A cynic might think that these writings on the roots and ramifications of Elvis Presley were put together just to cash in on a King-size observance this August of the 15th anniversary of Presley's death. But when you read that the editor directs the Toronto Institute for Elvis Presley Studies, you realize the extent of the myth-making machine.
Overanalysis characterizes many of the pieces, such as Linda Ray Pratt's ruminations on how Presley both epitomized and mocked traditional notions of Southern manhood. Some of the reprints of period newsmagazine articles are fun for their we-were-so-innocent-then quality. But best are the works of fiction that play on Presley's irony and sensuality—like an excerpt from Don DeLillo's novel White Noise and the odd and hilarious Elvis Bound, a tale by W.P. Kinsella of a woman so obsessed with the King that she must keep his poster within view of her marriage bed.
Like a barrel of popcorn at a revival of Jailhouse Rock, The Elvis Reader is hard to resist—but you'll end up slightly queasy and embarrassed for happily ingesting both. (St. Martin's Press, paper, $12.95)
Photographs by Rowland Scherman
This isn't a book about Elvis, it's a book about us," photographer Scherman said when publishers told him they didn't want to do another Elvis book. And we, according to these pictures, have made Elvis one of our totems, right up there with Mickey Mouse, Marilyn Monroe and creatures from Mars, where for all we know Elvis is lonely tonight.
Scherman, who shot for the Peace Corps before he won a Grammy in 1967 for his album cover of Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits, noticed that Elvis images kept cropping up in his viewfinder—in a store window behind a couple kissing, on the side of a bus, etc. So he went looking and found that, indeed, Elvis is everywhere—everywhere tacky and commercial, anyway. Many of his pictures playfully tuck Elvis into the frame in a way that will divert Waldo junkies awaiting their next fix. (Clarkson Potter, paper, $15)
by Dean R. Koontz
Hatch Harrison, killed in a car crash, is miraculously restored to life by a mysterious surgeon. Hatch and his wife, Lindsey, are understandably grateful.
But since this is a book by Dean Koontz (The Bad Place, Whispers), whose horror novels rank in sales just behind, and in gore just beyond, those of Stephen King, there's a great deal more going on. Hatch believes he has brought some malevolent force back with him. Soon a madman named Vas-sago is stalking people who have had run-ins with Hatch and Lindsey. Hatch agonizingly sees each murder enacted in his mind, almost as if it were he doing the deed. How can he end the carnage?
Koontz's prose can be a touch stilted, but he makes up for that by honing his fearful yarns to a gleaming edge. Hideaway is, in fact, arguably his best work since Phantoms. While King is still leader in the horror field, Koontz is a hellhound on his tail. (Putnam, $22.95)
by Sam Smith
by Jim Naughton
by Nelson George
by Charles Barkley and Roy S. Johnson
Unlike baseball, basketball doesn't produce many literary prospects. To be sure, there have been some notable exceptions—Bill Bradley's Life on the Run, Pete Axthelm's The City Game, Rick Telander's Heaven Is a Playground, Bill Russell and Taylor Branch's Second Wind and John Fein-stein's more recent A Season on the Brink, just to pick a quick starting five.
But now, with basketball enjoying unprecedented popularity, a number of new books are looking to rewrite the conventional wisdom. Soon we will have not one, but three Magic Johnson—approved bios, each dealing with various aspects of his ongoing battle with HIV.
Magic's odyssey notwithstanding, the most compelling name in basketball today is Michael Jordan, so it's not surprising that he is the subject of two new titles. The more heavily publicized is The Jordan Rules (Simon & Schuster, $22), in which Chicago Tribune basketball writer Sam Smith chronicles the Chicago Bulls' '91 championship season. The book has quickly soared to the best-seller lists, in part due to widely quoted excerpts in which Jordan is taken to task by his teammates for hogging the ball, skipping team parties and holding up the team bus.
But in context, Jordan actually comes off as a sympathetic mortal, which is no easy trick given his supernatural powers and Fort Knox bank account. Author Smith gives us a number of vivid examples of how the Bulls' superstar is expected (both on the court and off) to live up to unrealistic expectations. What's remarkable is that he fulfills so many of them. There is a poignant pregame locker-room encounter between a highly emotional Jordan and a young girl suffering from cancer. When the girl walks away, Jordan says sadly, "How do they expect me to play basketball now?"
Taking to the Air (Warner, $18.95) purports to take on the larger questions surrounding Jordan's success. Does he have a responsibility to the black community? Should he be hawking expensive sneakers to inner-city kids? Should he use his stardom to endorse political causes and people? All good questions and, to his credit, writer Jim Naughton, a reporter for The Washington Post, avoids the temptation to answer them glibly. The problem is, that while Taking to the Air is thought-provoking and intelligently constructed, it's not very much fun to read, and in the end isn't that what His Airness is really all about?
In the same jet stream there is Elevating the Game by Nelson George, a Village Voice columnist better known for his writings about pop music. To Nelson, basketball has become a theater of black style and a metaphor for the African-American experience. His school-yard prose does not always serve his sweeping claims and connections well. But George is on solid ground describing how the great black stars who entered the game in the '60s and '70s not only sped it up but made it more exuberant and imaginative. And, hoop fans will enjoy the expansive anecdotal histories of such legends as Earl "the Pearl" Monroe, Oscar Robertson, Connie Hawkins and New York City school-yard star Earl Manigault.
Finally there is Charles Barkley's Outrageous! (Simon & Schuster, $20), by the imposing power forward of the Philadelphia '76ers and SPORTS ILLUSTRATED senior editor Roy S. Johnson. Basketball's biggest bad boy takes shots at his teammates, fans, the City of Brotherly Love and '76ers owner Harold Katz. Ironically it's the less explosive stuff that makes the better read. Barkley waxes eloquent about his longtime friendship with teammate Moses Malone, whom he regards as a father, and calls Sudan native Manute Bol, another teammate, the smartest man he has ever met. Though Barkley's mouth often outruns his brain, Outrageous! demonstrates that he's not the fool his many detractors would have us believe.
by Richard Kluger
Oh, the fun you could have casting the movie of this sneakily subversive historical novel. Robin Hood, it seems, was a seedy, wenching, hoodwinking huntsman—much too lazy to do an honest day's work but smart enough to shed his real name: Stuckey Woodfinch (picture a bemused Bill Murray).
His archenemy, the Sheriff of Nottingham, is a sort of medieval Marshall Dillon who rides into town to root out corruption and, at one point, even joins forces with Robin and his merry Boyz N the Hood to rid Sherwood Forest of its real evildoers: crooked game wardens who prey upon the poor. The Sheriff is so good at his job, so virtuous, so stiff...well, who else but Kevin Costner, our most recent screen Robin, could do this lonesome lawman justice?
Movie misconceptions, actually, are what Kluger is intent on clearing up. Having thoroughly done his homework on 13th-century England and discovered that there is simply no proof that Robin Hood ever existed, he rightly banishes the character to a minor role.
There really was a Sheriff of Nottingham, though: his name, Philip Mark, even appears in the Magna Carta, a landmark document drawn up by rebellious lords seeking to abrogate the absolute power of tyrants like Philip's employer, King John. If there's a real villain in this novel, it is John, a blundering plunderer who keeps raising taxes to finance foreign misadventures and crushing dissident uprisings.
Kluger (who has written five previous novels and Simple Justice, a non-fiction account of the Supreme Court's 1954 desegregation decision) populates his tale with a colorful cross section of nobles, knights, clergymen and serfs, as well as the obligatory scenes of lust and bloodshed. But the dialogue, the details and, especially, the history all seem right. So much so that we can't wait for the movie—and for Hollywood to get it all wrong again. (Viking, $23)
- Contributors:
- Sara Nelson,
- Eric Levin,
- Lorenzo Carcaterra,
- Tim Whitaker,
- Michael A. Lipton.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
