A Tale of Two Schreibers

There are two horror novelists whose books I avidly await. The first is Sarah Langan and the second is Joe Schreiber. Both write spooky stories that disturb not by creating revolting images, but by creating moods and suggesting terrible things. They are young and have just a few (solid) books to their credit, but Schreiber has two new books out. The books are in different genres, so I expected some variation, but I found the differences between them to be startling.

One book, Death Troopers, has a immediately engaging concept, but a weak payoff. The other, No Doors, No Windows, has one of the most hackneyed of concepts, but is riveting throughout. In Death Troopers, an Imperial prison barge investigates and abandoned Star Destroyer and finds it occupied by space zombies. Sounds cool, but doesn't go anywhere. No Doors, No Windows is a haunted house story about a hard luck family and the gothic horrors of small towns. It's been done a million times, but Schreiber's characters, plot peculiarities, pacing and writing rise to the top.

Death Troopers has weak characterization, relies on the Star Wars universe to carry much of the background and is marred by far too much exposition. No Doors, No Windows has a number of interesting characters, some cliched to be sure, but symphatheically and often surprisingly handled. The difference in the writing is just shocking. It feels lifeless in Death Troopers, while vigorous in No Doors, No Windows. Sadly, I think that Death Troopers might be the future of Schreiber's books (he already has a prequel in the works.)

Death Troopers has a sales rank of 430, while No Doors No Windows has a rank of 89,965 (as of this writing). I can't blame him if he churns out more of these Star Wars books. My only hope is that the people who find him thanks to Star Wars move on (and buy) his much better horror books.

Orange crepe paper and Halloween candy

Thanks to some visits to Target, this year, I am getting a taste for some of the more off the wall Halloween candies. So far, most are less than awesome.

Jones Soda Candy Corn soda This one was tough. I poured out a few ounces for myself and the kids. My apprehension was such that it reminded of the first time I looked down at a glass of Everclear punch. The color is a bright, malevolent yellow. The taste is, well, extremely sweet. So sweet that the sweetness seemed to end, as if it had gone into regions that my tastebuds dare not follow. The kids loved it 'natch. Hats off to Jones for calling their Christmas coconut pineapple soda Mele Kalilimaka though.

Hershey Pumpkin Spice Kiss Overall, not bad! The bright orange color and close to too sweet flavor screams white chocolate, so beware if that is a deal breaker. Unlike regular kisses which I can consume with heedless abandon, I am done after two of these, which is probably a good thing.

Candy Corn Dots. Nicely colored with the traditional orange and yellow, but this one didn't work. The flavor is just like that of a regular candy corn but the gooshy mouthfeel of the Dot made me feel like I was eating really, really old candy corn. Once again, kids loved them.

Blood Orange Dots. In lovely black. These I liked. The flavor wasn't over done and I enjoyed the natural Dots chewiness.

Caramel Candy Corn. Also pretty good, but not something I am going to munch like potato chips. The low end caramel flavor is stronger than the corn flavor although it hangs in there. My friend Joanna ate these while running a half marathon. Not sure what that says, but there you go.

Indulge Caramels. High end caramel. Ran into them at the Portland Nursery Apple fest. I was sad that they were sold out of the sea salt but picked up the cinnamon toast. Exquisite caramel, but not meant for the debauch of Halloween. I'm saving mine for the chill of November.

My big move on Halloween night will be to tax the kids of all their Tootsie Fruit Rolls. They don't like them anyway. I am the only person I know who does.

Blood's A Rover

So I've finished Blood's A Rover and I am happy to say that my initial enthusiasm carried throughout the entire read. I was so sad to see it finish, which is rare for a crime novel. While I tend to think the best crime novels are the equal of the best litfic, there are those that disagree. Genre snobs should consider the book a literary work and note that while its story line is like that of a thriller, the depth of character, the singular use of language and syntax and the emotional depth of the story will win over the more effete readers. Unless of course you can't stand the over the top vulgarity.

Past fans of Ellroy will note many consistencies with his earlier books. There are a pair of men with a complicated relationship who weave back and forth across the good and evil line. There is an unsolved crime scene around which much of the plot revolves, although it is often unclear why. There is the uneasy sense that the power structure is completely corrupt and there is little chance for hope for the good.

If you want to scare yourself this Halloween, but don't like traditional horror stories, you should pick this up. All the conspiracy theories that nagged you about the 60s and early 70s are true. What's more, in Ellroy's dark world, no one is truly innocent. The left is populated by the deluded, the self-important, the idiotic and the ineffectual. The right is populated by a range of terrifying monsters perfectly happy to grind up anyone in their path. The path chosen by the book's few survivors makes perfect sense after the hell they have been through.

My only regret after reading the book is my fear that Ellroy now has no place to go. He has completed his major work started with the Black Dahlia, the first in the LA Quartet and continued with the Underground America trilogy. His story line has been so epic for so long, I am not sure how he goes back to simpler plots or how he would continue this story. My only solace is that his creativity and vision are strong enough to do just about anything.

Pendragon's banner

Helen Hollick's Pendragon's Banner is the second in a trilogy of books about King Arthur. Typically tales of King Arthur have some element of fantasy, like the Lady in the Lake or the magic of Merlin. These books though are written as historical fiction, so you will find none of that here. Instead, it is gritty portrayal of Britain in the chaotic fifth century.

Rome has left the island, although its influence, mostly cultural, remains. Although Arthur is King, his is no united kingdom. He is a Briton, one of the original pagan peoples of the island. His people are threatened by a tide of Germanic invaders. A canny politician as well as warrior, Arthur plays the various factions off one another, while he watches his back.

His greatest foe is Morgause, who harbors thoughts of revenge against Arthur. She comes closest to being a magician, although it is via seduction not spells. Her quest for vengeance shatters Arthur and Gwenhwyfar and makes the story often quite dark.

The grimness of the battle between Morgause and Arthur is matched by the grim reality of much of the book. This isn't the pomp and splendor of the traditional, medieval-based Arthurian stories. Instead it is the brutal time when an invading army might appear on your doorstep, kill you and take your children. Your enemies sought to poison and kill you whenever possible.

Arthur is as complex as the times. He is not chivalrous or noble, but a scheming politician of more than dubious morality. He loves his wife, but he also finds time for his mistresses. He plots wickedly and is willing to kill his opponents children if it is politically the thing to do. This feels correct, given the times, but it may be hard for some readers, especially fans of chivalric legend.

A lost opportunity

I'm a fan of covers, so of course I am interested in the new Killers/Rhythms del Mundo cover of Hotel California. I think its fine, but I am a moderate fan of the song, so your mileage may vary. The Ataris cover of singer Don Henley's Boys of Summer drives me into a frothing fury, partially because it sucks ass and partially because I adore that song.

Song quality aside, the bummer is that what the Killers should be doing is making a poetically critical song like Hotel California, not a cover of it. If Southern California was the center of American decadence in the 1970s, then the Killer's Las Vegas is the center today. Nowhere else (ok, maybe on Wall Street) is avarice, self-promotion and gluttony so nakedly embraced as in Vegas. The mindless expansion of real estate without environmental consideration is evident to anyone flying into Sin City. Now that the market has crashed, it is time for a song of wistful regret and who better than Las Vegas's own to do it?

Anyone like Girl with the Dragon Tattoo?

I was on the return flight from Atlanta yesterday when I started the much lauded Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I made decent headway into it, but put it down mid-flight. It was clicking. I'm not sure it was the book's fault as

A) I had just finished Blood's A Rover and loved it. The style of that book is so particular that it may have spoiled crime novels for a week or so.

B) I was tired. I was in a car for six hours and then got on a plane. The brain was not firing on all cylinders I assure you.

C) I was uncomfortable. The person in front of me kept adjusting her seat and the person next to me needed more room than an economy seat provides. I became more acquainted with the side of the plan than I would have liked.

So, I am thinking I should maybe try the book again. Any advice would be appreciated.

Visiting Lynchburg

I'm back from a lovely visit to Virginia and Georgia. I attended my cousin's wedding in Lynchburg, VA. There weren't any events scheduled for Saturday, so my parents and I visited Appomattox Court House and Poplar Forest, which despite the name, is one of Jefferson's houses. As with any trip, a highlight was visiting a new bookstore. Lynchburg isn't a big town, so I didn't expect a whole lot, but Givens Books and Little Dickens delivered. The format is a bit odd. The store is set in quarters. One has new books, one has used. Another has toys and another has teacher supplies. There is also a coffee shop.

The number of used books wasn't huge, but the quality was high and the prices were low. I picked up a used hardcover copy of Almost a Miracle for less than ten bucks. If you are in town you should definitely stop in for a look.

Iain M Banks on the big screen! But.....

It's a short story, not a novel. Since much of the joy of his work is his profusion of creativity and spectacle, most of which is found in his novels, not his short stories, I am not all that excited. Our best hope is that the movie makes insane cash and producers fall all over themselves trying to make the next one.

The new Ellroy and why I like it

Man, am I loving the new Ellroy* I'm sure you're all, whatever dude, you like it, that's cool, but this really matters to me.

In the late 90s, there was no author I loved more than Ellroy. I could not get enough of him. Then I read Cold Six Thousand and I felt like my a close friend had betrayed me. The book did not work for me at all. I didn't speak of his books for years and didn't recommend them. Now the new one feels like an old, but wayward friend showing up with tickets to London to see the reunited Pavement along with a tour of Irish pubs with the Pogues. All is forgiven.

Anyway, I was trying to think of why Ellroy, Thompson, Lehane, Kerr and other authors stand out for me. It comes down to world view. Many crime writers (and nearly all adventure writers) assume that the world is basically good. Their stories tell of evil aberrations brought down by shining exemplars of good. Once vanquished, the world is returned to its rightful, cheerful, sunny state.

Not so for our Ellroy and his ideological brethren. In their novels, the world is evil. The power structure exists to extract, exploit and exterminate, all the while proclaiming its goodness. The heroes in these books are damaged people who rise above their baser instincts and carve some out some small victory, often at terrible cost.

The treatment of violence in these books is markedly different. In the sunny novels, an act of violence by the hero is normally clean, and shaming. He won't be sadistic or attempt to levy justice. Violence is clearly the wrong path in these books. In the darker books, violence is righteous, cathartic and, in its own way, uplifting. The philosophy underlying these books is that some people need a beatdown and the books give us that beatdown.

The best books of the dark side nearly always have some moment where violence is meted out to those who deserve it. The scene in LA Confidential where Bud wrecks the crooked lawyer is an example. Joe Lansdale has a patient man taking an axe handle to a pair of racist fucks. Dennis Lehane's Prayer for Rain has a notable suggested beat down that had me smarting. Deep down, there is a part of us that wants to

The subtext is that the world is terrible and we can't really hope to change it, but we can make some of the jackals and vampires pay, and pay dearly. The funny thing is, for the most part I am an optimist and think most things are just peachy. When I see that view reflected in fiction, it seems mawkish and foolish, and I recoil. Some deeper part of me suspects that the world is not as nice as I hope.

Children of Dust

There are plenty of books out there aimed, at least in part, at helping Westerners get a handle on Islam. Many are designed to whip up fear, uncertainty and doubt. Others, perhaps trying to offset the pernicious effects of the haters, refuse to acknowledge the harsh elements of religious practice. In his memoir Children of Dust, Ali Eteraz portrays Islam as a vast, complex tapestry with beautiful and terrible elements, just like every other religion in the world.

Eteraz, born in Pakistan and now living in the United States, is told early in his life that he is destined for Islamic greatness and spends much of his life pursuing the idea of how to be a Muslim. He studies in a madrassa, moves to the United States, becomes a fundamentalist, then unbecomes one and makes peace with the West. In the US, he trains as a lawyer and becomes a writer.

Eteraz's skills as a writer sets the book apart from similar works. He writing is lyrical, funny and evocative. He handles difficult material, including some occasionally disturbing sexual material quite well. He is best at describing his religous experiences. Far from being a mindless adherent, his relationship with the faith is constantly in flux as his understanding expands.

Although it is not the focus of the book, the early sections on Pakistan are especially valuable today. Despite it's massive importance to the world today, Pakistan remains little known to American readers. His stories of growing up in a small village will give readers a sense of what the life in this vital place is like.

Empire of the Passion

There can't be a lot of movie plots that hinge on the shaving of pubes. OK, maybe a adult movie with twins and a wacky Three's Company-like misunderstanding plot, but not mainstream movies.

Empire of the Passion, submitted for Japan's shot at the 1978 Academy Awards no less, does have a plot where a few thoughtless moments with a razor lead to madness and death. The movie was made by Nagisa Oshima, director of the 1976 In The Realm of the Senses. Like that movie the plot centers on an illicit liaison, but lacks the In the Realm's pervasive nudity and explicit sex. So no, you do not get to see the shaving.

In the movie, a layabout soldier seduces a rickshaw driver's wife and then declares they must kill the husband. If he saw that she was shaved, there would be no end of it. Turns out killing him leads to more trouble.

To be honest the movie is slow moving and may not appeal to everyone. The ghost of the movie is disturbing, but not really scary. The rising madness of the adulterous, murderous couple is the drama of the second act. There are some good scenes and I like how the village slowly turns on the couple as rumors and suspicions grow.

Overall, I would say that Asian horror fans looking for the roots of the modern movies would like this one. Otherwise, it is just too slow.

Adventure books are not for me

Robert Masello got a fair amount of buzz for his recent Blood and Ice, which I read. It was pretty good although twice as long as it needed to be. I decided it was good enough to give him another try so I picked up his earlier Bestiary. This one involves a family of Iraqis who guard an bestiary of ancient and mythical beasts. Thanks to a crack down by Saddam and the invasion of Iraq, the bestiary is now located in the US, but the animals are dying. A restorer of ancient texts, her paleontologist husband, an Army vet and a bunch of right wing whackos clash amid the threat of the beasts escaping.

Its not a bad book by any means. There is plenty of action and inventive situations. It is overly long with action and character scenes that don't really add to the overall experience. This one avoids the general pitfall of making a tight plot that could be cut and pasted into a movie script, but falls into the other problem of more text means more story. The subplots felt like they were bogging down the narrative. I didn't get that have-to-find-out-whats happening feeling, as it was evident where the story was going. I suppose what I really look from these books is being surprised and they so rarely deliver.

Truth be told, I don't think I like adventure novels. Movies do a better job creating the scares and pace, at least in most cases. I loved Jurassic Park and Relic, but those books created a sense of suspense and excitement that I haven't found in many other adventure books. I think I will avoid these in the future unless I get a spectacular recommendation.

Reading the new James Ellroy

Blood's a Rover. yowza. I am about 50 pages in and I am hooked. The writing style is singular and will put off lots of people. It is terse, brutal, abrasively musical, and filled with emotion, mostly negative. The odd thing is, it didn't really work for me in Cold Six Thousand, but it is working now.

I was listening to an Fresh Air interview with another favorite, Michael Chabon, who said that good writing should make the author and the reader uncomfortable. If that's the case, then Ellroy needs to take home the National Book Award and the Pulitzer. Ellroy puts his dark characters through hell and takes the reader through the worst of America. One character is a heroin dealer patricide with a hand in the MLK assasination, and he is one of the good guys.

A lot of crime novelists have supposedly evil characters. Usually this means they are amoral killers who have no mercy on their victims. Ellroy goes a step further with people who use hate to guide society and politics. These are the real monsters. Here he describes the art collection of the country's leading creator of hate pamphlets:

Fine oils. The masters reconsidered. A Van Gogh lynching. A Rembrandt gas-chamber tableaux. Matisse does Congolese atrocities. Paul Klee does Martin Luther King charbroiled.
Crutch scoped the walls. Man Ray did Bobby Kennedy dead on a slab. Picasso did Lady Bird Johnson muff-diving Anne Frank.

My reaction to that last one was the same as the character Crutch, a disbelieving "fuck......" The book is like a fictional, conspiracy theorist version of Nixonland. It shows you the horrors behind the smiles. Oh man would it be fun to read those two books together. You'd need a few weeks to recover, but what a ride.

I love Britain, but...

Really I think the UK is tops (I even lived year for a year!) The books, great! The beer, great! The use of mass transit, great! The people, great!

The only thing I dislike is the idea, which really comes from the US, that the British are somehow more highminded than Americans. That they have their eye on the important things (page three girls apparently.) I have always suspected that they were just as celebrity addled as we are, and the Guardian UK gives a bit of evidence today.

What is the most viewed world news story by Guardian readers today? Why it is news of People magazine publishing photos of kidnap victim Jaycee Dugard.

Beautiful books are waiting for me

Yesterday featured my finest visit to the library in weeks, nay, months! I had four excellent holds awaiting. The only question is whether I can burn through them in the next few weeks (in one case I will probably eat the fine.)

Here they are:

The Dead Hand by David Hoffman. This one is about the end of the Cold War, the legacy of WMD and DOOMSDAY MACHINES!!!! Check out this article by Hoffman about the Soviet doomsday machine that may still kill us some day. PD Smith, who covered this topic in his own book, Doomsday Men, has another good piece on the subject.

The Hawk and the Dove by Nicholas Thompson. This book looks at the Cold War through the lens of the great realist George Kennan and the creator of the national security system, Paul Nitze. The reviews are gushing on this one and the subject matter is perfect for me.

Death Troopers by Joe Schreiber. If you want to bum out your lit fic friends at the bookstore, make them come into the scifi section with you. There will be plenty of eye rolling and mockery of book covers. Sci fi fans themselves will do the same to the little section of Star Wars and Star Trek novels tucked away at the back of the sci fi section. I am often one of those eyerollers.

I make an exception for this book because of the author. He is one of the few horror writers, Sarah Langan also comes to mind, that I think are fabulous writers in a debased genre. Anyway the story is about zombies attacking a Star Destroyer and a prison barge. We shall see.

Blood's a Rover by James Ellroy. This is the one I am most excited about. No one writes quite like Ellroy, but he require some concentrated reading time. I need to go hide somewhere with this one. If you don't know him, his hard bitten style has morphed into a speed freak translating jazz numbers in words approach. He is all dark underbelly, all the time. It has been a long, long wait for the novel and maybe you have worried that perhaps he has gone soft, fear not. Part one of the book is titled Cluster fuck. In all caps mind you. So excited to read this one.

Adventureland returns me to the rock of the 80s

I watched Adventureland last night. The director's previous work, Superbad, was a bawdy comedy. This one is a much more low key story of awkward young love at a theme park, peppered with comedic sets by the likes of Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig. It is certainly worth your time.

The movie is set in 1987. The most notable nod to the 80s is the heavy use of 80s tunes. The theme park workers are tormented by Rock Me Amadeus, but find solace in the Replacements, and for some reason Lou Reed. I guess liking Lou Reed = arty outsider status. They could have used something more contemporaneous like Big Black, although that would connote vaguely dangerous outsider status. My vote would be for the use of the Dead Milkmen, specifically Punk Rock Girl. That one has young rebel couple all over it.

Mostly though, I just don't get Lou Reed. Not even Black Francis proclaiming his love can convince me to like Reed or his over-rated band the Velvet Underground. I do like the chorus to Satellite of Love, a little, but for the most part I could never listen to another song.

Fortunately all this Lou Reed cluttering my head is easily dispatched. A visit to the 120 Minutes Archive can clear away the most unforgettable of bad songs. 120 minutes (one of college roomates inexplicably pronounced it one twenty minutes) was a late night MTV show about "altnerative music." Back in late 80s high school days, I drank lots of coke to stay up late and watch. The best/worst part was hoping they would finally play the band you liked.

You might not get the exact song, but you could got plenty of good ones. Here is a Ramones hosted show with Interesting Drug, Dominion (one of my earliest band lady crushes was on the woman in this vid - wow I forgot they shot the video at Petra), and Never Say Never. Of course you had to suffer through Concrete Blonde. There is always a price.

There is always the middle path. The bands that aren't great, but also aren't gratingly terrible. The rock wizards at Clear Channel have apparently decided to revive Billy Squier, who is now nearly unavoidable on the classic rock station. He reminds a bit of what Foreigner might sound like, if they had ever decided to stop being shitty. The one song that I think is not so bad is My Kind of Lover. The lyrics, though, give me pause. He sings to his love "you give me something way beyond revenue." Is he a pimp?

Life in the fast lane

When they work, I really like books about jobs and what it is like to experience thsm. As someone who has worked almost entirely in offices, I don't have a good sense of what a day is like for a fire fighter or a park ranger. Two books that managed to explain a job while also telling good stories are the Last Season, a book about backwoods rangers, and Book, a collection of essays about life in the book trade.

Just as entertaining and informative is Richard Polsky's I Sold Andy Warhol (Too Soon). Polsky is an art dealer who writes about the big business that contemporary art has become. The principal change was the switch from dealers selling most of the art to the auction houses creating market frenzy.

Polsky moved from representing artists to brokering deals between sellers and the auction houses. Over the years he watches as the prices move from the tens of thousands to the tens of millions. While the increase means the commission on one deal can be quite significant, it also means that he is now priced out of the market. He began his career in part to spend time with and too own art. Now owning the ones he loves is just about impossible.

In addition to his art work, Polsky is a journalist, which shows in the quality of his writing. It is breezy, funny and on target. He maintains a good natured air throughout even when he is getting squeezed out of substantial amounts of money. This one will be of particular interest to anyone interested in the business of art.

Pixu

Well, I'm glad I didn't spend any money on Pixu: Mark of Evil. For whatever reason I am drawn to both horror novels and horror comics so Pixu, a hardcover graphic novel no less, seemed like a good choice. It seemed a bit too short to buy, so I went to the library. Good for me.

My main complaint is how insubstantial the story is. If you your focus is on the pictures (or art if you must) you will get more mileage than I did. I however want story and there isn't much. Here it is. Five people live in a spooky apartment building. Only one is a good person, some are OK and some are evil. Bad things happen to them quickly, but we don't care a whole lot because they aren't developed.

The authors, mostly artists, would rather communicate with images than words, but in a book this short, nothing really cohered. There are some unpleasant themes as well, mostly child abuse, but the authors went a little too far in the direction of suggestion. There also a sense of unreality about the entire thing, that was probably meant to be creepy but ended up making it less engaging.

Do you know what your leaders are reading?

The always excellent George Packer looks at what the leaders in the Obama White House and the Pentagon are reading and comes away concernded. It is well worth reading, but these last two lines are great:

The rule for Administration readers should be: no books that you already know will confirm the views you already hold. If that’s asking too much, at least the advisers and officers should be required to exchange volumes, and read what their policy opponents are reading, before the book group meets and decides the fate of the world.

What are the good myth books?

My eldest is becoming more and more interested in myths. He loves the Greek myths, and now thanks to the Avengers and Marvel Comics, he is becoming interested in Nordic myths as well. I wanted to get him some books on other mythos, but I can't think of any to get. Most I have seen are either too simple or way too academic. The only things I can think of are the two D'Aulaire's myth books. Those are great for my children, but I want something aimed at the adult as well. What I want is something like Robert Graves' Greek Myths, but for Mesoamerica, India or China.

I am trying to remember how I learned about the Greek myths. I think it was a combination of Clash of the Titans (and the rest of the Harryhausen movies), the D'Aulaire book, and Deities and Demigods. There are probably other influences, but I am drawing a blank.

Rocking out with the Pogues

Sweet Jaysis, the Pogues can put on one hell of a show. Yes, it was the Roseland, where everyone sounds good and yes the crowd was filled with maniacal fans, but they really brought it last night. A few things set the show apart.

First of all, ShaneMotherFuckingMacGowan. Good Lord, how is that man alive? The entire band was assembled on stage ready to kick off Streams of Whiskey, and about a minute later he wandered onto the stage looking like a man who just wrapped up the Circle Line Pub Crawl. His banter was completely incomprehensible, the only thing I caught was "Portland, you're fucking wonderful." Spider Stacey encouraged the crowd to yell approval, and eventually everyone cheered whenever he dropped a few phrases. He knew the words to the songs, and while his voice has lost, shall we say clarity, he still has the shout and scream.

The fans were quite something else as well. There was a neo-hippie element of camraderie on the floor. There was lots of stranger hugging and swaying (someone tapped me on the shoulder and said "this guy wants to hug you.") On the other hand, there was more moshing than I have seen since a Helmet/Jesus Lizard show back in 92. It was "I love you man, can you hold my beer while I go slam into those guys?" Irish, I guess.

The crowd appeared to know all the words, so there was lots of audience participation. I think the highlight was Philip Chevron stepping to the mike to sing Thousands Are Sailing, a song he wrote. If you don't know it, it's a song about Irish-Americans and their relationship with Ireland. Chevron sings about Irish-American life in the 20th century and then questions why Irish Americans love Ireland so with these words:

Thousands are sailing
Across the western ocean
Where the hand of opportunity
Draws tickets in a lottery
Where e'er we go, we celebrate
The land that makes us refugees
From fear of Priests with empty plates
From guilt and weeping effigies
And we dance

Conquistadors who took their share

Hey remember that French jackass, Frederic Mitterand, the Culture Minister of France who called the US all sorts of bad names for catching that rat bastard Roman Polanski? Well, apparently Mr. Mitterand was just standing up for a fellow pedophile. He wrote a book that described his love of trolling for slave boys in Thailand. If you think slave goes a tad too far, here is what he wrote:

"All these rituals of the market for youths, the slave market excited me enormously... the abundance of very attractive and immediately available young boys put me in a state of desire."

Apparently he doesn't think it is such a big deal. The sense of entitlement these people (Hollywood, politicians, the mega-wealthy) have never fails to astound.

A remembrance of things past

I've been going back to my local video store Movie Madness lately. Partly it is because I want to support local business, but also because I end up finding things I don't think to put in my Netflix queue. The latest trip led to a terrible mistake.

I had recalled a list of horror movies with great endings from Ten Bad Dates with De Niro. One was the excellent Sleepaway Camp, which does in fact have a jaw dropping finale. For some reason I had it in my head that The House on Sorority Row was on the list. I later realized the movie I was thinking of was April Fool's Day, which probably sucks as bad as the movie I watched.

The movie I saw lacked any reason watching. The acting was piss poor. The story is ridiculous and obvious. Sorority house mother has bad birth experience and when sorority sisters think they have killed her, someone starts killing them. Whatever, why am I bothering? It is shitty like all the other movies of its ilk, the terrible stalker film of the 80s. I watched til the end, which was an uninteresting rip-off of Black Christmas. Bad, bad, bad. I should have watched another episode of the Prisoner.

What is more interesting is why these movies were popular. It is as inexplicable of as the popularity of hair metal. Why did such utter tripe make so much money? Later the same night I watched a little of The Rise and Fall of the Slasher Film. It made me dislike these movies all the more. It reminded that one or two (Halloween and Black Christmas) are worth a damn, but I took from it that people just wanted to see people die in different ways. Lovely.

There really isn't much else to the movies, but many of those interviewed tried to dress them up as art or expressions of the time, blah, blah, blah. They are just friendlier versions of Salo.

Transsiberian

I watched Transsiberian last night. This one came out last year, but didn't get a lot of buzz. Too bad because the direction is awesome, the movie is crammed with great actors and performances and it looks great. The movie is centered around Roy and Jessie, an American couple in Beijing for a church volunteer mission who decide to go home via the Siberian railroad to Moscow. Roy, played by Woody Harrelson, is a earnest fan of trains but wife Jessie, played by an absolutely fantastic Emily Mortimer, is a former wild child. She is tempted by a roguish Spanish traveller, although she also befriends his young American companion.

The movie is slow moving, but you can feel the walls closing in around Roy and Jessie even when they don't see it. Ben Kingsley's shadowy Russian policeman complicates their lives and they find themselves way over their heads in backwater Russia.

The director, Brad Anderson, also made Session 9, a horror movie I also adore. Both movies share a wonderfully tense build up of suspense. This one is happier in many ways that the bleak Session 9, but both are better than most films out there.

The next Dennis Lehane

Well I was hoping for another Given Day, but it looks like Lehane is finally going back to Kenzie and Gennaro. His next book is a sequel to Gone Baby Gone. The book takes place 11 years after Gone Baby Gone. The young girl of that story is now a teen and has disappeared....again. I'm a little sad that we won't get a new Given Day (yet!) but I am also happy to see Kenzie and Gennaro again.

Where white America is going

Every once and again, a friend will mention some great new place they have discovered. Usually it is on a beautiful beach, near gorgeous mountains or on some amazing fishing river. Out here in Oregon, Bandon is getting as hot as the overheated Bend. Back east, Florida panhandle developments like Seaside in Florida keep getting hotter. After you note the great places to eat, the natural beauty, and the nicely ordered streets, you will note the people. They will be quite open and friendly and, almost to a person, white. Rich Benjamin, who is black, explores these places in his book Searching for Whitopia.

Benjamin argues that wittingly or unwittingly, whitopias are created by fears of immigrants and terrorists and a desire to create comfortable, expensive playground cities. These places are too expensive for most minorities, and even for poor or middle class whites. They allow for like minded people to segregate themselves. Fans of books like the Big Sort will enjoy this aspect of the book.

Race is a touchy subject in America (to be fair, where isn't it a touchy subject?) but I think Benjamin handles it exceedingly well. He is not interested in attacking people, only problems. He genuinely likes the people he meets in these white enclaves. He has few if any personal beefs with them. Instead he wants the government to look at the policies that encourage the development of segregation. A tall order and one that requires resetting the national conversation.

The United States needs a new approach to race, Benjamin argues. For one, people, including whites, need to be able to express all their concerns and needs, without fear of being labeled racist. Equally problematic though is the adoption of identity politics based entitlements thinking by many whites.

The book reminds me of those of Robert D Kaplan, if generally cheerier than his books. The combination of travelogue and policy analysis makes for a engaging way to deal with this topic.

The remake that will probably be more fun than Attack of the Clones

People love some Star Wars, despite George Lucas neglectful parenting. Is there any other cultural phenomenon that could produce the Flickr group Growing Up Star Wars 1977-1985, where over 1,200 people have uploaded their images from before the dark times (here is one I really like)?

You can't keep the fans down and now there is Star Wars Uncut, an effort at collective film making. Fans claim 15 seconds of the movie and reshoot it anyway they like. Here is the trailer. The selections range from cartoon to live action to surreal madness like this one where all the characters have been replaced by babies:

Star Wars Uncut - Scene 328 from M. Schramm on Vimeo.

Deadly meat

Everyone once and again I think about cutting off my kids from beef. Stories like this one in the New York Times, which details how beef containing E.coli led to paralysis in a young woman, certainly add fuel to the fire.

The Prisoner

My buddy Neill is just now watching Lost. Lucky him! Talking to him about seasons one and two reminded me of how much I have loved the stories built into the show. He may suffer plot whiplash with all the twists and turns in the seasons to come, but he will also not have the agony of the wait.

The Prisoner is an 60s British paranoid spy drama that is often called an influence on Lost. I started watching it recently and expected it to be the loopy island drama. While it does have a person trapped in a remote area and plagued by shadowy forces, it is quite different. For one, it is much more episodic than Lost. There is apparently some debate as to the true order of the shows. In many cases you rearrange them and watch them in the order you like.

I tend to dislike episodic shows, but I have come to quite like the Prisoner. The main character is a British spy who has resigned. He is knocked out at his house and wakes up in a strange place called the Village. The residents act, dress and talk strangely and no one has a name. The main character is known as number six. He is constantly tested by a series of people known as number two.

Among the series's themes is the idea of the individual against the collective. The great powers of the Cold War, the state, the nation and the Party are shown as destroyers and grinders of the individual. Number six is one of the few willing to stand up to them.

It isn't like Lost or 24 where you feel compelled to watch as many shows as you can stand in a sitting. Each show is independent and the mood created is more one of reflection than excitement. Well worth it, if you know what you are getting into.

Another reason to love Powells

Whenever I am near a Powells location with some time to kill, I stop in for a visit. With the huge number of used books and excellent recommendations, I nearly always spot a surprising find. The remainder section is surprisingly good as well. In many other stores, the remainder books are stale popular fiction novels of the James Patterson variety. Most there are are out in paperback already.

Not at Powell's. You will find a number of very good books that didn't sell quite as well. There is lots of serious history, literature and science fiction available. Even better they have piles of British editions of books on hand. Much of the time all you get from the British editions are different blurbs, spellings and crappier paper. Sometimes though you get a paperback edition while the American edition remains in pricey hardback. Other times you get a gem like I found today.

George R R Martin, author of the cruelly incomplete Song of Fire and Ice, is a prolific writer of short fiction. His short works were collected in two hard covers called Dreamssongs. I wanted to buy them when they came out, but they were too expensive. I would have gone to the library, but they aren't the sort of thing you read at once. It is for picking up as the whim takes you.

So I was thrilled that a combined British edition was on sale at Powells for ten bucks. Now if I can just find the time to read it.

Violence

I was completely taken by the trailer to the movie Surveillance. It made it look like a twisty crazy murder mystery. It's not. It's a fairly obvious strange movie about, I guess, the idea that we live in a world filled with predators and we are mostly screwed. It's not very good, aside for some truly left field perfomances by Julia Ormond and Bill Pullman.

The treatment of violence is peculiar. At first I thought that Lynch (the daughter, not the father) was going for a serious Haneke-esque lecture to comfortable middle class people about the dangers that await them. Later I thought it was going for a goofy Tarantino-esque use of violence to shock and titilate. Still later I think it was going for a horror film scarefest. None of these really fit the film and the slipping back and forth didn't help. Also, most of the characters are reprehensible without being terribly interesting.

The movie does have a few stand out moments. You will be shown an outre sex act you have probably never seen (nor considered.) If you are so inclined you can get a sense of what a crazy Bill Pullman O-face looks like. That could be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on your point of view.

End of the re-reading project

Well that didn't take long. I got into the book and nearly all of it fell into place, including the memorable death of key character via farm equipment. Once the pieces started re-clicking, I sped ahead to the end to remember what happened there exactly. The siren song of unread books became too great and I put the book down.

The next song I am going to overplay to the point I stop liking it

I haven't paid much attention to the Black Crowes over the years. The new single I Ain't Hiding is awesome though. It's like Love is the Drug performed by the Some Girls era Stones. I guess I need to listen to the new album.

Here is the song

Re-reading

For the first time in, well more than I recall, I am re-reading a book. Sure I re-read plenty in school (thanks to the Jesuits, I have read Plato's Republic far more times than I would have liked), but I almost never re-read for pleasure. There are just too many good books to read to justify going back to spend time on a book I have already read. Amazingly, I justify keeping so many books, because I say I want to re-read or at least refer to them.

I am though re-reading Dan Simmon's Summer of Night, thanks to a chance conversation about the book A Winter Haunting. I had read Summer years ago and when I later read Winter, I had somehow missed that it was a sequel. Someone reminded me of it and told me it was better to read them closely. So I picked up copies of both and decided to try again.

So far I am ashamed to say that I am recalling each page, but I can't remember what is coming. Either that means the book is forgettable or I am getting forgetful. Neither is an attractive option.

No one knows what its like to be the bad man

Like Jim Thompson and James Ellroy, Charlie Huston writes beautifully dark novels about crime where the reader escapes despair through excellent writing rather than false hope of redemption. I've just finished the second Hank Thompson book which is titled Six Bad Things. We first meet Hank in Caught Stealing. In that book, Hank is a down on his luck guy who gets a bad case of the wrong place, wrong time syndrome. This should be a bore, but Huston delivers enough plot, violence and tight writing to make it sing. If you liked that book, read this one too.

Here be spoilers.

The second book is slower but more interesting. The trilogy would appear to be the creation story for a complicated villain. In the first one, Hank was a guy on the run who mostly had bad things happen to him, but who saw many of those connected to him die. In the second, he makes more of his own choices, delivers more of his own violence and becomes someone for whom violence is more natural.

/spoilers

It's a sad book, because his greatest victims are his parents. In trying to protect them, he puts himself on a course that leads to a Hamlet-esque body count. The darkness of the main character will put off anyone who frowns when they hear words like hard-boiled or noir. If you can get past that, look at the dialogue. His characters are great as well. He has a number of gems here including a pair of stoned surf killers, some whiter shade of trash vigilantes and a Elvis impersonating drug dealer with a dog named Hitler.

Should I read The Blade Itself?

I had heard all manner of praise for the fantasy novels of Joe Abercrombie, so I wishlisted and eventually received the Blade Itself. So far (page 40 or so), it feels pretty so-so. I am thinking of switching to the Name of the Wind. Good call or no?

The reading of a thousand page book begins with a single sentence

I am currently about halfway through George Herrings excellent From Colony to Superpower. It's a great read, useful to those new to American foreign relations and to those experienced, but I have to wonder how many people give up on it, or even more likely, never start it. With the annotated bibliography, the text is a thousand pages long. I found it a daunting to pick up despite my great love for the subject matter.

After a nice 50 page reading session, I put my book mark in place. I then closed the book to see how far along the bookmark appeared to have progressed. I might as well have read nothing as the mass of unread pages made me hastily put the book down. I also put the book in a slightly out of the way location. That way I wouldn't be constantly reminded of my lackluster progress, but I also couldn't ignore it.

Back in the 80s, A Brief History of Time was famous for being bought but unread. In that case, it was the difficulty of subject matter. I admit to not making it very far into that one (but I have the excuse of borrowing and not buying that one.) Today the problem is of reading opportunity cost. I have hundreds of books that I haven't read, many of which I probably never will read, so deciding to read a long book is also the decision to not read many other books. That's the intellectual reasoning, but the emotional reality is that I stare at all these other books and wonder what they are like.

My solution is to read the long book chapter by chapter, while also reading shorter books at the same time. It means the long book will take months to read, but it will get read.

Arena shows

I went to see the Killers last night at the Memorial Colosseum, the smaller of the two arena venues here in Portland. I'd last seen them at the Roseland, a smallish club, so I was worried the arena show would suffer by comparison. While the event lost the excitement created by the proximity, aural overload and close crowds of a club show, it was still quite fun and they spent a buck or two on pyrotechnics and visuals. They also played EVERY song I wanted to hear, so of course I was psyched about that.

The bummer is that I had to hang in the seats, which always suck. If you sit, you look like spoilsport dork and if you stand you are in an awkward position where you can't really dance and where you feel unnaturally close to your neighbors. Next time buy tickets early enough to get on the floor.

The band (judging by the choice to end the show with it) and the crowd (judging by the excitement) agree with me that their finest song is When You Were Young.

Only Yesterday

I have a bias against older nonfiction books as I don't think they age well. The evidence gets old, the arguments get settled or the style becomes out-dated and the read just isn't the same. Well, Frederick Allen Lewis sure showed me up. He wrote Only Yesterday in 1931 and it read like it was written last year.

Lewis was an editor at the Atlantic and I wonder if his style has influenced later writers there. He is crisp, funny and has a strong point of view throughout. I loved his description of the motivations of Klan members:

"...but it white robe and hood, its flaming cross, its secrecy, and the preposterous vocabulary of it ritual could be made the vehicle for all that infantile love of hocus-pocus and mummery, that lust for secret adventure, which survives in the adult whose lot is cast in drab places. Here was a chance to dress up the village bigot and let him be a Knight of the Invisible Empire."

It doesn't hurt that the subjects feel particularly relevant today. Lewis covers racism, populism, and the infatuation with celebrity, sports, and trifling events, at the expense of vital issues. He describes the madness of the stock bubble and the shouting down of anyone who call into question the riches to be made. He also looks at the cult of business (the business of America is business, and all that) and at the how religion and business began to use each other's language. He describes a very popular book called the Man Nobody Knows which argued that Jesus was the founder of modern business thanks to his executive experience and his skills at advertising.

Reading this book, I was both happy and sad to see that we as a society have many of the same problems. On the downside, there are many problems that we have failed to conquer for so long. On the plus side, our time is not a uniquely debased one.

A song for your morning

I'm getting back into Pandora. If you don't know it, it is an online music service where you can create music stations based on bands you already like. The created stations serve all up all sorts of delightful songs of which you are likely to be unaware.

I have a few stations in place already (Drive By Truckers, Sleater Kinney, Wolf Parade, Franz Ferdinand and so on) but I recently created a Butterglory station. If you don't know the band, they were a mid-90s Kansas band that people thought sounded a bit too much like Pavement (That's a problem?!!) Check this video, complete with LARP and a hot drummer. Anyway Butterglory is a great underrated band, so just the thing for a Pandora station.

Today, Big Dipper came up on the station. Yet another band I missed back in the day. This late 80s indie rock band reminds me of the Pixies, probably due to the Boston connection and weird lyrics. Here is Lunar Module, a hooktastic treat for you.

Are big books doomed?

Matt Yglesias wonders if the giant novel is in fact dead in this world of multiple entertainment opportunities. He uses the example of his dissatisfaction with the very long Infinite Jest.

But in a fundamental sense it struck me as very unsatisfying. Not just in terms of the weird ending, but in terms of definitely not feeling like I got more out of reading it than I could have gotten out of reading three books that were one third the length.

I probably won't read Infinite Jest, for just the reason he lays out. I do think though that big book is doing fine. There seem to be more ginormous fantasy novels every day.

Do I have to stop liking the Flowers in Your Hair song?

Vulture has it right.

Have you had problems listening to R. Kelly ever since learning that he (allegedly) engaged in water sports with underage girls? Have you been forced to hit the fast-forward button on your Discman every time "Rock &Roll, Part 2" comes up while you're listening to Jock Jams, because of Gary Glitter's pedophiliac tendencies? Well, then, if you're a fan of the Mamas & the Papas (and who isn't?), we suggest you find something to do this afternoon that doesn't involve watching Oprah.

In case you missed it, John Phillips slept with his daughter MacKenzie on numerous occasions, including the night before her wedding! Clearly, you can't listen to songs by this evil bastard now, but what about songs he wrote, but didn't sing like San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers In Your Hair?) I vote a cautious no.

To Serve Them All My Days

My views of British primary and secondary education are probably a little off. Like many of my peers I watched Pink Floyd's the Wall a few too many times and had it in my head that all the teachers were like the "Stand still laddie" guy in this clip from the movie. Thanks to my infatuation with the Victorian period, I'd gotten the sense that the public (private in the American sense) schools were factories for creating the foot soldiers of empire.

While Floyd made have overstated the case, the imperial duty awaiting the students is central to R.F. Delderfields To Serve Them All My Days. The main character, David Howlett-Jones, is invalided out of the British Army in the later years of World War One. As part of his recovery, he is sent to a small rural school to serve as a teacher. While he has little formal training, he has a background in history and soon finds himself deeply engaged in the role and in his students lives. He also finds himself at odds with some of his colleagues. David finds himself at odds with a jingoistic fellow teacher, who is all for the war, despite not serving himself. Some of the more conservative elements in the school also oppose his methods of teaching, which many label Bolshevik.

As in his other work, Delderfield takes his time in telling his story. His chapters are filled with details and asides although the various plots including David's romance, marriage and eventual parenthood. As time passes, he becomes more and more senior at the school and becomes a central figure to the community.

Hanging over the later half of the book is the coming of the Second World War. The school is haunted by the large number of dead alumni from the first war and the threat of new losses becomes nearly unbearable. It is David's quiet dignity that keeps it from becoming maudlin. The book concludes with an act that closes the circle opened at the book's start.

So many books today are written for the short reading blocks. In thrillers in particular, the chapters are usually only 10 or 15 pages, just the right amount for your subway ride. This book is meant for longer, committed reading times where you can really sink into the book.

Morning links (Neil Sheehan!)

How did I miss this? Neil Sheehan, author of the titanic A Bright Shining Lie, has a new book on the way. This one is called a Fiery Piece in a Cold War. Like A Bright Shining Lie, it has a little known figure, in this case General Bernard Schriever, who built the intercontinental ballistic missile system. The New York Times has a feature with this interesting quote.

Though Mr. Sheehan did not conceive of them in this fashion, the two books, the first beginning with a funeral, the second ending with one, are mirror images. “A Fiery Peace” is a success story, in which the military, or a part of it anyway, instead of becoming mired in a folly of its own creation, prevailed over bureaucracy and incompetence and probably averted catastrophe.

Sci fi guy and environmental crisis Cassandra Kim Stanley Robinson has an article in the New Scientist about British science fiction. He decries the genre ghetto and exhorts readers to broaden their reading horizons. The issue has eight (very) short stories from the likes of Justina Robson, Ken MacLeod and Stephen Baxter.

Check out this list of what classic books would be called if released today. The quality varies greatly, but there are gems like this one:

Then: Quotations from Chairman Mao (or "the Little Red Book")
Now: You're Telling Me Comrade! Hilarious but helpful sayings from China's Best Selling Author

Reading Only Yesterday

After finishing the Given Day, set as it is in 1919, I was inspired to pick up Frederick Lewis Allen's Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the Twenties. I had read somewhere that the book, written in the early 30s as a reflection on recently past times, would be interesting reading in light of our current economic situation.

So far, I am finding the book amazingly current, in terms of style, attitude and approach. It reads as if it was written this decade. Reading it, I settled into a familiarity zone from which the odd anomaly jarred me. In a piece about the import of radio in the decade, Allen muses whether the day of the first radio broadcast would soon be a date of study in school. Another one made me wonder how much people will remember the supposedly unforgettable OJ murder case. Allen refers to the crime of the 20s, the murders of Reverend Edward Wheeler Hall and Mrs. James Mills through a series of key images from the case.

It was an illiterate American who did not shortly become acquainted with DeRussey's Lane, the crab-apple tree, the pig woman and her mule, the precise mental condition of Willie Stevens, and the gossip of the choir members.

It calms me to think that early 20th century Americans were just as prone to follow murder cases as latter 20th century Americans. Also the Pig Woman and her Mule should either be an album title or a band.

The War of the World

Niall Ferguson writes thick history books with controversial ideas. His argued in the Pity of War that Britain should have just sat out World War One and dealt with a German dominated Europe. In Colossus, he put forth the idea that the world needs America to be a real empire, but believed the country isn't up to the tasks. One of more recent books is War of the World which explores the incredibly violent 20th century. His argument is that the break up of empires and the expansion of the national/ethnic idea fuel the intense ferocity of century's killing.

So many American books about the war focus on the technology, whether it be aircraft carriers, tanks or planes. That's fine, it is how Americans tend to look at things. It also tends to make the conflict seem a bit more bloodless. This ship sank, forty planes were destroyed. We know that people died when we read this, but it removes the horror of it somewhat.

None of that for Ferguson. He goes straight down to the village level. He shows the remarkable breadth of the cruelty in the century. We've tended to focus all of our horror on the Holocaust. This makes sense as it is a uniquely terrible series of events, but our focus has obscured all else that happened and even the share of guilt in the Holocaust. Germans, naturally, get the blame for the Holocaust, but Ferguson shows the horrid but willing participation of many other Europeans.

He also shows the incredible terrors and evil of Stalin's regime, the terrors of bombing, the Japanese atrocities in China, the fate of African-Americans in the early 20th century and more. It makes for fairly grim reading. Thankfully, Ferguson is a strong and often witty writer, which alleviates the sadness quite a bit.

One strange bit is the subtitle. It is called the Descent of the West. He doesn't really support the declinist idea in the book, which is too bad, as it is certainly on the tops of peoples minds.

Thanks to that problem and a fair amount of bloat, I have to say that The War of the World isn't Ferguson's best book, but it remains a good, if dark, read.

One of the craziest of the "lost" books

OK, it is not really lost, just rather hard to read. You have to get the manuscript at a library in Florida. Charles Willeford was a crime writer known for his character. He is considered one of the great hard-boiled guys although he hasn't gotten the attention of a Jim Thompson. One of his more popular books was Miami Blues. It was the first of a series of books featuring Hoke Moseley. Willeford, though, had a different plan. The second, unpublished, book was to be called Grimhaven and it featured Moseley killing his family and timing the murders to get the best death penalty possible. Lee Goldberg has the story.

Going back to the Gold Soundz

Start saving your money. Pavement is going back on tour next year. There will be much rejoicing.

A Map of Home

How many coming of age novels can our bookstores bear? Given the number published each year, the answer is apparently "limitless." Still, how can the reader choose which one to choose? Randa Jarrar's A Map of Home provides a number of reasons to put it on your reading pile.

Number one is the narrator. We've seen a wide range of narrators, but how about a Palestinian/Greek/Egyptian female? Nidali, named for an Arabic word for struggle, is born in the United States, grows up in Kuwait, flees the 1990 invasion via Iraq, moves to Egypt and ends up back in the United States.

Then there is the balance between humor and seriousness. Nidali's tale is told in a series of vignettes about her life. The first, about the day of her birth, is laugh out loud funny and shows that Jarrar is quite happy to work blue, a trait I always appreciate. She is just as capable of presenting subtle heartbreak. Her characters constantly uproot themselves and discard one set of dreams for another.

The overall theme of the stories is the notion of home. Is it geographic, cultural, personal? The characters wrestle with all of these and with the the home they never reach, Palestine. The characters have so many homes that all of them blend in to create a home in the head.

The language may be a bit salty at times for some readers (not me!) but I suspect that most will find this an engaging read.

The new Dennis Lehane continues to rule

The first 50 or so pages of the Given Day were great, top shelf reading for certain. Then it leaps into classic territory. He hits all my buttons on this one. It has a huge civic canvas (Boston 1918/1919). It has morally ambiguous characters, your opinion of which Lehane carefully guides. The plotline shifts constantly but in completely fair ways. He plays few favorites, but I think Lehane has no love for the fervent certainty of the ideologue. Two of his more repellent bit characters are super-righty J Edgar Hoover and supreme leftie Eugene O'Neill. It might still crash and burn but I seriousldy doubt it.

As a long time fan, I worried that Lehane, on his road to literary fiction, might discard his trademark acts of badassery. No worries on that count.

Check out Jonathan Yardley (but skip the spoilerish last few paras) on the book. He doesn't like it as much as I do, but he still finds it strong.

Dan Brown's Day

Today is a nice day to own a bookstore as the new Dan Brown book is out. Janet Maslin of the New York Times is happy with the book. Lev Grossman has a review at Time, he thinks it works too, although he says the ending is weak. It looks like if you liked the last one, you will like this one. As lots of people liked that one, I bet sales will be through the roof. I am sure I will read it at some point.

Apparently, the Masons are at the center of this plot. Going from the Catholic Church to the Masons is a bit like going from the Empire to the Trade Federation, but at least they are cloaked in some level of mystery. Jay Kinney has a new book called the Masonic Myth that hopes to burst the conspiracy bubble. It lays out the history, the activities and the future of the Masons. Kinney's book is dispassionate, but I bet conspiracy theorists inspired by the Brown book will enjoy trying to read between the lines and to know the real truth.

On the topic of Masons, if you ever visit Alexandria, VA, you should stop by the giant George Washington Masonic Temple. Well worth your time.

Curse you Ayn Rand

So you've started work at a new place and you want to avoid hanging out with douchebags. Sometimes they are easy to spot. In the work place, unfortunately, they often hide their ways until it is too late. I have identified a simple way to determine if you are a dealing with a douche. Look at their desk. If they have a copy of Clausewitz's Art of War (and this isn't the Pentagon or an IR department) or any book by Ayn Rand sitting prominently on the desk, you have to avoid this person at all costs. In the former case, the person is likely a pompous ass, in the latter he or she is likely dangerously deranged.

While those willing to wade through cumbersome Teutonic prose can learn a lot about war from Clausewitz, the books of Ayn Rand are like the unholy texts in HP Lovecraft stories. Just a few pages and you go nuts.

Jonathan Chait has a review article about Rand and her nefarious influence on the ideology of many on the Right. If possible, I dislike her even more now.

Random items

Check out this literary map of San Francisco. It consists of thirty-ish quotes from literary fiction about San Francisco. Where possible, it even sites the quotes in the appropriate locale. Pretty cool.

So I am reading the massive From Colony to Superpower, the only thematic book in the Oxford History of the United States. I am quite enjoying it and anyone who wants to look at the grand sweep of American foreign policy would do well to read the book. I am up to 1898 or so and I was a bit surprised to see that the author refers to War of 1898 saying that it was once called the Spanish-American War. When did this name change happen?

Nina Siegel has a lengthy essay on the bestseller lists and what it says about literacy in America. She brings in arguments from Chabon and Franzen about how people might start reading decent books again, instead of 17 new books from James Patterson.

The New York Times reviews a great looking book about Paul Nitze and George Kennan called the Hawk and the Dove. The title simplifies their viewpoints, but these two men are central to the Cold War and international relations.

Jim Carroll RIP

Poet Jim Carroll died Friday. He was 60. I wasn't a huge fan, but there are few songs that blew me away like People Who Died. I heard back it back in the day when you couldn't just go to Hype Machine or Google and find the studio version, a cover and your choice of live versions. I spent weeks tracking down the singer and the song. Buying the cassette (that's right) felt like a triumph.

I'm totally not reading the Krakauer book

Damn, I was excited for the new Krakauer book about Pat Tillman. Now the New York Times and the Washington Post reviews say not to do so.

Dexter Filkins, who knows a thing or two about war zones, essentially calls the book boring. The key line is "With Tillman, you would think he’d have all he needed to fashion an epic narrative. Unfortunately, he fails to pull it off." Filkins complains that very little of the story is about Afghanistan and that the book is plagued by digressions.

Andrew Exum, author of This Man's Army, is a bit harsher arguing that Kraukauer doesn't really know his subject matter. He ties the friendly fire death of Tillman to the evils of the Bush administration rather than to the mistakes of the local commanders. His final paragraph captures the mistake that outsiders make of many organizations (notably corporations):

An Air Force officer I know likes to say that whenever one seeks to understand an epic failure of our nation's military, one must first draw a line on a sheet of paper and write "conspiracy" at one end and "buffoonery" on the other. Those who have spent time in the military and have seen it struggle not just with war but with everyday barracks life tend to err on the side of incompetence, while those who never have -- such as Krakauer -- tend to suspect conspiracy.

Disappointing indeed, but at least I can keep plugging away on the massive George Herring book I am reading.

The new Lehane

I finally picked up the Given Day. After the first chapter I was amazed that I hadn't started it sooner. If it continues to be as good as it is now, this is probably his best book, which puts it above nearly everything else out there. The book reminds me quite a bit of James Ellroy's LA Quartet books. While they have their basis in police work, they are really stories of the City and the political and social fault lines in those cities. More on this great one later.

Another good movie to be remade

I saw the Spanish horror film The Orphanage the other night. It is totally awesome. The suspense is slow-building and rewards patience. This one isn't about the fake shock every ten minutes. It is about anguish, pain and possible madness. Belen Rueda is fantastic and more or less makes the movie.

Which is why, I think the American re-make will probably be a disaster. Although director Larry Fessenden is also known for understated horror movies, I suspect we will have more scares, more gore and less acting in the new one.

The Wheel of Time rolls on, and on, and on....

Back in the early to mid-90s, I could not get enough of the Wheel of Time series. Sure it was a Tolkein ripoff, with small town heroes emerging to fight a nasty Sauron like dark force, but it was a story well told with its own flourishes. Hey, why not bring the Fremen like Aiel into the picture?!

Then the books kept coming and the story got thinner and thinner. By the time I stopped reading them, the plot had moved forward an inch in about 700 pages. No thanks.

Robert Jordan died before completing the series and Brian Sanderson was brought on board to wrap it up. For some reason I had it in my head that he would just write a single volume, which would be fine with me. Nope, he has THREE more books for the series, which will bring the total to FOURTEEN books by the end. Yes, yes, Patrick O'Brien had more than that, but those were models of concision by comparison.

Anyway, the first one comes out next month and Tor.com has the first chapter available online. You have to log into the site to read it.

Tor.com also has a guest blogger writing about the series, chapter by ever-loving chapter. So far, the blog is through the still readable volumes. Soon, the hell begins. How will the blogger deal with it?

Books for your wishlist

An article in the Wall Street Journal recently listed major book releases for the fall. The Dan Brown book will drown nearly everything else, (613 holds at Multnomah County Library!) but there are plenty of other exciting books to be found. There is a new post-apocalyptic book by Margaret Atwood called the Year of the Flood. This is great news as her Oryx and Crake remains one of my fave post-apoc novels of all time.

Kazuo Ishiguro has a book of short stories/novellas called Nocturnes coming out. The connection between the five stories is music. His mastery of the understated study of emotion should be interesting in short story form.

Jonathan Lethem's newest is longer and larger in scope than his last book. This one is called Chronic City. Chronic does appear to be used as Dr. Dre used it, but I imagine it has other meanings as well.

John Irving has another one too. Ho hum.

On the nonfiction side, John Krakauer has a new one called Where Men Win Glory, about Pat Tillman, the football star turned Army soldier. There are few nonfiction writers that can enthrall like Krakauer.

Death in the ice

I am all for a little mindless monster fiction every once and again. Or every week if it is any good. Lincoln Child co-created one of the great modern monsters with Relic and his latest Terminal Freeze is good fun as well.

This one will immediately remind you of Who Goes There/ The Thing with a far North scientific expedition uncovering what seems to be a saber tooth tiger in the ice. Not long after that a Discovery Channel-like documentary crew helicopters in and takes over the exhibition. They are such total bastards that you wonder if Mr. Child has had some run-ins with Hollywood in the past. A couple are so eggregious that they may as well be wearing I Am Going to Die....Badly shirts.

So it isn't exactly original and it telegraphs some of the bodycount, but it is still a good read. Child knows how to build and sustain tension and he gives just enough detail and background to enrich the story without weighing it down. Some times he moves a little too fast, there is one sub-plot that he seems to have felt needed extra tension, but it felt like a throwaway.

The monster is cool, especially in his gruesome attacks. For most of the book, when asked to describe it, survivors just started gibbering and going mad. I thought he was going to go down the too-terrible-to-describe Lovecraft path, but worry not, he eventually reveals and I think it works well.

A great intro

Ah the first day of school. Things were quite hectic at Skyline when I dropped off the kids today. Sad of course that I have less time with them, but now I have more time for weighty matters, like blogging.

I was in the used bookstore the other day when I found one I thought might be good. The book is called Boonville, and I couldn't remember if I had read good things about it, recall driving through the town of the same name or just remember the town's beer. It is always a risk, so I decided to try the first page test. Having read it, I took the book straight to the register.

I repeat, this is a work of fiction. I tried my best to get at some "higher truth." It think we all know the inherent problems in that undertaking. So, any of the local residents who can read, and do read this novel, and take offense at the descriptions or content, instead of sucker-punching me while I'm in town trying to buy groceries with my wife and son, let me just buy you a drink and we'll call it even. As for the hippies in the county who may be upset at the depiction of hippies, I say "Tough shit, hippie." Anyone willing to identify themselves as a hippie here in the 21st century has their head up their ass and gets what they deserve.

A vexing question regarding bands

I listened to Kelly Clarkson's Since U Been Gone last night. I love that song, but nothing else I have heard. That got me thinking about other bands I dislike with songs I like. Does one good song redeem a bad band? Or does it just provide a silver lining?

Take the aggressively bad band Bush. Oh how they plagued alternative rock stations for years. That said, they gave us the awesome Swallowed.



Does this redeem the band?

Continuing to binge on graphic novels

Thanks to the riches of the Multnomah Public Library and Cosmic Monkey comics, I am continuing my comic book binge. I read issues 2 and 3 of Unwritten and will shortly be getting the rest. It's a fun story of characters from books coming to life and has lots of jokes about horror stories.

Hack/Slash is a tongue in cheek horror comic about a pair of sword wielding misfits who hunt slashers. In this world, serial killers and mass murderers are often a form of undead that Cassie Hack and her hulking partner Vlad dispatch in often gruesome form. If you enjoy horror movies, and particularly if you like loving send-ups like Scream, this one is for you.

Ex Machina is super dee duper awesome. It is written by the same dude who penned Y: the Last Man and has an equally novel story. It is a superhero book of sorts. Thanks to a strange accident with a mysterious, potentially alien?, technology Mitchell Hundred gains the ability to communicate with and control machines. He becomes an underground hero and, thanks to heroism on 9/11, gains enough stature to win the office of Mayor of New York. So it is a comic about politics, with superhero and sci-fi elements. He weaves in stories about gay marriage into ongoing political intrigue. This one is awesome.

I wish Point Blank were as good. The book is an early Ed Brubaker comic set in the same universe as the superior Sleeper and Incognito comics. This one though lacks the stream lined plot and tight writing of those later works. I think Brubaker also created unnecessary confusion with his dream vs. reality plot.

God is an Englishman

It is a generalization to be sure, but today's literary novelists work with a much smaller scope than those of the past. The books are generally shorter, with a focus on fewer characters and on a less complex story. There are great exceptions, like Chabon's Kavalier and Klay, but overall, the focus is more on the intense examination of character.

The big writers of the 19th century, from Melville to Trollope to Tolstoy wrote giant novels with epic lists of characters and stories long enough to sustain months of reading. There are downsides of course. How many high school students think of Moby Dick with little more than bitterness at the lengthy asides about whale parts and the business of whaling? My 11th grade teacher was kind enough to let us skip many of those sections, but the book still felt interminably long.

That said, I have had years of enjoyment out of the likes of the Chronicles of Barset or the Pickwick Papers. The usual phrase is that you get lost in these books, which makes them quite like fantasy novels. Fantasy novels create worlds in which you temporarily take residence. Their breed of escapism is one of immersion and the big fat story telling literary novel is the same.

While modernism has dominated 20th century fiction, story tellers held their own as well. Englishman R F Delderfield specialized in the story-telling novel. Out of print for many years, his God is An Englishman is available once again. It is the first of a trilogy of books about Adam Swann, a soldier turned businessman in Victorian Britain.

The story starts after a battle during the Indian Mutiny (or First War of Indian Independence if you prefer) with some jewels falling into Swann's hands. He returns to England with vague plans of becoming a tycoon, probably in rails. His second bit of fortune is his meeting with a station master who tells him the opportunity is in transporting goods where rails can't go.

On a scouting expedition, he meets Henrietta, the daughter of a small town mill owner. She is driven by a desire to escape and she finds it with Swann. The novel is about the rise of his business and the development of their romance.

Delderfield spins his tale slowly and relishes the little details. We hear for example, about how some of Swann's operators won over locals with the capture of an escaped circus lion. Where most authors would be happy for a paragraph length aside to describe the goings on, Delderfield spends a number of pages to relate the humorous anecdote.

If you have an interest in British history, this book will be particularly interesting with its picture of bustling London, the railroads, the smog-covered Lancashire and the still green countryside. Even those who don't will likely appreciate Delderfield's story telling abilities.