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Zeitoun: Patriotism Drowns in Tidal Wave of Fear

One man, one canoe, one country’s terrible mistake.

Rating: 10 out of 10

When people begin their journey to earn the title of ‘writer’ or ‘author’ the phrase they hear most is, “Write what you know.” So when Dave Eggers broke onto the literary scene he seemed to personify that motto with his memoir, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. Surely that title sounds a touch egotistical, but Eggers holds his own and backs it up with a tale of such candor, wit and humility that you can’t help agree with the given moniker.

Since then, Eggers has gone on to expand his wordy sphere and he now has his own publishing house, McSweeney’s, and been the recipient of numerous awards and accolades. Yet the most interesting turn in his career seems to be his switch from talking about his own life story to detailing the lives of others, with the same skill and grace as before. His fictional works are also quite good, but Eggers is really at his finest when describing the trials and tribulations others have gone through, and that is what he tackles in his newest book, Zeitoun.

Zeitoun is the story of a middle-aged Syrian-born man who stays behind to watch his house and business while his family retreats to safety in the face of the oncoming Hurricane Katrina. When he awakens to the true devastation being caused, Abdulrahman Zeitoun does what many people would not, he jumps in his canoe and begins rowing around his neighborhood helping people out of their homes, locating supplies for some, even feeding the local dogs trapped in their homes with no food or escape. While efforts like these should be commended with medals and keys to various cities, Zeitoun is awarded with an arrest by Federal officers, humiliation, degradation and unwarranted terrorist accusations based on nothing more than his race and the overwhelming chaos of the moment. Zeitoun becomes an unwilling disciple to the doctrine of fear and the corruption of unregulated power.

The first half of the story lulls the reader into a comfortable state of being, where we celebrate the fact our country is a place where an immigrant like Zeitoun, a practicing Muslim, could arrive here, find love and build a successful business in one of our greatest cities, New Orleans. His early tales of the building of his family and work force can only be described as a true American triumph due to his sheer hard work and determination. Yet what follows is a horror story filled with not only the worst traits inside everyday people, but the nearly fatal flaws in our system of government and emergency response. The violations of Zeitoun’s civil rights, among many others, are painted with harsh strokes, dripping with the blood of a city washed backwards in time, to a wild west of roving gangs of looters and trigger-happy deputies, their fingers twitching as much from fear as excitement over their next capture.

The scenes that come alive in this book are ones we believed lost to the annals of history and the atrocities committed on our soil in WWII. Yet the phrase we all know so well, but try so very hard to ignore, rears its head once more: “Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it.” [George Santayana, The Life of Reason Vol.1 1905]

What we repeated here as a country was the unleashing of unbridled fear. After 9/11 we let fear of another terrorist attack rule every decision we made and we began a systematic shielding of each and every part of our society against these ghosts. We didn’t look at how far back that fear was pushing our country, how many of our own prized rights and privileges were being stripped away in order to ensure something that could never be proven or guaranteed. Eggers truly breaks it down as he says:

This country was not unique. This country was fallible. Mistakes were being made. He was a mistake. In the grand scheme of the country’s blind, grasping fight against threats seen and unseen, there would be mistakes made. Innocents would be suspected. Innocents would be imprisoned.

We chose to turn a blind eye to the rights of those innocents and many still do to this day. The combination of a nationwide catastrophe, like Katrina, and the well-touted doctrine of fear created the ultimate breeding ground for the travesty that Zeitoun was dragged through. We need to hear these stories and we need to remember these stories so we can protect our children and our fellow citizens from ever becoming one of these stories.

The End of the Page Recommendation: There is a reason why this book is a national bestseller and named one of the best books of the year by the San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune, The New Yorker, The Guardian, The Huffington Post and many others. If you feel you can stomach the bitter and harsh truth of some of the things that happened outside the reach of the news cameras during Katrina, pick this up.

To those who have read this already, what did you think? Any other favorites from Dave Eggers?

Chasing Che: A Motorcycle Journey in Search of the Guevara Legend

The Che-cycle rides only towards revolution! [insert inspirational road music here]

Rating: 8 out of 10

Everyone has heard the popular phrase, “Never judge a person until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes.” Well, many people throughout history have judged those gone before us, especially those who went on to change the course of history. Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara Jr. was one of those people. After growing up in Argentina, he took a soon-to-be-famous motorcycle journey with his friend and compatriot, Alberto Granado, into the deep plains and undeveloped areas of Latin America. During that journey he witnesses abject poverty and suffering of the indigenous people. By the time he returned, seeds of political and revolutionary discourse were germinating in his soul and they would very soon sprout and give rise to the man everyone came to know only as ‘Che’. Even years after his execution by a one-man firing squad, scholars and modern-day revolutionaries alike have attempted to explain and understand who the man was, but very few of them remembered that famous parable above, and those who did remember, didn’t take it to heart like Patrick Symmes.

Chasing Che is a documentary tale of travel, both physical and intellectual, that follows Symmes as he saddles up on his own motorcycle (one a little more modern than Granado’s jalopy) and attempts to follow the exact route those two fellow travelers ventured upon so many years before. Symmes even attempts to limit any and all creature comforts to match whatever Ernesto and Alberto had during their original journey. There are new obstacles, to be sure, and detours must be made, but when they do arise, Symmes rolls with the punches and finds himself transformed into the same road-weathered traveler he is following years behind.

There are many great qualities about this travel journal, but foremost among those is Symmes’ dedication to the quest. At numerous points he could have taken a lighter path, called for more help or equipment or turned back towards more friendly locales, but he continually pushed through in search of the same physical places and people that Guevara and Granado touched on their way through. On more than one occasion, Symmes found himself in conversations of broken Spanish with heavily armed men– some government soldiers, while others were guerrilla warriors still trying to live out some of the mantras Che left behind. One wrong move could’ve landed him in a South American jail or worse, “disappeared” like many opponents of the various controlling regimes. Yet, I believe his saving grace through this was he not going after an ideology, he was going after a man. He made no proposition to learn, live and spread the teachings of Che. Instead what he was after was the true history of the man, good or evil, who would later become Che and change the face of global politics. That objectivity and balance allowed him access through gates many others would have failed to pass.

Two things struck me during the book. First, Symmes continually mentioned the inherent charity of the indigenous people with whom he crossed paths. Time after time he would ride up on his motorcycle, kill the engine a good distance away from a small shanty home and clap his hands twice (to signal that he was friendly and approaching the house). He would almost always find the family willing to give him a small piece of floor to sleep on, or at the very least against the side of the house, and possibly food if they had enough to spread around. The following mornings, many of his new-found landlords would refuse to accept payment, just seeming like it was their duty to help fellow travelers (which many of them are as well considering the great distances between villages and homes). Secondly, Symmes went in the end of his journey to the source, at least, one of the sources; Alberto Granado. Still living reasonably off his notoriety as Che’s wandering partner, Granado granted an illuminating interview and insight into those dusty days on the trail. Symmes had both of Granado’s and Guevara’s original diaries from the trip and he pointed out many of the disparate descriptions of places and actions between them, one moment standing out in particular where Granado and Guevara both credit the other for the heroic rescue of a small kitten. What came from that discovery was that the journey represented different transformations for each traveler. As for the kitten, Granado admitted to laying the heroic banner on Che because he was the one destined for it.

Another factor I found interesting is Symmes was on his travels during the exact same time the government and others were in a desperate search to exhume Che’s body from the hidden dumping ground the Bolivian soldiers left him in. Another writer, Jon Lee Anderson wrote a book entitled, “Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life” (which I have also read and highly recommend), and in his research for that book he interviewed and received confessions from the very people responsible for hiding Che’s body. It had been many years since the action, so the location information was not entirely specific, but both books ended up tying together in the same place and moment, which made for even more interesting reading.

The End of the Page Recommendation: For those interested in learning more about the man behind the mythology and who that is staring back from the hipsters t-shirts and messenger bags, you could do far worse than starting here. As I said earlier, Anderson’s book is another great find, but a much thicker and in-depth read.

The Assault on Reason: Attacks from the Head and Gut

Since I’m not President, I finally have time to finish writing my book.

Rating: 7 out of 10

Flipping through these pages can be tragic when you read the level of intelligence behind the words and begin to wonder what the world would be like today if Al Gore had served George W. Bush’s two terms in office. Would there be milk chocolate fairies delivering candy and fountain-style root beer floats to children throughout the heartland of America? No, absolutely not. Yet I would wage a healthy amount of money that the U.S.A. would not have been in the geopolitical crapper as it was when George W. Bush finally walked out of those hallowed doors with one of the lowest approval ratings in history. His one-time opponent, Al Gore, tries to explain and extol on the reasons things went so badly off the rails.

The Assault on Reason is written by former Vice President Al Gore and details chapter after chapter the numerous areas where the Bush years, and some of those before, have displayed an incredible and frightening trend replacing science and reason with faith and narrow-mindedness. The government we once knew, the one begun all those years back, has been systematically dismantled, pulling the power from the people as a whole and concentrating it into an increasingly small number of hands. Those chosen few have since done everything in their power to eliminate reason and intellectual debate in favor of religious rhetoric and cowboy posturing in face of any and all opposing evidence. In essence, readers feel the true power of the American people slip further and further away with each turn of the page.

Before even opening the book, it must be noted the context in which these words live. Al Gore lost the Presidential election back in 2000 in one of the most contentious, and in some minds demonstrably corrupted, rulings in history. This man was a single breath away from the oval office and seven years later he writes a book about how terrible a job his former opponent is doing. So it is impossible to view this book without a small sense of bias on the part of the author. Yet, although the book does sometimes fall too far into “political slam-book” territory and reaches a slight whiny tone, Gore checks himself and within a few pages brings it back to a place where he backs up each and every criticism with solid, reasonable and irrefutable facts. In those passages when he cites source after source and charts out the trends which we should be so afraid of, that is when Gore is at his most effective.

The real power of the book is not as a weapon against the Bush-era style of politics and power grabbing, but the entire political system hierarchy and its continued growth away from the general public. Gore points out numerous occasions, pre-Bush, that also helped lead to the dangerous place we are today with so much control centralized into the office of President and not spread out amongst the three co-equal branches of the government as intended by those who set it up all those years ago. Yet, Gore even expands on this to the rest of the planet as well when talking about nuclear proliferation, detailing other nations and how they followed the missteps of the American powerhouse. In one of his most eloquent moments in the book, Gore writes:

“As a world community, we must prove that we are wise enough to control what we have been smart enough to create.”

In my mind, that is the central thesis to his entire argument. His textual intent is to warn us of the danger of nuclear arms being in the hands of people who block out reason in favor of belief, religious or otherwise, but sub-textually I believe the statement also shines lights on the creation of our government. Power should never be wielded only by one man alone; that is the antithesis of our democratic style of government. The balance between the three branches has been slowly ebbing away and the person sitting in the oval office has been the silent beneficiary of it all. Both sides have played their parts in the dismantling of that balance, but the Republicans took more giant steps on that march towards  an iron-fist government between 2001-2008 than ever before in history.

What we can learn from this book is how to regain that balance, if you can filter out Gore’s “I wouldn’t have done it that way” tone in various portions. Science, reason and factual proof are slowly making their way back into governing politics, but there is a long way to go and more people who live by that credo need to find their way into the hallowed halls of the capital buildings. I’m not suggesting no one of any faith should be in government, just that they no longer turn a blind eye to anything that doesn’t follow in lockstep with that belief. Important choices should only be made after the most rigorous of debate and unfortunately, as you will see in these pages, our last President was not a huge fan of differing points of view. Even though this was written while Bush was still in office, many of the policies and laws enacted during that time are still in effect and Obama has yet to find the spare time to return some of that balance the government so desperately needs. Let’s help remind him.

The End of the Page Recommendation: A well written and well researched book on the state of our government and the dangerous path it is on. Although not exactly a page turner and it gets randomly embroiled in mudslinging and overly scientific terminology, the final result is still impactful and important.

Emergency: Neil Strauss Bugs Out

Lesson One: Stop trying to pull the lever on the cover. It’s not going to happen.

Rating: 9 out of 10

There are certain voices out there, particular tones and rhythms floating through the stacks at your local bookstore. Original, unique and challenging writers who take their stories to new levels each and every time they grace the page. Voices like these are few and far between and we are lucky to be talking about one of them right now. Neil Strauss whispered his way into popular culture inside the words and stories of others, specifically those who were already enjoying massive levels of celebrity. He co-wrote biographies for Dave Navarro, Motley Crue, Jenna Jameson and Marilyn Manson, bringing his talent as a wordsmith to the lives of the edgy and fringe in our society. Then he decided to sink himself into the vacuous and vapid world of the pick-up artist in his next best seller, The Game. While trying to extricate himself from the superficial and shallow lands of the Los Angeles bar scene, something happened which not only changed his life, but the lives of every person on the planet: 9/11. After the fall of the twin towers, Neil began to realize that the society we all rely on is far more fragile than we want to realize. That thought burrowed deep into his psyche and dragged him onto a new path, one that led him not only to his ability to survive in a time of crisis, but also to a realization about how he fits into the world around him.

Emergency is a nearly herculean effort to imagine all the complications that would arise from the collapse of society and then how to survive through each and every one of them. Strauss goes on a bender of classes and in-person instructions about survival techniques, hunting, urban tactics and even quick-draw pistol training. Each new skill enabled him to take another step towards complete autonomy in the case of a social and financial meltdown. Along the way he also tries to share this newly acquired knowledge with his girlfriend, which proved in some cases to be harder than the course itself.

The book slips and slides between funny and frightening, bringing chaos and comedy together in a style only Strauss can supply. He details each step he takes along the way, from learning how to kill, skin and cook a goat himself to how long it really takes to lease an apartment and become a dual citizen in another country. Yet, what good is it to be a dual citizen if the airports are all shut down and you can’t get to your foreign villa? Strauss covers that too when he learns how to fly a personal helicopter. Sure, it can be argued that most people who read this book will not have the same resources Strauss does and that will severely impede their efforts to follow in his intensely prepared footsteps, but there is a treasure trove of knowledge in this book which can be easily applied in your everyday life (like the simple fact that if your water is shut off, the water in the tank on the back of your toilet is actually clean and drinkable). Underneath the sarcasm and self-deprecating humor of Strauss, he actually relates a number of incredibly valuable lessons between these pages. One passage worth looking into is where he details running his urban survival test and being interrupted in a men’s bathroom while dressed in drag. Trust me, there is incredibly intelligent logic behind the situation. Over and over Strauss proves that little things can become intensely important in times of crisis and it behooves all of us to learn at least some of them, if not all.

One thing that also draws me back to Strauss again and again is he really takes these journeys. These are not just research books with cold and empty facts filling the pages. Each lesson is one painted and colored through his experience of starting out a semi-vain and technologically-needy Los Angeles writer and ending up an everyday survivalist and part-time medical disaster volunteer. His original intention was to avoid death when the shit eventually hits the fan, but what he gained was a universal appreciation for life and the necessary skills for preserving it.

Recommendation: For a frank look at how fragile the web we’ve woven for ourselves really is, dig in. For those who break out into a cold sweat just turning on the news or browsing Web M.D., you might want to keep browsing the bookshelves. Try a cookbook specializing in chocolate.

The Zombie Survival Guide: Humor Done Dead Serious

If only I’d read this before summer camp of ’84…

Rating: 8 out of 10

You’re standing on the top of your local water tower, while below you is a moaning and clawing horde of the walking dead. Your pump action shotgun has proved mostly useless and you’re almost out of shells anyway. What could you do to summon help? Is there any way out of your self-made trap? What could you have done to prepare better for this onslaught of undead? These are all great questions that many people think they will never have to ask themselves, but in the world of Max Brooks those questions get asked each and every day and he takes them very seriously. (Kind of…)

The Zombie Survival Guide is a completely serious approach to the methods and training needed to withstand a zombie attack. The first section details which weapons are good to use (tried and true machetes will always outdo flashy firepower, like an Uzi), which terrains are best to travel in (cities are great for location protection, but easy to get trapped in, while the frozen tundra is technically your best bet), and what kind of equipment you should pack if you’re going on the run (surprisingly, this list is eerily similar to any well-prepared hunter). Once you have the basics down for offense, defense and escape tactics, the guide proceeds to detail the long and largely secretive history of zombie attacks all over the world. From the pre-historic regions of Central Africa to an attack on the Virgin Islands only six years ago, you’ll read case after case of cover-up, deceit and blatant denial of any existence of the zombie phenomenon. Unfortunately for those trying to keep it hidden, zombies have a long standing tradition of sitting and waiting for the right moment to strike.

Max Brooks is the son of comedy legend Mel Brooks and screen icon Anne Bancroft, so life in the entertainment world was in his blood. He also picked up from his father the truth that making people laugh is very serious business and shouldn’t be taken lightly if you plan on doing it well. He also honed his craft in the writer’s room of Saturday Night Live for three seasons and wrote for over forty episodes. I have no idea where he found the time, but in those crazy days of skit comedy and hair-pulling deadlines, he wrote this survival guide against the undead, which went on to become a New York Times Bestseller. The completely serious tone he maintains throughout the novel is critical to the underlying humor of it. He knows that true humor comes from when the person delivering the punch line doesn’t know it’s a punch line. There is an odd sensation while you move through the chapters where slowly you almost forget it’s a joke. I wasn’t getting any urges to stock up on kerosene or long-range rifle scopes, but there is a lot of truth tucked in between those pages. The survival techniques spelled out in the book could easily help any hiker or traveler stuck in the woods without food or one being chased by a bear. Those kernels of down-to-earth facts help strengthen the tone and keep the reader hooked in. In the historical sections, Max also brilliantly laid them out in chronological order, which allowed him to refer to past instances as the reason or cause of future outbreaks (as in cases were the zombies from one attack were not properly disposed of, only to come back years later to strike once more).

Max went on from the success of this book to pen his sequel, World War Z, which again is a seriously toned historical fiction detailing oral accounts from people who survived the worldwide outbreak of the zombie race. I actually read that one first, mainly because it was given to me as a gift, but the order of the two books matters very little in terms of enjoyment. World War Z is now being adapted into a movie for Paramount Pictures and Brad Pitt’s company, Plan B Entertainment. Max turned down the offer to write the script since he felt he wouldn’t get the best out of it, so the screenwriting duties fell to J. Michael Straczynski, who is currently enjoying great acclaim for his possibly Oscar nominated script, Changeling (not necessarily from me, but I’m only one voice among the many). No real word on what Max is working on now, but you can be sure it will be serious…seriously funny.

Recommendation: If you’ve ever read any of those other survival guide books, take a crack at this and see how easy it is to get sucked in. Also, this is a true goldmine for any fan of the undead.

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How I Became Stupid: Intelligently Ironic

There was another hole in this shirt, I swear it…

With a title like this gracing the front cover, you might get the impression that this is a tale of wrong choices, longing for the good ole’ days and trying to figure out how it all got away.

You’d be mostly wrong…mostly.

This is a tale about Antoine, who feels forever burdened by his astounding intelligence and natural curiosity about the world he inhabits. The weight of his knowledge is stifling and he longs to become one of the drolling, ignorant masses he sees around him every day. His goal by whatever means necessary is to dumb himself down into apparent nothingness in a crowd. Only then, he thinks, or deduces rather, can he find true happiness. He tries various methods and over-complicated ways to end up in places most people find themselves without thinking at all. This sarcastically comic journey follows these brave attempts to limit the reaches of his mind and the effects it has on those who know him, before and after his inclusion into the world of the stupid. Antoine is a wanderer, a rover, a vagabond of the mind, yearning for a place where his mind doesn’t run free because it sees nothing and nowhere to run to.

Martin Page, a French author, created Antoine almost as a reaction and retribution of the world of today. We cling to evolution and parade around preening in front of all other creatures, but not with our feathers or our fur, since we lost those long ago, but we preen with our minds and our reason. As a race we lord our cognitive thought over all other organisms, but Antoine shows us it comes with a hefty price tag. Martin’s novel gives us a glimpse into the mirror, a vision of someone we all hide deep in the closet who judges other people, overthinks each and every detail of the life before his eyes and who has a problem taking anything at face value. The eternal question posed by the book is whether there is a way to tone down that voice in our mind? Reel in the ego and superego and just become one with the mass consciousness, oh, and don’t forget to enjoy it as well.

This was a quick and enjoyable read, laced with wry wit, sarcasm and unique characters, people who would have to be incredibly singular just to stand hanging around Antoine in the first place. I felt the lesson I took away was you can never run away from who you really are and to be truly happy you need to start with acceptance of that fact. A tall tale indeed, but one that can be accomplished with a little time, energy and possibly a nice, creamy bar of dark chocolate.

(p.s. Thanks to Nikki for sending me the book! )

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The Yiddish Policeman’s Union: Chasing the curly locks of the end.

If you stare closely at this cover and relax your eyes, you’ll see a schooner.

Only on rare occasions can you walk out of a movie and say, “You know what, that was just as good as the book. I’m shocked.” For that to happen two things need to come together, a superb writer with a cinematic mind and a visionary director who appreciates and respects the original literary work. I can only think of a twinkling of titles that fall under that elusive ray of sunlight:

American Psycho (book written by Bret Easton Ellis, film directed by Mary Harron)

The Basketball Diaries (book written by Jim Carroll, film directed by Scott Kalvert)

The Crow (graphic novel written by James O’Barr, film directed by Alex Proyas)

Fight Club (book written by Chuck Palanhuik, film directed by David Fincher)

The Princess Bride (book written by William Goldman, film directed by Rob Reiner)

The Outsiders (book written by S.E. Hinton, film directed by Francis Ford Coppola)

You might be wondering what this list has to do with this book review, if anything at all, but here it is. The most important entry to this list:

Wonder Boys (book written by Michael Chabon, film directed by Curtis Hanson)

I actually did see the movie before reading that book, but I was amazed by how well it had been translated to film. Going back and watching the movie again I was able to fully appreciate both mediums the story was presented in and I felt they really complimented each other. So my excitement was instantly peaked when the Coen Brothers announced that they acquired the rights to adapt Michael Chabon’s latest book, The Yiddish Policeman’s Union. People were already sending me giddy whispers about how good this book was, so it already had a place on my reading list, but the Coen Brothers helped escort it up the red carpet to the top.

The story surrounds a rugged policeman on the end of a social and lifelong bender. What seems like an innocuous suicide in the room below him sends him spiraling down a road lined with Yiddish mafias, ghosts of relationships past, familial bonds kept and broken, topped off nicely with a dollop of worldwide religious revolution. Our dogged protagonist, Detective Meyer Landsman, didn’t see this all coming when he woke up that morning, but his lockjaw determination won’t let him be swayed from finding the truth behind the black hats and black badges placed in front of him. Landsman is the classic take-it-on-the-chin hero, treading the shoes of Jake from Chinatown and Rick from Casablanca. Once the problem is unleashed in his brain, it itches and itches until he breaks each and every rule to find the calm inside his mental storm.

Growing up in a Jewish family I figured I would be able to follow along with the lingo and traditions mentioned in the book, but the level of detail is intense and intimidating. Admittedly it took me a few chapters to finally wrap my head around what each term meant, as examples: “sholem” for “gun” and “shoyfer” for “cell phone”. Chabon paints the town of Stika, Alaska and its Yiddish contingent wonderfully, their traditions, their struggles and their dedication to the cause, whatever that cause might be since each faction inside the group was different. Each upturned stone shows a deeper hole to crawl down and the ropes and strings begin to pull the fragmented pieces of the story together into one amazing and meticulous tale.

Still reeling from the brilliance of “No Country for Old Men” I can only imagine how the Coen Brothers will bring this to life. I’m sure it will be a sight to see and like sprinkles on a warm, red velvet cupcake, Chabon’s words will be a delight to hear. Supposedly there are a couple of other films in line for the dynamic duo of directors, so you all have time to run out, pick up this book and let it live with you, as it now lives with me.

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All Tomorrow’s Parties: A Bridge to the Future Unknown

“It’s not a dream?” “No,” he said.

Timelines and parallel possibilities come together and break apart during each waking second of the day and every sleeping moment of the night. Little connections are being made everywhere that ripple and reverberate throughout society and sometimes, just sometimes, people find a way to get in front of the chaos wave, trying to direct it towards their own desired outcomes. So when telling a story like this it only makes sense to place most of it on a large, broken down bridge, as it leads in one way to a whole new existence, but in another way it leads to nowhere at all.

For those who don’t know about William Gibson, here is a tasty refresher course. Gibson can’t be said to have burst onto the cyberpunk scene in 1984 with his landmark novel Neuromancer, the reason being that he created the cyberpunk scene. He refers in a large number of his books to nodal points and connectors that bring about change in the world they exist, well, he himself is one of those points. With the introduction of Neuromancer into popular culture he coined the first ever usage of the word “cyberspace” and thereby defined it. Once that found its place in our lexicon the growing world of virtual reality and cyberspace became molded as much by his visions than any scientific field or philosopher. It’s not even too far to say that Neuromancer became the unofficial bible of this burgeoning virtual world. From that point on he was raised to cult-like status by science fiction fans around the world and her has never strayed far from the cyberpunk genre, following things up with titles such as Count Zero, Burning Chrome, Mona Lisa Overdrive, Virtual Light and Idoru. He also wrote the short story Johnny Mnemonic, which was adapted into a completely silly movie with Keanu Reeves as the star.

No that you’ve had your literary history class, let’s discuss this particular work, All Tomorrow’s Parties.

This story revolves around a group of people who unknowingly find themselves at the nexus point of a major change in the world as they know it. Some of them are fighting to stop it, while others are trying to get ahead of it and direct it to their own ends. Lastly, the group which we all feel the most kinship with, are those who are stuck in the middle without any comprehension of how big this situation really is. On the heroic side; Laney, a unwilling patient from an orphanage who was given a drug that now allows him to see the flow of data and understand it on a deeply fundamental level; Rydell, a one time rent-a-cop who encapsulates an archetype that Gibson loves to write, the dark trenchcoat-wearing, quiet-talking, lighting-quick moving, unwilling loner hero; Silencio, a boy who doesn’t speak, but has an innate talent for digging underneath the information he is shown to find the information that he wants; Chevette, a young, punky looking girl who’s undesired ability is being in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong man on her arm; and lastly the appearance of Rei Toei, a completely virtual Japanese pop star who is totally sentient, universally desired and somehow nowhere to be found. These are the characters that Gibson weaves into this tale and the enviroment he sets them loose in is a nearly destroyed futuristic version of the Golden Gate bridge, which since a massive earthquake no longer has cars packed on it in traffic jams, but an entire city of squatters and outcasts aptly called “Bridge People”.

One of the things I love about Gibson is his staccato writing style. The stories snap and break as he slices over to a new timeline or another character’s point of view. There is a beat and rythym to his writing that is unique to him alone. I will admit that if you have no knowledge at all of computers and the digital culture, there are going to be a lot of concepts and terms thrown around in Gibson’s work that won’t make a lick of sense. He is the Granddaddy of Cyberpunk and it would definitely be good to brush up on the topic before diving into his world. As for my feelings on this story, I liked it. It is a little tough getting into it, mainly due to so many different threads being started, but once they start to intertwine with each other the excitement from each one builds on the next and you ride that wave until the final page. Overall not quite as intriguing as some of his other books, Pattern Recognition being the most recent I read before this, but still a solid effort and a fun dip into the seedy side of the tech world.

Duma Key: Unlocking more than you ever wanted to see

Continuing his quest to become the most prolific horror writer in history, Stephen King unleashed a new tale of heaven meets hell on the sandy beaches of an island called Duma Key. The story follows a sturdy Midwestern man named Edgar Freemantle who has worked long and worked hard to have the good life. On the far end of middle age he has built his construction company into a multi-million dollar empire, kept his wife happy and healthy and raised his two wonderful daughters. Retirement plans weren’t nearly on his mind yet, but other plans, more devious and more red plans were already in action. A crane on his work-site backs into his truck and just misses taking his life. What it did succeed in taking was his right arm, a crack out of his skull, the mobility of his right leg and lastly, the happiness of his marriage. Edgar begins to have rage issues when he wakes up in the hospital and after numerous therapy sessions it is decided that maybe he needs what is referred to as a “geographic cure”. Time to pick up and move on. His doctor also suggests a hobby, “something to build hedges against the night” as King put it. Edgar sees a brochure for Duma Key and knows it is the place he will start his new life. The hobby he digs up from his past is drawing, which leads to painting, which leads to things he never could have dreamed of in his worst nightmares.

King succeeds continually at creating characters that not only are believable, but likable as well. I instantly felt I knew Edgar Freemantle, along with Jerome Wireman, the wise and painfully genuine gentleman who lives down the beach, and Elizabeth, the elderly woman who’s past is not only hidden from others, but from herself as well due to the onset of Alzheimer’s. In classic King form he sets up a relaxed and easygoing pace, steadying the reader for the roller coaster they are strapped into. Then with a soft turn of the page and a quick hidden scream you find yourself tearing through the final 250 pages at breakneck speeds (I actually finished the book at 2:30am this morning, no rest for the wicked or those who imagine it). Beyond the storyline, just underneath the surface, this story is also about the muses, the voices from those hidden places that speak to all people who create, artists, writers, builders, musicians, etc. We read in here the dangers that lie beneath the ebb and flow of what we safely refer to as “inspiration”. King asks if you really know where that great line came from, how that picture in your head got so clear, and what would you do if you realized their was power just lurking out of focus behind those ideas.

I’ve been a fan of King’s for most of my life, in fact it was with him that I really gained my appreciation of literature as a whole. He was an author passed down to me by my Mom and I initially read him as something else her and I could talk about, but soon enough I found myself diving from one strange and haunting world to another. I can’t seem to get enough of King’s talent for twisting the simple and ordinary into mesmerizing and terrifying. Yes, he can be called a “pop author”, but you can never call him lazy. The man is a writing machine and even through his own personal declarations of retirement, he shows no signs of slowing down. To that, I say, “Thank goodness.”

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