I’m not a big Science Fiction reader, but the three stories that make up A Canticle for Leibowitz have a lot to offer even a mainstream reader.
The three stories revolve around the monks of the Leibowitz Order in the desert of Texarkana. The first story opens in the 26th century, 600 years after a nuclear war and the resulting Flame Deluge, and the last one closes in 3781, at the start of another nuclear war. We learn that after the Flame Deluge, the survivors rose up against the very technology and knowledge that led to the war, destroying books and killing scientists during the Simplification. Some scraps of knowledge, gathered by a government scientist named I.E. Leibowitz and preserved by the Catholic church, are nearly indecipherable to the monks as the first book opens. In each story, the character of an old wanderer/hermit/homeless man appears and seems to know much more than the monks about what’s really happening. I found the first story, with Brother Francis’s discovery of new Memorabilia and his order’s reaction, to be the most interesting. The characters felt the most developed and relatable, especially Francis, from whose eyes most over the story is told. Their weak understanding of society before the nuclear war and the science that led up to it results in them wrapping this history into their Biblical history, resulting in a narrative that is at once familiar and foreign. The second narrative introduces the beginning of the reawakening of knowledge in the world through the scholar Thon Taddeo, who comes to the monastery to study the preserved Memorabilia. Honestly, I got lost in the political machinations during this story; there were a lot of characters who never appear but whose actions and motivations drive the plot. By now, the monks have become more familiar with and generally more comfortable with the knowledge they’re preserving, and one has even developed a man-powered electric light bulb. By the third story, the world’s political superpowers have again started a nuclear war, complete with negotiations and cease fires and denials of responsibility. The monks scramble to send their Memorabilia and a small group of monks and nuns to space to continue the order. Meanwhile, the head of the order clashes with an NGO that is offering relief services, including euthanasia, to victims of the bombing and radiation fallout. To me, this conflict was the most interesting, as the abbot struggles to understand how cycles of destruction and prolonged suffering fits into his faith. The wandering hermit, called Benjamin in the second story, initiates the action in the first story and has a long, cryptic conversation with the abbot in the second. In the third, though, he appears only briefly and doesn’t participate in the narrative. As the world goes up in flames, again, we’re left wondering who this character was and what his role in the history was. He’s old when he appears in 26th century, and his appearance remains mostly unchanged for the rest of the 1,200 years we see him. In the second story, he states that he’s not Leibowitz, although the wooden statue of Leibowitz (carved in the first book, but reappearing throughout) clearly resembles Benjamin. So who is he? (Update: since writing this, I followed some Internet clues and found the Myth of the Wandering Jew. Now I realize that my confusion here may be due to ignorance!) Although the stories are by no means perfect, this is a good gateway book for mainstreams readers to get exposure to Science Fiction.
(Full disclaimer: I met Ken Foster when he taught a fiction workshop I took as an undergrad at Florida State. I've since kept up with him through social media.)
The Kind I'm Likely to Get is a series of short stories, some of which follow recurring characters and all of which include characters in the same universe with similar emotional voices. Although the settings change, the urban centers through which the characters orbit is nearly interchangeable. Foster paints some really intriguing scenes, although I found myself struggling to hang it all together. It wasn't until I finished the stories and discovered the notes section in the back that it started to click for me. I have trouble investing in stories when I don't like the characters or when I can't understand the motivations of their actions. In the notes, Foster explains that he doesn't expect--or even want--the reader to like some of the characters. Some of them really are toxic and horrible. He's simply painting a scene in which these characters exist. And he paints those scenes brilliantly. So much so, in fact, that I forgot for a while where I'd heard some of the stories. Some images from “Keep it From the Flame” lingered with me, and later I tried to remember if it was a news story or something someone told me or where I'd heard the story. Also, one character's trademark doodle, a cockroach turning into a locomotive, is described in one of the first stories and then mentioned again in a much later story. In the interim, I forgot that the doodle wasn't a real-life graffito or logo and thought Foster must be referencing the non-fictional world. That may indicate that I'm an inattentive reader. Or it may show just how vivid Foster's scenes and characters are, how they come to life and worm their way into your memories.
How surprising to learn that a 162-year-old novel with the dreary title of Bleak House could be so charming, so engaging, and so funny! But it really is. From Esther’s self-deprecating, clever point of view to Matthew Bagnet’s maintenance of discipline in “the old girl” to the acerbic narrator’s description of the English political and judicial systems, every sentence drips with careful craft and intention. The heavy satire and irony reminded me strongly of Monty Python sketches about English manners. Before reading this, Tale of Two Cities was my favorite Dickens (over Oliver Twist and A Christmas Carol), but Bleak House has taken its place. (That said, Tale at least has brevity going for it.)
As the novel gets rolling, the reader is introduced to so many characters that it begins to feel like Doctor Zhivago or something. But all the characters are differentiated well in look, in manner of speech, and in their unique ticks. Mr. Snagsby's specific coughs of communication, Grandfather Smallweed's need to be shaken up frequently, Inspector Bucket's roaming index finger... the traits are consistent throughout and help to convey important characterizations. Every character here--even the most minor, and even the ones that never actually appear but are only spoken of--comes alive under the narrator's description. While there are a lot of characters to like, even love, there are many others to like less. Did I really hate any of them? No, because even the worst among them (probably Mr. Tulkinghorn or Grandfather Smallweed, followed by Mr. Vohles) are such delightful caricatures that you just have to smile at their horribleness. The social and political criticism of the novel is shockingly contemporary. You'll have no trouble following the discussions about Boodle and Coodle and Foodle if you can keep up with a conversation about Perry, Bush, and Kasich, for example. Sir Leicester's reaction when he discovers that an ironmaster is rallying voters against him and his party in the North is completely relatable to a modern reader. The description of the court system had me laughing out loud. You heard me: the description of the mid-nineteenth century English civil judicial system had me laughing out loud. It really is a remarkable book! Like many long, old books, I listened to this one rather than reading the text. Simon Vance did a good job with the narration, keeping the voices pretty consistent and pulling out the humor. And he's British, so he sailed through the pronunciations of names that I, as an American, would have stumbled over (even Jarndyce, which Vance pronounces more like "JON-dis"). I've seen some criticism that Esther is too good, too perfect, and therefore irritating. But I encourage you to look little closer, and consider the ideals of womanhood at her time, not to mention her upbringing. Esther's sharper than she lets on. She's also more prideful and vain and judgmental. But she knows how to hold that back and reveal only the most flattering portrait of herself and those she loves (Jarndyce and Woodcourt also seem a little too perfect through her eyes). Even though parts of the narrative are in her voice, she states early and repeats that she's writing it for external readers. That is, this isn't her private journal. She's giving us her public face only. I highly recommend Bleak House, despite its length and gloomy title. I was so wonderfully surprised by it! I re-read Siddhartha after more than 15 years. While High School Me appreciated it to some extent, I think I got much more out of it as an adult. By now, I've had the chance to make some life choices the way Siddhartha did, and I've been able to see some of their results. During high school, I was still at the stage he was right before he joined the aesthetics. Now, I'm probably somewhere closer to his time as a wealthy merchant. I really enjoyed watching Siddhartha's choices, understanding his arrogance, and being at some points just a little closer than him to knowing what makes life worth living.
I pulled this off my shelf somewhat randomly, knowing I had a couple long plane trips coming up and looking for something smallish to carry around with me. How different travel can be when your head is still floating around Siddhartha's world! I think I smiled like a fool at everyone I saw. Hesse's writing here is quiet and gorgeous. He's not following any of the rules we know about how to write engaging fiction. It begins with a montage of Siddhartha's happy childhood, being loved by everyone--not exactly the action hook we expect these days. And it proceeds in a soft, explanatory voice, interrupting a narrative that spans years with a few specific anecdotes here and there. When we think back on our own lives, doesn't it replay in much the same way? By the end, I found myself reading more closely, wanting to really understand what Siddhartha is saying and doing, even as he was explaining the inherent shortcomings of communicating and teaching. You have to discover it for yourself through your own experience, not seek it from others. Not even from Siddhartha himself.
Despite some plotting and characterization challenges, The Fate of Mercy Alban is an engaging and entertaining read. The ideas that push the plot forward are unique and keep the reader guessing, mostly.
Throughout reading this, though, I thought that the author struggled with how much credit to give her audience. At times, the characters come up with explanations for what's happening that are so unreasonable, it feels contrived. And yet, even when I thought "Obviously, it's not A, it's B," it usually ended up being C. So why do the characters stick stubbornly to A? They also at times seem to completely forget where they are and what's happening,which causes them to make other questionable decisions. For example, <spoiler> they finally find the manuscript that is expected to reveal the truth to everything that's happening. But then, they read it slowly, out loud, and have long re-cap conversations in between the chapters. And they leave it unread for most of the book. I understand that it would have totally disrupted the plot to have the characters so easily figure it all out, but what you would do? "Hey, this book should give all the answers we've been seeking! How about we skim through it, especially skipping to the end, to figure this out without endangering ourselves more?" "Nah, let's savor it, read it really slowly, and let things play out as they will." Really? Also, why does the Protestant preacher go to bed with the woman he just met, who's not sure she's emotionally ready for a relationship, who has returned home after a 20+ year absence, whose mother has just died, and who is going through one of the most difficult, stressful, and frightening times of her life? Did the author think that we wouldn't believe a romantic relationship between two adults if they didn't have sex within the first two weeks of meeting each other? Why make him a preacher, then?</spoiler> Even despite these complaints, though, there are some genuinely creepy moments throughout The Fate of Mercy Alban. And the plot is twisty enough that I was surprised even when I thought the characters were going out of their way to avoid the obvious conclusion. I see that this was the author's debut novel, and it reads like one. But if you like mysteries and creepy old houses, you'll find a lot to like here. Now that I've read Don Quixote, I keep finding references to him. They've probably always been there, but now I'm trying to understand more specifically what they mean. For example, I recently saw Central Ohio's darling dairy farmer, Warren Taylor, referred to as Don Quixote. Was the writer saying that he doesn't understand the world around him? That he's delusional? Then I saw Lost in La Mancha, the documentary about Terry Gilliam’s failed (so far) attempt to make a move of Don Quixote. The movie really wants to make a claim that Gilliam is Don Quixote, deluded into thinking that this movie dream of his is possible, despite the evidence to the contrary. But that never quite worked for me either. And here's the reason. I get the impression from this movie that Gilliam understands exactly what he's up against. He has experience making movies, even big productions. Some of them have been hits, and others have not. He's pursuing one specific idea, one that he knows will be a challenge but one that he's willing to try again and again until he makes it happen. Gilliam's not Don Quixote. He's Ahab. Moby Dick's Ahab was an experienced whaling captain with years of success. After losing his leg, Ahab becomes obsessed with finding the whale that did it--a whale that happens to be white and therefore recognizable as an individual he can track across the globe. And he does. He charts his course through waters not based on where the best whaling is, something he understands from his previous experience, but based on where he's heard rumors that the white whale has been spotted. At one point, the Pequod comes across another whaling ship that requests assistance--the captain's son has been lost during a hunt, and the captain is scouring that part of the ocean to find him. Certainly, Ahab, who even has children at home, could relate to this desperation, but he can't tear himself away from his own search. (Luckily for Ishmael, the captain is still searching for his son after Ahab has battled and lost to the whale.) Don Quixote would never do this. Don Quixote has a skewed understanding of the way the world works, but he tries always to do what is most noble and right, albeit by his own definition. When Don Quixote agrees to help (what he sees as) a damsel in distress, she makes him promise not to grant any other promises of help until he completes her mission. He has a really difficult time sticking to this, in part because of his short temper and in part because he so quickly recognizes injustices and feels a compulsion to right wrongs. After Don Quixote attacks his first giant, he doesn't keep attacking it once he sees that it's a windmill. Don Quixote's actions are completely coherent *given his delusion*, but he is under a delusion. Ahab, on the other hand, understands perfectly well what he's facing and what he's asking of other people, but he is intent on reaching his goal. I'm not recommending that Terry Gilliam give up on his white whale, a movie production of Don Quixote. If I can cross references here a bit, I feel a bit like the Duke and Duchess, encouraging him on in something that may not be good for him or others, but that is fascinating to watch. I want to cheer for Gilliam in a way I could never commit to cheer for Ahab, maybe because he's a real human and therefore more sympathetic. But he's still Ahab. So who might be closer to a real-life Don Quixote? I have an idea, but I'd love to hear yours too. Tune in next week to hear mine!
When I read Sarah Waters’s The Little Stranger, I was blown away by the subtlety of the characterization and the quiet but steady pace of the plot. It’s one of the best contemporary novels I’ve read, and it’s hard not to compare The Paying Guests to the things I loved about it.
The Paying Guests falls little short of that bar. It starts strong in the same way--the subtle way the reader gets to know Frances through the omniscient narration, especially--but by the second act, it falls into something more straightforward that relies just on the tension of the plot and the stated actions of the characters. Similarly to The Little Stranger, The Paying Guests begins by revolving around the collapse of a grand house after the family has lost its money. In the former work, the slow collapse of the house cleanly reflected the collapse of the family and possibly their sanity. In the latter, it’s more of a plot point, something to keep Frances constantly busy and to bring Mr. and Mrs. Barber into the lives of Frances and her mother. When the novel opens, it seems like Frances doesn’t do much other than repair and maintain the house, cook meals, tend fires, and sit in the sitting room with her mother. She occasionally accompanies her mother to bridge or church or a movie. Then she takes a wistful walk through London, and we see her try to shake off the spinster persona. As we start to learn more about her, we see how wrong this persona is, and it immediately becomes irrelevant. Whereas the narrator’s voice in the first act seemed to encourage it somewhat, it's dropped so entirely and so soon that it seems odd that it was ever an issue. This is certainly not the only change in tone between the first act the rest of the novel, but it’s one I can mention because it doesn’t reveal any major plot points. Later, there are some sex scenes that make it hard to believe the word “subtle” could ever be applied to anything in the book. They’re not gratuitous, but Sarah Waters so excels at that quiet cloaking tone that the scenes feel like someone has flicked on the light just after your eyes have adjusted to the dark. All this said, The Paying Guests is still a good book that I would recommend. The plot is engaging, and the characters are worth getting to know. But it didn’t meet my expectations.
There is so much to say about not only Part 2 but also about the entire story of Don Quixote, that I'll never fit it into one blog post. I'll try to limit this one to my thoughts on Part 2--the way Cervantes tried to limit himself from digressing into entire other novels after the first book--and instead include other thoughts in later posts.
The short version is: Part 2 is a significantly better read than Part 1, but you really have to read Part 1 to understand Part 2. Part 2 starts with all those formalities that Part 1 lacked. The dedications in particular. And here Cervantes introduces us to an incident that evolves into a bit of an obsession throughout the work. After Part 1 became a success, someone else wrote a sequel without Cervantes's permission. He deemed it quite inferior, obviously, both in writing style and character development. The irony, of course, is that we're still reading Cervantes's Don Quixote 400 years later, and we would never even remember this counterfeit if he didn't harp on it so much. In this world of Part 2, we encounter our Knight of the Rueful Countenance (later to be known as the Knight of the Lions) still in bed recovering from his second sally, just a month or so before. And somehow in this time, half of Europe has read the true history of Don Quixote (the one by Cide Hamete Benegeli, of course, the historian Cervantes claims to be translating through both parts) and is completely enamored with the protagonist and his squire. They discuss the short-comings of the book--specifically the crazy novel-within-a-novel part I complained about earlier and a plotting mistake--and it's funny to hear that the complaints of readers 400 years ago are so similar to today's. Don Quixote and Sancho Panza decide to proceed on a third sally, and they sneak out of the house in order to do so. Since I promised to keep this brief, I won't recount their adventures here. The important difference between this and the first and second sallies is that they actually win sometimes. The reader cheers for them because not every adventure ends in a spectacular beating or a sheep slaughter. Not all (most) of their wins are objectively fair successes, but they think they're winning, and you can't help but want it for them. A lot of people play a lot of tricks on them throughout, but many of the tricks are harmless except that they increase the delusion of Don Quixote and Sancho. We love them for their delusions. When Sancho occasionally contemplates walking away, the reader wishes him to stay. As mean as some of the tricks are, we are the trick-players. We want them to believe, maybe because we want to live in a world where their beliefs are relevant. And that's the magic of Part 2. Despite all the cultural differences between early 17th century Spain and 21st century America, we can still relate to the emotions behind the characters and their stories. Maybe this is what earns Don Quixote the title of "the first modern novel," I'm not sure. But it feels modern. I am honored to announce that Gay City 5: Ghosts in Gaslight, Monsters in Steam has been nominated for a Lambda Literary Award. My lupanoid story, “Alexander’s Wrath," which takes place in the same universe as my forthcoming comic, appears in this anthology.
The Lambda Literary Awards, according to their website, “nurtures, celebrates, and preserves LGBT literature through programs that honor excellence, promote visibility, and encourage development of emerging writers.” Ghosts in Gaslight, Monsters in Steam has been nominated with 9 other worthy competitors in the LGBT Anthology category. 2014 marks the 26th annual Lambda Literary awards, and past nominees and winners include Alison Bechdel (for Are You My Mother? A Comic Memoir), Jeanette Winterson (for Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?), Justin Hall (for editing No Straight Lines: Four Decades of Queer Comics, and David Levithan (for Every Day) …and seriously, that’s only from 2013. I can’t tell you how amazing it is to have a project I’m involved in be listed among such great company. The winners will be announced during the Lambda Literary Awards Ceremony on June 2, 2014. Keep your fingers crossed!
Miguel de Cervantes published Don Quixote de la Mancha in 1605, and it was pretty much an overnight success. By 1612, it had already been translated into French, German, English, and Italian and spawned many bootleg counterfeits. Ten years after the first publication, in 1615, Cervantes published the sequel (because why not?), although today, these two parts are usually published as a single unit.
That strategy makes this book intimidatingly long. I’ve been listening to it in the car, and it’s 37 hours (by comparison, the copy of Moby Dick I listened to was 21 hours). I’m currently taking a short break between the first and the second parts, but I don’t think it makes sense to wait until I finish the entire thing before sharing some thoughts. For one thing, Wikipedia tells me that there’s a definite tone shift in the second part. They really do sound like two distinct novels. The first book lasted until the end of CD 14. Unfortunately, all the stuff you’ve heard about–tilting at windmills, fighting the monks and merchants, the great sheep slaughter, the barber’s basin on the head–all pretty much happen within the first two discs. That leaves 12 more CDs filled with the parts you haven’t heard about. And do you want to know why? It’s because the narrative really slows down after that. As a reader, you start to understand what you’re in for when Don Quixote and Sancho Panza take a rest with a bunch of goatherds and shepherds. These pastoral staples sing songs about their unrequited loves and tell a long story about a beautiful shepherdess who had the nerve to not be interested in some guy who then killed himself. They all feel so terrible about that fact that they attend this guy’s funeral and read aloud some of his chivalric poetry. Then the shepherdess shows up and gives a speech about how she has no obligation to love someone just because he loves her, and she’s doing perfectly well on her own, thank you very much, and then she hides and the reader doesn’t hear anything more about her. But that alone makes her the coolest female character in the entire book by a long margin. I can’t really even talk about Dorothea and Lucinda. I just… whatever. There’s a lot more wandering around and encountering people like this, but the whole thing really goes off the track around the time Cardino is introduced. The plot from there on is too complicated and silly to explain here, but take my word that it’s very slow and rather non-nonsensical, and it delves into the sort of ridiculous “fancy meeting you here” coincidences that Doctor Zhivago so relied upon. The one part I just couldn’t believe was happening (and sat through in the same sort of awe you might watch a terrible movie with) began when Don Quixote goes into another room for a nap, and the remaining characters all agree to read an entire other novel out loud. Cervantes was all like, “Hey, I heard you like novels, so I put a novel in your novel.” Pimped my novel. This sort of thing happens a lot throughout the last three quarters or so of the first part–other characters just hijack the narrative, and we have to listen to their long and unbelievable tales of woe. Of course, this entire novel–from its structure to its topic to its characterization to its plotting–relies upon the chivalric novel tradition that was already going strong in Europe at the time. That’s not a field I have a lot of experience with, so I’m sure there are subtleties that I’m missing. Many of the (to me) less interesting parts reminded me of lesser Shakespeare comedies. That is, the plots are silly, the characters unrealistic, and everyone falls in love at the end. Also something like Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta opera, which I saw recently (thanks, Met HD!). I also have a passing knowledge of Renaissance poetry and prose thanks to my English degree, and that background also helped me place this in context. Even so, I don’t think I recognized a single title that the curate and barber pull off of Don Quixote’s shelves and burn (another long and detailed scene that doesn’t really translate too well to today). Without that familiarity, this would have been an even harder read than it was. But, enough whining about what was boring and inaccessible. There were many good parts, especially near the beginning. In the prologue, for example, the author is bemoaning the fact that his novel doesn’t have enough important Latin phrases uttered by important people, and there’s no weighty bibliography to accompany it, as was the custom. Then his buddy comes by and tells him to fake it. Just copy a bibliography out of another book, he says, and make up all the Latin phrases and poetry that you’ll need! Only a bachelor of arts will argue with you, and who ever listens to them? I kind of loved that. And Don Quixote is a pretty amazing character himself. His way of seeing the world, warping every detail to fit his fantasy, is simultaneously awe-inspiring and horrific. Sancho’s way of dealing with Don Quixote’s eccentricities emphasizes the idea that you don’t have to be considered crazy to mold what you experience to fit with your preconceived notions. We all do that everyday. Don Quixote’s “adventures” are really entertaining, and you’re rooting for him despite all the terrible things he brings upon himself, Sancho, and others because he’s just so confident about it. The fact that it’s such a mockery of the existing literature of the day adds a wicked little gleam to Don Quixote. Cervantes revels in pointing out some of chivalric literature’s great pitfalls, even if he does fall into them himself. For example, Don Quixote insists that knights never pay for lodging or food or armor repair or anything of the sort because he’s never read of such a thing, to the great consternation of the innkeepers he encounters (which results in Sancho’s comedic epic “blanketing”). He also insists that knights don’t have to regularly eat or see to the calls of nature, but Cervantes focuses quite a bit on the unavoidability of these things. Don Quixote and Sancho piss and shit and bleed all over each other for various reasons, and at one point, Don Quixote vomits all over Sancho’s face. Yes, at points, Don Quixote reads like late-16th century “Jackass.” But while the early part of the novel mocks the adventure-story part of the chivalric literature, the latter part focuses on mocking (sometimes too subtly for my attention span) the romantic parts. And that is so much more boring. I’ve debated whether I should begin the second part or just be satisfied with the first; after all, there’s no one asking me to finish this. After reading the Wikipedia entry, I’ve decided to at least give it a try. The concept sounds pretty awful–noble people in Spain have read Part One and now trick Don Quixote into chivalric acts for their amusement–but the reader is promised fewer diversions and more focus on character and societal themes. So, would I recommend Don Quixote, Part One? Only in one of two circumstances: 1. you just really want to give it a try, knowing it’s a challenge (I read Moby Dick and failed to read Les Miserables for this reason), or 2. you’re studying it in a class where you have the benefit of a teacher to curate related readings and to facilitate discussions. Since I don’t have the benefit a teacher, I plan to watch some movie versions and read some more of the Internet before delving into Part Two. (Also, major props to my public library for carrying these movies that I can’t find on Netflix!) |
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