akujunkan | TWIB-III: 39 (7/13-7/19)

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TWIB-III: 39 (7/13-7/19)

Surpringly, I managed to read two books during the final week leading up to the Hell Thesis deadline, both of them extremely good. They are:

Fatal Light - Richard Currey
Two comments about Fatal Light: 1) This may be the best war novel I have ever read; 2) People who criticize this novel for its paucity of main character description (to say nothing of development) are missing the point. A corollary: The second point is directly responsible for the first.

1) Fatal Light's plot is the plot of every war novel you've ever read: a young man, innocent and full of dreams is changed by the brutality he experiences fighting a war in a far off land. The difference here is that Currey's narrator is barely there; as do all war novel protagonists, he speaks of his childhood, his first love, his fellow soldiers, his experiences on the battlefield, on leave, in the hospital, but with little attempt to provide back story or narrative continuity. Currey's protagonist is essentially narrating this story to himself, which means there's no need for him to fill in the particulars because he already knows them fully well.

But we readers, of course, cannot know this information, with the end result that it is simply not provided. In most novels, this would be the kiss of death. Here, it is what makes Fatal Light extraordinary. Why? Because any war novel with a defined protagonist is as much about the protagonist as it is the war it's set in--what happened to the protagonist, how the protagonist's friend Johnny XYZ did or didn't pull through, if the protagonist survived this or that battle, how his family reacted when he came home. It is precisely because Fatal Light's protagonist is barely there that the novel truly becomes about the Vietnam War and not just a few of the people to whom it happened.

The same can be said for the plot. Because there's so little emphasis on the main character, the plot is not about how one man was strong enough to overcome the odds or too sensitive to withstand the horror, it's about the horror of the war itself, the damage it causes to everyone and everything in its path, which is perhaps the truest depiction of war possible. Finally, Currey's prose is so beautiful and atmospheric it defies description. This is one of the most powerful books I have read in quite some time. Read this book.

2) The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins
Believe the hype. Believe all of the hype you have read about this book. It really is That Good. Collins is one of the few young readers/young adult authors who can actually write about violence and psychological horror in such a way that it's appropriate reading for ten-year-olds but doesn't insult their intelligence either. Her prose appears simple and straightforward at first glance, but there is a lot going on under the surface; indeed, one of the reasons it appears so simple is because Collins trusts readers to make connections and extrapolate motivations and emotions on their own, instead of holding their hands to make sure they're understanding everything correctly.

Not only does The Hunger Games rise above its potentially ho-hum premise (namely: what if reality shows like Survivor were actually played for life-and-death stakes), but it does so while rarely resorting to the deus-ex-machina and happy coincidences on which so many other authors depend to move their stories forward. This is one of the most tightly plotted novels I have read in quite some time, and its narrative development rarely strains credibility. And then there is Katniss, the protagonist and narrator of the novel. I cannot put my love for this protagonist into words. Far from being some ineffective disney princess, Katniss is tough, resourceful, doesn't put a premium on being fashionable or "nice" (or secretly wish in her heart of hearts that she was either of those things), and who spends a fair portion of the novel helping the knight in distress. Better yet, it's entirely believable; Katniss is neither superhumanly gifted nor written to some misguided idea of a "feminist protagonist" checklist. She is a supremely natural and sympathetic character.

The world needs more fiction like this. Go read this book.

That will be all.

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As, I'm sure you read my review for The Hunger Games after I finished it, and you know I went out and bought all of Suzanne Collin's books last January, then I'm sure you know how spasastically glad I am that you liked that book.

btw, if you didn't know, that is the first in a trilogy, and the second comes out in September.

Now I must go and smile a lot and not ruin your post for the wifey.

OH MY GOD. "Liked" does not even begin to cover it. It was perfect in just about every way...and even the parts that weren't perfect? I totally forgive Collins for them because the whole is so brilliant.

And I pretty much knew I would like it because it came so highly praised by the two of you. In fact, the reason I decided to read it (instead of waiting till I could get my hands on the copy you got me...cause I really wanted to hold *that specific book* in my hands when I read it the first time) was because I knew it would be damn good, and I needed something to cheer me up after Hell Thesis. And it did the trick like a motherfucker.

I knew there'd be a second one coming soon; the only reason I'm glad I waited so long to read HG was because I don't have to experience the months of waiting that you guys have been experiencing.

It's much like having a severe chest wound. In actuality when I sat down to read it when it came out, I had no knowledge that it was gonna be a series, and I was scouring the Internets for info for a few days before I learned it was to be a trilogy. That was painful.

But now you can read the Gregor series as i'm sure bran has said. I'll warn you up front though, the first book has a few weak points, but the rest of the series kicks.

One of the things I thought was awesome about HG was the way that, even though it's a series, it had a concrete conclusion. None of that stopping pre-climax to try and force you to buy the next book (which is actually a counterproductive strategy in my case).

Gregor is on the list for when I'm next in the States, you can be sure of that.

I know what you mean. But at the same time, the world was left open for more stories. that's how all series should work. The question I have is will she do the cliff hanger ending for book two or will it be as much a stand alone as the first?

Another question I have for you: on my review on lt, I mentioned a review by a certain author that I decided not to name on that sight but it was Steven King. He felt that the tributes were authorial laziness. I disagree, but am willing to argue or rail on King until he cries in the night for an unknown reason.

that's how all series should work.
YES. THIS.

Second books are traditionally the hardest to do as stand alones, but after HG, I have great faith in Collins as an author. Thank god there's not much time left until we can find out one way or the other!

Can you explain to my why King felt the Tributes were lazy? I reread your review and I don't really understand what King's getting at. How can you have a battle to the death without other people to battle?

What he was refering to was the fact that outsiders watching the hunger games could donate supplies and medicine to people from their districts, and then these items would parachute in.
(the review is here...I can't remember how to do a link, so sorry...http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20223443,00.html)
As I said, I hideously disagree with that, because it's a fact that's established from the beginning. He thinks it's a contrivance, and is convenient since it was something she needed to help the dude. and for that I want to punch him.

Oh no! Your link didn't copy properly, so I still couldn't read it. (T_T) (FWIW, [a href=""]...[/a] with the link between the quotation marks, the link display instead of the ellipses, and the ['s replaced with < 's is the way to hyperlink.

Incidentally, I think Stephen King's writing has about as much craft to it as the dumps I take daily; that review just made me despise him even more, because I think he is an even worse offender in every area where he criticises Collins. (Honestly, his review reads to me as if he is jealous of her success.)

That said, I don't think the tributes are contrivances because they make sense in the context of the world Collins has created. Letting a popular contestant die prematurely would be death for a reality show, number one. Number two, not all of the tributes are particularly useful: the bread from Rue's district being a case in point. And Collins didn't give Katniss a free pass on Peeta either: the sleeping medicine helped Katniss to heal him, but she had to take risks like a mofo to finish the job. And finally, the tributes don't come every time Katniss needs them. And as we all know, deus ex machina are one of my big pet peeves, so I think it says something that I don't feel the tributes count as such.

THANK YOU. Number one, for the HTML lesson, and number two, for agreeing with me on that point. Considering how easy it truly is to rely on dues ex machina in genre fiction, the number of times I've wanted to throw a book down at the end is considerable. (the one exception is in a Jasper Fforde book, they actually summon Goddess at the end, but that was good because his stuff is just so wierd and entertaining).

I haven't read one of King's books in years. But his reveiws do almost always piss me off. He did an article on "dude fiction"(you know, the opposite of chick lit?) and what sticks is while he recommended Robert B. Parker as an action author, his advice to him was that the main character should "dump Susan and kill the dog." To me, some of the best books of the series stem from the things that King's ass find's boring.

But anyway, back to HG. I totally wasn't expecting everyone to come back as genetically reengineered zombies at the end. I actually had a little reservation up to that point because she hadn't been required to kill, and I thought that was kinda weak, but then throw in some monsters and I was happy.

Okay, no more points about the JF books because they're still sitting at home waiting for me to read them, but since they come highly recommended by both you and my father, I think I'm going to enjoy them.

Also, I tried searching for that King interview for a full ten minutes and my google-fu turned up nothing. Care to test those link-making skills again?

Right, and I don't think that's the last we're going to see of them, either. I wasn't expecting Kat to kill, not because I thought Collins was too much of a pantywaist to write such a thing, but because I was expecting her publishers to be too much of a pantywaist to allow her to do it. That said, I do think it would raise interesting moral question if Kat actually had to take someone out in hand-to-hand combat and not just drop a nest of deadly wasps on them. Only two more days till September!

I looked for the terrible quote, but I didn't find it on entertainment weekly's site, which was where I found it originally, so it actually may have been someone else. Here's the one I found.

do think it would raise interesting moral question if Kat actually had to take someone out in hand-to-hand combat and not just drop a nest of deadly wasps on them. Or if she would have sniped someone from afar, holding thier head in her crosshairs.

In the Gregor books, without spoiling anything, there are points in the later books where Gregor is forced to kill, or needs to kill, and he spends a lot of time thinking about it. It's not like it's something he just does, even though given the story arc, he probably could have just glossed over it. That's one of the things I liked about his character and the stories Collins was telling.

The WCPL gives away a monthly magazine called bookpage, and this magically delicious interview was in it.. Awesome.

I'm trying to make this damn link work.oh, the link to the review we've been discussing is here. I've tried to make it work, and if it doesn't, I got the link off Suzanne Collins' home page. Hopefully it works now.

Usually I refuse to do this, but I'll make an exception here...

I TOLD YOU SO!!!!

Now you shall read the Gregor the Overlander series.

Waaah! If only I could get copies of said series over here. It was hard enough tracking down a bookstore with a copy of HG to read (I feel justified because I do own a copy...just not here).

Anyway, let's have a big long conversation about Hunger Games now. You go first.

I loved that the weakness of the main characters was a MALE pining over a WOMAN. Not some cheap little girl writing his name in notebooks with little hearts drawn around it, envisioning her wedding day *gack...I just threw up a little just thinking about it*.

Yes, and the fact that she has to save his ass...and more than once too.

Right! I also love that the motivation for helping others doesn't come out of some conniving on her part. She has accepted, mostly, her death and chooses to help out of a kinship to the other contestants. I like that she is both noble and flawed. I know it can fall into that "hero" typecast, but I enjoyed Katniss and her development into that hero all the same.

Right, but you hit on an important point here. Sure, she helps some of the other contestants (namely Rue), but that's motivated by her hatred of most of the other contestants (including, at that time Peeta). I mean, lesser authors would have had her playing the stereotypical Noble Pacifist Woman who gets everyone to unite because she hates death and suffering. Katniss joins forces with a select few because it's the best option available to her, not because she wants everyone to see the light.

And the thing is, Collins subverts the usual hero stereotypes, because the usual hero, for instance, would have found out a way to save or civilize Cato.

Exactly. I love how she can be a friend and a bitter enemy. One of my favorite parts is when Rue is killed and she wants to show them how much she disgusts the tradition by covering her in flowers. It's her only available form of protest and she uses it to her advantage. The resourcefulness of Katniss just blows me away. It's great Collins gave her skills, but not perfectly so, which makes her character all the more realistic. She initially teams up with Rue out of a neccessity.

Right! Because it was protest that was believable given the narrative constraints. If she had stood over Rue's corpse and given a big long speech about the Evils of the System, well, Collins had already established that Katniss was way too intelligent and realistic to know that that would have any effect, but a lesser author would have had her do it anyway ("I knew it wouldn't make any difference, but I had to say my piece" or something). Here, Katniss makes her point and does it cleverly.

Yes! And the tribute of bread from the district, that was impressive too. Because it was brodcast live, it was a form of solidarity and protest from a whole area under control. Totally awesome. This world kind of smells like China meets Survivior.

I was also impressed with her ability to develop secondary characters without doing the crappy descriptions (her blond hair was accentuated by the unforgiving sun, but it couldn't hide the twinkle in her expressive green eyes, blah, blah, blah...) She manages to give them a depth and a humanity that most authors can't in such a modest role.

Yeah, and the fact that Katniss doesn't have to go on for paragraphs about what that tribute means, because Collins has already shown us enough of Katniss and Rue's worlds that we know without being told.

And yes, yes, yes on the secondary characters. I really hate it when authors have characters "catch a glimpse of their reflections" while just passing by a mirror or window or something, and then we're subjected to waaaay too much description for a glance. And honestly? People tend to know what they look like, which makes the whole thing reek of fakery. I'd rather have a few bits slipped in here and there and have to readjust my impressions then get an annoying info dump right off the bat.

Exactly. There is so much about her writing that I love that it is hard to pick out a few examples. Well, okay, not hard, but I start to feel like a Stephen King fan, except with a GOOD author.

THIS COMMENT, FOR THE WIN.

Thank you, thank you. Ah, my loyal subject. Remember, I'm here weekly giving these pearls of ultimate wisdom for FREE.

You'll dig this. I live and die by this article when I write.

Ahaha, a man of my own heart, is Chris Moore.

Incidentally, what Sherwood Smith had to say on the topic (http://www.sherwoodsmith.net/writingriffs/pointofview.html) (just do a find for the word "mirror" and you'll jump right to it) really had me reevaluating if not her skill as an author, the intelligence of taking her advice on writing.

Just because you can do a thing doesn't mean you should do a thing.

What gets me about her tips concerning the mirror trope is how useless they are. I don't find her reworking of it any more believable than the "bad" example she offers. I don't know why she defends it, because the other two examples she gives are much more natural, and thus smarter, ways for going about revealing a character's appearance.

Her's was in a way, more trite and sentimental, because a person never thinks that hard about their appearance or backstory into a mirror. The interaction between the characters a little later in the story would have revealed (show) all of the characteristics that she bullied us with (tell). What wouldn't be shown obviously wouldn't be important.

I disliked her locked down version of POV actually. There's a bit more fluidity to it than what she was attributing to it.

because a person never thinks that hard about their appearance or backstory into a mirror.
Exactly! I notice new zits or wrinkles, but I'll be damned if I've ever been pressed for time in front of a mirror but decided it's worth it to potentially make myself late while I try to figure out whether my eyebrows resemble my father's or my maternal aunt's.

What wouldn't be shown obviously wouldn't be important.
FAR, FAR TOO MANY AUTHORS FORGET THIS. You don't have to describe the living room down to the wallpaper and thread count in the carpet. Now, if there's a BDSM jungle gym in the corner, you might want to mention that, but otherwise, say "living room" and pretty much anyone gets the idea.

Her POV bit didn't bother me in and of itself, as it generally works well for the genre in which she writes. But the prescriptiveness of the piece kind of bugged me.

Now, if there's a BDSM jungle gym in the corner, you might want to mention that, but otherwise, say "living room" and pretty much anyone gets the idea.
LOL!

I think my own objections to the mirror trick for describing the main character are funniest, because I can't pass on without checking myself out. it's not that I'm vain, I just have a facination for seeing things that I can't normally see myself.

Ahaha, you may have just convinced me that the mirror trick could work...as long as the character is vain or you.

How refreshing. "He came down the stairs hard, and stopped at the large mirror that took up much of the living room. 'Me," he thought. "Goddamn, i love me. I love my wavy black hair and my hazel eyes. I love the way my pecs press manishly against my muscle shirt, and the way my butt looks in these jeans. I love the way I don't look gay at all.' he then sped out of the room for his date, not noticing he had left his fly down."

YES. THIS.

should there be a comma after "stairs" or is it a good thing that I imply he has an erection?

Again, yes.

hey while we're talking about terrible fiction, can you get me the link for that story all those guys wrote blindly to prove that the publisher was a vanity press? There's actually a publishing unit in my poetry class (score!) and he's gonna try to steer us in the right direction, and my prof seems like the sort of person who would appreciate the joke. I'm confident that my lack of clarity will not be a problem for you.

Your lack of clarity is referring to Atlanta Nights (http://www.travistea.com/), which remains one of my favorite pieces of fiction EVER.

I have to buy a copy of this book...I can't remember if you gave us a copy or not on the computing machine. I'm so totally going to send this to Dr. kalamaras. if he doesn't think that is hilarious, I will lose all respect for him as a teacher. I'm not familiar with any of the authors that contributed to it, though. Any recs out of the list?

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TWIB-III: 39 (7/13-7/19)

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