a lay of the land

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mlcmontgomery — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 01:54:08 +0000

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Rules of Reviewing

mlcmontgomery — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 01:37:00 +0000

Presented here is John Updike’s rules for reviewing and critiquing fiction.

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation–at least one extended passage–of the book’s prose so the review’s reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending. (How astounded and indignant was I, when innocent, to find reviewers blabbing, and with the sublime inaccuracy of drunken lords reporting on a peasants’ revolt, all the turns of my suspenseful and surpriseful narrative! Most ironically, the only readers who approach a book as the author intends, unpolluted by pre-knowledge of the plot, are the detested reviewers themselves. And then, years later, the blessed fool who picks the volume at random from a library shelf.)

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author’s ouevre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it’s his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser. Do not accept for review a book you are predisposed to dislike, or committed by friendship to like. Do not imagine yourself a caretaker of any tradition, an enforcer of any party standards, a warrior in an ideological battle, a corrections officer of any kind. Never, never (John Aldridge, Norman Podhoretz) try to put the author “in his place,” making him a pawn in a contest with other reviewers. Review the book, not the reputation. Submit to whatever spell, weak or strong, is being cast. Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.

I’m not sure if I follow all of these perfectly. Obviously, I almost never give examples of the prose. But most of the others I try to follow fairly well. I often put the book into context of the rest of the author’s output, and I am ready to admit when it’s my fault that I don’t get a book.

The first rule is of most interest to me. I think there’s nothing more important than trying to understand what the book is trying to do. One should judge the book on the basis of its intent as well as its contents. For example, if a novel attempts to display the banalities of common drudgery, and it’s boring, but it’s successful in that portrayal, then the novel is a success. But then again, we run into a perennial topic of this blog: Status or Contract? (Click here if you’d like to read a discussion on Barbelith I had about it with other literary-minded people; and click here if you want to read some thoughts I have about Pynchon).

But something related to this first rule is the idea of authorial intent. A lot of critics, and I mean a lot, seem to think that authorial intent is completely irrelevant to the proper interpretation and criticism of a text. Now, I’m not terribly knowledgeable about this, but these anti-intent critics tend to rationalize parts of a text through other methods, such as the author’s subconscious leaking through. These are all interesting and potentially valid points, but to me, authorial intent is probably the second most important part of criticism, with context (historical and textual) being number one (someone could easily argue that context envelopes authorial intent as well).

It seems to me that Updike is asking the reviewer to understand the intent of the author and of, by proxy, the novel in order to properly gauge whether or not the novel is a success. To make a long story short here, I’m essentially using Updike’s maxims to further my own opinions regarding literature.

I may not always follow these rules to the letter, as inflexible rules are meant to be broken, but I follow in spirit the tenets that Updike has provided us with.

Still Life

mlcmontgomery — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 00:10:00 +0000

The last book I reviewed for this blog was The Virgin in the Garden, the first in a quartet about Frederica Potter. Now, I have finished the second, Still Life. I didn’t mean for this blog to become a Byatt-blog, but here we are. I find I cannot put down Byatt’s doorstoppers; I compulsively read, to the detriment of my relationship with my girlfriend, almost. So what of Still Life? Does it match the brilliance and size of the previous volume? Let’s take a look.

Starting pretty much where the last one finished off, Still Life examines the intellectual and social development of England during the last half of the Fifties, using the scholarly and bookish Potter family as symbols. Frederica is at Cambridge, jumping in and out of various lovers’ beds; Stephanie is pregnant and stifled by domesticity; Marcus slowly approaches the real world, one not of abstract geometry or life inside his head. Alexander, the playwright of the last book, is composing a drama in verse about the final years of Vincent Van Gogh. The famous painter plays a subtle role in all of the main characters’ lives.

Just like in her other books, the title plays a massive part in the successful interpretation of Byatt’s texts. With this one, Still Life seems to refer to Van Gogh’s paintings and to each of the main characters’ stagnant and stilted existence. On a grander scale, the novel seems to imply the same about the English during this time.

There’s a lot to talk about with this novel. The same compliments I lavished upon the last book apply here: the exquisite and exact prose, the level of detail, the immediate characters, and the proliferation of idea after idea after idea.

This time, George Eliot’s influence becomes more apparent: Byatt’s narrator takes a much stronger stance and directly refers to itself. The narrator is omniscient and godlike in this book, but with a definite Fowlesian postmodern outlook. The future, possible futures, seem visible to this narrator. This isn’t a negative aspect, considering Byatt’s seeming intent to create a sprawling nineteenth century novel of characters and society. In fact, it’s apropos.

Spoiler alert for the novel’s climax….

Stephanie becomes the victim of a tragic accident at the end of the novel. Her death lets the novel look at a myriad of different topics. Prominently, the social aspect of grief. Like The Virgin the Garden, Byatt is examining English-ness, like the tendency to overlook the more embarrassing of emotions. The narrator explicitly tells us that novels often skip ahead. Instead, the novel bears down on this idea, and looks at grief, specifically Daniel, Stephanie bereaved husband. Daniel muses on death, and interpretations of it. King Lear figures once again into the life of Daniel. The narrator details different critical approaches to the death at the end of King Lear, that it is a moral lesson, at a high cost, taught to Lear.

It seems to me, that Byatt is obliquely doing the same to Daniel and the rest of the cast. They are stagnant and unmoving. They are still. Change must happen, and the novel kills off a cast member to affect change. Instead of a moral lesson on hubris, etc, Still Life‘s lesson is of personal growth. Stephanie neglects her intellectual pursuits due to domestic duties, and she pays a mental cost for it. The novels asks us to consider this, in an implied way. The intellectual development must continue.

Another interesting thing that I’ve been mulling, and might look at when I finish the next volume, is Byatt’s use of literary motifs. She associates characters with works of great literature, like the aforementioned connection of King Lear and Daniel. I hadn’t really thought of it until I finished this novel. Byatt’s interest in intertextuality is almost worth examining in an academic work, if it hasn’t already been done. Like Possession and letters, etc, like The Children’s Book and – well – children’s books, the Frederica Quartet seems to have tons of intertextuality play. For Byatt, and I think she’s said this in interviews, the world of the mind is made of works of art, all connected. It is the human subconscious desire for order that makes the a-ha experience so rewarding. It’s like Byatt’s novels are all about making a-ha connections. This idea is even discussed within Still Life.

Just like the last book, I adored Still Life. It’s verbose, heavy, physically and with meaning, and it’s not for everybody. I absolutely loved this book and I cannot wait to read the next book, called Babel Tower. However, I just got from the library The Children’s Book, so I will be starting that immediately. I highly recommend Still Life to fans of big Victorian novels, and to fans of books about ideas, for this surely is both.

Random Thoughts

mlcmontgomery — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 18:51:00 +0000

Here is a collection of random things, none of which I want to examine in a whole post.

I saw Shutter Island last night. This is the fourth collaboration between Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese, to me, a very fruitful friendship. Does the newest film hold up to the standard set by The Departed or The Aviator? No, but it’s damn close. Shutter Island is a fantastic Hitchcockian thriller, with a great soundtrack (by Robbie Robertson!), a great cast, and some amazing virtuoso camera work by one of the masters. I thoroughly enjoyed, however… I wish I hadn’t read the book by Lehane before. I wish I could’ve enjoyed the new Scorsese movie as a new experience. The book is good, but the movie appears better. It’s hard to separate them. Perhaps in a few weeks, I’ll revisit some classic Scorsese movies and a few I haven’t seen, and do some reviews. Spoiler alert: The Color of Money is one of Scorsese’s best, and most underrated.

Peter Gabriel’s new album is an excellent concept. One CD of covers by Gabriel of songs he likes, and another forthcoming CD of covers of Gabriel songs by those artists he covered. The first release is called “Scratch my Back” and the second is “I’ll Scratch Yours”. I’m most looking forward to Paul Simon’s cover of Biko. Not only is Biko one of my favourite songs ever, but Paul Simon is one of my favourite artists ever. As for the album itself? Gabriel’s covers are static and unemotional.

Did you know that the Australians call ketchup “dead horse”? That’s fascinating. Why do they do it? Rhyming slang, the best of all slangs. Tomato sauce (in Aussie accent) rhymes with dead horse. Don’t ask me explain how that works. But it’s great.

Here’s a fascinating article on Slate about Canada’s aggressive campaign to procure more gold medals than ever. It’s written from an outsider’s perspective, which I rarely get unless it’s from the UK. Typically, The British press are hounding us for our taking advantage of home turf, but if it isn’t Prince Harry or Becks/Posh, the British press is complaining.

Random Classic Doctor Who Review

mlcmontgomery — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 13:00:00 +0000

Okay I’m starting a new thing on this blog today. This will be a new recurring feature in which I review a classic Doctor Who serial – sometimes chosen at random, sometimes selected. The first one we will go with is the Fifth Doctor’s Resurrection of the Daleks from series 21. I chose this serial because it’s one of the major stories from the Fifth Doctor’s era, and it’s considered good. Let’s take a look.

The Doctor, Turlough and Tegan are caught in some sort of Time Corridor and are deposited randomly in London of 1984. They attempt to find the Corridor and figure out what drew them here. Meanwhile, a Dalek space vessel invades a prison ship with the intent on freeing a mysterious prisoner. The Daleks are employing humanoid mercenaries in order to conquer this ship at the same time using the mercenaries for some mysterious purpose in London 1984. The Doctor and his companions run into a bomb defusing squad in a warehouse where the Time Corridor is, and lo and behold, suddenly they are assaulted by a Dalek. What is buried underneath this warehouse? Who is the mysterious prisoner and what do the Daleks want with him?

Let’s get this out of the way right away: yes, the special effects are dodgy. Doctor Who operates on a budget a fraction of the size of American television shows. The effects don’t really bother me. Sometimes they’re laughably bad, and other times they’re surprisingly effective. But what of the story?

This is an extremely entertaining Doctor Who serial. The dialogue is decent enough, the plotting is pitch perfect. Each cliffhanger is set up well enough and the mystery unfolds slowly enough to keep my attention. That being said, this serial suffers from some pretty poor acting, specifically, from Tegan and from the prisoner. There’s often the sense of theatrical acting, trying to shout to the back seats when there’s no need. It’s not enough to ruin the story for me.

The prison ship features some terrific characters such as the doctor who attempts self-destructing the ship and the new recruit with a desire for change in working conditions. All of the character building is done quickly, making room for what appears to be a huge death count for a Doctor Who serial.

That being said, character development stops completely by the end of the second of four parts, giving way to action and chases. It’s not a terrible thing. I just wanted more from the writing.

I really enjoyed Resurrection of the Daleks. I thought it was well-plotted, staged professionally, and the acting from most participants was excellent. I loved the fanservice nods to previous continuity without being intrusive or attention-grabbing. I look forward to more Fifth Doctor adventures.

So concludes the first Random Classic Doctor Who Review post. Keep your browser here for more exciting reviews of Doctor Who and other things.

The Virgin in the Garden

mlcmontgomery — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 22:00:00 +0000

When I read Byatt’s Possession, I was bored by the endless poetry, but enchanted by the exquisite prose. I was determined to give Byatt another go, and I thought that the first book in a quartet would be a decent place to start. I finished The Virgin in the Garden, and I’m ready to take a look at it.

Set during the summer of the new Queen’s coronation in 1953, this novel is the story of the Potter children: eldest Stephanie, falling in love with a clergyman, middle child Frederica, falling in love with a teacher, a colleague of her professor father, and finally, youngest Marcus, a mathematical prodigy who has entered into a strange and phantasmagorical relationship with another teacher.

This is a character-oriented novel about the developing relationships between the large-ish cast. At its center is Frederica, strong-willed, proud, fiercely intelligent and not altogether beautiful. The narrator never really explicitly tells us whether or not Frederica is gorgeous; mostly it’s Alexander, the professor she loves, who lets us know this.

Alexander has written a play about the first Elizabeth’s coronation, and it is to be staged around the time of the new Elizabeth’s coronation. As well, it is to be staged in the beautiful garden at the school where Alexander and the Potter paterfamilias teach.

Just like in Possession, Byatt plays with the title of the novel in a myriad of ways. The Virgin of the title can refer to almost all of the major characters, even if the virginity is figurative rather than literal. The Garden also refers to plenty of things. The main garden in the school is the scene of a wedding reception, of confrontation, of sexual dalliances, and of course, of the play at the novel’s heart.

The play in this novel is used as a fabrication like the play within Hamlet or the beginning scene of Yates’ Revolutionary Road. The narrator uses the play to obliquely comment on the characters who are acting. It’s a clever method to get important information across about the characters.

For most of this book, I was again plagued by questions of “why”. I wasn’t sure what Byatt was trying to tell me. It’s a very long and slow moving novel, and filled with excellent examples of Byatt’s ultra-specific prose, in which she zeroes in on something, a room, an outfit, a painting, and details it for paragraphs. But to me, the novel’s true meaning is hidden in throwaway lines and small references.

The Virgin in the Garden is a novel about the English at a specific time in a specific place. Evidently, the entire quartet traces the intellectual and emotional development of the English from the coronation to the present day. This is no more apparent than in this first novel of the series.

Often, the narrator will refer to a character’s forced politeness, a compulsion to look away from something potentially embarrassing. They are repressed: sexually, emotionally, intellectually, living in an Elizabethan or Victorian past, obsessed with the literature and poetry of another era.

D. H. Lawrence figures into this novel in a big way. While numerous characters live in their head, reciting lines of Spenser or Tennyson, only a couple characters have read Lawrence’s Lady Chatterly’s Lover or more importantly, Women in Love. (There’s a reason why I’m always harping on Lawrence to be included in “best-of” lists.) Lawrence is an important figure in literature for introducing the modern reader to modern thoughts of sexuality, of awakening.

This novel is set during the coronation for a couple reasons, including historical as the new era was supposed to be one of prosperity. But it’s also the Fifties: the final breath before the sexual and intellectual revolution of the Sixties were to begin.

I’ve gone on and on about what the novel is about rather than what the novel is about. Even if one was to not gather any hidden subtext or meaning, one could enjoy this novel on the surface as a great soap opera. The rise and fall of this family is interesting unto itself. Byatt’s prose and characters are vivid as always.

A word of negativity, however. Of the three main story threads snaking through the novel, the least interesting of all is the one featuring Marcus, the youngest Potter. His descent into madness is well-schematized, but unfortunately, reading pages upon pages of incoherent prose becomes tiresome. I thought it was clever how Byatt shows (rather than tells) his developing madness, but I never found it entertaining or engaging.

The Virgin in the Garden is a fantastic novel, and I’m glad to have given Byatt another chance. I really look forward to the next novel in the sequence, Still Life, which is said to be the best in the series. Check back here for more reviews and thanks for reading.

Omega The Unknown (2007)

mlcmontgomery — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 13:00:00 +0000

I haven’t reviewed a comic book for this blog in a long time. There’s a couple reasons for that…. Mostly, a lot of mainstream comic books suffer from a plague of sameness: the same situations, the same characters, the same “shocks” and “twists”. Superhero comics are stagnant and in dire need of a huge paradigm shift. In the spirit of that, we have Jonathan Lethem’s revamp of Steve Gerber’s enigmatic Omega the Unknown.

The 2007 series of Omega the Unknown is different than the original in a couple ways. First of all, it’s drawn in a very unique and idiosyncratic thanks to Farel Dalrymple, a mostly indie artist. Also, it’s set during the present day. The story is of Alex, just a kid who is a little smarter than most. His parents perish in a car crash and Alex becomes the ward of the nurse who took care of him while he recuperated in the hospital. Alex is introduced to regular school in the heart of Hell’s Kitchen in New York; it is a bildungsroman of growing up in modern era New York, just like Gerber’s original series.

And just like the original, Alex is tied to a mysterious and silent superhero by the name of Omega. Robots are attacking regular people and infiltrating their homes and restaurants. Only Omega stands up to them. However, there’s another element: the Mink, the very brand-orientated superhero who boasts a comic, action figures, and movies with his name.

What is the connection between Alex and Omega? Who is controlling these evil robots? Who is the Mink and how will he benefit from these two warring groups?

Lethem and Dalrymple set up mystery after mystery and build towards a confusing climax with this comic book. Lethem’s talents at plotting are from his work with novels, not comics. It’s very clear, considering he doesn’t set up each issue as standalone stories. Rather, each issue is simply a chapter in a longer narrative. This isn’t a good or bad thing; it’s just different than sequential serial storytelling.

The story itself isn’t terribly compelling to be frank. I never found Omega or Alex to be engaging enough characters for me to care, and the Mink was as subtle a satire as a screwdriver to the face.

I didn’t hate this book, but I didn’t like it either. It was a chore to sludge through the middle chapters in which Lethem sets up more mysteries. Does the conclusion of the story tie up all these loose ends? Sort of, I guess. There’s no dialogue in the final issue for some bizarre reason.

I found this revamp of Omega the Unknown to be pretentious in that indie way, lackluster in the mainstream superhero way, and most egregious of all, boring in terms of story and character; there’s no greater crime in fiction. I have only read one Lethem novel, Motherless Brooklyn, which I found entertaining if disposable, so I wasn’t expecting Watchmen. I just found Omega the Unknown to be mediocre unfortunately.

A new Bret Easton Ellis novel?

mlcmontgomery — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 19:15:00 +0000

Yes, it appears Bret Easton Ellis has scheduled for publication his seventh novel. It’s called Imperial Bedrooms, and it is a sequel to his first novel, Less Than Zero. Here is the synopsis and the cover art.

The book is expected to focus on Clay as a middle-aged screenwriter drawn back into his old circle, where Blair has become married to Trent and Julian has become a high-class pimp and Rip is into even more sinister activities. Amidst this, Clay begins dating a young actress with mysterious ties to Julian, Rip and a recently-murdered Hollywood producer and his life begins to spin out of control.

Huh. I’m not sure if I’m interested in this. Of course I will read it. Of course I will buy it in hardcover. But I’m not sure. I absolutely adore Lunar Park. I thought it was a great postmodern ghost story, and seemingly, the end of an era for Ellis. For him to return to the same story of 25 years ago is unsettling. Is there no growth for you, Ellis? That’s my big fear. However, Less Than Zero is a tremendous novel. The tone and voice are perfect. Perhaps Imperial Bedrooms will be good. I hope so, considering that cover is godawful.

Check back here come May of 2010 for my review.

Doctor Who: The 2009 Specials

mlcmontgomery — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 14:22:00 +0000

Well, the girlfriend and I finally did it. We watched all of the revival series of Doctor Who, all of the Ninth Doctor, all of the Tenth Doctor, and all of Russel T. Davies’ era. Instead of reviewing the second, third and fourth series like I should, I’m going to skip them and focus on the four specials of 2009.

Planet of the Dead

The Doctor gets on a bus with a bunch of strangers when he’s trying to track some sort of rip in space-time. The bus goes through the rip and they end up on a desert planet where a mysterious storm is approaching, and a couple of visually arresting aliens have become very interested in the humans.

It starts off like a pretty normal Doctor Who special except at the end, when the prophecy is told to the Doctor, about the end of his song, which was also foretold by the Ood in a previous episode. What makes this special, and the others, so interesting is the mental deterioration of the Doctor. He’s a sad, lonely god, who has chosen to travel solo as to avoid any more emotional attachment and heartbreak.

Other than this aspect, Planet of the Dead is fairly run of the mill. The mystery at the heart is fairly simple, the humour is spot on, and in true Russel T Davies fashion, the foreshadowing is direct and never oblique. It’s a higher quality episode but it’s still just another Doctor Who episode.

Waters of Mars

The Doctor has landed on Mars by coincidence on the very same day that the first human outpost on Mars gets mysteriously destroyed. He realizes that this is a fixed point in time, and shouldn’t intervene, but he just can’t quite leave the humans alone, especially when they’re becoming infected by something and dripping water everywhere.

Definitely an improvement on the previous special, this one raises the stakes quite a bit. For the Doctor that is. Without ruining the ending of this special, let me just say that it is awesome to see a Doctor who is badass.

David Tennant’s Doctor is often maniacal, jumpy, energetic and sometimes loopy. He’s also sometimes cruel. More cruel than a human could ever be. Like at the end of the third series’ episode “Family of Blood” in which the Doctor devises particularly devious and cruel punishments for the Family.

This is applies also to this special. The Doctor is not human and we should never forget it. The Waters of Mars is a fantastic episode of Doctor Who and a fantastic lead in to the next special.

The End of Time

Split over two parts, The End of Time is the last story of the Tenth Doctor, the end of his era, the final singing of his song. I am not going into spoilers about this special, so the only thing I will say about this is that Donna Noble’s Gramps returns, and so does the Master, but in what circumstances, I will not divulge.

That being said, I can honestly say that I enjoyed this final two part special, but I didn’t love it. As a goodbye to David Tennant, the epilogue works perfectly as Davies ties all the loose ends up. There’s even a heartbreaking callback to the aforementioned “Human Nature”/”Family of Blood” two parter.

But the actual plot left me a little cold. It’s just a setup for a new era, a new showrunner, and a chance to blow a bunch of things up. The most positive thing I can say about the plot is that it’s a terrifically ingenious use of time travel, the way Steven Moffat writes time travel.

As goodbyes go, this was sad, but the second series’ two parter, “Army of Ghosts”/”Doomsday” remains the ultimate new-era Doctor Who episode. The goodbye between the Doctor and Rose is heartwrenching. There’s an echo of that in the final moments of The End of Time, but it’s not the same.

All in all, I enjoyed The End of Time and I certainly looked forward to Series 30 of Doctor Who, especially since Steven Moffat is the showrunner. However, the new Doctor looks weird and is far too young. His head is too big. Oh well, you can’t always have perfect transitions.

Watch here for more Doctor Who reviews as the girlfriend and I are about to embark on a journey through classic Doctor Who. As in Doctors Four through Seven!

A quick quote from E. M. Forster

mlcmontgomery — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 15:20:00 +0000

I’m knee-deep in A. S. Byatt’s The Virgin in the Garden and in Forster’s Howards End right now, and it might be a few days before a post a review of either. But for now, enjoy with me, this delicious quote taken from Chapter 7 of Howards End.

“…I began to think that the very soul of the world is economic, and that the lowest abyss is not the absence of love but the absence of coin”

What a gorgeous and cynical thing to say. Very prescient of Forster I think.