Bedazzled by the King

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The first celebrity I ever had a crush on as a kid was Elvis Presley. And when I say "as a kid," I mean young. My earliest memories are from third grade recess, huddled against the school building with my best friend Kay VanSkike, flipping through the latest movie magazines — Photoplay, Modern Screen — borrowed from our mothers' stash.

This was in 1972, 1973. Kay and I sighed over nostalgic pictures of the young and handsome Elvis with his beautiful child bride Priscilla, and clucked our tongues at more recent tales of his dissipated escapades with various and sundry models after he and Priscilla split up. We never gave up hoping that the "real" Elvis — dressed head to toe in black leather and smoldering with sex appeal — would make a reappearance, banishing the pudgy white-jumpsuited modern version forever.

Early in fifth grade I moved with my family out into the country, changing schools and losing touch with Kay. We hadn't seen each other or even spoken in months when Kay called me the following summer to break the news that Elvis had died. It was August 16, 1977; I remember standing in the doorway between our dining room and living room, phone cord stretched to the limit, sharing the news with my mom. It was the first time someone I "knew" had died, and it didn't seem real. Two years later, my oldest brother would die unexpectedly, and I'd experience again that same stunned disbelief, but Elvis was the first.

After that, I went through a period of consuming every bit of information I could find about Elvis' life. I read long magazine articles that examined his proper place in the pop-culture pantheon; Albert Goodman's trashy biography; Priscilla's autobiography Elvis and Me. I watched made-for-TV movies and practically wore out my mom's Elvis LPs, especially the Blue Hawaii movie soundtrack and the classic 50,000,000 Elvis Fans Can't be Wrong, with its multiplicity of images of a sexy young Presley in a dazzling gold lame suit. Everyone who'd ever served Elvis so much as a milkshake wrote a tell-all book after he died, it seemed, and I devoured them all indiscriminately.

All of this is by way of establishing that I thought I knew pretty much everything about Elvis, from his birthplace (Tupelo, Miss.) to the company for whom he was driving a truck when he first walked into the Sun Studios in Memphis (Crown Electric) to the woman who was waiting in his bed as he expired on the toilet in the adjoining bathroom (Ginger Allen). But tonight, on the 75th anniversary of Elvis' death, I learned something new when I listened to The Story on NPR. Dick Gordon interviewed Gene Doucette, the guy who designed those bedazzled white jumpsuits that have become synonymous with latter-day Elvis. (Click on the link to hear it for yourself; it's the second segment.)

It's easy to make fun of the caricature Elvis became by the end, with his bloated physical appearance, his mutton-chop sideburns and oversized smoke-tinted aviator glasses, and his over-the-top stage shtick, tossing sweaty scarves to swooning septuagenarians. But the interview and its accompanying music clips inspired me to dig out some old CDs (I still have the LPs but no turntable, alas). And you know what? There's a reason that long before Michael Jackson, Elvis was the King:

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Gmail wants your grandma's address

Well, kinda. The all-online, all-the-time e-mail provider knows that everyone has at least one Luddite on their holiday e-mail newsletter address list, and they want to help. They will send a free, personalized holiday postcard — on real paper! delivered by a real postal worker! — to anyone in the U.S. All you have to do is fill out an online form, cut-and-paste some pseudo-sincere seasonal sentiment, and cross Aunt Clara and Uncle Roscoe off your list.

Details here: Official Gmail Blog: Spread some holiday cheer, one card at a time Read more!

Library Thing book review: Montana Rose

True confession time: I only requested this book because I have an unrequited love affair with all things Montana. I didn't really pay any attention to the description of the book beyond the title, so it was a bit of a surprise to realize as I read that it was (in my view) a Christian romance. I lowered my expectations accordingly (having found previously that books with such an overt point of view, whatever it is, tend to have less-than-stellar writing and plotting) and kept reading.

How refreshing, then, to find that Montana Rose is a very good book. It is well-written, and the characters appealingly drawn. In a nutshell, a woman in 19th century Montana finds herself widowed and pregnant, an unacceptable condition in that time and place. She is forced into marriage with a local fellow (at her husband's funeral, no less!) who is a virtual stranger, and struggles to make a life for herself and her family.

The Christian message is not subtle, but it fits smoothly within the narrative rather than sticking out like a sore thumb. It's true, though, that I don't have any beef with a Christian viewpoint, being one myself though not evangelical. Someone with a strong non-Christian worldview would probably find this book's message overbearing.

As I said, there were some interesting plot "twists." I dreaded the inevitable preaching about a woman learning that it is her Christian duty to be submissive and obedient to her husband, but that wasn't the message at all. Cassie's new husband, Red, is much more interested in molding Cassie into a wife who can be an equal partner for him in their hardscrabble frontier life.

Still, it's hard for a Christian novel to generate much reader suspense over whether the good guys will prevail and the bad guys be thwarted. There's really only one way for it all to work out, so the emphasis for me as a reviewer became whether the journey is enjoyable even when the destination is preordained. In the case of Montana Rose the answer, quite happily, is yes. ( ) Read more!

Editors vs. writers: 'Twas ever thus

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I watched the first 2 parts of HBO's recent John Adams miniseries tonight. (As the holder of a history degree, I think it's required by our bylaws.) It's a very fine production, and fascinating on a number of levels beyond the sheer pleasure of seeing our country's beginnings brought to life.

For example, I couldn't help noticing the similarities between then and now, watching the Continental Congress squabble amongst themselves about whether to declare independence or try one more meek petition to King George III. I think today's Congressional debates would be much improved if each member was issued a long stick with which to pound on the floor to signal their agreement with the speaker. (That, and the elimination of microphones, television sound bites, and cable news pundits.)

But the scene that gave me a start and made me nostalgic for my moribund journalism career came in Part II. The retelling of the drafting of the Declaration of Independence shows that writers and editors have always been at odds in their common quest for elegant expression.

The scene opens with Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and John Adams gathered in a room. Jefferson, having been cajoled into writing the Declaration of Independence by John Adams (in other words, given an unwelcome story assignment by his editor), has delivered his copy to his fellow congressman (editors). Like all writers, he paces nervously behind his editors as they read through the draft. Adams is complimentary of the way Jefferson has made a case not only for the the Colonies' independence from England, but for the rights of all men.

Adams: "This is well-said, sir. Very, very well said."

Jefferson, his nerves slightly soothed, finally takes a seat across the room from the others.

After criticizing Jefferson's inclusion of a condemnation of the slave trade (which Franklin knows won't fly with the delegates from the South), Franklin reads aloud another line in the copy.

Franklin: "'We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable, that all men are created equal, et cetera ...' 'Sacred and undeniable' smacks of the pulpit."
Jefferson (eyebrows raised in real or faux astonishment): "Does it?"
Franklin: "These truths are self-evident, are they not?"
Jefferson (reluctantly): "Perhaps."
Franklin (with a brisk nod): "'Self-evident', then."

Jefferson watches unhappily as Adams marks up his printout of the Declaration with his edits.

Jefferson: "Every single word was precisely chosen. I assure you of that, Dr. Franklin."
Franklin: "Yes, but yours will not be the only hand in this document. It cannot be."
Adams (trying to smooth things over a bit): "There may be expressions which I would not have inserted if I had drawn it up, but I will defend every word of it."
Jefferson (with a wave of his hand, pretending not to care): "Well, it's what I believe."

Jefferson's restrained reaction doesn't hide his annoyance that any editor, even the great Benjamin Franklin, would have the nerve to alter his golden prose. (Franklin, of course, being a newspaper editor and publisher, proves himself immune to a writer's pique.) I've been on both sides of that argument in my career, and I can't say I handled either role with as much grace as these men.

On the other hand, at least Jefferson didn't accuse Franklin of acting like Procrustes, as a writer once did to me when I had the temerity to ask her to cut a paragraph or two from her review of a community theater production. (Greek mythology says Procrustes offered a bed to weary travelers, cutting off their legs if they were too tall to make them fit.) Not having had a classical education, I shrugged off the insult and told Pat I still needed 3 more lines cut.

I had already learned what Benjamin Franklin knew: You have to have a thick skin to be a copy editor.

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It is what it is

I was plowing headlong through my RSS feeds in Google Reader earlier tonight, trying to get rid of the nagging little (341) perched next to Unread Items. I recently revamped my whole folder/tagging system in Reader, dumping all the subject-centric tags in favor of a simplified 3-tier system: Gotta Read This, Good Stuff, and If There's Time. This makes it much easier to keep up with the blogs I'm most interested in, and I  just hit the Mark All Items Read button on the rest whenever posts start to pile up on me.

But I digress. (Geez, if I had a dollar for every time I've said that ...) I was reading a post on Consumerist promoting a list compiled by the Mint blog of "10 Things You Can Do To Lower Your Auto Insurance Premium". It's a pretty good list, but item 7 did give me pause: Buy a vehicle with a theft device or have one installed.

This is probably good advice for some people, but I won't be taking Mint's advice any time soon. Let's review, shall we? I own a 1999 Hyundai Elantra. The windshield is cracked, there's some rust acne flaring up on the door panels, and I keep forgetting to replace a taillight cover that got broken last winter because I hardly ever walk behind my car. I don't need to buy some fancy gadget; the entire car is an anti-theft device.

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Library Thing book review: Fear the Worst

This suspenseful novel starts out in a very promising way with every parent's worst nightmare: A divorced father is dumbfounded and frantic when his teenage daughter doesn't come home from her summer job one evening. When he goes to her workplace to inquire about her, they claim not to know who she is. So if she wasn't going to work every day, where was she going, and where is she now?

The first two-thirds of the book are solid, filled with a frantic dad trying to convince everyone, including the police, that his daughter's an innocent teen mixed up in some scary stuff. I know you won't be shocked — shocked! — to hear that the police not only don't believe him, they think he had something to do with her disappearance. But the ending is so weirdly convoluted I'm still not sure I understand exactly what happened. Between dead bodies showing up on dad's lawn and a climactic scene at a shabby Catskills resort, it's a disappointing denouement to an otherwise tense thriller. Read more!

Library Thing book review: The Cellist of Sarajevo

It took me much too long to review this book, but not because I couldn't decide whether I liked it or not. I knew as soon as I started reading this compelling and unusual narrative of the effects of the 1997 siege of Sarajevo on a quartet of the city's citizens that it was one of the finest books I've read in a long time.

No, the delay was because as soon as I finished it, I started loaning it out to people who I was pretty sure would love it, too. One of them, Amir, lived in Sarajevo when the siege began. He managed to escape through the tunnel mentioned in the book, and later married a good friend of mine and came to the U.S.

But enough about that. The narrative of The Cellist of Sarajevo is unusually constructed. There are four main characters, and the chapters alternate between their viewpoints. One of the characters is the titular cellist, who reacts to a bombing that killed 22 people waiting in a bread line by vowing to play on the bombing site every day for 22 days. Another character is "Arrow," a female sniper who is assigned to protect the cellist from assassination during his daily concerts. Kenan must make a dangerous trek across the city to fetch fresh water for his family, a journey that involves crossing intersections that are targeted by enemy snipers in the hills surrounding Sarajevo. Dragan is making a similar journey, trying to reach his workplace where he knows he can get a free meal — a precious commodity in a city where privation is the norm and no one has enough.

The four characters never meet each other, but they encounter other neighbors, friends, and strangers during the course of their quests. These encounters bring into sharp focus what it means to retain your essential humanity in the most inhumane of conditions, and whether it is possible to live through a war without losing the eseential essence of civilization. It's important to note, I think, that while The Cellist of Sarajevo is based on actual events, the author says in his introduction that he has compressed three years of war into a month of narrative for literary purposes. Knowing that did not lessen the impact of the story for me in any way.

The Cellist of Sarajevo is beautifully, lyrically written. I found myself compelled to read passages to myself, for the joy of hearing the language spoken aloud. Reading aloud also helped to slow my reading, and prolonged the pure pleasure of the experience of living with these four brave, fascinating individuals.

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