June Reading Summary

Bulmer's Dray Prescott adventures just go on and on.  At least they are quite entertaining.  #31 in the series is called Masks of Scorpio, from 1984.  Dray has been reunited with his wayward daughter, and they are beginning to have father/daughter adventures on the planet Kregen.  The masks of the title refer to masks worn by the religious cult that Dray and Pompino are trying to eliminate, as well as masks worn by others who oppose the religion.  Once again Dray saves a little girl from sacrifice, and another temple gets burned.  But Dray gets sidetracked as Pandahem gathers a fleet and prepares to attack Vallia.  Dray and his daughter musts somehow stop the fleet before it gets started. 

Each novel contains at least a dozen separate adventures, along with plenty of camaraderie among Dray's followers, both men and women.  There is intrigue, savage fighting, and plenty of eating and drinking and even some singing.  The adventures continue and I couldn't be happier.

 

E C Tubb's Cap Kennedy #9 Earth Enslaved is from 1974 and is 128 pages long.  It's not really Earth, and it's not really enslaved.  But I quibble.  My main concern here is a male SF writer who, for most of his prolific writing career, has been a sexist beast (as opposed to a sexy beast, which I am).  In this story of an alternate Earth captured by aliens, woman are dominant and men are meek and subserviant.  Fine.  We've seen this a hundred times before in pulp SF, especially in Edgar Rice Burroughs' writing.  Here is my peeve with Tubb.  When all is saved and getting back to normal, Cap Kennedy (the strong and very manly type) tells the main effeminate male hero from this alternate Earth that it's time that men and women become equal partners, rather than have one sex dominate the other.  Certainly a very admirable statement from Cap (and Tubb).  The only problem is that Cap is returning to his own universe now, probably the most sexist one ever invented by any pulp writer.  I mean it's 1974 as he writes, and women have nothing but minor and subservient roles in all of Tubb's stories.  Cap works with an all-male team, led by an all-male administration, in a pretty much all-male dominated stories.  So where is the equal partnership that Cap was encouraging others to take up?  Or was it merely that he couldn't stand to see women bossing men?  Pray, readers, do not preacheth unless one practiceth. 

 

Moving on now to three novels in the Kindle Delphi Classics series, I begin with Oscar Wilde's first comedy play.  Lady Windemere's Fan is from 1891 and was a big hit in London when it came out.  The theatre manager asked for more, and Wilde was able to oblige him.  Though silly and perhaps even a bit fluffy, the play is often outrageously funny, with one liners popping up from stage left and stage right in often unexpected ways.  Sometimes they go by so quickly that one barely has time to laugh.  At least reading the play one can put aside the book for a moment or two before continuing (and with Kindle, proceed to highlight relevant sections).  One of Wilde's most memorable lines occurs in Act 3: "We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."  Not just funny, but truly profound!  Also from Act 3:  "There's nothing in the world like the devotion of a married woman.  It's a thing no married man knows anything about."  One final example, from Act 1: "I think that life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about."  I could quote pages of this stuff.  Priceless.  The plot concerns a woman who believes that her husband is being unfaithful to her, and though she never learns the complete truth (which I find quite sad), everything ends well.

 

P.D. Wodehouse wrote a series of pulp novels about life at an English boys boarding school.  The books are easily read and nearly as easily forgotten.  They mostly concern sports, either cricket or rugby or football, but these are often used as props for the character situations that arise during the story.  In this one a bad egg tries to bully his way onto the first squad of rugby, despite his being a very poor player.  He goes to extreme lengths to get his way, and it says something about the boys who endure this mischief that things get settled on their own, without teachers or headmasters.  The Golden Bat is from 1904 and can be read very quickly.  It does have some lasting value and no doubt teaches all the right things to boys who read it at the time.  Wodehouse has many humourous situations and characters in the story, but there is enough nastiness to make it seem real enough.  On the lighter side are boys who smoke in secret, and two others who secretly have pet ferrets and visit and feed them in their hideaway.  On the darker side we have study rooms being wrecked and precious photos shredded, and a boy being framed for mischief to a statue that he didn't do.  Oddly enough the book could probably still be read by high school boys and enjoyed.

 

With the 1922 Jacob's Room, Virginia Woolf begins her ascent (or descent, depending on one's view) into the hierarchy of avante garde writers.  While the novel is a far cry from Ulysses, it's also a far cry from her first two novels.  While Jacob may be the central character of the novel, much more is written about London, the English landscape, Paris, Athens, and at least a dozen other characters.  Some of these other characters are close to Jacob, such as his mother and his best friend.  But others are just on the periphery of his existence.   We seem to learn more about them than we do about Jacob.  What we do learn about Jacob comes from these side characters, who observe him and tell us snippets of information about him.

Ultimately I felt let down by the novel, though I do give the author full marks for attempting to diverge from the age-old story telling method.  While the novel isn't close to being as challenging as even a single chapter of Ulysses, I found my attention drifting quite often.  There are many fine passages to come across, but they are pretty far apart.  One of them talks about how straying for only a moment from one's path may lead to an entire new adventure.  Others are descriptions of what one might experience or feel, for instance at the Acropolis.

Overall, however, there is little to really engage a reader.  I rely on curiosity to keep me reading a book.  What might this character do next?  Or, now that this has happened, how will the character deal with the new situation?  Storytelling is probably the oldest cultural tradition we have, and it still engages most people, at least from time to time.  Throughout the book I had very little interest in Jacob, and even less in the people who knew and interacted with him.  I had nothing to grasp hold of.  Ultimately I came to the final page and was glad at my arrival.

 

Susanna Clarke's Piranesi is from 2020.  After reading the first chapter, a number of other authors popped into my head, sometimes a good thing.  Mervyn Peake, James Ballard, Iain Banks, Umberto Eco, and even Edgar Pangborn spring to mind.  Those are among my favourite authors, and while each has left their own unique literary footprint behind, they seem to share something about one's view of the world.  Clarke writes sparsely but well, though she tends to tie up too many loose ends--it would be nice to leave a few of them dangling at the end.  Her plot is concerned with "transgressive ideas", meaning those that are usually outside the limits of the modern definition of science.  The labyrinth also plays a major role in her philosophy, in this case an endless oversized house with gigantic rooms peopled with innumerable marble sculptures.  Characters are able to shift between one reality and one other one, though the author never defines exactly how this is done.  The novel is easy to read, leading us slowly and carefully through her story.  It begins like a great puzzle in which we do not have many pieces, and builds gradually until the last piece is found and put into place by the solitary main character.  Banks' The Bridge offers readers a similar experience, though much more intense and troubled, and the ending is more prosaic in its explanation.  Umberto Eco's The Island of the Day Before offers a third variation on the puzzle theme, and of course Peake's Gormenghast is probably the great grandfather of all such books.  Piranesi is an very enjoyable read, and is recommended if you like any of these others novels and authors mentioned.

 

I read the Kindle edition.
 

Cornell Woolrich was a novelist who had many of his stories and novels turned into major Hollywood films.  Cover Charge, from 1956, was his first published novel and it is quite a fun book to read.  The story begins in New York near the end of the first World War.  The first part of the book follows Alan and his climb from the gutter to considerable fame.  During the war there was a notable dearth of men, and he was soon earning a good living by working at jazz clubs as a dance partner to rich and often beautiful women.  Because of a heart defect he was ineligible for military service, though dancing all night doesn't seem to cause much of a problem.

The second part of the book follows Veronica, a woman he is destined to meet and later marry.  We first hear of her as a fifteen year old wannabe flapper.  She and Mary, a younger sister, live with their older brother and a grandmother in a rundown apartment in NYC.  She is soon living the high life, getting by on her looks and fun, outgoing personality.  The final section of the book deals with their eventual falling out, and what happened to each of the couple afterwards.

While the book has a somewhat confusing beginning, it quickly hits its stride and captures the reader, throwing him into a world of endless parties and drinking and dancing.  Woolrich is a colourful writer, and his novel includes many fine quips that reminded me often of Oscar Wilde.  When Veronica is asked for her thoughts on being a wife she replies, "It feels like when you get vaccinated," she said, "you're not sure whether it'll take or not."  Later another great one-liner pops up: "She was pure as the fallen snow, only she drifted."  A woman, describing Alan, has this to say:  But oh, his eyes; they make you think things that you shouldn't.  They're enough to make a good girl bad and a bad girl worse."

One more quote, discussing Veronica her girlfriend at 18 years old.  "Veronica and Rosalie are of an age, between them they discuss men and women and the world in general. They are in favour of men, skeptical about women, and not particularly interested in the world in general."

I look forward to reading many more books by Woolrich.

 

A group of about fifty poems by W. B Yeats was next.  The Wind Among the Reeds was published in 1899 and contains several of Yeats more notable works.   Included are Song of the Old Mother, The Fiddler of Dooner and The Song of the Wandering Aengus.  I also much enjoyed Into The Twilight and Aedh Tells of the Perfect Beauty.  A very worthwhile collection to have sitting around the house.

 

Finally comes an epic novel by Iain Banks.  Whit is from 1995 and is yet another display of the author's ability to tell a good story well.  Banks can be frustrating times.  The novel is very slow to get started, and the first half of the book suffers terribly from story interruptus.  Isis is the name of the heroine.  She is 19, innocent and naive.  She is at the centre of a religious community founded by her grandfather, and because of her unusual birth date (Feb 29th 1976) will eventually become leader of the group.  She is sent on a journey to find her female cousin, who has left the flock.  The girl who leaves the farm is a woman by the time she returns a few days later, and she soon experiences and learns that all is not healthy at the commune.  Banks fills in so much backstory in the first half of the book that the actual story of Isis' journey to London and beyond doesn't really get much chance to develop, as it constantly interrupted by pieces of backstory.  The book was probably put down unfinished by a lot of readers, and I would not blame them.  However, I am very glad that I stuck it out, because once the story is allowed to play out it just gets better and better.  For the second time Banks has made a female character the centre of the plot and the most important person in the story.  She is a strong character in the beginning, but her strength continues to grow as she encounters information that totally upends her world.  She proves herself many times over, and comes out ahead after all.  The book has a lot of subtle humour as Isis encounters the "real" world for the first time, managing to navigate it quite well despite her initial ignorance of how things actually work beyond the commune.  A terrific book, and a long one.  But the second half flies past when Banks lets loose his writing skills and fertile imagination.  Highly recommended.

 

I read the Kindle edition. 

 

Mapman Mike

 

 

 

 

April 2024 Books Read

 There were nine days of travel last month, which seriously cut into my reading time.  The long eclipse day and the week in Sudbury cut my reading time down by nearly a third.  Though I did manage some reading in Sudbury on our week long visit, it wasn't anywhere near the usual time allowed for such pursuits.  Two of the books read last month were 500 pagers, also limiting the number of books read.

I have finally run out of SF from Robert Silverberg.  This month I dove into his recently republished crime and sex novels.  Though pretty mild by today's standard best sellers, in the 1960s he chose to use a different name on those book covers.  From 1960 and republished in 2022, even more of Silverberg's early output is now making its way into mainstream publishing.  I have the Kindle edition of The Hot Beat, now published under his own name.  The story is short, though there are 25 chapters.  A news reporter and a former girlfriend of a suspected killer try to prove his innocence.  The police don't care; they have a suspect in custody and he looks guilty to them.  Though not up to top notch crime writing standards set by Hammett and Chandler, the book gets to the nitty gritty aspects of sordid lifestyles.  The girl, Terry, gets pawed by creeps, and we get a queasy enough feeling when it happens.  The suspect is a former popular big band leader who hits the skids via alcoholism.  Two people put him at the scene of the crime.  The novel is preceded by a short intro by Silverberg, who seems as amazed as this reader regarding the republication of his crime stories.  In addition, there are three short stories included.

 

Jailbait Girl is from 1959.  Sorry readers, but the girl is 23.  She has a scam going with her boyfriend.  After finding guys to seduce her, the two crooks return later, she dressed as a high school girl, to extort money.  They score four times, but the fifth time turns out quite different.

 

The Drunken Sailor is from 1958.  A young sailor looking for his first time with a woman is sold out by a buddy, who has a scam going with the girl who does the trick.

 

Naked In The Lake is from 1958.  A murder story with an ironic twist at the end, like most of these tales.  A man kills his pregnant lover, but his wife manages to outdo him without violence.

 

I own the Kindle edition. 

 

From 1976 comes the 157 page on-going troubles of Dray Prescott, titled Captive Scorpio.  Dray goes off in search of a daughter he has never seen, who is living with scoundrels and trouble makers.  Imagine his surprise when he does encounter her (see cover art, below).  Of course she hates him; he is a coward, etc.  He ends up having to leave her among the group of traitors planning his death and that of the Emperor.  Meanwhile, back in the capital city, the Emperor's armies have been tricked and defeated.  The evil Wizard of Loh, 'Phu-si-Yantong' is behind the attacks on Vallia, and there seems little that can be done to stop him.  In the shocking finale, another very important person close to Dray and Deliah is killed, forever altering the leadership and destiny of Vallia.  Along with the shocking revelation regarding Dray's daughter, and the death mentioned just above, it is obvious that Bulmer is taking his series very seriously.  None of these happenings were expected, and end up shocking the reader, who expects most things to continue on as as before.  Nope.  A very good entry in the series. 

 

Cover by Josh Kirby. 

 

From 1973 comes Monster of Metalaze, a 125 page pulp SF novel from one of the best of the trade.  This time around Cap Kennedy works with a (male) team on the planet Metelaze to stop the government there from completing a series of towers that are supposed to give limitless energy to the planet.  It's obvious to the Terrans that the towers will kill all life on the planet when turned on.  To find out what is going on, Cap gets himself into the planet's dictator's good side, eventually becoming his body guard.  Assisted by a professor, a large and very strong man, and a person who is able to blend in anywhere like a chameleon, they go to work to find out the truth.  The story jumps back and forth between the various Terran operatives, and becomes quite complex at times.  Once the truth is known, the political ruling council has to be convinced they are in danger.  Some suspect it, but others support the dictator in everything.  To add to the confusion, a fake religious leader out for power is harnessing his followers to overthrow the present system so he can take over.  It's all very messy, and not a terribly satisfying read.

 

From 2013 comes the 482 page 3rd part of Moorock's epic series detailing the life and adventures of Colonal Pyat, Jerusalem Commands.  The events now take place between 1925 and 1929.  At some point in this wonderful series I suspected that I would begin to tire of Pyat, and that process is now well underway.  I am reading the volumes too close together, so I will rest Pyat for a while, and possibly even rest Moorcock for a time.  Pyat is the cocaine sniffing Cossack from Kiev who continually denies his Jewishness.  His rants against Moslems and what they ultimately represent to the world are pretty much non-stop, as are his rants against Jews.  Sometimes his insights are quite enlightening, and at other times one wonders why there isn't a fatwah laid upon the author.  I guess not many people have read it or drawn undue attention to these books.

Pyat is an entertaining person, very full of himself, and his fictional memoirs are among the best travel writing ever laid down on paper.  This time we begin in the USA, slowly making our way to New York from Los Angeles and back again, with many adventures in between.  Pyat is a 1920s silent movie star, as is his best friend Mrs. Cornelius (mother of Jerry).  With his beloved Esme, they embark on a ship to Egypt (from LA) to make a desert epic film.  The journey is long but great fun to read.  Filming doesn't end up going so well in Egypt, and Pyat and Esme become sex slaves, forced to make pornographic films.  Mrs. Cornelius, who knew better and gave fair warning, leaves the country unhindered.  Poor Pyat.  He goes through a living hell, and doesn't talk much about the details.  These are left to the readers' imaginations.  Esme is now taken fgrom him, never to be seen again.  Then it's finally an escape into the desert, followed by a balloon ride to Morocco.  In Morocco Pyat slowly recovers from his nightmare in Egypt, but again gets into deep trouble, becoming a captive of the rich Arabic leader of Marrakech.  Escape finally comes, but not in the expected way.

The book is often tiring to read, though admittedly it is very good.  I recommend taking a lot of time to read these novels.  I have been gobbling them.  Pyat's Egypt experience is certainly a low point, but there are many high points to balance things out.  Whether amidst a bustling city or stranded in the middle of the Sahara Desert, Moorcock always uses just the right words to get the mood and the atmosphere down perfectly.  Highly recommended series.

 

#6 in the Lone Wolf Series, Chicago Slaughter, is from 1974 (Malzberg was writing one of these per month) and it is 165 pages long.  The tone of these books is shifting.  Wulf is now sick and tired of killing, and the killings that he does undertake get more and more difficult.  He is on his way to Chicago with his now famous briefcase of pure cut heroin.  He wants to turn it into the DA there, where a grand jury is trying to get to the bottom of the country's drug problem.  But as the story moves along, sometimes over familiar ground and sometimes not, Wulf begins to realize that the system is rotten from top to bottom.  The Chicago DA gets his orders from that city's drug kingpin.  Wulf goes through an amazing thought process at one point where he realizes that even the Vietnam war is being fought so that the supply of drugs from Asia can continue, rather than be stopped in its tracks by the Communists.  And closer to home it appears that the CIA wants the drug trade to continue, though reasons for that are obscure.  Williams, his one time partner on the NYPD, is badly knifed on an undercover operation, and spends much of the book in hospital.  But he finally wakes up to the fact that Wulf has been right all along--the system is rotten, and it's rigged.  Today we might ask "So what else is new?"  There is a short postlude by the author at the novel's completion.

 

On to Delphi Classics, beginning with the continuation of the complete works of Virginia Woolf.  Night and Day was published in 1919, four years after her first novel, The Voyage Out (See January 2023 Books Read entry).  Lasting for 579 painful pages, the 2nd novel is a huge disappointment.  It's a love story involving two couples and an odd person out that takes place mostly in London, though it is a cardboard London, a city we get no feel for.  Had there been some humour involved it might have been a less painful read, but alas, it is all so serious.  Katherine, daughter of a prestigious family, becomes engaged to William, whom she does not love.  She loves Ralph.  When William takes notice of her younger cousin Cassandra, the engagement is called off.  But no one tells her father.  Ralph proposes to Mary, but she realizes that he is in love with Katherine, and refuses him.  It is all so dreadfully boring.  The 'young' people (the youngest is 22, the others 25 or over) act like tongue tied high school students when they encounter one another.  No one seems to know anything about love and what it truly is.  The only non-hopeless person is Mary.  She works at a society trying to garner the vote for women (but after a while she doesn't work there).  The novel seems truly endless, but I stuck it out, being stubborn enough.  It sounds like something Woolf might have written for close friends to hear it read to them.  In most articles about her writing, Day and Night isn't even mentioned.  I wonder why.  I think she was trying to achieve a prose version of something vaguely Shakespearean.  Or not.

A collection of poems and a play by Yeats came next.  The play and poetry were first published together in 1892.  The play was revised and published separately later, as was the poetry, under the title The Rose.  The play, a mystical one, is called The Countess Cathleen.  I really liked three of the poems, one of which is probably his most famous one.  "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" was written in 1888, and served the poet's needs much as Knight Peak in NM does for us--somewhere spiritual and pleasant to think about during the duress of living and working day to day.  "When You Are Old" and "A Dream of Death" are also quite remarkable works.  As to the play, it is in five scenes, and according to Yeats should take about an hour to perform.  A woman gives up her land, house, and gold to feed the poor and starving of Ireland by selling her soul to agents of Satan.  At the end, the angels find a loophole in the bargain and manage to save her soul.  Not exactly an engrossing bit of theatre.  However, it was part of the search for something home-grown in Ireland.

Lastly came Sherwood Anderson's 2nd novel.  Marching Men is from 1917, and follows the fortunes and misfortunes of the son of a Pennsylvania coal mining family, as he escapes the small dreary town where he was raised and goes out into the world (Chicago) in search of something bigger and better.  This is one of fiction's strangest characters, and one of the strangest novels I have ever read. Nearly as strange as Vita Sackville-West's 2nd novel (see January books read blog).  I won't say much about this book (stop me if I do), but Mr. McGregor has some serious social issues to deal with.  His attempt to bring order to a chaotic world by having men march around after work is, of course, symbolic.  They do that sort of thing in China, perhaps, but it would never catch on over here.  The brotherhood of men is a widely misunderstood concept, and Anderson realizes this.  But his shallow attempt of proving it likely turned off most readers (at least I would hope).  Today we have sporting events and Taylor Swift concerts to unite people.  The college football stadium in Ann Arbor Michigan holds over 100,000 people, and autumn football weekends are always sold out.  That is just one example.  Books like Harry Potter have united millions of people in ways Anderson could never have dreamed about.  A professional symphony orchestra is probably the best example of a finely tuned brotherhood, uniting with one goal in mind.  Though a mighty strange book by almost any standard, it is at least capable of starting discussion about topics most writers never touch.

Mapman Mike

 

 

 

January Books Read

I read 13 books last month, including the 7 authors remaining from my Avon/Equinox SF Rediscovery Series, and 6 from the miscellaneous shelf.

 

Volume 7 in The Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg is called We Are For The Dark.  Each of the ten stories is introduced by the author, and he also has written a 5-page intro to the volume.  The finest tale is the title one, a novella.  One of my very favourite kinds of SF stories has to do with found ancient alien technology, art, and/or music.  Silverberg has written a masterful story about true exploring, which is usually a search within oneself.  But he has done both types here, by combining it with an outward search.  We visit several planets, and learn why humans are going beyond the 100 light year radius decreed when colonization began.  One of his best stories, it is from 1988.  Lion Time in Timbuctoo is from 1990, also a novella.  The African story setting takes place in the same world as the author's 1967 novel The Gate of Worlds.  In that alternate history story, the plague decimated Europe until only about 10% of the population survived.  As a result, there was no European colonialism in the new World or in Africa or Asia.  The Turks rule a huge swathe of Europe, the Aztecs and Incas are still in control on their side of the ocean, and China remains a small player in world affairs (as does England).  This is the second of what Silverberg had planned as three stories set in that world, and it's a good one, more political intrigue that anything else, but very well written and fun to imagine.  Also noteworthy is Enter A Soldier. Later. Enter Another One, from 1989.  It is a novelette built around a discussion between Pizarro and Socrates about right and wrong.  

 

Under A Velvet Cloak, from 2015, is Piers Anthony's 8th and final book in his Incarnations of Immortality series.  This is not a slight series by any means, though Anthony often treats the material very lightly.  The series is needlessly complicated as it backtracks through time, moves into the future, and sees events from the perspectives of many different characters.  Most of the time reading I was not exactly lost, but in so deep that I didn't really care very much, except for wondering when the book would end.  If you like the first book you will probably enjoy reading the others, but beware.  Things get overly complicated.

 

Bulmer's 7th Dray Prescott novel is called Arena of Antares, and is from 1974.  This new adventure sees Dray captured (yet again) and made a fighting slave of an evil queen.  Yawn.  On it goes, with the remainder of the novel set in a gladiatorial arena, with fight after fight, usually uneven, for the delight and satisfaction of the bloodthirsty populace.  I was quite bored soon after the arena scenes takes over the plot.  Luckily for us, Dray and Delia are saved at the last second by their friends in an airship, who rescue them from the arena and take them to safety.

 

Tubb's 4th Dumarest novel is called Kalin, and is from 1969.  So far this is a pretty good series. 

Dumarest has a habit of ending up on dead end worlds, those that are depressing, have no honest work or way to earn money, and are nearly impossible from which to escape.  This time he hits a poisonous mining colony, worked by slaves.  The few free men have to scramble hard to find enough food to eat, and enough warmth to keep them alive over the winter.  The local wildlife is on the dangerous side, too.  He and Kalin, a psychic woman, arrive there after their passenger ship explodes, and they manage to escape in a life pod.  They are picked up by a slaver, but luckily for Dumarest he has enough money to buy his way to freedom, and Kalin's.  Her story becomes more complicated the further one reads, and by the end we are left dazzled by Tubb's plot.  Making their usual beneficial appearance are the religious brothers; making their usual harmful appearance are the Cyclans.  This is one of the better entries so far, in a series that will run for a very long time.

 

Cover of the month for January 2023.  The artist is John Schoenherr.

 

I finished up the 4th volume of The Collected Stories of Jack Williamson, reading the first half in December, and finishing it up in January.  There are volumes in the series that I do not have, but they cost hundreds of dollars and I have no interest in getting them.  His early stuff is mostly so much juvenile crap anyway.  So this ends my affair with Jack's fiction, except to read his highly anticipated autobiography in February.  The volume of short stories I finished up is called Spider Island.  The only decent story of his from the January reading is called Released Entropy, from 1939.  The story raises the question of how strongly was Williamson affected by Olaf Stapledon's writing.  A lot, it would seem.  Worlds within worlds, and universes within universes.  Despite the cop out ending, this is a fun story to read.

 

Stormbringer by Michael Moorcock contains four linked novellas from 1963-64 (updated slightly more recently) on the further--and final--adventures of Elric.  While none of the stories really stand out, they are fun to read.  Elric is certainly a unique sword and sorcery type of hero, so different from Conan, the heroes of Edgar Rice Burroughs, or even from Fafhrd and Mouser by Fritz Leiber.  All of Elric's adventures are tied up with sorcery, and especially with his soul stealing sword.  If this is your thing, then Moorock and Elric are for you.

 

Malzberg and Pronzini teamed up for their final novel in 1979.  Night Screams is a bit frustrating to read as a murder mystery.  The reason is that the story is written so that virtually anyone could be the murderer.  The writers wouldn't even have to make up their own minds until the last chapter.  So it's a cheat if you want to try guessing who did it.  And it you are correct, then it is likely that you guessed, or drew the name from a hat.  The story uses psychics as the victims of gruesome murders, with the setting a snowed-in village in New England.  As usual, there are too many victims for one novel.  The authors have collaborated on a few books of short stories, which will be reviewed here someday soon. 

 

Turning now to the six books from the shelf, five of them were taken from my Delphi Classics collection on Kindle.  Only one book actually came off a (dusty) shelf.  Black Cloud Rising came from an honest to goodness bookstore in Detroit (Source).  I went in and asked if they had anything on the American Civil War from a Black perspective.  I was shown this book by D. W. Falade from 2022.  A work of fiction, it has many truths to tell.  We follow a Black sergeant and a Black regiment of soldiers as they go about their day to day marching and fighting in the South during the Civil War.  There were no surprises to this reader regarding the rampant racism in the North and South (but especially the South), and to the higher standard that the Black regiment was held.  Though led by whites, the leaders (the colonel, anyway) are willing to learn about their men as they go.  There are no major battles, but there are opportunities for the regiment to show their stuff, and as they did in real life, they accounted themselves very well.  One does not have to have an interest in the Civil War to read this wonderful story about growing up Black, becoming a freed slave, and enlisting in the Union army.  Highly recommended.

 

Next came a truly delightful and slightly mad story by H G Wells called The Wonderful Visit."  From 1895, an angel accidentally crash lands on Earth, is shot and wounded by the vicar (a nature lover and collector who thought it might be a rare flamingo), then brought home to rest and recuperate.  This is not an angel of God, but one of art, like a muse.  This one is a violinist.  The story stabs at the heart of Christian society, however, and almost every page sends out a zinger or two.  I had not expected much from this story, but it turned out to be a real gem.  Chapter Two, where the author discusses English gentlemen scientific nature "collectors," has never been bettered.  Definitely worth a read.  Apparently Joseph Conrad loved the book.  Marcel Carne made a filmed version in 1974, which I have yet to track down.

 

Vera is from 1892, an early play by Oscar Wilde.  Loosely based on a real Vera, it tells of the Nihilists in Russia who wish to overthrow the Czar.  Political intrigue, hard socialism, and the defeat of monarchy is at the heart of this adventure tale, in four acts.  It was performed for a week in New York around the time it was written, before closing suddenly.  I doubt if it ever sees the light of day much anymore.  It certainly isn't a terrible play, though I doubt that Americans would have cared for the plot.

The Voyage Out was written between 1912-15, and was Virginia Woolf's first novel.  A lot of this novel is sticking with me.  It's one of those books where nothing much happens, but everything happens if one is aware.  A little bit autobiographical, a woman of 24 years ships out with her father, who owns a shipping company.  They are off to Brazil.  Also on board is her uncle, who is a scholar, and her aunt, who takes the girl under her wing.  The young Rachel Vinrace has been raised by maiden aunts in Richmond, and is pretty much clueless about life, men, and about love.  The novel traces her slow awakening, and of her first love.  The novel is slow to grip the reader, and it didn't really happen to me until we'd been in Brazil for some time.  There are a lot of minor characters, and we even get a brief trip up the Amazon.  But most of the action takes place in a small town not far from the river, in the villa where Rachel lives with her aunt and uncle, and in the hotel where the other British travelers stay.  Born in 1882, Woolf is about the same age as Rachel, and was obviously a thoughtful and observant woman.  Her first few drafts were heavily revised on the advice of friends, who found her original story too harsh an attack on society.  It's easy to read between the lines to see what she often meant, however.  It is an amazing first novel, and well worth reading.  It is a long one, at just over 500 pages. 

Next came a volume of poetry by W B Yeats.  The Wandering of Oisin and Other Poems was published in 1889.  The title poem is an epic ballad from Irish mythology, and is quite good.  Having read the Mabinogian, this one recalls similar doings.  It is about a normal man who falls in love with an eternal spirit, and they dwell in happiness for many a hundred years.  Eventually, however, he wants to return home, somehow expecting everything to be as it was.  Though warned that he would never be able to return, he heads for home.  It is the only early poem that Yeats liked in years afterward, and I must say that the rest were not very memorable at all.

Lastly came Sherwood Anderson's first novel, Windy McPherson's Son, published in 1916.  Divided into four books, the first deals with Sam's youth, growing up in a small town in Iowa.  He sells newspapers, and his enthusiasm and flair for selling and getting ahead impresses the locals.  He is guided by an artist, and a former school teacher.  His father is the town drunk, and his mother is the local washerwoman.  In book two he heads for Chicago to earn his fortune in sales, and indeed he prospers beyond anyone's wildest expectations.  He becomes a ruthless businessman, working tirelessly to make more and more money.  In book three he chucks it all and heads on the road, becoming a (rich) wandering vagabond.  He is in search of meaning to his life.  He and his wife had planned to raise children as their main goal, but their attempts result in three failures, all nearly killing his wife.  And so he goes in search of the big something.  Book four is very short, and brings him to the end of his journey, and at least a partial answer to his still burning questions about life, the universe, and everything.  The book will not be everyone's cup of tea, but for those lost souls who still haven't found what they seek (luckily, this reader has), the book will be a welcome journey into oneself.  Surprisingly good writing, though the novel is not critically acclaimed.

Mapman Mike

 

 

 

Criterion Channel

We get weekly newsletter updates from the Criterion Channel, and the last one had a letter they had received from Wes Anderson.  He proclaimed his love for the offerings, and said that Criterion  was like the Louvre for cinema lovers.  That is an apt description,as we discover major and minor treasures each time we browse the website.  In a typical month we watch about 11 movies on Criterion.  This weekend is Deb's film festival, where she gets to choose three.  With one to go, here is what we have seen so far.

Now showing on Criterion. 

Crumb is a very disturbing film, mostly about mental illness and how it has affected three boys from the same family.  The Crumb brothers each have their own problems, mostly stemming from childhood and high school years.  The two Crumb sisters refused to be interviewed for the film, so things might just beyond just the boys.  We do get to meet and hear about Mum, and Dad, who passed away well before the film was made, also looms large in the narrative.

The crew follow Robert Crumb around downtown Hollywood for several days, and inside his own home.  we talk with former girlfriends, a former wife, and a present wife.  We meet his two brothers, Charles and Max, and the sequences are disturbing.  We see many examples of Crumb's underground comic art, and that is probably the most disturbing thing of all.  Still, it is a must-see film.  I was never a fan of Crumb's work, but still found the movie very addictive.  I have just located all of his work on ReadComicOnline (along with great Michael Moorcock story comics), so I will get around to some of it at a slightly later date.  The film is from the director of Ghost World and Art School Confidential.  All three movies are brilliant.

Now showing on Criterion. 

We watched Orlando tonight, blown away by the costumes and sets.  The recreation of a carnival on the frozen River Thames (filmed in Russia) is enough reason to watch the movie.  But there are many others, including Tilda Swinton's portrayal of a character seen through time, at the same age, but not always the same sex.  Taken from a novel by Virginia Woolf (which neither of us has yet read), the director has made a virtually unfilmable book into quite a ravishing film!   I was constantly reminded throughout of Black Adder, and wonder if that writer was at all influenced by the Woolf book, or whether this movie was influenced by Black Adder.  A highly recommended film, and it should be seen more than once, just to get all the visuals.

Now showing on Criterion.  

Earlier in the week I chose this indie film from 1987.  Four years in the making, it just managed to get completed and find a distributor.  Not a great film by any means, but the excellent documentary that comes with it gives a pretty good indication of what it takes to sometimes get a movie done.  The film can be better appreciated along with the documentary.  Three LA film students were (barely) up to the challenge, which was largely financial.  Allison Anders is one of the directors, and I will be screening more of her work in the future, this being her first film.

Mapman Mike

Ides of August

Our weekly Detroit visit was a short one, without actually any stops in Detroit.  We had two pick ups at the Dearborn mailbox, had lunch in  Dearborn, and came home.  However, the outbound voyage to the mailbox was a bit surreal, as we kept hitting obstacles that consumed a lot of time.  Construction in Windsor made the journey to the bridge quite long.  The customs line were much longer than normal to get into the US.  And an accident on the main freeway into Dearborn saw us trapped on the highway in nearly stalled traffic for a time.  A truck had overturned just up ahead.  The highway was gridlocked for over six hours.  It had just happened when we got stuck.  We managed to finally get off at our exit, which was somewhat busier than usual.

Lunch was at La Shish, where we shared an order of rice/almond salad (the best there is!) and a side of baba ganoush.  It comes with lots of freshly baked pita bread and two kinds of dips, a spicy tomato one, and whipped garlic, which comes out looking like butter.  Our lunch for two cost $22, including tip (we only drank water), and we brought home enough for our dinner.  In Windsor we stopped at Fred's Farm Fresh Market for a peach pie.  It was full moon night, so we needed something round to eat.  We never saw the moon due to heavy rain, but the pie was soon eclipsed by about 1/4.

Speaking of rain, it had been very, very dry around here, even though ditches are still flooded and our creek is still flowing backwards.  When we got back from Detroit at 3 pm I checked the rain gauge, as the ground seemed a bit damp.  It contained 0.7" of rain!  We had missed the biggest deluge of the summer while we were away.  But then an even bigger rain storm hit us dead on around 9 pm, which is about the time I was supposed to put out the recycling and garbage for Friday's pick up.  We received another 1.3", totally 2" for the day.  Not bad!  However, this is very localized rainfall, and most places did not receive any.  We got lucky.

This morning, the door guys are back, taking out and reinstalling our door.  Two weeks ago they were just finishing up when a heavy tool was dropped onto the new footplate, denting it severely.  Today everything has to come out, an new silver footplate installed, and then everything reinstalled.  I don't think they made any money on this sale.

In movie news, we watched a very long samurai film over Monday and Tuesday evenings, and a different kind of movie last night (Thursday).  Bandits Versus Samurai Squadron is showing on Criterion, while Mrs. Dalloway is showing on Amazon Prime.  Both movies started out as books, though the body count is much higher in the samurai film.  Bandits is a wide screen colour extravaganza, with some of the bloodiest stab wounds I have ever seen.  The plot is a little hard to grasp at the beginning, as there are two bandit gangs, and they are both robbing the same house on the same night.  They are rudely interrupted by the official police squadron.  So all of the main characters (about ten) are introduced within five minutes.  After a while things begin to make sense.  The opening scene when the squadron arrives on horseback, in the house, must have been quite the scene to film.  It is stunningly effective.  We have seen an anime series (on Prime) about this same squadron, from the same series of books.  Bloody, but some great sword work.  Also, the final castle scenes show one of the most stunning interior art and design I have ever come across in a movie.  Watch the final half hour to see it.

Bandits versus the Samurai Squadron, an epic film of love, violence, and lovely interiors.

Mrs. Dalloway is a late 1990s film from a novel by Virginia Woolf, starring Vanessa Redgrave along with much of the British acting guild.  So many characters recognized from so many other series and films.  But it is Vanessa's film, as she spends a day preparing for a large party she is giving that evening, and reminiscing about her coming of age years.  The setting is 1922, and intertwined with the party story is one about a young man suffering from what was then known as shell shock.  Shell shock was not something people took seriously, unless it affected one of their own.  There was no treatment, and sufferers were often left to their own devices.  If they attempted or threatened suicide, they were forcibly required to live in sanatoriums, or rest homes, to suffer in quieter surroundings.

 Showing on Amazon Prime.

    

It is a mostly gentle film, though there are some biting comments on British society of the time.  The costuming and interiors are of course perfect, and Ms. Redgrave sparkles as the hostess who fears that her party will fail miserably, but carries on with raised chin.  It's fun seeing many of the party goers as their younger selves in many scenes, (different actors, of course), and how they have changed and aged and matured, and mostly grown apart.  Live or die friendships at one age often become distant acquaintances in later life, and this movie handles that aspect quite well.  With top notch acting and some attempt at depth, the movie is quite enjoyable to watch.

Mapman Mike