Stuff I've Been Reading: September

Stuff Read:
Johnathon Strange And Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke
The Hilliker Curse, James Ellroy
Spook Country, William Gibson
Jimmy Corrigan, Chris Ware
Role Models, John Waters
Batman Gothic, Grant Morrison
Mockingjay, Suzanne Collins
Dead Zone, Stephen King
All Things Considered, GK Chesterton.



Jonathon Strange And Mr. Norrell is a thousand page novel that feels more like a massive intricate prologue then a novel in itself. Its pacing is, well let’s just be polite and say deliberate. And the lone protaginist for the first three hundred pages is an unpleasant old man who looks and acts like Mr. Burns at his most vulnerable.

But it’s still a pretty damn good read.

If Strange and Norrell was a shade more conventional, it would fall completely out of balance. In shirking every opportunity to embrace fantasy clichés, it excuses itself from having to pay lip service to a single one. By being eccentric in every aspect it excuses itself from having to play by any rule.

The thing that makes Johnathon Strange And Mr. Norrell magical (sorry I was momentarily possessed by Gene Shalit and could not resist) is that it doesn’t merely seem like a book about this era, but actually from it. Which is why it’s not only permissible, but commendable for the novel to spend oh say about 90% of it’s time doing nothing in particular but observe the nature of it’s characters, and the rules of their society.

The story follows the decades long struggle between two English Magicians, who bring “Practical” magic back to England after it has lain dormant for centuries. The consequences of this act are further reaching then either could imagine. Around them, Clarke weaves a tapestry of characters of Dickensian (or to be slightly more accurate Austenian) proportions. And supplements the book with countless annotations and footnotes, that make the world about them live and breath like few do.

Strange And Norrell is amazing because there’s just so little like it. While almost all of today’s fantasy fiction derives either from Tolkien, or at least Howard, Collin’s novel draws from something much more primal and darker. It seems like nothing so much as the world’s longest Grimm’s fairy tale. Powerful and mysterious, with undercurrents of something ancient.

It’s not for everyone. But the people who it is for are lucky.

…


Last Month I wrote a review of Catching Fire, that I now must partially recend. My complaints about the book’s style and structure still seem valid to me, indeed, maybe even more so. But one thing was clear. I was underestimating Suzanne Collins.

Vastly.

Mockingjay is one of those books that isn’t just an entry that is a success in and of itself, but makes everything that preceded it better. Abruptly dragging the moral universe of Black And White that Collin’s presented into staggering shades of grey. With a plot that’s just merciless.

In my review of Catching Fire, I noted that Collins honors the predecessor’s she draws from. Here she does better. She earns them.

I won’t go too far into Mockingjay as all that would accomplish is to make little sense to those who haven’t read the other two books, and spoil things that should not be for those how have.

Suffice to say it’s an unrelentingly bleak and rather perfect capstone to a young adult series with serious teeth and ambition.

It’s so good I think it might single handedly undo the damage Twilight has done to a generation of readers.

…

Man Grant Morrison sure does like Batman to fight The Devil.

To be fair Batman isn’t facing off against Old Scratch Himself (though he does make a cameo). But rather a damned soul who is pissed at some monsters.

Batman Gothic is a depressingly bland book from Morrison, who despite my misgivings about most of his work knows how to write a damn good Batman.

And yet from the man whose created a run as distinctive as the current one (which I’m a huge fan of) and Batman Arkham Asylum (which I’m really not). Batman Gothic just seems like the work of an average Neil Gaiman wannabe circa the pre Knightfall era.

It’s not bad per se, though the pacing is a bit draggy for a four issue book. It’s just that it lacks both the eccentricity and depth that characterizes Morrison’s work, and which I always respect even if I don’t enjoy.

I wouldn’t dissuade anyone from reading it, but it’s just kind of taking up space.

…

Then on the exact opposite side of the comics spectrum there’s Jimmy Corrigan The Smartest Kid On Earth. Called such because the title “Jimmy Corrigan The Most Depressing Thing You’ve Ever Laid Your Eyes Upon” was presumably already taken.

Similarly to The Corrections, I’m going to be kind of Brief, not because there’s too little to say, but because there is far too much to go through in the brief amount of space I’m allotting myself for this. Like The Corrections, Corrigan is a major work of Modern literature and demands to be unpacked all at once or not at all. Half assing it really isn't an option.

Suffice to say, it’s a deeply felt, deeply miserable work, about despair and mediocrity, passed down through the ages, along with the deep hurts and disapointments that are transferred from Father to Son.

It’s kind of beautiful.

Though I have a tough time giving an unqualified recommendation to a book that made me kind of just want to curl up and die (perhaps not helped by the fact that I chose The Shutter Island Version of “This Bitter Earth” on repeat as my reading soundtrack). But alas I must.

Read Jimmy Corrigan.

Just make sure that someone who loves you hides all your razorblades and sleeping pills first.



I’ve always referred (in admittedly questionable taste) to William Gibson as my abusive boyfriend. Because no matter how many times he hit me, I’d always give him another chance.

Well with Spook Country it seems like he’s actually reformed. I don’t know if it’s just the fact that listening to it on Audiobook, narrated by Robert Dean’s lucid voice, just gave shape to Gibson’s prose. Making the jargon that so often obfuscates his books actually seem like part of a plan of some sort. Playing down the density of his prose, and emphasizing Gibson’s knack for vivid metaphor, well drawn characters, and subtle wit. Or if he’s just finally written a book I like. Either way it’s nice not to be locked out of the club anymore.

Gibson has traded his knack for sharply detailed (too sharply detailed) futures, for a keener sense of the chaos of the present. He uses the concept of locative art (art virtually imposed on the real world only seeable to those who have the frequency) to explore how the realm of the digital has created a simultaneous parallel universe, as our own world fractures ever more into what Gibson terms “secret histories”.

The book follows Hollis Henry; Cult musician cum journalist hailing from the oddly specific Pixies stand in The Curfew. Milgrim, an unflappable pill addict whose addled, dry under reactions to the various dire circumstances he finds himself in, draw some of the book’s biggest laughs. And a Cuban Chinese member of “the world’s smallest crime family” as they vie for a mysterious shipping container, the key to which is held in the unstable mind of the facilitator of Locative Art.

It might sound overly complex, but unlike virtually everything else he’s written the plotting is smooth. Gliding seamlessly from one protagonist to the other. Leaving plenty of time for Gibson’s trademark digressions on the merging of technology and Philosphy.

Behind them all, to one degree or another, is Gibson’s great late period creation, Huebertos Bigend (an obvious Swift reference, of whose meaning I have no idea. He seems if anything vaguely Vonnegutian). The “Radically Agnostic” Belgium Bajillionaire, whose voracious curiosity, and non existent regard for the consequences there of. Seems to make him a personification of the digital era.

The book isn’t perfect, The third act collapses as Gibson’s Third Acts are want to do. But only a little. It’s really his own fault as the question “What’s in the box?” will always be more interesting then the answer.

But as a whole Spook Country is an intriguing step forward from Gibson. And I’m very happy to be forced to reassess my opinion of him.



John Water’s is a charming personality, a great filmmaker, and a surprisingly graceful writer (his early autobiography Shock Value, is a favorite of mine, even if he does deride it as glib in this volume). Role Model’s finds him at his best and worst.

At his best, when he gives an endearingly humbled interview to Johnny Mathis, describes his fans as “People who feel uncomfortable in their own minority” (raises hand) and muses about the shocked expressions that people have when they see him on Public Transportation. Assuming that Water’s tools around in his own Filthmobile (an image once articulated that will never leave me).

Unfortunately things start to drag a little at then end of the book. I love Water’s for his energy and inclusiveness, and have long considered his polite nature and delighted humbleness to be his secret weapons. All four elements are in short supply in the closing two chapters, where he is in turn petulant and self aggrandizing, in away that’s just plain unnecessary. Not to mention more genuinely distasteful then Divine getting raped by Lobsterella.

It’s not all Water’s fault, over three hundred pages is a long time to spend with any one personality, and I suspect that If I broke it up more I would have hated it less.

Still most of the essays are entertaining and droll in the best Water’s style. Who else would we have to ask the immortal question was Tennessee Williams crazy or high when he wrote his autobiography?

Water’s God love him, writes like he’s both.


And while we’re in the realm of “For Fan’s only.” I also read Chesterton’s All Things Considered. Things are a bit more thin on the ground here. Chesterton is upfront about it being a minor work, and it contains both essays dependant upon turn of the century English Political Figures that will merely be mystifying to the modern reader such as, “The Third Duke Of Trensick Is Acting Like The Fourth Viscount Of Norwick”. And those such as, “Women Voters. Why This Is Hilarious.” (Note approximations) That will seem merely offensive.

Still, a good half the essays are as good as anything he’s ever written, and for those new to the blog, that means they are very very good indeed.

…


Rounding out The For Fan’s Only Trilogy, is another work from a controversial author with a beloved cult following.

In The Hilliker Curse James Ellroy, The Demon Dog of American Fiction, momentarily stops examining the thugs and perverts who’ve written American History, to examine the biggest Thug and Pervert he knows. Himself.

This is well traveled ground for Ellroy, who has rehashed his mother’s murder and perverted past, not merely in his fiction but in various essays and memoirs. Luckily that’s exactly what Hilliker is about. The ways in which her death was both the catalyzing moment of his life, and something he has used, sometimes even exploited, to excuse every fuck up in it.

The difference between the prose style of say Killer On The Road, and Ellroy’s documentation of his own life, is negligible. And there are scenes, including one where he documents a two year long cancer obsessed nervous breakdown, that made me wonder, both in and of itself and in the way Ellroy chooses to depict it now, if he isn’t crazy. Like literally, not figuratively. It’s intense, self aggrandizing stuff. And if you hate Ellroy’s Beats on steroids and scotch prose style, The Hilliker Curse might seem a trip to your own personal hell.

But if you have some affection for the old demon dog, The Hilliker Curse is moving stuff. It’s as close to a look behind the curtain that we’ll ever get from Ellroy. Though that doomed LA persona never comes down completely. We may have heard these stories before, but not like this.

…


Capping things off I revisited The Dead Zone in preperation for my review of the same film.

The Dead Zone is a book that I will always have a huge amount of affection for, given that it was the first “adult” book I can remember reading. Picked up at the library on a fourth grade field trip when I snuck away from the children’s section, and having heard, that King wrote “scary stories” I made my way to his shelf and hastily trying to pick a book before the teachers noticed my absence I became transfixed by the image on the cover (there’s a saying there I know.) The sight of a man’s face cast deep in shadow, half of it blotted out by a monstrous wheel.

So fucking sold.

Dead Zone is still one of King’s best, and makes an ideal entry point as it contains all of his good points as a writer and virtually none of his bad ones.

I wrote more or less all one can say about The Zone in my previous review. So I’ll just reiterate that The Dead Zone is a showcase for King’s genius with both people and plot. Spinning with Johnny Smith one of his most fully likable and decent heroes, with Stillson one of his most believable monsters, and with their combination one of his most terrifying nightmares.

It’s simply a great piece of pulp fiction.

Odds and Sods

Believe it or not I digested other media then horror films this October. Some of which I even wanted to write about, and did, then didn't have the inclination to turn into proper posts once the month ended. But still wanted to get my two cents in. Well here they are!



Whip It – Whip It is the kind of funny, intelligent movie that hardly ever gets made for young adults, and it’s failure to connect with said group has caused no end of wailing and gnashing of teeth on my end.

Maybe it’s my own odd affection for films set in Texas. Maybe it’s the fact that Barrymore has a sense of place, people, and community that’s nearly Linklaterian. Maybe it’s the fact that even Juliet Freaking Lewis who normally makes me want to tear out my eyes and jab knitting needles in my ears does a good job in this movie, but I kind of sorta loved Whip It.

While I doubt Barrymore is going to prove herself to be the next Altman, she aquits herself admirably with this film, showing a sharp eye for talent, with the ensemble cast, creating a real feeling of intimacy. This is the kind of movie I hope to be able to share with my own children someday.



Batman And Robin:

A lot of people have been bitching about the second arc in Batman and Robin, I for one have been enjoying it as much as the first. Maybe it’s because I haven’t really been reading the series lately, and thus haven’t read the last dozen, “Jason Todd is an asshole” stories, but I like the way Morrison handles the character. While I agree that it was a mistake to bring him back, Todd’s purpose in the comics was to serve as a monument to Bruce’s failure. The one time he wasn’t up to the task. Well now he’s the same thing, except this time he’s a walking talking example of it who is murdering people. I think Morrison's take on Jason That he's basically the runt of the litter, (I love Damien's contempt that he let the fucking Joker kill him) is interesting. He's not a badass he's a bitter, weak and losing his hair. It takes all of two seconds for The Flamingo (who I'm also loving) to take him down. Paring him with Sasha who is proving to be a living example of Damian’s first failure, gives it a nice feeling of synchrony and dare I say tragedy.

I like how Morrison is taking the language of the old Batman TV show, flamboyant villains, identical henchmen, outlandish plots, and visual sound effects, and is turning it on its head. When you talk about something like subverting Iconography, its normally just empty buzzwords. Morrison knows how to do it.

And we’re not even on The Flamingo yet, the second memorable freak that Morrison’s created this run. Most modern day comic books feel like they’re written by people just happy to get a chance to play with the toys. Afraid even to take them out of their packaging. The genre feels positively inbred now, is it any wonder that it’s so unwelcoming to new readers?

I have to give credit to Morrison, I may not always like him. In fact I may very often hate him, but he’s never interested in just playing with someone else’s toys, he wants to use his own.

Ultimate Spiderman:

So one good things come out of Ultimatum, Bendis is energized on this book like he hasn’t in years. While Ultimate Spiderman has long served as the one comic that was guaranteed to be at least pretty good, Bendis has really kicked it up a notch. Moving things on a faster clip, weaving an intriguing plot with the same deft ear for character that’s always set him apart.

A lot of people are getting hung up on the artwork but, You know it's grown on me. I hated it when I read the annual, and there's stuff that still bothers me; mostly the way the characters only seem to have noses half the time and the way he can't seem to figure out that there are old people (his Aunt May is freaky).

What I like is the fact that he seems to have his own twist on manga style. It's not like he’s a Huberto Ramos (for whom I would not brake my car if I saw him crossing the street). He takes the warmth and dynamism of Manga and marries it with some good American detail.

I love his Mysterio, and MJ but I really like the way he's gotten Bendis to step up his game plotting wise. For those who complain his books are nothing but talking heads, these are event packed.




Sky Crawlers –

Sky Crawlers is the latest from Ghost In The Shell director Mamoru Oshi. Which means you’ve either already seen it or you never will.

It tells the story of a young group of pilots fighting a war in a vaguely European setting against an ill defined enemy. There is of course something totally up, but it’s not really a secret to the characters only to us.

In a lot of ways Oshi is like The Monte Helleman of anime. Many are put off by his deliberate pace (slow) existential (slow) musings, and meditative (slow) style. But the rhythm and world he creates are so unlike any other, that I can’t help but be drawn to them. Still for those who don’t respond to long indistinctly animated scenes of a basset hound frolicking, or characters reading the morning paper might be turned off.

It plays like a version of Never Let Me Go in which the characters occasionally get into planes and blow each other up. The problem with the movie, which I think keeps it decidedly second tier Oshi, is the fact that while the film’s central conceit works as metaphor, it works as nothing else.

Sky Crawlers isn’t Oshi at his best, and at his best I think he genuinely is one of the greatest filmmakers in anime or any other medium, but it’s an intriguing odd movie, that’s more then worth your time.



Where Men Win Glory

John Krakauer remains one of my favorite authors, and Where Men Win Glory, might be his masterpiece. Krakeur’s muse has always been those who push themselves to the very edge of experience. In Tillman he seems to find his ideal, and then watches with dismay as he’s tossed away. Its the story of a good man so poorly used by the country he sacrificed everything to serve. This book will piss you off royally no matter what your political leanings are. Still the book isn’t just another tract of Bush era crimes. Aside from side trips into the philosophy and anthropology of War, and a damning look at the whole “Saving Private Lynch” fiasco; It also contains one of the most concise, damning and terrifying portraits of the last fifty years of Afghan history. If you consider yourself at all involved in politics, or indeed are a sentient being living on the planet you owe it to yourself to read Where Men Win Glory. It’s the best book of the year.

Bright Star:

Jane Campion is an incredible director. The depth, beauty and sensuality of her frames are more or less unmatched among the formalists. So it’s been a real bitch that I haven’t liked any of her films.

The Piano was one of the damndest experiences I’ve had with a movie. A case of it simply not working for me despite both my and the movie’s noblest of intentions. I just sat looking at the screen bemused. Clearly something was happening though I had no idea what.

Holy Smoke was an agreeably strange movie, with it’s Freaky to the nines performance by Kate Winslet, and Harvey Keitel’s wang. But it’s not exactly something I’ve been dying to see again. And the less said about In The Cut, that ghoulish anti-vanity immolation the better.

But with Bright Star, Campion has really hit upon something. There might not be much on the surface to separate it from the dozens of other “tasteful” costume drama’s out there. But Campion’s artistic ferocity really hits home. She strikes at something primal, bringing out the emotion of the story full flower. Capturing the beauty and sensuality of Keat’s poetry, in away that usually isn’t touched in the dubious genre that is “films about writing”

The lush beauty of her frames, the doomed romanticism of the performances, all combine to make Bright Star something truly memorable.

Batman And Robin: Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Tolerate Grant Morrison

So me and Grant Morrison are not the best of friends. I’ll be the first to admit that it could be me, and not him. I just don’t get it. While others see the best comics storyteller working today. Someone who understands and utilizes the form in a way that’s almost preternatural. I on the other hand do not.

I get no charge from Morrison's work. To be frank he’s kind of a bore, someone coasting on an overrated reputation, chaos magicks, and an ego that makes Alan Moore’s seem healthy. It’s not that I haven’t tried. I read Final Crisis with an ever growing sense of despair it. I didn’t understand that. And I mean that on a very basic narrative level. I couldn’t follow what was happening. It was like a chemistry book with superheroes doodled in it. Stuff like Animal Man and The Filth, where disappointingly (and in The Filth’s case depressingly) shallow, based upon their reputation. And as for his “classics” like All Star Superman, and Arkham Asylum. Well these too where problematic. For something that supposedly “got the essence of Superman perfectly” I can’t help but think he had remarkably few qualms about genetically engineering peoples fates. Arkham Asylum was also problematic. Though McKean’s art was beautiful (and also utterly inept narratively) and Morrison did script some arresting moments, the whole thing was too clever by half, and came out as the work of someone who didn’t really like Batman.

Which was kind of what I thought about Batman RIP the first time I read it. Though in interest of truth in criticism that particular piece works one hell of a lot better as a whole then in parts and featured a few truly stellar sequences. Still I can’t help but feel that it’s a flawed work at the very least.

I mention all of this only to underline how odd I found it when Morrison became responsible for one of the best Goddamn Batman stories I’ve ever read. A story centered around not one but two gimmicks that I was deeply skeptical about at first. It’s sort of amazing a true classic of the genre (And can we take a moment to savor the irony that it shares the name with the other Batman And Robin? OK Irony savored. Moving On).

So many comic writers seem like kids at a toybox dragging out two action figures to bang together for the thousandth time. And one thing I’ll say about Morrison, he’s never afraid to bring new elements into play. At the climax of this issue there are now two characters who feel like they’re destined to be lasting parts of The Batman universe, it feels like things matter, and frankly it’s a rush.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Batman And Robin is based on two Morrison elements that I found, at the very least, quite questionable. Morrison giving Wayne a son in the form of the petulant, vicious Damien, and Morrison sending Wayne back to the caveman era to go write shit on the wall (I think? I’m not going to lie I have little to no idea what happened at the end of Final Crisis). Taking these two unstable elements, Morrison has somehow spun gold. Telling the story of Dick Grayson, attempting to fill Batman’s big shoes, while at the same time turning his sociopathic son into a somewhat acceptable Robin, while battling a new villain Professor Pig, and his creepy creepy Doll people, made for a compelling story. And while Morrison’s first two issues in the arc worked fine, in the third one he brings it all together.

It’s like this issue allowed me to briefly see the Grant Morrison everyone is always talking about. The one who knows how to write a scene like Professor Pyg’s monologue, which could ONLY work in comics. It works because the best version of it is happening in your head as it happens on the page. As a result it’s hilarious, disturbing, terrifying, and even a little sad, with a great punch line to boot (A punch line that incidentally happened to capture my exact reaction after reading The Filth).

Morrison it seems has also finally figured out how to write for Damien, by giving him just a smidgen of a moral center (though so much as to spoil the fun Morrison has writing him) he makes him infinitely more relatable. And by giving Damien his first failure, he sets up what appears to be one hell of a thread for the next arc in the series. All while still finding the time to work in one of the best moments from Batman RIP.

Batman And Robin seems vital in a way very few Comics appear these days. In a medium where every story is just a retcon away from obsolescence, Morrison’s story seems to matter. He’s setting up something great here, and when he brings Quitely back to end the run, I think it’ll be very clear that this is one of the true, few classics of superhero genre.