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A Mathematician's Apology
Before anyone runs for the exits when I say that I'm going to be writing about a mathematician's book, I'm not going to throw pointy, abstruse theore...Without Feathers / Getting Even / Side Effects
Without Feathers, Getting Even and Side Effects by Woody All...1,001 Movies You Must See Before You Die
1,001 Movies You Must See Before You Die by various authors
(Note: I read the 2003 version, which documents movies made up until 2002. I believe the editors have updated the list a few times since then.)
It's a simple idea -- there are many great movies that should be seen by people all around the world. Which are the 1,001 best?
This book has an interesting mix of movies. It is dominated by American movies, of course, and includes most of the movies critics have unanimously dubbed classics. But there are also plenty of movies from the rest of the world -- Japanese cinema (Kurosawa, Ozu, anime, J-horror, etc.), a bunch of Chinese cinema, stuff from Germany, Russia, Mexico, South America, Australia, and so on. Lots of variety, with a ton of movies I have never heard of before and am eager to see.
The descriptions are good, too, even the shorter ones. They are generally well-written and insightful, with just enough plot detail to get you excited about seeing the movie, and interesting details about the actors, directors, etc. who made these pictures. In fact, I probably spent more time reading about the movies I had already seen than the ones I hadn't, because the details about them are so fascinating.
These descriptions also contain my biggest problem with the book, however. The title implies the reader is going into this without having seen the movies listed -- obviously this is not going to be true for all of the movies, but the descriptions should be written with that thought in line. Most of them are -- but some are not. There are a few where huge plot details are tossed away, many of which ruin the endings of the movies (Psycho is a big one that pops into my head immediately). Minor spoilers are not a terrible thing, but shouldn't be common sense to avoid giving away the ending of a movie?
Overall, though, it is an interesting book and one that is worth reading for any movie lover. Anyone can find faults with the list (Independence Day makes the list, but Ed Wood, Heathers and Evil Dead II don't?), but it is a more than solid representation of what the movie industry has to offer.
A Scanner Darkly
A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick
Officer Fred's job is to watch people and to be watched.
Fred is a police agent hunting for dealers of the highly addictive Substance D. He is also deep undercover as Bob Arctor, a small-time dealer of Substance D. Fred cannot be seen because he wears a suit that conceals his identity; Bob is being watched constantly in his home because Fred put in hidden cameras and bugged it. The police want Arctor caught so that they move up to the next highest rung on the ladder to get that much closer to the origin of Substance D.
Fred much catch himself. But who is he? One of the side effects of Substance D is it splits the left and right hemispheres of the brain into distinct entities that battle for domination of the self. Is he Fred watching himself? Or is he Fred watching Bob? Or is he himself watching Bob? In between these struggles of the self, Bob floats among his demented, drug-addled friends -- Barris, a hyperactive know-it-all; Luckman, an easygoing layabout; and Donna, his girlfriend -- while they slowly destroy themselves.
Drug use and abuse has been written about an untold number of times. However, A Scanner Darkly is not just about the drugs. (Although that is a big part of it -- the novel takes plenty of influences from Dick's own life, and in the author's note, he dedicates the book to friends of his whose lives were obliterated because they "wanted to have a good time ...") This is a drug novel dealing with many of things that predominantly interested PKD throughout his literary career -- the essence of reality, and our construction and perception of it; our perception of the self and the mind; and paranoia, dealing with who can and cannot be trusted in the world.
PKD is almost never pointed to as a master of the English language, but the more I read his writing and think about it in the context of the stories, the more I am impressed with it. He writes perfectly for what he is writing about -- his style is fluid, frantic and visceral, always on edge. When the story focuses on Arctor, thoughts pile onto the reader, splintering off in different directions and float there to be pondered. Officer Fred's sections are cold and factual until Substance D seizes his mind and erodes his grip on reality. PKD really knew how to write.
Something that definitely does not come across in my synopsis of the plot is the novel's dark humor. Arctor's associates are a bizarre bunch -- Barris always has something to say, whether it's about how to have sex with people for 98 cents or how to build a cheap silencer from ordinary household items. Luckman is like a sad dopehead in a teen movie. After a botched suicide attempt, one of Arctor's friends has a hallucination involving a many-eyed creature that reads him a list of every major and minor sin he ever committed. These are very funny, but it's strange, guilty sort of funny, as if the reader is always on the outside looking in. It's a laughter that comes without understanding.
The novel is definitely not all about laughter, though. At heart, it is a tragic story of loss of the self and reality. Substance D warps Arctor's mind; he doesn't know who he is and watches himself obsessively, not knowing he is doing so or why he is doing it. His friends disappear into themselves and betrayal; more than one is completely different than his perception of them. The biggest tragedy, however, is Arctor lives in a self-defeating system that sets him up to fail from the start. His mission is to capture himself. There is no other way it can end. He went undercover and lost himself to capture himself.
This novel is a classic of science-fiction and one of PKD's best stories (it's actually my favorite of his that I've read).
The Big Sleep
The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
The image of film noir is burned into the minds of millions because it is such a distinctive movie genre -- the look, all dark shadows and bizarre angles; the feel, tough and more likely to hit the streets than waltz with the upper crust; and the sheer energy, moving along to get through a tangled web of lies, murder, sex and corruption. But it wasn't the movies that came up with this, of course. The stories that changed the face of crime fiction the world over sprung from the minds of authors like Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain and Raymond Chandler, whose character, Philip Marlowe, is practically a god of American crime fiction.
The Big Sleep starts simple, as many crime stories do. Marlowe, a private detective, is hired by General Sternwood to uncover the source of a blackmail note and to get the blackmailer off Sternwood's tail. While investigating, Marlowe discovers an entirely different racket going on -- a pornography dealership. The scheme behind this leads Marlowe down a trail littered with double- and triple-crosses and more than a few corpses.
Chandler's story is infamously complex (one murder is left unsolved because even Chandler himself didn't know who committed it), but it's about much more than the "Whodunit?" at the end. (I would actually argue that the outcome of the mystery is sort of unsatisfying.) Of much more importance is how Marlowe wades his way through the crime to its conclusion. Marlowe deals with the police, with shady criminals and with General Sternwood's two bizarre daughters, Carmen and Vivian. Reading the way the crime unfolds and how all these characters fit in with each other is much more entertaining than the actual mystery itself. Marlowe might not always solve a crime to his satisfaction, but he sure as hell knows how to investigate it.
And he does it with such style. This is the kind of writing I love -- it's direct and to the point, but the way the language is used gives it such a wonderful voice. Marlowe is a tough guy; however, he's not averse to cracking wise every now and then in a show of bravado. And, in particular moments, he just seems to go crazy for the hell of it. Marlowe's personality lives and breathes through the writing. He's written about as well as a character can be.
When people think of these pulp detective novels, one thing that comes to mind immediately is the dialogue. These people are mainly of the streets, and they have a particular way of communicating that is captured so well. The characters may not always be intelligent, but they have their special brand of wit that allows them to duel with anyone in the field of speaking. It's a way of toughening oneself up to match the hard nature of life on the streets. Nimble thinkers live longer than the slow.
Modern crime fiction owes a tremendous debt to Raymond Chandler -- The Big Sleep is a massive part of the detective novel's current template, and if you see a show with a detective satire episode, it's more than likely a few of the cliches came from Chandler's pen. This is far from a bundle of cliches, though. The pure energy exuded by the writing is something that's pretty damn special. Chandler was a gifted writer. The Big Sleep is proof of that.
