Vonnegut on the Read/Re-Read

Today I finished re-reading Kurt Vonnegut jr’s Slaughter-House Five for about the fifth or sixth time.  Even considering that I pretty much know the book by heart now I still love reading it again and again.  it is very easily high up on my list of favorite all-time books and Vonnegut himself might be in the top five of my all-time favorite authors (if not actually being my solely favorite author). 

I won’t claim that I really got anything new from the book this time around.  As usually I just appreciated its wit and wisdom.  As in the past readings I finished the book feeling a mixture of great happiness and positinve outlook on life while at the same time feeling terribly sad and despaining about the way the world is.  Vonnegut had possibly the most amazing ability at creating this sense of bittersweetness in his stories.

Besides Slaughter-House Five I also bought his short story collection Welcome to the Monkey House on Saturday.  Welcome to the Monkey House has probably one of my all-time favorite short stories in it, that onebeing “Harrison Bergeron.”  In fact it was reading “Harrison Bergeron” my freshman year of college which really got me started with loving the works of Kurt Vonnegut.  I had read Slaughter-House Five as a freshman in high school but something about it had been lost on me back then and so it would take another four years before I re-discovered it and found the real genius of Vonnegut. 

I have not read eveyone of his books (though I’d greatly like to).  I hope I can get to them all in the not too distant future.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. fell down a flight of stairs my junior year of college and only a few short days after that died.  So it goes.

The Sun Also Rises Again

I am currently re-reading Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises for the second time (which will make it my third reading altogether).

As I have likely mentioned in previous posts, The Sun Also Rises holds a special significance to me, in that I think it is really the one book which demonstrated my growth as a reader and lover of literature.  When I first read the book, my junior year in high school, I loathed it and found it difficult to complete.  I wish I could offr more of an explination as to why this was, but my teenage brain and thought process is quite alien to me now and thus, in all honesty, I really am unsure as to what it was specifically that I disliked about the book back then.  What I can say was that at the time I was quite satisfied with the notion of never picking up Hemingway again.

My first re-read of The Sun Also Rises occurred during my junior year of college, four years after I had had my first painful encounter with the book.  In truth I had not intended to re-read the book at all, but a professor of mine challenged me to give it a second chance and see if I still hated it.  I didn’t.  In all honesty it was almost a mystical experience or something.  I breezed through the novel the second time (which really isn’t much of a challenge considering tha tit is quite a short story) and found myself enjoying every moment of it.  I discovered a humor to the book that I had comepletely missed the first time around.  I also found myself enjoy the tact and skill with which Hemingway had committed words to the creation of a story.  Nothing seemed wasteful with Hemingway’s writing style.  The man had written exactly what he intended to write without needing to over elaborate or becoming clumsy with his style.  As a writing major at the time I found myslef greatly appreciating the use of language that Hemingway had employed in the story and how it maintained a steady motion and consitent sense of character.  Four years prior I had been greatly mistaken, The Sun Also Rises was indeed a fantastic novel.

So that brings us to my current reading.  I had bought the book some weeks back in a used copy of The Hemingway Reader which I had found at a GoodWill store.  This past Sunday I picked it up in the morning as I sat out on my porch and drank a cup of coffee.  It was very relaxing beginning the story again.  I was familiar with it, comfortable with it.  Whereas during my second reading I had picked up the story with a cynical belief that I’d find no more joy in it than I had with my first read, this time around I knew that the story would be a pleasure to work through again.

While I cannot avoid noticing again the magnificent use of language that Hemingway employees in The Sun Also Rises I find that so far during this read (I’m about halfway through currently) I have been paying far more attention to the characters in the story, especially the narrator Jake Barnes.  I know that during both of my previous readings I was well aware of the personalities and characteristics of the main cast of the story, but this time it seems that I am far more interested in the intricacies that make them all at once compelling but also tragic.  Jake has emotion, that much in unquestionable, yet he approaches the story with a certain stoic attitude which shapes our perception of the whole story.  There is a kind of defeatist quality to Jake’s narration which makes us feel that even in the dazzling swinging times the characters might be having in appearance, that in truth there is a lingering sadness and malaise to all of their existences.  In this way we, the readers, truly encounter that “Lost Generation” with which the book so intimately deals.  To be lost is to be without direction and that is exactly what the different characters are, directionless, wanering around, pursuing the semblance of happiness and enjoyment all the while spiraling furthing into indifference and defeat.

I think it might be easy to enjoy the book solely for the nostalgic feel of the 1920s in Europe with lots of drinking, late nights, and parties but this approach to the story misses the key point which it that all those things were merely a shell or a mask put on over the real quality of the people who performed the parts.  There is an existential note to it all, not necessarily the angsty existentialism which emerged after the second world war, but instead, agian, that defeatism in the face of reality.  Jake, deeply in love with Brett knows there is no chance of happiness with her because of his injury in the war (WWI) and Brett, equally in love with Jake, knows that she lacks any ability at actually loyalty which would ever allow for them to be happy.  Instead of seeking some kind of resolution the characters seem to avoid their problems by pursing outside entertainment and a ton of drinking.  As such the story can come across as being without any real sense of resolution or closer, which I suppose might be frustrating to some, but in the end that is entirely the point, that there is no closer because the characters are completely incapable of making such a thing happen.  Thus the story is a tragedy of characters and their inabilty to save themselves from their own directionlessness.

Truly fantastic.  The Sun Also Rises is one of those books which I strongly suggest to anybody who enjoys good writing and storytelling but also likes the challenge of pulling more from a story than may initially be apparent about it.  Hemingway has remained a classic for a reason and The Sun Also Rises is a great example of why that is.

The Wonderful Mr. Bradley

Ray Bradley is unquestionably one of my all time favorite authors.  I honestly cannot think of a single piece of writing of his which I’ve read and not enjoyed.  Perhaps one of his most influential works to me was his collection of essays entitled Zen and the Art of Writing which served as a constant source of inspriation for me during my college years.  I think the man is an absolute creative genius and unquestionably one of the greatest authors of the 20th century.

That being said I was touched and pleased with The New York Times article “A Literary Legend Fights for a Library” by Jennifer Steinhauer.  Being employeed in a public library myself I always feel a ping of anxiety when I read about the closing of other libraries across the nation.  As such it is wonderful to hear about such devoted patronage from a man who has contributed so much in the realm of the material that libraries provide.

I cannot help but feel that the article contains a strong homage to Mr. Bradbury’s best known work, the famous and insightful Fahrenheit 451.  Both the context of closing libraries and Mr. Bradbury’s comments on the Internet (and his great dislike of it) strike me speaking a similar theme and fear of the destruction of books.  Is it a real concern or just tilting at windmills?  Can censorship also ultimately be possibly through the propogation of useless unintelligible junk theat gains more respect and following that that material of true knowledge and worth?  Things to think about.

Anyway, a great article about a great (albeit a bit eccentric) man.  He’d probably hate this blog post on the Internet.  Good for him.

Salinger and Caulfield and Lawsuits . . . Oh My?

Not too long ago I wrote here a bit about J.D. Salinger’s novel The Catcher in the Rye and the allure and popularity which has surrounded the story (and how I really am not that big a fan).  Well today I write a bit more about the Mr. Salinger and his famous novel. 

 I’ll direct you first to the article “Holden Caulfield, a Ripe 76, Heads to Court Again” by A. G. Sulzberger in The New York Times.  It seems that Mr. Salinger and his lawyers are pursuing a lawsuit against a Mr. Fredrik Colting (aka J. D. California) for copyright infringement for Mr. Colting’s novel 60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye.  Now I haven’t read Mr. Colting’s book, so I can’t speak on all the specifics, but, from the above article it sounds like, the story of 60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye relies on a number of similarities in plot to The Catcher in the Rye as well as utilizing a character named Mr. C who is heavily influenced on the fictional Holden Caulfield.  This is where the all the problems come into play.  Mr. Salinger’s lawyers claim that Mr. Coltings book is a “rip-off” of The Catcher in the Rye whereas Colting’s lawyers say that it is indeed an original work, especially considering that a ficticious J. D. Salinger is an important character in 60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye.

Again, not having read Mr. Colting’s work I cannot say for sure how much or little he might be “ripping-off” The Catcher in the Rye.  What I can say however, is that the case seems to raise some questions of fictional ownership that i enjoy contemplating.  For a long time I have been somewhat skeptical (if not outright opposed to) the way in which our society seems to demand the “ownership” of fiction.  I’m not suggesting that all fiction is without creators, or even that people shouldn’t credit others for fictional origins or concepts, but moreso I would say that it seems a little bit ridiculous to suggest a complete ownership over this inmaterial of a fictional character or basic plot.  I understand that we value originality and the creative process, but to me a rethinking and a use of an already created character counts as originality and creativity.  To a certian degree I feel as if it would almost be better if authors of fiction pursued a bit of an “open source” mindset with their material.  That being, that they deserve credit for the original story and creation, but allow for the characters, plots, bits of the story to be used beyond their own work, by others who can also contribute to the originality of these works of fiction.  Of course it really seems to all be a money kind of conflict, which is unfortunate in my opinion, becuase that, much more than the reinterpretting of plots or characters, really strikes me as diminishing thevalue of the fictional work.

Beyond money, it is also part of that whole author function debate, which I could go on and on about for quite some time.  In the article it mentions how Mr. Salinger has refused to sell the rights to make a movie of The Catcher in the Rye, because he, as his agent says, “feels strongly that he wants his fiction and his characters to remain intact as he wrote them.”  Sure, that’s fine and good and all, especially considering that so many good books have been done an unjustice by being made into film, but the problem I have with it is this sense of ongoing ownership and control.  Personally I think that if Mr. Salinger wanted to keep his characters and fiction so safe to his vision then he never should have published in the first place.  I see this as a reality of the author of fiction.  The author has some control on guiding the plot and developing the characters, but really, once a story is made available to read, those plots and characters are open to all sorts of interpretation, contemplation and criticism regardless of whether the author likes it or not (or if they entirely adhere to the author’s original vision).  That being said, I respect Mr. Salinger’s wish not to have his book made into a movie, becuase that is his right, as the law and ownership stand.  But really I question the legitimacy of the lawsuit and am curious to see what the outcome will be.

H. P. Lovecraft “Tales”

Yesterday I bought The Library of America copy of Howard Phillips Lovecraft’s Tales, a collection of 22 of Mr. Lovecraft’s most famous stories.  The whole collection was selected by Peter Straub, an appropriate individual for the job, if I may say so myself (Mr. Straub also wrote the notes for the collection).  It was this collection, several years back now (when I was in college) that first introduced me to H. P. Lovecraft.  Much like Everything is Illuminated I found Tales while I was shelving some books, and thought “why not?”  A good choice all around.

I have long been a fan of what is considered horror or dark fiction.  As a child (I’m sure of mentioned this before) I was particularly fond of John Bellairs who wrote startlingly creepy books for children and young adults.  As I got older I moved on to Stephen King (who I know I have mentioned as probably my favorite living writer).  I have also long been a fan of Edgar Allen Poe, whom the inside cover of Tales‘ notes as having been a direct predecessor to H. P. Lovecraft’s dark works.

There is much in Lovecraft’s works to admire.  He had an uncanny knack at creating a sense of uncertainty.  Most of his stories rely on at best a questionable narrator, if not one who is outright unreliable due to the possibility of insanity or some other degree of derangement.  While I read some of the stories last night I thought of this fact.  As the reader, the audience of the story, it is hard to determine the truth in what the narrators give.  You want to believe it because it is what you are provided in the story, and yet these narrators often admit to having slipped into madness and insanity due to the horrors they encountered and often what they describe is too strikingly absurd to truly believe.  It is a wonderful conflict which Mr. Lovecraft created.

Then again there is his mythos, the vast dark stories of beings of immense power, which have influenced a great number of other writers since.  The Lovecraft Mythos creates a world in which we are all unfortunate victims to the whims of beings so vastly more powerful than ourselves and beyond anything we possess the capacity to understand.  These are ancient creatures that lack any regard to the suffering or needs of humanity, they exist for their own timeless purposes and we just happen to occasionally get in their way.  They are incomprehensible monsters and yet they have the amazing ability to fascinate us, to make us want to understand even a mote point about them.

The sad thing about H. P. Lovecraft is that he died at a rather young age (he was only 46 years old).  One can only imagine that if he had lived longer he might have had the chance to created even more strange dark tales, as well as expand further upon his mythos.  Alas it is not so, and we must make do with those works that he created.  If you are looking for eerie, dark tales, of the things that go bump in the night, then Lovecraft is an essential read.

“Dune” Everybody should Read It!

I would like to extend praise to Douglas Cohen in his efforts to sell Frank Herbert’s Dune to more traditional fans of the fantasy genre (as opposed to the science fiction, where Dune is generally placed).  That being said though, I wish he had pushed further, and not just outreached to fans of the fantasy genre but to readers of all sorts.  While I admit to the personal nature of my opinion, because of my love of the book, I feel that Dune is one of those great novels that should be picked up by everybody.

The thing is that even though Dune is definitely science fiction in its basic structure, I think the story does a lot to transcend the genre.  It is a work, somewhat like Tolkien’s The Hobbit that offers so much more than a simple genre labeling would provide.  I remember when I first read Dune, back when I was a sophomore in high school, being absolutely fascinated by the apparent parallels to the trade guilds during the Enlightenment.  Dune has so much more to do with political systems and power struggles than it really does with spaceships and different planets (sure the spaceships and planets are present, but they are really just vehicles used to convey the complex ideas within the story).  Essentially Dune has always struck me as a wonderfully developed contemplation on the interplay of politics, economics, and religion and how pulling a string in one area inevitably causes effects in the others.

What is more is that Mr. Herbert created some of the most memorable characters you could ever encounter.  Paul Atreides is ten times the hero that Luke Skywalker could ever aspire to be.  He demonstrates outstanding qualities of bravery, level headedness, and all around wisdom in the face of great adversity and ultimately finds transcendence in the tough lot that life has given him.  And the villains like Baron Harkonnen truly strike an emotional chord of the possibilities of the corrupting influence of power and greed. 

Really it is a magnificent book, that I strongly suggest to everyone who claims to like a good read.  It has all the elements that make it an appealing sci-fi or fantasy novel and yet it does so much more than that in the end so that it doesn’t really matter much what genre it is lumped in.

Interestingly, while I was cleaning my room this weekend, which led to my finding and beginning to re-read Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything is Illuminated (which I wrote about in my previous post) I also discovered my copy of Dune and strongly considered giving it another read for old times sakes.  I have it on my desk at home and think that it might be what I move on to once I finish Everything is Illuminated.

Finished “Anathem” . . . Finally

I will start by saying that Neal Stephenson’s Anathemis a really long book.  The hardcover was 890 pages of novel, plus nearly another hundred worth of appendix content.  Now a book being long isn’t necessarily a good or bad thing, it just means it is long, and if you are the kind of person who does not like devoting a lot of time to a single book then something like Anathem probably isn’t for you.  I actually don’t usually mind long books, but I also haven’t been reading as much or as fast as I used to so it can be a little difficult when it takes over two months to read a single novel.

That being said I found Anatheman overall enjoyable story.  I think that Mr. Stephenson did a great job at creating a interesting social structure and hierarchy as well as a truly original story in a science fiction genre that often has too many variations on the same theme.  All and all I liked it.  I thought the characters, especially the narrator Erasmus, were all interesting and relatively believable people.  I was interested by the various plot developments and curious as to how everything was going to work out, which strikes me as an all around success in any novel.

My main detractor though goes back to the great length of the book.  Upon finishing it, and at several times in the story, I felt that really it was just over stretching.  I don’t think Anathem needed to be nearly 900 pages long.  I don’t think that it even needed to be 500 pages long.  yes there was a lot of interesting moments and a lot of characters and obviously Mr. Stephenson felt the need to fully develop the society in this world which is quite different than anything that we know, but there just seemed to be a lot of stuff that seemed to drag forever unnecessarily.  And while I don’t know for sure, I imagine that the original draft was significantly longer than the published book because there were some parts that read as if Mr. Stephenson had more that he wanted to write but didn’t include.

My personal conclusion to this is that the book should have just trimmed down and focused more on exact plot points, or Mr. Stephenson should have opted to write a couple books, like a trilogy.  Now sure, you can ask how a trilogy where each book is about 300 pages long would be that different than a 900 page book, but I think that it definitely would.  It would create a bit more of a differentiation in the story arks, and possibly have allowed Stephenson to add that bit more that at times seemed missing.  It is kind of a tough call but, that is my overall feeling.

I will give Anathem an A for overall plot and concept and a B for overall reading enjoyment and experience.  Probably not for everybody, but I think some people will really like it.

Rivka Galchen’s “Atmospheric Disturbances”

So I am reading this book called Atmospheric Disturbances, by Rivka Galchen, and I am finding that I really enjoy it.  The the fact that I am really enjoying it is not all that special in and of itself, seeing as I have a habit of enjoy a lot of the books that I read.  But my reason for my enjoyment is something which I have not experienced for a great while with a book.  This reason is in that I feel that Atmospheric Disturbances is a book which should be read and discussed in a college environment, because it is the type of book that promotes contemplation about the characters and situations and everything.  It is, so far as I can tell (only being about 70 pages into it) a truly literary work.  To me this makes it wonderfully enjoyable, my only real regret being in that I am not reading it in a classroom where I can talk to others and hear what they make of it as well.  Not only is the story compelling, moving, a wonderful display of postmodern thought and story device, but the very language is just saturated with intelligence, cleverness, and all around beauty.

That being said, I will say that I cannot consider Atmospheric Disturbancesto be, by any means, an easy read.  For a novel of only around 240 pages, it has thus far presented itself as being dense, full of cerebral content and articulate wording.  I would not recommend this for a simple browsing read, because in doing such, one is guaranteedto miss important parts of the story.  This is a book that almost demands close reading and that is why I feel it would be so in place in a college classroom.  I want to write a paper about it, pulling in material from the likes of Freud and Baudrillard both (the latter especially because of the concept of “simulacrum” that exists throughout).

It is fantastic . . . there, I have said it.  Don’t take that to mean that the book is “good” because the measure of goodness is not an easy thing for one to objectively classify.  But it is fantastic in the sense of being a piece of literature that sparks further contemplation beyond just the initial act of absorbing the story.

This Day in Books

On this day, February 2, 1922, James Joyce’s masterpiece Ulysseswas first published.  To this day the book has been regarded as both one of the most important works in the English language and also one of the most difficult.  Critics have presented a slew of various takes on what it means and whether or not it is even a valuable contribution to English literature.  Though there does seem to be a general consensus that Ulysses is important piece of work to modernist literature.

I have never read Ulyssesthough, having been in college studying English, I have heard many takes on the book.  it has both been highly recommended to me and also blatantly ripped apart by its detractors.  Personally it is one of those books that greatly interests me, but one which I have not decided whether or not I actually want to read it.  part of me is greatly intimidated by Ulysses.  I have found throughout my life as a reader, and especially since spending my college years studying a lot of literature, that there a number of works that act in this fashion.  The Brothers Karamazov is one example, as is Moby Dick.  It has something to do with the concept of a literary classic, that these books have thus far withstood the tide of time and remain as relevant works in the greater study of the art of literature.  Ulyssesis a massive novel, some publications surpassing 1000 pages.  It is also noted for being very difficult because much of the novel is written in stream-of-conscience style.  I feel that if I intend to continue on in literary scholarship (something which I fully intend to do) this is a book that I need to at least take a shot at.  But as of yet I have not.

But anyhow, there is the big thing in literary history for this day.

John Irving on John Updike

I always love reading what authors have to say about other authors.  Sometimes the pieces are critical and deeming, while at other times they can be full of praise and grace.  My favorite thing about reading what authors have to say about each other is the insightfulness that exists in the understanding of how one writes.  While without doubt we all write in our own personal style and voice, I believe there is a similarity in all writing.  It has something to do with the thread of language, and the purpose of writing in and of itself, which is to communicate ideas to others.  Very often (though not all the time) people who have made a profession out of writing have a profound understanding of the art and what goes into the process of good writing.  As such they can often relate to other writers and the process they got through.

All that being said, I direct you to a piece written by John Irving on the late John Updike, appearing on Slate.com.  It is wonderful, insightful, and moving and strikes of that understanding that I think exists between people of letters.  As I mentioned in my previous post, I have never read a full John Updike novel.  The same is not true of John Irving, who ranks as one of my favorite authors (The World According to Garpbeing high in my favorite books list).  I think Mr. Irving is a great writer.  And while his stories may definitely not be for everybody, I think he deserves credit for his skill with language.  Read what he wrote about John Updike.  It is really beautiful in my opinion.  And interesting, very very interesting.

RIP John Updike

Perhaps one of the greatest American authors of the past century, John Updike, passed away from lung cancer yesterday.  Mr. Updike was 76 years old.

I am a bit ashamed to admit, that while familiar with many of his major works, I have never read a full John Updike novel.  I have however read a number of articles and other pieces by him, the most recent being an article about Mars that appeared in the December 2008 edition of National Geographic, it was a lovely and enlightening piece.  I feel that it is worth reading the New York Times obituary for Mr. Updike, as it does a better job than I could at summing up the man’s great life. You may also want to check out this article and this slideshow.

I can say, with honest belief, that Mr. Updike wil be greatly missed, but that in all likelyhood his works will continue to persevere and promote discussion and contemplation.  He was truly a gift to American Letters, a rare breed that finds their place, and excels at it in all ways.

Charlie Huston’s “Already Dead”

I will begin this post by saying that prior to picking up Charlie Huston’s mystery novel Already Dead I knew next to nothing about the author or the books he has written.  The way in which my attention was brought to Charlie Huston was through reading a post on Early Word: The Publisher| Librarian Connection which pointed me to Huston’s new novel The Mystic Art of Erasing All Signs of Death.  Stephen King provides a captivating review of the The Mystic Art on Amazon.com (see book link previously) which made me think that it would be worth a look (a feeling which I feel stronger about having now read Already Dead).  One of the great benefits of working in a library is that I literally have thousands of books within immediate reach of me every work day.  So, after reading the reviews for The Mystic Art I decided to see if we had a copy available at work.  We didn’t but we had a number of Huston’s other books.  At work I took a quick break and went to browse the shelves to see if anything by Huston would possibly interest me.  That is how I found Already Dead.

On finishing Already DeadI will state that I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it.  The reason for my surprise stems from two major facts.  1).  I don’t really care for mystery novels.  I don’t have anything against the genre in general (and arguably some books that I have read could be considered slightly within the mystery genre, like say many of Stephen Kings works) but it just doesn’t really interest me.  Probably part of it is because I associate mystery novels with my mother’s personal reading preference, while I have always been swayed more towards fantasy, horror, and scifi.  2).  I don’t really read books about vampires.  Yes, that is right, Already Dead is about vampires, I realize I neglected to mention that previously, but now you know.  The fact that I don’t read vampire novels (in fact the only one I think I have ever read is King’s Salem’s Lot and I read that more because it was a Stephen King book than because it was about vampires) might surprise some people who know me because I happen to be a pretty big fan of vampire movies and I find the mythology that has developed around vampires to be rather interesting.  Probably a big thing that has driven me away from vampire novels is the general pop goth stereotype I associate with the works.  I do not have anything against either pop or goth but neither are areas that generally interest me and I think a lot of vampire stories are written with these groups in mind.  Sure, I’ve been curious about works by Anne Rice (my college roommate was rather fond of her works) and have considered picking up one of the Sookie Stackhouse novelsby Charlaine Harris because I was really enjoyed HBO’s first season of True Blood (which was based on Ms. Harris’ works).  So all around not a reader of either mystery or vampires.

But I did like Already Dead.

I think a big part of my enjoyment stems from the fact that Huston’s novel provided me with a very quick and relatively easy read that was entertaining but also thoughtful.  Huston’s style of writing, in my opinion, can best be described as pulp.  Already Deadread like a gritty detective novel that seems like it would be more in place in the late forties or early fifties, except for the whole vampire thing (I don’t think they were quite the same level of popularity then) and the computers and ATMs and cellphones and everything else in the novel that presents modern day Manhattan (where the story is set).  In a way the noir pulp feel of Already Dead set in modern NYC seems almost anachronistic, but it works for the characters and the plot in a way that dives the reader from front to back.  For this fact alone I give Huston high praise.

As I said above I found Already Dead to be a pretty easy read.  It only took me about two days to read it (though admittedly I was sick yesterday and spent most of the day in bed reading).  Just because it was a quick and easy read does not mean I think it was written simply.  All around I found the story to be very creatively developed and the language to be written with admirable intelligence.  Huston has a knack for words, especially when he puts them in the mouth of his characters, like the narrator Joe Pitt.  He captures the gritty underside of the world in startling detail all the while keeping the read accessible and progressing.  And while the book was easy enough to pick up and get through, I actually feel that there is a lot more going on than first impressions give.  Sure you can read Already Deadas a detective novel featuring vampires in modern day New York and walk away having encountered a fairly entertaining book.  But I would suggest you could dig deeper into the story and pull a lot of relevance from the themes that arise.

Already Deadis dark, and honestly that is a bit of an understatement.  I would list this book as rated Mature with the capital M because a lot of the subject matter is pretty rough (the least of which is a vampire sucking somebodies blood or a zombie munching on some brains – both of which happen repeatedly in the story).  Probably not the best book for teeny-bopper fans of Stephanie Meyer’s the Twilight Saga to jump to next (though I don’t know for certain just how detailed and mature the subject matter in those books gets).  Besides the general violence that one would associate with vampires and zombies there is also a fair share of other dark aspects of society presented; murder, rape, child and domestic abuse, drugs, alcohol, sex, and enough “colorful” language to fit right in with a Quentin Tarantino movie.  This isn’t to say that Huston glamorizes any of these subject matters.  In fact, if anything, he writes about them exactly as they are, the hardships and dark sides of life that some people have the misfortune of experiencing.  It isn’t gratuitous, it is just the world in which the characters of Already Dead live in.

Another theme that I pulled from the book, though I think that it is a little bit burried under the other more visual elements form the story, is the concepts of illness or sickness.  Quite obviously the vampires and the zombies are infected with disease and this is a fact that is brought up time and time again; the zombies have a flesh and brain eating bacteria and the vampires have a blood consuming virus (simply referred to as Vyrus).  But beyond that there are other ways in which illness is present in the story.  Joe Pitt’s girlfriend, Evie, has HIV which is the main reason she won’t have sex with Joe (even though as a vampire Joe is immune to the disease – Evie is unaware of Joe’s vamprism though).  Then there are the diseases that might not be caused by any germs but seem to be the ills of society.  There are several characters who are homeless or drugs/alcohol abusers.  Several of the people have been victimized by abuse or are themselves abusers.  Even the perception of Manhattan and it’s society seem to represent a sickness in the world.  part of this is inevitably due to Joe Pitt being the narrator and his cynical perception of the world and people around him, but I also think that Huston was consciously using the idea of illness to further frame the story.  Nobody is clean in Joe Pitt’s world and near the end of the novel there is a pretty grim couple of paragraphs in which Pitt contemplates the fact that inevitably everyone is either dying or on the road to being killed.

Joe Pitt himspef presents an interesting study.  As the protagonist and narrator he is what I would call a pretty good example of an anti-hero.  Being an anti-hero does not mean that a character is necessarily a bad guy or a villain but more so that they do not follow the normal perception of traditional heroism.  Joe fits this description in that he tends to be far more concerned with his own well being and survival than with other people around him.  Joe doesn’t end up in most of the situations in the book because he is pursuing the goal of being a hero and savior, instead much of his actions are driven by his desire to earn his next meal or to save his own hide.  Joe shows little problem with roughing people up or, if the situation calls for it, killing them.  He seems to view most others as either inferior to him or too dangerous to really try and get involved with.  But Joe also does have some deep set moral drives.  It is revealed in the story that before he became a vampire he had lived in an abusive household and so he tends to have a strong drive to protect innocent people, especially children and teenagers.  Further Joe comes across as having a somewhat guilty conscience of his need for blood.  This doesn’t always stop him from taking it but it is a matter that seems to always be in debate in his mind.  There is also his relationship with Evie and his knowledge that if he made her a vampire it would cure her of her disease but ultimately curse her to another and potentially worse one.  If Joe has any real weakness it may be that he is too smart, which is also, interestingly, one of his biggest strengths.  Joe Pitt can’t seem to escape from his own mind and thoughts, and at times from his own mouth (he often fails to know when to shut up).  In some ways life might be easier for Joe  if he was more brawn and less brains, like the giant vampire Hurley.  But Joe is a thinking and his thinking often gets him into more trouble than out of it.  But it is his ability to reason which also allows him to be more than a blunt instrument and thus overcome being a truly monstrous character.  While Joe knows how to use violence when it is needed he can also refrain from it.  It is his intelligence that in many ways makes him a kind of heroic.  What drives Joe into action is usually his own self interest but inevitably his intelligence leads him down other paths, even ones that may be of danger in the long run.

So Already Deadis a pretty good book in my opinion.  A quick read but an interesting one.  Charlie Huston has written three other novels in the same setting and with Joe Pitt as the main character.  I think I would like to check them out just to see how Huston further develops his characters and the world of Manhattan populated in part by vampires.  There were also a few questions left open at the end of the book which I imagine will be further examined in the following books.  I also would still really like to pick up The Mystic Art of Erasing All Signs of Death.

Praise of Neil Gaiman’s “The Sandman”

A bit late on noting that the 20th anniversary of Gaiman’s epic comic creation (which occured a few weeks past) but not so late that I cannot lint to a great post on the 5 Ways That Sandman Changed the World.

I did not grow up as a lover of comic books.  Sure I read some here or there, but ultimately I was never really terribly interested in them until around Junior year of college.  It was that year that I picked up Alan Moore’s great comic, which some regard as the greatest comic of all time, Watchmen.  I will put my reaction simply as having been blown away (I’m also proud to report that my brother has recently had a similar reaction to Watchmen).  From there I went on to read other great comics (or Graphic Novels depending on your semantic preference — I still owe a post on my views of the use of Graphic Novel versus Comic Book) such as Art Spiegelman’s Maus, Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns, and Jeff Smith Bone amongst others.  Interestingly I had been curious of Gaiman’s Sandman books before beginning my real comic reading mostly because I had greatly enjoyed his novels Neverwhere and American Gods (both wonderful pieces of urban fantasy).  After having read the above mentioned comics and finding myself enjoying this form of literature, I made it a personal goal to pick up The Sandman at some point.  I was lucky when I got a job at the Greenville County Library System that the main library had all the comics available.  I made my way through the series in about a month’s time.  All around The Sandman comics rank up there with Watchmen and Maus as the favorites that I have read.  If you like comics or are interested in trying reading some I would suggest checking out Neil Gaiman’s works, they are very good.

R.I.P. Michael Crichton

Best-selling author Michael Crichton, who authored such well known and popular novels as Jurassic Park, The Andromeda Strain, and Timeline passed away this past Tuesday.  Crichton was 66 years old.

I’ve read a number of Crichton’s books myself including The Lost World, Sphere, and Prey.  Back in 1996, when I was only twelve years old I picked up The Lost World (I had not read Jurassic Park amazingly considering how mush I liked the movie) and absolutely loved it.  I wrote Crichton a letter telling him how much I appreciated his novel.  All I got back was a basic form letter, you know a “Thank you for your comments” kind of thing (a fact that has always irked my father even though I didn’t really mind that much).

Personally I would not list Crichton as an author of great literature but I will give him credit for creating very popular and commercially successful books that have the wonderful ability to truly captivate readers.  Personally I link Crichton as being in a clade with authors like John Grisham, Dean Koontz, and even to a degree Stephen King (though I like King by far the best) in that they have all been very successful at marketing the “pop novel”.  Crichton will be greatly missed but we should all be appreciative of the work he provided to the world.

The New York Times offers its own take on the man who Crichton was.