M. Sarki's Blog: Mewl House - Posts Tagged "nonfiction"

Vanishing Point: Not a Memoir

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Vanishing Point: Not a Memoir by Ander Monson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Not that anyone would give a hoot but I finally did get a correctly described copy of this book from a seller on amazon.com, and for that fact alone I am extremely happy. It is easy to discount the troubles, and even the successes of others, but you won't find any of that here coming from my lips, or even sparks off the blazing speed of my typewriter. I, too, like Ander, could type 55 words per minute in Mr. Sventko's typing class, and I probably could have done even better had he not been the feared football coach he was. My stupid spelling mistakes were what bothered me and made me have to slow down. His daughter Marcia consistently kicked my ass in typing and it gave her a superiority over me she probably needed in order to get through her routinely boring days. The recreational drugs that others of us engaged in made for a high school education a little bit more adventurous than the typical high school cheerleader like Marcia. Try taking mescaline and attending a Paul Butterfield trigonometry class. Or be a student teacher working under the tutelage of the school's golf coach in a special education classroom. Once I even dropped a hit of blotter acid too late in the day and had to play a qualifying round for placement seed in our following day's school-sponsored golf match. There was no possible way to keep track of where my new golf balls were flying off to after striking them so hard with the intensity of a rapidly blooming acid trip. Thank goodness I was playing with a young square geek who would go on after college to become the county's prosecuting attorney. Back then he had a proficiency for cheating on the golf course, so me offering him the freedom to blatantly adjust his own score if he would allow my reentry, without penalty, of a new golf ball in place of the lost one still flying around somewhere out there in the cosmos seemed like a very good deal for both of us. Neither one of us ever spoke of that day together on the golf course again, and we were both lucky not to have been found cheating on our scorecards. I am sort of a heal for bringing this subject up now but I wanted to make the point of how a born cheater can naturally years later slip into the county prosecutor's seat and seem to do a pretty good job of keeping accurate the public score against its own criminals.

Ander Monson wrote some pretty good pieces collected here in Vanishing Point. Were they perfect and without blemish? I think not. But nowhere as poor a showing as some critics here on goodreads.com have made them out to be. There were fits of brilliance to be found here and there, and as I said in another piece I wrote regarding this book, the first essay titled Voir Dire was fantastic. He also wrote of the Gerald R. Ford memorial funeral service and procession held in Grand Rapids as well as a lengthy, and quite interesting piece on the money brand of snack chips, Doritos. I did not much like the Dungeons & Dragons essay, but I am not born of that time period and have never played a Play Station type Game Boy slash computer game in my life. And for the record, I will state that Ander Monson is not David Foster Wallace, and in addition he is no Hunter S. Thompson. But I will vigorously say he is loads better than Jonathan Franzen and the other wannabes out there writing essays today. To have him compared to an inconsequential writer the likes of Tao Lin I do find more than a bit disconcerting. There is a whole lot of upside to Ander Monson and I think, almost snidely and certainly happily, that already Tao Lin has had his fifteen minutes of fame, and for what I clearly am not sure of. Another fairly new writer I am currently involved in reading goes by the name of John Jeremiah Sullivan and he is not too shabby, and his best work is surely ahead of him too. Look also for a fellow by the name of Lee Klein. His star is definitely rising. But I certainly do recommend this book to anyone wanting a new experience in the form of an essay. Monson is fresh, and like myself, was fortunate to be born in northern Michigan, and in his case, the Upper Peninsula in a cold and lonely town called Houghton.

For further word and more detail over what I think about Ander Monson click on the following link:
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Blood Horses: Notes of a Sportswriter's Son by John Jeremiah Sullivan

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


A most amazing and brilliant work. I was totally surprised. The first half of Pulpheads prepared me for the reading of this masterpiece. Thank goodness my stubborn refusal to have a try at it did not prevail and a brighter mind prevailed. My total review is here:

http://mewlhouse.hubpages.com/t/302646



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I wrote a review of this book here:

http://mewlhouse.hubpages.com/t/30494a

Otherwise Known as the Human Condition: Selected Essays and Reviews by Geoff Dyer

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


For those of us so hungry for more David Foster Wallace that we begin to believe that Jonathan Lethem might be a satisfactory replacement stop it right now. This fellow Dyer is the real deal, or if he is not the real deal, he is very very close. If good writing is what you are looking for then this is the guy. If personality in the writing matters, as it must for any DFW fan, then Dyer has it in spades. It simply comes down to if you like him or not. And I do. For a more thorough and honest look at the selected work of Geoff Dyer go here:

http://mewlhouse.hubpages.com/t/3146fb



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U and I: A True Story by Nicholson Baker

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


A little too much for my tastes. Is it possible the dude has low self-esteem? That he is a bit of a poseur? I write about the book here and I would love for you to read about it:

http://mewlhouse.hubpages.com/hub/A-S...



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Hammerklavier by Yasmina Reza

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Yasmina Reza does it again!!! My review can be read in total here:

http://mewlhouse.hubpages.com/hub/The...



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Inscriptions for Headstones by Matthew Vollmer

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Five stars at least in goodreads terms is supposed to mean "amazing" which is exactly what this bit of work is. I wish I would have been the one to write this book. But I wasn't and the good news is Vollmer is young enough to give us more of this sort of quality he has set himself the bar for. Three cheers for Matthew Vollmer. I explain myself more personally here:

http://mewlhouse.hubpages.com/hub/Vol...



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Enough about You: Adventures in Autobiography by David Shields

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


There must be something wrong with me. I just can't get into this fellow who is obviously somebody others might adore. I explain why here:

http://mewlhouse.hubpages.com/hub/Dav...



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The Ongoing Moment by Geoff Dyer

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


What an engaging and scintillating read! Though I disagreed with many of Dyer's examples of common threads in the photographic tradition, I thoroughly enjoyed reading all of this book. Complaints by other reviewers about Dyer's photo examples as being too small were not issues for me in my study. I have written the longest and most personal critical review of my career regarding this book. For those interested it can be found here:

http://mewlhouse.hubpages.com/hub/Sul...



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