I really enjoy your magazine—except for the fact that you apparently worship the insufferably smug Al Franken as some kind of god [“Al Franken Is a Big Fat Genius,” October]. He impresses me not at all, and never has. I never thought Franken and Davis were even remotely amusing when they were on Saturday Night Live. This man has no talent whatsoever, except for being an irritant. I agree with Peter Kind of St. Paul [Letters, October], who wrote you about the childish Limbaugh-Franken feud. After Franken’s book Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot and Other Observations came out, some friends of Limbaugh’s wrote their rebuttal, Al Franken Is a Buck-Toothed Moron and Other Observations. While I agree with both assessments, I find this infantilism nauseous. As Kind says, neither sways my opinion. There are those of us who don’t need anyone to tell us what to think or how to live.
Jerry Westermann
Fridley
Author: rakemag
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Ok, We’ve Moved On
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The Wind and the Wire
Bravo to The Rake on its series of stories on shipwrecks [“Too Deep, Too Dark, Too Cold,” November] These were very well-researched and well-put-together articles and I very much enjoyed reading them. As a result of your articles, my husband and I will be attending the Gales of November conference in Duluth next weekend and we are considering making the trip to Michigan for the Ghost Ships conference next spring as well. We have a sailboat on Lake Superior, which provides us an intimate link to her, and we always enjoy reading these stories.
Karen Brown
Andover -
Go Stuart!
Stuart Greene [Sex & The Married Man, “Dancing With Myself”] has guts. Yes, we all do it. No, we never admit it. And I think his statement that sometimes sex for men is just a physical thing is true. That doesn’t mean we can’t have deep loving relationships, and we prove it all the time. As he said in a previous column, any men who claim they never “go solo” are either liars or politicians or both. Hell, let’s all pretend we never watch TV while we’re at it; it’ll make us seem smarter and more responsible than we really are. Just don’t get moralistic on me, or I’m liable to go all Kiefer Sutherland on your ass.
Nick Harding, Roanoke, VA -
No Stuart!
I just read your article on strip clubs [Sex & The Married Man, “Should Married Men Go to Strip Clubs?” August]. Strangely enough, someone posted it on our bathroom stall in my college dorm. So your friends regularly attend strip clubs. Good, wholesome fun, right? They’re not hurting anyone. I could not disagree more. One question I raise to men and women who go to strip clubs is, Did they ever think about the actual person inside of that body? I doubt it. I don’t know all the reasons why people choose to strip, but I know some. Although strippers probably say it’s good money (or “I’m so hot why wouldn’t I show off my body”), I think they are all neglecting to dig deeper for the real problem. All female strippers have low self-esteem and this is how they make themselves feel better. A backwards way of doing it, if you ask me. Because by showing off their body to these men who call out to them, fantasize about them, call them “baby,” they are objectifying themselves completely. They are losing their identity and being valued solely for their fake breasts and painted faces. And your friends, you say they are capable of healthy relationships. I disagree. If they objectify these women so often and so callously, how could they truly value their wives? And what about how their wives feel? Do you think they enjoy being compared to an unreal standard of beauty? By going to strip clubs, they are disrespecting their partners.
Jenna Sophia Hanson
Minneapolis -
J.M. Coetzee, Elizabeth Costello
Already the only writer to win the Booker Prize twice, South African novelist Coetzee nabbed an even bigger honor in October in this year’s Nobel. He certainly didn’t net such accolades by avoiding controversial topics-consider 1999’s Disgrace, a complex story about animal rights, racism, and his homeland’s iniquitous history and uncertain future. He’s notoriously enigmatic, rarely grants interviews, and once gave a lecture at Princeton not as himself, but in character as a fictional novelist speaking at a fictional college. His new novel expands that last premise into a fully fleshed-out book, an odd duck that’s not exactly fiction and not exactly a collection of essays. Elizabeth Costello’s titular heroine is a renowned Australian writer whose career is resonantly similar to Coetzee’s own; just how much we’re meant to correlate the two is one of the book’s sources of mystery. Structured as a series of eight public lectures that obliquely function as Costello’s autobiography, it’s a work with next to no traditional plot, but much in the way of thought-provoking and even deliberately confrontational ideas. This is writing intended to draw blood. There is certainly some self-observation taking place when Coetzee, in the book’s opening chapter, wonders why the public adores Costello even though “she is by no means a comforting writer. She is even cruel.”
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Harry Mulisch, Siegfried
Often considered Holland’s best hope to win the Nobel Prize, Harry Mulisch has built a reputation chiefly on two powerhouse novels-his World War II epic The Assault, and his sky-spanningly surreal The Discovery of Heaven, an ambitious work in the Umberto Eco vein. Mulisch’s aim in his latest, Siegfried, is pretty ambitious as well-an attempt to gain a deeper understanding of the enigmatic evil that drove Adolf Hitler, via a fictional what-if tale involving der FŸhrer’s secret bastard son. It’s only partially successful. Many pages are wasted on a witty but ultimately self-indulgent bookend section concerning a Mulisch-like novelist, but the big problem is one that Mulisch himself takes pains to point out: It would be nearly impossible to create a fictional story more horrible that what the Nazis did in real life. And the sorrows of young Siegfried, while tragic, just don’t measure up. That weakness of the novel in turn makes the final one-third of the book fall apart into nonsense.
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David Guterson
Like his previous novels, Snow Falling on Cedars and East of the Mountains, David Guterson’s latest, Our Lady of the Forest, follows another band of confused, rain-chilled characters battling tragic pasts and uncertain futures. In the sodden forests of North Fork, Washington, a homeless and asthmatic teenage pothead named Ann Holmes claims to be visited by the Virgin Mary. Word spreads across the weary logging town and Ann quickly garners a cult of followers, bringing the believer, the cynic, the hopeful, and the wounded out of the woodwork; among them an eye-rolling, misanthropic fellow mushroom picker, and a trailer-dwelling priest with a nagging attraction to the reverent waif. While Guterson’s story has all the ingredients for a predictable, maudlin piece of religious mumbo-jumbo, he stays wry yet sympathetic to his characters as they explore the complexities of modern faith.
Ruminator, 1648 Grand Ave., St. Paul, (651) 699-0587, www.ruminator.com -
Ann-Marie MacDonald
As a playwright, Ann-Marie MacDonald is best known for the lighthearted Shakespeare parody Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet), but her novels travel a considerably darker emotional terrain. In her Oprah-blessed debut Fall on Your Knees, she detailed the corrosive secrets and lies destroying a dysfunctional Nova Scotian family. Her followup, The Way the Crow Flies, uses its setting in the early sixties as a backdrop for two shattering losses of innocence: Canadian Air Force desk jockey Jack McCarthy, who’s about to be caught up in the machinations of the Cold War; and, perhaps more heartbreaking, his eight-year-old daughter Madeleine, whose idyllic world is shattered when a classmate is found strangled in a nearby meadow, and whose teacher hides an abusive side from the community. A portrait of a family who struggles to figure out how to do what’s right in the face of harsh and confusing reality, this is heavy stuff, but MacDonald has a talent for drawing characters that pull you into the story all the way to the end.
Bound to Be Read, 870 Grand Ave., St. Paul, (651) 646-2665, www.boundtoberead.com -
Frances Itani
A whisper in your ear: Canadian author Itani’s debut novel, Deafening, is a true joy, a moving and observant story of love, sorrow, and survival during the days of World War I. It’s made up of three entwining stories: a girl named Grania (inspired by Itani’s grandmother) learning how to cope with profound deafness in a world designed for the hearing; how she falls in love with a hearing man named Jim; and Jim’s hellish experiences in the bloody cacophony of the European trenches. Deafening is clearly a labor of love-Itani spent six years researching deaf schools and the Great War, and even became fluent in sign language. She’s a perceptive, sensitive prose stylist who’s gone the extra mile and more to really live in her characters’ skin and breathe the air of their time. That care comes through on every page.
Ruminator, 1648 Grand Ave., St. Paul, (651) 699-0587, www.ruminator.com -
Peter Sís
Children’s books are not immune to the trends of adult publishing-in fact some grand old pretensions of the book trade do best in titles for the little people, like pop-ups and picture books. Czech-born Peter Sís is an extraordinary artist whose books are works of fine art that can be cherished by and for generations. Though published by a large house using modern methods, books like Tibet: Through the Red Box look and feel as though they were hand-produced with letterpress and lithograph. Sís’s latest book, The Tree of Life, is a dense scrapbook-like exploration of the life and work of Charles Darwin. We met Sís the last time he was in town, and he’s delightful and approachable-making him awfully popular with Mom, we noticed.
Wild Rumpus, 2720 W. 43rd St.,
(612) 920-5005, www.wildrumpusbooks.com
Red Balloon, 891 Grand Ave., St. Paul, (651) 224-8320,
www.redballoonbookshop.com