All I have to say is, holy crap.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Saturday, January 30, 2010
The Wild
Now co
mes the time of year I sit chained to my desk running sales reports and ordering endless cartons of textbooks. My horizon is an expanse of plaster-white drywall papered over with lists of vendor information and posters that were funny when I first walked in the door six years ago. It's a living, just sometimes a claustrophobic one. So, naturally, I think about the wilderness.

The thread that runs through all of these is not the beauty of the natural world, or its freedom from the depredations of the civilized– Chris McCandless perished on an Alsakan preserve well traveled by hunters on ATVs; of the eight who died summiting Everest on the one day in 1996, five were a part of guided expeditions organized like a theme park ride; and the Alaskan gold rush is the very backbo
ne of Jack London's tales, there are few things more civilized than the pursuit of filthy lucre– what unites them is what it means to be stripped bare in the wilderness. What animates them all is the understanding of full exposure to the uncaring world, what it means to live and possibly thrive in that place where the line between living and dying is held by small decisions and the will and the skill to keep making them. That is what Krakauer writes most adeptly about and he is at his best with his own accounts.

Into the Wild 's most riveting chapter relates Krakauer's solo expedition across
the Stikine Ice Cap in the Alaskan panhandle to assail the unclimbed nordwand of the Devil’s Thumb. Every page is a vivid vista of cold and lonely terror. McCandless himself is of least interest, it’s the sense of kinship with him and his final days that Krakauer finds that redeems the account of a young man so ensconced in America’s suburban womb he had to become a shiftless drifter to find the cold and indifferent heart of the world. It is the presence of that magnificent and dreadful truth that blows from the pages of Into Thin Air, the mountain will shrug you off without ever knowing you were there. Your best efforts might end with watching your life slip through black and frozen fingers.

Friday, January 29, 2010
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Kit Marlowe & Co.

Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Quick, everybody! Moral panic!
I want to take a minute to talk about Christian Fiction. It was Slacktavist's Left Behind reviewing that put the subject in my mind. Did you have a Jesus-enough upbringing to browse a Christian Bookstore at some point or another? Well, I did. & some of the books are kind of lodged in my head. Like Frank E. Peretti's books This Present Darkness & Piercing the Darkness. These books alternate between a small town congregation struggling against "evil" in one chapter-- then in the next, the same events are taking place but there are angels with flaming swords & crystal wings fighting against devils reeking of sulphur. I mean, while Pastor Hank is trying to convince people not to be swayed by temptation, or whatever, Tal the Captain of the Hosts is stabbing the Baal of the Demons & trying to clear the minds of the people from diabolical influences. They are kind of cute & hilariously quaint: the "evils" that the angels & the good people of the town are confronting are adorable straw men of New Age philosophy & liberal conspiracy. I mean, the wicked & cruel ACLU & their demonic patrons come to town just because the preacher man performed an exorcism on a misbehaving kid...who was, of course, genuinely possessed. In the sequel we find out that Transcendental Meditation (which as we all know is in danger of taking over the word to create a New World Order) will cause you to drown your baby as a pagan sacrafice to Satan. You know, that kind of thing. Pretty much what you'd expect. Except every so often you'd run into a book like Children in the Night by Harold Myra, which somehow is called a Christian book & is even published by Zondervan. Except...it isn't? At...all? I mean, themes of Mercy & "Light" are present, but this is a fantasy novel set in a lightless subterranean Underdark-- there is no mention of Jesus or anything like that. I mean, it is as Christian as Tolkien or Wolfe, sure, but no more. Still, there you have it! I'm not even going to mention Christian rock like Mortal or Christian metal like Seventh Angel. I wouldn't know anything about that.
Monday, January 25, 2010
How I Saved Comic Books One Afternoon.

(Kitty Pride by Alyz.)
The way I see it, there are two problem facing comics at the moment; well, two main ones, anyways. The first is a subject near & dear to my heart, & to the shriveled up plums that serve a lot of my compadres as blood-pumpers: comics are...sort of insulting. Alienating. Not all of them! Some of them, enough to call it a trend, an institutionalization, a status quo...they are...well...I am going to throw out two loaded words here: misogynist & racist. Now, it is getting better on both counts, but we're still dealing with stuff like The Seige's varient cover. In which the joke seems to be that Deadpool (a fourth wall breaking character, thus making this a little more editorial) seems to think hip hop is hilarious. & that women make excellent accessories. Now, I'm not telling you anything new. Heck, minority characters have gotten a raw deal all across the media, & are really only now starting to break into the mainstream. & sometimes, comics can really excel at giving people a voice, an avatar. Sometimes not. Now, with regards to the standard of the portrayal of women (by which I mean more than just in refrigerators) is a little less steller. Still, you've got people crying out for feminism to take comics by storm. Sometimes it even does! Heck, Girl Wonder took on the lack of a Stephanie Brown Robin memorial case-- & if you don't know what I mean by that...ugh. In summary, there was a girl Robin for a minute. You know, ROBIN, as in, Batman's sidekick. What, you didn't know there was a female Robin? RIGHT. See, she was killed off in a particularly brutal matter, & unlike the other Robin (Jason Todd...yeah, there have been a bunch of Robins), who Batman moped over & made a little "Never Forget, Never Again" costume memorial...Stephanie was just left out in the cold. Erased, forgotten. Well, Girl Wonder took them to task for it. Yay. Then, besides the wins & the losses, you get weird results like...Gail Simone is back on Birds of Prey! Yay! But...so is Ed Benes! Less...yay. I don't know-- I do think that Bird of Prey was a sterling example of non-offensive cheesecake in its heyday, so I'll let it slide...
What is the other problem facing comics? & how do I propose fixing them? I'll tell you about it later!
Friday, January 22, 2010
Comics. On the INTERNET?

Homestuck is the current amazing & surreal MSPaint Adventure story line, which really soared in the now complete Problem Sleuth. Minus is about magic & extinction. Dresden Codak is an amazing exploration of time & transhumanism &, well, everything. Gunnerkrigg Court is about a spooky school. Kukuburi is about a dreamworld. The Meek is filled with Emperors & naked girls. Family Man is about religious scholarship...& werewolves. Daisy Owl is cute & has space babies. The Abominable Charles Christopher is about a Sasquatch. The Loneliest Astronauts is about space, & people you don't like. Looking for Group is a parody of online & tabletop gaming. Order of the Stick is a Dungeons & Dragons spoof. Dr. McNinja is a parody of everything awesome. Minion Maze is another DnD homage. Oglaf is a NSFW parody of fantasy in all its forms. Bad Machinery came out of Scary Go Round which came out of Bobbins. Questionable Content is a soap opera that doesn't betray you.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Words (now New & Improved, with Pictures!)

Now, I realize I am speaking to the choir here, a little. Heck, who hasn't read a comic book? Where words & pictures are indelibly wedded. So let me take this & twist it around a little to specifically talk about science fiction, fantasy & horror. I mean, these are the genres where you imagination is really asked to do the heavy lifting. Heck, half the time the monster in horror is suggested only in metaphor, half-glimpses, or as a non-Euclidean squamous beastie.
These are zones where letting your imagination go wild pays off big. If the writer suggests the creature to you, then you are left to fill in the blanks with the emotionally appropriate imagry, right? If you are afraid of spiders, the creature is more arachnid. Afraid of swimming? Piscine. Toothy maws can be lupine, shark-like, or filled with grinding human teeth. So it seems like artists are better off leaving well enough alone-- right?
I'm not convinced. Especially when there is a good artist on the scene. Sure, a hack can ruin something alien & beautiful; it is a worry. The risk is there, but if it pays off...well, now we're talking! David Lynch makes the Third Stage Guild Navigator a giant naked mole rat grasshopper thing, & ugh, how much more creepy is that then what Herbert actually lays out? The right artist can take a thing & make it solid. I'm sure there is something tied up in mirror neurons & visual memory, right? Neuroscience or something.
I think the reason I'm chopping at this here is: intertext linkages. Sure, sure, people can mention this book or that book & seem erudite as hell. Good for them. Artists can take the context & spin it into another medium. I'm not talking college art show here. People like Alan Howe & John Lee-- Sorry, I mean John Howe & Alan Lee, my brain is always conflating the two-- defined how people think of J.R.R. Tolkien's work. They were so successful at this that they were called into the movie to be the primary visual innovators. Between the two of them making pictures they managed to define the canon. You think you know what a balrog looks like? Go back & re-read the passage & see just how sparse the description is in the primary source. Yeah, I said primary source; this is what I mean by multimedia intertexuality!
Why is all of this on my mind. A couple of reasons, stemming from Wayne Barlowe, the artist whose book Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials is pictured above. First thing: I looked at the picture of an Alzabo in Barlowe's Guide to Fantasy (& a creature in The Book of the New Sun) a while ago & said "Huh. I guess it is red." I'd totally missed it. & secondly, because I've seen illustrations, like the one of Gorice XII from The Worm Ouroboros, will make me pick up & read a book I would probably never have noticed twice. So. I've been thinking about it, is all.
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Nelson Algren

Thank you, New York Times, for my lead-in. Deeply important to my father, I heard about Nelson Algren long before I ever had the chance to read him. By 1989, all of his work was out of print. And without a copy at our local library or in our house, that was pretty much it for me. It's painful to have to remember days before the internet.
Studs Terkel, Warren Leming and others founded the Nelson Algren Committee to commemorate their friend, in part, by restoring his legacy. Everything of his was rightfully put back into print. Neon Wilderness was my primer, first purchased at our downtown store. Subsequent gift copies, along with Never Come Morning and The Man With The Golden Arm, came later. It is hard to talk about why I love him, only to repeat that I do over and over until asked to leave the room.
"not walls, nor men / brutal, remote, stunned, querulous, weak or cold / do crimes so massive, but the hideous face / stands guilty: the usurpation of man over man."
Algren is significant. Like Twain, like Vonnegut, I read Algren and read about how to live. Amidst private and public failures, neglect and despair, ruin and isolation but to go on, with hate, love, anger, humor, charged with the collective responsibility of other foundlings. It's like a tribe of outsider founding fathers, strangers to the country whose ideals they advance and make legend, even as their countrymen drift towards another future.
Friday, January 15, 2010
eBook thieves: Ninjas of intellectual property

My surprise (and skepticism) comes not because nine million sounds like too many people to me, it sounds like too many people for me not to know any of them. With all the news stories about illegal music downloading, those numbers, crazy as they may be, made a degree of sense because it seems like virtually everyone I have ever known, from kindergarten on up, downloads music illegally. Its ubiquity is a given. But illegally downloading books? I don't think I've ever heard of anyone within six degrees of separation from me downloading books from the Internet. Granted, my sample is skewed by the fact that I work in the book biz and am surrounded by people who really, really like books and almost certainly prefer bound piles of paper to PDFs. But still. Who are these people?
One clue, from the AAP’s release, is that it says Attributor “looked at illegal downloads of 913 popular titles.” 913 popular titles is the key phrase here maybe. So maybe it's just limited to the fanbases of a handful of megauthors? Or just one guy downloading Dan Brown's Lost Symbol 9 million times.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
In the Land of Invented Languages

The premise of the book is a breezy revue of the highlights of constructed languages through the ages, starting with the Lingua Ignota of medieval abbess and weird spiritual polymath Hildegard von Bingen, and winding up, eventually, with the Klingon language created by Marc Okrand from (very bare) seeds planted by James "Scotty" Doohan. I preferred the earlier stages of the book, which were more historically distant, more rooted in utopianism ("Hey, let's invent a language that will end all war!"), and just plain more exotic (e.g. Blissymbolics). But the latter parts of the book are by no means a letdown, and I'd recommend it in a heartbeat to everyone I know who is particularly tweaked by thinking about people thinking about language. In the Land of Invented Languages is neither too technical to be accessible to those with only a casual interest in the subject, nor too light to be interesting to those with a more serious and abiding curiosity about conlangs (and natural languages too).
I wish we weren't in the midst of gearing up for the Spring textbook season, because I would love to sit all day typing about constructed languages and this terrific book about constructed languages, but alas, it is time to pay the piper.
Problem

I keep coming across these really awesome fake designs for TV shows as x, popular cartoons as Y. And now: big-budget movies and TV shows as Atari 2600 games.
My problem (aside from spending my day seeking out these ridiculous things) is that they're always for non-literary entertainments. Books, people! They are media. Just once I'd like to see a Tumblr post about 20th century novels recast as 80s sitcoms. Or something.
Saturday, January 9, 2010
My Top Ten Films Adapted From Novels #3: Wonder Boys By Michael Chabon

Friday, January 8, 2010
On The Joys Of Re-Reading
First things first -- Operation New Year of the New Sun proceeds at breakneck pace! Mordicai (the aforementioned MAN IN THE TRENCHES) has already kicked off the discussion, and a heady list of participants, over at his blog. Follow the link. It's like the Oprah Book Club with actual geniuses. Well, she did do Anna Karenina that one time...
With that out of the way, the topic of today's post is only tenuously connected to that great and noble undertaking of speculative fiction unearthing. As a gentleman with an interest in the written word, usually all that I can do is keep the number of books that I've read on my bookshelf and the number of books waiting to be read even. If I can keep fresh acquisitions from overwhelming me, it's a job well done. So, it's no surprise that I very seldom re-read a book once I'm finished. I read it, I ruminate over it for a little bit; maybe I yell about it. Gene Wolfe said, as I mentioned in my previous post, that "good" literature is literature that can be read and re-read with increasing enjoyment, and it's a thought that's always bugged me. Why, you could by that logic keep yourself occupied by going over Moby Dick until the end of your days, while every day new books are published and an unfathomable sea of works you haven't even heard of wait to be read.
Re-reading a well-loved book has turned me on to the virtues of doing so -- especially since New Sun is kind of a tangle. And it's not just that sort of... heightened attention to critical thinking. You know, the part of your brain that says "oh, I guess this whole thing is a weird Purgatory allegory." Now that I've untangled the knot of a plot and laid out neatly in my head, there's sort of a new pleasure. The bits of my gray matter that were responsible for collating plot points and tidbits of world-building are freed up. Like a 16th century rich dude, I am freed from the toils of labor to pursue fancy things.
Also fun is reverse-engineering what is now an indecipherable codex of sticky-notes and study tabs. I suppose it probably didn't make much sense when I put it together, either.
So, I put the question to you: What are the books that you find merit and enjoyment in re-reading? What are the books you come back to more than once, or many more times than once?
With that out of the way, the topic of today's post is only tenuously connected to that great and noble undertaking of speculative fiction unearthing. As a gentleman with an interest in the written word, usually all that I can do is keep the number of books that I've read on my bookshelf and the number of books waiting to be read even. If I can keep fresh acquisitions from overwhelming me, it's a job well done. So, it's no surprise that I very seldom re-read a book once I'm finished. I read it, I ruminate over it for a little bit; maybe I yell about it. Gene Wolfe said, as I mentioned in my previous post, that "good" literature is literature that can be read and re-read with increasing enjoyment, and it's a thought that's always bugged me. Why, you could by that logic keep yourself occupied by going over Moby Dick until the end of your days, while every day new books are published and an unfathomable sea of works you haven't even heard of wait to be read.
Re-reading a well-loved book has turned me on to the virtues of doing so -- especially since New Sun is kind of a tangle. And it's not just that sort of... heightened attention to critical thinking. You know, the part of your brain that says "oh, I guess this whole thing is a weird Purgatory allegory." Now that I've untangled the knot of a plot and laid out neatly in my head, there's sort of a new pleasure. The bits of my gray matter that were responsible for collating plot points and tidbits of world-building are freed up. Like a 16th century rich dude, I am freed from the toils of labor to pursue fancy things.
Also fun is reverse-engineering what is now an indecipherable codex of sticky-notes and study tabs. I suppose it probably didn't make much sense when I put it together, either.
So, I put the question to you: What are the books that you find merit and enjoyment in re-reading? What are the books you come back to more than once, or many more times than once?
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Deluge of Internet
We have been flooded with online orders, overwhelming everybody. Especially Kevin, who was built for the job from spare parts. Racing to catch up, we are listening to Coltrane and shelving for the coming semester.
Our notable acquistions include Food Rules, the brand-new pocket-size Michael Pollan. There's this beautiful book on Marchesa Casati. And Portable Grindhouse, which makes me feel like I am eight again, searching the shelves of Crossbay Video. I want to take this book home and keep it under my pillow. Also, I have been restocking David Simon, out of immense love and respect for The Wire. Powered through the first and second seasons so far, can only anticipate three and beyond. In the meantime, Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets!
Lastly, more Penguin clothbound classics. We have been keeping warm three titles for about a month when three additionals came in; I am working on finding a spot for all of them to form a circle together. A circle of loveliness.
Saturday, January 2, 2010
Project Acoustic Kitty
Acoustic Kitty was "a CIA project launched by the Directorate of Science & Technology in the 1960s attempting to use cats in spy missions. A battery and microphone were implanted into a cat and an antenna into its tail. Due to problems with distraction, the cat's sense of hunger had to be addressed in another operation. Surgical and training expenses are thought to have amounted to over $20 million.
The first cat mission was eavesdropping on two men in a park outside the Soviet compound on Wisconsin Avenue in Washington, D.C. The cat was released nearby, but was hit and killed by a taxi almost immediately. Shortly thereafter the project was considered a failure and declared to be a total loss."
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