Our critics weigh in on the best new books, CDs, and DVDs.

BOOK
Herbert Gold: Still Alive!
(Arcade)
Herbert Gold belongs to a generation of writers whose lives have passed into legend. A colleague of Norman Mailer and Saul Bellow, he’s one of the last survivors—and the leading San Francisco exponent—of a time when writing was heroic. Gold’s literary reputation firmly rests on acclaimed novels such as Fathers (1966) and A Girl of Forty (1986). His powerful new memoir will certainly add to his standing as a major post–World War II American writer. This unusually insightful and eloquent essay-cum-autobiography is also destined to become an essential record of the San Fran­cisco beatnik and hippie eras. Gold’s account, keenly observed and mellowed by critical distance, cuts through the usual nostalgic pabulum: “After the unending Summer of Love ended,” he writes, “foreboding clouds gathered over the Autumn of Love, and folks were feeling angry in addition to groovy—irritated about parking meters, speed bumps…abuse of food stamps; they were angry about not really ruling their own lives, as they had planned, after a season in which Free was the mantra.” Gold’s honesty about the past extends to the present, and some of the bravest writing in this memoir concerns his grappling with life as an octogenarian. “Still writing?” people often ask when they see him in a North Beach café, as if putting words on paper required the heroic energy of youth. Gold is still writing, showing that heroism has nothing to do with age, and everything to do with courage. A
JONATHON KEATS

CD
GARRICK OHLSSON: BEETHOVEN SONATAS
(Bridge)
Beethoven’s greatness lies in his ability to communicate the full range of humanity’s grand passions while honoring the heart’s subtle shifts of emotion. Taking on all 32 of his piano sonatas presents a supreme opportunity for pianists to demonstrate the breadth of their emotional and technical mastery. San Francisco resident Garrick Ohlsson is among the latest to embrace the challenge. He began his Beethoven Sonata project in 1992, almost a quarter-century after becoming the only American to win first prize at the pre­stigious Chopin International Piano Competition in Warsaw, then interrupted the project after recording four volumes. As Ohlsson turns 60, Bridge Records is rereleasing those four recordings, interspersed with six newly recorded volumes of the remaining sonatas. Listen to “Waldstein,” Op. 53, on Volume 5, which features three of the most popular “name” sonatas, and discover Ohlsson’s ability to create an atmosphere of holy stillness, then summon forth a rainbow of sounds that declares pure triumph. On Volume 4, Ohlsson’s rendition of Sonata No. 12, Op. 26, cascades from joy to funereal profundity and back again. Facile attempts to pigeon­hole his approach as “romantic” fall flat in the face of artistry that mixes soul-touching revelation and unbridled delight in equal measure. We can’t yet assess the entire project, but what’s available so far declares “major musical force.” A-
JASON VICTOR SERINUS

BOOK
Sylvia Brownrigg: Morality Tale
(Counterpoint Press)
In her modest but unexpectedly moving fourth novel, Sylvia Brownrigg explores adultery through the troubles of a disappointed second wife. Her unnamed narrator is swept off her feet by a married man whom she meets in a Bay Area coffee shop while working halfheartedly on a book she calls her Dictionary of Betrayal. The novel opens five years after this passion­ate encounter has devolved into a betrayal of its own: a bitter and joyless marriage weighed down by two truculent stepchildren and their enraged mother. The mistress-turned-wife gives up on her book, takes a job at a stationery store, and finds herself drawn to a chubby, jolly envelope salesman whose lunch invitations soon give way to romantic notes and declarations of passion. Brownrigg, who lives in Berkeley and is perhaps best known for her novel The Metaphysical Touch (1999), never reveals more of the narrator’s heart than the narrator understands herself, so much of our pleasure comes from a shared, unfolding aware­ness that this affair is as much about her husband as about her would-be lover. She, like the reader, gradually begins to understand that the real questions are, “Where was my husband in all this?” and “What was I thinking?” B+
SHEERLY AVNI

BLOG
Reflections of a Newsosaur
(newsosaur.blogspot.com)
Whither the newspaper? It’s an urgent question in media circles as profits drop, circulations shrink, and layoffs gut every paper from the Chronicle to the Times. Most of us are too busy surfing news blogs, job hunting online, and otherwise hastening the industry’s slide into the abyss to notice, but Alan Mutter has been paying attention. This veteran news­man turned Silicon Valley CEO of several startups—he’s now the managing partner of Tapit Partners, a sort of consultancy for tech entrepreneurs—is old enough to remember when the dailies led the national conversation, and realistic enough to declare that the industry is probably “stumbling to extinction.” Depressing stuff, but Mutter’s sharp writing, dry wit, and exquisitely calibrated bull­shit detector ensure that his blog is more than a newsy deathwatch. His posts are peppered with insider analysis (why Rupert Murdoch is more savior than Satan), news ethics questions (would you have printed that ridiculous piece about Burmese pythons invading Oklahoma?), and encomiums to the glory days (Mutter worked alongside legendary Chicago columnist Mike Royko). Time and again, though, Mutter returns to his main theme: Can the newspaper survive? Maybe, he answers—but not without great effort, lots of luck, and a fervent embrace of new technologies. He is not optimistic. “Normally, those who do not learn the lessons of history are condemned to repeat them,” he writes. “In this case, newspapers won’t get the chance. History simply will obliterate them.” A
CHRIS SMITH

DVD
The Dirty Harry Ultimate Collector’s Edition Box Set
(Warner Home Video)
For a while, back when bad polyester pants weren’t worn ironically, Dirty Harry was the hero San Francisco deserved: the potent antiestablishment advocate for victims’ rights and fighter against bureaucratic law-enforcement corruption. As played by Clint Eastwood, employing his most laconic, flinty-squinty wit, Harry Calla­han of the SFPD had two basic modes of expression—silent seething and jocular intolerance—and punctuated the transitions between them with the occasional well-aimed blast of a .44 Magnum. Watch the films in this newly released and handsomely appointed seven-disc set—Dirty Harry (1971), Magnum Force (1973), The Enforcer (1976), Sudden Impact (1983), and The Dead Pool (1988)—not just for nostalgia, but for hints of the political pendulum swings and world­view complications that Eastwood would later deploy to praiseworthy effect as a director. Did you remember, for instance, that the famously pitiless Callahan actually hugs small children in Magnum Force, and spends the rest of the movie pitting himself against vigilante cops? Maybe it’s from this sequel’s other-side-of-the-coin approach that Eastwood figured out his strategy for Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima—namely, that the best way to dramatize a black-and-white moral code is to devote whole movies to its shades of gray.­ B+
JONATHAN KIEFER