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?