The increasingly off-topic blog of Corey Redekop, acclaimed author of Shelf Monkey, winner of the Gold Medal for Best Popular Fiction Novel at the 2008 Independent Publisher Book Awards. Reviews
Sunday, November 01, 2009
Critical Monkey - update the fourth! One-third done!
Wow, has it been a third of a year already? Four months of challenging yourselves to be the best your can be? Well, cowboy up, buttercup, because you gots eight months to go! You think this is a challenge for sissies? You gotta have serious literary cojones to compete here!
Sorry, that came off a little harsh. I'm fighting something as I write this, something internal. No, not swine flu; good guess, but this feels different, more watery. Call it fish rabies.
We've got some real movement here on some fronts, and some stagnation on others. I know its not easy, people, but its of vital importance that you see this through. Remember, you don't necessarily have to choose a novel you think you'll hate, just one that you feel you've ignored. I never would have read W.O. Mitchell otherwise, and I'm sure Lori L though she'd never read a Star Trek novel.
But, since it isn't easy, here's the first giveaway I promised to all contestants, a copy of Douglas Coupland's Generation A, which, by means of a random number selector, is hereby is awarded to:
Betty!
Congratulations, Betty. Write to me with your postal info at shelf.monkey@hotmail.com, and Coupland's latest (and a secret second novel) will be winging off to you as fast as Canada Post can fly it over (general delivery).
And as a reminder, at the halfway point I will be drawing one name to win a signed copy of Canadian author Mark Rayner's absurdist epic The Amadeus Net. For this one, I think a little more participation is in order (let's gird those loins, people!), and only those contestants who publish a new review between now and January 2, 2010 will be eligible for this particular prize. And this goes for anyone new to the game; there's still plenty of time for newcomers, and the more is definitely the merrier in this case.
So tell your friends!
For me, I am loading up on carbs and vitamins to properly tackle my next choice. This one will be a personal Everest for me; one of only two novels I can remember not finishing because it was so damned terrible. (The other novel? The Ninjaby Eric Van Lustbader.) I fear this is going to be a bad one, my friends, the Hurricane Katrina of crap. The one that's going to taunt me mercilessly all the way with its unmitigated awfulness.
I refer, of course, to the Kirk Cameron-approved, fundamentalist dogma-infused, rapture-tastic epic Left Behind.
Wish me luck. I already feel nauseous. But that could be the rabies.
Monkey droppings - Shambling Towards Hiroshima by James Morrow - "We can thank our lucky stars that Hitler never got the lizard."
Today, the monkey braves horrors that would terrify you, if you were a gullible teen in 1940s America. As it stands today, you'd probably giggle instead.
There exists in my house a monolithic list of authors I admire intensely. I'd show it to you, but it's far too heavy to move, and is in danger of growing its own gravitational pull. It's currently functioning as a temporary retaining wall in my basement. It's a big list, I guess would be the main bullet point to take away from this topic.
But authors I will follow to the ends of the Earth and beyond if they asked me to? The list quickly gets whittled down to a select few. These are authors who've earned my respect and admiration to such a degree that they could publish the phone book under their name and I'd read it. Hell, I'd read it twice. Jonathan Lethem is probably the leader of the pack. Philip K. Dick, Stephen King, Clive Barker. William Kotzwinkle. Eric McCormack. John Irving. I'm sure there are more, but you get my drift. Jim Dodge, where are you? Please write again.
James Morrow is another. His Godhead Trilogy is arguably (and I'll argue it to the pain, my friends, the pain) the greatest religious satire of the last century, followed close behind by his own Only Begotten Daughter. His work evokes the best of Vonnegut and Swift. Morrow is an author par excellence, a satirist of the highest quality, a provocative writer of limitless compassion for the foibles of humanity. And a damned funny novelist. If you don't laugh as his befuddled characters trek around, over, and through the two-mile-long floating corpse of God in Towing Jehovah, well, you just don't get humour. Or you're easily offended.
But Shambling Towards Hiroshima, like its subject matter, is a weird beast. It's a light, airy piece of work, a lark. Morrow appears to be having a ball with this quick little read, loosing all his talents over a frolic of a novel. Consequently, Shambling may not be his best, most focused work of caustic wit, but it is supremely entertaining.
Remember Godzilla? Silly question. We all know of the great fire-breathing lizard, even if we haven't seen his films. So great and powerful is the hold the mythic pop-culture monster has over our collective conscious that everyone everywhere knows of his exploits. Not bad for a man clad in a rubbery, unwieldy costume who lays waste to some of the least-convincing cities ever put to film.
Well, Godzilla had nothing on Gorgantis, the fire-breathing lizard whom the world fell in love with, at least as Syms Thorley tells it. According to Thorley, writing his memoirs over the course of one long night , Gorgantis was not originally a monster born of Japanese fears of nuclear argmageddon in films such as Gorgantis vs. Octopocalypse. No, Gorgantis was the brainchild of the U.S. Army during the final days of World War II, an attempt to terrify the Japanese high command into surrendering. And it was Thorley, b-movie actor and star of such 1940s monster epics as Curse of Kha-Ton-Ra and Corpuscula Meets the Dopplegänger (not since Paul Auster'sBook of Illusions have I longed so desperately for fictional films to actually exist), who was picked to star as the titular monster because, as head mad scientist Dr. Ivan Groelish says, "His lumbering is second to none." And given that Thorley is most famous for portraying Corpuscula, a monster with a "third eye embedded in his cheek and [a] herniated brain emerging from his fractured skull," he would seem ideal for the role. And it's not like Thorley would turn down good work: as he puts it, condensing an actor's entire existence into one short sentence, "You learn your craft, you play your mummies, you collect your trophy, and then you die."
This being the U.S. Army, of course, frightening the enemy is not nearly enough; there has to be something to back up the macho posturing. Through Dr. Groelish's tireless efforts, three leviathan fire-breathing lizards do in fact exist, kept sedated in a large lake and going by the names Blondie, Dagwood, and Mr. Dithers. These aren't cartoonish monsters, however, but truly horrific freaks of genetic alteration:
The creatures suggested quarter-mile-high tyrannosaurs, but modified for a marine environment - pulsing gill slits, translucent swim fins, webbing between their talons like the vanes of a Spanish fan - and retrofitted with fighting tusks, barbed horns, feelers as long as tentacles, and dorsal plates the size and proportion of fir trees.
Thorley is to portray Gorgantis destroying a scale model of a Japanese city to demonstrate the unstoppability of the real monsters should they be unleashed upon Japan. Much of the novel's humour comes from Thorley's personal testing of the constume with his girlfriend Darlene, both for practical and impractical purposes, which leads to a scene of sexual bravado that can only be described as...well, I don't know how to describe it well enough to do it justice. Let it be known, however, that the original Gorgantis suit was put through its paces both inside and out.
Morrow's novel is at once a cautionary tale of military paranoia and a superbly enjoyable recreation of the b-movie renaissance of the '40s and '50s. Thorley's memoir is peppered with loving tributes to the days when movies were made in two weeks, descibing himself and his fellow b-movie breathern as "a bunch of hard-drinking alpha males who spent their days pretending to perform blasphemous medical experiments and their nights fantasizing that they were going to give up alcohol tomorrow."
It was also a time when true craftsmen toiled in the trenches of pulp cinema to pursue their art. Cinema geeks (such as myself) will get a kick as luminaries such as esteemed director James Whale (Frankenstein, The Bride of Frankenstein) and special effects maestro Willis O'Brien (King Kong) make appearances. O'Brien is hired to create the effects for Gorgantis' carnage, and Whale is pegged to direct the opus for maximum terrifying effect. Whale proves himself somewhat more artistic than the army had hoped: "This is not a cerebral part," Whale instructs Thorley on the nature of his role. "You are a monster from the id. You are Death with haunches, la Grande Faucheuse with scales."
Beyond the loving recreation of Hollywood's monster era, Shambling Towards Hiroshima makes some trenchant points on military madness, the utter uselessness of war, and the way horror movies desensitize the populace to the true, unimaginable horrors that exist just out their windows. Such movies are fine for entertainment's sake, but they can serve to distract us from the importance of our own reality, as Thorley discovers in his later years, preaching on the perils of nuclear holocaust to Gorgantis fans far more interested in his recollections of wearing the suit.
As I said, Morrow is being immensely loose and playful with his story, which may explain the novel's relative slightness. But how I can I really complain, when the result is so much damned fun? Shambling Towards Hiroshima is the most sheerly entertaining novel I've read in quite a while.
Monkey droppings - The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood:
Today, the monkey tackles either science fiction or speculative fiction. He's not sure which it is, but as the author herself isn't sure, the monkey doesn't feel too bad about it.
The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood
"Then God says a noteworthy thing. He says, "And the fear of you" - that is, Man - "and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air...into your hand are they delivered." Genesis 9:2. This is not God telling Man that he has a right to destroy all the Animals, as some claim. Instead it is a warning to God's beloved Creatures: Beware of Man, and of his evil heart." Adam One, The Year of the Flood
Now, there's been a lot of blog-furor over comments made by Margaret Atwood (for a taste, see here, here, and here), so I want to get something out of the way right up front: The Year of the Flood is science fiction. What's that? Gasps of disbelief? Well, I apologize, but only for the shock caused by the remark, not its content.
That out of the way (and please, no angry posts in response), I have always preferred Atwood's dips into possible future outcomes of humanity far more than her other works. I could not tell you from memory what Alias Grace was about, and The Tent blew away before I finished the last page. However, The Handmaid's Tale is an out-and-out masterpiece, and Oryx and Crake is a damned disturbing dystopian epic. Atwood may hate the term, but her science fiction ranks among the best out there. Ironically, The Handmaid's Tale won the first ever Arthur C. Clarke Award for best Science Fiction in 1987. I wonder if she returned it.
The Year of the Flood is a visceral return to the hellscape first catalogued in Atwood's previous novel Oryx and Crake. This marks (to my knowledge) the first time Atwood has penned a sequel (although 'companion piece' would be a far more accurate term). Taking as its cue the man-made plague of Oryx, Atwood here focuses on two individuals not directly related to the creation of said plague; Ren, an exotic dancer holed up in accidental isolation in a strip club, and Toby, an older woman living in an "AnooYoo" abandoned beauty spa. Atwood, par for the course, is superb at creating nuanced characters, and Toby and Ren are no exception. As they unspool their stories pre- and post-pandemic, Atwood reveals both her skill at characterization and her dazzling ability to hold disparate storyline together.
Both women are past members of God's Gardeners, a pseudo-religion made up of equal parts old testament fundamentalism, Darwinism, creationism, and probably a few other religious backgrounds I'm not smart enough to pick up on. The Gardeners are lead by Adam One, a charasmatic lead who defines the purpose behind his beliefs thusly:
We've evolved to believe in gods, so this belief bias of ours must confer an evolutionary advantage. The strict materialistic view - that we're an experiment animal protein has been doing on itself - is far too harsh and lonely for most, and leads to nihilism. That being the case, we need to push popular sentiment in a biosphere-friendly direction by pointing out the hazards of annoying God by a violation of His trust in our stewardship.
Toby and Ren are rare survivors of "the Waterless Flood," as the Gardeners call it, a genetic plague that has wiped mankind off the map. The Flood has been expected for some time by Adam One, who preaches in one of the many fascinating sermons interspersed through the novel,
Let us today remember Noah, the chosen caregiver of the species. We God's Gardeners are a plural Noah: we too have been called, we too forewarned. We can feel the symptoms of coming disaster as a doctor feels a sick man's pulse. We must be ready for the time when those who have broken trust with the Animals - yes, wiped them from the face of the Earth where God placed them - will be swept by the Waterless Flood, which will be carried on the wings of God's dark Angels that fly by night, and in airplanes and helicopters and bullet trains, and on transport tucks and other such conveyances.
Atwood's writing, freed from the exacting confines of her more lauded 'literary' works, is exemplary, and her skills at world-building are terrific. The world of Flood is a lonely and terrifying place, and Atwood details with precision exactly the path humanity took to get there. The near-future is a place of corporate-run government (particularly the omnipresent CorpSeCorps), where animal species are dying out at the rate of hundreds a month, and science and religion battle over who gets the hearts and minds of the citizenry. Far more so than Oryx (which mentioned God's Gardeners only briefly), Atwood concentrates on the religious aspect of humanity's future, a future of strange offshoots of accepted religious practices, sometimes with exceedingly strange results. But Atwood does not take the easy path and subject the beliefs of her characters to ridicule (and how easy that would have been). Her sensitive treatment of the various cults and the security and comfort they can offer lonely individuals is commendable. As Adam One preaches, humans have evolved to believe in a higher power, and it is only logical that in the face of utter bleakness (and how bleak it does become), people seek reason for their misery, if only in the undefined actions of a nebulous authority figure.
Atwood's future is not without its humour, albeit of the blackest of black variety. Building on the genetic 'triumphs' of glowing green rabbits, pigoons (pig/baboon hybrids) and rakunks (racoon/skunk), Atwood introduces a few new animal cross-breeds into her world, most noticeably the liobams: "The lion-sheep splice was commissioned by the Lion Isiahists in order to force the advent of the Peaceable Kingdom. They'd reasoned that the only way to fulfil the lion/lamb friendship prophecy without the first eating the second would be to meld the two of them together. But the result hadn't been strictly vegetarian."
As much as there is to laud in the pages of Flood, it suffers somewhat in its position as a secondary companion to Oryx and Crake. In Oryx, Atwood built an entire world though her characters, then destroyed it to begin again. It had the edge over Flood in being far more proactive in its world-building. While characters from Oryx flit through its pages, is far more about characters on the margins who react to their world rather than control it. When compared to Oryx, Flood is a trifle superfluous, even redundant, and people unfamiliar with the base provided in Oryx may find themselves frustrated by certain references and the opaque importance of several secondary characters. Flood is an often riveting piece of work, but overall it suffers as a stand-alone piece of work.
Yet Atwood proves again that, despite her misgivings, she is a proven talent who truly excels at 'science fiction.' Would that she could accept this as fact and move on; just imagine how triumphant the result would be.
Monkey droppings - Marvellous Hairy by Mark A. Rayner; "Think down. Think monkey."
*NOTE* - In the interest of exhibiting some form of blog honesty (oxymoron? perhaps), some of the following review has been cribbed from a blurb letter I wrote to accompany the release of Mark Rayner's novel. Nevertheless, I meant every word then, and I mean it now. I'm just a little lazy sometimes. If your opinion of me is lowered as a consequence, well, then, it couldn't have been very high anyway, right?
I’ll give you a moment to process that. Done? Good. Now let us weep and gnash our teeth in despair.
Canadians are a damn funny people. I would not hesitate to proclaim that Canadians—as a sui generis species of timid, weather-beaten snow creatures—Canadians are some of the funniest people on the planet. Maybe it’s the harsh bleakness of Canadian winters. Or the oppressive smothering heat of Canadian summers Or all the free health care we have lying about. Maybe it’s our natural politeness, or something in the beer. Maybe it’s hockey. My money’s on hockey. No, beer. If I knew what the secret was, I’d bottle it and make a fortune.
But with all that, where’s our Adams, Rankin, Moore et al? Where’s our cult author who mangles language with glee, who puns with ferocious focus, who bends and warps plotlines and traditional narratives to satisfy his craven tastes, who goes completely meta over the whole writing thing?
I don’t know. But I think Mark Rayner could be in the running.
The London, Ontario writer never met a joke he didn’t like, an event he couldn’t satirize. A man whose first novel The Amadeus Net was equal parts Adams, Monty Python, The Goon Show, and Red Dwarf, Rayner is nevertheless unique, a mélange of influences that results in something new and utterly tasty, if a bit odd.
All this is a method of saying that Rayner’s novel Marvellous Hairy is weird. Deeply, unsettlingly weird. It obeys few of the laws of literary physics. It weaves together gene-splicing, super-villainy, criminal plots, and ghosts. Rayner dances through subplots and asides with hectic abandon and a willingness to try anything once.
Marvellous Hairy is a weird little beast, a blending of the anything-for-a-laugh mentality of Adams with the experimental abandon of early Philip K. Dick. Is it satire? Science fiction? A piercing exploration into the nature of being? Good-natured sex romp? The publisher, Crossing Chaos, has labeled Marvellous Hairy as being “Fabulist Satire,” which is as good a way as any to say that categorizing Rayner's work is a near-hopeless task.
To give you a sense of the novel's strangeness, it begins with the narrator Rob, a computer nerd working for the bio-tech company Gargen (Gargantuan) Enterprises, attending a wedding presided by his friend Max. Max, or rather, Maximillian Tundra, is both a doctor and "an ordained minister in the Church of the Irredeemable Bong-Hit, or some equally questionable Internet sect." During the service, he releases a gaggle of macaque monkeys and a komodo dragon for reasons as obscure as they are innately funny.
As the plot deepens, we realize that Rob's work for Gargantuan on a weather satellite may not be, strictly speaking, a good thing for humanity. But there are many other sub-plots and characters to keep us distracted from what might otherwise be a comedic novel of the 'straight and narrow' variety. For instance, we meet:
Nicholas Motbot, a writer of surrealistic prose making ends meet by offering himself up as a test subject for experiments;
Ted Shute, the CEO of Gargantuan, who is being haunted by the ghost of;
Johnny Thipirous, Shute's deceased business partner;
Spider, a cold sore of a criminal, "a malignant heterosexual with festering relationship issues, and a complete inability to think in non-Euclidean terms";
Blossom, a bedraggled woman who thinks of Spider as "her 'boyfriend,' much in the same way we are starting to accept entertainment as 'news'";
and Spider's partner in crime Seedy, slightly smarter than Spider, blessed with "long greasy black hair that clung to his head like an octopus humping his skull, and then fell onto his shoulders in oily post-coital exhaustion."
And that's only about half of Rayner's characters, and hardly anything about his interweaving plotlines. Suffice to say, when Gargantuan begins altering Motbot's genetic makeup to see if "they could alter just 10 [genes] to see if they could make the alterations without killing the subject," things take a left at Albuquerque and go more manic thenceforth.
I can't say that Hairy is perfect (but then again, I can't say that about Douglas Adams' work either, much as it hurts me to write it). Rayner takes a scattergun approach to his satire, and the cohesiveness of his narrative suffers as a result. There are laughs aplenty, but too many ideas to shake some sort of idea-shaking device at.
But I'll take a novel that tries over one that doesn't any day. So, read Marvellous Hairy. I think you’ll enjoy it, if your tastes lean toward the spicy and unusual. If you enjoy it, great. If not, I’m sure Mark won’t take it personally. He’s got a pretty good sense of humour about himself.
Just in time for Hallowe'en: literary horrors adapted for them newfangled moving picture shows!
It's the eve of All Hallow's Eve, and time for a few scares to wile away the night as costumed boogens egg your house. Damned punk kids!
In keeping with the more literary nature of this esteemed blog, I wrote a previous post on a good selection of favourite horror novels to keep you spooked until the morning light. This year, I thought I'd broaden that idea. Let's face it, when it comes to horror, most of us will rent a movie or two. But let's keep it somewhat in the same vein, and focus on works of fiction adapted to film.
These are a few of my preferred choices for a night of literary horror, the ones I find myself returning to on evenings when there's nothing on, and nothing to do but crack open a beer and relive some basic terrors. Some adhere quite closely to their source material, and some veer wildly away. These are inherently personal choices, and while many have both detractors and enthusiasts, they cannot be defended by anyone here but myself. You don't like? Go rent something else. I'm sure your local public library has a copy of The Pacifierwaiting just for you (the horror!).
And for those wondering why the venerable Draculaand Frankensteinhave been left off this list:
1) Frankenstein is a great, great film, and its importance cannot be underestimated. But Bride of Frankenstein is even better, but cannot really be considered an adaptation and is thus ineligible for this list; and
2) Dracula (the Bela Lugosi version) is a boring mess. Sad, but true. It's also a defiantly dull novel, vastly overpraised. Other filmic adaptations, while infinitely preferred by moi, are not movies I return to on a regular basis.
Admittedly, the second manifestation of Finney's work is my personal fave, but all three are worth your time, even the unjustly ignored third (but avoid the Nicole Kidman version at all costs). Each carves its terror from that block of paranoia lodged within our subconscious, that fear that our loved ones are not who they say they are. It's also the loss of identity that drives the terror, the fear that we are but a breath away from becoming that which we hate. The first movie became viewed as a warning against the scourge of communism, the second used new-age mysticism as its base, and the third railed against the conformity of self present in our military apparatus. Each has scares aplenty, but only one has the awesomeness of Donald Sutherland, thus earning its edge over the other two. And when you add in the greatest whopper of an ending ever, you get gold, baby!
Spielberg has gone to many other films, some of which are legitimate classics. None, however, have played with dread and fear so effectively Jaws, as his first major film. It's a cliche to say that the movie changed Hollywood, but there you have it. It also demonized sharks beyond all rational thought, which is a testament to Spielberg's skill (as well as a condemnation of the mob mentality of humanity).
Jaws is one of those films that grabs you from the throat from the opening strains of its thumping tuba melody and doesn't let go until Brody and Hooper face off against the beast. Spielberg is still a force, but doubts exist as to whether he could still manage to evoke the fundamental terror of his monster from the depths. That first appearance of the shark, just under the surface of the water, pulling that boater under...still hate deep water.
I love both Flies. The first is a brightly-colored nightmare, the second as gory and wet a movie as you could ever hope for. Cronenberg's version is by far the more complete film, being an epic love story as well as a goreathon of the highest calibre. Very rarely have I wanted to cry at the death of a practical special effect, but damned if this one did not get to me. And the original is a ton of fun, and has its moments of sadness as the mad scientist silently pleads with his wife to end his torment. While I'll give the higher praise to Cronenberg (and a career-high performance from Jeff Goldblum), the first will always hold a special place in my heart, if only for "Help meeee! Help meeeeee!"
The only movie on this list directed by the original author. The lowest budget of them all (adjusting for inflation). The goriest. The most squirm-inducing and unpleasant to sit through (in the best definition of the phrase). You can quibble with the results, but its undeniable that Clive Barker created something inherently unique, a family drama involving violence, lust, and S&M bondage gear mixed with religious iconography. Wild, wild stuff. And of all the monsters on this list, the lead cenobite Pinhead is the most iconic, even if he devolved into a sideshow barker over the course of countless unnecessary sequels.
How could I not include The Thing, a seminal work of movie horror in both its iterations? Both are hugely influential, but the edge will always go to the John Carpenter version, if only because it hews far more closely to the original source material. Also, it's fabulously gross. I mean, the head grows legs and walks away! You gotta be fu@#in' kidding!
Both versions are tight little nightmares involving trapped individuals, but Carpenter's version adds a grim layer of paranoia (very similar to that of the Body Snatcher variations) by having a monster that replicates itself into any organic life form it comes in contact with. Who's human? Even the actors weren't sure, if the DVD commentary is to be believed (and yes, I listen to commentaries, I've that much of a geek).
But The Mist may be as perfect a rendition of King's work as anyone could hope to get. Director Darabont - no slouch with King's work, having directed adaptations of King's The Shawshank Redemptionand The Green Mileto Oscar nominations - takes his usual penchant for hopeful endings and does a complete 180, resulting in a gloomy little horror epic that is as demanding as they come.
Both works take a cue from such claustrophobic moves such as Night of the Living Dead, confining its characters in an enclosed space and assaulting them with all manner of wee beasties. In this instance, it's a supermarket shrouded in a thick fog in which all manner of devilish monsters await anyone stupid enough to venture out. The monsters are handled well (especially considering the budget limitations), and the attacks are suitably horrific and gruesome.
However, the real monsters are inside, as the movie subtly turns into a study on group dynamics. Cut off from the outside world, the terrified humans fall prey to the histrionic rantings of a devout Christian fundamentalist. "As a species we're fundamentally insane," Ollie the grocer opines. "Put more than two of us in a room, we pick sides and start dreaming up reasons to kill one another. Why do you think we invented politics and religion?" In this way, The Mist adds an element lacking from Carpenter's The Thing, the only mainstream horror film I can can compare this to. The men of the arctic post may have fought ramping paranoia, but they'd have had no problems in shutting down a religious nutjob with a swift blow to the head.
As the scares ramp up, the mob becomes bloodthirsty, and all notions of civilization fall by the wayside in a very short period of time. All of which combine to end the film in one of the bravest and most downbeat endings to a horror film in quite some time, even more than The Thing. Some people hate the ending, but I think it's absolutely perfect. Those looking for a feel-good horror epic need look elsewhere.
Ah, the mid-nineteen-eighties. It was a simpler time. A time when a director such as Tobe Hooper could command huge budgets for personal projects. A time when Steve Railsback was considered a leading man. An innocent time.
I can't really defend this choice, other than it's one of my all-time guilty pleasures, a bizarre fun-fest of conflicting ideas and money run amok that never fails to entertain me. Wilson's novel is a fairly straightforward and (despite the gloriously pulpy cover to the right) sedate affair, setting a far more cerebral tone than its cinematic counterpart. The Space Vampires concerns, uh, let me check my notes...ah, yes, vampires from space. Wilson follows a group of scientists as they study and hunt down a strange being who may be the progenitor for the vampire myths of old. It's a studied affair, measured and direct, and hardly a sensational, hyperbolic affair.
Not so the adaptation. Tobe Hooper was on a career high, after arguably directing the hit horror flick Poltergeist. Given an immense sum of money, I think Hooper went a little bit nutso, the end result being a fantastically weird horror/sci-fi epic firmly in the vein of the Quatermass films of the 1960s (and you should check them out, they are awesome). It starts out as a space epic, as a British/American team of astronauts are sent to check out Haley's comet. There, they find a bizarre Lovecraftian type of spaceship filled with dessicated bat-creatures and three humanoid life-forms. Returning to earth, the lead female escapes and begins infecting the populace, and the movie switches gears into a weird psycho-sexual drama as lead astronaut Railsback finds he has a psychic connection with her. Then, in another left-turn, the movie becomes a zombie film as newly-infected persons quickly turn London into a battle zone. All this, plus fantastically inventive practical effects work and a jaunty, bombastic score by Henry Mancini.
It is a weird, weird, weird film, and although I know that none of it should work, it has always fascinated me. There is a certain amount of astonishment that something so unhinged was ever allowed to go through a major film studio (even if it was only Cannon). I return to it again and again, reveling in the great atmosphere, the ridiculous scientific explanations, the overacting Railsback, Patrick Stewart (!), and everything else. It is wonderful, absurd, inane, and perfect.
By the way, the trailer below is red-band for partial nudity. You have been warned.
You know, as I look over this list, I realize that I really have a thing for the downbeat ending, don't I? Not much hope on this list. But that's where the true scares are found, don't you think? Not from the "boo!" but from the slow realization that the monsters are real, and they will always, always win.
No, I have not been busy procreating, but I can see how the title might lead you to that conclusion. I am, however, as proud of my new 'son' as if he were my own progeny.
Introducing the official mascot of Shelf Monkey (the blog and the novel):
DARWIN!
Darwin came to me via a Thanksgiving visit from my parents, who are now officially the coolest 'rents on the planet. They came across him in a store in Winnipeg, and while the proprietor was reluctant to let him go, the blatant FOR SALE sign hanging about his neck sealed the deal.
Darwin is carved from solid granite, in what must have been a time-consuming task. I think you'll agree that he's a beauty. The detail of the watch, the book he's contemplating -
- it all works so wonderfully well. Is it any wonder he's now my new reading buddy?
In addition to his grand personal choices in reading material, he's also a hell of an attentive cat-sitter.
I'm thinking of teaming Darwin up with Mocha (the cat) for a neighbourhood watch program. Darwin and Mocha, fightin' crime!
Yes, life is officially better round these parts, now that Darwin has taken up residence in my home (and in my heart).
If Nick Hornby can be said to have a thematic thread that weaves through all his novels, that thread would have to be ‘perpetual adolescence.’
Best exemplified in his breakout novel High Fidelity, the British writer excels at crafting characters (mainly men) who steadfastly refuse to put away childish things. Hornby’s obsessives take pride in their noncompliance with the march of time, seeing nobility in pursuit of the arcane and (to their minds) unfairly ignored.
The Internet has only served to heighten such fanboy fervour, a fact Hornby is well aware of. The Internet is a place where the dusty and forgotten are kept alive, and Juliet, Naked, Hornby’s latest, deftly explores how such access keeps certain nostalgias alive well past their ‘best before’ date.
Hornby settles his story in Gooleness,an English township “that held on grimly to what was left of the good times it used to have...Gooleness was the wind and the sea and the old, the smell of fried food that somehow clung on even when nobody seemed to be frying anything, the ice-cream kiosks that seemed to be boarded up even when there were people around.”
Duncan is Hornby’s fanatic, a man in his late thirties still in thrall to the music of Tucker Crowe, a reclusive Dylan-esque singer. Anne had lived with Duncan for fifteen years, but now, on the eve of a release of demo tracks from Crowe’s classic album Juliet, it occurs to her that Duncan’s enthusiasm might not be enough to satisfy her cravings for an actual life.
Finally, there’s Tucker Crowe, now in his fifties, living with a young son and father to at least four other children around the world. Crowe has spent most of his life avoiding the spotlight, but when he contacts Anne because of her less-than-flattering online review of his album, all three begin to take true stock of their positions in the world.
At first, Juliet, Naked appears to be a welcome expansion of Hornby’s favourite motif. His characters, always his strongest point, are fully engaging, and it is invigorating to witness Hornby depart his comfort zone and fully embrace a female character’s perspective.
While women often are viewed as being the mature influence over Hornby’s reckless aging youths, Anne is as endearingly screwed-up as the males, if more aware of this fact. Anne is tired of reliving the past, hoping that “there had to be a present tense, somewhere,” and her tentative yearnings for a way into the now and away from the then give Hornby’s tale its true narrative drive. As well, Tucker's emergence as an actual character, and not simply an object of adoration, pushes the novel in new directions for Hornby, and lends hope that novel might become the British equivalent of Whale Music, Paul Quarrington's wonderful Canadian novel about a Brian Wilson-like recluse.
Yet the novel feels inconsequential, too lightweight to rank with Hornby’s best. The overwhelming niceness of it all significantly dilutes the novel’s very real core of emotional pain and confusion. The ultimate resolution feels like an afterthought, petering out before the last sentence is reached.
Juliet, Naked confirms that Hornby’s flair for rich personalities and warped-yet-identifiable humour is still at its peak. What has altered, perhaps inevitably through age, is the knife-sharp edge he brought to his best works. It has moments that ranks with his finest, but the overall piece is simply too slight.
VERDICT: MONKEY LIKES, BUT CAN`T HELP BUT FEEL A TRIFLE DISAPPOINTED BY
*Originally published (expurgated version) in the Winnipeg Free Press, October 4, 2009.
Hi, I'm Corey Redekop. This blog initially began as a way to promote my debut novel Shelf Monkey, but time has a way of altering one's intentions. So, look around, won't you? There's book reviews, links, and all sorts of literary-related paraphernalia. And Shelf Monkey stuff, I can't deny it, I needs to eat too, y'know. Feel free to drop me a line at any time.
Wow, has it been a third of a year already? Four months of challenging yourselves to be the best your can be? Well, cowboy up, buttercup, because you gots eight months to go! You think this is a challenge for sissies? You gotta have serious literary cojones to compete here!
And as a reminder, at the halfway point I will be drawing one name to win a signed copy of Canadian author Mark Rayner's absurdist epic The Amadeus Net. For this one, I think a little more participation is in order (let's gird those loins, people!), and only those contestants who publish a new review between now and January 2, 2010 will be eligible for this particular prize. And this goes for anyone new to the game; there's still plenty of time for newcomers, and the more is definitely the merrier in this case.
