Seth's comments (member since Aug 04, 2007)

Seth's comments from the Books I Loathed group.

Limbo, Bernard Wolfe
Mysterium, Robert Charles Wilson
The Man In The High Castle, Philip K. Dick

Alright, Foxymeth, I mean Foxthyme, seeing as how--except for the nonfiction work I'm committed to now--I'm doing only SF for November, it means that I can get to a Douglas Adams book or two next. So I'll do that.

Here are ten suggestions for you, if you want to pick two:

Quick Service or Thank You, Jeeves, or Uncle Fred In The Springtime, by P.G. Wodehouse
Orbitsville, by Bob Shaw
The Anubis Gates, by Tim Powers
The False Inspector Dew, by Petere Lovesey
Replay, by Ken Grimwood
Up The Line, by Robert Silverberg
The Painted Bird, by Jerzy Kosinski
Johnny Got His Gun, by Dalton Trumbo
Time And Again, by Jack Finney

I don't like stories about the Earth being destroyed to make a freeway. They give me bad dreams. This sounds like a very dark, depressing premise for a book. never mind a series. It makes me feel like I'm in a Fritz Leiber novel like The Sinful Ones, except that instead of me being able to step outside the facade that is reality, I've stepped into a reality where everyone but me finds the destruction of Earth funny. I am alone in a twisted world. I suppose you all think Roadwork by Stephen King is a light, cheery romp too.

I think I've lost my mind. Or, no wait, it's over there by the hack-saw.

The quote on Wodehouse's output is that he wrote one book for every year of his life...93. I still resist words like "churned out", or assembly line metaphors, when discussing his prolific nature, but point taken. Ultimately, I think we're on the same wavelength.

He did write some great short stories. Besides Jeeves gems like 'Jeeves and the Yule-Tide Spirit', or 'Crime Wave at Blandings' and 'Lord Emsworth and the Girlfriend', which tie to the famous Blandings series, you have singletons like 'Honeysuckle Cottage' and 'The Amazing Hat Mystery', which play on fantasy tropes in a sly way, you have the Webster the Cat stories in Mulliner Nights, 'Goodbye to all Cats', a great Freddie Widgeon story in Young Men In Spats, plus 'The Clicking Of Cuthbert' and all the golf stuff.

I confess that the most exposure I've had to Dougles Adams is the Doctor Who TV story, City Of Death, which is quite funny, and pretty much considered the best "old school Doctor Who" TV story ever. Douglas Adams wrote it under a pseudonym. It's an amazing piece of work. The Hitchiker stuff is admittedly a major piece of SF that I haven't got to yet, partly because it's so darned accessible. Not likely to go out of print...there when I need it. I have been hit with various Adams one-liners, like the first line Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, and my first reaction is that I'm going to enjoy the author's work, but that he's probably not going to leap ahead of Wodehouse in my estimation, possibly due to, well, an element of "cute and simple". But I pre-judge. I do suspect I'm in for lots of abrupt, cheeky whimsy.

Hmmmmm.

As a bit of a Wodehouse fanatic, I'm just gonna step in here for a second...

It seems a bit off-kilter to suggest that Wodehouse "slapped out" books, as the term suggests that he was not a writer who was concerned enough about his work to make revisions and work through re-writes and polishing. Most biographers of Wodehouse (Donaldson, Usborne, Benny Green, David Jasen, etc.) do mention the fact that Wodehouse novels were worked over pretty good by Wodehouse until he was happy with them. When Usborne made sure Wodehouse's last, unfinished novel--Sunset At Blandings--was published, to fill out what was a sparse, incomplete manuscript, Usborne included all the rough notes and revisions Wodehouse was making, which indicate a pretty meticulous writer, when it comes to aiming for perfection. And this was when he was about 92 years old.

Certainly I agree with the assertion that Wodehouse loved to write, was obviously born to write--specifically to write humour. And to be fair, it is true that Wodehouse used various humourous turns of phrase repeatedly, but I would argue that those particular phrases or witticisms are the lesser ones, which sort of came in handy, like "he did not resort to calling Skiffy a vapid and irreflective guffin, for fear of getting the sack, but the words trembled on his lips.". I'm paraphrasing there, to bring out the phrase "the words trembled on his lips". BUT--I would argue that the very best Wodehouse quotes show up in one book only, and that there are a great many of them (read the stories,, or check out Wodehouse Nuggets, by Richard Usborne), and that for every repeated phrase that begins to lose its lustre, there are hundreds of original lines, which sustained Wodehouse's career, and his status as a comic genius, from around 1903 to 1975, when he died on Valentine's Day.

Now, if there is a repetitive aspect to Wodehouse's work, it is in his use of some of the same plots over and over again. That has certainly been discussed by biographers and critics. Most of the Jeeves and Bertie books run the same basic plot line. This sounds very negative; this sounds like a reason not to read Wodehouse. BUT--the fact is, a series should create a sense of familiarity, because that is what keeps people coming back; they grow to love the characters, they feel that the stories are different enough that each book is fresh, but really, if you were to start dissecting and comparing, yes, you have a lot of similar plots. This is where my argument against the notion that Wodehouse ran the same joke-lines over and over again comes in: I feel Wodehouse was able to tinker with the same plot elements year after year precisely because in the details--in his ability to keep coming up with amazing new witticisms (yes, amongst some old reliables that became Wodehouse cliches), he was the best humour writer ever. The bag of tricks, in other words, was huge. Huge.

Wodehouse remains my favourite writer. His mastery of the English language, and all of the aspects of the English language that can possibly be found and used to create humour, make him my Master. He is my Master of words. Now...coming down off that pedestal for a moment...Wodehouse is a writer of light fiction, of stories with happy endings that take place in an eternally Edwardian England, mostly. You can get into discussions, a la Orwell on Wodehouse, of relevant social satire, and Bertie Wooster as feckless British youth with no purpose, but you really read Wodehouse for the fun, and to meet the king of language. For depth, I go to Kosinski, or Trumbo, or Golding, or Orwell himself. So I have to acknowledge that my favourite writer is not deep, and that other writers do fulfill important needs that Wodehouse can never provide. Which makes me this kind of reader: George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four is the most important book about the human species that I have ever read, and probably the most vital book written last century. But it is not my favourite book. My favourite books are The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers, for inventiveness of plot beyond all, and Quick Service, by P. G. Wodehouse, for the high genius of the humour...and the plot.

Not keen on "anthropomorphizing", the word or the act. And I'm fine with "supercalifragelistikexpialidocius"...right up til the end. I don't like "docius". It turns it into a cold and scientific term, like all those Latin genus or phylum or species classifications (ie. "arthropodus supercalifragelistikexpialidocius", or something. It should be "superdupercalifragelistikexpialidopey"--like it's Dopey's full name, but you wouldn't call him that, because it's too long.

I don't know what I'm typing at this point. Okay, it's a good word, and I didn't mean to confuse anyone.

I remember being in a university philosophy tutorial, and we were discussing what gives something its essence, how are things defined, and how, when you say something, a universal essence of what-that-is can be triggered in almost everyone's mind. But we had a very pretentious Teaching Assistant, so I listened as he put the suffix 'ness' on the end of examples; "what is orangeness?"; "what is butterflyness?"

"What is Hamletness?" he asked. "Elliot Ness's brother?" I suggested. That got me in a bit of trouble, as did accidently refering to the Philosophy Dept.s upcoming Wine and Cheese party as a Macaroni and Cheese party, that was BYOT (Bring Your Own Theory).

I should mention that, in my childhood, I was very disappointed to learn that gorgonzola was a cheese. I had read a book, put out by Mad Magazine, that collected Don Martin's comic-book tales about Captain Klutz. I can't even remember who else Captain Klutz fought, but one foe he encountered was some kind of large hideous beast called Gorgonzola. I thought this was the best name in the world for a slavering blobule. Then I found out Gorgonzola was really gorgonzola, a cheese. I much prefered Gorgonzola as a munster. Monster.

Yes, I thought my metaphorical placement of smegma was going to go over very big with this crowd. That was a gimme.

And Fistula's sisters are Fibula, a compulsive liar, and Spatula, who expectorates more blood than she consumes.

God bless you guys for reviving this fun thread. God bless you.

The novel Human Nature is often cited as the best Doctor Who novel, written while the TV show was off the air. It was written by Paul Cornell, and featured the 7th Doctor, whose adventures were continued in novels, when the show was cancelled in 1989.

Now, with the show back on the air, we are up to the 10th Doctor (he, for those not familiar, is an alien who can "regenerate" an entirely new body, and somewhat different personality though there is an essential Doctor "essence", when severely injured; this gimmick was brought in way-back-when the first actor who played the Doctor quit, and the show was saved, by having the character finally prove himself to be an alien, by regenerating).

So they've taken Human Nature, a 7th Doctor adventure, and filmed it as a 10th Doctor TV story (2-parter, thank goodness). Paul Cornell, in fact, is quite active writing for the new show. I hate to say it, but I really liked Human Nature, the TV version. But the continuity freak in me, who accepts the novels as part of the canon, is a bit distressed that the Doctor is having the same basic adventure twice. I almost wish they hadn't done this; but I'm torn, because it's fun to watch. I hope this doesn't become a habit--taking previous-Doctor stories and applying them to other Doctors, but I'll just assume Faction Paradox is involved, messing with the Doctor's timeline. Somehow they have caused the Doctor to go through two very similar adventures, both exciting. Yes...that must be the explanation.

Oh, and Da Vinci Code is a loathsome film version of a decent read. As Statler & Waldorf once said, on The Muppet Show: "I've seen detergents that leave a better film!--Oho-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho-hooooooooo!"

Anything picked by some as one of the great works of the 20th century is worth a look. Obviously I recommend you give it 50 pages, and see where that leads. Just keep in mind: if it took five minutes to get someone to see the light--fictional person or not--everyone would be a wonderfully enlightened person. Sometimes epiphanies take a grand scheme by a master of illusions investing the time. As I say, it's been my experience that it would take at least a year of bizarro mental torture to get most people to be more sensitive.

Or it works as a strange fantasy book.

Loved it. Can't trash it. Can maybe see why some might feel it's some kind of bogus fantasy effort with a weak payoff, but I was totally into the whole head-trip.

Basically, I WISH there were some old guy on an island with a clear moral code who would take every selfish, arrogant jerk in the world and teach him not to cause pain to others by mentally torturing him for weeks, so that he would come back to the real world a better person. We need this. The book takes a bit long to make it's point, but given the state of humanity these days, we need a tough-love Yoda with a penchant for harsh but worthwhile lessons.

Fistula. That's like Dracula's boxer sister.

Horror and Crime writers know how to combine words for gross effect. Words like "pistol-whip" and "bone protruding" and "fetid stench". And hey, "disemboweling" by itself is gross, and "puncture-wound" all alone is vile, but how about a DISEMBOWELING PUNCTURE-WOUND! Eh?

I would not want a disemboweling puncture-wound ("What the hell happened to THIS guy?!!")

Okay okay, time for a pretty words thread: gossamer, starshine, splendiferous, Claire Forlani, all-you-can-eat...

"Pit stain" is so yucky, that "Pit Stop" is forever tainted, as a distant relative. "Bitumen" and even "Albumen" give me the willies, and "Angioplasty" is full-out nasty. Anything "plasty" is to be avoided. Is "Spitume" a word? I forget.

Smegma was on the tip of my tongue. Easily more vile than keloid. Keloids are actually more disgusting than the word "keloid", yes? Keloid sounds like sores only robots get. Pustule, meanwhile, expands on pus deliciously.

Ed McBain's "87th Precinct" Mysteries have mostly been mishandled on film. I actually like Fuzz, starring Burt Reynolds as Detective Steve Carella, a lot more than most (Stephen King hates the movie), but more recent TV movies of Ice and Lightning, were weak. Lightning was an awful TV production, and Ice was not as bad, but hardly as riveting as the book, which is possibly McBain's masterpiece. The Canadian-film version of Blood Relatives starring Donald Sutherland as Carella (not exactly Burt Reynolds, right?) is pretty good, but the re-location of the story to such a radically different environment makes it an odd experience for manic McBain fans. I have not seen the Kurosawa film version of King's Ransom (filmed as High And Low) but I think King's Ransom is a lesser McBain entry, and I'll probably like the film more.

Really Bad Movies that come from good books:
The High Crusade (SF; from a book by Poul Anderson)

Martians Go Home (SF; from a book by Fredric Brown)

Just Cause (Thriller; from a book by Jon Katzenbach; oh, I loved the book and they just ruined it when they did the movie)

The Pack (Horror: decent "killer dogs" horror novel by David (?) Fisher, altered and filmed rather badly)

The Tommyknockers (LOVED the novel, more than most Stephen King fans, but I don't like the TV mini-series; of course, Stephen King adaptations are worth their own special attention).

Movies that I liked better than the original book:

Jaws

Die Hard (book was originally called Nothing Lasts Forever by Roderick Thorp)

By the way: LOVED Blade Runner the film, and Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep--the original Philip K. Dick novel--equally, even though they are very different.

gross and unlikeable, but they serve their purpose:

offal, pus, feces, earwig, lice, bile, phlegm, scabies, gangrene, femoral or carotid (usually gushing in a crime novel), bloodclot, hookworm, keloid, mucus, vomitorium, sodium nitrite, cyst, dung beetle, mildew, grout, necrophage, roadkill, Howdy Doody (hate him), slime-trail, meningitus, Andy Dick.

I knew there were reasons I didn't like these words! "Disingenuous", "Marinade", "Marinate". These are all troublesome words.