A little resurrected horror

The other day, while we exploring a used bookstore in Wrigleyville, Steve pointed at a paperback horror novel by Douglas Clegg and said, in jest, "look, your favorite author." Not a bad assumption on his part, horror in general and mass market paperback horror in particular is not a genre rich in glories. Back in the 80s, I adored the paperback section of the grocery store and drug store. That was where you would find all kinds of treasures. Trashy treasures to be sure, but treasures nonetheless. Today nearly anything in mass market is suspect. A book published in trade paperback is an argument that the book before you is worth a try.


I had read some Douglas Clegg before and enjoyed it. One of his earliest novels, Neverland, was recently republished in trade paperback, so I naturally took notice. It is actually a good horror read. It centers on a family vacation to a run down Georgia island where people who can afford to go elsewhere have done so. The action centers around a pair of cousins, the parents of whom are usually too drunk or in battle to notice them. The kids explore a place called Neverland where one claims he has met a god.

The best parts of this horror book are the non-horror elements. Clegg has made some very believable children. Given their terrible home lives, it isn't a surprise that they turn to make believe to escape what they have to endure on a regular basis. The horror is good too, especially in the early parts when it is mostly glimpsed.

It goes to show you that you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but you may as well republish in trade as people will keep on judging.

There's no Carlos in Interpol

Seriously, this makes me wanna cry. Carlos D has left Interpol. The rhythm section is critical to the band's awesomeness. Where else where will the band find a cool looking aloof New Yorker bassist? Watch Obstacle 1 and pretend it isn't real.

The sorrow of Revenge of the Sith

For awhile now, I have been telling myself that Revenge of the Sith wasn't a bad movie. I didn't say good, mind, just not bad. Maybe this was in comparison to the first two cinematic horrors, but I have to say it is in fact crap. Our youngest kids really wanted to see it this weekend, so we let them. This meant we had to sit through it. Good gracious, it was all there, Padme's pouting, Anakin's glowering, Obi Wan's terrible dead pan puns. I only took pleasure in noting the care the designers took in making the equipment look like precursors to the equipment in the sequels. Oh well.

This morning my inner geek found solace in this story of a lavishly produced Lord of the Rings doll house . (via Vulture)

Takashi Miike on American TV?

Well it nearly happened. Showtime ran a series of one hour horror films by famous horror directors. The series was titled Masters of Horror. Miike got unlucky thirteen and his ended up going straight to DVD. Why you ask? Well for being himself. Miike is known for some over the top imagery and violence and he brings it here. We see a number of aborted fetuses floating down rivers, horrible torture via what look overgrown sewing needles, and a variety of human depravity.

It all takes place sometime in the late 19th century or early 20th century Japan and mostly at a brothel run by the deformed. The main character is an American adventurer looking for his lady friend who he believes is now working in a pleasure house. Too bad he doesn't find much in the way of joy.

Short and nasty, I suspect fans of Laird Barron will find parts of this one interesting.

Paul Fussell's Wartime

Paul Fussell is a critic and essayist rather than a historian, which makes Wartime, one of his World War 2 books, quite different from the others you have read. There are no glowing portraits of military genius or campaigns well fought. Fussell is more interested in how much war sucks. To give you a sense of the book, one of the chapters is titled "Chickenshit, An Anatomy," which we now would probably call bullshit. It generally was used to describe arbitrary abuses of power by very small men. It could be at the level of annoying, if cruel, such as denying leave thanks to a poorly made bed, or it could be evil, such as needlessly sending a patrol to their dooms, because a commanding officer didn't care for their leader.

The book details all the little ways that war destroys civility, society and the individual. He describes the propagandizing that developed into the Greatest Generation concept. The public was rarely given the real story. He also argues that World War 2 was even more dehumanizing than the trench warfare of the First World War. In the second, governments went even further into dehumazing and de-indivualizing soldiers so that they became just another replacement part or machine.

This sounds like grim reading and it is, but Fussell's outstanding prose and lighter moments, like what books people read make it more bearable. He attributes the explosion in paperbacks after the war to wartime paperbacks distributed to servicemen. I will now need to read his Great War and Modern Memory, which looks at the literature of that war.

Another book that will be traded at Powells

I just started the Monster of Florence and I am not feeling it at all. The subject is interesting in theory. Douglas Preston moves to Italy and starts researching a crime novel. As part of the research he meets a reporter who covered an unsolved series of brutal murders. They start investigating and get into trouble with the fuzz.

It may be fine, but the opening bit of dialogue really put me off.

The man sat at the edge of Spezi's desk. "This morning I have a little appointment." he said, "She's not bad looking, married. . ."

"At your age?" Spezi said. "On a Sunday morning before church?" Isn't that a bit much?"

"A bit much? Mario, I'm Sicilian!" He struck his chest. "I come from the land that gave birth to the Gods."

Cue Dennis Hopper. Really though, I felt like I was in for 250 pages of Paisan! and Chianti. I had to put it down.

Waiting for the Gun

Man, looks like I live in the wrong Northwest city. Soundgarden got together (as Nudedragons) for a show in Seattle last month. I would have loved this cover of Waiting for the Sun. Here is the whole show. Gun sounds as fucking bad ass as ever.

I love these guys if only for being one of the best live shows I recall. My man Neill got kicked in the head by Chris Cornell on a stage dive and my ears took a few days to recover.

Most highlighted passages on the Kindle

One of the (purported) benefits of the Kindle is that you can highlight text. Big Brother Amazon is apparently aggregating this info, judging by this page of most highlighted text. Anyway, can you guess who is the Daddy Mac of highlighted text? William P Young, author of the Shack. Got-dam Shack readers love them some highlighting.

A few thoughts. Highlighting amazes me. Ann Fadiman described two kinds of readers, carnal and courtly. The former mark up, deface and tear apart their books. The relationship becomes physical. The latter treat their books chastely and like nothing more than a virginal book. I am all about courtly reading. I get upset when a tiny food stain winds up on a page. Unreasonable, as I am not hoping to sell them for a profit, but there you go.

Second, where is the dirty, dirty talk? Porn leads the way in the technology world, so where is it? I bet Amazon is suppressing some info here. I used to work for an online electronics store and we had a list of top 100 movies. Thing was, we had to hide the leading titles, which were nasty. One of the favorites was Ilsa She Wolf of the SS. That was one effed up movie. Anyway, I bet something like the Story of O has way more highlighting.

Finally what do people do with their highlighting? Besides note taking of course. Do people really go back and look at them?

A little old school scifi

The other day Harris wrote about books you are supposed to like but just don't. He was talking about literary fiction, but the same holds for science fiction. Two books (and series) I just could not get into were Zelazny's Amber books and Robert Silverberg's Lord Valentine's Castle. The thing is, I love the giant multi volume fantasy novels, but I can rarely stick with multivolume scifi and these two didn't work at all.

Thanks to a Powells display, I did pick up a Silverberg book that I did like. The Book of Skulls is dated but reasonably well written and engaging. Set in the early 70s and populated by earnest philosophically minded college students, the book nearly collapses under the weight of bullshit. The short length and the tensions between the characters keeps it going.

The premise is that one of the four mismatched college roommates (one neurotic Jew, one mincing gay, one bronzed Midwesterner and one aloof aristocrat ---stereotype much?) discover the possibility that a cult can teach them how to live forever. The catch is that four men (and note the emphasis on men) can enter, but only two leave. One has to commit suicide and another must be murdered by the other two. Therein lies the book's tension.

While I think male readers will like the book, I think female readers will not. Most scifi of the period was male centric, but this one is is almost anti-female. Not because of the extensive focus on gay relationships, but because all of the women in the book are portrayed negatively or anti-humanely. The women serve only to hinder our heroes from gaining wisdom or as objects for their learning. Come to think of it, this might really put off male readers too.

The Third Rail

I am just back from Chicago, what a town that is! I am sure the winters are brutal, but in the nice weather, it is really something. The incredible architecture, cool neighborhoods, great food add up to a lot of fun. Being large of course, and with its reputation for shady politics it is also a great setting for a crime novel. Chicago's Michael Harvey's the Third Rail is his third book featuring Michael Kelly. The character may be a little too familiar (Irish, cop turned PI, problems with authority,) but the story isn't. It starts with random killings on the L trains and builds into a broader plot involving revenge, those nasty city politics and the lingering effects of a train crash.

This one is bleaker and nastier than the average crime novel. It feels like the mid period Lehanes in the level of violence and cruelty on the part of the bad guys. This is not a cozy crime novel by any means. It also pulls in quite a bit of the serial killer and thriller genres into crime picture.

The plot is fairly complicated and it can be a bit hard to follow, especially as Harvey intends the protagonists to be at a loss for the beginning of the book. Still, it is good to see new writers developing and taking the stories out of LA and New York.

Back from Chicago

Ah, now that was a trip. Of course it included trips to bookstores, including a very nice one near Wrigley Field. More on all of that soon, but take a look at the Edgar winners. I am thrilled to see that John Hart won (again) for the Last Child.

Oooooo, new Interpol

You can go the Interpol website for the MP3 (as I did) or you can just click on the YouTube that someone immediately put up (could disappear of course.) This one is less about the hooks and more about the atmospherics, which means it sounds like Turn Out the Bright Lights. Good times.

Heading to Chicago

I will shortly be off to Chicago for the weekend. I will be meeting up with some good friends for eating, drinking, game watching and bookstore visiting. I've never been there so I am quite excited. Right now, I am wrestling with the dilemma of which books to bring for the flight. Right now I am thinking Fussell's Wartime, a creepy looking Robert Silverberg called Book of Skulls, the lovely Netherland (which I started) and Quietus, a book that I fear may be too long for its own good.

Since I am going to Chicago, I thought it fitting that I read the Third Rail by Chicago native Michael Harvey. More on that one later today or tomorrow.

Say it ain't so Stephen

Well, he can't, as he is dead, but I am sad to hear allegations that Stephen Ambrose made up interviews with Dwight Eisenhower. These purportedly fake interviews were essential to his books on Eisenhower. The New Yorker has the details. Yahoo has an overview of the coverage. I imagine people will now pore over his books to find more examples of dodgy research. This makes me sad as I have greatly enjoyed many of his books.

A record speedy book abandonment

I usually give a book 50 pages to hook me (100 pages if it is a fantasy novel, for some of those the first 50 pages is the prologue.) I picked up the Raw Shark Texts and read this on page one:

The shudder-hacking violence of no air then too much knocked me dizzy, sent the floor tilting away under my fingers. Static behind my eyes bacteria-swarmed dangerously towards another blackout and, snow blind and shaking, I pushed my wet mouth down tight into the palms of my hands, trying to pull controlled, steady breaths through my fingers -

Done on page one. There is no way in hell I can stand to read that sort of cutesy playful language, especially when the book is at least partially inspired by one of the greatest waste of trees, the House of Leaves. As Harris noted earlier, the literary world is trying to convince us that purposefully obtuse writing is good and that if you don't like it, you just aren't smart enough. I'll just be old fashioned and look to writers like Ian McEwan who can actually tell a story and use language to communicate emotion and understanding, rather than over the top metaphor and pop cultural allusion.

NB, I also put down a genre book as well. CJ Cherryh's Foreigner. She really needs an editor on that one.

I just saw Kick Ass

It's pretty awesome. You get McLovin, Nic Cage doing his best Adam West, a filthy mouthed 11 y/o girl who is great with a knife and lots and lots of violence. There are no big thoughts in this movie, there are no lessons, no growth in character, no subtle commentary on crime, the media, our infatuation with violence and explosions. In fact, I imagine some will be repelled by the cavalier attitude towards mayhem, especially by the idea that a father raises his daughter by training her to be a killer to seek vengeance.

The movie is really two movies in one. It starts with a goofy guy who gets the notion that he should become a superhero. He has a rough go of it and comes to find he would rather be a regular guy again. Since the movie has promised us ass kicking, the second part of the movie involves a real superhero father and daughter team.

There are lots of fun little details, like the use of social media by superheroes and the idea that a popular hangout is a combination malt and comic shop. Essentially if you like cartoonish violence that is very well presented, you will like this movie. If you think violence has been made too easy in our times, watch out for this one.

The new Vampire Weekend single

I like it! More than the last one too. I guess I will see these guys live again. Check the video for Jake Gyllenhaal as a hard drinking tennis player and the RZA as a tennis judge.

When books are really cheap

My kids school held a library fundraiser this week. It works like this. The kids bring in books from home and when they get hit benchmarks they get a prize (200 books gets you a popsicle party, 500 gets you a bookmark and so on.) The books sell for a pittance ( $1 each) and all the cash goes to buy new books for the school library. So it was my parental duty to pick up a stack, right? I did walk away with a small amount. Just six books. I picked up Monster of Florence, a Bryson book on Shakespeare, a book about Frederick the Great, Jesusland and a few others.

Who knows when I will read all these books, but really that rarely bothers me. The number of unread books I own rarely enters into my buying calculus. The key factors seem to be my desire to read the book, the possibility of never seeing the book again (which includes forgetting to look) and the cost. A low cost, as in a dollar, means that I even the barest chance of wanting to read it will lead me to pick up the book. After all, if I don't like it, I can lend it to someone else or trade it in at Powells.

I like the idea of having lots of books from which to choose, but the reality is less attractive. I end up forgetting what I have already purchased and often just grab the nearest book on the shelf for the next read. I stuff books in various corners of the house and forget they exist. Some get hidden behind the latest acquisitions. And then the stack of library books beckons with its urgency.

The thing is I like buying books for the sake of buying. Just exploring the piles and stacks of books, looking at the covers, and imagining the read build up to pleasurable time spent. Buying cheap books is like buying a lottery ticket. There is chance (a better one that the lottery!) you will get something out of it, but in the mean time you had a little cheap fun.

Reading the new Hampton Sides

The new Hampton Sides book, Hellhound on His Trail, is not only great, it compares well to his incredible Ghost Soldiers. His earlier book told a little known tale of a joint Army Ranger/Filipino guerrilla operation to liberate US servicemen from a Japanese prison camp. He took a fresh story and told it incredibly well. Hellhound on His Trail, also describes a lesser known aspect of a terrible event. His new book is about James Earl Ray, the assassin of Martin Luther King, Jr.

As the center of the book and the driver of the narrative, it is a little odd that we do not see the name James Earl Ray until page 321 of the book. In his preface, Sides alludes to Shelby Foote's belief that historians should borrow the novelist's way of writing. Sides takes that advice and writes like the very best of the crime novelists. Ray, who Sides depicts as a criminal driven by his angry racism, his shattered family life and a peculiar desire to lead others on chases, was given to creating multiple fake identities. So for the first 3/4 of the book, Sides refers to him as Eric Galt, the name Ray took after breaking out of prison.

Sides' use of novelistic technique of pacing, and building suspense makes the non-reveal of Ray's true name feel like a big reveal. Reading how the FBI manages to piece together his history and his past, I felt a bit of vicarious triumph when they found out who he really was.

The other major character, of course, is Martin Luther King, Jr, who at the start of the book is flagging and flailing, looking for a way for the Civil Rights movement to gain momentum. He is anxious to being a poor person's movement in DC, but becomes involved in a garbage worker's strike in Memphis. Sides provides enough background to show the tensions within the movement without slowing down the brisk pace of the story. We are all aware of the terrible symbolic and social impacts of King's death, so Sides focuses on the things we might forget. With mounting dread, we see him joking with friends as he prepares for a dinner, all while Ray readies his rifle. We also see his young children try to grapple with what has happened to them.

The focus here though is on Ray. I was unaware of his flight across the country and then into many more. He was under the belief that he could find ideological sympathizers who would help him join up with the Rhodesian military.

Don't look for conspiracy theories in the book. The only one of note is related to a St Louis lawyer named Sutherland who is believed to have put a bounty on King's head. Focusing on the Ray's actions leaves space for the conspiracy minded to fill in motive and assistance if desired.

The new Hampton Sides

So I started reading the new Hampton Sides book, Hellhound on His Trail, which concerns the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.* In a later post, I will talk about the book itself, which is great and stands up well to his prior work. At the moment, I want to mention how relevant the book feels today. King's killer appears to have been already damaged and filled with hatred towards King and African Americans in general.

It didn't help though that the Wallace campaign and it allies beat the drum of saving the country for the white man, all the while claiming that King was some sort of stooge of the Soviets bent on destroying the US of A.

The whole feel of the time is frighteningly similar to ours. The drumbeats of panic and fear pulsing from the Tea Partiers, with their outlandish claims about Obama and their over the top rhetoric remind echo what people said about King. You can't say that you are trying to help white America anymore, of course. Instead you say "real Americans."

My fear is that all of this atmosphere will trigger a reaction from some new James Earl Ray. This is not a new sentiment, but the book certainly makes it seem that much more of a threat.

*Full disclosure: The publisher sent it to me. Thanks!