The latest books: 21 so far in 2019

Just reading books by Jung or Jungians or memoirs of the individuation process by those who work with Jungians causes me to have delicious and mysterious dreams. I've been doing a lot of dreamwork with the Shadow, Anima, and Mother archetype lately.

The best bits of this book are those which use Biblical stories and religious symbols to explain Jungian concepts. And the best of those is the discussion of Job. Probably only interesting or useful if you're fairly deep in the Jungiverse.



There are several reviewers on Amazon who trashed this book because it's called "AMERICAN" short stories but there's a lot of stories about Africans, Asians, gray parrots, etc. Make the Best American Short Stories the Best Again! Whatever. I used to read these annuals religiously but stopped about 20 years ago; thought I should see what was happening with the short story lately.

I found this collection was excellent and interesting BECAUSE it didn't feature the painfully empty interior lives of a series of alienated suburban white people who had never even heard of Marx or Sartre or Chomsky and were unable to find a theorist to diagnose their malaise in US Weekly and People magazines. And the story about the parrot, narrated by a parrot, is an all-time great I can use with my middle school students. One of the classic devastating last lines!

 

Having met James Ellroy, and having spoken with him about JFK conspiracy books and novels, and having watched him scrawl "Blood rage rules!" in my copy of his American Tabloid, and having enjoyed several of his books, I thought I'd give the latest prisoner turned literary darling a shot. Cherry is a worthy first effort. Sometimes the narrator's voice is searing, clear, and white-hot, and that voice carries you along and surprises you with what captures the narrator's attention, and the curious tidbits he knows about literature and history sprinkled into the junky talk and soldier lingo. There is a lot of blood rage here, or at least blood hunger.

But other times the voice is clumsy and the narrator becomes a familiar type (I lived in West Baltimore for years--I saw these guys and gals daily. The reality of this "familiar type" is quite real to me). If you've read or seen The Corner you have heard this story. If you read Russell Banks's Rule of the Bone you've heard this story and met this character. You need some humor to sustain the plot, the way Trainspotting is just fucking awful and then awfully funny and then just awful again. Cherry has a lot of the awful but loses its sardonic humor at some point.

I dunno why I'm nitpicking a pretty strong first novel--it just feels like I've read this before, and done better. But the descriptions of the Iraq War and its consequences and the attitudes of the soldiers are top-notch. The first half of the book is very strong. Something about the narrator and the characters just can't sustain the second half.

 

Just great. Points out the resurgence of Native American population numbers, and while the well-documented and notorious facts of centuries of ethnic cleansing and genocide are noted and examined here, the book is mostly concerned with celebrating survival--and despite the grim data, a great deal of success. A really fantastic historic overview of government policy and indigenous response, of activism and combat, of submission and fealty and betrayal. The Epilogue is some deep shit.

Recent Reads

I've been reading Ramsey Campbell since about 1985. I first found him in the Little Professor Bookshop in York, PA. They had a copy of The Inhabitant of the Lake, which was HPL mythos juvenalia he sold to August Derleth at Arkham House, but which was pretty good. This recent trilogy revisits that universe.

It's an uneven series. I thought the first volume showed a lot of promise, but as we progress through the years with the main characters the story was less convincing, and the central character became more of a bore.

The original horror from the Inhabitant of the Lake is back, and is influencing the prophet of a new Church which claims to teach the True Gospel. This Church also uses a meditative technique to spread its message, and the meditative technique is effective at helping children who have seizures and who are "on the spectrum." The narrator of the series discovers as a young boy that one of his teachers is trying to re-awaken an eldritch horror, and combating this becomes his life mission. After volume 1, which is somewhat reminiscent of better Campbell novels (like Incarnate), the story gets looser but I maintained enough interest to see it through.

I'm seriously pleased one of my fave writers is still plugging away, more often good than not. And the idea that he would even attempt a trilogy is great.

Though the recent trilogy is uneven, this collection of new short fiction shows Campbell is still a master of that form. Campbell has always had the knack for taking reality and twisting it just enough to make it creepy AF. His prose is as mysterious and engaging as ever, and his poor protagonists suffer merciless fates.

 
Wow. This is not a collection of horror stories, but the stories are as viscerally disturbing as any horror. Every story is just wrong in only the most delightful and harrowing ways. Definitely Shirley Jackson level shit, and the characters, the plotting, the craftsmanship are at a very high level. But oh man, hold on to your hat.

 

Dude riffs on what we can know about the world of Odysseus from Homer and other writers and current archaeology. Chapters on manhood and traditions and hierarchy and economics. Appendices which destroy all the Troy bullshit accepted as fact since Schliemann.

  

Look at the cards. Try to visualize them. Read the chapters. Let your unconscious do the rest. The Teacher will appear when the student is ready.

 

One of my all-time faves. I read everything he releases. His short stories make me so happy. These are no exception. He can keep writing them until he can't and I'll keep reading them until he stops or I do.

 

Our task is to integrate all the autonomous parts of our Psyche into Unity. The Ego wants to think it rules the roost, but the other elements will fuck up your shit if you don't take a backseat sometimes. The Self wants the Ego to balance unconscious and more eternal elements of the Psyche, and in the Unseen Partner we get one woman's experience of the individuation process, through her spontaneous poetry, associated art works, and blurbs about the Jungian ideas behind it all.

Recent Books

Perhaps the most interesting, challenging, and wide-ranging book I've ever read. It's a book about Tarot, but it's also a magnificent overview of the Western Esoteric Tradition. It's a book about Tarot but it's also a close examination of the theological underpinnings of Christian symbols and their relationship to older traditions. It's a book about Tarot but it's also a mesmerizing discussion of philosophical schools and historic moments and individual mages, sages, mystics, and magicians. It's a book about Tarot but it's also an examination of the importance of Steiner and Jung and others of the sort. I wanted to start reading it again as soon as I finished it.



The best haunted house novel I've read since Jackson's Hill House. A good haunted house novel knows that such houses are merely amplifiers for the weaknesses and character flaws of those within reach of malign spectral influence. In this novel one character who has bitter class resentments and a very small history with the mansion is unwittingly used by the house to destroy its inhabitants one by one. Like Eleanor in Hill House, whose resentment of her mother and whose passion for Montague and whose blinkered naivite result in her own self-destruction and imprisonment in the house, the protagonist of The Little Stranger is absorbed into Hundreds before he realizes the reality of the situation.

England is no longer the world's largest Empire. As American intelligence cowboys face off against their Soviet counterparts on the global stage, English agents bicker and stew and lose their mission. Evidence that English intelligence has been compromised brings George Smiley and some old friends out of retirement. Will they solve the mystery before the Cold War is lost?



A lot of what has been written about Montezuma and Cortes was spectacular bullshit propaganda. Because this propaganda has been repeated for centuries, it became TRUTH and is enshrined in many ways in popular imagination and in history departments. But post-colonial historians are chipping away at the myths and trying to get closer to the reality of this brutal meeting of two great civilizations. Like Mexico itself, this history is layered and rich and complex. Was Montezuma duped by Cortes? Or was Cortes merely a specimen added to Montezuma's famous zoo? Was Cortes a military genius or was he a pawn of other Aztec/Mexica leaders who wanted to challenge the existing status quo? How much of this truth is forever unknowable?



An acerbic, hilarious, and totally unique voice in short fiction. Oh my God, I laughed too hard at some of these stories.



Exactly what is the flame? And who keeps it alive? The pyramids are denuded, their casings used to build Cairo. The intent of these initiation centers has been forgotten and they are called tombs. Manly Hall tries to keep the flame burning, and provides useful guideposts for those with eyes to see, and ears to hear.


The Dalai Lama shows off his mad exegesis skills on some ancient poetry. Along the way he drops hints and truth bombs about mindfulness/meditation techniques and deepening a spiritual practice.



The philosopher Godfrey-Smith uses octopods to explore the development of consciousness and how we learn, remember, experience the world, and interact with our physical bodies and environment. Along the way he details the peculiar and engaging behavior of these alien beings in labs and in the deep sea.

Book 31 of 2018

Thomas Cromwell is one of the supreme Machiavellians. Mantel's novel follows him from his lowly, brutish beginnings as the son of an abusive blacksmith who often beat him near to death and thence to the heights of power as King Henry VIII's most trusted and most feared counselor.

Surprisingly, as Cromwell plots the destruction of his foes and Henry's foes he remains a sympathetic character. One can't help but admire his astute knowledge of languages, finance, business, fine art and crafts, his keen apprehension of human nature and psychology. His past as a soldier and street brawler who knows the heft of a knife and how to use it, his use of sophisticated Italian memory palace techniques to keep reams of data organized in his mind--all of this makes him eminently likable despite his dastardly and often deadly machinations.

He has a nose for hypocrisy, and hypocrites tend to fall first in his schemes, and when they don't fall first their karma is used to keep Henry's world in order and to achieve his aims. Cromwell makes himself the indispensable man, and nobles from old blood lines tremble lest he target them.

I found the book deeply involving and fascinating, and look forward to Part 2...

Book 30 of 2018

What a great little novel! It's a classic haunted house tale with a multi-dimensional twist. Once you figure out what's happening to the victims you wish, as many do at horror films, that you could intervene somehow and stop them from doing what they are about to do. That's what makes dramatic irony so cool, right?

Of course a few of the victims are really distasteful people, so it's fun to see them get their occult comeuppance. But even they don't deserve this fate. Well, maybe the cop does.

As in Cloud Atlas, Mitchell keeps track of multiple narrative lines and characters and they are all fully fleshed out with profound and individual and entertaining back stories. Of course these lines and characters all end in a similar manner because their fate is pulling them gravitationally toward the singularity of Slade House. We get to experience this same fate from different points of view, and that's a fun exercise for a writer, to imagine how different people would experience and describe the same sorrowful fate. And Mitchell shows off by keeping them in character as they are snuffed--the things they notice and how they notice them are well done.

The little alley where Slade House hides itself is carefully and quaintly wrought. All of the settings are classic ghost story with 21st century updates. The House itself is truly entertaining, and its means of haunting is unique.

And the book, though creepy and harrowing, is also funny as hell. All good haunted house novels blend humor and despair. Mitchell does so quite well.

A great Halloween read. You can finish it between handing out candies Wednesday.

Books 28 and 29 of 2018

One of my favorite genres is the drug revelation memoir. I love reading authors attempting to describe going off the rails. I think of Walter Benjamin writing about hashish, or Aldous Huxley waxing philosophically about mescalin, or Castaneda's descriptions of peyote trips, or Burroughs, etc.

One of the coolest and most interesting thinkers and describers of such experiences was Terrence McKenna. And McKenna and his ideas are a large part of Lin's book. In fact, the only parts of the book which are at all interesting are when Lin is summarizing McKenna. Which leads me to ask why the hell anyone would read this book when they can just read McKenna or watch him on YouTube.

Because--no offense to Mr. Lin--this is the most boring book I've ever read about this topic. Or any topic. It's pointless. It's meandering. It says nothing new. Even the passages about depression and feeling alienated are dull...and another of my favorite genres is the descent into madness memoir by people who feel isolated and alienated and depressed.

How can a writer with any skills at all write tedious and wholly unimaginative descriptions of DMT and salvia divinorum experiences? I simply can't get my head around it. He smokes DMT and spends pages describing feeling distracted and paranoid and moving in and out of a tent he built in the corner from a blanket. He can't make a salvia experience at all tangible or interesting? Even Miley Cyrus can do that.

Nobody cares if you felt suspicious for six hours straight after she shared her DMT with you. How many pages can you spend giving her the hairy eye-ball while she wonders what the fuck your problem is? What did you see or feel inside that realm? That's what's interesting. McKenna and virtually every other writer creates edge-of-the-seat, earth-shattering descriptive passages of breathtaking wizardry about DMT. Lin's passages sag like over wet noodles. I remember as a novice writer in the Temple University MA program how Toby Olson complimented my description of a mushroom experience and pumped me up with lavish praise during a workshop, only to say "but anyone can write a good trip, it's almost cliched."

Mr. Lin--anyone can write a good trip. Why couldn't you? I read something by you before and that was better than this, but not better enough that I would want to read whatever you published between then and now. And after having read this, I definitely do not want to read whatever you published between that and this, because this was so bad. Sorry, dude.




Thank goodness Ms. Due provided a cleanse for the above atrocity. This is a fine selection of creepy fiction, and runs the gamut from traditional ghost stories which are finely crafted and inhabit an interesting niche to more action/adventure sci-fi thrillers. I particularly liked the one about demons in a Florida swamp who take over infants for a while in the summer--has a nice sardonic tone and delicious Twilight Zone moral! And best of all are the rather intense post-apocalyptic stories at the end. Definitely should go on your Halloween reading list.

Books 25, 26, and 27 of 2018

It took me forever to read this novel. Not because I got bogged down, or because it was so long...but because I didn't want to finish it. It could go on for 5000 pages and I would love that. The characters were so compelling I wanted it to keep going forever. And the characters are not only humans, but also trees. And trees are cool as fuck. So maybe there will be a sequel from the perspective of an elm or a red maple.

The first half of the novel I thought "This isn't a novel." It definitely stretched the boundaries of any of the traditional ideas of what a novel is or was or could be. Initially I thought The Overstory was simply a collection of vignettes or novellas with a thematic link. But they all eventually coalesce and the threads end up woven together in a satisfying canopy more in line with the traditional definition of a novel.

Now if only I could remember the other Richard Powers novel I read.  Or perhaps I've read two? Can't recall, though, even when I look at the titles. Something to do with Israel? I've read too many damn books. I'm totally stumped.



There's a blurb from "O Magazine" inside the front cover of this Vintage paperback which says the writing is "reminiscent of Henry James."

HAHAHAHAHOHOHOOOTEEHEEHAR

OK, had to get that out of my system. Not sure if I'm laughing about an "O Mag" writer referencing Henry James, or the content of the blurb itself.

There is some fine writing in this book, but nothing on par with James, even James at his worst is better than this. But it's got some good bits. I mean, the novel is about a blowjob which lasts 120 pages. And that's a pretty good blow job, though the participants are pretty bored during the blow job, as they spend a lot of time reminiscing, remembering, fantasizing, philosophizing, and otherwise discursing all over the place. I mean James also does that, but much more subtly and he was a savage when it came to point of view and characterization, whereas Minot, though she writes a tight sentence, well her POV shifts a lot and yet the voice often seems the same inside different characters. So the blower and the blowee are bloviating internally in similar ways. And alas, neither character is particularly likeable or interesting--in fact, they suck, and well yes one of them definitely sucks but they both do actually. So my verdict about Rapture is not quite that it blows, but that it blows for a book about blowing and being blown. It should be hard to make a book featuring fellatio as its central action tedious, but Minot dug deep into her writer's bag of tricks and managed it, right down to the climax. But to be fair, there is also some thoughtful stuff about gender and power and the problematic dynamics of sex and relationships given the complexities of gender and power. Just not enough of it to make this worth reading.



A somewhat tepid yet occasionally interesting book about Chomsky and the anarchistic ideal of mutual aid. The artwork is not so great, sometimes the gist vanishes and memoir becomes the focus, but I enjoyed the bit about Occupy Wall Street and its library.

Books 22, 23, and 24 of 2018

A Smiley novel without Smiley. I mean, Smiley is there, and his tendrils are woven throughout. But he is only very briefly present in the novel in a physical sense.

Alec Leamas is a more Bond-ish spy than Smiley, who mixes it up mostly in an intellectual sense. Leamas is an action man who works in the field. And his fate really lays bare the realities of that era and that region and the cold callousness of the Cold War. And that Cold War did not end as suspected decades ago but was carried on by the defeated side in new and ingenious ways. This is a novel so taught it thrums like power lines. I read it in about ten minutes.



I enjoy the 'descent into madness' genre of memoir. And when the memoir is written by a Surrealist and the long-time lover of Max Ernst at a time when the entire world had gone mad, well then of course it will be a worthwhile read. The first half of the book is an exquisite introduction, analysis, and biography of Leonora Carrington which is just as good as the memoir itself.



I just may begin collecting dew when the planets are in the correct houses, because Hall lets more of the cat out of the bag than anyone else I've read.