Bookpusher

I happened to catch a bit of the author speaking on NPR several weeks ago and was so impressed by what I heard, I frantically scrabbled around my car during a stoplight looking for a pen and wrote the author’s name on the palm of my hand. I checked out the book he was referencing, The Great Upheaval, and was glad I did. Granted, I’m still only about two-thirds of the way through, because this sucker is the size of a large dictionary, but it’s grand stuff, exactly what I needed after Cormac McCarthy, which was brilliant, but at this stage of my life I need to read something that doesn’t make me feel like hijacking a busload of children and looking for the nearest cliff.

Winik’s book is us a sweeping look at the history of several continents between 1785-1800; the Upheaval the title refers to is the American Revolution, which in turn sparked several social and political uprisings in Europe and Asia soon afterward, paving the way for the modern concept of nation-states and setting the table for the wars of the 20th century. Splitting its time between France, America, and Russia, the book fills in all sorts of historical blanks I wasn’t aware of – my dim grasp of world history from the period is limited to the American Revolution and some kind of crazy guillotining over in France.

Winik makes the point that even before the phone, internet, and satellite communication, nations were still interconnected. Events in one place inspire events in another, and when people are reading Montesquieu and Voltaire and Locke and Rousseau, and some upstart colonies from across the sea kicks England to the curb, then folks from even the most oppressed nations start wondering what they can do. It all doesn’t go smoothly. The glory of the French Revolution soon turns to chaos and terror as the most enlightened nation in Europe slowly commits suicide. Tiny Poland tries to rise up against the mighty Russian Empire, which is led by Catherine the Great, the grandest and most enlightened monarch of her time who invited the most brilliant minds available to her court but who brutally crushed dissent and free thought in her own people. Even America faces revolution as well, as the uncertain nation gets its legs and faces chaos in the form of the Whiskey and Shays’ Rebellions.

Generals, diplomats, and adventurers cross the world stage and flit from one country to another. Winik never strays from his role as historian, sticking to the facts, but makes that history fascinating and absorbing, using conversational language and building up tension between chapters as he switches from France to America to Russia and back again. This isn’t exactly a leisurely weekend read, unless your reading speed is roughly the speed of light, but it is a wonderful chronicle of an integral part of modern world history if you’re in to that sort of thing.

I’m slowly but surely coming to the realization that there will, in fact, be a tiny, loud, needy, and very messy person who will be living at my house that I will, in part, be responsible for. Having children is wonderful in the abstract. I’m a great theoretical parent. But now that the abstract is quickly becoming reality, I realize that I’m hopelessly unprepared. I feel like Britney about to go onstage at the VMAs, full of false confidence but ultimately about to embarrass myself in front of millions of people.

I’ll give you an example. I recently read Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road“. Granted, it’s an Oprah Book Club pick, but Cormac McCarthy is literaturah, you see, and since I’m soon to be plunging myself into the realm of Elmo, Dora the Explorer, and the Wiggles, I figured that I needed to read something good before my reading lists devolve into something that distracts me in the fifteen minutes I’ll have between nap time and a diaper change.

Apparently I needed to do a bit more research into my books: “The Road” is a post-apocalyptic novel about a nameless man and his nameless son who travel across a dead America, foraging for food among a gray and blasted landscape, avoiding the marauding bands of cannibalistic survivors that roam the countryside. Yeah. You can just feel the laughter coming out of that novel, can’t you? Just an airport read; a quick little kneeslapper that you forget an hour after you put it down, right?

Dear god, people. I’m a fan of noir and all, but this sucker is bleak. Seriously bleak. The words and sentences themselves are bleak – the novel uses no quotation marks at all, as if McCarthy was too depressed to add them in. All the sentences are short and abrupt, as if the words themselves lack the energy to continue. Major victories in the novel include finding a jar of peaches and successfully hiding the entire night from a group of cannibal slavers. And no cannibal slavers in a fun, pulpy Mad Max sort of way, either.

The concept of humanity and compassion in “The Road” is guttering out like a candle in a wind tunnel. There is so little hope left that a mere act of kindness to another human being is almost overwhelming. Which, of course, is the point of the novel. But as soon-to-be father, it’s not something I’m even remotely interested in reading right now. The problem is that “The Road” is such a damn good novel that I was unable to tear myself away from it. To be honest, this is an amazing example of American literaturah at its best. It’s the soul-sucking, depressing, ‘there is no hope for the human race so let’s just give up and let the cockroaches take a whack at it’ best, but there you go.

The next book I read has got to be a novel about happy rainbows and butterflies or something. If you know any like that, pass ‘em along. Meanwhile I’ll be scrubbing my brain out with bleach.

In the above equation, I’m always Charlie Brown, television executives always play the Lucy role, and the football is a good television show. I fall in love with a show, the tv execs yank it, and every time I come back for more, figuring that this time will be the time where I finally gain the object of my desire. My So-Called Life. Firefly. SportsNight. Studio 60. John Doe. Wonderfalls. Freaks & Geeks. Go ahead and add your own brilliant but canceled tv show to the list: no matter how good it is or was, the bottom line is that the folks in charge will always, always, screw up a good thing.

The show that’s always been number one on that particular list for me was Cupid, starring a pre-Entourage Jeremy Piven, which aired back in 1998. Piven played a character who claimed to be the god of love, tasked by Zeus to bring 100 couples together in order to get back to Olympus, and who hung around a couples therapist played by noted showkiller Paula Marshall. Thanks to the glory of the internet, you can watch the entire run on YouTube.) It was funny, farcical, offbeat, dramatic, and wonderfully written. It was also misunderstood, and quickly canceled, and I resigned myself to my cursed fate.

But this morning, I read the news, which quickly spread around the entertainment blogosphere. ABC has hired Rob Thomas, the creator and writer of the show, to remake it.

Sweet Jesus, I thought. At last. They’ve answered my prayers. I finally get a do-over.

But then reality kicked in – a major part of what made the show so wonderful was the chemistry between the leads. Also, ABC will never be able to pry Piven away from HBO. They’ll have to get a new cast, people who are probably wrong for the parts. They’ll force Rob Thomas to change the show, or maybe tweak things here and there to appeal to a larger audience, and make it nothing like the show I fell in love with. In short, the tv executives will ruin it. Because that’s what they do. They yank the football away from me.

But even with all that in mind, I’m pulling for it. I’m praying that lightning strikes twice. Because I’m Charlie Brown; I have to have faith. This time, they’ll do it right. Maybe. I hope.

Bill Simmons has recently updated his epic Levels of Losing column, which chronicles the progressive level of sports disasters that can befall a sports team, increasing the amount from thirteen to sixteen.

Being a fan of Kansas City sports all my life, I’ve personally been through at least ten of these.