It’s been a long while since my pen (keyboard?) has touched the sacred grounds of booksnotbombs. For this I apologize…as one of the founding members of the club I should indeed be more diligent; however, I have definitely enjoyed reading the recent posts and have been inspired to rejoin the discussion in a sincere way. I hope those who haven’t been involved in awhile will choose to do the same. That said…
Presently I am in the middle of reading “Middlesex” by Jeffrey Eugenides. This is a fantastic piece of work. I thoroughly enjoy Eugenides’ writing style and the story is exceptional. The instant I picked up the novel and began reading I thought that it would be one of the best books I’ve ever read…it has not disappointed. I love this book not only because of the great writing and great story, but also because weaved throughout are historical insights into very important contemporary social issues, such as race relations, economic hardship, definitions of gender, global conflict, and, perhaps most pertinent today, the immigration debate.
I have always vaguely known of the hardships that circa 1900 European immigrants faced upon arriving in the US; however, I failed to realize the extent of their hardships and the stark similarities between their plight and that of present day immigrants. Eugenides magically depicts the desperation of a Greek brother and sister as they are forced to flee their hometown due to war. He then shows the life of fear and compromise the family balances as they are pushed into dangerous, low-income jobs in factories and pushing illegal booze during prohibition. The Stephanides family endures isolation, mixed assimilation, depression, homesickness, racism, discrimination and poverty. If you have been paying attention to who picks your food, makes your clothes, kills and chops up your meat, cleans your bathroom at work, and performs countless other invisible duties that make our society run, it’s clear that if Eugenides were to write a similar story about a Mexican family in today’s USA a very familiar picture would be painted.
Literature can provide an incredible lens into our past and, if we pay attention, teach us lessons applicable to our contemporary world. “Middlesex” has the rare ability to draw the reader into a past life and seamlessly throw them back into reality with a clearer idea of how to make sense of the present day world.
Peace and Action,
Joe
Saturday, December 16, 2006
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
Wicked
Wicked by Gregory Maguire
I tend to start off most posts by telling people how amazing such-and-such a book is and how they should read it when they get a chance. And in some respects Wicked is no different. It was a pretty amazing book. But I’m not sure that I feel comfortable telling people to go read it. Since my new occupation is a high school English teacher, I have been thinking about books in terms of being interesting to a high school reader. And while the story in Wicked might be interesting to a high school reader, Maguire’s prose would elude most high school students, most college undergraduates, and probably a good portion of the general reading public. Which is not to say that it’s bad. It isn’t. It’s wonderful, but it’s not the type of thing that I would recommend to everybody. Not only do you have to have a stellar vocabulary (or be comfortable reading with a good pocket dictionary close at hand like me), you have to be willing to wade through a tremendous amount of ambiguous narrative to find where Maguire is tying to go with his characters.
Unfortunately I don’t think Maguire knew where he wanted his characters to go as he wrote. This indecision plagues the narrative, which is, since I haven’t mentioned it yet, the narrative of the Wicked Witch of the West. There is one truly great section of the book, which is what prompted me to write about it at all. In the middle of the book, Elphaba (the real name of our green-skinned heroine) decides to drop out of college and become an underground freedom fighter (aka terrorist depending on the spin). The event that drove her to this choice is laid out beautifully. Her life as a fiercely independent underground communist-style conspirator is one of the most inspirational and heart-breaking pieces of writing I’ve read. The whole ‘Wizard of Oz’ gimmick aside, the middle of Wicked is truly amazing writing. It’s hard to recommend one part of a book that is so utterly dependent on everything else, but if it were possible I’d tell folks to read Part III, City of Emeralds. It truly is beautiful.
Part of the ambiguity problem I mentioned above has to deal with the metaphysical direction the book takes in the end. Maguire maps out a complex metaphysics that would have given the book a whole different flavor if he had just elucidated it more in the first 300 pages instead of the last 50 or so. I felt disconcerted at this entirely new direction and frustrated by the meager hint-bones he threw out earlier in the book. I appreciate writers who play around for the first 100 pages or so just to make sure they have the reader’s attention. Umberto Eco is a great example of this type of writer. The first 100 pages of The Name of the Rose are absurdly boring and academic, but he goes on to deliver several big time homeruns in the rest of the book. The big hits in Wicked come, as I mentioned, in the middle of the book, and the ending, to follow the metaphor, is a failed bunt. And I don’t really want to lead readers astray by recommending a failed bunt. Sometimes it’s fun watch a great baseball game with a lousy ending, and Wicked is no different. The middle innings are grand, worth the price of admission to me at least, but you’ll go home disappointed. And there’s a helluva lot of other games out there that’ll keep you riveted the whole way through.
Peace,
MPJ
I tend to start off most posts by telling people how amazing such-and-such a book is and how they should read it when they get a chance. And in some respects Wicked is no different. It was a pretty amazing book. But I’m not sure that I feel comfortable telling people to go read it. Since my new occupation is a high school English teacher, I have been thinking about books in terms of being interesting to a high school reader. And while the story in Wicked might be interesting to a high school reader, Maguire’s prose would elude most high school students, most college undergraduates, and probably a good portion of the general reading public. Which is not to say that it’s bad. It isn’t. It’s wonderful, but it’s not the type of thing that I would recommend to everybody. Not only do you have to have a stellar vocabulary (or be comfortable reading with a good pocket dictionary close at hand like me), you have to be willing to wade through a tremendous amount of ambiguous narrative to find where Maguire is tying to go with his characters.
Unfortunately I don’t think Maguire knew where he wanted his characters to go as he wrote. This indecision plagues the narrative, which is, since I haven’t mentioned it yet, the narrative of the Wicked Witch of the West. There is one truly great section of the book, which is what prompted me to write about it at all. In the middle of the book, Elphaba (the real name of our green-skinned heroine) decides to drop out of college and become an underground freedom fighter (aka terrorist depending on the spin). The event that drove her to this choice is laid out beautifully. Her life as a fiercely independent underground communist-style conspirator is one of the most inspirational and heart-breaking pieces of writing I’ve read. The whole ‘Wizard of Oz’ gimmick aside, the middle of Wicked is truly amazing writing. It’s hard to recommend one part of a book that is so utterly dependent on everything else, but if it were possible I’d tell folks to read Part III, City of Emeralds. It truly is beautiful.
Part of the ambiguity problem I mentioned above has to deal with the metaphysical direction the book takes in the end. Maguire maps out a complex metaphysics that would have given the book a whole different flavor if he had just elucidated it more in the first 300 pages instead of the last 50 or so. I felt disconcerted at this entirely new direction and frustrated by the meager hint-bones he threw out earlier in the book. I appreciate writers who play around for the first 100 pages or so just to make sure they have the reader’s attention. Umberto Eco is a great example of this type of writer. The first 100 pages of The Name of the Rose are absurdly boring and academic, but he goes on to deliver several big time homeruns in the rest of the book. The big hits in Wicked come, as I mentioned, in the middle of the book, and the ending, to follow the metaphor, is a failed bunt. And I don’t really want to lead readers astray by recommending a failed bunt. Sometimes it’s fun watch a great baseball game with a lousy ending, and Wicked is no different. The middle innings are grand, worth the price of admission to me at least, but you’ll go home disappointed. And there’s a helluva lot of other games out there that’ll keep you riveted the whole way through.
Peace,
MPJ
Monday, August 14, 2006
WATCHMEN
Watchmen
By Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
1986-1987
Watchmen is a comic. Or, if you prefer, a graphic novel. Despite these unsophisticated labels, Watchmen has won the Hugo Award and was named one of Time magazine’s top 100 novels of the century. You can find copies in most major bookstores, in addition to every comic shop on earth. Watchmen is the story that forced the “literary” world to start paying attention to comics, hence the origin of the term “graphic novel.” If Watchmen hadn’t paved the way, so the story goes, then the comic-world would never have exploded on society quite the way it has. The most obvious effect of comic’s increased appeal can be found in the movies. Without the precedent set by Watchmen, Batman the movie would never have come into existence, based as it was on Frank Miller’s psychologically dark comic stories of the dark knight. And without Batman there never would have been a market for the numerous comic-related movies such as X-Men, Spiderman, the Fantastic Four, the much-maligned Hulk movie from academy-award winning director Ang Lee, or even Sin City. Comics drive the plot of Kevin Smith’s Chasing Amy, while the mythology of the comic world is central to M. Night Shamyalan’s Unbreakable. Comics, like it or not, are mainstream.
Just how mainstream are we talking about here? If we want to follow this comic resurgence into more tenuous territory, we might argue that Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay would never have been written (or won the Pulitzer Prize), based as it is on comics and super-heroes, because there would not have been enough interest in comics to warrant such an undertaking by a novelist. Of course, such an argument isn’t exactly convincing, but it suggests that comics and graphic novels have clawed their way into the realm of literature and solidified their position in that strange phenomenon called culture.
All because of Watchmen?
I was skeptical. Friends had been recommending Watchmen for years. And while I had been collecting comics since I was a kid, and while I loved Alan Moore’s work in Swamp Thing and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (the comic, not the movie), I just didn’t believe that a comic could hold it’s own against 100 Years of Solitude or The Odyssey. Alan Moore, brilliant as he is, is no Hemingway. After reading Watchmen, I can honestly say that Moore isn’t Hemingway, at all. . . . He’s more like Faulkner, with a touch of Jung, and a little MacGyver thrown in for good effect. Watchmen is amazing.
It’s a critique of the absurdity of superheroes. It’s an insight into the fucked-up psychology of vigilantes. It’s about the connection between power and evil, despite good intentions. It’s about the value of building relationships even when there are more “important” things to be doing. It’s a weird combination of Charlotte Bronte, Albert Camus, Charlie Brown, and Walker Texas Ranger. It’s disturbing: if you’ve ever read Native Son by Richard Wright, then you’ll have an idea of what I’m talking about. It’s not always a comfortable read, but it’s definitely a rewarding read. And it’s worth taking a day or two off and reading it cover-to-cover. But be warned – reading Watchmen takes concentration.
So, based on all my rambling and drivel, you’ve decided to pick up a copy of Watchmen and read it next weekend. Great! A warning though: it might be a little jarring. You might be put off at first; you might be tempted to put it down, call me a raving lunatic, and swear off graphic novels forever. So here’s a few tips for reading. Reading a graphic novel is entirely different from reading a book. Obvious, right? Sure, but it still took me a while to really figure out how to read Watchmen. The characters are as complete as any you’ll find in a work of “literature.” The plot is just as complex and mysterious as an Alfred Hitchcock movie. And to really read a graphic novel in an effective way, you have to combine the habits of reading a novel and the habits of watching a movie. It doesn’t work to read just the dialogue bubbles, and it’s hardly helpful just to look at the pictures. You need to train your eyes to do both simultaneously, and for a lot of readers this means slowing down. So…slow down. One study said that the average museum-goer looks at a painting for an average of three seconds. Three seconds! That’s ridiculous. And it’s just as ridiculous to read the words of a graphic novel and ignore the art. Slow down and pay attention to the pictures. They’re just as crucial to what’s going on as the words. If you train your eyes to read Watchmen effectively, I guarantee you’ll dig it.
By Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
1986-1987
Watchmen is a comic. Or, if you prefer, a graphic novel. Despite these unsophisticated labels, Watchmen has won the Hugo Award and was named one of Time magazine’s top 100 novels of the century. You can find copies in most major bookstores, in addition to every comic shop on earth. Watchmen is the story that forced the “literary” world to start paying attention to comics, hence the origin of the term “graphic novel.” If Watchmen hadn’t paved the way, so the story goes, then the comic-world would never have exploded on society quite the way it has. The most obvious effect of comic’s increased appeal can be found in the movies. Without the precedent set by Watchmen, Batman the movie would never have come into existence, based as it was on Frank Miller’s psychologically dark comic stories of the dark knight. And without Batman there never would have been a market for the numerous comic-related movies such as X-Men, Spiderman, the Fantastic Four, the much-maligned Hulk movie from academy-award winning director Ang Lee, or even Sin City. Comics drive the plot of Kevin Smith’s Chasing Amy, while the mythology of the comic world is central to M. Night Shamyalan’s Unbreakable. Comics, like it or not, are mainstream.
Just how mainstream are we talking about here? If we want to follow this comic resurgence into more tenuous territory, we might argue that Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay would never have been written (or won the Pulitzer Prize), based as it is on comics and super-heroes, because there would not have been enough interest in comics to warrant such an undertaking by a novelist. Of course, such an argument isn’t exactly convincing, but it suggests that comics and graphic novels have clawed their way into the realm of literature and solidified their position in that strange phenomenon called culture.
All because of Watchmen?
I was skeptical. Friends had been recommending Watchmen for years. And while I had been collecting comics since I was a kid, and while I loved Alan Moore’s work in Swamp Thing and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (the comic, not the movie), I just didn’t believe that a comic could hold it’s own against 100 Years of Solitude or The Odyssey. Alan Moore, brilliant as he is, is no Hemingway. After reading Watchmen, I can honestly say that Moore isn’t Hemingway, at all. . . . He’s more like Faulkner, with a touch of Jung, and a little MacGyver thrown in for good effect. Watchmen is amazing.
It’s a critique of the absurdity of superheroes. It’s an insight into the fucked-up psychology of vigilantes. It’s about the connection between power and evil, despite good intentions. It’s about the value of building relationships even when there are more “important” things to be doing. It’s a weird combination of Charlotte Bronte, Albert Camus, Charlie Brown, and Walker Texas Ranger. It’s disturbing: if you’ve ever read Native Son by Richard Wright, then you’ll have an idea of what I’m talking about. It’s not always a comfortable read, but it’s definitely a rewarding read. And it’s worth taking a day or two off and reading it cover-to-cover. But be warned – reading Watchmen takes concentration.
So, based on all my rambling and drivel, you’ve decided to pick up a copy of Watchmen and read it next weekend. Great! A warning though: it might be a little jarring. You might be put off at first; you might be tempted to put it down, call me a raving lunatic, and swear off graphic novels forever. So here’s a few tips for reading. Reading a graphic novel is entirely different from reading a book. Obvious, right? Sure, but it still took me a while to really figure out how to read Watchmen. The characters are as complete as any you’ll find in a work of “literature.” The plot is just as complex and mysterious as an Alfred Hitchcock movie. And to really read a graphic novel in an effective way, you have to combine the habits of reading a novel and the habits of watching a movie. It doesn’t work to read just the dialogue bubbles, and it’s hardly helpful just to look at the pictures. You need to train your eyes to do both simultaneously, and for a lot of readers this means slowing down. So…slow down. One study said that the average museum-goer looks at a painting for an average of three seconds. Three seconds! That’s ridiculous. And it’s just as ridiculous to read the words of a graphic novel and ignore the art. Slow down and pay attention to the pictures. They’re just as crucial to what’s going on as the words. If you train your eyes to read Watchmen effectively, I guarantee you’ll dig it.
Tuesday, July 11, 2006
Desire: Lack of agenda
I know it's very fashionable right now to bash McDonald's and fast food and pesticides and corporate farming and bioengineering and all of it.
I mean, I read Fast Food Nation. I re-read The Jungle and mareveled at Upton Sinclair's grasp of the exploitative nature of the food industry. I did the requisite three months of vegetarianism and, truth be told, I still can't bring myself to eat at a fast food joint (with the notable exception of Chipotle, which, it is a well-documented fact, puts crack in the guacamole).
But something always bugged me about Fast Food Nation. Shlosser doesn't even pretend to be objective. He leaves out facts, he tells only one side of the story, he casts anecdotes in such a way that no self-respecting jury would deny probable doubt.
In short, were he a newspaper reporter, his editor would have shredded his story so quickly it would have ignited.
So I approached Michael Pollan's Botany of Desire with some trepidation. The book's back covers summarizes Pollan's thesis such: "...plants have evolved to satisfy humankind's most basic yearnings. And just as we've benefited from these plants, we have also done well by them. So who is really domesticating who?"
Despite the pulled-punch of a jacket, the book is incredible. Pollan achieves the trifecta of entertainment, education and amazement. Essentially, his thesis is that human desires over the last few millenia have done as much to shape the evolution (or devolution) of four plant species as did millions of years of climate changes and natural selection.
And, in the course of our domestication of these plants, the plants themselves have played an incredible role in the development or destruction of human society. Consider the apple's role in making Ohioo pioneers feel more comfortable with their wild surroundings and thus greasing the wheels of manifest destiny as no other plant could. Or the way the modest, Apollonian tulip brought the commodities market of Holland to a screeching halt, introducing the idea of "the bubble" to economic theory. Or how research into marijuana, sponsored by the U.S. government to counteract reefer madness sweeping America's beat generation, has led to a greater understanding of human neuroscience than perhaps any other course of research. And, finally, how the social impacts of potato cultivation drastically altered the power structure of the European continent and later changed the literal face of the United States.
But all that aside. Pollan infuses his theories with ACTUAL fact. By actual fact I mean he gives all versions of the facts. His sections on genetic engineering and the impact it will have on evolution of plants, pests and people do not take on the predictable pallor of an Al Gore argument. Rather, he admits that genetic engineering may well be, as the scientists at Monsanto would have you believe, the next step in the human-plant evolutionary dance. But he also points out that he's just not comfortable, for whatever reason, eating a salad made with Monsanto vegetables.
There is no Supersize Me blanket condemnation of agriculture (although Pollan does advance the seed (sorry) of the anti-monoculture idea he further explores in his next book, The Omnivore's Dilemma). Instead, The Botany of Desire simply offers food for thought (again, sorry).
Next: How about a little eco-terrorism? Monkeywrench Gang. I might be the only college educated Westerner who hasn't read it. Think I should catch up.
I mean, I read Fast Food Nation. I re-read The Jungle and mareveled at Upton Sinclair's grasp of the exploitative nature of the food industry. I did the requisite three months of vegetarianism and, truth be told, I still can't bring myself to eat at a fast food joint (with the notable exception of Chipotle, which, it is a well-documented fact, puts crack in the guacamole).
But something always bugged me about Fast Food Nation. Shlosser doesn't even pretend to be objective. He leaves out facts, he tells only one side of the story, he casts anecdotes in such a way that no self-respecting jury would deny probable doubt.
In short, were he a newspaper reporter, his editor would have shredded his story so quickly it would have ignited.
So I approached Michael Pollan's Botany of Desire with some trepidation. The book's back covers summarizes Pollan's thesis such: "...plants have evolved to satisfy humankind's most basic yearnings. And just as we've benefited from these plants, we have also done well by them. So who is really domesticating who?"
Despite the pulled-punch of a jacket, the book is incredible. Pollan achieves the trifecta of entertainment, education and amazement. Essentially, his thesis is that human desires over the last few millenia have done as much to shape the evolution (or devolution) of four plant species as did millions of years of climate changes and natural selection.
And, in the course of our domestication of these plants, the plants themselves have played an incredible role in the development or destruction of human society. Consider the apple's role in making Ohioo pioneers feel more comfortable with their wild surroundings and thus greasing the wheels of manifest destiny as no other plant could. Or the way the modest, Apollonian tulip brought the commodities market of Holland to a screeching halt, introducing the idea of "the bubble" to economic theory. Or how research into marijuana, sponsored by the U.S. government to counteract reefer madness sweeping America's beat generation, has led to a greater understanding of human neuroscience than perhaps any other course of research. And, finally, how the social impacts of potato cultivation drastically altered the power structure of the European continent and later changed the literal face of the United States.
But all that aside. Pollan infuses his theories with ACTUAL fact. By actual fact I mean he gives all versions of the facts. His sections on genetic engineering and the impact it will have on evolution of plants, pests and people do not take on the predictable pallor of an Al Gore argument. Rather, he admits that genetic engineering may well be, as the scientists at Monsanto would have you believe, the next step in the human-plant evolutionary dance. But he also points out that he's just not comfortable, for whatever reason, eating a salad made with Monsanto vegetables.
There is no Supersize Me blanket condemnation of agriculture (although Pollan does advance the seed (sorry) of the anti-monoculture idea he further explores in his next book, The Omnivore's Dilemma). Instead, The Botany of Desire simply offers food for thought (again, sorry).
Next: How about a little eco-terrorism? Monkeywrench Gang. I might be the only college educated Westerner who hasn't read it. Think I should catch up.
Tuesday, May 09, 2006
Bondage and stuff
I've also read _Of Human Bondage_. It's crazy how something completely irrational, like an obsession with a wretched human, can become so binding as to completely immobolize human consciousness. As a reader I began to feel bound to the masochistic tendencies of Mildred, the main character's dastardly love-interest. Every 50 pages or so, Mildred would pop up and you just knew that she was going to wreck Philip's life. No matter how smart Philip thought he was and no matter how over Mildred he claimed to be, she would appear and in minutes he would turn into a snivelling shell of humanity completely "bound" to her manipulative whims.
I've often wondered if the author is trying to argue that mature relationships are only possible when a soul has been obliterated and when that same soul comes to expect nothing more than a comfortable normativity. Only then can one love? Only then can one appreciate a relationship? That seems to be how the books ends, even though it is a "happy ending." On the other hand I think that Maugham is dead-on in his analysis. Most people give up their dreams for companionship. They give up the wanderlust for a steady outpouring of affection (and yes nookie too). There just never seems to be that middle path. Of course I could be biased, but I think that Philip should have traveled to Spain. Sally might have waited; after all, she knows him better than anyone. Plus, Spain represented the mystery of existence, and Philip never even got to explore that mystery. He abandoned the search for existential answers for the love of an amazing woman. Crazy!
Perhaps I've misread the the last 200 pages, but the travesty of bondage seems much broader than the malicious Mildred. The travesty of bondage is being chained to a constricted, if comfy, concept of normal life. Is Mildred really any worse than the life represented by Sally? I don't know, but it's worth considering if you ever get the chance to read _Of Human Bondage_.
Peace.
I've often wondered if the author is trying to argue that mature relationships are only possible when a soul has been obliterated and when that same soul comes to expect nothing more than a comfortable normativity. Only then can one love? Only then can one appreciate a relationship? That seems to be how the books ends, even though it is a "happy ending." On the other hand I think that Maugham is dead-on in his analysis. Most people give up their dreams for companionship. They give up the wanderlust for a steady outpouring of affection (and yes nookie too). There just never seems to be that middle path. Of course I could be biased, but I think that Philip should have traveled to Spain. Sally might have waited; after all, she knows him better than anyone. Plus, Spain represented the mystery of existence, and Philip never even got to explore that mystery. He abandoned the search for existential answers for the love of an amazing woman. Crazy!
Perhaps I've misread the the last 200 pages, but the travesty of bondage seems much broader than the malicious Mildred. The travesty of bondage is being chained to a constricted, if comfy, concept of normal life. Is Mildred really any worse than the life represented by Sally? I don't know, but it's worth considering if you ever get the chance to read _Of Human Bondage_.
Peace.
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