Keith Richards, Life ****

Keith Richards' Life is far more intriguing than I expected from the autobiography of a prototypical junkie rock-and-roll star. Sure, it has its share of excess and debauchery, but it also has numerous musical insights and a complex main character.

The secret to the success of Life is that it captures Richards' voice and shows his contradictions.

[Mick's women] end up crying on my shoulder because they've found out he has once again philandered. What am I gonna do? Well, it's a long ride to the airport, honey; let me think about it. The tears that have been on this shoulder from Jerry Hall, from Bianca, from Marianne, Chrissie Shrimpton... They've ruined so many shirts of mine. And they ask me what to do! How the hell do I know? I don't fuck him! (p 294)

Keith rarely seems to recognize the distance between his self-image and his behavior. He imagines himself to be a disciplined junkie who is in complete control of his addiction...except for when he isn't. He says he never puts the make on a woman, then tells a story about tracking down the German model Uschi Obermaier. Many paragraphs start with a proclamation that he appears to contradict by the end.

I've never been able to go to bed with a woman just for sex. I've no interest in that. I want to hug you and kiss you and make you feel good and protect you. I'd rather jerk off than just have a piece of pussy... Usually I was more interested in chicks who weren't slavering and falling all over me. I'd be hanging out and go, let's try the wife of the banker... (p 349)

The next page contains a paean to the wonder of groupies.

Even more than the entertaining conundrums of Keith's rationalizations, I enjoyed the musical insights: how he got the sound of "Jumping Jack Flash" from acoustic guitars and a crummy cassette recorder overloaded to the point of distortion (p 239); how American artists played their Sears guitars using banjo tuning; and how the secret to the classic Rolling Stones riffs is open tuning.

Jimmy Reed produces a haunting refrain, a melancholy dissonance...At the 5 chord, instead of making a conventional barre chord, the B7th, which requires a little effort with the left hand, he wouldn't bother with the B at all. He'd leave the open A ringing and just slide the finger up the D string to a 7th...Believe me, it's (a) the laziest, sloppiest single thing you can do in that situation, and (b) one of the most brilliant musical inventions of all time. (p 106)

The compelling strangeness of the book can be summarized with a story near the end. Keith is living on an island in the Caribbean, next door to Bruce Willis, when Paul McCartney comes strolling down the beach. The two legends start spending time together. Their conversations start with music but quickly take a wild turn.

We talked about [how] the Beatles were a vocal band because they could all sing the lead vocal, and we were more of a musicians' band -- we had only one front man....We even started composing a song together... We got into discussions about inflatable dog kennels designed like the dogs inside them -- spotted ones for Dalmatians and so on. Then we went off on one about a special project we were going to develop, sun-dried celebrity turds, purified with rainwater -- get celebrities to donate them, coat them with shellac and get a major artist to decorate them. Elton would do it; he's a great guy. George Michael, he'll go for it. What about Madonna? (p 538)

Ken Kalfus, Thirst *** 1/2

I judged this book by its cover. When I came across it in Moe's Books, I was unfamiliar with the author. I bought it based on endorsements from David Foster Wallace and the New York Times Book Review.

Thirst is a collection of short stories, some of which are experimental in the vein of Italo Calvino (especially "Invisible Malls," which even uses the verb calvinoed) and some of which are traditional (such as "No Grace on the Road," narrated by a character caught between his Western education and his Asian heritage). My favorites spanned both types: "The Joy and Melancholy Baseball Trivia Quiz" is told in a question-and-answer format and captures how extreme experiences transcend the rules of the game; "Among the Bulgarians" captures a young man's ambivalence about his summer abroad.

I didn't know Ken Kalfus when I bought this book, but now I will seek out his other books.

Fareed Zakaria, The Post-American World *** 1/2

The Post-American World makes a fairly simple argument: soon the United States will not be the uncontested superpower in a unipolar world, not because it has done anything wrong but because of "the rise of the rest." Zakaria uses an analogy of tennis:

In the 1970s, about twenty-five countries sent players to the U.S. Open. Today, about thirty-five countries do, a 40 percent increase. Countries like Russia, South Korea, Serbia, and Austria are now churning out world-class players... In the 19070, three Anglo-Saxon nations — America, Britain, and Australia — utterly dominated tennis. In 2007, the final-sixteen players came from ten different countries. In other words, it's not that the United States has been doing badly over the last two decades. It's that, all of a sudden, everyone is playing the game.

Or, to put it another way, the perceived problems of today are the result of success in helping the rest of the world.

The most enjoyable aspect of the book was viewing the world situation from its perspective. Zakaria looks at the various concerns of modern doomsayers and casually shows that the United States remains in a good position. With respect to education, for example, Americans are frightened by surveys showing that U.S. teens are less skilled at math and science than teens in other nations. Zakaria points out that "the difference between average science scores in poor and wealthy school districts within the United States is four to five times greater than the difference between the U.S. and Singapore national averages... The large cohort of students in the top fifth of American schools rank along with the world's best" (p 192).

The book is easy to read and makes an interesting and compelling argument.