tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37490310911551302282024-03-13T13:56:44.766-07:00Reading in TaiwanRyanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07998996750944114185noreply@blogger.comBlogger188125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3749031091155130228.post-61689899768406013752013-10-20T09:10:00.001-07:002013-10-20T09:44:31.168-07:00The Testament of Mary<div style="text-align: center;">
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<b>The Testament of Mary</b></div>
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<b>By Colm Tóibín</b></div>
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The Man Booker Prize was awarded to Eleanor Catton for her novel her novel <i>The Luminaries</i> (Congrats Ms. Catton). At 28 years old, Catton becomes the youngest winner of the Booker Prize. But that is not the only superlative we can superimpose one this year's crop of nominees for (arguably) literature's most prestigious award. Colm Tóibín's 81 page novel <i>The Testament of Mary</i> is the shortest book to ever be shortlisted (or even long listed for that matter). It barely qualifies as a novel. I've read novellas longer that <i>The Testament of Mary</i>. But what it lacks in density, it more than makes up for in controversy. Not only due to it's subject matter, but also due to the delivery of the narrative.</div>
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The controversy involved in Tóibín's novel is twofold. First, any novel written from the historical perspective of a contemporary of Jesus of Nazareth is contentious by nature among those who will take issue with the way in which Jesus and other Bible personages are characterized. There are always going to be those who will take issue with elements of Biblical accuracy. Of more interest, though, is the literary controversy The Testament of Mary has generated, particularly the unconventional way in which Mary has been characterized. </div>
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<i>The Testament of Mary</i> is a first person account of the life of Jesus as told by his mother, many years after the crucifixion. Mary has been kept protected (hidden) by the disciples and is tended to by several watchers at Ephesus in Asia Minor. The disciples themselves often visit to gather stories from Mary, but only those that fit their particular needs. It is at this point, in her extreme old age, that Mary feels compelled to disclose the truth of her son's life as she recalls it. I suppose her motivation is the direction in which the disciples are steering the ship: toward a division with the Jewish tradition and the founding of a new religion.</div>
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What Mary recounts is a far more ephemeral account of the life of Jesus. His miracles as witnessed by his mother are open to critical interpretation and his death and resurrection are recalled in far more corporeal tones. In fact, Mary seems to be confounded by the cult of personality that spouts up around her son and professes to not understanding much of what his followers are saying. This, of course, implies that Mary was never a follower of her son. But Tóibín takes it one step further and hints at a possible reversion to paganism in her old age, a rather confounding notion, to say the least.</div>
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Mary is characterized as both brutally honest and absolutely sure about the events that lead up to the arrest and death of her son, but at the same time rather confused about the events that transpired in the days and years that followed the crucifixion. Her voice is lucid and exacting and her attention to the details surrounding both the wedding at Cana and the resurrection of Lazarus are vividly fascinating. But when it comes to the politicking of her son's life and martyrdom, Mary seems utterly confounded. </div>
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Surely one can excuse the bereaved for not entirely understand what is going on in the wake of death, but Mary's complete ignorance concerning the machinations of the disciples in the aftermath of the crucifixion is inexcusable and a real fault in Tóibín's characterization. Mary seems oblivious to the fact that she is being used by the embryonic Christian Church to further their political cause within the Empire.</div>
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Which leads me to wonder what is purpose of this little novel. Surely it's not an examination of Mary as a literary heroine. We learn very little about her throughout the novel. In fact this novel has very little to do with Mary other than the fact that she is the voice in which it flyers through. And surely it's not simply to suggest that Jesus was not, in fact, the son of God. That theme has been done to death in longer and far more insightful novel than this one. So if <i>The Testament of Mary</i> isn't about Mary and isn't about Jesus (in the historical sense) than what is it about?<br />
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My best guess is that Tóibín is investigating the nature of truth. The story of Jesus is one narrative that tends to get a free pass on revisionism. Through Mary, we throw the entire Jesus story through the first person wringer, allowing the writer to take license with virtually every detail of the story they see fit to alter. Here Tóibín chooses to reduce Christ to the status of man retrofitted as a godhead. Further to that point, it would seem that Colm Tóibín is examining the politics of myth-making and how an agenda trumps truth when the chips are on the proverbial table. Mary is simply a puppet to be manipulated when the need arises. A tool to be kept alive but also carefully choreographed.<br />
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But if that's the case, if Toibin's over-arching purpose was to somehow point out that the Bible is either patently untrue or (at the very least) decidedly unreliable, then this novel seems rather like flogging a dead horse. Only the most fervent zealots believe that the Bible is the literal word of God rather than a flawed and contradictory text written by hundreds of people over thousands of years. If pointing this out was Toibin's intent it's sort of like spending a pleasant afternoon proving that the sky is blue to a group of people, a small percentage of whom are color-blind.<br />
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To be honest, I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this novel. In the spirit of this blog, I wrote this immediately after finishing the book. But this is the sort of novel that will take days or weeks to sort out. I need to mull over the more intricate nuances of this tight little narrative. I know the novel is flawed, but I'm trying to decide whether or not it is intentionally flawed in order to make a point about the nature of truth, or critically flawed because Colm Tóibín is simply mean-spirited.<br />
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Has anyone else read this book yet? I'd be curious to know what you took away from it. </div>
Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07998996750944114185noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3749031091155130228.post-15417354245010058922013-10-18T09:06:00.001-07:002013-10-18T09:06:29.387-07:00Zone One<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>Zone One</b></div>
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<b>By Colson Whitehead</b></div>
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I've said this before and I'll say it again and again: The zombie genre is, by nature, limited. Films, television and books that are written within the genre appeal to a very specific sub-section of horror fans and rarely find purchase among a wider audience. Case in point, the relative failure of this past summer's film adaptation of <i>World War Z.</i> If Brad Pitt can't generate a wider audience for zombies, I doubt anyone can (though the failures of that film run far deeper, but that's another blog post for another day).<br />
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In fact, more often than not there is little effort made by creators of zombie lore to appeal to a wider audience. Why? With such a solid, rabid core following, why would an author or director bother to expand an audience in a genre that is notorious for being limited in scope and hopelessly bereft of innovation. The dead reanimate, infect the unsuspecting living, a motley crew of lucky people eke out a corner of survival where they wax philosophical on the nature of the apocalypse and what it all means. The fundamental themes of these stories tend to be hopelessness, desperation and the contrast between the living and the walking dead. I'm not slag gin on this formula. Obviously I'm part of the rabid core, but that's the essential alpha and omega of zombie stories. There are only so many avenues for the zombie to shuffle down and the widest ones also happen to be the most profitable.<br />
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But despite the rigidity of the genre, there is a certain degree of wiggle room and there have been a slew of Very Good Books written in the past few years that intersect the zombie genre with literary fiction. Here I'm thinking of Max Brooks's <i>World War Z</i> and Joan Frances Turner's novel <i>Dust</i>. But the best of the literary zombie lot (that I have read) is Colson Whitehead's <i>Zone One</i>.<br />
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<i>Zone One</i> refers to the southern tip of Manhattan Island. It is several months since the beginning of the zombie apocalypse and the remains of humanity are busy. A provisional government has sprung up in (of all places!) Buffalo and the world is in full clean up mode. The novel is told from the perspective of a nameless protagonist only known as Mark Spitz. Mark Spitz is part of a sweeper team that is charged with sweeping though <i>Zone One</i> building by building, room by room eliminating stragglers and making the city once again inhabitable. It's slow going, but things seem to be looking up for humanity.<br />
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The narrative is non-linear and tangential. Given that most of the survivors are suffering from what one psychologist refers to as post-apocalyptic stress disorder (PASD), the narrative structure fits the tone of the novel perfectly. It becomes a wonderful tool for keeping the reader in the dark about a lot of things until Whitehead is ready to reveal them. The reader only begins to get a full idea of the state of the world by the middle of the novel. And that idea is that survival is a great deal more boring that we all expected.<br />
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And that is really the over-arching theme of <i>Zone One</i>. Past the typical themes of hopelessness, isolation, and the psychological repercussions of mass death, Whitehead tackles a subject that few writers in the genre would dare to tackle: The sheer monotony of survival. The tedium of scavenging food and water, avoiding the walking dead and finding an adequate place to sleep the night. Unlike other novels in the genre <i>Zone One</i> is large swaths of tedium interspersed with First Night stories, a full reversal of the usual formula of viscera and victory.<br />
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Indeed mendacity is revered in<i> Zone One</i> and the novel break down the fetishization of the zombie apocalypse. In that respect <i>Zone One</i> is the very antithesis of the fanboy novel. Mark Spitz the very definition of an average man. There is literally nothing extraordinary about him except his complete lack of extraordinariness (the irony of his nickname is not lost). And that's the point. The survivors of the zombie apocalypse won't be the extraordinary. They will be the hopelessly average. The fact that the provisional government sets up shop in Buffalo, a cookie-cutter sort of American city devoid of character or flavor only accentuates that point (sorry people of Buffalo. I grew up in Toronto. Of course I was going to slag your fine city. It's my duty). Survival is not the stuff of action, adventure and romance. It is an oblivion of banality.<br />
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Beyond that, Whitehead uses his vast swaths of free time within the narrative to build a thought-provoking comparison between our modern world (of iPods, tablets and streaming videos) and that of a post-apocalyptic zombie wasteland. Whitehead constructs and then deconstructs (all too cleverly) the age old question of whether we are already zombies, asleep at the wheel of society. But Whitehead takes it a step further by applying modern business jargon and newspeak to the equation by introducing the notion of marketing and branding to the world of survival noting that we will all bring our particular strengths to the table in a post-apocalyptic world. It's just a matter of whether our strengths have any benefit. In this sense <i>Zone One</i> skirts precariously close to satire and the point is crystal clear. Whitehead has a lot to say about us as a society without zombies and he has full license to rant away now that he's done away with the vast majority of it. And the rants are fun to behold and satisfying in their hypothetical outrage.<br />
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Zone One is a thinking man's zombie novel. While it does have it's fair share of gore, it is expressed in matter of fact tones and is not intended to shock or terrify the reader, rather it is presented as the unfortunate reality of the world of Zone One. And while I am certain that I would catch a lot of flak for comparing this novel to Cormac McCarthy's The Road, there are obvious similarities that cannot be ignored. All of this makes <i>Zone One</i> the top of the heap among zombie novels and the first of its kind that I can confidently categorize as capital L, capital F Literary Fiction. If for no other reason that <i>Zone One</i> has the courage to drag zombies out of their traditional realm and placed under full literary examination. If you are only ever going to read one zombie novel, make it this one.<br />
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<br />Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07998996750944114185noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3749031091155130228.post-92013335431769385612013-10-08T09:33:00.001-07:002013-10-08T10:13:35.545-07:00The Big Sleep<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>The Big Sleep</b></div>
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<b>By Raymond Chandler</b></div>
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As I mentioned a few posts back, I am making a concerted effort to read novels by authors I have previously ignored or, for whatever reason, passed by over the years. I'm trying to round off my reading in such a way that I have less unexplored corners and reading renowned writers who have otherwise travelled under my radar seems like the perfect way to cover a few bases. One such writer is Raymond Chandler, the detective writer extraordinaire and the grandfather of hard-boiled mysteries Chandler, along with Dashiell Hammett are single handedly responsible for the careers of a half dozen leading men in Hollywood between 1930 and 1960. Hard-boiled lingo has continued to exist right down to the present day. Chandler is certainly not a lightweight.<br />
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I admit, I was a little apprehensive about picking up a Chandler novel because, much like my first Agatha Christie, I was certain I wasn't going to like it. But I approached The Big Sleep with an open mind. Maybe I would like this one. Maybe I've read all the wrong early 206th century detective novels. Maybe this one would change everything.<br />
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Turns out, I was right. I hated it. I should listen to myself more often.<br />
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Before anyone gets mad at me, I better take this opportunity to caveat this blog post with a few reading facts about myself. First, I really don't like detective novels or mysteries in general. Rarely does a mystery hold my attention. I really have a hard time maintaining a level of concern for the intricacies of the plot. I know that connoisseurs of the genre have the ability to pinpoint definitive clues and red herrings from the prose. I'm lucky if I can maintain the direction of the general plot. Somewhere in the middle of the first act I will miss a key plot device that will leave me with one foot out the door for the rest of the novel. Obviously it goes without saying that I will not be solving any mystery before the reveal. I just can't bring myself to care.<br />
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Mystery writers are trying to outsmart their smartest, most loyal readers. They take great pains to keep the reveal a secret to the very end of the story and, therefore throw all sorts of nonsense at the reader in an effort to deflect their attention away from the important issues. I am neither smart nor loyal so I get lost in the morass of false flags, red herrings and misleading tangents. What makes it worse, I get lost and I don't care. I simply shrug my shoulders and check to see how many more pages until a chapter break so I can nod off, guilt-free.<br />
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Second, I hate hard-boiled jargon. There's opacity to the language that makes me feel like I'm standing in a crowd of investment bankers or lighting technicians or something. It makes me feel the same as when two high school friends would be talking about a new band and you ask "who?" and they look at you as if you've lived the past three seasons under a a pile of dirty wrestling tights in the school gym. There is very little in this world I hate more than exclusionary jargon whether it's street lingo or managerial nonsense. <i>The Big Sleep</i> is full of this sort of language.<br />
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<i>The Big Sleep</i> is a mystery (strike one) that is rife with exclusionary jargon (strike two). It is also interesting that <i>The Big Sleep</i> is not only the title of this novel but also the effect it has on the reader. It's not a long novel, but it took me over a week to read because every single time I picked it up I would drift off into a dreamless slumber after a dozen pages. I swear, I've never felt so rested as I have during the reading of this novel. I averaged about ten hours of sleep a day throughout this novel. In that sense, it is I who got the big sleep, unwittingly.<br />
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Like all of Chandler's novels, <i>The Big Sleep</i> centers around Detective Philip Marlowe. Marlowe is hired by aged General Sternwood to investigate something or other to do with his naughty daughters (both of which throw themselves at Marlowe through the course of the book). There is something to do with a lost husband, pornography and a half dozen murders. It all happens at the excruciating slow pace of a bad Japanese horror movie and at no point could I have given a damn. Once the mystery is revealed I had simply lost all interest in every character in the novel and couldn't wait to be rid of the book.<br />
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Now, it's not all bad or else I would have put it down long before the end. Chandler does have a way with words. If you are a lover of language (and can wade through jargon to get to the good stuff), I have to admit that Chandler has a way with similes and comparisons. and for this alone, <i>The Big Sleep</i> is worth the price of admission. How could it not be when you get lines like: "Her legs were as long as a couple of Dickens' novel and I read them cover to cover." (note: I made that one up because I'm too lazy to open the book and find a real example even though the book is within arms length. I just don't care enough to be precise).<br />
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And to be fair, <i>The Big Sleep</i> does seem a little cliched and predictable from thdays perspective simply because the story has been regurgitated in lesser forms for over half a century via film, television and parodies. It has been the subject of imitation, lampoon and homage to the point that even those who have never even heard of <i>The Big Sleep</i> probably know enough aspects of the story to piece it together if they so wish. But historical and stylistic context still don't excuse the lack of a compelling story, and this is where Chandler fails in my mind, no mater if it's 1933 or 2013.<br />
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All in all, <i>The Big Sleep</i> is similar to eating crab from the shell. It's more trouble than it's worth what with the exclusionary language and the plodding pace of the mystery (that I couldn't care less about... did I mention that yet?). Sure there is some really sumptuous morsels of goodness buried deep in the shrapnel-like shell, but it's difficult to get to and not enough of it to make it entirely worth your while.<br />
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I'll pass on any more Raymond Chandler.Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07998996750944114185noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3749031091155130228.post-48961497029868561622013-09-27T09:36:00.002-07:002013-09-27T09:51:37.288-07:00Shopgirl<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>Shopgirl</b></div>
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<b>By Steve Martin</b></div>
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I need to pay more attention. I've been dismissing <i>Shopgirl </i>for over a decade because I, apparently, don't listen.<br />
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Somehow, I managed to confuse this little gem of a novel with the series of <i>Shopaholic </i>novels written by Sophie Kinsella, despite the fact that several people have repeatedly told me that it has nothing to do with the <i>Shopaholic</i> series. But, like I said, I don't listen. and since there is virtually zero chance of my ever picking up a <i>Shopaholic</i> novel (with no offense intended to either the<i> Shopaholic </i>series or Sophie Kinsella), this book almost passed me by due to my stubborn insistence that this book was going to be about shopping. Thank god my mother finally got it through my thick skull that <i>Shopgirl</i> was written by Steve Martin, untethering the book from Kinsella in my mind and placing it high on my list of novels to read. I love Steve Martin. I love his stand-up. I love his work on television. I love his films. I love his Twitter feed and I love that he can play the banjo. It would make sense that I would love his books as well. If you, like me, have dismissed this novel because you think it's going to be about shopping or something akin to consumption of items from a department store and/or a boutique on Rodeo Drive, I'm here to rest your worried mind. It's not about any of that.<br />
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<i>Shopgirl</i> is a bleak little love story told from the perspective of four individuals in the Los Angeles area as some point prior to the cell phone era (the novel was published in 2000). It centers around the doomed-from-the-beginning relationship between Ray, a wealthy, middle-aged man, and Mirabelle, a twenty something artist currently working the glove counter at an expensive LA department store (thus the name, <i>Shopgirl</i>). Jeremy, a going-nowhere slacker and Lisa, a ferocious sexual predator fill out the novel's dance card. The dating triangle of four is complete.<br />
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Martin is not exploring new territory. The modern dating scene has been raked throughout with a fine-toothed comb since the term "modern dating" came into existence. Much of the action is predictable and the outcomes are plain even to the most oblivious daters out there (read: me). Expect no Roald Dahl-esque twists in <i>Shopgirl</i> because they are not forthcoming. But, that's the nature of "modern dating in the pre-cell phone era," isn't it? There are no surprise endings. Only the same predictable results, relationship after relationship until we all die lonely and miserable in a house full of cats and tins of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup. It all seems so pointless.<br />
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Well, I did say it was a bleak story.<br />
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But there is a lot of charm and wit packed into this 130-page story to make it worth reading despite the fact that you know exactly how it's all going to turn out by page 25. Steve Martin has an observational tone that implies that he has lived this sort of life long enough to understand the exact physical, intellectual, emotional and psychological machinations, but not quite long enough to understand why we delude ourselves into pretending to not see those same machinations in our own relationships. This makes me like Steve Martin all the more because it's a war zone out there, kids.<br />
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Or something like that.<br />
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In <i>Shopgirl</i>, Martin explores the various manifestations of loneliness in an urban landscape where we are both surrounded by a millions of people and, at the same time, completely alone. Sort of like Facebook except with actual faces that move and talk and react to what you say immediately via speech rather than comments and pokes. Martin writes with a sincerity that is both comedic (expected) and tragic (surprising). Many of the observations within the novel are the sorts that we have all vaguely noticed but probably have never spent the time to collect up into a formal observation. Once Martin expresses them in words we find ourselves nodding in sad affirmation that he has nailed it on the head. Each of Martin's four principal characters have found ways in which to live with their loneliness, whether it is anti-depressants, psychological walls or dependence of self-help literature. It is fitting that one of the central characters in the novel, Lisa, works at the cosmetics counter. Her brand of loneliness is so completely covered over by vapidity and materialism that Lisa isn't even aware that she has set the controls of her life on a trajectory to disaster.<br />
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But the real strength of <i>Shopgirl </i>is setting. As with many of his better films, Martin brings a unique understanding of Los Angeles (or at least I think he has a unique understanding. I've never been to LA and most of what I believe about LA has been gleaned from Steve Martin Movies and <i>The Big Lebowski</i>). Much the same way Stephen King has the ability to capture the essence of Maine, Steve Martin has a keen sense of the particular eccentricities that make Los Angeles different and employs these eccentricities in a manner that accentuates rather than smothers the narrative. When Martin describes the various patrons entering and exiting a medical clinic while waiting for Mirabelle to fill a prescription for anti-depressants, he is expressing just enough of LAs unique qualities without over-burdening the reader with an editorial rant. It is plainly obvious that Martin loves Los Angeles and it permeates the novel, making it better as a result.<br />
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The literary style is simple. Martin employs simple, flat sentences in the present tense to convey complex social and sexual politics with the keen eye of a seasoned social scientist. However, the narrative remains stolidly detached and non-judgmental. In fact, Martin manages to evoke empathy for all his characters by focusing on the universal complexities of human relationships. I found it easy to relate to both Ray and Mirabelle despite the fact that their lives have virtually nothing in common with my own.<br />
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This is an exquisite little novel.Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07998996750944114185noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3749031091155130228.post-59845005878869118062013-09-25T10:39:00.001-07:002013-09-25T10:39:16.822-07:00Switch Bitch<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>Switch Bitch</b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>By Roald Dahl</b></div>
<br />
Keeping it short today...<br />
<br />
And for anyone who, like me, was unaware... Yes, that Roald Dahl.<br />
<br />
This might come as a shock, but I had no idea that Roald Dahl, the writer of some of my favorite children's novels including <i>Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,</i> <i>The Fantastic Mr. Fox</i> and <i>The BFG</i>, was also a prolific writer of short fiction for adults as well. I kew that Shel Silverstein wrote a lot of adult content, but not Dahl. So I approached <i>Switch Bitch</i>, a collection of four short stories for adults, with equal parts trepidation and eager anticipation. Was my childhood to be ruined or would I be opened up to an entirely new side of a writer I have always enjoyed?<br />
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Turns out, neither. If you have never read Roald Dahl's adult fiction he provides wonderfully fantastical premises and gorgeous twist endings to his admittedly addictive stories. I simply dare a reader to settle into one of these stories and then try and put it down for the evening. It won't happen. In that respect, <i>Switch Bitch</i>, like Dahl's children's literature is virtually impossible to ignore and a delightful romp from start to finish.<br />
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But I also found the stories lacking a certain quality. My fundamental problem with <i>Switch Bitch</i> (and this is my problem with so many works ofd fantasy and science fiction) is that he could have taken his premises so much further. I yearn for the extremes. I was literally begging the pages to take his ideas farther afield than Dahl seemed prepared to go. In the story "Bitch" the possibilities of a perfume that renders the human male into a helplessly unstoppable sexual beast are tantalizing, but Dahl reins the story in just as I was prepared to go all the way. And in "The Great Switcheroo" I was prepared for a bigger twist than what was eventually revealed I thought. Dahl owed it to his readers to take that premise to the ends of the earth. Alas, he did not, or at least not as far as this reader would have liked. I sincerely hope this is because Dahl was showing a modicum of literary restraint and not because I have become so wholly depraved that I am wishing sexual cataclysm on unsuspecting literary characters. Of course, on the list of things I'd rather no be known for "More Deviant than Roald Dahl" falls pretty low on the list.<br />
<br />
Is it worth a read? Of course. It's an interesting insight into the mind of one of the 20th century's greatest writers. Just don't expect the unexpected (as the cover implores). There's nothing particularly new on these pages. But if you like Roald Dahl you owe it to yourself to check this one out. Don't worry. Your virgin eyes will absorb the impact. Dahl may have hit his fair share of literary home runs, but <i>Switch Bitch</i> is second base is so many more ways than one. Of course, Dahl's second base is still pretty sweet.Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07998996750944114185noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3749031091155130228.post-32681671958032825752013-09-23T09:18:00.004-07:002013-09-23T09:18:59.745-07:00Killshot<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>Killshot</b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>By Elmore Leonard</b></div>
<br />
Welcome!<br />
<br />
I am in the middle of my own personal reading challenge. I didn't mention this in the previous blogpost because I was too busy getting pseudo-academic on the subject of Ernest Hemingway (I insist on using the "pseudo" prefix because A) I drink rather heavily while writing and B) even if I weren't, I rarely know what I'm talking about). It wasn't planned. It's not particularly organized and I didn't invite other bloggers to participate, though you are more than welcome to hop aboard if you wish.<br />
<br />
From now until Christmas I plan on reading as many novels by notable authors that I have previously never read. The first in this challenge was Ernest Hemingway, an author I have somehow managed to avoid for 38 years prior to last week. Other authors officially queued up for a peek this season are Iris Murdoch, Truman Capote and Raymond Chandler. But this week I finally tackled an author I've been dying to read for a few decades: Elmore Leonard.<br />
<br />
As I am sure I have mentioned on more than one occasion on this blog, one of my favorite sites on the web is <i><a href="http://www.avclub.com/">The Onion's AV Club</a></i>. For anyone who takes popular culture seriously, it is an invaluable resource for books, film, music and games, both old and new. One of my favorite columns on the <i>AV Club</i> is something called <i><a href="http://www.avclub.com/features/gateways-to-geekery/">Gateway to Geekery</a></i>, which provides step-by-step tutorials for Johnny-Come-Latelys who would like to get into the work of prolific artists. For example, perhaps you are interested in exploring Lou Reed's discography but you feel hopelessly intimidated by the sheer volume of material. Where do you start? <i>Gateway to Geekery</i> is there to help lest you make the mistake of picking up a copy of <i>Metal Machine Music</i>.<br />
<br />
Anyway, I wish there was a <i>Gateway to Geekery</i> article available to anyone late to the Elmore Leonard Party because I'm pretty sure they would have advised me against reading <i>Killshot</i>.<br />
<br />
<i>Killshot</i> is mid-career novel by Elmore Leonard. Written in 1989, it is the story of Wayne Colson and his wife, Carmen who inadvertently get caught in the middle of the shakedown of Carmen's boss. After a brief physical altercation, Wayne sends Armand Degas, an Ojibway hit man, and Richie Nix, a dim-witted loose cannon away, with their tails between their legs. Degas is a professional and knows that both Wayne and Carmen have seen their faces and could positively identify them in a police line-up. He is determined to do away with Wayne and Carmen as a measure of job security and maintained anonymity. As with any novel of this sort, the police are ineffectual. Wayne and Carmen are natually forced to take matters into their own hands.<br />
<br />
I was expecting a fast-paced novel with lots of slick-talking characters and what I got was a slow plot that seemed unsure of where to go next. It felt as if Leonard was throwing in all sorts of half-concocted ideas and ill-formed plot lines only to abandon them before they fully materialized. While the characters are indeed strong, I found it impossible to believe that a professional such as Armand Degas would have partnered up with someone as dull-witted as Richie Nix. Degas must have known upon meeting this half-wit that doing any sort of business with him was going to end in disaster and it's not like they were forced to work together. Furthermore, Degas could have dissolved their partnership at any time. So why does he let such an unstable partner continue to live despite his erratic behavior? Degas's motivations remained concealed throughout and that weakened the novel considerably.<br />
<br />
Furthermore, the legendary dialog that I expected from Leonard never really materialized. The dialog was by no means awful, but given what I had heard about his ability to write a conversation, I was decidedly underwhelmed. It is possible that it was built up too much prior to reading, but I found that the dialog in <i>Killshot</i> is a far cry from the brilliant work of Richard Price. Perhaps I picked the wrong book.<br />
<br />
One area in which this book excels is Leonard's exploration of the theme of security. Leonard takes aim at the myth that we can insulate ourselves from crime and violence via various methods of self defense (in this case firearms and police protection but it could extend to more contemporary methods such as video surveillance, home security firms etc...). The fact of the matter is that security is a complete myth. The amount of time, money and effort we put into security does not directly translate into a more secured existence. In fact, it is impossible to protect ourselves from anything or anyone if that thing or person is determined to get you. Leonard did a fine job of expressing this from both the perspective of the terrorized Colson couple trying to protect themselves from would-be killers and Armand Degas, a professional killer trying to protect his anonymity.<br />
<br />
Unfortunately the themes of the novel are not enough to carry the slow, meandering plot. <i>Killshot</i> had the makings of a decent novel but too many weird directions and loose ends makes it feel like an unfinished idea rather than a fully actualized novel. Given Elmore Leonard's reputation and his sheer volume of work, I will definitely give him another chance (though I am going to solicit recommendations before I jump into another title).Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07998996750944114185noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3749031091155130228.post-44549761611700844302013-09-16T16:32:00.001-07:002013-09-16T16:32:43.624-07:00For Whom the Bell Tolls<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>For Whom the Bell Tolls</b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>By Ernest Hemingway</b></div>
<br />
I am doing this review as part of of Banned Book Week. I am participating in a blog tour hosted by Sheila over at <a href="http://bookjourney.wordpress.com/">Book Journey</a>. This is my second year participating in this event. I feel privileged to be invited back. When I got the email invite last week it just so happened that I was in the middle of <i>For Whom the Bell Tolls</i> by Ernest Hemingway, a book I had never previously read and, it just so happens, to be number 30 on the American Library Association's list of Most Banned Books in America. Serendipity, indeed.<br />
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I can't believe I have to do this but <i>For Whom the Bell Tolls</i> follows about a week in the life of Robert Jordan, an American fighting on the side of the Republic during the Spanish Civil War. Jordan is charged with blowing up a strategic bridge in advance of a Republic offensive. In the course of the week leading up to the explosion, Jordan meets Maria, a young Spanish woman who was the victim of a brutal gang rape at the hands of the Fascists. As time passes and a lot of Hamlet-esque drama unfolds, Jordan begins to rethink his commitment to the war and his mission.<br />
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Published in 1929, <i>For Whom the Bell Tolls</i> was Hemingway's literary confessional about the Spanish Civil War, a conflict he covered as a writer. I'm of the opinion that if it weren't for Hemingway and the enduring legacy of his literature, the Spanish Civil War, which was Europe's dry run prior to the Second World War, would be largely forgotten today. So in that way one might liken <i>For Whom the Bell Tolls</i> to <i>M*A*S*H</i>, which has kept the Korean War from becoming a historical footnote. And if it weren't for Banned Book Week, this was where my blog post was going to go. I'll have to find another book in which to compare to <i>M*A*S*H</i>.<br />
<br />
So let's get to the $50,000 question. Why was <i>For Whom the Bell Tolls</i> book banned?<br />
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I use the past tense here because it is not a book that gets a lot of attention from Book Banners these days. Indeed, there are no <i>For Whom the Bell Tolls</i> is the sort of innocuous novel about the graphic brutality of war set during on the last century's most obscure conflicts. But graphic depictions of wartime atrocities were not a new concept. A slew of novels about World War I including classics such as <i>All Quiet on the Western Front</i> and Hemingway's own <i>A Farewell to Arms</i> had sufficiently shocked a generation of readers with their grotesque accounts of death and disease during history's most pointless war. But back in the 1940s and especially the 1950s <i>For Whom the Bell Tolls</i> was a novel of quite a bit of discussion not for it's graphic accounts of rape, torture and murder but because of its pro-Communist slant (Of course, it was also banned in Spain under the rule of Franco and, interestingly enough, in Nazi Germany where it was burned in bonfires prior to the Second World War).<br />
<br />
So let's make this clear. <i>For Whom the Bell Tolls</i> was banned because it was perceived as pro-communist. What a dated reason to ban a book. If there are people who supported this ban who are still alive today, I have to assume they are pretty damned quiet about it. It would be hard to convince anyone that this is a viable reason to ban a book in 2013. Hell, it would be hard to convince someone that this is a viable reason to ban a book in 1983.<br />
<br />
Allow me to explain...<br />
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As the years progress and the Baby Boomers fade into cultural obscurity it will be increasingly difficult for us as members of the modern Western World to fully comprehend the fear, the sheer terror that Communism evoked in the American psyche in the years immediately after World War II. Obviously there are millions of people who still remember the Cold War (myself included) and the fear that it was capable of invoking but as it slips ever farther from our public discourse it becomes increasingly difficult to reconcile the blood-curdling frenzy of McCarthy era America and its obsession with eliminating all remnants of communism from its social, political and cultural landscape. Censorship and suppression of seditious literature was a big thing in during the early days of the Cold War.<br />
<br />
Unfortunately for Ernest Hemingway, his novels about the Spanish Civil War, and particularly <i>For Whom the Bell Tolls</i>, fell squarely in the crosshairs of America's suppression set. It was guilty of several political crimes that seemed to be of the utmost importance at the time. <i>For Whom the Bell Tolls </i>first unthinkable mistake was to give the reader an accurate depiction of the Spanish Civil War in which the Republican forces, which consisted in large part of communists and communist-sympathizers from around the world, fought valiantly against the (eventually victorious) Fascists. It would have been difficult for Hemingway to write a well-reasoned novel about the Spanish conflict without making it clear that the Republicans were littered with communists, some of which were American.<br />
<br />
Which brings me to strike two. Robert Jordan is an American citizen that seems to be at the very least sympathetic to the communist plight in Spain. This was never going to sit well in the parlors and cocktail parties frequented by the McCarthites of the 1950s. Just like homosexuals in Iran, communists didn't exist in post-war America, and if they did, they would be silenced. Hemingway was one of the victims of that suppression. The nail in the proverbial coffin was the inclusion of one particular sentence: Hold out and fortify, and you will win. This was a verbatim Communist Party slogan and therefore seen as proof positive that Hemingway was perpetuating the Communist menace in America. It got so bad that in 1941 the U.S. Post Office refused to mail the novel due to it's perceived Communist sympathies.<br />
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It all looks rather silly to a reader of this blog in 2013. A novel being banned because it perhaps, maybe favored one political ideal over another seems rather heavy-handed. In fact, as I read this novel I noted that it was wonderful that we now live in an age in which one's politics will not land one in hot water, least of which a writer. That is until I thought a little harder. We like to assume that political freedom is a hallmark of our post Cold War world. But when we take a closer look, such heavy-handed tactics are still very much in play, though not so much on the literary front. Consider the cases of Julian Assange, Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden. None of them are writers but their particular situations are at least akin to those of Ernest Hemingway's from over a half century ago. By adhering to a political ideal that falls outside the accepted social parameters (ironically, Communism is well within those parameters now, precisely because it has been rendered marginal) they have been demonized, harassed and muzzled.<br />
<br />
But I digress. This is not a political blog and I have no intention of making it so.<br />
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I do, however, think there is a cautionary tale to be told here. When looking back on the rationale for the banning of <i>For Whom the Bell Tolls</i> we can collectively roll our eyes at the absurdity of the reasoning.As I mentioned earlier, it all seems so silly. So what of today? what of the slew of books banned for excessive violence and/or sex or novels that portray particular religious groups in a negative light? what will we say about these bans twenty, thirty or fifty years from now? Will we look back on the furor over these novels and say to ourselves: "Yeah, we were fighting the good fight and those decisions were right decisions." or will we look back and say: "What the hell were we thinking? That was much ado about nothing."<br />
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Given the fact that it has been decades since <i>For Whom the Bell Tolls</i> has provoked the ire of American cultural police, I'm going to assume the latter.<br />
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In conclusion, there is never, ever, ever, ever an acceptable reason to ban a book.Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07998996750944114185noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3749031091155130228.post-20344535882983483902013-09-04T09:24:00.001-07:002013-09-04T09:24:15.301-07:00Frail<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>Frail</b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>By Joan Frances Turner</b></div>
<br />
Faithful readers of this blog will know that I am a sucker for all things zombie. I've been a fan of zombie lore since I was in junior high school and it has been a pet obsession for the past three decades with no apparent end in site. I don't profess to be an expert on the subject, but I can talk knowledgeably and one thing I love to talk about is what's wrong with the zombie sub-genre. Over the years, I have developed a singular pet peeve in relation to my obsession: that of the endgame in the zombie story arc. It's a dead end (pun intended). Once a writer goes all in with a zombie apocalypse, it is danced near impossible to write an ending that doesn't involve the demise of the human race or the defeat of the zombie hordes. Just look at the situation Robert Kirkman finds himself with <i><a href="http://taiwaneastcoaster.blogspot.tw/2011/02/book-twelve.html">The Walking Dead</a> </i>comic and television series. How is he supposed to find an end to that story that doesn't involve the eventual death of all his human characters?<br />
<br />
Zombie lore has long been in need of a kick start. Something more nuanced. Something more creative than the simple local militia walking through the field armed with rifles picking off wayward corpses (and giving poorly scripted interviews with local newscasters: "They'll all messed up!"). I was waiting for someone to take zombie lore to another level.<br />
<br />
To a certain extent, there is a generation of writers doing just that. Experimenting with the genre, chewing it up and spitting out all sorts of interesting variables to the venerable zombie story. One of my recent favorites is Bob Fingerman's excellent novel <i><a href="http://taiwaneastcoaster.blogspot.tw/2012/12/pariah.html">Pariah</a></i>. Another is Joan Frances Turner's exquisite 2010 novel, <i><a href="http://taiwaneastcoaster.blogspot.tw/2011/11/dust.html">Dust</a></i>. At the time, I heaped a good amount of praise on Turner's take on the zombie sub-genre and how she was able to finally add something interesting to the typical war of attrition that all zombie apocalypse stories eventually devolve into. I made some pretty salient points, I must admit, but since I'm not nearly Gore Vidal-ish enough to quote myself, you'll have to suffice with Douglas Preston's decidedly succinct review: "Joan Frances Turner has done for zombies what Anne Rice did for vampires." It's not a perfect encapsulation of <i>Dust</i> or what it entails, but if you insist on not clicking on my review, it will have to do in a pinch. Turner made zombies both more terrifying and more human at the same time. Pretty nuanced, if you ask me.<br />
<br />
So here we are in 2013 and Turner has released the much anticipated (at least by me) sequel to <i>Dust</i>: <i>Frail</i>. If you haven't read <i>Dust</i>, I would recommend you read it before attempting <i>Frail</i> as the story picks up at the end of the <i>Dust</i> narrative and <i>Frail</i> refers back to many of the characters and events in <i>Dust</i> without explaining them in the sort of detail that would make anything clear.Turner, I suspect, is assuming that you read the first novel before cracking <i>Frail</i>. Turner takes the zombie lore into the stratosphere in her first book, so jumping into the second will leave you utterly lost, so forewarned is forearmed.<br />
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<i>Frail</i> is the first person account of a human named Amy. Left for dead by her mother, Amy is one of the few humans left following the zombie apocalypse and the subsequent evolution of a second species of undead creatures (known in the novels as exes) who are neither human nor zombie but have appetites larger than both (metaphor for crass consumerism, anyone?). The exes are now the clear masters and humans (or frails) have been relegated to slavery and/or food. Amy has managed to stay away from both the zombies and the exes throughout the winter but after being attacked by a starving dog in a small Indiana town, she is rescued and befriended by Lisa, an ex with a heart of gold (who just so happens to be the sister of Jessie, the protagonist zombie from <i>Dust</i>). Amy and Lisa embark on an, at times, surreal journey into what is left of their world and in the process uncover many of the secrets kept hidden by the local Thanological Laboratory, which, in turn, reveals the truth about zombies and exes.<br />
<br />
I want so badly to tell you that Frail picks up where <i>Dust</i> left off and fleshes out (pun intended) the intriguing mythology that Turner concocted in her first book. and to be fair, Frail has some legitimately terrifying and disturbing moments, some of which I will carry for years. But I must admit that much of the book is a slow, plodding melodrama between the trails and exes, much of which is shrouded in unnecessarily convoluted dialogue. The characters often talk over Amy's head about things she doesn't understand which, in turn leaves the reader in the same situation. I was literally lost for the fist two thirds of the novel because not a single character was able to make a direct statement about what the hell was going on. Because of this, the novel seems to tread water interminably.<br />
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Furthermore, Frail's characters are depressingly forgettable. It's funny that over the years critics have derided the zombie sub-genre as two-dimensional, that zombies make terrible villains due to their utter brainlessness. lack of character, motivation, no possibility of deconstruction. Zombie stories could only be as good as the human characters involved. So it is ironic that <i>Dust</i>, with it's cast of zombies, has infinitely better characters and characterization than <i>Frail</i> which has no zombie characters whatsoever. I never got any sense of Amy as a character other than she was slowly losing her mind, and she was the protagonist. The rest of the characters were a formless mass of dialogue that ceased to make sense very quickly. Perhaps Turner has a knack for writing from the perspective of a zombie and human frailty (pun intended) is an art best left to others.<br />
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The confusion of this novel is all too much, butt does let up. Toward the end of the novel when much of the narrative fog begins to lift, <i>Frail</i> begins heaping on fresh piles of new confusion in anticipation of a third book in the series (no spoilers). So while <i>Frail</i> does (eventually) clear up a number of outstanding questions from <i>Dust</i>, it does so in such a meandering way that I fear many readers will give up (or cease to care) long before the reveals.<br />
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I know I did.<br />
<br />
it's a shame, really, because deep within <i>Frail's</i> narrative curlicues and cardboard characters there lies a very compelling story but it will take a Herculean effort on my part to muster the enthusiasm to read the third book in this series.Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07998996750944114185noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3749031091155130228.post-55515882947277070232013-08-26T09:19:00.001-07:002013-08-26T09:19:30.562-07:00The Primal Blueprint<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>The Primal Blueprint</b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>By Mark Sisson</b></div>
<br />
I admit it, I've always thought of myself as being in pretty reasonable shape and I have all sorts of reasons to make that assumption.<br />
<br />
I'm a very active person. I've been a regular swimmer since college and have become an avid runner in my thirties. I do a fair bit of hiking and I prefer walking to cared and motorcycles.<br />
<br />
I eat healthy. I haven't eaten at a fast food restaurant since I was a teenager (other than Subway... full disclosure). I avoid processed foods and a good amount of the fresh produce that enters my home is organic.<br />
<br />
I have a very low stress life. I work, on average, about 20 hours a week and my job, which pays well and is rarely taxing. The rest of my time is devoted to my family and friends and travel when I can afford it.<br />
<br />
I feel pretty blessed that I have attained the age of 38 without having to take any medication. I don't wear glasses and I don't smoke. I get more than enough sun, reasonable amounts of sleep and I try to have fun wherever I m and whatever I am doing. Granted, I do have a weakness for alcohol, particularly beer and red wine, but I'm hardly an alcoholic.<br />
<br />
So it can as a shock to me when a could of weeks back my wife showed a photo of me and my mother from when she visited Taiwan a few months back. In the photo, clear as day, was a pot belly. It was not an optical illusion or a sudden gust of wind caught on film but a fully formed and rather round belly. It was like my entire world came crashing down. How could this be? All that running and swimming for nothing? Sure they tell you that your metabolism slows down with age, but I wasn't particularly ready for a gut at age 38.<br />
<br />
I immediately hit the scale, something I haven't felt the need to do in years and lo and behold! 78 kilograms. Hardly obese by any measure, but the last time I weighed myself in my early thirties I was holding steady at my typical adult weight of 70kg. Where did this 8 kilos come from? I was mortified and more than a little scared. I mean, I guess I had noticed that my pants were a little tighter, but I just assumed they had shrunk in the wash! There was no way I had gained that much weight.<br />
<br />
Sometimes, the truth hurts.<br />
<br />
I've never subscribed to a workout system or participated in a structured fitness program or weight loss program. I've always eschewed them in favor of my own brand of fitness: cardio plus sensible eating equals healthy. But I was rattled and impressionable. My co-worker gave me his copy of <i>The Primal Blueprint</i> and told me that he'd gone through something similar. I began to feel like my life was turning into a spam email. I half-expected him to tell me that the book was going to change my life forever, then spew off a bunch of nonsensical keywords.<br />
<br />
So here I am, at the insistence of a co-worker, reading and reviewing, <i>The Primal Blueprint</i>, the sort of book I never thought I'd ever read. A self-help fitness book. And this post is going to sound like an infomercial because, well, let's just get this out of the way: it's working for me (more on that later). <i>The Primal Blueprint</i> hardly a diet or a workout regime. It is an amalgam of anthropology, hard science and common sense. <i>The Primal Blueprint</i> presupposes that, from a human health perspective, the agricultural revolution has been a detriment to humanity and has caused us far more harm than good. <i>The Primal Blueprint</i> is not going to win any literary awards. It is written in the same informal style as Mark Sisson's blog, <a href="http://MarksDailyApple.com/">MarksDailyApple.com</a> (but seriously, if you are reading a self-help book and critiquing style and form, you need to reassess your priorities). Where it lacks in style it more than makes up for un substance. And it does have a narrative, of sorts.<br />
<br />
At the core of <i>The Primal Blueprint </i>is Grok. Grok is a neolithic hunter gatherer whose life pre-dates the agricultural revolution. Sisson gives us a peak into a typical (though a tad idyllic) day in Grok and his family's life. It is an eye-opening deconstruction of a hunter-gatherer's daily life from sunrise to sunrise. Sisson chronicles every mundane detail of the family's life from what they ate and how often, how they move and how much. How they divide there time and so forth. In the process, he paints a vivid picture of pre-agrarian life and then juxtaposes it with a glimpse into the lives of a typical American family in our times. The differences are striking. It's a real shock to see how Grok and us, two specimens of the same species separated by a mere microsecond in evolutionary history living such vastly difference lives and doing such vastly different things.<br />
<br />
That's when Sisson hits you with the kicker. Grok's lifestyle is what drove human evolution for two million years. The agricultural revolution, they domestication of grains for human consumption, occurred roughly 10,000 years ago. Hardly enough time for our bodies to adjust to this new form of sustenance. Add to that the more recent introduction of processed foods and we, as a species of animal, are now sitting two seats over from where we should be seating. We were never build to consume large quantities of carbohydrates. The vast quantities of carbohydrates that exist in the modern diet (in the form of grain: rice, corn, wheat, barley, etc...) is the primary culprit for the increase in obesity and related illnesses. The consumption of carbohydrates spikes our insulin levels for short periods of time. Over the course of a lifetime of consumption, these spikes in insulin lead to all sorts of health problems (obesity being one). The book goes into painstaking detail about how and why this occurs as well as other events happening at a cellular and organic level within our bodies when we ingest and digest our food.<br />
<br />
What Sisson is advocating is hardly new. Low-carb diets have been all the rage over the past few years. From the Atkins Diet (which Sisson is quick to distant himself from) to the strict Paleo diet (eat only food that was available to Paleolithic man). But The Primal Blueprint is absolutely not a diet in the sense that we understand it today. It's not designed to help you lose weight (though you will). It's designed to maintain optimum health and vitality through diet and exercise. It's an entire philosophical shift. What's more, unlike virtually every other health plan, it's not designed to deny or test a person's will. Rather it begs the question: What would Grok do? And while the book is comprehensive (it has to be, it needs to convince you), it can all be boiled down to ten points, known as The Ten Primal Blueprint Laws:<br />
<br />
1. Eat lots of plants and animals<br />
2. Avoid poisonous things<br />
3. Move frequently at a slow pace.<br />
4. Lift heavy things<br />
5. Sprint once in a while.<br />
6. Get adequate sleep.<br />
7. Play<br />
8. Get adequate sunlight<br />
9. Avoid stupid mistakes<br />
10. Use your brain<br />
<br />
Simple, practical stuff, right there.<br />
<br />
So, what of me? Well, I've been adhering to the system now for about a month and a half. Granted, my lifestyle prior to <i>The Primal Blueprint</i> gave me a bit of a head start, but it has been ridiculously easy to follow. I have cut out all grains (even rice... in Asia... can you even believe that?) and refined sugars and added a half dozen servins of meat, fruits and vegetables to my daily diet. I have modified my workout schedule to be a bit more low-impact and allow for more time to heal. and I'm proud to say that I have already shed six of the eight kilos I had gained. I'm more alert, less tired and generally feel better than I have in years. My daily aches and pains have all but disappeared (apparently grains are inflammatory) and I don't miss bread rice or pasta at all (never really liked corn, so that was nothing). My wife has also subsequently joined me and in her month on the Blueprint she lost the last of her pregnancy weight with almost no effort. Best of all, we seem to eat like kings in the process.<br />
<br />
This system is, obviously, not for everyone, but from what I read and experienced, it makes a whole ton of sense and it has been working. I apologize for the infomercial-ness of this blogpost. I promise, I will not give you an 800 number to call or offer you a free set of steak knives if you comment on this post in the next hour, but I do urge you to look into Sisson's program. I don't mean to come off as a shill, but the fact that I'm almost the same size as I was when I was 28 says a lot.<br />
<br />
I'm totally sold.<br />
<br />
<br />Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07998996750944114185noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3749031091155130228.post-28861809355839361972013-08-18T08:50:00.000-07:002013-08-18T08:52:37.448-07:00The Perks of Being a Wallflower<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>The Perks of Being a Wallflower</b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>By Michael Chbosky</b></div>
<br />
<i>The Perks of Being a Wallflower</i> is the sort of book that was written for me to hate. You know the type: A quirky 90210-esque coming of age story involving an awkward teen who feels alone, finds an amazing group of friends, loses those friends and then, ultimately, regains them in a flourish of altruism. Along the way, said troubled teen manages to safely navigate the potholed landscape of modern adolescence with relative style and panache coming out the other end a better and more well rounded person.<br />
<br />
Well, <i>The Perks of Being a Wallflower</i> follows that tried and true story line. This epistolary novel follows the hijinks of Charlie, a sensitive (and slightly troubled) teen who begins his correspondence with an unnamed person (known as Friend) on the eve of his first day at high school. Over the course of the next twelve months of letters, Charlie meets a group of amazing friends centered around Patrick, an openly gay senior and his sister Sam, with whom Charlie immediately falls hopelessly in love like only high school boys are capable.<br />
<br />
Like so many teenagers, Charlie is forced to deal with the full spectrum of adolescent problems: alcohol, drugs, suicide, relationships, sex, teenage pregnancy, abusive parents, homosexuality, mental disorders and the dreaded <i>Rocky Horror Picture Show</i>. And given that this is a book about teenagers, and given that the novel is set in Nirvana-drenched plaid of 1991, this potholed landscape of adolescence is served with a man-sized helping of angst.<br />
<br />
I should have hated it. But I didn't. I liked it. And I liked it an unhealthy amount. And there are two reasons why.<br />
<br />
I started high school back in 1990, which would make me a year (give or take) older than Charlie and slightly younger than his senior year friends. I suspect that if this novel was set any more recently (or any farther back in time) that I would have dismissed it with a series of eye rolls and gimme-a-breaks. But since it hit the proverbial nail (me) on the head (my susceptibility to nostalgia and sentimentalism), I was sucked in hook, line and sinker. The cultural markers were comfortably familiar and I liked the fact that the social hierarchy<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white;"> is (as it was back in my day) </span>based on the movies you watched, the music you listened to and the clothes you wore. I have no idea whether that intricate social classification system is still in place, but it was comforting to read a very specific high school caste system and know where 15-year old me would have slotted in. The cultural references consistently made me smile, especially each mention of the <i>Rocky Horror Picture Show</i>, a film I watched literally dozens of times throughout my own school career.<br />
<br />
Second, I recently chose <i>The Perks of Being a Wallflower</i> as the next book to teach my advanced English class in Taiwan. Taiwanese teenagers have such a different school experience from their North American peers. Theirs is a life filled with tests, studying and academic competition. High school students in Taiwan have very little free time to socialize. My students often hear me talk about high school in Canada and they are amazed at the swaths of free time I used to have. How I used to have a part-time job, friends and a social life. They are aghast to know that I got drunk as a teenager and the topic of drugs is so completely foreign to them that I simply don't even bother.<br />
<br />
I thought <i>The Perks of Being a Wallflower</i> would be the perfect novel to give my students a taste of what high school life is like for the average North American. Granted, Charlie experiences an entire student body's worth of triumph and tragedy in a single year, but the sentiment is there. While I was reading the novel I felt a sense of pride that this novel was able to convey a lot of the emotion and atmosphere of high school life in North America and that my students would gain some perspective on it. They have always told me that North American high school sounds easy. I have always told them that it is difficult, but a different kind of difficult. This novel seemed like an apt presentation of the point I have been trying to make for a few years.<br />
<br />
And the writing isn't terrible either. It is fun to watch how Charlie's writing ability matures throughout the novel indicating that despite the lack of mention in his letters, he is indeed attending and succeeding in the classroom (especially English). I also thought it was a cute literary trick to have the story vaguely mimic the novels his English teacher has assigned to him. Parts of the novel felt like an homage to various classic fiction.... especially <i><a href="http://taiwaneastcoaster.blogspot.tw/2012/11/catcher-in-rye.html">Catcher in the Rye</a></i>.<br />
<br />
That's not to say that the novel is without its faults. The ending was particularly disappointing. I thought Chbosky had set himself up for a nice non-traditional ending but I found that he left it feeling far too much like the ending of one of Charlie's assigned novels. As well, it did suffer from an over abundance of issues whereby the characters literally endure every possible After School Special ever addressed. But when I read the novel through the eyes of my students these little things hardly seemed to matter. I'm really looking forward to the illuminating comparisons that <i>The Perks of Being a Wallflower</i> will illicit in class, and how they correspond with my own experiences in high school in the early 1990s.<br />
<br />
I can't wait.Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07998996750944114185noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3749031091155130228.post-61204344428988017832013-08-12T17:21:00.000-07:002013-08-13T07:12:56.426-07:00The Golden Compass<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>The Golden Compass (His Dark Materials Vol. I)</b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>By Philip Pullman</b></div>
<br />
<i>(I am keeping it short because I've got house guests this week and don't want to appear as antisocial as I actually am. This blog post is intentionally incomplete in anticipation of the second and third in the series, in which I will flesh out some of the ideas I'm vomited onto this post).</i><br />
<br />
So what is becoming of me? The self-professed fantasy hater goes right ahead and loves yet another fantasy novel? Oh noes!<br />
<br />
For those (like me) who have either lived under or on a rock for past couple of decades, <i>The Golden Compass</i> (or <i>Northern Lights</i>, depending on where you live) is the first novel in Philip Pullman's <i>His Dark Materials</i> series. It is a series that has been pressed on me for a few years now and the weight of the recommendations finally crushed my will to resist. I'm glad I caved.<br />
<br />
The novel follows the adventures of Lyra, a semi-feral child living on the Oxford campus in some sort of alternate reality version of Earth where everything is distinctly recognizable but fundamentally different in every way. The Christian Church, for example exists, but there doesn't seem to have been a schism and they are infinitely powerful. Lyra, like every other human on the planet has a daemon that is psychologically attached to her being. The daemon exists in the form of a shape-shifting animal for children until it settles into a single animal form when a child reaches puberty. Lyra's father, Asriel, is some sort of strange cross between a scientist and wizard who works with (or against) the Church in trying to uncover the secret behind some sort of mystical matter that falls from the sky, known as Dust. It may or may not have something to do with the aurora borealis. Oh, and there are baddies trying to severe daemons from children (causing them to die) and armored polar bears and some really interesting global politics that involve Tartars, witches and a powerful kingdom on the island of Svalbard.<br />
<br />
OK, when I put it like that, it doesn't sound nearly as cool as it really is but if you haven't read the series you'll have to trust me that the above elements come together in a coherent and decidedly awesome way.<br />
<br />
What struck me was how dark <i>The Golden Compass</i> is. I'm guessing that it was intended for younger readers but the themes are so philosophically heavy. In setting up the novel, Pullman makes the Christian theology far more tangible. The daemon is a physical representation of the soul. Dust is some sort of physical representation of God or the holy spirit or something infinite. It seems to be the catalyst for the infinite multiverse that Pullman concocts (and here, <i>His Dark Materials</i> reminded me somewhat of Diane Wynne Jones's novel T<i>he Homeward Bounders</i>).<br />
<br />
Medieval theologians obsessed over whether a human soul had mass. Hundreds of experiments were carried out in dimly lit 12th century churches whereby theologians and physicians tried to measure the weight of a man immediately before and immediately after death to determine the differential, which would, logically, be the soul. They failed. Every time. Had they succeeded and proven that there was corporeal evidence for the existence of the soul (and therefore the existence of the Christian God), history would have taken a far different path, I'm sure. Pullman supposes that something to that effect indeed happened sometime in the past. By making the intangible elements of Christianity absolutely tangible, Pullman is free to express their absolute purpose and experiment with what it would mean to alter the fundamental laws of his version of the Christian Church. Is God a omnipotent and omnipresent entity that is full of love for His creation, or is He a manifestation of some non-sentient but all-pervasive matter? Such ideas give the novel a decidedly anti-Christian bias (which I will certainly discuss as I make my way through the series but not yet as I don't feel like I've got a handle on Pullman's ideas just yet) but the fantasy elements mask the full effect. All this brings me to the best part of this novel.<br />
<br />
Unlike so many young adult novels (and a good many adult novels) this book not only encourages a significant amount of critical thinking on the part of the reader, it practically necessitates it. While other fantasy novels that involve children as protagonists (and here I'm thinking specifically of Harry Potter, but most others apply) place them solidly within socially acceptable parameters i.e. they attend school, behave in a manner that is considered appropriate for their age and social status, Lyra is semi-feral, patchily educated (there is no mention of any sort of education system in Pullman's world) and unpredictable. The children in the series either run around in gangs and fight wars or else they have a job. In that sense The <i>Golden Compass</i> seems to break the mold in terms of how children are written into modern young adult fiction. Pullman does not coddle Lyra and doesn't ask the reader to feel any sympathy for her either. In fact, while Lyra and her daemon were indeed the central characters in the novel, I never found that I developed any significant feelings for or against them throughout. The story drove this novel rather than the characters, and that was fine. The story had the strength to endure the weak character study.<br />
<br />
Anyway, I'm going to save the meat and potatoes of these talking points for books two and three and get back to attending to my houseguest, wife and daughter. But before I wrap up this admittedly inchoate blog post I'd like to make a formal statement:<br />
<br />
I like fantasy.<br />
<br />
There. I admit it. Never again will you see me write about how much I hate the genre. I've read far too much good fantasy over the past three years to say that with a straight face any longer.Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07998996750944114185noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3749031091155130228.post-84117592470576068462013-08-01T08:07:00.001-07:002013-08-01T08:07:19.643-07:00Wolf Hall<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Wolf Hall</b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>By Hilary Mantel</b></div>
<br />
<i>(Note: Before reading, I want to be clear that this post has very little to do with Hilary Mantel's Booker Prize winning novel </i>Wolf Hall<i>. I know it's the title of the blog post, but I'm feeling tangential.)</i><br />
<br />
When I first started <i>Reading in Taiwan</i>, it was my mission statement that I would anything and everything that fell into my grubby, book-devouring little hands. The thought process was that I was living in a small town on a small, non-English speaking island with the bare minimum of English books at my disposal. It was a great social experiment and for a time it was pretty damned awesome. I read books I would have otherwise never have read. I read romance, fantasy and non-fiction novels about soccer players. I read<a href="http://taiwaneastcoaster.blogspot.tw/2011/01/book-one.html"> <i>I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell</i></a>. I was taking one for the proverbial team.<br />
<br />
But over the course of three years, things have changed in my neck of the woods. I am not as isolated from the literary world as I once was. A couple of years back my wife was thoughtful enough to buy me a Kindle which made acquiring new books a cinch. Furthermore, acquiring actual bound books made of paper has become a lot easier in Taiwan due to the Internet and 7-11 (God bless 7-11). Nevertheless, I remained resolute in my stubbornness to read anything that came my way and finish everything I started, regardless of how good or bad it was. I mean I read The Story of O when I really didn't have to. I wanted to keep the spirit of the blog intact despite the encroachment of modern technology and increased access to books.<br />
<br />
That is, until today.<br />
<br />
I was driving home tonight thinking about how I was 40% through Hilary Mantel's 2009 Booker Prize winning novel <i>Wolf Hall</i>. I set the same goal I had set for myself every day this past week: to finish at least 10% before going to sleep. I have accomplished that goal exactly zero times this past week and it suddenly occurred to me that I would not achieve it tonight either, nor tomorrow night nor any night after that. I was staring down another two weeks (minimum) of slogging through <i>Wolf Hall</i>. It felt like the literary equivalent of sitting in a dentist office waiting room waiting for a voluntary, and completely unnecessary, root canal. Why was I subjecting myself to such an avalanche of torture when there are perfectly corpulent books awaiting me on my shelf and Kindle? And considering I was trying to read <i>Wolf Hall</i> quickly just so I could start something new, well, that's a terrible reason to read.<br />
<br />
"But what about your mission statement?" I thought to myself.<br />
<br />
"A cute but antiquainted dogma," I rebutted. "One rooted in another time. Another place."<br />
<br />
"But what will people think when you say you couldn't finish <i>Wolf Hall</i>, a novel that was so celebrated? and why do I sound like Yoda?"<br />
<br />
"Care not what people think. Nothing to prove, you have."<br />
<br />
(Seriously, this is actually how I think).<br />
<br />
The truth is, I was never going to like <i>Wolf Hall</i>. And I should have known.<br />
<br />
Don't get me wrong, <i>Wolf Hall</i> is well written and painstakingly researched and probably deserves the Booker Prize for its meticulous (almost obssessive-compulsive) attention to detail alone. But <i>Wolf Hall</i> had three strikes against it right from the start and I should have seen the signs.<br />
<br />
First, <i>Wolf Hall</i> is about the English Royal Family in general and unless the novel was written by <a href="http://taiwaneastcoaster.blogspot.tw/2012/04/archers-tale.html">Bernard Cornwell</a> and is set on a blood-soaked 10th century battlefield in Essex, I'm not interested. As an unwilling citizen of the Commonwealth, I have a knee-jerk disinterest in the Royal Family. Just mention the names of Prince William and whatshername and my mind switches to auto-pilot whereby I continue looking at the speaker and nodding in a polite fashion but internally I have begun to ponder new and interesting ways in which to rip the speaker's tongue from his or her mouth.<br />
<br />
Second, <i>Wolf Hall</i> is about Tudor England in specific. As a history major, there are nations and time periods I like better than others and I am hard-pressed to think of a time and place that interests me less than Tudor-era England. (maybe modern day England, but I'll have to run some tests to see which sets off the boredom alarm first and that's a diagnostic I'm in no hurry to run). Give me the Mongol Hordes riding across the Asian steppe or the Early Christian Church fathers or Qing Dynasty China any day of the week. But try to get me excited about Henry disengaging from Rome due to his inability to conceive a son and you've got a recipe for a nap.<br />
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Third, the length of the novel was the nail in the coffin. I have a pretty high threshold for shit. I can usually roll my eyes through a bad book just to say I've suffered like Jesus on the cross or something at parties. My mother always called me a masochist, but even I have limits. It's one thing to press on through a 250 page novel you hate. It's quite another to press on through a 700 page novel of the same ilk. I'll force down a bad meal, but I won't eat the leftovers for a week. That's just dumb.<br />
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Of course, I want to be clear that I'm not calling <i>Wolf Hall</i> a bad book. It most certainly isn't. It's just not my thing. Not at all. Not even a little.<br />
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But all this got me to thinking about novels that I have left unfinished. Surprisingly, in a lifetime of voracious reading the novels I have quit are few and far between. I've read lots of books that seem to pop up on other people's Did Not Finish lists. I've read (and enjoyed) long books like <a href="http://taiwaneastcoaster.blogspot.tw/2012/10/infinite-jest.html">Infinite Jest</a>. I've read difficult books like<i> V.</i> by Thomas Pynchon (I didn't understand it, though) and I've read the entire Old Testament. I've also read my share of terrible novels (<a href="http://taiwaneastcoaster.blogspot.tw/2011/05/book-twenty-eight.html">Cathy Lamb</a> comes to mind) But when it came to finding books I never actually finished, I could actually only think of six (though I'm sure there are more):<br />
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1. <i>Lord of the Rings</i> by J.R.R. Tolkien: Of all the books I have ever hated, I hate this one the most. I hated it from the beginning. I hated the language. I hated the fact that each character took three pages to ask for a cup of tea and I hated Tom Bombadil (seriously... WTF?). I think I dropped this book somewhere around page 400 and have vowed never, ever to pick it up again.<br />
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2. <i>The Brothers Karamazov</i> by Fyodor Dostoyevsky: At the age of 16 I had this notion that I was going to become a man of letters or some such nonsense. I determined to read all the great works of literature and I was going to start with The Brothers Karamazov. Great start. I got about 60 pages in, realized I didn't understand a single thing that was going on and I went back to reading Michael Creighton novels. I've been meaning to pick this one up in recent years, but there is always something more interesting on my shelf. I think my 16-year old self has 37-year old me spooked.<br />
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3. <i>One Hundred Years of Solitude</i> by Gabriel Garcia Marquez: I love Marquez and I've read several of his other novels, but this one eluded me. Perhaps it had something to do with every character having the SAME GODDAMNED NAME!<br />
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4. <i>Wuthering Heights</i> by Charlotte Bronte: I recall literally throwing this novel out my bedroom window with only 40 pages to read. I recall hating it with every fiber of my being but for the life of me, I cannot recall why. As I said before, I'm a masochist, but not so much of one that would willingly revisit this novel to find out why I hated it.<br />
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5. <i>The Black Arrow</i> by Robert Louis Stevenson: Because it's plain terrible.<br />
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6. <i>Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance</i> by Robert M. Pirsig: I honestly believe that everyone who loves this novel didn't actually read it. It's worse than The Black Arrow.<br />
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I can now add <i>Wolf Hall</i> to this esteemed list of personal literary failures.Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07998996750944114185noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3749031091155130228.post-68188075032550114502013-07-18T09:37:00.001-07:002013-07-18T09:38:54.653-07:00Seven Years in Tibet<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>Seven Years in Tibet</b></div>
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<b>By Heinrich Harrer</b></div>
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While reading <i>Seven Years in Tibet</i>, Heinrich Harrer's sublime work of travel literature, I was struck by a disturbing question. Has the epitaph for travel literature already been written?<br />
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For centuries, armchair travelers have marveled at the tales of adventurers who have traveled to distant lands. From the works of Marco Polo and Ibn al-Battuta to the invaluable works of Charles Darwin to the amazing stories of Thor Hyerdahl, travel writers have taken readers to places they could only imagine, told stories of exotic people and extraordinary cultures.<br />
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But with the relatively recent advent of cheap flights, social media, the Internet and, most devastatingly, globalization, is the era of travel... real exploratory travel... finished? Well, until the advent of interplanetary travel, I think it just might be.<br />
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Let introduce the book and then let me explain.<br />
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In <i>Seven Years in Tibet</i>, Heinrich Harrer takes us inside one of the most insular cultures ever to exist on this planet. Not only was the Tibet that Harrer visited suspicious of outsiders, it had the luxury of being nestled on the other side of the almost impassable Himalayan mountain chain. When Harrer entered the country in the middle of the Second World War as an escaped POW he became one of only a handful of Europeans who had ever gained access to Tibet. Over his seven years in the country (just in case the title wasn't clear on that) he would meet less than a dozen other Europeans (conversely, I met over a dozen western expats on my first night in taiwan in 2002). There is literally no place on earth left that hasn't felt the impact of Western culture (aka globalization). In that sense, Harrer was given the rare opportunity to see one of the last nations on the planet completely untouched by the Western world prior to the Great Flattening.<br />
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The book itself is divided into four parts. The first part deals mainly with Harrer's time in a prison camp in India. As a German on British soil during the early days of World War II he was taken into custody. But he planned and executed his escape and crossed the border into Tibet with the intent of reaching the Japanese lines. The second part of the novel recounts the two years he spent trying to get a foothold in the notoriously insular nation. This part was most interesting to me because it was, by far the most harrowing portion of the book and recounted incidents that could only occur in the duty nowheres of Asia. The third part consists of his first years in Lhasa and the final part is essentially an early biography of the thirteenth Dalai Lama, their friendship and his ultimate flight from Tibet when the Chinese invaded in 1951.<br />
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This is travel writing in its purest form. Harrer has no Western crutch, no expat community that has paved the way for his arrival and provided for a nice cushy landing. This is the story of a man who made his way in a nation where he may have been the first of his kind (i.e. German) to ever live in Lhasa. Harrer saw a Tibet that few travelers had seen before and none will ever see again. He saw the pure, unadulterated culture prior to the onslaught of the Chinese invasion and the inevitable incursion of the modern world. And since 99% of the religious buildings in Tibet have been destroyed since the invasion and over 70% of the current population of Lhasa is non-Tibetan, Harrer's work is essentially a eulogy for an entire culture.<br />
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Now, I haven't been to Lhasa but I have done my fair bit of travel and, while I still love to do it, I have no misgivings about it. I'm never going to have a unique experience in any of the exotic locales I choose to visit (unless, of course i choose to visit a war zone, which of course I won't). No matter where I go, no matter how far off the beaten path I venture, I am treading on roads well worn by millions of people who have come before me. Every medium sized town in Vietnam and Sri Lanka has a Starbucks. There are fast food outlets in Rangoon and Nairobi. You can buy Bulgari watches at the airport in Ankara and Calcutta and I'm sure if you can't buy a McDonalds Happy Meal in the shadow of the Potala Palace, it's not long in coming.<br />
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This incursion has made the notion of travel problematic. If you can experience gourmet Indian cuisine in the comfort of your own home, view the cultural splendors of India from on the television and purchase authentic Indian handicrafts via the Internet why, exactly, would you pay vast quantities of money to fly half way around the globe only to find that Mumbai is a morass of the same 18 fast food chains, coffee shops and clothing outlets you just left? And unless you traveled for a very specific reason (i.e. mountain climbing, surfing, archaeological dig) there is never really much difference between Paris, Pretoria and Phnom Penh. Did you travel for the smell? Because that might be the only thing you couldn't have gotten back home.<br />
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With all due respect to Michael Palin, Bill Bryson and Neil Peart, who have written some fabulous travel literature in the past 20 years (focusing on travel with very distinct purposes, I might add), we will never again have a book that represents an introduction to a major nation, city or culture that <i>The Travels of Marco Polo</i> or <i>Seven Years in Tibet</i> was. At the time of publication, Tibet was perhaps the last great unexplored culture on the planet. It's a shame that Harrer's work coincided with its demise (and make no mistake, no amount of Beastie Boys concerts will ever resurrect the Tibetan Nation). The Epilogue to the edition I wrote is a thousand times more heart breaking than the book since Harrer' has had a half century to reflect on the events of his book and see it for what we all know it is, an epitaph.<br />
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In that respect, this book is also a cautionary tale for Taiwan, the country I live in (Ten Years in Taiwan?). Taiwan has been the focus of a relentless propaganda campaign since 1949 and while the situation with Tibet doesn't provide exact parallels, there are lessons to be taken for any Taiwanese who cares to listen. The recent self-immolations that have plagued the Tibetan capital represent a desperate endgame that has no happy ending. Is this Taiwan's future should China get the opportunity to act? Let's how for Taiwan (and my) sake we never find out.<br />
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Anyway, long story short, <i>Seven Years in Tibet</i> is deserving of the moniker classic travel literature and should be placed on the bookshelf with the other heavyweights in the genre. Perhaps (and lamentably so) at the far right.<br />
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<i>(Note: I never saw the Brad Pitt movie)</i><br />
<br />Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07998996750944114185noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3749031091155130228.post-35515837390558357252013-07-07T08:33:00.000-07:002013-07-08T07:21:15.928-07:00Where'd You Go, Bernadette?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>Where'd You Go, Bernadette?</b></div>
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<b>By Maria Semple</b></div>
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<i>Note: Please read this blog entry in Ron Howard's voice. Thanks.</i><br />
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<i>Where'd You Go, Bernadette? </i>opens with a report card. But it's not just any report card. It's Balakrishna (Bee) Elgin's report card from The Galer Street School, a snobby private school where the parents pick their children up in Subaru's (but not, lamentably for the administrators of the school, in Mercedes). Bee is a special student who has achieved straight Ss throughout her academic career. Galer School is one of those educational institutions that does't like the stigma of traditional "grades" and thereby gives their students Ss (Surpasses Exellence), As (Achieves Excellence) and Ws (Working toward Excellence), presumably to assure parents that their precious little snowflakes are all some incarnation of excellent.<br />
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Bee, however is not your typical special little snowflake. She is the daughter of Elgin Branch, workaholic Microsoft employee with a rabid geek cult-following ever since a now legendary TED Talk (fourth most watched TED Talk, ever!) about a technology that allows people to control a robot simply by thinking about it. Elgin enjoys reticulated bicycles and irrigating his sinuses among other pastimes. Bee's mother is Bernadette Fox, a legend in architecture the way Harper Lee and J.D. Salinger are legends in literature. Within the world of architecture, Fox is both a genius and a ghost. A former recipient of a McArthur Grant and the designer of the now mythologized Twenty-Mile House (mythologized because it was torn down immediately after it was completed). Fox has not designed a house in two decades and has become an angry, agoraphobic recluse to the point that she has outsourced her life to a personal assistant in India for seventy-five cents an hour.<br />
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Together, the Branch family live in the ruins Straight House, a former Catholic school for wayward girls which has now been overrun with blackberry bushes and rot. Despite being an architectural and design genius, Bernadette has not so much as lifted a drafting pencil since moving in and renovations have yet to commence. Much like The Branch family's collective sanity, the house is literally crumbling in on top of them. So, the house is, quite obviously, a metaphor about unrequited homosexual desire and to sum up, Bee is pedigree of genius. And with genius comes madness. Beautiful, anti-social madness.<br />
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In an attempt to stave off a pony, Bee's parent's had promised to get her anything she ways upon graduation from Galer School (on the condition she achieve straight Ss, of course). Bee calls them on their promise and demands a trip to Antarctica (it is here that I should note that upon my graduation from middle school I was given a pat on the back and told to keep out of trouble in high school). From that point on, the novel shifts into overdrive and truly awful but seriously hilarious things start happening in rapid-fire succession. There's a landslide, an intervention gone horribly wrong, physical altercations, an arrest, someone scratches their eyeball and, of course, all sorts of <i>Three's Company/Frasier</i> style misunderstandings. The situation is so grave that it requires a trip to the ends of the Earth to rectify the situation (the aforementioned trip to Antarctica, of course). Naturally, Antarctica is a metaphor for cultural erosion.<br />
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If the <i>Where'd You Go, Bernadette?</i> sounds like good television, it's no wonder. Maria Semple is a former television writer who worked on (among other things) <i>Arrested Development</i>, which is why I: a) hated every single character and b) loved every single character because I hated them so much (this is exactly why I think <i>Arrested Development</i> is the best television comedy of its generation (sorry <i>30 Rock</i>). How can you not hate and love to hate Lucille Bluth?). <i>Where'd You Go, Bernadette?</i> is a tightly-constructed narrative populated by delusional Tiger Moms, snobby private school parents, neurotic tech geeks, scatterbrained artists and the now ubiquitous overly-ambitious Asian woman who will do anything to succeed. The characters you are meant to hate are atrocious human beings (that you will recognize from your own life) who get their comeuppance in stunning fashion. But the protagonists are no better. Semple has not written then in such a way that a reader will immediately empathize with them. Nope. Not in the least.. The Branches (Branch's?) themselves are the worst sort of Bobos, a term coined by David Brooks in his book <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobos_in_Paradise">Bobos in Paradise</a>. </i>But who's thinking about sociology while personal assistants based in India are procuring anti-psychotics for you and research scientists are ordering pink penguins at the bar.<br />
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As in any good ensemble comedy (whether it is <i>Arrested Development</i>, <i>The Simpsons</i> or <i>Where'd You Go, Bernadette?</i>), the absurdity only works when there is a straight man to counterbalance the insanity. <i>Arrested Development</i> has Michael Bluth, <i>The Simpsons</i> has Lisa and <i>Where's You Go, Bernadette?</i> has Bee. These characters, while often seen as bland, are the lynch pins to the comedic payoff. They are the link between the off-kilter characters and the readers/viewers. In this particular instance, Bee is both the most and least interesting character in the novel, depending on how you read it. It's not terribly difficult to lose sight of her what with all the drug abuse, Russian mafia and dental appointments but make no mistake, this novel is essentially about Bee, not Bernadette.<br />
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Written in several formats including e-mail correspondence, psychiatric evaluations, FBI documents, report cards and even a receipt or two, the entire novel comes across as a case file that is weaved intricately and imaginatively without repeating information (a common occurrence in multiple format style novels (see: <i>Dracula</i>)). Semple is one hell of a good comedic writer and now that I know she worked on my favorite television show, I'm sorry that she didn't write more of the novel in dialogue form (there is a transcript of the intervention but it's a tantalizing snippet of what Semple might be capable of doing. I cannot wait to get my hands on more of her work.<br />
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<i>Where'd You Go, Bernadette?</i> is the very definition of a summer read but with the added bonus of having literary cred. It's a wild ride and absolutely impossible to put down. I picked it up with more than a little trepidation that it was going to be one of those definitive women's novels (no offense intended, I'm using this term for lack of a better. But there are so very many novels written and marketed to women specifically and I try to steer clear). If you are looking for something light to read on the beach this summer or if you are looking for something a little more literary than the usual check-out fare or if you are simply looking for a book that mentions Antarctica because it's too damned hot and you want to forget about it, you will find something to take away from <i>Where'd You Go, Bernadette</i>. It's impossible to put down.<br />
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Kenny Bania inadvertently summed up <i>Where'd You Go, Bernadette?</i> years ago when he succinctly noted: "That's comedy GOLD, Jerry!"<br />
<br />Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07998996750944114185noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3749031091155130228.post-12643521461835191372013-07-01T09:53:00.001-07:002013-07-01T09:53:48.955-07:00The White Tiger<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>The White Tiger</b></div>
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<b>By Aravind Adiga</b></div>
<br />
Happy Canada Day!<br />
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And like any red-blooded Canadian citizen, I like to enjoy our nation's birthday by sitting down and writing a blog post about modern Indian literature. This year I have the pleasure of cracking a Moosehead, turning up Blue Rodeo on the stereo and getting down to business with Aravind Adiga's "blazingly savage" debut (and short-listed for the Man Booker Prize) novel <i>The White Tiger</i>. I put those words, "blazingly savage," in quotations because they are not my words but rather those of Neel Mukherjee, reviewer for the <i>Sunday Telegraph</i>. I'm not familiar with Mr. (Mrs.?) Mukherjee's work for the Telegraph but a simple racial profile (i.e. reading his (her?) name off the byline) indicates that he (she?) probably knows significant amount more than me about India, Indian culture and Indian literature.<br />
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That's not to say that I'm writing about this novel in a vacuum. Long-term readers of this blog know that I am an avid fan of Indian literature and read as much of it as I can get my hands on. And I don't know it you have noticed or not but I have been reading quite a few recent Man Booker Prize winners and nominees, recently. It hasn't been a conscious thing, but I have been made aware of my recent trend and it's true (I picked up a recent nominee this morning, so expect more in the near future). So, I'm not entirely devoid of opinion on this novel and I'd like to think that my opinion has some weight on this stiflingly hot Canada Day in Asia.<br />
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I bring up Mukherjee's words because I cannot think of a more succinct way in which to express my feelings toward this novel. Set in modern day India, Adiga's novel is told from the perspective of Balram who is introduced as an entrepreneur at the onset of the novel. Narrator via a series of letters from Balram to the premier of China, it is revealed that Balram a small-town indian who has work his way out of The Darkness as a driver for Ashok, a local landowner based in Delhi. As driver, Balram is singly endeared, repressed, ignored and abused by his employer, resulting in a complex relationship that culminates in Balram murdering his boss (note: this is not a spoiler as it is mentioned in the first 20 pages of the book). The result is a "blazingly savage" (see I can't help myself) treatise on the injustice of India's caste, the human quest for freedom and the nature of individualism in a collective culture.<br />
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On the surface, <i>The White Tiger</i> is a simple (yet effective) examination of the stifling caste system in India and the way in which it maintains and perpetuates itself. Through Balram we are introduced to the knee-jerk servitude of the lower castes and the way in which lower castes are disregarded entirely. In all the novels I have read about India I have never encountered such a naked appraisal of the injustice of the caste system than in <i>The White Tiger</i>. But nowhere in this novel is the injustice more manifest than Adiga's blistering rant on the nature of Indian democracy and the manner in which the ruling castes manipulate elections to their advantage. Scathing stuff.<br />
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But for all the ways in which the caste system hinders social mobility in India, there resides within each individual a burning desire for freedom in some form. In this case, it is Balram's desire for freedom from his master's inconsistent and increasingly erratic relationship. Throughout the novel, despite Balram's questionable behavior, the reader finds it difficult to fault Balram in his often wayward quest to find his way out of the intricate web of relationships and obligations that was woven for him since birth.<br />
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Which brings us to the theme of individualism. At a young age, Balram is given the moniker of "The White Tiger" by a local luminary touring the schools in the area. In Indian lore, a white tiger is someone who comes around only once in a generation and is different from everyone around them. Despite the fact that his life trajectory seems to follow the median for his particular caste, Balram maintains the notion that he is somehow different from everyone in his village. Is this a partial motive for his later crime? Perhaps, but more telling of his idea that he is different from everyone around him is that the entire novel is a series of letters from Balram to Wen Jiaobao, Premier of China and the leader of the world's most collective culture. What significance is there in Balram, the stalwart white tiger of individualism, in writing to the very antithesis of individualism? Vanity, perhaps. The same confession written to the office of the President of the United States of America would be received with an anticlimactic shrug. Perhaps Balram has an inherent sense of irony.<br />
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It should also be noted that aside from these fun themes, there is an underlying current of globalization gone horribly wrong. In a recent blog post I noted that naive protagonists are often better than those in the know simply because it is more entertaining from a reader's perspective to read a story told from the perspective of someone who knows precious little about the world around them. Despite his recent success, Balram is the poster child for the half-educated child of globalization. In a sense, technology has permeated our culture (and one would presume Indian culture as well) enough to misinform a significant portion of the population about everything from poetry to physics. We see it in America among the adherents of intelligent design and we see it throughout <i>The White Tiger</i>.<br />
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This is the novel that <i>Slumdog Millionaire</i> desperately tried to be and failed. That's not a knock on <i>Slumdog Millionaire</i> so much as it's a heap of respect for Adiga's ability to actualize modern India in a way that is both endearing and horrifying at the same time. This novel is unrelentingly ferocious in its depiction of India and its caste system. <i>The White Tiger</i> deserves all of its accolades. If I had somehow read this novel a few Canada Days ago, before Neel Mukherjee, I would have said that <i>The White Tiger</i> is "blazingly savage."<br />
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Read it.<br />
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<br />Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07998996750944114185noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3749031091155130228.post-77895570142426173802013-06-22T09:52:00.001-07:002013-06-22T10:31:56.277-07:00Life & Times of Michael K<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>Life & Times of Michael K</b></div>
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<b>By J.M. Coetzee</b></div>
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<i>This is me talking out of my ass...</i><br />
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Often the most powerful, most blisteringly conscious novels are written from the perspective of the naive. Whether it is the innocent naivety of Scout in <i>To Kill a Mockingbird</i> or the simplistic worldview of Ignatius J. Reilly in a <i>Confederacy of Dunces</i>, or the practical clarity of Yossarian in <i>Catch-22</i>, naivety illuminates the world in a way that erudite characters often cannot achieve. Characters of limited intellectual capacity have a way (albeit filtered through the erudite minds of great writers) of boiling life's complexities down to simple concepts and reflecting them back on the reader as absurdities or truisms or whatever the writer wishes to convey. It is often only through the window of simplicity that we can she the world for what it really is and this particular literary convention is one of the great gifts that novels give humanity.<br />
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Conversely, J.M. Coetzee has made a career of reflecting on larger social issues, chewing the fat under the guise of simple characters on flat, 2-dimentional settings. In <i>Waiting for the Barbarians</i>, Coetzee paints a bleak, featureless, Cormac McCarthy-esque landscape in which to wax intellectual on the subject of imperialism. Coetzee thrives in stripped down settings and simple characters. It's no wonder that he is the first person to win the Man Booker Prize twice. Literary critics seems to love simple narratives that involve simple characters. I'm not here to argue with the critics. It's a solid literary device. See Dent, Arthur.<br />
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In J.M. Coetzee's Nobel Prize (and Booker Prize) winning novel <i>Life & Times of Michael K,</i> the reader is presented with just such a character. In Michael K, Coetzee has created a character designed exclusively to suffer for the greater good of his reader. Set in apartheid era South Africa, Michael K is a simple man born with a cleft lip who simply wants to help his mother return to her childhood home in Prince Albert in the country before she dies. Unfortunately he attempts this journey in the midst of a war and the trip is rife with dangers. When his mother dies mid-voyage, Michael oscillates between living a life of absolute freedom on the veldt and confined to labor camps as well as living in a state that can neither be called living nor dead. In both circumstances Michael suffers immensely, but only in absolute freedom is truly happy and bears his suffering willingly.<br />
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By stripped clear so much of the clutter that the average person's life collects, Coetzee is free to examine man at it's very foundation. Gone are the articles of civilization and the social mores that bind us and dictate kurt behavior. In Michael K, Coetzee has created a character devoid of family and social pressure and completely without material wants and needs. From here, Coetzee is free to use Michael as a vehicle in which to explore the essence of human nature, specifically the notion of freedom.<br />
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Freedom is the central theme of <i>Life & Times of Michael K</i>. It is through the clear lens of Michael, a sexless, apolitical entity that we are able to examine the nuances of freedom vs. confinement. In this respect, Coetzee answers the question: is it better to live an indentured life of plenty or a meager life completely unfettered by the demands of society. In true Coetzee fashion, he avoids the temptation to guide the reader's opinion, leaving the narrative open-ended and entirely open for discussion.<br />
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There has been much discussion about Michael K's last name and whether or not it is indeed Kafka. Certainly the parallels are there. In fact, the novel bears striking resemblances to <i>The Trial</i> and the themes and tone of the novel seems almost lifted verbatim from its pages. This could have been a travesty, but assuming that Coetzee generated parallels between <i>Life & Times of Michael K</i> and <i>The Trial</i> on purpose, one can rest assured that Kafka's essence is in capable hands.<br />
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Bear in mind, if you are looking for a light summer read, steer clear. <i>Life & Times of Michael K</i> is a heavy, thought provoking novel rife with symbolism and heavy with metaphor. I read it as an allegory on the nature of freedom vs. incarceration but I imagine it could be read in a number of different ways (as a parable on race relations, for example). The narrative itself is slow and plodding and doesn't really move much at all, but if it is simply plot that you desire, then you've come to the wrong place if you've come banging on J.M. Coetzee's door. To be sure, this is without a doubt a work of literary genius and deserves to be savored like a fine wine rather than devoured like a Big Mac after a 12 hour shift in the mines.<br />
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There is a profound wisdom to be found within Coetzee's work and a good portion of that manifests itself within this novel. The novel is deserving of all the accolades it has been afforded.<br />
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<br />Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07998996750944114185noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3749031091155130228.post-28508421995854270762013-06-17T08:55:00.000-07:002013-06-17T08:55:17.354-07:00Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk</b></div>
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<b>By Ben Fountain</b></div>
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Whether intentional or not, when Francis Ford Coppola debuted <i>Apocalypse Now</i> in 1979 he was thrusting The Vietnam War back into the American limelight, holding it up to America's face for all to consider. While the film would eventually garner the success it so richly deserves, it was a long time in coming. In 1979, America was only four years removed from the images of the last helicopter rising from the roof of the presidential palace in Saigon... the image that signified the ambiguous end to America's most ambiguous war. In many ways, America was not yet ready to deal with the Vietnam War. In many ways, Coppola forced the issue and demanded America step up and face Colonel Kurtz, a metaphor for America's wayward foreign policy in the post-war years.<br />
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Fast forward a couple of decades and a couple of even more morally ambiguous wars and you come to Ben Fountain's debut novel <i>Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk</i>. In much the same way as <i>Apocalypse Now</i>, this novel is a stark and ofttimes blistering story that may well do with the Iraq War what Coppola's film did for Vietnam.<br />
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<i>Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk</i> is mainly set over a single Thanksgiving weekend in Dallas. Bravo Company is winding up a tour of the home front after having achieved a level of heroic stardom because one of their recent battles with the insurgency was caught on camera by an embedded Fox News correspondent. The footage The company has been wined and dined by the country's elite including a stop at the White House. Their final stop is a Dallas Cowboys game where they are to be paraded as heroes in front of an American television audience during a halftime show featuring Destiny's Child. Over the course of the day, the Bravos meet the tight-fisted, conservative owner of the Cowboys, Billy falls in love with one of the cheerleaders and virtually everything they know and understand will be called into question by a world they no longer understand. To the home front, the war is simply a primetime spectacle rather than the real life tragedy it actually is. At it's essence, <i>Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk</i> is, at its core, heart-breaking.<br />
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Told from the perspective of Billy Lynn, a surprisingly astute nineteen-year old soldier with a ferocious game-day hangover, <i>Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk</i> instead parades the reader through a particular view of America circa 2004. It has been lauded as the <i>Catch-22</i> of the Iraq War and with good reason. Fountain delivers a panoply of ironies and absurdities about American culture and society ranging from the tyranny of organized sports to the fallacies inherent in the notion of trickle-down economics. All observed with the full capacity wisdom that a nineteen-year old soldier from small-town Texas can muster. The fact that it is set during the ostentatious, over-the-top consumerism-fueled pomp of an NFL football game (A Dallas Cowboys game, even) provides high definition contrast necessary to see the ironies and absurdities in all their particular glory.<br />
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In one especially poignant scene the owner of the Cowboys is addressing a press conference called in order to introduce the Bravos to the Dallas media. He takes the opportunity to provide his own personal justification for the war in Iraq, rattling off a laundry list of reasons pertaining to the economic plight of the Iraqi citizens and the corruption of the Saddam Hussein government. What he and all the people at the press conference fail to realize is that he says nothing whatsoever that differs from the problems faced by most Americans.<br />
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And this is the real success of this novel. Fountain delivers his story in such a straight forward, un-ironic tone that the irony of the words are almost (but not quite) lost in their simplicity. I say not quite because Fountain's complete and total lack of subtlety allows the ironies and absurdities to be both peripheral and front-and-center at the same time. All without compromising the actual story arc. Make no mistake, the Bravos are heroes. That is the one constant in the entire narrative. The rest is so decidedly ambiguous it is difficult to maintain a moral compass setting.<br />
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With so many themes running side by side throughout the novel it is a little difficult to pin down what, exactly, it is about this novel that sets it apart from virtually everything else written on the subject of the Iraq War. Perhaps, unlike so many other war novels, the actual soldiers are incidental to the story. It is the American public with its obsession with celebrity and shopping and instant replay and meaningless buzz words like nina leven and currj and terrR that plays the central role in <i>Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk</i>. Everybody supports the war and honors the heroes in theory. Everyone can spout off the necessary platitudes about sacrifice with expert media savvy. But do they mean it? America is still a land of haves and have-nots and there are systems in place to ensure that it stays that way... or so it seems to Billy. The culmination of the novel is such a succinct metaphor for the state of America today that I'm surprised it's not cliched (Maybe it is and I'm simply blind).<br />
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About halfway through this <i>Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk</i> it occurred to me that I was probably reading what would be regarded as a classic novel in the years to come. It has the style and grace and poignancy in writing to last generations and yet it is so deeply rooted in our own time that it would be a stellar illustration of our world circa 2004. I have no way of knowing whether what I predict will come true, but in my own mind, this is precisely the novel we should be reading ten, fifteen or fifty years from now when we attempt to understand the social, political and cultural motivations America had during it's most ambiguous war. But more importantly it is a novel in the here and now and perhaps Fountain can force the issue as it pertains to the Iraq War. Perhaps this novel will force America to examine its motivations and try to understand the war's legacy<br />
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In that respect, <i>Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk</i> is not only this generation's <i>Catch-22</i>, it may also be this generation's <i>Apocalypse Now</i>. Absolutely crucial reading.<br />
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<br />Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07998996750944114185noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3749031091155130228.post-27902343085988025482013-06-14T16:09:00.000-07:002013-06-14T16:09:55.418-07:00Flight Behavior<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>Flight Behavior</b></div>
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<b>By Barbara Kingsolver</b></div>
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I love the opportunities that writing a blog gives me as a reader. I didn't get into it for the free books and I most certainly do not take the few books I get for granted, but it's always nice for me, living overseas, to get an opportunity to read a hardcopy (as opposed to a Kindle version) of a book that I would otherwise have to wait years to get here in Taiwan. Case in point: <i>Flight Behavior</i>. Since reading <a href="http://taiwaneastcoaster.blogspot.tw/2012/02/poisonwood-bible.html"><i>The Poisonwood Bible</i></a> a couple of years ago, I have been extremely keen to delve into Barbara Kingsolver's catalog. Alas, the gods of access have conspired against me until recently when I got the opportunity to participate in the blog tour for Kingsolver's most recent recent novel. As an avid reader and a fan of Barbara Kingsolver, I couldn't be more appreciative to the good people at TLC Book Tours.<br />
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So, anyway...<br />
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<i>Flight Behavior </i>answers the proverbial question: If a butterfly flaps its wings in rural Tennessee do unhappy housewives fly the coop? Dellarobia Turnbow is the aforementioned unhappy housewife on the cusp of throwing it all away. Married early and suffering from a severe case of seven-year itch, she accidentally stumbles upon the new and alarmingly inappropriate winter roost of the bulk of North America's monarch butterflies on a stretch of undeveloped land behind her home. To make matters worse. the land, which is owned by her overbearing father-in-law, is set to be sold to an irresponsible logging company (in literature, is there any other kind?) in order to save the family farm. But the arrival of a scientific research team determined to study the butterflies causes a deep divide not only among the citizens of Feathertown but also within the Turnbow family itself.<br />
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What ensues is a litany of local conflicts that act as a microcosm for the growing divide within American society. Democrat vs. Republican. Science vs. religion. Rural vs. urban. Rich vs. poor. It's a veritable cornucopia of Man vs. Man conflicts and that is even before we get into all the man vs. nature and man vs. himself subtexts. In true Kingsolver fashion (or at least from the perspective of someone who has read <i>The Poisonwood Bible</i>) these divides are examined with a maturity and clarity that is rare among contemporary writers. Rather than simply taking a specific side and hammering her own opinion home, Kingsolver relishes in the role of devil's advocate and gives a fair shake to every side of the coin (well, except the media. Kingsolver saves all a special vehemence just for them). The end result is a rational, open dialog between sides that are not used to rational, open dialogs.<br />
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In true Richard Russo style, Kingsolver seems to thrive in telling stories that occur in small, tightly-knit communities. In<i> The Poisonwood Bible</i>, the Price family are living in a small village in the middle of the Congo, far removed from the workings of the modern world. In <i>Flight Behavior </i>she maintains the same sort of isolation by setting the narrative in a small, deeply religious Tennessee town that sees the bare minimum of outsiders. It would seem that Kingsolver enjoys crafting narratives with closed systems.<br />
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But one must examine her motivations for maintaining such pristine character cultures. In using small, closed communities, Kingsolver is able to limit the input/output of her characters and introduce specific environmental stresses to her story in an attempt to forecast specific reactions among her carefully constructed characters. Like the lepidopterists that inhabit the laboratories of <i>Flight Behavior</i>, Kingsolver approaches her narratives with the mindful deliberation of a scientist, ensuring that no outside contaminants will sully her instruments prior to the data read out.<br />
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And this is the reason for Kingsolver's success. In approaching a narrative in much the same way in which a scientist might approach a problem, Kingsolver is able to do away with outside contaminants and get to the root of an issue. I have heard more than a few people complain to me about the way in which Kingsolver crafts her characters. They are often one-dimensional personalities. That many of her characters can be reduced to single issues (he is a climate change denier) or single character traits (she is an uneducated racist). That may be true, but in Kingsolver's world (as opposed to the previously mentioned Richard Russo), stereotypes are a Kingsolver-esque narrative necessity in that they highlight the very real divides that plague our own communities. But Kingsolver fleshes out the stereotypes and makes it difficult to take specific sides along the way.<br />
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But let's not let all this analysis get in the way of a good story. For anyone expecting a repeat of <i>The Poisonwood Bible</i>, you will be sorely disappointed. In that respect,<i> Flight Behavior</i> is decidedly mediocre fare from one of America's great contemporary writers. But still, Barbara Kingsolver's mediocre is most writer's genius, so not to worry. As in real life, there is an ambiguity in everything that occurs in this narrative. Despite the absolutes in which the characters speak, events happen and the characters are forced to compromise their expectations and morals. And just like real life, nobody gets exactly what they want. Make no mistake, <i>Flight Behavior</i> is not a quick moving narrative. Rather, it simmers like a rump roast in a hot country kitchen. And considering the immediacy of many of its environmental themes, <i>Flight Behavior</i> behaves itself by not moving any faster than it should. No more than one would expect if it were propelled entirely on the strength of a butterfly's wings.Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07998996750944114185noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3749031091155130228.post-2365497277733026832013-05-29T09:03:00.004-07:002013-05-29T09:03:53.739-07:00Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage</b></div>
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<b>By Alfred Lansing</b></div>
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If there is a sub-genre of literature that I enjoy almost as much as zombie literature it's anything that has to do with polar exploration. And while I do enjoy a good novel on the subject (i.e. <i>The Terror</i> by Dan Simmons), absolutely nothing compares to the real life dramas that unfolded on the ice at either end of our planet at the tail end of the great age of exploration. I have devoured more than my fair share of non-fiction books on the subjects of Franklin, Scott and Admunsen. Pages filled with endless winters, frostbite and blubber. Stories that burble with the constant threat of hunger, exposure and death. Each of ten rife with tragedy, perseverance and thankless heroism. And for what? Usually nothing more than the whim of an adventurer and the glory of the day. Like the French, Spanish and British captains of the early days of North American exploration, there are so many characters in the great age of polar exploration. The recklessness of Greeley, they mystery of Franklin, the steely determination of Admunsen, the tragedy of Scott and the absolute true grit of Ernest Shackleton, the man whose expedition spent two years on the Antarctic ice and lived to tell the tale.<br />
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For those who are unfamiliar with Ernest Shackleton, he was a British explorer whose 1915 expedition is famous for its almost interminable time floating on Antarctic pack ice. Shackleton and his team had set out to become the first to cross the Antarctic continent on foot but they never even made landfall as their ship, the <i>Endurance</i>, become frozen fast into the thick pack ice that forms on the Weddell Sea. Over the course of the winter they spent on the ice, the pressure eventually crushed and sank the ship, leaving the entire expedition exposed on the ice and drifting with the pack.<br />
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Through the gutsy leadership of Shackleton and the diligent measurements made by Frank Worsley, the captain of the <i>Endurance</i>, the entire expedition and crew of the ship were able to survive the ice and a harrowing sea journey to the nearby Elephant Island (off the end of the Palmer Peninsula). From their Shackleton and Worsley outfitted one of their three small skiffs, the <i>James Caird</i>, for an even more harrowing journey from Elephant Island to South Georgia Island, across the Drake Passage, a body of water known as the most dangerous on the planet.<br />
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In these latitudes, as nowhere else on Earth, the sea girdles the globe, uninterrupted by any mass of land. Here, since the beginning of time, the winds have mercilessly driven the seas clockwise around the Earth to return again to their birthplace where they reinforce themselves or one another.</blockquote>
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And what is quite possibly the most remarkable thing about the Shackleton expedition is not the year they spent on the ice or their miraculous dash across the Drake Passage or even their impromptu crossing of South Georgia Island in order to reach the whaling station on Stromness Bay (a feat that was not repeated until 1954) but rather the fact that not a single member of the expedition lost their life. Of all the hands that left London in 1914, every one of them returned. Very few successful expeditions to the polar regions returned without casualties. It is a testament to the leadership of Ernest Shackleton that in the face of disaster, he was able to maintain order and persevere.<br />
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And it is Shackleton's leadership that is the focal point of Alfred Lansing's classic account of this remarkable expedition, <i>Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage</i>. Taken from the astonishing amount of primary source materials available to Lansing (i.e. the personal diaries of virtually all the men on the expedition) and given the exceptional quality of these sources, Lansing paints a picture of a dichotomous leader. Shackleton seems reckless to the point of disinterested in the planning stages of the expedition, making personnel choices based on anemic interviews and hunches. However, whatever selection process he used, it seemed to work because once on the ice, Shackleton's ability to lead in the face of extreme adversity was beyond reproach.<br />
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While the reader may disagree about Shackleton's motives and his heedless preparations for the voyage, it is difficult to question his ability as a leader in peril. From the outset, Shackleton had an almost innate ability to get the most from the men around him and the correct measure of tact to maintain order and cohesiveness even as the expedition was facing mortal peril. With very few exceptions, the entire team was able to maintain cordial relations throughout the almost two year ordeal without resorting to violence or mutiny. While a degree of credit should go to the men, it was Shackleton that brought them together and it was Shackleton that ensured they stayed together. One can only extrapolate from that that it was also Shackleton who ensured that all hands returned.<br />
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But what makes this book stand along side some of the other pillars of polar literature (<i>The Arctic Grail </i>by Pierre Berton, <i>The Last Place on Earth: Scott and Admunsen's Race to the South Pole</i> by Roland Huntford) is the author's ability to allow the story to work for itself rather than resort to embellishment and hyperbole. Lansing deals with his subject in the clinical, matter-of-fact way in which a good chronicler should. Certainly the events of Shackleton's two year adventure on the Antarctic ice (never once setting foot on the actual continent, I might add) are fantastical enough, certainly there is no need for a writer to garnish the story with over-wrought trimmings. It is difficult to add much to the open-boat voyage of the <i>James Caird</i> without resorting to mythologizing. Better writers have done so in the past, so it is a testament to Lansing that he has resisted, and it certainly must have been a temptation.<br />
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If you, like me, devour books about polar expeditions (and I especially like reading them during the sweaty Taiwanese summers, it helps me cool off just a bit) then this is a good call. Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage is both well researched and accessible. It shies away from the florid language of myth-making, maintaining the tone and pace of the materials from which it was born. It is often difficult to construct a compelling narrative from the personal recollections of a dozen men, but Lansing is apt to the challenge. Indeed he has written a book that should be viewed as a pillar in the genre. One that should be read be an would-be Antarctic explorer (even if their armchair is preferable to and slightly more comfortable than the confines of the <i>James Caird</i>).Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07998996750944114185noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3749031091155130228.post-62550795245134229372013-05-21T09:33:00.000-07:002013-05-21T09:33:17.126-07:00A Dance With Dragons: Book Five of a Song of Fire and Ice<br />
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<b>A Dance With Dragons: Book Five of A Song of Fire and Ice</b></div>
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<b>By George R.R. Martin</b></div>
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I'm there. I'm finally there!</div>
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Two years and 4884 pages later, I'm finally caught up. As of today (May 21, 2013, 26 days after starting the latest installment) I am completely up to date on <i>The Song of Fire and Ice</i> by George R.R. Martin. It's been a long and grueling road. At points I thought I'd never get to this point. I'd like to thank R'hollor, the Seven and the old gods as well as my agent, Petyr Baelish, my publicist, Cersei Lannister and my spin doctor, Davos Seaworth. Davos! Dude! We did it! I owe you a bushel of onions! Wait... wait! Before you cue the music, I'd just like to say that now that I am caught up, I wish I wasn't. I wish I could dive right back into Martin's world. I'm completely hooked in and I'm not sure what I'm going to do while waiting for the next installment. </div>
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Yeah, that's right. I'm a fully converted and completely unrepentant <i>Game of Thrones</i> fanboy. Sue me.</div>
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So it should come as no surprise that I say, without hyperbole, that this series has been the single greatest undertaking in my reading career. It has been every bit as monumental as reading the <i>Old Testament</i>, as thoroughly time-consuming as <a href="http://taiwaneastcoaster.blogspot.tw/2012/10/infinite-jest.html"><i>Infinite Jest</i> </a>and as satisfying as completing my first Shakespeare play in the ninth grade (<i>Twelfth Night</i> for those keeping score at home). But what sets Martin's series apart from those other reading peaks is the sheer scale of the series. </div>
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<i>A Song of Fire and Ice</i> has thrice the number of characters as the <i>Old Testament</i> (There might be more Freys alone than characters in the entire <i>Book of Genesis</i>), four times the amount of pages as<i> Infinite Jest</i> and.... well, okay, Shakespeare is still a better writer than George R.R. Martin, but he's at least in the same ballpark when it comes to writing epic histories. And there's still two books to go!</div>
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Furthermore, As of today I join the legion of fans eagerly awaiting <i>The Winds of Winter</i>. More precisely, because I have not seen a single second of the television series I can count myself among the bookishly elite uber-nerds who have forsaken the television series in a vainglorious quest to keep the series intellectually pure. My vision of Daenerys Targaryen is a unique snowflake that will remain untarnished by the creative limitations of the boob tube. How many of the readers of the series can say that? Sometimes living in Taiwan has its perks. One of them is the ability to completely avoid American popular culture if the need arises (as it does here and in the case of Justin Beiber, reality television and the cult of celebrity).</div>
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As well, I can now join the increasing cacophony of impatience bombarding Martin as he works furiously (alas, not furiously enough to satisfy this reader) to finish the series (Please take care of yourself Mr. Martin and, please, consider moving closer to a healthcare provider in case you suffer any unexpected medical emergencies). Sure, I'm joining the back of the line, but I am officially in that line and I'm guessing that you are now. (The law of averages says that the last sentence will be true of most of the visitors to this site. If that last sentence does not pertain to you, trust that I didn't mean YOU).</div>
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So, what of <i>A Dance With Dragons</i>? Well, I do not want to be the bearer of spoilers for those either A) still mired deep in the printed series or B) those unfortunate souls who have opted for the television version. I will try my best to maintain a spoiler free take on the novel but please, if you are at all worried, stop reading here.</div>
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I thought it unfair of reviewers to have been so hard on the fourth book, <i><a href="http://taiwaneastcoaster.blogspot.tw/2012/12/a-feast-for-crows-book-four-of-song-of.html">A Feast for Crows</a></i>. As I said in my review of that installment, it wasn't warranted. Oddly enough, I might be inclined to be a little hard on the fifth novel given that match of its one thousand plus pages seemed like a never-ending build-up to nothing. I was about 70% into the novel when I realized that very little had yet happened. The proverbial dust from the previous novel settled nicely but following that it was simply a lot of characters moving about Westeros and Essos without actually doing much of anything. Fortunately the final third of the novel more than made up for the slow-pace of the first two-thirds and there were enough holy-shit moments in the last few chapters to satisfy even the most jaded fans of the series. </div>
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There are a could of narrative specific thought I had while reading that are worth noting: </div>
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It took five books but Martin finally managed to generate some heated interest in the story lines emanating out of Dorne. Up until <i>A Dance With Dragons</i>, I cringed at a Dornish chapter heading. Now, Dorne finally figured into the storyline in a more concrete and meaningful way. Now if he can just do that for anything happening in the Eyrie all bases would be covered. </div>
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Tyrion continues to be my favorite character, though he lost a little something now that he's off his high horse. Here's to hoping for a return to form in the next installment. I also liked the inclusion (finally) of Barristan Selmy as a POV character. He's always been one of my favorites. But the one character that I want to see done as a POV is the one I fear will never be done: Varys.</div>
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I've never been a huge fan of Bran Stark's storyline but it took such a boring, pseudo-spiritual turn in this book that almost stalled out in his chapters. I know Martin is gearing up for something special with Bran but I wish he'd keep the hocus pocus to a minimum.</div>
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I'm hoping that Martin gives us a POV character from the House Martell in The Winds of Winter. Of the seven kingdoms, Highgarden is the only one that has yet to have its own POV character and I would really like to understand their motivations better. Or perhaps I'm not supposed to know.</div>
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And who the hell is Robert the Strong?</div>
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Anyway, as I said, <i>A Dance With Dragons</i> started out slow but those last few chapters made the entire ride so very much worthwhile. So many changes. So many questions. So much uncertainty. My only fear is that, like so many mediocre writers, Martin will end up creating such a masterful set up that he will be unable to follow through. I sincerely hope he knows where this narrative is going because other than in the most general terms, I haven't the foggiest. The rightful holder of the Iron Throne could be Stannis, Tommen, Daenerys or Moon Boy, for all I know. </div>
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And of course, I know nothing.</div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #080808; font-family: Calibri;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;">Previous reviews in this series:</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #080808; font-family: Calibri;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;"><br /></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #080808; font-family: Calibri;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;"><a href="http://www.taiwaneastcoaster.blogspot.tw/2011/10/game-of-thrones-book-one-of-song-of.html">A Game of Thrones</a></span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #080808; font-family: Calibri;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;"><a href="http://taiwaneastcoaster.blogspot.tw/2012/02/clash-of-kings.html">A Clash of Kings</a></span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #080808; font-family: Calibri;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;"><a href="http://www.taiwaneastcoaster.blogspot.tw/2012/08/a-storm-of-swords.html">A Storm of Swords</a></span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #080808; font-family: Calibri;"><a href="http://taiwaneastcoaster.blogspot.tw/2012/12/a-feast-for-crows-book-four-of-song-of.html">A Feast For Crows</a></span></div>
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Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07998996750944114185noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3749031091155130228.post-17128965040772758452013-05-14T15:27:00.000-07:002013-05-14T15:27:11.299-07:00The Magic Circle<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>The Magic Circle</b></div>
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<b>By Jenny Davidson</b></div>
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About halfway through this novel I was reminded of an interactive work of theater called <i><a href="http://sleepnomorenyc.com/">Sleep No More</a></i> that had runs in both London and New York (neither of which I attended). According to the interview I heard with the creator of the project, <i>Sleep No More</i> is set in a five floor building which is transformed into a turn-of-the-century hotel. Rather than traditional theater where audience members are asked to sit and watch the action, In <i>Sleep No More</i> the members of the audience, who are given masks upon entry to maintain anonymity but no program, are free to wander aimlessly throughout the building and into any of the various settings. They are encouraged to open drawers and closets, read diaries and interact with the actors (who remain silent throughout the performance). The story, or what little there is of it, is loosely based on <i>MacBeth</i>. Like I said, interactive.<br />
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Let me be absolutely clear on something. Jenny Davidson's novel <i>The Magic Circle</i> has nothing to do with this macabre bit of theater, but until about a week ago, <i>Sleep No More</i> the closest thing to Live Action Role Playing that I had ever heard of. That's right. I have lived almost four decades completely unaware of the entire sub-culture of live action role playing games (henceforth referred to as larp or larping). Some of you are probably rolling your eyes at me. How could I have never heard of larping? Surely I've heard of <i>Dungeons and Dragons</i>.<br />
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Well, yes. But I had always assumed that was something that a certain demographic of kids did with dice and cards in their parent's basement. I was unaware of the massive cottage industry of dressing up, equipping oneself with all sorts of expensive paraphernalia and wandering around pre-determined environments engaging in some sort of elaborate game complete with scoring. Apparently there are literally thousands of adults who do this and I was completely unaware. Me, a self-avowed nerd. I should hand in my card.<br />
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Now, I'm not particularly interested in larping. I'm not about to skip out and buy myself a broadsword, but to each their own. But it's these sorts of discoveries about the world that keep me in books. I love it that even at my rapidly advancing age I am able to discover pockets and corners of this world of which I was previously ignorant. Yay books!<br />
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So anyway, <i>The Magic Circle</i> is about three female friends who are particularly interested in larping, specifically in New York City. The three friends are on a seemingly endless quest to concoct and then play an elaborate urban role playing game. But much like games, reality is not exactly what it seems. Anna, the mysterious Swedish-born, occult-obssessed woman next door isn't being entirely forthwith about her past and when her brother shows up on the scene, the lines between the game and reality begin to blur. Much like <i>Sleep No More</i>, <i>The Magic Circle</i> is loosely based on another classic story. In this case it is <i>The Bacchae</i> by Euripides (If you are unfamiliar with <i>The Bacchae</i>, never fear, Davidson has you covered. She provides a more than adequate summary of the story within the narrative.<br />
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Viewed simply fas a narrative, <i>The Magic Circle</i> is fairly weak. The story is simplistic, slow and often aimless, especially toward the beginning. Davidson provides very little background about the three main characters and it took me a long time to differentiate between the three as separate entities. Their careers seem to be categorically dismissed in a manner that left me wondering where these three got all their free time. But not too much, because I really didn't develop any strong feelings for her characters. The story seemed to jump across large swathes of time (work, presumably) but as the novel progressed, the narrative did began to take a certain shape and dimension, but it never fleshes out as completely as I thought it could have.<br />
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But to read <i>The Magic Circle</i> simply as a narrative it to sell this novel short. Behind the flimsy narrative is a discussion worth having. <i>The Magic Circle</i> is, at its core, a novel about infantilization and the modern glorification of games and play in lieu of earnest relationships and honest dialogue. Davidson spends a lot of time inside the heads of her protagonists, chronicling their neuroses and their inabilities to communicate with family and friends on a mature field. Instead, the characters (and many of us) use games, whether they are role-playing games, sports etc... as a form of social lubrication. Not that there is anything particularly wrong with using games as a way in which to foster and facilitate friendships but, like so much else, there is more than one face on a dice.<br />
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This theme got me to thinking about an exceptional book I read a couple of years back called <i><a href="http://taiwaneastcoaster.blogspot.tw/2011/11/consumed-how-markets-corrupt-children.html">Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults and Swallow Citizens Whole</a></i> by Benjamin R. Barber. Barber contends that modern markets and the media that drives them have created an endless maze of escapism that has ostensibly "dumbed down" our population via movies, music, television and, yes.... games. While I don't think Davidson was thinking specifically about Barber's thesis or the infantilization of adults in specific, this novel does address the issue, even if by accident, and that's a dialogue worth having.<br />
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In this vein, the thematic centerpiece of the novel (for me, anyway) is the Christmas dinner at Ruth's mother's house. Ruth's mother is a collector of vintage toys and is given a first edition copy of The <i>Game of Life</i> from 1860. Despite the fact that the game is a historical artifact in the eyes of Ruth's mother, Ruth's friend Anna suggests they play the game. What follows is a flash of brilliance in an otherwise mediocre read. The episode speaks volumes about the games people play with each other within their own personal relationships all within the strict confines of an actual, physical game being played. What isn't said becomes every bit as important as what is said.<br />
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In fact, had Davidson edited this already short novel a bit more and had it centered around this particular episode rather reaching for the parallelism between <i>The Bacchae</i> and reality, it would have made for an exceptional short story. As it stands, <i>The Magic Circle</i> is an accessible novel about a subject that will is relatively unknown to most readers and could potentially be an excellent way in which to introduce the notions of larping to readers (such as me) who have never heard of it. Unfortunately, it is a great idea fallen a bit flat. There are moments in this novel, but they are too few and too far between.<br />
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<br />Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07998996750944114185noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3749031091155130228.post-13494321208881540822013-04-30T07:49:00.000-07:002013-04-30T08:09:04.056-07:00The New Republic<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>The New Republic</b></div>
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<b>By Lionel Shriver</b></div>
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Lionel Shriver's 2012 novel, The New Republic, is actually a problematic manuscript with a checkered history. Originally penned in the late 1990s, this psychological novel about terrorism was dismissed by American publishers as too jejune for American readers. Following the attacks on September 11, 2001, and the proceeding years of earnest introspection (at least among literary circles) an ironic take on terrorism and journalism continued to frighten off publishers, until recently. Apparently the social and political climate of 2012 was ripe for an unabashed satire on media sensationalism and terrorism. In the meticulous Shriver style, there are no psychological tables left unflipped and no sociological surfaces left unswiped. Having recently finished Shriver's Orange-Prize winning novel We Need to Talk About Kevin, and loving it, I desperately wanted to love this novel as well. Alas, I didn't. But it's not all bad.<br /><br />The New Republic is set in the fictional state of Barba, a drab, beard-like (Barba... get it?) appendage of land that extends into the Atlantic Ocean off Portugal's southern coast. Barba has recently become a European hotbed of terrorism under the guise of a paramilitary group known as the SOB – a radical terrorist cell fighting for Barban autonomy from Portugal and claiming responsibility for a seemingly random series of violent international attacks. Due to the rash of attention, foreign correspondents from the world's major media sources have descended on this European backwater previously known only for its unceasing gale-force winds, its tacky souvenir production industry and the hairy pear, a local fruit that is every bit as unappetizing as it sounds.<br /><br />The foreign correspondents form a Greek chorus of media personalities (or lack thereof. Shriver's two-dimensional take on the members of the foreign press is rife with meaning), producing tired examinations, reasonings and rationales for the violence in lieu of any hard reporting on the ground. Joining this murder of squawking crows is Edgar Kellogg. Kellogg is a greenhorn journalist sent to Barba to replace Barrington Saddler, a larger-than-life personality who has gone missing and who may or may not have a lot more to do with the SOB than simply writing about them.<br /><br /> But the entire point of The New Republic isn't the narrative so much as the themes it illustrates, sometimes in bold relief. Shriver, obviously, takes aim at the notion of modern terrorism and the manner in which it is reported to illogical extremes but this novel is really about charisma. Why some people have it and others don't and what drives people who don't have charisma to emulate and ultimately turn on those who do have it. In this vein, Shriver is disappointingly predictable. Kellogg recounts the story of why he has quit his Manhattan law firm to become a journalist. He is determined to follow in the footsteps of his charismatic prep school friend with whom he hasn't spoken in decades. Turns out that his friend has grown up to become a milquetoast sycophant for the Daily Record newspaper and possesses none of the self-assurance that he possessed in school. This was like discovering the butler killed Lady Butterbum in the conservatory on page 12 of a 400 page book. You'd think Edgar would learn his lesson right there before shipping off to a european hellhole, but apparently Edgar isn't that bright. Diligently, Shriver trudges on and, lo and behold, exactly what she says will happen in the beginning actually happens at the end.<br /><br /> Predictability is certainly a problem, but my real problem with The New Republic was the characterization of Shriver's have-not anti-hero, Edgar Kellogg. Kellogg is simply irritating. He's blunt, rude and completely devoid of charisma. Furthermore, he seems to lack class, tact and common sense. He's also arrogant, haughty and condescending. He's incapable of hiding his true feelings and utterly incompetent at his job. I could go on, but you get the picture. Needless to say Edgar is a bastard.<br /><br />While I understand that Shriver is attempting an examination of charisma and needed a character that was indeed lacking in it, but Kellogg is so relentlessly devoid of any emotions ascribed to charisma that he almost ceases to exist in any sort of reality understood by the reader. How does someone like Kellogg even ingratiate themselves enough with anyone to discover their lack of charisma? I wouldn't give Edgar 15 minutes before standing up and walking out on him.<br /><br />By way of explanation, Edgar was once a morbidly obese kid and, though he lost the weight, he never lost the inferiority complex. Fair enough, I suppose. Consequently, Edgar has awkwardly shifted into adulthood with an acute sense of both entitlement and disdain for those around him. Why shouldn't he have what others have? He deserves it more than they do, anyway. In that respect he had transferred his personal self-loathing onto everyone else. That's some serious pop psychology right there.<br /><br />In literary terms, this makes Edgar not so much a character but a caricature. He is, like the blathering idiot reporters at the local Barban watering hole, a predictable cartoon cut-out of what would happen if someone had zero charisma superimposed on a novel along side the world's most charismatic correspondent. This makes The New Republic a wolf in sheep's clothing. It is less novel and more a psychological and sociological diatribe.<br /><br />Which is why the novel, as a whole, fails to impress. Don't get me wrong, Lionel Shriver's acute understanding of her subject matter is apparent, especially on the subject of terrorism and the media and the elements that would be used with such effect in We Need to Talk About Kevin are manifest throughout. Furthermore, the writing is, at times, sublime and, at points, this novel can be scathingly funny. But it lacks in any real movement, drags on so unnecessarily through the middle and leaves the reader with a rather cop out ending. Unfortunately, the strong qualities of this novel only made this reader feel cheated out of what could have been an extremely poignant book.<br /><br />As it stands, it simply feels like a novel that should have remained right where Lionel Shriver left it in 1998... taking up a few megabytes of space on an out-dated hard drive. Perhaps the publishers were right the first time. Perhaps we didn't really need The New Republic.Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07998996750944114185noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3749031091155130228.post-9693218417099286602013-04-17T06:32:00.002-07:002013-04-17T06:32:57.696-07:00Flesh<div style="text-align: center;">
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<b>Flesh</b></div>
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<b>By Khanh Ha</b><br />
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px;"><i>[The following review is part of the </i>Flesh<i> blog tour being organized by <a href="http://hfvirtualbooktours.com/" style="color: #6f1e21; text-decoration: underline;">Historical Fiction Virtual Book Tours</a>. This review also appear at the superbly excellent blog <a href="http://www.ireadabookonce.com/">I Read A Book Once</a>. For a full list of tour hosts, see the <a href="http://hfvirtualbooktours.com/fleshvirtualtour/" style="color: #6f1e21; text-decoration: underline;">tour page</a>. For more information on Khanh Ha and his work, check out the <a href="http://www.authorkhanhha.com/" style="color: #6f1e21; text-decoration: underline;">author's website</a>.]</i></span></b></div>
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I'm not an expert on the subject but I have noticed a shift in Asian historical fiction over the past decade or so. My first exposure to Asian literature tended to place an inordinate amount of emphasis on colonial powers. Whether intentional or accidental, it's hardly surprising that Asian literature would be colored by the regions tempestuous relationship with the domineering west, especially among writers writing in English, given the historical largesse that European power expansion had on the globe until well into the 1980s. Most (if not all) of the prominent Asian writers of the era were educated in the colonial education system. The end result were several generations worth of writers who examined their own culture as a reflection of a distant European culture. While the notion of colonialism was certainly one that deserved examination, it literally dominated the literature in a way that left very little room for other themes. In that sense, colonialism became the proverbial elephant in the bed for Asian writers.<br />
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However, as colonialism in Asia gradually recedes from the collective consciousness, we are presented with a second (and now third generation) of post post-colonial Asian literature (if this term is not yet coined, it's mine) come of age, there has been a sea change in the focus of literature from the Asian perspective. As a result of time and distance, colonialism has, mercifully, become less and less relevant as a theme in Asian literature. Asian writers are free to examine other, more organic experiences that have nothing to do with the White Man's Burden. Recent authors such as Jessica Hagedorn from the Philippines, Jeet Thayil from India and Amitav Ghosh from Bangladesh are just a sampling of the new wave of refreshingly innovative Asian writers on the current literary landscape.<br />
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If you are looking out for names to add to the growing list of skillful Asian writers, look no further than Khanh Ha. His debut novel, <i>Flesh</i> is a somber, brooding and grim exploration of revenge and moral responsibility in turn-of-the-century Annam (present day Vietnam). If debut novels are, in essence a declaration of an author's intent, then you could do a lot worse than pick up this interesting little novel by Khanh Ha.<br />
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<i>Flesh</i> is told from the perspective of Tai, a young Annamese boy who witnesses his father's execution for banditry in the opening pages of the book. Tai's family reclaims his father's body but not the head, which is sent to a neighboring village to be displayed. Tai makes it his own personal mission to reclaim his father's skull from the village and provide it and his father's body, according to East Asian tradition, with an auspicious resting place. This daunting mission takes Tai from his village to the city of Hanoi and under the wing of a wealthy Chinese businessman and becomes involved, both physically and psychologically, with a beautiful young woman from Yunnan.<br />
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<i>Flesh</i> is the quintessential story of revenge. At its heart it is a brutal tale about brutal people living brutal lives during a brutal time. But if all you take away from <i>Flesh</i> is its moodily executed story of revenge, you are only getting half the picture. At its core, <i>Flesh</i> is about coming of age and trying to be a good person and do the right thing in a world where the temptation to resort to crime and murder are all too common. Through Tai, we are exposed to a cruel and remorseless world of banditry, savagery and addiction. Tai walks the razor's edge of temptation on virtually every page of the novel and, like most people, succeeds as much as he fails in trying to be a decent human being along the way. In that respect, <i>Flesh</i> is as much a novel about humanity as it is about humanity's proclivities toward barbarity.<br />
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Ha's prose is dream-like and poetic. It has a lucid quality that, in it's better moments, adds volume and flair to the writing, though in portions, Ha's style gets the better of itself and becomes a convoluted morass of thoughts. I had mixed feelings about Ha's style. He tossed in enough great writing to make me sit up and take notice, but its uneven quality betrays his inexperience as novelist.<br />
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<i>Flesh</i> is not a great novel, but it is a very good one. As a purpose statement, even this inconsistent work is worthy of notice. I think that readers of Asian literature, and specifically Asian historical fiction, should take notice of <i>Flesh</i>. Ha has laid a foundation for what could be a very promising career.Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07998996750944114185noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3749031091155130228.post-79719727499037530422013-04-07T09:01:00.000-07:002013-04-08T10:00:20.683-07:00The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy</b></div>
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<b>By Douglas Adams</b></div>
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I have a few reviews coming up this month that have to published on very specific dates, so it was going to be a little quiet around here for a few weeks. But I hate to let too many days go by without some sort of content so I thought it would be a good idea to discuss a couple of novels that I am currently rereading with classes or individual students. These are not new reads, but they are fresh enough in my memory to discuss with clarity and assurance, so let's get to it.<br />
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So anyway, I miss Douglas Adams. His death in 2001 is perhaps the only literary death that truly shook me not only due to his age (he was only 49) but because he was my first real literary love affair and the the author of the first book that really, truly made me stagger in awe. More on that later, but first, the story of how <i>The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy</i> very nearly cost me my university education.<br />
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Okay, that's a bit of an exaggeration, but it did almost make me fail my first year Western history exam (which would have been a disaster because that was my major). Here's the story:<br />
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It was the night before the exam and like any good Canadian university student, I was cracking my textbooks for the first time that semester in an effort to cram as much of the course material into my head in the ten hours (give or take) before the exam. I had the books all laid out on my bed OCD style and was just brewing up a pot of extra strong coffee when a friend from down the hall walked by my open dorm room door and tossed an inconspicuous little paperback onto the top of my neat textbook pile. He tossed it in a manner that suggested that he was discarding a chewing gum wrapper or a banana peel. He didn't even stop to tell me what it was.<br />
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At first, I thought it was some sort of exam prank. I'd grab whatever it was off my bed and find it covered in goo, or something equally annoying and time consuming. But when I went over and picked it up it was the oldest, most busted up paperback I'd ever seen. What was left of the cover was hanging on by the merest suggestion of a fiber, the spine was exposed, cracked and separating somewhere in the vicinity of page 86, there was no back cover at all and it looked like it had taken a dip in the bathtub on more than one occasion.<br />
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A looker, she was not, but something possessed me to flip to the beginning of chapter one to see why exactly my buddy had discarded this dilapidated old novel into my room.<br />
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Eight hours later, I finished <i>The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy</i>, admitted to myself that it was my new favorite book and proceeded to shit bricks about my history exam that was less than three hours away (textbooks still unopened).<br />
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The story ends well. I ended up doing fine on the exam and continued my studies over the next three years without incident, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree with Honours. But I learned a couple of valuable lessons that night. First, I learned the practical usages for a towel, both physical and psychological. Second, never, ever start a novel when there is something pressing to accomplish. I have a difficult time prioritizing anything over books. And third, never underestimate the power of Douglas Adams.<br />
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Since then I've read this novel at least a half dozen times and it never ceases to make me smile. Through the fictional notion of <i>The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy</i> (A tablet-like guidebook for interstellar travelers), Adams prophesied the advent of the Internet, the e-reader, tablets, smart phones... or at the very least, Wikipedia. The Babel Fish imagined in the novel predated translation software (one program that actually bears the name Babel fish, in fact) and we are probably less than a decade away from very practical translation apps that will be able to instantly translate any language into any other language at conversation speed. Hell, Adams predicted (almost to the exact spelling), Google. And he did it with such ease that it seemed as though he were blindfolded with his hands tied behind his back. With such accuracy one might require three pints of bitter to soften the mental blow of his awesomeness.<br />
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On a more serious note, Adams was the first author I ever read that put a fine point on many of the questions I had about religion. I've been an atheist since I can remember. The way gay people say they've always known they were gay, that's me except with atheism. My family wasn't particularly devout, but they were church going people. But as far back as I can remember I found the entire ordeal of church, the rituals the forced (to me, anyway) joy and the stories to be deeply unsettling and, at times, creepy. It was Adams through <i>The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy </i>that made me realize that I wasn't the only one who thought everyone around me was taking crazy pills. I credit Adams for allowing me to be unapologetically atheist. It's made my spiritual life a lot easier to reconcile.<br />
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But what I like most about this <i>The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy</i> (and to a lesser extent the rest of the trilogy of five) is that unlike so many science fiction writers (I'm looking at you Arthur C. Clarke!) Adams wrote with a scathingly astute sense of humor and irony and he never once, ever took himself or his story seriously. The fact that the reader navigates Adam's world of morose robots, fjord designers and rock star politicians from the perspective of the mildest of mild-mannered Englishmen is as much a bottomless well of comedic potential as it is a source of comfort in a universe populated by drug and alcohol fueled party animals. Adams had enough sense to ground his readers with Arthur Dent when he knew full well that he was going to send us into a universe so supremely bizarre that there was at least someone we could look to in order to ask the questions we are all thinking about. Want to know the science behind the Improbability Drive? Don't worry, Arthur has you covered, and he'll try to bring along a cup or tea as well.<br />
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Thirty years after publication (and ten years after the untimely death of Adams himself) <i>The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy</i> and its sequels remain not only readable but also as relevant as they were in 1979. There are precious few works of science fiction that can compare to the Hitchhiker series. When so many authors were grappling with the moral, existential and ethical questions of androids, space travel, alien contact and cloning, Douglas Adams threw caution to the wind and made the sci-fi universe safe for those of us who would simply rather bypass the difficult questions, buy a Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster and see where the evening takes us.<br />
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Here's to Douglas Adams and the Hitchhiker's series. He made all other sic-fi sound like Vogon poetry by comparison.<br />
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Incidentally, I still own that busted up copy of the book. It's one of my prized possessions.Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07998996750944114185noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3749031091155130228.post-72659723742429975642013-03-30T10:18:00.000-07:002013-03-30T10:21:12.573-07:00Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet<div style="text-align: center;">
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<b>Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet</b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>By Jamie Ford</b></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>Read in your best Estelle Getty:</i></span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Picture it. Seattle, 1942. Like most North American cities of the time, whites, blacks, Chinese and Japanese live in separate neighborhoods, their children attend different schools and prejudice is worn proudly on one's sleeve. Henry Lee’s father is a Chinese Nationalist with a deep rooted hatred for the Japanese, who are waging war in his former homeland. In Seattle, he sends 12 year-old Henry to an all-white school with an “I am Chinese” button pinned to his shirt. Naturally, he is the target of bullies who don't see the difference between Japanese and Chinese. His only deliverance is Keiko, a Japanese girl with whom he develops a lifelong bond. Although circumstances keep them apart, Henry never forgets her.</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Picture it. Seattle, 1986. An older Henry, recently widowed reflects on the war years and his time with Keiko before and after her family's interment. The coincidental discovery of items left behind by Japanese-Americans in the basement of a downtown hotel inspires Henry to reveal the story of Keiko to his own son in an effort to repair their own fraying bond. </span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>/Estelle Getty</i></span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Jamie Ford's debut novel is a strong declaration of purpose from a promising writer. Although not without fault, <i>Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet</i> deserves some applause its characterization of an era that doesn't get the attention it deserves from the literary community (The Japanese Internment) and deserves a certain measure of comparison to Julian Barnes's Booker Prize winning novel <i>A Sense of an Ending </i>in that both novels bookend of the protagonist's life via a story that begins in childhood and ends in old age (while, it would seem, stagnating during the middle part of life). In fact, <i>Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet</i> reveals virtually nothing of Henry's forty year marriage to his wife, a two-dimensional character rendered with so little characterization that the reader is left confused as to whether Henry really ever had feelings for his wife at all. </span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">But that's okay because that is the sort of characterization that gets to the heart of the Chinese sense of familial duty and the complexity of the relationship between Chinese father and Chinese son. Ancestral obligations are often stronger than any personal bond one might make outside the family and <i>Hotel at the Corner of Bitter and Sweet</i>, in that respect is an interesting examination of Chinese experience in America and the cultural shackles that stretch across the Pacific. Henry's father, though fiercely proud that he is able to live and educate his son in America, never once identifies himself or any member of his family as American. The button he forces his son to wear to school, ostensibly to keep him from being identified as a Japanese, speaks volumes about Henry's fathers ancestral and familial morality. It is equally important that Henry be identified as Not Japanese as it is for him to be identified as Not American, a point that causes more than a little friction between father and son.</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Which brings us seamlessly to the subject of prejudice in this novel. Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet is, at its core, an interesting examination of the ingrained prejudice both within American society toward visible minorities (especially toward Japanese Americans) and the prejudices that were imported along with ethnic populations from abroad onto American soil. The racial tension not only between White Americans and Japanese Americans (which, retroactively speaking, makes a degree of sense) but also the tension between White Americans and Non-Japanese Asians (i.e. Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese) and the tension between the Chinese and Japanese populations speaks volumes about the very real anxiety of the time and how very close it all came to boiling over on the home front. Though the inclusion of Sheldon, the black jazz musician did seem a tad contrived (one too many ethnicities in the literary melting pot spoils the broth, apparently). </span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">But not everything works in this novel. The tone is, at times, overly sentimental.</span></span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">"I was so worried about my family. Worried about everything. I was confused. I didn't know what I wanted. I didn't know what good-bye really was."</span></span></blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 20px;">Emo during World War II? Apparently, yes. A good lesson: Let the reader feel rather than force the feeling.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">As well, the prose is often repetitive. If an author employs a flashback it seems rather unnecessary to include the actual account of flashback to another character in the present, but that is precisely what Ford does at several points in this novel, giving Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet an unpolished feel. Also, Henry speaks in an unnatural, stilted manner that makes you wonder whether he was ever actually 12 years old.</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">But don't let saccharine sentimentality and wooden dialogue stand in the way of a decent debut. Jamie Ford's got a lot of promise as an author and overall, <i>Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet</i> is as good as any debut novel you're going to read this year or next. I mean, if you can't forgive an author a few transgressions for the sake of a good story and an interesting backdrop well, who are <i>you</i> anyway?</span></span>Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07998996750944114185noreply@blogger.com5