Books for Dudes: Atmospheric Murder 'n' Mayhem
By Douglas Lord Sep 1, 2011Atmosphere, or lack thereof, can be deadly. Just ask any Star Trek redshirt unfortunate enough to beam down to an uncharted planet sans helmet—or see the evidence in books. Looking for quality murder 'n' mayhem led me on quite the wild-goose chase. While the shelves overfloweth, there's a lot of crap out there, too. Nobody has time to read, so folks shouldn't have to make time to read books lacking that je ne sais quoi, joie de vivre, and even Gérard Depardieu.
Let's face it: dudes want some attaque au fer when reading. It's like when you eat at Long John Silver's or Arthur Treachure's, man; you're not just paying for that shrimp deep-fried in 11-year-old grease-you're paying for atmosphere.
The problem, then, is tepid books. Life's short. Spend your time reading any title mentioned on Boing Boing; even just linking your patrons to any of their wondrous YouTube findings would be a more productive use of time because, as Carly Simon sang, nobody does it better.
Examples of the Problem
Bernhardt, William. Capitol Offense. Ballantine. 2009. 320p. ISBN 9780345502995. F
The "offense" of the title is fine, but what about the Capitol Defense*? Mr. B's writing totally lacks panache; there's barely any color, detail, or description. It strikes me as really weird that Bernhardt has won not one but two Oklahoma Book Awards when he doesn't tell us what famous character Ben Kinkaid wears to the office. A suit? Business casual? A toga and cork-soled espadrilles? His writing is, indeed, art-in his case, a mixed-media sculpture with wooden dialog, a leaden plot, and stone characters.
* Sure, the Caps have Alexander Ovechkin and lot of other talented guys on the ice in every line, but how do you finish first in the NHL's Southeast for FOUR STRAIGHT SEASONS and have a combined playoff win/loss of 9-20? I'll tell you: poor defense.
Cook, Robin. Marker. Putnam. 2005. 533p. ISBN 9780399152931. $25.95. F
Marker is a typical Cook book: an interchangeable, repetitive medical thriller with greedy, colluding insurance companies and muckety-mucks and beautiful doctors falling in and out of love while investigating mysterious deaths. Cook's knack for detailing every stupid little thing drove me to throw up in my mouth: "When the alarm went off the second time, Jack turned it off, threw back the covers, sat up, and put his feet on the floor, facing away from Laurie." I admit that it's not fair for me to critique one pedestrian sentence, but THERE ARE 533 PAGES OF THIS. Do you enjoy reading about what color Jack's mountain bike is or that Laurie put her pregnancy test kit box on top of the hamper? Go for it.
Some Solutions
Bazell, Josh. Beat the Reaper. Little, Brown. 2009. 310p. ISBN 9780316032223. $24.99. F
Crackling with energy, this thriller will suck readers in before they can fight the undertow. Our hero ain't some nice guy who preens for the cameras; page one finds him taking out a would-be mugger: "I wrap his elbow and jerk upwards, causing the ligaments to pop like champagne corks." But then-o-ho!-he proceeds to reset the unconscious mugger's arm and fireman-carry him to the hospital. And steal his gun. Are you wondering, "WTF?" Hey, me, too! Turns out he's a doctor/martial artist/murderer/Renaissance man, a badass vengeful jackal who has nonetheless taken the Hippocratic oath. Is the Mob involved? Is Federal Witness Protection? What whimsical hijinks will he get up to next? It's compelling stuff with an antihero you can really root for.
Atmosphere: Psychotic. Any doctor who goes on rounds thinking, "The Moxfane I chewed up half an hour ago, along with some Dexedrine I found in an envelope in my lab coat...is making it hard to concentrate. I'm peaking a little too sharply," is the kind you want doing your thoracostomy.
Berry, Jedediah. The Manual of Detection. Penguin. 2009. 278p. ISBN 9781594202117. $25.95. F
If you mashed up Mike Hammer and Pink Floyd's The Wall, you might get something like this. Our man Unwin (get it?) is a clerk at a positively Orwellian detective agency. After filing papers and sharpening pencils for 20 years, he is one day mysteriously booted upstairs to take over for a missing detective but receives no guidance or instructions. Absent a structure, with just the titular manual and its peculiar axioms (e.g., "Woe to he who checkmates his opponent at last, only to discover they have been playing cribbage"), Unwin's search is by turns profound and absurd. It's a dream for us to read as he uncovers clues and dangerous information, but a nightmare for him to live. If you have a long attention span or liked the minutiae of Nicholson Baker's The Mezzanine, you'll enjoy this. If you don't like it by page 14, where Unwin describes how he sorted his paper clips by size, you won't like it at all.
Atmosphere: Arid extra dry.
Hand, Elizabeth. Generation Loss. Small Beer, dist. by Continuum. 2007. 265p. ISBN 9781931520218. $24. F
I didn't like this book, yet I read it compulsively. It's a dark, unpleasant, and quite beautiful experience that I highly recommend-in the same way that I recommend beef tongue tacos and Crooked Fingers*. Cass Neary is a deeply unlikable photographer about whom readers will ask, "Who is this scowling protopunk nihilist who drinks such bitter coffee all day?" With Cass, sex isn't sexy, and drugs aren't fun. Even her art is dour; she "liked dead things: the fingerless soft hand of a pheasant's wing, mouse skulls disinterred from an owl pellet, a cicada's thorax picked clean by tiny green beetles." A job brings Cass to a remote Maine island to interview a decrepit photographer. Despite Mainers' distrust of folks from "away," she manages to uncover the scoop about some missing local teens and their carefree amusements-like murder. Weirdest thing? Her story parallels Paul Simon's "You Can Call Me Al." Both Cass and Al need a photo opportunity, want a shot at redemption, and don't want to end up a cartoon in a cartoon graveyard.
Atmosphere: Ever pet a porcupine? Junkie destruction crossed with Maine brutishness and finished with a Northeastern non-rhotic accent.
* The AV Club needs to be linked from every media section's site.
Spencer, Scott. Willing. Ecco. 2008. 244p. ISBN 9780060760151. $24.95. F
Timid freelance writer Avery Jankowsky isn't your average ass-kicking 'merican who takes three-quarters of a page and ten beers to throw over his cheating girlfriend. It's 40 pages of heartbreak, after which Avery is broke, out of ideas, and unloved. A chance meeting with his uncle Ezra (who's Better Than Ezra?) results in a miraculous, paid-in-full international sex tour (wha???) through Iceland, Norway, and Latvia. As Avery documents it for a forthcoming exposé, he finds it's not all it's cracked up to be. Like most dudes, Avery is a romantic, even when it's free and she's beautiful. He wonders what the hookers think and feel and likens the experience to acting, reluctantly, in a play. "Being in bed with a whore," he muses, "is like being press secretary for a president. You believe his story even when you know it's not true..."
Atmosphere: Cloudy and lacking boundaries. Not since Umberto Eco's ponderous but riveting The Island of the Day Before (which I thought I finished yesterday but turns out I'm still reading) have I been this riveted by such ponderousness.
Extra Credit: The Literate Dude
Bishop, Elizabeth. Elizabeth Bishop: Poems, Prose, and Letters. Library of America, dist. by Penguin. 2008. 979p. ISBN 9781598530179. $40. LIT
I picked this up thinking much like Carl Brutananadilewski from Aqua Teen Hunger Force: "Aw, what the hell is that?" Well, I was shocked-this chick knew words like French Canadians know spackle! Poet Laureate, Pulitzerette, and winner of the coveted and prestigious Big Buster's da Dude Award, EB wrote fluid poems that force readers to pay attention and to think up their own images. She could rhyme, as in "Exchanging Hats": "Unfunny uncles who insist/ in trying on a lady's hat,-oh, even if the joke falls flat/ we share your slight transvestite twist." But her non-rhymey stuff is good, too. Like this stanza from "The Flood": And slowly down the fluid streets/ the cars and trolleys, goggle-eyed,/ enameled bright like gaping fish,/ drift home on the suburban tide. I also read some of her bazillion letters, but I only found one-addressed to modernist poet Marianne Moore concerning her pet toucan, Sammy-any good: "He has two noises-one a sort of low rattle in his throat, quite gentle, if he is pleased with you, or cranky, if he isn't, and the other, I'm afraid, a shriek. He also has the shortest intestinal tract even known, I think..." The upshot? Put it on your coffee table (remember to wear your pince-nez) to get the chicks on you harder than in any Axe commercial.
MOFO
Goins, Brian. Playing Hurt: A Guy's Strategy for a Winning Marriage. Kregel Pbns. 2011. 144p. ISBN 9780825426735. pap. $11.99. SELF-HELP
Ladies, isn't it soooooo cute when dudes use sports metaphors to explain all that emotional crap you bond over in the checkout aisle/bathroom/Pilates class? Since dudes genuinely understand sports analogies, and because it's easier to ride what moves, Goins uses to good effect chestnuts like, "There's no I in team" and "A sacrifice advances the runner." Mixing in gentle biblical passages ups the adorability factor, resulting in the mother lode of sports-n-sprituality woompfiness. Dudes are urged to step up to the plate every day because a successful husband "[l]earns his wife's playbook for feeling loved." More openly Christian sentiments encourage men to lead the marital team; "A husband who wants to love like Christ loves will nourish and cherish his wife... [and] engage when he'd rather shrink back." When Daniel in the Lion's Den is handed a javelin or David's win over Goliath is like the 1980 Miracle on Ice, a dude will pay attention and find damned charming stories about love. Or you could get your marital advice from Raymond Barone.
Atmospheric rating: Though gassy, this is sunny with a chance of sincerity.
Napoleoni, Loretta. Rogue Economics: Capitalism's New Reality. Seven Stories. 2008. 336p. ISBN 1583228241. $24.95. ECON
In this thought-provoking and aggressively macabre book, economist Napoleoni (Terror, Incorporated: Tracing the Dollars Behind the Terror Networks) details the greed and venality of corporations (and nations behaving like corporations) when money is at stake. The titular rogue economics is capitalism at its most vicious. You got your theft and your robbery on massive scales, sure. But you also got your fraud, your terrorism, your piracy, your money laundering. These work their way down to "We the People" in soul-killing things like subprime mortgage lending crises, fattening food additives, and the "two-incomes trap" that face middle-class families. Oh, and those hookers employed by dudes on international sex tours, too (see Willing, above). While the author doesn't exactly blame democracy, she sure does hammer home the point that democracies tend to encourage capitalism, which then bumps up against greed (headlines about the millions of missing dollars in Afghanistan come to mind). If your interest is piqued by Matthew Taibbi's political pieces for Rolling Stone, you'll dig this.
Atmosphere: Toxic with a chance of acid rain.
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