The first record I ever bought was the 45-rpm “Jezebel,” on the Mercury label, by the Rumbles. They were a garage band from Council Bluffs, Iowa, which is across the Missouri River from Omaha. Mighty Twelve-Ninety, KOIL, had been playing the song. The deejays pronounced KOIL as a word rather than spelling out the call letters individually. The station’s jingle included the slogan, “Million-dollar weekend.” I could never figure out who was getting a million dollars: maybe the station. Nor could I figure out why a band would name itself after a street fight. Or maybe it was just thunder. There were lots of things to figure out when I was twelve. I didn’t believe my mother when she said the Rumbles were only covering “Jezebel.” Indeed, the 1951 original, written by Wayne Shanklin, was sung by Frankie Lain, who was backed by the Norman Luboff Choir and Mitch Miller and his orchestra.

I probably bought “Jezebel” at Maple View Pharmacy, on 90th and Ohio Streets. I didn’t get too much farther away from home than that when I was twelve and thirteen. Maple View was within bike-riding distance, easily less than a mile from home by way of Brownley Drive. Maple View had a soda fountain where I tried cherry Coke a few times. It was also possible to buy cigarettes from the rack behind the main cash register, saying they were for my mom. Sometimes I produced a forged note. I don’t recall ever being turned down. The cigarette selection was pretty broad, and in these early days of the Marlboro man it was possible to buy old-time brands Chesterfield King and Herbert Tareyton and Phillip Morris. One source indicates the Tareytons had a cork tip, but the others were unfiltered straights. I had never seen any of my parents’ friends smoking them; instead, they preferred Kent, L&M (my mother’s brand), Bel Air, Salem, and Benson & Hedges. A fellow down the block named Tom Gaukel might have smoked Luckys, which indicated a defiant traditionalism: Luckys were a wartime brand, the kind handed out to soldiers. I had an older friend whose mother let him smoke at home. He liked Bull Durhams and thought it was hilarious when I puffed on these incredibly strong cigarettes and turned gray. When they weren’t making me gag or turn dizzy, cigarettes represented attainable adulthood. On top of this, the brand names and the packaging fascinated me. If I smoked today, it would be disappointing to have so few choices. As with so many consumer products, whether it’s soda pop or breakfast cereal, a relatively few companies dominate the market and the shelf space. Puffing a Basic Light from a packet with such a bland design would hold little innate allure. Smoking has become terribly prosaic.

Some other 45’s I owned:

• “Chain of Fools,” by Aretha Franklin
• “(Sittin’ on) the Dock of the Bay”: It always irked me to hear the deejays call him “The late, great Otis Redding” because I didn’t understand what that expression meant—or even that he was really dead: the song was recorded December 7, 1967 and he died December 10 in a plane crash at Madison, Wisconsin
• “Lean on Me,” by Bill Withers
• “Brandy (You’re a Fine Girl),” by Looking Glass (“Brandy, you’re a fine girl, what a good wife you would be, but my life, my lover, my lady, is the sea”)
• “The Rapper,” by the Jaggerz (“Rap, rap, rap, they call him the Rapper; rap, rap, rap, you know what he’s after”)
• “Venus,” by Shocking Blue (“She’s got it, yeah, baby, she’s got it. I’m your Venus, I’m your fire at your desire”)
• “Sign,” by Five Man Electrical Band, uncannily summed up my growing anti-authoritarian feelings
• “Judy in Disguise (With Glasses),” by John Fred & His Playboy Band was playing the other day in the supermarket, which prompted the writing of this entire memoir, and to prove how obtuse I am, even as a former owner of the record, I admit that it never occurred to me this song was a parody of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” until just moments ago when I read the Wikipedia entry. Ye gods!

Soul and pop gave way to rock records, and I added Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love” to my collection. Even as a fourteen-year-old, I knew what Robert Plant meant when he sang “I’m gonna give you every inch of my love. Especially as a fourteen-year-old, I appreciated seeing “Lotta” officially sanctioned in print. The psychedelic instrumental “orgasm” section, which is followed by Jimmy Page’s rip-roaring solo on a 1958 Les Paul still make me tingle when I hear the song over these forty years.

“Revolution” and “Get Back” were irresistible, even though Beatlemania was nauseating and I hated to jump on the bandwagon. Conversely, the Stones’ bad-guy image put me off, but the riff in “Brown Sugar” hooked me; I’m still learning just how seedy the lyrics are and how deeply Mick Jagger understood the culture that ultimately spawned the blues. “Honky Tonk Women” was another that scandalized but also intrigued while getting the hips shaking. Reading the lyrics online, I finally understand that the singer met a gin-soaked bar-room queen in Memphis and laid a divorcee in New York City: decades of ignorance brought to end.

“Spirit in the Sky,” by Norman Greenbaum, plays all the time on classic-rock stations and while I don’t know how well the lyrics hold up theologically, singing along is fun.

I also had the folky “In the Year 2525,” by Zager and Evans. I liked songs with easily followed stories, but another part of the appeal was that the duo came from Lincoln, Nebraska. It just didn’t seem possible for anyone from Nebraska to be number one at anything besides perhaps football. (By 1969, when the song held number one on the charts for six weeks, the Cornhuskers had yet to win a national title.)

About six months later, “Bridge over Troubled Water” also spent six weeks at the top of the charts. This was the required slow-dance song for make-out parties, one of which I held at my house, so Simon and Garfunkel abundantly repaid the investment of $1.49 or so. Mary Steele later wrote me a note asking if it was still good between us, and she relayed this information: “Everybody said it was a w-h-o-o-o-l-e lot of fun!! Little ones are more fun than the great big ones!! That’s what I think at least!!”

By “little ones,” I trust she was referring to my party and not my part.

When writing recently about the bane of gift books, I started off by lustily inveighing against the very most recent one of these to be sent my way, which is the collection of Charlie LeDuff’s newspaper pieces. But I’d completely overlooked the first gift books among them. I trace it back to the time I was turning 11 or 12 and decided I’d like to have a birthday party. A kid named Steve, who lived at the bottom of the hill, was one of the puny number of attendees. His family took its faith seriously, and he had been brought up to be kind to everyone.

Steve was physically a much bigger kid, with dark hair and eyes and a pleasant smile. On the playground he showed very little footspeed but was a ready participant in ballgames and could dependably clog up the middle, as they say of defensive tackles. In saying he was a big kid, I don’t mean he had large powerful shoulders. Once as were changing back to street clothes after ninth-grade gym class, I had a glimpse of his bare dimpled rear end and impulsively called him “Jell-O butt,” which was a most ungracious thing to say, and I’ve often regretted my callousness and would happily apologize if I ever meet him again, which will probably be in a big-box store as he’s driving down the aisle in an electric cart because he’s grown too fat to walk.

Steve’s gift to me at my birthday party, a hardcover edition of Louisa May Alcott’s “Little Women,” was probably a recycled item. Maybe Steve had received it at his own earlier birthday party, to which I most conspicuously had not been invited. (How else would he have seen the way clear to foist his book upon me?) Or maybe one of his older sisters owned but was discarding it after having purchased a leather-bound edition of the work. Maybe the advance notice for my party had been too slim, leaving only enough time to skim off “Little Women” from the scant selection of possible gifts in the family’s inventory. Maybe times were hard down there at the bottom of the hill—my mother said the salary of Steve’s father, a YMCA manager, couldn’t be too great. Maybe the whole family was just a little odd and Steve went off to the next birthday party with a copy of “Anne of Green Gables” or “Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm.”

My younger brother, Dan, once reported that Steve’s younger brother, Larry, took down his own pants and challenged Dan to do the same in a comparison of manly parts. Maybe Larry’s aberrant behavior was due to early and repeated contaminating exposure to “Little Women.”

Even aside from the question of the poor taste Steve had shown in giving me chick lit, the fact was that sentimental nineteenth-century fiction was definitely not the intellectual fashion in our house. Among other subjects my father would probably not have cared to see me pursuing were Greek and Roman mythology, Renaissance poetry, or Victorian literature. His disdain for the gods and goddesses of the Classical Period was in keeping with his rejection of all religious expression as naught but ego-based superstition. (“We’re too important to die, so there must be a soul and eternal life.”) As for the Renaissance, its artistic glories were too much within the purview of high-culture elitists who must be refuted. And the Victorians were of a royalist society, royalism being worthy of contempt and ridicule.

My father, being nevertheless a great believer in the advantages of reading, used to spend more time than money at newsstands. Why purchase the magazine for 35 cents when it could be read on the spot for nothing? “Wait here,” he would tell me and my sister Kate, leaving us sitting in the car outside the drugstore for 45 minutes while he perused Popular Mechanics. He usually wasn’t alone: freeloading at magazine racks was quite popular in those days. I remember accompanying him as an eight-year old at the huge Skagway superstore, located at 72nd and L Streets in our fair city of Omaha. While he was absorbed in his technical reading, I roamed the enormous humanities section of the periodicals, and here I came upon the first pornographic image of my life (aside from the centerfolds in an auto parts store he frequented). This image, offered by some rag that was included among the True and Argosy imitators, depicted the dungeon where Nazis were about to torture a woman, who was clad only in tattered underthings and was bound, spread-eagled—XXX marks the spot—to a wagon wheel. It must have been the Russian front because of the spoked wooden wheel: probably some oxcart had been flattened by a Panzer. I have never forgotten the thrill—an eight-year-old boy’s inexplicable tastes—and the instantaneous knowledge that this page was surely forbidden, verboten, taboo. I had most likely already committed a sin merely by chancing upon this page. Sometimes I’ve since regretted having put back the magazine so fast, as though it had scorched me. What became of the poor maiden? Maybe Allied bombers smashed the dungeon, and with fate leaving her as the only survivor, she precariously rolled herself on her wheel to amnesty in Switzerland. In any event, the result of my porn immersion at the 100,000-square-foot Skagway superstore was undoubtedly to leave me annealed—even if there hadn’t been too many words on the page—against the insipidities of such limp fiction as “Little Women.” I was into the hard stuff.

My father hadn’t seemed to notice any of this, but perhaps I was wrong. Sometime afterward, for no reason at all, he proffered “Ivanhoe,” the comic book. This historical romance by Sir Walter Scott was published in 1819 and put out by Classic Comics in 1946, with subsequent editions. Even if it hadn’t been way over my head—the dialog balloons teemed with loquacity—I had no taste for this sort of thing, being but my father’s son. I can’t imagine that he would have read Scott’s novel of Saxons and Normans and Lady Rowena, so why did he think I’d go for the comic book? I was already a newspaper reader but skipped the “Prince Valiant” strip on the funny pages. It was comedy, not Arthurian adventure, for me. I was a “Peanuts” kid. I dug “Andy Capp.” I have never forgotten that Dagwood Bumstead’s boss was J.C. Dithers, and I react approximately like Dagwood, which is to say apoplectically, when a door-to-door salesman rings my bell.

As a teenager, my thoughtful selection one year for my father’s Christmas present was Wilt Chamberlain’s autobiography, “Wilt: Just Like Any Other 7-Foot Black Millionaire Who Lives Next Door.” I adored Wilt the Stilt but should have known better than to make my father read about a black man, especially an egotistical one like Wilt, and even more especially one who suggested he might live next door. It wouldn’t have much less palatable if I had chosen Eldridge Cleaver’s “Soul on Ice.” To my father’s credit, thought, he soon applied himself to the hoopster’s autobiography but pronounced it nearly insufferable because of Wilt’s braggadocio.

My teen years passed. I read the hilarious “MASH,” by Richard Hooker, and the less hilarious sequel, “MASH Goes to Maine.” Besides the daily newspaper, I didn’t do much additional reading. I had always wanted to read George Plimpton’s “Paper Lion” but never sprang for the $1.95 and still haven’t read it. However, one day in a book nook at the Westroads shopping mall, I came across the racy novel “Three in a Bed.” How I wish I’d held on to this pocket paperback! What a rarity I’d possess today! At the moment of purchase it seemed to be part of a series of multifariously themed soft-porn novels that shared the same cover design, a sort of World Book Encyclopedia of perversity. Buying this—I couldn’t in those days buy cigarettes as easily as the literary transaction was completed—I brought home my prize, thinking finally I had found a subject that suited me: the ménage à trois! I read just the first couple of pages, and then stashed the book with my underwear. I went off to school, forgetting that my mother took care of laundry duties, including the loving placement of all clean and dried and folded underwear back into the bureau. My father—who had probably suffered feelings of rejection those nine years earlier over the “Ivanhoe”—entered my room that afternoon. (Why the hell wasn’t he at work?) “I see you’re finally reading,” he said, grimly tossing “Three in a Bed” at me. “Too bad your choice of material isn’t too good.”

My high school graduation occurred just weeks later. At the small party that was held for me, I knew Grandmother Tillotson could be counted on for some Holy Cards, as usual. Meanwhile, Aunt Margie had given me Peace Dollars over a succession of birthdays, my Holy Communion, and Confirmation. (I still have every one of them.) Another silver dollar would be fine, but I now unwrapped a package that obviously contained a book and found “Jonathan Livingston Seagull,” which had been a fixture on the bestseller list. This volume was a beautiful slip-cased hardcover with endpapers of vellum: my first deluxe edition.

It helped that “Jonathan Livingston Seagull” was brief—a shrewd choice on my aunt’s part—so I actually read the novel, or novella, which is very nearly a unique circumstance in my entire history of receiving gift books. Of course I don’t remember a thing about the story other than its seeming a bit vapid. Once I got to college and started reading the heavyweights like Melville, with all his deep philosophical musings, Richard Bach’s pop fiction fable hardly seemed to belong in my collection: J.L. Gull met Melville’s Confidence Man and endured quite the plucking. Somewhere along the line, I parted with him. Today I regret this action, but not as much as having sold back my physical geography text to the college bookstore.

It seems as though “Little Women” was still in the bookcase at my parents’ house in 1986, on the eve of their move from Omaha to Florida. Being present to help them pack up, I salvaged a couple of my childhood books and brought them back to Ann Arbor. My foxed copy of “The Flight of the Silver Ship,” a 1930 work of juvenile fiction by Hugh McAlister—a dirigible adventure story—survived the transition. “Little Women” got shuffled off among the discards. Society’s attempt to create out of me a eunuch for Jane Austen had inexorably failed.

“Taken,” the second-highest-grossing movie of 2008, is a not particularly thrilling thriller starring Liam Neeson as the retired CIA guy and one-man killing machine Bryan Mills, who goes to Paris (onboard the Falcon tri-jet belonging to his ex-wife’s new husband) and hunts down the Albanian mafia who have kidnapped his daughter Kim (Maggie Grace) and her friend Amanda (Katie Cassidy). With her mother’s complicity, Kim has deceived her father as to the real purpose of the trip. Amanda has already been to France and can practically, like, speak French. The two young ladies say they will be spending the entire summer in the Louvre, comparing the brushwork techniques of Baroque painters. Of course, their real mission is to follow U2 from show to show: “Uno, dos, tres, catorce.” Meanwhile, the Albanians’ racket involves the kidnapping of western girls, hooking them on drugs, and employing them as sex slaves. Kim’s value is particularly high because she’s a virgin. (We’re supposed to believe she grew up in Beverly Hills and made it unscathed through high school.) Going to the apartment where the girls had stayed, Bryan finds Kim’s phone. From its memory card he downloads photos showing where to start his search. He commences a singularly ruthless dispensation of the entire Albanian mafia, including the electric chair for one a chief perp. It’s remotely amusing to watch and goes by fast enough, but what’s lacking is any clue about Kim’s internal state. A couple of scenes showing her predicament would add some snap, but instead we’re just presented with Bryan’s monomaniacal pursuit. (Maybe it was decided not to go this route because none of the supporting cast seem to have any acting chops whatsoever.) He eventually finds Amanda OD’d and intercedes just as Kim is auctioned to a lascivious sheik, and it’s a shame his lovely yacht gets shot up like that. Showing no sign of yearning for the narcotics the other girls succumbed to, Kim is returned to her mother in L.A.  

“Taken” Tokens:

Date night value: Not very high

Best attribute: It goes by quick

Least endurable aspect: Neeson’s continually dyspeptic, scowling face

My wife heard me say on Sunday morning that Castroneves would probably win the Indianapolis 500, but my heard was with Danica. The race had its boring periods—what long race doesn’t? That’s when you flip through a magazine. Meanwhile, the play-by-play was often useless when something noteworthy did happen on the track or in the pits. Marty Reid & Company were several ticks behind and had difficulty identifying cars. How can they spend three weekends at the Speedway and not instantaneously recognize any given car? I might be one of the few who appreciates Scott Goodyear as a commentator. But Eddie Cheever is like the human appendix, a vestigial organ that serves no important purpose and can be removed with no measureable effect. He makes me long for broadcasting comeback by Bobbie Unser.

Milka the Venezuelan sparkled at last (in last).

The race was a bit on the boring side because no car had an advantage. The IRL formula is tuned too fine. There used to be significant variations between cars, between chassis and engines; hey, an entry or team with a clear advantage adds tension and drama to the race. (“Watch Murphy in the Havoline/Valvoline/Vaseline Twin-Engine Special work his way back through the pack after that unplanned stop for hemorrhoid removal.”) Danica finished third because of her pit crew. Not to say that she didn’t drive a perfect race. She’s amazingly steady and rarely makes a mistake. But she gained positions exclusively through her team’s efficient pit stops.

Me, staying off the wall in the Short Chute between Turns 1 and 2, where Marco hit.

So many crashes! Why is it unsurprising that Marco Andretti didn’t last a lap? His brash comment about Mario Maraes was deeply arrogant and self-serving. Sorry, Marco, but trying to pass someone on the outside in the short chute between One and Two just seconds after the green flag’s fall is the epitome of imprudence. For anyone who disparages Danica, just compare her results to Marco’s. And Graham Rahal’s declaring himself one of the cars to beat but slamming the wall on Lap 55 goes into in the annals of unsupported braggadocio.

Meanwhile, how Tony Kanaan merely limped away after clobbering the wall was mind-boggling. Justin Wilson’s slide into pit lane could have ended much worse. And poor Vitor Meira! Raphael Matos was evidently going to storm to the front, executing a grand (or grandiose) pit strategy, but being outside Meira at the entrance to One was just crazy, and Meira took a Cedar Point coaster ride. Here’s wishing him a full recovery. This year’s race saw the rookies and youngsters causing more mayhem than ever. In comparison, Milka Duno (last among those running) sparkled like a jewel. In tribute to the fastest woman from Venezuela, I just might purchase the “I am a fan of Milka Duno” license plate frame from her website.

“Broken Wings,” published December 1900 in Century Magazine, deals with Henry James’s common theme of love squandered through human folly. Pride has been at work here. Happily for the reader, this time, it isn’t too late to salvage things:

Stuart Straith acknowledges himself as the déclassé member of a weekend party at Mundham (“the immense house all seated aloft in strength, robed with summer and crowned with success”). Straith represents art, while among the group of five-and-thirty were some great persons. So far he hasn’t spoken to literature’s Mrs. Harvey, whom he once knew well, and wonders whether she has moved up the social ladder. He sees her during the afternoon seated in a bower with the Ambassador. At dinner, she is placed across the table from his Excellency (his own request). When Straith’s eyes finally do meet hers, she seems “strange.”

That evening, Straith was “reduced to a vigil unalloyed”—Jamesspeak for going off to bed alone—but Mrs. Harvey, a novelist, is sought out by young Lady Claude. Nothing sexy, though: she’s an aspiring author. It is Mrs. Harvey’s privilege to disabuse her of the notion that any money is to be made through literature, at least, any that can be kept. In fact, she confesses her own destitution, with but two dresses for the three days at Mundham and a maid who’s actually her cook, disguised. She can’t even say why she’s invited here, except that London is “wild” and such things happen. Lady Claude then happens to mention Stuart Straith. She’s hot for such a “good-looking, distinguished ‘sympathetic’” fellow. Now the secret is revealed: a decade earlier, after Mr. Harvey’s death, Straith could have had Mrs. Harvey “if he had lifted a finger.” But influenced by the steady rise in value of his paintings, he saw a grand future for himself. She was too small for him. That is why she supposes he belongs among these great people.

Sometime afterward, Straith and Mrs. Harvey find themselves seated together at a theatrical performance. He chides her about the ambassador. They feint with each other about the reasons for having been at Mundham on that weekend. He asks if he can come to see her. She prefers going to his studio instead. Then they reveal their reasons for being at this play. She is stunned to learn that he has designed some of the costumes. “For the fee,” he explains. He is equally stunned to learn that, whereas her books used to bring in several thousand per year, she currently writes the “London Letter” three times a month for the Blackport Banner. “The new books, the new plays, the new twaddle of any sort—a little music, a little gossip, a little ‘art.’”

She shows up at his tidy studio with a notebook in order to get a column out of her visit. She isn’t good at this sort of work and anticipates being fired. She receives three pounds and ninepence from the Banner, whereas his commission on the costume design brought him four pounds and sixpence. “But I’ve only done, as yet, that one. Nothing else has offered.” Neither can deny being unhappy; Mrs. Harvey says she will accept his pity. The boy brings them tea, and when all is settled he tells her how hurt he had been by her rejection. She had been so successful, he so small—a revelation that causes her tears.

Because of pride “their estrangement had grown like an evil plant in the shade.” They had striven to enforce deceptions about themselves. Visiting Mrs. Harvey in her new apartment—she has just downsized—he “raised the heavy mask and laid it beside her own,” and after so many years “they began really to feel themselves recover something of that possibility of each other they had so wearily wasted.” He confesses that he hasn’t sold a painting in three years. This “final abandonment of pride … was like changing at the end of a dreadful day from tight boots to slippers.” They agree to avoid Mundham from now on. A price is paid as one gives the rich what they seek. They take the imagination. “As they have none themselves—” Mrs. Harvey points out. Keeping up with the rich is impossible, so why try, as they were beaten together? They permitted themselves a long and close embrace before “recover[ing] themselves enough to handle their agreement more responsibly…” They agree that they will resume their work.

My friend Susan H. was Susan G. until her second marriage and Susan H., but a different H., before the first one. Susan HGH must not have come to understand in our nearly 30 years of friendship that I will go to any length in order to avoid reading a book with an adverb in its subtitle. I opened a package from her and found a book titled “Work and Other Sins: Life in New York City and Thereabouts,” by Charlie LeDuff. On the one hand, I was pleased Susan HGH thought of me. On the other, I groaned at the responsibility of receiving yet another book from a well-meaning friend.

“Ronald, I thought you would enjoy this,” Susan HGH penciled on the first page.

A current selection of books received as gifts, under the guard of a Danish soldier

She also thinks Michigan is a northeastern state. I’ve never heard of Charlie LeDuff, but what I’ve just turned up about him makes me leery. Evidently, he was exiled to Detroit after a plagiarism scandal forced him out at the New York Times. A witty commentator named Dexter writes: “He’s your typical suburban detroit [sic] douchebag reporter, in this case trying to stage a comeback as a hardboiled gonzo Charles Kuralt swooping down from his safe white suburb into the dark, black city to write about all those crazy colored people and their hilariously offbeat ignorance.”

And of course there’s the matter of the lazy sounding title and its adverb “thereabouts.” It just doesn’t have the same kick as the collection of stories by another New York writer, J.D. Salinger, namely, “For Esmé—with Love and Squalor.” (What a wonderful title!) And something more: “Work and Other Sins” is 357 pages of LeDuff’s Times pieces. With the exception of those penned by Mark Twain during his Washoe days, I have no interest in reading a collection of old newspaper columns or articles.

What my benefactress, and others like her, underestimate is just how slowly I read. Ten to 12 pages per hour is my usual rate, the result of being too careful, too much like a crawling Googlebot, which indexes an entire text. It doesn’t work for me, but obsessiveness rules. Another issue is my inability to stay awake after 9.00 p.m. My eyelids close as inevitably as the “Axiom’s” airlocks in “Wall-E.” Frothy books about sports or entertainment subjects provide the rare eye-opening exceptions.

I’m currently in the third week of enjoying a Swedish mystery novel by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, the wife-husband team whose detective, Martin Beck, flourished in a series during the 1960s and 1970s. Many readers would dispense with this thriller in two or three sittings. (Some people read a book a day.) My struggle with Herman Melville’s excruciatingly dull novel “The Confidence Man” extended over a three-month span early this year before I ground to a halt 80 pages from the end. My ambition of fully deconstructing this important work—the second time I’ve read it—has been cruelly thwarted.

Finishing about a dozen books a year is my reward. Other people glide through books as easily as the dog glides through a serving of Alpo Prime Cuts in Gravy. My friend Teri S. goes off on weekends to her little cottage in the woods east of Fairbanks to consume a book or two while watching the river ice break up. She sends many thoughtful selections my way. She must really have dug William Manchester’s “A World Lit Only by Fire: The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance: Portrait of an Age.” It does look enjoyable. Problem is, I’m bogged down at page 154 of “A World on Fire: A Heretic, an Aristocrat, and the Race to Discover Oxygen,” by Joe Jackson.

Laura in Texas gets quite a kick out of David Sedaris and sent one of his collections. I’ve perused a few Sedaris offerings in the New Yorker. Maybe it’s because one needs to have at least a 0.10 percent reading of National Public Radio in one’s bloodstream, but I consider him as engaging and hilarious as ditchwater.

Laura also favored me with a copy of “Running with Scissors,” by Augusten Burroughs, but painful childhood memories are in ample supply inside my own head. I seek escape by reading about a couple of imaginative boys floating their raft past a town “peacefully sleeping, beyond the vague vast sweep of star-gemmed water,” as Mark Twain put it in “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.”

They come from everywhere. One benefactress in Denmark supplied two illustrated volumes of H.C. Andersen’s fairy tales. Another Dane gifted me with the fat little “Design Directory: Scandinavia.” The latter is occasionally useful as a reference; some day I’ll get to the tales. For a few years I hosted a biennial luncheon for art directors and the production editor from Automobile Magazine, and for my 50th birthday one of them gave me a cookbook devoted to cookie recipes. Nearly four years later, I’ve just had my first real spin through those pages: oatmeal-raisin looks like a good starting point.

Even my dear subversive wife lays the occasional book on me. The anthology of stories by contemporary Nebraska writers delighted this native Nebraskan until the actual reading was undertaken. Opening up with three miserable tales about white trash forces the concession that, indeed, every place has its seamy side. But why dwell on it? And what’s ahead in the next 340 pages? Are there the wise, understated, admirable Nebraskans? A random sampling from an upcoming story yields this nugget about a man watching a horror movie during a party: “…Gary, lost in his own private world of the macabre, is listening for the next rising moan, the next victim, when Linda, joint in one hand, vodka tonic in the other, tells Gary that she’s pregnant.” As badly as I yearn to know how things work out for them, I find myself—not for the first time—with Italo Calvino’s “Cosmicomics” open over my knee.

Now for the glaring contradiction. Coming soon to the Knoxville address of Andy and Jamie is Wilma Dykeman’s “The French Broad,” her cultural history of the Appalachian river of that name, along with a bonus guidebook to North Carolina’s mountains. I acquired them a few years ago in Asheville. Jamie’s parents live not far away from there. Good stewardship will likely prevail, and the books will make their way into the hands of someone who will cherish them.

And now I seek a recipient for “Roadside Geology of Idaho.” The title’s narrow appeal could be widened with a Sharpie: “Roadside Geology of Idaho and Thereabouts.”

Sequel: http://baggyparagraphs.wordpress.com/2009/06/10/little-women-and-a-seagull/

For her monthly column, an editor of mine is collecting a list of Honda products owned by her magazine’s staff and contributors. Anecdotes are also welcome. She owns a Honda power washer, an ATV, an outboard engine, a vintage Honda 90 motorbike, a moped, and a vintage three-wheel ATV.

Here’s what I sent in:

Rather than a minivan, which would be prosaic, it's a Bentley and I.

When Susan and I came to Michigan in October 1985, we drove the Civic wagon that we had purchased new just a couple of months earlier. We owned that car for 11.5 years and 142K miles, selling it when rust started to cause some problems (oil pan, fuel filler neck). And I wanted something bigger. I bought a brand-new 1997 Voyager minivan but wasn’t happy with it. Automobile ran a Four Seasons wrap-up on the Honda Odyssey (Feb. 2000 issue: “Twelve months: A home run in drivability and utility, but the power doors strike out,” by Joe Lorio). I went out the next week and bought an Odyssey LX, without the power doors. That purchase was transacted January 31, 2000, for $25,304 including sales tax. We still have the Odyssey, now with 114,226 miles. It’s the only four-wheel vehicle that we own. (I have a Suzuki motorcycle.)

I put the Odyssey in the shop last month for some brake work, and the service writer said it’s in “outstanding shape.” It still has the original starter and alternator, which amazes me. And the original exhaust system, minus the catalytic converter, which became clogged at 68,105 miles in January 2006. Honda graciously replaced it at no charge even though our warranty had expired three years earlier! Otherwise, keeping the thing on the road has just been a matter of replacing brakes, bulbs, and the battery. Last winter, both of the rear brake drums warped, and replacement came to $285. Aside from oil changes and a CHMSL bulb, that was the only expense for repairs in a year’s time—incredible for a nine-year-old vehicle. There’s no rust to speak of and the Odyssey still drives great although it does rattle on our bumpy Ann Arbor streets. I’ve used it for everything from busing around the members of our reading group to hauling drywall and insulation. We’ve moved twice since 2002, and the number of boxes that will go into the cargo area is astonishing. The last couple of years I’ve bought split firewood from a farmer in Bridgewater and just filled up the whole cargo area from the front seats back. It’s a tremendous workhorse but gets 26 mpg at 75 mph on the road to and from Traverse City. Barring an unforeseen disaster, I’ll still have it five years from now.

I also have the four-year-old Honda HRX mower that I bought from Honda when Automobile did a Honda special issue. It’s my second Honda mower; I let the first one go as we downsized into a condo from 2002 till 2005.

From a Honda press event, I picked up a Honda cap, and it stays clipped to my motorcycle’s helmet hook, so I have something to cover my bald head when the bike is parked during an outing. I also have a Dodge cap, but Michigan International Speedway is the only place I’d consider wearing that.

Waiting for the game was like waiting for Christmas itself. We woke up on Monday, pinched ourselves, and counted only three more days. On Tuesday, two more days. And then an interminable Wednesday, the clock using a walker to drag itself around. Finally, it arrived: Thanksgiving Day, 1971. The Nebraska Cornhuskers would play the Oklahoma Sooners. “The Game of the Century,” the TV was saying, but even a 16-year-old recoiled from the hype. More than a quarter of the century remained to be played out. But it was a huge game. When the Cornhuskers won in thrilling fashion, yet again retaining their number-one ranking, we experienced euphoria in equal measure to the pre-game anxiety, waking Friday, pinching ourselves, and counting the first day since the great victory, and the second, and third, eager to return Monday to school and talk about Johnny Rodgers’s Etch-a-Sketch punt return and share the feeling that we Nebraskans were finally important.

It had never occurred to me that someone would write a book about all this, but my friend Budd recently passed along Michael Corcoran’s “The Game of the Century: Nebraska vs. Oklahoma in College Football’s Ultimate Battle,” published by Simon & Schuster in 2004. I could hardly wait to dip into a slick writer’s treatment of the subject. The opening chapters’ pace is excellent as Corcoran summarizes how Bob Devaney bounced around in Michigan high schools and was almost resigned to a mediocre life as a school administrator when Michigan State’s football staff solicited his services. (It isn’t explained the Spartans had won the 1952 national title and the program was a fecund producer of coaches.) Eight years later, Devaney brought his quips, garrulity, and football savvy to Lincoln.

My view of Oklahoma’s coaches had always been predictably dim, but Corcoran changes all that through his humane portrayals of the likable and accomplished Bud Wilkinson, the beleaguered but determined Chuck Fairbanks, and of course Barry Switzer, who was touched by tragedy. Something the three coaches shared in common, incidentally, was an excellent command of English. (Wilkinson had a master’s degree in literature and liked to sit down at the organ.) After a season of listening to Michigan’s Rich Rodriguez mangle his cases, a yearning arises.

The narrative builds momentum. It is clear why the looming game would be so important. But at an early point in the book I found myself beginning to chafe at some of Corcoran’s contrivances. Before 10 pages pass, the work is already creaking under the strain of the clichéd theme which asserts that football naturally flourished in a state inhabited by people of “pioneer stock,” to whom no game could seem too violent because life was so hard. (Through the rickety sides of a corn crib, do I hear the wind soughing?) Having grown up in Omaha and benefited from such advances as Cinerama, a sprayer attachment at the kitchen faucet, and daily radio serenades from Charlie Graham Buick (“That’s why Omaha-town is Buick-town, they’re all driving Buicks, best car around”), well, my pioneer stock had become diluted, I guess, and I really didn’t see it in my parents, either. Admittedly, Corcoran applies his asseveration to the much earlier era that produced song lyrics like these:

Where the girls are the fairest,

The boys are the squarest,

Of any old school that I knew.

But following his line of reasoning too closely would produce shock that, in 1952, for example, it was possible to drive an automobile from Florence, at Omaha’s northern edge, over to Iowa by crossing
a toll bridge over the Missouri River. (Why would anyone have wanted to go to Iowa, especially if paying a toll?) Or that the Nebraska Capitol, completed in 1932, is a modern masterpiece. It’s possible to lean too hard and long on the rickety fence that surrounds the state’s pioneer history. While also leaning a bit too often on sportswriters’ shopworn phrases like “particularly stellar,” Corcoran still manages to generate the anticipation of a thrilling climax to his tale. Here, I was disappointed. Note to journalism students across the land: it’s sometimes possible to do too much interviewing. Corcoran lets his tape recorder take over the story in the last 20 pages. It’s no longer a book but instead an ESPN retrospective, with each principal taking his turn in the spotlight. All the tension fizzles out as oral history intercedes. The author’s abdication is hard to figure out. It’s like giving up command of your cruise liner too early to the harbor pilot and being dashed against the rocks: hardly a salutary end to the journey.

Anyone who faults that metaphor, pointing out my landlubbing origins, is hereby referred to Corcoran’s line about Bob Devaney, who “looked more like a man who would give you an easy smile as he pushed his cap back slightly on his head and said he was sorry but your radiator was shot and that it’d be a day or two before the parts came in to fix it.” Hmmm. Maybe Corcoran knows something I don’t, but even in jalopies like those the Okies drove to California, the repair of radiators’ brass tubes and tanks just required a flushing out and bit of brazing before you were on your way. Which formula could be applied to “The Game of the Century,” as well.

All the singer from Newcastle knew was that a rock band in London was looking for a front man. It was guaranteed worthwhile to come down and audition. He borrowed money for a rental car and made the trip. Arriving at the address, he found some fellows playing pool and assumed they were the musicians—but they were just the crew. After 20 minutes the band’s manager came downstairs looking for him and summoned him up to the rehearsal room. Brian Johnson was stunned when he entered, asking, “Is this who I think it is?”

The one-of-a-kind singer and lyricist Bon Scott had died of acute alcohol poisoning a few weeks earlier, in February 1980. His ill-timed departure occurred not long after AC/DC had completed its “Highway to Hell” tour, which positioned the band at the pinnacle of international success. Now they had to re-forge their identity, come out with a new album, and hope their fans would accept the result. By April, Johnson was leaving his car roofing and windshield replacement business and for Compass Point Studios in Nassau, the Bahamas, with his new band mates, producer Mutt Lange, and engineer Tony Platt. What resulted from their labors was “Back in Black,” one of the most powerful rock records ever. The subsequent tour established Johnson with the group, a position he still holds 29 years later.

His audition episode arrives more than 300 pages into “AC/DC: Maximum Rock & Roll: The Ultimate Story of the World’s Greatest Rock and Roll Band.” Authors Murray Engleheart and Arnaud Durieux keep their comprehensive history trundling along well enough so that an American reader, such as this one, can make it that far. It must be remembered that until “Back in Black,” the outrageous band had received very little airplay in the U.S., so few of us knew the story through the first five studio albums and one live release. Fleetwood Mac and the Eagles dominated the airwaves, along with disco tracks like “Funkytown.” As Shane cleared out a frontier town, AC/DC arrived to clean up all that with catchy ditties like “Hell’s Bells.”

The authors do a fine job of portraying the band’s origins. Malcolm and younger brother Angus Young came from a close family in which an older brother had enjoyed some success in the music world. Especially vivid is the gritty struggle AC/DC fought to achieve Australian success and then take that to London for something greater. On just a couple of occasions the narrative doesn’t satisfy. To the dilettantish reader like me, learning that Angus settled for a Gibson SG guitar instead of a Les Paul doesn’t mean a thing. And even though I like cars, I have only a vague idea of the significance inherent in drummer Phil Rudd’s choice of wheels, an HK Monaro. It sounds more like a brand of cigarettes. Sometimes I just need the full explanation.

On the other hand, the book more than answers questions about the dynamics within the band. Malcolm willingly ceded the soloist’s role to Angus, yet he has always called the shots. Despite Angus’s devilish posturing, their solid character is a Scottish birthright. Something I’ve always enjoyed about AC/DC is the lack of U2-style social philosophy. Why don’t we just rock? Perhaps there are blessings to be derived from going only so far in school. As Angus told Rolling Stone last fall, “I didn’t have any prospects for a career, with the education I had. When I started doing this, I thought, ‘You gotta give it 200 percent.’” Yes, there were drugs, alcohol, and women. But Angus seems to exist more on comic books, milkshakes, and sitcoms. And the Youngs have a fabulous work ethic. The mere fact that they had to endure until “Highway to Hell” before the money started rolling in attests to it. Not to mention the unshakable belief they would be big. But they hadn’t anticipated their charming crooner Scott’s death. How the Youngs found the perfect guy for the gig is a tribute to their astuteness.

“Brian sounded as if he had been buried alive for decades and had finally burst free,” the authors write. He warmed up for gigs by screaming. Working out became a necessity for keeping up with the sustained explosion of energy the shows required, and he once passed out onstage in the stifling St. Louis heat. But his earthiness and good humor, and an altogether different virility from Scott’s, helped to transform the band. The recent “Black Ice” album—which made its debut at number one here and in two dozen other countries—was acclaimed by Jason Fine, of Rolling Stone, as the best since “Back in Black,” and the world tour is showing legs.

Which brings us around to the (second) subtitle: Is AC/DC the world’s greatest rock and roll band? In the U.S., only the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, and the Eagles have sold more records. After 35 years, AC/DC puts out a disc as good as “Black Ice.” In the live show, the school boy shtick and pants-dropping still works, at least a little bit. Elitists may laugh, but I didn’t hurry down the road a month ago when the Eagles came to town. They’re very good, but I was under the impression they cordon off their stage with yellow tape that warns, “Ballad Zone.”

College theater productions usually have a weak spot or two in the casting, a player who can’t hold his own vocally or just doesn’t look the part, but the recent run of “42nd Street,” by the University of Michigan Department of Musical Theater, lacked any hint of weakness. The bunch we saw on Saturday night at the Power Center gave a strong and spirited performance that made us feel privileged to live in Ann Arbor.

Mary Michael Patterson, of Aledo, Texas, starred as Peggy Sawyer, the underdog who defies million-to-one odds and becomes a Broadway star in “Pretty Lady.” When Julian Marsh (Max Spitulnik, Rockville, Maryland) gives Peggy a pep talk before the show premiers, he refers to her “golden talent,” and it also seemed true of Patterson, whose wondrous dancing and singing did indeed suggest a rare gift refined by untold hours in practice studios. (I couldn’t help thinking how proud her parents must have been to see her perform, if they did, and the same for all those parents who got to see their kids on stage in this glittering production.)

Marken Greenwood (Palos Verdes, California) gave a fine turn as Dorothy Brock, the fading star whose sugar daddy Abner Dillon (hilariously portrayed by Brant Cox, Kirkland, Illinois) is backing “Pretty Lady.” But it’s Beth Kuhn (Deerfield, Illinois) who was truly commanding as Maggie Jones, one of the co-writers. Her scenes were delicious, and one wishes this member of the senior class great luck in her newest pursuits.

“42nd Street” is such a wonderfully uplifting show, and two hours weren’t enough. If the company toured the state with it, I’d have to tail along and see them again and again.