townesvanfaulkner

Podcast: Cover Me Up

2006-10-15T18:16:00.000-04:00

Enoch takes on other people's songs:

Heartbeats (written by The Knife)
Some Things Last a Long Time (written by Daniel Johnston and Jad Fair)
Catch (written by Robert Smith)
Two Doors Down (written by Dwight Yoakam)

Books: The Road by Cormac McCarthy

2006-09-29T14:01:00.000-04:00

I'll be a son of a gun. Cormac snuck one in on me. I had no idea this was coming out. After last years No Country for Old Men, I figured it would be years before another one. But, I do recall reading an interview last year where he said that he had 3-4 books that were in the latter stages of being finished. So, here we have one. It came out Tuesday

Postapocolyptic? Sounds cool to me. I picked up a copy today at lunch. Can't wait to start it tonight.

http://www.amazon.com/Road-Cormac-Mccarthy/dp/0307265439

Music Recommendation: Jose Gonzalez

2006-09-26T16:59:00.000-04:00

Hey, I have to share with y'all the amazing concert experience we had this weekend. Last Friday, I didn't know Jose Gonzalez from Adam. Amy scored tix to a show and a demo CD through her work. Lucky for us, this shit has blown me away.

Ok, this dude's parents are Argentinian, but he is born and raised and still lives in Sweden. I would swear that he is the reincarnation of Nick Drake, except that he has a bit of Latin flair in his guitar playing, which is nylon stringed, mostly fingerpicking. I'm totally in love with the guy.

I found these two sets available online. One from the wonderful rbally, which I've been pimping; the other from kexp.org, which has a wonderful archive of live, in-studio performances. You should browse this archive while you're at it. Anyhoo, check this dude out. I listen to a lot of people who are basically just "rock musicians", "folk singers", etc and that's ok. But, this guy is an "artist".

http://www.rbally.net/2006/06/jose-gonzalez-on-kcrw.html

http://www.kexp.org/aspnet_client/KEXPViewMediaGroup.aspx?rID=3175&pID=528&fID=1141&artist=JR

Movie Recommendation

2006-09-14T16:18:00.000-04:00

I see a lot of movies but I don't think I've really recommended any specific ones on the blog before (unless, of course, you count my top 200 as recommendations). But, A and I saw a movie on DVD this past weekend that I wanted to throw out there becuase I'm afraid that no one will see it except for word of mouth. So here's my word of mouth.

Please rent Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World. It's written by and stars Albert Brooks. It was HILARIOUS and really smart. Anyhoo, I thought it was a great, poignant, endearing comedy that didn't get a whole lot of ink and may not have even played in your neck of the woods (I'm looking at you Kingsport). Pick it up, let me know what you think.

Music Blog

2006-08-17T17:17:00.000-04:00

Everybody needs to check this site out. It's incredible.

www.rbally.net

Marr and Mouse

2006-08-09T13:21:00.000-04:00

Wow, this is interesting. Johnny Marr is now a member of Modest Mouse.

http://prod1.cmj.com/articles/display_article.php?id=20047236

Songwriters

2006-07-25T16:09:00.000-04:00

Paste Magazine put out a Top 100 list of living songwriters in their latest issue. You can see the list online here:
http://www.pastemagazine.com/action/article?article_id=3003

So, naturally, it inspired me to make my own list. Assumptions: (a) I left mine open to those living or long gone on (b) I knew I didn't want to include too many bands. I think great songwriting means that one person could get up in front of a room full of people with an acoustic guitar, no accompaniment, and still have the crowd completely mesmerized for an hour or two (c) that said, I included two bands, REM and U2. First, I think they are arguably the two greatest bands of my generation. Second, I think they have incredible songwriting chemistry within the group, as though they were one songwriter in 3 or 4 bodies. Third, I think good songwriting can be taken out of context and still work. For example, I love the bands Sonic Youth and Modest Mouse, but I don't consider them great songwriters because if their songs were taken out of context then they wouldn't still be great songs at heart. (d) I started by ranking these but decided to leave numbers off because I just couldn't stand the quibbling. So, you have a list, roughly in order from best to not as good, but no numbers. (e) I'm embarassingly poorly versed in a bunch of people that probably belong on here like Springsteen, Costello, Bowie, Cat Stevens, Jackson Browne, Haggard, to name a few. Sorry. Here goes...

-Townes Van Zandt - Okay, this one was easy. He's hands down my favorite songwriter ever. He's got a huge catalog and very, very little of it sucks. In fact, I can't think of one song that he has written that I just can't listen to. Okay, one just came to mind called 'Talkin Karate Blues'. He's not that great at the talkin blues numbers. But otherwise, everything else is phenomenal. His "hits" were 'Pancho and Lefty' recorded by Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard and 'If I Needed You' recorded by Emmylou Harris and Don Williams. But this just barely scrapes the surface. He believed that a song had to start as a poem on the page first, and it shows in his lyrics. Check out the lyrics to 'To Live Is To Fly'.
-Will Oldham - Aka Palace, Palace Music, Palace Brothers, Palace Songs, Bonnie 'Prince' Billy. I got hooked after hearing two songs - 'Ohio River Boat Song' and 'You Will Miss Me When I Burn'. Another VERY prolific songwriter who rarely does anything that isn't fantastic. I really don't understand why everyone who has ever written about the alt-country genre mentions Uncle Tupelo and Whiskeytown but you never hear about Will Oldham who's been around just as long and is SERIOUSLY alt country. This is the guy who, for me personally, opened me up to the more country, folksy songwriting world. And I'm sure he's done the same for countless others out there who love him.
-Ryan Adams - Again, very prolific. Although, he's got some stinkers out there. Still, I really respect his eclecticism. He can morph into so many genres and still write impeccably crafted tunes. Try 'La Cienega Just Smiled' or 'Come Pick Me Up'. Going to see him tonight at the Bijou Theatre. YAYY!!!
-A.P. Carter - So many classic songs are attributed to AP Carter of the famous Carter Family. He traveled far and wide to find the old melodies and songs and ballads that were passed down orally and were still being sung in the southern Appalachians. Thank God for AP Carter and his work.
-Gillian Welch - Try 'Everything is Free' or 'One More Dollar'
-REM
-Bob Dylan
-Morrissey (The Smiths) - Most of The Smiths songs are attributed to Morrissey/Marr but since Morrissey has gone on to do good solo work and Johnny Marr (as much as I love his guitar work) has dropped off the map, I'm gonna give most of the credit to Moz.
-Neil Young
-Woody Guthrie - Everyone today wants to be Bob Dylan. Well, Bob Dylan wanted to be Woody Guthrie.
-Hank Williams - My personal favorite is 'So Lonesome I Could Cry'
-Johnny Cash
-Greg Dulli (Afghan Whigs, The Twilight Singers)
-Lucinda Williams - Possibly the sexiest voice ever
-Steve Earle
-Jay Farrar - Jeff Tweedy secretly wishes he could write songs as well as Jay
-Elliot Smith - I have a theory that if you're the type that would stab yourself to death and you know how to play guitar, that most likely some good songs will come out of you at some point. I'm not advocating stabbing yourself in order to become a great songwriter, I'm just saying that the sentiment probably correlates with creating great art.
-Jeff Mangum (Neutral Milk Hotel) - This guy gets the benefit of the doubt based solely on one album, From the Aeroplane Over the Sea. It's that good of an album.
-Robert Earl Keen - Do yourself a favor and go see one of this guy's shows. Good times are had by all. Try 'The Road Goes on Forever' or 'Gringo Honeymoon'
-U2
-The main dude from Belle and Sebastian
-John Hartford - 'Gentle On My Mind' and 'Work in Tall Buildings'
-Kurt Cobain - Not a big Nirvana fan, but this guy could write a song.
-Lou Reed
-Gram Parsons - This guy has so many good songs, especially when you consider that he OD'ed (I think) at the age of 26 (I think). Try 'Hickory Wind' and 'A Song For You'
-The main dude from Yo La Tengo
-Scott Miller - Knoxville's own. But, believe me, this songwriter can hang with the big boys on this list. I'm not just being a homer on this one.
-Dwight Yoakam - Try 'Two Doors Down'
-Jeff Tweedy
-Black Francis - Aka Charles Thompson, Frank Black, the Pixies frontman
-The main dude from the Decemberists - The lyrics on the Picaresque album are unbelievable. If this guy is not on MFA I'll kiss your ass.
-John Prine - Try 'Speed of the Sound of Loneliness' or 'Your Flag Decal Won't Get You Into Heaven Anymore'
-Willie Nelson
-Conor Oberst (Bright Eyes) - A little melodramatic for my taste, but he's got an uncanny ability to turn complex lyrics into rich and interesting vocal melodies.
-Jim James (My Morning Jacket)
-Guy Clark - Try 'L.A. Freeway' or 'Dublin Blues', which has one of my favorite lines ever: "I have seen the David, seen the Mona Lisa too, and I have heard Doc Watson play Colombus Stockade Blues"
-Nick Drake - Try 'Pink Moon', aka 'The Song in that Volkswagon Commercial'
-Kathleen Edwards
-Beck
-Eric Bachmann (Crooked Fingers, Archers of Loaf)
-Lou Barlow
-Stephen Malkmus (Pavement) - I haven't heard any of his solo work that has really impressed me, but others like it.
-Loretta Lynn
-J Mascis - Ok, I'm sort of stretching here. J is one of my guitar heroes and he writes a pretty decent song, but...
-Damien Jurado - I've heard just barely enough of this guy to know I like his style and he's got some songwriting chops. He's lo-fi, sort of like The Mountain Goats, but I like him a lot better.
-Slaid Cleaves - If you make a name for yourself as a songwriter in Austin then you are doing something right.
-Paul Simon
-Aimee Mann
-Chan Marshall (Cat Power)

I'd like to include two people based solely on one song each:
-Kris Kristofferson - 'Sunday Morning Coming Down'
-Jackson Browne - 'Late for the Sky'

I'd also like to include two local (Johnson City) songwriting hereos of mine:
Martha Scanlon - Reeltime Travelers, now solo. Try 'Hallelujah' or 'Little Bird of Heaven'. She's won the Merlefest songwriting competition for 'Hallelujah'
Sam Quinn/Jill Andrews - The Everybodyfields. Sam also won the Merlefest songwriting competition for 'Damn the TVA'. Also, try 'Good to Be Home'

Okay, that's what I could come up with off the top of my head. Who am I missing?

Podcast: Church Signs and Other Misguidance

2006-06-05T23:18:00.000-04:00

Don't Bury Me In Kingsport Town
You're Like Someone Out of a Novel
The Cosmonaut
Never Had a Say

All songs written and performed by Enoch and copyright of Bassless Accusations Music 2006.

Back to the Blog!

2006-05-23T13:17:00.000-04:00

I know it's been forever since my last post. So, no one is reading regularly anymore. But, this was actually good enough to make me come back.

Check it out:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/21/books/fiction-25-years.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Podcast: Queer as Folk Music

2006-03-26T21:54:00.000-05:00

The Ballad of Sean McCollough
You're Gonna Miss Me
There is Nothing
All Alone Blues

All songs written and performed by Enoch and copyright of Bassless Accusations Music 2006.

Book Review: The Sound of Waves by Yukio Mishima

2006-03-14T16:15:00.000-05:00

Writing Style-6.1
Originality-5.6
Plot-4.9
Merit(whatever that means)-5.9
Overall-5.5

Yet another extremely mediocre book. I picked this one up when I noticed it on Time magazines Top 100 and that we had a copy of it at the house.

This author is pretty interesting because after he completed what he considered his masterpiece (not The Sound of Waves) he commited seppuku (ritual suicide). I really hope that that book (actually a trilogy I think) is better than this one, though The Sound of Waves seems to be the most widely read in the US at least.

The feel of the novel is nice. Since it is in Japan and reveals somethings about Japanese culture. But the story is not very interesting. It's a pretty straight forward love story. Poor boy falls in love with rich girl. She loves him back but they have to overcome society's forces that are trying to keep them apart. It's one of those deals. Though I didn't really feel the struggle, you know? I just didn't feel the pain. I felt the love, but when it came to the main struggle of the novel, it just never seemed to get bad enough for the main characters to really care.

Book Review: The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin

2006-03-14T15:54:00.000-05:00

Writing Style-5.9
Originality-6.3
Plot-5.8
Merit(whatever that means)-4.9
Overall-5.7

I know it's been a long time since my last review. Sorry, I've been pretty busy. Plus, I just haven't felt very bloggy lately. Sooner or later you're bound to ask yourself, 'Who gives a shit?' The answer is inevitably, no effin' body. But what the hell, I kinda like having this record of what I've read. Plus I usually forget what the hell a book was about a few months after having read it, so now I can go back and jog my memory. In fact, the other day I picked up my copy of 1876 by Gore Vidal and tried to remember if I've read it yet or not. I'm pretty sure I have, but I can't remember one damn thing about it.

Anyhoo, on to The Lathe of Heaven. Another book that I probably won't remember a year from now if not for this blog entry. It's pretty standard sci-fi fare. Trying to be smarter than most, but not really having anything substantial to say.

The plot sounds so cliche that it feels weird even talking about it seriously. There's a dude who dreams stuff and the dreams come true. Problem is, it's not that easy to dream good stuff and keep bad stuff from happening. And even when he does dream what he wants to happen there are horrible unforeseen circumstances. Imagine!

Now, I'm a Le Guin fan. See my Dispossessed review. That book was thought-provoking. This isn't, at all. It's like a bad episode of Amazing Stories. Wait every episode was bad. You get my point.

The books is short though. Almost novella sized. So at least Le Guin recognized that there really wasn't enough there to work with to warrant more pages, which is something many novelist don't recognize.

Book Review: Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard

2006-02-28T16:04:00.000-05:00

Writing Style-6.5
Originality-7.0
Plot-2.0
Merit(whatever that means)-6.2
Overall-6.1

This is yet another book that could have been so much more if only I were the editor.

Ok, here’s how it played out. I had read about 40 pages and thought it was brilliant. I hadn’t read such detailed, highly perceptive writing about southern Appalachian nature scenery since reading Cormac McCarthy’s The Orchard Keeper. I thought, ‘I’m in for a treat. This book is going to be brilliant.’ By the time I had reached page 45 I had started to get slightly annoyed by the tone of the book. By the time I had reached page 50 I thought, ‘This book better change gears in a hurry and start going somewhere else because I’m getting tired of this crap’. By the time I had reached page 60, I hated it.

Now, that said, by the time I finished it I didn’t really hate it, I just hated the tone of the writing. Between pages 40 and 60 I was able to pinpoint what was grating on my nerves. The Orchard Keeper is written in the third person and the natural surroundings come off almost as though they are a main character in the story. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is written in the first person about a girl observing her natural surroundings and comes off as pompous flowery crap.

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is not really a novel at all, it’s more a collection of philosophical essays centered around observing nature. Sort of a Zen and the Art of Sitting Beside a Fucking Creek All Day. Each chapter could probably stand on it’s on and is typically some observation, for instance, observing a muskrat, and then something philosophical that the author gleans from this observation. The problem is the annoying, holier-than-thou tone that the author takes about these observations. Like, ‘I’m so patient, I can sit beside a creek completely motionless and wait to see a muskrat. I am so zen. And then I can see the beauty of the muskrat and the world around us that no one else can see. I am so smart.’ And then on top of this the writing is flowery and audaciously overwritten.

On the good side, many of the observations are pretty interesting and much of the philosophy is pretty good. A lot of the “novel” is random scientific trivia, sort of like a book that Jeopardy champ Ken Jennings might write. For instance, I now know that 10% of the world’s species are parasitic. That’s interesting (and gross) and the author goes on to discuss the moral implications of this. Why would God create so many species that all they do is feed off other animals? It’s weird and doesn’t seem like intelligent design. So, the book is full of stuff like this—pretty interesting science trivia and an interesting philosophical aside that follows.

All in all, this is a pretty decent book. I like what the author was going after. First, I think that the book should be marketed differently. I thought I was going to read a Southern Gothic novel and instead I got philosophy essays. Secondly, the tone of the writing is nigh on unbearable. You can’t help but think this is written by some crazy old lonely lady with nothing better to do than sit by a creek all day and live in her own head where she’s the smartest person in the world. At the end of the book, in the ‘About the Author’ section I found out that Dillard was actually 27 when she wrote the book so she wasn’t actually old, but her youth could by blamed for the flowery writing too.

Another point I’d like to make in the book’s favor is that it would probably behoove artists, particularly painters or photographers, to read this book or at least the second chapter, titled ‘Seeing’, because much of the book is about the art of observing our world and this is at the heart of what artists do—see things in our environment that others might not latch on to and make connections to our morals, values, beliefs, etc.--or at least just paint a pretty picture or take a pretty photograph.

Natury/literary/philosophy types would probably really like this book. I don't want to put it down TOO much because a couple of TVF readers come to mind here.

Book Review: The Death of Ivan Ilych and Other Stories by Leo Tolstoy

2006-02-28T15:57:00.000-05:00

Writing Style-8.3
Originality-8.2
Plot-7.7
Merit(whatever that means)-8.4
Overall-8.0

This edition consisted of four stories: The Death of Ivan Ilych (obviously), The Kreutzer Sonata, Master and Man, and Family Happiness. I had read The Kreutzer Sonata and Master and Man previously but decided to go ahead and reread them because I enjoyed them the first time and thought that I could perhaps glean something more out of them with a rereading. Actually, The Kreutzer Sonata is my favorite of Tolstoy’s “short” stories.

So we’ll start with that one. I thought that perhaps I was just particularly in the mood for a story of this nature when I read it several years ago. But upon rereading, I found that it was every bit as good as I felt it was the first time.

The Kreutzer Sonata is a Beethoven sonata for piano and violin. You should definitely check it out if you have not heard it. In fact, it would be a nice touch to listen to it as you read this story. The story is about a guy who kills his wife in a jealous rage (I’m not giving the ending away here, you learn this early on in the story). His wife plays piano and has been playing with a professional violinist for fun. It is their playing the passionate Kreutzer Sonata that helps bring about the main character's rage. The mood of the story is set perfectly when the jealous husband boards a late night train and begins to tell a follow passenger his story after there had just been a debate among the passengers about marriage and divorce.

Similarly, Family Happiness is about an unhappy marriage. Unhappy marriages seem to be a common theme in Tolstoy’s stories. Especially those that he wrote later in life. The Death of Ivan Ilych has another unhappy marriage. Another great story that wasn’t in this edition is called The Devil. It’s about marriage, lust, and infidelity too.

Master and Man is a very touching story about a master and his servant going on an ill-advised trip one evening because the master needs to make a real estate deal with someone in town. There is a fierce snowstorm that they are trying to make their way through and they keep getting lost by wandering off the road into the fields because they can’t see where the road is for all the snow. It’s about the social class dynamic between the master and the servant. Very powerful.

I’m not sure why they chose The Death of Ivan Ilych as the main story in this edition. I didn’t care for it nearly as much as Kreutzer or Master. This story takes place at the wake (or funeral?) of Ivan Ilych as they look back on his life, which was pretty shallow.

Family Happiness was pretty decent but the weakest story of the lot. It’s sort of about what makes a man happy with his family life and what attributes make for a happy, smoothly running family. I’m reminded of the first line of Anna Karenina about how each happy family is alike, but each unhappy family is unhappy in their own way.

If you are curious about Tolstoy but are intimidated by the length of War and Peace (which I loved) or Anna Karenina (which I hated) then it might be worthwhile to check out some of these novella-length stories first to see if you like his writing style and common themes. If you really like a couple of them and don't get very bored reading any of them then you can feel pretty confident about taking on War and Peace.

Book Review: The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles

2006-02-23T14:56:00.000-05:00

Writing Style-9.1
Originality-7.9
Plot-7.5
Merit(whatever that means)-7.6
Overall-7.8

This book was really close to reaching rarefied air. The first two-thirds of it I was completely captivated. The writing is incredibly beautiful, very Hemingwayesque. In fact the whole story reminded me of Hemingway.

I started noticing this book showing up on several of these Top 100 lists and I hadn’t heard of it so I became curious. And I can totally understand it’s inclusion on these lists.

The gist of the book is that there is this trio of Americans who are vacationing in North Africa not long after World War II. They are a husband and wife and their male friend who wanted to tag along.

The plot is leisurely paced, but the caliber of the writing keeps you moving through the book at a brisk clip.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t crazy about the ending. I dug the message, but just not the way the story played out. For instance, there is one scene in which a woman falls in love with her rapist. That just didn’t sit right with me and I couldn’t let it go regardless of how good the rest of the book was.

I also would have liked it better if the book ended a little bit more softly, quietly, gently—as the rest of the book seemed to flow. I thought it was a neat juxtaposition of bad things happening over and over to this trio of travelers, but the writing style and voice was so relaxed about it. I thought it went well with the existential bent of the novel. But then, the ending turns into this whirlwind climax. I thought it could have been more powerful if it didn’t seem like it was trying so hard to form a powerful climax. Make sense?

The central theme, that I took from it at least, was the world’s complete indifference to us and our wishes and plans. Sort of similar to Lord Jim, which I just read. There’s no running or hiding from your problems and there’s no use in planning or thinking you can undo what you got coming to you. It’s a theme that I’m particularly into right now. And the North African/Sahara environment in this book is great for it as was Patusan in Lord Jim. Plus, the author documents this environment beautifully.

I highly recommend this book, especially if you are a fan of Hemingway’s style.

Book Review: The Mind Cage by A.E. Van Vogt

2006-02-23T14:55:00.000-05:00

Writing Style-2.6
Originality-3.1
Plot-2.1
Merit(whatever that means)-0.2
Overall-1.0

This is cheesy 1950’s science fiction. Don’t bother. Unless, of course, you like cheesy 1950’s science fiction.

But, you know, if you do, in fact, enjoy cheesy 1950’s science fiction then you should at least read something with some brains and heart and pick up something by Philip K. Dick.

Because The Mind Cage is crap. I had it laying around the house for years and never read it for good reason until one day my dumb ass thought, ‘I gotta read this, I’ve had it forever.’ Bad move.

Ell I Be

2006-02-22T14:50:00.000-05:00

Did anyone know that Texas singer/songwriter James McMurtry is Larry McMurtry's son? Check this bio out:

http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:r1u06j5h71u0~T1

Of course, Larry McMurtry is the Pulitzer Prize winning novelist who wrote Lonesome Dove and screenwriter of Terms of Endearment and currently nominated for screenwriting Brokeback Mountain. I'm quickly becoming a huge fan of James McMurtry. Ornitholoco knows what I'm talking about. He's a hell of a guitar player too. This bio says his English professor mom taught him how to play. This is cool as shit.

Also, I discovered this by listening to http://pandora.com which is a pretty slick little app. Btw, it linked Belle and Sebastian to James McMurtry, which I think is pretty cool.

Book Review: Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad

2006-02-22T13:31:00.000-05:00

Writing Style-5.9
Originality-6.8
Plot-5.4
Merit(whatever that means)-6.9
Overall-6.0

I loved Heart of Darkness and the story that came with it in my edition, The Secret Sharer. And Lord Jim could have been as good or better than Heart of Darkness, if it had been Heart of Darkness sized. At over 300 pages this was far too long. Way too wordy.

I had trouble following the story because it was so needlessly wordy that my mind would drift. Most of the paragraphs are over a page long. And there’s not really enough plot to merit this length of novel. I mean, why choose to make Heart of Darkness short and Lord Jim so much longer?

The kernel of the story, I really, really dug. Basically, you have this dude Jim who is first mate (I think) on a ship and during some sort of disaster at sea he jumps ship. At heart he’s a really good, kind, sensitive guy and it really bugs him that he jumped ship. So, he feels pretty worthless and this causes him to accept a job that takes him to this remote and very wild location called Patusan. At Patusan he reinvents himself and creates a new life where he is well-respected with the local natives and marries a half-caste girl named Jewel. Everything is going good again, but his past and the outside world haunts him and the action builds to a climactic conclusion.

The ending is great. Very reminiscent of Heart of Darkness. The segment concerning the disaster aboard the ship is great too, but in between it gets pretty boring.

In my own little perfect world, this book would be roughly the same length as Heart of Darkness, say, about 150 pages and they would be published together and it would be one of the most awesome books in literature. I guess they are considered two of the most awesome books in literature, but that would be in the real world, not my own personal fantasy world. So screw that world.

This is one of those books where reading it makes you feel like you’ve got ADD because your mind keeps wandering. So, I don’t recommend it if you have a less than average attention span. But if you are someone who loves great literature and loved Heart of Darkness and can fight through a tedious novel for the sake of looking back on it in it’s entirety and appreciating it for the story buried deep beneath so many unnecessary words, then give Lord Jim a try because now that I’ve finished it I really am very fond of it.

There’s another novel like this that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. It’s Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy. I recently saw Woody Allen’s Match Point (which is phenomenal, btw) and it reminded me a lot of that book. It’s almost an exact modern retelling with a slightly different twist at the end. But at any rate, that book was unwieldy at seven or eight hundred pages and got really boring in places. But looking back on it, it’s a really great story and I grow fonder of it over time. It kind of sticks with you.

Book Review: The Ballad of the Sad Cafe and Other Stories by Carson McCullers

2006-02-21T15:59:00.000-05:00

Writing Style-6.8
Originality-5.8
Plot-5.0
Merit(whatever that means)-5.8
Overall-5.6

This was disappointing. As big a fan as I am of Southern Gothic. I expected and hoped for more.

I had read Clock Without Hands by her before and thought it was pretty good. Pretty simple, but solid.

I liked the Ballad of the Sad Café pretty well. It had a nice feel to it. Not quite sure what it was supposed to say, but that’s okay sometimes.

The other stories were completely useless. Totally uninspired and uninteresting. I got absolutely nothing from any of them.

In my opinion, you shouldn’t move on to Carson McCullers or Eudora Welty until you’ve read every word that Flannery O’Connor ever wrote. But that’s just me. And, of course, I still need to read The Heart is a Lonely Hunter to give Carson one more chance. So, take this advice with a grain of salt.

Book Review: The Shattered Chain by Marion Zimmer Bradley

2006-02-17T15:12:00.000-05:00

Writing Style-5.8
Originality-6.3
Plot-5.2
Merit(whatever that means)-5.4
Overall-5.3

This is from Marion Zimmer Bradley’s famous sci-fi series entitled Darkover. I’m not an expert on the genre, but I’d bet it’s about the best feminist sci-fi/fantasy series you’re likely to come across. I mean in the form of an overdone series, not compared to single novels like The Handmaid’s Tale or Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness or Marion Zimmer Bradley’s own Mists of Avalon.

In fact this book, especially in the beginning when you are still getting used to the world of Darkover, is really kind of comically feminist. Darkover is a very oppressive world, especially certain parts of it. And there is one country that women actually have to walk around constantly with their hands in shackles. There is a free roaming band of women who are called Free Amazons (seriously) and they reject the laws of man. They are on a mission to free a young girl who’s been taken captive by a prince of the very oppressive country.

The plot’s nothing special here. The first two sections in the novel are people on a journey to rescue someone held captive. Not to hard to dream this plot device up—and then to have the guts to use it twice. Wow.

But still it’s a very entertaining read. Bradley is a perfectly capable writer. The characters are enjoyable. The action is brisk and actually really exciting. I will certainly pick up the next Darkover book in the series at some point when I’m in the mood for this sort of thing. Amy’s read a different Darkover novel, called Darkover Landfall I believe, and she thoroughly enjoyed and plans to read more as well. So, if you are like us and every now and then are in the mood for a perfect blend of sci-fi and fantasy with a feminist slant then this is a good world to visit. Of course, this sort of thing isn’t for everybody, so…

Book Review: Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende

2006-02-16T16:35:00.000-05:00

Writing Style-6.4
Originality-6.8
Plot-6.2
Merit(whatever that means)-5.8
Overall-5.9

This is a historical fiction novel from Chilean author Isabel Allende. It’s centered around one young girl's venture from Chile to San Francisco in 1849, during the height of the California gold rush, to find her lover.

It starts rather awkwardly. I wasn’t sure who the main character was supposed to be. It goes into great detail about several character's backgrounds. And the first character that it goes in depth about actually turns out to be a fairly minor character in the main plot of Eliza, the young Chilean girl’s, adventure. Not sure what that was about. This kept me from getting into the novel from the start because as soon as I would come to care about this guy it would start talking about Eliza’s adoptive mother’s life. Then once I got into her story it would go into Eliza’s. Then into this Chinese doctor’s life, Tao Chi’en, who becomes very close to Eliza. By the second half of the novel it seemed to gain some focus as you pretty consistently follow Eliza and Tao’s lives in California.

It’s pretty good historical fiction. I really liked the detail in Tao’s background. He was sold into slavery, then was Shanghaied, meaning some sailors got him drunk and stowed him away on board a ship and by the time he woke up they were at sea and there was nothing he could do about.

It also goes into how Tao's biggest dream is to marry a girl with perfect "golden lillies", which are tiny (3 to 4 inch) deformed feet. It was common at that time in China for young girls to have their feet bound so that they couldn't grow because men found it attractive. It's crazy how society can shape what we find attractive isn't it? And then what lengths women have to go to in order to keep up with these requirements. In the west at this time, of course, you had corsets, which is fairly similar.

The novel is richly detailed, both the characters and the world that they inhabit. My critique is not the level of detail, but simply who the author chooses to focus on at the beginning of the novel—it just seemed odd.

Ultimately it’s about a young Eliza naively chasing after her love and the contrast between what she has in her head and what she actually gets. The relationship between her and Tao is really nice. There is a weird sort of love there; at times brotherly-sisterly, at times fatherly-daughterly, and a tad bit romantic—but above all, unlikely.

Unfortunately, the story really loses steam towards the end. I thought that it was a pretty good, well written novel that needed some fat trimmed from the beginning and a tighter ending.

Amy pretty much devoured it and really loved it though. She really loves reading about other cultures and there’s a lot of that here with the great diversity in San Francisco and the Chileans and British colonials of the age and Tao’s Chinese background. This stuff is probably the novel's strongest selling point.

Herndon's Hunderd

2006-02-14T16:21:00.000-05:00

Well, it’s been about nine months since I kicked off TVF with a post of Herndon’s Hunderd. I’ve read a lot of good books in the last nine months and I figure it’s about time to update the Hunderd.

There’s been a new top 100 books list published in Time magazine so I’m including TM in each books awards brackets to designate that it was included in this list. I also just realized I never linked to the Harvard Bookstore Top 100, so I’m adding that to the Book Lists links.

The commentary is pretty much the same. I’ve highlighted the new entries. The highest of which is The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, which came in at #45.

I’ve also thrown some stuff off the list in the interest of including more novels. I’ve thrown off all plays except for Death of A Salesman. I decided to throw off a couple of the lowest P.K. Dick books and a James Morrow because I felt like they were over-represented for essentially writing the same formulaic books over and over. I’ve combined somethings; The Hobbit is now included with the LOTR Trilogy, Flannery O’Connor’s The Complete Stories now takes the place of Everything That Rises Must Converge because The Complete Stories encompasses that story collection, obviously. Anyhoo, here ‘tis.

1. The Sound and the Fury-William Faulkner – Without question #1. No competition. [LM – 5, ML – 6, MLR – 33, R – 10, HBTWC, TM]

2. Suttree-Cormac McCarthy – Without question #1 among living writers. The heir to Faulkner’s throne; which, I think has actually hurt his career, but not in my eyes. [MLR – 96, HBTWC]

3. One Hundred Years of Solitude-Gabriel Garcia Marquez – According to former president William Jefferson Clinton this is the greatest novel written since Faulkner. I guess Bill hasn’t read Suttree yet? [HBS – 9, HBTWC]

4. The Brothers Karamazov-Fyodor Dostoyevsky – There are no words for the three chapter conversation between Ivan and Alyosha where Ivan states his case against God and ends with the Grand Inquisitor. [HBS – 14, HBTWC]

5. 2001: A Space Odyssey-Arthur C. Clarke – For years my favorite novel and movie (before I started reading Literature with a capital L). The reason I went into propulsion engineering (which I’m not too happy about now in hindsight). Still, I think it’s an important novel and a friggin great read. [PESF – 15]

6. A Death in the Family-James Agee – Reads like a long poem. It’s hard not to cry for little Rufus. This book is what Look Homeward, Angel could have been but didn’t quite accomplish. [PP, TM]

7. Death of a Salesman-Arthur Miller – The only play that I feel like including. [HBTWC]

8. All the King’s Men-Robert Penn Warren – Based loosely around the life of Louisiana governor Huey Long, one of the most complex and colorful characters in the history of American politics. This guy was caring enough about the working class to be considerably to the left of FDR’s New Deal politics but at the same time he ran probably the most corrupt state-wide political machine the country’s ever seen. [ML - 36, R – 38, HBTWC, PP, TM]

9. Absalom, Absalom-William Faulkner – I really need to reread this one. I read the first half on planes going to a job interview in Connecticut (God, I’m glad I didn’t get that job) and it’s really not a good book to read on a plane. But the ending, which adds a lot of insight into what was going on in Quentin’s head during his chapter of Sound and Fury, literally kept me awake ALL night after I finished it. [LM – 32, MLR – 36, R – 58, HBTWC]

10. Dune-Frank Herbert – Man, do I wish I could erase the part of my memory that contains this book and read it again. It’s so action packed and cool, but smart too. It’s what you wish every sci-fi book could be when you pick them up, but this was the only one that ever followed through. [MLR – 14, PESF – 3, SFBK – 3, HA, NA]

11. War and Peace-Leo Tolstoy – This 1500 pager reads like it was 400 pages. Not at all the chore that I thought reading it was going to be and which reading Anna Karenina actually was. [HBS – 57, HBTWC]

12. Blood Meridian-Cormac McCarthy – The book doesn’t advertise this, but this novel is actually based on a true story. Cormac took an obscure memoir of someone who traveled with the real-life Glanton gang to write this. From what I understand, all of the violent scenes and massacres actually occurred and the Judge was a real character who was every bit as weird and creepy as Cormac presents him as. [LM -48, MLR – 54, HBTWC, TM]

13. The Crossing-Cormac McCarthy – I thought that after Suttree, Blood Meridian, and All the Pretty Horses I had read the best McCarthy has to offer, but this one is every bit as good as any of them.

14. Beloved-Toni Morrison – What an amazing concept for a book about slavery. I wish there were more ghosts in great Literature. [LM – 12, MLR – 31, R – 7, PP, HBS – 37, TM]

15. Light in August- William Faulkner – This novel is as accessible as The Reivers but as brilliant and magical and rich as Absalom, Absalom. [ML – 54, MLR – 89, R – 68, HBTWC, TM]

16. The Sportswriter-Richard Ford – It’s hard to describe what makes this book so good. It’s so really, really realistically real [TM].

17. A Confederacy of Dunces-John Kennedy Toole – Wow, what a treasure that we have this novel. It was written by a guy who couldn’t get it published and then he killed himself in his late twenties, I think. His mom sent the manuscript to Walker “most over-rated southern writer” Percy who loved it and got it published. Thanks, Walker! Your greatest contribution to American Literature. [PP]

18. Lonesome Dove-Larry McMurtry – If this story were written by Cormac McCarthy it would likely be my favorite novel. [PP]

19. Lolita-Vladimir Nabokov – Sick but beautiful. [LM – 9, ML – 4, MLR – 34, R – 11, HBTWC, HBS – 7, TM]

20. Les Liasons Dangereuse-Pierre Choderlos De Laclos – There’s a reason this book has been adapted to movies so many times. It’s a great story with awesome characters. The book is surprisingly hilarious and there are great quotes throughout. I didn’t much care for the moral at the end, but the ride up to the fall was SO much fun.

21. All the Pretty Horses-Cormac McCarthy – There’s obviously so much to be learned in Mexico. [NBA, NBCC]

22. Wise Blood-Flannery O’Connor – Clearly the master of short stories. Still, I like it when her short stories are about the same characters and string together to make a novel. [LM- 56, MLR – 38, HBTWC]

23. As I Lay Dying-William Faulkner – Contains Faulkner’s shortest chapter. The entire contents of the chapter: “My mother is a fish.” [ML – 35, MLR – 67, R – 19, HBTWC]

24. Invisible Man-Ralph Ellison – I think this would make a phenomenal movie. Imagine the intro: the main character smoking a joint, listening to a jazz record, with the ceiling of his studio apartment covered in light bulbs stealing free electricity from the Man. Then cut to the Battle Royale scene. [LM – 18, ML – 19, MLR – 69, R – 24, HBTWC, NBA, TM]

25. Go Down, Moses-William Faulkner – A series of stories, including The Bear, that sort of make up a novel. Is The Bear Faulkner’s most inspired writing? Perhaps more so than Sound and Fury even? Make sure that you only read the version of The Bear that is published in Go Down, Moses or Three Short Novels. There’s a version out there that leaves a chapter out.

26. The Grapes of Wrath-John Steinbeck – This book has so much heart. [LM – 34, ML – 10, MLR – 22, R – 3, HBTWC, PP, TM]

27. Child of God-Cormac McCarthy – A necrophile, serial-killing, cave dweller is the main character. Only Cormac could infuse so much humanity into a story like this. [HBTWC]

28. The Orchard Keeper-Cormac McCarthy – Part ode to the east Tennessee landscape, part lament to a vanishing way of life. McCarthy’s award-winning debut novel.

29. The Unvanquished-William Faulkner – There’s a major scene in this one that’s so similar to a scene in Outer Dark (#31) it’s ridiculous. Fittingly, Faulkner is a step, nay, two steps ahead of McCarthy.

30. Slaughterhouse-Five-Kurt Vonnegut – Definitely the place to start with Vonnegut. [LM – 54, ML – 18, MLR – 23, R – 29, TM]

31. Outer Dark-Cormac McCarthy – Sort of a precursor to Blood Meridian. One of the main characters is similar to the Judge.

32. The Sun Also Rises-Ernest Hemingway – Emasculation is so sad. [LM – 20, ML – 45, MLR – 63, R – 18, HBTWC, HBS – 86, TM]

33. Song of Solomon-Toni Morrison – Among my favorite Toni Morrison character names: Guitar, Milkman, and a girl whose parents randomly open bible pages to find names for their children so she ends up being named Second Corinthians, or Cori for short. [R – 25, HBTWC]

34. The Rules of Attraction-Bret Easton Ellis – This is my favorite of his books and the setting and overall mood of the book has a lot to do with that. I like the small northeastern private school feel better than his typical LA/New York settings. Read this book in December while listening to old REM records (pre-Green era).

35. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest-Ken Kesey – I was surprised at how much I related to this book. Don’t let the movie suffice for this one, read the book. [MLR – 90, R – 28, TM]

36. The Big Sky-A.B. Guthrie – If you love westerns geared towards adults who aren’t morons and you’ve read McCarthy’s western novels and Larry McMurtry, this should be your next stop.

37. A Song of Ice and Fire Series-George R.R. Martin – I dropped this one a spot because book number four in the series, A Feast for Crows, wasn’t up to par. You better get your ass in gear George, take this as a warning.

38. Cold Mountain-Charles Frazier – This North Carolina author does his best Cormac McCarthy imitation and pulls it off extremely well. Plus it’s set during the civil war, so it’s super, extra cool. [NBA]

39. The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch-Philip K. Dick – Gosh, it’s been so long since I read this one I barely remember it. I do remember loving it though and maintaining that it is my favorite Dick novel. It was on one of Amy’s reading lists in grad school at Penn State so I feel somewhat validated in this opinion. [PESF – 13]

40. Only Begotten Daughter-James Morrow – This guy, from State College, PA, writes religious satire in the fantasy/sci-fi realm. He’s won numerous World Fantasy Awards among other awards. Most of his books are laugh-out-loud funny. This one is about the second coming of Christ, but this time It’s a She, Julie Katz, and She’s born in Atlantic City in the modern era. Hilarity ensues. [WFA]

41. Independence Day-Richard Ford – The sequel to The Sportswriter. Our protagonist is now working as a real estate agent, a perfect existential profession. [P/F, PP]

42. The Hamlet-William Faulkner – This is where Faulkner starts to not quite measure up to his masterpieces, but for Christ’s sake, he’s still Faulkner so it’s friggin fabulous and must not be passed up.

43. The Violent Bear It Away-Flannery O’Connor – I read this soon after McCarthy’s Child of God and was struck by just how similar their writing is in these books. And then I got to the last sentence of The Violent Bear It Away where it ends with, “...he moved steadily on, his face set toward the dark city, where the children of God lay sleeping”. I got chills. [HBTWC]

44. A Clockwork Orange-Anthony Burgess – I saw in the news the other day some kids beat a homeless person to death and said in court that they did it for fun and because they were bored. Reminded me of this book. [LM – 79, ML – 65, MLR – 55, R – 49, TM]

45. The Book of Laughter and Forgetting-Milan Kundera – This guy might be the most intelligent author I’ve ever read.

46. The Lord of the Flies-William Golding – I avoided this for a long time thinking it was children’s literature. It’s anything but. It’s quite terrifying and violent, very eerie. [ML – 41, MLR – 25, R – 8, TM]

47. The Handmaid’s Tale-Margaret Atwood – Things start to go wrong when the president is given an inordinate amount of power after a terrorist attack on congress. Hmmm… [MLR – 53, HBS - 25]

48. East of Eden-John Steinbeck – This is one of those rare books, like One Hundred Years of Solitude, that ambitiously tries to encompass a large chunk of human history and the human experience and in many ways succeeds.

49. The Jungle-Upton Sinclair – Great book for a borderline socialist. Power to the people. [R – 45]

50. Black Boy-Richard Wright – My edition, and I think most newer editions, contains the original Black Boy, Wright’s story about growing up in Mississippi, and then the second half was his story about moving to Chicago, joining the communist party, and then becoming disillusioned with communism and white intellectuals. It’s less compelling reading than the first half but still an important story. [MLNF – 13, HBTWC]

51. The Cities of the Plain-Cormac McCarthy – The conclusion to the Border Trilogy, following All the Pretty Horses and The Crossing. It’s kind of a disappointment. After it seemed like he put so much into the first two books, this one feels like he’s just trying to wrap it up and get on to something else.

52. Sanctuary-William Faulkner – Faulkner says he wrote this one just for sensationalism’s sake and to sell books. I have trouble believing it because it’s pretty brilliant and much meatier than The Reivers. [HBTWC]

53. The Complete Stories -Flannery O’Connor – There are very few writers who can write equally well about both sides of the arguments regarding religion and morality such that both devout Catholics and devout agnostics (myself) can both love them (The Brothers Karamazov comes to mind here). Flannery O’Connor is such a writer.

54. Darkness at Noon-Arthur Koestler – The anti-communist manifesto. I was turned on to this one because it was the highest ranked book I’d never heard of on the Modern Library’s top 100 at #7. I don’t know about #7, but it is a wonderful book and a concise critique of why communism failed. [ML – 8]

55. A Prayer for Owen Meany-John Irving – This one could have been higher but I just didn’t buy the ending, which felt contrived and cheesy. Still, Owen is a great character and you really come to love the little fella. Up until the last scene it’s a brilliant novel. [MLR – 28]

56. The Corrections-Jonathan Franzen – People keep mentioning this book to me and how much they liked it. Several of my friends can’t be wrong. It’s good. Hard to put my finger on why since there’s so many characters and so many themes, but it’s just good. So, let’s not belabor it shall we? [NBA, TM]

57. One of Ours-Willa Cather – This one might be a little high at 57. I read it not long after Sept. 11, 2001 and was feeling particularly, uncharacteristically patriotic. I would say that I’m, well, significantly less so four years later. But, I’ll stick with my first instinct and leave it. I can’t go changing this list around every time my moods or beliefs swing. [PP]

58. The Illustrated Man-Ray Bradbury – The master of sci-fi short stories. This is my favorite collection.

59. The Confessions of Nat Turner-William Styron – A beautifully written account of the famous slave insurrection. An exploration into Nat Turner’s background and what might have caused this particular slave to rebel and so many others not to. [PP, TM]

60. The Rocket Boys-Homer Hickam – Amy came home one day to find me lying on the floor literally balling. She thought someone had died or something, but I had just finished this book and was listening to a Mineral record. I was in a very weird, early-twenties, graduating college, emo kind of stage at the time and this book just struck a chord.

61. Sabbath’s Theatre-Philip Roth – I almost put this one down because the first 80 pages or so just seemed like gratuitous, dirty, dirty sex. But it actually turned into a respectable novel just in time and I ended up really loving it. [NBA]

62. Fay-Larry Brown – Larry Brown might be the greatest southern writer you’ve never heard of. Unfortunately, he passed away of a heart attack at the age of 53 last November (2004). But, he’s got 8-10 books out there and I’m looking forward to reading more of them.

63. The Fountains of Paradise-Arthur C. Clarke – This one really got to me during my engineering “phase”. Written in 1979, this book is about building a space elevator. They actually held the first ever space elevator conference a year or two ago. [HA, NA]

64. Neuromancer-William Gibson – What The Matrix is to movies, Neuromancer is to books. Of course, The Matrix had the benefit of being made in 1999. 15 years after William Gibson kicked off the cyberpunk revolution with Neuromancer. [PESF – 33, SFBK – 6, HA, NA, TM]

65. The World According to Garp-John Irving – Has a lot of similarities with Owen Meany. I don’t want to give anything away here but I think if you like one you’ll like the other. Basically, I feel like Garp as a novel has a little bit more dignity because it doesn’t have the kooky ending, but I just loved Owen’s character more. [MLR – 64, R – 37]

66. Less Than Zero-Bret Easton Ellis – This book was published in 1985, Ellis was born in 1964. You do the math and that means that this was published (published, not written mind you) when the author was 20 or 21 years old. Holy mother of God.

67. The Unbearable Lightness of Being-Milan Kundera – This was hard to rank. I feel like it deserves better than #68 because it’s obviously a brilliant novel. But, truth be told, I think a great deal of the brilliance was over my head. I just didn’t grasp all of the intricacies and had trouble tying it all together. However, there are so many levels to this book that you could enjoy it on. Kundera is very observant and keen on the different aspects of people’s personalities. The sheer joy of relating to parts of his characters or recognizing traits that you’ve noticed in others is enough to enjoy the book and warrant its place on this list. [HBTWC]

68. No Country For Old Men-Cormac McCarthy – My least favorite of his books, but the first new one to be published since I started reading him, and I was ultimately fully satisfied.

69. At Heaven’s Gate-Robert Penn Warren – I wasn’t sure where to go with RPW after All the King’s Men. I was attracted to this one because it was inspired by Nashville local politics around the time the novel was published (1943). This one was very good. If you liked King’s Men you can’t go wrong here, though it sounds like World Enough and Time is perhaps his second most acclaimed novel. I look forward to it whenever I get around to it.

70. Childhood’s End-Arthur C. Clarke – Clarke revolutionized sci-fi by taking the standard confrontation with alien beings and instead of fighting them or describing how different they look than us and what their world is like he looked at this imaginary confrontation and asked deeper questions like: how would we ever even conceive of what they are doing here or how their technology works since they would be so inconceivably more advanced than us, would they still perpetrate wars, perhaps they are what guides our evolution? His genius lies not in the setting up of these confrontations but in the conclusions where instead of tidily wrapping up the story with perhaps a clever plot twist at the end and explaining the aliens motives or technology or beliefs, he left a great deal of ambiguity which naturally rings more true since these civilizations would have to be so much farther advanced than us to have supported interstellar travel. Childhood’s End, published in 1953, is the early turning point in Clarke’s thinking, which led towards smarter, harder, more realistic sci-fi. [PESF – 1, SFBK – 7]

71. The Kreutzer Sonata-Leo Tolstoy – A classic novella about jealousy. The Kreutzer Sonata is a Beethoven sonata written for piano and violin. You should check it out, it’s phenomenal. The story is about a husband whose wife plays piano and finds a male companion to play violin with her. The husband hears them playing the Kreutzer Sonata and as the music builds he becomes certain that they are having an affair and he goes into a murderous rage. It’s pure genius. I’ve recently read a group of four stories under the title The Death of Ivan Ilych and other stories. I’d like to also mention the stories Master and Man and The Devil here, they would be my second and third favorite of his “short” stories.

72. Jude the Obscure-Thomas Hardy – Revolutionary. It felt way ahead of it’s time.

73. The Martian Chronicles-Ray Bradbury – Amy read this for a class in grad school and loved it. It’s short stories but they are sort of tied together in that they are all forays to the alien planet of Mars. [PESF – 79]

74. Ender’s Game-Orson Scott Card – This is just super-cool sci-fi. I want to say more but I don’t want to give anything away. [MLR – 59, SFBK – 22, PESF – 34, HA, NA]

75. Deathbird Stories-Harlan Ellison – Another sci-fi short story writer. Not quite up to par with Bradbury, but Deathbird Stories is widely regarded as his greatest collection. This book is almost as much horror as it is sci-fi, most of the stories are about violence and evil and so forth. He opens the book with a caveat not to read too many of the stories in the same sitting. Amy wasn’t able to get into it. [SFBK – 18, PESF - 76]

76. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?-Philip K. Dick – This is what Bladerunner was based on. [SFBK – 8]

77. About a Boy-Nick Hornby – This made a surprisingly good movie starring Hugh Grant.

78. Let Us Now Praise Famous Men-James Agee – I know this is not a novel, but it is High Art and I’ve got plays on here too, so, give me a break already. James Agee and photographer Walker Evans spent a couple of months living with 3 sharecropper families in Alabama during the Depression. They document their lives with grace and dignity out the ying-yang. It’s really amazing. [HBTWC]

79. Blameless in Abaddon-James Morrow – This is a sequel to Towing Jehovah (in which God dies and His body falls into the Mediterranean at 0 deg. longitude and 0 deg. latitude and the Vatican hires an oil tanker captain to tow His gigantic body to the Arctic to be preserved and keep it secret from the rest of the world that God is dead). Blameless in Abaddon is a modern-day Jobian tale about a lawyer whose wife dies of cancer and he puts God (who is now barely alive and whose body is the central attraction at an amusement park in Florida run by the Southern Baptists) on trial for crimes against humanity. Sacrilegious hilarity ensues once again.

80. A Gathering of Old Men-Ernest J. Gaines – This book kicked butt. I loved rooting for the old men.

81. The Lord of the Rings Trilogy & The Hobbit-J.R.R. Tolkien – Shew… another tough one to rank. I’ll be honest, I thought certain parts were terribly boring and I spent years in between books because I wasn’t compelled to read on in the trilogy. But simply for the accomplishment of building such a rich world from scratch and starting a whole genre it deserves at least this spot. [MLR – 4, R – 40, HBS – 5, TM]

82. Shogun-James Clavell – This was super-cool. I thought it was going to be about warring Japanese tribes but it’s actually about what it would be like to wake up in a totally alien civilization. The first Portuguese ship wrecks on the coast of feudal Japan.

83. Lincoln-Gore Vidal – It just seems to flow that James Clavell’s Shogun and Gore Vidal’s Lincoln are back to back on this list, doesn’t it? This is a must read for Civil War fans. [HBTWC]

84. American Psycho-Bret Easton Ellis – I like this book more and more as I reflect on it. Perhaps its rank at #83 is an artifact of having ranked it too soon after reading it before the initial shock had worn off. It’s pretty gruesome and I had to take periodic breaks from it. But I don’t think the violence is as gratuitous as it first seems. I think its hard to convince some people that certain policies/societies/beliefs/whatever(social contructs) lead from point A to point B to point C to point D, with point D being, for some, death/oppression/sexual objectification/whatever(bad things) and points B and C have obscured the root cause of this badness (kind of like money laundering). What I think Ellis has done is take artistic license to wrap the string of points around to where point A explicitly (very explicitly) leads to point D. [LM – 76]

85. The Color Purple-Alice Walker– I had a real good feeling about this one when I picked it up and saw that it was a series of letters to God written in black, southern dialect. It didn’t disappoint at all. [NBA, PP]

86. The Call of the Wild-Jack London – Buck is such an awesome character.

87. Hyperion-Dan Simmons – Someone at NASA was giving away some sci-fi paperbacks outside their office one day and among them was this Hugo award winner that I decided to pick up. I hadn’t read hardcore sci-fi in a while and this book restored my faith in the genre. Unfortunately, I’ve read plenty of sci-fi crap since then and have strayed away of late. [HA]

88. Moby Dick-Herman Melville – This book begins and ends superbly and there’s some parts in between that are great too. I love all the biblical stuff and the grandness of the tale and its themes. But, the lengthy technical descriptions of whaling and whales and whale ships and whale pictures and what not in between are just too laborious and painful to read to warrant a higher ranking. If I could select certain chapters and condense this book to about half its size it would easily be top 20. [HBTWC]

89. Rendezvous With Rama-Arthur C. Clarke – A celebration of mystery and encounters with the unknown. [HA, NA]

90. Breakfast of Champions-Kurt Vonnegut – I read this too soon after Slaughterhouse-Five and started to get tired of Vonnegut’s tone about halfway through it. Otherwise, you can’t go wrong with this one. [HBS – 89]

91. God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater-Kurt Vonnegut – The main character, Mr. Rosewater, in this book reminded Amy and I both of Ignatius from Confederacy of Dunces. This is a really funny book. We still laugh together regularly when we think back to one particular scene.

92. Innocent Darkness-R.F. Sheehan – I’m taking a flyer on this one. I really thought it was brilliant. I loved the idea. I loved the McCarthian journey through Mexico. In my humble opinion, this book should stay in print and be more widely read and recognized.

93. Glamorama-Bret Easton Ellis – The characters and the violence in this one are very similar to American Psycho except updated to the 90’s. So, it’s not quite as fresh here. Plus the plot jumps all over the place. It gets very phildickian, which is a bit of a twist from American Psycho. I think maybe Ellis was aware of the phildickianess because there is a scene where he mentions that in someone’s apartment they have a complete collection of all of Philip K. Dick’s novels on a book shelf, it seemed sort of out of the blue and since I had already felt the similarities I couldn’t help but chuckle. The cameos of all the famous people are really cool.

94. From Here to Eternity-James Jones – This is the first of a WWII trilogy with the second book being The Thin Red Line. From Here to Eternity presents life in the army in the lead up to WWII. [ML – 62, NBA]

95. Empire Falls-Richard Russo – This is a great book set in a small town in BFE Maine. I thought it was funny how much it reminded me of Kingsport, TN. [PP, HBS - 60]

96. The Winds of War & War and Remembrance-Herman Wouk – I’m now lumping these two together since I recently completed War and Remembrance. It’s good history and grand romance; epic in scale.

97. The End of the Affair-Graham Greene – This is my first and only Graham Greene novel so far, so I can’t really compare it with any of his others. The writing is great since it’s so captivating with a fairly sparse plot. I really enjoyed the love story. The End of the Affair refers to a promise to God that one of the lovers makes in the face of her partners possible death during a World War II bombing. It makes for a fairly interesting dilemma. Gosh, I sure do like religious dilemmas a whole lot to be a secularist. Wonder what’s going on there?

98. Look Homeward, Angel-Thomas Wolfe – I’ll hate to have to see this one drop off the list after I read three more books that are better than it because I really respect it and loved parts of it. It’s too long though and I think he tries a little too hard at times like he’s being really cognizant of producing Great Literature.

99. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius-Dave Eggers – The best of the last decade’s memoir frenzy, which James Frey has now effectively killed.

100. The Sheltering Sky-Paul Bowles – This had the potential to be higher, but part of the ending just didn’t sit right with me.

Book Review: The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera

2006-02-13T16:43:00.000-05:00

Writing Style-8.5
Originality-8.6
Plot-7.1
Merit(whatever that means)-8.3
Overall-8.4

Alright, that does it, I LOVE Milan Kundera. I’m not sure I can overstate this fact. I’ve now read The Unbearable Lightness of Being, then Immortality, and now The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. Good God, this dude is brilliant, I mean really effin’ BRILLIANT. Go read him right now. Walk, don’t run. Disregard the rest of this post. I’m serious. Git. Scram. Be off with ye.

Ok, now that you are back from the bookstore or library having obtained one of Kundera’s literary treasures, let me impart a few thoughts about him and this book.

This might actually be my favorite of his at this point. I’m not sure that it’s better than Unbearable Lightness as a novel, but having now read 3 of his books I think I’m starting to figure this Kundera character out a little bit.

Laughter and Forgetting is very similar to Immortality in structure. It has a central theme, Communist totalitarianism as it relates to Kundera’s native Chzechoslovakia being invaded by Russia in 1968—then with this central theme always in mind, Kundera proceeds to attack it from several different angles. These different angles are in the form of seven loosely related stories with loosely related characters in which he attacks the theme from a philosophical standpoint, an autobiographical standpoint, a metaphorical standpoint, a personal fictional account, an allegorical standpoint, etc. This was the exact same modus operandi as Immortality. Now that I’m catching on to his MO, I’d really like to go back and reread Unbearable Lightness to see if I get more out of it.

I’ve been pimping Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon on here lately. This is another great anti-communist manifesto to go along with that one. Both are from authors who actually lived under communist rule. In fact, as I understand, were both Communists of a sort, and became disillusioned, as tends to be the case.

I’m not gonna belabor the point anymore, but I strongly encourage all serious readers to try one of these books out.

There are so many things to discuss with the book, but part of the fun of reading it is trying to follow his logic and make connections on your own. So, I’d love to hear from anyone who has or chooses to give one of these books a go. Amy loves the guy too. So two enthusiastic thumbs up from our household.

Book Review: A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines

2006-02-13T16:05:00.000-05:00

Writing Style-7.0
Originality-6.8
Plot-6.9
Merit(whatever that means)-7.4
Overall-6.8

This is another great book by Ernest J. Gaines. It’s familiar territory if you are familiar with him. A Louisiana plantation where whites, blacks, and Cajuns coexist.

The main plot here is that a young black man is convicted of murder when he unwittingly joins in on an attempted robbery where a white store owner is killed. The young man is unarmed and unaware of the robbery plot, but he was at the scene and implicated. At his trial his attorney argues that the judge should not give him the death penalty because it would be like putting a hog to slaughter. This is a reference to the fact that the defendant is mentally challenged. But still, he is sentenced to the death penalty.

His grandmother’s last wish for him is that he not die like a hog but like a man. She and a friend enlist the town’s black school teacher to act as a mentor to the young man in jail and teach him how to be a man before he is executed.

This schoolteacher is the main character of the book. He reluctantly agrees to help out. He is college educated and hates his environment and would like to leave Louisiana with his girlfriend.

Like the other Gaines novels that I’ve read there is tons of local color. And every single word carries the weight of oppression. Gaines describes how every single act or even the tiniest gesture between a white person and a black person carries some message and reveals and reminds those involved that there is a deeply ingrained power structure there. To me this is the most important aspect of his writing. The central theme tends to be letting some semblance of pride or subtle revolt shine through from this horribly oppressive environment.

I still think I like A Gathering of Old Men most of the books of his that I’ve read. Maybe because it was the first, but I really think it was the characters and their particular ‘subtle revolt’ (not so subtle in this instance, really) that I liked best.

Book Review: Robert Kennedy and His Times by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.

2006-02-09T14:59:00.000-05:00

Writing Style-6.6
Originality-3.5
Plot-N/A
Enjoyability-6.0
Merit(whatever that means)-9.1
Overall-6.7

I’m morbidly behind on my book reviews so I’m gonna try to be brief so I don’t get bogged down with the chore of catching up.

This is the third Schlesinger book I’ve read along with A Thousand Days about the JFK presidency and Crisis of the Old Order, the first volume in his FDR New Deal trilogy. Schlesinger is certainly one of my favorite historians. He tends to write about the people that I am interested in, he’s sharp as a tack, has impeccable historical integrity (though his detractors tend to think he’s got too much of a hardon for the Kennedys), and writes superbly.

It took me many months to finish this one though. Not sure why. Maybe it was the intimidating length of the book, maybe it was the fact that I had recently read a lot of the same information in the JFK book, maybe it was just my mood recently. There’s really no good reason why it took me so long. The book is fabulous.

If you have any interest in Robert Kennedy, this is a must read. My favorite parts of the JFK book in fact were about Robert. Some of his quotes to southern segregationists while he was Attorney General and using his federal power to desegregate the south really get your blood flowing. And his role in the Cuban missile crisis as the voice of an appropriate middle-ground type of retaliation is extremely impressive. In short, the Joint Chiefs and anti-communist, hawkish types were calling for an invasion of Cuba. Meanwhile, dovish types were saying we couldn’t really do anything about the missiles unless we were ready to start a nuclear world war III. Robert Kennedy argued for the balanced approach of a naval blockade of Cuba to keep the Russians from sending nuclear warheads to further equip the missiles that were already there. So we stood up to the Russians without firing first and they backed off as the ships were approaching. Good stuff. If Nixon had been elected in 1960, running as a hardline anti-communist, what might have happened? Shudder to think, what if George W. were put in a similar situation? We’d probably all be mutants crawling out of holes in the ground forming tribes and worshipping the Big Boom Makers Who Came Before and having children with tentacles and three eyes and killing each other over the watering holes that don’t taste too brackish.

Not long before I read this book, I read A Cold Six Thousand by James Ellroy. It’s this crazy crime noir thriller set in the sixties and centers around the Kennedys and the mob and Cuba and Communists and J Edgar and all the stereotypical stuff that you would put in a noir book of the era. What was interesting was how much of this crazy shit was very true to life as I started reading the Schlesinger book. Crazy stuff like deals with the mob to find ways to overthrow Castro and the power struggle between J Edgar Hoover and Robert Kennedy who was supposed to be his boss as Attorney General, but essentially J Edgar could do whatever he wanted to.

There are tons of great Kennedy quotes in the book of course. I wish I had kept track of a few to share here. Maybe I’ll leaf through the book this weekend and try to find some. But I’ll leave you with one that comes to mind. In the early to mid sixties, Robert Kennedy takes a trip to tour South American countries. In one country, I can’t remember which one specifically, he is determined to enter their mines against the better judgment of his advisors who say that it’s too dangerous. After returning to the States, he’s talking to a reporter about living conditions for these miners and he says, “If I had to work in those mines, I’d be a Communist too.”

Podcast: A History of Things That Were Not

2006-02-05T23:14:00.000-05:00

Setting Sun
Of Love and Love Lost on the Rio Grande
Everyone Needs a Song Called Hallelujah
Twenty-two

All songs written and performed by Enoch and copyright of Bassless Accusations Music 2006, except background vocals on Hallelujah by A-killa. I'd like to thank a bunch of people that made this batch of songs much better than my previous ones. First and foremost is Amy who had the foresight to see that I needed quality equipment and got me a new 8-track and a sweetass condensor mic for xmas. Thanks to Phil for the loaner mandolin on Setting Sun and Hallelujah. Thanks to Ms. Lawless for the high quality Sony headphones. Thanks to Mike for the percussive intruments on Rio Grande. And thanks to Mom for the chromatic harp in Rio Grande. Thanks to Frank Wiggley for being my biggest fan.

Book Review: The Informers by Bret Easton Ellis

2006-02-02T15:46:00.000-05:00

Writing Style-7.0
Originality-6.5
Plot-5.0
Literary Merit(whatever that means)-6.6
Overall-6.7

I am a HUGE Bret Easton Ellis fan. He may well be my favorite truly contemporary author. Amy’s a big fan too. I think I’ve now read all of his work except for the latest, Lunar Park, which I’m waiting to come out in paperback.

Alright, for those of you not familiar with Ellis—he writes mainly about the 1980’s. Particularly the uber rich. His characters are typically young, rich, self-absorbed, vapid, vacuous, filled with ennui, etc—I think you get the point. Reading Ellis is like watching MTV’s Laguna Beach totally uncensored (only at some point in the show it would be revealed that Kristen, or somebody, is really a robot that runs on human blood and she starts harvesting hoboes after luring them to her estate with the promise of fetish-filled sex).

There’s tons of sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll. It makes for exceptionally entertaining reading. But somehow, it’s got heart too.

I think that ultimately Ellis is experimenting with the question of what happens to a society or group of people that have no rules and have no needs or wants? In his world anything goes. You feel the characters constantly striving to feel something, anything. Whether it’s via drugs or sex or rape or murder or torture or whatever crazy device Ellis comes up with, its this lack of substance (I guess) in their lives because of their status and wealth that leads them to this abhorrent lifestyle.

And, Ellis is so good at putting you in that specific time and place. The lingo, the food, the fashion, the music of the 80’s he is obsessed with. It’s comical how in one novel everyone may be listening to Duran Duran whereas in another everyone may be listening to The Talking Heads and REM, or they may be wearing Polo shirts or Wayfarer sunglasses or whatever.

I don’t recommend that you start with The Informers however. The Informers is really a bunch of loosely related short stories, sort of a Bret Easton Ellis version of the movie Magnolia. If I had it to do over again, I would probably read the books chronologically in terms of when they were published. Less Than Zero was his first novel, published when he was 20 or 21 years old. And it’s a great place to start. If you like it you’ll want more, if you don’t then you wouldn’t have liked American Psycho or any of the other books of his that you might have picked up instead.

If you’ve already read Ellis and liked it, you can’t really go wrong with the Informers, it’s simply more of the same. I like all of his books but they do tend to be sort of monotonous. That said, I do think that he effectively varies his theme enough that they are all worth reading.

Googling Kingsport

2006-01-24T12:59:00.000-05:00

Y'all remember this chick?

I think this is ultra impressive. Make sure you've got your speakers on because the first site plays their music. The second is an interview.

http://www.samhillbands.com/bands/quatro/index.shtml

http://richmond.net/locallife/output.aspx?Article_ID=2886955&Vertical_ID=2

Book Review: Elric of Melnibone by Michael Moorcock

2006-01-24T11:22:00.000-05:00

Writing Style-5.4
Originality-4.7
Plot-1.8
Literary Merit(whatever that means)-1.6
Overall-2.4

I’m going to do my best to get through this review without making a play on the author’s last name.

This is the first book in a fantasy series that has a very significant cult following. So I was curious. But, after reading this one, I don’t know what all the fuss is about.

There is some pretty cool imagery from time to time. Elric is an albino, wizard king so he’s kind of a cool character I guess. The writing is actually pretty decent in places. I thought maybe I would like it at first with the initial description of the world and Elric. But the plot is simply retarded. It’s one of those books where you can tell that the author has no outline of where the story is going. So it’s just chapter after chapter of ridiculousness and disjointedness. With a plot like this, no matter how cool you think Elric may be you really can’t care much about what happens to him.

Basically, it’s about Elric’s brother-in-law trying to usurp him because he sees him as a weakling. They have a big magical battle and—spoiler alert—Elric wins.

Eh, who cares? Unless, you are a serious fantasy fan steer clear of this one.

However, I’ve also been intrigued by a book by the same author called Gloriana which may be better. And the writing in places in Elric is good enough that I don’t think I’ll totally write him off. I sense some potential there if he were working on a story that is well thought through and that it feels like the author cares more about. So, I might try some Moorcock later (dammit, I tried).

Book Review: 1776 by David McCullough

2006-01-23T14:02:00.000-05:00

Writing Style-6.4
Originality-2.3
Plot-N/A
Enjoyability-5.9
Merit(whatever that means)-5.8
Overall-6.0

This was a Christmas present from my dad. Thanks, D!

I know embarrassingly little about our country’s birth via revolution. And this book is probably not as good a place to start as I had hoped. It covers almost literally only what happens in the year of 1776. Which seems like a pretty important year because it’s the year that we declared independence and so choose to call America’s birth year. However, the Revolutionary War continued until 1783 and this book covers almost exclusively the war and what happens to Washington’s Continental Army during this year and not the politics or social implications of the declaration of independence and why we decided to revolt in the first place. So, I guess what I’m trying to say is that it seems like a strange choice to cover only the battles fought during this year, which may indeed be a militarily pivotal year (I don’t know because I don’t know anything about the other seven years of the war), but seems more a year of symbolic importance rather than militarily.

The book starts off really well. McCullough paints a very vivid image of King George and George Washington and Nathaneal Greene and Henry Knox among other important figures on both sides. And he is a very good pop history writer. I was perfectly enthralled through the first half of the book. However, in the second half, it digresses into very repetitive troop movements, minor skirmishes, retreats, river crossings, troop morale, etc. This is the type of history that I pretty much abhor. Why do historians care so much about who outflanked who and who led this charge up this hill when and who moved the artillery where? I mean, it seems ridiculous. Here you have one of the most important episodes in world history as the new world colonies rise up in revolt for fairly vague reasons and overthrow the European monarchies and empires that ruled the world and develop a fairly brilliant new form of government and we’re talking about some minor General So-and-so who raided some outpost and made off with a couple of cannons and gunpowder. It doesn’t make much sense to me.

And it’s the same throughout history. With the Civil War and World War II and so forth. I mean it’s so interesting why we are motivated to get into these wars and how it all plays out politically and socially, but historians repeatedly choose to talk about all the minor details of the military campaigns. And in writing about these campaigns, they even manage to make something as crazy as war seem sterile and boring. I guess it’s just easier on the historian to go this route. These sorts of things are easier to document and fact check and be objective about. But, at the end of the day, what have I, the reader, learned from all this that is of any value? Not much. Most people can name a couple of generals and a couple of big battles and the years that each war took place, but how many people can talk even semi-intelligently about why we went into WWI or even WWII, or Vietnam, or why did the War of 1812 happen, or the Civil War even? At best, the average person might rattle off slavery or communism or the Lusitania or the Holocaust as answers to these querries but, are these answers really adequate?

I was also struck by the casualty numbers and it got me to thinking about the evolution of war. It really stood out that he would talk about some of the fiercest fighting of the Revolutionary War and some of the pivotal, biggest battles and then in the overall tally it would be something like—there were 4 dead, 23 wounded, and over 900 prisoners taken. What? Only 4 dead and 900 surrendered? And this happens over and over again. And then you read a Civil War history and there are battles with tens of thousands of casualties. What’s the difference here? I know there are a couple of inventions that made a big difference like the muzzle loader vs. breech loader and more and more accuracy with weapons because of the bore of the barrel and bullet design and whatnot, but does that explain the huge disparity? Why do historians, again, just list the numbers and not acknowledge what they may represent?

Anyhoo, overall, other than falling into this military writing trap, I thought that McCullough was a pretty good writer. This book certainly won’t discourage me from taking a look at, say, his book on Harry Truman. In fact, the start of this book, primarily the background on King George and George Washington, might prompt me to read this sooner rather than later. But, it’s not at all a good overview of the American Revolution, which I’d hoped that it would be. It’s really the battles of 1776 from the Americans’ siege of Boston to the Battle of Brooklyn and then the “major” (read: symbolic) American victories of Trenton and Princeton. As soon as 1777 rolls around, you’re on your own.

How Racist and Sexist Are You?

2006-01-20T09:07:00.000-05:00

This is interesting. Try taking these tests to determine how racist and sexist you are. Apparently, I have a slight automatic preference for white people. Which is a little embarrasing, but they say that two-thirds of white people display a strong to moderate preference for whites and that even half of blacks display a slight or stronger preference for whites. So I guess that's about as good as a white guy could hope to do.

As for sexism, interestingly enough I joined only 5% of the popultion by slightly associating female more with career than family. Two-thirds of the popultion strongly to moderately associates male with career and female with family. See what you've done to me Amy? I'm now sexist against men apparently. Sheesh.

Here's the test. Let me know how you do.

http://www.understandingprejudice.org/iat/index2.htm

Book Review: The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin

2006-01-19T16:59:00.000-05:00

Writing Style-6.5
Originality-6.1
Plot-7.4
Literary Merit(whatever that means)-5.9
Overall-6.8

This is quality sci-fi right here. A very imaginative, well written, insightful, and riveting utopian novel.

This is really very similar to a plot that I recently dreamed up and would have written if I were a capable writer. I was wondering what sort of geopolitical climate it would take to have another major revolution in the way governments are run as big as the American Revolution or the Bolshevik Revolution. And I thought, what if one day when Mars or the moon were sufficiently colonized they break away from outdated Terran governments and formed a totally now form of government. In my book, the government established would have been socialistic and the title of the book would have been Marsism.

Well, The Dispossessed is very similar to this. There is a world with a well colonized moon. The moon has broken all ties with the rest of the world except for very limited, highly regulated trade between the two. There has also been a relatively peaceful revolution that leads the citizens on the moon to develop a non-authoritarian form of socialism (to the extent that such a thing is possible).

So after nearly two centuries of cultural separation between the two worlds, one scientist, gets approval to make a trip from the moon, Annaras, to the planet, Urras. This scientist is working on a fictional sort of string theory of physics, which would be a major breakthrough in the field and technically important to any society possessing it. He wants to interface with scientists on Urras that are in many ways more scientifically advanced than scientists from Annaras, or at least their culture values science more.

So the book flip-flops between chapters taking place in the present as the main character, Shevek, goes about his journey to Annaras to chapters that are flashbacks to Shevek’s upbringing on his home world of Urras. This of course allows the reader to contrast the strengths and weaknesses of the two cultures as Shevek discovers how Annaras works and recalls his own life on Urras.

There can be little doubt that Le Guin is much fonder of the government that she has dreamed up for Urras. It’s really a strange mix of anarchism, libertarianism, communism, and socialism. The country that Shevek visits on Urras, named A-Io is for all practical purposes America. It’s shiny, superficial, and capitalistic with a dirty, sad underbelly that they try to keep hidden and ignore.

There is not simply the contrast between Annarras and Urras though. On Annarras there are many countries, some very different than A-Io. There are still pockets of communism, much like here on Earth. Also there are two alien civilizations that have made contact with the people of Annarras and Urras. Interestingly, though Annarras and Urras seem like polar opposites between themselves, these alien civilization view them as the same people from one binary planetary system.

So, Shevek finds himself torn in multiple power struggles not just between Annarras and Urras, but between countries on Annarras and between his Annarasti/Urrasti culture and the two alien cultures. Obviously, he is extremely important not only for his scientific theory but also for what he symbolizes about the people of Annaras and Urras and the fact that he is a communistic symbol for the struggling communist countries on Annaras.

While most of the novel is really about these ideas about theories of government, pros and cons of capitalism and socialism, breaking social barriers, how societies use and view science, etc with relatively little sci-fi action. It does build to a climax where these forces work to tear Shevek apart and use him for their own gains and it becomes very dangerous for him.

I strongly recommend this book for fans of smart sci-fi. I really think that this is what good sci-fi was intended to do, which is take an imagined future to have a clean slate on which to explore our current world and where it is headed. And Le Guin is a very accomplished and capable writer, not just relative to crappy sci-fi writers. The Left Hand of Darkness is another book by her that was groundbreaking in the genre. I like The Dispossessed better because the themes interest me more, but Amy really loved The Left Hand of Darkness (she hasn’t read The Dispossessed yet though).

Book Review: The Thin Red Line by James Jones

2006-01-18T16:30:00.000-05:00

Writing Style-5.6
Originality-5.1
Plot-5.5
Literary Merit(whatever that means)-5.7
Overall-5.6

I was really excited about this book because I loved the movie and I loved the first book in James Jones’ World War II trilogy, From Here to Eternity. But, it didn’t come anywhere near to living up to expectations.

I don’t think there are any characters that carry over from From Here to Eternity. I really think the only thing that ties the trilogy together is that they are all military stories set during World War II. Also, the first two are sort of chronological in that From Here to Eternity is about preparation for the war and The Thin Red Line is during the war.

The Thin Red Line is actually loosely based around the battle for Guadalcanal. There is a disclaimer that Jones’ took a lot of liberties with how the actual battle played out. But still, it is about a company of soldiers taking hold of an island in the Pacific from the Japanese. This is also about the only similarity that it had to the movie. I’d like to go back and watch the movie again now that I’ve read it, but from what I can remember of the film, there are a ton of differences. The film actually is a lot better and more powerful than the book, which I can rarely say about a novel adaptation. [As an aside here, Terrence Mallick, the director of The Thin Red Line has a new movie coming out this weekend called The New World centered around the love story between Pocahontas and John Smith. It looks good from the preview except for the fact that it stars Colin Farrell, not sure what that is about. Also, it seems weird that they are releasing it at this time of year when it is about two weeks late for award nominations. And by the time next year rolls around everyone will have forgotten it. This might be a bad sign, or perhaps Mallick just doesn’t care and he just finished the film when he finished it. We’ll see. I’ll let you know. I plan to see it this Friday. FYI, Amy.]

The book reminded me a lot of The Red Badge of Courage. It had a lot to do with how people actually react in combat. Not so much about a Rambo type of courage but a more real world experience. This is always interesting. Of course, The Red Badge of Courage was a nice, concise snapshot of courage under fire whereas The Thin Red Line is far too long, clocking in at over 500 pages. I realize that he was trying to encompass the whole Guadalcanal battle from landing on the island to fully controlling it, but the combat gets repetitive. I think that it would be much more interesting if he used the blueprint of Red Badge and presented a sort of combat “slice of life” only it would be updated to World War II Pacific Theater battle, which is clearly a bit of a different experience from the Civil War.

Also, related to this, I thought that I might like The Thin Red Line as much as or better than From Here to Eternity because it had actual combat and I thought maybe this would make for more exciting reading. But the opposite was true. The combat was so repetitive that I sort of became de-sensitized to the violence and horror of it. This is another argument for shortening the book as I’ve described.

I also think that Jones’ could have narrowed the focus in terms of the number of main characters. There are far too many main characters and they are all so much alike that you can’t keep them straight. If all these characters are so similar you can’t tell them apart then there obviously is no need for all of them to get across the major themes of the book.

So there you have it. This is one of the many books that I liked, but would have liked much better if I could have changed things about it. I highly recommend From Here to Eternity. It has a lot more heart and soul, which seems weird since The Thin Red Line is about war and dying and violence and so forth, but that’s just the fact of the matter. If you really love the writing in From Here to Eternity and crave more then there’s no real reason not to pursue The Thin Red Line, but you don’t have to just because they are published as a “trilogy”. They can stand on their own. But, I certainly wouldn’t read Red Line over Here to Eternity.

A Reading Failure: Dr. Faustus by Thomas Mann

2006-01-16T13:22:00.000-05:00

For the first time since beginning townesvanfaulkner, I started a book I couldn't finish. Oh, how I hate to do this. I feel like a failure.

Please forgive me, but there was just no way that I could finish this book. I feel like I gave it my all. I read over 200 pages of a 500+ page book. Basically, my rules are that I must finish any book less than 300 pages. And that I won't give up on a book in the first 150 pages. These rules can be broken, but rarely ever are. The Good Soldier by Ford Maddox Ford certainly tested the first rule. And I couldn't help but break the second rule with The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie.

I recall reading a quote from Faulkner saying that he thought the best living writers of his day were Thomas Mann, Ernest Hemingway, Willa Cather, John Dos Passos, and himself. So I took note of this and thought that I still need to read Mann and Dos Passos. Well, maybe I should have started with Mann's Death in Venice. Maybe this is what I get for choosing the cheapest copy at the used book store. I don't know.

But this was just unbearable. Unbelievably wordy and the plot was going nowhere, absolutely unequivocally nowhere. It's supposed to be a fake biography of a german composer. And I read through his childhood and early musical training and early in his composing career. Maybe it gets better? Who knows? I've started boring books before and come to really like them by the end. It's possible. But, I don't think the world will ever know because I QUIT.

Has anyone else read this guy? Any thoughts? What are some notable books you've given up on? I also gave up on Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow. However, I've managed to read the Bible cover to cover and it was a struggle but I made it through Anna Karenina.

Book Review: Tourmaline by Joanna Scott

2006-01-16T13:18:00.000-05:00

Writing Style-1.1
Originality-1.5
Plot-1.6
Literary Merit(whatever that means)-0.6
Overall-1.2

Oftentimes, Amy buys books and never reads them. They sit around the house for years and taunt me. They call out, yearning to be read by someone. Sooner or later, I get sucked in. Sometimes, they turn out to be surprisingly good. For instance, Amy bought White Teeth by Zadie Smith and Boomfell by Douglas Hobbie. Other times, they are a waste of time. This was definitely in the latter category.

I don’t see anything that can be gained from reading this book. It’s not interesting, there are no interesting themes, nothing to question, no good characters, extremely mediocre writing. Worthless in every sense.

The book cover says that Joanna Scott won the MacArthur fellowship. That astounds me. It’s really made me second guess the prestige of that prize. I used to tout Cormac McCarthy with, “He’s a MacArthur fellow.”

In Tourmaline, there’s a dude that gets obsessed with finding these precious gemstones called tourmaline and he takes his family to the island of Elba where Napoleon was exiled. And there’s a mystery when some girl goes missing and the dude is accused of it. And there’s a bunch of different perspectives to the mystery from the son, the mother, and so forth.

Eh, why waste your time and mine? This book will be out of print before I can get this post finished probably.

1st Annual Herndy Awards

2006-01-11T17:05:00.000-05:00

Best Supporting Actress Nominees:
Maggie Gyllenhaal - Happy Endings
Rachel Weisz - The Constant Gardener
Catherine Keener - Capote
Amy Adams - Junebug
Tilda Swinton - Thumbsucker

The Winner: Maggie Gyllenhaal

Best Supporting Actor Nominees:
George Clooney - Syriana
Mos Def - Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
George Clooney - Good Night and Good Luck
Matt Dillon - Crash
Matt Damon - Syriana

The Winner: George Clooney - Syriana

Best Comedy Nominees:
Wedding Crashers
40 Year Old Virgin
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

The Winner: Wedding Crashers

Best Actress Nominees:
Reese Witherspoon - Walk the Line
Laura Linney - The Squid and the Whale
Embeth Davidtz - Junebug

The Winner: Reese Witherspoon

Best Actor Nominees:
Joaquin Phoenix - Walk the Line
Terrence Howard - Hustle and Flow
Lou Pucci - Thumbsucker
Eric Bana - Munich
Philip Seymour Hoffman - Capote

The Winner: Philip Seymour Hoffman

Best Director Nominees:
Ang Lee - Brokeback Mountain
Christopher Nolan - Batman Begins
George Clooney - Good Night and Good Luck
Stephen Gaghan - Syriana
James Mangold - Walk the Line

The Winner: Ang Lee

Best Movie Nominees:
Brokeback Mountain
Capote
Walk the Line
Syriana
Wedding Crashers

The Winner: Brokeback Mountain

Most Disappointing Movie: A History of Violence

Most Surprisingly Good Movie: November

Best Music: Thumbsucker

Best Foreign: Paradise Now

Hottest Dude Nominees:
Heath Ledger - Brokeback Mountain
Brad Pitt - Mr. and Mrs. Smith
Jake Gyllenhaal - Jarhead
Christian Bale - Batman
Eric Bana - Munich

The Winner: Christian Bale

Hottest Chick Nominees:
Rachel Weisz - The Constant Gardener
Angelina Jolie - Mr. and Mrs. Smith
Embeth Davidtz - Junebug
Naomi Watts - King Kong
Maria Bello - A History of Violence

The Winner: Naomi Watts

Book Review: The Complete Stories by Flannery O'Connor

2006-01-11T13:41:00.000-05:00

Writing Style-8.7
Originality-7.2
Plot-7.1
Literary Merit(whatever that means)-8.4
Overall-7.9

I’m a huge Flannery O’Connor fan. I believe with the completion of The Complete Stories I’ve read pretty much all that she’s done. The Complete Stories is, guess what, all of her short stories; and I’ve also read her two novels, Wise Blood and The Violent Bear it Away. Am I forgetting anything?

Even though she’s my favorite short story writer, I still like her novels better simply because I prefer to read novels as opposed to short stories.

The Complete Stories presents all of her published short stories in the chronological order in which they were published. So it starts with stories that she wrote in college, which are pretty good but not nearly as good as they get later. You can tell when she really hones her southern gothic voice.

For those not familiar with O’Connor, she was a devout Catholic born and raised in rural Georgia. She’s known primarily for her short stories. Even her novels read more like a bunch of short stories with the same characters mashed together to form a novel, particularly Wise Blood was like this. Her stories are usually deeply religious, but they manage to complicate the religious issues and morality so effectively that even a devout agnostic, like myself, can love them. Her ability to do this reminds me a lot of Dostoyevsky.

She can make you empathize with horrific sinners and hate a community’s most upstanding Christian. A common theme throughout these stories is pointing out religious hypocrisy. Often, the main character, or a major character, will be a devout Christian but O’Connor will sometimes subtly, sometimes not so subtly, bring you to the point of asking, “Just how Christ-like is this Christian, really?”

Other common themes are racism and classism, pretty typical stuff for southern literature.

I can’t recommend O’Connor enough, especially for Southern Lit fans. Most people probably read “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, one of her most popular stories, at some point in school. The main character is an old lady (a devout Christian) who is reading in the news about a serial killer. She becomes terrified of this character, or this type of character, as old ladies are apt to do when reading or watching the news. So, while traveling with the family on vacation in Florida, the car breaks down, and they are confronted with a serial killer fitting the same description. Does this ring any bells? If not, this is a pretty good place to start. Plus, it’s a whole new world when you don’t have to read something for school. Then, if The Complete Stories is too daunting you could move on to Everything That Rises Must Converge, a great short story collection. Or, if short stories aren’t your thing then try one of the novels. Certainly, don’t eschew the novels just because you think of her as a short story writer, they are also top notch. And who knows what she would have gone onto if she hadn’t died at the age of 39 (I think?).

This is my dog, Flannery:

A TVF Auction: Digital 8-Track

2006-01-10T14:44:00.000-05:00

Hey, I got my home recording studio tricked out this Christmas. Thanks to the lovely and talented AMY. I gots me a Tascam 8-track with a 40 gig hard drive and a Groove Tubes GT-55 condensor mic that is INCREDIBLE and very good, studio-quality Sony headphones for monitoring and mixing.

With this upgrade, I'm looking to sell my Fostex 8-track. I've had it for a little over a year and it is in perfect condition. It uses Flash card media and came with a 128 meg card. I also bought a 512 meg card for it, which would come with it. Most Flash cards are incompatible with it, so it won't work with most standard ones you may have lying around the house for digital cameras or something. The 512 meg card holds 92 minutes of music and if you linearly interpolate, the 128 meg holds 23 minutes. For all practical purposes you can record about 1 song on the 128 and about 4 songs at a time on the 512 (this assumes roughly a 4 minute song with 4 or 5 tracks).

I've still got the owner's manual for it (I think I can find it) and it comes with a power adaptor. I'd be willing to work my Shure SM-48 dynamic microphone into the deal if so desired. With this package all you would need is a mic cord, mic stand, and some headphones to begin your own home recording!! Oh, and maybe an instrument or two and the ability to play them (optional).

Here's the product page for it at Musician's Friend ($249):
http://www.musiciansfriend.com/srs7/g=rec/search/detail/base_pid/240239/
Here's the Flash card ($89):
http://www.musiciansfriend.com/srs7/g=rec/search/detail/base_pid/700636/
Here's my mic ($69):
http://www.musiciansfriend.com/srs7/g=rec/search/detail/base_pid/270105/

The 8-track and 512 meg card I'd sell for $220. If you happen to want the mic too, say $260.

This is an extremely easy and cheap way to start recording music.

Let me know if you or someone you know might be interested or have questions. Musical trades considered. (I'd like this to fund the purchase of an autoharp or bass guitar to add to my repertoire)

Book Review Follow-up

2006-01-09T14:51:00.000-05:00

This is big news around the blogosphere today.

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0104061jamesfrey1.html

I would refer you to a quote from my original review of the book:
"The characters that he is surrounded by in rehab are really too good to be true. So good in fact, I wonder if there were some embellished aspects in places."

Parts of it really didn't sit right with me, but I'm cool with taking SOME artistic license and juicing it up a little. The question is how far did he go? I'm still digesting this expose though. I may comment more later. This also gives a clean post to comment about the book on.

Book Review: The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

2006-01-06T14:46:00.000-05:00

Writing Style-2.0
Originality-7.3
Plot-N/A
Enjoyability-5.5
Merit(whatever that means)-8.1
Overall-5.2

Ah, we finally have our first TVF non-fiction selection. Don’t worry, others are on the way. I just haven’t been as in the mood for non-fiction the last few months.

I think the Communist Manifesto is a pretty intriguing selection to kick off the non-fiction section of townesvanfaulkner with. I’ve been wanting to read it for some time now to see what all the fuss is about. I’ve often wondered, am I a communist?, am I a socialist?, am I a social-democrat?, am I a democrat?, am I a capitalist?, etc. In other words, I know that I’m pretty far to the left, but just how far, I’m not sure. So naturally, I’m intrigued by the philosophy and history behind leftist governments. And I must confess I’m pretty new to the subject, but I thought this was a pretty good jumping off point. So here goes.

Ok, my first impression is that throughout the book I would find myself reading one paragraph and going, “Yes, that’s exactly right! Amen, comrade.” And then the next paragraph would totally lose me and I’d go, “Dude that would never work.” or, “No, I don’t agree with that at all.” So it’s pretty much what I had expected going in. I dug the down-with-the-Man-up-with-the-common-worker sentiment, but then it would take it too far or wouldn’t give a realistic road map of how we go about setting up a society that truly fairly distributes wealth and/or power.

But, at least, it’s a step in the right direction. At least it recognizes the inherent evil in societies and governments that actively work to maintain social castes and power structures as they are. I sort of feel about communism the same way I have felt about the space shuttle for years. Sure the space shuttle is way more expensive and way more dangerous than they planned for it to be. And it doesn’t take off nearly as many times per year. And it doesn’t produce very good science. But, the long term goal of sending people into space reliably may very well pay off for mankind. So, there’s a learning curve there. We can look at the shuttle and say it’s a piece of junk and that humans have no business in space and forget it or we can chalk it up to the fact that it was the first try at a non-disposable vehicle. I sort of feel the same way about communism/socialism. It’s been a disaster so far, but there are lessons to be learned there and we shouldn’t give up on the goal of a fair (for lack of a better word) society.

Okay, some other criticisms of the Communist Manifesto. At times, it is terribly hard to follow. Unless you know some serious European history, I think that you will have trouble grasping some of the historical examples entailed. The book is rife with sweeping statements about some bourgeois society in some age in some country and then they move on to some other sweeping statement. I found myself wanting concrete examples to illuminate their points. For instance, they might make one of these statements and then tell how in France in 1752 King So-and-so did this or that and it was bad, thus proving our point. But they never do this. It comes across more as ranting and raving without firm historical examples to back up their assertions. They use language to make it feel as though they are speaking with great historical knowledge or a great deal of logical/scientific forethought, but the concrete examples or logical proofs just aren’t there. I don’t know much about Marx and Engels’ backgrounds but, it sort of feels like it’s written by lawyers instead of political scientists or historians.

Next, let’s look at some quotes and some examples to illustrate what I’m talking about. First, I think the greatest thing about the book, again, is the recognition and importance placed on class antagonisms and their history and the goal of doing away with them.

1. “In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital, is developed, in the same proportion is the proletariat, the modern working class, developed—a class of labourers, who live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labour increases capital. These labourers, who must sell themselves piece-meal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market.

Owing to the extensive use of machinery and to division of labour, the work of the proletarians has lost all individual character, and consequently, all charm for the workman. He becomes an appendage of the machine, and it is only the most simple, most monotonous, and most easily acquired knack, that is required of him. Hence, the cost of production of a workman is restricted, almost entirely, to the means of subsistence that he requires for his maintenance, and for the propagation of his race. But the price of a commodity, and therefore also of labour, is equal to its cost of production. In proportion therefore, as the repulsiveness of the work increases, the wage decreases.”

I’m particularly impressed with this second paragraph. It seems very prescient coming from a book published in 1888. We’ve seen the charm and pride in work decrease steadily from the days of tradesmen to industrial labourers. And with this, so goes people’s self-esteem and so goes family life and so forth. It follows with:

2. “Modern industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist. Masses of labourers, crowded into the factory, are organized like soldiers. As privates of the industrial army they are placed under the command of a perfect hierarchy of officers and sergeants. Not only are they slaves of the bourgeois class, and of the bourgeois State; they are daily and hourly enslaved by the machine, by the over-looker, and, above all, by the individual bourgeois manufacturer himself. The more openly this despotism proclaims gain to be its end and aim, the more petty, the more hateful and the more embittering it is.”

3. “No sooner is the exploitation of the labourer by the manufacturer, so far at an end, that he receives his wages in cash, than he is set upon by the other portions of the bourgeoisie, the landlord, the shopkeeper, the pawnbroker, etc.

The lower strata of the middle class—the small tradespeople, shopkeepers, retired tradesmen generally, the handicraftsmen and peasants—all these sink gradually into the proletariat, partly because their diminutive capital does not suffice for the scale on which Modern Industry is carried on, and is swamped in the competition with the large capitalists, partly because their specialized skill is rendered worthless by the new methods of production. Thus the proletariat is recruited from all classes of the population.”

Again, I am particularly impressed with the second paragraph here. It foresees a disappearance of the middle class when laissez faire capitalism has been allowed to run rampant. Here’s more insight into capitalism’s flaws:

4. “Modern bourgeois society with its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer, who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells…”

5. “It is enough to mention the commercial crises that by their periodical return put on its trial, each time more threateningly, the existence of the entire bourgeois society. In these crises a great part not only of the existing products, but also of the previously created productive forces, are periodically destroyed. In these crises there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity—the epidemic of over-production. Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of devastation had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed; and why? Because there is too much civilization, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce… …The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them. And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand inforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the way for more extensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented.”

I’m reminded here of the Great Depression that occurs 41 years after this was written. Where a great economic boom in the 1920’s led to a concentration of wealth, which in turn, led to the market’s destabilization and then a necessary destruction of “productive forces”. I also key in on the statement that to avoid this, capitalism must constantly be in conquest of new markets or exploit old ones. For instance, it is no longer adequate for companies to simply turn a profit. They must constantly improve upon last year’s profits to stay viable. For instance, as huge and successful as Microsoft is, it is not satisfactory in this economic climate to continue to sell Windows PC’s at the same rate year after year and have their stock price hover at $25-$30 per share. No, they must constantly be expanding and return a profit, not on what they produce, but on the investments that people have made in them. Their options become either exploiting new markets (hope that the xbox 360 sells considerably more than the original xbox) or exploit their employees through layoffs or benefit cutbacks—or the third option of pulling an Enron and misleading investors into thinking they are doing better than they really are (but when the cover is blown here, all the employees lose their retirement savings). The capitalist in me would argue that this competition creates cooler video gaming systems, but still, it’s pretty scary really what companies are pushed to do in the name of returning profits on investments. I mean how long can the market continue to expand? And what drastic measures does society have to take in order to preserve this expansion? For instance, expansion into other countries or more exploitation of the proletariat, dwindling of the middle class, concentration of wealth, disaster.

So what is the communist solution?

6. “The immediate aim of the Communist is the same as that of all the other proletarian parties: formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat.”

Okay down with the Man. I’m cool with that. And then:

7. “…the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.”

Huh? Does this mean I have to share my new Xbox 360 with my neighbors?

8. “You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in your existing society, private property is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine-tenths. You reproach us, therefore, with intending to do away with a form of property, the necessary condition for whose existence is the non-existence of any property for the immense majority of society.

In one word, you reproach us with intending to do away with your property. Precisely so; that is just what we intend.”

Yes, I am horrified. And, I’m sorry, what about my xbox?

The Communist Manifesto is rife with paragraphs like this second one, where they don’t really make an argument they simply shrug you off saying, “Enough with your bourgeois attitude, your complaints mean nothing because you are of the bourgeoisie. Moving on!” Another good example of this:

9. “The charges against Communism made from a religious, a philosophical, and, generally, from an ideological standpoint, are not deserving of serious examination.”

10. “It has been objected that upon the abolition of private property all work will cease, and universal laziness will overtake us.

According to this, bourgeois society ought long ago to have gone to the dogs through sheer idleness; for those of its members who work, acquire nothing, and those who acquire anything, do not work. The whole of this objection is but another expression of the tautology: that there can no longer be any wage-labour when there is no longer any capital.”

Here’s a good list that the Manifesto offers of steps that a Communist government would take:

1. “Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes”
2. “A heavy progressive or graduated income tax”
3. “Abolition of all right of inheritance.”
4. “Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels”
5. “Centralisation of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.”
6. “Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.”
7. “Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.”
8. “Equal liability of all to labour. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.”
9. “Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more equable distribution of the population over the country.”
10. “Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c., &c.”

Some of these I’m cool with and some are just plain crazy. And this leads us to the greatest critique of communism—that it leads to despotism. Check out this quote:

“Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionizing the mode of production.”

And there it is. The fatal flaw. In other words, with Communism, anything goes for the sake of the cause. Individuals don’t matter. A great read that I should recommend here is Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon. It’s about precisely this.

One final critique—who the hell is the audience here? I mean I understand that this book has been influential and all, but if it’s supposed to be a wake-up call to the proletariat shouldn’t they have made it a little easier for an under-educated working man to follow?

So in summation, what we have here is a beautiful, rousing call to action on the part of the proletariat to seize power from the bourgeois. Then we have a very insightful, cogent, prophetic critique of capitalism and it’s particular, peculiar flaws. But, what I don’t see, is a comprehensive solution. Instead, I see a blueprint for how a despot can take advantage of demagoguery to seize power and then do whatever he pleases in the name of the long-term cause. I also see a comical reluctance to answer critics of Communism who have some pretty valid points.

I don’t know if this is really a book review anymore. Not sure what the hell this is. But fuck it, it’s my blog bitches.

WORKING MEN OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE!

Book Review: East of Eden by John Steinbeck

2006-01-04T16:45:00.000-05:00

Writing Style-8.1
Originality-8.1
Plot-8.0
Literary Merit(whatever that means)-8.4
Overall-8.2

Man, this book was awesome. Maybe not quite Grapes of Wrath awesome, but still incredibly awesome nonetheless.

This is one of those books where you savor every single sentence. It doesn’t matter about the context, you just love the way each word is put together. Steinbeck’s writing has a very southern quality to it. You could rip the cover off this book and change the setting from California to Yoknapatawpha and I could easily believe that it was Faulkner’s.

There are a ton of stories in here and a ton of characters and a ton of themes. It’s a very meaty book. But not difficult to read at all.

Unfortunately, I’m behind in my reviews so it’s been awhile now since I read this and some of it escapes me now. But, essentially there are two families, the Trasks and the Hamiltons, and it covers a couple of generations of these families. The story of the Trasks is really a bit more important to the central theme of the novel and certainly more compelling.

There are many biblical allusions, as there were with The Grapes of Wrath, but the most obvious is the story of Cain and Abel. First, Cyrus Trask has two sons named Charles and Adam. Then, Adam has two sons named Caleb and Aron. Both generations involve an intense, very intense, sibling rivalry and each set of brothers strives fiercely for approval from their father. In both cases, the “C” brother is more mean-spirited and extremely jealous of the “A” brother, not just for the fact that the fathers favor the “A” brother but also for the love of a girl.

I think the main theme here is your ancestry and where you come from developing the type of person that you are in life. But, it’s not so much the “sins of the father” thing as it is “approval of the father, sins of the mother” in this instance. It’s kind of murky, I’m not sure if the ending affirms that we can break with the past or not. Or, if it’s more about the source of the strife or evil in mankind and where that comes from. Do you blame Adam or Caleb/Cain (or Cathy/Eve)? Not sure. But, I think the point with stories like this is not so much about what the author’s philosophy or intent is as much as the universality and identifiability of the characters and their actions. I’d love to hear some thoughts from anyone who’s read it.

At any rate, don’t let this deter you from reading it. I think that everyone should give this one a try. I don’t like it quite as much as Grapes of Wrath, but it might actually be a more enjoyable read for the average reader.

Googling Kingsport

2005-12-21T16:28:00.000-05:00

Since this is likely my last day posting until 2006, I thought I would make it a mega-post to tide you over through the holidays. I know how everyone will be jonesin' for some tvf.

This one is pretty cool. I heard one of her stories a couple of weeks ago on NPR. She's also the sister-in-law of a regular tvf reader, but perhaps we'll save that for a future Googling Kingsport.

http://www.mdn.org/2004/STAFF/SHELTONM.HTM

Merry Christmas everyone.

Townes Van Zandt Quote

2005-12-21T16:22:00.000-05:00

In my ongoing effort to pimp the genius of Townes Van Zandt, I bring you a series of quotes.

If I had a nickel I'd find a game
If I won a dollar I'd make it rain
If it rained an ocean I'd drink it dry
And lay me down dissatisfied

-From "Rex's Blues"
Townes Van Zandt

Book Review: Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller

2005-12-21T15:58:00.000-05:00

Writing Style-6.5
Originality-8.2
Plot-1.2
Literary Merit(whatever that means)-8.4
Overall-6.4

I thought going into this book that I would either love or hate it, but surprisingly I simply just like it fairly well.

About the first 40 pages were nearly unbearable. They made absolutely no sense to me I must confess. I started practically skimming and chugged along simply because I hate to quit on books, especially in the first couple of hundred pages or if the book is less than 300 pages total. [For example, a post is coming soon in which I talk about a book that I recently gave up on at page 200 out of 500.]

After this schizo-drunken introduction, it calms down quite a bit. Then it is simply Miller’s day-to-day life in gay Paree, which pretty much consists of living on little or no money, bumming from his friends, drinking, and last but certainly not least, sleeping with whores. I guess it’s the honesty about his obsession with the whores and their Cunts, really the female Cunt in general, that most people come away with from the book.

There is absolutely no plot whatsoever, so if you are a fan of plot, this book is not for you. The writing is pretty beautiful though. I mean, he’s no James Agee IMHO, but if a guy can get you to read 300 pages of absolute nothingness then he’s obviously a pretty talented wordsmith.

The one anecdote that stood out however was a story about Miller taking a religious kid who was coming off a two year vow of celibacy to a whorehouse. The kid didn’t know that you weren’t supposed to shit in the bidet in the whore’s bedroom. So, he shits, the whore goes off on him and kicks him out and he is terribly embarrassed and takes it as a sign that he shouldn’t have been preparing to copulate with a whore and renews his vow of celibacy. I think that if this story were taken out of the novel, it would stand on its own very well and be a classic short story. I loved it.

So, we have to ask the question—what’s the big deal with this book? Why is it so popular and why do some people hate it? Well I think there are a number of factors at work. The first that comes to mind is the identifiable and brutally honest glorification of the Female Reproductive Organs [or FRO]. This is at the same time intriguing, comforting, and repellant. At the same time that he glorifies women he must also degrade them. This paradox, common in men, is extremely interesting and always makes for good reading. In short, this book is grossly misogynistic.

It’s also grossly self-absorbed and egotistical. This book actually rivals Armies of the Night by Normal Mailer as the most self-absorbed, egotistical book that I have ever read. This facet of the novel is also fascinating and disgusting at the same time. I think that there is a brand of depressive, artistic genius that is so sensitive to the suffering of the world that they must become wrapped up in self-gratification constantly, often to the point of addiction, for the sake of self-preservation. I think that ultimately this might be the root of these paradoxes. In other words, someone may be so attuned to what’s wrong with the world or themselves that they can’t live with the world as it is or as most do and they end up hating themselves. In order to cope, they must become self-absorbed and withdrawn. I think that often this self-absorption is accompanied by drug addiction, alcoholism, sex addiction, and so forth and sometimes just plain dropping out of society or moving around a lot or ramblin’ so to speak.

At any rate, this self-absorbed artistic genius motif also makes for interesting reading. Many people are drawn to this type of person, and many people hate them because they feel like they should buck up and not be so worthless. [Many I think are jealous that they don’t have the social excuse to go off and do these things themselves.]

So, the book is misogynistic, egotistical, and plotless? Yes, I’m afraid so. But, you know, by the time I finished it, I was strangely charmed. Not that I plan to go read Tropic of Capricorn any time soon, but I’m really glad that I picked this one up and slogged through the rough parts. It’s really great writing and Miller is simply an intriguing character and you get to go deep into his mind as he goes about his daily life as a starving, horny artist in Paris. Good times.

Townes Van Zandt

2005-12-14T10:55:00.000-05:00

The name for this blog is an amalgam of two brilliant artists. William Faulkner we've pretty much all heard of, I'm sure, but, the Townes Van... 'Where does that come from?' some might ask.

I'd like to introduce my readers to Townes Van Zandt, in my humble opinion the greatest songwriter the world has ever known. And many agree including Steve Earle who declared Townes the greatest songwriter ever and then went on to say, "I'll say that standing on Bob Dylan's coffee table in my cowboy boots". [When someone told Townes about this quote he retorted, "I've seen Bob Dylan's bodyguards and Steve's not getting anywhere near his coffee table"]

I found this radio program that KUT in Austin, TX produced to go along with a new Townes documentary, which I can't wait to get ahold of.

I strongly encourage you to give it a listen. Townes led an interesting life and it's got some great song clips scattered throughout as an introduction to his music.

http://www.kut.org/site/PageServer?pagename=Townes_Van_Zandt

Book Review: Main Street by Sinclair Lewis

2005-12-13T14:27:00.000-05:00

Writing Style-6.1
Originality-7.5
Plot-6.5
Literary Merit(whatever that means)-7.2
Overall-6.5

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I read it right on the heels of Jude the Obscure and they fit together fairly well. They are both staunchly feminist and attack societal strictures and institutions such as religion and marriage. Main Street is quite a bit lighter however, for the most part.

It is the story of Carol Kennicott, a well-educated young woman from Minneapolis who marries a country doctor and moves out to the small town of Gopher Prairie to make a life with him.

She misses her big city life with cultured friends and art and is pretty bored with Gopher Prairie. She resolves to transform the people of Gopher Prairie for the sake of her own sanity and their edification. For example, she forms a library board and encourages reading of more serious works and she forms a drama club to perform plays for the town. With each attempt, she is thwarted in her efforts, usually fairly comically. The town is simply happy with their simple, country-bumpkin lives, their blatant hypocrisies that aren’t so obvious to them, and their ability to not question anything about their lives any deeper than how to make more money, or what to eat for dinner, or what the other townsfolk thinks of them. For someone who has lived in the city and/or in the North and then returned to small-town life in the South, the characters in Gopher Prairie are definitely recognizable and Carol’s frustrations with them are easily relatable.

In the end, she is faced with many of the same questions that plagued Jude Hawley and Sue Bridehead – how to fit into a society that they are completely unable to relate to; how to deal with childrearing on top of these other problems; how to remain a good wife while maintaining her own individuality and opinions.

Lewis does a good job of complicating some of these issues (it’s not all about making fun of hicks). Carol’s husband Will is not really a bad guy. In arguments that they have about Carol’s unhappiness, he makes good coherent arguments about the good qualities of Gopher Prairie’s citizens. Carol gains a ton of respect for Will as he goes about his job as a country doctor and comes to understand how difficult it can be.

I’d certainly recommend this book if you enjoy these themes. It presents a great contrast between city and town living in the American Midwest in the early part of the 20th century. It’s surprisingly feminist to have been published in 1920 (I think) and to have been so well received by the public at the time. Even though it has several levels, it could be boiled down to the story of a bored housewife. I think that it was and continues to be of supreme importance to tell the stories of bored housewives. I’d also point out that it was around this time that we gave bored housewives the right to vote.

Googling Kingsport

2005-12-08T16:56:00.000-05:00

I haven't done one of these in awhile.

Who's that in the upper right hand corner?

http://www.dcvols.com/flagfootball2004/

And, 3rd photo, slightly right of center, way in the back.

http://www.dcvols.com/whitehouse/

Book Review: A Million Little Pieces by James Frey

2005-12-07T15:31:00.000-05:00

Writing Style-6.6
Originality-6.9
Plot-7.1
Literary Merit(whatever that means)-6.9
Overall-6.8

I’ve read several great memoirs within the last year or so in this vein; most notably Dave Eggers’ A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and The Liar’s Club by Mary Karr. This book ranks right up there with those.

This is a personal account of the author’s trip to, through, and out of a drug and alcohol rehabilitation clinic. Basically, the dude has been an addict for nearly as long as he can remember. He started stealing alcohol and getting drunk when he was like 8 or something and then quickly moved on to pot and then harder and harder drugs until at age 23 he’s constantly drunk and his drug of choice is crack. He describes daily vomiting, passing out, shitting blood, etc.

When the book opens, he wakes up on a plane with his face and body torn up all to pieces and he has no idea what he’s doing or memory of how he got there. This essentially is his rock bottom and so, with the help of his parents, he checks into one of the premiere rehab clinics in the country.

Alright, I might as well own up to it, this is the current *throat clearing noise* Oprah book club selection. With this book, she returns to recommending contemporary authors after a hiatus of 2 or 3 years (much to the joy of the publishing industry).

It’s really an extremely edgy and gritty book. Frey talks frankly about all of the nastiest aspects of addiction and addicts without glorifying it at all.

It’s extremely fun to read though. Laugh out loud funny at times. The characters that he is surrounded by in rehab are really too good to be true. So good in fact, I wonder if there were some embellished aspects in places.

The writing is pretty monotone, it gets to be a little repetitive, but not too bad really. There are no quotation marks or paragraph indentations. I tend to like these type of gimmicks. It looks beautiful on the page, much like Cormac McCarthy’s writing. And it fits the sort of frantic nervousness and addiction and rage at the center of the story.

Everything that makes up a good memoir and story is included here (not to mention what would make a good movie). Not only are the characters great, but there is a forbidden love story and there is mysteries that Frey adeptly answers in little chunks that keep you turning pages. For instance, what happened to him at the beginning of the book? What is his friend Leonard’s mysterious background? What went on with Frey and his parents such that he turned out this way?

I also like that Frey gets turned on to Taoism in the book. I’ve always been a big fan of this philosophy and have adopted it myself (or tried to as best I can) at certain times. Frey is sort of faced with a problem that I am often frightened by. What if at some point in your life you are in dire need of religion, but are completely incapable of believing in anything that requires faith? It’s an utterly terrifying thought.

My biggest problem with the book is the idea that an addict can simply choose not to be an addict. Frey apparently chooses this route and has been sober ever since. But, I agree with his therapist that he is one in a million. I’m very happy for him and have the utmost respect for his courage and determination and success, but I can’t help but think that this idea is a common one and a dangerous one to reinforce, especially given the circulation of an *throat clearing noise* Oprah selection. I know it’s a memoir so it’s about Frey’s journey towards sobriety, but I would have liked to have seen his triumph cast in a slightly different light—not so, ‘I’m gonna kick this thing’s ass myself, because I’m a badass and everyone else be damned’ and then he goes on to, in fact, kick it’s ass; but that his particular case was special in some way or another that helped him beat the overwhelming odds that has a more complex explanation than, ‘I’m a badass, so I kicked it’s ass.’

Frey seems like a pretty interesting character. Check out this Salon article on him and the book.

http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2003/04/19/frey/

I particularly like the tattoo “F.T.B.I.T.T.T.D.”, which stands for Fuck the Bullshit it’s Time to Throw Down. I also don’t much mind the ego and self-promotion. For some reason, I’m often a fan of this tactic, ala Ryan Adams.

Overall, this is a really great memoir. It’s got it all. Don’t miss it just because you-know-who recommends it. Also, make sure and read A Heartbreaking Work, which Frey colorfully dismisses in his interview. It’s actually better. Sorry James.

New York Times Top 10 Books of the Year

2005-12-07T15:24:00.000-05:00

Ornitholoco posted this a couple of days ago in the comments of the National Book Awards post. I wanted to highlight it though because people don't always check back in and see new comments on old posts.

Make sure and check the other years back to 1997.

Thanks Ornitholoco!

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/11/books/review/tenbest.html

Another TVF Sighting

2005-12-06T15:05:00.000-05:00

This actually looks like a decent site in it's inception stage, not quite as dubious as that last site I found my reviews on which made up a random number of stars.

http://www.authorstore.com/c.p/0375400117

A Feast for Crows by George R. R. Martin

2005-12-05T15:49:00.000-05:00

Writing Style-5.6
Originality-7.4
Plot-8.3
Literary Merit(whatever that means)-4.2
Overall-7.2

If you read my post the day before this came out, then you know the background. This is the fourth book in a now planned to be seven book series called A Song of Ice and Fire. It is epic fantasy. But it’s different.

Most fantasy kind of sucks, I know. The genre has very dedicated fans that have reasonably low standards in my opinion. See Robert Jordan.

I’ll say it again, because you should take my word for it… this is different. This is brilliant storytelling. A lot of the same devices are there: kings and queens, knights, dragons, magic, etc. But the scope of the storytelling is so grand even when compared to other “epic” fantasy series that have multiple 1000+ page books.

Martin apparently does a ton of research on medieval England and wanted to model the island of Westeros on an England with seven major kingdoms in it. He at first intended it to be mainly court intrigue, diplomacy, spying, sabotage, war, etc. between the kings and important playmakers among these seven kingdoms for power over the whole, or within each kingdom, or all the way down to lordship over a certain castle or province. But slowly magic, the supernatural, and dragons began to creep into the story, so he went with it.

The manner in which he tells the story makes it feel real. It’s not the typical linear journey where an unlikely hero finds a magical object or has to go find a magical object and then there’s a long journey through distant lands populated by diverse, strange creatures like dwarves and elves and orcs and so forth. These books are told from the viewpoints of dozens of major characters both bad and good. In fact, the line between good and evil is not nearly as distinct as in the typical fantasy story. Someone that you abhor in the first book may become your favorite character whom you are rooting for by the third book and vice versa. But don’t get too connected to any of the characters because Martin is not afraid to kill off anyone, and I mean anyone. The characters are extremely dynamic with their modus operandi, raison d’etres, and motivations changing as the story progresses and powers shift and loved ones die and situations change.

This all goes into making the story feel as though you are reading a history of a real world in an alternate universe. It doesn’t feel contrived like many stories that one human being comes up with. As you read Lord of the Rings, you KNOW that what’s his name… Viggo Mortenson isn’t going to die in battle before he becomes the king, you KNOW that Frodo and Sam are going to succeed. So there’s really nothing at stake. It’s a wonderful story, but it’s still just a story. In A Song of Ice and Fire you aren’t sure that the good guys are going to prevail, in fact, you aren’t even certain who the good guys are. And that seems to be more like real life. Is America a beacon of freedom or are we war-mongering capitalist pigs? Who are the good guys and who are the bad in the whole Israel v. Palestine thing? Why did World War One happen, again? Was Napoleon a hero or a villain, did he change from one to the other at any point? How about Che Guevara? How about LBJ? Real life isn’t really Frodo and Sam vs. Sauron.

And that’s exactly what I think makes A Song of Ice and Fire so brilliant and rises it up above the muck that is the fantasy genre.

I don’t want to get into talking about the plot in A Feast for Crows specifically, because to even begin to would give away some things that occur in the first three books.

From what the author says, A Feast for Crows is actually only half of the book that he intended making the series go to seven books instead of the originally planned six. When he surpassed 1400 pages, he knew he had to cut it somehow. Instead of cutting it in half chronologically, he cut certain characters' chapters out. So A Feast for Crows revolves around a certain set of characters and the next book which is mostly already finished, titled A Dance of Dragons, is a second set of characters along the same period of time.

One caveat here: the epic sweep of the narration is at the same time the series’ greatest strength but is in serious jeopardy of becoming it’s greatest weakness as the series progresses. There are SO many major characters, there are SO many kingdoms, castles, lordships, etc that people are vying for, and there are SO many parallel plot lines that it becomes hard to follow. Especially, when there are years in between the publication of one book to the next. I read a chapter that is from the perspective of one character and tells their story and then by the time I cycle through most of the other characters and their chapters and get back around to the same character, I’ve almost forgotten where I left off with them and what’s happening in their life. Of course, I think that this will someday make for great re-reading fodder. I think that this series would actually be better enjoyed if you started it once all of the books were published and did not have gaps in between to forget what's going on. (Make a note somewhere that in around 2014 you should remember to pick up a copy of A Game of Thrones at the bookstore.)

I think that Martin has slowly widened his scope and cast of characters and that is a very good thing, but if he takes it any further, he is in danger of completely confounding the reader. I would like to see that trend climax with the Feast of Crows/Dance of Dragons book(s) and for him to start narrowing the focus again as we build towards a finale.

In conclusion, if you are like me and you like the concepts that come with fantasy or sci-fi, but you find that most of it is mindless crap, then you should definitely check out George R. R. Martin. If you are a diehard fantasy fan then you should LOVE this stuff. If you’ve ever had an inkling of desire for kings and queens and knights and dragons and wizards and ghosts and so forth but were afraid to try this stuff or were turned off by the stereotypical fantasy fanboy or that section of the bookstore then this might be the time you want to jump on in, the water is fine. If this just isn’t your cup of tea then that’s cool too, I can make my peace with that.

An Xbox 360 Love Story: Or Why I Haven't Blogged in Awhile

2005-12-05T10:59:00.000-05:00

That's right, I got a 360. On the launch date, in fact, about 20 minutes after midnite on Nov. 22. I had preordered one through Gamestop on Aug. 22 and they called to tell me that they couldn't guarantee me one until after xmas. So, I figured, 'Okay, I guess I'll have to wait in line somewhere.'

So, my plan was to go after work to the Oak Ridge Wal-mart and wait in line until they went on sale at midnite, but when I checked in at Wal-mart on my lunch break around 11:30 am I found that there were already about 10-12 crazy SOB's already in line and that they only had 26 of the premium packages and 22 of the core (sucker's) package. So, I figured that I wasn't gonna make it if I waited until 5:30 when I got off work.

I went back to work did a couple of hours of essential work and then told my boss I was sick. I got back to Wal-mart and was in line at about 2:00 pm. I was #18. By 3:00 they had run out of the premiums and the core line started filling. I think they ran out of the core at around 7:00 pm.

If you do the math, I waited in line for 10 hours.

It was actually kind of fun. I hadn't done anything like that since Episode One came out when I waited in line 6 hours for tickets.

Wal-mart (who I'm not a big fan of, btw) was pretty gracious. They gave us chairs and doughnuts and bottled water. And they sat us in the magazines and books aisle. I started reading the new Oprah selection, A Million Little Pieces by James Frey (expect a review soon).

So I waited and waited and waited. Amy brought me a sandwich and a latte for dinner and sat with me for about an hour. Thanks, babe.

Two people sold their place in line to other people for $50 each. There was almost a fight. Someone said there was a fight at a Wal-mart in Knoxville and that 6 people were arrested. Good times.

The thing cost me 10 hours and $399 and it was worth every second and penny. I got Call of Duty 2, Madden 06, Perfect Dark Zero, and Halo 2 (I never had the first xbox, but played Fern's boyfriend's).

Halo 2 is considered by most to be the best online game for consoles. It looks even better on the 360. I've finished the Call of Duty campaign and it was awesome. Online, it could rival Halo, but it has SERIOUS lag issues that keep me from playing it. Perfect Dark is awesome and probably so far the most popular of the launch day releases. I really like it for the cooperative play. It's not just the typical going through the same levels with a buddy standing beside you shooting everything up. They actually have levels that require you to be different characters at different points on the map and help each other and solve simple puzzles together. It's terrific and I wish more games would be designed for this because it's extremely fun. Madden 06 leaves a lot to be desired. I think they threw it together in a hurry and left a lot out. The player's arm muscles and the stadiums look amazing but as for actual gameplay, I like NCAA 06 on the PS2 much better. However, I have my xbox online so I've been playing football games on there which is much funner than playing the computer. As long as your opponent doesn't quit the game because they are losing. That burns me up.

Anyhoo, this is what I've been up to. It's also slowed up my reading and songwriting and rendered me pretty much useless.

If or when any of my TVF readership gets one of these things, let me know. We should do some online gaming. My gamertag is townesvanzandt. Townesvanfaulkner was too long.

Book News: 2005 National Book Awards

2005-11-17T16:52:00.000-05:00

The 2005 National Book Award winners were announced last night. Here's a listing of winners and finalists:

FICTION
Winner: William T. Vollmann, Europe Central (Viking)
Finalists: E.L. Doctorow, The March (Random House)Mary Gaitskill, Veronica (Pantheon)Christopher Sorrentino, Trance (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)Renè Steinke, Holy Skirts (William Morrow)

NONFICTION
Winner: Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking (Alfred A. Knopf)
Finalists:Alan Burdick, Out of Eden: An Odyssey of Ecological Invasion (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) Leo Damrosch, Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Restless Genius (Houghton Mifflin) Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn, 102 Minutes: The Untold Story of the Fight to Survive Inside the Twin Towers (Times Books) Adam Hochschild, Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire’s Slaves (Houghton Mifflin)

POETRY
WINNER:W.S. Merwin, Migration: New and Selected Poems (Copper Canyon Press)
Finalists: John Ashbery, Where Shall I Wander (Ecco)Frank Bidart, Star Dust: Poems (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)Brendan Galvin, Habitat: New and Selected Poems, 1965-2005 (Louisiana State University Press)Vern Rutsala, The Moment’s Equation (Ashland Poetry Press)

YOUNG PEOPLE'S LITERATURE
WINNER: Jeanne Birdsall, The Penderwicks (Alfred A. Knopf)
Finalists: Adele Griffin, Where I Want to Be (Putnam)Chris Lynch, Inexcusable (Atheneum)Walter Dean Myers, Autobiography of My Dead Brother (HarperTempest)Deborah Wiles, Each Little Bird That Sings (Harcourt)

For more info and past winners, visit:
http://www.nationalbook.org/nba.html

You gotta love this town. (part 2)

2005-11-14T17:23:00.000-05:00

http://www3.knoxnews.com/kns/local_news/article/0,1406,KNS_347_4232923,00.html

Book Review: Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy

2005-11-14T16:51:00.000-05:00

Writing Style-7.1
Originality-7.6
Plot-6.8
Literary Merit(whatever that means)-7.3
Overall-7.3

I was really surprised at how much I identified with this book. I thought that it would be more obscure, so to speak, but it’s actually pretty easy reading and a pretty simple, enjoyable story. I’m also always amazed at books that are over a century old (Jude was first published in 1895) that feel so relevant today.

I identified with this novel for two main reasons: 1) the main character, Jude Fawley, sets seemingly rather simple goals for himself and is repeatedly thwarted by unforeseen circumstances beyond his control; 2) this novel is a scathing diatribe against social conventions at the time, mainly marriage, which to my mind haven’t really changed all that much (particularly in the South).

Jude is a bright young man of simple means. Orphaned I believe, at any rate, he is being raised by an aunt who cares very little for him. He has a teacher who encourages him to make use of his above average intellect. He becomes inspired to self-teach himself “grammars”, Latin and Greek and so forth. And reads the classics voraciously to educate himself. He has the goal of going to the larger neighboring city of Christminster and going to college and perhaps becoming a minister.

But, alas, one thing after another happens to set him back in these dreams. He meets a girl and is seduced into marriage. Once he gets to Christminster he can’t get into the college. So he is left to work as a stone mason and puts his dreams aside.

He splits with his wife and then meets up with his cousin, Sue Whitehead. He falls in love with her. Gross, I know, but the reader feels pretty empathetic to their plight.

This book is kind of rough in its portrayal of the two women in Jude’s life. His first wife, Arabella, is the stereotypical gold digger who essentially tricks him into marrying her for her own financial comfort in life. And Sue, though at times a feminist, Hardy writes her to be far too whiny and moody, almost crazy, so that it detracts slightly from any feminist arguments he may be making. One feminist, anti-wedding, passage comes to mind where Sue is writing to Jude about her pending marriage to another man.

[“I have been looking at the marriage service in the prayer-book, and it seems to me very humiliating that a giver-away should be required at all. According to the ceremony as there printed, my bridegroom chooses me of his own will and pleasure; but I don't choose him. Somebody gives me to him, like a she-ass or she-goat, or any other domestic animal. Bless your exalted views of woman, O churchman!”]

I particularly liked some of these other passages, along the same lines:

[“I think I should begin to be afraid of you, Jude, the moment you had contracted to cherish me under a Government stamp, and I was licensed to be loved on the premises by you—Ugh, how horrible and sordid! Although, as you are, free, I trust you more than any other man in the world."]

[“Apart from ourselves, and our unhappy peculiarities, it is foreign to a man's nature to go on loving a person when he is told that he must and shall be that person's lover. There would be a much likelier chance of his doing it if he were told not to love. If the marriage ceremony consisted in an oath and signed contract between the parties to cease loving from that day forward, in consideration of personal possession being given, and to avoid each other's society as much as possible in public, there would be more loving couples than there are now. Fancy the secret meetings between the perjuring husband and wife, the denials of having seen each other, the clambering in at bedroom windows, and the hiding in closets! There'd be little cooling then."]

[“And I am not so exceptional a woman as you think. Fewer women like marriage than you suppose, only they enter into it for the dignity it is assumed to confer, and the social advantages it gains them sometimes—a dignity and an advantage that I am quite willing to do without."]

[“What Arabella has been saying to me has made me feel more than ever how hopelessly vulgar an institution legal marriage is—a sort of trap to catch a man—I can't bear to think of it.”]

[As she read the four-square undertaking, never before seen by her, into which her own and Jude's names were inserted, and by which that very volatile essence, their love for each other, was supposed to be made permanent, her face seemed to grow painfully apprehensive. "Names and Surnames of the Parties"—(they were to be parties now, not lovers, she thought). "Condition"—(a horrid idea)—"Rank or Occupation"—"Age"—"Dwelling at"—"Length of Residence"—"Church or Building in which the Marriage is to be solemnized"—"District and County in which the Parties respectively dwell."

"It spoils the sentiment, doesn't it!" she said on their way home.]

These are all good, strong feminist sentiments expressed by Sue. But she does tend to grate on your nerves as the book progresses. Really it’s because she’s going a little crazy because of society’s constraints upon her.

Also, these passages point to the main point of the novel I think. It’s really a story about Jude and Sue’s relationship. Both are fragile, intellectual, free thinkers and are therefore dogged by society and their prior marriages damning their current lives.

So, this book really spoke to me, for obvious reasons for anyone that knows me well. I highly recommend it to those that don’t mind the 19th century voice. This is what Classics, with a capital C, are supposed to be; timeless and relevant well over a century later.

You gotta love this town.

2005-11-11T10:59:00.000-05:00

Imagine if this dude was your boss. Crazy stuff. Sounds like a candidate for Lithium, if only he had someone in his life who wasn't too ignorant to recognize it.

http://www3.knoxnews.com/kns/lifestyles_columnists/article/0,1406,KNS_337_4219747,00.html

His letters to the editor:

http://web.knoxnews.com/pdf/1108gilmore1.pdf

http://web.knoxnews.com/pdf/1108gilmore2.pdf

BIG NEWS: My dog Suttree does NOT have cancer!!!!

2005-11-08T14:40:00.000-05:00

We just got word from the oncologist:

From: Carlos Souza/SACS/VET/UTIA
Sent: Tuesday, November 08, 2005 2:12 PM
To: L., Amy
Subject: RE: Suttree

Hi Amy:

Good news!
Just came out of surgery and received the results.
There is no tumor.
I will call you sometime this afternoon.
Carlos H. de M. Souza
DVM, MS, Dipl. ACVIM (Oncology)
Clinical Instructor
The University Of Tennessee
College of Veterinary Medicine
Dept. Small Animal Clinical Sciences
2407 River Dr.
Knoxville TN 37996-4545

Ok, here's the story. Sut has been limping for about 4-6 weeks now. We took her in, the vet thought it was a sprain, gave us an anti-inflammatory and told us to try that. The limp persisted. We went back to the vet for an xray thinking that it was maybe more serious-- as in a torn ligament.

The xray revealed a lesion in her knee. The vet called us and said that in all likelihood it was cancer, but he wanted a second opinion from the radiologist at UT vet school.

We waited the rest of that friday for the radiologist's opinion. Meanwhile, Amy searches the internet for info. (damn you Amy!, kidding I love you) The internet says that this form of bone cancer is very agressive such that by the time it is diagnosed it has almost certainly spread to the lungs and the prognosis is about 4 months to a year of life. That the dog would need to have the leg amputated to relieve the pain and chemotherapy could be performed to lenghten the life by a number of months but that it was incurable.

We cried ourselves to sleep that night.

The next morning the vet calls and says that the "nationally-renowned" radiologist has diagnosed it as an extremely rare, almost always benign cyst. But, we should definitely get a biopsy to make sure. Needless, to say we were ecstatic and thought that we were in the clear for a few days.

We schedule the biopsy and go in for the surgery. First of all, the info sheet on Sut that we receive at the front desk says that she has osteosarcoma (the REALLY bad bone cancer). And Amy notices it and we wonder why they have that down since the radiologist said it wasn't cancer. Then when we speak to the oncologist, he is nothing but bad news. He tells us that everyone else, other than that one dude, who has looked at the xray's thinks that it is osteosarcoma. It's just too common in that area of the leg.

So we leave thinking that she has cancer again.

The doctor performs the surgery and calls to tell us that it went well and that the bone was really hard, not the way it normally is when it's a tumor. So it was some promising news, but next we wait for what is called the cytology and then the real determining stage--the histopathology.

The cytology comes back inconclusive. The doctor says that it doesn't look like classic osteosarcoma but that there ARE some abnormal cells. He says it's still a toss-up, it could go either way, we'll have to wait for the histo-pathology results.

Eighteen excruciating days since the xray, we have just now received those results. NOOOO FUCKING CANCERRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Why does fucking cancer even exist????? How can anyone seriously talk about intelligent design when our bodies all too often spontaneously mutate and starts eating itself?????!!!!!!!!! FUCKKKKK!!!!!!!!

Both our vet and the oncologist have never seen one of these come back benign.

This is my baby. She's gonna live to be a hundred! And that's human years bitches!

Book News: A Feast for Crows out tomorrow

2005-11-07T15:49:00.000-05:00

George RR Martin's book A Feast for Crows comes out tomorrow. It's the forth in his epic fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire.

This is not your typical epic fantasy series... This one is REALLY, REALLY good and geared towards adults instead of children or adults with the minds of children. I'm telling you, if you have even the slightest inkling of possible interest in the fantasy genre then you should try this series. The first book is A Game of Thrones. The author expects to wrap it up in six or seven books. And the story doesn't get weaker as it goes along like many fantasy series with several books, this one only gets better.

Read this story about the series and author from the Detroit Free Press.

http://www.freep.com/features/books/martin6e_20051106.htm

Book Review: White Teeth by Zadie Smith

2005-11-03T15:24:00.000-05:00

Writing Style-7.2
Originality-8.1
Plot-7.0
Literary Merit(whatever that means)-7.2
Overall-7.4

This book is fabulous. Really, really top notch. As evidenced by its inclusion in the recently published top 100 novels from Time magazine.

This is the author’s debut novel, published at the ripe old age of 23 and was very well received by critics.

It’s about multiculturalism in a very ethnically mixed neighborhood in London. It’s centered around two families. One family consists of Archie Jones, a depressed, overweight, old white guy who marries Clara, a much younger Jamaican girl running away from her mom who is a crazy Jehovah ’s Witness. They have a daughter named Irie. The other family is Muslim and of Bengali descent. This family consists of the father Samad Iqbal and his wife Alsana. Samad and Alsana have twin sons, Millat and Magid, who are friends with Irie.

Okay, there’s your cast of characters. Samad and Archie become reluctant and unlikely best friends after serving in WWII together. Then they are neighbors in London.

My favorite part of the novel is about Samad’s twin sons. Samad wants them to be good Muslims and respect their Bengali heritage. He wants to send them to school in India where he came from, but he only has money to send one. He picks his favorite, the more promising Magid. Millat has to stay home in London. The interesting thing that happens is that this backfires completely on him. Magid ends up being a pro-British, agnostic engineer and Millat, in London, turns into a Muslim extremist.

It’s a great story and I think the point is to highlight what life is like for immigrants and people with different cultural backgrounds in England, and similarly I’m sure in America. The characters struggle with their identities. There is the desire to fit in vs. the desire to be true to your heritage. This is well developed in Millat and Magid’s story. They can’t simply be themselves, one has to overcompensate fitting in and the other has to overcompensate by rebelling against his surroundings. Also, there is the violent mixing of very different ideas in one place. The strange bond between Samad and Archie is very touching.

And then, there’s the very interesting story of Clara’s mom, the Jehovah’s Witness, who is always working to convert people and predict and announce to whoever will listen when the world is coming to an end. She drives Clara away but catches another unlikely convert in the neighborhood.

As you can see, there is a lot of plot here to be juggled and many characters with very different viewpoints to be fleshed out. And Zadie Smith does this brilliantly, especially for a debut novel by a 23 year old. The story never loses focus. You come to care about all of the characters. And they all have a unique voice, it’s not like many amateurish, debut novels where every character sounds the same and just isn’t convincing in their uniqueness.

This book gets a resounding recommendation. It’s easy, compelling reading with a lot of heart and soul.

This is how cool the author looks:

Book Review: Immortality by Milan Kundera

2005-11-02T13:41:00.000-05:00

Writing Style-7.3
Originality-7.5
Plot-4.0
Literary Merit(whatever that means)-7.0
Overall-6.8

As I was reading this book, my second by Kundera (the other being The Unbearable Lightness of Being), I kept asking myself the question: Is Milan Kundera the smartest living writer that I’ve come across? That is not to say that he is the greatest novelist or that he even writes the smartest novels, but is he perhaps the most intellectually gifted writer? In other words, would he score higher on IQ tests or win in a chess tournament with other writers? Because every page that I’ve read by him, almost every sentence, I am astounded at the complex connections that he makes and the subtle observations on human character.

I was very much befuddled by Unbearable Lightness in its entirety. Though I adored it and found individual stories within it to be enlightening, as a whole it felt like I didn’t have what it took to fully grasp it. Immortality seemed a little easier to get my head around.

Though it’s a complex novel that is very experimental and weaves between two alternate, loosely tied narratives and philosophizing asides that read more like essays than novel chapters, I think the book really boils down to the title… Immortality. Though the book has very little plot and jumps all over the place, it never loses its focus on this central theme. Every single word seems to grasp at man’s struggle with mortality.

What plot there is follows a sort of love triangle between two sisters and one of the sister’s husband. Woven in with this story is the strange love story of Goethe (yes, THE Goethe) and Bettina.

On a blog filled with superlatives you can take the smartest writer thing with a grain of salt, but for my money Kundera is a cerebral god among many giants.

Any serious to semi-serious reader should do themselves a favor and give Kundera a shot. I think that something should ring true with his books. If not the keen observations on human nature then his philosophies, if not the plot then his experimentalism, if not the many great characters then his amazing ability to connect the dots from point A to point Being. Hah! Clever, I am.

Googling Kingsport

2005-11-01T10:16:00.000-05:00

http://www.martindentistry.net/pages/meet.html

Why does kingsport produce so many dentists and engineers?

Book Review: The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber

2005-10-24T14:27:00.000-04:00

Writing Style-5.9
Originality-6.1
Plot-6.0
Literary Merit(whatever that means)-4.5
Overall-5.4

This book was okay. At ~1000 pages it’s probably more of a time commitment than it is really worth.

It’s a bestseller and it shows. It’s very soap operaish. It’s sort of a vulgar, poor man’s Dickens that revolves around the world of prostitution in the late 1800’s in England.

It starts out very well, delving into this seedy underworld in a very gritty manner. But then it actually turns into a hooker with a heart of gold story. I kept thinking, ‘Okay, surely he’s going to complicate things somehow along the way?’ But he never really does.

And the ending might be the most abrupt ending I’ve ever read. There are tons of loose ends left hanging. When you invest time in 1000 pages, you expect some satisfaction and you aint gettin none here. It’s pretty much like the author has this really fecund imagination and could have just kept going and going, but knew that he had to cut it off somewhere short of the four-digit page length mark.

I’m not gonna spend any more time on this one, since I’m almost 7 books behind on my reviews now. If you think you’d like a soap-operaish, bestseller, hooker with a heart of gold, period piece dressed up as something more intellectually redeeming then you could do worse than read this book. I was thoroughly entertained all the way through, but left feeling hollow.

Book Review: Bluebeard by Kurt Vonnegut

2005-10-18T17:46:00.000-04:00

Writing Style-5.2
Originality-4.1
Plot-0.2
Literary Merit(whatever that means)-0.003
Overall- -1

Shew lord… this book caused me to lose a ton of respect for Vonnegut. I loved Slaughterhouse, Mr. Rosewater, and Breakfast of Champions. Didn’t much care for Player Piano, but it was okay. I read a collection of essays called something weird like Wampeters, granfalloons, and something or other and I recall thinking that it was a bit pompous and that I didn’t want to read any more of his essays. And then… Bluebeard, I wisht I never knew ye.

A-killa and I were put in a Vonnegut mood a couple of weeks ago when we saw him pimping his new book, “Man Without a Country”, on the Daily Show. He was hilarious. At one point he was talking about how we’re teaching Iraq about democracy and he said something like, ‘We need to let them know that after 100 years you’ve got to give up your slaves, after 150 years you have to give women the right to vote, and that there is generally a lot of genocide and ethnic cleansing in the beginning.’

So, I had this turd of a book sitting around pretty much left forgotten. I guess I picked it up on the cheap somewhere down the line. I decided to give it a go.

I was immediately taken aback by the forward, which reads:

“Tremendous concentrations of paper wealth have made it possible for a few persons or institutions to endow certain sorts of human playfulness with inappropriate and hence distressing seriousness. I think not only of the mudpies of art, but of children’s games as well—running, jumping, catching, throwing.
Or dancing.
Or singing songs.”

So, basically, the whole point of the book, as far as I can tell, is that art that doesn’t deal with war is a waste of time. Wow, how egotistical do you have to be to write this book? Hey, Picasso, Beethoven, Mozart, Bob Dylan, Coltrane, Bach, Van Gogh, Shakespeare (at least most of his plays), Kafka, Dostoyevsky, Hank Williams, Woody Guthrie guess what, Kurt Vonnegut thinks you’re all a bunch of phony, stupid, masturbatory losers. (Apparently no better, or more important, than Shaquille O’Neal or Alex Rodriguez.)

Alright, he doesn’t go so far as to attack all these folks specifically(except for Picasso), he mainly goes after Jackson Pollock and his friends. But still, it’s not much of a stretch when you are totally dismissing aesthetics and psychology and putting war commentary and realism on a pedestal as the highest form of art that these persons’ work starts to slip down the sewage drain that is Vonnegut’s mind. Surely you can see how it becomes a slippery slope. I mean where does Mr. Vonnegut draw the line?

And secondly, and I say this with the utmost respect for the novel, but really, when you get right down to it, how much more do you think Slaughterhouse Five has decreased the world’s penchant for fighting wars than one single Pollock splatter? I mean really, common on. It’s not exactly Uncle Tom’s Cabin or the Bible or the Communist Manifesto or anything.

And I haven’t even touched on the irony that a NOVELIST is commenting on how worthless modern art is at the same time as he is WRITING A BOOK ABOUT HOW WORTHLESS MODERN ART IS!! This is exactly the kind of irony that a younger Vonnegut probably would have gotten a kick out of.

And then getting back to the fact that he also attacks pro athletes. Now, I agree, some of them make a lot more money than what they deserve probably. But again, you could start down a similar slippery slope that if pro athletes are worthless and that war is bad and we should work on stopping it, then everyone who isn’t lending a hand to stop war is worthless. Sort of like that Colorado professor calling the people in the World Trade Center “little Eichmanns” because they weren’t actively working on getting their government to stop stupid foreign policies. I mean I work for the federal government, and I understand that our government does some pretty evil shit, but for fuckssake, what am I supposed to do about it? Does that make me a “little Eichman”? I mean, I’m just a guy trying to get through this shitty life and I gotta eat and I’d like to stick around at least for the sake of reading books, and writing some songs, and watching some football. We can’t ALL be Jesus Christ, okay. Give me a break.

Unless you hate modern art stay well away from this book.

Mr. Vonnegut, I SAID GOODDAY SIR!

Book News: New Top 100 List (Time Magazine)

2005-10-17T10:02:00.000-04:00

Time magazine has just published a top 100 english-language novels since 1923. I'm still digesting it but, I think I've read 40 of them (41 if you include Gravity's Rainbow which I tried my damnedest to finish but was defeated).

http://www.time.com/time/2005/100books/the_complete_list.html

I like that they include Blood Meridian. They chose Blind Assassin over Handmaid's Tale which makes no sense whatsoever. They include some rather recent ones which is nice like Atonement, The Corrections, White Teeth (which I just read and owe a review; I'm falling way behind in my reviews). Props to sci-fi with Neuromancer and pkdick (though Ubik is a VERY strange choice for best pkdick novel, maybe it's the only one that the creators of this list both read or something). FINALLY, A Death in the Family gets some cred. And the Sportswriter! I was beginning to think that it was only me that thought that book was brilliant.

Overall, I really like this list. I still want to see A Confederacy of Dunces and Bret Easton Ellis get some respect and then I'll be happy.

Googling Kingsport

2005-10-12T14:55:00.000-04:00

http://davereed.org/

This is good stuff. Looks very interesting and informative actually.

If Dave was around I'd give him a ride in my car.

Book Review: The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

2005-10-04T14:15:00.000-04:00

Writing Style-6.5
Originality-7.0
Plot-6.7
Literary Merit(whatever that means)-6.2
Overall-6.7

This was a really nice book. It’s been on bestseller lists for a long time, so when I saw it for a decent price at McKay’s I bit.

It’s written by a guy from Afghanistan and most of the book takes place there. So, if you are at all curious about the history of Afghanistan and how the Taliban came to be in power there this is a pretty fun source of some of that info. You’ll also learn a bit about the ethnic divisions there as well as the whole sunni vs. shi’a thing.

The fictional story of a young boy growing up in the early seventies in Afghanistan proceeds up until post 9/11 and the boy’s story runs parallel to the political, social, and military upheavals taking place in the country over this period of time.

The young boy does something that he is terribly ashamed of, then moves to America, and many years later has the opportunity to return to his native country to try to atone for this mistake he made in his youth.

He describes his childhood in Afghanistan in the early seventies when it was relatively stable. There was a king that had been in power for around 40 years. Then in 1975 (I think) there is a political coup while the king is away in Italy and then there is the Soviet invasion and a long war with them which severely breaks up and destabilizes the region. Most of this he doesn’t dwell on, as the main character is now living in San Francisco. But then someone from his past calls one day and offers him the opportunity to come back and make up for his mistakes. When he returns, Afghanistan is totally different being ruled by the Taliban. He sees women being beaten for showing any amount of skin in public and executions during halftime of soccer games and so forth.

If this sounds like your cup of tea, it’s very entertaining book. I’d recommend it to people who like to read about other countries and cultures.

Podcast: The Great Depression

2005-10-02T22:00:00.000-04:00

Ivan's Waltz
A Song For
Strange Angel
November Third Blues: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Bush

All songs written and performed by Enoch except A Song For by Townes Van Zandt. All songs copyright of Bassless Accusations Music 2005.

Googling Kingsport

2005-09-30T22:08:00.000-04:00

http://gsm.utmck.edu/residents/main.cfm#L

Book/Movie News: Coen Brothers to Direct No Country for Old Men

2005-09-28T10:45:00.000-04:00

Shew law... Let's hope this actually happens.

Variety has reported that the Joel and Ethan Coen have "signed on" to make the movie adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's latest novel No Country for Old Men.

http://www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/12517129.htm

Book Review: The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood

2005-09-27T18:56:00.000-04:00

Writing Style-7.5
Originality-7.0
Plot-6.6
Literary Merit(whatever that means)-6.7
Overall-7.0

This was a surprisingly fun read. There are many books that are sometimes a chore to read but then you really appreciate them after you are finished, and then there are books that are super fun to read but then you don’t feel like you got much out of the whole experience when you’re done and looking back on it. This book is more of the latter.

I’m not real sure what the point of the book is. Basically, it is about three very different women who became friends in college and have kept in touch since. They were brought together and have kept up with one another mainly through their relations with a fourth female named Zenia. Zenia is a pretty bad person. She tricks each of the three women into letting her into their lives (and their houses) and then steals their men.

The book is almost simply a character study of the three women. One is a very intelligent, scholarly person who is a history professor that focuses on military history. The second is kind of flighty, works in a new age type of shop, and believes in astrology, eastern mysticism, that kind of stuff. And the third is also intelligent, but more street smarts than scholarly. She is very successful in business and has a high-powered CEO type of job. Each of them has an intriguing story from their past that perhaps sheds light on their current relationships and the way they lead their lives.

So, it seemed almost as though the point was to study these three women and the shortcomings that they perceived in themselves when reflected against the superior (in terms of “winning”, meaning fooling them and stealing their men), but duplicitous, Zenia.

It should be pointed out that we never learn exactly who Zenia truly is. She morphs into whatever the other person wants her to be. She changes into whatever will gain trust or pity or whatever she needs in order to get her into each of the women’s good graces. She will also become whatever each of the women’s spouses or lovers want her to be to make them fall in love with her.

I kept waiting for an epiphany about what Atwood might be trying to say with this novel but it never really came. One particular excerpt stood out in which I thought there might be something to grasp hold of.

[“The Other Woman will soon be with us,” the feminists used to say. But how long will it take thinks Roz, and why hasn’t it happened yet?

Meanwhile the Zenias of this world are abroad in the land, plying their trade, cleaning out male pockets, catering to male fantasies. Male fantasies, male fantasies, is everything run by male fantasies? Up on a pedestal or down on your knees, it’s all a male fantasy: that you’re strong enough to take what they dish out, or else too weak to do anything about it. Even pretending you aren’t catering to male fantasies is a male fantasy: pretending you’re unseen, pretending you have a life of your own, that you can wash your feet and comb your hair unconscious of the ever-present watcher peering through the keyhole, peering through the keyhole in your own head, if nowhere else. You are a woman with a man inside watching a woman. You are your own voyeur. The Zenias of this world have studied this situation and turned it to their own advantage; they haven’t let themselves be moulded into male fantasies, they’ve don it themselves. They’ve slipped sideways into dreams; the dreams of women too, because women are fantasies for other women, just as they are for men. But fantasies of a different kind.]

There is also an epilogue in which Atwood talks briefly about the purpose of The Robber Bride. She talks about how feminism should not just be about how women can be just as good at anything as men, but how they can also be really bad and do dastardly things.

[“Where have all the Lady Macbeths gone? Gone to Ophelias, every one, leaving the devilish tour-de-force parts to be played by bass-baritones.” Or, to put it another way: If all women are well behave by nature—or if we aren’t allowed to say otherwise for fear of anifemaleism—then they are deprived of moral choice, and there isn’t much left for them to do in books except run away a lot. Or, to put it another way: Equality means equally bad as well as equally good.]

But it seems to me that there already exists a sexy bitch man-eater stereotype in literature that male authors masochistically love to write about and other feminists typically rant against. So, I was kind of confused by this because Zenia is precisely this type of character. I felt that the novel was more about the 3 women as contrasted with Zenia and their flaws in dealing with her which are a result of their early (childhood) experiences with men and end up allowing Zenia to steal the men that they are currently in a relationship with.

Regardless of what the book is about or what it says to you as a reader, it’s a riveting read. Atwood is a phenomenal writer and the book was really a page turner for me because she is such a good storyteller that it really didn’t matter that the plot is jumpy and I couldn’t find a consistent theme.

Everyone MUST read A Handmaid’s Tale at some point as it is destined to be a classic. So, if you haven’t then start there. But, if you have read it, then don’t be timid in picking up The Robber Bride. Its quality shit.

Holy Moly: These are my 200 Favorite Movies Of All Time (at the moment)

2005-09-21T15:01:00.000-04:00

Alright, I tried to actually rank these as quickly as possible and not think too much about it. I'm probably forgetting something, possibly several films, but I've tried to be pretty thorough. Also, this is a snapshot of my mood right this instant; I reserve the right to change my opinions hourly without notifying anyone.

Fire away.

The Lord of the Rings Trilogy
Star Wars – ALL of them
2001: A Space Odyssey
The Matrix Trilogy
All the Pretty Horses
A Clockwork Orange
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Office Space
O Brother, Where Art Thou
Lost In Translation
Full Metal Jacket
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Magnolia
Gladiator
One Hour Photo
All the President’s Men
The Sixth Sense
The Royal Tenenbaums
The Shining
Dr. Strangelove
Pulp Fiction
Harold and Maude
High Fidelity
Memento
The Straight Story
The Thin Red Line
Batman Begins
Donnie Darko – Director’s Cut
Closer
Tombstone
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me
A Very Long Engagement
The Last of the Mohicans
Fahrenheit 9/11
Rushmore
Amelie
A River Runs Through It
Braveheart
The Shawshank Redemption
Jacob’s Ladder
Eyes Wide Shut
Apocalypse Now
Wedding Crashers
The Fog of War
Friday
Raising Arizona
Legends of the Fall
Sideways
The Quiet American
Unforgiven
Sling Blade
The Ring
Trainspotting
Dances With Wolves
In the Bedroom
Love Liza
Schindler’s List
American Beauty
Glory
Amadeus
Hard Boiled
Best In Show
Saving Private Ryan
L.A. Confidential
Austin Powers – the first two
The Princess Bride
A Christmas Story
Fletch – 1 and 2
Billy Madison
Cold Mountain
A Man on the Moon
The Big Lebowski
Blade – 1 and 2
The Sweet Hereafter
Elizabeth
Chasing Amy
October Sky
Punch Drunk Love
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
Beloved
Whale Rider
The Girl with the Pearl Earring
The 40 Year Old Virgin
Contact
Platoon
Friday Night Lights
American Splendour
Seven
Life is Beautiful
A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Lonesome Dove: the miniseries
Romeo and Juliet
The Good Girl
Happy Gilmore
Dead Man Walking
Top Gun
You Can Count on Me
Tommy Boy
Falling Down
Requiem for a Dream
X-Men: 1 and 2
The Apostle
Bowling for Columbine
Shrek: 1 and 2
Roger and Me
Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo
About A Boy
Y Tu Mama Tambien
About Schmidt
Black Hawk Down
Traffic
Touching the Void
The Insider
Happy Endings
Far From Heaven
Dangerous Liaisons
Gattaca
Kids
The Man Who Wasn’t There
Sexy Beast
Ghost World
Big Daddy
Monster’s Ball
Shattered Glass
Hero
The Constant Gardener
Bad Santa
Just Married
Garden State
Mr. Deeds
Dumb and Dumber
Liar, Liar
There’s Something About Mary
Minority Report
Space Balls
The Wedding Singer
Fried Green Tomatoes
Reservoir Dogs
Clerks
Face Off
November
Fearless
AI
Forrest Gump
The Color Purple
Boogie Nights
So, I Married an Axe Murderer
12 Monkeys
Mr. and Mrs. Smith
The Waterboy
Hustle and Flow
Starship Troopers
The Exorcism of Emily Rose
I, Robot
Talk to Her
Mallrats
Confessions of a Dangerous Mind
Gettysburg
Dogma
Erin Brockovich
Gods and Monsters
Leaving Las Vegas
Shadowlands
Naked Gun movies
Way of the Gun
Being John Malkovich
Indiana Jones movies
Philadelphia
Three Kings
Run Lola Run
Boys Don’t Cry
Sweet and Lowdown
Airplane
As Good as it Gets
Total Recall
The Others
Good Will Hunting
Affliction
Ace Ventura: Pet Detective
Die Hard
Amistad
The Hours
Of Mice and Men
The Terminator – 1 and 2
Air Force One
Junebug
Batman – the first 3
Meet the Parents
Cast Away
Muppets movies up to about 1995
What about Bob?
The Red Violin
Chevy Chase Vacation movies
Primary Colors
The Rock
The Perfect Storm
Crash
The School of Rock
What’s Eating Gilbert Grape
Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams

Googling Kingsport

2005-09-19T16:08:00.000-04:00

Check out the middle picture under "More pictures from austin" a little more than half way down the page.

http://www.castdiv.org/spring05.htm

Book News: And Movie News Too

2005-09-13T18:11:00.000-04:00

I’ve noticed that there are a great number of movies coming up that are based on some pretty good books. Here’s a look at some of them, with links to the books on Amazon:

The Good Woman – Based on the Oscar Wilde play Lady Windermere’s Fan. Stars Helen Hunt, Scarlett Johansson, and one of my favorite actors recently, Tom Wilkinson (In the Bedroom).
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1905432127/qid=1126637951/sr=8-2/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i2_xgl14/103-0079012-9551017?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

Everything is Illuminated – Adapted from the bestselling novel by Jonathan Safran Foer. Stars Elijah Wood.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0060529709/qid=1126638022/sr=2-2/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_2/103-0079012-9551017?v=glance&s=books

Capote – This is about Truman Capote (Breakfast at Tiffany’s, In Cold Blood), played by another of my favorite actors, Philip Semour Hoffman (Magnolia). It’s centered around Capote’s researching of the true crime classic In Cold Blood.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0679745580/qid=1126638083/sr=2-2/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_2/103-0079012-9551017?v=glance&s=books

Jarhead – Based on a bestselling memoir of the same name from a former Marine writing about his experiences in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait during the first Gulf War. Stars Jake Gyllenhaal (October Sky), Jamie Foxx, and Peter Sarsgaard (Garden State).
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0743235355/qid=1126638131/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/103-0079012-9551017?v=glance&s=books

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe – Based on C.S. Lewis’ book.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0007117248/qid=1126638388/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/103-0079012-9551017?v=glance&s=books

Memoirs of a Geisha – From the book by Arthur Golden. Stars Ziyi Zhang (Hero, Crouching Tiger), Gong Li, and Michelle Yeoh (Crouching Tiger). See my book review for more.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0679781587/qid=1126638426/sr=2-2/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_2/103-0079012-9551017?v=glance&s=books

Brokeback Mountain – Gay cowboys!! From the story by E. Annie Proulx (The Shipping News), screenplay by Larry McMurtry (Lonesome Dove, Terms of Endearment), directed by Ang Lee (Crouching Tiger). Stars Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger. Really looking forward to this one.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1857029402/qid=1126638589/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/103-0079012-9551017?v=glance&s=books

All the King’s Men – From the book by Robert Penn Warren (#8 on my top 100 books list). Stars Sean Penn (as Willie Stark) and Jude Law and Kate Winslet, as Jack and Anne I would think. Also eagerly anticipating this one.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0156004801/qid=1126638708/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/103-0079012-9551017?v=glance&s=books

A Scanner Darkly – Yet another Philip K. Dick book adapted to a movie. How rich would that dude be if he was alive? Some Dick adaptations have been huge stinkers and some have been pretty good. This one looks like a winner. From the previews, it’s some sort of weird animation where the actors look just like themselves (which is probably a pretty good metaphor for phildickianess). It stars Keanu Reeves and Robert Downey Jr. as I recall.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0679736654/qid=1126638751/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/103-0079012-9551017?v=glance&s=books

Oliver Twist – From Dickens. Directed by Roman Polanski (Statutory Rape). Stars some kids and Ben Kingsley (Sexy Beast, Ghandi).
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0812580036/qid=1126638809/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/103-0079012-9551017?v=glance&s=books

Pride and Prejudice – Based on Jane Austen’s. Stars Keira Knightley.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0553213105/qid=1126638854/sr=2-3/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_3/103-0079012-9551017?v=glance&s=books

Walk The Line – Ok, this isn’t based on a book, but I’m stoked about it so deal with it. Joaquin Phoenix is Cash, Reese Witherspoon is June Carter. Have you seen how good they look in these roles from the pictures for this movie?

Review: Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

2005-09-13T18:09:00.000-04:00

Writing Style-6.9
Originality-7.0
Plot-6.9
Literary Merit(whatever that means)-6.5
Overall-6.8

This is a nice, easy read about a fascinating culture.

Apparently the author (who’s from Chattanooga, by the way) has some degrees in Japanese art and history from Harvard, or something like that, and spent ten years doing research for this novel. His primary source, a real life geisha, has since denounced this book and written her own. Of course, by my way of thinking, just because a primary source denounces something doesn’t automatically debunk it. I mean this person has something at stake in the issue so they might have a strong bias away from the truth to cover their own ass so to speak. Sort of like Darwin denouncing evolution on his deathbed.

As for the fictional story, it’s quite nice and keeps the plot flowing. There’s not really a central, conventional love story which might be your first instinct to expect.

There’s really not any value judgments made towards the culture either. I like one part where the main character rebuts western dismay that geisha exist by saying that western women are geisha as well they are just not as upfront and honest about it.

The story is chronological starting with the main character as a very little girl, approximately age 5. It tells the story of how she becomes a geisha and her transformation from resisting it to embracing it. Then when she’s older she has several “love” interests vying for her attention and services. Finally, she becomes a very famous popular geisha.

The best part of the book is revealing this geisha world though, not really the story. It’s kind of a weird concept. It explains that geisha are not prostitutes and explains the differences, though, like most things in life, there are many shades of gray here. It goes through how geisha are trained, how they earn money, how they live, how they entertain, etc.

Basically, a geisha’s job is to entertain men at parties. They are trained to dance, sing, play stringed instruments and drums, and serve tea (there is a lot more to formal tea ceremony than just making tea and pouring it). They are adept at telling stories and making small talk in social situations and flirting. Pretty much they are just pretty things that entertain the men and make them feel good. I won’t give too much away because I think a big pull for reading the book is the curiosity at what a geisha is and does.

I’m looking forward to the movie coming out this winter with those two women who are in every Asian movie that makes it big in America, Ziyi Zhang and Michelle Yeoh.

Googling Kingsport

2005-09-12T13:55:00.000-04:00

How cool is this? Check out the staff editors.

http://www.theatlantic.com/a/masthead.mhtml

Pick up a hard copy sometime and look at the masthead in there. She doesn't just work for the online version.

You go girl.

This is weird

2005-09-07T15:08:00.000-04:00

Check this out. Notice the starred reviews at the bottom of the page.

http://books.filemaker-pro.us/the-hound-of-baskervilles.25112.html

Review: Of Love and Dust by Ernest J. Gaines

2005-09-06T22:56:00.000-04:00

Writing Style-7.1
Originality-7.3
Plot-7.5
Literary Merit(whatever that means)-6.7
Overall-7.2

This book, much like A Gathering of Old Men by Gaines, makes you feel the weight of hopeless oppression and gives you a kick ass character, or a gathering of old kick ass characters, to root for in their fight against it.

I can’t say enough good things about Ernest J. Gaines based on these two books of his that I’ve read. I really love them. They are fun to read and you learn a lot about the white-cajun-black social hierarchy of his native Louisiana.

I’m a big fan of local color and dialect and these books have plenty of it.

Of Love and Dust is about a character, Marcus, who is bonded from jail by a plantation owner who his (Marcus’) mother worked for for 40 years. Marcus is being tried for murder even though the other guy pulled a knife on him first.

The rest of the book is about Marcus’ effect on the lives of the people at this plantation. The narrator is someone who has worked on the plantation for many years and has promised Marcus’ mother that he will look after him there.

Marcus is much more rebellious and stubborn than anyone else that has worked there and this gets him in trouble in a hurry with the Cajun foreman, Bonbon.

Fans of southern and/or African-American literature MUST check out Ernest J. Gaines. I think A Gathering of Old Men is a little bit better, but not much. Either way you can’t go wrong. Check him out.

Review: Atonement by Ian McEwan

2005-09-06T22:46:00.000-04:00

Writing Style-7.4
Originality-7.2
Plot-7.0
Literary Merit(whatever that means)-7.0
Overall-7.0

This was a beautifully written, well-crafted, solid novel. I had heard nothing but good things about it so I was pretty excited about reading it. It wasn’t earth-shattering or anything, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.

The novel consists of three main parts and an epilogue. It’s a story about, you guessed it… atonement. The first section was my favorite for some strange reason, even though the second section is a World War II war scene and the third section essentially reveals everything and wraps the story up. The first section is a quiet scene that introduces these wonderful characters and their innocence and youth. And really the novel turns out to be about this innocence when the main character, a young girl in the first chapter, screws up royally because of her innocence and youthful imagination.

The themes are complicated by the fact that the main character is also a burgeoning writer. Her writing allows her to progress through her stages of atonement.

The first scene also contains one of the greatest love scenes I’ve ever read. Here are some excerpts:

‘As their faces drew closer he was uncertain enough to think she might spring away, or hit him, movie-style, across the cheek with her open hand. Her mouth tasted of lipstick and salt… …They felt watched by their bemused childhood selves. But the contact of tongues, alive and slippery muscle, moist flesh on flesh, and the strange sound it drew from her, changed that. This sound seemed to enter him, pierce him down his length so that his whole body opened up and he was able to step out of himself and kiss her freely. What had been self-conscious was now impersonal, almost abstract.

They were beyond the present, outside time, with no memories and no future. There was nothing but obliterating sensation, thrilling and swelling, and the sound of fabric on fabric and skin on fabric as their limbs slid across each other in this restless, sensuous wrestling… …Cumulatively, these bites aroused him and enraged him, goaded him. Under her dress he felt for her buttocks and squeezed hard, and half turned her to give her a retaliatory slap, but there wasn’t quite the space… …They were clumsy, but too selfless now to be embarrassed. When he lifted the clinging, silky dress again he thought her look of uncertainty mirrored his own. But there was only one inevitable end, and there was nothing they could do but go toward it.

They held their breath before the membrane parted, and when it did she turned away quickly, but made no sound—it seemed to be a point of pride… …Instead of an ecstatic frenzy, there was stillness. They were stilled not by the astonishing fact of arrival, but by an awed sense of return—they were face to face in the gloom, staring into what little they could see of each other’s eyes, and now it was the impersonal that dropped away… …Nothing as singular or as important had happened since the day of his birth… …Finally he spoke the three simple words that no amount of bad art or bad faith can ever quite cheapen… …He had no religious belief, but it was impossible not to think of an invisible presence or witness in the room, and that these words spoken aloud were like signatures on an unseen contract.

They had been motionless for perhaps as long as half a minute. Longer would have required the mastery of some formidable tantric art. They began to make love against the library shelves which creaked with their movement… …He forced himself to remember the dullest things he knew—bootblack, an application form, a wet towel on his bedroom floor. There was also an upturned dustbin lid with an inch of rainwater inside, and the incomplete tea-ring stain on the cover of his Housman poems.’

Really this is a fine read. I think I expected a little more with as many good things as I had heard about it. And it felt like the writing in the latter two-thirds of the book wasn’t as passionate as the first section. But, hey, you could do much worse than reading this book.

Googling Kingsport

2005-09-02T15:25:00.000-04:00

http://www.cosmeticdentistknoxville.com/DrPatrickKennedy.html

Review: The Call of the Wild by Jack London

2005-08-25T17:59:00.000-04:00

Writing Style-7.4
Originality-8.0
Plot-7.2
Literary Merit(whatever that means)-7.2
Overall-7.2

I guess you would really call this a novella, coming in at about 75 pages. My edition came with White Fang, which I planned to read in succession and review together, but Call of the Wild was so emotionally draining that I had to put it down to revisit White Fang later.

It was a lot like American Psycho, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, and A Portrait of the Artist where I had to take breaks during certain scenes to detach myself emotionally from the story to stop from being morbidly depressed or sickened. In the case of Call of the Wild it was the almost constant cruelty towards dogs, which I just can’t stomach.

But, it turns out to be well worth fighting through the rough parts because Buck, the central character, part St. Bernard and Scottish Shepard, kicks so much ass.

The story follows Buck’s travels and travails from domesticated life (in California, I think) northward into the wild of Alaska. During this journey he has several masters, most of which are not too nice.

Accordingly, Buck’s nature and personality digresses from one of being civilized and domesticated back to that of the wolf. This change is connected to the progressing roughness of his environment and mistreatment of his masters.

I think this plot derives from an interesting mix in London of an appreciation for the toughness that comes from a primitive, frontier life and a disdain for capitalism. As an aside, I think there’s an interesting paradox here that lovers of southern literature can understand. Capitalism favors survival of the fittest in the same way that frontier life does. We may admire a Faulknerian horse trader even as we criticize his dishonesty and cutt-throat business acumen.

So, I think Buck’s tale is clearly allegorical. It’s important to point out that Buck’s services are required as part of the Klondike gold rush. The following passage stands out:

“...the club of the man in the red sweater had beaten into him a more fundamental and primitive code. Civilized, he could have died for a moral consideration… …but the completeness of his decivilization was now evidenced by his ability to flee from the defence of a moral consideration and so save his hide. He did not steal for joy of it, but because of the clamor of his stomach. He did not rob openly, but stole secretly and cunningly, out of respect for club and fang. In short, the things he did were done because it was easier to do them than not to do them.”

This is definitely worthwhile for anyone to read. I mean it’s practically a short story. Its action packed and moves swiftly with very memorable scenes. It’s sad, especially in the beginning, but it kind of kicks butt in the end. Buck certainly doesn’t triumph over the forces that cause his digression into the wild, but he does adapt.

So, if the journey into the wild in search of gold is analogous to capitalism, is Buck’s adaptation analogous to the myth of the self-made man (which gets us back to the paradox)? Or am I being too optimistic about the end of Buck’s story because I love him so much? Or did London start with the intention of creating a socialist, cautionary tale but then fell into the horse trader admiration trap? I’m at a loss. At any rate, it’s a great story.

Book News: Complete Collection of Penguin Classics

2005-08-24T19:31:00.000-04:00

Check this out. You can buy on amazon for the bargain price of $7989.50 (that's 40% off the cover price) the entire collection of Penguin Classics. That's 1082 books that weigh a total of 700 pounds. And you get free shipping!

Amazon nicely provides a link to the list of titles. Pretty interesting. I've read approximately 45 of them. How depressing.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0147503078/qid=1124925482/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/104-1283284-3427956?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

Googling Kingsport

2005-08-24T19:13:00.000-04:00

This is a new townesvanfaulkner weekly feature where I google a fellow Kingsportian to see what they are up to. Enjoy.

http://ci.kingsport.tn.us/?CONTEXT=cat&cat=8&BISKIT=2552888515

Review: Staring at the Sun by Julian Barnes

2005-08-24T19:07:00.000-04:00

Writing Style-2.1
Originality-3.1
Plot-0.6
Literary Merit(whatever that means)-0.8
Overall-1.8

This book is a big stinky turd. I barely cared enough to finish it and it’s less than 200 pages. I feel bad about wasting your time reading a review of it. I’ll try to keep it brief.

There’s this dumbshit main character who starts out as a young girl who is amazed by her uncle who I guess she thinks is pretty cool and clever. Another major character in her life is an RAF fighter pilot during the war. He’s been grounded because he’s kind of out of his head and he is staying with her family. He tells her war stories and flying stories and whatnot and she’s pretty amazed by him. Then she grows up and gets married to a guy who’s kind of an a-hole. Through these parts, this girl is unbelievably naïve and stupid. I mean it’s not even realistic. I’m sure that the naïveté is part of the point but for Christ’s sake there’s no need to beat the reader over the head with it.

Then for the last third of this novel, the main character is an old lady. It seems she is somewhat at peace with the world as old people tend to be. And we learn more about her son Gregory who is mainly having a conversation with a super computer. Since it is now something like 2021, there is this supercomputer that knows pretty much everything. Their conversation gets pretty deep about suicide and the point of life and these type things.

So I’m looking back over this summary of the plot and it sounds like it should be really cool, right? But its not. The problem is that this basic outline is really all there is to the novel. The characters and plot never get fleshed out. And the writing is so drab and aimless you don’t really care.

I’m sure that there are all kinds of cool points one could make about this woman’s life. Her wonderment of the world as told by the airplane pilot and her uncle contrasted with her sons search for the meaning of life through asking questions of a supercomputer. The pilot and her son’s fixation with suicide. Her metamorphosis from a naïve young girl to a wise old lady. But there’s just not enough good writing and story to get a firm handhold on any of this. This book is just air, its not even hot air, its just lukewarm turd-smelly air.

Review: War and Remembrance by Herman Wouk

2005-08-24T19:05:00.000-04:00

Writing Style-6.7
Originality-7.3
Plot-8.4
Literary Merit(whatever that means)-7.0
Overall-7.9

This is a beautiful book. It’s historical fiction that takes you through World War II. It is the sequel to the Winds of War and flows seamlessly with that novel. They are best read together in series, though probably not back-to-back because they are both over 1000 pages in length.

It follows the story of one family. Each of the main characters is cleverly placed in places where you get a total, global view of the war. The main character, the patriarch “Pug” Henry, even writes a translation of a post-war book written by a German general so that you get the German viewpoint.

Pug is a navy captain who rises to admiral by the book’s end. He has two sons, one is a submariner, and the other flies fighter planes off of a carrier. The submariner, Byron, has married a Jewish girl in Europe (in Winds of War). Her and her uncle get stuck in Europe at the outset of the war and have family members in concentration camps. So you get the European Jew viewpoint as well.

Though probably guilty of being overly romantic about war, I can forgive it because if there is one war to be romantic about its World War II.

There are many interesting historical details throughout the book. In the afterword, Wouk says that all of the events are true as he has described except for the made up Henry family and a couple of made up naval vessels that members of the Henry family captain.

One such interesting story is that of the “Paradise Ghetto”, a horrific concentration camp that the Germans make look like a utopia so that they can invite the Red Cross in and show the world that the stories that they have heard about the holocaust are not true.

The battle scenes are all naval; I guess it was simply a preference of the author. Most of the warfare action takes place in the pacific while the European theater is written about more from the Jewish viewpoint or at times when Pug serves in a diplomatic capacity.

The book steadily gets better as you go along simply because you are investing so much in the characters.

This is a must read for fans of historical fiction.

Review: Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe

2005-08-19T12:55:00.000-04:00

Writing Style-6.8
Originality-7.9
Plot-8.2
Literary Merit(whatever that means)-7.2
Overall-7.7

This book starts out pretty slow. I was annoyed with the way Wolfe would write an action sentence to start each paragraph and then digress into some background story of the character’s. I thought that this would continue throughout the ~700 page book and that it would be pretty slow slogging through it. But, around page 200 this seems to stop.

There the pace quickens dramatically. And it’s an extremely compelling plot with great characters. I suppose setting up the scene and giving depth to the characters and their world is the point of the first 200 pages. But still, I think you can build depth more subtly and less annoyingly than he does it.

The main point though is that this turns out to be a great book. It’s about classism and race relations in New York, New York in the mid to late eighties at the height of Reaganomics and the New York crime wave.

The story goes: a wealthy Wall Street bond trader, named Sherman McCoy, and his mistress get lost one night driving through downtown in his Mercedes. They wander into the seedy part of Brooklyn that is filled with the downtrodden and minorities and are desperate to find their way back to Manhattan. They get increasingly scared. They come upon a couple of tires blocking the road, the man gets out of the car to move the tires and a couple of young black men approach him either to help or attack him. He assumes they are attacking him, throws a tire at them, the mistress gets behind the wheel and runs over the other one. They run off as fast as they can.

From here it progresses into a bit of a crime/court room type drama at times. Are they guilty of hit and run? What about the background of the two black men? Were they being robbed?

The trial becomes a huge media circus when a black, activist reverend takes up the cause to show that the New York legal system is corrupt and racist.

What is interesting is that though this is a book about racism and classism, it doesn’t revolve around the tragedy of the young black man who gets run over. You really feel for Sherman and feel as though he is a victim of this racially-charged, greed-induced atmosphere.

Overall, this is a great read. There is so much depth to the New York setting. Highly recommended. Don’t be thrown off by descriptions of this book as being about the upper class in 1980’s New York, that sounds kind of boring. It’s really a crime/court drama at heart, but with so much richness and so many great characters and such smart satire that it is really much, much more.

Boomfell by Douglas Hobbie

2005-07-28T18:35:00.000-04:00

Top 100 Ranking: 100

Writing Style-8.2
Originality-7.4
Plot-7.9
Literary Merit(whatever that means)-7.4
Overall-8.2

This was another buck-fitty McKay’s special that rocked and is apparently out of print for some reason. The author has a pretty stupid name, maybe he should have come up with a smarter sounding pseudonym than Hobbie.

This is great dicklit. Philip Roth blurbs it, in fact. And it says on the cover that it won some award that I’ve never heard of.

All the classic dicklit/Rothian clichés are there. The main character is a struggling writer, trying to get stuff published, hates teaching English, cheats on his wife, is very competitive with a male friend, feels emasculated, etc., etc. The only thing missing is that he never cheats with a student. I guess that would have been over the top or something (though his 40 year old friend does cheat with a 25 year old).

The main character is Charles Boomfell who I just described. He pretty much gets fired from teaching and gives up writing to become a real estate agent. I wonder if Richard Ford read this before he wrote Independence Day because a lot of the funny things about being a realtor and how sad it must be are contained in this book also.

Boomfell’s friend while he is teaching (the one that he is very competitive with and feels inferior to in many ways) is Eliot Singer who when the book starts he hasn’t seen in roughly seven years.

The book starts out as though it’s going to be about Boomfell feeling inferior to Singer especially when his wife informs him that she and Singer had a year long affair back in the day. But then, Singer calls late one night and he’s out of his head because he’s deeply in love for his 25 year old mistress. And she is refusing to see him again.

The movie revolves mainly around Boomfell though Singer’s relationship to Boomfell and his wife is very important. But strewn throughout the novel are chapters entitled April that are first person narratives written in stream-of-conscious. April is a girl in her early twenties who works for Boomfell’s wife cleaning houses. She tells about the people that she cleans house for and her infatuation for Boomfell’s wife (she’s bisexual). I’m not real sure how April’s story fits in with Boomfell and Singer, but it’s interesting none the less. And Singer is so out of his head crazy that it really keeps you turning the pages to find out what he is going to do next.

The book is brilliantly written. You really feel everyone’s unique depression and lust (April wants Boomfell’s wife, Singer wants his 25 year old mistress, Boomfell starts thinking about his old mistress, the Boomfell’s next door neighbor wants Singer). There’s the obvious contrast between Singer who is full of himself and just takes whatever he wants in life but is driven crazy by his lust and Boomfell who’s essentially given up on his ambitions of being a writer and settled down into family life with kids, a wife of 16 years, and a terribly pathetic job. Which one is better off?

I solidly recommend this book for dicklit fans. Though, don’t get me wrong, April and Boomfell’s wife are solid characters. I wouldn’t necessarily dismiss it for the ladies (Amy started and promptly quit the book, though she didn’t quite get to the more interesting parts involving Singer’s manic depressive episodes).

The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle

2005-07-28T18:34:00.000-04:00

Writing Style-3.2
Originality-7.5
Plot-3.8
Literary Merit(whatever that means)-4.6
Overall-3.4

This book was moronic. There were two good things about it, (1) the legend of the hound of the baskervilles was cool and (2) it was a very short book.

This is the longest Sherlock Holmes story that Doyle wrote I believe. I always thought I should try Sherlock Holmes. The idea seems intriguing, a classic mystery. The thought of hanging on every line at the edge of your seat, tracking clues, trying to figure out who done it. But, in practice, it wasn’t interesting in the least.

Like I say, the legend is pretty cool and potentially scary. It’s about this hellish hound that was brought on by the acts of an evil Baskerville many generations ago and this curse has haunted every generation since, leading up to the mysterious death of the latest Baskerville. But, you quickly learn that Holmes has a very scientific, skeptical mind and Holmes is almost never wrong about a deduction, so therefore, it is certain that any tale of the supernatural is simply superstition and that Holmes will get to the bottom of it and the explanation will be something mundane and stupid.

Also, all of the clues feel so contrived. You know that Doyle is just placing them there with something in mind for Holmes and Watson to cleverly figure out later. The storytelling just lacks the ring of truth. Nature is never that orderly and human nature is never that predictable.

This felt like a book for 10 year olds. Like it’s a glorified Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew. I don’t see any justification for anyone older reading this. All the clichés are there. Why bother?

The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver

2005-07-28T18:33:00.000-04:00

Writing Style-6.0
Originality-5.5
Plot-5.0
Literary Merit(whatever that means)-5.4
Overall-5.2

Blah. Meh. Hmph. Those are the first three words that come to mind to describe this book. It’s mediocrity to the nth degree.

This is not an Oprah book club selection to my knowledge, but it is what most people would probably stereotype an Oprah selection as being like (which is pretty unfair seeing as how The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen and One Hundred Years of Solitude were Oprah selections). It’s girly as all get out and not in a cool way. I thought maybe it had potential because Kingsolver is a southern writer from Appalachian Kentucky.

It’s about this chick who for no apparent reason, early in the book before we even fully understand her motivations, she buys an old vw bug and drives west with the thought that wherever the car breaks down, there she will live for awhile. As she’s crossing through the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma some random lady puts a Cherokee baby in her car. It’s been horribly abused and she decides to keep it. She drives on to Arizona and finds a roommate who’s recently divorced and has… guess what... a new baby!! So they live together, become best friends, and take care of their babies.

If you are a feminist who loves babies (which doesn’t make much sense, though my sister comes to mind) then you would probably like this book. Otherwise, don’t waste your time.

The one redeeming quality that I like about the book is that it makes a nice argument in the end for alternative families. I think it’s an important point. But, other than that… On to the next book!

Funny Stuff

2005-07-25T18:22:00.000-04:00

http://www.hemispheresmagazine.com/fiction/2005/faulkner.htm

Review: Innocent Darkness by Edward R. F. Sheehan

2005-07-25T18:17:00.000-04:00

Top 100 Ranking: 85

Writing Style-7.8
Originality-8.1
Plot-8.4
Literary Merit(whatever that means)-7.8
Overall-8.4

This book was a very pleasant surprise. I bought it because it had a cool picture on the cover and it was only a buck-fitty at McKay’s. I hadn’t heard anything about it. Amazon doesn’t have a picture of it on their website, so it may actually be out of print now.

It’s about the Texas/Mexico border country (fitting that I was reading it in conjunction with No Country for Old Men) and illegal immigrants crossing into the U.S. The main character is an ultra rich, as in tens of millions of dollars are nothing to this guy, Catholic who’s wife and only son are killed in a car wreck. He drives south and randomly ends up in a Texas town near the border and is strongly affected by seeing what a desperate state immigrants are in as they attempt to illegal cross the border. He spends lots of money to set up a safe haven and provides food, health care, and shelter for them.

At first, I thought that this book was simply a journalist/non-fiction writer who is familiar with the region and its problems and so he (the author) just wanted to write a novel about it based on his research, and that there would be just barely enough plot to justify the writing of it. And then I got a little further and it seemed like maybe he was a guy with strong white, liberal guilt having a fantasy about what he would do to help these people if only he were the heir to hundreds of millions of dollars. It held my attention but still not necessarily anything to write home about.

However, in the second half of the novel it really takes off. The main character, Adrian Northwood, is a painter and he is painting a series of pictures of the immigrants and a series of religious images. One of the immigrants staying at the shelter steals his paintings one day and crosses back into Mexico. This prompts Northwood to set off after him to retrieve his paintings. His spiritual journey through Mexico, complete with a run-in with the corrupt Mexican police and an extended stay in their horrific penile system, is very Cormac McCarthian.

The cover of the book says that this is the story of a modern day St. Francis if that means anything to you. I didn’t really know anything about the life of St. Francis before I read this book, but he seems pretty cool.

At any rate, I loved it. It’s got a great message and I think it probably paints a pretty good picture of the region. The author writes in the foreward that none of the characters are based on reality but that it is a realistic portrait of south Texas, Mexico, and the people migrating into the country (interestingly, he states that he was too kind to the Mexican police, which is hard to believe because he makes them seem pretty darn horrible).

Review: No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy

2005-07-21T17:56:00.000-04:00

Top 100 Ranking: 56

Writing Style-8.9
Originality-8.0
Plot-8.9
Literary Merit(whatever that means)-8.3
Overall-8.6

'How to prevail over that which you refuse to acknowledge the existence of. Do you understand? When I came into your life your life was over. It had a beginning, a middle, and an end. This is the end. You can say that things could have turned out differently. That they could have been some other way. But what does that mean? They are not some other way. They are this way. You're asking that I second say the world. Do you see?'
-Anton Chigurh

Alright, there’s no question, I’m a McCarthy fanboy. So writing a review of this book is going to be hard.

I LOVED IT!!!!!! IT KICKED ASS!!!!!!!!!

Ok, enough with the gushing, I’ll try to move on towards some semblance of objectivity now.

At first glance this is a huge departure from anything else McCarthy has done.

What’s different:
-It’s crime noir
-There might be more sentence fragments than run-ons
-There are probably no more than 3 words in the entire book that you would need a dictionary for, as compared to Suttree where you pretty much can’t get through a sentence without a dictionary and there are even words that you’d be hard-pressed to find a dictionary that included them.
-There are no lengthy, poetic descriptions of the landscape or people.
-The plot is simple to follow, there are no hazy, Faulknerian sections where you have to puzzle through what is actually going on.
-It’s feels fairly contemporary, set in 1980.
-I don’t recall a metaphor with the words “like some” in it.

What’s the same:
-His patented grim determinism
-It’s set in Texas near the border
-There’s a really, really bad mythic dude. What Judge Holden from Blood Meridian was to the late 1800’s, Anton Chigurh is to the late 1900’s.
-Lots of violence
-Its dripping with masculinity
-There’s a lot of respect for the old timers and great sadness in the fact that as the world changes, their ways of life and values and morals no longer apply
-Great dialogue with regional euphemisms

The writing is pared-down a lot with a strong focus on moving the plot along. Whereas he used to write long beautiful descriptions with very long sentences to set the scene, but then the dialogue would be extremely sparse, simple, and straightforward. Now everything, not just the dialogue, is economical. I recently read The Cold Six Thousand by James Ellroy and at times it reminded me of that; electing to write a series of very short sentences in place of one long one and the fixation with describing the guns and the gunfire and the bullet wounds and so forth. It’s as though he’s proven his whole career that he is a masterful “prose stylist” (as everyone, even his detractors, will admit) and now he wants to prove that he can write a classic noirish thriller that is a page-turner and will make a good movie (he’s already sold the rights, btw).

This may sound like a bad thing or that he’s sold out, but he’s so good, it works. It is, in fact, a fast-paced whirlwind novel. I almost read it in one sitting the same night I bought it, but I finally conked out at 2:00 AM.

And there’s just so much classic McCarthy in there. It’s so romantically manly, Chigurh is such a great bad guy, Sheriff Bell and Llewelyn Moss are such likable-yet-flawed-and-ultimately-helpless good guys, and the dialogue is touching, stark, at times funny, and subtle.

I don’t want to get too much into the plot (you can read the inside cover synopsis on Amazon if you wish) because I suspect more than one of my readers plans to read this book regardless of reviews or what it’s about, and I think it’s more fun sometimes to go into a book or movie without knowing too much about it.

But very briefly, there’s a drug deal that goes south and everybody dies leaving a bunch of heroine and ~2.3 million dollars. Moss finds the money while hunting. Chigurh is a sort of hired hand/assassin-type bad-ass who sets out to find the drugs and money and kill anyone who messes with him. Bell is the good ole boy sheriff who’s trying to solve the murders, find the bad guys, and save lives, mainly Moss’, before Chigurh gets to them. The action is interlaced with sections of italicized monologue from Sheriff Ed Tom Bell.

Bell’s monologues were particularly problematic for me at times. I had to ask myself, ‘How much of the author is in Bell’s character?’ because there were times that I just didn’t agree with Bell. Let me explain.

McCarthy has repeatedly written about the decline of a society and has repeatedly written about people pining for the good old days. Por ejemplo, John Grady Cole going to Mexico because too much of Texas was fenced in or the orchard keeper shooting at the big metal government water tank standing on the horizon and ruining the landscape or the growing filthiness of Suttree’s Knoxville. But this was subtle and romantic and had to do with days that were long before my lifetime. No Country for Old Men, however, is set within my lifetime and the manner in which Bell speaks on the causes of his world going to hell in a handbasket is far from subtle. He talks about the difference in getting in trouble in school during his days as being things akin to chewing gum or talking in class, whereas today there’s drugs, rape, and shootings in schools. He talks about young people with green hair and nose piercings and how you can tell that society is shot when people stop saying maam and sir. At times, he just sounds like a crusty old curmudgeon like my own grandfather or Zell Miller who think that our biggest problems are hippies smoking pot, gangsta rap, violent video games, and baseball players using steroids. As opposed to my opinion that our biggest problems are the lack of a truly independent news media, conflicts of interest that arise when you combine lawmakers and their campaign costs and large amounts of money from companies and organizations pimping their agendas, or an education system (particularly in the south and middle of the country) that fails miserably at producing adults who can think critically.

So, in short, connecting Cormac to Bell and then to Zell is something that I just can’t deal with. So, I’m gonna give him (Cormac) the benefit of the doubt and say that he’s just being true to his character. Because lets face it, a good ole boy cop from BFE, Texas is probably gonna be more than a little bit Zell-like. There, no dilemma. But still, Bell does get a bit preachy about contemporary issues, which distracted me a little. Overall, he’s a good, smart, very kind guy though, don’t get me wrong. It’s not like he’s total hick or anything.

Okay, there you have it. I think the last two that McCarthy’s written, No Country and Cities of the Plain, are nowhere near as good as the rest of his books. I liked Cities of the Plain a little bit more because of what I had already gone through with the characters from All the Pretty Horses and The Crossing. But I still loved No Country. It shows a new facet of McCarthy’s talents and it makes a nice complement going from Blood Meridian (his first western novel) through the Border Trilogy and up to 1980 and No Country.

Book News: IT'S HERE - NEW CORMAC MCCARTHY!

2005-07-19T18:33:00.000-04:00

No Country for Old Men

After a seven year hiatus, today is the day.

Just picked up my copy. About to go start it. Will post my thoughts when done.

check it:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0375406778/qid=1121812477/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/104-5631442-5131931?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

Review: The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank

2005-07-19T18:30:00.000-04:00

Writing Style-6.9
Originality-7.0
Plot-6.5
Literary Merit(whatever that means)-8.4
Overall-7.3

It’s unbelievable that this was written by a 13-14 year old. Simply the fact that a 13 year old could write 300 pages that hold most people’s attention is amazing. It shows an uncanny grasp of storytelling, pacing, and language.

I recently read Henry and June by Anais Nin, which is a section of Nin’s diaries that deals with her relationship with Henry Miller and his wife June. And I have to say that I think a 13 year old Anne Frank writes every bit as well and is in many ways as mature as an adult Anais Nin. In fact, I was repeatedly reminded of Nin’s diary while reading this. Particularly, Anne’s description of her feelings for Peter and one entry where she candidly describes exploring her own genitalia, which could have easily been an entry in Nin’s diary.

I’m sure most of you know the story. Anne Frank and her family are hiding in a secret apartment, or annex, with another family and some other random guy. She falls in love with Peter, the son from the other family.

Those people who would only seek to read this book for sensational violence of the holocaust should be forewarned. None, of the diary is written inside a concentration camp. There’s no physical torture, gas chambers, or mass graves. It’s more subtle than that.

It’s simply a real life snapshot of how people rather manfully persevered and did their best to carry on with their lives under the most horribly oppressive conditions. For instance, they celebrate holidays and birthdays (often writing each other poems as presents) and they take correspondence courses and continue their studies and work from before they went into hiding.

Even without the tension of the war and holocaust going on just outside their door, this is a brilliantly written diary. Even compared to diaries and memoirs written by adults whose lives are tumultuous this could stand up on its own.

However, I think the big catch of this book is that it’s so hard to come to grips with the fact that there was this brilliant young girl living with her friends and family all the while leading rather mundane, regular lives waiting for a war to end, and then they got caught one night. And of the eight of them, only Anne’s father survives the concentration camps. It’s this sudden, inexplicable end to so much that we recognize and value in people that leaves us shaking our heads at this book and the circumstances that come about to make it reality.

Review: On the Beach by Nevil Shute

2005-07-11T21:30:00.000-04:00

Writing Style-6.2
Originality-7.2
Plot-7.0
Literary Merit(whatever that means)-7.1
Overall-7.1

This book was pretty good. I read its 320 pages within 24 hours so it obviously held my attention.

It’s a post-nuclear holocaust book with a fairly clever twist. It was published in 1957 at the height of nuclear war terror, but the action takes place in an imagined future in 1961-1962.

China, Russia, Europe, and the U.S. have dropped over 4,000 nuclear bombs on each other effectively wiping out the entire population in the northern hemisphere. The southern hemisphere is insulated from the radioactivity, at first, due to the winds that swirl in opposite directions on each side of the equator in the tropics. However, the radioactivity will slowly diffuse through these winds and only give inhabitants in the southern hemisphere a brief, less than 6 months, respite from certain death.

The book is set in and around Melbourne, Australia which is geographically significant because this is the most southerly situated major city in the world. So the citizens of Melbourne will be among the last survivors of the human race.

There are four main characters an American navy man, his love interest in Australia, an Australian navy man, and his wife. The love story between the American and the Australian girl is actually quite nice. The Australian man’s wife is a complete idiot that I wanted to bitch slap into next week.

I wasn’t completely sold on the way people were reacting to the end of the world. For instance, the American goes shopping for several items within a month or two of the end and there’s no inflation? And no looting? And all the shop owners are working regular hours knowing they are about to die? Everyone’s fairly calm and their provincial manners, speaking, and attitudes in the face of this situation gets pretty annoying.

The book attempts briefly to answer the question of how we could have avoided nuclear war in this excerpt which I thought was cool:

“Newspapers,” he said. “You could have done something with newspapers. We didn’t do it. No nation did, because we were all too silly. We liked our newpapers with pictures of beach girls and headlines about cases of indecent assault, and no government was wise enough to stop us having them that way. But something might have been done with newspapers, if we’d been wise enough.”

The writing is pretty pedestrian, but in the end I was affected by the book. There are no plot twists, it is what it is. Several times it seems like it will veer into something different, but it’s pretty much about the last living people in the world dealing with a creeping cloud of radiation. If that’s your cup of tea, it’s a pretty good book.

Review: Small Gods by Terry Pratchett

2005-07-11T20:43:00.000-04:00

Writing Style-6.5
Originality-7.3
Plot-7.9
Literary Merit(whatever that means)-6.8
Overall-7.3

This is a really fun, exceptionally funny book that was also surprisingly smart with a swiftly moving plot. This book is in a series of books called the Discworld series that I don’t believe you have to read in sequence. This one is somewhere in the middle of probably a couple dozen books set in Discworld.

If you haven’t already guessed by the fact that it’s part of a series of at least 20 books called the Discworld series, it is in fact fantasy/sci-fi. This book (I can’t speak for the series) is religious satire. Sort of like if you took James Morrow and Douglas Adams and smashed them together, they would write a book something like this.

It starts off in the land of Omnia, a theocracy that worships the god Om. Om unwittingly manifests himself in the form of a tortoise who is dropped into a temple by an eagle. All gods have power based on the number of followers they have. Om is now a pretty impotent god and in the form of a tortoise because he has only one true believer.

Om meets his one true believer, Brutha, and speaks to him about his problem, namely being a powerless turtle. Brutha is the main character of the book and is set on a dual quest to 1) act as a diplomat with Omnia’s neighbor and enemy, Ephebe and 2) restore Om’s power by hiring one of Ephebe’s ubiquitous philosophers to help.

Though the story is set in an alternate world in an alternate universe, the author makes it obvious that he intends it to be allegorical. For instance, Omnia has a group of bishops that torture and kill non-believers, this group is called Quisitors. Discworld is actually a flat disc and the Quisitors kill those that believe that the world may be round.

Other examples of the humor:

‘And you were going to be a bull?’ he said.
‘Opened my eyes…my eye… and I was a tortoise.’
‘Why?’
‘How should I know? I don’t know!’ lied the tortoise.
‘But you… you’re omnicognisant,’ said Brutha.
‘That doesn’t mean I know everything.’
Brutha bit his lip. ‘Um. Yes. It does.’
‘You sure?’
‘Yes.’
‘Thought that was omnipotent.’
‘No. That means you’re all-powerful. And you are…

And:

‘Uh, I want to find out about gods,’ said Brutha.
The philosophers looked at one another.
‘Gods?’ said Xeno. ‘We don’t bother with gods. Huh. Relics of an outmoded belief system, gods.’
There was a rumble of thunder from the clear evening sky.
‘Except for Blind Io the Thunder God,’ Xeno went on, his tone hardly changing.
Lightning flashed across the sky.
‘And Cubal the Fire God,’ said Xeno.
A gust of wind rattled the windows.
‘Flatulus the God of the Winds, he’s all right too,’ said Xeno…
…
…The philosophers looked very embarrassed. Then Ibid said, ‘Foorgol the God of Avalanches? Where’s the snowline?’
‘Two hundred miles away,’ said someone.
They waited. Nothing happened.
‘Relic of an outmoded belief system,’ said Xeno.
A wall of freezing white death did not appear anywhere in Ephebe.
‘Mere unthinking personification of a natural force,’ said one of the philosophers, in a louder voice. They all seemed to feel a lot better about this.
‘Primitive nature worship.’

I’d recommend this book highly to fans of Douglas Adams or any fantasy/sci-fi fan that likes satire and poking fun at religion.

Review: Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

2005-07-11T19:39:00.000-04:00

Writing Style-8.0
Originality-8.2
Plot-7.3
Literary Merit(whatever that means)-8.5
Overall-7.4

I love it when you read a book that is not at all what you had in your head that it was going to be like. It’s a good argument for why everyone should every now and then force themselves to read something that is far outside the scope of their normal reading habits.

I figured that Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte was surely a girly book about some romeo named Heathcliff. I couldn’t have been more wrong. This is a dark, gothic, at times terrifying book. And Heathcliff is a terrible, vengeful, evil person. It is a love story of sorts and tragic which I had assumed, but there’s far more revenge than romance in this book.

It starts with a very scary ghost story, which piques the narrator’s interest into delving deeper into the history of Heathcliff and the Wuthering Heights home. Then it gets into the main story that revolves around Heathcliff.

His (Heathcliff’s) background is pretty mysterious. He enters the household as an orphan. In his adopted family he becomes the father’s favorite, a rival of his “brother”, and falls in love with his “sister”, Catherine. After overhearing Catherine’s plan to marry Edgar Linton, a wealthy gentleman who lives at Thrushcross Grange (the other important household in the story, near Wuthering Heights), Healthcliff runs away for 3 years. What he does in this time is also shrouded in mystery.

He returns having transformed himself into a wealthy gentleman as well and basically plots revenge on the Linton’s at Thrushcross Grange. He (Heathcliff) is not a likable character and it’s hard to feel sorry for him even though he does it all for love I suppose.

It is one of those books like The Sound and the Fury and One Hundred Years of Solitude where it is very helpful to either make your own family tree as you go along or find an edition that includes one because there are multiple marriages, a character (Catherine) has a child also named Catherine, and the story passes over a couple of generations. There are two households, Thrushcross and Wuthering Heights, and the two respective families, Linton’s and Earnshaw’s. So, by looking at the family tree you notice some nice symmetries and can better follow the plot.

It reminded me a lot of The Count of Monte Cristo with the main character returning from exile, transforming himself, and pulling off a complex revenge plot over the course of many years. Except, that Heathcliff’s revenge is not as morally justified.

So, it’s a pretty interesting book, it ends very well, returning to the ghost story. It’s particularly good if you like diabolical characters. The mood is extremely dark and gloomy.

It was originally published in 1847 and it reads like a novel published in 1847. So, if you are not already a fan of the classics of 19th century literature I wouldn’t say that this is the best place to start. I think War and Peace or Liasons Dangereuse would be much more gripping for a contemporary audience.

Podcast: I'll Cut a Switch by Enoch

2005-07-04T22:54:00.000-04:00

My debut EP:

My Sunny Tennessee
Hard Winter
Hand In Hand
Point of No Goodbye

All songs written and performed by enoch and copyright of Bassless Accusations Music 2005

Review: An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde

2005-06-29T18:09:00.000-04:00

Writing Style-6.6
Originality-9.0
Plot-7.0
Literary Merit-8.5
Overall-7.2

This is my first Oscar Wilde play (Amy says that The Importance of Being Earnest is the best). I’ve read a bunch of his quotes, there’s a ton of good one’s floating around out there. And he comes highly recommended by Morrissey:

‘A dreaded sunny day
so let’s go where we’re wanted
and I’ll meet you at the cemetery gates.
Keats and Yeats are on your side – but you lose.
While Wilde is on mine.’

Wilde is pretty darn funny. He pretty much pooh-poohs everything about society, sort of like a gay H.L. Mencken. Examples:

MRS. CHEVELEY: Ah! The strength of women comes from the fact that psychology cannot explain us. Men can be analyzed, women merely adored.
SIR ROBERT: You think science cannot grapple with the problem of women?
MRS. CHEVELEY: Science can never grapple with the irrational. That is why it has no future before it, in this world.
SIR ROBERT: And women represent the irrational.
MRS. CHEVELEY: Well-dressed women do.

SIR ROBERT CHILTON: Do you know, Arthur, I sometimes wish I were you.
LORD ARTHUR GORING: Do you know, Robert, sometimes I wish you were too. Except that you would probably make something useful out of my life, and that would never do.

And the more serious:

'Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people whom we personally dislike.'

This play is about marriage and politics. One character has a Dostoyevskian moral dilemma relating to his political career. Also wrapped up in this is his wife’s ideal of him as a perfect person, which of course he’s not, and neither is she, and neither is anyone else. So I guess that’s pretty much the point.

If you like Oscar Wilde quotes and you like reading plays definitely check this one out. There are funny, clever lines throughout and it’s a good story with a smart message.

Book News: Shelby Foote Passes Away

2005-06-28T21:33:00.000-04:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/29/books/29foote.html?oref=login

I've read the first volume of his Civil War series and it's every bit as good as they say. The only problem is now I can't find volume 2 sold seperately for a decent price.

Review: Billy Bathgate by E.L. Doctorow

2005-06-28T21:30:00.000-04:00

Writing style-7.6
Originality-7.1
Plot-7.9
Literary merit(whatever that means)-7.8
Overall-7.6

This is a really good book. Nothing to write home about, but a very entertaining, solid, smart novel.

Amy tells me I need shorter paragraphs when writing for the Web so I’m gonna try that against my better judgement.

It’s the story of a 15 year old kid who falls in with some gangsters in the depression era. He’s fatherless and poor and has a crazy mom so he’s quite aimless and in need of role models. The kids in the neighborhood all look up to mob boss Schultz. Billy gains cred and a lot of money when he becomes part of Schultz’s inner circle.

It’s got the whole 30’s gangster story feel with a good bit of Catcher in the Rye (of course, what book about a teenager maturing doesn’t get compared to Catcher?) and a dash of Theodore Dreiser’s An American tragedy (Billy, the poor street urchin, is enraptured by the money and notoriety and because of this his morals decline rapidly).

I found at times that my mind was wandering and I would have to go back and read certain paragraphs. I’m not sure why this was, maybe I was going through a low attention span cycle or something. I’m not sure why some writers like Richard Ford can write about a father picking up his kid from his ex-wife and spending time at the baseball hall of fame or James Agee can write endlessly about every tiny detail of a sharecropper’s existence and I am enthralled while others can be writing about the mob, murder, violence, political intrigues and I have trouble paying attention. E.L. Doctorow is a very accomplished, highly regarded writer… so. It’s a mystery.

Still, I’d recommend this book particularly if you like the 30’s gangster thang.