David G. Cookson's Blog, page 33

Meatspace

Meatspace by Nikesh Shukla

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


“The First and last thing I do every day is see what strangers are saying about me.”

I said to someone recently that between social media and a number of other factors, I feel like I have lost most of my ability to communicate with people on any normal level. It is with this thought that I approached Nikesh Shukla’s Meatspace.

Meatspace is the name that people who spend their lives online give to the world outside—as in, the opposite of Cyberspace. It is the story of Kitab, author of Indian descent living in London who has been fired from his job for writing a book on company time. The book did not turn out to be as successful as he hoped. He is lonely, his girlfriend has left him, and he spends nearly all his time online. When someone from the online world with the same name as him shows up in the real world, he threatens to ruin the life that he has built, the reputation that he has cultivated. No matter how fragile and unreal it is, he values it. And the man he refers to as Kitab 2 stretches Kitab’s ability to handle what the real world throws at him.

Kitab has a brother, Aziz, who is obsessed with a guy who got a bow-tie as a neck tattoo. Aziz gets his own bow-tie neck tattoo and then he writes a blog in which he goes to New York to find this person, his neck-tattoo twin. This narrative runs counter to Kitab’s own as he stays in London dealing with his same name twin. Kitab misses his brother. And missing Aziz factors into Kitab’s loneliness and contributes to the free fall that he takes while Kitab 2 unwittingly tarnishes his life.

Meatspace is an exploration of the role of technology and social media in our society, along the lines of Jonathan Coe’s The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim, Dave Eggers The Circle, or Wayne Gladstone’s Notes from the Internet Apocalypse. But it is the heartfelt way in which it ties together that won me over in the end. Kitab’s humanity as it is lived out on a phone or on a computer screen is a shield for his pain. A lot of it rings true. Because sometimes it’s tough out there in meatspace. But you gotta come out sometime.




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This is Your Life, Harriet Chance, review.

This Is Your Life, Harriet Chance! by Jonathan Evison

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This is Your Life was a TV show that was way before my time, but I believe I understand the premise. Guests heard voices that belonged to people who came from that person’s past, who then appeared from behind a curtain for a reunion. The whole sequence became a reminder of the life that person has led up to that point while offering perspective and thus hope for the future. This is Your Life, Harriet Chance! takes that format and stretches it from conception and all through the 78 years that one Mrs. Harriet Chance spends on the earth.

The story bounces around in somewhat random order a la Pulp Fiction, focusing on the 78 year old version of Harriet. She is recently widowed from her husband Bernard, to whom she was married for 55 years, and has two grown children, Skip and Caroline. She also has a best friend, Mildred. Before Bernard died, he had entered and won a free cruise to Alaska, which Harriet decides to cash in on, in spite of the objections of her children and her friends. And during this cruise, the past events of her life are revealed slowly, one at a time, throwing light on many of the darker corners of her life. These moments are revealed in the form of flashbacks, letters, and occasional visitations from the ghost of her late husband. And as she goes over those moments, she finds that the narrative which she held in her head for so many years was not the same as the one in her real life. Her stable but less than fantastic marriage was not what she thought it was, but that is only the beginning of the dark chapters of her life that she is both holding back from herself and the people she loves.

The organization of this book was impressive. I liked the way it kept together in this disjointed format: it made all the many revelations that much more powerful. The tone seems intended to be comic, though the material is disturbing and sad. It deals with the reality of having to care for a loved one at the end of one’s life, a cruel punctuation of all that preceded in a shared life together.

This is Your Life, Harriet Chance! is fast moving and enjoyable without being laugh out loud funny. The writing is tight and well-plotted. The family issues feel very real and are very relatable. I wasn’t 100 percent on this book--a lot of it is very sad. But it’s good nonetheless.





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Time's Up

Time's Up by Janey Mack

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


It’s about damn time someone wrote a book like this: a book about a meter maid who solves crimes. Times Up is the first in what promises to be a series of novels about Maisie McGrane, a Police Academy washout who takes to the streets with a ticket gun in her new job with Chicago Parking Enforcement.

Maisie McGrane comes from a family of cops, all alpha males who are both extremely protective yet merciless in that way that only a sibling can be. So when she flunks out of the Academy because of an issue with being “too thin-skinned to deal with the daily barrage of public hostility and unfriendly situations that a police officer encounters” well, the next logical step is to join Parking Enforcement and try to work her way back to where she wants to be. Her self-image takes a huge hit as she is forced to deal with the daily abuses and indignities that being a meter maid has to offer. But Maisie is no quitter, for all she has ever wanted to be was to be a cop, and she will find a way somehow.

With the help of the mercenary ex-Army Ranger Hank Bannon, Maisie finds herself embroiled in controversy and a murder investigation that reaches to the highest levels of city government. And along the way, she becomes a master of the AutoCite, the parking boot, and she learns the ins and outs of parking violations. While I don’t often find myself rooting for the meter maids, here I made an exception.

Time’s Up is a hoot, a book that moves along well, while making you laugh and maybe making you care just a little about the poor sap who is ticketing your car. If this book is anywhere close to reality, their lives are probably much worse than yours.






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1984

1984 by George Orwell

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


War is Peace.
Freedom is Slavery.
Ignorance is Strength.
Big Brother is Watching You.

George Orwell’s 1984 is the grandfather of all modern dystopian fiction, the inspiration for any number of politically minded punk rock bands, and a thematic precursor to The X-Files and many other sci-fi movies and TV shows.

As a work of fiction, 1984 has its moments, some not as strong as others. It all takes place in the Republic of Oceania, one of three World States, along with Eurasia and Eastasia, where there is a constant state of war between one of the other two, and freedom is limited, and in fact unheard of. Everyone lives under the watchful eye of the Thought Police, and everyone serves at the pleasure of a mythical figure known as Big Brother.

Structurally, the novel is divided into three parts, in which we follow the progress of Winston Smith, a small functionary in the Ministry of Truth, a Government organization which paradoxically serves to obscure and conceal the truth, rewriting history so that it fits the narrative that Big Brother puts forth. As Winston goes about his business, he makes observations about the world he lives in. In the second part, he gets involved in a relationship with a fellow Party member, which is both forbidden and dangerous, which then leads to the climactic part three. And in what is maybe my third reading of this novel (I can’t be sure of anything anymore…maybe they’ve already gotten to me!) the third act is where the novel has its power. As Winston is faced with the overreaching arms of Big Brother and finds himself having to confront his fears, there is no doubt that in the end, no one is ever safe in this nightmare world, and it is only a matter of time before they get you.

In attempting to review a classic, I have to acknowledge that there is probably little I can say that would affect anyone’s opinion on this work or influence anyone to read it who hasn’t already. Orwell’s vision of the future as seen from 1949(when this book was first published) may not have come to full fruition (or maybe it has and we just don’t realize it yet) but there are certainly elements of his nightmare in many levels of society, especially when he espouses his views of the need for constant war and the observation that no one in power ever voluntarily relinquishes that power. Smarter people than me have explored these themes to death. The point is, if you are human and you worry that outside forces conspire to strip you of the things that make life meaningful, such as love, trust, or kindness toward your fellow man, then 1984 will hit you as hard now as it must have hit readers when it came out 60 plus years ago.

One of the things I have always liked about Orwell is that he is direct: there is no confusing his meaning. He expresses the characters fear and revulsion and indignation at the circumstances in which he finds himself, but is then overwhelmed by the knowledge that there is nothing he can do about it. Orwell’s feelings about war and Imperialism and the power of language are right there on the page. I read Animal Farm and one of the collected essay books, and his essay about writing has influenced the writer that I am today.

It is a shame that he died so soon after writing 1984, but at least he saved his masterwork for last. If you really have never read this, please do!





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Something Missing: a review

Something Missing by Matthew Dicks

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Martin is not your typical smash and grab burglar. He is an unusual thief with an unusual business plan: he repeatedly steals from the same people for years on end, only he takes things that no one in their right mind would ever miss. A cup of sugar here, a plate there, forgotten jewelry, a half roll of toilet paper…it is in this manner that he is able to cultivate a long list of “clients” who are visited by him on a regular basis yet are never the wiser. Martin is extraordinarily careful and proud about his craft, taking the time to study his clients to the point where he feels like he knows them.
Ultimately it is this familiarity he feels with them that leads him to intervene in their lives: saving a marriage here, preserving a surprise party there all without ever revealing himself.

At 292 pages, the first 50 or so are very careful to explain the premise of Martin’s job as a thief, and then after that point the novel moves into the incident that change his role from burglar to odd guardian angel, one you might not even mind having visit your house. It moves along in spite of having large sections which occur in his head, with no dialog. It might not work for a movie, but in a novel, it works. When Martin starts down the path of intervening in client’s lives, he begins to break his many rules that he has developed to avoid detection. And it is in breaking these rules that Martin’s life begins to change.

I warmed up to this book after what I thought had been a slow start, because when it got going, I was really invested in Martin, who is easily the most sympathetic thief I’ve encountered on the page. While I’m not sure if the author intended this to have a sequel, I would certainly welcome it if it ever happened.




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The Art of Crash Landing: a review

The Art of Crash Landing by Melissa DeCarlo

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Mattie Wallace is thirty, single, broke and pregnant. When she learns of her grandmother’s death and the possibility of an inheritance, she takes off in her piece of crap car and drives the eight hundred miles from her home in Florida to a small town in Oklahoma called Gandy, where her mother grew up and ran away from thirty five years earlier. When she encounters the residents of this town who all remember her mother, the picture they present is not the one that she knew of her. The woman they all knew was fun, vibrant, artistic, musical, carefree…all traits that disappeared in the woman who Mattie knew. The big mystery of The Art of Crash Landing is why? What happened to this woman, and more importantly, could it happen to her?

At 402 pages, there is a lot of room for this exploration, but at no time does it really drag.

Coincidentally, or maybe not so coincidentally, two of the best books I’ve read this year are from authors who have roots in the OKC: The Long and Far Away Gone, by Lou Berney, and this one, by Melissa DeCarlo. TACL is tightly plotted, engrossing, and features a flawed heroine who is in search of her mother’s backstory. And indeed, the story is all in the backstory. It is a mystery that takes the reader through a range of small town characters, whose secrets are not easily given away.
#meldecarlo #Lou_Berney




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Last Call at a place where I think Bill knew my name....

A week ago I heard the news that Dougherty’s Pub was closing its doors, after 30 plus years in business. I worked there for ten years, years of my life that I count among the best. It’s not an exaggeration or some teary eyed thing to say just because it’s all now coming to an end. It’s because of what the Pub meant to me that my heart continues to hurt days after hearing the news and will no doubt hurt long after it is all finally gone and the doors close early Sunday morning.

I first came into the Pub about 20 years ago with a girlfriend. Before even ordering food, before even getting a drink, I said, “Let’s come here when we don’t know where else to go.” Which, in retrospect probably sums up my feeling toward the place that had become my second home. There was no place anywhere outside of my home that I felt more comfortable. The vibe, the simplicity, the good feelings that came from here; the Pub was a lot of things to a lot of people. When I got hired in 2000, it was kind of an off-handed transaction, the kind that would typify the next ten years there. No applications, no rigorous background checks: if you were a friend of someone who worked there, you were okay. When you came there, you were already family. If you knew somebody, you had a chance to be part of something, to work in a place that would keep you as long as you needed it, as long as you did your part and tried your best.

Bill and his family supported me in times of need. I can’t count the number of times when he came through for me in some way, as a boss or as a friend. It was the best feeling in the world to know that someone had my back. The Pub was truly a special place, where artists, musicians, black, white, Latino, Latina, construction workers, teachers, lawyers, doctors, nurses, soldiers, bureaucrats, students, and countless others could come together and eat and drink in peace. It was truly unique: a melting pot of Baltimore, once praised by The Baltimore City Paper as the Best Place where White and Black Baltimore Meet. I was always proud of that fact, that it was a place where everyone could go, where everyone could feel comfortable, no matter who they were. It was a neighborhood bar that was not really in a neighborhood, somewhere in that nether region between Mount Vernon, Martin Luther King Boulevard, and the Cultural District. This was the Pub that Never Changed. Even 4 days before it closes its doors and I enjoy it for one of the last times, it is still the same Pub that I remember.

I will always love this place. And now we say good bye. I already miss you.

Short Shrift Book Reviews

In November I was somewhat consumed with the writing of my novel, and neglected to review the books that I have read lately. So here is a quick list and quick review of the books I have read lately.

The Explanation for Everything, by Lauren Grodstein
A widowed Professor Evolutionary theory agrees to sign off on a girl’s dissertation on Intelligent Design, only to find himself growing closer to her after she moves into his house. Enjoyable throughout, thought the situation gets a little creepy and uncomfortable. 4 of 5 stars

The Code: Baseball’s unwritten rules and its ignore-at-your-own-risk code of conduct, by Ross Bernstein
Examines baseball’s unwritten code of conduct. While fun, was a little put off by the style, with way too many sections prefaced by “In the matter of…” and lots of sidebar stories which made it feel more like reading a magazine. Plus, I had already read a good book about the same subject and this one didn’t come off as well. 3 of 5 stars.

The Fold, by Peter Clines
Scientists are able to create a ‘fold’ in the space time continuum, which allows them to travel great distances in just a few short steps. Amazing sci fi, but it starts to collapse a little due to the length and a plot development that I felt didn’t work. But the hero, who is incapable of forgetting anything, is a pretty cool literary creation. 4 of 5 stars.

Immunity by Taylor Antrim Unfortunately, made my did- not-finish list, mostly because I just didn’t have the time for it. It was given short shrift.


I also perused two short story collections:
More Stories From the Twilight Zone, edited by Carol Serling

The Fun Parts, by Sam Lipsyte.

Love May Fail

Love May Fail by Matthew Quick

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Unbelievable coincidences notwithstanding….

Matthew Quick’s, Love May Fail alternates between being very good, and then being a little less good. It loses a little traction because of what I felt was an unbelievable coincidence involving two of the main characters that I found hard to get over. I mention it only because it is a flaw in an otherwise excellent book.

The story involves various people at some state of rebuilding their lives; the title comes from a Kurt Vonnegut novel, Jailbird: “Love may fail, but courtesy will prevail.” Love May Fail is split into 4 parts, each with a different narrator. There is the pornographer’s ex-wife Portia Kane, who returns home to New Jersey after her marriage falls apart; we have Nate Vernon, the teacher who inspired Portia and others yet fell victim in a horrible classroom incident; there is a shorter section with the teacher’s mother, who is a nun; And we have Chuck Bass, another former student of Mr. Vernon and the new boyfriend of Portia Kane.

There were parts of this book that really hit home, especially when we are introduced to Portia Kane’s crazy hoarder mother, who in so many ways struck a chord with me: “She would bring me a new Diet Coke with lime every ten minutes for the next 6 months if I asked…” even if the diet coke is the last thing anyone cares about. (pg. 48). It’s a kind of good-hearted but misplaced generosity. When the Chuck Bass character notes how crushing the Mother’s inability to engage is (pg. 306), I just found myself nodding my head. It was perhaps the strongest part of the book for me, this understanding of what it is truly like to love someone who is off-balance, which caused me to put the book down and reflect for several minutes at a time.

At one point I would have given this 5 stars, at another I would have dropped it to 3 but in the end, we will come in at 4. It all ties in within the 400 pages, and manages to overcome what I felt was an unbelievable coincidence that threatened to ruin what was mostly an enjoyable reading experience.




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100 Days Of Happiness: a review

100 Days of Happiness: A Novel by Fausto Brizzi

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


If you had only 100 days left to live, how would you spend it? This is the premise of 100 Days of Happiness, the bestselling first novel of Fausto Brizzi.

Lucio Battistini has been given a death sentence: an inoperable cancer that will kill him in 100 days, give or take. It seems he’s lived a good, but flawed life, and so he takes the last 100 days to try to make them the best he can, by reconciling with his wife (who had thrown him out after discovering his clumsily hidden affair), and by being a better father to his children. He sets up the story by telling us in advance that he has died, which certainly clears us any suspense you might have endured, as he then counts backwards from 100 days to 0, the day he has chosen to end it all in a Swiss assisted suicide clinic.

I found the book to be mostly enjoyable. The ChitChat shop emerges as one of the novel’s magical creations. Imagine going to a store that exists purely to provide people with a place to go with a friend to listen to them, and hang out and watch TV or eat cookies and then simply pay what the person thinks the service is worth. And then there is his friend, the Bookseller who writes novels for which he only has one copy. Or the donut shop which makes the best, most life-affirming donuts in the world. There is a lot to like here.

But while I found the book mostly enjoyable, I couldn’t help but see a little bit of a manipulative streak in Lucio: if you had a limited time left on this earth, do you really think that trying to convince your ex-wife to fall in love with you all over again (only to ultimately break her heart) would be a noble use of that time? Maybe, maybe not. It’s either tragically romantic or just incredibly selfish.
That said, this is solid, the cast of characters interesting and sympathetic, and if nothing else, this book has left me a hankering for a good donut.




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