The Call and Gimmicks

A book that's pleasant and quiet without being boring, which is a rarity as far as I can tell.

The book has a structure to it that might turn some people off from the beginning. The narrator is a large animal doctor, and each section works kind of like this:

Call: [explanation of animal ailment]

Action:

Result: [you're smart. you can figure this one out][explanation of what he did]

But then the narrator deviates from the structure a little bit.

Thoughts On The Ride Home:

What I Heard With The Window Open:

What I Checked For Out The Window:

What The Spaceman Said To Me:

and so on.

It really got me thinking about the difference between a book with structure and a book with a gimmick.

For example, I tried The Interrogative Mood by Padgett Powell, a book in which every sentence is a question. THAT didn't work for me. Honestly, I felt that the structure was SO rigid that it took away from the possibilities of the story. The most entertaining part was the existence of the book as an object, not the text within.

It had points where it was clever, but I don't personally value cleverness in art. Cleverness is a great attribute when it comes to problem-solving and engineering (and therefore can sometimes work in mystery novels), but in art it can be really annoying. If I enjoy a painting, it's likely that I'm getting a feeling from it or placing my own experiences on top of it, and that emotional result is never related to cleverness. Clever jokes are not my favorite, and usually the kind that result in someone SAYING "that's funny" as opposed to actually laughing. A clever poem? That's a tough sell.

So what, then, is the difference between a book with good structure and a book with a gimmick?

I thought about it a lot. Maybe it has something to do with whether the tool is something that is too rigid. If it's too rigid, the story starts conforming and contorting to fit the frame and can never go anywhere unexpected or fun. Maybe it has something to do with the tool being too repetitive. I did notice that several people who enjoyed The Interrogative Mood (of which there are many) seemed to have read it in small chunks instead of all at once.

Ultimately, though, the answer I came to is this:

Structure is a gimmick that works.

Murder on the Orient Express, Mackie Style!

*note: I am aware that cover is for the PC game. If I'd known that was an option, you be your ASS I would have played it. Why read it when you can LIVE it?

Uh, book club book.

That's the explanation for why.

It's pretty much what you'd expect, a whodunit with an ending that's fairly interesting, although you could probably just skip to it and get about the same amount out of it. I DO have a theory that horror movie writers are going back to Agatha Christie for their plot twists, turns, and oddly-positioned stabbings, though. However, the weird machines that drown people in pig's innards are a fairly novel creation that I'm not prepared to credit to classic literature.

Because I don't want to spoil the whole thing, I thought what might be useful is to discuss the detective abilities of the main character, Hercule Poirot. And because it is my only cultural reference at the moment, I will compare his methods of detection with that of television detective and star of the Shield, Vic Mackie.

Here are some scenarios and how I suspect each would handle them:

SCENARIO 1: A BODY IS FOUND ON A TRAIN

Poirot: Would work his way through the different passengers and narrow things down to a most likely suspect.

Mackie: Would find the conductor of the train, ask him what he was hiding, then assault him, shoving a piece of the train's coal in his mouth until he said everything he knew.

SCENARIO 2: A GOVERNESS IS SUSPECTED OF A CRIME

Poirot: Would gently question the lady so as not to put her on the defense.

Mackie: Would question the lady, then threaten to allow a sex tape of her to hit the streets if she didn't start talking, pronto.

SCENARIO 3: AN ITALIAN MAN IS ACCUSED OF STABBING ANOTHER MAN

Poirot: Would consider this possible, and does put forth the theory that "wops" (his word, I swear) DO tend to stab (this is pulled directly from the pages, I SWEAR to you).

Mackie:...actually, pretty much the same thing.

As you can see, our detection skills have come a long way, baby.

The Visible Man by Chuck Klosterman

Klosterman has written some damn good stuff, and his last few have been awesome. Eating the Dinosaur was strong, and his novel, Downtown Owl, surprised me. Honestly, I was surprised I liked it so much, which probably means 50% that he did a great job and 50% that I shouldn't be such an asshat and go into books with such an asshat-y attitude.

As one might expect, the book is about an invisible man, but it's not really so much about him being invisible. It's more about him watching what people do when they're alone. Being invisible provides the only real opportunity to watch every move someone makes, which the character feels is the only way to really and truly KNOW a person.

It turns out that most people really and truly like to watch Law & Order and fall asleep in front of the TV, which is only slightly different from what they're telling us they do, which is watch the Wire and fall asleep in front of the TV.

The book's narrator and the invisible man are two separate characters. The invisible man is very Klosterman-esque. You can hear his voice a lot when he describes his surprising affinity for sports and his anger when people call him "invisible" as he is not actually invisible but merely far, far LESS visible, a distinction that would strike me as being very important to Chuck Klosterman, and one he has the good sense to understand would be important to almost nobody else.

The most enjoyable parts were definitely the descriptions of what people did while alone, character studies really, while the interactions between the main characters were...not completely uninteresting, but far, far LESS interesting.

It's fun as a thought experiment, but feels more like a "What would you do if..." conversation that's forgotten the next day as opposed to something you find yourself considering again days later.

Lethem Has Wood

[note: this is about James Wood, critic, not James WoodS, this guy. But hey, who couldn't use a nice Videodrome pic here and there?]

Just as a timestamp, today is November 7th, 2011.

Jonathan Lethem's Fortress of Solitude came out August 4th, 2004.

So, it's a little unclear why Lethem decided to write a super-long, super-dense criticism of a review his book received when it came out. You can read it here. If you can actually get through the damn thing, good for you. You must have a life that has time for horseshit.

To summarize:

Basically, James Wood wrote a criticism of the book that made it seem like he A) wanted a book other than the book he was presented with and B) didn't actually read the book.

I 100% agree that criticizing a book that you haven't read, or at least criticizing without admitting that you couldn't get through it because it was so godawful, is wrong. And Lethem's right to be pissed that Wood criticized him for making no references to literature because Solitude is really one long love letter to forms of literature in a lot of ways.

However, this criticism...the one by Lethem, the criticism of the criticism, I found unreadable. I'll admit that I skimmed, but it's because I was so tired of waiting for him to get to the point that I couldn't take it anymore. 2,220 words long? And the first 500+ words are quotes? The kind of quotes that lead off a book and that I skip 90% of the time because they're either irrelevant until you've read portions of the book or because they're by Lewis Carroll and I just don't care anymore?

I tried going to the source as well, the James Wood review. 4,200 words. Couldn't even begin to begin it. Besides, you could be 5% into the goddamn ACTUAL BOOK by then at which point you could make a pretty informed decision on whether or not to read it.

My best work is by no means critiquing writing or writers. It's not really my place. But in creating a dense, unreadable criticism, I feel like these things don't function.

The other day I was waiting for a sandwich and looking at one of those bulletin boards filled with tacked-up business cards. One of the cards was for a business involved in graphic design. Despite the fact that this designer has spent money and time tacking up business cards in sandwich establishments, a dynamite business plan if I ever heard one, I doubt the calls are flooding in. You know why? Because the business card itself was boring and not well done, and if a graphic designer can't graphic design his own business card, why would I trust him with designing mine?

If you want to make the point that you're a good writer, maybe the best way to do it is to write something good. Just saying.

The controversy is silly to me because I would NEVER read that insane, rambling review in the first place, nor would I read the response to it. It's just a bunch of words about a bunch of words about a bunch of words, and it feels like a couple guys angrily 69'ing all day.

Also, and this is one of those things that proves, as we all learned from the Malcom in the Middle theme song, that life is unfair: when a writer talks about a harsh review from a critic, it's almost impossible to not sound like a whiner. Yes, Wood clearly didn't read the book and yes, that's clearly wrong, and not just wrong like a mistake is wrong. Just plain wrong. A lie. But you know what? It's false to assume that a writer, who is suited to writing, is also good at accepting criticism. So if the book is done, be done with it already.

Just so you don't think this is all about me hating on J.L. (who is hit or miss for me), check out his Promiscuous Stories project. Very cool.

Equality NOW!

Check this shit out:

On the left we have the Spanish version of James Patterson's Swimsuit. On the right, the English edition.

First off, how come they get such a sexier title? For the sake of accuracy, both cover models appear to be wearing the swimwear known as the "bikini."

Swimsuit? That's what you wear to do water aerobics with the other old ladies. It has built in beige mesh. Bikini? Much more exciting.

Secondly, I find the Spanish cover model's bikini far more scandalous. Look how much thinner the straps are! And the patch covering her stuff? Teeny. I might even go so far as to call it Teeny Tiny. Plus, that patch isn't even visible on the English cover. You have to use your stupid imagination, and if people could use their imagination to successfully see naked women, wouldn't the porn industry be a complete failure?

The English version does have a more severely posed model, however. Her back is arched in such a way that suggests the insertion of a metal rod to replace her spine, and this is now the closest thing she gets to being reclined and relaxed.

As a substitute for the visible crotch area, the English model has a definite side breast thing happening.

Side breast for crotch area? Looks like someone was going for the classic Separate, But Equal thing here. And we all know how that ends up.

It begs the question, Why make s different cover if they're going to be so alike anyway? Who knows. Any excuse to make a model pose uncomfortable in 8 inches of tepid water, I suppose. And not to get too far off track, but if I were a lady posing for Maxim or some crap like that, I would demand to see where that water was coming from. I need to be sure that they freshened it up since the last time Kirsten Dunst was here.

Machine Man by Max Barry

Brief summary of the first dozen pages:

Super logical engineer dude gets his leg crushed in an industrial accident, loses it. The prosthetics he’s presented with are crap, so he builds his own new leg. He then find his flesh leg inferior and incompatible with his new leg. What’s a fella to do?

I had fun with this book. Max Barry knows how to write something that keeps moving along without being completely plot-driven.

Some would say it’s philosophy 97 (4 less than 101), but I’d say the idea of whether a person is a body or a body a person is something that warrants reexamining as technology progresses.

The most interesting theory in this book is the question of why we create mechanical and technological substitutes for things only to mimic their biological or natural counterparts. How much money did someone sink into creating e-ink when we already had ink, and why didn’t they try to come up with something altogether new an improved?

Like I’ve said, author/idol Tom Spanbauer always says writers should do three things to an audience: Make them laugh, Teach them something, and Break their hearts.

Make Them Laugh:
Main Character on Love: “I had gone seven years without kiss and now I’d had two in a week. It was the kind of data event that implied serious contamination of laboratory conditions.”

Teach Them Something:
Main Character’s Speech to Girlfriend After She Hangs Onto the Salt at the Dinner Table: “Everything is a system. Look.” I leaned forward. “What if I had your water and I suddenly decided I wanted the salt? And instead of giving you back the water I just sat here waiting for you to release the salt, which you didn’t because you were waiting for the water? It’s a deadlock, that’s what. It’s catastrophic system failure. And you’re probably thinking, ‘Well, I could just ask Charlie to give me the water in exchange for the salt.’ But that requires you to understand my resource needs, and violates process encapsulation. I’m not saying it’s a big deal. I’m just pointing out that locking the salt like that in incredibly inefficient and systematically dangerous.”

Break their Hearts:
[I’ll leave this one alone because I don’t want to give out all the details here]

Fun book. It sags somewhere near the end when it turns into an all-out action film and loses some of that emotional core. But it’s close enough.

Ghost in the Wires by Kevin Mitnick

The incredible story of Kevin Mitnick, hacker extraordinaire.

A truly fascinating book, both in the narrative and the technical details, Mitnick will have a lot of people rethinking what hacking is, what it means, and why people do it.

On the hacking side, there is a lot of techie stuff in here that might be tough for some to follow, although having only a cursory knowledge of information systems is more than enough to help readers understand WHAT Mitnick was doing, even if you might not understand exactly HOW he did it.

On the narrative side, I was pleasantly surprised as the story evolved from one of technical curiosity to a fugitive story complete with a helicopter chase.

Combining the two sides is the curious fact and often humorous descriptions of Mitnick's social engineering ploys.

One of my favorites (recreated here based on my shoddy memory):

Mitnick calls a telecom office pretending to be one of their salesmen. "Yeah, I'm out here in the field and I lost my database password. I was hoping I could get that from you, I have some clients I need to meet with and I need to show them the new software."

The guy at the office says, "I can get you the password, but I can't give it out over the phone."

Mitnick says, "Hmm...I might not be in until later tonight or tomorrow. Tell you what, can you print it out for me and seal it in an envelope? Just leave it with Peggy [Peggy being the name of a secretary Mitnick got from some earlier calls] and I'll get it from her."

The worker sees no problem with that, and 20 minutes later Mitnick calls Peggy posing as the salesman, asks if she has an envelope for him, and asks her to open it and read him the contents.

The book is full of entertaining vignettes like this one. And if a good book is supposed to change your life, this one succeeded. I spent Saturday looking at shredders.