Reading – Page 5 – DONFOOLERY

Quickie Review: THE MEMORY GARDEN

The Memory Garden by M. Rickert
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This review is probably biased. I’ve been a fan of Rickert’s writing for almost a decade. As far as I know, I’ve read her entire published oeuvre, and have gone on record talking about how much I love it. I even had the pleasure of telling her face to face a few weeks ago!

A lot of Rickert’s shorter work is often populated by the walking wounded. Characters who are often terribly aware of whatever darkness (some kind of guilt, trauma, tragedy, maybe some secret) pervades their lives. It often isolates them, as those who might share that grief–well-meaning lovers, family, community–move on. And while sometimes (not every time) I’m left with a sense of a character’s transformation, of some tiny newfound strength or hope in the future, I would fear what tomorrow could bring them.

The difference in Rickert’s debut novel The Memory Garden, is that Nan and her friends Mavis and Ruthie made it through to the other side of their darkness. They lived past a shared tragedy some sixty years into old age. Not unscathed, of course. The damage to their lives is done, and they drift apart. But one way or the other and with varying degrees of success, they each soldiered on to eventually move into and through their own individual guilts and traumas–and occasional blessings, too. Nan was given the care of Bay, an unexpected, maybe even undeserved miracle. And Nan chooses to raise Bay, even if it meant doing so in the shadows of everything that came before. Even if it meant more secrets.

It’s the sort of situation one falls into once life becomes about more than survival.

The Memory Garden‘s peculiar cast of characters gathered under even more peculiar circumstances shows us what any of Rickert’s short story characters’ lives might be like sixty years after a given tale, about a time when the past will, despite whatever life you might have lived in the interim and whatever you’ve done to put distance between you and it, demand to be reckoned with. And this is, at least as far as my memory of Rickert’s other work goes, fresh ground.

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Quickie Review: THE INCAL

The Incal by Alejandro Jodorowsky
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I’ll be honest, I finally got around to reading this classic only after having seen Frank Pavich’s documentary Jodorowsky’s Dune. I’d heard of Jodo and his El Topo, and you can’t be any kind of comics fan without having at least heard the name Mœbius. Still, I came late to this particular party.

It’s absolutely true what people have said–you can literally pick out the bits that have been used in any number of sci-fi films over the past 30 years. I’d never read The Incal, but every one of Mœbius’s meticulously drawn panels seemed familiar. Jodo’s writing didn’t disappoint either–it’s a good example of a writer weaving his beliefs into a story while avoiding, IMO, turning the work into a tract.

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Quickie Review: JAGANNATH

Jagannath by Karin Tidbeck
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This review is technically incomplete. I finished this book back in September (’13) but didn’t write about it until now (January of ’14). I felt I couldn’t write about it because I didn’t (and still haven’t) rated the story “Some Letters for Ove Lindström.” (I’m still too close to the subject matter of that story.)

I know almost nothing about the Swedish/Scandinavian myths and didn’t think I necessarily had to in order to see the heart of these stories. Nor could I tell which stories were translated and which were written in English. It’s testament to Tidbeck’s writing, I think.

The collection started strongly and ended with a bang. The stories that didn’t move me were generally the ones where Tidbeck revisits certain themes without, at least as far as I could tell, adding anything new. Those aside, the ones that did move me are positively gut-wrenching.

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Coca-Cola Comic Book Orgy, or Quickie Review: HORSE OF A DIFFERENT COLOR

Horse of a Different Color: Stories by Howard Waldrop
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

5 out of 5, with the caveat that I cannot be objective about this collection. Howard Waldrop is one of the few writers whose work I’ll buy the day it comes out, unseen and unreviewed.

If all Waldrop does is cleverly hide all sorts of historic/pop culture Easter eggs into most of his stories with barely any telegraphing, it would be a feat. Indeed, it’s a point of pride for me when I catch them. I immediately recognized bits of the Bird Man of Alcatraz in the story of the “Wolf-Man” of the same. But, here’s Waldrop’s trick: as always, there are moments I fail to spot the references, and it doesn’t affect my enjoyment of the stories one bit!

More importantly (to me at least), Waldrop’s characters almost always convey some sort of bittersweet piece of truth or wisdom that can only be gained from going around the proverbial block a time or two.

I did let a sliver of objectivity creep into my reading, but I won’t mention it here (you can find it in my story-by-story comments on the actual goodreads review page). It’s more of a technical quibble, anyway. Whatever.

Also, “Coca Cola comic book orgy” is now my favorite Waldrop line. If I had a band, I’d ask his permission to use it as a name.

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Quickie Review: North American Lake Monsters

North American Lake Monsters: Stories by Nathan Ballingrud
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Plain and simple, if this collection doesn’t win the Shirley Jackson Award or the World Fantasy Award for 2013, there really is no f**ing justice in the world.

I hung on every word in this collection. I was enthralled by every story, something I haven’t felt since reading M. Rickert’s Map of Dreams. Ballingrud takes some rather standard horror tropes and gives the readers more palpable and disturbing reasons to fear them. In a lot of stories, the horror/speculative element serves as a possible pathway that can be chosen by a given character. What’s disturbing is that often times that pathway represents a viable, sometimes even a preferred, life option.

I found myself giving each story a 5* rating. But that isn’t to say the collection didn’t have it its… well, I’m so reluctant to say “flaws.” That’s much too strong a word, in my opinion. Let’s say, “Things that took me out of the story for a micro-second, of which I took note before re-submerging myself back into it.” There were two.

In the cover blurb, Maureen McHugh calls the collection “Raymond Carver territory.” There’s definitely a “K-Mart Magical Realism” thing going on here. The opening scene in “The Good Husband” would’ve made me think of “So Much Water So Close to Home” even if Carver wasn’t referenced in the blurb. One of the tiny, tiny problems I had, though, was being so effectively grounded in each main character’s POV–very Carver-esque characters–that I couldn’t help but notice when these characters, as they’re written, would think in un-Carver-esque terms. A construction worker seeing something “in a rictus of pain.” An ex-con encountering something “soporific.” A homeless man smelling “the ripe, deliquescent odor of river water.” (Maybe it’s more accurate to substitute “Raymond Carver” for “Gordon Lish,” but that’s another debate altogether.)

The other matter depends on how cynical a reader one is. What I might, and in fact DO, interpret as this collection being an examination of a singular theme from multiple angles might be interpreted by another reader as “the same story over and over again.”

I feel like I’ve given too much time to these issues relative to the actual impact on my reading experience. But it’s important to note that even despite them, the quality of the stories is such that I unreservedly give this collection a 5* rating.

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“I’m gonna take the stone of Sisyphus. I’m gonna roll it back to you.”

Alternative Alamat: Stories Inspired by Philippine Mythology by Paolo Chikiamco
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

In his introduction, editor Paolo Chikiamco spells out the payoff and the problems involved in putting together an anthology of remixed Filipino myths. “We are a nation of many indigenous cultures–numbering anywhere from sixty to over a hundred, depending on who you ask–with distinct oral traditions.” There are resources and strategies aimed at sussing all this out (see the appendices at the end of the book); guideposts to avenues of research in which even some Filipino scholars fear to tread. In the end though, the most meaningful way to relate to these myths (or those of any culture’s, for that matter) is through story.

Some stories were weaker than others, as can be expected, but even these had something to offer–one in particular that I thought might’ve been the weakest might have had the best writing. These stories seemed to share a similar overall flaw IMO: the focus on the inscrutability and strangeness of the supernatural characters who didn’t seem to be too bothered by it one way or the other. (An attitude that seems distinctly un-Filipino).

The anthology really picks up steam in its latter half, though. The better stories weren’t just simple retellings, but remixings and straight mash-ups of various myths, time periods, genres, and even modes of storytelling. One of my favorite pieces has an ending which cleverly hinges on the blending of Christianity and folk belief for which the Philippines is famous.

All in all, an easy 4 stars for me.

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“All this energy calling me back where it comes from…”

Cleveland by Harvey Pekar
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Probably the only thing Harvey Pekar and I have in common is the city of Cleveland.

It’s supposedly the hipster thing to do nowadays to declare Pekar a genius while admitting you’ve never read his work. Fine, guilty. But at least I’m not one of those folks who came to his work as a direct result of watching the American Splendor biopic (still haven’t seen it, but soon). Anyway, my previous experiences of Pekar were his appearances on David Letterman in the 80s. (As a kid, it seemed for years that the only guests Letterman had were Pekar, Fran Lebowitz, and Howard Stern. More likely, these were the only guests that were memorable, having held my interest and attention.) The fact that he was from Cleveland and talked about Cleveland didn’t mean that much to me at the time.

It’s to my everlasting regret that I never came to underground comics at an earlier age. I just couldn’t brave the densely-drawn comics in “that section” of the comics store where American Splendor, Heavy Metal, and others were shelved, near the porn comics. But better late than never, and I’m glad my first real taste was from Harvey Pekar’s Cleveland.

The fact that the book gives a good-enough history of the City of Cleveland over the years is almost beside the point. It, like most of Pekar’s work in American Splendor is really about Pekar alone and his observations. It just so happens that there are years where his observations on Cleveland and mine coincide.

When he talks about the things that happened in the late 80s/early 90s–Toby Radloff’s 5 minutes of fame, the decline of Cleveland schools to the point where the State of Ohio took them over, the hospitals taking over the local economy, etc.–he’s talking about a time when Cleveland was my home, during years when there was every chance that we might’ve bumped shoulders walking down Coventry, or up the steps of the main branch of the Cleveland Public Library. Some of the times that were his own, like the experience of running up the stairs of Cleveland’s (Old) Arcade, I independently experienced (as did a lot of Clevelanders) 40-some years later. To me, Pekar isn’t to be praised just for speaking general truth, but for speaking some truths that I can verify.

So, I have to give Cleveland a very biased 5* out of 5.

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Incomplete Review

The Robert Sheckley Omnibus by Robert Sheckley
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I skipped the longer works in the Omnibus, the novel Immortality Inc and the story “A Ticket to Tranai,” and focused on the shorter pieces. I’ll come back to them eventually. Here are some brief thoughts on everything else…

“Specialist” works as a wonderful, if a tad simplistic, metaphor. 4*

I liked the worldbuilding (i.e. Sheckley’s commentary on his–and even MY–world) in “Bad Medicine” a bit better than I liked the overall plot. 4*

The prose style of “Pilgrimage to Earth” might show its age a bit, but the story’s concepts and the way Sheckley pulls them off are pure 21st century, IMO. 5*

5* for “Ask a Foolish Question” because Sheckley’s The Answerer predates–and outthinks–Deep Thought.

“The Battle” is an even better scifi/fantasy mashup than that Joan Aiken story I read the other week. 5*

“Hands Off” gets points for cleverness, but the old-school prose style just turned me off. 4*

“The Prize of Peril.” Same prose issues as “Pilgrimage to Earth,” but it gets 5* for talking about the issues we talk about concerning reality TV today. Except Sheckley did it, oh fifty-freaking-years ago!

“Hunting Problem” was a little too predictable, mostly because I’d already read “Hands Off.” 3*

Odd, that I remembered reading “Ghost V” in Sheckley’s The People Trap, yet I don’t recall the ending touching me quite as much as it did this time around. 5*

“Something for Nothing” is another 50+ year-old too-close-to-home prediction of 2011. 5*

There’s a tiny part of me that’s pissed off that I didn’t see the ending of “The Store of the Worlds” coming a mile away. But then I re-read it. Nope, almost no way I could’ve seen it. I’ve been misdirected by plot before; never by theme. 5*

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“Who ever told you that you could work with men?”

I need to read more fiction by men. There, I said it.

I know how it sounds, what with all the stuff going on at DC Comics these days, to say nothing about the general He-Man-Woman-Hater’s club vibe that some parts of genre-dom still have (even in writing circles). Hell, anyone who doesn’t know me and sees The Playboy Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy in my goodreads “currently reading” list might well roll their eyes and write me off as a toolbag. But I have a good reason.

Everyone who does know me as a writer, or has read this blog, knows of my love of M. Rickert, Aimee Bender, Carol Emshwiller, Karen Joy Fowler (her short work, at least), and Kelly Link. I’ve recently acquired and devoured collections by Joan Aiken and Margaret St. Clair. My favorite issue of Tin House thus far is 33: Fantastic Women. The only novel I’ve really, truly enjoyed in the past few years was Sarah Shun-lien Bynum’s Madeline is Sleeping. I wish I could write like Lydia Davis, Ann Beattie, and Amy Hempel. I also wish I had Fran Lebowitz’s brain. These writers have really sort of set the bar as far as what I look for in a story.

Sure, there are male writers who do that for me, too. Etgar Keret, Ray Vukcevich, Howard Waldrop, Peter S. Beagle, Harlan Ellison, Raymond Carver, Barry Hannah, and… um… and… and…

See, therein lies the problem.

I might sound a bit disingenuous if you take a look at my goodreads “Favorite Authors” list. You’ll find Jonathan Lethem, Benjamin Rosenbaum, and other dudes and they certainly belong there. But in terms of having the influence that the aforementioned female writers have (or wish they would have), it’s just not there.

And, it’s not like I don’t have the books, either. Which is why I’m taking steps to rectify the situation. They say, “Plan the work. Work the plan.” And, that’s what I’m doing by moving 8 particular books to the top of my reading queue…

For the curious, The Playboy Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy is lower on the queue. But it’s worth mentioning that I got the book because it has a bunch of writers with whose work I need to be better acquainted (Robert Sheckley, William Tenn, Charles Beaumont, et al.).

The Green Flash

The Green Flash and Other Tales of Horror, Suspense, and Fantasy by Joan Aiken
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I couldn’t believe my luck when I found this collection at a local used book store! It didn’t finish quite as strongly as it started, but there are pieces that were clinics on short-story writing. Here’s how I thought of each story…

“Mrs. Considine.” I don’t describe too many stories as “chilling,” but this story of a girl with a gift bonding with an older woman with another gift is just that. 5*

“Marmalade Wine.” The reason I snatched this collection from a used book store was this story, which was adapted as a segment for Rod Serling’s Night Gallery. A decent straightfoward story about comeuppance. 4*

“Sonata for Harp and Bicycle.” The expository middle didn’t stop this from being a story of the most romantic exorcism I’ve ever read. 5*

“Follow My Fancy.” This is not a “science-fantasy” story. It’s both a scifi story and a fantasy story, rolled into one. 5*

“Smell.” Saw the ending coming a mile away. Hate when that happens. 3*

“Searching for Summer.” If you let yourself get too caught up thinking “What REALLY happened here?” you’ll miss the beauty of this story. 4*

“A View of the Heath.” 5* ‘cos who said a mystery story has to have anything to do with a dead body?

“Belle of the Ball.” If I’ve ever read a story that was very proto-Aimee Bender and the like (Sarah shun-lien Bynum, etc), this is it. 4*

“Summer by the Sea.” This calls to my mind Karen Joy Fowler’s Nebula Award-winning “What I Didn’t See.” You could argue that any sf/f/h genre element is non-existent, depending on how you read it. I will say that reading it one way makes this a better story. 5*

“Minette.” Not quite as chilling as “Mrs. Considine,” but it is another wonderful example of what happens when two supernatural forces meet. 5*

“Dead Language Master.” Very engaging at the sentence level. But to the other mechanics of the piece, my reaction was, “Just…no.” 3*

“The Windshield Weepers.” Some aspects of this story really seemed ahead of its time. The ending really didn’t do it forme though. 3*

“The Green Flash.” It pulled me along quite nicely at sentence level. Unfortunately it became obvious that this was 2 or 3 stories thrown together as soon as I gave the plot a second’s thought. 3*

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