Best American Short Stories of 2007

I am, in general, not too keen on short stories - to me it always seems to be a cockout for a writer to write a bunch of short stories rather than one proper novel. However, this book is different, because it is a compilation of short stories and even more than that, it is a selection of the best short stories. I am intrigued by the selection of Stephen King as the editor, as I have and still think of him as a pulp fiction writer. Nevertheless, the stories inside are, while not annoyingly arty-farty, still a good read (as opposed to most SK stuff). It takes one or two days to read each of them and there is a lot of variety, styles... basically one gets a taster for each writer.The overwhelming theme is plain, sad, everyday life, not even life slotted into the grand scheme of larger forces influencing us as was the case with the realism at the end of 19th century, but the real depressing stuff of pointlessness of our life. My favourite ones were Toga party by J Barth, My brother Eli by J Epstein, Where will you go when your skin cannot contain you by W Gay, Wake by B Jensen, Horseman by R Russo and maybe Sans Farine by J Shepard.

Jon Lee Anderson: Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life

It took me 9 months to read this book, it is 800 pages long. If there is one thing that cannot be denied about this book is that it is extremely well researched. The guy interviewed literally hundreds of people and went painstakingly through all available archives (including Russian and CIA's ones). The outcome is probably more or less as complete biography about Che as we will ever have (or need). The book is quite objective and while it is clear that the author likes Che, it steers away from an unfettered adoration that is present in so much work about Che.

The resulting image of Che remains, even after all bad things are taken into account, that of a positive historical figure. While Fidel's struggle was about power rather than personal convictions, Che was an everlasting idealist. True, he was naive, he never doubted in Fidel and he killed people. However, he did so because he saw himself as an inevitable force of history. Rather
than retire in Cuba, where he could have lived a comfortable life of a revolutionary hero, he went on and fought, first in Africa and then in Bolivia, where he was killed. And while in Cuba, he lived a manic frugal life, thinking it is a duty of revolutionaries to live exemplary anti-capitalist life. He was also incredibly creative, authoring several books on economy, he was critical of the Soviet system and had deep understanding of Marxism. His main theoretical weakness was near fatal attraction to armed struggle - armed struggle was elevated to literarly epic proportions and was in Che's view crucial for development of the "New Man". Most fascinatingly, excerpts from his letters and poems show an incredible mastering of language - he would have been a writer if not
a revolutionary.

The story goes that when his executioner came to do his job, he invited him: "Go on, you're only going to kill a man." [and not an idea]. Essential reading for both moonbats and wingbats alike...

Friedrich Dürrenmatt: Fiziki

Obvezno čtivo za srednješolsko maturo, ki jo med drugi dela tudi moj brat. Čisto sranje.

Gunter Grass: Pločevinasti boben

Kate Land me je pred kratkim opomnila, da moj blog vsebuje skoraj povsem zgolj recenzije piv, čeprav so knjige nekako prominentno v naslovu. Glavni razlog je, da sem zadnje dva meseca žulil Pločevinasti boben Gunterja Grassa, to je 608 strani bobnanja. Težko priznam, ampak na splošno sem ljubitelj dolgih knjig, ker te poskrajo vase tako močno kot te sto-stranske knjige nikoli ne. V osnovi gre za magični realizem, ampak to ni tipična južno-ameriška sorta z družinskim sagami, ki se vlečejo nekaj generacij, temveč življenje Oskarja Mazeratha od rojstva do njegovega tridesetega rojstnega dne. Oskar se pri treh letih odloči, da noče vstopiti v svet odraslega življenja in se zato vrže po stopnicah in od takrat ne raste več, temveč samo še bobna in se dela malo neumnega. Pri 23 (?) letih se odloči, da ima tega dovolj in vrže boben v grob svojega očeta, vstopi v svet odraslih, zraste iz 94cm na 123cm in služi denar z različnimi priložnostnimi deli. Na koncu pristane v bolnišnici za duševno bolne, čeprav pravzaprav ni nor. Vsa ta zgodba naj bi bila nekakša metafora za vse nemško kolobocijo, travmo z nacizmom (sam Gunter Grass je bil član Waffen-SS, kar je priznal šele pred kratkim) ampak najbolj zanimivo pri vsem je, da ni očino točno kako naj bi ta prispodoba delovala. Tako se knjiga utaplja v eni težko oprijemljivi metaforiki, ampak je, ko se enkrat zažene, zelo berljiva, tako kot pač skoraj ves magični realizem. Prevod je odličen (Janko Moder, kdo pa drugi).

Borislav Pekić: Steklina

Na splošno nisem ravno navdušen nad srbskimi finticami, melos v stilu Ko to tamo pijeva in podobno, zato sem precej s težavo začel brati to knjigo, sploh ker je to debela bukla dolga 540 strani. Ampak, Pekićeva steklina, ki je izšla v Delovi zbirki Vrhunci stoletja je res dobra. V bistvu sem jo prebral že nekaj mesecev nazaj, ampak takrat še nisem beležil prebranega... Hecno pri tej knjigi je, da ni prevedena v angleški jezik (razen nekega debilnega prevoda pisateljeve vnukinje) in je potemtakem sploh ne morem priporočit nejugoslovanu... :) Osnovna zgodba je, da se Heathrow okuži z neko super-steklino, forma horror krimiča, ampak v bistvu je zgodba irelevantna, podobno kot pri večini postmodernistov tistega časa (knjiga je bila napisana v sedemdesetih letih). Kritiki na splošno trobijo o totalitarizmu in podobno ampak jaz sem knjigo povsem drugače izkusil. Gre za bizaren preplet človeških zgodb, čudnih karakterjev, malo verjetnih toda možnih zapletov, cel vrvež modernega letališča in bralec vseskozi ne ve, kaj se bo zgodilo z zgodbo: bo postala znanstvena fantastika, orvelijanska strahota, komedija? Torej bereš in bereš in vseskozi narobe ugibaš in potem te na koncu še poslednjič preseneti z res bizarnim koncem... Močno priporočam.

Marco Rossignoli: The complete Pinball Book

I bought 3 book this New Year. One on beer (shit one, more on that on a later post), a Che Guevara bibliography (still waiting to be read) and this jewel about pinballs. It sounds like sad cases' hobby, but pinballs are actually incredibly cool and this book is just a very good introduction to the history and inner workings of pinballs. You can sort of see that he is not a professional writer, the style is a bit shabby every now and then, but the guy is so keen it is just joy to read him. It goes through all the history including flippers, bumpers, scoring devices, mutli platfors, EM-SS transition, pinball art, alternative experiments, etc., etc. It is amazing how much text the guy actually managed to write on the theme without repeating himself much... For example, did you know that flippers didn't exist before fifties and the first time they put them in, they pointed outwards? Or that flippers used to be just 2 inches long? And that you had to manually push ball into the lane using a strange contraption on early pinballs? Warmly recommended.

Virginia Woolf: K Svetilniku

To je moja tretja knjiga od gospe Woolfove, prebral sem še Orlando (pred nekaj meseci) in Valove (pred nekaj leti), oboje v originalu. Valove imam v spominu kot boljše, so pa precej podobni. Orlando je povsem drugačen in malo slabši, četudi še vedno berljiv... Tokrat sem bral v slovenščini v prevodu Rape Šuklje, v bistvu je lepo brati dobre prevode in ta je bil precej soliden (čeprav se je Maja pritoževala obratno).
O Woolfovi se nikakor ne morem izdelati mnenja, nekaj časa se mi zdi ok, nekaj časa povsem jadna. Ima res dober feminističen cinizem, gospa Ramsayeva, ki je tipičen produkt 19 stoletja se ves čas prepričuje, da je zadovoljna, da je zgolj žena tečnega postaranega filozofa in poskuša poročiti še vse ostale v njeni bližini. Tudi tok zavesti ji gre dobro od rok, precej prepričljivo, ampak hkrati nekoliko dolgočasno za bralca - po pravici povedano so debilnosti, ki krožijo ljudem po glavah relativno dolgočasne. Najslabše ji pa gre, kadard začne razpredati o umetnostu, v K Svetilniku obstaja pisateličin alter-ego, slikarka Lily, ki vidi, ki gleda, ki tako vse uvideva in doživlja, da človeka primer srat, čeprav izgleda sicer čisto ok človek.
Tri do štiri.

Harvard Business Review on Entrepreneurship

Ok, couldn't get a more decently sized picture. A good book, not too much bullshit, but general common-sense that might be useful when you try to get rich as I do every now and then. A collage of papers from different authors - every now and then they blatantly contradict themselves; some papers much better than the others. My biggest problem is that all this is pre-internet (my copy is a 99 reprint, but articles date mostly 85-95) and business, marketing and distribution models were considerably different then. Still, who made millions there is likely to be able to make them now. Chapter about commercialising technology is particularly crap, and "How much money does your new venture need?" is also surprisingly useless. Chapters on how to write a successful business plan and the one on milestones are particularly good and so is the quite amusing rant by Arthur Rock, a legendary venture capitalist.