The Rake Magazine

Author: rakemag

  • Inter-Squad Squabble

    Craig Cox’s analysis of light rail was shallow and poorly researched. His most glaring omission was his failure to consider the issue of “capacity.” A single track of transit can carry 40,000-50,000 people per hour. A dedicated busway can carry just 20,000 people per hour. A car lane can carry an absolute maximum of 4,500 people per hour, and that’s with three people per car! Clearly, light rail transit has the greatest peak-demand hauling capacity. With no more room for highway lanes downtown, the only way to significantly increase capacity in the long run is by building a light rail transit network. Secondly, Cox doesn’t consider regional air pollution which frequently exceeds safe levels during the summer months. While diesel trucks and buses account for only 2-3 percent of highway vehicles, they are responsible for 25 percent of the smog-forming pollution and over half the particulate matter in our city’s air. Only electric rail (or electric buses) would significantly improve regional air quality. Finally, Cox makes some historical errors. The Twin Cities Rapid Transit Company was forced to share much of its right of way with cars, eliminating its potential advantage in speed and peak capacity. More importantly, Fred Ossanna was in the pocket of General Motors, whom he hired as “consultants” to rip up the TCRT and convert it to buses. GM repeated this process in hundreds of American cities, using front companies like National City Lines and Yellow Bus Company, to purchase and destroy trolley systems. A good account of all this can be found in David St. Clair’s book The Motoriza-tion of American Cities.

    Andy Singer, Rake contributor,
    St. Paul

  • Cosmopolis By Don DeLillo

    DeLillo’s last book, Underworld, was one of those seasonal doorstops that the cognoscenti gets in a lather about—you know, the 800-page tome that everyone talks about and no one reads, the one that ends up atop a growing column of hardcovers in the basement, the last addition to which was Pynchon’s Mason & Dixon, or perhaps Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections. Well, DeLillo had it coming—it’d been 20 years since his seminal novel White Noise came out, establishing him as an important voice in the world of white guys ruminating on technology and its discontents. He’s essentially been writing the same book, more mood than plot, ever since then—and every time, we love it. This novel is about a 20-something dot-com millionaire trying to make his way across Manhattan in his limo. Angst ensues.


    Buy Cosmopolis: A Novel at Amazon.com

  • Mcsweeney’s Mammoth Treasury Of Thrilling Tales

    Staggering Genius golden boy Dave Eggers’ journal swells from magazine to full-fledged 478-page paperback book for its tenth issue. The breathlessly pulpy title is only a little tongue-in-cheek. Mammoth Treasury, guest-edited by Michael Chabon, sets loose its writers on the plot-driven adventure story, the idea being that maybe they can help recapture the ripping yarn’s place of honor alongside what’s usually regarded as Serious Literature. After all, genre fiction was good enough for Hemingway and Poe, so why shouldn’t Nick Hornby spin a sci-fi tale about a VCR that warns of a coming apocalypse? And so here’s 20 tales of sharks, mummies and murderous elephants by such critical darlings as Eggers, Chabon and Sherman Alexie, alongside writers like Elmore Leonard, Michael Moorcock and Neil Gaiman who’ve been hammering out quality writing in oft-disrespected genre ghettos for years. Treasury doesn’t exactly reinvent the wheel, but there’s plenty of fun to be had here. Chris Offutt’s submission has a particularly neat hook: He gets involved in a scheme involving time travel, ghosts and alternate universes in order to break the case of writer’s block that’s preventing him from finishing his story for this book.


    Buy McSweeney’s Mammoth Treasury at Amazon.com

  • Catch as Catch Can: Collected Stories and Other Writings by Joseph Heller

    For Joseph Heller, there was only one catch, and that was Catch-22. Although his blockbuster first novel catapulted him to lifelong prominence as one of the century’s most important novelists, its very success would haunt him for the rest of his career. Because he was only important for the one novel. Everybody loved the crazy WWII satire, but about the rest of his writing, you heard words like “tepid.” As time went by, even he grew to accept his fate as American letters’ jack of one trade. When he came to Minneapolis a few years back for a book signing, he seemed genuinely surprised when I asked him to autograph Good As Gold, the lampoon of Washington politics and American Judaism that’s generally considered his second-best book. “I haven’t seen this in a while,” he said. This posthumous collection of short stories and miscellanea is no exception. Though it features several pieces of fiction from early in his career, it’s dominated by the presence of The Book. Outtakes from Catch-22 are followed by outtakes from the ill-remembered sequel, Closing Time, and four behind-the-scenes essays on Catch-22’s creation and later adaptation into Mike Nichols’ 1970 film. Still, better one catch than no catch at all.

  • Local Spotlight

    Just as the trees are beginning to bud again, spring brings a flowering from Minnesota’s local authors and independent presses, including several notable debuts. From Coffee House Press comes The Grasshopper King, Slate columnist Jordan Ellenberg’s wryly funny Boyle-cum-Borges satire about a crabby, untalented, yet mysteriously important Kafka-like poet and the two academics who wreck their lives trying to explain him. We laughed more than a few times, and crown King the best thing we’ve read all month. P. J. Tracy, a pseudonymous mother/daughter writing team from Minneapolis and L.A., has a breakout first novel with Monkeewrench, a comic police procedural/ serial killer thriller that sites one of its murders at the Mall of America. Two from Graywolf Press: First, much-published poet Albert Goldbarth switches to the novel for Pieces of Payne, a wild and freewheeling thing that manages to combine the Legion of Superheroes, quantum physics, Dickens, Moby-Dick and Victorian-era mastectomy surgical practices. In a much more somber vein, Patricia Seraffian Ward draws on her girlhood in Beirut for The Bullet Collection, a passionate tale of the corrosive effects of the Lebanese civil war. And last but not least, New Rivers Press celebrates its rebirth out west in Moorhead with several new publications, including Daniel Bachhuber’s melancholy memoir Mozart’s Carriage and short-story author Cezarija Abartis’ Nice Girls. Bacchhuber and Abartis read at Open Book April 4; P.J. Tracy at Borders in Woodbury April 18, Barnes & Noble Eden Prairie April 19 and Once Upon a Crime April 21. Open Book, 1011 Washington Ave. S., (612) 215-2575, www.openbookmn.org; Borders, 8472 Tamarack Bay, Woodbury, 651-578-2931, www.bordersstores.com; B&N, Eden Prairie Center, (952) 944-5683, bn.com; Once Upon a Crime, 604 W. 26th St., (612) 870-3785

  • David Sedaris

    It’s nearly perfect that the mischief-minded David Sedaris first gained fame for being an elf. If you’ve heard of Sedaris at all, you know about his hilarious, sardonic memoir “The SantaLand Diaries,” detailing his petty humiliations as one of Kris Kringle’s helpers at Macy’s department store. Insightful, bitter and genuinely sidesplitting, it struck a nerve among NPR listeners and freed Sedaris from elfdom and a series of other go-nowhere jobs. Since then he’s written four books of essays and stories, and still contributes regularly to Ira Glass’ radio series This American Life. He’s got a terrific ear for dialogue and a seemingly inexhaustible supply of dry wit. He also has a knack for recognizing and capturing life’s bizarre little moments. These often prompt his funniest observations, whether he’s struggling to explain Easter to a Muslim in a language he barely knows or explaining the way of the Rooster, his yokel younger brother who thinks a businesslike name for his floor-sanding company is “Silly P’s.” His last book, Me Talk Pretty One Day, actually caused fights in our house over who got to read it next. But his real skill is as a monologist, easily on par with Spalding Gray, and his stories are best heard rather than read. State Theater, 805 Hennepin Avenue, (612) 339-7007, hennepintheatredistrict.com

  • Farm Babies

    What a treasure the Minnesota Zoo continues to be. Hard to believe it turns 25 years old this year; it seems like only yesterday when they were talking about a state-of-the-art zoological garden out in the cornfields of Apple Valley, just about the time we were all feeling kinda creeped out by Como. Here’s a great way to celebrate: Put the kids in the minivan and head out to the up-and-running Family Farm section of the zoo, and watch them go ga-ga over the piglets, ducklings, calves, and other babes presently on order from Mother Nature. MN Zoo, 13000 Zoo Blvd., Apple Valley, (952) 431-9500, mnzoo.org

  • Declaration of Independence Road Trip

    Just think, if this document had never been written, King George would still be pushing us around. He’d make us all drive on the wrong side of the road and wear powdered wigs, and demand that we call soccer “football” and freedom fries “chips.” That’s just the kind of tyrant he was. Luckily, the Declaration of Independence put a stop to all that. But seriously: It’s remarkable to think of how the ideals expressed so succinctly here—life, liberty, and all that jazz—have survived these 227 years and remain central to our concept of the America we want to be. Of the 200 originally printed, only 25 copies are known to have survived. The one on tour here was a recent discovery—found, weirdly enough, behind the frame of a $4 thrift-store painting and bought for $8 million by TV producer Norman Lear, who sent it out to spread its message just like it did circulating around the colonies in 1776. MIA, 2400 Third Ave. S., (612) 870-3131, www.artsmia.org

  • Minneapolis-St. Paul International Film Festival

    As recent events have made painfully obvious, the peoples of the world still can’t get along. It would be nice to think that this, the biggest local film event of the year, might help bridge the gap in some way. With more than 120 films from 50 countries screening at theaters all over town, there are far too many worthy movies to properly enumerate here, but you’ve got everything from quirky Australian comedies to Swedish psycho-thrillers to documentaries on the Chinese working class. Visiting filmmakers include Robert Duvall, whose Assassination Tango has opening-night honors at the State Theater April 4. The most timely entry is surely Marooned in Iraq, a fascinating and music-rich drama about the Kurdish plight from the director of A Time For Drunken Horses. But our secret pleasure during the last few fests has been to go see at least one film completely at random, no matter where it’s from or what it’s about. It’s never failed to open our eyes to something new and interesting. It’s a big world out there; this is your chance to go somewhere you’ve never even thought of before. Multiple venues and showtimes; (612) 627-4430, http://www.ufilm.org/fest/2003

  • A Mighty Wind

    This is the fourth showbiz-schmucks mockumentary from Christopher Guest and his Spinal Tap/Guffman/Best in Show troupe, and if we’re lucky they’ll be able to go all the way to eleven. This time around the target is folk music—lampooning the malcontents, losers, and loonies reunited decades past their prime for a Carnegie Hall memorial concert. The most promising news: For the first time since This Is Spinal Tap, Guest reunites with bandmates Michael McKean and Harry Shearer in the guise of a Kingston Trio send-up called the Folksmen. The songs we’ve heard so far are a credit to the legacy of “Big Bottom.” Folk’s tendencies toward pomposity and overearnestness make spoofing it practically the definition of shooting fish in a barrel, but you know what they say: Hear “If I Had A Hammer” once too often, and everything starts looking like a nail.