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 Red Lobster, White Trash and the Blue Lagoon

Joe Queenan
Hyperion Press

Here's the premise: Joe Queenan, film, television and book reviewer, has, despite his profession, kept his consumption of popular culture to a minimum. He is part of, what he considers, the cultural elite. That means, no Brady Bunch, no Billy Joel, no Stephen King, no Sizzler, and surely no, "The Osbournes". He decides, in the service of journalism, to "throw off the mask of the urbane sophisticate and plunge headfirst into the culture of the masses." "Red Lobster, White Trash and the Blue Lagoon," is Queenan's report on his odyssey into the world of the hoi polloi.

Queenan is a gifted writer who is at his most amusing when skewering the awful, the stupid or the merely mediocre as seen through the electron microscope of his jaundiced eye. His journey into schlock begins with catching a matinee of the abysmal, yet long-running Broadway behemoth "Cats". "To give you an idea of how bad 'Cats' is, think of a musical where you're actually glad to hear 'Memory' reprised a third time because all the other songs are so awful." During his bottom-feeding along the great white way he subjects himself to three separate performances of "Victor Victoria". The first stars Julie Andrews, the next features a macabre turn by Liza Minnelli in the title role, and the last — because Queenan can't get enough — is a denouement performance with Raquel Welch incongruously playing the androgynous lead role. "Watching these postmenopausal show-offs executing kicks designed for Bebe Newirth... made my stomach turn. It was like watching your mom vamp it up on top of the piano."

Cannibalized Hollywood on Broadway was only the beginning for Queenan in his 18-month-long investigation of tripe. There was pop music. About a John Tesh concert he says, "With his shopworn, lounge-lizard stage gestures, eviscerated salsa compositions, and studied reveries, Tesh was a human Cuisinart of every hack musical stunt, effecting a strange synthesis of various mongrel styles where half the songs sounded like generic background music for promotional videos. (Dayton, Ohio — On the Move!) and the other half of the songs sounded like retreads of Mason Williams' sixties hit 'Classical Gas'."

Meanwhile, on the literary front, he read the lesser classics ranging from "Men are from Mars, Women Are from Venus," to the works of Tom Clancy to "The Bridges of Madison County," He slogged through a notable litany of supermarket selections during his vigil, all of which he finds atrocious. He takes particular glee in lancing the boil that is Joan Collins' erstwhile literary work. "Collins is a thrillingly inept writer who in this case has crafted a semiautobiographical potboiler about a slutty TV star whose life is ruined by the media. Chockablock with ludicrous little Gallicisms ('moi aussi' 'viola' 'malheureusement' 'cherie') that give Collins a chance to show off her sixth-grade French, the novel is not even vaguely readable."

Of course, Queenan needed some sustenance to keep up his stamina on this seemingly endless trek through the muck. This is where the Red Lobster comes in. While he may founder in other parts of the book where he strains to keep up his acerbic viewpoint, he is laugh-out-loud funny when reviewing restaurants.

"The Red Lobster was a consummate bad experience. It wasn't just the Huey Lewis & the News ambience, it wasn't just the absence of mozzarella sticks from the menu that day, it wasn't just the party of twenty-nine seated next to us complaining about the service, it wasn't just the Turtles singing 'Happy Together,' overhead, it wasn't just the absence of root beer from the menu that day, it wasn't just the titular head of the party of twenty-nine incessantly referring to different members of his entourage as 'landlubber,' and it wasn't even the way those social-climbing townies gave my son and me the once-over as we came through the door. No it was definitely the food. The food tasted like baked, microwaved reheated, overcooked, deep-fried loin of grease. Admiral's Feast, my ass."

After eating the most tasteless meals, watching the lamest musicals, undulating to the sophomoric sounds at a Kenny G. concert and learning to despise Adam Sandler films, all described with a delightful tone of horror, Queenan takes an unfortunate turn. Perhaps he had a word count to meet as part of his book contract and needed to pad. This is the only excuse for his making the editorial decision to use the last third of the book as a sort of "Days of Wine and Roses" addict's story. Here he admits, unconvincingly that he has so succumbed to the lure of crap that even when visiting Lourdes, France he can't shake the need to watch subtitled "Banacek" reruns on TV. Of course, if he does write as many articles for Movieline magazine as he claims, it may be true that mediocrity already had enough of a toe-hold in his soul that all he needed was one more sip of the bad brew before it overwhelmed him and pulled him into the gurgling abyss.

At this point in the tale, because now he can't seem to help himself, he soldiers on to Las Vegas, Nevada, to view the alarming spectacle of David Cassidy in EFX. Then, it's off to Branson, Missouri for a gag-fest at the Osmonds' theater. In the end, he makes one last pilgrimage to get a bit of the hair of the dog that originally bit him by seeing "Cats" one last time. "'Cats' really was the worst thing on the entire planet. Which, considering the planet's overall record in this area, was quite a statement. This was suffering, and I didn't want to suffer anymore. What's more I didn't have to suffer anymore."

By the time Queenan has hit bottom, the jokes at the expense of those who make a success in the arts without actual taste or talent, had worn thin. Queenan will presumably spend the remainder of his life watching films, reading literature and listening to music that have high-falutin redeeming qualities — and only eating in restaurants that are eminently rated in Zagat's Guide. While Queenan waxes poetic in Movieline and worries about whether or not he is becoming Andy Rooney, the rest of us can get back to the guilty pleasures of wolfing down hamburgers and zoning out to John Grisham adaptations on cable. "Red Lobster, White Trash and the Blue Lagoon," is a chiefly enjoyable and clever book that went on a bit too long.

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Appeared in "Boy, are my arms tired!" January 2003 © Suzanne Rush 2003

The Beauty Battle

Wendy Lewis
Laurel Glen

Unless you have a trust fund set up specifically to pay for cosmetic treatments beginning in middle age, "The Beauty Battle," is not for you. Wendy Lewis has written a book, which is more of an homage to modern cosmetic surgical and pseudo-medical treatments for aging than it is a practical look at things most women can do to prolong youth. While you might read and agree with the phrases: "Liposuction is an effective way to remove unsightly bulges," or, "Botulinum toxin has become the cornerstone of any anti-aging program for the face," you would do well to remember that these procedures costs hundreds or thousands of dollars.

Lewis has provided a laundry list of anti-aging treatments, and gives basic insights into how the procedures are done and what the after-effects might be. Did you know that after a laser facial resurfacing, "the skin takes several weeks, up to three months to return to normal?" How about this information about the results of successful vertical banded gastroplasty (surgically creating a small pouch in the upper stomach for weight loss): Overeating will result in pain or vomiting and will stretch the pouch. Only half of patients lose at least 50 percent of their excess weight."

There is a section on taking care of one's hair. Proper coloring and cutting is stressed, and as always, a surgical alternative to hair loss is suggested. There is a section on dieting and proper low-calorie eating for keeping slim, which precedes the, much longer, section on lipoplasty and body lifts.

This book seems designed to get women into a doctor's office to do something, anything really, about the problem of looking old. There is no talk of acceptance of the natural aging process. Short shrift is given to the state of a woman's physical health and mental health is never mentioned. This book is intent on getting women to cut, shape and inject their way to happiness.

If you have enough money and leisure time to recuperate from the numerous procedures outlined in this book, perhaps you will find it helpful. (Look what modern cosmetic surgery did for Joan Rivers.) If you are interested in information on natural methods to retard aging, information on prevention, a good facial cream recommendation, or just a book that will make you feel better about who you are inevitably becoming, "The Beauty Battle," is not the one.

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Appeared in "Boy, are my arms tired!" March 2003 © Suzanne Rush 2003

Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo

By Hayden Herrera
Harper & Row, Perennial Publishers

Salma Hayak fought, and won, a long battle to bring the life of Mexican painter Frida Kahlo to the screen. That appealing bio-pic was finally released this past autumn. The Kahlo story was a property that had been coveted, with good reason, by other actresses like J-Lo and Madonna. One hopes that their concurrently released films — a remake of "Swept Away" (Madonna) and a remake of "Cinderella," called "Maid in Manhattan" (J-Lo) — will console them. If not, perhaps another wedding or two will.

The book on which this adaptation of Kahlo's life is based, "Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo," was first published in 1983. In an era epitomized by glittering shoulder pads and the glorification of greed, this woman's life, typified an earthier drama — one which combined both shimmering fame and endless personal pain — and it became something of an alternative touchstone for Ô80s feminists and artists alike. In light of this recent film version, which glosses over much of the historical misery with vibrant costumes and aggressively-thespian monologues, it is a fine time to take another look at Hayden Herrera's bestseller to get a sense of what Frida's life might really have been like.

Frida Kahlo was born in Mexico after the turn of the last century to a German-Jewish father, and a Mexican mother. She was a child of revolutionary Mexico, and this fact would always color her politics and personal life. Kahlo began prep school at a time when girls were not encouraged to seek higher education. She was whip-smart, spunky, talented and uninhibited in her display of these unfeminine characteristics. As a teenager, she had decided to pursue a career in medicine, when an almost unfathomable accident changed the course she had set. Riding through Mexico City one afternoon, the bus she was on collided with another and she was impaled by a steel pole. It entered her side and exited through her vagina. Vertebras were crushed, her leg and foot were mangled and her pelvis was broken.

This accident would inform, if not define the rest of her life. Relegated to body casts for the next couple of years, she began painting. Though necessity dictated that she needed to earn a living to help her family and pay medical bills, she discovered, once out of bed, that she was not suited to the menial pursuits for which she was trained. So, she took her paintings to Diego Rivera, the preeminent Mexican painter (and Communist) of his era — and a man she had long admired — and asked his opinion about her talent. This was the second defining act of her life, or, as she describes it, "her second accident". For this meeting would begin a stormy, life-long love affair with this famous man, old enough to be her father.

In time, Kahlo married the womanizing artist and began a life as wife and caretaker to Rivera. She embraced his politics, his art, his lifestyle and his corpulent torso with her typical gusto. Rivera, the flamboyant fellow traveler and muralist favored painting public art, because he believed that art was for "the people" and should be displayed for the many in communal spaces, rather than shown to the few in elitist galleries. His works, extensively described in the book, are filled with depictions of triumphant workers and vividly glorify the Mexican peasantry. As the political climate swung from left to right in Mexico, Rivera lost his public commissions. This prompted an expeditious trip, with Frida in tow, to the temporarily more politically lax, United States, to paint a series of murals in San Francisco, Detroit and New York. His work at the newly built Rockefeller Center and subsequent firing by Nelson Rockefeller for adding Lenin to a mural, are legendary.

Becoming the wife of a famous man brought Kahlo much acclaim. As a couple, they were internationally feted by the leading social, artistic and political figures of the 1930s-40s. Yet Rivera's non-stop work schedule and pathological need to have sex with countless other women, left ambitious Frida with plenty of time to pursue her own artistic visions. Her painting began in earnest during her stay in the US.

It was then, after a disastrously failed pregnancy, that she began to develop the surrealistic style for which she would be remembered. Her highly personal work consisted mostly of self-portraits, which externalized her mental and physical pain. She is at the center of many of her works, displaying wounds and dripping blood. Author Herrera, describes and dissects these paintings in frustratingly minute detail throughout the book. While his interpretations may lend some insight into the motivations of the artist, the length of these academic asides bogs down the linear narrative in a manner that makes one long to skip on to the next interesting incident.

While her personal fame increased with the acclaim resulting from her work, it did so in direct proportion to the dissolution of her body and marriage. When she wasn't in the hospital or recovering from one of her numerous operations, Kahlo managed to travel to the US and Europe on her own, to show and sell her paintings. That she managed to travel so frequently, much less paint, when she was so tortured is remarkable. While Herrera describes her copious consumption of alcohol, he never seems to make the connection between that and her physical suffering.

If she found surcease from pain in booze, she also found it in the company of other women. If Rivera could paint, so could she. If Rivera could be a dedicated communist, so would she be. If Rivera could sleep with other women — including her sister — she would, too. (She also slept with other men; most famously Leon Trotsky when he came to Mexico seeking political asylum.) Anything Rivera could do, Kahlo could do, if not better, at least limpingly enough to compete.

It is understandable that so many famous women have vied to portray her life. Kahlo makes sense as an icon for the 20th century woman with her amalgam of male and female characteristics. In her pursuit of masculine activities, Kahlo was ahead of her time. In her slavish devotion to her philandering husband, she was a product of her era and gender. In her triumph over adversity, she is the perfect subject for drama.

After reading the book, one wonders if a female author would have recounted this life story differently. Certainly, the movie, the making of which was spearheaded by two women, lends a theatrical gloss to Kahlo's tribulations and does not contribute any significant new insights. In this Hollywood-Hayak version, we are shown that Kahlo may have spent four decades in pain, yet the suffering remains secondary to the victory of her life as epitomized by fame, fortune and good looks. In Herrera's book, however, we are shown that Kahlo's pain was the wellspring of everything she created as an artist and a woman. She did not ignore her pain to power through, she used her pain to create sympathy, love and art. In the end, his version remains the more psychologically viable of the two.
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Appeared in "Boy, are my arms tired!" November 2002 © Suzanne Rush 2003

Refugees from Hollywood

Jean Rouverol
University of New Mexico Press

If the House un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) had known that those filmmakers they blacklisted in the 1950s spent the majority of their time worrying about au pairs, ponies for their kids and other domestic concerns, they would have ended the political persecution long before they did. In her endearing book, "Refugees from Hollywood," Jean Rouverol gives us an insider's look at the lives of several families of expatriate screenwriters who, like she and her husband, Hugo Butler, fled the USA for Mexico, rather than go to jail for their varying associations with the Communist party.

In Rouverol's memoir, the stresses of writing under pseudonyms and making ends meet in a foreign country take a back seat to folksy remembrances of picnics, day trips and the foibles of her six children. From her perspective, finding good help was far more vital than joining a good study group. She is a mother first, and an irresolute dissident second

The first section of her memoir briefly details the Butler's backgrounds, writing careers and escape from Hollywood in 1950 with fellow screenwriter Dalton Trumbo and his family. As she tells the tale, she and her husband joined the Communist party because of their beliefs, but stayed mainly because of the pleasant, attendant social whirl.

The remaining bulk of the book examines the day-to-day intricacies of raising their family during a decade-long stretch in Mexico City. It is in this section that she hits her stride as a parent and a writer. She intersperses memories of childbirth, adolescent first dates and the Butler's extended-family friendships with other political refugees, with short tales about the difficulties of making money and staying ahead of the law.

Rouverol's memory is excellent when it comes to the exotic menus devised by their live-in maid, Ramona, but sloppier when it comes to vital moments in HUAC history. This is not necessarily a fault. Most people remember the incidents that made them happy and block the tragedies. She is remarkably honest about these lapses.

Though one gets the sense that there are stresses on this family not felt by their "Happy Days" counterparts living state-side, in the end, this book reads more like a cozy Little House Behind the Iron Curtain than it does a tale of difficult exile. One can tell by her emphasis on domesticity that she must have created a haven for her children — one where they rarely felt the pain of their banishment. Further, Rouverol leaves one with the feeling that despite the difficulties, these were the happiest years of her life.
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Appeared in "Boy, are my arms tired!" November 2002 © Suzanne Rush 2003

The Giant's House

By Elizabeth McCraken
The Dial Press

The "other" is as hidden in some people as it is obvious in others. Yet, however cloaked by normalcy — regular hours, habits of cleanliness or complacency — otherness will, like fowl of any kind, flock to its mate. This fundamental principle is the keystone of Elizabeth McCraken's peculiar love story, "The Giant's House."

Peggy Cort is a 1950s Cape Cod librarian who takes an interest in James Carlson Sweatt, a boy who suffers from a rare disease, which causes gigantism. By age 12, he is six feet tall. By the novel's end he is nineteen and over eight feet tall. Peggy is, in the grand, literary tradition of librarians, a spinster. She has been passed over by love. Not because, like James, she is misshapen or unattractive, but because by some gift of mind she is too contemplative, too self-absorbed or self-aware to surrender herself to the compromises necessary to yield adult union. "The rest of the world fell in love, and the physics baffled me. I could see it happen — God knows, all around, I saw the falling couples — but I did not understand the emotional gravity that allowed their descent," she admits.

At first, she merely befriends this gargantuan boy, who stirs her cauldron of simmering emotions her in some inexplicable way. She suggests books, visits him when he is ill with excruciating growing pains, and convinces herself she is just nurturing his mind. However, as the years pass, and James flowers into full adolescence, she begins to occupy a more significant place in his life. By now, she has insinuated herself into every aspect of his existence.

"Some days I wondered why James tolerated me, a comparatively old woman of thirty-one, when he had those teenagers. Other days I knew why: he felt, if not older than the kids, at least significantly different. Maybe those days — the days he seemed sadder, the days he'd talk so long I wouldn't leave for hours — were the times he remembered that he was going to die sooner than they were."

Peggy watches with some jealousy as he struggles through his first crush. Yet, it is to her that he turns, as the clock ticks on his short life, for romance. Though she has denied this aspect of her feelings for James, when he finally makes his bumbling attempt to woo her, she is as just unable to couple with him, as she has been to join with a peer. When he proposes to her on a trip to New York, where he is the featured act in a traveling circus, she says: "Something in my heart turned, like the latch in the catch of the adjoining door, not open but ready."

Despite McCraken's poetic language and piercing insights, this story — essentially about love and love lost — feels chilly to its core. While emotional stasis may be Peggy's truth, the novel may not appeal to those who prefer a more agreeable character trajectory. Nevertheless, for others, "The Giant's House," will touch that soft place behind the ice where we harbor the circus freak within.

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Appeared in "Boy, are my arms tired!" November 2002 © Suzanne Rush 2003

White Teeth

Zadie Smith
Vintage International (Random House)

Zadie Smith's debut novel, "White Teeth," is an enlightened examination of three cultures over the course of three generations. It is a story of science vs. religion. It is a depiction of the battles between men and women; the young and the old. It is a glimpse at shadowy traditions illuminated by the brilliant white light of the 21st century. Mostly, it is a wildly clever and funny book.

"White Teeth", follows the life of Archie, a middling-kind-of-working-class man in London. He is the type of person who decides all of life's great questions by flipping a coin. But despite his white-bread normality he marries a Jamaican woman, sires a mixed-race daughter, Irie, during his late middle-age and is best friends with Samad, a Pakistani would-be philosopher.

Samad is everything Archie is not. He is complicated, driven, religious, educated. Yet, there are just as many similarities that bind them in their common exasperation as divide them culturally. Samad is a lowly waiter, has had his children during late life, and like Archie, squanders the greater part of his leisure time at a local pub.

Clara, Archie's wife, who has escaped the strictures of her Jehovah's Witness past, and Alsana, betrothed to Samad as a child, both married to older men, forge a friendship of their own. Their children, Irie and Samad's twins, Magid and Millat, represent the third generation and the one on which the plot pivots.

The outside world beckons the women and children with the same vigor that the past holds Samad. Samad, like an old man, laments the loss of traditions that immigrants have always encountered in new countries. In this regard, he views his boys' English assimilationist tendencies as dangerous. So, he devises a means to save one of them (all he can afford). Irie and Alsana try to save the other. What ensues is both tragic and hilarious.

Smith is a fine storyteller. She captures her characters through the use of dead-on dialogue ("innit?), witty asides and recounting honest foibles in a ruthless-but-kind fashion. Though one suspects that Irie may be her fictional alter ego, the lack of resentment towards the parental figures in the book, and the light touch that typifies her prose, elevates this book from the many depressing confessional first-novels churned out in graduate writing programs each year. Come to think of it, "White Teeth" stands on its own merits alongside any novel.

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Appeared in "Boy, are my arms tired!" June 2002 © Suzanne Rush 2003

Them
Adventures with Extremists

By Jon Ronson
Simon & Schuster

British journalist and documentary filmmaker, Jon Ronson says, "Them," "began life as a series of profiles of extremist leaders, but it quickly became something stranger." Spending time with "those people who had been described as the political and religious monsters of the Western world Ð Islamic fundamentalists, neo-Nazis, etc.," Ronson discovered that for all their differences they held one belief in common: "that a tiny elite rules the world from a secret room."

In "Them," Ronson effectively employs the same method used by fellow Brit filmmaker, Nick Broomfield in "Kurt and Courtney," whereby the interviewer allows the absurdities of the interviewees and situations to speak for themselves with no editorial assistance from a literary laugh track. He spends time with such notables as the survivors of Ruby Ridge; David Icke, who believes that the modern "illuminati" who rule the world descend from an intergalactic race of giant lizards; and underground journalist Big Jim Tucker, who claims to know the location of the next meeting of these shadowy world rulers.

To that end, Ronson accompanies Tucker to Portugal to infiltrate this alleged meeting of the Bilderburg Group, as they are known. In one of the most amusing and chilling chapters of the book, Ronson relates how he was followed, spied upon and intimidated after the two attempt to enter the hotel where the meeting is scheduled. They watch from the gate as the guests, including, David Rockefeller, Umberto Agnelli of Fiat, Vernon Jordan, Henry Kissinger and James Wolfensohn, president of the World Bank, arrive. The more he attempts to dispel the myth of Bilderburg, the more Ronson becomes convinced that there is merit to the story.

In the final chapter, Ronson and three conspiracy theorists infiltrate the exclusive Northern California campground, Bohemian Grove. Here, Ronson notices that the guest list includes Dick Cheney, and two of the speakers scheduled to appear that week are Henry Kissinger (again) and John Major. While inside the notorious Russian River enclave they witness the "Cremation of Care" ceremony, where a huge effigy of an owl presides over the ritualistic burning of a symbolic human body. Afterwards, though there are a conspicuous number of bathrooms, the Bohemians all piss on the ground in some kind of ceremonial culmination.

The anecdotes are hilarious and disturbing throughout the book. In "Them," Ronson seems to have, somewhat innocently, discovered a truth that lies at the foundation of the belief systems of conspiracy theorists, extremists of all stripes and a surprising number of normal, middle-class people: it's us against, "Them." Whoever they are.

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Appeared in "Boy, are my arms tired!" January 2002 © Suzanne Rush 2003

Mad in America
Bad Science, Bad Medicine and the
Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill

By Robert Whitaker
Perseus Publishing

Everything the general public believes about the causes and remedies for mental illness — specifically schizophrenia — is based on shoddy science and is likely false. That is the message of noted science journalist and author Robert Whitaker, in his book, "Mad in America; Bad Science, Bad Medicine and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill."

Whitaker's book, based on comprehensive research culled from old patient medical records, historical accounts and government freedom of information documents, paints a harsh picture of the mistreatment of mental patients from the beginning of the 19th century to the care prescribed by today's psychiatrists.

His historical perspective begins with the description of "cures" from the late 1700s and early 1800s like the tranquilizer chair, to which those suffering from madness were strapped, immobilized, hooded and doused with icy water. Drowning therapy was another early favorite. Here the subject "was enclosed in a coffin-like box with holes, [and] was lowered by means of a well-sweep [into water]. He was kept there until bubbles of air cease to rise, then was taken out, rubbed and revived." The presumption about this therapy was that after experiencing near-death a patient could re-evaluate his life and fly right.

In contrast, the York Quakers of Pennsylvania tried more humane methods to alleviate the pain of the mentally handicapped, a philosophy they dubbed, "moral treatment." They saw the mentally ill as "brethren" who needed gentleness, respect and good food. They opened a home in 1796 with beautiful gardens, game rooms and nighttime entertainment. Their success rate in curing those who had suffered psychotic breaks ran about 70%. Moral treatment was a method that lasted for most of that century, but by the end of the 1900s, the general adoption of Francis Galton's (cousin to Darwin) eugenics theory brought moral treatment to a standstill.

Eugenics was the belief that both desirable and undesirable human traits were bequeathed and not the result of environmental conditions. "By 1914, forty-four colleges in America has introduced eugenics into their curriculums, with the subject taught as a science... Even the august Encyclopaedia Britannica confidently predict that future progress would include 'the organic betterment of the race through wise application of the laws of heredity.'" Hitler would later employ eugenics as a justification for the most infamous human slaughter of the 20th century.

The groundwork had been laid for American society to view moral and physical infirmities from an unforgiving perspective. So begins the litany of modern abuses heaped upon the impotent insane. This was the era that saw the beginning of large-scale asylum building to segregate those who were seen as unfit to participate in society and who must not, at any cost, reproduce. Sterilization, without consent, was a powerful tool to rid society of the impure, and was practiced without regard to the rights or wishes of the confined.

But castration and clitorectomies would not rid the mind of impure thoughts. Once segregated, a number of new methods were employed to "help" psychotics, depressives and those who, by lack of wealth or power, found themselves incarcerated. Insulin coma treatment was one such therapy — one that caused grand mal seizures that would damage the brain in such a way that the patient would become drooling and docile. This led to electroshock therapy, another permanently damaging regimen to subdue the ill. Finally, this line of care found its ultimate expression in lobotomy. Lobotomies of the frontal lobe produced the same effects as the other brain-damaging therapies, but much more quickly.

Psychiatrists in charge of the mentally ill felt justified in using any toxic method to make their wards more pliable for their long-term care. That is probably why, after WWII, neuroleptic drugs that inflicted a whole host of virulent side effects, were introduced, misrepresented and lauded. These drugs, of which thorazine is the most commonly known, cause a blockage of dopamine to the brain, which it was postulated, would help schizophrenics eliminate psychotic episodes.

In reality, thorazine and other neuroleptics caused serious damage to the brain and body in addition to blocking the dopamine receptors. Parkinson-like symptoms appeared in almost all patients who were prescribed these drugs. The list of side effects is long and harrowing. "Evidence of the harm caused by the drugs was simply allowed to pile up and up, then pushed away in the corner where it wouldn't be seen." Still the drugs were touted as "insulin for the insane." It was said that neuroleptic drugs used daily would help schizophrenics maintain mental health, live regular lives and keep them out of state institutions which were increasingly losing government funding as the century came to a close.

If the drugs had actually kept patients free from delusions, allowed them to function, or even kept them pain-free, perhaps the brain-damaging effects could have been justified. But not only did these drugs have low rates of success in returning the insane to society as functioning citizens, they instead turned a whole population into veritable zombies. The ugliness didn't end there. As "Boston Globe" journalist, Whitaker, recounts with evidence culled from the FDA, medical journals, and the records from clinical trials, the drug-makers knew all along that the drugs were not effective.

The stories of corrupted "double-blind" studies, drug money influencing doctors and psychiatrists and the unrelenting disregard of the afflicted, are harrowing. The book brings us up to date with it discussion of the newest "wonder" drugs, the atypicals, notably clozapine. This modern drug, based once again on the unproved hypothesis that psychosis is caused by the dopamine receptors in the brain, produces many neurotoxic effects — "seizures, dense sedation, marked drooling, rare sudden death, constipation, urinary incontinence and weight gain." Try to get a job, or return to normal society with those symptoms.

Ultimately, what the book reveals is that neither doctors nor drug makers know what causes psychosis, their drugs do little but turn humans into incompetent animatrons and that most of what the public has been led to believe about the marvels of modern drug therapy is a hideous sham. Furthermore, studies done during the end of the twentieth century by the World Health Organization in Africa, and others done in California by the National Institute of Mental Health, show that patients who are never given neuroleptics have much higher rates of recovery than those who are medicated.

"Mad in America," exposes and debunks our deepest-held societal beliefs about the mentally ill, which have been fed primarily by the publicity and money machine that is the pharmaceutical industry. As Robert Whitaker says, "The day will come when people will look back at our current medicines for schizophrenia and the stories we tell to patients about their abnormal brain chemistry, and they will shake their heads in utter disbelief."

Perhaps society has been willing to separate and isolate the insane because it has been too frightening to see them for who they are: us, on a very bad day. If even half of what this book purports is true, the time is nigh for the human race to return to the ideals of the Quaker's moral treatment for our mentally ill — and our mentally functioning.

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Appeared in "Boy, are my arms tired!" November 2001 © Suzanne Rush 2003

More Now, Again
A Memoir of Addiction

By Elizabeth Wurtzel
Simon & Schuster

The 8th step of the 12 suggested steps of Alcoholics Anonymous reads: Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

Elizabeth Wurtzel has a lot of amends to make according to, "More Now, Again", her tiresome account of her recent bout with drug addiction. According to her story she has managed to subject everyone within her neurotic grasp (both literal and literary) to her abusive brand of cocky egotism. She has lied to her publisher, editors, mother, friends and psychiatrists; subjected the staff of this same publisher to her selfish needs and tirades; had an adulterous affair; used friends and acquaintances to acquire drugs; and lived, in general, like an over-indulged, peevish teenager. Plus, by publishing this tell-all, she has now subjected the book-buying public to more of her vain self-indulgence.

Wurtzel is a former "Rolling Stone" critic and best-selling author of, "Prozac Nation," another autobiographical tale centered around her bad behavior, at that time due to mania and depression. In this latest book, "More Now, Again," she reveals the "real story" behind the years she spent writing her follow-up book, "Bitch." During this couple year interval she developed an all-encompassing addiction to cocaine and prescription Ritalin, to which she attributes her new bad behavior. Though many have written moving tales about addiction before her, Wurtzel has virtually nothing of merit to add to this body of stories. The tedious descriptions of drug paraphernalia, obsessive tweezing of leg hair, and lack of consideration for all within her ken is exhaustive yet almost thoroughly devoid illuminating epiphanies.

Amusingly, the acknowledgment section at the back of this book is the most illustrative portion of the story. We are supposed to believe, after forcing ourselves through the previous 300 pages, that Wurtzel has gotten clean and changed her ways with the help of 12-step programs. Yet, when one reads the following passage: "How lucky was I when Marysue Rucci became my editor. She is astonishingly acutely smart, and turned a bloated mess of text into a sleeker, smoother modelÉ. And I am eternally in her debt for every time my obsessions and confusions made this process more complicated than it needed to be," one can only think, that despite her adoption of sanity and sobriety, Wurtzel is still nothing much more than a giant, albeit talented, pain-in-the-ass.

When she is finished making amends to her friends, co-workers, family and acquaintances for her behavior she can begin to write letters of apology to everyone who buys this book. Because $25 is just too much to pay for the privilege of joining her in gazing at her supremely commonplace, pierced navel.

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Appeared in "Boy, are my arms tired!" January 2002 © Suzanne Rush 2003

Snow Mountain Passage: A Novel

James D. Houston
Harvest Books

The westward migration of the hardiest Americans during the 1800s continues to be a fascinating interlude in the history of our country. No story of wagon trains that braved the trek has attracted more interest than the grisly tale of the Donner Party. In "Snow Mountain Passage: A Novel," James Houston revisits this doomed group of travelers from the fictional first-person perspectives of seminal party members James Reed and his daughter, Patty.

Exiled from the party after an accidental killing, Reed departs from the group and makes it through the Sierras into California before the first winter snows. As we know, his family, and the 80 other members of the party, including the Donner family, was not so fortunate. The short cut they took, at Reed's suggestion, left them stranded in a spot in the mountains, difficult to access, as an early blizzard descended. Makeshift cabins were erected and the group hunkered down for the duration.

From Reed's perspective, we follow him on his journey into verdant California, the Promised Land, to find help to extract his friends and family from the mountains. His tale is one of countless frustrations. He arrives during the battle for California with Mexico and is conscripted to join the fight. As it turns out, this war is almost non-existent, but this does not stop him from being waylaid in numerous useless actions for almost four months.

Meanwhile, as Patty recounts, things at what would later be named Donner Lake, are dire. The first unexpected freeze has killed most of the cattle, and the meat cannot be extracted from the 15-foot drifts. As the months pass, the Reeds and others are forced to eat little more than shoe leather and cow hides. The descriptions of hunger, cold and what starvation does to the human mind and body are compelling.

The bulk of the book, unfortunately, follows Mr. Reed in California and is bogged down with lush descriptions of the landscape. The battle for survival in the Sierras, which is far more interesting, is given short shrift. Let's face it, we want to know who was eating whom and when, so what gives with the endless portraits of orchards and green hills? The reader is given a truncated look at the insanity and cannibalism that eventually took over the mountain clans. Though Houston may have hoped to present a tasteful representation of these events, his lean portraits of horror only leave the reader hungry for more.

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Appeared in "Boy, are my arms tired!" June 2002 © Suzanne Rush 2002

Her Own Woman
The Life of Mary Wollstonecraft

By Diane Jacobs
Simon & Schuster

British author, Mary Wollstonecraft, is best remembered for two accomplishments. The first is the publication, in 1792, of her book, "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman," a groundbreaking, eighteenth century, feminist manifesto. The second is giving birth to a girl child, also named Mary, who would later wed Percy Shelly and write the gothic novel, "Frankenstein."

In the recently published, "Her Own Woman: The Life of Mary Wollstonecraft," author Diane Jacobs presents an entertaining history of this indomitable woman. One of five children, Wollstonecraft was born to a ne'er-do-well, alcoholic father and an indifferent mother. Raised in an era when the best that a well-born woman could expect from life was a wealthy husband who didn't beat her too much, young Mary longed for a path other than that proscribed by her circumstances of gender and station. When her father lost his money, she knew that the education she had long fostered on her own would be her salvation from the only three jobs open to lowly women: servant, teacher and governess.

In her youth, she worked as all three. But tired of this life, and in a flamboyant act of daring, she moved to London and struck up a relationship with publisher Joseph Johnson that changed her life. "She was determined to become the Ôfirst of a new genus,' a female who wrote not as a housewife's hobby, but to avoid the enslavement of marriage and to support a life of the mind." Johnson advanced her money on a novel and put her to work as a reviewer. It was during this time that she wrote her seminal feminist work, "Vindication." That bestseller would launch her into the public realm and turn her into an international figure at the age of 30.

Suddenly successful, and hungry as always for new experiences, Wollstonecraft next moved to Paris, where she would act as a witness to and chronicler of the French Revolution. During those heady and dangerous times, while cooler heads than hers were lost, she met and fell in love with an American, Gilbert Imlay. Her physical and emotional union with him would eventually leave her mentally broken and with an illegitimate child at the age of 35.

Through letters Jacobs has retrieved, Wollstonecraft emerges as a woman who could no more take no for an answer in love than she could from a society that was designed to keep her down. Though Imlay abandoned her, she remained obsessive about the relationship, dragging it out for several years, stalking him, making various suicide attempts and debasing herself tirelessly.

Finally, back in London, her passion wore thin and she met and began an affair with aging bachelor and philosopher William Godwin. Godwin also impregnated her, and though Wollstonecraft had as little use for marriage then as ever, she loved her domestic arrangements well enough to wish to solidify them. She married Godwin, bore his child, and through complications during the birth, died less than five months after tying the knot. As she suspected, marriage did not agree with her.

Wollstonecraft lived life on her own terms and often paid a harsh price. She was willful, intelligent, bossy, stubborn, but open-minded, original and above all determined. This biography is a vibrant record of her ideas, her times and her singular life.

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Appeared in "Boy, are my arms tired!" April 2002 © Suzanne Rush 2002

One Book, One City: Los Angeles
Fahrenheit 451

Ray Bradbury
Ballantine Books (1953)

"Fahrenheit 451" begins as an unremarkable piece of writing that makes you wish you had read it in Jr. high school when it would have seemed wondrous by virtue of the "big ideas" it contains. However, half-way through, then-youthful, author Ray Bradbury's dull prose suddenly turns pleasingly lyrical and, in terms of skill and style, almost catches up to its grandiose theme.

The story takes place in a future where firemen no longer put out fires, they set them Ñ specifically, they set fires to books. The society in which this takes place is one where most people have become so deadened by the vacuous mass media television which pervades their existence, that they don't notice the absence of genuine thoughts or emotions in their lives. They are so numb that even their acts of suicide are committed absentmindedly.

The novel follows a few days in the life of one fireman Guy Montag. One day, Guy, who has thusfar led a hollow life, has an emotional epiphany when he meets the first person who actually connects with his humanity. In a life otherwise devoid of such encounters, this sets him aflame with feelings heretofore unknown. Feeling eventually sets him to thinking and it's all downhill from there for Guy.

While there are sections in the book where characters give majestic, pontificating soliloquies about the theme of book-burning which verge on Ayn Rand's literary bludgeonings in "Atlas Shrugged," there is plenty of suspense and action to offset the grandstanding. Bradbury, known for his futuristic novels is actually more adept here at rendering beautiful descriptions of nature than he is at depicting a three-dimensional futuristic world. When Montag views the destruction of his city by atomic blast, it is less compelling that the simultaneous image of him smelling the leaves and dirt in the forest from where he watches.

In some ways "Fahrenheit 451," chosen by Los Angeles Mayor Kenneth Hahn, as the first selection for this city's participation in the "One Book, One City" reading promotion, was an odd one. The book is, in many ways, a running indictment of the cavernously empty entertainments that many local residents produce on a daily basis. But it's okay, they won't have time to read the book anyway. They're too busy making "reality" shows about adulterous couples on cruiseships which are surprisingly like the stupefying television shows depicted in the book. Maybe someone did read this after all. On second thought, they probably just watched the movie.

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Appeared in "Boy, are my arms tired!" June 2002 © Suzanne Rush 2002

A Memoir of No One in Particular
In which our author indulges in naive indiscretions, a self-aggrandizing solipsism, and an off-putting infatuation with his own bodily functions

By Daniel Harris
Basic Books

When a youthful Daniel Harris, intellectual elitist and underachiever, was planning the great literary works he would one day put forth he could not possibly have foreseen the autobiography he has produced. "A Memoir of No One in Particular" consists of equal parts fascinating exploration of human egotism, and bloody, emotional train wreck. This combination has produced a work simultaneously repellent and hard to put down.

Harris is an erudite writer who, as he tells it, seems to have spent the greater part of his adult life mired in unfulfilled potential. The intellectual life he might have had, as an academic, novelist or biographer eluded him. Instead he dissipated his literary gifts writing caustic reviews of low-brow books, cruising for one night stands, laboring in lowly jobs and reading, reading, reading. (A life much like my own.)

Written in a mocking tone, this navel-gazer is divided into chapters chronicling the most excruciatingly mundane aspects of his life, including making faces, cleaning the house and pooping. While it is clear, at times, that this is partially a parody of the glut of memoirs published during the last decade, it also appears to be an earnest attempt to finally create a distinguished tome. In this respect it fails, because as fascinating as the interior of his apartment, head or underarm might be to him, they lose their ability to captivate an outsider with alarming frequency.

Harris puts it best, himself. "When I look back at the self-mutilation that I performed in the course of a chapter in which I have dragged all of my skeletons out of my closet and stood eyeball to eyeball with the entire crew of my past selves, a comment comes to mind that Arthur Koestler made in his memoir, ÔThe Invisible Writing.' Here, he warned the autobiographer that the impulse towards sincerity easily degenerates into exhibitionism, so that all of the Ôepisodes that should be embarrassing and painful to tell are told with wallowing gusto.'"

There is a raw honesty to Harris' self-flagellating revelations about his more-than-adequately-examined life, that creates a sensation similar to the one experienced when looking into an open wound. However, any empathy this may produce is regularly mitigated by his subsequent overlong bouts of glib pomposity. Harris takes the stick out of his ass long enough to beat himself over the head with it, yet in the end, he seems too self-satisfied with this disingenuous act.

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Appeared in "Boy, are my arms tired!" March 2002 © Suzanne Rush 2002

The A-List
The National Society of Film Critics 100 Essential Films

Edited by Jay Carr
Da Capo Press

It was during the early 1980s when, among a certain black-clad set of folks, the word movies was generally replaced by the word film in conversation. "Did you see the new David Lynch film?" as opposed to, "No, I saw the Terminator movie." It was a subtle acknowledgment in the nomenclature that the kinds of exploratory and issue-oriented movies made during the 60s and 70s had been replaced, in the main, by big budget, violent, special-effects encumbered, car chase-filled blockbusters. As the entertainments became fluffier the insights became more convoluted, and movie reviewers became film critics.

Call them what you like, but these amusements, that have been captured on everything from celluloid to digital video, are the most accessible and widely viewed art form of the past 100 years — next to advertising. Despite all the tripe produced during the past century, there have been a number of films that, for reasons of theme, cinematography or acting, remain notable. Many of those have been reviewed in The A List; The National Society of Film Critics 100 Essential Films, available in January 2002 from DA Capo Press.

The book is a collection of elucidating essays by the foremost commentators of the American press, many of them written expressly for this volume. Their choices, sometimes obvious, sometimes surprising, are all provocatively examined. The list includes films such as the seminal D. W. Griffith classic, "Birth of a Nation," Warren Beatty's "Bonnie and Clyde," the quirky Jane Campion film "The Piano," and the Cohen Brother's masterpiece, "Fargo." While many will not need reminding why these are great films, the eloquent discourse about less-known movies like, "A Touch of Evil," "Closely Watched Trains," "The 400 Blows" and "Pandora's Box," will send some out to the video store with a long list of new recommendations.

Though no one really needs another litany of things to do or see, this book with it's 100 essential films, is a lively read by any standard. Both for long-time cinema-lovers who just need a reminder that there is something to watch besides, "Who's Got Mail," and for those without an extensive motion picture background who need a place to start their education, "The A-List," with its delicious descriptions, is the book to help transform you from a movie-lover to a film-goer.

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Appeared in "Boy, are my arms tired!" Septmber 2001 © Suzanne Rush 2002

Jonny Bowden's Shape Up!
The Eight-Week Program to Transform Your Body,
Your Health and Your Life

By Jonny Bowden, M.A., C.N.
Perseus Publishing

Reading about dieting is a national obsession second only to eating packaged, high calorie, denatured foods while sprawled inert before the TV. Ask almost anyone about losing weight and they can brandish a paperback listing the specifics of a low fat diet, all-meat program, or no carbohydrate plan. The labeling okayed by the FDA, allowing 100% sugar candy bars to call themselves "non-fat" is confusing enough. But the types of contradictory nutritional and weight loss information one gleans from the ever-increasing inventory of books on the subject, could drive any normally lazy North American to a menu designed exclusively by Frito Lay.

Since the national media can never reach a consensus on whether or not broccoli is good for you, it is no wonder they can't be counted upon to do more than lament overweight in America, before cutting to the next Sarah Lee commercial. The message that fewer calories and more exercise make one healthy and trim would have captured the forefront of the news by now if there were more corporate sponsors for exercise than for bundt cake.

Jonny Bowden, the iVillage fitness guru, cuts through the mixed-messages to provide the kind of data missing from corporate sponsored information in his book, "Jonny Bowden's Shape Up! The Eight-Week Program to Transform Your Body, Your Health and Your Life." The book is a compendium of common sense ideas, easy-to-digest science and a psychological and physical regimen.

His program is based on a few sound ideas. One, eating processed foods, whether or not they have calories, will not make you lean or healthy. Taking in fewer calories without exercising will not make your lean or healthy. Finally, using a diet plan that works for someone else will not necessarily work for you. Give up the Hollywood Miracle diet, the fruitarian plan and the food pyramid and discover the needs of your specific emotional and physical type and you will become lean and healthy, he attests.

To do this he promotes the concept of keeping a journal, starting your life plan with small, achievable goals, and learning the benefits and detriments of different foods. The book is notable for its comprehensive lists of "good" and "bad" foods, the side-effects of additives and processing, and generally competent, science-based nutritional advice.

Did you know, for instance, that "if you think you aren't eating sugar when you're eating 'health' bars, it's time to take another look at those labels." Or that "fully more than half the world's population is lactose intolerant." How about, "eating some fats may even help you to lose fat." Or, "the base of the food pyramid consists of foods that will cause many people to gain weight." And "Attention Deficit Disorder is not a Ritalin deficiency."

Even if one never followed the simple exercise program, they could not help but learn the rudiments of nutrition and forfeit every excuse they had to visit the Entennman's rack. Written in a breezy style, chock-full of vital information and good advice, Bowden has produced the only dieting book you may ever need.

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Appeared in "Boy, are my arms tired!" November 2001© Suzanne Rush 2002

A Woman of Salt

By Mary Potter Engel
Counterpoint Press

The influence of Mothers on the formation of their children's psyches can never be over-emphasized. This influence, if possible, is more clearly etched upon the psyches of girl children because the expectations of one woman for her nearest doppelganger can be daunting. If the Mother in question is an unforgiving Calvinist who sees her imagined sins reflected in the eyes of her progeny, the psychological bias can be damning and long lasting.

"A Woman of Salt" is a trip through the tormented spirit of Ruth VanderZicht, a woman nearing mid-life, who was raised by such a mother. Ruth still wants nothing more than to be loved and accepted by a parent whoses version of caring consisted of enumerating RuthÕs various transgressions; who made Ruth hate and fear her body and ultimately herself. If only, Ruth thinks, she could separate her "dirty" body from her clean mind — which wants only to find the solace in finally facing her God — she would be delivered. Yet she fears facing this harsh God of her strict childhood training, worrying that she, like LotÕs wife, would only be turned into a pillar of salt if she finally stopped running and turned to face her authenticity.

Part novel, part theological treatise, Mary Potter Engel's book features lyrical passages that evoke the heartbreaking beauty and pain of living through the complexities of our primary relationships. That said, much of the book also seems bogged down by her principal literary invention, that of alternating the story with constant midrashim about the old testament story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. At first this device seems compelling, but its use begins to slow the story, never allowing it to achieve a satisfying dramatic climax.

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Appeared in "Boy, are my arms tired!" January 2002 © Suzanne Rush 2002

Juniper Tree Burning

By Goldberry Long
Simon & Schuster

The recollections of so-called Gen-X, the children of the confused, ever-adolescent Baby Boomers, have begun to surface during the last decade. Some of the snapshots of "hippie" parenting are more harrowing than groovy. "Juniper Tree Burning," is one such story.

Juniper/Jennifer, the protagonist and narrator, with the heart of a Republican and the training of a Druid, tells her tale of growing up in rural, Northern New Mexico with urban parents who have chosen "back-to-the-land" poverty. Juniper paints a hideous picture of what happens when the narcissistic needs of adults overshadow the urgent and real needs of children.

Juniper's parents are guilty of buying drugs when there is no food; not providing adequate clothing, medical help or shelter; having a callous disregard to their children's place in society; and for saddling both Juniper and her younger brother, Sunny Boy Blue, with idiotic names. Juniper's struggle to appear normal as an Anglo in an otherwise-Hispanic community; as the child of parents who take peyote and worship in a sweat lodge while all her classmates are Catholic; as someone dressing from the Goodwill box when the other kids have new clothes —and all this with parents who are either high or so wrapped up in their own consuming and violently dysfunctional relationship that they don't care — is heart-rending.

But Goldberry's Long's well-written tale is as much about grown-up Jennifer still struggling with creating normalcy in the wake of her brother's suicide, as it is a flashback to the "good old days" of hippie yore. Adult Jenny finally runs away from home and makes a cross-country journey which is equal parts seeking her future and running from her past.

A fine first novel, "Juniper Tree Burning," works on every level. It makes one realize that as hard as the Boomers strained to separate from their own upbringing, many of them only succeeded in producing progeny who disdain and reject them, much as they did their own parents.

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Appeared in "Boy, are my arms tired!" November 2001 © Suzanne Rush 2002

The Broken Places

By Susan Perabo
Simon & Schuster

I was looking forward to reading Susan Perabo's debut novel, "The Broken Places." Her book of short stories, "Who I Was Supposed to Be," published last year, was brilliant. The stories were original and filled with fantastic twists that entertained and shocked in just the right proportions.

"The Broken Places," is the tale of a small town fire fighter, Sonny, who saves a teen punk from a collapsed house and subsequently becomes a national hero. In the main, the story follows the puzzling personality changes that overcome Sonny during the aftermath of the rescue. Told from the viewpoint of Sonny's preteen son, Paul, we watch Sonny's withdrawal from his family and community while he forms an inexplicable bond with the teen he saved, swastika-tattooed, chain smoking Ian.

Ultimately the story moves too slowly toward the inevitable Perabo twist. This is where we finally find out what really happened in that ruined farmhouse — in the dark, between the fireman and the teenager. My imagination must be more sinister than Perabo's, because the punch-line seemed too mild a reward for the long, serious, plodding build-up.

"The Broken Places," would have made a better short story than full-blown novel. Without 90 pages of narrative leading up to the pay-off, the book's shocking revelation may have actually felt like a surprise. It's not a bad work of fiction, but Perabo's previous writing is so superior that I can't help but leave this novel feeling disappointed. In light of the nation's recently found reverence for firefighters, the subject matter of this book and the timing of its release may combine to create a disappointing debut.

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Appeared in "Boy, are my arms tired!" November 2001 © Suzanne Rush 2002

The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio

By Terry Ryan
Foreword by Suze Orman
Simon & Schuster

During the 1950s, when it was difficult to purchase a can of green beans or open a Redbook magazine without finding an entry for a jingle contest of some kind, Evelyn Ryan of Defiance, Ohio, became the queen of the prize winners. Responsible for a brood of 10 and a ne'er-do-well alcoholic husband, she learned she had to bring home the bacon, cook it up in the pan, and use her limerick-writing prowess to win ever more cured meat.

As told by her daughter, Terry, Mrs. Ryan's story is that of a woman with an indefatigable spirit who persevered by using her wits to survive a pre-feminist era lifestyle that was as rewarding (as a mother) as it was difficult (as a wife). Mrs. Ryan won trips, cars, appliances, watches, televisions, clocks and thousands of dollars in cash. Amazingly, the prizes and money always arrived just when most needed.

Where others in her position — with mouths to feed and a husband who drank away his paycheck and mortgaged the house behind her back — would have crumbled under the pressure, Mrs. Ryan would just sharpen her pencil, stand at the ironing board, and write. The book is sprinkled with examples of her work, like the ditty she scribbled for Hormel's "Spammericks" contest: "The boat and the basket went over the dam/But Dad is our hero — he rescued the Spam." Clearly she was as optimistic as she was witty.

Despite Terry Ryan's plodding narrative style, and the residual resentment about her childhood that oozes from much of this record, the book is well worth reading. Read it both for the portrait of a frustrated writer and poet who found a voice and an audience, and for the fascinating historical glimpse into a time when Madison Avenue cleverly developed a cadre of mostly-unpaid, housewife copywriters. Come to think of it, doesn't that describe Samantha Stevens?

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Appeared in "Boy, are my arms tired!" October 2001 © Suzanne Rush 2002

Not Your Mother's Life
Changing the rules of work, love and family

By Joan K. Peters
Perseus Publishing

Who could resist a title like this one? Unless, of course, you actually want to have a life like your mother had. But then you probably don't read self-help manuals anyway. Academic and author, Joan K. Peters, has produced a guidebook, of sorts, for the Generation X and Y woman who doesn't want to play by "The Rules."

In it she had theorized that for a woman to have a life she enjoys, she has to do some planning in advance, since the life that just happens is not as fulfilling as the life that is methodically striven towards. Peters uses numerous examples of women's lives, from interviews she has collected, to illustrate how planning everything from what you do for a living to whom to choose to mate with can make or break your chance for happiness.

While the concept of choosing a mate who is supportive, or taking a job you care about that has good benefits and hours, is not revolutionary, it's always useful to have an updated look at the options. What is different now in the workplace, an area she stresses heavily in the book, is the number of opportunities for choice heretofore unavailable. Do you want money, decent hours, a life outside of work, child care or a child-friendly employer? All of these are things Peters suggests you question yourself and your potential employers (and partners) about before you settle in to a career.

A lifelong feminist of the old order, Peters is a pragmatist about women's place in society. Though women continue to make gains in the areas of authority, respect and remuneration, it is still not a level playing field. She counsels knowing the territory, personal or professional, before making commitments.

If anything, this book is flawed by the same element which hinders much current non-fiction. That being a reliance on treating the "new economy" as if it is still on the rise, rather than a bubble that has, for the time being, burst. Many of the life examples she puts forward, of women working at dot-coms, calling their own shots, already seem dated. One wonders how many of those women are still employed at the jobs they had a year ago, and if they are not, what kind of choices they are able to make now.

While the best laid plans may go awry, it is also true that practice makes perfect, and everything in life is filled with obstacles that could not be foreseen. Peters counsels that women take a hard look at the course, choose their shoes wisely, and make a run for the gold.

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Appeared in "Boy, are my arms tired!" November 2001 © Suzanne Rush 2002

Smashmouth

By Dana Milbank
Basic Books

It is to his credit that Dana Milbank, White House correspondent for the "Washington Post," has been able to craft such a lively book from two years of covering the tiresome US presidential campaign of 2000. Milbank spares no player's dignity in this diverting look at a leap-year spectacle that derives most of its laughs ironically.

What we don't already know from having watched CNN obsessively during those years are the insider tidbits only a reporter on the road could reveal. Things like the fact that Gore's campaign staff saved money, and lost precious sleep, during the costly campaign by sharing hotel rooms. Or the inside dish on which candidate served the best food to the press corps. Apparently the vote was as close with members of the press between Gore's and Bush's caterers, as it was with the public for the policy-makers themselves.

The trick for both was to feed the press as many carbohydrates as possible to render them so somnolent at deadline that it took the poison from their journalistic barbs. The trick for Milbank, it seems, was to keep his edge so that he could milk the maximum laughs from this tired road show and write a book that reads like a particularly smart episode of Comedy Central's news spoof, "The Daily Show." Like the campaign it follows, "Smashmouth" is not about substance, but about style.

We all know how the story ends. However entertainingly this slice of history has been told, it will probably take some time before anyone wants to read about a dreary campaign that ended with the Supreme Court deciding who became the leader of the free world. It really isn't that funny.

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Appeared in "Boy, are my arms tired!" November 2001 © Suzanne Rush 2002

Paradise

By Larry McMurtry
Simon & Schuster

Larry McMurtry, best known for his novels that have been committed to film — like the western saga, "Lonesome Dove," and the mother-daughter tear-jerker, "Terms of Endearment" — has written a beautiful, if brief, memoir, "Paradise." The book is a study in contrasts, equal parts a South Pacific trip diary and a dissection of his parents' unhappy marriage.

On the eve of this mother's mortal passage McMurtry takes a freighter voyage to Tahiti and the remote Marquesas Islands — the very heart of Gauguin's painterly heaven. This balmy south seas destination could not be further from the hard-scrabble east Texas landscape of his boyhood. The two disparate locations allow him to delineate the differences between his parents' close-your-eyes-and-think-of-Lubbock sexuality, and the island voluptuousness that lured many of Captain Cook's crew overboard permanently.

He paints a vivid picture of shipboard life surrounded by a band of bored, European tourists. They jump the boat each day to have their pictures taken with the sensual natives, and judge each destination by the quality of souvenirs to be had. By contrast, McMurtry often opts to stay aboard and watch the proceedings from deck, or better still, keep to himself by reading the scanty offerings left by former passengers in the ship's library. (He finds Didion's "White Album," a bit bleak.)

Not much, happens in this story, yet the lyrical writing and the depth of his contemplative first person discourse stays with the reader long after McMurtry closes this short, satisfying tale.

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Appeared in "Boy, are my arms tired!" Septmber 2001 © Suzanne Rush 2001

The Blue Nowhere

By Jeffrey Deaver
Simon & Schuster

"The Blue Nowhere," a phrase which refers to the cyberspace which the reader inhabits during much of this novel, is the kind of book that could be characterized as guilty pleasure. Jeffrey Deaver, author of "The Bone Collector," weaves a suspenseful, if workmanlike, murder mystery in the world of computer hackers.

The story follows the adventures of a Silicon Valley police team devoted to computer crimes, as they track a hacker who has taken the frightening step of moving from the world of cyber-murder games, to real-life murders. Phate, the disturbed programming genius, tracks his prey online, discovers their Achilles' heels and moves in for the kill. He proves difficult to thwart, as his ability to transform himself into any personality he chooses, through social engineering, makes him a profiling nightmare.

The police are aided in their pursuit by a jailed hacker, Wyatt Gillette, who could use some time off for good behavior. He is also so addicted to computers that he would do almost anything to get his preternaturally developed hands onto a keyboard.

No one is who they seem to be in this world. And even when they are it is difficult to tell the white hats from the black. This is not literature, yet ultimately, what makes this mystery worth the read is the insight it provides into the psychology of computer hacker culture, a tantalizing world many have never glimpsed.

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Appeared in "Boy, are my arms tired!" Septmber 2001 © Suzanne Rush 2001

Scandalmonger

By William Safire
Simon & Schuster

If you're accustomed to obtaining your U.S. history from novels, this one will be a refreshing palate cleanse after Gore Vidal's campy series. It may even inspire you to read actual nonfiction in the form of the best-selling John Adams biography.

James Thomason Callender, plays the central role in this story of politics and intrigue in our young nation at the end of the eighteenth century. By trade, a scandalmonger — or journalist who is willing to dig up the dirt on such patrician luminaries as Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson — Callender is portrayed as a bitter pawn in the struggle for democracy as we know it.

Like his modern counterparts at the "National Enquirer," he uncovers sexual affairs, fraud in the U.S. treasury and miscegenation at Monticello and does not hesitate to publish his findings and subsequent opinions about these matters. Unlike today's tabloid journalists, it is his zeal for the truth which is his ultimate undoing — whether or not it is the truth he is being financed by one political party or another to reveal.

Well written, complex and credibly researched, this novel takes time to unravel, but is worth the effort. This is the spoonful of sugar you may need to make the history go down.

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Appeared in "Boy, are my arms tired!" Septmber 2001 © Suzanne Rush 2001

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