Reading List: July 2008

Graphic novels made up the bulk of my reading material this month, predominately due to a couple of big finds at the used book store. Unfortunately, progress on the thesis barely moved due to my inability to focus. Apparently, many graduate students have trouble when leaving the structure of the classroom and moving to independent research without the deadlines and direction. School starts in about four weeks, so that should get me back on track.

This month I managed to knock out 24 graphic novels, novels, and collections of essays, and this is what they were:

1. Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut: Though I read this back when I was twenty, I felt that the use of images might fit in well with my thesis. Perhaps it will, but the use was elementary in comparison to the complex things I am looking at. But he was a trailblazer, and this flawed work is interesting b/c we can see where Vonnegut begins to change into a more bitter narrator, something that intensifies from this point forward in his fiction.

2. Give Our Regards to the Atomsmashers! edited by Sean Howe: A collection of essays on comics by a diverse group of writers, including Jonathan Lethem, Glen David Gold, and Chris Offutt. The most satisfying analysis comes from Lethem, who weighs the Lee/Kirby dynamic at Marvel without deifying either party. A decent collection if you can pick it up secondhand.

3. Camp Concentration by Thomas M. Disch: After listening to a stirring Bat Segundo Show with Disch after learning of his suicide, I reread this novel immediately. It was eerie to hear Disch's voice in place of the narrator's. Focusing on a group of prisoners infected by a substance called Palladine which makes them super-intelligent. There is the forbidden fruit analogy, but Disch goes further with religion arguing against the existence of God. There is also a focus on motivation, whether the ends justify the means, which dovetails nicely with the religion angle. A very satisfying novel, one you should all seek out.

4. The Dark Knight Strikes Again by Frank Miller: Hated it. Read why here.

5. Havanas in Camelot by William Styron: Blown away by Styron's memoir

on depression, Darkness Visible, I was excited to read this collection of personal essays on a variety of topics. The best is the title piece, which captures something about Kennedy and the 60s that just felt so true and real. He has a way of transporting you to the place he is describing, even though it is a world you could never hope to actually be in. The collection was a bit light though, and suffered a bit from a lack of unification among the various pieces. Still, enjoyable and recommended.

6. Zodiac by Neal Stephenson: Stephenson's futuristic fiction has a way of seeming dated a few years after publication, only to seem prescient a few years after that. Still the case with Zodiac. Focusing on the environment, plot is the main catalyst. There is industrial espionage and attempted assassinations, but none of the characters are all that memorable, even first-person narrator Sangamon Taylor. There are pacing issues, and it is easy to see that this is one of Stephenson's earlier works.

7. Goodbye, Chunky Rice by Craig Thompson: I liked Blankets when I read it, but this not so much. Chunky is a turtle who is forced to leave his love, a mouse, and venture off. Why, we are never told. It's all an allegory for childhood, but not done all that well and without any realizations by the main characters.

8. DMZ: Public Works by Brian Wood & Ricco Burchielli: Matt infiltrates a terrorist cell in the third collection of this series. I'm just not sure that this whole thing is working, with a complicated backstory that isn't being revealed and characters that aren't drawn consistently from page to page. I'm willing to give it another shot, but this is the least successful of the four Vertigo titles I am currently reading.

9. A Less Perfect Union by William Lesiner

10. Places of Exile by Christopher L. Bennett

11. Seeds of Dissent by James Swallow: Read my thoughts on these novels here.

12. NASCAR for Dummies ostensibly by Mark Martin: Like all these Dummies books, there was a lot of information that was easy to digest. But being eight years old, there was so much out of date that it was almost pointless to read. The Car of Tomorrow negated a lot of the technical info, and none of the points information was pertinent either. But there was a lot of info on the tracks which will help me understand the sport better.

13-17. Fables by Bill Willingham, et al.: The first five collections of the series. I managed to pick up the first nine at a severely discounted price so I am making my way through them. Expect a detailed post when I finish.

18. Lisey's Story by Stephen King: My first King book. I really liked the story that was in McSweeney's, and my friend Brendan Moody praised the novel, so I took a chance and enjoyed it quite a bit. It wasn't without its flaws, but it caused me to do a little thinking about my own prejudices which I wrote about here.

19. The Sandman: Endless Nights by Neil Gaiman, et al.: The single issue stories made up the best of Gaiman's Sandman series, s a collection of seven stories here was quite appealing. The variation on artists suited the mood of the each, and once again I was blown away by Gaiman's imagination and talent with prose. Unfortunately, I am running out of unread Sandman tales, though I am thinking about saving The Dream Hunters for a special occasion.

20. Superman for All Seasons by Jeph Loeb & Tim Sale: Better than I thought it would be. Steve Mollmann praised this book highly, and our recent debates have me working on better defense of my issues with Superman. Look for it in the next few days.

21. The Thing About Life is that One Day You'll Be Dead by David Shields: This book doesn't know what it wants to be. A memoir about a man and his father? About their

bodies? A collection of facts and quotes about death? It's all and none of these, and it suffers as a result. We find out precious little about the author himself, but a lot about his dad, though with little context. And it causes you to start pondering your own mortality, and I have enough sleeping problems as it is.

22. Where Three Roads Meet by Salley Vickers: A reinterpretation of the myth of Oedipus from Canongate's Myth Series. It concerns an extended conversation between Freud and Tiresias, making the point that since Freud no one can read Oedipus separately from him. But by including him in her story, Vickers is able to sidestep the issue and look at Oedipus in a new way. Very intriguing and highly recommended.

23. Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri

24. Hunger of Memory by Richard Rodriguez: Read my thoughts about the former here, and the latter here.

Right now I am reading a collection of Disch's short work, and am pondering whether to start Richard Powers' The Echo Maker or Joseph O'Neill's Netherland. I just wish I could get my hands on an ARC of Philip Roth's Indignation.

Let me know what you think.

Hunger of Memory by Richard Rodriguez

As the son of Mexican immigrants, Richard Rodriguez spoke no English when he began the first grade. Twenty years later as a Fulbright scholar in Renaissance literature, he realized that he had become a member of a community that had caused him to forsake his family. But it was too late to go back: he remained an academic, even in his mother’s kitchen.

So far as autobiographies go, Hunger of Memory is a rather underwhelming realization. Growing up in a blue-collar union household and now a graduate student myself, I am all too aware of the distance that grows between one and one’s family as education level increases. Yet what makes this extended essay so interesting is the meditation on language and how we use language to create both private and public selves.

I wish I had read this book last year before I took Composition Theory, because Rodriguez adamantly warns against bilingualism in schools, and against programs like Affirmative Action from which he himself benefited greatly. So much of our course was based around the assumption that the university needed to cater to students who weren’t primarily English speakers/writers. Yet little was made of the greater issue: how is it that these students are so inadequately prepared for university studies when they get here? Not to mention the ethics of enrolling students who have little chance for success.

That is not to say that I agreed or disagreed with the perspective in class, just that I think that our discussions would have been better served by a presentation of the opposing viewpoint. But in that racially charged atmosphere, it was uncomfortable for the white half of the class to voice such opinions. Had I been familiar with Rodriguez's work, I might have felt better prepared to discuss his and other alternatives.

Rodriguez benefited from a middle class Catholic school and middle class community, so he is not really emblematic of the types of success programs like Affirmative Action claim to have. He claims that we live with both social and private selves, social because we live in a greater community in which we share everything in English. Therefore, the longer a student is kept from learning English the farther behind they are in creating this social self.

It’s not hard to see why Rodriguez is dismissed by so many people as a race traitor, especially as he claims at one point to have little in common with Hispanic academics who came up several years after him. He claims that he did it alone, not along with a group like they were able to. His conclusion is that he is no longer a minority, but now has been assimilated fully and is a part of the majority.

Rodriguez turned down all job offers, even one from Yale, because he couldn’t withstand the irony of such a system. Since he has become a respected author and speaker, most recently releasing Brown: The Last Discovery of America.

Though I have read fairly extensively on the other side of this issue, especially in journals like Race Traitor, it was refreshing to hear an engaging and articulate presentation of the other side. I am not sure how much of Hunger of Memory I agree or disagree with, but it is surely the most honest and well-written account on the subject I have come across.

Jhumpa Lahiri's Unaccustomed Earth

Looking over the reviews of Jhumpa Lahiri’s second collection of short fiction, Unaccustomed Earth, reveals at least one similar criticism seems to pop up again and again: her stories are all just derivatives of one another. While I enjoyed both this volume and Interpreter of Maladies greatly, I find that the critique is an apt one. Yet focusing on merely one aspect of Lahiri’s fiction misses her ability to effectively narrate a story with recognizable characters.

Rather than recap the stories as so many reviews do, I want to offer a slightly more personal take on this collection. I’m not sure I would have made the connection between Alcoholics Anonymous and Unaccustomed Earth without the inclusion of ‘Only Goodness,’ a story detailing the sibling estrangement that surrounds the addiction of the brother. The unifying principle of AA is that while everyone has a different story, they all have the same story. In other words, a member will hear his own story in the stories of other members, again and again and again.

I found myself reading a piece of my own story as I moved through the pieces of the collection. I am not a woman with a young child who must debate whether to invite her widowed father to move in with her family, but I felt her pain as I read. I also never fell in love with a roommate from another culture who had a possessive and abusive boyfriend who I crossed paths with, but I sensed the truth in the story just as strongly as if it had been my own.

Likewise, I’ve never been arrested or imprisoned. I’ve never been turned away from my parent’s home, nor have I ever had to sleep on the street. Not only have my children never been removed from my home, I don’t even have children. Yet when I hear people tell these stories, I see myself in them. I feel myself in them. They are true to me, not because they actually happened, but because they feel true.

This is called verisimilitude in fiction, and Unaccustomed Earth is filled with it in spades. I don’t have anything in common with any of these narrators, yet I feel like I have everything in common with all of them.

So Lahiri’s short fiction is a bit repetitive when it comes to plot. And she honestly hasn’t given the best interviews on her work, so a certain amount of mocking might be appropriate. But her stories are so rich with feeling and truth that it would be a shame for you to miss out on them.

Myriad Universes: Infinity's Prism

Last year, six short novels exploring some of our favorite character’s Mirror Universe counterparts were published in two volumes. While I thought the consistency of the novels was greatly uneven, the format’s success has allowed the publishers of Star Trek fiction to develop similar projects, and this summer two more volumes of short novels are being released, this time each being created in some sort of altered reality we as an audience have never seen before. The first volume of Myriad Universes is entitled Infinity's Prism and includes entries from Christopher L. Bennett, James Swallow, and my friend Bill Leisner.

Leisner’s A Less Perfect Union comes first, and explores a universe in the era of TOS had the Terra Prime movement a hundred years before succeeded and aliens had been banished from Earth. By setting his point of divergence so far in the past, characters like Kirk and Pike noticeably different than the ones we know. Yet their biases and personalities make them feel that they are essentially the people we know, only transformed by the context of their universe. Despite the ease with which the human Starfleet after Terra Prime could have been characterized as ruthless and bigoted, Leisner goes the other route and shows humans at different stages of dealing with the bigotry endorsed by their society and striving to move past it. I felt the resolution for one of the main characters was a bit pat, and at times I felt the author overindulged in showing counterparts of less well known characters, but in the end I felt Leisner succeeded in what I imagine his objectives were: tell an entertaining and interesting story, while also contrasting and connecting this new universe with the one we know so well.

In contrast Places of Exile seems to me to be quite its predecessor’s opposite. The point of divergence here is set in the middle of an episode of Voyager, making the differences between the characters very slight. A different approach, yet it doesn’t seem to work as well. For instance, it seems to me unlikely that the mere death of a couple of key crewmembers would have sent others on such destructive paths. The crew manages to forge an alliance with others after becoming stranded in the Delta Quadrant. Bennett’s major weakness as a writer is his inability to create characters who speak and act like real people. His tend to wear their hearts on their sleeves, and are too quick to profess their feelings or accept the feelings of others. No one would respond as well to the brush off Kes gives a boyfriend as this one does; those undergoing ‘epiphanies’ about love rarely emerge with decisions well formed, never to be changed. And those having sex for therapeutic purposes are almost never aware at the time that it is the case. It’s as though the author has based these relationships on poorly written television shows, and this failure to make characters believable makes it difficult for a reader to really care about what happens to them. As always, Bennett does a good job with explaining away some of the scientific questions the series left with us, the poor characterization leaves this novel a little short. This is becoming a recurring problem with Bennett’s work, and recent reviews of a newer novel don’t leave much hope that he is adapting. It’s a shame because he does have some real talent.

James Swallow sets the breaking point of Seeds of Dissent during the Eugenics Wars, where Khan emerges victorious and a band of non-enhanced humans board the sleeper ship Botany Bay. The story takes place in 2376, aboard the warship of Princeps Julian Bashir. He encounters the Botany Bay so there is friction on that front, throw in a plot about rebels and that's about it. The three-pronged nature of the plot lets Swallow avoid the basic good v. evil stance we see in a lot of these types of stories, but it was all too clear halfway through how things would have to proceed to get to the conclusion any intelligent reader could see coming. There are some nice twists, but I can’t help thinking that the opposite ending might have been more effective. I also wish that Swallow had spent more time contextualizing the broader universe in which his characters reside. Of the three novels, I would only really want to see another story in this universe.

Taken as a whole, Infinity's Prism is almost certainly worth your while, with only one truly weak story among the three. Of course, if you aren’t one to seek verisimilitude in the relationships in Star Trek books, you might end up liking that one best.

Kurosawa's Throne of Blood

As I have said before, the best production of Shakespeare I have ever seen live was a post-apocalyptic setting for Henry V. Musing about this performance years later, I decided I wanted to see some of the more nontraditional productions of Shakespeare out there and see how the traditional readings can be upended. Sitting through several seminars involving Shakespeare as an undergraduate, the importance of seeing a performance rather than reading a play became more and more apparent, and the oft cited influence of seeing Pinter performed assured me this was the proper slant.

Near the top of my list was Akira Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood, a version of Macbeth set in Samurai Japan. A haunting production, the stand out performance of Toshiro Mifune as Washizu, the Macbeth role, solidly grounds what I think is a fantastic movie. But for the basis in Shakespeare’s Scottish play, I have come to view it as less as Japanese version as merely a film inspired by it.

There is the Oriental notion of determinism that is at odds with the Western concept of individual free will. The characters in Throne of Blood seem to be fated to the events described by the haunting specter at the film’s beginning, but more likely they just buy into it so strongly that they see no other way. From the start we know Macbeth is a corrupt figure, but Washizu has noble influences, and believes strongly in his friend’s faithfulness and the justness of the rule of his Great Lord. Macbeth is merely talked into committing a murder he wants to commit anyway, while Asaji, Washizu’s wife, has to psychologically manipulate her husband in order to force his hand. The latter is a much more chilling display, perfectly captured by Isuzu Yamada. And unlike King Duncan, the Great Lord attained his position by killing his predecessor; in fact, the only way it seems possible to move up in the society surrounding the film is to emerge with violence. Therefore Shakespeare’s play shows us a world sunk by Macbeth’s corruption, whereas Washizu is part of a corrupt world already and subject to the pressures of such a place.

We can best see the arguments over determinism after the initial scene of the film as Washizu and Miki (Banquo) are riding through Spider’s Web Forest when they come across an evil spirit, at least a spirit identified as evil by the two men. She claims that both men will be promoted, and that one day Washizu will be the Great Lord and that later Miki’s son will be the Great Lord as well. Afterwards at the castle of the great Lord, both are given their promotions and the beginnings of the prophecy start to become true.

Yet, most of the action in the film is avoidable: had Washizu not listened to his wife’s claims against the Great Lord and Miki then wouldn’t he have just continued as Commander of the North Garrison? And his followers would never have turned on Washizu had he not informed them of the prophecy about the forest rising up against him. These were all choices he made, not actions he was fated to go through.

Despite the departures from Shakespeare’s play, I felt Throne of Blood to be one of the finest pieces from Kurosawa I have yet to see. It moved me, horrified me, in a way that Macbeth has never done before, especially Yamada’s barely audible manipulations that are delivered so realistically as the dominated ancient Japanese wife. Whether or not you concur with my analysis of the free will v. determinism argument in the film, or whether you think it is even there at all, seeing this movie will likely cause you to question your beliefs and never look at Macbeth the same way again.

Stephen King and Bias

This weekend I read my first Stephen King novel, Lisey’s Story, an entertaining and captivating novel that I enjoyed greatly. For many years I shared the bias that seems prevalent against King, thinking that such popular writing couldn’t be good as well. That King’s novels didn’t deserve to be considered alongside the more ‘literary’ fiction of which I was becoming enamored.

I freely admit that this bias is somewhat irrational and totally elitist. However, the popularity v. quality logic is hard for me to dismiss too quickly. The two aren’t mutually exclusive, but I think that the popularity of television shows like American Idol give some credence to the idea that anything widely popular must be a form of pandering.

That said, I don’t think King panders in this book at all; the characters are well drawn, the prose is inventive and moves along briskly. In fact, I find it hard to understand why King hasn’t gotten more accolades for his work. In 2003 he was awarded a Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters from the National Book Foundation, the same organization responsible for awarding the National Book Award each year. This attention, along with the completion of his Dark Tower series, considered to be his magnum opus, have raised his profile among the more elite literary community.

King got the Paris Review treatment in the Fall of 2006, discussing frankly the reception of his work and the line between popular and literary fiction, saying he felt that ‘the real breaking point comes when you ask whether a book engages you on an emotional level.’ To me, this seems sensible criteria. Personally, I enjoy reading about characters and how they react to situations, and I think this is why I enjoyed Lisey’s Story so much. These are bold, well drawn characters full of passion, be it love or hate, for each other, and despite the supernatural elements, I found the relationships to be truthful, to possess a verisimilitude of which other authors should be envious.

A year or so ago I watched an interview with John Grisham on the Charlie Rose show, where the discussion ran along similar lines to King’s in the Paris Review. More eloquent men than I have already made the argument for genre, so I’ll skip it here, but I was amazed at the time how similar Grisham’s responses were to not only King’s, but also to the comments made by other, more ‘literary’ authors. And at the time I filed him in the list of authors I should get around to reading one day.

But after finishing Lisey’s Story last night and rereading the conversation in the Paris Review, I realized something that bothers me. I only read King after he was published in a literary magazine founded by George Plimpton. I only got interested in Grisham after he appeared on a respected discussion program on PBS. Neither of these forums are frequented by or tailored to serve the majority of the these author's readers. Am I less elitist now than I was ten years ago when I dismissed these writers as lacking something essential, lacking perhaps any artistic touch? Or has the defense of genre become so accepted by the elitist community I belong to that I’ve just been caught adapting my own philosophies to what I’ve been told?

These questions aren’t easy to deal with, but in a sense I think I may be asking the wrong ones. Am I more receptive to King now because it has become more accepted to view his work as literary? Probably, but a more telling question would be this: were some of my misconceptions about King challenged by critics that I respect causing me to open myself to an author whose work I found quite enjoyable and worthy of the praise it has received?

All of us are wrong or biased about so many things that all we can really hope to do is pay attention, and when unjustified bias is pointed out to us adapt our behavior and thoughts to compensate.

Proof of Left Wing Bias in NY Times?

For several years I have been a faithful reader of the New York Times. Each morning I have an e-mail delivered with a rundown of the day's top stories, and each Sunday I buy a hard copy from the newsstand. For my money, the paper has the best foreign news available in the US, and from what i have been able to tell, there isn't really much of an actual bias. Does the paper call the Bush Administration to task whenever they make egregious mistakes? Of course, but that's just a good editorial policy, not a biased one.

However, as I looked through today's issue I was horrified by a glaring absence that proves without a doubt that a severe left wing bias is present.

No sport has grown in popularity more than NASCAR in the past decade, and this season seems to be generating more excitement than most. The most popular driver, Dale Earnhardt, Jr., changed his team, number, and sponsor. television ratings are up and cost of broadcast rights continues to rise. And 23-year-old Kyle Busch just won his seventh Sprint Cup race last night in a dramatic come from behind finish on the penultimate lap.

However, there is no mention of NASCAR anywhere in today's paper.

Apparently the New York Times thinks that NASCAR is a sport with only redneck illiterates for fans, with said fans being the bread and butter of the right-wing Republican party in the South, and therefore feel that they can shun the sport to cover other more elitist sports like horse racing or cycling.

Is it too much to hope for a paper that delivers quality foreign reporting with detailed coverage of stock car racing? And why do I feel so uneasy about the ease with which I just delivered a debilitating blow to the paper claiming they have 'all the news that's fit to print?'