Alternate title: In Which I Write the Words “Will Grayson” over and over and over…
There’s a lot to like about Will Grayson, Will Grayson: it’s strong and honest and funny, its teen melodramas feel so authentic (when you’re a teenager everything is so! important! and! dramatic!), and some of its characters are truly likeable.
But… I’m not sure I liked this book.
That’s because, despite its title, Will Grayson, Will Grayson isn’t actually about someone called Will Grayson. The dominant character is Tiny Cooper, an ironically named high-schooler whose body is almost as big as his personality. Tiny is the long-time best friend of Will Grayson, a pessimistic introvert who’s determined to avoid any sort of emotional experience. By a strange quirk of fate he meets another Will Grayson: this one is starting to open up about his sexuality, and entranced when he meets the openly and extremely gay Tiny.
The book wavers between the viewpoints of Will Grayson and Will Grayson (Green wrote from one point-of-view, and Levithan from the other), and it’s cleverly written – it’s a book with gay characters, though it’s not a gay book. (Not that there’s anything wrong with gay books, as such; I mean it’s not a Problem Novel about being gay.)
(For the record, the gay Will Grayson was my favourite Will Grayson.)
I found Tiny annoying, and it annoyed me that the other characters fawned over him so much – the book literally ends (spoiler!) with scores of people declaring to Tiny how much they appreciate his sheer awesomeness. If you’re like me and don’t buy into Tiny’s awesomeness, this is a serious problem. I didn’t really get why Tiny, who’s so overbearing (not to mention gay to the point of stereotype; he reminded me of “too gay to function” Damian from Mean Girls), is so important to these characters.
That said, I did like that the straight Will and Tiny have a friendship where sexuality is not an issue. And a crucial part of the adolescent experience is having at least one friend who is kind of a dick. (Years later, you reflect on your teenage years and wonder why the hell you spent so much time with so obvious a jerk.) Perhaps this is what Green and Levitan are really writing about – major kudos to them if so, though such an analysis seems like a bit of a stretch.
You know when a book is so good, its scope so wide and so imaginative, that it leeches into pretty much every thought you have? World War Z, an epistolary novel documenting mankind’s battle against rising zombie hordes, is one of those books.
For example: I read it while holidaying in the Cook Islands, on a tiny dot of land in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. “I’d be pretty safe from a zombie invasion here,” I thought. Then: “… right? What if the zombies crossed the sea somehow? What if the island became crowded with refugees, who carried the zombie infection? Would my hotel room provide a safe place to hide from zombies?” (I decided it wouldn’t.) It’s an exciting book, in the literal sense of the word.
It’s told as a series of short stories documenting the experiences of people all over the world1 before, during and after the zombie apocalypse, and though I’m not paticularly enamoured of the zombie genre (all those eviscerations and eyeballs hanging from stalks. Eeeeewwwww), World War Z is fascinating in its realism. Yes, realism. It’s an odd word given the subject matter, but this truly feels like what would really would happen if a mysterious virus started turning its victims into the flesh-hungry living dead. The human weaknesses that allow the zombie plague to spread and the (sometimes shockingly cynical) strategies that enable the survivors to win are convincing, propped up by Brooks’s incredible attention to detail – especially when he imagines scenarios that aren’t immediately obvious: what would happen aboard an international space station during a zombie invasion? How do you train dogs to detect and attack the living dead? What animal species would be ravaged by the zombie war (spoiler alert: the whales bite it. Sad face)?
What’s also surprising is that World War Z isn’t a gore-and-guns splatterfest that glorifies weapons and gung-ho violence. It’s hopeful, unexpectedly uplifting, partly because it’s set after humanity’s victory (mostly) over the zombies), so you know it has a happy ending (again, mostly); but also because it’s a celebration of humanity’s pluck and moxy. Many of the people respond to the zombie crisis as selfishly as you’d expect, but many more behave admirably. (And there’s a strong satirical undercurrent that keeps it all from ever becoming too mushy – win!)
The book almost makes me wish that the zombie apocalypse really will happen. Fingers crossed it won’t break out till after I track down a copy of Brooks’s companion book, The Zombie Survival Guide…
Unfortunately, Australia is hardly mentioned. Did we endure the zompocalypse or not?! [↩]
Neil Gaiman writes in the preface of this short-story collection that the most important rule for any tale is that is must consantly answer the question: “And then what happened?” Because why would you keep reading (or listening, or watching, or whatever) if you don’t care about what happens afterwards?
Not all the stories live up to the rule (I won’t name names, but a handful are so uninteresting that surely they only made the cut because the writers are pals of Gaiman and co-editor Al Sarrantonio), though almost all of them do, and many exceed it. An everyday husband develops a taste of blood (and then what happened?). An elderly woman’s dead twin sister attempts to manipulate her way back from the grave (and then what happened?). A “retired” serial killer releases his victims before killing them… mostly (and then what happened?).
There are many other tales worthy of a mention, but including synopses of them all would make for a super long post, so I’ll just say: there’s a heck of a lot of imagination stuffed between the covers.
The stories range from chilling to funny to outright bizarre, from the very short to the very long, and while they cross genre lines there’s a touch of fantasy to almost all of them (not to mention a pervading theme of death). It’s such a diverse collection of superb writing that there really is something for everyone – assuming that “everyone” likes their stories black.
(PS: This is my first book review in ages not because I haven’t been writing them, but because I’ve been trying to learn French in the time usually allotted to reading. But then I went on holidays for a week and read like a mofo, so.)
I am currently trying to learn French (I say “trying” because I’ve been teaching it to myself for the last several years, with varying degrees of success), and one of the joys of such a hobby is stumbling along French phrases which are amusing to a native English speaker – turns of phrase that are appealingly odd. Par exemple:
The little lunch. The word for “lunch” in French is “le dejeuner”1, and the word for “breakfast” is “le petit dejeuner” – “little lunch”. (Extra trivia: “jeuner” means “to fast”, so the French word for “lunch” translates literally to “un-fast”, similar to the English “breakfast”.)
Lemons and limes. In French, a lemon is “un citron“, and a lime is “un citron vert” – “a green lemon”.
Apples and potatoes. This is one of my favourites. An apple is “une pomme“, and a potato is “une pomme de terre” – “apple of the earth”. Something about that is just utterly lovely, the idea that a potato is an apple’s earthy cousin.
Redfish. In French, a goldfish is “un poisson rouge” – making it a redfish if translated literally.
I believe there’s an accent over one of those Es – but I have no idea how to format those on my Anglo keyboard, so I’m not going to bother with them [↩]
A fastidious new employee at the plant [Frank Grimes] doesn’t get along with Homer, who is anxious to make amends. Meanwhile, Bart comes into the possession of an abandoned factory.
Wikipedia rightly identifies ‘Homer’s Enemy’ as “one of the darkest episodes of The Simpsons“: Grimes, who’s “had to struggle for everything he ever got”, becomes increasingly furious with Homer and the ease of his accomplishments. It culminates with Grimes – nicknamed “Grimey”, against his wishes – impersonating Homer’s buffoonery, electrocuting and killing himself in the process. Homer then ruins his funeral by snoring during the service.
It is indeed dark. Handlen, while declaring the episode “hilarious, no question” (it is), argues that “it fundamentally and permanently undermines the series’ core” – The Simpsons, he says, is built on “family”, and the series “can’t support that level of darkness without losing its heart”.
I disagree (though I do agree with Handlen’s other point, that the episode is “a clever piece of meta-commentary on certain basic elements that have been with the show since the beginning”), because The Simpsons has always had dark elements, particularly concerning Homer’s behaviour – consider ‘A Streetcar Named Marge’, in which he flat-out tells Marge he doesn’t care about her interests, or ‘Lisa’s Substitute’, where he says pretty much the same thing to his eight-year-old daughter. Both stories are wrapped up tidily, though in neither does Homer really earn his redemption (I remember being shocked by his selfishness in ‘Streetcar’ even as a small child)1.
Note that both these episodes are from early on in The Simpsons‘ run (seasons four and two, respectively); Homer was a much darker, more selfish character before he morphed into the loveable idiot we’re familar with. ‘Homer’s Enemy’ really just combines those two sides of his character in a single episode.
One could argue that Homer earns his ‘Lisa’s Substitute’ redemption in the later instalment ‘Lisa’s Wedding’, which functions as a sort of unofficial sequel; both episodes are about Homer’s relationship with other men in Lisa’s life. [↩]
As I write this (timely!) Australia is going nutso over the possibility that Prime Minister Kevin Rudd will get the boot in favour of his deputy PM Julia Gillard. How responsive are (some of) Australia’s leading online media outlets to a breaking story that may emerge as one of the biggest political stories of the year?
ABC news: It’s their lead story!
The Australian: The lead (ie, the image slot) is the Afghan war. Rudd doesn’t even get his picture! Predictably dry of the Oz.
News.com.au: Top story – Photoshopped World Cup malarkey. (Of course that is their top story.) Rudd has an image, at least.
Ninemsn news: “CEO’s sticky fingers” wins the lead spot, but Gillard has her picture up there.
SBS World News: It’s the lead story, natch.
SMH.com.au: Seinfeld vs. Gaga is deemed the most important story (to be fair, SMH has five rotating “lead” spots, though none of them is devoted to Rudd/Gillard). The Rudd leadership threat is right up there, though.
This is probably the greatest scene to emerge from nine seasons of Seinfeld:
However, every time I watch this episode – and it airs on pay TV frequently – I get anxious. Because it’s never made clear whether Elaine has made copies of the Soup Nazi’s recipes; if he was to snatch the recipes back from her, her gloriously delivered revenge would collapse. And even though I’ve seen the ep enough times to know he doesn’t snatch the recipes back, the dread always lingers in the back of my mind.
Solution: travel in time to 1995, request that Jerry Seinfeld and writing team insert awkward line into the scene along lines of, “Hello Soup Nazi: I, Elaine Benes, have already duplicated your recipes, thus rendering your attempts to snatch them back from me ineffective. Next!” Sparkling dialogue!
I was pleasantly surprised to discover recently that there was to be a third book in Roald Dahl’s Charlie series, titled Charlie in the White House. It would’ve furthered the story started in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and continued in the considerably-less-well-known Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator.
It’s unknown what Charlie in the White House would’ve been about, beyond the obvious implied in the title. In Glass Elevator Charlie and Willy Wonka rescue an American space hotel overrun by Vermicious Knids (among other things; the scariest and therefore best part of the book comes when one of Charlie’s grandparents takes too many age-reversing pills and has to be rescued from Minusland, a gloomy underworld inhabited by the Gnoolies), and in recognition of their feat they’re invited to visit the White House by President Lancelot R. Gilligrass, a buffoon in the thrall of his strict nanny.
Presumably Willy Wonka would’ve mindfucked Gilligrass a little more in Charlie in the White House but Dahl only wrote one chapter, which is apparently on display in the Roald Dahl Museum in England. Unfortunately they don’t have said chapter available on their website – a shame, since there must be a tonne of adults out there with fond Charlie memories (like me!) who’d love to know what Dahl had in store for him next. Maybe next time I’m in England I’ll pop in and ask to have a quick read.
(Pictured: the Glass Elevator cover I had as a child. Probably the only Dahl book I owned that wasn’t illustrated by Quentin Blake.)
The last time I reviewed a Neil Gaiman book I noted that his authorial voice is one that people seem to either like (usually a lot) or they don’t. But, I don’t get how you wouldn’t like it! His writing is conveniently tailored to fit my interests: it’s imaginative, clever, eerie and a little bit creepy.
Coraline, I think, I would’ve been into bigtime as a kid: I loved (and still love) stuff that was scary but not gruesome, and Coraline fits into that niche with classics like The Witches. (Sidenote: I must’ve read The Witches a hundred times as a kid. I subsequently developed a terror of women with seashell noses, and I can’t wait for Guillermo del Toro’s adaptation.)
Much like Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Coraline is about a young girl who ventures into a strange land, but where Wonderland is eccentric-creepy, Coraline’s otherworld is creepy-creepy. It’s ruled by the Other Mother, a sinister matriarch with buttons for eyes. Gaiman smartly declines to reveal too much about the origins of the Other Mother and her powers, or about the nature of the mirror world Coraline winds up in, and it’s the mystery that makes it spooky.
My copy of Coraline is part of the Bloomsbury Phantastics range, and includes several of Gaiman’s short stories. Some of them I’ve previously read, either online or in Fragile Things, but even the ones I’d come across before are definitely worth re-reading. The highlights are Sunbird, about an epicurean club whose members decide to eat a phoenix; October in the Chair, which ties nicely with The Graveyard Book; and Don’t Ask Jack, a genuinely unsettling tale about a spooky jack-in-the-box and its effect on the lives of the children who own it. (It’s one of the shortest stories in the collection, but also the scariest.)
I realise that at this point it’s cliche to profess one’s adoration of Gaiman, but: he is such a great writer.
Alternate title: In Which I Write the Words “Will Grayson” over and over and over…
