It’s Not Happening

I came by this book of short stories by way of the Onion AV Club, and so far their book reviewers are batting .1000. Every story is set in the same poor, rural county in Ohio (the Knockemstiff of the title), and the characters are grotesque but still mostly relatable, thanks to Pollock’s impressively sympathetic voice. The stories veer into exploitation occasionally, but they’re still compelling enough (and brief enough) to pull the reader along for the ride.

It’s not for everyone – the book should come with a huge orange TRIGGER ALERT sticker. Bad sex, drugs, incest, violence, animal abuse and more roll through nearly every page, but Pollock cares about his characters as more than victim-puppets. The muck tends to serve his stories instead of just papering over the author’s emptiness, as so much shock fiction does. I look forward to his next collection.

PS I finished this months ago, but got far behind in my book review regimen. I’ve got another from December coming up soon…

Jessie got me listening to the Wiretap podcast a while back, and I’ve been meaning to recommend it for a long time. It’s an unusual format, mixing readings, fake interviews, real interviews and staged conversations between the host (Jonathan Goldstein, whom some of you may have heard on This American Life) and his embellished friends and family. The characters and pacing take a while to click, but this episode from a few weeks ago is perfectly accessible and well worth a listen. About half the show is taken up with an awesome email exchange between Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, with good old David Sedaris taking the role of Armstrong. Try it!

I read this while I was away, and it was near-perfect vacation reading. It pushes the big red nostalgia button that nerds of a certain age have for classic video games and, to a lesser extent, 80s pop culture. The plot itself is pretty much the same old lone-hero-fights-the-man-and-learns-something-important-about-himself ringading that has worked so well for centuries, but if you came to RP1 looking for experimental plot structure, you haven’t been paying attention. It feels a bit as if Neal Stephenson and Neil Gaiman collaborated in an effort to cash in on their strengths, and that’s probably as much as most of my people need to hear to run out and get it.

Not sure what Vlasta will think of this, but I like the idea.

The face of the future.

I’ve been (correctly) typecast as someone who enjoys the hell out of books about the early days of real science, so this was a welcome Christmas gift from Jill & Tom. It took me far too long to start and even longer to finish as I kept getting distracted. John Hunter was the first surgeon to apply anything like empirical observation to his field, and he also pioneered the field of living one’s life as an irascible, workaholic jerk.

It’s a great story, filled with body snatching and extra-gruesome pre-anesthesia surgical procedures, but Moore does foreshadow Hunter’s sad ending with the heaviest hands. It’s still good fun for the most part, so if you can take a downer denouement and gore-soaked pages, knock yourself out!