Cannonball Read #2: Pontypool Changes Everything by Tony Burgess

I was inspired to read Pontypool Changes Everything after I watched the Bruce McDonald-helmed film adaptation, Pontypool (which I found about through a review on Pajiba.com and through io9.com, proving that I am Queen of the Nerds for All Time Unto Eternity.) Prisco had many nice things to say about Pontypool the film, including:

None can hold a bayberry candle to the taught tension of Pontypool,
which is something like Talk Radio meets 28 Days Later. A
shock jock banished to the hinterlands of rural Canada finds himself trapped in
the radio station while a mob of seemingly insane maniacs spouting gibberish lay
siege to the building. With a minuscule cast, just a spectacular splash of gore,
and a veritable straightjacket of tension, Bruce Macdonald creates an
outstanding pseudo-zombie cocktail and an even better psychological horror that
should make M. Night Shamalyan weep with shame.

I really enjoyed the movie, though I thought it was a tad overwritten in places (paging Captain Exposition, you're needed in the basement of this small-town radio station for a Code 3 Background Description.) I've always been fascinated by the way speech influences thought and vice versa* and was intrigued by the premise of the movie. And McDonald's taut direction, especially towards the end, as things got Increasingly Dire for Grant Mazzy and his cohorts, kept me nervously clinging to the edge of my seat. So, when my natal day delivered a $50 Amazon gift card to my door I decided to get the movie's source material, Pontypool Changes Everything (along with Jeff Vandermeer's superb Finch, which I'll be reviewing next, and the 2-disc Star Trek DVD, see aforementioned Queen of All Nerds Bow to my Magnificence.)

Pontypool is to Pontypool Changes Everything what Ragtime! The Musical is to E.L. Doctorow's novel Ragtime: Features some of the same characters but takes vast liberties with the arcs those characters take. Normally I'm the first person to be up in arms about big deviations from the source material when adapting for the screen, but in the case of Pontypool Changes Everything the complete restructuring of the novel for the screen managed to convey the bleak tension of the novel.

Pontypool Changes Everything is set an unspecified amount of time after a virus has decimated vast swathes of Canada. Those infected with the virus are frankly called Zombies by non-sufferers in the book but are referred to elsewhere in interviews by Burgess and McDonald as "Conversationalists." I like this term better- those afflicted are first overwhelmed by a sense of having lost hold of their language, then moved to repeat certain words over and over (in the book and movie, usually terms of endearment) and finally moved to end their suffering by chewing their way through the mouth of an uninfected person.

Yes, seriously.

Post-Plague Canada has largely shuddered into a kind of bureaucratic detente around the outbreak- those who are diagnosed with the disease must register, and generally go days or weeks before manifesting symptoms. High schools are given over to the cataloguing and autopsy-ing of the dead (By Dr. Mendez, a central character in the movie but only tangential to the book's plot.)

Grant Mazzy who in the film is a shock-jock talk radio personality is a well-respected and famous TV anchor in the book, and takes up few pages of Burgess' time as he paints a portrait of every facet of society as it is touched by this insane disease. An addict named Greg, diagnosed but not yet manifesting symptoms, attends NA meetings with his Higher Power (who may or may not turn out to be a real person.) Greg is a volunteer at the TV station for Mazzy, who solicits sexual favors from the other volunteers on staff while being a passionate volunteer for various charitable causes. Pontypool, which Mazzy says "changes everything," is a kind of Ground Zero, the point from which the infection spread (though this is unclear.) A brother and sister, orphaned by their parent's zombification early in the book, live in an idyllic, incestual paradise in a shack outside of Pontypool, living on the flesh of dead zombies. Their child is born with full command of the English language. Les Reardon, a former mental patient who is trying to revive Pontypool's amateur dramatics league, is the first person we meet in Pontypool Changes Everything. As the world crumbles and Les witnesses increasingly terrifying and horrifying scenes, the lines between his schizophrenia and his dawning Conversationalism blur as he fights to save his child.

All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed Pontypool Changes Everything. Neither the movie nor the book is perfect, but both convey the feelings of the Conversationalists who become increasingly haunted by their inability to verbalize themselves, their anxiety over what is happening, or the certainty that they are about to do something horrible to someone else.

*I know I usually twitch when I hear the phrase "I've always been fascinated / intrigued by X" but it seemed to work here, so forgive me. I'll take off my beret now.
** There are undoubtedly many smart things to be said about the homage Pontypool Changes Everything pays to Neil Stephenson's magnificent Snow Crash, but I haven't read the latter in years and I'm sure someone else on the interwebs has already made these comparisons.
*** I totally typed this review with "Jim Sturgess" as the author instead of "Tony Burgess."

Prisco's Pontypool review on Pajiba.com
Pontypool Changes Everything on Amazon.com

Cannonball Read #1.5: Kushiel's Dart by Jacqueline Carey

I can't really count this book towards my Cannonball Read total because I didn't finish it, but I have to write the review simply to state the following:

This book, beloved of many a fantasy fan, is 900 pages of turgid foolishness.

There. I said it. My sophomore year roommate is, I'm sure, rethinking our friendship after reading that, but seriously: Turgid. Foolishness.

Kushiel's Dart's protagonist is the mother of all Mary Sues, Phedre no Delaunay. Cursed with a scarlet mote in her left eye (no joke) she is destined to experience pain and pleasure as one- basically, destined to be really, really into S&M. This leads to lots of creepy scenes of her in her childhood getting really turned on by getting pricked by a pin and, eventually, to being sold into indentured servitude and semi-whoredom.

It is this servitude that basically lost me from the beginning. In the land of the novel, Terre D'Ange (it's France! But sexier.) the ruling tenet is "Love as thou wilt." This seems to only apply to the upper classes, who run around having various sexual escapades with various paid and unpaid companions until one wonders who actually does the governing. Maybe I'm missing The Point of the book, but isn't grooming children from a young age for work as sexual companions, you know, wrong? Basically setting it in a fake version of our world, where this kind of activity is OK because it's justified by religion and is a way of life, doesn't take the squick out of it for this reader.

There is a plot in Kushiel's Dart, sandwiched in between scenes of Phedre getting the crap beaten out of her while having sex and loving it , which involves attempts by various groups to take over Terre D'Ange. These attempts are strung together with the kind of overly complex worldbuilding that requires vast lists of character names and group definitions. The betrayals and plot twists are broadcast hundreds of pages in advance, thanks to Phedre's inability to tell a story without inserting ominous warnings: "If only I had known then that this woman was actually a horrible manipulative jerk!" etc., etc.

For me it was Phedre's failures of narration and her utter unbelievability as a protagonist that made me unable to get into Kushiel's Dart. She's not just beautiful, she's mesmerizing, with an "imperfection" that actually makes her hotter. She's not just naturally smart, she's been educated by her master to know history and politics and singing and art. Not only can she read, she also speaks rare languages that really come in handy when she has gets sold into slavery with the Skaldic peoples (proto-faux-Scandinavia, if you can imagine). Everyone is really impressed by her diplomatic abilities. Oh. And she really really loves sex.

From wikipedia:

A Mary Sue ... in literary criticism and particularly in fanfiction, is a fictional character with overly idealized and hackneyed mannerisms, lacking noteworthy flaws, and primarily functioning as wish-fulfillment fantasies for their authors or readers. Perhaps the single underlying feature of all characters described as "Mary Sues" is that they are too ostentatious for the audience's taste, or that the author seems to favor the character too highly. The author may seem to push how exceptional and wonderful the "Mary Sue" character is on his or her audience, sometimes leading the audience to dislike or even resent the character fairly quickly; such a character could be described as an "author's pet".

That's my criticism in a nutshell. Phedre no Delaunay isn't a character: she's a weird non-human who does Everything Better than Everyone Else and who everyone in the book eventually falls in love with / devotes themselves to / has sex with. Coupled with the labyrinthine, nonsensical plot, the awkward sex-scenes, and the aforementioned squickiness involving training young people to be sex slaves, I had to put this book down about 200 pages from the end.

Once again: Turgid foolishness.

Cannonball Read #1: Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin

I bought this book on Wednesday, thinking that I would start it Thursday morning so it could be an official Cannonball Read book. Boredom on the uptown A train changed that plan, however- it runs local after 10pm, and living in the hinterlands of Washington Heights, the rides can stretch on for hours without entertainment.

The problem came in when I realized that Winter's Tale is one of those books that once you've started in, it grabs hold of you by the lapels and stares you down until you've read the whole thing in one or two orgiastic, page-turning sittings. If the doors to the train had opened to reveal that I'd ridden all the way to 207th street without getting off I would not have been surprised.

Winter's Tale is, quite simply, a great fucking book. It is a towering piece of writing whose phrases wrap themselves around you and linger well beyond the turning of the final page.

Winter's Tale is, according to its back flap, about a burglar, Peter Lake, who falls in love with a consumptive millionairess named Beverley Penn in the dimming days of the Belle Epoque. It's about that, sure; but it's also about snow, and machinery, and bridges, and justice, and most of all, it is about New York City. There are those who wander around eulogizing the New York City of days past, of the gritty "real" LES and the days when you could get a hot dog for twenty-five cents and the hepatitis came free. I'm not one of those people, but reading Winter's Tale made me long to see the city as it must have looked at the beginning of the last century, when there were still open spaces to be found and the land below 14th street was divided up into narrow warrens with gangs and wars and mud and tuberculosis. One of these gangs, the Short Tails, plays a vital role in the story- it is they who, led by their leader, Pearly Soames (what a name!) are chasing Peter Lake at the beginning of the book. It is while running from Pearly Soames and the Short Tails that Peter Lake meets the white horse. Oh, did I mention the horse?

To try to summarize the plot would be not only futile but foolish, as the best thing about this book isn't so much the plot (which is intricate, and foggy, and amazing, like trying to navigate the West Village if you've only lived in New York for a short time and couldn't tell Grove street from a hole in the ground). The best thing about this book is the feeling you're left with as you're carried along by the words, through hundreds of years of mechanization and progress, through the streets of a city that is, at its heart, anarchic and strange, and which ought to resist attempts to make it orderly for its own damn good.

"So with a city, which if it is to make its mark must be spirited, slippery, and ungovernable. A tranquil city of good laws, fine architecture, and clean streets is like a classroom of obedient dullards, or a field of gelded buls- whereas a city of anarchy is a city of promise."

This evening, as I was about 400 pages in, I got on the C train headed downtown and a woman excitedly started pointing at my hand and smiling. I took my headphones out and she said "Isn't that just the best fucking book you've ever read?" Ladies and gents, I'm not sure if it's the best fucking book I've ever read, but it's pretty fucking close.

"And then he was suddenly overwhelmed. It was as if a thousand bolts of lightning had converged to lift him. All he could see was blue, electric blue, wet shining warm blue, blue with no end, everywhere, blue that glowed and made him cry out, blue blue, her eyes were blue."

winter's tale by mark helprin. 748 pgs

I was tall, and I was slim, and I had a leg for every limb

That title is meant to tie into the "Cannonball" theme of this post but it probably makes no sense to anyone who isn't a fan of Texas-based celtic band Clandestine. (Which, I guess, is everyone but me.)

Anyway! I'm doing the Pajiba Cannonball Read. 52 books. I'm not entirely sure if it's 52 books in 52 weeks, or 52 books as fast as my little eyes can read them. It's entirely possible that every single one of these books will be Nora Roberts or Stephanie Laurens titles that I'll have to cover in brown paper to read on the subway, just to maintain my street cred.

Anyway. I never update, duh, but things are going really, really well. Perhaps two "reallys" are an overstatement- things are going well, I'm pretty happy, and The Great Foolishness has come to a merciful end. It actually came to an end back in July, but I've been too busy to take note.

I was just about to write "anyway" again but then decided that three paragraphs beginning with the same word is re-dun-tarded. So I ain't doin it. Instead, here's a picture of Raptor Jesus:

GRS (thanks, Elizabeth Bear!)

I'm sitting in the Thirsty Mind, working on the GRS (or the Giant Ridiculous Screenplay, inspired by Elizabeth Bear's Giant Ridiculous Dog.) It's coming along nicely, thanks to my installation of Freedom on my computer, which enables me to avoid temptations like writing this blog post and checking twitter every five minutes.

This has been such a nice weekend. We drove out with Miz Taylor on Friday night and I spent yesterday in a state of heavenly bliss. I took long walks, I drank my favoritest coffee in the world (Rao's!), I had lunch at Tailgate, I walked some more, I wrote some, I read some, I fell asleep in an adirondack chair. We wrapped up the night in true Mount Holyoke style, huddled under blankets watching a movie on Sarah's laptop.

Even though I've been feeling Super Nostalgic all weekend, the great thing about this visit is the nice nudge it has given me in the direction of actually moving forward with things. It's not a Grand Revelation, per se, but it is nice to know that this place will always be here, that I will have had my time in it. And that whatever I do in the future, I need to do it wholeheartedly, because though the alma mater doesn't care what I do, it does care that I am doing it with all of myself.

Oh goodness. Someone's been breaking into the self-help section again. /ridiculousness

Anyway. We drive back tonight, and tomorrow night Coraline opens for the world to see. CRAZY. It should be a fun evening!

How Sadly this weekend...

This weekend I'm driving out to South Hadley to visit campus & hang out. I am very excited about this. I am also excited about the Coraline musical which officially opens on Monday. It's apparently changed a lot since I saw it way back at the dress rehearsal... who knows. I am so ready for the opening to be over.

Fingers crossed for a friend at an interview

My friend Katherine is at an interview right now, just down the street. As soon as she gets out we're going to get lunch. (On an unrelated, food-centric note, Ian gave me a brownie earlier. I haven't touched it yet, mostly because I can smell the sugar through the cellophane and it's giving me a headache.)

Went and watched Fat Couples (Biggest Loser!!) with J1 last night. My ability to predict with confidence the winner of eliminations is quickly failing me. I think I've guessed wrong the last two weeks: last week I thought they'd send Ron the Jolly Brown Godfather packing, and this week I thought Laura (who wielded Ultimate Supreme Godlike Power) would kick Helen to the curb. Instead, she sent Tongan Seth Rogen home and we all cried a little bit and then got happy because his daughter wears cute little glasses.

I am looking forward to a nice, relaxing weekend. Steph & I are going to watch Supernatural tonight. We are both totally addicted to that show, thankyouverymuch, because of this guy:



We have totes only seen him in two episodes so far (not counting the annoying recaps that play before every ep) but we're finally caught up on DVD to John Winchester's Tortured Yet Hot Return! It's going to be a great evening.