Bad books

Art-appreciation is, I understand, subjective.  What one person sees as art can be viewed by another person as trash and vice versa.  Still, my tastes aren't so hoidy-toidy that I'm too critical about most things.  My tastes can be described best by saying I know what I like and I like what I know.  Come to think of it, that would describe my eating habits, too.

But I digress.

Recently, I've read a couple of books that made me scratch my head.  The first, 1776, by the estimable writer David McCullough, won the Pulitzer.  As anyone who knows me will explain, I'm a book whore of the first order, an inveterate reader of virtually anything historical dealing with the Revolutionary War, the American Civil War, the Spanish Civil War, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War or any of the Gulf Wars.  Typically, I can find something worthwhile in anything written about one of those conflicts.

McCullough's book is an eminently readable tome, but not one that wowed me.  In fact, it was rather pedestrian.  I didn't see any great scholarship evident in the writing.  He may have found an interesting tidbit or two that was newsworthy, but otherwise it was singularly unimpressive.  I'm not sure how Pulitzers are determined, but this one was a headscratcher.

The next book, The Zookeeper's Wife, by Diane Ackerman.  Touted by many as a must-read novel of historical fiction, it was the most outlandishly deceptive piece of literature I've read in a long time, so much so that I actually went on amazon.com and gave a review.  Given a riveting true story, the author butchered the tale by dwelling on nature, animals, colors, biology, botany and anything she could think of to detract from saving Jews from the Holocaust.  In the hands of a more talented scribe, this could have been a great work.  In Ackerman's hands, it was a travesty.  From what I read on amazon.com, I wasn't alone in thinking this.

One book that gained notoriety for reasons that escape me is the humorously titled A Confederacy of Dunces.  The author died a decade before the book was published by his widow and ended up winning a Pulitzer, for reasons that escape me.  Yeah, it's got lots of local color, but I'm baffled as to the plot of the book.  This book seems to have anticipated Seinfeld's show about nothing by being a book largely about nothing.  Yet the voters saw fit to give it an award.  Great title for a book, but a mediocre story.

Then there are people who, contrary to all reason, are able to get books published.  One such example is Larry Legend, the story of Larry Bird, the former Boston Celtic.  Unarguably an interesting topic, the rhetoric of the biography reads like an infatuated high schooler's diary.  What grown adult relies on the player's nickname almost to the exclusion of his given name throughout the book?  One can almost see the saliva dripping from the writer's mouth.

More troubling is that the author -- who had as his day job that of being a noted criminal defense attorney -- got some facts horribly wrong.  Notable among the several gaffes in his book is his assertion that during Bird's high school days, he and his buddies would listen to Cubs' games on the radio while Harry Caray did the play by play.  The only problem with that is this:  Bird graduated from high school in 1974.  Caray broadcast for the Chicago White Sox from 1971 to 1981.  Anyone who would describe himself as a diehard Cubs' fan surely would know that the voice of the Cubs during Bird's high school days was Jack Brickhouse.

What's more surprising about this is that the author of the book has published several books. If any of the other books is as weirdly written and as poorly edited as Larry Legend, it's a wonder anyone would agree to publish the author's books.

If there's any saving grace, neither The Zookeeper's Wife nor Larry Legend won any awards, much less a Pulitzer.

(c) 2012 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles