Richard Seltzer's Blog: Richard Seltzer, page 5

Perestroika in Paris by Jane Smiley

Perestroika in Paris by Jane Smiley

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


A horse, a dog, a raven, a pair of mallards, and a pair of rats survive and thrive on their own in downtown Paris. All of them can talk to and understand one another. All of them can understand what people say. But people can't understand them. Their view of the world is childlike and naive. They muddle along thanks to good luck and the sympathetic good will of the people they encounter, especially an eight-year-old boy.

This isn't an allegory or a fable, like Aesop, Animal Farm, or Watership Down. It isn't a story told from the perspective of a horse as a way to reflect on human behavior, like Black Beauty or Tolstoy's Strider. It also isn't a tale of a child's special bond with horse or dog, like Lassie, Black Stallion, or Old Yeller.

Rather this is a fun story for the sake of story. The characters happen to be animals and their personalities are built on the typical behavior and the physical capabilities and limitations of their species. But they come alive and grow and interact with one another as unique individuals.

Hop on the back of Paras, the race horse, and enjoy a midnight ride around the Champs de Mars, with the lights of the Eiffel Tower in the background. Sit behind Etienne the eight-year-old boy. Raoul the raven will settle on your shoulder. Kurt the rat will hold onto the horse's mane. Frida the dog will run alongside. The night is young, and you can be as well.



View all my reviews

Big Love, a refugee story by J. Paul Seltzer

Big Love: a refugee story by J. Paul Seltzzr

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


The life path of Bay Quanong Nyguyen leads from one challenge to another, from war-torn Viet Nam to Syracuse, NY. But what matters isn't the events themselves but rather how he responds to them and what he learns from them.

Most memorable for me is Bay's concluding speech on a return visit to his family in Viet Nam:

"If I try to sum up what I take from all of this is, I guess it is to say that the root of HOPE runs deep. There is a big YES at work in my little world and in the universe.

"Some people call it God. I've come to call it Big Love. It is the pervasive energy driving all of us and everything, whether we believe it or not. It's like the law of gravity. It just is in us and though us, and will always be so. We already possess exactly what we desire. It is that magnet, that grat light within. This big Love is twinned to our soul. Our winter places are kissed by this light. My heart is a place where Big Love might dwell. My outer life grows its peace from within.

"I think it's the same for everyone and everything. We ae all of this same source. We are one."



View all my reviews

The Searcher by Tana French

The Searcher by Tana French

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This isn't about a detective working for the police in Ireland and using police resources and techniques to solve crimes. Rather Cal is a retired cop from Chicago who just moved to rural Ireland and gets caught up in a missing person search on his own, with no resources at all.

It's about Cal, his backstory and his personal growth as much as it is about 13-year-old Trey whose brother is missing.

Cal has a personal "code", a sense of what is right and wrong and needs to abide by that code regardless of whether it coincides with the law. In that respect, he reminds me of Robert Parker's Spenser. I wouldn't be surprised if Call appeared in another Tanya French novel soon. He's a complex character with more than one-book potential.





View all my reviews

Pushcart Prize XXXIX

The Pushcart Prize XXXIX: Best of the Small Presses 2015 Edition by Bill Henderson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


An anthology can be worth the money and the time to read it if it includes one memorable gem.
For me, the gem in this book is Fables by Bennett Sims, from Conjunctions.
It recounts a short series revelatory encounters between children and common animals. It is unique both in style and content.
A sample memorable phrase:
"... it is as startling as the first sound in creation."
It also included three words that I had never seen before, but that I could decipher from the context.: imbricated, scansorial, couchant.



View all my reviews

How to Raise an Elephant by Smith

How to Raise an Elephant by Alexander McCall Smith

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I'm addicted. I've now read all 21 of the series No. 1 ladies Detective Agency. The tone throughout is consistent and the characters grow from one book to the next. There is a relaxing, entrancing atmosphere throughout. This is a world where empathy reigns, a world of traditional values (and traditional weight). These are ordinary people coping with the problems of everyday life, in the heart of Africa. As usual, there are a few investigations to be sorted out an dealt with creatively, punctuated with delightful digressions about Botswana and about human nature.



View all my reviews

Macbeth by Shakespeare

Macbeth by William Shakespeare

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Read for the second time and then a third Binge reading repeatedly, all of Shakespeare for my novel Shakespeare's Twin Sister.

Rereading Shakespeare is like playing a piece of music. The pleasure grows as you learn it, until you can watch it in your mind without looking at the words, like you can play the music without looking at the score and then can hear the music without playing it.




View all my reviews

Playboy, Mad Men, and Me

Playboy, Mad Men, and Me—And Other Stories by Julie Wosk

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This is a short, fun baby-boomer memoir. Episodes touch on such topics as the Civil Rights Movement, the work environment in the publicity department at Playboy, death/regret/guilt, and the 1950's concept of femininity, While this is enjoyable as it stands, the author has the talent and the life experience to write a novel expanding on these episodes. These real-life stories have an engaging immediacy, and going beyond them to fiction would open a world of possibilities.



View all my reviews

My Fair Ladies by Julie Wosk

My Fair Ladies: Female Robots, Androids, and Other Artificial Eves by Julie Wosk

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Great read.

This book describes and convincingly explains many instances of artificial women and women acting artificially from fiction, film, art, and performance art.

I was particularly struck by the discussion of the "uncanny valley," the unsettling moment when someone, perhaps the object of love, turns out to be a robot, or someone thought to be a robot turns out to be human.

Also, for me, the description and analysis of the many instances of Ray Bradbury's Electric Grandmother and its variants struck home strongly, evoking memories that had me teary eyed as I read.

And the analysis of the many iterations of the Pygmalion theme in both art and story over the course of 2000 years made me think of Shakespeare rewriting and transforming plays/plots/characters that others had created, finding the true story and bringing the characters to life.



View all my reviews

Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman

Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Off-the-wall characters, situations, and turns of phrase. Great fun.
I'm getting addicted to his style.
A few samples --
p. 55 Impossible things happen. When they do happen, most people jsut deal with it.
p 75 ...he had the kind of hangover that an Old Testament God might have smitten the Midianites with...
p. 151 Human eyes (unlike say, a cat's eyes, of an octopus's) are only made to see one version of reality at a time.
p. 206 Ah well, she thought. Being dead is probably just like everything else in life: you pic some of it up as you go along, and you just make up the rest.
p. 220 Maeve Livingstone had expected death to be a number of things, but irritating had never been on e of them.
p. 223 Death should be like the kind of all-expenses included luxury vacation where they give you a folder at the start filled with tickets, discount vouchers, schedules, and several phone numbers to ring if you get into trouble.
p. 247 There is a theory that, in the whole world, there are only five hundred real people.
p. 292 If you don't die now and again, people start takin' you for granted.
p. 321 He sang of names and words, of the building blocks beneath the real, the worlds that make worlds, the truths beneath the way things are; he sang of appropriate ends and just conclusions of those who would have hurt him and his. He sang the world.
p.333 ... then Marcus taught the mermaid the words to the Flintstones theme song.




View all my reviews

Bradbury Stories by Ray Bradbury

Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales by Ray Bradbury

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Reading 100 stories, I came to expect mind-expanding twists and take them for granted.
Then, near the end, I was emotionally blown away by two of them.
Forever and the Earth, in which a time travelling visits Thomas Wolfe minutes before he will die, and takes him a couple hundred years into the future, for a brief visit, during which he writes more masterpieces, before he must return to his own time and time as and when scheduled.
Last Rites, in which another time traveler goes back and visits great writers when they are old and dying, without recognition, without audience, and tells them after death they will have many readers and their works will be revered. Hermann Melville, Edgar Allan Poe... Tears came to my eyes when reading that one.




View all my reviews