Sam Lipsyte -- The Ask

Occasionally I get the feeling that the book I have requested, because of its glowing reviews, is not the book I am reading. It's not that I got the wrong item: nothing as easy as that! My confusion is due to the fact that other people, people who should know better, like critics for major papers or awards committees, maintain that this is a humorous and important, book. And I, struggling through to the end, find it neither.

This happened to me this week with The Ask, by Sam Lipsyte. This novel is the tale of Milo, a nobody, a would-be artist soldiering away on a college campus (Mediocre U, he calls it) in the Development Department. That is, he looks for people to give money for new buildings or endowed professorships or the like. Due to a series of unfortunate events, mostly having to do with his lack of tact, he is thrown out until an old college friend, Purdy, arranges to have him work on a donation which Purdy may make to the college.

The story then veers off into the relationship between Purdy and his son, born of an affair and not recognized until after the boy has returned from Iraq as a double amputee.

Do you notice anything humorous so far? Me neither.

It was only my determination not to let the book get the better of me that made me read through to the end, not caring whether Milo will save his marriage, or rescue his too-adorable and precocious three-year-old from the absent-minded non-care of the babysitter, or even get a permanent job.

The satirical targets are too broad (e.g., yuppified experimental pre-schools, over-age hippies). I can't recall one attractive character, and I think that even if all else fails, at least one character in which one can believe is necessary for an emotional connection to a novel.

James McManus -- Cowboys full: the story of poker

Let's hear it for the new historians, who take a subject -- an idea, an artifact, a slogan, a style of dress, a game -- and study it carefully, using the same analytic tools their colleagues use while studying the "big" topics like war. To understand our culture, it's sometimes more useful to view it from ground level rather than from the broader academic lens.

Cowboys Full, written by a journalist who himself was a participant in a World Series of Poker, is an entertaining and educational trip through western history, starting before the 1400s and continuing to the present. In fifteenth century Italy, decks of cards had coins, cups, scimitars and polo sticks. Stiff cardboard, too stiff to shuffle, was used later, and just about any group of people -- especially wanderers, warriors, professional gamblers and prospectors -- made decks of cards from whatever material was easiest to come by.

One of McManus' favorite topics is the connection between poker and politics. He includes the well-known stories, such as Nixon's financing his first political campaign with his poker winnings, but he also tells stories of other presidents and important people, illustrating the importance of discipline: the poker face.

Closer to the present, he covers the beginning and growth of the World Series of Poker, which all of us have seen at least on television. Since its inception, the admission fee has been $10,000. McManus says:

...For perspective, it's what Robert Ford was paid to kill Jesse James in 1882, and what John Backus cheats the cheaters out of with a double cold deck during the voyage to San Francisco in Twain's "The Professor's Yarn." ...

...Ten thousand dollars had been roughly the median family income when the World Series began in 1970, and despite inflation the sum will still buy a year's tuition at an excellent state university, a used VW Beetle in pretty good shape, or a family vacation to Hawaii. It's also the amount won by the high-stakes pro Howard Lederer, a vegetarian, from his fellow pro David Grey, who had bet him that he wouldn't eat a cheeseburger...

This book is stimulating, a fun read that will send you off in many direction as you decide you want to know more about the people, places, and events relating to poker. A born story-teller, McManus delights.

Barbara Kingsolver - The Lacuna

Barbara Kingsolver - The Lacuna

Oh my, what a fine book. And what a necessary book for these days, when militias and birthers and tea partyers are behaving with the same hysteria that Senator McCarthy and Richard Nixon and their ilk produced a half-century ago.

Harrison Shepherd moves with his mother to Mexico, after the mother leaves her marriage in search of romance and adventure. The adolescent Shepherd finds work with the household of Diego Rivera and his wife, Frieda Kahlo. Shepherd cooks and mixes plaster and generally makes himself useful as Rivera and Kahlo blaze across the Mexican political landscape. Before too long, Trotsky and his entourage become part of the party.

And that is the first third of this novel.

Like many recent novels, The Lacuna combines real historical personages with fictional treatment. We have seen it done well and clumsily, and here it works masterfully. Violet Brown, the no-nonsense stenographer Shepherd hires once he has returned to the United States, tells much of the story, which allows Shepherd to be two or three times removed from the historical events. Thus, WWII and the subsequent anti-communism witch hunts are described from her perspective as well as his.

I must mention the vivid descriptions of all of the places in this book, especially Mexico. Shepherd as a cook allows us to participate in many meals, lovingly described. The weather, both in Mexico and in Asheville, North Carolina where Shepherd made his U.S. home, can make your fingers feel frost-bitten, or make you sweat from the summer nights on the town plaza.

The implacable, unimaginative, self-righteous minions of McCarthy are chilling. They conjure up visions of life as seen by the Tea Party rioters we see on television today. As one who lived through the excesses of McCarthyism, I can testify that I was more frightened by the last third of the book than by any preceding threat, even the physical threats against Trotsky.

Readers and critics may well concentrate on Harrison Shepherd, but the real heroine here is Violet Brown. She has made her own life, moving beyond her peasant hill country family. Intensely loyal to her employer shepherd, she plays the role of Greek chorus here.

I hope this book gets wide readership and lots of comments. It's far and away Kingsolver's best book.