June was a strange month, with the year's most stressful and most relaxing weeks--I started it with stress hives and ended it in Mammoth, and in between I got into a lot of good reading, and slightly more good buying.
Read:Final Solution/Gentlemen of the Road:
Two of the final three Michael Chabon books I hadn't read yet (still haven't gotten to Wonder Boys). I've been kind of forcing myself to withhold Chabon, because I don't want to have read everything, and have nothing left--I'm always waiting for his next book to come out, so that I can read an old one, and still have one to come. Anyway, these two volumes are part of the second stage of Chabon's career (and, in fact, along with his intro to the McSweeney's volume he edited, the nexus of that career). Namely, the shift from brooding literary fiction to plot-driven fiction--he wrote an entire book, Maps and Legends, almost wholly devoted to explaining that shift, but basically it's because...it's more fun to write. That's also, since the advent of Stephen King, the direction that the majority of America's good writers are headed.
Anyway, these two volumes are a couple shining examples of why that movement isn't something to fear--they're taught (both under 200 pages), excellently-paced, and still feature Chabon's exquisite prose renderings, except now describing sword-fights instead of the factories of Pittsburgh. The former is a Sherlock Holmes mystery, set late in his life, and the latter a real swashbuckling story whose original title (seriously) was Jews With Swords.
Enemies & Allies:
At the height of our stressed out May/Early June, Shar and I bought trashy summer books to read, and put them on our nightstands, a promise to ourselves that at some point we'd have free time, and we'd spend that free time playing video games and reading (in my case) a novel about Batman and Superman, set in the Sputnik-era Cold War. And that promise was fulfilled, quite gloriously. Unfortunately, the book was also a reminder that even though I tend to venerate trashy fiction as fun, it in fact tends to bore me. And, on another level, kind of depress me. I mean, Kevin Anderson (a capable and proficient writer) got paid to write this thing, and there isn't a single word in it that you'd have to look up in the dictionary, a single serious alteration or addition to the Supes/Bat canon, or particularly a single plot twist you couldn't see coming through the bottom of a Coke bottle at a thousand paces. It just...is. It was entertaining, but not challenging in any way, which of course is what I bought it for. So I guess I shouldn't be complaining. But all it really made me want to do is reread DKR, Long Halloween, and Superman For All Seasons.
The Poe Shadow:
Now THAT's more like it! Here is a fun novel you can sink your teeth into, a dense, historical thriller about a lawyer trying to solve the famous mystery of Edgar Poe's death. Set in the months and years after his demise, this novel adroitly disinters the language and atmosphere of mid-19th century Baltimore--I haven't felt that completely brought into a foreign world since Lord of the Rings. Pearl does this kind of thing for a living now, after his similar historical/literary thriller The Dante Club, which is high on my list of to-reads. An amazing reminder that a good novel can be challenging as well as fun, and intellectually stimulating as well as page-turning. Poe's death has fascinated me since I read Midnight Dreary: The Mysterious Death of Edgar Poe when it came out while I was in Middle School. I was a huge Poe fanatic at the time, and the idea that we had no idea how he died (and we don't) didn't make any sense to a kid whose family had CNN since he was born. Pearl is a literary bona fide, and this novel includes a half-dozen revolutionary addendums to the Poe/death canon, all of which are pieces of genuine new evidence that Pearl dug up himself. None of which detracts from the fact that it's a murder mystery thriller. Rad.
Brief Interviews With Hideous Men:
Better late than never, I guess. Here I am prattling on about how much I love challenging fiction, and I'm officially one of those assholes who had barely read any DFW until after his unfortunate suicide. Trying to keep from hyperventilating, I will say this: I haven't been this excited about embarking on an author study since Joyce just after high school, F. Scott Fitzgerald at 16, and the aforementioned Poe at 11. If you haven't read DFW's fiction, if you're like me and you'd only checked out some of his essays, do yourself an enormous favor and start here. I'll be going through the Ulysses-esque Infinite Jest soon, but this is a dense, beautiful collection that I think is still relatively accessible. Almost every single story (including the eponymous series that winds throughout (and which have since been adapted by Jim from the Office)) does something surprising, or shocking. None of it feels jerry-rigged, either--everything is legit. Anyway, if I try to say more I'll go on for 4,000 words, and I'll save that for its own post, after I've digested everything else he's written over the next six months (just ordered every other DFW book from Amazon a few nights ago). For now, just know this: we did have a bona fide genius among us, wielding a tennis racket and a pen, and our contemporary literature is worse for having lost him.
Bought:
This is Water:
A short DFW book, actually kind of a ripoff in that it's a commencement speech he gave. Still, it's the kind of book you buy before you go on vacation (it's worth it, too, though I'll wait to write about it since I finished it in July). Cool cover.
Infinite Jest:
Er, a very long DFW book, clocking in at about 1,100 pages with about twice that many endnotes, it seems. The more DFW I read, the more I realize that almost every contemporary artist I enjoy, from Wes Anderson to Dave Eggers, is really just a reflection of one facet of DFW's work. Granted, it's a little less schizophrenic to be able to bask in one facet as opposed to being dazzled by all of them; you couldn't wear the Hope diamond on your finger, to say it another way. But there is a reason people line up to see it.
McSweeney's 31:
Happily snatched up the new issue--features "lost genres" of fiction. Looks like it should be pretty interesting, I'll let you know next month.
McSweeney's Little Box Of Short Stories:
I actually am too lazy to look up the real name of this, but it's the collection of three writers' flash fiction. Dan's ambivalence had kind of kept me from it, but I figured it was worth a shot, particularly with some free, relaxing reading time ahead of me. Excited to check this out--July, just a few days in, has already been a good month for books, so be sure to come back next month!
Labels: Generalness, Mike Recommends or Trashes Random Shit
