THE LITBLOG CO-OP

Of Openings and Endings and Montreux

Welcome to Kirby Gann week at the LBC. This is the first post in a discussion of Gann's Our Napoleon in Rags that will play out over the next few days, possibly culminating with an appearance by the author later in the week. Carrie and Matt (and anyone else who jumps in -- jump in, you, jump in) will have far more interesting things to say I'm sure, but for now, it's just me. Meanwhile, here's Matt's post on why he nominated the book in the first place.

I'm going to start this off by tossing off some randomish thoughts about the book and see where that goes. I feel compelled to confess that I had to start the book several times before it "took." In fact, I began to make bad jokes about how it caused comas. It seemed like every time I started to read it, during those lazy, hotter-than-hell summer days, I'd lapse into a deep sleep. This book is hypnotic, I'd say. Page 9 is an unconscious trigger: you are getting very sleepy.

So I skipped ahead to page 11 and everything went fine.

All this by way of saying that this book has a unique, dense style that doesn't hold anything back. It takes some getting used to. It doesn't give up its secrets or rhythm right away, and that's true of the book as a whole. I just reread much of Napoleon to prepare for this conversation, since it'd been a couple of months now, and found the prose practically transparent. I'm overstating -- I found it ornately straightforward and not something that I had to acclimate to at all. So maybe the heat was affecting my brain or maybe you'll have to give this one a dozen pages or so to click.

The story took a bit longer to click on the first time through, mostly due to the narrative not playing out in the expected way. Our Napoleon follows the regulars at the Don Quixote, "that sumptuous dive." If you've ever hung around in bars a little bit seedier than is probably good for you, you'll recognize it. The flap copy and even the first chapter focus us on Haycraft Keebler, a sort of rundown Emperor Norton figure, who is often at the center of the action at the Don Quixote, when he's not on the fringes of it. He takes up with a young hustler named Lambret. Once I figured out that this book was not really Hay's story, but the story of the regulars, of the DQ itself and what it represents, including Hay, it opened up into a rich narrative of community.

This novel has some interesting things to say about reality and reflections and transformation. At first glance, or in different sections of the book, we think we know many important things (maybe all the important things) about various characters. And then we get to their story, encounter their side of things, we see them change or stay the same. It's a reminder not to view the world too simply. A reminder that first glances are like a mirage, and may in fact obscure what really awaits us. The ending underscores this point -- it's both a reveal that a major minor character is narrating and that we didn't ever know it all about him either. That everything we think we've learned was really what he learned and so is suspect too. It's an upsetting, uneasy ending, the more you think about it and, wow, do I love that about this book, the way it changes upon reflection like a funhouse mirror throwing back distortions and the occasional truth. My reread made me appreciate the subtleties and richness of this book more.

The most important character in the book is the fictional city of Montreux -- a city which is wounded, stretching at its seams, down but not out. It's also Louisville, or at least a Louisville (the funhouse version?). Being a Kentucky girl, I latched onto this right away. The character of Hay, railing against the oppressiveness of society, is not what I see as the political heart of this book; he's one fragment of it, one reflection. The crux to me is the police violence aspect and how it has unsettled the community, both inside and outside the Don Quixote. This is something the city of Louisville has been dealing with for several years (at least and I can't say to what extent it still is). And so this seems to me that rarest of birds, a political novel in which real life politics are addressed and yet it never feels prosaic, forced or even like the politics upstage the people. I have no idea how directly that climate of unrest due to those incidents affected the book's treatment of the issue, but it feels spot on, nonetheless. A little excerpt from the POV of police officer Sutherland, who is a regular at the DQ, to demonstrate:

Usually I don't think much about work. People are ugly and do awful things and I see it every day and all the acts mix together in your head. You convince yourself that the implications are not worth pursuing. Sometimes they come up anyway. But this night is the only one I think of on my own, playing it again over and over. It's the only time I've been involved in a man's death, and it doesn't even matter that I knew Mather, some things you just do not forget.

You wish you could have done things differently, that life would have turned out in a different way. It sounds ridiculous, but I am being completely honest when I say that I blame the sock. A hard thing to get your head around: If me and Keach had not answered that call at the house; if the old woman hadn't been kind and just wanted to be left alone, she would not have offered us the coffee; if she hadn't had Parkinson's, Mather Williams might still be alive. It is exactly this kind of thinking that keeps me from reflecting on my job very often. Because there's nothing you can do. An old woman drops coffee on your shoe and it doesn't seem possible that this will lead directly to a man getting shot. It's like you are powerless to change anything, like life is going to play out any kind of way it wants. You want to feel like you have a direct influence on what happens to you and on what you cause to happen to others, but I wonder if we have much say in it at all.

My conscience is clean.

In an interview with Gann that Ms. Tingle pointed me to at The Compulsive Reader, the writer puts his own finger on why the politics never feel heavy-handed:

And there’s no specific “message” the novel is trying to put across to the reader; what I intended was to raise questions about what sort of commitments should we make to our community, what is within our power to change -- on a personal level; the primary thematic question in my mind during the writing of the book was what do we owe one another?

The novel isn’t intended to answer any of these questions; novels that claim to have answers tend to be bad ones. Finding worthwhile questions that one can put forth dramatically, in a narrative, is very hard and time-consuming work (for me at least). So my limited activism has dwindled to nothing but the writing.

That's all I got for now.

10:01: Reel Time

First of all, I have to apologize for starting a new post here.  There are plenty of threads of discussion going on below, so one should feel free to jump in anywhere.

Second, thanks to everyone who helped get the conversation started on 10:01.  Your pal here has been sluggish, intellectually and otherwise, this week, owing mostly to a drinking fiasco Monday night.  (I suspect that punks slipped some sort of emetic into my PBR, but that's neither here nor there.)  Suffice to say, I ran afoul of the Gods of Drink and spent a long night on the bathroom tile, wishing I were dead.

And what, pray tell, does this have to do with 10:01?  Well, as I was facedown on the tile, I noticed that one of the cracked squares that I walk over every day was cracked in an interesting way.  It looks exactly like the P wave in an ECG waveform, as a matter of fact.  (Remember, I'm dying at this point, or it feels like it.)  I'd never made that connection before, and might not have had I not been sick and laid out on the tiles (as Robert Plant sez).

This is a sloppy, perhaps silly, metaphor for experimental fiction, but it could be instructive.

What I like about experimental books--if you'd like to avoid labels, let's go with the more prosaic books that try something a little different--is that they force me (generally in a more kidney- and liver-safe manner) to get out of my comfortable reading habits and approach things from a different vector.

Is Olsen after something a little more than quotidian details, like interesting cracks in the tile?  I think so.  (See again, this interview, which goes in depth into Olsen's motivations.)  Even without considering the differences between the print and hypertext versions of 10:01--which Olsen is very interested in and which I have scarcely considered--I think one could go on for quite a while about the philosophical questions raised in 10:01.  It got me thinking, at least.  Then again, I see that the book didn't strike most of the group that way, for various reasons.

Yet even on the surface level I liked 10:01 for its subtle comedy and bizarre leaps of the imagination--more about that here.  And I suppose I don't have anything profound to say about the chasm between the likes and did-not-likes as regards this book; like a lotta things, it might just come down to a matter of taste.  If your taste runs to the strange and the slightly whimsical and the perhaps philosophical, 10:01's a book to pick up.

***

For part two, here's a response I wrote to a question of Ed's earlier in the week.  Generally, I'm interested in how 10:01 wraps up, as represented in the person of Milo, the theater's assistant manager, but there are also questions of time and other forms of representation involved.

Ed: To what extent does a novel depicting a specific time frame have validity?  And if such a novel does have validity, how does Olsen succeed and/or fail?

Rake: There are countless ways to play with time in narrative, and most of them will seem quote unquote valid in the right hands.  There is the question of real time--reel time?--of course, and that seems like a reasonable line of inquiry given the book we're discussing.

First, and perhaps apropos of nothing, I can think of films and television shows that run in real time, but I'm not sure if such a thing is possible (or even desirable) in a novel.  Is there a book somewhere that has a description of, say, making a sandwich where the description lasts as long as the sandwich building would?  (There's a pretty detailed bit of sandwich making in Beckett's "Dante and the Lobster," for example, but then again a lot of Beckett reads like that--maybe he's closer to a real-time prose writer than most.  Maybe the roughly mid-20th-century French novel--Robbe-Grillet--is an even better example?)

(For what it's worth, Olsen sez this:

"Novels can mine psychology in a way that films can't. Films are all about surface and speed. Novels are all about depth and taking one's time. What other art form allows you to live inside another person's mind—a theater of other people's minds—for days or even weeks on end? So part of the fun for me in writing 10:01 was also using one genre (novel) to explore the limits of another (film).")

I don't think Olsen's trying to exactly replicate the experience of the 10 minutes and one second before the movie begins, but I'm interested in hearing your thoughts on the matter, Ed.  (And Matthew.)  For me, the chronological conceit of the book sort of fell away as I was reading, but I started thinking about it again as I neared the end of the book, where things begin to unravel and there seems to unfold a cataclysmic event that disrupts the novel's progression.  And again on the last few pages, there seems--again, seems--with the character of the theater's assistant manager, Milo, to be a question raised about the people and events with which we've just been presented (i.e., Was it real?  Did any time pass whatsoever?)

I have loaned my copy of the book out, and I'm flying on my imperfect memory here, but I believe there's a bit somewhere about how film is constructed--missing frames, etc.--to trick the eye and mind into believing something that is, physically, on the celluloid as it were, not the case.  (Perhaps someone would be nice enough to dig this up?)  Is this a clue of sorts?

I wonder if anyone else in the group was left with the same question(s).  And even if we assume that everything is happening as described, is there something in the timeline structure I'm missing?

As always, feedback is much appreciated.

Too Many Hippies, Just Enough Angels

The Angel of Forgetfulness is ruined, as so many things are, by damn dirty hippies.

Okay, put down your incense. I was checking to see if you're paying attention.

I enjoyed Steve Stern's book (full disclosure: it was a very close second as my own Read This! choice), particularly the mythic storyline where an angel takes the back stairs to Earth and fathers a son who becomes obsessed with an actress, and so on. (As opposed to my fellow LBCers Derik and Dan, in their much more thoughtful and coherent dialogue on the book, who seem to like the fantasy story least of all.)

If I was trying to place this book in a continuum, I'm not sure exactly where I'd put it. So I'll steal someone else's placement. You know the way clubs sometimes fill their monthly music calendars with descriptions of bands that aren't this meets that, but more: "If you like Neutral Milk Hotel and have a soft spot for Bauhaus, you'll love She Wants Revenge"? Michael Dirda, in his review of Stern's book, does something similar putting him in the following illustrious company: Stanley Elkin, Cynthia Ozick, Michael Chabon, Mark Helprin, Melvin Jules Bukiet and Philip Roth. He goes on to say why:

All of these might be thought of, very loosely, as innovative and restless practitioners of contemporary American-Jewish fantasy. They draw on Jewish tradition and folklore, the legacy of Sholom Aleichem, Kafka and Isaac Bashevis Singer, the verbal razzmatazz of Yiddish.

And that sums up nicely what I really admired and responded to in this book. It mixes the fantastical story of Mocky the Angel with a living and breathing portrait of Nathan and Saul's experiences of two very different New Yorks (bound together by the same woman), and Saul's later adventures in communes. The angelic story, the story's lost and found narrative, is what holds everything together  -- it's the one thread that the book falls apart without, for me at least. This is a book filled with strange, lonely characters, always on the move, always caught between at least two worlds.

I suppose I need the ethereal to balance out the presence of the world with all those hippies. Kidding, again. Well, sort of.

Anyway. Are there any story-within-a-story books or American-Jewish fantasies any of you want to recommend or discuss? Writers left off the list? You hate Neutral Milk Hotel?

(A word or two about) Autumn 2005 nominee 10:01 by Lance Olsen

Hello, it's your old pal the Rake here to discuss my nominee for the Autumn 2005 LBC selection, 10:01 by Lance Olsen.

Now what can I say about 10:01 that hasn’t already been said?

Quite a bit, in fact, because not as many people have heard about this book as should. I count one review—mostly negative—at PopMatters and a handful of glowing customer blurbs at Amazon. And to be completely honest, I probably wouldn’t have heard about it either—or its publisher, Chiasmus Press—but for a person (who took the LBC to task for picking Kate Atkinson) bringing it up as a novel worthy of attention.  (Good sir, I haven’t searched for your name, but feel free to take credit for pricking up my ears.)

By the time my copy arrived, I’d plowed through a fair number of obscure books and hadn’t come to one that I’d heartily recommend.  So I started with the 10:01 blurbs—always dangerous ground—and read this description:

Walter Benjamin envisioned the underground Paris Arcades as the quintessential 19th century industrial dream space. In 10:01 Lance Olsen provides us with the Millennial version: the Mall of America, in Bloomington, Minnesota, large enough to contain seven Yankee Stadiums. Each page headlines a different character or set of characters randomly flung together in a movie theater there in mid-afternoon. They interface (often freakishly) with each other; with the Mall's blandishments; with the images on the screen; with their own fantasies. At the climax the theater and its inhabitants suddenly implode, perhaps out of the ultimate logic of late industrial capitalism. Or they don't implode but are sucked irresistibly into the black hole of American make-believe. Olsen has written a cunningly original docufiction of the American psyche post-9/11 and perennial.

Walter Benjamin?  The ultimate logic of late industrial capitalism?  Docufiction?

Yeah.  Well.  OK.  Even if I stuck around for the entire 200 or so pages, I’d be able to knock this one out in an afternoon and forget about it, on to the next.

But it happened that I started to quite like what Mr. Olsen had going: A friendly little book, acessible, smart, funny, even a little goofy at times—there are a coupla cartoon rednecks here that might surpass even the belt-buckle-broad comedy sensibilities of one Jeff Foxworthy—but one that always managed to sneak in some unexpected nugget of insight or bit of lovely writing. 

10:01 starts like this:

MIDAFTERNOON IN A MOVIE THEATER in the Mall of America. Glary lights before the show make everything seem stark and unfinished to Kate Frazey, a bony aerobics instructor relieving herself of her shocking-pink ski jacket, bunching it on the folded-up seat beside her, and sitting in row three, seat nine, seeing herself as she does so as if from a crane shot among these other filmgoers filtering in and settling down around her. Kate, blond hair so dark it is almost the color of high-fiber breakfast cereal, is Franz Kafka's great-great granddaughter, although she carries no awareness of this within her. She doesn't know her great-great grandfather once had an affair with another bony woman, Grete Bloch, friend of Felice Bauer, to whom Kafka was briefly engaged. Kate doesn't know Grete had a son about whom Kafka never learned, nor that his son was supposed to have died while a child, but was adopted by a Jewish businessman and his wife, and brought to New York in the thirties. Whenever Kate dreams, it is about the plots of Kafka's work, which she has never read because she believes there are already too many stories in the world. Kate dreams that two strangers in top hats and frock coats are always knocking at her door, wanting in. That she is a ninety-pound weight-loss artist dissolving in a cage full of hay in the town square in Prague. That she is a muscular hare darting through a wet field at night and that, no matter how fast she runs, no matter which direction she chooses, the beautiful hounds sleeping within the castle miles away will awaken the next day and chase her down. This is why Kate doesn't sleep unless she has to. This is why she hasn't slept for two nights, why she leans forward now, elbows on knees, concentrating very hard on keeping her glistery brown eyes wide open.

That’s the type of passage that makes me want to say that this book isn’t for everyone.  (But I won’t.)  Still, I think you either like this type of thing or you don’t.  Take, for example, this:

Thirty feet above Celan Solen skitters a mouse through the warm darkness flooding the ventilation system.  Tucked into the mouse’s breast immediately behind its heart is the soul of Remedios the Beauty, a young woman from a small village in Colombia.  When she was alive, Remedios the Beauty used to drive men mad with the sweetness of her scent, part orange, part cinnamon.

At the risk of assuming something about the General Reader, I’m saying that that’s the type of passage that either drives you away from a book or reels you in.  Me, I was reeled in.

The charms of 10:01 are not necessarily hard-won—there’s enough humor and character to keep you cheerfully speeding along—but on the other hand the little mysteries of the text and deeper philosophical underpinnings seem to be there, too, if you wish to dig.  (See this interview with Olsen, for example.)  You might also wish to simply ponder why quote unquote actor Josh Harnett is a character in 10:01, but my point is that he’s not in the book simply to amuse; Olsen’s a little more crafty than that and after a little bit more.

I’ll bet—and sort of know—that this book will be polarizing, and I can understand why a person might just want to toss it across the room and fall into the reassuring and waiting arms of, say, Richard Ford.  Olsen’s not as deliberate as Ford, and not seamless.  But I’d recommend him for just that reason, and to all readers who like to sink into a book and let their minds get a little untidy.  As a friend of mine used to say, It ain’t gonna cost you nothing to find out, either, because the whole book’s available as a hypertext presentation here.  (I recommend the paper copy, of course, but the hyper version gives you a good—if somewhat recontextualized—idea of what Olsen’s up to.)

Thanks to the LBC’s methods and madness I know about 10:01, a novel that cheers me up in the way that a truly novel novel can—it gives a bit of a lift that comes from knowing that the world of the possible, at least as far as literature is concerned, is larger than I’d thought.  And I now know of Lance Olsen, who has a bunch of other books out there to explore—to wit, "six novels, four critical studies, four short-story collections, a poetry chapbook, and Rebel Yell: A Guide to Fiction Writing, as well as editor of two collections of essays about literary innovation."

For me, this little LBC endeavor has turned up some real finds, and for that I'm thankful to be a part of it and to be following along.  If this round helps a bunch of hungry readers track down a book they’ll enjoy as much as I enjoyed 10:01—or The Angel of Forgetfulness or Stephen Dixon's Old Friends—then we've lived up to the task.

Now please stay tuned for more discussion of this title and the other nominees, coming soon. And if you'd like to join a discussion about this book, we'll be kicking it off October 3rd.

Another Nominated Title: Embroideries

It took me quite a while to make my nomination for the Read This! selection—I was looking for something a little unusual, a book that would shake things up a bit, one that would truly resonate with me.  When I came across Marjane Satrapi’s graphic novel Embroideries, I knew had to make it my pick.

In this loosely autobiographical book, Satrapi tells of a long afternoon in her grandmother’s salon in Tehran, where nine women (aunts, friends, neighbors) gather for a glass of strong black tea.  They share their stories and those of others, for, as Satrapi’s grandmother tells us, “To speak behind others’ back is the ventilator of the heart,” and these women are dying for some fresh air.   

Marji is in charge of the samovar for the tea, while her grandmother is the mistress of ceremonies, teasing the women to share their tales of life, love, sex, and marriage.  There’s Nahid, whose pre-marital tryst with a boyfriend forces her to take a drastic step on her wedding night, with highly comic results; Parvine, who flees an arranged marriage to an old army general; Amineh, whose husband, exiled in Germany, cheats on her; Azzi, who agrees to marry a man, sight unseen, because he lives in Switzerland and can offer her a life like the one she sees on MTV; and even Marji’s own hilarious story—she tells of how a friend uses the counsel of a magician to get her boyfriend to marry her. 

Many readers, confronted with the clichés shown on TV news channels, have a very particular image of Muslim women—quiet, covered, submissive.  Not only does Satrapi challenge that stereotype (as have many other women writers of the Muslim world) but, by drawing on her own family’s history, she takes the reader into the lives of real women, with their faults and their dreams, their vanity and their pride.  Her characters talk about sex with seriousness and humor coiled together, much in the way that life is lived.  Even when they discuss embroideries (the popular surgical procedure that restores a certain part of women’s anatomy) they do so with disarming pragmatism. 

Although the Persepolis series is hugely popular in the U.S., in some ways I think Embroideries is a better book, showcasing Satrapi’s natural storytelling ability and her knack for nuanced observation.  And it’s also, by virtue of its theme, a more intimate book, a book that can be experienced on a very personal level.

I should warn you, though, that Embroideries may not fare well with die-hard graphic novel readers: the stark, black and white art isn’t sophisticated, and the book is more of a collection of narratives than a novel.  But, to be honest, I didn’t really concern myself with whether this book had a neat label on it like memoir or novel or collection—I only asked myself whether it brought up emotion in me, whether the characters were well crafted, whether the story was well told.  With Embroideries, the answer to each one of those questions was an unequivocal yes. 

remember when you read that one in the sunshine or maybe it was at the bottom of the sea

It was so fantastic reading the responses about the ways in which you guys read. (Consensus: The New Yorker is an albatross!) Lots of commonalities emerged, complemented by great individual tics. I now know that Justine Larbalestier can’t read while walking, for instance. That for Beverly Jackson, reading is always a forbidden pleasure (I’m jealous). That Louise Anonymous absolutely checks out bookshelves and comments on them, but draws the line at medicine cabinets. That Ben Peek can’t read on transport. That Jonathan Strahan reads lots of magazines, but the only nonfiction mags he reads are about music. Holly Black mostly reads what she starts, and does nothing else until she finishes the book in question. Cecil Castellucci likes books written in her code (her wonderful Boy Proof was written in mine). And so, so many more wonderful readerly secrets. (Though I already knew that Christopher reads over your shoulder.)

Since we’re still a few days away from the first Read This! announcement when we can start really talking about books, I’m going to stick with reading and sneak in books sideways.

Yesterday I had a nasty little bug of some kind and mostly stayed in bed all day reading the utterly delicious Breath and Bones by Susann Cokal. It was the perfect thing for the day: less miserable with the Roman shades half-open behind me, having stolen C’s pillows, and with a hefty book propped in my lap. Breath and Bones is set in the late 1880s. I reached the part of the book where the Danish heroine Famke has taken up with Mormons to get a passage to America, where she might track down the artist who loved her and left her (after rendering her in a giant painting as Nimue). Famke’s misery at the heat and dust of Utah and at being one of three wives of her new husband (the man who gave her passage) was the perfect tonic.

The topic of sickbed books has been done to death, so let’s broaden this discussion to include your most recent memorable experience of the act of reading (or just a memorable one, it doesn’t have to be recent) – what you were reading, when, why it was perfect at that particular time. Yes, yes, I’m so looking for recommendations with this too.

Nudge Nudge

I've owed the LBC a post for some time, and I was thinking, perhaps, of a long-but-gentlemanly response to this jeers-to-the-LBC post, which baffled me in all sorts of ways.  (As in: When did I become part of the "self-proclaimed elite literati"?  And: Why does a simple book recommendation occasion the "raising" of "working-class hackles"?)

But someone decided to bring a new puppy into the House of Rake, and this puppy is now mercilessly tearing through all the low-hanging fruit around here, so there's no time for intelligent or belligerent response.  (Eternal vigilance is the price of maintaining carpet in a rental.)  Also, frankly, I was conscripted by the LBC for my ability at light comedy and, if necessary, light cleaning, and I like to mind my station.

Still, I'd like to (briefly) report that I've made my way through almost all of the material for the first book pick, and I've liked everything I've seen (to various degrees, of course).  These are good books--all pretty accessible, by the way--and I'm glad my pals in the LBC gave me a little nudge and put them in my hands to serve as worthy companions for a few hours.  Seems to me that, underneath it all, that's all this really is--a little nudge in the direction of a certain book, take it or leave it.

As one of my long lost friends sez: It don't cost you nothin'.  Other than maybe cover price.

Fish Out of Water

What book would I nominate if I could?  That's like asking a fish what part of the ocean he loves best.  He doesn't swim because he likes it, he swims because that's what he does.  If you're wondering what the hell I am talking about, I am getting to my point, I swear.  What I am trying inarticulately to say, is that I read because that what's I do, like the fish.  There is no question of me not reading.  So to pick one book out of the huge list I've read in the past year is difficult.  Several good ones came to mind immediately: The Time of Our Singing by Richard Powers, but that came out several years ago.  Divided Kingdom by Rupert Thomson was one of the best books I've read in a long while, but it won't be out for a few months yet. 

But there is one book that I think about often---The Confessions of Max Tivoli by Andrew Sean Greer.  One of the reasons I love this book (and this may seem strange) is how I even came across it in the first place.  I think it was Mark or Ed who kept talking about it.  And I know it was popular amongst other bloggers as well.  Suffice it to say, I read the book and loved it. 

This is what I wrote when I first read The Confessions:

It's not until I reread the first line of this enchanting novel that I really understood it.  'We are each the love of someone's life.'  The entire novel seems to revolve around missed chances and wrong times.  Max Tivoli is born an old grizzled man in 1871.  He appears wrinkled and white at birth, but ages backwards, appearing younger and younger as time passes.  The story is told in 3 parts but with the twist---youth, middle age, and old age are each 'confessed' to us.  And we realize as we read, that Max is writing this in his old age, but living as a young boy.  'Be what you are' is what his mother tells him.  Max does just that, playing whatever role his physical appearance imposes on him.

What is remarkable about this book is not the twist, but the melancholic and observant tone.  Max is not completely sympathetic----he does some remarkably selfish things.  But so much of Max's life is observed rather than experienced, since he never feels like a part of the world due to his condition.  The one thing Max truly experiences is love.  He meets Alice when she is 14 and he is 17, but of course he is living as an older man.  In fact, his mother has told the neighbors that he is her brother-in-law.   He spends his life loving Alice and writing about Alice.  The other character you keep reading about is his lifelong friend Hughie, who plays a major role in Max's life as well. 

The whole thing sounds gimmicky, but Greer makes it work with his wonderful writing.  He has a real feel for the period (there are echoes of Proust).  This isn't to say that the novel does not have its problems.  I wish Max's sister was more than briefly mentioned.  But all in all the problems fall away with the very human story of a man who loves a woman but doesn't know how to fit himself into her life.

Maybe this book won't appeal to everyone.  But I hope at least some will give it a chance.  It's really worth it, I swear. 

 

If I ruled the world...

...everyone would be forced to read Air, or Have Not Have by Geoff Ryman. People who say they hate science fiction would have to read it, people who say they love science fiction would have to read it. The illiterate would have to learn to read just to read this book.

If I'd been a nominator, this is the book I'd have put up for consideration. I would have cried and said, "I was robbed!" if it lost. There's not a novel out there that I'm more disappointed by the lack of conversation about. This novel should be winning awards like nobody's business (not that awards necessarily count for much, but some books deserve them--and in fairness, Air was nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award this year). Of course, it took ten years to get published and has only been out in the United States since late 2004, which means this book could still find an audience. If you're incredibly smart and lucky, you'll be in it. So, maybe I should tell you a little bit about the book, huh?

I first wrote about Air over on my own site Shaken & Stirred in January (and that's a lengthier reaction, so check it out). To steal a bit of plot synopsis from the Publisher's Weekly review:

One day, the citizens of Kizuldah and the rest of the world are subjected to the testing of Air, a highly experimental communications system that uses quantum technology to implant an equivalent of the Internet in everyone's mind. During the brief test, Mae is accidentally trapped in the system, her mind meshed with that of a dying woman. Left half insane, she now has the ability to see through the quantum realm into both the past and the future. Mae soon sets out on a desperate quest to prepare her village for the impending, potentially disastrous establishment of the Air network.

I half-wonder if the inexplicable lack of readers of this book has to do with the fact that it concerns itself with so many things that most science fiction novels don't: namely how the third world interfaces with first world technology on a personal level and the strictures on poor women in patriarchal cultures, especially in small villages. To cast how change comes to societies, in both good and bad ways, through the story of a poor "fashion expert" in a non-Western culture is a pretty radical tactic for any novel looking to find an audience. But this book has important things to say. We should listen. It will make you laugh, it will draw you in, it will break your heart, it will leave you pleasantly flabbergasted and with substantial things to consider. The book never feels forced. The female characters are some of the richest I've ever encountered, starting with Mae herself.

Do yourself a favor. Read this book while you're waiting for the first Read This! selection on May 15. You won't be sorry. And I'll be happy.