A Highbrow Spring in Lit Land


Most years it seems like the publishing industry waits until the prestigious "fall season" to release titles by heavyweight writers, making summertime a good time for catching up on your reading list or flipping sophistication the bird and reading mass market trash. But a quick perusal of this year's spring lineup reveals that the suits at Knopf and HarperCollins are letting the big boys and girls out of the gates early this year. Here are the titles I'm most looking forward to:


May 1
The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon
HarperCollins, $26.95

The guy who brought us Wonder Boys and the Pulitzer-winning The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay returns with a revisionist historical novel based on the idea that Alaska became a sanctuary for a Yiddish-speaking Jewish homeland after World War II.

May 8
After Dark by Haruki Murakami
Knopf, $22.95

Murakami follows the alternatingly ingenious and maddening Kafka on the Shore with this short novel that chronicles one night in a major Japanese city. Characters include a teenage girl who likes to read at Denny's and someone who spies on a sleeping girl.

May 15
Falling Man by Don DeLillo
Scribner, $26

After publishing the brilliant epic Underworld in 1997, DeLillo scaled down to short, claustrophobic novels like Cosmopolis and The Body Artist. Clocking in at 256 pages, his latest joins the ever-growing 9/11 genre, following the plight of a man who survives the attacks on the WTC.

June 1
The Gravedigger's Daughter by Joyce Carol Oates
Ecco, $26.95

Who knows what to expect from the frighteningly prolific Oates, whose work ranges from the brilliant You Must Remember this to the repulsive and exploitative The Tattooed Girl? Early notices are good, thought the plot summaries are so dense that all I can tell you is that it has something to do with Holocaust survivors and a serial killer, and that it's set in upstate New York.


June 5
On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan
Nan A. Talese, $22

Set on the English coast in 1962, McEwan's short novel examines the tensions - sexual and otherwise - that arise between a newleywed couple on their honeymoon.

A Case of Joni

A Tribute to Joni Mitchell finally arrives in stores today after nearly a decade of delays. Originally titled A Case of Joni, the Nonesuch Records release boasts a few terrific tracks, some intriguing oddities and a couple of flat tires. Given Joni's royal stature in the music biz and the eight year incubation period for the project, the disc really ought to be better. Why does the set conclude with James Taylor's wretched take on "River" when any number of Joni devotees (Beck, Bonnie Raitt, Robert Plant or Tori Amos, for instance) would have put a much fresher spin on one of Mitchell's legendary compositions? Is it just because Joni and James go way back to the early 1970s, when Joni based several tracks from Blue on Taylor? And why the hell does this "new" release contain Sarah McLachlan's 1995 cover of "Blue," which appeared on a 1995 pro-choice compilation disc called Spirit of '73? It's a beautiful version, but a complete waste of time for fans who have vigilantly kept track of Joni cover songs over the years.

That said, several of the artists concoct strange and fascinating arrangements. The disc starts off with Sufjan Stevens's bold, anti-melodic take on "Free Man in Paris" and progresses to Bjork's scary little girl lullaby rendition of "The Boho Zone." Jazz pianist Brad Mehldau presents a smooth instrumental version of "Don't Interrupt the Sorrow," and Prince skips two complete verses of "A Case of You" (he makes up for it by hitting the highest of high notes from Joni's soprano days.)

A few musicians stick closer to the source material, and generally fare well with that approach. Cassandra Wilson's take on "For the Roses" is far jazzier than Joni's original version, but - unlike Sufjan's "Free Man"- fans will have no trouble recognizing the tune. Annie Lennox soars with "Ladies of the Canyon," and Emmylou Harris wistfully channels Joni's trademark melancholy in "The Magdalene Laundries." Elvis Costello's orchestral arrangement of "Edith and the Kingpin" is impressive from a technical standpoint, but so far it has left me a little cold. Finally, k.d. lang revives the groovy spin on "Help Me" that she unveiled at a live tribute to Joni in 2000.

The TV Set
Grade: B+

In the tradition of Hollywood send-ups like The Player, writer/director Jake Kasdan (Orange County) exposes the nitwit television execs who dumb down risky material for fear of low ratings. Though its message is not exactly groundbreaking, the film is consistently funny and it boasts Sigourney Weaver in an exhilaratingly bitchy performance that recalls her Oscar nominated role in Working Girl. David Duchovny stars as writer whose loses creative control of his script for a TV pilot. Justine Bateman, Judy Greer and Philip Baker Hall round out the cast.

The Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier

(Vintage, $13.95)

Now available in paperback, Kevin Brockmeier's 2006 novel offers one of the most compelling interpretations of the afterlife that I've ever come across. Elegant and concise, it strikes a nearly perfect balance between simple, myth-like storytelling and weighty philosophies about living, loving, suffering and dying.

According to Brockmeier's premise, people move to another realm when they die, an unnamed city where they carry out basically the same day-to-day grind they did when they were alive. People remain in the city until there's no one left on Earth who remembers them, and then they vanish with no clue of what - if anything- awaits them next.

We soon learn that a global pandemic is killing off most of the world's population, threatening the future of the afterworld and its inhabitants. Every other chapter focuses on Laura Byrd, a woman spared from the plague because she's off on an expedition on the South Pole. Her life is very much in danger, though, when she undertakes a treacherous journey to find her missing colleagues. Back in the city of the dead, just about everybody has some connection to Laura because they're embedded in her memory.

Now in limited release:

Year of the Dog
Grade: B-

Bisexual screenwriter Mike White (Chuck & Buck) makes his directing debut with this uneven black comedy about a spinster (Molly Shannon) who fiercely embraces animal activism after her beloved pooch eats poison and dies. It’s great to see Shannon land a leading role after years of bit acting, and she proves that she can handle subtle moments along with the demented physical comedy that made her Saturday Night Live years so memorable. Regina King and John C. Reilly are hilarious, but the usually reliable Laura Dern and Peter Sarsgaard don’t take their characters anyplace interesting.

Cross-X by Joe Miller (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $26)

I'm on the verge of finishing Joe Miller's terrific journalistic account of a successful debate team from a poor, academically dismal high school in Kansas City, Missouri. Despite their failing grades in unchallenging classes taught by underinformed teachers, four black boys named Marcus, Brandon, Ebony and Antoine excel on the national debating circuit under the tutelage of an untiring, politically progressive coach named Jane Reinhart. With virtually no economic or moral support from the school district, Reinhart and the boys devote their weekends to local and distant tournaments, and Miller becomes an honorary team member for several years (starting around 2002) so he can document their progress and pitfalls.

Apart from a somewhat tedious section that presents the history of the high school, Cross-X is consistently funny and entertaining. At times it's downright thrilling, particularly when close debates boil down to the whims of finicky judges. Most importantly, the book is an articulate, unpretentious and enraging look at the racial inequities in America that prevent curious and intelligent children from exploring possibilities outside their impoverished neighborhoods.

NELLIE OLESON & ME

As a kid I was a gynormous Little House on the Prairie fan, so needless to say I got pretty excited when my editor asked me to interview Alison Arngrim (a.k.a. Nellie Oleson) to publicize her upcoming Portland appearance. Alison is really sweet, smart and quick, and my alloted time (25 minutes) flew by. After our phone call we exchanged some short email messages, so after all that contact I feel like an honorary citizen of Walnut Grove.

Here's the lil' story I wrote up:

No list of great fictional villains would be complete without the name Nellie Oleson.
As the calculating, curly-headed foil to plucky Laura Ingalls, she considerably offset the saccharine factor on the TV classic Little House on the Prairie . Who could forget the time Nellie sneered the words “country girls” at Laura and her sister, or the episode when Nellie feigned paralysis to shame Laura into being her servant?
Alison Arngrim, who is now 45, reflects fondly on the nasty deeds she committed in the role of Nellie. “I was fascinated by villains as a kid,” she says, citing Vincent Price’s characters as an inspiration. “I tried out for the part of Laura,” she says, “but when they offered me Nellie I took the part and ran with it.”
After a 17 year absence from the screen, Arngrim recently appeared in several indie films, and she has rekindled a passion for stand-up comedy that dates back to her teen years. Known for her close ties to the gay community, she brings her one-woman show Confessions of a Prairie Bitch to CC Slaughters on May 4. The multi-media, autobiographical show combines storytelling, photographs and video footage from Little House and Arngrim’s 1981 guest spot on Fantasy Island.
“The show really frees me up,” Arngrim says. “It’s all about what it’s like to be an ex-child star in a weird cultural niche.” Confessions will also play in Seattle, and in June it goes international with a two night gig in gay Paris.
Twenty-five years after Little House ended its NBC run and went into massive syndication, Nellie remains an international icon. Arngrim has fans all the way from France to Borneo, and tells of a school in Ireland where the students refer to the playground bully as “The Nellie.”
Arngrim lives with her husband in the Los Angeles area, dividing her time between political causes and performing. She’s a longtime AIDS activist, and last year she earned a leadership award for her work with the National Association to Protect Children. Arngrim outed herself as an incest survivor on Larry King Live in 2005.
Activism, she insists, has done wonders for her mental health. “I went to therapy for 20 years and now my therapist tells me not to come back!”

Grind It Till You Find It

GRINDHOUSE Double Feature

Robert Rodriguez's Planet Terror: B-

Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof: A-

Fake action/horror movie trailers: B+

Including previews, Grindhouse clocks in at 3 and 1/2 hours. It seems like a pretty long commitment for a couple of stupid horror movies, but I must say that I left the theater feeling downright giddy (and guilt-free even though I spend a big chunk of a gorgeous day in the dark).

As you've probably heard, Rodriguez and Tarantino fashioned the show after the B-grade double features that used to show in venues known as Grindhouses (because they kept on grinding out crappy movie after crappy movie). The directors have lots of fun with the idea that they're recreating the whole experience, padding the proceedings with fake trailers for action and horror movies with names like Machete and Don't! At the risk of pissing off modern moviegoers, they even insert "Missing Reel" when steamy sex and lap dance are supposed to happen.

The first feature, Rodriguez's Planet Terror, is silly, disgusting and, at times, charming. But it goes on forever, causing me to take a strategic pee break before Tarantino's contribution rolled. Planet Terror stars Rose McGowan, Freddy Rodriguez from Six Feet Under, Bruce Willis and Naveen Andrews of Lost fame. After a toxin-generated epidemic causes thousands of Texas dwellers to turn into oozy-fleshed zombies, a small group of folks bands together to fend off the monsters. The best sight gag appears toward the end, when a go-go dancer played by McGowan loses a leg, prompting Freddy Rodriguez's character to fashion prosthetic legs for her (one is a long wooden stick that she breaks when sticking it into the eye of a would-be rapist played by a completely creepy Tarantino, and the other is a machine gun that comes in handy when she needs to kill off dozens of zombies in one fell swoop).

Three fake previews roll after Planet Terror, and then Grindhouse hits highway speed (and then some) with Tarantino's edge-of-your-seat romp Death Proof. Also set in Texas, it starts off with a pleasantly slow sequence about four young women hanging out at an Austin bar. They meet Stuntman Mike, a seemingly harmless teetotaler who says he just likes to hang out at bars for the nachos. While the four friends drive off listening to dreamy music, Stuntman Mike agrees to drive another woman home. He summarily kills her and orchestrates a grisly head-on with the other four women. The crash kills all the women, and he survives and soon sets his sights on another quartet of women. Little does he know that the group consists of a couple of actresses and two stuntwomen who, in a couple of breathtaking and innovative car chases, decide to partake in some vigilante feminism when he messes with them in a big way. Tarantino has always been a great dialogue writer, and he doesn't disappoint here. All the conversations crackle with sass and irony, and the characters are remarkably well developed considering this is only supposed to be a B-movie.

The Namesake
Grade: B

Jhumpa Lahiri's popular novel about an Indian-American family has jhumped to the big screen courtesy of director Mira Nair. It's nowhere near as good as Nair's brilliant family drama Monsoon Wedding, but it does have a lot going for it. Irfan Khan delivers a subtle and extremely moving performance as Ashoke, the father who names his son after the Russian writer Nikolai Gogol. Model-turned actress Tabu matches his intensity note for note, and Kal Penn (Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle) is serviceable - but not particularly memorable- as Gogol. Some of the supporting performances are god-awful, however, and the last half hour clunks along like soup cans dangling from the back of a car. Getting back to the pluses, there are some breathtaking shots of the Taj Mahal early on.

Kalling All Komrades!

Since I moved to Portland in 1997 I have lived near Reed College. I always presumed that the school was named after John Reed, the American communist from Portland who chronicled the Russian Revolution in Ten Days That Shook the World. As it turns out Mr. Reed has nothing to do with the progressive school, but it’s still a handy bit of cocktail party trivia that the hero of Warren Beatty’s 1981 film Reds hailed from my city.

I was only seven in 1981, when Reds hit theaters in all of its 3-and-a-half hour glory. I was pretty underwhelmed when I saw it on a muddy pan and screen VHS tape a few years ago, but my opinion has skyrocketed now that I’ve seen the newly released double disc DVD. The widescreen print is gorgeous, showing off all the genius of Vittorio Storaro's Oscar winning cinematography. And despite the marathon running time, the film is a consistently entertaining and provocative study of Bolshevik idealism and some of its unforeseen negative consequences.

Beatty won the Best Director prize, but in one of the most famous upsets in Oscar history he lost Best Picture to Chariots of Fire. Even if you don't want to see the movie again, rent the DVD for the extras. On disc two Beatty overcomes his aversion to DVD bonus features by appearing in seven short documentaries that follow the project from its earliest stages through its commercial and critical reception. Jack Nicholson comments extensively on his portrayal of Eugene O'Neill and his working relationship with Diane Keaton, though Keaton herself declined to talk about her portrayal of Louise Bryant, the feminist journalist who had an ongoing romance with John Reed.

Best of all is the footage about the elderly men and women who appear as themselves in short documentary sequences throughout Reds. To avoid boring exposition about historical events in his screenplay, Beatty gathered hundreds of men and women who knew Reed and/or Bryant, resulting in fascinating interviews with the likes of Rebecca West and Henry Miller. According to veteran film editor Dede Allen, some of the interview subjects were so furious about their political differences that they had to be grouped in opposite rooms during auditions and filming.