Sunset House 1968...finally

Finally getting around to scanning this and posting it to Flickr.

The Book Of Ralph

The Book Of Ralph John McNally

Ralph is divided into three sections, and the first two are engaging enough. McNally has crafted an engaging, fictionalized memoir. You can skip around freely anywhere in the first two sections of the book, grazing at an entertaining buffet of Sedaris-style tableaux of growing up working-class in South Chicago in the late 1970s.

The final act takes place in 2001, and involves a reunion wiith the eponymous Ralph, some goofy crime, and some redemption of the narrators' misspent life. This is all about as convincing as a James Bond movie, and does not serve the book at all.

Wicked

Wicked Gregory McGuire

Ok, I've been sucked in. Even though it has a "Discussion Guide Included". Even though it's so agressively popular I can't find it in any local used bookstore. McGuire's Wicked Witch of the West--aka Elphaba--is among my top female protagonists in fiction, not least of all because her first words as a toddler are "Horrors!", repeated to the growing unease of the adults around her.

"Elphie" grows up to be a relentlessly honest, ceaslessly unhappy woman, enraged by the conniving and cruelty she sees trickling from the top of Oz downward. The Wizard has taken the country in a coup, and the talking Animals are being quickly marginalized.

McGuire packs a lot of satire into his novel, but avoids being didactic. His heroine is the best, unhappiest heroine since Morrissey in his prime.

Two Phrases That Have To Go

At the end of the day.
Step up to the plate.

Free Music: The Leaf Label

Pleasantly strange, minimalist mp3 downloads from The Leaf Label. Downside: tracks are 64kbs.
Via Jorn.

OCW: Dante, Boccaccio, Chaucer

MIT's Open Course Ware offered this nice-looking survey course in spring of this year. Very cool.

Worldes blisce, have god day!
Nou fram min herte wand away;
him for to loven min hert his went,
that thurgh his side spere rent,
his herte blode ssadde for me,
nayled to the harde tre.
that swete bodi was y-tend,
prened wit nayles thre.

Butter Darth

Via A Welsh View

Flock Goes Public

Flock is available now for download. I wrote this post from Flock, which has a "Write blog entry" prominent in the main toolbar. The whole thing is very Web 2.0, tightly integrated with del.icio.us and tags. We'll see.

No working AdBlock plugin yet.

Year Of Wonders

Year Of Wonders Geraldine Brooks

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Kelly's book group chose this for the October book. I am magnetically attracted to any novel subtitled "A Novel of the Plague", and also Kelly seemed to like it.

The book is based on the history of the (real) English mountain village of Eyam, which in 1665 and 1666 was struck with the Plague. Led by their pastor, William Mompesson, the villagers agreed to quarantine themselves to stem the spread of "plague seeds".

Brooks' prose is pleasingly spare, with liberal use of period vocabulary, usually to good effect. The story moves briskly, related by the servant of Mompellion (the nom de clef for the historical Mompesson). If the protagonist is anachronistically mobile socially, and oddly open-minded, I was inclined to let it slide because the narrative is engaging and plausible enough.

Plausible enough until the conclusion, that is. The end is startlingly bad, unmixed bodice-ripper stuff mixed with a simply bizarre denoument in Oran, of all places. Brooks has to be tipping her hat to Camus's The Plague with that choice of setting, but it doesn't redeem the novel's unfortunate flameout.