December 2004 Archives

Chronologically I can't quite remember when I finished this book, since I read a lot of books over the New Year's vacation. I have mixed reviews for "The Ice Storm". I plowed through reading it, which is always a good sign. But at first I really didn't like it, and I was considering moving on to another book until I realized I'd consumed a third of the novel already. There was a disparity between my supposed tepid response to the book and how oddly compelled I was to continuously read it.

My biggest problem with the novel is that the side plot about the son. There are about three dedicated chapters to that character which are totally unconnected to the rest of the novel. Perhaps there is a thematic connection (everyone's life sucks?) but it seemed almost an afterthought. It really distracted me, and as I put the book down my first thought was, "What did that have to do with anything?" rather than, "That was a good novel."

Aside from the problematic prodigal son, I did like the rest of the novel. It was about a wealth suburban family in simple surburban crisis, about cheating and coming-of-age and marital strife, but more it was just about these characters interacting in the midst of these problems. And the writing was good even if the novel structure was troubling. Sometimes a book can be about nothing more than family angst.

I've been getting a lot of reading done, mostly because of time spent on airplanes. I borrowed my girlfriend's copy of "Kissing in Manhattan" and managed to read the whole thing in one day... Not because it's an easy book (though it is a relatively fast read), but, rather, because I spent 10 hours in airplanes or waiting for airplanes.

The book is sort of chick lit meets brainy contemporary fiction. It's a collection of short stories which become more and more interspersed as the book goes on, until really it's a novel. So it's a little different than most reading experiences. For some reason I don't feel like getting into it in detail. I'm tired today from too much being sick on my vacation. Perhaps I'll revise this entry later to give more opinion. But for now: good book, quick read, smart and surreal.

I'll be heading out of town until January 4th to do a multi-state multi-purpose trip.

Places include:
Seattle, Washington
Los Angeles, California
Lake Tahoe, Nevada

Purposes include:
Seeing family
Skiing
Miscellaneous

A message to all my loyal readers:
"Who are you and why are you stalking me?"

"Einstein's Dreams" was recommended to me by a friend and indeed was a good book. It's not a traditional novel. It's more a collection of prose poems. The whole book is comprised of two-four page glimpses into worlds where time works in different ways, plus a few very brief interludes that frame everything as dreams Einstein is having as he works out his world-changing theories. The book is really about how tiny moments in people's lives can be emotional and moving. In just three pages Lightman paints a picture of a world and shows us nameless characters who are known only by their emotional state, lonliness or happiness, or by their simple actions, buying bread or hugging a loved one goodbye. But by changing the rules of time in that particular world he makes an embrace last forever or a whole life pass in an instant, and we get a sense of heightened passion and sorrow. It's a really very beautiful book, and since it is made up of such unconnected fragments it can be read at any pace.

It looks like now I'll have to find another book to read on my vacation though. I've borrowed my girlfriend's copy of "Kissing in Manhattan" by David Shickler, which is supposed to be very good despite the fact that its title sounds like chick lit.

I'm thinking of starting a new project, entitled "The Zombie Diaries" which would be a fictitious blog posted by someone hiding out in a post-apocalyptic near-future where zombies have overrun the planet. I don't know why, but the concept intrigues me. I've wanted to create some sort of ongoing fictional blog for some time. Does anyone else know about any blogs like this, where the blog itself is a continuong story (or even just a fake blog of some kind)? It seems like an interesting organic fiction project, writing a novel one paragraph at a time. It wouldn't necessarily have to be about zombies, of course, though setting the whole thing in the future makes the question of dating the blog a little easier, rather than me having to somehow keep in synch with the actual posting date. Any other suggestions for a good fake-blog topic?

I've stopped cross-posting to the main blog every time I post to my mostly-personal book track, but since MixedMetaphors has tended to idolize Dave Eggers, I thought it was of interest that I really disliked his newest book.

So. "How We Are Hungry" by David Eggers. That's a good question. How ARE we hungry? I, for one, am hungry for a novel that is funny, poignant, clever, genre-stretching, and at least a few times makes me laugh so hard I snort something (milk, preferably, but it could be anything) through my nose. I'm talking about a book like "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius", of course, which "How We Are Hungry" is definitely not. I suppose an author isn't required to follow one book up with another of the same vein. However, an author is expected to stick to a certain level of quality, and if you burst out of the gates with a brilliant first novel subsequent novels are always highly scrutinized.

Perhaps my problem is that I know TOO much about Eggers himself. Since his first novel was a memoir and since I pay attention to his McSweeney's Press and related ventures (which lately has been as much a pulpit for pushing liberal agendas as a literary outlet) it is hard for me to separate Dave Eggers from his fiction. 1) I cannot help seeing Eggers in every one of his fictional characters and thinking each story sounds like something Eggers experienced and then translated directly to the page with a different name. 2) I cannot help noticing that half of his short stories are thinly veiled attempts to push liberal anti-Bush agendas.

I realize that EVERY story is actually something the author experiences and then translates to the page with a different name. That's fiction. However, there's a problem when you can't stop thinking about it. Also, I have no problem with a liberal anti-Bush agenda, but there's a place a liberal anti-Bush agenda DOESN'T belong. An example of a place it doesn't belong is an Academy Award acceptance speech. Another place it doesn't belong is literary fiction. Especially thinly veiled anti-Bush liberal agendas. If you're going to do it, it shouldn't be thinly veiled. It should either be thickly veiled or not veiled at all.

Okay, but all this is sort of secondary to the fact that the book just wasn't that great. There are some clever moments, but unlike his previous works the clever moments aren't funny, and clever without funny is just annoying and pretentious. There are short-short stories that are two pages long and serve to be nothing other than voice experiments. There are five blank pages entitled "There Are Some Things He Should Keep to Himself" that don't serve to evoke a second thought or even a grin as the reader flips immediately past. None of the characters seem to have much at stake. None of them even seem that compelling or emotionally complex. There is one story about a man who is desperate not to die alone and it's one of the few stories that could have possibly been emotionally deep, but instead Eggers tells the story as NOTES ABOUT A STORY, which is clever, but it ends up distancing the reader from the whole thing and making it more of an workshop exercise. Had the story been a real story, it might have been overly sentimental and sappy, but sometimes a good author needs to tackle such subject matter and prove himself to be a good author by dealing with such material well.

I realize I'm being very hard on this book, much harder than I would be on a first book or on any other book whose author hadn't previously written something I loved so much. Sorry, Dave Eggers. I'll still read your next novel.

My blog has devolved into the worst form of meta-blog lately: all I can think to post about is how I'm trying to fix my blog. Actually, aside from the comment spam post (and this post) I suppose I haven't actually been posting about that sort of thing, but I've been thinking about posting about that sort of thing, which, to me at least, makes the blog feel self-referential in a mundane way, and for you makes the blog boring and empty because my disillusionment means very little of anything is being posted. But, hopefully, you should be seeing all this self-referential disillusionment and boring emptiness just a wee bit faster because I've theoretically fixed some of the performance problems. The fix apparently just involved shutting down the firewall and then restarting it, so I have no doubt that in about two days it will be slow again.

I still haven't been able to get MT-Blacklist working again, though perhaps with some help from my Microsoft ISV Buddy it will finally happen. As Vice President of the Avenue Lofts condominium HOA I've been charged with creating a website for our building, which means I'll be renting out actual managed server space, which means I might just steal a little space for myself and give up on this self-servered blog experiment.

Coming Soon: The Avenue Lofts webpage!

Previously: [Part I]

Currently: [King Arthur is in a dimly lit, poorly furnished study. He has a pen in his hand but he is not writing, rather he is staring blankly forward. Sir Knight enters, in full knight garb. King Arthur turns to him and reacts in surprise and pleasure. Sir Knight does not look happy.]

King Arthur: Sir Knight! How good of you to come! Have a seat. Let me get you some tea.

[King Arthur hasn't left his seat. Sir Knight waves off the tea anyway.]

Sir Knight: It's taken ages to find you.

KA: I've been especially well hidden, haven't I? Though I suppose there's no stopping old friends.

SK: I'm afraid I'm here on business.

KA: Business? You wouldn't happen to be an agent now, would you?

SK: No, I still work at the pleasure of the king. The NEW king.

KA: Oh, yes, King King. What's he up to these days?

SK: His first order of business was to have you tracked down and killed for abdicating the throne.

KA: Ah.

SK: So I'm afraid you're going to have to come with me.

KA: But I'm almost done with my novel.

SK: Sorry.

KA: Please, it just needs a bit of rewriting and it'll be ready for publication, I'm sure of it. That's all I ask for. Just a month to finish, then maybe one or two more months to do rewrites and polish up the language a bit. After that I'll just need the summer to really tie it all together and rework the ending. Then, I promise, I'll come without complaint.

SK: You'll come with me now.

KA: Yes, but with complaint. You wouldn't want complaint, would you?

SK: I've got my orders.

KA: Why would King King want to have me killed, anyway?

SK: Because you abdicated your throne.

KA: Yes, but, don't you think as the new king, King King would want to show me lenience, just in case one day he abdicates the throne as well. He's setting a bad precedent for himself.

SK: King King is not planning on abdicating.

KA: But just in case.

SK: Look, he can't just let you get away with it. You have to be punished. For the stability of the kingdom. The people need to know that the king is as burdened by his noble obligation to the crown as they are by their poverty, sickness, and general hopelessness. It gives the system balance. If being the king was simply a fun dalliance anyone could do for a while and then stop doing when it got boring, well, then EVERYONE would want to be the king.

KA: Everyone DOES want to be the king!

SK: Not you.

KA: Oh, yes. True. You've got me there. But I'm talking in general. You know what I mean. Most people.

SK: Okay, sure. Yes, most people want to be the king. But do they REALLY want to be the king? It's just like how everyone wants to be a professional athlete. Kids hang up posters of famous jousters on their bedroom walls and dream about jousting one day. But when they realize how difficult it is and how much sacrifice it takes, when they learn about the ten hour days of practice, see how the big-league jousters skip school and college and normal lives to focus on the sport... people want the glory but not the price that comes with it, so they go on with their lives. If you take away the price... suddenly the whole system breaks down.

KA: So King King wants me killed for the good of the system?

SK: I'm afraid that's how it is.

KA: What about my great Camelotian novel?

SK: It'll have to be put aside for now.

KA: You mean forever.

SK: Yes, I'm afraid so.

KA: How did you find me, anyway?

SK: The anonymous letters to the editor about how King Arthur should be given a full pardon and a book deal.

KA: Oh. It was that obvious?

SK: Yes.

KA: Just when I was getting my start.

SK: You've had some success?

KA: Well, I had a short story published in a new online limited-distribution literary journal. Nothing fancy, but it was nice to see my name in print. Otherwise I've been doing ad copy for a ladies magazine to pay the bills. But stuff is being passed around. I'm sure success is right around the corner.

SK: Was it worth leaving the throne?

KA: I often ask myself the same question.

SK: And what do you say?

KA: Yes.

SK: Even when your head is on the chopping block?

KA: I don't take the rejection notices that personally.

SK: I mean the literal chopping block. You're going to be executed for your crimes.

KA: Oh, right. It was still worth it.

SK: What about when you sit up in the middle of the night alone in bed with fear in your heart that you'll never be a successful writer, that you're fooling yourself into believing you can make this sham work, that you gave up a promising career for nothing, that you'll never get the fame or recognition you've dreamt about, and that, worst of all, you're not even very talented?

[King Arthur is silent.]

SK: Well? Is it worth it then?

KA: Would it have been better otherwise, sitting on my throne, failing to change the world? Can you tell me whether my life means more or less as a failed king or as a failed writer?

SK: I don't know.

KA: You, Sir Knight, most sucessful of knights, what have you done to change the world?

[Pause.]

SK: Nothing.

[King Arthur rises.]

KA: I'm ready to go now.

[Pause.]

SK: You weren't a failure as king.

KA: That gives me little respite.

SK: Many people would have glady laid down their lives for you. To be you. I would have glady laid down my life for you.

KA: I wouldn't have asked you to do that.

SK: That's why I would have.

KA: That's your job. You'd lay down your life for any king.

SK: But not gladly.

KA: It wouldn't be worth it.

SK: No one lays down his life for a writer.

KA: That's where you're wrong.

SK: Who in the history of humankind has laid down his life for a writer?

KA: I have. Gladly.

[THE END]

I was quite ill this weekend, the sort of illness that involves a restless sleep on the bathroom floor. Fortunately I have a nice, fluffy bathroom mat that provided a modicum of comfort, as well as a very patient girlfriend. And, no, I was not sick from too much partying (in fact, I missed two parties I had claimed I would attend) but, rather, from ennui. Okay, not from ennui. I just love the idea of ennui. Really, I was just sick from being sick, from some microscopic invader that found its way into my fragile system, sort of like ennui but less conceptual.

Haruki Murakami is a Japanese author who mixes Western literature with Eastern culture, history, and mysticism. "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles" is the second book I've read by him, the first a collection of short stories called "The Elephant Vanishes". Oddly, one of the short stories in "Elephant" is actually the first chapter of "Wind-Up Bird", so I guess Murakami decided that particular short story was worth more exploration.

The first half of this book is great; Murakami is adept at using fortunetellers and dreams to weave a wonderful magic realism. The main character is passive but likable, and he sort of wanders from one strange event and character to the next. The second half of the book devolves somewhat into magic surrealism, more time is spent in a dream world, the characters get even stranger, and, in the end, I just didn't feel like enough loose ends were tied up. Now, I have no problem with questions being left unanswered in a novel, but in this case there were too many questions left unanswered, or, rather, the wrong sorts of questions. It sometimes seemed like I was reading a collection of interwoven short stories, and that one particular short story wasn't necessarily bound by the previous stories. Characters just dropped out of the novel halfway through. Entire side plots seem to be abandoned. But, anyway, I still enjoyed it, and it definitely held my interest.

Note: Normally I hate dream sequences in stories. When a dream sequence starts I just use the italicized text as an indication of what not to read. But once I got used to the fact that the dreams in this novel are actually real events taking place in another world and having some limited influences on the real world I had no problem with it.

I admittedly don't know much about Japanese history, and was quite enthralled by the stories Murakami wove into this novel. There are some fascinating "flashbacks" about Japanese atrocities during WWII as well as atrocities faced by the Japanese in Siberian labor camps. (And while these history lessons work thematically, they were one of the subplots hardly even tangentially connected to the main story. Though, they were so interesting I don't really care.)

In summary, I have mixed feelings about the novel. It was a great read and I really connected with the protagonist. But even though I was enthralled until the end, I could feel things slipping away from me more and more. If anyone else reads this book, please give me a call, because more than anything else I need to discuss it with someone.