Carlos

I've never been a huge fan of “magical realism.” In fact, I've kind of disliked the label, often thinking of it as shorthand for “fantasy written by non-anglos.” I am, however, willing to admit when I'm wrong. And this is certainly one of those cases, as this work goes far beyond the conventions of fantasy. Marquez sets up a unique narrative, the story of a family and a town, in which miraculous and strange events are treated as everyday occurrences, and names seem to be reused in each generation. The effect of all this isn't one of confusion or arbitrariness. Instead, the novel reads like a very complex fable or myth.

Yet Marquez incorporates into this myth very real events, such as a bloody and pointless civil war, the reign of the fruit companies, and the murder of striking workers. In doing so, he's creating what could be taken as the foundation myth for Colombia (and by extension Latin America). That's certainly a tall order, but Marquez is up to the task. His prose, which with its twists in time and space are reminiscent of a more lyrical Faulkner, is integral to the fabulous sense of the tale.

It's probably fair to say that this is one of the great Latin American novels of the 20th century. It innovated many elements that would be borrowed later by other writers. Yet these elements, which make up magic realism, are so well integrated into the novel that one doesn't get that sense of cliche that often happens with reading influentual works.

The story of a poor orphan boy who runs away to sea, has a series of adventures among a crew of misfits, and returns home somewhat the worse for wear. The sort of novel Melville and Faulkner would have written had they been collaborating and had a supply of hallucinogens handy. The tale Fishboy tells is dark and gruesome, yet also funny and moving, told in a lyrical style full of rich language and set in a surreal yet familiar world of ghosts, mermaids, and strange civilizations. Not recommended for anyone who prefers happy endings.

A fascinating collection of short pieces, ranging from mysterious autobiographical moments (but are they in fact real?) to some lucid and penetrating essays on the short story. Piglia stands on the shoulders of those two giants, Borges and Arlt, from which he ventures even farther into the secret nexus of fiction and life. Some pieces demand to be read slowly or repeatedly to truly absorb the intoxicating brilliance of Piglia's vision.

A nice conclusion to the Ambergris saga. Relatively straightforward noir-style detective tale lacks some of the postmodern fun of the previous works.

A nice tour of the development of the Mythos, from its origins in Lovecraft's fiction, through the Derleth era. It covers a good number of authors who have worked in the Mythos. Also, I was rather thrilled to see that Joshi found Mr. X almost as disappointing as I did.

Popular Hits of the Showa Era is the story of surreal conflict between two groups of the marginalized in the Japan of the late '80s. It starts as the tale of a group of dissolute young men, who have taken to gathering together once a week for what might charitably called parties, at which they interact very little yet still feel some sense of camaraderie. A chance encounter on the streets leads to a conflict with another group of outcasts. These are six women in the thirties, all divorcees, who also experience life with some detachment. As the conflict escalates, both sides resort to ever more extreme tools of destruction. Greatest Hits is a fairly bizarre, darkly humorous tale of the marginalized finding some connection to life through rather extreme acts. Not for the faint hearted.

Interesting work detailing Borges' relationship to Argentine literary tradition.

A well-written, provocative and yet ultimately not entirely convincing account of the displacement of the Platonist worldview and its re-emergence in the form of popular entertainment. Nelson clearly sees Western culture through the lens of a dialectic of Aristotelian and Platonic thought, and she both predicts and welcomes the return of Platonism into the mainstream. Yet there are gaps in here, moments where the analysis seems superficial, eliding over contradictions, so that I sometimes wondering if Nelson is not herself making the mistake of conflating imagine with believe. It was interesting to read this book shortly after finishing Thomas Ligotti's The Conspiracy Against the Human Race, since there is quite a bit of overlap, and Ligotti too seems to foretell a crisis of philosophical materialism, though with quite different conclusions.

This may seem like an odd thing to say about a horror writer, especially someone as boundary-pushing as Barker was (in his debut), but I think Clive Barker's Books of Blood sort of hit a sweet spot. They're shocking and bloody without descending into hackwork. They've got plenty of interesting characters yet never seem to drag. They're smart and creative without becoming pretentiously clever. I wouldn't say he gets it right all the time (see “The New Murders in the Rue Morgue” in volume 2), but since good horror is actually rather hard to write, his batting average on this series is phenomenal.

When I started Twilight, I anticipated really disliking it. I had seen the movie, which had some nice cinematography but was rather dull, and had read other people's reviews of how terrible the writing in the original novel was but was still curious enough to give it a shot. Perhaps it was just low expectations, but I ended up enjoying it more than I expected.

If you've been paying attention to popular culture for any length of time, you're already familiar with the premise, plot, character, etc. so I'm going to skip directly into commenting on the story.

To start, the writing isn't that bad. I won't claim that Meyer is a great author or that it isn't a bit clunky at times, but it's worth keeping in mind that it's being told from the point of view of a seventeen-year-old girl with a fondness for early Gothic and romantic literature. I thought the writing fit the strange mix of banal, awkward and overheated that you'd expect from a girl like Bella. It could be argued that those elements above represent not Bella's limitations but Meyer's, but I can't see why not to give the author the benefit of the doubt.

I think the interesting mix of Gothic and realistic elements actually works pretty well a good deal of the time. It seems perhaps a rather simple formula, filtering overheated teenage emotions through the overheated emotions of the Gothic tale, which helps highlight how bewildering and overpowering emotions can be, especially for adolescents. It is possible that Meyer stumbled into some of these elements. Perhaps the idea of the story starting off when the virginal heroine moves from her sunlit world into a gloomy place connected with her own past wasn't intentionally borrowing from older Gothic tales, but again I feel the author deserves the benefit of the doubt.

Additionally, this makes what might be interpreted as absurd elements a little more understandable. The interest that every boy in Forks shows towards Bella isn't just a Mary-Sueism, it's the fact that only in this gloomy world is she capable of becoming an adult. Her clumsiness, so over the top as to be absurd, suggests the struggle to come to terms with her own adult self, both physically and emotionally.

The novel is not without it's flaws, though I think some of these are pretty typical of the paranormal romance genre. The book seems to fall most flat when it tries to go dark. As a threat, James seemed almost laughably bland, and Edward's tale of his brief time hunting humans leaves so little impression that it's no surpirse it was cut from the movie. The book is particularly unconvincing when trying to suggest the threatening aspect of vampirism. Vampirism comes off as pretty awesome, so that when by the end Bella is being asked to be turned into a vampire, it's difficult to understand Edward's resistance.

This is especially odd since Edward generally seems to come off as incredibly smug about how awesome he is. And while it's understandable that someone over a hundred years old and possessed of tremendous abilities would come to feel pretty superior, it seemed to me that all those years didn't seem to have taught Edward much in the way of maturity, so he ends up coming off as an entitled, self-satisfied jerk quite a bit. (A bit of an esoteric note here, but I wondered if it was a coincidence that Isabella, Bella's full name, is the name of the young sister in Wuthering Heights who, much to her own tragedy, falls in love with bad boy Heathcliff.)

So, while not great literature, I'd say Meyer is a worthy successor to Ann Radcliffe.

One thing that puzzled me as I read It was, Why wasn't it scary? I finally came to the conclusion that the problem is that It is meant for kids or at least teenagers. When Pennywise makes his first appearance, he entices his young victim with the promise that once in Pennywise's realm, he will have lots of cotton candy and games and won't ever have to grow old. The echo of Peter Pan and Pinocchio's Pleasure Island is clear, and I think It makes much more sense when you consider it along those lines.

I have to admit that while some people find Pennywise completely terrifying, I thought he didn't quite work. Part of it is the way King structures the story. Our first sighting of the clown is when he murders someone when he's clearly some sort of monster, so there's no frisson, no ambiguity, when he starts showing up in his various guises. His habit of changing into cinematic villains to stalk the young protagonists also struck me as counterproductive, a postmodern sort of move which served mainly to remind me that Pennywise, like the Wolfman, the Mummy or the Creature from the Black Lagoon, is just another pop cultural artifact.

King also errs in going Lovecraftian, as he doesn't really have the temperament to pull it off. It is closer to Smaug than to Cthulhu, though I wonder if it would be possible to write a horror story that encompasses King's humanistic approach when dealing with its characters and Lovecraft's cosmic approach when dealing with its outer beings.

Anyway, I give it four stars because I acknowledge I'm not really the audience for it but still think it's good at what it sets out to do.

Save for one story, all of the stories in this collection are well-written haunting works of weirdness.

I had found the first volume sort of hit and miss and was hoping that the second would preserve the strengths while avoiding some of the pitfalls of the first. While it is more consistent, it's still sort of weak and made me realize how difficult it can be to translate from one medium to another, especially when dealing with such an odd, singular vision such as that of Thomas Ligotti.

I've found that Ligotti's best stories have such a powerful sense of language that after reading one, I'll have a phrase or a whole sentence bouncing around in my head for a while. To transfer these stories successfully into a visual medium would probably require a visual imagination equally as twisted and powerful as Ligotti's literary imagination. Sadly, none of these pieces reflect such an achievement.

Of the stories adapted, “Gas Station Carnivals,” which is the first of the four, is easily my favorite. The story centers largely around a story that one character tells about weird little carnivals located adjacent to gas stations, which his family would come across on road trips. Among the attractions was a sideshow which would sometimes feature a sinister figure called The Showman, who never shows his face to the audience. From this little bit of reminiscence, the story spins off into a strongly Kafka-esque sense of paranoia. The visuals are adequate though not spectacular, and the choice to fully reveal The Showman, while an arguably defensible choice, reveals the pitfalls of this sort of adaptation. Also, the illustrator, perhaps because he was aware of the importance of language, has chosen to highlight important terms in the dialogue, which makes the whole thing feel like the world's strangest Mark Trail comic.

The next story is “The Clown Puppet,” is a weaker story than Gas Station Carnivals. The story is of a man who has experienced occasional visitations from a clown puppet, a literal puppet that will suddenly appear in his presence and mostly just proceed to creep him out. These experiences have turned him into something of a drifter, and so as the story begins he finds himself behind the counter of a little drugstore after closing hours. The clown puppet shows up, but the events of that evening deviate somewhat from his previous experiences. Because it is a lesser story, one would imagine there's a little more the illustrator can do, yet it also means the story is even more strongly dependent on the language. The art pushes more towards the surreal, with a certain washed-out look which emphasizes the artificial lights of its nighttime setting. However, it doesn't really compensate for the weaker story.

The third story is “The Chymist” from Ligotti's debut collection Songs of a Dead Dreamer. I confess I've never thought this was a great story. Ligotti does have a talent for a unique sort of psychopath who despite a certain awful glamour also happens to be completely aware of his own insignificance in the universe, a combination of malevolence and lucidity I find chilling. In this story, the psychopath is also the narrator, which means instead of seeing the story from the point of view of someone we might identify from we see it through someone completely repellent, which makes it less able to get under my skin. The narrator is an actual chemist who works for a pharmaceutical company, and the story involves his picking up a prostitute in a bar, going back to her place and him giving her a drug with certain (literally) nightmarish effects. It's not a great story, and the art doesn't help. At some points, it does sort of evoke the peculiar take on urban decay that is a prominent Ligottian theme, but the figure of the chemist himself, whether in his leisure-suit wearing regular day self or in his mad scientist alter ego, is just a bit too cartoony. A better artistic representation might have made this unlikable character a little more interesting, but the cartoony approach just makes him even less interesting.

The final story is “The Sect of the Idiot,” a story about a man who moves to a new city, an older city which he finds almost transcendent in its age and decay. One night he has a dream about certain strange, inhuman figures gathered in a room. During the course of the dream, he comes to realize that not only do these figures somehow control reality but that they are themselves in turn controlled by even more powerful, more inhuman beings. This story is also from Songs of a Dead Dreamer and the original, while pleasant enough, never struck me as one of his stronger pieces. The adaptation is interesting, though as with “Mr. Locrian's Asylum” in the first volume, I got the sense that the story had been trimmed a little too much, so that much of the sense of atmosphere was lost. Aside from saying that I liked the way the figures in the room reflected the story's strongly Lovecraftian element, I thought the art decent but not strong enough to compensate for the abridgment of the text.

Overall, I'd say only “The Chymist” is a disappointment, though perhaps it was unrealistic to hope an interesting approach would redeem a lesser story. The other stories, while never really elevating the original material or perhaps even living up to it, are enjoyable though not quite a match for the originals.

This little volume (edited by August Derleth) brings together a sampling of H.P. Lovecraft's better poetry. While I've often heard the opinion that Lovecraft's poetry is quite poor, reading this gave me the impression that's not an entirely fair. If there's one weakness to HPL's poetry, it's his archaism. This is especially true of the earlier works, where Lovecraft indulges his most Edwardian inclinations. The later poetry, beginning with The Ancient Track, while still somewhat old fashioned in style captures a pleasant weird vibe. Especially worthwhile is “The Fungi From Yuggoth,” which features thirty-six different sonnets. Some are little scary stories in their own right, while others aim more for the sense of the numinous that often accompanies the horrible in HPL's fiction. While Lovecraft is arguably not the best weird poet of his era–that title would probably go to Clark Ashton Smith–I would argue he's worth reading for anyone in seeing this curious overlap betwixt the poetic and the uncanny.

As the introduction describes it, the avant-garde period in Chinese fiction was relatively short, with most of the production between the years 1987 and 1989. The avant-garde fiction was marked by a turn from politically focused literature towards a more experimental, literature-for-literature's approach. Most of the stories in this collection have an element of ambiguity and uncertainty, a calling into question of the very nature of narrative. The first two stories, both from Ge Fei, are investigations, the first (“Remembering Mr. Wu You”) a murder mystery, the second (“Green Yellow”) a historical investigation, which only become more puzzling the farther the searcher enters into them.

One other element running through many stories is violence, sometimes quite savage in nature. Yu Hua's “1986” tells of a man obsessed by the violence of China's ancient past and broken by the violence of its recent past, and his reenactment of that same violence. Bei Cun's “The Big Drugstore” spins its tale of an herbalist's shop into nightmarish dimensions. Su Tong's fiction resembles Ge Fei's in its irresolvable mysteries, but in “The Brothers Shu” also gives us a boy giving rein to his savage side.

The collection finishes off with a handful of stories that evoke the modern crafter of labyrinths, Jorge Luis Borges. Sun Ganlu's “I Am a Young Drunkard” makes allusion to the “blind Argentinean” before going on to tell of the narrator's encounter with an old poet, a tale quite poetic in itself. Ma Yuan's “A Wandering Spirit” begins with an epigraph from Borges, then proceeds to a twisting narrative where truths collide.

Overall an enjoyable collection. Details to follow.

Overall, a successful collection that captures the spirit of Aickman without falling into mere pastiche or imitation. While I liked some stories more than others, there was no tale that felt superfluous or detrimental to the over-all reading experience.

Juan Jose de Soiza Reilly was an Uruguayan/Argentine journalist and author from the first half the twentieth century, whose work influenced follow journalist/author Roberto Arlt. I'd never heard of him until recently, so I suspect this anthology is in part to make sure he does not fall completely into obscurity. The book collects an interesting variety of pieces, most of it fiction, though a few essays (on being a journalist or various aspects of the Argentine art world) are included. The stories include some portrayals of the life of the hard-knock life in Buenos Aires, a short novel about the moral failings of the upper class, a satire on journalism, and a couple of peculiar stories with elements of science fiction (including the title story). Most of it was pretty engaging, though perhaps less so than Arlt, except for the novel, which felt as if it didn't really go anywhere. I rather liked the science fiction stories and would probably pick up an anthology containing more of those kinds of stories.

Una colección de varios cuentos cortas del principio de la carrera de Piglia. En general, son bastante buenos, pero la verdadera joya es el que da titulo a la colección. “Nombre falso” es una narrative del descubrimiento de un nuevo manuscrito de Roberto Arlt, en que la ficción y la no-ficción se mezclan libremente. El resultado es una intersección genial de las influencias de Arlt y Borges, la clase de experiencia que puede cambiar como une lee ficción.

A collection of approximately three hundred poems from the T'ang Dynasty. Some very beautiful poetry, with themes including the beauty of nature, the joy of friendship, the sorrow of being separated from one's loved ones, romantic love, and growing old. My only lament is that since I don't read Chinese, I'm unable to really experience the way the poems were originally meant to sound.

En general, el libro realiza la onda de William Gibson en Bolivia sugerida por la descripcion. Yo no lo llamaría brillante, ya que juega un poco como pastiche: un poco de Gibson, un poco de Borges, un poco de García Márquez , un poco de Phil Dick, etc. Además, no estoy convencido que todos los experimentos estilísticos y las diversas líneas argumentales se combinan efectivamente.

La mayoría de la acción desplega durante los últimos días de la administración Montenegro. El gobierno ha promulgado muchas de las reformas neoliberales, incluyendo la privatización de los servicios públicos. El crisis empieza porque la gente se harta con la multinacional que dirige la compañía eléctrica y comienzan a demostrar publicamente. Un grupo clandestino, dirigido por un hacker llamado Kandinsky, decide que esta sera la oportunidad perfecta para derrocar al presidente.

Oponiendolos es el servicio de seguridad del gobierno, incluido el departamento de criptografía que se denomina Cámara Negra, que es dirigido por un ex-empleado de la CIA con el nombre de Ramírez-Graham. Entre su personal es el veterano Sáenz, quien va por el apodo de Turing, y que es totalmente Old School. La esposa y la hija de Turing también están involucrados en la acción (a diferentes grados). Además, un ex magistrado ha estado investigando los crímenes cometidos por el gobierno de Montenegro cuando era una dictadura y ahora ve una oportunidad para obtener justicia.

Por alguna razón, Turing es el único personaje cuya narrativa se da en la segunda persona. El uso de narración en segunda persona no salo malo, pero no me parece que fue realmente necesario. Los otros personajes, salvo uno, se narran en tercera persona. Ese personaje, que es el ex-jefe de Turing, pasa la mayor parte del libro inconsciente en una cama de hospital, la víctima de algún trastorno neurológico degenerativo, los primeros síntomas de que consistían en halucinaciones en que él era inmortal y tenía anteriormente encarnado todos los criptógrafos de la historia. Este aspecto, junto con la atmosfera de paranoia, es donde el libro me recuerda a la obra de Phillip K. Dick.

Me pareció interesante como los temas del cyberpunk caben en el tercer mundo actual. En muchos aspectos, un pequeño país en desarrollo es más parecido al escenario de Neuromancer que los Estados Unidos contemporáneos. Es decir, se contará con la presencia de una cultura popular global, los gobiernos débiles y corruptos, las multinacionales sombra con mucho peso para repartir, yuxtaposiciones dramáticas de la riqueza y la pobreza (así como de alta y baja tecnología).

The idea of hint fiction is that by keeping a story at 25 words or less a writer can suggest a larger, complex story in the space of only a few lines. It's an intriguing concept which, if this collection is any indication, is tricky to pull off. Many of the stories either feel like great lines, either as something brilliant to open with or a nice little bit of characterization or plot twist within a novel. I think the collection is best seen as a serious of experiments, with the determination of success or failure left to each individual reader. That not all of these experiments are succesful is understandable given the challenges of hinting at so much by so little.

Jack Kerouac is in Big Sur when R´lyeh rises from the deep. The Great Old Ones are coming back, so Kerouac thinking the planet may need whatever dharmic firepower he can spare, sets out to stop them. This quest will take him to San Francisco, Denver, New York, and many points in between, during which he'll join forces with Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs and Neal Cassady. He's going to need the help, as the path to salvation is filled with those who have heard the call, beetlemen and mugwumps. (In an interesting inversion of Lovecraft, it's the average Joe's and workday stiffs who are most susceptible to Cthulhu's influence.)
The Beats vs. The Great Old Ones seems like the kind of literary mashup that shouldn't work or would at least lose its charm in anything longer than a short story, so it's a pleasant surprise to see how well it works. The crazy energy of Kerouac's writing feels right at home with the end of the world, while capturing both Kerouac's spiritual hunger and his growing world-weariness. Nick Mamatas pulls off a fun, pulpy story with quite a bit of soul.

Though I wouldn't recommend it as an intro to HPL (due to the inclusion of lesser stories, such as “The Shunned House” and “The Horror at Red Hook”), as a longtime Lovecraft fan I found it to be a real treat. Joshua and Cannon's notes help bring out the use of historical and literary allusions as well as the intertextuality of Lovecraft's tales. Includes such gems as “The Picture in the House,” “Pickman's Model,” and “The Call of Cthulhu.”

Having ruined the life of a previously wealthy Englishman, vampire Sebastian Newcastle makes his way to India, drawn by a mysterious urge. Here he seeks the Thuggee, believed to have been wiped out by the British only a short while ago, with plans to bring them to a new glory. Reginald Callender, the men whose life Sebastian ruined, comes looking for him, seeking to revenge himself on Sebastian. Both will soon find that India has more in store than either can expect.

No Blood's premise of vampire meets Thuggee is what attracted me to this novel, and it did not fail to live up to it. The vampire Sebastian is quite compelling; Daniels manages to make him both sinister and sympathetic. Calcutta becomes, as in Simmons' “Song of Kali,” a location which evokes the old-time Gothic dread while incorporating an element of the exotic, and the encounters between the British and the Thuggee recall Masters' “The Deceivers,” but Daniel's has less of a colonial mindset than Masters or Simmons. Overall, an enjoyable vampire novel with a unique twist.