The city referred to in the title is Ambergris, and rather than tell the story of Ambergris in a traditional novel format, Vandermeer has instead pieced together short stories, biographies, history papers, and letters to weave an image of this terrifying city and its inhabitants.
Vandermeer wrote each piece, but many different voices tell the story of Ambergris. Usually I'm turned off by the collection of stories as novel format, but Saints and Madmen, would not work as well if presented as a traditional long novel. Instead what you have is a sort of found guidebook to a city you've never heard of, that you read anyway.
The pieces here reference one another, sometimes contradict one another, but always add a layer to the city's realness. The slow reveal pays off big time. The city is still alive in my mind days after finishing the book.
Vandermeer is a rising star, and this intriguing book left me eager to see what he does next.
Perhaps you've heard of Muxtape, the latest darling of the musically inclined web crowd. It's a neat interface for sharing your music, mixtape style.
The last mixtape I made was for a girl in a Mississippi city three hours away from my home in Baton Rouge close to 13 years ago. She and I made a lot of mixtapes that summer. Swapping them on weekends when one of us would drive in to see the other. They were actual tapes too, made on a dual cassette boombox. Pressing play on one tape, record on the other. Some of the songs were recorded straight from my local rock station100.7 The Tiger, or, better yet, the Zephyr out of New Orleans if the wind was right and the sky was clear.
I really want to make a Muxtape, but I have so much music now that almost nothing stands out. I've probably bought over twenty albums in 2008 so far. I like most of them. Some of them I've spun only once before moving on to the next one. Maybe I'll give those another listen, maybe I won't. I can think of at least two that were added to my iTunes library this year that I haven't even listened to.
Before digital music vendors like iTunes (if you must), eMusic and now AmazonMP3, I bought two-thirds less music than I do now. This meant I was spending a lot of time with each individual record. Getting into the nuances, finding the hidden gyms. I played most of those early albums so many times, that it's impossible for me, even now, not to think of the next song as the previous one fades out (Soul Coughing's "Soft Serve" will always make me think of "White Girl"). Now when I buy two or three albums in a single click, I may spend a day with one album, the next with another.
I applaud the fact that this allows for more experimentation with my music. I've bought several albums from eMusic that I would have passed over easily in a traditional record store. Most of those times I've been rewarded with the discovery of a great new artist. However I lament that I care about less music as a result. In order for a song to earn a place on a mixtape, it has to carry some significance. My relationship with most of the music in my collection is insignificant.
To combat this syndrome, I've been using a method similar to Daytrotter.com's Progressive Reviews, which involves spending an entire week with a single album. It's the way I used to listen to music before I bought an iPod. One album on endless repeat. Of course back then my commute was a lot longer: 40 minutes one way versus about 15, so it takes a few trips to even get through an album. Last week it was Destroyer's Rubies. This week it's Parc Avenue by Plants and Animals. Nothing drastic has happened, but I do appreciate the songs more on the third or fourth listen. Maybe one of them will make it onto a Muxtape before the RIAA takes the site down.
Like a distant Canadian cousin of Blitzen Trapper, this three-piece spins shaggy songs into expansive, genre-bending symphonies. And though last year's too-brief With/Avec EP hinted at Plants and Animals' expansiveness, it didn't fully prepare listeners for Parc Avenue, a sprawling collection of rootsy melodies, majestic arrangements, and classic rock riffs that owes as much to jam-band psychedelia and it does to delicately orchestrated chamber-folk. -- Pitchfork, March 13, 2008.
The muse struck yesterday morning in the kitchen and I whipped up a very fine egg sandwich. The ingredients are simple -- Chorizo sausage, one egg, beer cheese* and toast -- but in combination are divine.
I formed the Chorizo into a patty and pan fried it. Then I fried an egg, over easy. I spread beer cheese on both slices of toast and assembled.
Enjoy at your own risk.
*Beer Cheese for those of you who don't know is cold pack cheddar with beer and spices added so that it becomes more of a spread. I never encountered it until we moved to Kentucky.
Looking forward, Barack can win both Wyoming and Mississippi this week. Then he has a four week battle to take it to Clinton, Inc. in Pennsylvania. He has to prove to his supporters that he can throw a punch just as much as he can take Hillary’s below the belt hits. We’re not voting for Gandhi here.--Jon Taplin, March 3, 2008.
Had Bush not waged a nasty smear campaign against McCain in South Carolina, McCain would have gotten my vote for President in 2000. Back then Al Gore seemed boring to me, and sadly that was as deep as my political knowledge went. I didn't know who George W. Bush was, but I had heard a lot about McCain. He was a Republican but seemed moderate enough for my liking.
Now however I know a lot more about John McCain. He sides on the Democratic side of many points. He is a moderate conservative by most measures and his party is afraid of him because of it. But don't be fooled. McCain is not a Democrat in hiding. When it comes to war he may be even crazier than the rest of his party.
Onward to Victory is a key element of the McCain platform. He refused to back down on the idea that the surge was working for so long, that for a moment McCain seemed like he'd been right all along. This is not the case. The "surge" has failed.Bombing Soviet ships, of course, would probably have started World War III, but McCain's vision, then and now, encompasses war as a way of life. There is significant evidence that McCain believes war is something righteous and necessary, a tonic for the national soul, intrinsically "noble" irrespective of context (he is still one of the only politicians to apply that word to the Iraq conflict). That is why it's no joke when McCain says casually, "There's gonna be other wars," or when he sings, "Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran." We have to assume that he will jump at the chance to expand this conflict and hit those politically sensitive targets his "complete idiot" civilian commanders once barred him from going after in Vietnam.--(emphasis mine) Rolling Stone, March 6, 2008.
On the surface Iraq is calm. (The lyric "Calm like a bomb" comes to mind.) The way the United States has achieved this calmness is very much like lighting a slow-burning fuse to a massive powder keg and hoping someone else comes along and extinguishes the flame before everything is blown to bits.
By continuing to insist that the "surge," of which buying the loyalty of former enemies is a large part, is working McCain is showing is true conservative side.Now, in the midst of the surge, the Bush administration has done an about-face. Having lost the civil war, many Sunnis were suddenly desperate to switch sides — and Gen. David Petraeus was eager to oblige. The U.S. has not only added 30,000 more troops in Iraq — it has essentially bribed the opposition, arming the very Sunni militants who only months ago were waging deadly assaults on American forces. To engineer a fragile peace, the U.S. military has created and backed dozens of new Sunni militias, which now operate beyond the control of Iraq's central government. The Americans call the units by a variety of euphemisms: Iraqi Security Volunteers (ISVs), neighborhood watch groups, Concerned Local Citizens, Critical Infrastructure Security. The militias prefer a simpler and more dramatic name: They call themselves Sahwa, or "the Awakening." -- Rolling Stone, March 6, 2008.
If you're planning on voting for Hilary, but not Obama. Or Obama but not Hilary, please consider the alternative.
What he does know about is crippling accidents, and that plays a very large role in Duma Key. Edgar Freemantle was a successful builder before a crane accident crushed his body, took his right arm, and resulted in his divorce. Edgar moves to the Florida Keys for some geographical therapy, and discovers a formerly hidden artistic ability.
Duma is about the power of art to uncover truth. Because this is a Stephen King story, that truth concerns dead twins, giant frogs, and a Florida Island's dark history.
While I enjoyed Lisey's Story a lot more than Duma Key the new book does speak to King's further development as a writer. He no longer writes pure "horror" in my opinion, but instead uses horror as the backdrop against which his characters live their lives.
No King's not writing literary fiction, but with the exception of the horrible Cell, King is writing deeper, fully realized works.
For me it was a compelling read, though I usually devour King at a rapid pace anyway. The story unfolds perfectly, ramping up the creepy factor with each new chapter. The ending fell a little flat, almost too easy, but other than that it's a new spin on classic King that's worth reading.
Reading is something else, an engagement of the imagination with life experience. It’s fad-resistant, precisely because human beings are hard-wired for story, and intrinsically curious. Reading is not about product.
New York Times, February 20, 2008, Book Lust.
This piece ostensibly calls Steve Jobs out for his wrongheaded remarks about the state of reading in America, but what I really liked are the ideas about books, like the one above, found in the piece.
This story from Rolling Stone is a few issues old, but can be found online. In the War on Terror, it seems there is
"The hope is that they will nab an actual terrorist or prevent a putative jihadi from becoming one," says David Cole, a law professor at Georgetown University and co-author of Less Safe, Less Free, a new book detailing the ways 9/11 has transformed domestic law enforcement. "It makes sense in general —but when you're pressing people to undertake conduct they would have never undertaken without an informant pushing them along, there is a real question if you're creating crime, not preventing crime." -- Rolling Stone, The Fear Factory, Feb. 7 2008.
When I'm actively working on my own writing, as I am currently, I read books in a slightly different manner than normal. I read not only for the story, but to study the craft. I did this while reading Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union and came away thinking I should give up writing entirely. My skills will probably never match those of Chabon.
His use of simile alone in this novel blew me away. His command of the English language is among the best I've read. His prose style is somehow simple and complex. Meaty sentences full of crystal-clear detail abound here.
The story is pretty damn good too. Chabon has taken a classic pulp-character, a down on his luck police detective, and an essentially pulp story and turned it into a literary feat of character driven fiction.
Amazing!
Recent Comments
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regan said:
I have a 90's playlist on my iPod called "the Zephyr" after that radio station. read more
on So The Mix Might Glow -
michelle said:
If you come visit we'll make sure to get some for you. read more
on The Oh So Good, But Oh So Bad Breakfast Sandwich -
michelle said:
Your relationship with music, past and present, echoes my own. I too miss getting to know albums the way I... read more
on So The Mix Might Glow -
Jason said:
[this is good]I'm going to take your advice and spend much of this week with one album - Gnarls Barkley's The Odd... read more
on So The Mix Might Glow
The Zephyr opened my ears to a lot of great music. That radio station was the gateway drug for my... read more
on So The Mix Might Glow