#4 of 2009: Number9Dream by David Mitchell

Mitchell is another author whose works seem, at first glance, to be simplistic and tongue-in-cheek and easy to finish, but they end up being all of the above and none of the above at the same time. What should be a quick read always finds a way of becoming complex without ever hinting at the mechanics that allow this trick to happen, a deceptively simple narrative unfolding into something rife with literary gimmicks and bizarre tales-within-a-tale that will leave you placing a bookmark between the pages and taking a break just to make sure your brain has absorbed the info properly.

That’s my excuse. I’m sticking to it. That’s my reason for never finishing Mitchell in a timely fashion.

Unlike Ghostwritten, Number9Dream sticks with one main character the whole way through, but in the eight chapters that cover the four-hundred-page novel there is a cast of characters almost too bizarre to be believable. Almost. We follow a young island hick in the big city looking for his unnamed father, a man who impregnated his mother and ran off, only to run into yakuza (multiple times), a concert pianist, a video store owner/capsule hotel landlord, a crazy train station employee, a wannabe hacker, a Korean bar hostess and several weirdo pizza delivery employees. Not to mention the equally weird pizzas they make.

It’s a strange story, told in a strange style, and once again I’m going to have to come out and claim a better understanding of the work would be had after a second reading. I notice myself making this claim a lot. Perhaps I read too quickly, to shallowly, to understand everything my eyes scan over. Perhaps I’m just not cut out for “intellectual” work. Perhaps I’m lazy.

Perhaps, like Number9Dream, I’m everything at once.


3/5, only for being layered enough to require a second reading.

#3 of 2009: JPod by Douglas Coupland

2009 started off funny and has continued that way for a while.

First I became rather entranced with the idea of using this year to whittle my way through all the DVDs I’ve amassed over the years. If there’s one thing I love to collect as much as books it’s DVDs. I’ve been running on the elliptical and watching movies every day with the dual goal of losing a considerable amount of weight and seeing a considerable amount of movies and so far this year I’ve shed fifteen pounds and twenty-five DVDs.

Not too shabby.

Of course, all of this comes with the sacrifice of reading time. Not to despair, though, because I’ve lost my job as well, freeing me up for all kinds of time-consumptive projects. At this point in my life, losing my job might very well have been the best thing to happen in years, but this period of empty space is going to have to be incredibly short and bittersweet as I try to find a job in this very depressed market while reading, writing and watching movies on a tighter budget.

Good thing I have all this stuff already on my shelves, huh?

I burned my way through JPod in a matter of days. This is my fist Coupland novel, though I’ve been aware of him for years, and I’ve got to say I’m a bit angry at myself for not turning on to him much sooner. JPod is the kind of sarcastic, ironic, meta-book that I think I’ve been dreaming of. It’s almost post-modern but not quite so, caught up in a world full of penis-enlargement emails, lists of pi that last ten pages, missives from Nigerian scammers and concepts for the shittiest video games ever almost-made.

God, I love it. It's almost like reading Max Barry, whom I've already fallen quite head over heels for in a strictly literary-related sense, but not quite. It's Coupland's own distinct voice, completely different from Barry's, but they have the same sense of irony and humor combined with distaste for corporate retardation that gets me every time.

One of the traits of successful writers that I don’t believe I myself possess is the ability to create characters that flow through any and all situations, and the ability to make these situations arise without feeling contrived. God, when I write any emergence of the absurd or grotesque feels so forced that it immediately shames me. I feel like a walking cliche generator, a hack, someone who can’t even conjure the most basic characters or personalities.

JPod is life, the life of nerds and techies blending in with the rest of society, as seen through the glass of a slightly morbid funhouse mirror. What you’re looking at is completely real and mostly true, but it’s stretched a bit in ways that are physically improbable at best. But it’s great, and a blast to look at, and it reminds you of yourself in some kind of fucked-up manner that makes you also grateful at the same time that it’s not a complete mirror of your life.

Really, really good. I’m looking forward to rereading it sometime soon.

5/5


Now, back to Number9Dream, another great book that was misplaced somewhere in my house for a while. Hope I haven’t already lost my momentum with this one.

#2 of 2009: Spook Country by William Gibson

Another book needing a dictionary with a plot that’s just a few inches over my head. I “got” it, but there are a few subtle detours in the storytelling I’m sure need a second reading to pick up.

Unlike Pattern Recognition, which deals with a subject that I loathe but am simultaneously fascinated with (advertising), Spook Country delves into a bit of territory that I’m firmly involved in, at least somewhat - GPS technology. As a geocacher, I really got into some of the concepts in this book, especially placing “invisible” art at specific coordinates that require special equipment to view. Other things, like using GPS to track objects around the world, caused the gears in my head to begin working overtime. All of the neat things that could be done with these satellites...

As it is with everything Gibson, there’s no such thing as a single story line. In this book, there are three, the story of the rock star turned journalist, the story of the young, spiritual mafioso and the story of the drug-addicted translator held captive by the supposed government agent. This last story line is where the book’s title comes from, as both the man employing the mafioso and the man holding the translator against his will are current or former intelligence agents.

It was a great read, but like everything of Gibson’s I’ve read, it’s long, arduous, and requires a lot of concentration. I’m glad to have read it, and I’m keeping my copy, but I think I’m going to hold off on any more Gibson until I’ve read some of these “essentials” I’ve been rambling about lately.

4/5

On to The House of Leaves. I’m not sure I should be complaining about a book requiring intense concentration before I’ve tackled this. I’m almost breaking out in cold sweats already.

#1 of 2009: Bangkok 8 by John Burdett

An American Army sergeant in Bangkok is found under a bridge in a luxury car with its handles forced shut, the interior of the vehicle teeming with angry cobras. On the man’s head coils an equally angry python, bound and determined to swallow him whole. Two police officers, devout Buddhists and perhaps the only two non-corrupt cops in the Royal Thai Police Force, have been assigned to tail this man for reasons unknown, and when he slips away for a half hour he winds up dead.

Who killed William Bradley, and why? If you follow the pattern of other crime novels, the pages of this book should be devoted to finding the answers to these two questions.

Set in Bangkok, however, against the backdrop of two teeming, illegal industries, the most important question becomes “Who are all these people, and why do they live the way they do?” Prostitution and drugs abound, intertwined with Buddhist philosophy, as a half-Thai, half-American near-saint of a cop ponders the case and questions both himself and the people around him.

Call me stupid, but I’m still not sure why this is called Bangkok 8. Perhaps as a reference to the Eight-Fold Path of Buddhist scripture, I don’t know [It's a reference to the Royal Thai Police district Sonchai works in. Ignore me, I'm dense. - JB ]. What I do know is that this is one damn fine novel, a crime novel for sure but a bit apart from what classifies as detective fiction. I would probably refer to it as a character study steeped in illegal activity, or a character study because of illegal activity. Burdett’s Thailand seems to be fueled by it, though in a way that makes everyone both culpable and blameless at the same time. It’s all for the better of society, right? The redistribution of Western wealth into the East? And who doesn’t like to have a good time?

When the last page is flipped, two points will have been made. First, there is no black and white in Thailand, only shades of grey. Everyone is corrupt, even if only a little. And the second point?

Everyone is a whore.


5/5

New Year, New Goal

In 2008 I proved to myself that yes, I really can read fifty books in a year. I can even read more than that, if I push myself. It was a great feeling, but I felt a little let down when I didn’t make it to 75. “Oh, well,” I said. “I can try again next year.” Great idea, right?

Well, I’m not going to do it.

2009 is the Year of Big Books. Those books that I’ve been meaning to read, but keep putting off because of their size or difficulty? The books that I shoved off to the side because I was afraid of slowing down my “completed book count”?

This is the year for them.

I’m setting a goal of twenty books or more, though these books will include the following:

Infinite Jest
The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Out (for the second time)

The Broom of the System

White Noise

Cloud Atlas
The House of Leaves
Snow Crash
The Vampire Chronicles Collection 1
Gravity’s Rainbow

Any book I’ve wanted to read that I put off because it would take a week or more to fit into my busy schedule is being read this year. I’m not paying much attention to numbers this time. I have so many different things, easy reads with long page counts and difficult reads with shorter ones, plus anything in between, that I haven’t given an opportunity because I was too busy trying to reach my book number goals.

This is also going to be the Year of Suggestions. Some books people just keep bringing up, mostly Snow Crash and House of Leaves. I bought copies and ended up not reading them immediately, and I’ve been pestered over and over about when I’m going to read them. I’m going to read them now, this year, possibly even before Spring arrives. Who knows.

But this year for sure I’m not reaching for fifty. It was helpful in clearing out my TBR of shorter books, but it’s time to dig in now.

#61 of 2008 - The Tattoo Murder Case by Akimitsu Takagi

One of the greatest things about mystery novels, in addition to the prospect of solving a case before the solution is revealed on the page, is the amount of emotional depth that can be lent to the characters. Nothing brings out familiarity and camaraderie between an author and their audience like conflict and mortal danger, and crime novels have both in spades.

Crime is also an incredible vehicle for social observance. Reading foreign mysteries are the best way, aside from spending large sums of money at your local travel agent’s office, to get a feel for a country’s many overlapping societal layers. You have criminals, law officers, academics, local businesspeople, religious officials and many others weaving their way in and out of the narrative, sometimes the focus of a chapter and sometimes the colorful background.

This is a book written for the Japanese by a young Japanese writer. Both the novel’s date of birth and setting are 1947, just after the country’s defeat in World War II. Though there is little outright hostility directed towards the Western occupiers, there is a pronounced sentiment of loss, regret and bewilderment that permeates the narrative as thick as beef and potato stew. These people are survivors; ordinary citizens who’ve been conscripted and sent to hell only to return to a half-destroyed city, or people who never left and witnessed the air raids firsthand. Nobody in this story is untouched, innocent or naïve. Criminal or not, they’re all damaged in one way or another.

The crime appears early in the novel. A temptingly beautiful yet troubled young woman is brutally murdered, her torso and parts of her arms and legs carted away. Her head and the remaining portions of her arms and legs are found in a locked bathroom with the faucet still running, washing all the blood down a drain in the floor. Her home has been ransacked and her belongings stolen. Even the tattoos that adorned her body are gone, every bit of her that was inked having disappeared. From here we are led through twists and turns, given information about the then-prohibited Japanese tattooing underworld, in the hopes of finding this woman’s killer. Instead, what we find are more bodies and a deepening sense of dread as the case goes from very hot to tepid to cold.

When the killer, the killer’s motives and the methods employed are finally revealed at the end, the solution is obvious enough to cause the reader to nod and say, “Yes, that makes perfect sense now!” But nothing is so obvious that it would make the reader feel stupid.

This is Takagi Akimitsu’s first novel, written before he was 30, and the first to be published in English by SOHO. Two others, The Informer and Honeymoon to Nowhere, have been published in the years since The Tattoo Murder Case’s debut.


5/5

#60 of 2008 - Pattern Recognition by William Gibson

I had to buy a dictionary for this one, an Oxford American with additional thesaurus features.

I didn’t know if I’d make it through this book in a reasonable amount of time. The premise is intelligent, captivating, but the language is dense with lesser known words and product references and the sentences are constructed so oddly that I was sure this was going to be one of those books that looks and feels fantastic but you-as-reader are never able to sink below the surface with. The kind of book that makes you feel inadequate, stupid even, as both a writer and a reader. The kind of book that’s just too much for you.

Like David Foster Wallace, or Pynchon, or DeLillo, all of whom I have unread works of sitting on my shelf, just waiting for me to attempt to take them on. Tomorrow, I tell myself, or next week, or next month, I’ll give them a whirl. But right now I’m reading for pleasure, damn it, not to tax my brain or grant me some kind of temporary bragging rights that will last until the next epic work shows itself to me. Not right now.

And, of course, those days have yet to come. Even The House of Leaves is still waiting for me, I’m sad to say.

However, things didn’t turn out the way I’d expected them to. Pattern Recognition takes a while to pull you into its orbit, and even longer to achieve rhythmic balance between mind and prose, but once you’re in you’re golden.

Just make sure you have your dictionary beside you and a browser open to Google, should you need them.

At the heart of this story lies Cayce Pollard, an uber-nerd living and working in the heart of chic as a “cool-hunter” for advertising agencies. In her spare time, she posts on an Internet forum devoted to a series of nameless, unidentifiable bits of film footage that emerge in random on different websites, seemingly out of sequential order. Who creates the footage, why, and how? She cannot figure it out, despite lengthy debates with her online friends, and eventually her online and real world realities blend together when she is hired by one of her current clients to begin a new job, actually a partnership, of finding the footage’s creator.

On top of this, Cayce has a severe allergy to several well-known corporate insignias, a mix of physical and neurotic reactions that leave her nearly unable to function at the mere sight of them. Didn’t know the name of the Michelin Man was actually Bibendum? You will after reading this. You’ll know what a Curta calculator is as well, but only after looking it up so you can picture it as it’s described on the page. Prada, Tommy Hilfiger, Apple and several dozen other recognizable logos make appearances here, either as severe allergens or harmless artworks.

Considering what Gibson is best known for (cyberpunk), this felt oddly mainstream, too close to real, actual life. Pollard’s father has gone missing in the 9/11 tragedy, and her mother’s coping mechanism includes going to live in a hippy commune with people who analyze recorded audio for ghost whispers. Between the constant references to pop culture, current (or very recent) events and corporate giants, this could be one of those “ripped from the headlines” type of stories, or even a cheap cyber-thriller. It is both of these, and yet it is neither as well.

What it really is, at its core, is an explanation to the rest of the world, the people who don’t understand the duality of Internet enthusiasts, of how people can live and befriend online, and how eventually the digital world spills out into the real.


4/5