I loved this book, from it's first opening paragraph to it's final two words. I loved it so much that I consciously slowed my reading after the first I loved this book, from it's first opening paragraph to it's final two words. I loved it so much that I consciously slowed my reading after the first few chapters so I could savor both Adichie's writing, but the world she describes her main character, a woman I'd love to count among my friends!
Adichie masterfully evokes a whole community of friends and lovers -- and some not so friendly -- across three countries: Nigeria, the US, and the UK. In doing so, she skewers some stereotypes and can, with humor (sometimes caustic) and sometimes through a nuanced understatement get multiple messages across without ever being dogmatic or sermonizing. And one theme she weaves exposes the simplistic and myopic veiwpoint of identity politics. To quote philosopher Susan Neiman from Left Is Not Woke, "The life of a black person is dramatically different in America and Nigeria, as Chimamanda Adichie so brilliantly showed in Americanah. And being Nigerian is only an identifying description outside the country; in a land whose citizens are divided by fraught histories and more than five hundred languages, saying you're Nigerian means nothing at all."
Not only that, Adichie shows how a "Nigerian Black person" in the US experiences race and racialism differently than a Black person born here in the States. Her main protagonist, Ifemelu, while living in the US, starts a popular blog about race, and tellingly, when she returns to Nigeria and starts up a new blog, she is asked if it's also about race and her response speaks volumes: "No, just about life. Race doesn't really work here. I feel like I got off the plane in Lagos and stopped being black."
Seeing America through her character's eyes can be bracing, and listening in on her and her friends talking about what they love -- and what they don't love -- about America shines a light on generally unquestioned things us modern Americans may be blind too:
"Soon they were laughing and listing the things they missed about America. 'Low-fat soy milk, NPR, fast Internet." Ifemelu said. 'Good customer service, good customer service, good customer service,' Bisola said"
because apparently those in service in Lagos act like "they are doing you a favor by serving you." But then one of the others talk about how annoying American customer service can be and gives an example that made me snort with laughter:
"Someone hovering around and bothering you all the time. Are you still working on that? Since when did eating become work?" Yagazie said.
Again, I found this a wonderfully human story. Yes, it's a love story, but a love story that manages to not dominate the narrative while pervading it at the same time. ...more
I am a big fan of the horror genre, and whether in film or literature, the most horrifying tales have nothing to do with the supernatural. As I write I am a big fan of the horror genre, and whether in film or literature, the most horrifying tales have nothing to do with the supernatural. As I write this review, the film Speak No Evil is screening in theaters and it is an agonizing slow burn of psychological horror, more horrifying because you know such a situation is completely possible and perhaps even plausible. Thomas Tessier's Rapture is one of the more horrifying and horrifyingly "true to life" tales of psychopathy I have ever read.
Tessier masterfully gives us insight into his protagonist's mind as he twists all that happens to his preferences and how he turns all evidence of failure into a new realization of his deep insight. You see the twistedness and you feel the tightening in your stomach just knowing it ain't going to lead to anything good. Jeff, the tech-bro psycho reunites with a High School crush and the happily married Georgianne makes an innocuous comment when asked by her husband why she and Jeff never dated in High School saying that if Jeff had asked she would have gone out with him. And as Grady Hendrix points out in his Introduction, "And right there, on page fifty-two of a two-hundred-and-forty-seven page book, she's sealed her fate." And like a Greek tragedy, all the stalking, the murdering and depravity unfolds from that one moment.
I don't know how I missed out on the work of Thomas Tessier, but I've already got several more of his books on my "To Read" shelf. I'd say that the writer he most reminds me of is Jim Thompson, especially the Thompson of The Killer Inside Me or A Hell of a Woman, as well as his professed "model", the masterful author of the first person psychopath novel: Patricia Highsmith. The big difference is that we uncomfortably find ourselves rooting for Highsmith's Tom Ripley while we are kept looking on in horror as Jeff moves inexorably toward doom....more
Talk about a 'magnum opus,' this book, which has sat on my shelf since published in 2011 is a monumental achievement! At times, it reads like a policeTalk about a 'magnum opus,' this book, which has sat on my shelf since published in 2011 is a monumental achievement! At times, it reads like a police procedural, a mystery, at times a true sci-fi horror story, an adventure AND an inspiring tale of human endeavor.
"Fuck Cancer" is something we hear a lot and as someone who has had to deal with prostate cancer, is something I certainly feel. I've lost too many people I love to it. And yet, unlike other diseases and illnesses, cancer is something unique... it is literally in our very dna (oncogenes). As he writes, toward the end of this 'biography' of cancer, "Taken to its logical extreme, the cancer cell's capacity to consistently imitate, corrupt, and pervert normal physiology thus raises the ominous question of what 'normalcy' is." As one of his patients puts it, "Cancer is my new normal" and this is something any cancer patient knows. There is BC and AC. Having gone through diagnosis and treatment, I am "good" now, but the question always lingers... will it return? And if so, how and when?
But it's more than that individually. Mukherjee continues: "...quite possibly cancer is ournew normalcy as well, that we are inherently destined to slouch towards a malignant end. Indeed, as the fraction of those affected by cancer creeps inexorably in some nations from one in four to one in three to one in two, cancer will, indeed, be the new normal -- an inevitability. The question then will not be if we will encounter this immortal illness in our lives, but when.
The reality of this malady is that we can only rid ourselves of cancer only as much as we can rid ourselves of the very processes of life, of growth: aging, regeneration, healing, reproduction. Cancer is the body's ability to heal gone crazy. As our cells divide, mutations accumulate and cancer is often the result. So our project becomes seeing if we can learn ever more ways to forestall the inevitable.
I don't want to end this review with a bracingly sober analysis that may foster despair. As I said, there is much that is inspiring in this tale and I wish to share one passage that moved me as it was the thought of my young daughter being left without her dad that motivated me to do what I could to survive:
"In 1971, about half the patients diagnosed with multiple myeloma died within twenty-four months of diagnosis; the other half died by the tenth year. In 2008, about half of all myeloma patients treated with the shifting armamentarium of new drugs will still be alive at five years. If the survival trends continue, the other half will continue to be alive well beyond ten years.
In 2005, a man diagnosed with multiple myeloma asked me if he would be alive to watch his daughter graduate from high school in a few months. In 2009, bound to a wheelchair, he watched his daughter graduate from college. The wheelchair had nothing to do with his cancer. The man had fallen down while coaching his youngest son's baseball team."
Whew! What a slog of a book. Of thirteen books I've now read in this wonderful series from Bloomsbury, this is the most disappointing by far. Eleven, Whew! What a slog of a book. Of thirteen books I've now read in this wonderful series from Bloomsbury, this is the most disappointing by far. Eleven, in fact, have been wonderful, receiving four and five stars from me, while the one on Arcade Fire's The Suburbs was less than stellar, it's still a book I have kept but this one, managing to make a wonderfully exciting album feel cold and generally lackluster will be given away.
Griffiths is Head of the Department of Music at Oxford Brookes University, a guy who knows music, but does a poor job of conveying the life of it -- at least in this case. While all the other books in this series I've read do not require any knowledge of music theory, Griffiths seems to have written not for the general public, but for other musicologists! He's also quite enamored of numbers. In one tedious section he lists the tracks of the album like this:
Time Speed Speed Type 1. Airbag 4.44 284 x=86 M
and a few pages later uses this data to expand into pages and pages of this:
Airbag (Information from first chart: 4.44/284/x=86 Intro: 9 (preceded by one-note upbeat) Verse: 12 (6+6) -- "In the next world war..." 'Chorus': 6 -- "In an interstellar..." Verse 2: 12 (6+6) 'In a deep deep sleep' Chorus: 6 -- as before Break: 2 (6+6) Chorus: 6+6 -- as before Break: 14 (4+10) Coda: 10, followed by one bar of single beats wordy: 48, wordless: 51
WTF???
Not only that, but he spends an inordinate amount of pages talking about singles, and other versions of the songs and the songs that are on those singles which I would guess only obsessives would give a crap about. He draws linkages that are often tenuous at best.
In one telling passage he writes: "That too is part of the problem of the way pop music is written about, overly contextual, overly sociological, and increasingly, tied to the demands of marketing and photography: there are in truth few ordinary pieces of writing that make you want to listen to the records again." Griffiths doesn't seem at all "tied to the demands of marketing" but he certainly overburdens his text with contextualization, falls into some sociology and photography (a whole section on the cover and the artwork accompanying the cd).
To be frank. If I didn't already like this album, this is a piece of writing that would never make me want to listen to it. ...more
The Suburbs is the 13th book in the Bloomsbury 33 1/3 series of books about albums and, while I love Arcade Fire and their album that garnered them a The Suburbs is the 13th book in the Bloomsbury 33 1/3 series of books about albums and, while I love Arcade Fire and their album that garnered them a Grammy, sad to say this is the weakest of the books I've read so far. It feels like Eidelstein overreached in attempting to make a 'BIG STATEMENT' and while the topic may even be as he posits, his writing misses the mark too many times.
This is also the first of the books I've read from the series that doesn't go into the actual process of making of the album and I've added it to the "Memoir" shelf because that is close to describing what I found less than interesting with this book. While he tries to draw parallels with larger culture -- and he does this best when dealing with his parallels between Arcade Fire's album and Douglas Sirk's All That Heaven Allows too much of his own story makes its way into the text.
At times, it reads like a undergrad attempt at a graduate level cultural analysis. I've loved the other 12 books in this series that I've read and so I find myself feeling a bit bad giving this such a negative review....more
Emma, Jane Austen’s 4th novel, the last to be published while she was alive, is also her longest. As with her other novels, the concerns and challengeEmma, Jane Austen’s 4th novel, the last to be published while she was alive, is also her longest. As with her other novels, the concerns and challenges of ‘genteel women’ living in Georgian Regency England is the context for what can best be described as a ‘comedy of manners’.
Interestingly, even before she began to write Emma, Austen wrote, “I am going to take a heroine whom no one but myself will much like”. Emma is spoiled, self-satisfied, and headstrong. She repeatedly overestimates her psychological insight into others feelings and her own “matchmaking abilities” and intrusively involves herself in the lives of others in ways that create difficulties for herself as well as others.
And yet, despite – or perhaps because of these character attributes – Emma is arguably the most interesting of Austen’s protagonists and the novel may be the best introduction to Austen as it reads as more contemporary than her previous novels. The story is less intricately plotted than her earlier novels. It is a quick read after the more densely packed Mansfield Park. Indeed, there have been from the first some criticisms that there is not much “story” in Emma, but Sir Walter Scott’s review captures the energy and even fun this novel can provoke writing: “Emma has even less story than either of the preceding novels...The author's knowledge of the world, and the peculiar tact with which she presents characters that the reader cannot fail to recognize, reminds us something of the merits of the Flemish school of painting. The subjects are not often elegant, and certainly never grand: but they are finished up to nature, and with a precision which delights the reader.”
Another interesting point to be made about Emma, the novel, is the many parallels between the main characters and plots of Pride and Prejudice and Emma, but with a sex reversal: Respectively there are proud central characters (Darcy and Emma); a critical foil who ends up being the love interest (Elizabeth and Mr Knightly); a nearly thwarted romantic aspiration (Jane and Martin); and a wrong choice for marriage with the central character (Anne de Bourgh and Frank Churchill). Such sex reversals plays at the gender dynamics of the time allowing a critical examination of different roles and expectations held by society for men and women especially in what is referred to as the “gendered space” in Emma. A particular example is how Jane Fairfax cannot walk to the post office in the rain without a huge outcry among the village gossipers, while no one comments on Mr Knightly riding all the way to London.
The sheer number of adaptations from manga to theater, tv, film, and fictions inspired by it such as Joan Aiken’s Jane Fairfax: The Secret Story of the Second Heroine in Jane Austen’s Emma, and the mashup Emma and the Werewolves: Jane Austen and Adam Rann, and even an Amish retelling prove that either Austen was wrong about Emma, or she was being a bit arch. I tend to think more the latter. The most recent film version starring Anya Taylor-Joy as Emma was released in 2020 but others include the 1996 version starring Gwyneth Paltrow, an Indian modern adaptation, Aisha, and of course 1995’s Clueless. ...more
This book presents another where I wish we could offer 1/2 stars because 3 is a bit weaker than I would like but 4 ("I really liked it") a bit too strThis book presents another where I wish we could offer 1/2 stars because 3 is a bit weaker than I would like but 4 ("I really liked it") a bit too strong. I wanted to like it more and for several of the first essays in this book I really did like it. In fact, as I slowly made my way through these essays, I found myself posting quotes to social media, much of Gay's writing moving me for its literary quality as much as for what he is saying!
For instance, in the opening essay, "Through My Tears I Saw" what he says about death, the loss of loved ones, and grieving touched on absolute profundity. I would have to stop after a literally breath-taking passage and process before reading on. "It was through my tears I saw my father was a garden" is one of those phrases that pulsate with living energy and you just want to say "YES!"
Following that essay with "We Kin" and a poetic rhapsody about gardening may be my favorite of the essays in this collection and if all of them spoke to me as did this, I'd have found 5 stars too little, But essays like "Share Your Bucket!" and "Insurgent Hoop" that take skateboarding and basketball as their templates were a real slog for me who has no interest in either. The basketball one especially was tiresome. Now, of course, this -- like all criticism or reviews -- tells more about me than Gay or his writing so you may find these essays as moving as I found the previous two I mentioned.
The other criticism I have is Gay's occasional forays into anti-science as when he writes about GMOs and other pseudoscience. But that is truly occasional and did not always detract from his major point, such as the loving final essay on gratitude which was overall truly lovely.
So, overall, a mixed bag for me but I will say I love the idea of inciting joy; goodness knows the world needs it!...more
The Platform Sutra has an outsized influence on Zen Buddhism, mostly to the detriment of the tradition. Yet, anyone practicing any form of Zen has to The Platform Sutra has an outsized influence on Zen Buddhism, mostly to the detriment of the tradition. Yet, anyone practicing any form of Zen has to engage with it, and there are many translations and commentaries better than this one.
I question why, given all we know of the history of this text and its ahistoricity and propagandist purpose, why so many western practitioners, even with Dogen calling the text a "forgery", regard this text so reverently. A recurring trope is passages extolling "original mind" that are nothing but the imposition of a "subtle atman." For instance, Hsūan Hua comments, "Your physical body is an inn where your self-nature temporarily dwells." This is pretty much how Krishna describes the atman to Arjuna in The Bhagavad Gita and could not be further from the teachings of the Buddha who denies any such entity within, behind, above, or behind the five aggregates. And this subtle atman is found throughout the sutra and the commentary.
Another aspect of Hsūan Hua'a translation and commentary is the repugnant body and sex negativity throughout. His emphasis on the "deviance" of sexual desire and sexuality, referring to it as always nothing but an affliction is repeated constantly more reminiscent of the more conservative sects calling for celibacy than the more sex-positive message found in the teachings of many other zen teachers.
In any event, this is most certainly not a translation/commentary I'll be sharing with my students. There are many others that would be more conducive to critical discourse; this reads more like a very dogmatic, puritanical and overly judgmental diatribe at times.
For the propagandist purpose of the sutra, check out: The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch by Philip Yampolsky and Alan Cole's books, Fathering Your Father and Patriarchs On Paper....more
Though I am a big fan of Nick Cave's work, that's not the reason for the five stars. This is a book that has leaped toward the top of my "Favorite BooThough I am a big fan of Nick Cave's work, that's not the reason for the five stars. This is a book that has leaped toward the top of my "Favorite Books" list for reasons that include the critical thinking, the vulnerability, and the wisdom exhibited throughout these pages.
Though I do not resonate with Cave's Christian theology per se, I do appreciate his self-awareness around it: that it may or may not be all true, that regardless of its irrationality, it is something he commits to for the most subjective, personal reasons; reasons that I can fully comprehend and with which I most assuredly do resonate with. One lesson Cave has learned leads him to the following:
"Well, the young Nick Cave could afford to hold the world in some form of disdain because he had no idea of what was coming down the line. I can see now that this disdain or contempt for the world was a kind of luxury or indulgence, even a vanity. He had no notion of the preciousness of life -- the fragility. He had no idea how difficult, but essential, it is to love the world and to treat the world with mercy."
This is something my Zen Naturalism is permeated with because mindfulness of impermanence and the first truth of the noble: duhkha most often translated as "suffering" but is much more nuanced and expansive, describing the existential situation or dilemma of human life: its precariousness, its pervasive sense of loss that makes the world a thing of beauty and terror; the sweet-bitterness of love and loss.
This book is the result of a year of intensive long-form interviews structured as an ongoing conversation that Seán O'Hagan and Nick Cave had over the course of one year. In that year, only five years since the death of his son, Arthur, Cave's mother, his ex-lover, creative partner, and good friend Anita Lane, his friend Hal Willner, the singer-songwriter Mark Lanegan, and the lead singer of The Saints, Chris Bailey died. So yeah, loss and grief permeate this book.
But, so does deep love and joy, the energy of creativity and deep inquiry into metaphysics and relationship, of parenting, of life on this "pale blue dot." "We are, each of us, imperilled," Nick says at one point in the conversation, "insofar as anything can turn catastrophic at any time, personally, for each of us. Each life is precarious, and some of us understand it and some don't. But certainly, everyone will understand it in time."
Or, as we chant in the evening gatha: Let me respectfully remind you, life and death are of supreme importance! Time passes swiftly by, And opportunity is lost! Each of us should awaken; awaken, Take heed! Do not squander your life!"...more
Brown and Ladyman have presented a clearly exposited history and inquiry into Materialism and its place in history and where it has led to in contempoBrown and Ladyman have presented a clearly exposited history and inquiry into Materialism and its place in history and where it has led to in contemporary times with the newer sciences of relativity and quantum mechanics. Those who would most benefit are those who think they know what materialism is and thus are critical and dismissive of it but who most likely lack any real understanding of it and how so much of Liberal humanism and the values of the Enlightenment are the consequences of it.
Materialism has, through most of history, been a marginalized view, often persecuted by its opponents -- often with the punishment of death! Those opponents mostly intolerant religion. In fact, toleration of diverse views is one of the most valuable outcomes of materialism!
That said, the writers do not shy away from the fact that the only times materialism became the dominant ideology in the 20th century, it led to the horrors of Stalinism! But that is clearly, as they point out, not an inherent aspect of Materialism.
The latter part of the book details why they argue for a version of materialism called "physicalism" which takes into account the realities uncovered by modern science, specifically, physics! They point out an aspect of physicalism that places it in a rather different relationship to science than most philosophy: "Modern physicalist materialism prides itself on its refutability. It may be false, and it may be proved to be demonstrably false by future advances in human knowledge." Such a stance requires a humility those with religious views of certainty, as well as ideologues of various stripes lack.
There is one criticism I feel incumbent upon me to mention and that is a piece of misinformation regarding Buddhism found on page 16. They write, in the context of materialism's atheism: "An obvious example of a non-materialist atheism would be the Buddhist tradition, which holds that there is no god but which does believe in the transmigration of souls." This is wrong because the Buddha explicitly denied the existence of souls and of transmigration! Transmigration is an accurate description of the reincarnation taught in Hinduism, as where Krishna instructs Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita describing how just as a man takes off one suit of clothes and puts on another, a soul leaves one body and migrates into another at death. The Buddha denied that kind of reincarnation, instead offering a concept of "rebirth" which is not the migration of a soul but the continuance of a stream or impulse of action and volition. What is reborn is not the same individual, but also not completely different or distinct in the same way that a person at 50 years of age is not the same as the person they were at 5 years old nor completely unrelated. Of course, a materialist and naturalist such as I deny that kind of continuance as well. Unless there is irrefutable evidence that consciousness of any kind can exist outside of a living brain, there is no mechanism to explain such 'rebirth' and so Zen Naturalism denies its reality....more
Mandel's Station Eleven, a book that became one of my all-time favorites led me here, to her debut novel. A totally different genre and the narrative Mandel's Station Eleven, a book that became one of my all-time favorites led me here, to her debut novel. A totally different genre and the narrative so different, it also shows the genesis of her writing style and narrative structuring. Mandel's writes beautifully, at times with a sharp precision and at other times with poeticism that caused me to stop, re-read, and reflect upon a sentence or phrase that is just perfection.
It's a mystery of suspense, abduction, love, obsession, relationship, family dysfunction and trauma. It's a meditation on traveling (do we move toward or away when we move from one place to another?) and on language: one of the main characters is a student of dead languages, and much is made of the Quebecois relationship to French:
“The Québécois are speaking French with an accent so ancient and frankly bizarre that French people from France can’t understand it. It’s like a fortress in a rising tide of English. It’ll be like research for you.”
“What do you mean, a fortress?”
“Imagine a country next to the sea,” she said, “and imagine that the water’s rising. Imagine a fortress that used to stand near the beach, but now it’s half underwater, and the water won’t stop rising no matter how they try to fight it back. Eventually, in the next century or so, it will more than likely rise over the top of the walls and overwhelm them, but for now they’re plugging the cracks and pretending it doesn’t exist and passing laws against rising water. I’m saying that French is the fortress, and English is the sea.”
A theme that reverberates through this story of people skating on the surface of life, not immersing themselves in the world and life runs through the narrative as well with a description of a kind of 'hipster' who talk endlessly about art while never really producing any.
It's a sad story, and all the characters are quite imperfect... no one a reader might choose to identify with, though we feel for them. Each does what they do as characters in Homer: kind of puppets of fate with little real sense of agency. And yet, I found myself completely absorbed in the story and the story-telling....more
The cover, with its title and graphic intrigued me. I read the inner cover description:
“Lou is a happily married mother of an adorable toddler. She's The cover, with its title and graphic intrigued me. I read the inner cover description:
“Lou is a happily married mother of an adorable toddler. She's also the victim of a local serial killer. Recently brought back to life and returned to her grieving family by a government project, she is grateful for this second chance. But as the new Lou re-adapts to her old routines, and as she bonds with other female victims, she realizes that disturbing questions remain about what exactly preceded her death and how much she can really trust those around her. Now it's not enough to care for her child, love her husband, and work the job she's always enjoyed — she must also figure out the circumstances of her death.”
And that's all it took for me to decide to buy it. I'd never heard of the book nor of the author. But, as I said, I was intrigued.
I checked to see the NY Times' review after I finished it and could not agree more: "My Murder is one of those rare emotionally intelligent books that are also fun reads, and it even manages to perform two or three plot turns that are so masterly that they would make Ira Levin blush. You can read the ending as happy — or as existential horror, as I do — but in any case it’s a book that’s going to keep readers turning pages late into the night."
The writing is tightly constructed, with poetic lyricism slipping through now and then that literally had me have to stop and just breathe in its beauty. Lou's voice is intelligent and snarky, often making me laugh out loud, and then suddenly, she says something so poignant about something like parenting and again, I'm stopped in awe.
The twists are really twists. This is Speculative Fiction that has been called a new genre: Domestic Speculative Fiction or Science Fiction, taking place in a time where self-driving cars, virtual reality, and yes -- the ability to clone people -- are all taken for granted. It's not till over half in that one twist reveals we are talking about a murder mystery. I won't say more but truly, this book is unlike any I've read, and that is one major achievement.
As I said in the opening to my review of Cochran's previous novel, Eddie and Sunny, take off one star if you think knowing the writer biases me. MaybeAs I said in the opening to my review of Cochran's previous novel, Eddie and Sunny, take off one star if you think knowing the writer biases me. Maybe it does. But that still leaves a solid 4--star review of a taut, concisely written, compelling novel. It's back cover denotes this narrative as "Speculative Fiction/Science Fiction" and while it may be that, it transcends genre in that it is a love story, a metaphysical speculative investigation, and a suspenseful mystery.
I won't review the set up... the young man with no memory of who he is and how he came to be where he is (questions like this permeate the story and its clear -- at least to me -- that Cochran welcomes us to consider that this particular situation for "Jordan" is the human existential situation we all are embedded within. That a large part of the narrative takes place on an island reminded me of the 1955 classic sci-fi movie This Island Earth which features scientists playing with technology and a love story involving amnesia!
It's a tale of survival and when Jodan and his lover make it to the mainland, the quick pace goes into overdrive and I found myself as compelled as Jordan to "get some answers". I have only just finished it and already have a sense that this story will be sticking with me for some time. And that is always a mark of good art....more
Paul Auster has been my favorite living author for the past 35 years; since I bought Moon Palace in 1989. To this day it is the only book that, when IPaul Auster has been my favorite living author for the past 35 years; since I bought Moon Palace in 1989. To this day it is the only book that, when I finished the last page, I went back to the first page and began to read it again. I cannot explain why it moved me as much as it did, and why I re-read it once a year for the next three or four years, and why it's the book I have gifted to more people than any other. Baumgartner is his last book, published at the end of 2023. It was gifted to me by my closest friend, with an inscription as to how Moon Palace will always take her back to our time together. Now, unless some other novel is published posthumously, this is truly Auster's last book. And it is beautiful!
Somehow, Auster is both one of the most American -- particularly New York and even more specifically, Brooklyn writers and at the same time one of the least parochial. His books have been translated into over 40 languages because though, as his wife, the writer Siri Hustvedt wrote on Instagram after Paul's death last week, his writing is "dressed in the clothes of his particular times and places and most often set entirely in the United States, the bones of his stories address questions that move far beyond any here and now." His writing is permeated with the examination of what Zen Buddhism calls "the great matter". The real existential questions like What does it mean to be alive and know that you are mortal? How do we act when we are limited in and by our perceptions and thinking? What is the right thing to do at any given moment? How do we go on after experiencing profound loss?
If you Google Paul Auster, you will find reams of articles calling him "postmodern" and I was glad to see Siri address that absurdity! Yes, The New York Triology and perhaps The Country of Last Things may be called postmodern in the focus on identity. The trilogy involves deconstruction of the mystery genre, but at heart, Paul Auster was a storyteller. Siri writes: "I have laughed out loud at the stereotype perpetrated in this country's media organs and sometimes those int he UK too, of Paul Auster, the chilly, clever, "postmodern," "Intellectual" writer. This manufactured caricature is so foreign to the person and the writings I have known intimately for 43 years, and was, frankly, so confusing to him."
I have read him in awe at the prolific nature of his storytelling. In this latest, we are introduced to a writer/philosopher, pushing 71, looking back over his life, the essence of it being defined by his deep, abiding love for his deceased wife killed in a swimming accident nine years ago. And as in so many of Auster's novels, in the telling of Baumgartner's story, we are led into the stories of so many other times and places, including tales of his grandparents and parents. Tangents are the point of the tale and not "mere tangents." Chance, chaos, and coincidences are part of life and it struck me today, as I tried to share with a colleague about Auster, that in some ways Auster's stories are simply stories of life.
The first few pages of this book are a comedy of errors, and one mishap after another and it feels so real! I mean, I have definitely had mornings like Baumgarner has that day. And that realness is what I think allows the sense of intimacy. It's one thing after another!
I end this review as Hustvedt ended her Instagram post. She was always Paul's "first reader" and I remember that about them as I attended a conversation between the two of them where they talked about their process and how Paul would read to her what he had written that day (she on the other hand would wait till she was finished and then let him read what she'd written). At the time, Auster was gravely ill, though the cancer that killed him had not been diagnosed yet. She writes that "I had a potent feeling that he and I didn't have all that much time left together, but note the ambiguity, gentle irony, the refusal of the final, absolute, the rigid or categorical. Paul's dear old man has been in a car accident:
"And so, with the wind in his face and blood still trickling from the wound in his forehead, our hero goes off in search of help, and when he comes to the first house and knocks on the door, the final chapter in the saga of S.T. Baumgartner begins."...more
Well, I believe this qualifies as my very first "Romance Novel." It's very highly rated here at Goodreads and Wikipedia informs me that it is Henry's Well, I believe this qualifies as my very first "Romance Novel." It's very highly rated here at Goodreads and Wikipedia informs me that it is Henry's first "adult romance novel", released to "widespread success" (after she had published four "young adult fiction" novels. The situation is two writers described as "polar opposites" both facing writer's block who challenge each other to write a novel in the other's genre: he, a writer of dark "literary fiction" will write a romance and she, the romance writer, will write a darker novel sans any "happy ever after." The back cover description says: "Everyone will finish a book and no one will fall in love. Really." I don't know but that may qualify as false advertising because they do, of course, fall in love, and even become engaged to marry by the end of the book!
I found it engaging, and for sure see it as a really good "beach read." At times I found myself growing impatient with the stereotypical behavior of the wounded man and the insecure woman tropes, the "will they won't they" scenario but I'm guessing this is just part of the genre?
At the same time, I found passages of great beauty and depth evidenced in a passage such as: "People were complicated. They weren't math problems; they were collections of feelings and decisions and dumb luck. The world was complicated too, not a beautifully hazy French film, but a disastrous, horrible mess, speckled with brilliance and love and meaning." Again, nothing terribly uniquely profound, but spot on. A theme that comes to the fore is that rather than seeking the "happy ever after," perhaps "happy for now" is what we must learn to appreciate....more
Though a fiction novel, Emma Flint includes just about all the details from the real-life case of Alice Crimmins, a mother convicted of the murder of Though a fiction novel, Emma Flint includes just about all the details from the real-life case of Alice Crimmins, a mother convicted of the murder of her two children in 1965 in Kew Gardens Hills near the World's Fair. What this is, is a feminist mystery novel, with Flint showing what was obvious to feminists at the time: Crimmins was pretty much on trial for being a woman who expressed and indulted her sexual desirre and pleasure with many men, while married as well as estranged from her husband and with men married and unmarried.
Cimmins did not meet the conventional notions of what a woman, a mother should be or act like. Apparently, Flint's is the tenth fictional reworking of this case, with novels, plays, and films having been produced based upon it. The character based upon Crimmins, Ruth Malone, works as a cocktail waitress, was involved in a custody battle with her husband, and wears makeup (a lot of makeup, chain smokes and drinks heavily, and enjoys sex. She armors herself with a steely countenance that doesn't measure up to society's expectations of a grieving mother. Flint devastatingly portrays the contempt and misogyny of the detectives and the tabloids covering the case. The narrative concocted by them is that Malone (and in the real case of Crimmins) was a modern day Medea who murdered her children to prevent her ex-husband from gaining custody of them.
Flint's artistry in story-telling is being able to show all this -- how Malone looks on the surface to others -- while writing poignant sections where she goes beneath the mask of makeup and pride, to expose the vulnerability and self-loathing and doubt describing Malone's heartbreaking grief and loneliness... the depth and expanse of her inner emptiness that drives her to seek solace in the arms of her many "lovers" who are mostly just users. In a telling passage, Flint writes of Malone thinking of those who accuse her: "They knew nothing of guilt. They were not mothers." This guilt Malone feels deeply is the guilt of a flawed but loving and 'good-enough mother' who feels that she failed to protect her children, and it tortures her while no one seems to notice, despite all the scrutiny she lives under.
I found the writing throughout engaging, but the final third that depicts her trial is riveting, with a rhythm that pulls you along to the final page. It was here that I could not put the book down. Little Deaths is truly a fine novel that tells and reflects so much of our society -- have things changed all that much in the 60 years since the true crime?
This is Emma Flint's debut novel. Her biography says that she has a life-long interest in true crime stories and "notorious historical figures and by unorthodox women". I was moved by the final paragraph of her "Acknowledgements": "And finally, to all the dreadful managers and employers I've had: thank you for making my day job so awful that I rushed to escape into Ruth's world every night and every weekend. You made me determined....more
I'm glad I re-read this novel first read in 1989, the year it was published because I had forgotten how good it is. In fact, given where Cave was in hI'm glad I re-read this novel first read in 1989, the year it was published because I had forgotten how good it is. In fact, given where Cave was in his life at that time, I am amazed he could pull off such a poignant, offensive, beautiful, ugly piece of fiction. As one reviewer wrote: "...the man can write." The title is a biblical quotation from the Book of Numbers, Chapter 22, Verses 23-31: "And the ass saw the angel of the Lord standing in the way, ...". With its dense, even fetid swamp-like Southern Gothic setting, critics have compared it favorably with novels by American authors William Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor.
To read Cave's description of its origin is to garner insight into the Biblical influences that permeate the narrative:
In 1985, I went to live in Berlin, where I got it into my head to write a novel, and for the next three years I locked away myself in a room in Kreuzberg and wrote it.... It was about a mad, hermetic mute boy called Euchrid Eucrow, who, having been denied the faculty of speech, eventually explodes in a catharsis of rage and brings to its knees the religious community in which he lives. The story, set in the American South and told through the voice (or non-voice) of Euchrid Eucrow, was written in a kind of hyper-poetic thought-speak not meant to be spoken, a mongrel language that was part Biblical, part Deep South dialect, part gutter slang, at times obscenely reverent and at others reverently obscene. Throughout the story, God fills the mute boy with information, loads him up with bad ideas, "hate inspiration straight from God," as he puts it. But with no one to talk to, and no way to talk, Euchrid, like a blocked pipe, bursts. For me, Euchrid is Jesus struck dumb, he is the blocked artist, he is internalized imagination become madness.
That last sentence is tellingly important because Euchrid as a shadow Jesus put though a very extended "passion" is the central image presented with nuance and lovingly described. The structure of the book begins with an extended multi-chapter "Prologue" that sets the scene, using documentary, maps, charts, and poetry allowing Cave to just jump into the story with Book One: "The Rain" that is so rich in its imagery that this reader began to feel the fetid dampness of unrelenting rain, reminding me of the time I spent in a rain forest. The language fits the dense quality of such rain. The story is told in third person authorial voice and the "voice" of Euchrid (it may be more accurate to think of this as a kind of telepathic "hearing" of his thoughts. And they are a riot of depravity and sensitivity.
A job well done and very different from Cave's second novel: The Death of Bunny Munro....more
I'd no idea MTV was in the book business but this is one of a series of books published under their banner by Pocket Books/Simon & Schuster. Goldman iI'd no idea MTV was in the book business but this is one of a series of books published under their banner by Pocket Books/Simon & Schuster. Goldman is most notably a screenwriter and producer (among her work are X-Men: First Class and Kingsman: The Secret Service. This is her only novel and it tells an engaging tale of murder, duplicity, and subterfuge around a fictional Disneyworld knockoff theme park. Despite the killer being fairly obvious from early on, the pace and narrative voice kept me engaged till the end.
One of four Hoke Mosely novels, Elmore Leonard wrote of Willeford: "No one writes a better crime novel than Charles Willeford." I'd add, no one writesOne of four Hoke Mosely novels, Elmore Leonard wrote of Willeford: "No one writes a better crime novel than Charles Willeford." I'd add, no one writes so genre-bending. Read the generic review to get the set up for this tale. And just know, that Willeford cuts back and forth between the story of Troy Louden's seduction of a simple retiree into a supermarket burglery scheme with Hoke Moseley's midlife crisis and the family dynamics of the Moseley family.
Willeford centers character in his tales, while writing from an almost deadpan neutrality seemingly avoiding any sense of emotionality. And in this one, the crime doesn't happen till page 235 of a 279 page novel. It's almost as if the crime were tangential to the story Willeford is really wanting to tell. And when he gets to the crime, his clinical tone of narrative doesn't change while detailing the absolute carnage that if filmed would most resemble of Quentin Terantino film! That doesn't mean this novel is any the less engrossing! I devoured it over the course or two days while being very busy visiting family in NYC! ...more
A Scholastic book directed to Middle Schoolers, this is simply a wonderful story! There is nothing "childish" about the story nor the storytelling; thA Scholastic book directed to Middle Schoolers, this is simply a wonderful story! There is nothing "childish" about the story nor the storytelling; this is a wonderful tale that pulls you into a world of Kinde Folk, Travelers, and Pookas. Hahn was inspired to create this tale on a visit to Ireland and reading it at bedtime, when I woke the next morning I felt like I was in the detailed world she creates in her tapestry of images.
Guest is the changeling, and once he begins talking, he becomes one of the most beguilingly charming character I've read in quite some time. The young girl whose journey of (self)discovery this is, Mollie Cloverdell and the mysterious man who aids her, Madog, are also wonderfully drawn.
I found myself thinking this tale is incredibly cinematic and would make a wonderful film. If you enjoy some fairy tale magick, especially of the Celtic type, then no matter your age, this you cannot lose with this one!...more
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