"Pistol", the Elvis of Basketball

Pistol. The Life of Pete Maravich- Mark Kriegel

Sadly, I was too young to watch Pistol Maravich in action, and when I really got into NBA, he was already dead. But as a basketball addict I quickly discovered the talents of Pete "Pistol" Maravich, an American icon and, foremost, a unique ballplayer that made that elevated that sport to unparalleled levels of spectacle with his never-ending talents (watch video below or links). I believed that I already got the chance to knew a bit of his turbulent life, but after reading this addictive biography, I realise I didn't have a clue of what really went on with Pistol. For good and bad.

Writer Mark Kriegel achieves what I thought it was impossible with this sort of "commercially appealing" biographies. There's very little, if any, bias from the author. Zero hagiography, instead a highly documented work, fuelled with the opinions of countless who were there, plus a will to make no prisoners, but tell a story that is shocking, powerful and touching enough by itself.

Have you seen any "Behind the Music" program? Sure, after seeing too many they look rather silly and cliche-bounded. But it also shows the classic structure of rise-fall-final rise (redemption) that is so recurrent on American mythography (literature, music, cinema...). The Maravich tale is no different... with one exception. This time it seems it was completely for real. The Elvis of basketball.

This is a tale of obsession as much as frustration, with basketball being the joy and ruin of the Maravich's family. Father Press lived for the sport, to push the game forward and making his son Pete a child prodigy fated to be "the million dollar contract kid". Pete even surpassed the expectations, averaging the never to be beaten mark of 44,2 points a game at Louisiana State University. He became a legend, a Southern icon capable of building venues thanks to his presence, more like a rock icon. But also his worst enemy too. The dream  quickly transformed into a terrible nightmare once he went professional, one where playing the ball, always his shelter, turned also to be his curse.

Kriegel does a fantastic work in showing us all. The nature of Pistol's myth and his endurance among generations, his role on transforming the game. The impossible father-son relation, leaving alone their doomed wife-mother, the contradiction between his flamboyant, individual genius style on a team sport, his incredibly lacking social skills and struggle with fame against his will to be the focus of attraction on court, and all his obsessions, including the final and relieving finding of Catholicism. And how his legend and fate haunted his family even after his death. "Pistol" is an incredibly absorbing read, even for non-basketball fans. But hey! don't just believe my word, just watch the Pistol play...



SCORE: 8,25/10

"Alan Lomax", the Folksong Hunter

Alan Lomax: The Man Who Recorded the World. A Biography- John Szwed

My interest on Alan Lomax's figure comes from one of this rare cinematographic experiences were one enters to a theatre with little-to-zero expectations and then leaves the venue almost in tears, deeply moved by what has seen. The film, better said documentary, was "Lomax , the Songhunter" written and directed by Rogier Kappiers. What an impact. Since then I've been looking for something to read about the man and his work. Now, after reading this biography, I can say I'm still impressed and amazed by his story, but also a bit confused, dubious to some extent, about his motivations. Damn, I have to find the film and watch it again...

"The Man Who Recorded the World" is an immaculate, scrupulous and fine biography, at least on its surface. Informative and argumentative, rich in statistics, facts, figures and complete, even to the point of saturation sometimes, in what regards to explain with detail every book, play, recording and field work Alan Lomax did (add letters too). And he did many (and I mean MANY). His task was so gigantic that becomes scary. That's not a relentless passion but probably also a worrying obsession. A feeling I was confirming while reading John Szwed's book.

The depth of the biography in Lomax's activities provides a rich account of a work life that really escapes from just one categorization and had several sides. Lomax was a musicologist, folklorist, filmmaker, music producer, television & radio host, writer, actor, singer, lecturer, ethnomusicologist (he's recognised as the father of the discipline by many), anthropologist, political activist (among the most interesting for me is the People's Song platform or being accused and surveyed for being a communist)... He tried everything for folk music, to restore its legacy, to make it known and popular... but in his very own terms, something that also  involved him in several controversies. Was he a purist or a popularizer? The book doesn't hide the contradictions and the heated debate around his figure and role in music's history, although Szwed take a clear side at the end.  

But unfortunately, and despite being very informative, "The Man Who Recorded the World" has some regrettable misses. Lomax's family is neglected from the book. Wives, daughter and sentimental partners are getting in and out at Szwed's will, while the extremely peculiar relation with his father and mentor John Lomax is almost left behind after Alan's goes on his own. Even worse is the lack of interest of Szwed in providing some space to the artists that Lomax recorded, and in several cases, discovered. Legendary musicians like Lead Belly, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger or Muddy Waters (or the thousands of unknown performers) don't anything to say in Lomax's story? That's a serious flaw.

In that sense, I certainly believe that Kappiers film pays a better tribute to Lomax's figure going to the places he visited to meet the folk singers he recorded and how they remember that peculiar song collector. I'm sorry but I don't care that much about cantometrics (to be honest, that will to measure and categorize folk music is as ambitious as questionable, to be polite, music doesn't need to be constrained by artificial definitions) or the dollars he received from every foundation or government institution he reached for his music investigations. The man and the music he discovered should have been more than enough for a fascinating biography. But we have an incomplete picture of the first, and even way less about the second. Interesting, but rather flat.

SCORE: 6,25/10

"A Writer's Life", a journalistic mess

A Writer's Life- Gay Talese

As much as I believe Gay Talese's prose is masterful and his ability to find and chronicle a story is unparalelled, I'm afraid to say that with "A Writer's Life" this amazing journalist has descended to Earth, revealing us the worst of his art, offering us a book that, contrary to "Honor Thy Father" or "Portraits and Encounters", amazingly absorbing reads, is quite mundane, even tedious to follow at times.

And that's a shame, because it could have worked. "A Writer's Life" aims to be a memoir of a veteran journalist looking back to some of his "adventures". But there’s very little of his personal life, and the book quickly evolves into something else, an unexpected account of Talese's failures, his shortcomings to find a story that his bosses would die to put in paper, or his inability to close his latest book. That could have been challenging and exciting, such a gifted writer showing us how hard it is to "wait for the click", as The National would say on personal favouite "City Middle".

But with few exceptions, this book is not capable of transmitting that doubt, weakness, lack of luck, bad timing or writer's block when facing a potentially good story. And it's because -and that's tough for me to say, as I admire Talese so much- of the author's ego and his self-indulgence. Instead Talese offers a monumental digression of 600 pages where he recapitulates and reworks pieces and bits of previous, unfinished or left behind stories, adding personal notes or wikipedia-like-facts. It's arbitrary, and despite at the end everything seems to connect, it's incoherent as a whole. As a book, it's simply weak. Again sorry to put my thoughts in words, but I believe this is just a packed compilation of material to fulfill a contract.

There are horrible passages. In particular I couldn't go on with the whole story of the restaurants, so pointless even Talese is incapable of not much more of accumulating notes for almost three decades -just a bunch of pages finished by 1999-. Others are much interesting, like the one in Selma regarding civil rights and liberties of the Afro-American people, the Lorena Bobbit trial or the one about the Chinese player Liu Ying. But this latest story is a clear example of the serious problem this book has with its structure. Talese clearly didn't think much about order his account of failed stories, so the trip to China appears quite early on the book, then vanishes for hundreds and hundreds of pages just to reappear at the very end. The effect is quite strange, to say the least.

Even masters can fail.

SCORE: 4,75/10

"Fante", reality bites of literature and alcohol

Fante: A Family's Legacy of Writing, Drinking and Surviving
Dan Fante

I have no idea why I am crazy and angry and edged-out most of the time and why alcohol and painkiller pills and Xanax-type stuff are the only things that help to keep me remotely calm. I have no idea why I experience life as pointless and screwed and I know that most people don't pour a cup of bourbon into their milk and oatmeal in the morning. That's just how it is. 

Dan Fante, "86'd"

Four sentences to define a life of self-destruction that, surprisingly, becomes also a story of surveillance and passion for literature. Dan Fante's biography is an unusual one, because mixes his own, suicidal life, with the story of his ancestors and, in particular his father, the great writer John Fante. The tale is terrible, ill-fated and full of booze, but there's also space for redemption and change.

With that trademark's straightforward way of writing, Fante's memoirs are darker than a black hole. And the parallel lines between father and son are always present. The frustration and bliss, and if you allow me to say it, their self-condemnation, as it was always fate had dictated for them. But the paths taken are very different. John sold himself to Hollywood, so he could pay the bills, form a family that he didn't take much care of, and life comfortably but in anger. A man of his time (40-50s) with a gifted prose that, ironically, only was recognised (Bukowski you are next in line of my readings) when he was approaching his (cruel and suffering) death. On the contrary, Dan never seemed to find his own way, a blistering road to nowhere and incredible suffering, until redemption and literature settled him down.

The fragmented structure, shifting between father and son (biggest part of the book) is hyper-addictive. A number of chapters, paragraphs, sentences, are memorable, deeply affecting (in a shocking or a touching, emotional way) and the tension of a life constantly looking to the horizon from the edge of the cliff is always palpable. You might not like the Fante's as persons after reading their story, but the level of exposure, the absolute lack of pretensions of presenting himself (or his father) as some sort of hero that "came back from the dark side", reveals a gigantic human heart, with all their contradictions, miseries and hunger for living.

I have some minor complaints, though. I would have loved some more chapters devoted to John Fante and his writings, as well as their relation with Hollywood. Also, a bit more on his mother,  Joyce, who is clear plays a pivotal role but is too blurred in the biography in my opinion, would have been necessary. I became a bit exhausted with Dan's recurrent cycles of self-destruction, to be honest, and its hard to me to understand how he finally defeated his addiction. I don't believe in miracles.  

But as I said before, there's no self-pity, victimisation, apologies, excuses or preaching here. So take it or leave it, because that's the way it is. And as everything coming from Fante's (both father and son) prose, I sincerely recommend you to grab it. These are monstrous reality bites, a reality that hurts a lot. But you might even win the fight, if you try.

SCORE: 7,5/ 10

"The Quitter", Harvey Pekar's unexpected victory

The Quitter- Harvey Pekar, with Dean Haspiel

I don't believe Harvey Pekar needs to be introduced, at least to anyone with a little interest on comic books/graphic novels. After launching the series “American Splendor” in 1976, in collaboration with cartoonist Robert Crumb (among others) he became an underground celebrity. If you want to know more about it, I vividly recommend you to watch "American Splendor", the excellent 2005 movie with Paul Giamatti as Pekar.

Pekar became a reference in the comic books world with his biographic, realistic, everyday life stories. "The Quitter" follows that path. It's a personal trip to his childhood, adolescence, manhood, with glimpses of his later years, told by the older Pekar, narrator and interjecting presence.

Autobiographies could be very boring if they can't connect with the reader. But that is not the case with "The Quitter". First, because Harvey Pekar, if anything, should be remembered as a particularly good storyteller, making this memoir intriguing and attractive to read. Second, because of the excellent (especially with facial expressions, revealing so much) work of illustrator Dean Haspiel, who's remarkable and varied talent mixes wisely with the narration. And third, because the book might be an autobiography on the surface, but it is done through a very specific prism: failure and the fear it provokes.

As told by himself, Pekar's life can be resumed as a succession of activities and possibilities that turn wrong, the majority of them with our unlikely "hero" quitting when shortcomings have or might appear. Sports, the Navy, many part-time jobs, college... Everything turns into a failure, everything slips away. With that structure, it could have worked as an humorous (grim humour of course) novel, but the suffering, the anxiety confronting or advancing each situation is so real, that "The Quitter" quickly reveals itself as a dramatic and mundane tale of human condition. Pekar is a very contradictory character: full of ambition and ego, but frightened to death to do what it takes to achieve his goal because of the chance of failing. Aren't we all a bit like him (at least sometimes)?

Of course, we know the end of the story (jazz, meeting Robert Crumb, working together), and how his lack of persistence eventually gave Pekar finding the are where he could excel: the graphic novels world. But even then, when in the hands of another author that would become a succeeding example of finally finding what one has been looking for (sort of an "American dream" tale), Pekar manages to  bring doubt, uncertainty and fear for the future. Would the success last? For how long? What if...?

Don't have many complaints to point out to "The Quitter". Its an absorbing, vivid and direct portray of someone so recognisable as a person that immediately connects with you. If any, I would have liked a much longer story, developing much further his latest years. Or a more detailed account of the "pivotal persons" of his life, which are almost non-existent. But I guess that's another example of Harvey Pekar's unexpected victory. He managed to do what he wanted with his art, the same as he did with his life.

SCORE: 7,25/10

"A Happy Marriage", love, death and everything else

A Happy Marriage- Rafael Yglesias
This is an example of a novel with the potential of being a masterpiece... that I couldn't really like. Author Rafael Yglesias exposes all, a brave and risky decision that has to be valued, and tell us the story of a marriage (not the most original thing to write about) in a quite refreshing way. But, at least to me, the book never takes off from being a very personal, intimate and sometimes even a bit morbid, take on a particular couple.

In what regards to style and structure, "A Happy Marriage" is an excellent work. Yglesias' prose flows with grace but without any pomposity, sounding real. The book combines two timelines, the first being how Enrique and Margaret meet and started their relationship, and the second, the last days of Margaret's life, as she is dying from cancer. That dual structure shocks at first, and I'm a bit undecided whether I like the brutal contrasts on the tone, from a more lightweight, with hints of comic situations during their first encounters to the depressing (and in my opinion, a bit too detailed) final days of his wife, but then becomes a very interesting and original approach for telling the story of a marriage from its start to the end.

But it is clear the book is more an autobiography of Yglesias' life (he was too hailed as a young masterful writer with his early novels, had success with Hollywood scripts and with a long marriage that ended with the death of his wife in 2004, due to cancer) than just a fiction novel, and to me, that takes its toll on the book. First, because this is, exclusively, the husband's point of view. Enrique Sabas is a pretty well defined character, and Yglesias must be praised to present his alter-ego as a flesh and bone person, with many defects and obsessions. But I can't say the same about the rest of characters. Margaret, the couple kids, her parents, friends, aren't very far from being sketches.

Second, and something that made me question even to continue reading the book a couple of times is the need of detailing everything. Do we really need to know everything about how Margaret’s deals with her terminal illness? Does it add something to the novel? Why is that relevant? Is not pure morbid curiosity? Sure, that's just my opinion, but I don't see the point of carefully writing about the colour of the food that can be seen through the tubes that Margaret is connected with. In that sense, a few passages of "A Happy Marriage" seemed to me "masturbatory". Sorry if it seems an angry criticism, but to me the whole point of such a personal book is to reach emotional impact through the identification of the reader with the characters and their situations. Cancer, love, disappointment, betrayal, loss... Familiar topics for many, but with "A Happy Marriage" I couldn't empathize with the characters, in particular with Enrique. And that builds a distance between the book and the reader. A distance that, like in relations, ruins the final result.

SCORE: 5,25/10