Review: "All Hands on Deck," Will Sofrin

 

By Paul Carrier

Will Sofrin knew a thing or two about sailing when he landed a new job in Newport, R.I., in 2001. He had studied the restoration of wooden boats after graduating from high school, was an experienced boat builder, and had served as a deckhand aboard a racing yacht.

But Sofrin, who was 21 at the time, had never worked on a full-rigged ship, the type of vessel more commonly referred to by landlubbers as a tall ship. Yet that’s exactly what he found himself doing when he joined the crew of the Rose, a 500-ton reproduction of HMS Rose, an 18th-century English warship.

The opportunity presented itself because director Peter Weir needed a replica of a period frigate for Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, a movie inspired by the novels of Patrick O'Brian, which are set during the Napoleonic wars. (The film, which starred Russell Crowe and Paul Bettany, was released in 2003.)

The Rose had been chosen to play the role of HMS Surprise, a ship commanded by “Lucky” Jack Aubrey in O’Brian’s series. (The fictional Surprise was modeled after an actual French vessel captured by the Royal Navy in 1796 and renamed the Surprise.)

The production team had big issues to sort out from the get-go. The first was that the Rose needed significant upgrades before it could leave Newport. The second was that the Rose — not the most seaworthy vessel afloat — would have to be sailed from Newport to San Diego. Oh, and one more thing. The trip would begin in the dead of winter.

Although All Hands on Deck is Sofrin’s first book, the author comes across as a natural storyteller with a welcome sense of humor and, not surprisingly, a spirit of adventure. At one point he describes himself as having been “a cocky little prick” during that time period.

The Rose began her journey in early January 2002 with what the book’s jacket copy describes as “a ragtag crew of thirty oddballs.” Or, as Sofrin puts it in the first chapter, "the Hells Angels of the sailing world." The mix of old hands and neophytes fell into three categories, Sofrin writes, including “cult-type sailors” who idolized “an archaic sailing lifestyle,” rebels who preferred a more modern approach and floaters who were “trying to find the best of both worlds.”

The experience of sailing aboard the Rose from Rhode Island to Puerto Rico, then through the Panama Canal and on to Mexico and California, is compelling enough. A brutal storm only a few days into the trip had at least some crew members speculating about the possibility of having to abandon ship, and Sofrin’s description of what happened makes an indelible impression. A brief excerpt: “Waves soon formed inside our sleeping quarters, rolling from one side of the compartment to the other, soaking bunks and gear.”

But Sofrin also provides context and supplementary information to flesh out the adventurous, sometimes terrifying, passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific. That includes photos; a capsule biography of O’Brian; plainspoken translations of nautical terms; drawings identifying sections of the ship and its masts, yards, sails, rigging, etc.; and periodic comparisons between life aboard the Rose and HMS Surprise.

Sofrin notes that O’Brian once said the essence of his books “is about human relationships and how people treat one another.” And so it is with All Hands on Deck. The crew of the Rose included a broad “spectrum of personalities” who “lived together, worked together, laughed together, and took care of one another.”

Review: "Chasing History," Carl Bernstein

 By Paul Carrier

Carl Bernstein is known as the Washington Post reporter who, while teamed up with Bob Woodward, helped expose the Watergate scandal that eventually led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon.

But Bernstein’s new memoir, Chasing History: A Kid in the Newsroom, does not deal with Watergate or even Bernstein’s decade-long stint at the Post.

As the subtitle suggests, Chasing History focuses on Bernstein’s introduction to journalism at the Washington Star, a legendary (but now defunct) newspaper which, in Bernstein’s time, employed such heavyweights as Mary McGrory, David Broder and Haynes Johnson.

Starting as a copyboy in 1960, while still in high school, the ambitious and inexhaustible Bernstein soon found himself working as a reporter during an epochal time in American history that coincided with the glory days of the newspaper industry. Bernstein writes of his coming of age with insight, wit, charm and an abiding love for the beauty and power of the printed word.

Review: "Newspaper Days," H.L. Mencken

 

By Paul Carrier

 

In the 1940s, H.L. Mencken, sometimes described as America’s greatest journalist, published a trilogy of “Days” memoirs that looked back on his accomplished and colorful life. Happy Days came out in 1940; Heathen Days, three years later.

In between, Mencken released Newspaper Days (1941), which covers his early years as a journalist in Baltimore. That period stretched from Mencken’s stint as a rookie reporter for the Herald in 1899 through the Great Baltimore Fire of 1904 and into 1906 when, as an editor, Mencken witnessed the Herald’s demise.

The Library of America has combined all three books in one volume, complete with extensive, sometimes sardonic notes that Mencken added following publication of the books. In the case of Newspaper Days, the supplementary comments alone run to some 60 pages.

Review: "The Ravenmaster," Christopher Skaife

By Paul Carrier

It’s not at all unusual for people who have interesting careers —  surgeons, veterinarians, prominent trial lawyers, athletes — to write about their professional exploits. But you might be hard-pressed to find a memoir from an author with a more exotic job, or a bigger mouthful of a job title, than Christopher Skaife

Skaife, a native-born Briton and a veteran of the British Army, is a yeoman warder (yes, warder, not warden) assigned to Her Majesty’s Royal Palace and Fortress, the Tower of London, and a member of the Sovereign’s Body Guard of the Yeoman Guard Extraordinary.

Which means what, exactly? Skaife is part of a team that provides tours, security and other services at the Tower. In Skaife’s case, its those added duties that are the most interesting; Skaife is in charge of the ravens that live at the Tower of London, hence the title of The Ravenmaster. His job is to keep the Tower’s seven resident ravens safe, healthy, happy and, ideally, on the premises.

That is no small task, because the ravens are large (three times the size of a crow), highly intelligent, sometimes mischievous birds that can fly away if they choose (although their flight feathers get trimmed a bit). Ravens may or may not have lived at the Tower since the 17th century, but they definitely have done so since the late 1800s. Legend has it that, if they ever leave, the Tower will crumble to dust and great harm will befall the kingdom.

Thanks to his position and his personality, Skaife is, by turns, a historian, folklorist, raconteur, student of animal (and human) behavior, and humorist. He does occasionally venture beyond the confines of the Tower in The Ravenmaster, to look back on his youth in Dover and his military service. (All of the yeoman warders assigned to the Tower previously served in the armed forces.)

But not surprisingly, the birds are the primary focus of Skaife’s memoir: those at the Tower, with whom he tries to speak “ravenish,” and those Skaife has seen elsewhere. Skaife clearly loves them, describing ravens as “some of the world’s most extraordinary nonhuman creatures.” Recalling the time he once spotted two ravens in Cornwall, circling side by side and diving and turning in formation, he says the spectacle “moved me more than any human performance ever could.”

Each of the avian occupants of the Tower — Munin (who died during the publication of the book and has been succeeded by Poppy), Merlina, Erin, Rocky, Jubilee II, Gripp II and Harris — is profiled individually in The Ravenmaster, with short biographical sketches that include gender, age, and the month and year in which the bird “entered Tower service,” as Skaife puts it.

A sampling: Merlina, the “Tower Princess,” is a free-spirited loner who steals sandwiches from tourists and has been known to “play dead” by lying on her back with her wings spread and her feet in the air, much to the dismay of visitors. Erin, one of the smallest but noisiest ravens, loves to “invade another bird’s territory, pick a fight, cause all sorts of commotion, and then suddenly back off.”

The Tower itself, which was founded close to 1,000 years ago, figures prominently in Skaife’s memoir, thanks to a storied past that has made it a World Heritage Site, a celebrated tourist attraction and the supposed haunt of assorted ghosts, including that of Anne Boleyn, who was beheaded there in 1636.

Skaife doesn’t put much stock in such spirited tales, but he believes there are “echoes of the past” everywhere at the Tower, “shadows that beckon and call out to us . . . .” When the sun sets and the shadows grow long, “memories and imaginings of a bloody and glorious past” come to the fore.

Written with wit, insight and verve, The Ravenmaster will appeal to fans of British history and, of course, to bird lovers. None of the Tower’s ravens cries out “Nevermore,” but the author does offer a tip of his ornate hat to Edgar Allan Poe and Charles Dickens (the latter had pet ravens), as well as to assorted experts whose work Skaife has studied.

The Tower ravens “have a job to do,” Skaife writes, “upholding tradition and reminding us of our past. In return, they get their food and lodgings for free. They rely on us, and we rely on them.”

Review: "Vacationland," John Hodgman

By Paul Carrier

You don’t have to be a New Englander to enjoy humorist John Hodgman’s Vacationland: True Stories from Painful Beaches, a pleasingly disjointed collection of antic essays and (occasionally) sober-minded observations. But it wouldn’t hurt.

Born in Cambridge, Mass., and raised in nearby Brookline, Hodgman also has ties to an unnamed town in the western part of that state. He holds a degree from Yale (which, as you well know, is in Connecticut). And he has spent quite a bit of time hanging out with his family in Maine, a state whose license plates promote the place as Vacationland. Hence the title of his latest book.

Hodgman was a regular on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show at one time. He may be best known as the guy who personified a PC in Apple’s 2006-2009 TV campaign pitting the suited, neatly coiffed Hodgman against an untucked, casually dressed Justin Long as the embodiment of a Mac. But this isn’t his first book. Hodgman’s previous efforts in that department include three books he describes in Vacationland as “a trilogy of fake facts and invented history” that found “a particular following among strange thirteen-year-olds.”

Vacationland’s quirky tone is clear from the outset. Literally. Here's the book's opening paragraph:

“I apologize for my beard,” writes Hodgman, who isn’t the clean-cut fellow of yesteryear anymore. “Not only because it is terrible — thin, patchy, and asymmetrical — but also because it is inexplicable.  Many people have asked me why I grew it, and most of those people are my wife, and to them and to her I say: I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

Growing a scruffy beard for no good reason, and then keeping it, is just one of the many personal quirks that Hodgman lists here. To what extent they’re factual or fanciful is anyone’s guess, but either way, they are entertaining.

Hodgman says he doesn’t like riding on city buses because they don’t run on tracks, and so could end up going just about anywhere, regardless of their designated routes. He insists on going through life playing by the rules because he figures everyone will love him for it.

He prefers hard liquor to wine because gin and whiskey are soothingly consistent bottle after bottle, while wine is mysterious, there are too many types of it, and you never really know if it’s any good without consulting  “some judgy wine priest, an initiate to its mysteries.”

Hodgman's glad he settled for pay-what-you-can counseling from a trainee when he was a young man living in New York, because he got a good deal. “You should always pay full price for a haircut,” he writes, “but if you have a chance to buy discount therapy you should grab it, because the markup on that shit is insane.”

Vacationland isn’t a random collection of nonsensical and self-deprecating wisecracks. Well, not all of it, anyway. Much of the book is devoted to Hodgman's alternately laughable and moving experiences in Massachusetts and Maine, including his discovery that the ocean in Maine “is traumatically cold. If you make the mistake of going into it, every cell in your body will begin shouting the first half of the word ‘hypothermia’ into your brain; the second half will simply be frozen tears.”

There are tender, insightful turns in Vacationland as well, touching on such topics as the early death, from cancer, of Hodgman’s mother; the importance of accepting life's transitions; the sometimes painfully embarrassing interactions in a state like Maine between the privileged and the underemployed; and the love Hodgman has for Maine. Still, the book is, at heart, more comical than contemplative, as Hodgman shows while discussing raccoons, which have a penchant for pooping on his porch and raiding the nearby bird feeder.

“Raccoons are beyond fear, and they are assholes. I tried to chase a raccoon off our porch as it was casually emptying our bird feeder in its fat mouth. As I yelled, it turned its head and eyed me with such casual contempt that I apologized to it.”

Review: "Cartoon County," Cullen Murphy

By Paul Carrier

It’s a safe bet that most fans of newspaper comics don’t give them too much thought. They may read Pearls Before Swine with their morning coffee, or scan the latest episode of Pickles before turning to the sports page and then heading out to work.

Some readers are more obsessive about their cartoons, collecting reprints in book form and devouring the occasional biographies that chronicle the lives of, say, Charles M. Schulz (Peanuts), or George Herriman (Krazy Kat) or Al Capp (Li’l Abner).

But for those with the most insatiable appetites, there’s no substitute for an account written by someone who was present at the creation, so to speak.

That’s what Cullen Murphy provides in Cartoon County, a firsthand look at the quirks and the art of prominent American cartoonists and illustrators who lived in or near Fairfield County, Conn., during the mid 20th century. These highly talented and idiosyncratic artists came to be known as the Connecticut School, practicing their craft during an era that Cartoon County’s subtitle describes as “the golden age of make-believe.”

This close-knit but informal club was a who’s who of cartoonists and illustrators from that period: Chuck Saxon, whose cartoons and covers graced The New Yorker for years; Mort Walker (Beetle Bailey); Bud Sagendorf (Popeye); Leonard Starr (Little Orphan Annie); Stan Drake (Blondie); Dik Brown (Hägar the Horrible); and Ernie Bushmiller (Nancy); among many others.

Although Cartoon County ranges afield, offering telling glimpses into the personalities and habits of several cartoonists, its primary focus is on Cullen Murphy’s father. John Cullen “Jack” Murphy illustrated the boxing comic strip Big Ben Bolt during its entire run, from 1950 to 1978. But the senior Murphy probably is best known for his 30-plus years of work on Prince Valiant. He began as an assistant to the Sunday strip’s creator, Hal Foster, in 1970, before assuming the mantle later on.

Born in 1952, Cullen Murphy was old enough to observe his father at work on both strips. Moreover, the younger Murphy took over the writing of Prince Valiant after Foster, who both drew and wrote the strip, called it quits in 1979. Foster's retirement transformed the Murphys into a creative father-and-son team. Jack illustrated; Cullen scripted.

The world described in Cartoon County is no more, thanks in part to the declining fortunes of the newspaper industry and the growth of the Internet as a mechanism for distributing just about anything, including cartoons.

Things were far different when Cullen Murphy was a boy.

“For cartoonists in America, the 1950s were the Cretaceous revolution. Conditions on planet Earth had never been so propitious,” Murphy writes. Back then, the country supported some 300 morning newspapers, 1,500 afternoon papers and 500 that were published on Sundays. “Those Sunday newspapers, with their thick comics sections, had a combined circulation of fifty million,” which exceeded the number of households in America. The Sunday funnies were so popular that, often, the comics section was wrapped around the rest of the newspaper, to assure that a paper’s biggest draw -- the funnies -- were front and center on the newsstand.

Murphy’s recollections are hard to pigeonhole, combining as they do elements of biography, memoir and comics history in a richly illustrated homage to a time and a place that obviously conjure up fond memories for him.

The illustrations alone — there’s at least one on almost every page — justify the price of admission. But Cartoon County has much more going for it than reproductions of photos, cartoons and other artwork. Murphy is a talented and experienced wordsmith who has produced a charming tribute to Jack Murphy and his friends. In addition to writing Prince Valiant for a time, the Amherst College grad is the author of several books, editor at large at Vanity Fair, and former managing editor of The Atlantic.

Armed with a wealth of historical information, a son's devotion to his father, keen insights into the world of comics and delightful anecdotes about some of cartooning's legends, Murphy lovingly resurrects the “vaguely anarchic” world of these Connecticut-based cartoonists who filled in at the drawing board when a pal was laid up by injury or illness and constantly grappled with their own tight deadlines, all within the quasi-puritanical mores of their era. In those long-gone days, for example, women in comic strips could be depicted in bikinis, but there was no tolerance for male nipples, which, Murphy writes, “presented a challenge for strips about prizefighters, cavemen, or barbarians.”

Review: "Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls," David Sedaris

By Paul Carrier

With only one other David Sedaris book under my belt (the hilarious Holidays on Ice), I may not be in the best position to judge Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls, a collection of monologues and essays, many of which have previously appeared in The New Yorker and other publications.

That being said, I didn’t enjoy this compilation as much, not because it lacks Sedaris’ delightfully offbeat sense of humor (there's some laugh-out-loud stuff here) but because this is an uneven assemblage. The hits here share space with a few near misses.

Sedaris is known for writing ostensibly autobiographical essays about his life, including his childhood in North Carolina; his time abroad in England, France, and elsewhere; his relationship with partner Hugh Hamrick; and his dyspeptic take on the antics of the boorish and baffling people he encounters in his travels.

In fact, Sedaris is at his best when he turns a jaundiced eye and a sardonic pen on folks who strike him as ill-mannered cretins. He is a peevish — some might say petty —  fellow, but that’s part of his appeal. Many readers are sure to share his take on the irritants that bedevil modern life, such as the slovenly dress code that has become the norm for traveling Americans.

“I should be used to the way Americans dress when traveling,” Sedaris writes, “yet it still manages to amaze me. It’s as if the person next to you had been washing shoe polish off a pig, then suddenly threw down his sponge saying, ‘Fuck this. I’m going to Los Angeles!’”

Sedaris doesn’t confine his biting assessments to his fellow Americans. He describes rural Britons as slobs who dump an obscene amount of litter along scenic roadways and in adjacent forests. He finds China to be a land plagued by truly horrendous, and avoidable, sanitation problems. As for Italy, Sedaris laments that the language barrier there had unfortunate consequences when he bought a train ticket to Brindisi.

“The man behind the counter offered me three options, and I guess I said yes to the one that meant “No seat for me, thank you. I would like to be packed as tightly as possible alongside people with no access to soap or running water.’”

Part of Sedaris’ appeal is his knack for finding links among disparate events and ruminations, which he packages so tidily that readers may find themselves wondering, in the end, how they got from A to Z in the course of a single essay. He also conjures up poignant images from time to time, most notably as a son who, even in adulthood, continues to crave the love of a less-than-supportive father.

Still, 13 pages devoted to Sedaris’ one-man anti-litter campaign in West Sussex, a county in the south of England, is at least a few pages too many. Another essay, on Sedaris’ growing frustration while stuck in line behind a boringly chatty customer at a coffee bar in a New Hampshire hotel, is shorter, but only mildly entertaining.

Yet Sedaris packs so much variety into Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls that reading it is something like catching a talented stand-up comedian at work. Some jokes may fall flat, but the audience doesn’t obsess over them because the guy on stage is sharp enough to quickly recover his footing with a better gag or a funnier anecdote.
 
Sedaris tosses in several entertaining and thought-provoking monologues that make no claim to being factual. In one such fictional tale, a homophonic man becomes so unglued when same-sex marriage is legalized in New York that he decides the world has completely gone to hell, so the rules governing acceptable behavior no longer apply to him or anyone else.

The narrator then murders his wife, his daughter and his mother-in-law, none of whom he liked all that much anyway. For good measure, he zips past a stopped school bus while it's unloading students, accidentally killing a kid — “most likely a gay one” —  who was crossing the street. Figuring he’ll be released from prison if the powers that be believe he's gay, he kisses his cell mate and concludes that "it's really not that bad," if you keep your eyes closed.

Over-the-top? Certainly. But how better to skewer senseless hatred and all-consuming phobias?

Review: "The Road to Little Dribbling," Bill Bryson

  

By Paul Carrier

As soon as I began reading The Road to Little Dribbling, I snorted. On the first page. Of the prologue. More sniggers followed, along with assorted guffaws, chuckles and even an occasional belly laugh.

Not that such a reaction was surprising. This is a book by the prolific Bill Bryson, after all, the man who gave us A Walk in the Woods, a 1998 classic in which he described his far-from-successful attempt to tackle the Appalachian Trail.

In 1996, Bryson released Notes from a Small Island, which recounted his affectionate impressions of Britain, where the Iowa native has spent most of his adult life. (His wife is British, for one thing.) Now Bryson is back with a fresh look at his adopted home, which he loves so much that he now holds dual American and British citizenship.

This time around, Bryson set out to avoid the communities he profiled in Notes from a Small Island, and although he revisits some sites, he breaks new ground as well. The author follows a rambling south-to-north route that takes him from Bognor Regis in West Sussex to Cape Wrath in the Scottish Highlands, which Bryson describes as "the farthest you could travel in a straight line (in Britain) without crossing salt water."

Run an image search for Bryson and you’ll be greeted with countless photos of a smiling, genial-looking, twinkly-eyed fellow who comes across as a great wit bubbling over with bonhomie and good cheer. Which he is. But Bryson is not one-dimensional. He can be acerbic, ruthlessly judgmental and unforgiving. A real smart-ass, in other words.

The combination makes for the best of all possible worlds, as Bryson alternates between lovingly poetic descriptions of the British countryside and caustic assessments of the more troublesome people, places and practices he encounters in his rambles. The Road to Little Dribbling combines bits and pieces of memoir, travelogue, social commentary, history, and, of course, plenty of laugh-out-loud stuff.

This American-born Brit can be self-deprecating, a quality that he has the good sense to display sparingly. Thus, the now 65-year-old writer opens The Road to Little Dribbling by describing a freakish, entirely preventable mishap. "One of the things that happens when you get older," he writes, "is that you discover lots of new ways to hurt yourself," as he goes on to explain, to humorous effect. From time to time, he pokes fun at his own lapses in memory.

Bryson has a fondness for flitting from one subject to the next, thanks to unexpected linkages and jumping-off points. When he visits Durham, his ruminations range from medieval architecture to his six-year stint as a university chancellor to the glory of Britain’s underfunded universities (compared to their fat American cousins) to the time, years ago, when he almost saw a toddler drown in the River Wear. (The tyke's mother saved him at the last possible moment.)

Cutting observations are a Bryson hallmark, and he doesn’t disappoint on that score. Offended by a high-rise apartment building that mars a seafront view, he notes: "The world is full of shitty things that should never have happened. Look at Sean Hannity." Later, Bryson spots an online critique of a favorite café by someone who wrote that he was "dissapointted" during his visit. "If you are too stupid to spell ‘disappointed’ even approximately correctly," Bryson says, "you are not allowed to take part in public discourse at any level." So there.

An overpriced sandwich — an overpriced anything — makes him peevish. So do overly boisterous crowds, poorly designed museum displays, misspelled signs and rude store clerks. Oh, and litterbugs. Bryson despises them. When he sees a kid toss a wrapper on the ground three feet from a trash bin, he muses that Britain "is going to require a lot of euthanasia" if the country is "ever going to sort itself out."

In other words, he’s a perfect travel companion: knowledgeable, curious, opinionated, entranced by what is charming, appalled by what is despicable, erudite or plainspoken as the situation requires, and always willing to tell readers exactly what he thinks, sometimes in delightfully crude language.

Despite his curmudgeonly ways, Bryson never remains churlish for long. He clearly has a deep and abiding love for his adopted home. "Britain is infinite," he writes. "There isn’t anywhere in the world with more to look at in a smaller space — nowhere that has a greater record of interesting and worthwhile productivity over a longer period at a higher level." 

Review: "The Republic of Imagination," Azar Nafisi

By Paul Carrier

Azar Nafisi, the best-selling author of Reading Lolita in Tehran, focuses her roving eye and keen intellect on the United States in The Republic of Imagination, as she explores the importance fiction plays — or should play — in American life.

With mixed results.

Nafisi, who was born in Iran but became an American citizen in 2008, contends that literature gives readers a key to understanding the heart and soul of America and to expanding their own horizons, both as citizens and as travelers in the realm of the mind.

In the introduction to The Republic of Imagination, Nafisi explains that her latest book is an extended response to the comments of a young Iranian whom she once met at a bookstore in Seattle. The man said her interest in writing for an American audience was “useless” because Americans “don’t care about books and such things.”

“Stories are not mere flights of fantasy or instruments of political power and control,” Nafisi writes. “They link us to our past, provide us with critical insight into the present and enable us to envision our lives not just as they are but as they should be or might become.” The author says she cannot imagine living in a country that is indifferent to what she has dubbed the Republic of Imagination, which anyone can enter with “an open mind, a restless desire to know and an indefinable urge to escape the mundane.”

What follows is a mélange of memoir, biography, plot summaries and literary analysis in which Nafisi devotes much of her time to deep readings of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Sinclair Lewis’ Babbitt, Carson McCuller’s The Heart is a Lonely Hunter and works by James Baldwin, to lay bare what they tell us about the American psyche.

Nafisi became enthralled with American literature as a child growing up in Tehran, and it shows. She is thoughtful and insightful, skilled at finding links between, say, the adventures of Huck and Jim and the role of individualism in America, a land where the freedom to be yourself often is coupled with isolation and loneliness.

But Nafisi juggles so many balls that The Republic of Imagination can be startlingly disjointed. Much of what she has to say is sagacious, especially on such subjects as the poorly designed Common Core learning standards, misguided efforts to shield overly sensitive students from books that might disturb them, and the ominous dangers of ideology. Yet some of what she writes seems obvious, or bewildering.

One minute Nafisi is teasing lessons about contemporary America from a favorite novel. Then we are back in Iran, where Nafisi lived during the revolution that installed the Islamic state; or meeting friends from her student days at the University of Oklahoma; or reading her take on Oprah Winfrey.

We are with Nafisi as she becomes an American citizen in a “rather shabby room” on Dec. 1, 2008. And we hold our breath as Nafisi’s pregnant friend Farah, whose husband has been imprisoned (and is later killed) by the new regime, makes a harrowing escape from Iran to Turkey with her two-and-a-half-year-old daughter Neda in tow. Farah makes her way to the United States, where she and Nafisi passionately discuss literature, even as cancer slowly claims Farah’s life.

Some of this is compelling stuff, but is all of it germane? Or as well-focused and sharply analyzed as the better passages in The Republic of Imagination lead us to expect from the book as a whole? There is much flitting to and fro here, as well as an unevenness that is disconcerting.

Still, there's no denying Nafisi’s passion. In Pakistan, she writes, “a girl called Malala was willing to give her life to be able to learn to read and write. What would it take to rekindle that hunger here? That many of our children are illiterate when it comes to history and literature is a much-lamented fact known to all, but do they know what they are missing?"

Review: "Flirting with French," William Alexander

By Paul Carrier

William Alexander is an American in his late 50s who doesn’t simply love France. He wants to be French. Trouble is, he doesn’t speak the language. So he sets out to learn it, and therein lies a tale that is informative, moving and eye-opening.

Above all else, though, Flirting with French is damn funny.

How could it not be? The poor guy finds himself in France struggling mightily to be understood, yet mangling la langue so badly that he ends up saying things like this: “It sleeps very cold in the soup.” Alexander’s French vocabulary is limited, and he keeps forgetting words he has learned. His grammar is spotty. And his pronunciation? C’est pathétique!

Despite Alexander’s breezy tone and comical anecdotes, this is a serious guy on a serious mission. “I have such an inexplicable affinity for all things French that I wonder if I was French in a former life,” he muses. Molière, perhaps? More likely Robespierre, whose date with the guillotine during the French Revolution would explain “that persistent crick” in Alexander’s neck.

Yet Alexander knows that the deck is stacked against him. Attending a conference of linguists, he discovers that only a tiny minority of adult students will ever achieve near-native proficiency in a foreign language, and none will achieve native proficiency.

Still, he plods ahead with language software, podcasts, a French pen pal, audio courses and assorted French classes, including a prestigious two-week immersion program in Provence, all while interviewing experts on brain science and linguistics. To become bilingual, Alexander discovers, he must learn to actually think in both languages, eliminating the inefficient “mental middleman” that translates English into French. 

Alexander chronicles not only his halting, faltering, humorous forays into French but also the history of the language, its inner workings, and the science of language acquisition. He does his homework to the point of masochism. To prepare for a trip to France, Alexander reads a history of the country that runs to 500 pages, “although it feels not a page over a thousand.”

Although I was raised in a French-speaking home and did not learn English until I went to school, I found much here that was revelatory. Alexander approaches French with a mixture of devotion and a wry sense of humor. He may worship it, but he doesn’t hesitate to poke fun at its idiosyncrasies.

Take, for example, the matter of gender. Unlike English nouns, all French nouns are either masculine or feminine, yet as Alexander points out, there is no rhyme or reason to the gender of any given noun. “Breast” is masculine. “Beard” is feminine. “Arms” are masculine, but “legs” are feminine. In the oddest of oddities, “vagina” is masculine. And so it goes.

Then there is the sheer lunacy of numbers in French. Alexander explains — and the strangeness of this had never occurred to me before I read Flirting with French — that French numbers only make sense up through sixty-nine (soixante-neuf).

After that, things get weird. In French, seventy is soixante-dix, which translates as sixty-ten. Seventy-nine is soixante-dix-neuf, or sixty-ten-nine. And eighty? It’s quatre-vingts, or four-twenties. Which brings us, eventually, to ninety-nine. That’s quatre-vingt-dix-neuf, or four-twenty-ten-nine. “French has a numbering system that is only slightly less complicated than the Babylonian calendar,” Alexander laments.

Flirting with French blends entertaining quips about Alexander’s adventures and fascinating facts about the language he adores. For example, although English has absorbed many French words, the French lexicon is only about a third the size of the English vocabulary. And while English pronunciation normally stresses one syllable in each word, French does not, giving spoken French a monotone that makes it that much harder for English speakers to understand.

But this is Alexander’s story, after all, so more than anything, readers will want to know whether he succeeded in his valiant quest to master French. He offers up a surprise ending, which I won’t disclose here. Suffice it to say, the outcome is worth the wait. Pick up a copy of Flirting with French, and discover it for yourself.

Review: "Holidays on Ice," David Sedaris

By Paul Carrier

Paging through David Sedaris’ Holidays on Ice does not, in any way, call to mind Burl Ives crooning A Holly, Jolly Christmas.

As the title of this slim volume suggests, these darkly comic tales have a (sometimes tenuous) link to the holidays, particularly Christmas. But the black humor to be found in several of these essays bears no resemblance to the saccharine tripe that TV programmers foist upon us during our annual celebration of conspicuous consumption.

(Why, you ask, am I reviewing a collection of holiday-themed essays after the sappy season has come and gone? Holidays on Ice was a Christmas gift. So here we are.)

Holidays on Ice is largely devoid of restraint or gentility. It isn't subtle. But what it has in abundance is a wonderfully wicked mischievousness. These essays, some of which claim to be autobiographical, have an arch tone that leaves the reader laughing out loud - snorting, even - more often than not.

Perhaps the highlight is SantaLand Diaries, in which Sedaris recounts his purported exploits as a Christmas elf at Macy’s department store. Here, as elsewhere in this collection, Sedaris’ take-no-prisoners attitude is on display, along with his disdain for correctness, political or otherwise.

When Sedaris and the other elves learn rudimentary sign language to better communicate with deaf children, for example, one of Sedaris’ sisters, who can sign, decides to help him out with a few lessons of her own. The result? Sedaris can now tell the kiddos: “Santa has a tumor in his head the size of an olive. Maybe it will go away tomorrow but I don’t think so.”

Things come to a suitably bleak head on Christmas Eve, when Sedaris witnesses a fist fight between two mothers. A father labels Santa a faggot for refusing to sing a carol to his kid, a manager calls a customer a fucking bitch, and parents in long lines leave disposable diapers at the door to “Santa’s house.”

Season’s Greetings to Our Friends and Family!!! is a hilarious send up of those insufferable family letters that make the rounds at Christmas. Sedaris’ sister Lisa rescues a prostitute and brings her home in Dinah, the Christmas Whore. And a ridiculously pretentious newspaper critic pens scathingly cruel reviews of grade school Christmas pageants in Front Row Center with Thaddeus Bristol.

Christmas shoppers are sheep, Sedaris tells us in one essay, “stupid animals programmed by nature to mate and graze and bleat out their wishes to the obese, retired school principal who sat on his ass in the mall’s sorry-looking North Pole.”

Sedaris even visits a medical examiner’s office at Halloween and shares a few how-not-to-die tips with his readers: “never fall asleep in a Dumpster, never underestimate a bee, never drive a convertible behind a flatbed truck, never get old, never get drunk near a train, and never, under any circumstances, cut off your air supply while masturbating.”
 

There’s an occasional passage in Holidays on Ice that almost begins to approach something vaguely resembling merriness. But don’t worry. It’s just a passing illusion.

Burl Ives is nowhere in sight.

Review: "Escape from Camp 14," Blaine Harden

By Liz Soares

I wasn’t totally ignorant of the recent history of North Korea before I started reading Escape from Camp 14: One Man’s Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West.

I knew that the country had a totalitarian government, led by the latest member of the Kim dynasty, Kim Jong-un. And that the country experienced a famine in the 1990s. Of course, I was well aware that North Korea poses a nuclear threat to the rest of the world - even though its recent missile launch fizzled.

What I didn’t know, until I read this fascinating and heartbreaking book, was that North Korea’s twisted government runs labor camps that confine, enslave and torture political opponents of the Kim regime - and their families. Even worse, children are born in these camps. They grow up in an inhumane, closed and paranoid environment.

Few escape from these prisons, which are well-guarded, surrounded by electric fences and set in the bleak landscape of the North Korean hinterlands. But the story of Shin Dong-hyuk is made even more compelling by the fact that he was a camp native. It’s a true testament to the human spirit that a young man who grew up without any comprehension of love, friendship, honor or the realities of the outside world, was able to find the resources to evade the forces of one of the world’s most brutal regimes.

In fact, he is believed to be the only person born in the camps to do so.

Reporter Blaine Harden has crafted a fine account of Shin’s journey from a living hell to the paradise of southern California.

Shin’s father was jailed because of the alleged transgressions of his brother. His marriage to Shin’s mother was arranged in prison. Life, for Shin, was a battle for survival. He saw his mother as competition for food.

For years, Shin was not even aware there was an outside world worth escaping to. It’s not until he meets an older, well-traveled prisoner that he begins to dream of freedom - and grilled meat.

Escape From Camp 14 is not an easy book to read. It is a visit to a place where people are commodities, not just to the guards, but to each other. They sleep on floors and eat a diet of cabbage soup. When prisoners die on a work detail, their counterparts simply pick up the bodies and toss them to the side.

Shin’s escape does not mean an immediate end to his hardships. He wanders through North Korea, living by his wits, until he finally reaches the border with China. Then he faces another slow journey to South Korea, where he finally gets the help he needs to learn to live in the world outside Camp 14.

Not surprisingly, Shin has to deal with feelings of guilt and a growing awareness that the years of living in an emotional vacuum may be as hard to overcome as the electrified fence.

He has had to acknowledge the role he played in the execution of his mother and brother, who tried to escape well before him.

As Harden points out, the enslaved laborers of North Korea have no famous face to represent them, to appeal for help for them. It’s a huge human rights issue that few know about, or care about. Even South Koreans, complacently living well-fed lives amid a booming economy, are tired of escapees’ tales. As Harden titles one chapter, “South Koreans Are Not So Interested.”

The book left me wondering if these camps would have been closed years ago if North Korea had oil reserves beneath its barren soil. Did the Korean War accomplish all that it should have if these hellholes still exist? What can be done to stop the Kim regime? Shin’s story makes it clear that we urgently need to find answers to those questions.