"Tis better to have loved and lost then to have never loved at all? No. Tis better to have never met certain people in the first place."
-Kurt Daniel Glowinski
I'm not up at all on current poetry. I don't usually find it all that interesting, and because of that, I've no idea how to evaluate what's good and what's bad. Most people will yap at you that it's all subjective anyway until you say you like ________ poet, and then they'll loudly call you on your stupidity.
I stick to reading poets who are dead.
Still, let me take a moment to recommend Narcissistic Personality Disorder by that guy I just quoted above. I've no way to tell whether this set of poems is particularly good or not, but I can say that they will speak to anyone who has been in a relationship with a chronic narcissist. For those who have been, perhaps it will speed the healing process to know that you are not alone. For those who haven't been, maybe you will see how abusive relationships like those hold together. Or maybe the poems will be useless to you.
Poetry's pretty useless anyway. Unless it's Dr. Suess.
Showing posts with label books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label books. Show all posts
Monday, June 23, 2008
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
The Legacy of Susan Kay - this is a terrible title
Most medium-to-hardcore Phantom fans have read or tried to read the novel Phantom by Susan Kay. It's a tricky book to find; eBay or finding a stray copy on Amazon is usually your best bet. I happened to chance upon a copy at a secondhand bookstore one magical summer.
I was entranced with Phantom, which is a "biography" of Erik, starting from before his birth, and going through his childhood, his life as the Phantom and his affair with Christine, to after his death.
If you find it and read it, have a box of Kleenex handy.
Susan Kay has only written one other novel, that was actually published before Phantom, and is even harder to find, called Legacy. The story of Legacy is as follows:
I was entranced with Phantom, which is a "biography" of Erik, starting from before his birth, and going through his childhood, his life as the Phantom and his affair with Christine, to after his death.
If you find it and read it, have a box of Kleenex handy.
Susan Kay has only written one other novel, that was actually published before Phantom, and is even harder to find, called Legacy. The story of Legacy is as follows:
Phantom - Erik + Queen Elizabeth I = Legacy
I'm being glib, it really is a good book. I can't help comparing it to Phantom, though, and I have to say that in the five year gap between novels, Susan Kay really honed her craft.
I can't complain about the subject matter. I love history, and Elizabeth Tudor is a fascinating figure, and real, unlike Erik (I can tell the difference every now and again). I kept having issues with the narration though, which prevented me from breezing through the book in a day like I did with Phantom. I could also be slightly biased towards the subject matter in Phantom, but like I said, the Tudors are an interesting set.
The issue seemed to be that the book hovered between using a (with apologies for sounding like a prat) limited third-person omniscient narrator and an objective third-person etc. etc. So while the pronoun usage, in theory, placed the reader in the minds of different characters, one always felt divorced from the action of the story, and this left some important moments of the story feeling rushed, or the impact lessened. Towards the end, it also seemed she was trying to build Elizabeth up to be an unreliable narrator, but I couldn't tell if this was deliberate, or just a result of the narration issues from all the way along.
Being a historical book, of course I can't resist nitpicking at a few points. If you, dear reader, actually intend on exerting the energy to find Legacy and read it, you might want to stop here. Spoilers. No, it doesn't matter if you're already familiar with the story of Elizabeth Tudor, you want to stop here.
Are we all sorted out now? Good.
Legacy is very accurate, to my knowledge, though I would be the first to say that I am not an expert. Two fairly significant issues jumped out at me, however:
1. There is a suggestion towards the end of the book that Elizabeth was actually the daughter of Anne and George Boleyn. Based on every source I've ever read, that is absolute bollocks, and really didn't add anything to the story to suggest it. Matter of fact, it pissed me off about fifteen pages from the end. Taking liberties with history in fiction can be forgiven, sometimes, if it actually adds something worthwhile to the story. Having Elizabeth spend six hundred and fifty pages fighting to keep the throne because the Catholics think she is a pretender and a bastard, and then telling the reader, "Hey check it out! They're right! PWNAGE"? It defeats the purpose of the character. You've just invalidated six hundred and fifty pages of your own work, and the time it took your reader to read them. Good job.
2. Elizabeth is described as being very naturally beautiful well into her forties and fifties in Legacy, and her appearance gradually changes to being very mannequin-like due to wigs and cosmetics as she ages. This is not the case. Elizabeth I suffered through a bout of smallpox in 1562, when she was 29. This left her scarred, and she began to use heavy make-up from that point forward, which hastened the loss of her hair, so by her mid-thirties there would have been nothing natural left about her beauty. This was not an unusual case in her time, but in Legacy, Elizabeth comes through the bout of smallpox miraculously un-scarred, and actually marvels at her unbelievable luck at having done so. A major inaccuracy like that is annoying enough, but more to the point, why change it? It doesn't add anything to the story, and in fact it would have been more interesting to read about Elizabeth's struggle with her vanity; historically that's one of the interesting points about her.
And those are my gripes.
For all my complaining, I still loved Legacy very much. Whoever finds my cold corpse one day will have to pry both it and Phantom out of my dead arms with the jaws of life. I'm sure it will find it's way into my regular book rotation. Just not for a little while.
I can't complain about the subject matter. I love history, and Elizabeth Tudor is a fascinating figure, and real, unlike Erik (I can tell the difference every now and again). I kept having issues with the narration though, which prevented me from breezing through the book in a day like I did with Phantom. I could also be slightly biased towards the subject matter in Phantom, but like I said, the Tudors are an interesting set.
The issue seemed to be that the book hovered between using a (with apologies for sounding like a prat) limited third-person omniscient narrator and an objective third-person etc. etc. So while the pronoun usage, in theory, placed the reader in the minds of different characters, one always felt divorced from the action of the story, and this left some important moments of the story feeling rushed, or the impact lessened. Towards the end, it also seemed she was trying to build Elizabeth up to be an unreliable narrator, but I couldn't tell if this was deliberate, or just a result of the narration issues from all the way along.
Being a historical book, of course I can't resist nitpicking at a few points. If you, dear reader, actually intend on exerting the energy to find Legacy and read it, you might want to stop here. Spoilers. No, it doesn't matter if you're already familiar with the story of Elizabeth Tudor, you want to stop here.
Are we all sorted out now? Good.
Legacy is very accurate, to my knowledge, though I would be the first to say that I am not an expert. Two fairly significant issues jumped out at me, however:
1. There is a suggestion towards the end of the book that Elizabeth was actually the daughter of Anne and George Boleyn. Based on every source I've ever read, that is absolute bollocks, and really didn't add anything to the story to suggest it. Matter of fact, it pissed me off about fifteen pages from the end. Taking liberties with history in fiction can be forgiven, sometimes, if it actually adds something worthwhile to the story. Having Elizabeth spend six hundred and fifty pages fighting to keep the throne because the Catholics think she is a pretender and a bastard, and then telling the reader, "Hey check it out! They're right! PWNAGE"? It defeats the purpose of the character. You've just invalidated six hundred and fifty pages of your own work, and the time it took your reader to read them. Good job.
2. Elizabeth is described as being very naturally beautiful well into her forties and fifties in Legacy, and her appearance gradually changes to being very mannequin-like due to wigs and cosmetics as she ages. This is not the case. Elizabeth I suffered through a bout of smallpox in 1562, when she was 29. This left her scarred, and she began to use heavy make-up from that point forward, which hastened the loss of her hair, so by her mid-thirties there would have been nothing natural left about her beauty. This was not an unusual case in her time, but in Legacy, Elizabeth comes through the bout of smallpox miraculously un-scarred, and actually marvels at her unbelievable luck at having done so. A major inaccuracy like that is annoying enough, but more to the point, why change it? It doesn't add anything to the story, and in fact it would have been more interesting to read about Elizabeth's struggle with her vanity; historically that's one of the interesting points about her.
And those are my gripes.
For all my complaining, I still loved Legacy very much. Whoever finds my cold corpse one day will have to pry both it and Phantom out of my dead arms with the jaws of life. I'm sure it will find it's way into my regular book rotation. Just not for a little while.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
The Ninth Gate versus the Club Dumas: It's Not Just the Depp Factor
I really hated the book the Club Dumas.
This is one of the few cases in history of the movie being better than the book, and naturally I'd say that about pretty much any movie version of a book if the movie version involves Johnny Depp, which in this case it does, but in this case it's not just the sexy, sexy Depp factor that makes the Ninth Gate a much better movie than the Club Dumas is a book. I really enjoyed the Ninth Gate. It was slow and calm to watch, but quirky as hell just under the surface, like Polanski movies are. It was a decent story, well-shot, well-acted, satisfying ending. So, armed with the common knowledge that the book is always better than the movie, I eagerly purchased the Club Dumas at a bookstore at Pearson airport a couple of summers ago while making my annual pilgrimage to the Mysterious East (Nova Scotia).
By the way, there will probably be spoilers for both book and movie farther down, so you may want to stop reading now. Or there may not be, it's not like I put any thought or planning into these things before I write them.
I got to reading, and made an exciting discovery: there was an entire second plotline that hadn't been in the movie at all, about Alexandre Dumas, the Three Musketeers, and the Satanist society that uses the book of the Nine Gates (the society, and obviously the book were in the movie, but the Alexandre Dumas story was not). That explained the title at least. Boy, was I ever giddy with happiness and insecurity. Surely the two stories...the search for the three last copies of the Nine Gates and the gradual revelation of Dumas' devil-worshipping and possible credit-stealing...were going to intertwine in some fascinating way that would have me bemoaning my sluggish, third-rate brain for not being able to think up something nearly as clever, thereby sealing my fate to remain a mediocre pulp hack for the rest of eternity.
Not quite.
It was a good book, really. I had such high hopes. Nicely atmospheric, pretentious as a poet at Starbucks, but that wasn't really a surprise, given the subject matter. Overall enjoyable, until the last fifty pages or so. The grand climax hit, and gosh, it sure was neat, but something was wrong. The whole Dumas story seemed to have flatlined about twenty pages earlier, and one of the main characters (Irene Adler, guardian angel and token love interest) was standing around and doing nothing. I don't just mean that you didn't hear about her doing anything during the high drama resolution of the search for the Nine Gates, it's just that what you did hear about her what that she was standing by the window of the castle and looking bored. Okay. So, where was the rest of the story?
There was no rest of the story. The Dumas story never concluded. And, as it turned out, it had nothing to do with the primary story of the search for the Nine Gates.
Nor, it turned out, did Irene Adler. In fact, one of the last scenes in the book had Corso and Irene driving around in a fancy convertible and laughing about how the search for the Nine Gates had absolutely nothing to do with her. And we never do find out what exactly made her important beyond being Corso's occasional guard dog and sex toy, in which case making the character an actual dog would have been much more interesting. Or certainly uncommon. Whatever gets the reader's attention.
My hands were shaking as I closed the book the book and put it down. I looked at it lying on my bed, and thought that maybe if I clapped my hands three times or something, it would jump up and act out the rest of the story.
No such luck, though my mother mentioned something after dinner that night about maybe having me tested for autism when we got back to Toronto.
Had I really just read that?
I love books. I am very nice and gentle with my books. I won't let any but a select few individuals borrow my books, because I don't trust everyone to take care of them properly. And some of my books I won't even let out of my house. You want to read my copy of Phantom by Susan Kay? No problem. I'll just handcuff you to the radiator in my kitchen, place the book on a book stand no less than twelve inches away from you, and you may turn the pages only with a pair of sterilized tweezers that I will provide. I cry when the cover of one of my books gets bent, or a page torn. I love the damn things.
So, in the name of that love, and my resolve to never do harm, I had to take the Club Dumas to my mother, and ask her to hide it from me. Why? Because I feared I would rip it to shreds. And light the shreds on fire. And then scatter the ashes into the grazing paddock of an alpaca farm nearby.
A few days later, I had mom produce the book again, and we got in the car and drove (fast) to the closest Frenchy's. I didn't even let her slow the car down, I just opened the window and hurled the book out in the general direction of the store. I may have broken one of their windows. I didn't care. I just wanted to get the book out of my sight and out of my presence.
If you see this book, do not read it. Do not let its poison enter your mind.
Watch the Ninth Gate. Feel a greater than usual sense of appreciation for Roman Polanski.
Enjoy the scene where Johnny Depp is only wearing a towel.
Don't read the Club Dumas.
This is one of the few cases in history of the movie being better than the book, and naturally I'd say that about pretty much any movie version of a book if the movie version involves Johnny Depp, which in this case it does, but in this case it's not just the sexy, sexy Depp factor that makes the Ninth Gate a much better movie than the Club Dumas is a book. I really enjoyed the Ninth Gate. It was slow and calm to watch, but quirky as hell just under the surface, like Polanski movies are. It was a decent story, well-shot, well-acted, satisfying ending. So, armed with the common knowledge that the book is always better than the movie, I eagerly purchased the Club Dumas at a bookstore at Pearson airport a couple of summers ago while making my annual pilgrimage to the Mysterious East (Nova Scotia).
By the way, there will probably be spoilers for both book and movie farther down, so you may want to stop reading now. Or there may not be, it's not like I put any thought or planning into these things before I write them.
I got to reading, and made an exciting discovery: there was an entire second plotline that hadn't been in the movie at all, about Alexandre Dumas, the Three Musketeers, and the Satanist society that uses the book of the Nine Gates (the society, and obviously the book were in the movie, but the Alexandre Dumas story was not). That explained the title at least. Boy, was I ever giddy with happiness and insecurity. Surely the two stories...the search for the three last copies of the Nine Gates and the gradual revelation of Dumas' devil-worshipping and possible credit-stealing...were going to intertwine in some fascinating way that would have me bemoaning my sluggish, third-rate brain for not being able to think up something nearly as clever, thereby sealing my fate to remain a mediocre pulp hack for the rest of eternity.
Not quite.
It was a good book, really. I had such high hopes. Nicely atmospheric, pretentious as a poet at Starbucks, but that wasn't really a surprise, given the subject matter. Overall enjoyable, until the last fifty pages or so. The grand climax hit, and gosh, it sure was neat, but something was wrong. The whole Dumas story seemed to have flatlined about twenty pages earlier, and one of the main characters (Irene Adler, guardian angel and token love interest) was standing around and doing nothing. I don't just mean that you didn't hear about her doing anything during the high drama resolution of the search for the Nine Gates, it's just that what you did hear about her what that she was standing by the window of the castle and looking bored. Okay. So, where was the rest of the story?
There was no rest of the story. The Dumas story never concluded. And, as it turned out, it had nothing to do with the primary story of the search for the Nine Gates.
Nor, it turned out, did Irene Adler. In fact, one of the last scenes in the book had Corso and Irene driving around in a fancy convertible and laughing about how the search for the Nine Gates had absolutely nothing to do with her. And we never do find out what exactly made her important beyond being Corso's occasional guard dog and sex toy, in which case making the character an actual dog would have been much more interesting. Or certainly uncommon. Whatever gets the reader's attention.
My hands were shaking as I closed the book the book and put it down. I looked at it lying on my bed, and thought that maybe if I clapped my hands three times or something, it would jump up and act out the rest of the story.
No such luck, though my mother mentioned something after dinner that night about maybe having me tested for autism when we got back to Toronto.
Had I really just read that?
I love books. I am very nice and gentle with my books. I won't let any but a select few individuals borrow my books, because I don't trust everyone to take care of them properly. And some of my books I won't even let out of my house. You want to read my copy of Phantom by Susan Kay? No problem. I'll just handcuff you to the radiator in my kitchen, place the book on a book stand no less than twelve inches away from you, and you may turn the pages only with a pair of sterilized tweezers that I will provide. I cry when the cover of one of my books gets bent, or a page torn. I love the damn things.
So, in the name of that love, and my resolve to never do harm, I had to take the Club Dumas to my mother, and ask her to hide it from me. Why? Because I feared I would rip it to shreds. And light the shreds on fire. And then scatter the ashes into the grazing paddock of an alpaca farm nearby.
A few days later, I had mom produce the book again, and we got in the car and drove (fast) to the closest Frenchy's. I didn't even let her slow the car down, I just opened the window and hurled the book out in the general direction of the store. I may have broken one of their windows. I didn't care. I just wanted to get the book out of my sight and out of my presence.
If you see this book, do not read it. Do not let its poison enter your mind.
Watch the Ninth Gate. Feel a greater than usual sense of appreciation for Roman Polanski.
Enjoy the scene where Johnny Depp is only wearing a towel.
Don't read the Club Dumas.
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