Books, beards, and beyond - pt. 1.

Aleksandar Hemon is interviewing for the position of Steve's Favorite Living Author.  He probably doesn't know that, but still.  Interviewing means I've got to read just about everything he writes, which in turn means I have to read his short stories.  Now, Hemon's come out with three books so far, only one of which is short stories.  Hardly an onerous task.  In fact, I'm only mentioning it so I can express my general low regard for ss's.  This is silly, of course.  But even when they're good, they generally just don't stick.  Not with me, at least.  Frankly, not with many people, as far as I can tell.  We who relish good fiction can all enjoy short pieces, but how many of us can come up with specific stories we've read once, maybe five or ten years ago, and remember them well enough to express why they touched us?  Not many, right?  Hence my low regard.  There are exceptions, of course.  Beginning with David Foster Wallace.   Girl With Curious Hair isn't only a wonderful introduction to his work, but the title piece is unforgettable.  Especially if you've ever done drugs.  And who but DFW could make a story out of a dictionary entry?  OK, maybe someone else could, but only Wallace thought of it and pulled it off.  (Datum Centurio in Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, if you're interested.)   I've dug lots of stories by Alice Munro, Ellen Gilchrist, and William Trevor, too.  Not that I remember any, except for Floating Bridge in Munro's Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage.

Which brings me to Hemon.  The Question of Bruno was published in 2000; it was his first book.   The themes of identity, dislocation, war and death that mark his subsequent novels are all there.  As are his  understated humor,  emotionally nuanced characters, and penchant for adjectives.  Blind Jozef Pronek & Dead Souls ranks among the best stories I've ever come across.  I've never ventured into lit crit, so forgive me my ignorance if I maintain that I read it as an exploration of displacement and an extended metaphor for death.  It's also grimly funny.  If you like it, you'll enjoy the rest of Hemon's work; if not, you're wrong.

I've also been thinking quite a bit about beards.  Shortly after I ventured down life without lanes (i.e., retirement), I grew a beard to accompany my vintage 1968 moustache and the barbet/soul patch I added shortly before I semi-retired in 2009.  We'll get to my present facial hair configuration and its place in the constellation of beards later.  For now, I'd observe that new FHCs and retirement seem to go together for lotsa guys. 

So what do I think of when I think about beards?  Classification, of course.  Just what you'd expect from an ex-librarian.   Let's first get my approach clear.  I don't count moustaches or soul patches as beards, but when accompanied by chin whiskers, they're part of the beard for purposes of classification.  Second, I'm not gonna include ethnic takes on/varieties of  beards.  Ditto for women with beards.  I claim no understanding of either realm.  And ethnic women's beards is, well, terra incognita.  So, when I describe a beard, picture it worn by a white male. 

Beards fall into two general categories, full-face and partial face.

Full-face:

The professional.  "Professional" doesn't refer to the beard's owner, but to the short, well-polished beard itself.  These beards are not grown, they're cultivated.  And one doesn't "cut" a professional beard.  One doesn't even trim it.  No, one grooms it.   Maintenance takes some time and rather more attention.  A  degree of pride and prosperity are hallmarks of its owner.   The professional beard is de rigeur for Oregon criminal defense attorneys.  They're also popular with economists, though not with those on the margins of opinion.  Middle age and up.

The professor.  Similar to the professional, but longer.  Similar to the sculpture (below), but shorter.   As its name suggests, it's a distinctively academic pursuit, though it will appeal to writers, too.  The professor has a relatively wide margin for error/inattention, thus the appeal to absent minded profs. Suitable for all ages.

The sculpture.  Longer than the professor, shorter than the mountain man.  The owner is generally lean and may well have an artistic background.  Performing arts, especially.  And let's not forget REI workers.  High maintenance required, but owners relish the chore.  Failure to attend to its upkeep results in a mountain man look; confusion among one's acquaintances (and audience) ensues.  The sculpture provides its owner with terrific opportunity to be creative.  Which parts long, which short?  How long is long?  Pointy or not?  It's really chin topiary.  Not a great look for beginners.

Mountain man.  Long, uneven, unkempt.  This is the beard for bikers.  Not much in the way of upkeep.  The owner should be of some size, and that goes for both height and girth.   The MM looks ridiculous on anyone under 30.  After that, age is irrelevant, as long as you're big.

Santa.  Think mountain man, but grey to white, rounded and even.  Hell, think Santa.  Upper middle age and beyond.  Please.

Hermit.  Like the mountain man, but without the upkeep.  In fact, any upkeep disqualifies a beard from this category.  And that includes washing.

I'll deal with partial-face jobbies in my next post.  And yes, there is point to this.

Christmas shopping?

Yeah, I coulda said "holiday shopping," but you understand, right?  If you don't understand, then go out and buy The Sparrow (Mary Doria Russell), the most politically correct book of all time.  (I know, you already read it.  Probably in a place of honor on your bookshelf.)  It's earned my VIDS (Verily, It Doth Suck) rating, and not only for its unrelenting (sometimes unimaginable) political correctness  It also qualifies by virtue of an extraordinarily high degree of preposterosity.  Even for sci-fi.  Not to mention poorly drawn characters and an ending which the author subsequently undid so she'd have a plot for her next book.  It's not the worst book of all time;  I'll discuss a couple of candidates - the finalists, actually - in a future post. 

Now, if you enjoy good lit, here are two books I finished recently.  First, Anne Michaels's The Winter Vault.  I enjoyed it more than her previous novel, Fugitive Pieces, written about 10 years earlier, even though the earlier work received greater acclaim.  Michaels is a poet, and I dig writing in which special care is taken with language.  Many of her passages seem less written than chiseled.  FP, though worthwhile, was a bit too cryptic for my taste.  WV is close to great, and it shoud be exceptionally appeciated by book groups.  Check the back and forth in the reviews on Amazon.  Insight and articulate argument abound.  (Not a bad idea to read them before you read the book itself.)  Same goes for The Lazarus Project by Aleksandar Hemon.  Except he's not a poet.  But he did get a MacArthur "genius grant."  And LP does reach my "great" threshold.  One book I didn't finish was Steve Toth's A Fraction of the Whole.  It takes a lot for me not to finish a book, but this one was long enough to confront me with the realization that I might end up hating myself for sticking with it beyond the 250 pages I'd already read/spent.  And who knows how much it would cost to replace whatever I broke when, upon closing the back cover, I hurled it against the nearest fragile object.   I have no idea how it got on the Booker Prize short list.  I do know that the jacket blurb comparing it to A Confederacy of Dunces ought to give John Kennedy Toole's estate grounds for libel.

Thinking more about the Bush tax cuts and what's gonna happen.  Well, not so much what's gonna happen, but what's happening right now.  One thing that's happening is that liberals like Lawrence O'Donnell (MSNBC) are trying to convince other liberals that this is the best deal we can get.  Note that I didn't put "liberal" in quotes when I used it to describe him.  LO'D's a genuine lib.  He's arguing strenuously and cogently for doing this deal.  I'd like to hear him tell us if he'd still support it if its passage guaranteed that the tax cuts for the upper 2% AND that the estate tax reduction (REDUCTION!) from the Bush years would both be made permanent.  Because that's a virtual certainty if this deal gets done.  May not happen in 2012; Congress may kick it further down the road yet again.  But it'll happen sometime, and when it does, undoing it will be off the table for a generation.  That's close enough to permanent for me.