Books: City on Fire By Garth Risk Hallberg (2015)

This is Garth Risk Hallberg’s debut novel, a rare first novel that started a publishing bidding war earlier this year, and in which the author took home a cool $2 million. And for months before its October release, a lot has been said about this 900 pages plus tome. Could it, would it, be the “it” book of the fall season, where folks would be pushing it onto others, saying in a hyperactive voice, “You’ve got to read this”?

While I find City on Fire to be a well written book, it falls short of being the epic it wants to be, and much like Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch, feels way too long, and while filled with a grand prose, it relies on way too many similes, and sometimes obvious plot turns, and mostly unappealing characters.

The story centers around a large cadre of folks: Regan and William Hamilton-Sweeney, estranged heirs to one of the city's biggest fortunes; Keith and Mercer, the men who, for better or worse, love them; Charlie and Sam, two Long Island teenagers seduced by downtown's nascent punk scene; an obsessive magazine reporter; his spunky, West Coast-transplant neighbor; and the detective trying to figure out what they all have to do with a shooting in Central Park. From post-Vietnam youth culture to the fiscal crisis, from a lushly appointed townhouse on Sutton Place to a derelict squat on East 3rd Street, this city on fire is at once recognizable and completely unexpected. And when the infamous blackout of July 13th, 1977 plunges it into darkness, each of these entangled lives will be changed, irrevocably. 

Of course, the above description is only a small part of this book, as it would be very hard to try and cover all the aspects of this long book in any real review. But suffice it to say, we get a very detailed look into a very dysfunctional group of white folks, who despite all the money in the world, can not escape the pull of loneliness and entropy. 

The one thing that occurred to me reading City on Fire is how much it could work better as TV show than a book. Its nonlinear structure, while always workable in novel format, is a bit offsetting here –its sometimes confusing the way time interacts here. I’ve read where Hallberg, a literary critic who covers a wide variety of subjects and genres, admits HBO’s The Wire influenced him in writing this book and I could see this novel would be more interesting as a serialized drama (note the book is split into seven sections, which are stories onto themselves). And like The Wire, which challenges the audience to not fully like any of its main characters. Which is great, it’s a format that I kind of enjoy, and something that television has been trying to do since the millennium.

Did I like it? Yes, but I also felt that it was overlong and a bit New York-centric for me –people who live there will enjoy it more, I sense. I would say, if this was adapted as a TV series, I think it could work. Despite the literary aspect of it, the basic plot is very pulpy in nature. Even so, though, I’m sure it would be critically praised, while suffering low ratings. 

Such is the nature of today’s writers, especially those brought up what many consider a Golden Age of TV drama.

Books: The Shepherd's Crown By Terry Pratchett (2015)

For me, while The Shepherd’s Crown will be the last new Terry Pratchett to be published, I still have a bunch of his novels to go through. Perhaps I’ll never finish them, only time and tide will dictate that. But I will try to get through as many as I can before I too shuttle off this coil. 

But with this book, published six months after his death this past March, the last Discworld novel, fifth and last Tiffany Aching novel brings to an end a large chapter of a long series of novels in which Pratchett, under the guise of fantasy, took on human foibles. 

But this last book, in which it seems its creator might’ve known this would he last before the ravages of Alzheimer’s disease finally overtook him (the disease took a relatively rare form that affected his sight and coordination rather than his memory), fills the story with death and life. There is much darkness here, yet Pratchett left us with some hope that there is light at the end of the tunnel.

He also, through the death of long-time character Granny Weatherwax, gives readers and fans, long and new, young and old, a guide on how we shall process his passing. If there is a “good” part to knowing your time is short, it enables that person a way to prepare those that are left behind. Here, in 41^st and final Discworld novel, Granny (like all witches and wizards) has anticipated her death, and quietly and calmly goes about the business of preparing for the time. She makes her own casket, she selects where she wants to be buried, and then cleans her home, leaving instructions to the one who will now take over it. And when she meets Death, it’s done in such a charming, heartfelt way, as a reader, you’ll feel that Terry Pratchett was telling you that life must go on and (thanks to many things about publishing) will always be near. 

Also, the story is somewhat disjointed, a bit blunt, and simple. It features the return of the Queen of the Elves from the first Tiffany Aching novel (Wee Free Men), who has regained her power and has discovered the rift between the Land of Elves and Discworld has grown thin. But before she can hatch her revenge plan, an upstart goblin (whom she though humans hated) who has learned iron can hurt the elves, has dethroned her and tossed her onto Chalk where she must survive. Taken in by Tiffany, who distrusts her (along with the Nac Mac Feegl), but knows that she can make Nightshade understand that humans, witches, goblins, and wizards can live together.  So an alliance of sorts is hemmed, as Tiffany (already overburdened with taking care of a lot of people, as well as training a new apprentice {a boy who wants to be a witch} along with being the heir to Granny Weatherwax’s home and people) must prepare for a fairy horde that is about to invade Chalk. Her land.

In the Afterword at the end, we are told that while Pratchett did finish the book, he was unable to go over it again, to add or subtract new plot points -it reads like a first draft. This is fairly evident throughout the story, as it seems to missing the tangents he would often go on. The action is fast paced and some characters get lost in the crowd, so to speak. I mean, one of the great things that made these novels work, for new readers especially, was the ability to start almost anywhere, despite the books building one upon the other. Here, Pratchett makes several direct references to past novels, including the trains that were part of the last book, Raising Steam (which seems to me a bit of analogy about change, not only in the Discworld, but the real one as well). It’s as if he knew this would be the last book and was trying to tie the series together. 

Overall, it’s a satisfying novel, even though a funeral like atmosphere hangs over the book. For fans who’ve kept up reading each new book as they came out, it’s a sad day. For me, of course, I have many more to go through. But like life, while this is the end, we will continue on. I think this is what Terry Pratchett was trying to say, along with the empowering notion that he had the ability to pass away with some sort of dignity. And he maybe that will get us, his family and his fans, the strength to march on towards our own undiscovered country.

Books: Ghost Story By Peter Straub (1980)

I originally read Peter Straub’s Ghost Story in 1980, right around when the paperback version was released. I was in the midst of reading Stephen King and knowing that Straub and King were friends, I thought I try another horror novelist. I had already read Dean Koontz, and found him lacking (and find him even today, a pale imitation of King, and John Saul seemed to be stuck going over the same territory again and again. I had enjoyed –for a time-the gothic aspects of V.C. Andrews. But on the whole, over these decades I’ve been reading, only King remained the one author I read continuously in the horror genre. 

After the huge success of Ghost Story in 1979 –Straub had published two mainstream novels before he found moderate success with Julia (1975) and If You Could See Me Now (1977), books with heavy supernatural themes –he went on to write the best-sellers Shadowland (1980) and Floating Dragon (1983). He teamed up with Stephen King to write The Talisman in 1985 before his writing took a turn into more gothic and psychological territory that was formed with what would be called The Blue Rose Trilogy in Koko (1988), Mystery (1990), and The Throat (1993). These complex and intertwined novels extended Straub's explorations into metafiction and unreliable narrators. The thriller Hellfire Club (1996) and Mr. X (1999) would follow, continuing his more literary approach things that go bump in the night. In 2001, he and King published the loose sequel to The Talisman called Black House (which was also disguised as a Dark Tower novel).

Lost Boy, Lost Girl (2003) and In the Night Room (2004) where a return to previous characters featured in The Blue Rose Trilogy (like King, Straub had a tendency to set his stories in and around the same areas, which meant characters and towns from previous novels popped up). A Dark Matter was released in 2010 and remains his last book, though he seems to have a book coming, possibly in 2016.

Anyways, I’ve not read every Straub book, like I’ve done Stephen King. While I like his work, his books are fairly dense and defiantly more literary than long-time friend King. But I had been thinking lately of re-reading a few of his old books, in particular Ghost Story, Shadowland and Floating Dragon. As I’ve noted many times before, I don’t usually re-read books. But here is October and maybe, in this month of Halloween, reading a spooky book seemed appropriate. So, yeah, I re-read Ghost Story.

While I still remembered the structure of the book –it is a ghost story that spans fifty years- I found I still things I had forgotten. The book is way over long, though. This book could’ve been 100 pages less and not lessened his ideas one bit. But it also contains one the best scenes I still remember to this day, when Peter Barnes figures out where some of the ghosts haunting Milburn are hiding out. 

It also got me thinking about the 1981 movie adaptation of this book. I remember how much I disliked it, as the movie jettisoned a lot of the book and stuck with its basic themes of a vengeful ghost. Much like what Stanley Kubrick did with Stephen King’s The Shining, director John Irvin and screenwriter Lawrence D. Cohen sort of took a bare-bones approach. Most likely though, because the novels structure of flashing back and forwards in time and its large cast of supporting characters would’ve made a linear movie difficult. 

Honestly, though, much like Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes, I would not mind a large screen (or even a small screen, multi-part) remake of this book. I think it deserves a better treatment.  

Books: Doctor Who: City of Death By James Goss (2015)

When Target Books ended its run of publishing novelizations of Doctor Who serials in 1990, only five (well, seven, but Evil of the Daleks and Power of the Daleks were well on their way to being adapted and even though Virgin Books would release them, they still fell under the Target Books mark) stories remained unwritten in book format. Three were by the legendary Douglas Adams (who spent a year as script supervisor of the show), and two were by former story editor Eric Saward.

You see, the Target had a long standing policy that allowed writers of serials to pen novelizations of their stories for around £600. Some writers took it, and others passed, allowing novelist like the prolific Terrance Dicks to do the job. But when Douglas Adams penned The Pirate Planet, the second serial of the sixthteen season of Doctor Who, the Target offered him a chance to adapt it. However, he declined (probably rightfully so), saying: “I don't want to be embarrassing but I do have a tendency to be a best-selling author”. Which, of course, translated as: Target Books would fear other authors would demand a higher paycheck for adapting their stories, so The Pirate Planet would remain a “lost” book within Target Books line-up (for now). He would do the same with City of Death and the unfinished and unaired Shada that would be part of season seventeen of the series. 

The other two stories, Resurrection of the Daleks and Revelation of the Daleks (season twenty-one and twenty-two respectively) faced similar issues, with writer Eric Saward asking a higher price to adapt them, along with the always complex licensing issues the BBC and Target Books had with Dalek creator Terry Nation.

But getting back to City of Death, which I noted aired during season 17. Originally, this was not a Douglas Adams script at all. David Fisher had been assigned the story A Gamble with Time, which was about a very rich, suave Count and Countess who were rigging tables at a casinos to fund their time travel experiments. The story was to be set in the 1920s and 1970s with some very limited filming scheduled to be done in Paris (the first time the series would leave the UK to film).

But series producer Graham Williams and Production Unit Manager John Nathan-Turner (who would go on to produce the series from season eighteen to its demise) figured out a way to spend more time in Paris than originally planned. This meant a bit of a re-write on episodes, especially the fourth part of the serial. As according to BBC policy, David Fisher was offered the chance to polish up his script. But, as author James Goss notes in his afterword, “…Fisher was in the middle of an interesting divorce at the time”, and was unable to re-write his story. Thus, it fell to new script supervisor Douglas Adams to type out a new script, with aide from producer Williams and the director Michael Hayes. The four-part adventure would eventually be credited under a pseudonym of David Agnew. 

City of Death, despite its production history, became one of the most popular and most watched Doctor Who shows during its original 1963-89 run. Part of the reason was rival broadcast network ITV having a strike, which led to repeats which led Doctor Who to be one of the only TV stations airing new episodes. But City of Death is actually very good. Oh sure, it has plot holes like most Doctor Who serials, sure the plot was a bit wonky, but what made it shine was the script, the witty dialogue and performances from series stars Tom Baker, Lalla Ward and guest-cast Julian Glover, Catherine Schell, and Tom Chadbon. They all seemed to be having fun.

But like Shada, the legend of City of Death grew. Douglas Adams always said he had plans to eventually adapt these two stories and The Pirate Planet, but they were way far down his “to do list”. Sadly, of course, Adams would die of a heart attack in May 2001 leaving a large cadre of fans in mourning. He remains, in my opinion, one the most creative, most genius authors, of the late 20^th Century. Had he lived longer, he could be have been called the funniest humorist since Mark Twain. And yes, many fans like me also mourned the fact that his three Doctor Who stories would never be seen in print (though Adams never saw a good idea he could not steal, even from himself, and reworked a lot of elements from both City of Death and Shada into his novel Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency). 

Eventually, though, BBC Books would work with Adams Estate to have Shada adapted into a book, which was written by Gareth Roberts and released in 2012. For Roberts to write the book, he drew on the latest versions of the scripts that were available, as well as adding new material of his own to "fix" various plot holes and unanswered questions of Adams original script.

Author James Goss does same here when adapting City of Death. He’s added a lot his own material here, but he’s incorporated notes left by Adams, in particular those on the rehearsal scripts for the episodes; it was here he discovered the Countess Scarlioni had a first name, Heidi. But the book, like all the novelizations of Doctor Who, follows the transmitted version (another-words, there are no additional subplots that were deleted during production). But, like Gareth Roberts before him, Goss fixes some of the serials plot holes –like cliffhanger to episode one where Scarlioni (for unknown reasons) removes his fake face to reveal his true visage. Of course, on TV that makes for a great fright, but in book format, it needs to be explained. And surprisingly, Adams made note of that, as Goss discovered. It seems the twelve splintered versions of Jagoroth, who are working through time to save his race, are not aware they’re aliens at all. This new wrinkle adds some great depth to Scarlioni. 

The novel also breathes life into secondary characters like the tour guide at the Louvre, and creates more background information on the artist (which includes his name) who draws Romana with a cracked clock for a face and the two art gallery lovers (played by Eleanor Bron and John Cleese). 

While Goss is a capable writer, and he’s done a fine job adapting this book, like Shada and The Pirate Planet, I feel Adams could’ve made those into wonderful books, if only because he saw things more differently than others. He found humor and meaning in the absurd and there is not many people in this world today who can do that. 

Finally, James Goss will adapt The Pirate Planet, which BBC Books will release next year. It will be interesting to see what the author will do with that story, as it is one of the oddest, funniest, and wholly weirdest serial Doctor Who made.

Books: Undermajordomo Minor by Patrick deWitt (2015)

One of the biggest things I miss about the closing of Borders was getting Advanced Reader Copy’s of writers books. Most that came were by new authors, but you could always count on an oldie but a goodie (such as Stephen King) from time to time. One book that came in 2011 during the last few months of the companies existence was The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt. It was a darkly comic, Western-inspired story that takes place in Oregon and California in 1851. The narrator is Eli Sisters and his brother Charlie are assassins sent to kill Hermann Kermit Warm who is accused of stealing from the Sisters' fearsome boss, the Commodore. Was it the Sisters fault that the man turned out to be sort of likable?

While the novel, with it’s short chapters and and sparse narrative, sometimes seemed indicate deWitt was penning a screenplay, the book was wonderfully odd. And then, by accident, after reading this book, a remainder version of his first book, Ablutions, came into the store. Of course, as things happen, I’ve yet to pick up the slim book. It’s somewhere here, but at this writing I’m not so sure where it is. Life of a bibliphile.

Anyways, while in Portland working on Something Like Summer, I was surfing through Powell’s and saw that deWitt’s newest book, Undermajordomo Minor, got released. So I scored a copy at the library when I got back. 

And while it’s clear that The Sisters Brothers was a Western (well, western themed, because it really wasn’t about cowboys), Undermajordomo Minor is sort of hard to categorize into a genre. It could be a literary fantasy book, but I don’t think it is. It has tinges of English gothic to it, as well. It may, for me who needs to categorize things, really fairy tale or fable. Well, a fable without a moral. It is certainly a love story and an adventure story but it’s also an ink-black comedy of manners.

“Lucien (Lucy) Minor is the resident odd duck in the bucolic hamlet of Bury. Friendless and loveless, young and aimless, Lucy is a compulsive liar, a sickly weakling in a town famous for producing brutish giants. Then Lucy accepts employment assisting the Majordomo of the remote, foreboding Castle Von Aux. While tending to his new post as Undermajordomo, Lucy soon discovers the place harbors many dark secrets, not least of which is the whereabouts of the castle’s master, Baron Von Aux? He also encounters the colorful people of the local village—thieves, madmen, aristocrats, and Klara, a delicate beauty whose love he must compete for with the exceptionally handsome soldier, Adolphus. Thus begins a tale of polite theft, bitter heartbreak, domestic mystery, and cold-blooded murder in which every aspect of human behavior is laid bare for our hero to observe.”

Once again, deWitt employs short chapters that remind me of what screenplay looks like. But while I don’t find that jarring –it actually propels the story- it may put people off a bit, especially those more literary readers. The prose, which may seem light, is filled with many weighty issues. Much like science fiction writer Joe Haldeman, deWitt is able to give a lot of meaning in short passages. The humor, dark and often laugh out loud, is brilliantly rendered here. Sometimes I often felt I was watching an old BBC costume drama, mixed with Hammer Films spooky castles. The book does take a weird left turn towards the end, but it’s not out of place in the atmosphere deWitt was trying to create. 

But I miss those ARC's because without them, I would have never discovered Patrick deWitt. Now where is that copy of Ablutions?