Book Review: Men Without Women, by Haruki Murakami

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Book Review, Books, Fiction, Haruki Murakami, Reading

I’ve been a pretty avid reader of Murakami for some time now and as such made sure this new release got on my list as soon as possible.  As luck would have it, my hold came through only a few days after finding myself in-between books for the first time in several months.

Men Without Women is a collection of short stories featuring male protagonists and their complex, often troubled, relationships with women in their lives.  Rather dark in tone, issues of death, separation, and personal/societal estrangement are common features throughout all the stories in this volume.  Each character is lost in some way and have either resigned themselves to their situation or spend their days searching for something within themselves that may or may not be within their power to find.

On the whole I found this collection to be something of a mixed bag.  There were a few stories that I liked, but aside from those none of the others appealed to me as much as I had hoped they would.  The overall feel of the book was generally very bleak and it didn’t seem to have that same sense of magical realism that usually draws me into Murakami’s work.  While each story was without a doubt well-written, Murakami does an excellent job setting a scene and building characters throughout, these just wasn’t really what I was looking for.  None of the characters captured my interest all that much and as such I couldn’t get fully invested in their stories.  Appropriately enough, I didn’t make it through the one from which the collection took its name.

That said, there were two stories that I was particularly taken by.  Kino, my favorite of the group, is the story of a recently divorced man trying to open a new chapter in his life by converting his aunt’s tea house into a bar.  When something happens to drive away his two most reliable guests, a mysterious book-reading man and a stray cat, Kino is advised to get out of town for a while and lay low.  This was the one story that really left me wanting more and also the one that best captured the otherworldly mysticism that usually draws me into Murakami’s books.  The other note-worthy story for me was Samsa in Love, a tale far creepier and horror-like than anything I’ve read from Murakami to date.  It’s protagonist, a man named Samsa, regains consciousness in a boarded up room.  Disoriented and in a great deal of pain, he gradually comes to his senses and begins exploring his surroundings, taking step by excruciating step through an unfamiliar house.  As he does so, the reader slowly gets the impression that something is very wrong.  Samsa doesn’t seem fully comfortable inside his body and certain thoughts suggest that he may not have always been human.  His awkward interactions with a hunchbacked young woman he encounters adds to the sense of foreboding and gives the story a very eerie vibe that for better or worse goes unresolved.

Overall though, I surprised to say that I consider this book a miss for me, a rarity from this author.  After reading a number of other reviews I realize that I am in an extreme minority in my opinion here, so I’ll say that dedicated Murakami fans would probably find this worth checking out (I wouldn’t fault someone else for being more into these stories than I was).  That said, for someone new to the author I would personally recommend they start elsewhere.

Book Review: The Collapsing Empire, by John Scalzi

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Book Review, Books, John Scalzi, Reading, Sci-Fi, Science Fiction

Recently published in March 2017, this book had been on my radar ever since news of its completion dropped late last year.  Irreverently fun and thought-provoking, John Scalzi is an author I’m always looking to read more from, and the beginning of a new series gave me an excellent opportunity to do so.

Several hundred years in the future, humanity has spread out across the stars with the aide of the Flow, a naturally occurring phenomena that allows for rapid transit between fixed points in space.  Politically organized as the Holy Empire of the Interdependent States and Mercantile Guilds, these settlements rely upon a complex system of trade to ensure their mutual survival since the Flow-accessible worlds, with one notable exception, are not particularly friendly to human life.  As the story opens we meet the dying leader of this Empire as he is offering final advice to a young woman named Cardenia Wu, his illegitimate daughter and unsuspecting heir to the throne.  Included in this briefing is the revelation that the Empire, and humanity as a whole, is threatened by one rather inconvenient truth; namely that the Flow is on the verge of collapse, an event which will mean the end of viable interplanetary travel and a slow death for the soon to be isolated settlements.  Planning for this catastrophe proves difficult, however, as most of the government is content to ignore the issue and at least one influential trade guild is scheming of ways to profit from the situation and use the resulting upheaval as a chance to usurp power.

This book was a lot of fun and went by very, very quickly.  A real pleasure to read, it featured plenty of the sarcasm, wit, and joyful cynicism I have come to expect from Scalzi’s novels.  The three main characters were great and each had their own particular charm to go along with their personal foibles.  Cardenia’s nonchalance and resigned acceptance of her new position brought a cool head to some otherwise extreme situations.  Marce was a relatable everyperson whose dedication to (peer-reviewed) science made him both easy to root for and a needed voice of reason.  In contrast, Kiva Lagos, the final main character, was an entertaining force of nature who could make a (space) pirate blush with her expansive vocabulary and unapologetic lifestyle.  Being someone who is predisposed to the general outlooks of these characters, I found it just plain felt good when Scalzi’s heroes would come out ahead.  On the other side of that, it was also a lot of fun disliking the scheming Nohamapetan clan.  The author’s less desirable characters so often align with the people I dislike in real life that it is equally rewarding to see them struggle.

As for the story itself, for all the absurd situations and convoluted schemes, it featured a pointed, yet amusing, satiric look at various social and political issues.  It is hard to miss the deterioration of the Flow as a symbol for climate change, and Scalzi has little patience or fondness for deniers and advocates of bunk science.  He comes at them in this story not so much from a place of anger, but of incredulity.  How the fuck (that word comes up a lot, see Lagos, Kiva) can people choose to be so willfully ignorant?  He answers that question in part through Cardenia, who learns that knowledge of the impending collapse is, in fact, old news, vehemently brushed aside and dutifully ignored for generations because it’s extraordinarily bad for business and also, well, kind of downer.  Not particularly surprising these days, the author’s unabashed support of views like this, in combination with other novel concepts such as supporting gay relationships, religious cynicism, and competent women in positions of power has made him something of a lightning rod for a vocal, thin-skinned minority of reactionary trolls within the sci-fi/fantasy community.  To his credit he takes this in stride, content to consider such folk being against him a sign of doing something right.

I am definitely on board with this series whenever the next book comes out.  The story was left very much wide open as to what will happen next, so I am curious to see where things go from here.  This also left me the mood for more from Scalzi, so don’t be surprised if another one of his books pops up here in the near future.

Book Review: The Hero of Ages, by Brandon Sanderson (Book Three of the Mistborn Series)

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Book Review, Books, Brandon Sanderson, Cosmere, Fantasy, Mistborn

Here we are with the final entry in the original Mistborn trilogy.  It has been an excellent journey so far and I couldn’t wait to find out how the story ended.  As usual there are no spoilers for this particular book, but since this is the end of the series I highly recommend skipping this until you have read the first two books.

Another year has passed and all is not well on Scadrial.  Ruin, the malevolent force released at the end of the previous book, has been growing in power and is on the verge of fulfilling its desire to destroy the world.  Koloss led by Steel Inquisitors are marauding through the countryside, ashfall and earthquakes are occurring with alarming frequency, and the mists have begun appearing earlier and earlier and have begun to seemingly strike down people at random.  The only hope for our heroes appear to lay within the Lord Ruler’s hidden storage caches they discovered to exist at the end of the last book.  Desperate for the vital supplies and cryptic clues about fighting Ruin, Elend and Vin are struggling to secure the final two caches which lay in unfriendly hands.  With time running out Elend splits what remains of his forces between the two sites.  While Breeze, Sazed, and Spook travel to the city of Urteau to parlay with an erratic Skaa populist that has risen to power, Elend and Vin lead their army towards the heavily fortified city of Fadrex to secure the final store by any means necessary.

I liked this book a lot and definitely felt it provided a worthy end to the story.  Full of surprises and suspense, it also gave satisfying answers about the origins of the mists and what caused the drastic changes to the world.  I won’t give away the ending, but what I do want to say about it is: Wow, I did not see that coming!  For the book as a whole, the author did a great job in setting a tense, urgent mood, and I particularly liked the mysteries surrounding the storage caches.  I was often reminded of my favorite parts of Heretics of Dune, in particular the chapter in which Odrade uncovers the ruins of Sietch Tabr and the God Emperor’s message.

I also enjoyed that the story again explored a larger portion of this world.  It gave the book an even more epic scope than the others while allowing characters like Spook, TenSoon, and Sazed more page time as well.  There were again a few slow spots, this time on account of an unnecessary amount of time spent rehashing established information every few chapters or so.  My eagerness to read on gave me the momentum to speed through these parts, but what really bothered me was that this took away time I could have been getting more new story.  Don’t get me wrong, I thought this book was great.  I just wanted to get as much of it as possible in the pages provided!

Luckily for me there is indeed plenty of more story out there.  There are a couple of novellas associated with this trilogy and a follow-up series set a few hundred years after these events.  Further, as if all that wasn’t enough, I found out all of those works are part of an even larger collection of the author’s works known as the Cosmere, a shared universe in which some of his various other series take place (and eventually overlap).  Pretty safe to say my reading list is now well stocked for the immediate future.

Book Review: Cibola Burn, James S.A. Corey (Book Four in the Expanse Series)

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Book Review, Books, James S.A. Corey, Sci-Fi, Science Fiction, The Expanse

With Abbadon’s Gate having successfully renewed my interest in this series, I eagerly went into book four, Cibola Burn.  As with my past reviews, while there are no spoilers that follow for this particular novel, I cannot make the same promise for content from the previous books.

Cibola Burn skips ahead two years in the timeline and takes place on the first human settlement within the newly accessible alien worlds.  Barely one year into the fledgling colony’s existence old conflicts from back home threaten its stability.  The colonists, all survivors of the disaster on Ganymede, have unwelcome visitors when scientists from an Earth-based corporation arrive with permits to study the world.  Fearing the eventual loss of their home and its lithium deposits, more extreme elements of the settlers attack and critically damage an incoming shuttle, causing a political crisis back in the centers of humanity.  Realizing few good outcomes exist, the UN and OPA nominate none other James Holden to mediate between the two sides and defuse tensions.  Holden, however, has more than diplomacy to worry about.  The protomolecule consciousness, still in the guise of Detective Miller, is very interested in the alien ruins on the outskirts of the colony and is imploring Holden to help it uncover the answers about its creators.  Those answers, however, might not necessarily benefit the world’s human population.

Overall I liked this book.  It did an excellent job advancing the protomolecule/Miller storyline in some really interesting ways.  The few chapters from what was presumably Miller’s perspective were fascinating and eerie.   On the human side, the growing political intrigues make for very compelling reading as they are getting more complex and far-reaching as the books go on.  There was a pretty major development at the end of this novel, and the teaser chapters featuring two of my favorite characters from previous books, Bobbie Draper and Chrisjen Avasarala, hint that they will have significant roles to play in upcoming events much to my delight.  Although I have had somewhat mixed feelings about the characters in this series as a whole, the possibility of more Avasarala is alone enough to keep me going, at least as long as the overarching story remains strong.

That said, when I consider how much I like the overall story, it is disappointing that similar character issues have hurt my opinion of three out of the four books I’ve read so far.  This time around I was troubled by two major flaws.  The first of these was pretty much the majority of POV character Elvi Okoye’s storyline.  As a scientist visiting the first alien world humans have landed on, there was a lot of potential for her character.  Unfortunately that was largely wasted on a ridiculous storyline involving a crush on Holden and a personal “problem” that took up way too much of the book and frankly felt out-of-place and a bit insulting to both character and reader.  The other flaw was that upon first arriving at the planet, Holden’s reactions to events on the ground were mind-bogglingly inept.  I don’t want to get too much into the details, but I felt he inexplicably gave one side way too much leeway and as a result enabled events to more rapidly escalate out of control.  As a reader, I was able to clearly see merits of both sides in the dispute, as well as recognize the terrible people in both groups.  With Holden’s outlook being so central to the story, I feel like this insight was mostly lost and prevented the novel from making a more effective point – if that was even the intention.

I do plan to continue on with the series. At this point I guess I’m committed to see it through.  I am almost reached a different sort of problem.  I am four books into the nine that have been planed and only the next two are currently out.  Book number seven is slated for release this year and then I am waiting for 2018 and 2019 for the last two, which almost sound like SciFi dates themselves.  As someone who’s not accustomed to reading a series before it’s done this is rather troubling to me!

Book Review: Abaddon’s Gate, by James S.A. Corey (Book Three of the Expanse Series)

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Book Review, Books, James S.A. Corey, Reading, Sci-Fi, Science Fiction, The Expanse

In my review for Caliban’s War, I had been wavering on whether or not to stick with the Expanse series.  I was so torn that the third book, Abaddon’s Gate, had about a 50/50 chance of keeping me, and I’ll admit that I went into it with cautious expectations.  As a warning, what follows is a general discussion of the book.  While I don’t post blatant spoilers, revealing plot points from previous novels is somewhat unavoidable at this point.  If you have yet to read this far, or are watching the SyFy series, proceed at your own risk.

The events of Abaddon’s Gate occur roughly a year after the end of the previous book.  James Holden and the crew of the Rocinante have been enjoying a period of success, translating their fame and notoriety into a series of lucrative security contracts.  Despite their newfound comfort Holden is troubled by past events involving the alien protomolecule, most notably due to its consciousness having begun reaching out to him in the form of Detective Miller.  Adding to his worries is the revelation that the ring-shaped structure launched from Venus is a gateway to an advanced transportation network, and there is no telling who, or what, is lurking on the other side.  In reluctantly accepting a job transporting a film crew to the device, Holden decides to face his fears and hopefully appease the Miller apparition.  Events, however, have a way of blowing up around him.  When a saboteur bombs a UN destroyer and frames the Rocinante, Holden and crew have no choice but to flee through the gate to buy time to clear their names.  On the other side they find the unimaginable: an empty space filled only by a field of other gateways, controlled by a mysterious space station.  With a coalition of UN, Martian, and OPA ships in pursuit, survival for Holden becomes a race to unlock the secrets of the station and find a way to get everyone back home, ideally proving his innocence in the process.

This book made me glad I stuck with the series as I found it the best installment so far.  I am getting into the politics and mysteries of the overarching story and the new twists in this novel really got me wanting more.  Indeed, this was the first installment in which I felt a real sense of danger for any of the core group and there was an excellent feeling of suspense throughout.  Once things go wrong inside the gate, the technological and psychological struggles made for excellent reading.  Going back to the characters, this was my favorite overall cast so far and on the whole I like the increasingly varied and diverse people populating these books.  Notably, this installment was a bit less centered on Holden, another huge plus in my view.  Although he is still no doubt the main player in this universe, I find him much better in smaller doses where he isn’t the primary mover of events.  POV character Carlos “Bull” de Baca was one of my top three in the series thus far and one of the others, Clarrissa Mao, was very good as well.  In combination with an interesting supporting cast, they easily made up for the weakness of Anna Volovodov, the fourth main character.  I am pleased to say that I got more than enough enjoyment of this book to eagerly continue on with the series.

Book Review: Towing Jehovah, by James K. Morrow (The Godhead Trilogy, Book One)

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Book, Book Review, Books, Fantasy, Godhead Trilogy, James K. Morrow, Reading, Sci-Fi

I had been hesitant to get involved with another series, but James K. Morrow’s Godhead Trilogy seemed like it had the potential to be a quick and amusing read. With all three volumes conveniently stashed in one ebook, I had visions of just plowing through them all in short order.  Things don’t always go as planned, however, and I only ended up reading the first book after finding this initial volume, Towing Jehovah, somewhat lackluster.

Main character Anthony Van Horne is a former sea-captain haunted by his past.  Some years prior to the events of the novel he was in command of a supertanker that struck a reef and caused a massive oil spill, an event which ended his career and stalks him in his dreams.  Seeking to ease his conscience, he has taken to bathing at a fountain in New York’s MET Cloisters to hopefully wash away his guilt.  One day while in the process of doing so, he gets approached by a sickly bewinged individual claiming to be the archangel Raphael.  The dying angel makes the stunning claims that God has died, Heaven is in disarray, and the Vatican wants to recruit Van Horne to discretely haul the 2.5 mile corpse to an iceberg for preservation.  In exchange for doing so he would be reunited with his old ship and offered the chance of inner peace and atonement, not to mention a nice paycheck.  The improbable voyage ends up being more difficult than even Van Horne could have possibly thought.  In addition to the staggering logistical challenges, he must face down a scheming society of wealthy atheists, hostile WW2 re-enactors, and the utter moral collapse of his crew.

While I thought the book had an entertaining concept, I never quite managed to get into it.  Some of that I think was due to the fact that the story wasn’t quite what I was expecting.  I had gone into this looking for something a bit more irreverently zany when instead it was often quite the opposite: dull.  Not to say the book didn’t have its moments; I did enjoy Van Horne’s dialogues with his Popeye notebook, the dedication of the WW2 re-enactors, and the creative solution to a food crisis that arises, but overall I felt there were a lot of missed opportunities.  All the groups depicted in the story offer plenty of fodder for satire; however, the author never quite hit the right mark on these and as a result the book made for a dry read and the overall story fell flat.  The characters also seemed a bit mismanaged, with parts of the cast often disappearing and reappearing without much in way of explanation other than the author was seemingly either done with them or suddenly needed a familiar face to throw on a page.  In a closed environment like a ship it felt odd.  Although I didn’t actively dislike this book, ultimately it failed to grab me, and I’ll be passing on the rest of the series.

Book Review: Kraken, by China Mieville

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Book, Book Review, Books, China Mieville, Fantasy, Kraken, Reading

Over the past year or so, the internet has been insisting that I read something by China Mieville.  I finally relented and decided to pick up this 2011 work on the strength of some reviews I came across and its description as “one of the strangest, funniest, and flat-out scariest books you will read.”  

The book centers on Billy Harrow, a curator at the Natural History Museum in roughly present day London.  Billy specializes in preservation and one of his most recent efforts, a massive forty-foot squid, has become one of the museum’s premier attractions.  We meet him when he discovers, while leading a tour group, that his prized specimen has disappeared without a trace, display case and all.  As the investigation into the missing squid gets underway, Billy finds that he has become a person of interest for the police; or at least to the detectives from the mysterious Fundamentalist and Sect-Related Crime Unit.  Before long the situation escalates beyond Billy’s wildest imagination, as he is dragged into a side of London he never even suspected to exist; an occult metropolis hiding in plain sight populated with magical persons, supernatural creatures, and Kraken-worshiping cultists, all of whom are bracing themselves for the coming apocalypse.

I liked this book, though it was not without its flaws.  There were times I thought the story was muddled and difficult to follow, and other points where I thought it felt either rushed or aimless.  Also worth noting, the book doesn’t quite live up the superlatives used to advertise it.  While it did have its strange and funny moments, it was not in the slightest bit scary or suspenseful.  If a book called Kraken teases horror, I feel like that sets a certain expectation; one this work did not deliver on.  Sure people die, and it dealt with the potential end of the world, but this was by no means a dark or scary book.  Or maybe I’m just not the audience those appeals were intended to lure in.

Putting that aside, these criticisms ultimately didn’t interfere significantly with my overall enjoyment of the story.  It was fun riding along with Billy as he got swept up in the events of the novel, and I remained interested in the characters and plot twists even when things got a bit confusing.  There were plenty of humorous moments along the way: the colorful language of Collingswood, the peculiarities of a familiars strike, an amusing revelation about Billy, and yet another reason to never, ever use transporter technology (as if that scene in Star Trek: The Motion Picture and the delightfully grim songs in the Hitchhiker’s Guide weren’t enough already).  The book was just fine for what it was, but don’t quite get why such a big deal seems to have been made about it.

Book Review: The Empress of Mars, by Kage Baker

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Book Review, Books, Kage Baker, Mars, Reading, Sci-Fi, Science Fiction

After reading a brief synopsis that mentioned both sci-fi and (somewhat tangentially) beer, I couldn’t resist picking The Empress of Mars up.  It was also well received, having earned best novella nominations for the Hugo and Nebula Awards in 2004.  Although set in the same universe as the author’s Company series (which I have not read) no previous reading seems to have been required for this book.

There were three Empresses of Mars.  The first one was a bar at the Settlement.  The second was the lady who ran the bar; though her title was strictly informal…The third one was the queen of England. (Prologue)

The story takes place around the first two, Mary Griffith and her bar.  Mary is one of the most influential colonists on Mars and the proud proprietor of its only brewery, an operation she runs with the help of her three daughters and a contingent of eccentric yet loyal staff.  While there is no shortage of interesting people and money-making schemes coming through her doors, life is not exactly easy on the red planet.  Colonization had once been enthusiastically led by a merger of corporate interests and old-fashioned British Imperialism, but the dream was soon abandoned when the board of directors of the British Arean Company (BAC) determined the endeavor was unlikely to turn a profit.  Left to their own devices, the remaining colonists carry on the task of terraforming the world and creating a society of their own, all the while cursing the BAC and its remaining administrative presence.  Life continues on like this until one day an unexpected discovery rekindles interest in the planet and draws in a host of new people, problems, and intrigues; all of which inevitably end up passing through the Empress.

On the whole I enjoyed this book.  Although it felt a bit superficial at times with its short, episodic, and often anecdotal chapters, there was a fun overall story arc.  Mixing in bits of political and economic intrigue with slices of sci-fi life, something about the reading experience just felt good as the book’s light-hearted, whimsical narrative moved the story along at an enjoyable and easy-going pace.  Calling this Cheers in space might be somewhat incorrect considering many of the events that take place outside the Empress, but that’s not exactly an inaccurate comparison either.  All the action and events in one way or another end up involving the bar’s regular group of workers and/or patrons, creating a diverse ensemble cast that compensated nicely for the lack of depth given to any one character in particular.  All in all, a quick and satisfying read.

Book Review: Caliban’s War, by James S.A. Corey (Book 2 of The Expanse Series)

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Book Review, Books, James S.A. Corey, Reading, Sci-Fi, Science Fiction, The Expanse

As some of you may recall I read Leviathan Wakes, the first installment in The Expanse series, a few months back.  While not exactly blown away, I did see some potential in the series and decided to give the next book a chance just to see how the story would develop.  Minor spoilers for Leviathan Wakes can probably be inferred from the paragraphs that follow, but everything is largely spoiler free.

Caliban’s War takes places several months after the end of the previous book.  The action this time centers around Ganymede, a major food source for the Belt colonies and one of the last remaining joint operations between Earth and Mars following a fragile truce established at the end of Leviathan Wakes.  This uneasy peace is soon shattered when an alien creature appears on the moon and wipes out a contingent each of Earth and Martian marines.  As the feuding governments attempt to sort through the confusion, signs of an even larger conspiracy emerge, as do increasingly volatile reactions from the alien protomolecule gestating on surface of Venus.  The story this time unfolds from the point of view of four characters, with familiar face James Holden accompanied by newcomers Praxidike Meng, a botanist from Ganymede, Sargent Roberta “Bobbie” Draper, a member of the Martian Marine Corps, and Chrisjen Avasarala, a high-ranking official in the Earth’s government.

While I was somewhat lukewarm in my feelings about the first novel, I found this installment a bit more to my liking despite still having some reservations.  Story-wise, I thought this book was pretty good.  Entertaining and action packed throughout, the book hit its stride early on and kept it pretty much throughout with the exception of two minor snags.  The first of these snags was one conflict near the end getting resolved just a little too easily and the other was a tendency in the middle to use repetitive word choices per chapter only to have them just as quickly disappear.  Overall though, while this might not have been the most thought provoking of novels, the story was fun and the series is beginning to get more complex as the intrigues expand the universe gets filled in as more key players begin to emerge.  It seems to be on the verge of making the jump from a made for film or TV action/adventure series into something just a little bit more.

As for the characters, I found them somewhat of a mixed bag.  Expanding the cast to include more point of view perspectives was definitely a good move that made for a much better read.  In particular I liked Avasarala, a tough as nails Indian grandmother who also happened to be one of the most powerful and competent people in the solar system.  Her character simultaneously added much needed senses of levity, diversity, and control, not to mention some fantastic one-liners.  Combined with Srgt. Draper, it was nice to see a pair of good female characters considering Naomi’s treatment in the first book (she fared a bit better this time around).  We also got to know the rest of Holden’s crewmates a bit better, most notably Amos, whom I also really liked.  I wish we got into the heads of these people a bit more, but I did get the sense that this will be happening soon, something that bodes well for future installments.

Speaking of Holden, there’s just something about him I don’t react well to; he’s like a combination of Dudley Do-Right and Captain Kirk-lite that I can’t help but think of as a bro.  Also frustrating is that the author had a tendency to diminish other characters when they’re around Holden to make him seem more impressive rather than write him up to their level; I just didn’t buy everyone around him so easily falling in line as a subordinate or suddenly morph from capable professionals to bungling underlings.  I did like him a bit better in this novel than I did the previous, but he may be the reason I drop the series.  Following the Game of Thrones analogy used to market the first book, I worry that I’m in the situation of being intrigued by the Song of Fire and Ice series but not being so sure about that Jon Snow fellow.  Since James S.A. Corey doesn’t seem to have the same bloodlust for killing off main characters as George R.R. Martin, this may not end well for me.

These reservations aside, the series was intriguing enough to bring me back (again) for at least one more book.  This installment ended on a pretty big cliffhanger that I’d like to see resolved and now that there are a few characters I’m starting to care about I don’t mind throwing the next installment, Abaddon’s Gate, into my library wait-list.  If I stop reading there, I’ll let you know; otherwise I’ll do an update later on in the series.  With six novels currently out in print and three more planned, I’d like to post about other books as well.

Book Review: Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ‘72, by Dr. Hunter S. Thompson

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Book Review, Books, Democratic Party, Donald Trump, Fear and Loathing, George McGovern, gonzo, Hillary Clinton, Hunter S. Thompson, Politics, presidential election, Reading, Republican Party, Richard Nixon

This book ranks among my all time favorites and has been an election year tradition ever since I found my copy at a San Francisco antique store back in 2003.  Told through a series of articles, field notes, diatribes, and ultimately taped conversations with his editor (following a nervous breakdown in November), Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ‘72 is a narrative of Thompson’s experiences and impressions covering the 1972 Democratic primaries and Presidential election for Rolling Stone magazine.  True to the author’s style, it contains a lot of colorful language, strong opinions, and several misadventures.  Frank Mankiewicz, campaign director of eventual Democratic nominee George McGovern, once called the book “the least factual, most accurate account” of the process; which given Hunter’s huge emotional investment, not to mention penchant for wild tangents and exaggeration, sounds about right.  If you’re at all interested in American politics or government this book is a must read.

For a general overview, the story begins in December 1971 and follows the path of South Dakota Senator George McGovern en route to winning the hotly contested 1972 Democratic Presidential nomination.  By appealing to the more liberal wing of the party and mobilizing an enthusiastic following among young voters, his campaign’s superior grassroots network allowed him to defeat a pair of old-guard establishment favorites while fending off a surprise challenge posed by a far-right demagogue.  After surviving an “Anyone But McGovern” challenge at the party convention, he seemed poised to deny Richard Nixon a second term in office.  Shortly following the nomination, however, the wheels began to fall off the campaign.  A scandal over an unpopular Vice Presidential selection with a history of shock therapy and lukewarm support from the defeated party establishment killed enthusiasm among new-found supporters and traditional Democratic voting blocs alike.  As a result McGovern suffered a crushing defeat, winning only in Massachusetts and Washington, DC, as Nixon cruised to reelection following a historically low voter turnout percentage.

Reading this again made me wish that Hunter was still alive to give his thoughts on our current political situation.  Having boasted of writing “some of the most brutal and hateful caricatures of Richard Nixon ever committed to print, in this country or any other (399),” what would he have to say about this year’s crop of Republicans?  Would he have felt the Bern despite his misgivings about the Democratic Party?  With these thoughts in mind, I will close with a few quotes that struck me as particularly relevant this year.

Speaking to my own Fear and Loathing about the candidates we’ve been offered for this November, the specifics might be different, but the sentiments are eerily similar:

How many more of these goddamn elections are we going to have to write off as lame but “regrettably necessary” holding actions?  And how many more of these stinking, double-downer sideshows will we have to go through before we can get ourselves straight enough to put together some kind of national election that will give me and the at least 20 million people I tend to agree with a chance to vote for something instead of always being faced with that old familiar choice between the lesser of two evils?  (55-6)

How long, O Lord. . .How long?  Where will it end?  The only possible good that can come of this wretched campaign is the ever-increasingly likelihood that it will cause the Democratic Party to self-destruct.  A lot of people are seriously worried about this, but I am not one of them.  I have never been much of a Party Man myself. . . and the more I learn about the realities of national politics, the more I’m convinced that the Democratic Party is an atavistic endeavor – more an Obstacle than a Vehicle – and that there is really no hope of accomplishing anything genuinely new or different in American politics until the Democratic Party is done away with. (125)

As for Donald Trump, these next few lines instantly made me think of the Republican nominee.  Again, the names may be different, but the personality disorders are apparently nothing new:

…it is Nixon himself who represents that dark, venal, and incurably violent side of the American character almost every other country in the world has learned to fear and despise.  Our Barbie doll President, with his Barbie doll wife and his box-full of Barbie doll children is also America’s answer to the monstrous Mr. Hyde.  He speaks for the Werewolf in us; the bully, the predatory shyster who turns into something unspeakable, full of claws and bleeding string-warts, on nights when the moon comes too close… (416-7)

The main problem in any democracy is that crowd-pleasers are generally brainless swine who can go out on a stage & whup their supporters into an orgiastic frenzy-then go back to the office & sell every one of the poor bastards down the tube for a nickel apiece.  (127)

The root of the Wallace magic was a cynical, showbiz instinct for knowing exactly which issues would whip a hall full of beer-drinking factory workers into a frenzy – and then doing exactly that, by howling down to them from the podium that he had an instant, overnight cure for all their worst afflictions…The ugly truth is that Wallace had never even bothered to understand the problems – much less come up with any honest solutions…(275)

Jesus! Where will it end? How low do you have to stoop in this country to be President? (414)