Agents of Dreamland by Caitlin Kiernan

 Back in 2018 I heard this novella recommended on The Coode Street Podcast as a good exemplar of the wave of contemporary takes on Lovecraftian horror. This was the first thing I read by Kiernan who has since become a favorite (I’ve read seven more). At the time I described it as a “good novella in the vein of Lovecraft with nods to Le Carre style espionage, Vonnegut, and Winnie the Pooh. Parts reminded me of Vandermeer (though anything with dangerous fungus reminds me of Vandermeer).” That’s not a bad short summary. I would make the Le Carre and Vandermeer links more strongly on this reread.

As I read more of Kiernan’s work I would become very aware that she was serious when she said that Ulysses should have freed writers from the tyranny of plot (paraphrase). She is much more concerned with language and with mood. That is not to say that she is not able to structure a book well. The story begins a little over a week after an aging cold warrior known as the Signalman who works for a spy agency that deals with the strange, the alien, the uncanny, and his colleagues invaded the compound of a cult that was equal parts David Koresh, Cthulhu and UFO. What they see there traumatizes them. He is in a diner waiting fearfully for an operative from England’s version of his agency. The narrative moves forward and back from the limited third person point of view of the Signalman or that of his opposite number, the first person narration of one of the cult members who seems to be losing her sense of self in the cult and the revelation it promises, and a weird omniscient narrator. The world that emerges is one which has had close shaves with destruction over the years and a sense of future doom. Over the whole thing wafts the scent of fungal spores.

I loved this. It makes the reader work a little, but the world  it introduces seems too small for the relatively short word count. I picked this up again for a book club, and I’m glad I did. Since I last read this, I am far more familiar with Kiernan’s style and concerns and with Lovecraft, a major influence on nearly all her work. I did enjoy it more this time, but I still think this makes an excellent introduction to her work. I need to reread the longer sequel Black Helicopters as she has a third volume in the series coming out soon.

Canon Worthy

Rereads and Everything Else 2020 16/35

Creativity, Inc by Ed Catmull

 I was honestly surprised at how well I liked this book. I picked it up because it is the required textbook for a class that I co-teach/provide heavy support for at the College where I work. I’m a huge Pixar fan, and Catmull was one of the three main driving forces in the life of that company, along with John Lassiter and Steve Jobs. That said, business management books are, to say it kindly, not a genre that appeals to me at all. Couple that with the allegations and subsequent ouster of John Lassiter from Pixar/Disney for workplace harassment; these seem to undercut any tips for leadership from someone who partnered with Lassiter for years. That said, if you add a strong dose of zero tolerance for harassment to the rest of the book, there is some really good food for thought here.

It’s hard to argue with the bulk of Pixar’s consistently excellent output. Hearing the behind the scenes story of how they paired technical brilliance with an insistence on stories that work was on one level inspiring. I particularly appreciated the acknowledgement that, despite the brilliance of the people they hired, there was a lot of randomness that was involved in gaining that position. The chapters that dealt with the impact of randomness and of the unknown really reminded me of Nassim Taleb’s Fooled By Randomness and The Black Swan, but without Taleb’s condescending tone. (I recommend those two Taleb books despite that.) It was refreshing for someone that successful to actually acknowledge that if a few things had rolled a different way (if Jobs had been able to sell them when he initially wanted to, if someone hadn’t made a personal backup for the work done on Toy Story 2 so they could work from home during a pregnancy) that the company could have easily floundered. 

I also liked the policy that anyone in the entire work chain can suggest changes without fear of reprisal. And the policy that people should speak with candor. I think these are keys to a good workplace. They had a day long retreat, or “notes day” which was built around the idea that anyone could make suggestions to improve the culture of Pixar and their processes without worrying that it would get them in trouble. This is where the ideal versus what happened is most easily questioned. In the lead up to notes day, everyone suggested ideas to work on, and these submissions were combined and winnowed to arrive at the smaller number of issues that were addressed that day. I find it hard to believe that no one mentioned Lassiter’s behavior in that first round of suggestions. There is no doubt that Lassiter was incredible at his job, but he also contributed to the negative aspects of the culture that developed at Pixar.

All that said, if you can add some basic idea of non-harrassment and the inclusion of women in the processes that they were excluded from, the advice in this book is very good.

Highly Recommended.

Owned But Previously Unread 2020 76/75

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

 Susanna Clarke’s Jane Austen-era historical fantasy novel Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrel is one of my favorite books. I’ve given it away 10 or 12 times over the years as I’ve found used or remaindered copies. Clarke has had some real health problems in the interim sixteen years since that book’s publication, and was unable to do the historical research required for a follow up. Fortunately, she got well enough to write recently. Piranesi, while it couldn’t be more different from Strange and Norrell  in some ways, is equally good, maybe even better (or at least closer to the center of my taste). It was worth every second of the decade and a half wait. The closest I can come to describing it is that it is almost as if CS Lewis wrote House of Leaves. That is an apt, if jarring comparison and somewhat reductive one.

The title character got his nickname from the Other, the only other living human in his world. The name is a reference to the Italian print maker obsessed with Labyrinths. Piranesi lives in a house that is also a world. There are a seemingly endless series of connected classical buildings. There are four distinct seas complete with their own tidal systems in the lower halls and rain and fog in the upper. Piranesi does not know his true identity, and lives a sort of contemplative life cataloging the statues that line the halls and fishing in the lower seas to feed himself. He understands some things that clearly come from our world, but the house is the only reality he knows. To say much more would venture into spoiler territory.

Clarke builds an incredibly evocative mythic atmosphere. It is both contemplative and awe inspiring. The statues in the halls have significance, but are often ambiguous (though at least in one case, a clear reference which doubles as a subtle clue to what is happening). When I first heard the book described, I expected more horror than is present. There is horror, but it is not the primary mood. As Piranesi gradually discovers what is happening Clarke generates real tension without damaging the wonder of the House that is Piranesi’s world. And, as David Mitchell’s blurb says, the ending is pitch perfect. I would never have anticipated this as a followup to Strange and Norrell, but as I’ve sat with it for a couple of days I really think I may like it more. Rereading will be the tell.

Canon Worthy

Handful Of Exceptions And Everything Else 2020 15/35

 

 

 

 

Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman

 Last year in preparation for the Amazon Prime adaptation, I read this for the third time and it clicked for me in a way it hadn’t on the first two passes.I’d always liked the conceit: the antichrist is switched at birth and when he comes into his powers things go awry, but it didn’t quite land for me. I was still a fairly devout Christian or close enough to that viewpoint that, despite being a good enough sport by that time to be able to take a joke, I was, like The Ringer’s Brian Phillips*, a little too close to the source material to fully appreciate the absurdity of some of the book’s action. Last year, though, it really clicked into place. I loved the series as well; I couldn’t imagine a better adaptation. On this fourth pass, prompted by an online book club, I still really loved it.

An angel, Aziraphale, and his opposite number, the demon Crowley (formerly Crawley) are charged with representing their representative sides in the battle for the souls of humanity. But they form an odd friendship over the centuries and the lines between good and evil are blurred. When Crowley is tasked with switching out the Antichrist for the son of an American diplomat the two hilariously and half-heartedly try to woo him to their sides as he grows. But then when the actual antichrist hits puberty and events are set into motion they realize the aforementioned baby swap and have to deal with the consequences. The actual Antchrist is a boy named Adam; he and his friends (the Them, in the parlance of their annoyed neighbors) hold the key to how things play out. The cast of characters is wide and varied, and every one is a delight. I especially liked the courier who delivered the news of the impending apocalypse to the four horsemen of the same and Agnes Nutter the witch whose book handed down among her ancestors drives much of the plot. And I just love that there’s a character named Thou-Shalt-Not-Commit-Adultery Pulsifer.

Good Omens is a very good blend of Pratchett and Gaiman’s styles. I’ve heard people who are fans of one over the other complain that it’s not like their solo work, but I think the mix works well. It is a humanist book; it asks the question, if certain religious people weren’t so concerned with apocalypse and justice in the afterlife, would they work harder for justice in this one? But despite that philosophical underpinning it is primarily  a hilarious action comedy/fantasy story, and the chronicle of a centuries long friendship. 

Highly Recommended 

Rereads And Everything Else 2020 14/35

*https://www.theringer.com/tv/2019/6/4/18651818/neil-gaiman-good-omens-apocalypse-hits-close-to-home

The Autobiography of Malcolm X As Told To Alex Haley

 A friend gave me a copy of this book seventeen or eighteen years ago and it’s sat on my various shelves since then. Like a couple of other books I’ve read during this project of focusing on books I own and not buying new ones, I’m both upset with myself for having not read it sooner and wondering if I would have been ready for it in my 20s. I’ve gone through a major ideological shift in the interim time and I wonder if my younger self would have been able to get past the deliberately provocative parts of this book to the societal truths that it contains. Because there is a lot to object to here, but his anger is justified, and his assessment of systemic racism is on point.

The narrative arc is a familiar one. As an ex-Christian, I have heard many stories which tell in detail the subject’s life before conversion, as if to convince the reader/listener that they know whereof they speak when they say they know sin. Then there is the coming-to-understand-the-truth moment and their lives are irrevocably changed. There is a lot of truth in that story archetype. People are changed by adopting a different religious (or political) ideology. One thing I appreciate about Malcolm X, as pointed out by the friend who gave me the book, is that as fierce as he was in his ideology, he budged a little on race issues when he became disillusioned with the Nation of Islam. And, with Haley’s help, X is able to compellingly tell his story. From start to finish this the narrative pulls the reader along.

He begins with his early days in Michigan. His father, a preacher, spent much of his time promoting Marcus Garvey’s ideology for which he was murdered. Malcolm X eventually moved to Boston then New York where he was, in his terms, a street hustler and drug dealer. Eventually he ended up in prison where he encountered the teachings of Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam through correspondence with his family on the outside. After prison he threw himself into bringing that message, and the message of the damage done to black Americans by the system that favors white men to an ever increasing audience. After Elijah Muhammad, he was the most prominent member of the Nation of Islam and was key in it’s rapid expansion. Later in life, though, he became disillusioned with Elijah Muhammad and the Nation. He went on a pilgrimage to Mecca where he first encountered white people who he felt he could trust. He left the Nation and formed a separate Islamic group and continued to be one of the primary voices of the more revolutionary end of the Civil Rights movement. 

As I said above, there are things to object to in the book. My agnosticism towards Christianity extends past that to Islam; I am skeptical of any ideology that makes claims to be the only source of truth. The book, and Malcolm X, have been criticized for misogyny, and the book bears that out as at least partially valid. Despite his protestations to the contrary in the book, the accusations of anti-semitism seem to be at least partially valid as well. But, for me at least, while acknowledging those issues, I can still recommend the book full-throatedly because it paints a vivid and angry portrait of the systemic racism that is baked into American culture. This really is one of the most convincing expressions of that system of oppression I’ve read. And his criticism of Christianity as having been used as a tool of that oppression is hard to argue. Given that we’re still dealing with that system that hasn’t changed enough, it’s easy to see the appeal of the more revolutionary attitude. All in all, I recommend this highly, despite taking issue with a lot of the particulars. It’s a compelling story from start to finish.

Canon Worthy

Owned But Previously Unread 2020 73/75

Saint Thomas Aquinas by GK Chesterton

 Last year I read a book of Chesterton’s essays and I remembered why I had liked him so well years ago, and saw how I had come to disagree with well over half of what he said. Including this one, I’ve read six or so of his books, but Orthodoxy, discovered while I was in college, was incredibly influential on my back during my Christian days. I doubt I’m exaggerating if I say I’ve read it 10 times, though half of those were before I kept a reading log so I can’t say for sure. It’s an explanation of why he is a Catholic and has some of the funniest, most paradoxical and nearly magical writing about faith I’ve read. Despite my subsequent apostasy, his voice is imprinted on my brain. No one turns a phrase quite like he does. When I read some of his essays last year that voice was on full display, and I understood a little better what he meant when he openly claimed to be a medievalist (in the sense of sharing the outlook of medieval Christianity, not being one who studies it). He actually thought that medieval Christian philosophy was right and used insights from it in his quarrel with modernity, the specifics of which quarrel I heartily disagree with while really enjoying his rhetorical force and wit. This short biography of Aquinas, in addition to being an enjoyable reading experience and informative for someone who is unfamiliar with the subject, really lays out Chesterton’s reasons for claiming medievalism.

Chesterton begins by contrasting Aquinas both physically and philosophically with St. Francis, a subject of a similar earlier book. Ultimately he argues that for all their seeming difference, they were both devout Catholics and despite their different approaches were essentially after the same thing. He then narrates the life of Aquinas, which was eventful and, in Chesterton’s telling, compelling. As he explicates at a popular (as in not academic) level Aquinas’s philosophy, he argues that the “dark” ages, or rather the years of Aquinas’s life, were, in fact, the high point of Christian philosophy. He argues that rather than making Christianity Aristotelian, as is commonly supposed, he Christianized Aristotle.

While this is the clearest statement I’ve read so far of Chesterton’s reasons for being a medievalist, I am still not convinced by his argument. That said, it does give him some good insights. From the viewpoint of the present it is easy to see the past as a monolith which it clearly was not: "It is not at all easy for us to feel that distant events were thus disconcerting and even disreputable. Revolutions turn into institutions; revolts that renew the youth of old societies in their turn grow old; and the past, which was full of new things, of splits and innovations and insurrections, seems to us a single texture of tradition." From this perspective it becomes hard to argue that history is a single progression forward towards a unified goal. While I suspect that Chesterton would disagree, this is why fighting for what we call progressive values is important; they are by no means inevitable. History is a welter of contradicting urges and motivations. It’s tempting to see ourselves as the pinnacle of societal development rather than just another point along the way, but that is wrong thinking. While I wouldn’t share Chesterton’s assessment of current events, either in his day or projecting forward what he would likely think of ours, his perspective from medieval times does a very good job of undercutting a cocksure sense of our own day as the end of history. 

All in all a good narrative of Aquinas’s life that doesn’t delve too deeply into his theology and does a good job (to my untrained eyes) of introducing and contextualizing his philosophical thought.

Recommended

Owned But Previously Unread 2020 75/75

Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

 I’ve enjoyed the five books I’ve read by Garcia Marquez before, most especially 100 Years of Solitude, which is a masterpiece, and Autumn of the Patriarch, which I’m pretty sure I’ll think is also a masterpiece upon rereading it. I picked this up a while back at a library sale when I was gathering more of his books to read. I thought it was a novella, but it’s a narrative recreation of actual events in the 1950s that Garcia Marquez ghostwrote with the titular sailor. In the prologue, Garcia Marquez paints a picture of the sailor as potentially unreliable in the details and a hog for the publicity he got for surviving his ordeal. But, incontrovertably, he did survive that ordeal. To quote the book, “"Some people tell me this story is a fantasy. And I ask them: If it is, then what did I do during my ten days at sea?"

And Garcia Marquez tells that story with his characteristic style and aplomb. It was initially published serially, and I think that would have been an incredible way to experience the story. The sailor was swept off the deck of a Destroyer (along with some illicit cargo that caused quite a bit of controversy when the first chapters came out). Each day gets a chapter and, despite previous knowledge of the outcome the chapters end on cliffhangers. The sailor goes through a grueling ordeal and Garcia Marquez makes the most of that story. It’s not Moby Dick, but is on par with Old Man and the Sea.

Highly Recommended

Owned But Previously Unread 2020 74/75