A Science Fiction Lament

Sci-Fi Lament

            When the snow started falling, I was excited. When the call came in that school was cancelled, I was elated. When flicking through channels and stumbling on – by perhaps the same luck that brought all that snow – Oblivion, the 2013 sci-fi movie starring Tom Cruise that critics seemed to laugh at more than write about, I was ecstatic. And then when the girlfriend agreed to rent Elysium on the second snow day! Oooh booooy. If you don’t get ecstatic at watching a new sci-fi movie, then it’s probably best to stop reading. This just isn’t for you.

The owners of all those cars are inside watching sci-fi movies.

Because yes, I get downright child-like excited when a new sci-fi movie comes out. I am selective and adulterous when it comes to sticking with one genre, but I carry the perpetual hope that a new Alien or Terminator (2?) (or add or replace with whatever movie first pops into your head) will come down the pike, that beautiful mix of excessive Hollywood visuals with a setting and story that pulls you in, makes you believe that other world exists because the characters who live in it exist, and just enough cheese on the top to make it palatable.

And yes, I even get excited to watch movies like Oblivion, which every review I read panned with some even arguing so fiercely against the movie and its silly storyline that it seemed a line had been crossed, that this was such a stinker that it blasphemed science fiction. Which still made me want to see it; maybe even more so.

So the point of this post, the sentiment that I just can’t hold in anymore, and must before I explode post it to my small, rarely-visited corner of the universal web:

Oblivion and Elysium really sucked. I mean, just awful, terrible, horrific movies. So bad that yeah I think I’m angry about it. I’m angry because the premises of each movie are great ideas! But besides drug use or mental illness, I can think of no other reason how such great premises could turn into such horrific stinkers. Maybe it’s just that the writers and directors and everyone else involved with these movies, even the gaffes, suck. At life.

Here’s a quick summary and condemnation of each movie:

Oblivion

 

Tom Cruise and some fairly good looking actress are stationed on a really cool and really high in the sky apartment, which they can reach only via their futuristic helicopter. They are on Earth, which has been mostly destroyed by the use of our own nuclear bombs in repelling an invasion by “Scavs”, who destroyed the Moon or provided a new kind of lunar phenomenon, depending on how you see it. Earth people won the war, but lost the planet, so they all moved to Titan, one of Jupiter’s moons. Tom Cruise is on Earth as a repairman for the drones that protect the huge water-harvesting machines that bring the precious liquid to needy humans on Titan. A ship crash-lands on Earth, and Mr. Cruise brings back a survivor to his apartment in the heavens.

Apartment for rent with killer view of destroyed moon.

There’s a surprise ending, and I won’t give it away here because I want you to watch this movie and be awed at the visuals of the sky apartment and the post-apocalypse scenes of the Empire State Building and the New York Public Library and a football stadium that is maybe Giants Stadium or MetLIfe Stadium or who cares because if it was destroyed that means the Giants were destroyed and that’s a good thing for everybody, and be drawn into the story with some burning questions in your mind that keep you glued to the screen and propel the story until BAM! You hit the wall that is the surprise and you’re like, “WHAT!!!???” with all the rage and confusion you can muster on a snowy Tuesday night.

I have more to say about this sci-fi abomination, but it ties into the Elysium so I’ll switch anger tracks and come back to Crap. I mean, Oblivion.

 

Elysium

Matt Damon lives in a barrio with a bunch of rough-and-tumble Latinos who inexplicably care about the only white dude there. Everything sucks for Matt Damon, including the world, the government, the robot police, his robot police record, his jerk boss, and just one too-big heavy dose of the Man keeping the little guy aka Matt Damon down. Oh, and Matt Damon gets a too-big heavy dose of radiation and now his life really sucks.

Elysium is a city in the sky, beautifully rendered as a circular space station with Beverley Hills landscapes and mansions on the interior of the circle. Imagine a tire in space. A huge tire that didn’t look as cheap and dirty as a tire. But a tire with its circular shape and space inside the tire that is usually filled with air…well where that air is in a normal tire, in Elysium there’s mansions and rich people. Which is the point of Elysium. Earth sucks so they left and set up a paradise in space. And they don’t want no stinkin’ poor people coming to ruin their party in the heavens.

So Matt Damon, who’s bald even before the radiation accident, goes to see this gang leader. Gang leaders in the future are different than our current ones. In the future, gang leaders will have massive hideouts filled with supercomputers. And they’ll charter illegal flights to nirvanas in the sky. Ok, maybe they will do that, but the huge computers in the barrio thing was weird. You can afford a wall of computer screens linked up to spaceships and you’re not going to flash a little green? Or whatever color the money will be then.

Matt Damon and the minimalist gang leader make a deal – Matt Damon can have a ticket on the next illegal spaceship to Elysium so he can use these machines they have that instantly heal people which of course technology the greedy Elysians won’t share if he helps steal/download files from and important tycoon’s brain. Which Matt Damon can’t do because he only has five days to live and he can’t walk or move that much. But the gang leader has the answer to that. He’s got this metal spider looking thing that his homies bolt to Matt Damon’s spine and program with their computers so that he can move about easily. I get how this thing could make him move, but it like cured him until the end of the movie when suspense was needed and it then could no longer keep him standing up and not looking like radiation does really bad things to a human body.

And I just realized my summary is four paragraphs long, so I’m ending it here. Matt Damon goes to Boston or something, meets up with Ben Affleck, hoodwink Hollywood, and make mostly forgettable movies for the rest of their lives. The End.

 

Now here’s the condemnation you were all waiting for. Why these movies sucked so bad despite having amazing visual effects and promising premises. Why Hollywood needs to get its act together and make a good sci-fi movie. Why I hope I’m not correct when I fearfully think that maybe Hollywood can’t make a good sci-fi movie anymore (and I’m leaning more here to the big massive blockbusters) because all the creativity and the ambition and the blind wonder that is encapsulated in so much good (and bad, but still good) science fiction has been zapped up in how quickly we’ve gotten used to touch screens and mini this and able to do everything!-software that. Why perhaps we don’t believe anymore.

SPOILER ALERT. SPOILER BELOW. SORRY, I CAN’T HELP IT.

                Oblivion sucked because the Scavs are really humans, not some invading army. And the thing – government, army, horde of pissed-off writers who actually write good sci-fi movies??? – that perpetuates this lie is…………..a big computer triangle in the sky. Yes, that’s it. If you don’t understand what exactly I’m talking about, then good. Perfect. That’s how I felt when the movie ended.

These questions are never answered:

–          Who are the Scavs? How did they become who they are, basically guerilla fighters with amazing technology?

–          What is the big triangle in space? Why is it there? Who controls it? Who or what is the voice that talks to Tom Cruise? How? What? Why? When? Who? Huh??

–          How did the big computer-voiced triangle in the sky cause everything to be like this? If everything is a lie, how did the lie start? How did it keep going? And most importantly, why did it keep going?? Because a very liberal guess of how many people are on Earth based on how many people are shown in the movie (not including the Tom Cruise replicas) is maybe 2000. So all this machinery and time consumption for 2000 guerilla fighters? Why can’t they just wipe them out?? Oh the questions keep coming and coming and this movie seems worse and worse as I think about it.

 

Elysium sucked for some of the same reasons. But here’s some unique sucky attributes of this movie:

–          Matt Damon is not a leading man actor. He is good in certain films. But he is not a well-rounded actor who can take on any role. Especially when he’s bald. Make movies about Boston and cast Matt Damon.

–          A story requires multidimensional characters. Especially a science fiction story because the premises are so hokey and outrageous that the audience needs something to hold on to while they’re being sold on the ridiculous idea that in 60 years Earth will be a wasteland watched over by low-level engineers who have apartments miles in the air. Or that Matt Damon was a good casting choice.

–          Science fiction is a commentary on our current society. Science fiction can hold up our practices to ridicule because it sets itself in the future, giving it a boundary, a false idea that is believable that we’re not judging ourselves. It can get preachy and radical, but it’s still just a story. But as any preacher knows – or should know before they become one – if your message isn’t relevant, then no one will want to listen. So Oblivion, I learned nothing from you. If I wanted to squeeze a lesson out of you like water out of a rock, it’d be that maybe one day my wife will appear in a spaceship and the woman I’m living with and think is my wife really isn’t and there’s one more of her so if she gets killed I don’ t have to feel sad. And Elysium, ok I get it. People who want to close off their borders to outsiders are evil and bigots and just terrible devil people who deserve everything that happens to them. B-o-r-i-n-g. As Ezra Pound said about something nowhere near as important as science fiction (he said it about poetry), “Make it new.” So even if you’re idea isn’t new, say it in a new way. That’s just Storytelling 101.

Travels in Reading: The Remaining Books of 2013

Book 14: Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth

There’s certain categories of reading I feel compelled to check off every so often. I’ve already talked about Southern literature, Stephen King, and war books. Here’s another: modern classics. These are the books my parents’ generation grew up reading and which forms the basis of influence for many writers working today. I had a late start in reading classic literary books, and I always feel like I’m playing catch up. Hence another reason for this being another one of my annual categories.

So I finally read a Philip Roth book. He’s like the landmark in your own city that tourists flock to, is always on the news, that you’ve never visited. He’s there, holding a high place in the collective consciousness, but you’re off doing your own thing, feeling his tug from time to time, but swatting it away because you just don’t get it. Or care to get it.

So Portnoy and his complaint. I have a number of disparate things to say about this book, more like hot flashes of observation that any connected analysis. So I’ll just list them.

– Part of the problem of reading books like these that have been written 40, 50, 60 years ago is that their immediate effect on the culture is lost on me, even if I’m aware of what that effect might have been. This story, of a pervert Jewish man who blames all his shortcomings and perversions, which he tells us in frank detail, on his Jewish mother, surely shocked the masses when it was published in 1967. I kind of regret that books like this are not shocking to me. Leave it to humanity to have to always one-up each other instead of perhaps preserving the ability to be shocked. We’re all coke addicts chasing that high and not caring that the stuff that we use to chase has eaten away the interior of our noses and our minds.

– Why is it such a big almost genre unto itself for Jews to complain about being Jewish/outsiders, about their parents/upbringing? There are any number of groups that are outsiders and could tell these types of stories, but I feel like there are so many Jewish writers and filmmakers and TV show writers and radio personalities that have mined this apparently deep, deep reservoir of material to build careers upon. I’m fascinated, as an outsider to being Jewish. And quickly further, there’s a similarity in all these stories. The Jewish father, the Jewish mother, and many other things Jewish, are exactly the same. There’s hardly any departing from the type. Is this because of the outsider status Jews have historically held, and that in being shunning they’ve segregated themselves so closely together that no matter where a community of Jews exists, that it’s in some ways tied to every other Jew? Is being Jewish so strong of an identification that it transcends time and place?

– Sometimes I’ll read a book and I’ll get it and appreciate it, at least for what it is, and I’ll still end up thinking, “That didn’t need to be written.” I felt that way with this book. Many times it felt that Roth was prurient for prurient’s sake. He’s an excellent writer, his greatest strength being the herculean power of the voice of the narrative. I couldn’t help thinking in the voice after I’d finished reading a portion. That’s amazing success as a writer, a clear entryway to one-of-the-greatest status. But in some ways I felt Roth didn’t use his voice for a high enough purpose. I know the pitfalls of this idea, but for a second, think about your favorite director. Then imagine he didn’t make any of the movies you love, but instead spent his career making porn movies. Perhaps those would be the greatest porn movies ever, but his talents would be better served on more serious subject matter. Roth fits in with some other writers, like Updike (someone who I haven’t read extensively, and sits high on the list of modern classics authors to read soon), who seem to have entered adulthood with a preadolescence libido fully intact. And in literature and real life, there’s something creepy about a guy (especially an older guy) who is just a bit too preoccupied with deviant sex.

– But that voice. I’ve read that Roth will write for 18 months in search of the voice for the book he’s writing. Then he’ll throw it all out and start on the actual story. While I wish I had the time and career choice to work like that, I respect the commitment to the craft, and commitment that has clearly rewarded Roth.

Book 15: Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup

I’d never heard of this book before hearing about the movie some months ago. The story itself – of a free Northern black man who is kidnapped into slavery – is what drew me in. I view firsthand narratives the same way I view my turtle’s dirty tank – I wish it didn’t exist. Not the turtle because I think he’s pretty cool, but the tank with his poop and filth that I have to clean every week. I know, given my interests, that I should read firsthand accounts of slavery, but I’m a fiction guy and I end up feeling like I’m more a charlatan who pretends to have an interest in the South and slavery than someone who’s really into it. Because someone really into it would consume everything that relates to the subject, having favorites and rankings of what they find interesting of course, but still a consumer of the field. I’m so selective that my interest in the South is really no more than a passing interest. It’s stayed around for some time, and it probably will, but until I start to dig deeper and actually study it, I’m on the sidelines with a pretty small playbook. But I digress.

This was a remarkably well-written book. Perhaps there’s a prejudice there, an assumption that these types of books will be poorly written since if it was written by a slave, and since slaves were mostly uneducated, then it most be a mish-mash of poor grammar and style. But this book, regardless of any assumptions on my part, wasn’t written by a slave, but a man who was free and became a slave. He knew how to read and write, and he wrote well. There’s a singleness of purpose in the book despite many digressions. The digressions work because they fully flesh out the world Northrup inhabited. What blows me away is that if I put myself in Northup’s shoes, and I was taken away from my wife and kids for 12 years and forced into the degradations of slavery – working for no reward, forced deference to those had legal but no moral or any other basis for their privileged status, and so on – I’m not sure I would be writing a book. Because I’d be too busy hunting down everyone who was responsible for my kidnapping. Which in my anger I could possibly see as the entire white race. But to Northup’s credit, he speaks passionately and emotionally about his ordeal, but never does he seem out of his own control. And the payoff is immense. I know about slavery. But what this book allowed me to do was see beyond my knowledge to see/experience Northrup’s. Northrup’s words took me into slavery, and though I’ll never know what it was truly like, he activated my imagination, enabling me to see as best as possible what it was like. This is a small example, but I’ve always known that slaves had to work from sunup till sundown, and possibly longer. I knew they then had to go back to their cabins and prepare dinner, mend clothes, prepare for the next day’s work, and so on, that they lived the job, so to speak. But the way Northrup described his daily experience, I began to think about my own life, about how when I get home from work, sometimes all I want to do is play with my son, or take a nap, or lay on the couch and watch some TV, or read a book, or drink a beer, or any number of leisurely activities that I usually get to do. Imagine if I couldn’t do that. Not because I had to work to provide for myself or to get a little further ahead, but because someone who owned me forced me to. I also began to think about the rewards of my work. I thought about all that I’m able to do, from provide comfortably for my son and my girlfriend to indulging in some hobbies to saving money so that maybe one day I’ll buy a house or so that I can pay for my son’s college, to not having to work for almost three months out of the year. I am immensely blessed, in the greatest way because I’m able to gain the rewards from my work. My life gets better because I work to make it so. That seems like such a simple basic thing, but for the slave, it doesn’t exist. Imagine waking up for work tomorrow before the sun, working all day at a manual job in the hot sun, not finishing until the sun goes down, heading home where you fix a simple dinner, preparing your clothes and tools for tomorrow, possibly having the energy to mend your pants or your blanket or plug that hole in the roof of your cabin or grind some meal for your cake or any other activity that is still work and not leisure, and falling asleep exhausted at an hour that you know is too late to make the sleep you will get enough to fully restore your strength, and just as the sun does every day, you rise and do the same thing again. And again. And again, six days a week, all year long except for a few days off around Christmas. Every year. For your entire life. In comparing my life, which Northrup’s passionate but downplayed, deceptively simple telling of the story forced me to do, the real terror of slavery struck me harder than a punch to the nose. All the rhetoric against slavery, which I’m well versed in, in some ways means nothing because of course I believe slavery is wrong, and of course I know why it was wrong. But all that reasoning and logic and moral imperatives pale in comparison to the day-to-day existence of a enslaved human being. This book haunts me. And while I’ve always been amazed that slavery existed in the country I was born into and call home, this book multiplied that amazement. I could go on, but read this book. It doesn’t cover every issue of slavery, but that doesn’t diminish its power in the least.

Book 16: The Handle and the Hold by David Mamet

I don’t know David Mamet’s work all that well. There’s things I know about him and his work, but I couldn’t carry on a well-informed conversation with anyone about him/his work. It’s kinda weird, but I’ve see a number of movies that he either wrote or directed, or both, without knowing it was him or anything about him. So there’s a knowledge, but a lack of knowledge. It seems like there’s DAVID MAMET, and I don’t know much about DAVID MAMET. Anyway.

One thing that Mamet is apparently known for is his realistic dialogue. Realistic in the sense that it sounds real and it’s like you’re hearing it in real life. Pretend you overhear a conversation. You automatically fill in the blanks as you hear it, giving it a context based on your prior knowledge, visual cues, and any other information at your disposal there in the same physical space as the people who are talking. But reading this type of dialogue is difficult to get used to since it’s like overhearing a conversation and you don’t know where you are, who’s talking, and you’re blind. But you do get used to it, and soon you’re immersed as the story takes off.

As for the story, it was merely OK. It really was the writing that was the draw. And it’s not that I particularly enjoyed it. I felt that I was either reading the work of an egomaniac who had no care for the reader or of someone reaching for something greater and publishing something that was merely practice. I enjoyed it because I got to experience someone doing something their own way, and doing it with obvious talent. It didn’t hurt this was a Kindle Single that I either borrowed via Prime or paid a buck or two.

So that’s what I read this year. I started The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin in mid-December so that’ll be my first book post of the new year.

Happy reading.

Travels in Reading: Year’s End Vol. 2

Books 10 – 13 (out of 16).

Book 10: Skeleton Crew by Stephen King

Ah, Stephen King, my guilty pleasure. Which I don’t feel guilty about but somehow I still view him and his work in that light. I read at least one Stephen King book a year. I’ve consistently read him since I was a teenager when I’d read his books on the beach on family vacations to Ocean City, NJ. Though my tastes have expanded beyond the “level” of his books, and as I get older I see a lot of repetition in his ideas, I still love reading him. I especially like his short stories, Night Shift being one of my favorite books of all time.

Skeleton Crew was ok. It wasn’t great, and it wasn’t terrible. It’s not King at his best, but like always, I felt sucked into his folksy-real-life/horror-unreality world. I take the title to refer to a skeleton work crew, the minimum needed to get the job done, and I don’t know if this is true or not, but the stories are that: the minimum needed to get the story-telling done. Again, they’re not bad stories, but perhaps this collection of stories are only for devoted King fans since the collection offers a glimpse into King that some of his more polished works might not. King, as he sometimes does, offers notes on some stories in the back of the book, a window into the thought processes and experiences that went into the writing of the stories. I find that fascinating, even when the stories aren’t that good. King tells stories effortlessly, or so he makes it seem, and the wanna-be writer in me has always loved being able to see behind the curtain. There’s validation in it, and also a little star-struck/idolization indulgence there. As a side note, and looking forward to what I’ll read in 2014, though I’ve read a lot of King, I haven’t read all of his works. Despite this not being the best I’ve read by him, I’m very much looking forward to my upcoming King pick.

Book 11: Shadow Show: All-New Stories in Celebration of Ray Bradbury edited by Sam Weller and Mort Castle

I’m reluctant to read books like this. Though I mentioned in writing about the Stephen King book above that I like the peeks behind his curtain that King often offers, there are other authors that strike me deeper than King that I just don’t want to know about. It’s like finding out that beautiful woman you idolize in a pure way lets her filthy dog lick her mouth or that she lets terrible farts loose in public. It’s stuff you just don’t want to know, and where the beautiful woman analogy breaks down is that with certain authors, knowing more doesn’t ruin anything about them, my perception of them, my continued enjoyment of their works, or their residence in my personal Authors Hall of Fame, it just gives me more information than I need. It does change things in a way, but in a way that I feel that I can’t adequately describe. This happened a year or two ago when I read a book about David Foster Wallace. I nearly cried after I read it because even though I knew about his depression problems, I didn’t know all I knew after reading that book, and I felt sad for him as if I knew him. Which I didn’t. Or maybe I did in a different way, from reading most of his works. And though I will never be as intelligent or as gifted a writer as Wallace was, I saw many parallels between how he saw and had to deal and coped with the world and how I do. It was a sadness I can’t find the exact source of, but it’s a complete and nearly devastating sadness that I wish I’d never experienced.

I didn’t feel the exact same way after reading these stories from authors who felt indebted to Bradbury. I enjoyed seeing how different his influence was on different writers, and how at the same time their stories shared something in common but were the antithesis of each other. Bradbury was still alive when this book was published and he wrote in an introduction that “Papa embraces his children with open wings.” I think of how similar but yet how divergent later in life children are in relation to their parents. But I also felt a bit of sadness that the impressions Bradbury left on my heart, deep ones that I cherish so dearly, weren’t exactly replicated in these stories. Which is a silly and unrealistic expectation, but I suppose love causes silliness and unrealistic expectations. I love Ray Bradbury and the stories of his I’ve read. I’ll carry them in my heart for the rest of my life, and I continue to see their influence on my thinking and my writing long after I’ve read them. To me, that’s the most powerful celebration possible for a reader to an author. And while I think this was a really cool book, I can’t silence the part of me that thinks that maybe this celebration should have happened between people, face to face in whatever community these authors found themselves in. Or alone in the chambers of their heart. I don’t begrudge the desire, maybe even the drive, to write a tribute story to Ray Bradbury. But I feel that something was ruined and lost, even though the way I feel about him is left intact. Again, I find it hard to describe this, vacillating between seemingly polar opposites of thought. But hey, maybe hence literature.

Book 12: The Walking Dead: Vol. 1 and 2 by Robert Kirkman

I’ve been trying to read more comic books this past year and was minimally successful. It’s hard to sneak another genre in with all the things I normally read besides the books I’m listing here. And it’s a shame because I liked these two volumes of the Walking Dead series. I stopped reading mostly because I started buying the individual volumes at $15 a piece and realized I’d be using a week’s salary to get them all. Despite how cool they’d look on a bookshelf, I decided to buy the all-in-one collection, which I never got around to. Oops.

Despite differences from the TV show, I enjoyed both volumes while still enjoying the TV show. I’ve started to try to view the book version of a movie and the source book as two separate entities, things to be enjoyed on their own merits even if the movie is a far-cry in quality from the book. I found it easier to do this with a comic and TV show. I don’t know if there’s something to that, nothing to it, or just a matter of personal opinion, but I’ll keep this in mind for this year when I hope to read more of this series.

Book 13: The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien

I tend to read a war-related book every year. I suppose my father’s interests finally trickled down to me. I was blown away by the writing in this one. O’Brien can flat out write. He’s the rare type of writer whose every word seems inspired. I thought the book lacked some things, was perhaps too personal in that so many details and meanings seemed to be left in O’Brien’s head. It wasn’t just a personal telling of the Vietnam experience; it was so personal that it seemed almost exclusive of anyone, even the reader. His genre bending fits the whole “magic realism” that’s often associated with the jungle and Vietnam veteran’s experience there. I would like to read some of O’Brien’s other non-Vietnam related works (although I wouldn’t mind reading more of his Vietnam stuff). But back to the writing. O’Brien possesses the ability to pull you into the story and forcing your mind down three simultaneous paths: the story itself, amazement at the writing, and amazement that as you fly by the words, ever faster because the writing is drawing you recklessly on, you can see and can’t see why that word and that phrasing and that spacing and that punctuation are just so good. It’s magic, the kind a child believes in and adults want to and every now and then an adult gets a chance to actually see.

Coming up, the final books of 2013. And perhaps some controversy and a hefty dose of saying-goodby sadness.

Travels in Reading: Year’s End Vol. 1

I failed to blog about every book I finished after I finished it so over the past few days, I wrote a condensed post about everything I’ve read since the last time I posted about what I was reading. It’s kinda long, so I’m breaking it up and posting it serially over the next few days. Here’s Books 7 – 9. Happy reading.

—–

So it’s January 3rd, and I’m three days past two self-imposed deadlines. When I die, I will be lauded and memorialized for so consistently missing self-imposed deadlines until my failures become myth and legend. I’ve been working on handwriting the 5th draft of my novel. It’s going very well, but very slowly. I have improved in carving out the time to write, but still have much room for improvement there. And the second deadline, which leads into this post, is that I wanted to blog about each book I read this year. Ideally, and according to common sense, this should have happened after I read each one. But it didn’t. I don’t know why. I could refer to the way that time seems to just slip away from me, like it’s a relationship I’m not mature enough to handle yet. Or I could point to what seems like a cliche now, but is still true nonetheless, that reading a book is like entering into a deep relationship, one that when over (and the ending of a book is always abrupt, even if you know what’s coming) leaves one feeling empty, listless, and void of faith that anything will ever be so engaging and uplifting as the experience you just had with that book. I could talk about these things and other things, and they’d be true things, but what really matters is that I didn’t write about these books after I finished them, and I should have. I’m going to do a much more concise and quick run through the remaining books I read. Hopefully you and I can benefit from this, but I feel the distinct loss of not having built a foundation and being further advanced in time when that foundation’s effects and influence would be most felt and needed.

So here goes, in the order I read them, books 7 – 15, a few comic books, and a novella.

Book 7: The Signet Classic Book of Southern Short Stories

I did a fairly good job this year of indulging my love of Southern literature. And this book helped knock off a couple of other indulgences as well. I love the short story. Besides a short poem, I think the short story is my favorite form of literature. The compactness, the total immersion in a foreign world so quickly, and the ability to say so much with so little entrances me and makes me all giddy inside. I have fond memories of short story books, which I still have, that smelled old even though they were new and contained short stories old and new, an excellent panorama of the art form through time, a glimpse into what has changed and what hasn’t (and maybe never will). This was one of those books.

I’ll speak briefly of one of my favorite stories of this book. “Jean-ah Poquelin” by George Washington Cable tells the story of a hermit living in an old, run-down plantation in Louisiana. This hermit used to be the successful operator of his plantation, but through the years and because of various circumstances, he’d fallen on hard times. I won’t get into the minutia of the plot (though it’s a good one), but suffice this for now: the man is looked down upon by his Creole neighbors. Ghost stories about the mansion circulate amongst the neighborhood, and soon a lynch mob forms to take care of him. In the end, it is revealed that Jean-ah Poquelin is not the monster everyone thinks he is. I’ve never paid much attention to genre classifications, especially subgenres (feeling that the study and/or the attempt to do such things was for people who don’t believe that story is the most fascinating and most worthy of preserving aspect of literature), but I suppose this to be a Southern gothic story complete with possibly haunted plantation, ghost stories, lynch mobs, and a foot in the reality of the South, specifically in this story a South that was changing, when the powers-that-be were fading in that power and populations like the Creoles felt “free” enough to voice their displeasure about the invading culture that surrounded them like the swamps. These are the kind of stories I’ve enjoyed as a kid – an almost impossible setting with events that flirt with reality and unreality but that subtly and inexorably point a finger at something very real, very true.

Book 8: The Moviegoer by Walker Percy

(I like this cover better than the copy I read)

Another Southern author, Walker Percy, came to my attention when I read A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole. Percy had been instrumental in getting Toole’s work published, and from what I read about him in relation to Toole, he seemed to be respected in his own right as an author and as a Southern author.

I greatly enjoyed this book. I admire books like this because it’s one of those that nothing much happens, but yet the reader can’t help but turn page after page and continue reading well after he’s tired.

This book tells the story of Binx Bolling, a not-so-young-anymore New Orleans stockbroker who fills his time with things – movies, his secretaries, etc. –  and is always searching for something and not only never finding it, but never looking for it in any healthy, beneficial way. It’s a classic man-adrift story, but one stripped of all pretension and told deftly so that the focus is on the soul of Binx and not so much on what happens. There’s enough that happens, and enough humor, to keep the reader engaged and aware that this isn’t all a decent into the mind of an infantile man. With books like these, the author’s writing is shown most clearly for how powerful and talented it truly is.

Book 9: Stephen Girard; America’s First Tycoon: by George Wilson

This book wasn’t especially well-written since it’s purpose seemed to be to reach the widest audience, from young teenager to well-read adults. It served as sort of a primer on Stephen Girard, and though there were numerous editorial intrusions by Wilson, despite his stated aim of just telling Girard’s story, Wilson did a fine job of admitting what I believe is impossible – an author staying completely out of the story – and pulling back quickly when he did intrude into the narrative. He did craft a simple narrative that served the story well. The book could have been improved by a wider research focus (though heavily researched and documented, it seems Wilson relied much on Girard’s papers. Perhaps I’m showing my ignorance and that’s all there really is, but I would think an important man such as Girard would have a host of books written about him, and it didn’t seem like Wilson relied too much on other scholarship) and a more focused and loftier (or complex? or unrestrained?) prose style.

Stephen Girard’s life is fascinating, and I recommend reading about him, especially if you’re from or are familiar with Philadelphia. I grew up visiting various places on Girard Ave. My dad, a cop, worked at a district on Girard in Fishtown. I used to go to a bike shop – Jay’s Pedal Power – near there on Girard. “Girard Ave” was a thing of my childhood, just like The Boulevard or Frankford Ave or 95. Now, as a middle school soccer, basketball, and baseball coach, my teams play Girard College (http://www.girardcollege.edu/) at least three times a year. I’ve been to the campus many times, and its beauty astounds me (http://www.girardcollege.edu/page.cfm?p=834). Reading about its construction, Girard’s desires for it, and the changes that have happened over the years was fascinating. Since moving to South Philly over three years ago, I’ve heard often about Girard Estates (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girard_Estate,_Philadelphia). This little neighborhood off of West Passyunk Ave approaching the industrial area demarcated by 76 is a direct result of Girard establishing a “country” home and farm. He lived in what is now Center City, but he traveled to this farm every day to work and check up on it. There is a park in Girard Estates where some of his buildings still stand. There are so many other hallmarks of all that he did in a remarkable life. Philadelphia is lucky to have had such an industrious, exemplary man whose shrewd business acumen and philanthropic spirit combined to put his imprint on this area for ages to come. He even rescued the entire country from financial ruin. I don’t want to go further with this, but if you’re into biographies, history, and/or Philadelphia history, I highly recommend reading up on Stephen Girard.

Tomorrow, Books 10 – 13.