I realize at this point, and to be fair the first time I wrote this post I knew it too, that Nick Hornby has a monthly article in The Believer titled Stuff I’ve been reading. This leads me to a couple conclusions. Either no one who reads this also reads that or no one reads this!
This month has been a bit of a slog. I read some stuff that I thought I wanted to, realizing about halfway through that I was completely misguided in my intentions. Sometimes a story doesn’t reward you as a reader enough to keep going with it.
If you must know the title I’m referring to was a book in a series based on the Assassin’s Creed video game. Before we get all judgey back there in the peanut gallery let me explain. The game series, one which I have avoided for a long period of time, due to its boorish (in my opinion) nature, has provided me with an incredibly unique game experience in its most recent offering, Black Flag. The main story – that of a buccaneer sailing the high seas for revenge is both predictable and filled with a lot of heart. It’s remarkable in that it makes you care about people associated with a franchise called Assassin’s Creed.
So, enough of that, on to the books.
Carthage, Joyce Carol Oates
My first impressions of this book were disjointed and not entirely favorable, but I read it faster than most any book I’ve come across in a couple years. It was easy to follow and relatively nothing happened other than the reader dealing with the distress of a father who’s lost his favored daughter to a heinous murder.
Everything is set up for you to root for the father, except that his favored daughter is (kind of) one of the worst people you’ll ever read about. She isn’t overtly terrible, not to the people she knows, its the emotional abuse that she offers up that gives her the distinction. From a reader’s perspective, it’s easy to spot her flaws, we’re literally creating her along with Oates descriptions so her flaws are painted with a wide brush. The skill of the story is that the characters accept these people as real people might, not as readers do – this is both impressive and hard to deal with. Impressive in that Oates pulls it off, hard to deal with because you can’t get behind the father’s desires as they pertain to his dead daughter. That sounds bad, but she is a real piece of work.
The Accursed, Joyce Carol Oates
This is clearly the most Oates-ian month of reading that I’ve had since I was assigned her stories in college. As with Carthage, The Accursed read quickly.
The Accursed comes across as the literary re-write of Dracula. It’s got a hell of a cast list including Woodrow Wilson, Grover Cleavland, Upton Sinclair and Mark Twain. Each of whom are haunted by ‘accursed’ visions in their dreams. These accursed dreams are, as vampire enthusiasts might expect, just the shadow of the problem. A shape-shifting prince quickly arrives in the narrative to steal away a beautiful woman (about to wed). The woman’s brother not her fiance, is tasked with finding her bringing her back and making everything right with the world.
If that all seems familiar and you feel like you already know how the rest of it goes, you probably do. However the influx of historical personae and Oates keen eye for emotion in the face of horror shine brightly.
Leaving the Sea, Ben Marcus
This is a collection of short stories by an interesting and markedly brutal writer. His most recent novel, The Flame Alphabet, was hard to read but rewarding. These stories follow the same pattern. This is a collection of what-ifs and if-then’s that are mostly dystopian, cynical, and rooted in terrifying realities. The writing is beautiful, making it obvious that Marcus takes time with every single phrase. I feel compelled to note that there is a bit of humor (dry as a bone of course) within the structure of the stories. If humor were to be vacant here the effect of the text would be nearly unbearable.
Fiction this bleak can be taxing, and unlike The Flame Alphabet you can sit and read complete stories without feeling like you need to take a break, the end is always right around the corner.
