Grapes and Gripes: Sideways by Rex Pickett

Mark on my list About Schmidt and Sideways as two of my favorite movies, both directed by Alexander Payne (I’ve yet to see Election). Nevertheless, when I had the chance to read the book Sideways after seeing the movie, I was skeptical. The author’s notes did not help – Rex Pickett comments on how Payne adhered pretty closely to the novel. Thus, a part of me was nagging and pessimistic, insisting that this would be a less enjoyable escapade than the film.

At first I was thrown off from my low expectations. The opening scene is hilarious with rambunctious interactions ensuing between the lead, Miles, and his fellow oenophiles at their regular wine-tasting hub. The dialogue is sharp and witty, as the characters bite into each other. The action and commotion is thrilling. Miles’ friend Jack shows up and they’re set to go on their trip, with more to come. I thought, hey, maybe there is something to this book that I couldn’t get from the film.

Unfortunately, three-hundred pages later, I learned my mistake. The cynical, jibing dialogue gets old very quick. The protagonist becomes an annoying friend, who overdoes the witticisms and depresses the hell out of you. And Jack’s tumbles and falls aren’t as funny as they could have been, after seeing it on the screen. One thing appeared glossed over: Miles rats out Jack’s impending marriage, but never gets found out by Jack. Then there is this whole bizarre episode with a hillbilly stranger they meet and go boar hunting with, only to find out that he is slightly psychotic, taking shots at them. Entirely gratuitous. Granted, when Miles engorges himself with the spit bucket after discovering his busted book deal, the hilarity is just as intense as the film, but the relationships in the book aren’t as fully developed between the men and women as they could have been. Jack and Miles is well done, but Miles and Maya wasn’t as great of a ride. Plus, the dynamic of Miles and his mother whom he filches from is lost later in the novel. His plagues as a poor struggling writer turn him into a caricature rather than a character.

I was able to interact with the book on a different level after seeing the cinematic version, interested in the changes Payne, his producers and screenplay writers made and the rationale for those changes. I noticed on the basis of the book, they consolidated various scenes, moved around of characters, and made an intriguing decision to cast an Asian woman (Sandra Oh) as Jack’s paramour, Terra. I think it was a wise decision and provides fodder for good discussion about race and culture. In fact, all four main characters were not nearly as attractive in the film as they were described in the novel.

I am mostly certain that the wine critiques from Miles, Terra, and Maya are legit and that Pickett conducted extensive research. In these parts, the language is inventive and I feel as though I’m listening to a trustworthy wine connoisseur. Harmless fun to read, convivial and proffering tidbits about wine, the novel is a good summer read on the beach with a cold bottle of Chardonnay, though I’m more of Pinot guy myself.

Poet Brief: Khaled Mattawa

Born in Libya, and migrating to the United States for a college education and MFA, Mattawa currently teaches at the MFA program at Michigan. He never left his heritage behind, as his poems are infused with references to Middle-eastern places and practices along with commentary (usually not positive) on American culture. I appreciate his sense of irony and dark humor, as well as his sharp criticisms of societies, governments, and human nature as a whole, its history being anything but flattery.



His series, “Echo and Elixir,” includes engrossing poems that are absurd but so pressingly relevant. Without rhyme or any rigid structure, the poems still resonate with life and a strong rhythm. They are quickly paced and make twists and turns that can leave the reader behind if he or she does not keep up. I love the figuring of the discussion between the speaker and cab driver in this poem – the figurative treatment of language and the ballsy references to historic events.

Echo & Elixir 2

Cairo’s taxi drivers speak to me in English.
I answer, and they say your Arabic is good.
How long have you been with us? All my life
I tell them, but I’m never believed.
They speak to me in Farsi, speak to me in Greek,
and I answer with mountains of gold and silver,
ghost ships sailing the weed-choked seas.
And when they speak to me in Spanish,
I say Moriscos and Alhambra
I say Jews rescued by Ottoman boats.
And when they speak to me in Portuguese,
all my life I tell them, coffee, cocoa,
Indians and poisoned spears.
I say Afonsso king of Bikongo writing
Manuel to free his enslaved sons.
And Cairo’s taxi drivers tell me
your Arabic is surprisingly good.
Then they speak to me in Italian,
and I tell them how I lay swaddled
a month’s walk from here. I tell them
camps in the desert, barbed wire, wives
and daughters dying, camels frothing disease
the sand stretching an endless pool
And they say so good so good.
How long have you been with us?
All my life, but I’m never believed.
Then they speak to me in French,
and I answer Jamila, Leopold, Stanley,
baskets of severed hands and feet.
I say the horror, battles of Algiers.
And they speak to me in English
and I say Lucknow, Arbenz. I say indigo,
Hiroshima, continents soaked in tea.
I play the drum beat of stamps. I invoke
Mrs. Cummings, U.S. consul in Athens,
I say Ishi, Custer, Wounded Knee.
And Cairo’s taxi drivers tell me
your Arabic is unbelievably good.
Tell the truth now, tell the truth,
how long have you been with us?
I say my first name is little lion,
my last name is broken branch.
I sing “Happiness uncontainable”
and “fields greening in March”
until I’m sad and tired of truth,
and as usual I’m never believed.
Then they lead me through congestion,
gritty air, narrow streets crowded with
Pepsi and Daewoo and the sunken faces
of the poor. And when we arrive, Cairo’s
taxi drivers and I speak all the languages
of the world, and we argue and argue about
corruption, disillusionment, the missed chances,
the wicked binds, the cataclysmic fares.

Poet Brief: Julianne Buchsbaum

Presently a graduate student down in Missouri, Julianne Buchsbaum has already produced some fascinating poetry. Her poems contain evocative language and there is no wasted movement as she makes unnerving observations. Highly intelligent poems that make effective, but not erudite, allusions, mostly to Greek and Roman mythology. Phonetically, some of her poems soar, such as “Slowly, Slowly Horses.” The opening stanzas almost always hook you in, such as in the poem “Thrillsville”:

When the mind begins to see the lies it loves
with eyes that could have looked elsewhere,
old pain repullulates. Errors of architecture,

errors of eros, the train ride out is not
the train ride in. Is this the kind of life
you left us for? No one has a face in the dark.

Buchsbaum’s poems have a kinetic energy, but also a shade of darkness that entangles the readers. Following is one of her harrowing pieces with stark imagery and a beautiful commingling sense of dread and positive urgency.



Clouds Swell Out

The finale of fall hangs in yellow clusters.
You can't muster

the drive required for potent acts—to hide
like the cat who eyed

each skittering leaf and churring sparrow from
a dark sanctum,

frozen, invisible, dumb—such is your will.
The world is ill

with demands it can't meet; hence, the crickets'
deaths, the rosettes

of rot, the dusky clusters, and flourishing worms.
All this confirms

your wish to divorce yourself from the vista
and phenomena

of autumn which looms from raw branches a dark
afternoon. The stark

landscape deepening its shadowed dales cannot
stray a lot

from the invincible doctrine, though owls moan
misgivings. Alone,

you watch a jet's contrail zip open the sky
and the high

clouds swell out like huge, snowy hearts disgorged.