Wednesday, September 28, 2005

 

Anansi Boys

Neil Gaiman is a popular man—I had no idea just how popular till I went to his book release reading at the Union Square Barns and Noble. I got there about an hour and a half early after jury duty hell and the reading room was already ¾ of the way full of excited Neil Gaiman fans and the curious—I was one of the latter. I had read his American Gods and thought it was pretty good, but this crowd thought he was amazing. Having read Anasi Boys—I agree with them.
In Anasi Boys—Anansi, the trickster spider god, dies and his two sons long separated finally meet and mad hijinks ensue. This is a terribly funny, beautiful book that I just couldn’t put down until it was done and when I was done I was sad to see it end.

Tuesday, September 13, 2005

 

American Psycho

I thought it was about time I read something by Brett Easton Ellis, and I happened to pick up a free copy of this at the Void Magazine reading in which our own Jessica presented her work last month. So... I loved it, which totally surprised me. It starts off as very broad social satire and you think that you will never be able to stand 400 pages of 1980s yuppies, full of inredibly detailed descriptions of the designer-label clothing that everyone is wearing. You almost want to say, "All right already, I get it." But Ellis carefully calibrates the revelation of the narrator's psychosis. Certain of the brief chapters are absolutely pitch-perfect and laugh-out-loud funny. Ellis uses the same elements again and again, tropes references, the same types of vacuous conversation between the characters, but rather than boring you they play like variations in a satirical fugue. There's a Balzacian quality to this cynical world of finance and sex.

And as for the gore: I like to think of myself as de-sensitized to descriptions of violence, but there are certain chapters of this book that made me feel immoral just for reading them. Gut-wrenchingly, unimaginably horrible. The book has a real power to it and, despite the incredible humor, it does "have something to say." That "something" boiled down to a platitude ("Capitalist excess destroys the soul"?) sounds trite but as presented through the hideous, freaky prism of Ellis's narrator that simple commonplace idea somehow becomes infinitely rich and readable. This book is certainly NOT for everyone; I would hesitate to recommend it to most women I know, for example. But for those who love writing, and especially crystal-sharp deadpan satire, this is an important and masterful piece of work.

Friday, September 02, 2005

 

What's the Matter with Kansas?

Of course, this is a question that plagues all of us--or maybe just expats who live the liberal lifestyle. This book actually turned out to be much better than expected. I'd read a pretty harsh critique in The New York Times Book Review, and although I don't always take their critiques much to heart (they keep publishing reviews by Jonathan Franzen, who I merely hate on principle since the Oprah debacle and his psycho review of Alice Munro where he didn't review the book at all, just talked about how cool she was), but I'm always suspicious of books by liberals about a place they might not really know. But, the author is an ex-Kansan, brought up in Johnson County (the richest county in the state), but on the somewhat dodgy side as far as social strata is concerned--not poor, but middle class. And, although the first couple of chapters bestow the usual liberal diatribe about how hideous conservatives are, the further you reach into the book, you find out how this state, once a state of rebels and progressives, has turned into one of the reddist states imaginable. His notes in the back of the book are meticulous--I have yet to read even a few of them. There are some points where he dives back into the diatribe, but he suddenly pulls himself out, shakes it off, and moves on. A couple of tidbits about the history I never knew came up: how the town of Ulysses literally picked up and moved away to avoid the corporation that wanted to foreclose on them; the fact that a pope has been elected right in the heartland because of the heretical nature of the late Pope John Paul II, etc. One of my main problems with the book, other than the diatribe (which, by the way, I pretty much agree with, but do we have to hear it repeated?), is the fact that, except for a few forays into Wichita and Garden City, he remains geographically in eastern Kansas. It's his stomping grounds, I suppose, but were he to head out west a few more times he may have found a few yet-liberal strongholds. I guess I'm pissed because, as a south-central Kansas expat, I know a lot of people who aren't crazy rich or crazy redneck conservatives. So, a brief, ever so brief glimmer of hope in this world according to Frank couldn't have hurt. (And, he made NO mention of Mennonites, who brought the hard winter wheat that made Kansas what it was--but nobody's perfect, I suppose.)

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