crazed monkey » books

Transmetropolitan

Ian Stevens — Mon, 02 Dec 2002 04:47:00 +0000

I recently finished browsing, reading and re-reading Warren Ellis’ Transmetropolitan trades Lonely City and Gouge Away. I already have Spider’s Thrash on order and it should arrive any day now. Yes, I am little behind the times but I don’t normally read comics and am too lazy to buy each release as it comes out. I am a reader of books, but Transmetropolitan is so good that it could easily make me a reader of comics. Having read the series as well as Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics, I am much more open to the graphic novel than ever before.

For those who don’t know, Transmetropolitan follows renegade journalist Spider Jerusalem in his personal quest for “the truth”, most notably behind the evil president called The Smiler. The story is set one hundred years or so in the future and is a cross between post-cyberpunk, Hunter S. Thompson, and Michel Foucault. (The latter more because of the uncanny physical resemblance and not necessarily because of similarities in philosophy of which I cannot speculate. To see the eerie resemblance, check out this likeness of Foucault and the cover of Lust For Life.)

The stories in Transmetropolitan eerily mirror present day news, such as part one of “Dirge”, published in April 2001, which features a sniper picking off people in the print district of the city in which the series take place. That story bore an uncanny likeness to the recent sniper shootings in the Washington D.C. area. Not all stories contribute to the plot, but help to set the mood for the world which Spider inhabits. One such story is the award-winning “Another Cold Morning” which tells of a woman cryogenically frozen in our time and revived in Spider’s time, only to be unwanted and shocked by the new world around her. The shock which the woman experiences is much like the shock and nausea we feel when reading Transmetropolitan’s first few stories as we are thrust into Spider’s world, similar but so very different from our own.

Apart from the stories, the other reasons for reading Transmetropolitan are Spider’s witticisms, his philosophy on life, and the artwork, without which the effect would be not as great. Some samples:

“If you loved me, you’d all kill yourselves today.”

“Yeah. I’m calling your ‘faith’ bullshit. This man needs medical help if he can’t get through his life without something invisible to believe in.”

“I have considered this information carefully. I have decided that I could not give two tugs of a dead dog’s cock about my ex-wife, and that you may keep her.”

It is impossible to summarise the stories, plots, feel, and philosophy of Transmetropolitan. This comic really needs to be read. Patrick Stewart reads it, you should too.

Addendum: Regarding the Foucault comparison, check out this interview with Warren Ellis which has a question towards the end about Foucault and Spider.

Update: Vic pointed me to this picture of Hunter S. Thompson in his younger days. Why do these people all look the same?

Finished: Iain Banks’ A Song of Stone

Ian Stevens — Thu, 21 Nov 2002 00:54:08 +0000

I finished A Song of Stone last night. Frank was right, this book is to be avoided – not because it isn’t well-written, but because the plot progression is just so damned depressing. The book starts off relatively upbeat where we find the narrator, his lover and their servants in the process of fleeing their castle because of a civil war. Yes, I said upbeat because, in retrospect, this is the happiest moment in the entire book. It is as if Banks decided to drop his characters in an already depressing scenario, then asked himself “How could I make their lives worse?” and wrote whatever immediately came to mind. Then again, war is never positive, and this book successfully drives that point home. As there are no victors in war, so there are no winners in this tragedy.

I have yet to write a review for Everyone in Silico, which I finished last week. I hope to get on that in a day or so, but I’m too lazy to write something decent at this point.

Iain Banks recommendations gone wrong

Ian Stevens — Sun, 10 Nov 2002 07:55:00 +0000

A few weeks back I recommended Iain Banks’ The Business to Vic only to find out that he wasn’t too keen on it. It had been a while since I had read the book and I suppose that the only thing which stuck in my mind was that the story was a neat concept which I thought Vic would enjoy. I had forgotten about the unsatisfying dÃ©nouement and the rather slim plotline. Nor could I compare The Business with Banks’ other straight fiction books as I have kept primarily to his science fiction, which he writes under the name Iain M. Banks. I can understand Frank’s response to Vic’s post and his need to come to the rescue. Unfortunately, the only Iain Banks book which Frank doesn’t recommend, namely A Song of Stone, is in my reading queue. It’s a good thing I only paid $7 for it.

Controversy abound in award-winning Canadian literature

Ian Stevens — Fri, 08 Nov 2002 00:00:00 +0000

First Yann Martel won the 2002 Booker Prize for Life of Pi and was accused of plagiarizing a novella by Brazilian writer Moacyr Scliar. Evidently the concept of a boy adrift on a raft with a big cat as his companion is used in both books. To his credit, Martel admits he read a review of Scliar’s book Max and the Cats in 1990, thought the premise to be interesting and filed the idea away for later refinement. Is copying a concept plagiarising? Martel, of course, says ‘no’, but Scliar will have to read Martel’s book to be certain.

Next Austin Clarke, thought to be an also-ran for the Giller Prize, wins the award with his novel The Polished Hoe amid surprise and shock in the literary community. Evidently a lot of people, among them BookTelevision host Daniel Richler, did not simply dislike the book, they intensely disliked it. Some people are calling the choice a politically correct decision but others, pointing to the personalities of the 2002 jurors, are saying that’s nonsense.

Justified controversy or no, all this talk can only be good for Canadian literature.

John Ralston Saul, what a guy!

Ian Stevens — Thu, 07 Nov 2002 19:42:00 +0000

If you’re viewing this weblog as a web page, you might have noticed my book list and seen that John Ralston Saul‘s book The Doubter’s Companion is on my reading list. Saul is probably my favourite writer of philosophy and politics and I have read most of his non-fiction works including The Unconscious Civilization, Voltaire’s Bastards and Reflections of a Siamese Twin. This man is easily one of the alpha males of Canada’s intellectual elite.

I had thought that Saul was one of those supremely intelligent and inflential writer/professor types. Little did I know that he once ran a Paris-based investment firm and worked as Special Assistant and Policy Advisor to the founding Chairman of Petro-Canada. You can find Saul’s biography online at the website of the Governor General of Canada. Adrienne Clarkson is a fantastic choice for Governor General, but with John Ralston Saul at her side, it’s like having two Governor Generals!

The Very Curious Language of George W. Bush

Ian Stevens — Thu, 07 Nov 2002 16:42:00 +0000

There are many sites documenting so-called “Bushisms“, curious quotes made by the U.S. president. Now you can collect these quotes in a desktop calendar format. A sample:

“There is a lot of speculation and I guess there is going to continue to be a lot of speculation until the speculation ends.”

Just finished: Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Unconsoled

Ian Stevens — Tue, 13 Aug 2002 15:00:00 +0000

I recently finished Kazuo Ishiguro‘s The Unconsoled and am terribly glad that I kept with it after the first half.

It is very difficult to read a novel in which you abhor the protagonist, which is how I felt about Ryder, the novel’s narrator. Here is a man who, throughout the novel, makes a lot of promises and accepts a lot of invitations but never keeps the ones which are important, wanders about as if in a dream and, at many times, acts like a complete and total asshole. At one point, Ryder goes to a screening of 2001 at a local movie theatre, incorrectly names the movie’s lead actors as Clint Eastwood and Yule Brenner, and then leaves in the middle without the woman he came with, quite likely his wife or mistress. In another scene, he leaves a boy, who might be his son, at a cafe for several hours as he allows himself to be led away by photographers and then by a local musician.

In addition to being very frustated with Ryder’s actions, I became very puzzled with The Unconsoled’s surreal setting, specifically the relative distances between locations in the village. In one chapter, Ryder is whisked away from the hotel where he is staying in the centre of the village and driven to what seems like a large house in the country for a formal gathering. When the gathering is over, Ryder is then led through a door which, quite miraculously, leads to his hotel. Later on in the book, Ryder drives to a gallery in the middle of the country, remembers that this is the same place where the gathering was located, and then finds his way back to the hotel through another door.

Because of my frustrations, I would have abandoned The Unconsoled altogether but did not as I wished to get to the bottom of Ryder’s behaviour and because of the tense build-up to the climax at the end of the novel. Having read this book, I look forward to reading Ishiguro’s other works, including The Remains Of The Day, for which he won the Booker Prize in 1989.

Book-shopping for my niece

Ian Stevens — Mon, 12 Aug 2002 14:59:00 +0000

On Saturday I perused the BMV bookstore at Yonge & Eglinton for birthday presents for my niece, Leyla, who turns 5 on the 22nd. I know that relatives on Leyla’s father’s side of the family will bestow toys upon her, but I and my parents believe that books make a more practical gift. This is not to say that I don’t give Leyla toys, just that, in the long run, I think that books provide more stimulation.

As children’s books go, I am fond of the classics. On my Saturday trip I picked up The Giant Paddington Story Book with stories by Michael Bond, Stuart Little by E.B. White (the same edition featured in the link), and Where The Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein. The latter is a book I always wanted as a kid, if only because of Silverstein’s song “You’re Always Welcome At Our House”, which features a deliciously sadistic and twisted sense of humour. As far as Stuart Little is concerned, I am uncertain whether it is appropriate for a five-year old, especially after reading that link. We’ll see.