A light read with a dire warning in Cat’s Cradle

Cat’s Cradle was my first foray into the hugely popular Kurt Vonnegut. It is about what I expected, which is to say, not quite my kind of style, but I can see the appeal. It did however leave a strong impression on me.
The book is written in first person, with the narrator telling the story of when he set out to write his own book. He wanted to write about what Americans were doing on the day Hiroshima was bombed in World War II. For research, he sets out to find the family of one of the fathers of the bomb, Felix Hoenikker. Felix had died years before, and left three very peculiar children who are now very peculiar adults. Felix also supposedly left another more deadly invention called ice-9, a substance that turned any water it touched instantly to ice. A funny trick when using only a bowl of water in front of you, it would be deadly if it ever touched a river or ocean, as it would instantly spread to all other places that body of water touched (i.e. the whole planet). However, Felix’s living colleagues all agree ice-9 was just a myth.
When the narrator tracks down Felix’s oldest son Frank, who has set himself up as a military leader in the small fictitious Caribbean nation of San Lorenzo, he heads there and also runs into the rest of the family. We see just how crazy the kids are, as well as how outlandish the island nation is, in conversations in the second half of the book. There is more detail than I care to get into here, but suffice it to say, there is a weird religion that everyone follows, yet no one admits to. Before the end, the kids admit they do in fact each carry a piece of ice-9, which does indeed up getting out and basically destroying the world, leaving only a handful of survivors. The narrator contemplates mankind’s future on this desolate planet, and what got them here, as the book ends.
The manner of writing is very quirky and downright silly at times (think Wes Anderson, though obviously Vonnegut came long before). Having said that, there is depth and meaning in this book. Written at a time when the Cuban missile crisis very nearly wiped us all out, Vonnegut obviously looked at what could have happened if cooler heads hadn’t prevailed. I’ve read that in other books, Vonnegut focuses strongly on the idea of free will, and that certainly is strong here too, with Felix’s kids destroying the world basically because they did whatever they wanted to do in life, with little thought to the consequences. The book feels like it is going nowhere fast, for a huge portion, but when it shifts in the final 50 pages, it turns fast, and leaves you with a lasting impression and something to think about.

Knowles’ classic still great 25 years later

I first read John Knowles’ A Separate Peace back in middle school. It’s the kind of book that is on most grade school and high school reading lists, so I’m sure many of you have read it as well.
To refresh your memory, the first-person narrator, Gene, attends a prep school named Devon in the early 40’s. Going into his senior year, all of the talk among students and teachers is the current world war. Gene is a bookworm and has no plans to enter the war, and while he is popular among his peers, he is continually overshadowed by his best friend and roommate, Phineas (Finny). When Gene causes Finny to fall out of a tree and shatter his leg though, they both have to deal with the changing dynamics of their friendship.
This book has some pretty straight-forward themes. Mostly it is a coming-of-age story, with Gene starting out as a child, and after realizing the serious consequences of his actions, he matures and changes the course of his life. Jealousy is also central. It agitates Gene that Finny always gets away with breaking all the rules, but once Finny loses his athleticism, their roles are slightly reversed, and Finny becomes jealous of Gene’s mobility, almost trying to live his (Finny’s) life through Gene’s. A short book, and an easy, though satisfying, read. As an adult re-reading it, you might just pick up a lot more than the first time around.

Muddled plots and characters in Faulkner’s Light in August

I’m going to chalk William Faulkner’s Light in August as a great book that I just don’t want to have to spend the time deciphering. There’s a lot going on, some of which Faulkner opts to share with us, other things he leaves for us to figure out, but all of it is told in a rather obtuse way.
It has basically 3 over-arching story lines, taking place in the south in the 1930’s. Lena is a young woman who has become pregnant by a southern rascal, Lucas Burch, who heads out of town upon hearing the news. She convinces herself that he is just coming up with money to marry her and build a family, and when he doesn’t show up as the baby’s date approaches, she sets out to find him. We also learn about Joe Christmas, an orphan who struggles with his heritage. Though he looks white, he believes he had a black father, which leaves him angry towards both races at different points in his life. He spents his first 25 or 30 years as a pretty awful person; picking fights, destroying lives, and not owning up to his sins. The third story is that of Hightower, a disgraced minister in the town of Jefferson, Mississippi. Through an unfaithful wife and a mental meltdown, he is a preacher without a congregation. Jefferson is where all the stories connect, as Christmas has settled here and Burch as well, who has changed his name to Joe Brown.
Lena finally comes to town in her search, meeting Byron Bunch, who recognizes her quarry based on Lena’s description of him. She arrives just as Christmas’s white lover is murdered (by Brown or Christmas we never learn), and Bunch sets Lena into a cabin to await her lover, even as he himself falls in love with her. When word gets out of Christmas’s heritage, he becomes the de facto target of the police search. The story gets stranger from there, with Christmas’s maternal grandparents entering the scene and Hightower becoming heavily involved before the end.
The book is obviously mostly about race, and how that affects our views of people (or at least, those views in the 30’s when the book was written). We’ve come a long way in many ways, but not so far in others. My only problem is sometimes the characters’ actions don’t make much sense, from a reader’s (outsider’s) perspective, or even in context within the lines of the novel. Whereas my previous read captured my interest and made me want to ponder the interweaving plots and subplots, I mostly just wanted to move on from this book.

Newest Star Trek film goes back to its roots

Star Trek Beyond marks now the third movie in the “new” rebooted franchise. With a fourth movie all ready in the works, this cast will match the Next Generations crew in theater releases. This new movie, for me, felt almost like a throwback to the original series, and I think Star Trek fans and sci-fi fans in general have plenty to like here.

The film revolves around the Enterprise following a distress call to a distant planet. There they are attacked before they have a chance to ready, and James T Kirk ultimately finds himself marooned on the planet with most of his crew dead or captive, and the Enterprise destroyed (again!). As he, Spock, Bones, and Scotty try to rescue their friends from the newest big bad evil guy, they find unlikely friends also on the planet. Even when they make it off, they must still save the Federation from this newest crisis.

When I say it feels like a throwback, I mean the plot, dialogue, and just the general “feeling” of this film brings visions of the original crew. You can supplant Chris Pine with William Shatner and I’m not sure the movie changes all that much. I think this has amazing value for Star Trek fans who maybe felt a little backstabbed at seeing Khan resurrected in the last Star Trek film, but even casual fans can really enjoy this film too.  Stunning effects and some nail-biting action sequences keep it tense, but Kirk keeps his cool and the film never loses its Trek-like fun atmosphere. With original Spock Leonard Nimoy passing away last year (and slight spoiler, in the beginning of this film off-camera), this movie is definitely a proper tribute to his and his original crew’s legacy.

Quick takes on 5 films

The Family Fang is a rare dramatic role for lead Jason Bateman (who also directed). He plays Baxter, who, with his sister Annie (Nicole Kidman), are more famous for their parents actions than their own (though Baxter has written some acclaimed novels and Annie is a Hollywood actress). Growing up, their parents made “performance art,” staging the kids as props in fantastic situations and filming passersby’s reactions. When the parents go missing, leaving behind a crime scene full of blood, the adult children don’t know whether to believe them truly in danger, or if it is just the newest art scene to fool their fans. Brilliant acting by Bateman especially, and the film is raw and emotional, in which the viewer can’t help but be swept up in.
Hello, My Name is Doris showcases that Sally Field hasn’t lost an acting step with age. She plays Doris, who has lived at home with her mom all of her life. Now her mom has finally passed away, and her life is shaken up. In a bit of a life crisis, Doris falls for a man at work who is half her age. Field is breathtakingly good in this film. She runs the gamut of emotion and I felt all of it with her. She misses her mom, she aches for the life she could have had, had she not stayed home to care for her ailing mother, and she longs for love. At the same time, she experiences supreme joy with new friends that she may have missed out on. In the end, the movie is about moving on, though not necessarily the way you think you might.
King Jack is a well acted and emotional story of a coming-of-age in a small town. Jack is picked on by everyone older than him, and ridiculed by those of his same age. He does bring a lot of it on himself by trying to act tough, and get out of the shadow of his older, popular brother. He seems to be on the road towards juvenile deliquency with his constant fighting, when really he is just trying to stand up for himself. When he and his younger cousin become the targets of a particularly ruthless bully, he needs to decide when enough is enough. I make it sound fairly ho-hum, but the movie is deeply moving and more than your average indie flick. I had not heard of the lead, Charlie Plummer, before, but this is one to keep an eye out for.
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot is the latest comedy starring Tina Fey. She plays a journalist at a TV station, who finally has a chance to get in front of the camera if she is willing to report from the war in Afghanistan. Semi-biographical but with Fey’s comedic talent (at least in the first half), the film is just entertaining enough to keep you watching. It loses some steam comedically in the second half, where the meat and potatoes of the script come together in an actual plot, but there is still enough there to want to see how it all ends. A little vulgarity at times keeps it a solid R rating, so watch this one after the kids are asleep, but you don’t need to be diehard Fey fan to enjoy it.

 

The Invitation is a pretty boring for a thriller. A couple gets invited to a friendly get-together, by some people they haven’t seen in years. The first 60 minutes is slow in building but with plenty of B movie sideways glances and creepy music. The last 30 minutes turns into an even worse cliché slasher film. The movie has some recognizable faces, but definitely low budget and not all that well put together. There are better low budget movies out there.

The brilliance of a modern classic in Infinite Jest

I’ve finally just finished David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. Took me a solid 4 weeks to read this one, and I’m not a slow reader. Coming it at over a 1000 pages (plus endnotes, and sometimes endnotes on the endnotes!), and an often convoluted narrative, it isn’t the easiest read, but it is well worth the journey. It is an absolutely brilliant work, I think one of the truly great novels of the last half century.

This will be a very different kind of synopsis, because I won’t say anything about the book at all. Much of what makes this book exciting is a series of plot revelations. There are big shifts in the story, and sometimes plot elements you thought were maybe going nowhere, end up being vitally important to the overall story. So while I won’t be saying anything about the story, I’ll instead write a little about where (I think) it came from and its lasting appeal.

I was first turned on to this novel from a film I saw last year, The End of the Tour, which was biographical about the author’s life just after this book was published. That movie was great, and it made me very curious about this book that was being applauded so heavily at the time it came out. In fact, when I had about 100 pages left in the book, I went back and re-watched the movie, and I got a very different feeling from it after having read most of the book now. Wallace was (he committed suicide in 2008) very introverted and obviously highly intelligent. He admitted to having an addictive personality (and many forms of addiction play a heavy role in Infinite Jest), but he also (in the movie) talks about people being spoon-fed entertainment and just taking it without thought or perspective. “The Entertainment” is also key to this novel.

So what does Wallace do with his ideas about entertainment and addiction? He writes this novel that leaves much to the reader to come up with their own conclusions. If you google reviews, most negative reviews rant  that the ending is too sudden and leaves too much open to interpretation. I feel that is exactly what Wallace wanted. And really, the answers are all there if read carefully and in-between the lines, though a lot of it is easily missed because parts might be buried in drug-induced ramblings or dream-like hallucinations. I tend to think that even though the book is hefty and long, there really isn’t much in there (if anything) that doesn’t deserve its place. Many times seemingly innocuous passages end up having a strong impact on the reader’s understanding of how it all fits together, even though you might not know it at the time. Which means re-reading the whole damn book again (which I will be doing some time in the next year, while it is still fresh in my mind). So that takes me to my final observation.

Wallace wants us to grow with his novel. He wants us to think for ourselves. He does give us all the keys to understand Infinite Jest, but he doesn’t just map it all out for us, and sometimes doesn’t even show us the doors that those keys open. It is up to the reader. Having read it, I googled interpretations of the ending, and there are many, and what was beautiful about the whole experience, my own was not in the majority. I think Wallace would be ok with that too.

Quick takes on 5 films

Green Room is sort of meh. Actually not a bad movie, but a little stereotypical of this genre. A rock band is touring from town to town, barely making enough money to keep gas in the van. As a last resort they take a gig at a neo-nazi hangout. When they witness a murder in the back room though, they are held prisoner, and the decision is made to kill them as witnesses. They decide not to go down without a fight. The bad guys are a little cliché but the action is good and the film doesn’t play out in an entirely foreseen way. Not all that memorable, but a worthy way to spend 90 minutes.
Triple 9 is one of those movies where the amazing cast can’t quite save the story. Not a bad movie, but when you look at the actors (Casey Affleck, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Kate Winslet, Woody Harrelson, and those guys from “Breaking Bad” and “The Walking Dead”, among others!), you expect something pretty stellar. The movie is about a group of thieves and dirty cops, doing a couple jobs for the Russian mafia, and the good cops and detectives trying to put it all together. A lot happens in the first 20-30 minutes where you think it is going to get really deep and complex, and then it never does. But still, good action and decent acting (at least they weren’t just mailing it in) put together a passable film, but a few too many holes will leave you wanting more.
45 Years is very enjoyable, and a poignant look at how events long past can have real implications on your emotions in the present day. Kate and her husband Geoff are getting ready to celebrate their 45th wedding anniversary, having had to postpone a big party on their 40th when Geoff underwent a major heart procedure and had to fight back to life. A week before the big party this time around, Geoff receives a letter that an old girlfriend’s, Katya’s, body has been found. They had been hiking in Switzerland when she’d slipped off a cliff, and apparently she’d become frozen in the ice, her body now preserved all these years. Though this was all before Kate ever knew Geoff, she is consumed by feelings of jealousy and hurt, especially when Geoff admits that Katya was more than a girlfriend, and in fact they were engaged at the time. Over the next few days, Geoff becomes increasingly possessed about Katya and their time together 50 years past, and withdrawn from Kate, and Kate doesn’t know what to make of it as their anniversary party approaches. The ending is just ambiguous enough. Fantastic acting by Charlotte Rampling, who was nominated for an Oscar.
Eye in the Sky is a movie that will get you thinking. Helen Mirren oversees a drone strike program, jointly between the UK and the USA. They are hunting 3 high profile targets in Africa, and when the 3 come together in a house, the team is faced with the decision to take them out and risk killing nearby innocents, or miss possibly their greatest chance to get all 3 terrorists at the same time. Really fine cast including Alan Rickman (his last on-screen movie), Aaron Paul, and Barkhad Abdi (from the hit Captain Phillips). The movie shows the strife amongst politicians, when everyone keeps passing the buck higher up the food chain, as no one wants to be the one to make the final decision, as well as showing the turmoil among the military. Some are willing to take the shot, seemingly not caring how many innocents die, and others struggle with killing even one non-target. The movie does a great job of balancing the good and bad consequences of the choice, and ultimately, the decision made will affect different viewers in very different ways.

 

I may have mentioned it before, but I have a soft spot for sports films, and I like the Olympics, so a movie about the Olympics will get me every time. I really enjoyed Eddie the Eagle, but not just because of its setting. Taron Egerton is incredible as Eddie, who wanted nothing more than to play in an Olympic games. After trying different sports growing up, he finally settles in as a ski jumper, mostly because his native UK has no team, so it is an easier road to the games. He latches on to a former jumper as a coach (played by Hugh Jackman), and sets out to reach his goals. I’m not sure how factual the base-on-a-true story movie is, but it is quality film and can be enjoyed by all ages.

Quick takes on 5 films

The Wonders is an Italian film, with a couple different subplots going on. It follows a rural family of beekeepers living a simple life. They struggle to get by and have none of the trappings of modern times. However, when a reality show competition comes to the area, offering prize money to the local family with the best product, their simple lifestyle is put at risk. At the same time, the eldest daughter, Gelsomina, is coming of age. She struggles with being the one everyone else relies upon to continue their hard life, with her desire to want to do and see more. Like a lot of foreign films, the dialogue (at least the translated, subtitled dialogue) can be a little hokey and over the top, but it is a heartfelt film and enjoyable.
Anomalisa is a throught provoking film in a different style. Written by the great Charlie Kaufman, it is a stop motion film, but this one isn’t for the kids. Michael Stone is due to give a speech at a seminar out of town, but on his walk from the plane through the airport to his hotel, we see that he perceives everyone around him the same way. All men and women have the same face and same voice, and they all annoy him. At the hotel, he finally hears a female voice down the hall, and he runs to find her. They spend the evening together, but what happens from here, I’d hate to give away. If you like Kaufman’s inspriring films, you’ll enjoy this one as well.
The Program tells the rise and fall of Lance Armstrong, played here by Ben Foster. Foster is great in the movie, and he obviously worked on getting down Lance’s mannerisms and faces; there are scenes where he (Ben) looks a lot like him! Having said that, the movie is sort of boring. It jams Lance’s full career from 1993 – 2011 (or so) in under two hours. Some parts feel rushed, and others you wish they’d have rushed further. I don’t know how accurate the film is, but Lance is portrayed as incredibly egotistic, and not all that secretive about his doping. By the time he is brought down, it is no surprise due to the sheer number of people aware of his cheating.
Race is a little better, but (unfortunately) is a little boring too. It tells of Jesse Owens’ rise and breakthrough at the 1936 Olympics in Nazi Germany. It should be a thrilling movie, and the final half hour or so does almost reach must-watch status, but the film as a whole is lacking. It is easy to root for Owens in an environment and time when he has to fight for everything, and the movie leans a little too heavy on that promise. It stars Stephan James as Owens and Jason Sudeikis as his Ohio State coach. James is fantastic, but Sudeikis still has a way to go to distance himself from the comedies and romantic-comedies he is known for.

 

The Wave is a Norwegian disaster movie, and a relatively good one. It takes place around a quiet mountain town in Norway. Kristian is a geologist who monitors for quakes in the mountain, at a waypost that is built to give early warning in case of an earthquake. A large avalanche can lead to a tsunami in the canyon, wiping out the town below. The first half of the movie is great, as little warning signs are popping up and Kristian is getting increasingly worried of impending disaster. When the calamity comes, the movie (for me) slows down a bit, as the tight suspense is replaced by more of a search-and-rescue kind of flick. Still very good and a rewarding film.

Quick takes on 5 films

Even I give up on some films. James White is about a listless, goal-less, waste of a human being, who I’m sure turned it around by the end, or at least I hope he did. I wouldn’t know, as I quit about 30 minutes into this one. I get that it is an art film and not for everyone, but it is damn hard to watch, even for someone like myself that typically likes independent films. The scenes are choppy and show moments in James’s life over a couple months, after his dad has died and his mom is seriously ill, but there is no coherency and very little to get behind. Maybe it eventually turned a corner, but that corner was too long in coming.
Life is one of those films where the acting outshines the movie. Semi-biographical, it is about the weeks leading up to the East of Eden premiere, when photographer Dennis Stock followed James Dean around taking photos for a story about this new up-and-comer. Robert Pattinson as Stock and Dane DeHaan as Dean are equally brilliant in this film, and though the film itself is solid but not extremely compelling, film buffs will want to see this for those two alone. If you only think of Twilight when you think of Pattinson, you are missing out on his last few outstanding showings, and relative newcomer DeHaan channels the ultra-cool but seriously haunted Dean as few probably could.
I didn’t get this one, but it is a foreign film (Romanian) so perhaps something is lost in reading the subtitles. The Treasure is a comedy (I think?) about two men, down on their luck, digging for treasure in one of their’s great-grandma’s old houses. The two say and do fairly ridiculous things, the least of which is digging for treasure basically on an old passed down legend, and putting all of their remaining funds into said search. A really low-key film, and delivered throughout in a deadpan fashion.
Entertainment is anything but. It stars Gregg Turkington and is sort of based off his persona of Neil Hamburger. If you’ve ever seen his schtick, he’s the comedian that does terrible one-liner jokes, and is unfunny on purpose. This film is basically 1 ½ hours of that. The comedian is on the road, going to increasingly worse and worse venues (bars), to fewer and fewer patrons, while his jokes are getting worse all the time. It seems to blend into his real life too, as during the day his trips around the towns he’s visiting just get more strange and he seems more depressed. In the end, Turkington is the only one laughing, and the movie can’t be anything more than a joke he’s pulled on the viewer for self amusement.

 

And finally, after a series of so-so to terrible films, I got a good one in Of Mind and Music. Dr Cruz is a neuroscientist researching to find a cure to Alzheimer’s, of which is mother is suffering. He returns home from a long international trip to find she has progressed rapidly and no longer remembers him. When he stumbles upon a local street performer, Una Vida, he makes it his goal to help her in some way since he wasn’t there for his own mom. He finds that even as Una Vida gets worse, she is brought back to coherency by her music. A very touching film about trying to find hope in a situation where none exists.

James’ Wings of the Dove is hard to read, but ultimately worth it

My first Henry James read, one of the greats. I have to say after reading The Wings of the Dove, James is obviously brilliant when it comes his grasp of the English language. I’ve never read a book that was both so hard to read, yet so rewarding for its substance. To say James is “wordy” is an understatement, with extremely long sentences that never quite become run-ons, paragraphs that go on for pages, and even his characters often repeat each other to lengthen it further (“You mean she did not wish to see you?” “Yes, she did not wish to see me.”). This novel demands your full attention, you cannot have the tv on in the background, or any distraction around you. Even so, I had to go back and re-read sections often, just because my mind would wander. But at no time did I feel frustrated or bored, James is just that good.

The novel follows a small group of characters in England. Kate Croy is a beautiful young woman, with unfortunately no family fortune to elevate her status, her dad having squandered their money on drugs. She is watched over by her Aunt Maud, who will only let her marry to further her station. However, Kate is secretly in love with Merton Densher, a poor writer, and so far has been rebuffing Aunt Maud’s pick for her, Lord Mark.

Densher goes away to the USA on a writing assignment, and there meets a lovely, young, very wealthy woman named Milly Theale, and her traveling partner Susan Stringham. Susan and Maud are old friends, and when they come to England, the whole group meets up. Here we learn that Milly is ill, in fact dying from some unknown illness, but she doesn’t let on. Somehow Kate suspects it though, and tells Densher to get close to Milly, to woo her even. Lord Mark tries to propose to Milly, but by then she has all ready started to fall for Densher and declines. The group travels on to Venice as a vacation, mostly because Milly wants to experience all of life before her death.

As Milly’s condition worsens, the others start to realize something is up. Kate and Maud return back to England, but before leaving, Kate tells Densher her whole plan. She wants Densher to marry Milly, who would then leave him her fortune upon her death. Densher is shocked, but agrees to go along with the plan despite his misgivings. It goes awry though when Lord Mark comes to visit Milly, and tells her that Kate and Densher have been secretly engaged this whole time. She is heartbroken, meeting Densher once more before he sets back off to England. She dies while he is en voyage.

When he gets back, he confronts Kate. He has received a letter from Milly, written on her deathbed and as yet unread by him, and he wants to know if Kate told Lord Mark of their engagement, as no one else had known. He asks her to confirm or deny, which she refuses, and instead tosses the letter into the fire before he can read it. Densher tells Kate that Milly has still left him a lot of money, but that he cannot accept it because of what he has done. He tells Kate that he will still marry her, if she too refuses the money, however, if she chooses, she can take the money and Densher will leave her. The ending is somewhat cryptic, but Kate does say something along the lines of their lives not turning out as planned, hinting that she will take the money and leave Densher. (Of course, it could also mean that she will marry him and be poor. The joys of interpretation!)

As I said, I thoroughly enjoyed this novel, even with it being one of the more challenging books to get through. I’ve quit books that weren’t this hard to read, but James keeps your attention through it all. If you can stick with it, it is a rewarding experience.