Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 104

June 24, 2022: Las Vegas Studying: Andre Agassi

[On June 20th, 1947, mobster Bugsy Siegel was killed in Beverly Hills. So for the 75thanniversary of that murder, I’m going to AmericanStudy Siegel’s role in the development of Las Vegas, along with other contexts for that tellingly American city. Leading up to a weekend post on Vegas in song!]

On the tennis great who has embodied both sides of the city.

Tennis legend Andre Agassi (1970- ) is more than one of the most famous people ever to have been born in Las Vegas; he’s also a figure who has, across the very distinct stages of his life and career, embodied the seemingly contradictory duality at Vegas’ heart. When Agassi broke onto the tennis scene as a teenager in the late 80s, he was the epitome of glitz and cool—granted it was only an advertising catchphrase, but the “Image is everything” of Agassi’s famous Canon ads certainly seemed to reflect the way in which his hair, his clothes, his style, his dating life, his image felt paramount, perhaps even more so than the undeniable tennis skills that had made him famous. If ever an American athlete has looked like a walking advertisement for the allure of Las Vegas, it would have to be this youthful native son in all his late 1980s and early 1990s glory.

Youthful glory never lasts, however, and (fortunately) image isn’t everything. By 1997, Agassi’s career had reached a profound low point, including injuries, a failed drug test (caused, he later admitted, by experimentation with crystal meth), a tabloid-friendly failed marriage, and a drop to 141 in the international rankings. No amount of glitz or glamor would be sufficient to pull an athlete back from that kind of hole—only serious, sustained hard work can accomplish that. And work is what Agassi did, on a brutal new fitness regimen and on the Challenger circuit (a tennis tour for professional players outside of the top 50). Not only did he get back to his prior level of success, but he far exceeded it—before 1997 Agassi had won three total major tournaments, and between 1999 and 2003 he won five of them, including the 1999 French Open (after being down 2 sets to 0 in the final) to complete the rare career Grand Slam. From his work ethic to his short hair to his marriage with low-key tennis great Steffi Graf, every aspect of Agassi’s second stage seemed designed to directly undercut the “Image is everything” mantra.

And here’s the thing—Vegas’ image isn’t everything either. I know most of my posts this week have focused on various sides and layers to that image, from organized crime to sin, with idealized dreams of wealth and romance on the other end of the spectrum. But Las Vegas is the 26th most populous city in the US, with a 2020 population of about 650,000 (and more than 2.2 million in the greater metropolitan area), and those residents are real people, not glitzy simulacra. If many of them do work in and around the Strip and the tourism trade in one way or another, that only amplifies my point—that behind the glamorous façade are real people, working hard to keep it all running as smoothly as it appears. The Strip is part of the real world as well, of course, as was the teenage Andre Agassi—but I’d argue that the most genuine Las Vegas is these residents, just as the most authentic Andre Agassi was the grown man who cut his hair, battled all the way back from all those low points, and went on to achieve a far more meaningful American Dream.

Next Vegas context tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Las Vegas contexts, histories, stories you’d highlight?

June 23, 2022: Las Vegas Studying: Vegas Films

[On June 20th, 1947, mobster Bugsy Siegel was killed in Beverly Hills. So for the 75thanniversary of that murder, I’m going to AmericanStudy Siegel’s role in the development of Las Vegas, along with other contexts for that tellingly American city. Leading up to a weekend post on Vegas in song!]

On what we can learn about the city from a handful of feature films.

1)      Viva Las Vegas (1964): I can’t lie, Elvis Presley films have always seemed to be to exist as vehicles for, well, Elvis Presley, as well as for specific songs (for example, the performance of “Viva Las Vegas” in this movie is certainly impressive, but Presley’s character is supposed to be a race car driver, not a musician!). Moreover, the screenplay for this film was apparently written in 11 days, before which time there had been no Vegas connection whatsoever in the planned movie. Yet despite those factors, I’d say Viva represents an early and striking image of Las Vegas as the place where dreams come true, an enduring, idealized counterpoint to the Sin City symbolism I wrote about in yesterday’s post.

2)      Honeymoon in Vegas (1992): Those dreams aren’t just financial or individual, of course—they are also romantic, as illustrated by the city’s ubiquitous quickie wedding chapels. Of the many films that explore the city’s romantic allure (including Viva, with Ann-Margret central to Presley’s character’s dreams), the James Caan-Nicolas Cage-Sarah Jessica Parker-starring Honeymoon in Vegasstands out because it utilizes Las Vegas iconography so fully—right up to a conclusion featuring a pack of skydiving Elvis impersonators! Cage’s character has a fear of skydiving but goes through with it for love, which parallel’s the film’s overall message about the interconnected power of love and Las Vegas (he promised his mother on her deathbed he would never marry, but is willing to do so in Vegas).

3)      Leaving Las Vegas (1995): Just three years later, Cage would star in one of the bleakest Vegas films (and American films period) ever released. Leaving Las Vegas does feature a central romance and one potently connected to the city at that, as Cage’s depressed alcoholic writer Ben Sanderson meets and falls in love with Elisabeth Shue’s cynical prostitute Sera. But without spoiling all the details, I’ll simply say that the film’s romance ends just as tragically as do these two characters’ individual arcs—and while tragedy isn’t limited to any one setting, in this case the tragedies do feel interwoven with the excesses and horrors that lie beneath the city’s glamorous façade.

4)      Showgirls (1995): From Oscar-winning tragedy to Razzie-winning farce, AmericanStudies really does contain multitudes. I’m not gonna try to rehabilitate the reputation of Paul Verhoeven’s Showgirls, truly one of the worst films I’ve ever seen (and featuring a central performance from another Elizabeth, Berkley, that is, let’s say, less good than Shue’s). But I think many of those badnesses do directly correlate with the city in which every second of the film’s action takes place (Berkley’s Nomi arrives in Vegas at the start and departs it at the conclusion): ridiculously over the top and cheesy and fake and yet impossible to turn one’s eyes away from, even as we know we’re throwing our money away on something thoroughly debauched and debased and destructive (at least to our sense of good taste, if not indeed to our dignity).

5)      21 (2008): The Vegas heist thriller 21 is a much much better film, but is problematic for two distinct and even more troubling reasons: it “whitewashed” many of the real people on whom its story is based, casting white actors to play Asian American figures; and it stars the now-disgraced sexual predator Kevin Spacey (although at least he plays a despicable villain). The first reason in particular might warrant staying away from the film and reading the source material, Ben Mezrich’s Bringing Down the House (2003), instead. And in any case, both these stories, like all the Vegas-centered heist and con tales (of which there are many), reveal a deep-seated collective desire to take down the house, despite the oft-repeated reality that the house always wins. Both of those ideas have a great deal to tell us about not just Vegas, but all of America.

Last Vegas context tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Las Vegas contexts, histories, stories you’d highlight?

June 22, 2022: Las Vegas Studying: Sin City

[On June 20th, 1947, mobster Bugsy Siegel was killed in Beverly Hills. So for the 75thanniversary of that murder, I’m going to AmericanStudy Siegel’s role in the development of Las Vegas, along with other contexts for that tellingly American city. Leading up to a weekend post on Vegas in song!]

On a necessary challenge to our Puritanical roots, and how it can go too far.

The iconic journalist and legendary quipper H.L. Mencken once wrote that Puritanism can be defined as “The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy” (which has sometimes been adapted into “may be having a good time”). While I believe it’s easy to oversimplify the Puritans, a multi-generational transnational community that featured a variety of perspectives and ideas to be sure, all you have to do is look at the way they responded to Thomas Morton and his Maypole of Merrymount to recognize that yes, they had some problems with fun (a subject about which Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote pitch-perfectly in his short story on Morton and that problematic pole). While we’re of course talking events that transpired nearly 400 years ago, many of the Puritans’ more extreme fun-repressing laws remain on the books up here in New England, and as that hyperlinked Yankee Magazine article indicates even have the occasional effect on our day to day lives in the 21stcentury.

Beyond those regionally specific laws, it’s also fair to say that a culture which originated in part with the Puritans—and I do mean in part; I hope you all know how much I would disagree and have disagreed in print with the idea that the Puritans are the origin point for America—has had some issues with fun and “sin” over the centuries. It’s impossible to understand the decade-long travesty that was Prohibition without this context, for example; I would say that it’s equally impossible to understand our aversion to sex and nudity in media (compared in particular to our widespread acceptance for violence in media) without grappling with these Puritanical influences. All of which is to say, it’s quite striking that this same nation features a major metropolitan area in which gambling and prostitution are legal (compared to the rest of the country at least), in which free alcoholic beverages flow as freely as the Fountains of Bellagio, a community which has from its earliest moments more than earned the moniker Sin City. The Mathers would no doubt roll over eternally in their graves at the thought, and that’s an effect this AmericanStudier is okay with.

At the same time, there’s a single moment from my one and only visit to Vegas (my family began and ended a Southwestern National Parks trip in the city during my 7th grade year) that has always stood out to me as an embodiment of the destructive downsides when such pleasures are taken too far. I wrote about it in that hyperlinked post, but to quickly recap: we briefly entered a casino, and in our few minutes there, I saw a woman win thousands of dollars at a slot machine and immediately (and I do mean immediately—I don’t even recall her taking a moment to celebrate) begin putting those quarters back into the machine. I’m not suggesting that such excesses are always or necessarily present in Vegas, but I think even the unofficial slogan “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas” depicts a place where “sin” is free of consequence. Whereas the best way to enjoy pleasures is to make them part of our lives, not treat them as something which can be enjoyed separately and then forgotten entirely. Not sure that’s any healthier than the Puritan view, ultimately.

Next Vegas context tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Las Vegas contexts, histories, stories you’d highlight?

June 21, 2022: Las Vegas Studying: The Godfather and Casino

[On June 20th, 1947, mobster Bugsy Siegel was killed in Beverly Hills. So for the 75thanniversary of that murder, I’m going to AmericanStudy Siegel’s role in the development of Las Vegas, along with other contexts for that tellingly American city. Leading up to a weekend post on Vegas in song!]

On the important differences in how two gangster films portray the city.

Moe Greene, an important minor character in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather (1972), was loosely inspired by yesterday’s subject, Bugsy Siegel. Greene is killed not in a Los Angeles home but in his Las Vegas hoteland casino (part of an orchestrated series of such murders that conclude the film, as that clip depicts), and not for allegedly stealing from the mob but for standing in the way of fellow mob boss Michael Corleone’s attempts to buy into the Vegas scene. But those changes between the real-life Siegel and the fictional Greene only amplify the film’s depiction of Las Vegas as an extension of the Corleone crime family’s world, another setting ruled by mob bosses who represent adversaries and obstacles that Michael has to overcome as he ascends to his father’s title and throne (a process that only deepens in The Godfather, Part II, in the present of which Michael has moved the family west to more thoroughly dominate that Vegas world). Audiences occasionally see the more glamorous sides of Vegas in the Godfather films, but they are clearly a façade behind which the criminal reality is always clearly visible.

Sam “Ace” Rothstein (Robert De Niro), the central character of Martin Scorsese’s Casino (1995), was apparently based on a different Las Vegas gangster who became prominent two decades after Siegel’s death, Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal. But Scorsese’s Rothstein sure has a lot in common with Siegel as well: a Jewish kid from New York who moves west and to Vegas on behalf of the mob, gains control of a hotel and casino, and is eventually killed by his fellow mobsters due at least in part to his relationship with a Vegas socialite (Sharon Stone’s Ginger McKenna). As those plot details suggests, and as anyone even vaguely familiar with Scorsese’s body of work will be unsurprised to hear, Casino emphasizes the connections between Vegas and the mob even more fully than do the Godfather films, not only through Rothstein but also and even more fully through his violent criminal frenemy and the film’s third main character, the Mafia wiseguy Nicky Santoro (played by Scorsese favorite Joe Pesci). Yet at the same time, I’m not sure any film has made the glittering façade of Las Vegas look more glamorous and alluring than does Casino, never more so than in its justifiably famous tracking shots.

That final point is consistent with my overall critique of Scorsese as far too often glamorizing the people and practices his films ostensibly critique, and I know many other viewers and AmericanStudiers would read Casino (like all those films) differently. But I think the comparison between these two particular films can also be read through the specific lens of images and narratives of Las Vegas—and more exactly that whatever we think of Scorsese’s own perspective on the themes his film presents, there’s no doubt that the character of Rothstein is seduced by the glitz and glamour of Vegas (as, in their own ways, are both Ginger and Nicky). Which makes it very difficult for any viewer of Casino not to be likewise seduced—that is, even as De Niro’s voiceover behind those tracking shots is telling us that this is how the casino takes our money, I’d argue that the shots themselves are making us want to catch the next flight out to hand it over. Whereas the Godfather films present a Vegas that more clearly corrupts and destroys everyone, even the most powerful figures who come to be associated with it—and if we don’t want to end up like Moe Greene, we’d best keep our distance.

Next Vegas context tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Las Vegas contexts, histories, stories you’d highlight?

June 20, 2022: Las Vegas Studying: Bugsy Siegel

[On June 20th, 1947, mobster Bugsy Siegel was killed in Beverly Hills. So for the 75thanniversary of that murder, I’m going to AmericanStudy Siegel’s role in the development of Las Vegas, along with other contexts for that tellingly American city. Leading up to a weekend post on Vegas in song!]

On what Siegel’s two earlier settings contributed to his Las Vegas legacies.

1)      New York: The son of Eastern European Jewish immigrants, (1906-1947) was born in Brooklyn and came of age in New York’s early 20th century Jewish American community. He joined street gangs at a very young age and shortly thereafter befriended , just four years older than Siegel but already on his way to becoming the notorious gangster who would help fix the 1919 World Series and become part of the inspiration (along with his compatriot Arnold Rothstein) for F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Meyer Wolfsheim. Together, Siegel and Lansky went on to found the National Crime Syndicate, also known as Murder, Incorporated, an organization that linked numerous families in the area and beyond. What Siegel clearly learned in each of these early stages was the role that local relationships, networks, and communities played in building larger and more nationally powerful presences—lessons he would seek to apply a few decades later as he helped build an entire city where there had been no network but the desert a short time before.

2)      Hollywood: When the heat got too much for Siegel on the East Coast (thanks to his own role in various famous murders and assassinations, to be clear), he moved both his young family and his crime organization west, settling in Los Angeles in the late 1930s. He would continue and amplify all his Murder, Inc. and related activities out there, but would also become closely associated with Hollywood, associating with stars like Clark Gable and Cary Grant, becoming close enough to the actress Jean Harlow that she was godmother to his daughter Millicent, and throwing parties at his Beverly Hills home for bigwigs like Louis B. Mayer. Although much briefer than his time in New York, Siegel’s Hollywood stage offered a crucial lesson in the intersections between crime and celebrity, with both among other connections being irresistibly appealing to the broader American public. Siegel would help turn Las Vegas into the single clearest symbol of those interconnected layers.

3)      Vegas: In 1930, Las Vegas (which had only been incorporated as a city in 1911) was scarcely populated; by 1950, it was one of America’s most booming urban centers, despite that aforementioned location in the middle of hundreds of miles of uninhabitable deserts. There were various factors which contributed to that striking change, but a central one was the role of organized crime in supporting and financing the growth of casinos and the Strip—and no single figure was more instrumental to those efforts than Bugsy Siegel. Siegel saw in William Wilkerson’s Flamingo Hotel a perfect starting point for such rapid expansion, and eventually forced Wilkerson out and turned the Flamingo into a model of the hotel-casino-lounge-theater form that would come to define Vegas. Yet despite its success the Flamingo was constantly in the red, and Siegel’s criminal compatriots accused him and/or his of skimming from the profits. His June 1947 murder was the result, one more reflection of the intersections of crime and community, commerce and celebrity, vice and violence that defined Siegel’s life and the city he helped create alike.

Next Vegas context tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Las Vegas contexts, histories, stories you’d highlight?

June 18-19, 2022: Crowd-sourced Beach Reads

[I can’t lie, I haven’t had time to read for pleasure during this academic year, so I didn’t have a ton of new recs for this year’s Beach Reads series. So I wanted to revisit authors and books I’ve read on the beach over my life—and to ask for recommendations for this wonderfully diverse and deep crowd-sourced weekend post we can all throw in the beach bag. Add yours, please!]

On Twitter, Joyce Pattersonresponds to Monday’s post, sharing, “A friend turned me on to Tony Hillerman novels before my first trip to the SW about 30 years ago. I had a much deeper appreciation for the region and was completely hooked by Leaphorn and Chee!”

Laura Kitchingsresponds to Tuesday’s Clancy post, noting, “I’m always amazed at the tight editing of Hunt for Red October which falls apart in later books, when the author had more control.” She also adds her own Beach Read suggestion, “Really any Jenny Crusie, but the co-written Agnes and The Hitmanis a regular read.”

While Cyndula counters my overall emphasis on happy childhood Beach Reads, writing, “NO…read Intensity by Dean Koontz and be all stressed for your beach read. That’s my suggestion anyway.”

Other Beach Read suggestions:

AnneMarie Donahue shares, “LOL On the Beach by Shute! Kidding aside, I love cozy mysteries and the Hamish Macbeth series is fun, super easy to tear thru, and honestly a blast. ‘Night Surf’ by King is fun as well! And since the film is coming out soon Salem's Lot.”

John Stella tweets, “Love: Defending Jacobby William Landry. Any book by William Martin. Mary and Carol Higgins Clark books (separately and co-authored).”

Catherine Pattersontweets, “So many good books to share (for me, reading is pleasure and relaxation all rolled into one). I just finished Hello Molly!by Molly Shannon.” She adds, “I’ve also loved Invisible Childby Andrea Elliott and The Final Revival of Opal & Nevby Dawnie Walton.”

Larry Hartzelltweets, “Highly recommend the Dervla McTiernan novels featuring Cormac Reilly, especially The Ruin and The Scholar.”

Dalchico tweets, “While I love serious reads for fall and British/EU mysteries for winter, I indulge in breezy and fun reads for summer! For our annual family OBX vacay I always take along Vicki Delanywriting as Eva Gates, The Lighthouse Library mystery series. Fictional OBX at the real OBX!”

Savannah Paige Murray shares, “So right now I'm reading Mill Town: Reckoning with What Remains by Kerri Arsenault. Part memoir and part science writing about environmental and health costs from the paper mill where Arsenault grew up! It is soooo good. I also just finished and loved Gentrifier: A Memoir by Anne Elizabeth Moore about her (mis)adventure with winning a ‘free’ house in Detroit, MI through a nonprofit. Such strong voice and great writing throughout! Oh and Vladimirby Julia May Jonas--this novel . . . I could not put it down! Unlike anything I've ever read. Highly recommend!”

Katy Covino nominates, “I've been on a Lucy Foley kick. The Guest List, The Paris Apartment, and The Hunting Party are more thrillers. The Book of Lost and Found and The Invitation are more historical romances. The audiobooks are also really good - different actors, lots of accents - makes weeding (and reading) a lot more fun.”

Nicole Bjorklund writes, “I love light and fluffy books for the beach - ones that aren’t necessarily unputdownable, but rather that you can easily put down when your kid wants to build a sandcastle or jump in the ocean with you and you can pick it right back up without missing a beat. I read Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid in March and my only regret was that I didn't save it for the beach. Honestly her entire catalogue would all be great beach reads, but it helps that this one is set in Malibu. Emily Henry has a romance novel CALLED Beach Read - to be perfectly honest I didn't love it but so many people do so it's worth putting it out there. I'd recommend her newest one, Book Lovers, instead. The People We Keep by Alison Larkin is really great as well. Might be my favorite book this year so far. If you're a thriller-beach-reader, I highly recommend pretty much anything by Riley Sager. The Night Shift by Alex Finlay would also be a good beach-day thriller.”

 

Melissa Mazzone (herself a very talented writer) seconds some of these, writing, “The perfectly named BEACH READ by Emily Henry, but I love her adult rom-com follow-up even more, PEOPLE WE MEET ON VACATION. She is by far one of my favorite contemporary writers right now! Her three adult rom-coms are filled with hilarious banter, palpable chemistry and very swoony & realistic love stories. For fast-paced thrillers, Rachel Hawkins' RECKLESS GIRLS and THE WIFE UPSTAIRS are fantastic. Short and punchy with delightful twists, slow-burn suspense and smart characters.”

 

Shayne Simahk highlights, “Then She Was Gone by Lisa Jewell, The Midnight Library by Matt Haig, and Sigh, Gone by Phuc Tran.”

Natalie Chase, who received her MA in English Studies from FSU this past Spring, suggests, “Just read Family of Liars and both that and We Were Liars (its sequel) are great nostalgic beach reads with a dark twist.”

Blog Guest Poster Tanya Roth tweets, “Oh, I have been on a reading TEAR lately. For starters: for YA fans, pair E. Lockhart's We Were Liars and the new prequel, Family of Liars (read We Were Liars first); The Guncleby Steven Rowley is *fantastic*, a great summer read or anytime read; I *adored* Kelly Barnhill's When Women Were Dragons; Rachel Barenbaum's Atomic Annawas captivating; Emily St. John Mandel's Sea of Tranquilityis a slim, BEAUTIFUL volume that reminded me of Ray Bradbury's Martian Chronicles(a fave); Speaking of Bradbury, I always, always, always love Dandelion Wine (and Martian Chronicles); Allison Pataki's The Magnificent Lives of Marjorie Postwas so good, I couldn't put it down; Natalie Jenner's Bloomsbury Girlswas excellent; and finally, Sheila Williams, Things Past Telling— forget Roots. Read this, then go read Tiya Miles' All That She Carried.

Indigo Eriksenhighlights “Any fiction by Peter Heller, esp The Dog Stars and The River.”

Andy Cornick shares, “Child Zero—written by an old friend, praised by Stephen King himself. Quick read, dystopian near-future thriller with Crichton-esque flare for scientific horror.”

Kelly Stowell nominates “the Terry Pratchett Discworld series.”

And to conclude on a different note, Derek Tang shares, “I love reading the faces of people walking along the beach. Especially the ones attempting to corral little kids or feisty pets.”

Next series starts Monday,

Ben

PS. Keep the Beach Read recs coming!

June 17, 2022: Revisiting Beach Reads: Foer and Krauss

[I can’t lie, I haven’t had time to read for pleasure during this academic year, so I don’t have a ton of new recs for this year’s Beach Reads series. So I wanted to revisit authors and books I’ve read on the beach over my life—and to ask for your own recommendations for a crowd-sourced weekend post we can all throw in the beach bag!]

Why you should read two Holocaust novels on the beach this summer.

When faced with the worst of what humanity can do and be, sometimes all we can do is laugh. That idea is at the heart of a particular post-war strain of American literature and art, the satirical black comedy of Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five, Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove (and later Full Metal Jacket), and other similar works. Yet while some of these works (especially Vonnegut’s novel) do feature relatively sympathetic characters, I would argue that our laughter is not with these characters so much as at them, or at least at the ironic and ridiculous situations in which we encounter them. Such laughter might well help us deal with the horrors behind those situations, or render the memories of them powerless to inflict further pain; but it also has the potential to distance us from the horrors, to make histories that were dead serious to those who experienced them instead seem somewhat silly to us.

That’s one kind of laughter in response to the worst in humanity, and whatever its strengths and weaknesses, I don’t think it makes for entertaining beach reading (although to each his or her own!). But there’s another, very different kind of laughter, one in which the funny voices and perspectives of sympathetic characters lead us as an audience to laugh even as those characters deal with such historical horrors. I think that was the intent behind Roberto Benigni’s Holocaust-centered film Life is Beautiful (which I haven’t seen, so I can’t personally speak to the results!). And that kind of laughter also comprises a big part of two recent, popular and award-winning American Holocaust novels (written by a pair of married New Yorkers): Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything is Illuminated (2002) and Nicole Krauss’s The History of Love (2005).

Both Foer’s and Krauss’s novels are in many ways mysteries, puzzles in which the final pieces don’t lock together until their conclusions, and I’m certainly not going to spoil either here (what kind of beach read commendation would that be?). But I will say that one of the chief pleasures of both novels is in the very funny narrative voices of two of their protagonists: Foer’s Alex, a supremely self-confident yet secretly sensitive Ukrainian kid whose efforts at translating and writing in English aren’t exactly prize-winning; and Krauss’s Leo, a self-deprecating and gloomy elderly Jewish American man whose experiences posing nude for an art class form a throughline for much of the novel’s opening section. It’s no spoiler to say that the novels go many other places as well—they are, after all, Holocaust novels—but as readers we are guided to and through those places by Alex and Leo’s voices, and the genuine, sympathetic, and hearty laughs that each provides. Not a bad reaction to get from a beach read!

Crowd-sourced post this weekend,

Ben

PS. So one more time: you know what to do—share Beach Read recs for the weekend post, please!

June 16, 2022: Revisiting Beach Reads: Tana French

[I can’t lie, I haven’t had time to read for pleasure during this academic year, so I don’t have a ton of new recs for this year’s Beach Reads series. So I wanted to revisit authors and books I’ve read on the beach over my life—and to ask for your own recommendations for a crowd-sourced weekend post we can all throw in the beach bag!]

[NB. This is another post that originally appeared a few years back, and since French has published a couple standalone mysteries that are just as worthy of bringing to the beach, just FYI!]

On two ways to AmericanStudy the talented and popular Irish mystery novelist.

Although Tana French was apparently born in Vermont (a fact I only learned while researching this post, for the record) and retains her American citizenship (ditto), I’m not going to pretend that her series of six (to date) bestselling mystery novels set in and around her longtime home city of Dublin isn’t deeply and crucially Irish. As virtually every post in this week’s series has reflected, mystery novels are almost always as much about their settings as their plots: Ross MacDonald’s Southern California, Tony Hillerman’s Southwest, and Attica Locke’s Houston are all central and crucial presences in their mysteries (as of course are Dupin’s Paris, Miss Marple’s St. Mary Mead, and many more). Moreover, one of Tana French’s most important and ingenious formal choices—to rotate the first-person narration of her books between different detectives in Dublin’s Murder Squad, introducing such detectives in earlier books and then shifting the narration to them in later ones—has allowed her novels to trace the distinct Irish backgrounds and situations, experiences and heritages, lives and identities, of her six detective-narrators just as fully as those of her murder victims and their worlds. I’m no IrishStudier (obviously), but I’d be hard-pressed to imagine that any writer has captured 21st century Ireland with more breadth and depth than has French in her stunning series.

Yet French’s novels can and do still speak to us AmericanStudiers, and here I’ll highlight one thematic and one formal such transatlantic connection. Each of the six novels has dealt with different central themes; while all of them could be productively linked to American contexts, I would argue that that’s particularly the case with her best novel to date, Broken Harbour (2012). Without spoiling anything, I’ll say that the crimes and mysteries of Broken Harbour(including those involving the detective-narrator as well, as always with French) unfold in a family, home, and community economically and psychologically devastated by the mortgage and financial crises of 2008. One of French’s greatest skills is her ability to take such social and cultural issues and connect them to universal human questions and themes, and Brokenlinks that post-2008 historical moment to a layered and powerful examination of both the ideals and the limits (and of course the dangers) of home and family. I would link all those aspects of French’s amazing novel to a parallel but more distinctly American text, Karl Taro Greenfeld’s psychological and horror thriller short story “Horned Men” (2012). [Greenfeld’s 2015 novel The Subprimes seems to mine the same vein, but I haven’t had a chance to read that yet.] On their own, but even more as a pairing, French’s and Greenfeld’s stories present and plumb the very human horrors in these recent histories.

French’s formal use of the rotating first-person narrators can also be interestingly connected to American contexts and mysteries. As I wrote in this post on Lethem and O’Brien, first-person narration is always a tricky element of mystery fiction, and French’s novels largely sidestep the questions I raised in that post; I don’t believe we’re supposed to see these narrators as writing their stories, but they’re clearly remembering them from some unspecified future point (they consistently, purposefully use foreshadowing, for example). But what I’m particularly interested in is the way that French uses her first-person narrations to explore the personal and psychological sides to these police detectives. As always, feel free to correct me, dear readers, but my sense of mystery novels is that they tend more often to present police protagonists with third-person narration (as does Hillerman), and other protagonists (whether private detectives like Lew Archer or sidekicks like Dr.Watson) with first-person narration. If that is indeed the case, it would seem to me that it might relate to our sense of police officers as public figures, ones whose roles are less tied to their private or personal identities than might be those of private detectives or others. Whereas French’s narrators and novels make clear that the lines between private and public, personal and professional, are as blurry and ambiguous for police detectives as they are for all of us.

Last Beach Read tomorrow,

Ben

PS. You know what to do—share Beach Read recs for the weekend post, please!

June 15, 2022: Revisiting Beach Reads: Tad Williams

[I can’t lie, I haven’t had time to read for pleasure during this academic year, so I don’t have a ton of new recs for this year’s Beach Reads series. So I wanted to revisit authors and books I’ve read on the beach over my life—and to ask for your own recommendations for a crowd-sourced weekend post we can all throw in the beach bag!]

[NB. This post originally aired in 2012, and I’m sure some of the details of Tad’s career are long outdated—check out his site for current updates!]

Why you should read an epic four-volume sci fi series on the beach this summer.

If you’re a fan of science fiction already, I probably won’t have to work very hard to convince you to give Tad Williams’ Otherland series—all four 800-page volumes of it—a shot. Williams has had a long and impressively varied career in sci fi, fantasy, and related genres, in print and in numerous other media (Otherland is in fact currently being developed into an online gaming system and also has been optioned as a film which Williams is set to script), and to my mind this series remains his most significant achievement; I’d put it alongside Dan Simmons’ Hyperion novels as the best sci fi series of the last couple decades. So if you’re a fan of the genre and haven’t read Williams’ series yet, feel free to stop reading now and go pick ‘em up; I promise you won’t be disappointed.

But if you’re not a fan, I know that much of that paragraph—and especially the part about 3200 pages of epic science fiction—is more likely to send you running in the other direction than to scream “beach read!” to you. Moreover, Williams’ series is set in numerous places, real and virtual, and if I’m remembering correctly only two of its many central plot threads take place in the United States; hardly an obvious fit for a series on American Studies beach reads. Yet I am including Williams’ series in my own, and there are a couple of pretty good reasons why. For one thing, Williams sets his series in a near-future in which numerous early 21st century American and world trends—historical, cultural, technological, and more—have been extended and amplified; as with all of the best sci fi, then, his works allow us to consider and analyze our own moment and society from that distance. It doesn’t hurt, for the beach reading and for helping that socially critical medicine go down more smoothly, that Williams’ touch in these areas is both wry and funny; each chapter begins with a brief glimpse into one or another of these futuristic trends, and taken together they comprise a dark satirical vision on par with the kinds of black comedy I referenced in yesterday’s post.

That’s one good reason for any American Studier to engage with science fiction, and particularly with a series as pitch-perfect in its futuristic world-building and social commentary as Williams’. But I would argue that the series’ central theme is even more salient for any and all 21st century American Studiers. I’m not going to spoil the specifics of how Williams develops this theme, as it’s central to the series’ mysteries and arcs, but will say that his characters and his books are concerned, on multiple key levels, with questions of story-telling: how we create and tell stories; what stories mean for individuals and communities; how stories can be put to the worst as well as the best uses; what the oldest and most enduring stories have to offer all of us in a 21stcentury, technologically driven society; and many more such questions. As I’ve argued many times in this space, I think few questions matter more to American politics, culture, society, and Studies than that of our national narratives, the stories we tell about our past, our community, our identity. Williams’ series makes for a hugely imaginative and entertaining way in to thinking about such narratives, and about the deepest human questions to which they connect. Definitely worth your suntanning time!

Next Beach Read tomorrow,

Ben

PS. You know what to do—share Beach Read recs for the weekend post, please!

June 14, 2022: Revisiting Beach Reads: Tom Clancy

[I can’t lie, I haven’t had time to read for pleasure during this academic year, so I don’t have a ton of new recs for this year’s Beach Reads series. So I wanted to revisit authors and books I’ve read on the beach over my life—and to ask for your own recommendations for a crowd-sourced weekend post we can all throw in the beach bag!]

On learning from authors and books that (eventually) make us cringe.

He wasn’t the first author I truly loved—that honor would go, if I have to settle on one, to Edward Ormondroyd (whose book I shared with my boys in a pivotal period in our lives). Nor was he the first in whose library I read multiple works—Tolkien takes that crown, as I ploughed through The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings in the summer before 6th grade (and have been very excitedly sharing them with my boys this winter). But Tolkien’s books are all connected, and in fact he even considered Lord of the Rings one long novel (it was his publisher who insisted that it be divided into a trilogy). And so I would have to admit that the first non-children’s book or young adult author for whom I read multiple unconnected books—who, that is, inspired me to check out different offerings not because a series compelled me, but just because I needed more—was none other than the dean of American military, espionage, and political porn (I mean, thrillers), Tom Clancy.

It’s easy, and not entirely inaccurate, to claim that the Clancy beloved to the 11 year old AmericanStudier was substantially different than the author he would become in subsequent decades (and remain until his October 2013 death). I would certainly argue that around the time of Debt of Honor and Executive Orders Clancy decided to make his right-wing politics much more central to his books, and it’s no coincidence that this decidedly not right-wing reader found those novels much less appealing; I made it through Rainbox Six and then said “No más.” But honesty compels me to admit that in looking back at the Clancy books I loved, a list headed by The Hunt for Red October and Red Storm Rising, I find them full of similarly objectionable adulation for the military, contempt for the “bureaucrats” who try to limit it, xenophobia (other than toward those foreigners who are also true soldiers, who are wonderful in every culture), and more. They may have been better novels than the later books, that is, but I still feel pretty guilty about how much pleasure I got out of them.

Yet if I move beyond that guilt, I think it’s fair to say that I can learn a good deal from my youthful infatuation with the Clancy. Partly, of course, I can learn about how talented, best-selling authors find their niche audiences and deliver the goods—for Clancy, it’s fair to say that middle school boys (or men who haven’t quite outgrown that phase) are a core such audience, and he gave us all the submarine battles, tank warfare, and macho heroics we could handle. (In Red Storm, a meek weatherman finds his inner macho warrior and wins a blonde Icelandic beauty.) But Clancy’s appeal isn’t that simple—I’m sure there are lots of authors who write about similar subjects and themes and yet would not have done it for me nearly as fully. He also constructs perfect thriller plots, whether on a small scale (as in October) or the broadest (as in Storm); and the truth, even if we lit snobs don’t like to admit it, is that the same can be said for many of the great novels. Scarlet Letter? Absalom? Beloved? All thrillers in their own way, perfectly plotted to lead us to their climactic revelations. I’m not saying Clancy is on par with those folks—but they’re all writers, all novels, and all worth our analytical time.

Next Beach Read tomorrow,

Ben

PS. You know what to do—share Beach Read recs for the weekend post, please!