The Road

So there I was, flying back from Washington DC last Thursday evening, and all set with my well-planned reading agenda.  I actually like to fly because I get a lot of time to read while waiting around in airports and on the plane itself.   But lo and behold mother nature stepped in and decided to storm over Dallas, causing our airplane to have to divert to St Louis to avoid running out of fuel.  My first reaction was, "Oh crap!  What if I miss my connecting flight home?"  But my immediate second thought was, "Cool!  I'll no doubt finish my book ahead of schedule and will be forced to buy another one in St Louis!"  Yes, I am one of the "gently mad".

So we spent an extra hour on the ground in St Louis plus travel time to Dallas but fortunately, my connecting flight was also delayed allowing me about 15 minutes to browse the airport bookstore.  I didn't need that long though because I've promised several people that I would read The Road by Cormac McCarthy just as soon as I could get my hands on a copy.  And, of course there were stacks of them (with the movie tie-in cover) right up front.  So it would be a happy homecoming afterall.

Lots has been written about this book and, of course, it won the Pulitzer Prize, an achievement which many people seem to value.  For me, I chose it due to opinions of people I respect and trust.  The novel is billed as a post-apocalyptic novel and I suppose it is; at least the setting would concur with that assessment.  But it's really so much more than that.  On the surface it's about a man and his son, travelling along a road to get to somewhere that they hope is better.  There are quite a few encounters along the way that serve to drive the plot to its conclusion.  But where this novel succeeds is through its multiple layers.  Depending on how far the reader peels back that onion, he or she is likely to have a different reading experience.  The author is conservative in his word count but depicts so much with his word choice.  You get the flavor of the setting with very few descriptions but this bleak landscape is vibrant because of his writing skills.  And the relationship between the man and his son was written beutifully.  I got their personalities and outlook on life right away through there limited dialogue. 

I've not read any other books by Cormac McCarthy but I suspect I will now.  In this book, he doesn't use quotation marks or apostrophes but it didn't bother me at all.  In such a world, how could such trivial things matter?  We are never told the name of the main character, the "man" or his son, and we never come to understand just what happened to destroy the world prior to the beginning of the book.  But so what?  It isn't about that.  It's about this relationship between two people and just how far a father's love can go to protect his son.  This is not a cherry, happy read but nevertheless gives the reader a deep sense of purpose and certainly gives us pause to think.  I can tell you it made me happy to be back home with my family.  Thanks to all of you who recommended this to me.

Next up: an ARC called, The Trade by Fred Stenson.

Veracity

I've unintentionally encountered quite a few post-apocalyptic fiction experiences this year.  Perhaps it's due to all the buzz surrounding the 2012/Mayan calander thing but certainly not all of it.  I had read 1984, A Canticle for Liebowitz, I am Legend this year as well as watching the complete "Jeremiah" TV series.  I've always been drawn to such work and perhaps it isn't all that suprising that Veracity, by Laura Bynum caught my eye when I saw it on my Amazon Vine Program list.

The book has an intriguing premise: much of the population of the US has been wiped out by a pandemic virus in 2012 and now in 2045, the survivors of that experience live in an extreme government-controlled society, for the citizen's own protection.  The protagonist, Harper Adams has a gift in that she can see people's auras and know what they are feeling, including if they are telling the truth or not.  She is recruited by a resistance force, organized by people who remember the way things were prior to the pandemic and want to bring back freedoms, democracy, etc.  A central theme of the book involves the "Red List", a list of words that are not allowed to be used any more, thus supressing the population.

This book was OK, but just OK.  I liked the theme that language has power and I liked the way that was resolved through the use of "The Book of Noah".  The author uses first person present tense, and also skips around in her timeline quite a bit during the first half of the book.  That can work well in the hands of an experienced writer but here it seems to make the whole work a bit snobbish, as if the author was trying to make it be more literary.  The characters were not well developed, at least not enough so that the reader can grow to really care what happens to them.  I also found the later half of the book, the part about the resistance's efforts to take back the government to be hugely simplified.  The battle tactics just weren't believable, almost as if there were large parts of the narrative missing.  Unfortuantely, novels like this will inevitably be compared to 1984 and similar works...certainly a difficult standard to achieve.

On a different note, "Big Man" the next short story in Louis L'Amour's collection, The Strong Shall Live, was a fantastic story.  I had just been complaining about the sterotype western hero from the previous story and here I get just what I asked for.  The hero this time is a 6'7" 330 pound, over confidant young man who starts a ranch in the middle of hostile Indian country and plants groves of cherry trees there.  How he interacts with the nearby townsmen that just shake their heads at his foolishness and how he not only manages to survive but actually thrive is the stuff of great storytelling.  Best of the bunch so far.

Next up: December calls for me to wrap up all series that I've started during the year so now it's the Star Wars one, number 3 of the Black Fleet Crisis.

A Canticle for Liebowitz

I finished up Walter M. Miller Jr's A Canticle for Liebowitz last night and I must say I'm not particularly looking forward to writing about it today. For those of you that are not familiar with this work, it is considered a classic of science fiction, and even a classic in the entire universe of literature. Written in the 1950's it is probably one of the first novels ever written concerning a possible post-apocalyptic society.

So why am I hesitant to write about it? This book has achieved cult status. It is so well regarded by the science fiction intelligencia that to question it in any way is almost sacreligious. So of course I will proceed directly down that path and risk the scorn of those that would say I'm just not intelligent enough to appreciate it. I have never strayed from my mission to point out elitism where I find it and I don't intend to start now. Of course not everybody who raves about this book is an elitist and I'm fully aware that different books appeal to different folks. And don't get me wrong, I don't hate this book or even actually dislike it. There is a lot here that is intriguing and parts are quite thought provoking.

The premise is that some 600 years after a nuclear holocaust in the 20th century, some "artifacts" belonging to an engineer named Liebowitz have been found in an old fallout shelter. An abbey of Catholic monks who exist in a sort of Dark Ages struggle with how to deal with these artifacts. The book is divided into three parts with the second part taking place 600 years later at the onset of a new Renaissance with the final third taking place yet another 600 years later at a time of another potential nuclear war. There are all kinds of themes in this book, not the least of which is that history repeats itself and seems incapable of learning from its mistakes. Overall, the book depicts a conflict between knowledge and morality. There are huge religious underpinnings throughout with the Catholic church being the one true bastion in the abyss to which we can all hold on to in times of crisis. I do not happen to be catholic and was somewhat lost in all of the catholic rituals occurring and dogma expressed. Perhaps if I knew more in this area my interest level would have been higher. But there is also a lot of latin used in this novel, with no benefit of translation for those readers like me who are unfamiliar with the expressions. This served as yet another way for my mind to wander instead of following the plot.

But more than any of that, I simply found the story lacking. The first part was OK; I actually liked the unassuming Brother Francis who found the original artifacts and was interested to find out how an entire sect could grow from these items. But the second part was a jolt with all new characters, a different style, and different themes. The third part only served to lower my level of caring about what happened next. Overall, there are certainly less entertaining books out there but I wouldn't recommend this to the casual reader. It would, however, be a good one to study as part of a class where a lot of discussion takes place.

The third short story in Stephen King's collection, Skeleton Crew, "Monkey" had just the opposite effect on me. Here is a tightly woven story that epitomizes the short story form. And if you like horror, this is one of the greats. The monkey itself, one of those toys with the wind up clanging symbols on his arms turns out to be one fantastic creepy icon, much like clowns or creaking stairs. King uses his classic method of bringing out his characters' worst fears of childhood and translating that very real horror to them as adults. This is turning out to be a great collection of stories indeed!

Next up is Dean Koontz' Odd Thomas.