The Gospel According to Prisco

In Persuasion Nation by George Saunders

Damn, and I thought I like Pastoralia.  There are more stories in this collection, so there are few clunkers, but that’s only because in relation to the other stories included in the collection, they aren’t as good.  And there are some monstrously incredible stories happening up in here.

I’m not going to copy “My Amendment” as I had previously promised, if only because it will make you go out and get your hands on a copy post haste.  It’s one of two “letters to the editor” in this collection, and makes an argument for the banning of “vaguely gay marriage”.  I’ll let you figure it out for yourselves. 

I was trying to think of some of my favorite stories, but there are so many reasons why this collection is great.  One stand out for me was “Jon” which is about a boy raised in an advertising agency to be a legendary hero and to essentially design commericals.  All of his memories are commercials, or implanted by the company.  Again, Saunders is working on this fine line between melacholy and hilarity with these brilliant satirical jibes being taken.  It’s fucking astounding.

Again, I think he’s cemented even further my belief that he’s one of the best short story writers around. 

Pastoralia by George Saunders

My God, this man is a fucking genius.  Imagine if Philip K. Dick and David Sedaris had a baby, and then let Kurt Vonnegut tuck him in at night and read him bedtime stories.  This guy would be the result. 

It’s kind of impossible to explain why he’s the best short story author around, and yes, that does include Joe Hill, who is awesome for totally different reasons.  The first collection of his I read was called CivilWarLand in Bad Decline.  He’s sort of got a fetish for these dystopian societies (up creeps that dirty word again — i think Left Behind has me awaiting the Rapture) and CivilWarLand is an amusement park/reenactment museum site of sorts.  This crops up a lot in his collections.  These weird ass sort of futuristic terrariums where people are forced into this weirdly corporate con fascist environs.  It’s totally tongue-in-cheek and supremely hysterical.  He did a full novel, which is probably like a page or three beyond being a novella called The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil.  To try to explain the concept of this novel might literally make someone’s head fall off and roll down stairs to burst in confetti.  And while that would be awesome, let me sell the book by saying, Read CivilWarLand first, then you’ll just read everything by this dude.

Pastoralia is more of the same, and while the stories enclosed are not necessarily my favorites of his, they are assuredly fantastic reads.  The title story takes place in, again, a weird sort of museum amusement park and is told from the point of view of one of the cavemen performers.  He is both a caveman and a modern day human, and the sheer focus and tone of the story makes it disturbingly hilarious.  The rest of the stories range from funny to touching.  If I had to compare it to Sedaris, I’d probably say this is somewhere between Barrel Fever and Dress Your Family in Corduroy.  There’s a story in here called “The End of Fripo in the World” that will tear your fucking heart out of your chest. 

I’m currently reading In Persuasion Nation, which is brilliant.  In fact the story I just read is so good, I might try to transcribe it in its entirety in lieu of a review.  It’s that fucking awesome. 

The Man Who Ate the 747 by Ben Sherwood

What a strangely haunting and beautiful book.  It would make such a touching little romantic comedy that even your grandmother would like.  It’s got such a neat story at it’s core, and even though it rampant with cliche and wooden dialogue, it’s just such a sweet fucking story about what people will do for the ones they love.

JJ Smith works for the Book of Records, a Guinness Book knockoff, where people set out to make history for insane acts.  JJ Smith is the record verifier, so he travels the globe authenticating victories and failures.  The Book has seen better days, and so he needs to find something great.  A letter sends him to middle of nowhere Nebraska, where a man has set out to consume an entire 747 that crashed into his farm as a testament to the woman he loves. 

Now the interesting part is, this man never wanted the attention or the record.  People knew what he was doing, and thought him a bit mad, but he never was public about it.  He just did it for the woman he loved since he was a shy grade school boy.   So his science teacher buddy makes him a machine which grinds the pieces of airplane into a metallic ore which the guy mixes with milk, uses as a ketchup, or as a seasoning.  In order to consume every single inch of the airplane.

The book then becomes a romance about small town life, unrequited love, and the ambition of what love means.  It’s really very beautiful, and I don’t want to give away too many plot points, other than there is a small love triangle and that’s about it.  But, this is one of those Mitch Albom-y stories that just so tender and gentle, you don’t care how poorly assembled or sacchariny it gets. 

This is a hard one to find, but honestly, I’m curious as to whether or not it’s been optioned, because if carefully written, it would make lots of money as a movie.

The Film Club by David Gilmour

This is second book I have read in its entirety while sitting around a Barnes and Noble.  But this was the first one that was a steaming disappointment, after such a promising premise.

Gilmour was a former film critic/television documentarian who had a teenage son struggling with high school.  So he agreed to let his son drop out of school, if he agreed to a) do no drugs and b) watch 3 films a week with him.  Which sounds fucking awesome.  Which may become part of the eventual homeschool regimen I force my own theoretical children into some day.  Films can be used in such powerful ways to enforce ideals, to demonstrate historical periods, or especially as a jumping point to other greater things.  Film is a universal language that draws people together.

But in this book, the story just feels incredibly false.  And it’s a biography.  Essentially, it’s a dad’s version of his son’s life and how it effects his own.  It’s sort of this weird angsty Canadian version of 8 Mile, where the concept gets whitewashed by a goony middle aged dude.   The son wants to be a rapper.  The son smokes and drinks wine with the father, not just at home, but in public.  Perhaps this is de rigeur with our northern neighbors, but for me, it just felt like he was trying to be TOO cool of a dad. 

The film selections were obvious, and I would be hard pressed to find someone who could come up with a curriculum that I would support and agree with 100%.  But this dude was a film critic who loved  Ishtar.   I honestly would have preferred a little more discussion about the films, but his son was about as into it as me as a reader.  Mostly the kid manages to pick up a few interesting tidbits about filmic knowledge, one-ups his dad, and the rest of the book reads like a very uninteresting biopic.   The ending is so brutally cliched, I almost wished that someone contracted cancer so they could make it a Lifetime movie of the Week that TK would have to review.  

Grade for Life:  F. 

I don’t care much for the beach.  I have had enough near death collisions with jellyfish, crippling accidents with boogie boards, and suffered through plenty of washed up Jersey needles and hurricane force waves that I’ve had my fill.  So aside from a few splashes and occasional body surfing, I tend to go to beach, plop in an easy chair or on a blanket, and do some reading. 

I prefer paperback novels that are easily fit in your back pocket, and are often parts of large series.  I love digging my teeth into a new series, because if you enjoy it, there is usually more for you to feast upon.  I tend to read twisted bits of fiction, sprinkled with the occasional heady literary meal in the name of Steinbeck or Dostoevfsky.  Usually, it’s pretty much junk food, and I loves it.

So for your edification, I recommend the following series to get you from sunburn to boat drink and back safely and enjoyably:

Tim Dorsey, Florida Roadkill:  How Serge A. Storms passed beneath my radar for so long is beyond me.  This enjoyable series, about a homicidal Florida history buff, is somewhere around it’s 12 book by now.  The first book is Florida Roadkill, and reads like Carl Hiaasen or Big Sur Christopher Moore.  There are about 35 maniac characters who dwindle down to around 4 or 5 by the completion of this pulpy ride, in variously gruesome ways.  Such as tour bus full of Promise Keepers and Fix-A-Flat injected into the throat.  The star of this series is Serge, who’s easily one of the finest folks from the Sunshine State.

Harlan Coben, Deal Breaker:  The first of the Myron Bolitar novels, and a book that pretty much spring-loaded me into the whole comic murder mystery.  He manages to intersperse action with dry wit, and it’s a fantastic combination.  Myron is an ex basketball pro, who was injured during his professional career and now makes money as an agent.  He works closely with his seductively lethal secretary, Esperanza, a former lady wrestler, and his homicidal yuppie cohort, Win.  The mysteries have great twists, Myron’s a spectacular character, and the action doesn’t let up.  Coben’s stand alone novels are also pretty bad ass. 

PJ Tracy, Monkeewrench:  The first of a spectacular set of novels, set in Minnesota.  They are written by a mother-daughter team, and again, feature a lot of decent comedy with a scintillating mystery.  It’s a little pulpier than most, and I usually recommend these to fans of James Patterson’s excellent Alex Cross and Women’s Murder Club Series.  This first one is about a software company run by some less than saavy legal folks who develop a murder crime game that some copycat killer is aping.  It’s pretty damn fun.  There are only four books so far in this series.

Jim Butcher, Storm Front: The Harry Dresden Files.  If you aren’t reading these books yet, then what the fuck?  This pretty much has everything you’re looking for in a series.  It’s about a professional wizard for hire in Chicago, and reads like one part Sam Spade, and one part Harry Potter, and one part Punk Rock.  For a series that’s gone 10 books, it’s managed to keep the story surprisingly fresh.  Dresden is an all-around badass, and the cast of supporting characters gets even finer as it progresses.  Also, his Aleran fantasy novels are none too shabby either, if you’re into the whole D&D thing.

JA Konrath, Whiskey Sour: Inspector Jack Daniels Series.  I was skeptical at first about this series.  Slim little tomes with drink names, and the main character, a female detective named Jack Daniels.  It seemed a little too punriffic to be any good.  Boy was I wrong.  This is a spectacular series that gets better as it goes along.  The humor is brilliant, and the violence is fucking horrifying.  It’s like watching Dexter if he were being pursued by a combination of Sipowicz and Jerry Orbach.  Jack is a grim Chicago cop with a dry wit and a penchant for fine clothing and footwear.  I will be posting a review of book five, Fuzzy Navel, a little later this month at Pajiba, and I wanted to give everyone a chance to get started on the series.  Again, it’s like a combination of Christopher Moore’s wit with James Patterson’s murder sprees.

There are plenty more I know I’m forgetting, and tons of stand-alones I needs to mention, but if you want a quick breezy read, I would recommend getting these and ambling over to the beach.  Every time I’ve carried one of these books, it’s sparked up a conversation with a stranger.  Which annoys me, because hey, jerkoff, I’m trying to fucking read here!

Boat drinks and happy reading, friends!

Snuff by Chuck Palahniuk

I guess once you’ve made something as miraculous as Haunted, a reality TV, fifteen minute whore version of the most fucked up Canterbury Tales, you are bound to fuck up a bit.  I thought Rant was decent, but Snuff just drops the ball. 

It’s basically the story of Cassie Wright, an aging porn star who plans on breaking the world gangbang record by taking 600 men.  The story is told from the point of view of three of the men: an aging male porn legend, a washed-up television actor, and a young man who may be the illegitimate child of Cassie Wright.  We also get perspective from the porn queen’s assistant, Sheila.  Essentially, Cassie might be trying to fuck herself to death to give her lost child the insurance money. 

None of the characters are appealing or interesting in any way, which says a lot for a Palahniuk novel, who peoples his stories with the absolutely dregs of society.  And while it’s layered with the usual nuggets of trivial intrigue one has come to expect, it’s also got a lot of terrible, terrible lame jokes.  Particularly, the names of the porn movies.  I mean, it reads like a bad email forward written by a sexually starved english major.  Cassie’s features are on constant loop, so we are bombarded by something in the neighborhood of 80 titles like A Handmaid’s Tail and Beat Me In St. Louis.  While mildly clever, the device gets old real fast. 

Also, all the porn stars have liquor as their last names (with the exception of Cassie Wright and the authentic names peppered throughout).   Branch Bacardi, Cord Cuervo, Biff Bailey.  I guess these are all riffs on Jenna Jameson, or else they’re just kind of lazy on the part of Palahniuk.

At a brief and unsatisfying pace falling just a cunt hair short of 200 pages, the book just doesn’t capitalize on it’s premise.  Even as they start to whirl through the mystery and the set up, what was supposed to play out like a Rasho-porn, ends up as thinly plotted and characterized as late night Skinimax flick.  Maybe that’s the clever point that Palahniuk’s trying to make, and I just didn’t get it, but really, he’s far too talented and creative to have jerked out this mess. 

It’s not bad enough to start pulling the sticks from Stephen King and going after him with torches and pitchforks, but I’m starting to see the cracks in the facade.  And no amount of shaving and concealer can make those go away. 

Princess Naughty and the Voodoo Cadillac by Fred Willard

Do I really need to go any further than that title to tell you that this is fucking hilariously told story?  Honestly? 

It’s not THAT Fred Willard (I made the same mistake) but this guy’s got some brutal comedy in his bones.   It’s set in Atlanta, and has all the pomp and insanity of Tim Dorsey and Serge Storms’ Florida.  Basically, it’s a heist, kind of Elmore Leonard or Carl Hiaasen, but it’s got more in line with say Tom Robbins or Christopher Moore. 

I believe Christopher Moore is the one who recommended this to me, and I’ve yet to go wrong on one of his suggestions (still need to make my way over to Bill Fitzhugh and Joe Lansdale).  He’s got an earlier novel called Down on Ponce that I’m itching to pick up.

To try to explain this plot gives so much of the ridiculousness joy of letting it unfurl.   For the most part, it’s a pretty wrote backstabbing, fake CIA type tale, with kinda gangsters, billionaire frogs, and a guy named The Shitass Ronnie Gordon.  Mostly because he’s a shitass.  Nobody is particularly nice in the novel, and that’s what makes it so fun to read.  I don’t know if Willard has done anything beyond the two, but I aim to find out.

I libraried this one, and I suggest you do the same.  But it’s definitely worth a gander.  

Small Favor: Book Ten of the Dresden Files by Jim Butcher

When you get this far in a series, you got to be careful.  You have to balance that fine line between bringing us something new, and not totally alienating your characters.  This is often the time in a series when inappropriate or awkward relationships start up, we start to see totally assinine villians, or everything begins to feel stale and repetitive. 

Jim Butcher has admirably been able to keep the Wizard going by literally throwing a dozen balls up into the air and then keeping them aloft with dazzling intricacy.  Taking a page from the Arkham Asylum Guide to Not Killing Off All Your Baddies at Once, Butcher populates his Chicago with so much richness, he’s going to be able to go for years without the well running dry, and it’s all going to have that sweet familiarity and comfort that you get from a series this deep.

Small Favor is interesting in that it essentially works as a median point.  It doesn’t create anything necessarily catastrophic, it basically shakes up the plotting like an aquatic game of Connect Four, and it makes everything fall into place slightly askew.  The easiest way to do this is to essentially create a royal rumble with all the different elements, and then let them dust each other off.  It’s a strategy that’s worked for the WWE, and it works just as well here.  It serves as a nice reminder for what’s been going on in the story so far, and it touches based on all of the myriad of storylines.  We’ve got the mobster Marcone, we’ve got Summer and Winter Fae, we’ve got the Denarians, we’ve got the Knights, we’ve got the Wardens, and we’ve got the Archive.  We’ve also got Harry trying to teach an apprentice in the midst of all this. 

Nothing much happens persay to move the narrative.  There’s still plenty of suspense and some major events taking place.  But for the most part, it’s sort of a checkpoint, a waystation and a reminder for all the shit that’s bound to go down sooner or later.  If the next book plays out like this, I’ll begin to worry about the character.  But as I said, the story is so grandly epic, and there are so many characters woven into the webbing, he’s got a long ways to go before it starts to fall apart. 

Dead Star Twilight by Chez Pazienza

I know Chez as well as I know most of my fellow cosmonauts in the Blogosphere, which is to say a few glancing facts coupled with a personality presented in little blinking typeface on my monitor.  But I like his writing, over at good ol’ Deus Ex Malcontent, and I amicably disagree with some of his viewpoints on things, while steadfastly whooping at some of his other comments.  I was pissed when he got shitcanned by CNN, but it gave him an opportunity to be even more skewering and also a bit more personal.  When picking up the banner of warfare and pulling off your helm, you draw the slings and arrows of outrageous douchebaggery, so I do not envy him the attention.  

Anyway, dude went and wrote hisself a book.  It’s available on his website to be downloaded for a meager $12 bucks.  About what you’d pay for a trade paperback.  It’s the story of his addiction and the road to recovery, and road that weaves through a blasted wasteland of television news, a crumbling marriage, and 9/11 in the aftermath of the devastation.  I will openly admit, I was skeptical.  Any one of these topics could be exploitative and schlocky.  Any time you read the story of some whiny twenty something who had it all and then: a) pissed it away on drugs, b) sought enlightenment, or c) lost everyone and everything in the attacks, it reads like a reality television script.  It doesn’t appeal, even when it’s faked so beautifully. 

What could have been a confluence of Oprah-grade catastrophe ended up melding into a delicious creamy nougat of a novel.  I loved James Frey (faked or not, it was captivating) and Chez’s book cannot help but draw parallel that.  Except Chez’s narration is more like that suave fuckuperry of John Cusack in High Fidelity.  He fucked up, he knows he fucked up, he never puts the blame on anyone else (even though he wants to), and he still manages to be endearing. 

His road is hellacious, and throughout the narrative, you find yourself wanting to kick the fucking balls off of him.  Every time he fires up that pen and foil, every time he seems to be getting better and stumbles, you want to grab Chez and shake him like a fucking Schnauzer with a bone rope. 

The narrative can be jarring, in that it jumps around quite a bit, from the days of his heroin chic marriage in LA, to the events around 9/11, to his stay in the hospital.  It’s effective, but it’s also a bit erratic at times.  It feels like a narrative device.  Fortunately, we’ve got an appealing narrator, so it doesn’t feel like three different stories.  At times, it felt like it was about to slip apart, but he manages to stitch just enough connectivity to make it stay.

If I have one complaint, and I always do, it’s that his wife in the narrative comes off as a bit shrewish.  I have no reason to doubt that she really was an all-consuming thundercunt, prone to violent mood swings and scathing bitchery flared in the darkest hell of a thousand Pajiban souls.  It’s just that while Chez plays the “No seriously guys, it’s all me, I done a bad, bad thang”, it’s uber-convenient that his ex tears off her face and swallows men whole.  However, I’ve spent plenty of time gazing through the rearview at the flaming wreckage of a few relationships, and it’s hard to remember the times she held your heart when you’re bleeding from the hole where it used to be trying to get to a hospital for a mercy fuck.  Plus, history is written by the winners, and Chez done won.

A few folks have commented that they wanted more Jayne in the novel.  Which I disagree with.  Not that I don’t love Jayne, she writes such lovely things for me and about me at Blog Me a Tale.  But in this story, she’s just the rainbow on the horizon.  Knowing them like we do, there’s already a happily ever after.   This book’s happy ending is that he got through all the shit and came out with the scars, and now he’s telling you the story, like some sort of Wolfman Jack version of Beowulf.

It’s funny, it’s charming, it’s a violin stringy at times, but it’s definitely a wonderful read.  If you even consider yourself a partial fan of James Frey or Augusten Burroughs, you would do good to visit Chez over at his website and give him some of your hard earned money.  Motherfucker needs something in his life besides a fine lady now that American Idol is over.

If nothing else, this book has inspired me to get cranking on the rest of the novel I wrote for NaNoWriMo and think about publishing it via the web.  I really think that was an awesome way to do it, and I think you can reach a bigger audience that way.  It’s the smartest way to independently publish.   

Angels Flight by Michael Connelly

It’s almost impossible to write reviews of a series that has so many novels in it when you are six or seven deep.  Essentially, you can’t cover new territory from your old reviews.  All I can do is say whether or not it’s gotten stronger or weaker.  Which is particularly problematic with the Harry Bosch novels.

Harry Bosch is a hard-boiled detective in Los Angeles.  I’m so glad I waited to read these novels until I came out here, because I appreciate them all the more.  And Connelly infuses the stories with a sense of historical imprint.  The OJ Trials, the earthquake that decimated the city in 1994, the Rodney King riots.  It helps to layer the novels, which are deftly written.  It’s such a strong series, but it’s also relatively of the whole world-weary gumshoe variety.  A smoking dick, who hates the rules and who hates corruption.  He’s just a man, with a badge, trying to do his job.  It’s not a cliche here though. 

It’s a beach read style novel, paperbacks that you load into your back pocket.  I would never buy a Connelly book in hardcover, because I don’t ever have that much fever for the series.  But I own most of them in paperback.  Because it’s a solid read, and I know it’s going to be good, and I know I’ll want to read the next one.  Even his Mickey Haller lawyer novels, and the stand alones, they’re all solid. 

And Angels Flight is no different, this time tackling a high-profile lawyer who was seemingly assassinated.  What makes it so fiery is that the lawyer made his career suing the LAPD in the early wake of OJ and Rodney King.  And that he was probably iced by a cop. 

It’s a great book, but only more so because of what came before it.  You have to start with Harry Bosch from the beginning, and if you like detective stuff, pick up The Black Echo.  It’s more of a LA Story, but it’s a quality read.