April 4, 2014

“Blood Will Out” by Walter Kirn

Reviewed by Mark Lindquist
Special to The Seattle Times

“I was in the mood for an adventure…. I was a writer, even more importantly a writer between books, and I had a hunch I was going to meet a character.”

Thus Walter Kirn, language artist, enters the world of Clark Rockefeller, con artist. Memoir meets true crime in this fortuitous American matchup between author and criminal.

Rockefeller, born Christian Gerhartsreiter, adopted a crippled dog from the Humane Society where Kirn’s wife worked, and Kirn offered to transport the animal, curious to meet a Rockefeller.

At the time, 1998, Kirn was a magazine writer and a not yet well-known novelist. Rockefeller was a con man and not an actual Rockefeller.

“I found him instantly annoying,” Kirn writes, “a twee, diminutive hobbit of a fellow whose level of self-amusement seemed almost delusional.”

Nonetheless, they become friends of sorts. Kirn, a Princeton graduate and the son of middle-class Midwestern Mormons, was fascinated by the faux Rockefeller in a manner reminiscent of Nick Carraway’s fascination with Jay Gatsby.

Gerhartsreiter, unlike Gatsby, does not turn out to be all right in the end. 

Coming from Germany to America as a teenager, Gerhartsreiter arrived just in time for the go-go years of the 1980s. “The Official Preppy Handbook,” Kirn suspects, served as Gerhartsreiter’s assimilation cheat sheet.

In 1985, Gerhartsreiter, aka Christopher Chichester, then claiming to be a British baronet, murdered and dismembered a San Marino, Calif., man, John Sohus. Afterward, he changed geography and identity, moving to Connecticut and becoming an American blue blood. He relied on art scams and moneyed women for income. 

In 2008, he kidnapped his daughter, making national news, and was subsequently found out and arrested for the 1985 murder. 

Even after the California trial and conviction, Gerhartsreiter’s motive remained murky, but Kirn suspects it was literary. In an effort to understand, Kirn revisits Dostoyevsky’s “Crime and Punishment,” Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley novels, Hitchcock’s “Rope,” and “Star Trek,” the original TV series. 

“Some people kill for love and some for money,” Kirn observes, “but Clark, I’d grown convinced, had killed for literature. To be a part of it. To live inside it.”

Kirn runs this epiphany by the assistant district attorney, but “he awarded me not a flicker of agreement, let alone comprehension.” I pity this assistant DA.

Clark, as Kirn calls him throughout, isn’t fully revealed until the trial. Kirn never stops examining how he, a professional writer, could be snookered by an amateur. “As a college English major, I’d learned the phrase, ‘suspension of disbelief,’ but with Clark you contributed belief, wiring it from your personal account into the account you held with him.”

Still, Kirn concludes, despite his artful lies, Clark “wasn’t a real artist.” He was a good liar without great talent. 

Kirn, who was once dumped by a Boston Brahmin, obliquely identified as writer Susan Minot, because he didn’t have “enough money or the right friends,” is the perfect Carrawayesque narrator to tell this tale of glitter and gullibility. This is one of the best true-crime books I’ve ever read and also one of the best memoirs. Kirn’s sentences are smart, his metaphors are apt and his ability to cobble together pieces of pop culture in new, illuminating ways is the work of a real artist.

March 29, 2015

“Crow Fair and Other Stories” by Thomas McGuane

Reviewed by Mark Lindquist
Special to The Seattle Times

By outliving Raymond Carver, Thomas McGuane became one of our best living American short-story writers. Now, Captain Berserko, as McGuane was known in the 1970s, just has to outlive Richard Ford to claim the crown. 

In a recent interview with NPR, McGuane said, “I think there’s only one interesting story … and that’s struggle.” This book contains 17 variations on that story, all set in Montana, where McGuane, author of novels, essays, screenplays and short stories, lives, writes and raises cattle. 

In the first piece, “Weight Watchers,” McGuane takes us straight into the land of the losers and alienated. The narrator’s father moves back in with him because, “My mother had thrown him out again, this time for his weight. She’d said that he was insufficiently committed to his weight-loss journey and that if he hit two-fifty she wouldn’t live with him anymore.”

While the father struggles to lose literal weight, the narrator, a middle-aged man with no intention to ever marry, struggles to lose the emotional weight of the baggage his parents dumped on him. “As a kid,” the narrator explains, “I viewed my parents as an anthropologist might view them and spent my time as I sometimes spend it now, trying to imagine where on earth they came from.” 

Like many of McGuane’s characters, his complaints are disguised as stoic non-complaints. “It’s not that there’s anything wrong with my ability to communicate: I have a cell phone, but I only use it to call out.”

In “Hubcaps,” which could have been titled Portrait of a Criminal as a Young Man, a boy’s affection for baseball is slowly soaked into nothingness by his heavy drinking parents. Like the alienated adult of “Weight Watchers,” the boy is given free rein by his egocentric parents, but it’s a freedom that leads into a trap. 

The alcoholic grandson of “Grandma and Me” — there’s a lot of drinking in these stories — leaves his blind grandmother at a river bank so that he can have a drink and chase a dead body he saw float by in the river. I liked Grandma, who “was convinced every empty building housed a meth lab,” but her grandson prefers the company of the corpse, which he strangely identifies with.

“Prairie Girl” is one of the few stories to focus on an arguably successful character. “Mary Elizabeth was an ambitious woman, but she was not cynical,” McQuane writes. Mary, a former prostitute, marries the gay son of a banker and begins her “ascent from vulgarity and survival.” In the end of the story, her son is going off to college. 

“She watched him as he looked out the window at the prairie. She thought he was beautiful, and that was enough. It didn’t hurt that the car was big and smelled new and hugged the road with authority. She said to herself, as she had since she was a girl: ‘I can do this.’ ” 

Even the losers, as Tom Petty noted, get lucky sometime. This is especially true in the masterfully layered world of McGuane. He enriches every life he renders. Even when his characters don’t get lucky, they get great lines like this: “Telling someone to relax is not as aggressive as shooting them, but it’s up there.”

Entertainment & the Arts, Sunday, February 28, 1999

“South of the Border, West of the Sun” by Haruki Murakami

Reviewed by Mark Lindquist
Special To The Seattle Times

This is a Japanese novel that feels as American as the movie “Casablanca,” which it brings to mind in both tone and plot. Hajime, the narrator, owns a jazz bar in Tokyo. He is in his mid-30s, has a wife, two children, and a BMW. Life is good, except he has moments where he feels he is “living someone else’s life, not my own.”

Hajime is haunted by the memory of Shimamoto, a precocious girl he had an intense friendship with when they were 12 years old. They lost track of each other after Hajime’s parents moved and he went to a different junior high school.

Twenty-five years later, Shimamoto reappears in Hajime’s life, much like Ingrid Bergman’s appearance at Rick’s. The jazz trio strikes up Duke Ellington’s “Star-Crossed Lovers,” which does for Hijime what “As Time Goes By” did for Humphrey Bogart’s character. This masterfully composed short novel is about what happens when these two reconnect. You can read it in one sitting, and then you will want to read it again.

Murakami has translated several American authors into Japanese, including Raymond Carver and F. Scott Fitzgerald, and comparisons to both are called for. Murakami shows the control and compassion of Carver along with the lyricism of Fitzgerald. The only weakness here is the occasionally wooden dialogue, which may be a translation problem.

Possibly because Murakami is Japanese and in his 40s, he gets away with something his younger American contemporaries have been criticized for: bridging the gap between literature and popular fiction. At times this book reads like a screenplay, but with a remarkably smart and moving voice-over.

This is Murakami’s fifth novel to be translated into English and his popularity here is on the rise. If you are not already a reader of his, this is a good place to start.

Arts & Entertainment: Sunday, June 10, 2001

“Glue” by Irvine Welsh

Reviewed by Mark Lindquist
Special to The Seattle Times

Irvine Welsh is best known to the mainstream as the man who wrote the novel that the movie “Trainspotting” was based on.

In the “rave” culture, he is revered as the man who wrote “Ecstasy” and “The Acid House,” collections of stories that depicted raver clubs and electronic music with the same sort of giddy, literary energy Jack Kerouac brought to road trips and jazz.

“Glue” is Welsh’s version of an epic – a fat, multigenerational novel that intercuts the lives of four friends. Terry, Carl, Billy and Andrew are working-class fellows from Edinburgh who drink, drug, talk and generally mess things up in the pursuit of sex, money and other highs.

Welsh relies on voice and set pieces for momentum, rather than plot, which can be problematic in a 469-page book told from alternating points of view. Because of the repetitive nature of the action and the lack of forward motion, there are times when you could swear you already read this chapter.

Another possible put-off is Welsh’s Scottish vernacular. Here’s a typical sentence: “Jist when ah think aboot shoutin oot the windae or gaun doon fir a blether, ah see thit eh’s talkin tae Maggie Orr n this other lassie.”

Well, a typical sentence except that it lacks profanity, the preferred form of self-expression for all four of the protagonists.

That said, the book nonetheless succeeds on its own terms. The men flail along, tossing off brilliant one-liners and finding moments of transcendence and dignity in a world seemingly designed to sabotage, beat and emasculate them. There are shades of Hemingway in passages where the men buck up and carry on.

However, unlike Hemingway’s stories, where men go toe-to-toe against other men or nature or fate, Welsh’s characters mostly battle self-created stumbling blocks – and these lads are not quick learners. This may be one of the reasons the book doesn’t so much resolve as fade out.

In the final chapter, a character laments, “Life had to be more than a series of unsolvable mysteries.” Welsh seems to disagree.

Arts & Entertainment: August 16, 2001

“Heavier Than Heaven” by Charles Cross

Reviewed by Mark Lindquist
Special to The Seattle Times

Rock biographies became a publishing phenomenon after “No One Here Gets Out Alive,” the Jim Morrison biography, became a New York Times best seller in 1980.

For those of us who read “No One Here Gets Out Alive” when we were young aspiring writers or musicians, the book served as a guidebook and a reading list — Yes, yes, this is how an artist takes on the world. 

Morrison read Nietzsche, Rimbaud, Blake, Huxley, Coleridge, Keroauc, Ginsberg, the beats, the Greeks, and any other writer a young artist should read. Morrison believed as Nietzsche wrote, “Say yes to life,” though he said yes to death at 27 in an accidental drug overdose.

Morrison took drugs to broaden his mind, to expand on life’s possibilities. At least that was the plan.

Kurt Cobain, the frontman for Nirvana — the band that first put Seattle on the rock ‘n’ roll map — was not the book-lover Morrison was. Cobain took drugs to kill the pain, both psychic and physical. He killed himself with a shotgun at 27.

Charles R. Cross, from a technical perspective, is a better journalist than Danny Sugerman or Jerry Hopkins, the authors of Morrison’s biography. Cross is more thorough, more cogent, less blinded by the glare of fame. Cross’ book lacks the vitality of Sugerman and Hopkins’ effort, but this may be in large part due to their respective subjects and the respective audiences.

Cross was editor of The Rocket, a Northwest music magazine, for 14 years. In the 1980s and early 1990s, there were talented and literate people at The Rocket, and its readership extended well beyond the small incestuous Seattle music scene. But by the year 2000, when The Rocket folded, it had become a magazine for people who weren’t readers. “Heavier Than Heaven” has that same problem.

Nirvana fans are a diverse mix, but they overlap more with the fan base of Guns N’ Roses than, say, the lettered folks who love R.E.M. and read book reviews. Cobain was well aware of this. On “In Bloom,” Cobain sang about fans who like his songs and like to sing along but “don’t know what it means.” These fans still bought his records. But they are not going to buy this book, because they don’t buy books.

If, however, you fit into the sub-category of Nirvana fans who do buy books, you should buy this one.

Fifteen other Cobain books are listed on Amazon.com, and I skimmed several, but none matches “Heavier Than Heaven” for research, accuracy and insider scoops. Sections of Cobain’s journals are excerpted, along with unsent letters and descriptions of Cobain’s drawings and other artwork.

Also, it’s worth noting that Cross, with unusual integrity for the field, did not allow the favor of his access to censor his reporting. The Cobain of “Heavier Than Heaven” is more complicated and infuriating than other portrayals of the Nirvana star.

Even if you kept up with the onslaught of publicity surrounding Cobain and his wife, Courtney Love, of the band Hole, Cross has new stories and details, especially about Cobain’s formative years and his conflicted approach to fame.

In classic Seattle fashion, Cobain thought it was uncool to admit he wanted to be successful. Cross also debunks some myths — Courtney Love did not turn Cobain into a junkie.

Cobain was a junkie before he was a rock star. He called heroin “heroine” and it was, to borrow Lou Reed’s phrase, his wife and his life. “Heavier Than Heaven” tells us the same thing writers from Jacqueline Susann to Norman Mailer have told us repeatedly: Fame and money and drugs don’t make the pain go away. Art, however, can grow out of the mess.

Cross’ prose style is workmanlike, apparently uninfluenced by the postmodern fiction and journalism so many contemporary nonfiction writers favor, but he gets the job done. Kurt Cobain, for better and worse, is the star of the show, along with his “heroine.” R.I.P.

Mark Lindquist’s third novel, “Never Mind Nirvana,” was released in paperback this summer by Villard Books.

July 28, 2001

“How to Be Good,” by Nick Hornby 

Reviewed by Mark Lindquist
Special to the Hartford Courant

Fans of Nick Hornby’s first novel, the decidedly hip and male “High Fidelity,” initially may be perplexed as to why Hornby is now writing about humdrum grown-ups from a female point of view.

Katie, the admittedly self-absorbed narrator, breaks up with her husband on the first page. She warns us, “If my thoughts about our marriage had been turned into a film, the critics would say that it was all padding, no plot, and that it could be summarized thus: two people meet, fall in love, have kids, start arguing, get fat and grumpy (him) and bored, desperate and grumpy (her), and split up. We’re nothing special.”

Furthermore, we’re told that the marriage we’re about to hear about is not like a film and is, therefore, instead a series of “dull, superficial arguments.” At this point, you might be inclined to put down the book and go see a movie, but don’t. Hornby will soon break out the wit.

Katie’s a doctor — “I’m a good person, I’m a doctor” — and her husband, David, is a newspaper columnist billed as the “Angriest Man in Holloway.” His anger is directed at homeopaths, restaurant critics, old people on buses who don’t have their money ready and the like. These rants seem strangely emasculated.

“I’m the man,” Katie points out, “I’m the daddy.” And she, more than David, seems like a guy from a Hornby novel as she wisecracks her way through the pitfalls of popular culture.

They have two children, a boy and a girl, and their married life in London is “a gentle, middle-class version of brutality and degradation.”

“I want us to live a better life,” Katie tells David.
“And how do we do that?”
“I don’t know.”

So it goes until the appearance of Dr. GoodNews, a hippie faith healer David invites to live with the family. GoodNews has issues with modern amenities, such as beds and dishwashers, and talks like a “nutter” half of the time, but occasionally points out things that are uncomfortably true, such as how the possessions game can make people spoiled and uncaring.

After David’s back pain is healed by GoodNews, he quits his column and gives up a novel he was working on.

“Why?” Katie wants to know, referring to the column. She couldn’t care less about his god-awful novel.

“Because I’m not angry anymore.”
“You’re not angry anymore.”
“No.”
“About anything?”
“No, it’s all gone.”

Worse yet, David is suddenly full of sanctimonious schemes. He and GoodNews collaborate on a self-help book titled “How to Be Good.” He forces the children to give up toys and to befriend repellent peers they don’t like. A street kid named Monkey joins their household. David even rallies his neighbors to take in homeless teen-agers.

“We’ve all been living the wrong life,” he says, “and I want to put that right.”

Katie — a good person, a doctor — can only sputter an obscenity. David thinks he is like Erin Brockovich, the character Julia Roberts played in the eponymous movie, sacrificing family life in pursuit of a higher good. Katie thinks he is daft.

So what does it mean to be a good person, to lead a good life? This is, of course, a good question, the type of good question that good books have been asking for many years.

Hornby doesn’t pretend to know the answer, or even to have especially strong opinions on the subject, except that he is sure false piousness is not the way to go.

I wanted much more acerbic wit from Katie, and much less of her grim determination to be a good grown-up, yet I still find myself recommending “How to Be Good” to friends as an ambitious example of entertaining literature.

Contrary to Katie’s protestations, this story is far better than a movie. It doesn’t just skip along to the neurotic tune of modern life, but incisively examines our relationships with each other and morality and popular culture, and though Hornby may not find any definitive answers, he certainly finds the humor.