http://www.goodreads.com/review/list_rss/84023 en-US Sun, 11 May 2008 10:09:51 -0700 60 http://www.goodreads.com/ 200 41 http://www.goodreads.com/images/layout/gr_logo.gif 17663593 Sun, 11 May 2008 10:09:51 -0700
Like The Virginian, this predecessor of a genre never seems to fall into the same traps as its innumerable followers. Indeed, with both these books, the focus itself becomes something entirely different than the obsession it inculcates in others.

Though this book certainly contains a mystery, a set of clues and twists, and a brilliant detective, the focus is not on these but on the characters themselves. Firstly, there is the fact that the book is narrated in sections by different observers and participants. Secondly, there is the fact that the chief mover of the entire series of events is never the mystery itself, but the maddening effect that the unknowns and miscommunications have on the personal relationships surrounding the events.

The characters themselves, chiefly in the case of the narrators, are such discrete and believable characters that part of the enjoyment of the book becomes an appreciation for the author's knowledge of human behavior and ability to represent wholly different mindsets without any lingering authorial voice intruding.

It is not only the psychology of the characters and their movements which are represented here, but also the little shifting falsities of how they see themselves and how they are seen by others, none of which represent a truthful opinion, but all of which flow from the way people generalize one another.

Collins succeeds greatly at the old authorial adage that one should show instead of tell, as innumerable details and observations build up to give us a more thorough view. He does have somewhat of an easier time of this due to his method, it may be noted. By using constant and somewhat unreliable narrators, he may be seem to be telling, but in truth these opinions represent more about the narrator than about those whom they cast their judgment upon.

Also like The Virginian, Collins carries with him a strong and concise voice bred of that Victorian generation for whom Austen was the venerable master. He was also, it may be noted, a close friend to Dickens.

Another pleasantry with both authors is that they retain a certain humility, such that they never seek out more lofty heights than their prose may bear up. This is the reason their stories each stand as the foundation of pulp movements, whose writers were more concerned with writing to their own ability than to reaching for far-flung achievements they might or might not be equal to.

However, while those later authors attached themselves so much to archetype and rare coincidence to produce the strenth of their work, the ealiest hands to touch the page were fueled by human emotion and character. There is some sense of stereotypical characterization in The Moonstone, but it is tempered by extending even the joke characters a surfeit of humanity.

That being said, the main joke character in this book nearly drove me down in the few chapters she stood as narrator. It was not because she was too ridiculous, not because she was annoying, nor too cliche. She was simply too accurate to a type of person I loathe to meet or to spend a free minute with; namely: the self-righteous, proselytizing old maid.

This was the curious tangent which passed between this text and 'The Screwtape Letters', which I was also reading at the time. It was especially marked in comparison to the earlier narrator, who though simple, retained a charm and a welcoming humility in his various shortcomings.

It always seems a shame to look at the first movement of a genre, be it Wister's, Collins's, or Tolkien's, as those creators who later move to take up the torch miss the point: that independant of the magic or mystery or gunfight being the main event, what keeps and impresses the reader is the emotional content, psychology, and strenth of the pure writing, itself. Collins stands in good stead with the other innovators in this: that his work is a fine novel that happens to be a mystery, and not tjhe other way 'round.

P.S. Some may point out Poe as originator of the mystery, or even point to older cases. This is an old debate, which I will not enter into, suffice it to say that Collins is the first example of a mystery novel, as Poe believed one should never write something which takes more than a sitting to read. I'm glad collins didn't feel this way, but it seems exceptionally true for Poe.]]>
author: William Wilkie Collins
name: Keely
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2001
rating: 4
read at: 05/08
date added: 05/11/08
shelves: mystery, novel
review:
Perhaps it is not surprising that I managed to guess the 'whom', if not the how of this prototype mystery. What may be somewhat of a surprise is that this did not make the book seem tedious, nor did it become a plodding step-by-step towards inevitability like many mysteries are.

Like The Virginian, this predecessor of a genre never seems to fall into the same traps as its innumerable followers. Indeed, with both these books, the focus itself becomes something entirely different than the obsession it inculcates in others.

Though this book certainly contains a mystery, a set of clues and twists, and a brilliant detective, the focus is not on these but on the characters themselves. Firstly, there is the fact that the book is narrated in sections by different observers and participants. Secondly, there is the fact that the chief mover of the entire series of events is never the mystery itself, but the maddening effect that the unknowns and miscommunications have on the personal relationships surrounding the events.

The characters themselves, chiefly in the case of the narrators, are such discrete and believable characters that part of the enjoyment of the book becomes an appreciation for the author's knowledge of human behavior and ability to represent wholly different mindsets without any lingering authorial voice intruding.

It is not only the psychology of the characters and their movements which are represented here, but also the little shifting falsities of how they see themselves and how they are seen by others, none of which represent a truthful opinion, but all of which flow from the way people generalize one another.

Collins succeeds greatly at the old authorial adage that one should show instead of tell, as innumerable details and observations build up to give us a more thorough view. He does have somewhat of an easier time of this due to his method, it may be noted. By using constant and somewhat unreliable narrators, he may be seem to be telling, but in truth these opinions represent more about the narrator than about those whom they cast their judgment upon.

Also like The Virginian, Collins carries with him a strong and concise voice bred of that Victorian generation for whom Austen was the venerable master. He was also, it may be noted, a close friend to Dickens.

Another pleasantry with both authors is that they retain a certain humility, such that they never seek out more lofty heights than their prose may bear up. This is the reason their stories each stand as the foundation of pulp movements, whose writers were more concerned with writing to their own ability than to reaching for far-flung achievements they might or might not be equal to.

However, while those later authors attached themselves so much to archetype and rare coincidence to produce the strenth of their work, the ealiest hands to touch the page were fueled by human emotion and character. There is some sense of stereotypical characterization in The Moonstone, but it is tempered by extending even the joke characters a surfeit of humanity.

That being said, the main joke character in this book nearly drove me down in the few chapters she stood as narrator. It was not because she was too ridiculous, not because she was annoying, nor too cliche. She was simply too accurate to a type of person I loathe to meet or to spend a free minute with; namely: the self-righteous, proselytizing old maid.

This was the curious tangent which passed between this text and 'The Screwtape Letters', which I was also reading at the time. It was especially marked in comparison to the earlier narrator, who though simple, retained a charm and a welcoming humility in his various shortcomings.

It always seems a shame to look at the first movement of a genre, be it Wister's, Collins's, or Tolkien's, as those creators who later move to take up the torch miss the point: that independant of the magic or mystery or gunfight being the main event, what keeps and impresses the reader is the emotional content, psychology, and strenth of the pure writing, itself. Collins stands in good stead with the other innovators in this: that his work is a fine novel that happens to be a mystery, and not tjhe other way 'round.

P.S. Some may point out Poe as originator of the mystery, or even point to older cases. This is an old debate, which I will not enter into, suffice it to say that Collins is the first example of a mystery novel, as Poe believed one should never write something which takes more than a sitting to read. I'm glad collins didn't feel this way, but it seems exceptionally true for Poe.
]]> 19226230 Fri, 09 May 2008 16:36:01 -0700
Much of the book is written in apparent simplicity, but the degree to which the author concentrates on pointless tedium without building plot, mood, or character means that the whole text is needlessly complicated by distracting details:

"He took out the plastic bottle of water and unscrewed the cap and held it out and the boy came and took it and stood drinking. He lowered the bottle and got his breath and he sat in the road and crossed his legs and drank again. Then he handed the bottle back and the man drank and screwed the cap back on and rummaged through the pack. The ate a can of white beans, passing it between them. Then he threw the empty tin into the woods. Then they set out down the road again."

Often, these laundry lists of repetitive details will be capped by McCarthy's other most apparent stylistic touch: the incredibly awkward metaphor:

"The man turned and looked back at him. He was lost in concentration. The man thought he seemed some sad and solitary changeling child, anouncing the arrival of a traveling spectacle in shire and village who doesn't know that behind him, the players have all been carried off by wolves."

or " 'it's snowing' the boy said, he looked at the sky, a single, grey flake sifting down. He caught it in his hand and watched it expire there like the last host of christendom."

Indeed, McCarthy will sometimes pile them one atop the other, in what we must assume is an attempt at graceful or poetic language, but which never ceases to feel forced and unoriginal:

"Query: how does the never to be differ from what never was? Dark of the invisible moon. The nights now only slightly less black. By day the banished sun circles the earth like a grieving mother with a lamp. People sitting on the sidewalk in the dawn, half immolate and smoking in their clothes like failed sectarian suicides."

He will often feel the need to describe in detail how a character might scrape paint with a screwdriver, but will then add in a complex jargon term with no explanation, nor any indication that it stems from character knowledge. One might suggest he either move his thesaurus closer or further away from his desk, such that the effect of these very dense words amongst completely bare and meaningless paragraphs will be less jolting.

The metaphoric or 'poetic' language tends to be equally jarring, as in one sentence, when he describes 'dead ivy', 'dead grass' and 'dead trees' with the same descriptor, and then as if adding a punchline, declares them shrouded in a 'carbon fog'.

The main characters are equally bare. Their conversations tend to follow an invariable pattern of the father giving orders, the son saying he's scared, the father repeating the orders, the son asking if they are going to die, the father saying no, the son repeating the question, and the father repeating the answer. This will eventually be followed by a 'father/son' moment where they come to an understanding by the son asking difficult questions and the father not answering them.

Now, I won't suggest this to be a particularly unlikely or odd relationship in general, but that McCarthy does little to support how it would have psychologically developed between the two.

The boy constantly acts surprised and afraid of the world he has grown up in. One might imagine if a suburban child were thrust into this situation, the constant questions and crying would make sense, but anyone who has seen a Rwandan child with an AK-47 knows that the child would have adapted to the bleak environment better than his father.

There is also little sense of trust or understanding between them, despite the fact that they spend time entirely in one another's company and no one else's.

The entire book seems to stem from the premise that under difficult situations, human beings simply fold in on themselves and give up. The book is mostly empty of any sense of hope, or joy, or anything but bare bleakness. I might suggest that McCarthy has achieved a feat in making a world so bleak and pointless that no matter how bad things get, it never feels like an escalation, but it also seems a complete betrayal of human nature.

People always find little hopes and joys, especially in situations where they are forced into difficult and harrowing actions. The type of depressiveness McCarthy represents fits in more with a depressed teen than with those people who go through wars or natural disasters.

In fact, the book seems more and more to represent that sort of teenage obsession with bleak depressiveness as it goes on. The fact that it is utterly without levity and yet seems to take itself entirely seriously while the text ambles from meticulously described tent packing to the sun as a 'mother with a lamp' indicates an author who has come to believe he is talented to ever write disjointed crap.

I found that whenever the text made attempts at becoming more dire or poignant, the effect was so forced that it became a source of unintentional humor. It was not difficult to imagine McCarthy in black lipstick posting this story in response to his mother not letting him go to the mall until he finished his math homework.

McCarthy painted a picture entirely in black paint, and then expected that covering it in more black paint would somehow make it more profound. Hitchcock once said that you cannot tell a story by constant escalation, but must break and build, break and build. McCarthy has ignored this rule, though I am not sure if it is because it is without any sense of build, or if it is all ludicrously piled without rhyme or reason.

He seems to fail to realize what creates fear and unease. Pain and inhumanity are not in and of themselves the causes of fear. What we fear is the unknown and the surprising. We fear a revelation that there is something inside us, inside those we love, and inside the world that we cannot defeat, cannot comprehend, and cannot stop. Cannibalism and dead infants are unpleasant things, but Cormac seems to think that simply putting them there and pointing at them will somehow shock us.

Too often, he overcompensates with character reactions (usually the frantic fear of the boy) and seems to expect that the reader will automatically react along with him. Unfortunately, since the boy's psychology is so simplistic, and since he has no hope or joy, he cannot seem human to us, let alone a sympathetic character.

The author ignores a possible wealth of stimulating visual imagery and emotional content in favor of unrelated metaphors. He tries to ensconce you in a world of endless, bleak fear, but not only does he distract from his own mood with asides and lists of actions, but he fails to represent any character with enough emotional depth to ever lose anything, fear, or suffer pain.

I simply cannot see how McCarthy can expect to engage anyone with what, in the end, is a world completely sterlized of emotion or possibility. Human beings always create a possibility, a way out, even when there is none.

One might bring up the excitement of finding food, or of 'the fire', which is the father's cryptic word for why they keep going on and on. However, one may neatly replace 'the fire' with 'the plot' and see the effect McCarthy achieves.

In the end, I ask this: to a starving man, which jar is more empty, the one with crumbs of food, or the one who has never held food at all? I could perhaps appreciate a completely empty world as a writing exercise, but McCarthy is constantly trying to instill and to provoke reactions, so he cannot have been going for utter bleakness of emotion. However, all of his entreaties are shallow and scattered, and so the book never builds to anything more than the sum of its parts. This would be less problematic if those parts were more than long tedious bleakness occasionally interrupted by grotesquely self-satisfied attempts at figurative language.]]>
author: Cormac McCarthy
name: Keely
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2006
rating: 2
read at: 05/08
date added: 05/09/08
shelves: fiction, novel
review:
The text of the book is jumbled and without any lingering style. Many have pointed out where parts resemble one author or another, but the whole of the book is not a seamless blend as much as it is a reanimated corpse, sewn together from half dead parts to make a wobbling, incongruous whole.

Much of the book is written in apparent simplicity, but the degree to which the author concentrates on pointless tedium without building plot, mood, or character means that the whole text is needlessly complicated by distracting details:

"He took out the plastic bottle of water and unscrewed the cap and held it out and the boy came and took it and stood drinking. He lowered the bottle and got his breath and he sat in the road and crossed his legs and drank again. Then he handed the bottle back and the man drank and screwed the cap back on and rummaged through the pack. The ate a can of white beans, passing it between them. Then he threw the empty tin into the woods. Then they set out down the road again."

Often, these laundry lists of repetitive details will be capped by McCarthy's other most apparent stylistic touch: the incredibly awkward metaphor:

"The man turned and looked back at him. He was lost in concentration. The man thought he seemed some sad and solitary changeling child, anouncing the arrival of a traveling spectacle in shire and village who doesn't know that behind him, the players have all been carried off by wolves."

or " 'it's snowing' the boy said, he looked at the sky, a single, grey flake sifting down. He caught it in his hand and watched it expire there like the last host of christendom."

Indeed, McCarthy will sometimes pile them one atop the other, in what we must assume is an attempt at graceful or poetic language, but which never ceases to feel forced and unoriginal:

"Query: how does the never to be differ from what never was? Dark of the invisible moon. The nights now only slightly less black. By day the banished sun circles the earth like a grieving mother with a lamp. People sitting on the sidewalk in the dawn, half immolate and smoking in their clothes like failed sectarian suicides."

He will often feel the need to describe in detail how a character might scrape paint with a screwdriver, but will then add in a complex jargon term with no explanation, nor any indication that it stems from character knowledge. One might suggest he either move his thesaurus closer or further away from his desk, such that the effect of these very dense words amongst completely bare and meaningless paragraphs will be less jolting.

The metaphoric or 'poetic' language tends to be equally jarring, as in one sentence, when he describes 'dead ivy', 'dead grass' and 'dead trees' with the same descriptor, and then as if adding a punchline, declares them shrouded in a 'carbon fog'.

The main characters are equally bare. Their conversations tend to follow an invariable pattern of the father giving orders, the son saying he's scared, the father repeating the orders, the son asking if they are going to die, the father saying no, the son repeating the question, and the father repeating the answer. This will eventually be followed by a 'father/son' moment where they come to an understanding by the son asking difficult questions and the father not answering them.

Now, I won't suggest this to be a particularly unlikely or odd relationship in general, but that McCarthy does little to support how it would have psychologically developed between the two.

The boy constantly acts surprised and afraid of the world he has grown up in. One might imagine if a suburban child were thrust into this situation, the constant questions and crying would make sense, but anyone who has seen a Rwandan child with an AK-47 knows that the child would have adapted to the bleak environment better than his father.

There is also little sense of trust or understanding between them, despite the fact that they spend time entirely in one another's company and no one else's.

The entire book seems to stem from the premise that under difficult situations, human beings simply fold in on themselves and give up. The book is mostly empty of any sense of hope, or joy, or anything but bare bleakness. I might suggest that McCarthy has achieved a feat in making a world so bleak and pointless that no matter how bad things get, it never feels like an escalation, but it also seems a complete betrayal of human nature.

People always find little hopes and joys, especially in situations where they are forced into difficult and harrowing actions. The type of depressiveness McCarthy represents fits in more with a depressed teen than with those people who go through wars or natural disasters.

In fact, the book seems more and more to represent that sort of teenage obsession with bleak depressiveness as it goes on. The fact that it is utterly without levity and yet seems to take itself entirely seriously while the text ambles from meticulously described tent packing to the sun as a 'mother with a lamp' indicates an author who has come to believe he is talented to ever write disjointed crap.

I found that whenever the text made attempts at becoming more dire or poignant, the effect was so forced that it became a source of unintentional humor. It was not difficult to imagine McCarthy in black lipstick posting this story in response to his mother not letting him go to the mall until he finished his math homework.

McCarthy painted a picture entirely in black paint, and then expected that covering it in more black paint would somehow make it more profound. Hitchcock once said that you cannot tell a story by constant escalation, but must break and build, break and build. McCarthy has ignored this rule, though I am not sure if it is because it is without any sense of build, or if it is all ludicrously piled without rhyme or reason.

He seems to fail to realize what creates fear and unease. Pain and inhumanity are not in and of themselves the causes of fear. What we fear is the unknown and the surprising. We fear a revelation that there is something inside us, inside those we love, and inside the world that we cannot defeat, cannot comprehend, and cannot stop. Cannibalism and dead infants are unpleasant things, but Cormac seems to think that simply putting them there and pointing at them will somehow shock us.

Too often, he overcompensates with character reactions (usually the frantic fear of the boy) and seems to expect that the reader will automatically react along with him. Unfortunately, since the boy's psychology is so simplistic, and since he has no hope or joy, he cannot seem human to us, let alone a sympathetic character.

The author ignores a possible wealth of stimulating visual imagery and emotional content in favor of unrelated metaphors. He tries to ensconce you in a world of endless, bleak fear, but not only does he distract from his own mood with asides and lists of actions, but he fails to represent any character with enough emotional depth to ever lose anything, fear, or suffer pain.

I simply cannot see how McCarthy can expect to engage anyone with what, in the end, is a world completely sterlized of emotion or possibility. Human beings always create a possibility, a way out, even when there is none.

One might bring up the excitement of finding food, or of 'the fire', which is the father's cryptic word for why they keep going on and on. However, one may neatly replace 'the fire' with 'the plot' and see the effect McCarthy achieves.

In the end, I ask this: to a starving man, which jar is more empty, the one with crumbs of food, or the one who has never held food at all? I could perhaps appreciate a completely empty world as a writing exercise, but McCarthy is constantly trying to instill and to provoke reactions, so he cannot have been going for utter bleakness of emotion. However, all of his entreaties are shallow and scattered, and so the book never builds to anything more than the sum of its parts. This would be less problematic if those parts were more than long tedious bleakness occasionally interrupted by grotesquely self-satisfied attempts at figurative language.
]]> 4000436 Tue, 06 May 2008 20:03:51 -0700
The sharp weapon of Lewis's rhetoric tears down humanity through all the self-righteous hubris, denial, misdirected hopes, and easy mistakes we pile upon ourselves in masochistic suffocation. However, one begins to develop the impression, slowly at first, that Lewis has nothing to offer in return. There are scarcely words of alternatives, let alone improvements.

Lewis does give us a house which disgusts the devils and redeems the man, but this perfect representation of Christian values seems mostly defined by a lack of any description of philosophy, excepting that it is 'suffused' by some sort of magical glow which infects the cat. Indeed, I began to get the impression that Lewis intended to fill in this section later, but that he never got around to it.

Lewis said that the writing of this text was one of the most painful that he had with any book, and that he could not bring himself to write a sequel. I find little surprise in this, because one can see how, as the book goes on, Lewis more and more recognizes and elucidates the failures of mankind but when he comes to express what makes him or his faith any different, he cannot find anything to say.

The 'suffusing glow' then becomes a stand in for Lewis's own righteousness, but it is not difficult to see that, in a book where Hubris and self-assuredness are constantly torn down, that self-righteousness is left with little to stand in.

Along with this, Lewis often presents a very advanced knowledge of rhetoric and human behavior but it oddly deficient in that he applies the same things to one side and then the other first as a positive, and then a negative.

For example, the book begins with the demon advising that humans shoud be encouraged to think of things as being 'real' without ever questioning what that means. The term 'real life' is meant to act as a self-justification for assumptions, not as an introspective view.

However, later on Lewis begins to talk about how the Christians should make sure to follow what is 'natural', without ever defining what that is. He mentions it several times and one is left with the sense that there is little distinction between 'natural life' and 'real life'.

This can hardly surprise, as Lewis maintains a philosophy of Duality. Dualitism presents the 'with us/against us' ideal by which any two groups may grow to hate one another despite the fact that they have relatively few differences. As long as one defines the other as bad, there is no need to define the self as good, as in the Dualistic system, there is only good and evil, and you are either one or the other.

The problem with this is that if one believes morality more complex than black and white, then it is not enough for him to simply say he is better or different than those who so deeply disappoint him.

That being said, it would still be refreshing to meet a Christian who had put as much thought and work into at least attempting to understand and explain themselves. Indeed, this book has reminded me that it is rare enough to find that in or out of religions. Atheists and scientists can be just as troubled, flawed, and deluded as anyone else.

The lesson I will pull from this is that it is important for me to concentrate on myself and my own growth, because worrying about everyone else didn't help Lewis, and it isn't going to help me, either.]]>
author: C.S. Lewis
name: Keely
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2001
rating: 3
read at: 05/08
date added: 05/06/08
shelves: fantasy, humor
review:
If not for the fact that this is a satire in earnest, it would serve as a powerful absurdist invective against humanity. There is a degree to which this book helped to improve my view of Christians in general, but only in the sense that it points out that all the faults which I have found in your average Christian are often just as powerful in the uncommited person, the Christian just tends to make themselves more conspicuous in it.

The sharp weapon of Lewis's rhetoric tears down humanity through all the self-righteous hubris, denial, misdirected hopes, and easy mistakes we pile upon ourselves in masochistic suffocation. However, one begins to develop the impression, slowly at first, that Lewis has nothing to offer in return. There are scarcely words of alternatives, let alone improvements.

Lewis does give us a house which disgusts the devils and redeems the man, but this perfect representation of Christian values seems mostly defined by a lack of any description of philosophy, excepting that it is 'suffused' by some sort of magical glow which infects the cat. Indeed, I began to get the impression that Lewis intended to fill in this section later, but that he never got around to it.

Lewis said that the writing of this text was one of the most painful that he had with any book, and that he could not bring himself to write a sequel. I find little surprise in this, because one can see how, as the book goes on, Lewis more and more recognizes and elucidates the failures of mankind but when he comes to express what makes him or his faith any different, he cannot find anything to say.

The 'suffusing glow' then becomes a stand in for Lewis's own righteousness, but it is not difficult to see that, in a book where Hubris and self-assuredness are constantly torn down, that self-righteousness is left with little to stand in.

Along with this, Lewis often presents a very advanced knowledge of rhetoric and human behavior but it oddly deficient in that he applies the same things to one side and then the other first as a positive, and then a negative.

For example, the book begins with the demon advising that humans shoud be encouraged to think of things as being 'real' without ever questioning what that means. The term 'real life' is meant to act as a self-justification for assumptions, not as an introspective view.

However, later on Lewis begins to talk about how the Christians should make sure to follow what is 'natural', without ever defining what that is. He mentions it several times and one is left with the sense that there is little distinction between 'natural life' and 'real life'.

This can hardly surprise, as Lewis maintains a philosophy of Duality. Dualitism presents the 'with us/against us' ideal by which any two groups may grow to hate one another despite the fact that they have relatively few differences. As long as one defines the other as bad, there is no need to define the self as good, as in the Dualistic system, there is only good and evil, and you are either one or the other.

The problem with this is that if one believes morality more complex than black and white, then it is not enough for him to simply say he is better or different than those who so deeply disappoint him.

That being said, it would still be refreshing to meet a Christian who had put as much thought and work into at least attempting to understand and explain themselves. Indeed, this book has reminded me that it is rare enough to find that in or out of religions. Atheists and scientists can be just as troubled, flawed, and deluded as anyone else.

The lesson I will pull from this is that it is important for me to concentrate on myself and my own growth, because worrying about everyone else didn't help Lewis, and it isn't going to help me, either.
]]> 21748958 Tue, 06 May 2008 19:59:05 -0700
author: Brian Jacques
name: Keely
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2006
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 05/06/08
shelves: childhood, fantasy, novel
review:

]]> 21421534 Thu, 01 May 2008 16:40:09 -0700
The skill and intellect of Lewis are without question, but the way he meanders about duality, truth, social darwinism, pathetic fallacy, comparative anthropology, and scientific process tends more towards self-justification than any profundity.

There grew a steady and genuine question in my mind whether our self-importance and distraction has become so imposing that we are simply not capable of detached, rational thought any longer. One can still look to the Greeks and find a height of this which I suspect can only exist when conflicts over resources are not masked with false cultural purposes.

It seemed that every time Lewis embarked on a thought, it would grow and blossom in intriguing ways until he would simply bunch together the whole bundle, tie it with a bow, and move on before reaching an insight. It made me think the purpose of Onan has been widely misread.]]>
author: C.S. Lewis
name: Keely
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1943
rating: 2
read at: 05/08
date added: 05/01/08
shelves: non-fiction, philosophy, religion
review:
It is no wonder that Christians should revere a miracle-working carpenter. I think one must be the son of a god to build an attic without a thought for the rest of the house.

The skill and intellect of Lewis are without question, but the way he meanders about duality, truth, social darwinism, pathetic fallacy, comparative anthropology, and scientific process tends more towards self-justification than any profundity.

There grew a steady and genuine question in my mind whether our self-importance and distraction has become so imposing that we are simply not capable of detached, rational thought any longer. One can still look to the Greeks and find a height of this which I suspect can only exist when conflicts over resources are not masked with false cultural purposes.

It seemed that every time Lewis embarked on a thought, it would grow and blossom in intriguing ways until he would simply bunch together the whole bundle, tie it with a bow, and move on before reaching an insight. It made me think the purpose of Onan has been widely misread.
]]> 21411838 Thu, 01 May 2008 13:17:41 -0700
author: Douglas Adams
name: Keely
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1991
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 05/01/08
shelves: humor, mystery, novel, sci-fi
review:

]]> 21411827 Thu, 01 May 2008 13:17:32 -0700
author: Douglas Adams
name: Keely
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1991
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 05/01/08
shelves: humor, mystery, novel, sci-fi
review:

]]> 1598126 Mon, 28 Apr 2008 18:07:54 -0700
Portrayed as a travelogue of a shipwreck survivor on the island of Dinotopia, Gurney successfully captures the feel of early century sci-fi tales which, even today seem only just beyond the realm of possibility. It seems that the only area positively affected by a little scientific ignorance is that of the visionary futurist. Of course, it was not as difficult for Gurney to look back and imitate this method, but it is not a very familiar style to modern readers, anyway.

A competent draughtsman, Gurney's style evokes the travelogue of a naturalist (which is, luckily, his story's very frame), so that the sometimes indulgent fantasy or unremarkable characterization may simply come off realistically as the effect of an occasionally unlikely or overly likely world, or of a character's view of it. If only Gurney had the tenacity of Baum, as he has already escaped the pointlessness.

Perhaps the greatest gift of Gurney's as a combined author/illustrator is that he lets you forget what you know and allows you to believe in what he has created.]]>
author: James Gurney
name: Keely
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2003
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 04/28/08
shelves: art, childhood, fantasy
review:
This fanciful retelling of "The Land that Time Forgot" would just be a passable (if fun) story if not for the truly remarkable artwork on every page. Gurney's imagining of his new and strange world carries a depth and weight that, to be trite, truly transports you there.

Portrayed as a travelogue of a shipwreck survivor on the island of Dinotopia, Gurney successfully captures the feel of early century sci-fi tales which, even today seem only just beyond the realm of possibility. It seems that the only area positively affected by a little scientific ignorance is that of the visionary futurist. Of course, it was not as difficult for Gurney to look back and imitate this method, but it is not a very familiar style to modern readers, anyway.

A competent draughtsman, Gurney's style evokes the travelogue of a naturalist (which is, luckily, his story's very frame), so that the sometimes indulgent fantasy or unremarkable characterization may simply come off realistically as the effect of an occasionally unlikely or overly likely world, or of a character's view of it. If only Gurney had the tenacity of Baum, as he has already escaped the pointlessness.

Perhaps the greatest gift of Gurney's as a combined author/illustrator is that he lets you forget what you know and allows you to believe in what he has created.
]]> 4696260 Sat, 26 Apr 2008 16:58:41 -0700
In listening to a discussion between Douglas Adams and Lewis Walpert in which the point was brought up that the individual is unimportant in science, but that they are paramount in art. Walpert proposed that scientific discovery is inevitable, as the confluence of ideas often produces linear developments of the same ideas, such as with Newton and Leibniz (or Archimedes for that sake).

However, I would venture that this is equally applicable to the arts, where movements develop out of shared influences and social concerns. The process of an artistic movement developing is often geographically remote and more an indication of collective thought than of proselytism.

The vast cited influence of this book, then, is not difficult to conceptualize when one begins to look at the nature of movements and ideas which surrounded it. Of course, horror has tended to follow in the wake of new discovery, as the Industrial Revolution brought forth Frankenstein, or the Communist scare and 'alien threats'. This book draws upon those very sources and bringing in the idea of apocalypse--newly popularized by the nuclear age--create something which is not altogether as insightful as it is inevitable.

The apocalyptic nature of the book may be reflected in earlier expressions, such as Shelley's 'Last Man' and the wide study of religious eschatology; the aforementioned advent of the nuclear age created a new series of questions about this possibility, bringing it again to the forefront (in a way more engaging than the religious scares of every other year).

The vampires themselves may also be linked to 'The Last Man', in addition to the Communist scare aliens and bodysnatchers of the pulps. A force which is mindless, anti-individualistic, and inhuman comes up over and over as representation of any enemy, especially the communists. Indeed, one can look at this conceptualization as an early recognition of the danger of viral memetics.

These same ideas will contine to be carried on after this work, not only though the oft-mentioned zombie stories, but also through speculative fiction as represented by the Twilight Zone and Outer Limits. Beyond this, you may see 'I Am Legend' as prototypical of the trope of the entire point of a story hinging on a shift of point-of-view, delivered as a twist ending.

All these shifting movements and ideas are rife with opportunity for writers looking for a conceptual shift, but I would argue that 'I Am Legend' fails to take advantage of this. One might point out that it is an early example, but this alone does not save it, as we may point out earlier writings which tackle similar issues with a greater depth and sense of conceptual exploration.

We may point to Shelley's 'The Last Man', Bierce's 'Can Such Things Be', or the works of Mann, Hesse, and Conrad to find authors who explored similar themes of inhumanity, hopelessness, sex, death, loneliness, and who did so much more fully and with a sense of joy and artistry.

There are many cases where pulp authors, despite some elements of simplicity, have through later analysis proven to have overcome this by sense of psychology, or character, or tone, or theme. Indeed, Shakespeare was considered a populist, and in all his fart-jokes, cliches, and story borrowing, we might compare him to 'Family Guy' or 'The Simpsons'; the chief difference being that they draw their allusions from 1998's culture and he drew his from Greek Myth.

But I digress; Matheson as an author does not bear these strengths, and misses many opportunities to take advantage of the themes he explores, which may be new in their particular combination, but in no way could the excuse be made that there was no precedent for any of them.

Matheson spends much of the book in psychological character exploration. It seems every statement of action (or interaction) is followed by an explanation of the thoughts and events which have just occured. Instead of filling out the characters, these descriptions are so simple that one begins to feel that Matheson is simply telling you the same thing twice; or three times.

This was typified when the main character asks a question which Matheson follows with 'he asked, incredulously'. The fact that the character was both clearly incredulous and asking a question did not seem self-evident enough, it seems. Then again, nothing seems self-evident to him in this book. Matheson tells us what his characters are thinking almost constantly, despite the fact that it rarely offers any further insight. One might achieve a similar effect by taking a Hemmingway story and having a high-schooler add in how the character is feeling or what they are thinking between every line of dialogue in the style of a literary analysis.

Matheson doesn't seem to have a great sense of psychology and his character's reactions seem either unjustified or oversimplified. It seems more like he's trying to make his characters fit the story than building a story around them. Then again, the characters aren't really deep enough to build the story around in the first place.

I began to feel that the main character became a surrogate for the author in a lot of situations, and that he would then try to deflect this by making the character oddly different or suddenly emotional, before slowly creeping back.

Comparisons to Stephen King are also apt: another author whose sense of storytelling is rather jumbled and rough despite some interesting concepts driving it.

It is not difficult to understand why this book was so influential: in the process of reading it, I was constantly thinking of things I wished the author would do with the story. Every time he overstated a point or underexplored a theme, I began to imagine how I might do it differently. It's not hard to imagine Romero finished this book having already built an entire movie in his head by simply extending where the author faltered or ceased.

Indeed, the book often reads like a screenplay, and if the plodding character descriptions were meant to curtail the interpretive fancies of pretty but moronic actors, I could not have been surprised.

In the end, Matheson does that which seemed unpredictable in that no one had yet done it, but seems equally inevitable in light of the social and literary movements surrounding. He breaks the rule of authors, in that we should always strive to show instead of to tell, and that we only tell when we do not have the skill to show.

I will not deny that this work exists in a certain nexus along the developmemnt of some very important and interesting genres and works, but that in this sense it works more like a rough draft than an artist's concept. It is less an inspiring work than a work which revealed that there was a lot of space for authors to re-introduce old ideas by new means and methods. If only Matheson had been able to take up this challenge himself, instead of indicating the void by inhabiting it, we might remember this book not from where it happened to sit, but from what it managed to do.]]>
author: Richard Matheson
name: Keely
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1954
rating: 2
read at: 04/08
date added: 04/26/08
shelves: horror, novel, sci-fi
review:
I know there is a lot going for this book, in terms of popular opinion, influence, and originality, so you'll have to forgive me for interposing my body with the flywheel; we'll see what's left of me at the end.

In listening to a discussion between Douglas Adams and Lewis Walpert in which the point was brought up that the individual is unimportant in science, but that they are paramount in art. Walpert proposed that scientific discovery is inevitable, as the confluence of ideas often produces linear developments of the same ideas, such as with Newton and Leibniz (or Archimedes for that sake).

However, I would venture that this is equally applicable to the arts, where movements develop out of shared influences and social concerns. The process of an artistic movement developing is often geographically remote and more an indication of collective thought than of proselytism.

The vast cited influence of this book, then, is not difficult to conceptualize when one begins to look at the nature of movements and ideas which surrounded it. Of course, horror has tended to follow in the wake of new discovery, as the Industrial Revolution brought forth Frankenstein, or the Communist scare and 'alien threats'. This book draws upon those very sources and bringing in the idea of apocalypse--newly popularized by the nuclear age--create something which is not altogether as insightful as it is inevitable.

The apocalyptic nature of the book may be reflected in earlier expressions, such as Shelley's 'Last Man' and the wide study of religious eschatology; the aforementioned advent of the nuclear age created a new series of questions about this possibility, bringing it again to the forefront (in a way more engaging than the religious scares of every other year).

The vampires themselves may also be linked to 'The Last Man', in addition to the Communist scare aliens and bodysnatchers of the pulps. A force which is mindless, anti-individualistic, and inhuman comes up over and over as representation of any enemy, especially the communists. Indeed, one can look at this conceptualization as an early recognition of the danger of viral memetics.

These same ideas will contine to be carried on after this work, not only though the oft-mentioned zombie stories, but also through speculative fiction as represented by the Twilight Zone and Outer Limits. Beyond this, you may see 'I Am Legend' as prototypical of the trope of the entire point of a story hinging on a shift of point-of-view, delivered as a twist ending.

All these shifting movements and ideas are rife with opportunity for writers looking for a conceptual shift, but I would argue that 'I Am Legend' fails to take advantage of this. One might point out that it is an early example, but this alone does not save it, as we may point out earlier writings which tackle similar issues with a greater depth and sense of conceptual exploration.

We may point to Shelley's 'The Last Man', Bierce's 'Can Such Things Be', or the works of Mann, Hesse, and Conrad to find authors who explored similar themes of inhumanity, hopelessness, sex, death, loneliness, and who did so much more fully and with a sense of joy and artistry.

There are many cases where pulp authors, despite some elements of simplicity, have through later analysis proven to have overcome this by sense of psychology, or character, or tone, or theme. Indeed, Shakespeare was considered a populist, and in all his fart-jokes, cliches, and story borrowing, we might compare him to 'Family Guy' or 'The Simpsons'; the chief difference being that they draw their allusions from 1998's culture and he drew his from Greek Myth.

But I digress; Matheson as an author does not bear these strengths, and misses many opportunities to take advantage of the themes he explores, which may be new in their particular combination, but in no way could the excuse be made that there was no precedent for any of them.

Matheson spends much of the book in psychological character exploration. It seems every statement of action (or interaction) is followed by an explanation of the thoughts and events which have just occured. Instead of filling out the characters, these descriptions are so simple that one begins to feel that Matheson is simply telling you the same thing twice; or three times.

This was typified when the main character asks a question which Matheson follows with 'he asked, incredulously'. The fact that the character was both clearly incredulous and asking a question did not seem self-evident enough, it seems. Then again, nothing seems self-evident to him in this book. Matheson tells us what his characters are thinking almost constantly, despite the fact that it rarely offers any further insight. One might achieve a similar effect by taking a Hemmingway story and having a high-schooler add in how the character is feeling or what they are thinking between every line of dialogue in the style of a literary analysis.

Matheson doesn't seem to have a great sense of psychology and his character's reactions seem either unjustified or oversimplified. It seems more like he's trying to make his characters fit the story than building a story around them. Then again, the characters aren't really deep enough to build the story around in the first place.

I began to feel that the main character became a surrogate for the author in a lot of situations, and that he would then try to deflect this by making the character oddly different or suddenly emotional, before slowly creeping back.

Comparisons to Stephen King are also apt: another author whose sense of storytelling is rather jumbled and rough despite some interesting concepts driving it.

It is not difficult to understand why this book was so influential: in the process of reading it, I was constantly thinking of things I wished the author would do with the story. Every time he overstated a point or underexplored a theme, I began to imagine how I might do it differently. It's not hard to imagine Romero finished this book having already built an entire movie in his head by simply extending where the author faltered or ceased.

Indeed, the book often reads like a screenplay, and if the plodding character descriptions were meant to curtail the interpretive fancies of pretty but moronic actors, I could not have been surprised.

In the end, Matheson does that which seemed unpredictable in that no one had yet done it, but seems equally inevitable in light of the social and literary movements surrounding. He breaks the rule of authors, in that we should always strive to show instead of to tell, and that we only tell when we do not have the skill to show.

I will not deny that this work exists in a certain nexus along the developmemnt of some very important and interesting genres and works, but that in this sense it works more like a rough draft than an artist's concept. It is less an inspiring work than a work which revealed that there was a lot of space for authors to re-introduce old ideas by new means and methods. If only Matheson had been able to take up this challenge himself, instead of indicating the void by inhabiting it, we might remember this book not from where it happened to sit, but from what it managed to do.
]]> 4000341 Thu, 13 Mar 2008 07:26:52 -0700
author: Robert E. Howard
name: Keely
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2007
rating: 3
read at: 03/08
date added: 03/13/08
shelves: fantasy, horror, short-story
review:

]]> 7682226 Thu, 13 Mar 2008 07:24:29 -0700
Who reads this and laughs but a little is too dour and prideful to be of much use, and only laughs when he cannot help it.

Who reads this and laughs a score is the wretched false-wit, and only laughs when it suits his crowd.

Who reads and laughs but once a chapter has a mirthful soul, if no great love for words.

Who reads and laughs at every page shall be my boon companion, and a kiss for each grinning cheek.

Who reads and laughs at twice and thrice a page shall be my worthy better, and may they forgive my endless queries.]]>
author: Henry Fielding
name: Keely
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1749
rating: 5
read at: 03/08
date added: 03/13/08
shelves: classics, humor, novel
review:
Who reads this and laughs not at all may be forgiven only as a simpleton, and does so because he does not comprehend.

Who reads this and laughs but a little is too dour and prideful to be of much use, and only laughs when he cannot help it.

Who reads this and laughs a score is the wretched false-wit, and only laughs when it suits his crowd.

Who reads and laughs but once a chapter has a mirthful soul, if no great love for words.

Who reads and laughs at every page shall be my boon companion, and a kiss for each grinning cheek.

Who reads and laughs at twice and thrice a page shall be my worthy better, and may they forgive my endless queries.
]]> 16697290 Fri, 29 Feb 2008 10:22:22 -0800
author: Walter
name: Keely
average rating: 3.67
book published: 1996
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 02/29/08
shelves: erotica, non-fiction
review:

]]> 8299764 Fri, 21 Dec 2007 14:56:04 -0800
Indeed, Nietzsche is not only cited as a critic of the faith but of the first great importer of Buddhist thought into modern philosophy. In the early stages of coming to an understanding with such culturally disparate philosophies, it is not surprising that he should have some misconceptions of his own regarding it, and that even today, our understanding of it cannot be whole. As a westerner, it would take long and careful study to understand even a single concept like 'iki', and how it would represent something as being 'improvised, restrained, romantic, and inconspicuous'.

It is this same sort of misunderstanding which brings this parallel between the 'Merrie England' ideals of Milne and the calm and prescient sublimation of Buddhism. Indeed, it is the modern love of romanticism and recreation of mythology which the popularity of both Buddhism and Pooh in this country are largely based.

It is interesting to look at the views and ideals of earlier artistic and intellectual movements, especially the role they played in the creation of Existentialism, Egalitarianism, and the birth of the dream of the American politic. These ideals came from an attempt to deconstruct historical and traditional roles and to place something reasonable and useful in their place.

Unfortunately, as Moorcock points out in his 'Epic Pooh', it seems that mankind is incapable of living without escapist myths, beyond the wild hopes of certain well-meaning intellectuals; I would like to meet the man whose pain was ever cured by denying it.

So, here we have a symptom of the mythic recreation of our culture, which may be visualized as one branch of New Agism; itself being only an aspect of the idealistic and charismatic movement which also includes Christian Fundamentalism. Of course, two enemies never recognize that the conflict lies in that their differences are too similar.

The Buddhist ideals of suffering and selflessness may appear to be mirrored in Milne's representations, but this is only a cursory effect. The 'suffering' in Pooh is a sense of the pitiful and despondent, coming from a child's exploration of these concepts by playing them out in representation on his toys. It also has a certain factor of humor to it, as all humor is, in some sense, Schadenfreude. The overwhelming sadness of pooh has always been a sense of the ephemeral and of the counted days until childhood ends. Of course, this acts in contrary to Buddhist ideal, which bears no such resigned sadness towards transition, and indeed, holds that change is to be hoped for (though also never really achieved).

The 'joy' in these books is also a romanticized invention of childhood, especially when viewed by adults. The joy of Buddhism is more sublime and not based on the self-centered ignorance of childhood, but in a rejection of all the irrational fears and desires which childhood imparts. Indeed, the attempt at Romanticism is against Buddhist ideals, and is not saved by the fact that the Romanticism is subverted by Milne's own Tory idealism.

I suppose that, in the end, Pooh may be as mindless as any Buddhist could wish, but lacks any intention or understanding of his state. The difference being that of a man who wins the lottery and the man who builds his own company from the ground up.

It is, in the end, too simple a thing to imagine that Buddhism is really a childlike state, or that our own over-romanticization of the abject confusion of childhood could represent a resigned sense of peace. It is true that we are always confused and mystified; always children, or at least never so far removed from them as we may think.

If we took the knowledge of a child and of a wise man, they would still both be miniscule compared to knowledge itself. The Pooh books do not recognize the permanence of this unknowning state, and in romanticizing it as a 'loss', become as foolish as the myth of virginity.

Perhaps it is not surprising that, in a western view which takes tries to combine Buddhism with idealized romanticism, that something which seems both romantic, joyful, and ultimately sad should seem Buddhist in a western understanding, but onlin insofar as Buddhism is mysterious and conflicted in their minds.
]]>
author: Benjamin Hoff
name: Keely
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2003
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 12/21/07
shelves: non-fiction, philosophy
review:
If Nietzsche is considered the West's strongest opponent of Buddhism, it must be through a thorough misunderstanding of both Nietzsche and Buddhism, which should come as shocking to no westerner who bears an affinity for either. Though at first observation we may think that his ideal of utter selfishness would conflict with the Buddhist ideal of utter selflessness, this marks our confusion at the fact that a Buddhist would consider them both to be the same state.

Indeed, Nietzsche is not only cited as a critic of the faith but of the first great importer of Buddhist thought into modern philosophy. In the early stages of coming to an understanding with such culturally disparate philosophies, it is not surprising that he should have some misconceptions of his own regarding it, and that even today, our understanding of it cannot be whole. As a westerner, it would take long and careful study to understand even a single concept like 'iki', and how it would represent something as being 'improvised, restrained, romantic, and inconspicuous'.

It is this same sort of misunderstanding which brings this parallel between the 'Merrie England' ideals of Milne and the calm and prescient sublimation of Buddhism. Indeed, it is the modern love of romanticism and recreation of mythology which the popularity of both Buddhism and Pooh in this country are largely based.

It is interesting to look at the views and ideals of earlier artistic and intellectual movements, especially the role they played in the creation of Existentialism, Egalitarianism, and the birth of the dream of the American politic. These ideals came from an attempt to deconstruct historical and traditional roles and to place something reasonable and useful in their place.

Unfortunately, as Moorcock points out in his 'Epic Pooh', it seems that mankind is incapable of living without escapist myths, beyond the wild hopes of certain well-meaning intellectuals; I would like to meet the man whose pain was ever cured by denying it.

So, here we have a symptom of the mythic recreation of our culture, which may be visualized as one branch of New Agism; itself being only an aspect of the idealistic and charismatic movement which also includes Christian Fundamentalism. Of course, two enemies never recognize that the conflict lies in that their differences are too similar.

The Buddhist ideals of suffering and selflessness may appear to be mirrored in Milne's representations, but this is only a cursory effect. The 'suffering' in Pooh is a sense of the pitiful and despondent, coming from a child's exploration of these concepts by playing them out in representation on his toys. It also has a certain factor of humor to it, as all humor is, in some sense, Schadenfreude. The overwhelming sadness of pooh has always been a sense of the ephemeral and of the counted days until childhood ends. Of course, this acts in contrary to Buddhist ideal, which bears no such resigned sadness towards transition, and indeed, holds that change is to be hoped for (though also never really achieved).

The 'joy' in these books is also a romanticized invention of childhood, especially when viewed by adults. The joy of Buddhism is more sublime and not based on the self-centered ignorance of childhood, but in a rejection of all the irrational fears and desires which childhood imparts. Indeed, the attempt at Romanticism is against Buddhist ideals, and is not saved by the fact that the Romanticism is subverted by Milne's own Tory idealism.

I suppose that, in the end, Pooh may be as mindless as any Buddhist could wish, but lacks any intention or understanding of his state. The difference being that of a man who wins the lottery and the man who builds his own company from the ground up.

It is, in the end, too simple a thing to imagine that Buddhism is really a childlike state, or that our own over-romanticization of the abject confusion of childhood could represent a resigned sense of peace. It is true that we are always confused and mystified; always children, or at least never so far removed from them as we may think.

If we took the knowledge of a child and of a wise man, they would still both be miniscule compared to knowledge itself. The Pooh books do not recognize the permanence of this unknowning state, and in romanticizing it as a 'loss', become as foolish as the myth of virginity.

Perhaps it is not surprising that, in a western view which takes tries to combine Buddhism with idealized romanticism, that something which seems both romantic, joyful, and ultimately sad should seem Buddhist in a western understanding, but onlin insofar as Buddhism is mysterious and conflicted in their minds.

]]> 10694051 Wed, 19 Dec 2007 11:04:12 -0800
author: Neil Gaiman
name: Keely
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1997
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 12/19/07
shelves: comics, fantasy
review:

]]> 10693774 Wed, 19 Dec 2007 11:00:01 -0800
author: Neil Gaiman
name: Keely
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1994
rating: 2
read at: 12/07
date added: 12/19/07
shelves: comics, fantasy
review:

]]> 1194644 Sat, 15 Dec 2007 12:54:54 -0800
So, the question remains: even if the vatican did not decide to explicitly include it, why are there not smaller sects which we expect should have sprung up around such and inspiring and daring work? The answer is that one need not explicitly include something when it has been included implicitly. It is not common to take Milton's view of events as accurate because it was derived from the Bible, and not recognize that most of it is entirely original work.

Under Constantine, Hell and the Devil were re-conceptualized. The representation of Hell in the Bible is often metaphorical, and does not include 'fire or brimstone'. Hell is defined as 'absence from God' and nothing more. This is supposed to be a painful and unfulfilling experience, but not literal physical torture.

Much of the modern conceptualization of Hell is based upon Hellenic mythological influences with verses from Revelation taken out of context for support. The place of 'fire and brimstone' is where the Devil and the Antichrist are put after the apocalypse, and is never stated as being related to human afterlife.

Likewise, the Devil is most commonly depicted as a greedy idiot chasing after farts. The only tempting he ever does Biblically is during Job, where he must first ask God if he is permitted to interfere. The concept of the Devil as a charming, rebellious trickster and genius is entirely Milton.

He portrays him this way to align Satan with the heroic figures of Epic Poetry. This is not because he thinks of the Devil as a hero, but rather so he can subvert that concept to show that heroes should not be rebellious murderers as they were in ancient stories, but humble, pious, simple men.

He gives the Devil philosophical and political motivations for rebelling, but has him fail to notice that God cannot be questioned and defeated. Unfortunately for Milton, this requires that one absolutely believe this assertion without ever testing it. Anyone who believes it unquestioningly (such as C.S. Lewis) is bound to find that the Devil is foolish to question the natural order.

However, Milton himself states that the Devil had no choice but to doubt, and that with our own rational arguments, man cannot help doubting either. In this case, we must then fall in with Blake, and agree that Milton was the Devil's man, but never knew it.

The strength of Paradise Lost is that both of these views stand well-supported, even though Milton may have sided himself with one more than the other. It is a great book of questions, and a book which is entirely demanding on the reader to think and to try to understand.

We are supposed to sympathize with the Devil because he is heroic and dangerous, but we also know he is the Devil. We know that to sympathize with him is wrong, and that he is supposed to be wrong. Milton here invented the concept of the Devil we cannot help but enjoy, and who we must fight daily to overcome.

What he may not have realized is that the Devil is doubt, and that doubt will always deconstruct and old answer and indicate a new one. The fact remains that metaphysically, doubt can only injure us in a realm we cannot know exists. As the enemy of any tyranny--of men, of ideas--doubt is the helpmeet of all who struggle. The Devil is the father of doubt, and the final answer to doubt is always ignorance: either in believing, or in not believing.]]>
author: John Milton
name: Keely
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1667
rating: 5
read at: 11/05
date added: 12/15/07
shelves: classics, epic-poetry, poetry
review:
Milton wrote this while blind, and claimed that the work was one of a divine inspiration which came to him in the night. If there is any modern text of the quality to be believably added into the Bible, it is this one. Indeed, as it outlines portions of that book which, thanks to the basis of combined mythic stories, are never explored. It also updated not only the epic, but the heroic form, and its questioning of the devil is a great philosophical exploration, even if it may be a failure, as I shall later try to explain.

So, the question remains: even if the vatican did not decide to explicitly include it, why are there not smaller sects which we expect should have sprung up around such and inspiring and daring work? The answer is that one need not explicitly include something when it has been included implicitly. It is not common to take Milton's view of events as accurate because it was derived from the Bible, and not recognize that most of it is entirely original work.

Under Constantine, Hell and the Devil were re-conceptualized. The representation of Hell in the Bible is often metaphorical, and does not include 'fire or brimstone'. Hell is defined as 'absence from God' and nothing more. This is supposed to be a painful and unfulfilling experience, but not literal physical torture.

Much of the modern conceptualization of Hell is based upon Hellenic mythological influences with verses from Revelation taken out of context for support. The place of 'fire and brimstone' is where the Devil and the Antichrist are put after the apocalypse, and is never stated as being related to human afterlife.

Likewise, the Devil is most commonly depicted as a greedy idiot chasing after farts. The only tempting he ever does Biblically is during Job, where he must first ask God if he is permitted to interfere. The concept of the Devil as a charming, rebellious trickster and genius is entirely Milton.

He portrays him this way to align Satan with the heroic figures of Epic Poetry. This is not because he thinks of the Devil as a hero, but rather so he can subvert that concept to show that heroes should not be rebellious murderers as they were in ancient stories, but humble, pious, simple men.

He gives the Devil philosophical and political motivations for rebelling, but has him fail to notice that God cannot be questioned and defeated. Unfortunately for Milton, this requires that one absolutely believe this assertion without ever testing it. Anyone who believes it unquestioningly (such as C.S. Lewis) is bound to find that the Devil is foolish to question the natural order.

However, Milton himself states that the Devil had no choice but to doubt, and that with our own rational arguments, man cannot help doubting either. In this case, we must then fall in with Blake, and agree that Milton was the Devil's man, but never knew it.

The strength of Paradise Lost is that both of these views stand well-supported, even though Milton may have sided himself with one more than the other. It is a great book of questions, and a book which is entirely demanding on the reader to think and to try to understand.

We are supposed to sympathize with the Devil because he is heroic and dangerous, but we also know he is the Devil. We know that to sympathize with him is wrong, and that he is supposed to be wrong. Milton here invented the concept of the Devil we cannot help but enjoy, and who we must fight daily to overcome.

What he may not have realized is that the Devil is doubt, and that doubt will always deconstruct and old answer and indicate a new one. The fact remains that metaphysically, doubt can only injure us in a realm we cannot know exists. As the enemy of any tyranny--of men, of ideas--doubt is the helpmeet of all who struggle. The Devil is the father of doubt, and the final answer to doubt is always ignorance: either in believing, or in not believing.
]]> 10470896 Sat, 15 Dec 2007 12:02:44 -0800
author: Alexander Pope
name: Keely
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2004
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 12/15/07
shelves: humor, lit-crit, non-fiction, poetry
review:
Sometimes, I grow the silly delusion that I might have the potential to be a writer. As a curative, I read this, Lycidas, and Hours of Idleness; then I recall that not only am I not a writer, I am old.
]]> 1431539 Sat, 15 Dec 2007 11:53:44 -0800
He began with his inimitable wit and wordly mastery with 'An Essay on Criticism' when he was only 21. Four years later he added his contribution to the Epic Tradition with 'The Rape of the Lock'. One of the reasons that this was a slow century for literature was that it was kind of a slow century in general. Like all great Epicists before him, Pope captured the spirit of his age, but in this case, instead of capturing it in a broad net of climactic action, beautiful language, and political posturing, he speared it with an acerbic tongue.

His epic was a small one, and like Milton reinvented the genre by turning the hero into the villain, Pope did the same by turning epic into everyday. His lampooning of the high nobility and their self-importance allied him literarily with his contemporaries, such as Voltaire, who all prefigured the social and literary revolution of the coming century.

Pope plays a very delicate instrument with his epic, often balancing a thin line between respect and ridicule: the same line those same nobles had to walk every day. His linguistic and conceptual ability shine here, as does his humor, which lies on the upper borders of the clever and the witty.

His later works consisted of translations and numerous political treatises, which though scathing and brilliant in their way, do not continue the philosophical and explorative opened up by 'An Essay on Criticism' and expanded in 'The Rape of the Lock'. The Dunciad certainly has a similar bent, but is too historo-specific to really have the same effect, so 'The Rape of The Lock' is probably the best example by the best British poet of the Eighteenth.]]>
author: Alexander Pope
name: Keely
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2005
rating: 5
read at: 10/05
date added: 12/15/07
shelves: classics, epic-poetry, humor, poetry
review:
Compared to the Nineteenth Century's Romantic movement and the Seventeenth's Shakespeare and Milton, the Eighteenth was a literary void. There was a little bit going on in France with Diderot and Voltaire, and some minor British works by Swift, Defoe, and Gay, but by and large, Eighteenth Century literature is Fielding and Pope.

He began with his inimitable wit and wordly mastery with 'An Essay on Criticism' when he was only 21. Four years later he added his contribution to the Epic Tradition with 'The Rape of the Lock'. One of the reasons that this was a slow century for literature was that it was kind of a slow century in general. Like all great Epicists before him, Pope captured the spirit of his age, but in this case, instead of capturing it in a broad net of climactic action, beautiful language, and political posturing, he speared it with an acerbic tongue.

His epic was a small one, and like Milton reinvented the genre by turning the hero into the villain, Pope did the same by turning epic into everyday. His lampooning of the high nobility and their self-importance allied him literarily with his contemporaries, such as Voltaire, who all prefigured the social and literary revolution of the coming century.

Pope plays a very delicate instrument with his epic, often balancing a thin line between respect and ridicule: the same line those same nobles had to walk every day. His linguistic and conceptual ability shine here, as does his humor, which lies on the upper borders of the clever and the witty.

His later works consisted of translations and numerous political treatises, which though scathing and brilliant in their way, do not continue the philosophical and explorative opened up by 'An Essay on Criticism' and expanded in 'The Rape of the Lock'. The Dunciad certainly has a similar bent, but is too historo-specific to really have the same effect, so 'The Rape of The Lock' is probably the best example by the best British poet of the Eighteenth.
]]> 10454858 Fri, 14 Dec 2007 23:27:55 -0800
author: Bruce Sterling
name: Keely
average rating: 3.54
book published: 1989
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 12/14/07
shelves: novel, sci-fi
review:
Has not aged as well as Gibson's work. I'm not certain what's more jarring, Sterling's enthusiasm for both nanotech and fax machines, or Star Trek's matter/energy conversion but inability to heal a spine.
]]> 10454608 Fri, 14 Dec 2007 23:19:03 -0800
author: William Gibson
name: Keely
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2006
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 12/14/07
shelves: novel, sci-fi
review:

]]> 10454560 Fri, 14 Dec 2007 23:17:08 -0800
author: William Gibson
name: Keely
average rating: 3.76
book published: 1989
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 12/14/07
shelves: novel, sci-fi
review:

]]> 10449509 Fri, 14 Dec 2007 22:44:44 -0800
author: Thomas Carlyle
name: Keely
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2000
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 12/14/07
shelves: classics, fiction, humor
review:
Alright, so he's an old bastard. I know. He was generally wrong-headed and entirely conceited. He's also hilarious and witty. I would that all those who disagree with me could do so in such a pleasing fashion.
]]> 10449929 Fri, 14 Dec 2007 22:41:32 -0800
As early feminism, this work is an undeniable source. It points out one of the most apparent symptoms of the double-standard implied by 'weaker sex'. However, the work tends to suggest more than it tends to ask, thus working as a piece of propaganda. Of course, it's easy to say this in retrospect when the question "is isolating women and preventing them from taking action really healthy?" was more profound back then. However, I have always been reticent to rate a work as higher merely because it comes from a different age. Austen comes from a different age, and stands on her own merit; so does Woolf.

This symbolism by which this story operates is simplistic and repetitive. The opinions expressed are one-sided, leaving little room for interpretation. This is really the author's crime, as she has not tried to open the debate so much as close it, and since no one is every fully-informed or correct, has doomed this work to become less and less relevant.

This is the perfect sort of story to teach those who are beginning literary critique, because it does not only suggest questions to the reader, but answers. Instead of fostering thought, the work becomes a puzzle with an accurate solution to be worked out. This is useful for the reader trying to understand how texts create meaning, but under more rigorous critique, we find it is not deep or varied enough to support other arguments.

Unfortunately, this means it is also the sort of story that will be loved by people who would rather be answered than questioned. It may have provided something new and intriguing when it was first written, but as a narrow work based on a simplistic sociological concept, can no longer make that claim.

The story is also marked by early signs of the Gothic movement, and lying on the crux of that and Feminism, is not liable to be forgotten. The symbolism it uses is a combination of classical representations of sickness and metaphors of imprisonment. Sickness, imprisonment, and madness are the quintessential concepts explored by the Gothic writers, but this work is again quite narrow in its view. While the later movement was interested in this in the sense of existential alienation, this story is interested in those things not as a deeper psychological question, but as the literal state of the woman.

Horror is partially defined by the insanity and utter loneliness lurking in everyone's heart, and is not quite so scary when the person is actually alone and mad. Though it all comes from the imposition of another person's will, which is very horrific, the husband has no desire to be cruel or to harm the woman, nor is such even hinted subconsciously.

For an example of a text which explores the same conditions but which is more universal and with a greater depth, one might suggest One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, where the question becomes: 'what is sanity in the first place?'.

I won't question the historical importance or influence of this work, but it is literarily very simple. A single page of paper dating the writing of Shakespeare's Hamlet accurately would also be historically important, but just because it is related to fine literature does not mean it is fine literature.]]>
author: Charlotte Perkins Gilman
name: Keely
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1998
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 12/14/07
shelves: fiction, horror
review:
Roland Barthes talked about 'writerly' and 'readerly' books. I've struggled for a long time, myself, in trying to come up for term to talk about what I see as conscientious works and those which are too bumbling or too one-sided or too ill-informed to make a point. While The Yellow Wallpaper brings up interesting points, it does not really address them. The text has become part of the canon not for the ability of the author, which is on the more stimulating end of middling, but because it works as a representational piece of a historical movement.

As early feminism, this work is an undeniable source. It points out one of the most apparent symptoms of the double-standard implied by 'weaker sex'. However, the work tends to suggest more than it tends to ask, thus working as a piece of propaganda. Of course, it's easy to say this in retrospect when the question "is isolating women and preventing them from taking action really healthy?" was more profound back then. However, I have always been reticent to rate a work as higher merely because it comes from a different age. Austen comes from a different age, and stands on her own merit; so does Woolf.

This symbolism by which this story operates is simplistic and repetitive. The opinions expressed are one-sided, leaving little room for interpretation. This is really the author's crime, as she has not tried to open the debate so much as close it, and since no one is every fully-informed or correct, has doomed this work to become less and less relevant.

This is the perfect sort of story to teach those who are beginning literary critique, because it does not only suggest questions to the reader, but answers. Instead of fostering thought, the work becomes a puzzle with an accurate solution to be worked out. This is useful for the reader trying to understand how texts create meaning, but under more rigorous critique, we find it is not deep or varied enough to support other arguments.

Unfortunately, this means it is also the sort of story that will be loved by people who would rather be answered than questioned. It may have provided something new and intriguing when it was first written, but as a narrow work based on a simplistic sociological concept, can no longer make that claim.

The story is also marked by early signs of the Gothic movement, and lying on the crux of that and Feminism, is not liable to be forgotten. The symbolism it uses is a combination of classical representations of sickness and metaphors of imprisonment. Sickness, imprisonment, and madness are the quintessential concepts explored by the Gothic writers, but this work is again quite narrow in its view. While the later movement was interested in this in the sense of existential alienation, this story is interested in those things not as a deeper psychological question, but as the literal state of the woman.

Horror is partially defined by the insanity and utter loneliness lurking in everyone's heart, and is not quite so scary when the person is actually alone and mad. Though it all comes from the imposition of another person's will, which is very horrific, the husband has no desire to be cruel or to harm the woman, nor is such even hinted s