#Nonficnov Wrap-Up

I read a variety of nonfiction during November.  I noticed that I read differently. Slower, with more absorption.  I missed mixing it up, though.

Will December find me on a fiction bender, or will I alternate fiction and nonfiction once again?

Here is what I read this month. As usual, my reach exceeded my grasp and I wandered too willingly from the list I'd made. As a bookworm, shouldn't I be made of sterner stuff? Then there's that other bookworm part of me that says oh, nevermind.

Polish Your Poise with Madame Chic was at the top of my list. I adore Jennifer's previous books about her efforts to live like Madame Chic, her mentor from her foreign exchange student days in Paris, I avidly look forward to her weekly videos at The Daily Connoisseur on YouTube, and I admire her steely yet charming determination to get Americans to step back from the precipice of tacky and unrefined. Jennifer's tips are extensive, positive and helpful and she maintains that anyone can cultivate inner and outer poise. I hope so. I'm still struggling, but fighting the good fight.

When Ball Four was first released, it was scandalous. Knuckleball pitcher Jim Bouton had dared to tell all that went on behind the scenes in baseball; most of that is now common knowledge. For me, Ball Four was more like peering into a time capsule. The salaries were so low then, and the players were ordered to groom and dress to a certain standard when not in uniform. During the long season, the players were bored and played some pretty funny pranks on each other, but the stuff involving women dates badly and was rather distasteful to my 21st century sensibilities. Korean connection: Bouton and his wife adopted a little boy from Korea, and he has been with the family for a few months when the 1969 season commences. I loved those few glimpses of Kyong Jo/David.

I first got to know Kathleen Flinn's story in a subsequent book she wrote, Burnt Toast Makes You Sing Good. I enjoyed that memoir so much, I set out to find The Sharper Your Knife, The Less You Cry, her earlier memoir of attending Le Cordon Bleu Institute in Paris. The three-part course is what gives this book its structure, but it is also a memoir of her courtship and eventual marriage to Mike, who comes across as the perfect man. Chock-full of the recipes Flinn was required to prepare at Cordon Bleu, some of them staggeringly complicated. I have to admit that I scanned most of these lightly. Korean connection: Some of Flinn's Korean classmates do not come off well, but she met difficult personalities from many countries during this time. If you're a foodie, this one's for you.

I don't know what to call this book. An art book? A humor book? It's funny, fresh, original, brilliant -- Artist Terry Border takes ordinary household objects such as cheese curls, potato chips,  an ice cube, (my favorite of the "scenes" he arranged!) lemons, marshmallows, and using bits of wire, turns them into figures and imagines these strange, surrealistic lives for them. So much fun! Go find it.

I also read Laura Ingalls Wilder's On The Way Home,

Burnt Toast Makes You Sing Good, a family memoir by Kathleen Flinn. I loved the stories of her lively and slightly eccentric Midwestern family. I'm glad I read this book before The Sharper The Knife, The Less You Cry.

Pop Sonnets: Shakespearean Spins on Your Favorite Pop Songs by Erik Didriksen. I'faith, this tome was poetry, yet the lovely verse was inspired by yon Top XL, so that belongeth in the category of Pop Culture, which did fit firmly on mine shelves of nonfiction. I did love these verses and have proceeded apace to annoy anyone within earshot to listen and figure out which pop song inspired the sonnet. Verily, I know how to clear a chamber!

There was also that unfortunate biography of Patsy Cline. I'm still cringing.

So that was the Nonfiction November that was! Can we do it again next year?

The DNF Files: Patsy

I paused in my reading of Ball Four by Jim Bouton because I found a biography of Patsy Cline at the library. I am so very much in love with biographies and memoirs of country music stars, especially female country music stars, but this one...I had to give it up. My disillusionment is worthy of a country song in its own right.

Patsy: The Life and Times of Patsy Cline by Margaret Jones (1994) starts out strong and has some wonderful pictures, but as Patsy begins to pursue stardom, all the people and places Patsy encounters garner their fair share of print and the effect is that Patsy is crowded out of her own life story. If this weren't bad enough, the anecdotes about Patsy are repeated. As further evidence of sloppy writing and editing, descriptions of Patsy's mannerisms can be found in identical form on subsequent pages. The book may have improved as she became famous, but I felt bogged down and had to quit. It pains me that this turned into one of my DNFs for the year.

Patsy Cline was an artist and a perfectionist. She was passionate about her craft. She deserves a better biography than this. I wish she had lived long enough to write her own memoir.

Trying to get a handle on my bookworm heartbreak, I resumed Ball Four. Found out that I've been saying Jim Bouton's name wrong. I was saying it "Boo-tahwn" with a slight Frenchified nasal thing going on. Turns out that it's actually "Bough-ton". This information comes from an old-time baseball fan, so I trust him. Furthermore, he didn't laugh at my mispronunciation.  Baseball is all about making adjustments.

Bird, Bird, Bird -- Bird Is The Word

Getting ready for Game 1 of the World Series.  All 4 of my St. Louis shirts are clean.  I've got my satellite radio set to 865.  I've been following the St. Louis Cardinals on Twitter for a few weeks.  In the cupboard is a bag of pistachios for nervous snacking during those suspenseful innings.

Am I neglecting my reading with all these preparations?  You'd think so, but no -- of course not.  I'm reading Three Nights in August by Buzz Bissinger, which follows Tony La Russa and the Cardinals over a three-game series with the Chicago Cubs during the 2003 season.

Boston, it's not going to be 2004 all over again.  Just put it out of your minds.

Readathon: Hour 16-17

Oh, Readathon!  You're an adolescent now -- all gawky and opinionated and spotty.  You can drive. You've been to a few proms.

Pages read:  43

New ideas:  1.  I decided to do some research and see if I could catch some inter-league games in Kansas City while I'm home this summer.  No such luck.  The Cardinals/Royals games finish a week before I get there.

Snack:  Sour grapes, of course.

You Could Look It Up



I usually mark the beginning of the new baseball season with a rereading of "Casey At The Bat", but this year, while rereading "The Catbird Seat" in an attempt to sweeten a briefly poisonous mood, I stumbled onto another story by Thurber called "You Could Look It Up".  Because the story's plot revolves around baseball I immediately made the connection between the title and the last line of one of my favorite movies, Bull Durham. I'm not often that quick, so it's always nice to have those flashes in which I feel so brainy that I scare myself. 

"You Could Look It Up" is told in semi-literate style (think Ring Lardner, but much more active and interesting) by the trainer of an unnamed baseball team.  In an incident that happened 30 years before the story opens, the team in a slump, much to the disgust of their manager, "Squawks" Magrew.  He insults them bitterly every chance he gets.  One night in a bar in Columbus, Ohio, Magrew meets a midget named Pearl du Monville.  After assuring himself that Pearl is real and not a return of the d.t.s, Magrew bonds with him and they get drunk and laugh it up, exchanging increasingly deprecating remarks about the team. 

Pearl travels on with the team to St. Louis, and in a strange turn of events, briefly becomes a player. Pearl is catapulted (in more ways than one) into the history books.  The team's losing streak is snapped, and they go on to win the pennant.  The trainer/narrator can't exactly remember which pennant or which year, but he assures readers that we "could look it up."

This story, published almost exactly 71 years ago in The New Yorker at the beginning of the baseball season (April 5, 1941) is Thurber at his zany "The Night The Bed Fell" best.  One of the things I like best about Thurber is how he adds to the manic hilarity by having the narrator observe everyone's reaction in the midst of chaos.

"You Could Look It Up" might have fallen into obscurity, remembered by Thurber fans only, except that slightly over 10 years later, on August 19, 1951, Bill Veeck, (rhymes with "wreck") owner of the St. Louis Browns duplicated Magrew's stunt with professional performer Eddie Gaedel, (pictured above) who stood slightly more than three-and-a-half feet tall.  Questioned by fans and sportswriters alike, Veeck said he remembered the Thurber story, but claimed that he got the idea decades before that.

Because of the dialect, "You Could Look It Up" is best read aloud, so gather some baseball fans and read to them or find someone to do the honors.  Right up there with reading "Casey At The Bat" and listening to John Fogerty's "Centerfield", it's a great way to usher in a new season.

Readathon: Hour 16

What I'm reading:  The Onion Field.  This terrible crime happened on a Saturday night and Karl Hettinger had to be back on duty on Monday.  Insane.

Pages read:  32

Baseball:  The Cardinals are ahead at the top of the 9th.  Albert Pujols just hit a home run, making it 16-7.  I wish my Cardinals t-shirt with Pujols' name on the back wasn't in the washing machine right now.  I suppose Texas could still rally in the bottom of the 9th.  Baseball's a freaky game.

Readathon: Hour 12

Whatcha doin'?  Well,  I think I'm done with the eyelid check.  Woke up in the middle of this hour.

How do you feel?   A little dazed, but I've opened the curtains and the patio door.  The sunshine and cool breeze are bracing me.

Blogs visited:  3

Plans?  I'm going to see the rest of the Readathon through, reading and cheerleading the Ls, but I'm also going to be following the fortunes of my beloved St. Louis Cardinals.  World Series Game 3 is just now starting in Texas.

Lucky: Maris, Mantle and My Best Summer Ever - Wes Tooke

First things first: I hate that title. I hate it worse than I hate the fact that Will "The Thrill" Clark only played a tiny bit of a season with the St. Louis Cardinals then retired. Yeah, that title smells like it was slapped together by a committee. A committee who hadn’t read the book.

.

This is a juvenile novel (told in third person, so why is that first person pronoun in the title?) about a 12-year-old boy named Louis May who is lousy at baseball, but knows (and knows and knows) baseball statistics. Because of a lucky catch at a Yankees game in the summer of 1961 and his statistical inclinations, he gets a chance to be a bat boy for the Yankees.

All is not so rosy for Louis at home, though. Mom ran off to be a beatnik in Greenwich Village (in one scene, she takes him to The Gaslight where one of the performers is a very young Robert Zimmerman). Louis is having trouble getting adjusted to life with his new (unsympathetic) stepmother and new (bratty) stepbrother.

Louis’ story and his obligatory coming-of-age feels a little workmanlike and Tooke's eagerness to have everything turn out hunky-dory feels a little forced, but it’s all worth it for the great scenes at Yankee Stadium with Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle teaching Louis (nicknamed “Lucky” by Maris) about life and baseball. Tooke's writing really catches fire as Louis follows the exciting and unforgettable race to Babe Ruth’s record. A quick read and a wonderful way to celebrate the start of the new season.

National Poetry Month: Casey At The Bat

Love has its sonnets galore. War has its epics in heroic verse. Tragedy its sombre story in measured lines. Baseball has Casey at the Bat."

- Albert G. Spaulding, sporting goods magnate (who is also famous for saying "When you play baseball, use my balls.")

Casey At The Bat by Ernest Thayer is my all-time favorite poem. I find it a truly moving epic, complete with the flawed hero of the title and the Greek chorus of baseball spectators who are in evidence right from the first stanza ("a sickly silence fell upon the patrons of the game.") to the last ("There is no joy in Mudville...)

In spite of the unsatisfying outcome, there's a lovely sense of balance -- Flynn (the "lulu") and Blake (the "cake") do more than is expected ("Flynn let drive a single to the wonderment of all/And Blake, the much despis-ed tore the cover off the ball.") while "Mighty Casey" does less than expected.

What's the deal with Casey? Is he a tragic flawed hero who comes up against unconquerable dark forces (the pitcher, the umpire) or is he just an insufferable, arrogant tool? Has he been blinded by the fans' adoration or has his hubris been lurking since way back in Little League?

In one of our first glimpses of Casey, he rubs his hands with dirt then wipes them on his shirt. Is the dirt/shirt stuff mere showboating? Is it a way of getting into "the zone" sort of the way some players tug at their crotches or readjust their wristbands before stepping into the batter's box? Is it a ritual that he feels compelled to go through to appease the gods of baseball? Does he resemble Antaeus, who got his strength from the earth? Does he just want to get a good grip on the bat since batting gloves won't be invented until well into the next century?

Thayer doesn't let his readers/listeners know if Casey is facing a pitcher unfamiliar to him. This would be a key to his behavior. He took that first pitch, which turned out to be a strike. Perhaps he wanted to check out this guy's style. Perhaps he was trying to psych the guy out by projecting a wealth of confidence. There are those who feel that he should have been looking for the first pitch to be a fastball and swung at it, but I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Damn nice of him, too, to soothe the crowd and dissuade them from killing the umpire.

Pitch #2 is where things get a little iffy. Casey "ignores" that second pitch, which is right up the pipe, as noted by the eagle-eyed umpire. Does Casey think that the combination of being part of the visiting team, seeing the crowd's response to Casey, observing Casey's unafraid bearing and hearing the shouts of the volatile crowd is going to rattle the pitcher and make him lose his stuff? Perhaps Casey was gambling that the second pitch would be called a ball and he would have more time at the plate. If it's a gamble it doesn't pay off. One thing we must give Casey props for -- even though he's got his faults and foibles and a hatful of bad decisions, he never argues with the umpire. In fact, when his "maddened thousands" of fans yell again, Casey gives them such a big STFU look that they are properly awed into silence. He may go down swinging, but he's sure as hell not going to get tossed from the game.

Casey is the one that's rattled now. He hasn't had a chance to see all of the tricks in the pitcher's bag. His unrestrained body language says it all (his teeth are clenched in hate/he pounds with cruel violence his bat upon the plate). The pitcher might as well get comfortable and have himself a snack since he's gotten up into Casey's kitchen and Casey is preparing to whiff something up.

The lines leading up to Casey's being caught looking have a compressed feel -- the reader or listener can feel the tension: (And now the pitcher holds the ball and now he lets it go) Everyone in that long line all the way back to 1888 is holding his or her breath and then: "And now the air is shattered by the force of Casey's blow." Such a delicate little diss, as far as disses go, but so potent. Ernest Thayer really knew how to hurt a guy. But he was a fan, and fans hurt, too.

So what about Casey? I decided to ask 3 people (one for each strike) what they thought:

Person #1: Casey's a big prick! He went out there all cocky and wasted two strikes then whiffed. Serves him right. He's no hero -- he might be if he had swung at least once, but he didn't even try.

Person #2: Casey did right to take that first strike because it signalled confidence to the pitcher. Should he have swung at the second one? Maybe he was acting a little Hollywood.

Person #3: I think Casey's fans are responsible for his behavior. It's a very co-dependent relationship.

I feel such a mixture of frustration and affection for the guy. Damn, Casey. The table was set. That's the thing about a classic epic poem -- the table is set and the spectators roar and Casey gives Mudville joy then no joy in quick succession for all of eternity.