Kurt Vonnegut. Breakfast of Champions.

After having spent the day plowing through Breakfast of Champions, my first novel by Kurt Vonnegut, what strikes me the most is his authorial voice: Playful, funny, sane, warm, moral, and humane.  There’s anger as well – a lot of it – but it’s tempered by sadness.  This is all the more apparent as Vonnegut runs down the laundry list of atrocities committed by humanity against humanity.  But because the book is so buoyed by humor, there’s a sense of hope by the novel’s end that change is at your fingertips, all you must do is reach out and take it.

The plot involves the chance meeting between pulp science fiction writer Kilgore Trout and used car dealer Dwayne Hoover and the violence that erupts from said meeting.  Vonnegut fills in the spaces with commentary ranging from art to criminal conspirator acts by corporations (such as pollution) to human rights violations to the concept of freewill.  Vonnegut even steps in later as a peripheral character – nothing short of Creator of the Universe, of course.

The book is funny, even when stuck on annoying, tedious tics like cataloguing the size of every male character’s penis, both in length and diameter.  Even the illustrations sprinkled throughout get tiresome.  This is perhaps because it peaked early with its crude rendition of an asshole (literally a drawn asterisk) and a vagina.

Despite everything that threatened to sink Breakfast of Champions, Vonnegut is able to pull it all off with his consistent tone.  Part of that is how he approached the descriptions, complaints, histories and transgressions of America like it was a science fiction novel itself.  So the descriptions of slavery come through with both a sense of wonder and disgust that humanity would allow such great crimes against humanity.  In this way, Vonnegut comes off like a warm, funny, foul-mouthed grandfather.  And every time he speaks my breath catches because I know my grandmother will bark a warning.  When she stays silent, my grandfather and I share a clandestine grin, knowing we both just got away with something special.

Malcolm Beith. The Last Narco.

The startlingly number of reports of cartel violence in Mexico is frightening – not to mention the brutality mentioned in the reports. Decapitation, dismemberment, castration, the list goes on. The violence is not only between cartels, but with the Mexican police and military, and even US operatives of the DEA. The cartels hold the advantage in the war with seemingly unlimited funds. They are able to recruit from within the military, the police force, and even within the Mexican government. The country has become a pit of vipers with no clear path to safety.

 It is this warzone that Malcolm Beith tries to make sense of in his book The Last Narco.

Beith’s book is in one sense a biography of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman and in another way a look at the current state of Mexico. As a biography, it’s pretty light. Most of the details are conjecture, hearsay, and sometimes even myth. But that is way of things in Mexico’s violent landscape. Investigative journalism is almost non-existent with imminent threat of cartel violence – Beith notes that at least 45 journalists have been murdered in the past few years. Newspapers often print contradictory stories due to cartel and even government influence. The shadow of survival makes truth almost impossible to discern.

Beith’s book is more interesting when he takes the reader into the trenches of the Drug War. Despite the wealth of information, the book is rather artless. There is a flurry of information that can’t help but feel rushed, as he jumps from one non-sequitur to the next. This becomes his greatest enemy as it often undercuts the more tragic moments.

Despite all this, the wealth of information – not to mention the actual physical danger he put himself in – makes the book worth it, at least as an introduction into the Drug War in Mexico. There are a few more books I would like to check out for an even better grasp of this violent picture. Otherwise, I recommend the Discovery Channel special Extreme Drug Smuggling, which demonstrates how clever (and disturbed) the cartels are and HBO’s serial drama The Wire, which studies the effect of the drug trade at all levels within a city.

Asura's Wrath - Demo

Capcom has been releasing videos of Asura’s Wrath for the past year. The game features a man or mini-god, gifted with six arms and a haircut straight from some Akira Toriyama manga who battles giant gods. The proportions are supposed to be the draw, with several bosses being much bigger than the player character. According to the developers – all who obviously suffer short-term memory lost – this is because they felt most games did not emphasize size in boss battles. Their memory fog, I must note, include the entire God of War series, the recent Souls games, and Shadow of the Colossus. But the developers insist that it is only Asura’s Wrath where size truly matters.

Regardless, I was anxious to try the demo. I have a soft spot for epic battles, which must come from those fantasy binges as a kid (sort of like an acid flashback). So I was eager to check out the demo released today on PSN.

Often when a game has a boss that’s proportionately larger than the player character, the game uses several tricks to really incorporate the illusion of the villain’s size. God of War, for example, often employs a fight that has several distinct stages that is sometimes incorporated across an entire level. This gives the sense that it’s a slow whittling away and not simply hacking away at the bosses ankles. The Shadow of the Colossus has the player climbing parts of the beast to get to its weak spot. The bosses in the Souls games are just fucking hard.

The demo for Asura’s Wrath is one long quick time event that has interrupted by cut scenes and what I guess is supposed to be a story, if one could be discerned from that jumbled mess. To be fair, the only playable portions of the game were episodes 5 and 11, so I’ll withhold any other comments about the story. The fights though were really disappointing. The boss in episode was big, but besides polygon count, you never really felt or were intimidated by its size. No, I was sweating the PS controller buttons that would pop up. If I missed those, then my character was truly dead.

This game could still go either way. It’s often unfair to judge a game by its demo. Sometimes it takes a lot longer than an episode to get into the meat of the game. So far, I was not impressed. But I will keep my on the reviews once it’s released. Maybe in the full the bosses are better integrated into the levels. That is the dwarf Asura’s only hope

Robertson Davies. Fifth Business.

Dear Mr. Frunk,

So, I put down Against the Day with less than two hundred pages left. Partly because I needed a break and partly because my girlfriend’s mother had lent me it, I started Robertson Davies’ Fifth Business (she signed up for booksfree.com, which is similar to netflix, only with books, obviously).

I didn’t have any expectations for it. The book jacket says it centers on a boyhood incident – the throwing of a single snowball – that affects the course of several characters throughout their entire lives. A bit of research told me the book is based off Jungian psychology, of which I’m only causally familiar with. I was even turned off by the phrase “fifth business,” which is a character in opera who’s not the protagonist, antagonist, etc., but is essential to the action if only in a peripheral way – something I never heard of until picking up the book. With a depressed, weighty sigh I picked it up more to read it as a courtesy to Mrs. R’s generosity than to any expected enjoyment.

The novel itself is a written letter from Dunstan Ramsay – in response to a brief article about his retirement – to his Headmaster. Usually, I avoid epistolary novels since they invoke memories of Stoker’s Dracula. But I trudged on. The book is roughly divided into six sections that more or less translate into six different stages of Ramsay’s growth.

Despite everything against it, the first section won me over. Ramsay lives in a small town in Canada called Deptford, which Davies paints in exquisite detail and reminds me of a wintry version of Carson McCullers’ small towns. Right away, that ominous snowball is thrown and events are set in motion. I won’t describe what exactly happens with the snowball, as Davies’ construction of the scene and its far-reaching ripples is ingenious and needs to be experienced. It was then I realized the powers Davies had at his command.

Yet the book at times can be slow-going. World events, such as World War I and the Great Depression, are depicted vaguely at best and used more as a time frame reference than anything else. However the events do impacted the characters’ lives, but the sections are tedious and dull. Later, you’ll realize the importance of the sections and recognize more fully the themes Davies was laying, but it was a chore.

I know so far what I’ve described probably sounds dull. And you’re thinking, God, why should I read this? Believe me, I thought so too at times. An accurate description of my own journey and thoughts is just being fair, I think. Because what I’m trying to do is describe the journey without spoiling the strangeness, the enigmatic events and ideas within it. And all of it was not entirely clear until the very last pages. That end scene changed everything that came before – through no trickery, mind you – but through natural actions of its characters. That’s not to say they’re unreliable, especially Ramsay, but the final revelation made me weak at the knees.

If I told you what the story hinges on, you’d probably never pick it up. It’s so deceptively simple. But Davies had crafted a masterpiece. One that works on so many different levels due to its construction and even more so because we don’t fully realize it until we reach its conclusion.

So, Frunk, I urge you to read it. It is not one of those depressing, existential modernistic texts or, as Mir described, something by those miserable German authors. But I think you’d appreciate the Jungian archetypes, the guilt of its protagonist, the hagiology, the fool-saints, and just the story itself. As a gift from one booklover to the other, I offer this recommendation.

Sincerely,
Cave Hinds

Brooks Hansen. The Chess Garden.

Brooks Hansen’s The Chess Garden is about the spiritual life of Dr. Uyterhoeven, which is detailed through twelve letters, in a form of an allegory, written to his wife who in turns reads them to the town they’ve called home. To call this novel allegorical fantasy sounds, to my ears, dismissive, so I’ll refrain. The book is a marvel of invention, of ideas, and of heart. Its end I find thematically similar to John Crowley’s Little, Big, though Hansen’s novel is not quite on the level of that masterpiece.

The novel’s structure is one of its biggest strengths, and one of its few flaws. It switches between the Dutch doctor’s wife and town, his biography, and his startling letters. They fit perfectly together, much like the golden leaf cloaks pieced together by monks in the Antipodes, the imaginary land the doctor visits. But I call it a flaw due to the tediousness of the biographical sections, which I concede are necessary, but, at times, a bore to get through. It’s partly due to the dry, detached manner of Hansen’s prose style. The style works in perfect conjunction with the fantastical elements, in a restrained way that casts them as almost natural, be it the wax-dripping candle trees, the large silver lake, or the chasm of a thousand tumbling dice.

The imaginary, star-shaped land the doctor visits, the Antipodes, is populated with game pieces, mostly chess pieces, but not exclusively so. As his adventures begins, events seem to happen random, with an eye more for imagery than plot, until Hansen introduces key elements and things that happened prior are cast in a new light. The island hosts a group the doctor calls vandals, who wish to destroy goods that are the essence of goods. So if you have the good cane and destroy it, the usage of a cane – its function and purpose – is lost to memory. The doctor sides against the vandals, and it isn’t until later that he understands the need to abandon earthly goods. This is where the spirituality kicks in. Overall, Hansen handles the topic rather well, except for one incredibly awkward scene when Dr. Uyterhoeven speaks of Christ and discusses his own spiritual life. Despite the embarrassing conversation, Hansen finds more effective means to convey his message, such as in the words of one character: “What matters won’t change. What changes don’t matter.” Which is the essence of this very spiritual book, not to mention the nature of the afterlife – at least in the Christian sense.

Charlotte Bronte. Jane Eyre.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë



To call Jane Eyre a feminist text is to insult women. To call it a feminist novel is to insult literature. And to call Charlotte Bronte a writer is to insult civilization. Might as well call Hitler a humanitarian.



Jane Eyre is divided into roughly three parts, which I will summarize in one sentence: It is about an abused orphan who falls in love with a man who keeps a woman upstairs that bites others. The plot isn’t very surprising or subtle, nor is it of much interest. As a child, Jane Eyre is neglected and abused at her adopted home and later at a boarding school. Life gets better as she ages and as she later takes employment under a Mr. Rochester.



Yes, Mr. Rochester is the same man Jane falls into a deep, unconvincing love with, the same man who shelters a mad-woman upstairs. All is revealed in a ridiculous plot twist. Yet, while Jane’s feelings never changes for Mr. Rochester, she is forced to abandon him due to propriety’s sake. This begins the third section, which details another boring plight in Jane’s life. She improbably meets up with relatives, though the fact isn’t uncovered until later. When it is discovered, her cousin immediately proposes to Jane. All of a sudden, her being blood-relation makes her eggs viable – I don’t know why.



Unsurprisingly, Jane rejects the proposal and seeks out Mr. Rochester once more. Mr. Rochester, though now wife-less, is blind and crippled, which, according to Bronte, makes the once superior man now on equal footing with Jane. Yeah… this novel was certainly revolutionary.



There is only one reason I can celebrate Jane Eyre’s existence and it’s due to her younger sister’s rebuttal, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte. So successful was Anne’s rebuttal that upon her death Charlotte repressed it. Thankfully, readers can now rightfully be disgusted be Charlotte’s works and then feel redeemed by basking in Anne’s glow.




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My Cats.

Penelope.


Penelope, crouched.


Penelope, asleep.


Odysseus.


Odysseus, hiding.


Odysseus, found.


Odysseus, hello.