The Millbrae library didn't have any of the titles I wanted, so I grabbed a bunch of random books from authors who I enjoy or have been meaning to read. First up: Because the Night, my first-ever James Ellroy novel. I think I'd mentally conflated him with various other crime writers whose books have been adapted into movies; Ellroy is most famous for "L. A. Confidential", which I have to confess I haven't actually seen.
Because the Night is a driving, kinetic, occasionally brutal book. It has the tropes of a hard-boiled detective novel, but it's quite modern in its frank fascination with the bad guys on the other side of the badge. The chapters alternate between the hunter and his prey, and Ellroy weaves the two together in a dance for our amusement.
MINI SPOILERS
The book opens with a murder, a triple homicide that takes place on the very second page, the culmination of a seemingly botched robbery on the first page. The crime seems senseless. This isn't a whodunit, though. Just a dozen or so pages later, we meet the triggerman, and learn the core details behind the crime.
The characters, while pulpy, are also kind of fascinating. The murderer is a man named Goff, but Goff is merely a puppet for the true villain, a deranged psychiatrist named Dr. John Havilland, who occasionally goes by the monicker "The Night Tripper." Havilland seems to be modeled off of Charles Manson: he's a charismatic figure, who has collected around him various needy, lonely people. He trains them to see him as their savior, and in their abject servility they will fulfill his commands.
Opposing him is Lloyd Hopkins, a Los Angeles detective in the Robbery/Homicide department. Hopkins belongs to the talented rogue school of detectives: he's part of the police force, but typically works alone, frequently bends the rules, fights with his superiors, and would have been kicked out long ago if he wasn't one of the best cops around. Lloyd investigates the gas station murders, and eventually connects them up with a set of other seemingly unrelated events, eventually unraveling a decently complex web that leads to Dr. John but also implicates some important figures within Los Angeles.
On the whole, I liked the way that Ellroy spun things out. I'm used to mysteries that try to obscure the guilty party; in those books, the fun is in trying to figure out who the bad guy is. Here, we have total knowledge of what's going on and so are always several steps ahead of Lloyd; in this book, the fun comes from the increased tension as we nervously watch Lloyd's progress and wonder if and how he will escape from the Doctor's trap.
A couple of things didn't quite work for me. Ellroy seems to be convinced that Hopkins and Havilland are both brilliant; he seems a bit obsessive about slapping IQ numbers on both men. I'm much less sure about just how bright they are. Lloyd is effective, but most of that comes down to good policework, not brilliant flashes of insight; in particular, he's rather shockingly willing to accept as coincidence some major clues that come his way. On the other end, Dr. John's schemes are overly complicated, and only work because the author is on his side. He takes way too many risks while seeming inappropriately confident at how well they will turn out.
The book was also jarring in some ways that may be products of its time. Granted, I don't explore this genre much, but I was a bit surprised at stuff like its frequent use of the N-word. The book was written in 1984, which I THINK is in the post-PC era, although it may have been just before. (No, Ellroy isn't racist, just depicting characters who are, but still, I don't think you'd see language and scenes like he depicts here in any work of American fiction from the last decade or so.)
The book takes a turn towards the Grand Guignol towards the end. It turns out that Dr. John is embarking on his murderous spree as a bit of ad-hoc psychiatric self-help: by restaging violent events that resonate with those from his boyhood, he hopes to break through some repressed memories of his and solve the mystery of what happened to his father. The most horrifying images in the book ultimately aren't those set in the present, which are bad enough (including a cringe-inducing snuff film), but those that Havilland "recovers" towards the end.
END SPOILERS
The book was a pretty fun read, once I reminded myself that this was genre fiction and I should just enjoy it on its own terms. Okay, "fun" may not be the most appropriate adjective to use here... it's dark and disturbing and violent, but it means to be all those things, and pulls it off with some flair. I won't be running back to Ellroy any time soon, but I'm glad I got to hear him in his own voice.
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
The Reich Stuff
Last week's New Yorker had a fascinating article titled The Poverty Clinic. The story centers on a clinic in Bayview-Hunter's Point, the poorest and most dangerous neighborhood in San Francisco. I was immediately glad to see that the New Yorker was casting its gaze over to my neck of the woods, even if it was for such a depressing topic. The article addresses the chronic, seemingly intractable problems of urban poverty, focusing on the health conditions that plague many black children in urban neighborhoods: asthma, hyperactivity, etc.
When I got deeper into the article, though, I started tripping out. It took me a while to make the connection: the article's thesis was eerily similar to the "crazy" theories of Dr. Wilhelm Reich, which I had encountered in Robert Anton Wilson's "Wilhelm Reich in Hell". Reich advanced a theory that he called the Emotional Plague: the idea was that a singular illness afflicted the human race, one that spanned psychology, sociology, and biology. The emotional plague is imprinted on us in childhood, it makes us neurotic, causes disease and war and crime, and we pass it on to our children. The ideas caused Reich to lose his credentials, his freedom, and his legacy to the forces of censorship.
Well, amazingly enough, there is actually evidence now that emotional trauma can have effects much like what Reich had predicted. The article talks about a study covering Adverse Childhood Experiences, also known as ACE. The study by Kaiser Permanente found an astonishing level of correlation between early childhood trauma (parents who fight, family members who use drugs, emotional neglect, etc.) and later adult disease (diabetes, heart problems, and, yes, cancer). To some degree these links are already expected: emotional abuse in childhood can lead to adult depression, which can help lead to, say, smoking, which increases cancer risks. But even when they accounted for such intermediate risk factors, the Kaiser researchers found a huge and otherwise unexplainable correlation between ACE indicators and adult disease.
Contemporary research has developed a working theory to help explain this. All humans have hormonal responses to stress. This is an evolutionary, adaptive trait: when we feel threatened, our bodies flood our systems with chemicals: they make us more alert, prepare our bodies for healing, heighten our immunity, and so on. In the short term, this is helpful; however, when it happens frequently, especially in children, it can affect the body in permanent ways. Affected people might feel constantly anxious, or might not recognize when they're in danger; their systems don't work right, which causes physiological problems that lead to later diseases.
I was particularly affected by the Bayview-Hunter's Point physician who described what she observed in her community. Kids in the projects experienced broken family lives, which caused them to act out in social situations. When they started school, ten of the thirty kids in a class might be hyperactive; only ten kids are "infected", but all thirty are affected. When they become teenagers, these kids are more likely to have sex early, more likely to attach to abusive partners, and so they start raising another generation of kids who experience stress in childhood, and so are affected by the same hormonal and physiological symptoms.
To me, that sounds an awful lot like an emotional plague. A virus that propagates across social and biological boundaries. It's weird and creepy and depressing. At the same time, I'm fascinated that Reich might, in the long run, be recognized as a visionary instead of a kook.
When I got deeper into the article, though, I started tripping out. It took me a while to make the connection: the article's thesis was eerily similar to the "crazy" theories of Dr. Wilhelm Reich, which I had encountered in Robert Anton Wilson's "Wilhelm Reich in Hell". Reich advanced a theory that he called the Emotional Plague: the idea was that a singular illness afflicted the human race, one that spanned psychology, sociology, and biology. The emotional plague is imprinted on us in childhood, it makes us neurotic, causes disease and war and crime, and we pass it on to our children. The ideas caused Reich to lose his credentials, his freedom, and his legacy to the forces of censorship.
Well, amazingly enough, there is actually evidence now that emotional trauma can have effects much like what Reich had predicted. The article talks about a study covering Adverse Childhood Experiences, also known as ACE. The study by Kaiser Permanente found an astonishing level of correlation between early childhood trauma (parents who fight, family members who use drugs, emotional neglect, etc.) and later adult disease (diabetes, heart problems, and, yes, cancer). To some degree these links are already expected: emotional abuse in childhood can lead to adult depression, which can help lead to, say, smoking, which increases cancer risks. But even when they accounted for such intermediate risk factors, the Kaiser researchers found a huge and otherwise unexplainable correlation between ACE indicators and adult disease.
Contemporary research has developed a working theory to help explain this. All humans have hormonal responses to stress. This is an evolutionary, adaptive trait: when we feel threatened, our bodies flood our systems with chemicals: they make us more alert, prepare our bodies for healing, heighten our immunity, and so on. In the short term, this is helpful; however, when it happens frequently, especially in children, it can affect the body in permanent ways. Affected people might feel constantly anxious, or might not recognize when they're in danger; their systems don't work right, which causes physiological problems that lead to later diseases.
I was particularly affected by the Bayview-Hunter's Point physician who described what she observed in her community. Kids in the projects experienced broken family lives, which caused them to act out in social situations. When they started school, ten of the thirty kids in a class might be hyperactive; only ten kids are "infected", but all thirty are affected. When they become teenagers, these kids are more likely to have sex early, more likely to attach to abusive partners, and so they start raising another generation of kids who experience stress in childhood, and so are affected by the same hormonal and physiological symptoms.
To me, that sounds an awful lot like an emotional plague. A virus that propagates across social and biological boundaries. It's weird and creepy and depressing. At the same time, I'm fascinated that Reich might, in the long run, be recognized as a visionary instead of a kook.
Friday, March 18, 2011
The Comic vs. The Movie
I seem to write about movies here much, much less frequently than I do books, and I'm not entirely sure why. Part of it might be a lack of confidence; while I'm definitely not a literary expert, I'm far, far less well-versed in film, both modern and historic, and I usually don't feel like I have a whole lot interesting to say. Another part might be simply time investment. If I've already spent, say, five hours reading a book, or twenty hours watching a TV series, then another thirty minutes to write up a quickie post doesn't seem like too much; but the same amount of effort after watching a two-hour movie might seem like overkill.
In this case, though, since I already gave my reactions to the Scott Pilgrim comics, it seems fitting to address the movie, at least in passing. As usual, this is way too late to actually do anyone any good.
MINI SPOILERS FOR BOTH BOOK AND MOVIE
On the whole, I was extremely impressed with the movie; I was pretty astonished at how much content from the book they were able to retain on the screen. The books are pretty big: sure, they're comics, but you've got six volumes, seven evil exes, a large cast of characters, and several requisite plot points. They could easily have split the movie into multiple parts and it wouldn't have felt padded at all. Instead, they turned out what I think might be the most aggressively edited movie I've ever seen. Virtually every second of what's on-screen is crucial; there's virtually no wasted time at all. If two characters need to have a conversation, and they need to establish several scenes, then they'll split a ten-second conversation across three different scenes. The cutting is fast but never jarring, because the narrative is never, ever interrupted.
Again, I was impressed at how much they retained. Virtually every character from the comics remained; the only one I can think of off-hand who didn't make it was Jacob; Scott's family also didn't appear, but that's more for a related reason that I'll get into below. The movie did retain even extremely minor characters like Comeau who could easily have been removed or folded into other characters. Some were extremely scaled back, such as The Clash at Demonhead's drummer, but remained recognizable enough to still count. The overall arc remains virtually intact as well, aside from some minor fiddling. Even the jokes and the stupid stuff, which were my favorite parts, weren't sacrificed at the altar of narrative necessity.
In some cases, the movie ADDED more. The biggest thing I noticed were the video game references. Now, these were definitely an important part of the comics, but there they were a kind of accent note, brought in from time to time but not really dominant. Scott Pilgrim the comic was about a bunch of folks and sometimes referenced video games. Scott Pilgrim is a video game movie: the references there are constant, and the whole movie is informed by a video game structure. In the comic, only some of the bad guys drop coins; here, they all do. I don't think one approach is better than the other, but it is interesting.
The casting for the movie felt spot-on. Most of the actors totally nail their characters, even though they have much less space in which to fill them out. For example, the movie totally gets rid of the flashbacks, which make up a good chunk of the comic pages; that means we don't get to see Scott's family, nor his college years with Envy, nor his high school years with Kim. Ah, Kim... she may have been my favorite character in the comic, and she's great in the movie. She only gets a few scenes, but the actress has her down perfectly: her wry sarcasm, her total familiarity with Scott's precious little life, the kernel of tenderness that she keeps incredibly well-hidden.
Scott himself probably changes the most. I do really enjoy Michael Cera and the character he's created, but personality-wise they're rather different. I think I can best sum it up by saying that Cera's Scott is less dumb and less confident than the comic's Scott. The comic-book Scott is just hilariously stupid; he doesn't seem to get ANYTHING, is constantly surprised at what occurs, and forgets stuff that just happened. The movie gets rid of most of that, with a few much-loved exceptions (including one of my favorites: "Bread makes you fat?!?"). The movie's Scott is much more self-aware, which means in part that he recognizes when situations are crazy, recognizes when he's being a jerk, recognizes when he's being lame. Once again: I'm not saying that one approach is better or worse than the other, just that they're different.
What else... stuff is way more compressed in the movie. Even though they hit all major interactions, the nature of those interactions frequently changes and simplifies. The episode where I felt this the most was the fight against Todd. In the books, this stretches out way more, across a week or so, with multiple confrontations, flashbacks, discoveries, and so on. In the movie it's mostly all in one contiguous segment, from The Clash at Demonhead's live show through the meeting backstage through a two-part fight with Todd. That means that we lost a lot of awesome stuff, like that amazing trial through the shopping mall and, more importantly, the REAL split between Todd and Envy, which I thought provided way more catharsis in the book. I was happy to see that the movie retained the Vegan Police, which is probably the single best part of the Todd episode, even if they have to simplify down the reason why Todd loses his powers.
I don't think they had a lot of choice, though. There was just no way that they could have fully plumbed out the Todd and Envy episode without making the movie unbearably long. Again, I'm amazed that they fit as much stuff as they did in under two hours.
Sex Bob-omb was a bit different. I think that in the comics they were a little more supportive of Scott; particularly in his first fight against Matthew, Sex Bob-omb did a lot to help him win that battle. In the movie, they provide great personality but are pretty useless otherwise. And, to be fair, that's the role that they play for much of the books - I love it when they cut out at a fight and say, "We'll meet you at the pizza place later."
MEGA SPOILERS
From looking at the copyright books on my comics, I think that the movie came out after the sixth and final book, but it must have started shooting well before it. Therefore, I'm giving the movie a total pass for anything it does in the final quarter.
For the most part, the stuff they change works. Some of it is just re-arranging, most notably Nega-Scott. (Nega-Scott is a perfect example of something that they could have completely cut from the movie without any narrative impact, and yet they somehow managed to keep in there and make people happy.) I was going to be supremely disappointed that they cut the Ramova/Knives fight from the movie, then was delighted when they weaved it into the climax. That was one of my favorite scenes from the book, and it elevated the ending.
Gideon seemed like the biggest change with the ending; he was just kind of a jerk in the movie, and seemed way more sinister in the books.
I'd be very interested to hear how people who haven't read the comics react to the movie, especially that last fight. In particular, I wonder if it makes any sense at all if you haven't read the comics. The movie very briefly alludes to subspace, but does virtually nothing with it - I think it sets up the meeting with Ramona, ends their first date, and provides the sledgehammer during a battle (although you won't know that's subspace unless you've read the book), and.... is that it? Since they don't do much with subspace, even less about the Ramona/Gideon link makes sense. They do show the chip and say "Gideon has a way of getting inside my head," which, if you've read Book Six, explains everything, but I just don't think there are enough hooks within the movie itself to understand what the heck is going on.
And, on a related note, I was SLIGHTLY disappointed that they gave Scott the extra life for defeating the twins; I think that in the book it's from, um, either Todd or the girl. It's way less surprising for Scott to use it here, since he just got it a few minutes earlier.
And, incidentally, I thought the way they used the extra life was interesting. In the book, it's a Contra-style extra life: when Scott dies, he picks up from where he left off. In the movie, it's a Mario-style extra life: when he dies, he has to re-start the level. And I love the way they run with that in the movie: as with any video game, after you've played through a level once, it's way faster and easier the second time around.
END SPOILERS
On the whole, I was quite happy with the adaptation. Of course they made changes, of course they cut things, but I think they kept the core of what made Scott Pilgrim such an awesome comic, and they also retained a shockingly large amount of the various random dumb things that made it so goofy and fun. I think they managed to pull this off largely because the Scott Pilgrim style and subject matter lends itself so well to kinetic cutting, which the filmmakers took full advantage of. The movie and comics are two different beasts, but they bear a striking similarity, and I love them all the more for it.
In this case, though, since I already gave my reactions to the Scott Pilgrim comics, it seems fitting to address the movie, at least in passing. As usual, this is way too late to actually do anyone any good.
MINI SPOILERS FOR BOTH BOOK AND MOVIE
On the whole, I was extremely impressed with the movie; I was pretty astonished at how much content from the book they were able to retain on the screen. The books are pretty big: sure, they're comics, but you've got six volumes, seven evil exes, a large cast of characters, and several requisite plot points. They could easily have split the movie into multiple parts and it wouldn't have felt padded at all. Instead, they turned out what I think might be the most aggressively edited movie I've ever seen. Virtually every second of what's on-screen is crucial; there's virtually no wasted time at all. If two characters need to have a conversation, and they need to establish several scenes, then they'll split a ten-second conversation across three different scenes. The cutting is fast but never jarring, because the narrative is never, ever interrupted.
Again, I was impressed at how much they retained. Virtually every character from the comics remained; the only one I can think of off-hand who didn't make it was Jacob; Scott's family also didn't appear, but that's more for a related reason that I'll get into below. The movie did retain even extremely minor characters like Comeau who could easily have been removed or folded into other characters. Some were extremely scaled back, such as The Clash at Demonhead's drummer, but remained recognizable enough to still count. The overall arc remains virtually intact as well, aside from some minor fiddling. Even the jokes and the stupid stuff, which were my favorite parts, weren't sacrificed at the altar of narrative necessity.
In some cases, the movie ADDED more. The biggest thing I noticed were the video game references. Now, these were definitely an important part of the comics, but there they were a kind of accent note, brought in from time to time but not really dominant. Scott Pilgrim the comic was about a bunch of folks and sometimes referenced video games. Scott Pilgrim is a video game movie: the references there are constant, and the whole movie is informed by a video game structure. In the comic, only some of the bad guys drop coins; here, they all do. I don't think one approach is better than the other, but it is interesting.
The casting for the movie felt spot-on. Most of the actors totally nail their characters, even though they have much less space in which to fill them out. For example, the movie totally gets rid of the flashbacks, which make up a good chunk of the comic pages; that means we don't get to see Scott's family, nor his college years with Envy, nor his high school years with Kim. Ah, Kim... she may have been my favorite character in the comic, and she's great in the movie. She only gets a few scenes, but the actress has her down perfectly: her wry sarcasm, her total familiarity with Scott's precious little life, the kernel of tenderness that she keeps incredibly well-hidden.
Scott himself probably changes the most. I do really enjoy Michael Cera and the character he's created, but personality-wise they're rather different. I think I can best sum it up by saying that Cera's Scott is less dumb and less confident than the comic's Scott. The comic-book Scott is just hilariously stupid; he doesn't seem to get ANYTHING, is constantly surprised at what occurs, and forgets stuff that just happened. The movie gets rid of most of that, with a few much-loved exceptions (including one of my favorites: "Bread makes you fat?!?"). The movie's Scott is much more self-aware, which means in part that he recognizes when situations are crazy, recognizes when he's being a jerk, recognizes when he's being lame. Once again: I'm not saying that one approach is better or worse than the other, just that they're different.
What else... stuff is way more compressed in the movie. Even though they hit all major interactions, the nature of those interactions frequently changes and simplifies. The episode where I felt this the most was the fight against Todd. In the books, this stretches out way more, across a week or so, with multiple confrontations, flashbacks, discoveries, and so on. In the movie it's mostly all in one contiguous segment, from The Clash at Demonhead's live show through the meeting backstage through a two-part fight with Todd. That means that we lost a lot of awesome stuff, like that amazing trial through the shopping mall and, more importantly, the REAL split between Todd and Envy, which I thought provided way more catharsis in the book. I was happy to see that the movie retained the Vegan Police, which is probably the single best part of the Todd episode, even if they have to simplify down the reason why Todd loses his powers.
I don't think they had a lot of choice, though. There was just no way that they could have fully plumbed out the Todd and Envy episode without making the movie unbearably long. Again, I'm amazed that they fit as much stuff as they did in under two hours.
Sex Bob-omb was a bit different. I think that in the comics they were a little more supportive of Scott; particularly in his first fight against Matthew, Sex Bob-omb did a lot to help him win that battle. In the movie, they provide great personality but are pretty useless otherwise. And, to be fair, that's the role that they play for much of the books - I love it when they cut out at a fight and say, "We'll meet you at the pizza place later."
MEGA SPOILERS
From looking at the copyright books on my comics, I think that the movie came out after the sixth and final book, but it must have started shooting well before it. Therefore, I'm giving the movie a total pass for anything it does in the final quarter.
For the most part, the stuff they change works. Some of it is just re-arranging, most notably Nega-Scott. (Nega-Scott is a perfect example of something that they could have completely cut from the movie without any narrative impact, and yet they somehow managed to keep in there and make people happy.) I was going to be supremely disappointed that they cut the Ramova/Knives fight from the movie, then was delighted when they weaved it into the climax. That was one of my favorite scenes from the book, and it elevated the ending.
Gideon seemed like the biggest change with the ending; he was just kind of a jerk in the movie, and seemed way more sinister in the books.
I'd be very interested to hear how people who haven't read the comics react to the movie, especially that last fight. In particular, I wonder if it makes any sense at all if you haven't read the comics. The movie very briefly alludes to subspace, but does virtually nothing with it - I think it sets up the meeting with Ramona, ends their first date, and provides the sledgehammer during a battle (although you won't know that's subspace unless you've read the book), and.... is that it? Since they don't do much with subspace, even less about the Ramona/Gideon link makes sense. They do show the chip and say "Gideon has a way of getting inside my head," which, if you've read Book Six, explains everything, but I just don't think there are enough hooks within the movie itself to understand what the heck is going on.
And, on a related note, I was SLIGHTLY disappointed that they gave Scott the extra life for defeating the twins; I think that in the book it's from, um, either Todd or the girl. It's way less surprising for Scott to use it here, since he just got it a few minutes earlier.
And, incidentally, I thought the way they used the extra life was interesting. In the book, it's a Contra-style extra life: when Scott dies, he picks up from where he left off. In the movie, it's a Mario-style extra life: when he dies, he has to re-start the level. And I love the way they run with that in the movie: as with any video game, after you've played through a level once, it's way faster and easier the second time around.
END SPOILERS
On the whole, I was quite happy with the adaptation. Of course they made changes, of course they cut things, but I think they kept the core of what made Scott Pilgrim such an awesome comic, and they also retained a shockingly large amount of the various random dumb things that made it so goofy and fun. I think they managed to pull this off largely because the Scott Pilgrim style and subject matter lends itself so well to kinetic cutting, which the filmmakers took full advantage of. The movie and comics are two different beasts, but they bear a striking similarity, and I love them all the more for it.
Saturday, March 12, 2011
Doesn't Suck
Ahhhh... that's more like it!
In ordinary circumstances I would have taken more time off after my relatively-disappointing read of Fluke before returning to the Christopher Moore well. I've historically had a tendency to get addicted to authors, devour everything by them that I could get my hands on, and rapidly experience the law of diminishing returns. Because of that, I tend to make a conscious effort to space out my approaches to authors I enjoy, and I'm extra-careful to back off when I feel like I may be getting too accustomed to them and thus not enjoying their work as much as I otherwise might.
Here, though, I'm glad that I moved straight from Fluke to You Suck, which made me realize that I still do enjoy Moore's work, just not that one book (as much).
You Suck is a sequel to Bloodsucking Fiends, and a sequel done well: it carries forward the best aspects of the first book, including the terrific characters, unusual plot, and super-sharp writing, and adds some fresh ingredients of its own. I had certain expectations going in, and they were soundly met.
MINI SPOILERS
So: vampires. The book picks up right after BF left off: Thomas has become a vampire. He's changed by this, of course, but he remains the thoroughly likeable exuberant freed-Midwesterner doofus of the first book: he acts like an especially energetic puppy when exploring his newfound powers, whines when he tries to get his way, enthusiastically tries to solve the problems thrown his way.
Pretty much all of the characters from the first book return. The surviving Animals have been to Vegas and back, losing their ill-gotten gains with astonishing speed. The cops are keeping things low. The original vampire eventually escapes from his prison and continues his odd test, leaving corpses behind to frighten the populace. And the Emperor sticks around too; he has less to do in this book, but provides his regal presence and assurance to some crucial scenes.
The book adds a bunch of new characters, a few of whom are minor but several which are more important. Probably my favorite is Abby Normal, a high school sophomore goth chick who Thomas recruits as their new minion. (She calls him "Lord Flood," and for most of the book has the mistaken impression that he was friends with Byron.) She's pretty fun in general, but my favorite part is her chapters, which Moore writes as entries from her diary. Unlike the rest of the book, which is done in Moore's comic third-person voice, these chapters are done in first-person, just-after-the-fact, and man, Moore has lots of fun with it. Lots of dialect, slang, stream of consciousness. And most of the dialog is of the form: "So I was like, 'Yo, dude, wherefore art thou giving me such a hard time, sir?' And he was all, 'Duh, der, look at me, I'm a stupid fat cop.'" This is how people sound when they're recounting dialog to other people: summarizing it, coloring it, reinterpreting history to make yourself seem more clever. It has a great effect here; knowing Abby as we do, we can sort of de-crypt her recounting of events and come up with a reasonable approximation of what actually occurred.
Let's see, what else... there's Chet, another homeless guy who's way less cool than the Emperor but who still achieves comic greatness, mostly due to his huge cat. Blue is kind of the main villain of the book: the Animals picked her up in Vegas, where she bled their money dry. She now terrorizes and leads them. Jerrod is kind of a bummer of a character; he's more of a whiney brat than anything. Jerrod and Abby's families provide some good color to these determinedly moody characters, but aren't intended to be fully fleshed out. Finally, towards the end we see three mysterious other vampire characters. They get almost no narrative time at all, but seem likely to figure into the sequel.
END SPOILERS
There is a sequel, of course. Apparently this set of books is one of Moore's most popular, and his fans keep clamoring for more. I can't blame them. The satire is sharp, the characters are hilarious, the plot is wild (without veering into Fluke-ish nonsense), and everything moves along at a nice pace. I'm now back at the other extreme, deliberately holding off on reading my next Moore book because I want to keep around something good for me to read when I need it.
In ordinary circumstances I would have taken more time off after my relatively-disappointing read of Fluke before returning to the Christopher Moore well. I've historically had a tendency to get addicted to authors, devour everything by them that I could get my hands on, and rapidly experience the law of diminishing returns. Because of that, I tend to make a conscious effort to space out my approaches to authors I enjoy, and I'm extra-careful to back off when I feel like I may be getting too accustomed to them and thus not enjoying their work as much as I otherwise might.
Here, though, I'm glad that I moved straight from Fluke to You Suck, which made me realize that I still do enjoy Moore's work, just not that one book (as much).
You Suck is a sequel to Bloodsucking Fiends, and a sequel done well: it carries forward the best aspects of the first book, including the terrific characters, unusual plot, and super-sharp writing, and adds some fresh ingredients of its own. I had certain expectations going in, and they were soundly met.
MINI SPOILERS
So: vampires. The book picks up right after BF left off: Thomas has become a vampire. He's changed by this, of course, but he remains the thoroughly likeable exuberant freed-Midwesterner doofus of the first book: he acts like an especially energetic puppy when exploring his newfound powers, whines when he tries to get his way, enthusiastically tries to solve the problems thrown his way.
Pretty much all of the characters from the first book return. The surviving Animals have been to Vegas and back, losing their ill-gotten gains with astonishing speed. The cops are keeping things low. The original vampire eventually escapes from his prison and continues his odd test, leaving corpses behind to frighten the populace. And the Emperor sticks around too; he has less to do in this book, but provides his regal presence and assurance to some crucial scenes.
The book adds a bunch of new characters, a few of whom are minor but several which are more important. Probably my favorite is Abby Normal, a high school sophomore goth chick who Thomas recruits as their new minion. (She calls him "Lord Flood," and for most of the book has the mistaken impression that he was friends with Byron.) She's pretty fun in general, but my favorite part is her chapters, which Moore writes as entries from her diary. Unlike the rest of the book, which is done in Moore's comic third-person voice, these chapters are done in first-person, just-after-the-fact, and man, Moore has lots of fun with it. Lots of dialect, slang, stream of consciousness. And most of the dialog is of the form: "So I was like, 'Yo, dude, wherefore art thou giving me such a hard time, sir?' And he was all, 'Duh, der, look at me, I'm a stupid fat cop.'" This is how people sound when they're recounting dialog to other people: summarizing it, coloring it, reinterpreting history to make yourself seem more clever. It has a great effect here; knowing Abby as we do, we can sort of de-crypt her recounting of events and come up with a reasonable approximation of what actually occurred.
Let's see, what else... there's Chet, another homeless guy who's way less cool than the Emperor but who still achieves comic greatness, mostly due to his huge cat. Blue is kind of the main villain of the book: the Animals picked her up in Vegas, where she bled their money dry. She now terrorizes and leads them. Jerrod is kind of a bummer of a character; he's more of a whiney brat than anything. Jerrod and Abby's families provide some good color to these determinedly moody characters, but aren't intended to be fully fleshed out. Finally, towards the end we see three mysterious other vampire characters. They get almost no narrative time at all, but seem likely to figure into the sequel.
END SPOILERS
There is a sequel, of course. Apparently this set of books is one of Moore's most popular, and his fans keep clamoring for more. I can't blame them. The satire is sharp, the characters are hilarious, the plot is wild (without veering into Fluke-ish nonsense), and everything moves along at a nice pace. I'm now back at the other extreme, deliberately holding off on reading my next Moore book because I want to keep around something good for me to read when I need it.
Monday, March 07, 2011
Use the force, Fluke
My merry romp through Christopher Moore (er, I mean Moore's work) continues unabated. My most recent entry: Fluke. I was going to say that it's the first of Moore's works that I've read to be set outside of Northern California, but then I realized that England is also outside Northern California, so never mind.
Fluke is... a weird book. A really, really weird book. Even for Moore (again, based on what I've read from him before). The first 50 or so pages left me utterly unprepared for where the book ended up, and I'd be shocked if any other readers could predict where things end up.
Obviously, all this implies abundant spoilers, so I'll try to treat the little that I can before dropping into that tag.
The book remains very funny, of course. Some of the humor is implicit within Moore's writing style and authorial asides; some of it is explicit within the characters' speech; and some is metaphysical at the overall shape of the plot. There were a few times when Moore seemed to be trying just a little too hard... I generally love his absurd metaphors, but a few of these just didn't parse. Still, overall it was really funny.
From a technical standpoint, I think this was the worst-edited of Moore's books that I've read so far. It wasn't awful (not "Crossroads of Twilight" awful), but I was kind of surprised by how many technical errors ended up in here. Nothing totally horrible, but several instances of dropped closing quotation marks, missing words, and other ephemera. (I read the hardcover; I suppose, and hope, that these might have gotten cleaned up in the paperback.)
Uh... I guess that's about all I can say without dropping into
MINI SPOILERS
The Hawaii setting was really pleasant. I've never been, and the book furthers my vague desire to one day go there.
The science stuff was pretty interesting. At the end of the book Moore has a note that summarizes what parts he made up and which were genuine. Almost everything I know about humpback whales and their songs comes from Star Trek IV, so it was pretty cool to learn more about what scientists currently think about this. I also thought a lot about Moby Dick, especially in the discussions of different types of whales and their hunting. (And also of last week's episode of Archer, which features a hilarious exchange between Archer and Lana that includes the phrase "Clean-burning whale oil.")
The background characters were fun, too. It's kind of surprising that there aren't more books about scientists, and it was a lot of fun to get all that drama (backstabbing, poaching, public relations, public embarrassment, fights over funding, maintaining reputations, etc.) in a small, well-understandable community. Moore says that he made all of that stuff up, but as someone who has worked in a variety of corporate environments, it feels awfully believable to me.
The primary characters: good, but weird. Really weird. Nate and Clay are very likeable, and also a bit two-dimenstional for the role they have to play. Kona is just far out there; he may be the funniest character altogether, but almost all of his laughs are too easy (white guy smoking ganja and talking about Bob Marley). Amy is way too much of everything: way too perky, way too pretty, way too affectionate. I had a really hard time early in the book understanding why Amy was not only putting up with these people, but actually flirting with them. That kinda became less of an issue later on, but only by exchanging a small bit of oddness with a huge wormhole of strangeness.
MEGA SPOILERS
Man... where to begin? Whale ships? Pirates? Kinda-aliens-but-actually-alternately-evolved-oh-wait-they-did-not-really-evolve-but-were-created-but-it-is-still-science creatures? The Goo?
I was flummoxed from the moment Nate got swallowed, and I still don't know what to make of it. It reads like a shaggy dog story. The distinct feeling I got throughout the last 2/3 of the book was that Moore was just making it up as he went along, pulling the craziest thing that he could think of out of his rear. That's cool, I'm all for inventive and wild storytelling, but... man, I don't know. I guess it felt like he wrote the whole book as a sort of creative-thinking exercise, and then didn't go back and re-write with the ending in mind. There are a lot of weird little digressions that go nowhere, plot points that seem important but end up meaningless, general narratorical meandering. And, again, I'm not necessarily opposed to any of that, but I guess that this felt sloppy in a way I'm unaccustomed to.
That said, the core idea of the Goo was really interesting. I immediately connected it with Robert Anton Wilson's idea of the Leviathan, from the eponymous third book of the Illuminatus! trilogy. Both area incredibly ancient sea-based life forms that represent a different evolutionary path that began back in the primordial ooze.
I also found myself thinking of Guu, from Jungle wa Hale Itsumo nochi Guu. Both Guus are incredibly powerful, sneaky, capable of swallowing things up and creating other things. Other than that, um, little resemblance, so forget I said anything.
END SPOILERS
Altogether, I have to concede that Fluke is probably my least favorite so far of Moore's books. That doesn't mean that it's bad, far from it, but it hasn't blown me away like his others.
Part of this might just be that I'm spoiled, coming off the hilarious, tightly-plotted, and resonant Bloodsucking Fiends. I would ordinarily suggest taking a little break before diving back in, except that I've already started in on You Suck. Which, so far, is awesome, so I'm hoping that Fluke was, well, a fluke.
Fluke is... a weird book. A really, really weird book. Even for Moore (again, based on what I've read from him before). The first 50 or so pages left me utterly unprepared for where the book ended up, and I'd be shocked if any other readers could predict where things end up.
Obviously, all this implies abundant spoilers, so I'll try to treat the little that I can before dropping into that tag.
The book remains very funny, of course. Some of the humor is implicit within Moore's writing style and authorial asides; some of it is explicit within the characters' speech; and some is metaphysical at the overall shape of the plot. There were a few times when Moore seemed to be trying just a little too hard... I generally love his absurd metaphors, but a few of these just didn't parse. Still, overall it was really funny.
From a technical standpoint, I think this was the worst-edited of Moore's books that I've read so far. It wasn't awful (not "Crossroads of Twilight" awful), but I was kind of surprised by how many technical errors ended up in here. Nothing totally horrible, but several instances of dropped closing quotation marks, missing words, and other ephemera. (I read the hardcover; I suppose, and hope, that these might have gotten cleaned up in the paperback.)
Uh... I guess that's about all I can say without dropping into
MINI SPOILERS
The Hawaii setting was really pleasant. I've never been, and the book furthers my vague desire to one day go there.
The science stuff was pretty interesting. At the end of the book Moore has a note that summarizes what parts he made up and which were genuine. Almost everything I know about humpback whales and their songs comes from Star Trek IV, so it was pretty cool to learn more about what scientists currently think about this. I also thought a lot about Moby Dick, especially in the discussions of different types of whales and their hunting. (And also of last week's episode of Archer, which features a hilarious exchange between Archer and Lana that includes the phrase "Clean-burning whale oil.")
The background characters were fun, too. It's kind of surprising that there aren't more books about scientists, and it was a lot of fun to get all that drama (backstabbing, poaching, public relations, public embarrassment, fights over funding, maintaining reputations, etc.) in a small, well-understandable community. Moore says that he made all of that stuff up, but as someone who has worked in a variety of corporate environments, it feels awfully believable to me.
The primary characters: good, but weird. Really weird. Nate and Clay are very likeable, and also a bit two-dimenstional for the role they have to play. Kona is just far out there; he may be the funniest character altogether, but almost all of his laughs are too easy (white guy smoking ganja and talking about Bob Marley). Amy is way too much of everything: way too perky, way too pretty, way too affectionate. I had a really hard time early in the book understanding why Amy was not only putting up with these people, but actually flirting with them. That kinda became less of an issue later on, but only by exchanging a small bit of oddness with a huge wormhole of strangeness.
MEGA SPOILERS
Man... where to begin? Whale ships? Pirates? Kinda-aliens-but-actually-alternately-evolved-oh-wait-they-did-not-really-evolve-but-were-created-but-it-is-still-science creatures? The Goo?
I was flummoxed from the moment Nate got swallowed, and I still don't know what to make of it. It reads like a shaggy dog story. The distinct feeling I got throughout the last 2/3 of the book was that Moore was just making it up as he went along, pulling the craziest thing that he could think of out of his rear. That's cool, I'm all for inventive and wild storytelling, but... man, I don't know. I guess it felt like he wrote the whole book as a sort of creative-thinking exercise, and then didn't go back and re-write with the ending in mind. There are a lot of weird little digressions that go nowhere, plot points that seem important but end up meaningless, general narratorical meandering. And, again, I'm not necessarily opposed to any of that, but I guess that this felt sloppy in a way I'm unaccustomed to.
That said, the core idea of the Goo was really interesting. I immediately connected it with Robert Anton Wilson's idea of the Leviathan, from the eponymous third book of the Illuminatus! trilogy. Both area incredibly ancient sea-based life forms that represent a different evolutionary path that began back in the primordial ooze.
I also found myself thinking of Guu, from Jungle wa Hale Itsumo nochi Guu. Both Guus are incredibly powerful, sneaky, capable of swallowing things up and creating other things. Other than that, um, little resemblance, so forget I said anything.
END SPOILERS
Altogether, I have to concede that Fluke is probably my least favorite so far of Moore's books. That doesn't mean that it's bad, far from it, but it hasn't blown me away like his others.
Part of this might just be that I'm spoiled, coming off the hilarious, tightly-plotted, and resonant Bloodsucking Fiends. I would ordinarily suggest taking a little break before diving back in, except that I've already started in on You Suck. Which, so far, is awesome, so I'm hoping that Fluke was, well, a fluke.
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