Miscellaneous Crumbs of Dialogue: The Good and the Crummy

Miscellaneous Crumbs of Dialogue: The Good and the Crummy

 by Silence Do_nothing

1: You know what's good?

2: Water.

1: Nope.

2: Someone's properly hydrated.

1: Am I supposed to feel guilty about that?

2: I simply mean that you can only appreciate water when you're thirsty.

1: That's with everything.  I'd still rather have something than have appreciation for it.  Because I appreciate it so much.

2: Are you thirsty now?

1: No.

2: Then you can't properly value water.

1: Maybe if I convert to Shinto and pray to a river god or something.

2: That wouldn't help.

1: Shintophobe.

2 [rolls eyes]: I'm sure countless souls have found serenity and a sense of purpose and meaning in Shinto.  They've been a vibrant and vital segment of the community for generations.  I would not hesitate for one second to vote a Shinto practitioner into the White House if he were the best qualified candidate.

1 [puffs out chest]: That’s right.

2: But even hypothetical President Shinto would require a parched throat to truly understand water's precious essence. 

1: You're not looking to hit me up for a charity run for a group that drills water wells in Africa, are you?

2: No, why?  Are you against that?

1: Not the charitable work itself.

2: Just stingy?

1: I don't like how those things are setup.

2: Hmmm.  Like what?

1: That the runners' part is supposed to put them above people who "only" donate money.  I know they do good and all, but-

2: When's the last time you donated money?

1: That's not the point.

2 [rolls eyes]: ...

1: There's the general idea out there that volunteering is superior to giving cash.

2: I'm sure they're very grateful for both.

1: I made my money myself, so when I donate-

2: If you donate.

1: Oh, I will.  Just so you can't hold this over me.

2: My chops busting serves the greater good.

1: It's not about "just writing a check."  I have to work to cover the checks.  I'm donating time like a volunteer, but it's less direct.

2: Yeah, but it's not as though you're mining coal.

1: So.  I still have to put up with a boss.

2: Volunteers have supervisors.

1: It's not the same.

2: And the last time you volunteered was?

1: I don't need to to know that a charity's supervisor can't afford to be nearly as big of a dick as a boss in a business.  A charity isn't going to bitch at a volunteer for being two minutes late.

2: Well then set your alarm five minutes earlier, big baby.

1: I'm not-

2: And don't come in looking all hung over when you're late, too.

1: I'm not disputing that I deserve it.  When you screw up, you get chewed out. I get that.  And when you're getting chewed out, and if you happen to be bad at hiding the feelings that are betrayed by your facial expression -something that goes back to when you were a kid and you kept getting in trouble  for "that look on your face", even though your muscles were making that look without your knowledge or control- if you still haven't developed good enough control to mask the emotions that force their way in when someone is belittling you, then you get to take more flak for your attitude problem.  Hey, fine then.  And when you can't produce as well as the others, even if it burns you up that you can't and even if you hustle like someone who really cares, but because you don't have a knack for it, you come up short.  Too bad.  This isn't a nursery.  You're paid to produce results.  I accept that.  And yes, I know that someone working in a sweatshop would love to be in my shoes, and I would have no right complain to one of them,  but since you aren't one of them, I feel plenty of right to bitch about it to you.

2: I know it sucks, but it has to be that way or everything would fall to pieces.  People are fundamentally lazy.

1: I don't doubt that.  It's just that volunteering doesn't come with that kind of crap so I don't get how it is supposed to show more dedication or a truer act of charity than "only writing a check."

2: I would imagine it's directed towards donors who come from wealth and that for them, writing a check really is the easier way out.

1: Maybe.

2: I never knew you hated the job so much.

1: Nah, it's not so bad.  I mean, it's a job.

2: I guess.

1: Although, I will say -and this isn't just for this job in particular, but for any one.  In my dream lottery scenario, if I won, I wouldn't quit-

2: Oh right.

1: No, not because I'm Mr. Workaholic or I would feel unfulfilled just lounging around all day.  But I would love working I job I didn't need.

2: "Take this job and shove it!"

1: No, I wouldn't even do that.  That lets them know they're getting to you.  I wouldn't be a jerk to people or goof off.  I would take my duties seriously.  I wouldn't try to get fired.  I just wouldn't respond to the threat of it.  The boss could go ballistic and I would calmly shrug it off because I wouldn't really need him.  I don't care about sports cars, or fancy jewelry or home theaters.  Indifference to the boss's wrath would be the one luxury I'd look forward to.

2: Are we including liquor?

1: It would be crazy to stop just when I could start to afford the good stuff.

2: I figured as much.

1: I know that breaks your heart when I could be going bananas on just like pallets and pallets of Perrier.

2: Actually, I'll grant you that liquor is a more reasonable purchase than bottled water.

1: Victory!

2: Tap water quenches just as well.  Alcohol production does require craftsmanship.  Water's water.

1: How could you turn your back on the sacred waters?.

2: I never said that.

1: You acted like it.

2: The bone of contention was more to do with the inability to judge it when fully refreshed.  I wouldn't have argued with your opinion, even if it still contradicted mine, if you gave it after forgoing water for ten hours.  Or after eating half a slice of pizza.

1: How do I know you're fit to judge?

2: I had pizza for lunch so I'm going to have Sahara thirst for the next twenty-four hours no matter how many gallons of water I down.

1: Then don't eat pizza, you baby.

2: Oh no.  It's worth it.  A good restaurant pizza.

1: Sure, who doesn't like pizza?  If that had been your answer you would have gotten no argument from me.

2: That's why booze is such a waste.

1: For a tea-totaler like you, but not for normal people.

2: I know pizza can be pricey, but not compared to alcohol.  Think how much delicious restaurant pizza you could get for what you waste on liquor.

1: I spend it.  I don't waste it.

2: Do you regret spending it?

1: I'm going to spend more.

2: But do you regret it?

1: It's hard for me to say I regret something I do over and over and that I know I'm going to keep doing over and over.

2: When you were hung-over on Saturday, did you regret it then?

1 [smiles]:...

2: See.  How much did you blow on shots?

1: I happily paid eighty bucks for them.

2: Happily?

1: Well, willingly.

2: So you paid eighty dollars to make yourself sick.

1: No. I paid eighty dollars plus a hangover to feel really good.

2: You could have gotten four large pizzas for that!  Or three pizza and several bags of peanut butter cups.  Can't forget desert.

1: What about the water wells for Africa?

2: You brought that into the conversation, but I won't discourage charity as an alternative to your liquor money.  That's what I assume you were referring to when you asked me what was good.

1: No.

2: Oh really.

1: I'll admit that was looping through my head as background noise, like usual.

2: You're such a whino.

1: I was actually going to say that crumbs were good.

2: How are you going to argue against water when that's your answer?

1: People already know water's important.  Crumbs get a bad rap.

2: Then what you should've asked was "What's underrated?"

1: Maybe the question could have been worded more precisely.

2 [rolls eyes]:  Expound on the goodness of crumbs.

1: The crumbs on the bottom of Frosted Flakes and Doritos are always the most flavorful part of the whole.

2: That's it?

1: Both of us were influenced by our choice of lunch.  I brought some Frosted Flakes and Doritos to snack on for lunch.  Not all of can afford pizza.  Some of us have liquor habits to support.

2: Are you saying cookie crumbs are good?

1: No.

2: Or potato chips?

1: No.

2: Any crumbs besides Frosted Flakes and Doritos?

1: None that I can think of at the moment.

2: So good crumbs are actually a rarity.

1: Yes, but still a reality than must be acknowledged.  They're not all bad.

2: But they usually are.

1: Yeah, usually.

2: I'm not even sure if we can speak to crumbs being rated one way or the other.  Unless there's some study about various cultures' attitudes towards crumbs that I'm unaware of.

1: No.

2: It's a weird topic of conversation that's seldom if ever touched on.  I don't know how you gauge it.

1: I was going with the negative connotation "crummy" has.

2: Have you researched the etymology of the word?

1: No.

2 [shrugs]: I mean it might have to do with food crumbs.  But I'm thinking it's just as likely to refer to crumbling architecture.

1: Oh, really?

2: I'm guessing the word is old enough to go back to when most people couldn't afford to scoff at crumbs of food.  Back when you were grateful to have a moldy cockroach for supper.

1: Well that is locally sourced.

2: Yeah, I'm not a believer in your crumb barometer.

1: Whatever it started from originally, I still think people today associate it with food, so I need to introduce a more positive meaning as part of the rehabilitation of crumbs.

2: So you want to change it to its opposite?

1: People did it with the word "literally".

2: It seems like a waste of time.  Nobody uses "crummy" nowadays anyways.  Unless you're Leave it To Beaver cosplayers, maybe.

1: Even then, I couldn't ask them to introduce an anachronism by insisting on my definition.  You have to respect the integrity of the characters.

2: I suppose crumb fandom is innocuous next to alcohol.

1: It's not an either-or proposition for me.

2: You're going to call off on Saturday again, aren't you?

1: You know it!

2: Which means that I must condemn your crummy, in the conventional sense, work ethic, but applaud your crummy, in your reformed sense, candor.

1: Then screw you and thank you.

The Gratitude of Kings (1997)

     I had some knowledge of Thieves' World as early as the mid-1980s.  Probably had something to do with the fact that Chaosium did the RPG for the setting and I was purchasing – more properly, my parents were purchasing at my insistence – ElfQuest RPG materials from the same company at the time.  I don't think I read much more than a couple of excerpts from stories from the world, though.  But it didn't stick enough in my memory for me to be searching out Thieves' World material now.  No, I came to read Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Gratitude of Kings (1997) because it was at the library, looked short, and I found out who Bradley was in reading How to Write Tales of Horror, Fantasy & Science Fiction (1987).  Clearly, I should have known who she was as I was familiar with some of her works (that they exist, not that I read them), but it is never to late to get started.
     While The Gratitude of Kings is officially listed as a short story, I have chosen to treat it as a novella.  First, it has its own stand alone hardcover book.  Second, and more importantly, it would still be close to sixty pages as a trade paperback, which I am willing to accept as being just past my comfort zone for a short story.  This information really only means something to me and how I'm counting what I've read this year, but now you know that there are some internal debates when the material can be judged two different ways.
     Jumping into an established setting with established characters isn't always a pleasant experience, but Bradley has an easy writing style and a comforting sense of humor.  It doesn't feel like she is working at explaining what has gone before while allowing the new reader to know that, yes, much has already happened.  If I have a complaint – and I always do – it would be that Bradley has a fondness of fantasy names that are confounding to pronounce and keep happily in one's mind.  I was thankful when she introduced characters like Princess Velvet and the weredragon, Beauty.  Those are names with which I don't have to struggle, but they still keep the illusion of a functioning fantasy world.
     This story is a rather small one, with a spellcaster answering a King's request to be present at a Royal wedding.  There is a cursed magical instrument, a contest of magical arts, a murder, and the general message that a woman can usually count on a man to get the big picture wrong.  That last part doesn't come across as angry or painting with a broad brush, but specific to the situation and in keeping with the humor of the tale.
     Bradley has much more famous and successful work, but I would suspect that I would be happier with her lighter Thieves' World material.  I could be wrong; that wouldn't be the end of the world.  But at least I do know that I need to make an effort to seek out some more Bradley for next year's Reading Project.

Make Love! The Bruce Campbell Way (2005)

     Make Love! The Bruce Campbell Way (2005) marks Bruce Campbell's first venture into humorous fiction (his first book being a memoir on how a guy from Michigan ended up a B-Movie icon with not a lot of extra money to show for it).  Knowing that Campbell's humor runs not just towards the lowbrow but to the most repetitive slapstick the Three Stooges ever performed, I didn't have high expectations for this.  Sure, Campbell is a literate guy – he has at least been reading scripts in all that time as an actor and director – but I did not expect him to be able to build a compelling narrative without dedicating some serious time to honing this new craft.
     In fact, there is not really much of a plot to Make Love!; it really is composed around a handful of recurring ideas.  Rather than tell the story in a conventional manner, Campbell intersperses his supposedly focal idea – he has been cast as the third major character in an A-list Hollywood movie (filming in New York) – with sketches that really have nothing to do with the story except to show how wacky Campbell's fake life is.  These asides (for the most part) end up being better than the story about Campbell destroying Mike Nichols' movie. 
     The best part of the book – sorry, Bruce – are the worked-up photos and gag visuals.  These were what led me to laugh out loud repeatedly.  Not so much for Campbell being inserted into numerous alternate personae but the fake signs and such.  So much better than the disasters that came out from Jon Stewart (and The Daily Show writers) that one has to wonder if Campbell and Craig "Kif" Sanborn have struck a rare kind of comic gold by working together.
     The only part of the book that I actively didn't like was when Campbell confused Dungeons & Dragons with hide and go seek.  For a guy who has appeared at numerous gaming conventions (and game fairs), and who would be age appropriate for AD&D's heyday, this was a real letdown.  I was also surprised that in his acknowledgements Campbell didn't thank (or even acknowledge) Richard Gere, Renée Zellweger, or Mike Nichols; if one is going to use real people in ficticious situations – like having Gere happily cheat on his wife – that person should probably give them some mention or thanks.
    I don't know that anyone who isn't a fan of Campbell-the-actor who would ever find reason to read this, but it isn't bad.  It just isn't very mature.  Maybe that is part of Campbell's charm, that he can be fake smarmy while retaining his innocent immaturity.  It works, for the most part, here.

A War of Gifts (2007)

     One of the benefits (for lack of a better term) of reading lots of shorter books is that I don't mind taking a chance on random ones picked up at the library.  Well, not exactly random.  These books tend to comes from the single aisle of Fantasy and Science Fiction – because apparently there is no difference between the two.  To date, this has not been a rewarding way to select reading material in terms of personal satisfaction but it has helped in racking up the titles read.  It also lets me ease my way in to authors who many of my peers are quite familiar (whereas I had retained my ignorance of their works).
     I am going to assume that A War of Gifts (2007) is not a proper introduction into Orson Scott Card's multi-book saga about Ender Wiggins.  It seems like some fleshed out background material that passes as a decent (if short) novella to a neophyte, whereas a person immersed in the larger story would feel that Card is giving many (I assume) of the characters a richer backstory.  I see it – in my admitted ignorance – as a reward for those who have read and loved the previous novels.
     There isn't much science in this Science Fiction story, other than the general setting.  Instead, it places the themes of religion (does it have a role in military exercise?), camaraderie (on what basis is it extended?), and opposition to stifling authority in very common situations by having it be explored by children with little control of their lives.  Sadly, Card doesn't really have much to say on the subjects that stirs too deeply.  Maybe he does in the full-blown novels and simply repeating it here would have been tedious.
     It isn't a bad book.  In fact, I was happy to enjoy it given the disappointments other blind grabs have been.  Card is much more glib that I expected him to be with his dialogue. However, the only characters who come off as not being worthy attention are Ender and Zeck (the nominal main character here).  I am somewhat confidant that I will never get around to reading the rest of the saga, but I have finally (at least) acquainted myself with Card as a writer.

Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH (1971)

     I remember the first – and to that point, only – time I read Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH (1971).  It was well after Don Bluth's animated adaptation, The Secret of NIMH (1982), at least as how time is seen to a child.  To my knowledge, I was the last of my friends to actually read the book; I distinctly remember asking Joel Tysiak for the title of the book so that I didn't end up reading something nobody else had.  I can't explain why that last part was important because I still don't know.
      As a child, I don't know if I got beyond the simple narrative of the story.  It certainly was more tame than the movie.  No magic.  There isn't some sinister force working against the good rats.  It certainly didn't seem all that heroic.  The best thing going for it – it seemed – was that it had talking animals. 
     Giving it another pass as an adult, I was struck by O'Brien's economy of language.  He doesn't draw this tale out to preposterous lengths, choosing instead to keep the story continuously moving forward with only the necessary descriptive adjectives and adverbs.  He certainly challenges the vocabulary of the average 10 year old with it (I don't know the target audience, but it feels like it is pre-tween), but not in an aggressive or impolite manner.  Indeed, I can imagine children gleaning most of the meaning from context and happily turning to the (online) dictionary for any words beyond them.
     It has at its core an interesting concept for a children's book.  It is about the everyday heroics of parenting made manifest in the quest to keep a child safe.  The good relationship the late Jonathan Frisby built with the Rats (and how well he was regarded by other various creatures) allow for Mrs. Frisby to seek out allies and do right for her children.  She cannot do it alone, but she is not so obstinate as to even try to forgo seeking help.  She is also a good enough soul to offer help to others when she is in position to do as much.
     In an animal world where most of those she encounters are smarter than she is, Mrs. Frisby isn't rejected or looked down upon.  She is different, but she is still valued.  Largely treated as an equal by the Rats (who know she is not), she becomes a keeper of their history for their time on the Fitzgibbon farm and the informant who keeps them from being exterminated.  That O'Brien could do all of this with a gentle yet engaging tone, one that has certainly made many a young reader strive to find out what comes next without fretting about the lack of control the mouse has in a world of Rats, men, owls, and Dragon (the cat). 
     Mrs. Frisby is the ultimate mother-as-hero, but she is presented also as how a child would be among adults.  Her actions have merit.  She matters.  O'Brien makes it happen through the story, not as some tagged on lines to reassure the little ones that she is like them and they like her. 
     I certainly don't read much in the way of books aimed a children.  Hell, until recently, I could be said to not be doing much in the way of reading.  But I glad I gave this book another look.  It is a great example of how to write – and do so exceptionally well – for children.

Heat Rises (2011)

     Why am I reading these books?  Isn't it enough that I watch – usually on tape or via ABC.com – Castle (2009-present)?  Is there really a need for me to support the franchise by reading the supplemental material?  I look upon this as my ongoing struggle with a need to achieve some acceptable level of fandom, even though I am aware that this unobtainable (because there is no real meaning in how one is viewed as a fan of something in the eyes of others).
     Heat Rises (2011) is the third novel credited to Richard Castle, a television character who spends his time getting coffee for a squad of homicide detectives (apparently writing mostly off-screen).  It follows the formula of the earlier books and television show in that it is filled with needless misdirection and revisiting of suspect characters (because the detectives can't seem to do the legwork before dragging them in to be interviewed or confronting them at their homes or places of business).  In book form, this feels quite tedious.  Why not let the characters seem a little more on the ball?
     What the book does offer that is lacking in the TV show is frequent (and not well described) sex between the lead detective, Nikki Heat (Nikki doesn't seem to have a less ridiculous first name, but that's okay because every frequently refers to her, when speaking to her, by her full name...just like all of us do in our regular lives with our family, friends, lovers, coworkers, and enemies) and supposedly gifted journalist Jameson Rook.  That would be fine if it were handled by a more adept author, but "Richard Castle" handles the placement of the sex scenes with all the gentleness of a child stomping an ill-fitting shoe to make it fit.
     That is not the real problem with the book.  No, it suffers from an inability to have most of the disparate elements have any real relationship to what the plot is supposed to be. I don't know how this is the draft that the editors decided was good enough.  It could have absolutely used more direction from the editor, but it isn't a book that is going to make it on its literary chops – see Shatner's TekWar (1989) for a book that only needed to be good enough for die-hard Shatner fans to find satisfactory before it went to press – so all it needs to do is be written in coherent sentences. 
     Maddeningly, the Castle books never do anything to try to develop the characters.  "Richard Castle" is happy to just ape the show, albeit with less charm and little wit.  Again and again it strikes me that Castle must not be a very good writer.  We kind of know this on the show when he considers a contract to write James Bond novels (no offense, Eric Van Lustbader), but to be constantly reminded of it in the books supposedly written by the character feels like an insult.  Why doesn't investigative reporter Rook know how to do research or investigate?  Because "Richard Castle" doesn't want to do the research to show what that entails, because it would grow the character beyond a stand-in for Castle-on-TV, and because it would make the guess work the police do look very stupid in comparison.
     Why can't this series get someone who will do the Castle books some level of justice?  I have enjoyed some books that should be in the same vein of Castle's books.  Surely there are authors on par with Stephen Woodworth or Philip Hawley, Jr. who would be willing to ghost write a Castle novel (there's a paycheck, right?).  I don't know who actually writes these Castle books – I don't care enough to even search to see if that is readily available information – but it feels like it is a junior member of the show's writing staff who would not have a chance to get a book published otherwise.
     Heat Rises felt like work for much of the book.  It gets much better towards the end, where it starts to build some momentum and the characters stop being inconsistent.  Then that falls apart and most of the elements are exposed as being unrelated to the central story and so they are just dropped.  Not a good book, but if you feel the need to prove your fandom, go ahead and read it.  Or read it again, because that means you are an even more serious fan.

The Lake of Death (2004)

     I guess I didn't expect to be that rusty with the world of Krynn, but I also didn't realize I hadn't read a Dragonlance novel since 1996.  A sixteen year break from a setting – and one that I was not all that into to begin with – will make one a stranger to a much of it.  And things kept on happening in the in-between, so I shouldn't have been all that surprised that I there would be wait, what happened? moments.  My return to Krynn wasn't born out of a deep and abiding love of the setting (though I must admit I would have been more excited about a Living Dragonlance campaign than those for Greyhawk or the Realms), but the belief that I owed it to Jean Rabe to finally read one of her novels.
     I have taken seminars on writing from Jean (at GenCon, back when it was still in Milwaukee), been a guest in her home, and played RPG games with her (both as a player and as a GM).  While I had read some short stories and RPG supplements written by her, I just never got around to reading one of her novels.  When I think about it, that makes me quite the asshole.  Now, I guess I could have contacted her and asked which of her books best represented her style and ability (and I would be willing to bet that it probably wouldn't be a Dragonlance novel), but I also wanted something with which I was familiar because...well, what if I hated how she wrote?  It had been a long while.
     Luckily (and I mean that for me), The Lake of Death (2004) ended up being a pleasurable read, much better than I would have expected given how simple and direct the plot was.  Sure, Jean has to make references to what had happened before the story – this actually helped me grasp the way the world had changed and who the heroes have been after the Chronicles trilogy – and has to work with the creatures inherent to the setting, but I felt that she made the story very much her own. 
     The characters in The Lake of Death have clearly appeared in other books, so regular readers would be revisiting them.  In that regard, it felt a little unrewarding to jump into their story far from the beginning (I am not going to read a bunch of Dragonlance books, however, just to be better acquainted with the characters in this one).  But Jean does a very good job in defining their personalities (with the exception of Ragh, the sivak, who seems a little cardboard) and making it seem as though they would be worthy of a story without the preamble.  The relationship between Feril and a ghostly spirit is both funny and sad at the same time, and I think best displays Jean's ability to step beyond the normal bounds of licensed fiction.
     Anyway, TheLake of Death ended up being a fun, quick read.  I don't know that there would be much appeal outside those who read Dragonlance or feel they owe it to the author to finally start reading something from her catalog.  It is well better than average writing.  And I know that I won't have to hang my head in shame the next time I see Jean Rabe.

The Sword of Samurai Cat (1991)

     Well, it seems that most of Mark E. Rogers' Samurai Cat books are out of print.  Maybe that is as it should be.  The best part of the humorous tales of Miaowara Tomokato and his gun-toting pint-sized nephew, Shiro, were always the illustrations.  By the time 1991's The Sword of Samurai Cat came along, Rogers was trying his hand at telling the stories with a minimum of pictures (or at least the version I read was).  All that did was show just how unpleasant his attacks on others for not being creative were (especially given that his entire stock and trade was in satirical parodies of other properties, history, and/or myths and legends).
     The way I view it, The Sword of Samurai Cat consists of five connected short stories – all but the first like a half-novella – that do the disservice of having the entire thing be both part of the ongoing absurdist story and part of a shared dream spanning planets.  I'm not sure what bothered me the most – "Red Dawn of the Dead" with its pointlessness, "The Dead Lot" with its constant attack on Stephen King (I'm not a fan, but I certainly don't rank him as one of the most derivative authors of all time) while trying to make a case for Lovecraftian horror (excuse me while I yawn), or how poorly punny names translate when making endless appearances on the page.  It goes from not quite clever to maddening as the non-words stand in for real words in a mildly humorous way (at first).
     There is really only one good story in the collection, "Invasion of the Kitty Snatchers".  Actually, it is a better take on the well-told story of space plants that replace people.  Better than The Invasion (2008), by every measure.  Unfortunately, Rogers is too long in getting to a decent story.  He also feels the need to reference himself as the author, a way before Community (2009-present) omnipresent level of meta-referencing, but almost always just to point out his failings as an author.  Here's a note, Mark: if you know the story needs work, fix it – don't just bitch that others have failed in the same manner.
     The first two Samurai Cat books are, at least as I remember them, more friendly and more appreciative of the sources being spoofed.  It doesn't feel that way by this, the fourth book (the third book is not available via my library system and lists on Amazon.com at over $100).  It may be for some, but The Sword of Samurai Cat did not suit my tastes.  Stick to the The Adventures of Samurai Cat (1984) and More Adventures of Samurai Cat (1986).

Muse of Fire (2007)

     There are some dangers in choosing a book off the shelf (in this case, the shelf of the Forest Park Public Library) largely because it looks like it could be read in a single day.  I did finish it before I made it home on the return trip, so I can find some level of comfort that I didn't need to spend multiple days with this Dan Simmons novella.
     Muse of Fire (2007) is over populated with underdeveloped characters, and even underdeveloped alien beings. Much of the supposed description of the characters is really a chance for Simmons to give some (universally positive) opinions on Shakespeare and Shakespearean actors. Never mind that there is an Earth with no oceans but constant rain and overcast skies (which offends my limited knowledge of functional climates and meteorology), Simmons truly tries the reader's patience with his weak, often off-to-the-side narrator, Wilbr.  Seriously, the story is told by an actor who wants to spend his time telling the reader how much better most of the other actors are.  And those are characters that have little or no other traits.
     This novella felt preachy and uninformed. The only good thing I have to say is that it didn't take long to read, but if an aggressive editor had been able to get his or her hands on it, Muse of Fire easily could have been 50 pages shorter (and thus a possibly compelling short story).  I wish that there was more to say, but there really isn't.  While I am appreciative that Simmons can write in a shorter format than most of his novels (which can run over 900 pages, and average 500+), I think that he has not mastered the format to any degree.  Also, given the listed price of the book ($30, $60 if it was a signed copy), I have to think that Muse of Fire saw most of its sales from the remainder table.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (1968)

     I am not going to pretend that I have any level of familiarity with Philip K. Dick, other than from the adaptations of a few of his stories for the big screen.  But to assume that those are an accurate representation of Dick's work would be like assuming that Pat Robertson has an honest take on Christianity.  Borrowing from the source material to spin a different story isn't the same as the original material itself.  And so I found myself giving Dick a chance with the quite accessible Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (1968).
     Actually, I had the misfortune of first being exposed to the Boom! Studios graphic novel series first.  While it is entirely faithful to Dick's text, it ruins the rhythm of the writing.  If Dick has one strength in the novel, it is his pacing and rhythm.  As such, the graphic novels ruin the experience.  Worse than that, the illustrations do not feel particularly evocative of the story (though Dick is very sparse with his descriptions) and fall well short of the not-at-all-faithful big screen adaptation, Blade Runner (1982).  Rather than take three times as long reading the graphic novel series, I quickly switched over to the novel and started all over again.
     There are two interesting elements at play in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.  The first – and far more interesting – is Dick's meditation on the nature of religion.  His Mercerism is easily identified as a form of Christianity (or, at the very least, borrows its imagery and central message from Christianity), but one that can be decried as a lie, one that is known to have been manufactured as a result of World War Terminus.  The linkage of humanity, the idea that empathy is the central tenet of life – these are the concepts that Mercerism brings into play, and they are meaningful in a way that expands beyond the story. 
     The other element at play is the unsteady nature of reality.  Dick crafts his world and the experiences of the inhabitants as a long, mostly coherent drug-induced fever dream.  Even setting aside the clearly dream-like shifts, there is a duality to the reality the characters experience.  There are fake animals and fake people.  The ersatz animals are still beings that engender love and require attention – and thus prove the empathy of the humans involved in caring for them – but the fake people, the androids, need to be eliminated on earth because they have no empathy.  It is an obvious double standard, but one that the androids cannot understand on the human level.  The andys are doomed to a series of self-generated betrayals and lack of greater community, making their superior intelligence (and perhaps physical abilities, as indicated by the opera singer) ultimately meaningless.  They are a people without a history and unable to form a collective purpose.  They are the ultimate argument against unrestrained individualism.
     Having written all of that, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is not as rewarding as the ideas that float around inside of it.  It isn't hard science fiction.  Instead, it seems to have a Sci-Fi setting so as to be able to let Dick range in terms of personal horrors and fears and place them amongst his musings on the nature of humanity and society.  There is something unsettling about personal greed and desire to be seen as superior to one's neighbors being shown in the terms of animal ownership and maintenance.  The idea that a woman desired could be repeated ad infinitum, and that all of them represent a very real threat to one's world may only make sense when understood as a dream, but that is one of the things that Dick's style does accomplish.  Unfortunately, he both goes to far and not far enough with that element to satisfy, and it doesn't have the impact that it should.
     This novel is not going to make me rush out and read more Dick (never mind that my list of books to read for the rest of this year's Reading Project is already overfull).  It may be because I find Blade Runner to have more to say about the human condition – though on a smaller scale than Dick attempts in his novel – or because I have encountered quite a few novels and short stories where the once novel idea has been better developed in later works, but Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep did not do much to excite me.  I had to go looking for a deeper meaning, and ignore Dick's ability to completely forget about characters and part of the story that seemed to have some importance (and not just to serve as filler) in order to enjoy the novel.  And I didn't enjoy it enough for me to want to engage in a steady diet of this kind of work.

Patient Zero (2009)

     Before I spent two weeks reading books on the do's and don'ts of writing fiction, I would have merely found Jonathan Maberry's Patient Zero (2009) to be tiresome and poorly written.  Having read those books, however, I can point to Maberry's novel as a prime example of bad writing in nearly every form, though not always to a disastrous level.  Not always, but when Maberry insists on having the least likeable protagonist – ever – narrate about ¾ of the story, which only made me wish that somebody would kill that character so that the middle-of-the-road zombie-plague story could go on without me hating the story because of who was telling it.
     Why have most of the novel narrated in the first person while the rest is told in a more traditional third person?  Maybe because Maberry doesn't believe in writing conventions, and maybe because he thought it  clever.  Whatever his reasoning, it is largely an effort that shouldn't have been made. 
     The bigger question should have been why is the protagonist, Joe Ledger, the best at everything?  He is the smartest cop (though he does no kind of police-like investigations – maybe Maberry didn't want to do the research into finding out how that worked), the best shot (better than the Delta Force guys), the best Martial Artist (even though he doesn't understand how the character's form works), the best judge of character, the guys who makes all of the connections with little help (other than to have people to supply expository information) from the other characters, and, of course, he has the biggest cock in the world.  That last bit may be an exaggeration, but Maberry does let the reader know that Ledger has a big dick, and the character knows it, too.
     Overlong, full of points that go nowhere (a bad guy disfigures his face for seemingly no reason, just as this characters need to be where he disfigured his face ends up being ridiculous because he could have gotten from A to C without every needing to go to B, and B is never explored other than to have the character cut a huge gash in his face), and celebrating an adolescent's view of ultra-masculinity, Patient Zero is a prime example of a book to avoid.  That is disappointing, because the basic story is one that would make a fine supernatural (though Maberry makes it a medical issue) thriller if the author and his main character didn't get in the way.  If scenes were not consistently indescribable or characters perpetually at a loss for words, I wouldn't be convinced that Maberry is a bad writer (I may have just thought that this one book was poorly written).
     Whatever the cause for the many faults in this book, they are more than enough for me to warn everyone I can to stay away from it.  It is beyond bad.  It is a waste of time.

The Pearl (1945)

     John Steinbeck's novella The Pearl (1945) was one of those books assigned in 6th or 7th grade (please excuse my memory; it is scarily specific on things that absolutely don't matter but failing on anything that pertains to my earlier education).  I may have read it completely back then.  I have an odd feeling that I read both The Pearl and Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea (1952) in the same year for the same class – and finished both – but I more clearly remember almost finishing The Grapes of Wrath (1939) in 7th grade and considering that an accomplishment at the time.  Anyway, I had some familiarity with The Pearl.
     There is nothing subtle or nuanced in Steinbeck's novella.  In that regard, it is proper fare to be assigned to 12-13 year olds – especially if the teacher giving the assignment is hellbent on the students finding and analyzing the symbols and tone of the piece.  However, for an adult – and one who doesn't have to give a detailed report proving that he gets what the author is saying – it is somewhat frustrating.   
     The Pearl presents Mexico, or at least its localized region, less critically than Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory did.  Sure, Steinbeck gets points for expressing the type of internalized colonialism that sets the elites against the natives, but that point seems lost in his greater picture of self-destructive greed.  Indeed, it is lost completely when the elites lose only hired hands and potential immediate profit – nothing real to them; there will always be more money to be made and people to be hired to do the dirty work that passes for business.  Steinbeck doesn't need a proto-Communist Revolution to place the well being of his characters in danger.  The danger is as real and as present as the human condition, but it is revealed along the way in such heavy handed prose that it doesn't read as those it was intended for a sophisticated audience.
     While making that criticism, I will fully own the fact that the least of Steinbeck's fiction is undoubtedly better crafted than the best of mine.  In this instance, however, too much of his is awkward.  The description of the action scenes seems to take the reader away from the story and its meaning.  The lack of familiarity between the pearl divers and the villagers, while plausible, doesn't paint the picture of two sets of beings inhabiting the same space.  Worst, the most important scene in the book is glossed over with no reasonable explanation for how it actually happened given that the description of where characters were before the event would render it impossible. 
     The Pearl presents an insanely simple story, but it takes a long time to tell it (for it being so simple).  Yes, greed is bad; it can corrupt a person if all he or she does is want for more.  But Steinbeck tries to play some false nobility into being so poor and ignorant as to not know that one is being exploited, that surviving and being happy with squalor is better than aspiring for something more if it means that there are moments of unhappiness and it restricts the gain of others. 
     Still, it is an easy and quick read.  I started it on my train ride into the city and finished it on the train ride home, with about 15 minutes to spare.  I would recommend The Power and the Glory over The Pearl, because it is a much better book and has more mature points to be made.  I prefer my tales not be structured so black and white, but I understand why Steinbeck wrote this that way.

The Best Car (2012)

     This is some real-life inspired fiction.  While there is much about this that resembles my life, it is far enough from the real truth that it would be an unrecognizable accounting for anyone who was present to the era for me.  But the car was real.

The Best Car

     I avoided getting my driver's license at sixteen.  There were several factors that contributed to that delay – I didn't want to take driver's ed at school, and quickly quit the Len Scaduto course in which my father enrolled me; I knew I wouldn't have regular access to a car, at least not until my mother replaced her rapidly aging '86 Ford Tempo with something reliable; I had no means of income for gas or insurance, and I was thoroughly uninterested in working to acquire money; I had friends who could and would drive me places – but none of them were the real reason I didn't get my license.  I avoided it because having one would have meant I could be pressed into service at any moment, wholly subject to my father's whims and his imagined state of health.  I bore witness to my older brother being awakened in the middle of the night – anytime from midnight to four a.m. – for a not so emergency trip to the hospital because our father had a headache and wanted drugs to make it go away.  By the time I was old enough to understand his need for injectable medication to combat his maladies I was also aware that he was being administered doses that would kill a regular, healthy person.  Moreover, he needed such treatment at irregular times; whenever was worst for everyone else would perfectly fit his schedule.  My father lived a life that was, without question, wholly about himself.
     Living in fear of having a strange dictate – to drive my father to the hospital or his doctor's home, which meant that he would be getting a dose so large that it couldn't be recorded without alarming hospital staff – was something that I knew was abnormal.  Every part of it, really.  I have to assume that most children, even in the heady years of adolescence with a need to establish independence from their supervisory adults, would not be alarmed by the call to be of service.  Children are supposed to love their parents, sons to love their fathers, and so there should not have been a reason for my very real need to not be made to serve as courier to wherever the drugs were stored.  Still, there it was.  I knew that if I could avoid the license I couldn't be forced to take him, and I should then have been able to get my license without any need of driver's ed once I turned eighteen.  I drove occasionally without a license, in the parking lot of the apartment complex and once to a job interview – a job in which I lost all interest once it was clear they wanted me to work forty hours a week while I was still in school – so I wasn't wholly unfamiliar with the operation of a motor vehicle.
     My father only tried to get me to drive him to the hospital once after my brother moved on to college.  He woke me up at one a.m. and told me I needed to get dressed and take him for some relief.  I was told that he had waited hours before deciding it was so bad that he couldn't possibly sleep, apparently unaware of the fact that if we had left at 10 p.m. we could have been back to the apartment by 2 a.m., and that would have allowed for some sleep.  Waiting until one was essentially a type of sleep deprivation, so long as one allows that the thirty minutes of sleep I may have gotten to that point would effectively be worthless.  To this day I think of it as a kind of terrorism, and I had no desire to bend to the will of a terrorist.  I told him that he had plenty of options other than me.  He could call a cab – roundtrip fare would have cost less than twenty dollars.  He had a friend in the building next door that he could have called and she probably would have taken him.  If he felt so bad that he had no choice but to go to the hospital, he could call for an ambulance – we had learned that the insurance United provided would cover the cost of the ambulance if he spent at least a night in the hospital and be a little more than one hundred twenty five dollars out of pocket if he didn't – and spend the night there. 
     Whatever it took to allow me to try to get some sleep, something that never came easy back then, that is what I suggested.  He pleaded his case for about fifteen minutes upon which time he must have realized I was not going to drive him; he had no winning counterargument to "I am not driving without a license" and so he simply went back to bed.  When I saw him the following afternoon, he was fine.  More than that, he never got so sick that he needed to be taken to the hospital or his doctor from his headaches.  His condition was, as I suspected without any cause, was wholly dependent upon his ability to have others service it.  I did not want to be tethered to it, made to serve without any attention directed back at me, and thus I decided to similarly rely on others when it came to needing to be driven places.  To be fair, if I couldn't get a ride I would usually walk or ride my bike.  I appreciated the efforts others made for me, but I was sure as hell not going to be helpless without them.  And I wasn't going to make it all about me.  Not always.
     That was a lesson learned while without a license.  In an effort to retrieve a hastily mailed letter, I got a friend to drive me to its intended destination where I could steal it from the mailbox.  When it wasn't there, I told him we would have to try again the next day.  He smiled and said, "Not going to happen.  You had your chance to get it.  If it that important, find another way to get there before anyone gets the mail."  Well, there was no way I could walk or bike there in time unless I ditched school to do it.  I missed a lot of days of high school, but never so I could commit a crime.  The letter got delivered, and the consequences of it fell much more lightly than I would have thought.  Still would have liked to have had the chance to get it back before it was read, but that is a bell that cannot be unwrung.
     The only reason I ended up with a driver's license before I turned eighteen was that my father got demoted at work and couldn't afford to keep us living where we were.  In actuality, that pay cut served as his chance to hand me off to my mother while – unbeknownst to anyone – he started squirreling money away for a Harley.  He went to live out in Winfield and I was shipped up to Oak Park.  Rather than transfer to the local high school – mine was so familiar with my brand of bullshit that I got away with most of the things that would cause them to expel other students – it was decided that I should finish where I started.  The first week my mother drove me to and from school every day, three hours sucked right out of her day; she tired of that by Tuesday.  The second week I was allowed to sleep at a friend's house but not really fed, and that was about as bad as anything I had experienced to that point.  The next week school was on break, but it was also when the road work for my driver's ed started. 
     Knowing that I was to be moved twenty five miles north, there had been a real push to get a license in my hands.  I cruised through the classroom sessions, and the school decided to cut how much practical experience I needed because I would often be inaccessible.  I had four days of driving over two weeks time before the school said i was ready to get my license.  What did they care?  The check had cleared months ago.  I didn't feel especially confident, but I knew that I could not rely on a mix of commutes from my mother, accommodating friends, and simply not going to school to make it to graduation.
     My father cleared a day so he could be there when I took my test.  He had some work he had to do on the car, an '84 Subaru GL Wagon – the last of the non-boxy wagons – that had been handed down from my brother.  The red wagon had been replaced with a blue one, this time a stick, which made it somehow more masculine in my brother's eyes.  They were both little station wagons, so I can't imagine either dripped with masculinity.  And he traded the near burgundy red one for powder blue.  I didn't care, because what I needed was a car that would handle the sixty to seventy miles a day that I would put on it.  My father gave it a tune up, replaced the brakes, and properly inflated the tires before I arrived.  The car was at our old apartment where my father continued to rent garage space.  He wasn't going to abandon his collection of tools, but he also couldn't bring himself to package them up and not be accessible.  His tools were different from his son.
     He drove us over to the facility in his Jeep Wagoneer.  I'll never understand why he didn't want me to take the test in the car I would actually be driving, but in retrospect I imagine it was a sense of ownership that he needed to impress on me.  He would be fully in charge because it was his vehicle.  Anyway, there was almost no wait at the testing facility.  I got one question wrong on the written – I don't know which and it still bothers me that I don't know – and sat patiently waiting for a chance to go out on the road.  I was assigned a man who looked like he could have been my guidance counselor's ugly, angry older brother, which meant that he was thoroughly unpleasant all the way around.  He started off by barking "Horn singal!" at me, which apparently meant that he wanted me to sound the car horn to prove that it worked.  I lost points there, in parallel parking, and the three point turn, but was still set to pass.  Unfortunately, when I pulled into a space to park I was about a foot into the neighboring space.  So that was a fail.
     What to do?  I had a car sitting and waiting for me.  I needed a license so I could go to school and graduate and do something with my life.  Jesus, without the license I might have to actually finish at a different school and meet new people.  The horror of it all.  Normally – or so we were told – I would have to wait a week before any possible retest.  Fuck that.  My father and I pled my case, my need for a license.  Never mind if I might actually be a danger to others on the road, I had places to go and a means to get there; I just needed a license in case I got pulled over.  A younger, less angry man came out and agreed to let me retest right then.  I passed with no problems and got the damn laminated piece of paper.
     My father took me back to the garage.  He had to run a quick errand, but he would meet me up at the school and make sure I made it to my mother's in one piece.  That was fine with me.  I was young and stupid and eager to prove that I could handle unsupervised driving even though I had almost no experience and absolutely none with the car with which I was entrusted.  I pulled out of the parking lot and was pulled over about a minute later.  The officer said I had failed to signal and I pointed out, very politely, that I didn't signal because it was a bend in the road and there was no other way to proceed on it; who the hell wouldn't know where the car was going?  He grumbled a little and told me to "be more careful". 
     About a quarter of a mile later he pulled me over again.  "I ran your plates.  You aren't from around here.  Your car is registered up in Oak Park."  To him that meant I lived near black people and therefore crime.  I must be some kind of criminal.  I pointed out to him that I had lived in his sad little retail-reliant village for four years, my father maintained his garage there and it was where I had to pick up the car.  Furthermore, I went to the high school about five blocks west and one block north.  I showed him my school ID.  I had every right to be there, but officer asshole wanted to prove something.  He grumbled again and then said he was going to write me a ticket for the illegal turn.  I laughed at him and said something along the lines of suing him for wrongful prosecution – or something similar I could have borrowed from Ghostbusters – and waited for my ticket.  About a minute later he came back and gave me license and told me to get back to where I came from.  At least I didn't get that ticket.
     My father showed up about thirty minutes after I got to the school.  We headed north, me following him because despite making the trip innumerable times I had never paid attention to which streets I needed to use.  Somewhere after I exited on 1st Avenue I lost him.  Shit!  I crept along, terrified both by the prospect of being lost and the other, more confident drivers flying by on my left.  I made a wrong turn on Madison and thought for a moment that I had crossed the border with Chicago – instead of it just being Forest Park – because of all the signs for liquor stores and bars.  I got myself righted and made it to my mother's.  My father showed up about twenty minutes later.  He decided to stop and get something to eat.  Not a lot of concern about it, either.
     From that point on, the car was mine.  I owned that car – actually, my brother owned it until it spent a winter in an O'Hare employee parking lot letting its underbelly get salted away – and made myself powerful among my friends by being able to drive places.  More than that, I had to drive places.  I took the opportunity to give pretty underclass girls a ride home, girls who never would have spoken to me otherwise, and learned the dangers of treating parking lights as headlights.  I got to spend almost every Sunday with a girl I was in love with – never mind that she was dating my close friend with whom I would help work stuffing Sunday Tribunes on Saturday night – because I had a car and he had destroyed his.  The car allowed me to feel as though I were a real person and not subject to the threats and whims of others.
     It was, without question, the best car I will ever have.  It isn't just about its primacy.  I kept a bag of clothes in the back so that I could spend the night wherever I wanted – there wasn't any insistence that I needed to be home.  With the seats folded down it was like a miniature covered pick-up; it certainly could carry a heavier load than my best friend's truck.  While I was aware that it could also double as a fantastic 'fuck wagon', I had nowhere near the confidence to test it out in such an endeavor.  My relationship with that car was about me, and I don't think I would have wanted to invite anyone else into something so intimate and risk how I felt about the beast. 
     And it was a beast, a might monster hidden in a partially rusted out and neglected body.  That wagon drove over a tree and a mailbox in one motion.  It didn't even damage the car.  Never mind that that tree was about six inches in circumference at its thickest or that the ground was so saturated with rain that the wheels sunk three inches into the ground, tearing up the lawn like it was only an ephemeral covering for the soil.  It took some hasty work – and a pair of baseball bats wedged under the rear wheels – to free the wagon from that muddy mess.  As I drove my friends away from the scene of the crime – conspicuously close to where I had tried to steal a letter only a few months prior – me grinning and they in near panic, I excoriated them for not keeping their eyes on the road.  They knew my attention would be elsewhere, yet not one of them said anything until we had already laid waste to the tree en route to the mailbox; some twenty five feet of non-road and none of them felt the need to say a damn thing. 
     We were muddy, and scared, and exhilarated.  My car – utter perfection in a compact, unassuming form – had inflicted damage and remained unharmed.  It was beyond perfect for the feelings of an empowered adolescent; it was freedom to do anything, yet it never occurred to us that there was much more to do than use the car to drive.  Driving was both a necessity and an expression of freedom, and we were free.  When relating this story to the acquaintance who lived near the scene of the crime, she could not keep herself from bursting into a near hysterical laughter.  Apparently, all her neighbor had said when seeing the damage the next morning was an exasperated "teenagers".
     That wagon drove a thousand miles one weekend trying to keep a relationship together, and not one in which I was directly involved.  It made a trip to a Boy Scout camp just to rescue a friend to see the premiere of Jurassic Park on the big screen – but the friend blew me off – on my birthday.  It made two trips out to Iowa City while I was scrambling to get courses and a place to live, and three more while I was there for a year (not attending those courses).  It was my means of being something other than trapped.  My father was disengaged from my life for the most part and there would be no threat to be his driver as he saw fit.  My mother was content enough to let wander around with it so long as I kept her marginally informed and made appearances at home. 
     That '84 Subaru GL Wagon in near-burgundy will forever be the best car I will ever have because it was the only one that gave me a sense of freedom, a sense that I was something other than trapped and small.  No other car – and most that followed were absolute pieces of shit – can be that for me again.  Like the car, life has worn me down.  Instead of freedom, a car has become a responsibility, a necessity to travel to places not accessible by the CTA or Metra.  The subsequent cars became the beasts that bore me to and from work, which immediately lessens the value one can assign to it.  It was the freedom to continue to go to the school where I had a small band of intensely close friends.  It became the means to access pretty girls in high school, and if I had any confidence back then it could have been so much more.  It became to embodiment of what I wanted to be able to see in myself.  Small but tough, reliable, versatile, and efficient; with over one hundred fifteen thousand miles on it, the wagon still got about twenty seven miles to the gallon.  Neglected for a winter, it was destroyed.
     I would like to say that the lesson is that one cannot neglect oneself in a similar manner.  That is how time gets away from people, they get busy living the workaday and miss the moments that we think should define us.  It isn't, though.  I simply miss being able to sit behind the wheel of a vehicle and know – or be astonished by – it survive a run-in with a sapling and a mailbox and be no worse for wear.  I want it to be the metaphor for how the seemingly small shit that comes down on me like rain is nothing that I can't overcome, with nary a scratch (or smelling fine if I want to be consistent in mixing my metaphors).  I know better, though.  The little things are the ones that will kill you.  They will eat you away, piece by piece when you aren't paying attention.  They will die like that wagon, a victim of the services that made the lot accessible to those moving their cars in and out on a daily basis. 
     That wagon is the best car ever because at the time I was driving it, I was still full of potential and promise.  Never mind that it was well past its prime, it was new to me.  It was the vehicle that could help carry me forward, but it died an inglorious death.  And whenever I notice that its promise is gone, I feel somehow despondent over how I have accorded myself.  I have recaptured none of what I felt with that car.  That freedom is somehow gone forever.  The road is dark.  The trees are tall and healthy.  The mailboxes are wrapped over in brick and mortar.  There will be no second coming of that old hope, but the smallest remnant of its flame resides within me because I had experienced it and done so well.
     Even if, in the full accounting, it was just a car passed down to me because my brother had moved on to something better.