KENTUCKY HAM by William Burroughs Jr.

 Finished Su 1/30/22

This is one of my ancient paperbacks that I first completed during a three day weekend, Sa 10/3/92.

Last week I watched the film, 'A MILLION LITTLE PIECES' and I really didn't like it. Billy Bob Thornton and Giovanni Ribisi were great, but the film seemed to lack the intensity of the novel. 

KENTUCKY HAM is also a story of someone who lands in an addiction facility.

When Burroughs Jr. was 14 years old his father had him move to Tangier, Morocco. Gays, junkies, and teenagers don't mix. I wish he had devoted more of the novel to this part of his life.

Commercial fishing in  Alaska as part of his recovery was very interesting. 

From the book's page at Wikipedia:

"Kentucky Ham, published in 1973, was the second novel by William S. Burroughs, Jr., the son of Beat Generation author William S. Burroughs.

Like its predecessor, Speed, the book is an autobiographical novel based upon Burroughs' own life. It covers his time spent in a prison farm in Kentucky, working on a fishing boat in Alaska, and visiting his father's old haunt, Tangiers, among other events.

Burroughs Jr. went on to write a third novel, Prakriti Junction, but it was never completed. Jennie Skerl, the academic who has published critical reviews of Burroughs' father's work, the Beats and Jane Bowles, befriended Billy and reported that his third novel included material about his liver transplant in 1976. Material from the third novel was edited into his third published work, Cursed From Birth.

As with Speed, Kentucky Ham is often erroneously listed as part of the Burroughs, Sr. literary canon. In 1993 it was republished in an omnibus edition alongside Speed."

RABBIT IS RICH by John Updike

 Finished Th 1/26/22

This is one of my ancient paperbacks. It doesn't say when I last read the book, but I know I've read this at least twice, but it was probably a different copy. 'The Rabbit' series is one of my favorites and every time I read one of them, I see something different that I love.

Harry has inherited his father in laws' Toyota dealership and he's enjoying a solid middle class lifestyle, but he is not 100% happy- not even close. His son Nelson seems impossible to grow up, his wife drink too much, and he's in 'lust' with one of his friends wives. There's a strange section in the novel about a wife swap while Harry and his friends are on vacation in the Caribbean. He doesn't get to sleep with the woman that he wants because Nelson forces them to return to the US early. Also, Harry is obsessed with finding out if his lover, Ruth, gave birth to their daughter many years before.  

I should look for more books by Updike that are not tied to Harry Angstrom. 

A link to the book's page at Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbit_Is_Rich

Updike's page at Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Updike#Novels

THE BLOOD ARTISTS by Chuck Hogan

 Re-finished Su 1/16/22

This is an ancient paperback that I originally finished on Mo 9/8/03 "in the whirlpool at Mackinaw City, Michigan". I don't remember this at all. 

My original note said 'Good idea, badly executed' and I think this is rather harsh because I liked the book the second time around. I think it was because there was not a single word about people in the novel that objected to the handling of their epidemic. 

The following phrase is the only thing on the front cover:

"EVERYTHING THAT BEGINS, BEGINS WITH BLOOD"

From the book's page at Good Reads:

"Chuck Hogan's new thriller opens as Drs. Stephen Pearse and Peter Maryk are summoned deep into the rain forests of the Congo, where a deadly virus -- set free from a centuries-old uranium cave -- has decimated a mining camp. Desperate, they bomb the area, resealing the cave containing the incurable disease. But two years later, it reappears, devastating the small New England town of Plainville. In the next few years, other isolated incidents are also ruthlessly silenced by Maryk, now head of the Bureau for Disease Control's (BDC) Special Pathogens Section. He and Pearse, now director of the BDC, have become bitter enemies, divided by opposing scientific philosophies. Still, as the virus continues to elude any vaccine with a disturbingly human cunning the men seek not only to stop it but to figure out how it came from Africa. Their battle with "Plainville" intensifies as it becomes clear that the virus has acquired a face, having taken over a human host. And in particular, this toxic creature pursues one brave young woman whose blood, immune to the virus, is the serum of life in the face of a viral death. Pearse and Maryk keep her close and protected, while formulating a plan to get to the killer first."

The interesting element of the novel is that the virus 'merges' with a human so that the virus is now connected to a human brain- A virus with human intelligence. It sounds hokey, but it worked (kind of).

This would make a nice 'beach' or 'airport' read. 

I would read more by this author.  

THE R. CRUMB HANDBOOK by R. Crumb and Peter Poplaski

 Refinished Tu 1/11/22

This is an old hardback that I got from Quality Paperback Books on Th 6/26/05 and 'finished Memorial Day Weekend after a trip on The Shadow to Shawnee National Forest- Tu 6/31/05.

NOTES FOR 'R. CRUMB HANDBOOK':

I finished in a couple of evenings.

"Children are afraid of the dark and adults are afraid of the light"

"It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society."---Krishnamurti

Always a loner and felt like an alien.

Very close to his older brother, Charles. They made comics together from the time they were young children.

Charles committed suicide and suffered his whole life from mental illness.
 
One of his first jobs was with a greeting card company; commercial art skills.

From a lower class family; no money for school.

"Lurid Exaggerated" "Lowbrow and Rough"

Disturbing things that are in the human psyche.

One of the chapters is called 'In the army of the stoned'. A nice title for anything.

"Some people don't know what a metaphor is, so for those people a myth is a lie"- Joseph Campbell

He comes across as a man who is deeply disgusted with American culture that is very similar to Charles Bukowski.

He and his second wife live in France since the early 90's.

When I finished the book this time I watched a 25" interview with Robert Crumb on YouTube.

MAKES ME WANNA HOLLER- A Young Black Man In America by Nathan McCall

 Refinished Sa 1/1/22 First book of the new year

This is the third time that I have read this book. I got this book from Quality Paperback Books and finished originally on We 9/14/94 and I read it again in January of 2017.

McCall is from the Norfolk, Portsmouth area of Virginia. You don't really think of this as a particularly racist part of the country, but I guess this is the point of the book. Racism is endemic to all parts of America. 

He was a very violent young man and I wonder if he would have gotten a better shake in the courts if he had have been born later. I tend to doubt it.

Racism obviously had a negative impact on his life, but the fact that he fathered so many children probably hurt him much worse. A vasectomy would have saved him a whole lot of heartache. 

The review at Publishers Weekly:

"Gripping and candid, this autobiography tracks McCall's path from street-happy hustler in a working-class black neighborhood in Portsmouth, Va., to a three-year prison term for armed robbery, a decision to rehabilitate himself, and his successful struggles as a journalist, finally reaching the Washington Post . In street argot, McCall mixes memorable, often painful description with hard-won insight: on how a teenage gang rape of a 13-year-old girl represented black self-hate or why his militant 1970s generation was unwilling to make the compromises that his stepfather made. It was in jail that a wise older inmate taught McCall lessons about survival between lessons on chess. (``The white pieces always move first, giving them an immediate advantage over the black pieces, just like in life.'') McCall's entry into the middle-class white mainstream was not easy and he unsparingly details his difficulties and tensions with white newsroom colleagues, struggles with marriage and fatherhood, and painful visits back to his decimated Portsmouth neighborhood. Keenly aware of the tragedy of lost boyhood buddies, McCall offers no formulas, but warns that the new generation is even more alienated than his was."

Columbia picked up the movie rights.