The Modern Novel, Broken Down to its Factory Made Pieces: Part 1

Advance Praise/Praise

This section is of course a way of boosting the author’s ego, and serves as a terrific way to advertise other authors and newspapers, which might be owned by the parent corporation of the publishing house. In any event, it’s an excellent way for one author to force another author, perhaps one more famous, to endorse their novel. This principal is most often used in the areas of genre fiction, specifically Science Fiction and Fantasy. It is also occasionally used in books of a higher class, where the point is to simply show off the credentials of said author. These usages however are considered to be vulgar to discuss in mixed company, as the blatant aggrandizement of them offends delicate sensibilities…generally the author’s but you never know who might show up to dinner.

The Title Page

Here we get the author’s name, the title of the book and the publisher’s name and logo. This was of course an early twentieth century invention, as many robber barons, while accosted by peasants or “mistreated labors” as they would have it, were wont to pick up whatever novel was being peddled by the malnourished child peddlers often used comically in Dickensian novels. Naturally, the robber barons had no time to actually look at the cover, too busy were they in showing their avid fascination, while waiting for hired goons to beat up and trouble makers. Publishers began putting it in, so the robber barons would not have to be bothered closing the book and looking at the cover. It was also of great help to the largely illiterate public, for then they’d be double clued in on what they couldn’t read. (Note: Sometimes, there is a further title page before this one and before the text proper, but that features only the book’s title and can usually be regarded as necessary for the binding and serve no real purpose).

Copy Right Page

            Ironically, the Copy Right Page, predates any actual copy write laws, as it first came into practice around 1456. It was a mandate by Chaucer that each copy of the Canterbury Tales come with the notice that it was indeed his work and was not to be distributed without his permission. He also insisted that all of his many creditors and investors be listed as responsible for the publishing of the book, and the research associated with it. While many complained that his “research” was little more than listening to minstrels and getting royally drunk, but Chaucer said they simply didn’t understand his genius. In the modern novel, the copy right page is most useful when torturing students with the use of citations and bibliographies, which Rockefeller helped design in the early forties, when he thought the lot of students was getting too “cushy”.

Dedication

            What we have here is a place for the author to thank people who offered them emotional support throughout the writing process, or who bribed them to get their name in print. The practice can first be seen, again, in the early Victorian era, when Lord Byron was issued a challenged by Clive Winston, third Ear of Essex -upon-Downs, that he could not get the name of every member of their club into his next novel. The novel, Heights of the Inferno, is among his least regarded works, but it is the first place where a Dedication was seen, so that Byron could fit the last two people from the club, ironically Clive Winston and himself. Byron was also the first to deride its sentimental usage, for when he saw the heartfelt dedication in Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, he was heard to remark, “It was such a terrifically complex tale, ruined before it was begun by her sickening reminstations to her mother”. Upon being told Shelly’s mother had died when she was very young, Byron said “Then at least she didn’t get to see the putrescence her daughter foisted upon a populace lusting for blood.” Shelly and Bryon never spoke again, although this had a lot to do with Byron’s bet that he could not shut up for a whole year, during which time Shelly caught consumption and died. Her last words were: “To Lord Byron, may your soul forever burn in the fires of Hell.” Byron was suitably impressed by her dedicating her death to him, and made it a point that all novels published by his friends were to have such sentiments.

Epigraph

            Epigraph’s a relatively modern invention, dating back only to 1948, when Roald Dahl quoted Arthur Conan Doyle before the beginning of Sometime, Never: A Fable for Supermen, a charming story about the apocalypse and the planet Krypton, though it remains out of print due to the deliberate action of DC Comics. However, the epigraph was thought of as early as 1735, when Jonathan Swift wished to open the amended version of Gulliver’s Travels with a quote from something besides the Bible or Shakespeare. However, his friend and fellow Irishmen, William Wordling (an accountant of no particular note), told him to wait a few hundred years for a greater body of literature to develop. Swift took his advice, but rued it for years after, as he found the perfect epigraph on a bathroom wall the very day he sent his book to the printers. Today, the Epigraph is either a way to help elucidate themes and ideas that will be present in the story, or to add a cheap veneer of respectability to classless novels.

Acknowledgements

            This is nearly identical to the Dedication, except it is for those that provided material help and is a more straightforward “thank you”.

Three Minute Fiction Confidential...Well, Not Really, But I Needed a Title

There is a short story competition on NPR on the weekends, whenever they don’t have reruns of Car Talk, Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me…, and This American Life to play. The story must be under 600 words, so it can be read in about three minutes, and an author, who also picks the final story, makes up the other rules for each competition. For instance, this time around, each story must have a character enter town, and one leave town. The judge is Daniele Evans, author of Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self, a critically acclaimed short story collection, I’m afraid I’ve never heard of.

            The current competition closes on the 25^th at 11:59, much like every high school paper I’ve ever had. I have only competed once, and found that I am much too verbose to compose a 600 (then 500) word story. After all, being wordy is much easier than being note-worthy. But I did actually write and submit one, though it was 521 words, and so disqualified automatically, and I felt far too lazy to try and tinker with it. When I tried my hand it, the judge was Michael Cunningham, author of The Hours, and his guidelines were the story must begin with the line “Some people swore that the house was haunted” and end with the line “Nothing was ever the same again, after that”.

Recently, I’ve been thinking about trying it again, and to dissuade myself, I figure I should post my first story, mostly unedited, to show what a horrible mistake that would be.

And the chorus said…

Some people swore that the house was haunted. They were the same “some people” who spread word when the Jennings girl had first begun to show; they were the Greek chorus of the neighborhood and their word was likened to that of God on the five cul-de-sacs off of Lamar Drive.

            To Emer, though, they were sellers of snake oil, to be tarred, feathered, and driven out post-haste. She would see them on their driveways or their neighbor’s driveways admiring the house or the garden, while their husbands divvied out advise on lawn care and car maintenance to one another, and amidst the banality of it all, their eyes would sparkle.

Emer would watch, seated from the curb, her braided hair kissing the top of the grass as she slowly panned from house to house, looking for the omnipresent “they”, spending whole days on the curb in front of her house, or slowly staring down each unblinking facade. Her glasses would often slide down her nose, and she’d have to right them, flinching as at the “cuteness” of the gesture.

She would make her daily rounds, returning home with the malicious grin of a saboteur.

Her mother worried about this with the father, when he arrived home. Emer was always careful to have hurried home before him, so she was parked in front of the TV for when he came through the door, his head bent in the position of supplication.

“Is this right for a girl? To be so…obsessive?” And the father could barely manage a series of non-committal comments.

At dinner he would have a highball ready, with lemon slices and tonic water forgotten on the counter, but the gin was right at his fingertips through out the night, even when Emer would sneak down much later and find him now glued to the TV. The father would never notice her and sometimes she’d watch him for hours.

The one thing “they” said that she believed was about the house. As she walked home, she would pass it, seeing the green chain link sprouting rust, the lawn a prairie in stately suburbia.

Opinion on the playground was certainly decisive on it; the various pre-cliques all in firm agreement for once. No one would walk by the house at night or god forbid Halloween; even the older children avoided it.

Emer was no stranger to fear of the house, but she was always curious. So, on a day after she had seen her father drinking late into the night, she made a detour on the walk home and marched up its walkway.

She opened the door and gazed inside, looking at the emptiness of the house. Entering, Emer wondered from room to room, the light gasping in through dust-encrusted windows illuminating just enough to restrict her fear to white noise. In the upstairs, in the smallest room, she sat down and looked at the walls.

“Hello?”

Nothing answered her.

It was just an abandoned house. The owners just hadn’t managed a sale, and had just given up on the place. Animals, domestic and wild, occasionally dropped in. High school-ers visited, doing those things the chorus disapproved of in their capital D way.

There was no haunting here. Exit Emer, in disappointment.

Back home, she hung her coat, and entered the den. He mother was cooking super in the kitchen. Emer looked at the father’s recliner and felt shiver, the type she’d expected to feel when inside the abandoned house. There been more harmony there than in any of the father’s smiles.

Nothing was ever the same again after that.

For those interested, I would suggest they read some of the better entries posted here: http://www.npr.org/2011/09/10/140353661/three-minute-fiction-round-7-arriving-and-leaving

There is No Such Thing as a Fish

That is the conclusion that the noted biologist Stephen J. Gould arrived at after years of studying fish. The conclusion that the very thing he had been studying, does not exist. One wonders just how upset he was when he realized this, and if he applied to some higher power for his life back, so he could focus on more important things, like stamp collecting and pulling a Sisyphus. Indeed, it’s like one off those Zen riddles that are supposed to have no answer: What is the sound of one hand clapping and how can the biologist have researched something, if that thing does not exist?

            It almost puts one in an existential frame of mind. Admittedly, it isn’t the sort of thing that Camus, the first writer to consider the existential nature of Sisyphus, would have written about, but there is still that odd sense of epistemological freedom. Like being lost at sea, without the possibility of rescue. It’s when floating here, seemingly lost, that sees that there is no lost, because there is only the sea and only yourself for guidance, so better start swimming. If you yourself got lost there, don’t worry. There’s some evidence that I was as well.

            Of course, Stephen J. Gould did not mean that fish are not nonexistent. He simply meant that the word fish I far too vague of a concept. After all, we don’t call everything that flies a bird. He was just pointing out all those things we label fish are actually quite diverse. For instance, salmon are genetically closer to camels than hagfish. Although, the salmon surely isn’t that relieved that it’s more closely related to camels, as it won’t make for a more attractive family tree.

            But, that still leaves one with an existential quandary, this time about the state of our language. It is such an unstable construction, a patchwork collection of the romantic and Germanic languages with an uneasy knit of Greek for good measure. It is inherently unstable, the most diverse of languages and hence the most difficult to control. Although other languages rely on inflection and modifiers, we are not bound by such conventions. There are those that believe (erroneously, but that’s another story) that Inuit have over 30 words for snow. Well, we have at least that many for variations on emotions.

            And, yet, despite our unstable variety, we are still at the mercy of our language. In order to have any understanding of the world, we require our language to share it, to discuss it. But our language is not really concrete enough. It assumes a shared experience that we have no empirical way of verifying.

            Consider the eye. We perceive our vision as absolutely clear thing, like the film from a camera. But actually, it is, before being processed by our brain, a jumble of images, more like a camera held upside down while riding on horseback, confusion incarnate. And so, given the level of processing it must take in our mind for any conceivable image to become comprehensible, we can never be sure that what each one of us sees is the same as what others do. And here our language is, again, an accomplice, as it is only on this flimsy basis that we can actually communicate what we see. If we are unable to trust our language, than we are unable to understand our own and others world. It all breaks down on the basis of language. And if fish has gone out the window, something that we all think we have a pretty firm grasp of, whose to say what else we think we know is wrong. At what point is something concrete enough in our collective thoughts to be a reality? Is such a thing even possible? Are we truly lost then, without language, navigating internal, landless seas, until we unable to swim further?

            Or has the writer gone way to far with a simple comment about fish?

For Bored Eyes Only

One of my favorite directors is Woody Allen, and of course, I am therefore obligated to love, unconditionally, Annie Hall. It’s the Woody Allen movie that everyone loves, after all, a bitter sweet and hilarious love story for all…over the age of eighteen. For those unfamiliar with it, or who don’t watch it frequently, the film begins with Alvey Singer (Woody Allen) telling two jokes, which relate the way he feels about life and his relationships with women. Ironically, the “key joke” to my relationships with women is derived from this movie and goes as follows:

“You know, even as a kid I always went for the wrong women, I think that’s my problem. When my mother took me to see Snow White, everyone fell in love with Snow White, I immediately fell for the wicked queen”.

Alright, so this quote might seem weird. Is weird. And it doesn’t help that the next segment of the film is an animated spoof with Diane Keaton as the wicked queen, which makes no sense at all. But I feel like the quote fits. Although, when we’re defining ourselves, isn’t everything correct to us. You could (and likely do) have a wholly different idea of me than I do. This then is the inherent difficulty in describing oneself. I may believe what I am saying to be true, but lacking any empirical way to test it, it’s no one man’s word against another’s perception or lack thereof.

But just for argument’s sake, let’s say the quote applies quite well to me. To prove it, I will give my own experience of falling in love with the wrong person. In The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, while everyone else was crying about Aslan, I was excited about the white witch’s impending victory. And everything would have been perfect, and it would have always been winter and never Christmas, but no Edmund had to break her wand and ruin everything. Oh, and did anyone else find it weird that there’s Christmas in a world without Jesus? I guess, magic makes everything possible. But back to the point though, I think liking the White Witch, is really enough to put me in the reverse Bonnie and Clyde hall of fame. Well, infamy, but tomatoes, potatoes.

I would go into my actual relationships here, if I were one of those professional writers, with credentials and quality control, and a I don’t care attitude, but I am timid, meek, and fairly certain that the interest here is roughly zero. “Oh, you like bad girls, that’s really…really interesting. Would you mind holding off on this until I finish literally everything else in the world I can think of? That’d be great.” 

But coming to his point without anything to show for it is a little disappointing. It would be like cutting off the last episode of a show in mid-sentence. Luckily, I am not creating a mob-themed drama, so I will not be doing that. Instead, I shall induce a sense of numbing oblivion in the minds of people reading this. It’s a fictional story, I wrote for a class, which means that it’s absolutely terrible, and only vaguely related to this topic. But, I have nothing else to offer, and I feel no obligation to do so. Indeed, this is probably worse than ending it right here. Ha! I won.

“I have never been very courageous, and that goes double where girls are concerned. The first time I asked out a girl, I could barely make it around a corner before screaming “YES!” (capitol and exclamation mark required) which is, I can attest, not the coolest thing to do after you ask someone out.

            And all the creepy, weird, and downright awkward moments that I’ve had with girls race through my mind as I frantically wring my hands, my feet beating a tattoo on the pavement outside of the Solomon Pond theatre, looking out to the street every few minutes in desperate quest for a muted maroon van. My fingers lock and unlock. My hair begins to spike from the prodigious sweat. My legs are starting to lock up, and I wish I’d brought a book, because waiting is agony. Which is when I make bonehead move #1: Moving from the theatre and into the mall, so as to find a book store, and (bonehead move #2) I forgot to turn my cell phone off of silent.

            So I miss them, and am at the checkout-line with a cheap copy of Fight Club, when I check my phone and see that Becca has called twice, X. once and Y. thrice, and all of a sudden I feel the proverbial hand smacking me in the face with all the force of idiocy. And I rush down the stairs, abandoning the un-bought book on the nearest shelf, hurtling down the stairs and rushing headlong out the double glass doors into the dark oppression of a March afternoon and then-

            It’s broken by sunshine.

            She is biting her lower, plump and waxy pink against her pale skin. Beside her, X. and Y. are practically cuddling, with G. standing off to one side. We meet awkwardly in between the two spots, and hug in the awkward way that only freshmen can, and walk silently in the wake of X., Y., and G. as they make their way into the theatre.

            And now let me interject and say that I believe the only reason for horror films not based on Stephen King books, is for the purpose of dates. It’s not that…well actually yes, they are god-awful. Even the sick “torture porn” Saw films of recent years are used primarily to get girls to cling to guys. And it doesn’t work well when the whole film is as nonsensical and…well…un-frightening as an episode of Barney. And so, Y. decided that we should see…The Eye.

            Clumsily, my fingers worm their way into hers and in the darkness I slide my other hand over her shoulder, the classic American pose for dating, sans the back seat and drive through atmosphere.

            And let’s consider for just a moment how truly strange this position is. It’s not comfortable for one, over extending your arm, constantly worrying about whether or not you’re putting too much weight on her, and the girl never seems to enjoy having a lump of practically dead flesh hanging off them (and yeah that’s the same romantic soul I bring to any endeavor). But it’s expected, an American tradition that would feel more at home in a drive-in then a claustrophobic theatre, wedged at the end of the back row, with X and Y predicting their relationship with worrying vigor, and Becca whispers in my ear “Isn’t she dating T.?”

I shrug, which is quite an awkward gesture with one arm wrapped around her shoulder and the other one clasping her hand.

It is at this point that I have a flashback, to…the same theater, the previous year, when I was going out with a different girl; on a first date destined to be our last. We took photos that I still had in some book I never read, so I’d never have to look at them and be reminded of that disastrous date. But that doesn’t help and my hand goes all sweaty inside Becca’s. Slowly I run my tongue over my lips which I am sure are far too dry just as my hands become lakes of clamminess.

X, looking at me with Great Significance, asks Becca to go to the restroom with her. Clumsily we disentangle ourselves, and I rise to let them pass, slumping down low as they leave, without catching a glimpse of the sunshine that had previously lit up the day.

Y leans over to me and begins to instruct me in his own methods of dating, and I look numbly forward. Glumly, I take a brief look at my relationships in theaters. They are less then stellar.

The first was just an embarrassingly poor choice of film, an ill constructed Bruce Willis action film which I went to see with a girl whom I had met because of drama and the fact we had both read 1984. Disappointments all around.

A second date at the movies ended quiet and forgettable, overshadowed by waking up to find an IM from the girl dumping me like a plague victim. A third, the photo date, had a relationship life of about a month.

So, slumped in my seat, barely listening to anything Y was saying, wondering why going on a date to the movies, such a quintessential and pleasurable thing, always ended up being, for me, the harbinger of a relationship’s end…thoughts which, might themselves, have been at the root of these unfortunate memories.

            My discomfiture grows as Y continues talking, with G occasionally jumping in,  and I start to squire in my seat, stopping only when I hear Y shift back into his seat and I look down to see X and Becca winding their way up the stairs towards us in the back. I straightened up and gulped then, looking at Becca’s now hesitant expression as she sat down next to me. We entwined ourselves around one another again and quietly settled in to previews.

I ask what took them so long and Becca rolls her eyes at X and whispers that it was “girl’s stuff”.

She asks what Y and G had been talking to me about. I look over at X, Y, and G, who now seemed to be entranced by the various images that now splash across the screen, where once Fred Astir and Ginger Roberts danced and Humphrey Bogart talked about being a tough man in a tough town (not really of course, but romanticism is a massive part of the movies anyway), and is now lit up by random violence dancing in a nonsensical fashion. They are enraptured and I feel safe enough to lean over and whisper directly in Becca’s ear “It was just weird.” She laughs and turns to face me, her nose less then a finger’s span from mine.

In light of the silver screen, I saw her biting the right half of her lower lip, making the left half jut out and bestowing an expression that is both pouting and incredibly cute upon her. It was one of the first expressions I’d come to know, even before we went out, and it had always melted something inside me. Which is when I get the single most inspired and yet idiotic idea I ever had: Why don’t I kiss her?

Almost instantly, I can come up with about a hundred reasons I should not kiss her, a hundred reasons why it would be the absolutely worst idea I couldn’t do, but all ready I was moving towards her mouth and my lips were connecting with hers and I could almost taste something sweet and lovely, but it was more like the memory of a taste. I closed my eyes. And for three seconds I was happy.

And in those three seconds, I was already formulating an apology, an excuse for kissing her, if she hits me and I break away to begin this litany. In my mind it went something like: “I’m really sorry I kissed you, it’s just that X told me to and Y told me to and I think G did, but really I couldn’t tell what he was saying. And X  told me before this you wanted me to, but I never really trust X and I’m sorry I’m really sorry. But it also had to do with the fact you look so beautiful tonight with you strawberry blonde hair and that pouting expression that makes me just want to hold you forever. And I’m sorry for sounding so corny but this really is what I think, and I’m sorry again for everything.”

Or something similar.

            Before I could get through any of that though, she smiled at me. And she was radiance. She kissed me back and I thought I love you.

It is one of only three memories that are crystal clear even today, but there is one thing about that night I cannot remember at all. I have no idea in hell anything that happened in that movie.”

I’m afraid I must apologize. This post started out like the last one with such a clear purpose and, yet, I just can’t seem to get it right. I begin with a theme, and I end with complete banality and inconsistency. Although to be fair, yesterday was Thursday, and as the great Douglas Adams said, “I could never get the hand of Thursday”. And today is Friday, I day I got the hang of, but where I often miss the mark. Now, some these statements might seem to contradict one another. They do not. But I’m a little too tired to explain or to think of why that is, so let’s just say its magic and pretend that all of this makes sense. By the way, the tenth person who reads this gets a prize. The prize will be of your own making, so that I won't spend any money.

Christopher Hitchens has Ruined my Confidence

            I have just finished reading Christopher Hitchens’ introduction to the Best American Essays of 2010, and I now feel as if I should just give up, and go into theater tech. It’s not just that his vocabulary makes mine look like the most minor of quarks or that my own fields of interest lie within striking distance of his (to my disadvantage I should point out). Even when our ideas don’t line up, say on the war in Iraq, I cede that his opinion is far better stated then mine could ever be. Even if I were to peal away the layers of excellent syntax to find the point is about as well thought out as an issue of the Authority, it would take me some time to do so, and thus I’d have already lost. This doesn’t hold true of course for his opinions on gender, specifically that women aren’t funny. This is just blatantly untrue, as Tina Fey has surely proved.

            Let’s just look at a small part of his essay, one that expresses a similar believes to ones expressed in our class:

“The very word “essay,” which I first learned in the most boring of declensions – a school “composition” – has the power to thrill”.

All right, so “thrill” might not be the best word given what other people have said, but I believe we all expressed a similar though of where we first learnt the dread word essay. And, to me, he says that so eloquently, that honestly, there is no point going on.  I cannot do that. It is too clever by half, and I just can’t be that talented, ever.  You should just go look up some of his work, because it will be much better than reading whatever else I can think to write. In fact I think from here on out, I’ll just type nonsense.

China is the world’s smallest country by population. No animal in Australia is able to kill you. Any two sides of an isosceles triangle are equal to the remaining side. Wicked deserved the Tony. My favorite British TV show is Benny Hill. Everything Steve Guttenberg ever did is gold. Richard the Third was an excellent king, and not a genocidal idiot. Jon Stewart isn’t funny.

My, what a load of garbage. But my point remains, that reading such things, rather than elate me as they once did, send me into a depression of the mind, because, while Hitchens has a fundamentally scientific view of human progress, as things are constantly getting better and better, my own is sadly more Hellenic. This post today, is worse than that from yesterday, which is miles behind the one before it, and so on. While I will admit to there being a period when the tools of my craft were cruder and my own ideas were less well refined, I can’t help but feel there was a greater imagination at work then. It is as though I’ve lost something in the intervening years, some essential spark that has vanished, never to be found here again.

There are times when I wake up frantic, because my head is throbbing and my mind is sluggish, as though I’ve lost what little acumen I’ve accrued. Even once I reassure myself that no, I can still remember a half dozen things I try to keep in mind, I worry for a few days, sometimes even a week, that a park of my mind has been extinguished. Today, I should point out, is one of those days, and so this post might seem especially sloppy. I apologize to anyone reading this, and can only say that I did at least try to keep it fairly mistake free.

I should however point out that I freak out about a lot of things. I go through disinfecting wipes like they’re Hairbo gummy bears, despair at news reports of gloom and doom (no matter how often they appear), and can stand parties about as much as they can stand me. In other words, my insanities are many, my manias numerous, and my opinions bizarre. Really, what you are doing while reading this is simply stepping directly into the depths of crazed persons mind. See, it’s not nearly as bad as Criminal Minds would have you believe is it?

However, I feel as though this whole post has been a bit of a downer. Well, more of a downer. So, I’ll close with a humorous fact and a quote from Homer Simpson.  First off, the fact, which is that ambisinister is a condition where you are clumsy and unskilled with both hands. And the quote is “Weaseling out of things is important to learn. It’s what separates us from the animals. Except the weasel.”

Oh, and some youtube clips of Stephen Fry. By the war, all of these deal with atheism, cause that’s the way Hitchens rolls…God that’s nerdy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sD0B-X9LJjs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uT-CMwffSt4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuPfymsbNkE

Desert Island Reading Guide

            Ever since I saw a debate where Ronald Reagan was asked what book he would bring to a desert island, I have wondered the same question, from time to time (ironically often while putting off readings for school that I should be doing). I actually think it’s a good question, one that reveals a striking amount about the person it’s asked to.

            Now for my part, I don’t agree with Ronald Reagan’s answer, which was the Bible. Personally, although scripture is fun and all, on a desert island I really would prefer lighter reading material. Although, having said that, would I? being alone, possibly without the hope of rescue, might put me in a more philosophical mood than I have previously possessed. Perhaps I will find it the perfect time to contemplate Foucault’s Power/Knowledge, the work of those French existentialists, or maybe even something by this Kirkegaard fellow I’ve been hearing so much about.

            Of course, I might then want to critique those authors, and without paper and a pen, all of my observations would come to naught. And even if I did, without someone to critique my own work, what would it accomplish? So, no, I don’t believe it will be the philosophy books for me.

            Honestly, I think my best bet would be fiction. It couldn’t be fantasy of course. I would require a three book minimum in order to bring anything fantasy related, and, at that point, the question loses any of its power. It also couldn’t be science fiction, because…well apart from Dune, cyberpunk, and Philip K. Dick, most of it is fairly unreadable.

            In terms of general fiction, I’m also a little stumped. While there are plenty of novels here that would fill the time and be presumably entertaining time and again, such as War and Peace, Infinite Jest, Blood Meridian, and the often overlooked and underrated With Fire and Sword, a challenge immediately arises when I try to pick a favorite. I have several favorites, but if I picked any one of those, I feel that I would immediately regret taking one over the other. For instance, how am I to compare Tolstoy to Sienkiewicz without both novels? Alright, maybe you’d be more worried about food and shelter, but I’m weird like this. In face, I would probably die of inadequate precautions mere moments after I finished my book of choice, so this might as well be, “what would you read before you die?”

            But, I think I’ve narrowed it down, though. There are probably six books I would have an incredibly hard time choosing between. The first is Michael Chabon’s Wonder Boys, a book that I have quoted before and will likely return to, so I’ll leave it there.

            The next is the Essential Ellison, a collection of short fiction by, perhaps, my favorite author, which includes the exquisite piece, Jefty is Five, a speculative fiction. It was this story that I once, very lamely, attempted to adapt into a play for a one-act for my school. I’m actually quite glad it failed, because I fear even a brief mention of it would have the litigious author battering down my door to demand compensation. And while that seems narcissistic, I should point out this is the same man who sued James Cameron because of fairly unsubstantiated rumors about Terminator being inspired by two of his teleplays. Oh, and he sent a copy of every award he every won to a professor who told him, his writing sucked. Not really, someone whose bad side I’d like to be on. Or on their radar.

            There would then be, for me, the obligatory Stephen King book, in this case Bag of Bones. I consider to be his best, a terrific combination of that small new England town setting, with a dark history that hides in plain view, the by turns terrifying and wondrous in its events. Of course, to those of you that have never read a Stephen King book, this description might seem strange. After all, isn’t the only thing they’re good for is making movies that range from abysmal (Silver Bullet) to terrific (The Shinning, Shawshank Redemption, Stand by Me, and Misery, depending on who you ask, of course)? No, they’re not. They’re also for terrible, terrible, mini-series. And don’t you forget it. Oh, and quite a few of them are excellent, underrated books.

            Then, there would be The Corrections, a novel I am sometimes ashamed to have read, especially when someone says “oh, yeah, wasn’t that Oprah book club book?” Well for your information, it was. It was also a PEN award and Pulitzer Prize finalist AND a national book award winner. It doesn’t just have one honor to its credit. Okay, so that seems like overreaction and…it probably is, but that’s never stopped me before. The reason I’d bring it, is simple, it reminds me of family. Warm, thanksgivings spent, bickering and arguing and bringing up tons of nasty old and festering wounds. Ah, family. What? Your family isn’t like that? You don’t have uncles who cuss you out while playing cards cause you were beating him? Weirdos.

            And now we’re in the home stretch, thank god. Number two on this non-sequential count down is The Insanity Defense, the collected prose of Woody Allen. (By the way, If you want a nice drinking game, with a highly caffeinated substance, try taking a shot whenever I mention Woody Allen. This will result in you being wired and actually able to make it through more than one of my posts). I don’t really think I need to explain this one. Hilarious non sequitur stories that always knock me out. This results in a fair few black eyes and bruises, but I try to keep that on the down low.

            Now, drum roll please, I give you L.A. Confidential. It is not only the best noir novel that I’ve ever read, and I have read far more than I would care to admit. It is also the only noir book that I’ve ever read multiple times and enjoyed it the same amount each go around. It’s a slick, well-constructed thriller that always entertains me. And that is something I will undoubtedly be talking to me therapist about in twenty years. It’s also proably the book I would most like to be stranded with, if only for its sheer entertainment value.

            Well, this was certainly an overly long and indulgent post. But don’t worry. I hear they’re giving refunds on time now.

This Posting Is Not For Everyone, or How I Learned to Start Caring and Love Quality

This is the Nerd Warning. All of those who have never heard of Harlan Ellison, can’t name all of the Endless, and don’t know what 42 is the answer to, are advised to stop reading now. This is the Nerd Warning.

            Alright. Now it’s just us people nerdy enough to know that, but not quite nerdy enough to quote Dune in public. On a side note, obliquely referencing Dune is fine, as long as you claim to be a David Lynch fan, and/or accuse the other of also knowing that, so ha! (Sorry for the absurdist hyperbole).

            Now, I will admit to being a person who would obliquely references Dune, who read Watchmen years before the film came out, and who devours anything that has Steve Erikson’s name on it. But really, I don’t read a lot of science fiction or fantasy anymore. The exceptions to this rule are the aforementioned Steve Erikson, R. Scott Bakkar, George R.R. Martin and Joe Abercrombie (absolutely no relation to the chain of stores). And there is a reason, to be outlined here why these authors slip by fantasy filter. Oh, and if you want to have a really bizarre time, listen to some Cole Porter songs while reading George R.R. Martin. It is almost sublime in the level of cognitive dissonance it requires.

            Moving on. Fantasy fiction, for me at least, has one major flaw, which you can trace back to the originators of semi-respectable fantasy, namely J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. See, they decided instead of say, actual battles between people of dubious morality and dueling if different believes, their stories would revolve around absolute good challenging absolute evil! Which is fun and exciting!...if you’re eight. Alright, that’s harsh, and likely untrue (for Lord of the Rings anyway), but really, I find it far too simple. At the crux of this issue is religion, at least it was for Tolkien and Lewis, for, though both had flings with paganism, they were always true to Christianity in their fashion. Not that any of this is a problem, for them, but when it became one of the most recognizable traits of the genre, it also became a somewhat tarnished. Not that it had ever been sparkling. See, there is no tension, no surprise, and no real sense of adventure if you are fairly sure the hero will always triumph and evil will always be punished. Although, it is more pleasurable then the masochism required to trudge through the opposite, which is currently my pastime.

Of course, I’m not wholly won over by the way most authors try to fix it which is simply to amp up the evil of the main characters, rather than make the antagonists more well rounded and complex in terms of their motivations and goals. It’s what I think really keeps the genre from earning any respect outside itself, something that crime fiction and gothic fiction has managed to do, given time and, in the case of the former, the terrific intervention of James Elroy. Of course, a hundred or so years always adds a little metaphorical gray to the equally metaphorical temples. But it’s well over half a century old. Indeed, if you count things like Peter Pan then its over a hundred. But Fantasy fiction is still a loner at the literary table, looking vainly for a friend.

And nowadays, I’ve shied away from most of it. If a fantasy book truly catches my interest, I might start to read it, but honestly these simplistic seductresses have burned me too often. I might begin reading, but if I see words like Dark Lord, and Grand Evil (or the made up equivalents they put in to fool you, yeah, that’s right, you didn’t trick me with “the necromancer” Tolkien) I will put the book down, and wonder over to the general fiction section, to pick up a Cormac McCarthy novel. And on that frightfully specific and unexplained out, I think I’ll stop.

The Nerd Warning is no longer in effect. Regular service has resumed. For those that didn’t notice a difference, I’m glad you’ve been paying attention. I repeat: the Nerd Warning is no longer in effect. Regular service has resumed.