Through the Language Glass by Guy Deutscher
I wanted to like this. It had been on my wishlist on Amazon for over a year. It started out fantastically and, since I bought the Kindle edition one day when it went on sale, I was making notes left and right. The further I got into the book the more I realized I wasn't learning anything, because essentially the author would present an outdated fact about language, talk about the advancements made since that fact was believed true, challenge the advancements with recent experiments, then undermine the experiments with other observations. In the end, I came out of each chapter completely confused about what I was supposed to believe.
Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
I don't know what's wrong with me lately, but it seems like maybe I'm hyping books in my head too much, getting too excited, because the ones I'm most excited about turn out to be awful. Last year at around this time I was thinking that choosing less random books was leading to more satisfaction, that if I read synopses I would be able to predict my personal preference toward certain books but I think maybe the novelty of making the list I made was too new, too exciting, and it was carrying over so that I looked past the flaws of those first books. Because now, a year later, I'm finding my satisfaction vs. my disappointment to be about the same ratio as when the books were just random.
What I thought this book would be: a mostly realistic portrayal of the underground scene in London with some surrealistic moments. Instead it is an out-and-out fantasy in an entirely made-up world, based on London, but with more magic than reality. I've come to realize that I don't really want too much magic, especially if I'm not expecting it (Harry Potter is "exactly as it says on the tin" as the saying goes - the summary is it's about an ordinary boy who finds out he's a wizard). The summary of Neverwhere is that a man gets pulled into the "dark subculture" of the "abandoned subway and sewer tunnels" of an "alternate reality." You may say, well, it says "alternate reality," so I should have had a clue, there's a big difference between a general statement of alternate realities and outright saying "there will be wizards."
The one thing that kept me going was that I was imagining the character of Richard from the TV show Keeping Up Appearances as the main character, also named Richard.
Drive by Daniel Pink
A book about what motivates people in the workplace. An impulse buy when I wanted to learn more about business because I was trying to get a job at our corporate office. Surprisingly more interesting that half the books I thought I would love. I wish the heads of our company would read it so they might learn why it's bad to offer a bonus for making a goal and then suddenly take it away just before that goal is reached.
The Painted Word by Tom Wolfe
Another impulse buy. I thought it would be different (a theme I'm experiencing) but at least I wasn't crushingly disappointed. It was relatively close to expectations, but I thought there would be less academic talk and more ranting as it was supposed to rip the bourgeois art world of the sixties apart and expose the critics for being responsible for a bunch of pomp and circumstance. It did but not as amusingly as I was hoping.
There were other books but I don't really remember them and so they aren't worth another hour out of my life.
Thursday, March 8, 2012
I'm a Bum. Also, The Maltese Falcon.
I have a hard time keeping up with journals and blogs mainly because I can't just write or type something. I have to scrutinize every word and read my entry multiple times before I can submit, and often one post takes me hours to write. Maybe it's a good thing the home office of the company I work for turned me down because they didn't think I would be fast enough to keep up with the pace they needed for communications between the office and the field.
Anyway, I'm here to give a review to The Maltese Falcon. Let me preface this with the story of why I wanted so badly to read this book. Years ago I watched a little famuos movie called The Usual Suspects which has an incredibly well-written twist ending. It's brilliant. Capital 'B' Brilliant. One day I was reading an article about the movie (a review in Rolling Stone or something) and the reviewer compared the movie to the mystery novel The Maltese Falcon, saying the ending of The Usual Suspects was second only to Falcon as the greatest surprise ending in the history of writing. Naturally, I needed to read The Maltese Falcon. I have, for years mind you, avoided even reading synopses of this book for fear of the ending being revealed. This happened to me once when I read the introduction to a book, where the introduction talked about the various ways to interpret the ending. I was not happy.
So I bought the book and began reading. First, it was not well-written, despite the caption on the front cover saying "Dashiell Hammet is a master of the detective novel, yes, but also one hell of a writer." (The Boston Globe.) It's funny, when you notice things you know you do in your own writing and realize how annoying they must be to readers once you see them through the eyes of a reader. Hammet would describe the actions in a scene excrutiatingly thoroughly, like how Sam Spade would pull a cigarette, put it to his lips, take out his matches, take out one match, light it, lift it to the cigarette, etc. Jesus, he lit a cigarette, okay? I mean, that kind of detail is fine the first time but not every freaking time he lights a cigarette or cigar. It also made for some choppy reading.
I recognize the book was most likely ahead of its time, and that it used specifically precise slang for detectives and criminals of the 1920s, but I just found a lot of the dialogue and even narration laughable. I tried, hard, to understand this book probably set the precedent for using correct slang and dialect, but it just made it sound goofy, like a spoof. I guess I like books that don't try so hard and therefore have a universal feel to them. I bet I would have cared about the characters more if I hadn't been trying to decode what certain phrases meant and hadn't been rolling my eyes at what seemed like a giant cliche.
I wonder if I feel the same when someone uses specific Southern slang, or New York street accents. I wonder if those things have withstood the test of time in the real world (most Southerners still have the same phrases and accent as they did 100 years ago and the same goes with at least the New York accent) where as gangsters in no way speak the way they do in this book. Maybe they do speak that way and I would laugh at them if I heard them today, and promptly be shot.
Worst of all, though, was that the mighty ending, fabled to be the most shocking in all of literature, was extremely disappointing. It was actually obvious from the very beginning. I found myself praying it wouldn't turn out that way. Maybe in 1929 no one had ever made a twist like this before (HIGHLY doubtful - no wait, impossible and I know it's not true because I've read stories written before 1929 with similar twists). I wanted the stupid falcon to mean something more than it does. I'm sorry if that ruins a part of the plot for you but that's an ugly truth about this novel - everything in it was disappointing. I don't feel any need to go back through and see if I can find the clues that were so obvious when the ending was revealed but that were cleverly hidden while in the midst of reading. I felt the need for that when I watched The Usual Suspects, and also felt the details throughout were just amazing and so very brilliant in hindsight. There was a point where the main character of Falcon, Sam Spade, was reading the newspaper and he kept dismissing the financial news as unimportant. He does it twice. I thought that would prove highly important to the legendary twist - that he would have seen everything had he not kept skipping that section - but nope. So very disappointing.
I give this novel a low C-, bordering on a D+. I think it might not have faired as badly had I not been anticipating it for so long but that's life, because I had anticipated it and what an anti-climax. I hope my next long-anticipated novel, IQ84 doesn't disappoint.
Anyway, I'm here to give a review to The Maltese Falcon. Let me preface this with the story of why I wanted so badly to read this book. Years ago I watched a little famuos movie called The Usual Suspects which has an incredibly well-written twist ending. It's brilliant. Capital 'B' Brilliant. One day I was reading an article about the movie (a review in Rolling Stone or something) and the reviewer compared the movie to the mystery novel The Maltese Falcon, saying the ending of The Usual Suspects was second only to Falcon as the greatest surprise ending in the history of writing. Naturally, I needed to read The Maltese Falcon. I have, for years mind you, avoided even reading synopses of this book for fear of the ending being revealed. This happened to me once when I read the introduction to a book, where the introduction talked about the various ways to interpret the ending. I was not happy.
So I bought the book and began reading. First, it was not well-written, despite the caption on the front cover saying "Dashiell Hammet is a master of the detective novel, yes, but also one hell of a writer." (The Boston Globe.) It's funny, when you notice things you know you do in your own writing and realize how annoying they must be to readers once you see them through the eyes of a reader. Hammet would describe the actions in a scene excrutiatingly thoroughly, like how Sam Spade would pull a cigarette, put it to his lips, take out his matches, take out one match, light it, lift it to the cigarette, etc. Jesus, he lit a cigarette, okay? I mean, that kind of detail is fine the first time but not every freaking time he lights a cigarette or cigar. It also made for some choppy reading.
I recognize the book was most likely ahead of its time, and that it used specifically precise slang for detectives and criminals of the 1920s, but I just found a lot of the dialogue and even narration laughable. I tried, hard, to understand this book probably set the precedent for using correct slang and dialect, but it just made it sound goofy, like a spoof. I guess I like books that don't try so hard and therefore have a universal feel to them. I bet I would have cared about the characters more if I hadn't been trying to decode what certain phrases meant and hadn't been rolling my eyes at what seemed like a giant cliche.
I wonder if I feel the same when someone uses specific Southern slang, or New York street accents. I wonder if those things have withstood the test of time in the real world (most Southerners still have the same phrases and accent as they did 100 years ago and the same goes with at least the New York accent) where as gangsters in no way speak the way they do in this book. Maybe they do speak that way and I would laugh at them if I heard them today, and promptly be shot.
Worst of all, though, was that the mighty ending, fabled to be the most shocking in all of literature, was extremely disappointing. It was actually obvious from the very beginning. I found myself praying it wouldn't turn out that way. Maybe in 1929 no one had ever made a twist like this before (HIGHLY doubtful - no wait, impossible and I know it's not true because I've read stories written before 1929 with similar twists). I wanted the stupid falcon to mean something more than it does. I'm sorry if that ruins a part of the plot for you but that's an ugly truth about this novel - everything in it was disappointing. I don't feel any need to go back through and see if I can find the clues that were so obvious when the ending was revealed but that were cleverly hidden while in the midst of reading. I felt the need for that when I watched The Usual Suspects, and also felt the details throughout were just amazing and so very brilliant in hindsight. There was a point where the main character of Falcon, Sam Spade, was reading the newspaper and he kept dismissing the financial news as unimportant. He does it twice. I thought that would prove highly important to the legendary twist - that he would have seen everything had he not kept skipping that section - but nope. So very disappointing.
I give this novel a low C-, bordering on a D+. I think it might not have faired as badly had I not been anticipating it for so long but that's life, because I had anticipated it and what an anti-climax. I hope my next long-anticipated novel, IQ84 doesn't disappoint.
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