2021 Redux

 A summary of unposted titles from Spring 2021....

 January 2021  Host - Roy   

Subtitled A True Story of Vengeance and Survival, John Vaillant's account of a man-eating tiger in Russia's Maritime Territory gave us a fulsome education on the wrenching poverty that afflicted Russia's far east after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the endemic corruption that has devastated the tiger's habitat, and the history of the Siberian tiger and its brethren in Africa and the Indian subcontinent.  What it didn't offer was a concise story.  After a promising start, in which we learn about and applaud the tiger's killing of a local poacher, Vaillant veers off into lengthy digressions about Soviet-era politics, the Russo-Japanese war, the consumer economy in China, the plight of early man in sub-Saharan Africa, etc.  After occasional updates on the activities of the marauding tiger, Vaillant does return in the final 30 pages to finish the story of how the tiger was eventually tracked and killed.  He doesn't, however, answer the question implicit in the subtitle, as we are never quite sure whose survival is at stake in this most bleak of environments.  Rating: 7.2

 February 2021  Host - Peter  

While Peter did offer News of the World for our consideration, we clearly disappointed him by not opting for one of his more substantial titles (Far From the Tree-Solomon; The Known World-Jones; Necessary Lies-Chamberlain; and The Return-Matar).  At 208 pages, Paulette Jiles gave us (and Hollywood, since it was recently made into a film starring Tom Hanks) a short, endearing story about a Civil War veteran who's agreed to escort across Texas a young girl recently freed from Indian captivity.  The book contains all of the ingredients needed for a successful movie:  a sympathetic protagonist bound by a sense of duty, menacing bad guys (and few good ones for contrast), an arduous but successful journey, and a bond created during that journey that produces the novel's climax.  OK, so it was predictable and at times corny, but it proved an enjoyable read.  Indeed, that was the most common adjective used during our Zoom discussion.  Misgivings aside, we liked the Civil War and Reconstruction history, Captain Kidd's livelihood as a reader of news in a time of deep political polarization, and the brief but sympathetic treatment of Joanna's captors, the Kiowa, and their Comanche allies.  Rating: 7.4

April 2021  Host - Andrew  

Kevin Barry's novel about two aging Irish gangsters waiting expectantly one night at the Port of Algeciras has been on everyone's list of books to read.  And it's been on ours as well. Offered but rejected in the past, I resurrected it alongside Homeland Elegies (Akhtar), The Abstainer (McGuire), The Splendid and the Vile (Larson), and Fortune Smiles (Johnson).  For most, our selection was vindicated by an appreciation for Barry's poetic dialog, his unforgettable characters, and the building suspense he creates out of a series of flashbacks.  Were it not for our American ears, we might all have given it a full thumbs-up as Doug did.  But the fact that Barry had us running for the Irish-English dictionary slowed many of us down. While I found pleasure in reading quickly and ignoring the unfamiliar references, I was in the minority.  All of us, however, were engaged by the gangsters' back story and intrigued by the significance each of the two men places on the elusive Dilly (for whom they are waiting) and her mother (whose death they both grieve).  Rating:  7.8

May 2021  Host - Tom  

When Tom told us we were finally going to dine in person, and he offered us a choice of Krueger's This Tender Land,  Weiner's The Geography of Bliss, Proulx's Bad Dirt, and Sides' Hellbound on His Trail to accompany our meal, he figured he'd also toss in a book about food just for kicks.  And that's how we ended up with Anthony Bourdain's book about his televised quest for the most compelling meals in the most exotic places around the world.  After a 14-month hiatus, with only Zoom meetings to sustain our reading, the promise of real food and a discussion of same proved irresistible.

Let's dispense with the book first.  It featured interesting locales and passable writing, with a few compelling stories intermixed with just as many forgettable ones.  What was most memorable about the reading were the occasional anecdotes--his time in France with his brother, his reflections crossing North Africa, his depression in Indochina--that foretold Bourdain's subsequent suicide.  While many of the dishes were enticing (and some utterly repelling), Bourdain's travelogue was bittersweet from start to finish.  

Our dinner, on the other hand, was a pure pleasure from start to finish.  With 15 guys in attendance (including our good friend Mark), and a table groaning with BBQ chicken and ribs and assorted sides, we spent less time on the book and more time simply eating and catching up.  Fully-vaccinated and guided by the latest from the CDC, our dinner was the first large indoor gathering most of us have enjoyed since the onset of Covid.  What a terrific way to return to normalcy!  

Peter Celebrates the Flower Moon

Dinner and Acknowledgments

April's book selection took us back to 1921 and told us, in unsparing detail, what lay at the end of the Trail of Tears for the Osage Nation.  As our host last Tuesday, Peter had to devise a menu that referenced, without trivializing, the subject matter of The Killers of the Flower Moon.  Our consensus:  his fry bread tacos were the perfect accompaniment to our book.

Now common to Native American tribes throughout the southwest, fry bread was concocted by the Navajo during their forced relocation to New Mexico.  The Navajo used the only ingredients offered by the US government (flour, salt, lard) to sustain them on land too poor to grow their traditional foods. Fry bread tacos later became part of the southwestern indigenous cultures that spanned the border with Mexico.  (Note:  no big beautiful wall then existed.)

Preceding the fry bread tacos was a tasty Three Sisters Stew, another Indian recipe and an overt reference to the three Osage sisters whose murders open Grann's story.  Dessert was a bowl of strawberries and brownies topped with vanilla ice cream.  Delicious, yes.  Subtle, no.  No one missed the symbolism of white over red and brown.  Well done, Peter!

Our Review and Discussion of The Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann

Thanks to the popularity of The Killers of the Flower Moon, Grann has successfully reminded Americans of a painful, long-forgotten chapter in American history.  During the decade following World War I, two notable events occurred on the Osage reservation in Oklahoma:  the discovery of large deposits of oil made the Osage enormously wealthy, and a series of Osage homicides began and persisted with the connivance of local authorities. Grann's non-fiction account sifts through trial transcripts, newspaper articles, first-person accounts, and other primary sources to re-tell the disturbing story of how prominent whites not only exploited the Osage but--to bypass the "headrights" of the Osage--also killed them.

Grann also describes how the then-named Bureau of Investigation was called in to find the killers after the efforts of the county prosecutor and state attorney general were deemed corrupt by the Osage and others.   The personal involvement of J. Edgar Hoover and the convictions obtained by his agents and federal prosecutors are the climax of Grann's narrative.

Despite our differences, we all found the story of the Osage fascinating.  We were, to a man, appalled by the treatment of the Osage by otherwise upstanding white citizens.  At every opportunity, the white establishment stole the wealth and dignity of a tribe that was, by the 1920's, greatly reduced in population and forced to survive on land whose spectacular oil wealth had already begun to diminish by the time the FBI concluded its investigation.  As Peter noted, Grann's book takes direct aim at the myth of American exceptionalism. And, as Larry and Dean pointed out, the suffering of the Osage was the logical result of the westward expansion foretold in Undaunted Courage.

Our Rating of The Killers of the Flower Moon

While The Killers of the Flower Moon features a compelling story, many of us faulted Grann for trying too hard. After selling us on the shocking killings that rocked the Osage Nation, Grann then tries to convince us that Hoover's legacy and today's FBI were both forged in the crucible of the ensuing investigation. (They weren't.)  If that weren't enough, he devotes the final pages of his narrative to his own investigation in which he purports to discover innumerable additional victims along with suspects never charged in their deaths.  (We weren't persuaded, as the sources he relies on had already made similar claims.)  Partly for these reasons, and partly to revoke Grann's poetic license (Paul and I complained about his occasional, awkward lyricism), we pulled back from a stronger rating and awarded Grann a still-healthy 7.3.

Next Up:  Lake Success by Gary Shteyngart

For May, Roy offered us The Overstory by Richard Powers, The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver, Rules of Civility of Amor Towles, and Lake Success by Gary Shteyngart.  In the end, Roy's desire to reprise Shteyngart (after our enjoyment reading Super Sad True Love Story) broke a tie with The Overstory.  We will see if Shteyngart's latest novel about Wall Street hubris lives up to his growing reputation as an American satirist.

Peter's Take on an American Classic

Dinner and Acknowledgments

I’m sure Peter puzzled over his meal choices.  What to serve when the story at hand is about submarines and deep-sea mining vessels?  A natural choice would have been a tasty deep water fish.  But lanternfish are hard to come by, even here on the west coast.  So Peter pivoted to patriotism and last Thursday showed his adopted flag by treating us to an all-American classic, the hamburger.  Combined with steak fries and salad, and ice cream afterwards, our meal was the perfect accompaniment to a quintessentially American story about ingenuity, money, and an engineering challenge fueled by the anxiety of the Cold War.

Our Review and Discussion of The Taking of K-129 by Josh Dean

In 1968, the Soviet ballistic submarine K-129 went missing.  Unbeknownst to the Kremlin, it suffered a catastrophic event and sank along the International Date Line north of Hawaii.   Shortly thereafter, the Americans learned of the loss and, using submerged acoustical beacons, discovered the sub’s location. With the CIA overseeing the mission, the race was on to devise a means of raising the sub before the Soviets realized it had been located.

The focus of Dean’s story is the engineering challenge posed by retrieving a 1,500-ton sub from a depth of 16,700 feet.  Complicating the mission was the requirement that the nature of the work be kept secret.  This required the construction of the Glomar Explorer, the world’s largest deep sea mining ship, equipped with a submersible barge (to carry the sub back).  It also required the secret cooperation of the Howard Hughes Corporation, which provided the CIA with its cover story:  the Glomar Explorer would explore the seabed for manganese nodules!  

Project Azorian was a partial success. Only a portion of the sub was retrieved, as the remainder broke apart during the lift process.  The story helped us understand America’s mood in the late 1960’s:  its confidence was high but Sputnik and Vietnam had punctured its post-war belief that anything was possible.  Much like the Apollo mission, Project Azorian tested and confirmed America’s engineering prowess.

After expressing our appreciation for a story so little known, we took turns faulting Dean for inserting one unnecessary character after another.  The Glomar Explorer had 178 sailors and engineers, and it felt like we were introduced to each one.  The narrative was also far too long.  What should have been long-form journalism, according to Larry, was instead expanded into a full-length book.  Both Jack and Roy skipped entire chapters and still came away with the story intact.  John was pleased to learn more about the U-2 and SR-71 spy planes and I was tickled to learn the origin of the CIA’s “neither confirm nor deny” response to press inquiries.  But neither was necessary to Dean’s story.

Our Rating of The Taking of K-129

Our below-average 5.7 rating reflected our impatience with Dean but belied our enthusiasm for the subject matter.  Indeed, some of us had a personal connection to the story.  George worked for the Hughes Corporation in the 1970’s and got to tour the secret offices used by the CIA.  Mando and others recall boating around the Glomar Explorer after it was mothballed in Suisun Bay.  And Larry’s uncle worked on submarines at Mare Island and took several out on shakedown cruises. 

Next Up:  The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan

Roy proposed three novels for next month, each reflecting the theme of love and war.  We turned down Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See and Cleave’s Everyone Brave Is Forgiven and instead opted for Australia’s most recent winner of the Man Booker Prize, The Narrow Road to the Deep North.  We’ll learn in December if Flanagan’s story of POWs on the Burmese Railway justifies all the attention it’s received.

All Heart and No Fist at Peter's

Peter's Dinner 

Oh, what to say about a man who assembles his menu from the Food section of The New York Times even after enduring its less-than-flattering portrayal of the Man Book Club?  Poor Peter.  He simply couldn't shake his affection for Melissa Clark's timeless recipes.  Fortunately for us, her curation and Peter's execution last Tuesday of a one-pan entrée of roast chicken, potatoes, and arugula, paired with roast carrots and Brussels sprouts, made for an almost perfect springtime meal. 

The only misstep came at the end.  Thanks to a minor oversight, the organic berries were topped with crème fraiche instead of vanilla ice cream.  Most of us would never have noticed the substitution had the cold vanilla-flavored cream not been dispensed from refrigerated Three Twins pint cartons! 

Our 2016 Quiz

Before we turned our attention to Yapa's debut novel, we all submitted to the Man Book Club 2016 Quiz, which was designed to test how closely we've been listening to one another since our last quiz in 2008. 15 questions were administered, with three guys given chances at each unanswered question.  (Paul was absent; he'll get number 16.) 

The questions were challenging, but men you should still be ashamed!  How many times have we heard Armando talk about his other men's group and George talk about US Rowing?  Maybe our poor performance will make us more sympathetic the next time we see our children's progress reports.  Kudos nonetheless to Terry and Glenn, who showed real test-taking mojo, and honorable mentions to Roy and Doug, whose correct answers to some questions kept them from disgracing themselves.  The rest of you ARE disgraced, so start taking notes.  I'm not waiting 8 years before administering the next quiz.

Other Acknowledgments

We should also acknowledge Peter's daughter, Lulu, whose presence during dinner tempered our outbursts and improved our table manners.  While only an 8th grader, she can already outrow George and outswim Larry.  A low bar, but impressive.  Speaking of impressive, John's daughter Ali was named CWPA player of the year as Michigan headed into the NCAA tournament earlier this month.  John was too shy to share this, so I'm giving Ali the plug she deserves.

Our Review and Discussion of Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a Fist

Sunil Yapa's 2016 novel about the 1999 WTO protests in Seattle had us polarized from the start.  Perhaps it was his ambition (the same event witnessed simultaneously by 7 different characters) or his craftsmanship (there were more than a few clunker sentences--"florid" according to Doug), but his street-level narrative didn't quite work for many of us.

It's hard to summarize Yapa's novel without trivializing his efforts.  The story centers on 12 hours of scripted yet chaotic protest and an ineffectual and at times violent police response.  Through the lens of his various characters, Yapa opines on globalization, illegal immigration, poverty, drugs, family dysfunction, homelessness, and much more.  And therein lay the problem for many of us.  Was the book as simple as its title suggested--an examination of the conflict between love and violence?  I posed the question but no one saw it in such easy terms.

Instead, we argued about Yapa's self-conscious character study and split over whether Victor, Julia, John Henry, Park, et al. were principled in their passion (Peter and Terry seemed to think so; I didn't), reflected a black-and-white clarity (Tom felt they did; Larry felt they didn't), presented as vivid and compelling (John) or muddled and unresolved (Larry and Jack). 

Most of us conceded the novel had its moments, especially in the way its shifting points of view reflected the chaos surrounding the characters (Armando) and captured the same events seven different ways (Glenn).  But if his characters' anguish was palpable, so was Yapa's prose.  He caromed between casual unfinished sentences and digressive high-pitched ones, often in the same scene.  In the hands of a surer stylist, it might have worked.

Rating the Book
 
Rarely has our post-discussion rating been so polarized.  With two 8's (Peter and Armando) and two 4's (Stan and George), Yapa squeaked by with a passable 6.0 and our grudging recognition of  his undeniable talent.  As Terry noted, if we rated on discussion quality alone, Yapa's number would have risen considerably.

Next Up: The Moonshine War by Elmore Leonard

Roy offered us an interesting set of choices for our reading in June.  Bill Bryson's sentimental favorite A Walk in the Woods was first, followed by Emily Mandel's much-touted Station Eleven, and finally Elmore Leonard's 1969 mass market classic, The Moonshine War.  Many of us had already read Bryson's comedic Appalachian meditation and a few bristled at the idea of reading Mandel lest it be taken as a conciliatory gesture.  Our misgivings were mooted when Roy promised a fine selection of distilled spirits if we chose Leonard's Prohibition era narrative.  An easy choice indeed.  We'll convene next month with our used paperbacks and shot glasses in hand. 

2014 In Review

With apologies, here’s a belated summary of our meetings in 2014, following our evening imbibing Joy Juice with Dan:

In March, I hosted and had the highest hopes for my favorite novel of 2012, Peter Heller’s The Dog Stars.  This first-person narrative chronicles the post-apocalyptic angst of a pilot (Hig) holed up in a rural Colorado airport with an ornery fellow survivor (Bangley), an aging dog (Jasper), and miles of open (and threatening) prairie around the airfield.  I thought Hig’s obsession with and eventual exploration of the world beyond would capture everyone’s imagination.  It did, but with reservations about Heller's plot contrivances.  At rating time, we gave the novel a modestly positive 7.1.  At least the Filipino food from Ma’s was a hit.

Glenn hosted us in April, with Rory graciously providing the venue.  The dark interior of the McNear House dining room was the perfect atmosphere as we ate stew and discussed Miller’s Cold War classic, A Canticle for Leibowitz.  Most were glad they read (for the second month in a row) this post-apocalyptic novel, but some quibbled with the narrative’s intentionally slow progression (yes, it took centuries before those monks figured out the meaning of a grocery list).  The church/state tension and the hostility towards science were fascinating, as was society's fate in repeating its cycle of self-destruction (barring a technological, not spiritual salvation at the novel's end). Were it not for the novel’s plodding pace, we might have rated it higher than 6.7.

In May, Terry had us reading another period piece, this time from the French Indo-Chinese conflict in the 1950’s.  Graham Greene’s The Quiet American generated ambivalence, as we struggled with the opium-laced duplicity of the English correspondent, Fowler, and the implausibly naïve American diplomat, Pyle.  The book had no likeable characters and instead was an interesting, if disturbing harbinger of the war that followed a decade later in Vietnam.  Following Stan’s loud protestations that Greene’s novel was “not a war book” (no one said it was, Stan), we gave it a thumbs-up rating of 7.1.

Stan hosted us for a twofer in June.  Our chosen book, Saramago’s Cain, was (thanks to the sudden generosity of Random House) twinned with a pre-publication edition of Alan Furst’s latest novel, Midnight in Europe.  Those of us who read Furst’s pre-WWII spy thriller were disappointed.  Thin, poorly plotted, and with unfinished characters.  Enough said.  Cain, on the other hand, was a provocative read for even those whose recollection of the Old Testament had grown dim.  From the Garden of Eden through Cain’s lengthy exile, Saramago's final novel moved along with an almost mystical hum.  Impressed but unpersuaded that Saramago had achieved anything close to the standard he set with Blindness, we gave him the benefit of the doubt with a 6.5 rating.

Following Doug’s summer party in July (thanks again, Doug), we met at Dean’s in August to chew over Reza Aslan’s critically-acclaimed Zealot.  It was mere coincidence that Zealot picked up where Cain left off.  And while no one was pining at the end of the meal for yet another story about the Bible, we were all quite taken by the extraordinary research Aslan poured into this latest account of the story of Jesus of Nazareth.  His thesis that Jesus was less a proselytizer than an overt revolutionary provided plenty of conversation to accompany our meal and as a story was impressive enough to earn a 7.6. And about that meal, Dean did a superb job replicating the cuisine of Israel while operating with a balky hip.  (Glad the bionic version is working well, Dean.)

In September, Larry persuaded us to read Steven Kotler’s controversial work examining the state of “flow.”  In The Rise of Superman, Kotler posits that today’s generation of extreme athletes is achieving extraordinary success by hacking (his term) flow and that this state of being holds promise for all manner of human endeavor.  As a group, we weren’t buying it.  And I mean that literally, as some of us felt that Kotler’s book-length exposition was designed in part to sell his accompanying workshops, seminars, and the like.  While some felt that a state of flow was achievable (Stan and Dan, in particular), no one was willing to defend Kotler’s view that flow is the sine qua non of ultimate performance.  The anecdotes were interesting, but the hyperbole relegated The Rise of Superman to a subpar 5.7.

With the arrival of rain and colder weather, we convened at Peter’s to mull over Dan Brown’s best-selling account of the University of Washington’s 1936 Olympic rowing team, The Boys in the Boat.  To a man, we enjoyed the core story with its (obvious) themes of teamwork, redemption, sacrifice, honor, and the like. But, led by Larry, we panned Brown for larding up a compelling story with extraneous detail and trying too hard to eulogize an entire generation (yes, THAT generation).  We also decried the formula: part Laura Hillenbrand, part Erik Larson, Brown doesn’t quite do justice to either. George shared his early rowing experience in Pocock shells and that rowing gradually disappeared from the national consciousness not only because of the rise of televised sports, but also due to the taint of too many betting scandals. Notwithstanding our quibbles, The Boys in the Boat generated a healthy 7.1 in our final rating.

Roy hosted us—well most of us—in December to share reactions to Gary Shteyngart’s Super Sad True Love Story.  Ok, let’s cut to the chase. Since I didn’t attend, I can’t do justice to the conversation.  But I did collect the votes afterwards and was surprised that Shteyngart, whose peculiar brand of Russian émigré satire isn’t for everyone, managed to pull down a 7.5.  Either Roy’s distillations were especially powerful or I misjudged my fellow MBCers.  Regardless, kudos to Roy for a fine meal (according to my sources), and that’s a wrap for 2014!

Middle America, Middlesex, and an Ending

With apologies to John, Larry, and Peter, here is an abbreviated and belated summary of three outstanding evenings in the preceding months.

Last December, we arrived at John's house with exceedingly low expectations.  With 1950's Iowa as his backdrop, and knowing that Roy had already mined the era to produce his Midwestern Manhattan-style sandwiches for our discussion of In Cold Blood, John's menu choices appeared limited. Or so we thought. John surprised us by pulling from his warming oven individual foil boxes he'd hand-filled with gourmet meat loaf, organic spuds, and fresh veggies.  Not Swanson's.  Not Hungry-Man.  Just outstanding!

Our reaction to The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid was more muted. We enjoyed Bryson's many references to a childhood that resembled our own.  From Glenn's memory of the x-ray measuring machines in shoe stores, to Larry's recollection of hi-fi cabinets and early color TV's, to our collective memories of delivering newspapers and driving to Disneyland--Bryson had us reminiscing about simpler times.  But it wasn't enough to achieve more than a middling 7.0 rating.  As noted by Paul, Bryson's memoir, while funny and evocative, is a book about not very much.  There is an aimlessness to the narrative that left many of us wanting more.  So we helped ourselves to dessert, talked about growing up, and relaxed in the company of John's excellent guests, Mark and Don.

In early January,  we went skiing.  And a good thing, too.  By late January the snow in the Sierras was declining fast and very little more came our way.  Fortunately, our bye month gave us an extra 30 days to finish reading Jeffrey Eugenides' best known work, Middlesex.

When we met in February, Larry's dinner nicely captured the Greek immigrant story at the heart of Middlesex with servings of lamb and beef gyros (on two types of homemade pita bread!) followed by  assimilationist brownies a la mode (yes, the vanilla ice cream was also homemade).  The book was received almost as well as the dinner.

Many considered it a rich, evocative tale (multi-layered, according to John) that suffered from a single, significant distraction:  the lengthy revelation that the main character, Callie, is a hermaphrodite.  Doug, who was born only 5 miles from Greek Town, wasn't convinced of its import but figured it was Callie's fate given the secret of her forebears. Contrast that with Paul who, having read the novel on his iPhone, complained that the first 2100 pages were mere foreplay to the main act (presumably the reader's epiphany about Callie, but as usual Paul wasn't saying). From there our discussion evolved into commentary about the Greek  diaspora (who knew Peter's hometown of Melbourne boasts the second largest expat Greek community?) and of course hermaphrodites (Terry warned us not to research the subject via Google images; Armando noted that post-coital snails eat their penises to separate). (Editor:  My notes are quite specific on this last point.)  Our 7.5 rating was boosted by Stan who proclaimed the novel "a brilliant work of art," despite having read it over five years ago and retaining only the dimmest recollection of the story line.

Peter's dinner on March 19 was a well-conceived and even better executed St. Patrick's Day meal, replete with corned beef, cabbage, potatoes, carrots, and competing apple and rhubarb pies.  Maybe it's his Commonwealth upbringing, but leave it to Peter to serve up Irish food to accompany our discussion of Julian Barnes, an oh-so-English contemporary novelist.

Barnes' The Sense of an Ending generated an unpredictable reaction.  Unlike Banville's The Sea, an equally introspective novel that had most of us on the fence, we all genuinely liked Barnes' effort.  Like Banville, Barnes delves deeply into the fissures of unreliable memory, in this instance through the perspective of Tony Webster, a retiree who discovers a painful part of his past.  For most of us, the pleasure of this novel was the gradually building suspense that precedes the narrator's realization of the pain he'd caused his school friends long ago.  But not quite all were entranced by Barnes' skillful prose.  Paul, always the contrarian, found the characters uniformly unlikable. His dissenting 5 failed to keep this gem of a novel from pulling down a very respectable 7.5 (an above average rating, especially for a Booker Prize winner).

From the Kashmir Valley to the Copper Canyon....It's the Full Peter!

Acknowledgments

On Tuesday Peter broke with tradition and made no effort to theme his meal with McDougall's ultrarunner's opus, Born to Run.  Instead, he treated us to an outstanding rendition of Kashmiri chicken laced with saffron he picked up in Kashmir back in 1992.  We may not have tasted the vintage saffron (nor seen evidence of its distinctive yellow coloring), but we did taste the freshly ground cinnamon and cardamom and the minced pistachios that flavored his dish.  I would have taken home leftovers, but in Peter's politically correct household (yes, the temperature stays at an even 62F to remind his daughters--and his guests--of their environmental responsibility), I couldn't find a single container of Tupperware!

Despite Peter's preference for the Himalayas, most of us prepared for a Mexican evening.  We brought plenty of Mexican beer and Stan even wore his bespoke sandals that were custom fit in the Copper Canyon in 2004.  John wore nothing (on his feet, that is), but Larry succumbed to the new ethos of minimal footwear and sported a pair of just-bought Nike Frees.

As we sat down to dinner, Peter was forced to recount the story of his failure to run a 5:00 mile at age 50, and the consequences thereof.  Suffice to say, none of us will ever join the Tamalpa runners on Tuesdays at the S.R. track without thinking of Peter's bold move last October on the evening of his 51st birthday.

The Book
McDougall's Born to Run showcases the extraordinary running abilities of the Tarahumara people in northern Mexico and culminates in a showdown in the Copper Canyon between Scott Jurek, a seven-time winner of the Western States 100, and a clutch of unknown Tarahumarans.  Most of us agreed with Doug that McDougall's story was perfect fodder for one of his magazine pieces (he writes for Men's Health, Esquire, Outside, and other manly periodicals) but a rather slender premise for a full-length book.  No matter.  McDougall lards up his paean to ultra runners with plenty of diverting (and distracting) anecdotes about every major distance runner since Emil Zatopek.

Despite our criticisms of the writing, everyone enjoyed the subject matter.  Indeed, as Paul and Larry both noted, the book was literally inspiring.  By attacking as myth the notion that distance runners are predisposed to injury, McDougall poses a compelling alternative:  that a naturally trained stride, a rejection of modern shoe technology, and a genuine love of running can produce extraordinary and extraordinarily durable runners.  He's certainly convinced Terry, who is back on the trails of China Camp, and John, who promises to go shoeless at his next early morning boot camp session.

Our rating for Born to Run (7.1) proves that a fascinating subject can overcome the choppy, journalistic prose that infuses so many acclaimed works of non-fiction these days. 

Next Up
Our next title is Jonathan Franzen's much-hailed novel, Freedom.  At 576 pages (and hardcover to boot), we've disregarded our usual 500-page limit in the hopes that this meaty study of current American manners will give us plenty to chew on when we meet next at Larry's.  If the novel is a bust, we'll blame Doug for misleading us with his riveting description of Franzen's storyline.

Peter No Lie

Acknowledgments
Our host teased us with his early menu suggestions of kangaroo meat and his later references to Indo-Chinese fusion. Despite the misdirection, Peter pleased us last Tuesday with vodka on ice and a delicious sampling of chicken breasts, baked salmon, assorted sides, and brown rice (anathema to Asians but perfect for Marin County’s whole grain ethos). With his daughter’s brownies and Roy’s after-dinner spirits, we were more than satisfied as we settled in to our book discussion.

Our dinner was notable for the presence of two new MBC members, Tom A. and Paul, who impressed us with their thematic enterprise. Paul showed up wearing a vintage bulletproof vest, replete with camo coloring and an attached grenade. Tom arrived in mufti but with a bottle of Fly Catcher pinot noir and a six-pack of Ruination IPA, names that evoked characters in O’Brien’s post-Vietnam narrative.

As we introduced ourselves to our new members, it became obvious that mutual respect and civility have no place at our table. Tom and Paul, you gave as good as you got, and we only hope you come back for more.

The Book
O’Brien’s In the Lake of the Woods is a documentary novel about a Vietnam vet’s political disgrace, his wife’s subsequent disappearance, and his conflicted and confused role in both events. O’Brien asks more questions than he answers, and we obligingly struggled to figure out many of the same issues that perplex the characters in the novel.

None of us pretended to solve the Big Questions, but we were intrigued by the little ones. Peter asked if the protagonist’s flaws were the product of his childhood or of Vietnam. Paul queried the lack of emotional attachment in and between the characters and wondered if the reader was intentionally left with a similar disaffection. Tom A. and John were both taken by the geography of the novel, the vastness of the lake region, and the title’s inference that the answers are to be found in, not at, the lake. Garth and Stan dueled over the dishonesty propagated by all wars (or just some wars), while acknowledging (with Tom J.) that having friends and acquaintances drafted to serve in but not return from Vietnam makes for painful memories.

The story’s narration was a challenge, given the shifting first person, but when it came to the evidentiary chapters and their footnoting, we were all left guessing. Dean proposed that the narrator in the footnotes was Wade himself, returned from the dead and chronicling his own disappearance as the consummate act of magic. Peter questioned the veracity of much of the "record" presented in these chapters, while others suggested that references to an actual record (e.g., the Peers Commission) without context was just as dishonest. I felt that since only one man (Lt. Calley) was ultimately convicted of atrocities at My Lai, the novel’s exposure of Wade and his lie (“my lie”) was O'Brien's indictment of the many who couldn’t or wouldn’t acknowledge their role in this shocking chapter of American military history.

The book drew consistently positive ratings (7’s and 8’s from all but Roy, whose 4 may have reflected his disgust at Wade’s indecision on the eternal question: vodka or gin?). With a 7.2, O’Brien’s stature in the Man Book Club is secure.

Next Up
Next month’s host, Chris, pandered mightily and very nearly hijacked our usually staid book selection process. Playing Barack to my Hillary, he invoked Obama with his call and response (“Yes, we can!”), and he turned on the Bohemian charm (yes, I refer to the conservative SF gentlemen’s club to which he belongs and, yes, irony duly noted). With these antics, Chris sought to force the selection of Tom Robbins’ cartoonish novella, B is for Beer.

Fortunately, taste and tradition withstood Chris' ham-fisted tactics and, after a series of votes in which no one opted for O’Neill’s Netherland and few gave the nod to Lewis’ Coach, we picked The 25th Hour by Christopher Award-winner David Benioff. (The Christopher Award is admittedly a second-tier Hollywood tribute—in Benioff’s case for adapting The Kite Runner to the big screen—but he is married to Amanda Peet!) Let’s see if this venture into crime fiction is the diversion we need as summer approaches.

Wherein we thank Peter for his Emu burgers and look ahead to poker in September

Many thanks to Peter for a fine evening on Tuesday. The "Emu" burgers with tamarind glaze were very tasty (darling, we all want that recipe!), and the Australian Shiraz was more than drinkable. John, take note: guests need not eat from cans heated over an open flame to feel the muse within.

While the food and drink were above standard, it's a shame that our book fell short. Oscar & Lucinda will have to rank among the poorer of our choices. Had anyone other than Roy and I actually finished the book, maybe our discussion would have been more favorable. That's a broad hint to those of you still on p. 124.

Apart from the book, though, the company also left something to be desired. With the arrival of Chris, the MBC has sunk to a new, literary low. Through force of personality, and a little charm and swagger (he does manage other people's money, after all), Mr. B succeeded in tearing us away from our usual selection criteria in favor of murder/poker/showgirls. Our next book, therefore, is Positively Fifth Street, a non-fiction account of the World Series of Poker and the Ted Binion murder trial by James McManus. Here's an Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/Positively-Fifth-Street-James-McManus/dp/0312422520/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/002-8970648-5624023?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1184168482&sr=8-1

(Please note that this deviation is an EXCEPTION. We return to our usual nail-biting, cliff-hanging Pulitzers immediately thereafter!!)

By special request, we are skipping August and will meet at Mr. B's residence on September 11. Given the nature of our reading material, the evening will feature discussion of the book along with a few hands of poker. As a measure of his sportsmanship, Chris has promised to drink heavily and lose graciously.

Between now and September 11, we wish Garth, John, and Tom well during their trip to Burning Man. Bring back pictures and stories for the rest of us! We also wish Stan well in Wyoming as he recuperates from his latest orthopedic intervention (hope that knee heals fast).

PS: Dan, choosing baseball over the Man Book Club is simply not good form. Next time tell us you're attending a Broadway opening. That will arouse our interest and understanding. All of us, that is, except Chris, who had the nerve to turn on the telly (I think that's Australian) during our discussion of Oscar & Lucinda....