HOW TO BE GOOD

Nick Hornby

Here is another terrific Hornby novel, but from earlier in his career somewhere after High Fidelity and before Juliet Naked. It is about Katie and David Carr, a married couple in Holloway, England with two fairly demanding kids, Tom and Molly. Katie is a general practitioner and a little smug about her profession. David is "The Angriest Man in Holloway," an acerbic columnist for the local paper. His naked hatred of everything has worn Katie down and at the onset of the novel she is seeking solace with Stephen and feeling quite guilty about it.

David also suffers from a bad back for which his physician wife can do nothing. It seems that Katie has quite a few patients for whom she can do nothing and this performance deficit is another thing driving Katie to have an affair. But David ends up going to a grungy street healer type named D. J. Good News who only has to touch David's back to make it all better. And just for good measure, he cures Molly's eczema, another condition for which Katie could do nothing.

It seems that Good News has not only cured David's back, but has also cured him of his rotten disposition. He is no longer "The Angriest Man in Holloway;" instead, he has become a cross between a Fuller Brush salesman and a Hare Krishna. His transformation is more than Katie bargained for, especially since Good News has moved in with the family and she is slowly going crazy and suppressing an urge to murder someone, anyone.

If you have been clever enough to have read other works by Hornby, you will recognize the trope on display in its formative stages here. A central character has to navigate the shoals of all these relationships while trying to find meaning in a life filled with lots of hot air and precious little substance. The characters coalesce around some focal point, D. J. Good News in this instance, and they manage to help one another out of their malaise by discovering some underlying truth. Then they all wander off to their respective worlds until the next existential crisis forces their hands.

Sounds dreary, but under the influence of Hornby's prose it is a hilarious trip. It also provides a few profundities along the way for those of us who need more than simple hilarity.

The title of the novel supplies the theme. How is it possible to do good without simultaneously being a "do-gooder?" Until she met D. J. Good News, Katie never thought about this question. She was, after all, a doctor. Of course she did good, notwithstanding her numerous failures with her patients and her deplorable habit of assigning cruel nicknames to some of her more notable cases.

But Good News and the transformation of her husband give her pause. Katie doesn't want to give away half of the children's toys to those less fortunate. She doesn't want a homeless boy moving in with them. She doesn't want to go door to door proselytizing and alienating her neighbors. She doesn't want to bring home any of her weirder patients for a chicken dinner. But she doesn't have good arguments for her position. In her gut she feels selfish; however, her mind tells her it is Good News and David who are being selfish. How to do good in this situation?

More to the point, what is fair and what isn't What is our obligation to others? What is our obligation to ourselves? Our families? I have four televisions. There are only two of us in the house. We spend a lot of money at expensive restaurants and we travel quite a bit. I drive an Infiniti. Do I need to start throwing things overboard so I can fit through the eye of a needle?

How to be good?

There is a nice, albeit overly didactic, metaphor at the end of the novel that states all this in a nutshell.

For the last three days, it has been raining, and raining, and raining. . . . The last time it rained like this was in 1947, according to the news, but back then it was just a fluke, a freak of nature; this time around, they say, we are drowning because we have abused our planet, kicked and starved it until it has changed its nature and turned nasty. It feels like the end of the world. And our homes, homes which cost some of us a quarter of a million pounds or more, do not offer the kind of sanctuary that enables us to ignore what is going on out there; they are all too old, and at night the lights flicker and the windows rattle. I'm sure that I am not the only one in this house who wonders where Monkey and his friends are tonight.

Nick Hornby! Sometimes he makes you put both hands on top of your head to keep from floating away.

Reading in Puerto Vallarta

We just got back from twelve days in Puerto Vallarta with Bud and Janet. High seventies every day. Lots of good restaurants. Every morning by the pool reading books and drinking Pina Coladas. I polished off five books during my stay and got half way through a sixth on the plane ride home.

High Fidelity - Nick Hornby

I am accidentally reading Nick Hornby in reverse chronological order. I first read Juliet Naked a couple of years ago and fell in love with Hornby's voice and self-deprecating sense of humor. I say self-deprecating because the main characters he writes about have to be thinly disguised versions of Hornby, a person who seems to love drugs, sex, and (especially) rock and roll. Next I read A Long Way Down. I didn't think it as good as Juliet because it didn't have the same acerbic humor directed at rock and roll groupies and fanatics. High Fidelity, Hornby's first novel, is the best of the three. I haven't seen the John Cusack movie version, but after reading the book, one comes to the undeniable conclusion that only John Cusack could play Rob, the music store owner with one foot in reality and the other on a musical banana peel.

Rob and his down and out employees remind me of the guys in Diner, especially Daniel Stern who submits his prospective wife to a sports quiz to make sure they are right for each other. In Rob's world, everyone who walks into the store is subjected to a music quiz. YOU LIKE TINA TURNER?! GET OUT OF MY STORE! But Rob, unlike his co-workers, is slowly beginning to see the shallowness masquerading as good musical taste that is bringing about his ruination. The fact that he has just been left by his girlfriend helps bring him to that realization. In the end, Rob sees the light and seems willing to let someone with a bad record collection enter his life.

I know lots of Robs, but I am not going to mention any names on the off chance someone might actually be reading this. They usually have an icebox full of beer, a killer sound system, and a collection of concert tee shirts. Their homes are great places to hang out while getting lost in ear drum shattering recordings and good dope, but after awhile you just have to move on. Rob is on the verge of learning that lesson.

I loved the section at the end of the book where Rob is being interviewed by an undergraduate who innocently asks him to list his top five recordings of all time. Rob has waited all his life for someone to ask him this question and after much thought presents his list. But the list keeps festering and he calls back again and again to amend it. It is a funny moment and I can't imagine anyone who would be able to read on without stopping to make his own list. Here is mine.

"Cripple Creek" - The Band
"Eddie's All-Star Joint" - Ricky Lee Jones (Thank you Katie Hoffman)
"The Unsquare Dance" - The Dave Brubeck Quartet
"Wouldn't It Be Nice" - The Beach Boys
"Old Friends" - Paul Simon

Here is Kathie's list.

"Honky Tonk Woman" - The Rolling Stones
"Wouldn't It Be Nice" - The Beach Boys
"Come Together" - The Beatles
"Life Is A Carnival" - The Band
"Ain't Scared of Dying" - Blood, Sweat, and Tears

An Object of Beauty - Steve Martin

Steve Martin's Picasso and Einstein at the Lapin Agile is one of the smartest plays I have ever read or seen performed. It basically explores the idea that art and science both spring from the same creative impulse, the same need to explain. His new book isn't nearly as smart, but it taught me a lot about the inner workings of the art world. How art dealers deal. How art is valued. How to tell good from bad. It also gives a little history lesson about the state of the world the last couple of decades.

It is also a romantic comedy with a speaker who is a writer about art. This speaker unwittingly becomes involved in a little scam at an art auction which supplies the book with the bare bones of a mystery.

When I taught AP I would sometimes tell my students to go to a show at the art museum and rent the headphones. The descriptions of the paintings provided wonderful models for writing about literature, especially poetry. Steve Martin's descriptions of the various works considered in this book are masterful models of writing and thinking about art.

Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger

I decided to reward myself with Catcher. I hadn't read it for about ten years, so I figured it was time. Let me tell you that Salinger's masterwork holds up quite well against all the stuff I've been reading lately.

I read a piece about Catcher by Louis Menand(I think)celebrating the book's fiftieth anniversary a few years ago. The article was fun to read, even though it didn't teach me anything new. The one thing I remember from the article was Menand thought Holden was more articulate and more insightful than any seventeen year old could possibly be and he saw that as a flaw in the novel. At the time, I remember thinking he was as wrong as he could be, and now having read it again, I am convinced he was wrong. I've known all kinds of seventeen year olds with the same insight and the same ability to express that insight. On top of that, I continue to maintain that Holden Caulfield is the most memorable character in American Literature. I also maintain that anyone who doesn't love that little boy and that great book is either illiterate or has no heart.

The one thing that struck me about the book this time is that I am basically the same person I was when I first read the book at age fourteen. I laugh at the same jokes, cry at he same frustrations, recognize the same fears. I am still the hopeless neurotic I was in junior high school. I'm not sure what I think about this.

In Cold Blood - Truman Capote

I have recently enjoyed watching Phillip Seymour Hoffman in Capote, so while picking out books for our Mexican sojourn I chose this one to refresh my memory about the whole Clutter thing. It was quite a juxtaposition to Salinger, but it was even more compelling. Very few people write sentences like Capote. You can taste them.

I taught the book two or three times years ago and I remember that kids almost always loved it. I'm not a big fan of mystery novels. Don't get me wrong; I read them, but I always feel guilty afterwards. Not so with this magnificent book. I knew what was coming, but I still couldn't put it down.

Generosity - Richard Powers

In the midst of making some pretty heavy indictments against everything from genetic engineering (and profiteering) to the evils of Oprah Winfrey, this terrific book creates Thassa, maybe the most memorable character you will ever encounter.

Thassa is a blissfully happy and content creature and her happiness infects all around her. I found myself wanting to go out into the world spreading joy and good will, but not ironically. For real.

She is a student in a creative writing class taught by a young man whose caustic vision tends to skewer everything he encounters, but not Thassa. The problem is that anyone who is unqualifiably happy (She is said to possess the happiness gene.) is not sufficiently armed to withstand the 24/7 media scrutiny that such a person would inevitably be subjected to and we are forced to witness the gradual eating away of her joyfulness.

Don't worry. The end is satisfying without being sappy. This is a wonderful book and a great way to end my reading binge.

Beach Reads

THE ENGLISH MAJOR - Jim Harrison

Technically, I did not read this at the beach, but immediately before we left to join Franny and Ken in Kauai for ten beautiful days.

I have mixed emotions about this book. It is the first one I read after finishing Underworld, so in that sense it was kind of a nice vacation from heaviness. On the other hand, it suffered a great deal by comparison. Briefly, it is about a sixty-something English major who dabbled in teaching for about ten years (I have to assert here that in my book being in the classroom for ten years does not qualify one as a teacher. I don't think I really became a teacher until well into my second decade in the classroom.)and then moved onto other occupations. At the beginning of this novel we discover that our "hero" is recently divorced and trying to forge a new identity sans long time wife. He isn't doing well, primarily because his emotions vacillate between self-pity and raging lust. The lust rages whenever he encounters someone, anyone, of the opposite sex. When he encounters a former student (It is a wonder he remembers any of his students.) oozing sex appeal, his lust factor grows by a factor of ten.

He takes off cross country as a way to deal with his current life crisis. I get the feeling that he has had lots of life crises in his time. The former student rides along with him to return to the family she has deserted and during the trip we watch as he discovers all sorts of heavy shit about himself and life in general. To occupy his time and give him the illusion of accomplishment, he sets himself the project of renaming all the states. He manages to make this task much more difficult than one might imagine and the reader is rewarded for his perseverance by getting a list of the renamed states on the last page. Phew!

The most interesting thing about the book for me was the title: The English Major. It seems to turn that rather common college route into a cultural stereotype and since I am in fact an English Major I found it a little irritating. I was probably irritated because I realize that English Majors are of a type. I know a lot about the type. I married one. Most of my friends are English Majors. But I'll just speak for myself. I chose the major at first because I liked to read. I wasn't really thinking about teaching, but rather I thought it would be an okay thing to occupy my time until I got into the seminary and became a priest. Marriage after my sophomore year put an ecclesiastical damper on those plans and forced me to consider the practical side of being an English Major. I quickly discovered that there was no practical side, so I turned to teaching. Now I'm through teaching and asking myself what else my college major has prepared me to do. It has given me a refreshingly literary perspective on being a handy man and allowed me to see the irony in any number of political posturings and proclamations, but other than that I'm not sure how it has prepared me for anything.

So I can see how losing your wife and never really being a teacher would push someone out onto the road armed only with a year long quest to rename states and a hard on for anything feminine with a pulse.

THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET'S NEST - Stieg Larsson

This is the third and best of the adventures of Lisbeth Salander. I started it on the plane to Kauai and finished it by my second day on the beach. Like all of these novels, it is quite difficult to put down. Lisbeth gets herself into all kinds of fixes and always manages to escape by the hair of her chinny chin chin while getting graphic revenge on all her tormenters. Even if you are bothered by the idea of revenge (I still feel guilty about how much I enjoyed Dustin Hoffman finishing all the bad guys off in Straw Dogs.), you will get much satisfaction with the creative ways Lisbeth finishes off her tormenters.

I think the main reason why I like this book is because it spends a lot of time talking about journalistic ethics and even more time in courtroom drama. I love trial scenes.

A LONG WAY DOWN - Nick Hornby

Wonderful book. Four individuals all set on suicide happen to meet one New Year's Eve on the most popular rooftop for jumping in London. We have Martin, a TV breakfast show host who has pissed away his life with a fifteen year old girl; Maureen, a long suffering middle-aged mother of a hopelessly infirm son; Jess, a loud mouth punker with impulse control issues; and JJ, a mediocre rock guitarist who has just lost his band and his purpose in life. These four improbable people unwittingly offer each other support and a reason to live by the end of the novel.

That is the plot, but the charm of the book is the varying points of view and macabre sense of humor permeating every page. I loved this book and was able to finish it in two mornings of hanging out on various beaches.

INES OF MY SOUL - Isabel Allende

This is a serious book that is also exceedingly compelling. It follows the various loves of Ines Suarez through her travails in the Peru and Chile of the 1500's and in the process shows us the true history of Spain's systematic rape of South America happening at the same time that North America was being raped by our forefathers.

On one level the book is about love and soul mates. On another it is about exposing the truth of history. But mainly, I think, it is about an incredible individual who survives against seemingly impossible odds to be instrumental in founding a country. It also shows how women are behind the forming of civilizations. They provide the sustenance, the foundation upon which everything is built, while the men folk indulge in fatal pissing contests.

INHERENT VICE - Thomas Pynchon

I read this on the awful plane ride back to Denver. If you have ever read Pynchon (Gravity's Rainbow, V.) you will agree that he is next to incomprehensible, so it was with a little trepidation that I approached this mystery. In this book Pynchon seems to be writing a parody of west coast mysteries, the kind that become film noir classics. The music of his language as he apes the speech patterns of drugged out sixties types in Los Angeles sounds like the patter in L.A. Confidential or Chinatown. Not much more to say about this juicy little novel. I liked it.