Carlos' 2010 Reading - Round 3

This is my third year doing the 75 book challenge, and while I sort of flaked out on posting last year, I did make it to 75 books. So, this year, I'll try to keep up better.


1. La Puta de Babilonia by Fernando Vallejo

I finished this book yesterday, but I'm just going to roll it over to this year's list. There's a little bit of a story behind this book, as it's not the sort I normally read. My mom had brought it back from Argentina, where she had bought it because there appears to be much talk about it. She had found it pretty unreadable and had passed it on to me. Well, with my morbid curiosity, I had decided to check it out and found it rather captivating.

The book is basically a polemic/rant against monotheistic religions. While, I'm not religious at all, I haven't really been interested in any of the New Atheist books that have come out lately, (I'm more of a live-and-let-live agnostic.) but something about the style intrigued me. It's written without chapter breaks or footnotes, without even a clear sense of what the argument is. It's a little exhausting, but Vallejo really seems to have done his research. He also leavens things with his odd sense of humor.

I can't say I'd really recommend it. Even if you're sympathetic to Vallejo's arguments, it still makes for an odd book. It did get me intrigued to check out his fiction, such as Our Lady of the Assassins, which I've seen the movie version of.

Welcome back, Carlos!

Welcome back!

2. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde - finished 12/7/09

Early in Melmoth the Wanderer, the narrator comes into possession of his recently diseased uncle's belongings. Among these are a crumbling manuscript and a portrait. Before his death, the uncle made the narrator swear that he would burn the painting. The manuscript, on the other hand, he could do with what he liked. The novel never gets around to explaining why the uncle thought it important to burn the painting.

When I read that part of Melmoth, I wondered to what extent it had inspired Oscar Wilde's writing of Dorian Gray. Despite very different structures and characters, the book feel strangely similar. If Melmoth is structured around the question of Would any man knowingly give up salvation?, Dorian Gray seems to be similarly written with the thought of What depths would a man sink to if he thought his actions held no consequences?

Of course, we never see Melmoth's bargain, but we certainly see that of Dorian Gray, who is convinced by the adoration of one friend and the cynicism of another that it would be best if he could stay young forever. He is granted this wish, but this turns out to ruin him.

I have to admit, the Gothic is one of my favorite modes in fiction, so I was not surprised at how much I enjoyed this. Like many Gothic novels, this one takes some odd detours (the account Gray's genealogical and spiritual forebears) but makes for an engaging peak into the darker paths that people may walk down.

Great review! I am planning to read this book, and now I am really excited about reading it.
--BJ

Hope you like it. It's the first Wilde I've read, though I've seen a couple of pretty good film adaptations. (Well, I can't speak with how they compare with the originals, but I enjoyed them.) It was interesting how Wilde's sense of humor was sort of intertwined with the eeriness of the story.

3. The Azathoth Cycle by Robert M. Price (editor)

Azathoth is Lovecraft's "blind, idiot god" at the center of creation who serves as a sort of inversion of the traditional concept of the omnipotent deity. (And as Price points out, parallels interestingly with the Gnostic concept of the demiurge.) Several writers take up the concept to create their own stories. Azathoth isn't always central to the stories, which include two sequels to HPL's "The Thing on the Doorstep." (These were provided by Peter Cannon, and were largely tongue-in-cheek.)

Overall, it was a good collection. I found Campbell's "The Insects from Shaggai" sort of disappointing--it seemed to get bogged down in exposition--in part because I've read some really good horror tales from him. A few of the stories are set in the Dreamlands, the best of which was Burleson's "The Daemon-Sultan." Ligotti brings the weird with "The Sect of the Idiot."

Makes me think I should revisit Cthulhu Mythos as comfort read more often.

4. Museo de la novela de la eterna by Macedonio Fernandez

Museo de la novela de la eterna is a very curious work. An anti-novel or novel of postponement, a celebration of the city of Buenos Aires, a meditation on the nature of reality and eternity. It takes place around the estancia of "La Novela" where several characters--not so much characters as abstract concepts--engage in philosophical conversations in which the author and reader sometimes take part. Yet, at every turn Macedonio frustrates the novelistic quality, drawing attention to questions of narrative and perception. It's a heady experience, made only more so by Macedonio's prose, which is often ironic or playful, but sometimes poetic as well.

Though it sounds pretty postmodern, the novel was written in the 1930s and early '40s, making it ahead of its time. Macedonio was a pretty interesting figure who had an important influence on Jorge Luis Borges.

Anyone curious can check out one of these two translated excerpts:

Prologue to the Never-Seen
For the Readers who will perish if they don’t know what the novel is about

This looks good. According to Amazon US, The Museum of Eterna's Novel will be published in the US (in English) on February 28, and I'll look for it then. Thanks, Carlos!

#9: I am glad you mentioned that, Darryl, because it sounded like one I would like to read, but my Spanish is not good enough to read it in that language.

@7: I may have to check this out. Many of my friends of my youth were big Lovecraft fans (including one whose email was nyarlothotep for many years), so I am long familiar with the general Cthulhu concept. But I did not actually read any Lovecraft until fairly recently, thanks to the anthology Dark Descent that I borrowed.

@8: I confess I've read only a handful of Latin American authors. I'm not sure I've read any Borges, but I am starting to feel the urge. Thank you for pointing out other authors as well, particularly those who influenced the most widely recognized names today.

Chris, I definitely recommend checking out Borges. Admittedly, he's not for everybody, since his works are sometimes pretty cerebral and plotless. He's easily the master of what you could call the high-concept short story, with stories that are about such things as: a conspiracy to create a fake country with fake myths about a fake planet which is then made real, a library which is also the universe, a man who dreams another man into existence. Not all of his stories are quite so heady, since he also writes about the lowlifes and outcasts of Argentine society, (albeit in a somewhat detached fashion when compared to his contemporaries).

4. I Am Legend

I've been rather distracted lately, and though I've managed to keep up reading, I've fallen way behind on posting about it. Here's my attempt to catch up quickly, touching briefly on what I've been reading.

I imagine by this point, the basic plot of I Am Legend is familiar enough to most people. Robert Neville is the last man on earth, plague, vampires, the whole works. The premise is pretty good, and the best parts are easily Neville's day-to-day work to stay safe and sane. His attempted rescue of a stray dog about halfway through the novel is emotionally wrenching and gives you a great sense of the psychological strains the guy is under. The novel is somewhat less effective during action and suspense sections, where Matheson tends to indulge in purple prose out of sync with the novel's quieter moments.


5. The Complete Short Stories of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. 1: The World of Horror

Most of Bierce's work is from the late 19th century. He was from Kentucky, fought in the Civil War, then moved west to San Francisco. His work often reflects this background, and his horror stories are set in a recognizably American landscape. These are mostly old-fashioned ghost stories, often dealing with the aftermath of an act of violence. Usually told through fairly spare language and sometimes featuring a twisted comedic sensibility, there are some classics in here for fans of older horror fiction.


6. Los ejercitos

Violence is nothing new in Colombian literature. Certainly, Garcia Marquez' work features its share of wars, killings, assassinations, etc. Yet in the past few decades, the country has suffered from pervasive and ongoing violence at several levels, whether related to the drug wars, the civil wars or financially motivated kidnappings. (Phenomena which have not been entirely distinct.) Rosero's novel has as its protagonist the retired schoolteacher Ismael, who is a bit of a peeping Tom. (The novel first meets up with him up a ladder picking oranges, which conveniently allows him to check out his neighbor's wife, who likes to sunbathe nude.)

Soon, the violence which has only been talked about begins to edge closer to the village. Shots are heard, rumors of an invasion spread. Soldiers arrive, but then also another army, either rebels or paramilitaries. People disappear, including Ismael's own wife. Those left behind struggle to pick up the pieces even while the violence shows no sign of abating.


7. Ghost Stories of an Antiquary

More old-fashioned ghost stories, this time from an English author who is easily master of the form. (Or at least it's English variation.) James doesn't stick to pale specters making boo sounds in the dark, some of his ghosts are terrifyingly fleshy and hairy. There's a level of attention paid to the craft of story-telling, which often make for some finely crafted stories, though sometimes the concern with the how of the narrative borders on the Borgesian.


8. Jane Eyre

In some ways, this is the novel that I wish Northanger Abbey had been. Both have their grounding in early Gothic works, yet are really love stories in which the heroine manages to find her true love after some trials and tribulations. While Northanger Abbey reflects its Gothic influences mainly through a few short passages about what the heroine reads or speculation over a character's death, Jane Eyre has fully synthesized the influence, adding another layer to this passionate love story.

I think it was sort of inevitable that I'd get around to Jane Eyre once I got into Gothic fiction. (It also helped that Wuthering Heights was all kinds of awesome, which helped me get over my adolescent dislike of 19th Century British fiction.) Even if Jane Eyre isn't as Gothic as Carmilla or The Fall of the House of Usher, it features the best known use of the "insane person in the attic" motif. I was pleasantly surprised at how great Jane Eyre is, not just as a Gothic tale but as a love story. Jane and Rochester are such brilliantly fleshed-out characters, and their romance--from their somewhat surreal meet-cute to "Reader, I married him."--is just perfect.


10. Met, el Muerto

Buenos Aires has all these great little discount bookstores. You can often find classics, such as the works of Borges, Cortazar, Arlt, for quite cheap. There's also works from contemporary authors I'd never heard of, but cheap enough that I was willing to take a gamble.

This novel concerns an author who has achieved a small measure of fame after winning a literary award. It's allowed him to buy a Notebook and an apartment, and he spends his days going to parties, signing autographs, bedding women and trying to write his second novel. (Apparently science fiction, from what little we see of it.) One day, a man approaches him, with a request to write his life's story. The man claims he has only three months left to live, but he is convinced his story would make a great novel. This starts a strange series of events, involving the Buenos Aires art scene, switched identities, a strange religious community and a trip to New York. The novel is best when it's following along on the detective line, with the author/narrator trying to figure out what is going on. Too much, though, is taken up with the narrator's own unpleasant personality and the dramas he gets himself into. The end is I think supposed to be sort of trippy and mind-blowing, but doesn't really pull it off.


11. Offspring

Jack Ketchum's Off Season was a brilliantly executed take on a somewhat cliché idea. One night in the backwoods of Maine, a group of city dwellers are attacked by a group of cannibal feral people. In their attempt to survive, they find themselves confronting the savagery of mankind, not just in their enemies but in themselves as well. A decade later, Ketchum returns to the lonely woods of Maine, through which stalks the only member of the original clan to have survived. She has now grown and gathered a new family around her, feral and vicious as the first, to seek out new prey.

You may be wondering how Ketchum manages to top Off Season, which was brutally engrossing despite a few clichéd elements. Surprisingly, he doesn't, eschewing "the same, only bigger" strategy so common to sequels. Though the structure is the same--one night's encounter between a group of people and the deadly clan hunting them--Ketchum creates a more varied and complex cast of characters. Even the cannibal children have more personality than they did in the original.

Ketchum's prose has also improved, and the story feels a little more organic for it. Though very much along the same lines as the original, Offspring is actually somewhat richer and more emotionally complex. The only downside is that it fails to match the white-knuckle intensity of the original.

Glad you took time to do a 'catch up' post, Carlos.

I read I Am Legend a couple of years ago, not really expecting much, and was pleasantly surprised. I thought the ending was very good.

I have not read much of Bierce, although his An Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge is to me, the epitome of what a short story should be. I do not do horror, so I will stay away from the collection you mentioned though.

I love, love, love Jane Eyre, so I am glad you finally got a chance to read and enjoy it.

I think I will pass on the ghost stories, the Spanish language book (my Spanish is just not that good yet), and the Ketchum books.

Thanks, I agree the ending is good. I have to confess, though, that I was already roughly aware of it from reading about I Am Legend. (In King's Danse Macabre and in relation to how the movie adaptations always seem to change it.)

And Jane Eyre was great. I almost feel like I soft-pedaled my enjoyment of it with that lengthy intro. One of those books that sort of has everything that's wonderful about reading, entertaining yet also beautiful.

Jane Eyre has been a favorite of mine for years now. It is one of the books I really wish I could go back and read again for the first time.

12. Fevre Dream by George R. R. Martin

I've seen this described as Mark Twain meets Anne Rice, a description which doesn't quite do it justice. The Mark Twain parallel comes from the role of riverboats and the river trade and the Anne Rice from vampires in New Orleans, so it's easy to see where the comparisons come up. Martin, though, is writing historical fiction, not really going for the sort of social commentary of Mark Twain. In contrast to Rice's vampire stories, the hero of the piece is Captain Abner Marsh. (Abner, not Obed, and he doesn't have the true Marsh eyes, though that would make for an odd twist.)

Marsh is owner of a riverboat line, though recent events have left him with only one boat, an aging stern-wheeler, to his name. As the novel begins, he is heading to a meeting with an eccentric but wealthy businessman named Joshua York. Though initially skeptical, Marsh agrees to the partnership, when York agrees to finance the construction of the greatest riverboat yet built.

Soon, the Fevre Dream is making its way downriver, but Marsh finds himself unable to overlook York's increasingly strange behavior. He soon learns that York has constructed the Fevre Dream in order to seek out vampires which he has been tracking. This puts the boat and its inhabitants on a collision course with an old and brutal vampire named Damon Julian.

Martin has a talent for describing pre-Civil War riverboat life and the variety of characters who populate it, an element that I found captivating even before the vampire plot really kicks into gear. Captain Marsh makes for a somewhat unlikely hero. He's not particularly bright, good-looking or charming, and I half expected him to die early on so that someone more conventionally heroic could step into his role. Yet, his persistence, loyalty and lack of pretension made him a winning character and I really found myself sympathizing with him and hoping for his eventual success.

#17: That one looks interesting. I will have to see if I can locate a copy. Thanks for the recommendation, Carlos.

13. Survivor by Chuck Palahniuk

The middle child of Palahniuk's unofficial trilogy of transgressive novels about broken male protagonists, Survivor is the story Tender Branson, survivor of his former church's mass suicide. The "novel" is in fact meant to be a transcript from an airplane's voice recorder in it's final hours of flight, for Tender has hijacked it and is planning to let it run out of fuel somewhere over Australia. Already, you can see it's got the intensity associated with the Palahniuk brand. I'd heard from some people that this is one of the better Palahniuk novels, and I have to admit, I think it's the one where he goes most whole hog, pushing the limits of what constitutes crazy.

I have to admit I was a little disappointed, but I'm not sure if it's Chuck or me at fault. To start with, I listened to it as an audiobook. That should really be perfect, since this is supposed to be a recorded oral narrative. I pictured myself just sitting back and imagining being a NTSB investigator listening to the Apocalyptic Log of this complete stranger. That's powerful stuff. Or it would be, if I could actually suspend disbelief. Palahniuk's trademark style may have a lot going for it--a certain live-wire energy, the ability to make you re-look at the world--but it completely ruins the illusion here. I'm sorry, but nobody talks that way, especially extemporaneously and while facing certain death.

So, got to deduct a point for that. I did enjoy how crazy the story got, and this is the first time where I was struck by Palahniuk's use of trivia. I had previously considered it a misguided attempt to add veracity to his books, but it's really more textural, like the cetology stuff in Moby Dick.

The larger problem, though, is that I think I've outgrown Palahniuk. I know a lot of people love him for being shocking and appalling and probably an equal amount hate him for the same reason, but I've gotten to the point where all the outrageousness seems a little calculated. Tender Branson goes from being basically a house slave to an international spiritual celebrity, yet at the end it takes a wild series of events to convince him that he needs to embrace life on his own terms. He has the "been there, done that" refrain, even though he's really done very little. You know who has that kind of misplaced sense of ennui? Teenagers! Similarly, the liberating "destroy the past to create a new future" message strikes me like the perfect message for that same demographic that so hungrily hopes to break away from their parents, teachers, etc.

Which isn't to say that it's bad. I imagine Palahniuk is a little like Kerouac, best enjoyed when you're still young. (Though I think he lacks the sort of spiritual hunger that Kerouac expresses.)

I have a similar response to Palahniuk now, but I had thought it was because his books are fundamentally so similar you get a bad case of diminishing returns. Also he has to be increasingly extreme in order to achieve the same shocking effect.

Well, there is that as well. Despite some superficial differences, Fertility Hollis is just Marla Singer all over again. And Survivor has the name nonsensical yet preachy look at celebrity as Haunted. And, well, I could probably go on... It wouldn't be so bad if Palahniuk's social commentary were less shallow. As it stands, I sometimes get the impression that the shock value is calculated to chase off the type of reader who might be thoughtful enough to realize the paucity of original thought while appealing to the sort of reader who is totally blown away by his brilliant insights into society, dude. (This isn't too say his take on class warfare can't be fun, but it has all the similarity to real questions of income and social mobility that the Die Hard movies have to real questions of terrorism.)

P.S: Another thought as of 3/18, re: Palahniuk vs. Kerouac -- There is some degree of searching for meaning, spirit, a greater purpose in Palahniuk, but as with much in his fiction it starts to feel a little calculated after a few rounds. With Kerouac, it seems a little more immediate and sincere.

14. The Watchers Out of Time by August Derleth

Derleth published the stories in this collection as "posthumous collaborations" with H. P. Lovecraft, which could charitably called stretching the truth. The reality is that Derleth took story fragments or ideas from Lovecraft's notes. I have to admit I would have been curious to know how much Lovecraft actually contributed. (How about an annotated edition? What you say, Joshi, you up for it?)

Even that wouldn't be so bad, except that it appears that the some of the notes or fragments he used to write his stories were for stories that Lovecraft had already completed. It's a little reminiscent of Borges' Pierre Menard, and Derleth is at his most Menardian with "The Shadow Out of Space" which is, as the title suggests, just a rehash of "The Shadow Out of Time." That's the worst of it, though some of the other stories suffer from a similar déjà vu, such as "The Peabody Inheritance" which crosses "The Dreams in the Witch House" with "The Rats in the Walls" while failing to be as good as either.

It's not always bad. "The Lamp of Alhazred" is a retelling of "The Silver Key," though I rather liked the way it mythologized Lovecraft. Derleth borrows heavily from Lovecraft for "The Fisher at Falcon Point," "The Shuttered Room" and "Innsmouth Clay," yet I liked the spin he puts on them. "The Survivor" and "The Shadow in the Attic" while certainly Lovecraftian, manage to be quite original and pretty solid tales.

Derleth is a pretty good writer, stumbling mostly when he tries too hard to ape Lovecraft. (This is particularly noticeable in his use of italics, which he manages to push to the point of parody.) He does have a bad habit of repeating the same plots in this collection, especially of the man who inherits some ill-omened house or other piece of property. Changing Lovecraft's nihilistic cosmology into one of warring clans of good and evil deities wouldn't be so bad except for when Derleth tries to cast it as a struggle between Absolute Good and Absolute Evil. This just rings false since there's never any sign that the Elder Gods (the alleged good guys) are anything but benignly indifferent. But overall, when Derleth doesn't trip up by trying to copy Lovecraft or by asserting a Manichean struggle that doesn't really make sense, these are pretty good Weird Tales easily among the better ones of their type.

#22: That one does not look like my cup of tea at all, so I am giving it a pass.

15. Raucho by Ricardo Güiraldes

Ricardo Güiraldes is best known for the novel Don Segundo Sombra, about a boy growing up in rural Argentina with some relatives who ends up befriending and being mentored by an old gaucho. This is an earlier novel, apparently highly autobiographical. The protagonist, whose nickname is Raucho, grows up on an estancia with his siblings and widowed father. He learns the ways of rural life but then develops a case of wanderlust and goes off in search of more cosmopolitan adventures. He travels to pre-World War I Paris, where he gets caught up in a lifestyle of drugs, sex, gambling, and general dissipation. He finally bottoms out and returns to Argentina.

It's a pretty straightforward story, perhaps a little simple structurally. The strongest element was Güiraldes' writing, especially in regards to rural Argentine life. He is wonderfully descriptive yet elegant, managing to capture the feel of an Argentine estancia in summer in only a paragraph. It was overall an enjoyable read, but not quite as captivating as Don Segundo Sombra.

16. The Brontës Went to Woolworths by Rachel Ferguson

This is an Early Reviewer book. (The first I've received in a while.) I'd never heard of this novel or its author before, but the title was neat enough to get me interested in the book.

The main narrator is Deirdre Carne, the oldest of three sisters living with their widowed mother in 1930s London. Deirdre is a journalist, while the middle sister, Katherine, is an actress. The youngest, Sheil, is still young enough to have a governess. They share an imaginative fantasy life, which incorporates everything from childhood dolls to Lord Toddington, ajudge that Deirdre has seen as part of her reporting. It's a little confusing at first, as Deirdre does not delineate between the real and the unreal.

Overall, I found the book enjoyable. Deirdre is a pretty amusing narrator, with a great sense of humor. There's an interesting tension between the sisters and mother, who take part in this fantasy, and Sheil's governess who is very down-to-earth and has no patience for that sort of thing. Eventually, Deirdre meets and gets to know Lord Toddington's wife. This initiates a change in the game that the sisters have been playing, not so much ending it as pushing as expanding it.

I have to admit that perhaps it's just the effect of works such as We Have Always Lived in the Castle or Peter Jackson's Heavenly Creatures, but to me there was an edge of the uncanny to the Carne's fantasy life. Even so, it's overall a funny and heart-warming book about way shared fantasies can connect people and even aid in dealing with the harsher truths of life.

17. Los almuerzos by Evelio Rosero

Los almuerzos (The Lunches) takes place in a Catholic Church in Bogota. The hunchback Tancredo has grown up in the church, and among his tasks is serving the daily lunches that the church serves to the needy. It's a task he dislikes, particularly on Thursday when the elderly come, and the violent feelings it provokes in him often disturb him. He is carrying out a secret relationship with Sabina, another orphan who has been taken in by the church. Along with the priest and the sacristan, the final three residents of the home are three women who lost their husbands and children to a militia. They are called the three Lilias and seem curiously interconnected.

As with Los ejercitos, Rosero begins what with what appears to be a picaresque setting and then lets it gradually slip into darkness until the whole thing takes on the aspect of a nightmare or horror story. Ejercitos is a little clearer in its allegory to contemporary Colombian society, but I wonder if like his (ex-)fellow Colombian Fernando Vallejo, Rosero sees the church in Colombia as generally harmful.


18. Aguafuertes Porteñas by Roberto Arlt
19. Cuentos Completos by Roberto Arlt

Wow, well, Cuentos took me a while to complete (as it's 820 pages long and in Spanish) but it was worth it. It appears that only two collections of Arlt's short fiction were published during his lifetime: El jorobadito and El criador de gorilas. Together, those two collections appear to have constituted only a third of the stories Arlt wrote in his lifetime. So, it's pretty clear why a work like this is something of a treat. It's especially interesting to see how the focus of Arlt's shifts. His early work is much like that in El jorobadito about the hypocrisies and foibles of contemporary Argentine society.

This is also the realm of Aguafuertes Porteñas, though from a somewhat different perspective. The short stories are somewhat harsh, sort of tragic. The protagonists seem to find little option but to reject society, often symbolized by running away from a potential marriage. The essays of Agufuertes, on the other hand, tend to be humorous if sometimes sardonic. I especially like the language of the Aguafuertes, which reflects the particular Buenos Aires way of speaking. (I felt I could sometimes "hear" the various characters that show up in these pieces.) There were definitely lines I was tempted to write down because of their humor or insight.

Arlt's focus changes with the later stories, though certain themes persist. A trip to North Africa inspires a bunch of Orientalist stories, some collected in El criador de gorilas. These are often interesting stories, with a similar sense of Arltian desperation, though without the brilliantly captured milieu. In the afterword, David Viñas criticizes those stories for relying too much on cliché. While there is some truth to that, I think there are some very good stories in that bunch.

Arlt was influenced by Dostoevsky, which shows more strongly in the early stories. Some of the later stories read as more like Poe, dealing with terrible revenges, detectives solving impossible crimes, science fiction themes, and even a story about a ship caught in a maelstrom which strongly recalls Poe's "M.S. Found in a Bottle."

Overall, a magnificent journey through Arlt's short fiction, which sometimes strange or cruel, but never dull.

Boy, I wish my reading in Spanish was up to the task in reading through those books. I am definitely going to have to work on it.

Thanks for those reviews, and the information about Roberto Arlt, who I am completely unfamiliar with. I enjoyed Los ejercitos by Rosero, and I'll definitely get Los almuerzos when it is published in English.

I agree with Stasia; I'd like to be able to read novels in Spanish, especially ones like these that aren't available in English. I'll look at the local colleges for courses, but I'd love to get ideas for online courses from others.

Strangely enough, the two short story collections El jorobadito and El criador de gorilas touchstone as their English names, which gave me brief hopes that they had been translated. Wasn't able to find a trace of said translations on Amazon, though, so it might just be a quirk of the touchstones.

>>>26 CarlosMcRey:. I too thought there was an uncanny edge (which I actually called sinister) to The Brontes Went to Woolworths. Since it was never manifested in the book itself, I chalked it up to having enjoyed the same books you mention and perhaps having never had to entertain myself without all the distractions of modernity such as LT and TV. I wonder, though, if perhaps it does lie underneath after all.

Nancy, it's interesting to see I wasn't the only person who got that sense from it. I'd also be tempted to think it was just my own reading of it, but the novel seems to be rather ambiguous about the ghostly visitation of the Brontës. I get the impression Deirdre is at one point a little freaked out by it, suggesting it isn't just something they made up.

20. Moby Dick; or, The Whale by Herman Melville

This is the first time I've really read Moby Dick, my previous experience with it having come by way of the audiobook. Reading the book is a substantially more challenging and also more rewarding experience than listening to it, mostly because audiobooks allow one a certain degree of passivity as compared to text. Still, I was glad to have some appreciation of Melville before tackling his language and frequent digressions.

When you're really grappling with a text, sometimes it manages to get under your skin. I remember one night after a long day of work, reading the chapter on whiteness. I was struck by how brilliant the whole idea seemed, because whiteness seemed to suggest blankness but also opacity. And this seemed to get at one of the fascinating ambiguities of the novel, which is to what extent is Moby Dick a consciously destructive force. Does that great opacity hide a devious nature, or is it just Ahab's projection onto a blank page? That night, as I was falling asleep, the thought ocurred to me that Moby Dick might be God, and when I woke up the next day, I saw Moby Dick's whiteness as the obverse of the jaguar's spots in Borges' "The Writing of the God." That is, the surface from the whale carried a message from God, and that message was, "I have nothing to say to you, no interest in communicating with you." I'm not sure if it's what Melville was going for, but it's the sort of thought that crops up when a piece of fiction really gets your synapses going.

One thing that I got out of this reading that I didn't get out of the previous one are the Gothic elements in Moby Dick, which I think I touched on briefly above. Central to this is the character of Ahab himself, whose brooding nature and fixation with revenge reminded me of Poe. There's a poignant moment shortly before the final hunt when he becomes aware of the complete waste that has been his quest for revenge, yet he decides that he must see to completion what he has started.

This is the first of my re-reads, and I guess I should address the obvious question: Was it worth revisiting? Oh, yeah, without a doubt.


21. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë

For a long time, I had a rather dim view of 19th Century English literature, seeing it all as dreary and moralistic, full of people dying of consumption while going on about religion. Then I discovered Gothics and decided to give Wuthering Heights a shot and was surprised at how much I enjoyed it. Dreary, perhaps, but there was something about Heathcliff and Catherine's a so wrong emotional connection that gave the novel life. This year, I picked up Jane Eyre, worried that it would seem too melodramatic and cheesy compared to Wuthering Heights, but instead I found myself completely drawn into it. I approached The Tenant of Wildfell Hall with a pretty high opinion of the Brontës, fully expecting to discover another classic I had foolishly neglected in my youth. Well, as Meatloaf once said, two out of three ain't bad.

And, honestly, Tenant isn't a bad novel. It's well written, deals with important issues, was daring for its time, has realistic characters, features a very heroic portrayal of a woman, generally avoids histrionics, but, well, I just didn't find it that engaging--definitely not on the level of Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights.

To get into what I found disappointing, I'm going to have to get into spoilers, so skip ahead to the last paragraph if you want to remain ignorant of the plot twists.

The Tenant of the title is Helen Graham, a widow who moves into an old abandoned manor with her young son. The narrator, Gilbert Markham, gets to know her and eventually falls in love with her. Helen warns him that their relationship cannot move beyond friendship and reveals that she is still married, having left her husband for being unfaithful, abusive and an alcoholic. She then learns that her husband has been griveously injured and returns to minister to him. Despite her ministrations, his drunkeness leads to his death. Gilbert later seeks out Helen, and they get married.

Though the characters were largely realistic, I found them sort of flat. Let's start with Arthur Huntington, Helen's profligate husband, who plays the part of Gothic villain here. We first meet him through Helen's diary, where she describes how he courts her. The novel never really convinces me that Helen is particularly in love with him. He just seems like a handsome guy who is more interesting than her other, middle-aged suitors. Worse than that, he comes off as a little bit of a frat boy. There was something about his portrayal that made me think that 150 years later, this character is too familiar, the husband from a hundred Lifetime movies who by the end of the first act has been revealed to be less perfect than he initially seemed.

Helen is pious, considerate and earnest, which makes her the sort of character that's easy to respect. She comes off as sort of bloodless, though, a plaster saint. It almost seemed like in trying to make the character unimpeachable, Anne Brontë strips from her much of her potentially complex humanity.

As for Gilbert, well, there's not really much to him. There's no sense of an unreliable narrator, as with either of the narrators of Wuthering Heights. And as with the Arthur-Helen courtship, I never felt any sort of emotional investment in their eventual union. Was it nice that see that they got their happy ending? Yes, but it pales in comparison to the end of Jane Eyre, which had me seriously tearing up.

In brewing, a beer brewed to extremes (big, bitter or sour) generally keeps longer than one made along milder lines. So with the Brontës. Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights more fully embrace their Gothic roots, and what results are novels that still retain much of their power over a century and a half later. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall tries to be more measured and serious, and what results was admittedly "daring for its time," but that time has passed. The issues it raises are important and the book is well-written, but it's lost much of its impact over time.

#32: I am still making my way through Moby Dick with the group read, but I am enjoying the book.

I read The Tenant of Wildfell Hall last year and I agree with you - the book is well-written, but it has lost much of its impact over time. That being said, I still think it is worth the read.

I thought The Tenant of Wildfell Hall was an amazing book - I liked it much better than her sisters' better known novels. I was surprised to find that such a portrait of a woman affected by domestic violence had been written that long ago.

Stasia, I was doing it as part of the group read, but I confess I found keeping pace with the group sort of frustrating. I found myself ripping through the scheduled chapters and then setting it aside. Then picking it back up wasn't as much fun, trying to remember where I was, getting back into the story. So I just decided to finish it. I'd already read it before, so there aren't any spoilers I would be giving away that I would have kept under wraps.

(On a side note, I hope calling you Stasia is okay. I have to admit it feels a little odd going with name over handle, as if implying a false familiarity. But that seems to be the style here on LT and does seem more friendly than calling people by their handle. I'm probably overthinking this.)

elkiedee - Tenant definitely it has its merits from its realism to the quality of its writing, though to me it's the sort of novel I find easier to respect than love. Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights strike me as novels very much about passion, whether positive (JE) or bleak (WH), while Tenant strikes me as more staid and proper. There's a subtle difference between the flights of Jane Eyre and Helen Huntington that capture part of my sense of this.

Helen is arguably a more moral character than Jane, but Jane strikes me as more modern. Helen flees the marriage because she fears her husband's behavior will corrupt her son, which allows her to fulfill the duties of a mother of her era. Jane, on the other hand, flees from Rochester not so much because she is concerned about living in sin, but because she knows that if she becomes his mistress, he will lose his respect for her. It's a subtle difference, but Jane's willingness to embrace her own individuality strikes me as more radical.

In my 11th grade English class, we read A Streetcar Named Desire, and the teacher had us read parts of it out loud. He had asked one kid in particular to read the part of Stanley. The kid tried to weasel out of it by offering to read the part of Mitch instead. Mr. Hood's reply was, "Anybody here could read Mitch. I think you're capable of reading Stanley." It's one of those moments that's stuck with me, perhaps just the realization that some characters are just bigger than others.

I thought of that when thinking about the characters. I think Anne's are certainly more realistic, but I confess I found them less interesting than, say, Emily's. Last year, I read Duma Key right after finishing We Have Always Lived in the Castle and was struck by the difference in the narrators, how dull King's characters seem next to Jackson's. "I'll take one Merrikat Blackwood over a hundred Edgar Freemantles," I wrote at the time. Similarly, I'll take one Heathcliff over a hundred Arthur Huntingtons.

#35: I know what you mean about reading the book with the group. I generally leave my group reads for the last possible minute, lol.

Calling me Stasia is just fine. Everyone does. I like the fact that the group has been together long enough now that most of us are comfortable enough to share first names; after all, the core group has been together since 2008 and the group has just taken off since then.

Darn, falling behind again, so it's going to be a quick catch up...


22. Three Hainish Novels by Ursula K. Le Guin

Though arguably science fiction novels, Le Guin is arguably more interested in social science than technology. The later novels in the series go into this more hardcore, serving almost as little thought experiments into the construction of property or gender. These never go that far, though there does seem to be an interesting deconstruction of colonialism going on. Not that you have to get into all the theory to enjoy Le Guin's sci-fi. Her attention to the social context in which her characters act gives one a much richer sense of where they coming from, they never come off like the cliched characters that one encounters too frequently in genre works.


23. La virgen de los sicarios by Fernando Vallejo

A realistic portrayal of Medellin, Colombia in the '80s and '90s would be pretty violent and bloody to begin with, but Vallejo's pushes it into something else. An embittered narrator, who seems to be a thinly veiled version of the author, gets romantically involved with Alexis, a boy for whom killing is second nature. Though the narrator claims he is aghast at the violence, his sympathy for the victims tends to be minimal, and he begins to see Alexis as his own "Angel of Death." Is Vallejo taking himself to task for his own misanthropy or only trying to show the poisoned soil that may have given rise to it?


24. Los gauchos judios by Alberto Gerchunoff

Gerchunoff was part of a Jewish migration which left Europe, especially Russia, in the late 19th and early 20th century to seek homes in more hospitable climes. Among their destinations was the pampas of Argentina, where they settled and farmed in what had been open grazing land. The immigrants and the gauchos (who had been there much longere) mostly come to a degree of mutual respect, though tensions do arise on the small scale. Some of the young decide to abandon the ways of their fathers for the romance of life on horseback, living by the skill of bolas and facon. Some of the young women run away with the rugged young men of the new land. And, in one story based on the death of the author's father, a gaucho stabs a rabbi to death over a minor altercation.


25. The Hungry Moon by Ramsey Campbell

An evangelist comes to the Yorkshire town of Moonwell to exorcise what he sees as a Pagan holy place, a large cavern out on the moors to which the townspeople sacrifice an effigy of flowers once a year. He ends up releasing something old and malevolent, and its up to a handful of people to save the town. Campbell is a master of creepy imagery, put to great effect here, especially as the supernatural evil begins to let lose. The concept of the evil is a little bit of a mish-mash and the pacing sort of slow, so it never really gets beyond eerie and a little creepy to become really scary.


26. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

And speaking of creepy Yorkshire moors... I've noticed a lot of people seem to dislike this book, and I'm not surprised because Emily doesn't seem to have given a fig for making it easy on her readers. Instead of the appealing, sometimes ironic narrator of Jane Eyre, we get two unreliable narrators. Instead of the good guys and bad guys of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, we get a bunch of difficult people, nobody you're sure you really want to root for. Though it's style is clearly 19th century, it's almost understated, an effect which only renders its Gothic touches more powerful. Simply brilliant, though unflinching in its bleakness.

#37: I am one of the people who dislikes Wuthering Heights. I have only read it once and that was enough for me :)

#38 - I found myself wondering near the end of Wuthering Heights if it was meant to be some sort of personal statement from Emily, some way of saying, "This is who I am. You don't have to like it, but I won't pretty it up for anyone." I don't know if drawing comparisons with her sister's works is the best way to think about WH, but it seems like an obvious approach. And by that standard, I do feel as if it's not clear why the book was written. Jane Eyre strikes me as crafted to be a best seller and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall to get people thinking, but Heights isn't really designed to give anyone the warm fuzzies or get them thinking about the plight of orphan gypsy boys.

I guess in a way it's the flipside of Eyre, which is also very much about passion, but in Heights the passion seems to take the wrong channel, curdling and nearly laying waste to two families.

It is a hard novel to read, not stylistically, but it's difficult to watch all these people act awfully, sometimes screwing up their lives. Still, I think Heathcliff is one of my favorite characters. He's just so unsettling, strangely charismatic yet an obvious monster. I have a fondness for characters which push at my notion of what a character can be, leaving a strong mark.

>37 CarlosMcRey:: Le Guin's early Hainish stuff seems largely ignored but, while recognizing that her later stuff is better, I always felt they were good books, focusing...as you say...on the social side of SF rather than the technology.

I have finally caught up on your reviews. I always enjoy them, especially about the books in Spanish. I am one of those who liked Wuthering Heights. But I haven't read it in a long time. Loved the review of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. I have got to read that book and check it out. Have a great day!
--BJ

#40 - I do think all of the novels in the series are pretty good. At first, these felt a little "pulpy," lacking the sort of sociological significance of the later works. But there is something nice about the sci-fi romp being the important aspect, and all of the speculative sociology in the background adding depth, instead of the other way around.

#31 - Thanks, BJ. It was neat to read works from all three Brontë sisters this year. It seemed to me that they are strikingly different writers despite their similarities.

Another roundup after a period of neglect...


27. Books of Blood Vol. 2 by Clive Barker

These early stories tend to be quite dark, and due to his fondness for body horror, quite gruesome to boot. Barker's approach isn't particularly sophisticated, but it is effective.

The collection kicks off with "Dread," which has little gore and nothing supernatural but the psychological nastiness was pretty unsettling. "Hell's Event" is the story of a footrace in London, which will decide if parliament will stay in session or be replaced by a legion of howling, ravenous demons (insert joke about Congress). I found it darkly amusing. "Jacqueline Ess: Her Will and Testament" and "The Skins of the Fathers" are both Barker pushing the body horror to its full extent. In the first, a woman learns she is capable of manipulating flesh with her mind, often to very horrific result. (She kills her husband by turning him into a briefcase.) The story goes into some odd territory but generally works. "Skins" concerns a group of bizarre creatures, like something out of Tim Burton's nightmares who are distantly related to mankind and able to interbreed. A confrontation with some townspeople in the desert leads to very messy results.

The only story I didn't care for was "The New Murders in the Rue Morgue." I just found it too ridiculous. Of course, the same could be said for the other stories, but they all manage to be entertaining. The story stumbles early on when the narrator introduces himself as the grandson of the real Agustue Dupin, the detective of Poe's original "Murders in the Rue Morgue." Perhaps it's just all the Lovecraftian pastiches I've read, but the "horror story turns out to have been based on true story" trope just strikes me as sort of tired. Overall, the story strikes me as a misfire. Except for that one, though, the book is pretty good overall.


28 Harvest Home by Thomas Tryon

Thomas Tryon retired from acting to write novels, producing (among other works), two novels of terror in rural New England. The Other was a nicely paced tale of doppelgangers and bad seeds, full of moments where you realized what was about to happen only a heartbeat before you read about it. Harvest Home has a slower pace to it, building up to a big reveal.

Ned and Beth Constantine decide to move out of the city. They discover a pleasant rural community, where people still live very traditional lives. They are enchanted by the place and find themselves generally welcomed. Over time, Ned becomes aware of some disquieting things about the community and its past. As he begins to learn the truth, the place comes to seem much less of an idyll.

Harvest Home owes a clear debt to Ira Levin's Rosemary's Baby, but overall I found it better realized. The characters and the world they operate in are more fully fleshed out and believable. The betrayals that the protagonist encounters hit with real weight, not just a sense of surprise but also a degree of sadness. Tryon's neo-paganism is also much more convincing and menacing than Levin's satanism. (Levin's novel has its merits, but a convincing portrayal of a non-Christian belief system is not among them.)

The novel also bears an interesting similarity to The Wicker Man (it even has shades of the newer, Nicolas Cage version, though not that one's silliness). It's not dated, but it has a definite '70s zeitgeist-type of feel.


29. Lovecraft Unbound by Ellen Datlow (ed.)

The history of Lovecraftian fiction is filled with plenty of second- and third-rate pastiche (see August Derleth up above), yet there seems to be something about the Old Gent's legacy that prompts authors and editors to attempt to capture that ineffable Lovecraftian fiction while avoiding pastiche.

Overall, this anthology succeeds, with only one story I felt really stumbled.
I especially liked "The Crevasse" and "Cold Water Survival," two brilliant works of Antarctic horror. Other stand-outs include "Houses Under the Sea" by Caitlin Kiernan, where a cult commits mass suicide by walking into the ocean--the telling gives it an Inssmouthish ring; "In the Black Hills," Michael Chabon's tale of industrial horror in a cursed town; "Leng" by Marc Laidlaw, in which the Lovecraftian horror manifests in the hunt for rare mushrooms on the Tibetan plateau; and "Mongoose," which spins HPL's themes into space opera for entertaining effect.


30. A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin

I'm not a big fan of epic fantasy. The Lord of the Rings is quite good, but I've been wary of the rest of the genre since overdosing on those AD&D novels as a teenager. A friend once recommended Feist's Magician books, which weren't so much bad as just sort of aggressively bland. My genre fix was better satisfied by New Weird authors such as Jeff Vandermeer or China Mieville.

Places like Ambergris or New Crobuzon may be fantasy locations, but they also have a certain rough edge which makes you feel it'd be really awesome to visit, but you probably wouldn't want to stay after dark. Feist's Midkenia may have it's dark elves and orcs, but it never feels either fascinating or dangerous. Right from the start, Martin's Westerous comes off as a dangerous place, one in which even the "good" guys may not be so nice.

Overall, Martin delivers the epic aspect pretty well. The main focus is the Stark family, which rules the northernmost of the Seven Kingdoms, which are all under King Robert Baratheon. We see bits of the action from the two older sons, both daughters, mother Catelyn and father Eddard. We also get the perspective of two other characters, one is the brother of the Queen and the other is one of the survivors from the dynasty that Robert Baratheon overthrew. It's a complicated picture, but Martin does a good job of juggling all of the different characters and plots. It does have it's share of clichés, but so much in the book is well done that I found them forgivable. Will I be continuing with the series? Definitely, though I can't say when. Considering it hasn't even been finished yet, I don't feel too much of a hurry.


31. Halloween: New Poems by Al Sarrantonio (ed.)

This was an Early Reviewer book. I didn't expect a collection like this to be great poetry, but it did sound like it could be fun. And sometimes it is fun or manages to evoke nostalgia or eeriness. Overall, it's hit and miss. Call me old fashioned, but I would have liked to have seen more traditional poetry and less free verse. I don't have anything against free verse, but I think it's harder to pull off. There are some gems in here, though I wish the collection had been stronger overall.

A couple of years ago, perhaps in 2008, I settled at some point on monthly updates of my 75 books thread. I now seem to be sliding into that, though perhaps my degree of distraction will shortly pass, and I can be a little more diligent. Well, without further ado...


32. El lugar sin limites by Jose Donoso

Translation: Hell Has No Limits.

The first work I've read from Chilean author Jose Donoso, this story concerns a small Chilean town that is slowly dying from isolation, and some of the people who struggle there. It centers around a character known as La Manuela, who owns and operates the cat house in town. Manuela is a fascinating and sometimes very sad character. She is the target of much abuse from the other townspeople, but she tries to maintain her dignity, even though she tries to express this in ways that seem less than totally constructive.

Ruling over the town is Don Alejo, who claims to be its benefactor. This good will has earned him a position with the legislature, yet he often seems rather distant from the concerns of the people and may in fact be profiting from the town's decline. It's a powerful though depressing story of the dynamics of power and sex in small-town Chile.


33. The Unicorn by Iris Murdoch

I picked up the book not because it's author was portrayed in a movie by one-time cinematic crush Kate Winslet, but because the back copy promised a Gothic tale with modern psychological insights. The novel actually starts off with something akin to Gothic overload: Marian, a young woman, has accepted employment as a governess at an old country house, and as she makes her way there observes the isolated and forbidding countryside, learns that the job is actually stranger than she expected, and meets some odd locals, some of whom claim to still have fairy blood in them.

From there, the novel unfolds its secrets carefully, revealing a fascinating interrelation of unrequited love and secret passions. Murdoch uses this to fold in her own philosophical observations on love and identity, not all of which I completely got. Overall, an enjoyable, well-written, and sometimes quite heady take on the Gothic tale.


34. Fledgling by Octavia E. Butler

I'd say this is not your typical vampire novel, but in the days of True Blood and Twilight I think the concept of a "typical" vampire novel no longer exists. (I picture Bram Stoker sitting across a table from some cliché version of a literary agent. "Bram, Baby, you're taking vamps in a whole new direction. Your bloodsuckers don't pine for their former lives or fall in love with hot young women. It's fresh! But what's this about them being afraid of crosses? Let's not mess around with the vampire myth too much, ok?")

The story here is told from the point of view of a young, female vampire. The vampires here are actually called Ina and, though bloodsuckers, are not undead. She wakes up at the beginning of the novel with no memory of what has happened, which provides a good opportunity for us to learn about her world at the same time she does. Octavia Butler is known as a science-fiction author, and here she brings a certain biological sensibility.

The Ina-human relationship is symbiotic instead of parasitic, which actually makes quite a bit of sense. It's an interesting variation, and one which allows for some interesting interpersonal dynamics, including ideas of non-traditional families. Butler also delves into racism and race-relations, though more subtextually than with the sex.


35. Toby Alone by Timothee de Fombelle

I won a copy of the ARC to Toby and the Secrets of the Tree from the Early Reviewer's program. It looked intriguing enough that I was willing to take a shot on it, even though it was the second of a series. However, once I got it, I figured I should try to do things right and checked the first volume (Toby Alone) out from the library.

Toby comes from a race of people who or only millimeters tall and live on a large tree. Toby's family has fallen afoul of the forces that rule the tree and who would exploit the tree to their own shortsighted ends. We meet Toby near the beginning of his flight and slowly learn about the events that caused his family to meet with such a state.

I normally don't read YA/children's fiction, this was a really fun and moving book. Though sometimes the political and ecological allegories feel a bit heavy handed, but Fombelle's world-building (or tree building) gives a good foundation to it. (And is also pretty neat on its own right.) I look forward to reading and reviewing the next one.


36. Historias fantasticas by Adolfo Bioy Casares

A collection of some of Bioy Casares' tales of the supernatural, of ghosts and space invaders. A pretty good collection. ABC gets overshadowed by Borges, largely because they dealt with similar themes and were friends, though Borges is considered the better writer. Borges' stories all have a sort of minimalism, which I think makes them more readable and overall more powerful.

However, I think there's a good contrarian argument to be made that ABC was the better writer. While his stories can be just as heady as those of Borges, they feature much of the elements his stories lacked. The strange or alien in these stories is always in the context of recognizable (mostly Argentine) characters operating in the real world. One might argue ABC is operating along the lines of Stephen King here, building up realistic, sympathetic characters before bringing in something bizarre to see how they react.

The only potentially frustrating aspect is ABC's fondness for leaving his stories on something of a question mark, sometimes giving them a pointedly ambiguous feel, but sometimes leaving them feeling a little rushed.


37. Best Ghost Stories of Algernon Blackwood by Algernon Blackwood

Speaking of contrarian arguments... Since I came to Blackwood through Lovecraft, the thought crossed my mind while reading these works whether Blackwood or HPL is arguably the better author. Ultimately, I think it's a bit of an apples and oranges comparison, but it did amuse me while I thought of it.

Blackwood's simply brilliant at creating atmosphere with many little details, slowly creating a sense of unease. The best ones of the bunch (and arguably of his career) are "The Willows" and "The Wendigo." Both feature people in an isolated wilderness coming to confront something that seemingly should not be. The reader gets a sense that something supernatural has happened but never in a way that can be completely pinned down.

When Blackwood takes a more traditional approach, as with the devil worshippers or witches of the John Silence stories, the results are largely disappointing. Still, even these stories have a nice sense of atmosphere and a great visual sense. Some of the stories here, such as the odd crime tale of "Max Hensing," aren't really ghost or horror stories, yet they manage a good eerie vibe.

Though I think the HPL comparison isn't that worth getting into, I did find myself thinking of two other British authors who can achieve similar feats of spectral dread. The first is Robert Aickman, who seems like an additional development in stories of carefully crafted dread. The other is Ramsey Campbell, whose strong visual sense (and talent at crafting it and using it in his stories) struck me as quite like Blackwood's.


38. Fausto y otros poemas by Estanislao del Campo

Gaucho poetry. The long title poem involves one gaucho recounting to another his experience of visiting the Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires and seeing a performance of Faust. Doesn't quite have the sense of clever wordplay or tragic destiny as Martin Fierro, but still pretty enjoyable.

I have been meaning to read Murdoch's The Unicorn for years now. Thanks for the reminder, Carlos.

Wow, some nice reading there!

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39. City of Saints and Madmen by Jeff VanderMeer

"What can be said about Ambergris that has not already been said?" So begins the epigraph for City of Saints and Madmen, in a quote taken from a resident of the same city, which is a pretty good signpost of the crazy, metafictional, postmodern fantasy in store for the reader. Some books are doorways, opening new vistas in literature, drawing the reader not just into their own labyrinthine (or is it librynthine?) world but also feeding a hunger for other works. I picked up CSM largely on a whim, having first learned of it while reading about authors influenced by Borges. (Borges’ work itself being another of those doorways.) I didn’t know anything about New Weird or Slipstream or Steampunk, but an interest in Borgesian works and some favorable reviews convinced me to take a chance.

There’s definitely a fair amount of Borges in Ambergris--and not just in the name of the local bookseller—but also multiple other sources that VanderMeer is drawing from. Superficially, CSM is just a collection of short stories set in the same city with certain links between them, much like M. John Harrison’s Viriconium (which in my personal geography lies beyond Ambergris), but that doesn’t do justice to VanderMeer’s use of the postmodern arsenal to heighten the sense of fantasy and absorption. The first time I read this book, I became mildly obsessed with it and found myself writing notes in the book: cross-referencing, drawing out the chronology, the geography, trying to craft family trees. Postmodernists will tell you that the act of reading constructs the text, but CSM makes that process more fun and intoxicating than nearly any work I have ever read.

After the introductory material, the collection starts with “Dradin In Love,” in which the title character comes to Ambergris just in time to observe the Festival of the Freshwater Squid, fall in love, and have some terrifying encounters. The second work is a short history, presented as a pamphlet, though with plenty of footnotes which give you a sense of the pamphlet writer’s personality. The third story, “The Transformation of Martin Lake,” is about one of Ambergris’ most celebrated painters. Among other things, we learn that “Dradin In Love” exists as a work of fiction in Ambergris, written by the same Dradin about whom the story is. With the fourth story, “The Strange Case of X,” things start to get really strange. X is interned at a mental hospital, because after writing the stories which created Ambergris, he began to believe it was a real place. “The Strange Case of X” also serves as something of a pivot point, since the stories that follow are all alleged to have been left behind by X when he escaped the mental facility.

CSM is pretty radical as a work of fantasy, because it is singularly preoccupied with its own status as a work of fiction. While some people may find that sort of textual self-reflection annoying, I think it really brings the city of Ambergris to life. The first time I read it, it felt less like reading about a place and more like exploring it. The combination of postmodern approach with genre fiction is a strange mix, the two approaches sometimes at cross purposes. What CSM manages to achieve is that its postmodern technique makes the reader feel like a collaborator in the fiction, almost a co-conspirator in this fictional creation, which gives it the sense of being more “real,” or at least authentically artificial.

(One inappropriate comparison: There’s an odd blend of the whimsy and dread in Ambergris, which is difficult to pull off yet generally works. It reminded me in that extent of Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next series, which also attempts a similar mix, though IMHO less successfully. The Eyre Affair may be the first dystopian novel where the bread and circuses are intended as much for the reader as for the characters.)

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40. Toby and the Secrets of the Tree by Timothee de Fombelle

Speaking of curious blends of whimsy and dread, there’s certainly copious amounts of both in Timothy de Fombelle’s Toby books. I’m not a big reader of children’s or YA literature, but I sometimes get an ARC in that category through Early Reviewers. I'm sometimes unsure how to read this, mostly out of a fear of nitpicking things a younger reader wouldn't mind. I didn't really run into that with this series, perhaps because it mostly won me over.

The previous book left off with Toby having fled the tree for the lands of the Grass People, an exile that he has accepted because he believes everyone who cared about him is dead or had betrayed him. On hearing that his parents still live, he decides to head back and rescue them.

What he returns to is even worse than what he fled from. The governance of the tree is shared between a greedy environmental despoiler and a vengeance obsessed young man. The damage done by run-away excavation is starting to have serious impact. Dissenters and Grass People are forced to work as slaves in the excavation project. Changing things will require Toby to meld back into the world he abandoned and draw on the friends and allies he left behind.

The conceit in the Toby books, of a race of tiny people who live on a tree, works surprisingly well. The world is simultaneously familiar and strange--people eat grub eggs, use weevils as excavation animals, make armor out of insect hides. There's nothing inherently supernatural or fantastic, but Fombelle makes the most out of creating a sense of wonder through this tinier perspective.

The action is quite moving, and the characters, though drawn in the broad strokes one would expect from a fairy tale are often engaging, sympathetic and even a little surprising. Between the fascinating world and the winning characters, I found myself quickly becoming absorbed in both books.

If I had to point to a flaw, it'd be that sometimes the ecological allegory feels a bit heavy handed. This is only a minor quibble. Also, I get the impression a certain degree of morality/moralizing is pretty common to children's lit. Anyway, it rarely took away from my enjoyment of the book.

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41. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

I’m not sure if I have much to add in terms of commentary to Dickens’ classic work, aside from my own reaction. I hadn’t picked up Dickens in over 10 years, though I had seen some BBC and Hollywood adaptations of his works. Overall, I liked it, but some parts are certainly better than others. My main complaint, though I will readily admit it is probably a good source of Dickens’ success, is that the heroes sometimes seem a little plain. Lucy and Charles seem like nice enough people, but their straightforward nobility makes them a little flat and generally leaves them as reactive to events. My interest was drawn more towards the more complex characters: clever if damaged Sydney Carton, haunted Dr. Manet, vengeful Lady Defarge.

I think Dickens is at his most powerful when he’s addressing the iniquity of the world, especially the arrogance of power of the nobility and corresponding desperation and hunger of the poor in pre-revolutionary France. Even when he paints a picture of the terrors of the revolutionary tribunals, he links it clearly to the oppression under which people suffered for so many years. That sense of moral justice really comes through.

Though I feel I have a better grasp on Dickens, I’m not sure my opinion about his work has changed all that much. It’s definitely a different experience than the first time I picked up Moby Dick, and was shocked by how funny and how terrifying Melville could be. I suspect because of the quality of Dickens’ writing, curiosity will eventually bring me around to some of his other works, but I confess for the moment I don’t feel particularly compelled to seek any out.

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42. Finch by Jeff VanderMeer

Finch is the third book in VanderMeer's Ambergris saga, following first CSM and then Shriek: An Afterword. Interestingly, as the story has progressed, VanderMeer has drawn back from the most pomo elements. While Shriek is definitely less complicated than CSM, it still delves into unreliable narrators and significant footnotes. Also, Shriek, like CSM, is meant to be a book within the world of Ambergris. Finch never plays that sort of game with its own status as a book.

Finch is in some ways a pretty straightforward hardboiled detective story, albeit located in Ambergris and so markedly weird in some ways. I found the beginning a little disappointing, perhaps because John Finch initially seemed a little soft for the role, but it got better (and wilder) as the book progresses. It is a satisfying conclusion to the mysteries and dilemmas first laid out in CSM, though I have to admit it didn't inspire the same kind of goofy obsession/immersion that CSM did.

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43. Nombre Falso by Ricardo Piglia

(Translation: Assumed Name) I'm going to backtrack a little into the concept of books that guide you to other books. After being introduced to the works of Roberto Arlt, I started trying to seek out some of his works. I was living in the Seattle area at the time, and a search in the KCLS catalog under "Arlt" turned up this collection. It is a collection of short stories from early in Piglia's bibliography. Overall, the stories are pretty good, with some better than others. The strength of this collection is the title story.

"Nombre Falso" has two parts. The first is a first-person account of Piglia trying to dig up any undiscovered material from Roberto Arlt, such as essays, letters, notes, etc. He is contacted by a man who used to rent workspace to Arlt, and who has some documents in his possession. Piglia enumerates the documents, including a notebook with a large portion of pages missing from the middle. Upon further investigation, he contacts a former colleague of Arlt's, a failed poet, who reveals that he does in fact have a complete and unpublished story from Arlt in his possession. The final section is the discovered story, about a young anarchist who finds refuge in a cathouse.

The whole thing is a literary hoax, pulled off in a way that is fairly convincing yet manages to hint heavily at the fraudulent nature of the narrative. Piglia has achieved a fusion of Borgesian metafictional play with an Arltian sense of crime and the con. Piglia's combination of these two influences brings some fascinating insights to how one approaches fiction. There's one section I liked so much, I'm going to quote it here (in rough translation):

A literary critic is always, in some form, a detective: he perceives on the surface of the text, the prints, the residues that allow him to decipher its enigma. At the same time, this assimilation (which is somewhat paranoid) of criticism with police pursuit, is already transparently present in Arlt. On the one hand, Arlt always identifies writing with crime, fraud, falsification. In this scheme, the critic appears as a police inspector who can discover the truth. ... Finally, when one says--as Arlt did--that all critics are failed writers, doesn't this confirm one of the classic myths of the detective novel?: the detective is always a frustrated criminal (or a potential criminal). ... In more than one sense, the critic is also a criminal.

This struck me as very radical, perhaps because I was used to more traditional notions of writers as moral exemplars, of reading as uplifting. To link the act of writing with that of fraud seemed to flip this notion on its head, yet it also seemed to make a lot of sense. It's a notion that has stuck with me--a new, sometimes quite useful, perspective to bring to a text.

I am jealous about book #40, having just finished the first book and been left hanging. I've preorded it at Amazon but I want it now. *stamping foot* Now! Now!

44. The King of Elfland's Daughter by Lord Dunsany

The Council of the land of Erl decides that what the land lacks is magic, and so they request for the King to bring more magic into the land. The King sends his son into the the realm of Fairy to bring back a princess from that realm so as to fulfill this request. This quest is only the beginning of the adventure, as the arrival of the Princess is not exactly what the Council bargained for.

Soon, though, the princess returns to Elfland, and the prince sets out on a new quest. Now the King of Elfland is ready for him, so the Prince finds his quest more difficult and enlists the aid of a shepherd, a poet, a fool, and a moon-struck madman. Meanwhile, the son of the Prince and his Fairy Princess grows to a young man and begins to hunt for unicorns with the aid of a mischievous troll from the land of Fairy.

The story is something of a swan song for Dunsany's early style, a unique sort of pseudo-Biblical prose which creates a real sense of fantasy. In some ways, it's the opposite of much modern fantasy. The story is relatively low on plot and action but very imaginative, with a very playful sense.


45. The Great God Pan and The Hill of Dreams by Arthur Machen

In retrospect, this is a bit of a strange book, not because there is anything particularly strange about either work, but because they would not be the most intuitive of Machen's works to print together.

The Great God Pan is Machen's first published story. It begins with the story of a young woman who is subject to an experiment that allows her to pierce the veil and experience reality directly. The result drives her insane. Later chapters in the tale follow first the story of a girl adopted by a rural family who seems to cause the madness or death of two young playmates, and later the trail of some prominent gentlemen and their mysterious suicides. Very popular in its time and fairly influential, but the story is a little bit dated. A little too Victorian in its approach, the story sometimes reads as a shocked reaction to sex.

The Hill of Dreams is a different matter altogether. Machen's style is rather improved in this novel, surreal and dream-like that matches the theme of the novel. The novel is an autobiographical account of an aspiring author who seeks to capture a certain numinous quality in his writing and poetry. Much centers around his childhood home and the nearby Roman ruins, which fire up his imagination and inspire that sense of mystery he seeks to express. He finds himself at odds with society and draws away as he delves more deeply into his work. It's a fairly moving work with an ambiguous ending. The Introduction to this story is also quite good, and manages to be both funny and somewhat heart-wrenching. (Machen lays out the creative process in all of its frustrating grind.)


46. The Weird Tale by S.T. Joshi

Lovecraft scholar S.T. Joshi's work regarding Arthur Machen, Lord Dunsany, Algernon Blackwood, M. R. James, Ambrose Bierce and H. P. Lovecraft whose work overall spans teh end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th. In the introduction, Joshi lays out an interest premise (and one of the rationales for the volume): that the weird tale of this era exists not as a genre but as an expression of a world view. It's an interesting premise, but when one gets into the individual chapters it doesn't hold up. Joshi is on strongest ground when dealing with Machen, Blackwood, and Lovecraft, all of whose works prominently feature their particular philosophy. A little less so with Dunsany, and much less so with James and Bierce.

It's an interesting look at these classic authors of weird fiction and their work. Joshi is still somewhat in Lovecraft scholar mode, leaving HPL until last and devoting more pages to his fiction and its particular world view than he does to that of any other author. I did actually wonder if Joshi had selected authors whose work was most influential on Lovecraft instead of those who best followed up on that proposition of the weird tale as the expression of a particular weltanschauung. Occasionally, Joshi's own bias for what he thinks a piece of fiction should do causes him to stumble, but he's overall a pretty interesting critic, especially since he's delving into a variety of fiction often overlooked.


47. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys

After reading Jane Eyre, it turned into something of a foregone conclusion that I'd eventually get around to Rhys' portrayal of the first Mrs. Rochester. Though connected to Eyre, it's overall a very different novel. The style struck me as somewhere between flashback and stream-of-consciousness, as of the characters looking back on events that have haunted their lives, but not as in Eyre having the power to craft them into a narrative of redemption.

The story begins with Antoinette's life in the Jamaican estate of Coulibri, which has fallen into financial ruin after the emancipation of the slaves. Antoinette lives with her widowed mother and invalid brother, cut off from society with the former slaves of the island often hostile. Her mother remarries, but after tragedy strikes, the family flees Coulibri, Antoinette is sent to a boarding school and her mother suffers a nervous breakdown.

The marriage of Antoinette and the unnamed Rochester takes up most of the middle section, and it is one fraught with the inability of characters to perceive, to communicate. Truth seems to be always in play, subject to (mis)interpretation or willful forgetting. Jane Eyre intelligently deploys its Gothic tropes, but Wide Sargasso Sea represent something more akin to a colonial Gothic, one in which the lines of entrapment cannot be so easily traced.


48. The Lurker at the Threshold by August Derleth

The Lurker at the Threshold, like the stories in The Watchers Out of Time, is a “posthumous collaboration” with Lovecraft, this time as a novella or short novel. Derleth gets a little more ambitious with the story structure, breaking it up into three distinct narratives. Thematically, the story falls back into the man inherits property which is connected with bad juju plot that Derleth seems to rely so much on in Watchers.

The first third of the novel is a third person account of the arrival of Ambrose Dewart to the old Billington home in Massachusetts, which belonged to an ancestor of his. The action here builds slowly, as Ambrose begins to explore his surroundings, including some curious features of the house, the nearby town of Dunwich, and some suggestive old documents that the previous inhabitant left behind. Despite some occasionally awkward writing, it’s a pretty enjoyable section which captures that Lovecraftian feel of discovering a horror along with the protagonist. Soon Stephen is having strange dreams and finding evidence that he may be sleep walking. This freaks him out enough that he decides to write to his cousin.

The second section shifts the POV to Ambrose’s cousin, Stephen, who narrates in first person. There’s not much point to this, since Stephen’s first person narrative sounds almost exactly like the narrow third-person perspective of the first section. Stephen goes over some of the same research as Ambrose, and also observes his cousin’s increasingly erratic behavior. Soon, even more disturbing hints and sights come to his attention. Things come to such a point that he decides to consult an acquaintance at Miskatonic University.

Stephen’s contact with Miskatonic to call in the cavalry makes up the third section, which is also told in first person. This time the narrator is Winfield Phillips, junior professor and colleague of Seneca Lapham, who will serve as this story’s Armitage. This section reveals one of Derleth’s major flaws as a Mythos writer, his penchant for pointless expository dialogue. A large part of this section is taken up by a conversation between Phillips and Lapham in which the latter goes on, in the most long-winded, pompous terms about how the particular mystery of Chez Billington ties into the larger history of Elder Gods and Great Old Ones. This kills whatever sense of suspense or momentum the story has built up so far. After too many pages of this tedious exposition, the story reaches a very anti-climactic climax and then just sort of peters off. In what comes off as desperation, Derleth throws in one final italicized paragraph in which Phillips describes some of the horrors he has just witnessed.

Lurker features both the best and worst of Derleth’s efforts to write a Lovecraft story. The early section goes a long way towards portraying the horror to be found in piecing together disassociated knowledge. But as the story progresses, Derleth abandons this approach in order to lay out the Great Old Ones vs. Elder Gods mythology in all of its detail. The shift of point of view, while an interesting effort, detracts from the story. As our first POV characters (first Ambrose, then Stephen) begin to draw close enough to the truth for things to get interesting, the point of view shifts. Derleth may have been going for something like HPL’s Call of Cthulhu, but the effort comes nowhere close. An interesting effort but largely a failure as a horror story.


49. The Cipher by Kathe Koja

It’s sometimes tempting to take a shortcut with describing things. I could describe this novel as “Thomas Ligotti suffering from heroine withdrawal” or “Chuck Palahniuk minus literary pretense or factoid dumps,” but I’m not really sure I’d be doing it justice. To sum up, a failed poet and his on-again, off-again love interest discover a curious thing in the basement of his apartment building. It appears to be some form of hole, a strange dark spot which absorbs light. Strange phenomena are associated with it, and the would-be GF becomes obsessed with it. The hole begins to dominate the protagonist’s life, bringing in stranger and stranger people bound up with the local art scene. The Cipher is generally considered part of the splatterpunk movement, which sought to make horror fiction more gritty and urban. This one definitely qualifies. Along with the flop-house apartment where much of the action takes place, it has among the least sexy sex scenes I’ve ever read, making this a novel that sometimes feels as grimy as it does creepy. I confess that I liked it overall, in part because the book does manage a balance between the dismalness of its characters and the fantastic eeriness of its central conceit.


50. El Otro, El Mismo by Jorge Luis Borges

In the last year or so, I’ve started to make an effort to read more poetry. Though I feel I’m starting to get a better sense of poetry, I would still confess to being very much an unsophisticated reader of same. I say this by way of explaining why I will not be able to fully elaborate on what I like about Borges’ poetry. Nonetheless, I do like Borges’ poetry quite a bit. It’s often fairly philosophical in theme, dwelling on eternity or the elusive nature of selfhood, and Borges can even take a theme like the knife fighters of Buenos Aires and give it sort of a transcendent twist as he does in “El Tango” which, along with Astor Piazzolla’s production of same, should be considered a classic.


51. Obras: Cuentos I by Horacio Quiroga

Cuentos de amor de locura y de muerte, Cuentos de la selva, El salvaje, Anaconda, El desierto, Los Desterrados—per the introduction, these six collections of short stories (all gathered in this volume) are considered central to Quiroga’s legacy. Quiroga also wrote novels, poetry and commentary, but it’s the stories that have had the most impact and been the most influential. There’s certainly some great stories in this volume, though the feeling is sometimes a little hit and miss. The stories in Amor Locura y Muerte seem like among the strongest, though that may be because they come first and lay down a lot of the themes that Quiroga will come back to. One of the major themes running through many of the stories is the confrontation between man and nature. Among my favorites is “The Feathered Pillow,” a different sort of vampire tale. “Jungle” is more like a collection of children’s stories, told from the point of view of the animals. El salvaje, Anaconda and El desierto mix things up a little more, blending tales of wilderness survival with more experimental stories such as “Dorothy Phillips, my wife” which seems to prefigure Borges’ more sophisticated metafictions. I thought the last collection Los Desterrados (The Exiles) was pretty solid overall. It centers around the theme of men from Europe or from the cities trying to forge some measure of success in the jungle. Quiroga draws up some interesting characters to be at the center of these stories, and this blend of unique characters and their odd schemes in the middle of the wilderness was very strongly reminiscent of A Hundred Years of Solitude. (It’s one thing to read about Quiroga’s influence on the Latin Boom literature. It’s another to find it for oneself.)


52. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce

This year, I decided to revisit some classics that I had read (or attempted to read) for junior or senior high school and had found underwhelming. Though I had found Portrait largely dull as a high school senior, I had high hopes for it, in part because I had read that Joyce was an author that Borges thought highly of. If Borges thinks this guy’s all that, I figured, I should give him another shot. Sad to say, I continue to be underwhelmed. There were aspects of the novel that I liked. I can see how it traces Stephen’s development as a poet, from his early fascination with the sound of words to his later formation of an aesthetic theory as well as his poetic attempts to capture certain transcendent moments. It’s also interesting how the style shifts to match the character’s maturity, from the heightened stream of consciousness of his early childhood to the more sophisticated and poetic prose of his early manhood. Sadly, that means the middle sections fall somewhere in between, an awkward sort of adolescent prose given to too many overheated metaphors (“he felt as if his side were pierced by a rapier.”) Also, as far as modernist prose style is concerned, (and to paraphrase Royce da Five-Nine) Joyce ain’t that eye-brow raisin’ to me. I’ll take Hemingway’s minimalism or Faulkner’s Southern Gothic over Joyce’s prose. I won’t dispute that Joyce is important and influential—that would be a mug’s game—but I wonder if he’s been so influential that what seemed like innovation in 1920 looks tame nowadays.

You have been busy, Carlos! I am adding The King of Elfland's Daughter to the BlackHole. Thanks for the mention.

53. Alraune by Hanns Heinz Ewers - finished 6/30/10

Alraune is a plant, commonly known (at least in the English speaking world) as mandrake. Quite a bit of mythology surrounds the mandrake, such as that it grows where the semen of hanged men falls to the earth, screams terribly when it is dug up from the ground, and has powerful magical properties. Ewer's novel Alraune takes the old myth and gives it a 20th century twist.

In it, Professor Jakob ten Brinken, on a suggestion from his nephew, tries to breed a human alraune through artificially inseminating a prostitute with the sperm of an executed criminal. The young woman who results has a strange effect on those around her, bringing success but also much ruination to those who associate with her.

The novel actually takes a little while to get started, first playing as something of a satire of upper-class German society circa 1910. And while apparently inspired by Frankenstein, I found the novel strikingly reminiscent of Arthur Machen's The Great God Pan (whose publication precedes that of Alraune by about 20 years). Both feature a quasi-scientific experiment with a mythological twist (the scientist in Pan describes the purpose of his experiment as "seeing the Great God Pan") which result in the birth of a beautiful young woman who drives men to ruination and death.

(There's some interesting overlap among the two authors, Machen and Ewers, including their interest in occultism, which was apparently much deeper for Ewers.)

It's much less coy about sexual matters than Pan, though hardly explicit by contemporary standards. The phobia of female sexuality feels a little dated, but aside from that and the slowness of the beginning, it's a pretty good piece of weird fiction.


54. Horizonte de suceso by Willy G Bouillon - finished 6/30/10

Contemporary Argentine poetry. "Horizonte de suceso" translates as "Event Horizon," and there's often a strong scientific or astronomical element to the poems. Sort of a post-Borgesian approach, taking Borges' fascination with time and its flow a step further. It's free verse, but my sense of it is that it's quite good. Bouillon has apparently won some awards for his poetry and is also (nepotism warning) a family friend, which is how I came by this book. I also have another volume I'll have to check out some time.


55. Move Under Ground by Mamatas - finished 7/2/10

Jack Kerouac is in Big Sur when R´lyeh rises from the deep. The Great Old Ones are coming back, so Kerouac thinking the planet may need whatever dharmic firepower he can spare, sets out to stop them. This quest will take him to San Francisco, Denver, New York, and many points in between, during which he'll join forces with Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs and Neal Cassady. He's going to need the help, as the path to salvation is filled with those who have heard the call, beetlemen and mugwumps. (In an interesting inversion of Lovecraft, it's the average Joes and workday stiffs who are most susceptible to Cthulhu's influence.)

The Beats vs. The Great Old Ones seems like the kind of literary mashup that shouldn't work or would at least lose its charm in anything longer than a short story, so it's a pleasant surprise to see how well it works. The crazy energy of Kerouac's writing feels right at home with the end of the world, while capturing both Kerouac's spiritual hunger and his growing world-weariness. Nick Mamatas pulls off a fun, pulpy story with quite a bit of soul.


56. Pastoralia by George Saunders - finished 7/6/10

Hillarious, often twisted stories of modern life, populated by characters whose struggles are often as tragic as they are amusing. In the title story, the narrator attempts to cling to his job pretending to be a caveman in an odd theme park. Other stories follow a disturbed little boy as his plan for revenge goes horribly wrong, a male stripper whose life is upended when his dead aunt comes back from the grave, and other characters


57. Fungi from Yuggoth by H. P. Lovecraft - finished 7/19/10

This little volume (edited by August Derleth) brings together a sampling of H.P. Lovecraft's better poetry. While I've often heard the opinion that Lovecraft's poetry is quite poor, reading this gave me the impression that's not an entirely fair. If there's one weakness to HPL's poetry, it's his archaism. This is especially true of the earlier works, where Lovecraft indulges his most Edwardian inclinations. The later poetry, beginning with The Ancient Track, while still somewhat old fashioned in style captures a pleasant weird vibe. Especially worthwhile is "The Fungi From Yuggoth," which features thirty-six different sonnets. Some are little scary stories in their own right, while others aim more for the sense of the numinous that often accompanies the horrible in HPL's fiction. While Lovecraft is arguably not the best weird poet of his era--that title would probably go to Clark Ashton Smith--I would argue he's worth reading for anyone in seeing this curious overlap betwixt the poetic and the uncanny.


58. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne - finished 7/23/10

My impression of Hawthorne, this being the second of his books I've finished, is that his style initially feels impenetrable but as one becomes accustomed to it, it becomes quite engaging. That was my experience with The House of the Seven Gables, which at first I found hard going but then ended up really enjoying, and it was my experience with The Scarlet Letter. At first, I found myself thinking that the only reason this book is taught to high school students is to impress them with the fact that there was a time that making the sexy before marriage could land you in a mess of hot water. As with H7G, though, by the end of the novel, I found myself very much caught up with the characters and their struggle. This was worth revisiting, and I look forward to checking out Hawthorne’s short stories, sitting on Mt. TBR somewhere.

The Scarlet Letter is one of my all-time favorite books. I am glad that you think it is one worth revisiting, Carlos.

59. Adan Buenosayres by Leopoldo Marechal

I confess that, looking at that cover now, I find myself wondering if anyone suggested the book would sell better if they opted for a picture of the author in his prime. Perhaps Marechal's aged visage is as iconic in Argentina as Borges'.

Adán Buenosayres is Marechal's own spin on Joyce's Ulysses, except that it also attempts to echo the book of Genesis (Adán is Spanish for Adam) through a seven-part structure, with the seventh part (or day) serving as a parodic transferral of Dante's Inferno. Oh, and it feature's a group of seven friends based on then-contemporary authors, who while perhaps not entirely "loco" are peculiar enough to suggest a connection with Roberto Arlt.

Got that?

I do not know if I could render much of a review, since what I've described so far only scratches the surface of this almost encyclopedic foray into Argentine culture and history.


60. No Place for Heroes by Laura Restrepo

This was an Early Reviewer novel, and though I was attempting to restrict the Cien años de senderos que bifurcan category to works in Spanish, it's a novel from a Colombian author about two Colombians (a mother and a son) in Argentina, so it definitely belongs on there. (I did consider reading the original, untranslated work, but my library did not have a copy.)

The mother is an ex-Trostkyite who lived in Buenos Aires for several years during the Dirty War, where she fell in love with and married the man who became the boy's father. After the son's birth, the fear of being hauled away proves too great and the family flees back to Colombia. There the marriage fell apart, and the couple separated. The boy grew up without the father, and so they have come back to Argentina to find him.

It's a potentially rich concept, and the execution provides some very interesting themes and moments, but it has its flaws. On the positive side, it's an interesting look at the way narrative is part of how we make sense of our lives. The mother spends a good part of the time telling the boy the story of how he and his father met, fell in love, then came apart. This provides opportunity for a degree of back and forth between them on how the story is told, what facts are important, how is the narrative being dressed up, etc.

However, the novel sometimes feels a little false. The son, in particular, spoke in a way that didn't seem very plausible for an 18-year-old. Also, Restrepo sometimes attempts to underline her themes in ways that felt heavy-handed. One of the back cover blurbs compares the novel to Kiss of the Spider Woman or Waiting for Godot, but it lacks either of those works' confidence in letting the dialogue speak for itself without having to lay everything out for us.

Overall, an interesting novel, but not quite as satisfying as it could be.


61. Lovecraft: A Biography by L. Sprague De Camp

August Derleth was apparently working for a long time on a Lovecraft biography but died before he was able to write it. So, it ended up that de Camp's became the first complete biography of H. P. Lovecraft ever published. Though it has since been superseded by S. T. Joshi's Lovecraft: A Life, I still couldn't resist picking it up when I found it in a used bookstore.

I can't speak to the degree which Joshi's version fills in the gaps left by de Camp's, but overall it feels like a pretty substantial account of Lovecraft's life, from his family background to his final days. Some of the psychology is somewhat outdated--I can't imagine that the word "schizoid" is still in current use as actual jargon among psychologists, and de Camp's discussion of homosexuality may have been accepted theory 40 years ago but would not pass muster today--and de Camp spends too much time apologizing for HPL's politically incorrect views (though it is a subject that would have to be dealt with in any serious treatment of the subject).

The largest flaw, however, would have to be de Camp's frequent editorializing about how Lovecraft should have lived his life. It'd be a bit like reading a bio of Vincent van Gogh in which the author described how the artist could have marketed himself better, how he should have drunk less absinthe, etc. I understand that de Camp is the sort of author who had to work had to make a living given his degree of talent, so it must pain him to see somebody with Lovecraft's talents not using them more effectively. Still, that sort of commentary is wholly unnecessary.

Overall, though, I really enjoyed it. I was a little surprised by how likable Lovecraft was. Perhaps I shouldn't have been, since I know his reputation as a recluse is mainly due to a large amount of exaggeration. Still, the impression of Lovecraft is of someone who is a little eccentric but still really interesting to be around. When I got to 1936, I actually got this feeling of, "Oh, no, he's going to die soon," as if he were a really fascinating character in a novel, and knowing his demise was coming up just seemed too tragic. Admittedly, Lovecraft was a fascinating personality and a fiction writer who could capture half of that complexity would have a great character on his hands.


62. Lovecraft by Hans Rodionoff - finished 8/13/10

I picked this up as soon as I finished with the de Camp bio. It's a graphic novel of a fictionalized version of Lovecraft's life. In this work, it turns out that all of the frightening supernatural stuff that Lovecraft wrote about (the Necronomicon, the Great Old Ones, Wilbur Whateley, Brown Jenkin, etc.) was based on reality. It's not a terribly original concept, though fairly ripe with possibility. It'd be easy to dwell on everything that Rodionoff gets wrong about HPL's life. However, given how many scenes and quotes seem to be taken directly from de Camp's biography, I don't think these are errors so much as intentional playfulness.

The art is by Enrique Breccia, an Argentine artist whose father also took part in a Lovecraftian graphic novel (but more on that later), and he does a pretty good job of balancing the bucolic scenes with the nightmare imagery.

Overall, I enjoyed it, but I do think it has a couple of flaws. After reading the de Camp bio, I was disappointed by how dull the character of Lovecraft came off here. Lovecraft in this book is a rather somber figure, lacking much in the way of charm or a sense of humour. If you're going to turn Lovecraft into an action hero, some pithy sendoffs would not be a bad idea. (Though what HPL's version of "Yippee ki yay, motherfucker" would be, I couldn't say.)

Also, the story seems a little brief. I've read it was originally based on a screenplay, so that may have something to do with it. Still, considering the amount of material available, both from Lovecraft's real life and his fiction, it feels a little rushed, especially near the end.


63. Junk Fiction: America's Obsession with Bestsellers by S. T. Joshi

Joshi is mainly known for his work in Lovecraft scholarship, but he does wear other hats. I rather like his literary criticism, however flawed it can be. Seeing how he's a self-described elitist, a book like this, where he decides to read bestselling books from various genres, such as romance, horror, suspense, mystery, etc., has a certain questionable quality to it. Is this just an excuse to point his finger and mock some bestsellers or is there a real attempt to see what about the material makes these books commercially or even artistically successful?

Well, your mileage may vary on this one, but overall I found it an interesting book. As someone whose experience reading a Dan Brown book Angels and Demons was mostly mild irritation, followed (in the last fourth or fifth) somewhat delirious giggling as the silliness of it all got to me, I'm perhaps a little predisposed to Joshi's brand of elitism. Of all the books that he had read and commented on, I was only familiar with two (Patrica Cornwell's Black Notice and Brown's DaVinci Code, which I know mostly through the movie), and I got the impression he gave those works a pretty fair shake. (I think I would actually have been harsher with both works. Though Black Notice was pretty entertaining overall, it did not leave me tempted to seek out further Cornwell.)

I think Joshi does have blind spots that weaken some of his criticism. (Among Lovecraft fans, Joshi's dislike for "The Dunwich Horror" seems to have taken on the status of a running joke.) I'm not going to defend Dean Koontz' fiction, but I think comparing The Taking's Christian bent with the moral relativity of Lovecraft's "The Colour Out of Space" tells us more about Joshi's dislike of religion than the merits of Koontz' works.

Additionally, his commentary on Stephen King continues what would appear to be some sort of vendetta against the latter. I think Joshi's criticism of King's use of supernatural elements is mostly correct. Though I haven't read the novel in question, Bag of Bones, Joshi's criticisms reflected my own frustrations with the supernatural elements of Duma Key. However, I think Joshi gives too little consideration for the effectiveness of King's prose style and approach to character (whatever his weaknesses in those two realms).

Overall, I thought this was an entertaining and informative work, and would recommend it to anyone not afraid to let themselves be tagged by the E-word.


64. Wieland: Or The Transformation: With Memoirs Of Carwin The Biloquist by Charles Brockden Brown

The book, overall, was a little bit of a disappointment, though the prologue did allow me to lower my expectations sufficiently. I think there were some good ideas in here, but also some major flaws. In terms of good ideas, I liked that the author realized that writing a Gothic set in America meant more than just placing the same old elements in an American setting. Instead he picks up some interesting elements such as religious fanaticism, spontaneous combustion and ventriloquism. (Okay, that last part probably played a little better when the novel originally came out.) The book is not afraid to delve into some really dark territory.

In terms of the flaws, well, the biggest one is that apparently Brown did not believe in revisions. (No, really, that's what the intro claimed.) The story sometimes has a feel of being made up as its going along, with red herrings, extraneous characters, and a plot that often feels directionless. There's actually a whole subplot about one of the main characters, which Brown decided to spin off into a separate tale, but then he never got around to finishing that either. Oh, some of the seemingly supernatural events get explained away at the end Ann Radcliffe-like in a way that struck me as almost as unlikely as the supernatural could have been.

I was a little put off when the intro mentioned that Brown felt that all fiction had to have a clear moral. In order to reiterate the moral, the novel spends the last 30 or so pages bringing up a barely mentioned subplot which reinforces the moral of the main plot, and then the last few pages outlining the lessons of these two stories. It was just sort of clunky and heavy-handed.

Enjoyable, but I really couldn't recommend it to anyone who wasn't already fascinated with old Gothic novels. Even among that crowd, I would say this ranks below Vathek, The Monk, or Melmoth the Wanderer.


65. Julia by Peter Straub

Straub's first horror novel leans heavily on the two Jameses (not to be confused with The Two Jakes), combining Henry's theme of the naive American in over his/her head among corrupt Europeans with M.R.'s vengeful and sometimes all too physical spirits.

The title character is the American in question, who has left her domineering husband after the death of their daughter. During the process of settling into the large, old house she purchased on a whim, she spots a little girl who reminds her of her own lost child. This is only the first of a series of strange events which make Julia aware that something has taken an interest in her and which prompts her to investigate the history of the house.

This is the fourth Straub book I've read and while the style and some of the themes are familiar, I liked the more compact, intimate way it's structured. It makes for a more atmospheric and focused experience.


66. Los mitos de Cthulhu by H. P. Lovecraft

When Enrique Breccia inked Lovecraft, he was somewhat following in the footsteps of his father, Alberto Breccia, who like Horacio Quiroga was a Uruguary-born Argentine. The elder Breccia was a groundbreaking comics artist, responsible for comics such as Mort Cinder and El Eternauta, which I have not read but am now intrigued to look into.

Breccia's visual adaptations are quite striking, though I lack the vocabulary to discuss them in much detail. I'm going to scan and upload some images, but am not sure when I'll get around to that.


67. The Cthulhu Cult: A Novel of Lovecraftian Obsession by Rick Dakan

I have to admit that one big motivator in reading this novel was that I was able to download it for free from Stanza. Interestingly enough, most of the action is set in Sarasota, where I spent five years earning a Bachelor's Degree. (At New College, which is mentioned in the book.)

The action revolves around two child hood friends: the narrator, Rick, and his best friend, Conrad. Another childhood friend, Shelby, comes to town after having been chased out over an orgy gone awry. He brings with him an exotic girlfriend and vague but oddly sounding plans related to H.P. Lovecraft, and for which he enlists the aid of the two friends.

As the two learn more about Shelby's plans, their questions only begin to multiply. How are he and his girlfriend funding the purchase of property and rare documents? Is Shelby really the materialist he claims or has he crossed over into believing in HPL's Great Old Ones? Is Shelby calling the shots or is the mysterious Kym he met in Providence? When a fourth childhood friend falls into the hands of the cult, Conrad and Rick decide to finally penetrate the cult's secrets.

It makes for an entertaining and thought-provoking journey into paranoia, philosophy and how things can spin out of control. I can't say whether a non-Lovecraft fan would enjoy it to the same extent, but Dakan's novel of Lovecraftian obsession brings a unique approach to the realms of fiction inspired by the Old Gent.

I am definitely not an elitist when it comes to my reading - I will try just about anything with the exception of horror (too active an imagination), but the Joshi book looks interesting to me, so I will give it a try. Thanks for the review, Carlos.

One of the things I like about Joshi is that he is a reader/critic of genre fiction, so he's pretty open to fiction that falls outside the traditional definition of "literature" while still being willing to make judgement calls about what constitutes good writing.

I forgot to mention in my write-up that Joshi does point out what he considers writers of merit in each genre. I don't recall all of them, but I'm sure he recommends Patricia Highsmith, Raymond Chandler and Ed McBain as good crime fiction.

#55: Nice to know that Joshi does not just trash all of the writer's work, that he does actually list writers he thinks of as good ones.

68. Las caras y las mascaras by Eduardo Galeano

The second of Galeano's "Memory of Fire" trilogy, this one covering the 18th and 19th centuries. Galeano describes the sweeping events of history as a series of small vignettes, often concentrating on specific people or events from the era. Even having read the first book, it is still sometimes something of a shock at how effectively these moments not only provide a sense of what the time was like but also capture the historic forces at work. This is in some ways a more depressing than the first, as attempts to reform the social structures of the New World are consistently co-opted or suppressed.


69. Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake

Herein continues the saga of Titus Groan, the titular hero who was only a few years old at the end of the previous novel. While this one didn't have as much in the way of delightful surprise, it was a joy to return to the world of Mervyn Peake. I love his language, his descriptions, and the way he creates characters that manage to be almost cartoonish grotesques yet have a real core of humanity. The novel climaxes with a tense showdown in a flooded section of Castle Gormenghast, which manages to be a real page turner. It is such a shame Peake died after having mostly completed only one more novel in this series, but I look forward to reading Titus Alone (probably next year).


70. The Dark Domain by Stefan Grabinski

Grabinski was an early 20th century writer of horror fiction. He was something of an eccentric and apparently falls somewhat into the Blackwood/Meyrink camp of weird fiction authors who were into alternate cosmologies. Though none of these stories get into the realm of Lovecraft-like cosmic vision, he does share the approach of trying to contemporize the Gothic. Trains feature in several of his stories as totems of the power and strangeness of the new age, and some delve into more abstract forces, such as time and fire. I think his approach to sex was probably relatively straightforward for its time (say, if you were to compare his fiction with that of Machen or Lovecraft), but now is pretty tame.

A couple of stories that stand out as among my favorites in this collection: "The Area" is a tale of a neurotic author (shades of self-portrait) who gives up writing in order to seek alternate, less obvious modes of creation, and ends up bringing to life that which should have been left alone. "Saturnin Spektor" involves a man who is developing an esoteric model of time, but who finds he has an intellectual adversary who mocks those theories in the city's newspaper. It's a variation on the tale of the doppelgänger, crossed with the changing perceptions of time. (Though it didn't quite take the leap into Einsteinian space-time that I thought it might.)


Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk

Because I did not finish Haunted, I'm going to go ahead and throw it up here but not count it. I confess I feel no shame in having bailed on this one, in part because it was a reread and in part because, well, the part I gave up on really stunk.

Haunted bills itself as a "Novel of Stories," and has a superficially interesting structure. The overall arc of the book is of 19 people trapped in an old theater, each of them telling their stories, often with a "poem" introducing the characters. (Poem is in scare quotes, because Palahniuk is of the "it's a poem because the format is funny" school of poetry. Sorry, but there's a difference between free verse and simply playing around with formatting in Word.)

Inspired by Julio Cortázar, I decided I'd read the book in whatever order I saw fit. So, I ripped through all the "poetry" in a couple of sittings, then moved on to the stories. The stories are overall pretty good. Palahniuk is definitely digging into the gruesome or extreme, so they're not for everybody. There are a couple of duds and a few stories that start strong and sort of go off the rails (or just don't go anywhere), but I could see recommending them to someone into horror or transgressive fiction.

After reading the stories, I went back to the novella/framing narrative, and made it through several chapters of that before I had to give up. It's pretty terrible, lazily written, gratuitously gross and slow. I get into a little more detail in my review.


71. The Sundial by Shirley Jackson

That's not the real cover for the version of The Sundial that I read. I read the library's version, which has a plain hard cover. So, I just picked out the one I like best from the ones people uploaded.

The Sundial is one of Jackson's lesser-known works, so I expected it to be sort of a let-down after the brilliant We Have Always Lived in the Castle. I admit it's not quite as unnerving, but this is still brilliant fiction, the kind that just sort of makes you marvel.

In The Sundial, twelve characters wait for the end of the world in an old house, which is supposed to keep them safe until they can stride out into the new Eden. The characters are varied. Some have blood ties to the builder of the house, others seem to arrive by accident. The novel isn't so much about the end of the world (which appears imminent at the end of the novel, though even then it is left ambiguous) or even the preparations (though those are touched on) but with the way this prophecy and the end of the world changes the dynamics between the characters, exposing their petty ambitions and vanities, the fissures of class, gender and age.

The novel maintains sort of a quietly weird atmosphere, compounded by the eccentricities of the characters. The tension builds almost imperceptibly, sometimes broken by moments of humor (especially one brilliant scene where the matriarch of the house meets with a Heaven's Gate-style cult who are also planning for the end of the world) and heightened by confrontations.

As with much of Jackson's work, it can often seem that what's going on at the surface is trivial, yet over the whole narrative one gets the sense that there is some greater, potentially deadly struggle going on beneath the light banter. Her stories sometimes recall Kafka-style paranoia but they are deeply grounded in domesticity, in a way taking the Gothic duality of "house" as building and "house" as family/line and placing it squarely within contemporary notions of home and family. It's a captivating achievement that only a loopy genius could achieve.


72. Viaje Olvidado by Silvina Ocampo

I was going to start with an analogy about Argentine fiction as the Superfriends, with Borges as Superman, Bioy Casares as Batman, and Silvina Ocampo as Wonder Woman. Then I realized the whole thing didn't make a lick of sense. ("Man, there ain't no blind Superman, man.")

This was Ocampo's first published books, a collection of very short stories set in various locations in Argentina. Childhood is a frequent subject, often told from the point of view of the children within, and Ocampo captures a certain amount of the mystery and confusion of being a child especially in the ways adults fail to communicate with them when things go wrong. Other stories concern every day life in the cities of Argentina, though sometimes with a peculiar twist. Since this was published in 1937, I'm not sure where it fits into the "magical realism" tradition, but there is sometimes a sense of a coexistence of realistic and fantastic elements.

Overall, I thought these were quite good, sometimes sort of tragic, with some interesting characters, and a sort of sense of the magical about them.


73. The Painted Darkness by Brian James Freeman

I received this novella as part of LT's Early Reviewer's program, knowing little about it except that it involved a painter whose paintings feature dark themes associated with something that happened to him, which he himself does not remember but that there appears to be some hint of the supernatural about it. The story is told along two tracks, each covering one wintry day in the life of the painter.

In the present day, he is alone in the isolated farmhouse that he lives in with his wife and child. He is trying to paint, though he finds it difficult. The other track is a flashback to a different snowy day when the painter was a young boy and the experience that he had which changed him. Since it's such a short work, I can't really get much farther into it without getting into spoilers.

Overall, I liked the story. I thought it was fairly well told, with some moments that were spooky. I approached it as a horror story, but despite those few moments, I didn't find it all that scary. I'd say it's more of a modern dark fairy tale. I could see recommending this to someone who doesn't normally read horror.


74. Cuentos Completos 2 by Julio Cortázar

The first volume in this series--Cuentos Completos 1--is easily one of my favorite books, which I would rank alongside Borges' Ficciones and Arlt's El jorobadito as exemplars of the Argentine short story (or, heck, short stories in general). The second volume shows Cortázar stretching somewhat from his earlier work, starting with the book of Cronopios y Famas, which tend towards the experimental and abstract to an almost Borgesian extent. The books that follow show Cortázar refining his surrealist/stream-of-consciousness style, often to good use.

Overall, I have to admit I didn't enjoy this volume as I did the first. I confess, though, that the fault may be mine more than Cortázar's. The stories are just more challenging than those of his earlier works, the memorable elements that gave stories such as "Axolotl" and "Casa tomada" such a kick seem more subdued or concealed. There's still some real gems in this volume, both of the realistic and fantastic varieties, and I think Cortázar's willingness to keep pushing himself as a writer is admirable. For now, I'll just leave it that I preferred the first volume, but hopefully when I get a chance to revisit this one, I might reconsider that.

I have really got to get to Titus Groan. I bought it a while ago but still have not read it yet. Thanks for the reminder, Carlos.

I would like to read Galeano's Memory of Fire trilogy, and I'll look for Genesis, the first part of the trilogy, this weekend. I'll have to see if there is an English equivalent of Cuentos Completos 1; I've read Historias de cronopios y de famas (Cronopios and Famas) and Todos los fuegos el fuego (All Fires the Fire and Other Stories), but I don't think I've read the other sections.

#59 - Sadly, there don't appear to be any English-language collections of Cortazar's short stories. I think a good selection of his earliest stories can be found in Blow-Up and Other Stories.


75. Rayuela by Julio Cortázar - finished 10/5/10

I started Rayuela as something of a skeptic. Though I'm a huge Cortázar fan and have a high tolerance for pomo antics, I'd heard from some people that this novel is just hard to take, in part because the characters are pretty unlikeable. Also, I'd already picked it up once or twice, read a chapter or two, and felt really lost. But I decided to just jump for it, even deciding that I was going to read it the more difficult way and keep going until the book got good or frustration sent in.

A quick note on the book, in case any of the above was confusing. Rayuela is written in 155 chapters, separated into three different sections. The reader is presented with two different ways of reading this novel. He or she can opt to start on chapter 1 and then read until chapter 56 (reading only the first two sections). These encompass the major events of the novel, told in consecutive order. Alternatively, the reader can choose to "hopscotch," jumping around among the 155 chapters in a scheme outlined on the introduction page. Some chapters in the third section are just a few lines, a quote from a poem, a song, a secondary character, an encyclopedia entry, etc.

In the hands of a less masterful author, the whole thing would be a frustrating mess, and I confess that it did take me several chapters to really get into the story. The writing, as can be expected from Cortázar, is simply brilliant and the depth of the novel simply moving on many levels. Yes, the main character, Horacio Oliveira, an Argentine Bohemian living in Paris, is not the most sympathetic or heroic of figures. He reminded me quite a bit of Jack Kerouac: intelligent and sensitive, frustrating in his sense of detachment to life and people, and yet someone whose spiritual hunger is all too real to dismiss.

Rayuela is very much not a book for someone looking for an easy read. As with much of Cortázar's fiction, it sometimes feels like an attempt to plumb the farthest reaches of consciousness or reality using the tools of fiction, something that can make it deeply unsettling, confusing, moving, even sublime, depending on the reader's interaction with the story.

There was a moment after I really got into the story, when I found myself thinking that reading it straight versus reading it hopscotch-style didn't just result in two different approaches to the same book, but in fact yielded two different books with quite different meanings. Then I had to ask myself, what if I came up with a completely different approach, say reading all of the even numbered chapters first, or reading it all from chapter 155 to chapter 1. How many different novels were contained in this one book? It's probably an unanswerable question, but it is that ability to get you thinking along those lines that represents part of what can be so exciting about reading Cortázar.


76. El milagro y otros cuentos by Enrique Anderson Imbert - finished 10/9/10

Because Enrique Anderson Imbert occupies a somewhat similar space as Cortázar, of fiction with a high degree of philosophical content, it could have been a let down to follow up the latter with the former. However, Anderson Imbert's style and approach is different enough that I found them quite enjoyable. One strong characteristic of AI's stories is an element of irony, along the lines of O. Henry or Max Beerbohm.

The introduction has this passage I found quite interesting:

The Grimoire--a key work in Anderson's fiction--particularly exemplifies the narrative of an unexpected change in the elements or natural laws which shows mankind at the mercy of an overwhelming process in which, far from being central, mankind is revealed to be a mere accident, an invention of Nature.

Which intriguingly puts Anderson Imbert's fiction somewhat along similar lines as Lovecraft's. Lest I give that impression, however, the striking difference is that where Lovecraft tends to emphasize horror and dread, Anderson Imbert emphasizes the ironic or humorous element. I would say some of the stories have enough of a freaky element to qualify as "weird fiction."

The stories are all relatively short, some brief enough to count as flash fiction or prose poetry. There's a pretty good handling of philosophical themes, perhaps not quite as mind bending as in the works of Borges or Cortázar, but with intelligence and a sense of humor. Come to think of it, this was a nice relief after Rayuela, not nearly as heavy, but not fluffy either.

77. Vestigios by Marcelo G. Urbano

I wouldn't call Vestigios a weird novel--there's nothing all that baffling or surreal about it in terms of structure or language--but it certainly is peculiar. Though its publication year of 2007 and its themes of secret societies and hidden texts suggests that the success of DaVinci Code may have helped it find its way to a printer, it doesn't read anything like a DaVinci knockoff.

First of all, no Templars. The hidden cult is made up of alchemists and is called Alethia, which is Greek for "the way of truth." I'm not sure if there's any historical basis for it, or if Urbano just made it up. Second, nobody is interested whether Jesus had kids, was a human being, traveled to America or built the Pyramids. Lastly, it's not written like a thriller. Thrillers tend to go with short chapters, lots of cliff-hangers, anything to keep the pages turning. The action here jumps around so much, from the 1589 to 1805 to 1975 to 1986, that you don't get that same level of suspense. Overall, I'm not sure what sort of genre you could peg this novel into, and perhaps that question isn't really that useful.

The story concerns a book called the Gnosis Hermeticum, produced by a group of alchemists, then lost and sought after by various groups. The book is taken from Spain to Argentina, where it is again concealed or lost. Later, another alchemist, who has escaped Napoleonic France, arrives in Buenos Aires to seek it out. In 1975, an academic by the name of Ramon Biasutto finds evidence that the book exists, and in seeking it out ends up coming to the attention of Jose Lopez Rega, an astrologer and sort of Rasputin to Juan and Isabela Peron. In 1986, Ramon's son, Hector, investigates his father's disappearance and also ends up on the trail of the book.

It's an interesting work, and, I'd argue, quite Argentine in its own unique way. Though Argentina is a Catholic country, hermetical/mystic thinking has often found fertile ground. Leopoldo Lugones was the most important national(-ist) poet of his generation, but his Las Fuerzas Extrañas concludes with "Ensayo de una cosmogonia en diez lecciones," a rather lengthy account of the formation of the universe, which appears to have been heavily influenced by Theosophy. Arlt himself published an essay titled "The Occult Sciences in the City of Buenos Aires," and his Los Siete Locos featured a terrorist who called himself "The Astrologer." And then Lopez Rega, who actually published works on astrology and was dubbed "El Brujo." I wouldn't say that Urbano's intent here is to tap into the connections between occult and political power and violence, but it definitely seems an interesting undercurrent of the novel.

#61: Too bad it does not look as though that one has been translated yet. I would be interested in reading it. Thanks for the review, Carlos!

78. Respiración Artificial by Ricardo Piglia - finished 10/20/10

My first exposure to Ricardo Piglia was Nombre Falso (item #40 up above). One reason I reread that work is because I often found myself equally fascinated as befuddled while reading it, as if I could tell the author had something to say which my brain was not grasping in its entirety. Unsurprisingly, I found rereading it earlier this year to be a very rewarding experience, as the familiarity helped me better concentrate on what exactly the author was saying.

Similarly, my first thought upon finishing Respiración Artificial was, "That was great. I should read it again right now." As with other works in this category, I find myself feeling lost at first, trying to figure out what kind of story this is supposed to be. Respiración, like Novela del Museo de la Eterna or Rayuela, never really settles into a conventional narrative, but one "tunes in" to the unconventional form so that some degree of clarity can be perceived.

Respiración begins as the story of a young man who converts an old family story into a novel which earns him a small degree of literary acclaim. (The young man, Emilio Renzi, describes it as "using the tone Faulkner acquires when translated by Borges, by which means the tale sounded more or less like a parody of Onetti.") The story concerns the marriage of his uncle, a young lawyer, with a young woman of notable and wealthy family. The marriage ends rather abruptly, and shortly thereafter the uncle is sent to prison under allegations of having stolen from his ex. Based on the success of the book, the uncle, now well into middle age, contacts the narrator. They correspond a little, the young man describing his literary aspirations, and the uncle telling of his work regarding a man named Enrique Ossorio, who was a confidante of Juan Manuel Rosas, the 19th century strongman who was Argentina's first dictator.

The narrative fractures somewhat from here. The narrator, at the uncles request, visit's the father of his uncle's ex. Some of the story is taken up with a series of letters, some of them clearly Ossorio's, and somebody's notes (the uncle's? Emilio's?) about the potential for coded messages in those letters. Finally, the uncle invites Renzi out to his home in one of the provinces of Argentina, and the narrator makes his journey out there.

When he arrives, the uncle is gone, apparently gone on a trip, but Renzi meets up with Tardewski, an aged Polish academic who has lived in exile since the start of WWII. The last section of the narrative is largely taken up by their conversation on the very long night when they wait for the return of the uncle. This conversation is quite fascinating and even involves an intriguing fictional theory linking Hitler with Kafka.

Though I ended up deciding not to reread it, I did ponder the thought seriously for a little while, and it is likely I will be returning to this book next year.

79. Weird Tales (Vol. I) by E.T.A. Hoffmann - finished 10/23/10

E.T.A. Hoffmann was a German Gothic/Romantic writer whose work influenced Poe, Kafka, Dostoevsky, and others. There were several works and collections of his available as free e-books, and I chose this one because, well, the title fit with my Weird Tales category, and I hoped this collection would encompass the most macabre/eerie of the author's works.

There are some good works in here, such as the effectively creepy "The Sandman" and the rather melancholy "The Cremora Violin." "The Entail" also had an interesting supernatural element, but the story seemed a bit lacking overall. Other tales, such as "Signor Formica" and "Arthur's Hall," were entertaining but lacking much in the way of weirdness.

Weird Tales is divided into two volumes, and I was originally going to read both of them. However, after reading the first volume, I found the second one something of a chore. Hoffmann isn't a bad writer, but the stories often have these very archaic structures where they seem to spend the first third setting up the characters and history. This combined with a less-than-expected element of creepy elements finally made me give up on the second volume partway into the second story. I'll probably return to it at some point, but for the moment, it's nice to move on.


80. Usher's Passing by Robert McCammon - finished 10/27/10

Although the cover may look properly seasonal, there's really no Halloween connection to the book. What attracted me to Usher's Passing was the name. "The Fall of the House of Usher" was only the second Poe story I ever read ("The Tell-Tale Heart" being the first) and it made quite an impression on me. The description on the back describes the premise for the story as one where the Usher line has continued and grown prosperous, though still concealing dark secrets.

Generally, I think this kind of literary sequel or homage quite tricky. (See my comments on Barker's "The New Murders in the Rue Morgue" above, or my review of Mr.X in which Straub fails attempt at Lovecraft homage goes awry.) The first chapter of the novel starts things on a strong note, presenting a fascinatingly sinister picture of one of the Usher clan as he confronts Edgar Allan Poe over his writing of a story about the family. Poe swears he thought it was purely fiction, that perhaps he heard about them second-hand and subconsciously worked the family into a story he thought he had dreamed up.

It sets the tone well, making it clear that while connected to Poe's story, McCammon intends to make Usher's Passing his own story, his own take on the old Gothic tale of a doomed family line. From there, events leap forward to the present day. Rix Usher is called back to the family home near Asheville, North Carolina, by his father, Walen, who is dying from a hereditary terminal illness which enhances the senses of its victims. The family fortune extends back to the middle of the 19th century, when they got into the business of weapons manufacturing. Now, they possess a large estate in the mountains of North Carolina, dominated by a large, though unused, mansion they call The Lodge.

At home, Rix has to contend with his mother Margaret, who is in denial regarding her husband's impending demise: his arrogant brother Boone and his fading Southern Belle of a wife; and his sister Katt, who resents his abandonment of the family. Rix's latest novel has been rejected by his publisher, and his return inspires thoughts about writing the Usher family history. While delving into the old documents in the library, he begins to uncover secrets and mysteries of the family. Meanwhile, what do all the legends of an evil presence in the hills around the family estate mean, of the Pumpkin Man and his sinister feline companion Greediguts, who the locals blame for the disappearances of children in the area?

I especially liked how McCammon handled the Poe element. Poe's presence is certainly felt, from little story details to the climax of the book, but done with a light enough touch that it doesn't feel smothered by allusion. McCammon both captures the traditional Gothic feel of the doomed family and the sinister structure whose shadow may as well be the shadow of their own crimes, but gives it a decided modern and Southern twist. In fact, sometimes I was reminded of Faulkner, and those families which made their fortunes off the blood of slaves yet have gained the illusion of gentility thanks to their wealth and endurance.


81. Neverland by Douglas Clegg - finished 10/30/10

As I've mentioned before, there's some risk to reading similar works close together. Neverland also wraps its contemporary horror around a Southern Gothic tale, and it's also clever enough to steal from its literary predecessors without having to call attention to said borrowings. However, I found it to be a little bit of a comedown after Usher's Passing.

Neverland is told from the point of view of Beau, a 10-year old boy, on vacation with his family on the South Carolina peninsula known as Gull Island. Also on the island are his aunt, uncle and cousin, as well as his grandmother who lives there. Sumter, his cousin, is approximately the same age as Beau, but is the sort of kid that would likely get picked on in elementary school. He is withdrawn, yet bratty, often living in his own imagination, and still carries a teddy bear around.

He does claim to have made an important discovery in an old shed near the grandmother's house. He calls this realm "Neverland" and claims it is ruled over by Lucy, who he keeps in a crate and describes as a god. Soon, Beau and his two older sisters are drawn into increasingly sinister "games," led by Sumter.

Despite much that was done well, the novel didn't really capture me until it neared the climax. The way Sumter is written is a little off. He seems like he should be alternately creepy and pitiful, a weird little boy who lives largely in his own imagination. However, I just found him too irritating to be a very compelling character. Additionally, the middle section dragged somewhat. Sumter likes to talk a lot about Neverland and contrast it with the adult world of lies and disappointment, but this got a little too repetitive.

Overall, I enjoyed it and thought it was a pretty smart novel, despite its flaws.

#63: I wish Respiracion Artificial had been translated. It looks intriguing.

I'm pretty sure it's been translated. The translation is up on Google Books for preview.

#65: OK, thanks. I found another one of Piglia's books available (in English) for the Nook, so I downloaded it. Have you read his The Absent City?

#66 - I haven't read that one yet, but it is high on my list of his books to get around to.

#67: The blurb on the B&N page looked interesting so I went ahead and bought it since the other book was not available on the Nook. I hope the book proves as interesting as it sounds.

82. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier - finished 11/7/10

The Gothic is a curious category in fiction. It's historically linked to genre fiction (predominantly horror) without really qualifying as a genre itself. Its sometimes outlandish tropes can seem at odds with the sort of realism usually associated with "serious" literature, yet I would argue those tropes reflect real issues and concerns that it makes sense for literature to deal with. I suspect that Gothic fiction's liminal quality (its "neither fish nor fowl" nature) is one of the factors that makes me such as a big fan of it. It often feels like a back door into literature for me, a weird subterranean tunnel connecting two such dissimilar works as Wuthering Heights and Usher's Passing.

I can think of plenty of good reasons to recommend Rebecca, from its mystery and romance to its portrayal of the social mores of upper-crust Cornwall, but I may never have picked it up had I not seen it compared with Jane Eyre. Though they are imperfect, there are strong parallels in the story of the young woman who falls in love with a rich older man and after moving into the large palatial home, finds that the home and man hold certain secrets.

From the narrator's first description of her dreams of Manderlay (the palatial home), the story had me hooked. I'm fascinated by the way that houses figure in Gothic fictions, often creepily ambiguous in their nature of shelter versus prison. The English have a phrase to describe something secure: "safe as houses"; but Gothic houses (and mansions and castles) subvert that simple association. I was thinking recently about the current mortgage/foreclosure crisis, and how the bubble was inflated in part because so many believed that not only was purchasing a home a safe investment but even part of their patriotic duty, only to find, like the protagonists of Gothic tales, that a house is often a trap. (Sorry to go on a tangent there, but that's been kicking around in my head for a little while, and it finally had to come out.) Du Maurier paints Manderlay as a sort of lost paradise, an almost sublime realm across which a shadow has fallen.

The narrator of Rebecca is a young orphaned woman who meets Maxim de Winter while she is working in Monte Carlo as a wealthy lady's assistant/companion. Though they occupy much different social spheres, Maxim takes an immediate interest in her, and after only a few weeks together, he proposes marriage. After their honeymoon, the couple returns to the family home of Manderlay, where the narrator has to make the adjustment to being lady of the house. This is complicated by the history of the first Mrs. de Winter. Though dead for over a year, her presence hovers over the house. The new Mrs. de Winter is often reminded of how much more beautiful, intelligent and accomplished her predecessor was in conversation, while other conversations on the same subject (especially with Maxim) yield strange silences. Worst of all is Mrs. Danvers, who runs the house and makes little effort to hide the fact that she sees the narrator as an interloper. Du Maurier creates a very palpable sense of how the spirit of Rebecca haunts Manderlay, not supernaturally, but in the way the past can linger on in the present, distorting our ability to perceive and maneuver in the world in front of us.

Though I read it slowly at first, once the novel reached the last part, I was so engrossed in the action that I ended up reading in marathon sessions, finally staying up until 2:00 am to finish it. And to push past exhaustion through that tense final section to that ending (which I won't reveal), well, that is quite an experience!


83. Aquí Vivieron by Manuel Mujica Láinez - finished 11/15/10

One thing I've noticed while getting acquainted with Gothic literature is the way themes and elements mutate as they cross national/cultural boundaries, such as in the differences between American and English Gothic tales. This got me wondering about the Gothic in Argentine literature. There are already some suspects in this matter, since Edgar Allan Poe's influence includes key authors such as Horacio Quiroga, Leopoldo Lugones, and Jorge Luis Borges.

Still, it was not until about a third of the way into Aquí Vivieron that it occurred to me that Mujica Lainez has a marked Gothic sensibility. Though Aquí is a short-story collection, the stories are centered around a specific location--a home in the Buenos Aires suburb of San Isidro--and are strongly linked. The first story takes place in the 17th Century, telling of one slave's escape from the ship on which she has been held captive, and her encounter with the indigenous people of what will become Buenos Aires. From there, stories trace the development of the humble shack to a palatial estate, as it becomes home first to impoverished immigrants and later to a wealthy family. We follow the happenings in and around this house until it's final destruction in 1924.

The importance of the house is not the only Gothic element. The stories are often rather dark, the fates of the characters determined by secrets they've sought to conceal or divine. Tragedies that take place in the stories are sometimes alluded to in later stories, creating the impression of the past hanging over the present. (The stories are largely realistic, though there are a couple of moments when the supernatural appears to intrude.)

I'd previously read MML's Misteriosa Buenos Aires, which takes a similar approach, tracing the history of Buenos Aires over 350 years and 42 short stories. I think I actually liked this one better. The focus on a single location gives it a greater focus, so this actually feels a little like a novel.


84. Popular Hits of the Showa Era by Ryū Murakami - finished 11/17/10

This is my latest Early Reviewer novel, which I just finished this morning. This is the first book of Ryū Murakami's I've read. Ryū is sometimes referred to as "the other Murakami," since he shares a family name with murakami Haruki Murakami, who is better known internationally. (And of whose works I've read Dance Dance Dance and Kafka on the Shore.)

The novel takes its name from the time it takes place, which falls at the end of the Showa Era (1925-1989), probably in the '80s if I read the cultural/technological references correctly. Six aimless young men, most of them in their twenties, get together socially to drink and share snacks, sing karaoke and talk past each other, in a rather bizarre version of friendship. A chance encounter between one of the men and a divorcee in her mid-thirties ends in violence. The divorcee, too, has her circle of friends--all fellow divorcees of similar age--and soon they are plotting their revenge. This leads to a small gang war of sorts and escalating violence on both sides, with ever more extravagant weaponry being obtained and used.

It makes for a funny, dark tale of characters who exist just outside the mainstream of Japanese society. In their descent from simple alienation to criminal violence, the characters begin to learn more about themselves and each other. The novel reminds me in some ways of Roberto Arlt's Los siete locos and Los lanzallamas, making Ryū the Arlt to Haruki's Borges.

I love Rebecca. I am glad you enjoyed it, Carlos.

85. A Dreamer and A Visionary by S. T. Joshi - finished 11/22/10

Reading this made me even more interested in reading either H.P. Lovecraft: A Life or I Am Providence, in part because I'm curious to what extent the material in this volume overlaps with either of those. Though there is quite a bit on Lovecraft's thinking on matters social, political, cultural and otherwise, it does seem to me that there is still quite a bit taken up by the more traditional biography material. (I would totally have been okay if Joshi had delved a little deeper into Lovecraft's views on, say, his literary contemporaries.)

What I found most interesting is that this book appears to have been written almost with L. Sprague de Camp's in mind, calling a couple of his theories directly into question and also alluding to previous critics or biographers who found fault with Lovecraft in ways that Joshi feels are unjustified. (Despite the vagueness, it's pretty clear that Joshi has de Camp in mind.)

Enjoyable bio, which mostly achieves what Joshi sets out in the introduction, but not the most complete by a stretch.


86. Selected Poems, 1956 - 1968 by Leonard Cohen - finished 11/23/10

Not really sure how to sum this work up. Some I quite liked, while others left me cold. I guess when they were good, they were quite striking, having the same intelligence and emotion as his music; however, sometimes they strike me as sort of opaque.


87. Tinieblas by Elias Castelnuovo - finished 11/28/10

I picked this book up in a Buenos Aires bookstore because the blurb on the back described Castelnuovo as the most important of the Grupo Boedo (Boedo Group) authors. The Boedo Group was a literary movement in early 20th-century (20s/30s) Buenos Aires which was influenced by social realism and Russian literature. They were mostly working class and left-leaning, and much of their creative effort went into literature which they hoped would spur some degree of social change. They are frequently contrasted with the Grupo Florida (Florida Group), whose members were middle class and more interested in literary experimentation for its own sake than for social purposes. (Boedo and Florida are both streets in BsAs, located in neighborhoods whose different economic status at the time you can probably guess from the contrast between the two groups.)

The time period and contrast would suggest that Boedo/Florida is somehow related to Arlt/Borges, and while it's easy to see how Arlt's own artistic ambitions and influences line up with Boedo (and likewise for Florida/Borges) neither of these two authors were really part of either group. It's more on an interesting, if confusing, parallel. Also, this way of talking about the two groups suggests a greater contrast than really existed. From what I've read, there were writers who considered themselves members of both groups.

Anyway, I couldn't resist the opportunity to explore this little bit of Argentine literary history I had previously heard of. There's a nice, short introduction which gets a little more into Castelnuovo's influences and the aim of his fiction. The stories themselves feature characters who occupy a pretty low strata of society, either orphans or with terrible parents, marginally employed or working under hellish conditions. There is at times an element of the surreal in the stories. Both thematically and in terms of language, the stories are reminiscent of Arlt, but what sets them apart is that the protagonists tend to be loyal, self-sacrificing, almost Christ-like. (Whereas Arlt's protagonists sometimes find a redemption of sorts in betrayal, which I guess makes them Judas-like.)

This was a slim volume with only four relatively short stories, which I thought quite powerful. There is a sort of constant misery, which might have made a larger volume a little difficult to get through.


88. Juan Moreira by Eduardo Gutierrez - finished 12/1/10

This work was originally serialized in the newspaper La Patria Argentina from 1879 to 1880, and is the account of the life, exploits and death of Juan Moreira, an outlaw gaucho killed in 1874. As with In Cold Blood or Piglia's Money to Burn, this is a nonfiction story told as a novel. I have not gotten a chance to dig into the veracity of the narrative, but Gutierrez declares at several points in the book that what he is writing is based on eyewitness accounts or other sources. For now, I'm willing to take his word for it. (I did Moreira's Wikipedia entry, but that tracks so closely with the novel, that I suspect that it's using the novel as a source.)

The book presents Moreira as a good man (hard working, considerate, not given to drinking excessively) who runs afoul of the law because Don Francisco, the local Deputy Mayor, feels jealous at his marriage to a woman Francisco was in love with. Moreira sees no other option but to arm himself and revenge himself on the DM, after which he becomes a fugitive from justice. Eventually, he comes to believe that he has no options left and gets into bloodier and bloodier confrontations with the authorities, finally leading to his death.

Despite Gutierrez' portrayal of Moreira as a good man, it was at times to maintain sympathy for him as he finds himself repeatedly in situations where he has to kill. After a while, though, I began to see Moreira as akin to a Ronin. Having been cut off from society, he feels too bound by a code of honor to allow an easy escape, so eventually whatever hope he has gives way to the fatalism of dying bravely. I could totally see Toshiro Mifune playing this character, and was reminded of a quote applied to his character in "Sanjuro," which could just as easily apply to Moreira:

You're too sharp. That's your trouble. You're like a drawn sword. Sharp, naked without a sheath. You cut well. But good swords are kept in their sheaths.

(And, yes, I realize that the gaucho is closer to the cowboy than to the samurai, but I saw "Yoijimbo" first, so to me the Man With No Name will always be Mifune.)
Anyway, I could totally see Mifune as Moreira:


The novel, while not as lyric as Martín Fierro, was pretty enjoyable. Apparently the novel was a big hit and was adapted for the theater, and then cinematically several times.

A few more thoughts on Juan Moreira:

I sort of got sidetracked up there with the whole Ronin comparison (which I still consider apt), so I ended up cutting short my observations about the novel w/in Argentine literature. I'm a little fascinated by the changing fortunes of the novel, since it does seem to have been quite popular when it first came out but has fallen out of favor. In fact, as of this moment, I appear to be the only person on LT in possession of a copy of said book, compared with 173 for Martin Fierro, 158 for Facundo, and 30 for El Matadero-La Cautiva. Certainly there are strong arguments to be made for each of these works.

I think something about the tale of Juan Moreira strikes me both as compelling on its own and also interesting for its importance in Argentine culture. I've already discussed the way my feelings about Moreira changed throughout the course of the novel, and as I've had time to look back over the novel, I notice that there's something sort of admirable if tragic about Moreira and his willingness to refuse to give up no matter that it means that his doom is sealed.

On another level, this work strikes me as very much in line with other concepts of the gaucho and the Argentine character. While listening to tangos over the last couple of days, I sometimes thought that the more melancholy of them seemed to share the same sense of fatalism as Moreira. I think there's a definite kinship between the compadritos of Borges' fiction and the gaucho as exemplified by Moreira.

89. Sombras, nada mas by Antonio Di Benedetto - finished 12/15/10

Fallen behind here on updates, so I'm going to be brief. Sombras (shadows) seem to stand as metaphor for dreams, and there are dreams interwoven into the narrative about a poet who becomes a journalist and finds himself struggling with how to make the best of his career, attempting to balance idealism versus practicality, plus his own romantic entanglements.


90. Hint Fiction by Robert Swartwood - finished 12/21/10

Hint fiction is the label used to describe stories of less than 25 words. I'm actually rereading this one, because I'm not quite sure what to think about it. I feel that there'something fragile about stories this brief. Some seem poetic in how they suggest much with so little, while others don't quite work. Either they seem sort of mundane or they leave me feeling like, well, that's a great opening line, but where's the story? To what extent this has to do with my own state of mind when reading a story is one of the questions that intrigues me and part of the reasons I think there's a fragility to this type of story.


91. Mr. George and Other Odd Persons by August Derleth - finished 12/21/10

I picked this up (at a bookstore in Madison) because while it's weird fiction/horror, the stories are not Lovecraftian at all. What sort of horror writer is Derleth, I wondered, when he's not trying to be HPL? The stories were pretty good overall, though fairly tame. Derleth still has a bad habit of repeating the same plots in different iterations, and in this book a good 50 - 60% of the stories are some variation on "revenge from beyond the grave." The strongest element may have been the personal one, and what struck me most about the stories is how frequently and how well Derleth expresses the sense of the lonely child forced to rely on his/her own imagination for solace.


92. Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman - finished 12/22/10

I'd read this book (or at least parts) in high school, when our philosophy class was studying time. I remembered it as a set of dreams/thought experiments about the possible different ways time could flow. This is, to some extent, true, though I think Lightman is much more interested in the relationship between humanity and how we perceive time.

Carlos, I do hope you will be joining us in 2011, if you have not already!

http://www.librarything.com/groups/75booksin20111