Tag: Books

No Country for Old Men–Cormac McCarthy

Edwin Turner1 Comment

no-country.jpg

Didn’t we write about No Country for Old Men a week or two ago? Yeah, but that was for the upcoming Coen brothers movie; this post is a review of the audiobook, and I’m not creative enough to think of a different title.

So we listened to the entirety of Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men over the course of two drives: from Jacksonville to St. Pete Beach and back. First off, as far as books-on-CD goes, this one was pretty good. Native Texan Tom Stechshulte manages to get all of the male characters spot on (the women in the novel sound kind of ridiculous though), and the action-filled plot, tight pacing, and simple sentences make for an easy-to-follow-while-driving listening experience (this is my number one criterion for an audiobook–you have to be able to follow the plot while navigating a road littered with truckers and asshole teenagers. F’r’instance, Faulkner’s short stories are almost impossible to follow in audiobook format).

Set in 1980, No Country for Old Men is the story of Llewellyn Moss, a Vietnam vet who stumbles across the aftermath of a drug deal gone bad and a suitcase with 2.4 million dollars in it. Of course, he takes the money and runs. Assassin Chigurh is hot on his heels to collect the drug money, leaving a bloody wake of murder and chaos. Sheriff Bell, a WWII vet who first-person narrates the beginning of each section of the book, is also on the case, trying to track down Llewellyn before he gets himself killed.

The first five discs (of seven) of the book were excellent–an exercise in genre fiction–the crime-suspense novel–that transcends the limits of the genre’s tropes. McCarthy’s spare prose moves at just the right pace, with just the right amount of “literary” interjection. However, the end of the novel morphs (evolves or devolves?) into a meditation on war and the changing nature of America and the American people. McCarthy’s symbols and metaphors seem heavy-handed and downright clunky at times, and in the end, the book becomes something of a reflection on personal failures and regrets, and how these personal failures add up to national failures.

Perhaps because I was driving, and because I had been so involved with characters over the course of five compact discs who suddenly disappeared in the narrative, I was disappointed in the end. Perhaps if I had read the book instead of listening to it on compact disc while driving, I would have found the ending more profound, or even enjoyable. Who knows–reading books vs. listening to them is probably a subject for another post. I do think that the Coen brothers will make a fantastic movie out of this story–potentially on par with Fargo. We’ll see.

Sanctuary–William Faulkner

Edwin Turner3 Comments

sanctuary.jpg

So I’ve been reading William Faulkner’s Sanctuary over the past few days. This was Faulkner’s breakthrough novel, the one that made him famous when it was published in 1931. He claimed that it was pot-boiler pulp fiction, written purely to make money, but who knows. I mean, we’re talking about a guy who chose to start spelling his name with a ‘u’ for some obscure reason–an author who worked from day one at creating the myth of himself as author. So who knows–maybe he actually thought he was writing a great piece of literature when he produced this lurid drivel.

Sanctuary is most famous for the rape of Southern debutante Temple Drake. She is raped with a corn cob. There you go. That’s pretty much all you need to know about this book. However, if you’re into elliptical and confusing depictions of violence, drunken debauchery, creepy voyeurism, and post-lynching sodomy, Sanctuary just might be the book for you.

There are two film adaptations of Sanctuary–1933’s The Story of Temple Drake, and 1961’s Sanctuary. Neither are readily available on VHS or DVD, and for good reason. They’re both pretty terrible. Still, the early sixties take on Sanctuary manages to capture the backwoods grotesque that saturates the novel. Actually, David Lynch could make a pretty decent film out of this.

My final analysis: I’m very very happy that I only have one more novel of Faulkner’s to read–Intruder in the Dust. Sanctuary did nothing but help consolidate my prejudice against Faulkner and my belief that the notion of Faulkner as an American Great is nothing but a scam.

No Country for Old Men

Edwin Turner3 Comments

I’ve been reading a lot of Faulkner lately. This has nothing to do with me liking Faulkner (I don’t) or thinking that he’s an American master (at this point, I’m convinced that he’s not. Rather, it seems that a few critics–notably Malcolm Cowley and Cleanth Brooks–decided either that a. Faulkner is really great and/or b. America needs a new master of literary fiction, and it might as well be Faulkner. It seems amazing to me that these two critics conned a whole generation into believing that someone whose books were so unbelievably poorly written was actually, like, a totally awesome and important writer). I’m taking a class that requires me to read Faulkner.

Anyway, over the course of my reading, I got to thinking that the Coen brothers, two guys that have made some of the best American films ever (masterful films, certainly) are fond of Faulkner: the flood in O Brother Where Art Thou? hearkens to Faulkner’s novella Old Man (as does the whole milieu of that film really), the slow southern grotesque of Blood Simple is pure Faulknerian, ditto the gloomy doom of The Man Who Wasn’t There, and the failed screenwriter W.P. Mayhew in Barton Fink is essentially a caricature of Faulkner during his days in Hollywood.

So well and anyway, the Coens have a new movie coming out, No Country for Old Men, based on the Cormac McCarthy novel of the same name. Cormac McCarthy is often compared to Faulkner, though I have no idea why. They’re American? That’s it. They’re American. Like I said though, No Country for Old Men. Early reviews suggest that this is a return to form for the Coens, who have either been stumbling or just lazily cashing in lately (see: Intolerable Cruelty; The Ladykillers)–but we’ll have to wait until November to find out. For now, check out the trailer:

The Road–Cormac McCarthy

Edwin Turner11 Comments

114930__road_l.jpg

At this point, I don’t know if it does any good to anyone for me to throw in my two cents regarding Cormac McCarthy’s latest novel The Road. This book won all sorts of awards and critical praise, topped The Believer‘s 2006 readers’ poll, and even became an Oprah’s Book Club selection. In fact, Cormac McCarthy gave his first ever television interview last month on The Oprah Winfrey Show, and I actually watched the damn thing. I was in the hospital; my daughter had just been born. Anyway, like I was saying, after the publication of The Road, everyone in the field of arts and letters and criticism seems to have simultaneously decided to confer “living master” status on Mr. McCarthy, most noting that he is an American writer. This is something we’re desperate for in American literature–masters of the art. And, if you cannot tell already, I have a somewhat cynical attitude toward this desperation, and a wary if not pessimistic approach to anything so unanimously lauded. So when my mother-in-law gave me a copy of The Road as a belated birthday gift–only a few days after the Oprah interview, in fact–I felt a mixture of intrigue and hesitation. I was reading The Children’s Hospital at the time (#3 on The Believer list, incidentally) which gave me some time and distance from the Oprah interview and some of the hype. When I finally finished The Children’s Hospital, I gave myself a little more distance, reading a few Faulkner short stories and a few magazine articles. Finally, I picked up The Road; I read about half of it in one sitting on a Friday night, finishing the rest of it over that weekend. I had to slow down in the end, because I knew that this book was a tragedy; I knew that (more) bad things were going to happen, and I loved the little boy and the man–the protagonists of the novel–and simply put, I put off reading as a way of putting off their deaths (I did the same with the end of The Children’s Hospital; also, just to get it out of the way, both novels are post-apocalyptic. Done with comparisons).

The premise of The Road will remind you of any number of other post-apocalyptic stories you’ve read or seen: the world is over and everything has gone to shit. However, McCarthy is unrelenting in his refusal to provide an explanation or even description for the epic disaster that precedes the events of the novel. Where most stories in the end-of-the-world genre delight in some sort of mythology, The Road eschews any fantastic back story. Instead, we get fragments, glimpses, the briefest hints. The overall effect of this lack of a reason is a stunning, awesome loneliness. This is an abandoned world, desolate, dead, cold, covered in ash. Nothing can live. Besides, the real story of The Road is the touching relationship between a nameless father and son. These are “the good guys” who “carry the fire”–this is the only mythology of the novel, the father’s only lessons to the son. The pair travels south, although their purpose is simply to stay alive, to not die. A large amount of the text is devoted to the simple day-to-day scavenging that is necessary to live, with occasional encounters with other living people being rare, unexpected, and ultimately meaningless. In a world where living people equal a good source of protein, no one can really help these two; all other people are threats–“the bad guys.” And as the novel progresses, the young boy begins to realize that the world is not so simple, that there may not be such a thing as “good guys” and “bad guys.”

The bond between the father and son, so beautifully expressed in McCarthy’s spartan prose, genuinely moved me. Their relationship propels a narrative absent of all but the dimmest kernel of hope; indeed, it doesn’t seem like there can be any future for these two at all in a world where nothing–no plants, no animals–can live. Which brings me to the last few pages of the book. I have a problem with this. First, I guess I should give a spoiler warning. Honestly, I believe that you can know the end of the book and not have it spoiled for you, but in the interest of etiquette: SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING! SPOILER WARNING! There. May we continue?

So yes, from the beginning of this book, it’s evident that either the father or the boy or both will die by the end of the book. And yes, the father does die, in a scene so moving that I actually cried. Unbelievably, however, McCarthy cops out in the last few pages of the book, and provides a deus ex machina in the form of a loving surrogate family to protect the boy. I mean, the new father figure comes literally out of nowhere and more or less says: “Okay, you’ll be safe now. Don’t worry readers, the kid is gonna make it!” This improbable resolution seems to contradict the 283 pages or so of the novel that preceded it. It seems far more likely in the world and vision that McCarthy crafted that the boy would be left alone to fend for himself. It’s almost as if McCarthy loved the boy too much to see him on his own, unattended to. And of course, a lot of his readers probably felt the same way–I certainly did. I really did. I wanted to see that kid make it, but at the same time the logic of the narrative does not support the ending that McCarthy wrote. Still, this really is a fantastic book–perhaps a bit overrated, but excellent nonetheless. Highly recommended.

The Children’s Hospital — Chris Adrian

Edwin Turner8 Comments

childrenshospital.jpg

“The book started out a lot more like a big happy Love Boat episode, then 9/11 (and all that followed) happened and blew it in a new direction.”–Chris Adrian (McSweeney’s interview)

Chris Adrian’s 2006 novel The Children’s Hospital begins with the end of the world. A flood of (excuse me) biblical proportions drowns every living thing on earth with the exception of a children’s hospital which has been specially engineered with the aid of an angel to withstand both the flood as well as life at sea. The residents of the newly nautical hospital–doctors, med students, specialists, nurses, some 699 sick children, portions of their families and sundry others–must navigate an uncertain future drenched in despair and loss. Their mission of helping the ill is the only thing that sustains them–initially.

Central to the story is Jemma Claflin, a mediocre third-year med student with a haunted past. Years before the deluge, each member of her family and her long-term boyfriend died in a horrific way, leaving Jemma unable to love, let alone believe in a positive future. However, as the book progresses, it becomes apparent that Jemma will have to best her fear and become the hero of this epic novel.

I really, really enjoyed The Children’s Hospital. Adrian’s writing communicates a stirring mix of immediacy and pathos, tempered in a cynical humor that sharply bites at any hint of sentimentality. Despite its 615 pages, epic scale, and use of multiple narrative viewpoints, The Children’s Hospital never sprawls into logorrhea–Adrian holds the plot reins tightly at all times, sparingly measuring details which accrue neatly to an affecting payoff. The middle 200 page section of this book is easily the best thing I’ve read in the past few years. I actually had to stand up to read it–the highest Biblioklept endorsement there is. Yes folks–if you have to stand up to read it, it’s truly excellent stuff.

You can read the entirety of Chris Adrian’s short story “A Better Angel” here.

More Alphabet Soup: Brought to You Today by the Letter H

Biblioklept1 Comment

lolita.jpg

H is for Humbert Humbert, the rascally narrator of Vladamir Nabokov’s Lolita. Throughout the novel HH, a sardonic European, provides a running critique of conformist 1950s America, his adopted home. Pining for the haunting, ineffable feeling associated with a brief, tragic childhood love, HH engineers a series of unfortunate events in order to abscond with (and eventually seduce) twelve-year old Lolita Haze. Yep. That’s right. A child-molester made this list. But if you’ve ever read Lolita, you know how charming and funny this son-of-bitch is. Lolita is in a special class of books in the Biblioklept library; it’s one of those books that I’ve read in full at least four times, and one that I pick up and read parts of every year. The first time I read Lolita, I didn’t even realize what a monster HH was–in fact, I tended to sympathize with him, even to the point of sharing his condemnation of Lolita’s bratty, manipulative nature toward the end of the novel. Like Catcher in the Rye, I first read Lolita when I was 16; like Catcher in the Rye, Lolita was an entirely different book when I read it at 21. Somehow the book managed to change again, four or five years later. I’m sure Lolita will be completely different in a year or two when I’m thirty. In fact, I vow here and now to re-read it in full right after my 30th birthday. Who knows what will have happened to it by then? How these books change on you…

Narratological shape-shifting aside Lolita deserves to be read, and read repeatedly. Nabokov’s highly alliterative prose reverberates with lyrical gymnastics, multi-lingual puns, and allusions that will make you feel oh-so clever (if you are indeed oh-so clever enough to get them, of course). Neither Kubrick’s toothless 1962 film adaption or Adrian Lyne’s gauzy 1997 attempt do any justice at all to Nabokov’s words–this is one you simply have to read. Great stuff.

velocity.jpg

H is also for Hand, zany foil to Will, the tormented narrator of Dave Eggers’s You Shall Know Our Velocity!. In this book, the pair embarks on a futile attempt to travel the globe giving away an enormous amount of money Will has recently received as part of an injury settlement. This scheme turns out to be much more difficult and much more complicated than they had imagined. Hand is one of my favorite characters because he’s just really damn cool–a strange combination of someone’s hip older brother mixed with someone’s annoying younger brother. My favorite part of Velocity is the fifty page section where Hand takes over the narrative, casting doubt on everything that Will has previously told the reader. Will then resumes the narrative, but at that point, the book–and Will’s status as a reliable narrator–has taken an entirely different shape. Although the story ends at a wedding, Velocity is ultimately a tragedy; the very first page announces Will’s death. But again, the whole narrative is cast in ambiguity and doubt. I loved this book so much that I bought it for a friend.

(Incidentally, Hand also tuns up in “The Only Meaning of the Oil-Wet Water,” one of Eggers’s short stories collected in How We Are Hungry).

U.S.!–Chris Bachelder

Edwin Turner3 Comments

us.jpg

Chris Bachelder‘s superb novel U.S.! portrays an alternate (and somewhat hyperbolic) United States where the Left (big-L) keeps bringing Upton Sinclair (that guy who wrote The Jungle (maybe you read it in high school (I didn’t))) back to life. These would-be revolutionaries try to keep Sinclair (and hope) alive in spite of the fact that right-wing reactionary populist heroes keep assassinating him. In fact, in U.S.!, Upton Sinclair assassination is its own cottage industry.

Bachelder uses a dazzling range of approaches in the first 200 pages of the novel, employing everything from folk song lyrics to Amazon reviews to talk show transcripts in order to flesh out his alternate universe. The first part of U.S.! essentially sets up the last third of the novel, a relatively straight-forward third-person omniscient account of a Fourth of July book-burning in a Southern state. I won’t reveal any more of the plot, because I’m lazy and you should read this book for yourself.

Bachelder’s writing crackles with wit and surprising warmth, especially in the character of Sinclair, who comes across as a (literally) dusty out-of-touch relic, an idealist as equally unable to effect any change in the modern world as he was able to in his own era. Sinclair and the would-be revolutionaries who resuscitate him serve as Bachelder’s critique on America’s stale, impotent left (or is it Left?). Bachelder also savagely criticizes Sinclair’s rhetoric; one of the funniest sections of the first part of the book involves an analysis of exclamation points (and their overuse) in Sinclair’s novels. Toward the end of the novel, Bachelder employs a meta-critical strategy of adding more and more exclamation points to his own writing; the exaggerated gestures comically highlight the cartoonishly grotesque world of U.S.!, at the same time counterbalancing the understated but profound sadness of the novel.

My only gripe with U.S.! would be Bachelder’s rare lapse into what I like to call “workshop fiction”–fiction that seems the contrived and overwritten product of MFA work-shopping (did I mention that Bachelder got his MFA at my alma mater, the University of Florida at Gainesville? (other great writers associated with this glorious institution include Padgett Powell and Harry Crews)). As I noted though, these instances are rare and mostly notable because the majority of the novel is so fresh, original, and readable. This book is funny, poignant, and you should read it.

Leviathan–Jens Harder

Edwin Turner2 Comments

Jens Harder’s Leviathan is a graphic novel in the truest sense. Harder uses scratchy but fluid images to tell the story of a mystical whale who battles a giant squid, saves Noah’s ark, attacks the Pequod, wreaks havoc on a cruise ship, and eventually battles an armada of anachronisms. The only text Harder employs in Leviathan are excerpts and quotes from a variety of sources including the Bible and a host of philosophers; the bulk of quotes come from Melville’s Moby-Dick. Just as that novel begins with an “Etymology” followed by a section called “Extracts,” Harder begins with a section called “Leviathanology,” a collection of quotes about leviathans from the likes of Hobbes, Milton, and the book of Job. These quotes inform the story of Leviathan, connecting the whale to a sublime and unknowable mystery that Harder will explore. Harder’s surreal images often invert notions of “proper” space and time, giving the whale an awesome significance, but also positing the beast as something that denies signification. By eschewing the traditional forms of graphic storytelling, which rely on speech bubbles and clear-cut panel transitions, Harder is able to capture something that is essentially too large to capture. This book works. Highly recommended.

leviathan.jpg

Jonathan Lethem, Emo Comic Books, Realism, Meta-textual Quotes, History’s Actors, and Lazy Writing

Biblioklept1 Comment

There’s a good (and rather long) interview with Jonathan Lethem at the AVClub today. Mr. Lethem is one of our favorite authors here at Biblioklept, Inc. (you may recall our review of his brilliant Fortress of Solitude back in September of 2006 (a mere 1,111 days after the book was initially published)).

In the interview, Lethem references the Talking Heads a number of times, claims to be slowly writing “kind of an emo comic book” for Marvel Comics, goes in-depth on his style and approach to writing, and discusses his new book, You Don’t Love Me, which I have not read yet.

The interview begins with an interesting discussion about realism (specifically, literary realism) which reminded me of an essay I’d read a few days before in the February issue of The Believer by Chris Bachelder (yes, I’m aware that I lazily linked to a Believer article earlier this week).

In “Doctorow’s Brain,” Bachelder ponders on whether such a thing as literary realism can really exist, and if so, what types of books and literature represent that style. I found the essay fascinating–I love all things literary, and I could point plenty of books that could be called “magical realism,” but I would have a really difficult time defining “realism.”  So Bachelder’s inquiry provoked a lot of deep questions about the very nature of writing, communication, memory and history. One of the most fascinating (and scary) pieces of writing he discusses is a quote from one of George W. Bush’s senior advisers, published originally in an October 2004 New York Times Magazine article by Ron Suskind. From Bachelder’s article:

“[…] Ron Suskind’s “Without a Doubt” introduced the Bush administration’s derision of what it calls the “reality-based community”–those reporters who, according to a senior adviser to Bush, “believe that solutions emerge from judicious study of discernible reality.” As the adviser explains to Suskind:

“That’s not the way the world really works anymore. We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality–judiciously, as you will–we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.””

Yikes!

Seven Great Books About Rock and Roll (In No Particular Order)

Biblioklept6 Comments

1. Crazy From the Heat by David Lee Roth

david-lee-roth.jpg

This book is as good as you want it to be and there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that David Lee Roth wrote every word of it (no ghostwriters here, pure Roth). I’m not even sure if there was an editor involved, actually. David Lee Roth takes the chronological approach, giving equal time to Van Halen’s earliest days, their 80s success, and his post-Van Halen, big band days. Particularly interesting is David’s illumination of some of the vocal techniques involved in the production of those early Van Halen records (hamburgers and marijuana cigarettes). This book is a treasured gift from a dear friend.

2. Jimi Hendrix’s Electric Ladyland by John Perry.

082641571701_aa240_sclzzzzzzz_.jpg

I read this in like two days. What a great book. Author John Perry was a young eyewitness to many of Jimi’s London gigs; most of the info here is culled from personal memories and observations, as well as discussions with all the people involved. Perry’s style is simple and always focused on the music. The book is divided into seven sections, including a thorough discussion of the instrumentation involved, a detailed track by track review of the album; even a section about the cover. Perry writes from a musician’s point of view, but the most interesting lines to me are about the initial reaction of the American critical press to Jimi Hendrix:

“Behind a whole raft of complaints about Hendrix’s undignified performance and his irritating failure to fit existing critical categories for black performers, lay the essential point that his songs mysteriously failed to punish the audience for being white. Hendrix didn’t play the wounded, angry black man, or the dignified bearer of oppression; he didn’t provide white critics with a handy receptacle for their guilt. They didn’t know quite what role he fulfilled.”

I got this for fifty cents at the Friends of the Library Sale.

3. Our Band Could Be Your Life by Michael Azerrad.

our-band.jpg

Your life is probably nothing like any of the sort-of-famous indie bands covered here, unless you basically live in a van. I’m actually not even really sure if this qualifies as a great book. This book is actually just “okay.” Chances are, if you’re a fan of Sonic Youth, Ian McKaye, Dinosaur Jr, or Hüsker Dü you probably know most of this stuff already, or at least the stuff that’s interesting. And if you’re a fan of Beat Happening, well, there you go. This book has a whole chapter on Beat Happening. Actually, if you’re really interested in the whole indie rock thing, 1991: The Year Punk Broke is a much better document. But here I go comparing apples to oranges. I bought Our Band Could Be Your Life at Barnes & Noble for like three or four dollars.

4. Chronicles, Volume 1 by Bob Dylan

180px-bob_dylan_chronicles_volume_1.jpg

It took me a long time to get through this. Let me clarify: I read this in large, fifty page chunks, put it down, picked it up again months later. Dylan’s style is discursive and rambling; he elliptically deconstructs his own myth, picking away at the bits of identity he picked off of other musicians and poets on his way to fame. The book never really gets to that fame–to be clear, it discusses the after-effects of Dylan’s fame in detail: the obsessive fans who showed up at his home unannounced, the bewildering pressure to deliver some kind of messianic answer, the expectations to deliver a specific kind of record–but Chronicles spends most of its pages tracing and retracing Dylan’s youth in Minnesota and his days sleeping on friends’ couches in New York City. Will the second and third volumes ever come out? Who knows with this guy. This book was given to me by my cousin for Christmas a few years ago.

*Also recommended: Anthony Scaduto’s biography Bob Dylan.

5 . Transformer by Victor Bockris

transfusa.jpg

Lou Reed is a weirdo, and Victor Bockris wants you to know about it. Starting with Reed’s Long Island youth (complete with electro-shock therapy), Bockris’s biography covers pretty much everything right up through the Velvet Underground’s early nineties reunion: Reeds early apprenticeship in the Brill Building, the nascent days of the VU (plenty of Warhol anecdotes, of course), punk rock, several doomed romances, his years living with a transvestite, his karate skills, his yoga skills, and his all-bran diet, and of course, the drugs. Oh the drugs. Also, Reed’s solo career is also examined (including plenty of material from guitar god Bob Quine). Bockris seems to feel Magic and Loss is something of a watershed moment in modern rock (anyone who accidentally bought this album knows otherwise).

Bockris’s book employs a bitchy, dishy tone, rife with catty comments from everyone whoever worked with Reed: apparently Lou was a total asshole. Bockris reprints some painful comments (e.g. Reed on Springsteen, 1975: “Isn’t Springsteen over the hill?”); the most awkward moment comes in the book’s appendix, in a transcript of a meeting Bockris arranged between Reed and William Burroughs. Bad idea (Reed can’t remember the name of “that book you published”–Naked Lunch). I can’t remember, but I think I got this for like three or four bucks at Barnes & Noble.

6. Hammer of the Gods by Stephen Davis

hammer_of_the_gods.jpg

“Here’s a red snapper for your red snapper!”

Intrigued? You should be! Burroughs makes a cameo here as well.

I don’t own this one. I read the good bits in high school though.

7. Hickory Wind: The Life and Times of Gram Parsons by Ben Fong-Torres

gparsons.jpg

Some jackass made a movie about Gram Parsons’ life a few years ago; I think Johnny Knoxville played Parsons. I didn’t see it, but I’m sure this book is way better. Rolling Stone alum Ben Fong-Torres clearly appreciates Parsons as not only the influential icon that he’s generally recognized as, but also as a truly gifted songwriter. Parsons’ early days in Winterhaven, Waycross, and Jacksonville (he attended the Bolles School) are scrutinized along with his brief stint at Harvard, his time in the Byrds and his days partying with the Rolling Stones in California hippy mansions. Also, another appearance by William Burroughs, who recommended a treatment to help kick the heroin. Parsons’ infamous death in the California desert is also put under the lens, right down to a time-line if I remember correctly. Good stuff. My uncle lent me this book, and yes, I returned it to him. So there.

Lost: Lost in the Funhouse

Edwin Turner3 Comments

It’s been a while since I’ve written about a stolen book (ostensibly, this blog is all about book theft. But we’re easily distracted here). John Barth’s Lost in the Funhouse is one of my favorite short story collections ever and it’s been MIA from my library for a couple of years now. The collection starts with “Frame Tale,” a one-page (front and back) meta-commentary that informs the whole text. “Frame Tale” is essentially a marginal strip which says “Once upon a time…” on one side and “there was a tale that began…” on the other. The accompanying directions (a number of the stories come with directions; some are to be read aloud, some are to be tape recorded and played back, some are to be read aloud along to looped recording) direct the reader to cut out a strip of paper and connect the opposing ends, creating a Möbius strip, a commentary on the infinite and cyclical nature of story-telling (Barth expanded on this theme in the three linked novellas of Chimera).

funhouse-pbk.gif funhouse-hbk.jpg

My favorite story in the collection is “Petition,” a letter from a distraught Siamese twin, but the most lauded tale in LITF is the title story. “Lost in the Funhouse” recounts the adventures of young Ambrose as he navigates a bizarre amusement park funhouse during a family vacation to the beach one summer. The story is shot through with sexual anxiety and familial tension; Ambrose’s confused (and sometimes confusing) narrative loops discursively, unwinding and then condensing as he trips over his own thoughts. David Foster Wallace riffs off of “Lost in the Funhouse” in his long short story “Westward the Course of Empire Goes” (from Girl With Curious Hair). Ambrose, a semi-autobiographical stand-in as Barth’s pubescent alter-ego, appears as a a much older writing teacher in DFW’s novella. Clever, hunh? And to think, some people hate post-modernism! I feel bad for these folks.

I think that this collection paired with DFW’s Girl With Curious Hair (or, even better Brief Interviews With Hideous Men) makes a great introduction to post-modern writing. The major tropes, themes, and devices are explored in these books in short, digestible chunks full of humor and (surprise!) emotion. Highly recommended.

The Biblioklept Interview: Eddie de Oliveira

Edwin Turner4 Comments

Last month a local news station reported that Eddie de Oliveira’s book Lucky was being placed under review by the Duval Public School Board. Apparently an upset mother was disturbed by some of the content of the book; instead of calling the school directly, she allegedly went directly to the local news. I reacted by posting this blog, to which Eddie responded. We exchanged a few emails and I tried to contact some of the people involved in this story; I believe Folio tried to follow up this story also, but the leads go nowhere. I still haven’t been able to find out if the book really is “under review,” but I asked my department head (I teach English) if such a review list or “banned list” existed, and she said she’d never heard of such a thing. She then became alarmed and told me to “be careful” with what my classes read. This is kind of an unwritten rule of public education: don’t rock the boat. Play it safe. Books can be dangerous.

There’s nothing dangerous about Lucky, though, and I mean that in the nicest way–it is a book intended for teens, after all. Some down here in the beautiful South may still be alarmed or shocked by the subject matter of a sexually confused teen navigating identity in modern London. However, the real themes here are hardly subversive: Young Adult (YA) fiction has a legacy of exploring what it means to be an individual among a collective, and how young people are to negotiate a “proper” space in society. In the case of Lucky‘s protagonist Sam, that “proper” space is constantly under attack from all directions, as he is repeatedly prompted to identify–is he straight? gay? bisexual? In a way, the novel creates a meta-critique of those who would question its valid, “proper” space in a school library–unfortunately, those would-be censors will probably not read the book, preferring to simply highlight “offending” words.

Lucky tells an important story about the search for identity that all teens have to traverse, and I would have no problem suggesting it to any of my students. Eddie was kind enough to answer a few questions, which you will find below.

You can find both of Eddie’s books, Lucky and Johnny Hazzard, at Amazon or your local library.

luck.jpg hazz.jpg

Biblioklept: Have you ever stolen a book, and if so, could you
talk a little bit about that experience?

Eddie de Oliveira: I removed the Wide Awake Club book of Ghosts, Monsters
and Legends from my school library when I was around
ten years-old. The Wide Awake Club was a Saturday
morning kids’ show, and this book was the bomb.

BK: Have you ever borrowed a book and never returned it
(on purpose)?

EO: I have not. I never checked out the Wide Awake Club
book.

BK: What are you reading right now?

EO: I’m reading Four Trials by Senator John Edwards. Amid
all the media hullabaloo about Hillary and Barack,
I’ve been impressed by the one candidate for the
presidency who bothers to combine policies with
explanations on how he’ll implement them. I’m also
impressed by Edwards’ manner, rhetoric and sincerity.
Four Trials was published in 2003, and, as the title
suggests, it recounts four of Edwards’ most defining
moments in the courtroom when he was a trial lawyer,
defending the powerless against medical negligence and
corporate giants.

Next up, I’ll re-read The Perks of Being a Wallflower,
which I first read way back when.

BK: What were your favorite books as a child?

EO: I loved Roald Dahl – especially Charlie and the
Chocolate Factory and George’s Marvelous Medicine. I
re-read Charlie not so long ago and it really is
special. I remember reading To Kill a Mockingbird and
Lord of the Flies at school and thinking they were
extraordinary – helped, perhaps, by having a brilliant
English teacher back then, Mrs. Martin.

Way before I was 13, I read The Secret Diary of Adrian
Mole aged 13 ¾ and The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole
several times. And, of course, the Wide Awake Club
book of Ghosts, Monsters and Legends.

BK: You are currently an expatriate, living in Sweden.
Could you say a few words on this?

EO: London was pissing me off and in Sweden, most ‘things’
work very well. It may be colder, but the tap water
tastes like water should and the Stockholm air doesn’t
turn my white earphones black after two days.
Everybody speaks English very well (some better than
my compatriots) which makes learning Swedish rather
hard. Public transport is cheap and, for the most
part, reliable. The overwhelming sense here is that
the government actually gives a shit about its
citizens.

I’ve done some freelance journalism and continued
working on new books and film projects since living
here.

BK: Your book Lucky could be seen to fall under the
rubric of Young Adult fiction. What do you think of YA
as a genre, and was it your initial intention to reach
young people with your book?

EO: Yes, Lucky and Johnny Hazzard are both YA. I think
it’s an important genre and, thankfully, a growing
one. More and more books are being written primarily
with teens in mind, and those of us who write them
have a significant and serious responsibility. That
responsibility is to stay relevant and realistic,
avoiding some kind of The OC type representation of
what it is to be an adolescent. I read Melvyn Burgess’
Doing It, a YA/adult crossover title. He’s a good
writer, no doubt about it, but it really reads like a
middle-aged man writing about teens.

Johnny Hazzard is a love story written for teenage
boys. It’s a hard sell, because teen boy aren’t
renowned for their reading. Probably the finest
compliment I’ve ever received was on a 17-year-old
Texan boy’s myspace page. He listed dozens of bands in
the favourite Music section, a bunch of films in the
Movies section, and, in Books, it just said “I don’t
really read except this one book called Johnny
Hazzard.”

If I ever stop knowing how a teenager thinks, I’lI
quit YA and begin writing cookbooks.

BK: As you know, a cranky mom in Duval County, here in
sunny Florida, has raised some objections to you book
Lucky having a place in her kid’s school library. Is
there any merit to her objections? If you could speak
with her, what would you say?

EO: There is no merit to her preposterous objections.
Censorship of any form is reprehensible. I don’t
accept that Lucky isn’t suitable for a child. It’s a
book about identity and figuring out where you fit in.
It is not a bomb-making manual.

If I could speak with her, I’d sit her down with a
fine Arctic Daquiri, served on a coaster with the text
of the First Amendment written over it. I’d ask her
what she’s afraid of, and offer her a signed copy of
Johnny Hazzard.

BK: How does one make an Arctic Dacquiri?

EO: Arctic Daquiri
———–
Lots of ice cubes
Winter fruits (berries)
Sugar water
Vodka

Put it in the blender. Absolutely wonderful.

BK: Are you an Edwin or an Edward (or possibly an
Edmund, or just an Eddie)?

EO: I’m neither, I’m an Eduardo. You also left out Edgar.

(ed. note: Biblioklept will now acknowledge an anglocentric bias that we didn’t even know we had!)

BK: According to your Myspace page, you and I are the
same age. How is it that you’ve managed to write and
publish two books, while I’ve accomplished so very,
very little in comparison? But no, seriously, how long
have you been writing? What kind of writing did you do
when you were younger?

EO: I’m motivated by guilt: Each and every day I feel I
haven’t achieved enough, and that motivates me to get
some work done. I have South American parents,
football was on the diet from a young age, and so I
look at my career like that of a footballer’s;
considering they hit their peak at 27 and tend to be
on the slide by 31, it’s not a constructive analogy.

I’ve been writing since I was small – I started out
with school magazines and little plays I’d put on with
my friends, then moved on to big plays I’d put on at
the Edinburgh Festival and in London, and then on to
the fiction novels, short films and journalism.

BK: You seem to be a big Beastie Boys fan. What draws
you to their music? What album is “the” Beastie Boys
album, in your opinion?

EO: The Beastie Boys are the most innovative and important
American band alive. They’re always a step ahead,
doing new things, mixing up genres and sounds. “The”
album for me has to be Paul’s Boutique, which did all
of those things I’ve just mentioned, but on a massive
scale. That record pioneered the art of sampling,
which is now a given in almost every modern musical
style.

Never Break the Chain–Cath Carroll on Fleetwood Mac

Biblioklept1 Comment

neverbreakthechain.jpg

Never Break the Chain: Fleetwood Mac and the Making of Rumours by Cath Carroll (yes, that Cath Carroll) provides an excellent overview of the long, strange career of Mick Fleetwood and company. Like many of you (I’m guessing), I was introduced to Fleetwood Mac via my parents, who played Rumours ad infinitum. It was one of the first albums I “owned”–from the vinyl, I recorded a cassette copy that I played on my Sony Walkman repeatedly. I believe Born on the USA was on the other side. As the years passed, Fleetwood Mac somehow became very uncool to my ears (i.e., they did not rap, there was a paucity of shredding metallic guitar overtures, etc), then slightly cooler, then totally uncool (i.e. the Clintons, the reunion tour), then very very cool (thank you college, thank you Tusk).

Never Break the Chain is organized chronologically, making it easy for readers such as myself to skip around to sections of greater interest. The majority of Carroll’s research comes from previously published articles from magazines like Creem and Rolling Stone, as well as a few interviews. Carroll navigates the Mac’s bizarre history, detailing the numerous personnel changes. Mick Fleetwood is the book’s undisputed hero, the rock(er) who kept the band together through the tumultuous tempest of three decades. It’s fascinating to see how the band transforms from a British blues rock group from the John Mayall school of rock, to the melodic songwriting team that recorded the utterly-Western masterpiece Rumours.

As the title suggests, the making of Rumours becomes the focal point of the book. Carroll explores the bizarre love quadrangles that erupted within the band during that time, although for my taste there wasn’t quite enough VH1’s Behind the Music trashiness to her analysis. Ditto for the legendary cocaine use that supposedly fueled the FM’s late seventies output, which is largely glossed over.  However, gearheads who can’t get enough descriptions of studio equipment, instrumentation, and production techniques will love this book. Carroll goes into very detailed accounts of how FM approached songwriting–some of the most interesting passages recount how the band arrived at the album sequences. Plenty of in-fighting, plenty of fights with the studio, and a whole chapter devoted to Tusk. On the whole not bad. However, no substitution for actually listening to the albums.

Persepolis

Biblioklept3 Comments

“It was funny to see how Marx and God looked like each other.”

Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis makes a nice introduction to the graphic novel autobiography for anyone who hasn’t read one before. Marjane’s memoir weaves the political turmoil of the Islamic Revolution with the everyday stuff of childhood experience. As the the repressive Islamic regime revokes liberal freedoms, Marjane’s folks (secular intellectuals, of course) smuggle Iron Maiden posters back from Turkey; young Marjane sneaks cigarettes and rock music to a backdrop of political assassinations and war with Iraq.

persepolis_extract2

Persepolis succeeds by engaging the reader in a personal experience of revolution and cultural alienation. It works as a history lesson and as a coming of age story. Readers who try something different (maybe suspend some prejudices?) will be rewarded with an enriched perspective on a political/cultural upheaval still affecting global politics today.

Mythologies–Roland Barthes

Edwin Turner2 Comments

“Myth is a language”–Roland Barthes

Everyone should own a copy of Roland Barthes‘ Mythologies. Published over 50 years ago, the book seems more relevant than ever. Barthes wields his sense of ironic humor like a scalpel, dissecting the ideological abuse of the post-war spectacle society. In this collection of short essays, Barthes examines the ways in which societies create, use and mediate myths–particularly the way that the “elite,” monied crust of society create new myths–whole systems of myths, really–to control cultural perceptions of “reality.” Barthes uses the language and tools of linguistics in his meditations to examine the malleable space between the signifier and the signified.  Barthes analyzes a range of disparate topics: amateur wrestling, plastic, advertisements for milk and wine, the face of Greta Garbo, children’s toys, and modern film’s conception of the ancient Roman haircut are all considered in relation to how these “everyday” things support the dominant cultural/economic ideology. The methods put forth in  Mythologies are certainly a precursor to what we now call popular culture studies; Barthes is certainly one of the first writers I can think of to dissect mass-mediated, popular culture. And even though it was published half a century ago, Barthes’ keenly ironic style and short-essay format comes across as thoroughly contemporary.

In the final essay of the collection, “Myth Today,” Barthes warns us that the myths we uphold to protect our culture can ultimately destroy the culture. What are the contemporary myth-systems of the United States? What ideology do these myths uphold? Do these myths hold the potential to harm the culture of our great country?

William Gibson

Biblioklept7 Comments

Just out of high school, I had a mild obsession with William Gibson’s so-called cyberpunk novels. The first and most famous of these is Neuromancer, an incredibly prescient book that the Wachowski Bros. shamelessly ripped off in The Matrix. Neuromancer is the first in “The Sprawl” trilogy; Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive followed. I borrowed and never returned Neuromancer from Tilford; a few years ago I lent it, along with Burning Chrome, Gibson’s collection of short stories, to a student who in turn never returned them. I read Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive at the same time as my college roommate Jordan. I don’t know who has these books now.

In 1990 Gibson co-authored a book called The Difference Engine with Bruce Sterling. The Difference Engine posits a Victorian England where computers have already been created and are in use. The novel explores the consequences of a technological revolution coming a 100 years early. This book launched what is sometimes called the “steampunk” genre. After TDE, Gibson spent the 90s writing three novels often referred to as “The Bridge” trilogy: the first, Virtual Light, was pretty good (it had a really cool idea about “organic computers”); the second, Idoru, was pretty bad, really; the last, All Tomorrow’s Parties, was downright awful (I couldn’t finish it–I was embarrassed for one of my favorite authors!) At the beginning of the new millenium, technology had caught up to Gibson’s cyberpunk visions, making some of the details of his Bridge trilogy seem outdated or just plain hokey.

I knew our time together was up when I passed on a $4 copy of 2003’s Pattern Recognition at Barnes & Noble a few years ago. Despite his fiction taking a dip, Gibson’s blog, as well as his essays (often published in Wired magazine–check out what is probably his most famous piece, “Disneyland with the Death Penalty”) remain relevant and entertaining. Maybe his forthcoming novel, Spook Country, will prove more entertaining; until then, at least we have the Sprawl Trilogy.

(Check out more William Gibson covers at this gallery)   

In the Shadow of No Towers–Art Spiegelman

Biblioklept5 Comments

Art Spiegelman’s Maus, released as a graphic novel over twenty years ago, did more to legitimize the comic as an art form than any other work I can think of. It won a Pullitzer Prize Special Award in 1992 (the Pullitzer committee found it hard to classify…perhaps they didn’t want to admit that they were giving a prestigious award to a comic book!), and today Maus is a standard on many college English syllabi.

After Maus, Spiegelman worked for The New Yorker for over ten years, quitting in early 2002 after the September 11th attacks to work on a series of broadsheets entitled In the Shadow of No Towers. These broadsheets were collected in 2004 in an unwieldy 15″ x 10″ book.

spiegelman_02_550×637.jpg

Spiegelman lived in downtown Manhattan, right by the towers; his daughter attended school a few blocks away. He saw the towers collapse in person, fleeing for his life with his family. Spiegelman attempts to capture this raw, unmediated, and very personal experience in In the Shadow of No Towers (Sonic Youth’s 2002 album Murray Street works to the same end–only much more abstractly): the narrative is discontiguous, fluctuating from bitter satire to earnest inquiry. Spiegelman’s choice of the broadsheet as his medium (the broadsheets were published monthly by different newspapers as Spiegelman produced them) is tremendously affective: just like the 9/11 attacks, the broadsheets are larger than life, hard to grasp, hyperbolically resisting easy, singular readings. Spiegelman balances bitter attacks against the conformist mentality spurred by the Bush administration with pathos and humor; In the Shadow of No Towers recalls the good-natured satire of broadsheet comics from a hundred years ago, bittersweetening the content. The 2004 collection wisely contextualizes Spiegelman’s work by reprinting broadsheets of “The Yellow Kid” and “The Katzenjammer Kids.”

Like Maus, In the Shadow of No Towers is a fascinating exploration of how disaster confronts and transforms identity. And reflecting its heinous subject, In the Shadow of No Towers ends without concluding: as the foolish Iraq war begins, Spiegelman can no longer shape any meaning or sense from his work. This isn’t a graphic novel–don’t look for a cohesive narrative structure here; instead, In the Shadow of No Towers explores the loose ends, the detritus, the psychic remnants of disaster.