fiction
Review List III
Monday, January 14, 2008 | Skip to Comments
“Sharing is caring,” they say. And I believe that I have been unkind to you, the interweb, by posting so infrequently to this notebook. Please know that my head hangs in shame and that, truly, it wasn’t you, it was me.
I have been busy on a variety of projects — including pre-production for an animated short film (that’s fancy talk for doodling) — slogging my way through a masters degree and teaching. Amidst all of that, I have still found ways to fritter away the short amount of time allotted to me on this planet by gluttonously immersing myself in the fictitious worlds churned out by our popular arts. Those that have been the most successful at distracting me from pursuing any meaningful purpose with my life are mentioned below.
I highly recommend Michael Chabon’s newest novel, Gentlemen of the Road: A Tale of Adventure. Reviews on Amazon draw comparisons to Edgar Rice Burroughs and H. Rider Haggard but, having read neither of those two authors, I must instead point to Fritz Leiber’s stories of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, to which Chabon’s Zelikman and Amram, the heroes of Gentlemen of the Road, compare favorably. The working title for this novel was apparently “Jews With Swords,” but I think that, while accurate, such a title would have been misleading. This book is not religious in any significant way, but simply an adventure story whose main characters happen to be Jewish. If there is a subtext, it is cultural. No doubt Jews will find it refreshing to have a couple of swashbuckling adventurers with whom to identify (Mandy Patinkin notwithstanding), but I can attest that the book is equally accessible to gentiles as well.
Chabon is a marvelous writer and Gentlemen of the Road is clearly carefully crafted. While it may have been inspired by “dime novels” and serial fiction, Chabon’s complex and inventive use of language and his careful construction of the narrative create a novel that is not only a joy to read, but thoroughly engaging. A quarter of the way through the book, a minor character by the name of Hanukkah is introduced and, within pages, Chabon manages to not only emotionally invest the reader in Hanukkah’s continued well-being, but also uses the opportunity to strengthen the reader’s bond with the two main protagonists. It’s masterful storytelling.
There are moments when, perhaps, Chabon reaches too far. In the opening paragraph of each chapter, Chabon really pushes the English language to its limits, the reader required to wrestle meaning from the densely packed layers of preposition and metaphor. As exhibit A, I present to you one of the more egregious offenders, the opening sentence to chapter seven:
Hanukkah had been kicked awake by worse men, among them his own father, and so the curses he muttered, with his eyes shut and the honeyed hand of a dream still caressing his thigh, extended no further into history than the African’s great-grandmother and confined themselves to envisioning her use by scabby Pecheneg stallions, making only glancing reference to the attentions of Bactrian camels.
A sentence that, no doubt, grows funnier with repeated readings.
I should shut-up and move on, but the art direction on this book is also worth noting. From the dimensions of the novel to the paper stock to the use of a second color to the illustrated end papers, no detail is overlooked. And the book also includes some knock-out illustrations from Prince Valiant illustrator, Gary Gianni. Clearly, no expense was spared.
I suppose you could say that I have been on a bit of a Chabon kick lately, as I have also read The Yiddish Policemen’s Union: A Novel and The Final Solution: A Story of Detection. These too I found quite enjoyable. The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, in particular, is well worth the time if one is interested in crime fiction that follows in the footsteps of Hammett and Chandler. Here again, Chabon seems to be reclaiming a genre that is filled with Jewish writers but devoid of Jewish heroes. A fan of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay should find these titles to be worthy successors.
I have read arguments against the practice of “world building” in fiction writing but, if there is a counter to such thinking, it is Susanna Clarke’s masterpiece,
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell: A Novel. I picked this book up on a whim, despite the intimidating heft of the volume, and found myself unable to put it down. Again, like Chabon, there is a love for language here. Whereas Chabon cribs from pulp novels, Clarke’s prose evokes the overly-verbose and floral wordplay of Victorian novelists but still manages to tow a line that keeps the writing fresh and accessible to a reader more comfortable with modern writing conventions (such as myself). The book is riddled with footnotes — often with word counts that rival the chapters themselves — that diverge wildly from the main story to flesh out minute details about the historical figures and events that are mentioned in passing as the story progress. The reader could, I suppose, skip these tangents, but to do so would be to miss the point entirely. Clarke is so relentless in her presentation of world in which Strange and Norrell live that the reader has no choice but to eventually give in and agree to its existence. And to do so is a joy.
A few months back, I happened on a teaser trailer for the movie Jumper. I can’t say enough good things about this trailer — whether or not the movie is any good, the editor behind this trailer did a fantastic job. I was so taken with the trailer that I ended up plowing my way through all three of the “Jumperverse” books by the author Steven Gould: Jumper, Reflex and Jumper: Griffin’s Story. Even though the first and third books are geared towards a teenage audience, they are each a joy to read and worth one’s time.
If I have become smitten by any story in the last eighteen months, however, it is with that of Walt and Skeezix, the father and son protagonists of the long-running newspaper comic strip, Gasoline Alley by Frank King. I picked up volume one with some trepidation. Even with comic book legends such as Chris Ware and Seth praising the work of King, I know that sometimes that the work that is inspirational to the artists one admires isn’t itself always as interesting to the artists’ admirers. However, in this instance, I fell in love. King’s strip is a joy to read and beautiful to behold. I cannot wait to get my hands on a copy of the book of Sunday strips.
I’m not sure where to even start with movies. There are many I could mention that have been mentioned frequently elsewhere, from Superbad to Hot Fuzz to The Departed, but one that I haven’t seen much mention of is After The Wedding, a small, beautiful Dutch film that is not at all what it appears to be. I was also pleasantly surprised by Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, a hard-boiled crime story starring Robert Downey, Jr. and Val Kilmer that proves to be a joyous homage to the genre.
Previously in the notebook:
Tags: book, fiction, leisure, movie, review
The Photographer’s Lament
Tuesday, November 14, 2006 | Skip to Comments
I looked deeply into her eyes and slowly lowered her onto the bed. Our lips met in a passionate kiss. “Oh, Boris!” She moaned. Our fingers fumbled with buttons and clasps as fabric yielded to warm, soft flesh. We held each other close, our naked bodies intertwined. “Boris, my love, I feel like I have known you my entire life. My body is yours!”
“Just a minute,” I said. “I want to capture this moment forever!” I disengaged myself from my bewildered lover’s embrace, arose from the bed and pulled the Polaroid camera from the nightstand. She smiled coyly, bit her lip and vamped for the lens. “You look beautiful. Wait, just hold that pose while I check the light.” I fumbled through my bag and retrieved my light meter. “Hmm. Let me open the curtains.” As I reached the window, I casually mentioned that the Polaroid was a vintage 1968 Land Camera with a 114mm lens and an electronic shutter. As I rattled off the specs, I decided that the night light streaming in from the window was a bit too harsh. I thought briefly about setting up a soft box but decided that it would be easier to just use a couple of a-clamps from my bag to quickly cover the window with a white sheet and defuse the light. I then moved all the dirty laundry away from the bed so I wouldn’t have to Photoshop it out of the photo later. Perfect. “All right, my love, let’s —”
Fuck. She was asleep.
Tags: fiction, funny, photography, story
Review List II
Thursday, June 8, 2006 | Skip to Comments
I’ve been reading a lot of books lately.
While I was a voracious reader growing up, my consumption of fictional literature has slowly declined over the past decade, with occasional flurries of activity as authors such as Neil Stephenson, Michael Chabon, J.K. Rowling, or Paul Auster momentarily caught my attention. That’s not too say that I don’t read anymore, I am constantly reading design, art and computer books and dumping all of my expendable income into comics and graphic novels. It’s my patronage of the novel that has withered. However, I recently rediscovered the public library, which I had abandoned years ago as branch hours were cut and it was impossible to remember on what days it was open. (According to my wife, who is currently getting her Master’s degree in educational technology, California’s library system ranks 51st in the nation, beaten out by Guam.) Even with the shortened hours, technology has made it much easier to get books from the library. I can access Long Beach Public Library’s catalog online, renew my books with a click of the mouse and even reserve books for pick-up at my local branch. With prices on the rise, the library has freed me to try books that I wasn’t willing to drop fifteen dollars on at the store.
My first acquisitions was Bad Dirt: Wyoming Stories 2 by Annie Proulx. While I’ve never been a much of a fan of short stories, I had great hopes for this collection. A few years ago, I happened upon a copy of The Shipping News, which is one of the best novels I’ve ever read. The book’s sharp, clipped Hemingway-esque prose is almost poetic, while Proulx’s description of the land and people of Newfoundland is deeply nuanced and profoundly moving. Unfortunately, the stories of Bad Dirt did not live up to my expectations. Like The Shipping News, Proulx seems to be trying to use the land and history of Wyoming to shape and inform the characters in her stories but with far less success. The stories seemed muddled, unfocused and, worst of all, boring. Even the aforementioned style of prose is absent, replaced by a rather serviceable but bland narrative style that lacks all the magic of her former work. I managed to finish the book, but not without some struggle. I was very disappointed.
The Saxon Stories, a new series of books from Bernard Cornwell is fantastic. I picked up book one, The Last Kingdom, after spotting one of his books on display at Borders. I recalled his name from several Richard Sharpe miniseries I had watched years ago on Masterpiece Theatre (which is remarkable in and of itself, considering that I don’t normally watch the show). With that sort of pedigree, I was surprised to learn that Cornwell is a contemporary author and, after perusing several of his titles, I was intrigued by the subject matter of The Saxon Stories.
As one might infer from my surname, I am especially fond of stories features Vikings.
The series is historical fiction, with Cornwell using what facts he can and making up the rest. The books take place in late-800s England as Danish armies led by Ivar the Boneless, Ubba, and Guthrum storm across the isle, defeating the kingdoms of Northumbria, Mercia, and East Anglia. Wessex, led by Alfred the Great, is the last kingdom to face the invading Danes. The series is remarkably similar to Harry Harrison’s terrific The Hammer and the Cross trilogy from a decade ago. While it too covered the Danish invasion of England and chose for its protagonist a young English boy of remarkable ability and luck who is adopted and raised by the Danes, Harrison’s work was one of historical fantasy. Instead of Alfred repelling the Danes, he joins them and they go onto conquer much of Europe as well. Cornwell’s series makes for a nice contrast to Harrison’s, as equally compelling but much more faithful to history.
I am eagerly awaiting the US publication of the third book in The Saxon Stories, The Lords of the North.
I read Sharpe’s Tiger after finishing The Pale Horseman hoping that the joy I got from The Saxon Stories would cross over into The Sharpe Series. While I enjoyed the book, it wasn’t nearly as compelling. Sharpe’s Tiger takes place in 1799 in India as the British marched on Mysore. The series is written in the third person, unlike The Saxon Stories which is written in the first, which perhaps lessens the immediacy of the narrative. The book is fairly historically accurate, although major concessions are made so that Sharpe himself can save the day. Overall the book was an enjoyable read and I’ll probably pick-up another eventually, but I didn’t feel the urge to run down to the library and begin the next book in the series immediately.
I’m currently reading 1776 by David McCullough. The book won the Pulitzer Prize, which gave me great hope for the quality of its writing and I have not yet been disappointed. My interest in the Revolutionary War was piqued after extensive genealogy research revealed that one of my own ancestors, my great-great-great-great grandfather William Mapel, served as a private in the Pennsylvania militia in 1779 (the war did not end until the Treaty of Paris was signed in 1783). And this book does an excellent job of not only informing the reader as to the thoughts and actions of the generals and politicians controlling the Continental Army, but of the common soldier as well. McCullough makes liberal use of excerpts from letters, newspaper clippings, and memoirs to paint a picture of the entire conflict, both in the colonies and in England, although the book definitely is biased towards the cause of the Americans. It jumps into conflict during the Siege of Boston in the summer of 1775, alluding to Concord and Lexington and the Battle of Bunker Hill without spending much time on either conflict. Instead, the book looks forward towards the larger campaign that Washington would mount against the British and the Americans’ gradual shift from their pursuit of civil rights as English subjects towards the growing cause of colonial independence.
Next up? If 1776 continues to hold my interest, I may attempt reading another of McCullough’s Pulitzer Prize winning histories, John Adams.
Previously in the notebook:
Tags: book, fiction, leisure, review
Review List I
Sunday, March 12, 2006 | Skip to Comments
I’ve been watching a lot of films lately.
Dave Chappelle’s Block Party is a can’t miss. Well, if you’re a fan of Dave Chappelle and can at least tolerate hip hop music. The heart of this film is in how it was cut. Yes, Chappelle is hilarious and music is great, but Michel Gondry makes some brilliant decisions in post-production, skipping back and forth through time and from situation to situation. In other hands, this could have been far less entertaining.
The Constant Gardener is fantastic as well. Great thriller; the film takes a lot of liberties with your assumptions, leading you down false trails and tricking you into making connections between characters that turn out to not exist. Very well shot. The bulk of the film takes place in Africa, which lend it a feeling of being foreign and exotic. Interestingly enough, while there was a lot of implied violence in the film, there is very little of it on screen — the bulk of the film’s R rating being reserved for language and beautifully filmed scenes featuring Rachel Weisz’s very nude and very pregnant body.
Junebug is also very well done. Unusual pacing. It seems to stagger into a sort of steady rhythm before abruptly pausing very now and then to, quite literally, take in the scenery. Excellent performances. It seems to fall in that post-Wes Anderson Lost In Translation/Broken Flowers milieu, with its Futura Bold title cards and central characters dropped into enviroments full of quirky unusual people. But it works much better than Broken Flowers did and, I think, finds new ground not previously explored.
Battlestar Galactica Season 1 turned out to be far better than I expected. If you haven’t given it a try because of what you remember of it’s previous incarnation, this is something new and different and entirely it’s own. Oh, it’s nothing all that highbrow, although many of the themes that run through the series allude heavily to current world events, it’s mostly escapist mind candy along the lines of Lost and is really quite a lot of fun.
The Weather Man is so-so. Go re-rent American Beauty, it’s a much better version of the same story. You know, guy hates career, guy’s family is falling a part, guy embarks on a introspective journey of self-discovery. I did like how this one ended though. Not that having the main character shot in the head by a homophobic ex-military officer is necessarily a bad way to wrap things up, but The Weather Man takes a different path and still manages to avoid a tidy, vanilla ending.
Must Love Dogs and In Her Shoes are awful trainwrecks, the latter being so bad as to be completely unwatchable.
And 2046 left me wondering why foreign films are always so… foreign. Well shot, well acted but I had no idea what was going on. Watching some of the extras on the DVD helped, but I still find this film hard to recommend.
Oh, and I finally saw — and hated — Batman Begins. A lot of potential there, but ultimately unsatisfying. I mean, in a comic book film you never make the bad guy in the mask a secondary villian — especially to Liam Neeson of all people. But what really bugged me? That stupid Batmobile with the stupid torpedo hatch he kept diving into to use the car’s weapons. And I thought it was supposed to be this amazing James Bond-ian military car — yet it couldn’t outrun the cops? It occurs to me that if Batman really wanted to stealthily slink about unnoticed under the cover of night, he might consider driving something less exotic. Like a Honda Civic. But I suppose if one insists upon running around in the pre-dawn hours of the morning wearing form fitting spandex and a cape, it’s rather difficult to argue that one isn’t really seeking attention in the first place.
Finally popped in Michel Gondry’s The Director’s Label DVD. What a great surprise to find a short on there featuring David Cross!
I’m currently working my way through Scorsese’s Bob Dylan biopic, No Direction Home. It’s really good so far. Some spectacular footage of Dylan performing on-stage in 1966 is interwoven throughout the film.
Tags: fiction, leisure, movie, review