Stuff I've Been Reading: A Monthly Column (11/08)

The first two books I read in November were The Best American Comics 2008 and A Fan's Notes by Frederick Exley.  My reviews for those two books can be found here.  This post covers the rest of my book-related activities for the month.

BOOKS ACQUIRED:

• The Lottery and Other Stories--Shirley Jackson
• Stories in the Worst Way--Gary Lutz
• So Long, See You Tomorrow--William Maxwell
• Parade's End--Ford Madox Ford
• The Railway Children--E. Nesbit
• The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil--George Saunders
• #$@&!: The Official Lloyd Llewellyn Collection--Daniel Clowes
• Peepshow: 1950s Pin-ups in 3-D--Bunny Yeager

BOOKS READ:

Knockemstiff--Donald Ray Pollock

Donald Ray Pollock is from the real town of Knockemstiff, Ohio.  His first book is a series of 18 short stories featuring a group of interrelated characters from the town.  Most of the characters have issues.  There are alcoholics, drug addicts, prostitutes, and down-on-their-luck losers.  Most of the individual stories are worth reading, but I came away from the book with a feeling of disappointment.  My complaint about Knockemstiff is that it didn't feel like there was any progression to what I was reading.  With the exception of the first and last stories, just about everything in this book could've been read in any order.  I usually don't have an issue with that in a short story collection, but this book featured related characters and I think it would've been more powerful if the book had been designed in a way that it told a larger story.

I don't even know what that means.  Maybe I'm just jealous of Donald Ray Pollock because I wasted a good chunk of my life trying to write a similar book about a group of interrelated losers from Ohio.  Pollock actually finished his book and it's far better than anything I could've ever come up with.  (And I just ended the previous sentence with "with".  I think that's against the rules.  And I just started a sentence with "and".  I'm pretty sure that's against the rules, too.  I actually did that one twice.  Dang.) 

What We Won't Do--Brock Clarke

One of the highlights of Brock Clarke's collection was a story called "She Loved to Cook but Not Like This".  The last line in the story was:

And since I was lonely and scared of repeating myself and sick at the thought of telling, revising, retelling this story of my life, I promised to never tell it again, and this is the last time.

Of course, Brock Clarke later went on to rewrite and expand this short story into the novel, An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England.  I wish he'd taken his own advice and worked up a different story.  The novelization isn't anywhere near as good as the story he adapted it from.

My favorite story in this collection was probably "Plowing the Secondaries".  It's about two reckless brothers who drive around town plowing things with their snowplows other than snow.  "Up North" was also a highlight.  Like Glen David Gold's "The Tears of Squonk", this story deals with a town that decides to hang an elephant after a circus-related mishap.  Gold's story is the better of the two, but Clarke's has a great last line (also the last line in the collection) that really packs a punch.

Overall, I'd say that Brock Clarke is a much better short story writer than he is a novelist.  If you feel like reading some of his work, I'd recommend you start with this collection.

The Baron in the Trees--Italo Calvino

Sometimes a book's title provides a better synopsis of the book than any reviewer ever could.  This is one of those cases: The Baron in the Trees is about a baron who lives in the trees.  As a boy, the character gets into a fight with his family over having to eat snails for dinner.  He climbs up into a tree to sulk and decides to stay there.  Fortunately for him, there are a lot of trees nearby and he can climb from his tree to the others.  In this manner, he's able to move around the town and the countryside.

Years pass and the Baron stays up in the trees.  He manages to lead a full life up there.  He has a pet dog.  He reads books.  He makes friends and has adventures in the war.  He even has relationships with some of the local ladies.

This was my third Italo Calvino book.  I liked it a lot more than Invisible Cities, but not as much as If on a winter's night a traveler.

The Enchantress of Florence--Salman Rushdie

Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children is one of my all-time favorite books, so I thought I would give his latest a try.  I read it over the course of a week or so, and can honestly say I wasn't able to follow it very well.  I enjoyed it, but I really didn't know what was going on half the time.  I was at about page 150 before I finally figured out who the titular character was.

As best I can tell, The Enchantress of Florence is about an Italian who shows up at Akbar's imperial court with a strange story to tell.  I'm not going to go into much more detail than that because I gave/lent the book to someone and I don't want to spoil things for her.  Let's just say that the book is full of mystery, magic, four giant albinos from Switzerland, and about a hundred characters taken from the real world historical record.

This is one I'd really like to read again.  My concentration was off and it deserved better from me. 

The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil--George Saunders

I read this novella on a plane trip from Seattle to Cincinnati.  It's a political satire about the residents of a tiny country named Inner Horner.  The country is so tiny that only one of its residents can be there at a time.  The rest have to wait in a containment zone in the surrounding country of Outer Horner.  An Outer Hornerite named Phil gets it into his demented little brain (which keeps falling off) that the Inner Hornerites are evil and deserve to be exterminated.  He usurps the presidency of Outer Horner and then uses his new-found powers to attack the helpless Inner Hornerites.

But wait...Outer Horner is itself entirely surrounded by a country called Greater Keller.  Will the Greater Kellerites sit back and let Phil disassemble the Inner Hornerites?  Will they let Phil's unprovoked aggression stand?  Or will they ATTACK!!?!

Oh, and the "people" in the book are made out of tin cans, ball bearings, and blinking lights.  You figure it out.

#$@&!: The Official Lloyd Llewellyn Collection--Daniel Clowes

This is just another Daniel Clowes collection.  I'm not a big fan of his Lloyd Llewellyn character, but I thought I'd buy this one anyway because it was only $8 and I'd never seen it before.  I think it's out-of-print.  I also really liked the cover art (different than the one shown here).  It features Lloyd and a woman who looks like she could have been an early prototype for the Enid character from Ghost World...if Enid had been an incredibly tall, busty gal with crooked teeth.  Very strange cover art.  As far as the stories go, they were alright.  My favorite was "Crawl, Worm!"  In that one, Lloyd lusts after a lady and she rewards his attentions by biting off his fingernail and turning him into a worm.  You know, the usual.

Peepshow: 1950s Pin-ups in 3-D--Bunny Yeager

This is really just a picture book, but I'm including it here because it's fun and I did actually read the intro (really, I did).  As the title would suggest, this book is a collection of photographs of pin-up models from the 1950s.  Each picture is printed twice and when the "reader" looks through a pair of fold-out glasses, the images appear in 3-D.  I found this strange little volume at Half Price Books while looking for books about Bettie Page.  She actually makes two appearances in Peepshow, so I'm glad I found it.  I just hope no one saw me looking in the nude photography section.

CURRENTLY READING:

• Stories in the Worst Way--Gary Lutz