Chuckabilly's BIRTHDAY Literary Lollapalooza, November 2010 edition

So, November is my birthday, and every year about this time I try to populate my reading list with only my favorite (or most-likely-to-be-favorite soon) authors and books. This year is no different. Every author represented here are among my most respected and admired. In short, November is my favorite month of the year. Here’s why…

This is Literary Lollapalooza, November Edition.

Books Read This Month:

Sunset Park by Paul Auster

Full Dark, No Stars by Stephen King

The Walking Dead Books 3 and 4 by Robert Kirkman

Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk by David Sedaris

An Object of Beauty by Steve Martin

Demons in the Spring by Joe Meno

Medium Raw by Anthony Bourdain

Books Acquired:

Fiction:

Non-Fiction:

E-Books: Medium Raw by Anthony Bourdain

Books Borrowed: Full Dark, No Stars by Stephen King, The Walking Dead Books 3 and 4 by Robert Kirkman, Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk by David Sedaris, Demons in the Spring by Joe Meno, Medium Raw by Anthony Bourdain, The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood

Currently Reading: The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood

Reviews of This Months’ Books:

Sunset Park by Paul Auster

Paul Auster is a great American novelist. He has a storied career of writing about writerly-types who exile themselves into urban solitude because of a singular act of violence that has metastasized into a debilitating social phobia or general anti-socialism.

Sunset Park tells the story of Miles Heller, a 28 year old college drop-out, who is now working as a trash-out worker, cleaning out abandoned foreclosed homes in South Florida. After a devastating accident where he shoved his brother into an oncoming car, he has exiled himself from all family and most friends in a desire to start over fresh. On the side Miles takes pictures of the abandoned items he encounters in these newly empty homes, chronicling the weird and sometimes heartbreaking tales of the people who once owned them. The one bright side in his life is Pilar, the 17 year old high school student who he meets one day in a park, brought together because they are both reading The Great Gatsby.

However, things soon complicate when Pilar’s older sister learns of the affair and begins demanding gifts from Miles taken from the abandoned homes he empties (technically everything inside belongs to the bank that holds the note). In order to avoid prosecution on charges of statutory rape, Miles flees back to the Sunset Park area of Brooklyn. In Brooklyn, Miles finds himself squatting in a house with Bing, a childhood friend, who runs a repair shop called not-too-subtly The Hospital for Broken Things. The other roommates sharing the squat are Alice, a grad student whose dissertation is based greatly on William Wyler’s Time of Their Lives, and Ellen, an artist whose work is getting increasingly, more personally sexually graphic. The squatter’s home brilliantly mirrors Bing’s small shop: a place for broken people.

Auster paints a great portrait of modern artistic types, broken but essentially functioning in current day New York. With his penchant for well-structured drama, and characters that leap off the page, Auster is at the top of his game here. The true standouts for the book though are Miles parents: father Morris, a book publisher, a real mensch, who keeps questioning his past mistakes. And his mother, a fairly famous TV actress, who has returned to the New York stage to play Winnie in Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days. (Little known fact: Auster is in fact a bit of a Beckett admirer and even edited and provided the foreword to the Grove Centenary editions of Beckett’s complete works).

Auster writes lovingly about people you either might know already or people you’d love to know. His Brooklyn is not so much a place, as a state of mind, and a very enjoyable read indeed.

Full Dark, No Stars by Stephen King

Happy freaking birthday to me! This is what I read on my actual birthday. No fooling. Fate couldn’t have worked out better.

As many of you know, Stephen King is my favorite author and the only author I truly keep up with (as in I read every damn thing the man publishes). So a collection of stories that came out on November 9^th, my 35^th birthday: Couldn’t be better timed. Almost like the guy knew what he was doing. Hmmm…

Anyway, Full Dark, No Stars is a collection of three novellas and one short story. But here, dear readers: please heed the title! This is dark, dark stuff. No light, not even from the faintest stars. This collection in fact is so dark that I hesitate to recommend it.

Covering a variety of topics the four stories collected here focus mostly on the act of revenge, either physically or spiritually.

The first novella “1922” tells the story of a depression-era farmer who with the help of his teenaged son manages to kill off his meddling wife who owns their property and wants to sell it to the bank. He dispatches the wife and saves the farm, but he spends the (relatively short) remainder of his days regretting every moment of it.

In “Big Driver” a female novelist famous for writing mystery cozies about a group of elderly women who solve quaint small-town murders is brutally beaten and raped on a lonely, stretch of deserted back road. Barely alive, and shaken to her core, she manages to drag herself from her makeshift grave and back to safety. But what to do about that big, big man in the trucker cap? The one who raped her and left her for dead? The one who just might be waiting for another woman to enter his trap?

“A Good Marriage” is the last thing you want to read if you are part of a long, happy marriage. It tells the story of a terrible secret unearthed, making one wife question how well you can ever really know the people you love. A rattling, chilling tale of secrets better left hidden, and doors better left unopened.

“Fair Extension” is the shortest and lightest story of the collection. A welcome bit of gallows humor, this story shares much in common thematically with the Bachman novel Thinner. A guy stops to see a roadside vendor offering “Fair Extension”, but what exactly is he selling? Faced with the onset of a particularly aggressive cancer, our main character has little hope, but what if he had the chance to extend his life? First he must make it “fair”, i.e. he must swap his fortune with someone he hates. A skeleton grin of a darkest night campfire tale, this wry story asks just what you would do for another chance.

This is the darkest of King’s writings in a decade. This collection more comfortably fits under King’s pseudonym Richard Bachman, the guy who writes unflinchingly awful stuff that is undoubtedly human, yet horrific, the nasty bits we care not acknowledge about the human heart. The fact that King chose not to publish this under his more blood-thirsty pseudonym is telling. Perhaps he finally wants credit for the worst thoughts of which he is capable, or maybe he is just owning up, saying look, I don’t like it either, but sometimes people are just sick, awful human beings. The fact that he felt the need to apologize to his readers, says much about his state of mind after completing this collection. This is in many ways a much more mature King, choosing to face the darkest facets of our reality rather than creating a fantasy of monsters. Not for the squeamish, but you Bachman fans out there (you know who you are) will find this hard to put down.

The Walking Dead Books 3 and 4 by Robert Kirkman

This continuing story of a group of survivors in the aftermath of a full-blown zombie apocalypse is one of the best written and drawn comic books out there. Read this series, in any form necessary, and then tune in to AMC to watch the brilliant TV series adaptation by Frank Darabont (The Mist, Shawshank Redemption, and The Green Mile).

While the TV show has had some weak writing moments in the first season, the pilot remains one of the best of all time, and rumors have it that Darabont has fired the writing team for season two and while planning writing episodes himself is also farming eps out to freelancers, ala Doctor Who.

But never mind television! Get back to reading this riveting tale of the zombie apocalypse! Author Kirkman is threatening something like 700 issues of the monthly comic. I can’t wait!

Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk by David Sedaris

I can’t lie. David Sedaris is a superstar to me. The essayist and NPR contributor is one of the funniest, wittiest, and warmest of writers out there. His bestselling collections of essays cover many topics, most notably his wacky family and upbringing (including wacky sister Amy, star of Strangers with Candy, and brother Rooster, who well, really…needs no further qualification). He is such a superstar to me that when he visited the downtown DC Borders to sign copies of his book When You are Engulfed in Flame I was a stuttering, spluttering mess, jerkily turning pages and applying “autographed copies” stickers to the stack of books before him. Luckily he was gracious enough to pretend that I was not freaking out. He just asked me questions about my life, and told me funny little stories in his soft-spoken way.

Squirrel Seeks Chipmunks is a charming little collection of stories that for some reason remind me of Mr. Sedaris himself and the way he entertained an audience of me, one afternoon, over Sharpie fumes in the Borders café. With illustrations by children’s picture book author and artist Ian Falconer, this is a collection of anthropomorphized animal tales. Perhaps fable is not too unlikely a term? Much like the ancient tales of the fox and the crow and mouse and the lion, these modern tales of hubris are told through the guise of animal friends, but the sad, funny, and often meaningful outcomes of the stories are all too human. In searching out the little ways we embarrass ourselves, or belittle one another, or love the most unlike ourselves, Sedaris has created a gem of a modern bestiary. Fables for a modern generation, this collection can be devoured in an afternoon. Then you can spend a year poring over all the glorious little details, and the gorgeous illustrations to your heart’s content.

An Object of Beauty by Steve Martin

This new novel by Steve Martin (yes, that Steve Martin) is about the inner workings of the fine art world. Martin, an avid art collector since the early 90’s, here recreates a New York art scene through the eyes of a young idealistic art writer and the beautiful, smart, and ambitious object of his desire, Lacey Yeager. Covering the years between 1990 and the present, Martin follows the exploits of his flawed and engaging main character as she makes her way to the top of the NYC art world, from Sotheby’s flunky to fledgling collector to modern art gallery owner; we see the world changing around us.

From the beginning of the art boom when classic paintings began selling for extraordinary amounts of money, to the opportunistic 2000’s when the next big thing was bringing equal numbers just based on the promise of greatness, to the crash of art futures with the collapse of the financial markets in 2008, this is a veritable modern art history class in novel form. So great is Martin’s depth of knowledge on the topic, that he seamlessly weaves in subtle distinctions in art style and class by including numerous full-color illustrations of the famous (or semi-famous) artists he references. By the end this is as edifying a read as it an enjoyable one. I know more about art and about what drives the whims and desires of the art collector, than I could’ve ever imagined. From market variations, to small imperfections in notorious works, the inner workings of the art world are laid bare for the unitiated. This book quite simply, does for the art world what The Devil Wear’s Prada did for high fashion.

But this book is so much more than high glam expose, and so much more than the story of a small town girl in the big city. Lacey Yeager is the most difficult of protagonists: she is ambiguously written. We are never sure if she is an innocent in the grips of an evil influence, a seductress willingly using men to reach her goals, or just a girl doing what it takes to make it in the world, and that is the beauty as well. Because she isn’t any one of those things, she’s all of them. A beautifully complex character that isn’t afraid to be written honestly, warts and all, Lacey is the rarest kind of modern hero: one who isn’t that heroic, or admirable, but somehow beautiful in her singular ambition.

I loved this book immensely. Whereas Martin’s previous forays into literature (Shopgirl, The Pleasure of My Company) felt like amusing little heart-touching trifles, here he digs down and writes a great character and a great story full of wit, gravitas, and emotion. A genuinely gorgeous novel, this is not to be missed.

Demons in the Spring by Joe Meno

Joe Meno is probably one of the most unique writers writing today. His books always verge on the bizarre and focus on the sad, stolid lives of somehow broken and unhappy people.

How odd then, that I always leave Meno’s work feeling so joyous. Demons in the Spring is Meno’s 2^nd short story collection, but the first I have read of Meno’s short fiction. Like Meno’s novels that I have read (The Boy Detective Fails, Hairstyles of the Damned, and The Great Perhaps) the stories collected here almost all occur in a universe that is slightly off. Almost all are inexplicably bizarre, and haunting: tales of a broken world and the lost, lonely people who inhabit it.

In Meno’s world it’s not out of the ordinary for buildings to disappear, or for people to turn into clouds, or for a woman’s internal organs to be replaced by a miniature city of lights. Despite these sometimes odd and off-putting worlds, what Meno knows and nails is the sense of loneliness and loss we all feel at one or another time on this crazy planet. Meno is at his very, very best in this collection of twenty stories (collected here with illustrations of 20 of the best cutting-edge illustrators in the business). Each story is its own sad little Metropolis, and despite all the best hope, there is no Superman.

Meno writes what it’s like to be human, from that sad mournful place, where we all find ourselves from time to time. The only difference is Meno doesn’t offer solutions, only more malaise, every so often turning into indifferent whimsy and ridiculous fun.

So why am I smiling again? Joe Meno, like Tim Burton, can only infuse his darkest visions with elements of fun, leaving an indelible impression of joy with every instance of loss.

Medium Raw by Anthony Bourdain

Anthony Bourdain has gone from being a cook, to a groundbreaking author, to a travel writer, to a celebrity chef, to a Top Chef guest judge and veritable television star. What Bourdain really is, besides being a professional observer and provocateur, is a writer.

The hugely-popular New York Times bestselling expose of the cooking world, Kitchen Confidential, was published nearly twenty five years ago. Since then Tony Bourdain has been known more as a traveler and commentator than as an actual cook. These twenty-five years later Bourdain published what is the greatest companion piece to that earlier piece-de-resistance: Medium Raw is a love letter to the art of cooking and to those who still devote themselves to it.

While acknowledging that his “chef” days are far behind him, Bourdain creates a quite comprehensive look at what his life is like post-kitchen: he travels, he writes, he drinks, he reminisces, he raises a family. His priorities have completely changed, he has mellowed and softened, and he’ll gladly admit that he couldn’t even make it to the finals of Top Chef (on his BEST DAY), nor does he want to. For Bourdain, life is pretty good. He gets paid to travel and eat and record what he does.

Sure, he can still hurl a few untoward syllables in the direction of Food Network from time to time, and while he’ll not end up on Rachel Ray’s guest list anytime soon, the Bourdain that emerges here is a much older, much wiser, much more circumspect Bourdain than we encountered even a decade ago. He no longer feels the need to bad mouth TV celebuchefs, after all how bad can they be? We are all after-all just making a living, right? So what if so-and-so has 14 cookbooks, they’re not hurting you, so why hurt them, right?

But alas if you think Bourdain has gone totally soft, never fear, Tony is still pissed off. And he’ll still proudly list his heroes and his enemies, with reasons for each. And he’ll still proudly declaim food writer Alan Richman a douche bag. (Trust me, after you read the chapter titled “Alan Richman is a Douche Bag”, you will, too.)

What’s great is that after years writing for books and for TV Mr. Bourdain now writes like he talks (or talks like he writes). Either way, reading this is a joy simply because for the week that you read this you’ll have Tony Bourdain talking in your head constantly. The test though, is if Tony continues talking in your head long after you put the book down.

For me, Tony is now a constant voice, always offering his insight on what might be a great or a terrible meal, or even on the sunset now turning soft shades of purple and pink.

And that, ladies and gents, is why November is my favorite month. Tune in next month not only for the December ‘Palooza, but also for my year-end wrap up where I name my favorite books read this year. Good night, and keep reading!

Chuckabilly's Literary Lollapalooza October 2010 Edition (Halloween in late November, Yay!)

This month we celebrate Halloween with a slew of horror tales, old and new, and a tale of Australia’s greatest outlaw…

This is Literary Lollapalooza, October Edition.

Books Read This Month:

A True History of the Kelley Gang by Peter Carey

John Dies at the End by David Wong

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

World War Z by Max Brooks

The Walking Dead Books 1 and 2 by Robert Kirkman

Books Acquired:

Fiction: Knockemstiff by Donald Ray Pollock, The Ghost Writer by Robert Harris, Great House by Nicole Krauss

Non-Fiction: The Forever War by Dexter Filkins, Lies My Teacher Told Me by James W. Loewen, and God’s Middle Finger by Richard Grant

E-Books: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Books Borrowed: A True History of the Kelley Gang by Peter Carey, John Dies at the End by David Wong, World War Z by Max Brooks, and The Walking Dead Books 1, 2, and 3 by Robert Kirkman

Currently Reading: Sunset Park by Paul Auster, The Walking Dead Book 3 by Robert Kirkman

Reviews of This Months’ Books:

A True History of the Kelley Gang by Peter Carey

I was turned onto Peter Carey by my friend Josh, who loaned me this book. While perusing books at a small bookstore in Adams Morgan, Josh located a book by Carey that he hadn’t read. “Have you read this guy?” he asked. I told him no, hadn’t heard of him. “He’s great. True History of the Kelley Gang. Good stuff.”

Thanks, Josh. This book is an Australian “western” all about Aussie’s famous outlaw Ned Kelley. Written first-hand as a journal by Mr. Kelley it recounts how he came to reach his final destination, that is, shot full of bullets by the police.

Written in Australian accent and vernacular, it takes a moment to adjust to the narrator’s tone, but just like Shakespeare, after a few moments you adjust and everything makes perfect sense.

Young Ned Kelley is oldest of a clan of 7; his father coming from Van Diemen’s Land is imprisoned in jail for most of his young life. His mother, a hardworking spitfire manages to sell moonshine and create a manageable living for her brood. Following a daring rescue where Ned saves a young child from drowning, the child’s father has Ned’s Da released from jail, but he is a shadow of his former self. Listless and without the motivation to leave the house, Mr. Kelley soon wastes away leaving the family even more alone and forlorn.

Ned’s ma begins a series of dalliances with suitors, one of which is semi-famous outback outlaw. As a favor, he takes Ned under his wing, teaching him ways to survive in the wilderness and procure a living by robbing others. Ned takes to this lifestyle exceptionally well, but soon tires of his mentor’s abuses. He strikes out on his own, always trying to do the right thing, but always coming down on the wrong side of the law.

The unfolding story follows Ned Kelley’s attempts to make an honest living while constantly fighting against the class system and the bad name he has inherited. As lively a western melodrama as McMurtry’s “Lonesome Dove”, this novel based on real situations is a fantastic read. Readers become entrenched in the lives of the characters, rooting for Kelley even when one knows the inevitable outcome. Funny, fresh and absolutely riveting, this is a hell of a read. Highly recommended.

John Dies at the End by David Wong

This book has been on my radar for awhile now. I keep my eye on the horror section always, trying to look for the next book that will scare my socks off. This one has a striking and original cover art featuring a severed hand scribbling warnings to the reader not to read this book. Clever that. Like I could resist that temptation?

John Dies at the End is probably one of the most original novels I have read in ages. The narrator, one David Wong, recounts the horrors that have befallen him and his friend Dave since encountering a drug that opens a doorway to other dimensions. The rest is literally all downhill from there.

This book is crazy. It is scary, and gory, and creepy, and hysterical. A book that refuses to take itself seriously, it unfolds horror upon horror with increasing amounts of dread and night-black humor. The thing is, David just a regular guy who finds himself in way over his head, and John…well, let’s just say John is the guy that takes the tab, smiles, and then asks what it was.

I laughed as much as I cringed, but then again I think death can be pretty funny. The humor here is as pitch-black as it comes, and the scares are real. Evoking images of Lovecraft, this book manages the seemingly impossible: it scares the pants off you even while you’re laughing at the ridiculous situations David and John find themselves in.

I can’t recommend this book enough. If you are a fan of horror, or just someone like me with a sick, sick sense of humor then this book is for you. I passed this on to a coworker and had the pleasure to sit at lunch while she laughed out loud repeatedly while reading the first few pages. (She thanked me for recommending it after finishing the book, btw.)

Oh, and DOES John die at the end? Sorry. You’ll have to read the book to find out. (Heheheh.)

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Frankenstein. It speaks volumes just saying the title. This book is so entrenched in our collective psyche that everyone knows the story even if they haven’t read the book or seen any of the movie adaptations.

I have always wanted to read this book, but never really found the right time. I have of course seen the classic films and the Kenneth Branagh directed opus that is much more faithful to the source material. But after reading Stiff by Mary Roach (see September’s ‘Palooza) the need to read this piece of gothic horror was refreshed in my mind.

I am glad to report that Frankenstein is as good a horror novel as any other I’ve read. (I was tainted on gothic horror after trying to read the awful claptrap that is Dracula.) Well written, with restraint and empathy, this is great storytelling.

A half-mad, and near dead Dr. Victor Frankenstein is discovered by a sailing expedition in the Arctic. While being nursed back to health he tells his harrowing tale, and what emerges is the great archetypal story we all know. The scientist who overreaches his bounds and creates life, without understanding the consequences. The monster, unaware of why he exists and why all humans shriek and run from his hideous appearance.

This is heartbreaking shit. A classic examination of the nature/nurture argument, the monster wants only to be loved and cared for, and when repeatedly jilted by society he lashes out with violence. Is he evil because he does bad, or has society turned him into a monster?

A great read that was heightened by the Halloween season; I read this on my Sony eReader and enjoyed this free eBook immensely. Another great benefit of the eReader? Free books. Oh hell yeah. I am so there.

World War Z by Max Brooks

I started reading this book the week of Halloween. To be absolutely clear I started this book the night of the downtown Silver Spring zombie walk, a tradition that consists of hundreds of people dressing up as zombies and staggering their way through downtown Silver Spring en route to a screening of Night of the Living Dead at the AFI Silver Spring.

So, in the midst of my very own zombie apocalypse I did what any self-respecting survivor would do: I boned up on zombie survival. I read World War Z by Max Brooks.

World War Z is the essential zombie novel. The one zombie novel you have to read if you were so inclined to read a zombie novel. Max Brooks, son of famous daddy Mel Brooks, is the pre-eminent scholar on all things zombie, having previously published The Zombie Survival Guide and the numerous offshoots of that particular cash cow. Here he turns his zombie fascination into a real-life tale of terror and desperation.

The book is an oral history of the zombie war: a collection of anecdotal interviews recounting the zombie uprising and ensuing death, destruction, and ultimate victory of the human race as told through the eyes of those on the ground. What results is a magnificent imagining of a real-life zombie apocalypse and the human response to such a threat. A global masterpiece that manages to place a zombie uprising amid significant global politics and policies, making each country and each society its own special case. China is not the U.S., and France is not Africa. Each country is unique in how it responds to a threat of utter annihilation, and Brooks captures each voice perfectly, displaying an amazing breadth of imagination and wisdom.

In what very easily could have been a throw-away zombie novel of the semi-humorous variety, Brooks does the opposite by making this very real, very visceral, and very important. I have to say I was surprised by this book. I expected fun, but what I got was so much more engaging. Thought-provoking zombie fiction? You must be kidding? Nope. This is it.

The Walking Dead by Robert Kirkman

Zombie fever continues with this incredible comic book series by Robert Kirkman. Now an original series on AMC created by Shawshank Redemption wunderkind Frank Darabont, this collection of monthly zombie comics follows in the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse.

The main character, Rick, awakes from a gunshot wound induced coma, to find himself alone in a zombie wasteland. He must survive, must find food, supplies, his family. He must be vigilant against the “biters” that are constantly a threat.

The comic book and the series follow the characters of Rick and the other survivors as they attempt to rebuild a life in the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse. It is gruesome, and scary, and beautifully rendered in black and white illustrations by Charlie Adlard. The covers by Tony Moore are even more amazing. This is an ongoing comics series that publishes monthly, but I am late to the game so I am catching up by reading the beautiful hard bound collections numbered by Books. Each volume contains every full color cover and additional sketches.

I would also recommend picking up the Compendium that collects the first 48 issues together into one big, fat paperback edition.

And watch the AMC series! It is groundbreaking TV, unlike anything that has ever been offered by a network of cable entity. Frank Darabont is a genius and his handling of this comic book series is extremely well done.

That ends things for this very special Halloween edition of Literary Lollapalooza. A zombie nightmare of epic proportions, I hope yours was just as gruesome. Go and prepare yourselves for the zombiepocalypse! Happy Halloween! (Late!)

Chuckabilly's Literary Lollapalooza September 2010 Edition (Only two months late!)

This is Literary Lollapalooza, September 2010 Edition and we’re here to think about death and get sad and stuff! (Cue music.)

Books Read This Month:

I am Number Four by Pittacus Lore

Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

Morbid Curiosity: The Disturbing Demises of the Famous and Infamous by Alan W. Petrucelli

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach

Books Acquired:

Fiction: The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wrobelewski, Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri, Gone Tomorrow by Lee Child, A Whole ‘nother Story by Dr. Cuthbert Soup, Beyonders by Brandon Mull, Crossing by Andrew Xia Fukuda

Non-Fiction: A Voyage Long and Strange by Tony Horwitz, 13 Things that Don’t Make Sense by Michael Brooks

E-Books:

Books Borrowed:

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood, John Dies at the End by David Wong

Currently Reading: John Dies at the End by David Wong, Take the Cannoli by Sarah Vowell

Reviews of This Months’ Books:

I am Number Four by Pittacus Lore

This is a new Young Adult series that I had heard many great early recommendations for. I am Number Four is the first in a proposed trilogy titled The Lorien Legacies.

I am Number Four follows the story of an extra-terrestrial living on Earth. He is known as number 4, but wherever he lives he assumes a human name and tries his best to blend into society. He lives with Henri, his protector and guardian, who pretends to be his father. He’s really sick of moving around, and he’s just found himself surrounded by people that love him and support him. What’s the bad news? The ancient evil alien race that forced his evacuation from his own planet is tracking him, and they are hot on his trail.

Growing up can be hard enough, but Number 4 has it the hardest. He knows the first three are dead and now they are after him. They have to kill him in order to kill number 5. He wants to keep Henri and himself alive, but he’s just gained a best friend and even more important, he is in love. How can Number Four balance everything in his life, overcome the evil alien race coming to destroy him, and make sure he and his loved ones stay safe? You can only find out by reading this exciting YA sci-fi novel.

Not life-changing like The Hunger Games, but a worthy young adult novel to pass your idle hours.

Into the Wild by Jonathan Krakauer

Sean Penn’s film version of John Krakauer’s harrowing account of Christopher McCandless’ journey and subsequent death in the Alaskan wilderness moved me considerably. Along with the provocative sparse soundtrack by Eddie Vedder, Penn creates a heartbreaking account of brio and failure. I wept harder at the end of this movie than I have for most any other death in my life. So compelling is the story and so believable are the characters, that I wept out loud for such a sad and terrible death.

The source material, Krakauer’s Into the Wild, is a troublesome blend of biography, outdoor enthusiasm, and personal authorial insight and wisdom. It is as fascinating a read as it is a short, strange trip into another man’s life and death. While based on McCandless’s fatal trip into the Alaskan wild, the book at times is as much about Krakauer coming to grips with his own wanderlust and brushes with death, as it is about young idealistic Chris McCandless.

It is a meandering and diverting narrative, but when Krakauer focuses his attentions and just writes the story of the kid who gave his savings to charity, burned his money and backpacked into the wilderness, only to die a few months later, it is riveting. I can’t say I fault Krakauer his sidetracks and personal reflections. I have also had my days of wanderlust and my own need for solace. I connected deeply with the story of McCandless’s need to escape the “normal”. These personal anecdotes add insight into what might make someone face certain death in the pursuit of something larger than one’s self. However, the book is so detached from its human protagonist that it pales in comparison with Penn’s film, where he so deftly recreates the heartbreaking story of Chris McCandless’s fatal journey into the Alaskan wild.

I recommend this book. Highly. But I think you should add Penn’s amazing film to your Netflix que first. And then download Vedder’s incredible soundtrack. Then block out a good two days and just immerse yourself in this taut little narrative. It is SOOOO worth it.

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

Oryx and Crake is the first part of what is called the MadAddam trilogy. The second part, The Year of the Flood, was just released in paperback this past year. The third and final novel is forthcoming.

Set in a not-so-distant future Oryx and Crake is an inventive, dystopic novel that makes great hay out of current scientific and philosophic issues such as genetics and cloning. Oryx and Crake explores developments in science and technology such as xenotransplantation and genetic engineering, particularly the creation of transgenic animals such as "wolvogs" (with the appearance of domestic dogs, the viciousness of pit bulls, and the feral nature of wolves), "rakunks" (pet-like hybrids of raccoons and skunks), and "pigoons" (pigs with bodies shaped like balloons bred to grow extra organs for human transplantion). This society promoted an extreme commercialization of life, the commodification of sex and all forms of pornography, and exacerbated the gap between rich and poor. Oryx and Crake examines the social, economic, scientific, and ethical consequences of such technology.

Told from the perspective of Snowman, the last surviving member of the human race, the story takes place in a not-too-distant future where competing genetic engineering firms, in an effort to always have the leading edge in the industry, not only create new genetic models, but also engage in genetic sabotage by creating new viral strains and ultra-deadly forms of life.

We learn through flashbacks that Snowman was once a bright young man named Jimmy. Jimmy grew up in an ultra-consumerized society in which large corporations (largely in the pharmaceutical or genetic bent) house their employees on large compounds, walled off from the poor pleeblands on the outskirts of the compounds. Jimmy’s father was a scientist, an employee of HealthWyzer, a large genetic experimentation firm. His mother, an emotionally unbalanced woman, left him at an early age to protest and sabotage the large corporations.

Jimmy befriends a brilliant science student named Glenn, who later becomes known as Crake. The two friends, like all kids of a certain age enjoy watching all forms of pornography and death, both of which are available at their fingertips in a dizzying display of variations. Get tired watching bondage and torture? You can watch live executions. They also play a computer game called Extinctathon, in which players take on the role of an extinct animal. This game was created by a company called MadAddam.

We learn that Jimmy and Glenn have both fixated on a young girl in one of their favorite porn clips, and so many years later, Glenn, now known as his Extincathon moniker, Crake, has hired this girl (now a woman), as his personal mistress. Glenn, of course is also in love with the girl, and so begins a three-way love affair.

Crake, a top geneticist at one of the leading firms has started a new project: a race of uber-humans. They are genetically perfect: blond, well-shaped, hairless bodies, and devoid of emotion and hormones, and built to copulate only when in “heat”. He has also created a virus to destroy the human race, meanwhile building immunity into his perfect “Crakers” so that they will be built to survive.

The girl, now taking the Extinctathon moniker, Oryx, is not only Crake’s personal prostitute but also working as tutor to the innocent and childlike “Crakers”, teaching them how to use the natural elements around them and also about basic belief systems.

To say that things end badly is to put a rosy disposition on. Snowman is left the only human emissary and educator to a developing race of Crakers who don’t understand concepts like love and war. But the heart of the story is how Crake and Oryx got us to where we are, extinct but for one man, and the soured relationships that tread the path.

This is astonishing science fiction. Even going above and beyond such a title, it is an invigorated imagining of a very possible human future. Like Bradbury and Orwell before her, Atwood has created a world all its own that is at once believable and frightening. This is an addictive read that will keep you itching to pick it up and read a bit more. Great fiction writing! I can’t wait to read The Year of the Flood!

Morbid Curiosity: The Disturbing Demises of the Famous and Infamous by Alan W. Petrucelli

This book is a trivia lover’s dream! All about the many and diverse ways in which the famous (and infamous) kick the bucket; this is a cornucopia of gruesome human death. Covering many celebrity deaths, from the golden age of Hollywood to modern rock star overdoses; this book covers each death in short 1-2 page write-ups revealing all the gruesome details and salacious points of fact.

For instance, Jayne Mansfield was decapitated in a car crash in which her three children, including actress Mariska Hargitay, were sitting in the backseat. The book contains hundreds of factoids surrounding the deaths of celebrities and newsmakers, and is great fun (if you think death can be fun, that is.) Reading this urged me on to read more about death. (See, I really do think it’s fun!) So I picked up…

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach

Mary Roach is probably the funniest person to ever write about the uses of the human body after it has expired.

Not that there’s much competition. Roach is a noted science writer that writes with a great deal of humor and pathos. In this book she seeks to explore the many, many ways that science has utilized human cadavers throughout the years.

From organ donors to crematoriums to crash test dummies Roach leaves no leaf unturned. She is thorough, funny, and fearless. I wouldn’t have believed I would have so much fun reading about human corpses, but Roach makes it seem not only normal and necessary to study human cadavers, she makes a compelling point to becoming an organ donor.

Her descriptions of 19^th century medical teaching laboratories brought back vivid images from Kenneth Branagh’s Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and urged me further to go back and read that classic novel, exploring descriptions of medical arenas populated with various human ephemera. The accounts of medical grave-robbing are as inspiring as they are horrifying.

Her research takes her from hospital teaching labs to stories of cannibalism, and she never shirks, never wilts. She is our envoy to the world of the dead, and she magically elevates a dead human being to a thing of honor, respect, and even awe.

I can’t wait to read more of Roach’s books. Science never seemed so fun!

That's all for this month's reading. Check in shortly for the October post where we rev up the death and gore quotient for this, our favorite of holiday seasons...HALLOWEEN! Bwahahahaha! Seriously, death is fun. Anybody? Buehler?

Stephen G. Fritz on the Soldiers of the Wehrmacht

Robert McNamara once said, “War is so complex it’s beyond the ability of the human mind to comprehend. Our, judgment, our understanding, are not adequate. And we kill people unnecessarily.” No one understands this more intently, or experiences this more profoundly, than the warrior on the field of battle, the soldier on the front line. World War II was not unlike any other war in this respect. The ordinary German soldier, the Landser, experienced this conflict as soldiers have experienced combat in other wars, both previous and subsequent. Fighting along the Eastern Front, however, was a much more brutal and violent form of combat than was seen in other arenas of the European Theater. To truly understand the World War II experience, one must study and explore this dimension of the conflagration.

Stephen G. Fritz, professor of German and European studies at East Tennessee State University, looks at the war from the German point of view in his article, “’We are Trying...to Change The Face of the World’—Ideology and Motivation in the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front: The View From Below”, printed in the Journal of Military History. He further explores the experiences of the German soldier in his book Frontsoldaten: The German Soldier in World War II. Although the book does look at the Wehrmacht as a whole, his primary focus is on the Eastern Front. Fritz examines the experiences and motivations of the soldier on the front lines and the physical, emotional, and psychological hardships that the average Landser endured.

Typically, when dealing with military history, the tendency is to take a top down approach. That is, many scholarly works deal with the overall generalities of war at the operational, command, and logistical level. Historians often overlook the personality of war. What makes Fritz’s work unique, and an important addition to the body of scholarly work on the conflict, is that he looks at things “from below.” Fritz believes that to truly understand war and combat, it is important to study and attempt to understand the experience of the common soldier, the front line troops who fought and died.

History from the top down tends to sanitize war. History often contributes to the romanticization of war and portrays combat in vague and abstract ways, ignoring the brutality and the physical, emotional, and psychological strain that constitutes the basis of everyday life for the soldier on the front. Fritz understands that the verisimilitude of war is actually to be found in “the common swarm life of mankind.” The common soldier has often been overlooked by history. He is at the center of events in war, yet the focus has tended to be at the top, with the soldiers looked upon as an “anonymous crowd that just receives orders.” To truly understand the vagaries of war, one must understand the common experiences of ordinary people. The study of the everyday life of the Landser is a study of the War in the East on its most basic level.

To this end, Fritz relies heavily on personal accounts of soldiers on the front, the voices of the Landsers themselves. He relies not on memoirs or recollections of soldiers long after the war was over, but rather on the words that soldiers wrote while they were there, fighting and dying. The stories, the triumphs and the horrors, that make up the core of Fritz’s work, come from the diaries of the Landsers and the letters that they sent home. Fritz views these letters and personal journals as the most intimate portrayal of the war available. These letters are not clouded by the fog of memory or by self-serving changes in the telling of events. War consists of incalculable individual emotions, experiences, and actions, and Fritz attempts to capture them in their most raw form. However, even in doing so, Fritz maintains a neutral tone. Fritz’s writings are about understanding, not casting blame or making excuses.

In “’We are Trying...to Change the Face of the World’—Ideology and Motivation in the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front: The View From Below”, (which is essentially the basis for the eighth chapter of Frontsoldaten), Fritz examines the motivations that drove the typical Landser to fight so tenaciously in the East, committing atrocities along the way and willingly following grievous orders with seeming enthusiasm. Fritz postulates that a combination of factors led to this facet of the War on the Eastern Front. One idea was that a new type of soldier had been bred from the changing model of warfare beginning with the trench warfare of The Great War. This new soldier was able to adapt at will to the ever-changing circumstances of combat and was harder, with a stronger constitution than the warriors of previous generations. He saw warfare in the same way one sees a job in peacetime. He, in essence, became a “day laborer of death.” This new soldier was harder, with a stronger constitution than the warriors of previous generations. He saw not only pain and carnage in war, but also gratification and beauty. Even in the face of devastating losses on the battlefield, this new breed of warrior, this modern Landser, did not suffer despondency, but rather a stubborn sense that he must continue to fight on

A second reason Fritz gives for the Landsers’ determination stemmed from a deep sense of camaraderie and community. In warfare, all social and class distinctions become moot, effectively leveling the odds and making equals of the soldiers on the front. War created unity, a sense of community, and common purpose among the Landsers. It was a sense that they belonged to something and were a part of something greater. When the fighting was at its most brutal, the Landser felt a “sense of responsibility for ones comrades, even if one no longer knew them.” This feeling of responsibility was felt not just for fellow soldiers, but for the people back home as well. Soldiers at the front were keenly aware of the situation in Germany and of the destruction caused by the Allied bombing, and felt that they must also fight for the people on the home front.

Ideology also played a key role in the actions of German soldiers on the front. The average Landser believed to some degree that the Nazi State had “redeemed the failures of World War I and had restored, both individually and collectively, a uniquely German sense of identity.” This belief was an inherent part of the idea of Volksgemeinschaft promoted by the Nazi regime, the idea that a national community existed among the German people that transcended social and class position. Many also believed in the Jewish-Bolshevik conspiracy. Continuous barrages of propaganda bolstered these beliefs. This propaganda was highly successful because it was spread along the front soldier to soldier, not by officers in the rear. As the prospect of victory became dubious, the Landser on the front tended to look to the propaganda even more for inspiration and morale. Conditions in Russia served to reinforce the Nazi propaganda among the soldiers of the Wehrmacht. Upon entering Russia the soldiers viewed the famine and destruction wrought upon the people by Stalinist policies. Even working class soldiers expressed disgust towards what they saw as disparity and disillusionment among the people in what was supposed to be a workers’ paradise. As such, the typical Landser viewed Russians not as humans, but as animals. In this sense, the average German soldier on the Eastern Front believed that these “vermin” must be destroyed before they spread throughout the rest of Europe.

Fritz continues his examination of the experience of the frontline German soldier in Frontsoldaten: The German Soldier in World War II. The book, going further, examines the life of a German soldier on the front as an aggregate experience, examining the totality of the War from the beginning of training and indoctrination until the end of the ordeal. Again, Fritz uses letters and diaries to portray the common bonds of warfare as well as the idea of “combat as a deeply private experience.”

The life of a soldier begins with training. In Germany, this was no different. The Wehrmacht was perhaps the most well trained army of the time. It was this training that helped contribute to their doggedness in action. For future soldiers of the Wehrmacht, this training began in childhood. Young boys first joined the Hitler Youth, and next went to the Labor Service. The next inevitable step was the Wehrmacht. The Wehrmacht used intense degradation ceremonies designed to induce motivation and obedience. This approach was designed to prepare Landsers for situations where routine would save them both physically and mentally. This training produced the ability later to forge fighting units out of fragments of other units and have them operate successfully as a cohesive unit.

Fritz devotes most of the book to the actual combat experiences of the soldiers on the front. He demonstrates through their own words that combat can mean different things to different men. To some, war means chaos, while others find a sense of beauty and freedom on the field of battle. Other common themes are feelings of shock, despair, and of transformation. The book deals with the physical and psychological stresses of war. There are descriptions of the shock of seeing the first dead and feelings of loss of innocence. In the book, Fritz addresses the difference between the cinematic depictions of combat and actual life on the front, often tedious and mind numbing, interjected with intense periods of chaotic violence. To some Landsers, combat, and its associated sights, sounds, and smells, became as normal as everyday life back home. To many, thoughts became impersonal and loneliness began to set in; feelings magnified by the unfathomable magnitude of the war.

Fritz uses the writings of the soldiers themselves to chronicle the sights, sounds, and smells of battle and their emotional and psychological impact. Many Landsers described feeling an intense relationship with death during combat and a sense of being hunted. One Landser described the sensation: “Pitilessly, dangerously romantic, men stalking other men in a perilous contest of chance where only death proved triumphant.” Heavy artillery or aerial bombardment had a devastating psychological effect, and there was a feeling that fate ruled on the battlefield. Also vividly described are the visions of carnage and the effect that it had on the soldiers. Some described seeing the personal effects and mementos of the dead strewn across the battlefield. Others remarked that looking at the torn bodies of the dead, it was hard not to envision oneself in such a fashion. One sight the Landsers found particularly troublesome was the war’s “awful impact on horses.” Wounded horses, thrashing about in pain, would sometimes struggle to hold on to life even through several shots fired by soldiers trying to put them out of their misery. “Horses, ripped apart by shells, their eyes bulging out from empty red sockets,” haunted men’s dreams. The most prevalent feeling, however, was fear. “Fear was the real enemy...fear of death or of cowardice, fear of the conflict within the spirit...a simple fear of showing fear.”

Finally, Fritz demonstrates that even at the end of the war, things were not easy for the Landser. The ones who were lucky were returning to a land that was destroyed and a nation that no longer existed. Often, they had difficulty reassimilating into society. Generally speaking, they believed that they were good men and were unable to fathom why what they had done in war was considered evil. They had only done these things, after all, in service to their country. Many faced depression and disillusionment and lost faith in politics altogether. Countless men were returning home who felt that the years of the war had been lost or stolen from them, and they would never be able to get them back. This was especially true for those who remained in Russian captivity for years after the war. Some had never had a chance to begin a career and felt left behind in the progression of life. Mostly, though, there was an overwhelming feeling of the senselessness of the war.

War is a complicated, brutal, and trying endeavor. War creates complex, often conflicting emotions. Landsers on the Eastern front had the unique condition of being both perpetrators, willingly killing innocents and committing heinous atrocities, as well as victims, suffering physical and psychological traumas and “crushing anxieties of death and killing.” To the average Landser on the front, war was a complex endeavor. It could be brutal and horrific, yet strangely beautiful at the same time. By allowing the participants to tell their own stories, through letters and journals, at the time their emotions were most raw, Fritz demonstrates effectively the complicated and contradictory nature of war and the sentiments it begets. While there are some flaws in his approach, such as the heavy reliance on Guy Sajer’s The Forgotten Soldier, a work that is historically controversial, the end result is a moving and authentic account of the life of the average German soldier on the front lines.

Chuckabilly's Literary Lollapalooza August 2010

This is Literary Lollapalooza, August 2010 Edition.

Books Read This Month:

Netherland by Joseph O’Neill

Batman: Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader? by Neil Gaiman and Andy Kubert

What is the What by Dave Eggers

A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem

Books Acquired:

Fiction: A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore, I am Number Four by Pittacus Lore, The Acid House by Irvine Welsh, Filth by Irvine Welsh, Marabou Stork Nightmares by Irvine Welsh, Robot Dreams by Isaac Asimov, The Spies of Warsaw by Alan Furst

Non-Fiction:

E-Books: Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem

Books Borrowed: Batman: Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader? by Neil Gaiman and Andy Kubert, Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins, True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey

Currently Reading: I am Number Four by Pittacus Lore

Reviews of This Months’ Books:

Netherland by Joseph O’Neill

I actually read this book in July, but realized I had not included it after I posted July’s Lit ‘Palooza. I include it here, in apologia.

Netherland is a fascinating read. Told in first person by the narrator, Hans van den Broek, a Dutch-born and London-educated financial consultant who has found himself living in New York following the events of 9/11. At heart this is the story of a man living abroad in a strange place, and trying to find his place in a new home.

Hans is a likeable protagonist who connects with his home and with New York by playing cricket with a variety of working-class immigrants in Brooklyn. Among these cricket enthusiasts Hans meets Chuck Ramkisoon, a fast-talking, charismatic man with many capitalist interests and dreams of making cricket mainstream in America.

Told with the same thoughtful, well-paced plotting and vividly drawn characters one would find with Paul Auster or Don Delillo, this book is a slow burn. Slowly drawing you in, gradually enveloping you into the literary world, by the end you have lived in van den Broek’s distorted, alien, and ultimately life-changing Brooklyn. The character of Chuck Ramkisoon is a revelation, and when he is pulled, handcuffed from a New York reservoir many years later, it only deepens the mystery and lore you are already so entangled in.

At the beginning of Obama’s presidency in ’08 he was reading this book, and it has garnered numerous literary honors and awards since then. An eye-opening look at immigrant culture in the United States, this is a thought-provoking and deeply enriching novel.

Batman: Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader? by Neil Gaiman and Andy Kubert

This is not the first Batman tale by Neil Gaiman (those earlier tales are collected here as well), but this is the latest and most likely the last. In fact, it IS the last. The last Batman story that can be told: The story of his death.

As Batman attends a funeral populated by all his villains, friends, and allies after a long and storied career, he converses with an unseen female companion about all that he sees. Through different artistic styles, Gaiman and Kubert take a walk down memory lane reliving various important moments in the Dark Knight’s mythos by recreating the drawing and writing style of Batman creators throughout the 90 year history of the world’s greatest detective.

The result is a bittersweet farewell to a character that has had many lives. Of course the character of Batman can never really die, but that is the beauty of what Gaiman does here: by honoring Batman’s death, he is celebrating the immortality the character has attained.

Not the best Batman story ever told, but definitely the last…and a fitting tribute to my favorite of all comic book heroes.

What is the What by Dave Eggers

This is another tale about a U.S. immigrant, but in this case, he is Valentino Achek Deng, and he is a real person living and breathing in the United States.

Eggers, a brilliant biographer, as attested by his own autobiographical A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and the astounding Zeitoun, about an Islamic man in post-Katrina New Orleans. What is the What is the life story of a surviving “Lost Boy” of the Sudan. Told in the first person, but greatly enhanced by the author’s imagination, this biography is considered by author and subject to be a novel based on true events.

The story is a heartbreaking one of many trials and tribulations. As a warning it moves much slower than Eggers’ other works, without the optimistic zeal that keeps the others moving forward of their own volition. This is a bit of a slug-fest, but it is totally worth slugging through it.

Valentino Achek Deng is having a hard time adjusting to Atlanta. For one, his home has been just been invaded and robbed, and he has been beaten and tied up on the floor of his apartment, left for dead. As he awaits his roommate’s possible return, or a neighbor to hear his muffled yells or panicked kicks at the walls and door, he recounts the long and storied events that led to his being in his current state. That story involves constant starvation, fear, death, and the abandonment of family and of anything resembling home and safety.

His is a horrible story about great wrongs suffered upon a people by another. Sadly he is not alone. Thousands of others share his grief, and his horrific past. Like Zeitoun this is an incredibly true story about one man’s overcoming great odds to survive and live happily as an outsider in the United States.

Seriously, Eggers is one hell of a writer. If you haven’t read his others, go read Zeitoun. Then you’ll want to make your way through each of his other books. This is number three for me and there are two more novels to go. I can’t wait.

A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore

I find it odd, but it seems like almost every book I read this month took place post 9/11, and is greatly shaped by that momentous day.

A Gate at the Stairs is a novel about a young woman coming of age in the Midwest in the year following 9/11. Tassie Keltjin, our young protagonist, is the daughter of a potato farmer in a small town, and has moved to the university town of Troy to attend college. It’s here that she starts working as a nanny for a glamorous and mysterious family, and finds herself drawn deeply into their world, changing her own life forever.

This is a great American novel about those complex years of early adulthood that we later look back on realize truly shaped who we later became. It is a novel about small moments that seem big at the time and is written with all the warmth and humor and firecracker wit one could hope for. Lorrie Moore is an incredible writer: an obvious love for words and their meaning, she attacks each sentence with equal ferocity. But unlike other writers, Moore’s intellectualism isn’t pretentious or self-flattering, but winning and warm.

A great book of sadness, and hope, and triumph, and loss A Gate at the Stairs is an astonishing novel about race and class in modern America. Just like real life, it is at turns hilarious and heartbreaking, and it will make you laugh and cry, often at the same time.

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

Mockingjay is the third and final installment in The Hunger Games trilogy. Picking up immediately following the events of Catching Fire this book follows Katniss Everdeen as she tries to navigate the twisted world, at which she’s found herself the center. The colonies are in revolt, the Capitol is panicked, and Katniss finds herself being used as a pawn in revolutionary Colony 13.

I can’t say enough about this trilogy of young adult novels. Each volume picks up immediately on the heels of the last, and each one raises the stakes and the excitement. As usual there are many shocking deaths and we lose characters we’ve grown to love over the course of the series, but we also find ourselves locked in the middle of a tense love triangle as Katniss has to decide between the staid and loyal Gale, and her fierce protector in the games Peeta.

This novel is my favorite of the three, but of course don’t start here. Go back and start with The Hunger Games. They are truly some of the best dystopic science fiction novels one can find. Great characters, amazing action and suspense, this series will not disappoint!

Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem

Wow. I really don’t even know where to start with this comic book super hero inspired coming of age tale cum love letter to a childhood Brooklyn.

Fortress of Solitude is many things. It is an amazing coming of age story following young Dylan Ebdus growing up on the streets of Brooklyn in the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s. The main story focuses on Dylan’s moving to Brooklyn and his assimilation into the neighborhood: wallball and stickball are cornerstones of his childhood. His father is an artist intent on creating infinite tiny paintings on top of film stock. His mother, a social hippie, intent on raising her son in a classless, raceless Brooklyn, becomes increasingly vacant until she is gone completely. Dylan is left with his newest neighbor, and his best friend Mingus Rude, the son of a lead singer of a 60’s soul group, The Subtle Distinctions. Dylan and Mingus’ lives intertwine with a homeless street person named Aaron X. Doily, who has been spotted flying from rooftop to rooftop in the dusky evening air. After a close call, the homeless bequeaths his magical ring to Dylan and he and Mingus begin flying themselves, taking on the identity of a superhero Dylan and Mingus begin fighting petty crimes with the newly found powers the ring bestows on its’ owners…when they aren’t tagging trains and walls with graffiti and getting high on marijuana or cocaine.

Crossing as many genres and styles as one book can, this is book is a tour-de-force. It is an amazing literary force to be reckoned with, demanding to be taken seriously with its serious social issues of homelessness, gentrification, race wars, class wars, drug use and addiction and heartfelt examination of what it’s like to be raised white in a largely black community. And then it punches through the walls of the normal and introduces super powers like flying and invisibility, and doesn’t treat them as gimmicks, but further terrain that must be negotiated in the tricky world of being human and nurturing adult relationships.

This is one of the most wildly divergent novels I have ever read. It is literally schizophrenic in its make-up. It is both a tough coming of age novel about growing up amid gang and drug influences in Brooklyn, and a fantasy story about a kid who inherits a ring from a dying superhero that bestows magical powers upon the person who wears the ring.

It is astounding fiction. The writing is unbelievably emotional and nostalgic. I have never been taken back to my own childhood as strongly as I was here. Lethem transported me right back to the days when I would get “yoked” by school-yard bullies, and he kept me completely entranced throughout like I was living Dylan and Mingus’ lives right along with them.

An important and devastating novel, this is incredible heights of fiction writing, teetering ever-so-close to the edge and always threatening to fall from the ledge of believability. Luckily Lethem knows how to walk a tightrope and he manages to pull off a heartbreaking, exciting fantasy without one false note.