dustcovers

Social discourse

2006-11-13T06:44:00.000-08:00

....and in other argumentative news, note the heated debate over a Che Guevara-themed doormat, seen on sale in Helsinki.

mucking about in ... books.

2006-06-30T16:26:00.000-07:00

At the beginning of June, I moved into a new apartment within the city limits of the mid-sized town around which I've been orbiting for a considerable chunk of my life. With a new address came something I can't believe I never got in New York (though as an excuse I offer to those who know me my job in those years): a library card. My own! My precious!

As a result, I've been reading like a motherfucker.

No, for serious.

This month's booklist is twice the size of the last few months'. And on top of that, it's frosted with graphic novels, the likes of which I can never justify purchasing but always want to read. Imagine my glee when I discovered all the Books of Magic on the YA graphic novel shelves. Now if I can just go in with the list I made that tells me in which order they're meant to be read.

I read the third volume of Carla Speed McNeil's spectacular Finder. I read the Serenity GN, which I'm glad I didn't purchase as it seemed to exist simply to explain that the two by two hands of blue were taken care of, and that's why the Operative got sent in. Joss, I love ya, but my imagination could have taken care of that part.

But yesterday I read Warren Ellis' Orbiter.

Ellis consistently reminds me why GNs are such a vital storytelling form. It's not something I can easily put into words, but his stories are such that simple prose wouldn't be enough to properly present them. The image of a long-lost space shuttle putting down in a Kennedy Space Center that's become a tent city, the horrible chaos that presents, the very idea of a ship covered in a skin-like substance with incredibly properties ... these things can be written, certainly. But the visual does something different. It's the same with his Transmetropolitan, which all told probably adds up to several novels worth of text. Transmet, though, is hugely visual: the mad glare of Spider Jerusalem, the two-headed cat, the busy, teeming streets. This kind of visual creation is iconic. It gives us text the illustration of which we can all agree on; it gives us a sort of cinema that would never happen in the studio system.

I don't know if that makes sense, but there's something here. Toby, you want to be more eloquent than I?

First post in a while

2006-03-22T20:00:00.000-08:00

And it's simply to say that this sounds amazing.

The Memoir/Novel Debate, Revisited (in 2003)

2006-02-24T09:26:00.000-08:00

Just revisited an essay by Katie Roiphe from three years ago which contains some interesting musings on the recent novel/memoir brouhaha. Roiphe begins with the debate over the possibility that Siri Hustvedt's What I Loved contains autobiographical elements, and discusses the history of this in literature. She goes on to make a series of points that seem ever-so-slightly more relevant now:

Now it seems an actual confusion between the writer's life and the book has become more and more widespread. ... It may be that the profusion of memoirs in the late 1990s has caused reviewers to forget that there are books out there that aren't memoirs. But if a writer chooses to call her book fiction, surely the distinction should be honored. The genre does not exist as a convenient shelving system for bookstores: It means that the words on the page are, by the writer's own admission, at least part fantasy.

Houellebecq

2006-02-07T08:54:00.000-08:00

If you're a reader of Michel Houellebecq's work, this London Review of Books article -- reviewing his latest novel and a biography of him -- is pretty much essential.

His observations, bracing at first, seem specious and grating when repeated, in almost identical form, in novel after novel. It's frequently obvious that he is simply dressing up his personal obsessions as something more significant, or cannily repackaging popular prejudices as grand philosophical positions. On the evidence of The Possibility of an Island, his latest novel, he would be the first to admit all this.

Amazon lists a May 26, 2006 release date stateside for said novel, for what it's worth.

Subjects

2006-02-07T08:33:00.000-08:00

Finished Sam Lipsyte's The Subject Steve earlier this week. I'd read his novel Home Land a few months earlier, and seen him do a reading at Pete's Candy Store a few months before that. It would be tempting, at first, to write Lipsyte's work off as cynical/misanthropic dark comedy -- the sort of criticism I have of a lot of Daniel Clowes's work, for instance. While Lipsyte does put his characters through hell -- the protagonist of The Subject Steve learns that he's dying as the novel begins, and things get worse from there -- the possiblity of some form of redemption always exists.

That said, Lipsyte's work is often darkly funny, and some of the humor is indeed cringeworthy. Many of his characters exhibit contempt and compassion in equal measure, and his novels can be as emotionally bruising as they are spot-on funny.

And he knows the Garden State well, which is hard to argue with...

The Word "Chutzpah" Comes to Mind

2006-02-07T07:23:00.000-08:00

The Times has an update on the JT Leroy case, which includes the following.

Mr. Knoop, whose 25-year-old half sister Savannah Knoop was unmasked by The New York Times last month as the public face of JT Leroy, said that he had come forward out of concern for his son, family members and others affected by what he called an all-consuming web of deceit...

Mr. Knoop has hired a Los Angeles entertainment lawyer and said that he hopes to sell a movie about his experience.

....yeah.

Centralization

2006-02-03T07:29:00.000-08:00

Last night, I finished William T. Vollmann's Europe Central. This would be the fifth book of Vollmann's I've finished; none of them has been an easy read, as Vollmann is not one to shy away from the ugliness and horror summoned up by the morally wracked situations in which he places his characters. Nonetheless, Vollmann's willingness to grapple with these situations -- and the hallucinatory quality of much of his prose -- makes him a writer (for my money, at least) impossible to ignore.

Europe Central is set in Germany and the Soviet Union in the years before, after, and during World War Two, and unsparingly depicts the conditions of living under equally horrifying regimes. The best that his characters can aspire to is the status of tragic hero, and the mood that he summons up at the novel's opening is never dispersed. (Only one character shows up who isn't implicated in some way in the crimes of either regime -- the American pianist Van Cliburn -- and he only appears for a handful of pages, inscrutable, leaving the Soviet characters uncertain as to how to react.)

...and, now that I've finished it, I can finally let myself read this article on the author, which focuses on the novel in question.

Memoir Daze

2006-01-27T08:32:00.000-08:00

Just finished The Burn Journals by Brent Runyon.

It's managed to drudge up a lot of my own history, and
while mine isn't nearly as dramatic, it sure felt that way.

I feel compelled to say that I'm pretty sure all of it is true,
since the world that elected George W. Bush seems to be
so fucking concerned with the Truth when it comes to
Memoirs.

Anyway, I think it's well worth a read if you have ever
suffered from teen angst/depression, or if you know
someone who continues to fight that battle every day.

"Personally, I can't seem to get away from the quest-and-rescue narrative."

2006-01-24T12:24:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago, I finished Walter Kirn's Mission to America, and enjoyed it immensely -- it's bittersweet and insightful; moving and funny; and skillfully laid out. Kirn and Stephen Metcalf discussed the book not long ago in Slate, and Kirn's discussion of the book's roots (19th century utopian movements were expected; the Hardy Boys....not so much) is fascinating. Give it a read.

BHL

2006-01-24T06:41:00.000-08:00

I'm an Atlantic Monthly subscriber these days. Over the last year, the magazine ran a series of essays by the French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy. They've since been collected in a book called American Vertigo; in Slate, there's now a Book Club discussion on it.

Ah, the Taconics

2006-01-20T10:49:00.000-08:00

I'll admit that I haven't read any of Susan Orlean's work -- my mental image of her comes from the film Adaptation, in which she's a character. (Kind of.) She was recently featured in an article about her new home. Over in Slate, Timothy Noah looks over the piece , in which Orlean extols the luxury and design of her new digs, and comments that

The main thing, though, is that an inclination to state forthrightly, "I have a gorgeous multimillion-dollar house in the country and you don't," calls severely into question the journalist's ability to identify with the ordinary people about whom one is called upon, at least once in a while, to write.

Which, I'd say, speaks for itself...

Self-Referential? Yes.

2006-01-20T07:12:00.000-08:00

Over at my other blog, I've posted a few thoughts on a Chris Dahlen essay on Christianity in indie rock. I mention it here because Dahlen also invokes, among others, Marilynne Robinson's novel Gilead. Rick Moody's "How to Be a Christian Artist" treaded upon similar ground in mid-2005, and the essays in Robinson's The Death of Adam will pretty much torpedo any preconceived notions of what might be expected from left-wing Christian politics.

Diviners' Intervention

2006-01-18T07:54:00.000-08:00

Finished Rick Moody's The Diviners last night.

It's a massive book, full of characters (maybe too full?), wildly ambitious, and occasionally hilarious. It's also, for the first hundred or so pages, incredibly frustrating -- as opposed to the fairly tight focus that Moody used in his past work, this novel shifts focal characters from chapter to chapter, occasionally lapsing into stylistic experiments, diary entries, and a summary of an episode of a fictitious television show (The Werewolves of Fairfield County, which is either the best Joss Whedon homage since Kelly Link's Magic for Beginners or a remarkably stinging parody of his work).

Have patience with the novel, though -- soon after that, a structure emerges, centering around the employees of a small production company called Means of Production and their friends, families, and loved ones. The novel's plot centers around the development of a miniseries called The Diviners, but includes tangents into the art world, corporate politics, psychology, and radical movements. Reading The Diviners is not unlike some of Nick Tosches's nonfiction, where elements that seem digressive turn out to be critical to the work at hand. And in the last few chapters, the full shape of Moody's structure becomes clear -- all before he finishes it off with a gut-punch of a final sentence. What seemed at first to be a trivial book, a comic novel about the entertainment industry, builds to a chilling resonance in its final section. And while I don't think The Diviners is a perfect book, its ambition and -- for lack of a better phrase -- political dimension make it a deeply relevant one.

Juggling

2006-01-18T07:35:00.000-08:00

In my mind -- until a better theory comes along -- I tend to classify the novels I read into two groups. In one, the plot is fairly straightforward, and the narrative's momentum becomes captivating because of the plot's inherent strengths. In the other, the author keeps the reader in suspense about what's happening -- via a series of seemingly unconnected plotlines, through a narrator who may be unreliable or withholding, through a general sense of ambiguity. The analogy I'll make here is to a juggling act: the author keeps a number of objects in the air -- often thrillingly -- but the real skill lies in collecting all these objects safely.

Samantha Hunt's The Seas falls into the "unreliable narrator" camp. Actually, that's not entirely accurate -- although it's clear from the prologue that the book's narrator perceives the world differently than most, half the pleasure of the novel is coming to understand the underlying logic behind her perceptions. It's a finely spun story, concerning the 19-year-old narrator's relationships with her mother; her father, who may or may not have died years before; and the man, much older and traumatized by his wartime experiences, with whom she's in love. Set in a seaside town in (I think) northern Maine, Hunt manages to evoke a sense of place well while remaining ambiguous. Given that the novel includes elements drawn from folklore, this ambiguity works in the context of the novel; Hunt never makes it clear whether the narrator's perception that something supernatural is taking place is real or not. Which, I daresay, works for me -- it's one thing to play with that is this magic realism or isn't it? tension, but the resolution of that question can cause a novel to fall apart. (Helen Oyeyemi's The Icarus Girl fell victim to this issue, in my opinion). Hunt manages to sustain her tone throughout, and that ultimately makes The Seas memorable.

Kate Atkinson's Case Histories comes from a slightly different camp. In it, the narration is straightforward, covering several disparate characters: an ex-cop turned private detective, a traumatized lawyer, a prudish continuing-education instructor, among others. Atkinson effortlessly creates fleshed-out, sympathetic characters, and her sense of place is terrific. And the setup of Case Histories -- a detective takes on three seemingly disconnected cases, which turn out to be more interwoven than he would have thought -- is impressive. Unfortunately -- for me, at least -- it's in the interweaving of the cases that the novel falls short. There are clearly connections: someone from one case becomes close to someone from a third, and by the end of the book, it becomes clear that Jackson, the novel's detective hero, has secrets of his own that make him uniquely sympathetic to the concerns of his clients. But there's no real "Gotcha!" moment where all of the cases converge on one point -- one of them remains, as far as I can tell, quite detached from the rest of the novel's action. And while I can recommend Case Histories on the basis of Atkinson's skills with location and character, the plotting of it wasn't what I had expected.

On the other hand, it might be that I'm looking in the wrong places with this novel. I have a strange and somewhat crackpot theory that Atkinson may be going for something else altogether with this novel -- namely, the fact that many of the characters are fairly staunch atheists. Is Atkinson's point here that the interconnectedness of events implies a higher order of things; a refutation of these characters' refutations? If so, than this is a very different beast than the "literary detective" tag might imply...

Re: Memoirs & Novels

2006-01-13T07:06:00.000-08:00

I think it would be really interesting if musicians had to include
a note that acknowledges the fact that certain
names, events, etc. have been embellished for dramatic effect.

But mostly I think this whole "controversy" is complete bullshit.
You give people the Truth, and they cover their ears and say:
"I just want to be entertained!"
You give people Entertainment, and they get all pissy and say:
"Oh, this is so artless and vapid."
There is no way to please everyone, so you ought to please yourself.

Gah!

Memoirs & Novels

2006-01-12T07:29:00.000-08:00

There's an interesting piece on the James Frey/A Million Little Pieces controversy to be found here. (Via AndrewSullivan.com) Author Christian Bauman focuses on his own experiences in publishing, in contrast with Frey's and Anthony Swofford's, and goes into the concept of memoirs vs. novels drawing from personal experience.

That said -- I don't quite know if Bauman's take on Swofford's Jarhead is all that exact; he points out that "[b]oth of these authors have experienced difficulties of late", and goes on to say that

[t]here have been grumblings from family members of some who populate the pages of Jarhead about misrepresentation. In addition, The New York Times reports that the screenwriter who turned Mr. Swofford's memoir into a movie may have lifted scenes from Joel Turnipseed's book Baghdad Express.

The former doesn't seem to be particularly glaring; the latter, though, strikes me as a particularly strange point to make, as, well, Anthony Swofford didn't adapt his own book, and thus it's not really his "difficulty"...

How I Come To Buy a Book

2006-01-09T10:18:00.000-08:00

Was looking for information on Crowd Magazine, a NYC-based literary journal, the other night.

Found the website of Pia Z. Ehrhardt, a New Orleans-based writer who has a story in the most recent issue.

From there, I found the website of Crowd fiction editor Samantha Hunt, and realized that I'd been intruiged by the cover design of her novel The Seas earlier in the evening while shopping for a friend's birthday.

And, from the description of said novel on the site, I think I'm sold. Will probably be picking that up today at Coliseum, along with Kate Atkinson's Case Histories, which comes recommended via Stephen King's Best of 2005 list.

The District Sleeps Alone Tonight

2006-01-09T09:55:00.000-08:00

Finished George Pelecanos's Hard Revolution last week, and I've been meaning to write about it for a while now. Pelecanos is one of the most underrated novelists out there -- though you'll find his novels largely shelved in the "Crime" section of your local bookstore, he's earned rave reviews from the likes of Jonathan Lethem and Harlan Ellison (neither of whom is a stranger to the limitations of a genre tag). Although his novels can be divided up based on their protagonists, they share a series of recurring characters, particularly Nick Stefanos, a sometime private detective with a fondness for punk rock and an ongoing battle with alcohol. And their setting is uniform: Washington, D.C.

Hard Revolution is a prelude to the three novels that precede it, featuring a middle-aged detective named Derek Strange. Hard Revolution finds Strange as a young man, a promising police officer in late-Sixties D.C. Pelecanos has said that he doesn't consider this to be a crime novel -- and it's not, although crime does factor heavily into the plot, as does violence in many forms.

At first, this novel seems largely disconnected to the trilogy that precedes it. And slowly, we see connections: first, Strange's issues with monogamy, which play a not insubstantial role in the trilogy; and later, we come to realize that we're seeing something else, an event alluded to in Soul Circus (chronologically speaking, the latest of the Strange novels), and we come to realize just how much this is the story of Derek Strange's formative years -- and just how that's left him scarred. And as the book ends, its scenes of a burning Washington summon up the chaotic image that concludes Soul Circus -- and the preceding novel feels even more like a tragedy than it had before.

***

Plus, Pelecanos is a Q and Not U fan -- what's not to love?

Top Tens

2005-12-22T20:55:00.000-08:00

Over on my other blog, I just posted my top ten list for music for the year. Thus, my mood is currently fixated on top ten lists -- but I'm not sure that I've read enough books released this year to put together something with any degree of authority. What I can do, though, is point to a few other "best of" lists. Slate's, for instance, which makes me want to read Walter Kirn's Mission to America that much more. (It's on my Christmas list.)

One of the most interesting top ten lists I've seen comes from Stephen King -- it's idiosyncratic as hell, which may explain its attraction: The Godfather Returns coexists with Saturday and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. It's also piqued my interest to keep an eye out for A.M. Homes's next book, and to pick up Kate Atkinson's Case Histories; for the last few years, I've inexplicably purchased a book a day or so before Christmas for reading on Christmas Eve, and Atkinson's looks to be about the right size for that.

Seeing King's name also reminded me to pick up his novel The Colorado Kid, which Jenny Davidson, writing in the Village Voice, called "a small masterpiece".

Actually, while we're mentioning the Voice, why not mention their Best of 2005 list as well?

The Perils of Commissioned Literature: a play in three acts

2005-11-30T13:37:00.000-08:00

Act One:
In which an American pharmaceutical lobbying group hires writers to generate potboiler that might scare Americans away from Canadian prescription drugs.

Act Two:
In which the pharmaceutical lobbying group rejects book.

Act Three:
In which the writers retool their book to make an American pharmaceutical company the villain.

Slate has the details.

Narnia, Narnia

2005-11-21T19:41:00.000-08:00

Just for the record, I do not think ya'll are crazy.

In fact, I have the utmost respect for both of you.

Also for the record, I have never read C.S. Lewis, and I do not plan to.
Mostly because someone, who will go un-named in this public place, once
suggested that my "faith" might be enhanced by C.S.'s words.

Fuck that. I have plenty of "faith", it's just not rooted in Christianity.
Don't get me wrong, Jesus was cool, and I dig him just fine, but don't
expect to see me in any Christian place of worship anytime soon.

So maybe that's not very rational, or adult, but frankly I don't give
two pulls. I have made it just fine for nearly thirty years without Lewis,
and I'm pretty sure I can make it another thirty. Am I missing out?
Maybe. Does it keep me up at night? No, not ever.

Okay, enough of my own melodrama.

Here's my point:

Molly's right, the kids don't care. They have read, or will read the Narnia
stuff because someone that loved it recommended it, or maybe because
they find it on their own, or maybe after seeing the movie, whatever.
Bottom line- kids don't give a shit about sub-text, adults with "religious issues"
like me do. And really, no one gives a crap about what I think, so I won't
bore you with it any longer than need be.

Just know this: I think it is very important for kids (and everyone for that matter)
to choose their path. Whether it's church, or what-ever-the-hell.
Choose something. Even if it's the idea
that there is no God. Fine. Just choose it for yourself.

So- here's to hoping that the movie doesn't come off like some kind
of "join the Christians" thing. And I hope it's all magical and stuff for
the fans of the book. For real. For really real.

Oh, and make sure you tell me how it was.

Re: this whole "Narnia" thing

2005-11-18T14:08:00.000-08:00

I think it's telling that most folks say:
"Yeah, I read it as a kid, but I don't remember many details." (or something to that effect)

The question I have is this:
If all of these people read this stuff as kid, why have they not gone back
to re-read it at some point?

Maybe re-reading is too much to hope for.

Maybe it doesn't matter.

I'm just throwing my two cents out there.

Anyone else?

The Trouble With Narnia

2005-11-18T13:12:00.000-08:00

Well, then.

Warning for spoilers, here; why discuss this at all if not discuss all of it?

I did my re-reading, just a few years ago. I remember Narnia pretty well; I'm sure I read the books at least twice, as a kid - and as a kid with very little religious education outside the myths and folktales I chose to read myself. I loved those books, some more than others, of course. The Horse and His Boy stuck with me not at all, but the image of the children falling off the cliff - I think it's from Prince Caspian, though as with any series I do tend to mix up my stories - that stayed. Running away from the unpleasant schoolyard into a world of adventure and magic? Yes, please. Sailing to the end of the world? Ditto.

Re-reading is an interesting thing, especially when - as now - one goes in looking for the subtext. And one does not have to look very hard. It's funny that Pullman gets some gripes for his blatant anti-Authority, contrary-to-Lewis stance, when Lewis' stance is just so very clear in the first place. It's all there, every bit of it, Aslan dying and being reborn; the three less mature Pevensie children returning to Narnia at the dark end, after they've been killed in a train crash. How very morbid. The Problem with Susan, as I believe Neil Gaiman termed in in the title of a short story I'm itching to read, bugged me greatly, this adult-reading time through: She cares too much for nylons, and lipstick, to return to Narnia.

Only the innocent are allowed in to the fairy promised land. No matter she was a Queen there, once.

The stories can be moralizing, racist (see the aforementioned Horse for a nice dose of this one), sexist and more. I don't see how this can be argued against. The real question is, does it matter?

I don't think it does. I'm biased, sure; I love the stories. And that's what matters: the stories. What Lewis does with religion, with dumping Susan on her head for liking boys - kids, when they read this, take out of it what they have context for. A child raised by a misogynistic father may or may not see what happens to Susan for what it is. A child raised deeply Christian may or may not see Aslan as an animal personification of Jesus.

A child raised in a hippie home without religious schooling, a child in a Catholic school who goes to church every Sunday; any child may or may not see anything but a beautiful tale of escapism and magic that stems from the likeliest, commonest places; that mixes myth and religion and says that if you are true of heart, you will succeed.

In short? The kids don't care. We do, sure, and we can talk about it all day long, and read, and re-read, and that's what all this talk is about, I hope. It's when people start assigning values to things, making decisions about what they Are and Aren't Supposed to Be, I get troubled. I don't want to be beat about the head with Christian mythology when I head to the theater opening night. But I expect the story to bear some resemblance to the one Lewis wrote.

And I expect that ten-year-olds will leave the theater exuberant and thrilled, and looking for adventures of their own.

In which I take a stab at this whole "Narnia" thing.

2005-11-16T12:43:00.000-08:00

I read a few of C.S. Lewis's Narnia novels when I was a kid. I never made it through the entire series, which has left me a little cool to the film adaptation of The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe making its way to theatres in the coming months. I read the novels before I was at an age to understand the theological implications thereof, though a few years later, I put two and two together; one of my neighbors ran a religious organization that took its name from the books, and the rest wasn't difficult to figure out. Aside from that, my only real contacts with Lewis's life and work came from seeing the film Shadowlands when I was in high school, and the occasional reference to the man when I was a churchgoer. (This happens when you're raised Episcopalian.)

So, yeah -- there's this very hyped film adaptation on the horizon, and commentary on the man's work, his novels, their use of theology, and their merits as storytelling have cropped up. The New York Times ran a piece on Lewis that focused on his romantic life and, in part, his friendship with J.R.R. Tolkien; The New Yorker also ran an essay on the man recently. In response to those -- the latter, principally -- conservative Catholic writer Ross Douthat has chimed in with some thoughts on the novels and the response to them here and here -- particularly their use of allegory. And I daresay that that's sparked some interesting debate -- and I can't argue with that. One observation from Douthat:

There have been a thousand children's books about witches and dragons, dwarves and talking animals, and none have succeeded half so well as Narnia - and it's precisely because Lewis thought his fairy story wasn't just rich, but also fundamentally true in a way that no other fantasy could be.

Anyone want to chime in?