Monday, July 31, 2006

Oryx and Crake

ORYX AND CRAKE (Margaret Atwood) - Three Stars

This was an enjoyable read and, really, that's about all that one can say about it.

Reading the critical acclaims this novel has garnered might lead one to believe that it is some towering masterpiece that will make a profound impression on a person's life, but it's not. Oryx and Crake is as shallow and easy to see through as a tide pool... but that doesn't mean that it's not an enjoyable read.

Atwood does not set out to discover new frontiers here: the "post-apocalyptic future landscape" scenario she utilizes has been done and done and done again. As has the creation and usage of new words/animals/items to populate such a landscape (indeed, Atwood's over-use of these literary creations in the first fifty pages or so starts to grate).

The story is told in flashbacks, as Jimmy ("Snowman") tries to figure out what led up to the catastrophe that wiped humans off the face of the planet. Again, there is no new ground here, in style or content. What exactly happened is presented as somewhat of a mystery, but there aren't any twists or turns, and the eventual revelation of the truth is unsurprising without necessarily being a let down.

The whole reason for reading Oryx and Crake is Atwood's wonderful development of Jimmy and Crake's friendship, and how it affects them and affects the world around them. Jimmy and Crake are the only two characters that matter to the story (even title-character Oryx's role is minimal: mainly to provide an import link between the two and possibly a flashpoint for the plot), and Atwood is smart enough not to waste much time on the extraneous filler characters that populate Jimmy and Crake's world.

The novel has plenty of flaws. The symbolism in it is generally hackneyed and trite. Some of the "deep" dialogue (particularly between Jimmy and Oryx) is not at all meaningful or purposeful and actually quite tiring to read. The overall narrative voice is sardonic without really providing any decent morals from the story (the novel's warnings about genetic engineering, corporate manipulation, and the overall shallowness of the human creature are obvious and should provoke a "well duh!" response from any reader of even moderate intelligence). The pace of the book is slow (Atwood spends a long time saying not a whole lot), but this didn't bother me too much because the pace is even throughout.

But the development of Jimmy and Crake make it all worthwhile. Atwood's most lasting comments on the human condition come not from her extrapolation of modern sciences to their most extreme, nor from her grim, post-apocalyptic future, but from her development of such a simple thing as human friendship... and how easily it can be used for ill purposes.

"Please, oh Snowman, what is toast?"
Another error, Snowman thinks. He should avoid arcane metaphors. "Toast," he says, "is something very, very bad. It's so bad I can't even describe it. Now it's your bedtime. Go away."

Monday, July 24, 2006

East of Eden

EAST OF EDEN (John Steinbeck) - Three Stars

For an epic novel that has no plot and no specific main character, East of Eden is a pretty good book. It is, however, a maddeningly frustrating novel, as Steinbeck whets your appetite with flashes of brilliance before receding back into chapters full of aimless wanderings.

I had two major problems and a bunch of minor pet peeves with this book. The major problems, of course, I mentioned in my opening sentence...

1) NO PLOT. Really, this book has no real plot. It follows/observes the lives of various interconnected people in turn of the (20th) century Salinas, but there's not a lot of STORY here. This led to some major pacing issues with the story, since Steinbeck would ramble on and on about persons X & Y while persons A & B are more or less forgotten entirely for 50, 75, 100 pages at a time. There's a few amusing anecdotes and set pieces, but for the most part it's just 600-pages of character development. Which might have been more effective if not for...

2) NO MAIN CHARACTER. This book doesn't have one. The arc of the book generally follows the life of Adam Trask, but can you say that at any given point he is the main attention point of the novel? He is the focus around which events revolve, but Steinbeck is always more attentive to the characters around Adam as opposed to Adam himself. The first part of the book is mainly about Cyrus Trask (Adam's dad), Charles Trask (Adam's brother) and Cathy "Kate" Ames; the middle of the book focuses largely on the Hamilton family (Adam's "neighbors" in California; the last sections focus on Lee (Adam's manservant), Kate, and Cal and Aron (Adam's twin sons; moreso on Cal than Aron). This leads to possibly the most adverse effect in the novel: that once a character has finally been developed far enough to make the reader care for him, his time in the story draws to a close and he disappears/dies. Once you finally start caring about Samuel Hamilton, he dies. Once you finally start caring about Kate (and understanding some of what causes her to be who she is), she commits suicide. Once you finally start caring about Cal and Abra and Lee, the book ends.

I think Steinbeck worked better on a smaller canvas. The Grapes of Wrath (nearly 150 pages shorter) was his far better "epic novel," and even short novellas like Cannery Row and Of Mice and Men were able to draw the reader in and tell their stories without as much distraction. Steinbeck obviously had grand plans for East of Eden, but he tries to shove so much content into the novel that very little of it gets the attention it deserves. I think he also hamstrung himself a little in his attempts to shoehorn the story into the form of a (fairly obvious) biblical allegory instead of just letting the story and characters go where they may.

Some of my more minor, but still notable, pet peeves...

1) FORESHADOWING. Steinbeck simply does not do this effectively in East of Eden. He has all the subtlety of a bowling ball dropped on the foot when he foreshadows an event and, to make things even worse, once the event happens the characters usually perform an "event autopsy" which serves no purpose other than to spell things out for the reader. It makes for some mind-numbingly tedious reading the third or fourth time it happens.

2) PANORAMIC DESCRIPTION. Steinbeck's initial description of the Salinas Valley is vivid and vibrant and make the area jump to life. So why does he need to do it four or five more times over the course of the novel? IT'S THE SAME LAND. He's just repeating himself.

3) A WEAK AND FLAT ENDING. Expecting a wind-up to a staggering conclusion, East of Eden just kind of fizzles away and ends with a whimper. Again, Steinbeck failure to focus on one or two main characters throughout the novel led to several "false codas" that sapped momentum away from the conclusion. Indeed, after the relatively unhurried pace of much of the novel, the ending seems more than a little rushed and forced (from Aron unceremonious dumping from the novel, Kate's suicide, Cal and Abra's courtship, Adam's stroke... more events happen in the last 50 pages than in the previous 200+, but they're just kind of glossed over, speed bumps on the road to the finish).

After 1,000 words of criticism, you're probably wondering why I gave East of Eden even three stars. The thing is, Steinbeck was a brilliant writer and still capable of writing passages of heartbreaking genius. East of Eden is peppered with these. That's what makes the inconsistancy, the aimless wandering, the lack of focus so much more frustrating. East of Eden, in a way, is a victim of Steinbeck's success.

East of Eden could have been, SHOULD have been, one of America's all-time greatest novels. It's not. It's just a decent book. And I expected more than that from John Steinbeck.

"The war, at first anyway, was for other people. We, I, my family and friends, had kind of bleacher seats, and it was pretty exciting. And just as war is always for somebody else, so it is also true that someone else always gets killed. And Mother of God! that wasn't true either. The dreadful telegrams began to sneak sorrowfully in, and it was everybody's brother. Here we were, over six thousand miles from the anger and the noise, and that didn't save us. It wasn't much fun then."

Monday, July 17, 2006

Midnight's Children

MIDNIGHT'S CHILDREN (Salman Rushdie) - Five Stars

The thing that really surprised me about Midnight's Children, by the end of it, was its generally sardonic attitude towards the magical symbolism and omens that are so central to the plot. So much is made of the mystical connections relating to the main character (Saleem Sinai), so much promise is set up in the story, that it's surprising when the abuse starts being heaped on Saleem with almost sadistic relentlessness. By the end of the story Rushdie has portrayed a startlingly pessimistic view of the "potential" of the innocent. And, with the obvious parallels between the life of Saleem Sinai and the development of modern India, Rushdie also exhibits a pessimistic and fairly depressing forecast for the future of one of the world's most populous nations.

But amidst all that is an epic; a collection of stories that seems almost like "A Thousand and One Nights" in its scope. The magical realism style Rushdie employs is far less confusing than that of Gabriel Garcia Marquez: where Marquez's rambling, stream of consciousness writing serves largely to (intentionally) disorient the reader, Rushdie (through a liberal use of semi-colons) gently guides the reader through narrative leaps spanning both time and distance. Astonishingly descriptive, Rushdie is almost more a painter than a writer in this book: the near 550 pages pass by with a very economical use of dialogue, and it is the scenes and descriptions that provide the meat and memories of the novel.

"Who what am I? My answer: I am the sum total of everything that went before me, of all I have been seen done, of everything done-to-me. I am everyone everything whose being-in-the-world affected was affected by mine. I am anything that happens after I've gone which would not have happened if I had not come. Nor am I particularly exceptional in this matter; each "I," every one of the now-six-hundred-million-plus of us, contains a similar multitude. I repeat for the last time: to understand me, you'll have to swallow a world."

The Bookcase

Last updated: 05/21/10 - Getting Stoned with Savages



BOOKS I'VE READ, 2004 - present:

FIVE STARS
Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
One Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel García Márquez)
The Cider House Rules (John Irving)
Midnight's Children (Salman Rushdie)
A Dirty Job (Christopher Moore)
Black Swan Green (David Mitchell)

FOUR STARS
The Plague (Albert Camus)
Cannery Row (John Steinbeck)
Mother Night (Kurt Vonnegut)
The Sparrow (Mary Doria Russell)
Autumn of the Patriarch (Gabriel García Márquez)
Island (Aldous Huxley)
Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower (Stephen King)
Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves (P.G. Wodehouse)
Slaughterhouse-Five (Kurt Vonnegut)
The Remains of the Day (Kazuo Ishiguro)
Portnoy's Complaint (Philip Roth)
Wicked (Gregory Maguire)
Shalimar the Clown (Salman Rushdie)
Red Harvest (Dashiell Hammett)
Nineteen Eighty-Four (George Orwell)
Never Let Me Go (Kazuo Ishiguro)
Absurdistan (Gary Shteyngart)
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (John le Carré)
Murder on the Orient Express (Agatha Christie)
The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
The Sirens of Titan (Kurt Vonnegut)
In the Garden of Iden (Kage Baker)
Bloodsucking Fiends (Christopher Moore)
The Satanic Verses (Salman Rushdie)
I Capture the Castle (Dodie Smith)
Sky Coyote (Kage Baker)
We Have Always Lived in the Castle (Shirley Jackson)
House of Sand and Fog (Andre Dubus III)
Water for Elephants (Sara Gruen)
Island of the Sequined Love Nun (Christopher Moore)
The Graveyard Game (Kage Baker)
Who Goes There? (John W. Campbell, Jr.)
The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide (Douglas Adams)
The Road (Cormac McCarthy)

THREE STARS
Last Chance to See (Douglas Adams & Mark Carwardine)
The Moon is Down (John Steinbeck)
The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break (Steven Sherrill)
Naked (David Sedaris)
The Sex Lives of Cannibals (J. Maarten Troost)
Three Men in a Boat (Jerome K. Jerome)
Children of God (Mary Doria Russell)
The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
America (The Book) (Jon Stewart)
How to Breathe Underwater (Julie Orringer)
Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla (Stephen King)
The Gun Seller (Hugh Laurie)
Memories of My Melancholy Whores (Gabriel García Márquez)
Life With Jeeves (P.G. Wodehouse)
Appointment in Samarra (John O'Hara)
The Sun Also Rises (Ernest Hemingway)
East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
Oryx and Crake (Margaret Atwood)
The Blind Assassin (Margaret Atwood)
Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim (David Sedaris)
Of Love and Other Demons (Gabriel García Márquez)
On the Road (Jack Kerouac)
Son of a Witch (Gregory Maguire)
Snow Falling on Cedars (David Guterson)
Death on the Nile (Agatha Christie)
Ragtime (E.L. Doctorow)
Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers (Grant Naylor)
Wizards (various)
The House on Mango Street (Sandra Cisneros)
Ubik (Philip K. Dick)
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (Michael Chabon)
You Suck (Christopher Moore)
Mendoza in Hollywood (Kage Baker)
The Life of the World to Come (Kage Baker)
Everything is Illuminated (Jonathan Safran Foer)
The Children of the Company (Kage Baker)
The Machine's Child (Kage Baker)
The Sons of Heaven (Kage Baker)
And Then There Were None (Agatha Christie)
Black Projects, White Knights (Kage Baker)
Getting Stoned with Savages (J. Maarten Troost)

TWO STARS
God-Shaped Hole (Tiffanie DeBartolo)
Freaky Deaky (Elmore Leonard)
Prey (Michael Crichton)
Be Cool (Elmore Leonard)
Timequake (Kurt Vonnegut)
On Liberty (John Stuart Mill)
Napalm and Silly-Putty (George Carlin)
Airframe (Michael Crichton)
Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah (Stephen King)
The Crying of Lot 49 (Thomas Pynchon)
Thread of Grace (Mary Doria Russell)
At Play in the Fields of the Lord (Peter Matthiessen)
Make Love! The Bruce Campbell Way (Bruce Campbell)
Cell (Stephen King)
Operation Shylock (Philip Roth)
Their Eyes Were Watching God (Zora Neale Hurston)
The Secret History of Moscow (Ekaterina Sedia)

ONE STAR
Seduced by Moonlight (Laurell K. Hamilton)
The Power and The Glory (Graham Greene)
A House for Mr. Biswas (V.S. Naipaul)
Under the Glacier (Halldor Laxness)
American Pastoral (Philip Roth)
Lolita (Vladimir Nabokov)
Wide Sargasso Sea (Jean Rhys)
Howards End (E.M. Forster)
Under the Volcano (Malcolm Lowry)
Love in the Time of Cholera (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)

SPECIAL
Shostakovich At 100: The Fifteen Symphonies

Intro

Okay, so...

Not that I read as voracious as other people I know, but it is an activity I'm trying to keep up on. And, well, it's about the only blogging concept that currently holds any interest for me.

"The Bookcase" entry will be my rankings page, utilizing an unimaginative and simple ranking system. Each book I finish (starting now) will get it's own amorphous review, which might cover anything I feel like.

So there you go.