Read the The Throwback Special by Chris Bachelder this past weekend. It’s good. Smart. The book is about a group of men who have been getting together for years to re-enact the gruesome play where Joe Theismann had his leg broken by Lawrence Taylor on Monday Night Football. It’s a funny idea, and the object of satire here is less football or fandom than middle-aged men, always a ripe target for comedy. The book reads like a literary cousin to a m Gaffigan stand-up routine (I mean this as a compliment, FYI. Although if the book’s punches drew more blood, I might have compared it to a Louis CK special.)
Bachelder will have you reading his best bits out loud to the nearest person. I recommend a graffiti-ed story that one of the characters writes on the hotel’s pristine bathroom wall. Much is great here, even though many of the 22 reenactors blur into one another, and as do their disappointments. Also, the book, at a brisk 224 pages, takes care of its business a little too quickly.
But Bachelder captures well that feeling of arriving at an age where you see your letdowns more clearly than your possibilities. For these characters the break didn’t manifest as sharply as it did for Joe Theismann, but they know they’re on the other side of it all the same.
My dad actually gave me the book last year, but I only cracked it recently, in part because I don’t like the anthology format, specifically the way it condenses distinct works into a homogenous run. Also, I don’t like to read books by the same author one after the other, because in my mind they tend to blur together. Currently I am slow-reading my way through the works of Patricia Highsmith, and also John McPhee’s five geology books, but I am limiting myself to one a year of each.
One Man Against the World, by Tim Weiner. I mention Tim not just because, like my wife, he has the last name Weiner and once worked for the Philadelphia Inquirer. There’s more! In college I read (and loved) Jonathan Schell’s book about the Nixon presidency, The Time of Illusion. Tim’s new history has received great reviews and is supposed to go even deeper into some of the strangest days ever in White House.
Bourbon Empire, by Reid Mitenbuler. A history of the bourbon industry, which contains enough drama that the book has been optioned for a television series. Reid and I were lodged at the same hotel and shared many rides together in Annapolis. He came across as thoughtful, decent, diligent, and best of all he assured me that, because the process of creating bourbon is relatively simple, there isn’t great difference between the high-end gourmet bourbons and more reasonably priced brands such as Wild Turkey and Jim Beam. I don’t drink a ton of bourbon, but I am a cheapskate, which means I welcome any information which reveals luxury to be a myth.
Thirst, by Benjamin Warner. A literary thriller in which all the non-bottled water vanishes from the Earth. Benjamin was on my panel. He was clear-eyed and calm and just seemed like a guy who would write a good book. This may seem like an inane way to judge literary possibilities—according to the histories, a great many masterpieces were penned by asswipes. But I would like for my theory to be true, and so I am going to act as if it is.
On Saturday April 16 at 2:30 p.m. I will be appearing at the 
But with a mystery or thriller, if I make it past those early pages I’m usually in until the end, whereas in literary fiction, there’s a greater chance I will drop out midway through. More than once I’ve begun books dazzled by a writer’s talents, only to bang the gong because I felt like I was unlikely to get anything at page 456 that I hadn’t experienced by page 118. These books felt more like a flavor than a story. And I need a story.
Bill Syken 