Solid in the Right Places: Michael Sullivan's "Hollow World"

I am usually a SF skeptic. I have read so many famous SF writers that are famous in the genre, but after reading some of the stuff, I am turned away – I’ve had this with Herbert, Asimov, Stephenson, Heinlein, and Doctorow. I think I like SF in theory, but it may turn out I’m just a big fan of Douglas Adams or Gaiman when he writes a Doctor Who episode.

                The problem, as I see it, is that there are three distinct elements that have to come together in a SF work. The characters have to matter, the setting has to make sense, and the plot has to be interesting. So many works fail on at least one of those. Stephenson builds beautiful worlds, and he can write action, but his people are not believable as people. Asimov sets the plots in motion, but even his best work is dated. In the Foundation Trilogy, people are still smoking way in the future, along with other sexist and racist things going on. The stories are often a reflection of the time and the author’s politics. That’s why future fascism in Heinlein is no fun for me.

                But here’s the thing. Hollow World hits on all three things. The characters are developed and they change through the book. The world is fully realized without a heavy info dump or too much hand waving. The plot, though it takes a while to develop the conflict, moves organically from the setting and the characters. It is a really good book in these terms, not just good for SF. I’m glad I was able to be transported to it for a while. One thing though, there was a love-story –esque part that came to fruition after the resolution of the main conflict. It seemed tacked on and unnecessary to everything that came before it. So you can’t have everything, but this book comes very close to perfect.

There is a certain difficulty to modernism: Djuna Barnes and "Nightwood"

I think it started as a response to the impressionists. New technologies made the way stories could be told replicable by other media. Art had to move on.  I have liked a lot of modernism. I followed Joyce from the moocow to Stately, Plump through Yes. I tried to follow him all along the riverrun, but I failed multiple times. It was where he went from storytelling with a stylistic verve to just style – period. It didn’t work for me, but maybe since it has been years since my last effort I should try again.

All that is preface to build whatever ethos about what comes next: I did not like Nightwood.  It is short, and beautifully written, but the whole thing is written around the main character. She has no agency of her own and seems to exist as a character in the stories of other characters. And there’s the eternal student’s lament -- nothing happens. Even the Sapphic element, something of a angle for certain readers, feels downplayed. The lovers the main characters take on just happen to have multiple genders. Not hot at all. Maybe it was for the time, what do I know?

Basically, it was good enough that I wanted to keep reading to see if anything happened, but not good enough so that I wasn’t thumbing through the pages as I approached the end with anticipation of having finished the book. What I think it needs is one of those Cambridge Companion to Literature versions, where the text is just part of the whole and you have various academics writing around the text to help shape the context in which you read the book. There is introductory material, but it is too laudatory to really help the reader. At least it was for me. I’m just glad I’m not writing a paper on this book , because that would mean that I would have to flip right back to the start to see if I missed anything. It wasn’t good enough for that.

Sophomore Slump: Patton Oswalt's "Silver Screen Fiend"

I like the idea of Patton Oswalt.

He can be funny and snide and smart.

It is just that sometimes he may try too hard. I think that is the case here. He like movies and he went and watched a lot of movies. But the book tries to put a narrative arc and significance to some of the movies just where it doesn’t fit. I liked his previous book, but that seemed to have more form and structure in an organic manner.

Not to say that this book does not have its good parts that made me laugh. It does. It just felt less necessary than his other book and his stand up.

He is self-aware though, and I can respect that. He writes of a time he was opening for Louie CK, when he was younger and “My ideas were simpler and less startling than I cared to admit, so I masked that with a lot of unnecessarily ornate vocabulary an dense cultural references” (134). Maybe he’s still there. Heck, this book isn’t all about movies then, I guess.

And then, after all that, it’s too short! It is only 220 pages with larger font and margin, and that’s padded out with 40 pages of the movies he saw during the time period he’s talking about.  I was let down in the end, but only because it didn’t meet my high expectations.