Jurassic Park, Ethan Canin, and F. Scott Fitzgerald Present 3 Can't-Miss Stories

I've been doing a good job of getting back to reading novels lately after a few pretty sparse years in which raising two young kids has tested my ability to keep two eyes open for too long on the written page.

Before I dig into an epic I've been trying to get at for many years, Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace, I've recently finished West of Sunset, Jurassic Park, and A Doubter's Almanac.

Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton is obviously the most classic of these. Somewhere between horror and science fiction, the book is a page turner that is better than any of the four films in the series, all of which I've since watched with my 8-year-old Jackson, who loves them. The book has more detail about the dinosaurs and several scenes that are left out of the movie, like at the start when a little girl gets pecked apart by mini reptiles on the mainland of Costa Rica away from the island where the human-created creatures are supposed to be contained.
5 out of 5 stars

My favorite contemporary author is the Iowa- and Michigan-based Ethan Canin, and his novel For Kings and Planets is still my favorite book of the past 20 years. His new one, A Doubter's Almanac, is an epic and every bit as much of a page-turner as Jurassic Park. But it's gripping because it explores the dynamics of a family over generations that has a gift (or is it?) for mathematics. Nobody is better at nuanced characterization than Canin, and this touching story about how we never truly know all that much about our parents' lives is no exception. Not as great as For Kings and Planets, but as good as his most recent, America America, and a must-read.
5 out of 5 stars

Keeping the string of winners going is West of Sunset. I've always struggled to read The Crack Up and anything else at the end of F. Scott Fitzgerald's life, but Stewart O'Nan makes it easy to dig into and transplant ourselves into the final days of Fitzgerald, which is a fascinating and sad place to be. Still devoted to his wife Zelda and daughter Scottie but separated by the country, the author hunkers down in Los Angles to reap increasingly disappointing returns on his movie scriptwriting. His health is failing as famous characters like Ernest Hemingway and Humphrey Bogart drift in and out of his life. This is impossible-to-put-down fictional history.
4.5 out of 5 stars

2013's Great Gatsby Entertains, But Overshares the Mystery

I may be biased since The Great Gatsby has been my favorite novel for a long time, but it's a really tough one to pull off on film.

The new version tries its best with help from a host of gimmicks - namely rap music in the jazz age and over-the-top Moulin Rouge-like production pieces. (I suppose it's difficult to fault Director Baz Luhrmann for trying this approach.)

It's not that these elements are bad, they just happen to be the sections I probably dislike the most about 2013's Great Gatsby, but I think the part that leaves me most unsettled is how the creators spell out every little detail of the characters, plot, and motivations. The best thing about the book, and why I keep coming back to it every five years or so, is that I'm not entirely quite sure exactly what happens. I can't quite fully grasp all of author F. Scott Fitzgerald's intentions and meanings, and I read into it a little bit different every time.

The mystery of Jay Gatsby is, after all, what the story is all about. And the film actually does very well at withholding the secrets for a very long time. But it can't help itself, as Tobey Maguire's Nick Carraway blurts it all out towards the end.

Leo DiCaprio is probably the best Gatsby there may ever be for a film version. (I think this probably falls around DiCaprio's seventh-best movie.) He is dashing, a little bit wacky, and mysterious. Carey Mulligan and Joel Edgerton are also pretty perfect as the shallow and reckless Daisy and Tom Buchanan. Maguire is alright, but I've always pictured Carraway to be an equal in the looks (if not the money) department to his neighbor Gatsby. He is a little too timid for this role.

The cinematography is beautiful and should be a prime candidate for the Academy Award. Some of the dialogue scenes, when the film almost replicates what a stage production might look like, are also filmed perfectly, especially the scene when Gatsby announces he is taking Daisy from Tom.

The rest isn't quite there, but it's saying quite a bit just to pull off The Great Gatsby without it being a total disaster.

***1/2 out of ***** stars

What F. Scott Fitzgerald Had Against Jelly Beans

An odd thing: Over the years, I've read hundreds of short stories by a handful of my favorite authors (Poe, Vonnegut, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Capote). But, other than a few select classics, I rarely remember them.

One of the reasons I started Pop Culture Lunch Box was to jot down things I should remember from the things I read, watch, or see. Kind of like an, uh, journal. So my next endeavor is to reread F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tales of the Jazz Age and try to remember it so I never have to read any of its lesser short stories. (As a bonus, the Kindle edition is free at Amazon, even though the Library Journal review there curiously calls the collection "nice if you can afford it.")

The first story, "The Jellybean," takes place in small-town Georgia and was apparently co-written by Fitzgerald's wife Zelda. The Jelly Bean is 21-year-old Jim Powell, who is immediately described as an unappealing character coming home from the war in trousers that are too short and too tight.

He is invited to a party with his childhood friend Clark Darrow. Clark has lived a full social life and is a sought-after commodity by the ladies, while Jim is completely stunted and detests girls just as he had as a boy before the war. At the party, Clark asks Jim if he thinks Nancy Lamar, a girl who does "crazy stunts" and is dating the son of the owner of a safety-razor company, looks beautiful.

Somehow, Jim and Nancy end up sharing some strong drinks and a chat later in the evening. It's not long before she kicks aside her chair and stands up to announce her devoted love to Jim Powell - whom she calls King of the Jelly Beans - to the entire party.

Well, Nancy is obviously very drunk and that's pretty much where her night ends. But Jelly Bean leaves the party and walks the streets thinking about a successful woman Nancy had told him about and how unmotivated he'd been so far in life. He later tells Clark that he has decided to stop being a bum, go fix up his aunt's farm, and start a family.

But just a little while later, Jim the Jelly Bean turns into a pool hall on Jackson Street "where he was sure to find a congenial crowd who would make all the old jokes - the ones he knew."

This is a pretty depressing story, but at the same time, it's a brilliant look into how delusional we can be. Moments of brilliance and great ideas often flash past us, but only the truly motivated people turn those moments into something substantial. The other people are, well, jelly beans, which I guess in Fitzgerald's world means the ordinary people who don't stand out in a crowd in any way and float through life as just another jelly bean in the jar.

**** out of ***** stars

Midnight in Paris a Literary and Artistic Delight

Midnight in Paris would land somewhere in the middle of my list of the best Woody Allen films. The famed director is clearly still at the top of his game, with the only difference from his work of the 1970s being that other people besides him play the "Woody Allen role."

This time it's Owen Wilson as the neurotic protagonist. He does a great job navigating an era (1920s Flapper expat Paris) that has been fascinating to me ever since my two favorite novels became F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises.

And the performances of the actors who play the legends of that time are wonderful. When Owen Wilson, playing an L.A. screenwriter on an extended vacation to the City of Lights with his non-supportive fiancee and her lousy rich parents, slips into a time warp each night, he comes alive befriending the likes of a respectively sensitive and crazy F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, a surreal Salvador Dali, an unthoughtful Pablo Picasso, an artistic guru Gertrude Stein, and a rowdy Hemingway (with this movie released in a timely way, close to the 50th anniversary of Hemingway's Idaho suicide).

Allen's brilliance balances on his humor (Side Effects and Without Feathers are still two of the greatest comedy essay collections ever known to mankind) and his insight into how the times we live in never seem as interesting as other historical periods. We're disillusioned, and that's a big part of what makes Midnight in Paris so timeless.

Not to mention, the opening sequence is almost as good as a round-trip ticket to Paris. All the sights are included.

**** out of ***** stars