If I've been a bit on the quiet side, it's not that I'm out of the game, nor an am I holiday. Here are some of the books and reading materials I've been looking at and shall have more on at length. Some you should run out and buy or prep for now. And all are well worth your valuable reading time.
I don't think you have to have to worry about finding hot teenaged archers duking it out in bikini tops in Margaret Atwood's vision of the present future in 'Madd Addam,' her sequel to 'Oryx and Crake' and 'The Year of the Flood.' Atwood manages to find a delicate balance between disturbingly unpleasant and compassionately, weirdly beautiful.
Expect anything and prepare to be surprised anyway. Atwood is always unwilling to take the easy path, which makes her books especially rewarding. She'll be on tour later this month, so pick up your first printing now and get them signed in person. She is an absolute blast. Here's a link to my previous interview with her.
Jonathan Lethem is another author who always manages to turn in a new direction. His latest novel is 'Dissident Gardens,' about three generations of American radical women and his third big New York Novel. I have to say that I keep thinking he can't do something better than his last novel and then he sneaks around and turns up with a book like this. He'll be on tour later this month so pick up your first printing now and get them signed in person. Here's a link to my previous interview with him.
Books are art, and it's easy to forget that the form itself is art, not just the content. But the subtle combination of the two in 'The Transfiguration of Mister Punch,' a literary triptych by Charles Schneider, D. P. Watt and Cate Gardner in an extraordinary package — simple but intensely beautiful — will remind you just how powerful the two can be together. Buy it before it goes away. Let it haunt you for the rest of your natural life. Mark Beech, who writes the preamble, is to be congratulated.
John Howard should be no stranger to readers of this column and 'Stories Written by Daylight' should be on your auto-buy list as well. Howard's work is both delicate and powerful. He creates worlds from the personal to the political to the fantastic that are so immediate you just experience them and only in the aftermath realize just how pervasive they are. Swan River Press offers another work that is uniquely right for the end of summer.
And have no fear, I will have a full review and I hope an interview with Nathan Ballingrud about 'North American Lake Monsters' — once I've recovered from the trauma of stories that are more intense, more searing than you could ever expect from short stories. Ballingrud builds up solid, heart-rending characters, and then lets loose the monsters. Broken heart or torn out heart? Having had the former, one might desire the latter.
And finally, look, magazine are still worth buying. The latest Harpers is a case in point. Thomas Frank never disappoints, but he's in particularly fine financial form when he remembers five years ago in "If Memory Swerves." It's an economic eulogy for income equality in the US. Welcome to the serfdom. Here's my link to our interview about his still pertinent book, 'Pity the Billionaire.' On our journey to perdition, William T. Vollman decided to look up "Life as a Terrorist" — his own. Turns out, someone who didn't like his writing fingered him as the Unabomber. He FOIA'd as much as he could get out of the "UnAmericans" and his story is funny, touching, insightful, terrorizing, angering. A call to arms. A call to READ!
08-26-13:Walter Mosley Searches for 'Little Green'
Reichenbaching
I never knew Easy Rawlins before he died. I only met the man post-mortem. Of course, I knew about Walter Mosley's acclaimed series of novels. I've enjoyed his science fiction immensely, but had not yet found the time to ratchet back and start his most famous detective series. It's a daunting prospect to either go back to square one or jump into the middle of a series.
When Mosley resurrected Easy for his newest book 'Little Green,' it seemed like my best chance to get to know the character anew, as he was brought back from the Malibu version of the Reichenbach Falls and dropped into the flower-power revolution, already in progress in Los Angeles.
'Little Green' starts with passages that read more like Mosley's science fiction than any mystery, other than this one; Easy's journey back to the world of the living does not live up to his name. But Mouse is there to help, along with Mama Jo. It's not too long before Easy's back in the business of private detection, this time looking for a missing boy in the wilds of the Sunset Strip of 1967. These streets are truly a jungle, and Easy's not at the top of his game.
Mosley's a brilliant writer, who effortlessly crafts an atmospheric thriller that by virtue of character, prose and setting manages to make some trenchant observations of things as they were, which for readers in the 21st century, will jangle about with respect to things as they are. Mosley's historical observations and details are finely tuned to echo what's changed and what has not.
Mosley brings all this to life in prose that's smart, funny and particularly sharp. The dialogue is crisp and at it's best when Easy is trading barbs with Mouse, a very bad man who happens to be Easy's best friend. But Mosley is not averse to using his science fiction skill-set, in this case, world-building, to create LA in 1967 with all the verve and excitement the time and place command. Mosley brings this world and his characters to his readers with the power of memory. 'Little Green' plays the old joke about not having lived in the sixties if you can remember them in reverse.
All of this happens in the course of a pretty tense story, as murders in the world of free love seem to line the way to drug communes and corporate espionage. Mosley does a superb job of re-creating Rawlins' world for the reader, and finds the perfect path from the nice kid to the bad parts of town. Of course, there's more to the problem than a missing boy, and Mosley knows how to keep readers hooked beyond the bottom of the barrel.
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'Little Green' is also a great way to get to know Mosley's Easy Rawlins cast; Mouse, Mama Jo and Easy's family. One of the great aspects of the character at this point in his career is that he's more than a bit weary. He cares about his family and his friends as family. He's anything but the hard-drinking archetype, and much the better for it. Easy Rawlins is a character who most readers will think of as someone they'd actually be able to talk to.
'Little Green' is every bit as much fun to read as you might hope it would be. Mosley's smart observations about race, income, and life-as-it-was ring true and clear. And even if not you've not read any of the books that came before, this one has enough backdrop in it to catch you up, but told in a manner so as not to slow down the story. Indeed, it's integral to the story. Easy Rawlins has been brought back to life — both his and ours. It doesn't seem one bit strange to meet Rawlins after his death and in the middle of his life. Resurrection is the perfect makeover.
New to the Agony Column
09-18-15: Commentary : William T. Vollman Amidst 'The Dying Grass' : An Epic Exploration of Simultaneity
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2015 Interview with William T. Vollman : "...a lot of long words that in our language are sentences..."
09-05-15: Commentary : Susan Casey Listens to 'Voices in the Ocean' : Science, Empathy and Self
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2015 Interview with Susan Casey : "...the reporting for this book was emotionally difficult at times..."
08-21-15: Agony Column Podcast News Report : Senator Claire McCaskill is 'Plenty Ladylike' : Internalizing Determination to Overcome Sexism [Incudes Time to Read EP 211: Claire McCaskill, Plenty Ladylike, plus A 2015 Interview with Senator Claire McCaskill]
Agony Column Podcast News Report : Emily Schultz Unleashes 'The Blondes' : A Cure by Color [Incudes Time to Read EP 210: Emily Schultz, The Blondes, plus A 2015 Interview with Emily Schultz]
07-05-15: Commentary : Dr. Michael Gazzaniga Tells Tales from Both Sides of the Brain : A Life in Neuroscience Reveals the Life of Science
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2015 Interview with Michael Gazzaniga : "We made the first observation and BAM there was the disconnection effect..."
04-21-15: Commentary : Kazuo Ishiguro Unearths 'The Buried Giant' : The Mist of Myth and Memory
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2015 Interview with Kazuo Ishiguro : ".... by the time I was writing this novel, the lines between what was fantasy and what was real had blurred for me..."
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2015 Interview with Marc Goodman : "...every physical object around us is being transformed, one way or another, into an information technology..."
Agony Column Podcast News Report UPDATE: Time to Read Episode 199: Marc Goodman : Future Crimes: Everything Is Connected, Everyone Is Vulnerable and What We Can Do About It
