All reviews copyright 1984-2009 Evelyn C. Leeper.
THE WILD PARTY by Joseph Mancure March:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 04/15/2005]
Joseph Mancure March's THE WILD PARTY (ISBN 0-375-70643-7), illustrated by Art Spiegelman, is a re-issuing of what is described on the flap as a "lost classic", a "hard-boiled jazz- age tragedy told in syncopated rhyming couplets". Here's a sample of the style:
Christ,
What a crew!
Take a look at Madeline True;
Her eyes slanted. Her eyes were green;
Heavy-lidded; pouched: obscene.
Eyes like a snake's;
Like a stagnant pool filled with slime.
Her mouth was cruel;
A scar
In red,
That recently had opened and bled.
As you can see, the couplets are not always obvious to the eye, and the punctuation is idiosyncratic. The story itself has echoes of Frankie and Johnnie, and was made (with many changes) into a 1975 film (also titled THE WILD PARTY). In this re-issue, Art Spiegelman, best known for MAUS: A SURVIVOR'S TALE, provides wonderfully evocative woodcut illustrations for this story in verse that conveys both the exuberance and the desperation of the Jazz Age.
To order The Wild Party from amazon.com, click here.
SHINING AT THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA by Stephen Marche:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 06/20/2008]
SHINING AT THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA by Stephen Marche (ISBN-13 978-1-594-48315-8, ISBN-10 1-594-48315-9) is arguably science fiction, though I know of no one who reviewed it as such. (The cataloguing data calls it "experimental fiction". It purports to be an anthology of Sanjanian fiction and other writings, with a preface that provides the historical, sociological, and literary background necessary to understand them. Sanjania is an island nation in the North Atlantic, and was formerly part of the British Empire. It is a very literary culture: "Sanjanians are perhaps the most literary people on earth. Bookstalls are as common as fruit stands, the theatres around Saint Magdalene's Square dwarf the City Hall, and on Sanjair flights the stewards push small carts of books down the aisle after the beverages and pretzels."
Later, it says of Saint Magdalene's Square, "Seemingly endless bookstalls fill the square's edge and spill into the side streets in every direction. Bargain hunters and literature lovers cram every nook and cranny from sunrise (more or less) to sundown (more or less)." (Sounds like Hay-on-Wye in Wales.)
The only real drawback to this literary Shangri-La is that it does not exist. Oh, well, you can't have everything.
The earliest pieces--in terms of the internal chronology--are the most interesting, since Mache constructs a separate dialect for that era: "In his eighteenth year, Marlyebone oxchopped and mangled the other wolfheads, Goodfriday Martins, Samuel Baker Deloney, Abraham Crisp and Lover Gromes, and claimed the overward. In his nineteenth year, the Crown pursued him. Crownagent Keagan Poulter took a bulletsmash in the face and could not be regaliated. Agent Will Champion's moniker fibbed everafter his failure. Robert Strunk sunk. In Marlyebone's twentieth year, his Scourge Sally Parkman, a Woman Crownagent, grabbed his pirate fleet, and yawled it against the waves of Portuguese Cove, ane Marlyebone scuppered overhill byland toward his homecove Restitution, flittering."
This dialect is characterized by many compound words, and I suppose Marche got tired of creating them, because after the first few pieces, they go away, alas.
To order Shining at the Bottom of the Sea from amazon.com, click here.
AMAZONIA by James Marcus:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 09/10/2004]
James Marcus's AMAZONIA (ISBN 1-56584-870-5) is the story of the author's five years (from 1996 to 2001) as an editor at amazon.com. It is okay to breeze through, but does not have any real surprises or revelations. People who have been following the dot.com phenomena in general will probably already know about amazon.com's various policies and acquisitions, and others won't learn much from this. For example, Marcus talks about the disastrous acquisition of pets.com, but doesn't explain *why* it was so bad compared to other apparently similar decisions that went well. There were interesting tidbits--the Millennium Poem, for one. And even though I knew the all about "Project Shift" and one of its unintended side-effects, it was interesting to see an even bigger picture. (Project Shift was the concept of removing shipping charges for all orders of two or more items. When this happened, "'The Book of Hope' began its meteoric ascent. This slender Biblical tract clearly had much to recommend it.... Most shoppers, however were attracted to its 99-cent price tag. Droves of them tossed it in the shopping cart a second, more expensive item and made their shipping charges disappear: a miracle on a par with the loaves and fishes. We also did a surprisingly brisk business with Dover Classics, which sold for a dollar each." I used this ploy at least once, and various shoppers' web sites suggested it as well, so it is not surprising that it actually impacted amazon.com's bottom line. Apparently, amazon.com came close to eliminating every item under five dollars from their catalog to solve this problem, until wiser heads prevailed and they dropped the "two-item-free-shipping" offer. (I believe now it is free shipping for items over a certain dollar amount.)
To order Amazonia from amazon.com (!), click here.
ACQUIRING GENOMES: A THEORY OF THE ORIGINS OF SPECIES by Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 11/21/2008]
ACQUIRING GENOMES: A THEORY OF THE ORIGINS OF SPECIES by Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan (ISBN-13 978-0-465-04391-X, ISBN-10 0-465-04391-7) has a interesting theory (speciation happens by the acquisition of genes from symbiotic organisms), but made statements that I thought at odds with current definitions. For example, the authors say, "Groups of organisms, again like people or corn plants or chickens, considered to be all descended from the same ancestors ("clade") are classified as members of the same species. Such organisms are called 'monophyletic' because they are descended from 'a single common ancestor.'" But as I understand it clades are nested, e.g., all primates form a clade which itself exists within the clade of all mammals. Clearly this crosses species boundaries (or makes the term "species" meaningless.)
And "... viruses are not alive and indeed they are even, in principle, too small to be units of life. They lack the means of producing their genes and proteins." One can deduce from this that viruses are not alive *if* producing their genes and proteins is the definition of life (and if it is true that viruses cannot do so). But my suspicion is that this is probably not the only accepted definition of "life" and other, equally valid, definitions may imply that viruses are alive.
I have to say that the authors show more desire for intellectual honesty than most. Rather than attempt to hide contrary views, they include a foreword by Ernst Mayr that contradicts or denies them on several key points (e.g., symbiogenesis as an instance of speciation, the validity of the principle of acquired characteristics). Mayr says, "Given the authors' dedication to their special field, it is not surprising that they sometimes arrive at interpretations others of us find arguable. Let the reads ignore those that are clearly in conflict with the finding of modern biology. Let him concentrate instead on the authors' brilliant new interpretations and be thankful that they have called our attention to worlds of life that ... are consistently by most biologists."
To order Acquiring Genomes from amazon.com, click here.
A FEAST FOR CROWS by George R. R. Martin:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 05/05/2006]
Although I started Hugo-nominated A FEAST FOR CROWS by George R. R. Martin (ISBN 0-553-80150-3), I could not get interested in it, and gave up after about fifty pages. It has the additional problem of being the fourth (and apparently not last) in a fantasy series.
To order A Feast for Crows from amazon.com, click here.
THERE ARE TWO ERRORS IN THE THE TITLE OF THIS BOOK by Robert M. Martin:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 04/06/2007]
THERE ARE TWO ERRORS IN THE THE TITLE OF THIS BOOK by Robert M. Martin (ISBN-10 1-551-11493-3, ISBN-13 978-1-551-11493-4) is subtitled "A Sourcebook of Philosophical Puzzles, Paradoxes and Problems". Much will be familiar to readers of this sort of book, but Martin also includes a lot of paradoxes that I do not recall having seen before.
For example, here's one for physicists (page 132): Consider the
following two statements:
1) Shadows do not pass through opaque objects.
2) If light doesn't fall on something, then it doesn't cast a
shadow.
Most people would agree with these. Okay, then, consider the following scenario: I am standing with a light behind me and a wall in front of me. I cast a shadow on the wall. Now I hold a coffee mug in front of me. Consider the shadow cast on the wall that is directly in line with the light and the mug. Is it cast by me, or by the mug? The former violates premise #2, the latter premise #1.
Martin also seems to have an interesting response to those who claim that morality comes from religion (i.e., God) (page 175). Consider, he says, that you receive a message purporting to be from God. Let's say that you go outside and your hydrangea is burning, but not consumed. Out of it comes a voice saying, "You've got it all wrong. I want you to lie, cheat, steal, murder, and throw beer cans on your professor's lawn." Obviously if you did not originally believe in God, you would not believe the voice, but even if you did, the probability is high that you would not believe that the voice was God telling you what to do. Why not? Because you have some notion independent of God about what is good and what is not.
Some of Martin's paradoxes are just variations on better-known points. For example, he asks whether there can be a true statement which is impossible for you to believe. Yes--consider the statement "X is dead," where X is your name. It will be true one day, but when it is, it will be impossible for you to believe it. [page 80] This is just the contra-positive of Descartes's "Cogito, ergo sum."
This is just a small sample of what Martin covers in this book. Each chapter is independent of the others, so you do not have to read this straight through, and taking a break to think about each chapter is probably a good idea. (The reviews on amazon.com indicate that this is a great book for teenagers as well as adults.)
To order There Are Two Errors in the the Title of This Book from amazon.com, click here.
HAND OF GLORY by Sophie Masson:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 01/10/2003]
I just read Sophie Masson's HAND OF GLORY, an alternate history set in Australia. There aren't many of these (for starters, known history there goes back a lot shorter time than in Europe, for example), but this didn't seem to do much with the "alternate" aspect.
Hand of Glory is not available in the US; you might try http://www.amazon.co.uk.
AN OXFORD TRAGEDY by J. C. Masterman:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 03/09/2007]
AN OXFORD TRAGEDY by J. C. Masterman (ISBN-10 0-486-24165-3, ISBN-13 978-0-486-24165-4) is another classic Dover mystery, notable for its academic setting. There is an entire sub-genre of "bibliomysteries" which take place in bookstores, libraries, and academic settings, and this falls in that category. (See http://www.bibliomysteries.com/ for an extensive list.) This is not especially noteworthy as a mystery, but I still applaud Dover for having brought what seems to be an entire generation of mysteries into print.
To order An Oxford Tragedy from amazon.com, click here.
I AM LEGEND by Richard Matheson:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 12/21/2007]
I re-read I AM LEGEND by Richard Matheson (ISBN-13 978-0-765-35715-1, ISBN-10 0-765-35715-1) after seeing the movie. I have to agree with Mark--the movie that us most faithful to the book is the 1964 version, THE LAST MAN ON EARTH. In fact, the current film credits not just Richard Matheson but also the screenwriters of the 1971 film, THE OMEGA MAN, for the story. So not surprisingly, the current film resembles that in many ways. Of the current film, I will say that it is probably worth seeing the movie for the production and set design, but not for the action sequences or make-up. One note: the 1954 Fawcett edition of I AM LEGEND is 160 pages long; the 1995 Tor edition (reprinted in October 2007) is over three hundred pages long. This is not just larger print and wider margins--the Tor edition also includes ten additional short stories, hence is actually a collection. Normally one would expect a title such as I AM LEGEND AND OTHER STORIES, but I guess they felt that just I AM LEGEND was stronger.
To order I Am Legend from amazon.com, click here.
THE PAINTED VEIL by W. Somerset Maugham:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 02/29/2008]
THE PAINTED VEIL by W. Somerset Maugham (ISBN-13 978-0-099-50739-0, ISBN-10 0-099-50739-0) was this month's selection for the "original" book discussion group. Mark and I had seen the movie a while ago, and Mark suggested the book for the group. The screenwriter changed a lot; more specifically, he added a lot. There is no aqueduct-building in the book, and no insurrection or civil war. (The ending is also significantly different.) I think the reason for this (besides wanting to add action sequences) was that the book was told entirely from the main character Kitty's point of view, and that was considered undesirable for the movie. First of all, it would mean that the lead actress would be in every scene, which is hard work. And second, this in turn would make the film "a woman's film", at least to the backers, meaning that it would not attract a wide enough audience. So the screenwriter added scenes of Walter Fane in the lab, scenes of Walter Fane in the hospital, scenes of Walter Fane by the river, and so on. Of Kitty's feelings about the nuns and their life and emotions--the main focus of the book-- very little is left.
They also moved the location of the British "colony" from Hong Kong, to Shanghai, for reasons I can't figure out. (Maugham himself had to change it from Hong Kong to the fictional Tching- Yen when the book first came out for legal reasons.)
The notions of marriage in THE PAINTED VEIL seem very similar to Jane Austen's: Kitty is pressured to marry by her mother because, as she ask, "How long can you expect your father to support you?" Also, her younger sister gets engaged and Kitty feels she must marry, or be "shamed" by her continued spinsterhood. This is expressed more explicitly in the novel, which gives more of Kitty's history, rather than just the few days before her wedding.
To order The Painted Veil from amazon.com, click here.
THE INVISIBLE COUNTRY by Paul McAuley:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 01/02/2004]
Paul McAuley's THE INVISIBLE COUNTRY was another collection of short fiction by a British writer, although I was more familiar with McAuley because of his alternate history, PASQUALE'S ANGEL, which won the Sidewise Award in the first year those awards were presented. Both PASQUALE'S ANGEL and THE INVISIBLE COUNTRY are recommended--I am glad to see collections being published, since I think that too often short fiction gets ignored as soon as the magazine or book it appeared in is pulled from the racks.
To order The Invisible Country from amazon.com, click here.
PASQUALE'S ANGEL by Paul J. McAuley (AvoNova, ISBN 0-380-77820-3, 1997 (1995c), 374pp, paperback):
This is the second "alternate Leonardo" I read in quick succession (Jack Dann's Memory Cathedral being the first, though this actually predates the Dann by about a year). In this, however, Leonardo is not one of the major characters on-stage. He does appear but mostly he is talked about as the "Great Engineer" in the tower. So far as I can determine, he got that way because Savonarola's revolution of 1498 succeeded and Leonardo turned from concentrating on art to concentrating on invention. The result is a Florence well into the Industrial Age in Leonardo's lifetime.
Let me start out by saying that I enjoyed this book and that I recommend it. I want to say that up front, because my comments might lead you to think I had a negative opinion of Pasquale's Angel, and that's not true.
One of my complaints has to do with the premise: I doubt the Industrial Revolution could have proceeded this fast this early. In twenty years, Florence seems to have gotten to the technological level we achieved around 1900--considerably more than twenty years after the Industrial Revolution started.
Another problem is that Pasquale's Angel starts with a "locked-room" (or rather "locked-tower") mystery whose solution, alas, should be obvious to most of the readers who would be attracted to this book.
Given that McAuley wanted a murder mystery, I wish he had designed one less derivative. He does a good job of describing his characters and making them come alive. (Of course, most of his characters were alive, at least in some form.) His use of the politics and conspiracies of the time is the most interesting aspect of the novel, and more emphasis on that, with less on detailing more technical advances than seem likely or are necessary, would have made me happier. But as they say, your mileage may vary, and even with my reservations, I still strongly recommend Pasquale's Angel.
To order Pasquale's Angel from amazon.com, click here.
THE ROWAN by Anne McCaffrey:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 08/11/2006]
THE ROWAN by Anne McCaffrey (ISBN 0-441-73576-2) was chosen for our science fiction group for July. Someone described it as a "good quick summer read," which I suppose it is. However, that is in part because it seems to be aimed at a teenage (or perhaps slightly older) audience, and more specifically at teenage girls. It is basically the coming of age and romance of a girl/woman called (annoyingly) "the Rowan", after her home planet. Why not just "Rowan"? Who knows? Anne McCaffrey has a lot of fans, but her writing does not work for me.
To order The Rowan from amazon.com, click here.
44 SCOTLAND STREET by Alexander McCall Smith:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 03/27/2009]
44 SCOTLAND STREET by Andrew McCall Smith (ISBN-13 978-1-400-07944-5, ISBN-10 1-400-07944-5) is the first book in another series by the author of the "Number 1 Ladies Detective Agency" books. This one is set in the art world of Edinburgh, and I did not find it anywhere nearly as enjoyable, but that is probably because I thought none of the characters were really interesting in the same way that the characters in the "Number 1 Ladies Detective Agency" books were. The only interesting characters were Bertie and his pushy mother. What was intriguing was McCall Smith's discussion of what it was like to write a serial novel, which this was.
First, McCall Smith did not write the entire novel ahead of time, so although he started with several chapters written, he fell behind in his writing, and found himself up against a perpetual deadline. And he also discovered something perhaps less commonly thought of: he could not go back and make any changes in earlier chapters. So if he decides while writing chapter 15 that it would have worked better if the painting at the beginning was a still life rather than a seascape, that too bad--he's stuck with the seascape.
To order 44 Scotland Street from amazon.com, click here.
THE NO. 1 LADIES' DETECTIVE AGENCY by Alexander McCall Smith:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 04/29/2005]
Our book discussion chose Alexander McCall Smith's THE NO. 1 LADIES' DETECTIVE AGENCY (ISBN 1-4000-3477-9) for this month. It was a nice, amiable book, interesting more for the setting (Botswana) and characters than for any amazing detective work. It was popular enough that people expressed an interest in reading the next book for a future discussion. McCall Smith has also written a series of novellas about "Professor Dr. Moritz- Maria von Igelfeld", a professor of Romance Philology. (These are published as individual books: PORTUGUESE IRREGULAR VERBS, THE FINER POINTS OF SAUSAGE DOGS, and AT THE VILLA OF REDUCED CIRCUMSTANCES.) They are more in the tradition of screwball comedies, with such plots as von Iglefeld being confused with a professor of veterinary medicine, Professor von Igelfold, and invited to give a talk on daschunds in Arkansas, or being asked to transport stolen relics with predictably disastrous results. I read the first two--they're fast reads, but I'd recommend sticking with his "No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency" series.
To order The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency from amazon.com, click here.
BLACK BIBLE CHRONICLES: FROM GENESIS TO THE PROMISED LAND interpreted by P. K. McCary (African American Family Press, ISBN 1-56977-0000-X, 1993, 190pp, ):
Perhaps best described as "the Torah for homeboys," this is the first of a series of books translating (or "interpreting," to use McCary's term) the "Bible" into urban language. This volume covers the five books of Moses ("Genesis", "Exodus", "Leviticus", "Numbers", and "Deuteronomy"); a second volume has already been published covering the four gospels (called "Rappin' with Jesus"). But as a Jew I was understandably more interested in this volume.
This translation omits large sections of these books, particularly the genealogies (the "begats"). Since the footnotes reference this translation back to the chapters in the complete version, I don't consider this a big fault. More problematic is McCary's somewhat loose translation. The use of the term "church" to refer to the Temple may not be too unreasonable (though it points out the Christian focus of this translation, rather than a Judaic or Islamic one), but the translation of "Sabbath" into "Sunday" in several spots is irksome and deceptive. And, for example, the translation of Leviticus 18:21 as "he can't put her children on the altar to be burned 'cuz that'll cause the ultimate in punishment" may not be an accurate rendering of what the original says: the King James translation is "And thou shalt not let any of thy seed pass through the fire to Molech, neither shalt thou profane the name of thy God: I am the Lord," and Maimonides says this refers to passing an old practice of passing a newborn child through the smoke of a fire as a pagan rite ("The Guide for the Perplexed", Part 3, Chapter 37). On the other hand, "Don't mess with someone else's ol' man or ol' lady" is probably a better rendering of the intent than "Thou shalt not commit adultery." (The latter seems to lead to all sorts of hair-splitting over the precise definition of adultery.)
I notice, by the way, that while most of the Laws in "Leviticus" are retained, the prohibitions against homosexual behavior between men seem to have vanished. Not only does McCary include all the other sexual prohibitions ("And the Almighty didn't want folks peeping on people they had no business seeing naked"; "It was especially uncool to get down with any animals"; "The Almighty didn't want kissin' cousins getting hitched, and brothers weren't to sleep with their mothers or any wife of your dad's, whether she's your mother or not. Granddaughters, daughters, and half sisters are out of the question for doing the wild thing, just as your aunt or your sister-in-law"), but even the clothing ones ("Mix matching clothes, like wool and linen, isn't just a fashion downer, it ain't happening here"). One can only conclude that political correctness is at least partially responsible for this omission.
"Black Bible Chronicles" is certainly an unusual translation, and one that is surprisingly engaging. It manages to bring a life and a directness to the story that traditional translations don't. Whether it will reach its intended audience is not clear, but it could well find a favorable reception with an audience looking at it as a literary work rather than an inspirational one.
To order Black Bible Chronicles from amazon.com, click here.
"The Ashbazu Effect by John McDaid:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 08/12/2005]
John McDaid, "The Ashbazu Effect" (REVISIONS, ed. by Julie Czerneda and Isaac Szpindel, ISBN 0-7564-0240-9): This assumes that the idea of embossing whole pages at a time onto clay tablets has been discovered in Sumeria, and shows the next stage. As seems to be very popular, within the story someone talks about alternate histories ("fiction-that-continues-a-line"), including of course our own timeline. This gets extra credit for a more interesting setting and divergence point than one normally finds. (I commented on the entire collection in the 10/01/04 issue of the MT VOID; click here for that review.)
To order ReVisions from amazon.com, click here.
OMEGA by Jack McDevitt:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 12/05/2003]
Jack McDevitt's OMEGA is apparently the *third* book in a series preceded by CHINDI and DEEPSIX, though there is no indication anywhere on the dust jacket or facing the title page. It stands moderately well on its own, but I kept getting the feeling that I was supposed to be getting more out of some of the references than I was. The premise of clouds that travel through the galaxy destroying all signs of civilization was intriguing, but the geometry was all wrong. That is, it was claimed that they looked for right angles, which don't appear in nature, but there are in fact crystal forms that have right angles. In addition, an artifact called a "hedgehog" was described as having a lot of right angles, but the description made it sound more like something with spikes that were more like tall pyramids stuck on the central piece, and as such would have a lot of obtuse and acute angles, but few right angles.
To order Omega from amazon.com, click here.
BRASYL by Ian McDonald:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 04/25/2008]
BRASYL by Ian McDonald (ISBN-13 978-1-591-02543-6, ISBN-10 1-591-02543-5) is a Hugo nominee, but it has a major strike against it--the book comes with a six-page glossary (and a suggested reading list, and a playlist of songs). It also has a long description of a soccer game (which I can't follow). The only one of the three threads it follows that I could understand was the one taking place in 1732. Maybe if I studied the glossary first.... Or maybe not. I *really* wanted to like this one, but it didn't happen. (In fairness, I will add that I gave up around page 60.)
To order Brasyl from amazon.com, click here.
"The Little Goddess" by Ian McDonald:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 05/12/2006]
"The Little Goddess" by Ian McDonald (ASIMOV'S Jun 2005) is set on the near-future Indian subcontinent. India has splintered into several nations, all jockeying for position and power. The narrator begins as a goddess, chosen after a series of spiritual tests, but this is a position that will end after a few years, not with her death, but with puberty. She then finds herself trying to become a normal person again, but having been a goddess creates certain drawbacks. I really enjoyed this, both for the story, and for the milieu. (In general, I recommend McDonald's work. I have not had a chance yet to read his Hugo-nominated novel from 2004, RIVER OF GODS, but I am looking forward to it.)
HOLY COW by Sarah MacDonald:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 05/16/2008]
HOLY COW by Sarah MacDonald (ISBN-13 978-0-7679-1574-8, ISBN-10 0-7679-1574-7) is the story of a journalist's stay in India, and her quest for religion, or spirituality, or God, or something like that. What is not clear is when or how she decided this was a spiritual quest--that was not why she went to India to start with, yet it is clear that this becomes her goal, or why else would she be so diligent in seeking out every possible religion to find out what they have to offer.
That quibble aside, it seems as though every attempt by MacDonald to find something meaningful in India runs up against what can only be termed "loonies". This includes the Jews, who seem to be all Israelis or Americans, and more interested in hugging, dancing, and smoking hash than in anything that I would consider an expression of Judaism. After reading this section, though, I end up basically discounting all her other encounters with the extremes of each religion. (Trying to get the essence of Hinduism by attending the Kumbh Mela in Allahabad is, after all, like trying to understand the essence of Christianity by standing in St. Peter's Square on Easter Sunday, or understanding Islam by making the Hajj.) HOLY COW does give you a sense of India, but often a somewhat deceptive one.
To order Holy Cow from amazon.com, click here.
FILM CRAZY by Patrick McGilligan:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 09/08/2006]
FILM CRAZY by Patrick McGilligan (ISBN 0-312-28038-6) is presented as a collection of interviews with famous directors and writers. However, for a few of the people, there is no interview, but just an article by McGilligan about the subject, with some quotations. (The entry for Reagan is an article rather than an interview, and was written early in his political career.) As articles in a magazine they would be interesting, but they make for a rather lightweight book.
To order Film Crazy from amazon.com, click here.
FILM FLAM: ESSAYS ON HOLLYWOOD by Larry McMurtry:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 06/01/2007]
I was reading the foreword to FILM FLAM: ESSAYS ON HOLLYWOOD by Larry McMurtry (ISBN-10 0-743-21624-5, ISBN-13 978-0-743-21624-1), but was taken aback when I read, "As the ante for each picture goes up the old fever of excitement gives way to the constant low-grade fever of dread. What if we spend $30 million and it flops?" Just how old was this book?! It turns out it is from 1987, those halcyon days when $30 million was a lot of money in Hollywood. (SPIDER-MAN 3 just cost $250 million.) These essays reflect McMurtry's experience both as an author whose novels have been filmed, and as a screen-writer. His filmed novels include HORSEMAN, PASS BY (filmed as HUD); THE LAST PICTURE SHOW, TERMS OF ENDEARMENT, and perhaps his best known novel, LONESOME DOVE. McMurtry takes a refreshingly practical approach to the business of screen-writing--and, yes, to him it is a business. In the essay "The Fun of It All" he says that far too many screen-writers have an inflated sense of their own importance, and need to gain some perspective. (Among other points, he notes that "if writers play limited roles in Hollywood, they also bear limited responsibilities. They don't have to foot the bill when a picture gets made; and nobody's going to blame them if a picture flops.") This attitude puts him at the far end of the spectrum from, say, Harlan Ellison. McMurtry is in favor of treating screen-writing as a craft, working with deadlines, being open to input from others and changes to the script, and not insisting on being on set through the entire shoot.
Of having one's novels turned into movies, he writes, "When Hollywood entered my life I was sitting in a tiny room in Fort Worth eating meatloaf. The phone rang, and I was informed that some people I had never heard of had just bought the movie rights to my first novel. Three nights later I was sitting in the best restaurant in Fort Worth, eating my first chateaubriand--a steak so thick that in most parts of Texas it would have been called a roast--and discussing title changes with a gentleman from Paramount. At the time it never crossed my mind to wonder whether the movie would turn out to be better than the book; what I knew for a certainty was that the steak was better than the meatloaf." (page 36) (Stephen King tells a similar story about hearing about the sale of the movie rights to CARRIE.)
But what about the notion that a bad movie hurts the author of the source book? Regarding RAGTIME, McMurtry says, "In my view it is preeminently silly for Doctorow to give a damn about what happens to RAGTIME as a film. His work is done, and his tale now belongs, most properly, to its readers, not to him. The film De Laurentiis may eventually make of it is another problem, but it is clearly De Laurentiis's problem, no Doctorow's." (page 71) McMurtry's implication throughout all this, never stated, and perhaps just my conclusion, is that if the author is going to care that much about what a film made from the book will be like, he should not sell the rights. (Returning to Steven King, however, it is generally agreed that the best films made from his works are those he had the least involvement with, and conversely.)
(The title of this book, FILM FLAM, is a (perhaps unintentional) example of how books and movies are different. No one would use this phrase in a movie, because it is virtually unpronounceable.)
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SACAGAWEA'S NICKNAME by Larry McMurtry:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 06/01/2007]
Larry McMurtry is best known for LONESOME DOVE--indeed, for most people, that is his only work they could name (but see the review of FILM FLAM below for a list of others). However, he has also written a fair amount of non-fiction, mostly in the form of essays. These have been collected into several, one of which is SACAGAWEA'S NICKNAME (ISBN-10 1-590-17099-7, ISBN-13 978-1-590-17099-1). This includes twelve essays from "The New York Review of Books", covering such diverse aspects of the West as Buffalo Bill, the Zuni tribe, John Wesley Powell, and Angie Debo, as well as (obviously) Sacagawea. McMurtry places his own view of the West between the triumphalists and the revisionists. (I would summarize these as "manifest destiny" and "noble savage", but that is my shorthand, not McMurtry's, and even I will admit that both are more complex than that.) McMurtry has been involved in the popularization of "the West", yet he still retains the ability to look at how that popularization has done a disservice to both the West and those who are perceiving it.
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DEADLINES PAST by Walter Mears:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 02/13/2004]
Walter M. Mears's DEADLINES PAST is the reminiscence of Mears's forty years covering American Presidential campaigns and elections. I suppose I found it particularly interesting because these elections are precisely the ones I remember (I was ten years old in 1960). But certainly his descriptions of some of the older campaigns and how they differ from the current ones would be of interest even if you don't remember them. The "informality" of the earlier campaigns, done on buses with no security staff (or often any staff) to speak of contrasts sharply with the structure of today's campaigns. And this period is also that of the rise of television as a major force. Mears had to rely on his memory for what wasn't archived in his columns, however. He explains in his introduction that he didn't think it was important to keep his notebooks, but strongly encourages young reporters not to make the same mistake. (This may be an unnecessary warning: I was under the impression that the notebooks serve as primary documentation for the facts of a story, and the newspaper or magazine would probably insist that they be kept for several years any way.)
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MOBY DICK by Herman Melville:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 06/09/2006]
MOBY DICK by Herman Melville (ISBN 0-812-54307-6) is a much misunderstood book. People talk about how long it is--but at 470 pages (in the Norton Critical Edition) is shorter than a high proportion of science fiction, fantasy, or thriller novels written today. (Tom Clancy and Robert Jordan write novels *twice* as long.) It has a reputation for seriousness, yet it is full of wit and humor. For example, in chapter one, Ishmael talks about how he goes to sea: "I always go to sea as a sailor, because they make a point of paying me for my trouble, whereas they never pay passengers a single penny that I ever heard of. On the contrary, passengers themselves must pay. And there is all the difference in the world between paying and being paid. The act of paying is perhaps the most uncomfortable infliction that the two orchard thieves entailed upon us. But *being paid*,--what will compare with it? The urbane activity with which a man receives money is really marvellous, considering that we so earnestly believe money to be the root of all earthly ills, and that on no account can a monied man enter heaven. Ah! how cheerfully we consign ourselves to perdition!" (The two orchard thieves are, of course, Adam and Eve.)
And later, in chapter 55, when he is describing how whales are portrayed, he says, "As for the sign-painters' whales seen in the streets hanging over the shops of oil-dealers, what shall be said of them? They are generally Richard III whales, with dromedary humps, ...."
Or, "For as in landscape gardening, a spire, cupola, monument, or tower of some sort, is deemed almost indispensable to the completion of the scene; so no face can be physiognomically in keeping without the elevated open-work belfry of the nose."
But of course Melville has his serious moments, and much of what he says remains as true today as it was in 1851: "[However] baby man may brag of his science and skill, and however much, in a flattering future, that science and skill may augment; yet for ever and for ever, to the crack of doom, the sea will insult and murder him, and pulverize the stateliest, stiffest frigate he can make." It was true sixty years after Melville with Titanic, and it was true a hundred and fifty years after he wrote as it was with the fishing boat caught in the "perfect storm."
And in keeping with my noting of disparaging references to Jews in older literature, let me note that in chapter 89 Melville says, "What is the ruinous discount which Mordecai, the broker, gets from poor Woebegone, the bankrupt, on a loan to keep Woebegone's family from starvation; what is that ruinous discount but a Fast-Fish?" On the other hand, he does somewhat counterbalance this by saying in chapter 92, "[Nor] can whalemen be recognized, as the people of the middles ages affected to detect a Jew in the company, by the nose."
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THE MARTIAN WAR by Gabriel Mesta:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 03/17/2006]
THE MARTIAN WAR by Gabriel Mesta (ISBN 0-7434-639-9) is an expansion of "Scientific Romance" and "Canals in the Sand" by Kevin J. Anderson (who for some reason has adopted the penname "Gabriel Mesta" for this book). This is actually two inter- leaved stories, each of which could have stood on its own (though since the two together are only 256 pages, each would have been a bit skimpy). One story has Percival Lowell and Dr. Moreau providing a signal in the Sahara to bring a Martian spaceship there, and their subsequent adventures with the invaders. The other has H. G. Wells, T. H. Huxley, and almost all the remaining characters from the books of the real H. G. Wells traveling to the moon and then to Mars to battle the Martians. In addition to all these characters, Mesta re-uses themes and phrases, making the book as much a game of "spot that reference" as a story in itself. On the whole, this is a fairly lightweight entry in the field of pastiches of Wells. (Though not labeled as such, I suspect this is intended as a "young adult" novel.)
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