Alien Hunter, by Whitley Strieber

I read a few of the early Whitley Strieber novels decades ago, and found them good enough that I felt I should return sometime to read more. So I picked up Alien Hunter (2013), which is the first of three "Flynn Carroll" thrillers. Either my memory is wrong, or Strieber has gone down the tubes in the post-Communion era. Though it begins carefully, fleshing out the characters and situation, it's not long before all that is dropped and Streiber moves completely into thriller mode--a relentlessly paced, illogical, and at times nonsensical story. The back-story of the book is actually intriguing--some criminal mastermind (the title gives it away as an alien) has been abducting selective humans, and a secret government organization is on the case. Flynn Carroll, a Texas police officer, is recruited, so the story unfolds to the reader as it does to Flynn Carroll.  But soon (as the story reaches Las Vegas, appropriately enough) it becomes simply ridiculous. Hollywood evidently saw some potential in the book, for the Sy-Fy channel based a series on it, titled more simply, Hunters (2016), but other than the basic set-up, the series bears little relation to the plot of Strieber's novel. Thus, two failures, from the same idea. For decades I have had an annoying mind-worm in that every time I see Strieber's first name, I hear in my head the young girl Newt, in the film Aliens, screaming "Whitleeey!" Now you have the mind-worm too. You are welcome.

Of Solids and Surds, by Samuel R. Delany

This short book is part of the "Why I Write" series based on some annual lectures delivered at Yale University. Delany was the lecturer in 2020. It is a series of some 67 numbered sections, some short, others long, which meander around the subject of why Delany became a writer, wrote a particular way, or wrote a particular book, with many asides and random anecdotes. As a dyslexic, gay, black American man his viewpoint can be especially interesting. And so the book is, fascinating here, less interesting there, occasionally too discursive and even cryptic (e.g., even having read the book I'm unsure which meaning of surds is implied in the title). Delany also distractingly adds footnotes detailing his conversation with his copyeditor over specific points in the text. It could be an interesting way to define more clearly why Delany has written what he has written, but overall it feels more like an empty gesture, adding little to the text. Thus the book is a meandering collage of thoughts, but coming from Delany they are mostly worth reading. Here are a few of the passages I noted in the book:

I believe that if there were a god, it would have to be such a complex entity that for a human being even to say that he or she "believed" in it would be tantamount to an ant saying that it believed in the black hole at the center of our galaxy. (p.61)

I write because certain aspects of writing are difficult--and, as Yeats said, the fascination with what's difficult has dried the sap out of my veins, and rent spontaneous joy and natural content out of my heart, which is another way of saying it keeps me calm in a world where there are often things to get upset over. (p. 77)

Parnassus on Wheels, by Christopher Morley

This short novel is about a spinster women (of about forty) who buys into a travelling book wagon run by a bookloving single man of a similar age. Of course it turns into a romance. Parnassus on Wheels was published in 1917, so it is over a hundred years old, and the century does not sit on it well. The root problem is that the travelling Parnassus is based upon the idea that all rural folks love books, and are eager to buy and read them. I doubt that was true in 1917, and following the advent of radio, television, gaming, internet, streaming services, etc. etc., it's very clear today that rural folks young and old are interested in doing almost anything other than reading. And the writers admired by Christopher Morley's characters in 1917 haven't withstood the test of time either. But the story itself has some attractions, and one doesn't need to buy in to the story's applicability to enjoy a few quick hours of pleasant silliness. There is a sequel, with the appealing title The Haunted Bookshop, which takes place after the couple settle into running a bookshop, but it, alas, contains nothing supernatural.

The Original Bambi by Felix Salten

The Original Bambi: The Story of a Life in the Forest by Felix Salten is here translated and introduced by Jack Zipes. This edition, published by Princeton University Press in 2022, is illustrated by Alenka Sottler and follows the text of the original 1923 German novel, not the 1928 English translation by Whittaker Chambers, which Zipes notes as doing a disservice to the original. A further disservice came in the form of Walt Disney's 1942 animated film Bambi, which sentimentalizes and twists the original into a sugar-coated confectionary for very small children. (Zipes notes wryly that Disney had "a well-known technique for carrying cuteness to an extreme"--surely an understatement.) Basically, Salten's novel tells the story of a young deer's life and growth in the forest, though it anthropomorphizes all the animals too much (not only the deer, but rabbits, squirrels, etc.--there is even a short chapter comprised of a conversation between two leaves), giving a sentimental basis upon which Disney expanded. But Salten's novel doesn't shy away from evil and death, as man (always denoted as He) terrorizes the forest with his strange and deadly Third Arm. Salten's novel is perhaps an antidote to the Disney movie, but it isn't itself a very engaging book.