Book of the Week: The Man Who Watched Trains Go By by Georges Simenon

He was a quiet man. That's what they always say about the guy who one day picks up an axe and wipes out the whole family. Kees Popinga, the central character of Georges Simenon's The Man Who Watched Trains Go By, is just such a fellow. He's got everything dialed nice and tight. He's obsessed with having constructed a first rate life: a wife, a daughter, a stove, and a house all of the "highest quality." And then in the course of one evening, as Popinga discovers that the company that helped provide this postcard-perfect life is now bankrupt, it all goes to pot. Kees Popinga snaps, kisses his whole life goodbye in one bold stroke, and embarks on a violent spree that leads him across three countries and makes him the killer du jour of the European press.

Thus, Simenon rendered one of his best roman durs, or hard novels, so named because they involve uncomfortable situations. The pacing of the novel is impeccable; Simenon allows the reader no breathing room. Perhaps it was due to the fact that The Man Who Watched Trains Go By was Simenon's eleventh novel published in 1938. That's right, eleventh. Simenon's reputation for cranking out the prose is almost unparalleled. His record was 40 novels published in 1929 (all written under various pseudonyms according to Luc Sante's introduction). Once Popinga has made up his mind to leave his old life, we are dragged by the shirt collars along with this once simple man, as he drifts further and further into madness. The bodies start to pile up and in no time, Popinga has changed from an accidental madman to a cold-calculating psychopath.

Popinga's psyche is at the heart of The Man Who Watched Trains Go By. While not told in first person, we are stuck in Popinga's brain throughout the novel. We see the reaction of Popinga's wife, as he suddenly starts to behave in un-husbandly ways, or the mocking laughter of the prostitute, Pamela, that drives Kees over the edge. As Popinga gets to the point of no return, choosing to engage in a game of cat and mouse with the French police, we are there in his skull, seeing Popinga's deranged motives and actions laid out before us. We see how we reacts to lies printed about him in the press (an especially sore sticking point that causes him to start addressing the French papers directly). We feel his mistrust of the underworld characters who cross his path (and him). We feel his rage at the lack of respect he feels from the police, especially Commissioner Lucas. All the while, we are feeling what Popinga feels, a credit to Simenon's ability to give the madman all-too-familiar psychological shortcomings.

It is with wonderful irony that Popinga's rampage, deemed a product of madness by the press, becomes a game of chess between him, the authorities, and the underworld. An avid chess player, with a noted streak for being a sore loser, Popinga considers himself a superb tactician. We see him calculate scenarios, possible reactions, and end-game maneuvers, all the while convinced of his assured victory. And in the end, you become addicted to Popinga's madness, caught up in his scheme, greatly anticipating every turn of the page.

Chalk it up to a highly skilled writer who knew his craft, and more importantly, his characters. As Sante, details in his introduction, Simenon had a somewhat unorthodox approach to concocting his stories:

"On a large yellow envelope he would, over the course of a week or two, write the names of his characters and whatever else he knew about their lives and backgrounds: their ages, where they had gone to school, their parents' professions. The envelope might additionally contain street maps of the novel's setting, although it would never say a word about the book's eventual plot. Once he was satisfied with these notes, he would enter the hermitage of his study and knock off the book at the rate of a chapter every morning."

One can see how Simenon's writing routine infuses Popinga with so much life. We know this man. Most of us have worked with him at one time or another. The fellow who is perfectly content and sedentary in his quiet suburban existence. Simenon, having laid out his pedigree prior to the novel, wastes no time stripping him of the illusion of his worth as an adult and father, turning him into a cold-calculating human animal that bears no resemblance to the content, puffed-up Popinga we are introduced to at the beginning of the novel.

Over the course of this short and punchy tale, Simenon leaves us with a very dark and disturbing exploration of a former sheep who attempts to change his entire existence, remaking himself as a the wolf. In the end, Popinga never turns out to be as smart or as ingenious as he hopes. He wants to love women, but can only kill them. He wants recognition as a criminal mastermind, but is only considered a psychotic madman. The punchline that Simenon delivers so superbly is that no matter how much Popinga's megalomania convinces him that he is up to the task, he's not the man he wishes to be.

Book of the Week: The Rebels by Sándor Márai

I was lucky enough to read Sándor Márai's The Rebels while traveling through Budapest, Bratislava, and Prague. This was part of my standing rule of reading a novel from the country you are visiting while traveling. In paid off well with Stevenson in the UK and Strindberg in Sweden. It did not serve me well with Bowles in Morocco. In the case of Márai it was a perfect fit. Having had my feet on the ground, mangling the Hungarian language in my worst attempts at communicate with the locals, I experienced the feeling of Budapest for myself.

There is a mellowness and peace to Hungarians these days. It may be due to the fact that until recently, Hungary was constantly being conquered by one empire or military power after another. The Turks, Habsburgs, Nazis, and Stalinists all took their turn. For a brief period, leading up to and into World War I, Hungary merged with Austria, forming the second largest country in Europe. However, the defeat of the central powers in World War I, including Austria-Hungary, lead to 70 years of dark days for the country. It is at that stumbling point -- Austria-Hungary's entry in the war -- that Márai sets the book, having experienced first hand the embarrassing (for Hungarians) dissolution of the dual monarchy and its multi-ethnic society.

I state all this not to drone on about trivia, but to point out the context of The Rebels and the historical reality of what Márai experienced at the time of the writing the novel. For some reason, Americans don't seem to 'get' The Rebels. I've seen reviews where readers say the book is too foreign to enjoy, have labeled Márai as anti-Semitic and homophobic, and even more absurd, state that they cannot relate to the characters because they are all adolescent males. Take that Holden Caulfield. These sad misperceptions of The Rebels cause these readers to miss out on what is a superb novel. Dated, perhaps. Esoteric to western culture? No more than any Russian novel. Anti-everything-under-the-sun? Considering that Márai pined for multi-ethnic and multi-cultural Hungary in his Memoir of Hungary, was highly critical of the Nazis (a dangerous stance under the Arrow Cross Government), and soundly against the subsequent puppet-communist regime installed by Stalin, it is very doubtful the book has a prejudice against anything except oppression and senseless death.

As the title suggests, the focus of the book is rebellion. In this case, four childhood friends who, fearing their subsequent banishment to the front lines of World War I, engage in a very adolescent form of rebellion, starting with lying, but eventually moving on to mind games, and out-and-out theft. The friends -- Ábel, Tibor, ErnÒ, and Béla -- are snapshots of Hungarian youth at that time. The first a wealthy (but disassociated) son of a doctor, the second an almost too beautiful and unrugged son of a colonel, the third a lower class son of a disfigured cobbler, the fourth an irresponsible son of a shopkeeper. At the start of the book, all four are lost -- at least in the sense that the looming spectre of death in the trenches has them incapable of seeing any future. This is represented most notably by Tibor's brother who returned from the front minus an arm and a good chunk of his sanity. The disorderly appearance of Ábel's room, after a night of drinking and card playing, is a perfect metaphor for the state of mental disarray they are experiencing. In this mess, Ábel discovers by chance that one of the four has cheated at cards. Rather than be infuriated by the trickery, it spurs Ábel (and eventually the others) to attempt more daring forms of lying, deceit, and thievery. They become, in essence, a gang. The misguided rebellion, as one would expect, leads to their downfall, most notably at the hands of the pawnbroker Havas and a mysterious accomplice, who is not revealed until later in the book. Ultimately, this downfall becomes a tale of revenge, spurned on by class conflict, homophobic resentment, and a disconnect with authority (most notably represented by the fathers of the tale).

Márai is one of those exceptional writers who was able to make his characters live and breathe. A great example of this is the actor, Amadé, who is rendered so wonderfully complete in his idiosyncrasies, expressions, and almost bipolar flips in emotion:

"It was as if his girth were no more than some kind of misapprehension that existed between him and the world at large, and he never ceased talking about it. He spoke eloquently and at length to both intimates and strangers in the effort to persuade them that he was not fat. He produced precise measurements and medical tables showing average proportions to prove he was as slender as a flamingo and that his figure was in all respects the manly ideal, his belly swelling as he did so because, in his passion, he forgot to hold it in."

When not giving the characters the well-roundedness that is signature to the book or focusing on their exploits, Márai paints dark portraits of the town, reminding the reader that in spite of the self-centered acts of the four teenagers, there is the darker world of World War I surrounding them. This description of corpses from the war nails the looming threat and the stark reality of the novel's setting perfectly:

"All objects--houses, public squares, whole towns--puff themselves up with spring moonlight, swelling and bloating like corpses in the river. The river dragged such corpses through town at a run. The corpses swam naked and traveled great distances... they floated rapidly down on the spring flood heading towards their ultimate terminus, the sea. The dead were fast swimmers."

In the end, it is the gang's reluctance to own up to the consequences of their actions, their shucking off of adult responsibility in favor of blind rebellion, that proves to be their downfall. They are still children, playacting at rebellion. Márai parodies this superbly when Amadé brings the gang to a theater, dressing them up as characters in a bad stage play. The gang is happy to keep up their exploits when the going is easy, but they grow increasingly panicky and paranoid as their schemes begin to unravel. When the consequences are laid out so clearly at the end of the novel, Márai lets no one off easy.

Perhaps that is because Márai knew where all this rebellion and senseless violence would lead. It never served Hungary well in real life, only resulting in the death of too many citizens for senseless reasons. And in the world of The Rebels, every action has a consequence that ultimately wrenches the gang into adulthood with all its ugly realities.

Book of the Week: Unlucky Lucky Days by Daniel Grandbois

I was on vacation in San Francisco recently and one of the necessary items on my to-do list was a pilgrimage to City Lights Books. While perusing the shelves, I spied a signed copy of Daniel Granbois’ Unlucky Lucky Days. Knowing the man’s name and having heard great things about him from trustworthy people, I decided to plunk down some hard-earned cash.

Grandbois gave me my money’s worth. Even though it is a slim book at 117 pages, Unlucky Lucky Days is packed with 73 short tales. The longest maxes out at three pages, the shortest three sentences. Each one shows a writer so comfortable in his own skin, that he appears flawless at times. Granbois plays around with characters and prose in unique and inventive ways, creating his own genre of absurdist fiction populated with dead (or soon to be dying) humans, living everyday objects, and sentient wild creatures. There are mirrors that long for a different perspective, revenge-seeking middle fingers, and storytelling balls of yarn, all of whom live and breathe as much as any of the human characters in the book.

The best pieces – “The Note,” “The Yarn,” “The Tunnel,” and “Almost Borges” -- are more serious in tone, but show great heart and Granbois’ adeptness at creating deep, robust stories with very minimalist prose. That is not to detract from the lighter tales such as “Toothpaste, “The Finger,” “Three Wise Men,” and “Svevo,” which showcase the author’s dry sense of humor perfectly. And even the stories that don’t hit with as much impact (every reader will have their own favorites) still draw you into the strange world of the tale, sometimes in three paragraphs or less.

It was while perusing the book in City Lights, that I stumbled on to “The Note” and read the first paragraph:

“A note was pinned to a man in his coffin. It said, ‘I only seem dead.’ The man’s sister had pinned it there, as she’d pinned it to his pajamas before bed each night -- so afraid was he of being buried alive.

With her help, he’d escaped that dreadful fate.

She, however, did not.”

That is all of five sentences and yet it speaks volumes about the characters. I was hooked. Everything that followed, on the flight home, and the subway rides to work, did not disappoint either.

It’s not often you get to read stories by a writer who can take his work seriously, but seems to be having so much fun with the stories. Completely brilliant.

Book of the Week: The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

Endlessly dissected, ripped apart, its guts laid out on a slab, sewn back together, reconstructed, reinterpreted, misunderstood, misinterpreted, parodied, plagiarized, overanalyzed, and sadly sometimes underappreciated. Kafka’s The Metamorphosis is one of those jumping off points for modern literature, a key touchstone where so many good writers -- Borges, Nabokov, García Márquez – found inspiration in his work and studied it like a textbook on great writing.

But what is the metamorphosis? A dark fantasy about a man who wakes up one day to find himself transformed into a vile insect-like creature? Or an absurdist tale of a schizophrenic who believes he’s been turned into a human-sized beetle, terrorizing his family with his decrepit mental state? Kafka left that open for us to decide, even asking his original publisher to remove any imagery involving an insect off the cover. The first edition cover (you can find it on Wikipedia) is not a definitive statement on the story either. Is it the afflicted Gregor Samsa we see or his unnerved father fleeing from the sight of the creature in his son’s room? As it was written in German, Kafka never definitively stated what Gregor had become. The term he used, in what has now become one of the more famous opening lines in literature, to describe Gregor’s transformation was “ungeheueres Ungeziefer,” which literally means “unclean animal not suitable for sacrifice.” This has been translated (and mistranslated) as “gigantic insect” in some cases, but in later years, more translators have settled on “monstrous vermin,” as this seems to suit Kafka’s vague intent much better. But if you want to read the numerous theories, Google the book. I’ll leave it to those who are far more and far less philosophical than I.

In its construction, The Metamorphosis is flawless. Kafka upends the entire structure of modern storytelling, giving us the climax first, never explaining the possible source for Gregor’s affliction. Instead, Kafka leaves us in the dénouement, showing us the ugly effects of Gregor’s transformation on his too dependent family, who must now care for this unwanted monstrosity. As the tables are turned, the family shuns Gregor, locking him away. We then see Gregor move in two opposing directions -- becoming more louse-like in his basic behavior (such as eating garbage), but also more human in his fantasies (and sudden appreciation of music). It is this complex contrast that makes Gregor seem more human to us, thus playing into Kafka’s slippery reality that confuses as much as illuminates.

And yet, The Metamorphosis is not all doom and gloom. It’s actually quite funny. Sure, it has a dark, black sense of humor, but nevertheless, you can’t help but laugh at parts. When the new house maid spies Gregor for the first time, she does not turn tail, screaming in horror like his family. She merely states, “Come over here for a minute you old dung beetle!” Or the lodgers, who upon seeing Gregor slowly crawling towards them, do not try to smash him or exit the premises. They try to negotiate out of paying rent to Gregor’s father in light of the “disgusting conditions prevailing in this apartment and family.” Even Gregor’s ultimate fate, which I won’t give away, is handled in a way that the cast members from Monty Python’s Flying Circus would certainly appreciate.

With so many layers to it, The Metamorphosis still remains one of the most studied and widely imitated novels of the 20th century. But in its purest sense, it is an amazing, perfectly crafted, dark little fable.

If you use any of the book sharing sites, here a links to the novel for each:
Good Reads | Library Thing | Shelfari

Book of the Week: Swedish Death Metal by Daniel Ekeroth

When explaining my love of Swedish death metal to non-fans, I always fall back on one main point that suddenly piques their curiosity. Death Metal is to Sweden what hardcore punk was to American music in the 1980s. Entombed and At the Gates were as important in Sweden as Black Flag and Minor Threat were on American soil. And while purists can debate the relative importance of all the aforementioned bands, the simple fact is the DIY ethic that defined 1980s American punk — with its small enclaves of die-hard fans creating microcosm scenes in each city that included their own zines, labels, and venues — was just as important to the development of Swedish Death Metal.

Far better than any book on the subject I’ve read so far, Daniel Ekeroth’s Swedish Death Metal gets to the heart of the DIY movement that created one of the most important developments in heavy music over the past couple of decades. It dragged me right back to the first time I heard Entombed’s chainsaw guitar sound in the early 1990s. I was so taken aback, so in awe of that crunch. It was raw and alive, vicious and evil. It was everything a heavy music head wanted, especially at a time when heavy metal had started to become a dirty word in the United States and the standard bearers for high grade metal, Metallica, had turned into pop stars.

Obviously, Ekeroth has a bit of an advantage over other writers. He literally came of age in the Swedish death metal scene. What he lacks in actual writing skill -- there are parts where he is a little colloquial at times and too much of a fan at others -- he makes up for by having an in-depth, ground-floor knowledge of how the music (and the movement) developed. The writer’s own treasure trove of saved demo tapes, flyers, and zines, combined with those from other musicians and avid followers, immerses you in not only the music that was created, but the full scope of creative output. Then there are the obscure little facts. It was stunning to learn that often the most inventive music was coming from teenagers, not even old enough to drink, bashing it out in youth centers that served as the only rehearsal space in snowbound small towns. Also, Ekeroth uses his in-depth knowledge of the history of Swedish heavy music to great effect, giving a step-by-step progression from Bathory and Candlemass to the apex of death metal in the early nineties. While all books of this nature can often be a slog to get through, especially when bands you have no interest in are discussed at length, Ekeroth’s narrative rarely falls flat.

Most notably, Eckeroth made the wise choice to letting the musicians speak for themselves. What makes the book so fascinating is to hear such a wide cast of characters — Nicke Andersson and Uffe Cederlund from Nihilist/Entombed, Michael Amott from Carnage/Carcass/Arch Enemy, Anders Borer from At the Gates/The Haunted, Tomas Lindberg from Grotesque/At the Gates, Fred Estby and Matti Kärki from Dismember, Dan Swanö from Edge of Sanity, and Johnny Hedlund from Unleashed to name a few — talk very frankly about those early days and everything they put into (or didn’t in some cases) the music.

About the only part that falls flat is when Eckeroth discusses the sudden rise of Norwegian black metal and its impact on the Swedish death metal scene. Eckeroth is honest enough to admit that most of the Swedish death metal bands were caught off guard by the shift. Entombed’s Nicke Andersson quite possibly sums it up the best:

“I never understood what black metal was all about -- why suddenly everyone wanted to be so angry and ‘serious.’”

Sadly, Eckeroth drifts into a little bit of sour bashing on Norwegian Black Metal, without much ground to stand on. In many ways, the Norwegians were mirroring the Swedes’ DIY ethic by creating their own sound, labels, and zines. While the musical styles of Swedish Death Metal and Norwegian Black Metal are different, including the level of seriousness, the simple fact is both have their worthwhile bands and obvious idiots.

Overall, Eckeroth deserves many points for pulling the history together and documenting it so well. This is a fantabulous testament to Sweden’s most impactful musical contribution of the 20th century, as well as one of the key movements in heavy music.

If you use any of the book sharing sites, here a links to the novel for each:
Good Reads | Library Thing | Shelfari

Book of the Week: Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo

At the end of Johnny Got His Gun there is a fantastic line uttered by the protagonist that sums up the entire experience of reading the novel:

“That would be a great thing to concentrate war in one stump of a body and to show it to people so they could see the difference between a war that’s in newspaper headlines and liberty loan drives and a war that is fought lonesomely in the mud somewhere a war between a man and a high explosive shell.”

Dalton Trumbo’s greatest triumph with Johnny Got His Gun was boiling the entire anti-war argument of the novel into that single horror: an armless, legless, faceless, eyeless, voiceless casualty screaming at you for mercy. If you favor military action in any form, can you justify the victories in the loss of life and limbs?

Needless to say, Johnny Got His Gun still resonates so effectively today as it did when it was first published in 1939. Look at any photographs of Iraq war veterans with severed limbs and the same question still confronts you: is the war worth the cost? It is that focus that keeps the novel from drifting into long-winded speeches or diatribes. Because we never see the world outside of Joe’s mind, we are trapped in the argument of “Why? Was it all worth this?” Therefore, the novel never feels preachy. Nor does the anti-war argument grow dated -– because it is not rooted in World War I (where the action takes place), or World War II (which the novel was released just prior to), but in the moral argument against war itself.

Trumbo also does a superb job of making Johnny Got His Gun a “small novel.” It is not trying to encompass all the horrors of war, but just this one soul-wrenching example. You cannot help but cringe along with Joe when he feels a rat gnawing at the side of his body as he lies helpless on the hospital bed, unable to swat it away. As the reader, you share Joe’s isolation and helplessness.

And yet, from this horror, Trumbo is even able to bring forth great humor. Take the scene of Christ playing cards with the soon-to-be-dead soldiers. He performs a minor miracle by making full whiskey glasses appear beneath each player (a sort of mock of the water-into-wine trick), but then winds up losing a hand of blackjack (“I never could hit a twelve he said in a complaining voice”).

Throughout it all, Trumbo never lets you off the hook. You must look at Joe and see his fate. To look away (or stop reading in this case) is to deny the realities of war and its ultimate cost.

Without giving away the ending, the book outdoes the movie (which Trumbo himself directed) in that it doesn’t over-argue the point. The sad resolution is not discussed as a great moral quandary, but rather a matter of regulations. Ultimately, the army’s regulations turn a blind eye to the truth that lies before them.

If you use any of the book sharing sites, here a links to the novel for each:
Good Reads | Library Thing | Shelfari

Book of the Week: V for Vendetta by Alan Moore and David Lloyd

Admittedly, I am a latecomer to the cult of Alan Moore. I was barely aware of him back in the late 80s/early 90s, and other than Killing Joke, my introduction to him was actually in the superb D.R. and Quinch series for 2000 A.D. I missed out on the original releases of his Swamp Thing run, V for Vendetta, and The Watchmen.

Later, I rediscovered Moore with The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. I was already a fan of Kevin O'Neill from his work on Marshal Law (which is still one of my all-time favorite comics and fantastic satire), so I immediately jumped on the new series. Over the years, I've slowly been winding my way back through Moore's definitive work, viewing it for the first time with a somewhat different perspective than most who read the comics upon initial release.

While not the best of Alan Moore's work (The Watchmen, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Killing Joke are far better tales), V for Vendetta still stands up as an amazing piece of comic book art after all these years. Many of the political and social themes (as well as David Lloyd's artwork) may not seem that revolutionary now (or for literature in general), but one has to view the series like a Black Flag album or a painting from Joan Miró. Compared to other releases of that time (and in many cases of the ensuing decades), it stands well above the competition.

I do tend to agree with Moore that the series works much better in its original colorless incarnation, was serialized in Warrior magazine in the UK during the 1980s. The concept of the stark, black and white artwork used to tell a tale of endless moral gray areas works so perfectly. And in many ways, it sub-references the original pulp mystery origins of the series when Moore and Lloyd thought it would be set in the 1930s gangster era. The lackluster coloring by DC Comics, who published the series here in the U.S. under their Vertigo imprint, almost detracts from the story.

But up until this time, there had never been a comic series like V for Vendetta. This was the comic book equivalent of Swift’s “A Modest Proposal,” offering up a satirical and dystopian viewpoint that masks a very serious political argument. Moore and Lloyd were reacting to Thatcherite Britain, parodying its more grotesque sins including xenophobia and ruling by conformity.

In addition, the countless literary allusions, the use of iambic pentameter for V’s dialogue, and the unflinching portrayal of a society that is falling apart at its very core is still head and shoulders above most comic storytelling.

One fact hit me reading all these years later: there isn’t a single hero in V for Vendetta. No one is heroic, not even V. While his anarchist quest could be regarded as noble, it still results in murder and ultimately the complete destruction of British society (holding to the idea that the old society must be destroyed so a new one can be built in its place). Other than Judge Dredd or the Punisher, there was nothing this grim and cynical in comic storytelling of the 1980s and early 90s. It took guts for Moore to craft such a storyline and to do it with such a creative and artistic flourish. Even if you disagree with Moore’s viewpoint, you are dragged into his political arguments, forced to take sides, much like the characters trapped in the storyline, are left to question your own pre-determined moral judgments. That is the mark of a great storyteller.

If you use any of the book sharing sites, here a links to the novel for each:
Good Reads | Library Thing | Shelfari

Book of the Week: The Summer Book by Tove Jansson

You have to applaud simplicity in writing. It is the hardest thing for a writer to achieve. That sense of keeping the book ‘small’ for lack of a better term, honing the story down to the barest strokes on the canvas. I always thought Hemingway did it beautifully with The Old Man and the Sea. Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson is another great ‘small’ book that draws you in with its perfectly simple prose and contstruction.

In many ways, Tove Jansson’s The Summer Book is closer to the latter. It is a series of vignettes, rather than flowing narrative. It almost reads like a short story collection with all of the vignettes focusing on young Sophia and her grandmother, de facto stand-ins for the writer herself. At the time of writing, Jansson was a in her sixties, a grandmother, but also had recently lost her own mother (which happens to Sophia at the start of the book). It is this great understanding of both characters that allows her to imbue them with such life. Sophia is a precocious child, prone to fits and bouts of crying, and yet, can switch to being serene and adult. The Grandmother on the other hand is loving and accommodating, constantly nurturing Sophia in her adventures, but then swings into bouts of adolescent anger and bad behavior. The wonderful scene where she breaks into a neighbor’s house is a great example.

“In the middle of the gravel was a large sign with black letters that said PRIVATE PROPERTY—NO TRESPASSING.

‘We’ll go ashore,’ Grandmother said. She was very angry. Sophia looked frightened. ‘There’s a big difference,’ her grandmother explained. ‘No well-bred person goes ashore on someone else’s island when there’s no one home. But if they put up a sign, then you do it anyway, because it’s a slap in the face.’

‘Naturally,’ Sophia said, increasing her knowledge of life considerably.’

‘What we are now doing,’ Grandmother said, ‘is a demonstration. We are showing our disapproval. Do you understand?’

‘A demonstration,’ her grandchild repeated, adding, loyally, ‘This will never make a good harbor.’”

The interaction between the two is often hilarious and at other times really touching. They constantly swap roles, as in that scene from “The Neighbors,” where the grandmother can’t help but behave childishly while Sophia grows instantly into an adult. Writing from her advanced age, Jansson is able to look back at the two sides of herself and imbue a sort of rough love between them.

What truly grabs you about The Summer Book, strong characters aside, is its sense of place. It is a book of and about Scandinavian life on a tiny island in the Finnish archipelago. In her introduction, Kathryn Davis describes the book’s “unusual point of view, which hovers above and around the island and seems not so much to move from grandmother to granddaughter as to share them.” It’s imbued with the air, soil, and water of the small archipelago island where the stories are set. It has that contemplation and patience that one finds in Swedes, Norwegians, and Fins. Jansson gives you that sense of awe when viewing the landscape. You can feel yourself amongst the marshes, bilberry bushes, Rosa Rugosa, polished stones on the beaches, wet grass, and dense forests. You can feel yourself floating around in the small boats and feel the wind and rain on your face. You can see the long slow sunsets that last until after 10 pm. In many ways, the characters are small compared to the natural surroundings they walk through. It is a very Scandinavian appreciation of nature and while reading it you get a sense of walking through one of Carl Larsson’s watercolors.

While not all of the vignettes in The Summer Book are solid, “Berenice” and “Dead Calm” fall a little flat, the rest more than make make up for the duds. Some are quite funny, such as “The Neighbor,” “Of Angelworms and Others,” and “The Cat.” Others have a wonderful sense of sadness such as “Midsummer” or the closing “August.”

“Every year, the bright Scandinavian summer nights fade away without anyone’s noticing. One evening in August you have an errand outdoors, and all of a sudden it’s pitch-black. A great warm, dark silence surrounds the house. It is still summer, but the summer is no longer alive.”

As you keep reading the vignettes in The Summer Book, you always feel yourself there, walking along with Sophia and her grandmother, or floating in the boat, soaking up the atmosphere of the tiny little island in the Finnish Archipelago. It has that same quality that all great paintings from Scandinavian painters have, whether it be Munch or Larsson or Zorn, to instantly give you a sense of that northern lit sky and the serenity of the landscape beneath it.

If you use any of the book sharing sites, here a links to the novel for each:
Good Reads | Library Thing | Shelfari

Book of the Week: The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg by Mark Twain

Some books have a way of coming back. They are not of their time necessarily. But at their core is the human comedy which never grows stale or loses its relevance. Shakespeare's MacBeth is such a work. After all, the hunger for power and the willingness to murder in order to obtain it are universal in the human experience. The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg retains its luster for very similar reasons.

I've often believed there are two Mark Twains. I won't argue that one of them is Samuel Clemens. But the Twain who wrote Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was not the same man who had been hardened by financial troubles and the death of several family members later in life. That Twain was a bitter, cynical bloke who had a bone to pick with the world. And damn me if you will, but I love that Twain much better.

Maybe it's because my favorite works by Twain are not the perfectly rendered classics he penned at the height of his career. I read both Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn as part of my school curriculum. I found them interesting and well written. I do consider them to be classics. But in some ways, I never quite connected with those novels. Much like The Adventures of Augie March or Anna Karenina, I respected the writer and the works, but neither sunk into my soul.

My connection with Twain started with Pudd'nhead Wilson. Twain's satirical take on racial problems in America possesses a great sense of wit, but also a razor-sharp dissection of what makes humans tick. It is not a beautiful portrait of America. Nor is The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg. Once again, this was not a content man, but one who had literally fled the country to escape his creditors. Twain actually scrawled out ...Hadleyburg on hotel stationary from his various stops in Europe.

The visceral anger that Twain felt towards his homeland and his hatred for human greed in general bleeds off the pages of ...Hadleyburg. That, however, is what makes it such a joy to read. Much like Pudd'nhead Wilson, this novella comes across more as a punk anthem, a short series of jabs at our guts, rather than an epic tale. And in spite of its imperfections (the lack of subtlety, the forgone conclusion that the citizens of Hadleyburg will get theirs), you enjoy every bit of the town's downward spiral. It is a wonderful adult fable that benefits from Twain's sense of humor, especially in the town hall scene once the supposed upstanding nineteen are revealed as charlatans.

In fact, if you've been paying attention to the massive global economic crisis, ...Hadleyburg is the perfect companion to our current state of the world. After all, rampant greed was the cause of our financial system's downfall. Twain's tale of a supposedly incorruptible town, whose reputation made them the envy of citizens far and wide, and their ultimate downfall due to the simple sin of greed, still plays exceptionally well. Having experienced the harsh reality of being in debt, Twain was given a first hand lesson in the effects of greed.

One could never argue that ...Hadleyburg is a classic work of American fiction. That is often reserved for Twain's earlier novels. But you can argue that it retains its own enduring allure, if for no other reason than its belief that, at our core, we are all capable of being tempted and corrupted.

Of course, I would be a bastard for not complementing Melville House Classics for publishing "The Art of the Novella" series which keeps works such as The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg, Melville's Benito Cereno, and Dostoevsky's The Eternal Husband in print as stand-alone entities (rather than being lumped into anthologies). They are publishing the novellas in a style worthy of Blue Note Records, with similar cover treatments, and a sense of dedication that usually is only found at smaller presses. Cheers to them.

If you use any of the book sharing sites, here a links to the novel for each:
Good Reads | Library Thing | Shelfari

Another great review for The Love Book

Ben Tanzer and the nice folks at This Blog Will Change Your Life recently posted some nice praise for The Love Book. And I quoteth:

"...while love may be the operative word here, we're not sure anyone would call them love stories, per se. Now that said, are these stories all about how love gets warped, lost, manipulated, sublimated, twisted, fetishized, tainted and occasionally celebrated? Yes, and more. And so do we think you should you read this collection? Yes, again, for sure, so, go ahead, please read The Love Book, it just might change your life."

And a gratuitous reminder, you can come on down to Freebird Books in Brooklyn, NY on Sunday, September 28 to see Ben and myself kick out the stories to celebrate the release of his new book, Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine.

Book of the Week: Lucky Man by Ben Tanzer

Full disclosure: I know Ben Tanzer (although we’ve yet to meet in person) and will actually be reading with him at Freebird Books in Brooklyn, NY on September 28.

Some books have a way of winning you over. I remember the first time I picked up John Fante’s Wait Until Spring, Bandini. It was not Ask the Dust. When the former was written, the author had not developed into the great teacher of Bukowski that can be found in the latter. And yet, as I delved deeper and deeper into Wait Until Spring, Bandini, my perception of the novel changed. While the book is not a definitive example of Fante’s greatness as a writer (Ask the Dust is his most memorable book for a reason), it has great heart, it has soul. The scene of Bandini’s mother and father laying in bed together in the first chapter just about made me weep. It was a beautiful piece of writing. I was won over.

Ben Tanzer’s Lucky Man also won me over. Perhaps because the book starts so unsuspectingly, providing no grand opening or sudden launch into the action. It starts with a conversation — between the four main characters and the reader who serves as an impromptu listener of their life stories. But I think there is a simpler answer. There isn’t an ounce of pretense in Tanzer’s writing, something lacking among a lot of my peers. You never get the sense that Tanzer is trying too hard to convince you of his writing skill. His dialogue fits his characters. The situations always feel real. All of this helps the reader settle in and go along with what at first seems like a standard coming-of-age story.

Once the book gets moving however, the story takes flight (as do the characters). Lucky Man reads like a 220-page long prose poem, told by the four main characters who speak directly to the reader in present tense. One often feels like they’re reading transcripts of reality show confessionals strung together. This is even taken to an absurd pretense when one of the characters has an unfortunate incident. But it is also the four perspectives of Sammy, Louie, Jake and Gabe that deliver a great sense of seeing the world of Lucky Man from all sides, or rather all camera angles. Along the way, there is a lot of humor and a ton of sadness. But Tanzer never uses the breakups, suicides, adultery, car crashes, drug abuse, or sudden death as cheap thrills. This is life in all its grimness.

Ultimately, the title is a grand joke. And that is what really won me over in the end. Lucky Man can be dark. And anyone who has read my work knows I have a penchant for the dark and strange and cynical. But the last page of Lucky Man nicely turns a dark, cynical outlook into a great punch line.

If you use any of the book sharing sites, here a links to the novel for each:
Good Reads | Library Thing | Shelfari

Book of the Week: Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

It is really hard to write good literary satire. Simple fact is that often satire goes too far over to the side of parody. When it crosses that line, it becomes bad mimicry rather than true satire. Think what This Is Spinal Tap would have been like if Michael McKean, Christopher Guest, and Harry Shearer just did an impression of the guys from Saxon – it would be funny for five minutes (if you actually knew who Saxon was) but ultimately the joke would get old. Over-parody leads to a stale joke and then you have an author who is just winking at his readers. After all, is Rich Little really that funny?

Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch could’ve descended into a really bad parody, especially considering that co-authors Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett originally intended it as a send-up of Richard Crompton’s William books (ask your friends from the UK). The initial title they had conceived was William the Antichrist. But Gaiman and Pratchett took the joke farther out -- much farther out -- satirizing everything from the Bible to The Omen to modern English society. The cast of characters includes a sect of extremely loquacious nuns secretly in the employ of hell (The Chattering Order of Saint Beryl), Pollution as the replacement for a now retired Pestilence (thanks to the invention of Penicillin), a bibliophile Angel (known as Aziraphale) who is not so sure he wants heaven to win, a Demon who is more concerned with his antique Bentley than stealing souls, the slacker descendents of Matthew Hopkins, Witchfinder, and even Agnes Nutter who lives up to her name. This makes for a concoction that is rife with sharp, pinpointed jokes that still hold up and still retain their bite.

Simply put, it is amazing satire. It the equivalent to reading a Monty Python film and comes as close to matching the sheer genius The Life of Brian as one could get in a novel. In an opening sequence, we’re introduced to Crowley, a demon who has come to enjoy his life on earth and is not particularly enthralled with the idea of Armageddon. The only thing that irks him more is having to show up for the daily counting of the deeds with two other demons at a dreary cemetery at midnight. Never mind the traffic getting out of London, the real frustration for Crowley arises when he cannot explain to his fellow hellspawn that blocking all portable phone systems in central London will do more good for Satan than tempting a politician or a priest.

“But you couldn’t tell that to demons like Hastur and Ligur. Fourteenth-century minds, the lot of them. Spending years picking away at one soul. Admittedly it was craftsmanship, but you had to think differently these days. Not big, but wide. With five billion people in the world you couldn’t pick the buggers off one by one any more; you had to spread your effort. But demons like Ligur and Hastur wouldn’t understand. They’d never thought up Welsh-language television for example. Or value-added tax. Or Manchester.”

Manchester is of course Crowley’s proudest achievement as a demon. Or there is the slight episode where the mighty Kraken rises from the sea once more, directly under a whaling ship.

“There is a tiny metal thing above it. The kraken stirs. And ten billion sushi dinners cry out for vengeance.”

Chapters such as that keep Good Omens chugging along at great pace. What is most obvious is that Pratchett and Gaiman had an absolute hoot writing the book. The interplay is fantastic, a grand piling on of ideas, where ultimately it doesn’t matter who originally conceived of which bits (much like the Pythons).

If you could level any criticism at the book it is that the ending is so bloody nice. The writers literally pull the final punch and leave the reader with a very saccharine outcome after pages and pages of skewering most of modern society (from the 17th century onward). You come to this very perfectly resolved, somewhat hopeful ending, feeling as the writers feared appearing a little too cynical. Picture The Empire Strikes Back if Luke just suddenly strikes down Darth Vader rather than losing his hand (and discovering the true identity of his father).

This is mostly due to the original concept of William the Antichrist -- or rather the character of Adam. While the character is an interesting parody of Damian from The Omen, he tends to drag the action down, giving the book a YA bent that it doesn’t need. After all, the cast of memorable characters is overloaded as it is and the book is simply much funnier when Adam is not around to slow up the pace. One could argue this was a necessary device, a way to cut the more biting parts of the book in order to have some contrast. But in the end, you can’t help but feel that the character could’ve been reduced to a minor one with the emphasis kept on Crowley and Aziraphale’s attempts to thwart their respective sides during the ensuing Armageddon.

It is however somewhat of a nitpick because that flaw is greatly diminished by the overall wit and surgical skewering of all things the Apocalypse in Good Omens. About the only thing funnier is The Left Behind series, but those books are not intentionally humorous.

If you use any of the book sharing sites, here a links to the novel for each:
Good Reads | Library Thing | Shelfari

Book of the Week: I Spit On Your Graves by Boris Vian

When Jean d’ Halluin first published I Spit On Your Graves in 1946, he was looking for a bestseller to kickstart his new imprint, Editions du Scorpion. Written by an African-American writer named Vernon Sullivan, the book was a visceral, often misogynistic, and (once it gets rolling) violent pulp novel offering a gritty commentary on racial injustice in the United States.

The plot centered on Lee Anderson, a light skinned black man seeking revenge for the murder of his brother at the hands of whites. Anderson, takes his revenge by infiltrating southern society as a white man (he has light skin and blond hair), bedding every white woman he can, and ultimately selecting two of those women to murder as payback for his brother’s death. Despite being considered too controversial and subversive for U.S. publishers, the French public devoured the novel. By 1947, it outsold work by Sartre and Camus, giving d’ Halluin the bestseller he craved.

That alone would’ve made for interesting literary history. But there was more to the story…

Vernon Sullivan never tried to have the book published in the United States.

Vernon Sullivan did not exist. I Spit On Your Graves was in fact written by a Frenchman. A white Frenchman. Said Frenchman had never actually visited the United States.

Then there was the law suit filed against the author by Cartel d’action sociale et morale, the same right wing organization that tried to censor the work of Henry Miller.

Last but not least, there was the grisly murder committed by a Parisian man who strangled his mistress. The authorities discovered a copy of I Spit On Your Graves at the scene of the crime with a part where Lee Anderson dispatches one of his victims circled.

Hence its bestseller status. Who didn’t want to read the “murder book,” as the introduction Marc Lapprand calls it?

And then of course, there was the bigger question: what if the book was not about racial injustice at all?

On the surface, I Spit On Your Graves is a pulpy, not expertly written tale of murder and sex. And upon first reading, I Spit On Your Graves comes across as that – a cheap pulp mystery, lacking only the cover illustration of a woman screaming, hands raised against her face, as an unseen stalker comes at her with a knife.

It is overflowing with graphic sex (for it’s time) where Lee takes the female characters in every scenario imaginable (barring midgets and donkeys). At first one would take it as a sub-par Tropic of Cancer, except that the reader’s knowledge of Lee’s racial identity gives the book a taboo that is non-existent in Miller’s novels. Lee gets his hands on every white woman he possibly can, and they are all to willing to be taken, even if they don’t admit it at first (as is the case with Lou Asquith). As Lee relates early on in the story, “I had all the girls, one after the other, but it was a bit too easy, it turned my stomach.” It comes off like a line from a 70s Blaxploitation film. And in many ways, I Spit On Your Graves reads like a Blaxploitation script. However, as the book goes on Lee flips from bragging of his conquests to being disgusted at how far he has sunk to achieve his revenge. He becomes increasingly sickened by his seduction of the Asquith girls and this drives him further towards the violent outcome.

And that is where the book starts to turn from pure pulp sadism and gratuitous sex into a more layered, psychological exploration. We know Lee is seeking revenge. We know he is going to kill. It is only a matter of time and the reader is forced to travel down the road, dragged further and further into Lee’s madness, strapped in, unable to change the course.

Keep in mind, Vian was no pulp writer. He was a contemporary of Sartre and Camus, who wrote the incredibly well received Froth on the Daydream (also translated as Foam of the Daze). He was also a translator, poet, music, critic, and jazz musician who was close with Duke Ellington and Miles Davis.

In many ways, it is similar to Brett Easton Ellis’ American Psycho, forcing you to see the world of the book through the eyes of a very twisted and violent narrator. We immediately find ourselves repulsed by the narrator’s narcissism, their ruthlessness, and most importantly their penchant for extremely grisly acts. And yet, it is this grotesque, amped, psychotic, bloodthirsty humanity that captivates us.

I’m not the first person to make such a comparison between these two books. However, there is a major difference between them. Whereas Ellis was satirizing society, specifically the Reagan-worshipping stockbrokers of the 80s, Vian was going deeper – he was satirizing publishing and ultimately, the reader.

After all, sex and murder were rampant in novels published circa 1946. Both are still widely used as devices and plot points today. In fact, one could argue that both are necessary lynchpins of all modern literature. Sex and death is what it’s all about.

The book is so overly violent and misogynist because Vian is parodying pulp writing, a form very prevalent in post-war France when he wrote I Spit On Your Graves. Like Swift’s A Modest Proposal, it takes the argument to its fullest extreme, giving readers the ultimate in literary-noir: a story so extremely violent and disgusting to modern thinking that the reader can’t put it down.

Much has been said about the social commentary perceived within I Spit On Your Graves. Of this one can look literally. Lee, a black man who’s brother was murdered by whites, seeks revenge by wreaking havoc on white society. In the end however, without giving anything away, there is no justice for Lee. So it is easy to see I Spit On Your Graves as a biting commentary on racial injustice in America during the 20th Century.

But in many ways, Vian is still having his fun with us. After all, he’s not trying to convince us that Lee is an unfortunate character of racial injustice that we should pity. He’s getting us to hate Lee Anderson in spite of his quest for justice. After all, Vian’s audience was white, educated, French society. And it is Lee’s racial identity, his status as ‘black’ that made (and still makes the book) so controversial. If Lee was a white man bedding a bunch of women and then murdering two of them, it would be a Harry Crews novel. Vian however spins the tables, serving up a tale of a violent, lustful black man out for revenge, one that horrifies and yet draws us in, convincing a repulsed and outraged public to keep on reading. Ultimately the joke is on us. We are thinking of racial injustice, clinging to the social message seemingly contained within the book, and yet it is the titillating bits – the sex and death – that keep us reading. Swift would’ve been proud.

If you use any of the book sharing sites, here a links to the novel for each:
Good Reads | Library Thing | Shelfari

Book of the Week: Stories in the Worst Way by Gary Lutz

There is a great bit of wisdom uttered by Lee, the doomed narrator of Boris Vian’s I Spit On Your Graves:

“It costs a lot to put out a book, and all the dressing is for a good purpose — it shows clearly too that most people don’t care about getting good books: what they really want is to have read the book recommended by their club, the book of the moment, and they don’t give a rap about the contents.”

It is a very spot-on sentiment and one that sadly pertains to Gary Lutz’s Stories in the Worst Way. When it was originally released in 1996 Lutz’s collection of challenging and off-kilter short stories were dismissed, denounced, or simply ignored. In spite of being a protégée of renowned editor Gordon Lish — who inspired the author to scrape and claw at his prose, boiling it down to thin razor while also developing an approach to the English language that can only be perceived as one author rewriting our entire syntax — Lutz’s work was greeted as warmly as syphilis. When the collection was re-released in 2003 by 3rd Bed, it faired not much better. Perhaps greeted as warmly as gonorrhea.

The simple fact is that Stories in the Worst Way was not that book. It’s intent was obvious: not to reward or connect with the reader, but to challenge. As Lutz himself stated, “if I had been assigned to review it, I probably would've panned it myself. It's not the kind of book that's asking for any wide welcome.”

Lutz’s prose is not easy reading. Often, you have to go back, reread a sentence over and over again, chewing the prose until it finally digests itself into your brain. Of course using a vocabulary that seems to mine the dark recesses of Webster’s dictionary also does not help the book’s cause.

Take the following paragraph which is bound to throw fans of plain-spoken verbiage:

“Before the husband who kept leaving left for good, he accused me of two things: hirsutism and ‘self dependence.’ It is true that I had hair scribbled fine-pointedly over my arms and the backs of my hands and a few other places. It is also true that I liked to keep the marriage almost entirely to myself. There was more to get out of it that way.”

The effect created is that Lutz’s prose is precise – cutting and biting – and sludgy, drawing you into the muck of his character’s wayward lives. The cast is a collection of first-person misfits, malcontents, and outsiders. There is the office drone, who because of the efficiency of his work ethic, spends most of his time tormenting his co-workers in “Certain Riddances.” (“At first whenever the pressure to respond was acute – maybe every other day – I would simply slide an anonymous, index-carded ‘True’ or ‘False’ into her mail slot.”). Or the unfortunate high school teacher with a bad case of colitis in the aptly titled “Slops.” (“After each class, I lumped my way to whichever men’s room my notebook said was next. My life was an ambitious program of self-centrifugalization. I was casting myself out.”) Or the eternal ex-husband recounting his past wives and the negative impact of their cohabitation in “Devotions.” (“From time to time I show up in myself just long enough for people to know they are not in the room alone.”)

As you dig through Lutz’s stories, you cannot help but be in awe of the sheer force of his creativity, his ability to break literary conventions down and reconstruct it all in his own twisted form. He is the type of writer that makes you exclaim, “Crap, I wish I had written that line.” "Sleeveless" is as close as you can get to a perfectly crafted short story. It is all of 174 words and yet it hits you square in the gut with the tale of a husband being forced to give up his wife.

However this leads to a dilemma. Namely that often, Lutz’s bold experimentation doesn’t work. It falls flat, failing miserably. His love of language often causes him to overwrite characters, giving them voices that are either too introspective or frankly too damn educated for their insinuated background. After reading through the 36 stories in the collection (some as short as a single page), you are often left with the impression that you’ve been reading about the same character the entire time, simply cut and paste into a new identity. “That Which Is Husbander Than Anything Prior” comes off as rehash of Slops (minus the obvious fecal problems and swapping out the gender). Or even worse, stories such as “The Preventer of Sorrows” or “Their Sizes Run Differently” are so introspective and disjointed that they make no impact, leaving the reader feeling as if they’ve just reviewed a psychoanalyst’s report of a patient interview rather than a short story.

To be brutally honest, I don’t think Lutz cares. He’d rather push the prose in order to create something unique, as opposed to something likeable or readable. And in some ways there is much to be admired in that.

Stories in the Worst Way is nowhere near perfect, but like its grotesque narrators, there is beauty within the flaws.

If you use any of the book sharing sites, here a links to the novel for each:
Good Reads | Library Thing | Shelfari

Book of the Week: Crash by J.G. Ballard

I was traveling to London on business. Whenever I get a chance to go abroad, I try to read something “of the region.” Or at least something that contains a metaphor for the trip. Reading Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Stevenson on my first trip to London and Edinburgh worked quite nicely. Digging into Gulliver’s Travels by Swift while traveling through Sweden, a fantastic land that was completely alien to me at the time, was a perfect call. I won’t discuss the mistake of trying to read The Spider’s House by Paul Bowles while visiting Morocco. Two-for-three as they say.

For this trip to London, I wanted something indubitably British. The options were endless. But I handicapped myself with one stipulation: it had to be available for Amazon’s Kindle e-reader. I’ve had one for a few months now and have adapted quite nicely to reading newspapers and magazines on the device. But I had yet to finish a full novel. I was dead set on doing it for this trip, if for no other reason than keeping the bags light and not wanting to pack several books. After choosing a few novels that were not available (damn you digital rights!!!), I stumbled upon Crash by J.G. Ballard. It made perfect sense – here was an author delving into the complications of humanity’s increasing reliance on technology. What better book to read on a Kindle? And the book is indubitably British in its sense of humor and sort of dry delivery.

Which brings us to the book itself…

Crash could’ve been one of those novels. You know the one I’m discussing. It’s a really clever idea. Very clever. So clever that agents will engage in rugby scrums to get their hands on it. More often than not, it comes from a graduate of an MFA program. Publishers will jump into a frenzy, bidding with foaming mouths during an auction. Here is the future! Here is the savior of literature! Here is… Well nothing more than a clever idea poorly executed. It is the equivalent of seeing a Richard Prince exhibit. In the end you are left to say, “Well he’s clever, but that is all I can say about him.”

In many ways, Crash could’ve been that novel. The metaphor of car crashes as sexual affairs is driven (pun intended) down the reader’s throat. It’s carried to ridiculous lengths within the prose. “The aggressive stylization of this mass-produced cockpit, the exaggerated mouldings of the instrument binnacles emphasized my growing sense of a new junction between my body and automobile, closer than my feelings for Renata’s broad hips and strong legs stowed out of sight beneath her red plastic raincoat. I leaned forward, feeling the rim of the steering wheel against the scars of my chest, pressing my knees against the ignition switch and handbrake.” That is one of the tamer passages, as Ballard takes the metaphor to its fullest extent.

In the hands of most writers, the novel would’ve fallen apart quickly, a clever idea collapsing into itself. But Ballard expertly weaves it into a portrayal of humanity going quite mad, car crazy if you will. The character of Vaughan can even be seen as a non-entity, a mirror of the narrator’s increasingly decaying sanity. The world was already obsessed with cars when the novel was written in 1973. Our problems with climate change and an addictive need for oil to keep the gas-guzzlers running has proven that we’ve grown more deranged in our attachment to cars and driving since then. One need look no further than the SUV craze of the 1990s and early 2000s to see how prescient Ballard truly was. Americans bought large bulked up, big block, SUVs in droves – despite the gas guzzling nature of the vehicles and our already well-attuned environmental consciousness. The sexual overtones are obvious. I’m an impotent sheep at work; give me something monstrous to drive so I feel hard. A bit over the top I know, but dig deep, and it really boils down to that. Or did you really say, “Screw the environment, my kid needs a tank to be protected from other drivers!” Either way, it makes us look like fools.

And that’s the beauty of Crash. Ballard takes us into ourselves. The prose is cutting, biting. It wounds us, much like a flight through a windshield, leaving a map of scars. He picks apart our obsessions with automobiles (and the sexuality inherit with that obsession) and in a brilliant, over-the-top satire, lays out our ugliness on a morgue table.

Needless to say, I had a smashing time in London.

If you use any of the book sharing sites, here a links to the novel for each:
Good Reads | Library Thing | Shelfari

Book of the Week: Civilwarland in Bad Decline

I can’t help but feel like a jackass for coming to the game so late. It has been over ten years since Civilwarland in Bad Decline was first published and introduced George Saunders to the literary world. As a guy who is constantly pounding the table about the value of short stories, I look a bit o’ the fool for having not read and known the value of Saunders’ debut collection. What a way to kick in the doors and make an entrance into the literary world.

Saunders is amazingly comfortable in his own skin -- he’s running with a great stride in these stories, carrying the reader along with him effortlessly. Nothing ever seems forced. Both Flannery O’Connor and Mavis Gallant had that same ability, and in many ways Saunders is as adept at writing stories that seemed to have been set down on earth and exist (you never feel as if you’re reading, you are a witness).

It is an American vision, albeit a twisted, dark, and tragicomic one. The world of Saunders’ stories is our America, but turned inside out, revealing our ugly insides. And that alone makes them a pleasure to read.

On the surface most of the tales in Civilwarland in Bad Decline focus around theme parks or attractions that at first seem absurd, but as you read into the story, don’t seem that implausible. The Civilwarland theme park of the title story is savaged by teenage gangs, has authentic civil-war era tormented souls, and a reconstructed Eerie Canal complete with a historically inaccurate smell of Chinese food. There is the water park sporting a “Leaping Trout Subroutine” for authenticity and a very deadly wave pool. Oh and the not-so-perfect holographic projection franchise and the not-so-on-the-level raccoon disposal business and a science museum that includes pickled babies and cows with plexiglass stomachs. I almost forgot to mention the medieval times theme park staffed by mutants. But nothing works, or at least not the way it should. The bird count in Civilwarland is off so they have to kill several hundred orioles. The plexiglass cows keep dying. The wave pool sucks small children into the turbines. The holograph devices can actually siphon a customer’s memories. It is a strange America that Saunders presents to us, but not so far-fetched. It is just our foibles and desires and sins amplified to comic effect. This is usually why most people cannot go three lines without mentioning Vonnegut when talking about Saunders’ stories.

But the superstructures that hold up all these stories are simple morality tales. Most, with the exception of “Downtrodden Mary’s Failed Campaign of Terror,” center around emasculated or down-trodden men having to face up to the consequences of their actions. It gives the stories their sadness and their hook. One moment you’re laughing at Saunders wit only to be sucker punched by the reality of a character’s situation. The narrator of the title story, discovering that his de facto security guard has taken his role a little too seriously upon capturing a teenage candy thief, is forced to bury a severed hand behind the theme park. As he digs, he’s confronted by the ghosts of the park -- a civil-war era family who really haven't gotten over the whole death thing -- launching the otherworldly collective into a Macbeth like hand wringing scene. It breaks your heart.

And that is what makes these stories works so perfectly. They break you down, even as they have you laughing out loud. The best story in the collection, “Isabelle,” is almost an odd-duck as it is a straight tale of small town life. But it destroys you. It lays you out flat on a slab. The prose is simple, precise, razor-sharp. In all good short story collections, there is always one piece that justifies the cost of the others. “Isabelle” is worth the price of the book alone.

The collection is not perfect. The final novella, “Bounty,” while entertaining in parts feels like an unneeded, over-extended exclamation point to the stories in front of it. If I had to guess, the publisher included it so as not to make the collection seem too short. And in some ways, the recurring themes can start to feel heavy-handed as you get four or five stories into the book. But Saunders always saves the day. His writing is so perfectly witty, sharp, and poignant, that you’re willing to drop the petty criticisms and follow the tale. That is a sign of great writing.

If you use any of the book sharing sites, here a links to the novel for each:
Good Reads | Library Thing | Shelfari

Book of the Week: The Erasers

In an odd twist of fate, Alain Robbe-Grillet died the same week that I finally finished reading his debut novel, The Erasers. I don’t ascribe any importance to that, it was just odd.

The Erasers reminds me of Black Sabbath’s Black Sabbath or The Stooges The Stooges or Metallica’s Kill ‘Em All or Public Enemy’s Yo! Bum Rush the Show. There is something great here, it isn’t perfected yet, but there is hint of something amazing to come. This grand experiment will yield a Paranoid or a Fun House or a Master of Puppets or a It Takes A Nation of Millions….

In many ways, The Erasers is the most ‘conventional’ of Robbe-Grillet’s novels if for no other reason than it was his first stab at the New Novel. On the surface, the story can even be perceived as a more intricate form of crime fiction. In a small seaside town, Daniel Dupont, a professor, becomes the ninth victim in nine days of an unknown assassin. Theories abound as to the murder’s true identity: a terrorist group unhappy with the professor’s political leanings or a long lost bastard child. Arriving in town the day after the murder is one Detective Wallas who has been sent to investigate the murder. And so it begins…

Over a 24-hour period, Robbe-Grillet has us following Wallas, wandering down blind alleys, retracing steps, replaying scenes over and over again, as he would in Jealousy and In the Labyrinth. We are introduced to the assassin, or are we? We meet many witnesses, but have they actually seen anything? Soon we are forced to ask a disturbing question: Is Wallas in fact the assassin? Is he investigating himself much like Gian Maria Volontè’s police inspector in the classic Elio Petri film, Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion.

The twisting labyrinthine plot – what would become Robbe-Grillet’s hallmark – draws you into the story, taking it to a psychological level that most crime novels (and lesser authors) are unable to achieve. You are forced to consider the possibility that Wallace has a dark side to his character that even his own brain will not reveal to the reader (something RG used even more effectively in The Voyeur). Only by ‘tailing’ Wallas do we start to see the pieces of the disjointed puzzle pulled together and ultimately the grim, inevitable outcome.

In The Erasers, Robbe-Grillet has not completely abandoned traditional use of character and plot. There is a storyline here, but it is condensed into a frenetic series of meetings, arguments, subterfuge, and yes, murders. We are left with dead ends, miscues, faulty memories, and cryptic messages that the confound the reader as much as Wallas. It is this aspect that can turn someone away; the plot is not laid out as a simple series of events and an impatient readers quickly shut down. But compared to Robbe-Grillet’s later novels, The Erasers is a great entry point to his writing, the rabbit-hole if you will.

As I said, I don’t consider The Erasers to be Robbe-Grillet’s finest work. He is a young sprite, playing with new ideas. He wouldn’t hit his stride until Jealousy and In the Labyrinth. But my god, what a hell of a debut. And still more infinitely fascinating and perfectly executed than the endless train of ‘meta-novels’ unleashed in years after by lesser writers. It stands in the shadows of Robbe-Grillet’s later work, but still exists as one of the great experiments in novel writing. And more importantly, the story is still intriguing, fascinating, and addictive.

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Book of the Week: Elmer Gantry

Sinclair Lewis' writing always sticks with me. Perhaps it is because he so wonderfully savaged American culture, laying out all its ills, prejudices, and hypocrisies as a feast for the reader. The characters he presented to us--Elmer Gantry, George Babbitt, Samuel Dodsworth, and Will Kennicott-- were bright smiling neighbors that revealed the grotesque in American values.

Of these Elmer Gantry, the title character of Lewis' 11th novel, still rings the most true, if for no other reason than that the tomfoolery Lewis witnessed in tent preachers has grown exponentially into the likes of Oral Roberts, Jerry Falwell, Trinity Broadcasting, and the Christian Family coalition. In 1927, Lewis saw evangelical preachers as frauds, more hellbent on raising money and controlling their congregations than actually saving souls. The morality was suspect, a sales point. Lewis would have relished the arrival of a preacher like Creflo Dollar who insists business advice can be found in the bible.

It goes without saying that Lewis' work always had something to say, a larger social commentary that infuses all of his novels. But he was also one of America's best satirists. There are infinite moments of hilarity in Elmer Gantry in spite of the horror. The first line of the novel is a great example of his style:

"Elmer Gantry was drunk. He was eloquently drunk, lovingly and pugnaciously drunk."

Or there is Elmer's rejection of Lulu Bains:

"Once or twice in his visions he had considered that there might be danger of having to marry her. He had determined that marriage now would cramp his advancement in the church and that, anyway, he didn't want to marry this brainless little fluffy chick, who would be of no help in impressing rich parishioners."

NPR recently featured a look back on the novel, which includes snippets from the Academy-Award-winning film adaptation starring Burt Lancaster. While it is not a purely faithful adaptation of the book, Lancaster is fantastic in the role as Gantry; exuding that strange mix of religious cheerleader, drunken thug, and linebacker for God.

While I would admit that Babbitt is my favorite work by Lewis, I find myself more often reflecting back on Elmer Gantry. I'm happy to say I actually own one of the original 1927 editions. For my money, no book is better at shining a spotlight on all the flaws of Evangelical Christianity and its influence on America.

If you use any of the book sharing sites, here a links to the novel for each:
Library Thing | Shelfari | Good Reads