tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-56232558512731912472024-03-21T03:05:02.779-04:00Dan's CanonBuilding and recording my personal book and film canon. I love high minded art almost as much as pulp. Probable genres: SFF, crime, pretentious literary fiction, horror, history, poetry and biography.
Scale used in reviews: Canon (must have been read at least twice), Canon-Worthy, Highly Recommended, Recommended, Pass, Hard Pass. I'm more likely to finish and post about things I like than those I don't, so reviews will skew toward the high end of that scale.Dan Hawkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11835495311151812142noreply@blogger.comBlogger265125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5623255851273191247.post-91953544058977385542023-04-22T13:04:00.000-04:002023-04-22T13:04:52.063-04:00Ballad of the Harp Weaver/A Few Figs From Thistles/Eight Sonnets from American Poetry: A Miscellany by Edna St. Vincent Millay<p> As far as I can tell this is the only time they gave the Pulitzer to such a mix of works by one author. Sure there are multiple collected editions, but this one is strange. It won the prize in 1923. The single poem, Ballad of the Harp Weaver was published in 1922, and later became the title poem of a collections a couple years later. The collection A Few Figs From Thistles was published in 1920. And the 1922 anthology American Poetry: A Miscellany had eight of her sonnets included. It took a little digging just to identify what she actually won for. Looking at the list, I think this will be the only time that happens.</p><p>I've been mixed on Millay in the past. I read a selected poems collection a few years back and liked it well enough, but it wasn't entirely to my taste. Last year, though, I reread that collection concurrently with the excellent biography Savage Beauty. Getting the context for her life made me enjoy this pass more. Her first major poem, Renascence (and the title poem of her first collection) will probably never work for me, but in context I understood it better. And the selected was good overall. I find that I have to be in the right mood for her poems, as I tend to like poetry in a sublime or prophetic mode, and these are primarily love lyrics. They are very good, but I have to work to get into the right headspace for them.</p><p>Ballad of the Harp Weaver was actually my least favorite of the poems in this batch. It struck me as saccharine, though the ending did hit hard the first couple times I read it. But overall, the tone of it didn't work for me. Thankfully, I enjoyed the rest much more.</p><p>There are some shorter (4 lines or so) poems in A Few Figs From Thistles that I didn't really care for, but the others were generally very clever and well structured. I recognized a lot of them from the selected edition. Of the poems I hadn't read before, The Singing Woman From the Wood's Edge and some of the sonnets were the ones that I really liked from it. <br /></p><p>Millay's reputation as one of the best sonneteers is well earned. The eight sonnets from the anthology were uniformly great. </p><p>I have a Collected edition of Millay's poems, and I was wondering whether to read the whole thing or not, but the sonnets are collected separately. I think I will read through them, and then assess whether or not to read the others.</p><p>Highly Recommended<br /></p>Dan Hawkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11835495311151812142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5623255851273191247.post-34355879089696261602023-04-15T11:12:00.001-04:002023-04-15T11:12:11.594-04:00Small Gods by Terry Pratchett<p> I’ll start with the book is a damn delight! I’d read two Discworld novels in the past, The Color of Magic back in the late 90s and Guards! Guards!, both of which I enjoyed immensely at the time of reading. I’ve also read his collaborative novel with Neil Gaiman, Good Omens, several times. The first time I read it, I was just in an early stage of losing my faith, so while I enjoyed it and laughed a good bit, I don’t think I was quite ready for it ideologically. I read it again three years later in 2009. When I read it again in 2019 and again in 2020 before the TV adaptation was released, I was more open to what it was doing. It’s great. But Small Gods covers similar territory as that book and does it better I think.<br /><br />It’s as much a statement of a sort of humanist philosophy of religion as it is a novel. A satire of a certain fundamentalist mindsetl. That it does that while coming across more as a comic novel than an exercise in didacticism is impressive. He understood that it has to be a good novel first, and if it’s a comic novel it had to be funny first or second rather than putting a narrative veneer on a tract. He even has a major character called Dydactylos, which was perfect.<br /><br />And the novel is great. I’ve liked/admired Pratchett and thought he was hilarious ever since I first read one of his books. But this is the one that made me a fan, I think. I picked up a stack of used copies of his stuff at Mr. K’s last year, and I am now looking forward to the rest.<br /><br />Brutha, a novice in the service of The Great God Om, is a dull but kind man. He’s also the last person in the whole hierarchy of the religion who actually still believes in Om, who has fallen on hard times as belief in him dwindled away almost completely. Gaiman does a great riff on the premise of Gods needing worship to survive in his excellent American Gods, but, pending rereads, I like this one more. Om is an aging nearly powerless tortoise with one missing eye.<br /><br />Brutha’s religious order is ruled by a fundamentalist Inquisitor type (an Exquisitor) who intends to be the Eighth Prophet of Om. He’s a cruel sociopath out for power. He catches wind of Brutha’s incredible memory and chooses him for a spying mission/invasion of a nearby nation. We know from the start of the book that Brutha is the actual chosen prophet and his development across the book as he becomes more and more aware of what’s actually happening around him is incredibly done. The book is very well structured, both as a study of his and other characters and as a tightly written narrative. <br /><br />But of course, the real star of the show is Pratchett’s prose which is hilarious and light, but carries a lot of heft nonetheless. It’s impressive how he can sum up characters in a few strokes. Or show the absurdity of a point of view without being meanspirited about it. And as hilarious or insightful as the prose is, it’s all in service of the whole. Just masterful.<br /><br />Really looking forward to more of his work now.<br /><br />Canon Worthy<br /><br /></p>Dan Hawkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11835495311151812142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5623255851273191247.post-27416099297070776112023-04-11T20:17:00.000-04:002023-04-11T20:17:01.509-04:00The Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Sparks (and some catch up on other Sparks books)<p> The Girls of Slender Means is a thorough delight. I'm starting to expect that now that I've read a few Spark books recently. It's a savagely witty comedy about a group of women, mostly young, living in a hostel called The May of Teck club in WWII London. I cannot overstate how funny it is.</p><p>But like Prater Violet by Christopher Isherwood, or the very different humor of Flannery O'Connor, this skates lightly over some very heavy subtext. Setting this against the backdrop of the war (like the Isherwood), the author's almost ironic use of Catholic faith (similar to O'Connor), and death (like both writers) gives the novella real heft. </p><p>Muriel Spark will be someone I revisit often, as this type of writing yields a lot to rereading, I suspect. <br /></p><p>Years ago I read The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, but while I remember it being funny and having a school setting, I had forgotten a lot of what made the book special. Rereading it earlier this year, I was convinced it was a masterpiece. I had forgotten how concerned it is with the rise of fascism, and the danger of charismatic leaders. I had thought of it as maybe a funnier version of something like Dead Poet's Society set in a girls' school in Scotland. It is so much darker and better than that impression.<br /><br />I'd gotten free copies of several Spark books within the past couple of years and I finally read a few more. Like The Girls of Slender Means, Loitering With Intent was incredibly funny and had a similar heft. I will be returning to these books at some point I'm sure, and reading more Spark. I think I'll read Mememto Mori next, which given the premise, I have very high hopes for. <br /></p><p>Aiding and Abetting, Spark's final novel, alas, didn't quite work as well for me, but I'm glad I read it.</p><p>The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie - Canon</p><p>Loitering With Intent - Highly Recommended/Canon Worthy</p><p>Girls of Slender Means - Canon Worthy</p><p>Aiding and Abetting - Pass<br /></p><p><br /></p>Dan Hawkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11835495311151812142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5623255851273191247.post-32731342913644225762023-04-10T19:19:00.004-04:002023-04-10T19:21:10.615-04:00Collected Poems (1921) Edwin Arlington RobinsonI started a project last year to read all of the Pulitzer Prize Winners in Poetry in order, and to pick up with the National Book Awards when they started in 1950. There were three prizes handed out with the Pulitzers before there was an official prize for poetry, and they went to Love Songs by Sarah Teasdale, which was good but not to my taste, The Old Road to Paradise by Margaret Widdemer, which was very good except for the God on the battlefield war poems in the early going, and Cornhuskers by Carl Sandburg, which I was very mixed on, but the better poems were great.<br /><br />And then came the first Pulitzer Prize for poetry that was actually called that: Edwin Arlington Robinson’s 1921 omnibus Collected Poems. It contained eight books; six collections and two book length epic poems about the Arthurian Legends. I was not prepared to plow through the whole thing, but since it’s an omnibus edition, I was able to read them one collection or book at a time with other poetry in between to break up the pattern.<br /><br />I may have discovered Robinson some day, but I was unlikely to have picked this up any time soon without the long term reading project. I have to say that I think he’s great most of the time. I’m not upset that this won the first official Pulitzer. Set the bar high. He won the award two more times, so I will probably end up reading all of his books since there would only be a few left at that point.<br /><br />He excelled at both sonnets and long blank verse poems, though many of the other poems were good or great. Several times in the longer blank verse poems I started to wonder if I was going to make it through them, then by the end I was blown away. This was true most recently of the title poem in Avon’s Harvest, the final book in the collection.<br /><br />I was only seriously mixed on one of the eight here, the third book, Captain Craig, though I’m willing to revisit it at some point. The rest were somewhere on the scale between really good and great.<br /><br />I’ll break down where they fall for me by collection:<br /><br />The Man Against the Sky - Highly Recommended<br />The Children of the Night - Canon Worthy<br />Captain Craig - Recommended/maybe pass<br />Merlin - Canon Worthy<br />The Town Down the River - Canon Worthy<br />Lancelot - Highly Recommended<br />The Three Taverns - Highly Recommended<br />Avon’s Harvest - Highly Recommended<br /><br />If the Pulitzer Prize project only yielded this and The Old Road to Paradise, I think it would have been worth it. Having read a lot of the newer ones, though, I’m very excited for what’s coming.<br /><br />During a time in which the modernists and other experimental poets were dealing with the changes of modernity in new forms of poetry, Robinson stayed away from experimentation and stuck with formal verse. He’s at his best when in an elevated prophetic or sublime mode, which, fortunately, seems to be his primary approach. I was much less fond of the battle of the sexes poems. The Aruthurian poems were a great take on the mythos, especially the first one, Merlin. Robinson in combination with Robert Frost sold me on longer blank verse poems. I loved the first sections of Paradise Lost for instance, but eventually felt I was going crosseyed as I pushed through to the ending. This has made me want to go back and give it another go at some point. In the shorter term, I’m looking forward to more of Robinson’s work. <br /><br />Overall collection: Somewhere between Highly Recommended and Canon Worthy.<br /><br /><br />Dan Hawkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11835495311151812142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5623255851273191247.post-71720780306835804762021-06-09T20:03:00.001-04:002021-06-09T20:03:50.345-04:00Utopia Avenue by David MitchellI've been a fan of David Mitchell since I first read Cloud Atlas in 2009. I know that his structural gimmicks don't work for everyone, but they work entirely for me. I love mosaic books in which shorter works interact with each other; Fifth Head of Cerberus by Gene Wolfe, Jeff Vandermeer's Ambergris books, 2666 by Roberto Bolano, etc. Nearly all of Mitchell's books work that way, and they work with each other. The novels interact in ways that, if they work for you, really enhance the reading experience, and if they don't, smack of fan service. It all really works for me. <div><br /></div><div>The various strands of Utopia Avenue form a more straightforward story than Mitchell usually employs. The book is structured around the discography of the titular band, going through the albums side by side, song by song, with each chapter consisting of the time in which the song was written with the song's writer as the perspective character. The band has three primary songwriters, one woman and two men, keys, bassist, and guitarist respectively, though both the drummer and manager get a writing credit on a song. The weird connections come through references to Mitchell's previous books.</div><div><br /></div><div>Jasper de Zoet, the guitarist for Utopia Avenue is the descendant of the protagonist of The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, and he is carrying a traveler around in his head that has tormented him since his youth. This strand is in that genre of horror that doubles as an exploration of mental health issues and carries the novel into territory that overlaps with Thousand Autumns, The Bone Clocks and Slade House.</div><div><br /></div><div>This might or might not work for someone who hadn't read Mitchell before, but I found it enchanting, and the ending incredibly moving. Mitchell's prose is always excellent. There are several of his books I like more, but this was very good indeed.</div><div><br /></div><div>Highly Recommended</div>Dan Hawkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11835495311151812142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5623255851273191247.post-48566475630731763942021-06-05T20:48:00.002-04:002021-06-05T22:58:55.558-04:00Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned by Walter Mosley<p>This is my seventh book (and sixth novel) by Walter Mosley, who has cemented himself on my favorite authors list. This is up there for me a little ahead of the first couple of his Leonid McGill books. Those are heart of darkness style noir as PI McGill tries to redeem himself and go into (relatively) legitimate business as he solves cases. Another Mosley novel I loved, The Man In My Basement wasn't a crime novel per se, but in the deeply weird (but not supernatural) scenario of that book, among other things, a black man must make heads or tails of white man's bizarre idea of how to rid himself of guilt. In all of those books, class and race form much of the backdrop against which the ethical dilemmas take place. In Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned, that backdrop is even bleaker and starker and the ethical questions are asked more explicitly.</p><p>It's a mosaic of interrelated stories about Socrates Fortlow, a man in his late fifties who spent over half his life in prison. Originally from Indiana, he is attempting to rebuild his life in the Watts neighborhood in LA. He begins in abject poverty that gradually becomes marginally less abject over the course of the book. Socrates has no illusions about his own guilt. He was guilty of the rape and murders that put him in jail and does not pretend he was not. Like his namesake, he asks questions of those around him. The main ethical point seems to be that he can't undo what he did, but he can, within the limits of his situation attempt to do good. This takes many forms over the course of the book, but the main one is trying to keep a younger man from falling into the same pattern he did. </p><p>I think a lot about the degree to which individual choice and societal pressure act on a person; in existentialist (specifically De Beauvoir's) terms, how much is a person an object and how much a subject. I don't know to what degree Mosley was thinking in those terms, but he certainly was thinking about that problem as he wrote Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned. This is no treacly, leave-the-world-better-than-you-found-it existentialism light, though. Fortlow is firmly bound by his status as a black ex-con trying to make it through post prison life. Mosley doesn't flinch from the bleak implications of that status. But in Fortlow's insistence on trying to find ways to do good in that context, a more authentic version of the make-the-changes-you-can-in-the-context-you're-in trope emerges.</p><p>The book works perfectly as a compelling group of interrelated stories and as philosophical rumination on guilt and redemption. The ethical discussions are not preachy; rather they apply the Socratic method to the question of how to live in a context that makes the question seem absurd. The stories could stand on their own, or at least most of them could, but they truly make a compelling and unified whole. A stellar book. In a group of three with Circe by Madeline Miller and Mortal Love by Elizabeth Hand as the best things I've read for the first time this year.</p><p>Canon Worthy</p>Dan Hawkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11835495311151812142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5623255851273191247.post-76400647064653254392021-05-29T13:25:00.000-04:002021-05-29T13:25:09.441-04:00Mortal Love by Elizabeth HandElizabeth Hand's obsession with outsider art might find it's apex in Cass Neary, the aging punk photographer from Generation Loss and its sequels, or in Curious Toys her historical serial killer thriller which featured Henry Darger as a secondary character. Or here. Artists of all types populate her work from the band Wylding Hall from the folk band in Wylding Hall to the Xtian singer and cyberpunk adjacent art in Glimmering. This, which is, at least in part, her take on the La Belle Dame sans Merci trope continues her obsession with artists bohemian and otherwise and the source of their inspiration. Here those themes are in service of an excellent literary horror/fantasy thriller.<div><br /></div><div>There is an historical set of characters including some of the pre-Raphaelites and the poet Swinbourne. There's a fictional artist who seems to be based on Richard Dadd. There's two generations of artists named Comstock and several bohemian types in the present day, including one writing a history of the Tristan and Iseult legend in all its incarnations through history. Behind it all there is a mysterious woman who functions as model, muse and predator for generations of artists. </div><div><br /></div><div>There is a density of literary and historical reference here that ensures I missed a fair amount, but I got enough to realize that it doesn't entirely matter. Hand's prose and command of character motivation and structure make it compelling. The references I got only enhanced my enjoyment and sent me on several google dives to catch myself up on some things. The books that I found myself thinking of most while reading it were The Course of the Heart by John Harrison, mainly in mood and theme, and with The Stress of Her Regard/Hide Me Among the Graves by Tim Powers, his take on murderous muses and how that drives art. But as much as I love those books, I think I like this one more.</div><div><br /></div><div>Hand proves over and over she's a master in every genre she works in. This is a profound meditation on mortality and art. It's an equally exciting story with a climax that I absolutely did not see coming. It's horror and fantasy and capital L literature. I don't think it's recency bias to say this is among her best if it's not her actual best. I realized last year while reading one of her story collections she is my favorite living writer, and this only reconfirms that. I'll be returning to this many times, I suspect.</div><div><br /></div><div>Canon Worthy</div>Dan Hawkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11835495311151812142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5623255851273191247.post-19531646308518327602021-05-26T08:43:00.003-04:002021-05-26T08:43:55.871-04:00Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K Le Guin<p>The family doctor gave me the Earthsea books when I was a kid because I loved Narnia. I was not ready for them at the time; they really freaked me out. I returned to them later, or at least some of them, with enjoyment, but I still remember that feeling from that early encounter. Decades later I read The Dispossessed, Le Guin's excellent entry in the political science in space subgenre of SF. Last year I finally got around to reading her classic exploration of gender, Left Hand of Darkness. I liked all of these a lot, but Lathe of Heaven is easily my favorite thing I've read by her so far.*</p><p>This is her take on a Phillip K Dick style, loss of reality novel, and it is spectacular. It concerns a man named George Orr, living in 2002 (the near future at the time of publication) whose dreams are effective; that is, they actually reshape reality, going as far back into the past as necessary to make the change. He is referred to William Haber, a psychiatrist who comes to believe that Orr's dreams have this power, and then through hypnosis attempts to use Orr to reshape the world. A wave of alternate histories ensue that achieve that effect that happens in most PKD books where the very concept of reality is melted, especially when Le Guin floats the idea that there could be other effective dreamers. </p><p>This could have been as far as it went and I would have loved the novel; I'm a sucker for reality bending scifi that doubles as a study of madness/mental illness. Especially when it's packaged in a suspenseful story with excellent prose. But in Haber and Orr, Le Guin is able to explore an interesting set of ethical questions: How much history should they change? What cost is acceptable? What is lost? </p><p>"The end justfies the means. But what if there never is an end? All we have is means." In this line Le Guin gets at questions adjacent to those of both the Existentialists and the Pragmatists. It complicates and cuts to the bottom line of ethical decision making. What one chooses to do is what matters. It doesn't negate intent, but it does make it subservient to actions. I will be contemplating this line for weeks.</p><p>That such an vital question is embedded in such a well crafted, exciting and heartbreaking story makes this a novel I will return to many times, I suspect.</p><p>Canon Worthy</p><p>*It's been a long time for the Earthsea books, so a reread could change this.</p>Dan Hawkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11835495311151812142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5623255851273191247.post-56638228588887944942021-05-25T17:42:00.000-04:002021-05-25T17:42:05.745-04:00White Houses by Amy Bloom<p>I bought a copy of this shortly after it came out in hardback because I'd just moved to Charleston and it was a book club selection and I thought a book club in my new home would be fun. Unfortunately I didn't sign up in time for the actual book club meeting (they had it at a restaurant and therefore had limited seating), and I put off reading the book, to the extent that I didn't even read the description on the jacket. I think I put it off because I had subconsciously related it to a book by another author, who shall remain nameless as I don't want to be mean about it, whose book of short stories, a selection for my book club back in Raleigh, I did not finish, I did not like, and whose work I don't plan to revisit. But it turns out to be an historical romance novel about the relationship between Eleanor Roosevelt and Lorena Hickock.</p><p>I am so glad I finally got to this. This is a good mix of following the record and being willing to make up the interstitial things. The most delightful invention came as Hick, as Hickock was called, tells of her past. On her way from small town Wisconsin to a career as a journalist there was a detour as she spent a short time (a few weeks? a few months?) in a circus where she learned to type. This felt like a stealth homage to carnivalesque works like Geek Love or Nights at the Circus. If I hadn't been won over already, I would have been at that point. She also invents a cousin of Elanor's to allow for a blackmail subplot. But for the most part it's a fictional autobiography.</p><p>I'm not sure how much it reflects Hickok's actual writing style, but the narrative voice here is absolutely convincing. A little world weariness/cynicism a la His Girl Friday that is undercut by the clear strength of emotion between Hick and Eleanor. I've read about this time period in a couple of biographies, including No Ordinary Time which covered both FDR and Eleanor. Bloom captures the excitement of being near a president in office without ever making FDR the focus of the book. There are great barbs about figures of the time and it really captures a believable dynamic of living in the shadow of someone who was both a great president and a great con man (to paraphrase the book), while keeping the focus on Hick's life story and the love story between her and the first lady. I'm kicking myself for not reading this sooner; it's excellent.</p><p>Highly Recommended.</p><p><br /></p>Dan Hawkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11835495311151812142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5623255851273191247.post-84122903077393029792021-05-21T19:58:00.001-04:002021-05-21T19:58:17.515-04:00The Salt Roads by Nalo HopkinsonI wasn't in the right frame of mind the first couple times I started this one, but I'm glad that I returned to it. Last year I read Hopkinson's excellent science fiction novel Midnight Robber. This is in a very different, equally nonrealist mode, but is equally good. I finished it last night, but the more I sat with it today, the more I liked it. I love the technique of using real historical figures as characters and filling in the gaps of the story with the fantastical. And this plays interestingly with structure. And it's all in service of a moving story. <div><br /></div><div>It opens on a plantation in St Domingue, as Mer, a slave and doctor/healer and her paramour, another slave, help a third slave woman to deliver a child that I'd stillborn. A hundred years later in France, <br /><div>Jeanne Duval, the real life mistress of Charles Baudelaire, participates in a sex magic ritual. Between the sorrow of the St. Domingue slaves and that ritual a goddess who is detached from time is born. The lives of the St Domingue characters, the Paris characters, and as the novel progresses an additional set of characters in ancient Egypt centering around the Catholic Saint Thais, weave together to form a narrative about striving from freedom from various societal forces that has an incredible impact.</div><div><br /></div><div>The sheer amount of historical research and imagination that went into The Salt Roads would alone make it well worth reading, but Hopkinson's prose and the use of several first person narrators, including the young goddess Lasiren learning about her power and purpose, and a few strategically places third person passages make this something special. I'm still sorting through what Lasiren's relationship to the other gods is. It's the type of book that will clearly reward rereading down the road. </div><div><br /></div><div>Highly Recommended/ Canon Worthy</div><div><br /></div><div>Content warning: lots of sex and it deals with heavy themes.</div><div><br /></div></div>Dan Hawkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11835495311151812142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5623255851273191247.post-40001366050824248212021-05-15T22:47:00.002-04:002021-05-15T22:47:21.708-04:00Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu<p>I read Charles Yu's first novel, How To Live Safely In A Science Fictional Universe back in 2011 and really enjoyed it at the time, though it is sorely overdue a reread. This one was immediately on my radar when it came out last year, but I wasn't buying new books in 2020. I finally got to it this past week, and in the interim it won the National Book Award. <br /><br />I love a gimmick in a novel if it fits the material, and this gimmick fits perfectly. A novel about the precise boundaries of Asian success in Hollywood in the form of a screenplay more by someone who has spent years in writers rooms for television shows. I was expecting a funnier version of satire, but I really loved the direction it went instead. Not that it isn't funny at times; it is. The entire story is set in a Chinatown and more specifically in a set of high rises over a Chinese restaurant in Chinatown. The main character is Willis Wu, grew up there and is now typecast as Generic Asian Man, mostly doing bit and background parts in a crime show called Black and White, though he longs to be Kung Fu Guy. </p><p>But the book shifts from satire to a moving account of Asian life in America. Sometimes didactic fiction bothers me, but once I started thinking of this more as a parable, I got past any qualms I had about it. It feels like an essential account of the, or at least an, Asian American experience, especially given the turn national attitudes have taken in the past couple of years. <br /><br />Highly Recommended</p>Dan Hawkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11835495311151812142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5623255851273191247.post-83205874346055196852021-05-15T21:20:00.001-04:002021-05-15T21:20:16.273-04:00Walt Whitman's America: A Cultural Biography by David S. Reynolds<p>I have have been reading through a copy of the 1892 death bed edition of Leaves of Grass off and on for years. I started at the beginning several times, but have ultimately decided just to pick back up where I left off no matter how many months have passed since I last picked it up. There are passages I absolutely love in there, but there are also large stretches where the seemingly endless lists make my eyes glaze over. But when I push through even some of those are amazing. There are also many things I didn't get about the poems because of lack of context. </p><p>I chose this biography of Whitman because it promised to delve into the historical context of his life as much as his life, and on that front it very much succeeded. Like Whitman's poems, sometimes it can be too much detail, but it did exactly what I needed it to. And reading this shortly after reading The Metaphysical Club gave me a lot more insight into 19th Century America than they would have done alone.</p><p>I think Whitman gets read like the Bible a lot of times. That is, it can provide a borderline ecstatic experience and it can be turned to mean whatever you want it to. I had a picture of Whitman as the 19th Century version of a progressive. The reality, as much as it can be determined from the record is much more complicated. He had many progressive impulses, but was also very conservative in other ways, even by the standard of his time. In his own words, he contained multitudes. The book helps navigate those multitudes. It emphasized how much Whitman wanted to encompass all America and how much he was disappointed that the masses were relatively uninterested in his poems. It highlighted how slick a salesman of his work he could be. </p><p>I'm currently reading the 1855 version of Leaves of Grass and already can tell a difference in the experience. I'll keep hacking away at the death bed version for the next few years, I suspect,</p><p>Highly recommended, though you'll have to have patience for a lot of detail.</p><p><br /></p>Dan Hawkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11835495311151812142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5623255851273191247.post-67919842247194070122021-05-15T10:53:00.001-04:002021-05-15T11:18:36.049-04:00More Shapes Than One: Stories by Fred Chappell<p>After revisiting Chappell's masterpiece I Am One Of You Forever recently, I wanted to get into some of the unread books of his I've had on the shelf for years (a decade?) after picking them up used. I'm very glad I started with this collection of short stories. All of them least good, though there were a few that didn't really work quite as well for me as the others, and there were a few stunners. The first few were detailed stories about real historical figures that were true to their lives (as well as I could tell by a quick google), but filled in the edges of the story with the fantastic and horror. These were a huge change in voice from I Am One Of You Forever, but it only took a few pages for me to adjust. They were a pleasure to read. Then it transitions to fiction that is not tied to that history, including several stories that were in that tall tale mode that I loved so much.</p><p>Some of these, especially The Snow That Is Nothing In The Triangle, Adder, and Mankind Travels Through A Forest of Symbols are up there with the Elizabeth Hand, China Mieville, and Peter Beagle stories I read last year. Some of the best I've read for the first time in years.</p><p><b>Linnaeus Forgets</b>- In this story, the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus, who is credited with formalizing the binomial nomenclature, and receives a mysterious plant. Something incredible happens that I won't spoil, but this really set the tone for the first half of the collection and was a wonderful story</p><p>Highly Recommended/Canon Worthy</p><p><b>Ladies From Lapland</b>- This is one of the ones that didn't quite work for me. It concerns the French mathematician and explorer Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis, who set out for the North Pole to try to prove the world was not perfectly round. On the journey though, he was useless for the scientific purpose of the journey because of his dalliances with the ladies from the title. This seems to be based at least in part on Voltaire's real life criticism of Maurpertuis, and he really doesn't come across well in the story. It's probably the least fantastical story in the bunch. It's incredibly well researched and written, it just wasn't as much to my taste.</p><p>Recommended</p><p><b>The Snow That Is Nothing in the Triangle</b>- Based on the real life of mathematician Karl Wilhelm Feurbach, brother of the theological philosopher and discoverer of a theorem about circles and triangles that is named after him. He was mentally ill, and Chappell does a wonderful job weaving details from his life into a truly horrifying and beautiful story. The best of the historically based stories in the book. One of those where there could be supernatural horror, or it could be that mental illness wins sometimes. A profound reading experience.</p><p>Canon Worthy</p><p><b>Barcarole</b>- This is about the composer Offenbach and a melody that haunted him his whole life, and how he met a dying doppelganger of himself. This one skirted the line of being to cutesy, but there were little details that made it work.</p><p>Highly Recommended</p><p><b>Weird Tales</b>- The lives of HP Lovecraft and Hart Crane converge in a Lovecraftian tale that is very smart about both their bodies of work. If you like poetry and mythos tales, this is near perfect.</p><p>Canon Worthy</p><p><b>The Somewhere Doors</b>- This is a science fiction/fantasy story about a science fiction author who struggles to fit the mold of a pulp writer. A writer coming to terms with his destiny doesn't always work, but it does here.</p><p>Highly Recommended</p><p><b>The Adder</b>- This was one of my favorites from the collection. A pair of southern booksellers, and uncle and nephew discover an original copy of the Necronomicon. It's also about the poetry of Milton, and this works way better than that description would indicate. So funny!</p><p>Canon Worthy</p><p><b>Ember</b>- One of two stories that have the theme of men's brutality to women, and the more effective one, at least to my taste. An Appalachian revenge tale of sorts from the perspective of the one upon whom vengeance is wreaked. </p><p>Highly Recommended</p><p><b>Duet</b>- A country star tells a story of grief that explains the power of his singing. </p><p>Highly Recommended</p><p><b>Miss Prue</b>- A recent ghost pays a visit to the woman he courted during his life. </p><p>Recommended </p><p><b>Mankind Journeys Through Forests of Symbols</b>- Another tall tale that is maybe my favorite in the collection, with the possible exceptions of The Adder and The Snow That is Nothing in the Triangle. The story opens with a miles long tangible dream blocking a highway. A rural sheriff has to deal with the situation, and it gets wilder from there. Hilarious.</p><p>Canon Worthy </p><p><b>Alma</b>- Another story that didn't work quite as well for me, though it is very well written. It's a parable of sorts set in a dystopian future or past that talks about how men subjugate women while not understanding them at all. I see what he was getting at, but it didn't quite land as well as most of the others for me.</p><p>Recommended </p><p><b>After Revelation</b>- A dystopian tale that I will have to read again, as I don't think I quite got it fully on first pass. Interesting story and good writing, though.</p><p>Recommended</p><p><b>Overall Collection</b>: Highly Recommended. </p>Dan Hawkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11835495311151812142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5623255851273191247.post-34069276612776449332021-05-08T17:24:00.002-04:002021-05-08T17:27:02.184-04:00The Wanderers by Richard Price<p>The youth gang crime subgenre is not one that I'm usually interested in. My first glimpse of it was as a young kid reading the cautionary tale/disguised religious tract/testimonial The Cross and the Switchblade by David Wilkerson depicting the life and conversion of a gang member named Nicky Cruz. If decades old memory serves, it was just salacious enough to keep the interest while having a very heavy handed last act about converting to Christianity. At some point in school I read The Outsiders by SE Hinton, but I remember absolutely nothing about it other than the term "greaser" and that it was about rival youth gangs getting into racially motivated trouble. The Wanderers is a deliberately profane entry in that genre, one that I mostly enjoyed.</p><p>A college professor recommended Price's Lush Life to me back when it came out because I had praised Elmore Leonard's dialog, and the professor said Price's was as good. Lush Life is a great crime novel, and Price's ear for dialog was not exaggerated. I also read Samaritan around that time, and enjoyed it as well, if not quite as much. Later, when I realized that Price, along with Lehane and Pelecanos, was part of the writing room for The Wire, and I picked up several of his books, including this, his debut, which have sat on the shelf unread for years. </p><p>It seems that at least part of Price's point in this book is to de-sanitize the youth gang genre (based on my limited exposure to it). The racism that drives a lot of the gang activity is on full display. The coming of age sexual experiences are borderline pornographic. This is clearly an attempt at portraying the time and characters honestly, but will likely put some readers off. But if you have the stomach for that, it is an incredibly affecting work about some kids growing up in a very difficult situations.</p><p>The book has an undeniable energy. The dialog is very good. There are several absolutely chilling sections. I didn't like this as well as Lush Life or Samaritan, but, especially considering it was his first novel and published when he was 24, it's very impressive. </p><p>Recommended (with a heavy content warning), but read Lush Life first. </p>Dan Hawkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11835495311151812142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5623255851273191247.post-19678650026053340112021-05-08T16:58:00.001-04:002021-05-08T16:58:44.788-04:00Welcome Chaos by Kate Wilhelm<p>I've been meaning to read some Kate Wilhelm for some time; I've heard good things on podcasts and such and Gene Wolfe, one of my favorite writers, was a fan. I've had this mass market paperback of one of her early scifi novels on the shelf for some time, along with a few of her later mystery novels. I'm glad I encountered the book that way rather than having it specifically recommended because all the promotional material spoils what the central scifi concept is, which is left as a mystery for the first quarter or so of the book. To be fair, any discussion of the book will likely have to tip that off, though I will put a spoiler warning for anyone who wants to go in blind.</p><p>The book opens as a shadowy (former) government agent manipulates a college history professor and recent bestselling pop science author, Lyle Taney, into quitting her job to take an assignment writing a book about eagles and doing her research in a house in the Pacific Northwest on the coast. He is attempting to get her to discover the identity of a reclusive neighbor who has a valuable secret. </p><p>Spoiler in this paragraph:</p><p>Lyle gets drawn into the lives of the neighbors, who turn out to have discovered a way to perpetual health and long life, the secret the former agent is after. At this point the book becomes a cold war thriller of sorts as Soviet scientist have made a similar discovery and the heretofore independent group is faced with a choice of distributing the inoculation in the West as well so as to avert nuclear war under the assumption that one of the superpowers will likely strike before the other has time to inoculate their population against nuclear radiation. </p><p>End spoiler:</p><p>I'm not sure I entirely buy Lyle's initial motivation, but once the story is set in motion it's a very interesting and propulsive near future/present day (for the early eighties) scifi cold war thriller. It's very concerned with the ethics of the idea of mutually assured destruction. The central scifi conceit answers that in a way that is not especially comforting, but not without hope. </p><p>I suspect this is not a bad entry point to Wilhelm's work, as I want to read more at this point.</p><p>Recommended.</p>Dan Hawkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11835495311151812142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5623255851273191247.post-11868679088348554682021-05-05T20:49:00.001-04:002021-05-05T20:49:07.745-04:00The Metaphysical Club by Louis Menand<p>This is a very good group biography that doubles as a primer to a philosphy, like At the Existentialist Cafe by Sarah Bakewell or The Life You Save May Be Your Own about the Existentialists and mid-20th Century Catholic writers respectively. It documents thoroughly the milieu which gave birth to pragmatism. In that sense it is a powerful intellectual history that fills in some gaps of my understanding of that century. </p><p>I hadn't really considered Pragmatism as a philosophy before, so I appreciate that the bulk of the book is about the conditions that gave rise to it. Like the Existentialists and WWII, the trauma of the Civil War was a huge factor. As was Transcendentalism. And the rise of evolutionary theory, both in terms of its acceptance as science and various reactions to the pseudoscientific ways it was applied to society. Probability theory played a huge role. The battle between the rise of capitalism proper and the original progressive movement factored in. Racial ideas were woven throughout, as were religious ideas. I've long rejected, or at least tried to reject, easy explanations, or "the dogma of simple causation" in the words of a an article by someone with the last name Shera I read in grad school. Menand does a great job of providing many possible antecedents. Against this melange of ideas, an attempt to reach for what works versus what suits an ideal is very tempting. Menand is not uncritical of pragmatism, which I appreciate, but he does an impressive job of showing its appeal.</p><p>The book primarily focuses on the lives and works of Charles Pierce, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., William James and Thomas Dewey, though as my last paragraph hints, it includes much of what they were reacting to and against. It was a very satisfying reading experience in that sense; it contextualizes their ideas even as it summarizes them. And many of the conversations that were happening then: race, class, the relative importance of the individual versus the collective, the problems with capitalism and more were happening then as well. All through a different lens, as that age was starkly different from ours, but I've had conversations about most of these things just in the last couple months before reading this. This argues against Holmes's (at least I think it was Holmes quoted near the end of the book) that books over 20 years old are useless in terms of keeping up with the conversation. That The Metaphysical Club itself is about that old and felt so fresh does as well. It will take at least a second reading to understand, but even though I don't fully get all that it contains, it has been a remarkable spur to thought and is invaluable to understanding a period of time I've read about from different angles before.</p><p>Holmes's approach to law (to the best of my understanding based on this book), that legal decisions come before legal principles, that law is essentially judicial behavior, reminded me of an idea I first encountered in Use of Weapons by Iain M Banks, that people don't reason their way to their beliefs, they generally manufacture reasons for what they believe instinctually. This doesn't encompass all of pragmatism, of course, but it seems axiomatic to it. And while it may be somewhat off-putting, I have a hard time arguing against it. </p><p>All in all a very good history of ideas that I will be returning to, probably in the next couple of years.</p><p>Highly Recommended.</p>Dan Hawkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11835495311151812142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5623255851273191247.post-21612721742269887432021-05-05T16:35:00.001-04:002021-05-05T19:40:28.630-04:00Catch Up Post<p>I have been slammed at work lately and hadn't had the energy to post about the books I've been reading, but I wanted to write a catch up post of what I've read since rereading Remains of the Day:</p><p><b>Hummingbird Salamander by Jeff Vandermeer</b>- Vandermeer rarely does the same thing twice, though there is a commonality in environmental themes, deep weirdness/surreality and good prose. His most recent is a eco-thriller in the foreground with societal collapse going on in the background. Despite its differences from 2019's Dead Astronauts (it is largely plotless while this has a propulsive plot), I felt the same after reading both: deeply disturbed at humanity's chances of long term survival, but strangely comforted that the world and some type of life will likely succeed us.</p><p>Highly Recommended</p><p><br /></p><p><b>Prater Violet by Christopher Isherwood</b>- One of my annual rereads. A farce about the movie industry set against the rise of fascism before WWII that is also a great fictional restatement of Camus's idea that the only philosophical question that matters is "Why keep living?" It manages to be hilarious and incredibly moving without being jarring in its tonal shifts. </p><p>Canon</p><p><br /></p><p><b>I Am One of You Forever by Fred Chappell</b>- I read this in 2003 and remember loving it. But this time it was revelatory. A series of interconnected stories that deal with family and coming, not quite of age, but to an understanding of death. It is hilarious. It's part tall tale, part magical realism/fantasy, and part family saga all rendered in one of the best voices/prose styles I've encountered. This is rotating into my yearly reread pile and is easily canon.</p><p>Canon</p><p><br /></p><p><b>North by Seamus Heaney</b>- Heaney is solidly among my favorite poets now. This is up there with Station Island and Wintering Out. Up there with Auden, Yeats, Jeffers and Anne Porter.</p><p>Canon Worthy</p><p><br /></p><p><b>The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter</b>- Another book that I hadn't read in at least a decade. Fairy tales with all the darkness, danger and sex added back in from the sanitized versions. A great collection, and a clear forerunner of Kelly Link, Jeff Vandermeer, etc; IE literary fantasy, probably my favorite genre.</p><p>Canon Worthy</p><p><b>When We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro</b>- Ishiguro's take on the detective novel is to tell a story of the life of a detective. He is firmly among my favorite writers, but this is the only one of his novels that hasn't completely worked for me so far. I only have his story collection and The Unconsoled (which some consider his best) left to go completist with him.</p><p>Recommended (mildly)</p><p><b>Gateway by Frederik Pohl</b>- I've had this one on the shelf for a few years and hadn't gotten to it until this past weekend. But it is one of those rare scifi novels that won both the Hugo and the Nebula awards, which is generally a good marker for great books, and this is a great one.</p><p>It alternates chapters as the narrator, Robinette Broadhead, relates both his current therapy sessions on Earth and his past on the Asteroid called Gateway. Humanity has discovered a trove of mysterious alien ships that were abandoned there, and humans can go light years away and bring salvage back. This is good, because the situation on Earth is grim. There is a palpable sense of dread throughout the book.</p><p>Despite that hard scifi premise, it's essentially a human story about grief and regret. Bob is a fully realized character and it is his emotion that carries the novel against that background. I don't know what it was up against for those awards, but it certainly was worthy of them.</p><p>Canon Worthy</p><p><b>The Secret History by Donna Tartt</b>-I've read all three of Donna Tartt's novels and loved them. Despite the difference in genre between the three, she has consistently great prose, and has a combination of hifalutin and pulp that works perfectly for me. </p><p>It had been a decade or so since I last read this, her debut, and it is even better than I remembered. A young man from poorer means goes to a relatively exclusive college and falls in with small tight knit group of privileged students who all study classical greek under the same professor. Very early on, the reader learns that one of the members of the group was murdered by the rest of them resulting not in a whodunnit but a whydunnit which proves as suspenseful as most anything I've read. Her characters are fully realized, and the prose and voice of the novel works. It's a nearly perfect book, for my tastes at least.</p><p>Canon Worthy</p>Dan Hawkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11835495311151812142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5623255851273191247.post-84807967129160028562021-04-11T15:58:00.000-04:002021-04-11T15:58:15.274-04:00The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro Back in 2009 this was the first book I read by Ishiguro, which I followed up with Never Let Me Go later that year. At the time, I was impressed that he could tell two such different stories and yet have the sense of regret and sorrow. The same applied to his fantasy novel, The Buried Giant which I read around the time it was published. His approach remained the same regardless of the genre he was working in. More recently, I read his first two novels, A Pale View of Hills and An Artist of the Floating World, both of which are excellent. Rereading this in the context of the first two, I like it even more than I did a decade ago. <div><br /></div><div>Ishiguro says he sees this as a rewrite of An Artist of the Floating World, and reading the two in quick succession really highlights the themes of coming to terms with your obsolescence as generations change and a sense of wasting one's life. More than that, both are about characters coming to terms with their own culpability in the evils of their times, Ojo for abandoning his art in favor of war propaganda and Stevens for loyally serving Lord Darlington despite the latter's nazi sympathies. I really appreciate this. Too often it's easy to point out the moral failings of others, but harder to come to terms with your own failings. I certainly have this tendency. Social media exaggerates this. I love that these books force readers to consider their own small place in the world while simultaneously not letting them off the hook for their own part in societal ills. It's subtle, but incredibly effective.</div><div><br /></div><div>And on top of all that, it's a great unrequited love story and often very funny. Stevens' dithering about how well he is bantering had me audibly laughing in a room by myself. And, as in all the other books I've read by him, Ishiguro is masterful at having characters talk around what they mean while making it clear to the reader what is actually happening. I know that after these first three books he played around more with various genres, so I'm really looking forward to more of his work. Next up is (if I've been properly informed), his take on the crime novel, When We Were Orphans, though I will eventually read all of them.</div><div><br /></div><div>Canon Worthy</div>Dan Hawkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11835495311151812142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5623255851273191247.post-68237144559553026942021-04-10T16:07:00.001-04:002021-04-10T16:07:36.761-04:00Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan<p>I remember liking A Visit From the Goon Squad both in terms of story and structure, but I don't remember the particulars well, but I'll be revisiting it later this year, I'm sure, after reading The Keep and Manhattan Beach, The latter two are as different from each other as from Goon Squad, and both great. I knew from a couple of online friends that this was crime adjacent, but, despite that heads up but I wasn't quite prepared for the genre shift. There are several writers I love that never do exactly the same thing twice. I'm thinking of Jeff Vandermeer and Jonathan Lethem in particular, (and Ishiguro in genre if not in mood) but I have to add Egan to that category.</p><p>This is a genre mashup of the highest order. It's a noirish gangster story. It's a life during wartime historical novel. It's almost, but not quite a romance. It's woman making her way through a male dominated world novel. It's an underwater adventure novel (briefly). And all of these are pulled off. </p><p>The novel opens with Anna Kerrigan, then 12, visiting a gangster with her father. Her father is a go between for gangsters, politicians and union bosses. The exact nature of his involvement is initially unclear. The book jumps forward to Anna's late teens/early twenties, during WWII. Her father has disappeared years earlier. She was then working in a factory making battleship parts and longing to learn to dive. She runs into the gangster again. I won't give any other plot points, but the novel plays out perfectly. </p><p>Overall this was a great historical novel that belongs on the same shelf at Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay, Carter Beats the Devil or Underworld. </p><p>Highly Recommended/Canon Worthy</p>Dan Hawkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11835495311151812142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5623255851273191247.post-91353021335447526542021-04-06T19:04:00.000-04:002021-04-06T19:04:06.150-04:00The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende<p>The adjective brave gets thrown around too freely in descriptions of novels, so I try not to use it. That said, Isabel Allende published The House of the Spirits less than a decade into the Pinochet regime. Considering that the final quarter or fifth of this book is a fictionalization of that regime's brutal rise to power, she clears the bravery bar by some distance. All fiction comes from a point of view, even if that point of view is neutral. Still, I don't care for work that gets too didactic, even if I agree with the bulk of the sermon. But I do love generational fantasy novels, and this fits the bill. </p><p>The language (at least in translation) is excellent. I love that she pokes fun at Garcia Marquez and 100 Years of Solitude by pointing out (multiple times) that naming every generation of a family the same thing is needlessly confusing. I love that even though there is an evil businessman, and Esteban Trueba is truly an evil business man, that Allede doesn't A) pretend he's not evil and B) pretend he's not a person. This archetype can get tiresome but she makes him very real. I love the little details like the fact that he's a conservative ideologue who can't distinguish between the liberals, the socialists and the revolutionaries, which is incredibly true to life. And in the end, even he has to admit that military regime he helped install is a terrible thing.</p><p>And by giving three generations of women, Clara, Blanca and Alba tell the story Allende manages to show bot the brutality of the patrician class there and a sense of some of what was lost when the junta took over. But the novel is also celebratory and funny at times. This generational and fantastical approach is the main thing that keeps the ending from being didactic, but it also makes the condemnation of the Pinochet regime far more powerful giving a long context. That generational style of storytelling is powerful. </p><p>This is, to be sure, an incredibly tough read, especially in the final act. But it is an incredible novel. I will be reading it again, I'm sure and I'll likely track down more of her work.</p><p>Canon Worthy</p>Dan Hawkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11835495311151812142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5623255851273191247.post-59839831235190652572021-03-31T10:22:00.003-04:002021-03-31T10:39:52.197-04:00An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro<p>I've been on a Kazuo Ishiguro kick recently spurred by the release of his new, and very good, science fiction novel, Klara and the Sun. I recently recommended his debut novel, A Pale View of Hills, which I've only come to like more on further reflection. An Artist of The Floating World was Ishiguro's follow up to that, and it is an excellent one.</p><p>Ishiguro's mastery of subtlety is well on display here. Again there is an unreliable narrator. Again the characters are often talking around what they mean in heartbreaking ways. The narrator, Masuji Ono, is an an old artist in post-WWII Japan. As the novel progresses, it becomes clear that he is reckoning with his actions during the war, specifically his move from a place among bohemian artists to essentially pumping out war propaganda. I have read books that talk about regret and reckoning with one's own complicity in the crimes of the times, and I have read books in which characters are reckoning with their lack of impact, but I have rarely read books that sit in the paradox of both at the same time. It's a powerful tension.</p><p>As in Pale View of Hills, the war looms in the background of the book. Like the previous novel, there are themes of authenticity and wondering about how to continue living that are not far off from the Existentialists. With the war came American influence, both in the dropping of the bomb and in the subsequent western influence on Japan. In both of Ishiguro's first two novels, the struggle between those American influences and Japanese culture, and the changing mores of the younger generation drive a lot of character motivation. </p><p>Another meditative, masterful novel. I expect I'll eventually read all of Ishiguro's books. Next up is a reread of The Remains of the Day for the first time in around a decade. Ishiguro saw that novel, one of his most famous, as a rewrite of this one in a British context. I look forward to returning to it with that in mind.</p><p>Highly recommended (though with reflection and a reread it could go up to Canon Worthy)</p>Dan Hawkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11835495311151812142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5623255851273191247.post-37662385156117275122021-03-20T19:02:00.002-04:002021-03-20T19:02:43.226-04:00Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro<p>The interview Ishiguro did for this book with Neil Gaiman pushed me to read more of his work. Last week I read (and loved) A Pale View of Hills, his debut novel. After further reflection and listening to a couple episodes of The Gene Wolfe Literary Podcast where they discuss it, I like it even more than I did at first. This one, Ishiguro's latest, will take a similar amount of time to fully process, but I do have initial thoughts.</p><p>It is a near future science fiction novel narrated by an AF or Artificial Friend, the Klara of the title. I love the science fictional tool of a narrator whose vocabulary/experience is limited and so descriptions of mundane things become otherworldly. Gene Wolfe is masterful at this, as is Ishiguro here. These AFs are essentially AIs embedded in robot dolls that are able to move and provide a level of companionship for children as they grow. Klara has feelings and is quite perceptive. The first chapter takes place in her store, but eventually she is purchased by a family for a girl named Josie, who is quite ill. I don't want to get into the plot mechanics too much so as to avoid spoilers, so I won't summarize further.</p><p>As with A Pale View of Hills, so much of this novel's meaning lies in the subtext. The limited vocabulary of the protagonist makes for a different type of unreliable narrator. Honestly, I'm going to need a reread to fully understand her visual perception as described. But as the novel progresses a world is revealed in which CRISPR-like gene manipulation has created a separate class of people who have genetic advantages. Between the advances in AI and the "Lifted" people, two new prejudices have been folded into an already existing xenophobia. There are hints that one character has joined an alt-right enclave that is as opposed to non-white people coming into their space as they are about the genetic and AI advances. It's very subtle, though. </p><p>The main narrative is, unsurprisingly for Ishiguro, one of deep grief. The mother's grief over her daughter who has died, and around the illness of her remaining daughter. And Klara herself, AI, though she is, reveals this elliptically. One of the most haunting aspects of the book is the solar powered Klara's invention of a sun centered religion of sorts. Her prayers to the Sun on behalf of Josie are heartbreaking. Most AI narratives are asking questions about what makes us human, but Ishiguro's use of religion as a marker is brilliant. As is planned obsolescence as a stand in for death.</p><p>After hearing him discuss this novel with Gaiman, I got the sense that I might be diving in and reading all his books. Reading this and Pale View of the Hills only confirmed it. I'm reading An Artist of the Floating World, his second novel, now. More to come, I'm sure.</p><p>Highly Recommended</p>Dan Hawkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11835495311151812142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5623255851273191247.post-56201037595690736072021-03-19T12:20:00.003-04:002021-03-19T12:26:44.398-04:00Wild Seed by Octavia Butler (2021 Reread)<p>Not much to add this time through (2021 annual reread), except that, even though I'm an easy cry, this is an incredibly moving book. Like I said two years ago; beautiful and brutal.</p><p>2020 update- Wild Seed is one of my annual rereads and when I first thought of building this blog around my personal canon, this was one of the books automatically in. I’ve lightly edited and pasted my 2019 review below. It sums up a lot of my feelings about the book well.</p><p>I do want to add that on this reread I really wrestled with the power dynamic between Doro and Ayanwu. Theirs is on the most defining level a master slave relationship. It is troubling, then, when Butler gets as close to a “happy ending” as that dynamic, and the dystopia that is the endpoint of events set in motion in the book, can possibly allow. Over and over in her books, Butler is incredibly insightful into the psychology of slavery, of being on the powerless end of the relationship. This is true of all her books, but it is hard to see the ending as anything other than a defeat. It is no less powerful a book for that.</p><p>As I said last year, I cannot recommend this highly enough.</p><p>Annual Reread 2020 1/8</p><p>Rereads, Library Books, Etc 2020 3/35</p><p>My 2019 Review Lightly Edited:</p><p>I’ll start by saying Wild Seed is one of my favorite books; I reread it once a year. It’s the first Butler book I read, and it is not a bad place to start. Certainly if I thought I could only convince someone to read one Butler book, it would be this one.</p><p>It is the first book of Butler's Patternmaster series chronologically. It was written after the later books in the series, though. It could be read as a standalone. But the brilliance of what she pulled off here can only be fully grasped in the context of the later books. Her first published novel, Patternmaster, was a far future dystopia in which three groups of people existed: a web (pattern) of connected psychics controlled by the strongest of those (the Patternmaster), mutes (regular humans with no psychic ability), and Clayarks (centaurish bearers of a disease that will turn mutes or psychics into Clayarks). It is easily the weakest of the series. That’s not to say it’s not good. It is. In the prequels, though, she reverse engineered what it would have taken to get to that dystopia and those books are ingenious. Each is a different subgenre. Mind of My Mind establishes the origin of the pattern in 1980’s California. It’s a near future scifi with some elements of a mainstream approach to character. It’s very good. Clay’s Ark, which talks about how the Clayark virus hit earth combines pandemic disease from outer space thriller and home invasion horror against a sort of Mad Max background. It’s great. She always plays fair and doesn’t change anything implied by Patternmaster. Each book ends with a bittersweet bleak ending. But the knowledge of what they are setting up gives them a harder edge than they would have in isolation.</p><p>Then came Wild Seed, the best of the series. It reads like a literary fantasy novel beginning in Africa and travelling to antebellum slave-holding America. It feels like folklore, like myth with elements of superhero comics and slave narratives. By this point Butler’s prose was flawless. She was really in control of her themes of slavery, gender and the power dynamics that come from those. But she is never didactic here (the main flaw of her more famous Parable of the Sower, in my mind). These themes all emerge from the story. That story pits two long lived people against each other in a variety of capacities. The dominant one is master/slave. The backdrop of that power struggle is pure scifi; a centuries long genetics experiment.</p><p>Anyanwu is 300 years old at the beginning of the story. She’s a shapechanger and can heal herself. She presents as an old woman to reduce the scrutiny and fear of her people, who revere her as a healer and fear her as a witch. Doro is unbelievably ancient. When he dies he jumps to the nearest body and lives through them. Over the centuries, he has cultivated people who have abilities trying to create a species of psychics; he has bred them like cattle, and unsurprisingly is drawn into the slave trade. He is originally from Africa, but is making America the center of his efforts. He manages to coerce Anyanwu into his fold; she is the only person he’s discovered over the years who has the potential to be as long-lived as he. He threatens, cajoles, seduces. He sees people as valuable seed, values them for their potential to forward his genetic goals and kills them when they rebel or go crazy. She sees them as people, values them as family and attempts to heal them. She is “wild seed.” Her genetic mutations happened outside of his control.</p><p>Their long struggle forms the narrative of the novel, and it is a great one. I’ve only got a couple more Butler novels before I’ve read them all. She is among my favorite writers, and to my mind, this is her greatest book. Beautiful and brutal. I can’t recommend it highly enough.</p><p><br /></p><p>Canon.</p>Dan Hawkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11835495311151812142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5623255851273191247.post-86834431812027827042021-03-17T17:14:00.001-04:002021-03-17T17:14:47.269-04:00The Keep by Jennifer Egan<p>I read Egan’s Pulitzer Prize winning A Visit From the Goon Squad back in 2011. I don’t remember it well, though I intend to revisit it soon. I love books that are oddly structured or that consist of stories that can stand on their own but when put together add up to more. I usually think of such story suites as a science fiction trope, but given books like Winesburg Ohio, Dubliners or Nazi Literature in the Americas (or on a larger scale 2666) there’s a lot of precedent for it in mainstream fiction as well. What I do remember about Goon Squad was that it worked wonderfully as a connected sequence. That metafictional impulse is on display in The Keep as well, and I’m glad that I’ve finally returned to Egan’s work.</p><p>The story begins as a pastiche of a gothic family melodrama/horror story. And it works incredibly well as that. For a while there were tics about the narrative voice that bugged me, but eventually I realized what was happening and came to love it. The gothic tale is being written by a prisoner, named Ray, who is in a prison writing group. If this were set in an MFA workshop, I think I would have rolled my eyes at that point, but the fact that the narrator is in a group of people at least one of whom is a legitimate threat to his safety adds stakes that make that part of the story compelling. The final section is narrated by the woman who is leading the workshop in the prison. </p><p>Gene Wolfe once said something to the effect that the narrative voice should match that of the story, and Egan did that masterfully here. You believe that Ray wrote both the gothic novel and the prison one. There was a bit in there about hatred of adverbs that brought Elmore Leonard to mind, though the writing style isn’t as pared down as his. I read in a review (maybe on themillions.com?) that one reviewer appreciated the way Egan was able to bring an emotional weight to metafiction that is often lost in the ironic distance a writer risks in the use of such techniques. I couldn’t agree more (though I think more writers than just Egan and Vollmann can pull this off, though they certainly do. I suspect the reviewer hadn’t read genre masters like Jeff Vandermeer or Caitlin Kiernan etc who accomplish that feat regularly). This was metafiction as compelling page turner with emotional weight. For all the textual tricks it never disappears into too-clever-by-half navel gazing. It’s also smart/prescient (set in a time of blackberries, not smartphones and radar dishes not 5G networks) about how people get addicted to their constant connection with an illusory digital world. The importance of silence, imagination and how the latter is hard to foster without the other is a major theme. </p><p>This is an excellent book and I look forward to reading more by her and to that revisit of Goon Squad.</p><p>Highly Recommended (though a reread could bump it up to Canon Worthy)</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Dan Hawkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11835495311151812142noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5623255851273191247.post-76477523962590704432021-03-15T09:59:00.000-04:002021-03-15T09:59:04.190-04:00Deacon King Kong by James McBride<p>Back in 2013 I attended a reading by James McBride at the North Carolina Literary Festival. I had never heard of him before. But I got a signed copy of The Good Lord Bird and was blown away by it. It was an incredibly funny historical novel about a much larger than life version of the abolitionist John Brown narrated by a young boy named Onion who is disguised as a girl for the bulk of the novel. Like the great comic novels it had very heavy themes: slavery and the history of race in America most prominently. And yet its light touch made the whole thing completely enjoyable while still forcing the reader to confront those issues. I later read his memoir, The Color of Water and his biography of James Brown, both of which I enjoyed, though not nearly as much as The Good Lord Bird. Deacon King Kong, while set in a completely different time and place, 1969 New York, is equally funny and equally concerned with the same heavy themes as the previous novel, and pulls the balance off as well as its predecessor.</p><p>Deacon King Kong is equal parts a crime novel, a comic novel and a social novel that examines the life of a community. It pulls off all three genres and makes it look easy. The deacon whose behind-his-back nickname provides the book’s title, is more commonly known to the residents of the project he lives in as Sportcoat. In the first two pages Sportcoat gets drunk and shoots a drug dealer called Deems who he used to coach in baseball, but who has embraced a violent life of crime. Deems survives, but just. This event galvanizes the community, a group comprised largely of aging transplants from various southern cities. In an interview around a decade or so ago, Dennis Lehane said (I’m paraphrasing) that the great social novels of the past had largely moved over to the crime genre after postmodernism and the Updike/Roth brand of mainstream literary novels had taken over. This seems true of Lehane’s work as well as his fellow The Wire writers’ room compatriots like Richard Price and George Pelecanos. The Wire isn’t a bad comparison point for the crime elements of this novel. The machinations of drug dealers both on the lower and higher ends of the hierarchy, investigating cops, smugglers at the docks and the bystanders of various degrees of innocence are all present in both, though the community of bystanders takes a much larger role here. And Deacon King Kong celebrates the city of New York even as it criticizes in a similar way to The Wire’s treatment of Baltimore. The ways that racism is baked into the system and the lives that people build within that system, the little ways that find some joy in the midst of the situation they’re in is incredibly moving.</p><p>But, while The Wire definitely has some jokes, Deacon King Kong is a full out comedy embedded in the crime story. The humor rises from the community and the way the characters who have known each other for so long interact. Sportcoat’s a tragicomic figure; his alcoholism has completely subsumed him in the aftermath of his wife’s death a couple years before the beginning of this story. He is in a lot of ways a pitiable character, but in McBride’s hands, the humor that is born out of that is stunning. There is a slapstick quality to some of it as well. A would-be assassin runs into such trouble taking out his targets that I was reminded of Patrolman Mancuso from A Confederacy of Dunces and Sportcoat himself seems like a drunken M. Hulot from Jaques Tati movies.</p><p>The beauty of the novel is in the way the crime, the humor and the social critique blossom out of the incredible cast of characters that form an absolutely convincing community. It would be easy for this to turn into a dour morality tale or for the comic tone to make a mockery of the more serious elements. But McBride’s masterful prose and grasp of character allows the novel to embrace both the ugliness and joy of life in equal measure. In its exploration of a community over a couple generations (and in its drunken tragicomedy) it reminded me a little of Wendell Berry’s Port Williams Membership novels. The ending is hopeful. Here someone might quibble that it is unreasonably so, but I think it’s more an expression of McBride’s humanistic approach to the religion of his characters, that both critiques the church’s role in supporting systemic racism and allows it’s characters to take some comfort in it. McBride doesn’t pretend it’s a simple situation. It works incredibly well for me. I will be rereading this at some point, and this has made me really want to revisit The Good Lord Bird as well.</p><p>Canon Worthy.</p><div><br /></div>Dan Hawkinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11835495311151812142noreply@blogger.com0