June 23-29, 2005
cover story
BQ Nonfiction Shorts
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By Tom Hodgkinson HarperCollins, 286 pp., $18.95
Neither a book for overachievers nor a "how-to" guide for slackers, How to Be Idle is a literary and social history about the pleasures of leisure and value in doing nothing.
Hodgkinson, who edits a publication called The Idler, offers some typically reasonable suggestions on how, in fact, one can "be idle." In a series of short chapters, he proposes ideas for (in)activity: throw away the alarm clock, stay in bed, embrace the hangover, etc. And yet Hodgkinson labors intensely to convince readers that work is bad, meditation is good, and smoking, drinking and even fishing are best.
The author makes clever observations about the how the recreational aspects of hanging out in coffee shops are undone by the fact that coffee makes people more driven to work. In contrast, a whole chapter celebrates the art of having a soothing cup of tea as a respite from the day. Significantly, How to Be Idle acknowledges the paradox that "to be truly idle, you have to be efficient."
Curiously, Hodgkinson, who admits spending seven months writing this tome, seems to have put a tremendous amount of effort into his research. The book is stuffed with extended quotations. There are passages from Oscar Wilde's musings on inaction, excerpts from the Slow Food Manifesto and almost two full pages of Nietzsche's commentary on the need for holidays. But one still gets the distinct impression that the author may have taken the easy way out, simply assembling the work of other writers to make and defend his own arguments. It's worth noting that the appendix, containing titles for "further reading," is longer than many of the individual essays that precede it.
There are bound to be idlers who will enjoy Hodgkinson's book — that is, if they can be bothered to read it.
--G.M.K.
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By Gary Indiana New Press, 140 pp., $19.95
A world-renowned movie star whose films are steeped in apocalyptic violence, a star in bodybuilding (a sport with overtones of homoeroticism and steroid addiction), a Kennedy in-law and son of a Nazi party member, a celebrity accused repeatedly of sexual harassment and even racial slurs, stood before last summer's 2004 Republican convention. And the governor of California called his opponents "girlie men" to the swoons of delegates and pundits alike.
How exactly did Arnold Schwarzenegger — Arnold Schwarzenegger — become the leader of the world's sixth-largest economy? The felicitously named Gary Indiana tries to deconstruct the Govinator. Of Schwarzenegger's rise to Hollywood stardom and political celebrity, Indiana implies that there's no longer much difference between the two: "The total experience of having a relationship with Arnold Schwarzenegger that many people believed they had, and its transference from the world of make-believe into the arena of government, spoke to the possibility that the democratic experiment was rapidly mutating into a ceremonial fantasy."
The book offers a good summary of the statewide recall of Gray Davis in 2003 and the truncated, Gilbert & Sullivan-esque campaign season that put Arnold in the governor's mansion. And Indiana offers trenchant analysis of such Schwarzenegger films as The Running Man and End of Days: "The notion that the "right' kind of "strong leader' is all the government a dazed and confused rabble needs to awaken itself to more enlightened "values' is a standard premise in many of Schwarzenegger's films." But the book's tone is so polemical that it will appeal only to those who already agree with its anti-Arnold premise. Author Matt Miller recently lamented in The New York Times that "best-selling books reinforce what folks thought when they bought them," and railed, "Is persuasion dead? And if so, does it matter?" Schwarzenegger Syndrome will provide ammo for the governor's group of enemies, but I'm afraid it won't sway most of his (shrinking number of) supporters.
--Andrew Milner
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By Rodney Rothman Simon & Schuster, 256 pp., $23
Aside from the time a friend made an unfortunate mention of "manties" (that'd be old-maid-looking panties for men), the idea of assuming the geriatric position as a twentysomething never quite occurred to me. It's creepy, not captivating, sexless, not sexy, and, well, who wants to fantasize about being on the brink of some hole in the ground, anyway? Ah, but that was before blowing through Early Bird in an evening. Here, former David Letterman head writer Rodney Rothman skips the role-playing and goes straight down South — to a retirement community in Florida.
Having just lost his job, the 28-year-old figured, "What the hey, I might as well cash that Social Security check early, since it's supposedly expiring soon, and join the shuffleboard set now." Logic and sanity might lead one to assume that this line of thought should have gone no further than a droll icebreaker at some L.A. cocktail party celebrating the launch of a new pilot on NBC. No senior citizen could possibly tolerate a potential lost grandson infiltrating the insular world of heated bingo matches and 4 o'clock buffet dinners, right?
Wrong. After finding a "cat/bird" lady roommate named Margaret, it took Rothman but a few weeks of sunning his youthful skin by the pool to become both a novelty and a wistful reminder to a whole cadre of characters, including a 63-year-old former heroin dealer named Artie and a "sultry," self-proclaimed "aging femme fatale" named Vivian. Intense softball games (no, really — read and you shall understand), gambling boat cruises, senior citizen singles dances and, yes, shuffleboard training ensues. Yet Rothman never strips the humanity from his subjects — the way we often do when we revoke their driver's licenses and toss them into nursing homes. By examining his own life through the glaucoma-inflicted eyes of his new playmates, he instead begins to understand (a) how little we change over the decades and (b) what little we can do to stop that. It's a sobering read, a rare combination of subtle humor and stark realism that'll make you put down the Viagra (it's not just for Grandpa anymore!) and pop some Xanax instead.
--Andrew Parks
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By Elizabeth Royte Little Brown, 320 pp., $24.95
Funny how a book on human refuse can make you nostalgic for a time when pigs roamed the streets lapping up our slop. This was the case in New York City not much more than a century ago, when sanitation had nothing to do with beefy guys in trucks, but rather thousands of roving swine. Now it's a little bit of front-yard composting here, some curbside recycling there, but mostly just tons and tons of trash compacted and trucked to landfills in rural Pennsylvania, West Virginia and beyond.
In Garbage Land, Elizabeth Royte tackles a subject that's as complex as it is fetid. What drives her story is finding the answer to a seemingly simple question: Where does our trash go? The trail of refuse leads the author on a tour of waste disposal centers in Brooklyn, on a paddling excursion around the perimeter of Staten Island's defunct Fresh Kills landfill and into western Pennsylvania, where she finds that it's a lot harder than you might think to look at garbage.
What works about Garbage Land is Royte's big-picture approach. We hang out with New York sanitation workers who sweat through three T-shirts on a summer day, and then we're chatting with a Manhattan policy wonk who doesn't do anything so hands-on as composting but gets giddy over the prospect of anaerobic food digesters. My favorite is the humorless eco-Nazi in the Lower East Side, who corrects the author each time she says "garbage."
There's some great reporting in Garbage Land — interesting tidbits that one might think would be common knowledge. For instance, wastepaper has become our leading export to Asia. Trash collection is a $57 billion industry. Thirty-five percent of garbage comes from packaging. Who knew? Royte deserves commendation for magnifying a simple, smelly idea to such an expansive scale while encapsulating some of the wonkier debates on waste management into easily digestible pieces. Even better is her knack for bringing out the human side of a story most humans prefer to ignore.
--John Dicker
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Edited by Derek Rubin Schocken, 368 pp., $25
Are we Jewish Americans or American Jews? With just two possible answers, that classic Hebrew-school query may be the simplest in Judaism. But just add "writer" to the equation and the responses are limitless. Who We Are offers 29 of them, in essays arranged chronologically by age of the authors themselves, from a 1974 reminiscence by Saul Bellow (born in 1915) to a new piece by Yael Goldstein (born in 1978).
Much of the struggle to define what gives a work of fiction a Jewish identity — the writing or its author? — boils down to the old tension between writing what you know and letting your imagination run wild. The collection's oldest writers found freedom and boundaries in the tension between the Old World and America; the following generation found fertile ground in the push and pull of assimilation. The book's youngest writers, against common wisdom, were raised Orthodox.
For many in the middle, the Holocaust is the defining moment. Alan Lelchuk would allow only those who were there to revisit the war zone; several children of survivors think it's expansive enough for others to imagine. Cynthia Ozick believes its enormity transcends borders: "[F]or everyone alive in the century we have left behind, the cataclysm of murder and atrocity that we call the Holocaust is inescapable and indelible it is an event that excludes no one." And then there's Los Angeles-raised Leslie Epstein, who writes that "for me the Second World War had been essentially a matter of Japanese."
One book couldn't possibly contain all the answers, but Who We Are is an engaging look at where we've been and where we're going. Geographically, the field is pretty small: 19 contributors were born in New York or New Jersey, and only one of the 29 has ended up anywhere other than the Northeastern United States. (That's Michigan State University's Lev Raphael, who is also the only openly gay writer here.) But they cover a lot of philosophical territory, and if there's any temple where they can all worship, it's the library, exalted in many an essay. "Jewish American" — or "American Jew" — means something different to each, and "writer" proves to be their most common ground.
--M.J.F.
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