I’d been meaning for some time to write about one of the more pedestrian problems of reviewing from uncorrected proofs when I came across this sentence:

He stopped to tie his hoot, then continued, quickening his step, peering around comers before crossing intersections. 

It’s from City of God, by Paulo Lins, which has perhaps the most typos I’ve ever seen as a reviewer.

Now, I’m not saying anything negative about the book. I find Lins’ writing to be very involving, and I’m certain that all - or nearly all - of these little goofs will be corrected by the time the book is published. And almost everything I review has typos. Like anyone, publishers have time constraints, and if reviewers are to get their copies in advance of the publication date, then final copies won’t yet be available.

But in a way, I’ve never really gotten used to overlooking them. When I have to pause and use context to decipher the author’s intent, it interrupts the flow of reading.

Af first Hellraiser didn’t accelerate and they didn’t even dance at the policemen… 

Dance at the policemen? Is that some criminal tactic specific to Brazilian housing projects? I mean, I’ve heard of capoeira, which is kind of dance-fighting (not to be confused with the dance-fighting found in West Side Story) - oh, I get it - glance. They didn’t glance at the policemen.

Also, because I’m reading the book specifically in order to judge it, it’s always felt a little weird to me that I’m supposed to take it on faith that any errors, large or small, will be corrected.

Review galleys always have a disclaimer. Specific wording varies, but this one reads:

Please remember that these proofs are uncorrected and that substantial changes may be made before the book is printed. If any material from the book is to be quoted in a review, please check it against the text in the final bound book, which will be sent to you when it is ready. 

Oops.

Actually, there’s a Catch-22 here. The publishers send us uncorrected proofs knowing that, at Booklist (as at Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, and Kirkus), we do everything we can to publish the review before the finished copy is available. This serves both our purposes (letting librarians make purchasing decisions before patrons are clamoring for the books) and theirs (getting some buzz going before the newspapers and general-interest magazines weigh in).

So of course we don’t have time to check the quotes. Also, we often don’t receive finished copies of the books we review.

It’s probably a moot point, because Booklist reviews are so short that, if I do quote from the book, it’s usually only a phrase, or a sentence at most. And if I suspected anything was funny with the quote (”ran a digger through the paper,” for example) I’d call the publisher first. They’re probably more worried about long-form reviewers - yep, critics - who like to quote and quote and quote.

Anyway, the typos don’t keep me from liking City of God. I suspect that there are more of them than usual because it’s a translation, and I’m sure it’s a tough translation at that, because it’s chock-full of colloquialisms. (Like the way I used a colloquialism there?) And even if at first I think that “hut it was best not to nuke trouble” is some strange Brazilian slang, I get the gist.

It’s easy for me to tkae the high road, becasue my copy is so clena.

Publishers Weekly reports that HarperCollins Children’s Books will publish a picture book by clutch-slipping Yankees third-baseman Alex Rodriguez. Called It’s Not Nice to Boo Underperforming Superstars, it will provide young baseball fans with an important lesson in exercising tolerance and good manners, especially when visiting Yankee Stadium.

Just kidding. Actually, it will be called Out of the Ballpark and will be based on Rodriguez’ childhood experiences.

My first thought is that this deal, while a nice paycheck for the impoverished author and his struggling agent, and a nice bit of PR for the publisher, surely means there’s a little less money for more deserving picture-book authors and illustrators.

My second thought is that, while a lot of little sports fans are going to get this book for their birthdays from their sports-loving dads, if it’s any good, it will be the equivalent of A-Rod hitting two grand slams in the same inning. After all, if the funny Jerry Seinfeld, the arguably funny Billy Crystal, and the allegedly funny Jay Leno can’t write good children’s books, how’s A-Rod going to do it?

Of course, now that I say that, he’ll probably win the Caldecott and have an MVP year. Let’s just hope he does the latter for the Cubs.

We’re going to be redesigning the blog soon. It should look basically the same, but will have a few features (including month-by-month archives) that it doesn’t have right now.

Another feature I think I’d like to add is a regularly updated list of the books I’m reviewing. At the moment, the pile looks like this:

A Home on the Field, by Paul Cuadros (HarperCollins/Rayo)
City of God, by Paulo Lins (Grove/Atlantic/Black Cat)
Rebound, by Bob Krech (Marshall Cavendish)
How to Coach a Soccer Team, by Tony Carr (Sterling)
The Joke’s Over, by Ralph Steadman (Harcourt)
The Last Match, by David Dodge (Hard Case Crime)
The Best American Travel Writing 2006, edited by Tim Cahill (Houghton Mifflin)
The Blonde, by Duane Swierczynski (St. Martin’s/Minotaur)
Night Falls on Damascus, by Frederick Highland (St. Martin’s/Thomas Dunne)

Maybe if I get ambitious I’ll add book covers, too. Maybe.

Funny story about one of the above books. Ilene Cooper, Children’s Books Editor, asked me if I would be interested in reviewing a young-adult book about soccer. Her soccer-conversant reviewers were already committed, and, as you may have noticed, I do occasionally review a soccer book or two.

Sure, I said. I’ve got a lot of books in my pile, but if it’s about soccer, send it over.

A few days later I received two envelopes from work. The first one, from Ilene, held two copies of a blue book with a black-and-white basketball on the cover: Rebound, by Bob Krech.

Puzzled, I opened the second envelope, which was from Bill Ott. It contained two books: The Joke’s Over, by Ralph Steadman, and How to Coach a Soccer Team, by Tony Carr.

I scratched my head. Had Ilene thrown her soccer book in Bill’s envelope and then decided to also mail me a book about basketball? Then I noticed a note from Bill. The note explained that the soccer book was from him, something he’d thought of including after we discussed the Steadman book.

Then I had a thought. Ilene has many areas of expertise, from picture books to politics. She’s an oft-published (and award-winning) author herself. But I’ve never heard her talking sports around the water cooler. Had she mistaken the basketball for a soccer ball?

Turns out that was exactly what happened. And, given that the basketball on this cover was black-and-white (underscoring the book’s exploration of racial issues), she was actually pretty close to right. Black and white are the traditional colors for a soccer ball.

She was embarrassed, so I wasn’t going to tell her that rebound is a well-known basketball term - but it turns out she did know it was a basketball term. She didn’t think it was necessarily a basketball-exclusive term. She even surprised me by recalling Charles Barkley’s erstwhile nickname: The Round Mound of Rebound.

(Another area of Ilene’s expertise: celebrities.)

Then Ilene discovered that she did have a YA soccer book in her office. But due to time constraints, I’ll be reviewing Rebound and Ilene will be reviewing Soccer Chick Rules.

And there you have it, the uncensored, behind-the-scenes dirt on what really goes on at Booklist.

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Rereading what I wrote on Wednesday, it seems to me that, despite my attempt at breezy and ironic humor, I do in fact sound like a you-kids-get-off-my-lawn fogey. Memo to myself: don’t reread old blog posts.

This morning I filed my reviews for Anthony Swofford’s Exit A and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. I read the latter over the last three nights and it’s amazing. And I have to confess that one of my first thoughts when I realized it was amazing was, Oh crap, another amazing book.

It’s not that I don’t like reading great books. I approach each book with the hope that it will be the best book I’ve ever read (that’s hope, not expectation). But at the same time, praising too many books - especially assigning the ultimate praise, a star - devalues the praise. I want to sound enthusiastic, but not like a cheerleader.

(There’s also the fact that people have limited time to read; arguably, they’re best served by a more conservative approach.)

Having recently written one of the most positive reviews I’ve ever written, for Richard Powers’ The Echo Maker, I suddenly found myself writing yet another incredibly positive review, for The Road. Obviously I can’t diminish my praise for one book just because I recently heaped praise on another, but when a situation like this arises I can’t help but wonder whether I’m getting carried away.

When in doubt, I turn to the sage advice of Brad Hooper, Adult Books Editor, who says, “trust your gut.” And he’s right. Overthinking can lead you to decide that what seemed like a masterpiece was merely ordinary and vice versa. Deep thinking is necessary to writing a review, of course, but overthinking is fatal.

I did overthink one aspect of the review, however. My original closing line was, “A masterful work from a master craftsman.” Then I thought, Cormac McCarthy is a master craftsman, but calling him that seems to diminish his artistry.

Also I realized that the word masterful is perhaps best used not to mean the work of a master but acting like a master.

So then I considered calling it a masterwork. But masterwork is not simply a synonym for masterpiece. It most precisely means that it’s someone’s best work. And while I think that this could be McCarthy’s best work, I haven’t read all of his books, so I can’t make that judgment.

So then I decided to call The Road a “masterpiece.” It’s a word I want to use sparingly (in fact, I don’t think I’ve used it before), but I do think it applies. However, I don’t like it when I use a tacked-on phrase or word to sum things up at the end of a review. It feels like I’m trying to get my work blurbed on the paperback. Publishers are certainly welcome to use excerpts from reviews, but trying to write a something in the hope they’ll use it is, well, depressing.

I want most of all to write a review that helps the reader. So I should only close with masterpiece if I feel that the review doesn’t convey that concept. I read the review a half-dozen times this morning and still couldn’t decide. It does seem like the review conveys my deep admiration for the book - but calling it a masterpiece leaves no doubt.

Then I realized I was overthinking, which became paralyzing. I became lost in a maze of subjectivity. I began to doubt the entire review, my critical ability, even whether or not I had remembered to take my allergy pill this morning.

What did I do? Mastering my scattered decision-making process, I asked my editor to decide.

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As I write this, the Chicago Park District is hosting a luau for little kids in the park across the street from my apartment. It’s not that I don’t love the song “Wipeout.” And I’d be the last person to argue that the song’s already considerable charms aren’t enhanced by the sound of a dozen kids drumming along on plastic buckets and milk crates. They’ve been going at it for hours, and they are definitely getting better. Maybe, then, it’s the group chants of “Aloooo-HA!” that are getting to me. I keep hoping it means “goodbye,” but so far it still means “hello.”

Now on to books.

Actually, if you’ll indulge me a moment longer: I can understand why they would want to overstimulate a large group of under-eights by feeding them greasy food and then leading them in aerobically challenging games in the hot sun to the nonstop accompaniment of amplified music - it makes perfect sense. Children, when confronted with an environment low on noise and chaos often display undesirable attributes like long attention spans and an interest in imaginative play.

That the music should be loud is also understandable. Back when I was a 14-year-old punk rocker, I dreamed of having a PA system as large as these kids are enjoying. But we played indoors, in small rooms that were easily filled with sound. When attempting to fill the great outdoors, more robust sound reinforcement is necessary.

But why must they play music from the 1950s and ’60s? These are babies, not baby boomers. If anything, being relatively new on the planet, I’d imagine they would like to hear something new. Perhaps the new solo album by Radiohead’s Thom Yorke?

(See, that last reference saved me from sounding like a you-kids-get-out-of-my-yard old fogey. Or was meant to, anyway.)

Okay, on to books.

Right after this: isn’t it weird that music from the 1950s and ’60s is now seen as perfect for kids? Granted, it sounds poppy and naive today, but in its day, it was the music of rebellion. If we start kids out on “Rock around the Clock,” no wonder they’ll be ready for death metal by the time they’re teens. It’s as if they’re getting a crash course in the history of rock ‘n’ roll, starting when they wiggle to “Tutti Frutti” on floor mats at nursery school.

Okay, books:

On Monday, thanks in part to the 50 pages I read while my cranky-from-the-heat three-month-old passed out on my chest, I finished Anthony Swofford’s Exit A (which I started discussing on Monday). It got off to a great start, but the second half was a letdown. While the two main characters are confused teens in the confusing world of Yokota Air Force Base, outside Tokyo, Swofford does a great job with setting, characterization, pace, and plot. Once they’re adults, the story loses momentum. In particular, a lengthy part exploring Severin’s troubled marriage to a professor in San Francisco feels like another book entirely - and a less interesting book at that. In the second half, I was never sure where Swofford was going, and it felt like he didn’t know, either.

This reading experience reminds me a little bit of Jonathan Lethem’s Fortress of Solitude. The first part, about Dylan Ebdus’ boyhood in Brooklyn, was achingly good. The second part, when he becomes an adult, felt a bit flat. It’s a special challenge for writers to have multi-year time spans in their stories, and it’s an even greater challenge for them to capture characters’ changing viewpoints. Add that to the fact that it’s easier to start a book than to finish one, and a little act-two letdown makes sense.

Also, frankly, the adolescent mindset (Fortress of Solitude) and the teenage mindset (Exit A), convincingly portrayed, feel like foreign lands, and offer opportunities for emotional totality and discovery. When next we meet the character and he’s working a lame job and struggling with a relationship (Exit A), the adult years suffer by comparison.

(What the hell is “emotional totality”?)

Anyway, Swofford is not as good as Lethem, but the parallel is interesting. Maybe it says more about the writers - after all, there are books where the characters’ youths seem unconvincing and their adulthoods seem rich and full-fleshed. Examples escape me at the moment, but you know what I mean.

Okay, time for my guest drum solo on “Wipeout.” Unless this “aloha” really means goodbye.

As you may have heard, it’s hot in Chicago. Actually, looking at the weather map of the whole country, it’s all shades of brown and beige, as if it’s covered by sand dunes. I’m typing this slowly to conserve energy.

I finished Anthony Swofford’s Jarhead last Friday, and over the weekend I read about half of Exit A, his soon-to-be-released first novel. I had wondered if Exit A might be a fictionalized version of some aspect of Jarhead, but Swofford wisely moves into new territory - although it’s still territory he knows well.

Exit A is about Severin Boxx, a teenager living on a U.S. Air Force base in Japan, and Virginia Kindwall, the half-Japanese (hafu, although I don’t think that’s the nice way to say it) daughter of the base general. Severin is in love with Virginia, and Virginia is the base general’s daughter. General Kindwall is also the hard-ass coach of Severin’s football team. Severin is a clean-cut All-American type, and Virginia idolizes Bonnie and Clyde and carries a gun in her purse.

It’s a great setup for either a young-adult novel or a crime novel, and while there are elements of both, I think Swofford is trying to do something more. There is a strong coming-of-age angle, but when I closed the book last night, the story had jumped some years into the future and so I’ll be curious to see where it leads next. The start is certainly promising, with well-drawn, unusual characters and unusual twists on somewhat familiar settings. Like Jarhead, Exit A explores the side of military life that doesn’t show up in the recruitment brochures or on the nightly news. Swofford explores the strange symbiosis of base and city, the resentment of the locals toward the soldiers, the way Japanese punks and U.S. flyboys end up moshing together in the living room of an out-of-control off-base party.

I had wondered whether Swofford could make the leap to fiction - perhaps assuming that he was too untrained as a writer. So far he seems quite comfortable in fiction, though, as in Jarhead, he’s still betrayed by a weakness for the extravagant simile:

The kickoff whistle blew and profanity and shrill screams of pain and elation echoed around the stadium like wild cyclists speeding at the upper lanes of a velodrome. 

I also see, under his author photo (bearded, green military-looking jacket) that he is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. So, both as a soldier and a writer, he has received training reserved for elites (how many snipers hold an MFA?). At Iowa they might have trained him better to kill his darlings, but most of his writing is, thankfully, lean and muscular.

Now I wish that I hadn’t lingered so long over Jarhead - my reviews of Exit A and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road are due on Friday - but I’m really glad I read it.

I’m nearing the end of Jarhead. Operation Desert Storm has finally started but the men are still waiting to go into combat. The waiting reminds me, in a way, of the waiting in trench warfare, like All Quiet on the Western Front, except that, in today’s wars, the enemy is not waiting just a few hundred yards away. Armor and airplanes mean troops can deploy far and fast, and often will be deployed only after guided missiles and bombs have done the bulk of the killing. Today’s wars are both better documented - the missiles carry cameras on their way to the targets - and more abstract, because the soldiers have so little first-hand knowledge of their enemy.

Books about war have often depicted the soldiers as young, conflicted, and confused, but at times there’s almost an absurdist quality to Jarhead. Maybe no more absurd than All Quiet on the Western Front, but at least in trench warfare there’s a clearly defined objective, no matter how valueless (e.g., three hundred yards of mud and craters). There’s no sense of order and purpose in Jarhead. Even the soldiers’ routine, the busywork designed to keep them from losing focus or morale, is unable to keep them from floundering.

The modern soldier is trained to kill even more efficiently than his historic counterpart, yet is saddled with more rules and regulations about how to do so. The rules suggest that killing can be made moral or done right, and the constant training and exhortations keep the Marines keyed up and ready to kill on command. But the command rarely comes, if ever. It’s no wonder they’re confused and anxious.

Yesterday I wrote about my interest in nonfiction books that take me inside societies or groups to which I wouldn’t otherwise have access. Books about war are especially important because for every person who fights in or is victimized by war, there are many more who experience war third-hand, through the words of blow-dried anchorpeople. We need first-hand accounts to understand what it means to be there. Without meaningful data, our opinions on the subject don’t mean much.

I started thinking about books from particular wars and conflicts, wondering if I could make a list of the books that define particular wars. In a variation of Chicago’s citywide reading club (”One Book, One Chicago”), it could be called “One War, One Book.”

Reductive lists like this are always flawed, of course, as are any “best” lists. But - as the list-makers always cry in their own defense - it’s an interesting exercise. Of course, there have to be criteria: do the books represent “our” point of view, or “theirs”? The winners or the losers? Are the books overviews or personal views? Fiction or nonfiction?

Okay, I give up on this project already. Too explosive. But, in a general and non-definitive spirit, here are a few books that crossed my mind as being essential narratives (both fiction and nonfiction) of various wars, conflicts, police actions, etc. These aren’t necessarily histories with maps of troop movements, but books that say something about the experience of war and its aftermath.

This area isn’t my strong suit, so I need help. Anyone have any suggestions for more? (Just to draw the line somewhere, let’s keep the list limited to conflicts with U.S. involvement).

Iraq:
Jarhead, Anthony Swofford
Baghdad Burning, by Riverbend
The Pearl of Kuwait, by Tom Paine

Afghanistan:
??

Somalia:
Black Hawk Down, by Mark Bowden

Vietnam:
Dispatches, Michael Herr
The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien

Korea:
??

World War II:
Catch-22, by Joseph Heller
Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut
The Naked and the Dead, by Norman Mailer
Night, by Elie Wiesel

World War I:
All Quiet on the Western Front, by Erich Maria Remarque

Civil War:
Andersonville, by MacKinlay Kantor

War of 1812:
??

Revolutionary War:
??

Apparently, there are a few essential books out there that I haven’t read! Let me know what they are.

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I stayed up far too late last night reading Jarhead. I think part of the reason I’m so absorbed in it is that I’m not reviewing it. When I’m reviewing a book, I rarely surrender entirely to the writing - there’s always a part of me that stands back, taking notes and thinking about how I’ll frame the review.

Also, because I don’t read books that I’m not reviewing very often, it kind of feels like I’m getting away with something. I’ve written about this before - only three-and-a-half months and I’m already repeating myself - but, if you love reading, becoming a book reviewer definitely falls under the category of Be Careful What You Wish For. Maybe you’re just a person who likes to read. But anyway, it’s too late to save me, so save yourselves!

As Gil Taylor wrote in his review of Jarhead, sometimes Swofford’s prose is a little over the top. First-time writers, especially those without a background in writing, tend to overwrite. But his portrait of Marine life (soldier life, not sea life) is vivid and compelling. You can see him wrestling to get it all down, just as he wrestles with his own intensely conflicted feelings toward warmongers and peaceniks alike.

And the hard partying and hijinks jibe with what I’ve heard from one of my best friends, a captain in the Army reserve. One scene reminded me of one of my early days in Chicago, when I was living in the North Side neighborhood of Edgewater. My commute involved riding a bus north to Rogers Park, where I rode a Metra train north to the suburb of Highland Park, where I managed a Kinko’s. Yes, it was every bit as exciting as it sounds.

It was a hot morning and my white starched shirt was already wilting as the bus crawled north on Clark Street. As we passed Jarheads, a seedy-looking bar, I saw Marines standing outside on the sidewalk, drinking rowdily. It looked like they were standing out there because there wasn’t enough room in the bar. It also looked like they were still going, not just starting. To me, on my way to spend my day being berated by the citizens of an affluent suburb, it seemed as if the Marines were playing life by an entirely different set of rules.

It also made me think of how we have so many populations in our country with intensely different experiences. And those with the most different experiences - soldiers, prison guards, prisoners, Alaskan king crab fishermen - are often all but invisible to us. My nonfiction tastes have always trended toward these alternative/hidden/forbidden/secret societies. In high school I loved to read about rock stars (Stephen Davis’ Hammer of the Gods) and drug addicts (William S. Burroughs’ Junky), and in college I loved to read about hobos (Jack Black’s You Can’t Win), and after college I read about homeless people (Lars Eighner’s Travels with Lizbeth and Jennifer Toth’s The Mole People), and lately I’ve been interested in mountain climbers (Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air) - who are set apart from us by obsession, specialization, and, obviously, the fact that they spend lots of time high up in the mountains. And I’ve always loved stories about gamblers and pool hustlers (Robert Byrne’s McGoorty).

I’m not equating soldiers with drug addicts, of course. But for those of us with no direct experience of either world, the initiations, rituals, and lifestyles are equally mysterious.

Well, I got my reviews filed on time last Thursday (there were six in all-I forgot to mention The Science of Parenting, by Margot Sunderland). I haven’t read all that much since then. No matter how much I love reading, the rush to finish books in time for deadline often leaves me with a craving for low-mental-effort activities like watching TV. Or maybe just staring blankly into space as my two-year-old does chin-ups on the tray of my CD changer.

I often tell myself, after yet another writing period in which I didn’t quite pace myself as well as I should have, that this time I’ll do better, that I’ll add up all the pages and divide by the number of days I have to read them, so that I can read a leisurely 100 pages per day instead of 25 pages the first day, 40 pages the second, and 950 the last. Some writing periods I do better than others.

I did do a little reading over the weekend, about 100 pages of Green Eggs and Ham-I mean Jarhead. I’m reviewing Anthony Swofford’s first novel, Exit A, very soon, and as I haven’t read Jarhead I thought it would be useful to do so now. Because Swofford made his debut in nonfiction, readers (and I) will be curious to know how much, if at all, his real-life experiences have made their way into his made-up ones.

I don’t always have the luxury of doing background research. Plenty of times I’ve been assigned an author in mid-series without any time to read the older books. (Andrew Klavan, Ken Bruen, C. J. Box, Jasper Fforde, Bill James, Chuck Logan, John Shannon, Denise Hamilton, to name just a few.) I don’t worry about it too much, because as I discussed in a long-ago blog entry, I have the perfect resource - Booklist reviews.

(To read the review of Jarhead, click here-if you’re not a subscriber, you’ll need to sign up for a free trial first.)

But whenever possible, I like to take a look for myself. It can be a lot of effort for little reward-in a 175-word review, I can allocate at most a sentence to discuss how the new work is different from the previous one - but I do think readers like to know how the work fits in to the author’s oeuvre (what would book reviewers do without the word oeuvre?) and I can tell them better if I’ve done the reading myself. I may not have time to finish Jarhead before I start reading Exit A, but even reading half of it would help.

A couple of times this backgrounding has been exceptionally fun. I reviewed Mark Kurlansky’s book of short stories, The White Man in the Tree, for the Chicago Tribune before I came to Booklist, and I read Cod first to get a sense of his nonfiction work. His short stories were quite good, but as the world knows, his nonfiction can be marvelous.

In a research-related anecdote, when I was in college, I had the opportunity to interview to be John Irving’s literary assistant. Coming into college, I had a William S. Burroughs fan and had never read Irving. I went straight to the library, checked out a copy of a book that the rest of the world was apparently familiar with, The World According to Garp, and plowed through it. When the day of my interview came, Irving asked if I had read his work. “Well, I’ve read Garp, of course,” I said nonchalantly, and he nodded approval.

But I still didn’t get the job. Probably I should have read The Cider House Rules as well.

My purchases yesterday:

Jarhead, by Anthony Swofford
Green Eggs and Ham, by Dr. Seuss

(Both excellent for reading aloud.)