31 August 2011

So, google+ is gonna shame me into blogging again.

Yup. Let’s try to do this right for the 9th time or whatever…

Having half the summer off made things fly by in a hurry. I read a couple of great books – in especial Felix Gilman’s “The Half-Made World,” for which no linked reviews will be provided. It’s a fantasy/sci-fi book, and I don’t read a lot of those, so I can’t really judge it from the standpoint of whether it’s successful within its genre. But as storytelling, it’s dazzling. It’s sort of an alternate history of America, with a touch of magical realism lending a lot of weight to the use of archetypes. The mythic West, about which much ink has been spilled, is actually literally unmade: land is “made,” or formed, I suppose, by the sustained presence of humans. Humans name things, and keep the landscape from being quite so inconstant (to pilfer a phrase from Auden.) Far out West, at the furthest point you can travel, land, sea, and sky are inseparable. We become familiar with three distinct factions, more or less: you have The Line, which razes the natural world in its thirst for oil and what it defines as “progress.” You have the terrifying and bloodthirsty Gun, which recruits characters that have Waitsian names like Dandy Fanshawe, to do its bidding – which is mostly to kill and terrorize the men of The Line. And way back when, there was a honest to goodness republic buried somewhere, a society which believed in order, laws, and peace.

Anyway, the book is great fun – the writing is terrific, the characters are all compelling, the archetypal subjects are familiar – native Americans, early Christians, abolitionists - and there’s a pleasant haziness there that keeps some of the images just beyond the edges of what you can imagine. For example, we never quite get a clear sense of what the Engines that drive the Line look like, nor do we understand how the spirits that constitute Gun exist, or where they exist. Anyhoo, I understand a sequel is in the works, and I can’t wait to see where it goes from here.  

Stephen Malkmus came out with a new album, and you should listen to it.

I also developed a bit of a musical crush on Jessica Lea Mayfield.



Also, everyone had babies.

And that about catches you up on 2011 so far. More on thesis, school, and other things to follow.