Category: Books

I just finished Charles Bock’s first novel, “Beautiful Children.” In short, it was an amazing book. Flawed, but amazing. It’s still bothering me. The characters keep rising up in my mind at strange times, especially the street kids. I’m trying to sort through it all and definitely will need to re-read the last few chapters. A lot happens there. Too much to absorb in one read.

I guess I should expect nothing less from a novel that lists the bizarre guitar virtuoso Buckethead atop the acknowledgments section.

In short, the book is about Kenny, a Las Vegas kid who disappears. It chronicles the impact of the incident on his parents’ marriage. It staggers through the Las Vegas Strip following mangy runaways. It slinks through the slime and silicone of the porn industry.

I guess my main complaint is Bock’s tendency to layer detail in a way reminiscent of Updike. While it can breath life and truth into a scene, it also can short circuit the narrative. It’s a balancing act. At times, I just wanted to navigate around all the detail, staying with the narrative thread, that swift cool stream of words cutting through the descriptive silt Bock was accreting.

But I’d rate that a minor flaw, one born of an 11-year birthing process for the novel. That amazes me. What tenacity, to stay with it that long and finally get published with considerable fanfare.

The New York Times Magazine did a decent profile of Bock a few weeks back. Worth a look …

I just finished reading Matthew Polly’s “American Shaolin: Flying Kicks, Buddhist Monks and the Legend of Iron Crotch: An Odyssey in the New China.”

In one respect, Polly is “just another overprivileged Gen-X twit spending daddy’s hard-earned money trying to find himself in some exotic locale.” But he’s much more. He’s a humble, respectful, humorous visitor to the post-Tiananmen China of the 1990s who takes readers along for the ride, and it’s a fascinating ride.

Polly, a 98-pound weakling from Topeka, gets it in his head that he wants to study kung fu at the legendary Shaolin Temple, the supposed birthplace of both the martial art and Zen Buddhism.

What Polly finds when he finally arrives in Shaolin is more akin to “Kungfu World, a low-rent version of an Epcot Center pavilion.” Undaunted, he finds the monks, negotiates tuition fees with communist party officials and immerses himself in Shaolin. His observations on Chinese culture and customs are fascinating. During the course of his studies, he learns “to eat bitter” (suffer) and becomes quite proficient at kung fu and kickboxing. Great stuff ..

And Iron Crotch? He’s a monk whom Polly dubs “Monk Dong,” a practitioner of iron crotch kung fu. In other words, he’s learned to withstand insane abuse to his genitals. Talk about eating bitter:

“The door was slightly ajar. Overcome with curiosity, I peeked through the crack.

“Monk Dong, naked from the waist down, had placed his testicles on a wooden desk. At regular intervals, he brought down the palm of his right hand hard on his sack. He smacked and grunted. I winced.”

Ouch …