Wednesday Worlds Colliding
What I've Finished Reading
“What the hell?” growled Swoozie. “Get up, you stupid bastard.”
“Humans can't live without their heads,” explained Calvin. It was easy to forget that.
“That's crap. I don't see why I have to be saddled with such a silly weakness just because humans don't have the imagination to realize that their limitations are not required for a video game character.”
“These games are marketed with a human audience in mind,” said Benny.
“It's discrimination.”
Chasing the Moon is a recent novel by A. Lee Martinez, about a world troubled by rifts in reality. There is a difficult population of eldrich god-beings who are trapped in a plane of existence that doesn't want or suit them, and their hapless human wardens who are making the best of it. It's light, funny and pretty impressively sure-footed (a necessary condition of being funny, for this kind of premise). The hero of the book is Diana, whose determination to live rationally in an irrational universe is surprisingly successful. I liked it a lot. It felt like the kind of thing Douglas Adams might have liked to read when he wanted to cheer himself up.
Psmith Journalist is a very strange book, with a premise that should be funnier than it is, but isn't as funny as it could be because. . . Wodehouse is a little uncertain of himself? Is that possible? This is a Wodehouse book in more or less the Wodehouse style, but it's a lot less self-assured than later books I have read -- definitely less self-assured than Leave it to Psmith. It's early-ish (1909?) and it shows. The premise: Psmith and Mike are in America for Mike's cricket tour, but Mike is always playing cricket and Psmith is easily bored. One day they meet the equally bored sub-editor of a sacchrine "family market" newspaper called Cosy Moments, and Psmith talks him into turning Cosy Moments into a muckraking sensation sheet while the editor is away on a doctor-ordered vacation.
Which is an excellent setup and produces the beautiful tagline "Cosy Moments cannot be muzzled!" Then Psmith finds a tenement slum, is unconvincingly moved to anger and pity, and decides to use the paper to expose the owner, which leads to death threats (comical death threats) from several gangs -- and I don't know, I'm not sure that it works? New York can't possibly change Psmith; it can only become more Psmithian as it comes into focus around him, so the action all seems to take place within a bubble. This is perfectly all right when your characters are all natives of the bubble, like Bertie and the aunts getting into difficulties over antique coffee-creamers, but here, where the story attempts contact with The Real Problems of the Urban Poor the effect is weird, somewhere between parody and nothing at all. Also, I spent over a hundred pages thinking that the racism wasn't too bad, but then it got pretty bad.
It's interesting to see the Wodehouse formula applied to American stereotypes circa 1909, and the premise is excellent -- it would make a good movie, if the screenwriters were willing to work on the plot a little, so that the Great Cosy Moments Crusade has a wider range of effects than "hired toughs try to whack Psmith and Billy Windsor for 100 pages."
What I'm Reading Now
I'm supposed to be reading Brideshead Revisited, but the library book sale had Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham, so I'm reading that instead. I didn't think I liked The Razor's Edge all that much, but it got under my skin, and the best thing to do when something gets under your skin is to. . .put a lot of related things under your skin in an attempt to understand them better? I don't know. So far Of Human Bondage is magically delicious, and reminds me a little of Emily of New Moon. There is a sensitive, reticent orphan boy who goes to live with his relatives in the vicarage, who have no idea how to deal with nine-year-olds or any children, and everything is funny-sad and terribly awkward. I might not always love it, but I love it right now.
I also started The Scarlet Pimpernel, because it was fifty cents at the library book sale and I'd never read it before. It managed to find and cross my highly elusive "too classist for me" line on the very first page, an impressive feat but not a very pleasant one. I'm going to read it all the way through as punishment for my sins.
What I'm Reading Next
Brideshead Revisited! Your turn is coming! Also, the bookstore where I work has just received a large donation of P. G. Wodehouse, including lots of books I haven't read, so this space may become a little Wodehouse-dense for a while.
“What the hell?” growled Swoozie. “Get up, you stupid bastard.”
“Humans can't live without their heads,” explained Calvin. It was easy to forget that.
“That's crap. I don't see why I have to be saddled with such a silly weakness just because humans don't have the imagination to realize that their limitations are not required for a video game character.”
“These games are marketed with a human audience in mind,” said Benny.
“It's discrimination.”
Chasing the Moon is a recent novel by A. Lee Martinez, about a world troubled by rifts in reality. There is a difficult population of eldrich god-beings who are trapped in a plane of existence that doesn't want or suit them, and their hapless human wardens who are making the best of it. It's light, funny and pretty impressively sure-footed (a necessary condition of being funny, for this kind of premise). The hero of the book is Diana, whose determination to live rationally in an irrational universe is surprisingly successful. I liked it a lot. It felt like the kind of thing Douglas Adams might have liked to read when he wanted to cheer himself up.
Psmith Journalist is a very strange book, with a premise that should be funnier than it is, but isn't as funny as it could be because. . . Wodehouse is a little uncertain of himself? Is that possible? This is a Wodehouse book in more or less the Wodehouse style, but it's a lot less self-assured than later books I have read -- definitely less self-assured than Leave it to Psmith. It's early-ish (1909?) and it shows. The premise: Psmith and Mike are in America for Mike's cricket tour, but Mike is always playing cricket and Psmith is easily bored. One day they meet the equally bored sub-editor of a sacchrine "family market" newspaper called Cosy Moments, and Psmith talks him into turning Cosy Moments into a muckraking sensation sheet while the editor is away on a doctor-ordered vacation.
Which is an excellent setup and produces the beautiful tagline "Cosy Moments cannot be muzzled!" Then Psmith finds a tenement slum, is unconvincingly moved to anger and pity, and decides to use the paper to expose the owner, which leads to death threats (comical death threats) from several gangs -- and I don't know, I'm not sure that it works? New York can't possibly change Psmith; it can only become more Psmithian as it comes into focus around him, so the action all seems to take place within a bubble. This is perfectly all right when your characters are all natives of the bubble, like Bertie and the aunts getting into difficulties over antique coffee-creamers, but here, where the story attempts contact with The Real Problems of the Urban Poor the effect is weird, somewhere between parody and nothing at all. Also, I spent over a hundred pages thinking that the racism wasn't too bad, but then it got pretty bad.
It's interesting to see the Wodehouse formula applied to American stereotypes circa 1909, and the premise is excellent -- it would make a good movie, if the screenwriters were willing to work on the plot a little, so that the Great Cosy Moments Crusade has a wider range of effects than "hired toughs try to whack Psmith and Billy Windsor for 100 pages."
What I'm Reading Now
I'm supposed to be reading Brideshead Revisited, but the library book sale had Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham, so I'm reading that instead. I didn't think I liked The Razor's Edge all that much, but it got under my skin, and the best thing to do when something gets under your skin is to. . .put a lot of related things under your skin in an attempt to understand them better? I don't know. So far Of Human Bondage is magically delicious, and reminds me a little of Emily of New Moon. There is a sensitive, reticent orphan boy who goes to live with his relatives in the vicarage, who have no idea how to deal with nine-year-olds or any children, and everything is funny-sad and terribly awkward. I might not always love it, but I love it right now.
I also started The Scarlet Pimpernel, because it was fifty cents at the library book sale and I'd never read it before. It managed to find and cross my highly elusive "too classist for me" line on the very first page, an impressive feat but not a very pleasant one. I'm going to read it all the way through as punishment for my sins.
What I'm Reading Next
Brideshead Revisited! Your turn is coming! Also, the bookstore where I work has just received a large donation of P. G. Wodehouse, including lots of books I haven't read, so this space may become a little Wodehouse-dense for a while.