Alvah's Books

About a month ago, I wrote a review of Gerald Martin’s fabulous biography on ‘Gabo’ otherwise known as Gabriel Garcia Marquez for The Feminist Review. It’s finally been posted, but for a sneak preview below are the first two paragraphs:

Gabriel Garcia Marquez: A Life
By Gerald Martin
Alfred P. Knopf
672 pages
$37.50

In his exhaustively researched biography of Gabriel Garcia Márquez, Gerald Martin, who spent seventeen years examining every aspect of Marquez’s life and interviewing over 300 people, beautifully takes the reader through the life and times of one of Latin America’s most influential writers, a Nobel Prize winner, and one of the most popular novelist in the last fifty years.

Martin traces Márquez’s (or “Gabo” as he is affectionately referred to throughout the biography) early beginnings back to Aratacata’s early days and to the life of Colonel Nicholás R. Márquez Mejia, Gabo’s maternal grandfather, who played an influential and supportive role in the young boy’s life until he was swooped up by his nomadic parents at nine years old. It’s during that time, Martin writes, that the inspiration for One Hundred Years of Solitude was born and where Gabo learned of magic via his superstitious grandmother.

To read the rest of the review, please visit the Feminist Review’s blog.

Commercial Break
By Keith Harmeyer
Hollywood2Hollywood Enterprises 2009
301 pages
$11.99

Reviewed by Randall Radic 

There’s a guy named Keith Harmeyer, who lives in New York. He used to be in advertising. Keith decided to write a book. Taking the old adage “write about what you know” to heart, Keith wrote a novel called Commercial Break. And what a novel it is!

Commercial Break is a combination of Carl Hiaasen, Kurt Vonnegut, and Joseph Heller. Which means it’s laugh-out-loud funny, replete with cynicism and verbal pyrotechnics. It’s the story of Adam Glassman, who, along with his partner, Carlo Fiore, runs a successful New York advertising agency that goes by the fitting name of Hot Posse. Adam’s marriage is on the rocks and he flamed out a long time ago. He’s sick and tired of overcompensating in his life. He feels like a fraud.

Adam’s looking for a way out of his miserable life. Utilizing the incredible virtuosity of his creative and organizational genius, he devises a plan that will provide him with enough money so he can retire forever. The plan has two tiny, little, teeny-weeny drawbacks. Mere hiccups, really: he can’t do it alone, and it means breaking the law.

The plan involves selling the same Super Bowl commercial to six of his clients. One commercial, six fees. The risk is significant, but the payoff is enormous. Adam recruits his partner, Carlo Fiore, who feels that the undertaking by definition entails a certain diminution of dignity. Rather than make a moral choice, Carlo decides to resolve his dilemma by placing it in the hands of a woman. This will relieve him of the tedium. By the way, Carlo’s luck with the fairer sex is not anything to write home about. He has a girlfriend who is the prototype of the new woman – she’s a pangynic nightmare. In short, she lacks that provocative warmth which draws man to woman.

Meanwhile, Adam has his own female problems. He gets romantically involved with a young woman – an employee – who is not only a dire and frightening female, but sucks down wine by the gallon.

One of the funniest parts of the book is the commercial that Adam is peddling to all and sundry. Composed of “six, magnificent blondes in patent leather bikinis sitting on a black iceberg,” with Bobby Darin singing ‘Mack the Knife’ in the background, the commercial is a gelatinous mass of rhodomontade and piffle, which just adds to the insane humor, because it’s so indicative of contemporary marketing and advertising.

It’s one of those things that has to be read to be believed. And Keith Harmeyer pulls it off without a hitch. This guy can write comedy. In fact, Commercial Break should be a movie. It’s got all he necessary ingredients for a blockbuster.

The reviewer refuses to spoil the book by revealing what happens along the way, as the “big idea” is implemented. Needless to say the author mixes in poetic paradoxes, bracketing oxymorons, morons, and a few tawdry magician’s tricks as he demonstrates how, in the final analysis, the masses are the final tyrants in today’s advertising world. Which means this novel can be read at a number of different levels. On one level, there’s an amusing story of white-collar crime. On another level there is a social commentary that points out how the hoi polloi seem to confuse standard of living with quality of life, and equal opportunity with institutionalized mediocrity. And how the scorn of the intellectual elite blinds it to the vast primitive power of mediocrity.

Commercial Break is the funniest and most entertaining book the reviewer has read in years. Readers will not be disappointed.

After reading A World I Never Made, I had the honor and great privilege to interview James LePore. Below is my interview with Mr. LePore.

About James LePore, lawyer, photographer and writer:

Rebeca Schiller: It seems that lawyers who become writers are fairly adept in writing suspense genre novels. Is this your niche and will you stick with it or have you written in other genres?

James LePore:I am drawn to the suspense genre probably for the same reason I was drawn to trial work as a lawyer. The drama inherent in both seems to stimulate my imagination in ways that other genres—and other legal specialties—do not. I think something has to be at stake for a story to be interesting; the higher the risk, the more likely it is the reader will start to root for a character. This being the case, I will likely stick with the suspense genre for a while. It seems to be in my blood.

RS: Years ago, a novice writer told me that he wanted to take up photography because he felt that composing a picture would help with his writing–to show rather than tell. Do you find that your skills in photography have given you an edge in describing scenes, characters, and action?

JL: I do. For many years I looked at the world either through an actual or an imaginary viewfinder, and asked myself, what information does this piece of the world—this potential image—convey? That was how I learned what the elements of a good photograph are, and it is that experience that has been invaluable in helping me to describe scenes and settings in my writing in a way that (I hope) put a vivid picture in the reader’s mind. I would recommend to any writer to take a basic photography class and to play with the camera. The two disciplines are not as far apart as they seem.

 About A World I Never Made:

RS: As one of the lead characters in the story, Megan Nolan is not very sympathetic. Was that your intention when you fleshed her out or did she take shape as you kept writing?

JL: Megan was always going to be a character who was difficult to like, but who would change, even act heroically, when she realized where her bad decisions had led her. When the stakes were high enough, Megan went all in. Her courage, at least, could not be doubted.

RS: The Roma play important roles in the novel, what inspired you to include them?

JL: There was a gypsy family that lived in my neighborhood when I was growing up. The boys my age were unbelievably clannish and unfriendly. One day I woke up and they were gone and they have fascinated me ever since.

When Megan needs a place to really hide, it came to me that the Roma would be a realistic answer. They have a disdain for the wider culture and a fierce privacy ethic that I felt would make them ideal for Megan’s purposes.

RS: You mention the Madrid bombings, did they spark the idea for A World I Never Made?

JL: I had been to Morocco a few years before the bombings so when they happened I was very interested. They did not spark the idea for A World I Never Made, but they are a historical fact around which I felt much of the plot and the personal story lines could revolve.

About Writing and Books:

 RS: If you read through writers’ blogs, it seems that procrastination is one of the big hurdles they encounter on a daily basis. Are you disciplined writer with a schedule or do you fall in the trap “that tomorrow is another day” and do something else?

JL: I have been lucky. When I engage with a story and a core group of characters, procrastination is not possible. I write every day, taking the occasional day off to rest or to attend to iron-clad obligations.

RS: Once you decided to write, did you join any writing groups, take classes, buy books on the craft of writing etc?

JL: I did not write well at first, but I met an editor who must have recognized some potential and who’s work with me was very informative and formative. That was my training.

RS: Who are you currently reading?

JL: I am re-reading John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee series. There is something about them, a sense of excitement I think, that I wanted to re-experience.

RS: Which writers do you admire and why?

JL: I love knock-out mystery and noir: Raymond Chandler, P.D. James, Patricia Highsmith, James Ellroy, Walter Mosley, Elmore Leonard, and a few others. I admire them because they have mastered all or a great deal of a very difficult craft. Who is more noir than Chandler, more eerie than Highsmith, more down than Mosley?