Nov 22, 2005 | Uncategorized
JESUS, JUICED:
Anne Rice's 27th novel, “Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt,” is No. 4 on this week's hardcover fiction list. The book, like Norman Mailer's “Gospel According to the Son” (1997), is a first-person account of the life of Jesus, though Rice cannily breaks off a smaller piece of that life, writing about him at age 7. (“It's as if Rice is casting Christ as the new Harry Potter,” Chris Ayres wrote in The Times of London.)
The book has arrived to some of the best reviews of Rice's career. There's something about writing in the voice of Jesus that smooths out a writer's prose; Reynolds Price, reviewing Mailer's book in the Book Review, didn't like Mailer's “excess of self-effacement.” Yet Rice has been praised for pretty much the same thing. As Laura Miller put it in Salon: “Gone are such Ricean devices as passages of florid description, conspicuous high-end consumption, endless assurances of the main characters' beauty and that odd, pseudo-archaic Germanic syntax that would later become a trademark of Yoda. (Pretentious it was.)”
Rice, who was brought up in the Roman Catholic Church, was an atheist for 30 years – and wrote “Interview With the Vampire” and a pile of other pop-gothic novels – before returning to the church in 1998. On “Charlie Rose,” she seemed grateful she's been welcomed back. “I thought maybe,” she said, “I had been officially excommunicated.”
Stephanie Diani for The New York Times
Nov 22, 2005 | Uncategorized
Mike is back from DC, his coat stashed in the back of the storage closet, his jeans on a shelf, his shoes tucked away, his long sleeve shirts hanging where they won't be disturbed until another chilly trip beckons.
“How was it?” I ask.
“Cold,” he says. “Freaking cold, rainy, and miserable. Did we really live there for ten years?”
“Yep.”
“I don't miss it. I never want to go back.”
“True dat.”
He called me the first day he was there, saying “It's so flat and so big, just goes on and on and on. I'd forgotten.”
And we both know DC is nothing compared to a big city like Chicago or New York. DC is actually a lovely city, the mall is beautiful, and the lack of skyscrapers is refreshing. But the metro area is gigantic when compared to this island we live on. I wonder how many Oahus could fit inside the Beltway?
Last night, I was startled out of a dream in which a giant wave was coming toward the house, and then I realized it was raining. Not just a little tap-tap-tap, but a downpour in which I could hear water rushing down the sides of the house, splattering the soggy ground. I worried about the creek behind us, then figured it hadn't been raining long enough to fill a 12 foot deep trench. There'll be many more nights like this, and days too, when the water pours as if it won't ever stop and the news bleats flash flood warnings on a regular basis (turn around, don't drown the voice from the National Weather Service says as it reminds you not to cross any body of water in which you cannot see the bottom).
Winter has arrived. Time for high surf, short days, lots of rain, and whales.
Nov 20, 2005 | Uncategorized
I've been stuck on page 168 of The Da Vinci Code for the past three weeks. Life is just too short and I cannot force myself to continue through this linguistic hell. When I mentioned to my friend Michael, three weeks ago, that I was stuck on pg 168, he looked at me with surprise.
“You mean you made it that far?”
“You didn't?” I said.
“I picked it up in the bookstore and couldn't get past the first page.”
That's the benefit of a PhD in Lit, I guess. The crap meter works instantaneously.
I'll wait for the movie. This sucker is going back to the library (thank heavens I started cleaning house today, or I'd have forgotten the darned thing was buried beneath a pile of papers).
Foucault's Pendulum and The Last Temptation of Christ are much better written; Temptation, at least, is every bit as controversial as Da Vinci.
Nov 19, 2005 | Uncategorized
Finished The Egyptologist. I then checked out the Amazon reviews. A very mixed bag there. Partly, the problem is that some folks bought this book expecting a standard historical mystery/thriller in the vein of Elizabeth Peters. The book is not that at all. It's a literary novel that explores class divides, poverty, madness, and self-absorption. It's also a dark comedy, more like the movie Heathers where Christian Slater goes around killing the snobby girls that Wynona Ryder hates. The Egyptologist is Heathers in costume. But only sort of, so don't let that statement make you think you know the plot.
Some people were upset to have figured out the main twist early on. In fact, I think it's deliberately set up that way, but I also think it remains ambiguous enough for at least half of the book that you aren't entirely sure what you think is the truth. It becomes increasingly obvious that you were right, however, but even then I don't think you expect the ending. The answers to the questions are all there for the careful reader. I admit that being inside the head of Ralph Trilipush for such long stretches does get annoying, however. I know he's a pompous ass and I don't need to be banged over the head with it repeatedly.
But the book got a good review from Barbara Mertz, who also happens to be Dr. Barbara Mertz, PhD in Egyptology (U of Chicago, no slouch there). Dr. BM is also Barbara Michaels, novelist, and also, if you didn't know it, Elizabeth Peters, the author of the wonderful Amelia Peabody series. Dr. Barbara Mertz, aka Barbara Michaels, aka Elizabeth Peters knows her stuff when it comes to Egypt. She also knows how to tell a rollicking good tale, so for those who bemoaned the fact this book was nothing like the Amelia Peabody books, well, it wasn't meant to be and she knew it. It's a literary novel, not a thriller, and it's darned fine for what it does.
After finishing The Egyptologist at midnight, I picked up Doctorow's new book. Mike is on a business trip to DC, so I didn't have anyone beside me asking me to please turn out the light. In spite of that first long sentence, the story so far moves along at a good clip. Much quicker paced than the Egypt book. The first scene, in fact, reminds me of Aunt Pitty Pat in her carriage shrieking to Scarlett that they need to get out of Atlanta before Sherman gets there. You can't start off a book much more tensely than with Sherman marching along behind you and torching everything in sight. This book promises to be a fairly quick read, surprisingly. We'll see.
Nov 17, 2005 | Uncategorized
By now you know the winners:
Fiction, William Vollman, Europe Central
Non-fiction, Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking
Poetry, W. S. Merwin, Migration: New and Selected Poems
Young People's Literature, Jeanne Birdsall, The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits and a Very Interesting Boy
I'm certainly not surprised that Didion won. The book is a tour de force, to trot out a hack phrase. It's simply stunning.
OTOH, I just bought Doctorow's book at Borders lastnight. I was sure he'd win, as were most people, simply on the force of his literary giantness. Though, as previously reported, that first sentence of The March is a kicker. In flipping through the book, however, I noted that the rest of the prose doesn't suggest Ulysses redux. So I took the plunge. I had 20 bucks in my Christmas account anyway, so I got the book basically for free. Gotta love that.
I can't begin it, however, until I finish The Egyptologist (by Arthur Phillips; see post on Reading Material). What a fun book! The egyptologist himself, a Mr. Ralph Trilipush of Oxford, Harvard, and who knows where, is the most deluded guy on the planet. He is so convinced of his own correctness that every setback, every proof negative, he recasts to make it favorable to his theory. He is a hoot! And the mystery is, really, who is this Ralph Trilipush anyway? Is he who he claims to be? What the heck is going on in 1922 Egypt? I'd be reading it now, except I've promised myself I will do some work today.
