Michael Chabon addendum...

Talking to another Portis fan today I remembered that when I first started to read Yiddish Policeman I had a sudden epiphany. Chabon is the closest thing to Portis I have read. There is a feeling of "kindred spirit" there...some fascination with the ridiculous. A great choice to follow reading Yiddish Policeman is Masters of Atlantis. You'll never read schlock again.

Michael Chabon's Sitka...

I finished The Yiddish Policeman's Union over the long weekend. I started it a few days before the weekend, and I attempted to make it last longer, but it just would not. It captured me and tunneled me through that oddest of looking glasses and into a parallel universe of Jewish Sitka just before reversion. I lived in Okinawa just previous to that island's reversion to Japan, and there is indeed a surrealistic component to the temporary state of mind in a place which is neither one nor the other quite yet. In Sitka, the reversion has its upheaval religiously and socially, no one knows their fate. To be tossed out ignominiously into a cold world is nothing new to Jewish life, but the population had ignored the 60 year inability to make the Jewish state in Alaska permanent, and was confused and depressed about the coming abyss. Into this Meyer Landsman falls over a body in his flophouse of a cheap hotel whose identity and fate become an obsession for the policeman. Meyer has his own problems - an ex-wife he loves, a friend he counts on, and assorted characters who come and go through Chabon's brilliant world. His fascination with the chess pieces of the dead man's life becomes an unfolding story of a miraculous life, a Holy Man who found the modern world and its convoluted motives too much. I can't say any more because as usual, Michael Chabon has written a completely original novel which has to be read. Any fluid language of bookish critique would be exceedingly superfluous. Do I need to add that I think Chabon the most brilliant writer on the scene? I missed his book signing in Seattle last year by one day, and I still rue that I didn't change that plane ticket...

Alan Furst once more...

Last night I finished The Polish Officer. Furst (read all about his books in the New York Times) only gets better at crafting the time, the place and the characters. When I have to leave these friends at the end of the book, I am left hoping. I referred to the last novel as depressing in another post, but depressing isn't the right word. The realities of WWII were awful. No poetic effusions I could craft would make that any different. Just awful. The Germans and the Russians tramped over the top of the Poles, and that is just a fact, among many other facts about the period. What happens to people's lives, and how radicalized ordinary folk can become is the eternal theme of Furst's work. The germ of conscience, the surprising surge of honor and bravery in those who had considered themselves ordinary folk, continues to fascinate Furst and it fascinates me.These are novels of merit and worth, not genre novels, not what is referred to, irritatingly enough, as "easy reads." The main problem with good writing is that you can't go back, you can't settle anymore. If tricked into reading Furst or Portis because you thought it was genre, or you thought it looked swell, you are caught up in the search for more. I am a reader. I read as a child; I read whatever I thought looked interesting, and my parents never stepped in (She READS! Isn't it wonderful? They were wonderful). SO, I read voraciously and widely. I am not a writer because so many other people have done that already. Too many as it turns out. So much is drek. Now I only read what I want to read, and there are years of books ahead of me that I may not get to in this lifetime. You can be sure Alan Furst's work will top the pile.

Summer...reading...

Light reading has captured me for the last several weeks. After finishing Alan Furst's Night Soldiers I was ready for some M.C. Beaton. The Furst novel was so heavy. A depressing, intricate story of Eastern Europe and the Balkans pre and during WWII, it had an ending that was a surprisingly hopeful one. Furst writes with a dexterity and depth not found in a lot of modern writing, and I look forward to each novel. I know his characters now, and each one is a friend. I have a few Beaton books lined up, and just finished another Lawrence Block Bernie Rhodenbarr novel. This time I read The Burglar Who Thought He Was Bogart and it was the best of the Rhodenbarr's so far! Very witty, very New York. The resolutions of the mysteries in this series do seem pulled out of the woodwork. You don't have the clues in book really, so the books aren't about clever detection as much as about the characters, the city, the humor. I think they make terrific airplane reading, or summer entertainment. Donald Westlake's Dortmunder series is far better plotted, and more entertaining all around, but I will read Rhodenbarr books as I find them, and I love the whole New York City thing.

Ludlum's over for me...

I began to read The Icarus Agenda and then stopped and checked it back into the library. I think I have maxed out on Ludlum. I have read so may of his books that they are all sort of flowing into each other, each one a plot of megalomaniacs taking over the world. I liked that for the first ten books or so, but now I think I've read enough to have, in effect, read them all. Since reading Alan Furst, the bar has been lifted for any novel I read of any geopolitical topic. I am reading Night Soldiers now, and that's going to take awhile. In eReader, I just finished reading Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere. It was like reading a video game. His first novel, it was not at all fleshed out. The characters left a lot undiscovered, and the alternative world was left pretty much unexplained. I did like it though. I am looking forward to the next Gaiman ebook I have, Stardust.