As I finish up my 29th turn around the sun, I find myself getting a little set in my ways. Not that I’m becoming old or close-minded, but there are just some things I’ve become attached to. So, in honor of my birthday, I give you 29 things I can no longer live without.
My high school sweetheart
Quality running shoes
Zeke’s Coffee
Beloved cartoons or comics made into FREAKIN’ AWESOME movies!
The Lord of the Rings trilogy (the books, mind you, and ONLY the books)
The complete series DVDs of Stargate SG:1
Writing on a near daily basis
The Oxford English Dictionary
The Tour de France every July
My Teams (Terps Basketball and Football, the O’s, the Ravens, Manchester United, Fiorentina)
Like many Americans, I didn’t become aware of Lance Armstrong until he started racking up the Tour de France victories. Even as he blew through records, I wasn’t much into cycling. Things have changed. With Lance back from retirement and me getting ready to watch my third Tour de France, I thought it a good time to pick up this book. I didn’t expect much (it is a sports autobiography, after all), but was surprised with the honesty, balance, and just good storytelling that Armstrong and his co-author Sally Jenkins put together.
The more I’ve learned about Armstrong, the more it seems that he has always tried to live a straightforward life, and the book is no different. He doesn’t let his reader get very far before coming right out and telling them what’s in store. Usually, I’m not a fan of direct author-reader interaction, but here it works. “I’m sure you’d like to hear about how Lance Armstrong became a Great American and an Inspiration To Us All …. You want to hear about faith and mystery, and my miraculous comeback,” he says on the third page. He’s not far off, either, I’m sure. Many people probably approach this book looking for a lift, ignoring the gritty details of his illness. Armstrong won’t do that, however. He continues, “People die [from cancer]. And after you learn it, all other matters seem irrelevant. They just seem small.”
I was absolutely thrilled to find such a frank tone being set so early on. In the paragraphs I’ve excerpted, Armstrong eliminates the possibility of melodrama. There will be no sap or cheese involved in his narration. In telling about his pre-cancer years, even the successful bits, it doesn’t come off as a life you would want to live. There’s arrogance and anger, plus family issues galore which go a long way to pulling him off the pedestal of fame. A cynic would argue that this an authorial trick, setting up a Cinderella scenario, but that’s wrong. The reader has to understand his personality before the illness in order to appreciate the depth of change it inflicted on his life. That said, the narration has a slightly resigned air, as though he would rather not dwell on that time in his life. Besides, if you want rags to riches, it doesn’t get much more ragged than cancer.
Ultimately this book is about cancer, what it did to his life, and what he had to do to survive. The chapters in which Armstrong talks about the disease, his treatments, and the effects are unflinching in their honesty. There were parts which I actually had trouble reading, not because of graphic details (which are virtually absent), but because of the empathy I felt. The language employed is simple, but manages to communicate the pain and sheer hell of living with cancer. I had no idea just how widespread the disease was in Armstrong. It wasn’t just his testicle; it spread to his his lungs and brain with a frightening rapidity. Likewise, I was completely clueless on the level of toxicity employed in chemotherapy. The doctors are poisoning the patient with some of the most vile substances around in a desperate attempt at salvation. Some of the chemo parts were difficult to read, but they helped me develop an appropriate respect for anyone forced to undergo such treatment. There are no euphemisms employed here, only the bare truth. That includes, mind you, the occasional smiles and human connections which foster strength and endurance. The lone fact that such desolate ground was covered without a whiff of hyperbole or sensationalism makes this a book worth your time.
It’s not all doom and gloom. He does live, and he does win. Indeed, once the cancer goes into remission and he begins to ride, the narration becomes some of the best sports writing I’ve ever read. The comeback was not easy, either emotionally or physically, but it did happen and is a great story in and of itself. In the telling, Armstrong provides the reader with a primer on the world of competitive cycling. If you’ve ever watched any bike races, you already know more than you think. The politics of it, however, were entirely new to me, as were the dynamics of races and racers, with his discussion of the peleton something I found especially enlightening. The coverage of the Tour itself was impressive in that the book reduces a three week race to a manageable chapter without losing anything in the process. There were times the writing had me all but standing in my chair, cheering him to the finish line like it was a live race.
A topic which is only tangentially discussed is performance enhancers in cycling. Nevertheless, after reading this book I am more convinced than ever that dopers are stone cold idiots. I am also certain that Armstrong has never been among their ranks. When I consider the frequency and intensity with which the drug control organizations test riders, and Lance in particular, it leaves me incredulous that anyone would think they could go undetected. If the same level of scrutiny were employed in all sports, I don’t think baseball would have the issues that it does. As for Armstrong, the question of his drug use is answered in my mind. After all the races, after all the wins, there is no question in that had he been doping, they would have caught him.
In the end, I found the book both an enthralling read and an educational one as well. It is a snapshot of Armstrong at that point in his life, the story of how he got there. There are things which have happened since, especially his divorce from wife Kristin, who he speaks of tenderly in the book, which leave me with questions. But in a sense, that makes me like the guy and his book all the more. He’s an imperfect hero who manages to do extraordinary things, and if that’s not an American storyline, I don’t know what is.
On a side note, the new Nike/Livestrong commercial is out and echoes everything that makes the book great.
I picked up this book because I’m a sucker for two things (that I’m going to mention anyway). One, I’m an unreformed comic book kid and, two, I love alternate points of view. I have always been attracted to things which treat the status-quo from a slightly different angle. In the end though, I am left feeling conflicted. On the one hand, it was a fun read, but on the other hand I think it fell well short of its potential.
What we have here is essentially a prose comic book, with the narration alternating between the villain and one of the heroes. The interesting bit, of course, is that Grossman is working with entirely new characters. It’s not as though he was looking at a series and funneling it into a novel, which has been done without success so far as I’ve seen. Instead, he presents an Earth seemingly bursting with super-powered humans, aliens, and robots. There is a celebrity culture about many of them, and one even has an agent. It’s almost treated like a career choice, as several of the heroes are powered by chemical or mechanical implants. It’s a total geek scenario to imagine that anyone of of us could manufacture our own origin story and become a superpowered version of ourselves, but entertaining nonetheless (I would be Gravitron, by the way, master of the unseen force of attraction).
The villain, one Doctor Impossible, is much more interesting as a narrator than Fatale, the cyborg hero. He has a slightly ironic, tongue-in-cheek voice when he ruminates over the course of his life. He frequently discusses the futility of being a super-villain, but almost approaches it with a ‘it’s a dirty job, but someone’s got to do it’ attitude. He remembers fondly some of his best schemes which just didn’t come off, everything from time travel to a giant city-smashing robot (robots are kind of his thing). It’s during these meditations, however, that I think Grossman really missed an opportunity to do something great. Time and again, as Impossible starts to get metaphysical, he pulls up just short of a meaningful conclusion. Rather than using the character as a vehicle for commentary on heroism, or comic books for that matter, Grossman keeps the discussion right at surface level. I was constantly disappointed by this too, because I always felt the trajectory of the Doctor’s thoughts were headed somewhere profound. Instead, they always seemed to crash into a punchline. While I suppose that could be reflective of his constant failure to take over the world, I think it ended up just short changing the character.
Fatale, the book’s other narrator, did little for me other than move the plot forward. I was pleasantly surprised at first that Grossman picked a less than traditional hero-type to contrast with a pretty standard evil genius, but the farther I read the more disenchanted I was with the decision. Fatale was severely underdeveloped as a character. By her own admission she is uncomfortable in her own skin and so, as a reader, I simply couldn’t settle down into her narration the way I did with Doctor Impossible. There are several strands of her story which never really go anywhere. When the reader meets her, she’s a B or C list hero who has been called up to join the elite Champions super group. How she landed on the Champions’ radar is never fully explained, nor do we get any conclusion on a budding romance between her and the character Blackwolf. Likewise, there are questions about her origin which are raised and have the potential to go interesting places, but lose steam by the end of the novel. As the secondary narrator, she is thrown into immediate juxtaposition with Doctor Impossible, yet there is little to no conflict between the two in the plot. I would think that if you are going to divide a novel’s story between two tellers of opposing persuasion, there should be some sort of showdown in the story to establish final dominance. Otherwise, one narrator is suborned to the other by virtue of who gets the final chapter, which is Doctor Impossible in this case.
My biggest cognitive conflict came not from the narrators, but the superheroes which surrounded them. I loved the characters Grossman creates, even though some of their powers were a little vague. The shadowy, yet debonair Mister Mystic, the magical fairy-warrior Elphin, and the beastly Feral all add just the right diversity and comic book appeal. At the same time, there were characters so transparent it seemed lazy. The Champions are pretty clearly the Justice League. Blackwolf, a normal human with great athletic ability and untold wealth, ought to be living in Gotham City. Meanwhile, CoreFire, Doctor Impossible’s completely indestructible nemesis, is Superman with blond hair. He even has heat vision and a reporter girlfriend. At first I thought the rampant similarities were leading to some sort of satire or commentary, but then the story kept pushing on, full of pale shadows of the DC universe.
One of my favorite movies of the last few years was The Incredibles. It presents an alternative comic book world which is familiar enough to permit easy entry to the outsider, but it is also creatively independent. The characters, though there is precedent for their powers, are developed into their identities. Moreover, it contains genre-related introspection which arrives at a definable conclusion. None of that can be said of Soon I Will Be Invincible. It shows great promise in all those avenues, and was truly fun read much of the time, making me laugh and keeping me hooked in the story often enough. At the end of the day, though, I’ve seen this before and I’ve seen it done better. According to a post made on his Goodreads page, Grossman is working on a sequel. I sincerely hope he develops these characters beyond the superficial and takes them as far as they seem capable of going.
Charm City Craft Mafia’s annual handmade art market is this Saturday from 10 to 5 at St. John’s Church on Saint Paul Street. The place will be packed with local artists like Spaghetti Kiss, Broken Plate Pendant Company, Greenstar Studio, Bowerbox Press, Pink Kiss Pottery and many more. If you’re new to the arts and crafts scene, this is the show to check out. We went last year and had a blast. You can pick up totally cool presents for those summer birthdays, or something so hip it’ll make your friends stupid with envy. Besides, seeing this much talent up close will make you proud to live in Baltimore, and these businesses need our patronage now more than ever. Think of it as a cultural farmer’s market.
At first blush, Bill Bryson wouldn’t be my go to Shakespearean scholar. Then again, as Shakespeare himself seemed to prove, good writing is good writing, no matter where or how it appears. In Shakespeare: The World as Stage, Bryson presents a compact and persuasive biography of our language’s most famous and elusive writer.
Aye, and there’s the rub with any Shakespeare biography. Everyone thinks they know the Bard, but they really only know what he wrote, not who he is. Consider what Bryson points out in his first chapter, that we only have six copies of Shakespeare’s signature. Six! We’re talking about one of the greatest English writers ever and there are only a half dozen instances of his name written in his own hand. That strikes me as a tremendously small thing. In fact, for a man who made his living through words, there is remarkably little of his own writing which has survived the four centuries since his death. That scarcity sums up what we know of his life as well. As famous as he has become, even as famous as he was at the time, we really and truly “know” nothing. The space that leaves for speculation, however, makes for some fantastic stories.
Chapter Two, “The Early Years,” covers the religious/political turmoil which defined England in the late 16th century. There is also a recounting of John Shakespeare (Will’s father), the town of Stratford, and the confusion surrounding Shakespeare’s marriage to Anne Hathaway. Chapter Three, “The Lost Years,” tackles the gaping period of 1585-1592, during which Shakespeare drops off the map. Rather than try and pin him down through a series of intellectual leaps, however, Bryson basically divides the section in two. In the first half he describes what it would have been like to live in London–where we know Will ends up–and in the second half he lightly touches on some of the theories surrounding Shakespeare’s whereabouts. There is a bit of intrigue here, as stories involving Catholic spies and possible aliases are thrown about. It is brought to an end, though, where Will’s life picks up (at least as far as the evidence is concerned): in London, just after the defeat of the Spanish Armada.
We know more about Shakespeare’s working, adult life than any other period, largely because we finally know where he was. There are records of him in parish registries, on contracts and cast list, and even in court cases. That these things exist at all is mostly due to the Elizabethan police state, which kept copious amounts of paperwork on its own citizens. Through these middle chapters, Bryson is still circling around the Bard, talking as much about the general theatrical life of Renaissance London as anything else. All the same, we start to feel a little closer to Shakespeare the man knowing for sure some of the places he lived and worked.
The plays offer probably the best avenue for getting to know their writer, and Bryson returns to them again and again as he charts Will’s biography. Bryson doesn’t enter into much critical analysis when it comes to the works, although there is no doubt that he is a stalwart Shakespearean defender. When discussing the fact that many Renaissance plays were copied from earlier source material, he says “What Shakespeare did, of course, was to take pedestrian pieces of work and endow them with distinction and, very often, greatness. Before he reworked it Othello was insipid melodrama.” He stops short, however, of treating the First Folio as gospel truth. In the same chapter as the quote above, Bryson points out some instances of Shakespeare either being lazy or getting things flat wrong: “He has Egyptians playing billiards and introduces the clock to Caesar’s Rome 1,400 years before the first mechanical tick was heard there.”
In the final chapter, “Claimants,” Bryson addresses the question of Shakespeare’s authorship and identity. He covers a whole slew of theories which maintain that William Shakespeare, the man born in 1564 in Stratford-Upon-Avon, did not write the plays attributed to him. The most entertaining by far (and the earliest, according to Bryson) was put forth by Delia Bacon. For whatever reason this Connecticut spinster became convinced of two things. One, that she was related to the English philosopher Francis Bacon, and two, that Francis Bacon was actually Shakespeare. The book which resulted from her research and theories was “vast, unreadable, and odd in almost every way. For one thing, not once in its almost 675 densely printed pages did it actually mention Francis Bacon.” Bryson goes on to poke holes in other anti-Stratfordian theories which have been tossed out over the years, maintaining that each one “involves manipulative scholarships or sweeping misstatements of fact.”
While it is a slim volume, it is also a convincing one. I have never been one to care much about who Shakespeare may have been, or how he came by the prodigious knowledge apparently needed to write his plays. In the end, even if we were to find the ultimate answer tomorrow, it wouldn’t change the words on the page. Bryson seems cognizant of this, but also wants his readers to believe, as he does, that Shakespeare did exist and was undoubtedly a genius. Shakespeare: The World as Stage is a great primer on the life and times of England’s favorite literary son from a great American writer. It has the easy, entertaining style characteristic of a Bill Bryson book, and, at only 196 pages, leaves me wondering what longer biographies could possibly add.
