Get Into it

Employing a thorough, journalistic style, author Jon Krakauer does a great job chronicling the road odyssey and last days of Chris McCandless in Into the Wild.

The synopsis for this true story hooks you — "In April 1992 a young man from a well-to-do family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. He had given $25,000 in savings to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, burned all the cash in his wallet, and invented a new life for himself. Four months later, his decomposed body was found by a moose hunter."

Krakauer admits to an obsession over McCandless' story, but succeeds in offering as much insight as seemingly possible into why this happened. Some of the best bits don't even involve McCandless, including Krakauer's detailing of his own near-fatal Alaskan adventure and the story of Everett Reuss, who disappeared in Utah in the 1930s.

Great book, and another movie I want to see. I'm guessing you can see the movie first and still get a lot more out of the book too. You may also want to check out the episode of Iconoclasts on Sundance Channel featuring Krakauer and Sean Penn, director of the film version.

No County no joke

You could see how someone would read this and want to make a movie right away. Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men hurtles along at a breakneck — or rather, a compressed air-powered stun gun pace, with only the reflective ruminations of Sheriff Bell offering a breather.

The setup: In early 1980s Texas near the Mexico border, Vietnam vet Llewellyn Moss comes across a drug deal gone bad, and helps himself to a suitcase full of money.

McCarthy doesn't present the internal thought process of the characters, aside from the Bell bits at the beginning of chapters, which come into tighter focus as the book progresses. So while we know why he takes the money (it's a lot of free money), we don't know what makes him return to the scene of the drug deal. He's not stupid, but this was a stupid decision, and the shit hits the fan.

Some weird things: The sheriff's name is Ed Tom Bell, and people actually call him Ed Tom. I guess the two-name name (Joe Don Baker) has gone the way of the bubblegum disciplinary issues in America's schools, as Bell might say. Also, the intentional run-on sentences, and the contractions without apostrophes. OK.

This was supposed to be McCarthy's most accessible work, and I want to check out Blood Meridian which was recommended to me by Tim Jim McGlynn (hey, there's a two-name name), which he said was stranger but better.

Having seen the movie's trailer, I thought the bad guy might be too cartoony, but I didn't think so reading the book. I have a feeling the end of the film won't be as much of an issue if you read the book first, though it definitely slows bigtime. But the last bit of Bell's police work continues to offer insight into some of the overall themes — drug buyers are as much of the problem as dealers (whether we're talking about drugs or not), and stakes keep getting higher.

Awesome crime fiction. You really don't want to put it down, and I knocked it out in two days. Bring on the movie.

Amazon reviews, a cautionary tale

Surfing around this morning I came across A Slate.com article wherein an author details his discovery of shenanigans in the Amazon review process. Not startling, but kind of disappointing and fairly annoying. Pretty pathetic too.

Not that I really pay much mind to the reviews, especially when it came to reviewers' rankings, etc. I typically don't surf around Amazon looking for stuff to blow money on, I'm there to get something I already know I want. And reviews can be helpful in comparing different DVD versions of the same movie, for example, detailing what features on on which. The only extended reading of reviews I recall centered on the various DVD versions of The Killer or Hard Boiled, can't remember.

Obviously with the anonymous postings, anyone can write reviews — publicists, the authors themselves. You know that going in. But clearly some of these regular reviewers are cooking the books, so to speak. Averaging 45 book reviews a week? Uh, yeah, OK. Maybe this guy could pull that off, but otherwise you'd need time to eat and breathe, no?

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Connecting the dots

The dots, in this case, could be the approximate decade between the end of the initial punk movement and the rise of Nirvana and mainstream, MTV-frequenting alternative music. The dots could also be the substantial periods of time elapsed between my tackling of chapters in Michael Azerrad's Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground 1981-1991.

My brother-in-law Andy lent me a first edition, published in 2001, either that year or in 2002 while vacationing with family in Sea Isle City, N.J. I'm pretty sure I knocked out the first two chapters on Black Flag and the Minutemen down the shore, but it was the summer of 2006, waiting for the PECO man to turn on electricity and gas in my new apartment, before I finished the third chapter on Mission of Burma. It was more than another year before I determined to finish, and another shore vacation and a New England trip via train offered the opportunity.

Far from a tough read though, once you start you want to keep proceeding from band to band. Thinking I had to allot the time for such an effort may have kept me from picking it up sooner. Luckily, Azerrad keeps noting the connections and citing history as the paths of the bands overlap. So some time between reading doesn't hurt too bad.

While I think Nirvana was great, the band wasn't blazing new ground. They were there with the right sound at the right time. They wouldn't have been there without the bands chronicled in Our Band, however. They were blazing the trails, not only musically, but also in establishing national touring circuits, their own distribution methods and, maybe most importantly, creating a lasting community based in the music. Punks most media outlets forgot about with the Sex Pistols done, the advent of MTV, and more easily reported stories to cover.

In his introduction Azerrad acknowledges there were many more bands, labels etc. that made significant contributions in the discussed time period, but he narrowed his focus to the best and most influential bands. Aside from the three already mentioned, he covers Minor Threat, Husker Du, the Replacements, Sonic Youth, Butthole Surfers, Big Black, Dinosaur Jr., Fugazi, Muddhoney and Beat Happening.

I'd read or seen a good deal about Black Flag, Minor Threat and Fugazi, and their presence in this book no doubt confirmed my interest in it. But I probably most enjoyed the chapters on the bands lesser-known to me, and those I only knew by name. And in the case of Butthole Surfers, a band I really had no interest in reading about. The Surfers chapter however, including an account of a raving drunk Gibby Haynes at a Netherlands festival, is not to be missed. Those guys are nuts.

The thoroughly researched parts make an entertaining whole, and the importance and impact of the bands discussed is continually emphasized. You can't help but be awed at the artistic feats and cultural accomplishments of these young men and women, but with any writing about punk bands, it's the minutia of the van rides and barely attended gigs that provide the most entertainment.

Guess I can give the book back now.