(Most of) the humans are dead

I first learned of James Howard Kunstler back in the 1990s when a friend sent me a galley copy of Home From Nowhere. That nonfiction book was a revelation, explaining why suburban sprawl is depressing and more traditional architecture and urban development is not (in other words, why I had chosen to live in Old Town Key West instead of Weston). I feel a little reactionary about it and I'm not against everything modern but in the Jane Jacobs / Le Corbusier divide, I'm on Jane's side all the way. I noted that Kunstler was, at that point, primarily a novelist but was grateful that he had chosen to write, and write well, about urban planning, a subject in which I have always taken a small but persistent geeky interest. * Since then, I have followed Kunstler's career as a polemicist about the coming post-oil world -- which he thinks is coming a lot sooner than the rest of us are prepared for -- and occasionally looked in on his blog (which has the endearing name of Clusterf**k Nation). But I had never read any of his fiction. Until recently, when dystopia became a topic of interest. Not just because of earthquakes, volcanoes and oil spills although that certainly all seems to make one think post-apocalyptically. And my sister mentioned she had been reading Kunstler's novel World Made By Hand. So I ordered it up via interlibrary loan (thanks again, Alachua County!).

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1BdQcJ2ZYY&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

The story is set in an unspecified but obviously near future, when America has essentially fallen apart and reverted to a pre-industrial society after oil wars, nuclear bombs and a lethal flu epidemic. The setting is Union Grove, New York, an upstate small town that has survived better than most but is starting to fall apart.

As I started the book, I found the exposition a bit heavyhanded -- it was nice to learn what had happened to the world I knew, but it didn't make sense for the narrator to be explaining it all. Soon enough, though, I was caught up in the story and I wound up reading it in one giant gulp -- I love it when you catch a wave on a book like that (it helped that it was a Sunday of a holiday weekend) and it was especially nice after my recent reading experience. I had trouble catching on with The Difference Engine and I'm reading American Gods according to the One Book One Twitter schedule, which is two to three chapters a week.

One thing Kunstler does especially well is capture both the attractions and the difficulties of a post-industrial society, where you grow and make the things you eat and use. I felt this same pull of longing at the end of Julian Barnes' satirical England, England, where England has devolved into a similar state. Maybe it reminded me a bit of my rural childhood where my family did grow food and put up preserves and raise sheep and make clothes and know how to build a lot of things. But Kunstler is also realistic about the problems of life without clean water, power, antibiotics, a reliable system of law enforcement and justice, etc. Lots to think about, and a good story to carry you along. I'm giving it four stars.

A sequel called The Witch of Hebron is being published in September and I happened to snag a galley copy of that the other day, and I'll be reading that, too. Not sure if I have the fortitude to take on Kunstler's most recent nonfiction, The Long Emergency. It's weak and probably dumb to practice denial when you live on a low-lying island at the end of a 120-mile road smack in the middle of Hurricane Alley. I know this. I just don't know what I can do beyond vote for the right people and practice my own minor acts of sustainability like riding my bike and recycling and drying the clothes on a rack instead of the dryer. I know I should think about these things more and make my opinions heard, but I also know that if I engage I will start feeling simultaneously responsible, enraged and powerless -- which is no way to live and a big reason I left journalism.

Speaking of denial, in case anyone is wondering what's up with the music video it's obviously not directly connected but you have to love the Flight of the Conchords take on futurism -- especially the binary solo, which appears here in the credits. This might be playing the acoustic guitar while the Gulf of Mexico burns, but so be it.

* Stealing a move from Citizen Reader here and adding a footnote for something too long to include in the mainbar -- one of my favorite parts of Home From Nowhere is the two theories proposed by California architect Peter Calthorpe for why midcentury development got so damned ugly. Theory 1, the Stroke Theory: During World War II, the entire Western world went through such trauma that we, as a society, suffered the civic equivalent of a stroke and couldn't get it together to use our brains and hearts on this stuff so we just threw up a bunch of ugly, junky crap. Theory 2, the Stupor Theory: During World War II, G.I.'s had the adventures of their lives (at least the ones who survived) and when they returned their everyday lives were so stultifying and depressing by contrast that they spent the rest of their adult lives drunk and just threw up a bunch of ugly, junky crap. Either one works for me.

Different strokes

If I need to read the Wikipedia entry on a novel after finishing it, does that mean I'm stupid or the book wasn't meant for the likes of me? A bit of both, I think, in the case of The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, which I just finished (it's not available from the Monroe County Public Library, I'm afraid, but you could get it like I did via interlibrary loan -- thanks, Alachua County!). This book, according to a very handy list I found at Flashlightworthy Books -- a fine source for book recommendations of all kinds -- is one of Steampunk's founding texts and Gibson is one of those guys you're just supposed to read, right? Steampunk/alternative history hasn't been one of my genres, traditionally, but I do love the steampunk aesthetic -- all those gears and cranks and analog contraptions. Not to mention blimps. LOVE blimps. Anyway I thought I'd give this one a try.

I was a little concerned when LibraryThing, which has a "will you like this book" function that is interesting though not quite as much fun as their "unsuggester," opined that I probably would NOT like The Difference Engine, probability VERY HIGH. Not sure why, except that my online library probably has very little in common with those of people who loved the book. It did take me awhile to get into, but I would like to blame that on the fact that I was reading a couple other books at the same time, not the book or myself. It was fun to figure out who the real historical figures were (Lord Byron and his daughter, Ada, John Keats, Benjamin Disraeli and more) and how their fates had been altered by the book's premise, that the computer revolution came at the same time as the industrial revolution and triumphed over Britain's historical land-based aristocracy. And more -- America by 1855 has splintered into several hostile nations, Britain is at peace with Napoleon III's France, etc., and science has utterly triumphed over religion so figures like Charles Darwin are lauded public heroes, not just famous thinkers. I just wish the whole thing felt more like a novel and less like a puzzle I was supposed to figure out. This isn't my first foray into alternative history -- that would be Naomi Novik's Temeraire series, about which I've gushed before (it's Britain during the Napoleonic Wars -- with dragons!). But those books didn't leave me feeling dumb, perhaps because they focused more on character and plot than concept.

Anyway I'm glad I read this, because I feel slightly less ignorant about steampunk. I plan to read more Gibson, especially since my husband has taken to leaving a paperback copy of Neuromancer prominently around the house. And I plan to read more steampunk, though I think I'm going to go graphic next with The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, which happens to be sitting on a shelf upstairs. That way I get to broaden my knowledge and get the aesthetic thrills. And I'm reasonably sure that like a true Alan Moore project it will be better than the movie. I'm giving this 3 1/2 stars (out of 5). If anyone's interested in finding out more about steampunk, I recently came across a couple interesting articles: This one from Salon and this one from Library Journal.

Catching up

You know what's really cool about finding a series you like after it's started? You can gobble the books up ... none of this waiting around for a year or two for the author to produce the next installment (maybe that's why people like James Patterson and Stuart Woods so much -- you only have to wait around for a month or two!). But I digress. This week, I unfortunately caught up to C.J. Sansom with the fourth installment of his Matthew Shardlake series, Revelation. Fortunately I don't have to wait that long -- the fifth title, Heartstone, is due out this fall. This situation is especially frustrating because this series just keeps getting better, in my estimation. Maybe I'm just getting fonder of the characters or more familiar with the milieu but Sansom is doing a great job keeping up the intrigue and filling in the setting of London late in the reign of Henry VIII. This time, Shardlake is called in to help investigate a serial killer (a couple centuries before that term existed) -- mostly the debate between the characters is whether the killer is mad or possessed by the devil. Either way it's a scary chase involving Shardlake's friends, household and of course himself. I'm going to give this one -- the only in the series you can get from the Monroe County Library collection (we have it in print and audio) -- an A, or 4 stars out of 5. But I recommend starting from the beginning of the series, with Dissolution, the first in the series -- you can buy the earlier titles or do like I did, and order them from interlibrary loan.

A couple other quick links while I have your attention. Keys residents should check out our newly redesigned library website -- and a darn sight prettier it is, too! It also includes some book recommendations from staff throughout the Keys -- you look under "books and more" and then "staff favorites." Also I've done some revising to the links on this site -- new additions include Citizen Reader, a kickass book blog from a librarian who appears to read even more than I do and Flashlightworthy Books, a cool site of book lists. I find this especially handy for book recommendations in genres about which I know next to nothing, such as slipstream and steampunk.

Happy reading!

Journalists and murderers

I post today not to report on any books I have finished since my last entry (though I am closing in on Elif Batuman's The Possessed practically as we speak) but because I just finished what felt like a book, Janet Malcolm's piece "Iphigenia in Forest Hills" in the May 3 edition of The New Yorker. The thing was 29 copy-dense New Yorker pages long. I wish there were a word for the nonfiction equivalent of a novella, because that's what it is. Ostensibly, it's an account of the murder trial of a woman named Mazoltuv Borukhova, who was accused of employing an assassin to kill her estranged husband. Because it's Janet Malcolm it goes off into digressions on the nature of court trials and, especially, on the nature of journalism. Malcolm first came to my attention in 1989 when her two-part piece, "The Journalist and the Murderer," ran in The New Yorker. That piece, later published as a book, recounts the relationship between journalist Joe McGinnis and the subject of his best-selling book, "Fatal Vision," convicted murderer Jeffrey MacDonald. Malcolm's book has a first line many journalists of that era soon learned by heart, especially impressionable 21-year-old aspiring journalists (whether they wanted to or not): "Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible."

OK, so Malcolm views journalism as an ongoing act of seduction and betrayal between subject/source and writer -- but she includes herself in the latter category. And has herself been accused of some ugly behavior, specifically by Jeffrey Masson about a book she wrote on psychiatry, another of her obsessions. To her -- and I think she's right -- it all comes down to constructing narratives. Especially in heavily disputed cases like murder trials, the side with the plausible, authoritative narrative wins. As it happens, that rarely is the defense.

Malcolm's accounts of sitting through a trial are good, especially on the inherent drama of the set-up -- adversarial sides, the judge looming over everything, supposedly impartial although you can frequently sense which attorneys he or she views with favor. And she nails the weird camaraderie that develops among those attending a long trial together -- journalists and court personnel and families of the victim and/or defendant. It's like being shipwrecked, or stuck on an elevator. (Actually I was stuck on an elevator a couple months ago. That was a lot worse.) She is adept at going back and explaining background on the subjects, their community of Bukharan Jews -- who happened to come from Samarkand, Uzbekistan, a place I had never given a second's thought to but that also happens to figure largely in the book I am just finishing, Batuman's "The Possessed." Totally beside the point, but how weird is that? And the piece is worth reading just for the totally unexpected and bizarre left turn it takes (but doesn't follow) after Malcolm's telephone discussion with one of the witnesses. Stuff like that does happen and it rarely gets captured in conventional trial coverage because 1) it doesn't fit in 15 inches of copy and 2) it's not determinative to the trial's progress or outcome.

Malcolm is quite sympathetic to the defense, and honest about it, not that she seems to believe Bukharova is innocent of the charge against her, but because she is clearly the underdog in a system that claims to presume innocence and treat all equally. Malcolm notes several times that the prosecutor refers to Bukharova, a physician, as "Miss" instead of "Dr." Malcolm even calls herself "Ms. Defense Juror," imagining herself as a potential juror during the voir dire phase. (Who cares about the drama of voir dire except people stuck in courtrooms? Kudos to Malcolm for making the process interesting, which it is -- but only about 2 percent of it.)

I enjoyed the piece -- I kept reading all those 30 pages even though I was pretty damned sure about the outcome of the trial -- and I'm a Malcolm fan going back to the Journalist and the Murderer. I especially liked her book on the struggle over Sylvia Plath's legacy and literary reputation, "The Silent Woman." I think of her and Joan Didion as similar writers (I wonder how they'd feel about the comparison? Maybe they'd hate it.) Both are incredibly intelligent, insightful women -- and I think being women matters a lot in their choice of subject matter and approach. Both step back and analyze events that are covered in daily newspapers and other media, but take care to look at the way the stories are perceived, and why. I usually recognize the story they are telling, and realize yes, that was there all along, and I knew it, thank you, thank you for pointing that out. And there's some level at which both are drawing from the journalist's eternal well of newsworthiness: gossip, dirt -- murders, politics, literary celebrity. The fact that they do it in polished prose in places like The New Yorker and the New York Review of Books makes me feel all educated and high-minded while reading it. But it's still dirt.

And yet. This time, I felt just the tiniest bit irritated with Malcolm as she spoke about -- and for -- journalists. She wasn't condescending or nasty about the inkstained wretches who covered the trial and had to file daily for the New York Post, the Daily News, the Times and Forest Hills Ledger. I agree with most of what she said about journalists being more collegial than competitive, and I believe her on the nature of the coverage they produced. I think she ascribes too much malice to the profession in general -- that journalists enjoy torturing people and like covering trials because the attorneys do the torturing for you and all you have to do is write it down. I loved covering trials because of the drama she describes -- and because people were under oath and had to answer uncomfortable questions in a public forum, on the record -- but mostly because the trials you choose to cover generally contain an amazing story -- a great narrative, as Malcolm knows (and it's the reason she was sitting there in that Queens courtroom). I think journalists get off on being in on the story more than torturing their subjects. Maybe Malcolm thinks that's the same thing, but I don't. And I just feel, as a former daily copy toiler myself, a bit resentful at someone from The New Yorker speaking for journalists. It's kind of like a Harvard professor pronouncing about teaching. Well, yes, what you do is teach -- but you do it in conditions that are so far removed from what the vast majority of the profession does that I'm not sure you really get it. I doubt Malcolm ever had to cover a zoning hearing, or worry about coming up with a story for that day no matter if there were something newsworthy that you could have done in seven and a half hours or not, or feel the gut-clenching fear of being assigned to cover some breaking news event and knowing that her job (or at least future advancement prospects) were on the line if she didn't at least match and preferably beat the competition. It's really hard to do that. (I won't even go into whether Malcolm has ever had to cover two murder trials at the same time -- and then get yelled at by the boss because she didn't drop everything to write about the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue having been shot locally. Yes, I'm looking at you, John.) Daily journalism doesn't leave you much time to sit around and ponder the way you're constructing the narrative or the role you're playing in the justice system or society in general.

I guess that's why we have The New Yorker and Malcolm and I'm damned glad we do. I just felt, as she was sitting in the trial sympathizing with the defense that I was sitting there, too -- sympathizing with the daily reporters.

Update: I'm not the only one taking special notice of this story (no surprise, given how self-obsessed media types are) -- here's David Carr's blog post about it in the Times. He argues that Malcolm's identification with Borokhuva's "otherness" is part of the piece, if not its driving motive: "Let’s just say that she may have been one of the reporters covering the trial at the Queens Supreme Court in Kew Gardens last March, but she was not and never has been, part of the press corps."

Book Bites doubleheader

If you've ever thought about re-reading F. Scott Fitzgerald's masterwork, The Great Gatsby -- or if for some reason you never had to read it multiple times in high school and college, like I did -- now is a very good time, at least if you're in Key West. The Great Gatsby is one of the twin foci of the May Book Bites Book Club at the Key West Library. And on Wednesday, May 5, at 5:30 p.m. we'll be showing the movie version starring Robert Redford (as Gatsby, natch) and Mia Farrow (as Daisy Buchanan). Typically, Book Bites discusses anything by or about an author but this time Circulation Librarian Kris Neihouse is trying something a little different and the book discussion, at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, May 12, will focus solely on Gatsby from Fitzgerald's work -- and on a much more recent novel, The Double Bind by Chris Bohjalian. Why The Double Bind? Here's an excerpt from Jodi Picoult's guest review on Amazon:

"Fact and fiction become indistinguishable in The Double Bind: The story centers on Laurel Estabrook, a young social worker and survivor of a near-rape, who stumbles across photographs taken by a formerly homeless client and tries to understand how a man who'd taken snapshots of celebrities in the 50s and 60s might have wound up on the streets. However, an author's note tells us that Bohjalian conceived this book after being shown a batch of old photographs taken by a once-homeless man; and the actual photos of Bob "Soupy" Campbell are peppered throughout the text. In another neat twist, Bohjalian's resurrects details from The Great Gatsby, which become "real" in the context of his own novel--Laurel lives in West Egg; part of her hunt for her photographer's past involves meeting with the descendants of Daisy and Tom Buchanan."

Pretty cool, huh? Gatsby itself is a pretty slim volume and the Bohjalian title, while I haven't read it, strikes me as the kind of book that once you enter, you have a hard time leaving until you're through. There's still time to read one or both. Questions? Stop by the library or call Kris at 292-3595.