Ghostman Review
Like many things I read, I cannot remember where I first heard about this author. The buzz on Hobbs is that he is a absurdly young, crack-shot savant who wrote a destined-to-be-bestseller straight out of college. My expectations were high yet cautious. Unfortunately, the payoff was something akin to a James Patterson paperback. Okay, maybe not that bad. To be fair, I've never actually read a Patterson thriller. But, then, I've never bought a book at the airport either.
Synopsis: Bank robbery gone wrong. A "fixer" type, called Ghostman, is sent in by the crime boss behind it to clean things up. Another crime boss gets involved. High jinx ensue.
Commentary: I was originally drawn to this book because, in most cases, it takes a really fascinating backstory on the author to get me to read fiction. In this case: brilliant college student pens a griping thriller. Sky's the limit and all that. Plus, I'm jealous of his skills.
Despite his very-fake name, Roger Hobbs, he put together a tightly spun yarn about the aftermath of a heist-gone-wrong. The pace is "page-turning" and chapters are episodic and short. The book flashes back occasionally to the protagonist's early days as a thief and "ghost man"-in training. A "ghost" is someone who alters their appearance and persona in extreme ways to get out of tight spots; essentially running around as alter egos. The prose is serviceable but descriptions skirt the edge of high school creative writing class level. Hobbs tries to shock us with gritty, visceral details and dazzle with an insider's view of criminal activity. But, mostly, it feels like he's trying to impress us with his dark anti-hero by making him interesting rather than make us feel something about him. I mean, the Ghostman spends a great deal of the book as fake characters. It's not like Lisbeth Salander, where we are painted a revealing picture of the most fascinating fictional underworld geniuses in so much detail and thorough backstory. I really wanted this Ghostman to be a bad-ass but, he was so undeveloped, I only saw smoke and mirrors.
Finally, (and, I know this is trivial) I was off-put by his naming one of the mob boss characters "the Wolf." I immediately thought of another "fixer" character in fiction lore, that of Harvey Keitel's Winston "the Wolf" Wolfe from Pulp Fiction. Whether it was unintentional or not, I found it a little lazy. Keep going, Hobbs. You're a good writer but I have a feeling your best work is ahead of you.
the message that i keep forgetting
In a recent interview with The Atlantic Monthly's James Fallows, productivity guru David Allen underscores the ultimate point. It's a thought that I keep having to remind myself of.
"I guess it really backs down to--and I guess this is going to be my message forever, because I don't know how long it's going to take the human beings to change this habit--but your psyche is not your system, in terms of remembering and reminding. And as soon as you've got more than seven meaningful things that you're trying to negotiate and juggle and manage the relationship between them, and they're all in your head, you're dead. You deal with whatever is yelling longest and loudest and then feel bad about the whole game.
However, when you get all that out of your psyche, it doesn't relieve you of the personal executive responsibility to then say "Okay, how do I allocate my attention and my focus right now?" But what it does is, it frees you up to be doing that with your intelligence. So utilizing your intuitive intelligence is something you're not going to be able to computerize."
Christopher Hitchens is My Leader
Obligatory Smoking Photo that Accompanies Every Article About Hitch Since his Death
Hitchens was the Most Commanding English-language Virtuoso Conversationalist in the last 100 years. He had a preternatural ability to call up the exact word needed in every instance and situation. His vocabulary was colossal, ney towering, ney…prodigious. While many people employ 50-cent SAT-words in their own writing, they are likely hard-pressed to recall them during an extemporaneous speech or brave enough to attempt in conversation. If it sounds like Hitchen's confab was pretentious, it wasn't. He had that great shield against verbal haughtiness called a silky BRITISH baritone voice. To say nothing of his glass-cutting wit.
He is most notorious in America for being a member of the Neo-Atheism movement. His book God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything was at once celebrated and reviled. At the very least, it was amusing, and it gave birth to some fascinating public debates between eloquent locutioners and Evangelical dolts on the subject of God, her existence and her followers.
God is Not Great also happened to be the first work I'd ever read of Hitch's back in December of 2010. I'd been slogging through his dense monthly book reviews in The Atlantic for years before I realized his greatness. It wasn't until the debates were raging that I'd become obsessed and began consuming everything else I could pull up on the Internet. He was growing on me quickly and pervasively.
I think so much of what I like about Hitch is that sense of the schadenfreude of the Christianists that he played the catalyst in. I loved that this Wizard of Words romped around like an intellectual bull-in-the-china-closet when it came to making a point. They never stood a chance. Of course, there are some notable exceptions – Hitch v. Tony Blair and Hitch v. Alister McGrath.
Finally, I don't want to say much about the content of Hitchens arguments. That's for you to discover. Sometimes, it's as much about your Leader's ability to articulate rather than what he is articulating, though I agree with many of his points. I also respect that he changed his mind about Marxism and came around to being more of a Libertarian. I disagreed with his views on Iraq (he supported the war), I understood his points and respected his convictions. Unfortunately, he ravaged his body with a lifetime of drink and smoke. It ravaged him back with cancer which won out on December 15, 2011, about a year after I really fell in love this man and his work.
There is a ton of Christopher Hitchens material out there, and you could do worse than investigate this lion of the english language. I haven't even touched on his encyclopedic knowledge of and sober opinion on George Orwell. Fall down the rabbit hole on YouTube and watch his interviews and speeches. Read his memior, Hitch-22. Start with this and you won't be disappointed.
Bissell Quote - Write What You Don't Read
Just read a great quote from an interview The Rumpus did with Tom Bissell, great American author. In talking about his 2006 ripping of Robert D. Kaplan, he of The Atlantic Monthly, on Kaplan's allegedly dangerous writing, he said:
"...what I wanted to read about him didn't exist and so I had to write it myself."
David Allen on What He Reads
One of my productivity heroes is David Allen. He just revealed that he's a big Atlantic Monthly fan. It's good to know great minds read alike.
I still say that The Atlantic Monthly is one of the smartest, most insightful publications in the English language. They consistently produce quality journalism and bring to light stories that rise above the derivative drivel that infests other periodicals. I also find them to be refreshingly apolitical.
You can do a lot worse than to pick up and read an issue cover-to-cover. It's completely worth the $30 per year subscription for the paper edition. You can read it for free online, as well.