Readalikes: If you enjoyed January's selection . . .

If you enjoyed The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America by George Packer, then you might also like the books Packer reviews in A Critic at Large: Don't Look Down for The New Yorker (April 29, 2013), a look at the new Depression literature. These titles include Down the Up Escalator: How the 99% Live in the Great Recession by Barbara Garson; Detroit: An American Autopsy by Charlie LeDuff; and Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt by Chris Hedges with illustrations by Joe Sacco. You could also read the U. S. A. trilogy of novels by John Dos Passos, published in the 1930s, which Packer acknowledges influenced the subject, structure, and style of The Unwinding.

January Not Fiction Book Discussions

We begin our road trip through American history and culture with one of the most talked-about books of 2013: The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America by George Packer. Inspired by John Dos Passos' U.S.A. trilogy, Packer creates a montage of longer biographical narratives of ordinary Americans, shorter biographical sketches of celebrities of all kinds, and collages or mashups of cultural memes to illustrate the "unwinding" over the last three decades of the America most of us take for granted, "when the coil that held Americans together in its secure and sometimes stifling grip first gave way." Packer is referring in particular to what he calls the "Roosevelt Republic," a cohesive national web of public and private institutions that offers a place and a sense of security for all citizens. He argues that what has taken its place is organized money and a cult of celebrity that has reached beyond entertainment into other areas of public life, including government.

Looking back over the last three decades, do you recall noticing signs of this unwinding as they were occurring? What were they? Or did they only become clear upon looking back, as through a rear view mirror? In his Prologue, Packer suggests that unwindings of political, social, and cultural structures in our country are nothing new, that "Each decline brought renewal, each implosion released energy, out of each unwinding came a new cohesion." Yet in an interview with NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday, Packer says of this particular devolution, "What I see happening is not just cyclical, though, it feels like a real cultural shift where the value of the community, of what makes this a coherent society, has really been submerged." What do you think? Do you see the events of the last three decades in the same light as Packer does? Do you feel that they are cyclical or that they represent a true cultural shift? Does Packer offer any hope for our collective future? Do you see any? And finally, do you think future generations will read Packer's book as we do works like Edward Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, or do you think it is closer to a cry that the sky is falling that will appear alarmist to future readers?

The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America by George Packer includes collages, called Mashups, of headlines, slogans, and songs that capture the flow of events—the social and political undercurrents—in a given year. Did you find yourself wondering what sources Packer used? Click here for an interactive page on the publisher's website that provides source notes.

We hope you will join the discussion of this winner of the 2013 National Book Award for Nonfiction: Tuesday, January 7, at 6:30 p.m. at Main Library; Thursday, January 16, at 11:00 a.m. at West Ashley Branch Library; and here on the blog.

Not Fiction Book Discussion Titles for 2014

In his National Book Award-winning The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America, George Packer creates a montage of biographical sketches and cultural memes to describe the "unwinding" over the last three decades of the America most of us take for granted, "when the coil that held Americans together in its secure and sometimes stifling grip first gave way." In The Longest Road: Overland in Search of America, from Key West to the Arctic Ocean, Philip Caputo recounts his epic journey across the United States, Airstream in tow, asking Americans "What holds us together?"

In our discussions in 2014, we will take a virtual road trip through American history and culture, reading some intriguing books on the topic published within the last year or two and contemplating what unites us and what threatens to divide us. Packer suggests that "The unwinding is nothing new. There have been unwindings every generation or two . . . Each decline brought renewal, each implosion released energy, out of each unwinding came a new cohesion. . . . In the unwinding, everything changes and nothing lasts, except for the voices, American voices . . . dreaming aloud late at night on a front porch as trucks rush by in the darkness."

We hope you will join us for the journey--see the titles and dates posted on the right side of this page.

Readalikes: If you enjoyed December's selection . . .

If you enjoyed The Dangerous Animals Club by Stephen Tobolowsky, then you might also enjoy Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life by Steve Martin, which we read in 2010, and Bossypants by Tina Fey, which we read in 2012. Like The Dangerous Animals Club, both Born Standing Up and Bossypants are memoirs of how these actors discovered their passion for comedy and turned that passion into a successful career, written in their authors' signature comedic style.

December Not Fiction Book Discussions

 We conclude our 2013 discussions with The Dangerous Animals Club by Stephen Tobolowsky, which the author says in the publisher's promotional video below "is a book about the beginning of things." Tobolowsky is a character actor who has appeared in more than 100 movies and more than 200 television shows, including Mississippi Burning, Memento, Groundhog Day, CSI Miami, Deadwood, and Glee. In The Dangerous Animals Club, he shares hilarious, touching stories from his childhood, his career, and his relationships with family and friends in a manner that film critic Leonard Maltin compares to Garrison Keillor's. Tobolowsky says, "A question I frequently ask myself: why do I tell these stories? My answer: The mystery. It is a mystery as to what makes us do what we do. It is the other side of the mystery as to what makes us who we are. . . . Telling a story . . . is the only way I know to make sense of the unpredictable" (p. 24-25). This is why we read as well.

Enjoy Tobolowsky's storytelling timing and energy and learn more about the origin and themes of The Dangerous Animals Club in this video from Simon and Schuster:



We hope you will join the discussions of what Library Journal calls "that most magical of memoirs--one that illuminates the reader's life as much as the author's": Tuesday, December 3, at 6:30 p.m. at Main Library; Thursday, December 19, at 11:00 a.m. at West Ashley Branch Library; and here on the blog.

November Not Fiction Book Discussions

The theme of this year's discussions can be summed up in a phrase from Cheryl Strayed's memoir Wild: "There's no way to know what makes one thing happen and not another. What leads to what. What destroys what. What causes what to flourish or die or take another course." Yet that seems to be the nonfiction writer's task, to understand how the world came to be the way it is, how it is changing even as we observe it, and how people make their way in it, with curiosity, determination, courage, forbearance, forgiveness, humor, and not a little luck. Elsewhere: A Memoir by Richard Russo explores what Russo calls "the mechanism of human destiny" in his own life, inextricably intertwined with that of his mother, a bright and determined woman who was thwarted as much by her historical time and place as she was by her own mental illness, most likely an obsessive compulsive disorder. Russo, a devoted son, reflects on their life together and realizes that out of a sincere desire to support his mother, he unwittingly enabled her worst behavior, and, in spite of sharing many of her traits, became a successful and respected author while she restlessly looked for a better life "elsewhere."

Russo realizes after his mother dies that "Somehow, without ever intending to, I'd discovered how to turn obsession and what my grandmother used to call sheer cussedness--character traits that had dogged both my parents, causing them no end of difficulty--to my advantage. The same qualities that over a lifetime had contracted my mother's world had somehow expanded mine. How and by what mechanism? Dumb Luck? Grace? I honestly have no idea. Call it whatever you want--except virtue" (166). With great humility--and burdened by what one of our discussion members recognized as survivor's guilt--Russo refuses to take credit for his successes, while he is all too willing to shoulder responsibility for enabling his mother. Russo's conclusion is one that could offer real solace to any reader who takes responsibility for an aging parent or disabled family member or questions their own life's trajectory: "The mechanism of human destiny--that intricate weave of chance and fate and free will, as distinctly individual as a fingerprint--is surely meant to remain life's central mystery, to resist transparency, to make blame a dangerous and unsatisfactory exercise" (204).

Russo ends this double narrative of his own and his mother's life with an honest if not, for some readers in our discussion group, quite satisfying assessment of his efforts to understand and convey their connection: "Had I understood [his mother's great fear of poverty and abandonment and how it fueled her disorder] in time, had my moral imagination--any writer's most valuable gift, perhaps everyone's--not failed me, I could at least have . . . Could have what? The story ends here because I don't know how to complete that sentence. My family assures me I did everything that could've been done, and I don't know why it should seem so important that I resist the very conclusion that would let me off the hook. Maybe it's because I've never been a fan of grim, scientific determinism, or perhaps it's a writer's nature (or at least mine) to gnaw and worry and bury and unearth anything that resists comprehension. But who knows? Maybe it's just hubris, a stubborn insistence that if we keep trying one thing after another, we can coerce the ineffable into finally expressing itself. How tantalizingly close it seems even now, right there on the tip of my tongue before slipping away. But no doubt I'm misjudging the distance, being my mother's son" (242-43). If nothing else, Russo asks his readers to always consciously exercise their moral imagination.    

The Wild Effect

According to a recent New York Times article, The Call of the 'Wild' on the Pacific Crest Trail (October 18, 2013), the Pacific Crest Trail saw a record number of hikers this past year, due, at least in part, to the popularity of Cheryl Strayed's memoir Wild. Strayed told the New York Times that “'maybe approaching 1,000 people' have e-mailed her and said, 'I have read ‘Wild’ and you have inspired me to do a hike.'” And the film with Reese Witherspoon as Strayed is not even out yet . . .