No Pictures: Mind The Gap, Pamela

The Best American Crime Reporting 2009
Edited by Jeffrey Toobin
Series Editors Otto Penzler & Thomas H. Cook
Published by Ecco/Harper Collins, 2009

Mark it now, there's a Best American Blogposts Where Arizona Argues Against Race Mixing in the works, because that's what happens when three (for now) publishers figure out they can reprint previously written natterings about just about anything, as long as the word "Best" and "American" pops up before the part where they describe what the thing actually is. The Best American Crime Reporting, or BACR if you feel the need, isn't an official entry in the canon, but now that it's outlasted the for-serious Recipe collection, maybe it can find a home.

There's some decent stuff in this one, no surprise really: it's a book length equivalent of your newspapers Police Blotter/News of the Weird section, if your newspaper covered the world and the blurbs were longer and written by clever people with interesting agendas. There's more than a couple of Law & Order plots here, and since most of those particular episodes were filmed following this things release, NBC might want to bring Penzler & Cook on as data miners. (If they haven't already, since Penzler is one of those types who's more well versed in mystery and crime than wikipedia, and he's a sure-to-die-here New Yorker as well.) The most unnerving pieces aren't as predictable as you might expect--sure, there's the bleak tour into the final days of a spree killing teenager, and yep, there's one of those excellent let's-pretend-this-is-all-their-fault horror stories about the Mexican drug cartel wars, but then there's American Murder Mystery, a bundled slice of controversy and raw data that acts on the reader like an ingestion of foodborne botulism, seeping further and further into the body until the final sections serve as the moment in which the brain violently begins attempting to eject the information as rapidly as possible. While most of the book ends up in the same category as the cheap true crime fetish work that this genre mostly consists of--soul-crushing horror or alt-news pop fodder--there's enough muscle in the chosen few to give the book a dark sociological value that the cornball cover doesn't advertise. It'll be curious to know how much of a future these books might have--if it isn't obvious enough, the book is a print version of a link-blog, with many of its articles available for free from the same outlets that initially funded them--but then again, it's also notable that all of the collected articles were born in print, and that few of them could have found the necessary financial sustenance required in website dollars alone.

Out Stealing Horses
By Per Petterson
Published in English by Picador/St. Martins Press, 2005

It certainly takes way too much long for this Norwegian book to take off, but when it does--with the first of two requisite family tragedies that explain Newsweek's "master storyteller!" blurb--it has a good bit of punch to it. There's yet to be a decent explanation for why American readers have spent the last decade jacking themselves off to Nordic versions of the same kind of family secret novels and crime fictions that their own country produces plenty of already, and Petterson doesn't contain the answer anymore than a Wallander dour-fest. But there's more than a few passages in this book that really sing, and, as is standard with anything set in the snowed in hideaways of a country few of its readers will ever visit, it's an alluring setting to spend time in. If you're going to give it a shot, word of advice: ignore the blurbs. From NPR to the New York Times Book Review, everybody involved has taken the opportunity to praise a critic-turned-novelist who has, at best, produced a decent take on the umpteenth version of Old Man Looks Back, Heavy Heart at the Ready.

On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness
By Jacques Derrida
Published in English by Routledge/Informa plc, 2001

This is one of the books published under the "Thinking In Action" imprint, which publishes a wide manner of "theory junkie" books, including an upcoming one called "On Manners", which is why I'm using the word manner in the earlier part of this sentence. The books are barely ever tied into what their titles refer to--this one is a long form advertisement for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission as well as a bio-pic on France's relationship between Algeria, circa ten years ago--and that's probably why 30% of the blurbs describing the Thinking In Action series relate to the way the books are designed, because nobody reads these things. (They have pictures on the front, minimalist design, and orange spines. The Derrida cover is an out-of-focus picture of people, because, you know, forgiveness and cosmopolitanism are things that sort of involve people and is kind of out of their reach.) Derrida had great hair, and he's worth reading for that reason. There's a lot of philosophy out there, and one of the easiest ways to make sure you aren't wasting your time is to check and make sure that the people you're reading are at least as attractive as you are (or more so), because there is nothing you can learn from ugly people except how to suck at life.

Beauty and Sadness
By Yasunari Kawabata
Published in English by Knopf, 1975

Beauty and Sadness leans a lot heavier on the latter, with almost all of its beauty coming with massive strings attached in the form of These Hotties Are Crazy. They might just be sexist staples, but Kawabata is totally up front about how much of a shithead its primary male character is--if ever there was a guy who could only attract women who were all about annihiliating his life, it would be this guy, and boy does he pretty much deserve most of what he's got coming to him. (Most, but not all, because some of the fallout from his whole "I must have sex with young, damaged woman who I will emotionally manipulate into sociopathy through lust and indecisive whining" ends up landing on the innocent family members he treats like shit.) All that gruesome emotional torment aside, it's a pretty compelling story that suffers more from what one hopes is a shitty English translation that turns lucid, dreamy sentences into confusing half-finished fragments of thought. It's probably best not to look for too much of an autobiography in the plot, but it's hard not too when the author of the book about a successful author's illicit love affair apparently took his own life after an alleged illicit love affair--but hey, anagrams. Anagrams can be for grown-ups.

-Tucker Stone, 2010

Comments

[Kenny Cather]

"storyteller!" blurb--it has a good bit of punch to it. There's yet to be a decent explanation for why American readers have spent the last decade jacking themselves off to Nordic versions of the same kind of family secret novels and crime fictions that their own country produces plenty of already..."

You're right. I've been wondering the same thing recently. Although I have to admit I was quite impressed with "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo." I mean, it wasn't genius or anything, but I was expecting a poorly written book on par with John Grisham and found pretty good genre fiction inside.

But the whole Nordic book phenomenon is really a strange one. My guess is it's because the Nordic area seems like a xenophobic culture's wet dream - the economies there are strong yet there's not much immigration. I could be all wet on that guess, though.

[Tucker Stone]

I'm not sure what you're saying in the last part there. American audiences are attracted to the literature of xenophobic cultures, but only in the last decade?

This isn't one of those situations where I have a pet theory I'm trying to promote. It strikes me as curious how many new books are getting translated out of the Danish/Swedish/Norwegian trio. More than willing to hear you out, but right now you've stumped me.

[LurkerWithout]

"It strikes me as curious how many new books are getting translated out of the Danish/Swedish/Norwegian trio."

Mind-control chemicals pumped into the air at IKEA?

[Kenny Cather]

Tucker,

This isn't one of my most well thought out ideas, and I'm not married to it or anything, but here goes....

I think there's been a lot more hysteria over illegal immigrants and Muslims in the past 10 years. I think subconsciously, the Scandinavia region is appealing to the average American because it's appealing to think there's this entire world where beautiful, blonde, blue eyed people are running around with good jobs and where no one from Mexico or the Middle East is trying to sneak into and threaten their livelihoods through either employment or blowing skyscrapers up. And I think if there are books out there set in this fantasy land, then Americans would tend to read them.

I dunno - it's a sort of dismissive, cynical view of my countrymen, but that's how I'm feeling nowadays.

If I didn't adequately explain it that time, oh well. I'm not trying to make this some cause I believe in, it's just a passing thought I've had once or twice.

[Joel La Puma]

Well, as reaching theories to explain odd cultural blips go, that's one of the more appealingly convoluted I've heard.

I don't know, man, the only people I ever talk to with any kind of opinion on Scandinavia are death metal morons. Seems to me like the book surge is more a publisher's decision than anything. They're straining for a hit, so they throw out some writers with exotic names that might catch the eye in a Barnes & Noble. Who knows? Why are the film snobs crushing on boring Romanian dramas? Maybe it's just a case where a bunch of works are coming from a region no one thinks about, and people are curious to know what's up. I once heard a book agent tacitly admit that one of the reasons she took on Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies was because it was about a region no one was writing about. Maybe it's all just novelty, you know?

[Joel La Puma]

It just now occurs to me that what you've suggested is not dissimilar from Avatar, if you just replace perfect cat people with perfect blonde people. So, point for that theory, I guess?

[Kenny Cather]

Actually, Joel, I like your idea *much* better - that it's publishers stretching for a hit. That makes more sense. I think my theory says more about my current disillusionment with people than anything else.

[Joel La Puma]

I'll tell you this, man - I was in Barnes & Noble last night, and they had a big display of some writer named Brad Thor. Don't know his work, having looked at just the covers and titles I'm guessing he writes thrillers, either legal or spy. Maybe both?

But the point is, even knowing he was awful by looking at the cover, I was still drawn to the name. I mean, Brad THOR. If I was an agent or an editor at a publishing house, I'd take him on for the name alone. I think, honestly, that most weird cultural blips can be ascribed to a tight group of people who know exactly what they want to produce, or a loose network of people who have no idea what to put out next but BY GOD THERE ARE DEADLINES, MAN.