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South America
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 Living the Dream
Brad Meltzer gets to write about
Batman and Superman and visit with ex-presidents to research his novels.
Is it luck or Fate? By Zac Crain
Brad Meltzer hasn’t been an unknown in literary circles since his first novel, The Tenth Justice,
was published in 1997; his books have more than six million copies in
print. But that’s the position the author found himself in when he was
signed to take over the reins of DC Comics’ Green Arrow in 2002. Of course, his anonymity didn’t last long: After a well-regarded run on Green Arrow and the commercial and critical success of his seven-issue murder-mystery miniseries, Identity Crisis, Meltzer became a star on the comics circuit as well.
Both of those worlds are colliding this month. Meltzer releases his sixth thriller, The Book of Fate,
which follows Wes Holloway, who is trying to glue together the shards
of his broken life and unravel the mystery that caused it to break in
the first place, all while in the employ of former president Leland
“the Lion” Manning. (He’s a fictional president but feels real, thanks
to Meltzer’s visits to the offices of former presidents George H.W.
Bush and Bill Clinton.) Meltzer also happens to be two issues deep into
a 13-issue run on one of DC’s prize books, Justice League of America.
Though the mediums are seemingly dissimilar, Meltzer’s unique gift for
detail is present throughout both. In other words: If you are a fan of
Meltzer’s novels, you should check out his comics, and vice versa. And
if you haven’t checked out either, well, you’re missing out.
Given
his résumé, it should come as no surprise that Meltzer is a busy, busy
man. I caught up with him over a crackling cell-phone connection
between appointments. But he’s happy to be busy, especially with his
comics work: “I’ve been wanting to write the Justice League — and
Batman and Superman and Wonder Woman — since I was seven years old.”
In Identity Crisis, you kind of shined the spotlight
back on Ralph Dibny, better known, I guess, as Elongated Man. Even
hard-core fans probably weren’t too familiar with him. Is the plan to
include more characters like that in your Justice League run? I
love to play with unknown characters. That’s what I do as a novelist. I
have to take a character, and I have to make you love that character,
even though you’ve just met him. That’s what I have to do as a
novelist. You don’t know my characters in The Book of Fate. You
don’t know who Wes Holloway is. But I have to make you love him by page
one. That, for me, is what I love about the comic books, taking those
characters that no one loves and seeing if I can do the exact same
thing. It’s almost easier with Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman,
because the backstory is there. But to really stretch your muscles, the
most stretching can take place in the character who’s undeveloped. I
really believe there’s no such thing as a bad character. There’s just
bad writing. I really do believe you can make just about anything
interesting.
Do you think the medium has been sort of
reenergized by writers, like you, who don’t just write comics? Writers
who approach it from the mind-set of a screenwriter or a novelist?
The interesting thing, for me, is I don’t think it’s so much coming
from a different discipline. I think it’s actually coming from a
different life experience. I think comic books, for a while, could have
easily been written by and for people who simply love comic books.
That’s not a bad thing; I’m absolutely a fan, first and foremost. But
I’m going to bring a lawyer’s and a thriller writer’s eyes to it. I
always say the best thing I did for myself as a writer was to go to law
school, even though I really had no intention of practicing law.
Listen, that was a very expensive way to spend three years. I was
$60,000 in debt when I came out of it. But I now had a world to write
about, a world that would have been informed just by my high school
experience. In fact, to tell you more about myself, my first novel
wasn’t The Tenth Justice; there was a novel before that, and
that novel was solely about my college experience. That’s what I knew;
that’s what I experienced; that’s what I wrote about. The book got 24
rejection letters. There were only 20 publishers at the time, which
means some people were writing me twice to make sure I got the point.
It really was law school that gave me a setting, a place, an importance
that I just did not have before, because I didn’t have the life
experience.
How does it feel to go from that point — 20 publishers, 24 rejection letters — to 10 years later with The Book of Fate and you can call on presidents to help with your research? The way The Book of Fate
started was, one of them called on me. If ever there were fate in the
world.… I was looking for a new book idea. I had some ideas — I knew
the plot, and I knew the Mason stuff, and I knew some of the other
things. We have a PO box through our website; people send books, and I
sign them, and we send them out. My wife is opening the books, and I’m
signing them across the table. She opens up one of the letters, and she
says, “Oh my gosh, this is so funny. A secretary in former president
Bush’s office is trying to get a free signature by using Bush’s
stationery.” I grab the letter out of her hands, and I read the letter.
I read the letter, and it says, “Dear Brad … we like your book … would
you please send us this signed thing?” I look down, and it also says,
“Barbara and I have a great library.” And I stopped: “‘Barbara
and I?’” I realized this was no secretary. Listen, I don’t care what
your politics are: If you’re a former president, you get a free book.
So,
I sent him a free book and also a request that said, “Can I come see
what your life is like?” I couldn’t help but be fascinated by the fact
that he was the most powerful man in the world, and suddenly, he was
just another guy who had to stop for red lights again. To my surprise,
he said sure, come down for the week. I spent nearly a week in Houston
with him and Barbara, and it was one of the most surreal experiences in
my life. Right after that, I sent a note to Clinton’s office, and they
had me come up to Clinton’s office in Harlem. It just was absolutely
fascinating. The Book of Fate really got started with that
twist of fate. To answer your original question, it is something I feel
so lucky to have experienced. But I can’t for one second possibly take
it that seriously, that “oh, it’s because of me.”
Come on,
it’s at least a little bit because of you. One thing I appreciate about
your writing is that it all at least seems possible, whether you’re
dealing with ex-presidents or superheroes. When I was in Bush’s
office, they told me that when they leave the White House and they’re
no longer president, one of the first things they have to do is plan
their own funeral. And I just thought, “I’ve got to put that in the
book.” When I was in Clinton’s office, and I saw that picture taken
from the Oval Office of Clinton’s desk, I put that right in the book.
All the details you see about the office, all the details you see about
the ridiculous things that are sent to them, all the details about the
actual office mechanics, about the secure faxes, about the security,
about all those things that go on when you leave the White House and
just go back to being a normal person again — those were all shaped,
and basically lifted, from what I saw in Bush’s and Clinton’s offices.
I
can make up anything I want; it’s fiction. But if I tell you that
former presidents actually have a secret brownstone that is across the
street from the White House and only the former presidents can stay
there, or that they have to plan their funeral right when they leave
the White House, because presidential funerals are truly national
events that have to be put together in two days with nearly no notice,
you start saying, “You know what? That sounds really, truly real to
me.” That’s when fiction comes alive. Fiction and thrillers, to me, are
giant lies trying to masquerade as the truth. My job as the writer is
to arm myself with enough details to convince you that it really
happened.
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The Echo Maker: A Novel
By Richard Powers
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $25)
 Richard
Powers is a novelist of ideas — cerebral, if you will. That label can
serve as a mixed blessing. For some readers, the phrase novelist of ideas is a turn-on. For other readers, it is the opposite, making his novels sound too much like work and too little like pleasure.
Yes,
Powers writes like a genius, a certified intellectual who might feel
above the fray of popular opinion. Yes, he’s built most of his nine
novels around grand ideas. Indeed, Powers has touched on almost every
topic under the sun. His acclaimed Gold Bug Variations (1991) links computer science, genetic coding, music, and art history in the second half of the twentieth century. Plowing the Dark
(2000) features parallel narratives about the construction of virtual
reality in a Seattle computer-programming laboratory and an American
teacher taken hostage in Beirut. In Galatea 2.2 (2001), Powers creates an artificial intelligence protagonist named Helen while reinterpreting the Pygmalion myth.
Powers
has either studied each of those topics assiduously or learned about
them from firsthand experiences. But he weaves his knowledge into each
novel’s narrative so seamlessly that he seems to wear his genius
lightly — the knowledge appears to come through the brains of his
characters. Despite his erudite themes, there is nothing inaccessible
about Powers’s novels of ideas. He is a first-rate stylist whose
characters are never caricatures in service to abstract theory. In
fact, many of his characters are unforgettable, flesh-and-blood
individuals as finely drawn as those of any contemporary novelist. Take
Laura Rowen Bodey of 1998’s Gain, for example, a resident of
the fictional town of Lacewood, Illinois. Home of the Clare Soap and
Chemical corporation, Lacewood is on the verge of producing an
ecological disaster, and Laura’s personal plight speaks to larger
themes of environment, corporate greed, and human nature.
Now comes The Echo Maker,
which once again demonstrates Powers’s zest for the intellectual life
and skill as a novelist. He concocts an unusual case involving a
phenomenon called Capgras syndrome. The syndrome actually exists;
characteristically, Powers has researched its real-world implications
thoroughly before using it in his fiction.
The Echo Maker
explores the mysteries of human memory, brain chemistry, character, and
identity. The story, set in the plains of Nebraska against the backdrop
of a stunning spring bird migration, follows a New York cognitive
neurologist named Gerald Weber whose understanding of the brain is so
altered by one patient’s case that reality assumes new meanings. The
novel is also a family saga as Mark Schluter, the 27-year-old
ne’er-do-well who suffered brain damage when his truck mysteriously
flipped over, becomes the object of care from his sister, Karin, who
leaves behind her settled life a few hours to the east. The
relationships between Mark and his sometimes lover, Karin and her
sometimes lover, and Weber are told within the quandary of why the
truck turned over.
For readers who enjoy mystery fiction, The Echo Maker
contains plenty of suspense, derived mostly from the intellectual
puzzles it presents. For readers who spend their precious time reading
novels to better understand the human condition, Powers supplies plenty
to ponder about. — Steve Weinberg
Johnny Cash: The Biography
By Michael Streissguth
(Da Capo Press, $26)
 Walk the Line,
last year’s highly successful Hollywood version of the Johnny Cash
story, was entertaining viewing, but it made for poor history. The film
— and the small cottage industry that’s sprung up around it — is
indicative of a kind of revisionist cult that developed around Cash in
the later years of his life and which has only gotten stronger since
his death in 2003. Author Michael Streissguth — who previously penned
the insightful volume Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison: The Making of a Masterpiece,
about the making of the singer’s legendary live album — attempts to
strip away the layers of hagiography in a new book that ultimately
serves as a demystification of the Cash legend.
Streissguth
devotes considerable sections of his narrative to the Man in Black’s
lost years — the period from the mid-’70s through early ’90s, when his
sales were lagging and his once-considerable cachet had diminished.
Dropped by a series of labels, we discover a Cash in crisis, continuing
to battle drug addiction, struggling to find his artistic voice, and
far too eager to be led by the whims of others. Cast off as a relic and
forced to work the Branson theater circuit, he was rescued from
cultural and commercial ignominy by young rock producer Rick Rubin, who
recorded and released a series of Cash comeback LPs — although
Streissguth is appropriately critical in his assessment of those
efforts as well. The book also focuses on the sad final months of
Cash’s life, following the death of his beloved second wife, June
Carter Cash. A passage describing a frail, stricken Cash alone in his
room muffling sobs of grief so that his children won’t hear is just one
of many vivid and heart-rending moments.
Featuring frank, often
painfully candid testimony from his family, longtime friends, and
colleagues, the book presents a visceral view of a man who was
fallible, one who battled demons and was beset by doubts until the very
end of his life, rather than the untouchable, almost biblically
powerful figure of popular image. Expertly researched and compellingly
written, this is a serious and much-needed study worthy of Cash’s
complex and often contradictory life and legacy. — Bob Bozorgmehr
The Shakespeare Wars: Clashing Scholars, Public Fiascoes, Palace Coups
By Ron Rosenbaum
(Random House, $35)
 To
discuss “the Shakespeare wars” usually means to debate the identity of
the great writer himself. Did a relatively uneducated man named William
Shakespeare, born in Stratford-upon-Avon, England, compose all the
plays and poetry attributed to him nearly 400 years after his death? Or
did somebody else, of a higher social standing, with more formal
education, and a world traveler, write the classics using Shakespeare
as a pen name? Ron Rosenbaum cares about the answer, but not enough to
build his book around an identity debate.
Instead, Rosenbaum
explores what precisely makes Shakespeare such a timeless writer of
plays and poetry. What, in fact, does it mean to say that a work is
Shakespearian? To put it more colloquially, what’s all the fuss about?
Wrestling with the answers drives the narrative of Rosenbaum’s
intellectual exploration. The result is a book unlike any of the
millions of words already published about the Bard.
To call a
book by Rosenbaum unique would seem like a tautology to readers
familiar with his writing between hard covers, in magazines, and in
newspapers. Rosenbaum combines shoe-leather journalism with
intellectual prowess in remarkable ways. His 1998 book, Explaining Hitler,
explores the exceptionalist question as it pertains to the murderous
German dictator just as the new book explores the exceptionalist
question with respect to Shakespeare. Anybody unfamiliar with
Rosenbaum’s writing can start with The Secret Parts of Fortune, an enthralling 800-page anthology published in 2000. (The title is taken from Shakespeare’s play Hamlet.)
Rosenbaum, a Yale University English major, explains at the beginning of Shakespeare Wars how his viewing in 1970 of A Midsummer Night’s Dream
at Stratford-upon-Avon, Shakespeare’s birthplace, changed his life.
Following that are 14 chapters about various interpretations of
Shakespeare’s words — interpretations sometimes grounded in unresolved
controversies, sometimes grounded in something that could pass for
consensus. When it comes to witty and erudite writing, Rosenbaum is no
Shakespeare. But he is certainly a worthy chronicler of Shakespearian
debates. — S.W.
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 BLINKING AT THE MOVIES
MalcolmGladwell’s excellent book Blink
celebrates the power of thin slicing — that is, the ability to make a
decision, often a correct one, based on very little time and very
little information. I do this all the time at the movies, dividing the
trailers into three groups: see it in the theater, watch it on HBO,
forget about its existence. Here’s a sample. Feel free to play along at
home.
Jet Li’s Fearless
Stars: Jet Li
Setup:
Supposedly, this is Jet Li’s last martial-arts epic. If it is, he’s
going out on top. Which is great, if you like that sort of thing.
Blink: HBO
Open Season
Stars: Martin Lawrence, Debra Messing, Ashton Kutcher
Setup:
Remember when they didn’t make many animated movies, and when they did,
they cast people with interesting voices? Me too. It was awesome.
Blink: Forget it
Employee of the Month
Stars: Jessica Simpson, Dane Cook, Dax Shepard
Setup:
From the writer of Sorority Boys comes the story of two loser
big-box-retail-store employees who vie for the titular honor so that
they can score a date with Nick Lachey’s ex-wife.
Blink: HBO (I can’t deny it.)
The Guardian
Stars: Kevin Costner, Ashton Kutcher
Setup: Combine Top Gun, An Officer and a Gentleman, and Cliffhanger, and stuff the whole mess into the Coast Guard.
Blink: Forget it — Z.C.
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The Gold Standard
It’s officially Oscar Season. We look at the early playing field. By Zac Crain
Somewhere
along the line, the film industry gave up on the idea of four seasons
in favor of the current model, a setup that features just three, and
only two of them really matter. There’s Summer, which stretches from
the first week of May until the latter days of August; Oscar Season,
which traditionally starts in late September/early October and lasts
through New Year’s Eve; and the Wasteland, an amorphous period that
encompasses January, can stretch all the way to March and April, and
basically applies to any film that doesn’t score a release date in the
other two seasons. Guess which one doesn’t matter. ¶ Right. Films in
the Wasteland fall into two categories: (1) movies that the studios are
contractually bound to release into theaters, but which are deemed so
abysmal that no exec wants to squander additional cash waging a
marketing campaign in the more cutthroat months of the year, and (2)
well-made pictures that resist traditional advertising techniques, so
the suits just roll the dice. Either way, the studio is hoping for a
happy accident, that the general lack of competition will result in a
surprise success or, at the very least, enough green to break even. ¶
Summer movies can also be divided into two groups. The first includes
the so-called “tent pole” films: big-ticket sequels and remakes,
(hopefully) crowd-pleasing action extravaganzas, and high-concept
comedies — Superman Returns, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, Click,
and so on. The second group is smaller and a bit of a gamble. This is
the counterprogramming unit, and it presents a more intimate
alternative to all of the explosions and spandex. This summer, The Devil Wears Prada
scored big going that route. But it doesn’t always work. ¶ Which brings
us to Oscar Season. This is when the studios unveil their prestige
pictures, featuring A-list stars and directors or, at the very least,
top-notch source material. This is when you get high-class literary
adaptations, actors stretching into unusual (for them) roles, and
directors delving into labors of love. It’s still early yet — many of
the real players wait until late December — but it’s a good time to
size up the initial playing field.
The Namesake
You
don’t get much more prestigious than the film version of a celebrated
novel by a Pulitzer Prize winner. Jhumpa Lahiri’s story of the son of
Indian immigrants who is caught between his desire to fit in with his
Boston neighbors and his family’s desire to do the exact opposite is
brought to life by director Mira Nair (Vanity Fair, Mississippi Masala). If that sounds like the plot to Bend It Like Beckham,
well, it is and it isn’t, and, at any rate, that doesn’t mean there
can’t be another film about the struggles of someone trapped between
two cultures, right? There’s plenty of territory to explore in that
premise. I mean, how many movies have been made about rogue cops who
have to save the day while battling both bad guys and their own police
departments? Like, 100? Here’s another question: Will people take Kal
Penn, star of such funny (but slight) comedies as Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle and Van Wilder, seriously as the lead here?
Marie Antoinette
Sofia Coppola is — in
fraternity/sorority terms — a legacy, and no one, and I mean no one,
appreciates that more than Hollywood. But the good thing is she
deserves the love; her second and third films, The Virgin Suicides and Lost in Translation,
were beautifully constructed, fragile little movies full of style and
substance in equal measure. Her fourth and latest is a stylized biopic,
starring Kirsten Dunst as the 19-year-old queen of France, and features
decidedly nonperiod music by the likes of New Order and Gang of Four.
Here’s hoping that gambit fares better for her than for the last film
that tried something similar. That film was A Knight’s Tale, and it almost made Heath Ledger reconsider his line of work.
The Black Dahlia
The Black Dahlia may be
James Ellroy’s most beloved book, which is a strange descriptor to
apply to a novel that focuses on the grisly murder of wannabe starlet
Elizabeth Short. Director Brian De Palma was one of Hollywood’s young
lions in the 1970s and ’80s, and even though his career has been as hit
(Carlito’s Way, Mission: Impossible) and miss (The Bonfire of the Vanities, Femme Fatale)
as a one-eyed sniper since then, he can still deliver the goods when
involved in the right project. With a talented cast (Hilary Swank,
Aaron Eckhart, Scarlett Johansson) and a script by Josh Friedman (War of the Worlds), The Black Dahlia could and should fall under that heading. Plus, as L.A. Confidential
proved, Oscar voters love movies derived from Ellroy novels and movies
that take place in and around Hollywood. Two potential red flags: The
last time De Palma helmed an adaptation of a much-loved book, The Bonfire of the Vanities, it was such a debacle, a book was written about it, Julie Salamon’s 1992 best seller, The Devil’s Candy: The Bonfire of the Vanities Goes to Hollywood. And Josh Hartnett, who still hasn’t shown he can carry a movie, plays the lead role in Dahlia.
Children of Men
The latest from director Alfonso Cuarón (Y Tu Mamá También, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban)
has a premise that is immediately intriguing: In the distant (but not
too distant) world of 2027, man has mysteriously lost the ability to
procreate; the population, as a result, is slowly dying off, and that
population, naturally, has panicked itself into chaos. Clive Owen,
doing all sorts of Clive-Owen-y-type things, must help escort to safety
a woman who is pregnant with a miracle baby so that scientists can
literally save the world. Sure beats an alien attack, huh? Beyond Owen,
the cast is filled with reliable players such as Michael Caine and
Julianne Moore, who also happen to be Academy favorites. So expect a
few nods here, unless the sci-fi elements scare Oscar voters off. From
what I’ve seen so far, it would be their loss.
The Departed
Martin Scorsese offers his take on 2002’s gripping Infernal Affairs,
transplanting the cat-and-mouse action to Boston. There, the Irish mob
hunts for an undercover cop among its numbers, while the cops try to
sniff out an Irish mobster hiding in their ranks. Leonardo DiCaprio and
Matt Damon head the cast, which also features Jack Nicholson and Mark
Wahlberg. There is an almost zero percent chance that Nicholson will be
shut out when the nominations are announced. Scorsese, of course, will
probably join him, which brings me to this: Can we please give Scorsese
an Oscar this time? He probably should have won for Raging Bull. He definitely should have won for Goodfellas. I wouldn’t have complained if he had won for The Aviator. Is everyone really okay with Kevin Costner having a Best Director Oscar while Martin Scorsese does not? Seriously?
The Last Kiss
A remake of up-and-coming Italian director Gabriele Muccino’s 2001 film, L’ultimo bacio, The Last Kiss could be this year’s sleeper hit — at the box office and during award season. Zach Braff follows up 2004’s Garden State,
his debut as writer/director, with a role that’s right in his
wheelhouse: a boy who is in the process of becoming a man and wants to
keep being a boy. In a way, it’s sort of the flip side to Garden State;
in another way, it’s also its spiritual sequel. But it’s not Braff’s
movie this time around; his only duty beyond acting was assembling the
film’s excellent soundtrack. In his place: writer Paul Haggis, the
first person to ever write consecutive Best Picture winners (Million Dollar Baby and Crash), and director Tony Goldwyn. The latter is less of a known quantity, since he’s spent more time acting (Ghost, From the Earth to the Moon) than directing (A Walk on the Moon, Someone Like You, a couple of episodes of Grey’s Anatomy). Still, we wouldn’t bet against anything that involves Haggis. Even his cameo on Entourage was entertaining.
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