Albert
Is there such a thing as “so good it's bad”?
We're all familiar with the inverse, usually in the form of a movie which is so clumsy and inept that it becomes entertaining, in a “laughing at you, not with you” kind of way. What would the opposite—”so good it's bad”—mean? I believe that I had this experience when I read the legendary It by Stephen King.
There is no doubt that I enjoyed reading this book. I formed a real connection with the characters. My favourite scenes are when the kids are just being kids, joking with each other, building a dam, or running from bullies. I felt like I grew up with them, and when they are reunited in adulthood, I was fascinated with how they ended up and what they've done with their lives, just like I would be if I was reuniting with real people from my real childhood. How did King make me bond with the characters? He did it like any great writer: by giving the characters detailed characteristics and personalities, so that they feel like real people.
This attention to detail extends beyond characters, and into the setting as well. The town of Derry is treated to a series of “interludes” that separate the main sections of the book. The interludes serve as a history lesson of the town, and also as a way to build the myth of the monster called It. They have the feel of an origin story in a comic book, where the monster and the town itself became linked as a character of its own. By presenting the interludes as the personal journal of Mike, a black man, King even manages to tell an inspirational Civil Rights tale about a military nightclub called The Black Spot.
The level of detail is staggering, and it is a strength of the novel. But as I kept turning the pages, I came to see it as a weakness too. To put it bluntly, there is simply too much of a good thing. For example, I wrote down a note to myself at around page 300: “Eddie and the lobsters.” After finishing the book, I flipped back to that section to find 4 pages of backstory about Eddie meeting a hobo on the tracks, and obtaining a box of lobsters, and then eating (or not eating) the lobsters, and then being chased by a hobo or something. I had no recollection of this part of the book, because really, it had no bearing on the main plot. After some more flipping, I saw that the lobster/hobo episode is embedded in the middle the story of Eddie's encounter with the It monster, which is itself bookended by the story of Bill telling Eddie and the others about his encounter with the It monster.
This form of recursion, flashbacks within flashbacks, backstories within backstories, is a technique that gets used over and over in the novel. King seems to want to leave no gaps; every memory triggers another, as if the characters need a reason for every feeling and recollection that they have. I admire the skill that it must have required for King to pull this off, but the result is that the book became structurally predictable. I felt like I always knew what I was going to get, especially in the second act: this chapter is where Ben sees the monster, and we'll get some backstory about his life; then, the next chapter is now where Stan sees the monster, and we get some backstory about his life. Don't get me wrong, all of the pieces and stories themselves are compelling and enjoyable to read, but in the end, it felt like an album filled with good songs, but they all have the same time signature and chord progressions.
One of the plot devices of the book is the fact that the characters in their adulthood have forgotten what happened to them when they were kids, because of the psychic powers of the town and the monster. Given the mystical amnesia, I would have accepted some fuzziness in their memories.
You have a great imagination, Mr. King, but please leave some things to ours.
(N.B. I'm a student of the author's and have come to know him personally.)
Very crisp read filled with characters that are easy to identify with. The morality of the book divides the characters into haves and have-nots, and invariably it's the have-nots who find freedom from their situation, and find value in things other than... things. Lots of hope. Lots of humour.
Really enjoyed the sense of humour that Wong brought to this memoir. It really highlights the contradictory and absurd nature of Chinese communism. But, appropriately, the humour goes out the window during her first-hand account of the Tiananmen Square massacre. Those few chapters are very powerful indeed.
I liked the parallel and contrasting histories of Ancient Rome and Renaissance Italy, and how the rise of Christianity changed everything. But when it came to the actual ideas in Lucretius's poem and how those ideas affected the Renaissance, I felt it was kind of rushed and crammed into the final two chapters.
Much has been said about the structure of this novel, so I'll try to keep my thoughts on the subject to a minimum. Basically, I don't think that the structure contributes anything to the overall experience beyond providing some “hey, cool” moments where one story references another. Therefore, I see the novel as a set of short stories connected by some common themes rather than a single, grand narrative. As such, each story should be judged individually.
The one strength that flows throughout the book is the use of language. Each story takes place in a different setting and time period, which allows Mitchell the opportunity to write in different styles and voices. I particularly liked the archaic language used in “The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing”–it was challenging but not frustratingly so. The stories that take place in the future were not as stylistically interesting for me–I've read a lot of sci-fi and the use of invented words has become familiar.
“The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish” was the weakest story. While I did enjoy the character's snarkiness and intelligence, the stakes did not stack up to the more life-and-death situations that the other stories convey. Maybe it's meant to be a comedic touch to see a curmudgeonly old man overreacting to his plight, but I felt like it didn't fit in with the others.
My favourite story of the lot is “Sloosha's Crossin' an' Ev'rythin' After.” Initially, the future-hillbilly language was hard to get into, but it grew on me. Once I warmed up to it, the innocence of the narrator and his society became evident. The idea of a primitive post-apocalyptic society, contrasted with the high-tech society of the Prescients, worked really well in building a sense of danger. In a world that has already lost so much, every action that they take is amplified because of the risk of losing it all.
Frankly, I'm surprised I finished this book. I sort of saw it as part of my current project to work my way up to reading [b:Infinite Jest|6759|Infinite Jest|David Foster Wallace|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165604485s/6759.jpg|3271542]. (Which is currently sitting on my dining room table. I'm afraid to shelve it lest the lack of a visual reminder will make me forget that I have it. It is also my hope that visitors will be impressed by the sight of the thing.)
Anyway, I figured I would read a bit of Everything and More, see what it's like, and skim through the rest when the math got too hairy. Now, I'm not claiming that I understood all of the math and that it didn't get hairy, or that I never skimmed through any of it at all, but I did follow the general gist for most of the way, or at least enough that I never felt like slamming the book closed and hurling it across the room.
This I credit to DFW's writing style. I don't think I've ever read anything where the text was so aware of its being read. There are constantly little asides and apologies (many in Wallace's trademark footnotes) about how difficult a particular section is, how you might want to re-read this or that paragraph, how it's all going to be OK in the end. These constant conversational reassurances do a lot to encourage the reader (me, at least) to keep going, despite the difficult math.
And there is a suspense to it all too. Cantor is mentioned near the beginning and is set up to be the Hero of the Story, the one whose theories are the ultimate culmination of everything I'm reading, and I genuinely felt the urge to know what Cantor did, like wanting to find out who the killer is in a mystery novel. Wallace does a good job of reminding us how each theory through history will be relevant to Cantor's transfinite numbers, while making each theory interesting to learn about on its own. And while the actual proofs and formulae are explained well, I found the most enjoyment in the connective tissue about the like societal and cultural and historical contexts around each discovery, e.g. the geometric rigidity of the Greeks, the need to develop and accept infinitesimals in physics and science during the time of Newton and Leibniz, &c. I actually wish he had focussed on those contexts more, and I think he probably could have written a thousand-page book (it amazes me how much research must have gone into this as is). I would probably have still read it all.
Perdido Street Station is a great mix of setting, plot and character. I admit that for the first few chapters, I was a little weary. The main plot hadn't kicked in yet, and I was just getting introduced to the characters, so it felt like the book was spending a lot of time describing the setting. I think it's a weakness in my reading habits that setting doesn't capture my attention as much as plot and character development, so I found myself starting to skim over some of the longer descriptive passages. However, the city of New Crobuzon is so unique that whenever my attention started to waver, some imaginative element of the world would pull me back in.
Once the plot started to get going, it really absorbed me. Almost every scene introduced an interesting new element, which made the world seem like it was constantly expanding.
If I had one problem with the book, it's that there were maybe too many ideas. The fantasy setting was established early on, and it's a world where anything goes, and anything can happen. This was cool most of the time because there was always a sense that something unexpected would happen. However, there were subplots and tangents which seemed to me like they were just put there to introduce a crazy idea. The meeting with the Ambassador from Hell comes to mind; there's great imagery in that scene, but the character of the Ambassador, and the fact that our protagonists can freely communicate with Hell, never show up again.
This is a minor criticism, though, and overall, I enjoyed Perdido Street Station very much.
I spent my time with this book alternately impressed and frustrated at the writing style. The first-person narrator and title character is a chimpanzee named Bruno who has learned how to speak. It's clear that from the process of learning language, he has fallen in love with it, so I guess it makes sense that the narrative is written in such a flowery style. It does read well in some parts, but at the same time, it feels like the author is trying too hard to use big words.
It was nearer to the end when I started to lean more towards frustration. Bruno's friend Leon is introduced. I expected that the dialogue between the two would take a more casual tone than Bruno's elaborate first-person narration. After all, no one talks like that in real life. But, it turns out that Leon is a Shakespearean actor, and he does talk like that.
I realize that in the world of the story, this can be explained by saying that Bruno's speaking style throughout the entire narrative is influenced by his time with Leon. That makes logical sense, but it was still a decision by the author to have them talk that way. It made Leon seem not like a real character, but rather a device to deliver more fancy writing.
The book worked best when it focussed on Bruno's icky but somehow touching relationship with Lydia. Unfortunately, it lost me once it became about his adventures with Leon. I would like to judge the book as a whole, but this is a case where the final impressions took away from my earlier enjoyment.
When I saw the advertised premise of this book—that many world leaders are actually psychopaths—I went “Yeah! Politicians suck! Rich CEOs suck!” It would be a book for the 99-percenter in all of us.
(I was reminded of a speech that the CEO gave in the office at a previous job. Bizarrely, the employees were crammed into the elevator lobby because we had no meeting rooms large enough to hold us all. The CEO was giving his inspirational forecast for the company:
“In five years, we'll be the market leader. And our competitors... they'll be working at Dunkin' Donuts! BWAHAHAHA!!”
A handful of high-ranking execs managed some forced laughter, but most of us had no response except to look around at each other in shock. I thought to myself, “Yeah, this guy's a psychopath.”)
When I started reading the book, I was expecting a direct, focussed attack on the rich and powerful, which by the end would have me marching into my CEO's office, with an outraged mob rallying behind me.
To my surprise, Ronson pretty much abandons his thesis halfway, after interviewing Al Dunlap, a disgraced CEO. The evidence wasn't strong enough to declare Dunlap a psychopath. At this point, I could see that Ronson was struggling to keep his book on track. The point that he was trying to make had basically fallen apart.
To his credit, Ronson manages to recover. He changes gears, and looks into how our culture is fascinated by madness. A reality show producer that he interviews says that there's a certain type of crazy that we enjoy watching, because it makes us feel happy to be normal. (If only there was a word to express the feeling of taking pleasure in someone else's misfortune...)
I think some readers will call this a cop-out, but I liked how he rebounds from his failed quest by questioning his motives for undertaking the quest in the first place. The fact that he wanted to uncover hidden psychopaths means that he's part of the madness industry.
Entertainment, such as reality shows and books about psychopathic world leaders, is one side of the madness industry, but Ronson also covers a more serious side: overdiagnosis of mental illness and overprescription of drugs.
By ending on that note, I think Ronson is making a profound point: that the true madness in the world is seeing madness where it doesn't exist.
Joshua Foer writes a compelling account of his experiences in memory competition. The memory techniques that he describes are so simple that “anyone can do it,” but it takes a certain type of personality to commit that much effort and time to practicing those techniques. And indeed, the other competitors that he meets along the way are a little bit eccentric.
I enjoyed the variety of topics that Foer weaves into his story. It felt like reading a mashup of non-fiction genres: science, history, psychology, biography. Particularly interesting to me was the chapter on how the modern education system has shunned memorization. The common opinion is that rote memorization as a learning method is rigid and soul-sucking and that broader understanding is more important that knowing the facts themselves. Foer introduces an inner-city teacher who does teach his students to memorize facts, because in his view, understanding can't occur without knowing the facts in the first place. I always enjoy opinions that are counter to the norm, so this was a high point of the book for me.
I admired more than enjoyed this book. It's very well-written, but underneath the impressive style are a story and characters that I didn't like very much. I thought that it spent too much time in flashback, which gives it the feeling that the current storyline is constantly stalled; I was always waiting for it to get back to what's happening now.