Hello. This was April: a month of artists, assassins, and authoritarians.
“Five Views of the Planet Tartarus” by Rachael K. Jones. Simple. Effective. Brutal. Can see why this has been getting so much award buzz.
From Ted to Tom: The Illustrated Envelopes of Edward Gorey edited by Tom Fitzharris. Had this also included Mr. Fitzharris’s side of the conversation, this little volume would be as invaluable as Floating Worlds, that other gorgeous and considerably more intimate collection of letters between Gorey and fellow author Peter F. Neumeyer. Lacking the epistolary context, though, Gorey’s missives—full of cleverness and charisma though they may be—feel a bit cold and detached. (Although, to be fair, that is probably how Gorey would have liked it—the last thing the man wanted was to be scruted.)
But this is mainly meant as a showcase for Gorey’s endlessly evocative envelope art, and in that regard, it is a resounding success. A stunning collection.
Love and Let Die: James Bond, The Beatles, and the British Psyche by John Higgs. The central conceit of this book—Bond embodies Death; the Beatles embody Love—is absolutely delicious, and I all but devoured it in just a couple of days. Bond is what drew me to it initially, of course. While I’ve always enjoyed and appreciated the Beatles, I’ve never exactly been what you might call an active aficionado of the group. It’s definitely fair to say that I’m much more a proper Bond enthusiast overall, and Higgs’s commentary on the character—and his insights into the 007 stories—are among the finest, most perceptive I’ve come across. You can tell it comes from a place of deep fondness and appreciation, too, even when Higgs isn’t holding back on his criticism of the more objectionable elements of Fleming’s famous fictional fabrication.
Despite finding the “Bond is Death” premise evocative from the outset, I wasn’t entirely sold on it until literally the final chapter, with its discussion of the transformative nature of myths through the unlikely lens of the shamanic ritual tradition of the death and resurrection show—which is the kind of analysis you get from a book that insists on juxtaposing such incongruous legendary figures as Double-O Seven and the Fab Four. (It also, surprisingly, made me excited and hopeful for the future of the character—we tend to keep our myths around, after all.)
I wish I had more to say about the Beatles. Despite running a negligible MP3 blog in my early twenties, music commentary has never really been my forte. But the love Higgs has for the group and its individual members is palpable, and it made me revisit much of their music throughout my reading of this. It’s also simply astonishing how, for a group that’s been a fundamental component of pop culture for sixty years now, there is still so much left to discuss. Even this volume, which does not purport to be an exhaustive history of the band, offered some surprising insights and intriguing details I had never come across before. It was one of those sobering realizations: we’ll never truly comprehend just how much—and how utterly—these four lads changed the course of history.
But obviously, my favorite part of the whole thing was discovering the countless surprising ways these two icons of modern mythology intersected—and how their respective legacies continue to shape not just the culture of Britain, but that of the world. A perfect piece of pop punditry.
With a Mind to Kill by Anthony Horowitz. Horowitz may just be my favorite Bond writer—though that could simply be because he emulates Fleming’s distinct style so effortlessly and flawlessly. His 007 novels are excellent, and this is probably the most mature and well-written of the lot. I flew through this. I loved that the story was a direct continuation of The Man with the Golden Gun, which I still maintain would have been an excellent send-off for Bond had Fleming lived to do a final pass. That Horowitz expands and fleshes out that narrative here is a fine tribute—and indeed one that makes that particular novel retroactively better.
Horowitz has a flair for character work, and, appropriately, Bond’s portrayal here is superb—positively brimming with the acedia its original author bestowed upon the character. I appreciated that his battles were as much mental as they were physical, a device that has always suited the literary Bond so much better. Katya is a fascinating love interest, and her story—true to this series—is suitably shocking and tragic. Colonel Boris could have been a real contender for most vile villain if only he had been fleshed out more. In a way, it was fitting that the horrendous things he did to Bond and others were merely hinted at, letting our morbid minds fill in the rest—but it would have benefited the story more to see some evidence of the character’s depravity, the better to truly loathe him.
Still, a magnificent end to a magnificent trilogy.
Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion. My first Didion! Finally! It was fine!
Didion was undoubtedly a Writer, and she had a way of crafting sentences that were both beautiful and breathtaking, making her prose read almost like poetry, at times. Technical admiration aside, though, I feel like a lot of these essays didn’t do much for me, unfortunately. This collection is divided into three parts: the first is devoted to pieces about California, the Culture, and The Times; the second to personal musings—more journal entries than straight-up reportage; and the third to an assortment of abstract and introspective pieces exploring more psychological and emotional terrains, along with some additional diary-type entries.
For me, each section came with diminishing returns, with the first, “Life Styles in the Golden Land,” being the strongest. Didion’s wanderings through the rapidly changing cultural landscape of the sixties—and her insights into the whys and wherefores of the psychedelic age—were nothing short of fascinating. My favorite piece was “Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream,” mostly because it read like a particularly noir episode of Mad Men and reminded me that I should really give Double Indemnity a watch. A close second was the titular essay, of course—that powerhouse of zeitgeist writing. Brilliant, bold stuff.
Despite some truly wonderful writing, I’m sad to say that I found most of the other essays largely forgettable—mainly because many of their subjects were figures who may have, I’m sure, loomed large at the time but have since become minor historical footnotes, their triumphs and follies virtually faded and forgotten, and not even Didion’s sparkling, novelistic prose could make them resonate for this twenty-first century reader.
Required reading, regardless. Didion was an absolute force.
And that was April. See you next month.
BOOKS BOUGHT LOOK I WAS DOING WELL UNTIL ABOUT HALFWAY THROUGH THE MONTH BUT HONESTLY I’M CONSIDERING THAT PROGRESS:
- Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor
- Cary Grant’s Suit by Todd McEwen
- My Life with Bob by Pamela Paul
- The Spy Who Loved Me by Ian Fleming
- Heat 2 by Michael Mann, Meg Gardiner
- The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril by Paul Malmont
- Whalefall by Daniel Kraus
