Bukowski + Memphis

“Some people never go crazy, What truly horrible lives they must live”

I'm reading Charles Bukowski in Memphis. His prose about living on the edge seems appropriate here, even though there's no indication that Bukowski ever lived in Tennessee.

Bukowski wrote gritty fiction about Henry Chinaski, a largely autobiographical character. Chinaski smokes, drinks, and screws his way through the 50s, 60s and 70s. And Memphis is a gritty, gritty town on the banks of the Misssissipi river.

The building across the street is burned out, and a large number of for sale and for lease signs dot the storefronts of the central business district. The park across the street commemorates a forgotton hero: Jefferson Davis, the President of the Confederate States of America. Around here, the Civil War is "The War", and the Confederates are the "good guys". And Martin Luther King was assasinated at 450 Mulberry St on April 4, 1968 .

But Memphis has a rich musical past too. In the 1950's Johnny Cash lived here and sold appliances while playing in a band called the Tennessee Two with Luther Perkins. Indeed, Johnny Cash and a number of other artists got their first big break at Sun Records, including Elvis and Roy Orbison. Elvis made his home here until August 16, 1977 where he met his untimely death.

Meanest Book Club

I've been searching for a book club. Here's one that I won't be joining, or trying to join any time soon. The Book You Crew on Livejournal.com; quite possibly the meanest book club in existence. Think Jack Black in High Fidelity. Think English Lit majors with a God complex and constipation. Anyone applying to the Book You Crew must submit their top 20 favorite books, and then face a merciless barrage of questions. Over 80% of applicants are banned.

"...If your list reads like the most recent NY Times Bestseller list, reads like
your high school summer reading list, reads like the front table at
Borders/B&N, or includes anything by John Grisham, you're deluding yourself
that you're qualified to be here. Make like a tree and branch out."

Trash

I plan to consume, read, and eventually dispose of this collection of essays from MIT press. The book explores the meaning and psychology of garbage. From a typology of dust bunnies to an essay on brownfields redevelopment. In a consumptive society, our trash defines us to a large extent. So a study of the ethics and significance of trash is appropriate.

Read: Fiasco

Just finished Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq. This book is difficult to put down; a devastating critique of the Bush administration and senior military establishment from a star journalist at the Wall Street Journal. The book adds substantially to the debate on Iraq: it is not simply a rehash of available public information. As the Pentagon correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, Ricks has filled the book with candid interviews and research from inside the military.

Fiasco describes the disgraceful history of the invasion of Iraq, from 2002-2006. He briefly covers the false premises that led to war: the bogus linkage between Saddam and al-Qaeda; the false claim that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, which was cooked up by pressuring the intelligence community for worst case scenarios. However most of the book is devoted to the occupation.

Ricks describes in riveting detail the results of an administration of incompetent neocons. Having sold the war as a cakewalk, the Bushies and their pets in the military establishment then proceeded to hamfistedly botch the occupation: by wasting piles of money and time looking for nonexistent WMDs, by not providing sufficient troops on the ground to prevent the country from slipping into looting and chaos; by appointing an incompetent civilian administration of Republican loyalists; and by enraging Iraqis with a brutal, torture filled occupation.

This book is important because it shows that elections do matter, even if you don't like both choices. This should put to bed the conventional wisdom that generally conservatives are generally hard headed, whereas liberals are pie in the sky idealists. Republicans and Democrats are not the same, despite the fact that they both slosh in massive donations and are both beholden to moneyed special interests. An Al Gore administration most definitely would not have disgraced and endangered the United States with this trillion dollar quagmire.