The Ice Shirt – 3/5 Stars
I might be Viking-ed out. Between this novel, playing Assassin’s Creed Valhalla (which is a ton of game), and rewatching the Marvel movies (and with Loki starting up right now) this book was poorly chosen for me to read right now. But it’s a book I’ve been planning to read for 20 years and have failed to a few times, so maybe this is just my reaction to the book.
The book is a kind of mixed media novel (and also not a novel) that involves William Vollmann the writer taking on a handful of narrative voices here: William Vollmann the writer (the narrator), William the Blind (a kind of Viking skald who is narrating the stories and myths of the Nordic travelers to North America, especially Vinland (the coast of northern North America), and living among, trading with, and fighting the indigenous inhabitants, and then also the narrator of the indigenous mythology and history of the peoples of in North America. The book jumps back and forth from long histories of the Nords in Europe, long tales of myth and warfare, creation myths of the indigenous people, histories of the indigenous people, religio-mythico-histories of the interactions between the Nords and the indigenous people of Vinland, and then a few chapters mixed in of William Vollmann the writer researching the modern versions of the places in the text. The writing is often very clear and interesting and engaging, almost never transcendent or beautiful, and often a little dry and boring. Until the last fifty pages or so, the biggest complaint is that the book leans very very heavy on the Nordic narrative view, and the last fifty or so adds some balance, but not enough. I am hoping reading the rest of this series finds more balance in the storytelling.
(Photo: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/45634.The_Ice_Shirt)
Midnight’s Children – 4/5 Stars
This is definitively a white whale novel for me. My brother brought it home from college when I was still in high school and I wanted to read it then. I also was supposed to read it in grad school and read the first 100 pages and skimmed the rest. For me, the issue of the book (which is one hundred percent in my head and is my fault) is the issue that I often have with Rushdie novels, which is that there’s more text than book. What I mean by this is that the novel itself, which is certainly quite rich and lively, also embodies a lot more space intellectually and narratively than there is actual book to support it. This is opposite of a book that hunkers down on details and moves the plot quite slowly (something like Middlemarch or many 19th century Russian novels). And for whatever reason my brain drifts in novels like this a lot, unless I have something very familiar to sink into. And with this novel, I am very far away from the lived experiences of the characters (especially with the magical realism part duh), so I struggle.
What’s great about this novel in part is the opening essay by Rushdie about the response to the novel, the inspiration to write it, and the localized biography of his writing it. I also love that the breakdown of the plot is basically (maybe corrupt) government employs X-men to win regional conflicts.
The Rip-Off – 2/5 Stars
This is definitively a white whale novel for me. My brother brought it home from college when I was still in high school and I wanted to read it then. I also was supposed to read it in grad school and read the first 100 pages and skimmed the rest. For me, the issue of the book (which is one hundred percent in my head and is my fault) is the issue that I often have with Rushdie novels, which is that there’s more text than book. What I mean by this is that the novel itself, which is certainly quite rich and lively, also embodies a lot more space intellectually and narratively than there is actual book to support it. This is opposite of a book that hunkers down on details and moves the plot quite slowly (something like Middlemarch or many 19th century Russian novels). And for whatever reason my brain drifts in novels like this a lot, unless I have something very familiar to sink into. And with this novel, I am very far away from the lived experiences of the characters (especially with the magical realism part duh), so I struggle.
What’s great about this novel in part is the opening essay by Rushdie about the response to the novel, the inspiration to write it, and the localized biography of his writing it. I also love that the breakdown of the plot is basically (maybe corrupt) government employs X-men to win regional conflicts.
On Juneteenth – 4/5 Stars
While this collection does contain the essay “On Juneteenth” it’s important to know going in that the collection isn’t only about “Juneteenth” or more so, looks at some of the prevailing questions related to “Juneteenth” in addition to specifics about the holiday. We’re all the better for that broadened view because I think this book has some amazing insights related to large questions, but shown through a much sharper view and tighter focus.
In the largest, broadest context, the book asks the question “How can I be Black and love America?” And the answer is mostly, “With complications”. More specific to that though Gordon-Reed looks specifically at Texas, given her growing up there and having that same kind of complicated relationship most of us have with where we grew up, and adds that to the understanding of the history of Texas, its relationship with the United States, and with Juneteenth.
The most clear distilled moment of looking at how Texas history is American history in a lot of ways comes through in her reading of the history of the Alamo. The Alamo is a clear symbol of American sacrifice, fighting for property, dying for a cause, and rallying to win larger battles. There’s a “line in the sand” moment, literally, where the commander of the forces offers to let anyone who isn’t prepared to make a last stand to leave. Everyone stays! But then Gordon-Reed reminds us that two of the people who died in the Alamo were slaves, and that the whole fight was about rebelling against the Mexican government’s ban on slavery. And that the Alamo deaths were a rallying cry for the Mexican-American War, and that many of the generals and military commanders who would be in charge during the US Civil War, cut their teeth in that war, well, it shows in pretty salient ways the interweaving of these ideas into our history. I am not a huge fan of too easily reached understandings of history, and this book does what I like all history books to do, show us the complications, however knotty.
Why are we in Vietnam? – 3/5 Stars
So if you’re going to read this book, you should know that the book is a) fiction, so it’s not a reportage or anything like that and b) it’s pretty impressionistic (broadly, we could call it post-modern). The book itself is trying to portray a kind of mindset, one which violence, sexuality, masculinity, Christianity, frontiersmanship, and other swirling American characteristics amass in and inhabit someone’s whole consciousness. And it doesn’t happen in the brain of a president or a politician or anything like that but in the brain of a young man, on the eve of going to war on one last hunting trip.
What’s interesting about this book is mostly in thinking about the book itself than in the reading of the book (at least for me). Mailer clearly has tapped into a kind of consciousness that we will better understand later on looking back than in the midst of everything. And he’s willing to take some extraordinary risks in doing so. I can’t begin to imagine a book like this coming out talking about the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan (well, unless Gore Vidal wrote them) because of this book’s willingness to call a psychotic violent culture a psychotic violent culture.
A Winter Haunting – 4/5 Stars
A sequel to the earlier Dan Simmons novel Summer of Night, this novel comes twelve years (our time) after that novel, and about 40 after the events there. It’s both a sequel and not, and apparently there’s some more sequels in between that inhabit the same set of characters. Dale Stewart, just a kid in the first book, returns to his hometown, and rents out the farmhouse where one of his best friends was killed when he was a kid.
He’s on a bit of spiral. His marriage is kaput, having lost it by having an affair with a grad student he was teaching. Nothing too creative there, but when that also goes by, he becomes depressed, and eventually suicidal. A misfired shotgun shell keeps him from killing himself, and becomes a reminder of his stability and life throughout the novel. He’s “on sabbatical” but really he’s going to go do what he needs to or can for a while and see what happens on the other side. Moving back to Illinois from Missoula, MT, here’s some things he finds in his hometown. The sadistic bully from childhood is now the town sheriff. The girl from middle-school who every boy projected his own raging hormones onto is now back too, a failed actress. And a group of local skinheads has found Dale’s anti-militia/white supremacy articles from Montana, and would love a chance to torment him. Also, maybe the house he’s renting is haunted by a bunch of ghost dogs.
It’s a much more tightly focused novel than the first one, kind of narrated by a 19th century style narrator (it’ll be explained if you read it), and a solidly creepy and effective ghost story.
