WWZ, returns

so , i just finished max brooks’ World War Z for the second time around, and i gotta say, my initial assessment remains exactly the same – 5 stars – because it’s still a great book, and certainly the best zombie novel i’ve ever read. it’s the perfect blend of true horror and socio-political exploration/what-if exercise.

i’ve noticed that some folks on goodreads and in amazon reviews have expressed frustration with the fact that WWZ has no single protagonist. i find this a bit odd. because what has always been clear to me is that the real protagonist in WWZ is humanity itself. while an individual’s story can certainly reveal and explore facets of the human experience, it seems to me that a wider cast of characters, such as that provided in WWZ, is necessary to really delve into to the wide range of emotions and reactions that people and whole governments are capable of having in the face of an imminent and horrific global disaster.

brooks clearly aspired to tell a story that has a global scale. i much prefer his studs terkel approach to doing so, as opposed to, say, through the perspective of a single American (white) man who flies around the world as humanity’s last great hope.* some of the voices in the novel could have perhaps been written more distinctively. but most of the voices were distinctive enough that it’s a negligible complaint, if one at all. 4.5 bookish cheers!

*i haven’t seen the film (i plan to eventually), but this is how it certainly looks to me from the trailers. thought 1: good lord, am i over the whole summer blockbuster hero complex. thought 2: grateful for the fact that at least i know enough to expect pitt’s “zombie movie” but not WWZ.

one step closer to neil gaiman, everywhere: neverwhere

have you heard? because i hadn’t heard. in fact, ever since i (kind of) left twitter, i haven’t heard much of anything. okay, that’s an exaggeration, but not by much. anyway, the news. the NEWS is that, over the course of the last week, BBC Radio 4 has produced and released a radio play of Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman.*

“Neverwhere” cast

so i‘ve never read Neverwhere. but i‘ve read Neil Gaiman in my time, and i love me some Neil Gaiman. in fact, i‘ve been unofficially** re-reading Fragile Things for the past few weeks. and i‘m in the middle of a personal reading challenge to work my way through two, long-running comic book/graphic novel series – one of which is the Sandman series (the other is Fables). also this. i can’t wait for this.

lucky for me (actually, lucky for us all), i have this Neverwhere radio drama to tide me over. (side note: why is the BBC so awesome? now, i‘ve heard that the BBC isn’t all that awesome, but from where i‘m standing, the BBC looks like a beautiful, public-funded spot of very green grass). besides the obvious (um, Neil Gaiman. hello?), there are already 10 very good reasons why you should listen to the Neverwhere radio play. and here are a few more:

1. although you could probably find the audio in other places, the series will be on the BBC Radio 4 website for only three (three?!) more days.

2. Benedict Cumberbatch. with all the stuff that cumberbatch has been in lately, i‘d be tempted to say that he’s overexposed. except that he’s benedict cumberbatch. who can never be overexposed. never.

3. the rest of the cast. which includes sophie okonedo, james mcavoy, and christopher lee.

behold!, the first installment:

 

Postscript: one of my favorite new (to-me) websites, openculture, has compiled a fantastic list of free Neil Gaiman stories. check it out and yea shall not be disappointed.

* if you’ve heard already, you could just pretend you haven’t. i don’t have much. announcing old news on the news-saturated internet is the highlight of my week. (no, not really. but, kind of, yeah)

** “unofficially” just means that i get to read one short story every four days without feeling bad about myself.

Related articles

• Listen to Benedict Cumberbatch sing in Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere (io9.com)
• Q&A: Neil Gaiman on the Star-Studded BBC Audioplay of Neverwhere (wired.com)
• Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere: Why the best thing that’s on this weekend is on the radio (telegraph.co.uk)

beware the ides of march, it’s (still) chilly outside

ah, march 15th. the ides of march. and one of my favorite days of the year. for, it is on this day oh so many centuries ago, that julius ceasar, the formidable general and roman politician, was famously (back)stabbed by that traitor brutus and his co-conspiring members of the roman senate. i can never let this day pass without indulging in a little Shakespeare. Julius Ceasar, is my usual poison of choice —

Caesar:
Who is it in the press that calls on me?
I hear a tongue shriller than all the music
Cry “Caesar!” Speak, Caesar is turn’d to hear.

Soothsayer:
Beware the ides of March.

Caesar:
What man is that?

Brutus:
A soothsayer bids you beware the ides of March.

Caesar:
Set him before me; let me see his face.

Cassius:
Fellow, come from the throng; look upon Caesar.

Caesar: 
What say’st thou to me now? speak once again.

Soothsayer:
Beware the ides of March.

Ceasar:
He is a dreamer; let us leave him: pass.

and then of course, there’s mark antony’s famous speech. Antony:

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Caesar answer’d it.
Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest–
For Brutus is an honourable man;
So are they all, all honourable men–
Come I to speak in Caesar’s funeral.
He was my friend, faithful and just to me:
But Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
He hath brought many captives home to Rome
Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill:
Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?
When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept:
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
You all did see that on the Lupercal
I thrice presented him a kingly crown,
Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And, sure, he is an honourable man.
I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love him once, not without cause:
What cause withholds you then, to mourn for him?
O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason. Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar,
And I must pause till it come back to me. . .

this and the rest of the speech is so masterfully done – the repetition, the sly implications – that it’s hard to know who to praise: antony and his beautiful roman rhetoric or shakespeare, the poetic playwright. it’s a treat either way. and if you don’t agree, maybe marlon brando can convince you otherwise:

stories for any time of the day: loory reads

this is love at first listen. i haven’t read Ben Loory’s collection of really short stories, Stories for the Nighttme and Some for the Day , but i’m already head over heels. i first heard about these modern fables on This American Life when Loory read one of the stories from his collection. The story is “Cold Stone Creamery” and begins at 39:00 of the posted audio. it is absolutely well worth a listen (actually, the entire episode is worth a listen if you’re so inclined.).

here’s loory reading another of his stories, “The Tree” for the Writers’ Block.

https://soundcloud.com/kqed-writers-block/ben-loory-more-from-stories

there’s something about these deceptively simple stories that i find absolutely delightful. they feel incredibly familiar yet refreshingly new. i’m so broke it’s silly (don’t ask), but when i get some dough i know where some of money’s going.

postscript: in case you’d like to do the reading yourself, a copy of Loory’s story “The TV” can found here in the New Yorker.

gary shteyngart: giving it up for two covers, a spine, and at least 40 pages

i remember hearing about the literary kerfuffle surrounding Gary Shteyngart and book blubs a while back. the way i recall it, it happened a few years ago, but the Google tells me that it happened as recently as last year. it started (or maybe, restarted?) back in august when A.J. Jacobs, author of the frequently funny nonfiction”humble quest” books like The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible*, wrote an article for the new york times book review. the article was about copious book blurbing, and you can’t write an article about copious book blurbing without mentioning Shteyngart, the godfather/whore (choose your own adjective) of book blurbing.

so, if you don’t already know, the deal is that Shteyngart loves to blurb books. well okay, he doesn’t love it, but he also doesn’t like saying no when he’s asked to write one. so the long and short of it is that he’s blurbed a lot of books. like a lot. like over a hundred. and they’re blurbs, so they’re positive. and nobody trusts you if you’re positive about a lot of books. Shteyngart’s blurbs are doubly problematic because they’re not just positive, but exuberantly positive. See blurb of Aravind Adiga’s White Tiger (“An exhilarating, side-splitting account of India today, as well as an eloquent howl at her many injustices. Adiga enters the literary scene resplendent in battle dress and ready to conquer. Let us bow to him.”)

some people have wondered whether Shteyngart even reads the books he blurbs. others have wondered if his blurbs are glowing just because they’re his friends’ books (he must have a lot of friends). me, well i‘ve always wondered what the big deal was. are people buying books based on blurbs alone? i‘ve been known to read blurbs just like the next gal, but if i‘m looking at a book, it’s because i‘m already interested it. i might be persuaded to go ahead and buy it if more than one author whose writing i enjoy or reviewer whose taste i respect has something nice to say. but i‘m not going to buy it just because Gary Shteyngart (or A.J. Jacobs) alone said it was good. it’s one of the few cases in my life where quantity matters more to me than content. so again i ask, what’s the big deal? especially when, let’s face it, the blurber is so damn good at it? See blurb of Patrick DeWitt’s The Sisters Brothers (“DeWitt’s dirty realism makes me want to roll in the mud with him.”). if tweeting book reviews paid (good) money, Shteyngart would make a killing.

so, obviously i don’t get the whole fascination with Shteyngart and his book blurbs. but i still thought this Ed Champion-produced mini-documentary about the whole thing was pretty great. it’s tongue-in-cheek funny with a hint of serious exploration. kind of like a Shteyngart blurb.

in case you were wondering, here’s a link to the Gary Shteyngart blurbs tumbler.

* Jacobs also wrote The Know-It All: One Man’s Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World (which i read back in ’05 and thoroughly enjoyed, from what i remember) and, most recently, Drop Dead Healthy: One Man’s Humble Quest for Bodily Perfection. Jacobs should call his books “the perfect man” trilogy. i suspect that Jacobs’ light-hearted writing masks a much more profound cultural statement about our fascination with mental, spiritual, and physical perfection. there’s always something both silly and sad and maybe a little hopeful (can he do it? can he really do it?) about Jacobs’ endeavors. after all, they’re really just a magnification of what many of us try to do every day, especially this time of year: try to live a little better, and move a little further down the path to perfection.

Jacobs takes the idea of self-improvement to the extreme. in so doing, he forces us to ask, is it worth it? really worth it? buddists would probably say no. i don’t know what i think. i‘m curious about what Jacobs thinks. i think i might finally be ready to finish The Year of Living Biblically, which I abandoned with intent to return years ago.

Related articles

• Leninglad! Celebrating 10 Years of Gary Shteyngart, Contemporary Literature’s Hairiest, Funniest Author (observer.com)

george saunders: author of my heart

a wonderful, luminous, fantastic profile of George Saunders — author of the most electric short stories i‘ve ever read — is featured in this week’s new york times magazine (today’s front page!). fans of saunders or of awesomely-written profiles should check it out.

Excerpt:

It is true that if there exists a “writer’s writer,” Saunders is the guy. “There is really no one like him,” Lorrie Moore wrote. “He is an original — but everyone knows that.” Tobias Wolff, who taught Saunders when he was in the graduate writing program at Syracuse in the mid-’80s, said, “He’s been one of the luminous spots of our literature for the past 20 years,” and then added what may be the most elegant compliment I’ve ever heard paid to another person: “He’s such a generous spirit, you’d be embarrassed to behave in a small way around him.” And Mary Karr, who has been a colleague of Saunders’s at Syracuse since he joined the faculty in the mid-’90s (and who also, incidentally, is a practicing Catholic with a wonderful singing voice and a spectacularly inventive foul mouth), told me, “I think he’s the best short-story writer in English alive.”

Aside from all the formal invention and satirical energy of Saunders’s fiction, the main thing about it, which tends not to get its due, is how much it makes you feel. I’ve loved Saunders’s work for years and spent a lot of hours with him over the past few months trying to understand how he’s able to do what he does, but it has been a real struggle to find an accurate way to express my emotional response to his stories. One thing is that you read them and you feel known, if that makes any sense. Or, possibly even woollier, you feel as if he understands humanity in a way that no one else quite does, and you’re comforted by it. Even if that comfort often comes in very strange packages, like say, a story in which a once-chaste aunt comes back from the dead to encourage her nephew, who works at a male-stripper restaurant (sort of like Hooters, except with guys, and sleazier), to start unzipping and showing his wares to the patrons, so he can make extra tips and help his family avert a tragic future that she has foretold.

Junot Díaz described the Saunders’s effect to me this way: “There’s no one who has a better eye for the absurd and dehumanizing parameters of our current culture of capital. But then the other side is how the cool rigor of his fiction is counterbalanced by this enormous compassion. Just how capacious his moral vision is sometimes gets lost, because few people cut as hard or deep as Saunders does.” 

the title of the profile is “George Saunders Has Written the Best Book You’ll Read This Year.” to which my response is: “well, obviously.” i have both of saunders’ short story collections and a copy of a The Braindead Megaphone sitting on my bookshelf. i can’t wait to get a copy of The Tenth of December.

epilogue:

for those who can’t wait until tuesday for a dose of Saunders, here’s a link to the the eponymous short story “The Tenth of December,” curtesy of the new yorker circa 2011.

and, just because it’s such a great story with such a great reading by Joshua Ferris: an audio reading of “Adam.”

steve almond speaks: the thrust of good sex writing

so, the literary review recently announced this year’s winner of the “bad sex in fiction” award (via bookriot). apparently, thanks to the fact that E.L. James  doesn’t qualify (no erotica or bdsm novels allowed), this year’s the award went to Nancy Houston for her novel Infrared. Infrared included such gems as, the “undulating space where the undulating skies make your non-body undulate.” Yeah . . .

Houston had some stiff (ha!) competition this year. personally i think Tom Wolf’s Back to Blood should’ve won for, “Now his big generative jockey was inside her pelvic saddle, riding, riding, riding, and she was eagerly swallowing it swallowing it swallowing it with the saddle’s own lips and maw.” seriously, guy. pelvic saddle ? (incidentally, James Wood has an excellent review of Back to Blood in the new yorker).

it does make me wonder, where’s the good sex in fiction award? for that matter where’s the good sex in fiction? i mean, i read my fair share of romance (no, not 50 Shades) and i refuse to read a romance author who can’t write a good sex scene. after all, it’s romance. sure, not all romance is about sex or even has sex it it. but when i read a romance i expect there to be sex and i expect it to be well-written. i’m rarely disappointed. it’s only when i read literature that i get nervous for the writer if i see a sex scene around the corner. usually it’s not that bad but that’s because most writers cop out as soon as naked body parts begin to touch.

which reminds me of an essay i read a few years ago by Steve Almond called “Hard Up for a Hard On” (found in The Writer’s Notebook: Craft Essays from Tin House). it’s a fantastic essay on all that’s wrong with fictional sex scene writing and how it can be improved. Almond wisely notes that

The central reason that people muff – I said muff – their attempts to write sex is because they are putting pressure on themselves for the scene to be sexy. And any time you feel pressure you start making all the mistakes associated with pressure: the unnecessary similes and metaphors, the needless obfuscation, the genital euphemisms, the fancy words that wind up feeling imposed by the author instead of experienced by the characters.

he goes on to write that the best sex writing isn’t about how good the sex is but the way it reveals something about the characters, which is “what really matters.” Almond provides several compelling examples of good sex writing (see, for example, Spending by Mary Gordon). none of the excerpts are particularly concerned with being sexy. and in so doing, they end up being – you guessed it – sexy.

i won’t provide Almond’s excerpts here because they’re fairly long and i’m frankly too lazy to type them. but i leave you with this final quote from Almond’s essay, which is my favorite:

Real sex is compelling to read about because the participants are so utterly vulnerable. We are all, when the time comes to get naked, terribly excited and frightened and hopeful and doubtful, usually all at the same time. You [author] mustn’t abandon your characters in their time of need. You mustn’t make them naked playthings with rubbery parts. You must love them, wholly and without shame, as they go about their human business. Because we’ve already got a name for sex without emotional content: pornography.

bonus reel: “bad sex in fiction awards 2012: hunting for dirty books” (“you dirty cake”)

reading artists: an etsy love affair

i used to have a thing for bookmarks. in fact, i used to buy a new bookmark every time i bought a new book. these days my bookmarks are more of the “old receipt” variety. but that doesn’t mean i can’t covet this:

wicked witch bookmark by mybookmarks

if i haven’t said this already, i think etsy is the bees-knees, bomb-diggity of online shopping. whenever i want to drool over stuff i can’t afford or indulge myself to buy, i go to etsy.

one of the things i love about etsy is that it reminds me that people who love books also make stuff. bookish stuff. like, for instance, this book necklace:

book necklace by pegandawl

for those of us who hold books close to our hearts, what’s a more obvious expression of that than this? (this benjamin franklin necklace is pretty cool too) and, speaking of hearts:

i left my (heart) in the library by paper pastries

i don’t frequent libraries very often because i have a thing against due dates (i miss them), but i understand the sentiment all the same. besides, “i left my heart in the bookstore” doesn’t have quite the same ring to it. nor does “i left my heart on amazon prime (free shipping!)”.

i love surrounding myself with bookish things (and books) especially in the fall and winter. so i guess it’s no surprise that i broke down and bought one of these babies last year:

J. Austen Persuasion mug by brookish

i also bought this. every sip of tea out of one of these babies is a little sip of joy (guess what i’m sipping out of as i write this). finally, there’s this Les Miserables book scarf, which just looks lush and lovely (probably like the book, though i haven’t read it):

les miserables book scarf by storiarts

there’s also a Jane Eyre and a Pride and Prejudice scarf. i love the idea of girding my neck in literature. especially when it’s done this classily.

but more than anything, i love the fact that people – nay, artists – made these beautiful things in the first place.  like i said, it’s a great reminder that people who love to read do other things too. even when they’d rather be reading.

world war against me: a hollywood massacre

so i squealed when i saw there was finally a movie trailer for World War Z. Max Brooks’ novel of the same name ranks as among the scariest books i‘ve ever read. and it’s about zombies. and it’s great. and, if you like zombies, you should read it.

and maybe, even if you don’t like zombies, you should read it. because, like all great zombie stories, the novel’s not so much about zombies as it is about human nature and how world would react to a global catastrophe. the frame of the novel is a reporter who’s interviewing survivors ten years after the end of the war. the interviewees discuss how they survived the war and what role they played. it begins with a chinese doctor who first encounters the zombie disease and ends with soldiers and mercenaries who participate in the final battles.

but, as i’ve said, despite its title, the book’s not really about zombies or even about war. those things are just the scary, edge-of-your-seat frame. World War Z is really about how governments failed to react to the spreading disaster; how pharmeceutical companies sold fake cures; how heroes turned into cowards and everyday people became heroes. for a 342-page book, it’s surprisingly wide in scope.

which is why the trailer for the movie was  . . . disappointing. i like brad pitt. i was happy to learn he was attached to the film. say what you will, but he’s an actor who takes his career seriously. but. the trailer makes the film look like just another war movie as seen through the eyes of an “only-you-can-save-us” super soldier. sigh . . .

i’ll go see it. because it’s based on a book that i really enjoyed (and hope to read again in the near future). in the meantime, i’ll hold out hope that the movie trailer features brad pitt because brad pitt sells when the movie itself is actually wider in scope. i’m probably wrong, but hey, a girl can dream.

p.s. just please, oh please, don’t let it be as horribly disappointing as The Golden Compass. now there’s a film i wish i could erase from my memory. (i still don’t know how a movie with nicole kidman, daniel motherf-ing craig, and ian mckellen could be that bad. but stranger things have happened. i guess.)

(wherein i’m) sizzled to a crisp: an austen fallout

confession: i am not enjoying Austen’s Northanger Abbey.

. . .  .

#waitingforlighteningtostrike

. . . .

this actually comes close to the expression on my face

it’s a parody of gothic fiction. i get it. but i don’t think i like it. i can’t help but wonder if i’d find catherine moreland less annoying if i were more familiar with the literature she’s parodying. but that’s just me making excuses. i was an english major. i’m familiar with the genre she’s poking fun at. but still, i don’t like it.

virtually all of austen’s novels are a comedy of manners. they provide ample opportunities for readers to laugh at her characters. (though i’ve since learned that, by the end of the novel, the joke’s actually on the reader). besides, anyone who’s read even a little jane austen – especially her letters – knows how smart, witty, and, by golly, funny she is.

i just wish she didn’t try so blastedly hard in Northanger to be funny and witty. almost every sentence reads as if she’s a snicker or snort away from laughing at her own witticism. this is austen’s first published book and it reads like it too. it feels like a younger austen wrote it in the same way that Persuasion feels like a more mature author wrote it.

one of the things i’ve always admired about austen’s writing is its ability to pull me under and into the world of its characters through the sheer tidal force of its lyricism.

exhibit one:

“John Knightly … was in mute astonishment. That a man who might have spent his evening quietly at home after a day of business in London should set off again and walk half a mile to another man’s house for the sake of being in mixed company till bedtime, of finishing his day in the efforts of civility and the noise of numbers, was a circumstance to strike him deeply. A man who had been in motion since eight o’clock in the morning and might now have been still– who had been long talking and might have been silent– who had been in more than one crowd and might have been alone! Such a man to quit the tranquility and independence of his own fireside, and on the evening of a cold, sleety April day rush out again into the world! Could he, by a touch of his finger, have instantly taken back his wife, there would have been a motive; but his coming would probably prolong rather than break up the party. John Knightly looked at him with amazement, then shrugged his shoulders and said, “I could not have believed it even of him.” Emma.

exhibit two:

Had Elizabeth’s opinion been all drawn from her own family, she could not have formed a very pleasing picture of conjugal felicity or domestic comfort. Her father, captivated by youth and beauty, and that appearance of good humour which youth and beauty generally give, had married a woman whose weak understanding and illiberal mind had very early in their marriage put an end to all real affection for her. Respect, esteem, and confidence, had vanished forever; and all his views of domestic happiness were overthrown. But Mr. Bennet was not of a disposition to seek comfort for the disappointment which his own imprudence had brought on in any of those pleasures which too often console the unfortunate for their folly or their vice. He was fond of the country and of books; and from these tastes had arisen his principle enjoyments. To his wife he was very little otherwise indebted than as her ignorance and folly had contributed to his amusement. This is not the sort of happiness which a man would in general wish to owe to his wife; but where other powers of entertainment are wanting, the true philosopher will derive benefit from such as are given. Pride and Prejudice.

there’s little to none of that lyrical strength in Northanger. at least not as far as i’ve read. okay so i’m only on page 67 of 235. it’s a little early for me to be making judgments. but with other austen novels, i’d be sunk right now. i’m beginning to think that, for now, i should put this down and reach for Sense and Sensibility instead. but that would just mess my plan all up.

see, about a month ago, i’d decided to remove from my great pile of unread books, A Jane Austen Education: How Six Novels Taught Me About Love, Friendship, and the Things That Really Matter by William Deresiewicz. the book’s title concisely fairly describes its contents. deresiewicz ($2 bucks for anyone who can tell me how to pronounce this) is an english professor at yale university and, by all accounts, a pretty die-hard austen fan. but he wasn’t always so enamored (younger deresiewicz: “wasn’t she the one who wrote those silly romantic fairy tales?”).

the book neatly follows deresiewicz’s discovery of austen and that slow-motion moment that many first-time austen readers experience when they realize they’re in the hands of a true master. (“her genius began with the recognition that such lives as hers were very eventful indeed – that every life is eventful, if only you know how to look. . . she understood that what fills our days should fill our hearts, and what fills our hearts should fill our novels.”). deresiewicz works his way through the entire austen bibliography and learns a few life lessons along the way.

the first two chapters on Emma and Pride and Prejudice were absolutely delightful and enlightening. but as much as i wanted to continue, i was stymied by the third chapter about Northanger. i felt, somehow, that it would be wrong to read the chapter before i’d read the book. so here i am, months later, stymied by the book itself. as i write this, i’m wondering if maybe i should just read the chapter in A Jane Austen Education first. maybe it’ll provide a fresh perspective through which to view Northanger.

austen wrote to her niece once, “wisdom is better than wit & in the long run will certainly have the laugh on her side.” here’s hoping the rest of Northanger has slightly more wisdom and little less wit.