Tristessa by Kerouac

Okay, Kerouac is one of those authors I’d never read and kept meaning to get around to, so a few weeks ago, I saw Tristessa sitting there and decided to pick it up.

My only regret is that I didn’t get it at half price books.

I won’t say it was a complete waste of time since it only took me a day and a half to get through, but it didn’t really make me wanna go out and read anything else he’s done.

It’s the story of a drifter who becomes enamored with a junkie named Tristessa, (Hence the title. Get it?)

It really isn’t a cohesive narrative, but I don’t think that was why it didn’t click with me.

Naked Lunch is one of my favorite books after all and it doesn’t even have anything really even resembling a story let alone a plot.

And maybe that was the problem is that I was trying to read Kerouac from start to finish like one would a conventional novel.

Maybe, like Naked Lunch, Tristessa is best when just meandered through.

With Burroughs, the parts are generally greater than the sum and that’s just fine.

Kerouac did seem to have the knack for calling up distinct emotional snapshots in a very few simple words.

“It’s like winning an angel in hell,” and “morphine takes all the sex out of your parts and leaves it somewhere else, in your gut.”

And the page or so when Old Bull eloquently explains to us why morphine is better than love is truly a beautiful and sad passage.

So, I guess I’m not ready to pass judgment just yet.

I’ll probably pick Tristessa up again in a few months and just casually flip through it and we’ll see if, like Burroughs, Kerouac is best enjoyed a bit at a time.

Jenny Finn: Doom Messiah

Jenny Finn: Doom Messiah by Mignola/Nixey/Dalrymple is one of the best graphic novels I’ve read this year, so why can’t I really think of much to say about it?

The artwork is amazing and the characters are fascinating and creepy as hell.

Antman

The Irredeemable Ant-Man Volume 1: Low-Life Digest by Robert Kirkman & Phil Hester is not nearly as funny or outrageous as it wants to be, but it’s entertaining enough to serve as a diversion.



Not really much to say about it.

Guy gets ant suit, becomes superhero and uses his new powers to try and get laid.

The idea sounds better than the actual product.

Clever enough to finish reading it, but not enough to buy the next installment.

Hellshock

Hellshock by Jae Lee is your typical girl meets boy during her internship as a doctor in a madhouse, boy is delusional, girl falls for boy, boy goes into a persistent vegetative state, girl thinks boy might be an angel, girl takes boy out on the roof, girl flies away with her new boy, girl and boy, in reality, have just jumped off a building, boy breaks his neck and dies, girl gets committed and lives out her days as a split person, half her own doctor, half her own patient story.

Actually, I really loved this book. The story is haunting, touching and remorseful and the artwork is frequently breathtaking.

God is Dead by Ron Currie

It’s odd that the last book I read last year is easily in contention with The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafron as the best read of 2008.

But God is Dead by Ron Currie Jr. is that rare, frenzied yet slow, angry but gentle, repudiation of naivety and faith without the drippings of cynicism you’d expect.

As we start out, God has taken the form of a Dinka woman in the northern region of Sudan. His mission to earth is twofold.

First, he wants to experience the suffering that His indifference over the centuries has caused and second, he wants to help.

He roams from village to village, from refugee camp to refugee camp carrying a bag of never-ending sorghum.

He can pass out as much as he wants to the starving masses, yet the bag never empties.

Kinda like the loaves and fishes trick, I mean miracle.

Unfortunately for the universe (and who could’ve seen this coming?) God, in the form of a Dinka woman is killed.

It takes a while for the news to spread and even longer for the world to figure out what exactly this means, but God is officially dead.

The rest of the book is really a compilation of shorts juxtaposing the extreme reactions of diverse, clashing cultures and characters.

In one chapter, we find that holy wars can take place very well without the presence of a God, thank you very much.

Even when everyone realizes that God is dead, they kill each other over the right way to put this knowledge into a pragmatic context. In another chapter (my favorite) a group of friends, weary after weeks of hedonism because what are you gonna do when God dies, enter a suicide/murder pact.

The way it plays out is funny, disturbing, heartbreaking and revolting in turns.

We also get to meet the dogs who, after feasting on the corpse of the Creator, have not only human, but godlike intelligence.

They’re not quite omniscient, but they’re close.

From the title and description on the cover, I hoped this book would be thought-provoking and it is.

Actually, I’m not sure if Currie is criticizing the stringency of religion or the potential chaos that can go with a godless worldview.

Maybe it’s both.

But what was wonderfully surprising was the humor. And not all of the laughs come from dark places.

Even in a universe where humanity is the highest power, a terrifying thought, Currie seems to believe that there is room for hope nevertheless.

1602

1602 by Neil Gaiman is an intriguing concept.

What if there were superheroes during the Spanish Inquisition?

Of course, they’re burned, drawn, quartered, beheaded, sodomized, etc.

(sodomized figuratively, not literally)

(I’m not really sure what I mean by that.)

Magneto and some of the X-Men make the transition into historical allegory naturally, but alas, even Neil Gaiman can’t make the Fantastic Four interesting.

Not a bad read, but nothing memorable.

American Gods

American Gods by Neil Gaiman, sat in my ‘to-read’ pile for like a year. First, before Evil Darien starts calling for my head, let me say that I loved this book.

It’s now on the very short list of book I’m likely to read more than three times before I die. I had the thought when I read Coraline, with its many elements of The Thief of Always that Clive Barker had to be a huge influence on Gaiman, which is odd since they’re contemporaries, give or take a decade or so.

Reading American Gods, with so many ideas lifted straight out of The Great and Secret Show, (easily one of my ten favorite novels of all time) cemented the notion.

Ever since I first read Imajica, I’ve insisted that Barker is much more than a genre writer and I’m confident that I’ll be proven correct when he’s still being read after most of his peers are forgotten.

So, here’s the deal. Gaiman is brilliant. But so many aspects of his universe have been explored/created by Barker that I wonder just how good he really is.

I plan to read more Sandman to figure that out.

Odder than Ever by Bruce Coville

Every once in a great while, I’ll read a book and just wonder, ‘where the fuck has this author been this whole time?’

Imagine my surprise when I searched for Bruce Coville and found hundreds of results.

Odder than Ever is one of the most pleasant surprises I’ve encountered in a long while.

I wasn’t expecting much because first, I bought this book because I liked the cover and when I do that I’m pretty much always disappointed.

Second, short story collections, even from the greatest authors, are usually hit and miss.

And lastly, it’s children’s fiction and while some of the greatest literature ever written falls under this category, there are at least a thousand shitty kids books for every one profound work of art.

Odder than Ever is one of those rare works. There are nine stories in this collection and not a single misfire.

Coville approaches the universe he has created as if the world were a carnival and each protagonist had his own little booth in a side freak show.

Some of the stories are truly unsettling, (There’s Nothing Under the Bed & The Japanese Mirror) while others are hysterical (The Giant’s Tooth & Am I Blue) while others are filled with simple wonder (The Metamorphosis of Justin Jones & I, Earthling)

As far as children’s literature goes, this belongs up there with the best works of Carroll and Dahl.

And it ranks up there with Vonnegut’s Welcome to the Monkeyhouse & Stephen King’s Nightmares and Dreamscapes when it comes to short fiction anthologies.

So run, run to Half Price Books and you might still find this on an endcap for only $6.

Go on.

Rant by Chuck Palahniuk

Fu.

King.

Wow.

I don’t even know where to start. If you’ve read anything by Palahniuk you already know that there really is no quick summary I can give.

I still haven’t decided if Palahniuk is a very dark comedy writer or a very funny gloomy Gus.

I do know that Choke might no longer be my favorite of his works.

Thanks to Evil Darien, I’m in the middle of an experiment. He burned me a copy of Rant the audio book.

So, I’ve been listening in my car as I’ve been reading this, always keeping about a hundred pages or so behind.

Um, this was the first time I had ever listened to an audio book, much less listening to it as I read the book.

Turns out, this is the perfect book to try this with.

The way Palahniuk slowly reveals his characters, listening to the audio books behind reading the book, everything takes on new meaning, things you haven’t caught before.

So now that I’ve finished the book, I can listen to the rest of the CDs.

I’m kind of anxious to see what I hadn’t noticed or realized the significance of the first time I read it.

This will most likely be one of those rare books that I actually revisit within the year.

Therefore Repent

Therefore Repent by Jim Munroe& Salgood Sam is a really good idea that’s executed with a perfect blend of humor, philosophy, social criticism, and just flat-out sickness.

Apparently, after the rapture, those who are left behind develop powers.

Some try to kiss God’s ass in the hopes that Christ will return yet again to collect these most recent faithful while others start what is essentially a guerilla army to resist the powers of Heaven.

I just fucking loved this book.

From the depiction of angels as an invading force to the mutations those ‘left behind’ go through to the absolutely perfect and hysterical ending that I wouldn’t dream of spoiling.

Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman

I have said before that my favorite author is the Japanese surrealist Haruki Murakami, but until recently, I had not ready any of his shorts, just his novels.

I didn’t even realize that Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman was a collection of his short stories when I bought it and I don’t mind telling you, I was just a little disappointed.

I had set my mind on losing myself inside the peculiar, nightmarish world of a so-ordinary-it’s-abnormal protagonist. Each of Murakami’s novels, most notably Dance Dance Dance, Kafka on the Shore and, my favorite book of all time, The Wind Up Bird Chronicles has a way of enveloping you in a world that you don’t think you could possibly recognize, but feels somehow familiar, even comforting just the same.

My disappointment melted quickly after I started.

In fact, this collection reads very much like one of his novels, structured very similarly to Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting (a novel striking in its episodic nature) in that it weaves carefully in and out of realism, changing protagonists without ever breaking the story’s thread.

In Murakami’s work, the protagonists are often interchangeable because the focus of his work is not how a character reacts to the events taking place around and to him but rather on how minor characters and even the world these strange creatures inhabit react to the protagonist.

How Murakami can take traditional narrative structure and completely invert it the way he does and still manage to create a universe as beautiful as it is mystifying and often even cruel is a testament to how, after all these centuries and millennia, art still has the capacity to surprise us.

It’s been said that there is nothing new under the sun.

Bullshit and fuck you.

In this collection, we encounter men who may or may not be made of ice, crabmeat with worms, staircases in which you can disappear and be spit out across the country for no apparent reason, crows tearing each other apart, ripping out the intestines of their fellow birds in the quest for tasty snack cakes, an absolutely goddamn terrifying mirror, nausea that strikes as if it were a villain with its own mind, a one-legged surfer ghost and my favorite, an employee of the Public Works Department who just can’t wait for an excuse to beat up, kill and/or torture a talking monkey.

The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie

I can’t believe I hadn’t gotten around to reading The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie until now.

People are trying to kill a guy for writing this and I haven’t read it yet? What the hell is wrong with me?

Plus, once again, big fan of Satan. Satan in the title.

How could I go wrong? I gotta tell you, this book is easily one of the ten best novels I have ever read.

There is so much in here that I really need to digest it and maybe even reread it in the coming months before I can get a handle on it. I think that if most authors were to attempt something on this scale, it would end up being a mess, but Rushdie is up for the task.

Verses is congested with all kinds of crazy ideas and jumps from theme to theme, from story to story, from protagonist to protagonist.

We start with two fellows falling out of a plane that has just blown up. It doesn’t sound like it should be a funny chapter, but it really is. We follow them all the way down to earth as they miraculously land, unharmed.

We travel alongside them as they learn that maybe survival isn’t in and of itself the prize.

There is something more.

Then, Rushdie takes us back to the brothel where twelve prostitutes pretend to be the twelve wives of Mahound, the prophet.

Such sacrilege.

Then, it’s on to a disastrous pilgrimage with a delusional, leader who claims to be taking orders from the Archangel Gibreel. Is the prophet sadistic or foolish? Not only am I not sure, I’m convinced that Rushdie himself doesn’t know..

Rushdie juggles so many characters, so many stories, so many story arcs yet he weaves them together with such credibility that it really doesn’t feel as experimental as it really is.

It’s a rare novel that really experiments with theme, character, and story and is simple and accessible at the same time.

When it comes down to it, while Verses deals chiefly with religion, transformation, (one of our protagonists changes from a man to a faun to Satan himself and back again only to find that he really hadn’t changed much at all.) deception and death, on a broader level, it’s really about how we react to the unknown.

Rushdie studies both the insanity of belief and the stubborn arrogance of disbelief.

Goddamn, this book was good.

Rushdie’s style is so simple and lovely.

When he states that, “Where there is no belief, there is no blasphemy,” it just really impacts the entire book with a very short, simple sentence.

I really need more time to digest and then I may post more thoughts on it in the coming weeks/months/years.

The Tattooed Girl by Joyce Carol Oates

The Tattooed Girl by Joyce Carol Oates is quite simply a horrifying, heartbreaking story.

It actually recalls the underhanded sadism that was in Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been, which just so happened to be my introduction to Oates.

This story will in turns surprise, repulse and touch you.

Early in the book, we are introduced to a character, Dmitri the waiter, who doesn’t seem like a bad guy at first, and then, as Oates gradually and methodically peels back his layers, we are shocked to find that he is truly a frightening and evil fuck.

His brutality is truly sickening and through his character, Oates manages to do the impossible.

As I was reading one passage, I felt ashamed of myself.

Not because I had done anything even close to that, but because I was a man.

Or rather because I was human.

The characters in this book are more than dysfunctional; they are simply broken.

It’s odd but strangely touching how two people, so fucked up they could hardly pass for rational develop this kind of affection, friendship, love and then complete dependency.

This book is filled with surprises and I’m not talking about show-offy twists in the vein of Shyamalan or Palahniuk, (although I do think Palahniuk is the exception to the rule as far as dramatic surprises go. He is one of the few that can pull it off and make it feel organic.)

Oates amazes us with how quickly the hatred of her characters can turn to love and vice versa.

She offers insight into why some people love monsters unconditionally.

Another surprise is the tender romance that blossoms between Joshua Siegl and Sondra Blumenthal, who is pretty much the only functional character in this story.

What sets Oates apart is that most writers feel a need to define their characters whereas Oates realizes that this is not always possible since most people don’t know who they are themselves.

This is an incredible, devastating novel and seriously, whether you’ve read Oates or not, whether you’ve liked her before or not, give this one a shot because not only does Oates understand the craft of writing better than most writers, she understand what it means to be human more than most people.

30 Days of Night & Dark Days by Steve Niles & Ben Templesmith

30 Days of Night & Dark Days is a collection of the first two series from 30 Days.

I really fucking loved it. It is a very simple, very familiar story.

There's not as much to talk about as with other graphic novels like Watchmen, the Sin City series or Wanted, but that's not to say that it wasn't memorable.

The artwork especially sticks with me. It’s not realistic at all, but it’s brutal and very disturbing. Ben Templesmith is truly a genius of the horrific.

Highly recommended.

Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi: A Study in Freedom and Irreverence

Okay, if The Shadow of the Wind is the most elegant and graceful book I’ve read in a long time, The Complete Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi is certainly the most irreverent.

And yes, that really is a compliment, especially when you see how her criticism of authority and general sarcasm never turns cynical.

Satrapi retains her respect and affection for all her characters, even the ‘bad guys.’ She refuses to paint them as caricatures or monsters, never letting them off the hook by constantly reminding us that these are thinking individuals who make choices.

After all, a monster can’t be held responsible for behaving like a monster and she does insist on holding the people who've oppressed her country to account.

Satrapi doesn’t spare herself either.

At one point, I found myself thinking, ‘wow, what a selfish bitch’ only to find a couple of pages later that her grandma tells her that she’s a selfish bitch and Satrapi openly and apologetically admits that she found herself behaving in an unconscionable way.

I have no doubt that when you read this, you’ll know exactly which part I’m talking about.

We see Satrapi growing up under the Shah, going through the revolution and then experience the disillusionment that comes when the people of Iran find themselves just as repressed as they were before they overthrew the Shah.

What we see here is the end result of too many revolutions in which the ‘liberators’ turn out to be as or more oppressive than the tyrant they fought to overthrow in the first place.

This book also serves as a caution against painting an entire nation of people with a broad brush. Doing so isn’t only naïve, it’s dangerous.

But what stands out is that Satrapi never comes off as sanctimonious or preachy. Any political point of view rests comfortably in this bed of humor and sarcastic irreverence.

Seriously, read this book.

The Hard Goodbye by Frank Miller

For those of you who’ve seen Sin City, The Hard Goodbye is the one with Mickey Rourke.

It’s my favorite of the film's three segments.

Marv is just such a compelling character. He is sympathetic and terrifying at the same time.

I absolutely love the guy, but he scares the fuck out of me.

We’ve all heard about the hooker with the heart of gold, well, here we have the sadistic killer with the heart of gold.

Miller’s work, all of it, the story, the dialogue, the characters, the artwork all comes together so beautifully.

Best line: "I love hit men. No matter what you do to them, you don't feel bad."

Christ, Marv is so bad-ass.

The Hard Goodbye is the rare occasion where the perfect story finds its perfect medium.

For those of you who’ve seen Sin City but as of yet haven’t read any of the books, The Hard Goodbye is a great jumping off point.

300 by Frank Miller & Lynn Varley

There isn't a whole fuck of a lot to say about this book.

If you’ve seen the movie, you pretty much get the point.

I actually enjoyed the graphic novel more than I enjoyed the film which I thought was entertaining, if over hyped and more or less forgettable.

If you liked the movie, you’d probably enjoy reading the book. If not, I’m not sure it’s going to win over any new converts.

Buffy the Vampire Season 8: The Long Way Home.

Dear Lord, if you do in fact exist, what the hell is up with you?

Sex and the City gets a movie but not Buffy? What the fuck, dude? Not cool.

Please stop falling asleep on the job. Amen.

Okay, for what we got, which is a series of comic books for Buffy season 8, this compilation is very entertaining.

Joss has not lost his sense of humor or his ability to surprise us. He has an amazing ability to follow a story arc, not just through a single season, but through the entire series.

His gift for foreshadowing without disappointing in the payoff is staggering. Yes, I would rather have more episodes to watch or even a movie, but Joss is a master storyteller and at this point, we’ll take what we can get.

The story here for season 8 is very compelling, moving, frightening and funny.

Plus, bringing back Warren, the one villain we have absolutely no fascination with (Adam, the First, Gloria) or any affection for (the Mayor, Faith) sounds like a bad move, but in fact, it is a master stroke.

The only thing we have ever wanted in Buffy’s dealings with Warren is for him to die and die horribly. Whatever is in store for us, it's bound to be fun.

The Last Temptation by Neil Gaiman & Michael Zulli with inspiration & cooperation from Alice Cooper.

Okay, this book is just creepy as hell. You would think that a villain who looks exactly like Alice Cooper wouldn’t be so menacing, but you’d be wrong.

Even after Wayne’s World and hanging out with Alice Cooper myself at a concert that Joia produced (one of the perks of her job) I was still scared fuckless by Cooper’s Master of Ceremonies who may or may not be Satan.

Okay, sidetracking to the funny story about hanging out with Alice Cooper.

So, we were talking about our backgrounds, and how similar they are, me being a pastor’s kid and he also being a PK.

He told me that I should seriously consider going back to church because it would provide peace and guidance.

Walking away, Joia just started laughing her ass off. When I asked what was so funny, she said, “How fucked up do you have to be for Alice Cooper to think you need Jesus?”

So, that was fun.

Back to The Last Temptation, the black and white artwork is by turns horrifying, sickening and gorgeous and the story really adds a lot to the too-often re-treaded fable of Faust.


Gaiman draws a convincing parallel between the interaction between Cooper’s Showman and the young Steven and the temptation of Christ in the wilderness by Satan himself.

Particularly haunting is the attempt to seduce Steven through Mercy, a troubled, beautiful and perhaps imaginary showgirl.


As we've come to expect from Gaiman, what we’re left with is more than just a morality tale or a horror story. The Last Temptation is a fresh, unsettling take on a familiar story. Buy this book.