Book Review of "The Crying of Lot 49" by Thomas Pynchon

I consider myself a conspiracy theory connoisseur.  On one hand I mock them because they're so silly.  But I'm also fascinated by them because I love trying to understand why somebody could believe them.  And I'm drawn to them because, at various times in my life, it has been convenient to think of myself as a victim.  When the world seems full of conspirators controlling my life, it is easier to weather my failures.  If I can blame my lethargy on water fluoridation and my lack of writing success on corporate cabals, I don't have to work to change myself. 

The last decade has seen an explosion in conspiracy theories.  I'm very interested to see some oldies-but-goodies return to popular consciousness, such as the Bavarian Illuminati.  I'm also fascinated by some newcomers, such as the Reptoids.  Others have returned in new forms: the communist water fluoridators of yesteryear have been re-imagined as corporate masterminds.  Conspiracy literature has exploded as well, notably the novels of Dan Brown.  

Of greatest interest to me, however, is a small movement of public consciousness which derives ironic pleasure from the contemplation of conspiracy theories.  The theories are cast in a silly light, with many, any and all conspiracies being true at the same time.  It is given game-form in Steve Jackson Games' Illuminati.  In literature, it's The Illuminatus Trilogy.  This intellectual tree has borne hilarious fruit since the 80's, but the seed of the tree was planted in the 60's.  The name of that seed is The Crying of Lot 49, a novella by Thomas Pynchon.

Oedipa Maas learns that her ex-boyfriend Pierce has died and named her executor of his estate.  She travels to San Narciso, California, to settle his affairs.  As she does so, she begins linking clues, partly left by Pierce, others by happenstance.  Soon, she becomes convinced of the existence of a secret mail-delivery system called W.A.S.T.E.  An elaborate alternate history of Europe and the United States is spun, featuring armed conflict between the Thurn und Taxis delivery company and the U.S. Postal System versus a group of evil postmen called the Tristero.  As she learns more, the people she knows and loves are gradually eliminated or isolated.

Pynchon's writing style is cerebral.  It takes some work to decipher many of his sentences, not only because they can be structurally strange, but because some of them last for more than a page.  Yet these sentences are not ponderous like those of previous authors who attempted ultra-long sentences.  Rather, they're free-flowing and goofy.

The point of this book is its journey, not its end.  For the alternate history is funny and elaborately researched.  There are a lot of silly moments that left me laughing.  However, the ending is just not there.  Without giving away anything, the story ends right before where a climax would have been in a normal book.  After so much time spent fleshing the history of the Tristero, the book ends just before Oedipa has direct contact with it.  This is, no doubt, intentional and some readers may gain a lot of postmodern pleasure from it.  However, I love a good ending, so for me, I have to say that I saw what Pynchon was going for there, but I wanted more. 

What truly struck me about this book is that it seems like its from the wrong decade.  The style is similar to the confused, acid-soaked writing that came from the 70's, yet it is ten years early.  Truly, The Crying of Lot 49 was a work ahead of its time.  It might still be ahead of its time.  I say all these nice things about it, yet I recognize that I didn't enjoy it that much.
3 muted post-horns out of 5

Book Review of "A Clash of Kings" by George R. R. Martin

A Game of Thrones, the first book in George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire, is about as perfect as fantasy fiction gets.  I had high expectations when I picked up the second book, A Clash of Kings.  Would it have the same beautiful characters?  The same expectation-defying plot?  The same attention to medieval life and battle?  The same breathless page turns to see what happens next? 

The answer, sadly, is "no".  But that doesn't mean that Clash isn't great.  I'm still enamoured of Martin's universe and I've already picked up the next book in the series. 

I mentioned in my review of Thrones that Martin occasionally slipped into cliche in his description and fretted that in later volumes, after experiencing success, he might be less vigilant about editing his prefab phrases.  This is, indeed, the case in Clash: the entire writing style seems less intensely accurate and more relaxed.  The book is longer than the first and I suspect that, had Martin's editor or internal editor been more vigilant, certain events and passages could be removed to make the action tighter. 

In fact, the entire book seems less intense.  This is evident in the first half.  Martin takes time to prepare his massive conflicts, and his protagonists, mainly the Stark family, spend a lot of time being depressed and fretting over characters that we either don't care about or haven't met.  I confess that I lost my copy of the book for half a year.  If Clash had the been the manic page turner that was its predecessor, I would have been desperate to find it.  But I wasn't. 

Well, I found Clash of Kings in the zippered top pocket of a suitcase I had laid in the basement.  Eventually, the sails of this becalmed book fill.  Once more I found myself swept into the battles, intrigues and surprises of the unhappy isle and its bloodsoaked throne. 

The book continues to follow the viewpoints of the same characters who survived the first book.  Two more characters are featured, Davos Seaworth, a low-born smuggler turned knighted sea captain serving the now-dead-king's brother, and Theon Greyjoy, a hostage returned to the Viking-esque, brooding, troublemaking Greyjoy family.  Unfortunately, I didn't like either of these characters much.  Davos is dull.  Theon chapters are hard to read because he's an infuriating dink.  However, their antics were far overshadowed as my favourite characters, Tyrion Lannister, the Stark girls, and Daenarys Targaryen continued to brighten the book. 

I won't get into the details of all the awesome stuff that happens.  If you loved the first book, you will find the second worthy.  It's just not quite as perfect. 
4 off-camera battles out of 5

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Book Review of "Sacred Origins of Profound Things" by Charles Panati

Charles Panati is a renaissance man.  He's published books on history, the supernatural, science, word origins, and my favourite: his tome about endings, which covers sundry topics ranging from death to disease to extinction.  This book, Sacred Origins of Profound Things: The Stories Behind the Rites and Rituals of the World's Religions, is about the divine. 

Though this book is about world religions, Panati's interest seems to be attracted by the Roman Catholic Church and Judaism.  By comparison, Islam, Buddhism, Hindu and the Protestant and Orthodox Christians are given only passing mention.  Even so, the scope of this book is massive, covering how humans understood the gods, The God, Satan, the afterlife, religious garments and dogma for thousands of years. 

Panati's tone attempts to be impartial, but it's difficult.  Some of the rationalizations, bizarre interpretations, circular thinking, and blunders made by religions in the past are simply difficult for a modern reader to take seriously.  Also, Panati cannot resist a good digression and will often interrupt his narrative to tell a funny story.

I started reading this book in January of 2012.  Eleven months later, I'm finally finished.  At 500+ big pages, this book is a massive commitment.  It wasn't always an interesting journey, particularly the chapter about Catholic vestments, but I have returned much wiser.  I was unaware, for instance, of the amount of non-biblical story that generations of Catholic thinkers have heaped upon the Biblical Mary, mother of God.

The Bible says a teenager named Mary was betrothed to a man named Joseph, though she did not "know him".  An angel named Michael appears and tells her she is/will be with God's child.  She then gives birth to Jesus.  Jesus is raised by his mother, amongst brothers and sisters, until he gets killed by Romans.  Mary sees him briefly after he returns to life, and then she vanishes from the pages of the Bible.  Let's assume that "not knowing" Joseph is a correct linguistic interpretation.  She is the Virgin Mary, after all, and it would be cruel to dissect her greatest miracle, carrying the Son of God without having sex. 

At some point in the early Christian church's history, it started to get more prudish than its Jewish fathers.  Then it got a little more prudish, then ridiculously prudish.  Sex, female anatomy, burst hymen, and birth became abhorrent to Christian thinkers.  They blamed femalekind for original sin, which bore as its wicked fruit, sex.  From this viewpoint, 2000 years-worth of story was interpreted or invented onto the Bible's original text.  Some of this tale is dogma, some of it merely widely believed by those in the know:

Mary's parents didn't enjoy having sex, so therefore Mary was born into the world without original sin.  Jesus didn't have a vaginal birth, rather, he was magically C-sectioned in a ray of light out of her womb, keeping her hymen intact.  Her maidenhead remained intact after Jesus' birth as well, as it turns out all those brothers and sisters were Joseph's from a previous marriage.  When she died, her body laid in the ground for a couple days without decomposing, because bacteria and graveworms don't eat virtuous people.  Then she crawled out of her tomb and ascended.  These days, she ventures out of heaven to tell children to build shrines and convert Russia to Catholicism.

That's interesting.  I did not know that.  If this sort of thing appeals to you, you'll love this book.  Without a doubt, many readers may experience cognitive dissonance, particularly Catholics who may be surprised at the things they are REQUIRED to believe.  As I mentioned before, the book is very long and has boring bits.  Luckily, it's written to easily choose which chapters to read, and you can put it down for long periods if you so wish.  Therefore I rate this book, speaking Infallibly of course:
4 self-inflicted stigmata out of 5
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In other news, I put the finishing touches on my fourth screenplay, "The Rising".  Also, Rosie's Knife was finally published in the final issue of Dark Recesses Magazine.  Read it here: http://www.cuttingblock.net/darkrecesses.html.  It's been a good month!

http://pharaohphobia.blogspot.com/

Book Review of 'Tis by Frank McCourt

Frank McCourt is a writer and teacher.  In Ireland, he spent his childhood in poverty.  In the dark lanes of Limerick, he and his family suffered through starvation and disease.  He watched several siblings die.  Then, as a teenager, the woman he was working for died and he stole money from her purse.  The money paid his fare across the Atlantic to New York on a freighter.

This was the subject of McCourt's earlier memoir, Angela's Ashes.  The next chapter of his life, 'Tis, picks up where Angela's Ashes left off: the freighter crossing the Atlantic, and spans the next forty years of his life.  It follows his life as he cleans ashtrays at the Biltmore hotel, joins the army, unloads ships and struggles to become a teacher despite his poor education.  His amusing descriptions of his trials and the odd characters he meets form the basis of his memoir. 

The book truly allows you to live inside Frank McCourt's insecure skin and experience the life of an Irish immigrant in New York.  It has laughs and groans of embarrassment.  That he has bettered himself and lived a remarkable life I cannot deny.  My life is undeniably better for having read his story.  Yet I have to say that when I think of this book, I feel a little cold. 

Maybe it's just the ordering of events that bothers me.  I'm not sure what 'Tis is about.  Is it about the triumph of an immigrant in America?  Is it about a son who cannot remove himself from the shadow of his alcoholic father?  Is it about learning how to teach?  Is it about all of them and I'm an idiot for trying to force a moral or theme on this remarkable life?

Also, the book suffers from a lack of quotation marks.  I hate that.  I like knowing for sure when somebody is talking. 

If you've read Angela's Ashes or watched the movie, this book will have appeal as you get to explore Frank McCourt's life further.  Teachers and historians will also get a kick out of it.  For me, it had great parts.  Many great parts.  The sum of its parts is multiplied by a figure I don't understand.
3 1/2 cringing face-palms out of 5

Book Review of "Neverwhere" by Neil Gaiman

Neil Gaiman is one of the most highly-acclaimed authors writing in the fantasy genre today. He is lucky enough to have several film and television adaptations of his work. In at least one case, he wrote a novel based on his own television miniseries. That novel is "Neverwhere".

The plot follows Richard Mayhew, a timid businessman living in London. He's going nowhere at his job. He's engaged to a controlling woman but doesn't seem to mind.

One evening, on the way to an important dinner with his financee and her boss, he stops to help an exhausted street girl he finds bleeding on the sidewalk.  He assists the harried girl into his apartment.  Unfortunately for him, the girl is a dweller of London Below, a strange faerie realm that exists in the old tunnels, sewers and subway systems beneath the city.  London Below is populated by street people, sewer dwellers, people who speak to rats, ragged courts of nobles and monsters. 

Simply by interacting with the girl, Door, he phases out of the reality of London Above and is forgotten by everybody he knew.  Like the other residents of London Below, he is ignored by average people, and when noticed, dismissed quickly and forgetten.  He loses his identity, machines stop working for him, and he becomes a nobody.

Convinced that Door can help him return to his old life, he follows her into London Below, attaching himself to her quest to discover why her father was murdered.  Accompanied by the bodyguard Hunter and a swashbuckling Marquis, they wander London Below for clues, all the while stalked by the ageless assassins Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar.

"Neverwhere" is the second novel of Gaiman's I have read, the other being "American Gods".  I am sorry to say that I am not very impressed.  I say "sorry" because I very much want to love these books.  "Neverwhere" treads literary territory that I love, steeped in history, fantasy, and the supernatural.   Croup and Vandemar are villains straight from Dickens, inspiring fear and laughter at the same time.  London Below is richly imagined.  There are many, many things about this book to admire. 

What drags down Gaiman's book, for me, is his writing style.  I found the narrative to be overly-cutesy.  It is full of turns-of-phrase that sound wonderful when spoken aloud in conversational speech, but, on the page, need to be re-read to fully understand the meaning.  This happens often enough that it becomes distracting and winking, as if to say, "Look at how funny I'm being." 

I also have issues with the plot.  Richard is thrown into events which he, at first, does not understand, nor does the reader.  As Door and her entourage travel the underworld, their wanderings at first seem aimless.  Once the reader has gained an accurate idea of the quest, it seems a bit shallow.  Typically, when characters go on a literary quest, there are consequences for their failure, such as a nation being overrun or the world ending.  Not here, and it made me care less about the outcome.  It is only until the climax of the book that we discover something awful could happen if they fail.  And even then, it's still kind of unclear why or how the forces of evil will triumph and why it's so bad if they succeed in their plan.  I won't say more for fear of spoilers. 

I am very interested to read a more-recent Neil Gaiman book to see if his narration has matured.  As it stands, I am underwhelmed with his 90's novels and their weak narration, but love his work in more visual media such as movies and comics.  Once again, I need to repeat that there are so many things about Neverwhere that are great.  It therefore rends my heart to give it:
3 lame-duck protagonists out of 5

Movie Review of Sullivan's Travels

...And another giant break between AFI movies.  Anyway, we just watched #61 on AFI's list, a comedy called Sullivan's Travels.  It was released in 1941, directed by Preston Sturges and stars Joel McCrea and Veronica Lake.

The story is about a film director named Sullivan who has grown weary of making schlocky comedies and shallow musicals.  He wants to direct a movie called O Brother, Where Art Thou?, an epic that captures the struggles and plight of the common man.  His collegues chide him for knowing nothing about the struggles of the poor.  Undeterred, he dons hobo clothes and runs away to sample life as a migrant worker.  As he travels, he prompts people to talk about their troubles, but discovers nobody is in a big hurry to bemoan the plight of the common man.  He meets "the Girl", many misadventures occur, many silent-movie comedies are referenced and many lines of dialogue are delivered snappily. 

As an aside, despite bizarre claims by old movie posters for this film which proclaim that "Veronica Lake is on the Take", Veronica Lake at no point appears to be on the take.  I can only assume that this genre-defying movie left studio publicists mystified as to how to market it.  Scratching their heads in confusion, somebody suggested, "We need somethin' that rhymes, see!  Who cares if it don't make sense?"

***SPOILERS AHEAD***

What makes this movie different is that it has a fourth act in its story structure.  After Sullivan and the Girl spend an appropriate amount of time learning hardship and having zany adventures, they return to the studio in triumph.  Normally, a movie might end here.  However, Sullivan decides to don his hobo clothing and repay the poor he lived with a stack of $5 bills.  He is promptly robbed at a trainyard and tossed unconscious onto a departing freight.  His robber is mangled by a train and his corpse mistaken for him.  Meanwhile, the groggy Sullivan lashes out at a railyard guard and is sentenced to six years hard labour.

It is here that the film abruptly changes tone to a drama.  Miserable, overworked and persecuted, he learns real suffering.  He spends a day in the hotbox for reading a newspaper.  At his lowest point, a revival congregation allows the chain gang to watch a Mickey Mouse cartoon in their church.  All his troubles melt away as he howls with laughter at Pluto's antics.  He realizes then that he doesn't want to direct O Brother, Where Art Thou?  He sees that if he wants to help the common man, more good can be accomplished through laughter.

***END SPOILER ZONE***

And that's the message of this movie, recalling the film's dedication at the beginning:
To the memory of those who made us laugh: the motley mountebanks, the clowns, the buffoons, in all times and in all nations, whose efforts have lightened our burden a little, this picture is affectionately dedicated. 

It's a message that could have gone terribly wrong.  For in order to tell the message that "laughter is the best medicine", the film loses all its laughs during the fourth act.  It's risky business and some might accuse it of hypocrisy.  However, in my opinion, the film pulls it off.  Perhaps its hand is heavy, but it is moving in its own way.

It's a pretty good film.  The laughs vary from slapstick to wordplay to high-concept comedy.
4 1/2 unscheduled returns to Hollywood out of 5

Book Review of "You Only Live Twice" by Ian Fleming

I have always hated James Bond. 007, the icon, is known throughout the world because of his movies. Since the 60s, he's been suave, cool, irresistable to women, over-the-top and dangerous. I suppose his appeal is that men are supposed to want to be him. He gets any woman he wants and kills anybody he wants. If I met him I'd want to throttle him because he's so unpleasant. Frustratingly, he would kill me if I tried.

So you might be surprised to know that I chose to read a James Bond novel. It's number twelve in the series, You Only Live Twice. I did it out of masochistic curiosity, just so you know. You might also be surprised to discover that Hollywood's James Bond does not resemble Ian Fleming's Bond whatsoever.

Firstly, You Only Live Twice (novel) does not begin with an obnoxious action sequence that is supposed to make you vomit in entertainment. It begins with Bond moping after the death of his wife and a series of professional fuckups. In fact, Bond doesn't actually get into a fight until the end of the novel!

Eventually Bond gets assigned to Japan to uncover some vital information (which is never revealed). We're just told the mission is impossible. Impossible it may be, but Bond gets sidetracked hanging out in brothels with his new Japanese drinking buddy. Then his buddy tells him to go murder some crazy Doctor Shatterhand. But first, they attend some more brothels. He does eventually discover Doctor Shatterhand's secret and penetrates his garden-fortress of death, but that's really only the last fifth of the story. It is such a strange book. It reads like a travel brochure punctuated with anti-Japanese slurs and hookers.

And then there's Bond's personality itself. The literary Bond is not the gadget-laden, smooth-talking product placement we know and hate. Instead, he's hateful in a different way. Imagine if you can a chauvanistic, racist and old-fashioned Cambridge professor trapped in the body of a super-spy. He's also clearly an alcoholic. He wanders around the novel muttering stuff like, "I say, Tanaka, this damned lobster's still alive! Give me a rasher of bacon and hop to it, you damn slant-eyed tosser, wot?" For some reason, the Japanese find this behaviour endearing.

It's not that I entirely dislike the idea literary-Bond. He's real in a way that Hollywood-Bond could never be. To be honest, I kind of enjoyed the exploits of this stodgy booze-hound as he swanks around Japan and I liked even more how much Hollywood could never, ever feature this Bond in a film and expect it to be a blockbuster. The last two Bond films with Daniel Craig have tried to bury the campy 60's Bond and make him more realistic and like literary-Bond. But they don't even come close. This Bond is so irredeemably English that you'd expect to see him stumbling around some high-class function telling off-colour racist stories as annoyed guests tolerate him because he's little, cute and British. After about an hour his mortified wife bundles him off to bed.

So, was the novel good? I guess, kind of. It is the only spy novel I've read and in that sense it's like nothing I've ever read before. I don't think I'll be in any hurry to pick up another Bond novel, but I can say I was glad for the experience.
3 creepy sexual encounters out of 5

As a side-note, another reason I grabbed this book was my interest in comparing movie adaptations with their source material. After seeing this art from the movie poster, I've decided not to bother with the movie for reasons that should be obvious to anyone.

Book Review of "Two Sisters" by Gore Vidal

After reading Julian this spring, my mind was primed for more Gore Vidal. As I described in this review, Julian is easily one of the best books I have ever read. So on the way to rescue the wife from a root canal one day, I stopped into the White Cat Bookstore and said, "Give me all the Gore Vidal you have". I had two options, and bought them both. However, I chose the book Two Sisters because I opened the cover and the first sentence I read went, "Despite my protests, Marietta revealed her breasts."

I say "book", because Two Sisters is part novel, part screenplay and part memoir. The memoir bits are the sections where he reminisces and bitches about days past and present. The novel bits are the parts he makes up, and the border between the fiction and nonfiction is never clear. The screenplay is a relevant but amateur script about Herostratus, the ancient Greek arsonist who burns the temple of Diana to one-up his sisters. The three parts intertwine and gradually Vidal reveals the story of a love triangle between himself and twins Eric and Erika.

I can see how somebody could really hate this book. The structure is unconventional and some might find it jarring. The protagonist, Gore Vidal himself, could be construed as disagreeable. He's two-faced, petty, dispassionate and self-interested. He constantly snipes other authors. The universe in which Vidal lives is hedonistic, affluent and decadent. Some might see the antics as disgusting.

Yet I did not hate this book. I liked it. If one views the book with certain amount of distance, it becomes hilarious. It seems to me as though the Gore Vidal of Two Sisters is a self-parody. Therein is the key to liking this book. While Gore Vidal never winks at his audience to tell us that he's not really that bad, I'm willing to risk being wrong and say he's not the awful person he portrays. Even if the parody touches truths that are too close to reality, at least they're funny.

This book is full of quotables. I'm terrible at memorizing quotes, so I won't remember a single one. But Vidal's use of phrase had me constantly chuckling. He ranges late 1960's culture and brings home a variety of anecdotes and humourous observations on which the reader can feast. The world was changing as television and movies humbled the novel and Vidal has many things to say, sad and eloquent, as he watches his world of great literature dying.

This book was particularly significant for me. For this book is about the foolish pursuit of immortality. Vidal and his cast of characters in both his memoir and the screenplay all seek to be known after they have died. This has struck me hard at a time when I have ceased to be a young adult and I hold a baby in my arms.

Throughout my youth I wanted to create something or many somethings that would be admired in future generations, like a Beethoven Symphony. It's not just my desire, but that of just about every writer, artist, and composer. Here, in Two Sisters, Gore Vidal is watching literature collapse. His memory is failing him. He is just beginning to realize that the drive to create which he posessed in his youth will be destroyed just as certainly as his body will decay. Paraphrasing him, death comes for us all and the writer has a chance to take a shot at him. Some shots are better aimed, but death always wins.

Even during my lifetime, the yardstick by which I have judged immortality, Ludwig van Beethoven, has diminished. His music, and the means by which it is played, has grown fainter as interest and public money dry.

I have known that at some point I will have to challenge this idea of living through the art I leave behind. But I don't know if I'm ready to examine it yet. If I look inward and see that the reason why I write is empty, why write? I think before I'm ready for this philosophical leap, I'll have to actually be earning money through writing. That way I can say, "I write because it feeds the baby". That will certainly soften the blow. If I look too deeply now, that job at the 7-Eleven in Rosetown will be too appealing.

Enough about me. Two Sisters is certainly not for everybody, but it was certainly for me. I get the feeling that writers and literature enthusiasts will enjoy it more than others. The reviews that don't like it seem to dislike the ego of the Gore-on-steroids protagonist. For me, the book made me chuckle and sad by turns, and it is undeniably well-written.
4 bitchy writers complaining about each other out of 5

Book Review of "The White Plague" by Frank Herbert

Dune and its sequels got me through some hard times. In the midst of a painful breakup, I was lifted out of my funk by the words of fictional characters. A great deal of the series revolves around change and not being afraid of it. The books showed me how gripping the past leads to stagnation worse than any disruption caused by change. The action sequeneces make great film, as shown by the various adaptations, but they miss that the books are as much intellectual discussion as plot. The characters are more philosophical ideas than real people. Through author Frank Herbert's words, I was able to begin living again. It also set the stage for my future Discordianism.

It was with exitement that I found an old hardcover edition of The White Plague in an unlikely small-town bookstore in Perdue, Saskatchewan. It was his first non-Dune writing that I had found. Also, being a traditional Irish musician, the setting in Ireland was a plus. As I removed to irritating book jacket and settled into bed to read, I was hyped.

The action begins as the family of biochemist John Roe O'Neill is killed by an IRA bomb while on vacation. O'Neill's marbles go astray, he goes into hiding and manufactures a new plague which he releases into Ireland, England and Libya to scour those sinful countries clean. The world's women begin dying and the political and scientific elite scramble to find a cure.

Unfortunately, this beginning is a stumble rather than a leap. The narrator's viewpoint, in third-person, is unsettled and constantly switches between the perspectives of the characters. For myself, I didn't like it much. I found the constant switching between characters' thoughts to be disorienting rather than interesting. It also seemed to be cheating: rather than allowing the reader to guess a character's thoughts by their words and actions, Herbert just tells us. Yet, and perhaps Herbert meant this to be clever, there is still much mystery surrounding the motivations of characters. People just do things sometimes, and despite the amount of perspective switching, I had no idea why they were doing it and no amount of recollection or re-reading could reveal the mystery.

Luckily, after this opening face-flop, the story dusts itself off and gets going again. I became used to the perspective switching and during the plot's second act, I was able to enjoy myself. John Roe O'Neill, after a period of sneaking around the planet, returns to Ireland incognito to sabotage the efforts for a cure. There, he falls into the company of Father Michael: a priest who has lost his faith, Joseph Herity: the IRA operative who set the bomb that killed O'Neill's family, and a mute boy. They travel towards the biochemistry lab at Killaloe, across the island, and witness the devastation of the plague.

It was here that I found the Frank Herbert that I knew so well. For as the companions journey, they engage in philosophical discussion. Their intellectual discourse raises tempers as Father Michael and Herity try to destroy each others' psyches and secretly discover if their companion is O'Neill.

The problem is that this time, Herbert's philosophic and scientific discussions didn't work. In Dune, his characters are the intellectual elite of the universe and it makes sense that they speak on a level higher than average discourse. However, in The White Plague, everybody is a philosopher-historian and has something profound to say. Herity and Michael's sparring, in particular, is disconcerting as they are constantly becoming furious with each other for reasons which can only be described as esoteric. It is obvious that these are not characters but intellectual ideas and it is silly as often as it is enlightening.

In the end, The White Plague is a simple story dressed in fancy clothes. Nothing really unexpected happens and when it does, the reasons why it happens are confusing. Nevertheless, Herbert manages to paint an interesting picture of what might happen to our society if the full potential of biochemistry were unlocked, suddenly, on an unsuspecting public.
2 stirrings of O'Neill-within out of 5

ps: I've once again proved false the theory that one must like any book they've read from cover to cover. Ha.

Book Review of "A Game of Thones" by George R. R. Martin

A continuing five-part novel series named "A Song of Fire and Ice". A board game. A trading card game. An HBO series. When a fantasy novel inspires that much attention, there must be something good about it. How is it that I hadn't read A Game of Thrones until now? Regardless, I decided to give this one a read because I love reading books and then watching the adaptation.

Thrones is set in a medieval Europe-like world. Most of the action is set on Westros, a Britain-like island complete with Scotsman-like Wildlings. Mongol-like horsemen ravage the mainland. The big differences between our two worlds is that magic and mythical creatures exist in Martin's world. Also, instead of having winter during the course of a regular year, winter arrives two or three times a generation and lasts several years (the details of how and why this happens is not explained in the first book).

The action begins at the end of a pleasant summer, but the wise are predicting a dreadful winter. Westros is saddled with the irresponsible King Robert, his conniving wife Cersei of the rich, cruel and power-hungry House Lannister, numerous debts, and a gaggle of unusually selfish counsellors. Wildlings and terrifying creatures known as "The Others" threaten the north. Across the Narrow Sea, King Robert's mortal enemies, the remnants of House Targaryen who once ruled Westros, plot to sieze his throne. Into the action is thrust the honourable Eddard Stark, whom Robert asks to become his right-hand man. Eddard and his family are tossed from their happy northern lifestyle into a cauldron of intrigue.

The result is not pretty. Martin spins complex web of characters and their histories and I don't mind telling you that the cast is thinned significantly by the end of the first book. Jugular veins are slashed, femoral arteries opened, heads roll, wounds fester, poor slobs swing from tree branches and unpleasant things are poured over people's heads. Nor does Martin pull punches when it comes to sex. Pee-pees are inserted into hoo-hoos and the results described in detail. In true medieval style, some of the hoo-hoos in question belong to girls that we in the modern age would describe as underage.

However, blood splatters and money-shots are not, I repeat, NOT the point of A Game of Thrones. The stars of this book are the beautiful characters, their rivalries, loves, fears and aspirations. Even if some of the characters don't last very long, each one is an individual with their own needs and desires. This is not a realm of cartoons, but real people. Nor are their motivations obvious. Martin leads us to what his non-POV characters are thinking instead of just telling us. Each chapter leaves the reader excitedly speculating on why characters acted as they did and what they will do next. The plot is great, I was frequently surprised and never disappointed.

I have only two complaints with the book. Firstly, Martin excessively describes people's armour. For whatever reason, near the beginning of the book, everybody we meet is wearing ringmail over boiled leather. Then, as if to make up for the amount of boiled leather described, later characters are introduced with huge chunks of text describing the damn saphhire-encrusted gold with ivy rivulets covered by a cloth-of-gold cape that makes so-and-so gasp and blah blah blah. Next, please.

Secondly, while cliches are noteably absent, when they actually appear in middle sections of the book, the effect is jarring. I had, up until this point, marvelled at the lack of cliches and to read that somebody's blood ran cold and they were chilled to the bone was very disappointing. However, only the middle sections are polluted. (I would, however, bet that with the success of A Game of Thrones and possible resulting arrogance, later volumes may be more cliche-ridden. Can anybody confirm that?)

Thrones is a work of fiction that is almost mastery. If you like intrigue, mystery and great battles, this book will expand your understanding of what makes humanity tick. Yes, it's that good. However, I would say it is not for tender readers or persons who enjoy contemplating the Baby Jesus.

4 1/2 heads on spikes out of 5

http://pharoahphobia.blogspot.com/

Review of "My Year of Flops" by Nathan Rabin

Watching bad movies has been a favourite pasttime of mine for almost two decades now. I'm not alone in this questionable activity and different folks derive different strokes therein. Some enjoy feeling superior to others. Some come for a laugh. And some, and I admit I am guilty of this, enjoy inflicting bad movies on others for the sadistic joy of watching somebody else cringe. In any case, I've seen more than my share of cinematic shit and I fear that it has warped my sensibilities.

My quest for awfulness has led me to read several books about bad movies. Such books are essential for seeking movies that have otherwise escaped notice. Most of them adopt a snarky tone and give play-by-play accounts of the worst aspects of the films. The better books provide backstory to showcase production follies and the devatating effect on the careers of those involved, as well as contacting members of the cast and crew and allowing them to reminisce.

My Year of Flops, by Nathan Rabin, senior editor of The Onion's AV club, has all the best qualities that a rotten movie book should. However, the aim is different. Whereas other movie books have been written exclusively to mock, Rabin watches bad movies to find undiscovered gems. It is well known that if art and entertainment are misunderstood in their time, the public can punish the artists involved with mockery and shunning. When Nathan Rabin watches a notorious flop, he tries to see the good in each of these creations. However, if there is no good to be found, mockery ensues.

Those of us who revel in cinematic garbage know that there are several types of bad movie. To be avoided are movies that purposefully try to be awful and fail. Many such films are created every year and, surprise-surprise, it actually takes talent to purposefully make a cheesy movie. The result is an awful lineup of shitty horror movies that try to bad and hope that snarky viewers like myself will watch for a laugh. The result is usually excruciating. Sorry guys, the best bad movies are sincere efforts that have gone awry. My Year of Flops is composed entirely of sincere efforts.

Rabin has three ratings in his system: Failure, Fiasco and Secret Success. A Secret Success is a film which he feels is actually good, but misunderstood. A Fiasco is a film that is filled with love and effort that has gone horribly wrong, resulting in hilarity. A Failure simply has nothing going for it. It's a useful way to sort. Those who wish to find secret successes can seek them. For the rest, the Fiasco/Failure ratings are an excellent way to separate the hilarious from the irredeemably horrible.

Rabin's writing is charming, often following his stream of consciousness which invariably leads to the river of sewage that is his "case". He often begins his case files talking about some other bad movie, waxing witty on a thought which helps illuminate his subject. My only complaint with the writing is that often it seems like Rabin is playing to an audience which has already seen the movie in question, rather than introducing an outsider to the madness.

There are too many movies to list here, but some highlights include "The Conqueror", featuring John Wayne playing Genghis Khan in the role that would kill him, "Battlefield Earth", wherein John Travolta plays a hulking alien overlord to appease his Scientologist masters, and one of my personal favourites "Southland Tales", featuring an ensemble cast in a senseless story set in an incomprehensible future that constantly leaves the viewer giggling, "What the hell is going on?" Rabin concludes with his tortured minute-by-minute notes as he watches the director's cut of "Waterworld". Ugh.

My Year of Flops is clever and charming. Readers who are having a lousy day need only pick up the book, read a single case file for ten minutes, and I guarantee their quality of life will be improved. Nathan Rabin is obviously passionate about cinema and it shows in his writing. He loves to sift bad movies to find a good performance, a beautiful shot, a truth, a cool idea or an excellent line of dialogue. When he finds one, his praise is touching. When he can't find one, his commentary makes me laugh out loud. It's a marvelous masterwork of mockery, a must for movie masochists!
4 1/2 manic pixie dream-girls out of 5

http://pharoahphobia.blogspot.com/

Review of "The Baby Book" by Dr. William Sears and Martha Sears

Disclaimer: Apologies to my friends who are attachment parents. Please do not misconstrue this article as a reproach of how you raise your children. Continue to raise them in the best way you see fit. If your feelings are hurt, I apologize. Thank you.

So me and my wife, Suzi, were minding our business raising a talented, clever and happy baby, Kara. Then a well-meaning relative gave me a Father's Day present. Browsing at the bookstore, she had seen a very large book which gave helpful advice about feeding our baby, who was just turning six months old. The book presented reasonable information about how tall and heavy a baby ought to be at a certain age as well as expected developmental milestones.

That poor relative! She had no idea the effect that this book would have on my family. For she did not know the name Dr. Sears, nor his reputation as the man who coined the term "attachment parenting". She could not have known the amount of upheaval and sleepless nights it would cause us. The moment we opened this book, we began to feel horrible about ourselves.

I'm fairly certain that this was not the intention of the Dr. Sears and his wife when they wrote The Baby Book, either. I will grudgingly admit that our own insecurity as parents is our unresolved issue, not theirs. But, for vast sections, the tone and style of The Baby Book is written from an emotional and intuitive standpoint, and the language stirs powerful emotions in the reader.

Attachment parenting is a style of raising children that emphasizes intense emotional nurturing. It stands in stark contrast to many of the commandments fostered by physicians of the 19th and 20th Centuries. Attachment parenting features closeness to your baby at all times: co-sleeping, sling transport and skin-to-skin time. It recommends quick responses to crying and obeying intuitive parenting instincts. The first chapter of The Baby Book is about attachment parenting and the rest of the book is infused with it.

I like the idea of attachment parenting. So does the wife. So does the Royal University Hospital maternity department where we had our baby, which recently abolished its nursery so that parents could spend the first days of their child's life in close contact. While we had never previously read anything by Dr. William Sears, attachment parenting has inflitrated the institutions surrounding birth.

We really wanted to be attachment parents. We succeeded at first. Then, two and a half months after our baby was born, the wife had to get a job. The details of this decision I chronicled in this post. Basically, we decided that she could support us monetarily while I couldn't. With that, she spent less time with our baby. Her body couldn't keep up with baby's increasing breastmilk demands, so formula began to creep into Kara's diet. Then, a little past the four-month mark, Kara began to squirm, kick and scratch us in her sleep. We woke each other constantly. I was tired, Kara was cranky and Suzi was hopelessly exhausted with night waking, nursing and working.

Something had to change. Then one day when I was at the end of my rope and Kara was crying for seemingly no reason, I obeyed an intuitive parenting instinct and put her alone in her crib in a dark room. Five minutes of fussing later, she was asleep. I was shocked. Then I tried it again in the afternoon and hallelujiah, she slept again! I researched. I was ashamed because I knew that "cry-it-out" was not "in" and I was certain Suzi would disapprove. I secretly continued to practice Dr. Ferber's method for a week before I broke down and told her. After many apologies, we both decided Dr. Ferber knew his shit. Kara slept, I slept, Suzi slept, we were all sleeping, we were all happy for a month.

As it stood, we tried contemporary parenting and it simply clashed with modern life. We couldn't sustain it and keep ourselves fed and rested at the same time. So food and sleep won and Kara actually seemed more-rested for it.

Then this damn book appeared. Apparently, we were causing permanent damage to our little girl. Suzi should have obeyed those instincts and come running with her boob outstretched. The worst part was that we had already done the damage: Kara was Ferberized and broken forever.

What followed was several weeks of guilty vigilance on Suzi's part. She would wake with every tiny night-cry and I started having midnight arguments with her about running to the baby's rescue. Exhaustion slipped back into our lives. We both knew what the book had done, knew that we were good parents and had a wonderful and unbroken baby, and yet the book continued to haunt us silently from its place at my bedside table.

This is what The Baby Book did for us and Eris-help-me, we're still recovering. For this disservice alone, I am inclined to follow my emotional and intuitive instinct to tell the Dr. Sears that he can shove copies of his book up the arses of his huge and supposedly-perfect family. But that's not exactly fair. This reaction is based on my own subjective experience and surely it won't be the same for every parent. So for their benefit, I'll try to actually REVIEW this book and be as impartial as possible.

As I mentioned before, the tone of the book is from an intuitive standpoint. It is unsourced. It is scientific only in that a respected pediatrician and his registered-nurse wife authored it. I can't begrudge that, however: it's a parenting book and no parent needs to read a scientific article to learn how to take care of their baby. Scientific writing is boring writing, so not sourcing their claims is just fine. What maybe isn't fine is this: in the opening chapter the authors actually admit that their advice on parenting is not scientific. They say that their parenting style is based only on their subjective experience of dealing with parents of children whom they considered to be "good". Shabby.

Incidentally, William Sears has indeed published articles with actual sources independent of The Baby Book. I haven't read them, nor do I really want to after my experiences with his other writing, but I did find this article slamming his views on cry-it-out to be very interesting.

The subjective tone of the authors prevails everywhere in the book. Allow me to paraphrase a sidebar which appears in their section on baby's sleep habits:

There once were two parents who were offered a cry-it-out book to help their baby sleep. They tried it and their baby screamed all night. They were heartbroken and sad and as a result of this method they lost their sympathetic connection to their baby's cries. His crying didn't affect them anymore and they stopped caring for him and took increasingly long vacations away from him. The End.

Please allow me this uncharacteristic slip into leet: lolololololololstfu!!!!1!!11!

That's a very accurate paraphrase of their story and I challenge anybody to find it in The Baby Book and tell me I haven't captured the spirit of it. It's absolutely ridiculous. If these parents, who I doubt actually exist, stopped caring about their baby because of cry-it-out, what the fuck kind of parents were they in the first place? The world is filled with parents, such as myself, who continue to love their children and yet have let them cry-it-out. This bullshit story about two sociopaths who abandon their baby insults my intelligence.

The tone of the book continues to drag it down. The average section begins with inflammitory language wherein the Sears' state their opinion, then they repeat themselves over and over again. Then they say, "but if you can't manage to do this, that's okay too!" Then follows a section whereby they answer the critics of attachment parenting by stating the concerns and then unscientifically stating, "No, actually they're wrong and the opposite thing happens." Here's a parody:

Playpens: The Black Den of Evil

Often we find parents asking us about playpens. Are they good? In our experience, no. To a child, a playpen is a prison and you are an abusive guard. She wails and cries and the parent doesn't respond and she learns that nobody loves her. She needs to crawl everywhere and if you don't let her, her muscles will atrophy and she'll get ADD. You shouldn't own one or think about owning one and you should avert your eyes if you see one.

But it's okay to put her in the playpen if you need to answer the phone. Also, if you can't not put her in a playpen, feel free to do so! You need to feel your own way through parenting, so even if you have to keep her in a cardboard box for six hours, that's fine! We're not judgmental!

Some of you are dumb and won't take us at our word, so here are some of your concerns:

I can't watch my child all the time and playpens keep my baby from falling down the stairs or eating electrical cords. Should I use one?
Absolutely not! If you're watching your baby all the time like you should be, then you can keep her out of electronics. And because we don't believe in using harsh language or physical punishment, your baby will learn "no" but not care about it until she's six, she won't learn anything and you'll get to spend even more time watching her!

My baby always has fun in her playpen and seems to enjoy being in there because it's safe. Is that possible?
In our experience, babies only pretend like they're having fun in their playpen. Inside they are screaming for emotional attachment to their parents, but are too frightened to express themselves because they are afraid that if they cry they will have to spend more time in the playpen as punishment. Babies who find themselves in this predicament grow up to be like Hitler.

I heard a baby was put in a playpen and he died. Is that true?
Yes.

Joking aside, The Baby Book would actually be very helpful if its tone didn't make it unreadable. As that relative observed when she bought it, it is full of great information. I opened it many times for the charts. Personally, I think it could be rewritten. Half could be chopped, namely the paragraphs where they write the same thing over and over again, then some judgmental bullshit and of course one or two stories that probably didn't happen.

As it stands, this book is a giant mess of repeated unobservable and unscientific commandments with some useful charts hidden within it. I'm sure your money could be spent better elsewhere. As for my copy, it eventually left my bedside table and, for a week, it received its greatest use as a block to prop up Kara's carseat so it was level. Then it got returned.
1/2 a value judgment out of 5

And finally, I have some more personal comments to share. I've already railed against the tone of The Baby Book. However, the book does contain a passage that I'll take with me. The Sears ask us to simply not rely heavily on any baby book to raise our children. They say that no book has all the answers and as your child's parent, you know better than anybody else. It's commendable advice and after all the crap I read in this book, I was not expecting to read this passage.

Whenever discussing parenting, parents get uppity. When parenting emotions are stirred, they get judgmental. It's this attitude I object to. Despite the effort the Sears put into making their tone neutral, attachment parenting now has fanatic acolytes who believe that all of society's problems and their own personal disfunctions are Dr. Ferber's fault. Many attachment parents look down on parents who think differently than them. Like the Victorian chowderheads who invented the dispassionate and clinical approach to parenting of yore, they are being bitchy and judgmental and making other people feel bad about themselves.

In the end, the Sears are right about intuitive parenting. The truth of how to raise each kid lies somewhere between attachment parenting and Prussian child-rearing. Different kids will respond better to different things. Furthermore, no scientist on earth can accurately tell you how much nurture effects children versus nature. Some kids are born caring and some dispassionate, some artsy and some mechanical, some gregarious and some asocial and nobody knows how or why. Parenting just isn't a science. Those who pretend that parenting is a science are trying to make money.

So take a page out of the book of the man who coined "attachment parenting" and don't take his book that seriously.

http://pharoahphobia.blogspot.com/

Review of "Starfish" by Peter Watts

Starfish is a sci-fi novel by Canadian author Peter Watts. The story mainly follows Lenie Clarke, a deep-water worker who has been cybernetically enhanced to survive benthic conditions. The world's thirst for electricity has led humankind to tap geothermal power from deep-sea vents, and Clarke and her fellow rifters are specially selected by their employer to be psychologically primed to work in the freezing dark. That is, they are all broken: victims of abuse, unhappy loners, perverts or dangerous psychopaths. Starfish studies how the rifters change themselves, how their environment evolves them, and finally how their world transforms the unwitting humans who rely on them.

I feel safe in an assertion that you have never read anything like Starfish (or its two sequels) in your life. Watts' story is steeped in marine biology, sociology, psychology, parapsychology, computer science and biotechnology. Lenie Clarke's world is unique. She endures lack of sunlight, isolation, dangerous and unpredictable seafloor eruptions, attacks from monstrous fish, and finally the conniving politics of her own employers. Though an unhappy sufferer of previous sexual abuse, she learns to thrive in her new environment.

This book is in many ways a study of how life evolves and changes. Each deep-sea organism that Watts spotlights has learned to survive in hostile conditions in its own way. The rifters themselves are changed. Above the ocean's surface, humanity struggles with the evolving artificial intelligences of computer viruses and "smart gels", or bio-engineered brains. Because humans are so numerous, so are the illnesses that plague them. The world of Starfish is one in which nature has begun to compensate for the sudden evolutionary dominance of homo spiens.

The plot is fascinating. Lenie Clarke is a wonderful protagonist. She starts as quiet, shy and broken, and develops into a character with understated power. The story also features a few secondary protagonists, all fully-developed and intriguing. Each character is wonderful, real and morally ambiguous.

Summing, Starfish is unique and, above all, it is a fantastic read.
4 1/2 crippled fish with broken teeth out of 5

Review of "Night Watch" by Terry Pratchett

"Night Watch" is the 29th of Terry Pratchett's book set in his Discworld and the 7th starring the Ankh-Morpork city watch. The main character is, of course, the capable and cynical Sir Samuel Vimes, commander of the watch and Duke of Ankh.

This time, Vimes is accidentally tossed back in time by a freak magic storm into his own history. Unfortunately, at the time of the storm, he was locked in mortal struggle with the heartless criminal Carcer, who appears in the same time and murders Vimes' former mentor and Sergeant-at-Arms, John Keel. Vimes is recruited by the History Monks, guardians of time, to play the role of John Keel, teach his younger-self how to be a good copper, and nab Carcer before he causes more damage. It's another great adventure which Vimes negotiates by scowling, improvising and outsmarting his opponents.

Unlike The Fifth Elephant, which I reviewed about a year ago, "Night Watch" handles its exposition brilliantly. Though Vimes appears in a different time, no exposition is offered except that which is absolutely necessary. Though the Time Monks had been active in previous Discworld novels, though the readers were unfamiliar with the time period, and though history was being repeated for Vimes, there are no long expository diatribes. I was able to navigate the tale perfectly and something interesting is always happening.

The climax of the story is very moving, and while comedy is always present in Discworld, "Night Watch" manages to negotiate the unsteady line that plagues every story that tries to tread between humour and drama. I loved this story.

4 1/2 lilac-honoured graves out of 5

This story, more than the others in the City Watch series, presents interesting ideas about policing. More such ideas were featured in HBO's series "The Wire", which also happens to be the best television show I've ever seen. Vimes' unconventional policing style works wonders in Ankh-Morpork. I wish it could be applied in the real world. Can it?

Vimes' watchmen are peace-keepers. It is achieved thusly:

1. Being a part of the community. Vimes and his best officers know everybody on their patrol. They know every street and alley. They know who is worth querying and how to negotiate with them. They are not uniforms, they are members of the city that everybody knows. In "Night Watch", when a riot brews outside the watch house, Vimes puts his most harmless-looking coppers in front of the station and serves the gathered crowd cocoa. When a troublemaker hurts himself by smashing a bottle, he gives the man medical treatment and allows people inside the station to make sure he's okay. Vimes' coppers do not cause confrontations or exacerbate them with fear or anger.
2. Ignoring mostly-harmless illegal stuff that you can't do anything about. From prostitution to slightly-illegal sales to public drunkenness to Corporal Nobbs' casual kleptomania, the City Watch ignores a wide variety of crimes. This allows them to concentrate on policing more serious crimes. A similar idea is expressed in "The Wire", when Howard "Bunny" Colvin discusses alcohol in public. A law prohibiting displays of alcohol on the street was turning people, for example, friends enjoying a beer on their front steps into criminals and distracting police resources. The solution: a paper bag. The bag allows police to look the other way and law-abiding citizens to continue to stay out of jail.
3. Arrests with as little violence as possible. The courts are supposed to be society's instrument of punishment. Furthermore, violent scuffles and fights can disturb the community and cause harm to innocent people. Vimes uses reason and intimidation to get criminals to surrender peacefully, and if this fails, uses quick and intelligent action to incapacitate. He routinely orders constables to leave their swords behind and instead carry clubs (like English bobbies) in order to prevent conflict escalation with criminal groups.

Think about your own local police force. Do they resemble Vimes' watch, or are they a faceless uniform that cruises downtown in a police cruiser and occasionally gets embroiled in some racist scandal? Just saying.

I'm sure greater minds have considered this stuff, so I'll shut up now.

Review of "The Haunting of Hill House" by Shirley Jackson

"The Haunting of Hill House" is a novel by Shirley Jackson, published in 1959. It was adapted for film twice, in 1963 and 1999 under the name "The Haunting". It's been called a haunted house story. Right now I'm trying to think of a clever reason why it's not, but I'm drawing a blank. It's just different, okay???

The story follows what can only be called a neurotic loser, Eleanor Vance. Because her life is so lonely and friendless, she agrees to spend a summer in a reputedly haunted house. Dr. Montague, her host, has invited several people with experiences with the supernatural. Only Eleanor and a flakey beatnik named Theodora actually show. Also joining them is Luke, the future-owner of the house. Together, the four become fast friends and endure the ghostly tortures of the unhappy mansion in the name of science.

Here's what the book does very well: terror. (There's a difference between horror and terror. Terror is the dread that anticipates something scary happening while horror is the fright at the actual scary event.) The supernatural terrors of Hill House are not equalled in many books or movies. This terror is established in the book's opening paragraphs with the brilliant phrase, "...and whatever walked there, walked alone." When you identify with Eleanor, you feel acute dread at something invisible and malign looking for her. I recommend it as a how-to for other writers interested in terrorizing their audience. Remember, o ye horrorists, that the spook you describe is never as scary as the spook that an audience can imagine.

What makes this book different as well is the dialogue. The house's occupants speak in the style of sophisticated socialites. Eleanor, Theodora, Luke and the Doctor are all clearly intelligent and they are always playfulling razzing each other even in the midst of blackest terror. It adds a note of authenticity to the story that makes the moments of fear more surreal for the characters and more real for the audience.

Here's my only complaint with the book. Eleanor. She sucks. The story is told from her perspective and we are constantly offered insight into her deepest thoughts. She starts the story as a friendless milksop with an overactive imagination. From there she is robbed of her few admirable qualities by Hill House as she starts losing her marbles. By mid-novel, I found her constant neurotic inner monologue to be irritating rather than scary. I stopped caring about her as a character. By the end I was begging Hill House to put this poor slob out of her misery.

This is a lesson in character identification when you're trying to create your protagonist, you writers. When you're crafting a protagonist, you have to give them at least one admirable quality. This character has to be not only realistic and therefore easy to sympathize with, but the readers also need a reason WHY they would want to sympathize. This reason has to be a personality trait that makes him or her better than the other characters.

This personality trait doesn't even have to be that admirable. People like James Bond for some reason. Why? Because he's a way more effective spy than everybody else: he's an efficient killer and he always gets the girl. But if you really think about it, why would you ever want to know a guy like that? He's kind of a sociopath. Yet millions of people worldwide continue to identify with him.

In the case of Eleanor Vance, she starts the story lame, but you can see her vivid imagination and will to make her life better despite her past hardships. You want to like her. But then, her imagination is turned against her by the evil will of Hill House and her desire to change her life is subverted. With these qualities removed, Eleanor Vance is just a crazy-lady and it is very frustrating to be inside her head.

The Haunting of Hill House is a masterpiece in a way, but I cannot give it an extremely high recommendation because of problems with Eleanor. I still maintain that it is a must-read for anybody interested in horror because of the terrifying way that Jackson handles the spirits of Hill House. But because I was asking myself, "Why am I reading this?" near the end, it honestly breaks my heart to give it:
3 1/2 doors that shut on their own out of 5

By the way, I loved the 1963 movie adaptation of this book. For once. the movies did it right. The terror of the book is captured perfectly and the majority of Eleanor's insane inner-prattle is omitted. Go rent it!

http://pharoahphobia.blogpot.com/

Review of "Julian" by Gore Vidal

For the longest time I thought Gore Vidal was this weird character-actor who always played dignified guys with excellent diction. I also knew that he had written the screenplay for "Myra Breckenridge", which appeared in a book called "The 50 Worst Movies of All Time" (Vidal has apparently disowned it). Imagine my surprise when, a few years ago, I discovered that his movie career is actually secondary, and that he is a novelist foremost. He has written an impressive number of historical novels, one of which is "Julian", the life-story of Julian the Apostate (331-363 A.D.), a Roman Philosopher-Emperor who tried to fight Christianity and revive the worship of the Hellenic gods during his short reign.

It begins with a correspondence between two philosophers, Priscus and Libanius, during the reign of Theodosius I, many years after Julian's death. Together, the two conspire to publish Julian's secret memoir. Priscus sells the memoir to Libanius with some notes. Libanius writes on the manuscript as well, seething that Priscus keeps withholding sections of the memoir and asking for more money. Thus Julian's life work is interrupted constantly by the two philosophers as they berate each other, discuss morality and offer differing accounts of the history.

"Julian", amongst other things, is a criticism of the effects of power. From the moment his uncle Constantius murders his father from paranoia, Julian is abused by the Roman state with all its bureaucracy, intrigue and fear. In his secret dreams of power, he wishes to be Emperor and do things differently. As he first tastes power as Caesar of the West, he is energetic, destroys pointless ceremony and thwarts the powerful. But as his day as Emperor dawns, despite his philosophic training and morals, he finds himself miscarrying justice and making concessions to powerful men. Corruption leaks in: where Constantius had his decadent eunuchs leeching money and resources from the state, Julian has a cadre of dubious Hellenic priests and magicians making their fortunes from his rule. Paranoia begins to haunt him, just as it did his uncle. As one reads, one begins to ask, despite obvious religious differences, if Julian's reign would have been similar to his uncle's if he had ruled longer.

More than anything, "Julian" is a lament for the vanished Hellenic world. The main characters of the novel are all pagans. As Julian follows his quest to restore the old gods, everywhere he is confronted with omens that his efforts are too late. The old classical world is vanishing, replaced by a new, ugly world. As the pagans lament the shortness of Julian's reign and the fall of old Rome, the reader is struck with further significance of which the characters are unaware: that in little over a century, Rome itself will collapse under the weight of barbarian invasions and its own corruption.

"Julian" has also been called a critique of Christianity. I'm not sure that's exactly the case. Whatever Gore Vidal's thoughts on Christianity are, and I bet they are not that friendly, the anti-Christian sentiments of this novel are the time's own. The main characters, being pagan, are hostile. The criticisms levelled at Christianity are merely echoes of Porphyry, Libanius, Julian's known published works, and other neoplatonists. Is this really criticism or is it just journalistic retelling?

Despite definitions of what "it is", the anti-Christian sentiments seem to have stirred me up. Without a doubt, this novel was the impetus for my writing "My Damn-Fool Search for Religion" post - a post that seems to have lost my blog some readership, by the way. The hypocritical, sleazy and maddening origins of the early Church are examined: the contradictions in the Bible, the corruption of the Bishops, and the exportation of pagan rituals and gods as sacraments and saints. But the book also features what has to be the stupidest religious nightmare of all time: what is the Holy Trinity Made of? For those of you who are unaware of this debate in which hundreds of thousands of human lives were lost, what do you think? Are The Father, The Son and The Holy Spirit made from the same substance or are they made from different substances, are they different people or are they made from the same substance but they're different somehow? Be careful how you answer, because 1500 years ago, your life would be in jeopardy.

So far, I haven't touched on the structure, dialogue or story of the novel. That's because, as far as I'm concerned, it's perfect. The story is thrilling. The characters are brilliant and products of their time, not 20th-Century-people slapped into an antique setting. Every detail is slavishly researched. If I ever write a book this thoughtful and excellent in every way, I would die a happy man. I give it my highest rating possible and recommend it as required reading for anybody with a brain and a thirst for knowledge.
5 arbitrary arrests out of 5

As a side note, this is something I have always wondered. For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, here's the background. Rome was an awesome place with awesome art. Then it got divided in half between east and west. The western half fell to barbarians, beginning what is known as the Dark Ages, when art, literature and intellectual thought were in a primitive state. The eastern half of the empire lived on for 1000 years as the Byzantine Empire.

To give you an example of how crappy the Dark Ages were, let's look at some coins:

Here's a solidus of Julian the Apostate from 360, before the Dark Ages. The profile is of good quality and striking. Obviously, somebody of artistic skill crafted it. The tails side isn't so great, but you can tell what's going on. There's a guy with a captive or body held in submission.

Here's a coin of Marcian, who became Emperor in 450, ninety years after Julian. Under his reign, Rome was sacked by the Vandals, which officially marks the end of the West. The bust is looking a little more cartoonlike for sure. But what the hell is that thing on the right supposed to be? According to Wikipedia, it's Victory. Victory is looking a little shabby, kinda like Rome itself was.

Here's Zeno, who had a reasonably long reign at the end of the 400's. Oh dear. Zeno himself looks like he was rendered by a talented six-year-old. Victory looks like a fallen angel with droopy wings. Did contemporary Romans have any sense of irony about this like we do?

Poor Emperor Maurice and his family ended up headless and floating in the Sea of Marmara in 602. Perhaps he was beheaded by his usurper, Phocas, who saw this coin and figured Maurcie was so ugly he had to die. Victory is at her most abstract yet. Any more abstract and she would be a crayon drawing of a head with legs and feet sticking out of it.

Things were worse in the Western half of the Empire, where they stopped making coins altogether. Germans were running around whacking the heads and penises off of statues. Then they all retired to Africa and had a big laugh.

So here's my question. What was the Byzantine Empire's excuse for having sucky art? The West was overrun by barbarians. They have a good reason for entering the Dark Ages. But what was going on in the East? Constantinople was never sacked by barbarians. Why is there such a shocking and lasting decline in the quality of their craftsmanship?

If "Julian" is to be believed, the ascendancy of Christianity caused it. At the time of Libanius and Priscus, the Christians were just closing down all the Hellenic schools. There are constant references to the new style of "ugly" art. Could it really be that the Christians had their own abstract and austere style of art that they favoured over the photorealistic tradition of the Greeks? Did Christians cause the Dark Ages just as surely as rampaging Germanic tribes?

I suspect the truth is not so clear-cut. But on the other hand, maybe it is. I won't know until I spend a little more time reading the history. I have all sorts of vile anti-Christian words dripping from my fingers right now, so maybe it's best to stop this post now before I lose more readers.

Maybe I'll read a nice book about Jesus next. I have to get rid of some of this Christ-anger. Maybe I'll read Ben-Hur. Incidentally, Gore Vidal wrote the original screenplay for the 1958 movie Ben-Hur. Just goes to show you that Gore Vidal has affected our lives beyond reckoning. He might just be watching you right now...

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