Literary Lollapalooza February 2009

This issue of literary lollapalooza features a celebrated bestseller about how epidemics affect sales, a young adult novel about a high school senior who just can’t seem to do anything right, and a novel of pure terror set in the frozen Arctic.

This is Literary Lollapalooza, February Edition:

Books Acquired: Very Washington, D.C. by Diana Hollingsworth Gessler, The Wicked Wit of William Shakespeare edited by Dominique Enright, Building a Character and Creating a Role by Constantin Stanislavski

Books Read:

The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell

This ground-breaking book by the celebrated author of Blink and Outliers is an extraordinary analysis of fads in the marketplace and how “the next big thing” becomes the next big thing. What is fascinating about this book to me is the author’s approach of the fad phenomenon as that of an epidemic, coursing how it starts, catches, and then spreads far and wide.

With a few particular case studies, and a very linear and well-constructed narrative device, Gladwell illustrates how an idea becomes a powerful and pervasive phenomenon. Using case studies as diverse as Hush Puppies, Sesame Street, and New York City’s decrease in criminal activity, he indicates the ways and means, the people and players, and the sets of circumstances that help make an idea first “tip” and then “stick”.

This book is marketed as being about sales and marketing, but I find that terribly limiting. This is actually a book about sociology. About why we do the things we do. A book that examines what exactly creates any given moment’s particular zeitgeist. Why do we as people tend to flock to the same things at the same time? This book is a mind-blowing answer to that question.

I haven’t read Gladwell’s other books, but I will. If they are anything like this, I will be happy to follow along.

Twisted by Laurie Halse Anderson

Laurie Halse Anderson is one of the best Young Adult writers working today. She is most known for the book (and inferior movie adaptation) Speak, about a teen girl suffering the after-effects of a date-rape. She also wrote Catalyst, which I read to my senior remedial reading class back at Bay High. That book was my first introduction to Anderson’s writing, and I was immediately hooked. I loved reading that book. One of the few bright points of that class. Anderson is one of those Young Adult authors who manages to capture the gritty reality that teenagers face without sugarcoating anything, and without devolving into exploitation.

Twisted is the story of Tyler , who is a ne’er-do-well nerd-cum-bad boy, who entering his senior year finds himself not only suddenly VISIBLE, as he was that kid that was arrested last year, but also he finds himself in the crosshairs of the very lovely and very popular Bethany. In the only way a teenager can he manages to let everything in his life spiral madly out of control, until he is forced to finally grow up and accept responsibility for his actions.

Anderson knows the madness, insecurities, extreme highs and devastating lows of being a teenager, and she plumbs those depths with alacrity and a dexterous ability that belies her age. Never have the realities of high school been more painfully examined, and never have they felt so…true. There isn’t a false note in her writing, and the book is a painful reminder of the hell of high school, and the uplifting realization that it does end, and that believe it or not, we all grow up, get past it, and forget about it. At least for awhile.

The Terror by Dan Simmons

The Terror is a fictionalized account of the true story of the 1845 Arctic expedition headed by Sir John Franklin, with the two ships H.M.S. Erebus and H.M.S. Terror. The ships became frozen in Arctic sea, and the members of those ships were doomed never to be seen again. This is Dan Simmons’ take on what happened on that doomed expedition.

First of all, Dan Simmons is a first-class novelist. He takes the reader in fully into his world, wrapping one into layers upon layers of detail and exposition. That sort of detail is important in a historical fiction, and even more important in one dealing with the alien and highly technical world of the seafarer. Even more so, of the seafarer who ventures often into the frozen wastelands of the Arctic and the Antarctic.

The men of the ships not only must survive the brutal cold, losing appendages to frost-bite daily, but they are also running dangerously low on food, giving way to sickness and starvation, as the ships’ stores dwindle the men are overcome with the worst physical hardships and morale depletions, and as the men die slowly, painfully, and grotesquely from scurvy with no hope for escape from the ice, one might think that things can’t get worse. But then Simmons’ has something else up his sleeve. There is something out there on the ice, something hiding in the extended darkness, waiting and hunting. It’s smart, hungry, and utterly unstoppable. And let’s not forget the evil that lurks in men’s hearts…

Warning: this book is so dense with description and technical explanation that it at times felt truly daunting. Like reading Moby Dick as adapted by Stephen King. It is a thick volume, weighing in at a stout 800 pages, so it is a task to take this book on.

That being said, this book is SOOOOOOO worth it. It is 700 or so pages of the most miserable, depressing, and absolutely frightening excesses of pure terror that I have ever survived. I will never, ever forget this book. It took me so deeply into that frozen nautical world of the early 20th century that I still see the scenes and characters plainly in my minds eye a month after having read it. It is a brutal and relentless read. My only complaint is that when the end does finally come, it almost seems hurried and rushed, which after such a long build-up hardly seems balanced.

Still, The Terror is easily one of the best books I’ve read, not only this year, but maybe ever. I just can’t shake the absolute fear and loathing that this book made me feel.