Alvah's Books

PATCHES OF GREY
By Roy L. Pickering, Jr.
M.U.D. House Books
329 pages.
$12.95

Reviewed by Randall Radic

Roy Pickering is a writer who lives in New Jersey. Roy wrote a book called Patches of Grey. It’s a coming-of-age novel, which is set in the projects of New York City. Most, if not all, of the people who live in the projects occupy a zone known as below-poverty-level. They are on welfare, live in subsidized housing, own nothing, have nothing and hope for nothing. Their daily lives revolve around drugs, violence and survival.

Patches of Grey is the story of Tony Johnson, who is a high school senior. Tony is bright and ambitious, and Tony wants out. Tony recognizes that there’s a great big world out there. He can’t imagine what it’s like – not really – but he knows it’s there. He has his sights set on a college scholarship as his magic carpet to a new life. Then he meets a girl. She is white. Tony is black. Which means Tony’s status – the amount of melanin in his skin – becomes a focal point of tension. And racial tension exists because people, who differ in skin-color, exist.

Right away, the reader groans. Not another version of West Side Story steeped in the quandary of race relations and gangs and loss of innocence and heartache and teenage angst and blah, blah, blah. Yawn. Been there, done that.

Actually, Roy Pickering pulls it off without sliding down the slippery slope into the miasma of the same old same old. He pulls it off because he’s one heck of a writer. His metaphors are wonderful, and far from cliché. And he moves from scene to scene smoothly and avoids making the reader feel like he’s being dragged along against his will. Pickering accomplishes this feat through restraint, unobtrusiveness, and delicacy of allusion. Which is a pretentious-literary-reviewer way of saying that the guy can really write.

Patches of Grey deftly immerses the reader in a world that, according to some, is black and white. Good and bad. Rich and poor. The haves and the have nots. Law-breakers and law-abiders. But in the end, the world isn’t that simple. Really, the world is made up of lots of grey patches – those areas where human beings compromise. Human beings compromise because they don’t know what else to do. And when compromise enters the picture, a sense of tarnish oozes across the panorama.

In Patches of Grey, many of the characters are tarnished. Tony’s father has black skin, but he’s a grey person. His bitterness and hatred of everything and everybody, especially of himself, make him grey. Janet, who is Tony’s white girlfriend, suffocates in cloudy thinking, which results in grey actions. She tries to please everyone and doesn’t please anyone, not even herself.

In the end, Tony steps out of the grey patches and walks into the light. Which means the conclusion of the story is far from cliché. In fact, it’s unpredictable. And this alone recommends the book – because in the end, Patches of Grey is about the cost of loss, the cost of being human, the human cost of life not turning out the way it should.

All that being said, the reviewer would make a suggestion to Roy Pickering, who has written an admirable novel in Patches of Grey. Roy should ramble on in his next book. Choose a meandering story of Roberto Bolano-like aspect, and let his tremendous talent seize control of him, rather than him trying to control his talent. For as Nicole Kidman told Tom Cruise in Days of Thunder – another coming-of-age-story – “control is an illusion.” And if/when that artistic surrender happens – to quote Led Zeppelin – “ramble on.” Let the words flow. And because Roy Pickering’s talent is astonishing and ignores every precedent, he doesn’t need to be bound by the constraints of a traditional novel. With his literary gift, he can jump out of that box and nurture his advantages. He can produce an epic novel as vast and as powerful as the tundra of Siberia.

I’m in the middle of several books, but this week I plan to tackle and finish the following three:

• A World I Never Made by James LePore
• Lush Life, by Richard Price
• Spain Again, Alvah Bessie

Here’s a confession: I’m a carbohydrate junkie. I can’t live without my two main dietary staples: Noodles and rice. When I lived in San Francisco in neighborhoods that were either Chinese or Italian, I got in the habit of always having rice or noodles as a side dish or having the entire meal based on either one.

When my husband and I moved to upstate New York, far from our stomping grounds in Little Italy and Chinatown, we decided since we couldn’t find any decent fresh pasta that we would make our own. We bought a traditional pasta machine, the kind that you crank out the dough and made some amazing fettucine. We only made it once. Did our pasta-making adventure sway me from eating carbs? Not at all, we moved to Park Slope where you can find Italian gourmet shops with freshly made noodles.

But I have moved on from the Italian pastas and I’ve become a fan of Asian noodles, especially the Japanese variety. And because I live far away from my favorite New York City Japanese resturants, once again, I’ve decided to make my own noodles and I’ll be using as my source for recipes Terry Durack’s Noodle

Noodle
by Terry Durack with photos by Geoff Lung
SOMA Books, 1999
201 pages, $19.99

When I was shopping around for a noodle cookbook that leaned towards Asian cuisine, Noodle instantly seduced me. Visually this book is a gem. Full page photos provide a “Noodle ID” on how to prepare them and which recipes work best. Durack offers over 100 recipes–tradtional and contemporary–from a variety of Asian countries and regions, and introduces each recipe with an anecdote. Also included are the basic recipes on how to prepare Homemade Egg Noodles, Udon (my current favorite), Soba, Chinese Chicken Stock, Nuoc Cham (Vietnamese Dipping Sauce).

Tonight’s meal is most likely Japanese Curry Udon. If anyone is interested in the recipe, leave a comment with your email and I’ll be happy to forward it along.

HARDCOVER FICTION
1. DEAD AND GONE, by Charlaine Harris
2. THE 8TH CONFESSION, by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro
3. PYGMY, by Chuck Palahniuk
4. FIRST FAMILY, by David Baldacci
5. TEA TIME FOR THE TRADITIONALLY BUILT, by Alexander McCall Smith

HARDCOVER NONFICTION
1. LIBERTY AND TYRANNY, by Mark R. Levin
2. ALWAYS LOOKING UP, by Michael J. Fox
3. RESILIENCE, by Elizabeth Edwards
4. OUTLIERS, by Malcolm Gladwell
5. THE GIRLS FROM AMES, by Jeffrey Zaslow

PAPERBACK TRADE FICTION
1. VISION IN WHITE, by Nora Roberts
2. THE SHACK, by William P. Young
3. THE GUERNSEY LITERARY AND POTATO PEEL PIE SOCIETY, by Mary Ann Shaffer
4. PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES, by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith
5. CITY OF THIEVES, by David Benioff

PAPERBACK MASS-MARKET FICTION
1. SAIL, by James Patterson and Howard Roughan
2. ANGELS AND DEMONS, by Dan Brown
3. PHANTOM PREY, by John Sandford
4. ODD HOURS, by Dean Koontz
5. BURNING WILD, by Christine Feehan

PAPERBACK NONFICTION
1. THREE CUPS OF TEA, by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin
2. AUDITION, by Barbara Walters
3. LONE SURVIVOR, by Marcus Luttrell with Patrick Robinson
4. IN DEFENSE OF FOOD, by Michael Pollan
5. EAT, PRAY, LOVE, by Elizabeth Gilbert

HARDCOVER ADVICE
1. ACT LIKE A LADY, THINK LIKE A MAN, by Steve Harvey with Denene Millner
2. THE G-FREE DIET, by Elisabeth Hasselbeck
3. MASTER YOUR METABOLISM, by Jillian Michaels with Mariska van Aalst
4. THE LAST LECTURE, by Randy Pausch with Jeffrey Zaslow
5. 10-10-10, by Suzy Welch

PAPERBACK ADVICE
1. COOK YOURSELF THIN, by the staff of Lifetime Television
2. THE LOVE DARE, by Stephen and Alex Kendrick with Lawrence Kimbrough
3. NATURALLY THIN, by Bethenny Frankel with Eve Adamson
4. HUNGRY GIRL 200 UNDER 200, by Lisa Lillien
5. WHAT TO EXPECT WHEN YOU’RE EXPECTING, by Heidi Murkoff and Sharon Mazel

CHILDREN’S BOOKS
1. LISTEN TO THE WIND, by Greg Mortenson and Susan L. Roth
2. EXPLORER EXTRAORDINAIRE!, by Jane O’Connor
3. GALLOP!, written and illustrated by Rufus Butler Seder
4. LLAMA LLAMA MISSES MAMA, written and illustrated by Anna Dewdney
5. THE CURIOUS GARDEN, written and illustrated by Peter Brown

A few days ago, I was contacted by Murray Newlands, the founder of Affiliate Heat and ebook author, to do an interview. Lo and behold, it appeared today on his site, MurrayNewlands.com. Below is a portion of the interview:

An interview with Rebeca Schiller of Alvah’s Books blog

An interview with Rebeca Schiller of Alvah’s Books blog

Tell me about your Blog?

Alvah’s Books is a book review site. It’s named after my favorite author Alvah Bessie. Alvah was a veteran of the Abraham Lincoln Brigades who fought in the Spanish Civil War, he was a novelist, the literary and drama critic of The New Masses, screenwriter, and one of the Hollywood Ten. For Alvah’s Books, I review literary fiction and non-fiction. I also include essays, author interviews and publishing news.

What was your first blog?

My first blog was A Novel Approach.  It was supposed to be a blog chronicling the trials and tribulations of writing my novel. It was discontinued because it turned more into a lament about my job. It morphed into Exiled at the Beach: A Year’s Chronicle in Creativity.

What is the biggest tip you would give to a newbie blogger?

Have a plan. Think of your blog as a magazine. Think of what you want to publish daily and make it interesting.

To read the rest of the interview, go to Murray Newland’s site. Thanks Murray for the great opportunity!

I’m following J. Kaye’s example of discovering new blogs and I found quite a few this week. Apart from content, I also look at how each blogger organizes the reviews and the site’s design. Below are my discoveries. Check them out. I’m sure you’ll enjoy reading and following them as I did.

• The Contemporary Reader
• A Reader’s Respite
• The Tome Traveller
• she reads and reads
• As usual, I need more bookshelves

Clara's War: One Girl's Story of Survival by Clara Kramer

Special thanks for a speedy return request to Jocelyn Kalmus at HarperCollins!

Like many blogs and publications, Alvah’s Books has it’s very own Facebook page. Right now it’s a work in process to get it all up to date, but it’s starting to fill up with content. However, on the fan side of the page, it is very lonely.

If you are a member of Facebook, I personally invite you, dear reader, to become a fan of Alvah’s Books.

THE CANAL BUILDERS: Making America’s Empire at the Panama Canal
By Julie Greene
The Penguin Press.
475 pages.
$30.00

Reviewed by Randall Radic

Remember the movie The Ten Commandments? Charleton Heston squared off against Yul Brynner, and in between them were all those Hebrew slaves? Millions of them. All working fourteen hours a day, building magnificent edifices in honor of Pharaoh. And not because they want to, but because they’re slaves, who are whipped and starved if they don’t. In other words, the Ten Commandments showed us the way the world worked in those days – thousands of years ago. Slaves did the manual labor and died, while the Pharaohs got the glory.

Not very long ago—about a hundred years—a similar event took place. Historians called it “a stupendous undertaking.” Only this time, instead of an arrogant Pharaoh’s visage gazing out over his empire, it was a photograph of Theodore Roosevelt hoisting himself into the cab of a giant steam-shovel-driver, pretending to run the machine himself.

This was the updated version of the way the world worked. The people who did the real work were no longer slaves. Now they got paid. However, they still lived in squalor and they still died from overwork. The person in charge was no longer a Pharaoh, now he was called a President. But the high-muckety-muck, no matter what he was called, still got the glory.

Some things never change. Or do they?

Julie Greene has written a stupendous book about the building of the Panama Canal. Only instead of focusing on the great feat of engineering that the Canal encompassed, Ms. Greene’s book focuses on the people who actually did the work. As she says regarding the photo of President Theodore Roosevelt in the Prologue: “Absent from the picture are the thousands of workingmen who actually dug the canal.”

The Canal Builders zeroes in on the human factor – the lives of the 60,000 laborers who traveled to Panama to build the Canal. Some came seeking adventure, drawn to the activity like moths to a flame. Others came because they needed a job and couldn’t find one in their native country. Still others were searching for a new life in a new place. They were bored and something of historical significance was occurring in Panama.

They all came for one reason or another.

As Ms. Greene details in her book, most of these toilers came from the Caribbean nations, especially Barbados and Jamaica. They were recruited and promised big money, which was true. They made more than they ever could have at home. What they weren’t told was how many of them would die. No one told them that they were expendable. No one mentioned that the grand goal was the building of the Canal. No one told them what the cost would be in human lives.

Lots of white imperialists from the USA showed up too, looking for big paychecks. And they found them — $200 a month, paid in gold. Everybody else was paid in silver.

They all—no matter what their skin-color —lived in Panama City, which overnight turned into a heaving mass of multi-hued human flesh—Americans, Chinese, Jamaicans, Barbadans. And as one would expect—for that was the way the world worked—segregation took place. There were affluent neighborhoods and poor neighborhoods. Inequality was rampant.

The story Ms. Greene tells in her book is one of exploitation, misery, money, and, sometimes, even kindness. The picture presented is that of the foundation of today’s American Empire, where the USA dominates the world economically and militarily. And Ms. Greene castigates America for its participatory role in this evil dominion. “Strategies devised during the canal construction project have reached across the decades to the current day. We can see them…in the persistent notion that citizens deserve certain rights that are denied to aliens…the exercise of U.S. power around the world.”

Her viewpoint is valid, even depressing. But there might be more to the story. A different pair of sunglasses might dim the glare. Ms. Greene might have missed one or two things. And a couple of those things might be: that rather than evil exploitation, what was taking place at the Canal was globalization, which is a work in progress. The world is growing smaller and smaller, which – maybe – is better, because there will be less and less exploitation. Hope springs eternal.

Also missing is the hard-to-accept truth that that’s the way the world works. To paraphrase Jesus, “Exploitation you will have with you always.” Jesus didn’t mean ‘get used to it.’ Rather, he meant there’s always scope for change. Constant vigilance is required to make things better. The poor will always be around, so there will always be the opportunity to give.

It simply means that everything is a work in progress, and that progress can be seen in the fact that wonderful books like The Canal Builders are written, read and talked about. Books like this one can have an impact on the way the world works, because they’re about people, not about “stupendous engineering feats.”

About Randall Radic
Randall Radic, a former Old Catholic priest and a convicted felon, lives in Northern California where he reads, writes and smokes cigars. He is the author of A Priest in Hell: Gangs, Murderers and Snitching in a California Jail, and the forthcoming Gone To Hell: True Crimes of America’s Clergy.