Category: BookLust II

Gold Bug

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Poe, Edgar, Allan. “The Gold Bug.” The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe.Vol. V. New York: AMS Press, Inc., 1965.

“The Gold Bug” is a fascinating short story about a man, William Legrand, who, after being bitten by a gold beetle, appears to become mentally unstable. His man-servant, Jupiter, calls on an unnamed friend (the narrator) to visit & assess Legrand’s sanity. It’s at this point that Legrand claims he knows where the treasure of Captain Kidd is buried. Well, at least he knows how to get to it. Legrand is able to convince his servant and mystery friend to go on an adventure to find the lost treasure. Using cryptography Legrand brings his servant and this unnamed friend to the site of the treasure.

BookLust Twist: This was one of those off-hand mentions. Pearl doesn’t recommend reading The Gold Bug at all. She merely brings it up in More Book Lust in the chapter “Codes and Cyphers” (p 51) because author Leo Marks mentioned Edgar Allan Poe in his book Between Silk and Cyanide.

Confession: I have long been fascinated by E.A.P. and his writings. Of course his strange and often macabre stories held my attention first, but ever since I learned of his early demise at age 40 and the mystery surrounding his death I have been captivated by the man. How did he die? What did him in? Was it drugs, politics, or none of the above?

…And Ladies of the Club

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Santmyer, Helen Hooven. …And Ladies of the Club. New York: Berkley Books, 1985.

After 1,433 pages what exactly did Santmyer have to say? …because I have to confess, I didn’t finish it! …And Ladies of the Club is a sweeping, multi-generation saga that spans 64 years in a small town in Ohio. It begins when two college girls are invited to join a literary “club” to study and discuss influential authors of the day. The two girls take their invitation to membership very seriously and act accordingly. After all, their group consists of a mix of women with varying marital and political statuses. For example, Anne is chosen to go first. She studies the poetry of Browning to present a critique to the group and is chastised for being immature in her thinking. However as the group grows it is these different stages of life and opinion that sets the stage for Santmyer to paint the bigger picture – the trials and tribulations of life in a small town immediately following the Civil War. This is a time when men snickered at the silly, “harmless” interests of their wives. A time when health and reputation could deteriorate with a single, innocent event.
I will admit, this was a tedious book to read. In order to finish it within the prescribed 30 days of June I had to allocate 50 pages a day. I think that would have been realistic and maybe even fun had the main characters been more reined in and the story, well…more interesting. Any book that takes 50 years to write is going to have its share of inconsistencies. …And Ladies of the Club was no exception. Sometimes the plot dragged on minute by minute in great detail. Other times a whole year is covered in less than a blase chapter. My biggest complaint Santmyer spent more time (considerable more time) painstakingly recreating the era in which the characters lived than on personality development. That is to say, no one character was developed fully enough for me to have an understanding of, never mind much less like! There were so many characters (spanning several generations) that I couldn’t keep them straight. In a nutshell, …And Ladies of the Club uses a literary society to focus mainly on the political, social, and economic recovery of post Civil War Waynesboro, Ohio.

Best line: “If she could only reach Anne before the meeting – it would be dreadful to sit all afternoon with good news locked in your bosom” (p 58).

Author Fact: Santmyer was in a nursing home when …And Ladies of the Club was finally finished. Many feared she wouldn’t live to see its publication. She did and at age 88 she was a literary success thanks to clever marketing and publisher pushing.

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called “Small-Town Life” (p 202).

Persepolis

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Satrapi, Marjane. Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood. New York: Pantheon, 2003.

Whenever I read a book like Persepolis I think about how gluttonous, how wanton, how extravagant my life within this country has been. Imagine being told what to wear and how to wear it. Imagine being told what to not to do or say. Imagine having a curfew. Imagine the banning of alcohol or parties. All common for coming of age, but as an adult? Imagine uncles being executed; bombs exploding and killing your entire family of neighbors. Here one day, gone the next. Persepolis was hard to read. Maybe it’s because Marjane is my age (younger by several months) so all along I kept comparing her her stages of growing up to my own. But, really, how can one compare such things when we are figuratively and literally worlds apart?

The Amercican version of Persepolis is a two-part story. Part one begins when Marjane Satrapi is ten years old. It’s her first year of having to wear the veil, of school segregation, and the disintegration of life as she knew it. The story follows the next four years of her life as she comes of age in revolutionary Iran. She is interested in all the things a typical pubescent girl should be: fashion, rock posters, friends. As she grows up her personal uprising and rebellion run parallel with her country’s political unrest. As the Iran/Iraq conflict escalates Satrapi’s childhood world becomes more and more dangerous. She struggles with religious trust versus media influences touting the extremist view. Finally, her Marxist parents decide her future is more certain if she is sent to a boarding school in Austria.

Striking line: “When I went back to her room she was crying. We were not in the same social class but at least we were in the same bed” (p 36).

Book Trivia: Persepolis was adapted into an animated film.

Author Fact: Satrapi speaks five different languages (according to the wiki I read).

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called “Graphica” (p 105). Obviously.

Dean’s List

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Hassler, Jon. The Dean’s List. New York: Ballantine Books, 1997.

One of the dangers I have with reading books based in academia is making comparisons to my own employment. The Dean’s List was no exception. Scarily so. Right down to the weird chick who pretends to be a professor…

Leland J. Edwards, Ph.D, Dean of Rookery State College and senior member of faculty is 58 years old. From the moment you meet Leland you get the sense he has never really experienced the world; never really grown up. Rookery State College runs in the family as his father chaired the History Department. He still lives with his 81 year old mother and caters to her every need as she has advanced lung disease. He is, in his own words, “excessively attached” to her. With his marriage failed, Leland pours himself into boosting Rookery’s flagging fund-raising efforts. In the hopes of bringing national exposure to the college he works to bring a renowned poet to the college for a reading. It is from this moment that Leland starts to stand up to his mother, quell the memory demons, and make peace with the problems of his past.

Favorite zingers (and there were a few): “We still had high academic standards in those days; near-illiterates had a hard time graduating” (p 2), “If all of his students had brains, who would Kahlstrom feel superior to?” (p 46), and “If I’m ever to become as enlightened as I’ve always secretly wished to be…” (p 150).

Author Fact: Hassler died in 2008 just ten days shy of his 75th birthday. He suffered from Progressive Supranuclear Palsy. It’s related to Parkinson’s. One of Hassler’s characters, Richard Falcon, suffers from Parkinson’s…Which made me wonder if Hassler was trying to disguise a little of himself in Falcon.
Another interesting fact – on Hassler’s website his final resting place is given, complete with plot location in the cemetery. I thought that was a great idea. Fans of Hassler can pay their respects anytime they want.

Confessional: I didn’t read Pearl’s description of Hassler’s work closely enough. If I had, I would have caught on that Rookery Blues should have been read before The Dean’s List. Oh well.

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called “Big Ten Country: The Literary Midwest (Minnesota)” (p 28). This was read in honor of Minnesota becoming a state in the month of May but I easily could have read it in honor of college graduation month since this took place on a college campus.

Antigone

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Sophocles. Antigone. Translated by Elizabeth Wycoff. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1954.

The Cliff/Spark version of Antigone is this: Two sisters want to bury their dead brother. One wants to bury him admirably and the other doesn’t want to break the law. The brother in question cannot be buried because he was executed for a crime and must be left to rot in the courtyard as an example for the community. Defiant sister must go against the king alone as everyone who is anybody refuses to help her. True to Greek tragedy nearly everyone, including the king’s wife ends up committing suicide. The end.

Of course there is much, much more to the story and, depending on which version you read, you get it. In my version of Antigone translated by Elizabeth Wyckoff the language is watered down and somewhat pedestrian. It’s not as lyrical as other translations. A small example: from a 1906 Oxford Clarendon Press version (translated by Robert Whitelaw): “Ismene: There’s trouble in thy looks, thy tidings tell” compared with the 1954 University of Chicago Press version (translated by Elizabeth Wycoff): “Ismene: What is it? Clearly some news has clouded you” (p 159). Ismene is basically saying the same thing in each line, but the Whitelaw version has more animation, more movement. In the end Antigone is a simple story about the man against The Man, no matter how you read it.

Note: I’m note sure how many other versions have this, but I appreciated the biography of Socrates in my version.

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called “The Alpha, Beta Gammas of Greece” (p 9).

Skin of Our Teeth

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Wilder, Thornton. “The Skin of Our Teeth.” Collected Plays and Writings on Theater. McClatchy, J.D., ed. New York: Library of America, 2007.

Considering our own impending “end of the world” in 2012 I thought this was a fitting way to end April’s reading. Indeed, the working title of “The Skin of Our Teeth” was “The Ends of the Worlds.” But, the end of Wilder’s world is the threat of an ice age coming down from the chilly Canadian north (at the end of Act I). In fact, the entire play takes on a chronological time warp through Biblical, prehistoric and postwar environments. George and Maggie Antrobus, their children and house maid are the central characters of this play within a play. While the Antrobus characters remain constant, the house maid, Sabina does not. It is interesting to note that for the first and third acts she remains their maid and yet in the second act she is a femme fatale of sorts. Another inconsistent is the time line. Periods in history are jumbled together and stretched apart. Characters like Homer and Moses come to visit. A mammoth and dinosaur are the family pets. In the end the punchline is Mr. Antrobus, turning the fate of life over to us, the audience of this play within a play.

Play Trivia: “Skin of Our Teeth” won a Pulitzer Prize in 1943.

Author Fact: Wilder has a connection to this area. Two of his sisters attended Mount Holyoke College. Okay, so that wasn’t really about Thornton. Here’s something – Thornton Wilder was born on April 17th, 1897. Growing up, Thornton was ridiculed for his intelligence. Sad.

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called “Oh, Brother” (p 180). This is a little deceiving because “Skin of Our Teeth” isn’t really about brothers, per se. The plot is Biblical, with some Adam & Eve and Cain & Esau elements, but not really about two brothers.

Great Fortune

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Okrent, Daniel. Great Fortune: The Epic of Rockefeller Center. New York: Viking, 2003.

There is something to be said about a man with a vision, especially when that vision becomes the great and unparalleled Rockefeller Center in New York City. Great Fortune captures not only the man behind the vision and the epic journey of John D. Rockefeller and his team, but the society and political arena of their era. The 1930s are the beginning of urban sprawl going vertical in the form of skyscrapers. As the buildings start reaching higher and higher they become more grandiose and complicated; as do the people responsible for this growth at such an unlikely time in history. The founders of Rockefeller Center are egotistic, artistic, ambitious visionaries. Despite being mired in the Great Depression luminaries such as architect Raymond Hood believe in the grandeur of the project with unwavering faith.

The first thing I noticed about the copy of Great Fortune that came to the library was the cover. If you aren’t looking closely you would miss it. The cover with the ISBN of 0670031690 has a collage of four photos, all in tinted black and white. A photograph of a couple dancing. Below that, a picture of the Rockettes standing in a circle. Below that, iron workers presumably working on the construction of RCA building. Along side these three photos is a larger one of the RCA building. In my copy of Great Fortune the dancing couple featured in the upper left hand corner are Mary Rae and Naldi doing a waltz in the Rainbow room…except something is different about them. They do not hold the same pose. Mary Rae and Naldi are nose to nose in my cover shot. I’m not even sure they are the same dancers. Why was this one photo swapped out for another? Curious. For an illustration of what I mean click here. Take note of the photo of the two dancers. Look at their gentle pose. Then click on the cover and see how the photo changes. The dancers become more dynamic, more passionate.

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called “Building Blocks” (p 38).

“At Marlborough House”

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Swift, Michael. “At Marlborough House.” The New Yorker June 18th, 1990: 40.

This poem is loaded with details; details easily visualized into a short story. There are little shockers peppered throughout the entire poem told from the point of view of a patient at Marlborough House. Imagine: it is early afternoon and the patients of a psychiatric hospital are languishing in their rooms awaiting nurses with medication. There are a host of characters besides the patients – Jake the gardener and Dr. Levitz, the man in charge, but it’s the speaker of the poem you want to know more about. You snatch details, more like hints, in the things he says. He is male, old enough to still have parents who visit. He likes to read, knows pop cultural references and has homosexual tendencies. He is smart and funny and sarcastic. You want to ignore his suicidal thoughts.

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called “Poetry Pleasers” (p 188). Incidentally, Pearl called this poem “mysterious.”

Postscript ~ Every April I think the same thing. It is really unfair of Nancy Pearl to list poems she recommends for reading without proper citations. From what I can tell “At Marlborough House” was never published in a book. I found it tucked away in a 1990 New Yorker magazine. It might well have been the only place it was published. Here are the tags I would have used on LibraryThing: mental illness, hospital, first person, homosexuality, poetry, librarian, doctor, sex, paranoia, alcohol, suicidal, sarcastic”

Cosi Fan Tutti

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Dibdin, Michael. Cosi Fan Tutti. New York: Pantheon Books, 1996.

You know those books that are described as romps? This is one of those books. Not uproariously funny, but definitely entertaining through and through. Do I dare call this a murderous and mysterious comedy or a comedic murder mystery? To me, Cosi Fan Tutti is one and the same. It’s a twist on Mozart’s opera of the same name. Everything has been twisted – the plot, the characters, the outcome.

Aurelio Zen himself is a man of mystery. I found myself asking, “is this guy for real?” more than once. For starters, he works for the Ministry in Rome but asked for a transfer to Naples to avoid doing any real police work. In addition, in his private life he goes by the name Alfonso Zembla only because a deaf widow misheard his introduction at a party and he never bothered to correct her. He takes advantage of the alias because it’s fun. When this same widow asks Zen/Zembla to help dissuade her daughters from marrying beneath their status (to believed Mafia associates) he is more than happy to help…except his real job needs him. Several VIPs have gone missing and there is a havoc being wreaked by a couple of garbage truck crews. It only gets more bizarre from there.

Book Trivia: Cosi Fan Tutti isn’t a series per se, but Aurelio Zen is a reoccurring character. He’s considered an antihero. Makes sense.

Author Fact: Dibdin died in 2007 but one last ‘Zen’ book was published after his death in 2007. Interesting.

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called “Ciao Italia” (p).

Bold Vegetarian

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Kirchner, Bharti. The Bold Vegetarian: 150 Inspired International Recipes. New York: HarperPerennial, 1995.

A cookbook chock full of information beyond ho hum vegetarian recipes. Eggplant is listed in the index but you won’t find a recipe for Eggplant Parmesan. Special recognition must be made to the word “international” in the subtitle because The Bold Vegetarian takes you on a culinary adventure around the world. Oh, the places you will go! In no particular order:

  • China
  • Spain
  • Italy
  • India (this is a given because Kirchner is a renowned author of Indian cookbooks).
  • Korea
  • France
  • Japan
  • Caribbean
  • Africa
  • Thailand
  • Greece
  • Middle East
  • Germany
  • Mexico
  • United States, and because food is subject to the literal and cultural melting pot,
  • International (in other words, who knows where it originated!)

In addition to great recipes that sound different and exciting, Kirchner adds serving suggestions to create entire menus. She offers variations to make a dish vegan instead of vegetarian. She includes anecdotes, illustrations, and trivia to spice up the pages (pun intended). There are even a few notes for the Grow It At Home gardener. All recipes are simple to follow. Cooking directions are aided by a glossary of terms (just in case someone doesn’t know how to blanch, grill or simmer) and a “pantry” list although the term pantry is misleading because I would never consider storing ghee or feta in a traditional pantry. To say these are ingredients to have on hand would be a better way to phrase it. One other small detractor – no nutritional information. In this health-aware age knowing what you eat is all the rage, especially when it comes to foreign foods made from scratch.

Meals I am most looking forward to making:

  • Curry Gyozas (p 38),
  • Chipotle Chickpeas (p 150),
  • Plum Kuchen (p 254)

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called “Fiction for Foodies” (p 88). Even though this is a straight up cookbook Pearl mentioned it because the author, Bharti Kirchner, also wrote a fiction called Pastries: a Novel of Desserts and Discoveries (to be read later).

Jane Eyre

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Bronte, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. New York: Signet Classic, 1982.

Who hasn’t read Jane Eyre? Who hasn’t fallen in love with plucky, adventurous, moral, Jane? It’s a story everyone knows. When we first meet Jane she is ten years old and living with her deceased uncle’s family. She is despised by her aunt and cousins and considered lower than a servant (at least a servant earns her wages). As a result of Janes’s disharmonious and sometimes violent relationship with the Reed family Jane is sent away to a boarding school. From there Jane is trained as a governess and sent to the employ of Mr. Rochester. Because this is a romance it is obvious Jane and Mr. Rochester will fall deeply in love. Because this is a classic romance it is obvious there will be conflict. The conflict is Mr. Rochester is already married to a mentally ill and violent woman he keeps locked in an attic. Ever virtuous Jane leaves Mr. Rochester until telepathy steps in and Jane feels the need to rush back to Mr. Rochester. She arrives in time to see that Bertha has set the Thornfield mansion on fire and committed suicide. Mr. Rochester is blinded and loses a hand in the blaze. Jane promises to never leave Mr. Rochester again. Their love is triumphant and they live happily ever after. Of course, this is the much-condensed version!
The story of Jane Eyre has been widely criticized for its unrealistic episodes of ghosts and moments of 6th sense. Critics find it unbelievable that Jane is able to travel from one place to another as quickly and as efficiently as she does and it is downright miraculous that she finds a cousin who coincidentally has family wealth to bestow on her. Despite these criticisms Jane Eyre remains a lasting favorite. Obviously, there is a fan base willing to see the value of the suspension of belief.

Author Fact: Charlotte Bronte was one of six children born in the Bronte family. She tried her hand at being a governess (for ten years) before giving it up to write. She died at age 39 in pregnancy. Bummer.

Book Trivia: Jane Eyre has been transformed into movies, plays, operas, symphonies, ballets, and operas no less than 35 times. It has inspired countless retellings, spin-offs and songs. Its popularity resonates with young and old, men and women making it one of the best-loved classics ever.

BookLust Twist: Jane is very popular with Ms. Pearl. It is mentioned four different times between Book Lust and More Book Lust.. From Book Lust it is mentioned in the chapter called “Companion Reads” (p 64). I was to read Jane with Wide Sargasso Sea (of course) by Jean Rhys and The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde. Also in the chapter called “Romance Novels: “Our Love is Here To Stay” (p 204). From More Book Lust in two different chapters. First, in the chapter called “Brontes Forever” (p 34) and then again in the chapter called “Fractured Fairy Tales” (p 94).

Big Year

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Obmascik, Mark. Big Year: A Tale of Man, Nature, and Fowl Obsession. New York: Free Press, 2004.

Have you ever tried to have a conversation with a birder when he or she can see, and be distracted by, the outside world? I have and in my experience it’s a lot like having a conversation with a new mother when she has one eye (and her full attention) on her runaway, get-into-everything toddler. It’s nearly impossible. Here’s an example – I was hiking with such a friend, a big time birder. He was explaining and detailing renovations on his house when all of a sudden he stopped in mid-sentence to listen to something my ears could not detect. Impulsively, he grabbed my arm and his eyes bugged out. “Did you hear that? That was a yellow-billed something-er-rather! Female!” Up whipped his binoculars while I stood there unsure of what I was missing out on. Awhile later he stopped again to whistle, listen intently, whistle again and smile, obviously forgetting he was interrupting himself. Again. To me it was like listening for a snowflake to land.
Even strangers try to rub their enthusiasm for all things feathered on our uninterested minds. My husband and I were hiking along the rocky coast of Monhegan. It was the day after a terrific storm had blown away so the waves were breathtaking. We met a pair of birders on the trail and paused to let them pass when suddenly a particularly large wave crashed upon the rocks behind them. The sound was thunderous and both Kisa and I gasped. “What?! what did you see?!” the birders eagerly asked scanning the tree lines, “did you spot a black-legged kittiwake? A great-tailed grackle?” Errrr, no. When we explained it was a rogue wave capable of dragging a tank out to sea the birders just stared at us. Luckily, they were soon distracted by the mating call of some brown spotted something-er-rather and we went on our way. This line from the introduction of Big Year illustrates this obsession perfectly, “There even were twitters about a new species of grouse…having sex in the sagebrush somewhere in the Utah high country” (p xi). Exactly.

Mark Obmascik likes birds, but he likes birders even better. In Big Year: A Tale of Man, Nature, and Fowl Obsession Obmascik chronicles a year of birding with several different hardcore birders and their quest for “the big year.” The Big Year, as explained by Obmascik, is a birder’s attempt to chronicle as many birds as possible within a solitary calendar year. There are many different strategies for obtaining the biggest “birds seen” list and competitors will stop at nothing to hone their strategies while sabotaging those of others. It’s cutthroat, surprisingly so. All for the sake of something so small. Competing birders will spend thousands of dollars, millions of minutes, and countless miles to trek across North America looking for elusive, rare, and unusual birds. To see one is an accomplishment, but to photograph one is triumph. To be known as the biggest list is the best of all. Obmascik delivers humor and respect when sharing these birding tales. You will never look at a common sparrow the same way again.

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called “Living Your Dream” (p 157).

Carry Me Home

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McWhorter, Diane. Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama: the Climatic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001.

There is no doubt Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama: The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution is testimony to McWhorter’s nineteen year mission. Her conviction to expose the truth is on every page. What makes Carry Me Home so compelling in the unflinching examination of McWhorter’s own family’s beliefs and involvements in the tumultuous time of civil unrest. Interjecting personal biography give the book a unique drama. The detail with which McWhorter writes allows readers to not just walk in the footsteps of history but experience as if they are walking side by side in real time.

Interesting lines: “One did not need to know what was wrong in order to know something was wrong” (p 27), and “Over the two decades of solitary toil, my driving aim had been to “solve” the church bombing, to bring the murderers if not to justice then at least to truth” (p 589).

I have to point out that a friend didn’t like the title of this book. He felt that the use of the word “climatic” was incorrect. Climatic for the era, maybe, but certainly not climatic for all time.

Book Trivia: Carry Me Home was compared to Parting the Waters by Taylor Branch by author David Herbert Donald, and by writers for the Boston Globe and The Nation. Also, Carry Me Home won a Pulitzer.

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called “Civil Rights and Wrongs” (p 49).

Flaubert’s Parrot

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Barnes, Julian. Flaubert’s Parrot. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985.

I chose Flaubert’s Parrot in honor of February being Bird Feeding Month but really, Flaubert’s Parrot doesn’t have a whole lot to do with parrots, per se. Goeffrey Braithwait is a retired doctor looking to solve a mystery. Two different museums claim to have Flaubert’s muse, a stuffed parrot that sat on Flaubert’s desk while he wrote ‘Un Coeur simple.’ Dr. Braithwait calls himself an amateur scholar of Flaubert and yet he knows the smallest of details about the writer’s life which indicate a growing obsession. While the mystery of the two parrots is the token premise of the tale it takes on much more than that. First, it is revealed Dr. Braithwait would like to be an author. He wonders what it would be like to publish. This is a theme that runs concurrent with the search for the correct parrot. In time Dr. Braithwait’s wife suicide is revealed. He searches for meaning to her demise. There are multiple personalities of writing styles at play in the telling of Flaubert’s Parrot. First, an most obviously, is the fictional/factual biography of Flaubert. Then there is a “Dear Diary” approach to a literacy criticism of Flaubert’s work. The writing is sparse and humorous.

Flaubert’s Parrot had a few zingers that I liked: “Why does the writing make us chase the writer?” (p 12), I warned him of the dangerous tendency in this species to posthumously parthenogenesis” (p 22), and “Some people have a tender heart and a tough mind” (p 34).

Author Fact: Julian Barnes has a FaceBook page. Of course he does.

Book Trivia: Flaubert’s Parrot had two Booker Prize nominations.

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called “Parrots” (p 183). Go figure.

King of the World

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Remnick, David. King of the World: Muhammad Ali and the Rise of an American Hero. New York: Random House, 1998.

I realize David Remnick needed to set the scene, to establish the boxing backdrop in order for Cassius Clay’s story to be fully appreciated, but in my opinion three whole chapters equaling 68 pages was too much pre-story information. There was too much detail about the Floyd Patterson/Sonny Liston rivalry. To be fair, the long introduction established the dangerous culture of the mafia-driven boxing world before Cassius Clay entered it and how lucky he was to escape it. It clearly illustrated the mold Cassius Clay was about to break while simultaneously solidifying Liston and Clay’s animosity towards one another. I just wish it didn’t take three chapters to do it.

I think the entire story of Cassius Clay/Muhammad Ali can be summed up by one sentence late in the prologue, “He hit people for a living, and yet by middle age he would be a symbol not merely of courage, but of love, of decency, even a kind of wisdom” (p xvi). It is true Ali started out as a loud-mouthed, egotistical, “pretty” kid who could back up his bravado with a mean left hook. He hid his emotions under constant chatter. But, by the time the heart of Remnick’s biography leaves the story of Cassius Clay, Clay had barely become Muhammad Ali, had just beaten Sonny Liston in a November 22, 1965 fight to defend his heavyweight title, and was on the cusp of being a cultural icon. He had yet to sway the country as a force to be reckoned with. He would not become the beloved everyone thinks of today. It’s as if Remnick needs to write a King of the World: Part II and tell the rest of the story.

Line I liked: “The doctors of Maine may have been accustomed to a relatively low level of fitness” (p 250).

One of the coolest things about King of the World was learning that Ali trained in Chicopee Falls, MA and that his second bout with Liston happened in Lewiston, Maine. I had fun researching the Schine family and the different hotels they owned (including one in Northampton that is still in operation today). An inside joke – Robert Goulet sang the ‘Star Spangled Banner’ before the Ali/Liston fight. He couldn’t remember the words nor could he hear the orchestra! Glouleeeet!

Author Fact: David Remnick is a member of the New York Public Library Board of Trustees. He was born in Hackensack, New Jersey (one of my old stomping grounds), is fluent in Russian and has won a Pulitzer Prize,

Book Trivia: One of the best things about King of the World is the photo layout. Instead of having the traditional group of photographs clumped in the middle of the book Remnick’s photos are spread throughout the book, making each section a little present.

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter “Dewey Deconstruction: 700s” (p 74).