Review: A Long Way Gone

A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier
By Ishmael Beah

A Long Way Gone is the gripping first book by child rights advocate Ishmael Beah; it retells his experiences as a boy growing up in Sierra Leone in the 1990's, during one of the most brutal and violent civil wars in recent history. Beah, a boy as equally thrilled by causing mischief as he is by memorizing passages from Shakespeare and dance moves from hip hop videos, is a typical precocious twelve year old. But rebel forces destroy his childhood innocence when they hit his village, driving Beah to leave his home and travel the arid deserts and jungles of Africa. After several months of struggle the national army recruits Beah; he's made a full soldier and his new training teaches him to shoot an AK-47 and hate everyone who comes up against them.

This first two thirds of the memoir are frightening, watching how easy it is for a normal boy to transform into someone as addicted to killing as he is to the cocaine the army makes readily available. Peering so unflinchingly at the bloody horrors of warfare and what it does to children echoes many of the thoughts of Elie Wiesel in his classic Night, the core difference being that Beah was a participant as well as a victim. Some of the more disturbing moments are not shooting or slitting people's throats, but them going back to watch movies like Rambo afterwards and joking about how many they could kill if they only had an RPG.

But there is an abrupt change a few years later when agents from the United Nations pull him out of the army and places him in a rehabilitation center. Anger and hate slowly fade away and we see the first glimmers of Beah's work as an advocate. My only real criticism of Beah's book is that I wish it spent more time exploring how he managed to escape his addiction to violence. Much of his recovery centers around a nurse who takes an interest in him and encourages him by sharing music and books. While I'm sure that's certainly part of the story, I came away feeling like we weren't being told everything. But considering Beah's target audience is mostly teens affected by violence, the level of depth is probably appropriate. Told in a conversational, accessible style this powerful record of the violence of war ends as a beacon to all teens experiencing violence around them by showing them that there are ways to survive other than adding to the violence.

Excelsior

Johnson's Dictionary

Samuel Johnson was a pretty busy guy. Aside from being an essayist, critic, scholar and all around smarty pants, Johnson created the first full dictionary of the English language. It was quite a project, made up of some 42,000 words with definitions and sample sentences to show usage. Although he had 6 clerical assistants working under him, it was primarily Johnson's own hard work that pulled it all together. It set the standard for what became the Oxford English Dictionary and influenced how Noah Webster would create his own dictionary for us over here in the states.

One of my favorite definitions used in Johnson's dictionary is this:

Oats: A grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland appears to support the people.

I like it not because it's accurate, well written or funny (it's all of these), but so blatantly biased. Equating Scotsmen to horses sets them up to be little better than animals. At the time Johnson was living the Scots----my proud ancestors----were not exactly endearing themselves to the English. A few decades prior to our own revolution here in the colonies the Scots were inciting revolt of their own, something remembered today as the Jacobite Uprisings. They were a bit miffed when James the IV of Scotland and England was removed from the throne and replaced by his daughter Mary II and her husband, the Dutch-born William of Orange. It was a time marked by protests, violent uprisings and hurt feelings on both sides----some people still have hurt feelings over the whole fiasco.

For a long time Englishman told Scottish jokes the way Polish jokes are told here in the U.S., so it's easy to excuse Johnson for his silly slip into provencial crassness. It's a funny example of how language can be shaped and twisted to change the way we think. It's a small word, oats. But in defining it the way he did Johnson left a marker for how he and his fellow Englishman felt about the people just to the North.

Nowadays the various dictionaries strive to be as clinical, scientific and unbiased as possible in their defintions. But I do wonder what words will stand out in 100 years as cultural markers for how we think and feel about each other today.

Excelsior.

Happy B-Day Poe

This past January 19th marked the 198th birthday of Edgar Allan Poe; miss L and I chose to celebrate with a wild throng of fellow Poe fans at the annual celebration put on by the Edgar Allan Poe House and Museum in Baltimore, Md. I was held at Westminster Hall, an old church downtown that now functions as a rental space and a tourist site because Poe's dead body rests in their graveyard. It's a great space for a small performance; large enough to hold a couple of hundred people, but small enough that there really weren't any bad seats. The stained glass windows and general environment lent an air of gothic mood that added to the whole evening.

The Poe Society set up a small exhibit in the balcony level; it was small but fun, showing off locks of hair of Poe and his wife Virginia, as well as copies of magazines some of Poe's stories first appeared in. The Baltimore-Washington Beer Works was there, selling glasses, mugs and hats tied to their Raver Lager (The taste is Poetic). And movie director Mark Redfield was there, selling and signing DVD's for his film The Death of Poe (I bought one, but haven't watched it yet).

The event itself was built around live performances of two of Poe's short stories: "The Facts of the Case of M. Valdemar" and "Berenice". The first was a bit of a surprise; although a bit of a Poe fan, it's not one I've read too many times. It's an odd, macabre story about what might happen if someone is mesmerized a moment before their death. The story was one of Poe's most popular during his life. It became widely copied and distributed as a scientific paper in Europe, making many believe that Poe's strange story was really fact. It took several interviews to convince the public otherwise.

"Berenice" is an early tale of Poe, and is a story that lays down the foundation for a lot of Poe's macabre tales: an unreliable narrator with a strange, dark obsession and grisly details. I imagine it was performed in honor of the Baltimore Poe house, because the tale was actually written when Poe lived there.

The performances themselves were fun. The actors played it a little bit serious, a little bit campy---very appropriate for the crowd and the event. Between acts they gave away doorprizes---two large cakes with Poe's happy face on them as well as a copy of Redfield's DVD. The whole shebang closed with an actor portraying Poe and performing dramatic readings of some of Poe's work in verse. I have to give it to the crowd; I expected some of them to bolt at the idea of poetry, but everyone stayed, listened and really seemed to appreciate the poetry as much the stories. It was nice to see, since that was Poe's true love.

In two years time we'll hit the 200th anniversary of Poe's birth. I'll be curious to see what the Baltimore Poe House---as well as other Poe sites in Richmond, Charlottesville, and NY City----will do to honor the dark poet America. Who knows....it might be a good time for a road trip vacation.

Excelsior.

Review: Heart-Shaped Box

I have such mixed feelings about horror fiction lately. At its core it sets out to mine the dark corners of our psyche, to bring those inner terrors to life on the page. When it's done well it not only scares the hell out of you it also digs into deeper meanings of character that explain why something scares us so much. Trouble is, most horror writers seemed bent on using cheap shock tactics or gross out tricks; it might read well the first time but it's not enough to hold up to serious thought or second readings.

Not so with Joe Hill and his first novel Heart Shaped Box.

Aging rock star Judas Coyne is a collector of bizarre and macabre artifacts: a used hangman's noose, a snuff film, rare books on witchcraft and anything and everything in-between. When he purchases a suit billed through an online auction as the haunted clothes of a recently deceased man, Coyne finds much more than he bargained for. Everywhere Coyne looks he sees the twisted spirit of an old and evil man following him, laughing at him and dangling a deadly razor on a chain. Coyne soon learns the suit belonged to Craddock McDermott, the stepfather of a former lover who committed suicide shortly after Coyne tossed her out of his life. McDermott, a professional hypnotist prior to his death, swore on his deathbed to destroy Coyne's rock star life of self-indulgence to avenge the death of his step-daughter.

There are some really creepy moments in this novel, moments when things seem so out of control you don't know if Coyne will survive or end up as a soul damned by his own past. Hill has real a skill with the pyrotechnics of a horrifying ghost story, but he knows how to use it sparingly to really build suspense throughout the book. And like all good ghost stories, Hill also crafts a deftly plotted mystery as the true motivations and powers of McDermott unfold. As we learn more about the ghost of McDermott---and how ghosts work in Hill's universe---we also learn a lot about Coyne. We learn the truth behind his loose attitude towards women, about the love he holds for his dogs, and the hatred he holds for his own father. These are done not as simple character development but to show us pieces of Coyne that prove vital to his struggle against the spirit world.

I've never heard of Hill before, but he's got two Bram Stoker awards under his belt for his short fiction. I was first worried that Heart Shaped Box would be a quirky concept that didn't live up to its own ideas, but the depth of character hidden in the dark shadows of both Coyne and McDermott lift what could otherwise be a formula supernatural thriller to a fairly impressive and fun first novel.

Excelsior

Welcome Home, Mr. Chandra

With a great feature article in yesterday's Washington Post and an even better interview on WAMU's Kojo Nnamdi radio show today, Vikram Chandra is really making the rounds with his new novel Sacred Games. Much of the attention has focused on his $1 million dollar advance, how long it took him to write the novel and his ties to other authors from India.

I'm normally a little dubious when someone gets that much money for anything, but in this case it just might be deserved. Chandra's a great writer and he's digging into a subject (gangs, pimps and the criminal underworld of Bombay, India) that's important and has any number of potentials for fiction. That and I am happy to see someone who's not a pop-author make some big money for their hard work.

For those who don't know, Chandra played a great part in the writing scene here in D.C. for almost a decade. Aside from teaching fiction writing at GWU he periodically ran some readings around town focusing on differnent types of fiction. I never met Chandra myself, but Miss L took a class from him while she was at GWU for undergrad and she still mentions things she learned from him. He also had a reputation around town as an incredibly friendly and generous person.

For any in the D.C. area who knew him or his writing and want to say hello, Chandra will be reading tonight at Politics and Prose at 7 pm.



Excelsior.

In Praise of Used Books

For library class this week we had to answer some basic queries using a variety of print and electronic encyclopedias. One set of questions could only be answered by using the famed 11th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, published back in 1911. Fortunately, we have a copy here at Catholic U. The 11th was a real landmark edition, because it'smore than just a collection of factual articles. It also contains essays of real literary quality by people like GK Chesterton and Bertrand Russell turning it into quite the noted item for all intellectuals and literati of the time to have.

The questions we had to answer weren't hard. They were easy, in fact. But it was a lot of fun just flipping through all the tattered volumes. Even dopy entries like the one on photography were made fun with quaint illustrations. Bound in heavy green leather, pages hand-sewn to the binding, and made with quality paper, these books were made to last. Even though they had a dusty-musty smell these volumes are still likely to outlast many books just printed today. These were books with a presence, books with a history, books with a story to tell beyond the words on the page. Since all the material is now beyond the bounds of copyright protection, there are few websites devoted to recreating the original feel of the volumes, most notably Love to Know 1911 and Online 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica. While you don't get to feel the pages or smell the leather, you can at least get a sense of some of the articles and what made it such a unique project.

Don't get me wrong. I love all the developments in electronic publishing. It's been just about the most democratizing force for the word since Gutenberg. But there's just something about books as a physical object that I love.

I guess that's why I love used books. In a lot of ways, I may prefer them. There's an oddly heroic feeling when you rescue a lonely tattered volume from some random library booksale or a dusty used bookstore. Some people are bothered by notes and marginalia left by previous readers but, not me. There like little notes into people's quiet lives, and I feel like I'm sharing some odd connection with someone I'll probably never meet.

Like when I bought Italo Calvino's Baron in the Trees. I bought the book at Second Story in Dupont Circle here in D.C. on a lunchbreak and then ran down the street to eat a burger at Zorba's. I was thumbing through the Calvino novel and waiting for my order when something fell out from between the pages. It was an advertisement flier for a bookstore in Florence, Italy, of all places. I looked at it for a minute, thinking about how far this little book travelled and being quite amused that a book in English by an Italian author came to me via some Italian bookstore. I started thinking about what kind of collage projects I could use it for when a voice interrupted my thoughts.

"Excuse me, may I see that?"

I looked up and saw a man in front of me, wanting to look at the flier. I shrugged and handed it to him.

"I can't believe it," he said. "I lived in Italy when I was a teenager. I lived next to this bookstore for three years."

There was a bright light in his eyes, like a river of happy memories was flowing through his mind. I told the man how I came upon the flier and he seemed even more amused than I was. Of course, I offered it to him. He was ecstatic, slipping it into a manilla folder he had with him and swearing he was going to frame it when he got home. While I may have lost a cheap flier I gained a great memory, a great story. And a webpage can't bring me that...at least not yet.

Excelsior.

Review: The Sandman Papers

In the late 1980’s a new imprint of DC Comics called Vertigo took a chance on a young journalist named Neil Gaiman. Although he had little direct experience in writing comics Vertigo handed Gaiman two titles to create and write: first the limited series Black Orchid and later The Sandman. Gaiman’s approach brought unique stories, complex characters and a postmodern sense in structure and style rarely found in mainstream comics. Alongside a few other writers like Alan Moore and Art Spiegelman, Gaiman and his Sandman books are responsible for not only the increased acceptance of comics as an art form but also for raising the bar of expectations for the reader.

With these factors it’s not surprising to see a book-length collection of criticism focusing on The Sandman series. But don't come expecting a fanzine collecting odd bits of trivia and rants on the coolness of Morpheus; The Sandman Papers collects twelve essays written by critics, professors and librarians who take their comics, or at least The Sandman, very seriously. Using techniques of literary explication the essays examine Gaiman’s art, covering topics as diverse as the use of folktales, its place and influence upon contemporary fantasy, and postmodern theory. When appropriate, the book includes black and white reproductions of pages from issues of The Sandman to highlight specific critical points. Many of the essays were originally written as papers for various conferences sponsored by organizations like the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts, but a small handful are new works written just for the anthology. Despite the very academic and critical approach editor Joe Sanders does an admirable job in keeping the academic language to minimum, making most of the essays accessible to the general reader.

B. Keith Murphy opens the collection with “The Origins of The Sandman”, an effective introduction to both the book and the topic as a whole. Murphy examines the history of both gothic fantasy---everything from Poe to Penny Dreadfuls---and comics, placing The Sandman within the historical context of both trends. Murphy’s admiration of Gaiman does get the better of him at times; despite this one failing, the essay does an admirable job introducing the reader to historical and artistic trends that influenced Gaiman’s writing.

Coming from a bunch of English professors, it’s not surprising that several essays focus on the Sandman’s relationship with Shakespeare. In the series the great bard strikes a deal with Morpheus; in exchange for access to all the dreams and stories of the world to use for his plays Shakespeare must write two plays dealing directly with issues of dreams themselves. A Midsummer Night’s Dream fulfills the first part of Shakespeare’s deal, while his last play the Tempest completes the agreement. Gaiman works in references to the plays and historical facts with his own inventive bits of fantasy and postmodern metafiction, giving readers much to think about in regards to Shakespeare and two of his most famous plays. Four essays focus totally on this one thread, while several others touch on it. Each critic takes a different look at the issues, examining how Gaiman treated Shakespeare as a character, the postmodern mixing of historical fact and fiction, the complicated life of an artist, and other meta-fiction concerns. The variety of approaches here are interesting and fascinating, hinting that there’s probably a whole book on this topic waiting to be written.

Two of the more provocative essays examine The Sandman through a lens of feminist theory. “Illusory Adversaries: Images of Female Power” by K.A. Laity looks at the “Kindly Ones” storyline. In it a mother calls upon the power of the Kindly Ones, one of the many forms of the Furies of Greek Mythology, to kill Morpheus. Although they have the power to challenge and even kill other gods, it becomes obvious to the reader that the Kindly Ones only hold their power because Morpheus and other male power figures allow it. Laity dissects these ideas nicely, but then makes some assumptions that aren’t as fully developed as they could be. Laity challenges Gaiman’s portrayal of women via the Kindly Ones without considering that Gaiman might be making a purposeful statement on women’s power within today’s society. The essay also inexplicably ignores characters like Death and Delirium, characters who are both female and hold power equal to that of Morpheus. In contrast, David Bratman’s “A Game of You-Yes, You” looks at Gaiman’s use of gender roles in the storyline “A Game of You”. In a plot that features strong female characters alongside very femme transsexuals, this tale challenges the ideas of what gender is and can be. Instead of bringing in his own agenda Bratman examines what’s actually on the page and perhaps gets closer to what Gaiman actually intended.

One frequent failing of the book is the almost complete avoidance of discussion of comics as a hybrid art. While narrative is a large factor in comics, other aspects like the artwork, lettering, the style of the panels and gutters all add to the work as a whole. Bender Hy’s book The Sandman Companion examines the creative process behind The Sandman, documenting the enormous influence and direction Gaiman gave to his collaborators for each issue. Gaiman obviously put great thought into the visual side and how it shaped the overall feel for the story. Although Joe Sanders does an expert job explicating nearly everything on the page in his essay "Of Storytellers and Stories In Gaiman and Vess's A Midsummer Night's Dream", most critics focus solely on Gaiman’s narrative elements. By ignoring the visual elements the critics miss a great part of Gaiman's message, not to mention opportunities in reinforcing their perspectives. While some do occasionally reference the visual side of The Sandman they rely quite heavily on Scott McLoud’s book Understanding Comics. While a certainly wonderful book to read when first exploring the art and style of comics, it would have been nice to see the critics themselves make judgements and assertions either on their own or through the use of a variety of sources.

Readers won’t agree with everything these critics have to say. But what they do say showcases the rich thematic content of Gaiman as a writer who not only mastered the medium of comics but managed to push its boundaries. Criticsim is, if nothing else, about raising questions, and all these essays do that well by tackling issues that any fan of Gaiman should find interesting, invigorating and immensely rewarding.

Excelsior

Reader Advisory

A big term in the library world is reader advisory. Basically, it's an all-encompassing term for suggesting or referring a library patron to a particular book or author. Say, for example, someone comes up and checks out the Harry Potter series for 97th time. Using their fantastic powers of reader advisory, a librarian might suggest other authors like Christoper Paolino, Susan Cooper, Lloyd Alexander, Roald Dahl, or John Bellairs along with the Harry Potter.

Although not a complicated concept at all, it's been talked about at least a little bit in every class in grad school I've had so far and it's often used to justify the very existence of both libraries and librarians. Even though I'm just a schlub checking out books at the circulation desk these early days in my career, I'm still expected to do my part. So much so that it's one of the questions in my yearly performance evaluation. It's also one of the reasons I want to be a librarian. I love finding out about new authors, and I love suggesting them to other people I think might be open to them. People are often taken aback, though, whenever I just approach them randomly on the street offering reading advice.


A woman came up to the check out desk this evening who reshaped how I think about this whole concept. She was in her early 40's, dressed in a sweatsuit that looked like it was made more for fashion than to actually work out in. Coiffed, frosted hairShe walked up to the checkout desk somewhat hesitantly, and then dumped an armload of 15 paperbacks onto the desktop. They were all romances, with titles like Enduring Passion and Desires of the Lonely.

"I'm a bit embarrassed to be checking out books like these," she said.

"You shouldn't be," I replied. "Lots of people check them out all the time."

She shook her head. "I'm normally a book snob. But I haven't been sleeping well lately. I don't know why, but these are the only things that help me get through the night."

I paused a moment and said, "There's something to be said for formula books. There's turmoil and tragedy throughout, but you know while reading it that by the end everything will work out. There's a lot of comfort in that."

I put her books in a recycled plastic bag and then handed them to her.

She mouthed "Thank you," to me and smiled as she walked off. A strange sense of relief seemed to shine out of her.

Personally, I don't care much for romance novels. Even most well-written ones bore me to tears. I could have suggested some high-end lit with some romantic plot lines. But that wasn't what she was looking for. She just wanted to know that it was okay to check out those bodice rippers and that I, lowly check out boy, wouldn't look down my nose at her. Sometimes I guess the best advice you can give is to just affirm what they are doing is okay.

Excelsior.

Oops

Well.

Long time, no write.

I might be able to blame my lack of content on the holidays. Or on being sick. Or even on becoming obsessed with Battlestar Galatica and old epiodes of The X-Files.

But the truth of the matter is I was just damn lazy. I had books I wanted to review and thoughts for other short essays full of delight and wonder, but I had a hard time overcoming the all powerful force of creative inertia. When the choices were sitting down to write a few paragraphs on literature or watching a disgusting sewer creature attack people on television, I picked the latter. The more I put it off, the easier it became to put it off even more. Miss L even called me a liar last week, when I initially promised to start back up at the first of the year. I decided to defy my own physical abilities by kicking my own backside today on my 34th birthday and finally making a new post.

There will be some changes here. At least for now, I'm doing away with weekly events listings. I'll still post about ones of real interest to me just to help spread the word, but no more all-encompassing lists. Reviews will continue, and I've decided to really strive to reclaim my love for literature. A lot of the books I read for the magazine are fairly mainstream and, although good, often don't hit me in the soul like real books should. I need to seek out some reads that really move or interest me, not just books I have to read. I also may, at certain times, include a more journal-esque entries when something interesting comes up in class, work or real life. All is subject to change, and if anyone is still reading this who used to I'm happy to hear your comments as we move on.

Until next time,

Excelsior.

Status: Sleepy

Yep, I'm still around. I finished my final exam about 3:00 today and then headed off to work. All in all, I think it was a good semester for me. I did well grade-wise, but aside from that I feel like both of the classes I took this term---Ethics and Collection Development---were classes that I'll take with me the rest of my time in school and as a librarian. With all the rote memorization I had in my first two classes it was nice change of pace. From what I've heard, I'm probably back to memorization with my classes for the spring. We'll see, though. That's a few weeks away.

I have a few snippets coming up over the next few days, along with reviews for Joe Meno's The Boy Detective Fails, a Doom Patrol collection, and a collection of Emily Strange comics. But tonight I want to spend some quality time catching up with a friend I haven't seen in awhile. A good friend of mine named Sleep.

Until then,

Excelsior.

Nothing To See Here

I'm taking a break from the blog for a bit while the fall term finishes up with a full load of projects and final exams. If you're looking for lit events, check out Beltway for things in D.C. and the events page at the City Paper for Baltimore. I pull from a few other places they don't, but between the two it should give you plenty of options.

I should have a nice pile of reviews to post up after my break. I'll be back in 10-12 days. In the meantime keep reading, keep writing keep happy.

Excelsior.

Review: Jack Absolute

For inspiration for his series of historical thriller/adventure stories author C.C. Humphreys reached back into literary history to a comedy popular in the late 1700’s, a play by James Sheridan called The Rivals. A comedy of mistaken identity and romance that ends in a heated duel, The Rivals was immensely popular both in Sheridan’s native England and in the colonies that would become the United States a few years later. It was even a favorite of George Washington.

Humphreys takes the main character of the “The Rivals”----a quick witted British soldier of wealth named Jack Absolute---and fleshes him out with codebreaking skills and knowledge of and sympathies for the natives of North America. At the starting point of the novel Jack Absolute, Absolute himself is pushing past middle age and trying to grow beyond his youthful days of wild adventure. He’s shifted his focus from pioneering and soldiering in the Americas to running business ventures in India, both to make some money and to renew honor to his family his own disreputable father lost decades earlier.

But this is also the midway point of the American Revolution. Absolute is pressured to drop his business activities by the British General Burgoyne, who wants to employ Absolute’s skills in codebreaking and espionage as well as exploit Absolute’s contacts with the native population of the Americas. With his Mohawk friend Até in tow, Absolute sets out to convince the various tribes to join with Britain in suppressing the revolt of the colonials. Along the way he trips through the battle of Saratoga, falls in love with the beautiful daughter of a colonial businessman and, finally, uncovers the main plot. Through his codebreaking Absolute learns of a secret organization called the Illuminati that seeks to cause destruction and demoralization on both sides of the conflict in the colonies, enabled them to pick up the pieces and rebuild the society with their own ideals.

Humphreys handles the historical aspects fairly well for what is essentially a pop-novel. We here state side don’t often read things from the Brit point of view of the Revolution, and he does a good job getting across those feelings. Seperatists, rebels, traitors….many of the same name calling and finger pointing that occurred then occured again during the US Civil War. The battle details don’t shy away from portraying death and violence, but do so without glorifying it or making it excessively gory. Appearances by minor historical characters like James Sheridan, General Burgoyne and Benedict Arnold add some thin layers of authenticity and color to the tale. Even the Illuminati plot makes some nice references to Masonic Rites and to the societal revolt in Bavaria led by Adam Weishaupt.

You do have to suspend a bit of disbelief when it comes to Absolute himself. All of his narrow escapes and fantastic skills reminds me of no other character more than James Bond----not surprisingly this novel was subtitled the 007 of the 1700’s when it first appeared in the UK a few years ago. He openly supports the ideas of the colonials but can’t separate himself from his loyalty to the crown. This unique fence sitting makes his perspective on the revolution fresh in that he sees villains on both sides of the conflict and provides a nice layer of complication to both is character and the direction of the novel.

The weakest aspect of the novel is that it tries to be all things to all people. The Illuminati plot lot functions like a mystery; while Humphreys works in some nice red herrings when we finally get to the master of the diabolical plot it is somewhat of a letdown (I won’t say exactly why, since that would spoil the ending). The historical aspects are nicely done, but probably don’t dig deep enough for someone wanting a full portrayal of the times and all the issues involved in the Revolutionary War.

The main reason---really the only reason---to read this novel is to watch Absolute in all his exploits: slick escapes colonial jails, codebreaking, sword duels. No matter how improbable they all are, they sure are fun to read.

Excelsior

A Rant on Reviews via Pynchon

Thomas Pynchon's new novel Against the Day, came out today. It's a good thing none of the stores in my immediate area had it in stock. I'm enough of a fan that I probably would have dropped the $35 if I found it on the shelf. Instead now I can wait a bit, at least until I get a coupon to cut the cost a bit. I know I'll buy it, though. I have a short list of novels I count as vastly important to me and Pynchon's the only one to have written more than one.

The literati hasn't been very receptive. The reviews thus far of Against the Day have been mixed at best, but two of them in particular jump out at me as two different ways of doing reviews.

Michiko Kakutani opens her review in the NY Times with this:

Thomas Pynchon’s new novel, “Against the Day,” reads like the sort of imitation of a Thomas Pynchon novel that a dogged but ungainly fan of this author’s might have written on quaaludes. It is a humongous, bloated jigsaw puzzle of a story, pretentious without being provocative, elliptical without being illuminating, complicated without being rewardingly complex. (NY Times, 11/20/06)


Steven Moore chose this approach for his review in the Washington Post:


Pynchon fans will accept this gift from the author with gratitude, but I'm not so sure about mainstream readers. While Against the Day isn't as difficult as some of Pynchon's other novels, its multiple story lines test the memory, and some folks may be scared off by the heady discussions of vectors, Brownian movements, zeta functions and so forth, not to mention words and phrases from a dozen languages scattered throughout....Not for everybody, perhaps, but those who climb aboard Pynchon's airship will have the ride of their lives. (Washington Post Book World, 11/19/06).

To me, a reviewer should principally do three things: 1) Summarize the main ideas, 2) write briefly on the good and bad points, and 3) suggest who would like it and maybe even who wouldn't. Kakutani, for whatever reason, chose to slam the novel in her opening paragraph. While she moves on to some interesting (and balanced) analysis of the strong themes and weak characters, many would abandon reading the rest of the review after that opening. Between this and the bad review they gave Only Revolutions, I may start thinking that a bad review in the NY Times means its the perfect book for me.

More critical analysis is certainly needed in reviews, but so is the understanding that tastes in books have ranges far greater than your own. Moore suggests other viewpoints, hinting that the audience for this novel is probably limited but that there is an audience nonetheless.

Would I be bitching about this if Kakutani raved about the novel? Probably not. I admit, I am slightly defending one of my literary idols. But Kakutani's method here is one I see in reviews all the time and it's really been bothering me lately.

Excelsior

Events for the Week

Listing of fiction and poetry events in the DC and Baltimore area for 11.20-11.26. Feel free to email me if you know of other events you feel should be listed here.


20 Monday

1 PM The Mid-Atlantic Mystery Writers of America's "Mystery Monday Lunchtime Series" hosts a discussion with Maureen Corrigan, book reviewer for NPR's "Fresh Air" program and a Book World mystery columnist. Chapters Literary Bookstore, 445 11th St. NW DC. 202-737-5553.

7 PM Drawing on her Palestinian-American heritage, the cultural diversity of her home in Texas, and her extensive travels throughout the U.S., Asia and the Middle East, “wandering poet” Naomi Shihab Nye uses her writing to attest to our shared humanity. Ms. Nye will deliver the Friends School Class of 2000 Lecture. Friends School of Baltimore, 5114 N. Charles St., Baltimore, Md. 410-649-3200

7 PM Naturalist writer Barry Lopez, author of Of Wolves and Men and the National Book Award-winning Arctic Dreams, discusses and signs the new anthology Home Ground: Language for an American Landscape: 45 writers and poets define words that describe America's land and water forms. Chapters Literary Bookstore, 445 11th St. NW DC. 202-737-5553.

7:30 PM The Folger Poetry Series presents a reading by Tess Gallagher, author of the collections Dear Ghosts and Moon Crossing Bridge. $12. Folger Shakespeare Library, 201 East Capitol St. SE DC A reception and signing follow. 202-544-7077.

21 Tuesday

7 PM Kinky Friedman reads from and signs The Christmas Pig: A Fable. Olsson's Books-Penn Quarter, 418 Seventh St. NW DC. 202-638-7610.

22 Wednesday

7 PM A Space Inside, with featured reader Eugenia Kim. Riverby Books, 417 E. Capitol St. SE DC. 202-543-4342.

23 Thursday

No readings, so go load up on waldorf salad and yams. Happy Thanksgiving!

24 Friday

Fridays at 8 p.m.
Ends Sunday, February 18
52 Fridays reading series continues with a Featured poet and open mic. Load Of Fun Studios, 120 W. North Ave., Baltimore, Md. 443-318-4762.

8 PM Bee Free Friday: a featured artist/open mic event showcasing the area's spoken word artists. $5 before 8 PM, $10 after. Teavolve, 1705 Eastern Ave., Baltimore, Md. 410-327-4832.

25 Saturday

5 PM Novelist Wayne Karlin and peace activist Lee Swenson read from and discuss their contributions to the new anthology Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace, edited by Maxine Hong Kingston. Busboys and Poets, 2021 14th St. NW DC. 202-387-7638.

26 Sunday

2 PM The Enoch Pratt library presents a discussion with the author Pearl Cleage on her book Some Things I Never Thought I'd Do. Enoch Pratt Free Library, Edmondson Avenue branch, 4330 Edmondson Ave. Baltimore, Md. 410-396-0946.

3 PM Kaza Kingsley reads from and signs her new young-adult fantasy novel, Erec Rex: The Dragon's Eye. Barnes & Noble-Rockville, 12089 Rockville Pike, Rockville, Md., 301-881-0237.

Danielewski on Segundo

Episode 79 of the Bat Segundo podcast show features an interview with Mark Danielewski. As always, the intros to his shows drive me crazy with the all-too-cute, faux shock-jockey. But once you get to the interview itself it's quite entertaining and informative. Definitely helps enlighten some aspects of Danielweski's new novel Only Revolutions, which I ranted about a scant two days ago. You don't need to have read the novel to follow the conversation, and I actually might suggest listening to it before reading it.

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Review: Only Revolutions

About six years ago Mark Danielewski put out one hell of a first novel called House of Leaves. Blending pieces of horror and pomo fiction, it delivered complicated techniques and ideas in ways that were very accessible. The novel became more than a cult following; it became a NY Times bestseller. Despite it’s accomplishments, HoL wears its influences like tattoos on sleeveless arms: Lovecraft, Straub, Delaney and especially Borges. It was easy to see where Danielewski’s ideas and styles were coming from.

His new novel Only Revolutions is quite different. While there are certainly influences that show through----WS Burroughs, EE Cummings, Walt Whitman, Jack Kerouac----OR feels more like his own book, like Danielsewski’s managed to cover up all the seams and make the material and concepts really his own. Unlike most reviews that focus on plot, this one inevitably has to focus on other concerns like style, concept and structure. So be forewarned. I write very little about what actually happens in the book plot-wise in and when I do, I do it without caring about giving things away like I normally would. Because, honestly, in a book like this it really doesn’t matter.

But what is the book about, you might ask?

In short, Sam and Hailey are two wild souls who meet and fall in love with each other. They circumnavigate the U.S. together in true road novel fashion, blasting down highways and dirt roads with complete abandon, caring little about anything save the thrill of speed and jars of honey the carry around for sustenance. Through the magic of fiction both characters remain sixteen years old forever, removing any sense of responsibility from them and imbuing them with an overpowering sense of freedom. The main conceit of the tale is that Sam and Hailey exist in different points in time; Sam’s story begins with the Civil War while Hailey’s opens with the assassination of JFK. The story is told from both points of view. Following the publisher’s forward, eight pages of Sam’s story are to be read first, then the volume needs to be flipped over and upside down and read in reverse for Hailey’s story.

Page 8, Sam's Story

This flip-flopping between time periods creates connections between events in time---all listed as marginalia---hinting at similarities between events occurring around the two main characters. The Civil War and the JFK assassination, for example, were both times of great political, cultural and societal change and linking these two events separated by 100 years suggests a cyclical progression to our nation. Danielewsi makes great use of dialects and cultural references of each period, and at times even mimics voices of writers from the day. Sam’s story, for example, starts in a lilting poetic voice that reminded me a lot of Walt Whitman. When we get to the 40’s and 50’s, the language is more jumpy and recalls beat poets and early rock and roll lyrics. I found, quite by accident, that it’s a novel that works much better when read aloud (although with all the sex I don’t suggest reading it aloud on the metro).

Page 8, Hailey's Story

It’s a structural masterpiece, with most of the structural conceits referencing circles. What occurs in Sam’s story on page eight also occurs on page eight of Hailey’s story, but with her own perspective and in her own time with its own cultural references giving a back-and-forth, spinning around feeling with the novel. The letter “O” is highlighted in different colors throughout the book, and there are constant references in the text to cyclones, tornados, gyres and twisters. If you choose to disregard the publisher’s suggestion and read Sam’s story straight through, when things end you’ll also find yourself back at the beginning when Hailey’s story starts on the last page of Sam’s. Even the act of physically flipping the book back and forth has an inherent circular motion. The book is precisely 360 pages long, equal to the number of degrees in a circle. Although the prose at first might seem loose and very WS Burroughs, it’s actually very controlled. Each segment on each page---meaning each half page---has exactly 90 words. After you’ve read each eight-page segment you’ve read 720 words and made yourself spin around two full times.

Much of the structure that happened in HoL---the intersecting storylines and the marginalia---could have been done in hypertext. I remember thinking as I read it that it probably should have been done in hypertext and that Danielewski put it into a standard novel form to sell it. But OR stresses the book as a physical artifact: the pages, the cover, the text. Each time you flip the book over to read the other side of the story D doesn’t just remind you that you are reading a book but forces you to interact with it. Book-ribbons to help mark your place in both storylines are not only helpful but increase the physical interaction with the book.

There are a few parts of the story that slowed down for me. For some reason I have yet to figure out, the two spend an inordinate amount of time working in a diner in St. Louis. With all the constant wild motion, they suddenly seemed trapped standing still for so long. From St. Louis they bounce through court-houses trying to get married---remember they are always sixteen---and ultimately get lost in the mountains during an ice storm. The last thirty pages are particularly powerful as we flip the book back and forth, seeing and feeling the reactions of Sam and Hailey as they see their loved one freeze to death in their arms.

I don’t know if my review here does the book justice. In fact, my thoughts on it probably muddle Danielewski’s skill more than enlighten it. Taken individually the techniques he uses are not particularly new; I’ve seen most if not all of them done before in poetry and experimental short fiction. But he stretches these techniques to the limit by applying them to a novel and creates a new fictional experience. OR is a novel that’s bound to launch the academic careers of many a literary theorist as they sit down to interpret everything Danielewski is doing.

If all of this sounds confusing to you, parts of it are. If you are a reader who looks only for the familiar, this is not the book for you. If, however, you are like me and enjoy being truly surprised by a writer’s invention I suggest picking it up for yourself. Ride along with Sam and Hailey. Run with them, revolve with them, forget any preconceptions of what fiction should be and enjoy the freedom of reading something entirely new.

Excelsior.

Apologies, and a Picture for No Good Reason

I apologize to those of you using a newsreader to track my ramblings. Apparently going back and adding in meta-tags re-posts the material, making it look like I had 48 posts in one day. Now I have my industrious spurts, but not that industrious. I'm working up some reviews of a few things, which should be up soon. In the meantime I leave you with the below image, taken from issue 46 of the DC Comics title Doom Patrol, written by Grant Morrison and art by Richard Case and Mark McKenna. I'm re-reading the issues in newly printed trade paperback Musclebound, which prints issues 42-50 of the series. If you don't know Doom Patrol, it's one of the wackier things DC ever put out. It's a superhero book, but a book with villains like the New New New Brotherhood of Dada. Re-reading this stuff is a true guilty pleasure.

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Libraries and Writers

I'll have to give my library system credit. They're under a mandate of sorts to embrace new technology, and they've now taken on audio clips of interviews with authors dubbed Bookcast. So far they seem to be writers of pop-oriented material who happen to live in the area (Melanie Jeschke, Donna Andrews, Caroline Kettlewell, and Christine Anderson). It might be a nice way for local authors to promote their projects. The interviews are all conducted by Sam Clay, director of the Fairfax County Libraries and are pretty light and fun.

I do have a few problems with it. The link is located well down towards the bottom of the front page of the library website; with something new they really need a banner promoting it. I'd like to see them perhaps tapping a little more deeply into the local writer community as well. Otherwise it will probably only get as much attention as the blog (which they do a nice job with) and myspace profile (which I don't see the point of).

Excelsior.

Happy Halloween

Although we all dressed up like pirates at work today, the above mask is what I'm wearing tonight to scare all the princesses, frogs, superheroes and ninjas coming to my door tonight for candy. Despite the Hannibal Lecter quality, the mask came to me through my grandpa. It's a standard mask for pilots during WWII, used to help stave off the freezing cabin temperatures when you're flying in high altitudes.

Hope everyone does something fun and scary tonight.

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When Ethics Slips In

The story I've been working on the past few weeks is a sf/horror rewrite of the Poe classic "The Masque of Red Death". I have it in the back of my head to do a full collection of Poe rewrites at some point, and I started with this one because I think it's one of Poe's weaker stories. I love the basic concept of the story and the allegory quality it has, but so much of the tale is told not shown. Aside from changing the setting and a lot of the surrounding circumstances, I'm trying to crack it open and impart a lot of the same type of information through scenes instead of narration. For the most part, I've really only been striving for creepy horror story about a disease destroying the population of Earth, but somewhere along the line metafiction and my recent forays into ethics have slipped in.

One little trick I often do when I just need to figure out the real subtext for a story is to stick two characters who are completes opposites in a room together and see what happens. In this story, those two are prince and the nut who comes to the part dressed as a plague victim. I've been working on the exchange between the two the last few days, mostly scribbles on scraps of paper when I had a quiet moment at work. I just finished typing it up, and somehow I eneded up with a four page debate between the two over the purpose of art. Not really sure where it came from, except from the ethics books I've been reading lately (particularly John Gardner's On Moral Fiction. Somehow I need to compact the four pages down to about 1/4 of a page. 1/2 a page at the most. We'll see how it goes.

Completely unrelated, but I finally bit the bullet and upgraded to the new Blogger Beta. Over the next few days, I'll be backtracking through all my old posts to add the meta-tags. It'll be tedious, but they aren't much use if they aren't used for everything I've written here.

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Review: The Beast Bowl

I was a little bit mystified when the magazine sent me Tom Chaikin’s novel Beast Bowl to review. I book featuring talking animals is cool, but a book featuring talking animals that play a giant football game every year? It’s no big secret that I’m not much of a sports fan, so I wasn’t sure I was the right person to read it. Despite that, I cracked open this young adult book, Chaikin’s first published novel, and had a hard time putting it down.

The basic premise is fantastic. Every year animals great and small from across the world set aside their natural differences to compete in a dramatic game of football dubbed the Beast Bowl. To the animals that compete---everything from powerful lions down to hopping kangaroos---playing in the Beast Bowl means respect throughout the animal kingdom. When the coach for the East Team retires, the team’s quarterback---an idealistic chimpanzee named Sammy the Slinging Simian----takes up the challenge to keep the team going. Along with his best friend Carl the Elephant, Sammy travels from Africa to the United States to recruit an out of work college football coach to run their failing team. There’s only one problem: speaking to a human will break one of their most sacred laws of the animal kingdom and may mean banishment for the two travelers. For Sammy and the East Team to succeed animals and man will have to learn to trust and respect each other for the first time in hundreds of years.

The only real weakness of the novel is John, the human coach recruited by Sammy and Carl. Early on, he is framed by his employer to cover up the unethical recruiting practices of the college. We are told by a few he’s one of the best coaches in the world but we never really get to see why until the end. I also had a hard time believing that he would leave his wife and daughter at home while he trotted off to Africa to coach a football team of animals. It could be argued that Beast Bowl is not John’s story but Sammy’s and we don’t need that much depth in John to tell the real tale. But with a little tweaking this could have really been both Sammy’s and John’s story and would have been made all the more powerful for it.

Fortunately, Sammy’s story is really compelling. His motivations to save his team are clear and quite well done and the way he sneaks across continents is quite clever (I won’t give it away, because it’s one of the true pleasures of the novel). The sport aspect is also handled very well; from the quick thinking tactics of a quarterback to the severe body blows of a lineman Chaikin writes with enough knowledge to satisfy the pickiest of sports fans and yet uses enough humor and dramatic flair to appeal to readers who don’t know the difference between a safety and a field goal. It has great appeal to teens. Nearly every time I was reading it in a public place some teenager, both boys and girls, came up to me and asked me if it was good and what it was about. Most seemed really excited by the idea of a sports story with talking animals.

But Chaikin delivers more than a sports story. The tale shifts into a court trial of sorts, and its s trial that causes the animal world to reconsider how they interact with the human world. Well plotted and delivered through memorable characters, Beast Bowl comes together as a clever and thoughtful parable on mankind’s responsibilities to both the natural world and each other.

Review: Quick Fiction Number 9

Okay, I admit it. I really only picked up issue 9 of Quick Fiction because Kim Addonizio's in it. But I have to say, I found myself impressed again and again by all the work in this pocket-sized lit mag.

Billing itself as a venue for stories of 500 words or less, I started reading with a little bit of skepticism. For about a little over a decade now publishers have been printing teeny-tiny short stories----sometimes dubbed short-shorts or flash fiction----in books and lit mags. They are damn tough to do well, so I often find them fun to read once but not offering much reason to come back to them again and again. More than one time I've wondered if publishers and editors started the trend mainly to publish more authors and, hopefully, get more readers.

The stories in this particular issue ran the full gamut of short fiction: traditional stories with a beginning, a middle and an end, anecdotes, and formalistic experimental pieces. Some, like John Ellingsworth's "One Novel as Auto-Summarized by Microsoft Word, Reducing 31,000 words to 24, Losing None of Its Nuance Nor Delicious Homoeroticism, and Gaining Even a Kind of Terse, Sad Poetry, the Author Thinks" are just goofy fun. Sue Allison's "Second Chances in the Old People's Home" is more traditional but manages to dig into some surprising layers of character for such a short space. Not surprisingly, Addonizio's "Crash" approaches things like a short narrative poem, building image after image to shoot a pretty grisly scene at the reader. While the short lengths of all the pieces suited my current (ie short) attention span, I found myself marking phrases and re-reading pieces more than I have in some time. The editors have exerted real quality control here, publishing work with real purpose behind it and not just putting out short pieces to be quirky or trendy.

For fellow writers, this is a great market if you have a real talent for tiny, tight fiction. With the quality so high the competition would be pretty stiff, but I'd be more than honored to find my own name---my real name---in the contributors list someday. Not likely, since my stories seem to get lengthier the more I write, but you never know.

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Tech Stuff

I've been slow to update things here lately because I've been playing with audio software. Ever since the summer when I hit the Balticon SF Convention, I've had it in the back of my mind to add some sort of podcast component for the space here. Not every day or even every week, but maybe on a montly basis. Instead of reviews or random rants I plan to use them for personal essays dealing with art, writing, etc. For example, the one I've been playing with the last two weeks is all about the brief but very odd relationship I had with John S. Hall, frontman for the band King Missile. It started out in email, and then phone. It got really strange and pretty much ended when we met in person.

But I'm getting away from my point here.

I have a pretty good first podcast set up, content-wise. And I've worked in some musical clips as background that I think work pretty well. What's been bugging me is the low quality of the recordings of my own voice. If anyone out there who's done a little experimenting, I'm looking for a cheap microphone (preferably under $30) that can plug into a USB or firewire port. Any suggestions appreciated.

If Miss L lets me work on my laptop tonight after she goes to bed, I should have some new reviews up here soon.

Excelsior

SPXPO

I took time away today from studying, researching and writing to head up to North Bethesda for the annual SPXPO. Although essentially a comic book convention, It is a con with a twist. SPXPO specifically supports indie publishers and creators, and is also the home of the Ignatz awards---quite a big deal in the cartooning community.

Populated with the large bearded fellows who make up so much of any comic book con, SPXPO also hosts punk rock types, indie rock kids, aging hipsters and even a few open minded guys and gals in suits. Rows and rows of tables hosted by dealers, publishers, writers, artists and cartoonists stretched out in every visible direction in the conference room. Although there were a few examples of super-hero and fantasy comics, the wares were mostly made up of indie-spirited producers creating unique visions. Visions of true to life stories, retellings of epic myths like Gilgamesh, clever surrealist expeiments, and even text-heavy comics explaining the lives and thoughts of major philosophers. Big name indie presses---Fantagraphics, Drawn and Quarterly, Top Shelf---were all there but it was more made up by dozens and dozens of smaller publishers I've never heard of.

I was a little but overwhelmed by it all.

In fact, I was so overwhelmed after making one full lap around the room I walked back out. Not to leave, but to get my bearings. I pulled out my handy dandy brochure, circled tables I knew I wanted to check out and then strolled back in, armed with somewhat of a purpose.

I wandered and met Craig Thompson, who is every bit as nice as he seems in his own comics. Rob G of Gigantic Books was also pretty cool, although in a very different way. I even got to play a little on a computer demo for some comics-creating software that uses clip art and pre-packaged shapes for panels. Even though I had no idea what I was doing it was still fun.

It was really too crowded to do much browsing of new titles, so I took a lot of notes for my next trip to Atomic Books. In the end, I only bought two things. One was the most recent issue of Mome, a great ongoing set of anthologies pulled together by a certifiably wacky team of cartoonists. I also picked up a collection by Paul Hornschemeier, whose book Mother, Come Home still sits as one of the most devastatingly beautiful stories I've ever read.

It's too bad I have to work tomorrow, because otherwise I would go back to take in the panel discussions happening throughout the day. With topics like web comics and selling your first book, I think it would have been a lot of fun. There's always next year.

Excelsior.

Review: Fortress of Ice

CJ Cherryh’s newest novel Fortress of Ice marks her return to high fantasy as the fifth book in her acclaimed Fortress series. It’s been sixteen years since the final moments of Fortress of Dragons and Cefwen now sits on the throne as the just ruler of a tenuously united kingdom. He begins to look toward a future filled with the promise of good things he sees in his two sons: Aewyn, the fifteen-year-old rightful heir to the throne, and Elfwyn, an illegitimate child of Cefwyn and the dark sorceress Tarien Aswydd. Raised by the good witch Gran, Elfwyn grew up unaware of his noble lineage. But at fifteen Cefwyn claims Elfwyn and takes him to live at the capitol, where he becomes fast friends with his half-brother. As much as Elfwyn enjoys his new life the dark side of his parentage constantly pulls on him to release some powerful magic that could destroy everything Cefwyn worked so hard to create.

Eflwyn’s character, teetering so desperately between two very different paths, will draw in readers through a dramatic and sometimes magical coming of age story. Much of the early parts of the book rely on political intrigue and constant references to history of the land; fortunately Cherryh wisely includes a short introduction that provides a quick summary of the back-story for readers new to the series. The remaining action focuses on Elfwyn and his search for his own path. The action overall is well plotted and fast moving, and Cherryh's controlled prose works effectively alongside her ideas. Where I feel like the book falls apart, though, is at the ending. When finally confronted with the true evil behind all the dark plotting, the conversation might as well be this:

Evil Person says, "You will bow before me and further my plans to bend the kingdom to my mighty will. Hahahaha!"

Elfwyn responds with, "Screw you, jack!"

Cherryh's approach is not quite that simplified, nor as bluntly snotty, but you get the idea. At no point is Elfwyn really tempted or confused by the evil. Sure, there are points at which he's manipulated but it's made pretty clear that he's not under control of himself at those moments. It never enters Elfwyn's mind that the evil way is better, that he or even the kingdom could be better off if he--ahem--went to the dark side. It all makes the real struggle of the novel---the internal struggle for Elfwyn to find out who he really is---pretty mundane. To her credit, I think Cherry's main intent was to create a compelling commercial novel, and Fortress of Ice will definitely satisfy anyone looking for a fast read. But anyone looking for fantasy to do a bit more needs to look elsewhere.

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Review: The Squirrel Mother Stories

With characters drawn in clean, cartoony lines and colored in soft pastels, you might think Megan Kelso’s comic strips would sit comfortably on the Sunday Funnies page somewhere between Cathy and Family Circus. But her new book The Squirrel Mother Stories collects comics of a different variety. Not different so much because Kelso tackles more serious subjects, delivers thoughtful dialogue, or creates memorable characters. While she certainly does all of these things Kelso’s real skill lies in the way she lets her stories grow seemingly on their own. Instead of ending each tale with a sudden quip or an obvious “Aha!” moment, these fourteen stories, ranging from fiction to memoir to historical essay, build slowly, panel by panel. You are never quite sure which direction she’s going, but when Kelso gets you to the last panel everything suddenly makes sense.

“Meow Face”, for example, shows us how the heart-wrenching story of a young girl being purposefully locked out of the house by her own aunt becomes the singular moment that defines the girl’s adult life. Two separate but related pieces---“Publius” and “The Duel”---start out as simple character studies of historical figures like Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr, but develop into thoughtful explorations on not just our history but where society is now.

The complexity and depth Kelso delivers in such a small space puts her writing more in the league of short story authors like Alice Munro. Her approach can be a little too subtle at times(I had to read some of the tales a couple of times to fully get what was going on). The point of her tales can be a bit difficult to follow for anyone just looking for a fun read, but those readers willing to dig into the layers of subtext will find a unique vision well worth experiencing. Kelso’s bio lists a novel-length work coming out in 2007 and I can’t wait to see what she’s able to do with more space.

**Special note: The faded quality of these images is the fault of my camera and my low quality image editing software. Someday I'll invest in a scanner, but not today. For better quality images, check out Kelso's own website wwww.girlhero.com.

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Review: An Open Entrance to the Shut Palace of Wrong Numbers

When most people hear the word Surrealism they think of the powerful visual images created by the painters who followed the practices of the group. Dali’s melting watches, Magritte’s businessmen with their bowler hats standing amidst a perplexing landscape…It’s understandable, because so many of the images are startling, fun, dirty, and childlike. Often all at once. But most of the core members of the Surrealists, including the group’s self-appointed leader Andre Breton, were poets. They played and experimented with many of the same ideas in text that the painters explored on the canvas.

One of the few American-born Surrealists, at least one of the few that I know of, is Franklin Rosemont. Although best known for collecting and editing material for books like What Is Surrealism, Rosemont is a poet, essayist, thinker and cultural provocateur in his own right. His most recent book An Open Entrance to the Shut Palace of Wrong Numbers collects a series of short essays using the theme of wrong number phone calls as a framework.

We’ve all had them. Those irritating telephone calls that break us away from whatever we happen to be doing----reading, writing, sleeping, watching t.v.----and end up being a complete waste of our time. The only thing worse is a telemarketer. How and why could this little piece of life experience be worth exploring? Rosemont sez:

Any sudden ringing of the phone inevitably arouses one’s sense of anticipation, but in a Wrong Number it is an unknown voice that speaks, and it utters the unexpected. The recipient of the Wrong Number finds himself/herself to be the unwelcome intruder between two unknowns. The voice that calls and the name it pronounces remain forever faceless and formless for the one who answers. Despite their brevity, therefore, Wrong Numbers are acute moments of derealization…..The Wrong Number is an essentially irrational experience, all the more disturbingly so because it is also concrete. (Rosemont, 10)

For this reason Rosemont entered into an experiment tracking all the wrong number phone calls he received for close to thirty years. I do stress, however, that he admits his study is not very scientific. Many of his notes were scribbled on scraps of paper, a number of which have been lost. Others were scratched out late at night with the lights off and remain, to this day, completely unreadable. Some of his notes just briefly describe the call while others show Rosemont acting on things, trying to coax the stranger into an even odder conversational experience. After defining the basic purpose of his book a series of personal essays, commentary and critical theory move on to expose and explore his idea more deeply.

The early parts of the book unfold like an autobiography as he tries to explain why and how this concept became so important to him. We first see Rosemont as a teenager hitchhiking from Chicago to San Francisco in the early 1960’s so he could take in the Beat Poetry scene. From there we learn about his early exposure to Surrealism, his first correspondences with and even meeting important Surrealists like Claude Tarnaud, Nicolas Calas and Breton. Later we get a few hints on Rosemont’s founding of the U.S. arm of Surrealism in Chicago (which, according to this website anyway, is still doing quite well, thank you very much). Written with a very light tone, these sections draw a fun portrait of the art world of the time.

The whole idea of the wrong number phone call really works quite well as a metaphor for Surrealism. What’s often left out in a definition of Surrealism is that it involved a lot more than the exploration of dreams. It was a direct reaction to the ideas of rational thought that dominated so much of the 19th century; the Surrealists felt rational thought was all fine and good, but it only told part of the story of this thing we call reality. As a group and individually they explored Gnosticsim, mythology, spirituality, random chance and anything else they could get there hands on to get them and their audience thinking and feeling in a different way.

As Rosemont’s essays move forward they start connecting wrong numbers to seemingly anything and everything they possibly can: Bugs Bunny, Marxist theory, Noir films, bebop jazz, alchemy, H.P. Lovecraft, Jacques Vache, etc, etc. It’s interesting and fun for a time. His overall approach is pretty light and humorous for the most…but it does wear on you after a time. The repetitive nature of the book probably makes it better to read in small doses and not 50 or so pages at a time like I did. I definitely plan on keeping this book on my shelf and will probably even look for some of Rosemont’s poetry. As for recommending it to others, it’s an understatement to call it a niche book. But if you like oddball cultural theory you might enjoy it. If nothing else, it makes you appreciate the Surrealist movement a little more and gets you looking at your own life in a slightly different way.

As a final aside, I will say the day I started reading this book I was visiting Miss L in Baltimore. While I was there she received two wrong number calls in the same day, one on her cell phone for someone named Tony and another on her home phone from a lawyer’s office seeking someone regarding their past jail time (Miss L swears to me she’s never spent a day in the clink). In the past week I received six wrong number calls myself, one of them received on my cell phone while writing this review. Coincidence? Probably. But I can’t honestly remember the last time I received a single wrong number, much less six so close together. I will admit to maybe just not paying attention, but it’s enough to make me think that there just might be something to all of Rosemont’s odd little ideas.

Dial carefully.

Excelsior

Ethics and Art

I apologize for the scatter-brain nature of this post. This issue is new to me, and I'm still exploring my thoughts. Any comments are welcome and appreciated.

I signed up for the ethics class this term with the expectation that it would push me and my thoughts in directions I'm not used to going. So far, it hasn't been a disappointment. We've read things by Rilke, Sappho, St. Augustine, Martin Luther King, Jr, and the United Nations. Two key things seem to pop out of virtually everything we read and discuss.

1. Ethics develops out of contemplative thought both prior to and following your own actions.

2. Rights are not granted by a government, a religion or any other instituion. Each and every person needs to be viewed as an equal in regards to rights and the level of respect they should receive.

Which all makes sense in a touchy-feely, happy-go-lucky kind of way. It's nice to theorize about, but difficult to put into practice within your own life. Since the class started I've found myself questioning how I view people and why. I've also been writing a lot more in my journal.

One of the key documents we've read is "Towards a Global Ethic", put out by the Council for a Parliament of the World's Religions. There core purpose is to push for a system of rights based around the religions of the world, to create a recognized system for institutions to follow not matter what God, or Gods, they believe in---or even don't believe in.

The document reads like a legal document. It begins by listing the rights each and every person has just for being alive, and then breaks down the responsibilities different facets of society has to uphold the balance of rights. Things like the right to the best education possible, the right to own property, the right to raise a family are all key points that are clearly explored. But one short paragraph above all continues to stick with me.

For artists, writers and scientists, to whom we trust artistic and academic freedom. They are not exempt from general, ethical standards and must serve the truth.

The obvious angle of these two short sentences is simple: don't purposefully lie. But I don't know if it's enough to stop there. Artist need to seek out the truth and express it however best they can. This can take many forms...showing examples of inequalities in the world, showing methods for improving mankind and the world around them, or even just creating quiet beauty to bring calm contemplation to those willing to slow down enough to experience it.

Is it enough to write material that's just fun and entertaining? The piece I'm working on now is basically an sf/horror rewrite of the Poe classic "The Masque of Red Death". If I get this one to work, I actually have it in the back of my head that I should do a full collection of Poe rewrites. But if the pieces aren't about anything, if they aren't challenging pieces of the world that I see and feel are wrong do I have any business writing them down? A month ago I would have said sure, no problem. But now I'm not so sure.

We'll be doing a lot more reading over the term, but to help myself along I checked out the John Gardner classic On Moral Fiction from the library today. While I don't expect Gardner to give me all the answers I'm searching for, I hope he will at least help me start asking and exploring some better questions.

Excelsior

Random Links

Brian K. Vaughan, comics author of one of my favorite series Y: The Last Man, is interviewed on NPR's Talk of the Nation for his new project The Pride of Baghdad.

The Shortlist for the Man-Booker Prize is up. Have many have I read? None.

File this one under the category of "Huh?" Talks of a film version of Saragmago's novel Blindness.

Some threads of homophobia at Marvel Comics are picked up on in a recent review on Super Underwear Perverts. The most telling paragraph:

The answer is spelled-out very clearly on the last page of the story, as the Crusader, having skipped his best-friend Curtis' funeral, is shown basking in the attention of two 'lovely', ring-conjured, extremely subservient Skrull ladies, who are climbing all over him and feeding him by hand. You see boys-and-girls, the skrull is a dedicated heterosexual. As are all the other superheroes and supervillans of this tale, and so they get to survive to fight again, no matter how stumbling, bumbling, sexist, selfish, insane, evil, murderous or downright psychotic they might be.

New Litmag Temenos looks promising, and they are searching for new work!

Because Brad Meltzer doesn't have enough money, his new book is now advertised on a Nascar.

Jeff at And I Am Not Lying for Real writes on the growing phenomenon of scarification. Warning for those apt to get quesy: some of the images are graphic, bloody and disturbing.

Google joins the ALA with a new page on banned book week (starting on the 23rd this month). It's a terrifying reminder seeing all these titles listed together and why people fear them.

The Sobol Award offers $100k for the best new unpublished, unagented novel. Worth a shot if you have a book taking up space in the sock drawer.

The Nation writes an excellent article on how librarians are defending various citizen rights tied to information. Just one of the reasons I'm moving into the field.

Review: Stagger Lee

It’s Christmas Eve, 1895. In a sleazy bar in St. Louis, Lee “Stagger” Shelton just shot and killed Billy Lyons for touching his Stetson hat. This is the simple beginning to the ever-evolving urban legend of Stagger Lee. The story was picked up and used in song lyrics by old blues masters like John Hurt. From there it passed from mouth to mouth on the streets, prisons and bars all the way on to musicians like folk singer Arlo Guthrie, R&B artist Lloyd Price, contemporary post-pop maestro Beck, and postpunk songwriter Nick Cave. The legend of Stagger Lee changed with each interpretation, with each artist turning the story into tales of redemption, revenge, violence and even justice (note that some of the following images are links; clicking on them will take you to a slightly larger version of the same image for those interested).

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Writer Derek McCulluch and artist Shepherd Hendrix have joined their talents to turn this odd legend into an unusual and gripping graphic novel. Part cultural essay and part dramatic narrative, their book mixes fact, critical interpretation and fictionalized accounts to tell a more believable version of Stagger’s story. The main plot focuses on the courtroom drama of Stagger’s trial, while side stories of political intrigue, racism and romance broaden and deepen the already rich themes. The black and white artwork done by Hendrix, with its straightforward, realistic approach, works well alongside the pseudo-documentary style of McCulloch’s narrative.

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McCulloch occasionally breaks up the story with looks at different song lyrics and versions of Stagger’s legend; while these can get a little distracting, those willing to work through them will find them both informative and enlightening. One interesting aspect is that white artists always portray Stagger as the villain; black artists would sometimes portray him that way, but others would show Stagger as a man defending himself or even a victim of circumstance. Some versions even feel shockingly similar to today’s image of the hiphop gansta. Hendrix’s artwork becomes more cartoony during these essay sections, highlighting the over-the-top interpretations many musicians put Stagger through.

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In reality we know very little of what actually happened. The only hard evidence comes from a small newspaper article in a St. Louis paper and Stagger’s arrest record (check out the Wikipedia Article for more details). The rest of what we know come from the songs. Much of what McCulluch puts into narrative----the court trial, the political scandal, a love story between a prostitute and a piano player who puts the story to song----are pieces of fiction based loosely on the real events. If done in a traditional novel this mix of fact of fiction would probably garner comparisons to authors like Don Delillo.

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But since we are dealing with comics here the most appropriate comparison seems to be Will Eisner himself. Like Eisner, McCulloch is experimenting within the medium of comics. And much like Eisner, with experimentation come some small stumbles, particularly in regards to pacing. But these small stumbles don’t overcome what is otherwise a thoughtful and memorable work that examines the truth behind an unusual urban legend as well as offering a well-informed lesson on the importance of our national stories and how much we can learn from them.

Excelsior

Gargoyle Turns 30

If that book cover looks like a big party, it is. Longtime DC litmag Gargoyle turned 30 last month, and yesterday's party at the Writer's Center in Bethesda, Md. was held to celebrate both the mag's 51st issue as well as its move into middle-age. Readers for the landmark event included Sarah Browning, Virginia Crawford, Sunil Freeman, Jennifer Gresham, Tod Ibrahim, Reuben Jackson, Gerry LaFemina, Nathan Leslie, Lyn Lifshin, Mel Nichols, Sam Schmidt, Ross Taylor, Venus Thrash, and Angel Threatt.

I don't know if it was because of competing lit events like the Poets Against the War reading in downtown D.C. or the opening of football season, but the turnout was odd. Out of roughly 35 people, I'm pretty sure I was one of maybe three people under forty. It was still fun, though. After everyone had their jokes at poor Gargoyle's expense----everything from "You can't trust anyone over 30" to "Gargoyle doesn't look a day over 25---many of the readers made links with their work to 9-11 and all the related events and feelings following and surrounding that day. The most telling, I felt, we're the words given by Venus Thrash who said she witnesses terrorism almost everyday in PG County. She sees it whenever she finds someone's home, car or business damaged, destroyed or vandalized because of their ethnicity or religion and wished the administration would focus a bit more on handling the problems at home.

Editor Richard Peabody provided a lovely cake with frosting done to match the cover of Gargoyle 51. The unhealthy dose of sugar revitalized everyone and helped get people socializing after the reading. I hobnobbed and pressed the flesh a little, and even met a couple of editors for local mags who hit me up for some of my fiction. It was a not-so-subtle reminder of how much the biz of publishing is done through networking. After meeting them, they both gave me their personal emails and, with an wink, said, "Send it here....I pay more attention to the submissions I get through this than I do the email address on the website."

For any of you who missed the event, please visit Gargoyle Magazine to order the new issue. Based solely on what I heard at the reading, it looks to be a fabulous issue. Other than the new Gargoyle I also picked up the newest issue of the Potomac Review, as well as two teeny tiny little lit mags called Quick Fiction and Stray Dogs. With two classes, a job and an ever-growing pile of stuff to read I have no idea when I'll actually get to them. But when I do I'll toss some sort of little write-up here. Until then....

Excelsior.

Review: Wolfboy

This review for Evan Kuhlman’s Wolfboy was tough for me to write. There’s a lot about this novel that I liked, but every time I wrote a review it came across as largely negative. Which wasn’t how I felt at all while reading it. I say this with a word of warning to the reader, and as an apology to Mr. Kuhlman in the unlikely event he stumbles through here. I think I’ve worked out all the kinks, but it’s quite possible I didn’t.

This novel, set in the early 1990’s, opens with the death of Francis Harrelson. Or, rather, it opens just after the death of Francis Harrelson, who dies in a car crash one snowy night on his way back to college after winter break. The following 300 or so pages focus on the four remaining members of the family and how they make those first difficult steps towards recovery.

Each one of them deals with the loss of Francis in their own special way. Mom, who looked to Francis as her closest friend, has trouble dealing with the anger. She eventually becomes violent after a computer error causes the county to send her multiple copies of her son’s death notice. The father retreats to his job at his handmade furniture store and has an affair with his accountant. Little sister Crispy dives headfirst into an obsession with Marky Mark. Yes, of the Funky Bunch. Although just a little girl her obsession drives her to run away from home on her bicycle with hopes of meeting him in person at a concert several hundred miles away, thinking he’ll not only fall in love with her but take her away from all the difficulties at home.

And then there’s Stephen, who is the main character of this story if there is one. Smart, athletic, confident---Francis was the pinnacle of older brothers and, naturally, Stephen idolized him. After his brother died Stephen became angry with everyone and everything. Angry at the driver who killed Francis, angry his parents for not being able to stop it, and even angry at God for letting his brother die when he still had so much life to live. The characters are all well developed, especially Stephen and Crispy. Kuhlman has a real knack for conveying the odd mixture of intelligence and confusion kids so often have. The adults sometimes come off a little more as types, but there involvement in the story is much smaller so it didn’t bother me particularly.

About 1/3 into the story, Stephen’s mother sends him to talk to the town minister to help get out his feelings. The minister counsels young Stephen to find a creative outlet for his feelings. Being a kid just entering the confusing life of a teenager, Stephen picks an art form he knows and loves: comic books. He develops some wild stories about a teenager named Wolfboy who can turn into a werewolf and uses his powers to fight crime throughout the universe. After getting the first couple of tales scripted out he convinces his talented girlfriend Nicole (who I would have been madly in love with as a teen) into doing the artwork. They work together, create a few issues and even sell some through the local bookstore. Kuhlman includes a few of their strips as the main gimmick or hook of the novel.

I give Kuhlman credit for developing comic book storylines that are both thoughtful and funny; the comic book tales included are an odd pastiche of ideas borrowed from comics writers like Paul Chadwick (Concrete) and Kurt Busiek (Astro City) who recreate the superhero genre with a light touch of indie flair. The artwork done by Brendan and Brian Fraim is all black and white, its hard lines with dramatic frames and poses making a link with superhero comics done in the late 80’s and early 90’s (pre-Todd MacFarlane, for fellow comics geeks). Which makes sense, because it’s the style both Stephen and Nicole would have grown up with and known.

As the comic book part of the novel progresses it becomes an obvious mirror for Stephen’s own life. Wolfboy loses his own brother and faces many of the same feelings and frustrations Stephen feels. At one point Wolfboy questions God and finds that God is likewise torn apart with anguish of his own so severely he can’t help anyone on Earth. Wolfboy’s mother, who we find out is really an android, is overwhelmed by the loss of her son and the pain causes her circuitry to short out. The reference to Stephen’s own mother becomes increasingly obvious as the main story continues. This is the real magic of the book. While the inclusion of comics in his novel may seem gimmicky on the surface but the way Kuhlman uses the gimmick proves very effective and moving. By treating comics as serious artform, albeit in a fun way, Kuhlman shows us the power of the creative process and how it can help us not just get though the painful moments of life but also reach some level of understanding.

The one real failing of the book is that I wanted more. Multiple viewpoints and only getting to see the family for about a year’s time only lets Kuhlman get so deep into the powerful issues he’s digging into. The novel could have been more powerful if it focused more on Stephen and didn’t include the distractions of the other characters. But by the end we do get a sense that Harrelsons, and Stephen in particular, will not just be moving on but will find a way to learn from Francis’s death to better themselves. What we see is fabulous; it’s just unfortunate that we don’t get to see the journey continue a little further.

Excelsior

Random Rilke

I'm out of town for the holiday weekend. Unlike most I'm not dodging Seagulls at Ocean City or falling asleep at Bethany, but living it up somewhere deep in New Jersey for a wedding. Not mine, I promise. I would have written something a little more about it before now if I was getting married.

During my travels up above the Mason-Dixon line, I've been reading the first assignment for my Library Ethics class: it's a teeny little book called Letters to a Young Poet by Rilke. How I've missed this little gem for so long I'll never know. Essentially, it's a series of ten short letters to an aspiring poet who attended the same millitary academy Rilke did. It's easy to read, very conversational, and, like Rilke's poetry, filled with little nuggets of wisdom for artists specifically, but also for people in general.

You are so young, so before all beginning, and I want to beg you, as much as I can, dear sir, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything now. Live the questions.

This is, I'm guessing, one of the key points for our class. To begin asking those big questions we're all too often afraid to confront. But it's a great point for any writer. Not so much what does my story, my essay, my poem answer but what does it ask? What journey can it send its reader onto that they will never forget? Thath for me is the difference between a book that's a good read and a book that's a great work of art. All good works find a way to do this, and I don't think it's something that can really be taught. You either learn it on your own or you never learn it. I just need to figure out how for myself.

Hope everyone enjoys the holiday.

Excelsior.

Panel Discussion Recap

Yesterday's graphic novel panel discussion for the librarians went pretty well. The whole meeting was kicked off by Michael Wallace, a speaker hired through the YALSA who has a background in working with teens and has a love for graphic novels and comics. He started out talking about youth services and what role or roles public libraries have to play in regards to them.

His main focus seemed to sit on using graphic novels to get kids reading, especially kids who have trouble reading. He made an interesting point in regards to reading comprehension, that the most difficult thing to teach is how to make connections between different ideas by simply using words. If I understood his presentation, graphic novels can serve as a middle ground between picture books and books without pictures. He didn't seem to focus much at all on the artistic merits of the medium, although he did mention Maus winning the Pulitzer for literature. In his defense, though, he ran short on time. It was easy to tell he was used to speaking longer than the 45 minutes the meeting allowed him.

The panel discussion itself went pretty much how I thought it would. The panel was comprised of one guy who really knows superhero comics, another who really knows manga, a woman who knows manga fairly well, and little old me. Since my main interest is more on the indie side of things, it was a nice balance and I think we presented some good titles to them. The librarians were pretty receptive to hearing about graphic novels we all personally like, even the librarians who don't think much of the form. One comment I made that seemed to stick with them was that comics are a medium of expression, not a genre within a medium. While I can't take credit for the thought (I think I stole it from Scott McCloud, but I'm not sure) it's one that's important to remember. Especially with recent comics like the graphic version of the 9/11 report that just came out.

At the end, several from the audience came up, thanked us and asked for our emails to hit us up with questions. The four of us on the panel decided we'd like to try to get together again in a few months and maybe develop a e-newsletter of some sort to suggest new titles. I liked everyone in the group, so it would nice to stay in touch with them.

Only somewhat related, one of my classes this coming term for library school is on collection development. If we have any large projects I'm hoping to be able to use graphic novels in some way. Since it's still a growing field for libraries, I'm starting to think it might be a good area to get involved in.