(Book #19) Henry James - The Turn of the Screw

I hadn't intended on reading Henry James's 'The Turn of the Screw', but as I wandered around the library a couple weeks ago, I came upon it, and recalled a past episode of LOST where it was mentioned. It’s a short book, so I assumed it would be a fast and appropriate read to blast though before the final episode of LOST last Sunday. In the end it didn't turn out to be all that much related to the show or that fast of a read.

As I started reading the book, I couldn't help but realize how overly verbose literally every sentence was, taking a paragraph of extravagant words to illustrate what could have been related in a few words. This also resulted in much confusion and longer reading time. The book, having been written over a century ago, reflects the style and language of its time and tells of a governess charmed into overseeing two young children out in the country. Life on this estate is not as it seems, and the presence of mysterious spirits adds a "horror" element to the story. As the story plods along, the governess is slowly driven mad by her own paranoia. As her psychological state takes hold in her mind (hence the metaphorical screw-turning), I was expecting some sort of twist or great reveal after all the suspense and build up, but it never comes and I was left dissatisfied. My initial reaction was that I had missed the ending, that somewhere in the dialectical rambling was the key phrase and I just missed the reveal, but alas, the ending was completely left open to interpretation.

I suppose some might say that this ending might relate to LOST after all for the very reasons I just described, but to those hypothetical naysayers, I would strongly disagree! The finale was beautiful and a great culminations of 6 years of drama, action and character and in contrast I could not be sufficiently moved by Turn of the Screw's 150 pages of haughty melodrama.

Moving on…

(Book #18) Mike Nelson - Movie Megacheese

For my next book, I read Mike Nelson's 'Movie Megacheese' . Nelson being most notable as the guy from Mystery Science Theater 3000 that talks over B-movies with two robots. I will admit that I have not seen much of this show at all, but do appreciate the occasional crappy flick once in a while. In this book, Mike Wilson has no shame in hammering away at every subpar action movie, or romantic comedy that came out between 1980 and 2000, when this book was released. Classic movies such as Face/Off, Anaconda and anything starring Jean-Claude Van Damme are appropriately skewered. The likes of Patrick Swayze, Paulie Shore and all of the Baldwins are also the subjects of much cinematic ire, and rightly so! Swayze's Road House is actually held as the very pinnacle of bad movies and is the benchmark against which every other movie is compared!

My wife was actually who suggest I read this book because she is a fan of MST3K(as it is termed) , and that "it is a funny, quick read and will be good research." I will admit that it was indeed those things, an entertaining read that provided a little insight into amusing movie reviews that roast the mediocre. This is something that I have been interested in doing, but for a very specific breed of movie or television, those involving architects as characters. It fascinates me that a particular profession can be so poorly represented in film and television. Likewise, Nelson cannot seem to resist going after poor depictions of pretty much anything! His method is commendable and he fully commits to experiencing these movies completely, not only making it through the movie but forcing himself to watch it again with DVD commentaries and going through all the bonus features. The reviews didn't get too in depth, and he often side-tracked with personal anecdotes, but you could tell that as silly and cranky as his essays were, Nelson was writing about a subject that he thoroughly enjoyed and spent more time with than should be humanly capable.

(Book #17) Malcolm Jay - 50 Years At The Craps Table

I picked up this book called 50 Years At The Craps Tables from the library as a quick and informative read in preparation for my forthcoming trip to Las Vegas. It was mostly filled with anecdotes related to craps and gambling, but was not as informative as I had hoped. I didn't say all the books I read were going to be masterpieces, so at least I got another one done.

Moving on…

(Book #16) Hunter S. Thompson - Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas

Perhaps it is apropos that I finished reading Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas a mere week before actually going to Vegas myself. The book opens suitably on the open road, Highway 15, between Los Angeles and Las Vegas, as so many trips to Sin City often start. This is where we meet our drug-addled pair of characters, a version of Thompson himself and his nameless Samoan attorney, driving wildly in a red convertible towards their destination. The duo are on some sort of wild journey of which the impetus is established, but the driving force behind their story is indistinguishable through all the mad ravings and cringe worthy actions. When it is eventually revealed it's still unclear if they can be taken seriously at all, if they are really searching for meaning of the American Dream, or if that is just where they happened to land when the dust finally settled.

Thompson writes in a style all of his own , something he calls "Gonzo Journalism". It resides somewhere between journalism and fiction, which according to him should be, and in most cases are, indistinguishable. Regardless, the writing style of Thompson is all his own and unabashed in its bizarre sincerity. Fear and Loathing at its root is about the drug culture of the early 70's, but also illustrates the socio-political landscape of the Post-Vietnam, anti-drug Nixon Era. Some chapters in the book clearly reflect Thompson's opinions of these subjects, while others leave the reader struggling to find context or reason within the alienating, albeit very funny at times, madness. It is also worth noting the fantastic Ralph Steadman illustrations speckled throughout the book, giving some graphic representations of some of the more vivid and disturbing imagery.

In responding to the reading as a whole, I would say that it was a different but certainly entertaining read. Not having a whole lot of knowledge about the author, his work or his character, this book has left me a little intrigued about him as a person or his other writings, but I suspect Hunter S. Thompson is someone best handled in small doses.

(Book #15) Kurt Vonnegut - Slaughterhouse-Five

I finished Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five late Tuesday night, so I am a little late getting to the write-up. Finding time to write these has been much more difficult than finding time to do the actual reading. Better get down to business…

Overall it was a quick but engaging read revolving around a perspective of a gruesome, but lesser known event in history, the firebombing of Dresden in Germany towards the end of World War 2. The first chapter in the book, which was more of an introduction, presented the reader with the premise. It was told through the eyes of Vonnegut himself as he grappled with the subject and the people involved and the act of writing about it. I was surprised to find that Chapter Two introduced us to a completely new character that we followed for the rest of the book. Clearly he was an amalgam of Vonnegut's personal experiences churned by a plot device, time travel, which leads the reader on a dance before, after and around the crux of the story. Through time travel, we see these poignant and vivid moments of the character's life tied together and juxtaposed throughout the narrative. The reader sees the moments as the character does, not as they occurred but through flash-backs and flash-forwards. The character has preexisting impressions on what is going to happen because he has already lived or seen it, whereas the reader has different but similar impressions, based on what we have gleaned from Vonnegut's first chapter and what we have already read. The true climax of the book comes in the form of a memory, and in fact is the only memory described in the book. Whereas all the life's experiences are offered by means of the time travel, we only receive one truly human moment, the remembering of the massacre at Dresden. It is the knowledge that these events actually occurred in our own history which leaves the reader with a chilling impression which remains even after the book ends. So it goes.

(Book #13) Shakespeare - Hamlet & (Book #14) Tom Stoppard - Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

A Double Feature…

Looking back on my education, the lack of Shakespeare I was required to read surprises me. "Romeo & Juliet" and "The Tempest" were my only forays into the great Bard, and in the last few years I have really wanted to check out more of his work. "Hamlet" has been on my 'list' for some time and it was good to finally get around to reading it (Thank you, Shakespeare iPhone app!). I was pleasantly surprised to discover that I could actually understand what was really being said while reading the high English. "Hamlet" is one of the greatest tragedies ever told, and as such has been analyzed, reinterpreted, and reborn by each new generation for centuries. It is a tale of revenge, treachery and madness in which a chain of events is set off by the murder of the King of Denmark. Fatherless and stripped of his birthright, Hamlet teeters on the edge of madness while trying to expose the truth. There is a continual sense of unbalance between the characters that wants to be righted, but for each action there are harsh reactions, which escalate through the tale to its bloody conclusion.

As a follow up to "Hamlet" I read another play, "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead", by Tom Stoppard, which borrows two peculiar characters from Shakespeare's play and breathes new life into them. This pastiche weaves its way through the original tale, but through the eyes of Hamlet's two bumbling friends. Original dialogue is used to bookend the absurd banter that bounces back and forth between Guildenstern and Rosencrantz. As a counterpoint to the drama of "Hamlet", this play was genuinely funny, while still hinting at the unsettling events that were occurring elsewhere. Beyond the Abbot & Costello-esque bantering back-and-forth, there is a philosophical dialectic over deeper aspects of life. This volleying juxtaposes the unfiltered thoughts with the tragedies that are simultaneously occurring elsewhere. In the end, the result is the same, as it had to be. These parallel accounts address both sides of the same coin, a coin which Stoppard literally had his characters use to ponder the idea of fate. The pairing of these writings back-to-back provided a richer experience of the story as a whole, and almost begs the reader to go back and revisit "Hamlet" anew and with a different perspective.

(Book #12) Dave Eggers - A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

I finished the book 'A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius', by Dave Eggers yesterday and have been trying to think of what to say about it ever since. This could be the result of my mixed read of the material, or it could be because I am not entirely excited to be writing this review on a Friday night. Maybe a little of both, but I will try to remain objective.

This book (as have so many others that I have been reading) started with a 30-40 page introduction. Though I was given reprieve from the author that it was not essential to the story and could essentially be skipped, I was not compelled to break the rules of my little experiment and wound up reading it anyways. This introduction, as well as other pre-supplemental material given before the actual content, gave context to the story and was more lively than expected. The tone was fantastic and I finished this extremely excited to read the rest of the "work". The book, as it was introduced, was more or less a memoir, though some areas were tweaked, exaggerated or altered to benefit the overall path of the characters or maybe just Eggers himself.

Throughout the story, we learn of the "heartbreaking" aspects of his life, particularly the early-ish deaths of his parents and the way this affected his life and the lives around him and which started off the chain of events that unfold throughout the arc of the book. I will say that there were many parts of the book that were incredibly human and captured the pain of not only the moments themselves but the thoughts of Eggers and the realities he faced. These were juxtaposed with other thoughts or activities in his life that were less sweeping and more mundane. All of these events, though, were seen through the same filter, having been processed and worked out on the pages in front of the writer. The fragmented stories, judgments and opinions laid out in the book read to me almost like a journal or blog. For whom was this work to be benefitting? Eggers? The reader? The other people in his life? I had to remind myself that this book was written in the pre-blog, pre 9/11 era (2000), that perhaps putting this raw feed of inner dialogue 'out there' was not so commonplace as it is now.

I know this book was hailed as a fantastic piece of modern literature, that its format and tone perhaps captured the zeitgeist in ways other books of the time may not have, and for that I concede that it was worth reading. I might not go so far as to encourage people to read it, but I wouldn't dissuade them if they were interested. To me, it was a mixed bag. A collection of oft-times pretentious thoughts and anecdotes and streams of consciousness that somehow got pieced together to form a sort-of story. I kept wondering to myself as I read, "Why is this person significant? Why do I care about who I am reading about? Do I even care?" Maybe not, but I cannot deny that Eggers captured a slice of Americana that some of us, myself included, might find hard to resist relating to. In the end, I was unsure of how to respond, and I still am even writing this now. Maybe that was the point, to wonder if this writer was indeed something special or if he was just another asshole coming to grips with his past, like the rest of us.