Category Archives: Bookvision

Lost in America: A Dead-End Journey Colby Buzzell

Lost in America: A Dead-End Journey is Colby Buzzell’s response to his publisher’s pitch to update an American classic. Instructed to “retrace Kerouac’s footsteps and paint a contemporary portrait of America” and to write “a love letter to Kerouac”, Buzzell wholeheartedly agrees and immediately cashes the advance check. And also immediately lets the reader know “Like hell I am.” This is no homage to Kerouac or classic American literature.

The book opens with a quote from Kurt Cobain and each succeeding chapter opens with yet another in the same nihilistic vein. Very little of the book has to do with the trip Buzzell took across the country. It is more of a travel guide on his road to some semblance of grown-up life as well as a meditation on family. Twin earthquakes struck in quick succession: his mother’s death and his son’s birth. He chose to delay the trip for the first, but not the second. Buzzell remarked on several occasions that he needed to find the plot. Where would the book go? What was the hook? It is easy to see and surmise that this applied to his life as well as to the writing assignment.

For all intents and purposes, the six-month trip ended in Detroit. For Buzzell, this city is Ground Zero for the disaffected and disowned. Suicide is mentioned more than once, and one could argue that his actions in Detroit were a form of passively attempting such. He also used the city to draw a parallel between Kerouac’s Beat Generation and today’s beat down generation. He repeatedly referred to the city, the buildings and occupants as looking as though they had recently suffered a scud missile attack.

Ostensibly travelling across the country looking for and working odd jobs, Buzzell spent a great deal of the book drinking, drunk or hung over. It is hard to imagine that this is the approach someone would take if they were actually trying to pay the rent. In some ways, he’s a very unlikable character. It’s not just the alcohol; this world does that to people. It’s not that he ran from his responsibilities; many have run far further from far less. Perhaps it’s his constant over-justification. A common theme throughout the book is his lack of self-confidence, yet he seems absolutely confident, righteous even, in justifying his actions. None of this makes Lost in America a bad book. After all, America loves her villains almost as much as she loves her heroes.

I received a review copy from the publisher.

Available 23 August 2011

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Breathing the Fire Kimberly Dozier

Kimberly Dozier is a former CBS news correspondent who became the news during an embed assignment in Baghdad over the Memorial Day weekend in 2006. What was to be a ’routine’ assignment, if such a thing existed, turned into a hellish nightmare after a 500 pound car bomb was detonated at the scene. Assigned to follow a patrol over the holiday while Americans at home were eating their barbeque and doing their best to forget about the war, the incident put the war back ‘above the fold’. Four members of the party, Captain ames Alex Funkhouser, USA, CBS cameraman Paul Douglas, CBS soundman James Brolan and Captain Funhouser’s Iraqi translator, Sam, died at the scene, all but Douglas, instantly. Breathing the Fire is Dozier’s account of that day and the aftermath it wrought.

The story is engrossing, and as a reporter, Dozier makes it a compelling read. The book opens with Dozier setting the scene the night before the assignment. From there she darts back and forth through time, recounting the story as well as how she put the pieces of the story together. Not unusually for a traumatic brain injury (TBI) sufferer, it took a lot of time and a lot of digging to get the pieces to fall into place. She had to rely on information from outside sources until her slowly recovering brain could fill
in all the facts.

Breathing the Fire gives an in-depth view of trauma care and a small glimpse of the people who provide it. Dozier sets the scene from the Baghdad street corner all the way through her return to work. Included are stops at the Combat Support Hospital (CSH) in Baghdad’s Green Zone and the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, a “way station” in Germany for injured troops from Iraq and
Afghanistan, as well as troops based in Germany and their family members. From there Dozier is transferred to the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, and finally to Kernan Hospital for further rehabilitation.

Through each step, Dozier paints a vivid picture of her injuries, her pain and her care. The tale is emotionally raw and honest. She describes the toll that the bomb took not only on her and her loved ones, but those of the other victims as well. She talks to other service members from the scene as well as family members of those that were lost. In the process, she also tells the story of how she got to her position in Baghdad. The book is really an autobiography of her entire life, including her fight to return to ‘normal
life’ and get back in the field.

Overall, this was a riveting read; almost in stream-of-consciousness mode, the pages keep turning as the tale moves along. The faults are few: Dozier shows a tendency to repeat herself occasionally; the quickly shifting timeline can be a little confusing at times; she also tends to break situations, things and people into simply dichotomies. There is very little grey; there is good and there is evil. And, with very few exceptions, regarding people, the split is class-based: military figures in the field are all good,
administrators, not so much. Nurses and corpsmen are good, doctors tend to be evil. (This is one area where exceptions can be found, notably Dr. Dunne at Bethesda)

Additionally, Dozier spends a decent amount of the book justifying herself, her life and her career choices. While understandable given the context, at times it doesn’t come across very well. She mentions in the postscript to the paperback edition that with some time and distance, she saw the writing as “angry” and chose not to edit that out, as it was her true self at that time. I didn’t sense anger so much as defensiveness and I don’t know that Dozier has anything about which to be defensive.

I received a review copy from the publisher.

Available in paperback 1 November 2011

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Building Stories Isabel Hill

Louis Sullivan is famous for saying “Form follows function”. This upcoming book is a look at the stories that buildings can tell us. By looking at the different decorations adorning buildings, Hill shows kids that they can tell a good deal about a building, just by looking at the outside.
Buildings are like books with stories that last.
They tell us about our present and also our past.
The outside of a building says quite a lot.
About setting, about character, and even about plot.
Each two-page fold is mostly photographs of a particular building, with a rhyming couplet explaining the building and its purpose. Also included are some historical photos from inside the building of various workers at their tasks or consumers enjoying the building.
 This is an entertaining introduction to architecture for young children, but is definitely of the read-aloud category. Some of the vocabulary is beyond the picture book age group (i.e., hydrant, monumental, unique). There is also a ‘Characters and Plots’ section in the back of the book that gives more information on the buildings described. It’s a little bit heavier text-wise, so I don’t know how many kids will stick around for it; they might be better served by including this information on the original pages.
I hope that Hill follows this up with an update that takes it a little further afield. All of the buildings included are historical works in New York City. After all, Frank LLoyd Wright updated Sullivan: “Form ever follows function and environment.”
I received a review copy from the publisher.
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