Literature

Byzantine was nice enough to pre-order and get the last installment of the Harry Potter series this weekend. I don’t know if he realized that this would mean I would not be doing any type of work or anything useful at all until the book was finished, but he probably should have.

I will avoid any major spoilers (for the rest of the series as well as Book 7) and just give some overall impressions, but will Spoiler Tag this anyway since almost anything you could say about Harry Potter could turn out to be a spoiler for somebody.

Read on at your own risk ... spoilers abound »

Last month I had the pleasure of reading AS Byatt’s Possession: A Romance. It was an excellent novel, and one of these days I’ll get around to awarding it an official five-star rating here at Pizappa.

Now, when I really enjoy a novel, I usually proceed to frantically read everything else its author has ever written. So I had hardly set down Possession before I was at the used bookstore (in Lincoln, Nebraksa) purchasing a copy of The Virgin in the Garden, one of Byatt’s earlier works, and one that, the back cover blurb assured me, shared all of the qualities that made Possession so excellent. (Note to self: when all of a book’s glowing back-cover review quotes are actually talking about a different novel by the same author, beware!)

At any rate, I’m about 200 pages in, and I’m close to stalling out. With Possession, I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough; I burned through its 500ish pages in less than a week. But Virgin is killing me. Nothing noteworthy is happening at all, and Byatt is devoting truly vast amounts of verbiage to describe completely insignificant details. Take this passage:

In front of the hearth Simmonds had a Swedish woven rag rug in jolly primary colours, scarlet, lemon, Cambridge blue. In his chairs he had rather small hard square cushions in the same colours, but different cloths. They were clearly chosen to match the rug, or vice versa, and the match was unsuccessful enough to trigger off a perceptual disturbance in Marcus, who kept glancing from one to the other in an attempt to find some relationship of balance or tone between them, though they were too similar for any discordia concors, if not similar enough to be easy on the eye. This problem was temporarily eliminated when Simmonds, in order to create a homely or intimate atmosphere, switched off all the lights but one, a large table-lamp made from a carboy with a dark honey-coloured shade embellished with swarms of little commas, or organisms, or curved pins, in black, which swirled in aspiring tear-shaped clouds towards the upper rim which they never touched. This lamp made a pool of dark yellow light on the hearth and reduced the cushions to shadows of colour.

Allow me to brandish my editor’s scalpel and pare that down a bit:

The rug in Simmond’s house clashed with the chair cushions. This bothered Marcus. Then Simmonds turned off most of the lights, which helped.

This is even assuming that the color of Simmonds’ home furnishings is important to the plot, which as of page 200 is not the case. I’m not usually one to complain about verbosity in literature, but I just can’t take much more of this. For somebody with such a strong opinion about popular fiction, Byatt isn’t doing a whole lot to sway me over to her enlightened side of the literary aisle.

Happy Simpleton asked earlier this week what upcoming films we were excited about. Well, I wouldn’t say I’m terribly excited about it, but I am cautiously looking forward to I Am Legend, which is due out late this year. Here’s the trailer, which amazingly manages not to spoil too much.

The 1954 novel I Am Legend by Richard Matheson is a very good read, and puts an interesting slant on the post-apocalypse genre. Like a lot of early horror and sci-fi stories, It’s also got a great Twilight Zone-esque twist ending. (In fact, many of Matheson’s stories were adapted into Twilight Zone episodes. He wrote one of my favorite sci-fi short stories, “Death Ship,” which was rewritten as a fairly forgettable TZ episode.)

I Am Legend has been adapted (at least) twice for film already: The Last Man on Earth, starring VIncent Price in the lead role, and The Omega Man, starring Charleton Heston. I’ve seen Last Man and found it moderately enjoyable, although it’s hard to watch Vincent Price without picturing him seated next to a fireplace introducing PBS’ Mystery.

I don’t hold out much hope that the new film version of I Am Legend will be terribly good or faithful to the novel. But it’s summertime, and you’re probably looking for some good summer reading, right? You could do a lot worse than picking up Matheson’s original novel before the movie comes along in December. I reckon you’ve got a good month or two before a movie trailer is released that completely spoils every element of the story…

Pirates + zombies + voodoo + Blackbeard + the Fountain of Youth + a damsel in distress + general strangeness = a fine summer read.

Tim Powers loves to mix real history with secret history, and he always does it with style. Most of his books revolve around a poorly-understood historical anomaly (in this case, the improbably easy cornering and defeat of Blackbeard) and fill in the historical gaps with occult strangeness and high adventure. On Stranger Tides isn’t Powers’ best novel (to see him at his most brilliant, read Declare or The Anubis Gates), but it is the only book he’s written that features zombie pirates. And that’s compelling enough for me.

Every now and then a book comes along that reminds me just how wonderful it is to get completely absorbed in a great story. One such book has been The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón, which I finished reading this afternoon.

What a beautiful, heartbreaking story. It’s set in Barcelona in the aftermath of World War II, and relates the experiences of Daniel, a young man who comes into possession of a novel by the obscure author Julián Carax. As the plot unfolds, he learns that a mysterious figure is hunting down and burning every copy of Carax’s books in existence, and Daniel may have one of the only surviving copies. Who was Carax, and why is somebody apparently trying to destroy all traces of his life and works? Daniel starts investigating the author’s life and history, and is quickly pulled into a complex web of love, murder, and loss.

It’s hard to write this review without veering into Shadow’s wonderfully exuberant prose style–the story is told with a florid enthusiasm that borders on cheesy. The people who drift in and out of the story are caricatures: the mysterious and unknowable female; the wisecracking sidekick; the tortured and penniless artist; the prostitute with a heart of gold. While the story wends its way toward a conclusion to the Carax mystery, you quickly come to understand that the mystery plot is not the only thing this book wants you to focus on. It takes its sweet time revealing plot points, leading you on long and colorful detours throughout postwar Barcelona: elements of Gothic horror, love-at-first-sight romance, crime drama, and many other genres are all stirred together. All of this is blanketed by what I can only describe as a peculiarly European aura of mystery; if you’ve read anything by Umberto Eco or Arturo Pérez-Reverte, perhaps you know what I mean.

All I can say is that rather than winding up as the ridiculous train wreck it might have been, Shadow pulls it off and tells one heck of a story. Zafón lays down reams of melodramatic prose without flinching and pulls on your heartstrings shamelessly. “Dark and stormy night”-style thunderstorms strike during dramatic moments in the plot. Lovers recognize their eternal soulmate at first sight. Even an everyday teenage crush is worked into an epic tale of love and loss. But it all works.

I laughed out loud. I cried (and hoped my wife mistook my sniffling for the remnants of the springtime cold I had earlier this month). Summer is coming, and you’re looking for something interesting to read: do yourself a favor and give this one a try.

addendum: some kind soul has put together a site mapping out the many different Barcelona sites referenced in this novel. Very useful.

Anyone who knows anything about me knows that I am a die-hard Trixie Belden partisan, but nonetheless Nancy Drew played an important part in my childhood as well. When I spotted this book at the local library a week ago, I just had to read it.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Night Country is a collection of essays by Loren Eiseley, a man who came from a very fine town indeed and went on to become an archaeologist, natural historian, and writer.

It’s difficult to describe or come up with comparisons to his writing style. He writes essays based on what might seem rather dull, scientific, and factual subjects such as geologic formations and the habits of birds and insects. He brings to these subjects personal experience from his childhood, as a field geologist/paleontologist/archaeologist, and with other people. And he applies all of these to thoughts about such Ultimate Subjects as the nature of time, of human beings, and of nature itself.

That’s what the essays are about, as far as subjects go, but what they are really about is the way they make one think differently and feel different–about everything one encounters in the natural world, about other people, and about oneself. It’s not really possible to describe that experience, so I can only recommend you try reading his work for yourself.

What will happen if and when humanity ever makes contact with an alien race? Would “first contact” with an advanced culture be the beginning of a galactic war, or the first step in establishing a peaceful and profitable galactic community? Countless sci-fi books and movies have pondered this question, but I’ve rarely seen it dealt with as well as in The Mote in God’s Eye, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle.

In Mote, a group of soldiers and scientists travel to a distant star, following the path of an alien probe back to its source. There they encounter the “Moties”–a race of intelligent and advanced aliens whose culture and mindset differ drastically from humanity’s. These aren’t just humans with pointy ears–they’re genuine aliens with their own motives and goals.

The book depicts some very interesting and well-thought-out scenes of first contact, in which humans and aliens tentatively analyze and evaluate each other–and then, when complications and “incidents” inevitably occur, the tough ethical questions must be faced. Are the Moties genuinely friendly, or are they sizing up humanity for an attack? Are they hiding something–and is it prudent or simply paranoid for humans, too, to hide aspects of their history and technology? What do the Moties want from the meeting, and is it compatible with humanity’s own goals?

To say anything more would be to spoil the plot, much of which is concerned with slowly learning more about the Moties and what drives them. Suffice it to say, then, that Mote is just what I look for in serious science fiction: it’s imaginative, has interesting characters (mostly human, but a few aliens as well), and it deals with serious and believable issues. Its flaws–mostly seen in some inconsistent pacing, perhaps a consequence of being a collaborative writing project–are minor compared to its strengths. Mote left me morally uncomfortable about some of the events and decisions portrayed in it, but very glad to have read it. Recommended.

So, Captain America died (again) recently. (I suppose that’s a pretty big spoiler, but I’ve seen news headlines about it, and I don’t think y’all care too much.) Marvel apparently did a pretty good job of keeping his impending death a secret, in contrast to other superhero deaths which have been hyped well in advance.

Anyway, there’s an interesting piece in the WSJ that talks about Cap’s death and tracks how the super-patriotic character changed throughout American history, from World War 2 to Whitewater to the modern day.

Farewell, Captain America. I have a sneaky suspicion we’ll be seeing you again soon.

You guys need more Lovecraftian horror in your lives. Here’s two good short stories I’ve come across online:

• A Study in Emerald by Neil Gaiman (it’s one of the downloads listed on that page). An absolutely brilliant Sherlock Holmes/Lovecraft crossover story. The Victorian newspaper-style layout of the PDF lends a nice touch, too.

• A Colder War by Charles Stross. This is more of a short novella than a short story, but it’s good–retelling the Cold War through the filter of the Cthulhu Mythos. Fun stuff.

I’ve been in the mood for this sort of story ever since recently finishing Tim Powers’ novel Declare, an alternate-history Cold War novel about occult spies. That may merit its own post later, but in the meantime, the above two stories are worth the read.