20090413.amazinfail

One of the ways that cultural Christianity most often capsizes itself is its reaction to the world around it. We (if I may say we without necessarily implicating myself in our transgressions) have a historically reliable fear of that which is not us, of that which is—ironically like us—not quite pure as the driven snow. Our fear causes us to react badly. Our apprehension over the things and people of the world about us cause us to engage in a multi-variegated palette of poorly conceived behaviours.

From political propaganda founded on ill-informed dogma to outright hatred. From slippery-sloped doggerel to trenchant panic. From amateur paranoia to... professional paranoia. We, as a cultural Christianity, don't have a great track-record.

And that's just the last couple years. Never mind decades and centuries of reacting poorly to the world around us.

So then, what's this all about? It seems that as every week, this one features a whole new topic about which we might prove our success or failure. While apparently there had been various Amazon ranking shenanigans over the preceding months, things seemed to have stepped up a bit quite recently and over the weekend, the social networking hoo-hahs got ahold of the story. And there has been furor.

It seems that Amazon has gone out of their way to strip the sales rank of a particular sector of the literary product. Quoted as saying that it is Amazon's policy to remove adult-oriented books from their ranking system, Amazon has really only stripped books with GBLT themes. Apparently, books with non-graphic homosexual content are falling to the sales-ranking axe, while books with graphically sexual content catering to a heterosexual crowd are both Scot and Free (notably among others, Playboy books and American Psycho.

What being forfeited from the sales-ranking circuit means for a book is virtual invisibility. Not only do books show up at a lower rank in book searches, but it seems an added value is that the books do not show up at all in Amazon's sitewide search. For instance, when searching all of Amazon for Brokeback Mountain, the in-print paperback version is unseen. As if no such book exists. Only when one refines the search to troll only through the category Books does one find that the book does indeed exist. And as L.A. Times writer Carolyn Kellogg says, "As troubling as the unevenness of the policy of un-ranking and de-searching certain titles might be, it's a bit beside the point. It's the action itself that is troubling: making books harder to find, or keeping them off bestseller lists on the basis of their content can't be a good idea."

Now for our purposes here, I'm not super concerned with whether this particular sales-ranking methodology so far as what Amazon's going to do. It seems pretty clear and predictable that this operational philosophy, which has turned into a bit of a PR nightmare for them, will be abandoned forthwith. And while I worry about the mindsets of those Christians who may have cheered Amazon's effort here, my mind is already set on the potential calamity that Christians may bring upon their own heads when Amazon inevitably reverts its policy.

Christians have an uncanny ability to be rendered entirely unable to divorce the thing they believe to be sin from portrayals of that thing in fiction. If a film has a character reviling the church and mocking its practices, the film is anti-Christian. If a singer sings that she kissed a girl and that she rather enjoyed it, that singer is promoting homosexuality. If a book features a story in which a Christian behaves hypocritically, that book is a diatribe against the church. Add to this acute myopia a certain forgetfulness of what it means to live in a free country and we can almost expect a Conservative Christian outcry that Amazon is kowtowing to the godless.

Heck, we might even catch wind of a boycott or two.

The fact is, though: Amazon's precedent here is dangerous. Why is it that "making books harder to find, or keeping them off bestseller lists on the basis of their content can't be a good idea"? For this reason alone: when a society has the ability to censor a strain of thought based wholly upon its whim, its only a matter of time before its your idea or belief that is the target of censorship or ban. The thing is, it doesn't matter if I think that homosexuality or pedophilia or income tax evasion or naming your daughter George are unpardonable offenses. It doesn't even matter if I think they are the highest affront to the Almighty.

So long as we play at being a free society and a democracy, these are things that must be allowed. A privately owned business does have the liberty, I think, to makes discriminating choices, but when one is as powerful as Amazon, it is a liberty I do not think the company ought to take. And please let us not, as Christians, embarrass ourselves by encouraging them to take that liberty.

Unless we're going to be upfront about wishing to trade in our quote-unquote free society.

20090403

Apparently, and this has been brought to my attention on several fronts, I have not kept up the kind of rigorous schedule of posting that readers expect or require of me. How did we get to this place, you and I? A place where I kind of have just become indolent, flush with the lethargy born of years of practiced irresponsibly? A place where you can barely be bothered to care, challenged only by the vaguest sense of a tickle in the backs of your minds—a curiosity—that prompts little more than a whatever happened to... Whatshisname?

So last Thanksgiving, the Monk and I took a week's vacation to travel northbound in order to visit one of her long-sequestered college chums. After a relaxing time away, we returned to a house that was in desperate need of cleaning. I took on the dishes and halfway through, whilst scrubbing a glass tumbler, said glass broke and lacerated my right hand to the bone. Essentially, I couldn't type well for over a month. After that I just kind of got out of the habit and while occasionally considering renewing my interest in the platform, just couldn't get up the inspiration. This earned lethargy continues apace even today.

This does not mean that I have been inactive though. My use of Facebook has been fruitful, I have written several book reviews, my participation at Christ and Pop Culture continues undaunted, and I've even begun a Twitter stream that I am attempting to keep worthwhile despite the fact that the platform actively thwarts worth. In any case, if you're interested, here are a pile of links to things I've produced of late.

Christ and Pop Culture
While primarily occupied as what I like to think of as the backbone of the site's commenting citizenry, I was recently asked to guest write an article in regards to Michale Karounos' recent review of the movie adaptation of Neil Gaiman's Coraline. The book and movie were great fun and the review's author both didn't get the material but made a number of foolish statements in its regard. So much so that Gaiman posted how thoroughly amused he was by the ridiculous effort. My article in response is found here: "Sticks and Stones: Being Hurt by a Christian Review of Coraline".

Book Reviews
2666 by Roberto Bolaño
The Absolute Sandman (4 vols.) by Neil Gaiman
Silverfish by David Lapham
Emma (7 vols.) by Kaoru Mori
Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire
Twilight by Stephenie Meyer
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

Twitter
Twitter, to me, is a bastion of obnoxious nothings. There are a very few people performing on Twitter that are worth the trouble. As an evolving medium, people are still trying to figure out what to do with it and I think they'll continue to wonder until Twitter itself evolves. Part of Twitter's allure is its limitations, but those limitations also fuel my frustration with the medium—as they actively hamper value. Facebook offers something similar to Twitter, but adds the ability for user interaction with comments. This destroys Twitter's model in some ways. Yet Facebook's post-interactivity is limited to those who are your friends. One cannot simply just Follow worthwhile people on Facebook. As I said, media in flux.

In any case, my experiment with the communication vehicle lies here.

As I said there are very few people who make Following a really worthwhile endeavor, but one of those people is Merlin Mann of You Look Nice Today. I'm following Neil Gaiman, who is sometimes interesting, and Melanie Cogdill, who is likewise sometimes interesting. But really, Merlin is the only master of the medium I've encountered.

20081023.SnuffReview

NOTE: Until I get bored of the conceit, all reviews will be introduced like so with a clumsily worded Haiku Review.

Title: Snuff
Book: Novel
Author: Chuck Palahniuk
Year: 2008
Pages: 197

I'm not sure where the real problem with Snuff lay. Sure it's easy to point to dull and repetitive dialogue. Or continual narrative use by several characters of stock phrases that nobody uses very often. Or the uninspired characters. But somewhere beyond all that, Palahniuk just kind of, I dunno, fails to deliver a worthwhile story. And it didn't help that the ending was a confused jumble of narrative vomit—unless there were some hints to a different chronology that I had missed in my hurry to finish.

So anyway, here's what's what. Cassie Wright is this aging porn queen and she's setting out to break records by accomplishing sex acts with 600 men in a single go. Most of the book occurs in the green room, where the gradually diminishing group of 600 men mill about eating snacks and trying to keep themselves ready for action. The book is narrated by four of the characters, three individuals from the assembled male-strom (Numbers 72, 137, and 600) and Ms. Wright's manager, Sheila.

You would think that with four narrators, we would get four distinct voices, but despite the fact that Mr. 600 describes everyone as a "dude" and Sheila takes every opportunity in her narrative stream to refer to men by a string of euphemisms for masturbation (e.g. "pud-puller," "willy-wankers," "palm pilots"—yeah, I know, ho-hum...)—despite the fact that a couple of these narrators have obnoxious verbal tics, each of the four are quite obviously Palahniuk thinly veiled. Each of the narrators does this little shtick where they'll enlighten the reader to some odd piece of knowledge about one subject or another (usually movie star trivia) and then they'll punctuate by saying: "True fact." I've never run into anyone who talks like this ever, so to run into four or five in the course of a day seems a little tough to swallow. Also, I may have heard a person at some point in my life refer to the pointing index finger as a quote-unquote gun finger, but again, four people in a day?

Anyway, the story moves along at a nice clip and I finished it in good time, but I wouldn't call myself satisfied. Maybe Palahniuk spoiled me with Survivor, but a lot of this just had a kind of been-there/done-that feel to it. This felt like an author phoning it in. And I still don't know what happened with Sheila at the end. One minute she's pounding on the door and the next? It either skips a scene or we go back in time. And in either case, I just don't get it.

Rating:

Note: Overstreet can sleep happy tonight secure in the knowledge that his book was better than Chuck "First Rule" Palahniuk's.

20081016.YearOfBooks

Since Paul and Wendy didn't like my desert-island author question, Paul suggests something more realistic: What do you plan to read over the next twelve months? Okay, easy enough, I guess. Here's a rough sketch of the texts I plan to consume over the next four seasons, ranked into four categories, the first being the one's I will pretty much absolutely read and the last being books that I will read unless other additions to the list along the way push these out.

Snuff   (Chuck Palahniuk)

Baudolino   (Umberto Eco)

Wind-Up Bird Chronicle   (Haruki Murakami) REREAD

---

The Love of a Good Woman   (Alice Munroe)

The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana   (Umberto Eco)

The Last Cavalier   (Alexandre Dumas)

The Children of Húrin   (J.R.R. Tolkien)

Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World   (Haruki Murakami)

Wild Sheep Chase   (Haruki Murakami)

The Graveyard Book   (Neil Gaiman)

Never Let Me Go   (Kazuo Ishiguro)

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn   (Betty Smith)

Nine Stories   (J.D. Salinger)

Silverfish   (Dave Lapham)

The Absolute Sandman, v. 1   (Neil Gaiman) REREAD

The Absolute Sandman, v. 2   (Neil Gaiman) REREAD

The Absolute Sandman, v. 3   (Neil Gaiman)

The Absolute Sandman, v. 4   (Neil Gaiman)

Fables, v. 11   (Bill Willingham, Mark Buckingham)

Mary Jane Loves Spider-Man, v. 2   (Sean McKeever, Takeshi Miyazawa)

---

The Count of Monte Cristo   (Alexandre Dumas) REREAD

The Elephant Vanishes   (Haruki Murakami)

After Dark   (Haruki Murakami)

Remains of the Day   (Kazuo Ishiguro)

An Artist of the Floating World   (Kazuo Ishiguro)

The Cheese Monkeys   (Chip Kidd)

No Country for Old Men   (Cormac McCarthy)

Patriot Acts   (Greg Rucka)

Heart, You Bully, You Punk   (Leah Hager Cohen)

The Man Within   (Graham Greene)

King of Odessa: A Novel of Isaac Babel   (Robert A Rosenstone)

The Picture of Dorian Gray   (Oscar Wilde) REREAD

Thunderstruck   (Erik Larson)

Lady Chatterley's Lover   (D.H. Lawrence)

Middlesex   (Jeffrey Eugenides)

Five Festal Garments   (Barry G. Webb)

Locas: The Maggie and Hopey Stories - A Love and Rockets Collection   (Jaime Hernandez)

Emma, v. 2-7   (Kaoru Mori)

---

Kafka on the Shore   (Haruki Murakami) REREAD

The Shack   (William P. Young)

Twilight   (Stephanie Meyer)

Great Neck   (Jay Cantor)

Leepike Ridge   (N. D. Wilson)

Oscar Wilde Discovers America   (Louis Edwards)

Cyndere's Midnight   (Jeffrey Overstreet)

Water for Elephants   (Sara Gruen)

Oh yeah, and there's whatever six books get included into our bi-monthly bookclub.

As you can see, I lean heavily toward fiction. I think there are two non-fiction books in that pile and one fiction that's written as if non-fiction and one piece of historical fiction based around events recorded in journals and newspapers et cetera. I'm obviously favouring a couple authors (primarily Murakami, Ishiguro, and Gaiman - my rereads are almost wholly from two members of this group).

Some of the books from the last group are ones I don't have much particular interest in, but sort of feel a duty toward. Neither Twilight nor The Shack interest me, but they're so very popular that I may just check them out (plus The Shack sounds like the kind of thing that someone from the book club may pick anyway). Water for Elephants has an interesting cover, but that's about all I know. Leepike Ridge is one I'll have to give an honest shot to. I had read the first chapter and put it down under the shame of reading something that was overwrought and just trying too hard (not unlike the recently Auralia's Colors)—one of the things about my personality that makes like a little tricky to negotiate is that I become unbearably uncomfortable when I see someone embarrassing themselves. For this reason, I don't usually watch Ben Stiller movies (Meet the Parents was torturous) and have a hard time with Michael's scenes from The Office when he's interacting with anyone outside the office. And, it turns out, I get a sick-ish feeling in my stomach's pit when I read someone and it's clear they're trying super hard and not making it but maybe they don't realize it and they're just so earnest and, yeah. Basically, watch Swingers and you'll know what I'm talking about.

HR.AuraliasColors

NOTE: Until I get bored of the conceit, all reviews will be introduced like so with a clumsily worded Haiku Review.

Title: Auralia's Colors
Book: Novel (Fantasy)
Author: Jeffrey Overstreet
Year: 2007
Pages: 336

I had only heard good things about Jeffrey Overstreet's fantasy novel, Auralia's Colors. Which is, I'll state up front, not the best way to approach a text unbiased. I picked the book up expecting greatness and found only good-ness. I delved its innards hoping for something that would transcend its genre and discovered a novel mired in its genre.

Not that it's all bad. And neither is it at all bad. Auralia's Colors does though make generous use of what for lack of a better term can be called faults.

First the bad.

The novel, like most of its kind, labours heavily under the burden of its forefathers. The stereotyped tropes of the genre are a cruel taskmaster under whose fell thumb Auralia and her colours never threaten to emerge. The themes are tired and overworn and I felt like I was reading any number of the fantasy books I grew up with as a kid. Many of the characters are mere caricatures and you know from the first page of their introduction exactly who they will turn out to be (I had hoped while reading that he would be turning these stereotypes on the reader, playing with and then dashing expectations, but alas...). The prose is overheated, wrought over and again in the forge of Overstreet's imagination. (I read the first couple pages to The Monk while she prepared herself a lunch and her response: "Hm, I think he's trying to hard.")

Randall Munroe (of XKCD) recently posited a helpful rule of thumb regarding these types of novels:

Auralia and her colours do suffer on this point—though not as much as they might. While Overstreet is not quite as imaginative world-builder as Phillip Pullman and doesn't have the master's grasp on the language as does Tolkien, he does tell a well-paced story. This is something at which Pullman, for all his imagination, utterly fails. Overstreet's characters who are less like the cardboard standees that populated the Suncoast Videos of yesteryear are engaging enough and I really did want to find out what would happen in the end. The climax to this first book was satisfying enough that I went to the library to see if they had the first sequel Cybele's Midnight, but they didn't. And I'm not quite sold enough to actually purchase it.

As far as Fantasy goes, I'd put Overstreet far below Tolkien (but who isn't when it comes to fantasy), quite a stretch below Gaiman, a bit below Feist and Rowling, far above Pullman (though my butt is also far above Pullman), better than most of those Dungeons & Dragons books I read in juniour high, and probably on a par with McCaffrey and nearly on a level with Lewis (though in fair disclosure, I'm not the biggest fan of Lewis). Of course, this is his first novel and some authors have been known to hone their craft as they go.

Rating:

NOTE: While browsing Borders last week, I thought I'd check out the book's sequel, read the first chapter, and see if it was improvement enough to tempt my wallet (as I happened to have a spending allowance burning a book-sized hole in my pocket). I went to Sci-Fi/Fantasy and browsed down to the O section. Or more precisely, where there would have been an O section had there been any O authors. Apparently there are plenty of N fantasy authors and piles of Ps, but nary an O.

Still, I knew they had the book, so I meandered over to their handy self-service computer and located the mislaid volume. As it turned out, they had a bunch of copies. All in the wrong section. For some reason, the novels had been labeled (I'm guessing by the publisher) as "Christian Fiction." Man, way to stick to the ghetto. Sure, the book would probably find a ready audience (as Tycho might say, "a Captive audience), but the author's work will never be able to be appealed to a wider audience if it's shuffled into some dreary corner with a bunch of books that didn't deserve the cost of binding. Seriously, have you ever stopped to admired the tortured writing that passes under the banner of "Christian fiction."

I might not have been made a particular fan of Overstreet's trilogy (?), but I liked it alright. And I could see myself finishing the series if it didn't cost me anything but time. His work deserves better than the ghetto.

20081006.WhichAuthor

This time I'm interested in reader feedback. We'll take a similar question to the last. If you could only read one author for the rest of your life, which author would you choose? For the sake of getting answers more interesting than orthodox, let's exclude the holy scriptures of your chosen faith from the running.

For my own part, there is a heated race between Umberto Eco (five plumbable novels and fistfuls of non-fictional essay-type things) and Haruki Murakami (whose work never ceases to intrigue me).

I dropped out many of my favourite authors because they either were too one-note (e.g. Raymond Chandler, whose work is phenomenal but only for its style), had too small an ouevre (e.g. Harper Lee with one novel), or works in a genre that's too limiting to enjoy for a lifetime (e.g. Raymond Feist, who writes splendid fantasy adventure stories, but come on, fantasy adventure for one's whole life?).

My third runner-up was Neil Gaiman, who writes with both breadth and whimsy and is entirely enjoyable. Only perhaps less thoughtful than my two premium choices.

I'm absolutely torn here. While Murakami is vastly more enjoyable to read than Eco, in Eco you have the sense that you are actively learning about his subject-matter. To be fair, Murakami also rearranges the way one sees the world, only perhaps in a less formal and academic way.

In the end, perhaps I will choose Murakami for this simple reason: Eco often deals with literature and if I am only able to read Eco, I will never be able to encounter any of the works to which he refers (making reading something like On Literature a particularly dry and arduous task, I'd imagine).

So Murakami it is. Congratulations big guy.

But enough about me. How do you roll?

20080925.TheRoad.Review

Book: Novel
Author: Cormac McCarthy
Year: 2006
Pages: 287

It ended better than it began.

Despite being a very short book, I nearly gave up on The Road circa page ninety. It was, in a word, dull. As in without sheen. Without colour. Without any of that undefinable verve that makes a story interesting.

Sure, there were moments that would hold me. A nice bit of dialogue. The description of a passing forest fire's affect on the macadam road. A quick scene of action and blood-letting. An occasional turn of phrase (this was the first time I'd encountered "her nipples pipeclayed"). But these all were mere punctuations along a rather bland path.

After page ninety things began to pick up and while they never achieved any level of wonder that would keep me from putting the book down for either bed or bath, by the conclusion I was satisfied that I had read a worthwhile book. It's ideas and themes are worth pursuing and so far as post-apocalypse goes it doesn't tend toward cliche.

Plus, the father and son apparently run into Kilgore Trout along the way and give him a can of fruit cocktail and some coffee.

Rating:

Two more excerpts:
Description of the ELE that kills the world
Conversation with Kilgore Trout

20080924.OscarWilde

Okay, you're all lucky. Why? Because I'm introducing you to cool. Cool in the form of Hey Oscar Wilde! It's Clobberin' Time!.

This one guy has an extensive art collection of various comic artists interpreting their favourite literary figure/character/author. There is some pure awesome in there. Here are three that I like, but be sure to check out the real thing.

20080902

Book: Non-Fictional Novel
Author: Dave Eggers
Year: 2006
Pages: 473

Apart from a sometimes painfully awkward framing device and a style of writing that is dull enough to actively distance readers from emotionally connecting to the life and pain of one Valentino Achak Deng (a.k.a. Dominic), What Is the What ended up being not half bad. I suppose it was only a third bad.

Or maybe not actually bad. Maybe just one-third Not Great. Which is okay. We can't all be great.

"What is the what?" is a question that Valentino had been asking himself for a long time. Ever since he was Achak. Back before being reintroduced to his Christian name. The story goes: God approached the ancient Dinka, a people pregnant with hope and dignity, and offered them mastery of cattle, the source of life and greatness. That or the What. God never adequately explained the What to the Dinka and the Dinka, having seen UHF and knowing that there was nothing in the box and that box-pickers are so stupid, chose the safe bet. Cattle. And therefore, life and that abundantly. The other people got the What. Which is why apparently they took out their aggressions on the Dinka.

Okay, so that was a very loose paraphrase.

In any case, Valentino is busy wondering what the What could be when some of his Dinka brethren decide to begin a civil war against the northern half of Sudan (which is largely Muslim and Arab). The North is not a fan of this idea and so does its best to extinguish the Dinka (whether they own cattle or not). This started in 1983 or so and went on a good twenty years before stopping only to maybe start up again in the near future. In the end it really only has anything to do with the What if the What happens to be a thirst for money (and preexistent religious incompatibility). But Valentino doesn't know that. He's only six.

Or he is at first. He grows up over the course of the story. While a lot of his companions die, are killed, are kidnapped, or are lost.

Speaking frankly, Sudan has been an unmitigated disaster of country-running pretty much since it gained indepedence from its colonial British overlords. Since the war began in 1983, well over 2 million Dinka were genocidally put to pasture. What little infrastructure the Southern half of the country had thirty years ago is long since evaporated. There is hope for the country, but it's a slender hope. And a tenuous one. By the way, in case you missed it: 2 million.

To be certain, the subject matter of What Is the What is important for a largely ignorant American audience. We react easily, as a nation, to massacres like Columbine or the World Trade Center destruction, but compared to Sudan, these are mere stubbed toes while Sudan features sheared limbs and exposed organs. We should react easily and emotionally to the Columbines and the World Trade Centers, but we should react as well to the other terrors humanity perpetrates upon itself. Since 1999 I've been part of an organization that has worked with and in Southern Sudan (and Uganda and Kenya). I've met Rebecca Garang (wife of John Garang, the guy who essentially started the civil war by rebelling against an oppressive government). I've seen pictures, heard stories, and met those affected immediately by the situation. The story Eggers presents has more than the ring of truth to it. So far as things go, it is true—in that it represents with unflinching veracity the reality of the Sudanese problem.

I only wish it had been better written.

Eggers does not merely tell his story. He offers a framing device. One that does not adequately capture the life of Valentino and occasionally draws one so far out of story that it becomes difficult to reign back in. (I actually put the book down twice in order to read other books, despite having a limited time to complete What Is the What.) The book opens with Valentino being robbed and assaulted and he takes the opportunity over the next day and a half to think his story at his assailants and other non-Sudanese who come into his path. He's a good man and I feel for him, but the narrative trick just didn't work.

On top of this, Eggers' style here is rather lifeless. He's trying to write in the authentic voice of the very real Valentino Achak Deng, but the work suffers for it. The story content is fascinating but its delivery robs it of much of its fire and zest. It's not incompetent writing. It's just not enjoyable. Or interesting.

And that's just a shame.

Rating:

20080822

Book: Novel
Author: Thomas M. Disch
Year: 1999
Pages: 304

The Sub was interesting. I think I mostly enjoyed it as much as I did because I hadn't known what to expect. Let me now ruin that ability for you.

The novel mines very much a similar vein to Gaiman's American Gods. Only without any of the gods. Still, there's magic and shamanism and small towns and boonies. And the narrative is peppered with humourous notes. Really though, the thing that makes this novel work best is its shifting narrative plane. Chapter by chapter, Disch leaps from one character's perspective to another. He does so sensibly and this effort helps the reader empathize with characters who had previously been shown in an unfavourable light.

The story is well-paced and kept me interested throughout. The unraveling of mysteries and the up-tying of ends loosed within the story all worked well for me; and Disch's writing was competent enough to engage even a sense of joy while reading. I picked up The Sub as a distraction from Dave Eggers' What Is the What and Disch's authorship was a revelation in comparison with Eggers' lifeless words in the latter book.

In any case, The Sub was a fun, quick read. Great travel reading.

ASIDE:
I had read some complaints of misogyny on the part of the author. These are wholly unfounded. Disch takes an equal opportunity to portray the bulk of his characters in negative light. Male. Female. It doesn't matter. Their most visible traits are all undesirable and Disch does not cease to poke fun at them, their inadequacies, and their hypocrisies.

Rating: