I didn't want The Stranger to be the only novel by Camus I ever read, and the latest Vintage International paperback edition of The Plague had an excellent cover, so I found myself again wading the waters of this Frenchman's "idea writing." I call it that because there is much more (roughly) objective description of emotion and psychology in this novel than there is dialogue addressing those same issues.
As might seem obvious, this novel is about an outbreak of plague. It takes place at a port town named Oran and quickly leads to a quarantine. From within the shut walls, we are able to follow this lives, even in broad outline, of a doctor, a journalist, a priest, a criminal, and various others. Each one struggles for hope or escape, sometimes achieving these goals and sometimes simply discarding them for new goals.
I absolutely loved this book. I relished every page, rereading entire paragraphs frequently. Camus occasionally seems repetitive, but he is actually circling around a very fine point and only after a little while does he finally hit that point on its head. It is worth the wait.
There isn't much of a plot to examine, and the characters are such vehicles for philosophy that it's hard to talk about them as individuals. This is, essentially, a novel of ideas and not events.
Sorry this entry is a little scant, I've been very distracted lately.
Monday, December 31, 2007
Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay
My views on this book are necessarily filtered through what I know of the Showtime series "Dexter." Most of my impressions of the book are actually impressions of the adaptive work Showtime did in bringing the protagonist to the screen.
What's particularly different about Dexter is that (and I'm talking about the book here), he doesn't seem particularly cold. Although he is confiding in the reader his desire to and enjoyment of killing, it never feels as though he would ever kill you. This creates a strange pact with the character, drawing you into his difficulties and decisions because, well, if you're not on his side you'll probably end up dead.
The comparison of killers to artists is common in the crime genre, especially when describing the most depraved and psychotic of killers. Lindsay's novel, however, gives a new angle to the killer-artist by having his narrator-protagonist introspect in different ways. Dexter lives only to kill. The rest of his life is a safety shell erected to spare him suspicion or difficulty in achieving opportunities to kill. He is frequently distracted by everyday life, even by his family and friends. I think anyone with a strong creative drive can identify with the idea that everything but practicing that creative art is merely a distraction, one that makes you feel human and normal, but also one that is capable of making you soft and lazy.
The plot of this first Dexter novel seems to unfold very quickly, and I say "seems" because I spent weeks watching the same plot unfold on screen whereas I read this book in a matter of hours. There are definite merits to this character and his exploits remaining literary, however. Certain depictions of murder and murder scenes are capable of eliciting the right amount of mingled humor and horror only if they are primarily left up to the imagination. Filming them would be next to impossible - there are too factors in creating just the right mood. When reading these scenes, you provide your own music and scenery, and if they are off just so, you will get the wrong impression. Or, at least one that doesn't keep you engaged with the story.
I personally found this book to be not much more than a quick and entertaining read. I can certainly see how someone with an eye for television would pick up on this character immediately - although this novel is a completely enclosed story, it begs for another episode. The character is rich with possibilities and potentials. I already have the second book in this series in my possession, and will read it the next time I have a hankering for the purple prose of cheeky killer.
What's particularly different about Dexter is that (and I'm talking about the book here), he doesn't seem particularly cold. Although he is confiding in the reader his desire to and enjoyment of killing, it never feels as though he would ever kill you. This creates a strange pact with the character, drawing you into his difficulties and decisions because, well, if you're not on his side you'll probably end up dead.
The comparison of killers to artists is common in the crime genre, especially when describing the most depraved and psychotic of killers. Lindsay's novel, however, gives a new angle to the killer-artist by having his narrator-protagonist introspect in different ways. Dexter lives only to kill. The rest of his life is a safety shell erected to spare him suspicion or difficulty in achieving opportunities to kill. He is frequently distracted by everyday life, even by his family and friends. I think anyone with a strong creative drive can identify with the idea that everything but practicing that creative art is merely a distraction, one that makes you feel human and normal, but also one that is capable of making you soft and lazy.
The plot of this first Dexter novel seems to unfold very quickly, and I say "seems" because I spent weeks watching the same plot unfold on screen whereas I read this book in a matter of hours. There are definite merits to this character and his exploits remaining literary, however. Certain depictions of murder and murder scenes are capable of eliciting the right amount of mingled humor and horror only if they are primarily left up to the imagination. Filming them would be next to impossible - there are too factors in creating just the right mood. When reading these scenes, you provide your own music and scenery, and if they are off just so, you will get the wrong impression. Or, at least one that doesn't keep you engaged with the story.
I personally found this book to be not much more than a quick and entertaining read. I can certainly see how someone with an eye for television would pick up on this character immediately - although this novel is a completely enclosed story, it begs for another episode. The character is rich with possibilities and potentials. I already have the second book in this series in my possession, and will read it the next time I have a hankering for the purple prose of cheeky killer.
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown
It's lesbian pulp. That may mean something to you, maybe not. A poor girl, growing up in the south, quickly becomes comfortable with genitalia of both sexes, finds out she's a bastard, makes loves to another girl when she's in sixth grade, makes love to some cheerleader in high school, excels in school despite poverty, gets to college, sleeps with a sorority sister, gets kicked out, has to take a shit job, finds some solace in a friendship with a gay male, gets mixed up with older women, goes to film school, reconciles with her adoptive mother (in a way), and so forth.
This is the world of lesbian pulp. Nobody slows down for long thought-out emotional diatribes like in heterosexual literature. Nope. Stuff just happens. Girls just get things done. It's exciting. It's empowering. It makes me want to make love to a woman, but only the woman who is a protagonist in a lesbian pulp.
They sure do know themselves in this novel. Even the stand-out protagonist has become a stereotype over the last twenty years. This doesn't make the reading less entertaining or anything.
This is the world of lesbian pulp. Nobody slows down for long thought-out emotional diatribes like in heterosexual literature. Nope. Stuff just happens. Girls just get things done. It's exciting. It's empowering. It makes me want to make love to a woman, but only the woman who is a protagonist in a lesbian pulp.
They sure do know themselves in this novel. Even the stand-out protagonist has become a stereotype over the last twenty years. This doesn't make the reading less entertaining or anything.
The Rules of Attractions by Bret Easton Ellis
I've only read three books by Ellis: American Psycho, Less Than Zero, and now this one.
Ellis is, truly, an existential writer. It hurts to read some of this stuff. Attraction swiftly carries you along. It's easy to read quickly because distinctions between minor characters become as meaningless to the reader as they are to the main characters. You just zip right along. It does have the feeling of capturing fleeting thoughts, their repetition, their meaninglessness, their overlooked attempts at insight.
So, I would say that this book, of the three, is the one that focuses on the particular existential angst of relationships. It can be summed up in the line repeated throughout, "Nobody ever really knows anybody else," and its additional idea: we just have to tolerate each other.
This book left me wondering if, indeed, I have a moral center. If everyone else in the world is just like me or if, perhaps, I have something or lack something that makes me essentially different. Then I wondered if we all have this sensation, in our own ways, from time to time. And so on.
Try to fill the void with sex, and you get these people: young, drunk, totally out of touch or maybe in touch. Who knows? Who can tell?
Not only am I very tired, I also have lost the initial passion I had about this book when I first read it. I would recommend it, as I would the other Ellis books, to young people with a streak of darkness in them, as well as a penchant for willful self-destruction under the guise of "fun."
Ellis is, truly, an existential writer. It hurts to read some of this stuff. Attraction swiftly carries you along. It's easy to read quickly because distinctions between minor characters become as meaningless to the reader as they are to the main characters. You just zip right along. It does have the feeling of capturing fleeting thoughts, their repetition, their meaninglessness, their overlooked attempts at insight.
So, I would say that this book, of the three, is the one that focuses on the particular existential angst of relationships. It can be summed up in the line repeated throughout, "Nobody ever really knows anybody else," and its additional idea: we just have to tolerate each other.
This book left me wondering if, indeed, I have a moral center. If everyone else in the world is just like me or if, perhaps, I have something or lack something that makes me essentially different. Then I wondered if we all have this sensation, in our own ways, from time to time. And so on.
Try to fill the void with sex, and you get these people: young, drunk, totally out of touch or maybe in touch. Who knows? Who can tell?
Not only am I very tired, I also have lost the initial passion I had about this book when I first read it. I would recommend it, as I would the other Ellis books, to young people with a streak of darkness in them, as well as a penchant for willful self-destruction under the guise of "fun."
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
The Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson
Just so you can understand the context within which I read this book, here are two quotes from the covers of the edition I read:
"Probably the most chilling and believable first-person story of a criminally warped mind I have ever encountered." -Stanley Kubrick
This quote is the one that gives the book "hipster" status, like listening to music that David Bowie listens to before it gets big. But the quote on the back is the truly intense one:
"Thompson is my particular admiration among 'original' authors. The Killer Inside Me is exactly what French enthusiasts for existential American violence were looking for in the works of Dashiell Hammett, Horace McCoy and Raymond Chandler. None of these men ever wrote a book within miles of Thompson's." -R.V. Cassill, Book Week.
Now that is an opinion. A statement that seems even more intense after being assigned Hammett in a Berkeley English class, and after considering the status Chandler has attained and Thompson hasn't. I have never read anything by McCoy, so we'll leave him out of it for now.
The other novel of Thompson's that I have read is Savage Night, which I happened upon the same semester I was assigned Hammett's Red Harvest. It was at this time, when I was directly comparing the two authors, that I found myself heavily on Thompson's side. Savage Night was a book that, were it a movie, would have been directed by Hawkes or Wilder. Except for the last fifteen minutes, which would have belonged to Lynch or Tarkovsky.
The Killer Inside Me has made me want to look into the genre of first-person-killer narratives. Already a fan of American Psycho, Mr. Brooks, "Dexter," and the like, I wish to know how much this genre owes to Thompson's book. It hits what have become all the expected buttons: a disgust or amusement with "regular" people, a feeling that the victims deserve or ask to be killed, a complete awareness and twistedly reasonable acceptance of a "sickness," and, of course, almost compulsory involvement in "normalcy" as defined by a respectable job and romantic attachments.
Lou Ford is our killer, here, and he is wonderfully crafted. Thompson has this beautiful trick of using the first-person narrative primarily as a way of describing actions, delaying the opportunity to reveal our protagonist's detailed thoughts and feelings concerning those very actions. It is like slowly filling in a sketch with color paint. Beautifully done.
Thompson also does something wonderfully fun that he did in Savage Night as well, which is to comment on literature from within literature. When Ford begins to tell us how he killed his fiancée, he refers to the way that writers allow their prose to get sloppy when their characters are excited. He says that he won't do that, he will slow down and tell you exactly what happened, in the right order, with complete coherence. He calls those other writers "lazy," which made me blush because I pulled such a hat-trick in my own novel.
Ford's method of dealing with the mounting desire to kill is also fun. He socially "needles" people, purposefully talking in colloquialisms and annoying those around him under the guise of innocent friendliness.
So, there is certainly a sense of humor running underneath this story of evil, which also seems to be a theme of the "killer" genre. Whether this humor is the result of identification or uneasiness is probably a moot point, but it's interesting to ponder nonetheless.
Thompson has a great visceral style, describing physical sensations with intimate metaphors that make you believe he's actually experienced some of the things he's putting the protagonist through. He also crafts very interesting plots without overloading you with characters in the way that I felt Hammett did.
I only wish this book had been longer, but I suppose that indicates its quality, since I don't wish it were shorter, or believe it would have worked had it been shorter. Unfortunately, it's the perfect length. I didn't want it to be over.
Also, I hope they never try to film this. Or, if they do, they should hire me. And somehow cast a thirty-year old Henry Fonda in the leading role.
"Probably the most chilling and believable first-person story of a criminally warped mind I have ever encountered." -Stanley Kubrick
This quote is the one that gives the book "hipster" status, like listening to music that David Bowie listens to before it gets big. But the quote on the back is the truly intense one:
"Thompson is my particular admiration among 'original' authors. The Killer Inside Me is exactly what French enthusiasts for existential American violence were looking for in the works of Dashiell Hammett, Horace McCoy and Raymond Chandler. None of these men ever wrote a book within miles of Thompson's." -R.V. Cassill, Book Week.
Now that is an opinion. A statement that seems even more intense after being assigned Hammett in a Berkeley English class, and after considering the status Chandler has attained and Thompson hasn't. I have never read anything by McCoy, so we'll leave him out of it for now.
The other novel of Thompson's that I have read is Savage Night, which I happened upon the same semester I was assigned Hammett's Red Harvest. It was at this time, when I was directly comparing the two authors, that I found myself heavily on Thompson's side. Savage Night was a book that, were it a movie, would have been directed by Hawkes or Wilder. Except for the last fifteen minutes, which would have belonged to Lynch or Tarkovsky.
The Killer Inside Me has made me want to look into the genre of first-person-killer narratives. Already a fan of American Psycho, Mr. Brooks, "Dexter," and the like, I wish to know how much this genre owes to Thompson's book. It hits what have become all the expected buttons: a disgust or amusement with "regular" people, a feeling that the victims deserve or ask to be killed, a complete awareness and twistedly reasonable acceptance of a "sickness," and, of course, almost compulsory involvement in "normalcy" as defined by a respectable job and romantic attachments.
Lou Ford is our killer, here, and he is wonderfully crafted. Thompson has this beautiful trick of using the first-person narrative primarily as a way of describing actions, delaying the opportunity to reveal our protagonist's detailed thoughts and feelings concerning those very actions. It is like slowly filling in a sketch with color paint. Beautifully done.
Thompson also does something wonderfully fun that he did in Savage Night as well, which is to comment on literature from within literature. When Ford begins to tell us how he killed his fiancée, he refers to the way that writers allow their prose to get sloppy when their characters are excited. He says that he won't do that, he will slow down and tell you exactly what happened, in the right order, with complete coherence. He calls those other writers "lazy," which made me blush because I pulled such a hat-trick in my own novel.
Ford's method of dealing with the mounting desire to kill is also fun. He socially "needles" people, purposefully talking in colloquialisms and annoying those around him under the guise of innocent friendliness.
So, there is certainly a sense of humor running underneath this story of evil, which also seems to be a theme of the "killer" genre. Whether this humor is the result of identification or uneasiness is probably a moot point, but it's interesting to ponder nonetheless.
Thompson has a great visceral style, describing physical sensations with intimate metaphors that make you believe he's actually experienced some of the things he's putting the protagonist through. He also crafts very interesting plots without overloading you with characters in the way that I felt Hammett did.
I only wish this book had been longer, but I suppose that indicates its quality, since I don't wish it were shorter, or believe it would have worked had it been shorter. Unfortunately, it's the perfect length. I didn't want it to be over.
Also, I hope they never try to film this. Or, if they do, they should hire me. And somehow cast a thirty-year old Henry Fonda in the leading role.
Thursday, December 6, 2007
Wake Up, Sir by Jonathan Ames (cont)
I forgot that I started this blog for me to vent about what I'm reading, not analyze it all in a way that the rest of you can easily understand. So ppphhhhtt. I'm giving this book another go.
So, Alan is like the child in this book. An orphan, in fact, albeit a thirty-year old one. Jeeves is a very parental figure - he provides physical necessities, anticipates needs, provides support, and so on. But he doesn't provide too much in the way of guidance. Occassionally, he tries to share his view of life (his theory is that life is like a movie, hundreds of hours of footage boiled down to a short narrative history of key moments), but it tends to overwhelm Alan.
But Jeeves's detached manner stops him from providing the kind of support that parents can give. Because he is nonjudgmental, he never stops Alan from engaging in unhealthy behavior, although he may point out that the behavior is, objectively, unhealthy.
In another way, Jeeves is like a therapist, with his consistent responses of "Yes, sir" or "Very good, sir" to Alan's sometimes complicated theories about himself and others.
In a way, Jeeves presence makes me wonder, If practical concerns were taken care of and we had nonjudgmental support, would the other troubles of life cease? Or even lessen? Well - yes and no. Alan says his life motto is "live and don't learn."
Okay, I feel better, now.
So, Alan is like the child in this book. An orphan, in fact, albeit a thirty-year old one. Jeeves is a very parental figure - he provides physical necessities, anticipates needs, provides support, and so on. But he doesn't provide too much in the way of guidance. Occassionally, he tries to share his view of life (his theory is that life is like a movie, hundreds of hours of footage boiled down to a short narrative history of key moments), but it tends to overwhelm Alan.
But Jeeves's detached manner stops him from providing the kind of support that parents can give. Because he is nonjudgmental, he never stops Alan from engaging in unhealthy behavior, although he may point out that the behavior is, objectively, unhealthy.
In another way, Jeeves is like a therapist, with his consistent responses of "Yes, sir" or "Very good, sir" to Alan's sometimes complicated theories about himself and others.
In a way, Jeeves presence makes me wonder, If practical concerns were taken care of and we had nonjudgmental support, would the other troubles of life cease? Or even lessen? Well - yes and no. Alan says his life motto is "live and don't learn."
Okay, I feel better, now.
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
Wake Up, Sir by Jonathan Ames
The blurbs on the back of my edition of this book are all the same single word: "Hilarious." I'm inclined to agree.
The story centers on a young writer (and alcoholic, of course) who takes a brief visit to an artists' colony with his valet, Jeeves. Yep, Jeeves. It's so surreal that there is a valet character that there are times when I suspected it was all a figment of the protagonist's imagination. Thankfully, it was not.
Basically, Jeeves was hired after a bright bit of inspiration (and big lawsuit check) came to Alan, and he, Jeeves, feels like the real centerpiece of the book. Of course, Alan is the big character and he does all kinds of charactery things. He provides us with all the action, however drunken it may be. He was incredibly easy for me to identify with, and I imagine anyone with either literary leanings or a good dose of seemingly circular self-inspection would feel the same way. He's funny, he's smart, he's full of himself in the way that only the self-loathing can be. He is very very real.
The realism of his character, however, is perfectly offset by the ridiculousness of Jeeves's presence. Jeeves is frequently Alan's sounding board, witnessing his employer's life with "detachment." Aside from plot summary and praise for this book, it has left me thinking about the notion of a personal servant.
What good would a valet do any of us "normal" individuals? He could lay out my outfits in the morning, pour me a glass of juice while I am still in the shower, close the blinds when I do not want to get out of bed but the Sunday sun is bothering me. And, of course, be a sounding board. But would it do any good? Practical concerns are lessened and ostensibly your stress would be reduced as well. But, as an impartial observer and servant, Jeeves provides no true second opinion, offers no real advice, but merely "rides the wave" of Alan's personality and moods. He is non-judgmental, the type of friend we could all use. But he is unfamiliar with tough love, the type of friend we frequently need.
Whether Jeeves improves Alan's life is a moot point. I don't want to take this humorous novel too seriously. But, I find the notion of a personal servant for just some middle-class Jewish self-proclaimed Anglo-Anglophile intriguing.
Sorry for the short entry, but I'm getting back into the swing of things and I'm also very tired.
This book, like most of them, is highly recommended. A quick and easy read, but written by an obviously smart man, about another smart man, and a detached valet. I would love to discuss this with someone.
The story centers on a young writer (and alcoholic, of course) who takes a brief visit to an artists' colony with his valet, Jeeves. Yep, Jeeves. It's so surreal that there is a valet character that there are times when I suspected it was all a figment of the protagonist's imagination. Thankfully, it was not.
Basically, Jeeves was hired after a bright bit of inspiration (and big lawsuit check) came to Alan, and he, Jeeves, feels like the real centerpiece of the book. Of course, Alan is the big character and he does all kinds of charactery things. He provides us with all the action, however drunken it may be. He was incredibly easy for me to identify with, and I imagine anyone with either literary leanings or a good dose of seemingly circular self-inspection would feel the same way. He's funny, he's smart, he's full of himself in the way that only the self-loathing can be. He is very very real.
The realism of his character, however, is perfectly offset by the ridiculousness of Jeeves's presence. Jeeves is frequently Alan's sounding board, witnessing his employer's life with "detachment." Aside from plot summary and praise for this book, it has left me thinking about the notion of a personal servant.
What good would a valet do any of us "normal" individuals? He could lay out my outfits in the morning, pour me a glass of juice while I am still in the shower, close the blinds when I do not want to get out of bed but the Sunday sun is bothering me. And, of course, be a sounding board. But would it do any good? Practical concerns are lessened and ostensibly your stress would be reduced as well. But, as an impartial observer and servant, Jeeves provides no true second opinion, offers no real advice, but merely "rides the wave" of Alan's personality and moods. He is non-judgmental, the type of friend we could all use. But he is unfamiliar with tough love, the type of friend we frequently need.
Whether Jeeves improves Alan's life is a moot point. I don't want to take this humorous novel too seriously. But, I find the notion of a personal servant for just some middle-class Jewish self-proclaimed Anglo-Anglophile intriguing.
Sorry for the short entry, but I'm getting back into the swing of things and I'm also very tired.
This book, like most of them, is highly recommended. A quick and easy read, but written by an obviously smart man, about another smart man, and a detached valet. I would love to discuss this with someone.
Saturday, December 1, 2007
NaNoWriMo
So, it's over. I can resume reading, and then writing about what I've read in this blog. Aren't you thrilled? You should be. I plan to start off easy with Wake Up, Sir, and then finish off the two I was working on before NaNo started. Now, my thoughts on my first year of NaNoWriMo.
I did it. It was a lot harder than I thought it would be, and I knew it would be easy. If my three blogs don't prove that I can produce 50,000 words a month, then what else could? I had difficulty writing on one topic, however, and keeping my plot consistent. Here is a short rundown of what I remember my book being about:
Main character, Catherine. She has friends, she dates, she's surprisingly like me. She gets into a relationship, leaves it for another relationship. Pretty boring stuff. I became bored with myself, and changed it up. She has a psychotic break, of sorts, and goes off the map. What happens next is the author speaks to characters from earlier in the book, trying to figure out where she has gone. A journal of hers is discovered and we read again from Catherine's point of view about her psychotic break and return to sanity. She works to avoid the author, but runs into her outside of a photo-development place in Nebraska. She falls asleep in a revival theater and on the train ride home in the morning, meets someone who makes her laugh. The end.
Of course, there are a lot of quirks in there, but that is as simple a "plot line" as I can describe. I suppose it's open for reading, but it's unedited and will most likely be a disappointment.
Now, back to the reading of those who are worthy!
I did it. It was a lot harder than I thought it would be, and I knew it would be easy. If my three blogs don't prove that I can produce 50,000 words a month, then what else could? I had difficulty writing on one topic, however, and keeping my plot consistent. Here is a short rundown of what I remember my book being about:
Main character, Catherine. She has friends, she dates, she's surprisingly like me. She gets into a relationship, leaves it for another relationship. Pretty boring stuff. I became bored with myself, and changed it up. She has a psychotic break, of sorts, and goes off the map. What happens next is the author speaks to characters from earlier in the book, trying to figure out where she has gone. A journal of hers is discovered and we read again from Catherine's point of view about her psychotic break and return to sanity. She works to avoid the author, but runs into her outside of a photo-development place in Nebraska. She falls asleep in a revival theater and on the train ride home in the morning, meets someone who makes her laugh. The end.
Of course, there are a lot of quirks in there, but that is as simple a "plot line" as I can describe. I suppose it's open for reading, but it's unedited and will most likely be a disappointment.
Now, back to the reading of those who are worthy!
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