Then I saw a preview. When Tom Hanks’ face appeared, I allowed a feeling of cautious optimism. When in same said preview the Wachowskis were mentioned, I clapped my hands in glee, because Cloud Atlas the movie needs imagination galore in both storytelling and moviemaking. And THEN I read in The New Yorker that David Mitchell loves the script! And he’s making a cameo.

I may have to break my rule and see this opening weekend.

amazonian

(The link takes you to an abstract of the full article, which is in the 6/25/12 issue.)

The Name of the Wind

So, my niece is the cutest toddler. Ever. Relevance? you ask? I’ll get to that, but back to my niece. I mean, she’s CUTE. And I have 2 daughters of my own. She lives on the opposite coast from me, so I don’t get to see her much. Thank goodness for iPhone4Ses that can magically send me videos of her singing the alphabet while spinning until she falls from dizziness. Ok, ok, relevance. We were on vacation with my sister and her family, including said adorable niece. And once I started reading Day One, I ignored her. I was absorbed. Sucked in. My niece was confused. Hurt. Not really. Her attention span is really really short. I finished Day One in 2 days. At some point I realized this was the first in a series (yes, “Day One” in the title should have tipped me off). I went online to amazon, downloaded Day Two, and I was off!

The Wise Man's Fear

Should I actually say something about the books (other than the faery-sexcapade)? The characters are compelling. Kote is an innkeeper, a hardworking, tired, small business owner. He’s a newcomer in a small community of hardwoking, tired farmers who come to his inn at the end of the day to drink and tell stories. The world is becoming dangerous. There are tales of demons attacking travelers. Kote knows more than he tells. Kote is more than he tells. But he wants to be an innkeeper and nothing more. Fortunately Chronicler stops by, having heard a rumor that the great hero Kvothe may be laying low, as an innkeeper.

Most of Days One and Two is flashback of Kote/Kvothe’s story from his carefree days with his parents’ troubadour band to his days at the University where he mastered the science of magic faster than any other student and Imre where he earned his pipes. He’s definitely a Renaissance man – educated and well-read, a musical genius, an impressive fighter, a lover (at least with faeries), and even a poet (but only when strictly necessary). The mystery is why he is now an innkeeper trying to blend in to the background. Luckily he still has enough of an ego to want to set the record straight for Chronicler. Meanwhile, the roads are getting more dangerous….

Someone tell me when Day Three comes out.

The Tragedy of Arthur

That is just the superficial set-up. Arthur, our narrator, is a writer, and he is writing the introduction, as is his contractual right and obligation, to The Tragedy of Arthur, by William Shakespeare. What? you say? There is no such Shakespeare play? It wouldn’t be outside the realm of possibility for the Bard of Avon to have written a play about the medieval King Arthur and his defense of Britain against the Saxons. But even among the list of possible, disputed Shakespeare plays, there is no even whisper of a King Arthur. This is An Important Discovery.

So why does Arthur get to write the intro? The copy of the unearthed play, of which exhaustive testing was unable to disprove a late 1500s provenance, was in the possession of his father. How did his father come to have the only copy of a heretofore unknown Shakespeare play? That is an excellent question, and the question that Arthur (son, not King, but the identical monikers are not a coincidence. not by a long shot.) contends with in his introduction. He also contends with father-son issues, twin sibling issues, failed marriage issues, parenthood issues, self-worth issues, and identity issues. On top of ALL of that, the name of the main character is the same as the author. This book is jam packed.

And yet, it moves quite blithely along. The first half of the novel is about a dysfunctional family, which is always entertaining. Arthur and his twin sister, Dana, adore their artist father, who’s driving purpose in life is to bring a little magic to the humdrum world. Unfortunately his brand of magic includes criminal activities but little income. So, what’s a failed artist to do? Why forgery, of course. Arthur becomes disillusioned. Dana keeps the faith. Dana is helped by her shared love for Shakespeare with their father. While Arthur appreciates Shakespeare, he wonders, what’s the big deal? He whines about the knee-jerk literary worship of all things Shakespeare, positing that the only difference between the fates of Shakespeare and Marlowe was luck and rich friends. And then his dad gives him the winning lotto ticket, and the second half of the novel is Arthur’s struggle of what to do with it.

Like I mentioned, Arthur is writing the introduction, and the introduction is the novel, which is only half the book. The second half of the book is The Tragedy of Arthur, by William Shakespeare. You decide.

Against the Day, by Thomas Pynchon

If you were a vector, mademoiselle, you would begin in the ‘real’ world, change you length, enter an ‘imaginary’ reference system, rotate up to three different ways, and return to ‘reality’ a new person. Or vector.

The Anarchists and Socialists on the shift had their own mixed feelings about history. They suffered form it, and it was also to be their liberator, if they could somehow survive to see the day.

…for we’re only passing through, we’re already ghosts.

This book is brilliantly imagined and written and is a monsterous, glorious mess. There’s material enough for 3 novels covering the time period between the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893 to the deceptively idyllic years between world wars, but there’s also a consistency of theme, so maybe Pynchon said, what the hell, and wove it all into one. I hope he got his editor a really really nice thank you gift.

Science fiction, historic, crime thriller, pre-war comic books are part of an incomplete list of genres Pynchon plays with while ultimately converting into Pynchonian. The cast of characters runs into the hundreds, but each is unique and complete:

Professor Heino Vanderjuice, inventor and nemesis of Nicola Tesla; Lew Basnight, lost soul working off his unknown (possibly unknowable) debt with White City Investigations, a p.i. firm tasked with guarding Francis Ferdinand during a trip to Chicago; Scarsdale Vibe, a stand-in for the robber barons, and Foley Walker, his bodyguard and alter ego; the Traverse family, Webb and Mayva and their children Frank, Reef, Lake, and Kit, not to mention the explosive family business/destiny/curse, a character in its own right; Neville and Nigel, twits and members of T.W.I.T., a secret society that may be bent on world domination, based on tarot cards; Yashmeen Halfcourt, who may or may not have the supernatural powers that T.W.I.T. seeks to coopt for its own gains…

Floating above them all in their skyship Inconvenience, the Chums of Chance, Rudolf St Cosmo, Lindsay Noseworth, Darby Suckling, Miles Blundell, Chick Counterfly, along with Pugnax (literary cousin to the talking dog in Mason & Dixon) keep uneasy watch on Earth/not Earth. (I love Pynchon’s names: Deuce Kindred, Wren Provenance, Clive Crouchmas, Wolfe Tone O’Rooney, Merle Rideout, the Reverend Lube Carnal, just to list a few more.)

The structure of Against the Day is rooted in history, but Pynchon, playing off the dualities ever present in history, keeps shifting the plot a half step into another dimension, which is related to but not quite reality, which to Pynchon is simply one of any number of possibilities which may or may not have happened. Most of us exist in the everyday, unaware of any alternate. But some folks, like the Chums of Chance, slip in and out of visibility, “aeronauts of dual citizenship of the quotidian and the ghostly.” Some, like Lew Basnight, accidentally fall into this bifurcated existence, and some, like Yashmeen Halfcourt, may have the ability to go in and out at will, bending space along the way. Depending on the character (and plot line) these shifts are explained scientifically, mathematically, spiritually, or supernaturally, but always with one foot relatively firmly in history.

Their motto was “There, but Invisible.”

Ask the Dust is a virtuoso performance by an influential master of the twentieth-century American novel. It is the story of Arturo Bandini, a young writer in 1930s Los Angeles who falls hard for the elusive, mocking, unstable Camilla Lopez, a Mexican waitress. Struggling to survive, he perseveres until, at last, his first novel is published. But the bright light of success is extinguished when Camilla has a nervous breakdown and disappears . . . and Bandini forever rejects the writer’s life he fought so hard to attain.

Apparently, there is a movie that none of us have seen yet, starring Colin Ferrell and Salma Hayek, with a plot that appears noticeably different than the novel.

Mostly serious comments about the book:

Ask The Dust by John Fante

I will say that I completely recognize why this is a good book.

I mostly fantasized about killing Arturo Bandini; I had such rage for him.

It is really well-written. Any book that can make me that angry, not because it’s badly written, has to be good.

I started out thinking I would hate it. I ended up kind of liking it, I had to recognize that it was not just about him.

He was so young, so inexperienced.

The plot was sort of pointless.

The writing was really beautiful, but the character  . . . guys I dated in college. I did not want to revisit.

I liked the description of the creative process. Bit s and pieces, I liked.

I was with this man for 7 years. It was not until I left him I realized what an asshole he was. I alternated hating him and feeling sorry for him. For a moment, I sympathized, then he does something. . .  So autobiographical.

I would not read those other 3 books.

I didn’t hate him as much as the rest of you. I hated him at times, so vile at times.

I really wanted to understand his bizarre, compulsive behavior and why he treated Camilla like that.

It was masterfully written. I just wish he had used his skills for good.

I despised Arturo Bandini. He was an asshole of the very first water. At first, I was giving him slack cause he was 23, then I realized they just get more assholery as they get older.

I really liked the portrait f LA at that time. It was fascinating timeframe.

None of the characters were well-rounded; everyone had just one facet.

He was living the bohemian lifestyle, but judging everyone.

It was all the “Arturo Bandini show” in his head, monotonous.

He felt like a washed-up has-been to me not just starting out.

It felt very much like Jack Kerouac.

And he reminded me of Hemingway.

And this book made me think of East of Eden.

An exaggerated version of the characteristics that we all have. This isn’t like a realistic painting, it’s like an abstract painting.

When I saw that Charles Bukowski like it, I thought–it’ll be all drinking and hating women.

And now some random not-so-much book related comments:

We saw a horse with his schlong on the ground.

She looks like a shrunken kid.

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Mostly serious comments about the book:

I picked this book because it’s an all-time banned book, and it’s one of those classics I’ve always meant to read.

I could tell it was a short story padded out. There were still some questions unanswered.

I opened it and read through the whole thing, I just kept going.  I really liked it a lot. It had a lot of strengths, some weaknesses.

I never read it in school, I was happy to read it. I just couldn’t enjoy it. I was frustrated that there was a lot of “telling.”

I wasn’t in love with it, but there were definitely a lot of things I thought were timely.

The first time I read it, I was 12. If I was going to be a book, this is the one I’d be.

I adore Ray Bradbury.  I love this book.

I enjoyed the allegorical aspect.

As technology progresses, it becomes more true instead of less.

I was so excited to read it; I read it in junior high.  It was so despairing and heavy I thought do I have to read more?

I liked the imagery.

I wanted some parts of it fleshed out.

I was disappointed Millie didn’t remember [spoiler]. She was one-dimensional.

I never read it, wanted to read it.

It was good, well-written, good plot.  I just couldn’t get as connected to it as I would have liked.  I loved the ideas but it didn’t stay with me.

I loved it. Read right through it.  Bought a copy, I want my whole family to read it.  I want to spread it around.

I saw the allegory. I enjoyed it. One thing that bothered me, the 50s attitude as far as women were concerned.  He couldn’t envision a future where women were anything else.

It would have been awesome as a short story or as a novel.

There were beautiful images but no connections.

It didn’t grip me but I loved the conceit.

You may recall that I, Jules, read this book last December during our Book Club layoff. I did re-read it this month and had an interesting experience in that this time, I was aware of its faults as I wasn’t the first time I read it.  I do agree with many of the comments above.  I do believe it’s important, though, to read the Afterward and Coda form later editions.  Many of these issues are addressed there.  And, yes, it was originally a short story, The Fireman.

And, of course, this means that I can once again post one of my (and Tricia’s) fave videos (still hella NSFW):