steveatwaywords's reviews
1212 reviews

A fast and welcoming read of an American family in Japan now decades ago. But this is the summary judgment of it, as well.

Elder's prose is easy and self-effacing as he stumbles through some of the newness of cultural surprises. But we know very little about why he is there, why they engage in the activities they do, etc., and since each brief chapter feels a stand-alone essay on one aspect of the culture (calligraphy, Go, Noh theater, schooling), we sense little in the way of Elder or his family's thinking hard about their adapting. The children seem to do best after some difficult settling in, but since they are all staying for only a year, each open door to culture seems more a visit than an enduring revealing.

To be sure, I am contrasting Elder's book to other writers of the same era on Japan, Alex Kerr and Alan Booth, for instance. Following the Brush is an easy step into Japan. especially for readers who may know little about it. But since Elder spends most of his time in the traditional spheres of Japanese art and pastimes, we learn little about the larger workings of the country, of the lives of its people, or the long thinking such an experience might demand of us.

Menotti's simple one-act opera about a Three Kings stopover on their way to meet the Christ Child is widely beloved, family-level funny, and tidily offers a clear moral message. No surprises, there. But when some established opera reviewers began to mark its libretto as one of the finest of all time, my dubious eyebrow took note.

Best libretto?  To be sure, I have many nostalgic memories of this work, having served as a percussionist for an annual local performance for several years. Watching a local youth master the timing of the show's humor, hearing Balthazar sing about his treasured box, always seeking more complexity of motive in the mother's thievery--all these are firmly lodged in memory along with the often stretched and yearning melodies and harmonies.

So I recently read the libretto again. Yes, the story is fairly easy to follow for any child above the age of, say, six. But there is little here that is what might be called poetic or nuanced, layered or enlightening. The closest the story comes to a more mature theme is the Mother's decision to take some of the gold intended for the Boy-King, a choice immediately reversed after she is caught and her son assaults the kings who attempt to stop her. Drawn to the promise of a divine change in the world, Amahl and Mother want to offer gifts themselves. Finally, after a miracle, the boy leaves with the kings on their journey.  So, when the poor themselves wish to give away their earthly possessions, the faith is true. It's a fine enough--if predictable--narrative moment, but I would hardly mark it up there in dramatic enlightenment with Parcifal or even Rent.

None of this is meant to disparage Menotti's work. I think what makes this opera work best is neither its reading or its staging alone, but the combination of this, of course, with its fine musical composition. Menotti did all of it, and he intended it to be experienced as a single performance. For that, I admire the show, enhanced more by my own nostalgia. Just don't look here for a fabulous libretto.

Less popular opinion, here, but Gilead--my first read by Robinson--was not one of overwhelm. We have a richly drawn John Ames who has lived a fairly full life in his small town ministerial work, but who is still troubled by legacy, by covetousness, by questions of Scripture, by an imminent death which will deny him the opportunity to teach his young son.  He sets about writing a long series of letters to his son, but their purpose soon finds its way into a deeper exploration of his own thinking and faith.

It's a great premise for a book and it is well executed. We can wrestle with his motivations along the way (and Robinson offers us enough ambiguity and nuance to make these wrestling worthwhile), we can argue with the subjectivities and omissions in his storytelling. Robinson makes it clear enough as we read that he has largely misread that which has given him the most pain, which makes us wonder if similar problems apply to his happinesses. And finally, he offers us some interesting takes on various points of Scripture as he reconciles his own experiences with more Calvinist doctrine, conflicting texts, and the work of atheist philosophers he reads. These might be some of the most interesting passages if they did not often become fairly didactic towards the readers rather than merely instructional for his son.

So the novel is fairly fast-paced for all of that, written in relatively brief and frequently topic-shifting missives. I found myself a bit off-put, though, that Robinson seems to find the most important elements of this book the Christian work and the untold story of a seeming antagonist rather than the more fascinating and subtle work of memory and framing, of misreading and misrepresenting, of the degrees our own minds--seeking to resolve legacy when facing mortality--will work to deceive ourselves. 

Shelley believed this to be his masterwork, and it certainly is his longest and most ambitious. Even so, I mark it my least rewarding of all I have read of him. The reasons are numerous, but in general: a presumptuous argument, characters drawn too ideally to make that argument, and so much extraneous imagery and dithyrambic speech that the poetry is compromised.

To be certain, the resetting of the Aeschylus story of Prometheus in Shelley's Christian setting is challenging enough; that Shelley hoped to also make it a story of faith vs. reason merely raised his stakes. This makes the parallels between the characters often convoluted; Shelley himself introduces several (most notably the Demogorgon--not to be confused with any similar-sounding name you may have ever heard before in mythology, role play, or Stranger Things) in order to better define his allegory. Yes, the Promethean/Miltonian kernel of rebellion against the divine arrogance is here, but where Prometheus was himself first a collaborator in raising Zeus/Jove to power and still himself bears pride and ego--and where Milton's Satan holds some remarkable arguments based on reason tainted by pride and deception--there is neither subtlety nor roundness to Shelley's characters: Our new Prometheus is wholly virtuous and sacrificial (indeed, he might have learned a bit from Mary Shelley on this one). The Demogorgon is the glory of reason and free will. Jove is all tyrant and selfish power, etc. 

Once freed, the artist of reason may now (somehow) be free to create and fully realize ambition without the distraction of pain or suffering. Briefly, I find this claim truly problematic, but Shelley presumes it without elaboration. 

Where these ideas and difficulties might have been wrestled with in earnest, they are offered only in the closing act of the poetic drama, the first three spending more time in retreading mythological ground and offering lengthy exclamatory images of cloud and mountain and the like, none of it near the poetic achievement of his shorter works.

I am grateful to have read it, to have the contextual space to contrast it to Milton, Blake, Aeschylus, Augustine, Mary Shelley, Wilde, and others who work similar questions. But neither in its poetry nor its theme does Shelley match these thinkers.

The worst thing about this anthology, likely, is its production and marketing. In some effort to make readers believe they were getting unique and deeply unsettling stories from a collection of indigenous writers, instead we get a solid collection of stories from a wide array of serious writers which each address difficult but significant topics.  Some of these, to be sure, are horror or supernatural in nature, but even here, much of the magic of the stories comes from the questions the characters face, questions faced in any event by contemporary Indian culture.

Most of the reviews I've seen which are critical are about thwarted expectation; and I count myself among one who bought into the expectation. Seeing that Shane Hawk had created the collection and enlisted Stephen Graham Jones for an introduction, I think I was right to do so. 

But what we are offered instead is a much wider array of (mostly) contemporary challenges, on the nature of allyship, the purity of story, racism, personal and family legacy, intergenerational conflict, love, and--along the way--a healthy smattering of curses, ghosts, and the occasional  monster. As with any anthology, not every story is of equal 'matter,' but there are enough that wield subtle and not-so-subtle power, regardless of their genre: Mona Susan Powers, Kelli Jo Ford, Mathilda Zeller, and D.H. Trujillo are some whose stories will stay with me.

And, of course, immersing one's self in this writing and supporting indigenous art and writing is itself necessity. Many of these stories are addressed fairly directly to me, my preconceptions and privileged choices, my notions of my own story. And most all are addressed to all of us, in how we manage the shifting complexities of managing our grief and our politics, our respect and love. Worth the read.

We seem to have no end of snarky satires and commentaries anymore (from Lemony Snicket to Colbert's I Am America to Kuang's Yellowface), so Waugh's approach to English propriety and class of a century ago will seem quaint in contrast. Even so, that is part of its charm; even the protagonist Paul is caught by this gentlemanly reserve and we find a society where--even then--image must dominate over common sense, morality, and truth. 

In the way of such works, the ironies are more subtle and conservative at first, but soon (once we in a marginal aside note that a young prep school student has lost his foot in a school event shooting accident) the novel spins into out and out absurdity and still (more's the pity) believability.  

I didn't find Waugh as laugh-out-loud funny as some, perhaps, but I was never disappointed in the simple nostalgic amusement that dominates.

Less appealing? The novel's own mores have not aged well, especially in regards to its treatment of gender roles and race. Racism and racist vocabulary is a matter-of-course in some scenes, and while portions of this are intended for the satirical skewer, it's fairly evident that this is not uniformly the case. Yes, this is a novel large in class difference; sadly, it offers only the scantest of nods to other social rifts. 

And I thought I admired his graphic novels . . .

Yes, Jerusalem is huge (over 1200 dense pages), and yes it is enormously ambitious in a modernist sense. Yes, it harkens richly to the densest passages of Joyce or Blake, and yes it takes enormous liberties with a novel's form or structure. Yes, it spends seemingly incredible time with the minutiae of daily living as it does with its loftier cosmic themes, but this is not an act of a writer out of control, as many reviewers suggest: no, this is a writer expansive in his reach and recognizing that the schemes of the universe's engineers are every bit as significant as a troublesome bout of urination in an abandoned public toilet. Early on in the novel, what seems to be an angel speaks to one of the characters: "This will be very hard for you." Advice for readers.

Still, give this novel its necessary reading space and its breadth and re-figuring of nothing less than the nature of existence reveal themselves: the sense of humor of angels, the ultimate power of a Destructor, the nature of time and its end, the sensibility in madness, the holy brevity of the flesh, the history of an author's home town, the curving Escher-like significance of narrative, whether autobiography or cosmogony. 

Each thickened scene is a new stain on our fingertips and it leaves its marks backwards and forwards in the text. You will learn the deep-storied streets of Northampton in routes unwalked by most of its own inhabitants. And along the way, we find a kind of wonder that visits too few stories, one that requires less the music-swelling climaxes of character awe and more like the velocity of a falling cough drop or the advice of a 19th century midwife. 

Yes, this is a novel largely impossible to summarize. As I write this, the ambitious annotators out there seem to have abandoned their attempts far short of completion. Outside of a fairly handy family tree posted, there are no real resources to help you along the way. Looking for a trusty and comfortable quest story? Abandon that hope. Want to know what's it like to wear a necklace of dead rabbit pelts? As it happens, you may be in luck.

So yes, this is a monumental achievement of a (post-)modernist novel in the contemporary moment, and yes, I will be reading it again to see what I missed wading in the first time, and yes, I will read more of Moore so long as he writes it, it seems. And yes, and yes.

The best I can offer for this sprawling work--beyond its importance as a foundation for later gothics and some Victorian heroines and villains--is that Radcliffe spends a great deal of time offering breathy descriptions of the rural and wilderness landscapes of France and Italy. In fact, while at first I found these lengthy passages needless and off-putting, I began to find them preferable to the absurd and disjointed plot. I could almost overlook the confusing over-abundance of commas.

Where to start? For me, our breathless and often fainting heroine Emily is the primary villain of this review. At no point does our virtuous and highly-principled young woman take a single assertive step in 750 pages to change her situation. She is constantly swept away by others, ceaselessly writing poems to fir trees when she might be considering her circumstances, and all too often changing her mind about what options she has. All the while, when she might be listening to any number of characters, including the love-interest Valancourt, she runs away or claims a violation of her propriety: and it is these endless denials of the events of the outside world that cause much of the drama. Her mistakes, misunderstanding, and outright ignorance create her own distress. Her passivity to all of it makes her a victim to it. I found myself resenting her.

It's not that the caricatures amongst the other characters are much better. The comic but insipid maid-servant, the chronic sighing and wailing of Valancourt (they deserve each other), the over-arching ego of the villain Montoni, the ignorant and arbitrary cruelty of Madame Cheron, and the complete and utter failure of ALL of them to effect any change in their own conditions.  Each is an utterly static character, growing or learning not a jot but whining loudly each time they collide. That Emily has many suitors during the novel certainly has nothing to do with her quality of character.

It seems, too, that author Radcliffe understands that Emily herself cannot sustain the story. She spends the first 200 pages traveling in a carriage and looking at the outdoor scenes. After she escapes the evil castle--through the wildest of coincidences that have absolutely nothing to do with any previous events within it--Radcliffe quickly and without warning shifts the narrative point of view and introduces a similar young lady who has her own equally non-sensical adventures, many almost in parallel to Emily's. Why? Certainly not to fulfill any other demands of the main plot.

No, I could go on, but here's the base of it: That The Mysteries of Udolpho has been an origination point for many of the worst of Victorian romance tropes and patterns is not a sign in its favor. Unplanned, improbable, and just silly in its contrivances and coincidences, the length of this work makes it a poor reading choice for much but its own unfortunate role in literary history. 

We're past the point of insisting that poetry be "beautiful," yes? How about that it have traditional structure? Good.

Then we can still call this evocative, demanding, struggling, collection of writings by Layli Long Soldier poetry. But whether we do or not, nothing changes its invocation of truth: evocative, demanding, struggling. Many of the works here, preceding the long title poem, carry similar questions: "How can I convince you?" 

<i>Here are words in the Lakota language that have no meaning in yours. Here are your words that echo their own ironic meaningless in mine (hence the treaty language of "Whereas"). Here are my experiences, my love, my teeth in my hand: how can I make you know who I am? I offer it in both our languages, in poetry and song, in prose and sequestered phrases, in fragments and story. </i> Across Soldier's pages we find a poet who remains quiet when an academic expert lectures on Indian Myths and Legends. Who listens to grass. Who wonders at the evacuation of birth. Who nonetheless knows full well the work of language and of politics. 

As much as any of her indigenous ancestors, Soldier's words ring with charged poignance. Unlike them, she worries at their futility.

I've always been a fan of del Toro's work, so I wasn't surprised to find the opening premise of this vampire novel a wholly refreshing and fun take on the traditional myth: bio-toxic vampirism. 

From here, we get a great opening investigation, some political posturing over the degree of the threat to New York where a plane (no wooden ship for London!) has landed with its undead passenger. This is not the disco vampire of Fright Night or the glittery messes of Twilight and teen horror romances. This is the real thing: old and merciless.

But after these initial pages, what were clever takes on the tradition simply fell to rehashes of tradition: an old German (Jewish) vampire killer, coffin hunting, and the like. And to rehashes of all B-level horror stories: government conspiracies, secret cabals, the son endangered, the wife kidnapped to torment the hero, the inevitable journey into the dark to confront the Master . . . and absolutely no surprises or innovations along the way. Stoker's Count who visits London has more nuance (and varied character responses to him) than del Toro's ghoul (whose name has already escaped me). In other words, a solid premise turned very, very lazy. 

To say that it reads like it is filmed is too easy. It does. What again is initially some interested character wrestlings with challenges resolves to a long (long, long) series of action sequences as they track down the Critter. The TV series has only the advantage of the space to expand the storytelling (which it does well) and the ability to visualize everything as the author (also del Toro) intended: and since these are mostly action sequences anyway, nothing is really lost.

To argue that the book is the first of a trilogy is not to defend this volume, which many readers have argued is actually the best of the three in terms of its plausibility. I'll take their word for it. This was thankfully a quick read, asking very little of readers but escapist pleasure, but it was not so quick (400 pages) that I will finish the series.