I was given a review copy of this book. Joe Lansdale gave it a plug on Facebook, asking people to drop the publisher a line to help get this book the attention it deserved. So I dropped them a line and got my copy. This is the first book by Neal Barrett, Jr. that I’ve read.

So the book starts out a little like 50 Shades of Grey for Men. I say this having not read* 50 Shades of Grey.

But it’s what I imagine 50 Shades of Grey would be like, were it told from the point of view of a man.

But (like that’s off-putting, for some reason, and for some people it may be), Doug Hoover, the protagonist, has got a great voice. A great, authentic Texan/Oklahoman voice. Now, I’ve got to warn you, I’ve only accidentally been to Texas before, and that only on the inside of an airport, a hermetically sealed airport.** So I have no idea if this is a true authentic Texan/Oklahoman voice. But it was to me. Doug’s having trouble with his wife, Erlene and her unfortunate lineage (though that may only be a part of the problem), and that part of the story, the unraveling marriage, is interesting enough, and understandable enough, given Doug’s proclivities, but the journey just sizzles, along the way. In particular I enjoyed the part in chapter 6 in the bar where they start discussing Cherokee Indians and new black Stetson hat. In Kindle terms, and I have no idea what this really means***, it’s at location 522 or so.

I loved the little anecdotes like that one, and when a particular habit of Doug’s involving the rich Texas soil is revealed as the secret to his youthful glow the story gets even more interesting.

It soars, however, when Doug meets Royce, the young boy at the Hanging Judge Barbecue #7 and stumbles upon James McArthur Dean Hill, the possible cautionary tale, and finally Sue Jean, his perfect little package

I like the history of the Old West and feel like a complete ignoramus compared to the vast knowledge that Neal Barrett, Jr. slops out there without a second thought, along with a good heaping of World War fighter plane battle history, but I enjoyed the quick lessons through osmosis.

I suppose I won’t go into the second half of the book for fear of ruining it for you, but it was my favorite part, by far. Barrett captures Doug’s disorientation as his life falls just a little bit apart and I love the humor and imagination and tenderness with which he handles the aftermath. The basketball-playing (or obsession with it) and tennis games in the latter half of the book had me laughing out loud.

I hadn’t expected much from this book, to be honest, even though the recommendation came from Mr. Lansdale. But, in the end, this was a great read, and I’m glad it’s getting new life as an ebook. This is the second zombie ebook I’ve read this year where an older, out of print book that simply faded away, the first time around gets a second chance (the first being Michael Joyce’s amazing “Going the Distance”), and I’m very glad I got the chance.

* I swear.
** I also swear.
*** I really do swear, and I swear that this is the first time I’ve ever had a book crash on me, when I was reading this on a borrowed Kindle Paperwhite. The future!

I listened to Jim Gaffigan read his own book, “Dad is Fat.”

I really like Jim Gaffigan’s stand-up routines. I bought his Mr. Universe special during the spate of $5 stand-up comics doing that sort of thing.

But this book… this book.

It’s not as sharp as his stand-up, and a lot of it isn’t particularly funny or new. There are a lot of parents vs. kids jokes, seeing as he has five he’s probably earned them. But the stories and observations are just so… flat that it’s a wonder that it’s the same guy who sparkles on stage (in a literal sense, in that his skin tone reflects the bright spotlights to blinding effect and in a figurative sense).

If you’re looking for Jim Gaffigan at his best, I would spend the $5 at his site and download Mr. Universe over going for this book, which will someday be a nice keepsake for his kids, and that’s what this book boils down to: it feels like a vanity-published/iPhoto published book cobbled together from funny (to his family, perhaps) stories about their life.

Wow.

Wow wow wow.

I lived through the late nineties Silicon Alley phenomenon when it felt like it was falling apart (my first company changed from a Systems to a Solutions to a Razorfish in the span of a year), and Pynchon did an excellent job of capturing it. The book was people with the usual Pynchon-esque conspiracies, bagfuls of characters, genuinely laugh-out-loud moments, and touching come downs, as well.

I actually enjoyed Pynchon’s take on 11 September, as well as the craziness of some of those Silicon Alley days, but it’s just how Pynchon writes so effortlessly, I love lines like:

“Scrutinizing, as if for evidence of occupancy, a cheese danish he has impulsively bought.”

“If you were doing something in secret and didn’t want the attention, what better way to have it ridiculed and dismissed than bring in a few Californian elements?”

Some of the lines are cheesy, like “Maxine could run workshops in Conquering Eyeroll,” but even in those you get the sense of a man completely happy in what he’s doing, which is writing a breathtaking novel which speeds along through the Upper West Side and a changing New York City.

At any rate, I loved this book, laughed out loud a lot while I was reading it, and enjoyed Mr. Pynchon’s take on early 2000s New York City.

The eminent author Dan Brown, his hazel eyes glistening in the early morning sunlight was woken by the chimes of England’s famed giant clock, Big Ben, a true testament to man’s dedication to engineering really big clocks.

With his hazel eyes he gazed over the manuscript sitting on the heavy antique wooden desk which was large enough to crush an elephant if dropped from a high enough height, say 160 ft, which in ancient Grecian times was a sacred number, arrived at when Plato got his students to drop a large wooden desk on an elephant.

Suddenly, he was being whisked to Rotterdam, aboard a train, a long sleek train. His handsome hazel eyes looked steelily out across the European landscape.

“Rotterdam, is, of course,” a passing train-bound professor of European history, “Europe’s only capitol to claim tulips and murder amongst its chief exports.” The professor handed Dan Brown, eminent author in his tweed jacket, a copy of Flann O’Brian’s “At Swim-Two Birds,” which is a commentary on the German occupation of Rotterdam, during which they plundered the magical lapis lazuli amulet of Astarfisis, a Zoroasterian goddess of fertility and plums. “Dan, you are our only hope,” whispered the professor in a tone that signified hopefulness, but at the same time no hope at all.

The eminent author Dan Brown flashed his hazel eyes at the professor and the view, though not at the same time. “I’ll do my best,” he said, sizing up the situation, considering all of his options and a brief tangential jaunt down a line of thought about the rise of the shogun in Japan.

I listened to the audio version of the eminent author Dan Brown’s novel Inferno. I really wanted to visit Florence, at some point during the reading, then I may have passed out and imagined Dan Brown’s Rotterdam trip.

I listened to the audio version of this book. The kids and I had listened to Coraline, which was also read by the author, and really enjoyed it.

But this one… the reading was fine, excellent, even, it’s just that the main story, the flashback to that time when he was a kid, just didn’t do much for me. I would have preferred it if the enveloping narrative about the man returning to the lane to sit by the ocean had been developed, dwelled upon more.

There wasn’t a terrible amount of suspense, and this isn’t a spoiler, because you’re told, in the beginning, that the guy is now in his 50s, returning to the lane, reminiscing. So the kid didn’t die. So that’s one worry off your mind. The mythology Mr. Gaiman constructed was fine, I suppose, the magic forest and mysterious ancient creatures playing just on the other side of our reality was fine, it just didn’t grab me at all. The revelations when he finally surfaces from his reverie by the pond were far more interesting, for me, and I wish there had been more of that.

We stopped listening to this audiobook (read really well by Nick Landrum) a while ago because we’d only just started watching Dexter and it seemed so redundant that we moved on to other content.

But now that the Dexter TV series is over I figured I’d revisit the book, just to get my Dexter fix at the end of what was one of our favorite television shows. I was blown away by how much of the characters’ personalities were fully fleshed out by Jeff Lindsay and how much of the story they used, wholesale, in the TV show. Dexter is a great character, and the story zips along. But enough different things happen along the way that make this book worth listening to.

The only drag on the story is the sometimes heavy lean on alliteration (so many darkly disturbed Dexters, deeply dented Debs). Other than that it was a really enjoyable read/listen, like looking at a childhood album of photos of one of my favorite television show characters.

I was always afraid to start this collection. Thomas Pynchon, himself, doesn’t make it sound like a good time. I’ve had the book on my library shelf for a few years now, from where I’d occasionally take it down, start reading the intro, that first page where he partly disowns the writing therein, and I’d get scared off.

But I did it. I must have been drinking heavily, that old Dutch courage (sorry, Dutch folks reading this, no offense intended). Maybe I was reaching for another book and grabbed this one by mistake, sat down, started reading and was whistling (literally, I suppose this was the type of stupor through which you whistle) through the introduction. It’s interesting to watch a literary giant, an invisible literary giant like Thomas Pynchon dissect his earlier self’s work, going into a critique of each and every story in the collection. If I had a time machine and memory-eraser, I would probably read the introduction last, as I’m sure it colored my impression of the stories.

My favorite story of the bunch was probably “Under the Rose.” I enjoyed the spy vs. spy rush about Egypt and the old, weary spies who have been enemies for so long it’s not clear which side they really back. I had a blast with the characters in “Low-lands” and I loved the secret history of a Long Island dump he’s created for the story.

“Entropy” I enjoyed, though it may be because I’d recently been reading up on entropy, and I loved the idea of this “lease-breaking party… moving into its 40th hour.”

The others were fine, as well, certain moments and situations, like the kid in AA in “The Secret Integration” or the practical joke planning and the intricacies thereof in the same story were excellent.

So in the end, dear Reader, the lesson is that you shouldn’t be afraid to start (and continue reading) this book. It’s not as good as his later stuff, but, paired with his own analysis in the intro, it’s a fun peek into his development as a writer.

It’s like a koan wrapped in an elephant. Except more pleasant than that. And more accessible.

These were quiet, sweet little stories about a curious elephant with a very personal relationship with his god, who appears as a cloud or a rock in a river. While I read them all in a sitting or two you could probably pick and choose your way through like some all-you-eat buffet. If you are doing that, here’s where I think the bacon and sausages are (but there are few, if any, runny plates of scrambled eggs or sawdust biscuits, really):

“Love” – my favorite line from this one is:

“What the hell?” asked the cloud.”

“Jealousy” – God’s reaction to the elephant’s dramatic sighing is worth the price of admission for this one

“Pots O’ Clay” – a lovely story about the butterflies and elephant conspiring to make pots from the clay in the river.

“I’m God,” said God. “I do know what pots are and how they are used.”

I loved the characterization of God, in Its many (2) forms, the elephant, and the elephant’s jungle roommates. You could pick a worse book to center your religion around, for sure.

Excerpts From: Estey, Dale. “The Elephant Talks to God.” Goose Lane Editions, 2006. iBooks.

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