January 27, 2011 · 7:00 am

Review 107: Wizard and Glass

Wizard and Glass by Stephen King

So. Now that we’ve put three books behind us, and sit at the pivot of the series, it is time that we settle down and have ourselves a little palaver about Roland, the Gunslinger.

We know little about this man, the protagonist of our epic series. We know he’s a hard man, the kind of man who can cross deserts, brave oceans, and kill entire towns if need be. We know he’s a dedicated man, who will follow his quarry wherever they may flee to. We know he is single-minded, the kind of person who would allow an eleven year-old boy to fall to his death if that meant getting another foot closer to his precious Dark Tower. He is a hard man, Roland Deschain is. He is the Gunslinger.

But who is he really? Who was he before he started on this mad quest for something that may or may not exist? How did he get set on this path that could determine the fate of worlds, this quest that led to the deaths of everyone he ever loved? Who is he?

Blaine the Mono (art by Revenant42)

Well settle down, boys and girls, because this is where we get to find out. In between destroying a sentient monorail at a rigged game of riddles and facing off against the darkest Dark Man there is in a mock-up of the Palace of the Emerald City, Roland tells his ka-tet the tale that shaped him and set him on his path. It is a tale that begins with his entry into manhood – a trial by violence where he bested his teacher, Cort, in a duel to the pain, and ends with Roland’s soul nearly destroyed.

Roland and his companions, Alain and Cuthbert, have been sent by their fathers to the most out-of-the-way place they know – a small village called Hambry in the Barony of Meijis. Their alleged purpose is to count things, more as a punishment than a mission. They seem to be three boys who got into trouble, and who now must pay by spending their summer doing menial work. They don’t want any trouble, and they hope that no one will give them any.

They say there is a monster in the Citgo fields. Green, mayhap.... (photo by Cogito Ergo Imago)

That’s the story, anyway. In reality, they’re looking for evidence of the workings of John Farson, also known as The Good Man, who is leading a popular revolution against the established order in Roland’s home country, In-World. Hambry has an oil field, the work of the Great Old Ones, which is known to locals simply as “Citgo” Should Farson get enough oil – and the means to refine it – he will be able to revive ancient war machines and bring death to all of In-World. With Roland, Alain and Cuthbert as spies for the Affiliation, the Gunslingers in Gilead hope that they can stall, if not stop, Farson’s rebellion.

That would have been great if only Roland Deschain hadn’t met Susan Delgado, the daughter of a deceased horse-breeder and soon to be the promised girl of the mayor of Hambry. As soon as they meet, their destiny is clear: it is true love. No more able to stand against their fate than a tree in a whirlwind, Roland and Susan do as all young lovers have done, and risk discovery and death in the process. In every corner there are those who would stand against them: Susan’s spinster aunt, Cordelia, who hopes to make some money selling her niece off to the mayor; the Big Coffin Hunters, three mercenaries who work for Farson and who mean to see every last drop of oil gets in his hands; and Rhea of the Cöos, a horrible witch who possesses a crystal orb that lets her see all the malicious things that people do. Against these arrayed forces, Roland and his friends must not only foil the plans of John Farson, but also escape Meijis with their lives.

With the first, they are successful. With the second, not so much.

Dark Tower fans that I have talked to generally agree that this is the best book of the seven, for many reasons. First, we get to see Roland before he became all tall, gritty and scary. We see him as a callow youth, a boy of fourteen who is in way over his head, tackling responsibilities that would be better handled by a grown man. They’re on the losing side of a terrible war as it is, as they’re up against the combined cunning and guile of some very bad people. In many cases it is luck as much as skill that leads them to their eventual victory.

Roland and Susan (art by Jae Lee)

What’s more, we get to see Roland in love, and this is really where King shines in this book. He says in the afterward that he was dreading writing this book, mainly because he knew that he would have to portray teenage love – first love – in a realistic fashion, which can be hard to do when you’re several decades removed from being a teenager. All the madness that comes with teen love – the longing, the furtive trysts, the absolute certainty in what you are doing and that no one can stop you. The way that the person you’re in love with is all you can think about, and the only thing you want is to be with them again, if only for a moment. The way you freely and willingly lose your mind for love.

It’s something which, thankfully, we grow out of as adults. Frankly, if I ever felt like that again, I’d probably throw myself under a train.

King has done a fantastic job with the relationship between Susan and Roland – it’s as realistic as he can make it, without being mawkish and overly romantic. We are never allowed to forget that, like so many doomed lovers before them, they are risking everything with their love – their mission, their friends, and their lives – and we know that even the slightest misstep can mean disaster. Mixed with the other, more adventure-driven elements of the plot, it’s incredibly tense, and it’s handled very well.

The romance aside, there are some wonderful characters in this book, and as is the case with so many Stephen King novels, the best ones are the bad ones. Susan’s aunt Cordelia is a bundle of jealous paranoia, and you can feel her mainspring winding up every time she shows up on the page. Eldred Jonas is a laid-back killer, an old man who has buried countless young men, and means to bury Roland and his friends. And Rhea is just palpably foul. You can almost smell her when she shows up, which is a great accomplishment – and you can’t wait to see her again.

Rhea of the Cöos (art by Jae Lee)

As an aside, Marvel Comics has been doing comic book stories of Roland’s youth, and the first one re-tells this tale. It’s called The Gunslinger Born, and while it’s not bad, there is a certain emptiness to it. It’s not easy to compress hundreds of pages of character and plot development into a seven-issue comic series. I don’t know how it would read to someone who hasn’t read this book, but to me it looked like it was missing a whole hell of a lot….

As I said, this book is the pivot on which the series turns, and it is essential to understanding Roland. We have to know who he was and how he became who he is. While there are still questions to be answered, and stories to be told, the big story is out. Now he and his ka-tet can continue in their quest for the tower, confident that they know a little more about this man who yanked them from their worlds into his. For us, the character and his world become richer, more full of meaning. Things that we might not have thought about in the first few books become more meaningful, and we can better appreciate the history of his dying world. Most importantly, we can begin to understand why it is so important that he find the Dark Tower, and we pray that he knows what to do when he gets there.

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“I’ll pay ye back. By all the gods that ever were, I’ll pay ye back. When ye least expect it, there Rhea will be, and your screams will break your throats. Do you hear me? Your screams will break your throats!”
– Rhea Dubativo of the Cöos, Wizard and Glass

Wizard and Glass on Wikipedia
The Dark Tower Portal on Wikipedia
Stephen King on Wikipedia
The Dark Tower homepage
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Filed under adventure, coming of age, Dark Tower, death, fantasy, friendship, murder, quest, romance, sexuality, Stephen King, teenagers, witches, wizardry, world-crossing

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January 21, 2011 · 2:59 pm

More…. weight…

Okay, it probably says something about me that this was the first thing to pop into my mind when I head that I had been Freshly Pressed by WordPress while I was sleeping. This is for two reasons: I am a lit nerd and Arthur Miller knows how to write a good play.

Anyway, thank you, WordPress, for adding my review of Eats, Shoots & Leaves to their Freshly Pressed page! It was kind of a thrill to look at my site stats:

Tuesday: 3
Wednesday: 2
Thursday: 16
Friday: 256

So, welcome to all you new readers and listeners! Feel free to wander around and explore.

– Chris

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January 20, 2011 · 7:00 am

Review 106: Eats, Shoots & Leaves


Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss

This is how I know I’m a real English teacher – I have a shelf dedicated to books just about English. The history of English, the uses and misuses of English, and even the history of the alphabet we use. This is something I never expected to have in my personal library, that’s for sure.

So has my brain. (photo by Nathan Harrison)

But that’s all to be expected; I’m an English teacher, and people like me are supposed to read books like this. It’s professional development, or something. The weird thing about this book, a book dedicated to punctuation, of all things, is that it was popular with people who weren’t English teachers. Everyone was shocked by how well it sold, the author included. A book written as kind of a primal stickler scream somehow struck a chord with the general reading population. Perhaps there is some hope for our species after all….

The reason it sold well, of course, is that it’s well-written and entertaining to read. Far too many books about language are written by dusty intellectual Linguists who exude smugness with their impenetrable jargon and are completely inaccessible to the general public. I have those books on my shelves as well, and nothing this side of a double shot of NyQuil is as good at getting me off into slumberland. Ms. Truss, however, writes like one of us. She’s an ordinary person who loves her language and who just snaps every time she sees a sign like, “Apple’s – $1”. I share her pain.

Can't use white-out on neon, can you? (photo by James McNally)

The book is a well-mixed combination of history, usage and style. The tiny marks that make the written English word behave the way it does have come to us along a remarkable number of paths. In the last millennium or so, marks have been added, changed and removed over time as necessity dictated. One of her fears (and the impetus to write this book) is that we may be changing English to a new form that requires less of that rigid, form-fixing punctuation.

Or people just haven’t bothered to learn.

As she notes throughout the book, punctuation is one of those things that few people ever really get to learn. Our English teachers give it a once-over in elementary school, and then we never get a review of it, so we spend most of our lives just throwing around commas and apostrophes and hoping we get it right. More often than not, we don’t. And we’re afraid to ask anyone, lest we look like ignorant yobs.

But to master punctuation means more than just being a pedant and a nerd. Heavens, no. Mastering punctuation means controlling your language, which is controlling your thoughts. The vast difference between a sentence like, “The convict said the judge is mad” and “The convict, said the judge, is mad” should be enough by itself to illustrate how important proper punctuation is. In a language like English, so dependent on rhythm, timing and stress, punctuation is the substitute for our voice. It tells us when to speed up and slow down, which points need to be stressed and given special attention, and which points (like this one) can be safely disregarded, if one so chooses.

Only one member, mind you.... (photo by Lobstar28)

It would be very easy for Ms. Truss’ obvious frustration with the misuse of punctuation to overwhelm her and poison the book. Admittedly, she does at one point put together a kit for those who would be punctuation guerrillas and risk prison to set the world straight, but by and large she stops short at advocating actual lawlessness.

Ms. Truss understands that punctuation abuse isn’t something that people do intentionally – it’s largely a matter of ignorance, and she wants to help. What’s more, she’s funny. For example:

In the family of punctuation, where the full stop is daddy and the comma is mummy, and the semicolon quietly practises the piano with crossed hands, the exclamation mark is the big attention-deficit brother who gets over-excited and breaks things and laughs too loudly.

Every section in the book has sharp and clever humor, a description of something as simple as a comma made in such a way that you find yourself laughing out loud on the train.

Of course, whenever you get into this topic, you run the risk of finding yourself forced to one side or the other of the “proscriptive” versus “descriptive” debate. You know, the people who want to tell everyone else how to use language versus the people who want the speakers to decide for themselves how it is used. The latter smacks of classical democracy, and as both an English Professional and a person with a healthy distrust of The People, I’m hesitant to sign up for it. I like rules in language. I like having a common set of guidelines we can turn to in order to make sure we’re all getting the meaning that the speaker or writer is trying to convey.

WHAT? The fabulous fur's WHAT?? (photo by Trevor Coultart)

Unfortunately, for people like Truss or myself, it’s all too easy to cross that line from being the person who appreciates a bit of order to that person who writes letters to the editor because some headline writer used a colon where a semicolon would do. And I’ve seen internet flame wars go wild over this pro- or de- divide. People who could politely disagree with each other about Sarah Palin’s international policy experience will find themselves screaming bloody murder over whether or not you should put two spaces after a period.

What has to be remembered is this: there are rules to language, like it or not. Those rules, however, change, and no single one of us has any power to impel or obstruct that change. The best we can do is to make sure we are writing with clarity and precision so that our intended audience understands our thoughts with the least amount of effort on their part. Regardless of what you think of the rules, if the reader has to stop and ask herself, “Wait, what did he say?” then you have failed. So learn the rules. Once you’ve learned them, you’re free to do what you wish, but make sure you have them down cold.

So, if you’ve always wanted to know about how to use a semicolon, or you’re not sure if your commas are in the right place, or if you’ve ever driven someone to madness by dropping an apostrophe into a possessive “its” – and you know who you are – then this book is the one you need. Enjoy.

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“Using the apostrophe correctly is a mere negative proof: it tells the world you are not a thicko.”
Lynne Truss, Eats, Shoots and Leaves

Lynne Truss on Wikipedia
Eats, Shoots & Leaves on Wikipedia
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January 12, 2011 · 9:47 pm

Review 105: Reaper Man

Reaper Man by Terry Pratchett

So. What are your thoughts on death?

Or rather, Death?

It’s a weird thing, death. I mean, you’re here one minute and then you’re… not. And while we all know intellectually that we’re going to die, there’s something in us that refuses to believe that the essential Person that we are could possibly cease to exist. We have personalities, unique aggregations of memory and experience and inborn preferences that all display themselves as a Person, as far as we know unique in all the world. Each human being is an entity that will never be seen again in this universe, and as far as we know, the cessation of life brings that entity to an end, reducing the person we knew to a mere insentiate object.

Is it any wonder we come up with stories for what happens… y’know, after?

Just about very culture that’s ever been has come up with some form of afterlife, be it an eternal feast for heroes, a paradise in which we can bask in God’s glory, a place of exquisite pain and torment, or a ticket back to Earth for another go ’round. There is no way of knowing if any of those are actually what happens to us when we die. At least not until we actually do it. So since we cannot know, we make stuff up, if only to make the whole thing easier to bear.

What often goes with that other world is someone to take us over. A ferryman or a guide, someone who knows the territory and knows where we need to go in what is very likely a rather confusing time. It’s another piece of comfort – knowing that there’s Someone out there who knows where we need to go and what we need to do.

Grim indeed.... (photo by provia_17)

Which brings us to Death.

 

He’s been portrayed many ways over the years – my favorite is the Death from Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series – a sort of older sister who’s known you all your life and loves you anyway. If she shows up for me when I die, I think I’ll be okay.

I would be just as happy with Pratchett’s Death, even though he is the more traditional robes-scythe-and-skeleton type. Fans of Discworld love Death, which I imagine was somewhat baffling for Pratchett early on. In the first few books, Death was a bit character – he showed up a couple of times to collect the recently deceased, and that was it. But his scenes were so memorable and so good that they sometimes stuck out above the rest of the book. He speaks entirely in capital letters, which lends him a voice that is probably reminiscent of James Earl Jones. He’s aloof, but not uncaring, and seems to take a rather curious interest in humanity. He likes cats, has a house off on the edge of nowhere, and rides a great white steed named Binky. Death has become, in short, an interesting person.

And it seems that’s a problem.

The Universe, you see, is a finely tuned instrument, one which needs monitoring and, occasionally, adjusting. There are… let’s call them Auditors, who make sure that reality stays real – no odd deviations or anomolies such as, for example, anthropomorphic personifications of natural forces. In all honesty, they would eliminate all life if they could, but that is, as yet, beyond their capabilities. So they settle for telling Death that it’s time for him to retire. He gets a little hourglass all his own, and time to kill until the new Death comes into being.

Heya Tom, it's Bob - from the office down the hall... (photo by Scott Beale)

In the interim, this time between Deaths, a new problem arises: nothing is dying. Or, to be more specific, things are dying, but the vital energies that empowered everything, from cabbages to clergymen, aren’t being taken away. Without a Death to handle this very vital – so to speak – function, the life energy is looking for a place to go, an outlet. As a result, things that shouldn’t be alive are up and moving around. In some cases this means objects running along of their own accord, and in others it means that the dead simply have nowhere to go.

Such is the case with the wizard Windle Poons. After 130 years at the Unseen University, he was rather looking forward to a nice rest and then a bit of reincarnation as a woman in a far more liberal society. What he got instead was nothingness. Given that option, he went back to his body and became Undead, much to the consternation of the rest of the UU faculty. Unfortunately for them, they have bigger things to worry about – the buildup of life force is having a rather larger and more dangerous effect on the city of Ankh-Morpork itself. The lack of a Death may well doom the city in a manner that will be horribly familiar to many of Pratchett’s readers.

And where is Death in all this, or at least the person who used to be Death? He has found a small farm below the famous Ramtop Mountains. An old maid, Miss Flitworth, needs a hand and Death needs a way to spend his time – something he’s never had to worry about before. He takes the alias Bill Door and starts to learn what it means to be alive, despite the short time he has left.

"What can the harvest hope for if not the care of the reaper man?" (art by Andrew Mar)

The book, as you might imagine, is all about being alive. What makes life special and precious and ultimately worth living. Windle Poons let life go past while he grew old behind the university walls, and it is only in death that he finds out all that fun he’d missed. Bill Door learns that it is the fragility of life, and its most certain end, which ultimately gives it meaning. In the middle, we see that everything that can live yearns to do so, from the mayflies to the great Counting Pines to cities to ideas.

 

While the book gives no answers to what may happen after death (the Discworld books rarely do), it does give us another way to look at life. And that, ultimately, is the goal of any great story.

——————————————————
“Huh! Priests! They’re all the same. Always telling you that you’re going to live again after you’re dead, but you just try it and see the look on their faces!”
Reg Shoe, Reaper Man

Discworld on Wikipedia
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Filed under afterlife, death, Discworld, existentialism, fantasy, finitude, humor, Terry Pratchett, wizardry, zombies

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January 6, 2011 · 7:00 am

Review 104: The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

Remember – go and take the listener survey! The gods command you!)

The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul by Douglas Adams

This is the second of the Dirk Gently books – and the final one – and is no easier to explain than the first. But I’ll try.

Ah, just like college.... (photo by Gene Han)

In this story, Dirk is contracted to meet a client one morning at 6 AM, and play bodyguard. The time is vital. The client has made it a point that Dirk absolutely, positively has to be there by six, and he’s willing to pay handsomely for it. So when Dirk wakes up at 11 AM, he suspects that he’s screwed up royally.

His suspicions are confirmed when he arrives at the home of his client, who is sitting quite comfortably in an armchair while his head is rotating slowly on a nearby turntable. The only clues to his grisly demise are his ravings about a green, scythe-wielding monster and a mysterious packet of papers, written in a language that Dirk cannot begin to understand. But he does know their shape – they’re a bill. But for what services, and rendered by whom? So now Dirk has to figure out who, or what, did this to his client and why.

But there’s more to this story (isn’t there always?) An American woman, Kate Schechter, is one of the survivors of the explosion of an airline ticket counter, something that everyone who knows about explosions is calling an “act of god.” But which god would do such a thing, and why? Lucky for her, Kate is about to find out, and she’s also about to find out why gods aren’t quite all they’re cracked up to be.

This, of course, does not happen in the book. I needed a picture of Thor that wasn't the super-hero.... (art by Boris Vallejo)

There aren’t a lot of greater themes in this book – it’s an adventure, of sorts, but as far as overarching messages go, it’s pretty thin other than watch out for eagles and be nice to homeless people. It’s entertainment as only Douglas Adams can deliver it. There is some thought given to gods, however, which is a topic I always enjoy. In Small Gods, Terry Pratchett asks where gods come from, and what sustains them. In American Gods, Neil Gaiman asked the question of what happened to gods who were brought to America by their believers. Adams asks what happens to gods once we don’t actually need them anymore.

We made them, after all, and most of the time we made them immortal. We needed gods to be bigger than we, stronger than we, and generally everything we weren’t. And then we went around infusing them with humanity – with jealousy, courage, rage and fear. When we were done with them, we let them go. But that didn’t mean they went away. An immortal is an immortal, and without work to do or followers to deal with, what is a god to do? In the case of Odin, the father of gods and the ruler of the Norse pantheon, the solution is very simple. What’s more, it keeps him pampered and cared for, which is all he ever really wanted.

While I love Hitchhiker’s Guide first and foremost among Adams’ works, I really wish he could have lived to write more Dirk Gently books. The character is a person of reprehensible ethics and somewhat tarnished morals, but you can’t help but love him. Lurking refrigerators, coffee-thievery and all, you find yourself wishing that you could hang out with Dirk, while at the same time knowing that he’d probably invite you out for lunch and somehow make you pay for the meal. He’s a bad person, but an excellent detective – and a great character.

So pick this one up and give it a read. It’s fast, it’s fun – you won’t regret it.

————————————————
“Nobleness was one word for making a fuss about the trivial inevitabilities of life, but there were others.”
Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul on Wikipedia
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January 1, 2011 · 6:34 pm

Best (and not-so-best) of 2010

You know, everyone else is doing lists, so now that the year is over, so am I. Here are the best books I read in 2010!

  • Howard Zinn – A People’s History of the United States. Either a long-overdue look at the disenfranchised and overlooked victims in America’s rise to power or a screed of anti-American socialist dogma. Take your pick, but I know which side I come down on.
  • Warren Ellis – Crooked Little Vein. A trip through Weird America, introducing you to the things people do that you didn’t know people did.
  • Max Brooks – World War Z. An oral history of the Zombie War. Enthralling, exciting, disturbing.
  • Apostolos Doxiadis & Christos Papadimitriou – Logicomix. A graphic novel involving the search for ultimate truth. So involving that I had to read it several times in a row.
  • Barry Hughart – Bridge of Birds. It’s rare that a book shoots right into the “favorite books” category, but this one did it.
  • James Randi – Flim-Flam! This book  is great to give to people who you want to be more skeptical in their lives. A harsh takedown of the ways we try to fool ourselves and others.
  • Elaine Pagels, The Origin of Satan. Reading this was like taking a trip back to the early Church, and realizing that they were all just making it up as they went along.
  • North, Bennardo, and Malki ! – Machine of Death. Personally, I’m hoping for HEAT DEATH OF THE UNIVERSE, but we can’t all get what we want.
  • Robert Kirkman – The Walking Dead, Compendium 1. A really good zombie comic, something I don’t usually find myself reading.
  • Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha – Sex at Dawn. A funny and very compelling look at the nature of human sexuality, at least before we invented agriculture and screwed everything up.

I don’t really have a “worst” list, because my baseline for “worst” is The Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket, so this is more like my “Meh List.”

  • Lois Gresh and Robert Weinberg – The Science of Supervillains. Much like their Science of Superheroes book, it focused more on why comic books get science wrong than what comics can teach us about science.
  • Robert Heinlein – Starship Troopers. A love letter to militarism, thinly disguised as a science fiction novel.
  • Terry Pratchett – Unseen Academicals. This isn’t Terry’s fault, it’s mine. The book is about soccer, and I really couldn’t care less about soccer.
  • Henry Hitchings – The Secret Life of Words. I like words, but this was every bit as boring as people who don’t like words think that books about words might be.
  • Robert Heinlein – I Will Fear no Evil. It would be a great story, if there was a story there. As it was, it was a memoir at best. A really weird memoir, but still….
  • John Scalzi – The God Engines. A really cool idea that didn’t seem to come to life for me. If he explores it further, though, I will happily read it.

That’s it! How about you – what were the best, worst, and meh-est books you read this year?

Have a happy New Year, and keep reading!

– Chris

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Filed under Apostolos Doxiadis, Barry Hughart, Cacilda Jetha, Christopher Ryan, Christos Papadimitriou, David Malki !, Elaine Pagels, FYI, Henry Hitchings, Howard Zinn, James Randi, John Scalzi, Lois Gresh, Matthew Bennardo, Max Brooks, Robert Heinlein, Robert Kirkman, Robert Weinberg, Ryan North, Terry Pratchett, Warren Ellis

December 30, 2010 · 7:00 am

Review 103: The Waste Lands


The Waste Lands by Stephen King

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The way this book started really threw me when I first read it. It was too… alive.

The Gunslinger takes place entirely in a desert – featureless, dry, unchanging. The Drawing of the Three takes place on a beach – featureless, slightly less dry, unchanging. With this book, a few months have gone by and Our Heroes are in a rather lush forest, without the privation that they had gone through in the previous books. They weren’t desperately racing the clock to try and find food or medicine or water, but rather were going at their own pace, according to what they wanted to do.

It felt weird to me, honestly.

All it needs is the little radar dish on its head. And maggots. Lot of maggots. (photo by Eric Bégin)

In any event, that is how the book begins – Roland has taken Eddie and Suzannah (formerly Odetta/Detta) under his wing and is training them as apprentice gunslingers. They’re learning to shoot, to hunt, and to trust the instincts that they have so long let lie dormant. When they accidentally awaken a gargantuan insane robot bear named Shardik, they discover the path of the Beam, which finally sets them on their way to the Dark Tower.

But all is not well. There is a problem, you see, one having to do with the very nature of the events that have gone before us, and it has to do with young Jake Chambers.

In The Gunslinger, Roland meets Jake, who has been transported to Roland’s world after dying in his own. The last thing the boy remembers was being pushed in front of a speeding Cadillac while on his way to school, seeing a strange man in black who claimed to be a priest, and then waking up in the dusty way station in the middle of the desert. Roland befriended the boy, took him along on his journey, and then sacrificed him to gain an audience with his own Man in Black. Without Jake, and Jake’s double death, Roland could never have made it to the beach where he pulled Eddie and Suzannah out of their worlds.

But there was a third door, remember? Through that door, Roland learned the true identity of the person who killed Jake – a man named Jack Mort, whose hobby was making people die in accidents. By taking possession of, and eventually killing, Jack, Roland erased Jake’s first death. He was never pushed in front of a car, never died, and never came to Roland’s world.

Something like this....

Except that he did.

Or rather, he didn’t.

But he did.

This paradox is driving both of them insane – Roland in his world and Jake in his. Their minds are trying to reconcile two irreconcilable histories, two versions of events that are both true, even though only one can be said to actually be true. In order to save them both, Roland and his ka-tet need to get Jake to their world, where he belongs. Doing so will take all of them risking their lives against agents of unspeakable power.

That’s the first half of the book, and this is another big difference between this book and the two that came before it. If he had wanted to, King probably could have split this book into two smaller ones, and they wouldn’t have lost much. Once Jake is rescued, we are granted a moment to breathe, a moment to appreciate the work and energy that went into making sure Jake and Roland came through the event with their sanity intact. Once we take that moment to breathe, which in the book consists of a wonderful dinner with the few residents of a dying town, the group finds themselves in terrible danger again as they enter the dying city of Lud.

Would you kill for him? Yeah, me too.... (photo by Kasra Ganjavi)

All through the series, it is said that “The world has moved on.” People talk about the civilization that has just collapsed (of which Roland is a final relic) and the one that came even before them – that of the Great Old Ones. The city of Lud is held up as a prime example of their prowess and their poisoned legacy. Within it dwells the tribal descendants of whose who fought over the ruins of Lud, sacrificing their neighbors at the sound of great drums that echo through the city (which are, oddly enough, the drum track from ZZ Top’s song, Velcro Fly), and living like rats in its crumbling walls.

The group is split at this point, with Roland and Oy (a doglike animal whom Jake befriends) trying to rescue Jake from the decaying clutches of a pack of murderers, and Eddie and Suzannah hunting through the city for Blaine the Mono, a monorail train that could be their only way across the horrible irradiated wastelands just outside the city.

It’s an exciting book, I’ll tell you that much, and let me tell you right now that you’re going to hate the ending. At least you would have if you were reading it when it first came out. You see, King admits that The Dark Tower is one long story which, for various practical and financial reasons, has to be split up into multiple books. This means that there isn’t always a practical and clean place to break off the story so the readers can wait for the next one. With this in mind, Kind decided to end The Waste Lands with one hell of a cliffhanger – Roland and his ka-tet aboard Blaine the Mono, an insane, sentient computer train that wants nothing more than to end its life. If they can defeat Blaine, they may live. If not, they’ll all die when Blaine slams into a wall at the Topeka terminal at 900 miles an hour.

Suck it, me in 1991! (photo by me)

This isn’t too troubling today, when you can just turn to your bookshelf after you finish, pick up Wizard and Glass, and keep reading. But put yourself in the shoes of the first readers of this book: they had already waited four years for this book to come out, and it would be another seven before Wizard and Glass was finally published. Even worse, I knew a guy here in Japan who was a huge Dark Tower fan, and he not only had to wait for King to finish writing the book, he also had to wait for it to be translated. My heart went out to him….

But I digress. This book finally sees our heroes on their way – walking on the path of the Beam, as it were. After two and a half books, the journey has finally begun, and if this book is any indication, it’s not going to be an easy one.

——————————————–
“Jesus Pumpkin-Pie Christ, don’t you get it? You’re killing each other over a piece of music that was never even released as a single!”
Eddie Dean, The Waste Lands

The Waste Lands on Wikipedia
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December 23, 2010 · 7:00 am

Review 102: Dave Barry Does Japan

(Just a reminder – take the listener survey! Or I will be forced to do the honorable thing and disembowel myself to rid my family of the shame….)

Dave Barry Does Japan by Dave Barry

In September of 2008, I went to Hiroshima with The Boyfriend. I knew it would be a more serious place to visit than a lot of the other places I’ve been to in Japan, for obvious reasons, and as I thought about it, I remembered this book. You see, while Dave Barry is enormously funny, and I always have a hard time holding in my laughter when he writes, he also knows exactly when to turn off the funny and talk seriously about a topic. Such was the case with this book, and the chapter on visiting Hiroshima.

Oh, how I wish he were.... (photo by me)

But I’ll get to that later. Let me start by saying that yes, this is a very funny book, as so many of his books are. I can only imagine, though, how funny it is to someone who’s never been to Japan, much less lived there. I’ll bet that, while reading some of the more ridiculous examples of how different Japan is from the US, a lot of readers were thinking, “No, it can’t be that weird. He must be exaggerating for comic effect.”

 

No, no he’s not. Not in the least. Well, some, yes, because that’s his job, but all of the things that he points out as being “strange” about Japan – the ubiquitous vending machines, rockabillies dancing very seriously in a circle, kids practicing their English with strangers, plastic food shops, all of it is absolutely true. He is not, in fact, making this up.

Literacy is not vital to eating (photo by xeeliz)

He says at the beginning of the book, “So this book is not authoritative. If you want authoritative, go buy a real book.” At no point does he claim to be an expert on Japan, or that spending three weeks here would make him one. In fact, the main aspect he plays on is his eternal cluelessness. As he points out, Japan is like one big, very exclusive club into which you must be born if you want to become a member. There are rules that no outsider can ever really learn, much less on a three week whirlwind tour. There are people who try – there are a lot of foreign-born residents in this country who do their best to live according to the rules, but no matter how hard we try, we’ll never really become members of Club Japan. So, Barry just decides to do his best and try not to make himself look completely stupid.

He marginally succeeds, which is good – otherwise there would be no book.

Kneel-down comedy. (photo by Norimutsu Nogami)

With his family, Barry goes from Tokyo to Kyoto to Kyushu and back again, stopping to see temples and shrines, sumo, ceremonies, kabuki, rakugo and car factories, among other things. Through it all, they do their best to adapt to the strangeness of Japanese life and Japanese food, and he comes out with some wonderful stories that had me cackling on the bus ride down to Hiroshima.

Which I believe I mentioned before.

It’s an interesting chapter in the book. The chapter itself is flanked by two grey pages – a signal to the reader that this is a no-funny zone. There will be no jokes between these pages, and rightfully so. Barry and his family went there on the anniversary of the bombing, August 6th, and observed the Peace Ceremony. They looked at the statues and the monuments and the dome, and went to the museum, and came out with an enormous sense of… conflict.

There is no question in anyone’s mind that what happened in Hiroshima – and Nagasaki – was horrific. All you have to do is read the testimonials, look at the photos and the drawings in the museum, look at the charred and burned school uniforms, pieces of flesh on display, dioramas of the flattened city and you know that the nuclear bomb is nothing that you can really joke about. Hundreds of thousands of people died because of those bombs, and not all of them died right away. Soldiers, yes -Hiroshima has a history as a military city – but babies, students, innocent men and women also perished in fire, blast, trauma and, of course, the long, lingering death of radiation sickness.

No city deserves that. Ever.

Not all that funny, really.... (photo by me)

At the same time, Barry feels that the bombing is presented without context, and he’s not the only one to think so. From what he could see, it looks like America just decided to do this horrible thing, and there’s not sufficient explanation to visitors as to why this was done. What would make a supposedly civilized nation do such a patently evil thing to so many people?

It’s very hard to justify what was done. I know the arguments – that Japan was training civilians to defend the home islands to the death, that millions more might have died in a long, drawn-out battle, that the Soviets were ready to swoop in and take over – but all those justifications kind of sound hollow when you see the photographs of people with fifth-degree burns, and read about the thousands of children who were orphaned in a fraction of a second. To those leaders, however, at that time, the dropping of those bombs was a necessary option, and I don’t think even they knew how bad the effects would be.

Regardless, the bombs were not dropped capriciously. They were dropped following a long chain of events, decisions and ambitions that reached back decades. And I think I agree with Barry that more attention should be paid not only to the aftermath of the bombing, but also to what led up to it. Maybe just because I don’t want my country to look like a monster.

This country is even weirder than he thinks. (photo by me)

Anyway, the Hiroshima chapter aside, it really is a very funny book. Even funnier if you’ve ever been to or lived in Japan. It’s not the kind of book you buy if you’re actually interested in learning about Japan, but if you want some good laughs, go for it.

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“Compared with the Japanese, the average American displays in communication all the subtlety of Harpo hitting Zeppo with a dead chicken.”
-Dave Barry, Dave Barry Does Japan

Dave Barry on Wikipedia
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December 16, 2010 · 7:00 am

Review 101: World War Z


World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks

(Just as a reminder – go take the listener survey! You’ll have good luck for seven years, I swear!)

So where were you when the zombies came? I remember where I was. I remember vividly.

It was the third lesson of the day – still one more to go before lunch – and one of my regular students was due for her weekly lesson. She came in each week like clockwork, and while her English never got a whole lot better, she seemed to enjoy herself. Actually improving her English was secondary to having a nice chat, I think, and we could always count on her to liven things up.

Not this day, though. For one thing, except for me, none of the teachers showed up. Normally that would be a problem, but a lot of students weren’t in either. It was just a few of us and one staff member. We had heard of some new sickness going around, but we work for a company that doesn’t accept sickness as an excuse for missing work. After all, I’d seen students come in with a cold that would have kept me at home, and Mrs. Kuroda was just that kind of person. Come hell or high water, I knew she’d be there. And she was.

No sooner did she get in the door than she collapsed. Her skin was pale and waxy and she had a bandage on her hand. It had little yellow flowers on it, I’ll always remember that. Like she’d made it out of a dress or curtains or something. I don’t know why that sticks in my memory, but it does.

The staff, Naoko, called 119 for an ambulance, and one of the other students, Shyunsuke, who was studying medicine at Kyodai, tried to see what was wrong with her. He laid her on her back, felt for a pulse, and got all panicky. “Shinda,” he said over and over. She was dead.

Now I don’t know if you’ve ever had anyone die in your workplace, but it’s weird. We didn’t know what the protocol for this kind of thing was. There were only six of us in the building, and none of us were really experts in dealing with sudden and unexpected death. Aki, a high school girl, started crying. Naoko kept redialing 119, but no one was answering. I was about to suggest moving her into another room when suddenly the most horrible sound came from the body on the floor.

It was somewhere between a moan and a gurgle, like someone drowning in syrup. We all looked at Mrs. Kuroda.

She was moving.

Slowly, jerkily, she was moving, getting her feet back under her and moaning the whole time. Naoko started to go to her, to see if she was okay, and I remember yelling, “Don’t!” At the time I didn’t really know why I yelled that. I know now. My years on the internet had pretty much prepared me for it, but I wasn’t nearly ready for the way the Mrs. Kuroda grabbed Naoko and took a huge bite out of her throat. Blood flew everywhere, and I think everyone was screaming. Mrs. Kuroda dropped Naoko and started making her way towards us, her arms reaching for us and that low, wet growl coming from her throat. I knew what she was then.

I grabbed a chair from a lesson room and started shoving her back, like some kind of lion tamer. I yelled for the other students to get out, but they weren’t moving. Aki was crying harder, Shyunsuke was busy vomiting, and the other two had hidden somewhere in the building. “Everybody out!” I yelled again, and gave Mrs. Kuroda a shove away from the front door. Then I swung it at her, aiming for the head, of course. It connected, and she went down. I ran back, grabbed Shyunsuke and Aki by the arms and yelled “Everybody out!” again.

I had barely enough time to shepherd them to the door than Naoko started to twitch. And Mrs. Kuroda was already trying to stand up.

We ran. Didn’t even care where we ran to – just away. The streets were quiet, but once I knew what I was looking for, it seemed like the zombies were everywhere. I’ve never run like that in my life, you know. Always used to joke that I would run when I was chased. So there you go.

We broke into a sports equipment shed at Otani University and each took one of those aluminum baseball bats. Then we headed for the Botanical Gardens. I still don’t know why we chose there, especially after what happened to Aki. A large, sprawling garden with lots of twisting paths and forests? Can’t imagine what we thought we’d accomplish. I just knew that we couldn’t barricade ourselves in a building – that never works, right?

I got the zombie that took Aki, and Shyunsuke was the one who made sure that Aki wouldn’t wake up again. Then we headed for the Great Lawn, on the theory that we’d be able to see any zombie coming from a few hundred meters.

Bad move.

It would have been a fine idea if there were more of us and if we were all armed with shotguns and chainsaws. All we had, though, were the two of us and some dinged-up aluminum bats. Against half a hundred zombies that all wanted to take a good look at the tasty humans who had so kindly put themselves on display. Shyunsuke and I were back to back, and I could hear him saying something over and over again in Japanese. I didn’t know what he was saying, but I reckoned it was a prayer of some kind. I was doing some praying myself as those things got nearer. I could see the dull shine of their eyes and hear their feet shuffle across the dead grass and wished for the first time in my life that I had a gun.

Not for them.

We were saved, improbably enough, by an SDF helicopter. It was doing flybys around the city and saw the zombies moving towards us. Some of the soldiers started taking head shots while others lifted us up into the copter to safety. Shyunsuke pretty much broke down as soon as we were safe, and I’m not ashamed to say that I did too.

That was the last I saw of the zombies. The rest of the story you already know – Japan was evacuated until the zombie threat was cleared. I wasn’t allowed to go back to Osaka, so I could only pray that The Boyfriend made it out alive while I waited in the refugee camp in Pusan. When I did make it back, after the war, I found that everything on this side of the river had burned to the ground. At that point, I prayed that he’d died in the fire. Anything other than becoming one of them.

It’s been a long while since “victory” was declared over the zombies, inasmuch as they care. People in Japan don’t like to talk about it, though. You get the feeling that we all did things and saw things that we’d rather forget, and if any nation is good at selective amnesia, it’s the Japanese. So I was really glad when this book came out. It made me feel… less alone.

Brooks went around the world, interviewing people who had experienced the Zombie War – including a couple of guys up in Kyoto, even. He listened to their stories, kind of like Studs Terkel, and wrote down what they had seen and done. He talked to everyone – soldiers, sailors, housewives, government officials – everyone who would talk to him. What he made of it is maybe not a comprehensive account of the war, but a broad look at all the things that people went through during those horrible years.

A soldier who went through the Decimation in the Russian army; another who witnessed the Iran-Pakistan “war”; that asshole who made “Phalanx,” which so many people thought would save their lives, Brooks talked to them all. He showed how the Great Panic killed so many people, and how the Redeker Plan and all its emulators saved so many more, as heartless and cruel as it was. He looked at the army and how they had to figure out how to fight an enemy that doesn’t need to eat or sleep, and which recruits new members as it kills them.

We still don’t know where the zombies came from or why they rose up. And I don’t think it really matters. As this book shows, there was so much death and pain, with so much heroism and glory, that the question of where the zombies came from is really immaterial.

It opened my eyes, I’ll say that much. From the refugee camp, we got very little news at all about the world. Just that the war was continuing. We heard about the civil war in China, and whatever it was that happened to North Korea – everyone heard about that. But the rest, I didn’t know. Not until now.

Brooks’ book is exactly what it claims to be. It’s an oral history, the collected stories of dozens of people who survived the war, and it’s something that our descendants will need to read carefully. For those of us who survived the war, the pain may still be close. So if you’re not sure if you’re ready for this kind of book, give it time. But do read it.

We must never forget what happened to the world when the Zombies came. In many ways, the living dead showed us just how important it was to be alive.

———————————————————–
“Don’t worry. Everything’s going to be all right.”
– Dr. Kuei, World War Z
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World War Z on Wikipedia
Max Brooks on Wikipedia
World War Z on Amazon.com
World War Z website
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December 9, 2010 · 7:05 am

Listener Survey Time!

Hey, kids, you know what’s fun? That’s right! Filling out listener surveys!!

Seeing as how I’m up to episode 100 on this podcast – and it’s really all thanks to you – I thought it would be good to get your opinions on what I’m doing so that I can make it more interesting, informative and fun for everyone.

To that end, please follow this link to my simple, ten question survey. It won’t take a lot of time, and it’ll be a big help to me.

I’ll be moving operations over here permanently in a month or so, giving you plenty of time to change your links and do whatever you need to do for the transition to be smooth. The new place looks a lot nicer – I like it, and I think you will too.

Thanks a lot for listening!

Chris

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