Month: June 2016

The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game by Michael Lewis
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A friend gave me a big stack of books a while ago and Moneyball was one of them. I eventually got around to reading it and my one regret was not reading it a lot sooner. I immediately went to my local library’s website and said “Gimme everything you got by this Michael Lewis guy.” They finally gave me The Blind Side a few days ago.

I think it’s fair, but a bit shallow, to say that The Blind Side is a football version of Moneyball. This time around, Lewis uses “new football” (my phrase) to contextualize a short biography of Michael Oher; in Moneyball, Billy Beane’s story was just one part of a new way to look at baseball. But there are plenty of other parallels. There’s another Bay Area guy named Bill finding ways to win with meager resources. There’s an underlying tone of an established old-boys network resistant to the new way of doing things. There’s even an unsung hero who gets things going with a well-researched newsletter.

And through it all, of course, there’s that Lewis story-telling style, part journalism, part fairy-tale. It’s a compelling style, very readable, as likely to drop an F-bomb as to quote Friedrich Engels. And not given, in my opinion, to too much proselytizing or judgement.

That said, I’d be remiss if I didn’t offer my my own opinions. So let’s say the “review” part of this post is over, and now I’m going to editorialize a bit.

I’ve always been of the notion that modern American athletics can be likened to slavery, whether it’s unpaid college athletes and the billions of dollars their universities earn, or, even worse, a “farm” system that keeps kids poor so that opportunities in athletics come to be their only hope for success. Michael Lewis writes, “The inner city of Memphis alone teemed with kids whose athletic ability had market value.” As soon as I read that, my notion was reinforced.

“The Blind Side” is a nickname for where the right tackle comes at a passing quarterback, and a metaphor from where Michael Oher himself came before earning his well-deserved reputation as a gifted athlete. But don’t we sports fan stay willfully blind, protected by rationalization (“These athletes make more money than I do!”) and are thus able to ignore the truly terrible lives led by those who DON’T become professionals? Why do we give a few men billions of dollars when we could be giving thousands of poor children something decent to live off of?

I don’t doubt that the real hero of this story, Oher’s adoptive mother Leigh Anne Tuohy, had only pure intentions when she took Michael in. More people like that in the world, and we’ll all be better for it. But until we do have more people like that, there’s always going be a part of me that feels guilty when I watch sports.

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Ex-Patriots by Peter Clines
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Full disclosure: I forgot I had read Ex-Heroes, the first novel in the Ex- series, until I was informed that someone had “liked” my review of it. So I went back and re-read what I had written, and thought to myself “I should read the next book if I liked it so much.” I was waiting for the library to send my several reserves anyway, so why not: did the on-line thing, and started in.

Not much in the way of praise, I know, but that’s what you get with books that are sequels and genre fiction to boot. The truth is, we can only ask if the second book in a series carries the momentum of the first. Because, of course, no one is going to like, or even read, a second book if they didn’t like the first one. Ex-Patriots, I am happy to report, sufficiently continues the Ex-Heroes story.

More or less, Ex-Patriots is paint-by-the-numbers, but it’s a template Cline invented himself in the first novel. I mean, have you ever liked a book enough that you wanted to read it again? If you liked Ex-Heroes, you can read it again in this sequel.

(And if you liked my review, just apply it to this second novel as well.)

Some people disparage genre fiction, so to them I offer that Cline is a better writer than your average genre fiction author. Other people see genre fiction for what it is: built in tropes that provide materials for new stories. To those people I report that Cline does more than just take advantage of the available tropes; he develops them into something new.

But let’s be honest; people who don’t like genre fiction aren’t going to come anywhere near the Ex-Heroes series. Good. Who needs those judgmental jerks. The rest of us who just want to sink our teeth into a goodread will enjoy the Ex- stories.

I mean, so far. I’ll let you know when I’m done with the third one.

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The Loo Sanction by Trevanian
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I have just finished reading, literally seconds ago, The Loo Sanction.

I thought I had read this once before. But I didn’t remember any of it. Then again, my reading of it must have been nearly twenty years ago. Let’s call it a kind of pseudo-Alzheimer’s. And the joke is that it would be great to get Alzheimer’s and go reread all of one’s favorite books for the first time. I’m living the dream, here in my foggy head.

I read somewhere that The Eiger Sanction was supposed to be a spoof, but nobody got it. So this novel, it’s sequel, is supposed to up the ante.

In my review of The Eiger Sanction, I pointed out that Trevanian had used the word “insouciance.” Twice. However, in the Loo Sanction, he only uses the word once. So don’t know how we’re expected to feel the bash of the brick with which he’s allegedly hitting us on the head. Then again, he does go to great pains, when describing a nude woman’s woman parts, to use the word “ecu” repeatedly. I’m assuming it’s French.

No other word would do in this, a “thriller” that written as if the writer knows he should write literature but he’s deigning to entertain us for a few hundred pages instead. Not unlike the main character, who deigns to give lectures on art in between moments of daring-do, escapades, shenanigans. And in Britain no less. One wonder what escapades Travanian himself got up to when he wasn’t bearing the odious burden of using his amazing intellect to write pulp fiction.

In another twenty years I may read this book again. I may have for real Alzheimer’s. I may think I am reading my own biography. Not because I ever killed for the government, co-mingled with art thieves, or made vigorous love to acrobatic women. No, it will my recall of all the big words I like to throw around on account of how smart I am. You’ll see.

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The Eiger Sanction by Trevanian
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Third time I’ve read The Eiger Sanction, first time reviewing. And both times I reread the novel, I’d forgotten the “twist” endings. Most likely because it’s a bit anti-climactic. Or because I’ve never written a review for it before, and I tend to forget things easily. I’d make a lousy spy.

Actually, Jonathan Hemlock isn’t a spy, he’s an assassin. An assassin who likes fine art, his solitude, hates people, his job. You know, every assassin trope you can think of. Or cliché, if you want to be mean. (The difference between a “trope” and a “cliché” is whether you like what you see or not). We’ll forgive Trevanian for this, though, since the book was written back in the early 70s.

You remember the 70s, don’t you? When racism and sexism where just part of the picture. When a man could sit in a chair gazing at a mountain, and a woman he’d never met before would simply bend over in front of him to signal she was eager to have sex. You know, the good old days.

Trope, cliché: more like male fantasy. But again, we let it go, for just as Herman Melville had to hide his essay about the whaling industry inside a revenge novel, so too does Trevanian wrap his love of mountain climbing in, well, a kind of revenge novel.

Yes, I compared Trevanian to Melville. And why not. The novel uses the word “insouciance” twice. It describes an un-climbed mountain as retaining its “hymen.” Trevanian himself once said, “I read Proust, but not much else written in the 20th century.” For crying out loud, he uses a one-name name, like Cher or Madonna. Or Voltaire. Or Ludacris.

Rodney Whitaker (Trevanian’s real name) claimed that The Eiger Sanction was a spoof. I’m not sure how a man who doesn’t read books written before 1901 knows enough about man-fantasy assassination-thriller-revenge novels to spoof then, but, benefit of the doubt and all that. If you want a decent little vacation novel, and have access to a dictionary, The Eiger Sanction is a goodread.

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