New Nonfiction

OK, folks, I've been dithering, it's true. (What can I say?  It's summer.  It's the languid season.)   But if I'm laying out the welcome mat here for the nonfiction faction, I ought to have something more than mere crumbs and idle musings and low-temperature updates from Simon at 75 Degrees South when you arrive on the doorstep, right?

So today we begin a new, weekly feature, "What's new in (narrative) nonfiction." A few words of explanation on the no doubt ultimately arbitrary distinctions I will make here.  I'll be trying to focus on books with a narrative quality, books that are more "creative" nonfiction than "straight" nonfiction or journalism.   So, for example, a scholarly historical biography is "straight."  A travel narrative with biographical premise (see The Trouble with Tom, below) we'll claim for the Narrative Nonfiction Faction.   And some books--well, we'll just have to read them and decide.

I'll be trolling various places to look for what's new, but Dear Reader, you can help--if you come across something new not featured here, share the word. 

And one more thing—look in the left column of this page for an at-a-glance summary of the most recent additions to the new nonfiction list.

The City of Falling Angels by John Berendt (Penguin Press)
You may recall that Berendt was the author of that long-tenured mainstay of the bestseller lists, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.  In his new book, he takes on Venice.  Here's what PW (Publishers Weekly) has to say:

Berendt moves to Venice in 1997, just three days after the city's famed Fenice opera house burns down during a restoration. The Venetian chattering classes, among whom Berendt finds a home, want to know whether it was an accident or arson. Initially, Berendt investigates, but is soon distracted by the city's charming denizens. Early on, he's warned, "Everyone in Venice is acting," which sets the stage for fascinating portraits: a master glassblower creating an homage to the fire in vases, an outspoken surrealist painter, a tenacious prosecutor and others. As the infamous Italian bureaucracy drags out the investigation, Berendt spends more time schmoozing with the expatriate community in long discussions about its role in preserving local art, culture and architecture. By the time the Fenice is rebuilt and reopens, Berendt has delivered an intriguing mosaic of modern life in Venice, which makes for first-rate travel writing, albeit one that lacks a compelling core story to keep one reading into the night.

The Trouble With Tom: the Strange Afterlife and Times of Thomas Paine by Paul Collins (Bloomsbury).
Collins is apparently part of the McSweeney's crowd, so you can take that for what you think it portends for this book.  From the publisher:

Paul Collins combines wry, present-day travelogue with an odyssey down the forgotten paths of history as he searches for the remains of Tom Paine and finds them hidden in, among other places, a Paris hotel, underneath a London tailor's stool, and inside a roadside statue in New York. Along the way he crosses paths with everyone from Walt Whitman and Charles Darwin to sex reformers and hellfire ministers—not to mention a suicidal gunman, a Ferrari dealer, and berserk feral monkeys.

Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story by Chuck Klosterman (Scribner).
Per his back-flap blurb, Klosterman is a senior writer for Spin magazine, and apropos of nothing he eerily resembles the boy who was the object of my first giddy, head-over-heels, 12-year old crush. Right down to the nerd glasses and the crossed arms.

ANYWAY, as Klosterman writes with some frequency in the book (ah, a fellow member of the "but I digress" school), ostensibly this is a road book about visiting America's famous rock 'n' roll death sites, but mostly it's a book about Chuck Klosterman driving around the country in a manic, occasionally drug-fueled muse-fest, and mostly what he muses about is music and the three women with whom he is romantically/sexually entangled.

Klosterman also fills us in on the cocaine vs. marijuana contingents at Spin (were I Chuck's editor, I'd be a touch worried about the coming DEA raid), dines at the Olive Garden, is asked to leave the Chelsea Hotel by a manager who is not interested in his interest in the death of Nancy Spungen at the hands of Sid Vicious, visits his parents in North Dakota, and riffs on whatever happens to cross his mind, which sometimes makes for interesting and amusing insights, such as, "Your entire existence as a rock critic is built around the process of reviewing one's mail."   

"Divertissement" is the word that springs to mind re: this book. It's getting a lot of review traffic.  PW says: "Entertaining in a spontaneous, distracting way. When it ends, though, and Klosterman slams shut the door to his head, most of what went before melts into air."

In the New York Times Sunday book review: 

War Reporting for Cowards by Chris Ayres     (Atlantic Monthly Press).
Not your typical gung-ho war correspondent, Ayres is "a small-town boy, a hypochondriac, and a neat freak with an anxiety disorder" sent by the London Times to cover the Iraq invasion.  The NYT  gives it a general thumbs-up with a few caveats, as does PW, which says "The book's strengths lie in Ayres's details of the gritty, hot, lonely daily grind; its weakest aspect is the too-long tangent of his rise as a young reporter."

read the NYT review
read the first chapter

Comments

[Trix]

Golly. I wish I had this list when I was looking for some summer reads because sometimes trusth is stranger...er, well, you know. Where Klosterman's book may have really interested me at one time, it's the sort I'll wait for someone to loan me, but War Reporting for Cowards looks good, and I'll admit that I'm a sucker for the gossipy pettiness of a certain class which is why I'm intrigued by Berendt's book, especially if it reads like a really long Vanity Fair article! I read Midnight In The Garden of Good and Evil and still couldn't tell you why I was taken in by it. Thanks for tips!

[Caroline]

In my self-appointed role here as Host of the Nonfiction Lounge (no artificial ingredients served here), I plan to be offering this update weekly on what's new in nonfiction. And more nonfiction features to come!

Also in my self-appointed role as H of the NL, I'll be trying to get my hands on as many of these books as possible for a little more in-depth coverage. Which is why I took on the Klosterman book, though expecting I'd probably give it a cursory skim as I don't exactly live on the cutting edge when it comes to popular music, and the demise of rock stars, while no doubt a tragic loss for those who knew and loved them, has never registered particularly deeply in my brain (though I do recall hearing the news of John Lennon's death--walking with a friend up the stairwell of my college freshman dorm. "John Lennon's died," someone yelled with tragic portent from a landing above our heads, to which my friend immediately replied, "Guess that blows the chance of a Beatles reunion.") ANYWAY, as it turned out, Klosterman's book landed in my hands at the start of one of the rarest of all things these days in my life--a weekend with free time for reading, so I read it in a weekend. A divertissement indeed.