Russell Frank: ‘Tis the Season to Read Novels

All the days are dark and many of them are dreary: may as well find a comfy spot, pour a comfy drink, and escape into the world of words. Here is what I have been reading so far this holiday season.

“When the Garden Was Eden,” by Harvey Araton

A student in my ethics class had the same last name as a New York Times sports columnist. Turns out he’s Harvey Araton’s son. Turns out Harvey Araton just published a book about the glory days of the New York Knicks – the Reed-Frazier-Bradley-Debusschere-Barnett days.

I was in high school when that team won its first NBA championship. My friends and I adored them. When we shot hoops at PS 188, we imitated their shooting styles. Debusschere from the corner! Bradley from the top of the key! Yes! We called it Knockerbocker Bisquitball.

The Garden referred to in Araton’s title is Madison Square Garden, which is neither a garden nor located on Madison Square. A high school kid could afford an occasional ticket to an NBA game back then. I remember the haze of cigarette smoke that hung over the court. And I remember yelling so much that I lost my voice.

I told Alex Araton of my interest in his dad’s book. A week or two later, he brought me a copy.

“Is this a bribe?” I asked him. He assured me it wasn’t.

Probably for nostalgic Knicks fans only.

“The Bear Went Over the Mountain,” by William Kotzwinkle

Kotzwinkle’s claim to fame is a title you may have heard of: “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial.” Saw the movie. Never read the book.

“The Bear Went Over the Mountain” is about an Ursus americanus who finds a briefcase in the woods. In that briefcase is an unpublished novel. The bear outfits himself in a suit “of the kind lumberjacks wear to funerals” and heads for the city to peddle the book – which becomes a bestseller.

And once you’ve written a bestseller, your every pronouncement, no matter how clueless, becomes further proof of your wit and wisdom. Consider this exchange between the bear and his agent:

“Anybody ever tell you how much you resemble Hemingway?”

“Who?”

“Yes, who indeed. I think you might be the one to make people forget him.”

Reminiscent of Jerzy Kosinski’s “Being There.” If you want to take a break from reading, watch the movie, starring Peter Sellers. Or you can (re)watch “E.T.”

“The Anthologist,” by Nicholson Baker

The first book I read by Nicholson Baker was called “The Mezzanine.” Here is the entire plot: A man breaks a shoelace before lunch. He goes out during his lunch break to buy new shoelaces. He returns to work.

You don’t read Baker for his plots. You read him for his insanely detailed observations. Baker sets himself the task of documenting “the daily texture of our lives,” which he elsewhere refers to as “microhistory.”

I can see where this sort of thing would not be to everyone’s taste, but if Nicholson Baker’s novels survived a civilization-ending cataclysm, they could be used to reconstruct our way of life.

Baker has also achieved a measure of notoriety as a writer of funny smut: “Vox,” about phone sex, “The Fermata,” about a guy who uses his ability to stop time to undress and spy on women, and most recently, “House of Holes,” about a sex-themed amusement park (I haven’t read it yet).

“The Anthologist” is tamer stuff: It’s about a middling middle-aged poet who’s struggling to write an introduction to an anthology of rhyming poetry. I like “The Mezzanine” better.

“The Member of the Wedding,” by Carson McCullers

This is one of those books that I should have read a long time ago but somehow never did. It’s kind of a companion volume to “The Catcher in the Rye,” only it’s about a Southern girl on the brink of adolescence rather than a Northern boy on the brink of adulthood. I’m loving it.

“Henry’s Puzzle,” by Henry Dahut

I have known the author of this book since high school. Last year, at a New Age seminar in Oregon, he had one of those experiences that makes a person write a book about spiritual transformation: He saw green winged beings with human faces and a father-like figure with white hair and flowing beard and felt “the ecstasy of absolute love.” If such a thing happened to me, I’d write a book, too.

I’m also trying to plow through “American Radical,” a biography of the journalist I.F. Stone; Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States”; and Peter Matthiessen’s ethnography of New Guinea, “Under the Mountain Wall.” Good books all, but on a winter’s night I want to curl up with a story, not a treatise.

Let us know if you’re reading anything good.