November Reading Log

It was a month with a high page count but a low book total, as seemingly everything I was reading made for a good doorstop. Take a look!

5 Articles I Like This Month

"Post Malone Is the Perfect Pop Star for this American Moment. That's Not a Compliment." by Jeff Weiss, The Washington Post. 9 minutes.

I've come to really appreciate good, creative, socially conscious hip hop music. In turn, I've also come to despise bad hip hop. So this review/hit job of Post Malone was cathartic and wildly entertaining...which is more than I can say for its subject. 

"Deep River" by Will Bostwick, Oxford American. 14 minutes.

A solid overview of Baylor's Black Gospel Music Restoration Project, which seeks to catalog and digitize every piece of vinyl from black gospel's 'Golden Age' (1945-1975) still in existence. The project is, in my opinion, one of Baylor's greatest treasures, and the writer of this piece (born and bred in Waco) 'gets it.'

"Marvel Icon Stan Lee Leaves a Legacy as Complex as His Superheroes" by Spencer Ackerman, The Daily Beast. 20 minutes.

A lot of eulogies poured in for Stan Lee this past month, with many heralding him as the singular creator of the Marvel Universe. The real story is more complicated, and is told well and even-handedly here, giving Lee his due without stiffing the artists (especially Jack Kirby) who deserve at least half the credit.

"'Nothing on this Page Is Real': How Lies Become Truth in Online America" by Eli Saslow,The Washington Post. 15 minutes.

An affecting, personal look at one of the people creating fake news in the United States today and one of the people unwittingly consuming and sharing it.

"Beneath the Surface of Bruce Springsteen" by Michael Hainey, Esquire. 31 minutes.

An insightful profile of someone I'll never stop being fascinated by. Consider it your warm-up for the upcoming Springsteen on Broadway film, coming to Netflix December 15th.

JUST AS I AM: THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF BILLY GRAHAM by Billy Graham

This was an autobiography I'd been putting off reading for years, due mostly to its size (over 700 pages). After Graham's death earlier this year, I decided it was finally time to dust it off and give it a read. At the end of a month in which I dipped into this book for half an hour each day, I was as sad to to put his book down as his legions of admirers were to see him go. Just As I Am is a clear, charming overview of the life of the 20th century's greatest evangelist and most famous preacher.

Spanning Graham's life from birth until the time of the book's writing in 1997, when he had begun to wind down his full-time ministry, the book largely drives in three lanes: 1) his early life and entrance into ministry, 2) his most notable national and international crusades, and 3) his relationships with the different presidents he counseled, from Truman to Clinton. Not surprisingly, given my interests, I found the third lane most fascinating, though it was all a worthy read.

Reading an autobiography is always an exercise in reading between the lines—given the biases and motivations that go into writing your own life story, the reader has to not only hear what's being said but listen for why it's being said (as well as pay attention to what's not being said.) In reading Graham's account, it became apparent what made his ministry successful: he was plain-spoken without being overly folksy, he was shrewd without being cynical, he was always open to new opportunities, and he was devoted to his task and his Lord.

This is an easy read for anyone interested in Graham's life and work, full of memorable anecdotes and never shy about name-dropping (something I find annoying in person but irresistible in biography.) Soon I'll dive into The Preacher and the Presidents, which looks solely at Graham's relationship with the various commanders-in-chief whom he counseled. I'll be curious to see how its account differs from Graham's, and what gaps it fills in.

THE MASTER OF THE SENATE by Robert A. Caro

At 1200 pages (including acknowledgements, source notes, and index), this is one of the longest books I've ever read. It's also one of the best.

The third part in Robert Caro's masterful, exhaustive biography of Lyndon Johnson, The Master of the Senate explores how LBJ rose to power in the U.S. Senate after successfully stealing the 1948 election to acquire that office. Following Johnson's rapid rise from junior senator to Minority Leader to the most powerful Majority Leader in history, the book is (like all Caro's books) less a conventional biography than an exploration of how political power works in America, as told through the story of one of the men who knew best how to get it and use it.

Like the previous two books in this series, half the fun of the book is the tangential mini-books Caro writes as background for Johnson's story. For example, the book begins with a history of the Senate that runs nearly 100 pages before Johnson is even mentioned. Later, in order to establish the importance of Johnson's political patron in the Senate, Richard Russell, Caro gives us more than 50 pages of biographical information about Russell. These side trips are one of my favorite things about reading Caro—no stone is left unturned, no detail wasted.

But the truth is, these books would be utterly exhausting were it not for the quality of the writing. I appreciate good historical research, but would never have spent 3 months (and counting, since there's still one book to go) reading these books unless the prose managed to suck me in. Thankfully, Caro is as good a writer as a historian, which makes both the meat of the book and its lengthy but important tangents feel consequential, interesting, and even exciting. Would that history could always be written this way. One volume to go!

ESSENTIAL DAREDEVIL VOL. 5-6 by Steve Gerber, Tony Isabella, Marv Wolfman, Bob Brown, George Tuska, et al.

After the disappointing Essential Daredevil Vol. 4, I can't say I was looking forward to reading these two books, the final Daredevil volumes in the Essential line. However, they proved to be an improvement over the fourth volume, with the titular hero returning to form as a street-level defender of the law—both as Matt Murdock, attorney-at-law, and Daredevil, the Man Without Fear.

Spanning Daredevil's adventures from 1972-1977, these volumes see the superhero's break-up with Black Widow and subsequent move back to New York, the introduction of Bullseye as a villain, and the reintroduction of Foggy Nelson to the supporting cast. All are welcome moves for this reader—while a fun idea, the romance with Black Widow and move to San Francisco never went anywhere interesting, and being back in New York ensures that Daredevil is able to encounter familiar friends and foes alike. Where in vol. 4, the writers seemed to be looking to reinvent Daredevil, these books are a return to form.

With that being said, the comics historian in me can't help but see these issues as anything but a prelude to the coming Frank Miller era, when the writer-artist would introduce Elektra, transform Kingpin from a C-list Spider-Man villain into Daredevil's arch-nemesis, and make Daredevil the grim defender of Hell's Kitchen fans know him as today. Vol. 6 ends just 2 years before Miller would save the character from extinction, and these books had me ready to read those issues.

Ultimately, these books are the epitome of the Bronze Age of comics—fun, but forgettable. Lots of action, plenty of melodrama, but nothing that history will remember as outstanding work. I'm glad to have read them, but more than anything I'm geared up to dive into Frank Miller's seminal run on the character. Tune in for those reviews soon!

STAR-LORD: GUARDIAN OF THE GALAXY by Steve Engelhart, Chris Claremont, Doug Moench, Timothy Zahn, John Byrne, Carmine Infantino, Doug Sienkiewicz, et al.

Some Marvel characters haven't changed much since their original creation. The Hulk, for example, has been a giant, raging monster with an alter-ego of a meek, brilliant scientist since day one. Other characters have changed, matured, been retconned, and otherwise gone through various metamorpheses to suit the times: Iron Man, Spider-Man, and Thor are noticeably different from their Silver Age iterations, but the same characters at heart.

Then there's Star-Lord. When you picture him, you undoubtedly picture Chris Pratt's leader of the Guardians of the Galaxy and sorta-boyfriend of Gamora, who explores space armed with little more than jokes, a jet pack, a gun, and a cassette player. And if you were to pick up a Star-Lord or Guardians comic today, that's what you would get, thanks to the need for cross-media synergy. But that character barely resembles the Star-Lord who debuted in one of Marvel's black-and-white science fiction magazines in January 1976.

That Star-Lord, whose initial appearances prior to his mid-2000s transformation are collected in this book, was a Flash Gordon-esque cosmic adventurer named Peter Quill whose mother had been killed by an alien when he was a child. That part's familiar. What's less familiar is, well, everything else, starting with his relationship with "Ship," his sentient spaceship who—and I wish I was kidding about this—has romantic feelings for Quill. The less said about that, the better. This version of Quill became an astronaut on Earth so that he'd have the chance to go to the stars and avenge his mother; he is soon empowered by a mystical being called the Master of the Sun and then becomes the Star-Lord, a being with an ambiguous mission and power set. From there, he travels from planet to planet, star system to star system, getting into scrapes with galactic empires and defending lesser beings, aided only by Ship and his element gun, which is capable of shooting (you guessed it) fire, water, earth, or wind.

The stories are pretty generic 1970s Robert Heinlein homages, none of which connect to the greater Marvel Universe in any way. What makes them notable is not so much the stories or their influence on the character 40 years later, but the art. Through some cosmic coincidence (pun intended), Star-Lord's earliest adventures are drawn by some of the artists who would define comics for the next decade, from John Byrne to Bill Sienkiewicz. In fact, one of the stories is written by Chris Claremont and drawn by Byrne—that duo would go on to team up for what is unquestionably the greatest run in the history of the X-Men.

These stories didn't do much for me. They're hard sci-fi, and I'm not a sci-fi guy. But the art makes these stories worth a look. If you want to see the seeds of the character Peter Quill is today—and only the seeds, because he has blossomed into something much different—and to admire some beautiful art, give this book a whirl.