Literary Lollapalooza, February 2010 Edition

It is February…a famous month for lovers, but we instead turn our gaze inward. This month, by complete accident I assure you, we discuss four separate tales that examine the search for self, (with some film criticism thrown in). In a month where “who am I” supersedes “who am I with”, here are some great Narcissistic puzzlers.

This is Literary Lollapalooza, February 2010 Edition.

Books Read This Month: Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami, Point Omega by Don DeLillo, The Moment of Psycho by David Thomson, Funny Misshapen Body by Jeffrey Brown, and Horns by Joe Hill.

Books Acquired:

Fiction: The Professional by Robert Parker, Perforated Heart by Eric Bogosian, All the World’s a Grave by John Reed (play)

Non-Fiction: War by Sebastian Junger

E-Books:

Books Borrowed: Point Omega by Don DeLillo, 90 Classic Books for People in a Hurry by Henrik Lange

Currently Reading: 90 Classic Books for People in a Hurry by Henrik Lange, McSweeney’s Mammoth Book of Thrilling Tales edited by Michael Chabon

Reviews of This Month’s Books:

Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami

Murakami has been on my radar for quite awhile now. One of those writers I hear people talk about, and file it away in that “someday” folder in my head. I wasn’t sure where to start and my friend Kate suggested Kafka. So, thanks Kate!
Kafka on the Shore tells two interrelated but distinct stories, alternating between chapters. The odd chapters tell the story of 15-year-old Kafka Tamura who runs away from home to avoid an oedipal curse. His father, a successful sculptor who never showed much love to Kafka, told him that one day he would kill his father, and sleep with both his mother and sister. Kafka sets out to make a new life for himself. He finds shelter in a quiet private library in Takamatsu and settles in until police start looking to question him about a recent murder.
The even chapters focus on an old, mentally handicapped man named Nakata. Nakata lives on a subsidy from the state and, because of his unusual ability to talk to cats he makes extra money by finding lost cats for people in the neighborhood. A search for a particular neighborhood cat leads him out of familiar territory and into a road adventure with a truck driver named Hoshino. The unlikely duo cross the miles, encountering many odd characters, until they find what they are looking for.
Kafka and Nakata’s fates are intertwined, and we are certain from the start that somehow these two characters are very important to one another. Written in a heightened style, mixing reality with metaphysical planes, Kafka on the Shore reads like a strange but engrossing dream. With fun characters, pop culture references, music, fish falling from the sky, and talking cats this book is one of a kind. A great, fun read that’ll leave you puzzled and wanting to read it again. Since finishing Kafka it has lingered in my head, and I think of the characters like old friends.

Point Omega by Don DeLillo

Don DeLillo’s latest novel, released February 2, is another short and brisk novel of surprising force. DeLillo’s lean prose is as spare and athletic as ever, weighing in at only 117 pages, it is a breathless and energetic read.
Jim Finley is a middle-aged filmmaker who has an idea about a film: it will be one long, continuous take of a man holding forth, talking about whatever comes to mind. That man is Richard Elster, a former U.S. defense consultant for the Bush-Cheney administration. A sort of conceptual strategist for the Iraq war, Elster tells Finley he wanted a “haiku war”, “a war in three lines”. Finley is trying to woo Elster for his film and Elster seems to just want company. The two men spend a couple of weeks at Elster’s desert hideaway talking, two men laying bare their souls. Elster says that they are reaching their omega point, an idea that suggests an eventual leap out of our biology, as Elster puts it, an ultimate evolution in which brute matter becomes analytical human thought. DeLillo gives us a sense of foreboding, that the two men are headed towards tragedy. Soon their solitude is interrupted by the appearance of Elster’s twenty-something daughter, Jessie. The tension between the three of them ratchets up, sending the book towards its ultimate tragedy.
Bookending this story is the first and last chapters, where an unknown male character stands silently in a museum watching 24 Hour Psycho, where Hitchcock’s film Psycho is slowed down to play over the course of 24 hours, making each slow mili-second of the film its own strange piece of art. DeLillo attended this exhibit while it was at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. It serves to examine how time and space changes the meaning of the smallest action.
DeLillo is a master of those tiny human moments that add up to make a life. Both profound and shattering, Point Omega is a breath-taking work about the struggle to reconcile the soul with its surroundings, and to understand the scope of space and time.

The Moment of Psycho by David Thomson

And speaking of Psycho…

David Thomson is a film critic and historian, among the foremost in the field. His knowledge of film is formidable to say the least, and here Thomson turns his keen eye on Psycho directed by Alfred Hitchcock, citing it as a turning point in American cinema.
Thomson’s writing is fantastically off-the-cuff and highly verbose. He starts off with a brief history lesson, to place us in the cultural context of the moment, listing pre-production issues and casting decisions as well as Hitchcock’s recent filmography. But where Thomson’s razor-sharp little book really finds its feet is in the cultural significance of the film, both on the business of film itself (Hitchcock’s lucrative back-end deal was among the first of its kind) but on movie-going audiences as well. With vivid detail, but with none of the stuffiness one might get from a film professor, Thomson recounts not only the making of the film, but how it changed and continues to change film and the audiences that watch film. Thomson understands that the “moment of Psycho” transcends the film and has greatly shaped film, and America itself, in the 50 years since its release. (As a fun bonus, Thompson brings the book full circle by mentioning at the book’s conclusion, the art exhibit 24 Hour Psycho, mentioned previously in Point Omega.)
The Moment of Psycho is a great book for film lovers or anyone who wants to understand the giant cultural shift that helped to define modern cinema.

Funny Misshapen Body by Jeffrey Brown

Funny Misshapen Body is a memoir drawn by cartoonist Jeffrey Brown. Along with his other titles like Clumsy it tells the story of Brown’s formative years, growing up with Crohn’s disease and overcoming art school and the need to be a “serious artist”. Told in short ten page vignettes based on various themes, Brown’s crude yet highly detailed cartoons make up a scattered, meandering personal history. Brown’s great gift is his ability to tell a story in a very small hand-drawn square. The amount of detail he manages to squeeze in to those little 2-inch squares is astounding, never failing to connect one instantly with their own awkward childhood, or hard-partying college days. The fact that this memoir is practically told without words (the text never overtakes a frame, and is always a tiny portion of the 2-inch square) is a testament to Mr. Brown’s tremendous talent.
Funny, thought-provoking, and at times melancholy and nostalgic, this is a great quick little read, but one you will want to spend hours studying those dazzling, crudely drawn little squares. Also, Brown includes a vignette which he is writing and publishing Clumsy, so it feels, in a way, like you’re reading the making of the book you’re reading. Ooh, how Meta!

Horns by Joe Hill

This is the second novel by Joe Hill (Heart Shaped Box), declared by many to be the new voice of supernatural thrillers. I haven’t read his 1st novel, or his collection of short works (20th Century Ghosts) but they have both been on my reading list since they were published. I picked up the ARC of Horns, published in hardcover February 23, and I couldn’t resist this fiendish little book.
Horns is the story Ignatius Perrish, or Ig to his friends, who wakes up after a night of drunken debauchery to find that he has grown horns. The devil kind: growing right out of his forehead. He also finds that the horns have an unexpected effect on people: they all want to tell him their deepest, darkest desire and they want him to tell them it’ll be okay. Like the mother of a screaming brat, who tells him “I’d love to kick her in her spoiled little ass, but I’m worried about what all these people would say if I hit her. Do you think…?” He says, “No.” Or his grandmother who tells him, “When I look at you I want to be dead.” Why? “Everyone stares at me. They all know what you did,” she tells him. You see, a few years earlier Ig’s girlfriend Merrin was brutally raped and beaten to death. He was the prime suspect, but due to a lack of evidence an expensive family lawyer was able to get a mistrial. Popular opinion, however still laid the blame solely on Ig’s head. Depressed, heartbroken, and socially unmoored, Ig began a downhill spiral of self-abuse culminating in that terrible morning and his brand new horns. The mystery, of course, is if Ig didn’t kill Merrin, then who did? And is that person still out there? As Ig looks for the truth, the book builds toward the inevitable: some hellish revenge to be meted out.
Hill writes with jet-black humor and a razor sharp wit, reveling in the worst that we can be. This is a nasty piece of fiction, ruthless and unflinching, as bold a look at our darker natures that has been written in recent years. It careens towards the end like a death-proof hotrod, muscled, and growling through the turns. It’s unpleasant. It’s not religious. As a matter fact, it’s downright blasphemous. But it’s fun. In that scary, let’s turn off the lights and see what might be lurking, kind of way. If you like your thrillers dark, you could do a far sight worse than picking up Horns. It seems that Stephen King guy might have some competition…



And that ladies and gentlemen, brings us to the end of February. A good month with some very eclectic choices, but I was still able to find a common theme. Don’t expect that to happen again. Thanks to everybody that keeps coming back! Tell your friends.

Until next time, keep reading!