tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-46963008948718657442024-03-13T13:22:31.224-07:00The Dusty Anachronism Book ClubWhere I used to write about fiction, and now infrequently repost other people doing so. Sigh. and yay.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger19125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4696300894871865744.post-27114774838592037342020-02-08T15:58:00.000-08:002020-02-08T15:58:00.140-08:00More book ideas here...Sticky post:<br /><br />Anyone got suggestions for future books to read, whack them here for post-Gravity's Rainbow, if it hasn't killed our desire ever to pick up a book again.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4696300894871865744.post-59340438316477699622011-02-14T16:53:00.001-08:002011-02-14T16:53:52.366-08:00In the meantime...<p>Mirrorball by Mary Gaitskill.</p><p>http://pantheon.knopfdoubleday.com/2009/04/22/featured-short-story-mirrorball-by-mary-gaitskill/<br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4696300894871865744.post-29328317200711376052010-11-26T07:07:00.001-08:002010-12-15T15:05:07.922-08:00This blog is now...<span style="font-size:130%;">seriously on hiatus. Fo' reals. I've got a novel to write...</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4696300894871865744.post-56820655949692131882010-03-16T07:16:00.000-07:002011-03-15T16:09:33.414-07:00David Bell vs. The Lamberts<span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Back! 'The Corrections' demands a re-reading. I remember it being brilliant & compelling and want to figure out why. Anyone up for joining in, that's fantastic, though I'm cool to go it alone...</span></span><div><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">EDIT: Nothing is happening here because I re-read 'the Corrections', then read Don DeLillo's first novel 'Americana'. Now I'm re-reading 'Americana'. It's fascinating...almost talismanic. DeLillo's writing is so straightforward and simple and yet epic. Its meanings are as infinite as your imagination can make them... (except when DeLillo starts ranting about how technology's 'storms of passion and static' have made us all dumb. That's just classic DeLillo technoparanoia).</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">It's probably rare these days to compare some rusty 1971 debut novel favourably to Franzen's more recent masterpiece (at least, the one that stands in this place until his newest opus arrives forthwith), but I came across it, on a bookshelf otherwise rammed full of socialist tracts and grim postmodern theory, at just the right time, and that's what made the difference. It suits my itchy, dissatisfied soul; it suits the music i'm listening to, the places that pull me. It resonates on a far deeper level. 'The Corrections' made me both laugh and cry a lot. It seemed to lay out exactly what was going on in reality, and that was great. Addictive enough for 500+ pages. But when it was over, I was happy to leave its characters there in freeze-frame. I didn't have any burning questions about 'em. They didn't stay with me. They were brilliantly depicted but by the end, 'The Corrections' is overexposure. I couldn't stand another thought of the Lamberts. Their reality had closed in on me enough, I felt I knew every corner of it, and that it wasn't taking me anywhere other than a brilliantly expert vision of conventional tragicomic catharsis. </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">And so, to the Jodorowskian 'Americana'. The reality you can slip into whilst reading one novel might be truthful and accurate for someone else, and beautifully rendered, so you can temporarily inhabit it enough to care about it tremendously - but it's not going to last, because it's several shades away from what </span></span><i><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">you</span></span></i><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> understand is what is invisibly going on; your own deeper reality. Then you come across a novel - or music - that articulates it better; one that tells you far more, more subtly, about those things you weren't conscious of but knew you were looking for. 'Americana' is that novel, at least right now. It's a rare novel that I put down and there's no music I can find to listen to that can possibly reach the place the novel has taken me.</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">'</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">(to be continued....if I have the time - with high falutin' references to Mario Vargas Llosa's wonderful 'Letters to a Young Novelist')...</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4696300894871865744.post-39460436110357937472010-01-31T13:28:00.000-08:002011-03-15T16:11:09.564-07:00hiatus<span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">The blog's going on hiatus - I have other priorities and kind of need all the time I can get right now for them, so I'm dropping the stuff that's not necessary. China Mieville's 'The City & The City' was, however, faithfully polished off this morning and it's a satisfying novel – but time and more interesting comments elude me right now. I could talk about its staggering inventiveness, but s</span></span><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">urfing around on the net, I seem to be the only person who thinks the Beszel/Ul Qoma superimposition is explicable by quantum theory anyway (and thus is tantalizingly clever)...and I haven’t got the time to geek out over this more cos it would take ages.</span></span><div><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"></span></span><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">So there ya go. I love writing about novels I'm reading but right now need to dedicate the small amount of free time I have to other creative endeavours. Thanks to Rav, Doug, Lettie, Chin, Kat, Phil and everyone who's contributing but on the whole, I can't whip up enough permanent collective or personal time or interest to be as devoted as I'd like. innit x</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></span><div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 15px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 15px; font-family:Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:11px;"><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 3px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 20px; padding-left: 0px; "><br /></p></span></div></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4696300894871865744.post-61138335047464029542009-11-30T04:06:00.000-08:002011-03-15T15:10:06.203-07:00'The End of Mr Y' - Scarlett Thomas<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span></span><span style="color:black;"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">The question on everyone's lips in</span></span><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span></span></span><span style="color:black;"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Brown's broken </span></span><st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Britain</span></span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> is "is Scarlett Thomas's 'The End of Mr Y' worth reading? Well, is it?" It’s a good ‘un. Pertinent. You can't walk into a bookshop without a 3 for 2 offer featuring 'Mr Y' waving its arms around at you. Making it my personal mission to answer it, I read all 506 pages of ‘Mr Y’ ages ago and then absconded from my self-imposed citizenly duties by going and hiding in a basement in the former German Democratic Republic for a month. I can only apologise. </span></span></span><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span></span><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:black;"><o:p><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Anyway, now I'm back and the novel has turned to dust in my 'undermind' (whatever that is), it's time to give it what for. And then gratuitously mention Saul Bellow.</span></span></o:p></span></p><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span></span><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:black;"><o:p><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Evidence in favour of the novel being good:</span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span></span></span><span class="yshortcuts"><span style="cursor:pointer" id="lw_1259573685_1"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Scarlett Thomas</span></span></span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">is the only British female novelist currently writing thrillers that mix Derrida with sadomasochism, time-travel, the nature of reality, alternate universes, subatomic theory, being chased by CIA agents and a 'gimmick symbol' (Birkbeck elderly word-nerd slang) of a cursed book that promises all who read it will die.</span></span></o:p></span></p><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span></span><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:black;"><o:p><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Evidence of so-what-ness: Um...I kinda think the DABC is under a curse of its own, cos since Junot Diaz' '</span></span><span class="yshortcuts"><span style="cursor:pointer" id="lw_1259573685_2"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao</span></span></span></span><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">' everything else we’ve read has seemed rather mundane in comparison. 'Mr Y's' no exception.</span></span></o:p></span></p><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span></span><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:black;"><o:p><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Evidence of equivocating diplomacy, a return to warm fuzzy book reviewery: There's much to love in ‘Mr Y’, very much indeed. For one thing, Scarlett Thomas is cool. She can write all the elements of thriller (she used to write murder mysteries) and yet she is a proper brain. Lots of the novel is just her main character, Ariel Manto, a sexy Scarlett surrogate (i'm fairly sure) who is doing a PhD in thought experiments, thinking about or having conversations about things like phenomenology, the substance of thought & matter, the debate over the wave function collapse in quantum theory, the</span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span></span></span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_universal_ancestor" target="_blank"><span class="yshortcuts"><span id="lw_1259573685_3"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">last universal common ancestor</span></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> and all sorts of other awesome shit. And she does it deftly. You don't feel you're reading some textbook or being lectured to. The words 'penetration' and 'oblivion' are mentioned too often for that. So, props for that. Big props, in all possible quantum worlds.</span></span></o:p></span></p><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span></span><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:black;"><o:p><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Also, as briefly mentioned, the fact it's a page-turning thriller is also to the book's credit, though i've read a far better one in that respect recently which made this look messy and poorly paced in comparison (the better one being John Burdett's 'Bangkok 8' - now that man can write a cracking thriller). I can't be bothered to go into detail about 'Mr Y's' plot, it’s too complicated, but it involves an alternate dimension called the Troposphere (whose streets are described like really bad CGI) and some alchemical steampunk freakery called Pedesis, which is a means of inhabiting other people's minds discovered by a fictional Victorian dude who may or may not be a surrogate of, and whose ideas are implied to be fictionalised versions of Thomas Lumas', the Victorian dude Ariel Manto is doing her PhD on. And, breathe…</span></span></o:p></span></p><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span></span><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:black;"><o:p><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> About halfway through all this turns from steampunk to being basically set inside a computer game. This was never gonna be a winner for me - steampunk bores me (inevitable consequence of being weaned on the-future-is-awesome-ness of</span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span></span></span><span class="yshortcuts"><span id="lw_1259573685_4"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">The Jetsons</span></span></span><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> & Girl from Tomorrow</span></span></span><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">) - and the computer game thing; well, it's alright. It's clever & different. It’s pretty out there. I admire Thomas for trying to pull it off. But 'Y' is a lengthy bastard, and it dragged, only getting going on p180 when they discuss metaphysics over apricots. The plot, cool as it should have been, didn't hold much magic, though the real reviewers loved it ('daring', 'elegantly constructed', etc) so i guess that's a failure of imagination on my part. I just think trying to incorporate time-travel and mind-travel into a cursed Victorian book being read for a PhD thesis by a girl whose personality is most clearly defined by eating lots of lentils and being freezing (which hit close to home, but still), a love story with a post-nervous breakdown, priesthood escapee </span></span><span class="yshortcuts"><span id="lw_1259573685_5"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Jonny Greenwood</span></span></span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">lookalike theologian, being chased in more than one universe by two random CIA dudes, an AWOL PhD supervisor, a mouse god who likes coffee, and homeopathy as the key to entering other peoples' minds...it's a lot to cram in.</span></span></o:p></span></p><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span></span><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:black;"><o:p><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">And also, it wasn't quite funny enough. Obviously, this matters most. 500 pages of mind-stretching thriller goes down a lot smoother with a few jokes. Me and jokes are Danny & Sandy in the summertime.</span></span><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> Give me jokes. It was casually written, which obvs was great yeah, and by the end of it I felt like Ariel Manto was a friend – but a Shirley Manson from Garbage type, one who was all attitude and mythologies about her own fucked-upness and grey days and cigarettes. Fine, but have a few jokes. And finally...since I'm bitching, it was well-written but not amazingly so. For a heavily promoted bit of hot new</span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span></span></span><span class="yshortcuts"><span id="lw_1259573685_7"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">literary fiction</span></span></span></span><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">, it was no '</span></span><span class="yshortcuts"><span id="lw_1259573685_8"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Oscar Wao</span></span></span></span><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">'. *licks cover of OW*. I think Junot Diaz has raised the bar a little too much right now; I may need to revert to Saul Bellow to feel comforted again (see end...).</span></span></o:p></span></p><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span></span><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:black;"><o:p><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">So, while I applaud Scarlett Thomas's awesome boldness in writing about big, weird, ideas, and going Matrix on us, and am mighty glad she's doing it (cos there arent many other women being published as mainstream literary fiction who break down Heidegger in the middle of an on-the-run-from-the-CIA-with-the-love-of-my-life plot point), I was not nearly enchanted enough. It was ambitious but baggy and inelegant. Out of curiosity, I'll read PopCo and her forthcoming new book, but something's missing for me. I admire it, but I'm far from enamoured.</span></span></o:p></span></p><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span></span><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Straight after' Y', I started reading</span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span></span></span><span class="yshortcuts"><span style="cursor:pointer" id="lw_1259573685_9"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Saul Bellow</span></span></span></span><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">'s '</span></span><span class="yshortcuts"><span style="cursor:pointer" id="lw_1259573685_10"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Humboldt's Gift</span></span></span></span><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">'... I'm loving this shit. Dude's the Bellow, he's on another level, but he's overlooked by way too many people these days and that's a dumb move. Every page is funny, sharp as hell, self-deprecating, wicked. As William said when I got off the plane in </span></span><st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Berlin</span></span></st1:place></st1:state><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> and slapped him around the face with my gorgeous reading material, it's like 'Herzog' but funnier. And 'Herzog' is, of course, a great book. All 'Humboldt's Gift' is about is sex, hot women, divorce, </span></span><st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Chicago</span></span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> mobsters, money, vanity and belligerent men. And what Bellow can get away with in that loose and steamy frame is incredible. I'm not going to draw any comparisons or do down 'The End of Mr Y' any more - the latter's existence is a good thing. If i happen to find it lacking in narrative drive and enchantment...well, you should still try it out. you can borrow my copy. it's definitely </span></span><a href="http://images.contentreserve.com/ImageType-100/1590-1/%7B4F60ED2C-8F16-497C-9B6C-BA342139D8B0%7DImg100.jpg"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">a beautiful-looking book</span></span></a><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> and you'll feel like the coolest kid on the Tube. (i tried to put images here but they came out way too big). </span></span><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Whereas </span></span><a href="http://images.contentreserve.com/ImageType-100/0887-1/%7B81B5F664-16BE-4E0C-9BE4-186B620DD0A3%7DImg100.jpg"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">the cover of Humboldt's Gift</span></span></a><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> looks like some</span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span></span></span><st1:street st="on"><st1:address st="on"><span class="yshortcuts"><span id="lw_1259573685_11"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Pigeon Street</span></span></span></span></st1:address></st1:street><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">brawl/Beryl Cook painting and will make you feel like you're reading a cheap romance. </span></span><span style="color:black;"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">And if you end up loving ‘Mr Y’, we’re doing ‘PopCo’ together</span></span></span><span style="color:black;"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">. </span></span><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">You can tell me what I’m missing</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><span style="font-size:100%;">.</span></span></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4696300894871865744.post-19954001975834820542009-09-27T03:10:00.000-07:002010-12-15T15:09:13.047-08:00The Millions' best of the century<span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Over-enthusiastically premature, but over on The Millions blog they whipped together a panel of keenos and asked them to vote for the best 20 books of the 21st century so far. It's a good list. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic; "><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">The Corrections </span></span></span><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">at No.1? Didn't realise it was that popular, though I wouldn't disagree. Good to see the lad David Mitchell representing too. The only other Brits in there - Ian McEwan, for </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Atonement</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">? </span></span></span><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Shit,</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">no</span></span></span><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">And has anyone read Kazuo Ishiguro's </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Never Let Me Go? </span></span></span><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Hmm. </span></span></span><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Anyway, two DABC-recommended books made the list, so at least we're not reading total crap -- Junot Diaz' spectacular </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Oscar Wao</span></span></span><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> and Jonathan Lethem's </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">The Fortress of Solitude</span></span></span><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">, which we're reading next month, or the month after, or something. I didn't even realise it was highly-rated, I just liked the front cover, so that's cool.</span></span><div><div><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"></span></span><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></span></div><div><a href="http://www.themillions.com/2009/09/the-best-fiction-of-the-millennium-so-far-an-introduction.html"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Check it out: (link to The Millions)</span></span></a></div><div><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"></span></span><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"></span></span><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></span></div><div><strong style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">The List</span></span></strong><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"></span></span><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></span><a href="http://www.themillions.com/2009/09/20-gilead-by-marilynne-robinson.html" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; color: rgb(171, 24, 0) !important; text-decoration: underline !important; "><strong style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">#20:</span></span></strong><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span></span><em style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Gilead</span></span></em><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> by </span></span><strong style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Marilynne Robinson</span></span></strong></a><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"></span></span><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></span><a href="http://www.themillions.com/2009/09/19-american-genius-a-comedy-by-lynne-tillman.html" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; color: rgb(171, 24, 0) !important; text-decoration: underline !important; "><strong style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">#19:</span></span></strong><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span></span><em style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">American Genius, A Comedy</span></span></em><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> by </span></span><strong style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Lynne Tillman</span></span></strong></a><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"></span></span><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></span><a href="http://www.themillions.com/2009/09/18-stranger-things-happen-by-kelly-link.html" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; color: rgb(171, 24, 0) !important; text-decoration: underline !important; "><strong style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">#18:</span></span></strong><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span></span><em style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Stranger Things Happen</span></span></em><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> by </span></span><strong style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Kelly Link</span></span></strong></a><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"></span></span><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></span><a href="http://www.themillions.com/2009/09/17-the-fortress-of-solitude-by-jonathan-lethem.html" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; color: rgb(171, 24, 0) !important; text-decoration: underline !important; "><strong style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">#17:</span></span></strong><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span></span><em style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">The Fortress of Solitude</span></span></em><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> by </span></span><strong style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Jonathan Lethem</span></span></strong></a><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"></span></span><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></span><a href="http://www.themillions.com/2009/09/16-middlesex-by-jeffrey-eugenides.html" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; color: rgb(171, 24, 0) !important; text-decoration: underline !important; "><strong style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">#16:</span></span></strong><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span></span><em style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Middlesex</span></span></em><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> by </span></span><strong style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Jeffrey Eugenides</span></span></strong></a><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"></span></span><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></span><a href="http://www.themillions.com/2009/09/15-varieties-of-disturbance-by-lydia-davis.html" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; color: rgb(171, 24, 0) !important; text-decoration: underline !important; "><strong style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">#15:</span></span></strong><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span></span><em style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Varieties of Disturbance</span></span></em><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> by </span></span><strong style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Lydia Davis</span></span></strong></a><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"></span></span><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></span><a href="http://www.themillions.com/2009/09/14-atonement-by-ian-mcewan.html" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; color: rgb(171, 24, 0) !important; text-decoration: underline !important; "><strong style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">#14:</span></span></strong><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span></span><em style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Atonement</span></span></em><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> by </span></span><strong style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Ian McEwan</span></span></strong></a><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"></span></span><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></span><a href="http://www.themillions.com/2009/09/13-mortals-by-norman-rush.html" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; color: rgb(171, 24, 0) !important; text-decoration: underline !important; "><strong style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">#13:</span></span></strong><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span></span><em style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Mortals</span></span></em><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> by </span></span><strong style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Norman Rush</span></span></strong></a><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"></span></span><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></span><a href="http://www.themillions.com/2009/09/12-twilight-of-the-superheroes-by-deborah-eisenberg.html" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; color: rgb(171, 24, 0) !important; text-decoration: underline !important; "><strong style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">#12:</span></span></strong><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span></span><em style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Twilight of the Superheroes</span></span></em><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> by </span></span><strong style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Deborah Eisenberg</span></span></strong></a><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"></span></span><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></span><a href="http://www.themillions.com/2009/09/11-the-brief-wondrous-life-of-oscar-wao-by-junot-daz.html" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; color: rgb(171, 24, 0) !important; text-decoration: underline !important; "><strong style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">#11:</span></span></strong><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span></span><em style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao</span></span></em><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> by </span></span><strong style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Junot Díaz</span></span></strong></a><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"></span></span><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></span><a href="http://www.themillions.com/2009/09/10-never-let-me-go-by-kazuo-ishiguro.html" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; color: rgb(171, 24, 0) !important; text-decoration: underline !important; "><strong style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">#10:</span></span></strong><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span></span><em style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Never Let Me Go</span></span></em><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> by </span></span><strong style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Kazuo Ishiguro</span></span></strong></a><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"></span></span><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></span><a href="http://www.themillions.com/2009/09/9-hateship-friendship-courtship-loveship-marriage-by-alice-munro.html" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; color: rgb(171, 24, 0) !important; text-decoration: underline !important; "><strong style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">#9:</span></span></strong><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span></span><em style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage</span></span></em><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> by </span></span><strong style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Alice Munro</span></span></strong></a><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"></span></span><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></span><a href="http://www.themillions.com/2009/09/8-out-stealing-horses-by-per-petterson.html" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; color: rgb(171, 24, 0) !important; text-decoration: underline !important; "><strong style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">#8:</span></span></strong><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span></span><em style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Out Stealing Horses</span></span></em><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> by </span></span><strong style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Per Petterson</span></span></strong></a><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"></span></span><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></span><a href="http://www.themillions.com/2009/09/7-austerlitz-by-w-g-sebald.html" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; color: rgb(171, 24, 0) !important; text-decoration: underline !important; "><strong style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">#7:</span></span></strong><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span></span><em style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Austerlitz</span></span></em><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> by </span></span><strong style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">W.G. Sebald</span></span></strong></a><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"></span></span><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></span><a href="http://www.themillions.com/2009/09/6-the-road-by-cormac-mccarthy.html" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; color: rgb(171, 24, 0) !important; text-decoration: underline !important; "><strong style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">#6:</span></span></strong><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span></span><em style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">The Road</span></span></em><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> by </span></span><strong style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Cormac McCarthy</span></span></strong></a><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"></span></span><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></span><a href="http://www.themillions.com/2009/09/5-pastoralia-by-george-saunders.html" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; color: rgb(171, 24, 0) !important; text-decoration: underline !important; "><strong style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">#5:</span></span></strong><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span></span><em style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Pastoralia</span></span></em><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> by </span></span><strong style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">George Saunders</span></span></strong></a><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"></span></span><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></span><a href="http://www.themillions.com/2009/09/4-2666-by-roberto-bolao.html" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; color: rgb(171, 24, 0) !important; text-decoration: underline !important; "><strong style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">#4:</span></span></strong><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span></span><em style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">2666</span></span></em><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> by </span></span><strong style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Roberto Bolaño</span></span></strong></a><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"></span></span><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></span><a href="http://www.themillions.com/2009/09/3-cloud-atlas-by-david-mitchell.html" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; color: rgb(171, 24, 0) !important; text-decoration: underline !important; "><strong style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">#3:</span></span></strong><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span></span><em style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Cloud Atlas</span></span></em><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> by </span></span><strong style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">David Mitchell</span></span></strong></a><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"></span></span><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></span><a href="http://www.themillions.com/2009/09/2-the-known-world-by-edward-p-jones.html" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; color: rgb(171, 24, 0) !important; text-decoration: underline !important; "><strong style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">#2:</span></span></strong><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span></span><em style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">The Known World</span></span></em><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> by </span></span><strong style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Edward P. Jones</span></span></strong></a><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"></span></span><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></span><a href="http://www.themillions.com/2009/09/1-the-corrections-by-jonathan-franzen.html" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; color: rgb(171, 24, 0) !important; text-decoration: underline !important; "><strong style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">#1:</span></span></strong><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span></span><em style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">The Corrections</span></span></em><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> by </span></span><strong style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Jonathan Franzen</span></span></strong></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(1, 1, 1); font-weight: bold; line-height: 20px;font-size:48px;"><br /></span></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4696300894871865744.post-12116541152212761442009-08-24T15:07:00.000-07:002011-04-05T15:19:07.393-07:00'What straight middle-aged brother has not attempted to regenerate himself through the alchemy of young pussy?'<div><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Wao!</span> So, recently we’ve been talking about why we read less fiction than when we were younger. Gone are the days I did nothing but read Thomas Hardy hour upon hour - even day after day - without end. Our collective reasons for reading less were things like ‘not enough time’, ‘who needs books? This is a golden era of television, you fool’, ‘books are too heavy’ (?) and unsurprisingly, ‘the internet’. We put the above inferred causes to scientific testing and the results were clear - turns out the internet is the chief culprit. We’re jumped-up monkeys with ADHD is all. Can’t focus on a book no longer. We’re neurologically doomed. But - take heart - it’s not our fault.</span> <span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></span><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;"></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Last week, </span></span><a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2224932"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">an article was published in Slate</span></span></a><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> which said the reason we’re so internet-addled is because receiving an email, or finding a cool new website, etc, feels like getting some sort of abstract reward - we're hardwired to think that deposits in our inboxes are things we want - so our dopamine circuit goes nuts when it happens. This reward-seeking behaviour is why we spend so much time online. In contrast, novels don’t offer the same sweet punch of satisfaction. In this theory’s favour, I can verify that when I received this email in my yahoo inbox yesterday, from HOVEROUND:GET YOUR FREEDOM BACK WITH A POWER WHEELCHAIR, Eli! my dopamine circuits went absolutely mental.</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;"></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Having said that, I don’t think the promise of power wheelchairs etc are the only reason for us slacking off on novel-reading. A lot of people I know think novels are just serious and boring and didactic. Yeah, a lot of novels are. But not all. Not every novelist is Charles Dickens or Samuel Richardson. As I'll now try to prove...(Though if there are any hardcore non-fictioneers out there, state your case!)</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;"></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Anyway, due to the above two factors, it's been an uphill slog to find a novel awesome enough a significant number of DABC’ers will put down the internet for and read. You had young adult fiction, eloquent perverts and obese godheads thrown you way, and you were like, piss </span></span><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">off, you schmuck, I’m too busy getting dopamine fixes updating my Facebook status. Yeah, me too. </span></span><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">But then Junot Diaz came along to save the day… his ‘The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao’ was, I don’t think it’s too hubristic to say, the DABC’s breakout novel. Here’s why: I spoke to four whole people who’d read it! And I proslyetised it to thirteen more who said they would! If Trujillo can capture one nation under a narrative, imagine what the DABC could do. But enough about fascist fantasies. What was the difference? Why did 'Wao' work?</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;"></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Many reasons. First, unlike the massive miserabilist mountain of boo hoo me novels sitting beside it in every bookshop, it was fun. It really was. It was as funny, i dunno, </span></span><i><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Arrested Development</span></span></i><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> (don't chew me out on this one, it's late and anything - of a certain calibre - will do). Yet it wa horrifically tragic too, so it won on both counts. Most people can sell you only one or the other, tragedy or comedy. Demonstrating the two are indivisible was a fine, and brave (because it‘s so difficult to pull off) thing to do. I wasn’t expecting to be played like that - in fact, I didn‘t know what to expect from the whole novel. </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;"></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">All I knew when I started 'Wao' was that it was a Pulitzer-winning, 11-years-in-the-making story about a fat Dominican science fiction geek. Ahh, my naievety. Once you get into it, horizons expand infinitely. No spoilers here, just props. First, there’s the dictatorship. The anchoring in a part of 20th century history I - I don’t know about you (pl.) - knew nothing about. Nothing about the Trujillo Era - about, as Diaz puts it, ’the asphyxiation of a whole generation of young Dominicans’…or that Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina was ‘the Dictatingest Dictator who ever Dictated’. So that was an excellent wake-up call...being eye-deep in a dictatorship I'd not even known about before was absolutely fascinating.</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;"></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">And then there’s the immigrant stories, the opening out from Oscar’s nerdery, the ’moronic inferno’ that is his school, etc, to the backstory of his family, and before you know it you’re in the Cabral vortex, and it’s not only Oscar and Lolita whose lives we give a shit about, it’s Belicia and then Abelard, and La Inca too. Didn’t see any of that coming, nor the way the chronology would weave from past to present and keep us guessing. So impressive. It takes chops to encompass so much so smoothly.</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;"></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Excuse the lack of coherence here - it's late and there's so much to discuss in 'Wao' that things are </span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">gonna get tangential at some point. Which is why it's already time for some homegrown reader </span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: normal; "><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">reception theory. Specifically, the</span></span></span><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> theory of self-identification - which is totally obvious, I guess - that the reason we read/watch/anticipate & enjoy certain things is because they tell us about who we </span></span><i><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">think</span></span></i><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> we are or who we’d like to be. This worked with 'Wao'...at least, I thought so. I saw so many people I know kaleidoscoping around in Oscar, Lola and Yunior's personalities that I enjoyed reading about their lives best of all. There’s a little bit of most of us in each of them…and there’s pleasure in reading about the lives of *very* distant alter-egos. It's not only about the nascent narcissism of self-identification though. Diaz also says something in a ’Narrative’ magazine interview about compassion, which is the other side of self-identification - to feel interested in these characters, you can come at it on the level that you, too, have lived in a dorm room with someone totally different to you, and at some point you've felt like an outsider, or you can try to understand how and why each of these people feels vulnerable, tough, confused, scared, and then shit goes down for them and you feel engaged, completely absorbed, when it happens…that’s having compassion. Then there’s the semi-alien world of Beli which requires even more compassion. And…fuck…Abelard. Diaz asks a lot of a good reader. More than can be broken down by this lame identification-compassion spectrum which is actually bullshit and I renounce right now. To sum up: it’s not boring.</span></span></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;"></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Okay - anyone reading this far gets a reward, cos this is the internets! Let's talk about pum pum! Cos one of life’s most intriguing contrasts gets a going over - the world that revolves, as Diaz says so sweetly above, around the alchemy of pussy (such a phrase!). At Rutgers, you’ve got the pum pum mad player Yunior (thanks Jake, btw), and soppy fantasist Oscar rooming together in a dysfunctional but bittersweet bromance. You get the contrast between El hyper-masculismo and the boy who has to be begged to stop writing his space opera trilogy so he can do something about his weight and maybe, just maybe, get laid. And this is so sad and funny. </span></span><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Add to this Yunior’s spastic inability to get it together with the awesome, ferocious and beautiful Lola, and he digs himself into unforeseen depths of sad. It gets tragic. Cos Yunior is cool. I kind of admired him. He gets the girls, and he…um…you know, gets the girls. Well done him. And then I read something Diaz said in ’</span></span><a href="http://www.narrativemagazine.com/issues/spring-2009/junot-d%C3%ADaz"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Narrative’ magazine</span></span></a><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> about Yunior:</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;"></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></span></span><b><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">“Yunior looks at Oscar and sees a person who can expose himself, be himself, be vulnerable, often too vulnerable. Yunior doesn’t have any of that. He always wears a mask and is incapable of taking it off.”</span></span></b><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span></span></div><div><b><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;"></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span></span></b></div><div><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">That’s why he can’t get his shit together and man up for Lola. She got to him and he couldn‘t deal. Sad. So you get the hyper masculine unable to man up and be vulnerable, and you get the soppiest boy in the world unable to man up and be cool. (Note to certain men: don’t be Yuniors. Man up. Note to all men: Don‘t be Oscars either. Unless you want). </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;"></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Um…where was I? Oh yeah. That the novel is jokes. Cos Diaz also said (somewhere…I forget where) how much fun it was to write the Yunior/Oscar banter. The man for whom its always pum pum o’clock and his pathetically uncopacetic roommate. I hoovered this up. It’s like </span></span><i><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Peep Show</span></span></i><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">, but with a New Jersey accent, a Dominican swagger, and a way more nerdy David Mitchell, if that‘s possible. Here’s Yunior:</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;"></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> (p.173) </span></span><b><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">“Did I try to help him with his girl situation? Share some of my playerly wisdom? Of course I did. </span></span></b></div><b><div><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;"></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span></span></div></b><div><b><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Problem was, when it came to the mujeres my roommate was like no-one on the planet. On the one hand, he had the worst case of no-toto-it is I’d ever seen. The last person to even come close was this poor Salvadoran kid I knew in high school who was burned all over his face, couldn’t get no girls ever because he looked like the Phantom of the Opera. Well: Oscar had it worse than him. At least Jeffrey could claim an honest medical condition. What could Oscar claim? That it was Sauron’s fault? Dude weighed 307 pounds, for fuck’s sake! Talked like a Star Trek computer! The real irony was that you never met a kid who wanted a girl so fucking bad. I mean, shit, I thought I was into females, but no-one, and I mean no-one, was into them the way Oscar was. To him, they were the beginning and the end, the Alpha and the Omega, the DC and the Marvel…Developed crushes out of nothing…Not that any of these shits ever came to anything. How could they? Oscar’s idea of G was to talk about role-playing games! How fucking crazy is that? (My favourite was the day on the E bus when he informed some hot morena, If you were in my game I would give you an eighteen Charisma!)”</span></span></b></div><div><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;"></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Like John B. mentioned, you could see that Yunior’s voice might get wearing. But I really liked it. I like boys to be all urbandictionary.com. And if you tire of Yunior, you get the other stories - which there’s no time to go into detail here, but someone else, if you want to talk about them, please do - the stories which make the novel truly epic - Belicia’s and Abelard‘s. Man, I think I read 'Wao' too quickly the first time because when I finished, I was like, ‘amazing, but too much happens’. Then I read it again. Slowly. Not only then can you savour the language (Diaz is a worship-worthy wordsmith), you’ll also realise, as the Holman pointed out, how he creates lives by giving you the details you don’t expect - not the burn or the rapes, but, say, the story of Jack Pujols. The gangster. The boardwalk boy. The relationships that mattered and that taught the characters how to love and hate and forgive. And that they were fuku’d. This is really strong stuff. And it all culminates in Oscar finally, maybe, possibly, getting some (no giveaways here - read the novel)…but then history and myth come crashing down and fuku shit up. So you get what happened on the edges of lives, the fringe stories, and then you get like this meteor plummeting down into the middle of it all. Repeatedly. </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;"></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Chin wanted to discuss the use of sci-fi and comics in the novel. Maybe this would start with Diaz’s explicit parallel of the Antilles with the kind of burnt-out apocalyptic chaos you’d find in sci-fi dystopias. I can see it’s a great reflection…the ruined cities, the paranoid citizenry, the maniac overlord. My only tiny problem with how this mirror of sci-fi chaos was spun out, notwithstanding some really funny invocations of the Fantastic Four at crucially tragic moments, was that some of it seemed to be obvious. As in, many SF tropes are so disappointingly binary in the first place that lassoing them into metaphor for the story (eg. ‘The Darkness’, ‘the phantom zone’, 'the immortals', 'the apotheosis’) doesn’t do much in the way of illumination. I felt they were flat, rather than expansive, metaphors. (although I have aped such usage here cos i'm lazy, i mean, meta). In 'Wao', though, it’s still beautifully done. It’s original and makes brilliant sense - why not parallel the Trujillo regime with leg-shaking, awe-inspiring, cosmic fear-inducing sci-fi/comic tropes? People thought Trujillo was superhuman (a ‘cosmic force’) anyway. And the curse, the fuku, is always a great story thing. Who doesn't get off on a good curse? Actually, pre-empting this criticism, Diaz said in </span></span><a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2177644"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">an interview in</span></span></a><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> good old Slate: </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;"></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span></span></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">(page 2)</span></span></span><b><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">"</span></span></b><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 18px; "><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">No one can write a straightforward political novel about the Trujillato and capture its phantasmagorical power. That's another reason I had to go hard-core nerd. Because without curses and alien mongooses and Sauron and Darkseid, the Trujillato cannot be accessed, eludes our "modern" minds. We need these fictional lenses, otherwise It we cannot see."</span></span></span></b></b></div><b><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 18px;"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;"></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: normal; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Dunno if you'd agree with that. Up for debate.</span></span></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;"></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">So...it’s been rumoured Diaz gets about 100 emails a month, all written (poor fucker) in Yunior-style, saying ‘please share the secrets of writerly success, yo’…to which Diaz replies: ‘Accept that it‘s a tough road to choose. Good luck’. (I paraphrase. Okay, I invent. Never mind). What he's doing is light years beyond making a tough choice, though. It's not perfect, but for a first novel it's peerless right now (or not?). Whether it will become part of an early 21st century canon and go the distance is something I’d love to discuss. Will it slip through our fingers? </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" font-weight: bold; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">I think Diaz is a phenomenal writer. It was only when I stopped zooming through the story and started paying attention to its construction, to the elegance of the way its layers fell on one another, and to its words and how funny and perfectly chosen they were before I realised quite how amazing it was. As a still-alienated lit-</span></span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">otaku</span></span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">, I have a feeling what I just said - about the words -will pass some people by, but that doesn’t matter. That's</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> just me being obsessed by one particular form of communication. It's nothing. As long as people read 'Wao' and enjoy it then we don’t need to give a monkeys about the intricacies of each others‘ opinions.</span></span></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;"></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Except that’s the point. So please, please read and get involved! Get intricate!</span></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></span></div></b>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4696300894871865744.post-53798449338879812332009-07-22T13:41:00.000-07:002011-04-05T15:27:36.240-07:00The cheapest of cheap cuties<span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">So the woman who puts the 'hick' in 'chick lit', Nina L, was going to guest-write this post, whacking on here a dashed-off undergraduate triumph about Nabokov and his relation to something-or-other (she mumbled it to me, but it sounded intelligent). Sadly, she realised it was on the wrong computer and couldn't get to it or something (also mumbled, but sounded plausible)...so the ball's back in my court.</span> </span><div><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></span></div><div><div><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">As i get the sad, paranoid feeling that approximately one person other than me reads this (hi mum!), it doesn't matter what i write here, and since i'm feeling lazy too, no-one's going to be disappointed if i select some choice quotes from 'Lolita', passively enjoy them, and leave it at that. If anyone genuinely was looking forward to some robust monologue, there'll be some when it comes to current Dusty book '...Oscar Wao'. Cos i have a shit-ton to say about that firecracker. Or Nina can find her essay. It's never too late for an English degree to be useful.</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Nabokov is amazing. After his native Russian, English was his second language, and his grasp of it is (</span></span><i><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">insert preferred superlative, i'm all out of interesting ones</span></span></i><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">). In a note on 'Lolita', he said he wrote the novel as a 'record of his love affair with the English language'. (Although he then said English is apparently 'second-rate' compared to the 'infinitely docile Russian tongue' - cheers mate!), but - my god - what a great reason to write a novel, just to play around with nice words. And what a novel to choose to write! </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">I can't be bothered to discuss sympathy or otherwise for Humbert 'Jeremy Irons' Humbert. The tragedy at the heart of 'Lolita' is its blinding central conceit, and it's devastatingly clear that HH is a child rapist – although Lolita initially seduced him, fairly soon after she was desperate to get out of his clutches and he kept her with him, raping her, occasionally paying her for it (ie. using her as a whore) for two years (the second half of the novel). I find it utterly baffling that anyone could see him as sympathetic...though obviously one of Nabokov's tricks is to have us understand, on one level, that HH cannot help himself - he's just too much of a romantic to resist his 'schoolgirl nymphet'. And it's like he has this big modus operandi only he has the guts to deal with...as he says - 'i am not concerned with so-called "sex" at all. Anybody can imagine those elements of animality. A greater endeavour lures me on: to fix once for all the perilous magic of nymphets'.</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Hmm. I was bored on a plane journey recently, and needed to do something intellectually stimulating to mitigate the fact I'd just enjoyed and cried (a lot) at 'He's Just Not That Into You' and 'Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2' (which, by the way, is awesome) - and 'Lolita' was the only book I had, and since I'd already read it 1.5 times at that stage, I decided to make a close examination of the language used in their sexual conduct, in order to try to ascertain the levels of self-deception and reader manipulation going on in our narrator. I came to the definitive conclusion that there are numerous instances of rape reported by Humbert Humbert as acts of love. I didn't pick up on them on first reading, but it was a bleak exercise -they're there. I do wonder how much the light, vivid tone causes readers not to see clearly quite the level of cruelty that's played out through the entirety of the novel. </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">p.185: 'I would lead my reluctant pet to our small home to a quick connection before dinner'.</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Quick connection, eh? There's tons of these. The closer you read, the darker it gets. </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Anyway, whatever. Got no desire to continue the epic show of pedantry...the point was meant to be that if anyone is actually reading this and hasn't read 'Lolita', read it. As dark as it is, its also hilarious and somehow, incomparably beautiful. Don't limp out and see the film instead - the Adrian Lyne version of the film was so diluted and lacking in comparison it made me remember, cos i sometimes forget, why books will always be superior to films (although I haven't seen the Kubrick version nor the Nabokov script for the Kubrick version, but c'mon!). So lets scamper onwards from the grimness of HH and look at writing instead. Nabokov is the best writer ever. Discuss. Well, in lieu of quoting the whole damn perfect novel, here's my favourite bit, which, in sheer writing terms, is genius:</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">(It's Humbert describing Lolita playing tennis, p.263 in the Penguin Red Classic edition)</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">'She would wait and relax for a bar or two of white-lined time before going into the act of serving, and often bounced the ball once or twice, or pawed the ground a little, always at ease, always rather vague about the score, always cheerful as she so seldom was in the dark life she led at home. Her tennis was the highest point to which I can imagine a young creature bringing the art of make-believe, although I daresay, for her it was the very geometry of reality.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> </span></span></span>The exquisite clarity of all her movements had its auditory counterpart in the pure ringing sound of her every stroke. The ball when it entered her aura of control became somehow whiter, its resilience somehow richer, and the instrument of precision she used upon it seemed inordinately prehensile and deliberate at the moment of clinging contact. Her form was, indeed, an absolutely perfect imitation of absolutely top-notch tennis - without any utilitarian results. As Edusa's sister, Electra Gold, a marvelous young coach, said to me once while I sat on a pulsating hard bench watching Dolores Haze toying with Linda Hall (and being beaten by her): "Dolly has a magnet in the center of her racket guts, but why the heck is she so polite?" Ah, Electra, what did it matter, with such grace! I remember at the very first game I watched being drenched with an almost painful convulsion of beauty assimilation. My Lolita had a way of raising her bent left knee at the ample and springy start of the service cycle when there would develop and hang in the sun for a second a vital web of balance between toed foot, pristine armpit, burnished arm and far back-flung racket, as she smiled up with gleaming teeth at the small globe suspended so high in the zenith of the powerful and graceful cosmos she had created for the express purpose of falling upon it with a clean resounding crack of her golden whip.'<span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Wow. Especially 'hang in the sun for a second a vital web of balance between toed foot, pristine armpit, burnished arm...' So beautiful. But this is one random sentence (albeit from an exceptional paragraph) out of hundreds as equally good in 'Lolita' - the imagery's so vibrant and different and yet still obvious - look at a gorgeous young girl playing tennis - she's not just 'hot', she's gleaming, pristine, burnished, capable of creating her own mini-cosmos. Understanding you can see all that in a simple tennis serve helps me to see the world (yeah, and tennis) more richly. That's what the whole of 'Lolita' is like; fracturing into prismatic brilliance what would be in most other hands another motherfucking mundane view of reality. The scene in the hotel when Humbert gives Lolita the sleeping pill, then, 'somewhere behind the raging bliss, bewildered shadows conferred' (which is my favourite sentence in the whole novel), as he figures out how to get it on with her, having realised the pill ain't that strong, and worrying she's going to wake up cos of the gurgle of the 'manly, energetic, deep-throated toilet', is both poetic heaven AND comedy gold. And when Humbert trips over some chairs and calls them 'incarnadine zebras!' Awesome!</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Also, it's kind of frowned upon by the grim masters of domestic realism to use adverbs in fiction, but Nabokov's poetry flows so well that you don't trip over, or find excessive, his use of 'inordinately', 'absolutely', 'infinitely', etc, which would be excoriated in the hands of a lesser poet. Which just goes to show...something.</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Perfectly timed is </span></span><a href="http://www.boingboing.net/2009/07/20/vladimir-nabokov-dis.html"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">this mid-1950's interview with Nabokov on NBC, from Monday's Boing Boing</span></span></a><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">.</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">His accent rocks!</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Anyway, enough. i guess it made me realise why i'm such a word slut...when they're used well together, you get comedy and controversy, poetry and beauty, motel paeans and roadside thrills...they're the architecture of other worlds. Pretty cool.</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></span></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4696300894871865744.post-9663707228097553822009-07-01T11:48:00.000-07:002011-03-15T16:22:23.707-07:00Whittled down...<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Things have been quiet here. i've been equator-hopping and skipping through </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Lolita </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">again in faraway airports and thinking that if i write about it, all that will be accomplished is i'll realise i don't know enough synonyms for </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">awesome</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">. Reading and then instantly re-reading it (because it's that jizzworthy) has put me into a state of Barthesian </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">jouissance*. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">All I want to do is quote Nabokov into the ether. But to say, 'Look! how beautiful! How gorgeously he talks about being a child rapist!' and then roll out a ton of divine Nabokovian sentences wasn't quite the point of what i had imagined as a happy drooling place for alienated lit-</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">otaku</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">. Arse. Maybe I'll indulge myself anyway though...it'll be more fun to read than this drivel.</span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">So, drivelling on, I've whittled down the list of books on the Dusty table. I'll be ransacking these babies at a rate of a little more than one a month. With you (plural). Hopefully.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">July: </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao - Junot D</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">í</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: normal; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">az </span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: normal; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">August: </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> Oblivion - David Foster Wallace</span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">September:</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> What We Talk About When We Talk About Love - Raymond Carver</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">October: </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The End of Mr Y - Scarlett Thomas</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">November: </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The City & The City - China Mieville</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">December: </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The Fortress of Solitude - Jonathan Lethem</span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">These 6 books promise to be quality literature - "qualit lit" as the Americans say. The Junot D</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">í</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: normal; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">az and China Mieville ones have received tons of praise in recent months. All are highly recommended and you won't be wasting your time! I'm hoping 3 weeks for each, but we'll see how it goes. If you're up for joining in with reading and discussing even just one of these, that'd be sweet.</span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"></span></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4696300894871865744.post-39636377246737062502009-05-31T21:27:00.000-07:002009-05-31T23:12:14.385-07:00The book mountainA longlist of the books currently grabbing DABC's attention. Cross-genre, in no particular order, this is what the forthcoming few months of Dusty Anachronist reading will look like.<div><br /></div><div>More suggestions happily received. An order of sorts will be decided soon.</div><div><br /></div><div>Descriptions of lesser-known books will be sent out so you can have a gander and see whether they spark your interest. </div><div><br /></div><div>I got linking disease - this list is linked to the maxx<br /><div><br /></div><div>did somebody say gravity's rainbow?</div><div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half_Life_(novel)">Half Life </a></span></span>- <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shelley_Jackson">Shelley Jackson</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shelley_Jackson"></a></div></div><div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Name_Is_Red">My Name is Red </a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; ">-<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; "> </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orhan_Pamuk">Orhan Pamuk</a></span></span></span></div><div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Drowned_World">The Drowned World </a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; ">- JG Ballard - unless anyone fervently recommends other Ballardaciousness </span></span></span></div></div><div>Something by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Smiley">Jane Smiley</a> (maybe <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic; ">A Thousand Acres</span>)<br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Brief_Wondrous_Life_of_Oscar_Wao">The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao </a></span></span>-<a href="http://www.junotdiaz.com/">Junot Diaz</a><a href="http://www.junotdiaz.com/"></a></div><div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/12/books/12eder.html">The Savage Detective </a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; ">-<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/12/books/12eder.html"> Roberto Bolano </a></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Homicide-David-Simon/dp/0804109990">Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets </a></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; ">-<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic; "> </span><a href="http://www.hbo.com/thewire/">David Simon </a></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Jimmy-Corrigan-Smartest-Kid-Earth/dp/0375404538">Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth </a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; ">- <a href="http://www.fantagraphics.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=272&Itemid=82">Chris Ware</a> </span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2007/sep/22/sciencefictionfantasyandhorror.fiction">Stone Gods </a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; ">- <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2007/sep/22/sciencefictionfantasyandhorror.fiction">Jeanette Winterson</a> </span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howl's_Moving_Castle">Howl’s Moving Castle </a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; ">- <a href="http://www.leemac.freeserve.co.uk/autobiog.htm">Diana Wynne Jones</a> (I fell asleep in a pizza coma when watching the film of this but you gotta trust the words of Michelle Madsen) </span></span></span></div></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Silence-Shusaku-Endo/dp/0800871863">Silence </a></span></span>-<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Silence-Shusaku-Endo/dp/0800871863"> Shusaku Endo</a><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Silence-Shusaku-Endo/dp/0800871863"></a></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/What-Talk-About-When-Love/dp/0679723056">What We Talk About When We Talk About Love </a></span></span>- <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Carver">Raymond Carver</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Carver"></a></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_of_Eden">East of Eden </a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; ">-<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; "> </span>John Steinbeck</span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bigot-Hall-Steve-Aylett/dp/0575402938">Bigot Hall </a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; ">-<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; "> </span>Steve Aylett (my idol)</span></span></span></span></span></div><div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://dir.salon.com/story/books/feature/2002/03/06/europe/index.html">The Years of Rice and Salt </a></span></span>- <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Stanley_Robinson">Kim Stanley Robinson</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Stanley_Robinson"></a></div></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austerlitz_(novel)">Austerlitz </a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; ">-<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; "> </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WG_Sebald">WG Sebald</a></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colson_Whitehead">The Intuitionist</a></span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colson_Whitehead"> OR </a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colson_Whitehead">Apex Hides the Hurt </a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; ">-<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colson_Whitehead"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; "> </span>Colson Whitehead c</a>an't decide which</span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fortress_of_Solitude_(novel)">The Fortress of Solitude </a></span></span>- <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Lethem">Jonathan Lethem</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Lethem"></a></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Calcutta-Chromosome-Fevers-Delirium-Discovery/dp/0380813947">The Calcutta Chromosome </a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; ">-<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic; "> </span></span><a href="http://www.amitavghosh.com/about/index.php">Amitav Ghosh</a></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Mating-Novel-Norman-Rush/dp/067973709X">Mating </a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; ">- <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Rush">Norman Rush</a></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Bend_in_the_River">A Bend in the River </a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; ">- V.S. Naipaul </span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingsley_Amis">Lucky Jim </a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; ">- Kingsley Amis</span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portnoy's_Complaint">Portnoy’s Complaint </a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; ">- Philip Roth</span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://www.bookslut.com/fiction/2006_09_009907.php">The End of Mr. Y </a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; ">- <a href="http://www.bookslut.com/features/2007_03_010799.php">Scarlett Thomas</a> </span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://www.salon.com/weekly/gardner960930.html">Fat City </a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; ">- <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Gardner">Leonard Gardner</a></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_of_Light">Lord of Light </a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; ">- <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Zelazny">Roger Zelazny</a></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; "></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blind_Assassin">The Blind Assassin </a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; ">- Margaret Atwood </span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Lost-Souls-Poppy-Z-Brite/dp/0440212812">Lost Souls </a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; ">- <a href="http://www.poppyzbrite.com/bio.html">Poppy Z Brite</a></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Glass_Bead_Game">The Glass Bead Game </a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; ">-<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; "> </span>Hermann Hesse</span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/City-China-Mieville/dp/0345497511">The City & the City </a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; ">- <a href="http://www.believermag.com/issues/200504/?read=interview_mieville">China Mieville </a>(my <a href="http://www.chrismclaren.com/blog/wp-content/images/2007/02/mieville_large.jpg">ideal </a>man, as it happens)</span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic; "><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Swan_Green">Black Swan Green </a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; ">-<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic; "> </span></span>David Mitchell (the only DM i haven't read - hope it's as great as the rest)</span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Naive-Super-Erlend-Loe/dp/1841952516">Naïve, Super </a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; ">- <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erlend_Loe">Erlend Loe </a>(awesome the first time round - also the only Trondheim writer I know) </span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://www.metacritic.com/books/authors/nunezsigrid/lastofherkind">The Last of Her Kind </a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; ">-<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; "> </span><a href="http://www.themorningnews.org/archives/birnbaum_v/sigrid_nunez.php">Sigrid Nunez </a>this is meant to be Excellent.</span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/27/books/review/27KIRNL.html?pagewanted=2">Oblivion </a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; ">-<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; "><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/27/books/review/27KIRNL.html?pagewanted=2"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic; "> </span></a></span><a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/23638511/the_lost_years__last_days_of_david_foster_wallace">David Foster Wallace</a> </span></span></span></div></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4696300894871865744.post-85674806713595188882009-05-16T21:06:00.000-07:002011-03-15T16:24:41.942-07:00indigo-blue sky<div>So you meet this boy. He’s from somewhere you’ve wondered about but never been, and at first, he captivates you. You hang out with him. You realise he’s not <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">all that</span>, but still, you like him. There’s something he does that you want more of as soon as you’ve had a taste. Maybe it’s the way he speaks. He doesn’t fuck around with ums and ers, his voice is soft and clear. He’s a bit naïve and a bit sad, like life’s already robbed him of something, but he’s tough too, like he has an old soul. When you’re not with him, you clean forget about him. But when you meet up, you have an awesome time, you fall into his space, you make up your mind that he is <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">all that</span>. You even start to fall in love with him.</div><div><br /></div><div>Time passes. The boy disappears, or you disappear. One or the other is inevitable. You weren’t looking, but some other boy has stepped into his place. And this guy - woah. His brain is like seventy times the size of the first boy. His sense of humour is precisely 900 times bigger. And he’s less melancholy and more batshit insane, and you find both these things irresistible. So much so that you can’t not be with him. You wanna just like, fiddle, with him all the time. You know that this is a collision; it’s going to be quick and intense, and you’re going to part ways soon. Then he’ll be loitering in your head for a long time after, and since, as Stephen Malkmus said, ’you can never quarantine the past’, you’ll probably rose tint it instead. Meanwhile, you stop sleeping, eating, seeing other people, going to parties, making proper meals, because you want to do nothing but inhale him, his wisdom, his wit, and his filthiness, while this thing you have is still hot. Then you find a photo of the first boy. You can’t believe you slumbered through a quasi-relationship with him for so long. Dude’s middle name was ‘mundane‘. Your connection was childish, forgettable. What you have now - this is love.</div><div><br /></div><div>Hmm. What I’m trying to do is find a way of not writing about The Heart is A Lonely Hunter in a GCSE style way. It’s a problem. The bullshit introduction above is something I’ve set up to let me off the hook (I'm aware that it's my illusory hook, but still) of discussing it for longer than a few short paragraphs - you‘ll see. It’s an analogy for comparative analysis. But in the meantime, here goes.</div><div><br /></div><div> I was meaning to write up my thoughts about THIALH (hey - instant lisp!) a fortnight or so ago, but back then, I thought it was amazing, and because it’s so much harder to write praise than slag something off (at least in my experience), I had nothing more to say than that. Then I figured out the why of amazing, but banging on inarticulately about why Carson McCullers was able to do what Hemmo couldn’t (in ‘Arms’) - well, I’m outta practice. I can’t find the words. Besides, I’m not sure how much more is necessary than to illustrate just one thing - in THIALH you empathise with the characters. Which is what reading novels is, say, 95% about - going outside yourself, getting inside other lives, giving a shit about what happens to them. The human condition, maaaaan. </div><div><br /></div><div>The six main characters in THIALH are drawn in such a way that their headspace is wide open, yours for the taking. I’ll just make a quick point before returning to that - ‘nuff readers can only wade into new headspaces if they’re armed with pre-existing categories and stereotypes that let them make sense of who/what they find. Especially in literature that's been earmarked for GCSE level analysis. Fr’instance, when I was reading around about the novel, I kept on finding these character summaries - Mick - sexually precocious, McCullers’ alter ego, Biff - blatant trannie, Jake - raging drunk, Dr Copeland - freedom fighter doomed to failure, a symbol, a victim of social injustice, Singer - mute, possibly gay and jewish. Antonapoulos - chubby mentalist. Okay, no-one actually said ’chubby mentalist’. But these labels, however correct they are, make me feel So what? If all you can draw out of the novel is that Biff likes wearing women‘s things, Singer must be gay and Dr Copeland is illustrative of the struggles faced by black people in the South in the 30’s then big wow. Sure, maybe these would make decent starting points for queer or postcolonialist interpretations of ye text. But, y’know, gaping yawn. Gaping yawn if you’re gonna respond to THIALH by writing about Biff’s burgeoning transvestism, which is a really minor aspect of the story. It ain’t luminously revealing of anything. It’s what it is. </div><div>It’s like when I wrote a thesis on Jane Austen’s shit-hot ’Mansfield Park’ and focused the whole thing on the few hints here and there that Sir Thomas Bertram owned a slave plantation in Antigua. An epic rant about a peripheral point. But I was righteous, had been abutted by the film adaptation which featured slaves giving Sir T blowjobs (it‘s a shocker), and thought the rest of the text wasn’t worth discussing. I liked the fact that if you’re taking a queer or postcolonial viewpoint (and I can’t believe I’m even using these terms), you can usually go somewhere juicy. They take you straight to the heart of what literature students know is supertrue - literature is about sex and power. Identity, gender, race etc - follow those routes and you’ll see they’re nice shortcuts to the weird, difficult and fascinating heart of the matter. </div><div><br /></div><div>Except literature isn’t all about sex and power. There’s really no point in dissecting THIALH down lines of ‘what is McCullers saying, revealing, denying, whatever, about identity and/or sexuality?’ because that’s clearly not what the experience of reading it should be about. (I may be a little influenced here by Zadie Smith’s ideas about morality and fiction, cos I was reading one of her lovely, lucid essays on this subject recently). But also, what I’m about to say occurred to me in the shower, and it’s fact - and science - that what occurs to you in the shower is good and real and true. What’s worth discussing about THIALH is how and why McCullers succeeds in making us care about her characters, whether they’re mute, gay, gray, green, Daniel Johnston lookalikes, whoever. Cos the rest of it, the identity bits, the hints at this and that, while interesting, is incidental. Anyone disagree? Um…er…</div><div><br /></div><div>So I’ve only got two answers for this. First, the novel, obviously, is about loneliness. C-Mac works and works on loneliness, kneading away at at that tricksy little bitch. All the characters, despite their surface differences, are the same cos they’re all lonely. They have no-one to talk to about what’s churning away inside. Hence Singer. They’re entrenched in their perspectives and unable to step outside them (except for Biff and Harry), which makes them all seem kinda emotionally stunted, but also pushes them into being increasingly frozen in isolation. And so, loneliness. Cha-ching! Who can’t empathise with that? ‘Nuff empathy points there. Anyway, having made an insight derived from the novel’s title alone, I’ll move on. </div><div><br /></div><div>The other key awesome thing about THIALH is the fact that all the characters go around pedestalsing others and doing hardcore projection because they badly need meaning/validation in and of their lives. I don’t think the pathetic folly of projection has been more clearly pointed out in a work of fiction (as far as I know, though I’ve only read five books). First, the whole Singer deal. Yipes. If you’re a mute, you can’t tell the people who’ve decided to think you’re great that you’re (almost) as flawed and confused as they are. Although yeah, *SPOILER ALERT* shooting yourself might do it. </div><div><br /></div><div>And then we come to Spiros. Spiros, Spiros, Spiros. You fat fuck. You lie around, gobbling up offerings from the dutiful Singer, throwing them away when their shiny appeal dulls, usually in under a minute, and you don’t even once say thank you. Not only because you’re a mute. Because you’re frakkin graceless. The sad and awful thing about Spiros is that Singer treats him not like a saint, as some people have suggested, but as god. Mini-example:</div><div><br /></div><div>“Sometimes he thought of Antonapoulos with awe and self-abasement, sometimes with pride - always with love unchecked by criticism, freed of will”.</div><div><br /></div><div>Singers’ actions are pure bhakti. But McCullers is like, hey, you chose the wrong dude to worship. Cos Spiros is a prick and you were too blinded by your hopelessly hopeful delusions to see that. </div><div><br /></div><div>So where does this get us? Well, you empathise with a bunch of lonely people who project their illusions of greatness and godliness onto all the wrong things, and you begin to realise that you, too, have to be careful not to dress people up as you want them to be, instead of taking them for what they are. I need that lesson perpetually kicked into me. And, you can admire the clean, beautiful prose, and marvel that McCullers was just 23 when she knocked this baby out. (The bit when Singer goes to see Antonapoulos for the last time and is on the train is just awesome writing, and makes me wanna bomb ass-first into those cypress swamps. I’ve always been a sucker for the word ‘indigo-blue’).</div><div><br /></div><div>But then I cracked open ‘Lolita’. ‘Lolita’ is the new boyfriend in the crap analogy above, the one that’s made me reconsider THAILH as a witless, dickless square. ‘Lolita’ is so damn poetic and naughty and funny that I wonder why I thought THAILH was ayyymaaaayzing. It ain’t. It’s just good and the prose is solid and does what it does well, and as my first dalliance with southern literature since I threw ’As I Lay Dying’ under the bed, bored and incomprehending, so I could play Championship Manager, back when I was 14, it is gorgeous and worthwhile in its slow, sad, extremely clever way, and I‘ll be back there soon, for sure. But Nabokov …well…Nabokov has just raised the bar. Nina used to wonder, shocked, why it had taken me so long to get round to reading London Fields and Lolita, and it wasn’t that I had anything against Amis and Nabokov. I just didn’t think they would be good. I’m an idiot. </div><div><br /></div><div>Lolita, Lolita, a novel’s worth of poetry…</div><div><br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4696300894871865744.post-30376240568746484232009-05-04T16:01:00.001-07:002009-05-04T16:01:05.826-07:00A Goodbye To Guns<p>Right,</p> <p>Rav here. Taking advantage of my hard-won administrator’s privileges, and with apologies for the delay – as you may well know I’ve been, ahem, distracted – here’s my take on <em>A Farewell to Arms</em>.</p> <p>You remember <em>Titanic</em>? The film, I mean? Some people hated it, and some people loved it. My English teacher, I remember, said he thought it was great without any caveating or qualification, which I remember thinking was admirably unpretentious of him. Anyway, I half-liked it: but in the reverse way to a lot of my friends. They all hated the first two hours, with the Leo-Kate romance, but enjoyed it once the ship started sinking.</p> <p>I completely disagreed. I found myself reasonably well swept along by the first two hours, which though cheesy in places (“I’m flying!”) nonetheless made me want Kate’n’Leo not to die. But once the ship started its interminable decline, I was bored rigid. Water crashing through a room! And another room! And a corridor! Leo’s trapped! Now he’s free! Now he’s trapped again! Billy Zane is waving a gun for some reason! Yawn. When the stern of the ship tipped up vertical in that actually-quite-nifty climactic scene and was sucked forever into the whirlpool, I breathed a sigh of relief that we could get back to the characters. For the ten remaining minutes, at least.</p> <p>So fucking what, you ask? Well, the more perceptive of you have probably figured it out: I feel the same about <em>A Farewell to Arms</em>. I actually really like the main relationship, the which manages through the sheer inscrutability of the writing to appear both cynical and gloriously heartfelt – at least on the narrator’s part. Catherine’s determination to play the part of the dutiful lover always seems to stem from the conviction that she can’t ever actually succeed in giving Henry a happy home – which, of course, turns out to be true. She knows she’ll fail, so there’s a play-acting quality to it that makes it sweeter than it is depressing. Henry’s transition from detached cynic to hopeless romantic is more jolting, which is odd, what with Hemingway being the big writer of men and all. But generally, while I wouldn’t  agree with the blurb on the back of my copy which says that the relationship “glows with an intensity unrivalled in modern literature,” I do certainly find it touching and largely believable.</p> <p>But then comes the “war bit” – according to my copy’s blurb, “one of the greatest moments in literary history.” Well, I am obviously a bloody great philistine, because I could barely keep my eyes open for most of it. Little details, in principle, are the essence of realism, especially Hemingway’s studiedly hardboiled variety. But the nice details – the failed St. Anthony’s medal on page 44, for example – are swamped by the sheer amount of passionless description. They trudge/drive from place to place, Hemingway seeming to deliberately allow the reader to lose all sense of their actual route or destination. They eat. They drink. They walk a bit more. Little, supposedly touching, moments of compatriotship occur. They drink some more. Then it all comes to a faintly infeasible conclusion with the hero – spoiler alert - swimming off to safety.</p> <p>I don’t know why it didn’t work for me; there are similar pages of description in <em>The Old Man and The Sea</em> that I found perfectly compelling. But I think it’s because, unlike in <em>Old Man</em>, the action section of <em>Farewell</em> comes after an awful lot of something else – explicit and quite generous characterisation, making the grittily emotionless writing of the war section seem somehow churlish. The reader feels bereft at being deprived of Catherine and her strange charm, and the guilt-free idyll their relationship offers. But instead of letting the reader associate their feelings of deprivation with Henry’s, he doesn’t allow Henry to acknowledge his, leaving us simply bored.</p> <p>Still, throughout the book there are those odd little turns of phrase which always grab the attention. Like, on page 14, talking about the priest: “He had always known what I did not know and what, when I learned it, I was always able to forget. But I did not know that then, although I learned it later.” Or the wonderful moments where a sort of sublime insight arises from a long gusher of description, like the opening paragraph of chapter 2.</p> <p>And there are some distracting oddities. Like the fact that everyone drinks all the time, even while on active duty, without ever apparently feeling any ill effects. The novel’s obsession with alcohol has probably been the subject of a PhD thesis or two, but I – being, it must be said, a total lightweight- just find it a bit befuddling. A pleasant evening meal is accompanied by two bottles of wine between the couple. Stocking up to leave for Udine the motley crew of retreaters take several bottles of wine, but no water. Wine and apples is considered “a good breakfast.” I honestly don’t know if this is simply of its time or a weird Hemingway tic. I know people used to have a beer at morning break back then, but surely this is a bit OTT? It’s page 273 in my copy, after hours of rowing, before anyone actually drinks any water. In Italy, in wartime!</p> <p>Then – just as clear but just as matter-of-factly presented – is the weird homoerotic charge to Henry’s friendship with Rinaldi. “Baby, baby,” he calls him. On page 67, it’s surely more than just cultural differences in attitudes towards male affection going on here:</p> <blockquote> <p>“We won’t quarrel, baby. I love you too much. But don’t be a fool.”</p> <p>“No. I’ll be wise like you.”</p> <p>“Don’t be angry, baby. Laugh. Take  a drink. I must go, really.”</p> <p>“You’re a good old boy.”</p> <p>“Now you see. Underneath we are the same. We are war brothers. Kiss me good-by.”</p> <p>“You’re sloppy.”</p> <p>“No. I am just more affectionate.”</p> <p>I felt his breath come towards me. “Good-by. I come to see you again soon.” His breath went away. “I won’t kiss you if you don’t want. I’ll send your English girl. Good-by, baby…”</p> </blockquote> <p>I mean, you know.</p> <p>Then there are the sudden moments of insight, which typically come in sudden rushes of words, like after days of only thinking thoughts worth saying – practical, quick thoughts – Henry suddenly allows his thoughts to race faster than he can speak and is surprised where it takes him. Like the treatise on the deceptive nature of concepts like honour, on pages 184-5 in my copy (“the sacrifices were like the stockyards at Chicago if nothing was done with the meat except to bury it.”) These rare insights gain extra power for being rare, of course, and it’s one of the most satisfying aspects of Hemingway’s bare style. But there are really only a handful such moments in the book.</p> <p>Basically it’s a flawed book, it seems to me. Maybe those flaws are really marks of genius that I’m too daft to see. Certainly Hemingway conjures up a fine romance; he also has the makings of a fine semi-comic, semi-tragic war novel. But the tensions, in terms of plot and style, of combining the two ultimately overwhelm the book.</p> Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4696300894871865744.post-75587790129295410702009-04-15T02:43:00.000-07:002011-04-05T15:44:34.424-07:00Got me a feeder<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_nvxBKNxvNFI/SeWvV5vclPI/AAAAAAAAAA0/GR4dcCSJKO8/s1600-h/feed.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 186px; height: 320px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_nvxBKNxvNFI/SeWvV5vclPI/AAAAAAAAAA0/GR4dcCSJKO8/s320/feed.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5324854925247419634" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br />¡Hola! Dusty Anachronites. Thanks for checking in. I've been slowly making my way through The Heart is A Lonely Hunter, and am beginning to see why people talk of its 'treacly effect'. It's definitely a treacly novel. Full of boarding houses on arid streets, boozed-up ranting under hot skies, and next door neighbours with secrets. Treacly fo' shiz. But I'm on page 100 and not addicted yet, and not sure if i will be.<br /><br />I'm being lame with THIALH cos my housemate, Miss Librarian, handed me a book called 'Feed', by </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Tobin_Anderson"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">M.T. Anderson</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> and told me to "Read 'Feed'". Not only had she retrieved it from a bunch of old books in a box, which made it genuinely dusty, it was part of that dinky 'lil subgenre YA fiction. So i scoffed at it and went to do something more grown-up. Cos YA = Young Adult fiction. Like Point Horror and Sweet Valley Shenaniganzy Blonde Bullshitz. This anecdote has an obvious ending so i'll spare you/me/The Ether the build-up. I cosied up with a camomile tea and cracked open 'Feed' one quiet night last week. And it was so, so good. </span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Okay, it helped that dystopian YA fiction is my favourite genre. What's not to love about having a shit time on the moon and losing your boyfriend to a girl with a more futuristic hat than yours and not remembering the last time you breathed real oxygen? I refer, um, you, to 'This Place Has No Atmosphere' by Paula Danziger (YA goddess) for a perfect example of all this, in what was a seminal moment for YA fiction, and, actually, my life. 'Feed' has that same satirical voice, and gorgeous prose to boot. I forgot how great it is to read someone who doesn't heap on the lame-ass simile showboating but can still make you cry cos the characters just get to you. S'pose that's the beauty of YA fiction - you're not trying to be Pynchon or Carver or fucking Tom Robbins, whose prose, in 'Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas', I've felt like sticking a knife through (and it's not just that he keeps on using the word 'panties' like a dirty old man... apparently he averages one working day per metaphor, which makes me want to kill him. I hope he spends the rest of his time a little more usefully). Anyway, in YA fiction, you're only trying to communicate that you're starting to be suspicious of the way the world works and that your life FUCKING SUCKS. Since my mental age is stuck at 14, I appreciate this. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">'Feed' is about the interwebs and TV taken to a creepy extreme so their driveltastic datastreams are fed via a transmitter directly into your brain. It's 100% glossed-up sales talk whirling up your neocortex at the behest of corporations (of course), and it creates full-on consumers out of all of us. The message of the novel is an 'Adbusters'-esque resistance to this, including a hot date culture-jamming at the mall. It's territory so old it ain't fit for speculative fiction, but hey, could be new territory for Young Adults. And resistance will be an important message till we all embrace Neo-Quakerism, so, um, buy the book. yeah.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">More compliments, cos i'm having one of those quasi-orgasmic Blogger-font/interface catalysed Csikzentmihalyian flow experiences...</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; white-space: pre; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; white-space: normal; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> 'Feed''s future slang is so casual and good it almost falls into cool as 'Clockwork Orange' territory (i say almost - this is a dainty parable, 'tis no 'Orange', droogs). The characters and their relationships were beautifully developed anus and it's funny and sad, funny and sad, comedy and tragedy, ad infinitum, cos that's all there is to life. Funny, sad, weird shit goes down, some of us distract ourselves to numb ourselves, some of us don't, then we die. Pop stars get skin lesions to look cool. I can see LiLo doing that. You can upload and try on your friends' memories and experiences. Everyone is a hottie cos their genes were selected in a conceptionarium *stellar idea*. And the seas, the sun and mountains are all breathtaking, cos they're computer generated backgrounds. And you spend spring break on the moon:</span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"We went to the moon to have fun, but the moon turned out to completely suck."</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br />That's the first line of the novel. Good, eh? M.T. Anderson is a fantastic writer, 'Feed' rocks, I'm ready to get intimate with YA fiction again, but I will spare the DABC any further reviews. 'Feed's exceptional though - it takes an evening to ram through it and it'll warm you up in the way only good old-fashioned dystopian satire can. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">God, it's quite hard to be interesting when you all you want to say is GREAT! Yeah! COR! and then do some boring preaching like READ IT IT IS GOOD FOR YOUR SOUL!</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span><br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4696300894871865744.post-85472117874319106692009-03-21T14:00:00.001-07:002009-05-04T16:02:26.385-07:00A Farewell to Yawns (1929)Here's a theory: Some people like war-based novels/poems/films/tv/'The White Cliffs of Dover'. Others don't.<br /><br />Some things transcend this theory, when there's so much innate genius that pretty much everyone likes them. The Deer Hunter. Apocalypse Now. Catch 22. Um...(debatable) Tropic Thunder. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvyX-CwHpAQ">This.</a> The novel of Captain Corelli's Mandolin (come on, it was great!). Paradise Lost.<br /><br />But 'Arms' doesn't - at least, the first 174 pages of it don't. And i should have known better before picking it - ever since trying to analyse a Robert Graves poem in year seven English maimed me into post-traumatic stress, I've known what side I'm on. Fuck you, war writing! So perhaps someone who thinks otherwise would be better placed to comment on 'Arms'. Otherwise, i'll just make the best of a tactical error.<br /><br />In his favour, at least Hem keeps it simple; clean prose, no metaphor, no fancy poetry, just: I was in Italy. There were trees. And it was War. But it's not enough to keep me interested. Every morning, pre-commute, I look at five or so other books i'd rather be dipping into and dutifully pick up Arms. I can't pay attention to it...it's just...(cue literary heresy) <span style="font-style:italic;">not very good</span>. Of course, this isn't a 'so say we all' matter - Michelle told me it made her weep, which i assumed at the time was because it was a brilliant piece of emotional manipulation - that's what i want from my media.<br /><br />Maybe Mish was talking about the dialogue though, cos this shit's weepable:<br /><br /><blockquote> "I wish we could do something really sinful," Catherine said. "Everything we do seems so innocent and simple. I can't believe we do anything wrong."<br /><br />"You're a grand girl."<br /><br />"I only feel hungry. I get terribly hungry."<br /><br />"You're a fine simple girl."<br /><br />"I am a simple girl. No-one ever understood it except you."<br /><br />"Once when I first met you I spent an afternoon thinking how we would go to the Hotel Cavour together and how it would be."<br /><br />"That was awfully cheeky of you. This isn't the Cavour is it?"<br /><br />"No. They wouldn't have taken us in there."<br /><br />"They'll take us in sometime. But that's how we differ, darling. I never thought about anything."<br /><br />"Didn't you ever at all?"<br /><br />"A little," she said.<br /><br />"Oh, you're a lovely girl." I poured another glass of wine.<br /><br />"I'm a very simple girl," Catherine said.</blockquote><br /><br />It's cute, i suppose. I'm a simple girl too and i do like men, wine and trashy hotel rooms, so what more do i want? Also, it's of its time, so fair enough - a little. There is something gorgeous about having a mouth so laced up with propriety that you never cause others to overdose on your wordguff and instead just constantly say 'darling' - that's the 1920's for you. But it's still stilted as Thunderbirds, and that's not a timebound necessity. You don't stumble over awkward anachronisms nearly as much in Virginia Woolf's 1920's output...probably because she was an extraordinarily good writer. By comparison, Hemmo's people seem static; especially Catherine. Tenente's exchanges with her are kinda shoddy; we haven't yet seen any more of who she is other than what variations on the above example reveal - and they reveal that she's, guess what, 'lovely'. With 'nice' hair. Hemmo, fuck! I thought this guy could write! He has taken leave of his adjectival power. Or maybe he never had any. Or maybe he doesn't believe in adjectives as superpowers. Or maybe he can't write women as anything other than ciphers for his general feelings about beauty, yearning and the horn. Which means that you could replace Catherine with the words "hair curlers" and it would amount to the same kind of objectification.<br /><br />Things may get better, story-wise, as they get worse, war-wise. That's my hope for the next few hundred pages. Gunfire, extreme limb loss, and something to give a shit about.<br /><br />Although, as I mentioned to Rav, if someone can't empathise with an honest, clear, occasionally pretty sexy account of something, then PERHAPS (and here's the twist you didn't see coming), the problem lies with their emotional intelligence and ability to leap into others' imaginations - ie. i am a bad reader, in this case. Hmm. It's a tough one to call and I'm simultaneously hoping other Book Clubees will come forth and give their opinions on it, whilst advising you not to waste your time on it.<br /><br />Right, given its general reputation, and the way Hemmo's prose has been fetishized for decades, i'm willing to give this one to the book.<br /><br />So: Bad peacetime-lovin' reader, not bad book. For now.<br /><br />Anyone willing to pick up the baton? Rav, darling?Unknownnoreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4696300894871865744.post-47657942075485422422009-03-11T22:41:00.000-07:002009-05-04T16:03:05.199-07:00A lot about me, a little about the book (maybe not even...)<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFuFg8TkFmwI6vKv880uW-twZWyD0fJIA4AtduTO0RKq1AhAYUL5FHRP2D6tudNAsk_UeSXiCmjGbJ_y4cRM2ikWm4aUn65EV-jt1MQnT0jmWdWUjiJ9iLcTHCXYvYOiuuOTJXJsLYDUg/s1600-h/album-Funkadelic-Free-Your-MindAnd-Your-Ass-Will-Follow.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5312173577989793682" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 215px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 190px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFuFg8TkFmwI6vKv880uW-twZWyD0fJIA4AtduTO0RKq1AhAYUL5FHRP2D6tudNAsk_UeSXiCmjGbJ_y4cRM2ikWm4aUn65EV-jt1MQnT0jmWdWUjiJ9iLcTHCXYvYOiuuOTJXJsLYDUg/s320/album-Funkadelic-Free-Your-MindAnd-Your-Ass-Will-Follow.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div>In one of those delicious synchronicities that life has in store for anyone of us who pays a little attention, at the time Eli announced Siddharta would be the starter in the Book Club’s menu, a new flatmate moved into my house. What he brought with him when he moved in, along with a selection of French delicacies and a jailable amount of duty-free tobacco, was a serious addiction to Funk. Groovy Funk. Dirty Funk. Kinky Funk.</div><div><br />One track he played in particular stuck to me like a vacuum-cleaner salesman to a well off widow. It is from Funkadelic and it goes like this:<br /><br />Free your mind and you ass will follow<br />The kingdom of heaven is within<br />Open up your funky mind and you can fly<br />Free your mind and your ass will follow<br />The kingdom of heaven is within.<br /><br />Now wait a minute, I know that the apparent similarity in the choice of words does not necessarily indicate a consistency in Hesse’s and George Clinton’s message, but it got me thinking. Especially since the bridge in the song goes like this:<br />“Freedom is free of the need to be free”</div><div><br />Now here we are. That’s where I draw the bunny out of the hat and the parallel with what Eli was pointing out in her previous post. Time is unreal, truth is relative and freedom is more of a surrender than a fight. That’s what Clinton says to me. And as I hear Clinton encouraging me to loosen the grip of my tiny fists on my precious idea of freedom, Hesse whispers in my ear that “knowing has no greater enemy that wanting to know”, and I’ve got to let go of yet another human attribute: systematic intellectualization. Pheeeew. So to reach enlightenment and the “heaven within”, so George and Herman say, I’ve got to stop fighting AND stop learning, two words that were so far occupying a prominent position on the black board of my minuscule existence. Tough one.</div><div><br />Now pardon my tendency to over-simplify, I know Siddharta/Hesse is not encouraging us to reach nirvana by becoming mindless, ball-scratching monkeys. But still, I find it hard to agree to let go of every sort of accumulation, especially the accumulation of knowledge. That seems like a high price to pay, even for enlightenment…<br />Thoughts anyone??</div>Lettiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02737429930121870110noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4696300894871865744.post-32108616007036020742009-02-23T02:51:00.000-08:002009-02-24T04:44:42.511-08:00'Strange dreams were reflected in his enlarged eyes...'<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_nvxBKNxvNFI/SaKAH8bLtxI/AAAAAAAAAAM/3U5zlNTbtRA/s1600-h/siddhartha.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_nvxBKNxvNFI/SaKAH8bLtxI/AAAAAAAAAAM/3U5zlNTbtRA/s320/siddhartha.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5305944184963446546" border="0" /></a>It seems counter-intuitive to open 'Siddhartha' up for discussion because much of the novel is about S...(argh, i'm gonna call him Sid for brevity's sake...) is about Sid walking away from just such a thing, from reading and debate, from, quite literally, groping enlightenment with both hands. At the start, he's walking away from received wisdom (Brahmin/scriptural) about 'the creation of the world, the origin of speech, food, inhalation, exhalation, the arrangement of the senses, the acts of the gods'. The lad won’t be taught. Then he decides he doesn't want Buddha's version of events either, and wanders straight into the ‘fig-lipped’ (er…I might have that quote wrong - I‘m talking about Kamala) and oily-haired pleasures of samsara. What comes after is nigh on impossible to articulate, unless you‘ve got Hesse‘s grace. But in discussing 'Siddhartha', I guess we’re gonna forge ahead and clumsily try to articulate extremely nebulous things. <br /><br />So here's what impressed me about the novel, knowing nothing about it before I started reading it: that Sid's life was full. By which i mean that it wasn't obnoxiously ascetic, which I'd presumed it would be. He went out there, got in amongst 'em, down and dirty, let himself get ruled by his cock, his clothes and his covetousness, and stopped being righteously distant (as in, ' People like us cannot love. Ordinary people can'). I'm not sure what I was expecting. Someone whose life was more of a straight line, more exemplary, perhaps. Specifically, as in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_Eightfold_Path">Eightfold Path </a>sense of exemplary. But did anyone else find it unexpected and pleasing (I'm asking those with as much prior ignorance of the story as me) that Sid got lost in samsara, making him more relatable?<br /><br />On another matter, I don't know enough about Buddhism, and it would be great if someone could correct me/enlighten (boom boom) me as to my probably shite, snail's-paced interpretation of Hesse's theological thrust. Is Sid, in rejecting the institution of Buddhism, not only being very wise in rejecting all institutionalised ways of being in order to pick his own way (kinda Jonathan Livingston Seagull, but never mind. Also, perhaps, DJ *calling DJ Brown...*, if you have a moment you could riff on institution theory...?!?), but also moving beyond Buddhism? I mean, if Buddhism works on the idea that we need to get the hell outta samsara into nirvana but Sid unravels his own theory - that the distinction between samsara and nirvana, between suffering and salvation, is false, that they collapse in on themselves, and that time is unreal and truth is relative...then isn't Hesse dissing doctrinal, prescriptive Buddhism? <br /><br />Although sure, at the same time, he's saying that thing everyone knows, everyone says, and is in no way antithetical to Buddhism - that's it's all about love. Humbling, stone-stroking (if you're Siddhartha), love. And you don't have to go questing for it. It's just there. I'm just highlighting what I got from the novel - a perhaps minor critique of Buddhism and a major big-up for Love (which is encompassed in Buddhist doctrine so, you know, good).<br /><br />Yay, nay, have I misread things, whatever…?? I'd love to hear what you think - any thoughts, disagreements, corrections about my unsubtle interpretations, or anything really, would be marvellous. Also, anyone want to get biographical about Hesse, go for it (hey, or autobiographical if you want, i bet they do that in Oprah's book club, i bet the books are just excuses for rampant confessional...). I prefer the 'death of the author' thesis - ie. that banging on about what was going on for the author at the time, his diet, how often he wanked, is a waste of time. i'm not sure that gets too far into understanding a novel, honestly. But if anyone comes up with anything illuminating, then great. To start with (er, I've just suddenly switched to the 'resurrection of the author' thesis), here's a nice essay about Hesse's life and its analogies with the plot of 'Siddhartha'. <br /><br /><a href="http://www.gss.ucsb.edu/projects/hesse/papers/baumann-hesse-and-india.pdf">'Herman Hesse and India</a>'<br /><br />And a quote from Hesse (taken from that essay):<br /><br />"Jesus' teachings and Lao-tse's teachings, the Vedas and Goethe finally express<br />the same humanity. There is only one message. There is only one religion.<br />There is only one happiness. A thousand different ways expressing<br />the same thought, a thousand different voices expressing nothing but one final<br />and common call. God's voice can not be found on Sinai or in the Bible,<br />the essence of love, beauty and holiness is not within Christianity, not<br />within the ancient world, is not Goethe or Tolstoi- it's all within yourself, in<br />you and in me, in each of us. That is the only final truth. It is the message of<br />the heaven that is within ourselves" (1917).<br /><br />Woah. Dude. <br /><br />So...i've got the ball rolling. Eek! Any takers? Apologies about the slight reek of Hare Krishna stallmonkey earnestness. We'll do something more hard-edged next time, about football hooligans or something.<br /><br /><br />ps. Thanks Doug for the image :)Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4696300894871865744.post-41454020767007256392009-02-15T22:12:00.001-08:002009-02-15T22:13:52.780-08:00Just a quick one - I've started a new job today and have no internet at home yet, but am a Hesse-devouring commuter and will be kicking off Siddhartha discussion as soon as I get a moment. Everyone else, please feel free!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4696300894871865744.post-53035733068791560082009-02-07T18:06:00.000-08:002009-02-07T18:46:18.537-08:00No Hessing aboutHey hey, Dusty Anachronists - thankyou for being up for this communal reading shenanigan!<br /><br />Just a brief thought on how to work it - if we all kick off reading a specific book at roughly the same time, discussion will be open from then on. And it will remain open on all the books, till the end of time. I'll moderate it, but lightly.<br /><br />We'll get some links going about authors, context, background etc, too.<br /><br />Also, participation is as you feel. I'll keep the blog updated with whenabouts we're gonna be reading/discussing which books, and feel free to join in whenever.<br /><br />So, without any more Hessing about, Siddhartha (1922) is going to be the first book. Anyone who doesn't want to buy a copy can get the full text on <a href="http://gutenberg.org/">Project Gutenberg</a>, apparently. It's going to plunge us into talking about some major big shit (enlightenment, dude!) so I'm almost tempted to revoke it and make us read something piss-easy instead, like Kafka's 'The Vulture', where a vulture mutilates a man's feet before it drowns in his blood. Nice and concise.<br /><br />No, Siddhartha it is.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com13