#24 A Series of Unfortunate Events: The End, Book the Last by Lemony Snicket

Every book in this series features a warning by Lemony Snicket to put it down and read something else. For the love of God, please heed the message this time.

Lemony Snicket used to have balls of chrome steel. When I read The Bad Beginning and it got to the scene where Count Olaf smacks Klaus, I felt the danger. He was defying conventions and being clever to a degree previously not seen in Children's Literature, and the impact of those bold and perfectly timed early books in this series is evident throughout the publishing world. There are a hundred knock-offs that fail in their mimicry as prominently as this final chapter in the Baudelaire's adventures fails to deliver anything resembling closure, excitement, suspense, or even story. It is only because I was prepared by the dwindling inventiveness and quality of the last few installments and the mediocrity of Daniel Handler's Adverbs, that I avoid calling the this the most disappointing literary event in the history of mankind.


WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD

Let's take a look at character arc. Violet, Klaus and Sunny seemed to have been totally unaffected by all of the events around them. Although Sunny has developed a better command of obscure literary references and latin than I have, and she now cooks instead of bites (was this change imposed by a parent's group? It is dreadfully dull) What should have happened was that midway through the series, the orphans should have decided to take action against Olaf. They needed to make a decision to catch or kill him. Whether they actually would have done so in the end, I don't know, but that would have given some appropriateness to the discussion of "moral compass" in the last book. The children were never in need of a moral compass, they always were good and always did the right thing and we, the readers, knew this and were constantly bored by them.

Related to this is the hero's journey. Why oh why did they come back to the city where they lived and briny beach in the 12th book and all and then go away again? And what happened to the Quagmire triplets? swallowed by the question mark? That's retarded. Even within this book there were new characters who failed profoundly to deliver; what up with Friday? She seemed like an interesting character at the beginning and then she just goes away. stupid.

How about Lemony Snicket as a narrator? Could he be any more pedantic? And maybe I'm a big dork for pointing this out, but his two-page lecture on peer pressure is totally egregious: "If you try to avoid every instance of peer pressure you will end up without any peers whatsoever, and the trick is to succumb to enough pressure that you do not drive your peers away, but not so much that you end up in a situation in which you are dead or otherwise uncomfortable." (p.95-96) Lemony's diatribes used to be qualified by some ridiculous anecdote about his mysterious lifestyle, there is nothing to counter the heavy-handed homily presented to young readers here. Not that it makes any differenence, but it is possible never to succumb to peer pressure and be happy. It's called individuality. You should never succumb to peer pressure. You should never do things unless you want to, and it is very easy for kids to want to play dodgeball with everyone else at recess without succumbing to peer pressure, but rather acting of their own free will.

There are many moments of overbearing cleverness. Island characters named Caliban and Ariel. An attempt to pass off two closely related definitions of ferment as different. And a terribly annoying excess of sentences like this one from the back cover: "if you read THE END from the beginning of the beginning of the end to the end of the end of THE END, you will arrive at the end of the end of your rope."

SPOILER:
And Count Olaf. The only consistently entertaining character dies in the lamest possible way, with a brief moment of... what, I'm not sure, was it redemption? That's so pussy. Seriously, the Baudelaires thought about pushing him off the boat at the beginning and then they don't kill him at the end. That's the worst misdirection since the absolutely pointless opening airplane crash scene of Garden State, perhaps the most overrated movie of all time.

Mayhaps I am being a little harsh on Mr. Snicket, but he deserves it. There was clearly no plan, no outline, no clear idea of where this series was going and it shows in this clumsy pseudo-narrative whose low-quality frankly makes me sad. It's not the end of the world, but my day was ruined by this book.

posted by brettish @ 11:36 PM 1 comments

The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril by Paul Malmont

I was so surprised that Gabe just got around to reading The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. I read his review and it reminded me of the numerous reasons that book is great, but it also reminded me of how much I liked the book I just finished. After all, Paul Malmont's The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril also has a guest appearance by Orson Welles but what's more, it's got a cameo by Kavalier himself.

As the over-the-top title might suggest, the book deals with pulp fiction, although the real stuff rather than the Tarantino variety. In the days before superheroes made comic books the touchstone of American male youth literature, the pulp magazine adventures of Tarzan, Conan, The Shadow and Doc Savage were the Superman, Batman, Spiderman and X-Men of the day. Without the pictures to divide up the work, these had to be written by individuals, grinding out phenomenal quantities of plot and prose. It was often inelegant writing, but it was exciting and satisfying.

Rather than attempt to create his own iconic hero, Malmont decides to use the authors themselves as his heroes. After all, if The Shadow knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men, then his creators, Orson Welles and Walter Gibson know too. And all of the scientific expertise of Doc Savage and his friends had to be researched by Lester Dent before he could write it. They don't care for each other, but that doesn't stop the hero-worshipping Lafayette Ron Hubbard (long before he invented Xenu and phaetons) from milking both of them for writing tips.

After attending the funeral of Herbert Philip Lovecraft, Gibson and Hubbard meet up with a fugitive from the mob calling himself Otis P. Driftwood and the three are launched into the tale of the Death Cloud. Meanwhile, Dent and his wife are mixed up in some dangerous business in Chinatown. There are all sorts of pulpy goodness here, including (but not limited to) a mysterious conspiracy, street fights, a psychic femme fatale, kung-fu killers, a ghost ship, and a Lovecraftian re-animation. Despite all that fun stuff, there's some real political drama here too, dealing with the tumultuous history of China just before and including the Japanese occupation before World War II. This gives a light adventure substance and weight, like including Nazis and Biblical artifacts in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Plus it makes it feel like you're reading something worthwhile and legitimate, a definite advantage for a book called The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril.

Part of the fun is all the cameos and guest appearances, but I don't think you need to know the references to enjoy the novel. I've never read Gibson or Dent's work. Or Hubbard's. I've listened to some Lovecraft audiobooks, but the only author in here I've actually read is the one who hides under the Otis Driftwood pseudonym for most of the book. One hint: it ain't Groucho.

This book isn't likely to win a Pulitzer like Chabon's Kavalier and Clay, but I thought it was a lot of fun. Like the pulpateers themselves, Malmont writes strong action and keeps it moving. I might have felt a bit shortchanged if I had paid full hardcover price for the quick 350-page read, but that's what libraries are for. Put a hold on it and enjoy a nice surprise in a few months.

posted by Jesse Zander Corum @ 7:53 PM 1 comments

#23 The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon

I like comic books, I like novels, I don't know why it took me so long to read this.


The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay is the story of two cousins. One a visual artist, trained in escapism who was able to get out of Prague before WWII ahead of his family to live with relatives in New York City. That's Joe Kavalier. He moves in with his cousin (Sammy Clay) who immediately recognizes that their combined talents could rock the comic book world. The two boy wonders turn out a blockbuster superhero who fights Hitler and the Germans and makes the company they work for into a vast and wealthy comic empire. Joe works and works in an effort to save enough money to be able to bring his family over from Prague before they fall victim to the Third Reich.

Magic? Houdini? Superheroes? Nazis as the villains? An epic chronicle of the early years of the comic book industry? A cameo by Orson Welles? I LOVE IT!

The strengths of Kavalier and Clay are numerous. Outstanding writing, a wonderful storytelling style, funny dialogue, there's as much pop culture history as there is legitimate history. I especially liked Sammy and Joe, who work feverishly, almost unstoppably. Especially at the beginning when they put together a complete comic over the course of a couple days with original superheroes and artwork, because, you know, that's what they do. These chapters are infused with such optimism and youth and energy, that it was difficult for me not to put down the book and start scribbling out ideas for my own stories.

"New York never looks more beautiful than to a young man who has just pulled off something he knows is going to knock them dead." (p.165) This might be the theme of the books I am really connecting with this year, but there's a similar sentiment in a quote I pulled for my book report on Me and Orson Welles back in January. This first moment comes from Sammy, whom, it is evident early on, feels endowed with a greatness that he is so relieved to be able to unleash at the exact right moment in cultural history. At the beginning, Sammy works for himself, and Joe works to be able to save his family. After they've worked long and hard and are ready to move on to the next step of realizing the self-promised rewards of their labors, they are both denied by greater events. It is in the second half, the seeking of meaning and the reordering of priorities, the tumult of wartime, that the irony of superheroism is unveiled. In reality there're no such things as wonder men, only wonder boys.

Still, resilience makes great characters (which is what makes Wes Anderson films terrific), and late in the book Joe has a couple of realizations: "I need to do something...something that will be great, you know, instead of trying always to be Good." (p.367) And even more thematically appropriate, he extols the virtues of comic books with this endearing passage:

"Most of all he loved them for the pictures and the stories they contained, the inspirations and lucubrations of five hundred aging boys dreaming as hard as they could for fifteen years, transfiguring their insecurities and delusions, their wishes and their doubts, their public educations and their sexual perversions, into something that only the most purblind of societies would have denied the status of art." (p.575)

Not that I was ever maligned for my interest in comic books, but if I could have been that eloquent in defense of my collection, I probably could have convinced my 7th grade teacher that the 9-issue X-tinction Agenda crossover event should have made an acceptable book report.

Loved it. But I'm late to this party, I think everyone to whom I would recommend this book has already read it and I can't imagine my recommendation carries any more weight than that of Mr. Pulitzer.

posted by brettish @ 9:22 AM 0 comments

#22 Adverbs by Daniel Handler

If you're not a fan of Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, you missed out on something that was pretty cool for a while. Daniel Handler is an interesting writer who also happens to play accordian for the Magnetic Fields in addition to being Lemony Snicket. I heard Mr. Handler read from this, his new novel, at the Barnes and Noble in Edina. I then solicited his archnemesis services because I have been in the market for an archnemesis ever since I vanquished my last nemesis in spectacular theatrical fashion (an event I may choose to relate at another time). DAMN YOU, Daniel Handler! You have struck the first profound blow!



Let me clarify that statement. Mr. Handler's supremacy is the result of this novel's tedious, overly-stylized, utterly boring prose. Again, I say, DAMN YOU, Daniel Handler!

All readers should be warned that despite the clear indication on the cover that this is a novel, it is actually not a novel, rather a collection of essays, some of which are loosely intertwined with one another. Daniel Handler even describes the book as a collection of essays on page 193. The essays are about love, and in one of them the snow queen appears. There is nothing believable about any of the characters or scenarios and I was thoroughly disinterested. I don't have a problem with things being unbelievable in a book, but Daniel Handler tiptoes on the verge of magical realism and refuses to take that extra step. Instead wading in the pool of his stylized prose as it festers and births molds and fungi of varying degrees of putresence. (Take that!)

As a Children's book author, Handler's repetitive and sometimes pedantic tone is endearing. Here it is patronizing and annoying. For some reason he feels it is okay to interject as the first person author in places in this book, the way Lemony Snicket does; that too is entirely inappropriate and confusing. (And That!)

As if things weren't bad enough, There's a pull quote on the back from Dave Eggers, whose mediocrity hardly deserves mentioning here. To Mr. Eggers I say: Your reign of terror is at an end! (This statement is fueled almost entirely by jealousy of Dave Eggers vast wealth and frienship with They Might Be Giants and Sarah Vowell).

So, Daniel Handler, you may have stolen hours of reading enjoyment away from me and distracted me from superior literature for almost three weeks, but I have survived your assault, and rest assured this is only the warning shot of my impending literary onslaught!

I recommend this book to NO ONE!

Deal with THAT!

posted by brettish @ 12:03 PM 3 comments

#21 The Stolen Child by Keith Donohue

This book was a present and since it's about faeries, I was happy to make reading it a priority.



This is the story of some hobgoblins, or changelings, little, wild, faerie children who roam the woods in packs and after much study and employment of magic, steal a child, and send one of their own to take its place. They assume their shape and voice and take over their life and never go back to being a faerie. This narrative alternates between the changeling who has assumed human shape and the human being who is now frozen as a seven year-old living among the other magical forest children who have all forgotten who they used to be. Both characters find it nearly impossible to be accepted into their new lives and eventually begin trying to rediscover the people they were actually born to become and learn their stories.

This was a very nice little read. I know that sounds a little patronizing, but it's true. The dilemmas are deeply important to the characters, but because of the dual narrative, we are never led to believe that catastrophe is an imminent threat to either of them and the conflicts are present and feel very important, but not epic. It is also a very well-crafted and interesting faerie tale. I really enjoyed the language, although the dialogue was often a little dry. But the story was pretty cool and it was nice to see the way the two lives progressed.

Still I can't help but ask questions, such as when did this whole changeling thing start? Where does their magic come from? If there are hobgoblins why aren't there other faeries? I ask these questions, but this never pretends to be the type of book that's going to answer them. So it's really just my impetuous nature that's bringing these things up.

I guess overall, yeah, this was a fun little read. I might recommend it to my little sister and other people who like faerie stories.

posted by brettish @ 3:41 PM 0 comments