Watchmen (A Review)

** This review contains spoilers. **

Heard joke once: Man goes to doctor. Says he's depressed. Says life seems harsh and cruel. Says he feels all alone in a threatening world where what lies ahead is vague and uncertain. Doctor says "Treatment is simple. Great clown Pagliacci is in town tonight. Go and see him. That should pick you up." Man bursts into tears. Says "But Doctor... I am Pagliacci."

In Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons's Watchmen, there is a character called the Comedian who is just like the Joker from The Dark Knight in his gleeful contempt for humanity. And he was one of the good guys.

Somewhere in the multiverse, in a realm where superheroes exist, the Keene Act of 1977 outlawed "masked vigilantes," with the exception of those who worked for the United States government. Edward Blake, a.k.a. The Comedian, continued under federal contract, committing atrocities in the Vietnam War, until one day in 1985 he was thrown out his New York City apartment window. One of his few remaining admirers, a jaded rogue known only as Rorschach (described by Moore as a study in a real-world Batman – the end result is, unfortunately, "a nutcase") becomes convinced that someone is targeting costumed adventurers and sets out to warn his ex-comrades. Things get even shadier after the Comedian's funeral (attended by such notables as the Dan Drieberg, once the Nite Owl II; Doctor Manhattan; Laurie Juspeczyk the second Silk Spectre; and Adrian Veidt, previously called Ozymandias) when godlike superhuman Doctor Manhattan is publicly accused of giving a several of his former associates cancer and subsequently exiles himself to Mars. Once hailed as America's ultimate weapon ("The superman exists and he's American!"), his departure emboldens the Soviet Union to invade Afghanistan and plunge the nuclear powers into political instability.


As World War III lurks on the horizon, an ominous conspiracy becomes increasingly apparent, as Veidt is attacked in his office building, Rorschach is framed for murder, and rumors arise of a mysterious island where scientists and avant-garde artists labor together on . . . something. Watchmen is best described as a multilayered superhero mystery written as postmodernist metafiction – that is, "writing about writing," or making the artificiality of the art apparent to the reader. As one retired hero (Hollis Mason, the original Nite Owl) recalls in his memoir:

For me, it all started in 1938, the year when they invented the super-hero. I was too old for comic books when the first issue of ACTION COMICS came out, or at least too old to read them in public . . .

There was a lot of stuff in that first issue. There were detective yarns and stories about magicians whose names I can't remember, but from the moment I set eyes on it I had eyes only for the Superman story. Here was something that presented the basic morality of the pulps without all their darkness and ambiguity. The atmosphere of the horrific and faintly sinister that hung around the Shadow was nowhere to be seen in the bright primary colors of Superman's world, and there was no hint of the repressed sex-urge which had sometimes been apparent in the pulps, to my discomfort and embarrassment. . .

It set off a lot of things I'd forgotten about, deep inside me, and kicked off all those old fantasies that I'd had when I was thirteen or fourteen back into gear.

Pastiche is also evident in the snippets of magazine interviews, newspaper articles, and book excerpts that precede each chapter and frame the costumed adventurers of this alternate 1980s in their greater social context. Mason's nostalgic recollections of Superman's cheery can-do moral absolutism later become a moment of sadness, almost, as the contrast to the chaos of the present is increasingly apparent. A dark supernatural pirate story called The Black Freighter that recurs throughout Watchmen as a comic in a comic reflects the current mood far more accurately. Its crazed protagonist kills his wife in her bed in a deluded attempt to save her from murderous buccaneers, not unlike the Watchmen villain, who "saves" the world by slaughtering half of New York City.

Not surprisingly, Watchmen is, above all, an attempt to deconstruct the superhero myth. But I'm not sure if I'd call it a brutally realistic view of contemporary society and human nature or some kind of critique on the morally questionable tenets of postmodernism. Specifically, the survival of ultimate truth in an information-drenched world where hyperreality seemingly replaces the materially real by attaching empty stimulus response to artificial, consumer-driven signs and symbols (Baudrillard's third-order simulacra). It is, after all, the villain who says the following:

"Observation:

"Multi-screen viewing is seemingly anticipated by Burroughs' cut-up technique. He suggested re-arranging words and images to evade rational analysis, allowing subliminal hints of the future to leak through. . . An impending world of exotica, glimpsed only peripherally.

"Perceptually, this simultaneous input engages me like the kinetic equivalent of an abstract or impressionist painting. . . Phosphor-dot swirls juxtapose; meanings coalesce from semiotic chaos before reverting to incoherence.

"Transient and elusive, this must be grasped quickly:

"Computer animations imbue even breakfast cereals with an hallucinogenic futurity; music channels process information-blips, avoiding linear presentation, implying limitless personal choice. These reference points established, an emergent worldview becomes gradually discernible amidst the media's white noise.

"This jigsaw-fragment model of tomorrow aligns itself piece by piece, specific areas necessarily obscured by indeterminacy. However, broad assumptions regarding the postulated future may be drawn. We can imagine its ambiance. We can hypothesize its psychology.

"In conjunction with massive forecasted technological acceleration approaching the millennium, this oblique and shifting cathode mosaic uncovers the blueprint for an era of new sensations and possibilities. An era of the conceivable made concrete . . . of the casually miraculous."

Interesting to note the parallels there to Don DeLillo's novel White Noise, also published in 1985.


I saw a special on American comics on the History Channel awhile ago, which discussed a shift in the image of the superhero that occurred sometime around the early '80s, in which moral ambiguity began to swirl around a new brood of painfully human or just pissed-off anti-heroes, much like those of Watchmen. I think someone argued that this ended up ruining the genre (Spawn, for example, has been accused of being excessively psychopathic). A legitimate complaint from a traditionalist standpoint, and one I would be inclined to agree with after being let down by the Watchmen ending. Guy kills half of New York City in a megalomaniacal attempt to bring about world peace and they let him get away with it? But then I thought about it more and realized that a valiant battle of good-versus-evil ending in a shining, redemptive victory for the despised, fallen heroes, desirable as that might have been, would be too simplistic for the grayscale universe that Moore and Gibbons sought to portray. And again, I also feel that there's a critique going on here, or maybe I'm projecting. Why can't the good guys win and evil be punished? Is that really so naïve? Is Dean Koontz right when he condemns the giggling nihilists who write so merrily about disorder and meaninglessness? Who are said to "smile into the abyss" and "laugh in the void"? Granted, there's little humor in The Watchmen and it really does speak a lot of truths about the human condition and the plight of morality in contemporary society. And I'm not actually sure the bad guy does get away with it. It would seem that the media, which had hitherto contributed to the hysteria that resulted in Manhattan's exile, may do something positive after all – Rorschach's journal describing the whole ordeal has ended up in the hands of his favorite right-wing newspaper.

But overall, it is humanity that drives Watchmen: humanity at its best and at its worst. I read The Decameron and found myself amused at how little our nature has changed since the fourteenth century (our capacity for crude humor seems thoroughly undiminished). But today (and in the 1980s) there is a new paradox: that of technology, which has given us superhuman powers to both move the earth and to destroy it. "All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance," as T.S. Eliot once said. Exemplifying this is Doctor Manhattan, accidental post-human entity created, as many superheroes such as Spiderman have been, by chance exposure to something out of a laboratory. Now add that the emerging postmodernist worldview - which is inherently nebulous, unstable, and even nihilistic – and what is the result? That, I believe, is what Watchmen really explores.

In short: Watchmen a visually striking, superbly-written graphic novel, but definitely not breezy reading. Moore and Gibbons may have built their story on a genre that has historically centered on good triumphing over evil, but their updated vision has none of Superman's rose-tinted valiance. Because the real world is rarely so pretty.

Here's the trailer for the upcoming movie, BTW. Man, they better not screw it up. Sure looks good, though.

The Best and Worst of 2008

To commemorate the approach of 2009, many book bloggers are now posting about the best (and worst) titles they read this closing year. Larry at OF Blog of the Fallen, for example, has already done several entries covering different genres of speculative fiction he has read over the course of 2008, while Joe Sherry of Adventures in Reading has also done his share of yearly wrap-up listings. Nancy R. of When in Doubt, Read!, meanwhile, has decided to simply catalog "Books You Really Should Read at Some Point in Your Life So Why Not This Year." This, I thought is an excellent idea.

So here I go!

The Best

Shreve Stockton, The Daily Coyote (Memoir)
A professional photographer, living in a cabin with no plumbing in backwater Wyoming, recounts her first year living with Charlie the coyote. A beautiful homage to nature, cowboys, and wide open Western spaces. (2008)

Dan Simmons, Hyperion (Science Fantasy)
What can I say about this beyond what I've already said? This is a book to take your breath away. Pure imagination that takes you on a journey through a dying empire where people still dream of transcendence. (1989)

Ferenc Karinthy, Metropole (Hungarian Literature)
A surreal tale that almost out-Kafkas Kafka. A linguist boards the wrong plane and finds himself in a mysterious city with an utterly incomprehensible language. No way out. What does it all mean??? (1970)

Marguerite Duras, The Sailor from Gibraltar (French Literature/Romance)
A lovely travel tale light as a cloud. Take me away to the blue waters of the Mediterranean where wealthy widows sale endlessly, looking for the sailor from Gibraltar. (1952)

Esther Tusquets, The Same Sea as Every Summer (LGBT/Spanish Literature)
A sensual stream-of-conscious that reads like extended poetry. A middle-aged woman's affair with a female student that also reflects on the failure of the bourgeoisie artist in Spain's post-Franco years. (1978)

Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash (Science Fiction – Cyberpunk)
Slick, hip vision of a dystopic near-future where corporations rule, virtual reality is all the rage, hackers battle charismatic cult leaders, Sumerian myth is made real, and pizza delivering can sometimes get out of hand. (1992)

Victor Serge, Unforgiving Years (Russian Literature)
Brutal. Tragic. Hypnotic. Jaded. Beautiful. Human. Follows two world-weary Russian communists from the 1930s to early '50s. On the run from former comrades in Depression-era Paris, undercover in the ruins of Germany on the brink of defeat, trying to forget it all in Mexico. Finally safe? Or does the past never die? (mid-40's)

Dave Gibbons and Alan Moore, Watchmen (Graphic Novel)
A visually striking romp through an alternate 1985 that is powerful, poignant, bleak to the point of suffocation, and hopeful through humanity's darkest hour. (1986)

D.H. Lawrence, Women in Love (English Literature)
A darkly poetic look at the tumultuous dynamics of human relationships, with an emphasis on violence and destruction that mirrors the trauma of the Great War. (1920)

The Worst

Neil Gaiman, American Gods (Fantasy Adventure)
Not a bad book per se. More of a let-down. Still, I can see how others might like it. (2001)

Peter David, Before Dishonor (Science Fiction - Star Trek)
Hahaha, I get it! This wasn't really Peter David! It was doubtlessly the same ghost-writing imposter who butchered Blood Canticle. (2007)

Dean Koontz, The Darkest Evening of the Year (Suspense/Thriller)
Dean oh Dean, how far you have fallen. Remember Phantoms? You used to be great, Dean. What happened? Here: the New York Times says it better than I ever will. (2007)

Richard Matheson, I Am Legend (Post-Apocalyptic)
Again, not really a bad book. Just disappointing. (1954)

Anja Snellman, Sonja. O. Was Here (Finnish Literature)
If disrespecting yourself and engaging in reckless, irresponsible behavior is supposed to be feminism, then count me out. (1981)

Kurt Vonnegut, Timequake (American Literature)
Had a couple of humorous moments, but ultimately pointless. An old man rambling on about nothing. I didn't even finish it. (1997)

Henry Miller, The Tropic of Cancer (American Literature)
Tragic, really. He was a talented writer. Too bad he wrote this. Diary of a Sociopathic Jerk would've been a more accurate title. Although he's probably just the type of guy Sonja O. would've slept with. . . (1934)

Stephenie Meyer, Twilight (YA Paranormal Romance)
JESUS FUCKING CHRIST! (2005)

The Daily Coyote (A Review)

Back in November, shortly after the election, I blogged about The Daily Coyote, a website I had read about in a recent issue of People magazine and fallen in love with. Shreve Stockton is both an amazing woman and a highly talented photographer. Add that to a hunky cowboy boyfriend and an absolutely loveable menagerie of animals – Eli (cat), Charlie (coyote), and Chloe (dog) – and the result is irresistible. It's the ultimate off-the-grid fantasy. A book deal was inevitable.

The Daily Coyote, Internet version, definitely gives the impression of interspecies harmony of epic cuteness proportions. (A cat that bosses a coyote! Cuddly puppy! SQUEEEE!) There is a brief note of unrest, nevertheless, that comes in around February 2008, when Stockton briefly noted that Charlie's growing maturity had called upon her to become stronger and more assertive in order to maintain her alpha status. Also intriguing is the identity of the "MC," or My Cowboy, who is frequently mentioned as a coyote expert and dog owner but remains otherwise mysterious. And although Shreve is first and foremost a photographer, the written portions of the website – which originated as a blog here on Blogger – have always hinted at a strong writing ability as well. So what the book The Daily Coyote does is to basically fill in the cracks and answer everyone's burning questions, such as: Just what led a city girl to a Wyoming town of 300? What happened to the rest of Charlie's family? Where did Eli and Chloe come from? How did Shreve and MC meet, and what exactly is their relationship?

Actually, Shreve's prose gets a bit "purple" at times over the course of the book but the overall result is nevertheless a truly wonderful memoir that is as much about its authoress, the surrounding "big sky" West, and the hardy folks who live there as it is about Charlie. For the first several chapters, the story is wonderfully human and endearing; especially once Shreve acquires that tiny orphaned coyote who can barely open his eyes. The ensuing events will be familiar to anyone who's read the blog, but the book enables Shreve to go more in-depth, not only with regards to Charlie, but also her relationship with Mike ("MC") and his tragic past. Even when she actually incorporates written blog entries (such as this one) into the narrative, the surrounding context fleshes them out, whereas previously they were isolated islands on a photography-oriented site.

And obviously it is the photographs that are just the apex – so much so that having a pet coyote suddenly seems desirable. In fact, this was doubtlessly an issue of no small concern to those more familiar with wild animals. But that is really where the real value of the book comes in. I've mentioned that I more or less fell in love with coyotes thanks to Charlie, but finally reading The Daily Coyote was like a dash of cold water. Because Charlie grew up and became, well, a wild predator. In last week's live chat on Blog TV, Shreve stated that the January chapter was the hardest for her to write because it meant reliving such a difficult time in her life. And it is indeed acutely heartbreaking, even though the reader already knows that everything turned out all right.

But it also makes Eli seem all the more totally awesome. We already know that Charlie has never, ever challenged him for status, but reading about his troubles in that arena with Shreve seriously drives the point home. I was always one of those dog people who hated cats, but Eli has forced me to reevaluate that opinion. Now that cat is EPIC.

I was none too fond of memoirs either, nor was I ever one of those people ever to be inspired by another human being. (I'm kind of misanthropic like that.) But Shreve changed that for me. That woman is amazing on so many levels and I strongly recommend listening to this interview she did with motivational speaker Sue Thompson. Equally impressive is how understanding and respectful she is of the ranchers in her area, with regards to their feelings about the coyotes who eat their livestock. Her boyfriend (MC) even kills sheep-preying coyotes for a living! But definitely the general theme of The Daily Coyote is the holistic interconnectedness of nature, something that cannot be understood until one is forced to confront the elements and endure the hardships that come along with living on the edge. It's powerful stuff.

We romanticize that wild animals enjoy an idyllic life of freedom, when really, they are fighting to survive, for food and shelter and safety and against the infringements of man. Death serves in nature. The soil is fortified by the bones; animals and birds and bugs live off the carcass. In nature, there is honor in being eaten. To me, the poached deer was beautiful in providing its body to the living animals that were trying to survive. And I believe this works on a human level as well, although it is somewhat taboo in our society. I believe we can learn to use death, and let the gifts of the dead help us to become stronger. Our society responds to death by mourning, and usually, mourning is the stopping place. It is not the stopping place. I believe there is nourishment and strength to be found, if only we were not so afraid of it.

The book closes, however, to the tune of rebirth, in April, as Shreve considers acquiring a puppy-sister for Charlie. That is not, of course, the end, and there will hopefully be no end for a long, long time. Even after the reading is finished, there will always be more photos on The Daily Coyote to look forward to! Do, do, do read this book!

Also recommended: Hope Ryden's God's Dog: The North American Coyote as a companion book.

Note: Shreve's photographs on The Daily Coyote are copyrighted, so I am not going to reproduce them here. You will have to visit the website.

I can however, give you this wonderful video of Charlie and Chloe playing!

My New Dream Pet

Ever since I discovered The Daily Coyote, I've been wanting my very own canis latrans. Although I knew that it was very unrealistic, I thought a pet coyote sounded just so awesome! But reading the book and learning of Charlie's aggression issues has since put a damper on my enthusiasm.

But then I discovered the adorable fennec fox, native of the African deserts, who typically weighs only around 3-5 lbs, about half of that in the ears. But despite being a wild animal, it can indeed be kept as a pet!

How wonderful!






Photo sources: floridapfe on Flickr and the National Zoo

New Paris Interiors

A thought:

Interior design is applied art. It is the creative arranging of patterns, colors, furnishings, and different styles in order to compose a pleasing space to live in. Most human beings want to surround themselves with beauty - after all, your daily environment has a profound psychological affect, and it has even been conclusively demonstrated that color can alter mood. The question, however, is how to balance fantasy with reality. That is, where do we draw the line between art and practicality? At what point does the art aspect of the equation begin to dominate and result in a space that is aesthetically attractive but sterile? A home or hotel, after all, is not a gallery or museum.

I would like you to keep these questions in mind as you study the following pictures from the book New Paris Interiors. (There is a "leaf through" option that allows you to view the whole thing for free!) Are these rooms merely designers exhibiting their talent as artists, or are they truly viable places to live in?

Huh? Say What?

I've always found Faye Kellerman's Peter Decker/Rina Lazarus to be light, enjoyable entertainment that is also highly educational. Reading these books will teach you a ton about Orthodox Jewish culture, in addition to thrilling you with a very clever mystery that will have you guessing until the very end. The ongoing development of the extended Decker-Lazarus clan is also a highlight and I look forward to hearing more about Cindy and Koby in Kellerman's next offering.

Now that being said. . .

A bit of an issue I had with book #8, Sanctuary:

Ms. Kellerman, the way you dealt with New York State was unintentionally hilarious. First off: if you live close enough to NYC that the NYPD is investigating you, then you DO NOT LIVE IN "UPSTATE" NEW YORK! No really, NYC people, please stop calling anything outside your city "upstate." "Upstate" refers to Utica, Plattsburgh, and the Adirondack Mountains. (And no, Rochester, Buffalo, and Syracuse DO NOT COUNT. That is CENTRAL New York.) And then there's this: "I'm still amazed. When we left it was thirty degrees outside. Our village was a carpet of snow and ice. Walking three blocks hurt your lungs." WHA-AT? Thirty degrees hurts your lungs? No self-respecting resident of the real upstate New York even wears a hat and gloves in thirty degree weather. Heck, I used to walk to school in twenty below. Now, Ms. Kellerman, I know you're from LA, but come on!

I mean, after several days of sub-zero temps, twenty above literally feels warm. I'm not kidding.

End mini-rant.

Passage from Kurt Vonnegut's Timequake

"There is a planet in the Solar Systems where the people are so stupid they didn't catch on for a million years that there was another half to their planet. They didn't figure that out until five hundred years ago! Only five hundred years ago! And yet they are calling themselves Homo sapiens.

"Dumb? You want to talk about dumb? The people in one of the halves were so dumb, they didn't even have an alphabet! They hadn't invented the wheel yet!"

hahaha

New Star Trek Movie Trailer!

Kinkade and Saintcrow: Peas in a Pod

I recently found this literary blog called OF Blog of the Fallen that deals with speculative fiction – i.e. sci-fi, horror, fantasy and all their many subgenres. I haven't read much of it yet, but so far it's pretty neat. I've been wanting to expand my reading selection and over the past few days I've learned quite a bit from this blog and others. Needless to say, however, my lack of familiarity with speculative fiction has limited my ability to comment on OF, since I don't really have anything to add to the conversation. But yesterday's post really had me thinking.

In my Harriet Klausner rant, I mentioned that the "woman" (provided she is a real person, and not a marketing gimmick invented by a publishing company) seems to read nothing but romance novels and the contemporary equivalent of pulp fiction. Specifically, "urban fantasy," a genre described by Wikipedia as "a subset of contemporary fantasy, consisting of magical novels and stories set in contemporary, real-world, urban settings - as opposed to 'traditional' fantasy set in wholly imaginary landscapes, even ones containing imaginary cities, or having most of their action take place in them." Or, as I put it, books with "sexy half-naked pseudo-Goths on the covers." Again, probably no different from the cheap pulp fiction magazines my grandmother's generation was fond of. And not that there's anything wrong with that per se. Not everything you read has to be the Great American Novel, and there's fine line between being discernible and being an insufferable, narrow-minded snob.













Larry, one of OF's several contributors, had written a response to this article by urban fantasy author Lilith Saintcrow which can be summed up by the following paragraph:

Paranormal romance is considered lowbrow and trashy because it's female. Despite the fact that it's a multibillion-dollar business (and every dollar a woman shells out for it costs more because let's face it, we earn a lot less), it's still that pink-jacketed crap for bored housewives. Tom Clancy is supposed to be Real and Hard-Hitting, even if his "novels" are thinly-veiled technical manuals. Nora Roberts is supposedly less Real because she writes about feeeeeeelings. While we could debate the relative merits of Clancy vs. La Nora all day--and not agree, mind you, because Roberts is just plain the better writer--the fact remains that Clancy has a better shot at being considered "serious" because his is MAN'S FICTION.

Smell that testosterone, baby.

I'm not going to rehash everything Larry said in response to Saintcrow's protests, but I will point out that her assertion that no ass-kicking women existed until Anita Blake came along is just astonishing. Female warriors, real and fictional, have existed in multiple cultures for literally thousands of years – just look at this very long list. You've got everyone from Mulan to Calamity Jane to Lady Hangaku Gozen, the Trung Sisters, Joan of Arch, Boudica, Scandinavian Shieldmaidens, and many, many more. I'm in total agreement with Larry when he criticizes Saintcrow's "bold, sweeping" claims that completely dismiss other genres of fiction – and not to mention anything outside Western pop culture.

Now I didn't mention this in any of my comments (and I wish I did), but this whole controversy puts me in mind of an article I found (purely by accident, of course) on the Christianity Today magazine website about Thomas Kinkade, who claims to be reviled by the art world solely because he is a Christian who dares to produce paintings that reflect his conservative evangelical values.

Kinkade's populist sentiments mirror that of evangelicalism more generally. One of the hallmarks of evangelicalism, especially in America, is its disdain for pretension and high culture, its ability to speak the idiom of popular culture, be it the colloquial hymns of the 19th century, the folksy cadences of Billy Graham, or the food courts of suburban megachurches. Evangelicals like Kinkade care little for the approbation of the cultural elite.

"The critics may not endorse me," Kinkade says defiantly, "but I own the hearts of the people."

Never mind that one of the core definitions of kitsch is that it is often sappy, syrupy, schmaltzy, and whatever else the thesaurus says. Kinkade, natch, counters by asserting that humans are inherently sentimental and that his works simply reflect that. But it all really goes back to the anti-intellectualism that has historically pervaded American culture, especially its home-grown Protestant movements, beginning with the Second Great Awakening. I have contended that this is not intrinsically such a bad thing – populism is certainly preferable to any form of "walled-garden" elitism that denies ordinary people a legitimate social, political, or artistic voice. Kinkade characterizes the (Post)Modernist art world as an "inbred, closed culture" and I'm inclined to agree. But what he fails to recognize (at least publicly) is precisely what the original Modernists were reacting to. By the late nineteenth century, the European universities who controlled "high art" were churning out maudlin schlock featuring nothing but angels, cherubs, Venuses, modest nudes, and various Classical themes. Academic art had gone stale, and it is not the slightest bit surprising that the inevitable rebellion was so audacious. As the Modernists' beloved Freud has said: the greater the repression, the greater the certain release.




The masses (for lack of a more neutral term) need their – our – massed-produced culture. As Europe's experience with academic art has proven, a closed-off, inbred monopoly on taste is ultimately unsustainable. Individual innovation is ground-up, not top-down, and this is as true in tech and business as it is in the arts, including literature. (Thomas L. Friedman discusses this in detail in his book The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century.) All this has led, inevitably, to a scholarly re-evaluation of the value of the "low-brow." In my class on American Moderns back in college, for example, we read one of Daishell Hammett's Sam Spade novels, as well as John Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice, alongside works by Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Eliot.

Interestingly, Saintcrow insists that it is from Daishell that urban fantasy's gritty noir is directly descended. There is also, of course, the noticeable influence of Gothic literature, which originated in the eighteenth century and has been unnerving readers with its creepy ambiance, crumbling estates, dark secrets, and enigmatic Byronic heroes ever since. But considering that hardboiled detective noir was largely dominated by male authors, while both men and women have gone the Gothic route, I question (as does Larry) Saintcrow's assertion that urban fantasy is innately female and therefore, for that specific reason, often dismissed. While I'm not personally familiar with the genre, both Larry and Saintcrow name male writers working in it. Saintcrow promises to address their presence, but never does (something else Larry calls her out on).

























But for all their many, many differences, Lilith Saintcrow and Thomas Kinkade are nevertheless united in their perception of themselves, and others like them, as persecuted by the guardians of high culture (male-dominated, in Saintcrow's case). I will go out on a limb here and say that, in a society as democratic as the United States, the people are every bit as powerful as the intellectual elite, even if this is rarely acknowledged. Consequently, a creator who is dismissed as low-brow in their own time has the opportunity to nevertheless persist in the cultural imagination and eventually make their way into the canon. Daphne du Maurier's novel Rebecca is a good example of this, as is F. Scott Fitzgerald; the pop art of Andy Warhol, meanwhile, represents the true vagueness of the terms "high" and "low." Therefore, I think arguments against one's current status as "low-brow" are, at the end of the day, simply self-indulgent. I mean, Saintcrow sounds like a combo of whiny emo kid ("You don't understand me!") and the proverbial "feminazi." Kinkade, for his part, is downright disturbing in his obliviousness and delusions of grandeur. Apparently, positioning himself as the Messiah of Traditional Art by selling millions of phosphorescent paintings is going to bring about some kind of revolution. Don't psychiatrists have a name for this type of narcissism?

One more point: I recently got into a debate with a Twihard friend of mine in a Facebook album that consisted entirely of pictures of her going to see the Twilight movie. Yes, Stephenie Meyer SHOULD be taught at collegiate level, she insisted, going on to proclaim that:

I believe that young adult fiction is discredited BECAUSE it tells a good story. I know plenty of so-called "classics" that are taught because the writing is technically "good," but these books entirely lack a good storyline. The people who say that good storytelling doesn't constitute a good book hold a biased opinion which only values half of the art of writing. Consider writers like John Keats and Ian Flemming. They were both considered extremely lowbrow, but they are now the subjects serious academic discussion. Young adult fiction is the natural progression of the fantasy genre which Tolkien argues is constantly building on itself. Someday Twilight and other books in the young adult genre will be taught alongside great books such as Gulliver's Travels and the Faerie Queen (I'll even lend you my essay comparing the antagonist in Clive Barker's Abarat to such literary giants as Frankenstein's monster). Works of young adult fiction characterize our generation.

But I also think that Meyer will be taught at the collegiate level, just not as actual Great Literature (because, quite frankly, the Twilight series is ridiculous in the sheer badness of its writing). There are classes and academic disciplines that specialize in the history of pop culture and certain strands of artistic/intellectual thought. For instance, I read Edward Bellamy's 1888 socialist utopian novella Looking Backward – HUGELY popular in its own day – in a course called American Thought Since 1865.

And so, in summation: quit complaining folks! If your work is as good as you think it is, it will stand the test of time and force your high-falutin' critics to reconsider their evaluation of you. Just keep creating, and let the product speak for itself.

Just to be fair: Saintcrow's response to the responses. And this just in: Larry's response to Saintcrow's response to the responses!

Things in the Night (A Review)

Mati Unt was part of the "Sixties Generation," that cohort of young Estonian writers who came of age as Soviet censorship waned and a new variety of controversial foreign works became available in their country. Any hopes they may have had of "socialism with a human face" were soon thwarted by both the Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia and the underground availability of Western media, which kept Estonian intellectuals well-informed about events abroad. Stalinism, meanwhile, was starting to dissipate, enabling the introduction of numerous great works of foreign literature. Several especially controversial books, such as Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and the Margarita, were even translated into the Estonian language. The Soviets' reasoning was that so few people (roughly one million) spoke Estonian anyway (Russian was the primary tongue of choice), so what was the harm? Mati Unt's second book, The Debt, nevertheless caused a storm when it was published in 1964 for failing to adhere to the Soviet version of moral uplift.

Not surprisingly then, Unt's 1990 novel Things in the Night (translated from Estonian for Dalkey Press by Eric Dickens), written very strongly in the postmodernist vein, is centered on questions of subjectivity and the tension of hidden energy. As such, there is little linear plot to speak of, other than a story arch concerning terrorism and conspiracy. As a metaphor, Unt is especially interested in the phenomenon of electricity, that source of power that pervades our homes, schools, business, and government buildings, but which can also behave in strange and surprising ways (a taxi driver's profanity-laden tirade, for example, describes a fishing trip that is disrupted by a bizarre electrical build-up that charges the entire boat and its occupants). This pastiche mode frequently leads the storyline it into other unrelated topics as well (particularly cacti and cannibals), in addition to poems and fragments of other voices and narratives, such as letters, journals, monologues, and the protagonist's planned novel about an anarchist. The effect is altogether that of an extended stream-of-conscious, as the narrator wanders through a homeland either standing on the brink of transformation or doomed to tragedy; clearly, some unseen force is buzzing in the air, and there is an ever-present pressure felt in daily moments.

Because at an everyday level, life in this country is simply appalling, and if you start trying to describe the horror of it, you really have to devote yourself to the task, stack up thousands of pages of all kinds of absurdities, changes in the shops' opening hours, shortages at the greengrocer's, water taps that run without stopping, thousands of people who speak a foreign language, the lack of greenery around, the wrong time zone on our clocks and watches, rudeness and ill-breeding, loud arguments on trains, shoes that fall to pieces almost immediately, standing in a line for plane tickets, millions of things, billions of obstacles that are put in the way of people here every minute, but I don't want to write about it all, and nobody would want to read it anyway. One would rather push this frustration down into the subconscious. . .

One of the hallmarks of postmodernism is paranoia, and Things in the Night exemplifies this motif with a kind of dark subtlety.

If the first half of the book feels annoyingly meandering at times, the understated climax is astonishing in its austere urban silence. Without electricity, the monotonous apartment blocks of Tallinn are frozen under deep snow and biting temperatures and the narrator's cactus collection is mortally endangered. Lennart Meri, Estonia's president from 1991 to 2001, appears as a kind of national savior, which I personally felt was rather simplistic, but Unt is nevertheless very adept at the art of understatement and obviously politics is unavoidable when the Soviet Union is collapsing all around you. In other words, Lennart remains in the background, instead of rolling into Tallinn on a white horse.

In the end, however, Unt was a rebel, albeit a genteel one, and maybe it is the difficult act of finding balance between the individual and the collectivist society (such as the Soviet Union) that is the general theme of Things in the Night. Perhaps the narrator's lone sojourn through a darkened Tallinn reveals a need to connect, to communicate - I'm not sure, it was a difficult book to decipher at times. Says the Investigator:

"Now, at least, you are of the opinion that every individual should develop as much as he is able without fear of spreading himself too thin, grow too expansive. You are supposed to say to everybody: get on with it! Since we can't diminish the masses, we'll change them into individual beings, atomize and pluralize them. . . Most properly developed people don't need a leader or a person to point them in any direction, no didactics, nothing but themselves. That's what you think, but as you know, you are inconsistent in your thinking and there's no guarantee that these ideas will last very long. At any rate, they are dominant for the present and you are acting in accordance with them."

In contrast to the autumnal mood that characterized much of Things in the Night, the novel closes, with quiet and ironic optimism, in springtime in a cemetery, possibly at the dawn of something new for Estonia - like a victory for the singular human being over stagnant communism.

In short: this is not a book for everyone. It is certainly not casual reading. Things in the Night is recommended only if you are willing to 1) do a lot of pondering, 2) take the time to familiarize yourself with a little-known country and its history, and 3) accept that this is very much an internalized story that, like a lot of postmodernist literature, does not follow traditional plot structure and character development.

High Wizardry (A Review of What Girls Should Be Reading Instead of Twilight)

Don't let the fact that this is young adult sci-fi/fantasy fool you - Diane Duane's Young Wizards series is beautifully written, vastly imaginative, and, above all, challengingly philosophical even by adult standards. (I usually read well-regarded literature and academic history books by the way, so that is not an uninformed statement.) Although High Wizardry is the third installment, reading the first two is not necessary to enjoy it, although that will make beginning appear somewhat confusing. Originally meant to conclude a trilogy (Duane has since written more), High Wizardry has a real epic feel to it as its young protagonist, eleven-year-old Star Wars fan Dairine Callahan, steps out of a museum restroom onto Mars, and ends up racing across galaxies with an ancient evil in hot pursuit, accompanied only by her magic computer and new powers she barely knows how to use.

The setting is easily one of the most varied and original I ever have come across in speculative fiction. The story begins in the suburbs of New York City and ends on a desolate planet in a galaxy forty trillion light-years away. Definitely the most memorable location is a vividly detailed interstellar "airport," where all manner of non-humanoids arrive and depart via a wormhole-like transport system. The action then swiftly picks up again, as the real chase begins and Dairine's jumps from one fantastic realm to another rather resemble a surreal vacation slideshow. Her ultimate arrival on a planet composed of layers of silicone launches what is essentially a discourse on life, death, evolution, and entropy. This is cleverly disguised, however, as a wondrous and dangerous encounter with a group of newborn AI's who merely wish to help the universe by forcing it to stop expanding. Of course, the real evil is precisely this expansion and "slowing down" of the cosmos, first set into motion at the very beginning of time by the fallen angel known as the Lone One, whose name is legion throughout creation. Every sentient race, including humanity, has long lamented its decision to accept his "gift" of death, but now, for the first time, a species might say no. A great argument eons in the making is about to begin, and Dairine is right in the middle. (Another unforgettable moment: someone's annoying pet turns out to be a tall, beautiful goddess in jeans, holding a blazing sword.)

A seamless blend of fantasy and science fiction, High Wizardry feels like a cross between Paradise Lost and Dan Simmons's Hyperion. Its main characters are primarily children, aliens, angels, and demigods, giving the novel an aura of innocence, hope, and wonder that contrasts poignantly with its grand evocations of war in Heaven and the cold immensity of the universe. It's optimistic without being sentimental: at the end of the day, there is good in everyone and even the worst sinner can go home again. Now why is it that Twilight - an unoriginal, poorly-written series that equates love with death - is adored by the masses while talented authors like Diane Duane remain largely unknown? Instead of giving your thirteen-year-old daughter Stephenie Meyer's drivel for Christmas, I strongly recommend you introduce her Dairine, Nita, and Kit instead. (Note: I disagree with the 9-12 age range Amazon.com gives for these books. I would say 11-14. They're just too dense for younger readers.)

Actually, you may recall that I mentioned High Wizardry in my Twilight post.

Vintage Fashion, Beauty, Accessories

Okay, yesterday's rant was a bit much. So now I give you a blast from the past. I get these through the Vintage application on Facebook, which pulls them from AllPosters.com, where they can be purchased. I have also featured travel ads.

HARRIET KLAUSNER

So I was just in DC for a few job interviews. I arrived at Reagan National Airport a bit early for my return flight and was left in the waiting area with nothing to do. I did have a copy of Thomas L. Friedman's The World is Flat, which my grandmother had sent to me with high praise, but I just didn't feel like reading it at the moment. I popped open my laptop and connected to the airport's free Wi-Fi and suddenly, for no reason at all, remembered that there is a series of books based on the paintings of Thomas Kinkade. So off to Amazon.com I went.

Oh yes indeed, they exist. Basically, they're Jan Karon rip-offs, but that doesn't stop people from giving them glowing five-star reviews, including this particular gem:

I first heard about this book, recommended on QVC. Of course, Thomas Kincaid's name is what attracted me. Sure, we all know he is one of the best painters of modern times, so I was very curious to see if his writing could prove as pretty as his idyllic paintings. Well! I was not only *not* disappointed, but thoroughly sated by this book. It slaked in me a deep thirst to know more about the fascinating mind of Thomas Kincaid. Who better than the Master of Light, with his outstanding success--proving his intuition for the Real America, a better America--to reveal this "simpler life" and its pleasures? "The most collected living artist" is destined to be a success in more than one medium. Life is short, and it's far better and pleasant to spend some precious hours reading Thomas Kincade's moving visions than wasting time on tedious and outdated 'classics' like Tolstoy, Dickens, and Hemingway, who, unlike Kincade, pollute their 'art' with vulgarity. Thomas Kincade is surely not just the Painter of Light, but a true Master of Light. Thanks to Katherine Spencer and Thomas Kincaid for teaming up and, like the Cape Light lighthouse, casting forth this beacon of light. So simple, so pretty! Read it, and you, too, will feel simpler.

Yes, I am the one who commented on it. So yes, I am also on Amazon. More on that later. (To see that poor soul get pwned, click here. LOL, "cultural Prozac.")

But I also discovered a phenomenon even more fascinating than the prospect of the Painter of Phosphorescent Kitsch turning out cozy small-town soap operas: that of the singular Harriet Klausner, Amazon über-reviewer, profiled two years ago in Time magazine for their ill-conceived "YOU are the Person of the Year!" (Because the new Internet is now user-driven – although to be fair, Friedman also talks about the new power of individual innovation in The World is Flat.) At the time of the article, she had written 12,896 reviews. Today, the number is approximately 17,895. I found her while gazing slack-jawed at the five-star acclaim for the fourth book in the Kinkade series, entitled A New Leaf. #1 reviewer, I thought, and yet she enjoyed this? I mean, presumably she's read many books and can write well about them; otherwise, she would not be so highly ranked. Right?

Wrong. I was suspicious right from the start – her review for A New Leaf sounded like it came from the publisher. She concisely summarized the plot, provided a single phrase of mild criticism, and then settled into a few sentences of warm but useless praise that could just as easily have been jacket copy. Here it is:

Cape Light, New England resident Molly Willoughby works very hard bringing in income while raising her daughters (fourteen years old Lauren and eleven years old Molly) with no help from her Peter Pan like ex-husband Phil. Instead her family provides as much assistance to her as they can. For instance her sister in law currently watches her children while she cleans the rental for a Dr. Matthew Harding of Worcester, who is arriving in town tomorrow. However, before she leaves to pick up her children and treat them to pizza, Dr. Harding shows up. They talk about the area and being single parents. He invites her and her two daughters to meet his daughter fourteen years old Amanda.

As Matthew and Molly become better acquainted they begin to fall in love with one another. However, she distrusts matters of heart as Phil shattered her hopes and dreams and he feels hesitant to dive into a relationship ever since his wife died. Additionally, they must consider the children.

Though the climax seems to simplistic, fans of the series or anyone who enjoys a warm contemporary tale with a strong cast will enjoy the latest Cape Light tale. The story line centers on second chances at love if the individuals are willing to risk their heart and perhaps their soul to take a risk. The children are a delightful trio and the townsfolk open their doors to the audience, but the novel belongs to the M&M lead couple struggling whether they gamble on love.

I soon discovered, however, that this is extremely typical of Ms. Klausner. ALL of her reviews (at least, all the way to page 34, which is how far I got and still only dating back to November 1, 2008) are like that.

Clearly, you can polish off something of that ilk in about two minutes without even having read the book. In the Time piece she claims to be a speed reader who shoots through four to six books a day, and yet I'm not the only doubting that claim. Just perusing her reviews, one can find the occasional comment pointing out facts that she had gotten blatantly wrong. Most damning: John Birmingham, an author military fiction, slyly slipped a character named "Harriet Klausner" in his book Designated Targets. And so, quite predictably, Harriet came out with yet another vacuous five-star review that never once mentioned this. Shot down! Still others have pointed to the fact that she often posts multiple reviews in a single day. Now to be fair, I have done the same thing. But that's because all of my reviews were originally blog posts here (in other words, they were pre-written) and I suddenly, belatedly realized that more people would read them if I put them on Amazon. *smacks self in head* Now why did it take me three months to realize that. . . ?

But then again, I still think it's pretty obvious that I READ the damn books.

Here is a possible, partial explanation: the vast majority of books Klausner claims to have read are not exactly literary, and therefore not exactly novels you need to sit, ponder, and savor. As this article about Klausner on Bloggasm puts it:

“I’m a bit of an obsessive reader myself–I read fast, and I read a lot–and I would say that when I read the kind of paranormal romance, say, that Harriet Klausner is fond of, it would probably take me less than an hour and a half. . . I try not to do this too often, it’s the novel-reading equivalent of binge-drinking, but I have certainly had quite a few days in my life where I read five novels straight through, all in a row; usually crime fiction. So my take is that she’s sincere but misguided, not deliberately fraudulent.”

Harriet's reading material consists primarily of Harlequin romances, "urban fantasy" tales with sexy half-naked pseudo-Goths on the covers, "NASCAR romances" (no, really!), chick lit, "paranormal romances," cheap thrillers, Tolkien-wannabes, bored-housewives "erotica," and every contemporary vampire novel published in English. (Although I've made my Anne Rice fanship known in the past, there's still a difference between Queen of the Damned and Vampire Apocalypse: Descent into Chaos or All I Want for Christmas is a Vampire, Love at Stake Book 5.) Klausner also makes sure we get the genre just right, giving her reviews titles like "powerful romantic suspense," "amateur sleuth romantic suspense," "excellent futuristic science fiction," "excellent extremely complex medieval saga," "wonderful urban fantasy," "exciting werewolf romantic suspense," "charming contemporary romance," "deep slowly simmering psychological suspense thriller," "excellent military science fiction," "urban fantasy whodunit," "great suspense thriller," "engaging Christian thriller," "superb historical mystery," "excellent police procedural," "deep character study," "excellent regional thriller," "superb quest fantasy," "fabulous historical romantic action adventure thriller," "engaging treatise," "terrific sidebar Corean investigative fantasy thriller" (huh?), "engaging manga graphic comic book" (!), and I could go on.

Now before you accuse me of being an elitist, let it be known that not everything I read is high-brow. I happen to be very fond of Star Trek novels and the detective stories of Faye Kellerman. Arguably my taste in music falls several rungs below my taste in books. One of my best friends is studying to be an opera singer and hopes to get into the Eastman School of Music. She has a collection of hundreds of classical music CDs and can talk at length about everyone from Brahms to Stravinsky. When I told her about symphonic metal, which mixes in elements of opera (such as "beauty and the beast" vocals, in which a classically-trained soprano soars over male death growls), she was horrified at the thought of such a Frankenstein-esque fusion. But I love After Forever, Theatre of Tragedy, Flowing Tears, Nightwish, many other European gothic/symphonic metal bands no one in the US has ever heard of. But you can also make the case that, since this stuff is definitely not mainstream, it at least indicates a presence of original thought. According to the Blogthings quiz "Has American Culture Ruined You?", my ability to enjoy something other than the current Top 40 is a very good sign.

You Have Not Been Ruined by American Culture

You're nothing like the typical American. In fact, you may not be American at all. You have a broad view of the world, and you're very well informed. And while you certainly have been influenced by American culture (who hasn't?), it's not your primary influence. You take a more global philosophy with your politics, taste, and life. And you're always expanding and revising what you believe.

Has American Culture Ruined You?

And I'm a Republican! Who knew we could be so cosmopolitan! (Note: the best part of that After Forever song I linked to begins around 2:20.) But I digress.

So I've established that not everything you enjoy has to be cultured and intellectual. But thirty pages of reviews and Harriet Klausner has read absolutely nothing else. And if you refer back to my list of her review titles, another pattern immediately jumps out: a multitude of complimentary adjectives. Thirty pages of reviews and Harriet Klausner has evidently not read anything she didn't like and couldn't write anything less than a four-star appraisal about. Get it? Just about every last one of the literally thousands and thousands of books she's read has been, according to her, "excellent," "engaging," "great," "wonderful," "charming," "fabulous," "entertaining," "fun," "superb," "gripping," "intriguing," "terrific," ad infinitum. Holy crap, now WHAT is the point of having the God-given gift of speed reading if you possess 1) seemingly no power of discernment and 2) apparently no desire to read actual literature? In the words of Time magazine:

Klausner is a bookworm, but she's no snob. She likes genre fiction: romance, mystery, science fiction, fantasy, horror. One of Klausner's lifetime goals—as yet unfulfilled—is to read every vampire book ever published. "I love vampires and werewolves and demons," she says. "Maybe I like being spooked."

Personally, I resent the article's implication that speculative fiction is inherently low-brow. Someone please give that writer a copy of Hyperion. But really, if by now you're wondering why I've adopted such a vehement tone about a matter that is entirely trivial in the greater scheme of things, THIS is why!

. . . But luckily my plane came in and I had to put the laptop away. I then flew home and wrote this post the very next day while the discovery was still fresh on my mind.

There is hope, however! Amazon has recently revamped its review ranking system. We are now ordered by number of helpful votes, NOT sheer volume of writing. And thus, Harriet Klausner plummeted. Triumph.

Poor Cute Doggies

A horrible video. How can people be so cruel?

Drawing Dante

*Sigh* I was very disappointed by Salvador Dalí's illustrations of Inferno. Like T.S. Eliot and his astonishing poetry, Dalí had that uncanny artistic ability to transform the everyday mundane into a fantastically haunted mirror image of itself that nevertheless remains all too familiar. So . . . what happened with Inferno? Dante and Dalí should have been a match made in Paradiso: one, an exile who transmuted his hope and despair into a holy manifesto of truth and revelation; the other, a flamboyant visionary who saw beneath the surface.

So why am I unimpressed with Dalí's rendition of Canto 1? Because it looks like Dr. Suess drew it. Obviously it purports to show Dante departing from the "straight way" but it's too literal and too sparse. Dante is shown literally taking a sharp turn off the path and strolling towards a rather measly-looking grove of a few bushes, several lollipop trees, and a mound of grass. The actual text of Canto 1, however, describes a desperately confused Dante adrift in a dense wood that is "so savage and harsh and strong that the / thought of it renews my fear!" At one point he flees something terrible, turns back, and gazes upon a "pass that has never yet left anyone alive." Threatening beasts abound. He doesn't remember exactly how he got here – he is tired and disoriented and "the sun is silent." Dalí's interpretation, on the other hand, is simultaneously barren and whimsical. Dante's ambling off that path like he means it. A three-year-old couldn't get lost in that little copse. And with all that open, empty space around, Dante would have to be blind to be unable to find his way back.

It is interesting how the Modernist movement in which Dalí took part claimed to be throwing off the dead hand of dull realism and staid academic painting in favor of, as a character in Dos Passos' The 42nd Parallel puts it, disjointed abstraction and surrealism that can truly depict "the violence of our time." Yet it is Gustave Doré, a nineteenth-century French engraver of precisely that stuffy academic school supposedly so out of touch, that does the superior job of illustrating Canto 1. That is a scary-looking forest. Twisted ropes of vegetation blanket the ground; no path is visible. Towering trees form a canopy that blacks out the sky. Spindly root spread like claws over the face of an abrupt cliff. What lies ahead is shrouded in murkiness. It's no wonder Dante was so frightened when all of a sudden Virgil appeared to him and couldn't tell if he was man or ghost. Above all, Dante just honestly looks so very lost and very small.

All Dante quotes are derived from the Robert M. Durling translation of Inferno.