The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying up

A few weeks ago, I was expressing to a friend of mine my growing frustration with the state of my living space. It is cluttered which makes it difficult to keep clean and as a result, I often have the feeling I am living in squalor. Now, truthfully, this is far from fact, but when one is accustomed to a particular lifestyle and then allows oneself to stray from it, the change in mental state is profound. This friend of mine mentioned that her mother had just gifted to her a book by a Japanese author who specialized in decluttering and organizing. She read the book, followed many of the suggestions within, and ended up with a much tidier, pleasant living space. She warned me, however, that the author is crazy.

I had to see for myself so I borrowed her copy of The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up and gave it a read. Based on the statements the author makes about her obsession with tidying beginning during childhood, I suspect this woman has some serious OCD issues but has somehow turned it into a lucrative career. Good for her! This is a prime example of someone taking the lemons of life and making lemonade. She could easily have boarded the crazy train and been doomed to a life of cyclical tidying, a counter-hoarder, but she learned from her childhood mistakes and has devised a method that she claims will, if followed to the letter and to completion, will result in a persistent positive change and habit. The method, which she names after herself in a totally not egotistical way, is extreme and requires trust –dare I say faith—in the process.

Would you feel weird talking to your inanimate belongings? I certainly would but this is exactly what the KonMari Method asks of its participants. Let us say you wish to reduce your closet clutter. Take every piece of clothing in the house and pile it all on the floor. Now pick up each item, hold it, consider it, and ask yourself if the item sparks joy. Sparks joy? It’s a shirt. If I only wore clothing that sparks joy, I would have no choice but to wander around nude, which my office colleagues would not at all appreciate. It sounds strange, holding everything I own and asking myself if I feel joy while holding it. If I am being completely honest though, then yeah, a few of my belongings do spark joy and those have a prominent position on desks and shelves. A photo of me with my old hound dog, may he rest in peace. My tiny stuffed sheep that my wife and I bought at the Stonehenge gift shop during our trip to England in 2007 and which has joined us on every international journey ever since. Nearly every book on my shelves and piled on the floor. These are a few of my favorite things. And if you find something that does not spark joy that you wish to discard? This is where the entire method becomes a little wackadoo for me. As you discard the item, the KonMari Method asks that you thank the item for its service and wish it a pleasant journey. I find this more than a little absurd and I wonder how many people actually perform this step. Still, I did manage to collect four bags of clothing for donation and this is really the important part. I may have been too haughty to wish my old coat a fond farewell, but I was able to part with it because I was able to recognize that I was keeping it for foolish sentimental reasons and not because it sparks joy.

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up is short and many readers will probably be able to finish it in a couple of sittings. I read terribly slowly so the book spent two weeks on my nightstand. Read it with an open mind and I suspect you will find something useful in the book. Follow the author’s procedure perfectly and do not take shortcuts though or one is doomed to fail, or so she says. Who am I to contradict her? She is the tidying expert with a three-month waiting list of clients and millions of books sold. I am just a guy with three piles of unread books on the floor. At least I can remove The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up from those piles now. Thank you, book, for teaching me your ways and may your next reader learn much from you.

Symptoms of Being Human

I did not know what gender fluidity was until I heard about Symptoms of Being Human and reading it was an eye opening experience. Jeff Garvin, a cis male (born male and identifies as male) author, is audacious to write a first person novel from the perspective of a gender fluid teen.  Time will tell how the LGBTQ community responds to this novel, but my hope is that they accept and appreciate this work by one of their staunch allies rather than view it as an invasion of their community by an outsider.  I hope they realize that by writing this novel, Garvin is attempting to understand the community, relate to it, support it, and inspire his readers to do the same.  Sadly, I have already seen a couple of reviews from members of the LGBTQ community who lash out at Garvin for being a straight, white male and daring to pretend he knows anything about what they are going through.  This is as close-minded a perspective as that of those who still consider non-cis gender identity to be a mental illness.  We all need friends and to shove away someone who is clearly a supporter is daft.

Garvin has stated in several interviews that he was a victim of bullying in school. I, too, experienced bullying from early elementary school through high school so I feel like I am qualified to claim Garvin’s depiction of bullying and its effect on the victim is authentic in the worst way. I felt terrible watching the novel’s charming protagonist Riley suffer those experiences. When an author creates a character they want you to like and then puts them in awful situations, they hope you squirm and feel uncomfortable. I found myself grinding my teeth to the point my jaw ached. Ah, the memories, but my experiences cannot hold a candle to what Riley endures. I was just a small, shy kid, but at least I was a boy who looked like a boy and acted like a boy. At least I think I did. Riley is subjected to a more severe brand of bullying that is all too prevalent for people in the LGBTQ community. Drawing upon a year of research and his own experiences as a victim of bullying, Garvin writes some terribly realistic scenes that quickened my heart rate and left me short of breath. I suspect this is exactly the reaction Garvin wanted to invoke.

During his book release event, Garvin says he intentionally left Riley’s birth-assigned gender unstated. As I began to read the book, my main concern was how he would do this in a believable, organic way and would not end up being a cheap trick. The task must have been monumental. We are  conditioned to assign gender identity, even to inanimate objects. I feel a tremendous amount of sympathy for the translators working on the foreign language editions of this book. In the English language, the definite article the is neutral, but think about languages like Spanish, French, German. All of them have gender-specific definite articles:  el/la, le/la, der/die. Gender is a part of our culture. Gender is a part of our society. When we are reading, knowing a character’s gender guides us in imagining that character. When gender is intentionally avoided, it feels odd, like something shameful is being hidden. It is a difficult trick, writing a book about not applying gender labels to people while constantly discussing gender labels. There was just one brief moment when a character said something in a gender neutral way that sounded awkward and not at all the way that particular character would talk but for the most part Garvin executes a clever and deft sleight of hand.

Allow me to add my voice to chorus of reviewers who read and write faster than I in saying Riley is a wonderful character. Riley is witty, anxious, compassionate, introspective, smart-mouthed. Riley is relatable and, most importantly, undeniably human. Garvin’s ability to write painful introspection breathes vibrant life into a character that so easily could have seemed false and two-dimensional. Riley is an important entry into the world of literary characters that inspire real people to do extraordinary things and I hope serves as a positive influence to even just one person out there who is struggling with the same situation. All of the characters in this novel are well-written –Solo is particularly the kind of person I would have enjoyed knowing—and I have a memory of each one of them from high school. Their names may be different, but they and their quirks were definitely there. Their interactions with Riley are so very chillingly, maddeningly real. Garvin even manages to generate some modicum of sympathy for the bullies, which is no small task considering most readers will want the freedom to universally revile them. The glimpses into their lives humanizes them and reminds us that, as Solo says, “high school sucks for everyone”.

Symptoms of Being Human is an important novel.  It is an important book.  It is honest, uncomfortable, emotionally raw and genuine. I am sending copies to my parents, to my niece, and sharing copies with office colleagues. This book needs to be read. It might not change the minds of bigots, but for everyone else open-minded enough and empathetic enough and human enough, this could be an important work of fiction that educates uninformed readers like me about a part of the real world that is only going to grow larger as tolerance, acceptance, and understanding progress.

Aurora

Reading Kim Stanley Robinson’s 2013 novel Shaman (which I discussed here back in June 2014) reminded me of how much I enjoy Kim Stanley Robinson.  I was browsing YouTube one lazy weekend morning last Spring when I stumbled upon this video of Kim Stanley Robinson discussing the concept of his forthcoming novel, Aurora:

In eight minutes, Robinson had me chomping at the bit. His description of a multi-generational spaceship constructed with multiple biomes representing the major ecosystems of Earth fired my imagination in a way I had not experienced in a long time. The two months I had to wait until the book’s release felt long but finally July 7, 2015 arrived. I bought a copy at my local Barnes & Noble during my lunch break and began reading it that same evening. I cannot remember the last time I was so excited about a book that I bought and started reading it on release day.

There are some books one can read just for fun and other books that, like the works of Kim Stanley Robinson, require effort. That is part of what I enjoy so much about his novels. While they are not pulp science fiction, they are approachable. Robinson stops just short of being too difficult to comprehend or at least ponder. It is as though he expects his readers to possess above-average intelligence and rewards us with stories that challenge us to dream big.

When the story begins, the spaceship is already en route to Tau Ceti, a star system 12 light years from Earth. Because it will take a couple hundred years for the ship to reach the Tau Ceti system, the population of the ship at the beginning of the story is composed of the children of the children of the original travelers. That thought blew my mind. Imagine living your entire lifespan within the confines of a starship having never stood on real ground, having never breathed non-recycled air from a real atmosphere, and having never traveled to another country in a manner that did not involve simply opening the door from one part of the ship to another. How congested that environment must have felt.

As with all of the Kim Stanley Robinson novels I have read, the characters in Aurora are wonderfully realized. They are people with dreams and fears, ideas and doubts. They have goals that do not always align with the goals of others and the conflicts that arise are written in such a human way—quite the trick considering a computer is writing the narrative! How often do you hear readers complain that the characters in a particular novel or film do not talk the way people actually talk or do not behave the way real people would behave in stressful situations? You will hear none of that from readers of Aurora. Kim Stanley Robinson is masterful in his portrayal of the sociological and political machinations of people and populations.

The most fascinating aspect of this novel is the exploration of language. The majority of the novel is narrated by the ship’s computer. Encouraged by one of the ship’s crew to practice narrative style, the ship begins the story in a very simple manner, almost as though a child were writing the story. As the ship learns about narrative style, the narrative style of the book transforms. There are long passages early in the novel where the narration involves large blocks of information that, which factually accurate, may not be important to the story because the ship does not know if what it is narrating is important or how it fits into the story it is telling. The ship's musings on the flaws of human language, of metaphors and simile, add some welcome humor to the story. As the ship’s narrative skill improves, the novel itself becomes a gripping and sometimes heartbreaking tale of mankind’s journey to a distant star system in search of a habitable planetary body.

In the end, the story is about humanity’s interaction with its environment. It is a beautiful story and while it did not go where I thought it would go, I enjoyed it immensely. Kim Stanley Robinson has proven once again that he is one of our finest authors of speculative fiction.​

All the Birds, Singing

On weekend mornings, I enjoy opening the window beside my writing desk and listening to bird songs while I sip a cup of coffee.  I find it to be a calming experience.  A chirping bird sounds so happy.  Ever since I was a child, watching birds in flight has filled me with an almost dizzying sense of relaxation, of freedom, of positivity.  In All the Birds, Singing however, birds are symbols of sorrow, of isolation, and of death.  Despite such themes, All the Birds, Singing is one of the most enjoyable books I have read in a long time.  The novel, the second from Evie Wyld and for which she earned the 2013 Encore Award for Best Second Novel, is elegant with a fascinating story and an intriguing lead character.

An ominous opening line sets the stage:  “Another sheep, mangled and bled out, her innards not yet crusting and the vapours rising from her like a steamed pudding.”  Whoa.  What a great first sentence!  This tone flows through the entire novel, infusing it with dread and unease.  Even so, I found myself smiling often at the beauty of Wyld’s use of language and even laughing aloud as she mercifully injects moments of humor into the bleak story.  Some of the situations in which Wyld’s characters find themselves are so real and so ridiculously human (humanly ridiculous?) that one cannot help but feel empathy, and thus laugh.  Honestly, what does one shout at a charging sheep to frighten it away?  Such lighthearted moments are brief, however, for the storm clouds roll in fast and the story takes another dark step.  Like oranges in Coppola’s The Godfather, birds seem to always be there, warning of unpleasantness.

As much as a teenaged Jake feared her life would be mundane and ordinary, it seems to have been anything but.  It has been far from a happy life, though.  Jake Whyte, who sleeps with a hammer under her pillow, has suffered more than most people ever should.  She was dealt a rotten hand, but was made the best of it anyway, exhibiting a survival instinct that demands respect.  Throughout the novel, Jake expresses great empathy for animals.  Just as cruelty to animals is often a warning sign that a person may possess psychopathic tendencies, might the opposite be true?  Most humans have brought Jake nothing but trouble, but she recognizes the innocence and instinct of animal behavior.  Despite hints throughout the story that she had done something awful in her past, it is her treatment of animals that informed me of her good nature.

Jake’s story is told in two chronologically divergent timelines:  her present life moves forward, her history is told in reverse.  As we get to know the adult Jake, forced to grow up far too early and bearing physical scars to mirror the emotional ones, alternate chapters march us backward in time giving us a look at her younger years and the events that led to her to her present place of mind.  The promise of learning the true nature of Jake’s awful deed was a wonderfully effective carrot on a stick.

Whether we are in Jake’s present in the isolated English countryside or in Jake’s past in baked Australia, the setting is vibrant.  In Australia, the heat is omnipresent.  It dries the landscape and fries the flesh of the characters.  Reading Wyld’s descriptions of the Australian desert, I could feel the moisture evaporate from my pores.  My skin dried, my tongue swelled, and all I wanted was a gulp of cold water.  When in England, it seems to always rain, a permanent chill in the air.  I found myself wanting a shot of warming whiskey.  The scenes in England felt so dreary, the sky so low and dark compared to the high, blue Australian sky.  Both landscapes, as written by Wyld, are simultaneously beautiful as raw nature and dreadful as a human environment.

With All the Birds, Singing, Evie Wyld has leapt onto my list of authors to watch.  I am pleased to say I received a copy of her debut novel After the Fire, A Still Small Voice (her titles are poetic, yes?) as a gift so I have more Evie Wyld in my future.  I look forward to sitting with the book, steaming cup of coffee in hand as bird songs bespeaking of no ill omen at all drift through the open window.

One Second After

In the afterword to One Second After, William Forstchen’s novel of a small American town struggling to survive after an electromagnetic pulse disables all electronics in the United States, USN Captain William Sanders claims such an attack is possible, states that our nation is entirely unprepared for it and suggests this novel should serve as a wake-up call.  The author bio states William Forstchen holds a Ph.D. from Purdue in military history and the history of technology and is a professor of history at Montreat College in North Carolina so it is safe to say the man knows what he is talking about.  The story he crafts is scary in its authenticity, but I found the execution lacking.

Forstchen’s setting and the rippling effects of the EMP attack are the strongest aspects of his novel.  No electricity means no refrigeration which means rapidly spoiling food and medicines like insulin.  There are approximately six million American diabetes sufferers who require insulin and without it, they will die within a matter of weeks.  With our economy so largely dependent upon electronic transfer of currency, banks and retail cannot function.  When people are unable to access their money, they panic and panic breeds violence.  Commercial airliners, their systems dependent upon on-board electronics, fall from the skies.  According to the Federal Aviation Administration, there are approximately seven thousand airplanes in the air over the United States at any given time.  Many of those are commercial airliners with hundreds of passengers aboard.  Every modern road vehicle with a computer becomes a giant paperweight.  Roads and highways become as clogged as a bacon-lover’s arteries.  Even modern trains have computers.  No airplanes, trains, and road vehicles means no freight.  Food grown in the Midwest cannot be delivered to its destination and so it sits, rotting.  No fresh water, no telephones, no radio.  Entire cities and communities are cut off from the world.  The less moral among us begin to cause trouble just because they can.  They form gangs and terrorize, steal, rape, murder.  All of this is frighteningly and believably portrayed in One Second After.

I have huge issues with the novel, however.  It is patriotic in the extreme.  While I can appreciate the portrayal of American ingenuity, community, and resolve as the qualities that win the day, Forstchen takes it too far.  Several times, during heated arguments about the correct course of action, the less desirable option is rejected because “we are still Americans”.  How about argue that the a particular course of action is the right one to take and explain why instead of just saluting Old Glory and suggesting supporters of the alternative action are un-American?  This short-sighted and weak perspective is often used by people who are incapable of supporting their argument.  Further, people break into pro-America songs at the most ridiculous moments.  Think of the little girl suddenly singing “America the Beautiful” in the 1997 film The Postman.  It is a laughable scene in the film and it happens multiple times in One Second After.  I have never engaged in so much eye-rolling while reading a novel in my entire life.

I also had issues with Forstchen’s style and language, the most aggravating being the author’s unforgivable incorrect contractions of could have, should have, and would have.  The correct contraction of should have is should’ve, not should of as Forstchen writes.  It is not just a one-time mistake.  He does it every instance, of which there are many.  Yes, when spoken aloud, should’ve sounds like should of but this does not mean it is an acceptable spelling.  The error is so pervasive that it yanked me right out of the story every time it happened.  Some authors, notably John Steinbeck in The Grapes of Wrath, intentionally use incorrect language in dialogue to portray characters as uneducated.  Forstchen cannot claim this literary device.  None of his characters are illiterate bumpkins like Steinbeck’s Joad family.  This is just poor use of language and it is inexcusable. 

I found Forstchen’s dialogue attribution lazy.  Far too often, a character will join or begin a conversation and Forstchen, instead of surrounding the dialogue with action bringing the character into the scene, simply says It was [character name].  This dialogue attribution should be used sparingly.  I find it most effective when used to suggest other characters in the scene are surprised by the sudden appearance of the speaker.  Either Forstchen cannot write good description introducing a character to a scene or all of his characters live life being startled when anyone else speaks.

I like the premise of One Second After.  Forstchen’s small town setting is good.  His characters behave in a believable way given their rapidly deteriorating circumstances.  The novel is paced well and the story entertained me, but the points against it –poor style and super-saccharine patriotism— far outweigh the positives.  I strongly recommend Stephen King’s Under the Dome and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road as superior end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it stories.

100 Sideways Miles

Mom read a review of Andrew Smith’s 100 Sideways Miles in her local newspaper – she is olde tyme – that made the book sound like one of the funniest, most heartwarming novels to come along in a years.  She even clipped the article from the newspaper and mailed it to me ahead of the book shipment.  I wish I had saved that clipping and more than that, I wish I had read the same book the newspaper’s reviewer had read.  That book sounded wonderful.  The one I ended up with just did not click with me.

Finn Easton, the nice-guy teen protagonist of 100 Sideways Miles, suffers from epilepsy due to injuries sustained as a child in a freak accident that also claimed the life of his mother.  Due to Finn’s life-changing accident, the exact nature of which I will not spoil here, he has a unique perspective on life, measuring the passage of time in miles rather than minutes.  I had high hopes for a clever and perhaps enlightening implementation of this idea.  It ended up being a quirky but impotent character trait.  In fact, many aspects of this book felt impotent.  Finn sees the ghosts of two little girls a couple of times during the story, but nothing comes of it.  The ghosts don’t haunt him, they don’t save him from danger, he gains no insight.  What is the purpose of Finn seeing these ghosts?  Did I completely miss the point or is this just another odd thing in his life?

Finn’s best friend, Cade Hernandez, a star athlete and charismatic ladies’ man extraordinaire, almost completely repelled me in the early pages.  He is arrogant, a troublemaker, he drinks, he chews tobacco (people really still do that?!).  Basically, he is the kind of bad influence I would have avoided in high school.  Cade is, however, fiercely loyal to and protective of Finn, especially when Finn is having a seizure.  This quality redeems him and for this, I can forgive him his other faults.  He probably grows up to be a good guy.  Sure he is young, reckless and stupid now, but so was I when I was sixteen.  His brotherly relationship with Finn reminds me of my relationship with one of my own friends.  By the end of the novel, Cade ended up becoming my favorite character and that was a surprise.

A second strong character is transfer student and romantic interest Julia Bishop.  She and Finn latch onto each other early.  Their relationship is one of mutual respect and care and is as awkward and sweet as it needs to be.  Aside from the brotherly relationship between Cade and Finn, the relationship with Julia felt the most authentic and real, if perhaps a bit indulgent of teen male fantasy.

For no reason I could discern, Smith writes a couple of scenes as though they are a script.  It is random and pointless and irritated the heck out of me.  Had the scenes actually involved a stage play, then it might make sense to present the dialogue and action in this way, but these were scenes just like any other.  It is as though Smith grew bored of his own book and decided to switch up the format for a few pages just to be different.  One scene is just a conversation between Finn and his father and after rereading it, I see nothing leading or following the scene that supports its presentation as a stage play.  The second is a conversation between Cade and Finn.  At least this one is preceded by reference to the radio dramas soldiers in World War II listened to followed by “our own blank-screen radio theater played out as something like this”. If the entire reason the scene is written as a radio drama script is because WWII radio dramas were mentioned a sentence earlier, then the reason is as thin and weak as wet toilet paper.  Just write the scene.  If the scene is so weak that it needs to “punched up” by changing the format for no good reason, then cut the scene or rewrite it.

I haven’t been a teenager for twenty years, but I am fairly certain I did not say “Um” as often as Finn Easton does.  Even if I did and even if this is really how teens speak, it was gnash-my-teeth aggravating to have to read “Um” as his response to so many stimuli.  I get it that many of us precede a sentence with “um” or “err” or “ah” as we put our thoughts together but Finn Easton seems to be able to communicate a wide variety of thoughts and emotions by just saying “Um”.  Dad asks about Finn’s day.  “Um”.  Friend makes a joke.  “Um.”  Pretty girl talks to Finn.  “Um.”  (Actually, I completely understand this one.)  Museum attendant is a smart aleck.  “Um.”  Friend expresses concern for Finn.  “Um.”  On one hand, dialogue has to be authentic to be believable.  People have to talk the way people really talk, but an author can take this too far and I have to say Smith went overboard with Finn Easton’s use of “Um”.

On a positive note, I did learn something from 100 Sideways Miles.  The undershirt worn by baseball players, the shirts with the colored sleeves that extend up the shoulder to the collar, is called a raglan.  I did not know that, but now I do thanks to 100 Sideways Miles.

Character relationships are the strong point of 100 Sideways Miles, but they were not strong enough to save the story.  Ultimately, a disappointing book but I see enough talent in Andrew Smith that I am willing to give one of his other novels a chance.  Aforementioned friend recommends Winger so I will try that one with cautious optimism.

Ghostwritten

I have had David Mitchell’s 1999 debut novel Ghostwritten on my to-read pile for far too long.  I bought it several years ago, shortly after finishing his wonderful Cloud Atlas, which is darn near a masterpiece in my opinion, but too many other books were in front of it on my list.  At some point though, I grew impatient and may have manipulated the composition of the pile itself to cause Ghostwritten to float to the top.

Much like Cloud Atlas – or perhaps I should say that Cloud Atlas is much like Ghostwritten in its construction – Mitchell’s debut is presented as a series of stories, each centered on a different character and with each character’s story somehow linked to the story of one or more of the others in the book.  These little Easter eggs scattered throughout the novel added an extra layer of entertainment and they engaged me as a reader more than if Ghostwritten was just a short story collection. If a character shows up for two pages and then leaves, I know I need to keep that character in mind because they might show up in someone else’s story several chapters later, or they might even be the primary character of a later chapter.  I love this!  What I find even more fun is that there are characters from other Mitchell novels in Ghostwritten and characters from Ghostwritten in other Mitchell novels.  This establishes all of his novels in the same world and while some enemies of fun would call this a gimmick, I call it a feature and an entertaining one at that.  I enjoy tracing these character appearances from one novel to the next. I am tempted to purchase every David Mitchell novel and read them in sequential order and then create a timeline. Oo, what if I set up a bulletin board with photos and pins and colored string to keep track of it all?  Yay, project! *giddy dance*

Ghostwritten’s chapters do form a connected narrative, but each is an excellent story on its own.  This is good because, even as I find delight in them, I often found myself questioning the purpose of these connections.  Why does Mitchell structure his novel in this way with a new primary character for each chapter?  Is the book about chance and randomness?  Is he making a statement about how we are all connected in some kind of universal Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon kind of way?  Even having finished my reading of the book, I am not certain I completely understand it.  I admit that makes me feel like a bit of a fool, especially considering how much I enjoyed the novel. I like the pretty colors!  What I do know is that David Mitchell’s novel is a series of wonderful stories of humankind.  In each of his characters, diverse in gender, age, environment, morality, and vocation, I found something to which I could relate or empathize.

I feel like I owe Ghostwritten a second read at some point.  Mitchell is a talented author so I feel like my lack of ultimate understanding is likely my fault and not his, especially considering I did most of my reading just before bed after a long work day.  Such an exhausted state of mind and body is not conducive to full comprehension of a clever story.  For now though, I can say I thoroughly enjoyed Ghostwritten and look forward to finding out which of its characters show up in David Mitchell’s next novel.

Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration

I adore Pixar Animation films and that is hardly a unique opinion.  Ever since 1995’s Toy Story, almost every one of their films has connected with me in a deeply personal way.  The first ten minutes of Up wre-e-ecked me, as did the conclusion of Toy Story 3.  Pixar Animation is one of the world’s most successful film studios and not only because they employ wonderfully creative people.  It takes great management to bring all the pieces together to deliver a consistently superior product.

I heard great buzz about Creativity, Inc., Pixar President Ed Catmull’s book about his rise to his current position and his discussion of his management style.  It had been included on several business-related Best Of lists and my local Barnes & Noble had a whole shelf devoted to it.  Working in a management position myself, I am always on the lookout for guidance so a management book by the head of one of my favorite film studios piqued by interest.  Though Catmull states Creativity, Inc. is not a memoir, it certainly reads like one.  He delves into his past, discusses his dream of making the first computer-animated feature film, the relationships he developed and work he performed on his road to Pixar.  He brings you into the creative meetings, discusses the successes and failures at Pixar (did you know Toy Story 2 was almost scrapped?!).  It is a wonderful peek into one of my favorite companies.

Some of the management tips Catmull offers seem like common sense:  Establish a culture of open discussion and encourage all employees to share their ideas, treat others with respect and kindness.  I know some managers prefer a Machiavellian approach, a behavior I have witnessed first-hand and find disgusting and reproachable, but I would hope most people would already behave in the manner Catmull suggests.  This does not make Catmull’s advice dismissible.  I am just disappointed that there has to be a book about it.  These are not just guidelines for successful management.  They are guidelines for life in general.  The saddest part is that some people do not behave in this manner automatically.  Why is nasty the standard operating behavior for so many people?

“As leaders, we should think of ourselves as teachers and try to create companies in which teaching is seen as a valued way to contribute to the success of the whole.”

It is comforting to read about these nuggets of advice being successfully implemented at a profitable company.  I was about three-quarters of the way through the book when I had the sudden realization that it sure would have been a grand idea to write Catmull’s management tips down in bullet points so I could at least refer to them later.  Fortunately, Ed Catmull knew what I wanted before I did because there is an appendix called “Starting Points” that collects all of his suggestions in short, easily digestible reminders.  Some might be tempted to take a short cut and read just this appendix, but I urge prospective readers to take the time to experience Catmull’s book in its entirety. 

So here is my own “Starting Point”:  If you are already a collaborative manager who gives credit where credit is due, read this for the pleasant memoir and confirmation that your method works.  If you are on a power trip, read it to learn you don’t have to be a jerk to your employees to get them to work hard for you.  Maybe watch a Pixar film or two while you’re at it and learn compassion, cooperation, inspiration, loyalty, leadership, friendship.

The Slow Regard of Silent Things

I am an unabashed fan of Patrick Rothfuss.  Having read his blog, followed him on various social networks, participated in his charity Worldbuilders, and watched several video interviews and his brief YouTube panel discussion program The Story Board, I can tell the man is just an all-around good man.  I adored his first novel, briefly titled The Name of the Wind, The Kingkiller Chronicles: Day One.  The second book in the series, The Wise Man’s Fear, The Kingkiller Chronicles: Day Two disappointed me, though it is still a good story.  Now Rothfuss gives us The Slow Regard of Silent Things, a novella centered on the enigmatic Auri, the young woman who lives in the Underthing, a network of passages and rooms and sewers beneath The University.  Auri is introduced in the first book of the series and is for me one of the most interesting characters in Rothfuss’s world.  When protagonist Kvothe first meets Auri in the first volume, she is timid and exhibits an almost feral behavior.  As Kvothe learns more about Auri, it becomes clear that she is a bit disturbed, off-kilter, though intelligent.  When with Auri, everything must be just so and one must observe proper manners or she will scurry away and disappear.  She is a curious character and one I’m very happy Rothfuss explored in this novella.

While reading this book, I was constantly amazed by Rothfuss’s ability to write so clearly from the perspective of a broken mind and make the pieces make sense.  After seeing her world through Auri’s inquisitive eyes, I felt like I began to understand her.  What most people would see as irrational behavior started to appear… reasonable?  No.  Not reasonable.  Not at all, but darn it, I could see what she was going through.  She’s off her rocker, but I wanted to be there.  What do most people do when they see what they perceive to be a mentally ill person in public?  Think back to the last time you were strutting down your own Main Street, mocha latte in hand, and ahead of you was one of those people – maybe they were pacing to and fro, touching the tree by the curb and then the top of the fire hydrant and then the tree and then the fire hydrant, tree, hydrant, tree, hydrant.  I think most of us avoid eye contact and accelerate, hoping they don’t try to talk to us and if they do try to talk to us, we ignore them and walk faster.  That can’t be just me.  I’m a good person.  I am!  Sigh.  Anyway, Auri is one of those people but Rothfuss makes me want to not speed past her.  I am not sure if that is empathy on my part or on the part of Patrick Rothfuss.  Probably his because he is such a talented storyteller.  But I’m still a good person.  Shut up.

I love Rothfuss’s titles.  This one, The Slow Regard of Silent Things, sounds like a Walt Whitman poem, is his best one yet.  It is a perfectly Auri title, sparking my curiosity, drawing me close and by the time the story was over, it made absolute sense to me, particularly with regard to Auri.

I initially wondered why this novella exists.  The author’s fans are clamoring for Day Three of the Chronicles.  Was Slow Regard a tease, an appetizer, a stop gap?  His own Author Foreword tells prospective buyers that they might not want the book.  He goes out of his way to dissuade folks from spending their money on it.  Rothfuss seems to worry that readers who are using Slow Regard as their introduction to him will be confused and dissatisfied with him and avoid his future work.  Personally, I think he is not giving himself his due credit.  On its own, The Slow Regard of Silent Things is a quirky little story starring a quirky little character and it is quite enjoyable all on its own.  Having read the preceding novels, I had a bit of experience with Auri already so had an idea of what to expect, but I think an open-minded person reading this story in a vacuum would find the story and Auri odd and charming.  As for why the story exists at all, Rothfuss stated on his blog that it is too long to fit reasonably well within Day Three and so it made sense to release it on its own.  I’m awfully glad he made that decision and did not choose to kill this particular darling.

The Night Circus

I wish I could remember my first visit to Disneyland.  I wish I had clear memories of the wonder and delight I must have felt at the sights and sounds and smells.  I wish I could recall the first time I entered a professional baseball stadium and saw for the first time the emerald green field stretching out before me.  There are so many experiences I wish I could have again for the first time.  These events are synonymous with childhood for many of us and until science develops a way for us to relive our memories, once these memories have faded, they are lost forever.  This is an overly sentimental way of me saying that the experience of reading Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus felt very much like what I imagine those first-time memories might be if I could recall them. 

What a delightful way to start the new year!  Elegantly written and rich with imagery, The Night Circus tantalized my senses the way no novel has before.  Morgenstern’s use of color and scent put me right in the middle of that circus.  I was there among the tents.  I could smell the popcorn and caramel apples and hot cocoa.  I don’t know that I have ever noticed an author’s costume design before, but as costumes are an important part of any circus’s visual impression, so too are the attire of Morgenstern’s characters whether they are at the circus or not.  I felt like I always had such a clear picture of what everybody looked like though Morgenstern does not spend much time describing what the characters look like, only their clothing.  My imagination invented the rest quite easily because the rest of the picture was so clear.

This is a different kind of circus.  There are no clowns, no tutu-bedecked bears riding unicycles.  This circus is magical and surreal.  There is a labyrinth, a vertical maze made of clouds, gardens of ice.  The circus draws people to it with an almost preternatural power.  A community of fans develops.  Calling themselves rêveurs, these fanatics wearing clothing items of red – a hat, a scarf – to identify them as members of the group and follow the circus from town to town.  After experiencing the circus myself, it is easy to see how such a community would develop.

Part love story, part mystery, The Night Circus takes place over a period of three decades during the late 19th and early 20th centuries and follows two different sets of characters – Marco and Celia, opponents in a magic competition and Bailey, a young boy who grows to love the mysterious and beautiful circus – at various points in their lives.  Peppered in between these stories is a series of second-person (you don’t see that very often) chapters describing your own experience in the circus, the conclusion of which surprised me and left me smiling.  The two third-person narratives were fascinating and exciting, each with a bit of intrigue to keep the pages turning.  For several nights, I found myself still awake reading way past the time I’d usually be asleep.  I just couldn’t put the book down.  It was a joy to read and I am sorry it is over.

Misery

I first experienced Misery in 1990 on the silver screen.  I was fourteen years old at the time and Kathy Bates scared the bejesus out of me.  I started reading the novel a couple of years later, but did not progress very far due to reasons that now escape my memory.  Recently, and once again inspired by my niece, I returned to what may now be my favorite Stephen King novel.

Famous author Paul Sheldon loses control of his vehicle in a Colorado snowstorm and crashes off the road.  Annie Wilkes, a certified nurse, extracts the unconscious and seriously injured writer from the wreckage.  With the snowstorm raging, the phones are out and the roads are blocked so getting Paul to a hospital is impossible.  She brings him back to her secluded home to nurse him back to health and it is there she learns who he is:  her favorite author.  Oh what a treat for her. 

As expected, the film took quite a bit of creative license with the story and while I enjoyed it, the novel is leagues better.  Where the film included multiple points of view, the novel is told exclusively from Paul’s perspective.  When Annie is not in his convalescence room, we have no idea what she is up to and that frightens me much more.  Just as with every Stephen King novel I have read, the characters are the strongest part of the book.  When the majority of your entire novel has just two characters, they’d better be strong characters and King delivers as he always does.  Annie Wilkes is one of the most frightening characters I have ever encountered because she is so vile, so sadistic, and so believable.  She is not a monster under the bed.  She walks among us, a hideous beast hiding in plain sight behind a sweet smile.  We first see her as a benevolent rescuer but in short order, the veneer begins to crack and the true Annie is revealed.  O, and the things she does to poor Paul!

Misery is truly one of the most intense books I have ever read.  Anyone who has only seen the film needs to read the novel.  In many cases, the film is enough like its source material that one could probably get away with not reading the book if one wasn't in the mood, but Misery demands to be read.  King is so clearly expressing some personal concerns here that his words need to be consumed to gain a deeper appreciation of the author as a human being.  Fortunately, Stephen King has never been in the same situation in which he places Paul, but you just know he received some fan mail that got his brain pistons pumping.  When you are as famous a person as Stephen King, you no doubt come into contact with all kinds of people, most of whom are perfectly decent folk, but a few of whom are Annie Wilkes.

In a heart stopping instance of life nearly imitating art, Stephen King was struck by a car and seriously injured during his daily walk in June 1999.  I don’t imagine that in that exact moment he subconsciously prayed that the driver was not an Annie Wilkes, but as he recovered in his hospital room, one has to wonder if he was grateful not just to be alive, but to be in a public hospital with the story plastered all over the news instead of being rescued by a deranged fan and secreted away to a secluded location in the mountains.  As Paul Sheldon wrote during his imprisonment in Annie’s house, so too did Stephen King write after his accident to help himself heal.  Being in such pain, King had considered retirement but in a recent interview with Bangor Daily News, King recalled that his wife set up a writing desk for him and encouraged him to work to help him mentally recover from the accident.  It worked too because King has written over thirty novels, non-fiction books, and novellas since his accident.  We all owe Tabitha King a note of gratitude.

Into the Wild

The only time I ever ventured into the wild was during my junior year in high school when I and three friends spent Spring Break backpacking in the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California.  We packed in all of our food though and didn’t have to hunt or forage.  We had a cozy four person tent, a huge first aid kit carried by the aspiring medical student, a topographical map, good weather, and each other, so this was nothing like what Christopher McCandless, Everett Ruess or Jon Krakauer did in their youth.  We did experience a harrowing moment when our narrow mountain trail became completely covered by a wall of hard-packed snow and ice that extended up the slope and formed a cornice that hung over us like a white tidal wave frozen in time.  Our trail, barely wide enough for a single person, dropped steeply on our right in what seemed like a sheer cliff.  To our left and up was a steep slope of solid rock.  We could turn around and head back, maybe try to find another route over or around the pass, or we could traverse the wall of ice.  Since we were sixteen and stupid, we chose the latter.

I removed my forty-pound pack, unsheathed the hatchet I’d earned six years earlier as a Boy Scout, and slowly shimmied across the snow wall, using the hatchet to dig footsteps and handholds.  Two decades later, I look back on this moment of foolish decision and shake my head.  We did not have an ice axe, nor did we have crampons.  We had no business attempting a lateral crossing of a wall of packed snow when there was nothing beneath us but a vertical chute a few hundred feet long terminating at a field of jagged rocks.

About halfway across the trail I was digging, one of my footholds gave out beneath me.  I felt myself begin to fall and heard one of my friends call my name.  Fortunately, I managed to catch myself and clung to the wall, trying to force myself to breathe.  I glanced at my friends who were looking at me with mixed expressions of relief, horror, and amusement.  “Avoid this footstep,” I joked, and continued the rest of the way across.  It was the closest we came to disaster on that trip.

I mention this story only as a feeble attempt to pretend like I have any idea what Christopher McCandless may have experienced during his fatal journey.  In reality, we can only speculate based on the clues he left behind, the notes he scrawled on the walls of his shelter, and by what author Jon Krakauer was able to piece together when he wrote the book.

I was inspired to read Into the Wild by my niece, Cristy.  During a recent and far too brief visit, she lamented that she didn’t have anyone to talk with about the books she reads.  “But dear niece, what about your absentee uncle who you see once every other year”, I cried.  Shortly thereafter, she told me she’d just been assigned Into the Wild for school so I bought a copy the next day.

Prior to reading, I thought Into the Wild was only about Christopher McCandless, but it actually highlights several people cut from similar cloth as Chris including the author himself, and while I was initially irritated by what I felt were detours from the primary story, I came to realize these tangents were not included to pad the page count, but because they show the reader that Chris McCandless was not some kind of whack-job anomaly.  There are plenty of others like him; people who just do not feel like they belong among modern civilization.  These are people who were born in the wrong century.  They are frontiersmen in a world without much of a frontier.  While many people are quick to slap the crazy label on people like this, Krakauer speaks of these men in respectful terms, seeming to feel a kinship with them or at least he understands them more than the average person would.

Cristy asked me if I thought Chris McCandless was a visionary or an idiot.  Personally, I don’t really think he was either, but she feels quite strongly that he was the former, citing his intensity and strength of his conviction, his attempts to persuade others to live as he did (he even succeeded in one case).  I appreciate his adventurous spirit, but think he some of this actions were foolhardy.  There is no doubt he believed in something but by the end of his experience, his philosophy seems to have changed.  I enjoyed following his spiritual journey via passages he underlined in the books he carried with him.  Toward the beginning of his adventure, he read books that romanticized life in the wilderness.  He was excited but naïve, intelligent but unwise.  At the end, perhaps reality had begun to sink in and he yearned for human contact, writing a personal note in the margins of his copy of Doctor Zhivago:  “HAPPINESS ONLY REAL WHEN SHARED”.  I think he intended to rejoin modern society, but Cristy is of the opinion that he wanted to start a family and share the freedom of wilderness living with them.  We’ll never know.

McCandless’s story is inspirational, not in the “I want to do that” kind of way, but more because it is a story of a person who completely takes their life in their own hands and makes it exactly what they want it to be.  In modern society, most of us do the old nine-to-five, mow-the-lawn, fold-the-laundry weekly routine.  McCandless wasn’t up for that, wanted something different and made it happen.  His story shows us that we can make big changes in our lives if we really want to.  Just don’t discard your map.

The Old Man and the Sea

Mom had alerted me that she had sent her next selection, but the parcel I received in the mail seemed too small to contain a book.  It was the size of an oversized greeting card.  I tore open the envelope to reveal The Old Man and the Sea.  This is really a fortuitous selection because I had recently been pondering a reread of the book.  My first reading was in junior high school and I remember not caring for it much.  Such was my experience with most of the literature I read in school, though.  Forced consumption of anything tends to sour me.  Having reread The Old Man and the Sea for pleasure now, I found it much more interesting.

I am embarrassed to say this is the only Hemingway novel I have read so I have no clue how it compares to his other work.  Initially, the dialogue caused me to gnash my teeth.  It reads so awkwardly.  When Santiago and the boy speak to each other, it reads like two people who do not speak the same native language but who speak awkward English to each other because that is their only common language.  They speak about “the baseball” and refer to teams as “the Tigers of Detroit” and “the Indians of Cleveland”.  I don’t understand the purpose of this choice.  These phrases make it sound as though the novel were translated from Spanish.  Was Hemingway reminding his readers that the characters are not American or was this just an artistic choice?

I discussed my aversion to the dialogue with mom (my feelings grew worse once Santiago was on the sea alone, talking to himself) and she reminded me that Santiago is a simple man with simple concerns.  Alone on the sea, with nobody to talk to, he speaks aloud to himself so he doesn’t feel so isolated.  After our discussion, I had to admit to talking to myself in times of great stress.  I am sure we all do it.  Perhaps it was just the way it was written that rubbed me the wrong way.

Aside from this, I found myself inspired by and respecting the old man.  He knows his work and he loves the ocean and the fish he is hunting.  Santiago feels a kinship with the creatures of the sea, thanks them when he must kill one for food or bait, much like the Native American people.  He experiences a great amount of physical stress and pain throughout the story, but his determination sees him through to the end and though he comes home empty-handed, he is met with sympathy and awe by his colleagues, not ridicule.  Rather than losing hope and giving up, the old man simply begins making plans for the next trip out.  For me, that is the most amazing part of the whole book:  not the three day battle with the marlin that he could have sold at market for a handsome sum, but the old man’s resolve and his consideration of the whole event as just a bad day at work.  If only we all possessed such strength of spirit.

Sphere

For most of my life, I have been fascinated by the ocean but slightly terrified by it, by the sheer vastness of the sea, such a foreign environment for humans, the alien nature of the creatures within.  I have noticed this sensation growing worse as I grow older.  Still, stories like Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and films like The Abyss stir my imagination as much as stories of interstellar explorers.  I even enjoyed SeaQuest DSV.  When I heard that Drew Scanlon and Dan Ryckert of my favorite video game website giantbomb.com were going to read Michael Crichton’s Sphere, watch the 1998 film, and then record a special edition of their podcast and that the story was set at the bottom of the ocean, I scurried to my local bookshop and snapped up the last copy on the shelf.

The military has discovered something at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.  They say they don’t know what it is or where it came from so they collect a group of civilian scientists to help them study it.  What the object turned out to be surprised me but what was within disappointed me.  Still, the story was fun and Crichton’s inclusion of scientific debate by the characters gave me something interesting to consider.  One thing Michael Crichton did well, at least in the novels I have read, is express scientific ideas via fictional narrative.  He tricked unsuspecting readers into thinking about things like evolution, astrophysics, psychology, and ethics among others.  In Sphere, as in his smash hit Jurassic Park, Crichton collects a group of scientists from varying disciplines and throws them into a situation that challenges their understanding of the existing world and the way they think about it and in doing so, challenges the reader as well.  I found their discussions the most interesting aspect of the novel, my enjoyment of the action falling secondary.

One area of the novel I that felt was deficient was an exploration of the sense of claustrophobia I suspect one might feel living in a habitat at the bottom of the ocean.  This was a military installation, not the Ritz Carlton del Mar.  Crichton does describe the habitat as cramped and on one occasion, a character mentions they feel as though they have been buried alive in a tomb but aside from that, there wasn’t much made of the psychological effects – even with a psychologist on staff – on humans unaccustomed to living in such conditions with no possibility of escape.  They couldn’t just step outside for fresh air.  Even on the few occasions when the characters left the habitat, they were stuffed inside uncomfortable and restrictive diving suits.  That would drive some folks stir crazy.

Okay, so perhaps the characters were too distracted by other events to fall victim to cabin fever.  Those other events involve some pretty awful things (this is a Crichton novel so it is no spoiler to say some characters don’t survive) but they do not seem to faze anyone.  “Huh… well, that happened” seems to be the predominant attitude regarding the horrific demise of many of the characters.  It just didn’t ring true.  I’d even be okay with characters experiencing shock or disbelief during these moments, but instead they just sort of move on with their day.

These gripes aside, Sphere is a thrilling page-turner.  The story is suspenseful, has a cinematic pace, and the academic discussions are thought-provoking.  It is easy to see why so many of Michael Crichton’s novels were translated to the screen.  It is not my favorite of Crichton’s works (that honor belongs to Jurassic Park), but it is worth reading if you enjoy adventure tales.

The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P.

It was my turn to pick the next selection for my Mommy & Me Book Club and I was having difficulty choosing.  I thought some element of randomness might be fun so I asked my mom to choose two letters of the alphabet.  I received “W” and “L” in response so I drove to my local Barnes & Noble and with the excitement of a kid hunting for Easter eggs, I dashed to the fiction section and found authors whose last names start with “W”.  Running my index finger along the lip of the shelves, I scanned the book titles and stopped on the first one that started with “L”:  The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. by Adelle Waldman.  I believe I uttered an audible “ugh”.  The marketing blurb on the back of the book would have inspired me to put the book back on the shelf:

                “For every woman who’s ever wondered by he didn’t call and every man who has felt guilty – but not guilty enough – about not calling”

Good grief.  No, thank you.  I nearly put it back on the shelf and went for the next title.  Mom would never know, right?  But no, I had decided to try a somewhat random title and so it would have not have been right to reject this book.  When I returned home, I started reading immediately.  I knew if I didn’t, my initial reticence would result in me putting off reading for days or weeks.

I found the story of Nate Piven’s dating life not quite to my taste, but I loved Adelle Waldman’s prose.  She is insightful with an erudite vocabulary and though I found the titular character unpleasant and often offensive, I found myself grudgingly agreeing that Waldman accurately wrote Nate to behave and think the way many, not all, men do.  I would like to believe I am a better man than Nate, but as I reached the halfway point of the story, a long look in the mirror forced me to admit to myself that I have committed some of the same relationship crimes that Nate does.  While this made for an unpleasant moment, I found it cathartic.  We never like to admit when we are wrong but as long as we learn from the experience, even the bad can be put to good use.

A cause of much eye-rolling on my part is that it seems Nate lives in a world populated exclusively by attractive women.  I suppose this can be explained away by saying Nate only remarks upon the ladies he finds “doable”, but I grew tired of every female character in the novel being considered a sex object of some kind.  This is likely Ms. Waldman’s point, isn’t it?  There is good reason #YesAllWomen exploded on Twitter in the summer of 2014.  In fact, this novel appears to be a vessel for modern social commentary and that is what interested me most.  While I was irritated (envious?) that Nate was constantly surrounded by beautiful and sophisticated people, their conversations were my favorite parts of the book.  Waldman’s characters felt real and their discussions sounded similar to the ones my friends and I occasionally have.  I wanted to dive into the page and join in the chatter.

So story not so much, but a huge yes for Waldman’s style and characters such that I am going to keep an eye out for her work in the future.  This is her debut novel with no word yet about her second, but she has penned articles for several publications so I am going to hunt those down until her next book is published.  Mom felt much the same way about the book as I do, even as far as having an uncomfortable moment when she realized that she identified with one of the characters.  I’m pleased that our experiment of selection worked out this time.

Wolf in White Van

Reading Wolf in White Van casually will provide the reader with an interesting story of a troubled young man, but will rob one of the more complex and creative aspects of the novel.  It is a short book with a nonlinear structure so I think one needs to pay close attention or miss out on what John Darnielle is really saying.  This is not one of those fun little beach books.  Wolf in White Van demands and deserves thought.  The story begins with a wonderful, heartfelt hook that only vaguely hints at an awful event that has permanently disfigured Sean Phillips, the young narrator.  By the end of the first chapter, I was invested in Sean’s personal story and felt compelled to dig deeper and learn more about the event he calls an accident that has so dramatically altered the course of his life.

During the post-accident hospital stay, Sean conceives of a game-by-mail wherein a player’s goal is to safely traverse a dangerous post-apocalyptic landscape to reach the safety of the Trace Italian, a star-shaped fortress located on the Kansas plains.  Sean mails players an envelope containing a short narrative describing their surroundings and their options and players will respond by mail, dictating their actions taken and choices made.  Originally, the chapters about the game seemed like a distraction from what I felt was the real story and for a long while, these chapters frustrated me.  I wanted to know more about Sean’s accident, the cause and effect.  Still pondering the book weeks later, I realize the chapters about the game, indeed the game itself and thus the novel, are about choice and how each choice we make has a consequence.

We all know this at a surface level, but how often do we truly consider the choices we make?  Wolf in White Van begs the reader to pay attention to each decision point in our lives.  Since finishing Wolf in White Van, I have been hyperaware of the recent choices I have made, often tracing those decision points back several steps to see how I arrived at the point where I had to make that decision.  It is a fascinating exercise, but one that could potentially drive a person mad.  For your consideration:  If you don’t brush your teeth, you will develop a cavity and you will have to go to the dentist to get the cavity filled.  On the way home from the dentist, you decide to floor it through a yellow light, but you don’t make it and collide with cross traffic.  Had you made the decision to brush properly, you might not have developed that cavity and would not have had a dentist appointment that day, meaning you likely would not have been at that street intersection at that time and thus would not have been forced to react to the yellow light or try to get through it and would not have been involved in the car accident.  Consider then the branching effect of each of your decisions and how other lives are affected by them.

Had Sean made different decisions than the ones he made leading up to his disfiguring accident, he would not have ended up in the hospital and would not have created the game.  Had he not created the game, the two teens that took the game too far and ended up involved in their own tragic event would not have been placed in the situation in which they found themselves.

The title of the novel comes from a childhood memory Sean recalls about watching a talk show on television.  The guest panel discussed the alleged satanic messages heard when some music albums are played backward.  On one such record, the guests swore they could hear the phrase “wolf in white van”.  None of them knew what it meant, but were certain the message was sinister in nature.  This scene seemed like a throwaway to me, but upon further contemplation, I realized that the novel was also being presented backward with Sean retroactively revealing the details of his accident with the final scene being the event itself.  I feel like I might be reading too much into this, though, because for the life of me I cannot discern any meaning in structuring the novel this way.  Concluding the novel with the climax is certainly powerful and grim, but is the backward structure of the novel as meaningless as the backward messages on the records, intended to incite baseless and stumbling prattle much like that of the talk show’s guest panel?  I feel like I have either been duped into putting unnecessary thought into something or I have entirely missed one of Darnielle’s points.  Or am I getting Darnielle’s joke without realizing it?

Throughout Wolf in White Van’s 207 pages, the exact nature of Sean’s horrible accident is slowly revealed with a new tantalizing and horrific detail provided with each new anecdote of his life, each of which is presented with brutal and familiar honesty.  It is these sections that drove me toward Wolf in White Van’s stunning conclusion.  I use the word “stunning” not as a convenient adjective, but in the literal sense.  Upon reading the final sentence, I realized I had stop breathing.  I inhaled a great gasp of air and let my body collapse backward, slapping my head on the wall behind my bed.  I stared into nothingness for a good long while, thinking, sympathizing, and empathizing.  Since then, Wolf in White Van has stayed with me.

Choices.

Glorious

I don’t often read Westerns.  In fact, I don’t recall ever reading one until now – not even Lonesome Dove if you can believe it – but man, I love Western films.  I have my Dad to thank for that.  I remember being a little kid, he and I sitting down on Sunday afternoons to watch Channel 5’s feature presentation of the week.  This was back when the television had an actual dial you had to turn to change channels.  You actually had to get up from the sofa.  Eff that ess.  But Dad and I would sit there side by side, each of us with a plate of peanut butter crackers and a mug of chocolate milk and a Western film on the television.  I will now forever associate those food items and Westerns with my Dad.

For Father’s Day this year, I sent him a copy of Jeff Guinn’s Glorious after seeing it at my local Barnes & Noble and reading some good reviews.  After he read it, I decided I wanted to read it so I bought a copy for myself.  Not quite the same as sitting beside him on the sofa watching John Wayne six-gun some stagecoach robbers, but the sense of nostalgia was there nonetheless.

Glorious begins with a brutal prologue and then jumps into the main story about a young man on the run, looking for a place to hide, but also with designs on a lady.  He lands in a dusty little town in the middle of the Arizona Territory where he hears this lady might be because when you’re on the run from danger, the first thing you want to do it put a person you care about in that same danger.  Glorious includes several Western staples:  prospectors hunting for precious ore, a smelly saloon with bad beer and bar brawls, a wealthy rancher, the threat of attack by Apaches, and the ever-present Sheriff.  The supporting characters are well-written and I enjoyed getting to know them and felt for them when they struggled.  Even more so than the characters, Guinn nailed the setting.  I could clearly picture the town of Glorious, knew where each little adobe building was, felt the dust and grit on the hotel floor underfoot, the oppressive heat so early in the morning, and could smell the beer and stale sweat of the saloon at night.

As expected, or at least as I had hoped, it all comes together in a good old-fashioned Western shoot-out but just when the climactic conclusion is due, the story is interrupted by one of the most conspicuous deus ex machinas I have ever read.  My disappointment was palpable as the book dropped into my lap.  As Dad and I agreed, it seemed like an amateur move, though forgivable considering this is the first novel from Guinn, a veteran of non-fiction tales like The Last Gunfight and We Go Down Together.  I’m not giving up though.  Jeff Guinn is writing a follow-up to Glorious and the first ninety-nine percent of it was good enough for me to give the next one a read.  I feel like I want to watch Silverado now though.  And snack on some peanut butter crackers and chocolate milk with my Dad.

The Gutenberg Elegies

When Sven Birkerts’s The Gutenberg Elegies was published in 1994, the Internet was an infant.  The primary purpose of a cell phone was to make phone calls.  Texting was barely a thing.  It wasn’t until three years later that you could order a DVD in the mail through Netflix.  Youtube was a decade away.  iDevices didn’t exist yet, nor did e-readers.  Amazon had just been founded and wouldn’t release their popular Kindle device until 2007, a year after Birkerts released an updated 2006 edition of The Gutenberg Elegies.  The point is that our world has recently been flooded with new technologies all designed to make our lives simpler, more fun, more efficient.  Birkerts is afraid that books and literary culture as he knew it as a young man will disappear, occluded by electronic noise of the modern world.

In The Gutenberg Elegies, Birkerts expresses concern that the onslaught of electronic technologies will convert humanity into a species of automatons and that we will “lose the ability to confer meaning on the human experience”.  My initial reaction was to dismiss this concern, to think that humanity will be just fine.  But I look around and see an increasing number of faces buried in glowing screens.  I was at a baseball game a few weeks ago and hundreds of people around me spent the game staring at their iPad or cell phone screens, browsing the Internet or texting people.  Only when those of us actually watching the game cheered or booed would their heads snap up and they’d look around frantically asking those of us around them what had happened.  The next time you go to a restaurant, take a look around at how many people have their smartphones in their hands, not talking to each other.  Birkerts may be on to something, though I do not want to admit it.  Maybe it is not too late.

Most of the notes I took while reading this book are counter-arguments to the points of view Birkerts shares.  As I read those notes now though, having had a couple of weeks to mull them over and observe the world around me with Birkerts’s perspective, I find myself agreeing more often.  There are bright spots though.  Thanks to the Internet, we now have the ability to connect with like-minded individuals from around the world whereas in the pre-Internet age, one would need to meet up with book club members at the local library to discuss a book.  I think we should still do that because nothing beats a face-to-face conversation, but outlets like goodreads.com and the book blogosphere (into which I hope bookthump.com will be accepted soon) offer thriving communities full of intelligent people yearning to have thoughtful discussions and debates.

Sven Birkerts displayed an eerie prescience in 1994 about the effect modern technology has had on literary culture.  Many readers are converting to e-readers and downloading their reading material.  Brick-and-mortar stores are closing by the hundreds, unable to compete with the wholesale prices offered online.  Personally, I love the physicality of a book, particularly a nice hardback.  I even named this website after the sound a thick hardcover makes when you snap it shut.  I enjoy collecting books, browsing bookshops.  I enjoy the experience of holding a book in my lap and reading.  In this, Birkerts and I agree.  I am not sure I am ready to believe mankind is losing its humanity as a result of technology, but the more I read Internet forum comments (pick any news outlet and prepare to recoil at the magnitude of vitriol and hatred expressed by commenters hiding behind anonymity), the more I wonder if we may realize his prescience about our loss of humanity in another decade. It may already be happening, but we are too busy with our noses glued to tiny glowing screens to notice… or care.  Oh, and Birkerts is on Twitter so his journey toward the Dark Side is complete.

As I Lay Dying

Thoughts on William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying

Mom seems to be honing in on the classics for her Mommy & Me book club selections.  When her next pick arrived in my mailbox, I tore open the puffy white postal envelope to reveal William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying.  The first thing I noticed after the title was that the book had affixed to the upper right corner a golden “Soon to be a Motion Picture” label.  I scowled at the foul defacement of the book cover and immediately went to work on the edge of the label with my fingernail.  Fortunately, it was just a sticker with gentle adhesive and easily removed, leaving no residue.  I detest those labels and will only purchase a book that has one if it is removable.  If the label is printed onto the cover, forget it.  Of course, the worst offense of all is the replacement of the original cover art with the dreaded movie poster.  Ugh.  I wonder if post-film printings of novels like Washington Irving’s Rip Van Winkle and Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist ended up with “Now in Cinemas!” stickers.  Which was the first novel to be defaced by such a label and whose idea was it anyway?  Because it remains common practice, I suspect it results in the sale of books people might not pull off the shelves otherwise, but I’d still like to cinch up my suspenders and wag my cane at that filthy marketing executive anyway.

William Faulkner is one of those classic novelists I had managed to avoid all throughout school and university.  I didn't dodge him intentionally.  I just never wound up in a literature class with him on the syllabus.  Syllabus.  I haven’t used that word in more than a decade.  Remember how exciting it was when a professor handed out the syllabus and you perused it, quaking with excitement to see all of the things you were going to learn over the next few months?

The book, though.  In several alternating points of view, each character narrates their involvement with the Bundren family’s journey to transport their recently deceased mother across the Mississippi countryside via mule-drawn wagon to her desired burial place forty miles away.  That would be an hour-long trip on surface streets in modern times, but this is early 20th-century Mississippi.  Roads are dirt, bridges are rotten wood.  Add to that a furious rainstorm the night before the family sets out and now the roads are mud and the bridges are washed away.  What should have been a two-day trip even in a wagon drags out over more than a week and momma’s not smelling too swell by the end of it.

The Bundren family are different people.  Hill people.  No – not people.  Folk.  These are hill folk of the American South – misunderstood and odd.  You know how when you are driving across the country and you stop for gasoline in a little town off the highway and the people there have teeth the color of candy corn, bathe in streams and seem to speak their own language and when you leave you look in the quivering rear-view mirror and see all of them standing in the road watching you go?

Even with so many characters written in first person, Faulkner managed to create clear voices for each of them.  Being inside some of these people’s heads was disturbing.  Some of them seem normal-ish, if not troubled, and some seem downright nuts.  I had a difficult time deciding whether Vardaman, the youngest boy, was mentally unstable or just a regular kid with fractured attention span who doesn't know how to emotionally handle the demise of his mother.  These fascinating people are what this book is about.  The journey to get momma’s corpse, matter-of-factly referred to as "it", from Point A to Point B is just an excuse for these people to have something to do.  It is the Bundrens and the people they meet along the way that are the focus of As I Lay Dying.  If you want plot-driven narratives, look elsewhere.  This book is an examination of a part of America we modern city dwellers may never see again.  Modern civilization was already spreading into Faulkner’s fictional Yoknapatawpha County in this novel and the Bundren Family was viewed with wary eyes by those who encounter them.  As I Lay Dying is about the values of these hill folk.  In some cases, their values are all they have, which explains why they cling to them so very much.  For them, it is about what is right and durnit when something is right, you best see it done.

Now, about that “Soon to be a Motion Picture” sticker:  I see this thing is written by, directed by and stars James Franco.  I reckon I might could set down to give it a look-see.

Shaman

Thoughts on Kim Stanley Robinson's Shaman

I have seen Kim Stanley Robinson’s books in the science fiction section of my local bookshops for decades going back to the days when I worked in one of them.  His readers are accustomed to Robinson’s intelligent and thought-provoking prose about the far future. 

Shaman is very much about the long ago past and after reading this 2013 novel, I do not understand why it is labeled Science Fiction.  The book even says Science Fiction right on the spine above the imprint label.  There is a little bit of hocus pocus, but it is nothing so out of this world as any mystical goings-on you might find in a story about a tribe of Native Americans.  There is more paranormal wackadoo going on in Dan Simmons’ Black Hills and it is labeled Historical Fiction.  I know Kim Stanley Robinson is known primarily as an author of science fiction, but I do not understand why that means this work of historical fiction ends up on the SF shelf.

Taking place over a period of a few years, Shaman is the story of Loon, a young apprentice shaman living with his prehistoric tribe during the Ice Age.  We join Loon as he is a boy on the verge of manhood, beginning his shaman wander, a rite of passage during which he is stripped of everything including clothing, and told to disappear into the wilderness and not return until the next full moon.  What follows is a tale of survival told the Kim Stanley Robinson way.  His words are a paint brush.

The pace of the story is slow, much like the pace of Loon’s life.  Devoid of the hustle of the modern world, Loon and his tribe exist just to survive.  They are not worried about their 401(k), getting to a sales meeting on time, or navigating through gridlock traffic.  These humans are practically still just animals.  They hunt, they eat, they breed.  They maintain a connection to nature by naming themselves after birds (Loon, Hawk), plants (Heather, Moss), and rocks (Schist).  They recognize and appreciate their place in the ecology, unlike modern man who has paved over nature and replaced tree lines with skylines.  I enjoyed experiencing the simplicity of the ancient world through Loon’s eyes.  There are certainly harrowing moments that elevated my pulse, but I found Shaman to mostly be an exploration of early mankind’s life, like watching a well-produced documentary.

Robinson explores the cyclical nature of life, the passing of years marked by the seasons, the passing of days marked by the path of the sun across the sky.  He puts great effort into detailing these cycles and their importance to Loon and his Wolf Pack.  I found it almost hypnotic.  His setting is so crystal clear that even now, a week after finishing the book, I retain a vivid image of the woods in which Loon and his pack live, the river nearby, the tufts of snow on the ground late into Spring.  The seasons do not mean much to industrial man, but early mankind’s entire lives revolved around the seasons.  Summer was bountiful with rich hunting and gathering opportunities.  Autumn was a time to begin storing food for the long Winter.  The Hunger Spring was the worst, when food stores were low and wildlife had not yet returned so hunting was poor.

In a prehistoric society, the people told stories to retain their history and build their culture.  These stories were passed down through the generations.  The Wolf Pack’s shaman Thorn spends much of his time trying to teach his reluctant apprentice Loon the value of these stories and the importance of getting the details right.  I found myself wondering how much the stories might have changed over so many years, like a multi-generational game of Telephone.  In the Internet Age, information is at our fingertips.  Prior to the Internet, I could go to a library and read any number of volumes of scholarly information.  None of that existed thirty thousand years ago.  History was verbal.  This is how legends are born.  One person tells a story, the next embellishes a little, the next embellishes further.  Before we know it, we are sitting around the village bonfire listening as our shaman tells us the story of a man so strong, he killed an invulnerable beast with his bare hands and now wears its pelt as a trophy.  Loon’s own story is narrated by a seldom seen third party.  Is this the real tale or has it been sweetened to enhance the listener’s experience?

I thoroughly enjoyed Shaman and think even more highly of it as I continue to ponder it days after reading the final page.  Robinson can always be counted on to impart knowledge in an entertaining form and with Shaman, I feel as though I have been given a well-researched glimpse into a world I would not normally think about.  It is not science fiction though.  Not even a little bit.