Books: N0S4A2 by Joe Hill (2013)

With N0S4A2 (Nosferatu), author Joe Hill hems even closer to the odd, the weird and the often horrifying universe of his father, Stephen King. 

This is  a  creepy, suspenseful novel of the supernatural, where a man in a 1938 Rolls-Royce Wraith kidnaps kids and takes them to a place he calls Christmasland.

Of all the holidays, Christmas remains my favorite, even if it’s lost all meaning. I love the decorations, I love the music (which is odd, because it’s so religious and I’m not very religious), I love the sweets and all the other food that goes with those 6 weeks that starts at Thanksgiving. Yeah, presents are great, but for me they pale next to the colorful lights, the sparkling tinsel, and the smell of pumpkin pie and gingerbread cookies (love the odor, but not a huge fan of the taste). 

Here in N0S4A2, Hill gives us a very dark side to the holiday. Charles Manx has a totem, one that enables him to traverse our world to an “mindspace” dimension where Christmas exists all the time (ever since I saw the fourth Indiana Jones movie, the one with the aliens who don’t come from space, but from other dimension, the whole innerspace crutch seems a bit nonsensical to me, mostly because then the writer really does not have to explain too much about the internal logic of how a man and a car, or a girl and bridge can do what can be done in the this book). The Wraith, which could be the cousin to King’s Christine, exists here in our world, but is also able to open a doorway to Christmasland, where Manx drives the kidnapped children down the highways of his mind. It sort of preserves them in their young innocence, but it also sucks the life out of them during the car ride. What’s left of the children –empty husks, really – is stored away like cans of corn in the dark pantry of his demented mind. Thus, these kidnapped children now can live worry free life and never, ever be hurt by the outside world, or (the reason for Manx’s demented idea) by their parents. Much like Neverland, the kids never need to grow up.

For a long time, Manx has been able to do what he thought right, until he met a seventeen year-old girl in 1996, Victoria McQueen. Much like what Manx could do, when Vic was a child in the mid 1980’s, she was able to leave her squabbling parents behind, and with her Triumph bike and a magical bridge, she could go anywhere. First not understanding what it was she could do, Vic used the bridge to find lost things. But like any magical thing, it began to take its toll on her. But a near fatal accident put her trips behind her. 

Until a decade later when a much troubled Vic uses her thoughts and her bridge that brings her into the contact with Manx and his able henchman (or Renfield, if you will), Bing. But Vic is able to escape, saved by a fat young man who will –as time moves on- becomes Vic’s lover that produces a son, Bruce Wayne Carmody.

Now, more than another decade later, Vic remains a troubled woman. She is damaged by her parents, her magical bridge and life in general. Despite this, she still loves her son Wayne and –though she seemed never to admit it out loud for a long time- Lou, the geek that saved her. But the past, much as the theme in many of his dad’s novels, never stays there, and Manx (caught and imprisoned and who died there, but was able to walk out even after his heart was removed) never forgot the one girl who got away.

But as much as Manx wants Vic to pay for what she did to him, his real target is her son Wayne, and an epic battle for control over the soul of a 12 year-old boy is about to begin.

It is clear that Joe Hillstrom King inherited his father’s droll, gothic style humor –that includes the rhyming Bing and stuttering Liberian who possess some version of what Vic and Charles Manx can do. And much like his dad, Hill is able to create wonderful, believable characters. We see Vic go from being a messed up kid, to a messed up parent and it all rings true. And Manx can come across, at times, as a sympathetic vampire. I mean he does horrible things in pursuant of his goals, but he is not evil in every sense of the typical horror novel tropes (this something King has done in his later novels as well, especially in Under the Dome where we meet Big Jim Rennie. He is a horrible person, but evil? And in 11/22/63, King paints Oswald much more human. Yes, he's still a bitter man and a wife-beater, but was he evil enough to kill a president?)

Also, if Joe Hill is to be the next Stephen King, he seems to be fine with the comparison (he decided to use a pen name early in his career in hopes of getting published on his own merits, not his name. The story goes that not even his publishers of his story collection 20^th Century Ghosts and his first novel, Heart-Shaped Box, was aware of his lineage until shortly before they were released), as he drops some "Easter eggs" to his dad’s work, including The Dark Tower and the True Knot, the “vampires” that will take on Danny Torrance in this September’s long awaited sequel to The Shining, Doctor Sleep.  Then again, this whole book is sort of rift on his dad’s ‘Salem Lot (which borrows heavily from both the classic silent film Nosferatu and Bram Stoker's Dracula) and, as mentioned, Christine. And Hill also names a character after his mother, Tabitha. 

It’s a bit over long, but the characters are strong and the story creepy enough to keep you reading. I’ll admit it kept me turning the pages. Again, the whole “inscapes” aspect leaves me feeling a bit unfilled with what it actually is, or was, but Hill’s abilities as a writer have grown. Heart-Shaped Box was a strong debut, and Horns (which will be a film starring Daniel Radcliff) –though a more conventional Twilight Zone tale- was still wonderfully mean.

Materialism over what ever love is

A few years ago, I saw a commercial for a car company. If I remember right, it starts with a beautiful, statuesque woman coming out of building -her apartment maybe- dressed to the nines. Followed closely behind is a sort nebbish man. The camera follows the woman who stops at the curb, awaiting her gentleman to open the car door for her. It's nice car, some sort of luxury one. A car, maybe, that this stylish woman belongs in -at least in her mind. 

When nothing happens, the guy does not open the door for her, she looks to her left and notices that he has gone to another car that is parked behind the nicer one. Yes, the car the man is driving is not a luxury one, or a new one or as nice as the one parked in front of him. 

While it was a car commercial, the real gist of the ad was if you don't drive this car, then don't expect to date a stylish, beautiful, statutesque woman. And it bothered me, because while some just saw -perhaps- a funny car ad, what I saw was something else: the continued psychology of advertising that puts material objects first in any persons mind; the idea that if you have the nice phone, the great looking car, the most trendiest of clothes, that you'll be accepted into whatever version of the world you think is important.

Now take this ad

There is something wrong with the narrative of this three and half minute story. 

It seems Marco wants to take the next step in his relationship by giving his girlfriend a key to his loft. No problem there. But as soon as she sees it (btw, is this the first time she's ever been there? How long have they been dating, 6 months, a year, a week?), she seems disappointed. He still stuck, as the story implies, in bachelor mode. And instead of talking about it, she leaves in the middle of the night after the implication they had sex. Again, I ask, how long have they been dating? Because her slipping out before dawn seems to imply they are just still "feeling each other out mode." 

As the door closes, Marco looks around his place and thinks (for the first time), hey maybe I need to spruce up the place because my girlfriends implied silence says I'm a loser. 

So, we're off to the furniture store to buy some high-end stuff. JVB Interiors is their name, and according to the Youtube description, designer Damien Beck says "I believe an environment of beauty and style, from clothes to music to architecture to furnishings all contribute to the experience of a deeper, more rich experience for a couple in love."

Okay, a little too hipster, but I'll give him that. 

The description continues: "The short which highlights the tension between a westside girl, Grace, played by young Hollywood starlet Brianne Davis, (Jarhead, Prom Night), and her latin lover city boy, played by Daniel Gradias (Bunim Murray Productions). In just under three and a half minutes, the film pokes fun at Grace's reaction to the gritty rough and tumble, yet uber hip loft that Marco occupies, and the transformation that a home takes when a relationship moves to the next step, and when it finds the help of JVB designer Simon, played by Anand Desai-Barochia." 

Now one is also to assume that Marco must have money, as he lives in a loft (really, a loft? What is this, 1974?). After a quick trip to JVB, Marco has decked out his loft in thousands of dollars (and I mean a second mortgage on your house to pay for it all) worth of furniture, pictures and other "art." In what appears to be just happen in 24 hours. 

Then we cut to Grace sitting on some stairs -her's or Marco's?- with a glass of white wine and dressed in a black evening gown. If she's at Marco's, where did the wine come from, and where did it go when the next shot has her in an elevator holding the key to Marco's apartment -it's also on a cue ball (how tacky she must be thinking). 

She also carries a frown on her face, like she's wrestling with something -world politics, the rising healthcare costs or why she does not hang with other one percenter's?

She opens the door to Marco's place and see all the expensive stuff and smiles. Yep,  her boy finally got her unspoken message, update you're place or I'm not dating you.  

This whole thing is about materialism and not about love. The unspoken -which seems to the problem with Grace and Marco's relationship- is that these objects, these pieces of furniture, those pictures that glass sculpture that looks like the T 1000 melting, is what makes a couple love each other. 

Marco is attractive -we get a few shirtless scenes- but he could do so much better than the bottle blond who puts that type of materialism over true love. The fact that she blond's her hair speaks volumes of how she values her self-worth. Maybe blond do have more fun, but sometimes it turns them into ugly people. 

Love is not about the exterior of a person, but what beats in the chest -the heart. Grace decided that love was about objects and Marco apparently is willing to spend the next 20 years paying off bill to furnish is loft so some girl with let him, you know, screw her.

Books: Hope: A Tragedy by Shalom Auslander (2012)

Solomon Kugel and his wife, Bree and their sun have moved from Brooklyn in an old farmhouse in Stockton, New York. Nervous, fearful and bit odd, Kugel is disturbed by the tapping noises coming from the attic. He has hope that it’s nothing but mice, and not the arsonist who is attacking various farmhouses around Stockton. But he is surprised to find that it’s neither mice nor an arsonist, but an old woman typing on a laptop; an old woman that just happens to be Anne Frank.

Kugel is, of course, surprised, and author Aslander laments “while there’s never a good time to find Anne Frank in your attic, this was a particularly bad time” for our protagonist. As mentioned, the Kugels are recent transplants from New York City to the countryside. To help pay for the farmhouse, they take on a tenant, who becomes nosy when he reminds Kugel that he’s paying for the attic space, but is living in another room, next to Kugel’s own mother, who is pretending to die and who believes, as a Jew, she must suffer for all the millions who died in the Holocaust because she lived a very good life. When Kugel considers calling the cops about his unwanted Holocaust survivor who everyone thought was dead, he can hear his mother voice asking him “What’s the matter, you didn’t have Dr. Mengele’s number?”

The gist of the tale is, as Anne Frank has spent decades writing a novel, would her “fans,” both Jewish and those who are not, see her differently had she really survived the Holocaust. Is she only famous, in the end, because she died there? Would anyone care about her diaries had she lived to see them published? 

This is, in the end, an absurdist tale, written with some hilarious and biting satire. It is filled with guilt and pessimism, yet it never wallows too much in either of them, with Auslander handling the tale with aplomb. It’s a great humorous read, and kind of reminded me of what Mel Brooks might have done after History of the World, Part One.

Books: What in God's Name by Simon Rich (2012)

In his second novel, What in God's Name, author Simon Rich takes on God and creates a funny, touching novel about a deity who is the CEO of Heaven, Inc. 

The biggest problem with Heaven, Inc  is that it’s a grossly mismanaged corporation. For as long as anyone can remember, the founder and CEO (known in some circles as "God") has been phoning it in. Lately, he's been spending most of his time on the golf course. And when he does show up at work, it's not to resolve wars or end famines, but to Google himself and read what humans have been blogging about him. When God decides to retire (to pursue his lifelong dream of opening an Asian Fusion restaurant), he also decides to destroy Earth. His employees take the news in stride, except for Craig and Eliza, two underpaid angels in the lowly Department of Miracles. Unlike their boss, Craig and Eliza love their jobs and they refuse to accept that earth is going under. Inspired to save Earth, Craig and Eliza tells God if they give them thirty days, they will create the greatest miracle seen in centuries: getting two socially awkward humans to fall in love. But true love has never been more difficult as both Sam and Laura –despite being “perfect” for each other- seem destined never to find the course of true love.

A better and more rewarding novel than Elliot Allagash, despite the plot sounding a bit precious, the young author is great with using some hysterical and very sharp dialogue. He’s also able to prevent the novel from becoming gimmicky in many ways due to his ability to create more emotion than one might expect. A quick and fun read.

Books: Putting on the Ritz by Joe Keenan (1991)

The cast of Blue Heaven return in another madcap screwball comedy that takes on the magazine industry and the rivalry between two exceedingly rich Manhattan publishers who hate each other. 

It’s been several months since the events of the first novel, but Philip and Claire's latest efforts at breaking onto Broadway have flopped. Still, fate intervenes, but their efforts have not gone unnoticed by Gilbert's employer, Tommy Parker. Tommy is a gofer for billionaire Boyd Larkin, who wants to insert a spy into the household of his arch-rival billionaire, Peter Champion. Peter's wife, Elsa, is seeking to launch a singing career and needs just the right songwriting team. Gilbert, on the other hand, is hoping that helping Parker and Larkin pull off their scheme will advance his own chances at snagging the world's wealthiest sugar daddy.

Philip and Claire are soon hired. Unfortunately, Elsa can't carry a tune and her acting abilities are nonexistent –this plot stolen, me thinks, from Orson Welles Citizen Kane. Nonetheless, they have to make her look good: Champion could destroy their careers if they don't. But if they manage to pull it off, they'll be on the fast track to fame. It's not long before Philip and Gilbert are caught spying, which leads them to become double-agents, double-double agents, and triple-agents. 

Much like Keenan’s scripts for Fraiser, the novel resemble the old comedies of the 1930s with a lot going on –mostly booze and one-liners zinging by faster than the speed of light. The book peters out long before the end, but it’s an enjoyable romp through the fog of remembrance of things past when screwball comedies of the bygone era ruled and the most important thing –besides paying the rent- was how to get a good paying job that required as little work as possible.

Books: Double Feature by Owen King (2013)

In his debut novel, Double Feature, Owen King creates a darkly humorous look at family and low-budget film making, along with doses of screwball comedy.  The youngest son of best-selling author Stephen King, the writer shows a deft hand at creating odd characters that are sympathetic and very real.

The novel is about filmmaker Sam Dolan, who always had a difficult relationship with his father, a B-movie actor/director Booth Dolan—a boisterous, opinionated, lying lothario whose screen legacy falls somewhere between cult hero and pathetic. Sam has a half-sister Mina, who is, at times, violent yet endearing as well. While she sees the faults of their father, she loves him despite Booth’s tendency to screw-up repeatedly –though Mina’s mother is alive, while Sam’s mother Allie is dead, their relationship is strained due to the possible issue that Sandra may be a bit crazy. 

While still young, Sam makes his first film, "Who We Are." But the money man, who is also the first AD, hijacks the film in post-production, altering the film and destroying almost everything else. With his film irrevocably ruined, he’s trashes the only known copy. But as he tosses the DVD into the bin, it misses and lands on the ground. Too depressed to make sure it’s gone, he leaves.

And that little misstep sets in motion a ten years odyssey for him, as the film develops a cult following. Meanwhile, he toils at Brooklyn video store and doing wedding videos. But one weekend in 2011, Sam is forced to come to terms with his failed opus, "Who We Are," his dad and his messy life –which includes seeing two women, one who is married. Along the way we are joined by Mina, Wesely –his housebound roommate who has become famous on the internet- and Sam’s Godfather Tom, a contractor who can’t seem to stop adding additions onto his house. 

As a long-time reader of his father, Stephen and also now a fan of his brother Joe, Owen King’s turn into the realm of such authors who deal with family –John Irving, Jonathan Tropper- in a humorous way is great. While his dad has done the same, the elder King’s family dysfunction has always been sort of mean. Here the younger King takes a more real (maybe) look at regret, resentment and ambition. And he creates real people, who speak real words of everyday people –a hallmark of what I like about the elder King’s novels. 

While I felt the story petered out towards the end, I was still impressed with the novel, as King’s prose is different from his famous father and rising star of a brother; it seemed wilier, I guess. Finding the human condition is always difficult, but Owen King’s perceptive about people is sometimes what is best about the book; it’s very funny and always charming.

Note: 

Now that I've joined the working world again, I'm bound to slow down my reading time. The last week has been awfully tiring, and while I'm not sure I want to stay with this new company, I also realize I'm in no position to turn it down as well. I fully intend to get back to the Setting Free the Bears, but I needed to read this first. 

Still, until I can find a happy balance of not being so exhausted when I come home from work that all I want to do is watch TV, I might end up reading one or two books a month.