Shelf Life — Scott Dickensheets: Reading suggestions? You came to the right place

Friday, April 7, 2000 | 9:02 a.m.

Scott Dickensheets' books and magazines column appears Fridays. Reach him at 990-2446 or dickens@lasvegassun.com.

"Summer reading" -- ha! You, the Shelf Life reader, are different, exceptional. Let others spend the hot months paging, half-engaged, through a desultory sequence of torrid potboilers, genre escapism and Danielle Steele novels. "Light reading," they call it. Ha! You want more. You want engagement. You want to counter the lulling heat with books that speak to your intelligence, challenge your perceptions, are good for you.

Lord knows why you want these things, but you do, I know you do, and I've set aside my Danielle Steele novels long enough to help. The following is an all-too-brief rundown of the top thinking-person's releases this spring and summer (I'll fob off similar lists in the hilarious guise of "books columns" every so often; think of it as "light writing").

Let's begin with fiction. Saul Bellow may be 127 years old, but he's still got juice enough left to turn out another novel. "Ravelstein," out in a few weeks from Viking, tells the story of a charismatic intellectual dying of AIDS; the character is said to be modeled on Allan Bloom, author of "Closing of the American Mind." Given the title of Philip Roth's latest, "The Human Stain" (Houghton Mifflin, May) you'd think he was writing a treatise on Shelf Life, but in fact it's a tale of presidential scandal and academic politics, the final book of Roth's searing trilogy on the clash between the personal and the political in modern America.

I remember reading the title story from Sherman Alexie's May collection, "The Toughest Indian in the World" (Atlantic Monthly), last year in the New Yorker's fiction issue. I wasn't impressed by the tale of a contemporary Indian who connects with his tribal manhood or something after a brief homosexual encounter with an enigmatic drifter. Perhaps the other stories are better.

I never did read Kathryn Harrison's memoir celebre, "The Kiss," detailing her sexual affair with her father. Perhaps a less creepy introduction to her writing will be found in her novel "The Binding Chair; or, A Visit From the Foot Emancipation Society" (Random House), about a Westerner who falls for a prostitute in late-19th century China. I haven't read much Joyce Carol Oates, either, although I've certainly had my opportunities -- she's written a tall stack of novels; in terms of bulk product, she's neck and neck with Stephen King. Her latest, just out from Ecco Press, is "Blonde," a fictional dive into the life and fame-fragged psyche of Marilyn Monroe.

If I'm looking forward to any novel in the next few months, it would have to be the latest from lovable absurdist Tom Robbins, "Invalids Home From Hot Climates," coming next month from Bantam. It promises to be a typical Robbins romp, full of unlikely characters (a gun-toting government-employed anarchist) and bent poetry.

And for those of you who -- as a palette-cleanser -- want genre escapism, a torrid potboiler or a Danielle Steel novel -- there's some of that coming as well. Tom Clancy's "The Bear and the Dragon" (Putnam, August) finds Harrison Ford ... I mean, Jack Ryan as president. Jackie Collins brings her lurid touch to Las Vegas in "Lethal Seduction" (Simon and Schuster, July), while Mario Puzo takes on the Mafia yet again in "Omerta," due in July from Random House. As for the industrious Steele, she cranks out novels No. 48 and 49 this spring, "The Wedding" and "The House on Hope Street" (both Delacorte). Regarding their subject matter, check out novels No. 1-47.

Now for some nonfiction, starting with glimpses of how other people live. This May bad-boy British novelist Martin Amis tells his own life story (including his relationship with pop Kingsley Amis, the even badder-boy Brit novelist) in "Experience: A Memoir" (Talk Miramax).

Larry McMurtry's last book, "Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen," isn't even in remainder bins yet, but he'll be back in June with yet another book, the travelogue "Roads" (Simon and Schuster).

It's been an interminable wait since the last book by very funny essayist David Sedaris. In June Little, Brown will release "Me Talk Pretty One Day," a batch of Sedaris' crazy tales of life in France. For something a little more serious, check out Douglas Brinkley's bio, "Rosa Parks," due in June, as part of Viking's admirable series of brief, pungent biographies.

Let's turn now to current affairs: Actress Jane Alexander mixes biography and politics in "Command Performance: An Actress in the Theater of Politics," her account of her stint as boss of the embattled National Endowment for the Arts in the grim years after Newt Gingrich and his shock troops Republi-jacked Congress. Look for it in June from Basic Books.

Author Paulina Borsook confirms what you've always suspected about the soullessness of the digital class in next month's "Cyberselfish: A Critical Romp Through the Terribly Libertarian Culture of High Tech" (Public Affairs). She describes online culture as "violently lacking in compassion." I knew it!

Also violently lacking in compassion: a certain tin-pot dictator in a certain Middle Eastern country hostile to us. Richard Butler, former head of UNSCOM, the United Nations committee that oversees weapons inspections, sounds the warning about Saddam Hussein's continuing danger in May's "The Greatest Threat: Iraq, Weapons of Mass Destruction and the Growing Crisis of Global Security" (Public Affairs).

Never afraid to poke a stick into a hornet's nest, intellectual gunslinger Garry Wills takes on the Catholic Church's bureaucracy in "Papal Sin: Structures of Deceit," set for July release by Doubleday. Wills attacks the papacy's unwillingness to modernize its stances on contraception, homosexuality and the role of women in the church.

If I'm looking forward to any nonfiction book in the next few months, though, it would have to be Michael Paterniti's opus, "Driving Mr. Albert" (Dial Press, July), about the author's experiences driving Albert Einstein's brain across the United States. Paterniti, recently nominated for his second National Magazine Award, won his first for the article that grew into this book.

Reading matters

But then the doubts set in. Although the article names no names (the byline is "by Anonymous" and the perp is called "the tall man" throughout), there are enough details supplied that the New York media world has already figured out who's who. Repercussions are bound to set in. And so a furious debate has begun (check out MediaNews.org) regarding the ethics of GQ publishing such a one-sided account -- the tall man never gets to speak in his own defense.

Of course, it's more than a matter of skipping down to your primary-care physician and asking to be neutered. (How would your HMO handle that billing?) Many men are forced to turn to a shadowy subculture of men -- called cutters -- who are equipped with sensitivity, understanding and some big, honking snippers. GQ helpfully runs a picture of such a tool. Men, picture yourself in its embrace. Squirm.

The piece does have one of the better headlines in recent memory: "Farewell My Lovelies." I repeat: Yeeooowch!

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