Here We Are Now; Worst.Person.Ever; Johnny Carson; And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks

"Here We Are Now" by Charles R. Cross was a quick look at the lasting impact of Kurt Cobain on music and pop culture in general, 20 years after his death (in case you didn't feel old enough already...). I of course had to skip over all the suicide nonsense, but the rest of the book was interesting.

"Worst.Person.Ever" by Douglas Coupland was hilarious. I remember reading "Microserfs"  when it came out almost 20 years ago (again, with the feeling old...) and adoring it. I've read most of Coupland's work since, and some have been okay and others better, but this one was really great. Raymond Grunt is hired to work the camera on a Survivor type show set on a remote island. Raymond doesn't understand why awful things keep happening to him, but they are well deserved. It was very darkly humorous.

"Johnny Carson" by Henry Bushkin was revelation. I don't know much about Carson, but boy, he certainly sounds like a not very pleasant individual. Bushkin was his lawyer and friend, business partner and confidant, for over two decades before Carson tossed him aside over a misunderstanding. The book felt a little bit like Bushkin was finally getting the chance to tell his side of the story, but I get that. Anyway, Carson died alone, estranged from his wife and sons, with no real friends in the world. Very sad ending to great entertainer.

"And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks" by Williams S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac was much better than I was expecting. After reading that bio of Burroughs a few weeks ago I was keen to read some of his fiction, and this was one I hadn't read. It was published in 2008. Burroughs and Kerouac collaborated on it in the mid 1940s. Based on true events, it tells the story of Lucien Carr and David Kammerer (their real names, they used different ones in the book). Kerouac wrote the Mike Ryko scenes and Burroughs wrote the Will Dennison scenes, telling about their friends and their reactions to the murder of one by the other from their points of view. Out of respect for Lucien Carr, who went to prison and rehabilitated his life, the book wasn't published until after his death, although Burroughs and Kerouac tried to publish it earlier, when they wrote it. It was so readable, much more so than many of their individual works I've read in the past ("On the Road", I'm looking at you). I was surprised at how clean and straightforward the storytelling was, and how much I enjoyed both of their writing styles. What made it doubly fascinating for me was knowing how much Burroughs despised Kerouac towards the end of Kerouac's life, and how he didn't want anything to do with him. That they were able to create this together was impressive.