Book review: Justin Mitchell's "Shenzen Zen" is painfully hilarious

Shenzen Zen: An Accidental Anthropologist’s Decade of Life, Love, and Misadventure in the Middle Kingdom

Justin Mitchell

Telford Garden Press

2018

The only reason you need to purchase and read Justin Mitchell’s new memoir of his journalistic adventures in China, Shenzen Zen, is that it contains this sentence:

“I never thought that at the same time next year I’d be spending the afternoon of my 51^st with an apparently autistic 4-year-old Chinese child on a beach with signs forbidding ‘Whoring and feudalism.’”

OK, there are more reasons.

Mitchell, long-time reporter and editor for American publications wholesome and unsavory, found himself living and working in China from 2003 through 2012, moving from one journalism gig to another as one does — or rather, once did back when there was a plethora of publications to drift among. The resulting adventures could have filled a book, and did.

(Please note, I have been reading Justin for 40 years or so. I grew up reading his music writing for Denver’s late lamented Rocky Mountain News. Years later, I met him in a drug-fueled haze somehow associated with our mutual involvement with the pioneer regional TV program HomeMovies, and have tracked him ever since, through gigs at such stellar rags as the Weekly World News, where he crafted lifestyle pieces such as “Melt Flab Away with the Roadkill Diet!.”)

His chronicles are great — like the best journalistic prose, his writing is snappy, to the point, and insolent. There is not one scrap of high-minded analysis here, nor the stench of any self-righteous soul-searching. Instead, Mitchell does what one is supposed to do. He tells us his story in as straightforward, honest, and entertaining manner possible, and succeeds.

Mitchell doesn’t tread on the ground of history here (although he did dub Hong Kong’s somewhat infamous “milkshake murderer”). He stays in the zone of real life, at ground level, dealing in the daily details that define a life no matter where it’s lived. He looks for a decent place to live, tolerable food, cheap bars, and lively female companionship and even affection.

The politically correct will not tolerate this book; a few chapters in they will shriek and puff themselves inside out like a kernel of outraged popcorn. The rest of us will thoroughly enjoy it.

To be sure, Mitchell doesn’t hold back on sarcastic commentary, skewering the hypocrisies of the Chinese system, the ugliness of the Western visitor, and their mutual cultural incomprehension. Above all, he doesn’t kid himself, and we get a warts-and-all self-portrait as well. The result is an eloquent, raw, sharp-toothed take on a life, in a style that bears far more resemblance to reality than that of many memoirists.

Journalists and comics are a lot alike. Both populations consist of inveterate gossips, excuse-makers, lowlifes, guttersnipes; bitter, twisted, sociopathic, and bitterly funny humans. Neither profession sports a union, for the simple reason that there is no solidarity in them besides at the bar rail. And both know how to tell stories. Mitchell’s books is crammed with them, and most are laugh-out-loud funny (OK, he’s not a clown — he breaks down and gets serious when appropriate).

So do yourself a favor and read someone with no redeeming social value, but plenty of human value. Shenzen Zen is a good time.

Dear Fred: Reading ‘Good Things Happen Slowly’

Good Things Happen Slowly: A Life In and Out of Jazz

Fred Hersch

Crown Archetype

2017

Dear Fred:

I was going to write this to you directly, but I thought if I published it, that it might lead more people to read your new autobiography. It certainly is good!

I have loved your music, both as a player and as a composer, for a long time. (Readers, in case you didn’t know it, Fred is an award-winning, killer jazz pianist and composer. You should listen to him. He has released solo work, and played with ensembles of varying size; he has also composed a lot of fully notated music that is -- well, you could say that’s art music or whatever, the main thing is, it’s GOOD.)

You are a little older than me, and we have some things in common. For instance, we both got to New York around the same time – although you stayed and I didn’t. It was great to read that your impressions of that nasty, smelly, rough, dangerous NYC of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s align with mine – and that we both loved it. Like you, I sat on the curbs outside the clubs I couldn’t afford to get into and listened, blown away, to the music inside.

Unlike you, I am not gay, but I lost my best friend to the first wave of AIDS, along with many other good and talented friends. Reading about your life with the diagnosis for going on 30 years now helps me immensely in understanding what he went through. It was very painful to bring all those memories back up again, but in a way good too.

Like you, and like many folks that I think will like this book, I have always felt ill at ease and different, yearning for acclaim and acceptance. Me? I performed comedy for years – now I write. Your writing here is great, too – clear and concise and straightforward, but evocative. I didn’t realize until I got to a certain point in the book that David Hajdu helped you out with it. He is one of my favorite non-fiction writers, someone I read and re-read to remind myself how to communicate on the page effectively. (Don’t worry – you do not sound like him, you sound like you. The best writing mentors help their pupils sound like themselves.)

Jazz really sustains me as a writer, the idea that you just have to swing with what you’ve got. And then you write: “In jazz, it’s individuality, not adherence to a standard conception of excellence, that matters most. . . . Difference matters – in fact, it’s an asset rather than a liability. There is no describing how exhilarating this epiphany was for me, as a person who always felt different from other people. In jazz, difference is the key element that makes artistry possible.” Amen.

It’s great to read about all these aspects of your life – how you approach creative projects, your struggles with addictions (I’m right there with you, again), and just the contours of the changes wrought by time and circumstance as they cut and shape your life and work. Thanks for being brave about putting all that down on paper – it certainly inspires me to be as rigorous. Didn’t someone once say that all the good stuff is hidden inside the pain?

I was sorry to read of your recent and intense health struggles. I am just coming out of a period of being physically and mentally ailing to the point that I was in bed for three months – nothing compared to what you went through, but nothing like anything I’ve experienced before. Reading those passages was an inspiration as well, although I’d just as soon we could all skip that shit and just have the inspiration straight. Still, reading about your perseverance came at just the right time for me. Thanks for the help.

And hey, I still have a ways to go before I get through your discography, but the one I’m most grateful for isn’t even on there. In 1999, you made, in collaboration with Beth Kephart and Art Lande (Art lives near me here in Boulder) Nourishing the Caregiver, which I found providentially at the time my mother was dying from cancer., and many nights when I couldn’t sleep after a day of taking her to her chemo I’d put it on and feel better. It’s the best medicine I possess.

Anyway, that’s basically it. As a creative person, and simply as a person, your book gets me where I live and makes me feel connected, not wrong, like I’m not so different after all. I think that if the world doesn’t grant you the feeling of fitting in, and if the impetus is strong enough, you can build an entire culture out of yourself, and it ends up being a gift that others can inhabit as well. I think that is exactly what you have done and are doing. 

I hope you are feeling OK, being productive, and having fun with Scott. Thanks for everything!

Sincerely yours,

Brad Weismann

‘The Comedians’ a definitive overview

The Comedians: Drunks, Thieves, Scoundrels, and the History of American Comedy

Kliph Nesteroff

2015

Grove Press

Dammit. Dammit dammit dammit!

Did you ever think, “I’m going to write a book about ________.” You go to the bookstore or to the library the next day, and there it is. Somebody else wrote it while you were out screwing around. Dammit.

“The Comedians” is an incredibly strong work, highly readable, and immensely informative. This is a perfect general-interest overview of the history of American comedy – standup and its offshoots – from the turn of last century to 2011. Kliph Nesteroff somehow compresses this elephantine subject into a compelling 300-some pages without losing either focus on significant detail or a global perspective of the evolution of the style, substance, and business of comedy, along with its permutations through all the mediums we’ve leapt through over the last century.

The author dives right in, describing the late-19^th-century American construction of the theatrical “circuits” or chains that would offer performers contracts. The expansion of the continental railroad system meant that it was now cost-effective (if not incredibly uncomfortable and maddening) to tour the country with an act, and hope to climb the ladder of vaudeville respectability to play the Palace in New York City, the heart of the entertainment industry at the time.

In addition to citing such big early names as Eddie Cantor, Jack Benny, W.C. Fields, and the Marx Brothers, Nesteroff digs deep into the files and points out significant figures often overlooked – Frank Fay, Ted Healy, Rusty Warren, Ray Bourbon, Jean Carroll, and tons of others. He takes us through vaudeville’s decline, and the successive ascensions of radio, film, television, and digital humor. He illustrates the importance of nightclubs, strip joints, Las Vegas, and the gaping maw of cable TV in the evolution of the art form.

Did I say art form? Yes. Talking about your penis in a spotlight for money doesn’t sound like a skill, but it is. Nesteroff is, like me, a former standup, and it expertly informs his work. He knows what it’s like to stand in the back of the room until 1:30 a.m. to do your five minutes. For free. Six nights a week. He’s seen the depressing interiors of green rooms and comedy condos, where the talent is kept corralled, live livestock with attitudes and bad haircuts. His adept analysis is energized by his lean, clear prose. Another great lesson from standup – have something to say, say it, and move on. This lesson Nesteroff mastered long ago. There is a component of entertainment, of showing some leg, as it were, in writing for money that is mostly absent from academic writing.

Here’s a few glimpses of what the writer captures: W.C. Fields saying of his career, “I would never have gone through with it if I had known what it was going to be like . . . mental torture is too high a price to pay for anything”; Fred Allen, saying of a proposed statue to Milton Berle, “It will be the first time people  shit on a statue”; to Lenny Bruce performing naked; to Richard Pryor asking a Vegas crowd, “What the fuck am I doing here?” and walking, then changing comedy forever.

Best of all, Nesteroff constructs a chain of linkages between the comedy generations. For the first time in print that I know of, you can trace the influences (and, OK, outright thievery) of comedy approaches and structures that provide a kind of Hegelian progression, a passing of the torch, albeit between disturbed, transgressive, misanthropic misfits. For the first time, Nesteroff exposes a continuity. Comedy has a plot, and its performers high and low, big- and small-time, have molded it.

Anyone who likes to laugh will enjoy this look backstage .Any past or present member of the siblinghood of yockmeisters will recognize that nothing much has changed over the century. Anyone contemplating going on stage and telling jokes should read it first. 

Review: ‘American Cornball’ entertaining trip through comedy history

American Cornball: A Laffopedic Guide to the Formerly Funny

Christopher Miller

2013

HarperCollins

New York

By BRAD WEISMANN 

Did you ever wonder why being stuck on a desert island is supposed to be so damn funny? Or for that matter, why falling safes, rolling pins, snoring, pie fights, hoboes, alley cats, and big butts are an enduring part of America’s comedy DNA? And -- do you want to know what those enormous sweat drops that fly from nervous cartoon characters are called?

Christopher Miller’s mother lode of old-school memes, tropes, symbols, routines and topics is here to help. American Cornball combs through the 20^th Century’s postcards, ephemera, vaudeville sketches, radio shows, comics, cartoons, and books to assemble a definitive roster of stuff that used to crack us up.

A joke’s half-life is usually dramatically short. Topical humor is by definition fleeting. Any comedian will tell you that comic style changes over decades. Even a successful one whose work is grounded in general human observation such as Jerry Seinfeld finds he’s not connecting with a younger generation these days. The comics our parents loved we saw as hacks, and our children will feel the same. (If Bill Hicks and Sam Kinison had lived, would they have wound up playing the South Florida condo circuit?) American Cornball reminds us ars longa, comoedia brevis.

Miller’s voracious, if not masochistic, research, grounds an A-to-Z survey that concentrates on American culture from the birth of the comic strip in 1895 to the 1960s, when the idea of a large, homogenous common culture that shared a toolkit of common laughter-generating topics sputtered and died. These primeval gags lurked everywhere in the old days. Miller bravely tracks down their origins and then offers interpretation and analysis, throwing in citation, context, and a timeline as well. (For instance, he carefully breaks down the variegated comic possibilities posed by the three classic home-invasion figures: the plumber, the iceman, and the door-to-door salesman. Who knew?)

Miller’s peculiar genius here is to pare down these examinations to brisk, entertaining passages. His crisp wit sustains us throughout, and he constantly stuffs his entries with tangents of information that make the reader not want to miss any stray nugget of information. The casual reader can enjoy dipping in here and there; the diligent (OK obsessive) reader will absorb many insights Miller deduces from the no-longer-quite-so-hilarious evidence in front of him.

He doesn’t shy away from the plethora of racist, violent and misogynist humor that played so large a role in the comedy of the time and that we now longer officially find acceptable. Long-gone ethnic caricatures of blacks, Jews, “Polacks,” Italians, and “Irishmen” have already been joined by women-driver jokes and may soon also see jokes about homosexuals join them in retirement. Miller neither despises political correctness nor endorses old-school tastelessness; like the best scholars he puts it all out there, tells us what he thinks, and leaves the rest up to us.

And dammit, it’s just funny. By the way, those huge cartoon sweat drops are termed plewds. There’s a lot more where that came from, but you have to conquer this entertaining tome of nerdy brilliance to find out.

'Drew Friedman's Heroes of the Comics' tells American pop-culture history in portraits

Drew Friedman’s Heroes of the Comics

Drew Friedman

2014

Fantagraphics Books, Inc.

Seattle

Drew Friedman has always disturbed the hell out of me. His photorealist-seeming grotesques, studies of minor and marginal celebrities in dark and turgid circumstances, were for me like a flamethrower blast from a terrifying alternate universe – one that lurked beneath our all-too-thin floorboards. In mags like Heavy Metal, MAD, National Lampoon, and RAW he fought for – and won away – my attention from such trifles as big-breasted space maidens.

His new book is a gallery of 83 American comic-book greats that combines the virtues of a portrait gallery and a collection of life stories. These individual portraits in words and pictures, when read together, form an entertaining and neatly comprehensible history of the comics in America.

In rough chronological order, Friedman takes us from Maxwell Gaines, the visionary but short-lived progenitor of EC, through list of the usual Golden and Silver Age suspects such as Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, Eisner and the lot. But he also lavishes attention on the obscure but well-deserved – Mac Raboy, Gardner Fox, Ramona Fraden – all names for the enthusiast to scribble down and add to his or her research list. (Hell, he even throws in Frederic Wertham, whose infamous “Seduction of the Innocent” witch hunt against comics in the 1950s killed a lot of publications and careers).

Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, the creators of Superman. From Friedman's 'Heroes of the Comics.'

Friedman had the enormous good fortune to have a father (writer Bruce Jay Friedman) who kept him awash in comics through his childhood, and who knew seemingly everyone in the New York comics scene of the ‘60s and ‘70s. Friedman’s child’s-eye glimpse of the mechanics and business of the industry gives him unparalleled insights – and some great anecdotes – about this lost world, all to be found in his entertaining introduction.

Fantagraphics’ respect for the image gives Friedman’s work a large format, printed on high-quality paper stock. The artists, writers, and publishers are shown in humble situ – posed at drawing desks, cradling cigarettes, in photo-based illustrations. As Friedman puts it, these pictures are “ . . . neither idealized nor romanticized, but depicting the years of dedication etched into their faces.”

This book succeeds as a reference work, an aesthetic object in itself, and a good time – a trifecta that all good non-fiction storytellers would do well to shoot for. “Drew Friedman’s Heroes of the Comics” is an essential tool for understanding how comics became what they are.

Trickster Tales: "Pranksters: Making Mischief in the Modern World"

Pranksters: Making Mischief in the Modern World

Kembrew McLeod

2014

New York University Press

New York, London

By BRAD WEISMANN

Nobody likes a smartass.

Pranks are often thought of as a low form of humor, ranged down there with puns and practical jokes. However, Kembrew McLeod’s comprehensive and thought-provoking history of pranking ranks it much more highly. Pranking runs through modern history like a fault line of sardonic disorder, and McLeod demonstrates admirably the great, society-changing effects some of it has caused, as well as the damage and destruction that other examples have wrought.

McLeod’s wide net takes in all activities designed to make fools of society at large. He marks his start at the point where broader, faster forms of communication – pamphlets, almanacs, and proto-newspapers – lent themselves to the pointed attack, the spoof, and the literary hotfoot. The gamut begins with Jonathan Swift’s “Modest Proposal,” and wends its way to today through a variety of forms and frames, motivated by everything from sheer criminal intent to the most idealistic attempts to remake society.

A short list of topics and characters covered should in itself propel the curious into its satisfying pages: Benjamin Franklin, P.T. Barnum, the anti-Spiritualism movement, yellow journalism, the Merry Pranksters and the Chicago 8, “Paul is dead”, Andy Kaufman, and today’s hackers and groups like Anonymous. All relate to the intent of invoking a cathartic rethinking of a culture’s shared assumptions, waking it from its addled distractions.

While it seems that the primary motivation of a prankster is to crack a joke, McLeod makes it very clear that, by and large, society rarely gets it (and if it does, it tries to tear the perpetrator to shreds). Indeed, many of the fonts of crazy conspiracy theories – documents pretending to pertain to the Rosicrucians, Illuminati, Freemasons, the “Inner Circle” – were written as humor, satire, parody, all unfortunately taken at face value and run with by those that are inclined to paranoia. Even more disturbing are his accounts of the life-and-career-ruining “rumor panics,” such as the satanic-messages-in-rock-songs and the repressed-memory-child-abuse cases of more recent decades. In McLeod’s universe, the human mind doesn’t need much tinder to spark an outbreak of fear, hate, and ugly behavior.

McLeod is the perfect person to tackle the topic, as he himself has participated and/or perpetrated some mind games of his own. Most notably, he made Michelle Bachmann feel uncomfortable in the guise of a gay robot – which makes him A-Number-One in my book. He is able to expertly dissect not only the mechanics and thrust of the pranks, but analyze the repercussions and the effectiveness of the actions as well, providing a micro- as well as macro-focus.

It’s an examination, not a celebration. The moral ambiguities of pranking are in full view here. Still, there’s a sense here that the author sees pranking at its best as a creative kind of non-violent civil disobedience, justified in the face of a domineering state that brainwashes its inhabitants with propaganda of the kind pioneered by Edward Bernays, which can be construed as a kind of pranking itself. McLeod quotes media critic Stuart Ewen, who “characterizes Bernays’s ideal model of communication as merely a hallucination of democracy: ‘A highly educated class of opinion-molding tacticians is continuously at work, analyzing the social terrain and adjusting the mental scenery from which the public mind, with its limited intellect, derives its opinions.’”

Given this imbalance of power, “Pranking” can be read as a testament to the possibilities of the intelligent and humorous revolutionary. As a study, it soars right up into my bookcase alongside other critical studies of this subject such as Alex Boese’s “Museum of Hoaxes,” H. Allen Smith’s “The Compleat Practical Joker,” and Mackay’s “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.” 

'The Almost Nearly Perfect People': Bustin' on my Scandinavian homies

The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia

By Michael Booth

2014

Picador

New York

Now I know why we left the old country.

Michael Booth’s new survey of the Nordic lands is a feisty, funny, trip that enlightens as it entertains.

The English travel and food writer has a long-standing connection to Denmark through his wife, and the book originated in his chagrin at Denmark’s consistent rating as the world’s happiest, most progressive society. “They don’t look that happy to me,” he thought, and what results is Booth’s frank and acerbic levering up of the great assumptions about these cultures’ superiority to take a peek at what squirms about in the shadows beneath them.

As he travels through Iceland, Denmark, Norway, Finland, and Sweden, Booth does an admirable job of blending reportage, anecdote, and historical contextualization to present a balanced sketch of each society. This is a tricky business – Booth plumbs the national stereotypes for validity, and confronts his own ingrained generalizations, revealing a much bumpier, more complex reality.

Not that this is an expose or stab job. Booth is keen to remind the reader that in a world where poverty, conflict, disease, and injustice are par for the course, the problems of the highly developed, affluent North are relatively minor. Additionally, he espouses the virtues that makes these societies work – “trustworthiness, accountability, openness, a strong civil society, long-termism, individual self-control.” However, those of Scandinavian heritage raised with an intimidating sense of where they came from will find this study a big fat relief -- as some of these stereotypes are all too grounded in fact.

For instance, it seems that Danes are not the most happy, they are simply the best at pretending that everything is just fine. The Norwegians come off as not-too-bright, right-wing tribalists rendered effete by their vast oil revenues. Iceland? Vikings led astray into modern financial incoherence by their piratical tendencies. Finland is portrayed as composed of tough, taciturn binge-drinkers. And Sweden, the economic leader of them all, is a stultifyingly conformist culture, the ultimate nanny state, with an enormous immigrant problem.

In fact, the problems of multiculturalism crop up again and again in “Almost.” These host cultures are incredibly homogenous, not just culturally but genetically. The need for workers willing to do the mundane tasks that keep things running falls more and more to refugees, and inclusive philosophies are being tested now up North, with intermittent success. Enforcing tolerance and avoiding racial stratification is the new challenge.

The overall sense that Booth leaves the reader with is that, like a typical American suburb, Scandinavia is a nice place to be from. The traits I thought were my family’s alone are more broadly based. The aversion to conflict, the lack of emotionality, the stiff politesse, the smugness, the non-specific gloominess, the nagging sense of personal unimportance, the shyness, the yearning for universal approval, and wielding relentless, lethal niceness as a weapon all are found among the people Booth meets on his way.

Booth quotes journalist Niels Lillelund --“In Denmark we do not raise the inventive, the hardworking, the ones with initiative, the successful or the outstanding, we create hopelessness, helplessness and the sacred, ordinary mediocrity,” and The Economist – “Scandinavia is a great place in which to be born . . . but only if you are average. . . . if you are extraordinary, if you have big dreams, great visions, or are just a bit different, you will be crushed, if you do not emigrate first.” Why leave heaven? Well, if for you it's hell.

The idea that these “perfect” societies tend to iron out or exclude the unique, eccentric, and enterprising individual makes me understand why my dissatisfied, grumpy, free-thinking ancestors got the hell out of there. Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Ugly Duckling” has more than a dollop of truth in it. Of course, Booth's observations have stirred debate, as they should. "Almost" is great look below the surface.

'Do Not Sell at Any Price': A masterful exploration of an arcane musical world

Do Not Sell at Any Price: The Wild, Obsessive Hunt for the World’s Rarest 78 rpm Records

Amanda Petrusich

2014

Scribner

New York

Balance is the key here, in the best non-fiction I’ve read this year.

“Do Not Sell at Any Price” is an exemplary work that demonstrates that a non-fiction narrative can be just as compelling as any fictional one. By virtue of solid research and investigation, coupled with good writing, author Amanda Petrusich creates, rather than glib feature writing, authentic insights into far more than the specific topic at hand.

“Do Not Sell” delves into the cloistered and idiosyncratic world of music collectors – seekers of vintage music on 78 rpm records. Between 1925 and 1948, these brittle shellac discs were the way music was recorded, vended, and preserved, produced by a profusion of companies large and small. In those days of cultural and communication isolation, vast amounts of marginal, eccentric, and original performers were captured. The savants that collect these sonic rarities are obsessed figures, some possessed with a quasi-messianic sense of mission to rescue these lost voices from oblivion.

Petrusich brings the scene to life with an impeccably balanced approach equal parts research, interviews, profiles, and critical analysis, ensconced in a first-person framework as she goes along on the quest with some of her subjects, sometimes hilariously. She goes so far as to learn how to scuba-dive so that she can search the muddy bottom of the Milwaukee River for some of the fabled lost Paramount recordings. (Save the receipts; I believe those lessons ae tax-deductible.)

Most important of all, Petrusich is wise to herself. She states early on, “I wanted collectors to reveal their desires and methodologies so I could dissect their work and devise grand statements about our cultural moment. In response, collectors sneered, chortled, or told me to fuck off.” From the get-go, Petrusich simultaneously acknowledges and lets go of her preconceptions – then gets on the ground and saturates herself in the details.

Petrusich’s voice is here, but it’s not cloying or cute, pompous or sententious. As one should, she asks good questions, listens well, and pulls her conclusions from the evidence and her experience. She brings to life the characters that inhabit this alternate universe and gives them space to express themselves – and they are quite eloquent.

Remember, these fanatics aren’t academics but hobbyists – living outside the mainstream of cultural dialogue, creating their own canons and alternative histories, sometimes sharing their thoughts with others, sometimes remaining clapt in near-complete isolation, inhabiting what seems to be a self-constructed dream world, addicted to control over their basement-level kingdoms. “. . . collecting had clearly become . . . a functional way of rebelling against mainstream culture. . . . rejecting a society that felt homogenized and unforgiving,” Petrusich writes.

Says collector Ian Nagoski of his ilk, “’ ‘Zwigoff and Crumb and innumerable others, these guys are definitely discontents in a Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents kind of way. They’re looking at the world and seeing it as untenable. The world is sick. And yet here is this thing that affirms that there’s something about it that’s beautiful. But it’s forgotten, or lost, or separate from day-to-day reality. But if you could just put it back together, then you could reconstruct this gone world, this kind of life that was once worth living, and make that into your own life, and then it would be okay or tolerable for you.’”

One of the most interesting considerations Petrusich brings out is the concept that the historical narrative is always in flux, subjective, squishy – determined by accidents, destruction, bias, prejudice, and the sheer inability to deal. Cultural worth fluctuates like stock prices. The vital expression of the culture lies first here, and then there, and over there where you never expected it to manifest (that my childhood comic-book heroes are now seen as the foundation of a world-beloved secular mythology seems to me ridiculous and awesome, simultaneously).

She quotes another collector, Nathan Salsburg, “’Another danger of the canon being having been engineered – accidentally or on purpose – by collectors is that scads of things were excluded, either because they didn’t conform to a collector’s taste of because there just wasn’t enough time or space for anyone to properly process them.’”

The paradigm of the curator-as-impositioner-of-significance-meaning-and-context is, of course, Harry Everett Smith, the legendary compiler of The Anthology of American Folk Music, quite accurately described by Greil Marcus as “an occult document disguised as an academic treatise on stylistic shifts within an archaic musicology.” This 1952 creation helped spark the folk revival and blues renaissance, both of which folded into rock – and still surfaces in genres as diverse as grunge and Americana. Smith’s achievement was to select and assemble an intuitive masterpiece – a narrative of outcast voices summoning raw feeling and captivating sounds. Since then, supplemental and alternative compilations have emerged. Companies such as Revenant, Dust-to-Disc, and Yazoo and individual efforts such as Work Hard, Play Hard, Pray Hard: Good Time, and End Time Music and People Take Warning! Murder Ballads & Disaster Songs make the case that there is much material to be processed yet.

Petrusich is not an ironic observer. She can hear what the enthusiasts share with her, describing the raw, unmediated sound of the turn of last century, before media surrounded us. “And I understood, for a moment, what collectors meant when they moaned about what was lacking in contemporary music: that pure communion, that unself-consciousness, that sense that art could still save us, absolve us of our sins. We know better than to expect that now.”

There is something to be said about the parallel I pick up here between collecting and the act of creating itself – another lonely occupation populated by shall-we-say-unique-types who dredge for signs of significance, and reveal their insights . . . or don’t. The nature of obsession drives most creative types inward, and the shelter of eccentricity often protects the fragile. What is an artist but one who, unsatisfied with things as they are, crafts their own worlds? What do you call someone who discovers a new set of meanings – a visionary or a nutjob?

But I digress. “Do Not Sell” does more – it makes the reader come to terms with his or her own acquisitive tendencies (confession: I have stacks of 78s, and 45s, and LPs, and cassettes . . . it was difficult for me to throw out my 8-track tapes). Most importantly, it inspires us to seek out the sounds that are the basis of all this fuss. Few of us have the wherewithal to match Petrusich’s subjects, but the digital revolution means that nearly all the musics of the world can be enjoyed, absorbed, passed on. This book ties it all together.

'The Ordinary Acrobat': Letting the circus run away with you

By BRAD WEISMANN

  

The Ordinary Acrobat

Duncan Wall

2013

Alfred A. Knopf

New York

The remarkable thing about Duncan Wall’s circus memoir/history “The Ordinary Acrobat” is how deftly it marries the personal and the global, the macro and micro. His quest to understand the history, structure, and process of the art form is married to his personal desire to join the circus, or at least train at the Ecole Nationale des Arts du Cirque, seven miles east of the center of Paris.

The result is an immensely readable, perfectly paced alternation of personal saga and an exposition of the circus’ past, present, and future. The indefatigable Wall plows across Europe and North America, taking in the scene from the rattiest street performer to the steel-and-glass complex that houses Cirque du Soleil, the monolithic “entertainment company” that turned circus into big business again. (Wall even-handedly surveys contemporary developments, looking askance at Cirque du Soleil’s corporate stylings, reporting but not endorsing the opinion of artists who call it a “factory” or a “Walmart of circuses.”)

Wall’s passion invigorates the narrative. No George Plimpton, he is not a hobbyist nor a “participatory journalist.” He is rigorously honest about both his achievements and shortcomings in the ring, and his attention to the physical, mental, and emotional details of what it means to the perform “feats of activity,” as they were once charmingly called, makes the achievements of big-top stars only more impressive. His travels take him into the heart of circus culture, and trigger a multitude of fascinating discussions with the outsize personalities who keep the art alive.

The book is an immensely powerful starting point for understanding the circus. Wall’s pocket history of the form and its primary disciplines (juggling, acrobatics, trapeze, clowning) gives any interested reader a laundry list of names, and descriptions of acts, that will drive the curious to do more research . . . and maybe even inspire the next Grock, Wallenda, or Rastelli.

Given the circus’ ephemeral nature, its off-and-on popularity, and its sometime disreputable past, many sites and stories have been lost forever – at times, Walls’ quest seems bereft even of ghosts. The ultimate, comforting impulse that pushes the writer to devour all this information and relay it to us is one he finds embodied in Pascal Jacob, circus historian, who donates his collection of memorabilia to circus-friendly Montreal. As Wall helps Jacob sort his historical treasures, he realizes: “The world couldn’t be bothered with circus history. This had been proved to me time and again. Pascal’s passion was a response to this destruction of the past. He was on a mission to gather together what had survived and keep it safe.”

Thanks to Duncan Wall, a vibrant portrait of the art and an author’s relationship to it, is safe.

I don't do yahrzeits; or: good grief!

I don’t do yahrzeits.

In case you were wondering what those are, they are a widespread and ingrained part of Jewish tradition.

It’s the observation and commemoration of the date of death of a close relative, spouse, or friend – parents, particularly. The kaddish (mourner’s prayer) is recited, a candle is lit, a palpable act of tzedakah (charity) is encouraged, and Torah can studied in honor of the memory of the deceased.

Sounds laudable. And very depressing.

My mother died a year ago today. I have my share of problems about that . . . but commemorating it doesn’t help to solve any of them. (Yes I did say kaddish for her for 11 months. I’m not a complete monster.)

Maybe I don’t feel the pull of the ritual because I’m a relatively new Jew. I come from Lutherans, from the shady Christian hollows and hilltops of the Missouri River valley, Alexander Payne country, right around Omaha, where the blues are more commonly referred to as “our Scandinavian heritage.” It’s Garrison Keillor without the charm. Performed in stiff motions of despair.

In that primal culture, death is seen as a relief from earthly trials. More accurately, life is conceived of as one long “American Gladiators”-style competition against temptation, sin, and error. A vestibule crowded with a kaleidoscope of potential soul-destroying torments to be sidestepped.

Plus, we had this quirky family tradition of TAKING A PICTURE OF THE DEAD RELATIVE.

IN THE COFFIN.

AND HANGING IT IN THE LIVING ROOM.

My paternal grandparents’ walls looked like they were hung with pictures of fallen Pez dispensers. This is not OK, I thought then but confirmed objectively years later. This kind of familial focus on the Grim Reaper explains much of my reluctance to memorialize the departed.

In fact, we spent our fair share of time in cemeteries, sprucing up our people’s plots, or just taking a drive out to visit that field full of unresponsive relatives. Out of boredom, I would run up and down as a kid, vaulting over the headstones, until my grandma caught me and scolded me out of it.

Dad’s death, 20 years ago, didn’t help. The first mortuary we went to, the guy started off by saying, “Well, what can I help you with?” We moved on. Later, the unfamiliar minister faked his way through Dad’s eulogy, throwing in a plug for the funeral home smack dab in the middle of it.

I did make a habit of visiting his grave on the Day of the Dead. I thought treating it as a festive occasion was at least a move in the right direction. And those visits did actually lead finally to a kind of peace for me. So, memorialization works.

But Mom got cremated. So . . . she’s out blowing around somewhere right now. That’s not comforting.

More to the point – if I’m going to remember someone, why am I going to remember them on THE DAY THEY DIED? I can testify from personal experience that this is not when people are really at their best.

“Hey, remember that day Mom died?” is just not something I’m willing to entertain. It seems -- gauche.

Plus there’s the letter. I know it’s traditional, but I don’t want an ecclesiastical form letter reminding me of what happened, especially one containing a donation suggestion and envelope. Nope. Don’t like that.

So, smartass, I ask myself, how should you remember someone? I would pick out the nice bits to mull over, to start. That’s what I’ve been doing.

For better or worse, the parental influence is pervasive. I work in the arts, after a childhood my mother flooded with films, books, and music. I write; she wanted to. I read my kids Laura Ingalls Wilder with the same intonations Mom used. And we all seem to laugh in the same places.

So I currently choose just to remember the funny stuff. That’s what I can handle, that’s where I’m at. When I go, don’t light a candle or nail a little brass plaque to anything.

It’s like the old joke:

The teacher asks the class what their fathers do for a living.

Little Betty says, “My daddy’s a doctor!”

Little Billy says, “My dad works at the grocery store!”

Little Jimmy doesn’t say anything. Teacher asks him, “What about YOUR daddy, Jimmy?”

Jimmy says, “My daddy’s dead.”

Teacher says, “Oh, dear, I’m so sorry. Tell me, what did he do before he died?”

Jimmy clutches his chest and yells, “GGGGAAAAHHHGAKAKAKAKAAUGHHHH!”

Just remember the funny stuff.

Prologue: ‘I think I’ll just come in’

I have been ignoring the best writing advice I ever got.

In the foreword to radio comedian Fred Allen’s autobiography, “Much Ado about Me,” Fred relates advice John Steinbeck gave him.

“. . . try to remember it so clearly that you can see things: what colors and how warm or cold and how you got there. Then try to remember people. And then just tell what happened. . . . Put it all in. Don’t try to organize it. . . . Don’t think back over what you have done. Don’t think of literary form. Let it get out as it wants to. . . . cutting comes later. The form will develop in the telling.”

The one time I followed these dicta I produced my most odd and most widely-read independently published story to date (it didn’t hurt that it centered on midget wrestling). It took over a year to write, and it probably shows. It was the most challenging and the most rewarding project I have undertaken to date.

And I couldn’t get anyone to buy it.

I’ve been writing for 40 years, professionally for 30. Along the way I’ve written standup, sketch comedy, plays, for radio and TV, newspapers, magazines, and websites. I’ve interviewed famous people, covered crime, tracked political upheavals, and written about just about every art form on the planet. I have a leg up on all the templates, in style as well as form -- the advertisement disguised as breaking news, the heart-tugging feature, the seemingly balanced analysis, and the crooked results imposed by all the teapot tempests and pet peeves of moneyed clients, publishers, owners, editors, and controlling interests.

At any given moment I am writing or selling something. This incessant practice has led to a craftsmanship of which I am justly proud. But what good is it to crank out technically perfect and quite readable stories about shit? In comedy, it’s called being a hack. This slew of imitative, safe, predictable content producers persist everywhere, shovel the publishers’ furnaces full of words that curl, crisp, burn and are ash-expelled in the blink of an eye. The avalanche of data continues, whether I pitch in or not.

In this post-journalism world, acting as a communicator for private interests is no better. Hey, believe me, I tried to sell out! Over and over again, I attempted to gain acceptance, to find a group to be a part of, to sand down my prickly talents to fit the required measurements. Few takers. My level of talent, my faint-heartedness, my sheer self-destructive cussedness, luck, destiny has seen to that. So what do I want? Not to engage in precocious journaling, or addled gonzo narratives. What is the way out of the impasse?

Truth, first. Why is speaking the truth such an imperative? I grew up surrounded by lies and evasion, I developed a desire for truth. To root the truth out of myself, a practiced dissembler. Not facts. Truth. I’ve seen too many pages of bland facts obscure the truth. Alan Moore, in his “Promethea,” states that humans are amphibians of the psyche, half in the world of reality and half in the world of imagination. I would like to hear the clear clang of these hemispheres colliding in my head, for once, instead of being worried about it or muffling it with fears.

So, an approach that blends the reality and the imagination, the personal and the general. Open, relaxed, and conversational, admitting bias and uncertainty. Playing up and down the spectrum of the dynamic paradox.

What if I write with the intent of seeing what happens? Am I capable of being honest? Above all, will it be interesting? Enjoyable? Helpful? Readable? A kind of Fourth Step for public consumption? At this point, it does not matter. I am still turning out the standard fare for fun and profit. But it’s not enough.

Look for installments in my “Pursuit of Happiness” series in the months to come, centering on such unoffending topics such as sex, drugs, God, money, power, society, family. Maybe it’ll be fascinating, maybe it’ll be crap. Maybe it’ll be both. We’ll see, won’t we?

The source of the title quote comes from an anecdote I recall reading about actor Ralph Richardson, which of course I can’t find the source of now. Still, it sticks in my mind so strongly that, if it is not true, it oughta be. Evidently Richardson was a stickler for establishing his character with his first entrance. Well, in a show in later life, he could not get his entrance down. He drove the director and his fellow actors mad for weeks, trying every conceivable way to get on stage in character.

Finally, the night before opening, Richardson went to the director and told him he had solved the problem. “I think I’ll just come in,” he said.

I think I’ll just come in.

"In dark times, the definition of good art would seem to be art that locates and applies CPR to those elements of what's human and magical that still live and glow despite the times' darkness. Really good fiction could have as dark a worldview as it wished, but it'd find a way both to depict this world and to illuminate the possibilities for being alive and human in it." – David Foster Wallace

Review: "Directing: Film Techniques and Aesthetics," Fifth Edition

Directing: Film Techniques and Aesthetics, Fifth Edition

Michael Rabiger & Mick Hurbis-Cherrier

2013

Focal Press, Burlington, MA, USA

517 pgs.

So you want to be a movie director? Read this book. That’s it, you’re ready!

Comprehensive is too weak a word for the contents of the freshly updated “Directing.” In contrast to past tomes I’ve reviewed in the publisher’s FilmCraft series, this is not a string of anecdotal accounts about an aspect of the film profession. Possessed of a depth and scope far beyond what might suffice for laymen, this is a playbook for people who are serious about learning how to do this job called directing.

Film-school education has long turned away from the days when theory, interpretation, and critique held sway. The film industry is the quintessential capitalist/industrial venture – every movie a startup, an invention, an experience, a product, a gamble on the ability of the filmmaker to connect with a paying audience. And, like most artistic endeavors, you learn a lot more and a lot faster on the ground getting it done than sitting around thinking and talking about it. Film is a practicum: if you can’t make it happen, you won’t get far.

That being said, this would be the book to read before diving in to the daunting business of directing. The key to its effectiveness as an introduction, a classroom text, a reference work, or as a literal template for a specific film project is its straightforward, forthright style, peppered with both flashes of humor and a serious sense of purpose. The concern of the authors to be as clear and logical as possible is clearly felt, and the text is profusely illustrated with relevant stills and diagrams as well.

The organization of “Directing” is as impressive as the scope of work it suggests is the director’s responsibility is staggering. The book begins with basic premises through storytelling, film aesthetics, and cinematic “language,” on to preproduction, casting, working with actors, hiring a crew, breaking down the script, all the way through post and concluding with a friendly reminder to the filmmaker not to drink too much after the first screening, so that he or she can network more effectively.

Original author Michael Rabiger’s work has been seamlessly updated by Mick Hurbis-Cherrier, who writes with a similarly engaging thoroughness. (We are even treated to a photo of Rabiger’s father, makeup artist Paul, brushing Shirley Eaton down with gold paint for her memorable appearance in “Goldfinger.”)

The upshot for me, personally, after reading “Directing” is that I do NOT want to direct. It seems to demand a combination of the personality traits of Superman, Moses, Patton, and Renoir, with a double portion of the patience of Job.

A caveat – this is a text loaded with valuable content, and it means slow going and careful digestion for the reader who wishes to make full benefit of it.

“Directing” is exemplary not only in its address of its subject, but as a model for anyone who would seek to cover a subject thoroughly, with insight, and a healthy sense of how a neophyte should proceed. Really? You really want to direct? Read “Directing” and call me in the morning.

Review: "FilmCraft: Producing"

FilmCraft: Producing

By Geoffrey Macnab & Sharon Stewart

Focal Press, 2013

By BRAD WEISMANN

“The way I see it, my function is to be responsible for everything.”

n  David O. Selznick

“What is a producer? An enabler.”

                                    Jeremy Thomas

So what is a movie producer? A visionary who brings cinematic glory to life, despite all odds? A blackhearted bastard who reduces people and ideas to numbers? The new installment in FilmCraft’s anecdotal survey of cinema, “Producing,” does its best to answer the question. It’s a hallmark of the position that it is both so nebulous and so all-encompassing that you still may be confused about what it involves even after reading the book.

The producer does indeed do everything – from finding scripts and directors to back, digging up financing, generaling the logistics of the shoot, securing distribution, generating publicity – and anything else that needs to get done to make a movie come to life.

Despite the auteur theory, it’s the producer who picks up the Oscar for Best Picture each year, an acknowledgement of the ultimate responsibility of the producer to make things happen. And, although the titles of producer, associate producer, executive producer, etc. are flung about liberally these days, usually as an honorarium for a substantial cash contribution, the buck still does indeed stop with the producer.

“FilmCraft: Producing” follows its usual m.o., which is an anecdotal and not an analytical approach, lavishly illustrated. No fewer than 16 prominent contemporary figures, such as “Avatar”’s Jon Landau, Jon Kilik (“The Hunger Games,” much Spike Lee), Jan Chapman (Jane Campion’s long-time partner), discourse in cut-together monologues about their experience and approach. There is as well a quartet of profiles from the past – Selznick, Korda, De Laurentiis, and Balcon.

The variety of experience outlined here clearly demonstrates that a producer’s involvement and structuring of each project can be radically different. The highly structured, hierarchical paradigm of Hollywood’s Golden Age still exists, to some extent, and churns out international product efficiently. The American indie movement, where many of today’s top producers learned their trade in the DIY spirit of the time, is fading fast. The producer must constantly keep his or her skills honed and be ready to adopt new techniques – whether it means CGI or fundraising.

“FilmCraft: Producing” suffers a bit from its anecdotal approach in this instance. Unlike more concrete crafts such as editing and cinematography, producing is so ill-defined by nature that, after hearing from all the participants, the ultimate impact is less informative and cohesive than in other FilmCraft volumes.

If, as it is said in the book, that each film production is akin to creating a startup company, the demands of the job span both diplomacy and ruthlessness, exacting planning and foolish faith, persistence and energy. For those who seek information about the craft from highly respected industry leaders who are working now, “Producing” is a good place to start.

Code of silence: Iversen’s “Full Body Burden” is a revelation

Full Body Burden: Growing Up in the Nuclear Shadow of Rocky Flats

Kristen Iversen

Crown Publishers

2012

It is very rarely that a complex, decades-long historical tragedy and an intensely personal narrative can be woven together artfully. In “Full Body Burden,” writer, editor, and educator Kristen Iversen does so with a combination of clarity, self-revelation, and readability. That she does so in my critical eye is even more remarkable – as her childhood story is largely my own.

Like her, I grew up in the 1960s and ‘70s in the suburb of Arvada, Colorado, eight miles southeast (and downwind) from the U.S. government’s Rocky Flats nuclear weapons production facility. She writes, “Some of those new suburban homes would have built-in atomic bomb shelters, including a show home in Allendale Heights . . . It was one of fifteen ‘Titan’ showcase homes – homes named after the newly developed intercontinental Titan ballistic missile – scattered around the country near other nuclear weapon production sites.”

That was the house I grew up in. The bomb shelter still sits in my mother’s basement, now crowded with cardboard boxes, Christmas decorations, 78 rpm records, and miscellaneous keepsakes. There were a double-handful of government documents stored there, telling us all about how to successfully overcome Armageddon. They formed the basis for my own magazine-length memoir of growing up in the heart of the Cold War (“Growing Up Nuclear," 5280 magazine, April/May 2000).

Iversen’s narrative of course far more comprehensive and inclusive – in fact, it’s the first historical account of Rocky Flats, from its star-spangled start to its ignominious finish, that I found comprehensible. Its convoluted, largely hidden story of secrecy, danger, accidents, Cold War paranoia, and corporate exploitation is riveting in Iversen’s telling. Her research is far-ranging and impeccable.

Rocky Flats manufactured plutonium triggers which would set off the chain reaction inside thermonuclear devices. She describes the urgency and corner-cutting, pushed along by fear of being outgunned by the Russians, that characterized the project from the start. As the years went by, cost overruns, deadly errors, and incidents of contamination were routinely covered up in the name of national security. Iversen aptly delineates all the players – from the technicians and scientists to the bureaucrats to those whose families began to suffer from unexplained cancers in the region to the peace and environmental activists whose increasing clamor finally forced investigation and shutdown of the site.

Iversen, like me, was steeped in the ethos of the time. Most of our neighbors worked at Rocky Flats – high-paying jobs that enabled them to live the suburban dream of affluence and security. None of them could or would tell their children, or us, what they did for a living. “I keep America strong,” was one memorable answer I received.

Iversen has the wisdom not to paint one-dimensional pictures of the characters in her story. For a time, circumstances led her to working within the plant itself giving her an irreplaceable perspective. By sharing all points of view with the reader, she quite accurately portrays the zeitgeist of an area in which a “Father Knows Best”-type setting is sustained by an underlying traffic with the deadliest and most morally questionable of dangers.

Speaking of “Father Knows Best,” the other half of Iversen’s narrative consists of discussing her troubled family life. Once again, parallels between her youth and mine abound – our families came from the Midwest, our ancestry is Danish, we were raised Lutherans . . . and our fathers were alcoholics.

The symptoms and repercussions of her father’s addiction are almost unbearable for me to read. I can verify their verisimilitude. Like her family, mine coped largely by ignoring the problem (oh, those good old emotionally remote, reality-denying Scandinavian genes!). The shame, anger, sorrow, and guilt she outlines are heartbreaking; and the convolutions of her relationship with her father, with its muddiness and lack of closure, are all too familiar.

The big historical picture and the intimate personal one fuse in a mutually enlightening manner. Beyond my uniquely personal reaction, I think that this book serves as a fundamental resource for anyone trying to understand that particular place and time.

How long will it take until the 6,240 acres on the rolling plains east of the mountains will be safe again? The site has, laughingly, been turned into a wildlife refuge. Many hidden deposits of radioactive waste lurk there; meanwhile, housing developments are springing up everywhere around it, many in the fallout path of past plutonium leaks.

The fallout from a dysfunctional childhood has a big shadow, too. We strive to overcome our own addictive behaviors, try to heal, and pray that we don’t pass the curse on to our own children. Personally, I am very grateful for this book. Isolation is one of the hallmarks of those who grow up in an alcoholic household. Many thanks to Iversen for making me feel a little less alone.

The sky’s the limit: new book offers penetrating look at air safety

Why Planes Crash: An Accident Investigator’s Fight for Safe Skies

By David Soucie with Ozzie Cheek

221 pgs., Skyhorse Publishing

Straight out, I need to make an admission – I went to high school with the author. No pressure, right?

I have been reviewing books, and a vast variety of work in other media, for two decades now. When I found out that a former classmate had written a book, I requested a copy from him, without his prior solicitation. I was insatiably curious.

My nervousness about the possibility of reading something awful, and having to pan the work of a nice guy, was groundless. “Why Planes Crash” stands on its own merits, a thoroughly enjoyable a thought-provoking read.

It succeeds on many levels. First, it’s an engaging autobiography, outlining the author’s personal and professional progress and pitfalls as he moves from aircraft mechanic to maintenance director to FAA inspector and beyond. The number of alternately hilarious, horrifying and moving moments he has experienced in his career alone makes fascinating reading.

A key factor in this level of satisfaction is the tone of the book. It’s an old cliché that you should write as you speak, with a directness and sense of comfort that draws in the reader. It’s also absolutely true, and damnably difficult to pull off. Years of artifice, bad habits and self-consciousness usually have to be stripped away before a writer’s voice can truly be heard. Fortunately, with the aid of Ozzie Cheek, Soucie accomplishes this. In fact, it’s a special treat to read this book from my unique perspective as, having known him for 30-odd (or 30 odd) years, I can attest that it sounds like Dave is talking directly to me.

It doesn't hurt that the pervasive crusading thrust of the narrative is often punctuated by a number of acknowledgments of his own shortcomings -- his workaholic nature, his headstrong tendencies, and a shattering admission of his valuing the bottom line over life that he feels led to the death of a coworker.

Second, it offers a no-holds-barred look at the real-life practices behind airline safety – a system that, despite the presence of many good people and positive practices, is frighteningly prey to the same problems and lapses any other line of work is. Bureaucratic inertia, political infighting, personal vendettas, corporate collusion and governmental red tape all seem to stand in the way of a very basic public obligation – to make sure that people don’t get killed in the course of a flight. It’s easy to agree with Soucie’s assertion that he was edged out of the FAA due to his impertinent insistence on honoring this responsibility.

Thirdly and most importantly, he describes an evolution in his thinking that, articulated and spread properly, can prove of great value and application in all walks of life. His sense of integrity does not allow him to accept half-measures, and he eloquently gathers together strands of realization along the way, weaving them into a theory of prognosis and information sharing that can be used to prevent disasters, rather than merely the passive application of blame – and new rules -- after the fact.

I have seen the need for this kind of thinking, time and again, in every organization I have been a part of, and at the heart of many of the problems and tragedies I have reported on in my career as a journalist. Soucie traces each step, from literal nuts-and-bolt practicalities to philosophical stance, with elegant clarity.

In the end, what raises “Why Planes Crash” above the level of the as-told-to and tell-all piece of non-fiction is the soul behind it. Soucie comes from a place of caring. He has principles, and he manifests them in a real-world, high-stakes area of concern to all. "Why Planes Crash" offers new ideas and insights in the context of solid storytelling. Thanks, Dave.

P.S.: At the end of his book, he threatens to write a follow-up that will articulate his concepts more thoroughly. Get cracking, mister.

Canon fire: the passions of Pauline Kael

The Age of Movies: Selected Writings of Pauline Kael

Edited by Sanford Schwartz

828 pgs., Library of America

Pauline Kael makes me so mad. Yes, in the present tense. The brilliant, renegade film critic still pisses me off, 20 years after she stopped writing and 10 years after death. I grew up reading her, frequently flinging my copy of The New Yorker across the room . . . then retrieving it and pressing on, teeth grinding. The Library of America’s refreshing compendium of her work, “The Age of Movies,” brings all that back to me, but it also makes me realize what a great writer she was and how strongly she influenced my own film criticism.

She’s just so damn sure of herself. She hates “West Side Story,” “A Clockwork Orange,” Dirty Harry films, “Network.” She loves Brian DePalma? Hates Cassavetes? You see what I mean. She was mean – a compulsive iconoclast, snob, loner, egomaniac, infighter. For the first two decades of her writing career, she dined on dissatisfaction. She was compulsive – adding up the bulk of her 13 books -- most with blithely suggestive titles such as "I Lost It at the Movies" -- reveals a total of 6,791 pages. That “Age of Movies” editor Sanford Schwartz was able to make his way through this torrent of words and pare them down to an essential and readable 10 percent of the total puts him in my mind in line for sainthood.

The first piece in the collection, “Movies, the Desperate Art,” sets the tone for everything that follows. She is whip-smart, fully articulate, like an angry newborn looking to punch out the obstetrician. “The film critic in the United States is in a curious position: the greater his interest in the film medium, the more enraged and negative he is likely to sound.” She also seems to blithely excoriate her own approach, later in the same paragraph: “A few writers . . . have taken a rather fancy way out: they turn films into Rorschach tests . . . The deficiency of this technique is that the writers reveal a great deal about themselves but very little about films.”

She contradicts herself constantly throughout her career. She calls Brando’s career dead, then hails his resurrection in “Last Tango in Paris.” She loves Scorsese’s “Mean Streets” and “Taxi Driver,” then stomps him to death in her review of “Raging Bull.” When she loves a film or filmmaker, she waxes embarrassingly rhapsodic. She was perhaps the greatest put-down artist in history of criticism, and seemed to enjoy every second of it. She was Joan of Arc with a typewriter.

But these mad capers were always intelligent, entertaining, compelling, and in the service of the higher good, as she defined it. “In the arts, the critic is the only independent source of information. The rest is advertising,” she wrote. She was right.

She let genius in. Many of the movies we now consider to be the highlights of the American New Wave (from “Bonnie and Clyde” until “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” basically) – works by Altman, Coppola, Scorsese and the like – were not as well-recognized at the time as we seem to remember now. Kael was there to praise them and lead us through them, and her articulate analysis (minus the hosannas) really made their virtues concrete for us. Here and there, she made us see with her eyes, and she had glorious visions of what movies could be when they were honest, efficient and rich in content.

In the end, she was right about much more than she wasn’t. She yearned to be ahead of the game, able to foresee the future, to be the smartest person in the room. She frequently was all three at once. It’s surprising, too, how sustained the quality of her writing is, despite its volume (volume both in terms of length and tone). She tosses off aphorisms and bon mots by the thousands, like sparks from a steel mill.

And no one is safe. To understand her real achievement, you must look back at what film criticism was before she came along. With the exception of thoughtful, stylish analysts such as James Agee and Manny Farber, most film critics were for decades really just publicists in disguise, a state of things we have reverted back to in our times. Those who weren’t were vilified as moralistic curmudgeons.

Bosley Crowther and Dwight Macdonald were anathemized as such by Kael, Andrew Sarris and Richard Schickel when they grew to prominence in the 1960s, although each of these men had championed significant and innovative films in their time. The angry young critics themselves split apart, particularly over Sarris’ adoption and promotion of Francois Truffaut theory of auteurism, the claim that directors exercise a creative control over any sequence of films they helm.

Kael would not subscribe to any critical theory or method of classification. She responded with her gut, claiming never to see a film more than once and then rendering its salient points in stupefying detail. (This could be so; I have the uncanny ability to remember almost every movie, play or work of art I’ve seen, and every bit of music I’ve ever heard – meanwhile, my children must still wear nametags at home.) She was constantly, obsessively watching film and adding each to her stockpile of knowledge and experience, weaving ever-more intricate meditations out of each screening.

This for me is where she really becomes heroic. She does not write as a woman, or disguise or mute her keen cross-disciplinary knowledge. Unlike the gentlemanly reviewers of the past, or the scholarly or programmatic critics of her time (Molly Haskell is a feminist film critic; Kael is a critic plain and simple and if you don’t like then to hell with you), Kael commits completely to her impressions – she follows her chains of thought to their remorseless ends – she is all in, all the time, fully present, unafraid of being wrong, unable to admit to ever being wrong, because she isn’t ever wrong – her thinking and prose evolves just as she does. She has the integrity of the lone cinematic cowpoke who follows his own cryptic code of honor.

 She hates artistic pretense and loves enthusiastic crap. She is ready to throw aside any statement of faith she has ever made in honor of a new, vital film experience. This is a liberation unlike any other. Most criticism seeks to contain, define; her writing is always exploding, blowing outward. At her most narrow-minded, she inspired me to respond, first mentally and then with my own writing.

Was she a bitch? Was she trailed everywhere by a band of acolytes? Did she trade favors for influence? Who cares, really. I have read a few of the other reviews of this work that have come along; some seem to want to nail her down and others want to nail her to the wall. In that way, not much changes in the back-biting world of journalism and criticism . . . at least, in the tattered remnants of those two professions. What she has to say endures, and that’s the only thing that matters now.

After Kael, critics could not write in a rote manner and expect to be taken seriously. She gave us permission to ramble, a bit, examine things from a multitude of perspectives, to have the balls to be enthusiastically wrong, to bring all of ourselves to whatever we wrote. What a wonderful gift. (Plus, she loved movies like “The Killer Elite,” “Used Cars” and “Melvin and Howard,” which makes me feel pretty pleased with myself, I must say.)

Now that I’ve made my way through “The Age of Movies,” I feel invigorated. And traumatized. I’ll have to read it again, in 20 years or so. Thanks, Pauline.