Good Reading!

In an attempt to tidy up this site, I'm moving my Reading List stuff out of here.  I'm still doing the reading, but I don't feel it's relevant to this site any longer.  If I want to review something relevant, I may post it here, but otherwise, anyone interested in finding out what I'm reading or what I think of it can follow me on Goodreads at https://www.goodreads.com/aimcomics.  I've updated quite a few books there that I've finished, and posted my reviews on a fair number of them as well.  

The Reading List: Hugo Award Winner "The Demolished Man" by Alfred Bester

 

The first Hugo awards, the preeminent science fiction literature award, were given out in 1953, with seemingly little vision of how big they would eventually come to be.  With an odd lack of prescience, given the genre they celebrate, there were no rules laid down for the awards in subsequent years, and in fact the 1954 Worldcon skipped them altogether.

Nevertheless, in the intervening years, the Hugos have become a high water mark for science fiction.  While the winners for best novel reveal a few authors that have hardly become household names for all but the most ardent science fiction readers, generally the list of winners reads like a literary pantheon of the genre, and for good reason.  The works that have won this award have influenced not only the development of the genre, but in many cases affected the courses of literature, science and culture.  From its pulp beginnings, science fiction quickly grew into a literary exploration of our ideas of possible futures, of problem solving, and of our relationships with technology and with our own and other species.

The first Hugo award was presented to Alfred Bester for his novel "The Demolished Man".  Referring to the judicial punishment of "demolition", the destruction of memory and personality in response to major crimes, the book is an exploration of psychology couched in a police procedural.  

The novel comes ahead of a long line of imitators that continue to this day to mostly fail at recapturing its formula.  It betrays a certain influence from the noir fiction of the 40s in its use of detective tropes, but it largely remains its own thing due to its use of fantastic ideas such as "peepers", ESP talented people who are able to read minds and thereby prevent or solve crimes, and the aforementioned demolition.  

In its use of these ideas and its integration of crime fiction with science fiction, "Demolished Man" at times seemed like an early indicator of the work of Philip K. Dick, particularly works like "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" and "Minority Report"; it is high concept work with a gritty, street-level perspective on the world in which the story exits.  Like any older work of science fiction, it has to be taken in the context of its time to avoid direct comparisons with later works that play with similar ideas.  With that in mind, it functions well as a futuristic crime novel that successfully provokes thought about the possibilities and dangers of the world it posits.

At heart, though, it is the psychology of the characters, especially the protagonist Ben Reich, that drives the story, and in that it gives the story a timeless appeal.  The same set of characters could work in almost any setting, even without the benefit of the futuristic trappings.  The story could have been told equally well by James M. Cain or John D. McDonald as a straightforward murder mystery with a few simple adjustments, and I think it may be that universality that made it deserving of the Best Novel award that year.  It is a story that appeals and intrigues even out of its context because it is about the minds of its characters, and that psychology remains unchanged regardless of time and place.

Apropos of nothing, the one line that sticks out to me most from the novel, one that I have copied into my digital commonplace book is the following:  "Make your enemies by choice, not by accident."

"The Demolished Man" is available to buy from Amazon, or you can read it for free at Archive.org

The Reading List: Stoker Award 1987 - Misery by Stephen King

 The Bram Stoker Award is presented by the Horror Writers Association for superior achievement in horror writing.  It was first presented in 1987, and in that inaugural year saw two books take the prize for best novel, Stephen King's "Misery" and Robert McCammon's "Swan Song" (more on the latter at a later date).  Since then, it sees to have reflected the very best that horror writing has to offer, and nearly everything King has written has managed to find its way onto the nominee list.

In the 1980's, Stephen King was arguably doing his best work.  Some of his most iconic works, from "Firestarter" to "Cujo", "Pet Semetary", "It" and "The Dark Tower" originated in this decade, during which he prolifically proved his mastery of horror and dark fantasy.  However, towards the end of the decade there seemed to be another thematic thread rising in his work, and I would argue that it began with "Misery".  

One reason King's work has resonated so strongly with his fans is his handling of character.  In the horror genre at the time, there were few writers who gave their characters such depth and believability, where most authors seemed to prefer to focus on the lurid or the grotesque.  The terrible things that happen in King's novels have so much more impact because they happen to people, not just animated stick figures on the page.

Up until "Misery", the draw of King's work was definitely the monstrous; the vampires of "Salem's Lot", the ghosts of "The Shining", the devil dog of "Cujo", or any of his many deranged psychics.  With "Misery", King seemed to be exploring a new direction, setting aside his supernatural beginnings in favor of a quieter, more psychological kind of horror.  It was probably a gamble when his fanbase had bought in on the bloody promise of "Christine" and "Carrie", but it was clear that King wanted to explore new ground in his writing, and it was a gamble that paid off.

"Misery" has its share of the monstrous, but the thing that makes it work is that the monster is entirely human.  It is an exploration of solitude, toxic fandom, creativity (and, by extended metaphor, addiction) that takes horrible shape in the person of Annie Wilkes.  Behind her facade of adoration and support, she hides the face of the deadly consequences of the things we create.  The thing that looks like it is helping you is, in the end, going to kill you.  King lays out in very visceral imagery a picture of a writer who is bound by the persona he has created.  He is literally bound and hobbled by his own work.  Just as Paul Sheldon tries to escape from the restrictions that writing the chronicles of Misery Chastain has put him under, so Stephen King seemed to be trying to escape the limitations and tropes of his own work by creating a new monster that is so much more subtle, and so much more relatable, than the "famous monsters" cast he had played with up until now.

The proof of the value in this work, of course, lies not in the awards it won at the time, but in the way it has endured.  Beyond the book, beyond even the admittedly excellent movie, "Misery" has had an influence down the line to the present day.  It paved the way for many a psychopathic villain to follow and even, I would argue, set the tone for the recent trend towards "quiet horror" seen in the work of directors like Ari Aster and Ti West.  Only last Hallowe'en, I was treated to a new stage interpretation of the novel, done with some very creative set design and rendered with nearly as much impact as the original work.

Since "Misery", King has of course gone on to master this more literary form of horror with ensuing novels like "Dolores Claiborne", "The Dark Half" and  "Gerald's Game", and even woven the same kind of character development into more outright horror novels such as "Bag of Bones", "Dreamcatcher" and "Black House".  It is in part that depth that has kept his work from becoming stale and repetitive.  The supernatural elements in his work, when they are present, are often secondary to the character's arcs, and rightly so.  "Misery" changed a lot in King's work, for both the writer and for the reader, and overall (for this reader at least) for the better.

"Misery" is available at Amazon, or if you prefer, you can read it for free at archive.org.

The Reading List: World Fantasy Award 1975 - The Forgotten Beasts of Eld by Patricia A. McKillip

 

In Stephen King's memoir, "On Writing" he recounts a conversation with Amy Tan in which he asked her if there was a question she was never asked in Q&A sessions, and her response was "They never ask about the language."  

This line has stuck with me since I encountered it, and it has made me more mindful of my reading since then; I pay much more attention to the way an author uses language, and it is one of the criteria by which I determine the quality of an author or a work.

McKillip's book "The Forgotten Beasts of Eld" stood out to me like few others for its use of language.  Written in the language of high fantasy (think Tolkien and C.S. Lewis),  this story reads more like a poem than prose; her language has a lyrical idealism that is only found in the very best fantasy literature.  Witness this piece of "dialogue" from the novel:

"I thought of you with your hair silver as snow all through that cold, slow journey from Sirle.  I felt you troubled deep within me, and there was no other place in the world I would rather have been than in the cold night riding to you.  When you opened your gates to me, I was home."

I cannot imagine many recent authors I've read even attempting a passage like that with a straight face, but McKillip carries off the entire book in that manner.

Now, I'll make a confession...no surprise to anyone who knows me...I don't generally like fantasy fiction.  Oh, sure, I enjoy the Lord of the Rings as much as any reader, but when it comes to most modern fantasy, I tend to shy away from it.  For one thing, there's hardly such a thing as a fantasy "novel" any more.  There's fantasy sagas, epic series, cycles and chronicles aplenty, thousands of pages requiring a major commitment of time to read with no guarantee that the story will ever even be finished (yes, I'm looking at you GRRM).  On top of that, I can't seem to handle the names in fantasy novels; there's far too many hyphens and apostrophes in there for me to be comfortable with them.  When an author starts telling me the saga of L'erin-Medd'ezzath, archmage of Tir Cinealta, I'm out and heading for a stack of Donald Westlakes.

It's very refreshing, then, when I find an occasional and rare fantasy novel that engages me the way this one did.  "Forgotten Beasts" is not so much a read as it is an experience, like a fugue or a reverie.  It stimulates the imagination with visions of high fantasy and removes the reader from their personal context into the ficton of the novel.  It's characters are ideal figures, yet somehow still relatable, and still fantastic enough to inspire grand mental pictures of the kinds of world depicted by only the best fantasy artists.  

This is a book for not only those who love high fantasy, but also those who love good literature.  It is the kind of writing that much fantasy fiction aspires to be, and in achieving that transcends its genre in a way that echoes more popular authors whose work is considered more widely known.

"The Forgotten Beasts of Eld" is, of course, available to purchase on Amazon, or if you'd prefer to read it for free, there's several copies available to borrow at Archive.org.

New Blog Feature: The Reading List

Readers who are paying attention will recall that this blog has been running a series of articles on the "Most Unreadable Books", where I'm slowly...oh, so slowly...working my way through a list of books considered to be the most difficult to read (at least in English). 

Since it takes so long to get through each one of those (I'm working on Infinite Jest at the time of writing, and expect to be for quite a while yet), it seemed like a good idea to break up the monotony a bit by bringing in notable works from other lists.

With that in mind, there will be an ongoing series called "The Reading List" that will cover other notable books that might be of interest to AIM Comics readers, particularly focusing on those from the ranks of winners of the Stoker Awards (horror), the Hugos (science fiction), the Edgars (mystery) and the World Fantasy Awards (fantasy, obiously), with occasional diversions into anything else I find interesting.  I think there will be enough variety in there to keep me and other readers interested. 

I will be sharing my thoughts on those books as I read them, but I welcome discussion on them or simply being told that I have missed the point of a book entirely.  Leave a comment on the posts and let me know if you agree or disagree with what I have to say; I'd enjoy hearing from you.  Literature is always best when it's shared.

Reading List: "The Vessel" by Adam Nevill

It's Hallowe'en, which must mean it's time for a new Adam Nevill novel!  

In the past few years, one of the best things about this time of year has been the release of a new book by Adam Nevill.  From the cosmic horror of "Wyrd and Other Derelictions" to the rural terrors of "Cunning Folk", October always seems to bring round another Nevill-authored treat just in time for some great Hallowe'en reading.

Nevill writes in the weird fiction tradition of such greats as Lovecraft, Blackwood, Barron and Ligotti, and he certainly deserves a place among that pantheon.  His works are as imaginative and distinctive as they are dark and disturbing.  He puts in the work to avoid the tropes that mark even his own corner of the genre, instead devising horrors that are new and that arrive in unexpected ways.  

 With "The Vessel", Nevill seems to be promising us a good haunted house story, territory he's explored previously with books such as "Apartment 16".  However, as with that book, which went into insane territory by the end, I'm sure that what will be delivered here will a story that reaches well beyond the predictable form of that classic genre and will resonate in newly disquieting ways.

From the book's description:

"Struggling with money, raising a child alone and fleeing a volatile ex, Jess McMachen accepts a job caring for an elderly patient. Flo Gardner – a disturbed shut-in and invalid. But if Jess can hold this job down, she and her daughter, Izzy, can begin a new life.

Flo's vast home, Nerthus House, may resemble a stately vicarage in an idyllic village, but the labyrinthine interior is a dark, cluttered warren filled with pagan artefacts.

And Nerthus House lives in the shadow of a malevolent secret. A sinister enigma determined to reveal itself to Jess and to drive her to the end of her tether. Not only is she stricken by the malign manipulation of the Vicarage's bleak past, but mercurial Flo is soon casting a baleful influence over young Izzy. What appeared to be a routine job soon becomes a battle for Jess's sanity and the control of her child.

It's as if an ancient ritual was triggered when Jess crossed the threshold of the vicarage. A rite leading her and Izzy to a terrifying critical mass, where all will be lost or saved.:"

Give yourself the treat of some great reading this spooky season, and be sure to check out Nevill's other offerings while you're at it.  I strongly recommend "Wyrd and Other Derelictions", a personal favorite, which does things with the cosmic horror genre that no one else, as far as I know, has ever tried.

Strange Days Indeed or Things to Do in the Slowpocalypse

Actually, John Lennon fibbed a bit...people did tell me there'd be days like these.  Specifically, Mary Shelley, H. G. Wells,  George Stewart, Stephen King, Cormac McCarthy, Pat Frank and  Margaret Atwood, just to name a few of the better ones.  But perhaps I'm being hyperbolic...I don't actually think we're headed into a new dark age where mysticism and superstition rules, identity is forbidden and some plucky Randian soul will have to rediscover the lightbulb...although the romantic in me is secretly thrilled at the prospect of getting to live out Rush's "2112".

What we are headed for is, among other things, record amounts of downtime as we enable the oxymoron of "social distancing" and shelter in place in our homes, apartments and hobbit holes of choice.  The results, on an individual level, will be record amounts of boredom and ennui and an almost Asimov's Solarian level of isolation.  In short, pretty much what I've been practicing my entire life.

Like a lot of people, I'm facing a lot of "involuntary vacation" time in the coming weeks.  However, I am taking a rather stoic approach to all this and choosing to see it as an opportunity to do some of the things I've put off for too long now.  To quote Shakespeare when he channelled Marcus Aurelius in Hamlet, "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."
Fortunately, this is the best of all apocalypses in that we at least have internet while the world crumbles around us, and with that, there's some good folks out there willing to help me amuse myself to death (thank you Neil Postman!).  Here's just a few of the things I'll be enjoying in the coming weeks, presented for the edification and delight of anyone looking for some distraction. 

First and foremost, there's the Internet Archive.  I like these guys so much that I'm a regular financial contributor to them.  They are exactly the kind of resource we need at a time like this.  There are millions of books, movies, audio files, games and programs and other material available from their website.  I'm especially fascinated by their selection of magazines (they have the entire Warren archives!), particularly their Pulp Magazine Archive, where you can read scans of everything from Weird Tales to Fangoria to Amazing Stories magazine, with lots of diverting stops along the way.  In addition to all this, they have an extensive library of books on every topic imaginable, either free to read or free to borrow through their lending library service. 
In fact, they have just announced that in response to the current situation, they are suspending all waitlists on their lending library, making sure that the necessary books are going to be available to people who are stuck at home, especially to those students who will be studying at home and will require electronic resources to do so.
For an especially apt and timely read from their lending library, may I recommend Will and Ariel Durant's "The Lessons of History"?  It's a quick read that I've found very insightful in its broad overview of human history.
Or, if you're looking for something lighter, may I recommend "Eternal Lovecraft", an entertaining anthology of Lovecraftian stories, including some that are quite amusing.
Of course, if you've more video oriented, there's a lot of gold to be found in The VHS Vault, a vast collection of digitized VHS tapes from the golden age of home video.

On a more educational note, I will be enjoying and recommending the content at Open Culture,  Similar in intent to Internet Archive, Open Culture is a more curated collection of freely available material, including courses, book, audiobooks, images and movies.  True to their name, they definitely have a more cultural bent, highlighting such things as Patrick Stewart's one-a-day Shakespeare sonnet reading, lectures from the likes of Jorge Luis Borges, Margaret Atwood, and Buckminster Fuller, and films by the likes of Alfred Hitchcock, Charlie Chaplin, and John Wayne. 

Open Culture is a great resource to do a deep dive into a topic that may have interested you for a while, but that you've never had time to explore.  Personally, I've been meaning to get to the films by Andrei Tarkovsky, especially Stalker and Solaris, and I'll probably get to those this weekend.  It may also be a great time to take in some art lectures, especially the Digital Photography course available from Harvard.

For those wanting to spend more time consuming something fun to take their minds off all the bad news circulating right now, I'd also recommend the Digital Comic Museum.  It's a fantastic place to read all those wonderful comics of yesteryear that have entered the public domain.  There's work in there by some of the masters, including Eisner, Frazetta, Bob Iger and Reed Crandall, among many others.

Naturally, I'll be spending some time just vegging out with some video as well.  Aside from the offerings from Youtube, which is an attention hole like no other, there's some great genre classics available from Shout Factory, including a ton of MST3K material.  For anyone who uses Kodi, there's a legal and official Shout Factory add-on for that app that will give you access to their catalog.
Same goes for Tubi TV, which has enough B-movies and action/horror/sci-fi flicks to while away many an hour when you need to turn off the real world.
Being the horror fanatic that I am, I'll probably also be checking out the free trial from Shudder, if only to see what's available there.  I already subscribe to Netflix and Amazon Prime, so I probably won't want another subscription in these tightened belt times, but I am curious to see their selection.

Finally, and biggest of all for me, while I'm not working I'm going to be looking forward to....working.
I've got the strips for the next Brutal Blade of Bruno the Bandit.  I've got inking jobs to do and sample pages for a comic book proposal.  I've got personal projects to work on that will keep me busy for quite a while yet.
In anticipation of my income decreasing even further, I've decided to try my hand at editing other people's writing.  To that end I'm currently reading the Chicago Manual of Style to learn how to do this at something like a professional level.  I know that's probably like saying that I'm reading the dictionary, but in a weird way, I'm enjoying this book more than most fiction books I've read in the past year.  I guess I've always had a closet grammar nerd in me.  Anyway, give me a hot minute to finish this blunderbuss of a book, and I'll be ready to proofread and edit your documents into something like a publishable format.  I expect to be slow and imperfect at first, but to get better with practice, so I'm going to take my time and ramp up with some easy work.  There could be a lot of potential in work like this, and if nothing else, it will be fun (to a certain value of "fun"). 


I'm sure there's a ton more resources out there...lots of creative folks and publishers are making work freely available in response to this situation.  Feel free to leave a comment with your favorites to share them with other readers. 
Also, although it may be difficult at a time like this, don't forget that most of these services run on voluntary donations from users so if you can, give them a little bit of support.  Every little bit helps, especially at a time like this.

Stay safe.  Stay home, as much as you can.  And do what you can to make this time enjoyable.

Reading the Unreadable #6: The Female Man by Joanna Russ

To be honest, I'm not even sure why this one made the list of most challenging books.  The site I pulled this information from claims that it's due to the change in narrator and shifts in time and place, but honestly, it sounds like the compiler of this list just hadn't read much science fiction.  While the changes in viewpoint may be a bit confusing for a beginning reader, there's enough context clues to make it clear who's narrating, and the overarching themes of the book are much more important than the setting.
The work itself is a feminist examination of gender roles as seen from the perspective of characters from parallel earths, each with a vastly different cultural development.  As such, it is less rabid than, say, Thomas Berger's "Regiment of Women" but more aggressive than Octavia Butler's "Dawn".  Given that, perhaps the most challenging thing about this novel is it's approach to looking at gender norms.  Unfortunately, looking at it from the perspective of a somewhat liberal-minded reader in the 21st Century makes the ideas in this book seem somewhat dated.  While I'm sure the problems that Russ attempts to discuss here still exist in some forms, she writes from a milieu that no longer exists as such (at least not in Western society), and that makes the novel's approach less immediately relevant.  Not invalid, mind you, but rather separated from the modern context. 
To me, that's a shame, because the form of this novel is a fantastic one for an entertaining examination of a philosophical and cultural problem.  One of my favorite tropes in science fiction is the idea of the examination of modern life from the alien perspective, and Russ accomplishes that rather neatly while managing to make human beings themselves the aliens to their own world...or a form of it.  It's an approach that allows for a deep dive into the fallacies of culture and our perceptions of "how the world works".  This is a work that could stand to be updated to the modern context.  If ever there was an argument for rewriting a novel the same way we remake movies with new technology, this book is it.  Of course, I don't know that any other author could do Russ's voice justice without sounding like pastiche, and unfortunately, Ms. Russ passed away in 2011.  Perhaps a more current author like Nalo Hopkinson or N. K. Jemisin could get around to doing their own thing with this idea.  Perhaps they - or someone - already have; I haven't read enough to say for certain. 
All I know is that of all the books on this list so far, this is probably the one I would most recommend to other readers looking to expand their literary horizons a little.

Up next, "Being and Time" by Martin Heidegger.  This one promises to be a bit heavy, even for one with my philosophical bent.  According to Amazon, it's 610(!) pages, so I may see you back here by the end of the year.

Reading the Unreadable # 4: One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

"One Hundred Years of Solitude" is one book that probably does not belong on the list of difficult to read books.  I can understand why it's there, given that keeping the generations of characters straight when so many of them have the same or similar names is a daunting task for the close reader.
However, when reading for the numinous enjoyment of the book itself, without any expectation of fully grasping every aspect, this book is quite enjoyable and often beautiful, with nuanced characters, strong visual imagery and lyric language.
I have been looking forward to reading this one for a while, having been inspired to seek it out by reading the "Love and Rockets" collections.  I don't have much experience with magic realism, and actually tend to shy away from books involving magic, as it tends to be an easy out for lazy writers.  Yet it is the mundanity of magic in this book that partly makes this book so appealing; magic is not a cure-all for the problems of the characters; rather, it is just a fact of existence, like the cycles of sun, earth and moon, and almost invisible when it appears.  The lives of the characters do not depend on the magic; they just accept it.
This book is about character, and situation, idealism and romance, the absurdity of existence, in both the meaning of things very small and the meaninglessness of things very large.  It is about the continuity and fluidity of time and existence, in how lives overlap and intersect and inform each other, often in unexpected ways.  It is about the richness and beauty to be found in those intersections, in how the unforeseen turns of life produce their own kind of magic that can be as strange as that other "magic".  This is all told as a sort of historical narrative that gives each of the characters their turn on stage with nearly equal weight, drawing out those moments or features that are distinctive about each of them, despite their recurring nomenclature.  The language is poetic to the degree that there are individual sentences that make you want to go back and experience them again, sentences like,
"With her waiting she had lost the strength of her thighs, the firmness of her breasts, her habit of tenderness, but she kept the madness of her heart intact."

or

"He did not feel fear of nostalgia, but an intestinal rage at the idea that this artificial death would not let him see the end of so many things that he had left unfinished."

or perhaps most tellingly,

"Always remember that the past was a lie, that memory has no return, that every spring gone by could never be recovered, and that the wildest and most tenacious love was an ephemeral truth in the end."

In the end, too, the book is meta-textual, in a way to rival Jorge Luis Borges.  It ends in a way that reminds the reader of the literary reality of the entire story while inspiring metaphysical questions about our own authorship.  Who is reading, and what is read?  I can't explain it better than that...you'll have to read it for yourself.

Up next, one of the books that supposedly every literate person loves but no one has finished..."Gravity's Rainbow" by Thomas Pynchon.  As always, follow along on Twitter and see if I survive the experience.

Reading the Unreadable #3 - The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer

I remember reading The Canterbury Tales for a 2nd year English Literature class when completing my university degree.  I mean, I don't actually REMEMBER any of the book, aside from the first couplet, but I do remember the ACT of reading the book.  So I...suppose?...I'm coming to this one with a little more grounding than the previous books.

Not that that made it any easier.

Chaucer in its original Middle English is literature for those readers who find Shakespeare's language too easy.  It's got just as much romance, drama and fart jokes as any classic English work of literature, but you've got to work a little harder to pick the sense out of it.  Spelling is inconsistent at best, and pronunciation and meter are often sacrificed rather bloodily for the sake of completing a rhyme.  There's time when I'm sure Chaucer (much like his literary successor Shakespeare) just said "To Hell with it!" and made up words out of whole cloth.
As in Shakespeare's work, there is also the same gathering of story sources and inspirations to make the work an accumulation of the archetypes for centuries of stories to follow.  I imagine that this cultural aggregation into one source material goes a long way to explain the longevity of this work.  That, and the fart jokes.

The interesting thing about The Canterbury Tales is that it's actually less than half of a completed work.  Apparently the plan was to make this much longer by having more stories from other characters, and then to have at least a second story from each pilgrim on their way back from their pilgrimage.  However, in a move that, as a creator, I can completely identify with, Chaucer did not plan his time well and envisioned a work beyond the scope of the time available to him.  In the ultimate show of artistic laziness, he had the temerity to go and die before finishing the book.
So we never do get to find out who won that free meal, but we do get some good stories along the way.

I'm not sure how much the order of the stories was invented by later compilers of Chaucer's work, but in the version that I read, I get a growing sense of literary moralizing as the book progresses.  In the early stages Chaucer, like any good author, hooks his readers in with tales revolving around lust, licentiousness, the aforementioned fart jokes, and generally bad behavior.  However, later stories lean more heavily on morally instructive content, ending up with the sermon/screed that is The Parson's Tale.  Without knowing more about his motives for writing, I can't help but wonder if his intent was to create a work that would appeal to a general audience yet be religious instruction in disguise.  Sort of like inserting PSA's into an episode of Benny Hill.

Regardless, it's an amusing book, and in the end not that difficult to read.  Of course, I'm cheating a bit, having read Beowulf in Old English.  Your mileage may vary.

Up next is a novel I have actually been looking forward to, Gabriel Garcia Marquez's "One Hundred Years of Solitude".  I've been wanting to dive into this book since learning of its influence on Los Bros. Hernandez's "Love and Rockets", and now I've got a good excuse to do so.

Don't forget to follow along on Twitter as I comment on my reading progress on a more or less daily basis.

Reading the Unreadable - #2: The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

For anyone who doesn't know, or might possibly care, the list I'm using for my reading of the most unreadable books is this one published a few years ago by Buzzfeed.  Technically, by their criteria, these books are not necessarily unreadable, just difficult to get through.
I'm not sure why "The Sound and the Fury" by Faulkner made it onto that list, let alone to the #2 spot.  About the book, they say:
"The style is stream of consciousness with three different narrators and one third-person section. The first narrator is mentally disabled to the extent that he cannot process linear time and jumps between past and present mid-sentence."
Perhaps I'm just in a better mindset for it after just coming off Finnegan's Wake, but not only did I find this one relatively easy to get through, but I actually enjoyed it.  I didn't understand all of it, but I got enough of the story to enjoy Faulkner's deep dive into his characters.

Reading this book is like hearing events told through several characters internal monologue, sort of a Southern Gothic take on Rashomon.    The story of a Southern family in what appears to be a rapid decline, it is told through the perspective of a mentally challenged adult, an anguished college student, the conniving elder male of the family and through an omniscient view of the African-American maid Dilsey.  With such a diverse range of characters, each with their own idiolect and idiosyncracies, the reader is given an exploration of character and setting that is in-depth and personal in a way that no other narrative choices could deliver.

Although the unique nature of each character's inner voice makes the actual story hard to follow at times, it doesn't take a terribly in-depth understanding to figure out the main points of what is happening, and how the family is reacting to it.  As an outsider to Faulkner's work, I may be an outlier in thinking this, but it seems to me that this book is not so much about the story as it is about the characters; about the different viewpoints that can surround a set of events.  If there's any takeaway from this novel, it seems to me that it is the subjectivity of consciousness and experience.
 
It helps, too, that Faulkner's language is at times beautiful.  With sentences like, "Two tears slid down her fallen cheeks, in and out of the myriad coruscations of immolation and abnegation and time," used to describe Dilsey, this book can be pure joy to read, even if full comprehension is lacking.  It's a trip that's not about the destination, but it's definitely worth the journey.

I suspect that the rest of the books on this list won't be quite so easy to read, however.  Up next will be Geoffrey Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales" in it's original English.  This one could prove an uphill battle.

Reading the Unreadable - #1: Finnegan's Wake by James Joyce

When I committed myself to reading the most unreadable books, I didn't foresee that I would be sorely challenged from the very outset to make it to the end of one of these things.  Never has a book filled me with the desire to give up out of such utter frustration as has "Finnegan's Wake".  However, I am nothing if not stubborn, and although it feels like it took half my life, I made it to the end.  Although I'm sure this stream of consciousness writing will resonate with me for quite some time.
I'm not going to say that I understand even a tenth of Finnegan's Wake; I don't have the nerve or the energy to support that kind of lie.
But then, I don't think understanding is what Finnegan's Wake is meant for.  This is not a story in the traditional sense, whatever else it may be.
For me, reading Finnegan's Wake was something of a Zen experience.  Koan-like, I was only able to make any kind of progress when I stopped looking for meaning.  The secret to this book is to treat it as an utterly numinous experience, read it at a normal reading pace in spite of its lack of coherence and appreciate the form, rhythm, and - at times- the sheer ludicrousness of the book.
Joyce's style famously combines stream of consciousness with a Shakespeare-like facility for inventing words and all manner of puns, spoonerisms and malapropisms into a work that seems, ultimately, to be an exercise in form.  It defies meaning while maintaining a structure that implies and promises that very meaning.  In so doing, it causes the reader to question how it is that meaning is taken from anything.  Just as a reading of Freud or Barthe can force a psychological or symbolic interpretation of nearly anything, so does Joyce's work here cause a metaphysical analysis of literary form, literature and ultimately language itself.  Like the old trick of repeating a common word until it loses all meaning, this book deconstructs the meaning of all its words in order to examine the meaning behind all words. 
Finnegan's Wake is considered a great novel, in spite of so few people having actually read it. It would be glib to say that people consider it great because they don't understand it, but in truth, it is that lack of understanding in spite of the reading that makes the novel great.
That and the fact that James Joyce took 17 years of his life to create a work of utter nonsense, of course.

Disagree with me?  I'd be happy to hear about it.  Leave a comment and tell me why I'm wrong.
Also, be sure to check out the AIM Comics Twitter feed; I've been posting thoughts on this book as I read it, and will continue to do so for the rest of the books in this series.
See you next time when I attempt Faulkner's "The Sound and the Fury".  Wish me luck.

Reading the Unreadable

I have several concurrent problems that gelled together in an odd way for me.

I am a voracious reader.  To say that I read a lot is like saying that Niagara Falls is bit damp.  Thanks to e-reading apps and services like Project Gutenberg, Kindle and Archive.org, I am never without a library of books on my person, and will whip out a book at the slightest provocation, regardless of context or company.
That's not the problem.  The problem is that lately I've found a lot of my reading is rather pointless.  I tend to stick to the same genres - horror, science fiction, true crime, with a smattering of fantasy - with a slight ratio of nonfiction so I don't feel like I'm completely wasting my time.  After a while, the titles, characters and plots all sort of run together so that none of it sticks, and very little of it stands out.  I can't help but think that something that takes so much of my attention should have a little more meaning - or at least direction - behind it.
 A related problem is that I have a long list of "someday" books that I've been meaning to get to - books that I know I should read but always pass over in favor of something much easier and much more disposable and forgettable.  I've no doubt that these books will prove enlightening in some way, but always seem to be less entertaining and more difficult to process.
Less related are the problems of social media and attempting to supply content for a website/blog.  I have accounts on Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr that hardly see any use, like I've shown up for the party but have decided to just stand in the corner all night, nursing an Aquafina and admiring the wall art.  Additionally, the AIM Comics blog hardly ever sees updates any more, due to the slow production cycle of just about anything I am not being directly paid for.

So, partly inspired by the great rereads I follow on Tor.com, partly by some comments about Gravity's Rainbow heard in a recent Marc Maron podcast, and by my own lack of literary intertia, I've decided to challenge myself to read the unreadable....to conquer the important bits of my "Someday" pile by reading the books that are considered to be the most challenging to even experienced readers.  The books that everybody talks about, but no one has read, or at least not finished.  I'm going to take a run at them, provide some direction to my reading habit and broaden my literary horizons in one fell swoop.

More than just that, I'm going to commit the possibly unforgivable crime of doing this in public (gasp!).  I plan to tweet about the books as I read them, and to write up commentaries about them here as I finish them.  The idea is that the process will give a little bit of accountability to this habit I'm trying to change, and hopefully provide some interesting reading for others at the same time.

If this goes well, I might be inspired to do some of the other heavy reads I've been planning, such as the complete works of Robert E. Howard and Isaac Asimov, just to name a couple.

So if you're interested in finding out what I think of Finnegan's Wake, or Gravity's Rainbow, or a host of other "unreadable" books, be sure to follow me in (more or less) real time on Twitter, check out my posts on this site, or follow me on Facebook.  Feel free to post comments to tell me how I've missed the point of each book (I never said I was going to UNDERSTAND these books!) or how I should go back to Little Golden Books, or (less likely) how the depth of my insight has opened your eyes to new vistas of literature and inspired you to shout James Joyce's name from the rooftops.

Speaking of James Joyce, I'll be starting with "Finnegan's Wake", so we've got that to look forward to.  There may or may not be whiskey involved in the reading process.  Follow along and see if I can manage to hold it together enough to get through this exercise.