Reading Well: All Our Names by Dinaw Mengestu

Posted on February 1, 2016 by Daniel (@MKNN)

All Our Names (2014) by Dinaw Mengestu is a book about loneliness, isolation, and dislocation. It tries to be a love story, but the strength of the book lies in the other stuff.

The novel unfolds in two parallel parts: one is set in Uganda, sometime in the late 1960s/early 1970s and the second in the USA, perhaps in the 1980s. The chapters alternate in point of view, between Helen, a white, Midwestern social worker, and (not) Isaac.

The latter is the more complicated story to tell: our narrator migrated to Uganda, likely from southern Ethiopia, as a young man and there was radicalized and fell in love with another young student, whose name was Isaac. The two young men are swept into a revolutionary resistance to the current government, Isaac moreso than the narrator, an arc that culminates in Isaac giving the narrator his identity papers, including a visa for America. Which is where he meets Helen. The two of them fall in love and struggle with the inherent difficulties of everyday, systemic, and targeted racism.

The structure dictates a constant back-and-forth in time, as Helen’s chapters are all in the later timeline, while Isaac’s progress from the time in Uganda forward.

Mengestu’s power is an ability to convey heartbreak, the longing for identity and companionship and understanding that is at the center of (not) Isaac’s life. There is a poignancy to the writing, an understanding that it is profoundly unlikely that things end well, but there can still be moments of joy and pleasure along the way. It’s not a book of large revelations, and if you have even a passing familiarity with the history of the two time periods involved, there will be little new on display.

But the characters will stay with you: Helen is drawn warmly and sympathetically, and the mysteries of (not) Isaac represent a great accomplishment, a protagonist that is constantly obscured by his own past, but remains emotionally clear in the reader’s mind.

#WhatIWishICouldDo

The relationship with Isaac is stunning. I don’t remember if there is a sexual component that is revealed, but it doesn’t really matter: it is tender, respectful, and passionate in its idealism. He captures a certain youthful abandon, and then manages to make the older (not) Isaac both continuous with the younger, but also wiser, more cautious.

Aging a character is difficult, and Mengestu does it very well.

 

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Reading Well: Ancillary Justice, Ancillary Mercy, and Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie

Posted on January 14, 2016 by Daniel (@MKNN)

Ann Leckie‘s Ancillary Trilogy is among the most imaginative science fiction debuts you will find. They are very much of the genre, so if spaceships and alien cultures aren’t your thing, you should probably pass on this one.

But, if they are, it’s well worth the ride. The ingenuity centers around her conception of a spaceship as a hive mind spread across many, many bodies: our hero, Breq, (it is possible that all of the characters in Ancillary Justice are female; at a minimum, the overwhelming majority of them are–warning, here be subtext) used to be a spaceship called The Justice of Toren. When she was a spaceship, she was both the ship itself (with massive computing power at her disposal) and several dozen of its crew, whose bodies could be anywhere on or off the ship.

Leckie does a fantastic job communicating the range of perception and intentionality this requires: there are chapters where you are reading several scenes simultaneously, all being combined into the overall perspective the ship itself.

I did say used to above: the plot of the book hinges on Breq having been dislocated from being a ship, her consciousness stuffed into a single, vulnerable and all-too-easily damaged, human body.

The trilogy unfolds somewhere in a triangle formed from space opera, political thriller, and social commentary, and Leckie balances them all quite well. If that sounds interesting, these are strongly recommended.

#WhatIWishICouldDo

Two things: first, the creativity in the simultaneous perception scenes is really fantastic, and struck me as solving (not in the only way, but in one reasonable way) an age-old problem in the genre. Second, Leckie is fearless in her culture creation. I could never name a race the Rrrrrrrrrr, as she does, without forcing myself into contortions to explain the linguistics behind it, which she most definitely does not. I think her way is more courageous and even, perhaps, better.

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@The Movies with PopPop: The Story of the Weeping Camel

Posted on January 10, 2016 by Daniel (@MKNN)

And now for something completely different…

The Story of the Weeping Camel, a 2003 award winning documentary by Byambasuren Davaa and Luigi Falorni, follows the life of a contemporary nomadic Mongolian family in the Gobi desert who raise camels and sheep. It focuses on the season when the camels – very strange looking camels who were not used in making Lawrence of Arabia – are giving birth, and what occurs after one of the camels refuses her calf. The family, 3 or 4 generations who share a compound, eventually have to rely on an ancient ritual involving special ceremonies, foods and music, and requiring their sending for a stringed instrument virtuoso to come and assist.

What’s remarkable is the success of the film in capturing the life style of the family, its rhythms and strengths, and in individualizing each member of the family, their roles, and their harmony. It’s remarkably absorbing and I think remarkably successful in giving a picture of the lives of highly traditional people within a modern world. By the end, I thought I understood these folks, and thought their lives and lifestyle to be “just like ours” while of course totally different.

A very special cinematic experience. I even thought some of the camels were cute – anyone who’s been with camels know how unlikely that is!

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Reading Well: Last Call by Tim Powers

Posted on January 7, 2016 by Daniel (@MKNN)

Last Call by Tim Powers mixes many of my favorite things: neo-Egyptian mythology, tarot cards with the power to fundamentally disrupt reality, and, of course, poker. Or, in this case, a pseudo-poker game called Assumption, played with a full deck of tarot cards. The name derives from the ability of the ultimate winner to assume the physical body of other players, enabling effective immortality for the lucky few.

The book is a mix of noir procedural and revenge story, with the protagonist managing to out-hustle the bad guys, both at “regular” poker and the other games. There are a lot of vaguely magical trappings: people have affinities to different elemental powers, and there are a variety of ghouls and ghosts and golems, both helpful and not, that are found on the California coast and inhabiting the various extravagances of late-twentieth century Las Vegas. These are intriguing, and if it falls into the wide history of fiction that appropriates various magical and mythological systems in problematic ways, it does so relatively harmlessly.

It’s enjoyable, and a page turner, and even surprisingly creative at points.

#WhatIWishICouldDo

Juggle a half-dozen plot lines, slowly pulling them together into a nice knot at the end that is, with a deft pull, neatly unraveled. Powers knows his craft, and never lets the story careen out of control.

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Writing Goals, 2016

Posted on January 5, 2016 by Daniel (@MKNN)

I don’t really believe in goals as a fixed entities. As I am way too fond of saying, any damn fool can have a plan. The key is the re-planning, the adjustments that happen along the way.

But I do see value in stating things, and stating them in ways that a community is able to witness and engage if they so desire. So, my writing goals for this year:

  • By mid-year, have a completed outdraft (my made up term for what I am doing right now, which is more than an outline but less than a draft) of the rest of In Time.
  • Find a home, whether self-published or elsewhere, for Readings, which means having a finalfinal draft done in the next few months.
  • Gain some clarity on the future of In Time. Do I just start self-publishing chapters and see if an audience can be found that way? Do I engage in the agent-pitch-submission process? My guess is there is no “right” answer, but I need to be better informed.
  • Finally, continue to post Reading Well‘s with some regularity. They help me reflect on what I read, and, who knows, may be useful someday for others. Not as useful as @The Movies with PopPop, of course, but still …

We’ll see. I know that I am happier and healthier when I feel like I am productively and creatively writing.

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@The Movies with PopPop: Spotlight

Posted on January 4, 2016 by Daniel (@MKNN)

If you haven’t seen Spotlight, do! It’s a very well made movie that will keep you focused all the way through.

Spotlight is about the team of Boston Globe journalists who uncovered the depth and breadth of sexual abuses in the Catholic priesthood in Boston in 2002, including exposing enough of those in the hierarchy to make it clear it was a systemic problem – a very longstanding one – and not merely one of a handful of misbehaving priests.

Its focus is the real life work of investigative reporting, the non-glorious, ethics-driven kind that, alas, becomes ever rarer. Most of the film takes place either in what seems to be and is said to be a wonderful recreation of a real newsroom and the archival and research facilities of a major newspaper, or in courts and libraries doing tedious research and document review, or on the streets tracing down and interviewing – or trying to interview – perpetrators, victims, attorneys, and the Church.

The evolution of the story, the calls about when and what to publish, the decision to hold back on exposing the initial identified individuals in favor of tracing down 70 (!) specific priests and their victims, and uncovering cover-ups that extended over decades is what drives the film. Remarkably, the director, Tom McCarthy, while keeping the focus on the day to day pursuit and evolution of the investigation, has made a gripping, fascinating movie. The acting is superb and is a recreation of the actual investigative team that won a 2003 Pulitzer for their work.

Don’t miss it – it joins that small pantheon of great movies about investigative journalism.

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@The Movies with PopPop: If I Were You

Posted on December 27, 2015 by Daniel (@MKNN)

The 2012 film, If I Were You, directed by Joan Carr-Wiggin and starring Marcia Gay Harden, Leonor Watling and Joseph Kell is one of those movies that while not great, is delightful and an amusing and diverting couple of hours. Harden is wonderful in it.

The story essentially is of a middle aged couple, Madelyn and Paul, and Paul’s young mistress, Lucy, an incompetent but aspiring actress. Madelyn discovers the affair, Paul suspects Madelyn knows, tells Lucy it’s all over. Madelyn follows Lucy home, and while not revealing who she is, saves her from suicide, and gets drunk with her. They make a pact to make each other’s decisions, and the film takes off. An early decision has Madelyn accompanying Lucy to an audition for an extraordinarily amateurish King Lear, and improbably, Madelyn is cast as Lear and Lucy as the fool. At Lucy’s behest, Madelyn invents a secret lover and the rest of the film deals with the entanglements and unraveling.

All quite delightful, much insightful and some out-loud funny. You’ll enjoy it.

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Reading Well: The Girl in the Road by Monica Byrne

Posted on December 24, 2015 by Daniel (@MKNN)

The Girl in the Road, Monica Byrne‘s debut novel, carries with it one strikingly unforgettable image: a boardwalk across the ocean from India to East Africa. The path moves up and down on the waves, and the energy from that motion is captured and used to power a world transformed by the rising oceans: North America is desolate, and Addis Ababa, largely through its elevation, is the leading center of commerce in Africa.

That, of course, endeared me to the book, as did the use of Amharic. But that’s fairly idiosyncratic.

For others, the key to the book is the voyage of two young women: Meena heading west from India on the boardwalk, driven half-mad from a violent incident at home and Mariama, heading from West Africa to Ethiopia in a caravan. Each have memorable episodes: an encounter with bandits at the edge of the desert, an overwhelming crowd in the churches of Lalibela. For me, that was enough to overwhelm the plot twists (which are a little too convenient) and the final reveal (which was a little underwhelming), making The Girl in the Road an enjoyable diversion.

#WhatIWishICouldDo

Byrne dives into areas of mental instability with a confidence and bravery that I envy: both of her characters struggle, and she describes the edges of madness in a compelling and moving way. That, and the Amharic.

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Reading Well: Lock In by John Scalzi

Posted on December 7, 2015 by Daniel (@MKNN)

In some ways, Lock In by John Scalzi is two different things lurking inside one book. On the one hand, it is a sketch of a fascinating possible future where an epidemic has left millions of people fully conscious in fully paralyzed bodies, yet where technology exists that allow them to project their consciousness into androids or (more rarely) specially gifted human beings. On the other, it’s a page-turner of a police procedural, strong on the not-quite-buddy cop dynamic.

I was deeply intrigued by the former, then entertained by the latter. But I believe the world Scalzi created deserves further exploration: he sketches the possible technology, the political and social implications, and the impact of the presence of such a sizable population of lock-in’s (as they’re called) in a way that cries out for more. Wikipedia claims a sequel is in the mix, but given there is a decade of latitude in its publication date, I’ll believe (and buy) it when I see it.

Once the police procedural kicks in, the story moves very quickly, and the obligatory twists at the end are satisfying and believable within the world and characters he has created. So, well done, there.

#WhatIWishICouldDo

As the kids these days would say, I wish I could genre. Scalzi does, impeccably: he is writing within an established form and he stays faithful to its limits, its rhythm, and its tone. Doing that well–and he does–is one way to build and maintain a faithful audience of enthused readers.

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@The Movies with PopPop: Clouds of Sils Maria

Posted on December 5, 2015 by Daniel (@MKNN)

Clouds of Sils Maria is a 2014 film, written and directed by Olivier Assayas and starring Juliette Binoche, Kristen Stewart and Chloe Grace Moretz.

This is a very interesting film dealing with several layered themes: aging; acting; “real” life and fiction among them. Binoche plays an aging actress whose career was made playing the younger woman in a play in which, as a personal assistant to an aging actress, she coldly enters into an affair with her and eventually dispossesses her. Now, 20 years later, she agrees to redo the play for the London stage, this time playing the older woman to an up and coming young and calculating actress (Moretz). Stewart plays Binoche’s real life personal assistant. Their relationship and the older-younger woman relationship in the play have some parallels (and many differences) – to the point where when they’re reading lines from the play, it’s at times difficult to know whether the exchanges are from their actual relationship or from the play’s script.

The title refers to a phenomenon at a particular place in the Swiss Alps when at times the clouds roll in along a river bed appearing as a great white snake moving along the river – an actual phenomenon, and hence the name of the play in the film, the Maloja Snake. The setting and photography are stunning.

There are many more relationship complications, and for a film with minimal “action,” the dialogue and technique are riveting.

I didn’t think it a great film, but a fascinating one, and quite worth its two hours.

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