Monday, February 03, 2003

Pattern Recognition "The sky above the port was the color of television tuned to a dead channel." With this great line began the literary career of William Gibson, a prophet 10 minutes ahead of his time and one of the most important authors of the last years of the 20th century. In person, the Great Man resembles Icabod Crane, and he reads with the enthusiasm of William Burroughs after a big night out with the Wild Boys. The author's own oddly-compelling anti-charisma notwithstanding, his new novel Pattern Recognition seems to find him in fine form (I'll report back in about a week with the complete lowdown).  It is a departure for Gibson in several ways - most notably because it is set in the here-and-now, since the shape of our technology and society appears to have now completely filled the ugly mold that cyberpunk dug for it in the 1980s. It also features a linear narrative from a single character's point of view, a welcome innovation in my opinion since Gibson's trademark multi-camera storytelling techniques had grown a bit stale in his last several outings. Gibson read to a packed house (90% male) at the University of Washington's Kane Hall auditorium, where he plowed laconically through the first several pages of his latest book and delphically orated in response - more or less - to questions from the audience. The organizers of the event then had the supreme bad judgment to allow someone to interview Gibson as he was signing for the (very long) line of people who had plunked down their $24 for the hot-off-the-presses new hardcover. As a result, most people were cheated out of that brief but personal moment of interaction with the author, who becomes basically a piece of equipment programmed to replicate his signature. (Sorry - in my blog, I get to vent). 9:35:42 PM    Emphasize This! []

Friday, January 17, 2003

The Ladder of Success Independent publisher Scala House Press just got some much-needed exposure in a glowing write-up in today's Seattle Times. Scala House are the fine folks who brought Miha Mazinni's terrific novel Guarding Hanna to American audiences, and their other stuff is worth a look too. The Scala House gang are refugees from Publishing Online, a defunct e-book outfit I was briefly affiliated with back in 2000. It's encouraging to find a corner of the economy where bits-and-bytes are yesterday's news and the promising new trend is good old ink-and-paper publishing. 5:06:11 PM    Emphasize This! []

Sunday, December 01, 2002

Village Voice Reviews Guarding Hanna The Village Voice finally published its long-promised review of Miha Mazzini's novel, Guarding Hanna. I know both the publisher and the author were looking forward to the exposure, and having something to point to besides the review I did last month and the brief blurb in Publishers Weekly. The Voice review (by Francine Russo) is generally positive, though it's more of a plot summary than a strong recommendation. Hopefully it will spur others to take note of this intriguing work by one of Eastern Europe's most promising literary talents. 3:12:35 PM    Emphasize This! []

Saturday, November 23, 2002

Feeling Inquisitive Part I I find that to gain a better understanding of our own times, it's often helpful to read history. After all, despite all the material progress, people haven't really changed that much, and by looking closely at the events of the past, it is possible to see where certain ideas and actions can lead. In that spirit, I'm having a go at Henry Lea's monumental work on The Inquisition of the Middle Ages - the handy 900-page single volume abridgement of the 1912 three-volume set. Hey, it's raining up here in the Emerald City and there's not much else going on right now. Unlike more contemporary scholars, Lea's view of the Inquisition is that it was necessary to re-infuse the Medieval Catholic Church with a new spirit of faith, since things had become rather corrupt and oppressive by that time (early 13th century). Indeed the picture he paints is rather grim, with the sale of offices (known as simony) and abuses of all kinds by the clergy completely pervasive, and the element of religious observance almost entirely absent. In passing, he notes that the origin of the institution of priestly celibacy, which dates from this era, was less a matter of scripture than of finances: the Church did not want clergy having (officially-recognized) children to make inheritance claims against Church property. The Church also wanted to guard against the formation of hereditary power structures, since by infusing its ranks with fresh blood, it maintained a unique institutional dynamism that gave it an advantage over the highly static social structures that pervaded feudal Europe. The psychological consequences of priestly celibacy in those days were no different from today, and its manifestations caused the lay public the same kinds of problems. The original sources cited by Lea are quite frank and outspoken in their depiction of these “beastly sins,” though Lea himself is mostly circumspect in his discussion of these matters. However he is extraordinarily perceptive on the more general way that the sexual repression of the more observant clergy contributed to the ferocity of the Church's response to a variety of issues throughout the Inquisition. Because almost all of the historical record of the Inquisition comes from the Church itself, it is a fascinating look into the psychology of self-righteousness. Popes and prelates with profoundly materialistic motivations routinely convinced not only the public but themselves that even the most egregious offenses against human dignity were justified in defense of the faith. A huge intellectual, social and bureaucratic apparatus was called into being to rationalize and routinize horrible acts of torture and oppression. True believers who feel threatened by change are capable of anything. We would all do well to remember that. The great object lesson in that point is the Third Crusade, the event that got the whole Inquisition rolling. Basically, a group of free-thinking Gnostics known as Cathars had cropped up in Southern France, preaching an odd brand of asceticism and utterly rejecting the Catholic Church and all its works as corrupt and diabolical. The Cathars, by all indications, were industrious, virtuous, intellectual and tolerant. Among their innovations were the introduction of women into the priesthood. They flourished under the rule of Raymond, the easy-going Count of Toulouse– apparently a just ruler with little religious feeling one way or the other. While Pope Innocent III fumed and fulminated against the heretics, nearby monarchs jealously eyed Raymond’s rich territories. Raymond played into his enemies’ hands by not according the papal legates proper respect or authority, and by steadfastly refusing to persecute his subjects over the matter of their consciences. Matters escalated, excommunications and interdicts were issued, and Innocent III wound up declaring a full-on Crusade against the unfortunate Raymond, the first use of the doctrine of Holy War on European soil. Raymond didn’t realize how bad his situation was until it was too late, when other monarchs with their own temporal ambitions eagerly accepted the Church’s preachings as a pretext to mount an invasion and seize his domains. During the proceedings, a zealous monk named Dominic Guzman embraced the mission with such enthusiasm that he earned a Sainthood for his trouble and leant his name to the monastic order which was to carry out the Inquisition over the next several hundred years: the Dominicans. It is to this holy fellow that history attributes one of the great bons-mots of warfare. When asked if the Crusaders should make an effort to distinguish innocent Catholics from the heretics, Dominic replied, in a colloquial translation, “Kill ‘em all – let God sort them out!” (or, more conventionally, “Spare none, the Lord will know his own”). The point here is that the liberal-minded Cathars practiced their beliefs in relative security for nearly 100 years under the protection of succeeding generations of tolerant monarchs. They debated freely, they treated equally with Catholics, Jews and occasional Moslem traders, they practiced unconventional lifestyles and flourished economically without preaching or doing harm to any of their neighbors. Nevertheless, their very existence threatened the moral and material interests of the Church to such a degree that, in the end, not even the ethical framework of Jesus’s teachings could stay the hand of the enraged believers. The slaughter was absolute, and the social progress made by the Cathars – extraordinarily significant by Medieval European standards – was utterly reversed and destroyed. It would be another 300 years before the Reformation would open the door to a comparable step forward in intellectual and political development. We are well-advised to consider that history is not an inevitable march toward progress and betterment. The story of humanity is littered with false starts, dead-ends, and shocking reversals. The forces of progress, by their nature, consistently underestimate the ruthlessness of their adversaries. They assume that the advances they have made are permanent, the protections they have gained for their beliefs inviolate, and that simply by not taking actions to antagonize those who disagree with them, they win the right to be left in peace. How wrong they are. The constants of human behavior assert themselves with predictable regularity, and when fear and loathing gain the upper hand over hope, no institution is strong enough to resist the backward pull into violence, ignorance and oppression. 9:07:30 AM    Emphasize This! []

Thursday, October 31, 2002

Guarding Miha Last night I had the pleasure of meeting Miha Mazzini, author of the recently-released Guarding Hanna and numerous other books not yet available in translation. Miha was the gracious, though slightly exhausted, guest of honor at a small dinner party hosted by his American publisher, Scala House Press. His just-completed two-week reading tour of the Northwest was apparently a big success and his novel is beginning to get some attention: notice in Publishers Weekly and a good review from the Village Voice is slated to run any day now (but not there yet), and Scala House publisher Mark White says orders for the book continue to roll in from numerous and unlikely sources. Miha chatted amiably with any and all through the course of the evening, discussing upcoming projects, the curious business methods of the Slovenian film board (which produced “Sweet Dreams,” a film he wrote, then failed to put any effort whatsoever into seeing to its promotion and release), and the state of contemporary European literature. I was especially gratified that he had seen the review that I posted here several weeks ago, which seems to be drawing a trickle of interest from some very unusual quarters. Miha has said he will provide me with a special greeting for Slovenian visitors to Emphasis Added once he’s back on his home soil and sufficiently recovered from his American odyssey. 8:53:20 AM    Emphasize This! []

Tuesday, October 22, 2002

Houellebcq Not Guilty of Blasphemy France uncharacteristically missed an opportunity to demonstrate its foolishness today, acquitting author Michel Houellebeqc of "defamation" charges in a suit brought by various Islamic groups in response to negative comments he made in an interview last fall. It probably didn't hurt that the attack on a resort in Bali by Islamic extremists during the period when the court was deliberating the case closely resembled an incident described in Houellebecq's latest novel, Platform, published last summer. The notoriety of the case, combined with the inherent quality and relevance of Houellebecq's writing, is certain to drive him to greater heights of success and endear him even less, if such is possible, to the mandarins of French literary culture. 5:19:44 PM    Emphasize This! []

Sunday, October 13, 2002

The Shadow Out of Time   When the days grow short and the chill of Autumn creeps into the air, when the clouds hang low and heavy in the west and the trees explode in fiery bursts of color, a strange and unearthly sound like the pitched wailing of primordial pipes calls out to me across the mists of time and summons me to the rituals of the Festival. As though my body were but the plaything of some giant puppeteer, I am drawn inexorably to the shelves of my library and lay my quivering fingers upon the spine of the most forbidding grimoire in the archive. I blow dust from the tome and leaf through its ancient, yellowing pages, marveling at the sublime horrors contained therein, though occasionally recoiling at the shameless excesses of the mad author’s lurid prose. The words are familiar, but the sensation is always fresh, for it is His season: the time when the mad scribe of Providence reaches out from the tomb and feeds afresh on the minds of men. It is the time of H.P. Lovecraft.   As such, I am embarked on my annual October project of re-reading a portion of Lovecraft’s horrific oeuvre. I can’t remember exactly when I began this tradition, but I’ve been doing it for many year now, progressing from my well-thumbed Ballentine paperback copy of The Colour Out of Space to spiffy hardcover Arkham House editions of the master’s collected trove of short stories and novellas. It simply wouldn’t be autumn without my required dose of gothic gore.   For the uninitiated, Howard Phillips Lovecraft wrote horror, fantasy and science fiction stories for the pulp magazines (principally Weird Tales) from about 1918-1937. He is often compared to Poe, whom his ornate, literary writing style somewhat resembles. His principle contribution to the literature was a loosely-connected cycle of tales premised on the idea that long before the advent of humanity, the earth was once inhabited by several races of demon gods. These creatures now lie sleeping in hidden places, communicating with cults of followers and leaving breadcrumb traces of their fiendish ambitions threaded through history. Lovecraft not only used this concept in his own work, but also propagated it to a group of fellow-writers with whom he corresponded, including Robert E. Howard (creator of “Conan the Barbarian”), Clark Ashton Smith, August Derleth and Robert Bloch (later known for writing Psycho). The resulting body of work is known to fans as the Cthulhu Mythos (named for one of the nastiest of the pantheon), and its influence is felt in much contemporary popular horror and fantasy literature and films.   His important published work fills three bulky anthologies: The Dunwitch Horror and Others, At the Mountains of Madness and Others, and Dagon and Other Short Works. There is a further edition of his collaborations with other writers and a volume of his interesting but inconsequential non-fiction, plus five volumes of letters. In addition, his best stories like “The Call of Cthulhu,” “The Colour Out of Space,” “The Shadow Over Innsmouth,” “The Dunwitch Horror” and “The Shadow Out of Time” are frequently anthologized in collections of twentieth century fiction. Over the years there have been numerous efforts to capture his vision on film. Most have been disastrous failures to be avoided at all costs, although Stuart Gordon’s recent Dagon is excellent and worth a look.   The persistence of Lovecraft’s appeal has baffled many of his critics, who condemn his work as florid hackery – stilted, overwrought and boring. The objections are not without merit: Lovecraft’s writing style can be stiff and affected (see the opening paragraph of this piece as a barely-exaggerated parody), and he had little talent for dialogue or the creation of believable characters, particularly women. Nevertheless, he remains unsurpassed in the power of his imagination and in his ability to create an atmosphere of real dread and strangeness.   However, perhaps the most compelling factor is Lovecraft himself. He was a fussy, old-fashioned New England snob possessed of towering intelligence, dry wit, an encyclopedia of neurotic fears and ugly racial prejudices. The details of his strange life are available to readers in intimate detail through a voluminous body of correspondence (published in five volumes to date, and much more enlightening than several flawed biographies which have appeared), which is in many ways at least as interesting to read as his fiction. The morbid quality of his writing was a direct reflection of his fearful, inverted personality, and his attention to internal consistency and continuity in his work can be seen as a result of his social and psychological isolation from outside stimulus. He was, to be blunt, the prototype of the awkward, geeky science fiction fan. He was and remains easy for fans to identify with, despite his unfortunate attitudes on many subjects, and sympathetic readers are inclined to give his work the benefit of the doubt when more objective critics see only the flaws.   I would also add that once you come to an appreciation of his style, with all its tics and nuances, most of his work is quite enjoyable to read. If you can get into Lovecraft’s world, he will get into yours. That’s why every year at this time, I haul down one of the collections and read it cover to cover. 12:17:02 PM    Emphasize This! []

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