This is a list of my top 10 favorite books I read in 2019 from best to tenth best. Thank you to everyone who read/ commented on/ 'Liked' my reviews thThis is a list of my top 10 favorite books I read in 2019 from best to tenth best. Thank you to everyone who read/ commented on/ 'Liked' my reviews this year.
1. The Manifold Destiny of Eddie Vegas, by Rick Harsch 2. Sea Above, Sun Below, by George Salis 3. Phosphor in Dreamland, by Rikki Ducornet 4. The Outsider, by Richard Wright 5. Endangered Species, by Gene Wolfe 6. Peace, by Gene Wolfe 7. The Land at the End of the World, by Antonio Lobo Antunes 8. Perdido Street Station, China Mieville 9. Pizza Girl, by Jean Kyoung Frazier 10. Ghosts, by Morio Kita
Other books I read this year are listed on my 2019 shelf. ...more
Wodehouse may be the most comic writer from his time. This book, in a consummately British, very moist audiobook reading, was constantly hilarious. ThWodehouse may be the most comic writer from his time. This book, in a consummately British, very moist audiobook reading, was constantly hilarious. This author's use of similes might be unequaled. The wordy acrobatics he pulls off juxtaposes a mundane setting for bumbling characters. The prevalent theme is money, and how it is variously lost and gained, in relatively trifling amounts by people who just can't resist themselves. Featuring lost Pekinese, stamp collections and top hats. Don't expect earth-shattering dramatic panoplies but endlessly entertaining small-time antics. Even if many situations are interchangeable, they are wonderfully wild....more
Mieko Kawakami's novel Breasts and Eggs is a bold literary statement and another first person, modern, feminist novel from Japan. Staking a claim amonMieko Kawakami's novel Breasts and Eggs is a bold literary statement and another first person, modern, feminist novel from Japan. Staking a claim among literary celebrities like Banana Yoshimoto, Hiromi Kawakami, Natsuo Kirino, and Yoko Ogawa, it would almost appear that the future of Japanese Literature is female. It would make sense, in a way, since its past was male though and through with the notable exception of Murasaki's monumental Tale of Genji. I first heard of M. Kawakami when I read her short stories in Monkey Business and various anthologies. All of the stories were good. Her first novel in English, called Ms. Ice Sandwich, was disappointingly simple, unmemorable, and almost unmentionable. This work is far more complex, substantial and controversial.
Mieko Kawakami is one of the few Japanese authors I know of who has been granted interview time with the reclusive Haruki Murakami. In fact, Murakami was so taken by this book, that he announced his new favorite Japanese author, namely, Mieko Kawakami. She then went on to do a book length interview with the literary superstar. Hopefully we will get this interview in English soon.
The novel was quite uneven in my opinion. The first 40% I would rate 5 stars, the last 30% would get 4 stars and the middle 30% would earn 2 stars. The voice took on entrancing rhythm from the start, as intimate and easy to read as I had hoped. An absorbing, fast-paced chronicle involving complicated family issues ensued, including the ramifications of plastic surgery and some relatively common concerns and reminiscences of a young girl in the modern age. A very readable and rewarding first part overall. The second part falls into many tedious repetitions on the theme of fertility and the morality of artificial insemination. If you can get through it you will be rewarded by a satisfactory ending. The main character is a writer who offers us another cliched and idealistic view of the writerly life. Do writers really spend 90% of their time in restaurants discussing their meals and their work with literati? Hemingway would have you think so. Kawakami loads her novel with table conversations, and wastes our time with the inaccurate writer's complaints. Do writers really have to fend off their editors in person with clever dog-ate-my-manuscript excuses? Of course, she has writer's block - almost never touches the keyboard, yet still embodies all of the qualities we have come to associate with the ideal writer figure. She is an artist, who can't be rushed. You might begin to notice the influence of Haruki Murakami at this point. Yet, the protagonist's fixation with childbirth, its unfeasible application to her own ambition, and the relationships, hardships and sacrifices involved paint the picture of a self-absorbed artist on an existential ego trip. The character mentions this in the book, pointing out her own flaws. I commend the author for her well-rounded exploration, but the obsession infiltrates the plot so heavily that it weighs the book down for a large part.
Toward the end of the novel, many moral issues are explored with erudition and insight. Kawakami is an astute observer, and very confident in her ability to wrangle emotion out of the reader. She doesn't shirk or bow politely, she cooks up charm and smarm and really goes for broke sometimes. There is a scene detailing a meeting with a potential sperm donor that had me laughing out loud. It was the kind of masterful confrontation Murakami could have written. I was highly intrigued by Kawakami's stance or explanation of the value and demerits of sexual relationships. How they stand in stark contrast to Murakami's portrayal of sex in his novels was fascinating. It is not always productive to assume that just because a writer's main character is a writer who treats women like objects, that the writer treats women like objects. Or is it? Does writing about mistreating women constitute mistreating women? Kawakami faces off with Murakami's controversial female characters by lambasting male character tropes. She bashes men throughout the novel and takes a firm moral stance on women rights while exploring the emotional content of fertility choices. It is a vast and moving essay on the matter and an entertaining coming of age story.
The painful flaw of this novel lies in the repetition, which Murakami's style suffers from as well. It is a sort of dumbing down of the themes. But the themes are still there. The characters, their voices, and the strangled atmosphere of Japanese polite educated class strugglers tugged at my nostalgic love for Japan's literary past. I really adored parts of Breasts and Eggs, and you should give it a read.
An unconventional noir novella with the distinct flavor of Mieville and Lovecraft, and a dash of hashtag Elder Gods mythos thrown in. Entertaining if An unconventional noir novella with the distinct flavor of Mieville and Lovecraft, and a dash of hashtag Elder Gods mythos thrown in. Entertaining if a bit brief, and ecstatic if a bit forced, it is nonetheless a daring mishmash of fun otherworldly ideas....more
I devoured this scrumptious coming-of-age novel in two sittings. On the level of voice, character development, and humor it struck all the right chordI devoured this scrumptious coming-of-age novel in two sittings. On the level of voice, character development, and humor it struck all the right chords. It's Catcher in the Rye with a female lead, more modern, more swear words, and just more adult. Easily a cult classic, it was one of the most memorable and enjoyable books I read all year.
I will gladly read anything else the author puts out. For a first novel, it sizzles. It never stumbles, falters or cowers. From the gorgeous cover to the immersive rhythm, the pages flew by. Who doesn't love a saucy narrator? Taking the first person internal monologue to new heights, JKF lathers each chapter with alluring, intimate details, enough to overwhelm anyone's emotional arteries. The novel explores love, in all of its myriad forms, friendship, commitment, lassitude, drudgery, modern ennui, and the angst that has become inescapable in our culture.
A thrilling, bold, timeless literary statement, not a junk food entertainment....more
While I admire M. Robinson's writing ability I found the messages in this book plain as day. The ideas and character emotions were well-conveyed but dWhile I admire M. Robinson's writing ability I found the messages in this book plain as day. The ideas and character emotions were well-conveyed but did not require much analysis or interpretation. What I'm trying to say is that cut and dry situations, and some repetitive concepts added up to an unimpressive whole.
I don't fault the author for using compelling language to explicate worthy themes, but I found almost nothing new in the characters, setting, or circumstances described. Nonetheless, I can see that the down-to-earth protagonist and heartfelt moments in this book appeal to a lot of people out there and I respect that. I may read her other novels in the future to see if they strike me more....more
I was not prepared for this novel. I thought, Vollmann has been called "a Pez dispenser of career-capping megavolumes." Maybe starting with a 275-pageI was not prepared for this novel. I thought, Vollmann has been called "a Pez dispenser of career-capping megavolumes." Maybe starting with a 275-pager would be "easier" than tackling one of the solid bricks, denser than Neolithic ice, of his other books.
It was devastating.
Sprinkled with his occasionally grotesque pen drawings of naked women crouching in surreal jungles, I only became impressed after the first dozen pages. I noticed trademark integrated dialogue. No quotation marks, like ticker tape reportage, narrative suggestions scattering like frightened butterflies.
The first part, taking place in America, establishes the narrator's psychological need for women, which he calls love. This does not translate into respect for their bodies, but into a morbid obsession and a helpless compulsion in the face of a raging libido.
Michel Houellebecq, most notably in Platform, came to mind during the sections in Croatia, Turkey and Cambodia. In fact, you might plaster Michel's face onto the journalist's body if you want to have a laugh. But the protagonist is clearly both suicidal and self-destructive. I began to sink into the aggressive prose, so hypnotic and immersive that I actually had to force myself out of the trance of reading to take breaks.
WTV conjures an incredible sense of place, laced with existential terror, as he describes with crude elegance and constantly surprising word choice the underbellies of undeveloped places, and the downtrodden people who suffer there, in the semblance of what they can only call living. And yet, the mouthpiece of the novel observes greatness in people in proportion to how much suffering they've endured.
It evolves into a novel of compressed experience and expressed progression toward moral outrage. Combining reverence and disgust for the sanctity of the human body with righteous indignation and clinical frankness. Ryu Murakami's In the Miso Soup used shock value to jolt the reader out of comfort zones, and propel the narrator into existential crises. I recalled the subliminal layers in Bataille's Story of the Eye, and with chills, let the heat and lusciously cloying atmosphere of this book supersede those experiences...
It is about a journalist fascinated with women, who possesses a sympathy and desire for prostitutes to an unhealthy degree, who embraces dichotomies, and relishes monstrous depravity while somehow exuding moral forthrightness, and a disdain for ruling oppressors. He becomes the embodiment of the butterfly which first drew him in in childhood, this motif - the flighty, nectar-craving, frail being, the soul cocooned in flesh.
Unlike William S. Burroughs, I got the sense that the author was in complete control of his powers, and letting his mind slide into dark corners, far beneath the everyday stomping grounds of polite society. The audacious style and the uncanny realism of the pinyin English (or the Khmer equivalent) are inimitable. It was a quick read, comprised of a couple hundred micro-chapters, exploring unapologetically, the tenderness latent in troubled hearts, the pathos buried in human contact, with affectionate regard for love's myriad forms and manifestations.
Vollmann is clearly the enfant terrible of American letters. A writer Pynchon himself could read and enviously admire. It goes without saying that he is well-read, well-traveled, and that his overwhelming talent has produced well-researched unmerciful tomes, determined to take up as much shelf space as humanly conceivable, unconcerned with appealing to a wide audience, and so he remains, quietly toiling in his unadorned warehouse, chronicling the inner workings of the human psyche, which mirror the gearboxes of the macrocosmic world.
If you are brave enough to read this book, you will encounter, among the dross of startling human-insects, the stark inner need for human comfort, bought and sold, in a land deprived of warmth and humanity. Concluding brilliantly in Thailand, and the Arctic, converging in a surreal spiral, like the butterfly's pulsing proboscis, tunneling toward internal, dissipating hellscapes, inescapable ends, dread and somnolent nescience, having traversed the dives and infested hotels and brothels of war-torn, bomb-penetrated landscapes on the edge of inhabitability - "To gain more wisdom than others one must do abnormal things."
And with these disturbing images, and in these daunting mental zones, we discover unadulterated beauty, or our fragile hearts make something beautiful out of what we find there....more
Simple straightforward observations on the 4 types of love. Basic information that can enrich anyone's understanding of human relationships. Listened Simple straightforward observations on the 4 types of love. Basic information that can enrich anyone's understanding of human relationships. Listened to the only recording of the author himself via audiobook. The four categories are Storge (near relations), Philia (friendship), Eros (obvious), and Agape (God). These Greek concepts are nothing new. But the parallels and clear examinations of human interaction Lewis writes about are timeless....more
Another well-done production from Open Letter Press. Great cover, good book.
A Gessel Dome, as the introduction explains, is the two-way mirror used toAnother well-done production from Open Letter Press. Great cover, good book.
A Gessel Dome, as the introduction explains, is the two-way mirror used to observe, suspects, children and animals in a "natural environment." This is the perfect double entendre to describe Villa Gesell, a real place, much like every other tourist town, except for the undercurrent of racism, sodomy, pedophilia, incest, murder, gang violence, mass rape, pillaging, burglary, gossip, blackmail, adultery, and every other imaginable corruption Saccomanno describes with journalistic detachment. The sentences are short, but the stories are dense. Probably gleaned from thousands of newspaper accounts, the author compiled short sections in this novel, centering the events around recurring main characters, and interpolating occasional commentary, snide humor, and reflections.
Overall, I found the author's method engrossing and effective. Spread over 600 pages, this technique of recounting gruesome incidents, one after another, without much framework or context, felt a little like scanning newspapers in a particularly grisly time and place, trying to solve some sort of case, the extent of which keeps expanding infinitely in every direction. It was as if he picked out the worst and most representative parts of journalism's intellectual territory and pasted them together in a sociopathic album.
It is easy to believe that the author wrote for film and cartoons, given the absurd level of antics he includes. The sheer number of events and the amount of perversity strains credibility, but it is satirical in its use of the subject matter. The book has one foot in the realm of pulp fiction and the other planted fully in the arena of great literature. The use of short sentences is key. It is written in a quickly paced, fully fleshed style, cyclical and recursive, mirroring the mindset of addiction, of consumption, of sin, and encouraging the reader to race forward in an ever-increasing enthusiasm, throwing caution and morality to the high winds. But those jettisoned scruples are the same ones that hover accusingly in our wake.
There is continual reaffirmation that the plots occur on the same street corners as one another, right around the corner from the last atrocity, in the same neighborhood, the same stores and bars, where the same sorry individuals relive these horrendous crimes and tragedies, until the grotesque level of death, sexuality, miscarriages, brutality, etc., become a microcosm, the opposite of the Garden of Eden, or a prison...
"We are strangers to ourselves." We know more about strangers than we know about ourselves - that is what the Dante tells us. He is the aptly named narrator. The storyteller, though he is not immune to partaking in the derelict culture of the domain that is his jurisdiction. He is the one publishing the events in the Villa, and many people blame him for spreading the virus of their own troubles.
A cacophony of voices confessing, accusing, and hectoring, but rarely taking responsibility for their ethical failures, the tragedies depend as much on human folly as on Fate's whimsy. Like characters observed in a fish tank, the reader will pick out favorites from the catalogue of vice, men and women in their darkest moments, much like the menu of death served up in Bolaño's 2666.
The gritty, grisly, suicidal town is also concerned with the symbolic construction of a sewer system that will clear out all of the accumulated stink and pave the way for greater commerce and an influx of purity into their lives. Really, they just want more tourists to come next season and drop a dime. What tourist would want to come to such a place, the reader wonders? And we all know things are not going to get any better for these people. They have dug themselves so deep, what hope is there for them? It is rather sad, if a bit entertaining to vicariously experience their cruel existences.
The Villa is defined by the scandals within it. "Los abusaditos," the victims of child abuse, brutally described throughout the novel, brought up like a dark stain on the inhabitants' consciences, are a shared responsibility, and the focal point in the whole state of affairs, while the underfunded police force, complain about their lack of car batteries and weapons, their inability to clean up the festering corpse of a community they call home.
I enjoyed the parallel to "Waiting for Godot," which the townsfolk bastardize and interpret in their own way. In fact, I enjoyed all of it, and will read more by this author....more
A short, well-conceived time travel scenario, larger in scale than other time adventure stories I've read, with a compelling narrator and some unexpecA short, well-conceived time travel scenario, larger in scale than other time adventure stories I've read, with a compelling narrator and some unexpected fantasy creature interactions. Overall, a solid Leiber production. His work is cinematic and more flexible than other Golden Age of science fiction authors. By that I mean that you can enter his body of work almost anywhere and feel at home. At least, I felt myself wondering what the big deal was the first time I read other authors in that group. With Leiber, I felt an affinity. Not an all-encompassing, powerful affinity, but a comfortable one.
There is a war going on between the spiders and snakes. The definitions of those creatures are not what you expect. You can expect to have a good time with alternate histories, and it is an easy, light, enjoyable read....more
Calvino's lectures, prepared but not delivered late in his career, are just as thought-provoking as his fiction. He discusses some key, broad aspects Calvino's lectures, prepared but not delivered late in his career, are just as thought-provoking as his fiction. He discusses some key, broad aspects of literature, and his personal discoveries of certain propulsive forces in writing. His discussion of Multiplicity I found most interesting, and the way he categorized encyclopedic and plural texts. It will certainly aid your understanding if you are already familiar with Flaubert, Gadda, Balzac, Ovid, Dante, Boccaccio, Shakespeare, Mann, Goethe, Poe, Borges, Calvino, Leopardi, Eliot, Joyce, Perec, da Vinci and more, but familiarity is by no means required for enjoyment. Skillfully, Calvino ropes in the work of all of these authors, outlines their methods in some measure and suggests how precisionism or autodidacticism or lightness and suggestion led into the completion or success of the work. By handling a wide range of styles and general approaches, Calvino offers a splendid viewpoint of artistic achievements of the mind.
There are many quotes, especially from the Zibaldone, which could have used some condensation. But it is easy to see how Calvino's own work, such as If On a Winter's Night, Cloven Viscount, Baron in the Trees, Nonexistent Knight, Invisible Cities, Palomar, Cosmicomics and other books, were inspired by literary predecessors, and he even reveals the sparks of intuitive imagination that led to their shape and form....more
4.5 stars. My first encounter with R. A. Laugh-ferty. His humor and cleverness are quite astounding. He sets up gags and jokes in the middle of serious4.5 stars. My first encounter with R. A. Laugh-ferty. His humor and cleverness are quite astounding. He sets up gags and jokes in the middle of serious situations. His humor is often so unexpectedly outrageous it is harrowing. He made me catch my breath and squint my eyes. It is all a matter of subverting expectations. And he has a way of throwing out an offensively absurd line and then justifying it a few lines later. Anything can happen at any moment. And yet it all adds up to a satisfying conclusion.
In several of the stories, RAL seems to be commenting on Capitalism, contraception, xenophobia, economy, relationships, mortality, and conventional science fiction tropes. But often, it is impossible to separate straight satire from facetious propaganda.
These stories are wacky, gruesome, inappropriate, hilarious, abstract, and still compact. They operate almost entirely on dream-logic, and are guaranteed to baffle and entertain. A few times I was ready to move on, in the sense that I felt I had already gotten the joke, but he felt the need to throw in a few more punch lines. His wit is ripe though, and holds up well with the passage of time. Some of the stories are re-readable in my opinion, but knowing the plot-twists, or predicting them can ruin part of the fun. He still reads like a Golden Age science fiction author, and can run circles around some of his contemporaries as far as plot goes.
My only gripe is his choppy, chunky, rough sentence structure. Occasionally reminiscent of Philip K. Dick's sloppily constructed, contrari-wise, underachieving sentences, Lafferty's take some getting used to. But he is worth it. The clownish antics border on bizzaro-genius....more
Of course I read this without knowing it was part of a series, and not the first part, and of course I haven't read the others.
Nonetheless, it was a Of course I read this without knowing it was part of a series, and not the first part, and of course I haven't read the others.
Nonetheless, it was a quaint study of characters, which shows that Lackey can write traditional courting tales, and put twists on fae myths and delicate forms of fantasy. It was not an action-packed story, but it didn't need to be. Curiously, this is the second Lackey audiobook I've listened to, and the second in which there is a production of Midsummer Night's Dream. Perhaps it will become a motif throughout her immense body of work, or perhaps it was a coincidence.
I know with time and considering the large number of her audiobooks available at my library, I'll be able to piece together many more elements of her style and world-building. Even so, this was a satisfying listen, if only for the fact that it offered plenty of Welsh and British flavoring as regards the atmosphere and dialogue.
The characters are not as stand-out as the ones I met in Hunter, but I would obviously need to find the other myriad volumes in this intricately plotted series of element masters, or wizards, really, and I am not opposed to doing so....more
For the first novel by this author I have listened to on audiobook, I was entertained most of the way through. Mercedes Lackey has written an infiniteFor the first novel by this author I have listened to on audiobook, I was entertained most of the way through. Mercedes Lackey has written an infinite number of novels - by which I mean I know I will never be able to read them all. (Seriously, look at that bibliography...) Taking this one as an example, it is part of a trilogy taking place in a dystopian world full of storybook creatures and built upon centuries of fantasy cliches. However, it justifies the use of many of the tropes through clever loopholes in its own world-building. I will list some pluses and minuses.
Pluses: an easy read or listen. Lackey does not seem any worse or any better at writing than Ann Leckie. The suspiciously similar last name notwithstanding, I was more engaged by Hunter than I was by Ancillary Justice. Whereas Lackey writes prolifically, Leckie seems to scoop up all the awards and acclaim. I prefer an industrious writer working from the shadows.
I was surprised by the dark tone, the violent action sequences and the fast pacing. Strong suspension of disbelief is required. Humorous bloodthirsty gnome-like monstrosities and other nightmarish hoards. The world-building actually does its job. Functional post-apocalypse where conflict is essentially guaranteed for eternity. (I used this same approach for my serialized novel.)
Minuses: Cardboard side characters. Unlikeable 1st person heroine. Seriously, the biggest let-down is that main character. What if she had been similar to Poul Anderson's main character from Broken Sword? It would have been a much more enjoyable read. World-building shortcuts. Heavy reliance on cliches. Clashing tones. Anti-religious themes that don't seem to add anything to the plot. The magic system could've been more interesting. I don't require plausible explanations, but advanced tech + super powers without any literary invention is tough to swallow.
I actually feel like listening to the sequel's audiobook. Despite my reservations, it was still competent. I have been a lot less enthusiastic about certain Niven, Sheckley, Heinlein, Anderson, and Silverberg disgraces. (See my 2star shelf). ...more
Monsu held the butterfly uterus in the open palm of his right hand. Its skin fibers gently pulsed. In the end, it took flight, not through the mechaniMonsu held the butterfly uterus in the open palm of his right hand. Its skin fibers gently pulsed. In the end, it took flight, not through the mechanical beating of lepidoptera, but by undulations within the gelatinous medium, the way transparent beings on the bottom of the ocean proceed dreamlike through the abyss. P. 458
This book is nuts. In ways reminiscent of snatches of William S. Burroughs. But Cărtărescu's approach to the novel appears to stem from a deep appreciation for poetry. His habitual use of arcane scientific terms can only be intentional, geared toward, one would hope, precise observation and the enhancement of photo-realistic depictions alongside the dreamlike, demented transformations and unholy images recorded by the detached narrator. It's enchanting, unnerving and brilliant. But it would be easy to pick apart his hastily conjured juxtapositions. Death and birth, death and sex, death and lust, death and dreams, and lots of skeletons, both sentient and inanimate, human and animal, all cut a jig through the tormented landscape of post-war Romania. Wallpapered with more butterflies than the books of Nabokov, the texture and tone puts me in mind of a wild Dia de los Muertos procession, an exaggerated show of fanciful horror. Every ingredient under the sun makes it into his witch's brew, concocted for sheer entertainment. Even the above quotation, while elegant in its imagery, requires a leap of faith. You must suspend your disbelief and turn off your critical faculty. The only way to enjoy this luscious prose is to 'see it' rather than 'read it.' Flaws of logic make way for jungles of interpretation and labyrinths of the imagination.
Blinding thrives on impressionism. It follows its omniscient eye through uncanny valleys of hospital nightmares and filthy streets, where coupling ghosts wreak havoc alongside childish phantasms. He stirs in helpings of philosophy and sprinkles in holy relics. The author challenges your mind while delighting the senses. Many will be offended, as he does not shirk away from fluids and acts often better left in the dark, but his brand of magical realism casts wide nets, roping in astral projections, macrocosmic wombs, and ending in an unwelcome exegesis. Luckily, Mircea eases the reader into his madness, describing lengthy family and community rituals, focussing his intense author's lens on the finest of details, tackling every topic you can think of, while descending into moments of traditional coming-of-age narration. Truly this is how I would have liked My Struggle by Karl Ove Knausgård to read. This is more imposing, acerbic writing. You can learn from his fantastic gravitas, whereas Realism so often strikes me as pointless reiterations of thoughts and emotions that are all too familiar. If done right, this is not always the case, of course.
Once again, prepare for long descriptions, flights of fancy, and an uncontrolled narrative. This will obviously rub many readers the wrong way. It cannot be called autobiography unless you consider Dante's Inferno autobiographical as well. Nor is it strictly a dream diary. Much effort went into the craft of the sentences, even if the scattering of the themes and watering down of the plot inevitably followed. It is also a remarkable feat of translation that we can read this in English and still be astounded at the density of invention on display.
This novel is a bold experiment and a delight to read. It sustains a high pitch of aesthetic value and political relevance. It relishes, celebrates and shames human anatomy, religion symbols, and urban squalor. Like Pessoa, Cărtărescu lives vicariously through dreaming. Welcome to his madhouse, watch your step, when you come out the other side, the world may not look quite the same......more
Arthur Machen is, along with Blackwood and Bierce and Clark Ashton Smith, an early proponent of weird/ supernatural horror fantasy. Whereas Lovecraft Arthur Machen is, along with Blackwood and Bierce and Clark Ashton Smith, an early proponent of weird/ supernatural horror fantasy. Whereas Lovecraft seemed to revere Dunsany, Machen's influence is not as apparent. He seems to inhabit the outskirts of literature, as no one's favorite.
From the get-go The Hill of Dreams radiates an aura of 'masterpiece.' In my opinion, there are only a few books so polished, so evocative, and so articulate in the English language. It is so precise in its description, that its surreal landscapes and Lovecraftian visions are truly bone-chilling. The narrator, while cliched in some ways by today's standards, is incredibly rigorous in his intellectual pursuits. More so than Machen's other works, this one is the quintessential suggestively occult work of genius.
Like Clark Ashton Smith, Machen had some roots and understanding of poetry. The poetic sensibility is clear and resonating throughout this work. In some ways, the publishing details and coming-of-age revelations serve to ground the magic and dream aspects well, while giving the reader a break from the heady mixture of logic-defying structures of imagery.
I can't think of any novels where the scenery is whipped up into a literary froth as well as in this one. There is a depth of emotion alongside a continually surprising atmosphere of longing and subtle perversions. It is the story of an artist, who changes his perception to better suit his ideals. This idealism is endearing, and we are given over to his delight and maddening setbacks because he is enchanted by a majestic muse.
Prose so rich you have to sip it. And, incredibly, the best Librivox recording I have ever found....more
The Driftless Zone is the first book in the Driftless Trilogy, and Rick Harsch's first novel. You will notice very quickly that the author"Noirdreams"
The Driftless Zone is the first book in the Driftless Trilogy, and Rick Harsch's first novel. You will notice very quickly that the author is a virtuoso of the English language, with a talent equal to Jack Kerouac's, but a voice all his own.
The driftless zone is what the small city becomes once all the beautiful, brilliant and productive citizens have left for greener pastures. It is grotesque and narrow and corrupt. This setting is ripe for luscious and wry observations from the viewpoint of Spleen, and the derelict denizens that drift through his mystifying life. This is where dreams and slow burn Noir converge, and the loneliness of urban nomads, unattached pseudo-humans, and upstream swimmers in the dirty undercurrent meet in the commerce of want, the joy of dissolution, and the haunt of hurt. We explore through the dark and elegant poetry of Harsch's productive prose, which constantly reaches further than rhythm and words, straddling deep alleys of meaning and collage, the startling peculiarities of these city slickers. Undoubtedly, the atmosphere and ripe imagery will linger indefinitely in the mind. Coupled with pigeons, fish and mayflies, engaged in their own arcane microcosmic tragedies, a superstitious and constantly curious main character encapsulates the themes and accompanying conflicts with cinematic aplomb. Sprinkled with morsels of philosophy, this book operates through complex sentences injected with poetic meaning, such as:
"Between buildings softened by the thick mist moths live their absurd looping lives out in the skirts of doomed light."
The language requires you to slow down, chew and savor the intense flavor of the words.
As the players endlessly try to outrun destiny, responsibility, and even meaning their lives of desperate flight, escape and tension had my eyes riveted to the page....more
A flagship shelf-stopper from the stellar River Boat Books.
Is this book for you? At over half a million words, it's likely to keep you busy for a whiA flagship shelf-stopper from the stellar River Boat Books.
Is this book for you? At over half a million words, it's likely to keep you busy for a while. Luckily, the beginning is rhythmic and fast-paced. The layered complexities and dense historical detail comes later, once you get to know some key players, are acclimatized to the atmosphere, and once you revel with these frolicsome rogues for a while. In terms of difficulty, it is about as challenging as Cloud Atlas, but more than twice as long, with similarly strung together novellas, all differing in form and content and characters. It also brings to mind The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll for this reason, but The Mad Patagonian, in the end, is its own chimerical self.
As detailed in the fabulous introduction, there are many affinities between this book and Bolaño's work, and it is a safe bet that if you enjoyed 2666, you'll find joy in this expansive new offering. Due to the shifting perspective and kaleidoscopic contexts inherent in the novel, I would call the introduction required reading, if not part of the novel - a tenth layer hidden in plain sight - and it may benefit your reading experience to peruse the articles on the publisher's website after you have completed the last page, to better untangle the history of the book, its themes and integral motifs.
Rife with references to poetry, philosophy, theology, mysticism, pop culture, conspiracies, history, and much more, it does not often get bogged down by erudition or allusion. From the start, its capacity to engage the reader stems from its creative use of language and characters.
The novel explores, among a vast quantity of other themes, the pursuit of paradise, the possibility of salvation, redemption, and oblivion, and multigenerational connections, vendettas and familial gravitas and the inheritance of culture. Coherence and the malleability of history is one of its main preoccupations, leading to diverging interpretations and recursive speculation by the various narrators, protagonists and bit players.
Partaking of some elements of noir, it also experiments with barroom storytelling, police procedure, the epistolary form, diary entries, historical reportage, journalistic techniques, dream sequences, straight up surrealism and magical realism, hyperrealism (in terms of detail-oriented description), tropes of the bildungsroman, palimpsests and parallel perceptions of metaphysical reality, and a myriad of other belletristic incarnations.
Boiling it all down would never give you, the potential reader, an accurate portrait of this voluminous literary undertaking. But the key components, or driving forces of much of the chronicle are the following: impermanence, inner peace versus outer peace, the political nature of writing and the responsibility of the writer to embody the revolutionary spirit, the 'fragile mirror of our misplaced aspirations,' rebirth and renewal of the human spirit beneath the tyranny of history and cultural expectations, disappearance and the anonymity of the struggling artist, solitude versus the sacred ties of family, God's creation and man's relationship to Him, the question of whether He needs us or we need Him, a journey through the mythic realms of the past, existentialist crises and the idealist delusions of youth, the power of the imagination, the abyss of the self, the personal interpretations and quest for a satisfactory paradise, paranoia in government and relationships, the destructive and instinctual power of sexuality, religious atonement, dissolution and corruption, the transitory nature of art, the function of UFOs, inescapable uncertainty, despair and ephemeral beauty - but the more I seek to summarize, the more essential content falls by the wayside. A proper study of this book's inner recesses would necessitate a professional thesis.
Taking place primarily in Florida, Cuba and Spain, it also includes jaunts to other exotic locales, as the outreaching tentacles of war and suffering between disparate factions and progeny converge symbolically while they diversify in personification. We are confronted with unreliable narrators and criminals, along with a varied cast of outcasts, each with their own burden of hang-ups, fears, ambitions, and lusts.
The influences, according to the Introduction, of Salinger, Henry Miller, Borges (including a cameo), Cortázar, Bolaño, de Sade, Vila-Matas, Kafka, Breton, Dante, Foucault, and Nietzsche can be found in the pages to follow. But the tone - what about that? It is reminiscent of nostalgic Hollywood stills, moments in archival film, sepia-tone landscapes peopled primarily by Latin American men and women, wandering a lush, urban apocalypse of cardboard sunsets, dragging behind them like disembodied spirits their multitudinous coping mechanisms, the evidence of their own authenticity, the internal maps of escape to Devilish liaisons, always surrounded by Consumerist empires, haunted by the voices of crushed cultures, desire-laden ghosts, hypocritical tyrants, and festering with metropolitan numbness, they are the boiled beach bums and beached angelic dolphins, epitomizing shame, exasperation, and humiliation in the face of murder, depravity, disenchantment and a strangely symbolic omnipresent man with a metal detector, while their looming innocence and lost opportunities, the radiance of their souls within their bodies, their self-defeating investigations of wrongdoings, allow them to brave the seas of their own mortality, crossing an "ocean of trouble" to "paint their newborn self across the sky." Amid this crippling self-awareness and shattered faith is a tempest of doubt. Angels constantly dance on the point of a needle, and hallucinogenic, tilted reality reigns until the half-crazed rantings of our subconscious minds smack of prophecy and the ripples of our decisions are cast into the sullied sea of the future. The idea of cellular memory and reincarnation and the alternatives to the Catholic staples of belief are integrated into the legends of downtrodden representatives of the human race in this thorny masterpiece, effectively blurring the edges of its liminal space until the fictive corpus drifts into our cerebral firmament to subsume our simple complacency.
And yet. The chaos within us makes us human.
We must either accept the way the world is, or at least as it appears to be, and so we must buy into the propaganda that imprisons everyone else. Or we must embrace the world as we think it should be, what some would call paradise. But we must choose, and whatever we choose will be considered madness by those who would have made a different choice.
Life is a sort of post-traumatic stress induced by birth, and it only gets more harrowing as you age toward inescapable death. How we deal with this tragedy we call living is either our downfall or legacy.
Now, I am wondering if I am coming down with some kind of strange Patagonian madness....more
D by Z by D D Katz is Bizarro. Coming into it expecting anything else will raise zombie-colored flags in milliseconds. And to think I did. And encountD by Z by D D Katz is Bizarro. Coming into it expecting anything else will raise zombie-colored flags in milliseconds. And to think I did. And encountered feral mimes on my way in, and then spiraled back, and laughed, entranced ecstatically, I swear I did, on every page. Because almost every book can teach you something you didn't know about writing and thinking, noticeably this one, and repeatedly, as in the concept of surprise and delight, which occurs inevitably behind each door - even the one behind the toilet roll dispenser. A quick and mind-altering laugh and memorable, irreverent scenes makes for a pleasantly dispensed tale, which, through unapologetic satire, is fresh. It is a random collage of dream-logic, but in many instances the author rewards brain-usage. Unconventional chills, thrills and automobiles but not a single zamboni in sight......more
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