Tell me Good Woman & Good Man, are we supposed to hate the mad artists who do things we don't understand? Are we supposed to scoff at their arrogance Tell me Good Woman & Good Man, are we supposed to hate the mad artists who do things we don't understand? Are we supposed to scoff at their arrogance and their clear stupidity? Or are we supposed to worship them blindly? To look at their work, and even if we don't have a clue what they are doing, should we say "Yes! This is genius," even if it is genius we don't understand?
I don't know. I can't tell you.
Mark Rothko may or may not have had something to say about this, but under the creative fictionality of John Logan, Rothko had something definite to say, and that was that we -- all of us who are not initiated, and even some who are -- are unworthy of his greatness.
That may be.
But maybe we should hate Rothko. After all, he painted colours in geometric shapes. Surely our two-year-olds can do the same?! But no. No we shouldn't hate Rothko. And no ... our two-year-olds can't. We should celebrate Rothko because no two-year-old could do what he did. Watch the light. See what it does. Watch the darkness and shadows, see how they play with the light, see what they do to his shapes and his colours and his Red. Wonder what it means. Be angry at his arrogance, but consider it, wrestle with it, embrace it, make love to it, make hate to it, and see the greatness we are lucky enough to touch, even if it is through the extra filter of a playwright and only with our eyes and ears but not our fingers.
9. Experimental theatre excites the hell out of me, but it scares the shit out of most audiences. This thought makes Nine Thoughts on Never Swim Alone
9. Experimental theatre excites the hell out of me, but it scares the shit out of most audiences. This thought makes me wonder if Never Swim Alone could even gain a contemporary audience that wasn't at a Fringe festival. I doubt it.
8. We are all so damaged.
7. Canada is a much darker place than those of you who see us as a kind and gentle land can know. All that is sinister in Scandinavian Literature comprises our everyday hidden layers. We are as they.
6. We talk about white male privilege, but don't dig into what that entails beyond the "privileges." We need to be thinking more deeply about this, talking more deeply about this, following it to all its drafty and rotting crawlspaces and attics.
5. Swimming as murder metaphor? Swimming as rape metaphor? Swimming as rape-murder metaphor? Not in 1988 when Daniel MacIvor wrote Never Swim Alone, but now, forty-two years later, the experience of reading the play means those unintended metaphors create expectations the literal action of the play cannot meet. What does that say about who we've become and what today's expectations are?
4. The homoerotic triangle is at work in this play, and Frank & Bill and their guns ... well, that metaphor may have been intended in 1988.
3. Like father like son. Too right.
2. We often think of men as children; the infantile structure of our Western Economic and Political systems (and the deep erosion of our Social systems) make men so, and increasingly women (as they engage more equally in a system that no one should aspire to be part of).
1. How are we still a species on this planet? How?...more
How slippery is memory? Pretty slippery the experts tell us, yet we rely on it as a deliverer of truth in our most important and high stakes moments. How slippery is memory? Pretty slippery the experts tell us, yet we rely on it as a deliverer of truth in our most important and high stakes moments. Stephen Belber's Tape reminds us of this. It does it well. But is that enough to deliver the short play Belber has delivered? I'm not so sure. ...more
I went through most of my life not knowing that The Moon is Down even existed. I haven't been the most fervent fan of John Steinbeck, so that could beI went through most of my life not knowing that The Moon is Down even existed. I haven't been the most fervent fan of John Steinbeck, so that could be the explanation, but in all the classes I've been in, in all the discussions of Steinbeck's work or dicussions of stories of WWII, I've never heard of this book.
When I stumbled upon it in my local used book shop I couldn't help wondering why it was new to me. I figured it must just be a terrible book, unworthy of attention, a rare Steinbeck failure, but I went ahead and bought it anyway (it was only a buck and a quarter). Then it sat on my shelf for a couple of years.
I dragged it along with me to the Caribbean (where we're staying for 2014-2015), determined to give it a crack on the beach sometime. That time was over the Christmas break, and within about twenty pages I was trying to figure out the real reason for my ignorance of this book because it isn't a failure on the part of Steinbeck.
The Moon is Down is sparing, as are all of Steinbeck's novellas, and there is a beauty in his chosen simplicity. The cast of scantily drawn characters seems to be a deliberate part of that simplicity. It is as though Steinbeck wants us to find ourselves in any or all of the men and women who inhabit this little world of Conquerors and (Un-)Conquered, Vanquished and (Un-)Vanquished, so he spares us too much detail that could get in the way of our ability to relate. And herein may lie the reason why The Moon is Down has been pushed to the fringes of Steinbeck's work, because the characters (at least two thirds of them) that Steinbeck wants us to relate to are Nazis inhabiting a town in the midst of WWII.
We all know the discomfort that comes with being able to empathize with or relate to Nazi characters, but that discomfort can only be intensified by the fact that Steinbeck himself never gives his occupiers the name Nazi. The only place the word Nazi appears on my book, in fact, is on the back cover. I imagine anyone reading this book when it was released, or even folks who might read the book now without a back cover-spoiler, would be angered when they realized that the Nazis of Steinbeck's novella are not so different from they themselves or from their troops that might this very second be occupying another place somewhere in the world. Occupiers as hated by the Occupied as Steinbeck's Nazis in The Moon is Down.
I'd be willing to wager a pay cheque (don't get excited, that's practically nothing these days), that Steinbeck's book has been quietly set aside because of that very discomfort, which is a shame because it is telling an important story that I am better for having read. ...more
In 1932 the United States' Communist leader William Z. Foster wrote his book about the inevitability of the fall of capitalism and the rise of communiIn 1932 the United States' Communist leader William Z. Foster wrote his book about the inevitability of the fall of capitalism and the rise of communism, and how that would and must occur in the United States before leading to the worldwide Soviet. We all know how that turned out, so reading Foster's Marxist prophecies of a glorious Soviet world are kind of funny. Not nearly as funny, however, as the moronic commentary provided in this book by Dr. Maurice Ries of Tulane University and House of Un-American Activities Congressman Francis E. Walter. I'll let those American gentleman speak for themselves in their final proof of the insidiousness and evil that is Soviet Communism:
But not all of the conspirators' [meaning Foster and his fellow communists] working hours are devoted directly to revolution. Many of those hours are expended upon subversion of other sorts. ...They include: agitating for the release of "political prisoners"; demonstrating against "imperialist war"; taking control of various non-political disagreements and turning them into "broad class struggles" having a "political character"; defending the Soviet Union, Red China, and other Communist countries; demanding more and more unemployment insurance; fomenting racial trouble [specifically aiding African-Americans in their fight against "the man"]; pushing for higher taxes on the wealthy; insisting upon shorter working hours with pay for a full day's work; pressing for rent reduction; claiming the right for people on relief to operate the relief agency that is supporting them; urging steadily increasing trade with the USSR; calling for larger relief payments; trying to force the withdrawal of American armed forces from areas of Communist aggression; proposing old-age benefits from the Government; clamoring for cash payments to farmers; ordering dock workers and longshoremen not to handle military shipments; proclaiming solidarity with the "masses in Latin-America in their fight against American imperialism"; opposing the deportation of foreign-born agitators and law violators; struggling to oust Conservatives from all positions of leadership; making "special demands" for women in industry, in order to obligate working women to the Communist Party; organizing students in Young Communist groups; resisting the finger-printing of foreign-born workers; forming "mass organizations" (Communist fronts) as needed; combating injunctions and court decisions by "a policy of mass violation"; carrying on agitation for "rights of free speech, free assembly"; working inside labor unions to split labor from management; striving to elect pro-Communist candidates to public office; creating Communist cells in mines, mills, factories, and other locations; maintaining an extensive party press; and ranting for the right of US Negroes to set up their own nation in the South's "Black Belt."
I presume more eloquent men that Ries and Walter could have done a better job of counteracting William Z. Foster's call for Soviet Revolution in the US, and made slightly smaller asses of themselves. But their jingoism and un-American opinions aside, there was one area of discussion in Toward Soviet America that was well researched, well thought out, and thoroughly convincing: when William Z. Foster was talking about what was wrong with Capitalism and how its influence would destroy American from the Thirties into the future, he was spot on. His criticism is as relevant today as it must have been on the verge of the Great Depression, with the First World War still a fresh wound and the Second World War looking large. Much of what he says could be stripped of its Communist bent and replanted in Occupy pamphlet or an Anonymous manifesto, and the evidence is staying fresh and renewing itself all the time.
This is worth a read if you are curious what the America Soviets really made of the country they were living in back the day. ...more
Is it just me, or have we reached a point where it has become cool (perhaps hipster cool?) to hold Alan Moore at arms length and dismiss his work? I dIs it just me, or have we reached a point where it has become cool (perhaps hipster cool?) to hold Alan Moore at arms length and dismiss his work? I don’t think it is just me. It certainly feels like that was the everyreader (if not the critical) reception to Alan Moore’s Fashion Beast.
Travelling around to the comic book stores in my region (my decidedly rural Canadian region, it should be stated), I have not found anyone but myself who has actually read this entire series. Two people I know read a couple of issues then stopped, and a few read the first issue but no more. Only I have read the entire series in my less than immediate vicinity.And when I’ve brought up Fashion Beast it has been to a universal cool. Even those who’ve read some of the series responded with little more than a shrug and a “meh.”
This is a shame because Fashion Beast is as accomplished a piece of fiction as anything Moore’s written with (perhaps) the exception of From Hell (yes. I am actually saying it is as accomplished as Watchmen). It is a tormented and tortured retelling of Beauty and the Beast characterised by sexual ambiguity, abuse, power struggle, dystopia and psychological horror. And that is just the crust of the story. Dig deeper from the crust to the inner core and Fashion Beast is revealed to compress itself into subsurface layers of storytelling, layers we must work hard to uncover but whose uncovering is absolutely rewarding.
There are layers of perception, of reality and hyperreality, of anarchy, of fascism, of evolution and human interference with evolution, of fable, of morbidity, of asexuality, of transexuality, of subjugation and domination, of class and economics, of signs and semiotics, and these are just some of what make up the earth of Fashion Beast.
I have read some criticism of the screenplay structure of the tale, since it does come from an original Moore screenplay written in the eighties, because the screenplay structure doesn’t mimic the issue to issue structure of a comic narrative. I understand that feeling, and perhaps that has something to do with the response of those who’ve only read a couple of issues. This structure does mean that the story takes time to reveal its shape, but if one gives the cinematic orogenesis of Fashion Beast time, if one allows for a different pace of graphic storytelling, one will find the shape as pleasing as the more natural shapes we read everyday.
I suppose it is unfair to suggest that the lack of interest in Moore has to do with hipsterism. I think, in the end, it is simply that he challenges us too much (whether in form or substance).
He is like Orwell of comic book writing. Everyone says his name in hushed tones, everyone has read Animal Farm (Watchmen), and everyone claims to have read 1984 (V for Vendetta), and hard core readers (scholars and activists) have read The Road to Wigan Pier (From Dead), but going any farther is just too damn much work, so we admire Orwell (Moore) from a distance, recognize his importance, claim to be fans, but stay away — always — from the literature on the periphery. It’s easier that way.
So I get that. It just bums me out because genius tends to go un(der)appreciated....more
WARNING: This is not a strict book review, but rather a meta-review / spoof, responding satirically to the argument put forth in this book by the authWARNING: This is not a strict book review, but rather a meta-review / spoof, responding satirically to the argument put forth in this book by the author, Tammy Fitzherbert. Direct quote appear in italics with additions and changes between square brackets. Thanks.
One night Little Luke was watching Bachelor Pad with his parents, when the Dancing With The Stars cast was revealed. A short, chubby, rather round man with a beard walked across the stage, and Tom Bergeron said: "Chaz Bono." Luke's mother gasped. His father said, "Disgusting," and flipped the channel with the remote. Then poor Luke found himself being swept off to bed.
Poor Luke was confused. What was wrong with the chubby little man. He looked nice. He decided to ask his best friend, Jesus.
"Hey, Jesus. You must have heard that Chaz Bono was cast on Dancing With the Stars."
"Of course, Luke. I am a huge fan of Bachelor Pad -- all those people loving each other remind me of my heady days wandering Judea," replied Jesus. "So it was impossible to miss."
"My Mom and Dad were awfully upset, though. What did the man do wrong?" asked Luke.
"'Well, I'll do my best to help you understand.' Chaz, you see, was born Chastity. He was a girl. A cute little girl born to television royalty, Sonny & Cher. But now Chastity is a boy," explained Jesus. "This upsets people sometimes."
"How is that possible? How can someone change from a girl to a boy? Didn't God make her a girl?"
"Yes, Luke. My Holy Father did make her a girl, and that is why people are so upset. God made her a girl out of Love, and she and her Doctors have turned her into a boy. The problem is that they think they are making the change out of Love too."
"Doesn't God tell us that a boy can only be a boy and a girl can only be a girl? Why would anyone want to change that?" persisted Luke.
"You are right, Luke. God makes it very clear that people should not change their genders. Like in Deuteronomy 22:4 where those who engage in transvestitism are declared ABOMINATIONS! But some people believe that they were born into the wrong bodies, that they may have been born girls when they should have been boys, and they fool themselves into feeling sad about this."
"But that's just silly. God would never make that mistake," declared Luke confidently.
"You're right, Luke," said Jesus. "My Holy Father never makes mistakes."
"But Chaz looks like a boy now. I didn't know he was a girl. And he seemed happy. Isn't it important to be happy, Jesus?"
"'That's the tough part Luke. Some people choose to listen to their [hearts] instead of me. Though I understand sin and temptations, I have made it very clear in the Bible, they should [remain what I've made them.]' I love Chaz, and hope someday he'll become Chastity again and fulfill God's plan. 'See, Gods (sic) Plan is always perfect.'"
"But if Chaz is confused, why can't you or God make him --"
"-- Her --"
"Sorry ... her ... see the error of her ways?"
"It is hard sometimes, Luke, because the Devil is always working against us, trying to make sad people happy by confusing them."
"I don't like him very much," said Luke. "He's mean."
"Yes, Luke. He sure is. But there is something you can do."
"What's that, Jesus?"
"Pray for Chaz. Tonight before you go to bed, show how much you Love her, how much you reflect my Love for her, and pray that she will see the truth of the Bible and the plan the Holy Father has for her. Because even though she's wrong, Luke, we have to Love her and help her be right."
"Thank you, Jesus. I will. You're my best friend."
"That will do, Little Luke. That will do."
The End
p.s. I have to give credit to Mrs. Fitzherbert. She believes what she's writing, and that means she even believes that her message is one of love. She tries hard, and she really wants to do something good and kind for the world. It doesn't really succeed, though. Hidden though it may be, her intolerance is too much for me to bear, and the fact that she doesn't see it as intolerance mitigates it not one bit.
p.p.s. Go, Chaz! I am going to watch DWTS just for you. ...more
I came away with five things from the second volume of Isaac Deutscher’s incomparable Trotsky biography -- The Prophet Unarmed. Some of these thoughtsI came away with five things from the second volume of Isaac Deutscher’s incomparable Trotsky biography -- The Prophet Unarmed. Some of these thoughts are new to me, some of them are solidifications of ideas or opinions I already had, but they are what I leave this book with and, I think, worth sharing.
5. Stalin destroyed the promise of Engels, Marx and Lenin. He stained communism. And he provided capitalism with the ugliness it needed to vilify communism in the minds of their own, potentially dangerous, proletarian ranks. His need for power, the way he achieved it, his authoritarianism -- none of these things a feature of genuine communism -- all came to represent communism in the minds of the capitalist west. Stalin’s very existence was capitalism’s best propaganda tool against communism. And this man who was neither a Bolshevik nor a true Communist remains the best tool to this day (with neo-Stalinists Mao and Pol Pot a close second and third).
4. The U.S., England and their European lackeys should be ashamed of themselves -- as usual -- because it would have been vastly more difficult (if not impossible) for Stalin to have achieved power if it weren’t for their meddling in the earliest days of the Soviet Union. Arms and advisors sent to the White Guard during the Civil War, isolationist policies, boycotts, etc., etc., worsened already terrible conditions in post-Tsarist Russia, forcing the early Bolsheviks into compromising their principles to ensure survival, and once those principles were compromised the situation became easier and easier for Stalin to manipulate. While the west’s support of the counter-revolution failed in the short term, it certainly succeeded in condemning the Soviet Union to totalitarianism in the long term.
3. The methods, tactics and controls of Stalinism are not all that different from contemporary North America. Our right wing engages in fear mongering, disinformation, media manipulation, vilification of dissenters, purges, and claims to moral superiority and historical loyalty; they’re tactics are so commonplace as to be almost unnoticeable to everyday citizens. Worse still, our left is as apathetic and conciliatory as most of the Left Opposition that Trotsky tried in vain to rally in his day. Our liberals clamour on about how “nice and polite and correct” they are, about how “stupid and racist and misogynistic” the right is, but they’ve not learned the lesson that their “enlightenment” is a minority “enlightenment” that can only be turned into a majority “enlightenment” through hard work and a conscious effort to negate their tendency to condescension. History repeating itself. Again.
2. Trotsky was a great man. Some can be great revolutionaries. Some can be great thinkers. Some can be great leaders. Some can be great diplomats. Some can be great warriors. Some can be great writers. Some can be great winners. Some can be great losers. Some can live great lives. Some can die great deaths. But very few can be and do all of them in their lifetime. Trotsky was great at every single one. In the annals of socialism only Marx and Lenin can match him (although Engels and Che surely deserve honourable mentions). The hatchet to the brain was a great loss to us all.
1. Communism can’t succeed. Not because of any bullshit about the superiority of capitalism. Not because communism is “inherently evil” as ultra-capitalists would have us believe. Not even because it is “unworkable.” Communism can’t succeed because it hard fucking work. To be a communist, to create a communist society, everyone must be dedicated to selflessness, to hard work, to action, to trust, to reason, to each other. But most humans are too selfish, too apathetic, too untrusting, too unreasonable, too lazy to achieve the requirements of communism, and so communism must fail.
But I’ve a crappy lance, a skinny horse, and a world full of windmills, so I’ll keep fighting....more
"How are you going to write this review, Brad?" "I dunno, Brad. This is going to be seriously tough." "You liked it, though. You liked it a lot, so just"How are you going to write this review, Brad?" "I dunno, Brad. This is going to be seriously tough." "You liked it, though. You liked it a lot, so just write what you feel." "I liked parts of it a lot, loved parts of it, but it is so fucking depressing." "Depressing is good!" "Depressing can be good, but it isn't entertaining. I can't see myself coming back to this book anytime soon." "Still, you loved the characters ..." "Yeah. The narrator was good, but I really loved the woman, and that whole bit about wanting the son of the man she killed to recognize her. Amazing stuff." (view spoiler)[
She says, "So he can see I'm just like everyone else, that I'm not some monster. So he could see that I was just like him ... before ..." "Before what?" "Before the police eventually find me and I'm not given the chance to make people realize that I'm just like them ..."
(hide spoiler)]"Right. So what's the problem. You loved this book." "I loved the writing. I loved the dialogue. But ..." "..." "What?!" "But what?" "I dunno. It all comes back to how depressing it is." "But it's supposed to be depressing. It's catalyzed by boredom; it's a meditation on how to really live and be alive; it's full of cruelty and kindness and feeling; it's life." "Yeah, and life sucks." "Life doesn't suck and you know it." "I know, but the way we live sucks. The way we don't live." "But this story, these two people, they lived in their own ways. They took paths of their own choosing, embraced them and lived them. Surely that's worth five stars." "It is. And so is the writing. But the way I feel now, afterwards, undermines that. I honour this book, but I can't love it." "You're an ass." "Just so." ...more
This book doesn't just tell a story. It is told through stories, through storytelling, and this makes all the stories of Peru, even those beyond the cThis book doesn't just tell a story. It is told through stories, through storytelling, and this makes all the stories of Peru, even those beyond the confines of the page, one story. Mario Vargas Llosa doesn't give a damn about time or space or traditional plot; he doesn’t care about making the reader comfortable or making reading easy; he cares about connections, and he makes them however he damn well pleases.
Death in the Andes follows three stories (for a while). The first follows Corporal Lituma's search for the truth in the disappearances of a mute, an albino and a mayor posing as a miner who’s hiding from the terrucos. The second is a string of short stories wherein characters peripheral to Lituma's investigation are shown interacting in some way or other with the Sendero Luminoso. Some hide, some are executed, some help the Senderistas, some escape, some bear witness, but all are touched by the presence of the terrrucos in the Andes. The third is the tale of how Lituma's aid found himself in the crappy town of Naccos, and his great obsessive passion for a beautiful woman named Mercedes.
It is difficult to place these tales in time, even more difficult to place them in space, but none of that is really important because Llosa isn't trying to deliver a plot or even a character study; he is trying to express the reality of brutality, and its omnipresence in Peru -- now as ever.
So when Llosa abandons the short stories and the retelling of Tomasito's love for Mercedes, replacing them with the history of the cantineros and his wife –- debauched Dionisio and the seer Doña Adriana -- it is a seamless shift into further confusion. Suddenly we're listening to Lituma’s speculations spun as a story about the death of the mute. We can't know if it is a true story, but it doesn't really matter because whether or not it happened to the mute, it happened to somebody somewhere.
And when we finally discover what did happen to the mute it is even more brutal than we could have expected.
Yet even with all the brutality that swirls around and through Llosa's Andes, his tragic Peru, there is life and living. It might not be pretty or gentle or caring or healthy, but it is beauifully alive.
And all of that is reflected in Llosa's structure and prose. Death in the Andes is an exercise in language. And I read this wonderful Spanish novel in English. How sad is that? I must continue my Spanish lessons just so I can read this in its original form. I am sure it will blow my mind. ...more
The Unauthorized Death By ZamboniReader Qualification quiz designed to determine whether or not you should be allowed to buy a copy of Death By ZamboThe Unauthorized Death By ZamboniReader Qualification quiz designed to determine whether or not you should be allowed to buy a copy of Death By Zamboni or if you must wait for the Death By Zamboni mini-series on CBC™.
Answer these questions:
0. No? 1. Have you ever clamped clothes pins on your genitals? 2. Do acid flashbacks accompany thoughts of the Gibb brothers? 3. Have you ever uttered "Zoinks" without intentionally referencing Saturday Morning Cartoons? 4. Have you ever fantasized about making love to someone in mouse ears? 5. Do you prefer your comedians tripped out on amphetamines? 6. Is your personal contact with sweatshops a weekend “Rollback” the prices excursion to Wal-Mart™? 7. Do you get all angsty when you hear the promo words “Who will be voted out tonight?” 8. Are you a fan of books that are “too-sexy-for-maiden-aunts”? 9. Gouda? 10. Do you see things in a Rorschach test? 11. Have you ever, either in this life or the next, made love to a mime after it mimed its way through a death match with Jewish hitmen? 12. Do you see the connection between “it” and “is”? 13. Pink banana hammocks? 14. Do you hide your reading problem from friends and family? 15. Satan Donuts? 16. Does bowling in and around seminal fluid turn you off? 17. Have you ever ridden a Zamboni (nudge, nudge, wink, wink, say no more, say no more)? 18. Do you have a conscience? 19. Are you a superfreak?
If you answered yes to some of these questions Death By Zamboni is for you. Of course, if you answered no to some of these questions Death By Zamboni is for you. If you answered maybe to any of these same questions then Death By Zamboni is also for you -- maybe. But if you answered yes to some of these questions Death By Zamboni isn’t for you because you’re a half wit who probably can’t follow anything more challenging than a really challenging thing. And if you answered no or maybe to some of these questions then you should be ashamed of yourself, but you probably aren’t, so maybe you should just give your money to David David anyway because he’s earned it by being far cooler than you. Whatever...Death By Zamboni deserves to be read. Can you handle it? Are you man enough to handle it? Do you know what it takes to read Death By Zamboni? It takes brass balls to read Death By Zamboni. Now sway your hips. Do you hear that clickety clack? Death By Zamboni really is for you. ...more
We book lovers can’t help speaking of authors as “the next ....” We’re always keeping our eyes open for the next Jane Austen or the next Ernest HemingWe book lovers can’t help speaking of authors as “the next ....” We’re always keeping our eyes open for the next Jane Austen or the next Ernest Hemingway or the next Salman Rushdie or the next Ursula K. LeGuin, and we gleefully trumpet their arrival in our reviews. Of course, what we really ought to be looking for is the first China Miéville, the first Lisa Moore, the first Neal Stephenson, the first Iain Banks, the first whomever. When we find those authors who are truly themselves, we’ve really uncovered gold.
There is a comparison that is valuable, however. It doesn’t place impossible expectations on burgeoning authors; it doesn’t reduce the work they are doing; it simply places them in the context of literary history and points us in the direction of their progenitors. What I am talking about is authorial inheritance. There are some authors who, for whatever reason or in whatever way, have “inherited” a technique or a focus or an obsession from an established author and somehow built upon what came before.
Tolkien’s world building, especially linguistically, is legendary. He knew everything there was to know about the races, religions, languages and histories of Middle Earth. It remains a world of immense richness, and Fantasy authors of every generation have aspired to create worlds that match Tolkien’s genius.
I don’t think Vandermeer is one of those authors, at least not consciously. I don’t think he’s sitting down with his scribbled maps and booklets of backstories and rules of behaviour, aspiring to be the next Tolkien.
Yet what Vandermeer has done is create a world every bit as alive and teeming as Tolkien’s, and he has done it in a way that is unique to his time and personal experience and place in the world (a Pannsylvanian born, Fiji raised, Floridian).
Can you imagine a world where the grey skinned alien invaders people fear come from below, not from above, and are living, breathing fungus beings? Jeff Vandermeer can. Can you imagine a world where historians and artists are the venerated celebrities of the day, rather than actors and athletes? Vandermeer can. Can you imagine a world where weapons of mass destruction are fungal weapons that alter the world in a fearful burst of steampunky modernity? Vandermeer can.
But Vandermeer doesn’t stop at these peculiarities. He produces artifacts for reproduction, like a fungus rotted page from Janice Shriek’s Afterword, complete with Duncan Shriek’s annotations, and reproduces it in Sirin’s Afterword to her Afterword. He offers us photos of Janice’s mushroom overrun typewriter, the key artefact of her writing process, the green, glowing keys she writes about as she writes about her brother and Mary Sabon and Ambergris and herself.
And Vandermeer doesn’t stop there either. He invites bands into his world to write soundtracks for the works he’s writing. He hints at characters whose roots might be our world, madmen trapped in Ambergrisian madhouses. He offers histories of commerce and religion every bit as alive as the creations of any other world builder. And there’s more, so much more. It's in City of Saints and Madmen. It's in Finch. It's in Vandermeer's mind.
Vandermeer lives and breathes Ambergris and cities and nations it competes with, and all its environs, and his world is always expanding, always becoming. In its own way, Vandermeer’s world is as alive and important as Tolkien’s Middle Earth, and he has one leg up on the old master. He’s still alive, still working, and Vandermeer’s world can continue to grow.
Read Shriek: An Afterword, and you will discover the first Jeff Vandermeer. He's worth the time and the effort....more
I could feel DeLillo grappling with something important as I read this book, trying to deliver something profound, and that feeling made me want to prI could feel DeLillo grappling with something important as I read this book, trying to deliver something profound, and that feeling made me want to press on, to see where he was going, even though I found most of his narrative a slog.
There were astounding moments. The funeral of Ayatollah Khomeini was gorgeous prose. The discussion between Bill and George about the power of the terrorist to affect change was tense and convincing. Karen's time in the homeless shantytown was poetic and always shifting. But nothing in Mao II was easy; DeLillo made us work for every piece of wonder he embedded in his text. And along with these moments of genius was the promise of something profound pushing me on.
DeLillo fulfilled his promise to me, but considering the myriad opinions concerning what Mao II was about, I am sure what I found profound is only one possibility.
So here's what Mao II was about for me: insignificance. Not the usual evocation of existential nihilism, but a workable insignificance in the face of our search for impossible significance. It wasn't telling us to give up because there is no meaning, but telling us to simply recognize that whatever meaning we find for ourselves is significant for that and nothing else.
DeLillo engages with issues and artifacts and concepts that our culture endows with the illusion of significance: architecture, the world trade center, terrorism and terror, belief, love, belief in love, religion, home and homelessness, art, the artist, photography, great men, and writing. Yes, even writing. All of it is insignificant beyond ourselves. And the search for significance in these things is equally insignificant.
It's a subtle shift from the nihilist perspective that nothing means anything, but the shift is a profound one (even if DeLillo is only adding to the voices of those who've already spoken about this possibility). It was the pay off I was hoping for. I am only sorry that it wasn't enough to make me love this book.
I wanted to love Mao II. But I'll have to cope with simply admiring it and its author. I've been afraid to engage with DeLillo. His reputation is daunting, and so are the issues he tackles. But now that I've begun I am confident that somewhere in his body of work is a book I will love as much as I admire this one. I hope that book is Libra. ...more
Is the Terror a mythical beast in the Arctic? The Tuunbaq? Is the Terror Her Majesty’s Ship of the same name? Is the Terror nights that never end? Is theIs the Terror a mythical beast in the Arctic? The Tuunbaq? Is the Terror Her Majesty’s Ship of the same name? Is the Terror nights that never end? Is the Terror a Ripper style murderer and his penchant for mutilation? Is the Terror knowledge? Is the Terror sodomy? Is the Terror a silent Esqimaux? Is the Terror scurvy? Is the Terror unrelenting ice floes? Is the Terror belief? Is the Terror remembrance? Is the Terror dreams? Is the Terror the past? Is the Terror cannibalism? Is the Terror doubt? Is the Terror hope? Is the Terror ignorance? Is the Terror magic? Is the Terror misunderstanding? Is the Terror fire? Is the Terror interminable cycles? Is the Terror hubris? Is the Terror hate? Is the Terror capitalism? Is the Terror “civilization”? Is the Terror humanity? Is the Terror the unknown? Is the Terror failure? Is the Terror duty? Is the Terror ego? Is the Terror alcohol? Is the Terror visions and hallucinations? Is the Terror death? Is the Terror suffering? Is the Terror starvation? Is the Terror ice? Is the Terror morality? Is the Terror shame? Is the Terror foolishness? Is the Terror delusion? Is the Terror love? Is the Terror life? Is the Terror solitude?...more
**spoiler alert** Some of my favourite reading experiences have come from a flipping of my expectations, an unexpected turn in a story wherein it look**spoiler alert** Some of my favourite reading experiences have come from a flipping of my expectations, an unexpected turn in a story wherein it looks like it is going to be one thing and then becomes something else entirely.
It is the sort of turn that made Bloch-Hitchcock's Psycho so famous. The story begins with Marion Crane pocketing the money she's supposed to be banking for her boss, so that she and her lover can start life anew. It carries on for a significant amount of time as a moody, vaguely depressing, petty theft tale before Norman Bates flips his wig and turns it into one of the quintessential serial killer stories. We all know what's coming now, but even knowing what's coming, it is hard not to be lulled into relaxation until Marion climbs into the shower.
Cormac McCarthy isn't the kind of author who does things the same way as everyone else. He takes existing genres and strips them bare. He takes on genocide and makes it a bloodstained abattoir. He takes simplicity and makes it more simple. Now I don't know whether he is mindfully trying to one-up his brethren, testing his own skills, writing the story the way it needs to be told for him, or intentionally morphing the conventional, but I do know that there are few authors who can surprise me as regularly as McCarthy.
In No Country for Old Men, McCarthy takes the disrupting of expectations in the opposite direction from what we've come to expect. He doesn't lull us to sleep only to shift to the horror of slake moths or sinking ships or madness. No. He starts us off with terror in the shape of Anton Chigurh (not, it should be noted, the worst man to ever set foot in a McCarthy novel), then ramps up the terror with copious amounts of bloodshed, then ramps it up again with the inevitability of the desperate outcome, and only then does he offer the turn, but it is a turn he has been patiently preparing us for throughout. It turns from that horrible story of greed becoming violence becoming more violence becoming more violence, into a quite beautiful take on guilt and living and how we can love if we only allow ourselves the possibility.
It is, ultimately, the story of a man who has lived his life -- despite deep damage, deep hopelessness, and deep guilt -- the best way he knew how, and how some people, no matter how many Anton Chigurhs are out there, and no matter how hard it is to achieve on their own, can find their way. Eventually....more
I am a lover of Iain Banks -- and his M. alter ego -- so there were times found myself slogging through parts of this book out of loyalty. If I'd beenI am a lover of Iain Banks -- and his M. alter ego -- so there were times found myself slogging through parts of this book out of loyalty. If I'd been reading someone else I would have tossed the book aside. I recognize, therefore, that parts of this book are a bit like trudge on the muddy moors in the rain. But once the trudging was through, I found that the reward was rewarding. This isn't Banks best book in space, but it gave me things to think about, and like Feersum Endjin (though not as intensely), the Algebraist is better than it reads.
So what things were there to think about? There were plenty of things I saw out of the corner of my reading eye that I didn't have the energy to deal with, and my mind was darkly sanguine when I was reading, so I found myself most fascinated by the violence of the piece and how that violence manifested from character to character. Okay, I was interested in one thing, and even in that one thing I think I was only interested in one part of that one thing.
What part? How we choose victims for our violence. This book is packed with about every motive I can think of for violence, and even violences that are motiveless. Violences that happen through acts of omission or beneficence or ignorance.
Violence may be Banks' one great theme. The core of each and every book he's written. But most of the time he focuses on one or two kinds of violence, one or two motives for violence. This time he made an opera of violence, sort of a heady, Sci-Fi, Kill Bill, only a Kill Bill wherein the author had an examination of violence in mind, rather than painting a beautiful painting with buckets of blood.
I doubt I'll come back to this book any time soon, but I am glad I finally got through it. There's not many Banks books left for me to read, so who knows? I may just find myself back here in a year or two after all.
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