TBR Day: Lullaby (Chuck Palahniuk)

Five months have passed, and I have yet to participate in Avid Book Reader's monthly To Be Read (TBR) Day. Well, today that's changing.

I have a bad history of borrowing books and not returning them. Mister Troll is well aware of this (and yet still lends me stuff). I have another friend, Dana, who has yet to learn of my tendencies. She recently lent me three books, all of which I immediately placed at the top of my TBR pile in the high hopes of actually reading and returning them in a decent time frame.

One of these books is Lullaby by Chuck Palahniuk. He's the guy who wrote Fight Club, which was made into a movie that I really enjoyed. I thought this would be an equally fun read, so I dug in.

Set in modern time, the story follows Carl Streator, who inadvertently learns a lullaby that kills whoever it is sung to. Reproduced in an obscure book of international children's songs, the ancient African "culling song," is a magic spell originally created to be sung to malnourished infants or dying warriors to ease them into death.

Through his investigations of the song, Carl meets Helen Hoover Boyle, a real-estate agent specializing in haunted houses. She knows the spell, which she uses in a number of unique, if not completely ethical, ways. Carl, being the hero, confronts her about it. However, he learns that having the power to kill anyone at will is a dangerously seductive ability, and one not easily controlled, especially after you have internalized it enough that you can do it by just thinking someone dead.

The main plot of the book focuses on unraveling how this spell works and its ramifications, followed by a cross-country hunt for all remaining copies of the book containing it, as well as the original book of spells in which it was found. A couple more minor characters join in to assist the search and add some dramatic tension: Mona, Helen's employee and witch/occultist, and Mona's naturalist anti-society witch boyfriend, Oyster.

I found that I enjoyed much of the beginning. The culling song is a very simple, yet interesting idea. The tragedy of the song being distributed incorrectly as a lullaby, and thus read inadvertently by parents to their loved ones, really resonated with me, and worked to alternately horrify and sadden me (and I consider anything that can move me in such a way to be a good thing). Carl and Helen are both usually likable despite their deep character flaws. I found it interesting, albeit a little disturbing, to imagine myself in their positions.

However, the book has some big problems. There are many sections that try to be clever or trendily shallow (or just plain weird) and they feel forced. This gets annoying quickly, and even though I smirked a few times, I often found myself tempted to skip ahead. Then there are Oyster's preachy anti-society screeds. Basically, anything he says can be counted on to grate. The funny thing is that some parts of Oyster's message make sense, but the whole thing is so overdone that it induces eye rolls. And my annoyance only increased as the main character grudgingly accepted and repeated the message as if it was the author's.

Continuing the bad, later in the book some of the motivations, especially those of the minor characters, seem unrealistic. There's one bizarre scene at the end that I can only describe as garbage. Not only was the antagonist's motivation implausible, but the scene really reinforced the character's smarmy know-it-all jackass image. It did not help that the antagonist's method was so over-the-top and physically improbable that I said out loud, "This is stupid."

I enjoyed Fight Club. This book made me reevaluate the movie, as I saw similarities in the message and style. How much of my enjoyment of Fight Club hinged on me being an angsty, "nonconformist" teenager, more open to anti-establishment ideals and trendy shallowness (the backlash against a previous "deep" phase)? Maybe I'll have to go re-watch it and find out.

B.G. is going to be pissed...

But before I explain why... apologies again for the horribly delayed posting. We'll keep trying to stay updated. Thanks for checking back with us.

And now to the crux of the matter:

Pirate Freedom (Gene Wolfe)

I must disabuse you of any idea that this might be a recommendation. Rather, this is quite the opposite. Which is sort of against the whole point of this blog. Neither of us wants to rip on books that are bad (see here). We really just want to chat about some books we liked (not review them, just chat), occasionally recommend books we think are fantastic, that sort of thing. There are lots of other places you can go read about books that sucked (but seriously, who wants to?).

However, Billy Goat likes Mr. Wolfe's works too much for me to pass on this. And I also have not found any of Mr. Wolfe's novels to be less than good (until now). This is a clear demonstration of Rule Number One: no author is ceaselessly brilliant.

So. Gene Wolfe:

The Book of the New Sun, a series of four novels about Severian, the Torturer's Apprentice, set in the distant future. Ex-cell-ent! Wonderfully turgid.

The Book of the Long Sun, a kind of companion quartet, set in the same universe. The writing is a little more clear, but with Mr. Wolfe's typically cryptic and convoluted plot. I actually never finished the series, but it contains some of the most wonderful writing in science-fiction.

Not as good is The Urth of the New Sun, but it still has such amazing creativity that I can't honestly criticize.

And on the fantasy side: Soldier of the Mist and its two sequels. These are novels set in the ancient Mediterranean, narrated by a man with no memory (the opposite of Severian, I suppose). The setting, the history, the characters -- brilliant. Billy Goat tells me these novels are semi-obscure; I urge you check them out.

I thought for sure Mr. Wolfe would finally succumb to Rule Number One with Free Live Free. This is sci-fi in the near-modern day, much grittier and almost like "real" fiction. Hardly my favorite, but Mr. Wolfe pulls it off with a stunningly creative ending. Alas, to explain why I like the novel would be give you unforgivable spoilers.

And finally (though I have not yet exhausted the Wolfish canon), I came to Pirate Freedom. It's a novel, quite simply, set in the Spanish Main. Pirates! Ships! Guns! What's not to love? And yet, somehow... there's not much there. It's such a quiet novel, admittedly with some intriguing plot twists (very typical of Mr. Wolfe), but a decided lack of swashbuckling-ness. It's almost as if Mr. Wolfe tried too hard to be faithful to the historical period--which was interesting in its own right, but hardly anything like the piratical archetypes that one would long for in a novel.

Worst of all, the novel ends up being narrated from the modern-day, by a priest who somehow ends up back in time (Mr. Wolfe's notions of cyclical time are always present in his novels, but this one compares quite well with Free Live Free. Just in case you've read it.)

OK, OK, I don't mind if the main character is translated back in time to start things off. Works for Mark Twain, works for me. But do we have to spend part of every chapter back in the modern day youth center? Like, really? 'Cause I'm just here for the pirates.

I think perhaps Mr. Wolfe would have been better off just writing a novel set in the Spanish Main. Skip the sci-fi aspect, keep the characters true to the time period -- I think he could have done a fantastic job. But alas, this novel is the inevitable result... of Rule Number One.

That's it, folks, rant over! I hope Billy Goat will offer an indignant defense of his main man in the comments. And let's all encourage him to offer us a series of posts on the good novels of Gene Wolfe (of which there are many).

The End of Mr. Y (Scarlett Thomas)

The End of Mr. Y is quite an odd book, but it is refreshing to read something new and different. (The closest thing that I have read is Goedel, Escher, Bach by Mr. Douglas Hofstadter.)

It's been reviewed already, and I am afraid that I really have nothing else to add. Check it out!

(Very short: both Billy Goat and I--independently--have rather important things swirling around offline.)

The Lord of the Rings (Ralph Bakshi, director)

No, not the book. The movie.

No, not that movie!! This one.

I never had a chance to see the animated LOTR -- until recently, when I decided to catch up on some animated adaptations of movies (see my post on Watership Down). So I eagerly put it in the video cassette video player VCR (I can't even remember what it's called. And I really can't believe we still have a remote that operates it. Anyone under the age of 25 is encouraged not to continue reading this post).

Where was I? Oh, yes, LOTR, the movie.

Well, certainly it doesn't compare to Peter Jackson's version -- that was big and sweeping, and this is small and earnest. Cutting down movies to bare-bones animation can sometimes enhance the quality of the production. The animated version is surprisingly dark and gory, yet also chirpy. Still, Tolkien's story comes through clearly.

What I enjoy most about this kind of exercise is seeing a different interpretation of Tolkien. Surely everyone has a different vision for how to "do" the movie? I have quibbles with Jackson, and I have quibbles with Bakshi, but I also found much to enjoy and appreciate.

The animation is a bit odd. Apparently (according to the Source of All Knowledge) several scenes were filmed with live action, and then traced into animation. Although not a new technique, Bakshi uses this to create a very stark, harsh mood, well-suited to armies and battles. But this technique jars with the cartoon-y cell animation. Jackson preferred a consistent realism, but Bakshi's approach (though unsettling) would seem to suit the novels more.

Unfortunately, though, the movie is but a reflection of the novel. Imperfect, incomplete -- but it adds nothing. The best movie adaptations should add. It's the difference between reading a play and watching a performance. Characters, performance, production... you should get something new.

If we compare with Jackson, we find he added songs and music. Yes! How important these are to the novels, and how little the music shines through the pages of the books. (How reviled the songs were, too, but alas, the unwashed masses simply didn't understand.) Jackson expanded the roles and depth of female characters. Good for him! Jackson gave us sweeping and realistic armies; he gave us hordes. And whoa. Those took your breath away.

There were a few nice touches in the animated version (the going-away party, the Ring-wraith's assault in Bree). Intriguingly, all these "nice touches" were re-done exactly the same way in Jackson's movie (shame on him). But nice touches aren't enough to add true depth to an adaptation. In the end, I can only recommend this film for the curious. I don't think it stands on its own; you'd have to be a Tolkien fan, and you'd have to think, "Oooh, an animated film? Would that be any good?" If your curiosity is piqued, then satisfy it.

A warning, for those moved by curiosity: the movie ends abruptly, after the Battle at Helm's Deep (clearly some people are still bitter about this!). It is the first of a two-part series. The second part was not made. There are, however, animated versions of The Hobbit and The Return of the King, which the Source of All Knowledge tells me are linked as prequel/sequel. Huh? At any rate, you've been warned: the ending is abrupt, and the sequel may not exist.