books Archives - Page 20 of 26 - Ramblin' with Roger

Book Review: A Reporter’s Life by Walter Cronkite

Walter Cronkite as a morning show newsreader had dialogues with a lion puppet and Dick van Dyke.

At some point a year or two ago, I bought a whole bunch of books for not very much money; can’t remember where. They sat on my bookshelf en masse, all but untouched until I got into this recent reading binge. First up had to be the 1996 autobiography of Walter Cronkite (November 4, 1916 – July 17, 2009), for he was my all-time favorite news anchor.

The early chapters, about him growing up in Kansas City and later Houston, I found to be a bit bloodless, even as he tells about murderous racism. It seemed very “that’s the way it was.” His World War II retelling was somewhat livelier. When he described being stationed in Moscow for CBS News, he realized “how effective lies can be when the truth is suppressed,” so that his Russian driver was convinced that the Soviets had invented baseball and the Jeep.

When he gets to the issue of television, though, he lets his personality, and his opinions, shine through. He believes that the press’s focus on the “sizzle rather than the steak” of politics created a cynicism that resulted in an “international embarrassment” of low voter participation.

During Cronkite’s tenure as the anchor, US government officials were looking for the network to take a more supportive role toward the Vietnam war. He replied, “It is not the journalist’s job to be patriotic. How can patriotism be determined anyway? Is patriotism simply agreeing unquestioningly with every action of one’s government? Or might we define patriotism as having the courage to speak and act on those principles one thinks are best for the country…?”

My favorite parts of the book are the insights about the early days of television, where folks established in radio and print figuring out the new medium, including his tenure as a morning show newsreader having dialogues with a lion puppet and Dick Van Dyke. Later, he recognizes that he had become an “800-pound gorilla” of news trying not to upstage his news colleagues. When he retired, he developed disgust with the new CBS News ownership of the early 1980s over its concern with profits over content.

Of course, he tells about reporting the important events of the times, including the John Kennedy assassination and the landing on the moon. He namechecks his college physics teacher, who would be amazed how well Cronkite explained the technical aspects of the space missions.

I think that the state of television news, from the time he wrote this book until he died, must have filled him with despair for his chosen profession. Still, it was a most interesting read by a most stellar individual.

Book review: Vince Guaraldi at the Piano

Vince Guaraldi was known as the “Italian leprechaun.” He was short, barely over five feet tall, and youthful looking; this was the reason for his signature mustache, to look older.

If you know the name Vince Guaraldi, it’s probably because you associate the pianist as the composer of the music for the Peanuts television specials, starting in the mid-1960s. However, Doctor Funk, one of his nicknames, codified in a song he wrote and performed a decade earlier, was a well-respected performer and composer in the Bay Area/Northern California jazz scene.

Derrick Bang notes in the preface of Vince Guaraldi at the Piano that he was a reluctant writer of Vince’s legacy, expecting that someone more personally knowledgeable of the performer would surely show up to pen his story. Finding none, he put together an almost encyclopedic recollection of the musician’s life, starting with the influence of his mother. He had two failed father figures in his life, and just as Freddy Lennon reached out to John after the Beatles were famous, Vince’s dad sought to re-enter Vince’s life after Peanuts; both John and Vince said an emphatic “NO.”

Vince was an important member of combos fronted by Cal Tjader and Woody Herman (the third “thundering herd”). He actually had a Top 40 hit with Cast Your Fate to the Wind [listen] (#22 in 1963), though you may know the song better from the cover version by Sounds Orchestral (#10 in 1965). His jazz mass was revolutionary for its time. Like too many musicians, though, he got the short end of a lot of business deals early on.

Vince was also known as the “Italian leprechaun.” He was short, barely over five feet tall, and youthful-looking; this was the reason for his signature mustache, to look older. He also could have quite a temper, especially as it applied to the music, but he seldom held a grudge.

This is an important book, which I’d like to have in my library, not so much to read, but to refer to, like many reference books published by McFarland Press. He crossed paths with an interesting group of folks, including comedian-social activist Dick Gregory, influential jazz critic Ralph Gleason, plus musicians from the Kingston Trio to Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead. It was Brazilian guitarist Bola Sete, though, who helped infuse the bossa nova influence that’s apparent in many of the Peanuts themes.

Some folks call this a biography, while at least one described it as more of an “expanded provenance.” It surely doesn’t always read like a bio, but the information’s all there. And the early chapters plus the ones after Vince’s sudden death in 1976, before his 48th birthday, allowed for a more reflective style.

Peanuts creator Charles Schultz died in 2000; 15 months later, he was posthumously given the Congressional Gold Medal. Peanuts TV writer/producer/director Lee Mendelson was expecting the Marine Corps Band to perform the national anthem. But when they played Linus and Lucy [listen] instead, “there wasn’t a dry eye in the house.” And, oddly enough, that included me too. So even with this wealth of facts, there IS an interesting story narrative within as well.

Check out It’s Jazz, Charlie Brown: the Vince Guaraldi Story. Profile of jazz pianist Vince Guaraldi. Aired on WFIU / Indiana Public Radio’s “Night Lights” program on December 7, 2009. 59 minutes.

Guess who won FREE TICKETS to “It’s a Jazzy Christmas”, featuring the music of Vince Guaraldi, at the College of St. Rose’s Massry Center this afternoon?

Wicked, the book versus Wicked, the musical

What I’ve discovered in my circle is that people who read the book first, prefer the book.

Reprinted from my Times Union blog.

My wife and I went to see the musical Wicked at the Thursday afternoon matinee on November 8, right after it opened, at Proctors Theatre in Schenectady. We had not seen it before in any iteration, not at Proctors a couple of years before or on Broadway. I wasn’t particularly familiar with the musical, aside from Defying Gravity.

All in all, it was WONDERFUL. The performers were great, and the element that really impressed me was lighting. Michael Eck’s review is about right, though I obviously can’t speak to how much it may become dated.

My wife met me at the theater. She was driving from work with little time to spare, so I took the bus – the 905, for you locals – to Schenectady. I had left the book I had been reading, an autobiography of Walter Cronkite, at work, and I needed a distraction. I grabbed my copy of Wicked, the book written by Gregory Maguire. In fact, it was a copy signed by the author, to me, which I purchased from him at a Friends of the Albany Public Library event in April 2006.

I got about an eighth of the way through the book, and then I saw the musical, then I finished the book. Probably not recommended. These are very different animals. Wicked the book is grimmer, grimier, more sexually explicit, more about political intrigue and musings about religion.

I’m not talking about minor differences of interpretation. The musical’s book by Winnie Holzman resembles the book by Maguire in only minor ways. Elphaba, who Jaquandor describes here, is green; she has a distant father, a deceased mother, a sister Nessarose with cool shoes, and a secret romance. Almost everything else you THINK you know from one source will be negated by the other source. Characters are merged, characters who die in the book are pivotal in the music, relations are changed, and a whole lot of characters in the book never make it to the stage at all. Religion and politics, and what’s going on with the Animals, are central to the book, more peripheral to the musical.

For a spoiler-free analysis, go HERE. If you want analysis with specified spoiler alerts, look HERE. And if you like spoilers galore, go HERE.

What I’ve discovered in my circle is that people who read the book first, prefer the book. People who saw the musical first either really dislike the book, or can’t get through it. In fact, one said, the best thing, or even the only good thing, about the book is that it generated the musical. There’s a level of violence and sex in the Maguire book some found disturbing. For me, the extra characters left me a bit confused, and honestly, a tad bored in the middle – where is this GOING? – though it mostly made sense at the end.

There is a “reader’s group guide” at the back of the book. Question 1 notes that “Wicked derives some of its power from the popularity of the source material. Does meeting up with familiar characters and famous fictional situations require more patience and effort on the part of the reader or less?” I say “yes”, both. In particular, the musical is even more beholden to the classic film than the book.

I’m curious what others who both read the book and saw the musical think about each. In particular, I wonder if the order they experienced the media matters.

Book Review: 11/22/63, a novel by Stephen King

My great frustration with reading this book is that I had a great deal of difficulty putting it down!

I had never read a Stephen King novel, but due to boredom, I ended up taking out from the library 11/22/63, an 800+ page tome. OK, it wasn’t JUST boredom, but also a near-obsession I have long had with the tragic events of that day, crystallized in my mind; my own long-running curiosity about the various conspiracy theories surrounding John F. Kennedy’s assassination; and what would happen if, somehow, the President had survived the attack. (I’m sure I’ll write more about that next year.)

When I checked out the book – allowed for only 14 days, instead of the usual 28, because it’s a recent purchase – the library clerk, who had read it, assured me that it wasn’t one of those King horror books.

Well, no, and yes. This is a pretty straightforward narrative about a man and a portal to a very specific time and place in 1958. What I always disliked somewhat in some going-back-in-time stories is how very precisely timed the trips were. If one were trying to stop JFK from being killed (or make sure that he was, so that the “time-space continuum”, or whatever, wasn’t wrecked), one would show up in Dallas, Texas on November 19 or so.

What would happen, though, if you had to live in the past for five years before intersecting with history? Would that be a good thing? What would you do with your time? How would you survive financially? (Your 2011 credit card, or for that matter, your 21st-century cash, would not be useful.) Might you involve yourself in other wrongs that should be righted? And would you find the past more enticing than the present? The protagonist says, more than once, that the past is obdurate.

There were monsters, though, in this book, including assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, and a couple of other folks. But the protagonist finds some redeeming characters as well.

My great frustration with reading this book is that I had a great deal of difficulty putting it down! Sleep? Work? Housework? These were getting in my way of finishing this fine, incredibly well-researched book. King addresses his sense of the conspiracy theories, both in the story proper, and the Afterword. Even though this is a fictional account, you will learn much about the forces that led to JFK’s death.

I hope it’s obviously HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
***
Jaquandor’s take on the book.

New York Times review by Errol Morris.

Steve’s Stephen King memories

The thing about Stephen King is…

FantaCo sold a lot of horror film items in the mail order, as well as comic books.

I’ve seen at least five movies based on the works of author Stephen King: The Shining (1980), which I did not like; Stand by Me (1986), which I was very fond of; Misery (1991), which was quite good; The Shawshank Redemption (1994), which I LOVED; and The Green Mile (1999), which had its moments. Also saw at least parts of some miniseries.

I’ve read various comic book adaptations of his work. I devoured his articles in Entertainment Weekly magazine. But until the fourth quarter of 2012, I had NEVER read a Stephen King book, not one. Not even his nonfiction On Writing, which actually DID intrigue me. Or his book namechecking baseball pitcher Tom Gordon.

Let me tell you a story that’s only vaguely about Stephen King. I’ve told it before, but it was some years ago.

It would help if you understood that FantaCo, where I worked from 1980 to 1988, sold mostly comic books in the retail store. However, we sold a lot of horror film items in the mail order as well, including back issues of Fangoria magazine, Freddy Krueger (plastic) claws, and books and comics of the horror genre, some of which we published. It was partly from that experience that I got all “horrored out,” as it were.

There was a graphic novelization of the Stephen King’s Creepshow drawn by Berni Wrightson in the mid-1980s, published by some company. Having connections in both the comic and horror markets, we at FantaCo absolutely knew, from both comic and horror film stores we dealt with, that there was still a demand for this title, but no one seemed to be able to get any, for no explicable reason.

I went to the library and looked up the publisher’s information in Books in Print. The grapevine had it that there were still many copies of the book remaining. I wrote to the publisher and got no response.

About a month later, I called the publisher and was told the book was no longer available, which I had heard from others to be untrue. A couple of days later, I called again, and THIS time, I reached someone else, who acknowledged that they had copies but that it was not worth their time and money for them to send out the books, only to deal with a huge percentage of returns.

Now direct market comic book stores such as FantaCo were quite used to buying comic books on a non-returnable basis, but at a higher discount than the comic books sold at your local drug store. I said, “What if we bought the books on a non-returnable basis?” I thought the guy’s teeth were going to fall out. “Non-returnable?” So, we took 100 copies of Creepshow at 70% off the $6.95 cover price, put them in the store, listed them in a Fangoria ad, and blew through them.

I called the publisher again and ordered another 100. By this point other stores, seeing the book in our ad, were clamoring for this item, so we ordered an additional 500, and sold it to these horror book stores, and a few comic book stores, at 40% off, non-returnable. We kept on ordering in lots of 500 or 1000 until the publisher really WAS out of copies. The publisher made money on an item it had given up on, retail stores got to sell a book they could otherwise not get, we made a decent profit even wholesaling someone else’s book, and this kept the Wrightson/King book from just being remaindered. Talk about your win-win-win-win.

So now it’s Columbus Day 2012. I’d taken all the newspapers I hadn’t perused, which were several, and read them all. I’m in the North Albany branch of the library, with my daughter on the computer, using MY library card (so that I can’t be on the computer, too), while The Wife and my sister are finishing up at the YMCA next door, and I’m rather bored. Then I see it: a book I just had to read…