Thursday, January 18, 2007

nick tosches

i'm such a literary ignoramus that i didn't even realize that nick tosches had a new book, king of the jews, pubbed in 2005. what it is, is nothing less than a _history of western civ_ told through the prism of one man's life -- in this case, arnold rothstein, a politically-connected gambler and gangster who was accused of fixing the 1919 world series. more to the point, it's about storytelling (in the same way that another of my favorite books, tim o'brien's the things they carried, is) -- specifically, the notion that history is nothing more than a collection of lies that get repeated (and referred to) enough to be taken as truth. a sobering notion for anyone involved in the production of "non-fiction." strangely, altho i bailed on nick 30 pages into a diatribe against his agent that he inserted in the middle of his last book, in the hand of dante, my fave moment here comes when he pauses in the middle to contemplate and philosophize on matters unrelated to "the story." his use of language is _that_ beguiling.

having recently read his two mafia novels back-to-back, i gotta say that this time around, i found the "big" one (that'd be trinities) less diverting than the "little" one (cut numbers, his first novel), possibly because the former seemed like a big-budget hollywood epic version of the latter's small indie art film -- same story, different scale 'n' scope. or so it seemed to me, anyway. it's just nice having the attention span to read again.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I'd say I agree about Tosches, having just finished his JLL bio, Hellfire. I'd give anything else he's done a fair shot after reading that one.

Thanks for the tip on Robin Sylar, also. He's one I missed back when I was haunting Ft. Party Worth's blues joints, I regret to say.

8:10 AM  

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