BAN Books

Book Blog

Here I will record my thoughts on all the books I read from now on.  Or at least the ones I remember to write about. 

5-18-08

Maus by Art Spiegelman

Ever since I read that Maus is the only graphic novel to receive the Pulitzer Prize, I have been intrigued.  I finally got it for Christmas last year (so for those counting, yes, it's been a year and a half between getting the book and reading it), and finally-er, I sat down to read it.  It's divided into two books, although it originally premiered like a Dickens novel, a chapter at a time appearing in various magazines from 1973 to 1991, during which time Art's father and the protagonist of the story passed away.  After it was completed, in 1992 it received a special Pulitzer Prize (the same year as The Kentucky Cycle, for those tracking my past), and it sounds like they recognized its greatness but didn't quite know what to make of it.  A serious graphic novel?  The story itself notes the discrepancy in presenting the atrocities of the Holocaust as cartoons, but that's the whole point. 

Part 1, "My Father Bleeds History" throws us into the story of a young New York cartoonist interviewing his father in order to tell his story as a graphic novel.  So each chapter opens with Art visiting his cantankerous father Vladek, in the process of souring his relationship with his second wife Mala, and moves into Vladek's tale, as he rose to power in Poland, then suffered through the various ghettos while his family and friends are torn apart, most of whom never survived the Holocaust.  Part 2, "Here My Troubles Began," (an ironic title from an actual quote used by his father, as if the ghettos and poison pills and suicides and random shootings weren't troubles) brings Vladek and his first wife (and Art's mother) Anja to Auschwitz in 1944.  Through a combination of extreme resourcefulness, friendliness, and luck, Vladek survives almost a year there, and even after the war, when he and his fellow Jews were dropped off in the middle of nowhere, getting back to civilization was not easy.  The world has plenty of Holocaust stories, as characters in Maus point out, but a story as miraculous as Vladek's is worth telling.  How he made it through is amazing, and you get the feeling nobody else could have done what he did.  However, the novel is adept at pointing to Vladek's flaws as a human.  During the Holocaust he's like a superhero, albeit a frail, dying superhero, but in the present day scenes, he is miserly and shrewish, and the novel goes out of its way to say that Vladek wasn't made that way by his history, because plenty of others came through the Holocaust without sacrificing their generosity.  I just have one more thing to mention, and it's that in the beginning, during the time of ghettos in Poland, the Red Cross delivered food to the Jews and issued identity papers, and it pissed me off.  Never have I been more certain that cooperation is as bad as perpetration.

Grade:  8 out of 10

5-17-08

Cannery Row by John Steinbeck

I've wanted to read this book for a long time.  In California, we used to take occasional trips to Monterey, and I've been to Cannery Row a few times.  The only other Steinbeck novel I've read is Of Mice and Men, which was phenomenal (although I've also been in the play of Of Mice and Men and seen the John Ford version of The Grapes of Wrath).  But Monterey, California, with its extensive aquarium and coastal climate and salty air and sea otters and jellyfish, is one of those places that will always attract me. 

Cannery Row is essentially plotless, apart from one strand focusing on a group of drifters who don't drift trying to throw a party for the nicest guy they know, a local marine biologist named Doc.  Other than that, there is no real story, but instead a world is developed.  The opening chapters establish Cannery Row, almost everyone of import popping up in the description.  By chapters, we are introduced to Lee Chong's grocery story, the vacant lot next door and the Palace Flophouse behind that, Dora's Bear Flag Restaurant (and brothel) on the other side of the vacant, and Doc's Western Biologicals across the Row.  We meet the inhabitants of the boiler in the vacant, we learn the histories of the former brothel watchman and every previous owner of Lee Chong's broken down Model T, and occasionally we get chapter-long short stories set in Cannery Row, like one where two kids goad each other. 

Through this pastiche of storytelling, Cannery Row tells the story of community, and in that way it reminds me a lot of Deadwood.  The way Calamity Jane, Doc Cochran, and Alma Garret come together to care for Sofia is just like the hardworking men of the Palace Flophouse trying to get jobs to raise money to throw a party for Doc for no reason other than he's a nice guy.  Another similarity is how both incorporate a bit of political philosophy--why do people band together to form governments?  But the way Steinbeck evokes the small-town sense of community, lauding its virtues (Dora the whore madam donates heavily to charities) while lamenting its sadness (Mack's ex-wife), is the highlight.  Like the Old Chinaman flap-flapping through town, Steinbeck builds the physical location of Cannery Row and tangentially builds on it, eventually creating a whole tapestry. 

You can't help but admire the lower class denizens of Cannery Row.  They don't exactly exist outside of the law or the class system, but they do somehow reside just beyond normal society.  Mack, Hazel, Eddie, Hughie, and Jones don't work except when they need money, but their reputations for keeping jobs and dedicating themselves to their tasks allow for this lifestyle.  When they get a job collecting frogs on private property, Mack's medical advice for the landowner's dog not only allows them to stay, but it gets them food, alcohol, and the greatest frog battle the world has ever known.  Then, when the first attempt at a party at Western Biologicals goes awry, Doc covers all the damages and not only forgives but respects Mack and the boys.  After a brief spell of doom over the town, Mack goes to Dora for advice, and she comes up with the only answer, the simplest solution:  throw a party that Doc does get to.  And when they allow for this party to grow on its own, everyone in town gives presents for Doc and brings food or drink or decorations.  No matter what happens, life goes on and people help each other out on Cannery Row, and since everyone's strapped for cash, everybody's truly equal. 

One of my favorite chapter introductions finally develops a character oft mentioned but never yet seen:  "Henri the painter was not French and his name was not Henri.  Also he was not really a painter."  And in two sentences, Steinbeck tells that immortal moral:  never judge a book by its cover.  

Apart from all the intellectualizing and analysis, it's easy to become as taken with the novel (novel?) as I was.  There's a beautiful chapter where Hazel helps Doc collect starfish and octopi in the great tide pool that will have you running for the nearest coast.  The tide pool is all sex and death--an anemone opens up, an octopus pulls out its stomach and envelops a smaller creature, a squid shoots ink, a crab exposes itself for a moment to change shells--and while that may seem what life should be like for the lower class in Cannery Row, they've made themselves lives worth living in their community.  The tapestry metaphor is even more appropriate than I originally pictured:  not only do the girls at Dora's make a quilt for Doc using their finest silk undergarments, but the tapestry represents the different parts of the community coming together to make something beautiful from something that could be merely tawdry. 

And now, a passage:

"It has always seemed strange to me," said Doc.  "The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system.  And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism, and self-interest are the traits of success.  And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second." 

"Who wants to be good if he has to be hungry, too?" said Richard Frost.

--Cannery Row

Grade:  10 out of 10

4-23-08

King Lear by William Shakespeare

This was kind of random, but the two Shakespeare plays I had yet to read that I really wanted to were King Lear and The Tempest.  Then I started watching the Canadian show Slings and Arrows, about a theater festival whose productions of Shakespeare plays are riddled with problems that reflect the plays themselves (Hamlet, Macbeth, and in the final season, King Lear).  Strange as it is, I didn't want the show to ruin the play for me, even though I've seen Ran and know certain plot details anyway, so I decided to read it before watching.  Since I was wary of spoilers about a 400 year-old play, I think it's only right to tell you that I'm going to go into the plot. 

King Lear opens with a brief introduction scene that concludes with Lear, an 8th century British king, making his daughters profess their love for him in order to win their inheritance, a portion of his kingdom.  The eldest sisters, Goneril and Regan, flatter their aging father immensely, and as such, he rewards their husbands, the Dukes of Albany and Cornwall, respectively, with their promised lands.  But his favorite daughter Cordelia refuses to talk the talk since her apparent love for her father should be enough, and he banishes her (and the Earl of Kent, who speaks up against Lear's rashness), so she returns home with the King of France who offers to marry her.  Meanwhile, the Earl of Gloucester has two sons, Edgar, the legitimate heir and true follower, and Edmund, the illegitimate son who plots against his brother in order to inherit the throne.  Tragedy ensues. 

The first thing that I noticed after reading, apart from how all the death was saved for the final scene, which adeptly offs six main characters and a random (Gloucester, Edmund, Goneril, Regan, Cordelia, King Lear, and the hangman), was that the play loses sight of what's important.  I mean this as one of the script's merits, as Lear himself loses sight of what he holds dear.  King Lear's central relationship is that between Lear and Cordelia, and the two are separated from the end of the first scene until the end of Act 4!  Romeo and Juliet got three acts together, and Macbeth doesn't leave his Lady until the bitter end.  But Lear, the person and play, banishes Cordelia until the tragedy is well under way.  After I finished, I thought King Lear didn't even have the most lines in the play, which it turns out is wrong, but speaks to his importance.  For most of the play, he's mad, rambling about the stars and the storm and his vengeance, whereas the other characters' lines had substance, usually backed by plot advancements--Lear just talks to himself and to his fool.  Also, Lear's in just over a third of the scenes, whereas Macbeth's in half (and still, most of Act 5 is made up of short scenes consisting of a few lines said at Macduff's camp), and Hamlet's in two-thirds.

Secondly, the play, even more than Hamlet to my eyes, is drenched in the Oedipus myth--although clearly Hamlet's central story is that of Oedipus Rex.  The entire Edgar/Edmund/Gloucester story is about one of the sons plotting to kill the father, who eventually dies learning of the actual betrayal at the hands of his son.  Speaking of Gloucester, he has his eyes ripped out echoing Oedipus' own blinding, one by Regan and one by Cornwall.  More than one character discusses the importance of filial duty, since this is a play about parents and their children, and there is not one functional parent-child relationship, including the blinded Gloucester and Edgar in disguise, which is as close as this play comes.  Maybe that's because they all blame their actions on the trajectories of the stars, planets, and moons, representative of the gods they worship, than their own free will.  Cordelia's death by hanging mirrors Antigone's end, and assumed betrayals (and actual ones) forcing people to choose sides riddle both King Lear and Antigone, even launching the action in both--Antigone standing up for Polynices and Kent standing up for Cordelia.  And then there's the parallel that Oedipus spends the entire play verbosely declaring his intent to find Laius' murderer, only to realize it's himself, while King Lear rants on and on about the vengeance he shall have on his ungrateful children only to realize that he was the one who caused this tragedy, not his daughters and especially not Cordelia. 

In fact, there are a lot of parallels to other Shakespeare plays, and I want to specifically mention King Lear in relation to Macbeth, and Sophocles' Oedipus Rex.  In those plays, the plot is set in motion due to prophecies, so the rest of the play is predicated on the idea that maybe things would have been different were the prophecies never heard.  But in King Lear, one of the strengths is that entropy increases (eh?  eh?) due to assumptions and plots.  As much as the people discuss the movements of the planets, Lear himself is responsible for banishing Cordelia, and Edmund is responsible for forging a note in his brother's handwriting, not some prophecy or macguffin.  I also think it's a strength of the play that, over the course of the first few acts, as the characters travel back and forth between Albany's castle, Gloucester's castle, and the French camp at Dover, the play represents a series of alliances, betrayals, and political plots.  Then, when everyone arrives in Dover for the battle, the play builds momentum and becomes a battle itself, dispatching characters while others race to rectify the situation.  The travel of information, like the identity of Kent or the plot against Albany or the flight of King Lear, results in a gameboard where certain characters know certain facts, and none know it all.  It's quite a cleverly structured play. 

Of course, this being Shakespeare, despite the overwhelming tragedy, only the immoral are punished.  Albany, Kent, and Edgar the loyal son live on to bring stability to Britain, like Horatio and Fortinbras or Macduff and Malcolm, although Kent claims to have some mission first.  My own mission now is to try and find some version of the play to watch, and I'd also like to explore interesting analyses.  I wonder what Dr. Brooks would have to say about King Lear.

Grade:  10 out of 10

1-10-08

Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

I turned on the movie, but after a minute (credits), I decided to read it first.  Like most of my favorite foreign films, it's deeply involved with the country it came from, essentially a depiction of Iran's modern history through the eyes of a young girl and her family.  The book opens with a sort of explanation; I suppose Marjane Satrapi felt she needed to rationalize her desire to write about her home country.  But the book doesn't glorify Iran, at least not its government (in any form), nor does it glorify America or the Western world.  Rather, Satrapi asserts that freedom is not limited to the West (nor is it realized there), and asks that we give the people of Iran a reprieve for the wrongdoings of a few extremists.  While the main characters are freedom-loving revolutionaries, the Iranian government kills its own people, and while the British established the Shah's regime in order to exploit Iran's oil, the West is also responsible for planting those seeds of revolution and supplying the tools of rebellion (Michael Jackson buttons and Nike sneakers). 

The main character is a little girl named, shockingly, Marjane Satrapi, and she grows up in a secular French school under the Shah's regime.  The arrival/enforcement of the veil is introduced in the first frame but not seen chronologically until we get used to the women pre-veil, about halfway through the novel.  I had never considered that there was a time in Iran (in the '70s no less) during which women could wear t-shirts and jeans and men didn't have to have beards.  We're told early on that the CIA are responsible for the revolution (in case we weren't aware), so the draconian rule of the so-called Islamic Revolution is imbued with that little irony.  And the final sections are devoted to the Iraq War (almost immediately after the Islamic Revolution) and the general tragedy of war. 

Because we see Iran through the eyes of a little girl and her parents, we get everyday examples of how the governments affected the lives of Iranians, such as the Shah's policemen locking a theater and burning it or the Ayatollah having people killed merely for owning a chess board.  All the while, Marji learns her own independence, which starts with her learning not to simply repeat what she reads (which is Marx or Descartes) and ends (not a spoiler...there's a Persepolis 2) with her leaving Iran.  I loved the stories, the characters, and the little-girl's-perspective writing, but the themes and the history are obviously my favorite aspects.  I read it all in one sitting (about as long as the movie), and I'd suggest that's a great way to really let this enchanting tale really hit you. 

P.S.  I learned a lot from Persepolis since I only knew the general story of Iran's revolution and war with Iraq, but my favorite new knowledge is about the name of Iran.  Apparently it came from a word that looks a bit like "Aryan" that means the birthplace of the Aryan people.  Similarly, the mountainous region north of Iran (Turkey, Azerbaijan, Georgia) is called the Caucasus, which is where we get Caucasian.  It fascinates me that Persians look nothing like the modern interpretation of Caucasian or Aryan, but are technically true Aryans or Caucasians. 

Grade:  8 out of 10

11-12-07

I Am America (And So Can You!) by Stephen Colbert

I read this book too soon.  I needed my Colbert fix, and now I'm all done with new Colbert until the dreaded WGA Strike is over!  Which will likely mean no more Colbert until next summer.  If I were a conspiracy nut, I'd wager the AMPTP refused to budge on the internet residuals issue in order to prevent Jon Stewart and Stephen T. Colbert, DFA from influencing voters during a pivotal election year so as to keep the fat cats fat and catlike.  But I don't, because Colbert didn't tell me to think that.  What he did tell me to think was rife with satire, most of it the same old (pointing out the hypocrisy of the Religious Right, xenophobia, and homophobia), but none of it less than entertaining.  I laughed so much reading this book, and of course I loved the pictures at the start of each chapter of Colbert dressed somehow thematically (for instance, a massive mustache for the immigration chapter).  We also got a few regular features like margin comments and footnotes, "guest" writers who invariably agree with Colbert, and fun games.  I can't wait to put one of my Stephen T. Colbert Medals for Literary Excellence on America the Book (and, one presumes, various books around Barnes and Noble including recent outings by Ann Coulter and BO).  He appends the book with a discussion of his Correspondents Dinner speech, which was beautifully written, and I'm glad he recognizes it.  I felt like he was a little embarrassed to be up there, saying what needed to be said (indicting the press corps for not investigating anything was my favorite), but meeting mostly silence.  To me, including the speech at the end without a self-deprecating tone shows that he is proud of it and knows he was right.  I wish I had paced myself better, and I wish Jon Stewart had a book coming out, because now I have to wait months to get them back in my life.  I guess it's never a bad time to re-read America the Book. 

Grade:  10 out of 10

11-8-07

Dinotopia: Journey to Chandara by James Gurney

The latest installment of Dinotopia features Arthur's journey to the East, the empire of Chandara.  To get there, he travels through many vaguely African, Middle Eastern, and South Asian societies, and each stop on his journey is beautiful.  I get lost staring at the larger panels, trying to take in everything, and the real testament is that I always wonder what it's like in that room of the building, or where that street vendor lives.  Gurney's art is so involving, especially for dinosaur-lovers, and in this outing, it is the real draw.  I was a little disappointed that most of the characters we know were abandoned, leaving just Arthur and Bix for most of the journey, and it felt like the people they encountered this time weren't as charismatic as people from previous installments.  All that said, it was very enjoyable and went out of its way to incorporate new dinosaurs, as the first two books focused on the main ones already.  The ending screams for a followup, so I'm confident we'll get more of Arthur's adventures in Dinotopia.  I just hope the next one features Will more prominently, as he's my favorite character. 

Grade:  7 out of 10

11-6-07

Watchmen by Alan Moore

As soon as I finished, in a state of amazement, I quickly went to check out who the cast is going to be for Zack Snyder's movie:

Billy Crudup as Dr. Manhattan--inspired, beautiful, I love it
Patrick Wilson as Nite Owl--even more perfect, although Wilson's way more in shape than the middle-aged Dan Dreiberg
Jeffrey Dean Morgan as the Comedian--great actor, great part.  I wonder if he'll be able to be unlikeable? 
Matthew Goode as Ozymandias--brilliant, except for the age thing again.  All these superheroes are supposed to be retired, and Matthew Goode is clearly in his prime, not even 30. 
Malin Ackerman as Laurie--I only know her as Juna from The Comeback, but I liked her all right.  Thankfully, this isn't a make-or-break role for the movie.  In fact, most of the way through the book I started to wonder why the women had no real part to play. 
Jackie Earle Haley as Rorschach--This I'm a little disappointed in.  Again, it's inspired, and the actor will be terrific.  But I kinda wanted them to go with a flaming redhead.  And also, ever since Little Children, he has scared me beyond belief.  Which I guess is good for Rorschach. 

Suffice to say, I'm pretty pleased with the cast, and as long as the movie aims for more realism than 300 (If I were directing, I'd aim for a David Fincher style for the film), then I'm excited. 

On to the book:  After that, I wanted to find essays and examinations about Watchmen's themes, but all I found on wikipedia was the revolutionary superhero idea, that the superheroes in this universe are old and outdated, and much about the form of the books was innovative.  I didn't really know where else to look, but the book is drenched in 80s social commentary.  Wikipedia mentions the apocalyptic atmosphere, but fails to address the gays, AIDS, poverty, social Darwinism, and the extravagance (greed is good) of certain classes that the book really ties together at the end.  I especially enjoyed the coda's headline about R.R. running for president in '88, R.R. turning out to be Robert Redford, and the "Who wants a cowboy actor as president?"  Pretty sweet of Moore to have said that in 1986.  And I did really enjoy how each of the characters brought a certain philosophy to the stage that was constantly in battle, all the way up to Rorschach's hardline moralism leading him to try to reveal Ozymandias' plan after global unity had been brokered. 

Anyway, my perspective on the 1980s is a little similar to Adrian Veidt's:  America was too focused on the Cold War to give a crap about America.  There's a reason Reagan's foreign policy is lauded (whether rightfully so or not) and his domestic policy is overlooked.  And Reaganomics my ass.  Poverty and AIDS were obviously the biggies, and I'd say The Dark Knight Returns is better at addressing them, but Watchmen certainly had more provocative ideas.  I still can't stop thinking about how gold (and indeed all elements heavier than iron, it turns out, like copper and nickel even) comes from supernovas, the only force powerful enough to add the subatomic particles.  But better, Ozymandias and Dr. Manhattan reveal some pretty crazy (and accurate?) ideas about the world.  If it's true that the mass stockpiling of nukes during the Cold War brought the world infinitely closer to accidental armageddon, doesn't that mean that, now that the USSR is dissolved, the risk is still there?  Obviously there aren't any enemies on the scale of a superpower to incite nuclear holocaust, but that doesn't mean the sheer number of atomic warheads currently in supply don't pose a semi-imminent danger. 

Experts have long agreed that there will certainly be nuclear war on American soil.  The only question is when.  And I'd always thought the only way to deal with this is to accept it's going to happen and continue as usual.  The threat of terrorism hasn't frightened me into jack shit, thank you very much, and I'd wager most Americans agree.  But Adrian points out that there's no need to simply accept this as truth, and a much better plan would be coming up with a solution.  So I've decided to clone an animal hybrid with the brain of a human psychic (Madame Cleo) and teleport it to New York City in order to frighten the world into unity.  Oops, spoiler alert. 

Grade:  10 out of 10

11-5-07

Oedipus by Lucius Annaeus Seneca

This is the Roman version of Oedipus, obviously, and it doesn't do much to differentiate itself from the original (ish) Sophocles version.  It's certainly still enjoyable, particularly in the translation I read which pretty thorougly modernized Chorus' monologues.  But really, what earned this a score about halfway are a couple quotes that I found perfect: 

"Anger is quite clever at inventing reasons for its madness."

"Great is the king who has been wronged, and remains unavenged." 

Double true. 

Grade:  6 out of 10

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