Here's the back story: Born in 1900, William Heinesen was an author, poet, and painter from the Faroe Islands, which was for much of his life under Da...moreHere's the back story: Born in 1900, William Heinesen was an author, poet, and painter from the Faroe Islands, which was for much of his life under Danish rule (The Faroes are now mostly autonomous, although Denmark still handles their defense, legal system, and 'foreign affairs.') Although very much invested in the life, culture, and language of his native land, Heinesen elected to write in Danish for practical reasons. It was for this reason that in 1981, when Nobel-Prize-rumor-mongers (the best type of rumor-monger, for my money) spread the word that Heinesen was going to win that year's prize, the author immediately wrote to the Swedish Academy and withdrew his nomination. As he said,
"The Faroese language was once held in little regard – indeed it was suppressed outright. In spite of this the Faroese language has created a great literature, and it would have been reasonable to give the Nobel Prize to an author who writes in Faroese. If it had been given to me, it would have gone to an author who writes in Danish, and in consequence Faroese efforts to create an independent culture would have been dealt a blow."
[Thank you, Wikipedia...]
Anyway, Laterna Magica is not supposedly Heinesen's best (or best known) work, but I found both the premise and execution of this collection rather fascinating. A loose thread runs through all the stories, which all take place in a small Faroese village, and are being narrated in the present tense by a person who is supposedly walking with you from one end of town to the other. (This is a book that would do very well to have a map in the front...) On the way, the narrator points out houses to you and tells you about the inhabitants. These aren't really full stories, or even full anecdotes, simply slices of the lives that take place in this village.
Sometimes the effect is rather anti-climactic, or even disconcerting. For instance, the first story is presented as a ghost story (they all have explanatory subtitles). It seems that two boys who once lived in a certain house were sitting at home one day and were visited by two old women. The women scared the boys, who couldn't get them to leave until their parents could be heard returning home, upon which, the women disappeared into thin air. That's it. No explanation, to future sightings--the mother merely remarks, 'oh, that happens sometimes,' and the story ends.
The book itself ends on a similar note--no fanfare, no fade out "yay, we got to the other end of town" moment. The framing device of this walk you've been taking just drops off. What makes it work then is that these are the type of stories that you would actually hear if you were walking through a remote fishing village. There's not always narratives to each moment of life, but in the context of everyday life, these moments are still important just for having happened. There's a continuity to these tales that does make you feel like you've visited this town, that you have some insights into the dramas that drive its citizens.
Reading Laterna Magica is not unlike taking a vacation to your childhood home and wandering around with your grandparents--perhaps not the something that you'd want to do all the time, but certainly an enriching experience to have had.(less)
Obama may simply be too nice, well rounded, and educated to be our next president. How could we, as Americans, ever live with ourselves if we elected...moreObama may simply be too nice, well rounded, and educated to be our next president. How could we, as Americans, ever live with ourselves if we elected such a man? A man with a balanced a viewpoint, an awareness of the world outside of the US, a powerful handle on the law (he was a professor of law at U. Chicago), a sense of how his past experiences have informed his current point of view, an apparently genuine optimism about the US (despite a recognition of its faults), and hell, a multisyllabic vocabulary? Could we do such a thing?!
Although many of Ekman's future concerns--tensions between the Sami communities in Northern Sweden and Swedish society, small town politics, the meani...moreAlthough many of Ekman's future concerns--tensions between the Sami communities in Northern Sweden and Swedish society, small town politics, the meaningless violence that comes as the consequence of violence with motivation--are also elemental in this, her first novel, Under the Snow definitely reads as a primer for better things to come. Namely, Blackwater. If this had been the first novel of Ekman's that I had read, I wouldn't necessarily believe that she'd develop into so fine a prose-writer. Her characters lack a real emotional depth, her dialog is witty and clever to the point of embarrassment. But she does have an excellent sense of atmosphere and setting and uses these to her advantage here. Even so, Under the Snow is imminently skippable for all but the most anal completist. (less)
I picked up War by Candlelight as part of my new project: To find contemporary (possibly American?) authors whose work wouldn’t immediately turn me o...moreI picked up War by Candlelight as part of my new project: To find contemporary (possibly American?) authors whose work wouldn’t immediately turn me off with snarky postmodern pyrotechnics and faux quirkiness, with concepts and plotlines that outstrip the prose, with the constant I-Get-It-Do-You-Get-It? nudge-nudging that seems to be the currency in which so many contemporary writers traffic in. This is not, of course, to say that all self-aware, reflexive, fanciful writing is garbage—simply that I personally am rather tired of it and want some sort of reassurance that this isn’t the only thing going on in fiction right now.
This book turned out to be a really good counter to all of the above. Not only is it the first book of short stories that I have finished from cover to cover since Karen Russell’s delight of a collection (St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves) came out last year, but it consistently manages to approach its subjects and characters with a kind of critical empathy: Alarcon feels for his characters, but is never so caught up in their respective dramas that he falls back on sentimentality or cheap laughs.
Alarcon treats everyday drama (troubled relationships with family members and lovers) with the same gravity with which he approaches larger conflicts with grander implications (revolutionaries hiding in the Peruvian jungle, riots in a prison inhabited uniquely by ‘students’ and ‘terrorists’ which are subdued via firebombing, mudslides that bury whole villages). This is unusual and refreshing, a wide-angle perspective on human conflict that appreciates that all pain and drama is pivotal to those who are experiencing it, no matter what the stakes or scale.
The only real weakness in this collection is one that can be easily understood and pardoned. War by Candlelight is staged almost entirely in Peru (generally Lima), Alarcon vying for the position of national writer with a simultaneous earnestness and naiveté that bespeaks the conflict inherent in the immigrant experience. No opportunity to describe the hustle and claustrophobia or Lima “in all her glory” is passed by, an underlying affection for his third-world milieu that takes on the tone of a college student returning from a particularly eye-opening semester spent abroad, and occasionally becomes downright patronizing and simplistic. Alarcon did, after all, spend most of his formative years in Alabama and can’t be expected to completely shake the voice and outsider perspective of an Americano.
On the whole, however, War by Candlelight is a well-written, engaging read. Alarcon is a writer of experiences, not concepts, and a distinct voice among his peers. (less)
A great example of how genre-fiction can be "literary." A really enjoyable, quick read that plays with the conventions of the western without straying...moreA great example of how genre-fiction can be "literary." A really enjoyable, quick read that plays with the conventions of the western without straying into self-aware parody.(less)
I read a short story by Einar Mar Gudmundsson ("Uninvited") in the Icelandic issue of McSweeny's (Issue 15--it's really good, you should pick it up) a...moreI read a short story by Einar Mar Gudmundsson ("Uninvited") in the Icelandic issue of McSweeny's (Issue 15--it's really good, you should pick it up) and it had quite an effect on me. The story was broken into discreet sections, each a photographic anecdote which wasn't necessarily being included in linear order, but was organized in such a way that you felt as if you were entering the situation--and the events leading up to the immediate story--in an organic fashion. there was an event, there were emotions, there were moments leading up to and progressing from that event, and they all got sort of muddled up in the re-telling. Which is about as accurate of a portrayal of one's personal experience as I think you can get.
This is a narrative approach that I know I've harped on before--Isak Dinesen addresses her characters' memories and anecdotes in a similar fashion--but I think it really does merit some further attention. Chances are, when you're meeting someone new and sharing stories about your life, you don't reel off a time-line of events starting with your birth, progressing through your adolescence, and skipping one by one through each of the important events of your adult life without ever stopping on a digression, or more detailed explanation, or being pulled off course by a memory that perhaps isn't the point per se, but really did make a difference to the way your perspective developed. But for some reason, every biopic (what a foul terrible genre that is) and ever so many biographies approach one's life in this fashion. Which to me is a veritable attack on the nature of memory and a truly boring way to tell a story.
Like Gudmundsson's aforementioned short story, Angels of the Universe, understands memory and experience fully, and really gets to the heart of these by building meaning and significance slowly, as the book progresses. Chapters are divided into mini 'chaplets,' each of which relates a memory or image or exchange that when collaged together, gives you a broad, layered picture of the main character and of his experiences going in and out of a psychiatric hospital in Reykjavik in the 60s.
It doesn't sound like a fast, 'fun' read, but it's very compelling--wry and observant and funny, and never in the least self-pitying.
For a novel about witchcraft and ancient pagan rituals and such, this book was strangely prudish. On many levels, actually. For one, several of the bo...moreFor a novel about witchcraft and ancient pagan rituals and such, this book was strangely prudish. On many levels, actually. For one, several of the book's main characters--a group of part-time witchcraft enthusiasts/alterna-college students (they have piercings! and tattoos! and they do drugs! and still get A's!)--are embarassingly endowed with the language of 12 year olds in 90s middle America, scoffing at the world with such badass rejoinders as "Don't be a jerk," and 'As if!" They are 2D caricatures, exaggerated Bad Seeds that smack of an outsider's attempt to capture a subculture she has no understanding of. This is unfortunate, as in some ways, the struggle to understand and accept societal outliers into the still relatively homogeneous and insulated Icelandic character could be a matter of real self-reflection and (plot-strengthening) importance in a book like this.
I do believe that Sigurdardottir knows this implicitly--her single working mom cum co-detective Thora Gudmundsdottir awkwardly navigates such unheard of territories as erotic asphyxiation and body modification, and tries in vain for most of the novel to figure out what could be ailing her teenage son--only to find out that he's fathered a child with his fifteen-year-old girlfriend. The idea is that she's navigating a new world, with new problems that she's not necessarily equipped for. And this could be great copy, except for the fact that on top of a complete lack of understanding of any of the 'perversions' that she comes across, each moment of potential pathos is completely muted and rushed over. Mom storms out of a meeting with her son's baby-momma and folks just to go home and make dinner with her new boyfriend--albeit a wacky dinner because she's all out of sorts--and consoles the kid with the idea that he can come up with names for the baby (abortion, I might add, is not even an option that is mentioned as having been definitively excluded...) before rushing off for a business meeting with her clients.
It's not to say that there's no good here. The historical aspects (Thora has to become familiar with ancient European witch-hunting rituals and texts, leading her all over Iceland to peruse Withcraft museums in the middle of nowhere) are relatively untrodden and fascinating in a gruesome sort of way; the consciously multi-lingual element (we are told that characters speak Icelandic, English, and German throughout) gives the plot a sort of globe-trotting, urbane feel; and the heroine is potentially the type of plucky, ill-equipped, firecracker that a reader likes to get behind.
So, final verdict is, I think: 'A' for effort, but severely limited.(less)
Certain novels come to you with pre-packaged expectations. They just seem to be part of literature's collective unconscious, even if they are complete...moreCertain novels come to you with pre-packaged expectations. They just seem to be part of literature's collective unconscious, even if they are completely outside of your own cultural referents. I, for instance, who have no particular knowledge of--or great love for--romantic, Anglo-Gothic fiction, came to Wuthering Heights with the assumption that I was picking up a melancholy ghost story of thwarted, passionate love and eternal obsession. Obsession turned out to be only accurate part of this presumption.
Having an image of Heathcliff and Cathy embracing Gone with the Wind-style on a windy moor ironed in my mind, I was almost completely unprepared for the hermetic, moribund, bleak, vengeful, perverse, and yes--obsessive--novel that this really is. Don Quixote is not about windmills and Wuthering Heights is not really a love story. Heathcliff and Cathy's love affair (if it can be called that) is a narcissistic ("I am Heathcliff!" Cathy exclaims at one point), possessive, and imminently cruel relationship predicated on self-denial and an obsessiveness that relies not on passion, but rather borders on hatred. They are selfish, violent, and contriving people who have borne their fair share of abuses (mostly Heathcliff in this respect) and in turn, feel no compunction about raining similar abuses on those who they find beneath them.
Given this dynamic, it seems perhaps inevitable that these two characters would make not only themselves miserable, but everyone around them miserable--even after death. This is particularly easy to accomplish mainly because there are--with the exception of Mr. Lockwood, the tenant who rents a home from Heathcliff--no outside characters. Everyone in the novel (including the servants) is isolated, trapped between the same two homes, with the same two families, and have truly no chance of escaping any of the events and repercussions that occur.(One character makes a temporary escape, only to suffer all the more for it later.)
More important, however, is the fact that Heathcliff and Cathy don't even need be present (although they usually are in some fashion) for their influences to be felt by the other characters. The sins of the father, are literally, inherited and distributed among the next generation. The children of Wuthering Heights are not only physical doubles of their parents (At least 3 characters look like Cathy, and one resembles Heathcliff), but they are also spiritual stand-ins. They must suffer for past transgressions, and they must find a way to make amends for them. All, I might add, without the particular benefit of ever having the full story, the context that might be necessary to actually change their circumstances. Misery, it seems, is inevitable.
There is, of course, much more to be said about this novel. One could spend quite some time dissecting all the various repetitions and doublings, the narrative structure (the story is told by the housekeeper to the lodger who then writes it down as a diary entry), or the archetypal analogies and semi-biblical symbolism that seems to be implicit to every part of this story.
The point being, I suppose, that while Wuthering Heights may not be the wistful romance one (or maybe just I) expected to be, it is a particularly satisfying one for all of its dark and layered surprises. (less)
During the particularly bleak summer of my 11th year, I spent a month hiding from my wicked step-mother in the basement bedroom I shared with my siste...moreDuring the particularly bleak summer of my 11th year, I spent a month hiding from my wicked step-mother in the basement bedroom I shared with my sister. No TV, no movies, and very little radio reception meant I read more than usual, and when I went through my own summer reading, I started borrowing from my sister, whose taste ran mostly to Goosebumps and Choose Your Own Adventure books (which were, admittedly, totally awesome). But she did have some racier titles tucked away. The book I remember in particular was about a girl who got run over by her best friend after sleeping with the friend's boyfriend while high as a kite on strawberry-flavored hash. The dead girl then somehow inhabits the body of her murderous friend and spends the book trying to figure out how she died, while intermittently having second-hand, multi-positional sex with the newly reunited couple.
It was disturbing and sexy and taboo and I read it twice in one day.
What's the point of all this, you ask? The point is this: Given the alluring, soft-lit ads that the CW has been spinning out about the new Gossip Girl TV show, I was really hoping the book would have that same sort of effect. I was hoping that somewhere out there, a sheltered teenage girl was hiding this book under her mattress and pulling it out in secret to learn about blow jobs and pot smoking and underage drinking.
To be fair, Gossip Girl does cover this ground amply--its debauched youths smoke French cigarettes on the steps of the MET, drink cosmos and vodka tonics in swank hotel bars, molest each other, sleep around, and buy pot in Central Park. Unfortunately, though, the sense of taboo is lost. Don't get me wrong--I'm not asking for moralizing. I just think it takes away a lot of the fun when no limits are being defied. These kids don't have to steal liquor from their parents' cabinets--they buy them at members-only, A-list clubs. They don't have surreptitious sex in the back of parked cars--they get seduction advice from their parent's lovers. If I had read this as a teenager, I wouldn't have had anything to live vicariously through. It would simply have been too unimaginable that I could possibly experience anything that these uber-cool semi-adults do.
My other qualm (well, main qualm--I have limited space here) is the overall irony of the book. Cecily Von Ziegesar (what an appropriate name, no?) gets it--Her anonymous gossip-blogger gets it. Her artsy outcast reading Camus on the traffic island gets it. Her rebel-turned-reject heroine gets it. And they're all above it, too. Beautiful wild-child Serena may be so worried about her future that she 'can't taste her Tic Tacs,' but at the end of the day, she still knows how to play the game: "She could keep up with the likes of Christina Aguilera and Joaquin Phoenix. No Problem." The outcast may succumb to his fantasies of what it would be like to escort a rich girl to a benefit party while wearing an Armani suit, but he'll end up taking the suit back to the department store before he makes a fool of himself. This is exactly the problem. They know too much to make fools of themselves. Even when they fuck up--even when they sleep with their best friend's boyfriend, when they spend a night vomiting on themselves in their own bed--there's no embarrassment, no regret. Nothing at stake. They're still beautiful and rich and savvy no matter what, and they'll always get what they want eventually.
Not for nothing though, Gossip Girl still includes such gem observations as "Blair...gap[ed] at Nate's hard-on. It looked like it was going to take over the world," and may be able to single-handedly re-educate us fogeys on the multitudinous uses of the word 'slut.' So that's gotta count for something. Thx, GG!(less)
Arnaldur Indridason’s third ‘Icelandic Thriller’ finds his Inspector Erlendur in a plush Reykjavík hotel five days before Christmas trying to puzzle o...moreArnaldur Indridason’s third ‘Icelandic Thriller’ finds his Inspector Erlendur in a plush Reykjavík hotel five days before Christmas trying to puzzle out yet another gruesome murder—the brutal stabbing of the hotel handyman cum Santa Claus—that seems to have its roots in the past. Indridason’s previous efforts (the multi-award winning Jar City and Silence of the Grave) practiced such hindsight to rather compelling effect: rather than celebrate in the killers’ capture, we empathize with their motives. In fact, we almost applaud them for enacting what feels like a sort of karmic justice. Some people, it turns out, just really deserve to die.
In Voices, however, Indridason’s sympathies cast too large a net for either himself or his stodgy Inspector to reel in. It takes up the familiar cause of the downtrodden—battered women, abused children, victims of rape, those suffering from substance additions—but clumsily adds to it, trying to evoke even more reader compassion for Indridason’s new cast of prostitutes, pedophiles, and homosexuals. Unfortunately, trying to empathize with so many different characters leaves us not feeling for many of them at all. Moreover, reading Indridason’s frequently clunky prose (no fault of the translator—a seasoned veteran with Old Norse sagas and a fistful of modern Icelandic literary translations to his credit) reveals a distinct lack of authorial understanding. He wants to empathize with the hardships of gay men coming of age in 1980s Iceland, but doesn’t quite know how to, or even why. The act of empathizing has then become a knee-jerk reaction, and virtually abandons true insight into the experiences of another person for the satisfaction of arelatively empty gesture.
It’s pity that defines Voices—and a shame, too. For as we had seen in Indridason’s previous work, Iceland may be a small country where the phone book is alphabetized by first name, but its problems are not so different from our own.
This book began with a great premise: in the wake of his girlfriend's murder, a man discovers a picture of her having (porno-style) sex with another m...moreThis book began with a great premise: in the wake of his girlfriend's murder, a man discovers a picture of her having (porno-style) sex with another man. Though this is his only clue, and despite the fact that he is still the police's main suspect, he decides--vigilante-style--to solve her murder himself. Along the way, he begins to sleep with a woman who not only resembles his deceased girlfriend, but who also works for the same airline. The Hitchcock-ian echoes compound when he begins spying on his neighbors (and they on him) from his...Rear Window. Unfortunately, even for these great (and as it has been pointed out to me--Thanks, M. Asher--rather De Palma-esque) cinematic flourishes, the narrative simply cannot sustain itself under the equal weights of empty characterization (we know that the main character is a war reporter and a technophobe, but don't know why or really see any traits in action) and a foolish plot which presupposes the downfall of contemporary civilization via the evils of digital television.
Rather than give us a true picture of our anti-hero, Larsen hides the man behind incendiary speeches about the masses' inability to understand modern art, society's dumbed down morality and passivity, and strangely damning monologues about having raped women who he knew actually 'really wanted it in the end.' Which doesn't really give us any reason to invest in this person when the plotline--hinging on the untamed power and evil of High Definition Television (that is, H.D.T.V!)--spirals into a the paranoiac realm of such Technopocolypse classics as "The Net."
What's worst for me, however, is that we're seeing, yet again, a novel that begins with an exciting, meaning-laden, and (gasp!) entertaining concept, degenerate immediately upon trying to tackle--with a remarkable lack of foresight--some bigger, grander issue. Because apparently, one murder is not enough for us, and nothing really counts unless we can attach some grand, global crisis to it. (less)
Given that the premise of this 'study' is that the author and his wife were debating the pros and cons of moving to Denmark permanently after spending...moreGiven that the premise of this 'study' is that the author and his wife were debating the pros and cons of moving to Denmark permanently after spending three non-consecutive, Fulbright-aided years there--I can hardly claim that this is an exhaustive, academically rigorous study of Danish life or Expat culture in Dejlige Lille Land ("The Nice Little Country.") However, given that all of my knowledge of the country has thus far been accumulated through tour guides, travel brochures, and novels, any first-hand accounts (especially from a similar cultural perspective) are useful.
Most of the authors, artists, and teachers that the author interviews are individuals that came to Denmark in the 60s and 70s, either as a result of 'falling in love with a Dane' (this is a major theme for many of my Danish-language classmates, actually), never leaving after a brief period of study, or for some (although less than you might expect) because of political restiveness with the Good Ole' U S of A. As a rule, they point out the more 'humane' system of health care and overall societal compassion in Denmark, as well as the less media-stimulated, less violent, and generally more 'secure' Danish environment. They also note a lack of 'vitality' and energy, and a sense that all must conform in order to maintain a societal balance. According to these folks, the Danes don't appreciate boat-rockers.
Despite the relative homogeneity of the answers, I did particularly enjoy certain tidbits:
1) Children help pick out their own curriculum each year.
2) Birthday parties, dinner parties, holiday celebrations, and social of events of pretty much any stripe tend to follow the same agenda. The same foods are eaten, the same games are played, and generally, this happens in the same order.
3) A 'typical' Dane would rather walk around the block a few times rather than show up to a place too early.
4) Foreign university degrees don't mean a whole lot in Denmark, unless you've also been educated in one of their own universities.
5) Danish Parliament has twelve different parties represented in it.
Anyway, there are more neat little things, but lest I start horribly generalizing (too late! some of you say) I'll leave it at that.
Having read the first few stories in Seven Gothic Tales, I'm happy to report that the hype around Dinesen is well deserved. Relating her tales as well...moreHaving read the first few stories in Seven Gothic Tales, I'm happy to report that the hype around Dinesen is well deserved. Relating her tales as well-wrought tangents--elliptical anecdotes nested inside one another, ever expanding to the bigger picture--Dinesen not only provides a conversant fabric and background for her characters, but also taps into the spontaneous, memory-triggering quality of oral storytelling.
"The Chevalier's Tale" is particularly indicative of this: The storyteller (who is relating his tale to another narrator) starts off by telling us that his story is about a remarkable woman whom he met on the day his lover tried to poison him. It then becomes necessary to digress--Who was his lover? Why did she try to poison him? These stories raise questions of their own, which in turn, must be answered before the story that was ostensibly 'the point' can be told with any clarity. Could Dinesen have just started at the 'beginning,' telling her story in a compact, linear fashion? Probably. But such forethought is, once again, the project of prose narration (which is perhaps not truly Dinesen's aim here), and would have robbed the story of the organic familiarity that I'd argue makes it so accessible and pleasurable for the reader in the first place.(less)
I started this book at 3:30 on an insomniatic Friday night and finished it on the subway on the way to work on Tuesday. It was a rather apropos readin...moreI started this book at 3:30 on an insomniatic Friday night and finished it on the subway on the way to work on Tuesday. It was a rather apropos reading schedule considering the format of After Dark which begins around midnight and ends around 7 AM.
It's a simple and sufficiently enjoyable book--one that I'm sure hardcore fans and mild appreciators can both agree is 'Minor Murakami.' But it brings up an interesting conflict that I think is implicit in Murakami's writing, namely that his ideas often outstrip his prose. And while I found After Dark to be a little cutesy and gimmicky and perhaps beneath what Murakami is capable of, I do think that it's subject matter is far better suited to his writing style than say--and I know I'm about to wholly alienate a good 58% of you--The Wind-Up Bird Chronical, which was so sprawling and large that by the time I got to the end of it I was perhaps, impressed at the expanse of the novel, but not terribly sure of why any of it actually mattered.
It's not to say that Murakami can't write about larger, more involved, more resonant topics. I hear, for instance, that his essays about the Kobe earthquake and the posion gas attacks in the Tokyo subway are quite good. And I was strangely moved after reading Hardboiled Wonderland. But even in the case of the latter, we're dealing with unicorns, and time travel, and secret subway tunnels, and then finally, something larger, something more tangible in the midst of all of his fantasies. And I suppose I trust more in his ability to deal with a Big Idea like the vulnerability of memory than I do in his ability to render accountability for Japan's role in mainland China massacres and its actions in Manchuria.
I read Murakami for his 'pop sensibility,' for his aging jazz aficiandos and Beatles fan self-stand ins and his fondness for mysticizing the darker, more hidden worlds within urban settings. I like his quirkiness. I like the fact that he conned The New Yorker into publishing a story about a talking monkey.
I like, truth be told, Sputnik Sweetheart best, which I realize does not make me his 'ideal reader.'
This is one of those books where the back-story itself is almost good enough. Years after he originally wrote this novella (at age 19) in 4 Compositio...moreThis is one of those books where the back-story itself is almost good enough. Years after he originally wrote this novella (at age 19) in 4 Composition Notebooks (remember those black and white ones that you did all your Important Writing in in middle school?), Capote hastily moved out of his brownstone and asked his Super to throw away anything that he'd left behind in the rush. The detritus included a box containing this manuscript. A neighbor found the box and decided that such a thing should be kept for posterity. Which he did--in his closet--until he died recently. Then his relatives came across the manuscript and sold it to Sotheby's which sold it to the NYPL to house in their Truman Capote collection. And after various arguments about the ethics of publishing that which was intended to be un-published, we now have Summer Crossing in all its colon-happy, run-on sentenced, uber-similied splendor.
It's a sweet story, in its way, although the brassy 17 year old precursor to Holly Golightly ends up getting hers in about every sense. In essence, what begins as a hedonistic summer of independence becomes a rather doomed coming of age, with very little hint of redemption.
I'm not entirely sure I agree with the choice to publish this manuscript (although I look forward to seeing it at the NYPL). On one hand, I'm glad we get a glimpse of What He Was before What He Became. However, there is something a bit sobering about the appropriation of an author's work after his/her death.
At any rate, reading Summer Crossing will definitely give one a chance to think "I could do [better than] that!" which is probably reason enough to make it available.(less)
Tursten's 2nd novel with Inspector Huss--The Torso--is one of those buzzed-up novels that people who care about these sorts of things really went nuts...moreTursten's 2nd novel with Inspector Huss--The Torso--is one of those buzzed-up novels that people who care about these sorts of things really went nuts for awhile back. So I figured it couldn't hurt to start at the beginning. D.I. Huss has a lot going for it: Swedish female detective who moonlights as a Judo master (no, really), familial tension as a microcosm of greater societal tension (one of her daughters becomes a skinhead midway), Hell's Angels, BDSM photos as evidence, and general police squad drama.
This book definately reads like a primer, however. Tursten spends a lot of time establishing who her characters are, often by following them through a scene only to have them repeat it verbatim ten pages later to another character. A lot of space and time is wasted on this rehashing. The dialog also runs away with itself at times, with characters melodramatically emoting and responding to what are actually some very important social issues in Sweden (treatment of foreigners, such as the Finnish maid; the rise of the aforemention Skinhead youth culture, etc). My last pet peeve was simply the fact that the reader is forced to go through every minute aspect of the police investigation--the meetings, the dead ends, the interviews with sad old ladies. This, I admit, is not so much a fault of the book but a preference of my own. Make a note: Police Procedurals and Crime Novels--very different things.
At any rate, I am still looking forward to The Torso, whose grotesque crime apparantly leads the detectives on a wild chase through Sweden and Copenhagen. Skal!(less)
This is the type of collection that you (or, really, I)wish were more widely produced and read. Compiling a discriminating selection of (almost comple...moreThis is the type of collection that you (or, really, I)wish were more widely produced and read. Compiling a discriminating selection of (almost completely unavailable translations of) short stories written by the luminaries of 'Classical' Danish literature--including Henrik Pontoppidan (Nobel Prize winner in 1917), Herman Bang, and Jens Peter Jacobsen--the translators introduce and contextualize each author with a short biography and a bit of information about the story itself. These are exciting and important authors, indicated both by the aforementioned explanations, and also by the works themselves (the title story, by Pontoppidan, is one of the most enjoyable and elegant pieces of short fiction I've read in some time).
Unfortunately, this collection is a pretty severe tease for anyone who becomes interested--a quick survey of area university and public libraries, as well as several major bookstores yielded not a single copy of many of these authors' novels.
Pretty sad state of affairs when the work of a Nobel Prize winner languishes in non-translation.(less)
First and foremost, this is a book about form. Four of the five stories are broken in half, each one ‘nesting’ (thanks, Chabon) inside the other until...moreFirst and foremost, this is a book about form. Four of the five stories are broken in half, each one ‘nesting’ (thanks, Chabon) inside the other until we get to the apex of the novel in one complete, contained story. It’s an intriguing project for many reasons. Firstly, there are the more formal experiments that are taking place: Mitchell sets up his stories to question a reader’s sense of how a story is told—how we deal with chronology, the ways in which readers organize elements of plot and character, and what obligation the author has to guide the reader through new information. (Mitchell tends to drop us in headlong—no preface for what sort of world we are entering or how it is related to the one which preceded it.)
But what is really interesting about the way Mitchell sets up his book is the way the characters and stories end up relating to each other. Each story makes an appearance in the next one, becoming a minor element in an ever-expanding, ever-widening plot arch. Mitchell has a lot of freedom with this given that his subject matter is somewhat fanciful and blankly fictional all the way through. Where in a stridently ‘factual’ and ‘realistic’ novel readers may find the process of one story becoming a book in the next, which then becomes a movie in the one after that, a bit convenient and cheesey—the feeling of invention in Cloud Atlas allows for such literary devices without seeming cheap. (I did think the final stretch was a bit silly—a little too Brave New World dystopia-laden for me, but otherwise was rather pleased with the linkages.) This is something that I believe fantasy and sci-fi writers generally are allowed more freedom with—look at the Harry Potter series—the woman literally pulls plot devices out of a hat, and more power to her. Because that is (at least to me) what really puts the spark in truly ‘fictional fiction.’ You don’t have to constantly tell yourself to Suspend Your Disbelief because you did so at the beginning.
The other thing that is interesting about this is that you start reconsidering the ‘What’ of the thing. If Character A is reading letters from Character B, but Character A is a fictional person in another novel—what is the ‘real’ story? Where did these ‘fake’ fictions get generated? As each story expands, it throws the last into question, merely by reframing our sense of ‘real’ and ‘not real.’ The fact that this matters to any of us when we set out to read a fictional novel is, perhaps, one of my biggest literary ticks.
One seemingly small thing that really irked me by the end of the book: I hate it when authors use their characters to make commentaries on the quality of their fiction. At worst, this is a cheap absolution for a writer who isn’t willing to really defend a choice he has made in a work, and at best it’s cute editorial winking that I don’t need. I know that such meta-commentary is part of the dialog, per se, but I fail to see its true usefulness. If you’ve put your story out there, it should stay out there, and it no longer needs your commentary. Don’t patronize me.
Lastly, in a novel that has ‘come unstuck in time,’ where events intermingle and expand and contract with a fluidity that you don’t often see, I was a little disappointed at the sentimentality that this connection seemed to inspire in the writing. Call me a cynic, but I think novels lose their punch when they try to Really Matter. Suffice to say that honing in on the 20/20 hindsight/unacknowledged foresight of history, on the inevitability of humanity’s ironic destruction is pretty unnecessary in a novel that has spent so much thoughtful, patient time and effort doing just that. Once we have the god’s eye view perspective of time repeating, further discussion almost strikes one as prosaic and simplistic. To my mind, just the fact that there is a connection is enough in and of itself.(less)
Part of what continues to fascinate me about Scandinavian crime fiction is the routine respect with which the authors approach their genre--the real q...morePart of what continues to fascinate me about Scandinavian crime fiction is the routine respect with which the authors approach their genre--the real quality of the prose and complexity not only of the plots themselves, but of the milieus--the characters and settings peripheral to the events that these books are 'about.' Ekman's Blackwater is currently my favorite example of this--an eliptical rendering of a brutal, unsolved crime in a mountain village in Northern Sweden. For although this crime effectively changes the lives of all of the characters in the novel (three of whom narrate), it isn't truly the point, per se.
As in real life, horrible, arbitrary and unexplained things happen and the consequences often resonate for years to come. But even when one has been directly involved with such an event, the mundane, quotidian dramas--the (failed) romances, the family dysfunction, the fights with neighbors, the gossip, the trouble at work, the community struggles with the political, the racial, the progressive--these things are the real fabric of one's daily life. (If the book missteps, it is simply in an overzealous exploration of this environment—occasionally, her affection for the intervening lives of her characters pulls the narrative off course, although I confess enjoying such tangents for their sheer thoroughness and imagination.)
And so Ekman--coincidentally one of Sweden's foremost novelists (not only in the genre of crime fiction) and an ex-member of the Swedish Academy of Letters (she resigned in protest over what she deemed to be the society's underwhelming response to the 'Rushdie Affair')—allows her crime to precipitate the action of the novel, without defining it. We meet Blackwater’s ostensible narrator twenty years after the crime was committed, when a mysterious man reappears in the village. This leads to a prolonged flashback of the crime itself and all the events surrounding it at the time. We then return to the present, where the crime is eventually solved. However, such a protracted search for ‘The Truth,’ for an explanation of what Really Happened, is relatively useless. It doesn’t resolve anything or give the events more meaning. It merely is, leaving the characters to make their peace with such arbitrary violence as best as they are able.
A lovely 19th century melodrama (panorama) that cynically observes the plights of womanhood to be equally born of social restrictions and women's pass...moreA lovely 19th century melodrama (panorama) that cynically observes the plights of womanhood to be equally born of social restrictions and women's passive acceptance of their own degradation and unhappiness.(less)
1. Has been disillusioned by past experiences in either the police force or the military (double points if he's been disillusio...moreHallmarks of a good PI:
1. Has been disillusioned by past experiences in either the police force or the military (double points if he's been disillusioned by both).
2. Experiences hot flashes at the thought of meting out Justice (with a capital J), is wholly and unrepentently self-righteous, and yet can see more shades of gray than a color-blind sketch artist.
3. Speaks "Privatese," a language almost entirely composed of overblown similes and metaphors, and peppered with Class A reparte and banter. It's a fluke of the dialect--the more dangerous the situation, the snappier the speaker's dialog.
4. Has friends in very low *and* very high places.
5. Is a sucker for several classes of female: a woman in a tight dress and tall heels, a young girlchild who's hard up with no place to go, and someone's downtrodden mama.
6. But not such a sucker to forget that all women are the source of every good man's problems. Devious, lying, succubi--all of them.
7. Is equally equipped to take and give harsh beatings.
Freudian crime fiction. Turns out, seeing your mother get it on with a man Not Your Father really *will* ruin your life...or at least cause lasting da...moreFreudian crime fiction. Turns out, seeing your mother get it on with a man Not Your Father really *will* ruin your life...or at least cause lasting damage to your psyche. Damn you, mom!(less)
So here's the premise: Two young boys playing in the forests outside of Copenhagen in occupied WWII Denmark discover a cave underground. Inside the ca...moreSo here's the premise: Two young boys playing in the forests outside of Copenhagen in occupied WWII Denmark discover a cave underground. Inside the cave is a tunnel that leads them from 1941 to 1988. They crawl out of a hole in the ground near a freeway and immediately have run-ins with with angry farmers, child-hating biker gangs, teen heroin addicts, and rabid dogs, as well as engaging in car theft, police chases, and the massive explosion of a helicopter.
Totally the '80s of your childhood, right?
A heavy weight of Danish literature, Klaus Rifbjerg published 80 (some places say 120) odd novels, short stories, essays, etc. and--as the one time publisher of Denmark's largest publishing house and co-creator of its premire literary magazine--comes up pretty frequently as one of the country's Golden Boys. My guess is that his reputation was not made by this novel, a Cold War era tale that presupposes--perhaps understandably--an impending nuclear war begining with the systematic bombing of major metropolises in 1988.
While we can appreciate that the social realities of the time may have been bleak, however, a book that tries to make the 1940s come across as idyllic and innocent seems a bit foolish, whatever the context. Yes, I understand the downhill trend that's being underscored--the idea that what we once considered to be the ultimate evil (i.e. Nazis), may not actually be the worst that humanity is capable of. But nuclear war, social decay, pollution, emotional callousness, and an overwhelming sense of existential futility don't really need any further dramatization. (When a 13 year old kid roughly tells his Visitors from the Past that 'You can't have a home and be on the needle,' and later drags himself to the home of a bohemian artist three times his age who kindly ties him off and shoots him up...it's officially too much.)
A deeply nostalgic, deeply disenchanted novel, Witness to the Future capitalizes on humanity's progressive descent into the abyss, without ever managing to make one's sense of loss and regret (the ubiquitous urge to drege up 'the Good Old Days,' even if the Good Old Days were during WWII) truly resonate with the reader.(less)
My stepmother was the type of woman who painted the walls in our house eighteen different colors and wore turquoise-encrusted Kokopelli jewelry to sho...moreMy stepmother was the type of woman who painted the walls in our house eighteen different colors and wore turquoise-encrusted Kokopelli jewelry to show how in tune she was with the local culture. She hung Frida Khalo prints on the bedroom walls and thought that speaking ‘Food Spanish’ to waiters made her nearly fluent. She also compelled my sister and me to read a lot of Tony Hillerman paperbacks and other ‘local literature,’ which I am now almost positive included The Bean Trees. Because after reading the first chapter of this book, I got the strangest sense of de ja vu.
This is probably appropriate in its way, given that the reason I picked it up in the first place was to suppress a bit of homesickness. Because a couple times a year—amidst the April snowstorms and one too many guys on the subway who splay themselves across two seats while playing audio-enabled Snood on their cell phones—I start pining for the homeland. I turned to this book hoping to get a good dose of Tucsonan flavor to keep me going until I had the time and money to go home and remember why I left in the first place.
I have to say, though, The Bean Trees didn’t really do the trick. Because even though I appreciate details about the Sun Tran bus line and the way it smells in the desert when it rains (the thing I miss the most about Tucson), there’s more to invoking a landscape than just listing of things that are really there. A good book about New York, for instance, isn’t good because it mentions the Empire State Building or talks about people taking taxis. It is a major (and frequent) misstep in novels to try and just be factually accurate about a place, without ever getting into how it really feels there.
To be fair, though, while the landscape wasn’t terribly reminiscent of Arizona, the writing style really was in its own (probably accidental) way. Because Ms. Kingsolver really illuminates that deep Southwestern flare for ‘characters’ and ‘culture’—a fondness for highlighting how darn quirky desert folk really are, and a gringo’s deep and abiding love of all things latino.
(As a side note, though: if we’re going to just start dropping real places into the book for authenticity, I would have swapped the ‘Jesus Is Lord’ tire place for the church that has ‘Happiness is Submission to God’ painted on it—a slogan which often gets altered to ‘Happiness is Submission to Godzilla!’ by persistent neighborhood delinquents…) (less)
When I sit down to consider Hot American Expat Writers from the 20s (which I do often), I most often divide the field into two camps: The Romantic, Tr...moreWhen I sit down to consider Hot American Expat Writers from the 20s (which I do often), I most often divide the field into two camps: The Romantic, Tragic Disinfranchised and The Stoic Motherfuckers. Obviously (obviously), the clear choices for mascots of either camp are Misters Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald, and Ernest Hemingway, respectively. Reflecting upon this dichotomy, one might, if one is was so inclined--which (see above) I am--undergo one of the ultimate literary litmus tests:
Which one is your favorite?
Understand that this is not truly about whether you still consider The Great Gatsby to be one of the Best Books Ever Written, or whether you're an aficionado for whom any description of the life-and-death opera that is Bullfighting is a (nearly) spiritual experience. No, when you come down to it, this is really a question of whose book made you want to abandon your humdrum contemporary American life and take up residence in a sexy foreign locale where having a job, knowing the language, and/or sleeping with people you know are so besides the point. What it comes down to is this:
Whose (to crib a phrase from one of my very favorite writer/critic/phrase-coiner-s) "lifestyle porn" makes you hotter?
I have my answer, of course, but I wouldn't want to unnecessarily sway your own soul-search, so I'll just leave you with this thought, courtesy of the aforementioned M. Ascher Chamney:
"Fitzgerald was all agonized and wrote long books about his feelings. Hemingway was all, 'Fuck it--I'm gonna go shoot a lion.'"
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