Tag: books

bookmark_borderI’m Starting to Worry About this Review of Jason Pargin’s Latest Book

Posted on by Elliott Evans

There’s a quote that I think about quite often from Jame’s Cameron’s Terminator 2: Judgement Day: “There’s no fate but what we make for ourselves.” If there are messages in Jason Pargin’s latest novel, I’m Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom, one of them is that there are no black boxes of doom but those we make for ourselves.

There’s a quote that I think about quite often from Christopher Nolan’s Inception: “An idea is like a virus, resilient, highly contagious. The smallest seed of an idea can grow. It can grow to define or destroy you.” If there are messages in Jason Pargin’s latest novel, I’m Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom, one of them is that the black boxes we make for ourselves can grow to define or destroy us.

The black box in the title of the novel is not the physical black box in the narrative of the novel. I’m not spoiling anything here, this is all explained quite early on in the novel. Applying that information to the philosophical black boxes in the rest of the novel is left as an exercise for the reader. If all that seems like a bit of a bait-and-switch con, keep in mind how much bait-and-switch happened with those two movies. The actor who played the main antagonist in the first movie plays the main white knight protector in the second? The eponymous inception is perpetrated not just on the target of the heist, not just on the instigator of the heist, but primarily on the perpetrator of the heist?

That said, Black Box is a bit of a bait-and-switch. When you find out the true meaning of the philosophical black box, and when you find out the true contents of the physical black box, your concepts of most of the main characters are switched and turned. This is not to relegate this novel to the trash heap of the “twist ending”. There is a twist beginning, a twist middle, a twist climax, and a twist denouement as well. One character who is cast as the only competent and experienced professional turns out to be kind of a nitwit. One character who is cast as a relentless machine turns out to be one of the most tragic and sympathetic characters in the whole story.

All the while, we are forced to contemplate how information is presented to us in this world, and how that affects the way we interpret it. A clandestine road-trip quickly becomes one of the most comically public endeavors on the planet. What the characters think they understand about each other becomes as unreliable as what we think we know about them.

This novel is not part of either of Jason Pargin’s two successful series. It is not a John, Dave, and Amy novel or a Zoey Ashe novel. It is good to see a writer branch out in new directions and work on things that are different. This is not a horror novel or a science fiction novel. These situations are all too real, these landscapes are too mundane, and these people are very real. Everybody makes mistakes and has regrets. There are no color-coded hats or billowing capes.

At times, mostly in the middle, this novel gets a little bogged down in conversations that are mostly exposition. At the end, most threads get tied up maybe a little too neatly. If those things are “flaws” in the novel, I’m not sure how Pargin could have fixed them. Maybe it’s not perfect, but it’s good. Very good. I continue to think that Jason Pargin is a novelist who started out strong and just keeps getting better. I recommend this book to all adult readers, and most YA. What I really don’t understand is why this author’s publisher hasn’t updated his promotional web site.

bookmark_border“Shock Induction”, by Chuck Palahniuk

Posted on by Elliott Evans

This is the latest novel by Chuck Palahniuk. It is a satire. The only reason this is not a non-fiction novel is because it is a satire. The truth is that everything this novel talks about basically does happen, just not in the absurd ways Palahniuk pretends it does for the purposes of this novel. Everything that “some shadowy but not actually secret at all group” is doing to young people in the novel is actually happening, just to different sets of young people than imagined in the novel, and in slightly different ways.

This book is a fast read. It is engaging and well written. It is confusing at times, but nobody reads Chuck Palahniuk expecting the narrative to go down like vanilla ice cream, right? Chuck Palahniuk is more like a double cone of rum raisin and rocky road, and the cone is cracked, and the day is hot and sunny; and there you are in the hot sun trying to ingest this mix of textures and flavors while constantly licking the outside of the whole thing to keep from getting any on your pants.

I do not think that Shock Induction will become one of my favorite Chuck Palahniuk books. Those are still Fight Club, Diary, and Rant. It’s pretty high up in the second tier, though. Holding it up against his other recent books, it’s tighter than The Invention of Sound, more palatable than Not Forever But for Now, and less terrifying than Adjustment Day. Maybe wait for this one in softcover if you’re not already the proud owner of a hardcover copy. I mean, it came out weeks ago.

bookmark_border“Everything is Illuminated” by Jonathan Safran Foer

Posted on by Elliott Evans

A while back (apparently February of 2023), I saw the 2005 movie (starring Elijah Wood) that Liev Schreiber made from the 2002 novel. I was very taken by the film, and I knew that the novel would give me a different perspective on the story. I did not know how different these two stories would be. It took me about a month to read the novel.

The film details the “very rigid search” that a young American man (also named Jonathan Foer) makes to Ukraine to explore the history of his family there. Jonathan is the family collector. At home, Jonathan has a museum of his family’s history, filled with photos and artifacts. The film is narrated with voice over and vignetted with chapter cards by the young Ukrainian man who is hired to guide the American to “Trachimbrod” the birthplace of American’s grandfather Safran Foer. There are some flashbacks, but most of the film is the story of the search for Trachimbrod and what they find there.

The narration of the film is taken from letters that the guide, named Alex, writes to Jonathan after Jonathan has returned to the USA. Alex’s father runs “Heritage Tours”, the company that Jonathan hires to take him to Trachimbrod. Alex is the guide, pressed into service by his father, and Alex’s grandfather is the driver of the company car. Grandfather believes he is blind, so he has a seeing eye dog who he has named “Sammy Davis Junior, Junior”. Alex’s letters are printed in the book with his fractured English and editorial comments.

There is so much more in the book, however. Alex’s letters are interspersed with a history of Trachimbrod, and of Jonathan’s family there. This “history” is fantastic in the sense that it appears to be largely made of fantasies that Jonathan imagines to be the history of Trachimbrod. These fantasies are probably based on the artifacts that Jonathan retrieves from Trachimbrod, but an early detail in one of Alex’s letters reveals that these items were all stolen while Jonathan is still in Ukraine. This detail, like the note in the foreword to Lolita regarding the death of Mrs. Richard F. Schiller, will most likely be forgotten by the reader before its import becomes clear. None of this is included in the film.

The history of Alex’s family and its connection to the Foer family is also wildly different between the novel and the film. This is not a criticism of either. Both stories are poignant, enigmatic, and impactful. I don’t know if I think either story is better than the other. They are very different, though they end similarly. Alex’s final letters reveal more than the film about how he and his family fare after he returns home with his Grandfather.

Jonathan Safran Foer the author also wrote the novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, which was also made into a film. For personal reasons, I have never allowed myself to watch that film, but perhaps I will read the book.

I am not sure if this is, strictly speaking, a book review.

bookmark_border“Not Forever but for Now”, by Chuck Palahniuk

Posted on by Elliott Evans

In an afterword, Chuck Palahniuk reveals that the story of this novel is meant to be an exploration of addiction and addictive behavior. While not as absorbing as some of Palahniuk’s other novels, I feel this one succeeds in its goal.

Unreliable narrators are par for the course in in Palahniuk’s works, and this novel is no exception. My favorites of his novels have narrators who are not unreliable because they are liars, but because they are honestly ignorant. In Fight Club, the narrator is ignorant of the true identity of Tyler Durden and his own feelings towards Marla. In Diary, the narrator has no idea what is really going on. In Rant, which is presented as a series of interviews, almost none of the speakers have the full picture and can only describe the parts they have personally witnessed.

In Not Forever but for Now, the narrator is unreliable for every reason imaginable. There are things he does not want to tell you. There are things he has not been told. There are things he has been told that are lies. There are things he has been told that are terrible truths. There are things he has just never noticed. The narrator is unreliable like a fish is wet. He is unreliable because “unreliable” is the nature of his environment.

If the nature of a story is that the main character goes through some kind of change, then in order for this narrator to change his entire environment must be unraveled and rebuilt. Every terrible truth must be told. Every lie must be exposed. Every villain must be defeated. Every addiction must be broken. The fish must learn to live in the desert.

I got through this novel still not being sure what was real in the narrator’s world and what was not. If this novel is about addiction, he has succeeded in kicking most of his bad habits, but it’s possible his essential nature has not changed. It’s possible that this was his true nature the whole time, and it has merely been allowed to surface. If so, it has had to fight its way up through such a sea of unreliability that it has been somewhat damaged. One set of addictions has been exchanged for another, and the narrator is still unreliable.

It is a disquieting tale, which is also par for the course in Palahniuk’s novels. Also, it has 68 chapters. Not nice.

bookmark_borderIf this review exists, you are in the wrong universe

Posted on by Elliott Evans

Last night, I finished reading the latest book in Jason “David Wong” Pargin‘s “John Dies at the End” series, If This Book Exists, You’re in the Wrong Universe. I liked it quite a bit.

This series, if you can find it in a store, typically gets shelved under “Horror”, but I don’t know. I found out about the first book while trying to watch all of the movies directed by Don Coscarelli. He mostly directs horror movies like Phantasm and Bubba Ho Tep, so I guess that makes the book that the horror movie was based on a horror book. There is plenty of horror in it, but it’s also very funny because there is plenty of humor in it, but it’s not a comedy because there is a good solid serious story under those other layers.

The thing about these books is that each one is better than the last. The horror is more involved. The humor is more pervasive and integrated. The story and the development of the characters is stronger, more personal, and more positive (no, really).

Interspersed with all the bloodshed and explosions, with all the running gags and one-liners, there is some intricate plotting and utterly awesome prose. I read some passages out loud to Sharon because I was just stunned by some of the wonderful things Pargin writes for his characters.

You don’ have to read all the books in order to appreciate any one of them. If you don’t think you have the patience to “get all caught up”, I say don’t bother. Jump straight to this last one even though it will spoil the shock that John doesn’t die at the end of the first one. It’s definitely the best of the series so far.

bookmark_borderBook Review – “Once Upon a Time In Hollywood”

Posted on by Elliott Evans

I’m a great big slobbering fan of Quentin Tarantino’s films, so when I saw that he had released a “novelization” of his most recent film, “Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood” I added it to my shopping list.

Cover image courtesy of alibris.com

I greatly enjoyed reading this book, but one thing you need to know about it is that it is not the same story as the film. First of all, since it is a book there is a lot more of the story told from inside the heads of the characters. You see the world through their eyes and histories, rather than through your eyes and Tarantino’s camera. There are long expository sequences recounting the history of cinema and television, as regarded by different characters. These sequences inform the actions of the characters, but this exposition is not present in the film.

Actually, the book is edited so that the entire “point” of the story is different. If you utilize my theory that a well-crafted story ends on the point, then the end of the movie indicates that what Rick Dalton really wants to be is a real hero (like his friend Cliff Booth is), but the end of the book indicates that what Rick Dalton really wants to be is a real actor. This is a big difference.

Some of the Charlie Manson stuff from the movie is present in the book, but much of it has been edited out. Rick Dalton even makes some different choices in the book than he does in the movie, or at least that is what is implied. Anyway, the book is different than the film. I enjoyed both, but they are not exactly the same. I wonder if the book is the movie that Tarantino kind of wishes he could have released, but the movie is the movie that he knew he had to release to avoid bad reviews. Maybe Tarantino is just making fun of the way that novelizations are almost always different from the films.

The design of the book is really cool, mimicking the design of movie novelizations from the sixties. There are even ads for sixties books and movies in the back. I wish there was an ad for Red Apple cigarettes. I have so many old SF paperbacks with cigarette ads in them.

bookmark_borderRise and Fall of D.O.D.O., The

Posted on by Elliott Evans

A Novel by Stephenson, Neal and Galland, Nicole

Anybody who knows me well enough to read this here blog knows that I enjoy reading books by Neal Stephenson. Some people, including people I otherwise respect, consider him to be long-winded and tiresome. “Long-winded” I cannot argue against, but I find him to be endlessly entertaining.

DODO is 742 pages of epistolary diachronical action. It is chock full of manuscripts, emails, journal entries, after action reports, radio transcripts, running around, helicopters, car chases through the streets of Boston, boat rides, sex scenes, battles, beer drinking, quantum physics, holiday parties, and team meetings.

It took me more than a month to grind through it all, but I enjoyed the whole thing.