Book of the Month for September

BOM for Sept: Reality Hunger: a Manifesto, David Shields.


Knopf. 2010.

Probably the best way to review David Shields’ bizarre new screed Reality Hunger: A Manifesto is to present one passage:

I find nearly all the moves the traditional novel makes unbelievably predictable, tired, contrived, and essentially purposeless…
I like work that’s focused not only page by page but line by line on what
the writer really cares about rather than hoping that what the writer cares
about will somehow mysteriously creep through the cracks of narrative,
which is the way I experience most stories and novels.

If you’re the kind of writer, reader, or thinker who reads this fatuous passage as a neat indictment of its author’s shallowness and general stupidity, you’re not going to have a meaningfully different experience with the rest of the book and its glib pronouncements, which greatly outnumber and overwhelm the few interesting explorations it affords.
If you, however, read it with a fist pump and an “in your face, traditional novel!” read the rest of the book.

BOM for January

Book Of the Month, Jan.

Searching For Whitopia: An Improbable Journey to the Heart of White America. Rich Benjamin. Hyperion, 2009. E184.A1 B374 2009

This nugget of middle-brow pop-sociological exploration finds journalist Rich Benjamin staying for a time in various all-white exurbs and reporting his findings.

Whitopia is Benjamin's term for towns like St. George, Utah and Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, whose residents are attempting to return to a "simpler time."

Benjamin's prose is jaunty and brisk, his style narrative more than analytical.

Book of the Month, August

Between Barack and A Hard Place

Tim Wise City Lights. 2009

E184.A1W57 2009

Washburn University professor Tim Wise decries the myth that Obama's election has ameliorated all racial tension in this nation. His chief arguments are that

• there will always be exceptional people within any group, those with access to "good" education, etc. The presence of these people and their accomplishments says nothing about all members of this particular segment of society



• the fact that people admit to favoring or accepting Obama because he has "transcended" race or is a "different" sort of Black man demonstrates the persistence of prejudice and stigmas



• empirical evidence in areas of housing, health care, education and others points to continued discrimination against African-Americans

While much of the book advances an argument that most would accept out of hand, that institutional racism still exists, Wise, when discussing the effects of and dynamics concerning Obama's presidency specifically, advances a welcome critique of much conventional wisdom. He writes, "white folks still hold the power. White folks still get to call the tune...The fact that there are some folks of color who can play the tune...hardly alters the dynamic between those who call it and those who are forced to do the dance."