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| 0316724440
| 9780316724449
| 0316724440
| 3.74
| 13,100
| 1990
| 1990
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it was amazing
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Scored a first-edition hardcover (sadly sans dust jacket but I think I'll get over it) from one of my favorite used book stores. Love. (Real review liv Scored a first-edition hardcover (sadly sans dust jacket but I think I'll get over it) from one of my favorite used book stores. Love. (Real review lives here.) ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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not set
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Jan 08, 2013
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Hardcover
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| B0DSZWVB4W
| 4.44
| 71,060
| May 19, 2009
| May 19, 2009
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liked it
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(Some spoilers for both the show and the graphic novel herein. I tried not to include too many. You have been warned.) Okay. Forget everything you know (Some spoilers for both the show and the graphic novel herein. I tried not to include too many. You have been warned.) Okay. Forget everything you know and hear me out: Zombies are the great equalizing scourge. One of the first books my younger self fell hopelessly in love with (which probably explains an awful lot) was Stephen King's "The Stand." The book's been out for, like, more than three decades, so it's your own fault if this is a spoiler but all you need to know for this review of an entirely different creature is that a government-wrought super plague has wiped out something like 99.4% of the population, leaving the American survivors to be led by moral compasses/epically fucked-up dreams to their fated good-or-evil faction. Having watched society repeatedly crumble away so many times through this particular King-colored lens has left me kind of immune to dispatches from the end of the civilization as we know it -- y'know, in the literary sense. Being one of the most affecting reads of my formative years, "The Stand" is also, for better or worse, what I can't help but measure other end-of-days fiction by. I've mentally revisited it quite a bit in the past few years (the stuff of that tale is lodged in my brainmeats for always because, whatever your opinion of Sai King is, the guy paints some uncomfortably visceral, lingering images) as my own longstanding zombie fascination has invariably led me to books like "World War Z" and (somewhat regrettably) "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies" and I suppose "Night of the Assholes" counts, too, since bizarro zombies are still zombies and dozens of undead-themed flicks and marathons of "The Walking Dead," which ALWAYS end in a few nights of zombie-related nightmares (just once, there were kitties to make the whole nocturnal shebang less horrifying). The thing about the apocalyptic scenario in "The Stand" (and other media that take the disease route to decimating humanity) is that there's no cure, no battle plan, no hope of survival beyond sheer, dumb luck. And that's too fucking terrifying for our control-freak culture. Just like a natural disaster, a weapon of mass destruction, a meteor strike or whatever other cataclysmic event that could be the end of life as we know it, widespread, airborne pestilence fucks up everyone's game with no hope of fighting back. But we still like to pretend that we have some control over both our environment and the course of our lives. Enter: the ravenous dead, or the strangest occurrence of entertainment zeitgeist I've ever watched gain momentum. Zombies are the enemy you actually have a fighting chance against AND come with the bonus of an annihilated societal infrastructure. Hate your job? Hate your neighbors? Hate your family? Hate your first-world problems in general? Want to kill some folks without any real repercussion (you know, other than waving goodbye to the simple hassles of life before the dead claimed the apex-predator role)? ZOMBIES ARE THE ANSWER. Man gets to fall back to his more primitive nature (as society becomes increasingly bizarre and stifling, the sweet release of all-out chaos is a welcome fantasy, is it not?). And I think, with our actual times being as strange and stressful as they are, it's cathartic to imagine oneself in a world where all those mundane problems are obliterated by tending to the daily survival we've come to take for granted in our coddled state. It's a weird return to less civilized ways without losing the safety that our civilized facades allow. So. "The Walking Dead." I am so happy that a friend hoisted this 1,000-plus-page monster on me during the show's third season because reading this and then coming to the show would have me so terribly disappointed in the necessary changes made while translating this gorefest into less blatantly offensive fare for a television-watching audience. (view spoiler)[I mean, sure, I can live without seeing Herschel's very young daughters' murdered, headless corpses coming back to life on my needlessly giant TV screen. And, in the general book-to-show scheme, I didn't really mind that Daryl and his stink-palmed brother weren't in the book, so long as I wasn't watching the show and being all "OMFG DARYL IS THE TITS." Because he is and I will cry my face off if anything happens to him post-mid-season hiatus. But, unsurprisingly, I digress. (hide spoiler)] I don't necessarily condone excessive violence but, c'mon. When shit gets cray-cray, it's ridiculous to expect that people will behave as anything other than the humanimals they are once all of society's safety nets are effectively obliterated and that taking the nonviolent high road will result in anything other than becoming a victim with no law or legal counsel to help reclaim your once-idle existence. Overall, the characters in the graphic novel seem less like caricatures than they do in the show. I know it's easier to get into a character's head to understand their thought processes and motivations in a book but they actually seems less interchangeable and predictably dramatic in these pages. (view spoiler)[The stuff with Shane coming undone happened so much earlier and faster, which was like ripping off the Band-Aid to make the whole ordeal less painful (it actually sucked more in the book because I wanted more time with Shane's cracked self but that's what I get for predictably claiming the most damaged characters as my favorites). Rick's frustration with the way his fellow survivors cling to their naive humanity in the face of some shitty odds is more overtly driven/explained by how deeply responsible he feels for everyone's safety. He's grappling with a black-and-white perspective while realizing that even a world of Living vs. Dead has plenty of room for grey areas. Micchone is a fucking animal in both worlds and I love both versions of her, though I wish her AMC counterpart got as much back story as she did in the book because she is a complex little warrior. Graphic Novel Lori was infinitely less irksome than TV Lori, so watching her (and Baby Judith) eat it once the Woodbury folk opened fire on 'em was really, really fucked up. Oh, hey, while we're on the topic of fucked up: Carol. She's the one character whose television incarnation is so much more stable than her GN counterpart. She freely admits to being damaged well before the era of the undead... and then introduces herself to a chained-up zombie before offering her neck to it ("You DO like me" are her dying words to the undead beast that snacked on her neck like it was a pack of movie-theater Twizzlers). (hide spoiler)] I originally said that the Woodbury residents are so much more glaringly psychotic here but it's really just Philip who's got his wires in knots. The Governor (who looks like a more intimidating Danny Trejo, which I didn't think was possible even in an artist's rendering) is... (view spoiler)[look, we all know that he stares at a wall of fishtanks filled with severed heads like it's reality television and he's keeping his Zombie!Daughter in secrecy like one keeps mum about an illegal mail-order bride but if you're only watching the show, you're missing a scene wherein he pulls out his daughter's teeth -- presumably to make her more docile for the secret-keeping BUT REALLY SO SHE CAN GIVE DADDY A FULL-PAGE, OPEN-MOUTH KISS AND IT SKEEVED ME OUT LIKE SOMETHING MAJORLY SKEEVY. (hide spoiler)] Ew. Just.... ew. It reinforced the notion that when the dead roam the earth, the living are the real enemy. And then it made me want to start digging a moat around my house. Just in case. The art wasn't really earth-shattering in originally or anything but it was still pretty damn good. I did like the black and white inking, which was totally a metaphor for something. The starkness of such an approach certainly meshed well with the tone of the story. What struck me hardest was how the kids, especially Sophia and Carl, frequently look like miniature adults. Whether it was intentional or something I imagined entirely on my own or whatever, it was definitely a nice, subtly rendered touch. All told, I'm not really sure how I feel about this eight-book collection, honesty. I think, like a lot of things that straddle multiple representations across different media, it's hard not to compare one to the other, which took away something from both the show and the book for me. I mean, it was fun and disturbing and I couldn't tear through it quickly enough but it was missing something. It's certainly the first thing I've read that really dealt with the survival aspect of the zombiepocalypse as it's happening and how people's reactions would obviously run the gamut of emotions in the aftermath of such an event but I would have loved more post-zombie psychology and less hanging around waiting for the shit to happen. I guess, obviously, in a real-world situation, there WOULD be more inaction once a haven (like a reclaimed prison) was secured, and I can't really fault it for attempting to make such an unbelievable scenario more credible and less outrageous but... meh, better pacing would've been nice. Not like that'll stop me from reading more, though. I actually do like the characters and the way this one ended was just fucking brutally awful. I have a very real need to know what happens to these fictional people because I am more emotionally invested in them than a mentally healthy person ought to be. Good, viscera-strewn fun, this. But I really wouldn't recommend reading it in tandem with the show -- not because of the potential for spoilers (they're certainly different enough animals for that to not be a real problem) but because it is bloody confusing when things are just similar enough to create confusion in keeping the specifics of each "Walking Dead" straight. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Nov 11, 2012
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Nov 24, 2012
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Nov 12, 2012
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Paperback
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| B0DT11K5P4
| 3.87
| 105,557
| Oct 11, 1928
| 1993
|
really liked it
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A mere 10-minute drive has separated me from my college best friend since March. Even with my knack for getting hopelessly lost in the wilds of Centra
A mere 10-minute drive has separated me from my college best friend since March. Even with my knack for getting hopelessly lost in the wilds of Central Jersey, it鈥檚 the shortest distance between us since our days as roomies; unsurprisingly, however, life since we graduated six years ago has been filled with things like work and conflicting schedules and living with significant others whose company we actively enjoy and our shared inclination for decompressing in fabulously introverted ways, which means that we don't get to see each other as frequently as we would in a perfect world. When she got engaged last month, I was among the first to know. And when she announced her happy news, it was in nearly the same breath that she asked me to be her matron of honor. It鈥檚 not like I've been writing my MOH speech in preparation for Maureen's nuptials since college or anything, which is rather fitting: Though our friendship didn鈥檛 blossom until we found each other through mutual friends in the final days of our sophomore year, she and I first crossed paths in a freshman oratory class wherein our final project -- a toast of some nature -- was called off when our professor had a family emergency that semester. Maureen's really the first girl friend who I let bring out the unabashedly, endlessly silly THIS IS MY BESTIE FOR ALWAYS AND I LUUUURVE HER SO MUCH behavior that has punctuated our friendship. Until we glommed onto each other in the wake of another friend's tragedy early in our junior year, I'd thought of myself as someone who'd always have peripheral female friends and much closer guy friends. Not to say that my high-school gal pals weren't an awesome bunch -- they were then and they still are now -- but I didn't know how to appreciate who they were until much later. It took meeting my twin-to-be in some friends鈥� dorm room as our sophomore year was drawing to a rapid close to realize that I'd spent years looking for this sister figure right in front of me. When I hesitantly friended her after a truly neurotic internal dialogue that summer on LiveJournal ("Is this stalkery?"; "Was she only humoring me and secretly wishing I'd shut the hell up?"; "Will she think I'm trying too hard to be her friend?"; etc.) only to discover that her username referenced "Tristan and Iseult," I had a nagging suspicion that I had discovered a kindred spirit after a lifetime of right-person-wrong-time that neatly summarizes my self-inflicted messy track record with people to that point. I was proven more right than I could've optimistically imagined when another mutual friend later christened us as twins, which is still how we squealingly address each other. She and I do have a staggering many things in common, save for her ability to, like, actually plan things (an area in which I fail with joyful abandon). So when we recently found ourselves with simultaneously out-of-state mates, she and I had every intention of cramming a whole lot of wedding stuff into an uncharacteristically sans-SO weekend. Actually, I had every intention of catching up on the reading that stupid work kept interrupting but if there's one thing that trumps solitary bookworming, it's a two-day romp through the tri-state area with my beloved and sorely missed twin. Our university days were a blur of turning the college radio station (Maureen's territory) and college newspaper office (mine, and also her then-boyfriend's) into The Place to Be at Next-Morning-o'-Clock, nursing one cup of coffee after another in flagrant abuse of her Starbucks employee discount, trips to New Hope or Princeton for the hell of it or wherever our friends' makeshift bands were playing that weekend, scenic everythings for mutual shutterbugging, harassing the same roadies over and over again for a setlist after the show, and geeking the hell out over our shared affinities for things like British lit, British bands and British spellings. So when she turned to me during our recent drive through Bucks County and said something along the lines of "Screw the bridal show, wanna go to New Hope?" and later "Oh damn, looks like we'll be spending tomorrow in New York" while ogling dresses from her living room couch, it was like we were carefree co-eds with time to kill together all over again. So maybe I did do the content of my first non-required taste of Virginia Woolf a great disservice by tackling it in tiny pieces over the course of a month. But having Orlando on the brain while clumsily prancing around in pretty dresses in NYC boutiques, while examining tiny treasures together in New Hope shops (where we found a whole stash of outofprintclothing.com goodies!), while making a mad dash through the Met in the hour before it closed as she played tour guide (where I discovered a love of art I didn't know she possessed) more than made up for that by reminding me of what it means to experience a feminine love to the point where you want to write pages and pages detailing all the things that make this woman uniquely magical so other people come to love this quirk and that idiosyncrasy, too. And I think that, more than anything else, drove home the spirit of the novel better than an uninterrupted reading experience may have. Maureen and I might not have shared the physical intimacy that Virginia and Vita did (I mean, aside from the constant boob grabs and thigh gropes) but she's certainly someone who gets me in a way few others do. There was so much of Orlando him/herself that had the part of me that needs to find myself in every artwork, song, film and book I love underlining passage after passage in a story that, like my twin, I first encountered as a college freshman but didn't fully appreciate until later. Thanks to my first big-girl's film-appreciation class, I was introduced to the whimsy of "Orlando" via its cinematic incarnation during the same semester I read "A Room of One's Own," which should have been enough to make me a fan of VW had being an English major not left me with such an incongruous lack of reading time (speaking of things that never change....). Anyway. The things I foggily recall from the film -- frozen bodies underwater, positively scrumptious costumes, blocking choreographed down to an inch -- came screaming back and actually started adding to the sweeping narrative of this gorgeous novel. But when I saw "Orlando" nearly a decade ago, I had no idea that the novel itself was dedicated to Vita, nor did I know that Woolf's lady lover inspired the titular gender-bending character. Knowing that, plus having a better understanding of the historical guideposts that pop up throughout Orlando's centuries-long existence, turned this novel into the best kind of brain candy. I'm a sucker for literary allusions by the armful and lush symbolism (I'd rave about my late-to-the-party realization that Orlando is the oak tree she'd been immortalizing in verse for 300-some pages but hasn't this so-called review gone on long enough?) and pages soaked in true-to-life humanity, so it's only natural that I'd enjoy Virginia's ode to a woman for whom her passionate love most definitely stands the test of time. Way to throw down the gauntlet for the rest of us, Woolf. Challenge accepted. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Sep 11, 2012
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Oct 02, 2012
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Aug 27, 2012
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Paperback
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| 074324754X
| 9780743247542
| 074324754X
| 4.32
| 1,302,390
| Mar 01, 2005
| Jan 17, 2006
|
liked it
|
It's no secret that I get to read on the job. I proofread for a financial publisher, which means that I spend my days getting lost in the lilting lega
It's no secret that I get to read on the job. I proofread for a financial publisher, which means that I spend my days getting lost in the lilting legalese of prospectuses, trustee meeting results, shareholder reports, highlight sheets 鈥� it's riveting stuff, trust me. But we're a small operation with only a few clients and the fiscal schedule is defined by a feast-or-famine work flow: While the numbers are still being tabulated, portfolio managers are polishing their semiannual interviews and style redesigns are being approved before the work descends in avalanches, I鈥檓 usually catching up on my reading with on-the-clock me-time. Since it鈥檚 almost instinctive to dislike the person whose job it is scrutinize and correct everyone else鈥檚 work (especially when said person has one of the few oh-so-coveted offices with a window overlooking the bucolic charm of two parking lots and a heavily traveled roadway), I have spent the better part of my three years there endearing myself to my coworkers to soften the blow when I literally cannot hack through a report because it鈥檚 so choked with errors. My efforts have mostly paid off and a number of my mom-aged coworkers have grown rather maternal with me, as it鈥檚 also not a secret that I stopped speaking to my parents more than two years ago. When a coworker recently came into my office brandishing an almost-finished book and saying that she kept thinking of me while reading this memoir she couldn鈥檛 put down, I assumed she was referring to the way I always have my nose in some kind of reading material at work. And then a little bit of research revealed that 鈥淭he Glass Castle鈥� was about growing up under the rule of parents who clearly had no business accepting the responsibility of parenthood, which was when I realized that this was my coworker鈥檚 way of reaching out to me. A couple of days and maybe about 100 pages (and a lot of wincing because, holy crap, the Walls kids are tiny troopers) later, I got into a car accident during my commute home via a road that sees about seven or eight accidents a day, most of them during rush hour because it is a totally good idea to have a direct route to and from Philly narrow down to two lanes in one of the area鈥檚 larger suburban oases. Long story short, I escaped the ordeal with my admittedly low expectations of humanity exceeded by miles. As I watched the tow-truck driver (who was totally cool with my nervous habit of asking a thousand rapid-fire questions as he drove both my car and me to the auto-body shop) load up my beloved, battered car with minimal fanfare, the last sigh of relief I heaved tasted something like 鈥淎t least I don鈥檛 have to explain this to my parents.鈥� The thought resurfaced throughout the evening, like when my husband met me at the mechanic's and I just lost whatever composure I'd been faking when he was right there to help me out of the truck before pulling me into a bear hug. And later when my in-laws, who live right next door and treat me like the daughter they鈥檝e always wanted, greeted me with open arms, said that Mom鈥檚 car was all ready for me whenever I was ready to go back to work (as they all but told me that I was going to stay home for a day or two) and reiterated that 鈥淎 car can be replaced but you can鈥檛鈥� every other sentence and meant it. By the time I was going fetal on my couch and started to feel the damage that a seat belt and steering wheel are capable of (which is surprisingly extensive when you鈥檙e a small-statured, large-chested woman who always knew she鈥檇 pay for leaning too far forward while driving), still marveling over how I received neither a single verbal evisceration nor a ticket after two of the most emotionally draining hours of my recent existence, I blurted some garbled admission to my husband about not knowing how to stop expecting someone to punish me, which is about when I realized that I鈥檝e spent my adult life bracing myself to be torn down for every misstep as if the fate of the universe relied on me not fucking up, which isn鈥檛 entirely unlike the way my parents reacted to the staggering majority of the things that came naturally to me. I called out of work for two days not because my boobs were bleeding (they were) or because it hurt to move my neck (it did) or because pulling open doors made me feel like my chest was on fire (holy crap, did it ever), though my collection of minor injuries eased the terminally itchy conscience that won't even be appeased by having a valid excuse for calling out and leaving other people to pick up my slack unless I accept a load of Catholic-sized guilt in exchange lest I give myself a few justifiable recovery days without the appropriate reciprocal suffering. I needed some time to consider how much an inherently lousy experience opened my eyes to damage I didn鈥檛 even know I was still carrying around (what the hell, surely talking about going to therapy is just as good as actually going, right?). My coping method of choice? Alternately napping like a champ and juggling three books, including this memoir of the girl who was born to a bitterly brilliant drunk she idolized and an indifferent, self-involved artist who she tried so hard to understand, only to become the person she was meant to be with little support from the two people who should have been there to cheer her on all the way. Like I鈥檇 said, I knew I wasn鈥檛 going to be unbiased in how I approached Jeannette Walls鈥檚 coming-of-age story: No matter how sympathetically she painted her parents (which she did quite well), I knew I wouldn鈥檛 be able to stop myself from resenting them for failing their children. But then the little-girl hero worship Jeanette felt for her tortured, misunderstood genius of her father just struck every raw nerve I have and just poked and poked until I had to physically distance myself from the book. The killer was that I鈥檇 stew in whatever calamity last befell these children to the point of needing to know how things were resolved (or avoided entirely). It's distracting to be doing other things and thinking about the book you'd rather be reading. Not even the blatantly narcissistic ravings of Jeannette鈥檚 mother sounded enough alarms to keep me from venturing back to this book if I鈥檇 stray too far for too long. And I鈥檇鈥檝e thrown the book across the room at Mrs. Walls鈥檚 鈥淚鈥檓 not crying because you鈥檙e leaving me for New York City; I鈥檓 crying because you鈥檙e going and I鈥檓 not!鈥� outburst had I not already been forced to corral all my determination to return this borrowed book in acceptable condition after Mama W -- whose 鈥淥h, I don鈥檛 believe in discipline because children need to learn their own lessons鈥� philosophy barely disguised the maternal disinterest and selfish absence that I know all too well 鈥� wailed that she has sacrificed so much for her children when the scamps had demonstrated time and again that they鈥檙e more responsible for their family than the matriarch is. I, uh, may have transferred a lot of my own lingering anger at my emotionally damaging mother onto Mrs. Walls, which makes me question how justified my screaming dislike of her is. The less said about Papa Walls, the better. My father might not have been a hopeless drunk but I kind of wish he had some kind of excuse for routinely breaking promises to the children who thought the sun rose and set on him. An absent mother is easy to hate while growing up and even easier to pity once you鈥檝e come of age. That simpering animosity is something you get used to after a while and, if you鈥檙e like Jeannette and a better person than I am, you simply accept that your self-involved mother has constructed such an elaborate alternate reality around herself that nothing real can get through to her if she doesn鈥檛 want it to, that she can even turn homelessness into an enviable adventure. But an idolized father鈥檚 fall from grace? The older you get, the harder it is when you finally realize the one person you鈥檝e told yourself can do anything is the person who's let you down with the least remorse. That first hard look at how helpless and broken the man behind the curtain is.... that is not easy to come back from. That鈥檚 how little girls grow up to become giant messes. When Jeannette found her way to the school paper and sampled her first taste of print journalism's sweet, sweet escapist nectar.... oh, my heart went out to her younger self in eagerly over-earnest ways. Being a half-consumed whiskey bottle rolling around an otherwise empty desk away from calling herself a true-blooded journalist at such a young age would have won me over if the entire book preceding such a moment hadn't already made me want to see Jeannette find her place in the world. Newsroom nostalgia will always be the easiest way to my too-soft heart. I am amazed that this isn鈥檛 one of those 鈥淥h my God, so let me tell you about my super-sad story so you鈥檒l feel just awful about the craptastic childhood I had and then you鈥檒l be totally amazed at how far I鈥檝e come and how functional I am hey, why don鈥檛 you love me yet please love me and feel sorry for me I need your sympathy give it to me鈥� memoirs, thank bouncing Baby Jesus. It鈥檚 a documentation of these things that happened to the four Walls children and how at least three of them embraced responsible independence and sibling camaraderie. Walls describes what she sees, reporting the facts and supplying exposition as needed like any good journalist. Also like a good journalist, emotions get minimal face time here. Jeannette is the perfect narrator because it seems as though she is the most willing to accept her parents for what they are. Even though I selfishly wanted to know how her adult self dealt with the fallout of her turbulent childhood (because every little adult grows up to be a big child, let's be honest), I found myself admiring how Jeannette was in no way reliant on cheap feelings to maneuver the story to its conclusion. Jeannette and her siblings are the heroes of this story. They get themselves out of a bad situation one by one, fishing out each younger sibling as the means become available. Because what鈥檚 a better introduction to a new life of stability after years of only knowing that what comes next is an obstacle you can rely on exactly yourself and your equally young siblings to overcome? Christ, I still have two more reviews to catch up on and a stack of pumpkin pancakes that are clearly not going to eat themselves (unless they plan to fight me for the privilege). In short, this book was fucking great but it struck far too close to home in ways I may have overly personalized. It didn't make me laugh like it did my coworker but it sure as hell did make me appreciate how Jeannette Walls turned out. I've had a lot of people recently and unknowingly demonstrate that humanity might not be as awful as I've always thought it to be, and witnessing a grown child forgive her parents for their many crimes against her certainly made for the kind of book that confirmed it's probably time to fix my perspective. Maybe we're not as fucked of a species as I've feared all along. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Aug 13, 2012
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Aug 22, 2012
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Aug 13, 2012
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Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 0679760806
| 9780679760801
| 0679760806
| 4.29
| 390,475
| 1967
| Mar 1996
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it was amazing
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(ETA, 9 October 2013: This is another one of those books that stuck with me long after I finished it. I needed a little bit of hindsight to realize ho
(ETA, 9 October 2013: This is another one of those books that stuck with me long after I finished it. I needed a little bit of hindsight to realize how deeply this book resonated with my religious beliefs, or lack thereof, and echoed my preexisting opinions regarding the interplay between humanity's better angels and lesser qualities. The more I think about this novel, the more I realize how madly I love it and how badly I want to find time to revisit it.) The Devil went down to Georgia He was lookin鈥� for a soul to steal -- Er, no. Different story. Sorry. The Prince of Darkness in this tale is not an egomaniacal fiddler but a ringleader whose retinue (and, let鈥檚 be honest here, good ol鈥� garden-variety greed, pride and other stone-inscribed sins peculiar to human beans) wreak havoc on an unsuspecting Muscovite population one hot spring. The ensuing chaos and its key players had me wondering how Bulgakov was yet another writer (like Milton before him and Duncan many years later) who made His Dark Majesty less hateful to me than, say, the gargantuan manchild stumbling through 鈥淐onfederacy of Dunces.鈥� I had to build a bookshelf to remove this novel from my line of sight so I鈥檇 not be tempted to dig into it before my first group-read adventure kicked off. After doing a little bit of background research to stave off the mounting excitement, I finally dug into the first few chapters of TM&M and... uh, was less than immediately smitten. I started wondering what I鈥檇 gotten myself into: What in the sweet hell is going on with these names? Why a cat? And what, exactly, does Pontius Pilate have to do with Russia in the 1930s, anyway? Thankfully, my (sometimes awkwardly worded) translation had a commentary at the end to demystify some of the more obscure and alien references that would have eluded me otherwise, which absolutely helped me get through the initial lukewarm feelings I had for this book while offering up some of the richest symbolism I've ever had the delight to roll around in. Once I gave myself over to the bountiful allusions, veiled jabs at outdated and oppressive institutions, dark and downright vaudevillian humor, and surprising warmth (and not always of the hellfire variety) weaving through the story, I started looking for any excuse to return to this book. Once the titular characters arrived nearly halfway through the novel, I had as much success resisting this book as one does fighting the inevitable future, as their tale combined with the thoroughly modern concerns and warnings within TM&M positively dazzled me. As much as I deeply enjoyed The Master and Margarita鈥檚 story and eventual reunion, it was the push-and-pull of duality -- and, ultimately the realization that one polar extreme can neither exist nor possess meaning without an exact opposite -- that charmed me the most, especially in the religious sense. Any sense of spirituality I鈥檝e ever had has been mutable for years (I do believe in a higher power of some sort but lack the pride and presumption to assume that I'm right and everyone else is damned, which is one of the reasons I align myself with the Gnostic way of thought more than anything else) so what springs to mind when I'm confronted with the Judeo-Christian "God" ideal is not a fag-hating, insecure Old Testament bully who's got armfuls of lightning bolts at the ready for prompt smiting in hypocritical negation of the free will with which He Himself has blessed His earthly children: The God (-ish figure) I choose to accept has bigger problems than picking sides in American political affairs. He has, like, the rest of the universe that isn't a country in its infancy to worry about. I also embrace a hands-off perception of God, an all-knowing and relatively benign entity who rarely interferes with our dealings because He sees the bigger picture and how each thread has its place in the greater tapestry of human existence. Similarly, I believe that whatever counterforce exists has about as much immediate effect on all of us meat puppets shuffling around the mortal coil and relies on basic human failings to influence an individual's hellward saunter, which was embodied beautifully here. The lone magic show that Woland performed was rendered scandalous simply because he placed temptation within his audience's grasp and let them do what came naturally to them -- that is, acting out on the greedy desire for better things and free money (because that's all that matters, right?) fueling their belief that they deserved the opportunity to get something more for the price of admission. Woland's motives aside, his part in reuniting the tortured Master and his beloved Margarita only reinforced my belief that he's equally as just as his heavenly equivalent -- c'mon, the guy let Margarita ask for a second favor after her selfless first demand. Does that sound at all like modern Christianity's cloven-hooved demon? As for Lady M.... the Devil's Ball was clearly not the best of times for her but she kept her eyes on the prize because she could imagine no greater suffering than life without her beloved Master. The redemptive power of love was an unexpected undercurrent rushing through the latter half of this book, as was the message that it is an unpardonable sin to let one's nigh unequaled skills as a writer fester as self-doubt and defeat consume the human vessel in which these conflicting forces reside. The Master earning peace without light hit me like a speeding trolley: Love may be the greatest salvation of all but denying one's place in the world as dictated by immense talent is a special kind of damnation. The narrative leaves Russian matters with select locations going up in flames, echoing God's promise to never again annihilate life with a flood; as such, the Devil below ensures that the story (and, for some, their world) ends in flame. Fire in Moscow: Run, boys, run. ...more |
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Aug 31, 2012
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Sep 14, 2012
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Jul 26, 2012
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Paperback
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| 0802130208
| 9780802130204
| 0802130208
| 3.89
| 288,223
| May 01, 1980
| Jan 1994
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liked it
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ETA: I recently came across a physical copy of this at my favorite used-book store. The eagerness with which I grabbed said copy--and the disappointme
ETA: I recently came across a physical copy of this at my favorite used-book store. The eagerness with which I grabbed said copy--and the disappointment I felt in its previous owner for the lack of annotation I found in its pages--suggests that I liked this book far more than I hated its main character. Also, I am gleefully drunk at this particular moment so please forgive me for any logical or grammatical inconsistencies currently present in this preface. I might get around to fixing them once sobriety returns to me. I've come to realize that, for me, a mere "liked it" is usually the most apologetic rating. A three-star rating is my literary equivalent of "It's not you, it's me," an embarrassed concession that I'm the real problem here. It's usually an unspoken understanding that I can recognize why a work is so universally lauded but that it just didn't tickle me the way it ought to have. Sometimes it's simply a matter of taste, sometimes it's just bad timing, sometimes it's me having a visceral reaction to a work of fiction that shouldn't get under my skin so deeply. My three stars do not do this book justice, I realize that: They do, however, reflect just how torturous it was for me to watch Ignatius Reilly not get the thorough comeuppance or righteous bitch-slap that both hands of Fortuna owed such a thundering manchild. So I always thought this was written by a contemporary of Jonathan Swift's. Why? Maybe it's because of the title. Maybe it's because Toole is the first person since Swift who could make satire purr like a satisfied lap cat. Maybe it's because this is a novel packed with odious vermin of the highest order. Whatever the cause for my wildly mistaken notion, I don't remember what set me straight, nor do I recall why gaining such corrective insight propelled me on a frantic mission to both own and read this book as soon as humanly possible: All I am certain of is that the urge to get my hands on "Confederacy of Dunces" was impossible to put off 'til later, which is my preferred approach to doing almost anything. But every paper-and-ink copy I found had a cover that I absolutely hated (and now that I know the character, I'm annoyed that Ignatius looks more like a happy-go-lucky buffoon on many of the cover images when he is, in fact, a detestable, pretentious little wanker who masks his inability to relate to other people with an abrasive, overeducated front). The solution? Downloading this on my trusty but much-neglected Kindle. It's not that I don't love my Kindle (because I do, to an almost psychotic extent). Nor does my bookworm snobbery extend to the assumption that digital books are automatically inferior to their traditional predecessors. It's just that, after my e-reader became less of a reading device and more of an avenue for proving my Scrabble dominance over that dick AI even though I almost always wind up with more vowels than I think the game really includes, I simply grew accustomed to not using Ruggles the Kindle for his intended nose-in-a-book purpose (no, I haven't given all of my gadgets Pynchonian monikers; yes, I do see the irony in naming my e-reader after an author who was famously reluctant for his works to be digitalized). But this isn't about my Kindle: This is more about the shiny new iPhone I acquired recently, the very device that signaled another blow to my pseudo-Luddite ways by thrusting me into the joyous world of being owned by a smartphone (.... I'm actually not sure if that was sarcasm, either). Because the first thing I did after shelling out money on yet another Apple product, aside from blowing more than half of my monthly data allotment on downloading selections from my iTunes library before even leaving the Verizon store, was put the Kindle app on my as-of-yet unnamed phone. Seeing as I am, however reluctantly, part of the generation that feels unsettlingly naked without one's phone, my phone goes almost everywhere with me -- and now, so does my Kindle's vast treasury of reading material. Suddenly, the hatred I felt (and still feel) for one Ignatius Jacques Reilly grew in all directions, as if it, too, were glutting itself on Paradise Hot Dogs. I hated Ignatius at work. I hated him at home. I hated him in the bathroom. I hated him in bed, on the couch, in other people's cars, while waiting at everything from the grocery store to the dentist's office to the gas station, I hated him in a variety of locations to rival Dr. Seuss's rhyming lists. My burning dislike of the book's main character slipped its tentacles of ire around nearly every facet of my life to the point where I was transferring my irritation to probably undeserving but still irksome strangers. Reader, I hated him. And it felt bloody freeing, even if I'll never get the closure of punching Ignatius right in his stupid, Vaselined mustache. I'm the kind of person who feels uncomfortable when characters in books or movies are staunchly positioned under a storm cloud of shitty luck and proceed to have misfortune rained upon them to an allegedly humorous effect: Being in a position to shamelessly enjoy every irate former employer's final tongue lashing, to celebrate everyone who peeved Ignatius the way he annoyed the hell out of me (Dorian Greene, I think I might actually love you), to snicker at every unflattering description of a character who I loathed made me feel less awful about finally reveling in the seemingly downward trajectory of a character whose downfall I wished I could have on my otherwise itchy conscience. It was such a nice change to embrace the inevitable onslaught of woe that came rushing at a story's main character for once. But Ignatius even ruined that for me, as his titanic girth is buoyed by an ego that just won't quit. What willful refusal to accept responsibility! What blissful ignorance of one's own flaws! What enthusiastic defiance of reality! The mental gymnastics required in tirelessly painting oneself as the eternal victim would have impressed me if the character executing such skillful lack of accepting blame for his lot in life weren't such an overgrown brat. Though it's not like many of the other characters had a whole lot more going for them other than reluctant sympathy and the old adage that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. The duplicitous shrew Lana Lee probably should have been the most detestable member of the cast: While Ignatius is simply too emotionally immature to exist in harmony with the real world, Lana is straight-up starved of all redeeming qualities. As hard as I tried to sympathize with Irene, Ignatius's poor, long-suffering mother, she was clearly all talk and no action well before the book began, as Ignatius exhibits a lifetime of experience manhandling her into emotional submission -- let this book be a cautionary tale for the long-term damage of passive parenting! As for Mrs. Levy? She must have inflicted me with some kind of temporary Tourette's syndrome because I was helpless to squelch the string of profanities that wrenched themselves from my mouth every time she opened hers. On the other hand, there were some redeeming dramatis personae to be found amidst Toole's merry band of walking character flaws. If Dorian's brief appearance was a breath of fresh air, Jones's presence was the life raft I clung to in a maelstrom of assholery. I might have actually cheered at the end when Officer Mancuso got the kudos he deserved after four-hundred-some pages of being shat on. I was pretty keen on Mr. Levy until Ignatius dug his teabag-scented claws into him. And, okay, fine: There were actually a lot of folks who I liked simply because they didn't annoy me, like Darlene and Mr. Clyde. Actually, Darlene's cockatoo might have been one of the most likable characters in the book by virtue of his role in kicking off the climax. And then there's Myrna, who just might be the most effective foil ever. We hate in others what we hate most about ourselves, and Ignatius love-hates her because they're too much alike in all the wrong ways. Their letters are strokes of narrative brilliance, offering a richly suggested history between the two: I got such a kick out of how Myrna is the only character who gets even a kernel of truth from Ignatius and she assumes that he's exaggerating with every stroke of his pen. I probably would have liked her less had she been more of an active force here, so I'll be happy with how stingy Toole was with her scenes. This should, by all rights, be at least a four-star novel. It's Toole's fault that he was too adept at creating characters that embody so much of what disgusts me in real people. ...more |
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1
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Jul 25, 2012
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Aug 10, 2012
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Jul 12, 2012
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Paperback
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| 1849821631
| 9781849821636
| 1849821631
| 4.02
| 40
| Jan 01, 2012
| Dec 04, 2012
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really liked it
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2012 Creatively constipated in New Jersey Maddie stares at her work monitor -- the third machine she's attempted her American Decameron review on, a rev 2012 Creatively constipated in New Jersey Maddie stares at her work monitor -- the third machine she's attempted her American Decameron review on, a review that has hit more brick walls than a driving-school vehicle -- with her fingers poised over the keyboard and ready for speedy transcription of all the ways she wants to gush about Mark Dunn's newest gift to the world, a gesture as fruitless as her fervent hopes that staring at a computer screen long enough will magically produce words. "Fitting," she grumbles to herself, only half caring that her officemate (who's well-versed in her special breed of crazy) might overhear, "that a book comprising 100 stories would take 100 attempts to write about." The joy of finally finishing a book in the face of natural disasters, a thankless job's busy season and other, more pleasant assorted things that prevent her from falling into what would be her ideal natural state of existence (i.e.: bookworm hermitage) waned considerably as the frustration of reviewing being a use-it-or-lose-it skill grew like... like.... like what, Maddie? "Fucking similes," she mutters with an inappropriate degree of hatred, for Maddie is nothing if not a classy lady as her fondness for expletives shows. "Fucking stupid review. Why can't you just write yourself?" She sighs as if the world were ending, then rereads the paltry dross she's managed thus far: Mixed emotions always accompany the news that Mark Dunn is publishing a new book. On one hand, it's always a cause for celebration when one of my favorite living writers blesses the literary world with a new work; on the other, it's impossible to predict how much of an optimistic cock tease the initial expected publication date is versus the harsh reality of the much more distant one. Fortunately, this is one of those times I was rewarded for not being a technological curmudgeon: While the hardcover's expected publication date has jumped around the 2012 calendar like an overzealous child playing hopscotch, the Kindle edition was there to ease the terminally delayed gratification that's so inherently intertwined with the advent of a new Dunn offering. "Too boring," Maddie says to herself while shaking her head in self-disgust and not caring that she probably looks like Tippi Hedren to anyone neither inside her head nor in front of her computer screen. Still, experience has taught her that nothing plows through writer's block quite like hammering out whatever comes to mind so she continues with the unsatisfying direction her review has taken: I'm never really sure what to expect from Dunn as a writer so I suppose the surprise release dates are rather fitting for a scribe whose playwright and novelist hats both suit him to equal success. As far as Dunn goes, this ambitious book is markedly lacking a kooky hook: It's not an epistolary novel that takes increasing liberties with spelling as the available alphabet diminishes, it's not a biography rendered entirely in footnotes, it's not the tale of a modern-day Dickensian society sequestered in Pennsylvania or extraterrestrial-fearing neighbors sequestered in each other's homes. What it is is 100 individual stories that serve as a better American history lesson than any American history textbook not written by Howard Zinn (though it's definitely more life-affirming than Zinn's fare). On a totally superficial level, one could erroneously call this a short-story collection but it really isn't (much to the relief of my indomitable but ill-founded bias against short stories). Even if the bookending chapters didn't tie everything together by showing how many of the characters populating Dunn's 100 American tales have crossed paths to (mostly positively) results, the overriding theme of each story being part of something bigger is present without being intrusive. And it's the way that the macro- and microcosms play against each other that highlight my favorite thing about Dunn's writing, which isn't his snazzy word play and his clever presentation -- it's the palpable humanity and innate goodness he infuses into the staggering majority of his characters. More on that in a sec because, really, who needs to organize their thoughts? This is where Maddie lets loose an unladylike but totally characteristic snort over her own blatant cop-out. The thing is, she doesn't want this review to become a gush-fest about how the characters in this book, the forward of which betrays the non-fictitious nature of much of the cast parading through this book's 700-some pages, give her hope for humanity, just as Dunn's books and plays usually do. But Maddie is also deeply cynical about the goodness of people, despite her desperate (and, admittedly, more successful than she had anticipated) efforts to change her own mind. And she doesn't want anyone to know that her soft heart has been bleeding more than usual lately. Dunn covers a lot of ground, both in terms of time (all of the 20th century, occasionally punctuated by lapses into the past and flash-forwards to the future) and geography (50 states, one district, various airspaces and bodies of water -- including at least two oceans -- and Botswana). This is a day in the life of an American year as seen by seemingly inconsequential, everyday folks. Some of the personal stories collide with the bigger front-page stories (like journalists investigating the plausibility that the Wright brothers' incredible flying machine is a credible, airborne success), some are outright influenced by them (like Lusitania survivors bonding over an accidental encounter) but most illustrate how history affects people and how people affect history incidentally. Humanity and history are the main characters here, and Dunn breathes life into both intangibles with great deals of sympathetic realism. "But.... but... there's so much more to it than that!" Maddie almost exclaims, forgetting where she is in the throes of her needlessly intense internal battle. She sighs again, is briefly rocked back to reality as her coworker asks if she's okay, and finally concedes that she can't do in a 欧宝娱乐 review what Mark Dunn's achieved with his daunting accomplishment of a far-reaching, far-sighted tome. And she also admits that, like every other book she's read, this one was all about how she related to it, a justification she makes by telling herself that books do not exist in a vacuum and serve to delight, entertain, challenge and otherwise move readers. And what better way than by finding the human connection in a book that is, at its core, all about human connections. She gets teary-eyed as she grapples with recounting the specific ways that the 1988 installment -- "Stouthearted in Florida," in which a teenage girl goes against her mother's wishes to sneak her ailing grandmother's lesbian lover into the hospital -- absolutely tore her up inside but abandons the effort, knowing that no one can express the gamut of inherent goodness and love of which people are capable as well as Dunn illustrated with this and all of his other works. "Fuck this," Maddie proclaims, wiping at her eyes as surreptitiously as possible before emerging from the safe blockade that the monitor allows her. "I'm going to lunch." ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Oct 04, 2012
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Nov 12, 2012
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Jun 20, 2012
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Hardcover
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| 0573650675
| 9780573650673
| 0573650675
| 3.57
| 23
| Nov 01, 2012
| Jun 01, 2024
|
liked it
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There was a blurb about this play in the back of "PIGmalion," which is how I even knew it existed in the first place. The premise -- a neighborhood is
There was a blurb about this play in the back of "PIGmalion," which is how I even knew it existed in the first place. The premise -- a neighborhood is sloppily corralled and haphazardly quarantined across seven houses in the wake of an alien visitation's viral leavings (yes, really) -- intrigued me to the point of running to Amazon to hunt down a copy of the script. Mark Dunn expertly populates his plays and novels with quirky, sympathetically flawed and often well-meaning characters. He's also got a mighty fine knack for writing communities, too, which seems to stem from a genuine understanding of how people interact with and affect each other. I was initially going to say that I love how he writes women but it's really that he knows how to write people. The dialogue is never forced, the emotions always translate as genuine. The play's two acts examine relationships of all kinds and in all sorts of stages: young friendships, old friendships, blossoming romances, longtime crushes, crumbling marriages, newly discovered families, siblings' bonds, parents' concerns, a daughter's unspoken paternal insights. Dunn plays the specific goings-on of each pair or trio against each other, using the concerns or realizations of one to implicitly intensify another. There's a warm heart beating at the core of this play, which, like pretty much everything else of Dunn's I've ever read and loved, made me hope that life after the last page worked out well for each of the 15 characters. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jun 20, 2012
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Jun 20, 2012
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Jun 14, 2012
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Paperback
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| 1936383268
| 9781936383269
| 1936383268
| 3.79
| 311
| Oct 13, 2010
| Oct 13, 2010
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really liked it
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Dear Caris, Do you mind if I call you that? It's how you signed your most recent message so I'm assuming that we're on a first-name basis now. Please l Dear Caris, Do you mind if I call you that? It's how you signed your most recent message so I'm assuming that we're on a first-name basis now. Please let me know if I'm being too forward because my social ineptitude likes to make itself known even on the internets. I've been meaning to read "The Egg" for quite some time but prefer doing almost everything in the hazy future. What finally propelled me toward your novella were two overwhelmingly common factors in all the reviews I read: One, everyone seemed to either like it quite a bit or REALLY like it more than just a bit; and two, no one is willing to say much about why they liked it so much for fear, they say, of divulging too much of the plot and ruining the first-time reading experience for others. Sure, I was starting to wonder if the latter phenomenon was a cop-out or simply lazy reviewing. Then I thought maybe some folks were conspiring to shroud "The Egg" in mystery so that those of us who are insatiably inquisitive would have to break down and buy the book to stave off the creeping madness that too much unresolved curiosity brings. Finally, I considered that maybe some reviewers were following the novella's titular action and, in fact, deliberately said nothing. Turns out, I was wrong on all counts: It really is hard to offer a detailed commentary on such a tightly written piece without spoiling the surprises that make "The Egg" such a joy to read. Will I follow previous reviewers' tactful lead? Meh, not entirely. So! Let's talk about your book a little -- rather, let me talk vaguely about how fucking rad your book is. Because it is. So far as I can remember (last week was a long time ago), I had exactly one issue with it: Every time I glanced at the page number, the book was closer to being over. Maybe you can work on that for your follow-up offering? I'm sure there's a fancy, newfangled way to push a novel into the infinite-page-count realm these days. Seriously. Look into that, okay? By the time Manny and Ashley found themselves in a laundromat, I was desperately wishing that someone would make this into a movie. Even with a giant egg and paradoxes born of time travel, yours is a thoroughly relatable piece of fiction. In fact, the juxtaposition of Manny's believable reactions, motivations and wishes against the unbelievably crazy shit that dogs him created more effective suspense than I've seen in books three times as long. To steal a line I previously used, what I liked best about your book (and I did like an awful lot about it) is that Manny remains convincingly, sympathetically human while dealing with some.... well, bizarre problems. To further rip off a previous communique of mine, it seemed that your book had something to say about the uselessness of fighting what's fated to be for the sake of an individual's short-sighted desires -- a bigger-picture, greater-good sort of moral, if you will. It is downright refreshing to encounter a time-travel tale that didn't blindly accept the sanctity of the future, which is how I imagine a real-life confrontation with time travel would actually go down. Whether it was my own weakness for broken, down-on-their-luck characters, Manny's genuine likability or a combination of the two, it was increasingly difficult to watch the protagonist's honest efforts to fix things himself only further ensnare him in his increasingly upside-down existence. In the end, I came for the bizarro; I stayed because I got way too emotionally invested in the characters. Please don't ever abandon the cruel mistress that is word-slinging. You've got a lot to offer her. And your readers. Fondly, Madeleine P.S.: Please note how I did not once call your story "eggs-cellent." I need a cigarette after the kind of willpower I've demonstrated in avoiding such an obvious opportunity for punny business. P.P.S.: I fucking HATE clowns but would put aside that phobia long enough to read about them if you're the one at the tale's helm. The glory-hole story, however, shouldn't even be a question. Kindly add me to the list of people who want to read that yesterday. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jun 21, 2012
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Jun 23, 2012
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Jun 14, 2012
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Paperback
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| 057369804X
| 9780573698040
| 057369804X
| 3.71
| 7
| Mar 01, 2010
| Mar 15, 2010
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really liked it
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An utterly charming and warmly human variation on "Pygmalion" and "My Fair Lady," with loads of references to both. Dunn's creative liberties successfu An utterly charming and warmly human variation on "Pygmalion" and "My Fair Lady," with loads of references to both. Dunn's creative liberties successfully reimagine the English flower girl as a pig farmer's daughter in the modern-day American South. This play is populated by a small but specific cast who are acting quite differently from their previous incarnations, if they were originally there at all -- I don't recall Eliza having a trannie pal before, which is a shame because Tiffany Box is both a hoot and a delight. Prof. Higgins wasn't a blustery old sot in this (except through Higgins's remembrances of arguments past), which I loved because he's one of my favorite theatrical characters ever and I want him to be less cranky. The conflict, instead, arises from Freddy's unpleasant sister, Eliza's own floundering sense of self worth, and the question of when does self-improvement stop being a few helpful tweaks and start compromising an individual's endearing idiosyncrasies. Thanks, Mark Dunn, for making insomnia suck a little less. You're one of my favorites for a reason. ...more |
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1
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Jun 14, 2012
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Jun 14, 2012
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Jun 12, 2012
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Paperback
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| 1936383861
| 9781936383863
| 1936383861
| 3.99
| 107
| Sep 08, 2011
| Sep 08, 2011
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liked it
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So. This was my introduction to bizarro short stories, which seem to have just as much weird shit going on as a bizarro novella only with fewer sanity
So. This was my introduction to bizarro short stories, which seem to have just as much weird shit going on as a bizarro novella only with fewer sanity reference points thrown in like escape pods. Which this collection has (escape pods, not sanity). And they seem to be filled with Hungry Hungry Space Badgers. Because when you start off with a story about motherfucking werewolves not getting off your motherfucking plane, you can only top that with space oddities. And also houses made of cats. (Not houses filled with cats, which is what I was expecting. What, is cat-hoarding too weird for you, bizarro?) The short story is not at all my favorite storytelling vehicle (unless you're Raymond Carver, and most people aren't) but it really works for this genre in general and these stories' tone in particular for a number of reasons. It's a nice little sampler, only instead of chocolates or cheeses it's geriatric punk rockers (in what is probably the best recapturing-one's-youth yarn I've encountered since "Cocoon") and reality television to the extreme (or the next logical step, depending on your preferred degree of society-directed pessimistic realism). It gives a broad overview of the different bizarro flavors -- the shocking and gory, the reality that's just a bit more off-kilter than ours, the unfamiliar landscapes, the just plain weird -- so that it serves as a really great introduction to all the places the genre can go. It also keeps the more viscera-strewn tales from getting to be too much for the reader who isn't used to encouraged cannibalism and Frosty dancin' to support his meth habit. But it also totally spoiled "Shatnerquake" for me, so points off. Though said spoiler is mentioned in one of the best and least shameless approaches to self-promotion ever, which is quite redemptive. Additional points off for needing juuuust a little more editing. My proofreading superpowers, having been instilled in me via a proclivity for eating and not being homeless, are not a part of my awesome that I can just turn off, so seeing "want" instead of "what" or "this" instead of "his" or "an" instead of "and" just irritate the pants off me. Not that I was wearing pants in the first place. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jun 09, 2012
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Jun 18, 2012
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Jun 08, 2012
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Paperback
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| 0895871971
| 9780895871978
| 0895871971
| 3.73
| 5,008
| May 01, 2000
| Jan 01, 2000
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it was amazing
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Seven pages in, a passage that ostensibly illustrates the bond between M -- the titular smoking hybrid who's now safely mundane against the backdrop o
Seven pages in, a passage that ostensibly illustrates the bond between M -- the titular smoking hybrid who's now safely mundane against the backdrop of the modern world -- and one of his friendlier coworkers actually betrays the lonely core of the Minotaur鈥檚 five-millennia-old being: Cecie keeps telling him she鈥檇 like to take him home some night, husband or no. The Minotaur waits hopefully. Husband or no. (Believe me: It鈥檚 brutally sad in context.) Not to be outranked on the Don't You Want to Actively Seek out This Character so You Can Befriend and Hug Him? scale of heartstring-tugging insights into a traditionally antagonistic creature, a paragraph on the 100th page's recto side brings the dual, tormented nature of M鈥檚 existence into aching clarity with a tiny inkling of what it does to someone to live as a monstrous outsider for five thousand years: The architecture of the Minotaur鈥檚 heart is ancient. Rough hewn and many chambered, his heart is a plodding laborious thing, built for churning through the millennia. But the blood it pumps鈥攖he blood it has pumped for five thousand years, the blood it will pump for the rest of his life鈥攊s nearly human blood. It carries with it, through his monster鈥檚 veins, the weighty, necessary, terrible stuff of human existence: fear, wonder, hope, wickedness, love. But in the Minotaur鈥檚 world it is far easier to kill and devour seven virgins year after year, their rattling bones rising at his feet like a sea of cracked ice, than to accept tenderness and return it. Seriously. If that doesn鈥檛 make you want to give the poor guy a giant hug and a tender pat on the snout -- especially considering that such a revelation comes on the heels of a fleeting but significant physical interaction with the imperfect waitress M is crushing on hard -- then you have neither a soul nor a beating heart to speak of and I cannot, in good conscience, encourage further communication with you because you're probably a zombie. Not if you can read ....and puts her hand on top of his. And puts her hand on top of his. And puts her hand on top of his without the awed reverence of a beast unaccustomed to gentleness absolutely demolishing your stoic reserve and tear ducts. Though you鈥檙e probably a lost cause anyway if you made it past page 49鈥檚 confession that touch comes so infrequently to the Minotaur that when it happens, sincere or not, it nearly takes his breath away, blinds him momentarily to all rational thought and allegiance without your breath hitching and that little premonition of danger making you fiercely protective of M -- or maybe that鈥檚 just me identifying with fictional characters to an unhealthy extent again. This (debut, nonetheless) novel does so many things well beyond its sympathetic rendering of a mythical abomination. At one point, M鈥檚 constitution is described as one of 鈥済ritty resignation,鈥� which can also be said about the narration鈥檚 tone. M is never pathetic or hopeless, traits one might expect from so tragic and long a fall (fortunately, his Labyrinth days are mostly hazy half-dreams; even M鈥檚 primal defenses are blunted by a self-control he鈥檚 exerting after eons of learning that both 鈥減ossessing a capacity for evil unmatched鈥� and 鈥渉is own potential for tiny rages鈥� can lead to the kind of dire consequences he no longer welcomes). He鈥檚 scared and nervous an awful lot, but mostly in regard to the damage he can unintentionally cause other people and the embarrassment he can bring upon himself, and has a downright endearing habit of bovinely poking at the ground with his very human foot when he isn鈥檛 sure of what else to do, but he soldiers on with a hard-won, Zen-like 鈥渟tate of indifference, sometimes blessed, sometimes cursed鈥� that is completely expected from someone who has been everywhere once and who has passively watched the ultimately inconsequential rise and fall of countless civilizations. I feel so strange saying that I loved this book because there were so many moments that killed me with their undercurrents of sadness. For every instance detailing M鈥檚 private and painstaking maintenance ritual (being half-bull, after all, creates skin problems and requires frequent horn grooming), it was the self-sufficient singularity of it that got me the most. He reacts to the smallest kindness with a touchingly disproportionate relief and gratitude. His bull鈥檚 mouth is not made for human words, so verbal communication is an onerous task: His economy of language and the obvious embarrassment he feels when attempting to speak make his few non-grunted utterances poignant, not piteous (there's an exchange with M and his boss that crescendos with M's submissive, disbelieving "Not fired?" and, I swear, those paired words have never sung with such emotional resonance before). And his heady desire for the mere ability to sing into the warm nights as he drives his lovingly maintained jalopy screams of a being who may be no longer trapped in a Grecian maze against his will but confines himself to his inner world, as rich as any terminal introvert's mental plane, because he knows he never had and never will enjoy a real place in what鈥檚 going on around him. Even M鈥檚 bullish half is capable of empathy and despair. He certainly recognizes the cannibalistic nature of becoming his employer鈥檚 new beef carver and his emotional reaction to a televised bullfight 鈥� one of the few times he deigns to use the contraption, as ancient M 鈥渇eels hostile toward most things electronic.... There is a threat in the very existence of such minute and exact circuitry that touches something primal in the Minotaur鈥� 鈥� is terrible to consider in its personal relevance. As sympathetically as M is painted within these 300-some pages, it is nearly impossible to suspend one's disbelief to allow the sexual encounters between a woman and a man-bull to be effortlessly romantic. As loudly and over-earnestly as I was rooting for the Minotaur to get some, the novel would have hit a mortally insincere snag had M gotten his rocks off without a hitch (and a few suspicions about his partner's stability). Just like the few unprovoked, unwelcome confrontations and scuffles M finds himself in by virtue of being "a freak," it was absolutely crucial to the integrity of the narrative for M's lone love scene in this book to come with some ugliness. Because as much as you wanna take M's hand in yours for a little while to assure him that there are more than just a scant few decent people out there, the book straight-up questions what the hell an attractive, mentally sound woman would find arousing in such an unusual partner; also true to the gist of the story, however, there is a well-intentioned and genuine sense of companionship at the heart of a seemingly deviant behavior: What would compel a woman to kiss a man with the head of a bull? Pity? Curiosity? Genuine attraction? Maybe [she] recognizes the freakish parts of her own self and is drawn to the Minotaur through that alliance. Most likely it is a fluctuating merger of all these things that move her. Quite simply, I love this book and can't wait to read it again. I love what it had to say about people by way of a thoroughly nontraditional (but also undeniably human) protagonist. I loved M himself with such unrestrained empathy that he might be my new favorite fictional character. I loved the casual metaphors, the easy allusions, the subtle themes. I loved its warmth. And I really loved how it was a perfect storm of things that reminded me of how much I love getting lost and immersed in damn fine storytelling propelling a damn fine tale. Guys, seriously. Read this book. Read this book now. ...more |
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Oct 07, 2012
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Oct 08, 2012
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May 31, 2012
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Hardcover
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| 0140189300
| 9780140189308
| 0140189300
| 3.78
| 3,597
| Apr 28, 1966
| May 01, 1996
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really liked it
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There are two big things this book had working in its favor before I even cracked open Richard Fari帽a's under-appreciated final gem: The Pynchon conne
There are two big things this book had working in its favor before I even cracked open Richard Fari帽a's under-appreciated final gem: The Pynchon connection (which is was what nudged me in the direction of this novel in the first place, albeit more than a year after "Gravity's Rainbow" mournfully introduced me to Fari帽a) and my own probably-over-romanticized-at-this-point affinity for my college experience, with Pynchon's intro (which includes an obligatory kazoo-choir reference!) being, of course, a voyeuristic delight of the highest order right until the moment it crashed back to heartbreaking reality and the novel's not-entirely-fictitious collegiate antics serving as a not-entirely-unpleasant reminder of why I was so reluctant to let go of college life. And then, during the year's last handful of blessedly slow days at the Crappiest Place on Earth, I discovered that actually taking my lunch hour to hunker shoelessly down in the backseat of my car with a blanket and a book is pretty much the best thing to ever happen to my (Thank bouncing Baby Jesus that Fari帽a's Cornell chum desensitized me to complex equations interrupting literature.) So now a novel that was published two days before its author's far-too-early death has found an even fonder association in my own personal landscape, thanks to my unyielding dissatisfaction with and need to escape from a job that takes me farther and farther from where I wanted to be at this point in my life. I am so glad that I read this book now, rather than as a starry-eyed undergrad with dreams of running the NYT and writing The Greatest American Novel of My Generation on the side. I have a better sense of how life is not something that can be planned for, that growing up is fucking hard even with a willingness to let one's inner child have a say every now and again, that death is always lurking around every corner, and coming to this novel without even one of those hard lessons under my belt would have reduced this from a poignantly frenzied love song of youth's last discoveries to an instruction manual for college kids who just want to shake things up (not that there's anything inherently wrong with living in the moment and taking inconsequentially stupid chances, for those are the backbone of the best Hey, Remember When...? tales). I absolutely would have embraced any opportunity to cause a scene at a formal frathouse dinner like Gnossos Pappadopoulis (Fari帽a's thinly veiled stand-in for himself) did, just as I had also proclaimed myself in love with wrong guy after wrong guy based on a series of limited-engagement liaisons, as Gnossos did with Kristin, his obsession in green knee-socks and loafers. My tendency to relate too personally with literary characters came out to play for keeps as Gnossos became a clearer and clearer picture; save for a few lapses into first-person narration, this is a story told mostly in third-person with a focus on GP, so it takes some time to get a sense of his motivation and how others perceive him (it takes a little longer to reconcile the two seemingly at-odds realities). And perhaps I was imposing my own inner workings on Gnossos but I left this book with a sense of awed kinship inspired by his mostly successful attempts to hide his soft heart under an ornery facade. He wants to feel, he wants to live, he wants to be earnest in his devil-may-care approach to throwing himself into living but he is woefully, painfully afraid of doing so because fully embracing life means also acknowledging that death is the inevitable end game. Gnossos seems like the kind of maniac ringleader whose enthusiasm and passion attract unresisting friends and followers in droves but his attitude obscures a desperate desire to fall in love rather than indulge in a series of unemotional physical encounters, which is what it seems will finally help him stop fighting thanathos with an unequivocally driving life force. Had I not read Pynchon's "Entropy" in college, I would have probably missed the significance of how Gnossos has hermetically sealed himself inside every room he occupies in an attempt to artificially preserve life against the natural encroachment of death -- until his night with Kristin has him throwing open windows with the zeal of a man possessed. He is a character who fights the unpleasant reality with the much more pleasing act of losing oneself in the moment and clinging to that happiness as if that's all it takes to preserve that joy for eternity. As his attempts at pleasant stasis become more desperate and he loses control over situations that initially plopped him on top of the world, it becomes more obvious that this is a guy who wants freedom without responsibility -- and, in the end, isn't that what college is all about? It's Bukowski once you've swapped the booze for drugs. It's Hunter S. Thompson with an overt awareness that death is nipping at his heels. It's Kerouac as a college kid. It's Pynchon with narrative restraint. But most of all, it's both proof that Fari帽a's early death was a huge loss to the literary world and a tribute to a screamingly talented artist who knew how to find the biggest truths in the smallest moments while laughing and kicking death in the ass. Because as much as Gnossos (and, presumably, Fari帽a) feared death, his ability to suck the marrow from every moment is the ultimate victory of life. ...more |
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1
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Dec 06, 2012
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Dec 15, 2012
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May 27, 2012
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Paperback
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| 1621050165
| 9781621050162
| 1621050165
| 3.49
| 80
| Dec 16, 2011
| Dec 16, 2011
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liked it
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After the third time I started this book, got about five pages deep and decided that I just wasn't in the mood for a pulpy romp yet, I finally found t
After the third time I started this book, got about five pages deep and decided that I just wasn't in the mood for a pulpy romp yet, I finally found the there's-a-car-on-fire-and-I-just-can't-look-away point. What ensued left me assuring myself that my fear of large aquatic bodies is totally justified because boating adventures almost always end in catastrophe. This one, for example, began with a pirate chase and ended with a dude eagerly anticipating his future as a necrophiliac. The rest of the tale included things that not even my most dementedly vivid nightmares could conjure. Like a penis breaking in half from being forced into too many orifices. And a vagina-baby (NOT as obvious of a description as you'd think!) being sexxed to death. And a woman asserting her alpha-femaleness by painting herself with her own menstrual blood. While the other bizarro books I've read seem to focus on people dealing with strange impositions that wreak havoc on their daily lives, this is the first one that flung its characters right into the fire: There's no shred of normalcy to be found on Spider Island. The body count climbs as the main characters try to wring some sense from their surroundings, going so far as clinging to the time-honored coping method of writing all the weirdness off as a drunken illusion, when the only thing that could kind of save them from the native babes' sacrifices and unwelcome corporeal pillaging is to embrace their inner savages. Which they finally do. And which also involves being stuffed like Thanksgiving turkeys with dynamite. "Gargoyle Girls" has the dubious honor of being the first book since "American Psycho" that put my claims of possessing a nigh infinite capacity for the deranged to the test, as well as being the vehicle by which I discovered the uncomfortable delight of referring to olfactory offenses as "smelling like stomach rape." I had a few moments of wondering if certain details were necessary to the story rather than the shock value they brought to it but was usually surprised to find such things being resurrected as valid plot components. Though this be madness, aye, there really was some method in't after all. ...more |
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May 31, 2012
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Jun 2012
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May 25, 2012
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Paperback
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| 0142002429
| 9780142002421
| 0142002429
| 3.85
| 23,714
| Jan 06, 1987
| May 25, 2004
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really liked it
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If my first novel were this good, I'd be tempted to pull a Harper Lee and let that one beautiful work be monument enough to my prowess as both a words
If my first novel were this good, I'd be tempted to pull a Harper Lee and let that one beautiful work be monument enough to my prowess as both a wordsmith and a storyteller.
...more
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Notes are private!
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1
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Jun 04, 2012
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Jun 08, 2012
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May 18, 2012
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Paperback
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| B01181UBSU
| 4.03
| 1,266,961
| May 19, 1942
| Mar 28, 1989
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it was amazing
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I was so amped about this book when I tore through it a few weeks ago; alas, in that yawning chasm of time between then and when I first sat down to s
I was so amped about this book when I tore through it a few weeks ago; alas, in that yawning chasm of time between then and when I first sat down to start this review (as opposed to this most recent effort -- I think at least my fourth?), I found that I鈥檇 forgotten a lot of the specific reasons why it had hit all the right spots for me. Fortunately, since 欧宝娱乐 has instilled in me the need to take notes on, emphatically underline passages from and analyze the pants off every book I read these days, a quick revisit to my thorough defacing of this novel got me right back in the mindset of being unexpectedly taken by a deceptively disinterested narrator. This is a work that got under my skin and burrowed deep into my brain in slightly disturbing but mostly welcome ways right from the first sentence. I am not a terribly literal person. I love hyperboles and understatement and metaphors because they allow for elasticity of interpretation. It lets people impose their own inner landscapes on the seemingly uniform outside world, just as it leaves room for individual interpretations of message, intent, subtext, whatever. People do not perceive and interact with the world the same way, so why should they be expected to hear the same things, pick up on the same cues, follow the same logic of thought? To me, that鈥檚 how you get to the core of a person and their internal workings: Let them show you how they operate by giving them enough variables to put in comprehensible order as they see fit. Of course, forcing the observer to do some creative thinking on the fly (or trusting them to observe at all, in some cases) has a tendency to backfire more often than simply saying what's on your mind to eliminate all doubt, but that's how you suss out the mental midgets. Or, you know, wind up with a death sentence. Like life, it's all a gamble and not always worth the risk. As odd (though probably unsurprising, given the nature of my reviews) as it is to say, I found a certain kinship with Meursault. True, there鈥檚 not much to the fellow when you observe him as an outsider (that is, outside his head), but when I let myself roll around in the vast implications of what he says and the fathoms of unspoken depth in what impels him to behave as he does, I started to recognize so many of my own leaps of logic and nonsensical-without-an-explanation reactions. To me, Meursault is just a guy who just doesn't process the world in the same rank-and-file way as others do. He's an open book, an adaptable entity and honest to a fault, a man who doesn't subscribe to societal norms -- not because it's cool to be That Guy but because he truly seems to process events and impulses with a sense of sincerely stoic reservation. How many people haven't cried at a loved one's funeral, only to crumble under the emotional weight days or weeks or months later after some mundane event hammers home the finality of loss? Or have taken up an unpleasant task to relieve a friend from its terrible burden? Or shrugged their shoulders in the face of an ugly truth because nothing can change the course of fate once the momentum reaches its unstoppable peak? What, really, is the point of getting emotional when it's not going to change a damn thing? Meursault knows he is powerless to change things. He knows he has no business making assumptions about other people and their behaviors based solely on his own. What's so wrong with that? Fighting death is the most hopeless of causes so don't even bother wasting the effort; similarly, he knows that crying over his mother's death won't bring her back. Besides, what we know about their relationship is only what Meursault reveals, overtly or not, so who are we to judge him strange for not reacting as histrionically as we would? Isn't it awfully presumptuous to impose our sense of "normal" on a stranger? But by the time he shares his belief that no one has a right to cry over his Maman when being so close to death allowed her a peace that simply does not exist in the bloom of life, Meursault's own minimal relevancy to the world is nearing its close. We are not supposed to get to the heart of him but we sure can appreciate where he's coming from with just enough effort to realize that the example made of him misses the point by a shamefully vast distance. This book touched on a lot of things that annoy me about society, mainly the need to cling to misconceptions when confronted with an individual or circumstance that can't be neatly cataloged as a "type" or doesn't fall into a inflexibly prefabricated black-or-white category. Why is it so difficult for the staggering masses to extend the courtesy and minimal exertion of critical thinking to appreciate and be educated by a deviation from the norm? I appreciated the opportunity to judge that which I cannot stand in a cathartic, safely isolated way. It allowed me to focus on feeling just awful for Meursault. I mean, c'mon -- someone had to, right? He's the victim of the dangers of monochromatic thinking in a world painted in every hue, common or not. (Alternate read is that Meursault is an emotionally stunted Maman's boy who can't cope with life sans mommy, throws himself at this woman he barely knows and then gets himself legally killed so he doesn't have to do it himself, but that's so... so.... nope, not even gonna consider that one.) ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Dec 15, 2012
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Dec 22, 2012
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May 18, 2012
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Paperback
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| 0553210076
| 9780553210071
| 0553210076
| 3.56
| 594,691
| Oct 18, 1851
| Feb 01, 1981
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really liked it
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(In the interest of full disclosure, I wrote most of this while chomping on my newly acquired Gandalf pipe. As-of-yet-unnamed anachronistic tribute to
(In the interest of full disclosure, I wrote most of this while chomping on my newly acquired Gandalf pipe. As-of-yet-unnamed anachronistic tribute to oral fixation, I dedicate this review to you, new friend.) I am terrified of large aquatic bodies. Just.... scared shitless. Remember that inspired-by-true-events flick a few years ago about the couple on a cruise who resurfaced from their scuba adventure only to find that their ship had chugged right along its merry course without them aboard? Yeah, I saw a trailer for it in the movie theater and almost caused a public scene because it's not every day a person has a whole new worst fear forced upon their consciousness for obsessive, terrified consideration. The idea of looking around and seeing nothing but water and sky disturbs me me almost as deeply as the possibility of drowning does (you should probably know that my own wildly vacillating attitudes toward death reach panic levels when I dwell too long on what it would be like to drown). So, no. I am rapidly approaching my third decade of existing and have never once even considered reading "Moby-Dick." I always figured any sort of cultural or literary touchstone contained within Herman Melville's whale of a tale could be gleaned from the bevy of succeeding works that have doffed their caps to it in affectionate allusion. I mean, I was positively sick about "The X-Files" as a wee, impressionable lass, and in what contemporary bit of entertainment has a major character's backstory been more flecked with the flung spume of the Pequod's final voyage than that of Agent Dana Scully? I was certain that I absorbed all of this book's important messages without having to slog through what I figured had to be a most assuredly dry novel of high-seas antics. Except that once I finally started reading "Moby-Dick," I had to keep reminding myself that this story is 161 years old because it is the textbook definition of a timeless tale. The themes Melville tackled as the human constants he knew them to be just surprised the hell out of me from such an aged classic. Any narrator who can step back from the action to act as a faithful recorder -- an unbiased camera zooming in on all the intersecting threads that weave a tragic tapestry, driven to commit his experiences to immortal inscription not by ego but rather a need to ensure that the cautionary tale and its key players live on -- wins me over every time. Ishmael, whose desire for knowledge and feelings of being apart from human society only further endeared him to me in a fit of kinship I so often feel with fictional characters, imposed so little of himself and his point of view on the story that I would occasionally forget both he and his intent to counter some deep soul-aching absence with oceanic travels were among the Pequod's crew. His willingness to abandon his own under-informed prejudices once he began to understand Queequeg's alien ways and the ensuing fraternal bond they share is a lesson for the ages, a promise that moving beyond exhausted tolerance toward exuberant acceptance is more than worth the necessary shift in perspective. It is that very open-minded curiosity Ishmael embodies before he even gets a chance to show off his sea legs that solidifies his merit as the trusty lens through which the goings-on of "Moby-Dick" can be viewed. As for the civil savage himself, I think my husband's summation of the harpooneer works better than anything I could conjure on my own: "Queequeg is the shit." And all the whale biology stuffed between accounts of life in search of Ahab's White Whale? I. Was. Enthralled. Marine-mammal biology isn't really something that I've been all that interested in unless there was a grade on the line but, damn it, learning about every inch of the whale from tail to tip and inside out just fascinated me. I'll never look at Shamu or his brethren with the same cooing regard ever again: Them fishy bitches be scary, yo. There's something to be said for knowing the enemy and, good Lord, did Melville ever demystify the whale's inner and outer workings while proving that this is one giant beast who deserves awed respect. I can't believe how many beautiful, perfectly wrought metaphors and symbols Melville shorehorned into a book that is only superficially about whaling. I can't believe how this is a revenge tale that can actually rival the Shakespearean canon in its scope and fervency and misinterpretations and nihilistic body count. Most of all, I can't believe how much I enjoyed the face off a book that ended by forcing me to witness one of my deepest-rooted, longest-running fears. Kudos to you, Melville. And kudos again. (The obligatory dick joke is how I blew my load about halfway through this review. Just in case you're wondering.) ...more |
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1
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Oct 02, 2012
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Dec 04, 2012
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May 07, 2012
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Mass Market Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 4.15
| 151,097
| 1959
| Sep 1998
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really liked it
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Since discovering that I love me some Vonnegut a few years ago after a humorless eighth-grade English teacher nearly kept me from ever giving him anot
Since discovering that I love me some Vonnegut a few years ago after a humorless eighth-grade English teacher nearly kept me from ever giving him another go, I've read a not immediately dismissive number of his works. And they've all left me in various degrees of speechless. It can't be helped. He delights me in the way that only a favorite writer can. Reading Vonnegut makes me realize that there's nothing I can say that he hadn't already said better and more cleverly. And that's not really a bad thing because he made some idea I so fundamentally agree with sound so good that other people have to agree with him and, therefore, also me. And knowing that continues to make me feel a little better about the world. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Aug 08, 2012
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Aug 25, 2012
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May 05, 2012
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Paperback
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| 1936383225
| 9781936383221
| 1936383225
| 3.64
| 186
| Oct 17, 2010
| Oct 17, 2010
|
really liked it
|
I've spent most of my life in New Jersey, so I've probably encountered every type of asshole at least twice. Yeah, yeah, you all think you know someth
I've spent most of my life in New Jersey, so I've probably encountered every type of asshole at least twice. Yeah, yeah, you all think you know something about something thanks to the intellectual wasteland of "The Jersey Shore" but that's just scratching the surface. (I mean, I assume. I've never watched the show because I don't feel like explaining to the emergency-room staff that I've punched out my television. Again.) Those are what we sneeringly call "Bennies," the overprivileged, overgrown children who storm the state's shore towns every summer to ooze their particular breed of slimeball all over a state that reached its capacity for flagrant douchebaggery back in the '80s. That's just one flavor of asshole we offer, and they're only available seasonally. Try venturing inland and bearing witness to our impressive array of disgruntled Philly rejects and self-entitled soccer moms who can't believe that a stranger had the audacity to not find it, like, utterly charming when their undisciplined rugrats turn a grocery store into a playground. To survive in the self-proclaimed armpit of America, I've had to do as the assholes do and adopt a few of their tactics. The difference? I generally try to reserve my powers for solely defensive use, rather than construct my entire personality on a foundation of bitchiness -- of course, lesser days have seen my temper flare up without provocation. For the most part, though, being raised by assholes (do you have a better name for the kind of people who punish their children for the unimaginable transgression of wasting a quarter on a stranger's expired parking meter?) and pursuing a short-lived career in print journalism have taught me that the best weapon in the war against assholes is plastering on a big, unwavering smile and killin' 'em all with a sickeningly sweet kindness that just won't quit. The few "normal" people swimming against the surging tide of assholes in "Night of the Assholes" cling to the same arsenal of impregnable politeness, and also any umbrella, pole, stick or anally penetrating weaponry within grabbing range. Because when the assholes spill from the local mall to congregate around the farmhouse in which a small cluster of survivors seek refuge, one cannot simply exchange barbs or blows with the masses of asses: To sink to their level is to become one of them. You can grin and bear it, or you can stake an asshole in the asshole and know that you did your part to make the world a better place. You know, if it mattered. Is this starting to sound like a variation on the zombie theme? It probably should, as the book openly takes its inspiration from George A. Romero's "Night of the Living Dead." For people like me -- those weirdos who've had zombie-apocalypse survival strategies and go-bags at the ready for years -- the shuffling undead just aren't that scary anymore. A zombie somehow circumvented the booby traps littering my property? That's nice. Get out of my living room or prepare for a bullet to the forehead and a blade to the neck (thanks for the Nazi sword that not even eBay would consider touching, Uncle Walt). But a legion of assholes? You're not just one among a dwindling herd of brains to them: You're a target, and it's personal. They'll taunt you, pry the layers of boards off your windows, stuff a hot dog down your throat 'til you've choked, or charge your shelter with a fleet of molester vans just to hack away at the civility you're desperately trying to maintain for the sake of your humanity. Or, y'know, they'll just as soon kill you in the most demeaning way possible and rejoice that their laughter is the last thing you'll hear as your life seeps away. Because that's how assholes roll. At least zombies are limited in both methods of attack and motivation. Assholes dedicate their entire being to ruining yours and will keep plotting until they've won. And, oh my God, are the assholes ever on parade in this book. If the barrage of high-octane jerks in the first 30 pages don't make you hate humanity even more than you usually do during your rush-hour commute home, then you're a better person than I am: The onslaught of persistent telemarketers, pushy salespeople, loudmouth racists, deliberately terrible drivers, stereotypically catty cheerleaders, ineffective mall-security stooges, and the holier-than-thou faux religious zealots had me seething with barely contained rage. Those kinds of people are insufferable on their own and in small doses. But en masse? I can't imagine reacting with anything less than full-on stabby rage. For the few times I had to put this book down in order to distance myself from the growing need to tell everyone to eat me raw and like it, I couldn't leave it alone for more than a few minutes. The story is compelling -- how, or WILL, the non-assholes free themselves? -- and the characters are so fully realized that you just have to root for them. Or root for them to meet with the kind of gruesome death you didn't know you could wish on another person, living or imaginary. This is my introduction to Donihe's works, and it's my second helping of the bizarro genre: Reading "Night of the Assholes" made me want more of both. Immediately. The story would be campy and artificial in a lesser writer's hands but Donihe deftly navigates his reader through the seemingly hopeless tale he's spun. And the writing is really, really good! I can't emphasize that enough. I am one of those people who gets hyper-involved in a story and can't help putting myself in the characters' shoes, but the way I started getting too irritated at some of the displays of assholery featured in this book was on another level entirely -- and that's a testament to the talent that crafted the story, to make a reader feel what the characters are feeling. Barbara, the protagonist, struggles with anger issues all through the story, and I wished many, many times that she'd just admit defeat already and beat the bejeezus out of someone -- asshole transformation be damned -- because that's what I wanted to do and I needed some catharsis: Luckily, when the assholes get staked, it is satisfying in ways that should probably shame me. In the end, I like to think that the moral of this story is exactly what my planned defense plea has always been: It's not enough to placidly tolerate the world's assholes; you must kill them to fix the problem. And anything that can justify well-meaning but extreme measures is okay with me. It just helps that it's a mighty good read, too. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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May 2012
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May 02, 2012
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May 01, 2012
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Paperback
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| 1617750255
| 9781617750250
| 1617750255
| 4.28
| 89,458
| Jun 14, 2011
| Jun 14, 2011
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I read this book this while attending some friends' baby shower today and laughed my wine-drunk ass off through its all-too-short 32 pages (thanks, un
I read this book this while attending some friends' baby shower today and laughed my wine-drunk ass off through its all-too-short 32 pages (thanks, unknown fellow celebrant, for making my sense of humor feel a little less lonely). I can't say anything critical about an object that simultaneously made me want kids so I can read this to them and reminded me of all the reasons in favor of remaining willfully childless. (I mean, the rhyme scheme is a little forced sometimes and not all of those stanzas have a uniform rhythm, but those are the kinds of things that only humorless jerks point out, right?) ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Apr 16, 2012
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Apr 16, 2012
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Apr 15, 2012
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Hardcover
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my rating |
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|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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| 3.74
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it was amazing
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not set
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Jan 08, 2013
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| 4.44
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liked it
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Nov 24, 2012
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Nov 12, 2012
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|||||
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| 3.87
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really liked it
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Oct 02, 2012
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Aug 27, 2012
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| 4.32
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liked it
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Aug 22, 2012
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Aug 13, 2012
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| 4.29
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it was amazing
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Sep 14, 2012
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Jul 26, 2012
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| 3.89
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liked it
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Aug 10, 2012
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Jul 12, 2012
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|||||
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| 4.02
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really liked it
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Nov 12, 2012
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Jun 20, 2012
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|||||
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| 3.57
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liked it
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Jun 20, 2012
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Jun 14, 2012
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|||||
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| 3.79
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really liked it
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Jun 23, 2012
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Jun 14, 2012
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|||||
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| 3.71
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really liked it
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Jun 14, 2012
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Jun 12, 2012
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|||||
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| 3.99
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liked it
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Jun 18, 2012
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Jun 08, 2012
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| 3.73
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it was amazing
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Oct 08, 2012
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May 31, 2012
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| 3.78
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really liked it
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Dec 15, 2012
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May 27, 2012
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|||||
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| 3.49
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liked it
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Jun 2012
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May 25, 2012
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|||||
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| 3.85
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really liked it
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Jun 08, 2012
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May 18, 2012
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| 4.03
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it was amazing
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Dec 22, 2012
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May 18, 2012
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| 3.56
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really liked it
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Dec 04, 2012
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May 07, 2012
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| 4.15
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really liked it
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Aug 25, 2012
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May 05, 2012
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| 3.64
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really liked it
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May 02, 2012
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May 01, 2012
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| 4.28
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Apr 16, 2012
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Apr 15, 2012
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