Ancient Evenings by Norman Mailer (1983 Little, Brown & Company)

Like James Joyce's Ulysses and Thomas Pyncheon's Gravity's Rainbow, this is a long and difficult book. However, like most arduous endeavors, the payoff is big. Ancient Evenings takes the reader on a trip through the culture, religion, sexuality and politics of ancient Egypt that has been obsessively researched (Mailer spent 10 years doing research for the book.) and rightfully left unsanitized. This is not the National Geographic version of Ancient Eqyptian evenings. The sexual taboos and labels that we have today simply don't exist for the ancient Egyptian. The "birds 'n' bees" were not explained in an uncomfortable chat, there were no little books left on beds with "all you need to know". Instead children were given hands-on experience, at a very young age, with the parent of the opposite sex. Shocking and abohorent to us, but a matter of religious communion to the people of this distant culture. There were no Platonic relationships between anyone, of any sex or blood relation, simply because they had no purpose. To the ancient Egyptian , sexuality was a perfectly natural way to show affection to anyone. The only sexual taboo that seemed to be prevailent in this culture laid only in sex for procreation; royalty and the extremely wealthy, may use severants and slaves for sex, but they are never to impregnate or become impregnated by them. (Herbal abortions were very a very common request from priest, who also served as doctors.) Strange that it was this one taboo, not indulgence, that led to the weakening of Dynastic Egypt through forced inbreeding and allowed, in part, for their overthrow by Alexander the Great in 332 BC. Alexander put in place the Greek Ptolmey Dynasty which ended with the infamous Cleopatra 300 years later. (That's right, she was a Greek, not an Egyptian.)

Before you start the 709 page odyssey that is Ancient Evening, I suggest having a working knowledge of The Seven Souls of ancient Egyptian religion as spelled out in the Book of the Dead, but made much more accessible (and humorous!) in William Burroughs final novel, The Western Lands:

"Top soul, and the first to leave at the moment of death, is Ren, the Secret Name. This corresponds to my Director. He directs the film of your life from conception to death. The Secret Name is the title of your film. When you die, that's where Ren came in.

Second soul, and second one off the sinking ship, is Sekem: Energy, Power, Light. The Director gives the orders, Sekem presses the right buttons.

Number three is Khu, the Guardian Angel. He, she, or it is third man out ... depicted as flying away across a full moon, a bird with luminous wings and head of light. Sort of thing you might see on a screen in an Indian restaurant in Panama. The Khu is responsible for the subject and can be injured in his defense-but not permanently, since the first three souls are eternal. They go back to Heaven for another vessel. The four remaining souls must take their chances with the subject in the Land of the Dead.

Number four is Ba, the Heart, often treacherous. This is a hawk's body with your face on it, shrunk down to the size of a fist. Many a hero has been brought down, like Samson, by a perfidious Ba.

Number five is Ka, the Double, most closely associated with the subject. The Ka, which usually reaches adolescence at the time of bodily death, is the only reliable guide through the Land of the Dead to the Western Lands.

Number six is Khaibit, the Shadow, Memory, your whole past conditioning from this and other lives.

Number seven is Sekhu, the Remains."

Throughout, Ancient Evenings changes perspective from one soul to another. While it sets a unique and unpretentiously surreal atmosphere for the book, it can be discouraging from the start if you don't know the method to the madness. (I suggest printing these Burroughs definitions and using them as a handy bookmark and reference.)

Also, Julian Jaynes' Bicameral Mind Theory seems to have worked it's way into the psyche of Mailer's subjects. A superficial understanding of his theory, I think, will help you to have a deeper and more enlightening understanding of these seemingly strange characters. Simply put, Jaynes' postulated, and vehemently defended, the idea that ancient mankind did not live in the conscious state that we do, but in a halucinatory state in which a person didn't pause to think through a decision when met with an obsticle. Rather, the descision was made almost instantly on a subconscious level, in a part of the brain that functions, and serves the same purpose, in the conscious mind today. The decision was then presented to this ancient human being in the form of an halucinated, auditory command. As life became more complex for ancient man, the Bicameral Mind became less effective and began to break down. This breakdown, according to Jaynes, is the evolutionary source of all religion in modern mankind. He references the world of Homer and the Iliad, and the strange worlds of the ancient Egyptians and pre-Columbian Aztecs as shinning examples of societies that functioned under the bicameral mindset. Mailer was very much under the spell of Julian Jaynes and his ideas, as were many authors and intellectuals in the late 70's and early 80's.

Why You Should Read Kafka Before You Waste Your Life by James Hawes (2008 - St. Martin's Press)

I first started reading Franz Kafka in high school. The strange and isolated man, stuck in a place he felt at war with, dominated by a father he feared more then death was just the writer for me and my romantic notion of being too good for the dump of a small town in which I felt trapped.

After reading John Hawes' almost blasphemous re-evaluation of our idea of Kafka, who we think he was as a person and how it has been twisted, edited, cropped, and sometimes outright falsified to fit the nature of his work, I now see clearly that my idea of myself, as seen through my idea of Kafka, was just shy of delusional. (Let's face it, you don't sit poolside at the very southern country club your parents belong to, chain smoking and reading a book with a picture of a giant cockroach on the cover and expect Sarah McPopularity to swim over and ask you to the prom.) It seems that publishers then, as they do now, knew the value of an author's image.

Here's just a small sampling of the "Kafka Myth" that Hawes debunks:

(1) Kafka was a lonely and sexually repressed introvert.

In fact he spent most of his evenings socialize in wine bars and going to brothels. Recall the famous picture of dear Franz in a bowler hat, petting a dog? Well, that wasn't his dog. It belonged to one of his favorite prostitues who was sitting on the other side of the pooch when the photo was taken, but was cropped out of the picture. The original was only recently uncovered.

(2) Kafka suffered under the repressive beurocracy in which he worked during the day, and this is reflected in his writing.

Completely false. Kafka came from an upper-class merchant family. His family owned an asbestos factory, and a block of residential real estate in Prague. In addition, Franz was a valued and well-paid lawyer in his firm.

(3) He was virtually unknown during his short life.

Nein!!! Kafka was very widely published in both Chezh and German during his life-time and sharred the coveted Fontane Prize; a big deal in early 20th Century German lit.

(4) His masterpieces, like The Trial and The Metamophosis, stand alone in literary originality.

Nada. He stole the idea of turning into a bug directly from the Superman of German letters, Johann Goethe, and the basic outline of The Trial from one of his biggest influences, Sherlock Holmes. That's right; Franz was a verocious reader of detective novels. This is not second hand info. This fact comes directly from his own pen through his diaries. It was only recently brought to light because it had been previously edited out by publishers who saw such a popular writer's influence to be in conflict with their marketable Kafka Myth.

Guitar, An American Life by Tim Brookes (2005 Grove Press)

I'm hard pressed to find an icon that's more prevelant in American culture then the good 'ol six-string. Have you ever wondered how it got to be that way? How did an obscure folk and bluegrass instrument turn into one of the most instantly recognizable shapes of the Information Age? Whether you're a seasoned pro, an amateur, or if you're one of the few that have never picked up an "axe", Tim Brookes' Guitar, An American Life will take you on an absolutely enthralling and absorbing ride from its very beginnings, through the instruments struggles during the Great Depression, right on past it's embrace by middle class, white, American youth in the early Sixties, and to its current widespread use as a hip marketing tool for any brand looking to target the lucrative 18 -25 year-old demographic. As a seasoned player, and an obviously erudite historian of the guitar, Tim also fills this fun journey with personal insights and antidotes. Can't believe I scored this book, in hardcover, for a quarter at a yard sale. I got my money's worth!

Some Girls - My Life In A Harem by Jillian Lauren (2010 Penguin Books)

When I read Sebastian Horsley's Dandy In The Underworld a couple of years ago, I became so enamored of it that I ended up buying several copies just to give to friends. We'll, if you invite me to your birthday party in the near future, unless you're my grandmother, this is what you're getting. Like Sebastian's memoir, Some Girls is compulsively readable. (I put down every book I have stacked on our coffee table and plowed through it in two very busy days.)

Jullian recounts her childhood as the adopted daughter of flawed, but genuinely caring, New Jersey Jewish middle-class parents. Like many artistic and imaginative teenagers, she has aspirations of being successful in the theatre world. However, almost in spite of a lucrative internship, she becomes, seemingly in the blink of an eye, an 18 year-old New York upscale hooker, and within months is on a plane to Brunei to be an companion to the Sultan's son - the richest man in the world. She lands ass-first and unprepared as a member of his private harem. One of dozens of young international women who are kept sequestered and heavily guarded on the grounds of the Sultan's mind-boggling palace, she is technically free to leave whenever she wants, but doesn't. In fact, she stays much longer then her intended two weeks, even though she's subjected to one humiliation after another by Robin, her narcissistic, acutely sex addicted, misogynistic prince employer, and the insecure cattiness of the other harem girls. Her reasoning is simple - the money's just too damn good.

For me, this is where Jillian's book stands shinning above so many others in the contemporary, over-saturated, crank-it-out-for-the-cash genre of the memoir. There's more to her tale then just a vapid and voyeuristic romp through a world that most of us will never see, even from a distance. She provides the reader with a very contemporary moral question - Just how much does consumerism shape who we are? Not who we "think" we are, but who we really are when faced with grown-up choices, with serious consequences, that we're not prepared to make. Are you really the "do the right thing" person that you unswervingly empathize with in the movies when you've been offered a private jet to take you on bottomless shopping trips? Just how much of your core are you willing to permanently scar when you're handed a Louis Vuitton bag stuffed with cash? This is why I really want to give this book to my friends. Though Some Girls is a moral tale taken from an extreme situation, it's premise is food that everyone can chew. How much of your sanity will you sacrifice for that job that you hate? How much of your self-worth will you throw away on that lover who doesn't love you back? On self-absorbed sociopaths who you want to call your friends?

Jillian Lauren is now married to Weezer bassist, Scott Shriner. They have an adopted son.

King Kong Theory by Virginie Despentes (2010 The Feminist Press)

Most foreign movie buffs know Verginie as the writer and director of the controversial and explicit Baise-Moi, a semi-biographic feature so sexually frank that the two main characters had to be played by seasoned porn actors because no mainstream actors would touch the script. The basic plot consists of two lower-class French girls who, after being group raped, go on a killing spree to avenege their assaults. However, they don't just take revenge on the offenders, but almost every male they come across on their blood-soaked, hyper-sexual journey. Many critics of Baise-Moi saw this plot as sensationalist and/or militantly feminist. Some see the message of the movies as "We were brutally assaulted by two men, therefore, all men our complicit." King Kong Theory is Virginie's attempt to calmly answer to these accusations and to give a clearer, almost manifesto-like, account for what she believes and how she came to hold these beliefs. Like her movie, she is brutally frank, but she is also collectively calm in the assertion of her ideas; something that is more easily communicated with the written word then the silver screen.

Love, Sex & Tragedy - How The Ancient World Shapes Our Lives by Simon Goldhill (2004 The University Of Chicago Press)

The argument of this compulsively readable book is simply that since our roots are so deep in the dirt of Classical Antiquity, we cannot form a true picture of who we are today, as Modern Man, without at least a superficial knowledge of our classical history. From the sexual mores of the ancient Greeks, to the political wranglings of the Holy Roman Empire (and a lot of tasty fodder in between). Love, Sex & Tragedy is cleverly divided up into five sections, each with the title of a rhetorical question: Who Do You Think You Are?, Where Do You Think You Are Going?, What Do You Think Should Happen?, What Do You Want?, and Where Do You Think You Come From? - all start the reader with an introspective suggestion that leads them into antidotal chapters that give very erudite and entrancing explanations of some of the our biggest mores and traits that no one seems to question, yet are ever-present in every waking, and sleeping hour. How did we arrive at our idea of what is moral sexually? Who first thought of the ideology we now know as Democracy? Where do we get our lust for entertainment?...for art? One question that this book asks that wasn't answered was how I got through a Latin minor without knowing much of the information that it contains. This is one of my top ten books this year.

The Kingdom Of The Wicked by Anthony Burgess (1985 Hutchinson & Co.)

My love for Burgess' books can be overkill to some of my friends. I'm always reading 3 or 4 books at a time, and one of his titles is usually in the mix. Burgess was a polymath to the point of annoyance to some of his acquaintances, of which he had few that we close to him outside of his wife. His novels contain exhaustive, yet entertaining, information about subjects from dystopian literature to Greek Tragedy. Of course, he's best known as the author of A Clockwork Orange, a book that he counts as being one of his lesser works. Though it made him a literary celebrity, he felt that the movie kept him from artistic credit that he should have gotten for his other books. This point becomes more painfully clear with every book of his that I read. (At this point, I've read about half of his 50+ titles.) The adjective, "Kubrickian" has become a pop cultural staple among movie buffs and talk show hosts, but it's not at all accurate. The unsettling satire set in an atmosphere that's both nightmarish and food-on-the-end-of-the-fork real is a theme that runs through many of his works, and Stanley Kubrick brought this front-and-center in his movie adaptation. Unfortunately, Kurbrick got all the credit with the movie going public and most of the cash. (Burgess had to take legal action to recover royalties that he was never paid.)

The Kingdom Of The Wicked traces the first years of Christianity, starting with the days following Jesus' resurrection and, in the book, debatable ascension. It follows Saul (soon to be Paul) from his persecution of the Nazareens to his conversion on the road to Damascus, his omega-male takeover of the Nazareen movement, his struggle with the other disciples to allow non-Hebrews into the new faith, and through his mysterious martyrdom. (It is thought that he was beheaded in Rome.) This is wonderfully counter-pointed by the story of Sarah, a Hebrew beauty who finds herself marrying an upwardly mobile Roman citizen. (Counter-point was a faculty that was well-honed with Burgess. He was also an accomplish composer.) The reader is also taken on an erudite, often hilarious, often disgusting, ride through the reigns of Tiberius, Claudius, and his overtly murderous and promiscuous wife, and the insane and vindictive Caligula and Nero.

What I took away from this book was a rekindled thirst for classical antiquity.

Burgess also possessed one of the 20th Century's most hilarious comb-overs.