Book Nook (July 11, 2010)

Spending a lot of time indoors to avoid a recent string of miserably sultry days always means that my book consumption will climb.

The Kingdom of Ohio by Matthew Flaming started strong. I was intrigued by the premise that Toledo, Ohio began as a small independent kingdom founded by aristocrats fleeing the terrors of the French Revolution, and that as such the kingdom would eventually become a thorn in the side of the U.S. government, with the usual unfortunate results.

Then the tale turned into a mystery involving the possibility of time travel, a brief of the initial stages of construction of New York City's first subway, and the various purported intrigues and machinations of financier J.P. Morgan and fiercely competitive rival inventors Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla with the two primary protagonists, machinist Peter Force and heiress Cheri-Anne Toledo, to discover whether time travel was real or fiction.

Ultimately, this work of fiction was not clever or well written enough to entirely hold my interest, so I'm unable to give it a strong recommendation.

A much more delightful read was Backing Into Forward, a memoir by cartoonist, writer and classic Bronx-born, New York City left-wing intellectual Jules Feiffer. Unflinchingly candid, he tells true tales of his almost stereotypical Jewish mother, his long and frustrating struggles to achieve his goal of becoming a successful cartoonist, late life achievements as an author of books for children, and his ultimate joy about becoming a family man besotted by his children.

This book is also a capsule history of New York's thriving art and intellectual scene from the early 1950s through the 1990s. Feiffer loves to drop names and offers insightful anecdotes about folks such as Will Eisner, Jean Shepherd, George Plimpton, Arthur Miller, Robert Altman, Roy Cohn (a cousin), Woody Allen, Mike Nichols, Bayard Rustin, Stephen Sondheim, Alan Arkin, Elliott Gould, Jack Nicholson, Art Garfunkel and many other heavy hitters from those halcyon days when Greenwich Village was the place to live, work and play.

A less interesting semi-autobiography is the recent one by musician Clarence Clemons, co-authored with Don Reo, a former producer and writer of television shows. These two alternate chapters and a number of "legend" chapters printed on gray paper may or may not be true. Did Clarence and Norman Mailer truly spend long evenings together getting drunk and discussing metaphysics? Big Man: Real Life and Tall Tales is very cautious about what is revealed.

This book will not be mistaken for a Behind the Music episode where the ups and downs of life in the rock-n-roll fast lane are detailed. The sexual excesses of the 1970s and drug excesses of the 1980s by Clarence and presumably a few other members of the E Street Band (only the late Danny Federici is fingered as a bad boy) are glossed over, although Bruce Springsteen was reportedly a notorious womanizer in his early days.

The Big Man's response to the entirely unexpected and certainly heartbreaking firing of the entire band via telephone calls from Bruce Springsteen in 1989 is muted. Only about his many surgeries and physical challenges is he forthcoming.

Another American icon, Clint Eastwood, takes a bit of a beating in American Rebel: The Life of Clint Eastwood by Marc Eliot, who has also written books about Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart, Walt Disney, Bruce Springsteen, and Phil Ochs.

Eastwood comes off as a gifted and hard working actor and director with an egotistical streak a mile wide who generally refuses to work with any actor who might be better at his craft, a womanizer of epic proportions who does not know the meaning of the words monogamy or commitment, and a film producer who does not hesitate to toss faithful collaborators in the trash can when they become too uppity or opinionated for him to deal with. It's clearly good to be the king.

The only woman among the multitudes, including his indulgent first wife of more than 30 years, who is tough enough to hold her own against his mistreatment is petite former girlfriend Sondra Locke, who vigorously pursues several legal options in the wake of her being dumped and then duped into signing a fake deal as a producer with Warner Brothers so that Eastwood won't have to pony up a substantial financial settlement for their nearly fourteen years together in a personal and professional relationship. Way to go, Sondra!