The Counterfeiters

I was brought to Andre Gide’s The Counterfeiters by Roberto Bolaño’s The Savage Detectives (at least that’s how I remember it – will have to double check). Upon doing so, I realize I was likely led to Gide through a NY Times review of Bolaño’s novel.

The Counterfeiters is an intricate, layered novel of many intertwined and interrelated characters, which never fully starts or stops. It focuses on Edouard, a thirty eight year old novelist, who, while critically acclaimed, has not had the literary success of some of his fellows. As the novel progresses, it becomes clear that Edouard is a stand-in for the author himself, as he observes the scandals of his young friends and relations. Although he's involved, he's more of a benevolent overseer than an active participant.

The point of view is interesting – while it’s third person omniscient, it is so in an unconventional way, as events are related from a limited point of view, and then switching to limited from the viewpoint of another character. Events and new characters are often introduced obliquely.

Perhaps the biggest criticism that can be made of the work is that Gide lays out so much of his philosophy of art in the speech of the characters -- Edouard has long discussions and journal entries on the novel he is planning on writing (also called The Counterfeiters) which mirror Gide's journal, which is included at the end of this translation of the novel. This is another sticking point -- Gide seems like he could have lifted nearly all of Edouard's journal from his own journal. Should an author have such a transparent avatar?

Midway through, it's revealed that Edouard is working on his next novel -- also titled "The Coutnerfeiters", and dealing with the same themes as the novel we're reading. This is what allows Gide to insert so much of his thoughts on art and literature into the novel, since Edouard is working at the same business Gide is -- creation. It's not quite ham-handed, but it's not exactly subtle, either.

The Counterfeiters ends the way Edouard had been planning on ending his novel -- abruptly, in midstream, leaving itself open for a sequel, but not demanding one. It's a worthwhile novel, and an interesting exercise in metafiction. I won't be re-reading it anytime soon, but I'm glad that I finished it.

Starlight

Alfred Bester's Starlight is a worthwhile science fiction short story collection. My only previous exposure to Bester's short fiction was the excellent "Fondly Fahrenheit", which is included here, and is a highlight. Like many retrospectives, there's extensive commentary by Bester, as he introduces each story. In the hands of other authors, this is occasionally tedious, but Bester sets the stage for each story well, and explains what he's doing.

As with many collections, Starlight is a bit uneven. There's gems like the aforementioned "Fondly Fahrenheit," and typical sci-fi fare like "Adam and No Eve" and "The Four Hour Fugue." "Of Time and Third Avenue" could very well be an Arthur C. Clarke story. Of course, there's clunkers as well, like "Hell is Forever", the longest story in the book, which inspires Bester to opine on himself at the time he wrote the story:

"I feel like a father to that kid, and I think he shows promise in 'Hell is Forever.' He makes mistakes, he's green and gauche, his knowledge and understanding of character is minimal, he has a lot to learn, but I think he ought to stay with it. He might become a pro some day."

Tough to argue with that, but "Hell is Forever" really drags. Luckily, most of the collection isn't Bester growing and developing, but is rather high caliber science fiction stories. I would recommend, but it's probably worth picking up The Demolished Man first. That said, it's easy to see how Bester became disillusioned with science fiction, and decided to move on during the 1960s. While the work here is something that any science fiction fan should be aware of, it's very much rooted in the 1940s and 1950s, and there's only so much that can be done there without tedious repetition. Bester had a hell of a career, and this is not a bad coda.

By Night in Chile

Roberto Bolaño’s By Night in Chile is a critical look at the behavior of the country's intelligentsia during the military coup led by Augusto Pinochet. The novel is a dramatic deathbed confession by a priest and literary critic, Father Urrutia, who had turned a blind eye to the misdeeds, assassinations, and censorship of the regime, and is now filled with regret, and a desire that he not be misunderstood, that his story be told. He depicts himself as pursued by "the wizened youth", who, it becomes clear as the novel progresses, is a younger Urrutia, who has not yet debased himself.

Although the coup is mentioned (and our priest is an instructor to Pinochet himself!), the novel's most powerful political passage is in metaphor -- Urrutia is sent to Europe, ostensibly on church business, by government agents. He is to write a report on the preservation of churches, as the churches in Europe are much older than the churches in Chile, so there's been significantly more research on the Old Continent. After his arrival, the priest is surprised to find that "the principal threat to the major examples of Romanesque and Gothic architecture was pollution caused not by humans but by animals, specifically pigeon shit," and the priests have all taken up falconry as a solution. The passages that follow, describing how two falcons cannot coexist in one city, or how a falcon takes a dove that had been released to celebrate a festival, are clear metaphors for fascism.

The complicity of the intellectuals in the coup is made explicit towards the end of the novel, as our priest relates how a certain woman was able to give parties for writers and artists despite the curfew imposed by the regime. He speaks of how she wasn't exactly in the community due to her efforts, but due to her willingness to host the gatherings. Eventually, it is discovered that her husband is not a traveling salesman, but is a high level functionary in the secret police, and is torturing suspects in the house, sometimes even while the parties are going on. Again, in a metaphor, the poet who finds this out does not raise the alarm, but quietly slinks back to the party and rejoins his fellows.

Unlike this post, By Night in Chile lacks paragraph breaks, or regular sentences -- Bolaño has captured the spirit of a rant, as Urrutia digresses, hallucinates, catches himself, and plunges onward, pausing only to wheeze and draw breath, before the storm of shit begins.

Creatures of Light and Darkness

The most cogent criticism of Roger Zelazny's Creatures of Light and Darkness is that it has a very similar premise to Lord of Light, published two years previous. (In Zelazny's defense, he had not planned on publishing this novel, creating it as a writing exercise, and only publishing it after a friend of his had told the publishing house to request the manuscript). Creatures of Light and Darkness has a slightly greater scope than Lord of Light -- rather than people styling themselves after Hindu deities controlling a planet, people styling themselves after Egyptian deities control the known universe. Like the previous book, this is accomplished with both the means of technology (robotics/genetic manipulation), and possible supernatural abilities.

Perhaps the second biggest criticism one can make of this novel is that due to its birth as a writing exercise, the characters are not as fleshed out as in Lord of Light, with their motivations, origins, and histories often reduced to a few line explanation immediately prior to their introduction. As an example, the protagonist (the Prince Who Was a Thousand) reads much like a two-dimensional version of Sam.

Despite its weaknesses, Creatures of Light and Darkness is an engaging novel, featuring at least one memorable character -- Typhon, who despite originating in Greek mythology, is associated with Set. Appearing as a massive shadow of a horse, he inspires abject terror in all the other characters, as none can stand against him. (He's speculated as drawing his power from a black hole, although around the time Zelazny wrote the novel, the term was not in common use). Additionally, despite the plot of the novel not being quite as compelling as its predecessor, the action moves along at a quick pace.

Although it's not Lord of Light, this is by no means a bad novel -- it's fast-paced, engaging, written in a relatively accessible style, featuring memorable characters, a new martial art, and an evocative ending. Recommended to fans of Zelazny, as well as anyone interested in Egyptian mythology, or quirky sci-fi/fantasy. (Zelazny not at his best is still better than most authors in the genre)

The Demolished Man

Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man is a classic of science fiction, and is also cited as one of the forerunners of the cyberpunk genre, due to the role corporate intrigue plays in the exposition, as well as one setting (a labyrinth of a brothel, built on a post-nuclear site). It's an engaging, entertaining novel, that holds true to many fifties-era sci-fi conventions. Whether that adds to its charm, or hurts suspension of disbelief is an exercise for the reader.

Despite the fact that the novel is set in the early 24th century, in a world where telepaths are commonplace, it's unmistakably a product of the fifties -- much of the dialogue has a "gee whiz" feel. So while this may be a forerunner or anticipator of cyberpunk, it's certainly not a cyberpunk novel -- both the pro- and antagonist are initially likable characters, and the plot is relatively straightforward.

Bester's treatment of the emergence of telepaths is slightly more imaginative than most sci-fi or fantasy -- he organizes them into levels (for whether they can read thoughts, or delve into the unconscious mind), and has them formed into a guild. Said guild is the center of life for the telepaths -- one who has been sanctioned by the guild is exiled, and no other telepath will communicate with them. This is maddening, and many go crazy with loneliness -- the analogy is made to deaf-mutes. (One thing that bothers me about novels in the future, that The Demolished Man is particularly guilty of, is that many analogies are made to the mid-late 20th century, but few, if any, are made to the intervening period between then and the present of the novel)

While The Demolished Man is not perfect, it's still one of the best science fiction novels produced in the 1950s. Bester is able to create a compelling, mostly believable world, and a hell of a detective story. Absolutely up there with anything by Arthur C. Clarke, and I'd prefer him to Heinlein or Asimov.

As Though I Had Wings

Chet Baker's As Though I Had Wings is billed as "the lost memoir", and is excerpts from his diaries covering from 1945-46, when he had joined the Army at age 16, up through 1963 when he was living and performing in Europe. Baker relates the events in a matter-of-fact, almost disinterested manner. This works well when dealing with the mundane, but when dealing with more exceptional circumstances (soldiers drinking Screwdrivers made with Aqua Velva rather than vodka, his drug use, gigs), it's very odd, and understated.

A second area where Baker's writing tends to the oblique is his drug use. His explanations as to why he was attracted to it are vague, other than "[he] was also the first person to turn me onto grass, bless him; I loved it, and continued to smoke grass for the next eight years, until I began chipping . . ." Throughout, Baker is unrepentant, as he never mentions a desire to stop, nor does he hit rock bottom, although he is often arrested, harassed by authorities, and pressured by parents of a girlfriend to stop using. He never mentions a struggle with the addiction, although he doesn't sing its praises, either -- it's just something he does.

One area where Baker's writing almost picks up is his travails with women. His first encounter is with a girl in the German countryside while he was stationed overseas, and he later meets his three wives. These are recounted in little detail (his first wife introduced with "she loved to be screwed, and I loved screwing her") and big events (marriages, births of children) are barely noted.

Overall, this is an interesting look at an icon in his own words, and it's inspired me to seek out a more comprehensive biography, but it's short and light on detail. Worth picking up solely to get a first person perspective, and because it's such an easy read.

Wartime

Paul Fussell lays out his reasons for writing Wartime in the first sentences of his brief introduction:

This book is about the psychological and emotional culture of Americans and Britons during the Second World War. It is about the rationalizations and euphemisms people needed to deal with an unacceptable actuality from 1939 to 1945.

He then proceeds to not necessarily puncture the myths of the Second World War, but to sweep away any romance associated with it -- from how "Precision Bombing Will Win the War" (title of Chapter 2), to chronicling new soldiers' harsh reaction to the new military discipline, (with one saying "I thought the caste system was restricted to India,") to the bullshit spewed by the propaganda apparatus, with all its rhyming, simplistic poster slogans. Fussell then moves on to the war's effect on English and American letters, (as one may expect from a professor of English), and despite being an unrepentant Anglophile there's a lot of insight here.

Wartime has a blurb from Joseph Heller on the back cover on the insanity of war, and honestly, this is the closest to a non-fictional version of Catch 22 that I've seen. In fact the chapter on "chickenshit" certainly reads like something out of Catch 22. Absolutely worth picking up -- shows the lack of glory and the horrors of war without becoming a polemic.

Midaq Alley

Naguib Mahfouz's Midaq Alley is a snapshot of a neighborhood stuck in the past -- but what past is uncertain. In the first paragraph, the author describes the alley as "a gem . . . a flashing star in the history of Cairo", but says that only "God and the archaeologists" know when that was the case. Clearly, by the time of our story (late 1944, early 1945), the alley is a relic, populated by the lower middle class. However, with a few exceptions, the diverse cast of characters is content to remain in the alley, with little ambition to improve their station.

Midaq Alley features a diverse cast of characters with sundry motivations, and Mahfouz's third person narration gives us a good look inside each character's head. This gives the novel a very expansive feel, since each of the first fifteen or so chapters is devoted to a different character's issues, although the transitions are relatively standard, rather than abrupt -- everything flows smoothly. Each character is fleshed out well, although some of them (such as Hamida) seem repetitive. Of course, real people are like that, so it's tough to accuse Mahfouz of being tone deaf.

As the plot of the novel (the doomed romance of Abbas and Hamida) doesn't come to prominence until halfway through the novel, it's clear that Mahfouz isn't necessarily writing about characters, but capturing the alley at a point in time, and showing the daily lives of the alley's inhabitants. While the narrative voice doesn't typically poke fun, there's some irony at work here -- witness the dialogue between the baker's wife and Zaita, the creator of beggars, as well as the situation of Radwan Husseiny -- the alley's most respected resident, despite not completing his formal schooling, being so pious as to show no sorrow at the death of his children, and consistently beating his wife loudly enough that the other residents can hear her screams. Some of the other characters feature motivations so thin as to nearly be caricatures, although they're typically presented without a wink or a smile.

I'd purchased this novel without knowing much more about Mahfouz than what's present on his Wikipedia page (the picture there resembles Ray Charles), and I was not disappointed. This novel is subtle, funny, profound, horrifying, and revealing. Would recommend.

The Savage Detectives

I've heard Roberto Bolaño's The Savage Detectives described as "the kind of novel Borges could have written." I'm not sure I agree, but it's not an entirely far-fetched comparison -- the two protagonists (based on Bolaño and a friend of his) are on a quest to find a respected member of an obscure avant-garde group, and their meanderings after the meeting (or after their attempt at the meeting) are told through a series of anecdotes, related by persons of varying degrees of intimacy and familiarity -- we have former lovers, traveling companions, members of antipodal literary movements, minor functionaries, neighbors, drinking buddies, etc. Each anecdote (vignette) is well crafted, and as such, this could be a work of Borges'. However, if this were a Borges novel (or the Borges novel, since there are none), I doubt that there would be as much sex, booze, or weed involved. Additionally, the vignettes would take place during the search for Cesarea Tinajero, rather than afterwards. They also might be a bit less mundane -- while the vignettes aren't from bland people, it seems every narrator is slowly losing their mind in a different way. While we occasionally (often?) encounter such narrators in Borges' work, the worlds he creates are slightly more fantastic (in the most literal sense) than what is in The Savage Detectives.

Regardless of my quibbling, this is a hell of a novel. The initial structure was a bit odd (now there's a complaint, especially considering the previous novel reviewed here is Nabokov's Pale Fire) in that the first section is a series of diary entries from a bookish young poet who is introduced to our future protagonists, drops out of law school, and becomes a member of their movement. This section is much devoted to his coming of age -- his first experiences with sex, with cigarettes, alcohol, marijuana. In contrast, the second section is the aforementioned vignettes, spanning twenty years (1976-1996), in which our diarist is mentioned once -- when a scholar denies that he (the diarist, not the scholar) had been a member of the "gang". (In fact, this reference to the diarist comes in the second-to-last vignette, as if to remind the reader how the novel began. The last vignette is a continuation of the first -- an old poet that the two protagonists had visited in 1976, before setting off on their journey. His story is broken up throughout the novel, but stitched together, his (half dozen? dozen?) mini-chapters form one complete narrative of an evening he had spent drinking with the two protagonists). The vignettes almost take the form of interviews: as if the person being questioned had been asked "Tell me about your experiences with Arturo Belano and/or Ulises Lima", or "Tell me about your experiences in [time and place] and how they relate to Belano and Lima," and then was given free reign to ramble onwards. The final section is a resumption of the initial diary, concerning the continuation of the protagonists' search for the vanished poetess.

Despite The Savage Detectives being a novel about poets and poetry, the only poem written by a character in the novel that we as readers are shown is Cesarea Tinajero's sole published poem, which, other than its title, is wordless. I find this to be a good joke, as well as a good contrast to Pale Fire, which featured almost a thousand lines of subpar poetry. (Additionally, the protagonists are described as "more drug dealers than poets", which may or may not be a fair characterization -- their stories are only told secondhand.)

Beyond crediting Bolaño, I must credit the translator, Natasha Wimmer, who certainly had a difficult task, as this novel is clearly filled with slang in the original. (More or less difficult than translating Juvenal? Probably less, since at least Wimmer has contemporaries who have lived immersed in whatever vernacular this is written in).

Absolutely recommended.

Summer running

With June ending, it's the perfect time for one of my favorite passages from Ray Bradbury:

It was June and long past time for buying the special shoes that were quiet as a summer rain falling on the walks. June and the earth full of raw power and everything everywhere in motion. The grass was still pouring in from the country, surrounding the sidewalks, stranding the houses. Any moment the town would capsize, go down and leave not a stir in the clover and weeds. And here Douglas stood, trapped on the dead cement and the red-brick streets, hardly able to move.

From Dandelion Wine, the re-reading of which should be a summer ritual.

Lord of Light

Roger Zelazny's Lord of Light is a triumph, and proof that science fiction can be much more than just description of gadgetry. It features cynical interplay of terrestrial religions on an alien planet after colonization by a space ark. The first colonists to awaken subdue the world, and after a period of time, set themselves up as members of the Hindu Pantheon, through both technological and supernatural means. The other passengers on the ark are awakened more gradually, and are placed in a rigid caste system (are there any flexible caste systems?). With reincarnation (through technology) a reality, the populace is held in check with a form of Hinduism that is literally true -- their station upon rebirth is determined by the deeds and thoughts of their past life, and the gods are manifest in the world.

Kurt Vonnegut opens Cat's Cradle with "Anybody unable to understand how a useful religion can be founded on lies will not understand this book either. So be it." Regardless of the original veracity of Hinduism, Lord of Light is set in a world where much of it is literally true -- so when a member of the First chooses to oppose the system, what better path than to sow the seeds of Buddhism, especially given how the two religions have intersected in India in the past? (Later in the book, the would-be Buddha concedes that he had considered Christianity and Islam, but "crucifixion hurts!", and Islam and Hinduism didn't mesh all that well in the original India) Sam, as he prefers to be called, takes Vonnegut to heart -- "He never claimed to be a god. But then, he never claimed not to be a god."

Lord of Light has an odd narrative structure -- the novel opens in its present day, then tells the back story in a flashback, which lasts more than half of the novel, and from which we emerge mid-paragraph. While jarring, it's quite effective, as it gives the sensation of being woken from a dream, which is appropriate, given the experience of one of the characters at the beginning of the novel.

One of the characteristics of Zelazny's work that I enjoy the most is his use of humor. Early in the novel, there's one of my favorite descriptions of life native to an alien planet in all of sci-fi:

"Then the one called Raltariki is really a demon?" asked Tak.
"Yes, and no," said Yama, "If by 'demon' you mean a malefic, supernatural creature, possessed of great powers, life span and the ability to temporarily assume virtually any shape, then the answer is no. This is the generally accepted definition, but it is untrue in one respect."
"Oh? And what may that be?"
"It is not a supernatural creature."
"But it is all those other things?"
"Yes."

Not that the focus of Lord of Light is wordplay, but it features such dialogue throughout the text, which helps make the characters more believable -- they're literally trying to overthrow Heaven, which in the hands of a less capable author, could lend itself to a heavy gravity. Zelazny is comparable to Bradbury in this respect -- he's descriptive (this novel contains one of the most well choreographed fight scenes I've ever read) without being overbearing. Essentially the only complaint I can make is the ending, which, given the material, is oddly appropriate.

Pale Fire

Nabokov's Pale Fire is an oddly structured novel that Jorge Luis Borges would have rendered in a few sentences, as when describing an imagined writer's oeuvre: "He produced a novel containing a 999 line poem in four cantos by a fictional poet, a kind of latter-day Robert Frost, as well as extended commentary by a supposed friend of the poet, who weaves his own, unrelated story into the commentary, and appears to be a madman. It is unclear whether the poet or commentator exist at all (in the world of the narrative), or if one is the invention of the other -- (the poet concocting his own biographer, or the madman dreaming up a poet, to give background to his ravings), or if both are the creation of a third, hidden character."

Careful reading and much scholastic debate seems to confirm that the final hypothesis laid out above is correct, or at least that the commentator (Professor Charles Kinbote) is fictitious. The poet (John Shade) may actually exist in the world of Pale Fire, but the commentator appears to be the invention of a third party, a view endorsed by Nabokov himself. (This raises the interesting question of whether or not we should consider an author's statements outside a piece canonical -- I would say no. I remember a Hemingway story where Hemingway states that a character would kill himself after the events depicted, but, like Kinbote, I'm currently working without a library.)

One of the blurbs on the back of my edition of Pale Fire describes the novel as a "centaur work", which I would disagree with -- while the long poem is clearly essential to the novel, it isn't very good; Shade's Pale Fire, while containing occasional jewels (such as lines 1-4)

I was the shadow of the waxwing slain
By the false azure in the windowpane;
I was the smudge of ashen fluff--and I
Live on, flew on, in the reflected sky.

Is mostly written in conversational verse, much of it addressed to the poet's wife. Perhaps it's part of the joke that a man supposed to be second in stature to Frost among American poets would produce nearly 1000 quotidian lines, but calling this a centaur work is appropriate only if the horse is lame, or the man is mad.

Not that the novel isn't brilliant, because it is -- I read it as a satire of self-important academics, but regardless of Nabokov's intentions, it's pure absurdist fun. Kinbote's bitterness and defensiveness in the Foreword almost reveals his madness, but the slow, subtle progression of his deterioration is masterfully unfolded. Additionally, the Index following the Commentary allows for ease of reference from Note to Note, and reveals details not explicated in the text. While some early reviews criticized Pale Fire as incoherent, I can't agree. While flipping from poem to Commentary broke the verse's rhythm (Kinbote recommends buying two copies and mutilating both to allow for easier reading!), in the case of subpar verse and engaging commentary, I don't think that's cause to complain.

Short Story Review - "Dentist"

"Dentist" is probably my favorite story from Roberto Bolaño's short story collection Last Evenings on Earth. It concerns a writer (presumably one of Bolaño's alter egos, of which many of the collections protagonists seem to be) visiting a friend's hometown. The friend is the titular dentist, and the narrator wonders why he (the dentist) chose to remain in his hometown, rather than move to Mexico City, as do many Mexican intellectuals. As the story opens, we learn that the writer had been planning on relaxing, as his life was in a transitional period, but his friend is quite distraught, due to the death of a patient at a free clinic he volunteers at.

The story seems to be an allegory for Bolaño's feelings on art -- or at least Bolaño setting out a set of aesthetics for comment. The following passage is preceded by the dentist's encounter with a painter whose work he admires. An awkward misunderstanding results in the dentist being insulted, and then beaten up when he attempts to recover. After recounting this to the writer, and railing against the painter, the writer observes that this is a singular anecdote in a man's life, and doesn't discredit his work. The dentist responds as follows:

But that’s where art comes from, he said: life stories. Art history comes along only much later. That what art is, he said, the story of a life in all its particularity. It’s the only thing/that really is particular and personal. It’s the expression of and, at the same time, the fabric of the particular.
And what do you mean by the fabric of the particular? I asked, supposing he would answer: Art. I was also thinking, indulgently, that we were pretty drunk already and that it was time to go home.
But my friend said: What I mean is the secret story.
With a gleam in his eye he stared at me for a moment. The death of the Indian woman from gum cancer had obviously affected him more than I had realized at first.
So now you’re wondering what I mean by the secret story? asked my friend. Well, the secret story is the one we’ll never know, although we’re living it from day to day, thinking we’re alive, thinking we’ve got it all under control and the stuff we overlook doesn’t matter. But every single damn thing matters! Only we don’t realize. We just tell ourselves that art runs on one track and life, our lives, on another and we don’t realize that’s a lie.

Immediately afterwards, the dentist begins waving someone over to their table -- an Indian boy, named Jose Ramirez, who he clarifies to the writer that he'd met through his clinic. The boy seems like a relatively unremarkable adolescent, who's clearly the product of poverty, and already has spent significant time working in the fields -- his hands are "iron". On their second meeting with Ramirez, it's revealed that he is a writer as well, and the dentist regards him as a major talent: "And then my friend declared that there were very few writers alive on par with the boy sitting there before us. I swear to God: very few." The writer, rather than tacitly agreeing, expresses doubt, which results in the confirmation of the dentist's assertion. The boy is truly a singular talent.

The story closes with the writer and the dentist waiting in the dentist's clinic for a patient who never shows.

Japanese Death Poems is a collection of the last poems written before dying by many Japanese poets, both Zen monks and practitioners of haiku. It also contains a lengthy introduction explaining Japanese attitudes towards poetry, death, and religion. While initial death poems were often written by warriors or samurai before battle, the custom eventually spread to others, and preparing a death poem became accepted practice -- several of the writers in this book have more than one.

Reading anthologies can be tedious work; this is even more true when the pieces are short, such as an anthology of 3-10 line poems, as Japanese Death Poems is. Not that Japanese Death Poems is particularly tedious, but it can be tough to maintain focus, especially when many of the poems are presented without any biographical details, other than an approximate date of death. While many of these poets are obscure, and it might be tedious to read " . . . was a monk for thirty years . . ." hundreds of times, it'd be worthwhile to have some background on all of these poets, especially since the biographical sketches (anecdotes, really) are quite interesting. Even if further anecdotes would be banal, I'd have preferred to have at least some insight into the lives of these poets. (or merchants, samurai, monks, etc)

I don't know how often I'll refer back to this, but it does cover at least two styles of poetry (tanka and haiku), has the work of dozens of poets, and gives some insight into Japanese culture, so I think it is worth having in my library.

The Black Hole War

It's difficult do decide how I feel about Leonard Susskind's The Black Hole War. On the one hand, Susskind should be commended -- it's a pop cosmology book that does not read like a textbook (as someone who has read his share of physics textbooks, I certainly would know), and contains many cogent explanations of physics (mostly quantum mechanical) principles and problems for the layman. On the other hand, it's boring as hell.

This isn't to say that the subject Susskind covers is uninteresting -- far from it. It seems that since Carl Sagan popularized it, cosmology has exploded in popularity, and has kept up the pace even as interesting and original voices (such as Sagan's) pass into history. The particular subject of this work is black holes and information loss, which certainly doesn't sound bland. Unfortunately, much of the book is devoted to unfolding the problem and related issues in the slowest manner possible, along with repetition of the mantra "I knew Stephen [Hawking] had to be wrong, but I couldn't quite place my finger on why." Additionally, there's a lot about Susskind's personal life and experiences, which are exactly as scintillating as one would expect from a prominent theoretical physicist. (Ok, that's a bit of a cheap shot, but shouldn't digressions be either interesting or related to a semi-relevant topic? Susskind makes interacting with Richard Feynman and Stephen Hawking, two titans of physics, and interesting characters in their own right, seem like pulling teeth.)

One major redeeming factor of this work is the lack of emphasis on string theory. While Susskind does trot it out towards the end of the work, as a possible theory of everything, he doesn't dwell on it throughout as "the truth". (As an aside, he does offer at least one experiment to test string theory, which is refreshing; unfortunately, said experiment would involve a particle accelerator the size of the galaxy. Not quite as feasible as I would like) This isn't to completely dismiss string theory, as parts of it are falsifiable, but it's instructive to remember that models are typically wrong, but some are still useful. To that end, it's tedious to be lectured on the nuts-and-bolts of a difficult to falsify model, which Susskind manages to (mostly) avoid doing, until the later chapters.

Another major feature of the work that I can't decide is a positive or a negative is the amount of time Susskind will spend to illustrate a point. Descriptions of gravity, Schwarzschild radius, special relativity, quantum mechanics, and other physics concepts receive myriad examples and much explanation. I vacillate between thinking that this is a positive thing for those readers who are unfamiliar with such concepts, and that it's tedious for those of us who are familiar with them. While these are complex concepts that do require in depth explanation (I'm certainly not going to claim to understand quantum mechanics. Susskind does quote Feynman here: "I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics."), it can be frustrating to have examples taken to an extreme, as Susskind does in initially explaining gravity.

The meat of the book is devoted to a debate between Susskind (among others) and Stephen Hawking (among others) -- what happens to the information in a black hole if the black hole evaporates? Is it lost forever, or does it return to the universe in the Hawking radiation? If it returns to the universe, how does it return from beyond the event horizon? Why is information loss important? (Because if the information is lost, that would violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics by reducing the overall entropy in the universe. This is a Very Bad Thing (tm). Additionally, quantum mechanics and relativity predict very different things happen as objects approach and pass a black hole's horizon. Invalidating either one would deal a major blow to the state of physics. These are all very interesting questions, and while Susskind does a (relatively) good job answering them, what prevents this book being better than it is is that he has to explain so many concepts to get to the heart of the conflict, and this, combined with much digression, is enough to make the book meander.

A final point The Black Hole War's favor is that it's very thorough -- at no point in the book did I feel that a concept was underexplained. It's not a dense book -- it's light on math, and although the concepts can be difficult, especially for the uninitiated (Schrodinger's cat is thankfully not mentioned. As an aside, here is the front and back cover of the textbook I used for Quantum Mechanics), Susskind does provide many (perhaps too many) examples. Overall, probably one to avoid, unless one is very passionate about information theory, cosmology, or a huge fan of Leonard Susskind.

Cloud Atlas

David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas was apparently partially inspired by Italo Calvino's If On a Winter's Night a Traveler, which contains a series of first chapters of novels, all truncated at a cliffhanger. Mitchell takes this device but modifies it, so while there are six separate tales in Cloud Atlas, each has an ending, but also links to the other stories (novellas?). The linked palindromic structure is unique, but it works, particularly because each segment has a different style, which Mitchell segues between effortlessly. His skill here prevents each tale from reading as a pastiche, although the styles are identifiable.

The six tales are, in order: the journal of an American functionary on a voyage in the South Pacific (ca. 1850), the letters of a debauched and disinherited English composer (1931), the travails of a plucky female reporter working to uncover a corporate scandal, written in the form of an airport thriller (ca. 1975), the memoirs of an aging and broke English publisher (ca. today), the interrogation of a clone in a dystopic future Korea (ca. who knows), and a tale around a campfire of a tribesman's life in post-apocalyptic Hawaii.

While the tales (often frustratingly) fail to gel entirely into a cohesive whole, this is one of the techniques that makes the novel work, as it prevents Mitchell from getting bogged down in explaining why or how this happened to Korea, to Hawaii, or exactly what Ewing was doing in the South Pacific, or how reliable of a narrator Frobisher is. This allows him to focus on the characters and the tale at hand, rather than spending too much time setting the scene, which is a hallmark of subpar science fiction.

For such an oddly structured novel, Cloud Atlas is a surprisingly easy read -- the only section that gave me difficult was the central section ("Sloosha's Crossin' an' Ev'rythin' After"), as dialect with liberal usage of apostrophes and colloquialisms tends to make my eyes glaze over and my brain skip past sentences, much like the titular clouds. (Thankfully, the characters don't spend a significant fraction of their time watching the sky and engaging in pareidolia. Symbolism used is more subtle.) An absolutely worthwhile book.

Seeing

Seeing is a novel that opens in a rainstorm, but features a light, jocular tone, despite the fact that the events described darken significantly as the pages advance. It's a political parable without being overbearing, and possessing an ambiguous ending. While ostensibly a sequel to Saramago's earlier novel Blindness, no knowledge of the former is necessary to appreciate or enjoy Seeing, as the important points are explained when necessary.

One of Saramago's signatures as a writer is his refusal to delineate dialogue with paragraphs, indentation, the usage of quotation marks, or any other form of conventional punctuation. Instead, his dialogue is an endless series of commas. This is absolutely frustrating to read, but when one has a Nobel Prize, one can write how one wants. While I'd been familiar with Saramago's style, (I had previously read Death with Interruptions), it was still a frustrating experience, as it's easy to lose one's place, or switch the speakers up.

While the dialogue can be a chore to keep track of, it's a pleasure to read -- fast-paced, snappy, ironic, and full of characters questioning each other for their usage of vocabulary and various turns of phrase. The omniscient narrator also follows the same pattern -- apologizing for digressions, speaking in hypotheticals about the characters, and treating the plot as if he were observing it, rather than dictating it.

The plot of the novel revolves around the question of what would happen if a majority of the electorate were to cast blank ballots in a national election. This is exactly what does happen in the capital city of the never-named country -- first seventy-some-odd percent of the votes are blank, and then in the special runoff election, it's eighty-three percent. This is met by consternation and then terror by the government officials, who remove the government from the city and seal off the exits.

The government expects its withdrawal to foment anarchy, but are unpleasantly surprised when this fails to happen. Steps are taken to change this, but even a false flag terrorist attack fails to rouse the populace -- there are non-violent demonstrations, but societal calm prevails. Even when the members of the populace who hadn't cast blank ballots attempt to leave the city (and are turned back at the border), the rest of the population helps them return to their homes. As the government takes more and more extreme measures throughout the novel, several former underlings resign. This takes place both at the cabinet level (and results in the prime minister wearing several hats), but also at a more local level, as other functionaries quit.

It's ambiguous what point Saramago is making here -- it's not that democracy is a sham and society would be better off under a sort of collectivism, but more likely that in a democratic society which only has the illusion of choice (such as here, where the opposition to the party on the right is the party in the middle), people will want to throw the whole system out and start over. Of course, government will never allow such a thing, especially the one here, led by the power-hungry prime minister.

Seeing meanders for a bit before reaching its conclusion -- this is a function of not focusing on one character, but letting the narrative bring one or the other to the forefront as needed, then discarding them when their function is fulfilled. Sometimes this is quite literal, as in the case of the police superintendent. Despite all the meandering, the conclusion to the novel, while unexpected, can only be perceived as inevitable.

Writing Exercise #1

It's (supposedly) easy enough to conceive an idea and then elaborate upon it. It's another thing entirely to create something worthwhile from an external seed. That said, I'll be putting my preferred music player (iTunes) on shuffle, and attempting to write something based on what pops up in a short span of time -- say, 15-30 minutes. First result -- "Teenage Kicks" by the Undertones, which isn't exactly what I had in mind. A late '70s British punk song about teenage lust and/or love? Hmm.

He pulled his shirt off over his head, and with a big smile on his face, sat down on the bed, and lay back at its head against the wall. It had taken quite a bit of effort to get to this point, but here he was: he was finally going to get to fuck her. The approach, weeks ago -- the flirting, the teasing -- her smile and quiet acquiescence -- the first kiss -- and progressing beyond that -- it was all a happy blur in his mind. He bit his lip in anticipation of what was to come, already picturing her lithe body entwined with his -- and then she punctured his reverie by appearing in the doorway, holding a crossbow.
"Did you think I wouldn't find out?" a challenge
"What? What are you doing?" bewilderment
"I know about you and Kayla." surety
"I don't know what you're talking about." denial
THUNK
Off to his left -- it's her father's crossbow, and she's not much of an archer. No matter, he's already out the open window and sprinting across the yard.

Eye of Cat

Despite the fact that his protagonists often seem cut from the same cloth (loner who lives outside society, brought back in by an old connection for one last job, extremely competent, laid back, fond of wry humor and understatement, often a smoker), Roger Zelazny is one of my favorite authors. In Eye of Cat, the paint by numbers protagonist is William Blackhorse Singer, Navajo shaman and tracker, who has spent much of his considerable lifetime hunting alien beasts to fill a sort of zoo on Earth. (Ok, maybe "paint by numbers" isn't a fair characterization of Singer. Much of the novel is spent on his mental state/mystical experiences, which does set him apart from other Zelazny characters) He is the last surviving member of his clan, and no longer fits in with his society due to having lived around one hundred seventy years, owing to both advanced medicine and the time dilation effects of relativistic travel. (This is very significant, since family and clan are very important to the Navajo. One of the harshest criticisms one can make of a Navajo is "He behaves as if he had no family.")

The hook for Singer's one last job is pretty standard sci-fi fare: there's going to be an assassination attempt at a summit between humans and aliens, and the security forces all pulling out all the stops to combat it. Singer is merely one of many lines of defense. Since the potential assassin is a shapeshifter, Singer's mind turns to Cat, a shapeshifter he had captured years ago, who he has long suspected of sentience. (Singer reflects on this prior to visiting Cat -- while he realizes he may have done a great wrong, he would have preferred to live his life not knowing, in ignorance and cowardice) Cat agrees to stop the assassination, but his price is Singer's life -- during Cat's imprisonment, his planet's star has gone nova, so Cat is alone in the universe. (This part seems a bit fishy to me. Cat has been at the zoo for ~50 years -- I'd imagine a star ~50 years away from going nova would have already changed significantly, to the point where life that evolved millions of years ago would be under significant pressure, and possibly in a hostile environment. Even adjusting for relativistic travel, I have trouble imagining where even a star ~200 years from going nova would be comparable to the same star millions of years previous)

After the assassination attempt is resolved, we get the real plot -- Cat hunting Singer. Most of the novel is devoted to the hunt, with everything prior serving to set the scene. While the chase continues, we delve deeper into Singer's mental state, and he's forced to come to terms with his past, his ancestry, and his potential future. There's also an increasingly important side plot involving psychics hired to help stop the potential assassination. All in all, it's not my favorite Zelazny novel (that would be Lord of Light, or one of "Home is the Hangman" and "The Doors of His Face, The Lamps of His Mouth" if we're counting novellas.) Regardless, very fun, and Zelazny remains one of my favorite sci-fi writers. His language can be as evocative as Bradbury's.

The Power and the Glory

I was at first tempted to read The Power and the Glory as entirely allegorical, that the travails of the unnamed whisky priest are the persecutions of the Church in Mexico, and that his weaknesses represent the failures of the Church, due to it being an organization made of fallible men, as hard as they try to do good. However, this doesn't work particularly well, (with the exception of the final chapter) although the novel is not without allegory -- the half-caste mestizo as the Judas figure is merely the most obvious. While the priest's suffering and persecution is not Christ's, or that of a saint (contrast the whisky priest with the story of Juan, a martyred priest who certainly could be a saint that a devout woman reads to her children), he is unequivocally a man of God, despite his very human failings -- he had been proud and self-satisfied prior to the persecutions and outlawing of Catholicism, and afterwards, he turned to drink, even fathering a child in an alcoholic stupor. He is unable to regret this unconfessed sin, as he loves the child, so how can he truly repent for a sin he is not sorry for? (Not that it matters much anyway, as a renegade priest, one does not have many opportunities to attend confession.)

The novel is spent in squalor, among the poor towns of that certain Mexican state where it is set. (The setting is meant to evoke Tabasco, but Greene changes some of the geography. All place names are real, as far as I am aware. There are certainly towns with the names mentioned in the novel in Mexico.) All of the characters that we meet share a certain hopelessness with the priest -- there's Tench, the dentist, who wants ether, drink, and to be elsewhere -- although not necessarily back in England with his family. There's the lieutenant, an atheist, a self-described "man of the people" who can't relate to anyone and commits atrocities. There's Fellows, the happy-go-lucky banana salesman, his hypochondriac wife, and his precocious daughter, Coral. The only one of them who feels real is Coral, she's likely dead at the end of the novel. While the people don't always feel real or fully fleshed out, the settings do -- like jump cuts in a movie, each place is realized.

Overall, I have to be about the ten thousandth reviewer to conclude that this is an excellent novel, that Greene manages to write a pro-Catholic novel without it being merely an apologia. This, of course, makes it infinitely easier to read. The ending of the novel seems more allegorical than anything, which is satisfying, because on a real level, there can be no happy ending.

The King in Yellow

Robert W. Chambers' collection The King in Yellow is an unusual anthology -- the first four stories ("The Repairer of Reputations", "The Mask", "In the Court of the Dragon", and "The Yellow Sign") are considered classics of horror, and some of the themes and characters have even been incorporated into H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos. The remaining stories in the collection are unconnected to the first four and are French-influenced romances. I took the opportunity to read the first four stories (which are in the public domain, and hence, all over the Internet. The remainder of the collection will have to wait until I either come across it in a used bookstore, or until I exhaust much more reading material.)

Camilla: You, sir, should unmask.
Stranger: Indeed?
Cassilda: Indeed, it's time. We have all laid aside disguise but you.
Stranger: I wear no mask.
Camilla: (Terrified, aside to Cassilda.) No mask? No mask!

-The King in Yellow, Act I, Scene 2d

"The Repairer of Reputations", the first and best-known story, is a subtle tour of the mind of a madman. Hilbert Castaigne is not a stable individual, and he knows it -- as he introduces himself, he acknowledges that he hasn't been the same since has fall from a horse four years earlier. He then proceeds to mention that while convalescing from his fall, he read The King in Yellow, a fictional play that is the common thread that links these stories. Castaigne says of the play: "although it was acknowledged that the supreme note of art had been struck in The King in Yellow, all felt that human nature could not bear the strain nor thrive on words in which the essence of purest poison lurked." Prior to his accident, Castaigne had been a wealthy playboy and man-about-town; as the story unfolds, he's a recluse, keeping the company only of his cousin Louis, a soldier (in a very mid-19th century army), Hawberk, an armorer, and Mr. Wilde, an elderly eccentric who appears just as mad as Hildred.

Throughout the story, Hildred's companions often humor him -- while he is generally aware of it, and manages to turn the tables on his interlocutors at least twice, it's unclear if this actually happens, or only in his imagination. The mysterious Mr. Wilde is the eponymous repairer of reputations (he hangs out a shingle with that title at the halfway point of the story), and convinces Hildred that he has vast influence in society as a whole, with hundreds of members of the upper class in his sway. Additionally, Wilde holds a manuscript titled The Imperial Dynasty of America -- in it, Hildred is second in line to the throne, after his cousin Louis.

After poring over the manuscript again and again, Hildred confronts his cousin with two demands -- first, that he must give up his claim to the throne, with Louis does, laughing. The second demand is colder, in that Louis can't marry his fiancee, Hawberk's daughter. When Louis refuses, Hildred responds that it doesn't matter, he's hired an assassin. Louis and Hildred run to Hawberk's shop, where Hildred finds Mr. Wilde with his throat torn out by his feral cat. Without Wilde, Hildred will be unable to ascend the throne. As he mourns, he is placed in a straight-jacket by medical personnel, and led past a weeping Hawberk, his daughter, and Louis. It is unclear which of the events have occurred, and which have only occurred in Hildred's head.

Of the later stories, "The Mask" and "The Yellow Sign" feature The King in Yellow more prominently, while "In the Court of the Dragon" only mentions the play in passing (the unnamed narrator is troubled, because he's been reading it). Despite this, we never get much of a sense about what the play is about, other than a strange, otherworldly setting, and a vague sense of kinship with Poe's "The Masque of the Red Death." I feel this is for the best, as often overtelling would make the play less ominous and more ridiculous. Other authors actually have written a play based on the fragments and clues left by Chambers, but since none of them shatter the human mind, what is the point?

Along the shore the cloud waves break,

The twin suns sink beneath the lake,

The shadows lengthen

In Carcosa.

Strange is the night where black stars rise,

And strange moons circle through the skies

But stranger still is

Lost Carcosa.

Songs that the Hyades shall sing,

Where flap the tatters of the King,

Must die unheard in

Dim Carcosa.

Song of my soul, my voice is dead;

Die thou, unsung, as tears unshed

Shall dry and die in

Lost Carcosa.

-Cassilda's Song, The King in Yellow, Act I, Scene 2d

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_King_in_Yellow

Physics of the Impossible

Fourteen year old me would have loved to have had access to Michio Kaku's Physics of the Impossible -- it's a handy science fiction encyclopedia, dealing with the feasibility of many of the standard sci-fi tropes. Time travel, teleportation, superluminal velocity, and telepathy are all here, and are explored and explained in detail. This is an invaluable book for the layman, as it glosses over the underlying math while expounding on the effects of said math. I would have liked more rather than less math, but I realize that Maxwell's Equations aren't easy reading for those who haven't taken a few physics courses.

The book is divided into three sections: what Kaku terms "Class I, II, and III Impossibilities." Class I covers things that are technologically impossible today, but do not violate any known laws of physics. This category includes "Force Fields, Telepathy, Starships, and Antimatter," among others. (As an aside, some of the chapters here are a bit disappointing. For example, the chapter on telepathy is mostly concerned with MRIs and the electrical activity of the brain, rather than telepathy without the aid of technology.) Class II covers technologies that "sit at the edge of our understanding of the physical world. If they are possible at all, they might be realized on a scale of millenia to millions of years in the future." Examples of these include superluminal travel and parallel universes. Finally, Kaku classifies Class III impossibilities as technologies that violate the known laws of physics. These include perpetual motion machines and precognition.

This book really is a pleasure to read -- each chapter unfolds quickly and logically, with Kaku laying out the issues with the subject, adding possible plans of attack, difficulties to overcome, and adding examples from science fiction, or from research in that area. The only complaint I have here is that an inordinate amount of examples seem to be from Star Trek, but so it goes. Highly recommended for anyone with an interest in physics or science fiction.