Here's an item you don't see on the average bookshelf:

A heavyweight study of the future of soft cheese won Britain's annual competition to find the year's oddest book title on Friday.

The 2009-2014 World Outlook for 60-milligram Containers of Fromage Frais, by Philip M. Parker won the Diagram Prize, awarded by trade magazine The Bookseller...

Fromage frais — literally "fresh cheese" — is a dairy product that originated in France and has a similar consistency to sour cream.

Sounds like a fascinating read. But the $795.00 I'd have to shell out for a new copy at Amazon is a bit daunting.

I think I'll wait for the movie.

Labels: Books, Humor, Links, News

I've geeked out on Watchmen for too long now and I'm sure my handful of readers are sick of indulging me. I'll try to make this the last post on the subject.

I got the book back out tonight and looked through it again. It's really even better than I remembered. Seeing those panels and reading those words again really brought back how much I enjoyed that book the first time I read it a few years ago.

With all this focus on Alan Moore, I hadn't thought about the art of Dave Gibbons and how important it is to the impact of the book. Flipping through the book tonight I was struck by so many things I'd forgotten, like all the symmetry in the panels of the issue that focuses on Rorschach's origins. And how good Tales of the Black Freighter is. And I'd forgotten that, in the comic, Ozymandias seems like an authority figure instead of a nerd. Matthew Goode was all wrong for the role. They may as well have cast Macaulay Culkin as to case Goode.

While watching the film I'd had this vague impression that Rorschach's origins had been toned down and cleaned up for mass consumption, but I couldn't really put my finger on what was missing. I found it tonight. It's this speech, Rorschach's summary of his world view:

"The cold, suffocating dark goes on forever, and we are alone. Live our lives, lacking anything better to do. Devise reasons later. Born from oblivion, bear children, hell-bound as ourselves, go into oblivion. Existence is random. Has no pattern, save what we imagine after staring ait it for too long. No meaning, save what we choose to impose. This rudderless world is not shaped by vague metaphysical forces. It is not God who kills the children, not fate that butchers them or destiny that feeds them to the dogs. It's us. Only us."

Yeah, that Rorschach ... always clowning around. God (or whatever) bless him. As bleak as he was in the movie, the real thing is so much bleaker. Gotta love it. And I gotta give Alan Moore his propers, too. Maybe he is a putz who takes himself too seriously and rains on everyone's parade ... but Watchmen really is absorbing and intense.

Labels: Books, Movies, Watchmen

The more I anticipate an upcoming movie, the more likely it is that I'll be working the 3-11 shift when it comes out, making it basically impossible for me to see the movie in it's first week of release.

That's the case with Watchmen, a movie I've looked forward to for a long time and probably won't see before the end of the week or beginning of next week.

I've read some reviews, including a couple by favorite bloggers, and based on what I know about these guys I feel certain that I'll react to the movie in much the same way that they have.

My big concern ... the thing that will make or break the movie for me, is whether or not Zack Snyder's production get the characters right.

Since I'm gonna talk about my take on the characters, be advised that there may be spoilers below.

The movie's source material, of course, is a comic book. And like most or all comics, the story involves some broad charactures of classic personality types. But since Watchmen is a comic book for grownups, the archetypes aren't the usual kind. Watchmen is about the kinds of people that comic book readers grow up to be. Scott Nehring dismisses the source material as "another leftist whine fest about how sucky the world is," and I certainly see where he's coming from, but I don't quite agree. I don't think the story itself necessarily shares the perspective of it's characters. The story is colder than that, and told more clinically, and it keeps a certain distance from these characters. None of them are really portrayed in a particularly sympathetic light. I get the impression that Alan Moore wasn't really trying to advance any given political agenda so much as simply comment on those of us who are motivated to action (or inaction) by our own world views.

Of course, everyone has a different take on the story, and your perspective is as valid as mine.


My take, based on my own perspective and my own attitudes, is that Ozymandias is the villain of the story, and one of the worst villains in all of comics, given his typically liberal world view. Ozymandias sees humanity only as a whole. Individuals and the rights of the individual never enter the picture. Consequentially, Ozymandias is willing to sacrifice human life on a large scale in order to move the world toward what he sees as a higher plain of existence. He simply sees himself as someone who knows what's best for the world. Individual people, superheroic or otherwise, are nothing more than pawns he can enlist, manipulate and/or kill in order to advance his own cause. Ozymandias sees people as a hive and himself as the beekeeper. It's a perspective he shares with people like Barack Obama and Hugo Chavez.

At the opposite end of the spectrum is Rorschack, a characture of the extreme-right-wing point of view. Rorschack believes in one thing and one thing only: his code. In many ways he's very much like Ozymandias. Both of them deem themselves fit to determine who should live and who should die. Both of them look down on the huddled masses around them. The difference (and it's a huge one) between Rorschack and Ozymandias is that Rorschack is focused exclusively on the individual and not at all concerned about what's best for the whole. Rorschack hunts down the bad guys one at a time and kills them, dishing out his own brand of justice as it fits his code. His absolute refusal to compromise is both his Achilles heel and the source of his strength.

What makes Rorschach more sympathetic than Ozymandias is that Watchmen gives us a great deal more of Rorschach's back story. His cynicism and inability to relate to people were formed in a terrible childhood full of abuse and neglect. Whereas Ozymandias sees himself as moving toward perfection (and nearly there), Rorschach lacks even the simplest ability to assess himself and his behavior. Rorschach is who he is because he never had a choice.

The dynamic between these two characters is the heart of the story, especially with regard to Rorschach, the only character who's given any emotional resonance. If Zack Snyder screwed up that element, all the CGI and slo-mo action sequences in the world won't save the movie. And if he got it right, the movie might just be something special.

Standing above and beyond these two extremes is Dr. Manhattan, the movie's God figure. Having become omnipotent because of a science experiment gone awry (this is a comic book, after all, and comic book conceits are part of the story), Dr. Manhattan feels removed and separate from humanity. This God of the world of Watchmen possesses all knowledge; he knows when the world will end and how, and the weight of that has driven him into an almost catatonic apathy. If Watchmen is making a statement about God, it is not that God has stopped caring about humanity because of our sinfulness and selfishness. Rather, the theology of Watchmen might simply be that God doesn't care because it isn't in God's nature to care. Genuine concern about the people around us is a product of hope, and hope comes from uncertainty. Therefore, real certainty destroys hope and makes altruism utterly meaningless. Watchmen seems to be a story in praise of doubt, the great motivator.

The other characters in Watchmen are more disposable, in my view. Night Owl II and Silk Spectre II both inherited their status as superheroes and neither of them are particularly happy about their lives. Neither of them are particularly sympathetic, either. If there are two characters in the novel who really qualify as liberals who whine about how much the world sucks, it's these two. Especially the second Silk Spectre, the most poorly realized character in the story. She's a simple parody of every self-obsessed Jerry Springer guest who spends every hour obsessing over parent issues and excusing herself from honoring her commitments. Silk Spectre II isn't the villain of the piece, but she is far and away the hardest to give a damn about.

And then there's The Comedian, the anarchist of the group. The Comedian is sometimes interpreted as the right-wing opposite of Ozymandias, but in my view that's incorrect. The Comedian isn't a right winger, he's simply an opportunist and a nihilist. Whereas Rorschach and Ozymandias both adhere to specific belief systems, the Comedian adheres to nothing. The book gives him one and only one moment of genuine humanity; when confronted by Silk Spectre II about his attempted rape of the original Silk Spectre, The Comedian expresses genuine regret. It's a brief but important moment in the character's development, and it's the only thing that keeps him from becoming a totally stereotypical comic book villain. Still, even with that single moment of clarity, the Comedian never becomes a compelling character and really represents little more than a destructive force of nature that the other characters must respond to.

If the movie gets these character complexities right, it ought to be enjoyable. I'm not sure, though, that it will find the kind of audience that movies like Iron Man and The Dark Knight enjoy. Most comic books are about larger-than-life heroes and tales of daring-do. Watchmen offers comic readers something different. If you've read so many comics that you're a bit tired of heroes who are always heroic and villains who actually see themselves as evil, Watchmen is a breath of fresh air.

My hope is that the movie will provide that same paradigm shift for fans of comic book based films.

Labels: Books, Movies, Watchmen

I'm looking forward to Watchmen probably more than any other movie in 2009. The advance marketing gives me the idea that the movie will faithfully convey the comic book's themes and atmosphere, and I just can't wait to see it.

Hat tip to Scott at Good News Film Reviews for tipping me off to the new marketing website for the movie, a website that features profiles of the movie's key characters, including the masked vigilante Rorschak:

the twelve issues of Watchmen are full of fascinating, fully realized characters, and my favorite by far is Rorschach. Now that's not to say that I identify with Rorschach, just that I think the character is compelling and that he steals the story.

Rorschach is a vigilante with serious emotional issues related to his godawful childhood and his loveless way of life. This "superhero" is more Travis Bickle than Batman, and he represents as much potential danger as the criminals he hunts and kills.

What separates Rorschach from other fictional madmen like Bickle is that Rorschach sticks to an iron code of right and wrong and he won't compromise or yield. His madness is stoic, not manic... and Alan Moore developed Rorschach so well that the character's perspective is accessible and sometimes even sympathetic. For me, the real test of Zack Snyder's movie will be how well he brings Rorschach to the screen.

Labels: Books, Movies, Watchmen

Hold on a minute before I review Intensity, I need to ramble for a few paragraphs first. I assure you, it's relevant.

I don't read a lot of fiction, I prefer non-fiction. I used to love fiction, but I think I've mostly lost my taste for it. I probably read fewer than ten novels a year, and most of 'em make no real impression on me. (That's novels, long works of fiction, as distinct from books in general. I have no idea how many books I might read in a year.) But, as I said, fiction seldom resonates with me and I usually go back to the biographies, histories and essays that entertain me the most.

My favorite novelist is probably Elmore Leonard. His books go down like candy and I try to read a couple of titles from his catalog every year. Leonard's work is just pure, escapist fun.

Sometimes I'll read fiction if it's by a favorite writer primarily known for non-fiction. C.S. Lewis is probably my favorite writer of any kind, and I raved at the blog the about how much I loved his novel Till We Have Faces. But Lewis's fiction is something else altogether. Lewis used fiction as a vehicle by which to advance the same theological themes and ideas that he put forth in his non-fiction.

And now and then I'll read a Chuck Palahniuk novel if I just want a visceral jolt. Palahniuck's work is seriously weird, but his voice is unlike any other and his best stuff is creative, thought-provoking and rewarding. I admit that I didn't enjoy the last Palahniuck novel I finished, a gruesome satire of reality television called Haunted, but I'd recommend most of his other books (especially Diary and Fight Club) to fans of subversive prose.

Now and then I'll check out a fiction genre that I'm not typically interested in, and that sometimes results in pleasurable reading. When the National Review raved about the sci-fi novel The Mote In God's Eye by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, I went out and got a copy. I was glad that I did. I enjoyed it quite a bit.

I mentioned all of that to explain why I decided to read Intensity by Dean Koontz ... and why I enjoyed it so much.

And I did enjoy it. Very much. In fact, if I'm honest, I turned the last few pages with a huge lump in my throat and immediately told my wife "You've got to read this, I think it's the best novel I've ever read."

I'd always thought of Dean Koontz as a pulp novelist, one of those guys who churns out two or three crappy horror novels a year and never really writes anything worth reading. Then the National Review profiled the guy and I read that article and found out that Dean Koontz

• is a Catholic convert


• is a conservative


• is a dog lover

.
Hmmm, I thought. Sounds like my kinda guy. I oughta read one of his books. The novel that National Review seemed to recommend most was Intensity, so I picked up a copy.

Here's the plot summary from Amazon:

A young woman staying as a guest in a Napa Valley farmhouse becomes trapped in a fight for survival with a self-proclaimed "homicidal adventurer", and races to warn his next intended victim. Unrelentingly terrifying, this book lives up to its name...

Koontz tamps down on his usual libertarian soapboxing to let the story race; which it does fast enough to give readers whiplash as they hold on to what may end up being the most viscerally exciting thriller of the year...

Turns out that Intensity is EXACTLY the kind of book I like to read. In fact, it's pretty much the perfect book for me.

Intensity is a solid, all-consuming page-turner, like Leonard's best work. Man, I could NOT put this thing down. I know that's a cliche, but it was literal in my case. I carried this book around with me for the past three days and read every time I had a few free moments.

But Intensity is also a book with a lot of theological and philosophical substance. If you like to think about what you're reading, Intensity will give you a lot to like.

The narrative tells us about the two primary characters, the killer and his hostage, primarily through internal monologues. These sequences reveal two characters at diametrically opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to issues like love, hate, human nature, and the meaning of life.

Consider what Koontz reveals about his heroine ... and about the world view that her story promotes ... in this passage from Intensity:

For a long time ... she'd known that being a victim was often a choice people made. As a child, she hadn't been able to put this insight into words, and she hadn't known why so many people chose suffering; when older, she had recognized their self-hatred, masochism, weakness.

Not all or even most suffering is at the hands of fate; it befalls us at our invitation. She'd always chosen not to be victimized, to resist and fight back, to hold on to hope and dignity and faith in the future. But victimhood was seductive, a release from responsibility and caring: Fear would be transmuted into weary resignation; failure would no longer generate guilt but, instead, would spawn a comforting self-pity.

Contrast that with the perspective of the killer she's up against:

The Big Lie is that such concepts as love, guilt, and hate are real. Put Mr. Vess into a room with any priest, show them a pencil, and they will agree on its color, size, and shape. Blindfold them, hold cinnamon under their noses, and they will both identify it from the smell. But bring before them a mother cuddling her baby, and the priest will see love where Mr. Vess will see only a woman who enjoys the sensations provided by the infant...

All men and women, in Vess's view, are fundamentally nothing other than animals--smart animals, indeed, but animals nonetheless; reptiles, in fact...

This is the philosophy of Mr. Edgler Vess. He embraces his reptilian nature. The glory of him is to be found in his unmatched accretion of sensations. This is a functional philosophy, requiring its adherent to endorse neither the black-and-white values that so hamper religious persons nor the embarrassing contradictions of the situational ethics of the modern atheist and those whose religion is politics.

While the story is, on the surface, a cat-and-mouse game between a killer and his intended victim, there is much more under the surface. Intensity is also the story of a woman who survived a traumatic childhood by learning to repress, to avoid, to cut herself off from feeling ... and who finds herself forced to assert herself, to risk everything, and to learn to trust in order to save her own life and the lives of others.

And, Intensity is the story of a self-styled pantheist, a man who recognizes that when all is sacred, nothing is sacred. A man who sees life as nothing more than opportunities to experience sensations, and who equates all sensations, with no experience having any more value than any other. Koontz's villian is someone who will literally kill someone to watch the expression on his or her face change. What's interesting about him is that he justifies his homicidal tendencies with a lot of the same language that today's pseudo-bohemians put forth as "enlightenment." There are a lot of "WOW!" moments to be had while reading this book.

The visceral thrills to be had in Intensity are enough to recommend the book on the face of it. But there is much more here if you want it. Intensity is a book with much to offer the amateur apologist, the arm-chair philosopher, and the casual reader who's just looking for a good, tight thriller. Intensity is an ambitious book that achieves everything it's author intended. The book choked me up with a powerful ending, raised goose-bumps on my skin a number of times, and left my mind swimming with thoughts about God, mankind, and the purpose of life. I've never read another novel that satisfied me on so many levels. Intensity is one to own and read and reread. It's a keeper.

Labels: Books, Personal, Politics

I'm still alive, everything is cool. Just busy at work and getting ready for surgery Thursday. The golf ball size mass that has been living in my bladder is going to be evicted. Good. I don't like it.

On the urging of a reviewer I trust I'm reading the first Dean Koontz novel I've ever read, Intensity. I have to say, much to my surprise, this book is really, really good. Good on a number of levels. It's an actual book, not pulp, with subtext and character development and an engrossing plot and subtlety and a lot to recommend it. I look forward to writing an enthusiastic review when I finish it, as long as it doesn't come apart in the last 80 pages.

Labels: Books, Personal, Trivial Matters

Sometimes you're better off knowing next to nothing about your heroes.

Like a lot of people, especially those of us who live remotely close to Washington DC, I was obsessed with the news during the beltway sniper killing spree in October, 2002. I followed the story compulsively, and I got used to seeing Montgomery County Maryland's police chief, Charles Moose, on television.

Over the three weeks of the hunt for the sniper, I became a fan of Chief Moose. There was something about the guy that struck me as very genuine. I sensed a weariness about him whenever he gave statements to the press, and I had the impression that the guy was just living on the job, day and night, until the sniper was caught.

I remember seeing him tear up when he announced that the sniper had shot a child. That moved me. And I liked that he was willing, on more than one occasion, to chastise the press for broadcasting and/or printing stories that could have jeopardized the investigation. Charles Moose struck me as a no BS kind of guy. I liked him.

You can watch a short clip of one of his statements to the press at the beginning of this episode of the Charlie Rose Show:

So I was pretty enthusiastic when I recently bought a paperback copy of Moose's book, Three Weeks In October, his highly autobiographical account of the search for the Beltway Snipers. I read the book ravenously at first, and then with increasing distaste and unease as, over the course of the work's 300-or-so pages, Charles Moose revealed himself to be a real butthole.

Moose has had his detractors since the days when the manhunt for the snipers was still ongoing. I've always been willing to give him the benefit of the doubt with regard to his police work. For one thing, anyone leading that kind of investigation is just bound to be scrutinized beyond belief. Even if he'd handled the case perfectly, there would have been those for whom his work wasn't good enough.

What bothered me about the book ... and came to bother me about Moose himself ... was the book's focus on Moose's obsession with race. Moose is, unfortunately, apparenlty one of those guys who could find racism in a can of iced tea.

Now, when a black person makes a charge of racism, I'm inclined to give them some benefit of the doubt initially. I've never been black, I've never been a minority of any kind, and I don't know what it's like to be a victim of race-based oppression. Lots of black people have been oppressed over the years, and racism continues to be a serious problem in the world ... and in more ways than one.

But Moose talks about finding racism in every little inconvenience in the world. If he has to wait in line, he's a victim of racism. If someone cuts around him in line, he's a victim of racism. If someone chastises him when he shows up at the station out of uniform, he's a victim of racism. This is the kind of guy who makes Nat X look like a pussy cat.

And as I found out after I finished the book, by reading another review, this dude is seriously sue-happy, too.

And it gets worse. Moose's accounts of his actual police work left me scratching my head, too. Moose talks about posting police officers at schools, knowing full well that it wouldn't make any positive difference, purely as a matter of PR. Wouldn't that resource have been better used in the investigation itself? And when the two snipers, John Muhaamad and Lee Malvo, were finally arrested, Moose talks about how he took the calls with that information from his bed and chose to stay in bed. He justified that by saying that it would have been insulting to his force if he'd gotten up and came in during the arrest. Whatever. All I could ask myself was "How the HELL does the leader of that investigation just STAY IN BED when the arrest is finally made?"

Granted I'm not a cop, and I don't pretend to believe that I could have done a better job than Chief Moose. Still, I have to think that it speaks to a serious defect in his leadership that he worried about PR during the largest manhunt in American history. Finding out about his thought processes and legitimizations made me seriously doubt that he's the no BS guy I thought he was.

Later in the book, Moose devotes an entire chapter to his ruminations on the fact that the two snipers were black men. Moose has bought ... and even promotes ... the hype that black people are somehow mostly immune from the evil that causes people to become serial killers. It's not true, and a police chief should know better. Any one of us, regardless of race, religion, creed, etc ... might be capable of tremendous good OR unspeakable evil. It's part of the human condition.

If you're looking for a book about the demanding, exacting police work that eventually lead to the arrest of the Beltway Snipers, keep looking. Three Weeks In October is not that book. The book didn't satisfy any of my own curiosity about the case. Instead, it tainted my appreciation of a guy I'd once admired quite a bit.

Labels: Books, Media, News

I haven't (yet) read Jonah Goldberg's book Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning, but it was recently capsulized in an issue of National Review, and I found the article both entertaining and fascinating.

The book isn't the kind of emotional smear that we Conservatives have gotten used to whenever the word fascism is used by liberals. If you oppose abortion, favor private gun ownership, or simply can't figure out how the words "gay" and "marriage" are supposed to be used in the same sentence, the liberals typically can't go two minutes of conversation without calling you a fascist. Goldberg's book isn't that kind of rhetorical hyperbole. It's an in depth, historical examination of the links between the fascism of Europe of the '30's and '40's and the liberalism of America today.

And there are a great many links. The two ideologies are, in fact, of one mind in many ways ... and there are a great many connections.

If you're interested, here are a couple of interesting articles on the book and the topic. It's really pretty cool to see the fascist skeletons hauled out of liberalism's closet this way.

Labels: Books, Media, News, Politics

Free, legal eBooks, available in a ton of different formats. No registration necessary, no strings attached, from what I can tell, no BS of any kind. Just download and read: manybooks.net.

Labels: Books

I mentioned the other day that I was reading The Mote In God's Eye by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. I don't read much science fiction, but this novel got my attention after a favorable mention in the National Review:

This 1974 novel of first contact carries lessons for conservative hawks and liberal doves. (Robert) Heinlein called it “possibly the best science-fiction novel I have ever read.”

I finished the book yesterday and I'd recommend it, especially to readers who enjoy science fiction and fiction concerned with the military, politics and philosophy. The Mote In God's Eye is an entertaining, engrossing read; at times reminding me of such disparate writers as Kurt Vonnegut, Clive Barker, Tom Clancy, Michael Crichton, John Gresham and Franz Kafka. If that sounds like a rambling, incoherent mess, it's not. This novel is really quite complete and satisfying … and what it has to say about human nature is worth reading.

…Mote… takes place some two-thousand years in the future, with mankind's Empire Of Man having colonized much of the known universe. After a series of bloody and disastrous wars of secession, the Empire finds itself weakened but focused at the start of the book, intent on putting down rebellions and reuniting mankind in the name of peace and progress. The Empire of Man is a militaristic and aristocratic one, but the aristocracy is benevolent and the military is concerned almost primarily with finding new worlds and with maintaining peace. It's in this environment that mankind makes first contact with a new species of intelligent life from another world.

There are, of course, any number of "first contact" stories out there, but few of the ones I've read or watched are as complete and well imagined as …Mote… While there are thrilling action passages in the book, there are also important and engrossing subplots involving the politics of first contact. The way contact with an alien race will effect everything from human law to religion to commerce and art is pondered, and more often than not the conclusions the novel reaches seem at once logical and amusing.

I was really quite surprised at how well the novel manages to succeed simultaneously within it's own science fiction framework and within the context of other genres. The elements of the novel concerned with the Imperial Navy are smart and entertaining, as are the elements that present themselves as political thriller and as theological fiction. A love story between the primary male and female characters is a bit less satisfying … at times it's a bit of a distraction. Nonetheless, the relationship between those two characters reminded me of something from a 1940's movie serial, and it wasn't without it's charms.

It's amazing how thoroughly Pournelle and Niven touched on topics that remain relevant today. If you'd told me that the novel had been written in the last year (instead of the early '70's), I'd have been sure that the war in Iraq had been a major influence. One character is a Muslim trader, and as the relationship between mankind and the alien race changes (sometimes violently), that character's religious faith becomes more prominent. Other characters, including a Christian Naval Chaplin and practitioners of a new astrology-based religion, are rendered fully and believably. In fact, none of the human characters fall into stereotype, and the way they develop is one of the best parts of the story.

Most satisfying of all, however, is the way …Mote… treats the alien race itself. This is a wholly "alien" race, unlike anything I'd seen or read before. The race is given motives and logic that readers can relate to, but it never dissolves into anthropomorphic symbolism. These aliens are believably alien; sometimes mysterious, sometimes horrific, sometimes plainly obvious with regard to their actions. The passages where living aliens and living humans first attempt to find a way to communicate are real page-turners.

The novel's action climaxes in the third of it's four acts: Miscommunication culminates with a bloody and downright horrifying battle that results in the loss of a Naval spacecraft. It was difficult for me not to think of video games like Halo and movies like Aliens while I read that section. While that might speak badly of me and might indicate how stifled my own imagination has become due to movies and games, it should also indicate that the movie hit all of my excitement buttons. Suffice it to say that I was totally "into it" during the battle sequences.

The fourth act might be a bit of a letdown to some readers after the climactic third act. The novel ends with a protracted and dry focus on the political implications of what's come before. Some might not like it, but for political junkies like me, it was (to borrow a phrase from C.S. Lewis) red meat and strong beer.

The Mote In God's Eye isn't for everyone, and if you have no interest in science fiction at all, you should avoid it. Nonetheless, fans of fiction involving espionage, war, theology and philosophy will find much to enjoy within this space tale. If you're looking for a summer page-turner that's fun and smart, you probably can't do much better. The Mote In God's Eye gave me lots to think about and kept a perpetual smile on my face.

Up next for me … after cleansing the pallet with a a political autobiography, I might take on the sequel to …Mote…, called The Gripping Hand.

Labels: Books, Entertainment

"Every artist is a cannibal, Every poet is a thief. All kill their inspiration And sing about their grief." - Bono

Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk is a really, really awful book. I wish I hadn’t read it. Having said that, I have to admit that when I did read it, last week, it was the major preoccupation of my free time. I couldn’t put it down, even though I regretted every new page I turned. Haunted is the literary equivalent of crack-cocaine. Once you start you can’t stop, no matter how much you want to.

Palahniuk is the writer behind Fight Club, a novel that was translated into a movie I enjoy very much. I also enjoyed two of his earlier books, Choke and Diary. Both of those books are odd, even perverse... but not too perverse. Neither of them flat out bothered me when I read them.

Stepping back from Haunted, thinking about the book as a whole, it’s fairly obvious what Palahniuk is trying to do, here. The book is an angry satire of the cult of celebrity. Palahniuk seems to be disgusted by our “reality TV” culture and the way we glorify and celebrate the worst possible behavior. I agree with the message I think the book intends to put across; that we’ve come to a place culturally where we revel in (and reward) even the most tawdry kinds of conduct on television. I agree that mass media entertainment is at an all time low. I believe, though, that in his disgust, Palahniuk has crafted a story as hideous and repugnant as the culture he’s lambasting. Maybe even more so.

The inside of the dust jacket advertises the book as a combination of The Canterbury Tales, Frankenstein, The Real World, and Alive. That’s fair, all of those elements are there. What the dust jacket doesn’t warn you about, though, is the very real gruesome level of horror that the novel conjures up. The dust jacket describes the book with words like “extreme,” “provocative,” “stomach-churning,” “mind-blowing,” and “hilarious.” Those words are fair descriptions, too. The problem is, phrases like “stomach-churning” and “extreme” have been over-used these days to the point that they don’t really mean anything.

This is a story so gruesome that reading it will literally make your stomach churn. You may, very literally, very really, have to fight back the urge to vomit.

This is a story so repugnant, so disgusting, that you may have nightmares after having read it.

All of that is fair to say about Haunted, too… and, to be honest, it’s also fair to say that the book is often laugh-out-loud funny and very, very smart.

The question is, given the strong negative reaction I had to the book, can I recommend it? Can I recommend it for it’s finer qualities in spite of it’s flaws? Can I recommend it because it did, at times, actually make me laugh out loud? Can I recommend it it for being such an addictive page-turner?

Really, I can’t.

The premise of Haunted is odd, but the satire is apparent. Haunted is the story of a writer’s retreat gone bad, told in the usual kind of exagerated Palahniuk narrative. The story is also told with poems about the characters and short stories by the characters. The organizer of the retreat really has a social experiment in mind, and he holds the writers hostage for three months. Over the course of those months, each of the captives degenerates into something sub-primitive. There isn’t a crime or an offense you can imagine that doesn’t take place at some point in Haunted. Blackmail, murder, rape, dismemberment… even sexual perversion, pedophilia, cannibalism, and self-mutilation are all elements of this story.

In order to convey the depravity of Haunted's characters, Palahniuk holds nothing sacred. Abuses are committed against people, animals, even human fetuses. This is not a book for people with delicate sensibilities. This might not even be an appropriate book for anyone with even a shred of humanity.

Palahniuk simply goes too far, and at some point he crosses the line between satirizing a corrupt culture and actually celebrating it’s depravity. I heard that same argument made against Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers, a satire of the mid 90’s obsession with crime and criminals. Personally, I didn’t feel that Stone’s movie did cross that line. I think that Natural Born Killers is a justifiably hostile critique of a culture going down the tubes. I can’t say that about Haunted. There are images in this book that, once pictured in the imagination, simply serve to horrify the reader, and do nothing else.

And yet, this is an awful age, culturally, and it really is ripe for vicious parody. It needs to be parodied. If a picture is worth a thousand words, consider the following:

Hey, there’s no getting around it… Culturally speaking, things couldn’t get much worse.

As awful as it is, Haunted is a smart book with, at it's heart, a message I agree with. I appreciate the way Palahniuk skewers the fascism of political correctness in this story. Some symbols are blatantly obvious: A group of feminists commit a horrible crime against a woman as punishment for having things they don’t possess: beauty and happiness. A college student justifies her generalized attraction to American Indians by saying “I know it’s racist, but it’s the good kind of racism.” Elite socialites abandon their fundraising events for the cause of the week, stop bathing and start eating out of dumpsters because “poverty is the new wealth.” Yes, a lot of the book is brave and bluntly honest about the hollow heart of modern times.

I credit Palahniuk for crossing lines that need to be crossed. Political correctness and the cult of celebrity are awful, destructive elements of our world today, and they should be railed against. It’s a shame that, in his anger, Palahniuk seems ready to flush everything down the toilet. With the debauchery in Haunted, Palahniuk ultimately adds to the very evil that seems to be driving him mad.

Labels: Books

I’m currently reading one of the best books I’ve ever read. It might, in fact, be the best book I’ve ever read. That is exactly what I want to say about it right now, in fact… but I feel like I should finish it before I name it the best.

Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis is really outstanding. I’m only around half way through the book and I can’t get over how good it is. Don’t get me wrong, I am a big C.S. Lewis fan, having read around 15 or so of his books. Mere Christianity is my favorite book of all time, A Grief Observed is my second favorite. Until very recently, I’ve been a much bigger fan of Lewis’ nonfiction than his fiction.

In fact, until recently, the only piece of his fictional work that I’ve enjoyed (and I loved it) was his children's classic, The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. Out Of The Silent Planet didn’t do much for me, and The Screwtape Letters probably qualifies more as parody than fiction.

Anyway, recently I started feeling guilty enough about having not read the rest of the Chronicles, so I started Prince Caspian and loved it so much that I flew through the remaining books ravenously. I couldn’t get over how good they were.

And I couldn’t get over how good Paul Ford’s Companion to Narnia is. It’s an insightful, fun, informative read, and I recommend it to anyone who enjoys Lewis.

Anyway, in the Companion, Ford identifies Till We Have Faces as Lewis’ masterpiece. That was all I needed to know.

Like I said, I’m about half way through …Faces, and I cannot get over how good it is. I can’t remember the last time I read a work of fiction this compelling. Vonnegut once said that a good fiction writer tells us the truth about ourselves by telling us lies about people who don’t exist. With that in mind, I’d say that …Faces is probably the most honest book I’ve ever read. Passages from the book have literally given me cold chills.

If this book is as good in the second half as it has been in the first, I’m confident that I’ll call it the best book I’ve ever read. Even if the second half falls apart, the first half has been so good that I have to recommend the book without hesitation.

Labels: Books