Klosterman, Eco, and the Season of Books (Lakers vs. Celtics)



I read a lot in the winter. It's a pattern. At the end of every one of the past few years, I have found myself saying that it would be better if I read more. So, I've started out the years reading at a furious pace. This will wane as the winter metamorphs into summer. Concerts, and Baseball, and Tennis, and Travel, and (even) People, will exert their influence upon my many weaknesses and all the reading will recede into the background. Until that happens, I will soldier on.

I'm continuing my "audio books- on-the - iPod" experiment. The first time, I listened to 3/8th of Ishiguro's "Never Let Me Go". Now, I'm planning on listening to roughly 3/4 of Umberto Eco's "The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana". I like Eco. He's generally in the class of Rushdie, Garcia-Marquez, and Saramago, but will write certain things that force me to think of Borges. He's a bridge between them. The premise of "...Flame..." starts out something like: an antiquarian book dealer gets a kind of amnesia (he remembers things that he's read but not that he's experienced) and is forced to relearn who he is. I'll be starting CD3 (of 13) on my train ride tomorrow, and so far I've gotten some great ruminations on memory, sensation, and time. Interesting.

The other book I'm reading is "Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs" by Chuck Klosterman on recommendation from FM. I'm about halfway through it. It's interesting. It bills itself as a "low culture manifesto" and takes a look at some fairly serious topics through the lens of pop culture in a funny irreverent way. Topics like why every woman of a certain age has a crush on Jon Cusack's character from "Say Anything" (something about archetypes), why people like crappy derivative music (his example is Coldplay), how people of a certain age have taken "MTV's the Real World" as some sort of social guide on how to be noticed (or at least internalized en masse the notion of playing a role in a social grouping), the entire tribute band phenomena, the Marilyn Monroe- Pamela Anderson comparison, etcetera. (NOTE: I'll write about this more specifically when I finish)

The only reason I'm bringing this book up before I finish it, is because on page 97 there's a chapter devoted the Lakers-Celtics rivalry of the 80s and how it "...represents absolutely everything: race, religion, politics, mathematics, the reason I'm still not married, the Challenger explosion, Man vs. Beast, and everything else. There is no relationship that isn't a Celtics-Lakers relationship." In spite of all the contentious and sometimes ludicrous things Klosterman says in the first half of his book, I completely and utterly agree with this statement. (...To be Continued...)

Posted: Mon - January 23, 2006 at 07:59 PM      

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