Scott @ B&N

Nothing quite as striking as last week’s cover fiasco from the front lines this week, just new David Baldacci and Alexander McCall Smith books.

The cover of Andrew Solomon’s The Noonday Demon

This week’s book of choice is one that hit very close to home:

The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression by Andrew Solomon

In my mind, the genius of this book is that Solomon does his damnedest to cover all the manifestations of depression, and gave a voice to emotions or thoughts that I had previously found to be indescribable. Solomon tries to address both the symptoms and the root of the disease, dedicating individual chapters to breakdowns, treatments, addiction, suicide, and evolution, in his quest to present all facets of the disease.

One might read this book and object to Solomon’s use of stories and subjective experiences and data as the basis for some of his writing. However, in the introduction, Solomon makes clear that some of his writing is purposefully written subjectively. To take depression out of context, that is, out of the individual, is as grievous a fallacy as taking data outside of its statistical relevance; the profound nature of depression, like faith, is that each individual experiences it differently. The same medication will have drastically different results for people experiencing similar symptoms. Solomon also approaches depression and its treatment holistically, allowing for the effect of practices such as meditation, exercise, prayer, and other activities. True, in his attempt to approach depression this way, the scientific approach may get short shrift, but again, this is a text for the masses, to bring to light a disease, and to those who suffer from it, that still carries a stigma.

From a surprising but nonetheless revelatory opening sentence (“Depression is the flaw in love.”) to plumbing the depths of the stories of individuals who have suffered from the disease, I’d wager that there is no more comprehensive and worthwhile book on the subject.

So, there may or may not be any sort of thematic continuity between the entries here, as I know there isn’t this week. We’ll see if this pans out, but I think I’ll end up going back and forth between fiction and nonfiction works on alternating weeks.

Also, some fun from the front lines: I recently discovered that two new titles in stores now use the same stock image as the cover of the book. Joy Fielding’s Still Life and Natasha Mostert’s Keeper of Light and Dust used the same Stuart McClymont image on their covers. I think it’s safe to say that neither book will have that image on the cover of the paperback edition.

The cover of Joe Gores’ Spade and Archer

Allow me to introduce this week’s title:

Spade and Archer by Joe Gores

For those unable to read the cursive subtitle on the cover, it reads “The Prequel to Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon.” Gores, a former private eye himself as well as an accomplished Hammett historian, decided to tackle the story of how Sam Spade became the man we all know in the original book.

Now, to be clear, I must say that I read Spade and Archer before I read The Maltese Falcon. Having read both, I can appreciate both books as stand-alone works as well as giving them consideration in tandem. Gores’ book does nothing to spoil the plot of Hammett’s, and vice versa; however, this comes with the caveat that some scenes in both (though more pronounced in S&A, for obvious reasons) only make sense and have importance with knowledge of the other book. The love triangle of Sam, Miles, and Iva is given considerably more depth here, as does Spade’s antagonistic relationship with Dundy and Polhaus, the cops that dog Spade throughout Falcon. The reader gets treated to the way Effie, Spade’s darling secretary, gets the job and becomes the strong woman who balances Spade’s fire-and-brimstone approach to crime.

The plot of the book itself is broken into 3 distinct parts, set in different years: 1921, 1925, and 1928. The case in 1921 is one of Spade’s first working on his own, but he winds up not catching the mastermind behind it, something that doesn’t sit well at all with him. The 1925 story borrows liberally from Falcon, as a exotic beauty and a valuable treasure factor into the story. To describe the 1928 case would be to reveal too much of the book’s plot, but suffice it to say that the epigraph for that section is early 20th century entertainer and saloon-keeper Texas Guinan‘s legendary “Hello, sucker!” Gores makes a point of borrowing Hammett’s voice, complete with ’20′s era vernacular, when writing; Sam speaks in almost exactly the same style as he did in Hammett’s original. Stylistically, Gores does a great job of reproducing the feel of the original Falcon.

Especially if there were no notes in Hammett’s papers about the origin and backstory of Sam Spade, Gores does a remarkable job adding to the original. Obviously, it is not as groundbreaking as the original, but for those who have long wished to have more Sam Spade stories, Gores grants the wishes as well as anyone could.

So, I’ve been meaning to start shamelessly plugging books on a weekly basis for a while now, and now will procrastinate on other, more important (read: school) work to do so.  I’ll write about a new(ish) book that I’ve read and is currently available in Barnes and Noble stores on a weekly basis.  So, without further ado, let me introduce:

The Night of the Gun, by David Carr

Imagine losing 20+ years of your life to drugs, only to finally turn things around and discover that most of what you remember of that time is not just fuzzy but downright wrong. That’s the reality Carr faced not too long ago. Upon discovering his inaccurate memory of the titular event (more on that in a moment), he decided that he would need to go back into his life, interviewing the people he knew during this time, some of whom initially refused to see him. He wound up interviewing some 60 people about his past, and the resulting narrative became the basis for this book.

I say basis because the book winds up being part autobiography, part cautionary tale about addiction and drug use, and part rumination on the nature of memory and coping mechanisms. These examinations of memory etc. come about after he learns of a night where, as Carr remembers it, a friend pulled a gun on him. It was Carr’s learning that, in fact, he was the one threatening with the firearm that started him on this project and became the incident after which the book is named. Carr’s memory of the events is so far from what happened that he didn’t even recall owning a gun, much less having more than one and pulling the gun on someone. It is precisely his journalistic approach to his own past, and his examinations of the self-protecting alterations he made to his own memories, that sets this book apart from any other drug-addled author’s work currently on the shelves.

Highly recommended, though not necessarily for the faint of heart.

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