Sunday, May 19, 2013

I catch up on a bunch

I'm reading at a fairly breakneck pace because I have a whole bunch of student papers to grade, and I get to read a couple of chapters as a reward for grading three or four papers. Plus reading into the evening (and the wee hours) keeps me in the reading "zone."

Assassination Vacation***1/2
by Sarah Vowell
Very funny and quirky treatment of Vowell's "vacation" project to visit (often with her reluctant sister and young niece in tow) sites associated with assassinated American presdents, with the odd exception of President John Kennedy. Maybe the fact that people remember the Kennedy assassination would have made the book more sombre, and Vowell is clearly going for whimsy here. However, this isn't all fluff. Vowell includes frequent and engrossing riffs on our American artistic tastes in monumental architecture and statuary. For instance, she notes that we eschewed "real" American architects like Wright and Sullivan when we memorialized our fallen leaders, and she ponders what they might have done with the Lincoln memorial. Vowell also acknowledges that we are a nation of rubberneckers, and there are anecdotes a-plenty for the vicarious thrill seekers who want to see bullets and bloody shirts and bone fragments. This book is least effective when Vowell sidetracks into criticism of George W. Bush, which turns the tone splenetic and probably dates the book as well.

Everyone's Reading Bastard***
by Nick Hornby
Just a short story, really, about a wife who makes her living writing confessional newspaper columns, often about her hapless husband, who really isn't that bad. As the book opens, the wife has filed for divorce, and has traded up on the experience to write a column entitled "Bastard." Everyone's reading it! Makes a nice break if you've got an hour to kill.

Kapitoil and The Love Song of Jonny Valentine****
by Teddy Wayne
It takes some balls, I think, for an author to use "Teddy Wayne" as a nom de plume, especially when that's really his name. But maybe that's the sort of touch one should expect from a "lad lit" writer. These are two fine examples of the genre, which is the man's answer to chick lit, and shares many of its characteristics--a central romance plot, droll commentary by an up-and-coming but somewhat awkward young guy getting his first taste of success and how dog-eat-dog it all is. There are lots of allusions to clothes, interior decoration, food, and, of course the ubiquitous digital accoutrements that you'll find in chick lit. These are, after all, books written for twenty- and thirty-somethings who still care about that stuff. But there is plenty of the interior life and struggle with real moral dilemmas here. Karim in "Kapitoil" is a wonderful character, torn between his American girlfriend and his obligations to his family in Qatar. He is also a man of faith, and his Islam is worked into the novel unobtrusively and respectfully. Wayne does a great job capturing Karim's obsession with algorithms and computer lingo and imperfect English in his first-person narrative. Jonny (a character clearly inspired by Justin Bieber) is equally endearing, but, as an 11-year-old, in a much more vulnerable way. One problem with the narrative is that Jonny talks more like a 20-something, so the narrative voice is a little off. Nonetheless, its exploration of the cult of fame and the depiction of the Jonny's stage mother, who is treated with restraint, are to its credit. Also to Wayne's credit is the fact that the endings of these books defy the chick lit/lad lit formula. Possibly his association with McSweeney's helped him avoid some of those pitfalls. Sigh. All roads today seem to lead to Dave Eggers, don't they?

On Writing****
by Stephen King
There are so many quotable bon mots from King about the craft of writing in this latest and expanded-even-more edition that it's easy to forget that he often doesn't follow his own advice. King's storytelling ability has always exceeded his style, but the former is so prodigious as to allow you to forgive a lot of the latter. In any case, I made a list of many of King's aphorisms to share with my students. Of real value are first drafts of passages, the edits of which King talks the reader through. Bonus is his biographical first section, which makes no claims to show how a writer is born or made, but shows how early experiences resonated in his work. I don't know why this book isn't used in high school writing more.

The Scar***
by China Mieville
This very long book is like a graphic novel in words. It's about three-quarters description of the various landscapes and creatures that Bellis Coldwine, the putative heroine of the book, encounters on her flight from the city of New Crobuzon and capture aboard the pirate town, Armada. Think Gulliver's travels, and you'll have a bit of fun looking for social commentary in the weird and fantastic. Not that there necessarily is any. Do notice the myriad scar images and what they mean (scars are a sign of healing and metamorphis). I admit freely that I devoured this book in just a couple of days and felt that satisfying "I wanna go back!" feeling when it was all over. But all in all, the description of weird landscapes and freakshow of scabmettlers, kephri, anophilii, and vampyr distract the reader from the fact that there's not much meat here. I'm told that this book is part of the steampunk sub-genre of fantasy fiction, I guess because the author employs magic and steam engines to look for the "scar" in the world.*** SPOILER ***The scar may be a place where creatures can ascend to a higher plane of knowledge and power. That or a great big bottomless waterfall where everybody dies.

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