Reading a (Mostly) Good Book About a Bad (But Talented) Person

Frank Sinatra wasn't Joseph Stalin bad.  But he was a jerk.  An awful guy.  Insanely arrogant, he treated women horribly - actually he treated everybody pretty badly.  He was a bully, he slept with possibly thousands of women - he married Mia Farrow when he was 51 and she was 21.  Ew.  He liked to provoke fights and punch people (a lot easier to do when you travel with bodyguards - I mean, "friends").  

The mafia stories - did he use "connections" to sever his contract with Tommy Dorsey?  Did he use other connections to get his Academy Award-winning part in From Here to Eternity?  Was he the model for Johnny Fontane in The Godfather films?

Sinatra was a creep.  But also talented and he worked hard at his craft - music meant something to him and when he sings, you can hear that.  After I read part one of James Kaplan's biography, Frank: The Voice, I bought a best of Sinatra CD and even though - duh - I knew he was a great singer, I became more of a fan.  Listen to "I've Got the World on a String" or "Witchcraft."  See what you think.       

I've just finished Kaplan's sequel, Sinatra: The Chairman, and it was a good read in a sort of "National Enquirer" way.  Juicy and filled with gossip, maybe a little too juicy and filled with gossip.  But entertaining.  And I liked reading about the business of recording music - Sinatra's work with Nelson Riddle was especially interesting. 

It's a big fat book, over 900 pages, so I was surprised when it was 1971 and suddenly the book turns into a "Coda" where the last fifteen years of Sinatra's life are very condensed.  Too rushed and unexplored. 

So as a person - not so great.  But as a singer, as an artist - fly me to the moon, Mr. S. 

A Dot Ham

In 2004 I bought Alexander Hamilton, the biography by Ron Chernow.  It's a massive book, with 700-plus pages of text and I couldn't wait to read it.  Except - boy, it looked... massive.  So it sat on the shelf.  And sat. 

How interesting could the book be?  Alexander Hamilton - Founding Father, Secretary of the Treasury, his picture is on the ten dollar bill, killed in a duel with Aaron Burr. 

There you go, that's what I knew.  So why was the book so big? 

Years pass.  And suddenly there's a musical about him.  A musical about Alexander Hamilton?  Seriously?  What was I missing?  I bought the Hamilton CD and pulled the dusty book from the shelf. 

After reading Alexander Hamilton, it makes sense people didn't know much about him.  Hamilton wasn't especially popular.  After his early death he lacked a huge fan club to champion the many things he accomplished.  Instead he had people (including Jefferson and John Adams) criticize him and call him a monarchist and an aristocrat and a womanizer.  (Slightly strange coming from Jefferson - an aristocrat who had children with his slave and mistress, Sally Hemings.)

Hamilton wasn't perfect.  Brilliant, yes.  But also arrogant and bad-tempered and often too eager to speak his mind.  He did cheat on his wife and announced his infidelity by publishing a pamphlet, Observations on Certain Documents.  Good idea?  Not so much.

Hamilton's early years in the West Indies are Dickensian before Dickens existed.  His mother's morals were questionable, his paternity a mystery - was his father James Hamilton, black sheep of a wealthy Scottish family or Nevis merchant, Thomas Stevens?  And yet Hamilton manages to make it to New York and have tremendous success - he helped create a new nation, whoa, this orphan boy who came from nothing.  It's one of those books you read and say to yourself, "He did what?  Why didn't I know that?  He did that, too?  You're kidding.  This guy is amazing." 

The book is grand.  You're happy to finish it, but also wildly disappointed because you know whatever you read next won't measure up. 

And now I have to see the musical.  And read the book again.  And see the musical again.  Oh, dear.  This could go on and on. 

Do you understand the meaning of "A Dot Ham?"  If you've seen or heard the musical, you might.  There's a lyric in a song where Burr and Hamilton correspond with each other.  And A. Ham is Hamilton's signature.  Funny - it's the same signature as mine.

Here's a link to a Huffington Post piece I wrote about Hamilton the man, Hamilton the musical, and my hopeful possible genetic connection:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ann-lewis-hamilton/whats-your-name-man_b_9043314.html

Christmas Gift Ideas... and Endings

I have always been a fan of Robert Harris.  Fatherland (what if Hitler had won the war) is a novel I go back to and read again and again.  Hitler Diaries is also terrific - a nonfiction look at the famous Hitler Diaries - that turned out not to be written by Hitler.

Harris has also written novels about ancient Rome.  Pompeii, is like Chinatown set in Pompeii, just before the eruption of Vesuvius.  And he has written a trilogy about Cicero, focusing on Cicero's secretary/slave Tiro, who invented a system of shorthand (he also introduced the "&" symbol & and abbreviations like etc and e.g.).  The first book in the series is Imperium, the second is Conspirata and the third, Dictator, will be published in the U.S. in January 2016, but impatient me, I ordered it from Amazon.UK where it came out in the fall.  It's as good as the first two, but I was sad when I finished - it's like losing a friend when you get to the end of a series.

They should be read in order, but if you have a history buff on your Christmas list, Imperium would be a great start.

Ruth Rendell passed away this year and her last book, Dark Corners, was published posthumously.  I put off reading it because I knew when I was done, there would be no more from Ruth Rendell, one of the best mystery writers ever.  Dark Corners is about a bad tenant, a woman who lies about everything, a struggling novelist - typical Ruth Rendell, complex, filled with surprises, and moments that make you very uncomfortable.  She wrote more than fifty novels and seven books of short stories.  Her first book, From Doon With Death, introduced Inspector Wexford.  She also wrote novels under another name, Barbara Vine.  The first Barbara Vine was A Dark-Adapted Eye.

Dark Corners was very good, not my favorite (I was always a bigger fan of the Wexford books).  If you haven't read any Ruth Rendell or have a friend who hasn't, check her out.  Any of her books would make an excellent present.

Happy Holidays and hope you all receive a lot of books.

So You Don't Want to Sleep Tonight?

While reading Ted Koppel's new non-fiction book, Lights Out, he mentions a novel I'd never heard about, One Second After, by Willam R. Forstchen.  Ted Koppel's book is scary - what would happen to the U.S. in the case of a cyberattack that knocks out our power grid?  Well, we'd be in big trouble because we're not prepared.  It's an excellent book and I highly recommend it.

But don't read it before bedtime.

Another book to skip at bedtime, One Second After, is a novel set in a small town in North Carolina.  Life is great.  Until an EMP (Electromagnetic Pulse) weapon is detonated, wiping out the electrical grid, computers, cars, cellphones, you name it.  How will our main character, college professor and retired military colonel, John Matherson, provide for his family, take care of his diabetic daughter, and help keep the town together?  Will food be rationed?  Should outsiders be allowed entry?  What do you do with looters?

The strength of the book is its smallness.  It's set in a college town with people who seem familiar - the doctor, the police chief, the college students Matherson teaches.  And suddenly everything that's normal - ice in your freezer, watching TV or listening to a radio, driving a car, air-conditioning, access to medicine - it's all gone.  Money becomes worthless - how do you buy something when the supermarket has nothing left?

One Second After isn't written especially well.  A lot of the writing is clunky and clumsy.  "Should of, would of" used over and over, that made me a little crazy.  You wonder if there was an editor for this book.  But I couldn't stop reading.  Who will survive?  And the bigger, more frightening fact - this could happen.  An EMP is real threat.  Are we set up to stop it?  And if we can't stop it, are we prepared for what to do next?

Yes, I highly recommend One Second After.  But like the Ted Koppel book, Lights Out, don't read it before you go to sleep.  Trust me. 

Another Difficult Book

I don't know what made me order KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration
Camps by Nikolaus Wachsmann.  Probably a good review and my love of
history and interest in World War II.  In high school I remember trying to
read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich - I didn't get far, too dense.
(The book, not me.)  Later I read it in college and couldn't put it down
and naturally with my obsessive nature, had to devour everything by
William L. Shirer (Berlin Diary is a must-read).

KL is dense.  Almost 900 pages and over 600 pages of text.  It's heavy.  I
put it on the scale and it weighs almost three pounds.  Comprehensive, a
great amount of detail, excellent maps.  And as precise and clinical when
describing KL bureaucracy, Wachsmann is also able to connect us
emotionally to inmates through their letters and testimony after the war.
(Although far too many letter writers do not survive and only live on
through their writing.)

From simple, somewhat disorganized beginnings in 1933, the KLs (shorthand
for Konzentrationslager, concentration camp) were populated with mostly
criminals, communists, homosexuals, and "asocials."  It was surprising to
get deep into the book and realize how many of the inmates in the early
years weren't Jewish.  But that certainly changes.

And once it does the horror of the Holocaust becomes very evident in KL.  And
there are other horrors - as the treatment of Soviet POWs vividly
demonstrates.

At times I had to put down KL.  But KL is an important book.  It describes how
camps originally created to contain opponents to Hitler eventually
evolved into camps that practiced mass extermination.  Put the bureaucracy aside - 
how could human beings could treat each other like this?  How did people survive 
and go on with their lives after this experience?

There's a reason people say never again.  There's a reason people should
read books like this, even though they're not easy.

Read Me Now

I remember when Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant? by Roz Chast came out.  The reviews were great.  I love Roz Chast, I've enjoyed her cartoons in the New Yorker for years.  So why didn't I buy the book?

Recently I was shopping at Barnes & Noble with my daughter, looking for a birthday present, a "funny" book for one of her friends who is... well, a little earnest.  I suggested David Sedaris (of course) and my daughter shook her head.  "She doesn't get irony," my daughter said.  When I spotted Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?, that seemed to have potential.  A graphic novel - hey, it's got pictures!

But a book about a middle-aged woman dealing with her aging parents, probably not great reading for an earnest, un-ironic eighteen year old.

However, it turned out to be perfect for me.

It's very very funny, very very moving.  Honest, engaging.  Painful at times.  Sometimes so difficult it makes you "bats," as Roz Chast says.  But a beautiful book that reminds us about how complicated it is to be part of a family. 

Parents

I just finished two books, both about parents.  Well... about parents, but the books are very different.  Bettyville is a memoir written by George Hodgman, who leaves New York City to return to his hometown, Paris, Missouri, to take care of his aging mother.  Hodgman, a gay man, has never felt like he belonged in Paris (Missouri) and his relationship with his mother is at times awkward, funny, and glorious.  Bettyville is about growing up, about how our parents raise us, and how they can be as imperfect as we are.  You will fall in love with Betty.  And her son, too.  It’s a beautiful book.  If you’re on Facebook, check out George Hodgman’s author page. 

Stalin’s Daughter: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva by Rosemary Sullivan is also about a parent... if your parent happens to be Joseph Stalin.  Look at the cover of the book, do you feel a chill?  What would it be like to grow up with Stalin as your father?  Svetlana Alliluyeva's life wasn’t easy (not exactly a shock), she had several marriages, she defected and came to the United States, then went back to Russia – yes, extraordinary and tumultuous.  And Stalin as a parent?  Controlling, remote, abusive, although you realize that there were moments where he did love his daughter.  As Svetlana Alliluyeva grows up, she becomes more and more aware of who her father is and it's a horrible realization.  But in spite of everything, she survived.