Reconsidering Coach K

Tags

acc, basketball, dean smith, feinstein, krzyzewski, the legends club, valvano

When former N.C. State basketball coach Jim Valvano—the legendary and lovable “Jimmy V”—was undergoing cancer treatments at Duke University Hospital in early 1993, he formed an unexpected friendship.

Nearly every day, Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski would walk from his team’s practices at Cameron Indoor Stadium to the hospital, where he would spend an hour or so with his one-time rival. The two coaches talked some basketball, but they mostly talked about life. They laughed and cried. Every day, when Krzyzewski walked into the hospital room, Valvano’s eyes would light up.

“What are we, chopped liver?” one of Valvano’s daughters joked outside the room as the two coaches rambled on about some Atlantic Coast Conference basketball game from years past.

Krzyzewski was at Valvano’s bedside shortly before he died. He would later describe those hospital visits with Jimmy V as a life-changing experience. “You and I became brothers during the last four or five months of your life,” Krzyzewski wrote in a postmortem letter to the man he had battled against in several crucial basketball games.

Coach K’s friendship with a dying Valvano is the heart and soul of The Legends Club, a new book by John Feinstein about the three most iconic basketball coaches in ACC history—Krzyzewski, Valvano and North Carolina coach Dean Smith. From 1980 through 1989, the three coaches squared off against each other two and often three times a season. The games between Krzyzewski and Smith continued until 1997, solidifying Duke-North Carolina as the most intense—and publicized—rivalry in college basketball. Many would argue that the 17-year period covered by The Legends Club represents not only the heyday of ACC basketball, but all of college hoops.

When I was growing up in Georgia in the 1980s, ACC basketball was the biggest thing going from January into March every year. I was a North Carolina Tar Heels fan because most of my mother’s family members were Carolina fans. I also liked Georgia Tech due to its proximity and exciting players like Mark Price, Bruce Dalrymple and John Salley. I liked N.C. State and Valvano, who could have easily been a stand-up comedian if he wasn’t such a damn good basketball coach.

I despised Duke. I didn’t like the Cameron Crazies—the smart-ass Duke student section that reveled in its creative ways of rattling opposing players. I detested Coach K with his angry scowl and his tendency to jaw at the refs throughout a 40-minute basketball game. Storming the sidelines in a dark, Richard Nixon-style suit, he seemed petty and mean. As many have pointed out before, Krzyzewski really does look a lot like the team’s pointy-eared Blue Devil mascot, except that at least the mascot is smiling.

The only time I can recall rooting for Duke was during its epic 1991 Final Four upset of UNLV, a team that somehow managed to act more obnoxious and entitled than even the smug brats who always played for Duke.

After reading The Legends Club, I am still not a fan of Duke, but I did come away with a greater appreciation of Krzyzewski. Despite his fiery nature and defensiveness even in the wake of winning five national titles, Coach K has many admirable qualities. The son of Polish immigrants, he rose from working class Chicago to attend West Point and serve in the Army. Three years into his tenure at Duke, he was nearly fired after back-to-back losing seasons. Krzyzewski probably would have been fired if that took place in today’s big-money, win-now sports culture. Instead, he is simply the winningest coach in college basketball history.

What fuels The Legends Club are several entertaining anecdotes about Smith, Valvano and Krzyzewski, their games and their personal interactions. Feinstein, a Duke graduate who covered ACC hoops in the 1980s, knows the territory well. He does a fine job of pushing aside the public images of all three coaches to reveal their humanity. Krzyzewski and Smith, for example, despised each other and had several clashes during heated Carolina-Duke tilts. In the end, however, they developed a mutual respect, if not a friendship.

Ultimately, The Legends Club is a Coach K book—perhaps because he has coached the longest and remains at the top of his profession. If you just can’t separate Krzyzewski from Christian Laettner stomping on a Kentucky player, or Grayson Allen’s many tripping incidents, this might not be the book for you. Or maybe it is? You may be surprised by the old coach’s many layers, beyond the dark-suited Blue Devil you see all the time on TV.

You Might Be a Redneck: A Review of “White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America”

Tags

class system, history, nancy isenberg, u.s. history, white trash

The timing of Nancy Isenberg’s new book could hardly have been better. When White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America was released this summer, Donald Trump had just clinched the Republican nomination, largely behind the support of frustrated, disenfranchised working class whites. Thousands of panicked liberals rushed to Amazon and Barnes & Noble, and bought Isenberg’s book, anxious to learn more about America’s so-called underclass and the role it might play in disrupting the Republic. The New York Times deemed the book “necessary,” and Oprah Winfrey’s O Magazine called it “eye-opening.”

I had high hopes for White Trash, even though the book’s full title is a little misleading. The story of poor whites in America is hardly “untold,” as evidenced by the 125 pages of footnotes and bibliographic information in the back of Isenberg’s book. It’s also not earth-shattering news that America has a class system modeled after England’s, and that the British settled the colonies with “lubbers,” “rubbish,” and other people they deemed expendable.

Still, I was anxious to read White Trash because I agreed with Isenberg’s assertion that economic and social class in America is largely overlooked by the media, as are the concerns of working class whites (until about five weeks ago, that is).

I expected a lively, thought-provoking read about the role of class and inequity in American history. Unfortunately, while some parts of White Trash were informative, I did not find the book to be particularly engaging. At times, I was also confused as to whom Isenberg considers to be “White Trash.” Are they mountain people living on government checks and procreating at will? Are they poor dirt farmers and land dwellers in the South? Are they blue collar workers in the Rust Belt? Are they middle-class “Bubbas” who try to stay true to their redneck roots? Is it all of the above?

Obviously, some of these groups are more disadvantaged and downtrodden than others. Isenberg at times lumps them all together in an effort to cover the full scope of rural, poor white culture. Elvis Presley, Bill Clinton and Tammy Faye Bakker are all famous but for very different reasons. Isenberg tries to stitch them and others together as symbols of the white underclass. She does not do this very convincingly.

In my mind, White Trash contains two parts. The first covers about 350 years of Colonial and American history, from the settlement of Jamestown by debtors and “waste people,” to Okies fleeing the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. This part of the book is very informative, though it sometimes suffers from the Isenberg’s dry, academic writing style. I found the chapter about the eugenics movement of the early 20^th Century to be particularly interesting.

The second part of White Trash is basically a laundry list of pop culture fads, government assistance programs and colorful political figures of the past 80 years. At times, the writer seems disgusted by phenomenon like the Bakkers’ PTL scandal and the reality TV show, Here Comes Honey Boo-Boo. In another passage, she chides Hollywood and Deliverance author James Dickey for vilifying hillbilly culture. It is unclear at times whether Isenberg is defending or judging poor whites.

Isenberg has said in recent interviews that the main purpose of her new book is to debunk the myth of the “American Dream” and class mobility in the U.S. White Trash does make a strong argument that most Americans are stuck in the social class into which they are born. However, I think that message sometimes gets lost as the author attempts to cover more than 400 years of history in only 320 pages.

 

Review: Stories I Tell Myself, by Juan Thompson

Tags

aspen, fear and loathing in las vegas, hunter s. thompson, jimmy buffett, juan thompson, memoir, rolling stone, stories I tell myself

Raise your hand if you think that growing up as the only child of the writer Hunter S. Thompson would be a stable, nourishing experience.

Really, no one? Okay. Well, I’ll continue…

Stories I Tell Myself is a memoir by Juan Thompson about what it was like having a father who was as famous for his wild behavior as he was for authoring counterculture classics like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72.

Hunter S. Thompson was a celebrated writer and one of the more charismatic figures of the 1960s and 1970s. Along with others like Truman Capote and Tom Wolfe, he crafted a style of reporting that blended journalism with literary techniques and a considerable amount of egotism. He called his creation “Gonzo Journalism.” Thompson was a powerful figure whose friends included Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner, “60 Minutes” stalwart Ed Bradley, and at least two U.S. presidents—Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton.

Thompson was also an alcoholic and drug addict who was prone to late-night hours, womanizing, and violent outbursts. At Owl Farm near Aspen, where he spent most of his time, Thompson held wild parties that were often punctuated with firearms and the detonation of outdoor explosives. Throughout the 1970s, Thompson held court in the bars of Aspen, always surrounded by a throng of friends who adored and very likely feared him.

Juan Thompson, who is in his early 50s now, does not hold back in portraying his father as a brilliant artist as well as a distant, unpredictable and sometimes dangerous man. Early on, Juan Thompson writes that his father never hit him, though the threat of “a beating” was often present. The elder Thompson did direct a lot of screaming and verbal abuse toward his son and wife, Sandy. By the late 70s, when Juan was in his early teens, Sandy Thompson was fed up with Hunter’s tantrums, boozing and nocturnal routine. She and Juan moved out of Owl Farm, and Juan confesses that he hated his famous father at that point in his life.

Much of the book is about what happened after that moment, and the many years it took Juan and Hunter S. Thompson to find common ground and forge a relationship as son and father. Given Hunter’s self-absorption, the son apparently had to do most of the work in building that connection. At times, it is heartbreaking to read about Juan’s efforts. It is clear how much he craves his father’s love, but there are long emotional deserts to travel between halting moments of fatherly praise or affection.

Stories I Tell Myself is an engaging memoir for Hunter S. Thompson fans, as well as anyone who is fascinated by the bond between a child and a very flawed parent. By the way, not all is grim with the Thompson family. There are some fun moments in the book, such as when a teen-aged Juan gets to spend a month sailing the Caribbean with Hunter’s laid-back buddy, Jimmy Buffett. Fame has its privileges, I guess, even if you’re sometimes trapped inside the strange, paranoid world of Hunter S. Thompson.

Book Review: Serena

Tags

1930s, gone girl, literary fiction, north carolina, ron rash, serena, southern fiction

Ron Rash’s Serena artfully captures the beauty and brutality of life in the Smoky Mountains in the early 1930s. The novel provides historical perspective on the clash between business interests and environmentalism that still runs hot today.

However, the real force of nature in Serena is the book’s namesake, a woman whose ambition and cruelty mow over rivals just as swiftly as her husband’s logging company takes down hardwoods in the mountains outside Waynesville, North Carolina.

There is a scene early in the novel that indicates just how formidable a character Serena Pemberton will be. It’s the end of another long day at the Boston Logging Company. George Pemberton, his new bride and his business partners are relaxing with a few drinks. At this point in the story, Serena has already humbled her husband’s abandoned lover. Her courage and toughness have won the respect of the working men in the logging camp. But the company’s managers are not impressed with George Pemberton’s young wife—it is the 1930s, after all. The camp physician, Doc Cheney, mirthfully praises Serena for being unusually logical for the “the fairer sex.”

Serena gives the doctor a cutting response.

“My husband tells me that you are from these very mountains, a place called Wild Hog Gap,” Serena said to Cheney. “Obviously, your views on my sex were formed by the slatterns you grew up with, but I assure you the natures of women are more various than your limited experience allows.”

If you think Serena is striking a blow for women’s rights, you might want to hold your applause until the book’s end. Doc Cheney and many others will soon learn that Serena transcends any gender, that she may even be a creature of mythical powers.

I saw Ron Rash speak at a book conference in 2014. He said then that his creative process involves many, many rewrites—sometimes 20 to 30 revisions of a single short story. That craftsmanship and attention to detail pay off in Serena, which combines beautiful prose with vivid characters and a suspenseful, harrowing plot.

In Serena Pemberton, Rash has created an epic persona of uncompromising villainy. If you thought that Amy Dunne in Gone Girl was frightening, you really should check out Serena.

Book Review: Soil

Tags

a plot for pridemore, fiction, jamie kornegay, mississippi, soil, southern fiction

Many of us are taught from an early age that, with a little hard work and ingenuity, we can have it all. We can have a beautiful, loving family, make lots of money, achieve our professional goals and, along the way, possibly change the world. Follow your dreams, we are told by everyone from Disney princesses to the commencement speaker at college graduation.

Jay Mize has a gorgeous wife, a young son, and a cozy little bungalow in town. That’s not enough for him. Jay has a dream – to till some land, develop a new way of growing crops and, in the process, change how life is sustained on earth. The dream gnaws at Jay until he decides to pursue it, and the results are disastrous. Within a year, the river has flooded his farm, his wife and son have left, and Jay is slowly starving to death. What he finds one day floating on his ruined land adds a macabre twist to Jay’s struggle, and sets up the central dilemma of Jamie Kornegay’s excellent first novel, Soil.

Set in a Mississippi town, written in wry prose, and populated with remarkably defective characters, Soil is reminiscent of the darkly comic works of writers likes Clyde Edgerton, James Wilcox, and others. Crazy shenanigans in a Southern town are not exactly unplowed literary ground, but Soil offers a contemporary perspective on an old lesson: be careful what you wish for. Jay’s isolated quest for greatness, fueled by cable news conspiracy theories and doomsday scenarios, drive him to madness. That madness leads to some stunningly bad decisions that get Jay into a heap of trouble. Kornegay writes about this descent with sharp, vivid passages that are sometimes harrowing enough to make your stomach spin. The descriptions of the ramshackle house and devastated crops on Jay’s property are equally powerful. It’s clear that the writer has an intimate appreciation for the natural forces that make the Delta such a strange, tormented place.

Other characters resonate in Soil. Danny Shoals is a hot-rodding deputy with a keen eye on replacing his uncle as county sheriff. Unfortunately, Danny’s eye for every short skirt in town, along with an urge to peep under other folks’ window shades at night, threaten to destroy his plans. Sandy Mize is Jay’s pretty but long-suffering wife. Her inner conflict over whether or not to save her marriage make Sandy a sympathetic character, but not a helpless one. Her sparring sessions with the delusional Jay contain some of the book’s strongest dialogue.

It’s natural to categorize this novel as Southern fiction because of its locale and storytelling style. But the weaknesses that most of the main characters carry – grand ambitions, flawed logic, extreme narcissism – know no geographic boundaries, at least in this country. Soil is a cautionary but entertaining tale about what can go wrong when we want something just a little too much.

Stephen Roth is the author of the novel, A Plot for Pridemore.

Be sure to “like” his author fan page at https://www.facebook.com/StephenRothWriter

What They’re Saying on Amazon

Tags

a plot for pridemore, amazon.com, customer reviews, fiction, southern fiction, Stephen Roth

Each Friday, I visit Amazon.com to see how my book is doing. Amazon and Nielsen have a nifty application that can tell authors, roughly, how many books they sold over the past week. Some weeks the results are disappointing. Other weeks they are encouraging. Today, I learned that I sold four paperback copies of A Plot for Pridemore between February 23 and March 1. That’s a pretty encouraging week by my standards.

I also learned today that A Plot for Pridemore racked up its 23rd customer review on Amazon.com. So far, the reviewers have been amazingly kind. Twenty of them have rewarded the book with five stars, while three gave it four stars. Some of the reviewers are, of course, friends and relatives, but many are people I don’t know who managed to stumble across the book and read it cover-to-cover. I am humbled and amazed at how generous they have been to a first-time novelist. Here’s what one reader from Venice, Florida, wrote this week about A Plot for Pridemore:

I enjoyed the book very much. It started out on the slow side but got to the point where I couldn’t put it down. Stephen was very inventive to come up with this plot.

Customer reviews on Amazon.com are very important, I am told. Potential buyers look to these reviews to help them decide if they want to buy your book. Having a lot of reviews–even if they are not all positive reviews–shows that your book is generating “buzz.” That draws the attention of the Amazon people, who may decide to give your work preferential placement in their online bookstore, helping it stand out among the millions and millions of published and self-published books that are sold on Amazon.

There is a lot of content on the Internet about how to get more customer reviews, including stories about how some authors who have tried to bilk the system. It’s my understanding that you need at least 50 customer reviews for your book to get Amazon’s attention, but that might just one of those online rumors. At any rate, it’s a hot topic among newbie authors like me.

Which leads me to my plea: if you have an interest in purchasing and reading my book. I would love it if you would take a few minutes to review it on Amazon. The process is simple and easy. Even if you find that A Plot for Pridemore is not exactly your cup of tea, I would still greatly appreciate any feedback you could provide in the form of a customer review.

If you enjoy reading fiction at all, however, I’m willing to bet that you will like A Plot for Pridemore. After all, the customer reviews have given it an average of five stars on Amazon.

Stephen Roth is the author of the humorous novel, A Plot for Pridemore.

Be sure to “like” his author fan page at https://www.facebook.com/StephenRothWriter

Review: Drag the Darkness Down

Tags

arkansas, charles portis, Dog of the South, drag the darkness down, kansas city, matt baker, southern fiction

Want to drag the darkness down? Go on a road trip with Odom Shiloh in his Honda of the year 1997.

This 40-year-old man from Frothmouth, Arkansas, has more than his share of troubles. Odom is unemployable, his second marriage is about to go bust, and his talented but neurotic sister, Birdshit, has gone missing. Oh, and he’s also on the run from the authorities after ramming his car into a famous French cyclist in downtown Memphis.

With all this drama going on, why not hit the road? Determined to track down his little sister, Odom enlists help from his private investigator friend, Blakey Flake. The pair climbs into Odom’s vintage Honda and travels the highways of Arkansas and Missouri in search of Birdshit, who Odom believes has run off with a four-star high school football recruit. Along the way, Odom mostly listens as the chain-smoking Blakey ruminates on topics ranging from his favorite French Impressionist painters to the theory that Oprah Winfrey is, in fact, ruining our way of life. As is the case with most memorable road novels (Charles Portis’s The Dog of the South comes to mind), it is the journey – not the destination – that drives Drag the Darkness Down.

This debut novel by Kansas City author Matt Baker was published in 2009, but I only recently became familiar with it. The book is an impressive start to what looks to be a strong fiction career for Mr. Baker. His characters in Drag the Darkness Down are cold, conniving and perennially self-absorbed. The way they interact with each other while pursuing their individual agendas is often hilarious, though Baker’s characters seldom see it that way.

No one in Drag the Darkness Down is satisfied with his or her current state: Blakey wants to be a stand-up comic, Birdshit wants to write poetry and escape small-town life, Odom isn’t sure what he wants, other than to evade the law, rescue his sister, and stick a fork in another failed marriage. We see the action through Odom’s eyes, but can we trust his view of reality? The meandering banter between Odom and the screwball detective Blakey as they follow the trail to Birdshit fuels the first half of the novel. After a while, Blakey’s outrageous pronouncements and dubious theories start making sense, and Odom’s internal broodings become more frightening. Which one of these two guys in the Honda is the crazy one? Is it both of them? Is it too late to bail on this road trip and catch a Greyhound back to Little Rock?

Finding humor and building intrigue in characters who are as forlorn and shiftless as Odom Shiloh is the writing equivalent of a magic trick, but I believe Matt Baker has pulled it off. Drag the Darkness Down is truly dark, and it is unlikely that this detective story is going to end happily, but we can at least sit back and enjoy the bumpy, tumultuous ride.

Stephen Roth is author of the humorous novel, A Plot for Pridemore. Be sure to “like” his author fan page at https://www.facebook.com/StephenRothWriter

Another Review on Pridemore

Tags

a plot for pridemore, dew on the kudzu, fiction, mercer university press, southern fiction, Stephen Roth

I have been so very fortunate to have received lots of praise for A Plot for Pridemore. Currently on Amazon.com there are 16 consumer reviews that give the book the maximum five stars, which is almost a little embarrassing. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by comparison, averages a mere 4.3 stars on Amazon. There is no way my book is five-star worthy, but I do appreciate the enthusiasm.

The big banner will travel with me this summer as I share the good word about Pridemore.

The book has also been fortunate to have collected some positive press in Foreward Reviews, The Kansas City Star and my hometown LaGrange Daily News. The most recent review is from Southern fiction blog Dew on the Kudzu. I don’t know that the writer enjoyed my book very much. She found many of the characters to be unlikable, which I can understand. Everyone in A Plot for Pridemore has a dark side, some darker than others. All in all, it is a pretty cynical tale.

At any rate, I am grateful for what publicity I can get. I’ll let you know if I see any more reviews of Pridemore posted in the near future!

Book Review: The Harrowing

Tags

a plot for pridemore, book review, georgia, kenneth barber, kenneth w. barber, lagrange, suspense thriller, the harrowing

The author of this book, Kenneth W. Barber, was a classmate of mine at LaGrange High School in Georgia. Back then, we knew him as Kenny. He was a funny, all-around good guy who worked with me on the high school newspaper, The Granger Blues. So even back then he was interested in writing. None of us had any idea of the dark, fantastical images that were lurking inside his head, however.

Now we know. The Harrowing is an apt title this suspense thriller that contains many vivid moments of gut-wrenching gore and nightmarish violence. This is Kenneth’s first book, but he already displays a knack for the genre as well as an uncommon talent for scene-setting and description. When private investigator Zoe Flynn notices a distant, darkly cloaked figure everywhere she goes, you can envision the cruel, demented grin hidden just beneath the figure’s black hat. Here’s how the writer describes it:

Across the rain-shrouded street a figure stood, watching. It was impossible to determine if it was a man or a woman. The clothing was all black and the brim of a large, black fedora obscured the face. A long, black trench coat wrapped the stranger in a veil of indistinctness. The rain had slacked to a misting wall of moisture that danced with wisps of fog and obscured the mysterious face to a wraith-like state.

At 265 pages, Harrowing is a fast-paced, entertaining journey. I had a hard time putting the book down as I tried to figure out what kinds of creatures were tormenting poor Zoe and her family, and why they were doing it. The battle being waged over the detective has many unexpected turns and takes a deeper look at human existence and spirituality than many horror novels. I found The Harrowing to be an engaging, thought-provoking first novel by a promising author. I’m looking forward to Mr. Barber’s next book.

The Reviews are Coming In…

Tags

a plot for pridemore, fiction, forewordreviews.com, reviews, Stephen Roth, trina carter

Here’s a very nice review of A Plot for Pridemore by Trina Carter of ForewardReviews.com:

Exaggeration brings humor to the publicity stunt this mayoral main character has in store.

Machiavelli would have admired Monroe Tolliver. He isn’t a prince, just a mayor, but he has a plan to save his town. The fact that it involves explosives, kickbacks, and trickery is all part of the plot to get Pridemore, Missouri, going again. For if there’s one thing Tolliver has learned in his nearly fifty-year span as mayor, it’s that real goodness can be a liability, but the pretense is always very effective.

Set in America’s heartland, A Plot for Pridemore is a send-up of small-town politics. Pridemore is in danger of dying out. The new bypass has funneled traffic away from what was once a prosperous place for tourists vacationing in the Ozarks. The mayor seizes on the fact that Lewis and Clark passed close enough that way to turn a natural bridge and network of caves into a roadside attraction. Like Br’er Fox constructing a doll out of a lump of tar, the mayor dresses up his plan with enough made-for-television sensationalism to lure the media to Pridemore to cover the rescue of a slow-witted kid trapped in the cave.

It’s a sticky situation all right, and Roth spins his tale with a sure hand. He uses omniscient narration to keep his plates in the air with multiple viewpoints even as the publicity stunt goes awry. He uses exaggeration to poke fun at civic pride with almost Twain-like humor, like when he calls the town hall “one of those brick monstrosities that had all the charm of an East German dormitory.” He also creates characters to root for, including a jaded young newspaper reporter fresh out of journalism school, and characters that defy easy stereotyping, such as an aged skateboarding spelunker and beer-buzzed engineering expert brought in to save the day.

Some of these same characters are never fully developed, however. For example, the reporter remains the hapless onlooker, the kid in the cave is the clueless victim, and the old mayor stays the villain masterminding the whole fiasco (though he is the most complex and interesting character). There are also a few inconsistencies regarding the high-tech era in which the story supposedly takes place—battered maps rather than GPS, bedroom phones rather than cell phones, among others.

This is the kind of novel that begs to be read.