TWIB-III: 38 (07/6-07/12)
Jul. 28th, 2009 11:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
akujunkanWow. Wow. It's been a long time, hasn't it? As in, over two months. Anyway, the novels I read between weeks 30 to 33 are not going to be reviewed on this lj, and as for weeks 34 to 37?
I didn't read any books. Which is really sad, because it means I broke an over three-year-old record of reading at least one book cover-to-cover a week. (Such are the wages of Hell Thesis.) At any rate, in an attempt to get back on track, here are the two books I read between June 6th and 12th.
1) Zen Wrapped in Karma Dipped in Chocolate - Brad Warner
Anyone who's been following this lj for a while will know that Warner is one of my favorite authors on Zen, so you can imagine how much I was anticipating the publication of his third book. If Hardcore Zen is about how Zen relates to Warner's life and Sit Down and Shut Up is a nitty-gritty exploration of the mechanics of Zen, then this volume is the most straightforwardly biographical of the three. But that doesn't mean Warner didn't write it for a purpose; he most certainly did: namely to demonstrate how Zen teachers are no more perfect than the rest of us. And whether it's conveying his frank opinions on the personal imperfections of other Big Names in Zen or detailing his marital infidelity and sexual escapades with a student, he largely succeeds. Although I understand the point he was trying to make, some of it nevertheless strikes me as more of a personal airing of dirty laundry with justifications attached after the fact (e.g. witness the way Warner doesn't call out anyone by name, but includes enough personal information about his targets that one can just about hear him daring readers to google it).
The brashness of these elements is, however, somewhat leavened by some truly touching passages on the deaths of Warner's mother and grandmother and the usual snarky humor. At 170 pages it's a short book--I read it in a manner of hours--and although I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who hasn't read its two predecessors, it's certainly worth a read for anyone whose already a fan.
The Love Potion Murders in the Museum of Man - Alfred Alcorn
I have read this steaming pile of a book from cover to cover so that you don't have to. The Love Potion Murders in the Museum of Man billed itself as taking "black comedy to philosophical heights" but it does nothing of the sort. Rather, it is an attempt at satirical humor by an author whose age, social prejudices, and sexual fantasies are embarrassingly on display throughout.
Love Potion Murders is told from the POV of sixty-year-old Norman de Ratour, or to rephrase that in the annoyingly affected style Alcorn adopts for his main character, "Is narrated in the lyrical yet perhaps, one fears, slightly outmoded cadences of one Norman de Ratour, sexagenarian." Now, be it brain candy like The Somnambulist or serious fare like Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, I am a fan of novels that mimic pseudo-Dickensian florid prose--provided it's done well. Unfortunately, it's mostly just ponderous in this case, although there are a few nice turns of phrase here and there.
Now let's move on to the "humor." One imagines Alcorn believes his narrator's takes (or are those Alcorn's takes?) on such sacred cows as racial and sexual sensitivity, and modern phenomena such as lawyers and youth culture are scathing and incisive, but they're nothing of the sort. Oh look, here's a rapacious Jewish lawyer, ready to sue at the drop of a hat! And haha, would you look at that rabid feminist with her shaved head, foaming at the mouth about how everything is a tool of the patriarchy trying to repress her!
These two-dimensional stereotypes are no longer inherently funny and say nothing new about the groups they purport to parody. (Alcorn might want to try watching an episode or two of Family Guy to learn how to effectively skewer such people.) Furthermore, Alcorn/de Ratour's beef mainly seems to hinge on how tiresome it is for older white male Christians that young, non-white, non-male, non-Christians keep insisting that they be listened to. Or to put it another way, one gets the impression upon reading Love Potions that Alcorn/de Ratour doesn't have any problem at all with black people...just those annoying blacks that have to be so loud about racial prejudice. It's also notable that Christianity and horny old men are the only two groups spared the "sting" of Alcorn/de Ratour's "biting" insights.
As for language: Alcorn has an annoying habit of giving his characters "clever" J.K. Rowling-esque names, except that anyone with a decent vocabulary will immediately know what role those characters are doomed to play in the narrative. (Sixpak Shakur? Really?) Also, it behooves anyone wishing to mock the extremes of youth slang to first understand how youth slang is used. Alcorn does not, which means those annoying "likes" and "dudes" he thinks he's parodying pop up in all the wrong places in his dialogue, and instead of pointing out how ridiculous such verbal tics are the joke is on him--the old man who thinks he's being funny but doesn't, like, you know, get it.
And then there's Alcorn's truly bizarre sexual fantasies. To whit: you are a sixty-year-old man. Your beloved wife, the love of your life, is dying of cancer. Do you respond by a) descending into grief and depression or b) lusting uncontrollably after her twenty-something daughter by a previous marriage, with whom you consummate a sexual relationship a few days after your wife's death? Or how about this: you are a woman dying of cancer. Do you a) tell your sixty-year-old husband you love him and to be strong, or b) tell him to consummate a sexual relationship with your twenty-year-old daughter by previous husband?
If you chose "a," you're like most people. If you chose "b," you're Alcorn, and congratulations, your readership now knows far more about what springs your junk than they're comfortable with. I suppose there's a slim chance Alcorn means for this to be as disturbing as it is, but one rather gets the impression readers are supposed to cheer for Alcorn/de Ratour as he bones his four-decades-younger stepdaughter--I mean, gets the girl in the end. Avoid this piece of crap like the plague. Life is too short.
That will be all.
I didn't read any books. Which is really sad, because it means I broke an over three-year-old record of reading at least one book cover-to-cover a week. (Such are the wages of Hell Thesis.) At any rate, in an attempt to get back on track, here are the two books I read between June 6th and 12th.
1) Zen Wrapped in Karma Dipped in Chocolate - Brad Warner
Anyone who's been following this lj for a while will know that Warner is one of my favorite authors on Zen, so you can imagine how much I was anticipating the publication of his third book. If Hardcore Zen is about how Zen relates to Warner's life and Sit Down and Shut Up is a nitty-gritty exploration of the mechanics of Zen, then this volume is the most straightforwardly biographical of the three. But that doesn't mean Warner didn't write it for a purpose; he most certainly did: namely to demonstrate how Zen teachers are no more perfect than the rest of us. And whether it's conveying his frank opinions on the personal imperfections of other Big Names in Zen or detailing his marital infidelity and sexual escapades with a student, he largely succeeds. Although I understand the point he was trying to make, some of it nevertheless strikes me as more of a personal airing of dirty laundry with justifications attached after the fact (e.g. witness the way Warner doesn't call out anyone by name, but includes enough personal information about his targets that one can just about hear him daring readers to google it).
The brashness of these elements is, however, somewhat leavened by some truly touching passages on the deaths of Warner's mother and grandmother and the usual snarky humor. At 170 pages it's a short book--I read it in a manner of hours--and although I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who hasn't read its two predecessors, it's certainly worth a read for anyone whose already a fan.
The Love Potion Murders in the Museum of Man - Alfred Alcorn
I have read this steaming pile of a book from cover to cover so that you don't have to. The Love Potion Murders in the Museum of Man billed itself as taking "black comedy to philosophical heights" but it does nothing of the sort. Rather, it is an attempt at satirical humor by an author whose age, social prejudices, and sexual fantasies are embarrassingly on display throughout.
Love Potion Murders is told from the POV of sixty-year-old Norman de Ratour, or to rephrase that in the annoyingly affected style Alcorn adopts for his main character, "Is narrated in the lyrical yet perhaps, one fears, slightly outmoded cadences of one Norman de Ratour, sexagenarian." Now, be it brain candy like The Somnambulist or serious fare like Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, I am a fan of novels that mimic pseudo-Dickensian florid prose--provided it's done well. Unfortunately, it's mostly just ponderous in this case, although there are a few nice turns of phrase here and there.
Now let's move on to the "humor." One imagines Alcorn believes his narrator's takes (or are those Alcorn's takes?) on such sacred cows as racial and sexual sensitivity, and modern phenomena such as lawyers and youth culture are scathing and incisive, but they're nothing of the sort. Oh look, here's a rapacious Jewish lawyer, ready to sue at the drop of a hat! And haha, would you look at that rabid feminist with her shaved head, foaming at the mouth about how everything is a tool of the patriarchy trying to repress her!
These two-dimensional stereotypes are no longer inherently funny and say nothing new about the groups they purport to parody. (Alcorn might want to try watching an episode or two of Family Guy to learn how to effectively skewer such people.) Furthermore, Alcorn/de Ratour's beef mainly seems to hinge on how tiresome it is for older white male Christians that young, non-white, non-male, non-Christians keep insisting that they be listened to. Or to put it another way, one gets the impression upon reading Love Potions that Alcorn/de Ratour doesn't have any problem at all with black people...just those annoying blacks that have to be so loud about racial prejudice. It's also notable that Christianity and horny old men are the only two groups spared the "sting" of Alcorn/de Ratour's "biting" insights.
As for language: Alcorn has an annoying habit of giving his characters "clever" J.K. Rowling-esque names, except that anyone with a decent vocabulary will immediately know what role those characters are doomed to play in the narrative. (Sixpak Shakur? Really?) Also, it behooves anyone wishing to mock the extremes of youth slang to first understand how youth slang is used. Alcorn does not, which means those annoying "likes" and "dudes" he thinks he's parodying pop up in all the wrong places in his dialogue, and instead of pointing out how ridiculous such verbal tics are the joke is on him--the old man who thinks he's being funny but doesn't, like, you know, get it.
And then there's Alcorn's truly bizarre sexual fantasies. To whit: you are a sixty-year-old man. Your beloved wife, the love of your life, is dying of cancer. Do you respond by a) descending into grief and depression or b) lusting uncontrollably after her twenty-something daughter by a previous marriage, with whom you consummate a sexual relationship a few days after your wife's death? Or how about this: you are a woman dying of cancer. Do you a) tell your sixty-year-old husband you love him and to be strong, or b) tell him to consummate a sexual relationship with your twenty-year-old daughter by previous husband?
If you chose "a," you're like most people. If you chose "b," you're Alcorn, and congratulations, your readership now knows far more about what springs your junk than they're comfortable with. I suppose there's a slim chance Alcorn means for this to be as disturbing as it is, but one rather gets the impression readers are supposed to cheer for Alcorn/de Ratour as he bones his four-decades-younger stepdaughter--I mean, gets the girl in the end. Avoid this piece of crap like the plague. Life is too short.
That will be all.
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no subject
on 2009-07-28 03:21 pm (UTC)It's a shame though, they could have made that work a LITTLE better...I mean, either his wife was dying way young of cancer and was quite young for him to begin with (probably this, in which case it's not surprising he went after the young one, since he obviously likes 'em young, and also not as surprising she went for him, since her mother obviously wasn't caught up on age, so I guess she's not either), or she had her own daughter way late in life...either way, he coulda had the daughter be like 40 so it wouldn't have been quite as ...yeah. Or am I thinking way too much more than this book deserves? (I think the answer to this last one is a very obvious very loud yes.)
no subject
on 2009-07-29 04:30 am (UTC)And I don't think you're thinking too much at all...either of your suggestions would have made the book less bad, in my opinion. And anyway, the whole point of reading things is to think about them, non?
Honestly, my impression upon reading LPM was that had its author not been a Harvard OB, it would have been recognized for the mediocre pile it is and published on Lulu or wherever.