BOOK REVIEW: The Library at Night - Alberto Manguel

The eighteenth trump of the major arcana of the tarot is The Moon, which does indeed represent the nocturnal side of things. It is the sign of the imagination as it conjures both dreams and nightmares. The Moon is uncertain and even a bit dangerous, in the primal way that causes all animals to fear the dark, even if irrationally. It is exactly this twilight sensibility that Alberto Manguel was concerned with as he wrote The Library at Night, an exploration of mankind's relationship with its books.

The book is a series of essays regarding different facets of that literary relationship, "The Library as Space," "The Library as Shadow," "The Library as Survival," and so on, but he's not just referring to the library as a public or private institution (though that is discussed at some length). He's referring to any group of books, from the famed Library of Alexandria, to the more modest personal collection, to the single book that keeps a prisoner of war from going mad. Manguel asserts that books contain stories, yes, but even more, the story of books is our story, as they represent what we choose to collect, emphasize, and remember.

The tarot's Moon also represents the permeability of the boundary between past and present, and as the book examines how mankind has kept and cataloged its stories, the reader begins to see how the past comes to bear on the ways we let our stories live in and with us even today. The Library at Night is meticulously researched and its admirable scope brings a wealth of perspectives to bear on the topic, but true to the nocturnal bent of the title, the essays meander dreamlike through history and culture from the heights of Classical Greece to the depths of World War II to reveal their insights. This book is a rare gem for bibliophiles, as it's clear that Manguel is a reader whose passion matches the best of us, and the essays he's written not only justify our passion for the printed word, but demonstrate that it's perhaps that very capacity for invention and memory that makes us human.

BOOK REVIEW: River of Stars

The latest epic from noted fantasist Guy Gavriel Kaye is surprisingly economical and direct for a book of 650 pages. River of Stars Tells the story of a kingdom on the verge of collapse and the hero who might not only save it, but seems destined to return it to a former glory. It takes in the beauty of a vast kingdom that stretches from plains, to mountains, to marshes and renders it in sharp poetic detail. It involves a broad range of characters, from poets to warlords and everything in between including scheming politicians, honest men of letters and desperate peasants.

With his lean uncomplicated style Kaye brings this vision of remote Chinese history to life, basing it broadly on the events of the late Song Dynasty in the 13th century. Referred to in the book as The Kitan Empire, Kaye builds it into a complex world of both luxury and poverty, beauty and fear. One of the most impressive things about River of Stars is the way the author creates a sense of inhabiting an alien culture. His descriptions are rendered in a form and cadence that evoke Chinese sensibility and he describes character motivations from a complexly unique cultural perspective, communicating their importance without seeming to be giving a sociology lecture.  

There are grand memorable images, like the moving of a giant rock to decorate the emperor's garden, destroying everything in its path as it is moved at the expense of land, homes and lives. The desolation of an army as it is ambushed at a river crossing and the intimacies between a boundary defying female poet and the military hero who might save the empire.

The adventure element is also pretty stunning. Small confrontations in the wooded marsh and battles of thousands arrive in clear exciting bursts. In all Guy Gavriel Kaye puts his stamp as both a top tier fantasist, evoking ghosts, spirits and mystical destiny, as well as a talented historical re-constructionist, providing a clear and plausible image of a long vanished history.

BOOK REVIEW: Underworld - Don DeLillo

“Masterpieces teach you how to read them, and Underworld is no exception…”    -Greg Burkman for The Seattle Times

    Rarely does a back-cover blurb make you stop and think, but as I was reaching the halfway point of Don DeLillo's masterpiece (one of several) Underworld, this one caught my attention. It's a very true sentiment. A masterpiece should make you a better reader, and probably a better human, by pulling you up to its expectation of what its reader should be. And in this, Underworld is truly no exception, as my own history with it shows. I've enjoyed DeLillo's writings for a long time. I began with his novel of postmodern disaffection White Noise and moved on to the emotional experimentation of The Body Artist and I was hooked. But as I started Underworld ten years ago, I was still young, and I did not yet possess what the book needed me to possess. I lasted all of a hundred pages before realizing I wasn't sufficiently entrenched to prevent being pulled away by other things. Years later I bought a hardback copy of the 800+ page book, certain that what was inside it was going to be important to me, but after another half-hearted attempt at a time when I was between other interests, I drifted away again.

I started the book again recently, and by page two it was a completely different experience. Something connected, and as I reached the halfway point and saw the blurb about how to read a masterpiece, the difference between now and then became clear. In the intervening years, my focused interests in various periods and cultures of the past hundred years had become a full-blown intellectual obsession with the 20th century in general, and the American 20th century in particular. For my relationship to this book, that fact made all the difference, as Underworld is an odyssey into the heart of that very idea, an investigation of what DeLillo refers to in the book as "the curious neuron web of lonely-chrome America."

The story begins in 1951 as the Dodgers and the Giants (both still New York teams at the time) are playing for the pennant. Baseball fans may remember this game as the origin of the "Shot Heard 'Round the World" as Bobby Thomson sent a home run into the stands in the ninth inning to seal the pennant for the Giants. The book follows the home run ball as it ends up in the hands of a young boy who skipped school to see the game and then proceeds to change owners throughout the last half of the 20th century as various owner's fortunes rise and fall. As one might expect, the story is not really about the ball, it is about the people. The ball exists as its own part of the story, but the conceit of the ball is that it provides access to dozens of different narratives and perspectives on America from 1951 to the mid-1990's.

Another significant strand of the story begins on the very same day as the game-winning swing, as the Russians successfully detonate an atomic bomb, which sets in motion the nuclear tension that runs through the rest of the century as well as the rest of the novel. It's that atomic fear that acts as a poetic parallel to the various stresses and the sense of unease that permeate the story, which is broken up into several large sections, each of which could probably have functioned as admirable novellas in its own right. As the cast of characters that ripple out from that home run take their places in the narrative sweep, one begins to see how each perspective is masterfully placed to fill in a piece of the story as well as a piece of the history. Waste management engineer Nick Shay, with his murky past and strange connection to artist Klara Sax, shows us how the guilts and fears that we try to bury never stay that way for long. Chess teacher Albert Bronzini, elderly nun Sister Edgar, and 16-year-old graffiti artist Moonman157 are all pushed and pulled in various directions as the century tosses them about like a rock polisher. Historical figures show up in the book as often as DeLillo's own creations. It's a risky endeavor, but he pulls it off, and his versions of personalities like Jackie Gleason, Frank Sinatra, Lenny Bruce, and J. Edgar Hoover never seem obtrusive or distracting. He plays them as they are, just more bits of the story of America.

The idea of the Great American Novel is that of a piece of literature that excels in its craft while simultaneously providing an accurate representation of the zeitgeist with which it is concerned. With those parameters in mind, I see no reason not to at least consider Underworld as a candidate for the label. The writing is outstanding, with the author's signature dialogue fragments and hitches in character speech firmly in place, but it's the way that the story knits together from the macro to the micro into a panoramic view of forty-some years of American life that really shows DeLillo's mastery of the form. The novel reads true, even as fiction, as it portrays Cold War America as both consistent and invisibly dangerous, just like uranium-235, or for that matter, Coca-Cola.    

BOOK REVIEW: Moments Captured - Robert J. Seidman

Eadweard Muybridge was the late 19th century photographer who pioneered the methods of imaging that would eventually lead to the modern motion picture. He was also a volatile personality with a complicated history, one which novelist Robert J. Seidman speculates and expands upon for the purposes of his novel Moments Captured.

Seidman’s account begins in the remote American west in the late 1860’s. Muybridge is an ambitious photographer taking his bulky mobile photo studio over the vast American wilderness. He meets and begins a torrid relationship with feminist dancer Holly Hughes, a sexual dynamo who revolutionizes Eadweard’s life and world view. They fall in love and head west together to San Francisco. There Holly scandalizes polite society while Eadweard becomes ensconced with railroad tycoon and technology enthusiast Leland Stanford. Stanford, as well as being Eadweard’s chief patron, is Holly’s main antagonist and target of her righteous fury.

The story follows a course of cultural crusades, hard won victories of invention and romantic jealousies that all lead to a shocking murder. Seidman’s plot is fascinating and the liberties he takes with history compress the culture of post-civil war America into a blur of artistic invention and adventurous discovery. Yet the book suffers from the author’s obsessive and redundant detail in his characters’ sexual encounters.

When one has a fulsome and rambunctious story, so clearly bridling to be told, slowing to focus on the sensate details of sex, seemingly every few pages, for a dominant portion of the book, though it might be intended to deepen sympathy and heighten visceral involvement, slows the story to a clumsy undisciplined crawl. I found myself rolling my eyes every time the story seemed on the verge of yet another torrid encounter and the prose could be seen gathering its energy to plunge again into descriptions of breasts, penis, thighs and pungent juices. I do not object in the slightest to prominent sexuality in fiction but this novel lingers until the passionate becomes lurid, and the titillating, turgid. At the expense of what is otherwise a fascinating subject and a terrific yarn of Guilded Age Americana.

BOOK REVIEW: The House of Rumor

In The House of Rumor Jake Arnott attempts to link together a handful of obscure cultural mysteries from the last seventy years into a loose theory of existence, centering it on the fictional persona of Sci-Fi writer Larry Zigorski. Zigorski comes of age in the early 1940’s and as a precocious writer at the dawn of the golden age of speculative fiction is drawn into the orbit of Robert Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard and Jack Parsons. Meanwhile, in a parallel story, the persons of Ian Fleming, Rudolph Hess and Aleister Crowley toil at information, disinformation, and survival at the height of World War II in England and Europe.

Arnott’s narrative plays fairly loose with time, moving ahead and establishing a bookend in the 1980’s with a circle of post-punk transvestites and musicians who are linked to the WWII and Science Fiction narratives trough unhappy coincidence and the transfer of information, disinformation, and rumor. The uncertain nature of events, the inherent instability of knowledge, and its similarity to speculation and prediction are the all-pervasive themes of The House of Rumor. Through the lives and musings of British spies, renowned novelists, occult sages, and all of the points where their lives intersect, we get the impression of existence as a garbled message, an obscure transmission, equally visible and equally clouded from all relative points.

Arnott’s book contains much that is remarkable, scenes like a conversation between Ian Fleming and Aleister Crowley, convincing evocations of the crackle of energy as L. Ron Hubbard fences with rocketry expert and charismatic occultist Jack Parsons, the vision of the beach in Cuba the day Castro lifted the exit restrictions and there was a mass exodus upon makeshift rafts for Florida, and a harrowing blow by blow envisioning of the events of Jonestown through the eyes of a twelve year old boy. These items are tremendous and remain in the memory. Yet the book in all its meanderings leaves many story threads frustratingly half spun, like what of the young reporter with the same last name as one of the main characters, last seen preparing to make love to an emotionally vulnerable trans-sexual? Or what of the old spy master whose mishandled memoirs cost lives and scandal but whose fate and reaction we hear nothing of? There are so many instances of the unresolved in this book, ideas left hanging.

The story ends with Larry Zigorski addressing us with the full weight of our shared knowledge about his life and obsessions. He’s looking back and summing it all up. To my sensibility, for a book that began by moving so swiftly between fascinating set ups, its conclusion comes upon a distractingly ponderous note. It is for the most part a book of winks and playful hints, and for the end to be an over-serious meditation on the literal “meaning” of it all feels a tiny bit flat.

That said; The House of Rumor is full of interesting speculation and fascinating glimpses onto cultural crossroads we’ve all likely wondered about. Beyond that it reveals a richness of subculture it’s fun to be faced with after so long thinking one’s self too sophisticated for surprises anymore. In fact most of the strangest things and oddest people in the book are the real ones, and it leaves one to wonder about the details. How much of it credibly reflect reality and how much of it is amusing dissimulation? Jake Arnott has taken as his subject the un-knowability of truth and left it admirably muddled.

BOOK REVIEW: Gardens of the Moon - Steven Erikson

Gardens of the Moon is a fantasy book by Steven Erikson and the first in an epic ten volume series called the Malazan Book of the Fallen. While it injects some sorely needed originality into the epic fantasy genre and is written with admirable sophistication, it suffers from a number of issues that may cripple its appeal to a mass audience. That doesn’t mean it is bad by any means, I already have the second book and am looking forward to reading it, but it’s not for everyone.

I’ll start with the good. Fantasy fans will find a lot to like here. The world is well developed with a variety of different races and regions. It has a sword and sorcery vibe, but expands greatly beyond the clichés and feels appropriately adult in its ideas and graphic imagery. Soldiers use swords in battle, but are referred to as Marines. High explosives are used to wire up a city block for later detonation. That same city is powered by natural gas collected from the caverns it sits atop. The originality combines with a quickly paced plot that feels fresh and (for the most part) holds your attention.

Now, for the bad stuff. Character descriptions are woefully weak, and sometimes completely absent. And there are a lot of characters in this book, sometimes having multiple names and allegiances and it can become tricky to tell them all apart. One of the main characters, a soldier named Whiskeyjack, is described as a man with grey eyes and a beard. I can’t recall much other description. So, obviously, I immediately picture him as Bryan Cranston from Breaking Bad. Is that what the author intended? I don’t know, but it’s too late. In my head, Whiskeyjack looks like Bryan Cranston from Breaking Bad.

Further complications occur with the book as the reader is thrown right into the middle of the story with few introductions or explanations for what is happening. In a way, I like this, it feels realistic, like you’re the new guy and no one can be bothered to get you up to speed on the current happenings, you just have to pay attention, pick up bits and pieces, and overtime connect it all together. Eventually, you do figure out what is going on, or at least you become more comfortable with not knowing everything, but this doesn’t occur until about three hundred pages into the book. I will admit, it was a difficult barrier to get through. Even prepared as I was by other reviews that mentioned this issue, I still found it difficult to press on. Not everyone is going to be so determined to get hooked into this story. Rarely does a book make the reader responsible for becoming engrossed in its tale, but this book does and it gives you the finger and a firm backhand if you start mouthing off about it. It is what it is. Nobody asked you to read it.

There’s another issue I have with the book that may not be a problem for others. Scenes are short. Sometimes it cuts to different perspectives and plot lines multiple times per page. Longer scenes tend to only be a couple of pages in length. Like I said, this may not be a problem for everyone, but I found that it was hard to get absorbed into the tale or really get connected with certain characters because of this. This may have also contributed to the struggle to break through to the halfway mark. New characters are introduced then it’s quickly off to someone else. Characters have a brief conversation in which you have no idea what they’re talking about. Some assassins fight on a roof top for no apparent reason. Someone has a dream about an ancient god, but it’s actually real. Or is it? A mad wizard in a puppet’s body appears from a rift out of thin air, blasts a couple of talking crows, then disappears again just as quickly.

I think if you read some reviews and get a description of  the basic story elements, you don’t have ADD, and are patient about being in the dark for most of the plot, you’ll know whether this book is for you or not. It’s not an easy, casual read, and it’s got some flaws, but there are some brilliant moments and epic ideas that make the task of seeing it through worth while.

For now, I’m going to relax and take a breather with some “easier” fare, but I will get around to the second book at some point. Based on the observations of other readers, I feel like I will enjoy this book more as I read more of the series. For me, that’s fine, I can handle it, but most people don’t read for the challenge. If you decide to read this book, know what you’re getting into, go with its flow, be patient and I think the pay off will be worth it (unless you just hate the fantasy genre in general, Gardens of the Moon won’t help to change your opinion).