At the end of the day, after the last whistle is whet and the last shoe drops, cast every other classification aside and divide the world’s inhabitants in two: those who are capable of talking on a cell phone while taking a shit in a communal bathroom and those who find this behavior reprehensible.
I am firmly in the latter camp. The same can not be said for all my colleagues at work.
Just last week I was on le toilet letting nature take its course. I had my sights on a quiet, solitary stall session. It wasn’t to be.
About thirty seconds into the proceedings I hear the squatter to my left barking out international travel arrangements on his cell phone to a woman at United Airlines.
Here we go.
From that moment on I couldn't keep my thoughts in check, they had already booked a first-class ticket to Mordor. And they -- my thoughts -- kept asking the same question over and over: "how?"
How did frequent flier #3442000741 get to a juncture whereby he’s making airlines reservations in a communal bathroom? Had he: 1) been on hold for twenty minutes and refused to quit the United queue when a higher, digestive master came calling (best case scenario) or perhaps 2) his day was so busy he had to double up on duties (less encouraging) or finally it’s possible 3) he really didn’t care who heard about his upcoming trip to Australia out of ORD, leaving at 2:23 PM on March 23rd and returning two weeks later (deserving of the guillotine).
Regardless of the events leading up to the call, I still can’t believe 31B wasn’t deterred by the prospect of a co-worker or manager (!) bumping into this conversation. Wouldn’t sharing a bathroom with 100 people on a floor of business deter you from merging your business with your business?
There’s an instruction manual for everything in this world, even for off-on devices. Perhaps we need a user guide to bathroom protocol as well.
Moving onto another group needing a protocol overhaul....
Somebody needs to call the Better Business Bureau and rein in the Starbucks baristas – they’re getting sloppy with their pours.
Every day I buy a grande coffee at Sbucks; every day the barista asks me if I want a little room for cream and sugar; every day I say “a little” (emphasis on little). Seems like a reasonable exchange, but then the barista hands over my coffee and the little room has turned into a suite at the Ritz: 1/3 of my coffee is gone.
Now let’s think this through.
My entire cup of coffee costs Starbucks in the neighborhood of $.20. They sell it to me for ten times that. Knowing as much, if you’re going to err on one side of the “little room” equation, wouldn’t you leave more coffee in the cup and allow customers to pour some out (if needed)? Isn’t that more logical than potentially alienating a customer over $.02 of coffee?
Isn’t it?
And while we’re on the subject of coffee, here's another matter for shared contemplation: why does everyone make a big deal about “fresh” coffee beans? It’s not like Juan Carlos, manager de bean fields in Colombia, has a just-in-time inventory system and a FedEx loading dock for straight-to-Sbucks consumption.
In actuality, Juan Carlos’ management “system” starts and stops with Alejandra – Juan Carlos’ niece and most talented field operator/picker of beans – who yells at her overweight, good-for-nothing uncle twice hourly: “Juan Carlos, another bag of beans is ready you hijo de puta...come and get it.”
After forty minutes of Alejandra's hiena-like screams, Juan Carlos will stumble to action: calling his brother Jorge on the walkie talkie. Jorge is on siesta but agrees to come pick up the next bag of beans three hours hence forth, after siesta and his favorite program, Amas de Casa Desesperadas (the local version of Desperate Housewives), is over.
Jorge will then take the beans to the processing plant. Juan Carlos prefers the ferment-and-wash processing method, whereby the remainder of the pulp is removed from the bean by breaking down the cellulose and fermenting the beans before washing them with large amounts of water, or in this case, saliva.
When the eight-week fermentation is complete, Jorge’s beloved, Vilma de la Flores, sprays “aroma” scents from an 800-liter spray bottle onto the beans, ensuring the beans leave Colombia smelling of earthen soil and poverty.
Once the beans are spray-scented and packaged, they are a meager three ships, four ports, and two U.S. eighteen-wheelers away from Chicago delivery. Estimated duration: 24 days.
Putting things into perspective, from the time the beans are picked until the time they are pressed into coffee, the Afghan people have lived through four dictatorships and three Khaled Hosseini novels.
Not that I'm upset with Juan Carlos in the least. His magic beans are my morning’s savior, every morning. Rather, my point is this: is it really fresh beans (aromas) that we care about? Wouldn’t you drink a Juan Carlos’ roast circa ’78 if it tasted bien and offered the necessary morning jolt?
In this realm know that Knobs “Old Bean” Coffee is now seeking investors, with immediate plans to serve customers on a knob near you. Anyone who picks up a copy of the offering memorandum will also notice that our marketing slogan is already intact: “Maximum caffeine & maximum taste...poured to the brim every time....using the oldest beans we could find.”
Howard Schultz: did you get our Christmas Card? The one posted from Southern Indiana. No matter, I'll fill you in on its message.
It said: "your days are officially numbered."
*2% of the proceeds from Knobs “Old Bean” Coffee will go directly to the “Save the Vixens of South America” Fund – our preferred philanthropic partner for the new millenium.
Friday, February 27, 2009
Sunday, February 8, 2009
The Best Books of 2008
Each night, for approximately an hour, I forgot the known world. I choose displacement.
It is my favorite routine.
In the hands of a great author, anything is accessible and everything is illuminated – even the inconceivable.
My past literary year covered much terrain. In fact the terrain -- the place – was the focal point in many of the books I read. New soil and new perspectives poured through my fingers with every turn of the page.
From the Dominican Republic under Trujillo's regime (Oscar Wao) to the corruption-laden, modernizing marvel that is India (The White Tiger & Maximum City) to Peter Hessler's ultra-engaging look at China (Oracle Bones and River Town) to Roberto Bolano’s inimitable trek across Mexico (The Savage Detectives), I covered a lot of ground in 2008.
And to be sure, I am better off for it.
If push came to shove, I could give up everything in this world but family, friends, and books. That is my triumvirate of choice.
Thankfully, it will probably never come to that. We will waste away a million different ways, but our entire collection crap will likely be by our side; crap being forever en vogue.
But books are unique with regards to things we possess. A book is something accomplished (something read) and yet it is distinct and unclassifiable. The time spent inside a book’s binding, from page one until the last, belongs to the reader. It is theirs and theirs alone.
Which is also to admit that you will not derive the same pleasure as I did from the books below. But hopefully you will unearth your own pleasures, while discovering your own horizons.
Staying with last year's theme, this best-of list shuns the year of publication in favor of the year it was read. And while I generally migrate towards fiction, I had the immense pleasure of stumbling onto several autobiographical journeys worthy of recommendation. Accordingly, the list is divided in two.
Fiction
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
I was planning on hating this book. This follow-on effort to The Kite Runner -- back to Afghanistan no less – had all the makings of a publisher’s lunge for cash while the iron was hot. I thought for sure Hosseini’s sophomore effort would be a bust.
Was I ever wrong.
An anguishing tale of two Afghan women married to the same man. In Hosseni’s hands the barren war-infested Kabul streets are brought to life in brutally stark terms; the four-part story leads to devastation and disappointment with every turn. In the end Suns is a two-fold inquisition, forcing the reader to ponder the all-to-real depths of inhumanity while simultaneously asking if Hosseni’s pen is otherworldly.
This was my first read of 2008, and I've read nothing as impressive since. Add Khaled Hosseni to any running list of contemporary giants; my doubts are a thing of the past.
I Am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe
For many readers Tom Wolfe is the undisputed king of societal observation, but he had eluded my nightstand until '08 when I read both Bonfire of the Vanities and Charlotte Simmons.
In hindsight my only regret is that I didn’t get to Wolfe sooner.
Having already bested Wall Street (Vanities) and the San Francisco hippie generation (Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test), Wolfe set his sights on the vagaries of college life with Simmons – Greek life in particular. Dupont University is the setting, a would-be Ivy akin to Duke or Stanford. Charlotte is an ultra naïve and freshmen who was valedictorian of her rural high school and the town’s most prominent citizen at age seventeen.
Charlotte's ascent is about to hit a few bumps in the road.
I got more than a few quizical looks on the train as I read along laughing out loud. By the end of this book you’ll think Wolfe was twenty-two and part of the fraternal order. One of the most enjoyable reads I’ve encountered in a long, long time.
Options: The Secret Life of Steve Jobs (a parody) by Daniel Lyons
To the delight of many readers, Daniel Lyons, a regular contributor at Forbes, has been operating incognito and blogging as Fake Steve for years. With blog entries like “I Love to Fuck With Car Salesman” and “Happy now, bitches? (iPhone SDK)” it’s easy to see why Fake Steve has gathered a following.
With Options, Lyons offers us an entire novel devoted to the egomaniacal tendencies of Apple’s CEO -- by turns would-be Buddha -- Steve Jobs. Behind only Simmons in the “your belly will ache from laughter” category, this read is an escapist delight.
Stealing the endorsement of Entertainment Weekly: "Just as Tom Wolfe skewered Wall Street in the `80s, Fake Steve lights a mini-Bonfire in Silicon Valley.”
Couldn't have said it better myself.
The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano
The recent translations of Bolano’s works into English resulted in a tidal wave of interest the likes of which the literary landscape scene rarely sees. Unfortunately, much like John Kennedy Toole, author of A Confederacy of Dunces, Bolano’s stardom came about posthumously. He died in 2003 at the age of 50.
The Detectives centers on the bohemian life of a would-be poet, Juan García Madero, and a gang of poets who refer to themselves as the Visceral Realists. Bolano’s alter ego, Arturo Belano, makes periodic appearances as the Realists traverse about Mexico seeking answers to questions about sex, more sex, and purpose.
Split into three sections and utilizing a smorgasbord of first-person narrators, at 600 pages the Detectives is not for the faint of the heart. Much like a good road-trip, this is a non-linear and often times confounding voyage. But Bolano’s narrative voice is so original, you’re likely to be both entertained and compelled to continue on the journey, even if you occasionally ponder: “are we there yet?”
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
When a writer’s first novel wins the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, it’s normally a worthwhile investigation. Read a few pages of Oscar Wao and your sleuthing will be over; purchase is all but inevitable.
An epic tale centering on an obese and introverted youth (Oscar) whose story begins in New Jersey but leads to his family’s native Dominican Republic. The characters are fictional but Diaz’ depiction of the all-too-real and murderous regime of Rafael Trujillo, the DR’s former dictator, is so vivid and lifelike, you’re left to wonder how many Oscar-like counterparts actually exist.
Compelling, believable, sad, and as soulful as any book you’re likely to read this year – this book and its main character are not to be forgotten.
An Arsonist's Guide to Writer's Homes in New England by Brock Clarke
Clarke’s fourth novel is a highly comedic work with life lessons and truthiness on every page. Our story’s anti-hero, Sam Pulsifer, accidentally set fire and destroyed the Emily Dickinson house in his hometown on Amherst, Massachusetts as a teenager, killing a married couple in the process. After serving ten year’s in prison, Sam’s life appears to be looking up, but then other literary landmarks start to go up in flames, which smolders any hope for Sam's own future.
I thought this novel was going to spiral out of control, but Clarke had the narrative voice measured exactly right: he knew exactly when to let the storyline run rampant and when to reel it back in.
Hilarious, ludicrous and tender: this novel earns high marks.
Non-Ficton
Oracle Bones: A Journey Between China's Past and Present by Peter Hessler
There isn't a more fascinating landscape on earth (to me) than modern-day China. Doubly true in the hands of Peter Hessler.
Hessler was one of the first Peace Corps representatives sent to the interior of China. He catalogued his two-year stint along the Yangtze River and published the New York Times Bestseller, River Town. After leaving the Yangtze Hessler found work as a correspondent in Beijing, which serves as home base for this, Hessler’s second novel.
In literal terms, the oracles bones are tortoise shells which contain some of the oldest known writings in the world, dating back some 3400 years to the Shang Dynasty in China. Hessler uses the artifact bones as a thread, guiding the reader through China’s past and onto the present.
This book will take you to China’s coastal boom towns and introduce you to the teenagers who work the factories. You will meet ethnic minorities, like the Uighurs, who inhabit China’s interior and smuggle goods aross the country. And you’ll get to visit the tourist attraction that is the North Vietnamese border.
This book should be required reading for anyone who plans to visit, or aspires to relations with, the country that is home to 1 in every 5 people on earth.
Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found by Suketu Mehta
This book came highly recommended by two people in the know: a friend from India and Danny Boyle, the Director of Slumdog Millionaire (who was in attendance for the premiere at the Chicago Film Festival). Thanks to their advocacy of Maximum City, my outlook on India has changed forever.
Mehta is returning to Bombay after a 21-year hiatus; his beloved city of youth is now the most overpopulated city on earth. Mehta's overarching investigation is the tensions that exist following the 1992-1993 Muslim-Hundu riots, but Mehta also commits himself to Bombay’s many subcultures, including Bollywood, Bombay’s sex industry, and the gangster-infested sham that is India’s political system.
Mehta begins the book with a quote from Kahir Mohanty: “we are individually multiple.” After reading Maximum City, you’ll be hard pressed to imagine anything in Bombay in singular terms. On a peninsula of 18 million people, multiplicity is an all-encompassing theme.
The Best American Essays of 2007 edited by David Foster Wallace
I can’t help but feel affection for this annual collection; I am, after all, an aspiring essayist (committed to deconstructing OTBs and OldTownFunGirls).
In his introduction, David Foster Wallace (R.I.P.) offers a unique argument for reading on: “many of these essays are valuable simply as exhibits of what a first-rate artistic mind can make of particular fact-sets -- whether these involve the 17-kHz ring tones of some kids’ cell phones, the language of movement as parsed by dogs, the near-infinity of ways to experience and describe an earthquake, the existential synecdoche of stagefright, or the revelation that most of what you’ve believed and revered turns out to be self-indulgent crap.”
Whether our beliefs are self-indulgent or not, this collection is anything but crap. In particular, JoAnn Beard’s piece from Virgina Quarterly entitled “Werner” -- about a man who jumps from a burning building -- is both brilliant and unforgettable for its tonality and matter-of-factness.
I’ve already earmarked this collection for annual purchase.
It is my favorite routine.
In the hands of a great author, anything is accessible and everything is illuminated – even the inconceivable.
My past literary year covered much terrain. In fact the terrain -- the place – was the focal point in many of the books I read. New soil and new perspectives poured through my fingers with every turn of the page.
From the Dominican Republic under Trujillo's regime (Oscar Wao) to the corruption-laden, modernizing marvel that is India (The White Tiger & Maximum City) to Peter Hessler's ultra-engaging look at China (Oracle Bones and River Town) to Roberto Bolano’s inimitable trek across Mexico (The Savage Detectives), I covered a lot of ground in 2008.
And to be sure, I am better off for it.
If push came to shove, I could give up everything in this world but family, friends, and books. That is my triumvirate of choice.
Thankfully, it will probably never come to that. We will waste away a million different ways, but our entire collection crap will likely be by our side; crap being forever en vogue.
But books are unique with regards to things we possess. A book is something accomplished (something read) and yet it is distinct and unclassifiable. The time spent inside a book’s binding, from page one until the last, belongs to the reader. It is theirs and theirs alone.
Which is also to admit that you will not derive the same pleasure as I did from the books below. But hopefully you will unearth your own pleasures, while discovering your own horizons.
Staying with last year's theme, this best-of list shuns the year of publication in favor of the year it was read. And while I generally migrate towards fiction, I had the immense pleasure of stumbling onto several autobiographical journeys worthy of recommendation. Accordingly, the list is divided in two.
Fiction
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
I was planning on hating this book. This follow-on effort to The Kite Runner -- back to Afghanistan no less – had all the makings of a publisher’s lunge for cash while the iron was hot. I thought for sure Hosseini’s sophomore effort would be a bust.
Was I ever wrong.
An anguishing tale of two Afghan women married to the same man. In Hosseni’s hands the barren war-infested Kabul streets are brought to life in brutally stark terms; the four-part story leads to devastation and disappointment with every turn. In the end Suns is a two-fold inquisition, forcing the reader to ponder the all-to-real depths of inhumanity while simultaneously asking if Hosseni’s pen is otherworldly.
This was my first read of 2008, and I've read nothing as impressive since. Add Khaled Hosseni to any running list of contemporary giants; my doubts are a thing of the past.
I Am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe
For many readers Tom Wolfe is the undisputed king of societal observation, but he had eluded my nightstand until '08 when I read both Bonfire of the Vanities and Charlotte Simmons.
In hindsight my only regret is that I didn’t get to Wolfe sooner.
Having already bested Wall Street (Vanities) and the San Francisco hippie generation (Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test), Wolfe set his sights on the vagaries of college life with Simmons – Greek life in particular. Dupont University is the setting, a would-be Ivy akin to Duke or Stanford. Charlotte is an ultra naïve and freshmen who was valedictorian of her rural high school and the town’s most prominent citizen at age seventeen.
Charlotte's ascent is about to hit a few bumps in the road.
I got more than a few quizical looks on the train as I read along laughing out loud. By the end of this book you’ll think Wolfe was twenty-two and part of the fraternal order. One of the most enjoyable reads I’ve encountered in a long, long time.
Options: The Secret Life of Steve Jobs (a parody) by Daniel Lyons
To the delight of many readers, Daniel Lyons, a regular contributor at Forbes, has been operating incognito and blogging as Fake Steve for years. With blog entries like “I Love to Fuck With Car Salesman” and “Happy now, bitches? (iPhone SDK)” it’s easy to see why Fake Steve has gathered a following.
With Options, Lyons offers us an entire novel devoted to the egomaniacal tendencies of Apple’s CEO -- by turns would-be Buddha -- Steve Jobs. Behind only Simmons in the “your belly will ache from laughter” category, this read is an escapist delight.
Stealing the endorsement of Entertainment Weekly: "Just as Tom Wolfe skewered Wall Street in the `80s, Fake Steve lights a mini-Bonfire in Silicon Valley.”
Couldn't have said it better myself.
The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano
The recent translations of Bolano’s works into English resulted in a tidal wave of interest the likes of which the literary landscape scene rarely sees. Unfortunately, much like John Kennedy Toole, author of A Confederacy of Dunces, Bolano’s stardom came about posthumously. He died in 2003 at the age of 50.
The Detectives centers on the bohemian life of a would-be poet, Juan García Madero, and a gang of poets who refer to themselves as the Visceral Realists. Bolano’s alter ego, Arturo Belano, makes periodic appearances as the Realists traverse about Mexico seeking answers to questions about sex, more sex, and purpose.
Split into three sections and utilizing a smorgasbord of first-person narrators, at 600 pages the Detectives is not for the faint of the heart. Much like a good road-trip, this is a non-linear and often times confounding voyage. But Bolano’s narrative voice is so original, you’re likely to be both entertained and compelled to continue on the journey, even if you occasionally ponder: “are we there yet?”
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
When a writer’s first novel wins the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, it’s normally a worthwhile investigation. Read a few pages of Oscar Wao and your sleuthing will be over; purchase is all but inevitable.
An epic tale centering on an obese and introverted youth (Oscar) whose story begins in New Jersey but leads to his family’s native Dominican Republic. The characters are fictional but Diaz’ depiction of the all-too-real and murderous regime of Rafael Trujillo, the DR’s former dictator, is so vivid and lifelike, you’re left to wonder how many Oscar-like counterparts actually exist.
Compelling, believable, sad, and as soulful as any book you’re likely to read this year – this book and its main character are not to be forgotten.
An Arsonist's Guide to Writer's Homes in New England by Brock Clarke
Clarke’s fourth novel is a highly comedic work with life lessons and truthiness on every page. Our story’s anti-hero, Sam Pulsifer, accidentally set fire and destroyed the Emily Dickinson house in his hometown on Amherst, Massachusetts as a teenager, killing a married couple in the process. After serving ten year’s in prison, Sam’s life appears to be looking up, but then other literary landmarks start to go up in flames, which smolders any hope for Sam's own future.
I thought this novel was going to spiral out of control, but Clarke had the narrative voice measured exactly right: he knew exactly when to let the storyline run rampant and when to reel it back in.
Hilarious, ludicrous and tender: this novel earns high marks.
Non-Ficton
Oracle Bones: A Journey Between China's Past and Present by Peter Hessler
There isn't a more fascinating landscape on earth (to me) than modern-day China. Doubly true in the hands of Peter Hessler.
Hessler was one of the first Peace Corps representatives sent to the interior of China. He catalogued his two-year stint along the Yangtze River and published the New York Times Bestseller, River Town. After leaving the Yangtze Hessler found work as a correspondent in Beijing, which serves as home base for this, Hessler’s second novel.
In literal terms, the oracles bones are tortoise shells which contain some of the oldest known writings in the world, dating back some 3400 years to the Shang Dynasty in China. Hessler uses the artifact bones as a thread, guiding the reader through China’s past and onto the present.
This book will take you to China’s coastal boom towns and introduce you to the teenagers who work the factories. You will meet ethnic minorities, like the Uighurs, who inhabit China’s interior and smuggle goods aross the country. And you’ll get to visit the tourist attraction that is the North Vietnamese border.
This book should be required reading for anyone who plans to visit, or aspires to relations with, the country that is home to 1 in every 5 people on earth.
Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found by Suketu Mehta
This book came highly recommended by two people in the know: a friend from India and Danny Boyle, the Director of Slumdog Millionaire (who was in attendance for the premiere at the Chicago Film Festival). Thanks to their advocacy of Maximum City, my outlook on India has changed forever.
Mehta is returning to Bombay after a 21-year hiatus; his beloved city of youth is now the most overpopulated city on earth. Mehta's overarching investigation is the tensions that exist following the 1992-1993 Muslim-Hundu riots, but Mehta also commits himself to Bombay’s many subcultures, including Bollywood, Bombay’s sex industry, and the gangster-infested sham that is India’s political system.
Mehta begins the book with a quote from Kahir Mohanty: “we are individually multiple.” After reading Maximum City, you’ll be hard pressed to imagine anything in Bombay in singular terms. On a peninsula of 18 million people, multiplicity is an all-encompassing theme.
The Best American Essays of 2007 edited by David Foster Wallace
I can’t help but feel affection for this annual collection; I am, after all, an aspiring essayist (committed to deconstructing OTBs and OldTownFunGirls).
In his introduction, David Foster Wallace (R.I.P.) offers a unique argument for reading on: “many of these essays are valuable simply as exhibits of what a first-rate artistic mind can make of particular fact-sets -- whether these involve the 17-kHz ring tones of some kids’ cell phones, the language of movement as parsed by dogs, the near-infinity of ways to experience and describe an earthquake, the existential synecdoche of stagefright, or the revelation that most of what you’ve believed and revered turns out to be self-indulgent crap.”
Whether our beliefs are self-indulgent or not, this collection is anything but crap. In particular, JoAnn Beard’s piece from Virgina Quarterly entitled “Werner” -- about a man who jumps from a burning building -- is both brilliant and unforgettable for its tonality and matter-of-factness.
I’ve already earmarked this collection for annual purchase.
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