Man Bites Log: The Unlikely Adventures of a City Guy in the Woods - Softcover

Alexander, Max

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0786714123 ISBN 13: 9780786714124

Publisher: Carroll & Graf, 2004

Synopsis

Max Alexander had been the executive editor of Variety and was the senior editor at People magazine in charge of all Hollywood coverage, when he decided one day that the glitz of Tinseltown and the glamour of New York didn’t quite hold the allure they once had. So Alexander turned down yet another fancy magazine job, and family in tow, moved to a farmhouse in rural Maine, where he suddenly found himself forced to confront neighbors who “speak slowly but are hard to understand, and drive slower but are impossible to pass.” In the course of this both sobering and hilarious how-not-to, Alexander covers the gamut, from doing his best to avoid burning down the barn, and occasional intrusions from his previous life, to what E.B. White calls the “basic satisfaction of farming”—manure. Approaching what passes for small-town life in rural New England with the gusto and nose for a scoop of a seasoned Hollywood reporter, Alexander puts a new spin on the tradition launched by Thoreau’s reportage from Walden. Man Bites Log is an essential collection for readers of back-to-the-land literature, and anyone convinced that la dolce vita can be found in a pile of dung.

About this title

About the Author

Max Alexander is an author, journalist, onetime farmer and failed politician. Failure is in fact a central theme in his books, which have been called "how-not-tos," although many of his subjects refuse to cooperate and actually make something of themselves, against all odds. His latest book, "Bright Lights, No City," chronicles a three-year adventure in the West African country of Ghana, where his entrepreneur brother has been attempting to launch a new for-profit business providing innovative goos and services to low-income customers. Alexander is a former senior editor at People magazine in New York and, before that, the executive editor of Variety and Daily Variety, the showbiz trade publications, in Los Angeles. His writing—on topics ranging from crime to adventure—appears in dozens of publications including Smithsonian, Saveur, Prevention, This Old House and The New York Times. In addition, Alexander has edited books by such notable authors as George Plimpton and film critic David Thomson. He is currently working on a book about China. He lives with his wife and two sons in an 1816 center-chimney Cape in midcoast Maine.

From Publishers Weekly

A hotshot entertainment editor (at Variety and later People) chucks corner offices in New York and L.A. and phone calls from Warren Beatty to burn brush and butcher pigs in Maine and lives to tell about it. City slicker–in-the-woods has been done before, as Alexander readily admits, but it's done here with honesty, charm and a good dose of self-deprecation. In short essays originally published in the Portland Phoenix, Alexander tells how, in the late 1990s, he moved to Maine with his family to get away from "the frayed excess" of city life; he ended up, as the local plumber put it, in "a real shit sandwich" of a house on 150 semiwooded acres. While Alexander continues freelance writing, he also dedicates himself to becoming a small-time farmer. Not surprisingly, the local residents—hardworking, taciturn and thrifty ("When folks in my town heard that a teaspoonful of anthrax could wipe out the whole state, they appreciated its frugality")—are the heroes of the book, teaching Alexander what he needs to know. Alexander, in turn, does his part by running for selectman, which reinforces his "sense of place." This is a wise, enjoyable chronicle of the search for a meaningful life: "to both fight and surrender in the same moment. It's as good a recipe as any for living well."
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About this edition

• Publisher: Carroll & Graf
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0786714123
• ISBN 13: 9780786714124
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 263