wildcat

As I sat in the coffee shop about an hour before work this morning, I finished up Cory Doctorow's latest collection of short fiction, Overclocked. While at times Doctorow's obsession with patent and copyright law becomes a little laboured, I can honestly say that his story "I, Row-Boat" is one of the best short stories I've ever read, and I would happily put it in a top ten list at any time. No question. Quite a few of his stories are quite effective but it really and truly stood out for me. Much of the book is made of short works of apocalypse fiction that sumptuously combine, remix, and emerge from states of uplifting elation and deep sadness; his modulation of tone and mood is quite sweet and sad and brilliant. I sat and read the book from cover to cover without skipping stories or reading them in a bizarre, Ben-like order; the only other time this has ever happened was Carol Shields's Various Miracles.

My dad's coming to visit this week - he'll be living Prince George tomorrow and be driving down to arrive on Tuesday - and happily, the suite at the Margaret Atwood Boarding House is approaching a state of pristine organization, although this says nothing of the closet. The closet is an example of apocalypse non-fiction and needs some deep work with a nautical diving helmet involved and a fine-toothed comb: what do I really need to keep and what is hung onto out of misguided sentimentality or grudgesome unwillingness to change? This is going to be my project for the next two days.

You know, beside the short story that I'm working on and the benefits package paperwork that I need to fill out and return to administration.

THE QUESTION IS do I read the new George Saunders novel -- The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil (about the world's smallest, smallest, smallest nation) first? Or do I tackle Jeanette Winterson's surrealist remake of the Book of Genesis, Boating for Beginners - wherein Noah accidentally creates God, an omnipotent ice cream cone? Because either way there's going to be a party.

On the one hand - GEORGE SAUNDERS! I got an A on that Short Fiction Techniques "essay" I wrote about Meringue kidnapping him and torturing information out of him about the nature of short fiction writing. On the other? I have spent several years trying to track down a copy of Boating for Beginners. And it might actually make me feel like finishing Timothy Findley's Not Wanted on the Voyage (also a look at Genesis), which means that I might actually finish a Findley book sometime before I die.

Mondays at work seem so much more apocalyptic when I haven't be writing much if anything at all. Honestly, last week was a bit of a lost cause on that front because of the visiting family and work and all the myriad bits and bobs, but when you mix that with the unbearable block I've had lately, well, I was a horrible monster at work today, eating villagers and demanding virgin sacrifices. Rending flesh with my teeth and stomping on people's heads, hoarding jewels and gold in my dank, dark cave. The Fear was in attendance, coiled around my heart or liver or whatever metaphorical organ you want.

But things looked up: I left work and went for a long walk out to Shoal Point where I met up with Jenny at the Moka House out there. Compared to the Cook Street Village edition, Shoal Point is serene and quiet. I had a brownie and a hot chocolate while I waited for Jenny to arrive -- too much sugar! -- and read Winterson's Boating for Beginners.

It's a very good book. It's definitely one of her early works and not as developed in terms of technique, but Winterson's tics haven't quite developed by that point and it's very loose. It incorporates a lot of stories-within-stories of different varieties (fable, romance novel) and while she doesn't yet demonstrate her later command of language, she's definitely having a good time playing in the sandbox and the effect is engrossing. You can tell when a writer enjoys what they're doing, being playful and simply revelling in stories.

After the book I went to work. Over the course of the session I hand-wrote four pages, the opening of something which will probably be more of a warm-up for a short story. Setting up some characters for myself. The prose is overwrought, sure, but I was caffeinated and erratic from my day, but I had fun doing it. It spawned off something from Mister Bigelow, and it's provided me with the seed of something. Since I've been home I worked out a basic idea of what I want the story to be and we'll see how it goes from there.

The thing I wrote started out as a Lenore story but I forget some details about the Lenore setting that I remembered after, although I'm not sure how important the setting is in the piece and if I can rework it to make it fit the Lenore stories. It doesn't really matter if it does or not. But I sketched out two characters and I have two more in mind.

And the thing is, the writing cleared out my head and I felt more like a person again and the Fear dispersed and the monster crawled back under its rock in my head. I actually felt happy and productive again. All the more reason to make sure I'm doing my writing and not letting it get away from me.

By the end, Winterson's Boating for Beginners drunkenly stumbled a little too close to Terry Pratchett's millieu but was also quite "charming," which is an unintentional insult. To call a book "charming" is to brand it with quaint, twee impressions. It had much of Winterson's obsessions but the elegance I've come to associate with her wasn't there, although she certainly got close a few times - primarily when approaching the character of Mrs. Munde, Gloria's mother, a character who ultimately stole the show but never quite dominated the main stage. I think the problem was that Winterson never really drove the characters into final confrontation - events happened out front and events happened in behind (taking on a certain Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead quality), but they were rushing away from each other rather than towards each other. I could have done with a bit more of God, the big ice cream cone. But, maybe it was just a passing fancy and we can't really be sad when things pop like soap bubbles. I am bothered by the slight, painful notion that Winterson might not have known how to end the piece.

Anyway, I'm on to some Robertson Davies next, Murther and Walking Spirits.

Calamity Jon ruminates on Superboy:

"What I ended up telling him was that you don't really have to get your head around Krypto, you need to get your head around Superboy. And what you need to know about Superboy is that his real super-power isn't that he can fly, or is super-strong, or is invulnerable, but rather that he is the boy who gets everything he ever wished for."

Trixie Bedlam's New York >> "Porn is a Vicious Cycle."

Calamity Jon talks more about Superman's myth patterns, this time delving into his romance with that mermaid, Lori Lemaris:

"Here's how it goes; As a young man in college, Clark Kent is captivated by the exotic beauty of a foreign-born student, confined to a wheelchair. He approaches her, and despite their mutual attraction, she pulls away from. Clark follows her every night to the caravan she keeps by the sea. Thinking she must be embarrassed by her infirmity, he resolves to cure her with his superpowers, and uses his X-Ray vision to peer through the walls of her caravan to reveal - the girl speaking hurriedly in hushed, secretive tones over strange radio equipment. Is she a spy for a foreign power, he begins to wonder?"

Took time out of my day off to go in for a staff meeting this afternoon. It was finished after about forty-five minutes and I had a piece of red licorice.

Scans from Jack Kirby's comic book adaptation of 2001: A Space Odyssey up on Scans_Daily. It is truly, truly awesome.

Fourth issue of Mark Waid & George Perez's The Brave and the Bold is out today, doing the impossible: presenting me with a comic book that made me enjoy both Nineties alien "bad boy" biker character Lobo and this year's model of Superman's Cousin, Supergirl -- a character notable for some truly dubious writing, a belly-shirt outfit, and a tendency to be drawn without actual space in her body for internal organs. Waid made me like her. He made her forthright and offered the actual possibility of her growing up to be a Superwoman instead of remaining a perpetual adolescent. It also features Batman accidentally being merged with a criminal cyborg genius from the Thirty-First Century thanks to a probability-altering macguffin, which is hysterical. Because it's Batman. Fighting his spontaneously-developed robot half. Who keeps call him an ape.

Seventh issue of Darwyn Cooke's revival series, Will Eisner's The Spirit is out as well, today. I haven't found any scans of the cover, which features fun and poptastic Beach Party Bingo sheningans including some nice beefcake and cheesecake, but it's cute and fun. This issue is the first the series not to have contents by Darwyn Cooke or his inking companion J. Bone. Instead, there's three short stories by different artist/writer teams starring the Spirit in various pulpy adventures. Stand-out for me was defnitely Walter Simonson-penned "Harder than Diamonds," with art by one of my favourite pencillers -- Chris Sprouse -- but all three stories were pretty fun. All three artists favoured very different composition and line qualities so there's plenty of variety.

And for some reason, when I'm looking at blogspot pages now, the pictures just aren't showing up for me anymore. Not all of them, but a significant number of them -- only nobody else seems to be having this problem. Possibly I've been cursed by ravenous 5-dimensional imps. Sigh. Time to chase Mxyzpltk around and make him say his name backwards...

Five books into his Bryant & May mystery series and Christopher finally manages to get rid of some of the baggage. It's an old problem for serial fiction - how to get new readers up to speed without tediously reiterating past adventures? In The White Corridor, Fowler's started to find a balance, offering small teasers to past history and showing a bit of restraint insofar as what's necessary information for us to know. Previously, it felt like whole passages of text were being duplicated from book to book in the sake of clarity; now there's only thin slivers of information that properly entices.

After reading Ryu Marukami's In the Miso Soup - an exquisitely written, painful to process and absorb thriller about sex trade and serial killing in Tokyo - it was pleasurable to get into a Bryant & May story, about the two aging detectives who should very much have retired long ago but still try desperately to remain at the forefront. They head the Peculiar Crimes Unit in London, a alternative medicine equivalent of the Metropolitan Police. They are, as usual, at odds with their political situation while dealing with terrible and bizarre crimes. Fowler's moved the eponymous characters, Arthur Bryant and John May, into a position where they can only advise their proteges while solving a crime of their own out in the blizzard-ravaged English countryside. The twists were relatively interesting and as usual, the focus was on the characters. The problem tends to be that the series gets a bit old after a while, but there's only supposed to be one more book so it should all wrap up nicely.

1. Michael Moore's Sicko was a pretty decent movie, even if you factor in Moore's tendency toward grandiose stunts and a very clear bias. Maybe it's just because I tend to share the bias. That said, I'm unsure how I would feel if I were watching it as an American. As a Canadian, I was left oddly hopeful about the world.

2. Back in 1989, Grant Morrison and Dave McKean did a Batman comic called Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth. I finally got around to reading it. It's good, I suppose, but it's hard to look at it, even with fresh eyes, in this distant future; it was a bit like watching the recent A Scanner Darkly film -- it doesn't feel fresh or insightful to me because, let's face it, it was so integral to a certain interpretation of Batman's character and a certain era of comics that it feels mired in its origins. That said, it's a pretty good example of why Batman's villains work so well, all of them mirroring different facets of him, his secret identity, or his modus operandi. It felt short. That said, it did produce one of the most terrifying versions of the Joker that I've ever seen:

...although, of course, the Joker is complicated by how blatantly queer he is, in relation to Batman - he grabs Batman's ass near the beginning. He's presented as a cross-dresser and camp as hell. But that just reflects and comments on Batman's "dubious" interpretations by people like Frederic Wertham, so...

3. And scratch and scratch and cut and cut. There's worms in my brains, word-worms, writing-worms, something-worms. My head's a David Lynch movie -- the horror! -- and I need to get that down. But that's for the morning.