| The Palace of Illusions, by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
[Apr. 7th, 2009|10:50 am] |
A retelling of my favorite epic, the Mahabharata, from the point of view of Draupadi who here goes by another of her names, Panchaali. For those who don't know the story already, Panchaali is a princess who marries the five Pandava brothers and proceeds to live a rather put-upon life; her attempted stripping by the Pandavas' rivals is the immediate cause of the great war between them.
I have no idea how this book comes across if you're not already familiar with the story, and I am very curious about that. Please report if you fit into that category. (I am especially curious how you felt about the Panchaali/Karna thing; I couldn't tell if it worked for me because of what was actually in the text, or because I was projecting what I already knew about him.)
I think this might well be a good introduction to the story. It definitely tells the whole thing, but in very short form and in excellent prose.
My favorite parts were the ones in which Divakaruni brings more of her own ideas and interpretations to the story. I liked the beginning of the novel, which focues on Panchaali's childhood and young adulthood, better than the later parts, in which Panchaali is only present in her own reflections on events which mostly concern other people. I could have happily read a novel which ended at her marriage, in fact. Once the war begins, Divakaruni proceeds with more of a standard retelling than the re-imagining she began with, and since I've read a lot of re-tellings, that's less interesting to me.
Some of the more notable additions and interpetations are that Panchaali is secretly in love with Karna (I must say that I loved this); there's also a lot of attention given to her special relationship with Krishna, especially at the beginning, which I also enjoyed. I had a bit of a problem with the very modern-sounding way in which she expressed feminist sentiments - not a problem with the feelings themselves, but that they were phrased in a way that felt too contemporary to me.
I would have also liked to see more emotional range, especially later on. This may be my interpretation imposing itself, but I always thought that Draupadi had very high highs and very low lows. Here, she's never really happy with her husbands, and never really glories in battle and revenge - she already knows the war is futile and revenge won't bring her happiness before the war even begins. I would have liked to see more joy and ferocity, in addition to frustration, unhappiness, and resignation.
I appreciated the moments of humor early on ("Something always seems to go wrong at a swayamvara") and would have liked a little more of it later. Okay, maybe not at Kurukshetra, but I seriously felt like no one ever laughed once Panchaali got married, except for the catastrophic moment in the Palace of Illusions when Duryodhan falls into the pool.
I definitely enjoyed seeing Divakaruni's interpretation of the characters (I especially loved her Veda Vyasa, and her alternately very human and otherworldly Krishna, especially as he was early on) and the clever way she juggled a truly dizzying array of characters and events. Overall, I liked it, but I would have liked to see less of Kurukshetra and more of Panchaali.
Buy it from Amazon: The Palace of Illusions: A Novel |
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| The First Part Last, by Angela Johnson |
[Mar. 24th, 2009|12:37 pm] |
The storyline is simple but elegant. Alternating chapters tell a tale of past and present. In the present, sixteen-year-old Bobby is a single father caring for his baby Feather. In the past, his girlfriend Nia tells him she's pregnant. The stories move forward until they meet.
It's not the events that make this book special, but the beautiful simplicity of the prose, the precise and delicate evocation of emotions, the sweetness of Bobby's relationship with his baby daughter, and the power of Johnson's reconception of parenting as the work that separates boys from men. Not a word is wasted, every character seems real, and there's no preaching at all.
I loved it. It made me cry.
Click here to order it from Amazon: The First Part Last
( I posted the first page under the cut, and I highly recommend that you read it. )
Buy the novel from Amazon: The First Part Last |
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| Climbing the Mango Trees, by Madhur Jaffrey |
[Mar. 23rd, 2009|01:47 pm] |
A food-centric memoir of growing up in a huge Indian family in and around Delhi. Jaffrey became a teenager when India got its independence - a time of joy and horror, as the country gained its freedom and then tore itself apart in the violence that came with Partition.
But Jaffrey's childhood was more happy than not, despite the presence of a low-key but appalling family rift caused by an uncle's emotional abuse of his own children and favoritism of some of his nieces and nephews. There's not a lot of drama but a great deal of humor, well-observed family dynamics, and a wonderful sense of place and time.
Jaffrey grew up to a famous food writer, and her memories are full of the scents and tastes and family rituals surrounding food. It's impossible to read without getting hungry. And by relating the food to its role in culture, family history, and personality, the food itself becomes the story.
Though she mentions some horrifying accidents and tragedies, albeit in an understated way, the overall mood of the story is one of nostalgia for a flavorful and largely fondly-recalled childhood. Though Jaffrey was something of a misfit, by the end of the book she's beginning to find her own voice and destiny. Amusingly, she never cooks anything good in the entire book - but she eats well, and remembers well. The rest, we know, is history. |
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| Not Chicken Little |
[May. 20th, 2008|07:18 pm] |
Yesterday I was buying groceries at Whole Foods... taking my time... careful not to spend too much. I had finished and was on the last aisle, about to go to check-out, when I was suddenly drenched in a torrent of liquid that fell from directly over my head.
My hair was wet, my arms were wet, my glasses and pants and shirt were spattered. I rubbed a little between my fingers. It was sticky. Before I could freak out, a woman standing beside me, who has also been splashed, said, "It's juice."
Indeed, the color suggested apricot or mango, though I didn't taste to find out... because the juice had no obvious source. There was no juice dripping from the ceiling, no broken glass or debris, no sounds of commotion, and we were not on the juice aisle.
Baffled, I wiped off my hands and glasses, and informed an employee. He seemed completely baffled, and directed me to customer service. I went there and repeated my story. It was the kind of story ("And then suddenly liquid fell from the sky!") which makes you feel like you're lying.
"Maybe it was water from the air-conditioning unit," one surmised.
"No..." I said. "It's juice."
"So you were in the juice aisle?"
"No... Look, I know how crazy this sounds," I said, "But I swear it happened! Look at me! I'm all wet!"
The customer service guys exchanged glances. "We believe you," they said. "And we'd like to get to the bottom of this too. Can you show us where it happened?"
I walked them to the area. Soon we saw a guy cleaning up a spill in the juice aisle.
"Ah-ha!" They exclaimed.
"Er... No," I said. "It's another aisle over."
We continued further, and found another guy cleaning up another spill. A juice spill.
"There it is!" I said. "And look!" I pointed upward. Juice was dripping down the opposite wall from the shelves closest to the juice aisle, from a height of twelve feet up.
It turned out that a bottle of juice had fallen in the juice aisle and hit at the exact angle to pop the top and make a geyser of juice shoot out, clear a ten foot wall of shelves, hit the opposite wall, and rain down on me.
Whole Foods gave a $25 gift card. I was pleased with the outcome, overall, though I had to wash my clothes and take a shower. Until I sliced open my index finger on a Whole Foods gift carded artichoke leaf. |
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| Norah Vincent: Self-Made Man: One Woman's Year Disguised As A Man |
[Jun. 13th, 2007|05:16 pm] |
Due to getting stuck for several hours in the Dallas-Fort Worth airport, while the plane supposed to take me to Los Angeles was diverted to Oklahoma lest it be sucked up by a tornado, I was forced to hit the airport bookshop for additional reading material, which is how I obtained this. At the time I thought the author's name was familiar because I'd heard of the unusual premise. Several chapters in I realized that Vincent used to be a particularly annoying columnist for the "LA Times." Oops.
Vincent is a non-transsexual lesbian who decided to disguise herself as a man for a year to find out how the other half lived. She also mentions her long-held fascination with gender and gender roles, but claimed that despite being a tomboy, she never ever ever, no really not ever not once, ever wanted to be a man, and hated almost every minute of pretending to be one. (Except for the times when she male-bonded and realized how wonderful male camaraderie is and how totally different it is from her "friendships" with shallow, back-stabbing women-- one thing that came up a lot is that Vincent's current social circles resemble the movie "Mean Girls.")
I would be surprised it living a persona wasn't uncomfortable and disturbing, but there was a point when I wondered if she was protesting too much. Such a crazy-ambitious feat of role-playing and disguise may not be about her deep secret desire to be male, but it's got to be about some deep desire. That really ought to have been explored more.
Curiously, Vincent fails to explore the one group for which she has a genuine control: men of her own social class, race, and similar social circles. (White New York upper-crust intelligentsia, as far as I could tell.) Instead, she penetrates blue-collar bowling leagues, sleazy door-to-door sales companies, a monastery, cheap strip clubs, and an Iron John group. She also dates women, which comes closest to seeing her own life as if she were a straight man.
The reason I pick on this is that the book turns out to be at least as much about class as it is about gender, but Vincent consistently compares poor blue-collar men to rich professional women, and then draws conclusions about... gender.
In perhaps the most ridiculous instance of this, she describes the physical state that blue collar men attain after a lifetime of hard labor, stress, and poverty (weather-beaten complexion, callouses, etc) and says that it proves that men and women are inherently and biologically totally different in a way that cannot at all be accounted for by social conditions. This makes no sense whatsoever, as everything she describes, except for the five o'clock shadow and several pounds of muscle, would also be true of women who work similar jobs.
The failure to account for class differences also undermined the conclusions she arrived at, which is that men are not really powerful and priveleged compared to women, because the desperate door-to-door salesmen (etc) she met had unhappy lives. I still do not understand how she reached that conclusion given that the only people more miserable and exploited than the male salesmen were the female salesmen, but there you have it.
Generally, she seemed to cherry-pick for blue-collar or middle-class white Christians in settings in which a certain set of stereotypical male traits are expected or selected for. If she'd broadened her horizons, she might have found large groups of men in cultures (for the broad meaning of the word) in which emotional expressiveness or conversation on subjects other than sports or friendly relationships with women are common and expected.
Many non-WASP cultures do not expect or require men to repress all shows of emotion, or to be painfully inarticulate. (Many if not most brands of Jewish culture, for instance, encourage men to talk, to each other or to women, on many subjects and at great length eloquently.) Cheap strip clubs are an excellent setting if you're looking for men who feel driven to engage in cheap sex. It is unsurprising to find gynophobia and repressed homosexuality in monasteries.
Some of the reportage was good, and the chapter on the bowling league was touching-- she really bonded with those men. I also enjoyed the chapter on Iron John, as I've always been curious about what goes on in those groups. The chapter on dating exerted a horrifying, train-wreck fascination.
But again, her conclusions were both obvious and flawed: of course going on dates under false pretences is even more unlikely to give you a fun time than normal dating. Of course women will be pissed off if, after two dates, you inform them that you're not available for a relationship and never were. And of course men who are attending Iron John meetings will be unhappy with social constructions of masculinity. That's like going to AA meetings in the hope of drawing general conclusions about how Americans relate to alcohol.
I don't know what her lesbian dates were like, but getting rejected is not unique to men, and if I can manage to cope with men who cruelly and capriciously withold sex from me by refusing to date or have sex with me, without gaining a murderous hatred of men, I don't see why men can't do the same.
Though Vincent does not seem to be a feminist, reading her book put me in a radical mood. Especially the chapter where she discovers that men hate women because women hold the power to give or withhold sex, so they're constantly being rejected. And also women are bitchy. No wonder men are so angry! No wonder women get raped! It's all because every woman is not automatically available upon demand!
More general conclusions: It's much harder to be a man than it is to be a woman, and women fail to appreciate that. Women are back-stabbing, boring, bitchy, and have totally unreasonable expectations of men. The genders are so different, biologically and inherently, that they are basically two different species. There are no social advantages to being a man. Dating and marriage is scary and unpleasant for men, and that plus their uncontrollable sex drives means all men either go to nasty strip clubs or want to. Traditional male roles are stifling. (OK, I agree with the last one.)
Well, that was negative. Generally, I disagreed with her politics, and felt that though some of her reportage was good, she consistently drew overly sweeping, unwarranted, and/or obvious conclusions from it. |
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| The Wind That Shakes the Barley |
[Mar. 10th, 2007|09:32 am] |
Yesterday I was at my old college UCLA to do some research at the library. Afterward, as I was passing by the Theatre Arts movie theatre which screens free films on an irregular schedule, I approached the box office to get a schedule of screenings. Before I could say what I wanted, a ticket was thrust into my hand. So I took it and went into the theatre, where I saw a screening of The Wind that Shakes the Barley, a film about the Irish rebellion in 1920, directed by Ken Loach, starring Cillian Murphy from Batman Begins and 28 Days Later.
As soon as the director and subject matter were announced, I had a strong feeling that it would end with Murphy's character a) hanged, b) shot by a firing squad, c) shot in battle. To avoid spoilers, I will not tell you which if any of my guesses were correct. I will, however, say, a) depressing, b) unwatchably horrifying torture sequence, c) despite Loach's obvious sympathy with the Irish people and the Irish rebels/terrorists, he leaves it very much up to the viewer to decide if armed rebellion/terrorism actually was a good idea in either the long or even short run, d) Murphy's extraordinary eyes are not lit to display their spooky beauty, which I guess is appropriate since it's not that kind of movie, but disappointing to me despite his excellent performance, e) depressing, f) Iraqis will make movies just like this some day. |
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| The Night Watch, by Sarah Waters |
[Feb. 10th, 2007|12:06 pm] |
I really like Sarah Waters. Her other novels all feature Victorian lesbians. Affinity is a very spooky, claustrophobic thriller/love story/spoiler about a medium imprisoned after a seance goes horribly wrong, and the woman who visits her in prison. Tipping the Velvet is a very fun picaresque which bounces from oyster bars to theatres to the rooms of kept girls. Fingersmith is a wild thriller which doesn't entirely make sense in places, but is one hell of a ride. I recommend all of those. Some people hate Affinity because of the DO NOT SPOIL ending, but it's my favorite.
The Night Watch is well-written and gripping, but lacks the excitement, passion, and sense of joyous discovery that permeate Waters' other books. (Even her tragedies seem like she had fun writing them, even if the characters didn't have fun living them.) It's about the intertwined lives of several Londoners after and during the Blitz, and is told backwards in time. This narrative device is not arbitrary, and provides for a few interesting discoveries and poignant moments; but it also makes the entire book quite depressing, as we already know how everyone will end up, and nobody ends up better than "maybe, just maybe, they will now take a tiny step toward improving their life," and some of them don't even get that.
Several years after the war is over, everyone is miserable. Kay, the butch former ambulance driver, is mired in post-traumatic stress, depression, and agoraphoia; Duncan, the young former prisoner, is living with an old man and collecting worthless antiques; his sister Vi, a young woman, is stuck in a loveless and passionless affair with a married man; and Helen, whom I regret to say that I HATE, is obsessively jealous of her lover, the cold writer Julia whom I also kind of hate.
After a long section exploring their lives, the narrative jumps back to the Blitz, and we see who they were before, what their relationships were, and some light is shed on the more myserious elements of the first section. At the end of this, the concluding section jumps back even further, to the start of the Blitz; the concluding scene is lovely, but intensely depressing because we know how that particular relationship worked out.
I was fascinated by Kay, the heroic ambulance driver, her work rescuing victims of the air raids, and the society of butch volunteers she hung out with. I could have happily read an entire book about her and her friend Mickey, whom I loved with a passion disproportionate to her brief appearances. The other characters either interested me less, or their situations interested me less; the reason Duncan was in jail was tragic and not a story often told, but he was a rather opaque character and so were the men he interacted with; I liked his sister Vi, but except for her brief but wonderful interaction with Kay, her story was mostly about loving a married jerk and that has been told a million times; Helen and Julia I just didn't like, ever, and the more I learned about them, the less time I wanted to spend in their company, even on paper.
Worth reading if you're a Waters fan, but not a good introduction. It did make me want to read more about the Blitz, though. (Two of my favorite short stories of all time are set there, Connie Willis' "Fire Watch" ("deaths: one cat") and "Jack," both in her collection Impossible Things) Any recommendations? Especially, any recommendations for fact or fiction featuring lesbians and/or people doing the more dramatic sort of volunteer work, search and rescue, fire watch, ambulance drivers, and the like? |
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| I have been interviewed in Bookslut |
[Jan. 9th, 2007|02:14 pm] |
Baba-lovers are divided on the topic of All the Fishes Come Home to Roost: honest account of a difficult childhood, or sleazy work of blasphemous slander.
The Bookslut interview.
I have already emailed them about forgetting my last name, so you don't need to call that to my attention.
In other news, I'm going to Taipei, Taiwan next month for ten days for Chinese New Year, where I will be crashing with a friend whose family lives there. I understand that the food over there is incredible. Alas, my Mandarin is still limited to "thank you," "sticky rice in lotus leaves," "barbecued pork bun," and "custard tart." But if I only end up learning four phrases, I think those are good ones to know. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jan. 4th, 2007|06:22 pm] |
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Today I received spam with the subject line "Sex Accident Jessica." I think that will be the title of my newest manga. |
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| Shadow Divers, by Robert Kurson |
[Dec. 30th, 2006|05:13 pm] |
Walter Jon Williams recommended this non-fiction account of deep sea wreck divers exploring a German U-boat as being far more terrifying than any horror movie, and cited the scene in which a diver reaches for his knife with his left hand instead of his right, and so sets in motion a chain of events which ends in his death.
Walter was absolutely right: this book is scarier than most horror, and more suspenseful than most thrillers. There was one moment, toward the end, when I actually exclaimed aloud, "Noooo!" Though there's some melodramatic phrasing at the beginning, the writing style soon settles down into smooth, unobtrusive clarity. It's one of those stranger than fiction tales, and an extremely satisfying read.
Deep sea wreck divers explore wrecked ships for kicks and souvenirs. It's extremely dangerous hobby, particularly in the early nineties, when they used compressed air instead the now-standard helium-nitrogen-oxygen "trimix." The latter allows you to function normally at great depths; the former means that once you get to the incredibly dangerous wreck, where every move stirs up blinding silt and perhaps knocks down rotted timbers to pin you in place as your air runs out, you are so oxygen-deprived that you are essentially dead drunk and prone to irrational fits of panic or fury. Plus, if you ascend too fast, you will get decompression sickness, or "the bends": the pressure that causes nitrogen to dissolve in your blood in the depth, releases it in large bubbles if you shoot to the surface instead of ascending in slow stages. In minor cases this can still cause excruciating pain; in severe ones, your blood basically turns into soda pop and you die in agony.
As portrayed in the book, deep sea wreck divers are adrenaline junkies, mostly men with something to prove. (To my annoyance, though a couple female divers are mentioned, none are described. I'd have liked to hear more about being a woman in what is clearly a highly male-dominated field.) The various iterations of wreck-diving culture and characters, from the careful technicians to the rowdy frat boys, are vividly depicted.
The story begins in 1991, when some divers find a sunken U-boat off the coast of New Jersey. There is no record of any U-boat ever having been sunk there, so they begin exploring it to find out which one it is. This proves to be way, way, way more of a challenge than any of them ever expected: all identifying marks have worn away, and the submarine is a death-trap which, over the course of several years, claims the lives of several divers. Two of the divers become obsessed with figuring out its identity, and alternate increasingly dangerous dives with historical research that takes them digging through US Naval records and interviewing German U-boat commanders. The historical mystery ends up being just as fascinating and suspenseful as the diving itself, and has more surprising twists than an Agatha Christie. From the simple story of a dangerous exploration, the book evolves into a look at the uncertainty of the historical record, the limits of obsession, and the commonalities between men at war and men at play. An excellent, gripping book. |
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| Article on traveling in Japan |
[Nov. 27th, 2006|06:51 pm] |
I wrote a brief article on How to visit Japan without losing your shirt for the website for the next Worldcon, Nippon 2007, which will be held in Yokohama.
If you've been to Japan before, it won't tell you anything you don't already know, but if you haven't, it might be helpful. I wrote it because after the location of Worldcon 2007 was announced, I kept hearing people say that they could never go to Japan because melons cost a hundred dollars, and I couldn't take it any more. |
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| Casino Royale |
[Nov. 27th, 2006|06:19 pm] |
I've never been a big fan of James Bond, though I treasure the memory of watching Octopussy, which was partly shot in India, in a New Delhi theatre so jam-packed that we all would have died if it had burst into flames, with a crowd of people who cheered madly every time they saw a location they recognized or when a random extra they knew walked into the frame. Otherwise, I've watched them when they were on TV or when someone else wanted to rent one. The ones with Sean Connery are fun, although annoyingly sexist and a bit slow in between the action set-pieces, and the Roger Moore and recent ones are a bit ridiculous. I've never much cared for camp, so the alleged humor of a lot of the dialogue eluded me.
I've also read one Ian Fleming novel, The Spy Who Loved Me, which was pretty awful although possibly not characteristic, being narrated by a totally unconvincing woman whom Bond rescues, and which devotes about a fourth of its length to her unremarkable, yet pruriently described sex life. It further alienated me by having her think things like "Every woman enjoys a bit of semi-rape." EWWW.
Casino Royale, which ditches the elaborate gadgets in favor of something vaguely resembling realism, was much more to my taste. Though I loved the ways in which it is in dialogue with the earlier Bond movies and the Bond iconography, it could easily be enjoyed as a particularly well-done action movie even if you've never seen a James Bond movie, or dislike the whole franchise. I suspect that the people most likely to dislike it are fans of the Roger Moore or Pierce Brosnan films, which this seems a reaction against.
There are terrific action sequences, but stripped-down, relying on physical stunts (like a marvelous chase at the beginning through a Tetris-like construction zone) or old-fashioned suspense (a variant on the bomb-defusing scene, which takes place entirely in the front seat of a car with Bond on the phone to headquarters.) Judi Dench and Daniel Craig have wonderful chemistry, and I now am dying for a prequel where we see M as a young agent. There is an annoying interlude with a random Bond girl early on, but the actual female lead, though not an action heroine, is believable and not helpless. Plus, she is involved in a shower scene that is not what you would normally think a shower scene would be, and is not only the emotional center of the movie, but has now gone on my top ten list of hottest scenes ever filmed.
When I saw Casino Royale, I realized why I have never been much of a Bond fan, though I do like a good action/spy movie and enjoyed many elements of the Bond films: I never believed that Bond could be hurt. Of course you know going in that Bond won't die; but I know when I watch Lord of the Rings that the Black Riders won't catch the hobbits in the Shire, and that Boromir will succumb to temptation, and yet I still feel a terrible suspense every time I see the film. It's all in the presentation: acting, script, and direction. I never believed for a second, in any Bond movie before this one, that anything really bad could ever happen to him. And that prevented me from ever being truly engaged with the character.
Casino Royale made me worry about Bond. Daniel Craig's knuckles bleed after he punches people, and his face bleeds when other people punch him. He's not a perfectly suave and unflappably competent gentleman who can stroll out of any confrontation with his hair slicked back and a perfect quip on his lips; but that's the persona you can see him creating for himself. This is the beginning of Bond, and the Bond icon is something we see being constructed onscreen. The whole movie is about the tension between the persona and the barely-glimpsed self, between elegant poker games and men getting beaten to death in stairways. Bond is arrogant, and he makes mistakes; and his mistakes have consequences. He's sexy, and he knows it and uses it to his advantage; but he's not really conventionally handsome, not like a model or a movie star. There's a line early on about the lifespan of a double-0 agent, and it echoes through the whole movie. This has got to be the only Bond movie ever where you believe that he could die. |
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| Heads' Up for Brian K. Vaughn |
[Nov. 25th, 2006|07:07 pm] |
I just heard that the latest volume of Y: The Last Man is out. Woo-hoo! Its author, Brian K. Vaughn, is the main reason why I haven't entirely abandoned non-manga comic books.
In Y, every living being with a Y chromosome instantly drops dead... except for a slacker named Yorick Brown (his Dad was into Shakespeare and his sister is named Hero), who is on the phone with his girlfriend Beth in Australia at the time, and his pet monkey, Ampersand. Power structures are instantly turned upside down, and countries now live or die depending on just how much power women had in them before: Israel immediately becomes the world's top military power, Australia is the only country that can use its submarines, and everyone is after Yorick for one reason or another. He immediately begins to make his way toward Australia, accompanied by a geneticist and a kick-ass secret agent.
There are great characters, almost all female; crisp dialogue; and really terrific plotting, much of it leading to evil cliffhangers. Pia Guerra, its main artist, draws women who look like real women with real bodies, not inflatable sex dolls. A completely addictive series.
I also adore Vaughn's Ex Machina, in which a man named Mitchell Hundred gets super powers, finds that being a powerful vigilante isn't all the comics would make you believe, and gives up his powers-- mostly-- to become mayor of New York. Several of the plotlines are based on real political incidents, such as a hilarious and very smart one in which Hundred discovers that the city of New York has accidentally funded the world's most offensive piece of art.
His third major series, Runaways, is the one which got me hooked on his writing, but it's less mature and complex than the other two (though still great fun.) A bunch of teenagers find that their parents are supervillains. It's a rich and funny metaphor, but recent issues have lost touch with it in favor of comic book geeking with other Marvel universe characters: amusing, but not what I'm reading the series for. |
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| Chain Mail, by Hiroshi Ishzaki: advance review |
[Nov. 3rd, 2006|05:16 pm] |
A while back I did the English adaptation of Chain Mail, a Japanese psychological suspense novel by Hiroshi Ishizaki. It's forthcoming from Tokyopop in January, but it just got its first advance review.
"English adaptation" means that I was given a literal English translation from the Japanese, and asked to adapt it into a fluid, readable, literary translation which captured the spirit of the book as I saw it. This turned out to be much more of a challenge than I had anticipated, because the novel is about four Japanese schoolgirls who collaborate on an online novel/role-playing game by each choosing a persona and writing chapters from that character's point of view.
So not only did I have to give the schoolgirls distinct voices in the sections taking place in their real lives, I had to write four different distinct voices that were convincing as having been written by those particular teenagers, all of whom had different writing styles. For example, portions of the book-within-the-book had to sound as if they were written by a talented and bright but somewhat sheltered Japanese schoolgirl who is trying to imitate American hard-boiled detective novels.
It was clear that in the original Japanese, all those voices were distinct. It was also clear what sort of voices they were supposed to be. But in the literal translation I was working from, they mostly sounded the same. So though I had a good idea of what the original read like, it wasn't actually there-- and so was up to me to reconstruct/create all those different voices.
The book that Chain Mail most reminds me of is Miyuki Miyabe's Shadow Family, a police procedural/thriller about the murder of a man who role-played a normal family life online. Both books are much more about the characters and their relationships than about who done it. |
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| God is Gay, and Chicken is Evil |
[Oct. 25th, 2006|04:31 pm] |
This weekend I visited a friend in San Francisco. She and I were eating lunch at the Ferry Building, overlooking the bay, when we began perusing the discount book rack that was outside the bookshop, on the pavement next to us. It was an odd mix of pretty good YA (like Nancy Werlin and Paul Fleischman), decent-looking gay lit, and horrible self-help books, like Healing the Amazon Wound and Cry of the Soul-Daughter.
And then there was God is Gay.
It was a slim, yellow, self-published paperback. The back cover quotes (which we decided were sock-puppets) were decidedly strange:
Ah, it is marvellous... I read and read and then ponder over it.
--Dr. K. D. Chauhan
Jagdishnagar Society
North Gujarat, India
I just read your book and I felt 'happiness creeping over me.'
G. Rommersheim
Munich, West Germany
['Happiness creeping over me' turned out to be a quote from GiG; the narrator, Bob, feels that sensation when he talks to his soon-to-be cult leader, Daniel.]
The chapters are all headed with peculiar drawings reminiscent of the Rider-Waite tarot deck, but with more animals, some with faceted eyes and all a disturbing cross between cute and evil, like the subliminal octopus in Serenity.
It's the swinging 70s. Bob, along with God, is gay. He lives in San Francisco with his lover, Steve. Then Bob meets Daniel, who is obviously a crazy cult leader. Only Bob doesn't think so. GiG is a love letter to Daniel, Daniel's superb musculature and gentle smile, and Daniel's whack-job philosophy, which consists of crazed nattering about androids and mouseries and "the sound of hearing, the music of the spheres," not to mention "the sight of seeing, the vision of the third eye." (No, there is no scent of smelling. Alas.)
Daniel points out that Asia and Asians are spiritually superior to non-Asians. (A concept which, in addition to creating many awkward encounters between obtuse Westerners and unfortunate Asians, ruined my childhood.)
Bob is overwhelmed by Daniel and his circle: A very handsome, muscular man let us in. As I was introduced to him, any doubts about his gayness were resolved when he cruised me. Plus, there is gay boxing (normal boxing, gay boxers), and Daniel takes Bob out for a banana split.
But Steve, whom Bob describes in phrases like an ugly sneer crossed Steve's face, cannot appreciate the wonder that is Daniel. In fact, he accuses Daniel of being a cult leader. But Bob finally drags Steve to a meeting, where Daniel goes on for pages and pages of gibberish, including Isn't it obvious that male gays are men, with the understanding of women; who understand instinctively that war, violence, and hatred are wrong. Bob is sure this will make Steve see the light. But Steve takes Bob aside and tells him that Daniel reminds him of Charles Manson.
Horrified, Bob runs to Daniel and says, "You won't believe what Steve said about you!"
Daniel says, "Did he say I reminded him of Charles Manson?"
Since Daniel wasn't there, this convinces Bob that Daniel is clairvoyant and telepathic, because there is no other way Daniel could have known Steve said that. It does not occur to Bob that perhaps Daniel often reminds people of Charles Manson.
Needless to say, Bob dumps Steve and runs away with the perfect and telepathic Daniel. That was the point when we noticed that the book was coauthored by Ezekiel (who presumabably used to be known as Bob) and... Daniel!
There is a clearly fictional chapter in which Steve later apologizes for not being wise or brave enough to embrace Daniel. I think that Steve is now happily working for Google, and he and his handsome live-in lover sometimes do dramatic readings from GiG at dinner parties.
Having finished GiG, we then picked up a novel by bestselling fantasy author Terry Goodkind, and opened it to a six-page scene in which the heroine is menaced by... an evil chicken.
No, this is not played for laughs. There are more excerpts at fandom wank if you don't believe me.
The bird let out a slow chicken cackle. It sounded like a chicken, but in her heart she knew it wasn't. In that instant, she completely understood the concept of a chicken that was not a chicken. This looked like a chicken, like most of the Mud People's chickens. But this was no chicken. This was evil manifest.
She is terrified! For six pages! This is the heroine-- scared of a chicken.
Kahlan frantically tried to think as the chicken bawk-bawk-bawked.
In the dark, the chicken thing let out a low chicken cackle laugh.
In between being terrorized, Kahlan remembers her perfect boyfriend, Richard. Brilliant, strong, probably omnipotent, Richard comes across as a Daniel clone. Did I mention that he is wise, too?
Richard had been adamant about everyone being courteous to chickens. |
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| Clan of Death: Ninja, by Al Weiss and Tom Philbin |
[Oct. 10th, 2006|07:28 pm] |
I’ve been meaning to write this up for a while, ever since I pulled it off a dusty Little Tokyo shelf and bought it for a quarter, but it’s hard to do it justice.
The cover features an embossed black-clad ninja against a black background, with only his (rather Caucasian-looking, and light brown) eyes and katana visible. The title is in red. Above the title, in white underlined caps, it says The incredible true story! Below the title, also in white caps: In the quiet of a whisper, come the deadly soldiers of the dark.
Here’s the back cover: The amazing true story! From the ancient world of the Shogun to the modern terrors of Shibumi, here are the ninja and their arts of sudden death!
The overleaf claims that modern ninja are even better fighters than the old ones, because they have access to a wider range of techniques.
The book begins at a modern seminar on ninjutsu, taught by modern ninjutsu master Stephen K. Hayes. Hayes asks everyone what would make them willing to kill someone. Most give idealistic reasons; one says he’d do it for profit.
What we had seen impressed us. What we had heard in those last moments from those who attended from all parts of the country (we have no idea how many of them were truly ninja) was an introduction to the diversity of ninja thought—a microcosm of ninja philosophy.
Weiss and Philbin backtrack to do a decent, albeit totally lacking in citations, history of the ninja. Having cunningly laid down their four-page groundwork of history mixed with historical speculation, they promptly begin erecting an edifice of crazy (albeit rather touchingly enthusiastic) fantasy.
During World War II, for example, the Japanese high command had ninja-trained troops deployed to assassinate General Douglas MacArthur if and when the opportunity arose.
I confess, I would love to see a movie or manga about that.
But the ninja did not fail very often. Information on their specific World War II activities is scant, but according to Ron Duncan, a ninja practitioner living in New York, there were many strange incidents which had a ninjaesque quality…
But do not think that the ninja are a thing of the past!
In 1948, some ninja switched sides, or at least became employed by the CIA, says Duncan. … “As far as I know, there are still ninja in the CIA.”
He recounts the assault on the Iranian embassy by the SAS to rescue hostages: …the core members are in black, only their eyes showing through the hoods covering their heads. In short, they were in the uniform of the ninja.
“They were ninja,” says Duncan. “Absolutely.”
But wait! There is even more compelling evidence for the existence of modern ninja!
Someone told us that he was in Kyushu two summers ago and went into a room where there were five or six businessmen standing around talking. “It was only later,” he says, “That I learned they were all ninja.”
The rest of the book recounts ninja folklore, stories about ninja, and ninja techniques, interspersed with photos of black-clad guys sneaking around and climbing trees. The jaw-dropping chapter “I Am Ninja!” is about a boy ninja who gets revenge on an enemy by having sex with an insane prostitute and so infecting himself with a fatal venereal disease, and then presenting himself to his enemy as a catamite. But he rejoices at the success of his plan, even though it gets him tortured to death.
After all… he is ninja! |
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| The Squealing |
[Oct. 6th, 2006|10:46 am] |
Last night I started watching a TV show, Supernatural, in which a pair of cute brothers investigate supernatural stuff. It began at a carnival. There were clowns. Have I ever mentioned that clowns scare me? A particularly creepy clown waved at a little girl, in a slightly mechanical manner that made it even creepier.
"Look, Daddy," said the girl. "The clown's waving at me."
"What clown?" asked her mother. We see that from the parents' point of view, there is no one there.
I had a cat in my lap, or I would have leaped up and turned off the TV right then. (The remote is buried under a pile of junk somewhere.)
The family is driving home from the carnival at night. The clown is by the side of the road.
That night, the little girl is alone in her second-floor bedroom. She looks out the window. There, on the lawn below, looking up at her, is the clown.
I leaped up, dislodging the cat, and slammed the off button.
That night I was woken up in the middle of the night by my smoke detection giving off an obnoxious, high-pitched squeal to inform me that its battery was low. I couldn't figure out how to disable it, so I pulled a pillow over my head and tried to go back to sleep. But it was still pretty loud, and then after a while I started hearing a different sound, a scratching, like my cats were molesting my wood furniture.
I got up to investigate, but the cats were nowhere to be seen. I went into the living room, and heard the sound again. I looked out the window.
There, on the lawn, looking up at me, was a clown.
Oh, no way, I thought. There is just no way I would see that TV show last night and then, in a total coincidence, find a clown on the lawn.
I looked out the window again. The clown was still there.
Then I heard the scratching noise again. I ran to the other window. Another clown had set up a ladder and was climbing up the side of the house.
I opened the window so I could talk to the clown. "What's going on here?" I asked. "What are you doing?"
The clown smiled and pointed over my shoulder. I whirled around. There was another clown standing behind me.
"What are you doing here?" I yelled. "How'd you get in? Get out!"
The clown smiled, picked up my five-pound dumb bells, and began to juggle them.
"Stop that!" I cried. "You'll drop them and scratch the floors! Go away!"
The floor creaked behind me. I turned around. The other two clowns were climbing in the window.
One of them took out a horn and honked it. "EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!" it shrilled. "EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE..."
My eyes popped open. I was lying in bed, and the smoke alarm was squealing.
So it had all been a dream. Nothing but a horrible, horrible dream.
Or was it?
I hear a scratching at the win |
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| John M. Ford: Part I |
[Oct. 3rd, 2006|02:12 pm] |
John M. Ford was a marvelous writer, one of my favorites. I never met him, but was a great fan of his work; so my memorial will be to see if I can stir up a bit of discussion about his books.
I read his two Star Trek novels— perhaps the works most frequently cited in discussion when the question arises as to whether fanfic or media fiction can ever be considered great art— and soon began the long quest to read everything else he ever wrote. I think I only ever managed to buy one of his books when it was new: the others were all obtained by scouring used bookshops, ordering online from used bookshops, borrowing from friends, or interlibrary loans.
I went to those lengths because his prose was so beautifully precise, his images so right yet unexpected, his scenes so memorable, the emotions evoked so powerful. Long after I’d forgotten the exact sequence of events, fragments stayed in my mind, bright as glass: a wizard literally and horribly unmade by his own magic; an educational filmstrip called “Dilithium and You!” a tape recorder that stops and starts at a rehearsal, marking the impossibility of ever knowing the truth of events in retrospect, the impossibility of not trying to figure it out; “Jacks clasp Jills’ hands and step onto the sky;” a paramedic on the border between Elfland and post-apocalypse learns that a small side benefit of magic is clothes that fit perfectly; a boy plays a Grand Master, and learns to lose brilliantly; a girl tries and fails to create a beautiful ending for a long-running game, a long-running friendship.
If they're so good, why, then, are the majority of his books out of print?
There are some writers whose cult following and lack of mainstream popularity baffled me. John M. Ford was not one of them. Though I have long adored his writing, it is perfectly obvious why most of his works will only ever appeal to a smallish subset of readers. Though much of his work reads quite easily and fluidly, the plots (as opposed to the scenes) tend to be buried, mysterious, accessible only by repeated readings and much thought. Though their emotions come through strongly, his characters’ motivations tend to be difficult to read; and while each individual scene is strong and clear by itself, I am often baffled by much of the overall story.
But I tend to remember scenes better than stories anyway, and as political machinations often lose me even when the author is trying her darndest to make them clear, I am used to reading while confused. Also, not everyone finds his plotting as perplexing as I do. They are probably also the ones who get the elaborately allusive jokes he made online, of which I’d say I caught about one in five.
That being said, not all of his work is difficult, some of it is extremely funny, and all of it is worthwhile.
How Much For Just The Planet?
This hilarious Star Trek novel is not difficult in the slightest, and might well be enjoyable even if you hate Star Trek—though it will be funnier if you’re a fan. (Some fans detest it because it does not take Kirk, Spock, et al too seriously; I'd say it is a laughter which springs from love of a series which could be both dumb and wonderful.) It’s a farce, and also a musical comedy. With pie fights. And “Dilithium and You!” Co-starring an out of control Vulcan milkshake.
The Final Reflection
Another Star Trek novel, also accessible to non-fans, also even better if you are one. It’s written from the point of view of the Klingons, for whom Ford constructed a culture that is much more complex and interesting than what is actually portrayed on the show. The familiar Trek characters are limited to cameo appearances. It’s a somber, intense novel about war and negotiation, as performed on the battlefield, across a game board, at gunpoint, and heart to heart. It is unfortunate, but not terribly distracting, that one character’s name is better-known as a hair restorer. But unlike Terry Brooks’ twelve-stepping druid Alannon or Guy Gavriel Kay’s Aileron (an airplane part), Rogaine had no other meaning when Ford coined it. I can mostly follow the plot of this one.
Web of Angels
Early cyberpunk. I own this, but recall nothing of it except that I never did manage to figure out what was going on in it. I will try again some day.
The Scholars of Night
A non-fantasy spy novel. I remember enjoying this despite never really knowing what was going on, but have not read it lately because I had to interlibrary loan it, and have never seen a copy for sale, and so do not remember it well. I have deep envy in my heart for the two people I know who own a copy.
The Dragon Waiting
This doesn't involve dragons in any conventional sense, though the dragon is more than a metaphor. It involves vampires, but unconventional ones; magicians, but extremely unconventional ones; and a highly unusual portrayal of Richard III.
It's written in prose both exquisite and violent, like a very sharp knife aimed at your throat. It contains a number of unusual and memorable characters, down to the wizard who appears in the first chapter and never again thereafter, but who looms over the rest of the book like a menacing shadow. The dark side of magic is darker here than I've ever seen it portrayed, but partakes of no cliches about human sacrifice or anything like that. There are love stories, friendships, and human predicaments which are moving, emotional, and real.
All that being said, I'm damned if I can produce a plot summary. It's an alternate history novel in which Christianity is a little-known heresy and Gaul is Byzantine instead of Roman. Loosely, it involves a woman doctor, a vampire, a soldier, a magician, and Richard III, all involved in machinations so complicated that I had no idea what they were up to at any given moment. Luckily, the characters' emotional motivations were generally clear, so I read happily until I reached the end, and then put the book aside, satisfied.
Growing Up Weightless
At first glance, this seems a young adult novel in the Heinlein mold, told in clear, precise, elegant prose, about a young man growing up on a Lunar colony, full of hyper-realistic and clever extrapolation.
Actually, other than the fact that it's sf and all the s appears impeccable (and often more detailed than I, at least, cared about) it bears more resemblance to a typical young adult novel than a typical Heinlein novel. There are world-shaking events of a typically opaque nature going on way, way in the background, but the protagonist, Matt Ronay, is only peripherally involved in them. It's mostly about a boy and his group of friends in an interesting milieu, and how he comes to terms with his father and with growing up. It's extremely atmosperic, packed with bright details, and, despite a total lack of melodrama, quietly heartbreaking.
Next post will cover The Last Hot Time, The Princes of the Air, and some short stories.
Please put "spoiler" in the headline of your comment if you're going to discuss with spoilers; unspoiled readers beware. |
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