Book About Nursing Injured Owl is a Hoot

I reviewed a book I did not think I'd connect with, but ended up thoroughly enjoying. It is called Alfie & Me and it's about an ecologist out on Long Island who ends up with a badly injured baby squirrel. Carl Safina nurses the squirrel, and eventually lets "Alfie" out to scope out his back yard. 
As Alfie gets healthier, she gets more independent, but still seeks Safina out for a frozen mouse, and the two call each other in the back yard. 
Alfie eventually finds a mate, lays some eggs, and welcomes a few owlets into the world. 
The review, in the East Hampton Star, is entitled "Owl in the Family" and you can read it here. 
Safina writes, "Whenever I saw or even thought of Alfie, I felt something between us that united us. We did, after all, interact. We had a certain mutual understanding. To create a metaphor from physics, we had developed a covalent bond. And that was real enough to hold us."

Crazy Legs, Solid Stomach

I got to do my second story for the Boston Globe in recent months, on a long-running competitive eater known as Crazy Legs Conti. Conti has been on the pro eating circuit for 22 years, an extraordinary run. 

The piece came to be when the Malones were in the Boston area over Christmas. We went to a Christmas Eve party at my wife's friend's place, and got to talking with a friend of Crazy Legs, who is from the suburb of Belmont, as is my wife.  

I'd profiled Crazy Legs a long, long time ago--20 years ago, in fact--for the now defunct New York Sports Express. The documentary Crazy Legs Conti: Zen and the Art of Competitive Eating had just come out. I figured I'd check in with Conti again, and see if there was a new story to tell. 

There was! 

He's gotten a real kick out of his time on stage, and hopes to stick around a bit longer. He told me, “I try to be an ambassador to the sport and welcome the rookies, but also celebrate the fact that I’ve been able to do this for 22 years, and really enjoy the travel, the food, the people, and the storytelling.”

Review: Nick McDonell's Moneyed Memoir

 I reviewed the book Quiet Street: On American Privilege, by Nick McDonell, in the new issue of the East Hampton Star. As the book's subhead suggests, McDonell was born into privilege--his father is the magazine and publishing titan Terry McDonell. He writes of growing up in Manhattan, going to private school, attending Harvard and Oxford, and having a very successful writing career develop thereafter. 

To be fair, McDonell is as talented as he is privileged. His first novel, Twelve, came out when he was all of 18. 

His latest book's title comes from a nickname for 124th Street in Harlem dating back to his time at the Buckley School in Manhattan. A bus would transport the Buckley boys down 124th Street, en route to the ball fields on Randalls Island. Years before, a student yelled a racial slur out the window, and Nick and his fellow students were then required to remain silent for as long as the bus drove down 124th Street.     

Just 117 pages, Quiet Street is a fast read. McDonell writes deftly, but shares a few too many examples of his considerable privilege, while a solution or two regarding wealth inequality in NYC and beyond might've done us a bit more good. 

Michael C. Williams On With His Next 'Project'

I got to do a profile of Michael C. Williams, whose name you probably do not know, but who's face you might, and whose work you probably do. 

Williams played Mike in The Blair Witch Project, the wildly successful found-footage horror film that premiered 25 years ago. 

These days, he and his wife Toni direct the plays at the New York high school they both attended, and at the middle school as well. Our kids go to Westlake High School, and the plays are pretty amazing. Up next is Elf at the middle school in late January. 

Williams is also a guidance counselor at a New York middle school. 

He had grown close to his own guidance counselor while at Westlake High, as Donna Garr helped him focus when his father died and his mother battled alcohol. She suggested he study theater in college while he was considering the military. 

Many years later, after Blair Watch, Williams' acting work was unsteady, and he thought about a career change that might be better suited for his growing family. He reached out to Garr, and started his master's in school counseling. 

My piece is kind of short. I wish I'd had more room to tell Williams' story. But it's a good story nonetheless. 

[photo credit Michael C. Williams]

You are Cordially Invited to Check Out My Book Review Column 'A Novel Concept' on Substack

I write a column called A Novel Concept on Substack. Subscribers get my book review emailed to them each week, and it is free of charge. It launched in October 2021, and will shift to every two weeks in the new year, so I can finally read large novels like Fredrik Backman's The Winners. 

My columns have focused on Colson Whitehead's Crook Manifesto, Geraldine Brooks's Horse, The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride, and even Jimmy Buffett's Where is Joe Merchant?, because Buffett died. 

Please give 'em a read and, if you enjoy them, and find books to add to your to-read list, or gift ideas for loved ones, maybe even subscribe. 

Book Review: A Prominent Author Who Fought For the Environment Decades Before Other Celebs Did

 I reviewed Lucky Mud & Other Foma, a look at Kurt Vonnegut, his books, and his dedication to the environment and to humankind, for the East Hampton Star. Christina Jarvis wrote the book. 

"This book tells the story of Vonnegut's planetary citizenship," Ms. Jarvis, a professor of English at the State University at Fredonia, writes in the introduction. "It discovers the origins of his environmental stewardship in lessons from Vonnegut's Orchard School teacher Hillis Howie and the ethics and political ideals forged during his teenage Western adventures. It also explores Vonnegut's deep attachments to place and the profound ways his biology, chemistry, and anthropology studies shaped his planetary thinking."

As one might suspect in a book about Vonnegut, the title is odd. Lucky mud and foma are aspects of Vonnegut's invented religion, Bokononism, in his novel Cat's Cradle. Lucky mud refers to mud tapped by God to sit up and take in the Earth around it, while foma denotes a harmless untruth. 

My review said, "The reader may, at times, wonder if it would've worked better as, say, a 10,000-word New Yorker article, articulating Vonnegut's vision for a better Earth while freeing up a bit of time for the reader. 

But true fans of Vonnegut will enjoy "Lucky Mud," and will respect how he was a champion of our planet's health several decades before other writers, celebrities, and citizens took up the cause."

Regina Spektor Heads Back to the Beach

I got my first Boston Globe story! It's a profile of the musician Regina Spektor. 

Back when I lived in Manhattan's East Village, I heard her name quite a bit. A piano-playing rocker, she was playing out in the bars and establishing herself. 

I saw she was playing the Capitol Theatre outside NYC earlier this year, and got tickets. 

Spektor, who emigrated to the Bronx from the Soviet Union as a kid, was all alone onstage. She played piano on most songs, and picked up a guitar for a few. She delivers offbeat rock. She spoke of the war in Ukraine with a heartfelt address.  

I saw her tour brings her to Martha's Vineyard in late August, so I pitched the Boston Globe a story. I had no contact there, but an editor surprised me by saying yes to my pitch. 

Spektor told me her thoughts on the war. 

“The idea that so much beauty and so much history has just been turned to rubble, it’s just very painful,” she says. “And they’re sending young people who don’t know better from one country to the other, to die and to perpetrate atrocities. Everybody suffers except for the people who are actually perpetrating these crimes.”

The rest of the profile is a bit happier, with her memories of playing Boston, and visiting the Vineyard as a kid, and her thoughts on getting back to the island many years later.  

[photo credit Shervin Lainez]