A Tale of Two Readings

I just reread A Tale of Two Cities for the first time since high school, when the fact that it was assigned reading made it a chore, albeit one in which I enjoyed the classroom discussions, and especially, the introduction to Dickens' vivid characterizations. It's intriguing to me that several of the characters and the humorous personalities are what I'd recalled, decades later; the horrific, terroristic elements of the plot I'd either partly forgotten or blocked out altogether.

While reminiscing about that class, an absurd tangent occurred to me: does anyone still remember the Lay's Potato Chips television ad, maybe from the early 1970s, showing French revolutionaries challenging a miscreant to eat just one, delicious potato chip, with a silhouette of the top of a guillotine looming above a hilltop in the background? "He tried, but he couldn't do it," sings the chorus with a knowing smile, as the knife is raised yonder. Yeah. Traumatized for life by that one, I was. "Damn the man who cut this tree," said Sterling North as a precocious 11-year old to an unidentified woodsman, in Rascal; "Eff you, pal," I say to the unidentified Madison Avenue jokester who gave me the heebie-jeebies when I was 11.

Some confront history in a museum. I confront it in the salted snack aisle.

Of course, the reality was far worse. The horror of the age is bludgeoned home by Dickens through artful, awe-filled repetition, as if to say, "It was terrible. Really, bloody terrible. Really, really, REALLY bloody terrible. How terrible, you ask? Let me repeat...".  You're in for a rough ride in the rumble seat when your worst fears are depicted by a crafty novelist who's paid by the word.

Bob's Best Books of 2013 - The Top Ten, and Then Some

This is a purely personal list of books that I've read, finished (mostly), and enjoyed during 2013, regardless of publication date.  A more complete catalog of books I've read, along with 1-star to 5-star ratings and occasional capsule reviews, is on my Goodreads.com page.

Now, without further ado...the best of 2013!

1. Fisherman's Beach by George Vukelich (1962).  A moving, well-written story of a patriarchal family and way of life in crisis and transition. The Upper Great Lakes setting is visceral and pervasive; the writing is crisp, colorful, and powerful in its simplicity.  Comparable in quality and tone to the German novella, Der Schimmelreiter (The Rider on the White Horse).  I'm astounded that this regional work from the late Wisconsin writer didn't receive wider attention, although an excellent Madison Magazine profile of the author's life and a new edition of his novel may help to rectify that.

2. The Unlikely Secret Agent by Ronnie Kasrils (2012).  In a year that ended with Nelson Mandela's passing, this suspensefully plotted memoir of a young woman's small-scale, clandestine operations against the South African apartheid regime in the 1960s, in concert with the ANC and other revolutionary elements, serves as a testimony to her pluck, persistence, and resourcefulness under the constant threat of capture and harsh treatment.  Written by her admiring husband following her death, the book also serves as an internal snapshot of the organizational and personal alliances the two of them formed in pursuit of their activities.

3. Elegant Enigmas: The Art of Edward Gorey by Karen Wilkin (2009).  I became aware of cartoonist Edward Gorey, the comically morbid heir to Chas. Addams and progenitor to goth-graphic filmmaker Tim Burton, in the 1970s.  The Loathsome Couple (1977), Gorey's illustrated tale of two macabre anti-heros for whom a mundane life gets worse and worse, was a staple of my personal wry humor collection for years.  Elegant Enigmas is a comprehensive, curated survey of Gorey's masterful career -- although I agree with one commenter who suggested that those wholly unfamiliar with his work check out some of his original storybooks first.

4. The Spy Who Came In from the Cold (1963) and The Looking Glass War (1965) by John le Carré.  I'm still catching up on the George Smiley series by British espionage master le Carré.  This pair of iconic, acclaimed, literary spy thrillers elevated le Carré from his erstwhile status as part-time mystery writer, whose "detective" happens to be a middle-aged ex-spy, to a recipient of worldwide acclaim as a deep explorer of immorality, deceit, and duplicity by agencies and assassins on an international scale.  His characters' harsh actions are justified, at first, by a sense of patriotic duty.  The further one reads in the Smiley series, however, the harder it is to tell the good guys from the bad.

5. Mortality by Christopher Hitchens (2012).  This short book serves a profound, dual purpose: it is a frank, autobiographical documentary of the grinding, mundane realities of the author's diminishing quality of life as his terminal disease (esophageal cancer) overtakes him; and it is a stark defense of his strident, lifelong atheism.  As a mathematics student, I was once taught the value of testing general propositions under extreme conditions.  By examining his own debunking of faith during episodes of his failing health, an extreme condition that leads some to bargain with one or more deities with whom they haven't previously communicated, Hitchens provides the generous gift of transparency to his readers not presently in such dire straits.  He reaffirms his godless philosophy -- to his own satisfaction, at least.

6. A Hall of Mirrors by Robert Stone (1964).  Must confess, I haven't finished A Hall of Mirrors just yet.  However, any literary debut that uses colorful description, well-drawn characters, and brilliant dialogue to send up both sleazy, fly-by-night rescue mission preachers and rightist media polemicists in its first 120 pages gives me great hope for the remaining 280.  Set in New Orleans, the book is comparable to John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces (completed 1964; published 1981).  One wonders if Stone and Toole had made each other's acquaintance.

7. Hoot (2002) and Chomp (2012) by Carl Hiaasen.  I've accumulated almost a whole shelf of Carl Hiaasen's comedic, ecologically moralistic novels, now stacked on my overburdened books-to-read bookcase and waiting for a scrap of my attention.  So naturally, rather than start on those, I've been reading his books for kids instead.  Same wackiness, same eco-morals, same sticky come-uppances for the defilers of nature; just a bit quicker to read.  Or, in the case of Chomp, to listen to as an audiobook on an overnight Amtrak trip to Schenectady.  Even Hiaasen himself might not have calculated the comically disruptive effect of the repeatedly spoken character name of "Wahoo" on a railroad passenger and his seatmates.

8. The Third Man by Graham Greene (1948).  Conceived originally as the mere outline for the classic suspense movie of the same name, The Third Man is a detective novella with cinematic detail and more literary exposition than one would expect from a text that the author did not imagine the public would see.

9. The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman (2013).  Touting a book by the ever-popular pop-goth fantacist Neil Gaiman feels a bit like following the herd, but in this case it's a genuine recommendation.  Just as portrait artists who work in oils create self-portraits in their own style, Gaiman has created an artful, fictional self-portrait using nonfictional events and settings from his childhood.  The latest output from the groundbreaking graphic novelist known for the Sandman series, Ocean can also be taken as Gaiman's personal origins story -- or, more simply, as a narrative answer to the one question that plagues all successful authors: "Where do you get your ideas?"

10. Humor in Craft by Brigitte Martin (2012).  Ever since I saw a talented friend throw and carve a cartoonish firehouse mug on a potter's wheel, with a firehose for a handle, I've been intrigued by the ability of artists to create humorous works of high wit.  Humor in Craft is a collection of such works in multiple media from a cross-cultural perspective.  Only two complaints: I wish some of the photographed exhibits were larger, and I wish certain craft techniques were at least introduced so that readers who take inspiration from the collection might be able to follow in the artists' funny footsteps.

Honorable mention:

Six Days of the Condor by James Grady (1974).  One Man Against the Machine Award.

The Odessa File by Frederick Forsythe (1972).  Suspense with Horrifying Historical Elements Award.

Knots and Crosses (1987), Hide and Seek (1990), Tooth and Nail (1992), A Good Hanging (1992), and Strip Jack (1992) by Ian Rankin.  Bob's Found a New Mystery Series Award.

Red Square by Martin Cruz Smith (1992).  Bob's Other Favorite Mystery Series Award. 

Free Country: A Penniless Adventure the Length of Britain by George Mahood (2013).  Light-Hearted Travel E-Book for Settling Down and Trying to Go to Sleep Award.

The Babe and I by Mrs. Babe Ruth (1959).  You May Be Beloved But They Still Won't Make You a Manager Award.

Post Office by Charles Bukowski (1971).  And You Thought Your Job Was Unfulfilling Award.

How Many Lanes Must Neil Gaiman Walk Down?

While many readers will take The Ocean at the End of the Lane as a parable for an adult's hazy recollection of the intense feelings and dark fears and fantasies of childhood, a more specific perspective is possible: this is Neil Gaiman's gothic self-portrait, in the sense of a painter who depicts himself looking in a mirror, his bemused image standing out centrally if tentatively, embedded as it is in the composition among his favorite semiotic objects.

Fittingly for a creator and writer of comics, it's also Gaiman's superhero origins story, presenting how a figurative, residual hole in the author's heart from childhood traumatic events has led to his lifelong, genius ability to access his sharp, surrealistic imagination for popular consumption and illumination.

I See What He Did There

I'm through page 73 of For the Win, Cory Doctorow's 21st Century novel of multi-player virtual reality games and their intersection with bands of far-flung, carbon-based humans facing real, increasingly precarious predicaments.

Already, in fewer than 15% of the novel's rapidly readable pages, FTW has called to mind George Orwell's 1984, Norman Jewison's pithy short story, "Rollerball Murder" (later made into the violent future-sports movie, "Rollerball"), and Thomas Friedman's breathless economic globalism treatise, The World is Flat.

Then, without warning, Doctorow executes a perfect educational ambush and explains how financial arbitrage led to the mortgage and banking crisis of 2008, without ever using the words mortgage, banking, or collateralized debt obligations -- without even mentioning the historical events of 2008, in fact. He accomplishes this in only four pages, written at an eighth grade level, using vorpal blades, gaming gold, and other virtual treasure as currency to illustrate.

I'm now fully convinced of the author's powers. I'm hopeful that if I keep reading, I'll learn how to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict without using the word Jerusalem. I'm pretty sure a vorpal blade will be involved.

A Video Game, In Paperback

Stormbreaker, the Young Adult (YA) spy novel by Anthony Horowitz, fills an airport bookstore's urgent need to stock something to sell to action-loving teens -- and former teens -- who have left their Game Boys at home.

Borrowing heavily from BritSpy genre giants Ian Fleming (James Bond), John LeCarre (George Smiley), and Patrick McGoohan (himself - I mean, John Drake), Stormbreaker introduces 14-year old schoolboy Alex Rider as a reluctant hero whose covert-ops uncle has been killed in action and who is recruited by MI6 to take his uncle's place. He faces prototypical dangers -- the evil mastermind! the mumble-jawed monster man! the security forces on ATVs! the machine guns! the electric fence! the poisonous jellyfish! the plot to destroy the world! Fortunately, Alex has been ruthlessly trained by the MI6 team and tactically equipped by the always-important spy-gadgets supplier, Smithers. I'll never look at zit cream the same way again.

As fast-paced, two-dimensional, and values-free as a second-generation video game, Stormbreaker runs Alex through his harsh basic training and then drops him into an existentialist scenario that only a plot maven could love. There's no way out for Alex but forward through the ordeal; no possible alternative exists but to work at massive personal risk for bland, exploitative spymasters who need him desperately, yet who could care less about his personal survival. This is a bleak vision of teen as imperiled pawn, a joyless executor of the impossible mission that the adults have determined for him.

Good elements of the novel do exist: the taut pacing and animating plot, suitable for alumni of the Hardy Boys series; the economical writing; the Introduction to Existentialism course. It's not that Stormbreaker isn't well-written; rather, it's that there's a dry humorlessness without relief or redemption as the plot moves forward. There's no tubby, loyal friend Chet or other oddball sidekick to color in the human spaces. Even David Brin's Postman, a loner if there ever was one, forms alliances along the way; in contrast, Alex Rider is truly on his own as he fulfills his assigned destiny. In the end, Alex's increasingly bleak life is spared -- if only for the sequel -- when one of his murderous antagonists improbably shoots the other one. Talk about killer endings.

Alex Rider is John Drake without the worldliness; George Smiley without the moral nuance; James Bond without the girls. Now a major motion picture, says the book's cover. I think I'll wait for the Game Boy edition.

YA: Yea or Nay?

I've checked out a slew of young adult (YA) novels from the library for the first time since my mom took us to the bookmobile stop during summer vacations.

Hopefully this is not as weird as it sounds. I want to see if my writing impulses translate readily into a particular genre, age level, and subject matter -- even though my written output to date has primarily consisted of Excel spreadsheets and grocery lists. Taking inspiration from the best cross-generational writers, such as Carl Hiaasen and Neil Gaiman, I want to find a cadre of sharp, creative voices to emulate.

I plan to keep my reading list realistic rather than fantastical, steering clear altogether of the astoundingly prevalent dragons-and-swords subgenre. Squishy romances and teen emo won't work for me either: big surprise! Adventure, mystery, sports, and humor -- as well as nonfiction -- are the more appealing categories.

Has the fantasy of writing The Great American Novel morphed into the yen to strike it rich with the next Harry Potter series? Is there gold in them thar hills?