New page-turners

Squalor, rock, and cooking lead the pack

by Matt Ashare

Between Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, which has been a best-seller for so long now that John Gray is finally turning it into a one-man show on Broadway in January, and Ellen Fein and Sherrie Schneider's ubiquitous The Rules, it's pretty clear that most Americans really don't know the first thing about how to screw up a relationship. But Maggie Estep, a Lower East Side loudmouth who's spent the past four or five years rising to prominence in New York's hip spoken-word scene with a rap that mixes comedy, social criticism, and an intense in-your-face delivery, is something of an expert on that particular subject. The battle of the dysfunctional sexes has long been a focus of her pseudo-autobiographical monologues. And now it's the inspiration for her first novel -- Diary of an Emotional Idiot (Harmony Books) -- which should add a little spice to reading lists when it hits the stores in March.

With a scathingly cynical sense of humor that recalls Mark Leyner's literate rants, and a deep appreciation for the absurdities of human behavior à la Will Self, Estep chronicles one afternoon in the paranoid mind of a young ex-junkie who is obsessed with her ex-lovers. Her name is Zoe, and her talents include writing porn novels, working as a receptionist at an S&M dungeon, and eavesdropping on her neighbors in a rundown Lower East Side apartment building. Drawing on the confrontational style of her spoken-word routines, Estep builds Zoe from a fragmented collecting of humorous, sometimes disgusting anecdotes (a bowel-wrenching experience with dried apricots comes to mind) and clever spoofs like the "Idiots Anonymous" group founded by Zoe and her equally messed-up friends. As for The Rules, well, let's just say that Zoe breaks every single one of them with decisive conviction and generally appalling, yet entertaining results.

In early 1996, David Foster Wallace impressed, annoyed, and, more than anything, challenged readers with Infinite Jest, a sprawling 1088-page epic work of fiction, replete with almost 400 footnotes, labyrinth upon labyrinth of subplots, and a cast of characters large enough to rival García Márquez's 100 Years of Solitude. Set in a not-so-distant, fantastic future of international conspiracies, filled with delirious wordplay and long, winding sentences, it marked Wallace as the possible heir to the legacy of Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow.

The next eagerly anticipated work from Wallace should be a lot easier handle. A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again (Little, Brown) is a collection of non-fiction stories, chronicling, among other things, a trip Wallace took on a cruise liner and the time he spent as a young adult, competing as a nationally ranked tennis player. It is, mercifully, only 384 pages from cover to cover.

The term "women in rock" has been tossed around so much over the past few years that it's all but lost its relevance. The editors at Rolling Stone will attempt to revive it this March with Trouble Girls: The Rolling Stone Book of Women in Rock, a 448-page tome that traces the history of women's impact on popular music from the blues through punk, rap, and alternative rock. Edited by Barbara O'Dair, a former deputy music editor at Rolling Stone, the collection features essays by an all-female cast of rock critics, including Ann Powers, Danyel Smith, Mim Udovitch, Donna Gaines, Terri Sutton, Carol Cooper, Holly George-Warren, Karen Schoemer, and Amy Linden. The book profiles everyone from Bonnie Raitt and Carol King to Nico, P.J. Harvey, and Madonna, with photographs, all 175 of them, shot exclusively by women.

With the expansion and remodeling of his popular East Coast Grill in Cambridge completed, local celebrity chef Chris Schlesinger and his writing partner John Willoughby are gearing up for the publication of his fifth cookbook just in time for the next outdoor grilling season. License to Grill (Morrow), which is being billed as the follow-up to the duo's popular Thrill of the Grill, is weighted less toward meats and more in favor of less traditionally grill-worthy fare like fruits ("grilled oranges with hoisin glaze") and breads ("grilled black pepper flatbread"). Like the new East Coast Grill menu, it also features a selection of lighter items, from seafood dishes like a almond-crusted grilled salmon to grilled ratatouille. Which only leaves more room for a piece of caramelized banana-lime tart at the end of the meal.