Not the Rheos

Getting into the new Pratchett book now–have to finish that up to get it shipped back to Britain with it’s owner. More to say on this soon.

Also wrapped up this interview with Dave Bidini about his rock and roll travel book Around the World in 57 1/2 Gigs. Book was pretty good–might have lost the plot in the Africa part but brought it around in the wrap up for the Rheos end. Ended up missing that show– figured it was for hardcore fans. But the interview here turned out really well. Is there a future for Bidini in public radio? The next Randy Bachman, spinning his favourite hits from the CanCon eighties and nineties? Time will tell.

Sleep and how to find it.

I have been having trouble sleeping again. It’s not regular insomnia, an oppressive anxiety  driven response, a crawling night terror product of a hyperactive mind or a guilty heart. It’s more repetitive than that. Cyclical. Obsessive systems that I set up to catch me off guard. Toss and turn and then reset back to their original protocols. Or perhaps that’s a fancier way of saying I’ve become like the Princess from the Princess and the Pea. The tiniest bump under a mattress keeping me awake. I know if I work out the perfect physical geometry of cushioning combined with the optimal darkness conditions then nothing will rouse me. Hopefully.

So I pressed on and finished Winterwood, a novel that had piqued interest after reading  about in Bookslut last year. “Winterwood has obliterated my ability to read any other novels. Nothing else is quite as good or disturbing.” Strong words– which made me snatch it up when I saw it on the bookstore table. And I can’t deny that’s how it captured me when I began it, on a cold grey road out to the edge of the suburbs. It was hypnotic. Spell-like. And frighteningly fractured, particularly in what was left out by it’s supremely disturbed protagonist. And it went much further than I guessed it would. I described it to a friend as Roddy Doyle by way of David Lynch.

But then something happened about 2/3rds of the way through. It just stopped delivering. I can’t quite pin down why. Was it me? Because I was genuinely creeped out here. Was I internalizing the characters and didn’t find them that weird now after all? This needs more thought.

Maps for These Territories

“The human factor in prospecting is all-important. The beginner must first of all be an optimist, in whose heart there burns the steady flame of unquenchable hope. He must possess courage of the highest order and willingness to suffer hardship. The main essentials are good health, reasonable strength, an inquiring mind, and the determination to work.” from the Introduction to Practical Prospecting for the Beginner, Prospector’s Guide to Ontario Mining Fields, 1939.

Now Let’s See…

Still to come. Three Day Road. Honestly–I’m ready for it. Just you wait. Went to the war museum in Ottawa too which is as close as I’ll get to the trenches so I’m pretty sure I have a fresh perspective on it. Just have to get psyched. Enlist T. And giver.

Black Swan Green. Yep that one too. It’s coming.

Around the World in 57 1/2 Gigs. Done as an interview for Open Book Toronto. More when it pops up there.

Mysteries of Pittsburgh. A good Michael Chabon book?

Then there’s some Batman graphic novel or something. Actually was up all night reading this one. I don’t have to justify nothin’. I  can’t really see why it won all the top prizes in comics–as a mystery it gave away its lead right from the start. And it moved to slow to be a good action, er Detective comic. But about halfway through I got into it. I guess I clicked with it’s rhythm. But really worked for me was the pacing, and surprisingly, the art.

Tim Sale does not hit you over the head with style- it began, largely grounded in the real, thin lines, muted colouring, a bit of film noir shading. But as this was a story about the transition it seems between the early Gotham city which was run by mobsters and the latter day, populated by freaks, it becomes more and more expressive and it’s own nuances are revealed. I was more impressed by what Sale could do psychologically with a panel, the emotions, the mindset revealed of the cast of characters at the end, way more than I was by the plot itself. There’s something there to be admired. I’ve never cared much for Two-Face as a character–but Loeb and Sale’s rendition gave me second thoughts.

The New Revues…

Two offbeat Canlit reviews for Quill recently… still waiting for one of them to pop up on the site.

One for Brian Joseph Davis’ I, Tania,

One for Jessica Westhead’s Pulpy and Midge.

William Gibson’s Geek Rapture

Perhaps foolishly when starting this I thought I could keep record of every book I would read for the whole year. Just to see what it is I like–what I dislike–to be able to look back. I wanted to try to discern trends in my own tastes and zero in on what it is I’d like to write in myself. Not that that should be the only standard of course in what we read–but certain topics styles modes keep coming back. And there’s reasons why they are more appealing to me than others.

That all being said I have a lot to catch up on. Let’s start with this.

Sped through Spook Country a few weeks ago in prep for an interview with the man himself (which can be found here) Gibson is one of the few subjects who eluded me in my time at Book Television, when Pattern Recognition came out I was dying to have my questions answered about it. Or perhaps, I don’t know, really just as more share my bafflement and surprise with the creator at what he had made–sort of the same quest of its protagonist. Out of all of Gibson’s works, it did the most to create empathy for its lead Cayce Pollard, the coolhunter, and actually wrought a real awareness a painful humanity to a post 9/11 narrative, which sounds ridiculous even writing–but there you go. Irony free.

Spook Country’s pleasures are more mercurial– the book moved with the nervous energy of the Bourne Identity flicks; with much the same themes. However where those films get into semi-specifics, Spook Country subject was a much harder to define and yet still all pervasive sense of unease and anxiety, something it pulled off quite well. This left me not as much sure of the plot as the headspace of each of the characters being transported to their ultimate destinations. Less concerned with cyberspaces more connecting with the real– Gibson seems to be suggesting that the ‘cyber’ is now all around us, so much so that we are now bored with it–connected to it to a degree that we don’t even notice it. Fair enough. Plot still ticks like a motherfucker– with amazing action — and well threaded together strands of rock-and-roll journalists, junkie translators and mystical cubano-chinese KGB freerunners. I guess that’s really one way to do a plot–give your players a mission and set them loose.

He had many more intriguing answers, most of which I had to leave out–but I have to share this one, about a sci-fi subject which has been on the edges of much of his work called The Singularity. Apparently he’s had a change of heart on it:

How close are we to the singularity?

WG: Oh you know, I haven’t felt the same way about the singularity since I heard it referred to as the geek rapture. <laughs> and I think if you think of it as… as soon as i heard that i thought, uh oh. this is just visionary millenarianism yet again.

Can you explain more about what that is?

WG: Well, I can’t, I won’t do it justice. but the singularity is the idea that somewhere down the road maybe not that far away, we’ll, a technology will emerge that is so powerful that we’ll almost instantly change everything. and what will then be left of humanity on the other side of that event would scarcely be able to recognize us as human. and that’s kind of the best I’ve ever been able to do with expressing it.

however people who are convinced that this is going to happen are generally convinced that this is a very good thing, and will get us out of a lot of stuff that we’ve been suffering from up to now. like wealth and money and all that stuff will become unnecessary. everybody will be immortal. I’ve never been able to do much with it myself as a fantasy goes.

but honestly the first time I heard the geek rapture used instead of the singularity, I went oh, okay. And that was all I could think of it. It put it very much in a different context. you know if the singularity is coming, global warming doesn’t matter, we’ll be able to take care of anything. whatever we become on the other side will be able to take care of anything.

My novel All Tomorrow’s Parties ends with the arrival of the singularity. And I don’t know if many people ever got that. It’s a book with a confusing ending. it’s sort of on the very last page the singularity happens and i declare my inability to describe it.