By Connie Nardini

Jon Clinch/Finn: A Novel
Why do we love a story? Why do we need fiction at all? Above all, why do we need a sequel (prequel?) to an American classic like Adventures of Huckleberry Finn? Because we need to escape the restrictions of our own rules of engagement with our civilized world much as Huck did; and then we must reconstruct this world, remake the rules, even break them completely, and, finally, dance among the ruins.
Jon Clinch does this in Finn through his recreation of Huck’s father “Pap” – we never know his real name. On the cover of the paperback version of his book there is a picture of a large hook with the word “Finn” floating just beneath it. Pap Finn is hooked by many things in this novel, but so are we as we become entrapped by the dark and powerful Mississippi that is at the center of his life. This river has many things within it, such as the fish he catches on his many trotlines that provide him his livelihood, such as it is. There are also strange things:

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Posted on August 28, 2008

By Steve Rhodes

While Tom Frank’s What’s the Matter With Kansas was not without its problems, it still stands as one of the most incisive works not only about recent American politics but American culture in at least the last decade.
The fact that Frank is a University of Chicago graduate who founded The Baffler here doesn’t seem to get him any special dispensation from the local media, though, much of whom I’m certain have never heard of him. The larger political universe has heard of him, though, and not just because he lives in Washington, D.C. now (and is a columnist for The Wall Street Journal, but because he is one of the leading political and cultural intellects of our time.
Still, his latest book, The Wrecking Crew sounds like a bit of a disappointment – not just because it is getting lukewarm reviews, but because those reviews seem to ring true in their main complaint that Frank has fallen into a leftist ideological prism that he can’t get out of long enough to see, for example, that Democrats are evil too. My God, didn’t Chicago teach you anything?

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Posted on August 20, 2008

By Steve Rhodes

“The New Yorker writer Jane Mayer’s new book, The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals, reviewed on this week’s cover, may be the most uniformly praised nonfiction title of the summer,” Dwight Garner writes in his “Inside the List” column in the New York Times Book Review. “It enters the hardcover nonfiction list this week at No. 4.”
Behind books by David Sedaris, Madonna’s brother, and Chelsea Handler.
Be that as it may, Dennis Kucinich ought to stop fooling around with his impeachment articles and just enter this work into the congressional record. If there were more time left in the terms of Bush and Cheney, if the Democrats had an ounce of courage, and if there was any justice in the world, our fearless leaders would be in the dock for war crimes before you could finish saying extraordinary rendition.
Of course, anyone who has been reading the work of Mayer and others in the New Yorker – or who has half a brain – won’t be surprised at her thoroughly reported findings. But the gathering of detailed evidence in one narrative still has the power to shock.

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Posted on August 5, 2008