Review: Light Boxes

Light Boxes by Shane Jones

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



Some books are rather unusual and Light Boxes is one of them. The book is a fantasy in which anything is possible. February has come, but February has no intention of leaving and the towns people of a unnamed town are subjected to an unending spell of chilly weather dominated by snow and ice.
The towns people are late to resist, for how does one resist February? But February, now personified, kidnaps and murders children and the people, led by Thaddeus Lowe and the Solution, a group of men wearing bird-masks, plan a revolt.
But how to revolt against February?
How indeed.
Light Boxes reminded me of a dream I once had when I was feverish. Logic and reason, causality, death and any other rock solid idea are toyed with. People get killed, come to life later in the story, or make themselves even come to life. February is a man who can be killed, but his death will end the month too. But even February isn't February, for he could be someone else. And perhaps the cause of all problems might not be February, but maybe it was the creators that should be blamed.
Shane Jones is not tied down by anything and he does not hold back on style either. Almost any kind or writing style is used and this is supported by the design of the book. Some pages just contain one word, others contain one line, some one line repeated over and over, jet others contain huge letters and some are just notes jutted down.
I personally like this kind of experimental writing and I liked the story, but I can understand that some people find it hugely annoying as it is a unusual book and writing style. I hope other books will follow.






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Review: Being There

Being There by Jerzy Kosiński

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



The more books I read the harder it gets to judge a book, despite the cover. It is the same for movies for me, which is why I am happy to be able to write moviereviews at IMDB without having to hand out points.
One such book that is hard to judge is 'Being There'. It is a small book that I got at my local library, which few English bookcases seem to resemble some magical library that is able to conjure up far more books than I was willing to give it credit for based on it's apparent size.
'Being there' grabbed my interest because I know there is a movie of the same name that is based on this book. I haven't seen this movie, and now, after reading the book, I am not sure if I would want to see it because I doubt that it has much to add to it. But then again, maybe I will if I run into it.
'Being there' has got the same kind of atmosphere as Forest Gump has. A middleaged innocent man named Chance - you might see him as innocent as a new born baby - is confronted with the real world after his protector dies.
Chance has spent his whole life as a gardener for this rich man and has never set a foot outside the house. The only way he knows about the world is through the television. On his first trip outside he happens to get hit by the car of Eve Rand, the wife of (another) powerful and rich man, Benjamin Rand. She takes Chance home and so he eventually mingles with the high and mighty through a series of happenstances and mistakes.
His innocence, simplistic look and television knowledge is taken for wisdom or shrewdness and his lack of background and identity become points in his favor in a world where any kind of background can be used against you.
This is basically what the book is about and it is told in a rather matter of fact kind of way. The story is hard to be taken serious and kept light, but sometimes I got the feeling that right below the irony and tongue in cheek humor there is sarcasm or perhaps cynicism lurking.
For instance, while Chance has no proper knowledge of the economy he tells his ideas based on his experiences as a gardener after being asked about it. These words are thus (mis)taken as words of (economic) wisdom and even repeated by the president of the United States on television. The implication is that you don't really need any kind of proper understanding of economics as long as the words sound right and that those who ought to have a deeper understanding actually seem to lack proper judgement. In addition Chance gets invited to a television show and is asked for advise which shows that it is more important to have the right connections than to have proper understanding of the subject. Which might be true, but is sad to hear anyway.
The book is full of scenes born from mistaken communication. At some point this even results in some embarrassing intimate sex scenes, which I found a bit distasteful. I won't go into details.
Overall the book is slightly amusing but also a bit shallow. It's shortness is probably it's saving grace, another hundred pages would probably have seen the plot falter in one way or another. By now it is also something that you probably have seen and read before.
A book for those who like light entertainment. I am not sure if there is anything thing more to it.






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Poem : Never No More.

Review: And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks

And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks by William S. Burroughs

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



After reading Junky I discovered this book by Burroughs among the books dubbed as crime novels in my local public library. It was probably labelled as such because there is a murder in it and I don't think the library has a label for literature as such. So it would be the most logical choice from their viewpoint, but somehow this label doesn't fit the book.
From the introduction and comments I gather that Burroughs and the co-writer Jack Kerouac were part of a literary movement called the Beat generation and that this book was written before they became famous. In fact the book was published after they both died because it was deliberately put off. It was the wish of one of the people involved in the murder that it would not be published in his lifetime. It ended up as being published in nobodies lifetime..
The result of the delay at publication was that the book gained a mythical state. Like many things that are unknown it peeks the interest, gains notoriety and heightens expectations.
But what were the results?
The book seems a lot like Junky, with the same down-on-their-luck types as feature in that book, but a little bit less criminal. Most of the people are poor and some are the brink of crime. The best term to define them is: a bunch of freeloaders. They live on the money others make and they get that money by borrowing and not paying back, gaining it in a half legal way or by outright crime. For example: one of the characters pawns the diamonds of a relative, pocketing the money for himself, without letting the relative know.
Most of the book describes this freeloader life from various angles and against this backdrop is set the awkward semi-gay relation between a young man and an older man that finally ends in a death. The book is however not a crime novel. There isn't a real upbeat towards the killing, nor any investigation or anything else that is part of a crime novel. The murder itself and the aftermath actually are only a small part of the book and occur well in the end. It feels almost as and anti-climax when it does, which it probably will be for anyone attracted to crime novels. The murder isn't what the book is about.
But what is?
The charm of the book is the writing, which is to the point and frugal. Just like in Junky there is not a word too much it this book and no beating about the bush. The story is told straight and without any moral justification from the writer. Crime happens, people steal, someone gets robbed. It all is told in the same way as the writer tells that people had a bite, took a leak or banged their girlfriend.
The characters in the book have opinions of course, but nothing is morally weighted by the writer. Everything is told as it happens, to the point. It is almost clinical.
I like the writing style as a way to learn how to write. The shortness of the book combined with a efficient writing style made it readable.
The problem I foresee for me is that much more of this will start to bore. If a bigger book would be filled with just more scenes of freeloading then such book will become a tedious read. It does make me curious about the books that made Burroughs famous. I assume there must be a lot more to them.

www.meritcoba.com





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Review: No Country for Old Men

No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It is a twist of fate.
The public library in my home town, with only three bookcases of English books, harbors a few books that have been turned into movies at one time or another.
Perhaps not too surprising considering that the preponderance of crime novels and crime novels seem to be a favorite genre of books to turn into a movie.
And one of them is 'No Country for Old Men'.
It's a depressing title for sure. It invokes the image of cranky oldsters reminiscing how everything used to be better: the milk, the butter, the cheese, the people and the crime.
And it is that kind of book.
It would have been boring, if the writer hadn't employed a few things to keep your attention.
First is the MacGuffin of the story. A man, called Moss, runs into a crime scene and finds a suitcase with a few million dollars. Everyone is dead, nobody knows he is there. What would you do?
Moss takes the money and runs.
But running isn't as easy as he might think. For one, there is family to contend with, and for another, a lot of a other people want that money as well.
One of those is the coldhearted psychopath Anton Chigurh. The man carves a path of dead bodies through humanity. The dead pile up wherever he goes.
Next to him are a lot of shady, often unnamed, types that take potshots at Moss. Most of them are more meat for the meat grinder that Chigurh is. More dead bodies.
Next to those are the authorities, represented by Sheriff Bell, the old man in the title.
The whole story then proceeds along these three lines: Moss, Chigurh and Bell and ends in a tone true to the title: sad. I leave it open how sad exactly.
There is however something problematic with this book. The whole psychopath-goes-wild-theme is somewhat too fabricated. For some reason Chigurh gets away with murdering scores of people without the FBI getting involved. McCarthy paints us a picture of a wacko massacring a lot of people, often in the open, and he doesn't get caught or even suspected and so Bell can exclaim 'this is no country for old men' and ponder quitting his job. I found that a weak element in the book. It is simply unbelievable that anyone can get away with what Chigurh did without the federals getting on his case and someone gunning him down.

Now this all makes for a book that would not have gotten more than three stars from me, if it wasn't for the writing style. McCarthy uses various styles to tell the story. There is the internal monologue of Bell. There is the third person view of Moss and Chigurh and there is the for me interesting style of dialog.
I am used to write dialog like this:
"Where are you driving to?," Merit says.
But McCarthy writes it down like this:
Where you going?
No "", and usually no indicating of who says what. This could become confusing if not handled properly, but McCarthy does as he pulls it off if you pay attention. Sometimes I had to read back a little, but he usually keeps it clean enough so you are sure who is saying what.

For that I am giving McCarthy some extra credits. That is why I give the book 4 stars.

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Review: The Boys from Brazil

The Boys from Brazil by Ira Levin

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



It happens that the public library of Alkmaar owns a few English books that have been turned into a feature movie. This process from turning a written text into a visual medium has my interest as I hope to learn from others to apply it for myself.
It is my luck that I recently saw the movie "The boys from Brazil" and when I discovered the book - written by Ira Levin - in the library I knew I had to read it.
Mind you, I am not going to take you through a point by point comparison. While this might be of interest to me, this is probably not of interest to you and as such this is not the place for it. Besides, it would require a lot more space and time then I am willing to take up and want to invest. And, as suggested, it might also be of interest to a very small group of people.
This book is in conspiracy thriller. It is the kind where a nefarious organization is planning something bad for the world and only a few 'good' men are willing and able to oppose it. The authorities are ineffectual in these kind of books, either because they don't believe in the conspiracy, are part of it or just too impotent to do anything about it. So it is left to the individual hero to stand up and thwart the bad guys.
In this book the hero it Yakov Liebermann, an aged jewish nazi hunter who is well past his prime. It is the seventies now and a new generation is growing up. The second world war has been over for thirty years and other wars caused the interest in the nazis to fade away. There Vietnam; there is the conflict between the Israel, the Palestinians and the Arab countries; there is the cold war. The world has changed.
Liebermann is an unusual hero, as he is old and has fallen on hard times. But he gets involved nevertheless when he gets a call from Brazil from a young man who is subsequently murdered. The man mentions one name that peeks Liebermann's interest. That is the name Mengele. The Nazi doctor who misbehaved at Auschwitz and is hiding out somewhere in South America.
The investigation then goes underway as Liebermann slowly starts tp uncover the plot. He is however not without help. A lot of people still respect him or feel obliged to help him. With the assistance of these and others he finds out what is behind 'the boys from Brazil'.
The story is an interesting one and although the conspiracy is a bit improbable, it isn't so improbable as to be impossible like other conspiracy are.
What for me makes this book interesting is the way Ira Levin writes. At first I thought he couldn't write proper English, but it seems that he pictures himself how Yakov would have spoken English and thus his English sounds a bit awkward, because Yakov is Austrian. He often uses that in case of for instance Mengele. Although they think and speak in English, they are expressing themselves in a way a foreigner would. Not exactly right.
The writing is also low on explicit violence. While the plot necessarily requires a lot of deaths, these are mostly mentioned or implied. In fact there are only a few described killing scenes.
But probably the best reason are they way he sets up and describes some of the key moments in the story. There is one where Mengele finds out that his plan is going awry. He is good spirits, boisterous, pleasant and then, when he finds out something has gone wrong, the mask comes off and he becomes a violent man.
Also the climatic scene at the end where Mengele and Libermann confront each other is brilliantly setup.
Now to be honest, I have been influenced by the movie. Levin's Liebermann doesn't look at all like Laurence Olivier does in the movie. And every time the image of Olivier set itself over that of Ira Levin's Liebermann in the book.
This even more goes for Gregory Peck, who just dominates the movie as Mengele and thus is the Mengele from the book. The final confrontation in the book is one that occurs between Peck and Olivier.
Now a final note on some of the differences between the book and the movie. There aren't that many, the movie is recently loyal to the book.
However, in the movie Liebermann investigates more or less without many outside help, while in the book he does get help from people. And, as said before, in the book the killings and the killers are mostly mentioned in a offhand manner, while they take some more precedence in the movie.
There is one more thing that makes a difference between the book and the movie. The book works out the plot and the confrontations much better and that is not strange as a book can just take more time to set these things up. What in the movie looks like strange random meetings, is logically setup in the book.
I liked the book and would recommend it if you like conspiracy stories or like to see how books are turned into movies. Ira Levin has a writing style you have to get used to, but once you understand it is a good read.

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