Review: The Soft Machine by William S. Burroughs

Posted on January 30, 2010 by

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Summary:
The Soft Machine is a semi-continuation of what Burroughs began in Naked Lunch and also seems to be a prelude to Nova Express, though I have yet to read the latter. This novel, in typical Burroughs fashion (read: shocking, course, disturbing, blunt, incoherent, etc.) rants on the abuses of power, the “Red Scare,” racism and segregation, sexism, homophobia, drug abuse, and more.  They cut-up style of prose is interesting and certainly ground-breaking for the time (reminded me of Gertrude Stein, except less poetic sensuality and more raw sexuality), though it is not particularly novel to those familiar with Burroughs’ work.  I did find this novel more in-line with Naked Lunch than, say, The Wild Boys, which is to say that it is less accessible to the general public.

The Good:
Burroughs is still hilarious, and still refuses to pull any punches.  His writing style – prose and language – are incredibly blunt and “in your face.”  As are the themes being discussed.  I enjoyed how Burroughs ended many of the chapters by re-phrasing or summarizing what had been said/done throughout the chapter in a brief, chopped-up retelling, as if the narrator is having flashbacks, incomprehensible and out-of-focus.  These moments are seemingly drug-induced or drug-hazed memories, incapable of being fully grasped, and typically without meaning for the narrator (“Johnny” – they’re all “Johnny”).  And, since I’ve mentioned “Johnny” – I’ll go on to say that I found it incredibly amusing that all of the many characters of many nationalities, located in many parts of the globe (mainly Latin-American) referred to the American boys as “Johnny” – a nice, satirical, throw-back to the All-American G.I. “Johnny”.  Clean-cut and wholesome.  Well, except when Burroughs gets his hands on him.

The Bad:
I can’t honestly pretend to understand Burroughs’ genius.  I would like to, and I do get certain aspects of it – but I can’t go all the way.  Joan Didion said of Burroughs, “[his] voice is hard, derisive, inventive, free, funny, serious, poetic, indelibly American, a voice in which one hears transistor radios and old movies and all the cliches and all the cons and all the newspapers, all the peculiar optimism, all the failure….it is precisely this voice — complex, subtle, allusive–that is the fine thing about The Soft Machine…” Okay.  Serious, inventive, free, and funny?  I see it.  As far as imagination and free-expression go, I would be hard-pressed to name many authors who rise above Burroughs.  Peculiar optimism?  Subtlety?  I’m lost on this one.  I also find it hard to wade through a lot of Burroughs’ nonsense without getting lost.  Perhaps that’s my short-coming, or perhaps it’s Burroughs’ intent (most of his novels are told through the eyes of drugged-out narrators, after-all).  I must admit to tiring of the crass language, though, and the crude, repetitive descriptions of “rectal mucous” and vaseline, for goodness sake.  I understand that language is power and that, particularly during the time of McCarthy-era oppression, writing was freedom – but I couldn’t help but wonder if Burroughs is even capable of reigning himself in, of tightening up his ideas, of delivering a well-conceived, purposeful, and understandable plot.  Would it matter?  Maybe.  Would it get Burroughs’ point across to deliver the message in a pretty package?  Probably not.

The Final Verdict: 3.0 out of 5.0
While I still applaud Burroughs’ honesty, imagination, and bold social-conscience, I just didn’t enjoy the book very much.  I laughed at certain lines and references; I nodded along at certain moments where Burroughs lashed-out (in his way) at bigotry and ignorance; but, overall, I just got tired and I wanted to be through with the book.  When I finally did get to the end, it was more rectal mucus, tapeworms, and cannibalism. Blech!

Review: The Rules of Attraction by Bret Easton Ellis

Posted on January 24, 2010 by

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Summary
The Rules of Attraction takes place at New England’s Camden College – the starting point for many characters in Ellis’s later novels.  The novel is written in the epistolary fashion – each segment is a different character’s journal-type entry.  Sometimes these segments match up with what other characters are saying and sometimes they don’t (intrigue! mystery!).  The novel begins in the middle of a sentence and ends in the middle of a sentence, the author intending to make the reader believe that the story is cyclical – no beginning, no end, just boring repetition of the same mindless, emotionless patterns, themes, and events.
The Good
There were a few things I enjoyed about this novel, though I wish I would have read the Ellis books in sequence.  Still, I suppose this segment almost works well as a “prequel” to the other novels. 
I enjoyed the self-indulgent way that Ellis begins the story in the middle of the story (as if the reader is suddenly thrust into this group of “friends,” without prior knowledge, but with full, unsurprised acceptance) and then ends the story in the middle of a sentence (the reader fully knowing that, though these characters are going off for summer, Camden College will be the same when everyone returns – no surprises, no expectations that things will be different).  This very much reminds me of college – of the dreams and compromises we all have and make when we “go away” to school.  The lives we lead away from our family, parents, home towns, and the way we drift away, back into and out of it as summer comes and goes.
Another aspect of this novel which I found appealing was the epistolary style.  Each segment is written by a different character (though the same group of people throughout).  You don’t exactly get the feeling that these are journal entries, though, except for those italicized entries of perhaps the most tragic character – and these are particularly set apart so as to make the distinction from the rest of the group.  The rest of the entries seem to be brief insights into the character’s thoughts – none of which can be entirely trusted.  Sean, for instance, seems to be having an affair with Paul throughout the novel; yet, while Paul is open about it in his segments, Sean never mentions their “goings-on” nor does he ever even allude to it.  
 
Finally, I enjoyed and appreciated, as always, the honesty.  The brutality and pointlessness – the exposed wounds of these disillusioned, dishonest, self-centered, superficial bunch of rich, drugged-out nobodies, all of whom are certainly flunking out of college, but who will somehow graduate and go on to run companies, banks – drive expensive cars, travel Europe.  Those not so lucky – the scholarship kids – are the minor characters, the nothings, the nobodies with real problems, and the ones who are most slighted and damaged by this group who couldn’t really care less. It brought my college experience hurtling back, full force – and I imagine many people who had the opportunity to go away to college, to live in the dorms, to go to frat parties, local townie bars, to ditch class, pile into cars, wander around on cold nights just looking for something or someone to do.  Brilliantly realistic – and, as Gore Vidal put it, “wonderfully comic.”
The Bad
Too much sex and too much drug-induced nonsense.  Part of what makes this novel so great (the honesty) is also it’s downfall.  The sense of trudging through (not really trudging, since the pages turn so fast and the story is rather interesting, if morbid and sad) a book with no point, no purpose, no meaning.  And, yes, that is Ellis’s point – the lack of purpose and meaning to any of these people’s lives.  But there is no sense of redemption for any of the characters.  No revelatory moments, really.  No chance that any of these characters were in any way changed, that their experiences might have imbued them with a certain sense of reality – of growth.  Even if much of what Ellis is getting at in The Rules of Attraction is true, it’s still hard to believe that not one person would have learned anything about anything. 
I also can’t help but compare this to Ellis’s other novels and while this one may stand out more than, say, The Informers, it certainly does not compare in depth or breadth or impact as, for instance, Glamorama.  The story is good – but not great.  The point is well-taken, but not exactly revelatory or astonishingly executed.  The style is interesting, engaging, and perhaps even a bit “cutting-edge” (very 80s), but all of that doesn’t add up to a Glamorama or an American Psycho both of which were truly revolutionary and exposed the 80s and 90s for what they were: decades of decadence, disconnect, self-indulgence, and frightening pointlessness.
The Final Verdict 3.5 out of 5.0
I truly did appreciate what Ellis was trying to say and I think The Rules of Attraction is a great prelude to what Ellis did eventually accomplish with Glamorama.  Still, while I think the story was interesting and engaging, the characters fairly well-developed and understood, and the setting more than familiar to those who have had the “college experience,” I do not think that there was much ground-breaking revelation.  No real distinction in style or language.  There is much allusion to William Burroughs and, perhaps, a bit of Kerouac blended in for good measure.  All-in-all, I enjoyed the book but I can’t help compare it to Ellis’s other works and, in doing so, find that this one falls just a bit short.

Review: The Magicians by Lev Grossman

Posted on January 22, 2010 by

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Summary

The Magicians by Lev Grossman is a curious fantasy novel, in that it is almost the anti-fantasy novel.  The style is the fantasy-equivalent to literary Realism (capital R).  Despite the fanciful creatures and mysterious worlds, The Magicians approaches magic in a “business-as-usual” manner. The main character, Quentin Coldwater, embarks on a bizarre coming-of-age experience in which magic (discovered in a Harry Potter-like revelatory manner) turns out to be a fantastic opportunity, a terrible burden, an adventure, a curse, and – ultimately – just another part of life (believe it or not!).

 

The Good

A magical anti-hero (Holden Caulfield is the obvious equivalent, but I won’t go that far) is a breath of fresh air.  Grossman develops Quentin in such a way as to make him truly identifiable (if irritatingly recognizable) to all of us.  The story begins with Quentin finishing high school and ends approximately 6 years later, after graduating from a magical university and experiencing a few years of life – both magical and non-magical.  That Quentin is self-loathing, doubtful, angsty, confused, sexual, cowardly, jealous, and truly human in every way, he becomes a character which readers can really believe (though not necessarily believe in).  I enjoyed this break from tradition – that there were no real heroes, no “pure” characters, always noble and able.  Everyone was flawed, and everyone was just out there, trying to make it through – sometimes with a little help from their equally troubled and normal (as normal as a witch/wizard can get) friends. I also particularly appreciated the inclusion of gay & lesbian characters in this novel – and not in an ambiguous, alluded-to fashion.  Orson Scott Card may be the only other Sci-Fi/Fantasy author I’ve read who has included homosexuality in his fantasy fiction – it’s typically a stigma, an unwelcome intrusion into the dream-world of tough, manly heroes and damsels in distress.  Unlike Card, however, Grossman doesn’t seem to be making moral judgments on homosexuality.  He simply includes gay characters because gay people exist.  This goes back to my point that this novel is just so brilliantly realistic for a fantasy novel (side-note, having the majority of the novel take place in Brooklyn and upstate New York also lends much to the realistic aspect of this story).  I also enjoyed the ending quite a bit.  This may get into spoiler territory – but, let’s just say, Grossman has a lot to say about the “belief” in magic and fantasy.  At times, you wonder where the author is headed – he almost seems to be mocking fantasy stories and the hopeless part of all of us, where we just can’t seem to let go to certain superstitions, certain childish dreams and expectations.  Near the end, you get the feeling that the moral of the story is that, to truly be happy, successful, and functional, you must give up these infantile fantasies and get on with living a focused, purposeful life.  Thankfully, this was not Grossman’s final message.  Instead, he leaves us with a feeling that the point to life is to just learn to be you.  You will make mistakes, you have to forgive yourself.  Your friends will sometimes do stupid things, hurt or betray you, but you have to forgive them.  And, when it comes down to it, you have to hold onto that magic – that part of you that is only you – and never let anyone force you to believe you should or could do better without it.

 

The Bad

Grossman bit off quite a bit with this novel.  The story spans six years – university years, which are really the longest years of our lives.  It covers so much – relationships, education, adventure, growth, self-discovery, romance.  I found myself, many times, wondering how a year of school could possibly have just passed in as few as 50 pages.  Major characters graduate a year ahead of the main character, and new characters are brought in – yet that following year goes by in a few flips of the page.  It was disconcerting to move this quickly – and though the book was split into four parts, and many chapters, the sectioning didn’t seem to make a whole lot of sense.  I believe I would have much preferred that either this book be much longer, or be split into two or three novel-length pieces.  Characterization suffered, character development suffered, and the plot suffered.  There was just too much happening, without enough attention paid to most of it.  I also didn’t appreciate the reasoning behind what made the SPOILER ALERT antagonist evil.  The revelation is made near the end of the novel, by a third-party, and is tossed out in such an off-handed manner as almost to make it seem inconsequential.  Yet, this is the crux of the “evil” in the novel and 1) the social issue being addressed in this moment is far too great to mention so vapidly  2) that the “bad guy” would have turned so bad for such a reason as was given (re: P. 381, for those reading the novel, or who have read and wish to remind themselves of what I’m referencing) seems to me not just a cop-out, but a dangerous one.

 

The Final Verdict 4.0 out of 5.0

When all was said and done, I really did enjoy this novel.  I was surprised by much in this novel – even caught off guard at certain points (which doesn’t happen often enough anymore).  I loved that Grossman took risks by twisting the fantasy traditions and bringing the story into something much more realistic and identifiable, yet allowing the fantasy to remain important and, ultimately, the attainable goal.  The source of happiness – the “treasure” of the main character’s self-discovery.  I was bothered by the skirting of so many issues, so many plot lines, and so much time/so many events – more than could possibly be managed in a 400 page novel.  And I was disturbed by some of the handling of more sensitive issues in the book.  Still, I applaud this author for including those issues, for standing by them throughout the novel and making them seem as if they were just “part of the norm” – because they are.  Grossman makes the case that all points of view and all types of people are relevant to and should be included in the fantasy genre.  The language was biting, the story engaging – and, had more time/depth been devoted to these characters and their stories – the novel would certainly have then earned a 5 out of 5.

Review: For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway

Posted on January 17, 2010 by

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Summary:
For Whom the Bell Tolls is the fifth of Hemingway’s works (not including short stories) that I’ve gotten through.  Out of two novellas (The Torrents of Spring and Old Man and the Sea) and two other novels (The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms), I would say this is absolutely my second favorite, so far.  
The Good:
I could go on and on about Hemingway’s use of language and dialogue in this novel.  He breaks somewhat from his tradition of minimalism and gives real thought and feeling to his descriptions.  He plays with automatic-writing (probably heavily-influenced by his time with the prominent modernists of the time, most of whom didn’t think much of him as a writer, aside from his journalism).  I see Hemingway taking risks in this novel that I don’t think he managed – either to attempt or to accomplish – in his earlier works.  He also does a brilliant job of translating Spanish into English, re-translated into Spanish.  It’s hard to explain this, especially for mono-linguists, but all of the action and dialogue in For Whom the Bell Tolls is enacted in Spanish, then written in English (of course), but when it is written, it is written to preserve the distinct voice, dialect, idioms, etc. of the original language.  I’ve never encountered a writer who was able to accomplish this so well, so brilliantly, and who could convince their publisher not to re-work it into standard English for the readers. The honesty to the story of the Spanish Civil War, the people, the relationships, the many cultures involved.  I’m no historian, granted, and I don’t know much about the Spanish Civil War or the anti-fascist movement, but Hemingway certainly seems to understand it, and his simple, 72-hour exploration of a small group of mountain bandits, of a budding love, and the emphasis on “living and learning your life” regardless of having 20 years or 20 hours in which to do it – it’s masterful and moving and truly well done. 
The Bad
The ending was beautiful, until the final line!  Yes, it was incredibly simple, plain-spoken, and (no pun intended) down-to-earth.  But, after such an incredibly well-delivered, beautifully rendered final few pages of a novel, to be left with such a blunt, non-ending just almost seemed heartless.  Of course, this doesn’t seem to be Hemingway’s intent. Also disturbing are the many references to suicide by shotgun – both in the case of the main character, Robert Jordan, and that character’s father.  Though the novel was written well before Hemingway’s own suicide (by shotgun), the parallels to his life are there and they are haunting.  It made it painful to read, at times, because the inner-turmoil becomes so personal to a reader who is familiar with Hemingway’s life, history, and legacy.
The Final Verdict: 4.0 out of 5.0
Despite the sudden (almost seemingly unfinished, to be honest) ending, For Whom the Bell Tolls is a brilliant and honest novel.  Certainly one of the most thoughtful, well-written, and purposeful Hemingway works that I’ve encountered.  While I find Hemingway’s earlier A Farewell to Arms more effective as a war novel (simply due to taste – in A Farewell to Arms, Hemingway writes a war novel which doesn’t even include much “war” at all, and I found that appealing and genius), For Whom the Bell Tolls is certainly an accomplishment in terms of plot and language, in particular.  Recommended for those interested in Spanish history, modernism, Hemingway, or just a good, classic American read.

Review: Shadow of the Giant by Orson Scott Card

Posted on January 12, 2010 by

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While I very much enjoyed the Shadow/Bean series, I found this final book to be the least engaging. I did enjoy the ending – Ender & Peter’s “reconciliation” – and the series interested me enough and kept me entertained enough to make me still want to read the rest of the Ender series, including the newest “prequel” or sequel to book one – the time-line gets confusing, and I appreciate that Card gives shouts out in his books’ acknowledgments to the people who helped him keep track of time and characters. The final books in the Shadow series began to focus heavily on religion and politics, which distracted me from the story because of how at odds I am with Card’s own political and religious beliefs (though in all fairness, it’s hard to interpret this through his Shadow series). In any event, I enjoyed the series and I look forward to reading more – including the remaining Ender books as well as Pastwatch.

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