Treasure Island!!!

Read on Wednesday, December 15th.

I read Treasure Island!!! by Sara Levine and December's Rumpus Book Club Selection, in just a day.  This was a very interesting, different read.  It is lighthearted, but also morbid, and it is forgettable, but in a good way.  I could definitely relate, to some extent, with the unnamed narrator, a recent female college graduate.  She is in a solid relationship with her boyfriend Lars, and works at a Pet Library.  When she reads Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, the narrator becomes obsessed.  She is passionate about interpreting this old book and applying the core values of Boldness, Resolution, Independence and Horn-Blowing to her own life, which she views as pathetic.  

The narrator becomes crass, fiercely independent and quite bitchy.  She is very unsympathetic as she delves further and further into the madness of the book.  Eventually, she is fired from the Pet Library for buying a parrot, and then Lars breaks up with her.  She is forced to move back in with her parents, along with the annoying talking parrot.  The book takes another turn as we meet her sister Adrianna, who is older, larger, and having an affair with her elderly boss, a man who also had a brief affair with the sister's mother in the past. 

The family around the narrator descends into a partial anarchy, but she still remains inside her precious book and alienating those around her.  At one point, she kills the parrot and makes it look like it died of natural causes.  Finally, the family and Lars and others have an intervention for her, and try to convince her to give up the book.  She refuses, and stabs her sister in the hand.  She realizes how unbearable she has become and finally throws away the book, leaving hope for the future.

It is a funny book about literary obsession (which I hope I don't have to worry about, even though at many times I find myself emulating the books I am reading.)  The narrator is unlikable, but that is okay because we are entertained and curious about what she will do next.  I was pleasantly surprised by my reaction to the book, and I am sorry that I missed the author chat online due to work.  Four out of five stars.

American Gods

Read from Tuesday, December 6th to Wednesday, December 28th, 2011.

I started American Gods, by Neil Gaiman, as an audiobook, downloaded for free from Audible.com (I'm sure you've seen the ads.).  I wanted to try out an audiobook for the first time in my life, but I wasn't too thrilled.  I'm sure it would be great if I commuted to work, or drove a lot, but I do neither, so when I wanted to continue the story, I most often just picked up the book (borrowed and recommended by my co-worker Sue).  I read a lot faster than the spoken version.  

American Gods is a different genre than I normally read.  A little simplistic and cliched at times, Gaiman often writes for children and I could tell.  So the story took awhile to grow on me, but it did mostly thanks to the fascinating plot.  It begins with Shadow being released from prison.  His wife, Laura, was killed in a car crash while giving road head to another guy, and so Shadow got out early.  While traumatized, Shadow is a quiet guy and the narrator.  On the trip home, he is coerced into working as a kind of assistant for Wednesday, a strange but charismatic older man who knows everything about Shadow already. 

The conflict lies in the premise that all Gods imagined by humanity actually walk the earth, most assuming everyday, boring lives.  They came over with Americans from the Old country, where they flourished, but in America the Gods are slowly dying out as people slowly forget.  They are not Gods like Jesus and Allah, but more like the Norse Pantheon, the Hindu Gods, African animal gods and Pagan symbols, like Easter in human form.  Wednesday is Odin, the Norse King God, and he thrives on human sacrifice to him, which has been lacking in recent years.  The old Gods are threatened by the new Gods of America, those of Media, the Internet, Television and Commercialism.    Wednesday and Shadow travel across the country, (with beautiful scenery and imagery), trying to recruit the reluctant old Gods to join together with him to fight off the threat from the new Gods.  They meet characters like dwarves, elves, leprechauns, the Russian God Czernobog, Anansi from Africa, the Zorya from Russia, and Egyptian gods of the dead.  Also, Laura is reanimated as a zombie that helps out Shadow from time to time.

They are pursued by the new Gods and a government group comparable to the FBI or CIA.  Laura kills two agents that were detaining Shadow, and Wednesday hides him in a small town in Wisconsin.  This is a strange little detour in the book, as Shadow assumes a fake identity and befriends some of the quaint, nice townsfolk.  They have a tradition each winter of sinking an old car on the lake, but also a weird coincidence of kids going missing each winter. 

Soon, Wednesday is murdered by the new Gods, and all the old Gods are galvanized into action.  They retrieve his body, and Shadow agrees to hold vigil, which consists of hanging from the World Tree in rural Virginia for nine days.  While on the tree, Shadow dies, and enters the Underworld, where he is judged by Anubis, and learns that Wednesday was his mysterious, unknown father.  Shadow is brought back from the dead by Easter in time to make it to the final, climactic battle held at Rock City.  Shadow has realized that the whole thing is just an elaborate con set up by Odin and Loki.  The battle between the gods would be dedicated to Odin, and he feeds on the sacrifice, and Loki feeds on chaos.  Both gods would become incredibly powerful.  Shadow arrives just in time to convince all the gods, on each side, to just accept that America is not a good place for them, but they should make do with what they have.  Thus, the battle is averted, and Odin's ghost fades.  Laura kills Loki as well, before finally being able to rest.

Afterwards, Shadow returns to the Wisconsin lake town and discovers there a kobold in the form of Hinzelman, an old man who protects the town from economic ruin in exchange for the sacrifice of one child each winter.  Shadow and a cop defeat him, and his house burns down.  Since Shadow is Wednesday's son, he is part-God himself.  He spends the rest of his life wandering the world. 

It was a very interesting book.  Took me awhile to get into the story, but I flew through the second half of this large book.  Although Gaiman is technically a foreigner, he captures the soul of small-town America very well (almost no action happens in cities).  I purchased my own copy after returning it to Sue.  I am also interested in the HBO adaptation coming soon.  Four out of five stars.

Lord of Misrule

Read from Wednesday, December 7th to Tuesday, December 14th.

I've got eight open posts right now for books that I have read, or are currently reading.  The backlog is getting quite extensive.  As you can tell, I've been reading multiple books at a time.  I do this because I can have something on my Kindle for the treadmill, and a physical book for other places.  And then when the Rumpus Book selection comes in, I try to read that as quickly as possible for the discussion.  So I'll down a Monster, listen to some Stones, and try to bust out as many as these reviews as possible.

I've been meaning to read Lord of Misrule by Jaimy Gordon for a while now, as it won the National Book Award for 2010.  I like reading books that offer a different perspective on the world than the one I live in, and this is one of them.  It is the story of a pair of outsiders, Tommy and Maggie, that show up one day at a run down horse track in rural West Virginia in the 1960's (I think).  Tommy is a naive, but experienced horse trainer, and he has come into some quality horses that he hopes he can use to make a quick buck at the track.  The idea is to come in quickly, race the horses and win money before anyone can catch onto the quality of the horses.  Maggie is his younger girlfriend, and they have a very abusive, but animalistic relationship. 

However, they run into problems of course.  Maggie is very attached to her animals, and when some are put in danger or sold off, she gets in over her head.  There is another trainer, a gypsy named Deucey, and a groom Medicine Ed, and Maggie buys a horse with them, Little Spinoza.  Maggie also falls under the gaze of the head trainer at the track, Joe Dale Bigg, who is a small-time mafioso.  She is protected by a loan-shark uncle, Two-Tie, but he is murdered in the woods by Bigg's henchmen.  Tommy also slowly starts to lose his mind the longer they stay at the track.  He often leaves for long periods of time, and makes irrational decisions.  Eventually, Maggie must become the heroine and confront Joe Dale Bigg after a climactic race with the legendary Lord of Misrule, and she defeats him and escapes, with a little help from Tommy, who ends up in an institution.

The story is told in four sections, one for each of the main horses, and each ending in an important race.  It is also written in a heavy dialect, which can be hard to decipher sometimes for a city boy like me.  Lord of Misrule was a great book, and I can understand why it won the award.  Overarching themes of luck and fate combine with some foxhole humor and tragedy. But such is life.  Four out of five stars.

Love and Shame and Love

Read from Sunday, November 20th to Tuesday, December 6th.

Love and Shame and Love, by Peter Orner, is another book from the Rumpus Book Club.  I haven't been getting around to reviewing the books as soon after I read them as I would like, so it will be brief.

This is the story of three generations of the Popper family from Chicago.  It mostly follows Alex Popper, and starts off with his relationship with Kat in college in the late 1980's.  Popper is a quiet, reserved kid that has a problem remembering too much.  Kat is the first girl he ever really connected with, and for half a decade they spend in bliss in their apartment, until Kat becomes pregnant and it forces her to evaluate her relationship and who she wants to end up with.  They break up, and Popper gets visitation rights to his daughter and ends up a lawyer.  Most of this story is resolved at the end of the novel.

In the middle, we learn about the modern origins of the family.  Seymour is the paternal grandfather, with his wife Bernice.  Seymour went off to WWII to fight in the Pacific, and he ended up the commander of a large battleship.  His experience in the war is told through one-sided letters to Bernice that are spread throughout the novel.  After the war, Seymour and Bernice set up shop in Chicago and host many celebrities at their house, like the Rat Pack.  The Poppers are deeply involved in Chicago politics, and they are allies with Mayor Daley.  Seymour's son and Alex's dad Philip is a rich lawyer and he makes an unsuccessful bid for political office.  Philip and Alex's mom Miriam end up getting divorced after she has an affair with one of the family friends, and the story follows Alex and his brother Leo as they navigate school living with their mom and becoming estranged from their father.

It's a beautiful, although sad story, and the technique is the most interesting part.  There are dozens of chapters, each one only a few pages long, and each one telling a short story or anecdote about the family.  These are mostly sequential, although it reads more of an oral history of the most compelling parts of Popper's life.  The ending with Kat I found especially tragic as I had hoped for more of a happy ending, although the reader is able to feel the cyclical nature of lives.

Supposedly mostly autobiographical, according to Peter Orner in his author chat, it reads like excellent fiction.  Orner does an especially good job of showing things to the reader, and letting them figure it out themselves, rather than telling them what is going on.  It can be difficult to follow along, since each chapter is a new setting and time and characters, but you eventually get the hang of it.  Really recommend it, and look forward to more by Orner.  Four out of five stars.

The Crying of Lot 49

Read from Sunday, November 6th to Tuesday, November 8th.

The Crying of Lot 49, by Thomas Pynchon.  My first novel by Pynchon, it was discussed heavily in How to Read Literature like a Professor.  It is a very original satire written in the mid-60's.  The main character, Oedipa Maas, is tapped to be the executor of her old boyfriend's massive California estate.  She leaves her DJ husband, Mucho, to spend time on the estate and figure out what this guy, Pierce Inverarity, owned and all his real estate holdings as well.  However, for Oedipa it is a descent into near madness as she is thrust into a giant, world-wide conspiracy, or so she believes.  Tristero is an old postal service that operated in Europe in the middle ages, and it was opposed by Thurn and Taxis.  Tristero was crushed in the 18th century, but now Oedipa begins seeing all sorts of references to the organization throughout the estate and town of this man.  She is led to believe that Tristero is still conducting an underground mailing operation, using secret symbols and the acronym W.A.S.T.E.

Oedipa cannot seem to find any sort of hard facts on the organization, but she tries to hunt down information.  She meets many interesting characters, like scientists working on perpetual motion, a Beatles-like band of emo hippies, a lawyer she has an affair with, her psychiatrist (and ex-Nazi) who prescribes LSD, and a professor at a college.  However, people start disappearing mysteriously as Oedipa discovers more and more references.  Oedipa does not have any solid evidence, and she is constantly doubting whether or not she is just hallucinating everything, but every time she doubts herself, something new happens.  The term 'crying of lot 49' refers to the auctioning of a stamp collection held by Pierce, which may or not contain Tristero stamps.

It is a wonderful novel of conspiracy theories and a hidden side of history of the Old West and Europe.  It is a quick read, and I read most of it one sunny afternoon lying on the grass in Meridian Hill Park.  Thinking of using some of the conspiracy theories and strange symbols in my own work, since it is very light-hearted and upbeat.  I will have to check out more Pynchon as well; Gravity's Rainbow is still sitting on my shelf.   Four out of five stars.

Zipper Mouth

Read from Monday, October 17th to Friday, October 21st.

Zipper Mouth, by Laurie Weeks, is the second of the books for my monthly book club from the Rumpus.  I enjoyed Zipper Mouth much more than Show Up, Look Good, even though they were both about similar subjects; a girl trying to make it in New York City. She is a deeply interesting protagonist.  Heavily addicted to drugs and alcohol, she works in various temp jobs while she struggles with a strong infatuation with a straight woman (she is a lesbian).  Late nights in clubs, letters to dead celebrities as if they were her best friends, apology letters to her real friends, a homeless woman spending the night on her couch, these are some of the adventures she goes through. 

There is not a traditional plot structure, and the sequences of time often are blurred.  She does not end up with her straight friend, although she often leads her on into thinking that she might.  The prose is beautiful, and it reads like one long high, and the sentences flow naturally into one another. 

The protagonist is a complete mess, but she is very sympathetic and human, someone we all wish we were friends with, although from a slight distance.  I did not get a chance to participate in the online discussion unfortunately because of work.  I would have liked to talk with Laurie Weeks.  It is a quick, brief review, because it has been awhile since I read the book.  Unfortunately I have been busy with other projects so my time for reading has suffered dramatically.  However, I highly recommend checking out the book.  Four out of five stars.

Infinite Jest

Read from Tuesday, September 20th to Tuesday, October 11th.

Infinite Jest, by David Foster Wallace, is hands down the most ambitious book I have ever read.  Wallace is a pure genius, and he manages to create an entire futuristic, dystopian world so thoroughly convincing, that it is hard to think I am not still living in it.  It took me about three weeks or so to finish this book, and I really rushed through it, but it was about 1000 pages, but a couple hundred of tiny footnotes that you have to keep checking in the back of the book.  And once I finished the book, I started working on my own writing project, so I haven't had much free time to read new books or update the blog.

Where to begin?  Infinite Jest's main theme is about the importance of entertainment to a society.  It is comical, but dark comedy, and often very strange.  All the characters are dysfunctional in some way, and need something as a crutch.  For many characters, it is drugs and alcohol.  But it could also be a tennis academy and the rigid structure.  Another stays entertained by seducing women, and another by creating mind-bending movies.  The story centers around the Incandenza family.  Hal, arguably the main character, is a 17 year old star at Enfield Tennis Academy, which his father, James (or Himself), founded.  His brother Mario is autistic and deformed, brother Orin a professional football punter in Arizona, and Mother April currently the headmistress of the Academy.  James killed himself with his head in a microwave a few years before the action takes place.  He was an avant garde filmmaker who had just completed "The Entertainment" or "Infinite Jest," a movie so compelling and entertaining, that anyone who gets caught watching it will go into a trance and only be satisfied while watching the movie on repeat, never eating or drinking or sleeping, until they soon die.  The movie becomes a weapon of mass destruction, that a Quebec Terrorist group, the ATF, tries to find in order to force the U.S. government to allow their separation.

The story takes place in the near future, in which the U.S., Canada and Mexico merged into one country, O.N.A.N.  To earn money, each year is leased to a company to advertise, like the Year of the Depends Adult Undergarment.  Also, due to a pollution problem, most of Northern New England  was turned into a giant garbage dump, called the Concavity or the Convexity.  Quebec, after trying to separate from Canada, now aims to separate from O.N.A.N, so the ATF, which is made up of men in wheelchairs that lost their legs jumping away from trains, resort to terrorist actions.

At the bottom of the hill from ETA is the Ennet Halfway House, where Don Gately is a counselor.  Don is a reformed Demerol addict who counsels other addicts, sometimes unsuccessfully.  Towards the end, he is shot trying to protect his residents, and he struggles in the hospital to resist the urges to take the morphine for the pain.  He is visited by the ghost of Himself.  Gately also develops a relationship with Joelle Van Dyne, Orin's former girlfriend and the star of Infinite Jest the movie.  She wears a veil so no one can see her perfect face.

Much of the action takes place at ETA and the Ennet House.  There are short passages that sometimes skip around chronologically and follow different characters at a time.  It was tricky to follow at first, since it was tough to figure out how the years related to one another, but eventually the storyline emerged.  An ATF Remy Marafe infiltrates the Ennet House looking for the tape, but he is really a double agent, working for the U.S. government.  Hal struggles to break his addiction from marijuana after he and other teammates are threatened with urine testing, so he seeks help at the halfway house.  There are many other students at the school and residents at the halfway house, and nearly all of them are painstakingly detailed.

There is no discernible ending to the story, which is frustrating, but also fits in with the theme.  It is unclear whether or not the ATF gets ahold of the Infinite Jest, but the next year Hal is applying to college in Arizona, and he cannot seem to speak coherently, an ending that is difficult to interpret.  Wallace has fun playing with all the characters, as well our concept of a traditional story and novel structure.  It is really enjoyable if you just decide to go along with all the strange side-trips and backstories that he throws at you.  I also highly recommend reading all the endnotes as soon as they are presented.  It is a break in the action, but also a continuation of the story.  Some endnotes go on for many pages.  There is also a complete filmography of all the movies made by James Incandenza.

Infinite Jest is an amazing book, and I regret I cannot delve into the depths of the story any deeper.  I expect I will take another read of this book at some point in my life, expecting that there are many things I missed the first time through.  As I said, I am working on my own writing project now, and I am trying to incorporate some of the style of Wallace in my own work, like the fantastic stories and character details and the humor, (although right now it sounds similar to A Confederacy of Dunces).  Go take a month and read Infinite Jest, you will not regret it.  Four and a half out of five stars.