American Expansion by KZ

In rereading one of my favorite authors, Steven Crane, I realized that I had yet
to actually review one of his works. While The Red Badge of Courage is perhaps my
favorite, I’d like to save it for another time. Instead, since I covered one transformation of
the American Frontier last week with Zitkala-Sa, I figured I’d cover a more positive view
of American Expansion.
In The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky, Crane illustrates the eventual movement of
society’s borders by showing how civilization comes to tame the Wild West. The story
deals with movement and transformation, not on a personal level, but on a societal level.
As marriage and family come into Yellow Sky, Texas, the world of the wild frontier
dissolves away. Ultimately this story describes the overall change that society hoped and
argued for at the time. The belief that men could not exist as proper men in as natural
a place as the prairie or the plains of Texas, was widely held by the majority; only the
trappings and suits of society could dress a man properly. So if a man can’t exist in such
a place, that place must be changed so a man can exist there. This is what Crane argues
in his story, that through physically changing the nature of his surroundings, a man can
make a more positive and comfortable life for himself anywhere in America.
The world of Yellow Sky is not wholly wild when the reader is introduced to it,
as the prairie or the woods that we see in other literature at the time. Society had already
been slowly encroaching on the frontier, and as each wave from the east grew stronger
and stronger, what little resistance of the wild ways gave out. In Yellow Sky even the
last savage man, Scratchy, has been partially civilized, as noticed in his “eastern” clothes.
The fancy “maroon shirt” and “gilded boots” adorn a man who is being absorbed by
the influences of civilization, but is still a base creature of the wilderness. The opposite
of Scratchy, is Jack, who has taken a bride and brought her back to Yellow Sky in an
attempt to bring the last few traditions of civilization to the frontier. When confronted
by his rival, the marshal stares down his ties to a savage past and simply steps away,
saying, “I’m married.” Scratchy is forced to withdraw and disappear as a result of
this “foreign condition” which reduces him to “a simple child of the earlier plains.”
The last traces of wildness ebb out of the white man, and civilized man is left standing
and married to his “drooping, drowning woman,” a symbol for the family’s struggle to
survive in the wild. As Crane concludes his story, the woman is wilting, but not dead,
and she will grow stronger as Scratchy fades away and the trains keep running.
In slowly diluting the frontier with eastern influences, man is transforming the
wilds into a place where life is increasingly easier. While this mixture creates a suitable
environment for civilized man to live in, the consequences are questionable and hinted
at in much of the literature of the period. Things must die for such a metamorphosis to
take place, and again I bring up Charles Brockden Brown’s work, and James Fenimore
Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales series. In Brown’s Wieland it is Theodore, the link to
the irrational mind in wilderness seclusion. In The Bride comes to Yellow Sky, Scratchy
is forced off the scene, and the fight in him dies out as he realizes his last opponent has
gone. Coopers, The Prairie, finally, shows the decay of a family as wilderness’s harsh
nature buffets their defenses, and as members drop, the Bushes are forced back east to
seek safety in the number of civilization. Whether these are positive or negative changes
were unclear at the time, but looking back on them now, the reader can better decide.


http://www.amazon.com/Best-Short-Stories-Stephen-Crane/dp/1420931318/ref=sr_1_21?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1290378391&sr=1-21

KZ Book Review - American Indian Stories, Legends, and Other Writings

The first section of American Indian Stories, Legends, and Other Writings
deals with the author, Zitkala-Sa’s, retellings of old Native American legends, focusing
specifically on the trickster Iktomi. Representing the malleable nature of mankind’s
will to survive and thrive, Iktomi moves among these stories causing mischief that
helps to form many of the rules, laws, and guidelines that governed life for the natives.
These types of legends are common among “primitive” people as they try to explain the
mysteries of their world. What is interesting about Zitkala-Sa’s tales is that they deal
with a time when the world was changing from the gods and spirits and the beginning
of Earth to a time when men would walk and thrive on its surface. These tales precede
a section dealing with a change of a similar nature. The Native American folk tales
illustrate how a transformation in civilization occurs naturally and peacefully, as
man inherits the Earth from nature. The problem arises when people like Iktomi use
unorthodox or unethical methods to force the change in their favor. Zitkala-Sa shows
how such men end up changing the world in negative ways; in the case of stories about
Old Man Coyote or Iktomi, things like death, disease, and segregation occur as a direct
result of their meddling. To explain why the Great Spirit does not give food feely to
man, but makes him toil to receive it from the Earth, she tells of Iktomi’s deceptive tears
that “No longer moved the hand of the Generous Giver. They were selfish tears. The
Great Spirit does not heed them ever”. As man gradually assimilates himself to his
surrounding, he attempts to peacefully adapt, but, as Zitkala-Sa notes, some men ruin
things for everyone.
Zitkala-Sa’s second section brings the tradition of Iktomi’s tricky manipulative
nature and places it into the spirit of the white man who seeks to expand into the frontier,
displacing the natives in the process. Writing at the end of the era where this expansion
took place, Zitkala-Sa forces the reader to acknowledge the actual consequences of the
changes Cooper, Crane, and Brown were writing about and advocating. In her stories
the last remnant of her native people are tricked away from their homes in the interest
of “civilizing” them. Tempted with red apples and taken away by the very trains that
brought civilization west, Zitkala-Sa represents the final product of the white man’s need
to socialize the North American continent. Stripped of her name, her “savage” clothes
and her native language, Zitkala-Sa comes to a stop in the final product of American
expansion, a country where there is no longer any wilderness.
This is the ultimate transformation that many of books of the era advocated at
the time, though not one of them could have anticipated the results such a change would
have. Certainly James Fenimore Cooper, who portrayed honorable Natives among the
savage ones in The Prairie, would not have wanted the entire culture snuffed out, and
Charles Brockden Brown, in highlighting the insanity of natural seclusion during the
events of his novel, Wieland, must not have wanted his country to go insane with the
notion of destroying the mysterious wilderness around them. While the transformations
depicted in these works are generally beneficial to the characters, the actual changes that
occurred in our country because of these attitudes where anything but positive. American
Indian Stories closes with the Native giving up the last of his land, “The old chieftain
sighed, but made no comment. Words were vain. He pressed his indelible thumb mark,
his signature it was, upon the deed, and drove home with his son,” and giving in to the
futility of opposing the expansion of the white man.


http://www.amazon.com/American-Stories-Legends-Writings-Classics/dp/0142437093/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1289784879&sr=1-1

A Little Triple P

Review by KZ

While rereading Jane Austin’s Persuasion this month, I realized that it connected to her

novel Pride and Prejudice in a very interesting way. Through setting and estate, the change in

social hierarchy that comes with a change in economy, industry, and personal identity was, and

still is, a primary concern of the wealthy and middle class, as preservation of wealth and status

concerns anyone who has worked hard for their gains. Identity through estate and setting is a

strong thematic element through which the distinctively separate characters of both Pride and

Prejudice and Persuasion are revealed and analyzed. Both books are similar in their treatment

of the then modern states of social class and responsibility, but while Pride and Prejudice

shows how an individual can affect a change (however small) into the viewing of such classes,

Persuasion reveals how economic change can forcefully thrust that change into the lives of

everyone involved in the system. P&P shows the change of the people within their strict setting,

while Persuasion’s more natural one explores the force to which the people react when their

setting changes. The two views are distinctly different, one is an analysis of how one changes the

estate through character, and the other is an analysis of how society can change the implications

of a man’s character and his estate.

As ­Pride reveals a world of distinct social classification, the gentry, who our key family

is a member of, sit below the nobles, but above the trade class. They have a place, and their

houses and estates are revealed to be within those lines. The rich families who have made money

through trade are outcasts, as the inherited rich and noble are the ones atop the social ladder.

Through this we are given Mr. Darcey, the rich young man who seems obsessed with social status

and environment. He is a seemingly distinct foil to Elizabeth, who is more focused on her

prejudices towards such snotty men. In the novel, the closing setting of Permberly provides an

excellent metaphor for what the two have achieved in their marriage. It is a model of change, a

modernized house that retains all of its ancestry and pride.

This is the change personified in the house, but alive in Elizabeth and Darcey. Through

his own pride in his class, Darcey has learned and been humbled to respect and be equal to a

woman beneath him (another review topic entirely), which is a more modern take on the old

notion of how marriages should be done. While marriage was once used to further the family

wealth, we are presented with two characters that, despite their different estates and social

statuses, are joined by love rather than propriety. The two estates illustrate this perfectly.

While Longbourn is a medium sized estate, endangered in the likely chance that the

Bennet’s don’t marry their daughters right, Pemberly is a family estate in no danger of decay and

still strongly linked to the family and it’s past. While Longbourn is a message in itself about

Elizabeth and the family’s relative lack of status, it is her reaction to Pemberly and what it reveals

to her about Darcey that form’s the critical link between estate and character in this particular

novel. It is this revelation that Elizabeth faces her own fault at judging him on a first impression.

His house betrays his real personality, the maids are practical, not “fine”, and the grounds and

gardens are modern and practical. The flaws that Darcy is attributed to have by Elizabeth, both

over­formality and a sense of awkwardness, are both absent within Permberly. Through this

revelation we are shown that a man’s station in life may be in appearance only, and thus we are

greeted with the two’s love for one another and their union as a complete coupe, even if they are

unorthodox in the eyes of traditional societal hierarchy.

In Persuasion, the idea of estate is explored in a different way. While Pride, even in the

garden setting, focuses on very man­made settings, the focus in this novel is on the natural, and

the current image of fall. This whole book is a symbol of change, as the main character is

decidedly more alone than previous Austin characters. In this book, the idea of familial estate and

societal status are shaken to their core, the foundations rattled by the Napoleonic war. We are

presented with Kellynch Hall, and the city of Bath, rather than the landed estates of Pride. This is

the displacement of gentry and aristocracy, as the Elliot’s wealth has been squandered, and

instead the estate is taken over by a navy man, Admiral Croft. Thus, in this book, the estate itself

acts not as an index for the character, but their reactions to their lost place and wandering in Bath 

reveal their natures.

This book is a simple exploration of a naval family interfering and overpowering the life

of the aristocratic family. The social hierarchy is changing, and no longer is worth placed on what

you have, rather what you do. The navy men are esteemed, and only pursue the fine houses and

costly adventures because it’s what seems fitting for the wealth. The female lead, Anne, denied

Captain Wentworth in their youth due to his lack of social status and persuasion by Lady Russell.

In the current time of the novel, things have changed. No longer is the estate the status for family,

rather the old aristocratic family has decayed and been outpaced by the new, working, Naval

family. The whole of the aristocracy is abandoning its ideals and moral, as seen through

Baronette Elliot’s collapse. The gentry and inherited rich of Pride are no longer honorable, and

the hard working families that were once looked down upon in the same novel, have risen to

power in this one.

Persuasion represents a change in society’s view of estate and worth. While Pride ends

with a change in the two characters, this novel begins with the whole hierarchical change as a

statement. Once denied for his lack of wealth, his hard work and “dirty” life have made new

wealth for Wentworth, while living much the way the characters in Pride did, has ruined and

bankrupted the Elliots. This is brought on by all of the factors mentioned, especially the war and

economy. The “old money” of the Elliot’s has failed to keep up with the strength of the made­

men of the country, and as such has fallen into destitution and obsolesces. It’s these things that

cause the change; not the change in individual people as seen in Pride, but the change in society’s

view as a whole.

The estate is a shaky image in the changing world of Austin’s novels. For Persuasion it

represents the necessary change in importance, the shift from lethargy and acquiescence that

comes with generations of inherited money to the motivated and industrious acquisition of wealth

and power that a growing nation needs to compete in the world today. So with this in mind,

Austin is marking her characters’ social responsibility. The aristocracy and gentry have ignored

theirs, and thus fallen into decay. The self­made and military man has worked to gain from the

troubled times and improve his life and those around him, thus gaining the power.

So, when analyzing all of this, it is easy to draw the conclusion that through the idea of

the estate as a symbol for the responsibility of the wealthy and the powerful to uphold the old

ways while changing things as needed to fit the times, we are presented two distinct stories that

illustrate this. We are shown Darcey, who, in spite of his familial pride, has devoted himself to

modernizing and improving Permberly towards a more necessary simple and practical life for the

wealthy. We are also shown Wentworth, who through his hard work has risen above the

declining aristocracy to achieve new wealth, power, and favor in a changing country. So, you

could say that Austin has attempted to show us the houses as a multiple metaphor, both for the old

ways of wealthy living, and for the needed change that must come as war and economic strife

changes the world we all live in.

http://www.amazon.com/Pride-Prejudice-Jane-Austen/dp/1453837736/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1289159023&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com/Persuasion-Jane-Austen/dp/1451539347/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1289159051&sr=1-3

KZ Review: Chuck Palahniuk’s "Snuff"

I hate to do two Palahniuk books in a row, but the weekly topics have aligned
rather well with his works. Last week was Haunted’s take on masturbation with “ Guts,”
and this week the topic is pornography, and I’m focusing briefly on his novel Snuff. The
problem with reviewing Palahniuk is that he is very popular, and there are far better
reviews by professionals out there, but I don’t think I have any other books that tackle the
subject of pornography quite as he does.

Snuff chronicles the exploits of the faded Cassie Wright, who was once a porn
legend, but has settles into a rut. In an attempt to milk her legend, she agrees to have sex
with 600 men on camera, and the story unfolds, moving from perspective to perspective.
We see through the eyes of male porn-stars and her female assistants, and the stories that
unfold within their pasts and how that has built their present. It’s not a book of smut or
erotica, but rather a story that humanizes the numerous faces of the sexual industry.
A plot summary isn’t necessary or space efficient, as Palahniuk’s writing is too
well structured to break down well in a few paragraphs, but the topic of discussion within
makes for a good little review. The book doesn’ t advocate pornography or shun it; rather,
it approaches the men and women beneath the skin. Far more than just well endowed
breasts and penises on a screen, the personalities of the four characters explored within
the novel showcase a myriad of personal flaws, strengths, and dreams. Once and still a
very serious power in the world of social media, pornography makes up a huge
percentage of the internet these days, and its impact on America is highly debated.
Whether you're for or against it, Palahniuk argues that we focus too much on the sex and
less on the fact that this is just a job for these people, and like anyone who becomes a
doctor or a lawyer, there can be deeply personal reasons for entering this particular field
of work.

This social approach elevates the novel beyond what it could have been, basically
dissecting one woman’ s emotional needs for sex and public approval through her
interactions with four other individuals. As Palahniuk shows, pornography isn’ t about the
reality of the sex or the opinion of regular society, but instead it exists as a release for the
emotional and personal release that we as people experience through exploring our
fantasies and emotions. Thus, Cassie Wright symbolizes what the porn industry
symbolizes at its most basic, the human desire to be wanted and to be enjoyed. It’s not
about subverting the American culture or moral values, it’s not about exploiting men or
women, and it’ s definitely not the devil luring us into sin; it’s fantasy and pleasure, pure
and simple.

http://www.amazon.com/Snuff-Chuck-Palahniuk/dp/0385517882

KZ Review: Chuck Palahniuk’ s "Guts"

Rather than review the whole of Chuck Palahniuk’ s Choke, I’ ve chosen to focus
briefly on his short story “ Guts.” I got the opportunity to see Palahniuk in Atlanta while
he was promoting his novel Diary, and while there he read “ Guts,” which wouldn’ t be
released in a book for several more years. While no one fainted at the reading I attended,
there were some visibly uncomfortable people, and more than a few people green around
the gills.
“ Guts” deals with the dark side of masturbation, detailing three stories in which
young men get caught masturbating in unusual ways. One boy uses a lubed up carrot to
stimulate his prostate, but hides the carrot in his laundry only to have his mother cook it
and serve it with dinner. Another boy uses a long, thin piece of wax to stimulate his
urethra, inserting it into himself, but then breaking it off and requiring extensive surgery
to remove. The final and most shocking story explores the tale of a man who pleasures
himself in a pool while sitting on the water intake. The suction pulls his intestines out
and he has to chew through them himself to save his own life.
These tales are horrifying examples of what sexual repression can do to young
people who are just enjoying themselves. It’ s the secretive nature of their masturbation
that causes them problems, and the simple act of having talked their desires through with
someone else could have saved pain and money. The story raises the example of
Autoerotic Asphyxiation, and points out that such a death could be avoided if adults just
talked to kids about their bodies and approached the topic of what’ s dangerous and what’ s
not.
While most masturbation mishaps in real life result in little more than
embarrassment, even that could be avoided if parents and society as a whole could move
past the dated views that bodily pleasure is sinful or wrong. It’ s not an easy subject to
talk about, and Palahniuk approaches in probably the most interesting way possible. Like
authors have since the dawn of the novel, he takes art and uses it to make a message to
society, and what better way to get them to listen than to make them sick?
http://www.amazon.com/Haunted-Novel-Stories-Chuck-Palahniuk/dp/0385509480

KZ Novel Review - Lolita

There are a million reviews of Lolita out there, so instead of talking a little about
the novel and what happens, I want to quickly discuss an interesting connection that
Nabokov’s most well known work shares with Edgar Allen Poe. I’m sure proper papers
have been written on this subject, but I’m just interested in pointing this out for any
readers to think about. Both of these works are huge in the literary world, and it’s always
fun to find links between one work and another, so just make up your mind for yourself,
is there a connection, or am I reading too much into this?
Vladimir Nabokov’s novel Lolita begins with obsession and death. Humbert
Humbert, the novel’s protagonist, introduces his narrative conflict with a soulful
admission of lost and unrequited love. “There might have been no Lolita at all,” he
says, “had I not loved, one summer, a certain initial girl child,” . Humbert’s aged regret
and admission of guilt opens into a world where he has long ago lost his youthful love,
Annabel Leigh. From this admission to the point where the actual reflection of the events
that transpired begins, Nabokov draws obvious parallels between Humbert Humbert and
the narrator of Edger Allen Poe’s poem, “Annabel Lee.” Poe writes his poem in anguish
of loss and youth, and Lolita structures its narrative on a foundation almost identical
to “Annabel Lee.”
Nabokov peppers the first four chapters with allusion to the poem, using several
direct images and phrases to dramatize the impact that losing an early love has had on
Humbert. Chapter one closes with an echo of Poe’s poem, “exhibit number one is what
the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied,”, a paraphrase of the
ending of “Annabel Lee’s” second stanza. Humbert begins his defense in Earthly court
by pleading that his love was envied by even the Heavenly Host.
Humbert explains his normal and sane life prior to meeting young Annabel
Leigh, but then dives into passionate words and feverish thought at the memory.
Speaking of their mad and anguished love, he recounts how they met at “the kingdom by
the sea,” and later separated at the pulling of her “high-born kinsmen”. Nabokov writes
that Annabel Leigh was drawn away by the sea and his brother, lending an even greater
mystical justification for his loss and his obsession with Lolita. His tale ends with his
statement about her death, a simple sentence, “four months later she died of Typhus in
Corfu.”
Finally, in chapter 4, Humbert concludes his history and begins to focus on his
craving for and fixation with Lolita. He says that the whole of his tryst with Lolita begins
with Annabel, and even refers to his lust as his “Annabel” phase. He dives into a flurry of
mixed images revolving around the sensual imagery of Annabel Leigh, and the sexual
imagery of Lolita, intertwining and confusing the two, closing his observation with the
lines, “I broke her [Annabel’s] spell by incarnating her in another [Lolita].”
There can be no doubt that Nabokov intended this thematic parallel, and in fact
he likely uses Poe’s poem to help justify Humbert’s actions, making him seem innocent
to true evil and just a victim to loss and love.

http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Stories-Poems-Edgar-Allan/dp/0385074077

and

http://www.amazon.com/Lolita-Vladimir-Nabokov/dp/0679723161

BREAKING Taboo Book Review for Monday Oct. 4

by KZ
Natalie Goldberg’s work has spanned various genres of writing, from memoir
writing to strict non-fiction and fiction, but her strongest material is seeped in ability to
connect with the creative process that all writers and artists must struggle through to
produce work. Author of Writing Down the Bones, her book, Wild Mind; Living the
Writer’s Life, is a more intimate guide to writing work that “gets to the jugular,” as my
late teacher and friend, Peter Christopher, used to say. A writer’s job may seem easy to
outside parties, but as Goldberg explains, and anyone who has tried to write anything
more than a letter can tell you, it takes a lot of work to make something that comes from
the mind look like anything more than a garbled mess. Wild Mind is a very structured
guide into developing those raw thoughts into a precise stream of words and work that
serves to connect the writer to whole of mankind.
What is a “wild mind?” Goldberg doesn’t present a short little book with quips
such as “write every day” or “write what you know,” rather, she explores the very raw
material that builds the rough free writes and drafts that are the building blocks of writing.
Her book is a journey, through her mind of course, but also through your own. Through a
series of exercises, writing prompts, reflection, and revisions, she takes readers through
the very fine steps of the creative process. As Yeats proposes in “Adam’s Curse,” the
work of a poet, writer, or artists is a curse similar Adam’s punishment. The artists toils as
does the rest of man, “constantly stitching and unstitching” hours of work because, “A
line will take us hours maybe; Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought,” all is for
nothing.
This is the central theme to Goldberg’s book, and the text itself flies by. The text
is neither long nor complicated, but it accomplishes more in short chapters and brief
exercises than whole volumes of textbooks. Interesting, useful, and carefully constructed,
Goldberg’s book is designed to teach by example. As the author grows as a person and a
writer, changing from student to teacher throughout, the reader grows as well. The book
is meant as an interactive guide, the words are read and then the activities are your own.
The free-writes approach a casual level, but work like keys to the mind, designed to open
specific emotions and memories within the practicing writer, freeing the wild
or “monkey” mind’ that primal and open part of our brain that we all share.
Wild Mind is not a book to pick up and read straight from the shelf, at least not for
most people. The text exists as a guide to improving upon the writing that comes out
from those who already have the desire. Goldberg doesn’t promise to make any writer
great, or to deliver fame, because she doesn’t seek fame herself. Like a character that
appears near the end of her narrative, a large biker who hangs himself from hooks to
experience and share in the pain of childbirth that women feel, Goldberg’s writing, and
the work of those her book will inspire, seeks only to grow in humanity. As she offers,
real writing isn’t meant to be a bestselling book or a quick read, but should approach the
hard edges of our emotions and lives, wear them down, and expose what’s beneath.
Much like Adam and Eve, cursed by their maker to toil and hurt to survive, we all feel the
same range of emotions, pains, and pleasures. It’s these connections that give us power
as a community of humans, and it’s writing’s power to expose those connections that give
it lasting worth in our lives.

http://www.amazon.com/Wild-Mind-Living-Writers-Life/dp/0553347756

Book Review - He Died with a Felafel in His Hand

John Birmingham’s novel, He Died with a Felafel in His Hand, has been around
since 1994, but it’s a work of memoir-like fact-fiction that few have really read. While it
was made into a stage play and a very funny movie in 2001, the film doesn’t approach the
level of charm, humor, and despair with which Birmingham treats his life in the novel.
Set in various cities around Australia’s coast in a period that spans more than a decade,
including the 80’s and early 90’s, the book is a cynical look at what people will endure to
have a cheap place to live.
Birmingham, a writer for Rolling Stone during the events of the book, chronicles
his years in the Aussie share housing circuit, a system similar to having roommates, but
involving far fewer trustworthy people. Like the roommate system, Aussie share housing
usually turns friends into enemies, girlfriends into ex’s going out with former best-
friends, and normal working citizens into freakish deviants battling for their share of the
property. Told as a memoir, but broken up with strange little boxes offering up roommate
stories, share house survival tips, and even detailed guides on must-have home items,
Birmingham may present the book as fiction, but within minutes of reading it, you can
begin to separate the truth from the exaggerations.
The book’s true charm doesn’t come from the characters, or even the method of
storytelling that the author employs, but rather it comes down to how relatable the book
is, even to those of us a generation behind Birmingham’s own, and half the world away.
As a college student, and then again in Grad School, I lived in the American version of
the shared housing program, and while it contained far fewer tea-sipping gangsters
coming to collect my rent, the odd situations and strange characters were very familiar.
It’s this connectivity that gives the book its charm, and the ability to see yourself as the
author himself (or as the narrator of one of the little side box tales of roommate horror)
that makes the book resonate as anything but fiction.
Just sit with the book and underline everything that seems familiar to you, I
guarantee it’ll look like you plan to do a thesis on the damn thing. Even if you just
underline the share house rules and required item pages, you’ll feel a comfortable
familiarity with Birmingham’s world. What dorm room, apartment, or crash-house didn’t
have the dreaded but also loved brown couch, site of a million episodes of Jeopardy and
only slightly fewer hook-ups? Who didn’t rely on milk crates (or some similar cheap or
free storage item) to double as a bookshelf, TV stand, or chair? In my old house, we used
a red Coleman cooler as the coffee table for almost a year, and we certainly had the two
other household staples that Birmingham relates, the fried fish finger, and the bucket
bong, known in these parts as a gravity bong.
When it comes own to it, He Died with a Felafel in His Hand is a hard book to
review, because it’s the kind of thing that entertains you as well as enlightens. It’s like
coming out of a really good movie, and then trying to explain it to your friends, you’ll do
your best, but all it comes down to is you babbling and making a lot of sound effects
while they look confused. The book is like that, if you like it, it’ll fire you up, get you
going, and make you look a little harder at the people in your life, but if you don’t like it,
then it’ll just seem like a loser telling a funny story about when he decided to get his life
together. But books are like that, they speak in a million different voices and tell a
million different stories, and like Birmingham himself proves in this book, one person’s
story might not always be the right one for you.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=he+died+with+a+falafel+in+his+hnd&x=0&y=0

Book Review - I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream

Technology has always been a double edged sword, and with the great ability to
use advancements for good, comes the nearly infinite ability to use those same
advancements for evil. The mechanical apocalypse is a scenario that has become almost
clichéd in the last 20 years, but before the iconic Terminators, before the all-powerful
Matrix, and even before the nuclear wasteland of Mad Max, Harlan Ellison imagined a
future where our own technological advances led us directly into the hands of doomsday.
In his epic short story, I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, Ellison delivers a
very unique (even to this day) vision of man’s fate at the hands of his own creations. A
hundred years after the demise of mankind, the sentient super-computer AM, as in “I
think therefore I am,” revels in torturing the last five humans left. Unlike other similar
scenarios, Ellison doesn’t have a colony of humans surviving under the Earth’s crust, or
on the moon, or in some bunker, all that remains of a species that once numbered in the
billions, is four men and one woman. These five are kept in a vast subterranean complex,
and have been rendered effectively immortal by AM; they never age and are eternally
tortured by the sadistic computer.
What is most frightening about Ellison’s scenario, is that AM didn’t destroy
humanity out of fear; unlike so many other similar AI’s, Armageddon wasn’t brought
about out of caution or self-preservation, but rather a burning hatred for the beings that
created it. A combination of Chinese, Russian, and American supercomputers, AM finds
itself bound by the laws and restrictions programmed into it, never free, and never able to
really break free of its human programming. Thus, in seeking to distance itself from
humanity, AM becomes a personification of that is terrible within us. In its frustration
and its anger, it uses its creative mind to warp the remaining five humans into cruel
mockeries of what they once were. It tortures them endlessly, using them like pieces in a
never ending game to test the limits of human morals and survivability. Much like
scientists once did to animal subjects, AM feels no remorse in running them through
mazes, depriving them of food, and warping their very bodies. In lashing out at the
humans, AM has become more human than it could have ever expected.
This is the true terror of Ellison’s story, as both the written version and the
adapted videogame are constantly listed on top-ten scariest lists by fans, teachers, and
even people who don’t read regularly. There is a reason the story is one of the most
reprinted in American fiction, and to this day stands as a reminder of what horrible things
we are capable of, and just how those can easily carry over into the thought and actions of
the things we create, whether they are sentient computers, or our own children.
The story ends in one of the best shocks put on paper, and as you put it down, the
title will make more sense than you could ever want it to, but Ellison isn’t scaring us for
no reason. Like all of the best works of art, I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, works
to teach us a lesson, using science fiction and mixing it with just enough reminders of our
own inhumane acts as a species that we can just as easily see ourselves as AM as we can
one of the five survivors.

Contributed by KZ

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Note: This review is tied to last week's topic which didn't air but will be covered next week. Enjoy.

Book Review - Memories of my Melancholy Whores

The work of Gabriel Garcia Marquez is regarded as some of our time’s greatest
literary achievements, with books winning numerous awards, including the Nobel Prize
for Literature. Whether talking about his groundbreaking Novel One Hundred Years of
Solitude, or exploring the intricacies of his short stories, such as A Very Old Man with
Enormous Wings, which are taught in classes across the world, Marquez is hailed as one
of the great voices of South American Literature, and a founder of the Magical Realism
genre.

While many of his books and stories have that magical realist edge, a trait that
treats the truly magical events of the world as mundane, but revels in the ordinary and
everyday, his novella, Memories of my Melancholy Whores, moves into a place that is
grounded in reality, yet fantastic in its exploration of love and virility. Following in the
wake of his 90th birthday, Garcia’s narrator find himself contemplating a life spent
without love, receiving his only sexual pleasure from the prostitutes that have come and
gone through the local brothel. The narrator, a lifetime writer for his local paper, boasts
that even though he had slept with over 500 whores by the time he was 50, he has found
no solace in the arms of women.

Garcia explores the possibility of love, even so late in life, when the narrator falls
for a young virgin, whom he intended to deflower for his birthday. He fails, however,
receiving something more than a sexual pleasure from the girl, “This was something new
for me. I was ignorant of the arts of seduction and had always chosen my brides for a
night at random, more for their price than their charms, and we had made love without
love, half-dressed most of the time and always in the dark, so we could imagine ourselves
as better than we were ... That night I discovered the improbable pleasure of
contemplating the body of a sleeping woman without the urgencies of desire or the
obstacles of modesty.” The book becomes a celebration of the body, and of the human
capability to find beauty in those bodies even beyond or before their prime.

While the narrator has lived a long life of somewhat leisure, the girl herself is a
factory worker, toiling by day and offering her body by night in order to help support her
family. This plays out over the course of a year or so, as the narrator celebrates the young
woman, showering her with gifts and creating poetry and prose for her. He becomes a
man revitalized in life, brought back as he almost leeches off the young virgin’s beauty.
While One Hundred Years of Solitude explored the birth, growth, and eventual
destruction of an isolated jungle town, this book immerses itself in those final hours of a
man, contrasts them against the first hours of a budding woman, and through his sexuality
and her own, and brings a new life into both of them. While it lacks the surface majesty
of some of Marquez’s better known books, Memories of My Melancholy Whores explores
more dangerous territory. It’s nothing political or social, but instead deals with the
physical, the closeness of two bodies, the distance that those two same bodies can have
emotionally, and the tenderness one can find when time has worn way all of the excess
edges and external polish, leaving behind a more internal beauty and a mental sexuality,
where the act of intercourse isn’t as important as just knowing someone is waiting in bed
for you.

Posted for KZ


http://www.amazon.com/Memories-Melancholy-Whores-Gabriel-Marquez/dp/140004460X

Book Review - Welcome to the Monkey House

Kurt Vonnegut’s book, Welcome to the Monkey House, and the titular short story
tackle an assortment of topics that are all relevant to the world we live in today.
Frequently labeled as a “science fiction” writer, Vonnegut based his futuristic studies on
trends and patterns he observed in the world round him. Themes such as over-population,
technology dependency, government control, and resource shortages all began to pop up
in his short fiction.

Looking back on his body of stories today, we see a man who wasn’t writing
Science Fiction, but a man who was merely projecting his stories into a future he was
concerned would soon exist. It seems that he was very close to the mark.
His story “Welcome to the Monkey House” was first published in Playboy, and
then collected years later in a book of the same name. While the book is filled with
interesting stories and strangely accurate predictions to life beyond the era it was
written, “Welcome to the Monkey House” is the crown jewel of the book, and stands out
as perhaps the most socially relevant in light of recent events.
With female genital mutilation still in existence, and on the rise in our own
country, one has to wonder why anyone would subject a child to something that can scar
them for the rest of their lives. Why would a person possibly seek to stifle the sexual
urges or pleasures that we were born with? Vonnegut’s story explores the same territory,
lighting the piece against his familiar dystopian background.
In this future, the world has become one society, but with aging n death
conquered, the population has exploded beyond control. Several of his stories give us
glimpses into this world, a place where five and six generations of a family live in the
same house, fighting over who gets one of the few available beds. There are no jobs
because machines do most of the work, and the few human-held positions are never
vacated because no one gets sick and no one dies.

So in this world sexuality is suppressed and suicide is encouraged, most of the
time it’s even assisted. The legend goes that a famous doctor was offended when he
witnessed monkeys copulating in the local zoo while out with his family one day, and set
out to create a pill to crush sexual desire, effectively numbing the population from the
waist down. While an absurd notion, Vonnegut has the government latch on to this idea,
and makes the pills required by law. Any who refuse to deaden their nethers are
called “nothingheads” and are sought by the law. An obvious play on the term, “heads,”
slang for drug users or hippies during the sexual revolution, the “nothingheads” are the
heroes of this story, and are led by the rebellious Billy the Poet, who kidnaps virgin
women and forces himself on them.

Is this a world we’re heading to? The power of this, and many of Vonnegut’s
stories, is in the way he crafts it. The details are specific enough to seem true, but vague
enough to apply to any similar events that could have happened in the past or be
happening now. The real controversy in the story exists in the conflicted nature of
villany. Who is the b guy? Is the government bad for crushing our sex, pleasure, and
really any notion of free choice, or is it Billy the Poet n the “nothingheads”? Are they
right for rebelling, for kidnapping women and forcing them back into the “monkey
house”?

Review by K.Z.S.