15) The Twentieth Century, I Have Delivered It

Book Read: From Hell

Author/Illustrator: Alan Moore, Eddie Campbell
Pages: 590 (incl. Appendix)

When I was sixteen, my dad got laid off from his job. He and my mom took our family's collective savings and took myself and my three brothers on a trip to Europe: Paris, London and Scotland. It was one of the best trips of my life. To visit such amazing cities at an age where cynicism has not yet clouded the perceptions and everything is still wild and lovely was incredible. The trip was also a little desperate, I think, because of the circumstances surrounding our hasty departure. It was with this mindset that we embarked on a Jack the Ripper tour of Whitechapel in London at about the halfway point of the trip. Our guide was a short, white bearded Beefeater with an encyclopedic knowledge of 19th century London. He would finish each story and beckon us onward with a guttural spitty noise he made with his throat, sort of a "HRRRRCT!" sound. "Let's go down this street, shall we? Hrrrrcht!!" he would say, and the enthralled, disgusted crowd would follow. We finished the tour at the Ten Bells tavern where my brother got a taste of his first-ever English pint.

The bar is immortalized in From Hell, Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell's amazing graphic novel about the Jack the Ripper murders. Ten years later, as I read the novel and came upon the bar's first appearance, I was struck by how closely it resembled the bar I had had the good fortune to visit on that heady, terrifying, breathtaking trip. The entire novel throbs---sometimes literally---with this vividness. It's a perfect combination of dramatic license and historical fact, showcasing the true breadth of Moore's obsession with metaphysics, the moribund, and his talent for storylines that weave and snake around each other and collide over and over with awful, brilliant power.

Most of us know bits and pieces of the story of Jack the Ripper and some may be familiar with the multiple theories devised by "Ripperologists" about who the killer actually was. Moore has followed the theory raised in Stephen Knight's Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution that labels Sir William Gull, Queen Victoria's surgeon, as the killer.

Moore's Gull is a hulking, eloquent madman who worships art, nature and the occult (as attested by his alleged ties to the Freemason), a delicate soul who also happens to believe that his bloodlust is dictated by the gods themselves. He is a brute and a misogynistic monster. His lonely death in a madhouse---where his spirit moves through space and time, vaporizing and becoming, he believes, exalted---moved me to tears. He is the perfect Alan Moore villain---a man caught up in the misery of his time, held prostrate and completely helpless by his obsessions.

Of course, the story isn't just about Gull --- it is about the dour police inspector who returns to Whitechapel to attempt to solve the murders, only to resign from the police force in complete disillusionment. It is about the five prostitutes who fall victim to Gull's Liston knife. Moore's characterizations of these women, full of sickness and struggle, give them dignity. But again, as with all of Moore's writing, the story and characters become part of a larger understanding, a foreshadowing of what horrors are yet to come. The denseness of characterization, English history, backstory, the birth of Hitler, war, the soullessness of the future---it is overwhelming. So wisely, Moore and Campbell break the story up with panels of blackness and silence, and it's here that the story simmers with dread:



I don't know much about comic book artists, so I don't really know how to talk about the illustration above. I can say that Eddie Campbell's art is profoundly moving, and deeply disturbing. I have never seen anything like it, and to be honest, I'm not sure that I want to again. Blood has never appeared bloodless, so precise. His rough pen and ink scratches are almost painful to the eye. You feel he is taking you deep into the filth of Whitechapel---into its dirt, its despair, the consumptive, syphilitic heart. Moore usually does these stories that swirl with colour and life (the exploding flora and vitality of Swamp Thing come to mind) but this unusual match serves his style and the subject matter perfectly.

I can understand why From Hell hasn't gotten as much interest as, say, Watchmen or V for Vendetta . Although the subject matter in all three books is equally dense and rich, From Hell is a diseased, bleak and sprawling beast, graphic and unrelenting. It's a long, slogging read at times. But it is brilliant and meticulously researched, and I suspect that in its melancholy, its myth and conjecture, you may find a gleaming kernel of truth, and that is what makes the work rewarding.

14) The White Tiger is...Just Fine

Book Read: The White Tiger

Author:Aravind Adiga

Pages: 276


I really wanted to like The White Tiger. I have enjoyed a lot of work by Indian writers (Vikram Seth, Arundhati Roy, Rohinton Mistry, Hari Kunzru, Anita Rau Badami, Jhumpa Lahiri) and Adiga is of Indian descent, he won a Booker Prize, and lots of Indian writers have won Booker Prizes and other important literary awards, and the people who judge these sort of awards generally seem to know what they're doing, and so I bowed my head and bought the book.

The White Tiger certainly isn't bad. The narrator, Balram, relates his story through a series of letters to the Chinese premier Wen Jiabo, who is expected to visit India to learn about the new entrepreneurial class. Balram grew up in what Adiga calls "The Darkness" - a rural town called Laxmangarh - the son of a rickshaw puller. His father's pitiful death spurs Balram to learn how to drive, and through his ambition and charm, he manages to secure a post in Delhi ("The Light") as the driver of the son of a wealthy landowner from his village. It's here that the novel's sharpness unfolds and we see the bitterness and deceitful behaviour shared by both the upper and lower class characters. We also see Delhi - the new India - through Balram's eyes. He mentions "hospitals with lobbies as clean as five-star hotels" and provides lingering, loving descriptions of newly-built strip malls. Adiga wants us to know that India isn't all back roads, landfills and poverty - the country is growing.

The expanse of the country also matches Balram's rising ambition, and his loyalty to his wealthy but spineless boss begins to quaver beneath his own desire for Money and Power. The novel's conclusion won't be a surprise (it's revealed early on in the book) but the gradual course of Balram's changing personality may be.

I feel like this novel will be taught in classrooms and passed around overeducated, underemployed, middle-class North Americans (of which I include myself) who will be impressed and charmed at this "gritty depiction" of modern India. When The White Tiger is compared to the magical realism by Salman Rushdie or the romantic, damp family tales of Anita Rau Badami, it does come across as a little rawer, a bit more unflinching. But I also agree with the Guardian's first review of the novel, which pointed out that there are so many alternative Indias, uncontacted and unheard. Adiga's viewpoint is a very particular one---it should not be considered the ultimate truth.

A confession here, and a diversion: I found myself praising the book to others even as it became more and more milquetoast and less spectacular than I wanted it to be. With each successive page turn, I read frantically, groping for something better: better writer, a sharper wit and conclusions that were a little more revelatory. Now that I'm done, I feel a bit like a fraud.

Adiga has also been criticized in the press for being an Oxford-educated upper middle-class journalist; what does he know about being a poor, paan-chewing driver in Delhi? I'm of the view that this is irrelevant. The story is convincing. And authenticity isn't really Adiga's problem. For a novel that has been labelled as at least partially satirical, The White Tiger isn't very funny or particularly acerbic---and that is a problem. It was actually a bit tasteless, not in the sense of being uncouth, but rather because mostly it sat bland and dull on my tongue, like uncooked bread. Where's my fucking spice?

With that being said, a few parts work. It's genuninely agonizing to witness Balram's employer become more vulnerable and stupid in his eyes. In the same way, it's sad (but also vaguely interesting) to watch the deterioration of his character (or is it a strengthening?) His dubbing of a sleazy fellow driver "Vitiligo-Lips" is funny the first four or five times it's mentioned, and I also enjoyed every time the drivers brought up their favorite local periodical, Murder Weekly.

Overall, though, I wasn't attached to any character enough to care about their well-being or demise. Even Balram, who at least had the benefit of being interesting, became tedious until the novel's final, decisive act. I actually found myself skipping his repeated proclamations of enterpreneurial skill and ominous foreshadowing to Mr. Jiabo. I found myself wishing there had been more ACTION and less nostalgic blather - more little shocks to rouse the reader out of a bit of a stupor.

I ultimately feel the success of The White Tiger is due in part to the Slumdog Millionaire-ization of popular North American culture at the moment. Any story about downtrodden people in the Third World seems to get our attention, tug our strings, prod that little bruise of white guilt. Such stories are entertaining, certainly---but do they deserve all these accolades? Haven't we already seen these ideas paraded before us, and done better?

Roundup Time

Books read and blogged:

JPod - Douglas Coupland
Running With Scissors - Augsten Burroughs
I'm With the Band - Pamela Des Barres
DaCapo Best Music Writing 2008 - Various
Helpless - Barbara Gowdy
House of Meetings - Martin Amis
Three Day Road - Joseph Boyden
Flight - Sherman Alexie
Twilight - Stephanie Meyer
The Year of Magical Thinking - Joan Didion
Heart-Shaped Box - Joe Hill
George Elliot Clarke - I & I
Cintra Wilson - Colors Insulting to Nature

Books read, blog entries pending:

* Michael Azerrad - Our Band Could Be Your Life
* John Steinbeck - Cannery Row
* Chinua Achebe - Anthills of the Savannah
* Aravind Adiga - The White Tiger
* Alan Moore - V for Vendetta
Cormac McCarthy - The Road
Danny Sugerman - Wonderland Avenue

Total Books read thus far:

20

Books left to read by January 2010 (to meet goal, ostensibly)

80

Amount of books I need to read per month to make this goal:

13 (roughly)

Amount of books I probably will read per month, realistically:

Depending on the month (and my job status) 0-15


Books I'm super keen on reading in the future:

Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy
From Hell - Alan Moore
Fool - Christopher Moore
Columbine - Dave Cullen
Special Topics in Calamity Physics - Marisha Pessl
The Drive-In - Joe R. Landsdale
Starved for Science - Robert Paarlberg
Rashomon - Akutagawa Ryanosuke
Miles: The Autobiography - Miles Davis


Books I am not so hot on reading but feel weirdly obligated to read anyway because I know their long-term effects will be important and I WILL LEARN TO ENJOY THEM:

What is the What - Dave Eggers
The Crying of Lot 49 - Thomas Pynchon
Look, Homeward Angel - Thomas Mann
New Moon - Stephanie Meyer (yes. I HAVE TO.)
Where Angels Fear to Tread - Joseph Conrad
Too Fat to Fish - Artie Lange
The Kindly Ones - Jonathan Littell
One of the Obama biographies


Books that I will under no circumstances read this year because they are too large and will make me feel bad about myself (but I would like to try them sometime):

Gravity's Rainbow - Thomas Pynchon
Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace
Johnathan Strange and Mr. Norrell - Susanna What's her last name

People who seem to be into the blog despite my infrequent posting:

Around 10. This is actually more than I expected. Thanks guys!

People who seem to be secretly competing with me but are not saying this outright (judging by some sly, friendly but slightly edgy and always persistent lines of questioning)

25

If you're one of these, good on ya. Keep going, and keep telling me what you're reading and how long it took you, in your slightly detached, bored-seeming but still weirdly intense emails. It's funny. I support your efforts.

Keep on keepin' on, you all!!!

What Number Am I On Now?

I don't even know! Things have been busy, kids. I got married and then we had a honeymoon. Before that there were all of these getting-married type things that you need to worry about (karaoke machine! tequila!) But one of the blog's two regular readers (and an actual, real journalist) Mr. Brendan Kennedy mentioned that he'd be happy when all the wedding shit was over "so you can start blogging again." His words have haunted - HAUNTED - me. And as it happens, when you drive across Eastern Canada for your honeymoon, you have a lot of time to think about your life, think about what's wrong with it, and read books to distract yourself from these things. I've got four new reviews coming up, fools. This be review the first:


Colors Insulting To Nature
by Cintra Wilson

Pages: 346
How: My friend Harrison, she of rock-bandery, puckish attitude and impeccable taste in music and writers, brought it over. Thanks M.


So I was wary about this book when I first started, and that was due almost entirely to one quote on the back cover. "The Dorothy Parker of the Cyber Age!" gushed the San Francisco Chronicle. Errr.....really? Yeech. Another one that threw me for a loop was in the first few pages, where one reviewer chimed in that Wilson was the "female David Foster Wallace." Ergh. The last time I heard these kind of accolade-amalgams thrown about was when Jonathan Safran Foer first appeared. And I fucking hate Jonathan Safran Foer. Say what you want about my level of insight or whatever, but you can't argue that Everything Is Illuminated is kind of a gigantic pain in the ass that I still do not believe is worth the work. Plus, dude is like, what? Thirty? Shut up.

Anyway, that's how I felt when I started Colors Insulting To Nature;it was going to be work. I was going to have to work to pay attention so I could get the grand payoff. Sometimes you have to do this with certain writers. Everyone has different levels of tolerance---as you guys know, Martin Amis' latest had me grinding my teeth at various junctures. Some friends have told me they really had to slog to get to the creamy centers of Infinite Jest (and no, I'm not there yet) or Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman. For much of Colors, I felt like Wilson was settling into her very specific stylistic voice---or maybe it was just me needing to get used to it.

You see, Wilson used to write for Salon. (She might still write for them, but I haven't seen her around there for awhile.) If you go by her website and mini-bio/interview at the back of Colors, she used to write a lot about celebrities, culture and related ideas. Her first book was the hilariously-titled A Massive Swelling: Celebrity Re-Examined As A Grotesque Crippling Disease and Other Revelations. The woman can clearly speak with authority about fame, image and the ridiculous possibilities that lie therein. And that is exactly what Colors deals with.

The story is about young Liza Normal, born to the impossibly-named Peppy Normal - a failed showgirl who is on a hell-worn, lifelong attempt to recapture her dreams of celebrity. Most notably (and most important to the novel's development) is her revival production of "The Sound of Music" at a worn down playhouse attached to the family home. A ragtag summer stock troupe of children form the cast, including Peppy's own two kids, Liza and Ned (whose complete and total shrinkage from society results in his character's development as a reclusive but wholly successful outsider artist, in one of the novel's more obvious ironies.) This was my favorite part of the book - the time-honoured musical becomes delightfully twisted with a cast of queers, weirdoes, perfect stage children, deviants and Liza Normal. Liza's relentless and dogged pursuit of fame is hatched during this production and continues through the novel through a series of loosely-linked, bizarre and hilarious incidents (and a healthy amount of inspiration from Lisa Lisa and the Cult Jam.)

Wilson's writing is so loaded - with cultural references, with zippy dialogue and with her occasional attempts to hijack the narrative with authorial asides - that it's hard to explain here. That's not the best part either. The best part is seeing Liza go from one humiliation to the next (a near-rape at a high school party, a sex romp with a drug dealer, attempts at acting, acid-fuelled sublets with a San Francisco elven cult, rehab, and - at the novel's climax - the transformation of her basement apartment into an inferno) and see Liza reinvent herself into a Wendy O. Williams-inspired punker, a hippie, a coke queen, and finally a Vegas S & M showgirl - and emerge triumphant.

Wilson's true accomplishment here appears in her creation of a character who, despite being likeable and relateable, is also so fucking ridiculous that you can't help but laugh at her. She's effectively erradicated pathos from Liza's story by making the character so fucking determined to be FAMOUS - the ultimate parasitical disease. The fact that she remains intact by the novel's completion is a miracle. The fact that the novel somehow remains readable and delightful is a triumph. If you can get past the loaded prose, Colors Insulting to Nature is a brilliant tribute to ego-fuelled girlhood, fame-whoredom, drug mayhem, and yes - even wisdom.

13) Jumping The Shark, Crawling Back on the Board

I admit it. I've been extremely lax with my posting. But I've still been reading. I'm currently on book #16, which I admit is sad...it makes me sad. But I was jarred after an dear former schoolmate told me that she was secretly reading the blog (hi Rosel) and so I decided to start posting "reviews" again, as it were.

I'm not sure how many of you are familiar with George Elliot Clarke. He's kind of a literary giant here in Nova Scotia so I was aware of him before reading I & I. And afterwards --- well, wow. It's unnerving to have someone write so boldly and beautifully about the place you're living in. Elliot's Halifax in I & I is filled with drunken louts, gunslingers and romantics. He writes about the neighbourhood he grew up in (and now my adopted neighbourhood) the Halifax North End with such agony and love. The writing is painful and drippy. It made me hungry. Here's my review of the prose novel, originally published in The Coast a month or so ago. Upon re-reading it, I feel it doesn't give the plot, nor the writing, enough justice. Go and read it yerself, and don't just take the word of this hack.



At first glance, George Elliott Clarke's prose novel I & I seems to follow a familiar formula. Boy meets girl, girl's family doesn't approve, boy and girl run away, and after a seemingly accidental violent incident, both go on the run. And as the tragic romance of rich, white Betty Browning and the black boxer Malcolm Miles unfolds, Clarke indeed makes the requisite nods to Romeo and Juliet and Bonnie and Clyde. But in a novel jam-packed with cultural and literary allusions, these references swirl by in a maelstrom of blood, booze, sex and food.

Even Clarke's version of 1970s Halifax feels deliriously alien; north end gangs dig up corpses in order to bury them properly while "brass knuckle pimps" and other lowlifes rule the streets. Clarke lets the story unfurl with his trademark gusto, lingering over scenes of beauty and gore with the lip-smacking verve of a bawdy Wilfred Owen.

Strangely, though, it's his rendering of the book's biggest villain, the libidinous bible college professor Lowell, that rings the most sharply. When Lowell meets his inevitable end---with his gaping mouth "hot and raunchy/Inside, an adult, genital pink"---it comes across as the most obscene act in a story filled with vile characters and dirty deeds.

I've Been Drawn Into Your Magnet Tar Pit Trap

Author: Joe Hill
Book Read: Heart-Shaped Box
Pages: 382


My attention was drawn to Joe Hill when I read the first in a series of graphic novels he's working on called Locke and Key (mentioned in this entry.) I liked his style. He's not doing anything mind-bogglingly original with the ghost story genre, but his stories are propulsive and well-paced, with interesting characters. This continues with Heart-Shaped Box. I read this in an evening while coughing up my lungs from a brief cold that felt menacingly tubercular. The book suited my mood.

Judas Coyne is an aging Alice Cooper-esque rock star living in a decaying upstate New York farmhouse with a twenty-three-year-old Goth girl named Georgia (the latest in a series of young Goth girls, we learn.) He's tough and burnt out from thirty years of hard rocking and partying and now lives his remaining years in a creative rut, treating his Gothy live-ins like garbage, remembering his youth as an abused farm child, avoiding email and daydreaming over various gross artifacts he's collected over the years (skulls, snuff films, books of the dead, etc). One day his puppy-dog-like overeager manager Danny shows him a link for an online auction site, where someone has put their dead stepfather's suit up for auction. Judas orders it to add to his collection. It arrives - and guess what shape the box is in? And guess what else has come to stay in his house with the suit? I JUST DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT!

What comes next is many pages of trashy fun. If you like horror, this is probably the cream of the most recent crop, and you won't be able to put it down. Now, I won't say that Heart-Shaped Box isn't a guilty pleasure. Any book that can be read in under six hours while piled under blankets and gulping NeoCitran most definitely falls in that category. There aren't any heart-stopping literary endeavours happening here. There is, however, some ripping good storytelling, characters that you care about (despite not necessarily being able to relate to them) some huge scares and some shocking moments of violence. The ghost's first appearance should be predictable, but Hill lets it creep up on you, and when the moment comes - teased through agonizing, minute description - it's very scary. This shit will suck you in. Even as you sit shaking your head and thinking "I should read Invisible Man" or "Wow, that copy of The Crying of Lot 49 is just on my bookshelf, sitting there," your body-heart will chide your mind and roar, "Quiet, fool! I need to read the next part!"

I Don't Hate Joan Didion Anymore

Book Read: The Year of Magical Thinking

Author:Joan Didion

I really like Joan Didion's writing. Technically, she is nearly flawless. Her sentences are characterized by her careful word choices and restraint, and yet her profiles of people and situations are close. They seem true. Like most people I prefer her journalism from the '60s, especially the stuff collected in The White Album. Dark tales drenched in California sunshine. Murdering housewives, Charles Manson, the shifting faces and allegiances of the Beatles. Didion has a way of making everything seem iconic. There's also a backside to this. Emma Brockes hit it dead on in this Guardian interview:

While many of her journalistic peers got carried away in the 60s, Didion wrote with a cool head in accordance with the principle that the lower the temperature of her prose, the higher the emotional voltage it could carry. Her self-possession is such that the mere act of breathing in her presence feels like a vulgar transgression.

Although I loved the writing, the fragility of its author didn't sit well with me. And it confirmed my suspicions that this clean, laboured, clipped prose came from a detached, stingy, frail hypochondriac. Knowing this made the writing more interesting. It did not make me warm up to Joan Didion herself.

Flash forward to The Year of Magical Thinking. In 2004, Didion is sitting with her husband, John Gregory Dunne, in their New York apartment, eating dinner, making idle conversation--the things that couples do. Suddenly he keels over, having suffered a heart attack. He dies that evening. Meanwhile, Didion's 39-year-old daughter Quintana is in hospital suffering severe complications related to pneumonia. Magical Thinking deals with Didion's life after Dunne's death, and to a certain extent, her memories of him and Quintana both. (Quintana died a few months after the book was written, and Didion opted not to revise it to include this information.)

Yeah, it's a heavy book. But not as heavy as it could be. As most of you know (or can probably guess) Didion applies her finely-honed journalistic detachment to these traumatic life events. In a sentence, it's simply a thoughtful, well-researched account of a personal crisis. Early on after Dunne died, Didion lapsed into what she calls a sort of "dementia." She refuses to throw away Dunne's shoes (despite having donated the rest of his clothes to charity) because she wholeheartedly believes he "might need them later." She is aware that rationality, at this moment, is not there, and continues to maintain her cool exterior. Her form of grief is, in her words, entirely American. This detachment helps her come off as a "cool customer" to doctors, nurses, and worried friends. It helps her scrape by.

At the same time, Didion researches the ins and outs of virtually every aspect of both Dunne's heart condition and Quintana's various operations and complications. She feels knowledge is power. She needs to know everything to feel in control. This is where the book hits its emotional mark. Although Didion's writing is entirely sober and almost numb in its impassiveness, I sucked in a breath at the point where she recalls asking Quintana's doctor delicate and nauseating questions about whether her brain has shifted, or swollen, or have both her pupils fixed yet, or just one?

Didion's ruminations on her grieving process show up in the novel's last few chapters. It was the first time I had encountered her "real voice" and I welcomed it. It is good to learn that an author you previously felt was unapproachable--and indeed, completely unreachable as a relateable person--indeed understood grief, and guilt and her own state of unravelling. It's bleak, but not despairing; sad but not saccharine. We know Didion well enough at this point to know she will get through. It is the process that compels us to turn the page, and I suspect comforts as well.

There are many terrible books about grief, mourning and death out there---self-help manuals and Christian or new-age edicts disguised as meaningful literature. Magical Thinking is only the second book I've encountered that has presented the process in any kind of graceful and honest way. (The first is Banana Yoshimoto's beautiful Kitchen .) The book has an immensely calming effect, and you don't have to be mourning a recent loss to take something from it.