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I planned on flying to Washington, D.C. and Philadelphia over the course of my vacation. Then I realized that travelling over the Memorial Day weekend was going to be nearly impossible: many of my airline's flights were booked, overbooked, delayed, cancelled, and--well, you get the idea.
I may still try to fly somewhere later this week. But living in Florida is a vacation in itself; beautiful Tampa Bay is only a short drive away, and I'm within shouting distance of Busch Gardens. I also kicked around the idea of driving to Orlando (Disney World! Sea World! Universal Studios!), but with gas tipping the scales at almost four bucks a gallon, that'd be the height of insanity. (Note to Energy Secretary Samuel W. Bodman: now might be a good time to tap those oil reserves.) In any case, I've stocked up on beer, pizza, ice cream, and Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union. That doesn't give me anything to complain about.
In real life, I only have one friend who's truly literary--which is to say, she doesn't read the kinds of books you'd normally see on the New York Times bestseller list or as an Oprah recommendation. She has good taste. She's read and enjoyed Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment (and in that respect, Nicole, I am not worthy). She knows who said, "Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That'll teach you to keep your mouth shut." In short, she and I have scarily similar taste in books.
She was also the one who, several months ago, casually mentioned she was reading Chuck Klosterman's Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs. I casually picked up the book yesterday--and promptly read one hundred fifty pages of it over the course of the day and night. Klosterman's discourses on popular culture--ranging from Pamela Anderson to Saved by the Bell to the artistic brilliance of Billy Joel--are equal parts exasperating, funny, angry, and witty. He's also a damned good writer. I recommend. So does Nicole, I'm sure.
About halfway through Steven Hall's The Raw Shark Texts, I decided it was one of the best books I was going to read this year. It's a total mindfuck of a novel, a literary thriller (forgive the paradox) that's equal parts Mark Z. Danielewski, Haruki Murakami, and Jaws. Read this book read this book read this book--that's what I feel like saying to anyone and everyone who will listen.
Then I worried that I might be a little out of my depth. Experimental isn't a term I generally like, mostly because it's so ambiguous, and unless you actually like the kinds of books where language serves a purpose other than storytelling, that term can be off-putting to the general reader. I've been asking myself if The Raw Shark Texts really qualifies as an "experimental" novel, and like the word itself (when taken in a literary context), the line is blurry at best. The structure of the novel is pretty straightforward, and the plot can be summed up in a few words--amnesiac man chases/runs from shark--but the experimental part comes in the way Hall uses words to illustrate certain aspects of the book. A quick flip through The Raw Shark Texts reveals QWERTY keyboards, smudged text, and the ever-present shark (or Ludovician, as it's referred to in the story). Experimental, but not taken to Danielewski-like extremes. The Raw Shark Texts is unpretentious and very readable.
But it's not just the experimental aspect of the novel that makes it stand out from the stale thriller fare that's often on hand. The Raw Shark Texts is brimming with a certain character normalcy rarely found in these kinds of books. Aside from the fact that he's being relentlessly chased by a shark he knows nothing about, there's nothing truly exceptional about Eric Sanderson--he's just an average guy, with average-guy worries, average-guy habits, and an average-guy sense of humor. He hasn't had sex in quite some time, and he literally can't remember the last time he had sex. He falls in love pretty easily, and reacts to emotional manipulation (which there's plenty of in this book) in much the same way a child would. And that's okay. Eric is a character we can relate to, one we love reading about and can't help but root for.
Underneath the thriller-genre veneer--mysterious characters have a way of popping up at unexpected, often dire moments, characters who always know more than they're letting on--The Raw Shark Texts's true creativity lies in the details. Hall recycles just about every thriller genre cliché he can (locked rooms, underground passageways, an amnesiac protagonist, and a deceased lover who may or may not have come back in the form of a mysterious, sexy woman), but none of it seems regurgitated. We know what's going to happen, but Hall brings his own touch to the novel; he gives us a style that's intellectually stimulating, rather than a by-the-numbers narrative. The hook is great, and Hall reels you in with memorable storytelling, some truly frightening moments, a healthy dose of weirdness, and characters that could actually be the people next door.
Ultimately, The Raw Shark Texts proves that genre matters little. If it's good, it's good--and this book is better than good. It's one of the best books you'll read this year. Or in any year.
Sarah has resurfaced. I'll be honest: I'm going to miss the technical difficulties. It just won't be the same.
By the way: I can't resist sharing this. It'll make you laugh your ass off.
I didn't plan on starting Steven Hall's The Raw Shark Texts for a while--at least not until I finished one of the three books I'm currently reading--but I skimmed the first page, just to get a feel for what I might be in for, and before I knew it, ended up reading the first four chapters. It's good stuff, but the fourth paragraph--particularly the first sentence--sucked me in.
My eyes slammed themselves capital O open and my neck and shoulders arched back in a huge inward heave, a single world-swallowing lung gulp of air. Litres of dry oxygen and floor dust whistled in and snagged up my throat with knifey coughing spasms. I choked and spat through heaves and gasps and coughing coughing coughing spasms. Snot ropes unwound from my nose. My eyesight melted into hot blurs over my cheeks.
And this damnable book gets better and better, all while leaving me completely mind-fucked.
Evangelical Christians are nothing but tools for the Republican Party!
Well, that's what I'm getting from this review of Charles Marsh's Wayward Christian Soldiers. Read on:
There is nothing ironic, mitigated, or partial about the evangelical commitment to the Bush administration--and this is what infuriates Marsh more than anything else. Out of a combination of cultural parochialism and theological illiteracy, American evangelicals have come to believe that their Christian faith is perfectly compatible with unwavering faith in the Bush administration--in fact, many of them have come to believe that the two faiths are, at bottom, identical. Jesus Christ and George W. Bush, the city of God and the city of man, the Righteous Kingdom and the United States of America: for a distressingly large number of evangelicals, the clashing tonalities at the core of orthodox Christianity have become perfectly harmonious chords in an uplifting rendition of "God Bless America."Marsh is suspicious of all such attempts at synthesis, believing that a Christianity that compromises with the ways of the world inevitably conforms to the ways of the world. And Marsh makes his point with alarming ease, noting in one of his later chapters that although polls in early 2003 showed that an astonishing 87 percent of white evangelical Christians in the United States supported Bush's invasion of Iraq, "Christian leaders around the world--evangelical, orthodox, and liberal" expressed "dismay over the administration's case [for war]." Marsh quotes, to great effect, twenty-five of these critical statements, written by the leaders of Christian organizations from every corner of the globe, most of which the majority of American evangelicals have undoubtedly never seen or read. Regardless of one's position on the war, these pages of Marsh's book make a powerful and important point about the American evangelical difference: either the United States contains the only Christians capable of recognizing the fundamental compatibility between the moral message of Christianity and George W. Bush's foreign policy--or else evangelicalism in America has transformed itself into Republican Party propaganda.
A few days ago, I realized there isn't a single likable character in Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. Konstantin Levin is a dull man, with his high principles regarding farming and marriage; with all his bitterness and unrealistic expectations, it's no wonder he can't find a wife. Count Vronsky is your typical jock: good-looking, well-groomed, and outwardly impressive, but beneath the polished military medals lies an arrogant, dim-witted man. Alexei Arkadyich? He's simply dreadful, with his reedy voice and sociopathic personality; his wife can cheat on him as long as she doesn't make him look bad--which is to say, as long as high society, with its insatiable love for scandal and downfall, doesn't find out he married a slut. And Anna, our independent, high-minded heroine, is becoming increasingly jealous and needy, the sort of spectacle that invites more disgust than sympathy.
Strangely enough, I'm still enjoying Anna Karenina. It's a book steeped in irony. Perhaps, under the serious veneer, Tolstoy was chuckling ever so softly at the human condition. These characters, with all their flaws--too many, you could say--and their endless contradictions, both moral and psychological, are some of the most realistic characters I've ever read about. Tolstoy not only describes their behavior and motivations, but delves into the reasons behind their choices. Not all of it makes sense--Levin, despite being madly in love with Kitty, despite actually having a (slim) chance of marrying her, refuses to see her, or to even acknowledge her existence, because he's still pissed about being rejected by her--but at the same, it makes all the sense in the world. This is how people really behave--instead of being heroic, instead of having one set of morals, they keep us guessing, sometimes changing the rules in the middle of the game; they infuriate us with their flawed reasoning; and sometimes they can't explain their behavior at all, often resorting to the age-old I just felt like doing it.
Sometimes the most unlikeable characters in literature turn out to be the most realistic. In the case of Anna Karenina, it's easy to imagine that this is how people would act under the same circumstances.
I spent the better part of my weekend book-browsing in the Poetry section. I flipped through some Emily Dickinson (thinking, Well, she's not as weird as I remember) and some Chinese poetry (thinking, Now I look like a pretentious dick) and some Japanese death poetry (thinking, Hari-kari!). Then I kept coming back to Edgar Allan Poe (thinking, He was better as a poet than short story writer): the only poet I didn't hate upon first reading. Then I decided to challenge my brain by determining if I still had "The Raven" memorized.
The short answer? No. The details? I faltered after four stanzas--none of which were in order. Nevermore!
All this is only a preamble to my favorite of Poe's poems, "Alone." Even after all these years, I'm still trying to figure out why I love this poem so much. In any case, maybe you'll like it, too.
From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were--I have not seen
As others saw--I could not bring
My passions from a common spring--
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow--I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone--
And all I lov'd--I lov'd alone--
Then--in my childhood--in the dawn
Of a most stormy life--was drawn
From ev'ry depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still--
From the torrent, or the fountain--
From the red cliff of the mountain--
From the sun that 'round me roll'd
In its autumn tint of gold--
From the lightning in the sky
As it pass'd me flying by--
From the thunder, and the storm--
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view--
(Hear also.)
A round-up, some of which may not be literary, because it's Friday and I just don't feel like doing the heavy lifting.
I abhor positivity. But I seem to have found a nice medium between cheerfulness and negativity. Yeah, the we're all going to hell, and there's nothing we can do about it, and humanity is positively depressing, much like the AIDS virus is depressing. I'm the kind of guy who wonders why extending someone's life unnecessarily can be considered a good thing (remember Terri Schiavo?). I laugh at the irony of someone being a "good" person, then learning they're getting stiffed with incurable cancer.
As for complaining? I'm not the complaining type. I'll suffer through a cheeseburger with onions rather than bitching to the person who made it. I mean, I'm going to shit those onions out in a few hours anyway. I'm perfectly content with humankind's (particularly America's) mistaken belief that we're the greatest fucking thing since God said, "Let there be light." Believe what you want, preach what you want--but don't expect me to agree, or to be changed over the course of a few hundred pages. I love to disagree, if only because I can get a quick reaction out of you (usually disgust, sometimes barely-controlled rage). If there's anything we can learn from these books, is that they don't do jack shit for the unconverted.
If Mitch fucking Albom ever publishes another piece of his feel-good drivel, I won't scream or anything. But I'll likely be prompted to sit down and write a manifesto of my own--call it Wednesdays with Brandon--that, I hope, will put a sense of melancholy back into this country. "Hey, kiddo, you're not that important--in fact, the only legacy you'll really leave behind is a tombstone and some unforgivably rotten children."
Have a lovely fucking day.
(And speaking of melancholy: coming soon to a theater near you ...)