Sunday Musings

I am becoming an up-tight book buyer.  For the third week in a row, a local Borders going out of business sale failed to make any impression on me.  They are up to all things 40% off which came out to be roughly a dollar less for a new book bought online.  Don't get me wrong, I love saving a dollar but considering that I buy most my books used for about $5-$6 total or from a publishers remainder or bargain bin for the same price; 40% didn't convince me to buy anything.  Factor in on top of that my limited cash flow, taxes I have to pay in a few months, and the fact that I own thirty or so books I've yet to read and it was surprisingly easy to put back Annabel by Kathleen Winter of which I've read so many good things, Great House by Nicole Krauss of which I don't think anyone has said anything negative, and Before the Flood by Margaret Atwood.  They are all still on the list; only not in the TBR pile.

It would have been a fun purchase I there was a small part of me that was caught up in the moment.  It's rare I have a book buying binge that consist of only women; in truth, it's probably never happened before.  Add in a list that is dominated by Canadians and even I'm a bit confused...  My taste in fiction has certainly changed in the past few years.  

Without getting into to much of the financial aspects of a GOB sale, Borders has some crazy-ass pricing structures.  I understand the need to maintain a certain profit margin but I don't think consumers are as dumb as Borders executives do, or at least; I'm not.  I'll spare you my business discourse and hypotheses of their sales strategies.  I could expand on this in probably no less than ten pages with examples and numbers for support, but trust me: Borders has some crazy-ass pricing structures.

I truly feel sorry for all who are losing their jobs, but the GOB sale only throws into relief why I never shopped at Borders in the first place.

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

"From my birth when they went undetected, to my baptism where they upstaged the priest, to my troubled adolescence when they didn't do much of anything and then did everything at once, my genitals have been the most significant thing that ever happened to me.  Some people inherit houses; others painting or highly insured violin bows.  Still others get a Japanese tansu or a famous name.  I got a recessive gene on my fifth chromosome and some very rare family jewels indeed." Page 401    

It's easy to say that Middlesex is all about sex, because it is.  It is also a family history and biography.  Calliope Stephanides, our narrator, is at the heart of all the stories and while not always the focal point, she--and the evolution of her transformation to 'he'--is the element that always drives events forward.  Even when Callie is not yet born; even when we already know the present state of his circumstances; everything in the novel drives toward one massive moment of discovery that a statistically few amount of the human population can truly wrap their heads around.  There is nothing like Middlesex.  

The book's presentation is something of a memoir, with Cal looking back on his life and the lives of his parents and grandparents.  In this first half there is some very detached narration as we learn of Cal's grandparents incestuous union, compounded, nearly excused, and to some degree completely forgotten amid their dangerous lives of being Greek in Turkey, World War One horrors and immigration to Detroit in the beginning portion of the twentieth century.  

The characters are rich and tangible and yet the distance that their story is related to the reader makes itself felt all throughout the book.  This distance or gap in emotional connection between the narration and the characters slowly closes as Callie's grandparents story turns into that of her parents and finally her own story.  It is not to say everything before Callie's time--nearly half of a five-hundred plus page novel--is un-engaging or even anything slightly offensive, rather it is decidedly not personal and very detached.  It is Callie's family history that is being related, yet Cal's current insecurity while telling his family's history yields a certain coldness to the story being told; not quite apathy but something greater than passing indifference.  

It is in this section of backstory to Cal's life that Eugenides scored many points for getting the reader to think.  The heart of Callie's story is in finding herself; who she finally settles on being, 'himself.'  The array of topics Callie encounters span a myriad of influences from gender identity, gender supremacy, how the individual views gender and how society views gender, race riots, revolution, what it means to have sex, the vague parameters of a relationship before and after things become physical, the evolution of Cadillac, and heartburn.  Some of these topics are hilarious.  In fact, it is a trait of the book that everything within it's covers is funny.  Not the laugh out loud humor that leaves tears on your cheek rather the half-smile that lights up your face and you try to suppress as to not have to explain to someone else what's so funny.  Other aspects of book are very serious, but never given so serious a consideration by the author as to be academic or stymie the narrative drive.    

There is so much social commentary about the time that Callie grows up and general food for though that I'm convinced that the book didn't have to end.  Eugenides is amazing in his ability to relate so many vast aspects of life to his lead character all with relevance, interest, and an astonishing amount of clout.

The change from Callie's family history to Callie's story itself happens right around puberty, or midway through the book.  Callie first love, anther girl referred to as "The Obscure Object" (Eugenides' naming conventions are infuriating; Chapter Elven is the only name given her bother, The Obscure Object is referred to as such to protect identity but Callie can call out the incest--generational incest--of her family without pause.  It took me a moment, but in the course of reading this behemoth I got over it) as well as her first 'conventional sexual' experience with The Obscure Object's brother are the harbingers to her change.  It is this change to Callie's story, told by Callie that things personal, uncomfortable, and disturbing.  This book will make you squirm around and set your imagination loose on things that you'd never before knew you could imagine.  It's wonderful and will keep you riveted, possibly revolted, but undeniably hooked and condemned to read to the end.  

Some sexual drama and physical injury later, Callie is presented with the information, or perhaps choice, that she is a he, or even more ambiguous; Calliope Stephanides is nothing definitive in terms of gender.  It is the narrators coming to terms with this information that begins an odyssey and journey of self-discovery that isn't truly fulfilled at the books end.  

There is much in this long story that is left out.  Substantial amounts of time in Callie's life are glossed over or wholly ignored.  Callie's mother--the woman who changed her diapers and bathed her for years and never once noticed anything strange down there--is a minor character, perhaps only because her father is such a powerful one.  But what we are given is so fresh an non-derivative that we can fill in the blanks our self and be plenty happy in doing so.  Eugenides' prose is something to talk about.  It's the same, presentation and style he offered in The Virgin Suicides.  Stark and cold, there is nothing poetic or flashy about his combination of words.  I can't imagine anyone ever calling him a 'stylist' and who cares?  He forgoes artful lyric poetry for daring sledgehammer-impact originality, and overwhelming 'dear God is this book really about a true hermaphrodite' unexplored narrative territory.  A more than fair trade in my opinion.  

Did I like the book?  I don't think the question relevant to a discussion of it's merits.  I can't imagine anyone saying Middlesex is their favorite book or that they can't wait to read it again.  Yet I'm glad I read it.  While I don't particularly care for Eugenides (there I said it) if his next offering hits this hard, I can't wait to read it.  

The Month in Review and of Things to Come

I'm amazed to report that I started and finished four books this month.  It wasn't easy as the lees of December's reading, Jane Eyre, almost killed my reading interest (and caused a bit of a ruckus in the comments).

I've said all I need to say about Ender's Game.  The Magician's Nephew was kinda 'blah' by Narnia standards, and The Mammoth Book of Merlin was just plain ole 'not good.'  There were stellar efforts by Charles de Lint and Michael Swanwick but they weren't enough to save the collection from mediocrity.  My thoughts on Middlesex--which are ambiguous at best-- will go up in a day or two.  I am pleased at this months reading in the regard that I was able to get through two doorstopers.  Hopefully that trend will persist and the multitude of giant books I own won't hinder, inhibit or otherwise stymie my reading.        

For February, the most terrible word in the English language, I'm gonna take Mark Twain's advice and swallow the frog first.  My frog-of-the-month, doorstoper, is Summerland by Michael Chabon.  As it's a short month if I can get through Summerland and three others I'll be pleased.

It's been a remarkably uneventful month, which I guess isn't bad.  Hopefully I'll have more things of interest to report next month.  

A Rarity

I don't usually walk into a bookstore and leave having purchased nothing; let alone a bookstore that is having a going out of business sale.  There's a Borders that is going under in Buckhead--one of the most expensive retail areas in Atlanta.  The last day of business is still a ways off and today they were only offering 30% off everything which basically put them right in line with internet retailers.

I just couldn't bring myself to buy anything; isn't that terrible?  I want to feast on the lees on the last day of the stores existence when all books are one dollar.  With this in mind I was awfully tempted to 'misplace' some jewels in hopes that they would still be there when I go back.  Brick-and-mortar book selling is hard, and I guess I'm not helping, but 30% didn't make an impression on me for a new book, especially since I buy most of mine used at substantially less.    

I was encouraged (for selfish reasons) to see that next to no one was in the 'literature section' as the non-fiction trend seems to still be in control of sales.  Here to hoping there is something left for me when I go back in a few weeks.

New Year's Reading Rut

I don't feel pressured to read.  I do it because I enjoy reading.  But for the past week or so it's been a chore.  I completely blame Charlotte Brontë.  Jane Eyre almost killed me.  I told myself I'd finish it before 2011 got here... that didn't happen.  I've completed five other books in the time it took me to knock this 19th century British behemoth out.  It's over and done; I've turn the last page.  The final word was, "Amen" and in response all I could say was, "Hallelujah!"


I liked it better than Wuthering Heights but thats not say much.  I'm glad I read the book.  If nothing else, it proved that 19th century British lit ain't for me.  Dickens, Eliot, pick a Brontë, I'll throw Conrad into the pot, and damn near anyone else other than Jane Austen you can think of I'll pass and say their work is not for me.  I can admit that there is quality there, I'd just rather contemplate the sharp end of a Bowie knife on a tender spot on my body than seek said quality out.  


It's odd as I love Russian 19th century writers so much: Turgenev, Tolstoy, Checkov, Dostoevsky, Lermontov, and probably a host of others I don't know and can't pronounce.  German writers from the same time, Goethe, Schiller, Heine also make me very happy.  I've even come across some French writing for the time that I've thoroughly enjoyed though I'm not well versed enough to even drop names.  I'm sure some bright, literature person could tell me what that means about me and my reading preferences but I don't know such people...    


So Jane Eyre is over and done with, problem solved right?  All-kinds-of-wrong.  I'm reading Middlesex, which is possibly the most compelling thing I've ever come across--and it just won't end.  It never ends... and I've no clue where it's going.  It's long to def: i.e. really long.  I like it better--much better--than The Virgin Suicides, but at least that one was terminal.  Middlesex feels indefinite.  (Commentary forthcoming)  Jeffery Eugenides is quickly joining the ranks of the previously mentioned British authors from yesteryear.      


I'm also reading The Mammoth Book of Merlin figuring super awesome short stories will help pick up my reading pace.  Normally this is true, but this collection has very few redeeming qualities to speak of so far; I've about a hundred pages to go.  It's not bad; all the writing is very competent.  It is however, the most uninteresting compilation I've ever come across.  Considering the subject matter I'm amazed at the blandness of the stories included.  It makes me believe in the power of some of those 'name brand' editors I see on regular fiction anthologies and collections.  I'm not even sure that Michael Swanwick, with the last story in the book can save this mammoth book of trite banalities.   


I want to read something fabulous at this very moment and at the same time, my disenfranchisement with reading makes me not want to open a different book, but rather turn to the unthinkable: renew my World of Warcraft account after four long years of dormancy.  


My favorite hobby somehow got tedious. 


Help.

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

A six year old science experiment--Andrew "Ender" Wiggin--is manipulated into saving the world in Card's breakout 1985 novel.  Control is a central element in Ender's life.  He is given little more than verisimilitude of choice.  While the sci-fi setting, alien invasion; the human race on the brink of extinction, is in place for a stereotypical save-the-world ordeal Card instead chooses to tell something unique, intimate and ultimately more satisfying than genre fair.  

Ender a is genetically engineered and enhanced child born and breed for no other purpose than saving the world.  He has a special ability when it comes to understanding people and relationships.  His life has been scripted before his birth.  How he develops--alters or adheres--to the preordained path, is what's interesting.  He is consciously aware of how he is being molded and made to conform.  His own feelings remain conflicted as he is manipulated into thinking he has no choice in anything he does.

Ender doesn't think like an ordinary child nor an adult.  He processes information more like a computer than the rational, often dual natured, thought process of a human being.  He can predict reactions and then take definitive measures to achieve the results he desires.  Pushing the limits of what is able to foresee or expect is that drives him near the limits of his mental capacity. 

I have problems with novels that cast children in the lead and expect such great things from ones so young.  We primarily see Ender's family life, both with and without him, and his years in battle school where he trains to be a fleet commander to destroy the threat of invasion.  Ender's emotional maturity was difficult for me to reconcile.  The reader has to swallow a big pill in accepting the advanced intelligence in the children we encounter early on to avoid much eye-rolling in the latter half of the book.  To make this acceptance harder still, Ender is a bit of cry baby; a display of emotion that I felt incongruous with, well… everything.  On one hand we see him as a six-eleven year old who is in fact very sensitive.  On the other hand he is perhaps too rational and too efficient and calculating in thought to experience emotions with such frequency that would permit tears.      

For the backdrop of the novel to be so detailed, if only on a superficial level, (forbidden religions, internal struggle in unified international government, government funded education and no taxes to all families with no more than two children) I was surprised with Card's handling of all the other children who were deemed not fit for the prestigious battle school.  Ender's siblings, who were both thought to be 'the one' for a short time, are two of the world's most intelligent people and the government knowingly made them so.  The creators of these wunderkind can find no greater purpose than to send them to middle school and let them be regular kids?  Really?  Being brilliant ten and fourteen year olds, they plot to take control of the government and, over a course of many many years, are ultimately successful in achieving their goals.  That they were allowed to do so is one thing, but that they were never given any expectation at all with their enhanced intelligence was an oddity to me. Particularly so in a government as ruthless and capable as the one Card has established.     

Ender has some identity problems that are wonderful to watch unfold.  He was breed to be part of each his older brother and sister.  His possession of both killer instinct and a sympathetic nature combine to make him resent himself and not only what he's been born to do but the only thing he is good at: wagging war.  Ironically, combat is the only place he feels comfortable in his own skin.

The eponymous 'games' that Ender plays end up being the novel's--and the plot's--salvation.  I don't know that I've ever read a story where the author gives up so much of the plot's happening without the reader knowing until after-the-fact.  In an unexpected twist, the device also brings closure to the story and stops it from meandering in the obscure, 'Land of Blah…'  There is also a seed of redemption and atonement for all of Ender's doing at the end that was most unexpected.  And the unfulfilled 'planting' of this seed will ensure that readers think about the novel long after it is finished.  

  

The writing is all around solid with no stand out features or flaws.  Plot conveniences exist to serve the story and that alone is an admirably acceptable excuse.  Despite any misgivings on my part the novel is a fantastic read: thoroughly satisfying and surprisingly sensitive.  I'd highly recommend it to all fans of fiction.  

The Greatest Book Sale of 2011

Night Shade Books will be giving away their current inventory and even forthcoming books until January 23.  This is a great way to treat yourself with your news bonus, or buy what you really wanted for the holidays.  I've have been waiting on this sale for awhile now; saving for it honestly. 


I'm in short story heaven with this sale but the first and easiest purchase was Michael Swanwick's forthcoming novel Dancing with Bears.  Not even Amazon is gonna give you fifty percent off.  I've told myself I'm going to branch out this year and read more science fiction so I hope to see what all the hype around The Windup Girl is about.  Rounding out my splurge are two short story collection from the awesome Kage Baker, Wings of Fire edited by Johnathan Stahan, Wastelands by John Adams (which features an amazingly diverse group of writers), and The Imago Sequence and Other Stories by Laird Barron (because Terry told me to read it).


There were a few other I passed on; I had to draw the line somewhere.  Now if I could only get Tachyon to do a similar promotion... 


Tachyon?  Jacob, Jill and company?  You listening...?