I guess one shouldn't read Stephen King if he or she is hoping for a happy ending, but though I was expecting things to end badly, I still was more th...moreI guess one shouldn't read Stephen King if he or she is hoping for a happy ending, but though I was expecting things to end badly, I still was more than a little depressed with this book's ending.
Looking back, I suppose this letdown is because of one of the reasons I read Mr. King in the first place: the characters he develops. (That and a need for the weirdness and supernatural worlds he creates.) But there are a lot of writers of weirdness, I find myself caring about King's characters, emphasizing with them, actually.
First, though, the obligatory blurb summary, though you could find a equal or better one just about anyplace. Let's see if I can do it in two or three sentences though:
By serendipitous discovery of a time bubble, Jake Epping, a thirty-five-year-old high school English teacher in present-day Maine, gets the chance to travel back in time to 1958. But he can only time travel to a specific time and date in 1958. However, a collaborator posits if Jake can just hang out for five years, it's possible he can prevent the assassination of President John Kennedy on November 22, 1963 in Dallas, and change world history. (Hence the title of the book, 11/22/63.)
It seems simple enough, assuming the lone-gunman theory, but of course complications ensue, some of them from the peculiarity of the time-bubble, but most due to all-to-human things such as attachment, love, hate and out-and-out psychosis.
As I wrote above, these issues between characters, more to the point, their believability, is one of the main reasons I continue to read Mr. King today. There are more gruesome and original horror stories on the shelves today, trickier time-travel stories, but King's characterizations rule. I continue to care about them. They become real to me, and therefore the world(s) King creates become real to me.
In this story, the main characters, in addition to Jake, are Mimi, the pushy mover-shaker librarian, who "likes a nice bonk on Saturday night," her replacement youngish librarian, Sadie, who is married to obsessive compulsive abusive husband. Then there's Al, Jake's collaborator. There are, of course, a plethora of minor to near-but-not-quite-main characters, all developed economically and skillfully by Mr. King. One example is Bill Turcotte, a Derry-demon possessed working mill worker who could have been done as a simple villain, but whom Mr. King builds as a surprisingly complex character, though he only makes a half-dozen or so appearances in the novel. There are other to near-but-not-quite-main characters just as layered.
Even Lee Oswald is fictionally developed with some understanding, but no much. Spousal abuse is a re-occurring theme in this book, and Oswald, a failure at most everything, is a champion in this regard.
So back to my disappointment; why did I feel so let down by the ending of the novel? (And how do I explain this without spoiling the novel?) As I said, one expects there will be blood in a King novel, but there is surprising little gore in this novel. Instead, at times, it reads almost like a love story, and there's the rub.
It has been said by someone, I've forgotten whom, that the difference between melodrama and tragedy is that in the former, men (and women) are masters of their fate, while in tragedy (in the Greek classical sense) our fate is determined by the gods, who are more often than not fickle and holders of petty grudges.
More simply, in a tragedy, things almost always end badly, leaving one to speculate on the meaning of life, world-shaping deeds. A melodrama, according to Wiki.answers, deals "with the crises of human emotion, failed romance or friendship, strained familial situations" etc. Also, we usually associate melodrama with one-dimensional characters, and villains who are a hundred-percent bad, and heroes who are a hundred-percent good.
So which is 11/22/63? Both, I guess. It has all the elements of a good melodrama: with romance, friendship, dysfunctional families and broken marriages. But it also has elements of tragedy, with fickle gods – in this case the absolute rules of time and the universe that are not friendly to human revision.
And – spoiler alert – it is also a tragic love story in the grand form of Romeo and Juliet, only here the lovers are not so much star-crossed as time-crossed.
Maybe it's the season; maybe it's my own situation of failed love affairs; maybe it's because I'm a romantic at heart, but screw the world, I really wanted the love story to end differently. I found myself wishing the two could travel in time together, even if that meant travelling blind.
Lady Chatterley's Lover was assigned reading in one of my college English classes more than 30 years ago and I guess it's safe to admit that I only re...moreLady Chatterley's Lover was assigned reading in one of my college English classes more than 30 years ago and I guess it's safe to admit that I only read scant parts of the book, becoming bored and reading instead, Tropic of Cancer. I found D.H. Lawrence – well too chatty – if you'll pardon the pun. I still aced the paper, which made me wonder if the professor had read the book through too.
I picked up this book for two reasons. A friend of mine, Suzanne was reading it, and held in high regard. Also, the entire works of D.H. Lawrence are available as Kindle book for 99 cents. Curious, I started reading it.
Where Lady Chatterley bored me – I wondered what all the hoopla had been about – I found The Rainbow highly erotic. In contrast to Tropic of Cancer, which is also erotic, being published more than 100 years later, the sexuality is elemental. Both books were banned upon publications. But there the similarity ends. Where the sexuality in The Rainbow is elemental, in Tropic of Cancer it is base, or rather, more adolescent, perhaps; one can almost hear the sniggering of a frustrated teenager in the background.
With The Rainbow, there is hardly space for sniggering. It is the sexuality of private rooms, of love and extended foreplay building to some sort of bonding between lovers that is truly engaging.
D.H. Lawrence is still a bit chatty, however, for most of modern readers. For example there are long, extended scenes describing the interior houses. And he does this thing where he repeats a phrase, only slightly modified, after the first one, for emphasis. Today's writer do the same thing and then are encourage to edit out one or the other, and strengthen the remainder if it's not robust enough. Once you get over this impulse to edit, then his technique is lyrical at times; at other times, merely redundant. One example is his overuse of the word fecund.
Though fecundity is the constant theme of the book; so many of its characters seem poised that thick, creamy, plushness of life that the word suggests, I wish he had found a few synonyms. The use of the work or it's derivatives 26 times in the novel – according to a Kindle search – was a bit distracting.
D.H. Lawrence's genius, I think, was to start the novel several generations before the main character, Ursula takes her stance and establishes herself as the strongest character in the book. There are highly erotic scenes prior to her love affair with Skrebensky, and it is a bit amazing to find how arousing they are, though no body parts itemized, no penetration is described, no essential fluids cataloged, as they are in
The affairs are all well described, but D.H. really gets going with Ursula and Skrebensky. And here again, I can be honest, and mention the psychedelic culture of the late 60's and early 70's. (The statute of limitations has ran out, hasn't it?) As with Lady Chatterly, at the time I wondered why D.H. was made a counterculture hero posthumously. He was a favorite writer of both Huxley and Timothy Leary. Thinking back, if the professor of English literature had know how many hippies he had in his class, he would have assigned The Rainbow as an introduction to Lawrence instead.
I need to digress a bit first. Throughout the book, D.H. Lawrence's reputation for homosexual experiences not withstanding, I kept asking myself how he did such a believable job of describing women's inner dialogue, those private, usually non-articulated perspectives of everything from men, to marriage, to the precise" nows" of daily life. Again, Suzanne, my Goodreads friend said it was like Lawrence was reading her mind at times.
This mind-reading climaxes with Ursula in the final chapters. The scenes, her description of her reaction to the hard, defined edges of reality can only be described as psychedelic. I won't posit on whether D.H. tripped on something – I'll leave that to others, but these mental states he relates through Ursula closely resemble those of mescaline and psilocybin mushroom users.
Don't let this spoil the book for you. Please. One doesn't have to be a captain trips to enjoy the book. I'm not, and I still found it a worthwhile read.
Having said that, D.H. Lawrence is still a bit chatty, however, for most of modern reader, including myself. For example there are long, extended scenes describing the interior houses that seem to have little to do with carrying the plot along. And D.H. does this thing where he repeats a phrase, only slightly modified, after the first one, for emphasis. Today's writer do the same thing and then are encourage to edit out one or the other, and strengthen the remainder if it's not robust enough. Once you get over this impulse to edit, then his technique is lyrical at times; at other times, merely redundant. One example is his overuse of the word fecund.
Though fecundity is the constant theme of the book; so many of its characters seem poised that thick, creamy, plushness of life that the word suggests, I wish he had found and used a few synonyms. The use of the work or its derivatives 26 times in the novel – according to a Kindle search – was a bit distracting.
Another interesting bit of trivia. While my friend was angry with Skrebensky at the end; I was through with Ursula. While her insights were intense and immediate, and her desire to escape the commitment of a relationship understandable, she still looked for Skrebensky to be there for her, when she wasn't available for him, except physically. I think D.H. meant for us to be more sympathetic toward Ursula than Skrebensky, but I grew tired of her. At the end, she seemed the spoiled child, wanting and enjoying the security of civilization – and a lover -- but not wanting to obey its rules or tend to his needs. In a phrase, she violated the social contract between her and ordered society at large, which Skrebensky represented. I guess this is one of those instances where I have to bow to a dead writer for seeing into the soul of a woman where I cannot. (less)
**spoiler alert** "I don't like nostalgia unless it's mine." -- Lou Reed
I tried to find a nostalgia quote that was linked to ol...more**spoiler alert** "I don't like nostalgia unless it's mine." -- Lou Reed
I tried to find a nostalgia quote that was linked to old age, but I stumbled across this one by Lou and was happy to have (sort of) a reason to use it.
Why nostalgia for a zombie novel that is more than 50 years old? Why did I take time off reading D.H.'s The Rainbow, to read an apocalyptic horror novel? Good questions all, for which I have good answers -- I think.
First, a book such has The Rainbow deserves to be read in two or three consecutive sittings as it's about learning the inner desires of characters and how one life flows into another. Not that I am Legend doesn't have inner dialogue. In fact, it's more about the protagonist's thoughts about loneliness, despair and lost love than it is about zombies. The zombies are termed "vampires" in the novel, but they have a lot more in common with zombies. They stumble; they're mentally impaired and were made undead by a bacillus rather than by supernatural means. But let's not split – rather spill -- body fluids. Whatever they're called, the creatures in I am Legend serve more as the backdrop for the novel than the main plot line. They are "the situation," if you will, not the reason entendre of the story. The main theme of Matheson's novel is survival, of social isolation, and of, as I inferred above, extreme alienation. He is completely dispossessed. Even his dog dies.
First, though, if you've seen the Will Smith movie by the same name, forget it. Though supposedly based on Matheson's novel, it is about as much like it as a Big Mac and fries is like a dinner in a four-star restaurant. All the elements may be the same: meat, potatoes, a few vegetables, even some sort of special sauce, but the resemblance stops there. Both will fill you up, of course, but one will merely sate, the other leave you with a feeling you’ve done something good and memorable for yourself; a moveable feast, if you will
This allusion to Hemingway may offend some, but I actually think stylistically that Matheson is the better prose stylist. Like Hemingway, his word choices are economical. He trims away the fat, and like drunken Papa, he doesn't care much for lyrical prose. (What a departure both writers are from D.H. Lawrence!) But Matheson does have these little moments as a writer when he inserts a short insight into his narrative that is more like buried treasure; almost poetry.
BTW, there have been two other movie adaptations of this novel. The 1971 film, The Omega Man, with Charlton Heston, Anthony Zerbe and Rosalind Cash, was even less faithful to the novel than the Will Smith movie. The infected are purely zombies, but zombies who got a particularly nasty variety of fundamentalism along with their photosensitivity and flaking skin. You do get to see some brief nudity of Rosalind Cash – a real treat for twenty-something me when I first saw it. And the movie broached the inter-racial sex boundary of the early 70s, as I recall, when Charlie and Rosalind get it on. But the movie doesn't hold up, and if you enjoyed Matheson's novel, you feel rather cuckolded. Hollywood cheated again. Hollywood is a whore. What else is new? However, Charlie and Rosalind do get it on, inter-racial sex, which was a sort of courageous thing to do on film in the early 1970s. So Hollywood, in typical cliche fashion, is sometimes the whore with the heart of gold.
By far the movie most loyal to the 1951 novel is the 1964 film, The Last Man on Earth, with Vincent Price playing the part of Robert Neville, a.k.a. the last man, a.k.a, legend to the vampires. Though I thought the B&W movie very good -- which was filmed in Rome, Italy -- Matheson, who wrote much of the screen play, did not. He was evidently so embarrassed that he had his credits listed under an alias. You'll find him listed in the movie credits as Logan Swanson. Hmm… I wonder how Richard, a.k.a, Logan, would have done it differently?
Enough digression. Back to the novel and my allusion to zombie nostalgia. Why did I read this novel that is primarily about a man cut off from all he loved and all that loved him? Not to whine, but I suppose I was drawn to the novel because that's the way I was feeling last night. D.H.'s book is largely about family, love and connections, of which I have little to none these days. For some reason, reading the protagonist's (Robert Neville) continuing angst, his near failing in to alcoholism, his return to sanity or something like it, and then his contentment with what he calls his solitary bachelorhood, was a kind of therapy. No matter that the novel ends in another personal tragedy for Neville. (It's hard to do a spoiler on the book when Will, Vincent and Charlie all die at the end of their respective movies.) Despite all that, I came away from the novel feeling a bit more connected to people and the world at large. It's not if I not nearly as alone as Robert Neville. My lovers have all walked out the door, some to go back to their husbands, others for greener, younger haunts. My children are long gone and far away, and most the people I deal with day-to-day seem to be in some sort of consumer trance, buying what they can't afford, moaning over their huge debt loads, and still shopping like automatons anyway. But I'm good with all that, and I don't need a drink to deal with the stillness of my own thoughts. Now, perhaps, I can deal with the extended lyrical love poem that is The Rainbow without feeling depressed. Thanks, Richard.
In paperback, 920 pages consisting of mainly the introspections of main characters?
No real main plot structure in the modern novel sense,...moreIn paperback, 920 pages consisting of mainly the introspections of main characters?
No real main plot structure in the modern novel sense, the narrative being mainly centered about the gradual improvement in social standing and financial gains of Sugar, a young woman introduced into prostitution at the tender age of 13 by her own mother?
Many side plots, but concerned with what might be considered minor perils and tribulations?
Thoroughly enjoyable?
Yes to all these questions, particularly the last. But why?
Faber's book has been compared to something Charles Dickens might write, but with explicit sex. So was it the sexual scenes that made it a great novel? Not really, though such scenes are rendered in precise detail from both female and male viewpoint, they're more often medical and technical than erotic, at least so they seemed to me. There are, for example, the painfully researched explanations of 1870s of the way prostitutes douched themselves to prevent conception. And there are details such as waxed sheets to make brothel beds easier to clean in sort of assembly line fashion.
There is some validity in the Dicken's comparison, though his novels were set in the early 1800s England and The Crimson Petal and the White takes place in about 1875 London. Look, for example at the Wikipedia synopsis of Great Expectations. There you'll learn that Dickens novel is "in the style of bildungsroman, which follows the story of a man or woman in their quest for maturity, usually starting from childhood and ending in the main character's eventual adulthood."
It's been a while -- a long while – since I read Great Expectations, but as I recall it's more less told linearly, starting with Pip as a child and following him as he becomes a young man. In Faber's novel, however, Sugar's growth is told mainly from the 'present' of the novel with flashbacks, which is well-done and highly accomplished, but the question remains, how did the writer engage me through the Kindle equivalent of 920 pages when I, once an English major, struggle to get through half of Anna Karina?
I think the answer is Sugar, in herself a strange creature to garner the sympathies of a somewhat disgruntled old man such as myself. She's not what one would call beautiful. She has a skin condition, is small breasted and a bit gangly. She hates men, with good reason, considering what abuse she's been subjected to. And she despises God, again as the creator has either turned a blind eye to her fate or worse, has cruelly exacerbated it.
What saves Sugar and makes her both a success as a prostitute and as a sympathetic character is her genius. Self-educated, with an eidetic memory, she charms men as much with her intellect.
And then, of course, there's Faber's writing. Faber is a Dutchman who prefers to write in English. Like Joseph Conrad, for whom English was a second language, Faber 's prose style seems to enhanced by his being a bastard son of the English language rather than born naturally to it. (less)
I'm about halfway through the book, having picked it while browsing in a bookstore. My first thoughts, judging from the cover that it would be a stuff...moreI'm about halfway through the book, having picked it while browsing in a bookstore. My first thoughts, judging from the cover that it would be a stuffy tribute, the sort quasi-religious things academics often do because they can't create original work themselves, only derivative works. After reading the first short story, however, I was hooked. Yes, there was the tribute to the hero who has been described as having "cunning intelligence," but it was more than that; original and scholarly faithful to the original without be stuffy -- a work of what-if-ness.
What if Penelope hadn't remained faithful and had remarried? What if Odysses returned to find Penelope old, fat and graying, and he regretted returning from the sea, leaving the nymph Calypso or even the sirens?
What if Agamemnon wasn't just arrogant but stupid, wasting men and resources building castles in the sand on the plain of Scamander, much as leaders today erect unstable structures of ideology to justify war and imperialism? (Excuse my polemic, here, please.)
Odysseus is arrogant too, defying the gods (fate), but always the survivor, but like a modern novel – and unlike Homer's hero -- Mason's explorer is sometimes the more-than-average sensual man who comes to some realization that somethings are meant to be and somethings not. Where Homer's Odysseus merely ages, Mason's grows in some of the alternate realities.
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Many readers will probably be familiar with another of Atwood's dystopian novel, The Handmaiden's Tale, which was another amazing engaging book of a d...moreMany readers will probably be familiar with another of Atwood's dystopian novel, The Handmaiden's Tale, which was another amazing engaging book of a dark future. But where the Handmaiden's Tale is of a Orwellian totalitarian state, Oryx and Crake is more apocalyptic. I don't think it would be a spoiler to tell you all version 1 humans die; you'll probably find that in the backcover blurb of most editions. What the blurbs don't tell you is the depth at which she plums Jimmy's, the narrator and slacker friend of Crake.
Jimmy is sort of a futuristic Holden Caulfield, whose alienation and rebellion from an early age is documented by Atwood in frequent flashbacks from the novel's present. I write flashbacks, though that's not quite the right term, as the flashbacks are often told in present tense, and one gets a sense of the interchangeability of present in past, though not in a disorienting sense as in To the Lighthouse, from which Atwood quotes from in the novel's preface. ("leaping form the pinnacle of a tower into the air")
It's not too much of a stretch to say that Jimmy is often on the verge of making that suicidal leap, not so much for lost love or diminished expectations or even misery, though all that plays a role, but from the ennui of being the last or nearly the last version 1 human left alive.
It all sounds like a mediocre sci-fi novel as I write this, but I've all come to expect so much more from a writer of Atwood's ilk and I wasn't disappointed. As with Caulfield, Jimmy's isolation has its seeds in the elite class into which he was born as well emotional neglect by his genius parents. I'll spare you a full synopsis of the novel; you can find that on Amazon or perhaps here on Goodreads. Instead, here for example is an excerpt of Atwood's dissection of the pre-apocalyptic Jimmy:
"He no longer thought of these women as girlfriends: now they were lovers. They were all married or the equivalent, looking for a chance to sneak around on their husbands or partners, to prove they were still young or to get even. Or else they were wounded and wanted consolation. Or they simply felt ignored… At first he enjoyed the rushed impromptu visits, the secrecy, the sound of Velcro ripped open in haste, the slow tumbling to the floor; though he figured out pretty soon that he was an extra fro these lovers – not to be taken seriously."
Whether you read sci-fi or mainstream fiction, you'll find this book is truly a Good Read.
I'm feeling like the Last Man on Earth this weekend (classic Vincent Price zombie movie) so I went looking for modern Zombie novel. This Publisher's w...moreI'm feeling like the Last Man on Earth this weekend (classic Vincent Price zombie movie) so I went looking for modern Zombie novel. This Publisher's weekly and the cover struck a harmonic chord, in some sort of pathetic, morbid way: From Publishers Weekly Campbell (Wet Moon) adds color—in this case red—to the OEL manga format, the better to highlight zombie gore. Actually, the red keeps the reader's eye on Rylie, a red-headed black lesbian in a swampy Southern town. She's trying to start a relationship with her crush, Naomi, while the world ends around them. Campbell beautifully captures the decaying grandeur of the South, with the palpable weight of its languid air. Wearing little clothing isn't sexual; it's survival in the heat. His characters are solidly fleshy, realistic and with presence. There's a thin line between sex and death, and the characters deal with both in nonsentimental, practical ways as they talk about life and what they want to become and finding someone to love. The questions any teen faces, like whether or not to leave town when you're older or whether your friends will still be your friends as you grow up, become more powerful through the zombie symbolism. When a loved one turns 23, he becomes one of the monsters, and here the adults literally eat their young. This unique blend of zombie horror, relationship drama and Southern gothic says much about love and survival. (less)
Originally, I read this book sometime in the early 1970s, the best I can recall. For those of you who are sci-fi aficionados (I'm not sure I am myself...moreOriginally, I read this book sometime in the early 1970s, the best I can recall. For those of you who are sci-fi aficionados (I'm not sure I am myself) this was the time of lots of small independent publishing houses that allowed quite a bit of experimentation in the genre.
First the blurb: The protagonist and first person narrator is a Mr. Christopher Crockett Del le Cruz is a denizen of the Sack, a bubble of space station the size of small asteroid that orbits the moon. Time is a couple of hundred years in the future, after WWIII, and Del le Cruz is a thin, an extremely thin human, more selected by near zero gravity to be nearly 8 feet tall. Del Le Cruz is on a mission to Earth to save his family's thespian company. Earth is open to visitors for the first time in a century or so and he's there to take claim to some mineral rights in order to save the company from disbandment by the more technical and puritan minded leadership of the Sack.
Upon landing (in Dallas) he is surprised to find the surviving Texans, the anglo-Texans, that is, have mutated themselves to also be 8 feet tall. They are fascists through and through, and have a subjugate the Hispanic population and mutated them as well to all be under 5 foot tall. Texas now stretches into Canada. There Tulsa, Texas, Kansas City, Texas, and so on. Politics are a matter of the laser pistol, and Texas women are kept at home or dabbling in the arts where they belong, says the Governor of Texas. It's all ge-haw, and ge-haw this, with Del Le Cruz playing the part of a honorable Texan -- despite his ethnic heritage -- one moment and a snake-oil salesman the next. High melodramatic drama and a revolution ensue.
Okay, so in 1969 Fritz Leiber, himself the son of actors, missed it a bit predicting WWIII and the frying of most of Earth's population. But when I read the book in the 1970s, I didn't know he was the son of actors. (Thanks Wikipedia) or that it was his first novel, the best I can tell, after his wife died in the mid 1960s. Leiber went on a three-year drunk (thanks again Wikipedia) and didn't write much, which says a lot about the myth of alcohol being a writing muse.
All in all, it's one of those novels that remind me how I got hooked on sci-fi. It's not so much about technology, but the mutability of humans and human culture. We are so easily re-wired mentally by our culture, and our culture is to some degree a factorial of our technology.
On the jacket cover of another book by Amis, I read that compared him to John Updike "but meaner." I would add a "whole lot meaner"...moreOn the jacket cover of another book by Amis, I read that compared him to John Updike "but meaner." I would add a "whole lot meaner" for it's hard to find a sympathetic character in Dead Babies. Instead it's a menagerie of the self-absorbed with a few con-dependents thrown in. Nearly everyone is privileged, spoiled, self-absorbed and addicted to one thing or another. The "one thing" is in most cases many drugs and/or alcohol, but there's also some serious sexual addiction at play. Which was why I lingered over the book. No, not because of the sexual addiction, certainly not the gutter language, but because I found it difficult maintain interest in such low-life scum. The sex scenes were as harsh, like a low-grade porn movie made in bad lighting. Though I imagine Amis meant them to be darkly humorous, I was not amused.
There was one character whom I did have some sympathy: Keith Whitehead, the near dwarf with a multitude of hormone problems. The book is largely set in a communal living arrangement, and Keith is kept around a kind of foil. While the other players have varying degrees of physical attractiveness, Keith is a "horror show," grossly overweight, pimply and having pathological flatulence. But Keith alone in the book is a victim of bad circumstance, unless you count being born with physical beauty or wealth bad circumstance.
Amis makes an attempt with backstory to provide rationale for why the characters are what they are. But it was disgusting Keith that only looked good. And he was no spiritual giant, being mainly preoccupied with getting laid, but then he was a young man. But he looked like a saint compared to the rest of the crew.
I finished the book, which consisted largely of one debauchery after another punctuated by cruelty. Practically anything else I could say about the book would be a spoiler. The good thing: Amis, like Updike,is a powerful stylist, and his characterizations come alive -- like Frankenstein. Was there a message, or was Amis merely slumming the sex-drugs culture? You tell me. (less)
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