the longest night, the answer is never: a skateboarder's history of the world, goodbye tsugumi

[October 30th, 2002] the longest night
by David J. Eicher
(Touchstone, 990 pages, $22)

By one estimate, more than 70,000 books have been published about the Civil War: some about individual units or commanders, others about individual battles or even individual days of individual battles. So it's a highly specialized, well-trodden field in which the historian must toil to contribute anything new. David J. Eicher accomplishes something altogether more difficult here: a riveting single-volume military history of the entire Civil War. He succeeds.

Eicher covers each battle of the war in chronological order, cutting back and forth between the eastern and western theaters and interspersing his narrative with brief interludes on such topics as the complexities of rank, unit organization, and differences in artillery and ballistics. Eicher overlooks nothing, offering a valuable counterpoint to such works as Shelby Foote's elegantly written but thematically flawed three-volume history, which perpetuates the myth of the superior Southern fighting man and lionizes Confederate generals.

Eicher shows in battle after battle how both sides suffered almost the same number of casualties and committed the same strategic blunders, regardless of the victor. In fact, in key battles such as First Bull Run and the Seven Days campaign, the victorious South actually lost more men than the vanquished Federals, casualties the vastly outnumbered Confederacy could, in the long run, ill afford. Eicher also clears up some common misconceptions, such as the notion that the Union might have ended the war shortly after Gettysburg if only Gen. George Meade hadn't let Lee's retreating army get away, when in fact both sides were badly mauled and almost completely out of ammunition.

In Eicher's analysis, the Civil War was not a romantic saga of outsized Confederate heroes succumbing inexorably to a modern, mechanized North but a frightful, industrialized slaughter. Matt Buckingham

the answer is never: a skateboarder's history of the world
by Jocko Weyland
(Grove Press, 337 pages, $13.50)

The Answer Is Never: A Skateboarder's History of the World is a rare work, overflowing with author Jocko Weyland's passion for the lifestyle, music, and philosophy of skateboarding. As an added bonus, the first two chapters are clumsily written enough to discourage further reading by the feebs and hipsters who never should have cracked the cover of this beast in the first place. Soft rock-listening pedestrians are sure to grow tired with what begins as a dry recollection of skateboarding's early roots, starting with the birth of the cosmos. If you're unenthralled by prose like, "From the instant of the singularity that began the universe, movement has been a constant," you're welcome to read cereal boxes.

Though it feels at first as if Jocko is just going through the motions in order to make good on the subtitle, the persistent reader is happily rewarded. What follows is the moving story of Jocko's own immersion into skating: a curb-grinding, punk-rocking, no-bullshit-taking, balls-out shut-up-and-skate life history. The appeal of the book is due in large part to this matter-of-fact storytelling, with its "this was cool but that was lame" vibe.

It's precisely this attitude that brings to life his openly biased yet genuine account of skateboarding's ongoing evolution. After the Dogtown heyday of the '70s and before Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2, there was some kid in Asswater, Colo., shoveling a foot of snow off his ramp in the middle of winter. And now there is this book, written by that kid, who is still, to this day, floored by the narcotic feeling of freedom imparted by a four-wheeled board. Mike Campbell

goodbye tsugumi

by Banana Yoshimoto, translated by Michael Emmerich
(Grove Press, 186 pages, $22)

A tale about childhood's end and the bonds that endure afterward, Goodbye Tsugumi is similar in its subtle, simple execution to many of Yoshimoto's other short stories and novels--a trademarked style that's widely applauded in international literary circles, as well as among self-proclaimed "Bananamania" enthusiasts.

Yoshimoto's narrative contains an innocence that mirrors the naiveté of many of the novel's characters as it follows the story of Maria, a young woman who returns to a coastal inn where she grew up with her cousins for one final summer. One cousin, Tsugumi, is terminally ill and a termagant to boot, constantly terrorizing a family that continues to withstand such abuse because of her unnamed condition.

Unfortunately, not much else happens, and so the novel seems drawn out since there is not much of a plot to drive it. While the narrative is rich in its depiction of Japan's coastal landscape and rural culture, much of the dialogue of Goodbye Tsugumi seems forced and contrived in an effort to emphasize the youth of the characters. Because of this lack of plot substance, Yoshimoto relies heavily on her signature descriptive narrative style to carry the weight of a novel that would have been much better suited to a short story. Kim Colton