James York Glimm: FLATLANDERS AND RIDGERUNNERS- FOLKTALES FROM THE MOUNTAINS OF NORTHERN PENNSYLVANIA

I can understand, first of all, why this book would seem rather uninteresting to, well, most people. Northern Pennsylvania's Endless Mountains aren't exactly the Alps. Or the Rockies. Or the Adirondacks. Or the Catskills. They're not even, let's face it, the Poconos. Truth be told, they're ignored by most of the world, and contain (I'm pretty sure) all of Pennsylvania's least-populous counties. But they also contain my grandmother and various other relations, living and dead, on my mother's side of the family, so to me at least, there's a reason to be interested in this region. Other things contained in the six counties profiled by Flatlanders and Ridgerunners folklorist James York Glimm? The birthplace of Stephen Foster, Camptown Racetrack, Mansfield University and the first drive-in fast food restaurant I ever ate at. Still, I can see why you probably haven't read, considered reading, heard of, or considered hearing of this book. It's not J.K. Rowling, I admit it. But still--it's really, really good. Great, even. In fact, I would say it's (and this isn't a trifling statement, although it might sound like one) one of the absolute best collections of American folklore I've ever read. Glimm, a Long Islander (and thus a flatlander) who wound up teaching at Mansfield and thus living in this region, really got to know the people who told him these stories (they're the ridgerunners), and made sure that their voices came through in these stories. One of the most interesting aspects of this book: he includes a section for true stories, really momentous ones that have been told and retold and no doubt fictionalized to some extent, but that can still be held up against the facts and judged to be, relatively speaking, true. What really gets me about these stories is, once again, something that won't really apply to anybody reading this--they sound just like the stories my grandmother tells. Apparently, I've got some ridgerunner in me. Enough, at least, to rate this book an A+.

Neal Adams: THE "DEADMAN" COLLECTION

It fills me with a great sense of pride to announce that I have, without a doubt, decided on the identity of my all-time favorite comic book artist: Mr. Neal Adams. My (conscious) introduction to Adams came earlier this summer (you'll find it profiled on this blog, actually) with his work on Green Lantern/Green Arrow, was followed up a short time afterward with a (not profiled on this blog, because I forgot to) three-volume collection of his Batman work, and has most recently manifested itself in my completion of The "Deadman" Collection, a compilation of some of Adams's best work. And that, my friends, was a very long and complicated sentence that needn't have been so long or complicated. But you've got the story now, and I can start talking about Deadman for a second. Deadman is the name of a DC Comics superhero who happens to be, brace yourself, a dead man. Boston Brand, famed aerialist, is shot and killed by the mysterious "Hook." He dies, but doesn't quite die, no...instead, he's allowed to stalk the earth and seek revenge on his killer, thanks to the intercession of eastern deity Rama Kushna. You've called it already: no, this is not your typical superhero series. But it gets better: Deadman can't even touch the various evil-doers he must thwart as he continues his quest. All he can do is inhabit the bodies of living people, controlling their actions for a time. It is, at the very least, an extremely unlikely superhero concept--but in the hands of Neal Adams, it turned out to be a surprisingly good one. Adams's art helps to drive the story: it's realistic enough that you actually can suspend your disbelief in a story that requires quite a bit of disbelief to be suspended, and nice to look at on top of that. This whole collection, in fact, is really quite a beautiful volume (it's my father's, not mine; my father, who sells books, owns a lot of nice ones; I, who only buy them, own a lot of shoddy, used paperbacks that smell faintly of cigarettes, old men, or cat urine, if I'm lucky), and one I'd count myself lucky to own. And, since I haven't had a single bad word to say about it, I think I have to grade this on an A.

A list? A list.

Reading what I have to think about the-book-I-just-read-that-you're-probably-not-interested-in-reading-anyway might, I started to think not long ago, get a little bit old after a while. I mean, if you're not interested in myths/folklore, noir fiction or comic books, well, the last month-plus has been a little dry for you. But what else is there to do? For a time, I tried reprinting older book reviews I wrote whilst still a gainfully employed literary critic, but that, let's be honest, might be (is) much worse. Then there was that silly post about Marcel Proust's birthday--don't ask me why. So here's the Next New Thing, a list. A short list, but an informative one (I hope). And while it might be such a massive departure from writing about detectives, let the list of my Top Five Most Enjoyable Espionage Novels of all time serve as a harbinger of better, more different things to come:

1.) The Quiet American by Graham Greene: the biggest question, as I prepared this list, was exactly how three Englishmen--Graham Greene, John Le Carre and Eric Ambler--would fit into it. Only five books, why, I could've filled it up with...well, really with just any one of their works, but that wouldn't've done, would it now? In the end, it came down to a Greene-Le Carre contest for first. With the two books being compared so very, very different, however, there was no easy way to compare them, and I began to expand just what I was looking at. I wound up balancing each author's entire repertoire against the other's, and deciding that, on the whole, I'd rather wind up reading the wrong Graham Greene book than the wrong John Le Carre (without even considering the extremely high quality of Greene's more literary works). So what's this book about? Well, it's not your typical spy story, that's for sure. Set in 1950s Vietnam, it's probably the most artful depiction of a country on the brink of war that I've ever read. The ending doesn't resolve the tension, really (the ending, actually doesn't really come at the end; temporally, the book is a wonderful, wonderful mess), as it historically couldn't have done. Oh, and the quiet American himself? Not very quiet. Greene's a great writer, so there's plenty more, espionage and non-espionage, where this came from.

2.) Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John Le Carre: I once read a similar list in which Le Carre's entire Quest for Karla trilogy--this one, plus The Honourable Schoolboy and Smiley's People--were considered as a single book (and thus topped the list, since the overall arc of this story is quite amazing). I thought about doing that, then decided against it, since what I really needed to do was weigh Tinker, Tailor against another of Le Carre's George Smiley books, The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. I must say, Spy, if only because it was my introduction to the author, nearly won; would've won, in fact, had this book not had the personal touch. John Le Carre, real name something like David Cornwell (his son writes under the pseudonym Nick Harkaway, and recently published an excellent post-apocolyptic novel called The Gone-Away World which was highly recommended by erstwhile Temple News literary critic Peter Chomko [that's me]), was one of the confidential British intelligence agents outed by the English-born Soviet agent Kim Philby (Philby's true story is quite amazing in itself, and was also drawn upon by Greene in his masterful The Human Factor). Tinker, Tailor is based on the extraordinary Philby scandal, albeit in a heavily fictionalized manner. Still: great, great stuff. Read this, and more, please.

3.) A Coffin for Dimitrios by Eric Ambler: before there was a John Le Carre, there was a Graham Greene. Before there was a Graham Greene? Eric Ambler. Ambler's spy novels do, admittedly, lack some of the moral depth that you find in the more philosophical writing of the other two, but more than make up for that in pure action. An Ambler book reads like an Alfred Hitchcock movie, and Coffin is the best of them that I've ever read. It all takes place, as I recall, on a boat (I should just Wikipedia it and check, but if I'm wrong, then you should read the book I'm describing), and involves at least one case of mistaken identity and that oh-so-common man who knew too much--only, when Ambler writes about him, that common man doesn't seem so common, after all. Does that make any sense? Think about any of the tropes that we're used to in our spy novels, our spy films, our spy whatever, and there's probably some primordial form lurking somewhere in Ambler. This guy wrenched the ho-hum "thrillers" of people like Erskine Childers and John Buchan into the here-and-now, and his books, while they've obviously aged, still have a certain immediacy about them lacking even in more contemporary, less well-written spy stories.

4.) The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen by Alan Moore: what's this? A comic book, on this list? You're leaving out James Bond (just pure drivel) and company for the sake of a comic book? Where's Len Deighton? Robert Ludlum? Tom Clancy? Fuck 'em all, I say, and this isn't really even a spy novel. Or is it? I'm not sure, but I'm going to start writing a little more intelligently, now. Take the cast, here--and I'll explain them, for those of you not quite up on your Victorian popular fiction. You've got Mycroft Holmes, first of all, who assembled the whole team. That's Sherlock's brother, much fatter but possibly even smarter (hard to say on the latter)? And Mina Harker, the boss of them all; she's the former Mina Murray, once infected by Dracula in that wonderful story. Dastardly Captain Nemo, he's a Jules Verne creation, from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. The Invisible Man is from, well, The Invisible Man, and Dr. Henry Jeckyll/Mr. Edward Hyde are equally self-explanatory. Alan Quatermain is perhaps the greatest of them all, or would be were it not for his age and late opium addiction; he's the hero of a number of H. Rider Haggard's fantastic high-colonialist boys' adventure stories, starting with She. And that, I think, is all of them. Interested, yet?

5.) The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsythe: you can't just read spy stories written from the good guy's perspective all the time. Every once in a while, you've got to sprinkle in one or two from the other side, and Jackal is the best of those I've read. It's set, as are many of Forsythe's works, in an interesting time period: post-World War II France, during the De Gaulle administration. Somebody's hired Europe's foremost assassin to take out De Gaulle, and the French find out about it. From then on out, it's a race to...something. The death, if you're rooting for the bad guy (and even though you know how the story's got to end, you can't help rooting for the bad guy. Call it the Wile E. Coyote effect), or the prevention-of-death, if you can't break out of your overly-moral mold. Forsythe writes popular thrillers, and this one is most definitely a popular thriller, written at a breakneck pace and without much regard for the higher literary elements. But it's also a damn good book, so what are you going to do, complain that it's not Henry James? Not everything should be Henry James, and I happen to think that this would be just the thing to read after you've plowed through (the also excellent, but very different) Portrait of a Lady.

This reminds me...

Just finished corresponding with Olen Steinhauer, author of the well-worth-reading The Tourist, soon to be a (hopefully high-grossing) George Clooney film. We talked about the book's successes and failures, as well as some of the espionage genre's most notable successes. Look for a list of my favorite spy novels in the next few hours or days, and chide me for my broken promises if you don't find one. Oh, and read The Tourist while you're at it, so that Mr. Steinhauer becomes fabulously wealthy and magnanimously decides to get me a job.

Kevin Crossley-Holland: THE NORSE MYTHS

Two years or so ago, while vacationing in southern Spain during a semester abroad (No: unlike most sentences beginning in such a fashion, this one will not go on to describe a memorable sexual encounter with a mysterious foreign woman, a life-altering bike trip, or an amusing marijuana-related anecdote. I apologize for the inconvenience), I started reading Edith Hamilton's classic Mythology. A short while later, I started drinking, which may have colored my recollection of this event somewhat, but upon my return to the US I was left with the impression that nothing makes good vacation reading like myths and folktales do. Flash forward to 2009, and you've got me puzzling over what sort of reading material I should bring to New York's Adirondack Mountains with me; since I'm already at work on the Norse myth-influenced American Gods (see previous entry), I grab my father's copy of Kevin Crossley-Holland's The Norse Myths. Result? I enjoy myself thoroughly. C-H (hyphenated names are too long to write out in full) brings these thirty-two myths to life in much the way Hamilton did so successfully with (mostly) the Greek and Romans, and The Norse Myths can hardly be described as a dry retelling of these age-old stories. It helps, of course, that Norse mythology is so character-driven, and its characters so vivid: Odin, Loki, Thor, and company are a lot of fun (at least up until Ragnarok), and many of the tales bristle with a humor that I'd have to guess C-H is responsible for midwifing through the often-dangerous process of translation. I'm currently looking for my own copy of this A+ book in Philadelphia's used bookstores, and would recommend it immediately to anybody looking for a comprehensive yet readable introducution to the Norse myths.

Neil Gaiman: AMERICAN GODS

It's difficult to describe Neil Gaiman's American Gods (the first of two books completed during a brief vacation in New York's Adirondack Mountain, a locale very conducive to reading about myths and folklore, for whatever reason) without giving anything away. As I prepared to write this review, I found myself thinking, "Well, that happens so early in the book...who can it hurt if I mention it?" The Answer, I'm afraid, is that I'm Not Sure. Each mild surprise in American Gods builds on those that come before it, so that even if you're able to guess how everything will pan out in the end (as I was, sort of?), it still comes as something of a shock to actually read it. That being said, the more you know about myths and folklore--Scandinavian, Egyptian, South Asian and American Indian in particular, although I can't even begin to guess at where the allusions I missed come from--the more you'll get out of this book. And that being said, even if you know next to nothing about any of that, I still think you'll at least get a pretty good time out of these almost-600 pages. I certainly did, so much so that one of the main characters' identities strongly influenced the choice of my next book (you can see it here already: Kevin Crossley-Holland's The Norse Myths). Just think about, say, that mythology class you might've taken in high school, but add of dash of something like, I don't know, Mad Max into the mix for good measure, and a layer of mystery on top of that. And all easy to read, very easy to read, and very entertaining. It's good stuff, really A+ stuff, and I'd recommend it to anyone both intelligent and unpretentious.

Jules Feiffer: THE GREAT COMIC BOOK HEROES

In case you're especially slow to pick up on things, I like to read comic books. Yep, I know: who would've ever guessed it (answer: most people, sorry)? So did famed Village Voice cartoonist Jules Feiffer, only he wrote a book about it, whereas I only tend to mention it in passing on an obscure and pretty much entirely unread blog. Point is, he's legit, and I liked his book, The Great Comic Book Heroes. It's actually got a kind of misleading title; much more accurate would've been Jules Feiffer Reminisces About Reading Comic Books When He Was a Child, although that doesn't have quite the same ring to it. The book's short, and more autobiographical than anything else (although Feiffer does sidle into social commentary every now and then, and briefly into something that one might even describe as psychology), consisting mostly of reflections on what it was like reading a particular comic book rather than reflections on that comic book itself. Case in point: Feiffer mentions liking Hawkman, and talks about that for a little bit, using it as a lauching pad to talking about something else, but pretty much sums up Hawkman in, well, a single sentence (if I had the book here, I'd let you know just what that sentence was, but I don't; it had something to do with his being an Egyptian-tinged Superman knockoff, though). Did I agree with all of Feiffer's assessments? No, not at all. But I enjoyed reading every one, and that, I suppose, is what counts. So, let's say a B for this one.

Jim Thompson: THE KILLER INSIDE ME

After reading back-to-back Peter Rabes, I speculated that I was perhaps done with noir, at least for the time being. Nope; wasn't so. Just, what, two days later, I picked up Jim Thompson's The Killer Inside Me, perhaps the most chilling short novel I've read in quite some time. And a roman noir par excellance, oh yes indeed (I don't know if I've ever strung that much French together at once, or even if I've done it correctly this time around. Mon Dieu!). This is particularly American noir, however, and a particular school of even that: Texas noir. Granted, rural Texas isn't the first place that springs to anybody's mind when they think noir, but it's been done, and done well, more times than you might think (I can't recall the name of the James Reasoner novel that introduced me to the subgenre...)--but never, in my experience, better than this. I've read my share of first-person-killer novels, some good and some bad, but this one takes the cake. Jim Thompson writes like he's actually punched someone's stomach so hard he could feel their spine snap on his fist. Beyond that, I don't know what to say. A+, easily (Note: they're apparently releasing a film adaptation in 2010; Jessica Alba's going to be in it. If I recall correctly, it's also been filmed once already, for whatever that's worth).

Ward Moore: LOT and LOT'S DAUGHTER

Full disclosure: I read this book, like, a month ago. Almost a month. A month, minus six days. Call it three weeks. And the thing is, you wouldn't know that, without my telling you, because I'm back-dating this post. Dishonest? I'm not sure, it depends on what you're expecting the dates of these posts to measure. What they do measure (and I suppose that's it's better I tell you now and clear the air) is when I actually finished reading the book in question. That's why there are a number of posts technically dated before this blog existed--not because I've discovered the secret of time travel and decided to put it to an extremely mundane use, but because I cheated on the "post options" section, here. So don't worry about it: you know the truth now, and the truth, it turns out, doesn't really matter. Why tell you at all? Because I don't remember all that much about these Ward Moore novellas, at this point. They were short, they were haunting, and they went by all too fast (Lot's Daughter is much creepier than the already fairly-creepy Lot). Without going into and getting confused about detail, let's just call these two the most unfortunately realistic, pessimistic portrayals of post-apocolyptic America (California, of course) I've read in a long time. A-.

Fletcher Hanks: I SHALL DESTROY ALL THE CIVILIZED PLANETS!

What's most important about I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets!, a collection of early comic writer/artist Fletcher Hanks's innocently twisted work, is that it's the book from whence this blog draws its title: "You shall become a frozen spacite!" can be found in a comic featuring Stardust the Super-Wizard (with his "scientific use of rays"), who along with Fantomah of Jungleland (with her "superior abilities") is one of the recurring characters created by Hanks. Hanks, its important to point out, seems to have been kind of crazy (he froze to death on a New York park bench, incidentally), but crazy in such a way as to gift him with the ability to come up with fantastic ideas such as the Floating Frozen Space Prison and countless anti-gravity rays of all shapes and sizes. Hanks, truly though, is pretty much impossible to describe (that's why this post makes so little sense; that, and I'm really fucking tired). You've got to see this stuff to believe it, and see it I recommend you do. For that reason, I've included a true rarity for this blog--a second illustration:

Peter Rabe: A SHROUD FOR JESSO

Time for truth: I didn't actually read two Peter Rabe books in a row, even though I did like Anatomy of a Killer quite a bit. What I actually read was one book containing two Peter Rabe novels that were of such divergent quality that they necessitated two separate reviews. Got it? OK, cool. Now, the first thing I want to make clear is, that doesn't automatically mean that A Shroud for Jesso was a shitty book, because it wasn't: it's just that Anatomy of a Killer was really good noir, and A Shroud for Jesso was your standard fifties-sixties noir. Definitely not bad, but it didn't stand out, either. The plot was a little bit contrived, although not really as such things go (believe me, some noir can be really contrived)--a guy, Jesso, has information other people want. He's very difficult to kill. A dangerous woman falls in love with him. He almost comes out on top, and then there's a depressing denouement. In this particular case, a good part of the action takes place in enclosed spaces: on a boat, in a house. I don't think this claustrophobic aspect is played up quite as well as it could be (in general, what separates Anatomy from Shroud is the far superior atmosphere of the almost-experessionistic Anatomy). Alright: now that I've tossed around a few European art buzzwords, let's just give this a grade and finish things off. I think a B sounds fair.

Peter Rabe: ANATOMY OF A KILLER

We already talked (read: I already wrote) about my love of 1940s-60s (yes, the dates keep changing) crime fiction. I didn't go into much detail about why I love that era so much (answer: the Americanized roman noir), but I still think I covered the topic well enough at that time not to go into it again, and therefore I'm just going to come out and tell you how much I enjoyed Peter Rabe's Anatomy of a Killer. Donald Westlake once wrote of Rabe something like "He has the best books with the worst titles" (I think Westlake used Kill the Boss Goodbye as an example of just that, and a good one it was). So, right off the bat, I'm going to come out and state that no, Anatomy of a Killer is not an appropriate title for this book at all. "Anatomy" simply connotes too much detail, and detail there isn't. Profile of a Killer, that works, I guess. I hate to give anything away, but Requiem for a Killer isn't a bad title, either (nor, really, does it give too much away, since the killer himself wants to kill off the killer in order to become a retired traveling button salesman, but that'll all make sense if you ever read this). But the title only matters so much, and so much isn't ever very much, particularly not in this case. What Peter Rabe has written here is classic noir: turn down the lights a little bit, put on some Miles Davis (preferably the score to Elevator to the Gallows, or whatever that noir score he wrote/recorded was), maybe chain smoke your whole way through it with a bottle of rye for company (there truly is no better way to read such a book as this, although I don't smoke myself [if that's the case, drink more rye to compensate]). This is the kind of book that makes you want to handle a gun and talk like Bogart in his prime, and as far as I'm concerned there's no higher recommendation for a crime story. Solid A grade, this one.

Joel Townsley Rogers: THE RED RIGHT HAND

I should state before commencing this review that there are few things I prefer to a well-written mystery or crime story. That such stories seem to have been published primarily between, say, 1925 and 1975 (if you want me to cut it any tighter, 1930-1960. Or, like 45-55) isn't necessarily an indication that that fifty-year golden age marked the ultimate apex of all crime fiction, with the rest trending inevitably downhill. There are, in fact, still many good crime writers active today, although I wouldn't count James Paterson or too many of those New York Times bestseller-list hacks on my shortlist (Charlie Huston--now there's a good contemporary crime writer. Also a good contemporary vampire writer. And probably the all time best vampire-crime writer, provided you don't consider Dracula a crime novel). I'm just stating, in the interest of full disclosure, that I happen to particularly enjoy, on a purely personal level, crime stories written during the 40s and 50s, of which Joel Townsley Rogers's The Red Right Hand happens to be one of the best I've read. It's an extremely unusual mystery (more reminiscent of Fredric Brown at his weirdest and best than of either Raymond Chandler or Arthur Conan Doyle, or any of their followers), and that may throw off some readers. It's also narrated in a fashion that can seem somewhat affected and distancing, although I don't really think any other narrative voice would've suited the story nearly so well. And it's permeated by meaningless coincidences that, while lending an eerie sense of drama and symbolism to the violent acts that drive the story, turn out to be meaningless coincidences, nothing more or less. It's not, in short, anything a mystery "should" be, which is what makes it such a superior mystery. Granted, without going into the plot in any detail, I'm not giving you all that much to go on, I'm probably not, in fact, even making all that much sense. But this much I promise you: what's there is good, is worth reading, is worth recommending on a blog nobody reads (or, for that matter, a blog people actually do read). This is good stuff. A+ stuff, all the way. You'll finish in a day. A few hours. Promise.

Mario Puzo: THE GODFATHER

There has arisen amongst people who consider themselves intelligent a misguided and meaningless truism, that the book is always better than the movie. This, of course, is hardly true. Many bad books have been made into good movies; many good books have been made into better movies. The idea that a book can be better or worse than a movie, in fact, is absurd in itself: the two media are drastically different, tell stories in different ways and have different strengths and limitations. Quick: whose Faust do you prefer, Goethe's or Liszt's? You don't know, you can't know, because we don't equate literature and music in the same way that we equate literature and film. Goethe's Faust and Liszt's Faust are both fantastic works, but they function so differently that comparison is pointless. I love B. Traven's book, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. I love John Huston's film, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. I'd never presume to compare them. Why must you read all of this? Because, despite using all this space to proclaim my disbelief in lit-to-film comparisons, I'm going to compare a book to a film. The Godfather (film) : The Godfather (book) :: Marlon Brando in The Godfather : Marlon Brando in The Island of Dr. Moreau. One is significantly larger (the latter, in both cases), while the other is clearly much better (the former, obviously, again in both cases, again obviously). Mario Puzo's writing is OK, but it's not Francis Ford Coppola's direction, and he doesn't have Brando, Pacino, Caan, Duvall, et al bringing his characters to life. The result is a story that's flat where the film isn't, that's unnecessarily long because even rather peripheral characters are needlessly developed and their stories all brought equally unnecessary closure, and that operates in a strange kind of episodic fashion, but one in which the episodes overlap without seeming to overlap. Time, it seems, functions oddly in Puzo's book, and not to the author's advantage. There is little, in fact, to recommend Puzo as an author, the film's brilliance thus suggesting either that he really stood out as a screenwriter or that actors and directors really do matter. I'd go with the latter, and I'd also give this book a C+. It was still plenty exciting.

On a related note...

...I'm trying not to do any paragraphs, here. It's working so far, but perhaps at the expense of occasionally sounding like I just don't do paragraphs, period. I do. Everywhere else. Just not here. For now. Don't ask why. It's an aesthetic thing, and as pointless as all wholly aesthetic things seem to be.

Robertson Davies: THE MANTICORE

This is good news and bad news, hello and I-shall-soon-be-going, and altogether not anywhere near so dramatic as I've just made it sound. But let us take the good first, shall we? I've finished, as promised, The Manticore; I've completed, at least two weeks later than I should've, my belated celebration of Canada Day (that's the first of July, and you'll find it mentioned in several earlier posts). However long it took me (and it wouldn't have taken anywhere near this long had I not repeatedly distracted myself by reading comic books, only a small sampling of which are actually reviewed here), I'm glad that I've finally sampled Robertson Davies. The Manticore was a good book, and the writing was so fine, indeed, that while only halfway through I stopped at a used bookstore in order to check whether or not I could pick up the rest of the Deptford Trilogy (of which The Manticore is the middle book [although, as its cover blurb assures us, one need not read the trilogy in any particular order. Apparently, the three books are about, in some way or another, the impact of single event on multiple lives: a child ducks a rock-filled snowball, and it hits an innocent bystander instead], and perhaps the best-known, even if not [according to what little I've read online] the best overall [which may well be Fifth Business, the opener, although I can't say at this point]); I couldn't, but the point is that I was inspired enough to try. In essence, The Manticore is the story of David Staunton's really-rather-humdrum life, only the story is told almost exclusively through the Staunton's conversations with his Jungian analyst, following a breakdown after Staunton's father dies under mysterious circumstances. It's this interesting and, to my experience, unique narrative lens that adds real interest to the story--that, and Davies's obvious talent as a writer (plus, for Canada-philes like myself, the particularly Canadian nature of the story and storyteller both). Davies exemplifies a particular type of writing not often seen--it retains its sense of humor, without being humorous (or, as Davies would write, "it retains its sense of humour without being humourous."), a task more difficult than it might seem. Nabokov comes to mind, and, oddly enough, Orwell, in particular Keep the Aspidistra Flying. To write humorously and with a sense of humour isn't necessarily easier, but it's easier to call--Woody Allen, Kurt Vonnegut, Mark Twain, etc. Of course, one can also be humorous but lack a sense of humor, as the "comedy" of, oh, a Dane Cook more than adequately illustrates (I'm not trying to be arch, I just don't like Dane Cook; that alone doesn't make me unforgivably highbrow). Alright: so I really did like this book. An A grade, if not an A+ (well, no...not an A+. Let's just call it an even A). But I haven't even touched on the bad news, which is this: I'm not going to be showing up here, so frequently. I'll be, gasp, working, albeit only on a temporary basis. But I'll be working a lot on a temporary basis, and thus reading significantly less. As to what I'll be reading, that remains to be seen. Mario Puzo's The Godfather is in the running, since it won't exact the same sort of raised eyebrows from co-workers that, say, In Search of Lost Time (not in the running) might, or even John Kenneth Galbraith's Annals of an Abiding Liberal (that one is in the running). Also up there: Neil Gaiman's American Gods, only the paperback edition I have is in such nice condition I hesitate to subject it to the beating it'll surely get at work. Anyway, we'll see. Perhaps I'll be able to publish something trite here in the mean time, like a well-intentioned list (I've already got one, somewhere, of my favorite vampire stories), or reprints of old columns, although that'd be quite a cop-out, wouldn't it?

Bernard Porter: THE LION'S SHARE- A SHORT HISTORY OF BRITISH IMPERIALISM, 1850-2004

What separates good nonfiction writing from bad isn't something as ethereal and fleeting as a timely or groundbreaking nature--it's much simpler, really. The best nonfiction is written by people who are both experts in their fields, and terrific writers. Makes sense, doesn't it? If we can accept that definition, then (and I think we can), Bernard Porter's The Lion's Share: A Short History of British Imperialism most certainly qualifies as some of the best. For a book that's relatively easy to read (not to say that it isn't academically written; it is, it just also happens to be engaging), The Lion's Share is astonishingly informative. Moreover, if you buy into that ethereal stuff, it's quite timely right now (in 2004, Porter added a new chapter discussing US/UK involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, considered in light of imperial history), and was apparently fairly groundbreaking when first written (although I believe I've only got Porter's preface to back me up on that, which isn't necessarily the most unbiased of sources). There's no real need to describe the book's content; the subtitle does that well enough (A Short History of British Imperialism, 1850-2004). It's a history, however, that's related with just the right touch of wit and good humor. Porter takes his subject seriously, but isn't above including the occasional and usually very illustrative but less-than-serious anecdote (my favorite is the colonial governor of Aden who stated, in 1965, that when the old empire had sunken "beneath the waves of history," it would leave just "two monuments" behind it: "the game of Association Football, and the expression 'Fuck Off'." Porter amusingly points out that Association Football actually didn't really catch on in the former empire, at least not to nearly the same extent as cricket). Granted, this isn't exactly a riveting read on par with, say, hard-boiled detective fiction; it's a history book, even if it is a good (say, A grade overall) history book. But if that's what you're into, I'd strongly recommend giving this one a try.

Jack Kirby: CAPTAIN AMERICA AND THE FALCON- MADBOMB

Yes, I know what I said. It wasn't a lie, it was just wrong: an important distinction, although largely a semantic one. When I wrote that the next book I'd review would be The Manticore, I really did think that would be the case (thus, I wasn't lying). When I decided to start reading Jack Kirby's Captain American and the Falcon: Madbomb at dinner, however, plans changed. I was drawn in as I began to pick up on the particularly Kirbyish details of his artwork (I just finished reading some of his original New Gods work [which I think would've benefited {the act of reading it, I mean} from my actually having opened The Hero With 10,000 Faces one of the, well, 10,000 times I've considered doing so], and recognized his penchant for rod-shaped weapons and a particular type of technological design that appears to consist largely of round shapes connected by thin lines...difficult to describe, but read/look at a little Kirby, and you'll get what I mean), and stayed when I realized how unusual this story was going to turn out to be. The "madbomb," you see, is just that: a bomb, that makes people insane (very comic book). And it's set to go off, in Philadelphia, on July 4, 1976 (coincidentally, the same date the final issue in this series was published, celebrating the U.S. bicentennial). Who's behind this plot? Well, to be honest, it seems a lot like it might be the 2009 House Republicans--only in the book, they call themselves the Royalist Army of America (or something like that), and are plotting to overthrow democracy and replace it with a system whereby a chosen elite tell everybody what to do and social order is maintained through the exploitation of human greed. You know, exactly the sort of thing free marketeers are always trumpeting as the solution to all our problems. Well, Captain American isn't having any of it--and neither is his pal, The Falcon, a bitter African-American hero who finds the whole idea of a bicentennial a little trite, given that his family was, well, still enslaved when we white folk "introduced" this whole "freedom" deal to the world (the best part about Madbomb, I think, is that Kirby tries not to gloss over this: the comic's still very much all-American, but it's the kind of all-American that says, yeah, we've really made some pretty big mistakes, and are still working on ironing out their repurcussions, but aren't perfect yet by any means. Because otherwise, this would've just been a sickening exercise in nationalism). Even a marginally-realistic depiction of racial tensions, however, can't quite save this comic from seeming, well, a little bit dated. But is it still a fun read? Oh, yes, it's definitely a fun read. So give it a solid B-, and have done with it.

Canada Day follow-up...

Not long ago, I used this blog as a platform from which to wish the world a very happy Canada Day (if you're looking for a date, try July 1). At that time, I encouraged everybody to pick up a book written by a Canadian, any Canadian. Well, I'd like to announce that just this once, I'm taking my own advice: unless I absolutely can't stand it, or perhaps read a few more comic books before finishing it off, the next book you'll see reviewed here is The Manticore, from the pen of Thamesville, Ontario-born Robertson Davies. Wait for it.

Happy birthday, Marcel Proust!

Were Marcel Proust alive today, he'd either be celebrating his 139th birthday, or off by himself somewhere, contemplating how creepy his relationship with his mother was. I've never actually read Swann's Way, or any of the other volumes that make up Proust's multi-volume epic In Search of Lost Time (Remembrance of Things Past); but for some time now, I've wanted to. Bizarrely, however, the book's appeal doesn't have the least to do with a burning desire to read Proust--it's that opening sentence I just can't get out of my head. "For a long time, I went to bed early." Out of context, it seems meaningless, yet its meaning is about as clear as they come. It's nothing, in fact, if not very direct and very straightforward--but, absent context, all its directness and straightforwardness come to naught. Still, it sounds intriguing. For a long time, he went to bed early: we don't know how long, who he is, or just how early, and most of all we don't know why, or why it matters, or why it matters enough to start an astoundingly-long novel with. One day, perhaps, I'll be able to let you know. But until then: happy birthday, Marcel, you of the enigmatic opening line.

Charles Beaumont: THE HOWLING MAN (ed. Roger Anker)

In the minds of those whose credentials say they know best (as well as that of your humble and wholly uncredentialed reviewer) Charles Beaumont ranks with Ray Bradbury, Rod Serling and Richard Matheson in the exclusive pantheon of 1950s-60s American science fiction geniuses. With the exception of Bradbury (who was busy revolutionizing written sci-fi a decade or so earlier), it was this small cadre of elites who both steered The Twilight Zone to success and penned its greatest episodes--as well as the stories those episodes were initially drawn from. The Howling Man is a collection of such stories, a career-spanning look at Charles Beaumont's written work. The Howling Man doesn't necessarily contain all of Beaumont's best (if that's what you're looking for, best to consult the very unironically titled Best of Beaumont collection); what it does instead is represent how balanced and broad Beaumont's talent really was, giving readers a taste of Beaumont's work in a wide variety of genres, including those he didn't handle quite as ably. At his best and at his worst, though, Beaumont is a truly original writer. He manages to convey a childlike sense of wonder at and joy in life, while at the same time communicating a more adult appreciation for its most gruesome horrors (the title story does this particularly well). In this sense, Beaumont is a contradiction waiting to happen, but the stories in this collection maintain that fine and careful balance throughout (for which some credit is surely due to editor Roger Anker). If you don't like Beaumont, the nearly 600 pages of The Howling Man obviously won't be worth it. But if you like originality and damn-good writing, then you will like Beaumont, and all those pages will just fly by. Give it an A-, and The Best of Beaumont an A+.

June unemployment figures released; forecast is extra-gloomy

Well, we topped 9.5% unemployment last month (we're somewhere between 15-20% unofficially; I think the adjusted figure is around 16.5%?). In honor of this occasion, I'm reprinting one of my Temple News columns, to which I've hopefully retained some semblance of reproduction rights, here:

Books you can’t afford not to read

March 3, 2009 by Peter Chomko

Under normal circumstances, at least half the point of book reviews is that they’re timely. Once a book’s been out for a couple years, you can usually assume that it will already have flourished or failed on its own merits.

However, under particularly abnormal circumstances – and you’d be hard-pressed to argue that we’re living through anything but particularly abnormal circumstances right now – it seems that a departure from conventional wisdom can be easily justified.

For one thing, new books are expensive, and you can hardly be expected to go out and drop $28 for a hot-off-the-presses hardcover in the current economic climate. On top of that, recession jokes are the humor du jour, and I could hardly pass up my crack at them.

More important than that is given the state of our national economy, there are certain books that you simply can’t afford not to read. That three of those books happen to be a collective 150-plus years old is no argument, in my mind, against their importance. If anything, their longevity is a testament to that importance.

The fact of the matter is, after all, that recessions are nothing new. Our country has been through this territory before and so have plenty of others. We’ve strayed so far into this territory that such great numbers may be cause for alarm – but not necessarily for surprise.

Nor should it be cause for disregarding advice from the past – specifically, advice from economist John Maynard Keynes, universally-acclaimed as the smartest man in the universe (except by those who happen to declaim him as the most dangerously idiotic man in the universe). Regardless of which side of the Keynesian debate you fall on, there’s a lot to be said for familiarizing yourself with his theories.

In The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, Keynes interpreted economic variations as being products of “aggregate demand” (sound familiar?) and argued for activist government intervention, particularly in times of crisis (again, sound familiar?), in order to promote demand.

Although Keynes’ book was initially published in 1936, his influence continues to be felt in contemporary economics and politics. In fact, a contemporary Keynesian took home last year’s Nobel Prize in economics – Paul Krugman, a regular New York Times contributor and the author of 1999’s The Return of Depression Economics.

A decade ago, Krugman theorized that a world economic structure largely dominated by supply-side economics lacked long-term viability and would soon lead to prolonged, painful economic collapses. His conservative critics laughed, cited Alan Greenspan and continued to tout the greatness of mortgage-backed securities. Guess what? Krugman was right, and with last year’s release of The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008, he’s likely to be one of the few people to benefit from this recession.

Of course, no matter if you read Keynes or Krugman, John Boehner probably won’t read either – and as a result, we may be in this for the long haul. That’s why I’ve got a third recommendation for your reading list: Claude Goodchild and Alan Thompson’s classic Keeping Poultry and Rabbits on Scraps.

First published during the Nazi bombardment of England during World War II, the book advised the British of the little things they could do to make everything go a bit further. In response to popular demand, Penguin Group has chosen to reissue the book in (you guessed it) a budget edition, suggesting that you can keep a steady supply of eggs and meat on hand, even in the worst of times.

Of course, the best part is that all this reading comes out to less than 800 pages. Tell that to your conservative friends as they try to slog their way through The Wealth of Nations, clocking in at a hefty 1,200 or so. The upshot, of course, is that you’ll have more time to futilely mail out all those résumés – and plenty to read while waiting in the unemployment line.

Peter Chomko can be reached at pchomko@temple.edu.

Eric Garcia: MATCHSTICK MEN

I did not read this book because of the Nicholas Cage movie--or, if in fact that was the reason (I picked it up, by chance, at the Independence branch of the Philadelphia Free Library; I was purchasing two books there [one was Saul Bellow's Herzog; I don't recall what the other one was], and don't like to frequent libraries just to buy books. So, I had to pick out a few to check out on loan, and I recognized the title of this one. Or the title just stood out to me. I'm not sure. If the former was the case, you've most likely got Nicholas Cage, unfortunately, to thank. If the latter, then author Eric Garcia gets full credit), let's say I checked it out in spite of the film. I'm not a big Nicholas Cage fan. I think, in fact, that he's about even with Keanu Reeves so far as acting ability is concerned. So I don't want to make this about Nicholas Cage. I've never seen the movie at any rate, and thus it couldn't really prejudice my opinion of the book. That opinion runs thus: Matchstick Men (the book was Matchstick Men, by the way; I believe I forgot to mention that) is cute. It's rooted in a cute idea, and exploits that cuteness to the very end (others find the ending to be cynical, apparently; perhaps it is a testament to my own, abiding cynicism that I find it, again, to be cutesy). Books about con men aren't supposed to be cute, though. They're supposed to be fun, and lighthearted, and a lot of other words that mean approximately the same thing as those, but not cute. Because if the book ends on a happy note, then the cuteness is just overwhelming--and if it ends on a sad note, the sadness seems trite and affected (such is the case with Matchstick Men). Garcia tried something different, admittedly, and I read the book quickly. But it was still just cutesy, and nothing more. Read David Dodge instead, if you're looking for cons. Or adventure. Or excitement. Hell, just read David Dodge. Read Matchstick Men if you really want, but I'd give it a C-. And that's only because I'm feeling generous. D+, were today a lousy day.

Happy Canada Day!

Yes, it's that time again: to celebrate the 1867 Act of Dominion that paved the way for Canada's status as a sovereign nation. Or something like that. Sovereignty always gets confusing with those Commonwealth countries. Anyway, why not celebrate by reading a famous Canadian author? And yes, there are more than just Margaret Atwood. See the full list here, at "Well Known People Who Happen to be Canadian (Authors)":
http://particle.physics.ucdavis.edu/Canadians/authors.html.
Enjoy!

Rex Stout: SOME BURIED CAESAR

At least half--okay, a third--of the fun of reading one of Rex Stout's "Nero Wolfe" stories is watching Wolfe unravel an extremely convoluted mystery without leaving his home or varying his highly-structured routine. Gathering clues, doing legwork, making love to beautiful but dangerous women (in short, all the usual tasks of a private detective) are the province of Wolfe's personal assistant, Archie Goodwin (who, it just so happens, also narrates the pair's adventures). You might say, in fact, that the relationship between Wolfe and Goodwin, and the unvarying roles played by the two, are what make Nero Wolfe mysteries Nero Wolfe mysteries. As a departure from that tried-and-true formula, then, how well does Some Buried Caesar work? Well, that's actually a fairly complicated question. As a novel, just fine, really; in fact, it's proof that Stout is talented writer with the ability to soar above and beyond what might otherwise have become a tired formula. But as a Nero Wolfe mystery? Well, it's just not the same. And therein lies an interesting paradox: if all Nero Wolfe mysteries stuck to exactly the same formula, that formula would become dull and trite rather quickly--but they don't all work out in precisely the same way, and as a result it's actually the exceptions that seem a little dull. In my opinion, this is because they can then be compared to your standard American detective fare of the same period, and just don't pack the same level of excitement as a Philip Marlowe or Sam Spade tale. But that's just my opinion. So what do I have to say about Some Buried Caesar in particular? Read it, but only if you've already read some other Rex Stout / Nero Wolfe stuff beforehand (I remember enjoying The League of Frightened Men thoroughly). This one gets just a B-, but bonus points to anybody who can remember the poem from which its title is drawn (I don't feel like looking it up again). Oh, and ignore that sticker on the cover. You know, the one that says its one of the 100 all-time best mysteries, as selected by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association. I'm telling you, League of Frightened Men all the way.