THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
01/18/08 -- Vol. 26, No. 29, Whole Number 1476
El Honcho Grande: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
La Honcha Bonita: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
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Topics:
Correction (letter of comment by Dan Kimmel)
Einstein Confirmed! (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER Comes to DVD (comments
by Mark R. Leeper)
Hugo Recommendations (comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
THERE WILL BE BLOOD (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
Political Films (letter of comment by Taras Wolansky)
More Bibliographic Terms (comments by Evelyn C. Leeper
and Fred Lerner)
Edward Gorey (comments by John Purcell and Mark R. Leeper)
Blogs (letter of comment by Per C. Jorgensen)
Self-Driven Cars (letter of comment by Andre Kuzniarek)
This Week's Reading (THE SOLARIS BOOK OF NEW SCIENCE
FICTION, THE ARSONIST'S GUIDE TO WRITERS' HOMES
IN NEW ENGLAND, PEARL HARBOR: A NOVEL OF DECEMBER
8TH, Edward R. Hamilton, Borders Books, and ramen)
(book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
===================================================================
TOPIC: Correction (letter of comment by Dan Kimmel)
In his article on political films in the 01/11/08 issue of the MT
VOID, Mark called the director of SULLIVAN'S TRAVELS "Preston
Foster". Dan Kimmel writes, "The director of SULLIVAN'S TRAVELS was,
of course, Preston STURGES." [-dk]
Mark responds, "Oops. You mean there was more than one
Preston????? Other than the Sergeant? Right you are." [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Einstein Confirmed! (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Now according to Einstein's theory of Relativity: Suppose I was
on a spaceship going at relativistic speed in one direction.
Suppose Evelyn was on a spaceship going at relativistic speed in
the opposite direction. And suppose we were signaling each other
how best to clean house and make some free storage space. Under
these conditions I would see myself as wanting to keep the good
stuff and get rid of the junk. Evelyn would appear from my
inertial frame of reference to want to keep the junk and to dump
the good stuff. Observed from Evelyn's inertial frame of
reference she would be making the reasonable decisions and I
would be making the bone-headed ones. We have tested and
confirmed this phenomenon at relativistic speeds as low as 0.
[-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER Comes to DVD (comments by Mark
R. Leeper)
You will have to excuse me if this week's editorial looks like
just another film review. This week there was something of an
unheralded event in film fandom that I wanted to call some
attention to. For me the coming to DVD of the previously
unavailable THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER is something of a
special case. When I show people short list the films I give a
full +4 to this one seems to cause some quizzical looks. The
film is all but forgotten.
I was discussing film with a friend and we got on the subject of
film heroes. Was James Bond really a good film hero? I said
that to me he does not represent the values that would make him a
hero for me. Who does? I chose Thomas More in A MAN FOR ALL
SEASONS and John Singer in THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER. Neither
of these films comes immediately to mind to most film fans, but
many at least know A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS. Somehow THE HEART IS A
LONELY HUNTER has been forgotten by most people, though I list it
as one of my top-rated films. Why?
THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER is a loose adaptation of the Carson
McCullers novel of the same name. As frequently happens when I
like a film based on a book, when I read the book it really did
not quite stack up. THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODY is a much
better story than that of the Muriel Spark novel on which it is
based. The McCullers novel is long and meandering while the film
based on it is very much more focused. It is a concentrated
version of the novel and some sequences are changed in ways that
make them more poignant. I tend to associate THE HEART IS A
LONELY HUNTER with TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, a film with which it
has several parallels. Both films take place in small towns in
the American South. Each is at least in part about a young girl
learning about the world and seeing the world as a combination of
good and bad. Each has a role model played by a good actor. In
HEART, Alan Arkin plays John Singer in a role that won an Academy
Award nomination, one of two for this film. Each has a sort of
Depression Era feel. The novel of HEART is during the Depression
Era, but the film probably for reasons of production economy is
set in its present.
In the story there are two deaf mutes who are friends. One is
John Singer, a neat and precise man whose disability has isolated
him and has limited him to a single real friend. The friend is
Spiros Antonapoulos (played by Chuck McCann) who is large,
strong, and has the mind of a small child. Spiros's antics and
his sweet tooth are frequently getting him into trouble. In the
opening Spiros has gotten out of bed in the middle of the night
and walked to the small town's shops to break the window of a
bakery shop and get at that beautiful wedding cake displayed
there. It is all Singer can do to set things right, but he does
it because he clearly loves the only close friend his disability
allow him.
When Spiros has to have an extended stay in a mental hospital
Singer moves to a new town to be near his friend and in doing so
comes in contact with several new people in his life and gets
involved in each of their somewhat intertwined lives. There is a
dignified black physician with a virulent hatred of all white
people (beautifully played by Percy Rodrigues). There is a
garrulous drunken drifter played by Stacy Keach. And
particularly there is the young daughter of the house where
Singer rents his room. Mick (as Sandra Locke's first screen
performance and the film's other Academy Award nomination) is a
young teenager with a love of great music. She has a desperate
need to express this passion, but for her music is a luxury. Her
father is disabled and the family must do everything it can to
keep its head above water. There is no money for musical
instruments or even record players. Singer is a hero not through
any great acts, but because cares and wants to help people. And
he does that because without Spiros he has a desperate need to
have someone else to share his world with.
Most people think of Alan Arkin as a comic actor and comic roles
are certainly what he is best known for. He made this film in
1968, one year after his chilling performance as a sadistic
killer in WAIT UNTIL DARK. Four decades later both performances
stick with me more than any of his comic performances with the
possible exception of the sailor in THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING, THE
RUSSIANS ARE COMING. But his intense John Singer is the best he
has done.
Somehow THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER seems to have been forgotten
over the years. One review says that most of the attention the
film has gotten comes from schools for the deaf. That could be
because Singer uses sign language with Spiros. (Don't worry.
You will generally know what he is saying without subtitles.)
Perhaps it sheds some light on the kind of isolation that the
deaf feel as just one of its themes. But THE HEART IS A LONELY
HUNTER is a film that has some very personal connections for me.
Perhaps it is that I saw it at just the right age and it said
some of just the right things. But when I have shown it to
others it has seemed to strike some very personal chords with
them also.
After a long period when the film was unobtainable (I showed
friends a blurry copy recorded off cable), the film came to DVD
on January 8 this year. (I will point out that it is already
listed in NetFlix. I think it is well worth a rental.) [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Hugo Recommendations (comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
The Hugo nomination deadline is a month earlier than usual this
year (March 1, 2008), so I need to get my recommendations out
now. I don't have recommendations in all the categories, but here
are a few.
For novel, I will be nominating THE YIDDISH POLICEMAN'S UNION by
Michael Chabon, UN DUN LUN by China Mieville, and THURSDAY NEXT:
FIRST AMONG SEQUELS by Jasper Fforde, all of which I have already
commented on.
For Dramatic Presentation (Long), I liked IN THE SHADOW OF THE
MOON (a documentary with interviews with the Apollo astronauts),
PAPRIKA (an anime film), FLATLAND: THE FILM, STARDUST, and BRIDGE
TO TERABITHIA (early in the year, so I hope people remember it).
Before someone points out that IN THE SHADOW OF THE MOON is not
science fiction, I will remind you that the nominees should be
science fiction, fantasy, *or related subjects*.
(There was also a short "Flatland: The Movie" in 2007, but it was
not nearly as good, even though it had big-name stars for the
voices. Yes, there really were *two* versions of Abbott's
"Flatland" this year. One hopes that the Hugo Administrator can
figure out 1) that there are two versions, and 2) which one people
are nominating. It is conceivable that the Administrator might
think that "Flatland: The Film" and "Flatland: The Movie" are the
same, and some of the people just put their nominations in the
wrong category. I have sent the Administrator a note to this
effect, by the way.)
For Semi-Prozine, I would recommend HELIX, PARADOX, and the
ever-popular NEW YORK REVIEW OF SCIENCE FICTION.
Since it is considered déclassé to promote one's own fanzine, I
will say I am very partial to ALEXIAD in the fanzine category.
[-ecl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: THERE WILL BE BLOOD (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: THERE WILL BE BLOOD is the story of a fictional early
giant of the oil industry. Daniel Day-Lewis plays wildcat oil
man Daniel Plainview in what is probably one of the best
performances of the year. The story is loosely taken from the
first 150 pages or so of Upton Sinclair's novel OIL! The film is
more a literary film than an action one and is an education in
the origins of the oil industry. The title is technically true,
but this is not really a violent film. Rating: +2 (-4 to +4) or
7/10
Daniel Plainview (played by Daniel Day-Lewis) is a silver
prospector in 1898 who repeatedly nearly kills himself from his
own poor planning and taking of risks. He somehow manages to
survive his own incompetence, and in the process discovers oil in
the shaft he was digging for silver. Thirteen years later he has
dubbed himself an oil man and is building a powerful oil
syndicate in which he is to make all the decisions and his
investors are to remain silent. It is easy to see where this
film might be going. He could be becoming a totally soulless
exploiter of others, stealing their land to enrich himself.
Considering that the story is coming from social critic Upton
Sinclair that might be what could be expected, but that
expectation is neither entirely right nor entirely wrong.
Rapacious as he is, he still is some modicum of the audience
sympathy.
Plainview is a business shark swimming among the oil sharks of
the major oil companies. Rather than cheating the poor he
purchases land from, he simply drives very hard bargains, perhaps
harder than necessary. Plainview is not really a villain, and he
will be decent to people if it does not cost him anything. He
operates mostly from selfishness, but he has some grains of
decency and the occasional scruple lodges with him. He could
have better safety on his oil derricks. He is nowhere near what
would be modern OSHA standards, but he does have concern for his
men and for the community where he drills. Soon he come at odds
with and the aptly named Eli Sunday (Paul Dano), an evangelical
preacher who is more charismatic that Plainview could ever hope
to be and probably just as amoral and just a bit more creepy. A
major theme is about the quiet conflict between Plainview and
Sunday. It is only by inches that Plainview has the moral upper
hand. They each prey on the weak and neither wants the other
getting in his way.
The story has more than a few parallels to GIANT and especially
CITIZEN KANE. Plainview mortgages his personal relationships for
success. Like Kane he builds his business and becomes wealthy
but loses the love of those closest to him. In this case he
loses the son who early on tags along behind him as another
silent partner. He can think of nothing better to do for this
son than to give him a successful family oil business. Family
has meant so little to him that when his brother shows up in the
oil field Plainview has no idea even if he is genuine or not.
Plainview is a wild man, a force of nature, in a world that is
becoming more civilized in spite of itself. When faced with an
executive of a major oil company who is simply a more urbane
version of himself, Plainview unnerves the executive by
threatening to cut his throat. Plainview is always the primal
savage. He may be eloquent when he needs to be, but the savage
never leaves him.
The style of the film is strong and not entirely pleasant. Not
one word is spoken in the film for the first fifteen minutes,
making the point of how solitary Plainview has become in the
silver mining business. Much of the early parts of the film are
shot with a noir-ish dark lighting. The shadows on faces fade
into darkness. The effect is even greater when those faces are
covered with oil. The frame of the picture is dark with some
light highlights. This oddly suggests the pools of oil we see,
black with a little light reflected from the ripples. Director
Paul Thomas Anderson's way of filming people in nature is
reminiscent of Terrence Malick's films. The real show is Day-
Lewis's performance in a voice and cadence reminiscent of John
Huston.
Though it is very different from the Upton Sinclair novel this is
a film with the complexity of literature. THERE WILL BE BLOOD is
an intelligent if not entirely pleasant experience to watch. I
rate it a +2 on the -4 to +4 scale or 7/10.
Film Credits: http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0469494/
[-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Political Films (letter of comment by Taras Wolansky)
In response to Mark's article on political films in the 01/04/08
issue of the MT VOID, Taras Wolansky writes:
On the lack of box-office success of last year's crop of
political films: To me it seems the more anti-American a film,
the worse it did, at least in the United States. In the two
films that did relatively well, CHARLIE WILSON'S WAR ($54 million
to date) and THE KINGDOM ($44 million), we're the good guys.
Though in both cases there's an effort at the end to spin the
story a little negative, a little less "triumphal", probably to
make the films more palatable to the Hollywood community and
movie critics and others on the left.
For comparison, here are the U.S. grosses for the films you
mentioned, courtesy of the-numbers.com: RENDITION, $8.5 million;
IN THE VALLEY OF ELAH, $6.6 million; REDACTED, $65 thousand;
LIONS FOR LAMBS, $15 million; A MIGHTY HEART, $9.5 million;
MEETING RESISTANCE, $20 thousand; OPERATION HOMECOMING, $6.8
thousand. An example of what I mean: MEETING RESISTANCE, Mark
tells us, is "neither sympathetic nor critical" of the terrorist
bombers in Iraq; yet this is belied by the use of the loaded
term, "the resistance", to refer to mass-murdering religious
fanatics fighting to prevent democracy.
In Afghanistan, after the Soviets left, the various factions in
the erstwhile anti-Soviet resistance started duking it out for
power--as usually happens in the wake of decolonization. After
several years of civil strife, a movement grew up among
"taliban"--the Pashto word for "religious students"--in the
Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan to bring peace to their country.
Like the unworldly theology students they were, they made the
mistake of giving refuge to Osama bin Laden and his organization,
with the results we all know. [-tw]
Mark replies, "As for the film MEETING RESISTANCE, while I doubt
that all the people who were interviewed were "mass-murdering
religious fanatics," but they certainly were all resisting in
their own ways. I will point out that teaching us about the
enemy we are fighting and showing that some actually are bigoted
religious fanatics to extremes some of us do not realize may not
be as sympathetic as you assume. I suggest that you withhold
judgement until you see the film. Perhaps it would have been
more accurate to say it is both sympathetic and critical, but the
overall effect is really neither. THE KINGDOM probably made its
profits, such as they were, because it was early and was really
mostly an action film. The script was not very satisfying with a
contrived ending in which luck was the Americans' greatest
ally. As for the documentaries I recommended I should add NO END
IN SIGHT, which which covers in detail the post invasion
strategy." [-mrl]
Evelyn adds, "CHARLIE WILSON'S WAR had Tom Hanks; THE KINGDOM had
Jamie Foxx (and was basically an action crime thriller). Both
are bigger stars than Jake Gyllenhaal or Tommy Lee Jones, and
neither film had subtitles. MEETING RESISTANCE and OPERATION
HOMECOMING are documentaries, which puts them in a whole other
ballpark for grosses." [-ecl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: More Bibliographic Terms (comments by Evelyn C. Leeper and
Fred Lerner)
"A Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition with French flaps, rough
front, and luxurious packaging"
I know what French flaps are, but what is "rough front"? I
wasn't sure, so I asked Fred Lerner. He hadn't heard the term
either, but Googling turned up: "And the front edge of the text
paper isn't trimmed smooth, leaving a rough front. For some
reason, rough front looks more classy." Fred said, "I would have
used the term 'untrimmed fore-edges' to describe this," and that
I would have understood.
But I noted that what I was seeing was a little different. My
copy is bound with each signature put in asymmetrically, so that
the first eight sheets protrude about 1/32" more than the second
eight sheets. (The edge also feels a little rough, but that may
just be the paper quality. It's certainly not the sort that
looks like it was torn.) It was the only copy in the store, so I
don't know if this "in/out edge" thing is a binding error, or by
design.
View from the *top* (this will work only in constant-width text,
and the indentations are not to scale):
_________
b _|
i |_
n _|
d |_
i _|
n |_
g _|
|_
_________|
[-ecl]
Fred writes:
You said, "I don't know if this 'in/out edge' thing is a binding error,
or by design." Hard to tell with book designers. When THE STORY OF
LIBRARIES appeared I was dismayed to see that the book jacket seemed to
have been printed asymmetrically. My editor informed me that this was
deliberate, and was the way all Continuum book jackets appeared: it was
meant as a sort of visual pun on the publisher's name.
I notice that Hal Duncan's VELLUM and INK have untrimmed fore-edges,
*and* use three typefaces. I wonder what a graph of SF/fantasy trade
paperbacks, in which one axis delineated eccentricities of format and
the other complexity of literary style, would look like. [-fl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Edward Gorey (comments by John Purcell and Mark R. Leeper)
In his letter of comment in the 01/04/08 issue of the MT VOID,
John Purcell had written, "I love Edward Gorey's work. I used to
watch 'Mystery!' all the time, and the opening was simply
classic. Gorey, of course, had some delightfully macabre cartoons
over the years in THE NEW YORKER and elsewhere." [-jp]
Mark had responded, "Most fans of horror like Edward Gorey. I
remember Charles Addams and Gahan Wilson in the New Yorker, but
somehow I am blanking on seeing Gorey there. It would be his
style, however." [-mrl]
Mark now adds, "It would be his style, but not his practice. I
just treated myself to THE COMPLETE CARTOONS OF THE NEW YORKER
which I got cheaply due to a local bookstore closing. Edward
Gorey is not in their index of cartoonists. It does seem like the
sort of thing they would publish, but apparently they did not."
[-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Blogs (letter of comment by Per C. Jorgensen)
In response to Evelyn's comments about blogs in the 01/04/08
issue of the MT VOID, Per C. Jorgensen writes:
I just thought that I'd say that I appreciated what you said
about blogs in the second to last MT Void. I, too, sometimes
feel that it is a bit sad that a lot of people nowadays prefer
blogs to newsgroups and email lists. There are, of course,
several blogs that I enjoy and follow (and I've got one myself),
but I have a bit of a problem with what sometimes seems to be the
basic premise, that is, that everybody should have their own
blog, regardless of how much you actually have to say. Of
course, Usenet and mailing lists often have a high noise level,
but I like to post not just to get my opinion through, and then
get none or a few short few comments (yes, I do know that some
blogs have a high level of debate), but to participate in a
discussion and hopefully learn something new from people with the
same interests as I have.
I just read this about blogs (from a book report in the British
[magazine] "The Spectator"), by the way:
"Blogging is like modern poetry, more people write it than want
to read it. The world had 70 million bloggers last April, and
the number may have doubled since then. Britain now has four
million bloggers. Most blogs are read by fewer than 10 people a
day. Only 10 per cent have more than 100 hits a day. You’d reach
a wider audience if you photocopied a few sheets of paper and
left them on the Underground."
http://tinyurl.com/38a9xl
(I do not know whether these statistics are correct, though, but
I found it an interesting thought.) [-pcj]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Self-Driven Cars (letter of comment by Andre Kuzniarek)
In response to Mark's article on self-driven cars in the 01/11/08
issue of the MT VOID, Andre Kuzniarek writes
This is akin to the other notions of the "future" that have failed
to materialize: flying cars, apartments in space, colonies on
Mars, intelligent computers, even video phones. That latter
gadgets are simply something nobody actually wants. And most of
the rest are doable but just too expensive to justify. And that's
probably what will keep driverless cars off the road, mainly
because of liability costs. Who do you sue in current car
crashes? If neither driver was impaired, accidents are accidents
and you can only take them so far in court. But woe to any
company that has to stand behind it's software in cases of life
and death. Perhaps there will be waivers that guarantee you
understand the risk of getting into a robot car to indemnify its
creators, but it seems likely that human error will not be
considered ameliorative when it comes to programming bugs.
I got a good chuckle from this part of the article:
"The Defense Department contest, which initially involved 35
teams, showed the technology isn't ready for prime time. One team
was eliminated after its vehicle nearly charged into a building,
while another vehicle mysteriously pulled into a house's carport
and parked itself."
Shades of Herbie... [-ak]
Mark replies, "You say woe to any company that has to stand behind
its software in cases of life and death. The classic case of this
is that of the Therac-25. This was a radiation therapy machine
that had problems in the design of its software interface. It was
just the sort of bug that is very hard to reproduce. Five people
died of radiation overdoses as a result of a software bug before
it was found what was actually happening. A full magazine article
on the case is at http://www.ccnr.org/fatal_dose.html or you can
find the Wikipedia summary of the incident at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25. Back when I was a
software developer there where all sorts of similar extended
arguments when there was a bug in software as to what was
happening and whose fault it had to be. There was a lot of
finger-pointing and defensive posturing. At that time if there
was a software bug a test telephone call would not go through.
Imagine what it would be like if instead of phone calls dying it
was people who were dying. Now that is a scary vision." [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
I got THE SOLARIS BOOK OF NEW SCIENCE FICTION edited by George
Mann (ISBN-13 978-1-84416-448-6, ISBN-10 1-84416-449-9) in order
to read a single alternate history story in it (Peter
F. Hamilton's "If at First..."). But then I read the Paul
Di Filippo story ("Personal Jesus"), and then the Stephen Baxter
("Final Contact"), and then decided to read the rest of the
anthology. Noteworthy were the Di Filippo and James Lovegrove's
"The Bowdler Strain". The Baxter had an interesting idea, but
there was a bit too much "British-stiff-upper-lipism" for me.
The other stories varied in quality, but in any case it is good
to see original un-themed anthologies being published. Tor's
"Starlight" series was excellent while it lasted, but ceased
after five volumes. Perhaps a mass-market format will last
longer.
I picked up THE ARSONIST'S GUIDE TO WRITERS' HOMES IN NEW ENGLAND
by Brock Clarke (ISBN-13 978-1-565-12551-3, ISBN-10
1-565-12551-7) in part because it was set in Amherst,
Massachusetts, and the surrounding area. Since I come from there
(Chicopee, with four years at the University of Massachusetts in
Amherst), I thought the local setting would make it more
interesting. There are two sorts of ways to use local settings
for color. One is to get all the minutiae correct. Allen Steele
has done this with the same area. When he mentions characters
going to a barbecue place on the Route 116 bypass, for example,
you know he means Bub's. The other way is to mention a few main
roads, and make up the rest. That seems to be Clarke's method.
The result is that instead of enjoying the local references, I
found myself constantly saying, "What is he talking about?"
There is no Chicopee Street in Amherst, and no state prison in
Holyoke. There is an Our Lady of the Lake College, but it is in
Louisiana, not Springfield, Massachusetts. (Clarke may be
modeling this on Elms College in Chicopee, formerly Our Lady of
the Elms College.) Similarly, there is a Pioneer Packaging, but
not in Agawam. The Student Prince is indeed a German restaurant
in Springfield, but not owned by anyone named Goerman (the
owner's name is Scherff). Also, the Student Prince is at least
five blocks from Court Square, so the entrance to it could not be
in an alley just off Court Square.
There are no superstores on Route 116 near Amherst (they are all
on Route 9), and no Book Warehouse or Pioneer Valley Mall. It is
not a half-hour commute from Amherst to Agawam (even the
optimistic Google says it is 41 minutes). There is no Super
Stop-N-Shop in Chicopee, and the ordinary Stop-N-Shop is not in a
neighborhood of older homes, and is a mile and a half from the
Edward Bellamy House, not just a few blocks.
An even more interesting question is *when* this is taking place.
The narrator supposedly burned down the Emily Dickinson House,
served ten years in (the non-existent Holyoke) prison, and has
been out of prison for another ten years, yet the technology,
cars, and so on are present-day. So is this some alternate
history (since in our present world the Emily Dickinson House was
not burned down)? I suppose that would explain some of the
differences from our reality, but not really why there would be a
Super Stop-N-Shop right near the Edward Bellamy House in
Chicopee. The Paramount Theater in Springfield stopped showing
movies around 1970.
Now I'm sure that many people would consider all of this beside
the point, that I am missing the main ideas of the book for this
trivia. It may be an attempt to bring science fiction reading
protocols to a mainstream literary work. In science fiction, one
is expected to get one's facts right. If someone gets in a
rocketship and flies away from the sun, they should not arrive on
Venus. But while a mainstream author is allowed to make up some
details of setting, he is still supposed to maintain a certain
level of accuracy. A character in Manhattan should not cross the
East River to reach New Jersey. I think my feeling here is that
if Clarke has chosen to use a very particular real town as his
setting, he should hew as closely to that town as possible.
I slogged my way through PEARL HARBOR: A NOVEL OF DECEMBER 8TH by
Newt Gingrich and William R. Forstchen (ISBN-13 978-0-312-36350-5,
ISBN-10 0-312-36350-8isbn), only to discover that it *ends* with
a different version of Pearl Harbor. At this point I read
through the long description on the book flaps to discover that
this "inaugurates a dramatic new Pacific War series." I am sick
of multi-book series, and sick to death of multi-book series that
do not announce on the front cover of the books that they are
just part of a larger work. Shame on Gingrich, Forstchen,
St. Martin's Press, and anyone else responsible for this
deceptive marketing.
I recently received a catalog from Edward R. Hamilton. This is a
bookseller that has been operating a mail-order book business,
dealing primarily in remainders, out of Fair Village,
Connecticut, for at least of a couple of decades. Their latest
catalog is more of the same, but the prices on many of the books
seem closer to the general on-line prices at amazon.com, and the
selection is less interesting. On the other hand, maybe it is a
fluke of this catalog, or maybe it's just me and a decline in my
interest in acquiring books. Their catalog is now glossy instead
of newsprint, and they also now accept credit cards, but only
through their website, and only with an additional charge of
$3.50 plus 40 cents a book.
I recently saw the end of an era. We drove down Route 18 and
stopped at a few places: an Asian grocery, a clothing store, and
Borders Books. Borders, it turns out, was closing after twelve
years. It was selling everything at 40% off, and I still had
some Borders gift cards from my Discover rebates, so we bought a
few books. The biggest was THE COMPLETE CARTOONS OF THE NEW
YORKER (originally $35), which comes with a DVD-ROM of all the
cartoons as well. We also got Ray Morton's book KING KONG
(covering all the films), THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF MONSTERS (edited by
Stephen Jones), and the new Andrew Hurley translation of Jorge
Luis Borges's BOOK OF IMAGINARY BEINGS. I had been trying to
justify buying the latter when I already had the di Giovanni
translation, and a reduction from $16 to under $10 was enough to
convince me.
And the end of the era? No, it wasn't the Borders closing. It
was the even more depressing news that the Shin Ramen that we
like so much and which used to be vegetarian (hence kosher enough
for us) has taken to putting beef fat in its formulation. There
are still some vegetarian ramens around, but they tend to be non-
spicy and not as rich in taste. (The other one we liked, Paldo,
didn't seem to be stocked anymore, even though this store has an
enormous range of brands.) [-ecl]
===================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
A wise man hears one word and understands two.
-- Yiddish Proverb