David G. Cookson's Blog, page 8

The Peanuts Papers

The Peanuts Papers: Charlie Brown, Snoopy & the Gang, and the Meaning of Life by Andrew Blauner

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Writers and cartoonists from all walks of life take turns telling us about their personal experience with reading and experiencing Charles Schultz’s wonderful and long-running Peanuts comic.

Peanuts ran from 1950 until the day after he died in 2000. The simple drawings in the 4 panel strips often conveyed a deep truth through the mouths of children. There was never an adult in the strip, and themes of failure and depression were always there. And yet, it was so popular. It struck a chord with so many of us that it still runs in the newspapers over 20 years after his death.

Fans of the strip and the animated shows tend to have their favorite characters…Linus, Schroeder, Lucy, Peppermint Patty, Charlie Brown…I guess I’ve always been a Snoopy fan. I can admit that because of Snoopy, I had a brief interest in WW1 fighter planes. I used to pretend I was flying in one of them as I rode my bike. So basically, I was imitating a cartoon dog who was also pretending to fly a plane while on top of his doghouse while I was riding my bike.

The book is an anthology with many contributors. Some are better than others. It would probably help if you are a fan of Peanuts. If not, it might not be your thing.




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Revenge of the She Punks

Revenge of the She-Punks: A Feminist Music History from Poly Styrene to Pussy Riot by Vivien Goldman

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Title notwithstanding…this is not about anyone’s revenge but it offers a packed and relatively wide-ranging history of the role of women in punk rock. It is written by one of its participants. Vivien Goldman played in Chantage and the Flying Lizards and now she writes about music and teaches Punk, Afrobeat and Reggae at New York University.

The book is set up around track listings with the stories that shape the songs. It is grouped into 4 categories: Girl Identity. Money, Love and Protest. The idea of Punk being uniquely suited to feminism belies the fact that for much of its history, many of the same factors that work against women in the greater world outside are also very much at play in the punk scene--only in punk there is an avenue for self-expression not readily available elsewhere.

At 200 pages, it reads like a long zine or a short documentary.




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Follow Me

Follow Me by Kathleen Barber

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


If I hadn’t already been intrigued by the premise of this book, I was sold by the last line of the Author’s Note:

“I was so deeply unsettled by the thought of an anonymous ratter lurking around my computer that I did two things: first I covered my laptops’ built-in webcam with a sticker…and then I began writing.”

The result is Follow Me, a terrific little psychological thriller/mystery with a social media element at the heart of it.

Audrey Miller is an Instagram star with thousands of followers. When she takes a new job at the Smithsonian in DC, one follower in particular takes great interest, as well as her long-time on-again, off-again boyfriend, Nick. Meanwhile, the story (and the backstory) is gradually and methodically filled in via three main points of view. We see her own, her best friend, and the person who has been obsessed with her with for years.

What ensues is a very satisfying and well-executed story that offers a few crumbs of foreshadowing while showing how Audrey’s preoccupation with online attention (when you’re online, you’re never alone!) becomes a liability. Her friend Cat (the second narrator) has her own troubles which are exacerbated by Audrey’s neediness. And her stalker (the third narrator, referred to only as “Him”) has his own issues. I won’t spill any more.

Follow Me is a fun read that keeps the tension going all the way to the end.





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We Own This City

We Own This City: A True Story of Crime, Cops and Corruption in an American City by Justin Fenton

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Crime Reporter for the Baltimore Sun Justin Fenton covers one of the biggest scandals in Baltimore Police history in an absorbing account of Wayne Jenkins and the Gun Trace Task Force (the GTTF).
In the wake of the Freddie Gray riots of 2015 and the subsequent spike in crime--murders hitting 342 a year--a group of elite cops are called upon by police leadership to do something about it; To get the guns off the street, to take down the bad guys by any means necessary.

In that chaos, a group led by Sgt Wayne Jenkins, a gung-ho hard charging officer who is not afraid to bend the rules to get things done, take this opportunity to abuse the citizens of Baltimore in a wide-ranging campaign of robbing drug dealers and setting up innocent people and hoping that the charges stick (they more often do not). Jenkins’ reckless barely legal tactics cast a wide net, often landing the innocent in with the guilty. He kept a supply of BB guns to plant on crime scenes in case someone needed to offer cover for a bad shooting (“I thought it was a gun, what was I supposed to do?”) And in many cases, the culture he fostered meant that his men took money off of suspects, splitting it amongst his group of dirty officers while management looked the other way (or maybe they didn’t know, but who believes that?).

Meanwhile, there are victims who suffer for this, many of whom are falsely imprisoned, some who are killed as the result of one of Jenkins’ many reckless driving adventures. Many whose lives are, at the very least sidetracked by the court system in which they were brought into because of a bad arrest by Jenkins. Also, the story of Officer Sean Suiter and his mysterious slaying in Harlem Park one day before he was to testify in the GTTF case is explored. For the record, it is officially considered an unsolved homicide. (Also for the record: I don’t for one minute believe that he killed himself.)

I am a little biased and invested in things relating to my adopted home city of Baltimore. This is in fact the second book I have read about the GTTF. But I must say, this one is better than I Got a Monster. Fenton has written a terrific account of all of this. Well-documented and novelistic, We Own This City is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand the nuances of why Baltimore is the way it is. It goes far beyond simple knee jerk reactions that people offer, who often don’t live here and don’t care one way or the other.






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We Own This City

We Own This City: A True Story of Crime, Cops and Corruption in an American City by Justin Fenton

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Crime Reporter for the Baltimore Sun Justin Fenton covers one of the biggest scandals in Baltimore Police history in an absorbing account of Wayne Jenkins and the Gun Trace Task Force (the GTTF).
In the wake of the Freddie Gray riots of 2015 and the subsequent spike in crime--murders hitting 342 a year--a group of elite cops are called upon by police leadership to do something about it; To get the guns off the street, to take down the bad guys by any means necessary.

In that chaos, a group led by Sgt Wayne Jenkins, a gung-ho hard charging officer who is not afraid to bend the rules to get things done, take this opportunity to abuse the citizens of Baltimore in a wide-ranging campaign of robbing drug dealers and setting up innocent people and hoping that the charges stick (they more often do not). Jenkins’ reckless barely legal tactics cast a wide net, often landing the innocent in with the guilty. He kept a supply of BB guns to plant on crime scenes in case someone needed to offer cover for a bad shooting (“I thought it was a gun, what was I supposed to do?”) And in many cases, the culture he fostered meant that his men took money off of suspects, splitting it amongst his group of dirty officers while management looked the other way (or maybe they didn’t know, but who believes that?).

Meanwhile, there are victims who suffer for this, many of whom are falsely imprisoned, some who are killed as the result of one of Jenkins’ many reckless driving adventures. Many whose lives are, at the very least sidetracked by the court system in which they were brought into because of a bad arrest by Jenkins. Also, the story of Officer Sean Suiter and his mysterious slaying in Harlem Park one day before he was to testify in the GTTF case is explored. For the record, it is officially considered an unsolved homicide. (Also for the record: I don’t for one minute believe that he killed himself.)

I am a little biased and invested in things relating to my adopted home city of Baltimore. This is in fact the second book I have read about the GTTF. But I must say, this one is better than I Got a Monster. Fenton has written a terrific account of all of this. Well-documented and novelistic, We Own This City is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand the nuances of why Baltimore is the way it is. It goes far beyond simple knee jerk reactions that people offer, who often don’t live here and don’t care one way or the other.






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Slaughterhouse Five

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Kurt Vonnegut’s novel about the bombing of Dresden in the waning days of WW2 is a classic of American literature which I have now read twice.

The first time I read it, I was a teenager who was enamored of its sci-fi element. This time, I saw the sci-fi part as a vessel for Vonnegut, who was trying to make sense of something that he witnessed as a soldier in Germany.

Billy Pilgrim’s journey through time where he lives his life out of order but with full knowledge of all events allow him to skip to events before the war, during the war where he and others are kept as prisoners in an old abandoned slaughterhouse (hence, the title of the book). Then he is flung forward to his time as an inmate in a zoo on another planet…and at the center is always the destruction of war and the men who face it all with a sort of shrugging acceptance at the death that it brings. So it goes…

Within the tale are other elements that reappear in Vonnegut…Kilgore Trout, the fictional sci-fi writer; Eliot Rosewater, the man who introduces Billy Pilgrim to the works of Mr. Trout. Vonnegut’s unique style is conversational and understated. Every death is summarily reported and accepted with the words “so it goes…” (you might get a little tired of hearing those words, but I think that is exactly the point) The first chapter feels like Vonnegut was just taking the first twenty minutes of his writing shift to himself. Talking about how he wants to talk about the Dresden bombing and how he wasn’t to write this book about it…TBH, the story doesn’t really start until Chapter Two when Billy Pilgrim comes in as a Vonnegut stand-in…

And within the book are some brilliant observations disguised as dialogue and monologue from the characters: aliens and humans alike. A whole section about the immorality of the wealthy caused my jaw to drop. And it holds up even so many years later.

The skipping around and the short sections really help to move it along and liven it up. It is an easy read, which I always appreciate. But that does not mean it is simple.

Slaughterhouse Five is first on my meandering quest to read or re-read all of Vonnegut’s novels. And it’s a good place for anyone to start.





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Song For a New Day

A Song for a New Day by Sarah Pinsker

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


In the near future, before the government placed restrictions on gatherings due to terrorism and disease (The Before), Luce Cannon was a rising star in the music scene. Her song “Blood and Diamonds” put her on the map and increased her following.
And then everything got shut down. Public performance became illegal. Everything stopped (sound familiar?). But in the wake of this, Luce Cannon and others form a resistance, performing shows in secret venues, staying two steps ahead of the law, seeking the connection that only performing can bring.
Meanwhile…Rosemary works for a company called Stage Holo Live, who put on virtual shows—replicating the experience of concert-going through virtual reality. She is a neophyte in the music scene, but her job becomes to find these underground artists and sign them to the monolith that is SHL.
But the goal of commodifying music conflicts with the point of artistic performance, as Rosemary infiltrates the scene and runs into Luce Cannon, whose popularity has only grown in the days since the shutdown.
Two things:
1. This book is amazing. Loved it.

2. It is even more amazing when you realize that this came out a full year before Covid-19! The copyright date is 2019. Scary prophetic, with a few differences.
Luce’s journey through the underground of the After and Rosemary’s journey into this new world highlight everything that is wonderful about performing and sharing that experience live, and what is lost when that connection to the audience is gone. There is nothing like getting up in front of a crowd, and there is truly nothing like being able to say you were there when something amazing happened.
Maybe the point of performance is to challenge the audience to hear your music in a different, un-sanitized way…in a different order, in a different setting, having a shared experience with the crowd: an event that can bind you together and remembered years later. To listen to songs that you might normally skip over, forcing you to really listen to them…Everybody likes “Stairway to Heaven” but what do you think about “Black Dog?”

Great book. Loved it.







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Purity

Purity by Jonathan Franzen

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


“Young Pip Tyler doesn’t know who she is…”

So goes the driving force behind Purity, this 2015 novel from Author Jonathan Franzen. She doesn’t know who her father is and she has a contentious relationship with her mother—all she knows is that her real name is Purity, a name she hates. Pip is saddled with 130 thousand in student debt while living with anarchists in a squat in Oakland when one day she encounters a German peace activist who draws her into something called The Sunlight Project. The Sunlight Project is the brainchild of Andreas Wolf, a man who believes in transparency for all…except maybe for himself…

There are many elements of the sort of brilliance you can expect from Jonathan Franzen, with commentary about privacy and leaking secrets, with a Julian Assange-like character whose mission is to expose others’ secrets while harboring one deep secret of his own. Pip doesn’t know who her father is, nor does she even know when her real birthday is…and this journey she takes her to South America and Colorado and back as the layers are pulled back in a tale that is told from both omniscient narrator and occasional first person POV, with time shifting, in a tale that is sometimes told out of order. It is a soap opera without being quite as fun as Freedom (which I really enjoyed). It is still a novel told with the same level of detached seriousness and general a sense of humor that I noted in Freedom.

While at times is it fascinating, this does not lend itself to reading for ten minutes at a time and then putting it back down (which is what I tend to do). But it was the main reason that I found myself losing track of things in this multi-layered story. That’s when getting through 563 pages begins to feel like work. (Because without page breaks or chapters, there is often no logical place to put a bookmark in.)

And that is my not-so-brilliant observation of Purity. (There are certainly more serious issues with Franzen and Purity that smarter people than me have written about. The misogyny of this book, for one… https://medium.com/the-establishment/...)...

But…you know: Franzen’s gotta Franzen.




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To Die For

To Die For by Joyce Maynard

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


25-year-old Suzanne was always going to go places. Ambitious, full of aphorisms and positive can-do energy, she wills herself into a job at a tiny television station in her New Hampshire hometown. The job isn’t much, but she has lots of ideas and she is desperate for fame and success in a way than her little town can't contain.

She is married to Larry Maretto, who is completely devoted to her. He used to be a drummer in a rock band but now, he quickly turns to thoughts of raising children and settling down. To all the world it seems like they are the perfect couple.

But behind the scenes is a different story. In many ways, Larry is not the man she married. While she wants to be the next Barbara Walters, Larry just wants to stay home and raise kids. It is a far cry from the exciting life she imagined.

But Suzanne finds a project that will satisfy her enormous ambition: interviewing “at risk” kids at the local high school. To that end, out of thousands, she manages to find only three who will volunteer: one of whom being 16-year-old Jimmy Emmet.

Suzanne, Jimmy, and the other two students (Russell and Lydia) spend time outside of school, but quickly it is young Jimmy who becomes infatuated with Suzanne. Eventually, they become involved, which dovetails with Suzanne’s one-sided marriage and her ambition to be more than she is. She takes advantage of the inexperienced and poorly educated Jimmy and soon hatches a plan to eliminate the man who stands in her way.

And that’s where it gets messy…

To Die For is told by multiple alternating narrators, who all have their own version of the truth. We hear from Suzanne, her mother, Jimmy, other students, the police detectives, etc. It reads like a true crime documentary, but as it came out in the early ‘90s and is more than generously based on a real event (Pamela Smart…Google it) it is patterned after some of the trashy TV that was on back then (Hard Copy, anyone?). Events seen through the eyes of one character are completely different through the eyes of another. It brings to mind all the issues with eye-witness testimony: If we don’t even see the same things, how can we agree on truth?

To Die For is by no means great literature. But it’s good trashy fun.







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I Got a Monster

I Got a Monster: The Rise and Fall of America's Most Corrupt Police Squad by Baynard Woods

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I take this one somewhat personally because it is the city in which I live; the city that I consider my adopted hometown where I have spent 27 years working and writing and performing and making a life. I am biased for it and enraged at so much of what happens in this truly excellent book.

In 2017, Officer Wayne Jenkins and 6 others members of the Gun Trace Task Force (GTTF) were arrested by the FBI on multiple charges relating to their work on this special unit of the Baltimore City Police. For years, Jenkins and his men were at the heart of a criminal conspiracy to steal money from citizens, plant evidence on people they wanted to nail, and engage in reckless behavior behind the shield of the law.

This unit operated in response to the violence and gun deaths that have plagued Baltimore for years. The murder rate in this city has topped 300 a year for the past 6 years. In a post-Freddie Gray Baltimore, the Gun Trace Task Force flourished, taking guns off the street, making busts and pocketing cash along the way. And the scatter-shot approach to policing, which often swept up the innocent with the guilty was ripe with corruption and bad arrests.

In this mix is a cast of dirty cops, drug dealers, collaborators, victims and lawyers. One such lawyer, Ivan Bates had tangled with Jenkins on many occasions and in time became determined to do something about the corruption. This whole thing is like real life Bad Lieutenant. Cops ripping off drug dealers, planting evidence, roughing people up. The argument could be made that “oh, who cares? They were just drug dealers?” But the job is not to throw shit against the wall to see what sticks. The job is not to rob “bad” people. The job is to enforce the law and protect the public.

I Got a Monster is an absorbing read. I take note of the fact that the States Attorney comes off terribly. Marilyn Mosby is a peripheral figure in all this. The corrupt Gun Trace Task Force flourished under her. And they were subsequently brought down without her help. She does what is politically expedient: Dropping charges in case brought by dirty officers before investigating; she’s not thoughtful or methodical. All these arguments were initially used by Ivan Bates in his campaign to replace her as State’s Attorney, which is reported in the book. Ultimately, he had to drop that line of attack since he was a defense attorney and going against the GTTF would impact his clients. (the race was spilt three ways and Mosby won).

I Got a Monster is likely to be just one of many books about the GTTF. I know people outside the city love to dump on it. But this book exposes a small sliver of one of the many ways in which local leadership fails the citizens of this city every day.





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