All reviews copyright 1984-2019 Evelyn C. Leeper.
THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE by Shirley Jackson:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 12/06/2019]
Our book-and-film group read THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE by Shirley Jackson (Penguin, ISBN 978-0-143-03998-3) and watched the 1962 movie. (The less said about the 1999 remake, the better.) One thing that struck me was Jackson's intentional avoidance of gendered pronouns in the description of Theodora's roommate. I'm sure in 1959 it would have been more of a problem if the rommate's gender was revealed, but now it would be just ho-hum. I amo sure someone will point out that I am drawing conclusions that Jackson never makes explicit, but I think she put enough clues in to make them valid. (Martha Wells's avoidance of gendered pronouns in the "Murderbot" series is also noticeable, but it serves a very different purpose.)
THE KNOW-IT-ALL by A. J. Jacobs:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 03/18/2005]
A. J. Jacobs's THE KNOW-IT-ALL (ISBN 0-7432-5060-5) is the story of Jacobs's "quest" to read the Encyclopedia Britannica all the way through. In a sense, this is similar to Herman Gollob's ME & SHAKESPEARE (reviewed 02/11/05)--it is a combination of discussion of the topic and memoir of the author. Unfortunately, although one of the blurbs describes Jacobs as "self-deprecating," that is not the impression I got. Indeed, the title seemed to sum up his personality fairly well. While reading the Encyclopedia Britannica, he kept correcting people or inserting weird facts he had learned into conversations. This would be bad enough, but the problem is that he apparently did not comprehend what he read very well. And the publisher does not seem to have had a copy editor for this book, maybe because they figured that anyone who had just read the Encyclopedia Britannica would not need copy-editing. Wrong. The first major mistake is on pages 73-74, when Jacobs says, "[if] a stranger says he was born any day between October 4 and October 15, 1582, he's lying. Why? Because there were no such dates. That's when the world switched to the Gregorian calendar, and they skipped those ten days." That's just wrong. "The world" did not switch to the Gregorian calendar, only the Catholic countries did so. Britain did not switch until September 1752; Russia did not switch until after the Revolution in 1918. (See my long discussion of this in my review of Mary Gentle's 1610 in the 02/20/04 issue.) Then on page 104, Jacobs refers to "M. Night Shamalan" (it should be "Shyamalan"), and on page 120, to "Finnegan's Wake" (it should be "Finnegans Wake"--no apostrophe). Ironically, on page 127, he says, "I make mistakes rarely--maybe once every four hundred pages"! Given all this, plus Jacobs' tendency to gratuitously insult various pop figures, I found myself thinking that my time could have been better spent reading the Encyclopedia Britannica.
THE YEAR OF LIVING BIBLICALLY: ONE MAN'S HUMBLE QUEST TO FOLLOW THE BIBLE AS LITERALLY AS POSSIBLE by A. J. Jacobs:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 11/16/2007]
THE YEAR OF LIVING BIBLICALLY: ONE MAN'S HUMBLE QUEST TO FOLLOW THE BIBLE AS LITERALLY AS POSSIBLE by A. J. Jacobs (ISBN-13 978-0-7432-9147-7, ISBN-10 0-7432-9147-6) is both fascinating and irritating. Fascinating, because some of the things Jacobs learns over the year are unexpected. Irritating, because Jacobs seems fairly clueless about a lot of facts, starting with the fact that lots of people have been following the Bible (or at least the Hebrew Bible) as literally as possible, starting with Orthodox Jews. Yes, there is some disagreement about interpretation, but why is Jacobs so surprised that (for example) Orthodox Jews care about the rules against mixing fibers? Jacob also seems to interpret his mission as not just following the rules that intersect with his life, but going out of his way to follow rules that don't. For example, he eats locusts, not because he is commanded to, but because they are allowed. (However, he does not seem equally driven to eat, for example, duck just because it is allowed.) He seems more interested in seeing just how bizarrely he can interpret the laws, and how he can make his book more interesting, and less in trying to create a coherent, meaningful Biblical lifestyle. (And why is it so difficult for him to avoid reading his email for even an hour on the Sabbath? Surely he goes that long if he goes to a party or something.)
Jacobs did not have his wife's whole-hearted support, particularly when it came to the laws of marital purity. Jacobs could not touch his wife during her period (and for seven days after), or share the same bed, or even sit in the same chair. So one day when he got home, he started to sit in his favorite chair:
"I wouldn't do that," says Julie.
"Why?"
"It's unclean. I sat on it." She doesn't even look up from her TiVo'd episode of LOST.
OK. Fine. Point taken. She still doesn't appreciate these impurity laws. I move to another chair, a black plastic one.
"Sat in that one, too," says Julie. "And the ones in the kitchen. And the couch in the office."
In preparation for my homecoming, she sat in every chair in the apartment, which I find annoying but also impressive. It seems in the biblical tradition of enterprising women--like Judith, who seduced the evil general Holofernes, only to behead him when he was drunk.
Not every experience is this amusing, of course. And while Jacobs seems to work hard on some laws, he also seems to skimp on others. Although Jacobs eschews pork and shellfish, there is no mention of his requiring special slaughtering techniques to drain all the blood from animals destined for his table. He interprets Leviticus 19:32 ("Thou shalt rise up before the hoary head, and honour the face of the old man, ...") as meaning he has to stand up whenever an older person enters the room. So when he is eating pasta in a Boca Raton strip mall restaurant, he decides he has to stand up whenever "a gray-haired person enters the restaurant. Which is pretty much every forty-five seconds. It looks like [he is] playing a solitaire version of musical chairs." And what is he doing eating pasta in a (presumably non-kosher) Boca Raton strip mall restaurant? Well, he seems to be following a lot of the laws consecutively rather than concurrently for the entire year!
(Jacobs spends most of his time working on the rules in the Hebrew Bible, but spends a couple of months at the end working on the New Testament.)
The most interesting parts are not Jacobs's reactions to the laws and living them, but the conversations, interviews, and experiences he has with other people who have their own perspectives on what it means to follow the Bible. And I discovered the existence of "Red-letter Christians", a movement which tries to emphasize Jesus's words (often printed in red in Christian Bibles [*]) and teachings, rather than those of St. Paul or the other apostles. The Red-letter Christians are a bit of a contrast to the conservative evangelicals who get the bulk of the publicity, since the Red-letter Christians emphasize anti-war, anti-consumer, anti-poverty goals. "They point out that there are more passages in the Bible about the poor than any other topic save idolatry--several thousand, in fact," says Jacobs. Pastor Tony Campolo complains, "Many of us in the evangelical movement believe that the evangelical Christianity has become captured and enslaved by the religious. Its loyalty seems to be more to the platform of the Republican Party than to the radical teachings of Jesus."
[*] Leo Tolstoy produced a version of the Bible called "The Gospel in Brief" consisting only of Jesus's words and enough narrative to connect them together. It can be found at http://tinyurl.com/28lvut.
Strange Maps by Frank Jacobs:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 04/30/2010]
STRANGE MAPS: AN ATLAS OF CARTOGRAPHIC CURIOSITIES by Frank Jacobs (ISBN-13 978-0-14-200525-5) seems like it would have a lot of fantastical content. But unlike Alberto Manguel's DICTIONARY OF IMAGINARY PLACES, Jacobs's book is based mostly in the real world. True, there is a section titled "Literary Creations" which includes maps of Utopia, the island from MYSTERIOUS ISLAND, Oz, and so on. "Fantastic Maps" includes "Tolkien's Australia" as well as "If Land Was Sea and Sea Was Land". And "Watchamacallit" has "Europe, If the Nazis Had Won: Neuropa" (where Jacobs says of alternate history that it is "either a maligned branch of history or an obscure branch of science fiction").
But most of the book consists of maps of the real world. These are not always accurate maps, as one section heading might indicate: "Cartographic Misconceptions". Often they are not even intended to be accurate ("Artography", "Zoomorphic Maps", "(Political) Parody", "Maps as Propaganda", "Linguistic Cartography"), or are accurate in different ways ("Cartograms and Other Data Maps", "A Matter of Perspective", "Maps from Outer Space").
Some are historical ("Obscure Proposals", "Ephemeral States"). Others look at some of the peculiarities of geopolitics ("Strange Borders", "Enclaves and Exclaves"). Then there is "Iconic Manhattan", which is overlapped somewhat by one of the maps in "Linguistic Cartography" and does not include what one might consider the classic "Manhattan" map: Saul Steinberg's "New Yorker" map of the world. If one wants to argue that that includes more than Manhattan, it still seems as though it belongs somewhere in this book, or at least one of its many offspring. After all, there is an entire section, "Based on the Underground", devoted to the descendents of Harry Beck's 1933 London Underground Map. (On the other hand, I suspect that the rights to Steinberg's original are expensive, and to the offspring legally suspect.)
SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER
Do not read the rest of this article unless you have already read Miéville's THE CITY & THE CITY.
SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER
The one section I found that had unexpected fantastical content was "Enclaves and Exclaves", and in particular "Enclaves, Counterenclaves and a Dead Body: The Borders of Baarle". If you've read China Miéville's THE CITY & THE CITY, you'll understand why. One wonders, in fact, if Miéville was aware of Baarle before he wrote the book.
And the similarities are strong enough that I'd like to talk about
them. The following comes from
Baarle consists of two "administrative units": the Dutch Baarle-Nassau
and the Belgian Baarle-Hertog. These occupy 5732 parcels of
land which are completely surrounded by the Netherlands, but are
allocated to either Belgium or the Netherlands. Baarle is
described as having 22 Belgian enclaves in the Netherlands and 5
Dutch ones in Belgium.
One result of this is that, because taxes on a building are paid to
the country in which the front door is located, front doors are
sometimes moved to gain tax benefits. Because of differing closing
times, people in bars can get drinks longer by moving their tables
across the room. And so on.
But there are even more striking similarities to Beszel and Ul
Qoma:
I know--you think I'm making the last one up. But I'm not. The
body of a non-resident of Baarle was found in a building that had
parts in both administrative units, which made it even more
confusing.
WITH SIGNS & WONDERS
edited by Daniel M. Jaffe:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 04/23/2004]
Daniel M. Jaffe's WITH SIGNS & WONDERS (ISBN 1-931-22930-9,
Invisible Cities Press) is an anthology of "international Jewish
fabulist fiction." I think that means halfway between fantasy and
magical realism, but even if not, that's a reasonable description.
I don't think this would appeal to everyone, but it seems a
reasonable representation of this sub-genre. (The idea that a
small press in Montpelier, Vermont, published this is almost as
odd as that Martin Gidron's alternate history about Yiddish
culture, THE SEVERED WING, was published by Livingston Press at
the University of West Alabama.)
THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF COMIC CRIME
by Maxim Jakubowski:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 08/20/2004]
And if whether mysteries work is very specific to the reader, that
is doubly true of humorous mysteries. Maxim Jakubowski's THE
MAMMOTH BOOK OF COMIC CRIME (ISBN 0-786-71002-0) is a mixed
bag--some I found very funny, others I found too obvious, and some just
fell flat. The same will probably be true of you, but it is
unlikely that you will put the same stories in the same
categories.
"The Aspern Papers"
by Henry James:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 07/25/2003]
Our library reading group read "The Aspern Papers", a novella by
Henry James about a literary biographer who goes to Venice to try
to recover some letters written by his idol. These letters are
now in the possession of an old woman and her niece, so he uses
his charm to try to obtain the papers from the niece. I won't say
whether he succeeds, but frankly, it was hard to care.
THE TURN OF THE SCREW
by Henry James:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 07/19/2019]
Henry James, of course, wrote THE TURN OF THE SCREW, which may or
may not be a ghost story. Indeed, much of the studies about it
center on trying to determine whether James intended it as a ghost
story, or a story of the governess's repression and (perhaps)
incipient insanity.
The Children of Men
by P. D. James:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 03/14/2014]
THE CHILDREN OF MEN by P. D. James (ISBN 978-0-307-27990-3) was
read as an adjunct to the showing of the film (titled just CHILDREN
OF MEN) in our film-and-book group. It was written in 1992, so it
is not surprising that some of its predictions, even when correct
in their content, were off in their time-frame. For example,
Gl 581 c was the first "Earth-like" extra-solar planet discovered,
so arguably this would be "a planet which the astronomers told us
could support life" as described in CHILDREN OF MEN, but it was on
April 4, 2007, not in 1997 as James suggests.
Now I must confess that normally I read the book for an upcoming
discussion shortly before the discussion and make some notes, but I
often do not write up my comments until after the meeting. This
time, however, the meeting got postponed a month due to a storm, so
by the time I am getting ready to discuss it I have already
forgotten a lot of the book.
Luckily there are several web sites that list the differences
between the book and the film, and in the process refresh one's
memory about the book itself. For example, "CarrieK" contends
there are really only four basic similarities between the book and
the movie:
However, Theo and Julian are completely different people in the
movie than they are in the book, both in personality and in social
position. More significantly, in the book the cause of the problem
is male infertility, while in the film it is female infertility.
And while James dealt with immigration, director Alfonso Cuaron has
added "Homeland Security" and "Terror Alert" levels to make it even
more topical.
THE OFFICE OF MERCY
by Ariel Janikan:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 10/11/2013]
THE OFFICE OF MERCY by Ariel Janikian (ISBN 978-0-670-02586-2) is
marketed as adult fiction but reads like a YA novel, and not a very
good one. Though many reviewers compare it to 1984, it is closer
to BRAVE NEW WORLD, with its decanting of Alphas, Betas, and so on,
with its use of the word "mother" as an obscenity, and with its
contrast between the highly controlled and structure "Inside" and
the primitive "Outside".
The book is full of awkward constructions, such as "she clutched a
synthetic-protein wool (or prote-wool) blanket close to her neck."
"Synthetic-protein wool" the blanket may have been, but we would
not write in a realist novel, "She clutched an alpaca wool blanket
close to her neck," let alone call it a "alp-wool" blanket. I am
reminded of the tendency in early science fiction for people to
wear chronographs instead of watches and use visi-ports instead of
windows. (Apparently in this future they have "waste-release
stalls" instead of toilets.)
And the entire story is based on something that is unlikely, to say
the least. All in all, you can skip this one.
THE GRIZZLY MAZE: TIMOTHY TREADWELL'S FATAL OBSESSION WITH ALASKAN BEARS
by Nick Jans:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 12/09/2005]
THE GRIZZLY MAZE: TIMOTHY TREADWELL'S FATAL OBSESSION WITH
ALASKAN BEARS by Nick Jans (ISBN 0-525-94886-4) (and the related
film GRIZZLY MAN, reviewed by Mark in the 12/02/05 issue) both
focus on what motivated Treadwell to live with bears for several
years before eventually being killed by one. Watching the footage
of him, the term that came to mind was "eco-flake": well-meaning
but completely misinformed and ultimately more damaging to his
"cause" than helpful. The book points out that Treadwell did
manage one amazing feat: in the eighty years of record-keeping, he
was the first person in the Alaska wildlife preserves to be killed
by a bear. (Treadwell himself seemed to swing between claiming
that the bears would never harm him and that the bears might kill
him at any moment if he showed weakness.) Treadwell also claimed
he was protecting the bears from poachers, though there is no
evidence that there was any substantial poaching going on in the
preserves, and Treadwell's "evidence" was either questionable or
fabricated. (E.g., he shows a party of men photographing a bear
and claims they are poachers, though they don't shoot the bear
that is only twenty feet away.) It is an engrossing study of a
delusional person.
THE NEW WORLD ORDER
by Ben Jeapes:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 04/01/2005]
Ben Jeapes's THE NEW WORLD ORDER (ISBN 0-385-75013-7) is an
alternate history where scientifically advanced Neanderthals from
a parallel timeline invade Jacobean England and start affecting
the English Civil War. The high concept description would be
"Robert Sawyer ('Neanderthal' trilogy) meets Harry Turtledove
(THE GUNS OF THE SOUTH and the 'World War' tetralogy), written as
a young-adult novel." It didn't do much for me because I kept
seeing its antecedents, but younger readers unfamiliar with the
genre might like it, and at least the setting is much less
frequently used.
NOTES ON THE STATE OF VIRGINIA, WITH RELATED DOCUMENTS
by Thomas Jefferson:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 03/27/2015]
I give the full title of NOTES ON THE STATE OF VIRGINIA by Thomas
Jefferson, WITH RELATED DOCUMENTS (edited, with an introduction by
David Waldstreicher) (ISBN 978-0-312-25713-2) because it turns out
to reveal a lot. First, the introduction takes 40 pages of this
230-page book. Second, the "Related Documents" take another 45
pages and include (for example) his draft of the Declaration of
Independence, which does not strike me as related to NOTES ON THE
STATE OF VIRGINIA at all. Then, after devoting all that space to
other documents, Waldstreicher abridges NOTES ON THE STATE OF
VIRGINIA, in particular the catalogs of flora and fauna, which is a
large part of what I was interested in!
At least Waldtsreicher has left in a lot of Jefferson's
speculations that later proved to be false, which is valuable in
reminding us that even brilliant people make mistakes. For
example, he says that the Peaks of Otter of the Blue Ridge
Mountains "are thought to be of a greater height, measured from
their base, than any others in our country [Virginia], and perhaps
in North America." The tallest of these is about 4,000 high (or
about 3,100 feet above its base), while Mount McKinley is 20,237
feet (about 18,000 feet above its base). Even considering the
higher base, the Rocky Mountains provide many counter-examples--for
example, Pikes Peak at 14,115 feet, or about 7,000 above its base.
(It is surprisingly difficult to find a table showing elevation
above base for tall mountains.)
Jefferson mentions three caves. By now, of course, there are at
least a dozen commercial caves, and lots more that are not open to
the public. The ones he mentions include Gap Cave (a.k.a. Cudjo's
Cave) (open on a limited basis), Madison's Cave (a.k.a. Madison
Saltpetre Cave) (closed), and Blowing Cave (open on a limited
basis).
In attempting to explain fossil seashells in rocks at the tops of
mountains, Jefferson correctly deduces that even if the atmosphere
turned to water of the same mass, there is not enough water to
cover all the earth to that height (sorry, WATERWORLD). But he
also pretty much dismisses the uplifting of mountains from a lower
height, although only to the extent of saying that in all of
recorded history, we have never seen any force that could do that.
Regarding the origins of the "Aborigines" (a.k.a. Indians, a.k.a.
Native Americans), Jefferson observes that they could have come
from either Europe or Asia, but their resemblance to the East
Asians would make the latter more likely--except for the "Eskimaux"
(a.k.a. Eskimos, a.k.a. Inuit), whom he thinks descended from
Greenlanders, and hence from Scandinavians. In all this he says
that language would provide good evidence of tribal descent, but so
many tribes had their languages obliterated before any records were
made of them.
However, Jefferson also thinks the wide disparity of languages in
North America indicates that this took place over "an immense
course of time; perhaps not less than many people give to the age
of the earth." (This is before there was any accurate estimate of
the age of the earth.) And the greater disparity of languages in
North America, compared with the lesser disparity in Asia, "proves
them of greater antiquity of those in Asia." This does not take
into account (among other things )the relative amounts of contact
between groups in Asia versus those in North America.
Jefferson takes issue with the Abbe Rayanal's statement (in 1770)
where he says (apparently in a demeaning fashion), "It is
astonishing that America has not produced a good poet, one able
mathematician, one man of genius in a single art or a single
science." Jefferson makes two arguments against Rayanal. First,
America had not existed long enough to be compared with the Greeks,
the Romans, the French, or the English. Second, America had
produced Washington, Franklin, and Rittenhouse. The first sounds
more convincing now than the second--Rittenhouse is best known
today for the square in Philadelphia named for him, but time has
indeed produced great poets, authors, artists, mathematicians,
chemists, physicists, and so on. (Just look at the list of Nobel
Prize winners.)
Jefferson spends a lot of time explaining the laws of Virginia
(this book was written in 1787), including why Virginia broke from
England, and a half dozen ways in which the current state
Constitution is flawed (limitation of voting rights, uneven
representation, too much similarity between the two legislative
houses, too much power in the legislative branch, the ability of
the legislature itself to amend the state Constitution, and the
ability of the legislature to define its own quorum).
Apparently in early Virginia marriages may be "solemnized ... by
the minister of any society of Christians, who shall have been
previously licensed for this purpose by the court of the county.
Quakers and Menonists, however, are exempted from all these
conditions, and marriage among them is to be solemnized by the
society itself." I guess Jews or other non-Christians just
couldn't get married in Virginia. Also, heresy was still a crime
in Virginia, though apparently no longer a capital crime. In his
favor, Jefferson felt this law should be abolished--he calls it
"religious slavery."
"A foreigner of any nation, not in open war with us, becomes
naturalized by removing to the state to reside, and taking an oath
of fidelity; and, thereupon, acquires every right of a native
citizen..." (This was before the United States Constitution
limited the Presidency of the United States to native-born
citizens.) Apparently the Founding Fathers had a much more liberal
view of immigration than most people today. (Yes, I know
conditions have changed. But if people are willing to change these
laws, then citing "the Founding Fathers" as an excuse for other
laws is a bit inconsistent.)
It is true that Jefferson elaborates on a plan to gradually
emancipate all slaves, but this elaboration is so full of appalling
racism that one can only conclude that a plea to the desires of
wishes of the Founding Fathers should not carry much weight today.
He seems to think it self-evident that whites are more beautiful
than blacks, but it is more proof be assertion: flowing hair is
more beautiful than curly hair, pale skin is more beautiful than
dark skin, and so on.
What is truly amazing is that after he has excused America for not
producing a great poet or artist because of lack of time rather
than lack of innate ability, he then claims that there are no great
black poets or artists is because the race is obviously incapable
of it. He claims, "I think one could scarcely be found capable of
tracing and understanding the investigations of Euclid," while
omitting to mention that none of them that he has met were ever
given any sort of chance or motivation to do so. In some ways,
Jefferson may have been a genius, but in others, he was a horse's
ass.
Also, for someone known as an educated man and a scientist,
Jefferson is remarkably ignorant of the history of science. He
thinks that "Galileo was sent to the inquisition for affirming that
the earth was a sphere; the government had declared it to be flat
as a trencher, and Galileo was obliged to abjure his error." No--as
I presume everyone reading this knows, Galileo got in trouble
for saying the earth revolved around the sun, not vice versa. The
Inquisition, the Church, and everyone with any education knew the
earth was a sphere, particularly since Magellan's crew had
circumnavigated it over a hundred years before Galileo.
"The City Born Great"
by N. K. Jemisin:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 06/30/2017]
"The City Born Great" by N. K. Jemisin (Tor.com, September 2016):
In my opinion, this carries the metaphor of a city as a living
being a bit too far, but your mileage may vary. Clearly, this is
part of the new(-ish) trend toward more literary science fiction
(fantasy?); it would never have appeared in the classic science
fiction digests. Well, *possibly* THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND
SCIENCE FICTION, but even that seems iffy.
A HUNDRED THOUSAND KINGDOMS
by N. K. Jemisin:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 06/03/2011]
Once again, I have some comments peripheral to a Hugo-nominated
novel but not directly about the novel. The novel in question is
A HUNDRED THOUSAND KINGDOMS by N. K. Jemisin (ISBN 978-0-316-04391-5).
My comments are primarily about how this book is being promoted.
The use of initials immediately suggests that the author is female,
and there is an attempt to hide this (as often used to be the
case). It turns out that in this case, yes, the author is female,
but the use of initials is an attempt by Jemisin to distance her
career as an author from her already established career as a
counselor. In this regard it is the same motivation as Harry
Turtledove writing his historical fiction as H. N. Turteltaub--gender
has nothing to do with it.
But when an article that appeared in the Barnes & Noble newsletter
promoting this book was titled "The Next Coming of Octavia
E. Butler: A Hundred Thousand Reasons to Read N. K. Jemisin", the
immediate (and it turns out, correct) conclusion one draws is that
Jemisin is black.
In his introduction to HOWARD WHO?, George R. R. Martin wrote, "We
live in a derivative age, and nowhere is that more apparent than in
the books we read. Every new horror writer is compared to Stephen
King. Our fantasists all seem to write in the tradition of
J. R. R. Tolkien, Robert E. Howard, or Stephen R. Donaldson. The
hot young talents in SF are routinely proclaimed as the next Robert
A. Heinlein, the new Isaac Asimov, the angriest young man since
Harlan Ellison, unless they happen to be female, in which case they
are dutifully likened to Andre Norton, Ursula K. LeGuin, and Marion
Zimmer Bradley." Indeed, there was a book that compared one new
author to all three of those female writers--writers who have
little in common besides plumbing.
At Chicon 2000, there was a panel titled "Is This the Ebony Age of
Science Fiction?" On it, Tananarive Due said that the "image of
what a black writer should be" is limiting. And Maureen McHugh
added that it would be "intensively naive" to lump all black
writers together. But what is labeling Jemisin as the next Octavia
Butler except an attempt to lump disparate authors together based
entirely on melanin content?
It is true that Barnes & Noble attempts to show some similarities
between the writings of Jemisin and of Butler. It says, "[T]here
are subtle thematic similarities between Jemisin's novel ... and
Butler's unfinished Parable trilogy," quotes a poem from Butler's
work about how God is Change, and then says, "[A]lthough change is
a significant theme in Jemisin's [work], it's only a part of the
trilogy's underpinnings." But even the change that is there does
not connect Jemisin to Butler any more than to most other
speculative fiction--one might claim that change and its effects is
one of the key elements of speculative fiction.
Reading Jemisin's work, I can see possible connections to various
other writers, and Octavia Butler is not on the list. Why Barnes &
Noble chose her seems obvious--and does not reflect well on their
notion of a marketing campaign.
THE COUNTRY OF THE POINTED FIRS
by Sarah Orne Jewett:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 01/03/2003]
Sometimes when you read a book, or the context in which you read
it, can affect how you view it.
For example, I just re-read Lisa Goldstein's TOURISTS as a bit
of research on magical realism. I then read Sarah Orne Jewett's
THE COUNTRY OF THE POINTED FIRS, a turn-of-the-century series
of vignettes about coastal Maine. Though it certainly wasn't
intended as magical realism (and indeed, the notion of magical
realism hadn't been invented yet), it certainly read that way.
AT LAKE SCUGOG
by Troy Jollimore:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 05/24/2013]
AT LAKE SCUGOG by Troy Jollimore (ISBN 978-0-691-14942-4) is in
a genre I usually do not review: poetry. But it appeared on
someone's "best of the year" list for its year (2011) and the poems
were described as both philosophical and mathematical, so I decided
to give it a try. (It took so long because I had to request it via
inter-library loan and I tend to put that off.)
The very first poem, "The Solipsist", delivers on the promise of
philosophical ideas, beginning:
That primordial tide-
the slurp and salt-slosh
of the brain's briny wash-
is on the inside.
...
In other words, everything is really all in your head.
(I am at a loss as to how much of a poem I can quote in a review.
David Orr wrote about this in the New York Times in 2011 ("When
Quoting Verse, One Must Be Terse")
As he said, "The difficulty is not so much that the copyright
system is restrictive (although it can be), but that no one has any
idea exactly how much of a poem can be quoted without payment.
Under the "fair use" doctrine, quotation is permitted for criticism
and comment, so you'd think this is where a poetry critic could
hang his hat. But how much use is fair use?" Publishers seem to
give answers varying from three or four lines to almost an entire
poem. Giving a percentage figure (say, 5%) is problematic for
short poems (for example, haiku).
For example, Mark wrote a haiku on his office door once:
Further on, we get something worthy of Lewis Carroll in "Regret":
Jollimore does make a mathematical (and grammatical) error, though,
in "Tom Thomson in Space", when he writes, "it treks where no man /
(and even fewer women) have gone before ..." Clearly there
cannot be fewer women than zero who have done something.
IMPLOSION
by D. F. Jones:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 02/02/2007]
Spurred by comments from various readers about books similar to
CHILDREN OF MEN, I read IMPLOSION by D. F. Jones (no ISBN).
Jones is better known as the author of COLUSSUS (made into
COLOSSUS: THE FORBIN PROJECT). The premise of IMPLOSION is that
an Eastern European scientist is working on a way to get rid of
rats. He comes up with a drug that vastly decreases the
fertility of rats, and then his government decides to modify it
to work on people. Why England is the target is a bit contrived,
and the degree to which its use is limited as long as it is, will
seem unlikely to modern readers. And the reaction of the English
to the discovery that 80% of the female population is sterile,
and to the measures imposed, seems very "well-behaved"--more like
what one hears of their reaction to World War II than what it
would probably be today. My main criticism is the depiction of
women seems very sexist by today's standards (though rather
Heinleinesque, I think). One finds characters saying things
like, "A strong maternal woman is close to nature--she knows kids
are her business--she knows too that Mother Nature produces
nothing useless; yet a sterile women with strong maternal
instincts is useless, and knows it. She feels useless--that's
why some of 'em are so bitchy." Still, it is a novel of its time
(1967) and quite worth reading if one keeps that in mind.
PROOF OF CONCEPT
by Gwyneth Jones:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 02/01/2019]
And as evidence that not everyone will like all the Tor novellas, I
tried reading PROOF OF CONCEPT by Gwyneth Jones (ISBN 978-0-7653-9144-5)
but frankly, I could not follow what was going on at all.
THIS ISLAND EARTH
by Raymond F. Jones:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 06/19/2009]
The book/movie discussion group chose THIS ISLAND EARTH by Raymond
F. Jones (ISBN-13 978-1-584-45051-1, ISBN-10 1-584-45051-7) for
this month. Mark claims that everything good in the book was in
the movie, and vice versa, and he may be right. What is true is
that the second half of the movie is very different from the book.
In the movie, it turns out that the recruiting on Earth is to help
the planet Metaluna fight an interplanetary war against another
planet. In the book, the war is more widespread, and in fact Earth
itself is going to be involved. This makes the title of the book--a
reference to South Pacific islands that found themselves caught
up in World War II knowing nothing about the war except that one
side has landed on their island and told them to build an airstrip
for them. Unfortunately, although the premise is better imagined
in the book, it is not very well-developed. On the other hand, the
movie may not hold together as well, but it is very interesting
visually.
COUNT DRACULA GOES TO THE MOVIES: STOKER'S NOVEL ADAPTED, 1922-1995
by Lyndon W. Joslin:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 12/03/2004]
Lyndon W. Joslin's COUNT DRACULA GOES TO THE MOVIES: STOKER'S
NOVEL ADAPTED, 1922-1995 (ISBN 0-786-40698-4) is a fine book from
McFarland, who publish many fine books. Anyone interested in how
Bram Stoker's novel (and the Count) has been portrayed in films
should get this book. Joslin does a very thorough job comparing
the films with Stoker's book, and with each other, and with
traditional folklore. (Montague Summers is often cited.) He does
cover only the films based on the book--with the addition of the
other films in the Universal and Hammer series--rather than all
vampire films. However, this serves to focus the comparisons, and
was (I think) a wise decision on Joslin's part. Highly
recommended, but be warned--you're going to want to go back and
watch these films again after reading about them.
Don't be misled:
that sea-song you hear
when the shell's at your ear?
It's all in your head.
Sorry, no haiku.
That is 62 characters; 5% would be "Sor".)
They will return soon. I am
Off on Vacation.
I'd like to take back my not saying to you
those things that, out of politeness, or caution,
I kept to myself. And, if I may -
though this might perhaps stretch the rules -I'd like
to take back your not saying some of the things
that you never said, like "I love you" and "Won't you
come home with me," or telling me, which
you in fact never did, ...
that try as you might, you could not imagine
a life without me. ...
Go to Evelyn Leeper's home page.