Now Playing: A Man Called E
Recenty read:
THINGS THE GRANDCHILDREN SHOULD KNOW - Mark Oliver Everett. Touching, painfully honest and occasionally hilarious memoir by E, the man behind Eels. E, the son of quantum physicist Hugh Everett III, lost his entire family and somehow found a way to keep going and even remain optimistic. I'm an enormous fan of E's music, so I approached this with due trepidation. I needn't have worried. E illumimates his own life, touches on the inspiration behind some of his songs, but he doesn't strip away the essential mystery or wonderfulness.
THE YIDDISH POLICEMEN'S UNION - Michael Chabon. My last encounter with Chabon, the novella-length Sherlock Holmes pastiche THE FINAL SOLUTION left me with mixed feelings, but this is unreservedly brilliant. Whereas SOLUTION was technically assured, time and again I had the sense of a writer who thought he was a bit cleverer than was really the case. I very rarely got that impression with UNION, which seemed to nail most of the targets it set out to hit. Not all of Chabon's metaphors and similes make the grade, but every now and then he pulls out something that has you nodding in recognition and weeping in admiration at the same time. And it's funny, above all else. The dialogue is ready made for the Coen brothers.
THE TERROR - Dan Simmons. Astonishingly gripping - a juggernaut of a book that left me sleepless and dazed. Two steam-powered sailing ships are trapped in ice while scouting for the North West Passage. As their supplies run low, the hapless crews are picked off one by one by a malevolent, possibly supernatural polar bear. While I felt a degree of unease about the way Simmons bolted a Campbellesque horror story onto the speculative fates of actual men, I couldn't deny the staggering, hallucinatory power of this book.
