Angry-Man Book Review

Men Will Be Men, However Unfortunate This May Be

2008-12-01T10:25:00.000-08:00

Leonard Michaels's “The Men's Club” is the story of a handful of men and the lives they've fucked around in. In the early days of the women's clubs emerging a group of men decide that it would be nice if they had a men's club. What would they do? Guy things? Drink, fight, talk about sex?

Well sort of, but not entirely. They soon discover that what they like to do most is talk. They do talk about their sexual endeavours, but now how you would expect. They talk about them to share their experiences, to connect with one another. It just so happens that what they have in common is their inability to understand women and their inability to remain loyal.

As the night progresses they get more and more intoxicated and they reach a point where one has to talk, where one is compelled to share and connect, to reach out and have someone accept their stories, their experiences. They make rude comments about each other's stories but they always have the respect to hear each other out and then respond in a somewhat meaningful manner.

Can this simply be a story about talking and nothing more? Again, sort of. The men begin to show their feminine sides as they engage in actual discussion and sharing, something traditionally atypical of males. The story reaches a point though where they fall back into being men and they trash the house and eat all the food that the man's wife had saved for the women's club meeting the following night. Then the wife comes home and we are reminded that life has its consequences.

This book is a must read for anyone who wants either a sociological stroke of insight or an entertaining read of would-be men who can't quite make it to mature male status. Stories again prove to be ever important here and hopefully more people will one day be willing to share theirs. As long as its not more Oprah fans I'm happy.

Hard Case Crime, Hard Ass Dame

2008-04-26T20:27:00.000-07:00

Nothing makes you feel better on a sunny day when you're couped up inside avoiding the terrible heat of 18 degrees C than a good old hard-boiled detective work. Hard Case Crimes releases some pretty kick ass stuff in this area.

Max Allan Collins, whom you may know from comic books or as author of Road to Perdition, has a wonderful little novel based on his graphic novel character Michael Tree, its a chick by the way. Deadly Beloved is a hard-ass story about a hard-ass broad, or I guess dame, who uses her clever intellect and wit to solve crimes.

The crime? A murdered husband and a murdered whore. The guilty party? The wife. Open and closed case? We find that it is anything but as Ms. Tree, not Mrs. Tree, investigates something far seedier and far more intense than a simple dead husband and hooker.

Max Collins's language kicks you in the teeth and you turn every page laughing and asking for more. Some books can be really entertaining and this is one such book. When you pick it up you never want to put it down and when you reach the end you can't wait for the next one to come out.

Ms. Tree does everything from kill her own husband's murderer at point blank range, to kicking hilly-billy and security-guard ass, to sleeping around whenever she wants to, to solving one of the most complex cold case files. No case is ever too convenient for our heroine and don't let her hear you say anything bad about her, she is as likely to kill you as she is to court you. And the odds are pretty high.

There's Something Wrong With America? You're Kidding...

2008-04-26T19:35:00.000-07:00

Fury by Salman Rushdie is perhaps one of the longest rants I have ever encountered. The book is about as American as you can get. It was written for Americans about Americans and shows them exactly how fucked up they really are.

Everybody knows when something isn't right, dogs can sense things, rats leap off of ships, and Salman Rushdie's mind shits through his fingertips and nothing more poetic could come of hating America. I don't know if the man Salman Rushdie hates America, in all likelihood he loves it because it allowed him to write this book, but I sometimes hate them. Not all the time. Who are we kidding, I'm a fairly educated person, most days.

Fury is an attempt to hold a mirror up to one of the dumbest nations in the history of civilization because that is what great art does. If the nation is so dumb then why bother even showing them a mirror? All they end up doing is praising themselves for having a book written about themselves.

You know why you show them the mirror? Because it is a catalog of their utter inability or unwillingness to critically think about themselves, and to a large extent, to think period.

When one reads Fury one cannot help but feel like Rushdie is both jerking you off exactly how you like it and placing a Cleveland Steamer into your mouth at the same time, all while being on video camera. Rushdie bullies us into liking him but in the end what's not to like?

A book about a doll-maker gone mad and his oozing hatred for America, sounds like something worth reading any day. And keep in mind, nobody can write that hatred as well as Rushdie has written. Which is a shame, to think that such talent has gone to waste on something so paltry as the American conscience...or lack thereof.

A Man and A Dog, or, I really like homeless people and think that I can save their souls through jesus

2008-04-09T09:01:00.000-07:00

This book was an interesting read. It is short and not to the point. It reads like someone who appreciates Herman Hesse wrote it. The dog in the story talks and he's pretty clever I suppose. The homeless man is rather annoying. The book is also dedicated to the homeless which tells me that Mr. Duane Hewitt of Toronto, author of this book, has a fairly well romanticized view of the homeless.

This reminds me of a poem that tells us not to turn homeless people from our door for they may be angels. Well, I for one say that if an angel shows up haggard and woe-begone and self-loathsome and tries to trick me out of heaven, I don't want to be around the kind of people who are in that heaven.

It is hard to tell which character of this story is a foil for the other. The man is a loser, plain and simple, and he's so busy being caught up in his own little world of sorrow that he doesn't listen to what the dog has to say. The dog, on the other hand, shows up and speaks in oracle-ish ambiguity. All in all we have two characters who suck. I want to like the dog so much because at times he is witty and at times he is honest and what he says makes sense, but the dog seems to be leading me to the conclusion that what the world needs now is christianity.

As subtle as the dog is, his character seems like nothing more than christian propaganda, and not the good kind nor the entertaining kind, rather, it is the naive and unknowing kind. Perhaps my pallet is a tad bit sensitive but it still knowns bitter and disgusting when its crammed down my throat.

I enjoyed this book and will enjoy again in the future. Its just that my first reaction to it, which will most likely be different from my second reaction and third and so forth, is that I don't need to pay 12.95 CAD for something I can get for free at the cost of my self-respect and soul at the local church.

The dog likes that the people who are helping are other-oriented but he doesn't point out that they feel better about themselves for doing these things, the dog praises their motivations based on a surface observation, which makes him no more intelligent than a three year-old, which explains the cryptic speech. But, if the good is being done do we need to bother with motivations?

Faust is a Punk Bitch and he Needs to Meet me at the Monkey Bars, High Noon

2008-03-01T11:57:00.000-08:00

Clive Barker is a dick. No, really, he is. I love him for it. He tells such a passable story in such an enchanting way that we really like it in the end.

This is my first Clive Barker endeavor and I must admit how pleased I am with him. His writing isn't the most powerful or the most artistic, or even the most entertaining at parts, but it sure gets your attention and keeps it.

I don't know what goes on in Clive Barker's head but I wanna be there sometime, like an amusement park ride or something.

The Hellbound Heart is a re-hashed and updated version of Faust. Now, Faust through the decades has been an enchanting character but this book helps you to understand how much a bitch Faust really is.

Faust sells his soul to a devil and wastes his trade on bathroom humor. Faust puts saran wrap on toilets. The dudes in Lemarchand's box in The Hellbound Heart don't fuck around. When you open that box they take what's theirs, you. Whether you opened it on purpose or by complete accident, your soul is their and they rip it to shit.

Frank is the poor sap in this story who opens the box hoping for ultimate pleasure. He wants pleasure and women and sex and downright raunchy things porn-star industry people would be scared of. He gets what he wants and doesn't want it after all.

The humanoid creatures in the box come out and give you sensory pleasure, ultimate sensory pleasure. Rings under skin that stretch you, cuts, tears, needles, you name it and they tickle it real good and sensory-like.

Frank doesn't want to die into oblivion though and he escapes the box-dudes (Cenobites). In order to be human again he needs blood and dead bodies. He begins to recompose with the help of a lady. Everything hits the fan and if you thought things were twisted before enjoy the remainder of the ride.

Frank is a monster, Faust is a pansy and cry baby. In true Marlovian beauty someone's body gets ripped apart. That's art and that's beauty, that's the downright truth of it all.

Peaceful Revolution...Ha...Good Joke...Oh, You're Serious...Sorry...No, Really, Sorry

2008-03-01T11:45:00.001-08:00

Do you ever get that feeling like the world it turning to shit and you'd be better off with a desk job for some big corporation?

If you have answered yes to the above question than this book, Day After Tomorrow, is for you.

Mack Reynolds explores the future and it is grim. Well, grim for people who value themselves at least. If you value yourself as a bureaucratic cog in the great machine of work-landia then the future is perfect for you.

For those of use who like being human beings and having hobbies and relationships, the future sucks, and not in a good way. When people like us create The Movement to change the governing body we need to consider that the current governing bureaucratic monsters will stop at nothing to stop us.

We can have all the intellectuals and scientists we like, if they don't have guns its not going to work. Mack Reynolds informs us here that if we want a revolution there has to be bloodshed. Peaceful revolution attempts end in bloodshed anyway, just not the right kind.

We can martyr ourselves all we want and accomplish very little. Or we can try for a revolution that won't be televised. The ruthless agent sent to stop The Movement in this story is all too likable. I wouldn't mind hanging around with guy and drinking and shooting the shit with him, but when it comes to ideologies, anything goes.

Day After Tomorrow is a journey into the future of our civilization, I just wish it wasn't so eerily reminiscent of our current civilization.

God Bless You Kurt Vonnegut (the world has truly lost something)

2008-03-01T11:34:00.000-08:00

God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian is an amazing collection of short episodes. The premise to this story is simple: Kurt's friend Jack straps him down and brings him to the Pearly Gates where he gets to meet people who have died and gone to heaven. Then Jack brings him back and he reports on his interviews with the deceased.

The great thing about this plot is that Saint Peter has mood swings and sometimes doesn't play along.

Everyone gets into heaven.

When babies die they grow up to be angels.

Hitler is very apologetic but has paid his dues and wants his tombstone to read: “excuse me”.

William Shakespeare hates the way Kurt speaks.

Sometimes we need reminders that it is ok to laugh and ok to have fun, this is that reminder. This is all very marvelous in the end. Maybe take this book and put by your bed or in your bathroom and read one at a time. They're fast and jolly. You should thus be jolly too.

The Portrait of an Indian as a Young Man, or, Stories Matter Whether You Like it or Not

2008-03-01T11:16:00.001-08:00

Richard Van Camp is a master story-teller. The Lesser Blessed is the portrait of the Indian as a young man. It is life. Van Camp's characters are relentless in both their failures and their happiness.

The novel is not your run-of-the-mill plight-of-my-people narrative you would expect when picking up a piece of fiction by an aboriginal/indigenous/first-nations/first-peoples/Indians/Injuns/red-skin person. Van Camp tells it to you straight and he tells it to you well.

The novel is a story about story-telling. It forces us to consider stories and their significance in our lives. We must remember, or learn, that stories are not simply a piece of aboriginal existence. Stories are everywhere in every culture. They are universal.

It is our stories that matter and our stories, no matter how personal or private, will connect us to other people, other cultures. Human beings are social animals, the act of story-telling is an act of social bonding. Story-telling is reaching out and hoping others are reaching out also or are at least willing to accept a kind gesture.

Our joy, our pain, our love, our hate, our smiles, our tears, our bodies, our souls; these are ours and you can look to any race of people on any continent and you will find that they share these characteristics. Whether we like it or not we are more alike than we are different, perhaps it is time to reconnect.

In a world which embraces sorrow it is nice to feel as though you have taken part in something bigger than yourself when you read a book. For me, this book was that experience.

The characters may not be successful at school or at work or at life, but they are nevertheless worthy of your respect. The gas-sniffers, the drug-addicts, the scrappers, the rapists, the people are all too real in this book. The brutal honesty with which these characters are presented helps us as readers respect them. Perhaps not at first, but we eventually begin to see that they are human beings and capable of such follies.

This does not mean they are not accountable for their actions, it means we understand their actions better. This book teaches us compassion and understanding, what better traits are there for humans to possess? It teaches not through lessons but through story-telling; Van Camp doesn't tell you to do anything, he shows you a snap-shot of life and we do with it what we please.

None of the main characters are through-and-through low-lives, they simply all have their moments. The characters face problems that cannot be addressed in solitude in the bush or in the hills, they are to be addressed socially. The human being is important and good stories not only remind us of this but help us to heal and reconnect, help us to be happy.

Van Camp tells a story like its the end of the world. As though the stories must be passed on for our very existence, as though the act of stopping story-sharing is a self-destructive act in and of itself. When the stories stop being told and shared and passed on we loose a piece of where we come from which is a large part of who we are. Where do you suppose we would be if we lost our stories?

It is as though stories are one of the most important aspects of human existence. I happen to agree. Perhaps we are beautiful all the time instead of only once, if we choose to be that is.

The Fear of Souls Without Limits, or, What We Do To Ourselves

2008-02-10T11:21:00.000-08:00

All The Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy is yet another painfully honest journey into the souls of man(kind, etc., etc., etc.). It is the journey of two boys from home and back again. It is one of the most brilliant journeys.

McCarthy's brilliance is in his flawless writing. His dialogue flows more like an endless waterfall then an endless river. The story unfolds and happens very fast and keeps rolling. We keep up with the story because the story is enchanting.

Two boys leave town one day and head for Mexico. Crossing the border they realize they are in a different land altogether, they realize that those imaginary lines aren't all that imaginary. They boys go to work on a farm and John Grady is a horse whisperer, taming the wildest horses in the land.

Just like in life though, love comes along and screws everything up. Instead of allowing his daughter to be in love with John Grady, the farmer sets out to kill him then has him arrested instead. Like all McCarthy, the dialogue is the tops.

The other great thing about this book and all McCarthy books is the understatement. He doesn't spend pages nor even paragraphs explaining something that touches us. He states the outright facts of it and moves on. Is that not life? Does that not remind us how insignificant we can seem?

[spoiler] The boys meet a younger boy who calls himself Blevins. The youngest boy fancies himself something special and his death is one of the saddest and most understated deaths in all of the universe. McCarthy commenting on the boot left behind which is promptly thrown into the bush where his body is, then moving on because that's life.

McCarthy ventures into the souls of youth and their splendour in this work. He reminds us that if young people were told the troubles of life and understood the ways of the world that they may not even try to grow up for fear of those woes.

The story boils down to mankind and the way we treat one another. The way we divide ourselves and stick to those divisions with bloodshed. The story boils down to a most beautiful quote that can only be given directly from McCarthy himself:

“He slept that night in a field far from any town. He built no fire. He lay listening to the horse crop the grass at his stakerope and he listened to the wind in the emptiness and watched the stars trace the arc of the hemisphere and die in the darkness at the edge of the world and as he lay there the agony in his heart was like a stake. He imagined the pain of the world to be like a some formless parasitic being seeking out the warmth of human souls wherein to incubate and he thought he knew what made one liable to its visitations. What he had not known was that it was mindless and so had no way to know the limits of those souls and what he feared was that there might be no limits.”

If ever evil were defined, this was when. McCarthy's tale is another tale that seems bleak but we are to finish reading the story and respond as the judge does: we are to feel glad that there are stories of the happiness in life, stories that remind us we can be good. Stories that don't give us grave doubts about the human race. Positive stories for times when no birds sing.

14 Year Old Hookers! You didn't! But How Could You? Never Mind, Happy Birthday to Me!

2008-02-01T14:54:00.000-08:00

I didn't actually buy a street worker you know. Which makes me wonder, which should make you wonder, can you put that down on your taxes under the employment section? After all, its the solicitation that's illegal isn't it? So maybe its illegal to add an advertisement onto your tax slip. Oh, and do people who buy human beings receive tax slips? I digress.

Memories of My Melancholy Whores, by Gabriel Garcia (dingle-berry above the 'i') Marquez (dingle-berry above the 'a'), is wonderful. It begins with a 90-year-old man wishing he could have “the gift of a night of wild love with an adolescent virgin” for his birthday. Rosa Cabarcas runs a whore-house, I mean brothel, sorry if I offended your fine senses (would you accept a 14-year-old virgin as an apology?), and she tells the monsieur that it is quite impossible especially given the last-minute plan.

Well, she finds one. If I ever need help I'm asking the lady of the house-of-ill-repute because they can do anything! Only because of the times the girl is very young and the madam does not wish to spend three years in jail. That would be her punishment for pimping out, I mean selling a child as goods, the 14-year-old to a filthy old man with filthy old-man balls. So the price goes up. Simple.

The girl is tired though and sleeps. Then the man falls in love. That's right. This story is a love story. The journey of the old dirty man with dirty old-man balls who courts the 14-year-old virgin who wants nothing but to be with the old man and his old-man balls.

The book is crude. The women are nasty and downright freaky. The most likable character is the man who wants to buy a virgin. The whole time you read this the idea that he wants to bang this little girl should disgust you but it doesn't. By the time I finished the book I didn't even bother to judge him for it. Oddly enough I guess that means I could be a dirty old man with dirty old-man balls but whatever. This isn't about my balls - Yet [Just kidding].

The humor is great. The old man with the old-man balls is sincere. Some of the story is raunchy. But the writing is through and through genius. Ignore for as long as you can the fact that that dirty old man wants to put his dirty old-man balls all over that 14-year-old whore and you've got yourself a great read.

This love story will not make you weep from happiness. It will allow you to appreciate a dirty old man (perhaps even his dirty old-man balls[question mark]) who sets out at 90 to do the dirty with a virgin and ends up finding love and himself along the way.

Oh Drama! The High School Melodrama of the Frontier and its Ensuing Gun Fight

2008-02-01T14:18:00.001-08:00

The Gun Fight, by Richard Matheson, is an excellent commentary on everything. I think. Anyway, if you were to take a high school melodrama and place it in the west you would get this story.

Juliet is played by a silly girl named Louisa Harper. Romeo is played by John Benton, a famous lawman and one heck of a gunslinger. The rest of the cast is insignificant because Benton is pretty well rounded and needs no foil hold for the character of the idiot, played wonderfully by Louisa.

Juliet, or, Louisa, yeah Louisa, wants to make her boyfriend jealous so she tells him stories about Benton. The kind of stories high school girls tell when they want to start drama, as per their nature. She is quite successful at this and her boyfriend, Robby Coles, decides he wants to fight Benton.

Now this little sissy of a nobody rides into town and picks a fight. Benton, the ever noble character who does not like violence, is eventually persuaded to give him what he wants. And he does so. And it was good. Then word gets out that Benton and Coles are fighting for a girl.

Oh my goodness, are you following this Oprah? Benton's wife finds out. The priest finds out. Everything gets out of control. Benton is the classic hero of the Westerns, he does what he does to survive. He doesn't have to enjoy any of it just so long as he enjoys it. The frontier was an ugly place and if you wanted to keep the law out there you needed men who were capable of ugly things. Benton is one of those.

He just happens to be too nice. He hangs his guns up when he has to shoot down two little brat kids and their dad. He doesn't want violence. If only all school arguments could be handled by a fair showdown. That would solve a lot of problems including that of over-breeders and asshole-ery. I digress.

The characters are so real you get caught up in the drama. Eventually you think: gimme that god damned pistol and I'll settle this. Obviously there is a gun fight in the book and the fight is one to remember. Its nothing fancy, nothing spectacular.

The great gunman brings his old pistols along and he is unsure if he can even still use them. The kid brings a dirty little double-action pistol.

Benton retired his guns after shooting two kid and is finally forced to take the guns out because high school drama gets out of control. Does he have it in him this time to gun down some little boy who's only guilty of defending his honor also? Read it and find out.

The Road by Cormac McCarthy or I Dare You To Read It

2008-01-23T10:42:00.000-08:00

We are living in a time when the good guys hide from the good guys for fear that they may not be good in the end.

We are in the time where Religion appears to have failed us or we it. The Road is not of the religions we know. It is of the religion we feel and have felt since the earliest days of language and poetry and life. It is the religion of the fire.

The fire within. The fire that perhaps was gifted us, cursed or otherwise, from Prometheus. From a bird. From an angry god or deity. It is the fire that moves us and drives us. The religion of the passion of mankind. That is the religion of this book. It trumps all others because we feel it and it is inside of us, we don't read about it then think about it and try to understand it. We don't make establishments of it or for it. We don't force it upon others. It only helps us know that we have potential for greatness, and consequentially for great evil also.

It cannot be understood and we know it before we are told about it. This tale and its characters are not cautionary. This writing isn't about what could happen to us. It is about what has already happened to us. It is not fantastical. It is, as Salman Rushdie would put it, an intensification.

If there is a loving god as put forth by the many hollow-eyed straw people of today, then he has either already judged us or has completely forgotten about us. Who could blame him? Or her or it? If I were responsible for creating this mess we've made of ourselves I would walk away too. It seems like a bad investment.

This book is a journey through mankind's darkest time. A time in which we have forgotten that “all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.” We have stopped searching for the higher being. We have stagnated at a cross-road, out of fear or stupidity or ignorance, and this leaves us with the end of journey. Most are no longer impassioned clay fighting against damnation but have extinguished the fire inside and thereby damned themselves.

Society has left us with this honest observation from McCarthy: “he saw for a brief moment the absolute truth of the world. The cold relentless circling of the intestate earth. Darkness implacable. The blind dogs of the sun in their running. The crushing black vacuum of the universe...Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it.” The book should be read by an old and grumbling Marlon Brando, you thought T. S. was scary coming from him, imagine this audiobook.

The road we take spiritually doesn't have an absolute and definitive end and when we make it end it is because we no longer want to continue the path. This book shows where we are spiritually. We are not on the road to desolation, we are desolation. It is here and now and the souls of the many are void or non-existent. Those few with the fire still burning inside travel the journey avoiding people who kill for food and goods, who kill children, who cook babies, who rape women and children then kill them for food, people who eat their young. They avoid the bad guys as well as the potential good guys for fear of the doubt that is in man's heart. The doubt that has been brought about by man.

John Keats said he wanted to do it all again after he died. The Road is a story that tests whether or not you would wish the same. When you finish this book ask yourself this: would you like a new pair of phoenix wings or not?

The answer says more about you than McCarthy. Remember that.

Intro [edited: removed hyphen]

2008-01-16T19:19:00.000-08:00

So I've got a lot of books. I buy too many and I don't read fast enough to keep up. My friend told me I needed a blog, I think its because he doesn't read and doesn't care to hear what I have to say when I get all excited about something I've read. It seems to be one of those go-find-another-geek-who-wants-to-hear-that-crap things. So here I am, finding hopefully more and more geeks who share my love of reading. They don't necessarily have to share my taste. It is rare for me to turn down a book or genre so the books I will talk about will be varied. I have roughly 20% of my library being classical literature. I have a smaller percent accidentally adhering to Harold Bloom's Western Cannon. Which reminds me, I should mention that I have too many Bloom books, and for anyone who has ever read Harold Bloom, one can be too many. I have equal parts Crime Fiction and Contemporary Fiction. My western collection is growing. My girlfriend has an extensive collection of Harlequins so perhaps one day I will comment on those. Just because I don't like a book doesn't mean I don't think that that book doesn't have a place. When I read I read for myself, I try to relate to these books or make them relate to me. Sometimes it makes so much sense I start thinking the book is about me, other times I'm grasping for the minutest details trying to justify the reading. If I don't want to read a book its usually for a damn good reason and that reason is related to me not being able to relate to the text. Although reading is a solitary journey, I believe that literature should help us understand ourselves and the worlds we inhabit thereby being innately a bonding tool for society. The following are my reactions to books which I have read but they hopefully explain why the individual journey is a part of the universal adventure.

You are hereby cordially invited to Nerdlandia, continue reading to accept invitation.

Sincerely,
Angry Book-Guy