Spectacles
“He had read endless books, he had digested them, pondered over them. Day by day, year after year, he had turned over all the problems of human beings. Yet there were all sorts of simple things he didn’t know how to do: he couldn’t even walk into an inn and sit down at a table.”
– Georges Simenon, The Strangers in the House
Finished this book this afternoon. I think Simenon’s terrific but he’s one of those authors I can’t read a lot of in one go. Great stuff and he’s writing on all cylinders here, but if I spend too long with his style it becomes so transparent it’s like seeing how the magician does his tricks.
Character-arc spoilers: The novel’s about a drunken recluse. At the end he’s still a drunk, but no longer a recluse. This is something of a happy ending.
One Book Five Covers: Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban
Russell Hoban’s novel Riddley Walker is a bit like Walter M. Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz mixed with Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange. Set in a post-apocalyptic England that resembles the Iron Age, Riddley’s written in this odd, “degraded” style of English that is difficult to parse at first but after a bit takes on a poetic power.
A quote:
“Where ben that new life coming in to? Widders Dump. You know what they ben doing there. It ain’t jus only forming they ben doing there with stock and growings they ben digging they croaking iron. They ben digging up that old time Bad Time black time. Now weare at the las weve come to No. 1 and Brooder Walker. Widders Dump and thats where Aunty come for him. Stoan boans and iron tits and teef be twean her legs. Brooder Walker dug her up and she come down on top of him o yes.”
Another conceit of the book is that puppet shows like Punch & Judy mixed with Medieval morality plays are used by the government to communicate official announcements. Riddley digs up an old Punch puppet and this sets him over the fence and wandering the outside world. Hence the appearance of Punch on two of the covers.
Those two covers at least give you some idea what to expect in the book. The second cover, full of quotes calling the book brilliant and what not, looks more like a back cover, and the third and fourth covers look like in-the-know covers, by which I mean that unless you’re in the know already those covers aren’t going to tell you anything about the book.
Regardless of the cover you find, it’s a great book and worth checking out.
(There’s also this whole theory about how the book inspired parts of Mad Max 3: Beyond Thunderdome.)
Likenfreude
Likenfreude: When you recognize exactly which blog post/youtube clip someone’s opinions came from.
This is a working definition and liable to change.
“-Freude” means joy and this feeling isn’t really “joyful”.
Maybe it should be “linkenfreude”.
Friday’s Here
Since I’m teaching 1st grade this year, I’ve had to reacquaint myself with nursery rhymes and children’s songs. Trust me. It’s a matter of self-preservation. You wouldn’t believe how quickly you can channel the energy of a rambunctious class with the song “Five Little Monkeys”.
Here’s a song I stumbled upon that pretty much had me smiling all day. So much so that I’ve broadcast it on every social media site I’m on except maybe Good Reads — though with this post here I’m probably doing that.
Anyway, it’s a three day weekend on account of it being Buddha’s Birthday. There will likely be a parade in town, which should be pretty awesome on account of the floats. I just finished reading Russell Hoban’s Riddley Walker. That’s an amazing book. It’ll likely get the one book four covers treatment in the not so distant future.
Stay well.
One Book Three Covers: Missing Man by Katherine MacLean
This is one of those books I read about on a blog somewhere discussing “forgotten classics” of SF. The premise sounded neat: a pair of heroes (more psychic EMTs than cops) roams the weird streets of a future New York City that’s fragmented into communes.
The novel began its life as a series of novellas in Analog before going the fix-up route, so it’s no wonder that the Analog cover with its Apocalypse Chair is the most apt, sort of. The second picture is the first paperback novel printing and it’s your standard 1970s SF moodscape, like for real man, without any indication of setting or character. All it needs is a sketchy disembodied head screaming and you could call it Operation: Mindcrime. The next with the black cover is the Prime Books Wildside Press edition that’s in print now and it’s the copy I read, and, well, that’s the dullest of the bunch. It’s a road sign.
All of which is a shame because Missing Man is a fun book. It’s dated for sure, and a bit eyebrow-raising whenever the conflict centers on rescuing someone from a “crazy” ethnic or racial minority, but it’s also weirdly prescient in the way its fragmented NYC resembles the Internet: a world where people have segregated themselves from each other along the lines of their interests and via their computers so they never need to encounter someone who disagrees with them.
Missing Man may be wrong in the particulars and technology of this fragmentation, but I suspect it’s right in depicting some of the results.
Translation Telephone
Jin received her copies of the John Shirley book Rapture that she translated. She wrote a blog post about it. It’s in Korean, but there are pictures.
The reaction from the Korean BioShock community has been interesting. Some people are annoyed that the book doesn’t match the fan-made patch (where one thing named INCINERATE got translated as FIREBALL ATTACK!) Other people are a bit confused as to who this John Shirley guy is anyways. Some folks thought Ayn Rand was made up by the creators of BioShock. And other folks are reading the book saying, “Oh. This is actually a fun book. The game has more of a sense of humor than we realized.”
It’s been interesting. Part of it makes me think how translation can be like one massive game of telephone. Another thing it makes me realize how making guesses based on limited information may not be a problem now. But later down the line when your guesses have been codified into being considered “the truth” problems will arise.
That Avengers Film
The Avengers opened up here in Korea last week. Apparently this makes me the King of Spoilers now, because it hasn’t opened yet in the States. I liked it. I went in expecting Loud, Stupid, and Obnoxious — I should say I haven’t liked a lot of recent superhero movies — and was pleasantly surprised that it was only Loud.
First, say what you will about Joss Whedon he does do team stories well and this is a team picture, so it never feels like Iron Man or Captain America and these other people.
Second, jeez, a lot of people take spoilers and superhero pictures seriously. Between the online shouting from friends when I start to tell them about one scene, to the folks watching all the other movies leading up to this one. Pfeh. Can’t say I’m particularly bothered that I never saw Iron Man 1 or 2 or Captain America or the Hulk. I don’t care a whit about any of that.
I’m So Happy. *COUGH*COUGH*
Another portrait by one of my students. Dig the Maynard G. Krebs beard.
Still coughing and limping. I went back to the doctor’s for a check-up. I have another six days in my cast, but he says my ankle’s healing quite well.
From the Ray Bradbury Paris Review interview: “I type my first draft quickly, impulsively even. A few days later I retype the whole thing and my subconscious, as I retype, gives me new words. Maybe it’ll take retyping it many times until it is done. Sometimes it takes very little revision.”
That makes me think a bit.
Stuff
Some firsts:
– Had laryngitis. It was exciting and I wished I could stay sounding like the Cookie Monster forever.
– Last week I hurt my foot, but being the American I am I figured going to the doctor would be frivolous and I’d just wait for it to get better and bandage it up and all that. Yeah. That was working well until today and I was expected to play volleyball in my school’s league and I was like, “No, sir. My foot is still yellow and purple from last week. There will be no volleyball for me.” And coach said, “You must go to Hospital.” So I did, and they were super super super nice and took x-rays and put me in this soft cast. All fun stuff, and the whole thing cost me 25USD and I’ll have a cast to hobble around in and keep myself from playing volleyball. Yay.
– My kindle died. It did that screendeath-fuxxored thing. I’m taking this better than I’d expect.
Some stuff:
– Been devouring these interviews over at the Paris Review site. Great stuff.
– Jin’s first translated book is out. It’s a Diablo 3 splat-book thing.
– Her second translated book, John Shirley’s BioShock tie-in novel Rapture, should be out next month. She had a great time working on that one… well… mostly. Sometimes people got their faces cut-off and stuff, but she thought it was a fun book and did a good job on it. However this 17 year old, who runs the “most popular” BioShock blog in the Korean Blogosphere, got hired as her proofreader. Jin’s boss, you know, wanted to get the “community” involved. So this kid made sure all the translations matched the fan-made patch for the videogame, which was a lousy “transliteration”. For example, Jin translates the train, “the Atlantic Express” as “the word for the Atlantic Ocean + the word for express train”, the patch simply transliterated it as “Ata-lan-tic-eh Exs-pre-ss-eh” and that’s the way it’ll likely be in the book. (The editor’s a bit miffed by this, but wants to keep the fan-base pleased.)
– Had another Vaults game over the weekend. I’ll wait for Dennis to write it up. No one died.
– There’s a Chinese restaurant near us that’s so f’n killer. Seriously. They do this spicy chicken that’s amazing.
What the Sleestak Saw
Dennis (AKA Thidrek the Sleestak) has done a writeup of the last adventure over at What a Horrible Night to Have a Curse. And for a full expose of Thidrek in all his greenness checkout this picture by Jeremy/Oxide (AKA Ripper). Good stuff. Now I need to think of something for them to do this weekend when they once more head into the ruins.
Yesterweird 