(Absolutely due to laziness, I’m reviewing four books together, and I’m not doing full in-depth stuff for each not because of any lack on the part of any of the books, but because of the laziness. Each of these books are fantastic: all were (and should be) read and enjoyed slowly by the reviewer, very much moreso than the terse, quickly written reviews might otherwise imply.)

 

Joe Wenderoth’s No Real Light.

 

1. Wave books=gorgeous. Also: great writing.

2. It came out last year. I know. Whatever. It’s not like you can only buy a book the year it comes out.

3. Wenderoth is the best—and one of very few—poets who is, far as I can tell, almost unsaying stuff. I’ve spent hours with this book and I don’t really know how to get more clearly at what it feels like what he’s doing. It’s a poetry of incredible quiet, of very true, hopeful-in-spite-of (meaning: maybe overtly sad or whatever but never without some shine) moments. In all sorts of really significant ways, Wenderoth’s work could/should be some heavy duty tonic for what otherwise passes for poetry.

 

Tod Wodicka’s All Shall Be Well; and All Shall Be Well; And All Manner of Things Shall Be Well.

I’m not usually a fan of the you’ll-love-the-book-despite-the-character books: I like liking stuff, and I’m pretty fond of good and happy things, and so having to get over a character’s personality in order to enjoy a book isn’t typically what I’d consider A Good Time. T. Wodicka: thank you for getting me past this struggle.

The book’s centered around Burt, a Medieval re-enactor, but through Burt and his splintered family and real shaky relationship with the present, the story becomes an evocative tale (if slightly scary at times) of what it means to try to live within time, of who “owns” history, of how we all avoid or embrace or choose-your-verb our past (the scary part of the tale is the fact that Burt, so wrapped up in reenactment, spends bunches of his time reading books, which of course is not the best thing in the world to do, but of course you’re realizing that fact as you’re sitting there, feet on the red ottoman, reading a goddamned book). It’s also, at its heart, a real basic family drama—basic in the sense that families are always, in some way or another, fractured and crazy, and maybe family itself isn’t a noun but a verb and it means “putting shards together that may or may not have ever fit together in the first place.”

(review up by J. Maslin at NYTimes here) 

(and Kalfus’ NYTimes Sunday review (read: take-down) here) 

 

Richard Zoglin’s Comedy at the Edge.

 

Good but not great, Zoglin’s book does a thorough job of painting pictures and telling tales about the standup comedy scene of the 70’s (with detours into the 60’s and into the early-80’s, but mostly about the 70’s). With whole chapters on Lenny Bruce, Carlin, Pryor, and Steve Martin (and some others, but those were the chapters that were best)(also the chapter that, weirdly, coupled A. Kaufman and R. Williams. Not that they shouldn’t be joined, but certainly those two had enough influence to each get their own chapter, right? More than, say, Albert Brooks, right?), the book reads much more as an interesting, detail-filled romp through the fun days of excess and hilarity in LA and NYC.

That said, the book works far, far better as an hilarious compendium for the excesses and successes of a certain time period and certain comics than it does as some causality-implying tome about how standup changed lots of things. We know that Letterman and Leno and Conan and Stewart and Colbert are doing fundamentally different comedy than the comedy that was done by Carson et. al, but telling how comics changed things is, in USA Today pie-chart terms, a small slice of the story. That said: I could be totally wrong. I was 0 years old when most of the stuff in the book actually transpired, so maybe this is one of those you’re-too-young-to-get-it arguments. If so: I’m a moron.

Still, for all that, regardless: get the damned book. Read it. The first five chapters alone are worth the investment of time and money.

 

George Steiner’s My Unwritten Books.

 

Oh my god this guy’s incredible. I’ve heard all of thing zero about George Steiner in my entire life, and what’s totally possible, after having read this book, is that I’ve heard nothing about him ever because I’m just not smart enough to even be aware of someone this smart.

I can’t get into this book here. There are two way, way better reviews (here and here) that you should read—this book just trips me and I start stammering. It’s so much wonderfulness, though: a (it’s got to be certifiable, even if it hasn’t been certified) genius writes a book about the seven books he never wrote but wishes he could have, somehow also talking about (which is just tremendously resonant, for someone who has books he’d like to write) how wanting to but not writing a book creates a sort of “active shadow” (his words)—like a generative absence. It’s just fucking spellbinding. It’s not even the end of January and this might be the smartest book possible in 2008.