Reading Well: Company Town by Madeline Ashby

Posted on December 11, 2017 by Daniel (@MKNN)

Published in 2016, Madeline Ashby‘s Company Town deserves a place among the more solid entries in the burgeoning field of young adult dystopian novels that reach beyond a simple displacement of a boy-meets-girl narrative into a bleak future (although, it must be said, there is a strong romantic thread, especially in the latter half of the book).

The protagonist, Hwa, is a bodyguard working for a union that represents sex-workers in a town dominated by a single, controlling, multi-national corporation (obviously, this is nudging the YA market upwards in terms of maturity and subject matter, although, while certainly sex-positive, the book is never explicit or offensive). Through a combination of her own skill and a bit of luck, she is hired by the single family that literally owns the town to keep their youngest heir safe as he attends a high-end school. A deep friendship develops between them, and when the situation is complicated by the upper-level employee who hired Hwa becoming the aforementioned love interest, the wheels of plot are set fully in motion.

What is more interesting about the book is Ashby’s vision of the future, where class determines the ability of each individual to customize and improve upon their genetic lot, and her sophisticated characterization of Hwa, who is both a sophisticated and–appropriately for her age and life–somewhat naive narrator.

The ending is a bit pat–it is YA, after all–but I think Company Town is an interesting and intriguing read, one that left me hoping more stories set in that world are forthcoming.

#WhatIWishICouldDo

Create sympathy for the protagonist as quickly and deeply as Ashby does: within very few pages, I was fully rooting for Hwa, intrigued by her story, and hoping to watch her succeed. That’s a pretty good sign for the beginning of a novel.

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@The Movies with PopPop: Battle of the Sexes

Posted on December 2, 2017 by Daniel (@MKNN)

Battle of the Sexes is a very good movie – far better than it might have been! While its main plot event is the $100,000 purse tennis match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs, the movie is really about several transitions occurring in the US at that time: struggles for recognition of equal opportunity for women; for breaking down classic ‘50’s marriage stereotypes; for the legitimization of risk; and for the beginning, just the beginning, of recognition of gay and lesbian relationships.

The movie handles the relationships of Billie Jean with her husband, with her first lesbian lover, and with the gay fashion designer for the new women’s tour (sponsored by Virginia Slims!) with unanticipated warmth, subtlety and depth. The movie is also quite funny, showing us a playful, off center, and very creative Bobby Riggs – not quite the asshole he often seems in retrospect. Costuming and settings are appropriate to the era, and we also get Howard Cosell (his actual voice) calling the match. Perhaps the only person to come off worse than he likely was is Jack Kramer, then head of the USLTA, and while an important figure in the development of the men’s sport, a fierce opponent to women’s equality with men in the sport (of course a misunderstanding of what was being pursued) and to their receiving equal prize money.

You’ll enjoy the movie, appreciate how far we’ve come (and how far we still have to go), and value the way it didn’t wind up a simple minded sports movie!

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Reading Well: Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts

Posted on November 28, 2017 by Daniel (@MKNN)

Shantaram (2003) by Gregory David Roberts is a dizzying, frustrating, entertaining novel. The dizzying and entertaining are entwined: the protagonist is a (slightly? radically?) fictionalized version of Roberts himself, and the novel follows his audacious escape from an Australian jail, his travels to India, his time spent running a makeshift clinic in an urban slum of Bombay, more time in jail (this time in India), and many escapades while in the service of a faction of the network of gangs controlling the Bombay underground (including a gun-running trip to Afghanistan).

All of those key events are, it seems, historically true for Roberts, although he insists the details have all been fictionalized and, certainly, there are elements of the central love affair, as well as deeply symbolic characters, that seem quite clearly manifestations of his imagination.

Which lead us to the frustrating bits: Roberts is a good writer, and the action pieces move well, making two-thirds of the almost 1,000 page novel an engaging page-turner. The rest is spent in a mixture of philosophical musings and reflections on morality (to his credit, his own as much as others), and these are, while heartfelt, a bit repetitive, simplistic, and overly Romantic in nature. More importantly, they interrupt the other narratives, proving, in the end a distraction for the reader.

Still, the novel is rewarding overall, and the question of why it hasn’t been made into a movie can only be answered with, “yet.” It is, at core, a great vehicle for a leading man: a hero who, while fully repentant for his sins, is redeemed through both self-knowledge and, ultimately, love itself.

#WhatIWishICouldDo

There is an energetic pacing to the non-philosophical bits that makes Shantaram an instantly commercially attractive book. Maintaining that across a novel this long is something I need to figure out, given how long my novel seems to be insisting on being.

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Reading Well: Sequels & Other Novels

Posted on September 30, 2017 by Daniel (@MKNN)

{It’s been a little while. Summer, and sequels, and a major storm, and a very long novel. This post marks a few months of sequels/other novels by writers that have previously appeared on Reading Well. I wanted to find out how a few things turned out …}

The Cold Commands (2012) follows The Steel Remains in Richard K. Morgan‘s trilogy, A Land Fit for Heroes.

Little has changed: the novel is incredibly readable, and the three main characters (an aristocratic rebel, a mercenary, a sorceress of sorts) remain clearly sketched and compelling. There is a save-the-world plot that involves a shadowy (and time-traveling) threat to humanity, but the smaller challenges are, to me, more interesting as our triumvirate of heroes navigate their world.

The social world remains very nicely drawn, and the locales have a nice amount of depth. A lot remains unexplained, especially regarding the reptilian nemesis that lurks at the edges of the known world and the hyper-advanced race that abandoned the world long ago. But the odds are you will care about the main characters and how they will escape their current danger, whetherpolitical, physical, or supernatural.

The larger plot will, I assume, dominate the third book of the trilogy. I look forward to it.

Kai Ashante Wilson‘s A Taste of Honey (2016) is set in the same world as The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps.

Ashante Wilson continues to be a strikingly original voice in contemporary fantasy: like Wildeeps, A Taste of Honey is an explicitly African setting focusing on (forbidden, or at least, partially frowned upon) homosexual desire; in this case between a visiting warrior and a local member of the royal family. It’s tried-and-true material in terms of the strict plot, but the inventiveness of detail around the different cultures, around the relationship of women and higher mathematics, around the relationship between people and the natural world, all raise the novella far above the norm.

I hope Ashante Wilson continues to explore this world: there are hints at sweeping stories yet to be told here, and I would like to read them.

Ellen Ullman‘s The Bug (2003) isn’t really a sequel at all, but it does carry on many of the themes she explored in her book of essays, Close to the Machine.

The Bug is a thriller of sorts, narrated by a software tester at an early Silicon Valley startup, but focusing on a bug–a flaw in the software being created–that is downright malevolent, causing a developer to slowly lose his grip on reality as he grapples with its impact on his professional and personal life.

Ullman’s insights into the technical–how software works, how the people involved in creating it think about it, how those groups function–are the strength of the book; the rest is a clever conceit with occasionally gripping individual scenes. If you liked Close to the Machine and enjoy mysteries, you’ll enjoy The Bug.

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Reading Well: The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner

Posted on July 21, 2017 by Daniel (@MKNN)

The opening chapter of The Flamethrowers (2013) by Rachel Kushner is perhaps the best thing I’ve read in quite some time. In it, we are introduced to our protagonist through the overlap of two worlds: the first is art, specifically the New York scene of the early and mid 1970s (she is described as a land artist, using photographs to record events of interaction with the surrounding landscape); the second is motorcycles, as she is on her way to the desert flats of Nevada, where she will ride a new model bike on the same tracks where land records are threatened and set each year. It’s fantastic stuff: deeply ingrained in each world, finding authority in the details of language and behavior, and painting her character in crisply defined movements.

The rest of the novel is quite good, but never quite recovers the energy and electricity of the opening salvo. It traces her relationship with an older Italian artist, one of the heirs to the company that made her motorcycle (but whose fortune was really made in rubber sourced from Brazil and turned into tires for the near-infinite demand during World War II). The novel is very conscious of the complex contradictions of capitalism, making stops not only in Brazil, where indigenous workers are endlessly abused in the pursuit of rubber, but also spending a fair bit of time back in Italy, where factory strikes carry an ever-increasing threat of violence against both the workers and the factory owners themselves.

The book, however, is much more about the personal than the political: it is a story not so much of lost love, as of duplicitous behavior, of the cost of maintaining a facade for the world, whether that facade is emotional detachment or performance art. It is not a book of happy endings, but it is a moving voyage, well -executed and engaging to read.

#WhatIWishICouldDo

Create authenticity. Kushner’s ability to embed details in her descriptions and, more importantly, in her character’s actions immediately conveys a sense of thick reality to her settings, from the mechanics of riding a motorcycle at high speeds to the rules of engagement for the production of modern minimalist art. It’s so hard to do that without either (a) limiting your writing to only those things you know well or (b) sounding stiff and forced. As someone who writes about impossible futures, (a) is not an option …

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@The Movies with PopPop: I Am Not Your Negro

Posted on July 10, 2017 by Daniel (@MKNN)

James Baldwin, one of the mid-20th centuries best writers and speakers – some might insist on an “arguably” in there, but I’ll take my chances! – is often overlooked or at least under appreciated as an interpreter and prophet of the Civil Rights movement. While he returned from his self-exile in France in 1957 to participate directly and was always in or near the inner circle of planning, implementing, and publicly speaking about what was happening, he brought a long term view somewhat different from many of his peers, and at times in conflict with other major leaders.

Baldwin understood clearly that the struggle at its core had to do with white behavior and perceptions, and it was those that needed to change if the scourge of racism and its continuing impact on America were to be dealt with. He also understood that little beyond cosmetics could change until white folks and the country acknowledged that the country was built on genocide and oppression, of Native Americans and enslaved people, and that the ingrained institutional racism, attitudes and behaviors ended neither with the end of slavery, nor with the successes of the Civil Rights era.

I Am Not Your Negro, the 2016 (Oscar-nominated) movie directed by Raoul Peck, relies only on words written by Baldwin, and wonderfully and calmly delivered by Samuel Jackson, along with archival footage of Baldwin and some of the events he describes. The words come from an unfinished manuscript he was working on prior to his death in 1987 that was focused on the lives and deaths of Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X. It’s an important movie, that neither embellishes nor dulls Baldwin’s words.

The movie works well; it’s not preachy and will hold your attention and focus. You should see it – and then listen to additional excerpts from Baldwin’s speeches (Pacifica archives has many of them and google leads to even more), and if you haven’t – or haven’t in a while — take a look at his writings, both fiction and non-fiction. Much of what Baldwin said in the ‘60’s and ‘70’s seems even more on-target today.

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Reading Well: Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

Posted on July 9, 2017 by Daniel (@MKNN)

Homegoing (2016) belongs to an honored tradition of African-American fiction, a generation by generation narrative tracing a family’s life from a moment a few centuries distant in West Africa, through the horrors of capture and slavery (and often encompassing moments of both resistance and collusion), through some form of emancipation and into the 20th century. Yaa Gyasi adds a twist, in that she follows two families, one that remains in West Africa (Ghana) and one that survives the middle passage into North America.

The chapters alternate by location, with generational parallels. This structure makes Homegoing more a series of inter-related short stories than a continuous narrative–although towards the end of the novel, individuals persist more and more, becoming parents and grand-parents of the chapters’ main characters (this happened in Some Sing, Some Cry as well and is more a function of the longer lifespans and interconnected nature of 20th/21st century life than some narrative inconsistency).

Perhaps the most impactful moments of Homegoing are of the tragic variety: several individuals exist on the edge of mental illness, several others struggle with addiction of different types, and Gyasi’s skill at creating empathy for those characters and moments is impressive. There are some thematic elements that survive across the narratives as well, one of which is a necklace passed from generation to generation. Originally salvaged from a fire, the totem asks the joined questions of what survives and what is passed on, and, in the final scene (which also unites the two narrative lines), the answers are, as they should be, ambiguous.

It’s hard not to compare Homegoing with The Underground Railroad, given the close proximity of both their publication and my reading of them: I think Gyasi’s novel is more successful from a purely literary perspective, but Colson, in contrast, adds some new and distinctive elements to the conversation. Both are worth your time.

#WhatIWishICouldDo

Stick with this kind of regulated structure. If I were attempting this, some characters would become novellas, others would struggle to hold my interest for more than a dozen pages. There is a rhythm and a regularity to these kind of novels that I think demonstrate a mastery of craft on the part of the author.

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@The Movies with PopPop: The Hero

Posted on June 30, 2017 by Daniel (@MKNN)

The Hero, a 2017 film directed by Brett Haley, is a surprisingly strong, leisurely, contemplative and elegiac film that seems made for, and is made by Sam Elliott. He plays Lee Hayden, an actor in his 70’s, famous for one great Western, also called The Hero, made some 40 years earlier. Hayden now spends his time doing voice over commercials – ah, that Sam Elliott voice – and smoking reefer.

He’s divorced, estranged and somewhat alienated from his 30 year old daughter, Lucy, living an isolated life, and constantly reminded by himself and others of his role as the hero. In short order, he learns he has cancer, and he meets Charlotte, a woman in her late 30’s played by Laura Prepon (with a smile and a sexiness that dazzles). Together, those two events lead him to slowly relearn intimacy, to struggle with trying to rectify his relationship with Lucy, and to make sense and some use of his past fame.

None of this comes easy, and while little is fully resolved at the film’s end, Lee’s struggles with his mortality, with making sense of his life, and with trying to sort out his legacy is extraordinarily well done and powerfully portrayed.

The movie could have been a sentimental tear jerker or a depressing end-of-life reflection – it is neither of these, but rather a powerful, gentle consideration of issues we all do or will face. Well worth seeing – and oh, that voice. It carries us through whatever rough spots the film has. See it.

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Reading Well: This Census Taker by China Miéville

Posted on June 25, 2017 by Daniel (@MKNN)

China Miéville is probably my favorite author of the twenty-first century, and when I saw that he recently released not one, but two new books, I was both excited and a little hesitant. Miéville had a run–from 1998’s King Rat through the Bas-Lag trilogy through 2009’s The City and the City of some of the most inventive, immersive, unapologetic fiction I’ve read. Fabulous stuff. As his star ascended, there seemed to be a lack of editing focus in his later novels, and some of the taut mystery seemed to fade.

2016’s This Census Taker is a novella, and perhaps barely that (the book also includes the first chapter of his other new novel, The Last Days of New Paris, to be reviewed her probably later in the summer), but it marks a return to the Miéville that I’ve been missing. This is a fever dream of a story, told through the eyes of a boy who lives on the side of a mountain who suspects that his father is a murderer. The boy flees, returns, and struggles with how to navigate an uneasy existence until a man appears who claims that his job is to count the members of a mysterious diaspora.

That’s it. And little beyond that becomes concrete, but the notes hit by the story are unfailing and the boy’s inner life is rich, if stricken with a constant and, at least from his perspective, understandable anxiety. Little is resolved, but that’s not the point: This Census Taker is an exercise in tone and perspective, deeply creative and perhaps more than slightly disturbing.

Most of all, as an unabashed fanboy of Miéville, it may mark a return to the creativity and directness of his earlier works. That would indeed be a treat.

#WhatIWishICouldDo

Resist explanation. Miéville has always been great at this, dropping readers in media res and trusting them to learn as they read. To do that well takes such courage as an author, such belief in both their own skills and in their audience. When it fails, readers are left not caring and, quite often, perplexed to the point of insult; but when it succeeds, the mysteries of the text remain as questions to ponder, and the writing remains as well, pulling at you long after you’ve finished reading. That’s something I’d love to have happen in my own writing.

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@The Movies with PopPop: Seymour: An Introduction

Posted on June 20, 2017 by Daniel (@MKNN)

Seymour: An Introduction (no, not the Salinger short story of the same name, but a 2014 film directed by Ethan Hawke) is an extraordinary documentary that will charm and fascinate anyone who has either played or tried to play an instrument or just loves music – or excellence in any craft!

Seymour Bernstein is a piano teacher and composer, 88 when the movie was made, who lives on the upper west side of Manhattan (and summers in Maine). He is a gifted player who debuted with the Chicago Symphony and then played worldwide – until 1980 when he stopped playing publicly and turned his full energies to teaching. He claimed to never be comfortable playing publicly, while he palpably and obviously is a remarkable teacher.

He met Hawke – an actor who also claims to suffer severe stage fright whenever he goes on – seated next to him at a dinner party, and after their conversation (which Hawke claims was remarkably insightful and helpful), Hawke asked him if he could make a documentary about him, and thus the film. (Hawke stays off camera for almost all of the movie). We learn a little of a lot about Bernstein in the movie: his childhood; the hurt when his father said he had “two daughters and a pianist;” his organizing a trio while serving in Korea that played for other soldiers on the front line; his one room apartment; his interactions with students; his teaching of master classes; his friends with whom he discusses art; his belief in the need to both have the gift and to work ferociously at one’s craft; his dislike of Glenn Gould (“when Gould plays, I don’t hear Bach, just Gould”). But mainly we develop a deep feeling for his insights, patience, and absolute commitment. There’s a remarkable scene in the basement of the Steinway shop in midtown Manhattan when he’s trying out pianos with responses like “horrendous,” “OK,” and eventually “wonderful, this is the one I’ll use.”

Hawke has talked him into playing a private concert for perhaps 50 people (Hawke’s acting group plus many of the students and colleagues we’ve met during the movie) in the rotunda of the Steinway building, looking out at a Manhattan street. An “extra” on the DVD is the full 45 minute or so concert.

(A note on the title – though Bernstein had a brother who committed suicide, I could see little relevance in the title, other than Bernstein’s name is Seymour, and the film is an introduction to him!)

This is absolutely a film not be missed, it brings enjoyment, appreciation, and a certain peace.

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