Category: Reading

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.

View all my reviews

  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*

View all my reviews

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 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*

View all my reviews

I picked up the latest issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction because it had M. Rickert’s new story “The Corpse Painter’s Masterpiece.”  I’ll buy anything with M. Rickert’s name on it.  I wish F&SF had a “Just the Issues with M. Rickert in It” subscription option.  I have every issue with her stories since 2006 (except for one I’ve misplaced somehow).  I have both her collections, Map of Dreams and Holiday, and copies of her stories in Ideomancer and Interfictions 2.  I’ve spoken about my love of her writing here, and other places.  Yes, on my list of Favorite Writers, she is #1.  The very top.

I say all this so that you can have of sense of just how much it really and truly pains me to say: I wasn’t that into “The Corpse Painter’s Masterpiece.”

Most of you know the standard I have for my short-story reading experience: That Aimee Bender quote I use all the time, “I want to be violated by insight.”  The thing is, unless I’m seriously romanticizing my relationship with Rickert’s writing, I can’t think of a single one of her stories that didn’t give me that feeling… before this one.

Make no mistake: in my usual 5* rating system, this one would get a 4, but only because I typically round off.  If I had to be accurate (as much as one can be with a subjective rating), I’d give this a 3.8.  It had every bit of the dark beauty I’ve come to love in Rickert’s stories.  The imagery at the end blew me away.  But I think my damage has to do with Rickert’s use of the third-person omniscient viewpoint. 

I’m grateful that she tries to shy away from old-school “one POV, section break, next POV” and attempt something a little different.  At the sentence level, Rickert really does a skillful job weaving in and out of each character’s thoughts.  But as a whole, it muddied the waters in two different ways for me.  It messed with my sense of time, for one.  And for another, I never knew for which characters to really concern myself by the end of it.

Not counting the corpses (C’mon, that’s not a spoiler.  Look at the title.  You knew there were going to be corpses in it.), the story had a cast of three: The Corpse Painter, the town sheriff, and the sheriff’s wife, and I was in one of their heads at various points of the story.  And while most of the story seemed to be about the relationship between the sheriff and the Corpse Painter, the real punch of the story came in the last scene between the sheriff and his wife.  The more I think about it, I’m wondering if Rickert putting me into the wife’s head was her way of attempting to connect a reader with the wife as an expedient way to set up the payoff at the end, while still maintaining most of the story’s focus on The Corpse Painter and the sheriff?

Who knows?  I’m clearly rambling at this point.  I’m just having trouble pinning down my exact feelings about this story.  To say “disappointed” or “let down” seems far too harsh.  Maybe this is a case where I just need to appreciate the attempt to do something different and be okay with the fact that maybe the clearest way to sum up my feelings is, “I just didn’t dig it.”  After all, Rickert is still my #1 favorite writer, I’ll still buy anything with her name on it, and if there was an “M. Rickert Only” F&SF subscription option, I’d snatch it up in a heartbeat.

A lot of my reading last week, when I’ve gotten to it, has been a lot of non-fiction.  But that’s not why you’re here.   You want to know what fiction I’ve read.  Basically, I let myself get carried away with the remainder of Objects of Worship by Claude Lalumière…

“A Place Where Nothing Ever Happens” is a cross between the Twilight Zone episode “Long Distance Call” and Etgar Keret’s vision of the underworld in his story “Kneller’s Happy Campers,” the way only Lalumière can do it. Ending seemed a bit too pat for me, IMO. 4 out of 5.

“A Visit to the Optometrist” obviously had an instant familiarity, after having read “The Ethical Treatment of Meat.”  While I didn’t dig the plotline itself, I loved the idea behind it, namely the competing forces at work.  So, 5 out of 5.

“Roman Predator’s Chimeric Odyssey” is the second thing in almost as many weeks to remind me of Urotsukidōji: Legend of the Overfiend, the first being the discussion over said anime I had on the Functional Nerds podcast. There was probably a little too much going on in it for me. 4 out of 5.

“Destroyer of Worlds” shows that Lalumière and I definitely have read the same comic books. I have no doubt the pictures in my head and those in his were the same. 4 out of 5.

“This Is the Ice Age” is where Lalumière the best job writing the setting, IMO.  The ending didn’t really work for me, though.  It seemed a bit of a let-down after how well the tension was built.  4 out of 5.

##

I’m going to have to add this collection to my list of goodreads reviews I’m behind on, now.

I know I read a few things since the last entry, but I lost track. I have no other excuses–just saying that life happens and is actually continuing to happen.  (Cryptic, I know.  Sorry.)  Still, the only way out is through, and I need to get back on track with things like writing and reading, and talking about what I’m reading.

From the 14th through the 20th, I actually read quite a bit…

I finished up the last bit of Lightspeed Magazine 2:

• “The Zeppelin Conductors’ Society Annual Gentlemen’s Ball” by Genevieve Valentine. So far, I’m 2 for 2 in never having read a Valentine story I didn’t like.
• “…For a Single Yesterday” by George R.R. Martin. There’s a certain tier of SF/F writers that I just haven’t managed to read yet. Martin, De Lint, etc. Stories like this erode the consolation I take in the idea that I just can’t read everything.  5 out of 5 for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that if I hadn’t read in advance that the story was first published a mere two years after I was born, I might never have known.

I started Objects of Worship by Claude Lalumière.  As of now, I’m actually almost done with it.  I can’t remember when I got through anyone’s short story collection this fast.  All I can say is that, a few personal quibbles aside, Lalumière’s writing definitely lives up to its hype.

• “The Object of Worship.” Never before has the opening story of a collection blown me away like this. Wonderful!  5 out of 5.
• “The Ethical Treatment of Meat” had its ups and downs for me.  4 out of 5, but only because the main conceit of the story started being teased so well and then, in expository dialogue, “Whoomp, there it is!”
• “Hochelaga and Sons” definitely takes a page out of the Kavalier and Clay playbook. But only one. 4 out of 5.
• “The Sea, at Bari” hits some really nice Lovecraftian notes, but is still very much its own story.  5 out of 5.
• “The Darkness at the Heart of the World” seamlessly crams the main character’s entire mortal lifetime in a short-story. I’m astounded, to be honest.  5 out of 5.
• “Spiderkid” does the same thing “Hochelaga” did, but in a completely different way.  4 out of 5.
• “Njabo” is a master-class in how to write non-traditional family situations without hitting the reader over the head with “This is a Non-Traditional Family, Look at Me, Look at Me!!”  5 out of 5, even though I’m unsure if the ending of the story didn’t surprise me because the writing telegraphed it or because I chanced upon this article from io9 the same day I was reading this story.

I bought the TPB of The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis a couple of weeks ago. In a sense, it was pretty senseless, since I have all four of the original books that make up The Collected Stories, though I’ve only read three. I hadn’t read Davis’s second collection, 1997’s Almost No Memory. I’m about ten pieces in. I won’t list or review them. Anyone who’s familiar with Davis’s work understands that the distinction between “story” and “prose poem” is so blurred–I just don’t feel qualified to comment on it, except to say that rarely do her pieces fail to resonate with me.

Yes, it’s sad.  I missed a week of posting what I’ve read and how my writing has progressed.  What can I say?  It’s been one busy blur… lots to talk about about, and actually one or two things I can’t just yet.

But, ’til then, back to business.  Here’s what I’ve read over a fortnight.  It wasn’t much…

Yeah, yeah, I know I said I was going to get to Ted Chiang’s Stories of Your Life and Others, but it’s hard carrying around and reading a dead tree book while maneuvering through an upstate New York winter.  So I started one of the many ‘zines I purchased for my Nook during the holiday season, namely Apex Magazine #15.

• “Fair Ladies” by Theodora Goss.  A lovely, richly-detailed story.  Not entirely certain how much I bought the trajectory of the main character’s arc, though–at least not through the time gap near the end.  4 out of 5.
• “Four Is Me! With Squeeeeee! (And LOLer)” by Nick Mamatas.  A story about the future told in a data-stream of consciousness.  Exquisite!  5 out of 5.
• “Secret Life” by Jeff Vandermeer.  There’s a reason people tell you not to write office-space-as-metaphor stories.  The one you write will never be as good as this one.  5 out of 5.

Then I loaded up Clarkesworld 50 for the heck of it…

• “On the Banks of the River Lex” by N.K. Jemesin.  In comic book terms, this was sort of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman meets Brian Wood’s DMZ. I feel like I have to give it a 5 out of 5, since the one thing that sticks in my craw about this story isn’t the story’s fault.  It’s just that, sort of like DMZ, the obvious love for NYC comes across as something I, as a reader, could only really understand if I was cool enough to have once lived there.
• “Seeing” by Genevieve Valentine.  I don’t know how I’ve managed to miss her fiction.  It took me awhile to remember that I was reading Clarkesworld and not Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet.  In other words: dystopic astronomy and space-travel FTW!  5 out of 5.

From Lightspeed Magazine 2…

• “No Time Like the Present” by Carol Emshwiller.  Since precious few other writers can keep you invested in a story whose plot you’ve figured out all of two pages in, this gets 5 out of 5!

I spent last week with the rest of Karen Joy Fowler’s new collection What I Didn’t See and Other Stories.
[Edited to add: My Working Writer’s Daily Planner says it’s KJF’s birthday today–Happy Birthday!!]

“Familiar Birds.”  It’s funny how I keep coming across these “Back when I was a kid” stories lately.  I liked this one even better than I liked Mark Rigney’s “Portfolio” from LCRW 22.  5 out of 5.

“Private Grave 9.”  A detailed account of a character’s slow almost(?)-descent into… something.  5 out of 5.

“The Marianas Islands.”  It had my favorite passage in the book so far, and one of the more interesting main characters.  The ending was a little too abrupt for me.  4 out of 5.

“Once when I was four or five I asked my grandmother to tell me a secret, some secret things only grown-ups knew.  She thought a moment, then leaned down close to me and whispered.  ‘There are no grown-ups,’ she said.”

“Halfway People.”  Probably has my second-favorite line in the collection, but I’m pretty sure it’s my favorite story overall.  5 out of 5.

“But a story never told is also a danger, particularly to the people in it.”

“Standing Room Only.”  One story with John Wilkes Booth, dancing around his most infamous performance in the Ford Theater?  Okay.  Two?  I don’t know. 3 out of 5.

“What I Didn’t See.”  Loved the ending, but it just took a little too long to get there for me.  3.5 out of 5.

“King Rat.”  This was in the Trampoline anthology, but I hadn’t gotten that far yet.  A nicely solemn riff on the Pied Piper story.  5 out of 5.

For starters, I finally got around to those last two stories in Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet 22:

“Portfolio” by Mark Rigney. In the continuum of “when I was a boy…” stories from Steven Millhauser and Peter S. Beagle’s “Uncle Chaim and Aunt Rifke and the Angel” this one was (thankfully) closer to Beagle. Rigney’s & Beagle’s stories both involved painting. Hmm. 5 out of 5.

“Dearest Cecily” by Kristine Dikeman. The narrative got me over my initial “Oh god, not another story told in letters!” reaction PDQ! 4 out of 5.

Next up was something that caught my eye in my RSS feed. “Taking Flight” by Ben Tanzer at Metazen. I’ve introduced you to Ben before. I dug Ben’s narrative of what future generations from the late 21st century onward will eventually call “the same old story.” 4 out of 5.

The rest are from Karen Joy Fowler’s collection What I Didn’t See and Other Stories.

“Booth’s Ghost.” John Wilkes is in it, but he’s not the main character. Brilliant. 5 out of 5.

“Last Worders.” Nice story with great setting description. The end was a little telegraphed for me, though–maybe not the detail, but the fact of it. 4 out of 5.

“The Dark.” Great story but with too many narrative threads that left me unsure which character or situation to really invest in. 4 out of 5.

“Always.” This one was more my speed–a character I could sympathize with in a situation, while weird, I could still understand. 5 out of 5.