Category Archives: Fiction

Fiction, Publishing

Should Moby-Dick Be Hyphenated?

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Ahab reloaded
“When this interlude was over, Captain Mayhew began a dark story concerning Moby Dick; not, however, without frequent interruptions from Gabriel, whenever his name was mentioned, and the crazy sea that seemed leagued with him.”

Why do we occasionally see Moby Dick with a hyphen? Because that’s how the original title ran. Erin Blakemore of the Smithsonian calls it a Victorian convention, but that doesn’t satisfy many readers.

“Moby-Dick; Or, The Whale” was published in the United States on this day in 1851, having been previously released in the United Kingdom. It didn’t sell well compared to his other books, and critics took a dim view:

The idea of a connected and collected story has obviously visited and abandoned its writer again and again in the course of composition. The style of his tale is in places disfigured by mad (rather than bad) English; and its catastrophe is hastily, weakly, and obscurely managed.

Fiction

In Praise of The Handmaid’s Tale

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The Handmaid’s Tale has become a significant artifact of North American postmodern culture. It’s hard to imagine, for example, the myriad of shelves dedicated to young-adult fiction at your local Barnes and Noble without the influence—however indirect or incorrect—of The Handmaid’s Tale. After all, in our age of intellectual stagnation, who better to destroy patriarchal oppression than a noble and brave teenage girl, a postmodern Joan of Arc?

But this is a most superficial reading of the novel. In reality, the story is as complicated as anything Huxley or Orwell wrote.

Bradley J. Birzer of Hillsdale College writes about the virtues of Margaret Atwood’s most-loved novel. (via Prufrock News)

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Wrong Side of Goodbye,’ by Michael Connelly

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The Wrong Side of Goodbye

Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch cop novels are a long-running series. They’re bestsellers for good reason. Connelly writes tight, well-crafted novels with engaging characters. The Wrong Side of Goodbye is a sterling entry in a saga that shows no sign of flagging.

Aging detective Harry Bosch is no longer with the Los Angeles Police Department. He was terminated at the end of the last book (he’s suing them for it). But he’s got a private investigator’s license. He’s also working part-time, on a volunteer basis, for the financially strapped police department of the suburb of San Fernando.

For the San Fernando job, he’s working on a series of rapes by a creep who cuts through screen windows in women’s homes. A recent victim got away from him, coming away with fresh clues Harry and the other detectives can use to get closer to a solution. Their main handicap is simply lack of manpower, something that will put a member of the team in genuine peril.

Meanwhile, in a scene right out of Raymond Chandler, Harry (wearing his private eye hat) is called to the home of a steel and aeronautics magnate. The old man is dying, and he knows it. He has no heir. But long ago he fathered a child with a Mexican girlfriend. He wants Harry to find out if his child is alive – if he or she is, they’re in a position to inherit billions.

It’s a pleasure to follow Harry as he does his job. Connelly is especially good at layered characters – people who turn out to be more (or less) than they appear on first glance. There are lots of surprises here, and a plot that snaps together cleanly in the end.

Author Connelly’s politics would appear to be liberal, but his views on various issues are incorporated seamlessly into the story, without hammering the points home (though Harry seems to have had more lesbian partners than statistically likely). But if I disagreed with some passing political riffs, I appreciated the respect with which Vietnam veterans were treated.

Highly recommended. Cautions for language and adult themes.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Critic,’ by Peter May

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The Critic

This the second book in the Peter May mystery series starring Enzo MacLeod, who debuted as a character in Extraordinary People, which I reviewed earlier. I don’t think I like this series as much as I like May’s Hebrides novels, but he’s a good storyteller, and there’s plenty to enjoy in The Critic.

The critic of the title is Gil Petty, a prestigious American wine critic who disappeared on a working trip to the vineyards of the Gaillac region in France. His fate was unknown for a couple years, until one day his body appeared staked up like a scarecrow in a vineyard at harvest time. It had clearly been preserved in wine since his death.

Our hero, Enzo MacLeod, makes Gil Petty the next challenge in his missing persons bet. A friend has written a book about unsolved disappearances in France, and Enzo has made a bet with him that he can solve several of them. Enzo is a half-Italian Scotsman, but has lived in France for years, teaching his specialty, forensic science.

Enzo moves into a small cottage near a chalet, and in semi-comic fashion nearly his whole circle of amateur assistants gather around him uninvited – his daughter and her body-builder boyfriend, his young, sexy assistant, and his on-and-off girlfriend. Another drop-in is the estranged, beautiful daughter of the late Mr. Petty, from America.

Enzo is hampered by the suspicion of some of the growers, and by constant sexual tension with almost every female (except his daughter) with whom he comes into contact. Enzo’s attractiveness to women is played mostly for laughs, and it causes him more problems than any satisfaction he gets.

But the mystery is serious, and Gil Petty is not the last victim of a ruthless serial killer.

Like all Peter May mysteries, The Critic is pretty good entertainment. Cautions for language and adult situations. There are some hints of political views, but only in passing.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Wicked Kind,’ by John Turner

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The Wicked Kind

My feelings are mixed about The Wicked Kind, a first novel by one John Turner. I think some narrative mistakes were made, but the author shows promise.

The narrator/main character is Mason Tanner, who owns a California construction company and is an alcoholic maintaining sobriety. Years ago, when he was a young ski bum, his best friend Sam disappeared in a Rocky mountain resort. Mason is convinced his friend was killed by a strange man called “Gary” who chatted them up in a bar and tried several times to get Sam to come stay with him to avoid a coming storm. But Sam and Gary vanished as if into the air, and the police were baffled.

Now Mason’s girlfriend, who was Sam’s girlfriend at the time of the disappearance, uncovers some new evidence. She has identified a series of similar disappearances all along a line on the map. They head for a mountain town where the trouble they stir up brings a lot more push-back than they ever expected.

Author Turner has a lot of talent. His prose is generally good, and his dialogue and characterizations are excellent, in my view.

I thought the plotting kind of weak, though. Mason struggles to figure out things that seemed to me nose-on-face obvious. I kept waiting for plot twists, but there really were none. The criminal is pretty obvious from the start.

And the ending… I don’t know. I understand what the author is doing. He’s establishing Mason Tanner as a detective character for a coming series. But a story of this kind, it seems to me, would serve better as background exposition in a better-conceived full-out detective story, rather than standing alone. There just wasn’t enough pay-off here.

And he needs to learn how to surprise the reader.

Nevertheless, I moderately recommend The Wicked Kind. It’s worth reading. Cautions for language.

Fiction

Seeking but Never Leaving Home in the South

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Alabama Sunset

“When I taught English classes at a university in the Midwest,” Sarah Domet writes, “I often turned to William Faulkner’s Absalom! Absalom! as a representative sample of a ‘Southern’ book. . . . At the heart of the novel stands a character who both transcends and is forever bound by his roots.”

Interestingly, I have never taught Absalom! Absalom! in any Southern classroom. Perhaps this is due to my fear of being outed as an outsider myself, my fear of being seen as the dreaded Yankee stereotype who instructs Southerners on the ways of the world. Yet, as I was recently re-reading this great Southern novel, something struck me: My desires to belong to a new region—my anxieties of place, too—are all very Southern, at least in a literary sense. In my fear of not being Southern enough I was playing out the very themes of Southern fiction. Time and time again Southern writers confront the conflicting notions of what it means to live in the South, be of the South, find a home in a place with a complicated history. Time and time again Southern writers have reminded me that misfits and outsiders alike all have a shot at redemption. It is Flannery O’Connor herself who famously notes, “Whenever I’m asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one.”

Fiction, Reviews

Aborted review: ‘Wall of Storms,’ by Ken Liu

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Wall of Storms

I call this an “aborted” review because I didn’t finish the book. That shouldn’t be taken as a criticism of the quality of the writing. I set the book aside unfinished because of my principles (or, if you prefer, my prejudices).

I’ve already reviewed The Grace of Kings, the first book in Ken Liu’s Dandelion Dynasty series of fantasy novels. Think Game of Thrones but in a sort of Chinese setting, and somewhat less nihilistic. I enjoyed that book immensely, and gave it a glowing review.

Wall of Storms is also a brilliant piece of world-building and storytelling. The world of the book is wonderfully imagined, intriguingly detailed, and multifaceted. Author Liu is a fine prose stylist. His writing is evocative, his characters complex and layered, and his dialogue sparkling and nuanced.

What I didn’t like was the political correctness. Early on we are confronted with not one, but two homosexual relationships, treated as normal in the culture. Later on, an important (and highly sympathetic) character argues for sexual egalitarianism.

I suppose I lack imagination, but I think fantasy ought to hew close to actual human nature, however much it may play with the cultural furniture. No human society has ever normalized homosexual marriage before ours did it (artificially, through legal maneuvering), and no human society has ever treated men and women interchangeably. This element of the story was plainly adopted by the author to ingratiate himself to right-thinking readers. So I don’t imagine he’ll miss my readership.

I’ll be seeing more and more of this sort of thing as time goes on, I’m sure. But (at least for now) nobody can force me to finish a book that’s obviously trying to correct my thinking.

Otherwise, it’s a really good book. You may love it.

Fiction

Bulletproof Luke Cage in 2016

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The Luke Cage stories of 1972 Marvel comics are not what you see in the new Netflix series. The new writers deliver a more mature story than their source material, Sam Knowles says, in many ways.

One clear improvement is apparent to anyone who happens to see cover art from the old comics. Luke was known as a ‘hero for hire.’ He used his abilities as a way to earn a living, which in the real world makes some sense, but what other superhero does this? The mercenaries are usually the bad guys. The good guys are heroes for the sake of justice. Knowles states,

Luke’s identity as a self-proclaimed ‘hero for hire’ sets him up in opposition to white superheroes, whose racial privilege enables the narrative of ‘superhero-ness’ to be about altruism. As a result, others look down on Luke’s attitude–most obviously Dr Noah Burstein [the scientist who gave Luke his power]: “I’ve heard how you’ve helped neighborhood merchants against Syndicate protection men. For a fee / Bit disillusioning from a so-called hero, isn’t it?”

http://www.aaihs.org/luke-cage-and-the-evolution-of-the-superhero-narrative/?utm_content=buffer8e65f&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

The Netflix story explicitly drops this idea early on. In the beginning, Luke doesn’t want to get involved at all. His father figure, ‘Pop’ Hunter, urges him to use his gifts to help others and later suggests he hire himself out, but Luke refuses. Though he struggles with whether his efforts to help amount to kicking the criminal hornets’ nest, he continues to help those he can because it’s the right thing to do. He loves the people of Harlem.  Continue reading Bulletproof Luke Cage in 2016 →

Fiction, Reviews

‘Ten Guilty Men,’ by Daniel Campbell and Sean Campbell

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Ten Guilty Men

I’m not sure what to say about this well-written English police procedural. Ten Guilty Men by Daniel and Sean Campbell rates pretty high (I think) on the realism scale, but left me with the sense I always got from 19th Century realistic novels: What was the purpose of this journey?

Detective Chief Inspector Morton, the main character, is a London police detective, heading a small (understaffed) team of investigators. He’s called out to a posh home filled with trash, where Ellis DeLange, a famous photographer, has been found dead, floating in her swimming pool. Cause of death is not drowning, because she has a head injury that couldn’t have been accidental. Suspicion focuses on the party attendees – Ellis’ boyfriend (a sports broadcaster), her sister, her best friend, a drug dealer, and a few others. The systematic investigation gradually reduces the suspects to two, and then passes on to an account of the murder trial, somewhat like an episode of the TV series, Law & Order.

Inspector Morton is a pretty good character. He’s generally a good boss, though he likes to pull rank, often in a joking way. Of particular interest is his relationship with a subordinate who has suffered a stroke and has trouble communicating. At first Morton treats him like a defective, but he gradually learns that the young man has good skills and instincts, and so learns to make use of his strengths.

My main problem with the book is the ending, which is unsatisfying in the extreme. This is not the kind of book where everything gets tied up neatly with a ribbon on the last pages. Of course this approach is true to the real world, but it leaves me with little incentive to continue reading the series.

Moderately recommended. I don’t recall much extremely objectionable content.

One final question remains: What’s the cover about? It has nothing to do with any part of the story.

Fiction, Publishing

Now 75: Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine

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Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine celebrates its seventy-fifth anniversary this year. Bill Morris offers his thoughts on the magazine and an exhibition of it in the Butler Library at Columbia University.

In a land where most magazines have the lifespan of a fruit fly, how is it possible for one magazine to survive — and thrive — for 75 years? Janet Hutchings has a theory: “The great power that Frederic Dannay gave this magazine was its variety and its reach.”

For the first time in American publishing, the magazine published any good mystery it could: “hard-boiled stories, classic English mysteries, noirs, suspense, cozy mysteries, the work of literary writers.” It broke down barriers to what was acceptable to publish. “Now, writers of every stripe gleefully plunder one or more genres, stitching together scraps or horror, pulp, crime, fantasy, ghost stories, mysteries, westerns.”