Review: "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream" by Harlan Ellison

I have seen countless interviews with Harlan Ellison, and am convinced he is putting on an act, like all the crazed writers we knowingly worship, or still worship. Like James Ellroy, the act puts kind of a distance between the fans of the writer, and the writer’s emotional fragility, and it comes out looking like they are real overbearing assholes who are so mean to their everyday fan, you can’t help but feel that they see them as lesser beings. It is behavior that is supposed to enhance the quality of their books, or how people view them, which is a shame, because these stories in I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, when they are good, don’t need any of Ellison’s bullshit antics. They work on many different levels, and even the stories that somewhat go over my head with the science fiction jargon, still have a kernel of reality to them, as well as tons and tons of heart. The title story really is good enough to warrant an RPG game. The story of a super computer wiping out all of existence with the exception of five people, which it proceeds to torture mercilessly for hundreds of years, packs quite a wallop, with an ending both noble in its view of self-sacrifice and horrifying in its implications. The middle stories don’t have as much power, but that is coming from a non-Sci-Fi fan (and for someone so adamant about copyright and the stealing of others work, “World of Myth is eerily similar to an old Twilight Zone episode). The last story “Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes” is a cool yarn about a haunted slot machine, which, again, is pretty creepy towards the end. If you can find the collection cheap, get it. It is worth it to read these tales from a master storyteller, despite the asshole writing them.

Rating: 4/5

Review: "Angels" by Denis Johnson

My experience with Denis Johnson is a lot like my experience with Michael Chabon, except that I have yet to read anything by him that is anywhere close to amazing. I found Jesus’ Son to be too drug obsessed, and I am not the audience for that anymore, and Tree of Smoke was too long and it had too many historical elements that confused the hell out of me plot wise. Johnson is a master at these horribly damaged people living in a world they have no idea about the inner workings of, despite years of travel, work, and love. But he gets too obsessed with that aspect and his plots seem kind of weak, even from the distance of only having read the synopsis on the back cover (although Already Dead seems really cool, although the length scares me from my experience with Tree of Smoke). I decided to go back instead of forward for my next venture into the wounded worlds of Denis Johnson, and was lucky to find a cheap old Vintage Contemporaries copy (which have some of my favorite cover art) in Half-Priced Books. Again, like The Yiddish Policeman’s union, it is the best thing I have read by Johnson, but is in no way great. It is a simple story of two lost people meeting on a Greyhound bus, whose mutual pain and loneliness leads them down a road of shocking violence that ends tragically. I like both characters, and Johnson doesn’t resort to pretentious hipness in describing their wandering lives, like many the talentless beat writers), and grounds the book in a sense of morality, even when something like a rape is being committed. It gets to dreamy toward the end, making the ending too confusing, but I do recommend this book quite well. It is a good road novel that doesn’t rely on the characters coolness and I really want to read Already Dead sometime soon.

Rating: 4/5

Review: "The Financial Lives of Poets" by Jess Walter

The Financial Lives of Poets by Jess Walter really came out of nowhere for me, and I ended up finding this book to be very readable and very poignant, while at the same time being scathingly funny in moments of spiritual ruin. I knew very little about Jess Walter until this book came out a couple of years ago. It had a cool premise and cool cover art, but I never got around to buying it until I got the paperback for Christmas last year. I was very curious to dive in and put this very high on my to-read list. And after reading it, you should to, because unless you are a cynical literary type who finds entertaining narratives low brow (then I don’t think you would be reading my reviews), there is something in here I think everyone will like. We meet Matt Prior, a failed Internet mogul who just got fired from a newspaper job he had to crawl back to, as he is souring the aisles at a local 7/11 at midnight looking for overpriced milk. He has six days to pay of 30 grand, or he will lose the house he worked hard to build and his somewhat materialistic wife, who may be flirting with a former boyfriend on Facebook. While at his lowest, he gets high with a bunch of 20-something stoners, which leads him down a path of hilariously bad decisions, that may destroy his life, but that may be the kind of rubble he needs to find hope in the ashes of his life. Not to give too much away, but this is kind of like a very funny version of Breaking Bad, a television show I recently became a fan of. Prior is more sympathetic than Walter White, and less sociopathic the deeper he gets, but they both represent the insane kinds of things likeminded citizens will do when the world they have put their trust in for so long decides to toss their lives aside like a candy wrapper. But the message of this insanely funny and ultimately hopeful book is the meaning we put behind material objects, and what it means to let go of things in order to keep the real, emotional bonds we make with those that we love. We find out about Matt’s past and his wife’s, and how money problems have plagued them with a since of financial urgency that no one but truly poor people can really fathom. They cannot help but equate money with happiness and connection, because they see what happens to loved ones when money becomes scarce. But by the end of the book, as contrite and simple as it may seem, the overall theme of this book is that it really is going to be okay. Despite how cynics may treat that phrase, the people you surround yourself with can make things better given a chance. A kind of cheesy review, but my feelings and the feelings of this book are not. I highly recommend it.

Rating: 5/5

Review: "The Yiddish Policemen's Union" by Michael Chabon

Every since Wonderboys, I have been waiting for Chabon to blow me out of the water with a story filled with just as many zany plot twists and antics as there are real human characters with very serious dilemmas. I thought The Amazing Adventures of Kavelier and Clay had the great character elements that Wonderboys had, and I feel it introduced two of the most memorable fictional friends you are likely to find in modern literature, but I thought the story relied too much on the reader have the same amount of love for comics as Chabon did, and I was left slightly disappointed. His other two books I have read, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh and Werewolves in Their Youth, were simply forgettable, with Mysteries verging on Foer-like badness in places. While The Yiddish Policemen’s Union is the best book of his I have read since Wonderboys, it is still only okay, but at least not forgettable. It is a classic Chandler-esque story of an unsolved murder being investigated by a surly detective about to reach his breaking point in life, and all the wild people he meets on his way to finding out why this person was killed, and how close he himself is to the murder. The twist Chabon presents here is that everything takes place in this Jewish town in Alaska that was started as a safe haven for Jews during an alternate version of World War II. It presents the idea of Hasidic Jews being involved in organized crime, which reminds me of Once Upon a Time in America, but more funny. Overall it is not bad, but not great. It has many cool plot points and presents esoteric information that doesn’t bore the reader to death, (I know a lot more about Chess now, but still no interest in playing it). I do recommend it, and I do plan on reading the next Chabon book that comes out, hopefully soon.

Rating: 4/5

Review: "American Tabloid" by James Ellroy

This is my first foray into the seedy, gross, and morally aberrant world that James Ellroy presents in his novels, and, despite a few road bumps on the way, I will definitely be taking that journey again someday. Ellroy is an interesting figure in the world of modern writing. He is a much more complex and sophisticated version of the average hard-boiled detective fiction, but he manages, in interviews and such, to be down right bat shit crazy, which I honestly think is an act he puts on for the camera. He writes like a wounded wolf, determined to tell his brutal side of the story before he succumbs to the injuries this world perpetrates on him. But there is a great beauty to his prose, which fires off from the page like a tommy gun. It has rhythmic jazz-like quality to it that fills his stories of pimps, trannies, murderers, rapist and other kinds of degenerate monsters with a kind of angelic quality that elevates his stories to mythic proportions. I wanted to start with American Tabloid because of it being Time Magazine’s best fiction book of 1995, and the premise interested me: three guys, Ward, an underdog lawyer wanting to do right, Kemper, a suave slimy FBI employee, and Pete, a brutal hit man/bodyguard for Howard Hughes, as Ellroy uses them to rewrite history from ’58 to ’63 in his unique way. But I found it easy to get lost in historical data that had me chasing the plot and losing it many times, although it is interesting to see figures like JFK, J Edgar Hoover, and especially Howard Hughes in such a negative like. And that is where this book shines and made me want to finish it. The people Ellroy walks out onto his stage are so interesting, finely drawn, and sometimes too morally repellant not to want to follow them through five hundred pages and two longer books. Despite the hefty focus on historical data, American Tabloid is worth the time spent in Ellroy’s underworld of American history.

Rating: 4/5

Review: "St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves" by Karen Russell

Despite this not being as good as Swamplandia!,  it still is a great collection that showcases Russell’s fierce originality and vision, and in no way makes me think any less of this enormously talented writer. I take this book as being kind of an experiment in combing George Saunders’ wackiness with the kind of fantasy stories girls would read when they are children. They take fairy tale ideals, put them in a familiar setting, and throws very real and threatening adult dangers at its off the wall inhabitants. I think that is also why it kind of fell flat for me in some cases. It relies to heavily on its offbeat nature, and it is easy for someone who is not used to reading fantasy to lose details in reading, and even lose interest in the midst of one of the stories. All the stories have long titles, as if they are the names of attractions in a gimmicky and cheap amusement park. A few of my favorites include “Z. Z.’s Sleep-Away Camp for Disordered Dreamers” which has twins who share the same sleep problems in a camp investigating g the murder of a pet in a camp with many “disordered dreamer” such as bed-wetters, self mutilators, and those who think a demon is raping them. My favorite would have to be “The Star Gazer’s Log of Summer-Time Crime” which has a geeky kid falling into the wrong crowd, who plan on stealing turtle eggs. It has a weak ending, but is the closets out of all of these stories to connecting emotionally with the reader on a level of reality. That was the main problem with these stories; they lack emotional impact and try to make up for it in wacky creatures and magical realities. Luckily, Russell solved this with her brilliant first novel, and this is a must for fans of an extremely talented new writer.

Rating: 4/5