A New Batch of Reads

Undiluted Hocus-Pocus: The Autobiography of Martin Gardner (2013).  Written not long before his death in 2010 at the age of ninety-five, this autobiography of the legendary writer on pseudoscience is a mixed bag.  Personally, I’ve preferred Martin Gardner writings on literary subjects like Lewis Carroll and L. Frank Baum above most of his other writings.  But to get an overview of his life and works, as is found in his autobiographical reflections, is good too.  Yet along with such clear-headed insights like this:  “Not only is there no evidence for God or another life, but the evidence strongly suggests the nonexistence of both. The enormity of irrational evil implies the absence of a just God;” there comes the contradictory revelation “I managed to retain faith in a personal God and a hope for an afterlife,  I’m what is called a ‘philosophical theist’.”  Why?  Gardner admits:  “Shortly before he died, Carl Sagan wrote to tell me he had just reread my Whys, and was it fair to say I believed in God only because it made me happier? I responded by saying, in effect, ‘You’ve got it!’ My faith rests entirely on desire.”  Sadly, this admission leads one to place Gardner--at least with regard to his faith--among the uncritical cranks (whose wackiness was equally rooted in their personal desires) he so easily and thoroughly dissected. 

Beyond Binary: Genderqueer and Sexually Fluid Speculative Fiction (2012), edited by Brit Mandelo, is a reprint anthology of seventeen stories, originally published between 1996 and 2011.  Most of the stories are interesting and readable (there are a few duds), but overall I found the collection as a whole to be rather tame. I expected much more boundary-stretching, but it just isn’t to be found here.  Also, there seems to be an imbalance in that only two of the seventeen stories are by men. The best story, handsdown, is “Fisherman” by Nalo Hopkinson.

Letters to Arkham: The Letters of Ramsey Campbell and August Derleth, 1961-1971 (2014), edited by S.T. Joshi.  Here is the extensive correspondence between an old pro and editor at Arkham House, August Derleth, with young writer-to-be Ramsey Campbell, beginning at a time when Campbell was aged fifteen.  Kudos to Campbell for allowing this interesting correspondence to be published, despite any potential embarrassment in the exposure of his much younger self. Many topics are covered in these letters between two people who never met:  H.P. Lovecraft, prominently; and weird fiction, also prominently; but also films (a growing topic as the time progressed), and sexuality, including discussions of banned literary works (often via copies traded).  There are extensive notes by editor Joshi, with a number of errors and a few howlers (e.g., the well-known bibliophile and writer Timothy d’Arch Smith is said to have died in 1997—he is still happily with us, and has produced a number of new books since his presumed death).  Despite such problems (surely a good copyeditor could have caught these mistakes and the typos), this is still an interesting read. 

Literary Rogues: A Scandalous History of Wayward Authors (2013), by Andrew Shaffer.  This book sounded like a good idea, and I was expecting to enjoy it a lot.  Alas, the end-result is so snarky and smarmy that in this instance I would relax my disgust at the idea of book-burning to see this paper turd go up in smoke. If you have any respect for authors and their actual history and context, avoid this book.  (If you like listening to inebriated dim-witted know-it-alls pontificate in a bar, this book might be for you.) The style is glib and exaggerated.  On Lord Byron, Shaffer writes: “Unsurprisingly, Byron’s lifestyle of ‘bling, booze, and groupie sex’ proved to be incompatible with married life…. His wife may have preferred eternal damnation.”  Of Poe he tells us, “He was fiercely opinionated, a trait that would come back to bite him on the ass. He was also an alcoholic who drank for the same reasons he wrote: to push back the depression that he was constantly waging a war against.” Such pearls of cliche appear regularly. The main thing I learned from this book is to avoid any future writings by this author. 

Pybrac, by Pierre Louys, comes from a mass of erotic manuscripts left behind at the author’s death in 1925.  Here, newly translated by Geoffrey Longnecker, are over three hundred quatrains that all begin “I do not like . . .” and pass through a litany of encouraged various sexual acts, though predominantly of heterosexual anal sex. The form is limiting, and the reading becomes monotonous rather quickly.  This is the kind of book one supports because it will outrage small-minded moralists, and for that reason it must be applauded.

More Recent Reading

Dark Matter: A Ghost Story (2010), by Michelle Paver.  This is basically the journal written by one man of a doomed 1937 expedition to an imagined isolated place called Gruhuken in the Arctic, north of Norway.  While it is a ghost story, the ghost takes the form of a haunted figure in the icy landscape.  What’s far more real and significant to the men of the expedition, at first, is the barren landscape itself, the frozen world, and how to survive in it.  By authorial sleight of hand, giving out only selective details of the failed mission at the very beginning, one is left with a well-written page turner that draws you to the end.  With the right director and screenwriter, there is just enough material here, as well as mood and character, to make an interesting and artistic film.  

Red Delicious (2014), by Caitlín Kiernan writing as Kathleen Tierney, is the second of Kiernan’s novels about the half-werewolf, half-vampire Siobhan Quinn.  The first was Blood Oranges (2013), which also appeared as Kiernan writing as Tierney. When an established author uses a pseudonym, it’s often to do something quick for money, or something very different from their usual style.  Either may be true in this instance, but Kiernan really should have hid behind a pseudonym.  The book is a basically an extended exercise in attitude and cliché.  And it is basically a monologue by Quinn (who hates her first name Siobhan, so everyone calls her that at least once so the author can insert some boilerplate text about Quinn hating it). The whole is filled with unnecessary wordage, not always as wise as this bit from late in the book:  “Those of you who find this annoying, go read another book, instead. I won’t mind.”  I finished the book primarily to see if the author might do something interesting for an ending. Nope.  Just the same ole same ole. To use an appropriate critical cliché, this book isn’t writing, it’s typing.  

The Biographical Dictionary of Literary Failure (2014), edited by C.D. Rose. This book is basically a slim encyclopedia of biographies of some fifty-two failed writers.  I presume that they all lived only in the mind of the supposed editor, whose imagination was apparently given free reign at a website, from which these are collected.  Add a rather pretentious introduction by one Andrew Gallix.  Some readers may find this book clever.  I found it merely boring. One could, I suppose, build short stories around this kind of exercise, but what’s present here is just the invention, without artistry. I’d much rather read Borges than crap like this.   

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (2001), by François Augiéras, translated by Sue Dyson.  The original French edition “L’Apprenti Sorcier” appeared without the author’s name in Les Cahiers des Saisons (Éditions Julliard, 1964), where it is listed as by the author of Le Vieillard et l’Enfant (1949), which had appeared at the author’s expense under the pseudonym of Abdullah Chaanba.  It is a bizarre narrative, written as though by a teenage boy who is sent to live with a priest in his mid thirties. The nameless narrator is used sexually by the priest, and comes to love the pain of flagellation. Meanwhile he falls in love with a younger boy, and they have their own warm and open sexual relations, in contrast to those with the priest, and they cause consternation in the small village. The boy decides to write a small book (presumably the one that is being read):  “a tissue of weaknesses run through with follies and naïvity, that was the sort of book I could be the author of.” And that’s a reasonable description of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. A handful of poetic observations and keen turns of phrase, scattered throughout this short book, are just enough to help the reader make it to the end. 

Passion  (L’Appasionata): A Tale of Venice (2014), by Stefan Grabinski, translated by Miroslaw Lipinski.  Those familiar with the work of the Polish fantasist Grabinski will be intrigued by this novelette, his longest short prose work.  It starts out quite different from Grabinski’s usual, being first a kind of travelogue of Venice, and second a tale of romantic infatuation. Grabinski slowly sets the stage, and then his usual magic begins.  A very fine tale is the result.