Second Breakfast

Scott Lynch kind of pisses me off. These are his first two published books in what promises to be a quite fine fantasy series, and together I think are rather good.

While the trappings of these stories, the first two in a promised seven-book “Gentlemen Bastards” sequence, are typical sword-and-sorcery stuff, the attention to detail, complexity of plotting and character development are of a much higher order.

Both books center around the eponymous title character of the first book Locke Lamora and Jean Tannen, two young thieves in the rather Venice-like city-state of Camorr. As the two begin to learn their newfound trade, they find themselves embroiled in a battle for control over their city’s underworld, and undertake a series of cons and double-crosses that is a bit dizzying at times. The second book follows hard on the heels of the first, and moves from an “Ocean’s Eleven” riff to “Pirates of the Caribbean”, as the duo, having never set foot on a ship, must pass themselves off as seasoned pirates or suffer a horrible death by slow poison. Again the crossing and double-crossing runs thick, and the story has plenty of turns and enough misdirections that I was guessing even until the end.

Lynch’s world-building, a trademark metric of modern fantasy, is quite good, and he strikes a good balance between establishing his characters in a believable and interesting context without getting overburdened in the details. He’s no linguist, and the European flavor of his places and characters seem natural and yet fresh.

Ultimately the thing that keeps this writing interesting are his protagonists, and the complex relationship between Locke and Jean I think drives and redeems a little bit from some of the more pedestrian elements of the books.

One thing I enjoy about Lynch’s approach to fantasy writing is his restraint in the use of magic. While there is a real, bad-ass magician’s guild at the edges of the story, most of the “magic” used here is of the alchemical variety, and the cons they Locke and Jean pull off they accomplish by their own wit and bravado versus via the Ancient-Scepter-of-Azul bullcrap that infects a lot of this kind of writing. This isn’t your father’s Fafhrd and Grey Mouser.

Lynch, at least from his published photos for some reason reminds me of Margaret Cho’s observation about the “creepy connection between leather sex, Star Trek fans and Renaissance fairs”. Regardless, I look forward to his next installment.

This is a beautiful novel that lives somewhere on the border of fantastic realism and pure fantasy.

I recall picking up this book when I was an undergraduate at the long-gone Dawn Treader books in Ann Arbor on South University. I think there’s a comic book shop there now. I found Little, Big and Winter’s Tale on the same trip, and the former book moved me greatly even then. But some books don’t make sense to you as a young person, but with the passage of time become something you treasure. Delaney’s “Stars in My Pockets Like Grains of Sand” is a science fiction novel I would put in that category as well.

So when I put this in my reading pile this summer I was surprised that I didn’t really know anything about this book even though its been on my shelf for years.

I find it interesting that I bought both of these books on the same day (if, as in Iron Chef, “memory serves”) given how similar they are. Both Crowley and Helprin are masters of language, and Helprin’s prose is exquisite. I found myself savoring passages and his descriptions, and a thrill of almost physical pleasure at times as I read this novel. There are lots of parallels between the two books, which I’ll detail some other time.

The book itself is a little hard to describe. There are elements of fantastic realism - the novel is set in New York city and upstate, spanning from the late 19th century to the present day. But it is not quite “our” New York, and its history isn’t quite the one that we know. There’s a mysterious racing wall of cloud that lives just offshore, and occasionally intrudes and whisks people and even buildings away, to reappear in the future, or maybe never. There’s a flying horse named Athansor whose destiny shapes the fate of many in the story. There’s an impending Armegeddon, and a bridge to literally nowhere, which may hold the key to salvation, or maybe not.

In the midst of this all is Helprin’s intense romanticism and obvious admiration for his characters and love for his readers. This is ultimately a novel about love transcending death. The effect is beautiful, and although I’m not sure I can decide what the novel “means”, it is at the very least beautiful for beauty’s sake. That’s not so bad.

This book has received an enormous amount of praise and attention, all of it well-deserved.

Alan and I like to use Netflix to view long-format dramas and series, mostly geeky sci-fi stuff, but occasionally historical stuff such as HBO’s Henry VIII. So we watched the HBO miniseries based on this a few months ago and thought Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney were fabulous and the portrait of Adams fascinating. So I picked it up for my summer reading list, which stretched a bit into the fall.

This was for me an enormously pleasurable reading experience. McCullough is a master of prose and narrative, and I was impressed both the level of detail and his obvious admiration for this fascinating man. Unlike a lot of historical biographies that either just feels like an accounting of dates and places or gets bogged down in attempting to unravel the inner workings of the subject’s mind, this book draws on the enormous wealth of the Adams’ family papers to provide a nicely balanced portrait of both Adams the man and Adams the political revolutionary.

What strikes me most about Adams is his enormous devotion to consistency of thought, word, and action. Given the complexities of the age and his life, he remains remarkably free of the contradictions that plagued some of his contemporaries (Jefferson comes to mind). Jefferson himself does not come across in a particularly flattering light in this account, and I think rightly so.

Perhaps as interesting as John Adams is his wife Abigail. Their private correspondence is quite moving at times, and she shines forth even today as a remarkable woman of incredible fortitude, perception, and wisdom.

I was introduced to Christopher Moore by the (very nice) boyfriend of my step-sister.  Actually there’s a story there on my step-sister, but that’s another show.  Bloodsucking Fiends was in the back seat of his car, which is a title almost no one could resist.

Turns out Moore is something of a “cult literary sensation”, at least according to the press on his book jackets.  I hadn’t heard of him, but that doesn’t mean anything since I still really don’t know who Kylie Minogue is or why I should care, so I’m hardly a good bellweather for the tends of popular culture.

These are short, funny, breezy novels that live somewhere between fantasy and general popular fiction.  Fiends features a young girl who is attacked by a venerable (if attractive and young-looking) vampire who is looking to find a suitable companion, and then has to figure out how to maintain a reasonably normal life.  Apparently most vampire-spawn don’t last very long as they’re too stupid to deal with the rigors of life as the undead, go figure).  Demonkeeping features a guy who raises an amazingly bloodthirsty demon in his youth and stumbles across an opportunity to jettison his wretched (and ravenous) traveling companion.  Both novels worked well for me, and I was suitably caught up as the story action builds to the necessary climax.  Maybe a little formulaic — Moore likes to poke around in the spaces where the fantastic intersect with the mundane — but fun.

Actually I find it interesting that the arbiters of literary genres decided to classify these as general “literary” fiction instead of “fantasy/sci-fi” given that the tone, setting, and content these books would sit alongside plenty of authors in that genre, but the whole classification and marketing of books and music is a big game anyways.

Definitely enjoyable, fluffy summer reading.

Alan and I are big fans of Iron Chef America, and Steingarten is one of the regular judges on the show. Steingarten is often paired with Queer Eye’s Ted Allen, and their mutual annoyance with one another adds spice to an already entertaining affair.

Steingarten himself is a Harvard-trained lawyer turned food writer for Vogue, and the book is a collection of his erudite and witty essays, mostly from the late 80s and mid 90s. He’s a very fine essayist, and his ironic humor pervades these little essays on topics such as how to make the perfect pie crust, finding the best barbeque in America, fruitcakes, and my favorite, the essay on the artificial oil Olestra, titled “A Fat of No Consequence”.

A taste (not for the faint of heart):

The [...] current version of Olestra has been manufactured to stay quite thick at room temperature — it looks something like Vaseline until it is headted– which is why [Proctor & Gamble] always demonstrates Olestra melted.

Why did they formulate Olestra this way? Because the early, more liquid versions caused gastrointestinal problems. One of these–”anal seepage”, or, in my preference, “passive oil loss”–occurs when fully liquid Olestra separates from the food with which it was cooked and slips along the inner walls of people’s intestines, bypassing everything in its way. Drops of Olestra show up on their underwear or floating in their toilets. (The FDA actually abbreviates this as OIT, or “oil in toilet”).

There are some wonderfully laugh-out-loud moments throughout, and some useful tips and recipes and I’d definitely like to try.