The Luminaries – Eleanor Catton

 

It’s a gimmick book.  If that sort of thing annoys you, then don’t read it.  While I would fall on the side of generally avoiding such things, assuming that it is there to hide what’s lacking, that’s not always so.  House of Leaves would be a prime example of a gimmick book, but it was definitely worth reading, even all those pages with one word on them.  What is going on here is a book of twelve chapters, each half as long as the previous and built around the phases of the moon.  There’s also the characters, twelve of them, representing the various astrological signs.  None of this really intruded on the story to me, and the ever shortening chapters helped give the book momentum as it moves to its end.  It _does_ make the first chapter a long one – this is a hefty book (800 and some pages), and chapter 1 is half of it, but get through that (and it’s not hard) and it’s all downhill.

The story.   New Zealand.  1866.  Frontier gold mining town.  12 men of the town of Hokitika have gathered together to discuss the strange events – a missing young man who has made his fortune, a prostitute who has attempted suicide, a recluse found dead in his remote cabin, and of course, a fortune in gold. Each of the men has his own special relationships to the events and the people involved (particularly Anna, the prostitute).  The newest man in town, Walter Moody, trained as a lawyer but trying his hand at prospecting for gold, stumbles upon the meeting and realizes he has his own part of the story to tell. 

This is a big, complex story, involving old grudges and betrayals, greed, lust, and some nicer aspects of humanity as well.  Much like Dickens, there is a young, innocent hero who is more swept up in the book’s events than driving them, an intrepid detective who may or may not be a step or two behind, mixed in with shipping, prospecting, banking and local political life.  This can be an odd read at times – I thought that Walter would be the main focus of the story, yet he essentially disappears for a long stretch in the middle of the book (he does eventually find his place), and there are some odd plot points that seemed neglected, but were eventually picked up.  It even makes sense why later on, if again, you are willing to go along with some of the more metaphysical aspects of the plot.

Catton is a seriously good writer; she adopts the style of the time and it was pretty seamless to me.  Having read The Crimson Petal and the White at about the same time, comparing the two is a lot of fun – Catton stays squarely in the time in an absolute mode, while Michael Faber slaps modern sexual mores into his novel.

Iceland - Jim Krusoe

Finding an odd book is not that hard; many I have read are at least somewhat out of the ordinary. Much like the country is far away from pretty much everything else, the novel is nowhere approaching ordinary.


Iceland was published in 2002.  The protagonist, Paul, repairs typewriters.  While it isn't clear exactly when this novel takes place, other than it seems to be relatively modern day, which would make the typewriter repair business not a particularly lucrative one.  Paul, though, has more pressing concerns.  He needs an organ transplant (which organ is never made clear, nor what exactly is wrong with his), so he goes to an organ facility, in which available organs are kept floating in a swimming pool.  The organ caretaker, Emily, swims in the pool to keep the organs functional.


It will get even more weird from here.


Paul and Emily end up having sex on the diving board (and apparently elsewhere around the pool, although this only becomes apparent in later sections of the novel).  Unfortunately, Paul, now in love with Emily,  loses contact with her and ends up on an adventure that will take him to Iceland, see him lose a family in a volcano, spend time in prison and a piano bar, and a lot else, in what is a pretty slim novel.


Krusoe spends little time with what we would normally consider the big events in life; they don't seem to interest him as much as the details.  Paul is mostly a passenger in his life, but he does have desires, and in his own way, finds a path to them, even if it takes him years.  This is kind of comic, alt-universe Murakami - weird stuff happens that no one seems to notice is weird, and its never very clear where things are headed, but eventually it gets there. 

John Henry Days - Colson Whitehead

A small town has a festival honoring John Henry, who may have existed, and who may have entered into a duel with a machine near this town long ago.  While the ending is always the same, the actual story seems to exist in infinite versions.  Many of those are presented here with someone obsessed with all the versions of John Henry in song; someone else has a fascination with railroad stamps; another is trying to win a contest of his own and survive off junketing expenses a long as he possibly can.


Whitehead writes from several different viewpoints in this book, alternating from chapter to chapter.  While the expense account loving magazine writer J Sutter is the main character, he often rides on the periphery of the story, which really, is about John Henry.  We even get a few chapters from Mr Henry's point of view, a mythical (?) black man looking for recognition in a white world.  Race is outwardly a minor component here, but J Sutter is an African American as well, and lives with problems associated with that day in and out.  John Henry died in a race against a technology that if it didn't get him that day, would surely come back soon after and be better than before, until it would defeat him.  Sutter's problems are more subtle, and he ultimately figures out that he, unlike, Henry, has a bit of a way out.  Not that all the foreshadowing is wrong about how this ends;  like most mythology, there has to be something tragic.  But it might not be quite as expected.


There is a lot to like in this book.  If you are looking to identify, or become familiar with a character, this isn't for you - even J Sutter is hard to define by the end - he's too worn out to give much of himself, and he disappears for large chunks of the novel.  But the other characters who fill in are endlessly interesting, from the various fanatics, to his colleagues and the various town members whom all are involved in the goings on.  For a book that hangs on postage stamps, it is unique take on American mythology and its effects on us all in defining who and what we are.

Under the Skin - Michael Faber

If there's a category for sci-fi vegan satire, I suppose this would be the classic.  I went into this completely unaware of what this was about, and still wasn't quite sure after having read probably one third of the book.  Faber, who wrote  The Crimson Petal and the White, which is a fantastic, and very sexual, Victorian tale, does things quite differently here.  The protagonist, Isserley, is, in the beginning, very detached from anyone she encounters.  The writing is done in a very dispassionate manner.  On a side note, I did see the film version of this book not too long ago;  I didn't have too much faith in it going in, but it was actually a good film.  While the very basic story outline is the same, the details and the progression of the story are radically changed.  Given that the film is heavy on visuals, and sound, it worked on its own rather than trying to recreate the novel.


So, we have Isserley, a young woman who drives her car along the highways in remote Scotland searching for hitchhikers. Isserley, though not particularly attractive, has large breasts (this is important!!).  We soon learn that she subdues the hitchhikers, after finding out if they are suitable for her mysterious purpose. 




That purpose is to feed the starving population on her home planet.  Isserley is an alien, who through surgery, has been made to look like a human female.  Unused to walking on two legs, she is in constant pain, but she takes pride in her work.  The humans she captures are essentially treated like livestock - tongues cut out, castrated, fattened up and then slaughtered for food sent back home.   Initially Isserley regards humans, as well, sub-humans, as they are just a source of food.  However, she becomes gradually more sympathetic to them, and is horrified when she discovers all that actually happens to them.


She also begins to realize her lowly status among her own.  Condemned to appearing as a freak, toiling in gruesome work for the benefit of the upper class far away, who have destroyed the ecological balance on their own planet.  Faber goes after a lot of things here; sexism, corporate greed, consumerism and a host of others along the way. 

Zeroville Steve Erickson

 

“The Searchers is one wicked bad-ass movie whenever my man the Duke is on screen, evil white racist honky pigfucker though he may be.”


Plot: Ike Jerome (Vikar)  arrives in Los Angeles in 1969 just at the time of the Tate-LaBianca murders.  Vikar is obsessed with movies and will eventually parlay that obsession into work as a film editor.  As he travels through the 1970's and the emergence of a New Hollywood, Vikar encounters a wide range of Hollywood's movers, as well as others who share his fascinations to a varying degrees.  Near autistic, Vikar has a hard time comprehending the non-movie world, though he does develop into a fan of punk. 


Why read it: This is a movie lover's book, where you can have characters going into deep conversations on a whole range of movies going back to the 20's, arguing over what some may consider arcane aspects (there's a nice section on what film editors actually do).  Vikar has father issues (when your real name is Isaac, one might guess that to be the case).


A few years ago, I read Easy Riders and Ragin' Bulls, a history of Hollywood film from the late 60’s to early 80’s, when a group of new filmmakers, Scorcese, DePalma, Spelberg, Coppola, and the rest,  radically changed the ways films are made.  Zeroville follows roughly the same time period and involves many of the same characters, just in fictional, or thereabouts, mode.  However, Zeroville goes beyond that, regretting the loss of the old Hollywood and the movies that were made, despite the rigidity of making movies within the existing system that prevailed then.  If you have any love of 20^th Century film, this is a book for you – its filled with discussions, references, and criticisms of a vast catalog of movies, both from Hollwood and other places.  I was tempted to list them all at one point, but it was too daunting a task.

The hero of the story is Vikar, a strange man (“cineautistic”), who arrives in Hollywood in 1969 with a shaved head bearing a large tattoo of Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift from A Place in the Sun.  A repressive childhood (“God hates children.  He killed his own child.”) has left Vikar with one passion in life, film.  He manages (after being considered a potential suspect in the Manson murders) to find work building sets and from there getting involved in editing.  He also comes across Viking Man (essentially a renamed John Milius), a member of the new Hollywood, who helps Vikar (and names him as well) understand the odd world he inhabits.  Vikar yearns for the magical Hollywood of old and has a hard time understanding the new – his tattoo is constantly mistaken for Natalie Wood and James Dean, which confounds him to no end; after all this is Hollywood, how could they not know?  Still, Vikar establishes himself as a success in the new Hollywood.  Vikar’s personal life is barebones; he has difficulties connecting to other humans in general, with some exceptions – there’s a rather Taxi Driveresque relationship with a young girl Vikar runs into off and on (her mother is an unstable actress with a fractured relationship with Vikar).  Vikar does also find something in 70's punk - "I Wanna Be Your Dog" touches him like nothing else.

The ending drifts off to its own ambiguous end.  At first, I was a bit put off, as it didn’t seem to fit well.  Much like the hero, the book seemed to just exhaust itself.  Maybe that’s the point.   But I can read about film until the cows come home, and when it is done intelligently and passionately, as many of the characters do here, I'm in literary heaven.

Fuck continuity.  Indeed.

I would imagine if you like this, Suspects would also be worth a try.

The Narrow Road to the Deep North - Richard Flanagan

Flanagan upends ideas about heroism and bravery in this story, which uses the construction of the Burma Railway by Australian POWs in WWII.  Large sections of the book take place during this, and it is horrific stuff.  Disease and starvation are rampant among the prisoners, who are forced to work grueling schedules in intolerable conditions.  Their leader is Dorrigo Evans, a surgeon, who by rank, and attrition, is suddenly responsible for life and death decisions for all the men.  However, his range of decisions available are few, and their Japanese guards often demand them quickly.  Evans tries to save the most vulnerable of the soldiers by getting them days of rest when he can, but it all seems futile as more and more of them end up dead.




As a straight narrative, this is a gripping read.  What makes it rise above that, though, is Evans.  Although he is apparently a natural leader, respected by all his men and even his captors, he feels inadequate for the task.  This feeling will follow him for his entire life, even as he is celebrated back home as a hero, and for his skills as a surgeon.  Evan's personal life is marred by serial illicit affairs with several women despite his longtime marriage and family, and he seems emotionally empty for much of his life.  He is haunted by the one great love of his life, shortly before he heads off to war, with a woman married to his uncle.  This affair, and the complications that arise from it, both during his time in Burma, and after, will shadow him through everything he does.


The contrast between life as prisoners and Evan's civilian life is jolting.  The Burma sections are the ones most vivid - men on the verge of death with every step they take a monumental burden, surgeries attempted with a lack of supplies, medicine, and in one case, a lack of enough patient.  The scenes in Australia are more ephemeral - there's a section where Evan's is attempting to rescue his family from a wildfire which seems surreal.  We also get some of the post war history of one of the Japanese, who, despite is brutality during the war, is able to blandly assume a normal life after it.  I assume this is there to demonstrate the peculiarities of our roles during extraordinary times, and how those roles may be of no relation to the rest of our lives.


This can be a difficult book to read at times - the prison camp scenes are graphic, but it is well worth the effort.

El Payaso

Exposing Trump as the most awful, embarrassing excuse ever for a presidential candidate is almost easy;  I suppose that’s part of his plan.  You become almost immune to his constant hatred, bigotry and ignorance.  Yesterday’s press conference being a prime example – 40 minutes of a temper tantrum railing at the press for doing their job of asking questions, and showing Trump for the snake oil salesman he is.  The checks just happened to go out last week indeed……

Asked recently about what he looks for in potential Supreme Court nominees, Trump replied, “Well, I’d probably appoint people that would look very seriously at her email disaster because it’s a criminal activity, and I would appoint people that would look very seriously at that to start off with.”  Ignoring the irony of that statement based on yesterday’s press conference, it does make obvious Trump has no idea what the Supreme Court does, how it works, or much else about it.  But that’s par for the course with him – no policy, just a bunch of rambling statements that change day to day. 

Anyway, the article below is about Trump and his blowup at the judge overseeing his Trump University case.  Another ignorant, racist rant, but one that shows the true depth of his awfulness.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2016/05/29/on-donald-trump-and-the-rule-of-law/