December's Book: 4 3 2 1

4 3 2 1 by Paul Auster

Fantasy (2017 - 866 pp.)

Astoundingly, 4 3 2 1 is the first novel by Paul Auster I've discussed on this blog, and the first of his I've read in fifteen years. After being assigned his fantastic 1987 dystopian novel In the Country of Last Things as an undergraduate English student in 2005, and recommending it ever since, I somehow managed to evade the rest of his lengthy literary career until now. Why, I have no idea. Whereas In the Country of Last Things reminds me of 1984 and Brave New World, 4 3 2 1 reads more like Barney's Version. For an author to have that breadth of writing, from the chillingly dark to the heartwarmingly hilarious, is almost unheard of.

4 3 2 1 begins on Ellis Island, as so many stories of American immigrant families do. Auster's invented family, ex-Russian-Empire Jews who eventually land in New York City and New Jersey, resemble so many other families of the first half of the twentieth century... until Archie Ferguson* comes along. From that point, 4 3 2 1 follows four different paths Archie's life could have taken, from his birth on March 3, 1947** until the dawn of the 1970s. From a topsy-turvy childhood in the 1950s, to growing into LBJ/Vietnam-era political activism in the 1960s, Archie develops as a writer and student, sometime lover of various people,*** and conflicted family member, in four distinctly different ways.

Slotting 4 3 2 1 into a genre is of considerable difficulty. If you accept that there is some sort of multiverse theory at work, it is arguably science fiction. If you handwave the reasoning behind the different lives, it can be Night Circus-style low fantasy. If you truly do not care why Archie has these four storylines but simply enjoy Auster's sharp sense of humour, 4 3 2 1 is pure comedy.

Archie's timelines go back to the age-old question we all ask at various points in our lives: if I had made an important life decision differently, who would I be now? Archie's circumstances and decisions change drastically, from whether Amy Schneiderman is his girlfriend, his friend, or neither; which school he attends (Princeton or Columbia: not a bad set of options!); or even something as monumental as the duration of his young life. As I have explained using a decision tree, this is an insightful way to craft a character, seeing through the eyes of who that person could have become at any given time. Auster dumps four of those stories on the table, providing the hook for 4 3 2 1, making the reader think back to so many important life events. Like many a New York City-based writer, Archie never becomes a Republican: is this real life writing the plot?

4 3 2 1's best scenes are dramatic, comedic, or both. Auster packs 47 years of Ferguson family history/lore into the introduction, (1-29) which comprises the first 3.35% of the book; some of 4 3 2 1's most charming moments, all squashed together. Auster's description of a young Archie braving a rainstorm at Camp Paradise is one of the best uses of pathetic fallacy - a lightning strike - I have read in recent years. (184) Archie's early literary forays are described in detail, some with excerpts, such as the cute "Sole Mates", but the most all-encompassing is "Right, Left, or Straight Ahead?" (492) In that story, the protagonist Lazlo Flute takes three different paths at a key crossroad, much like Archie does in 4 3 2 1, much like Archie's writing (he's always a writer) is so drastically different in his four storylines. On a less introspective note, college humour takes the form of Archie and his roommate creating fictional character tennis matches, which, naturally, descends into a Dick Diver joke, (586) as 1930s fiction wasn't that old in the late '60s.

For all its emotional directions, 4 3 2 1 drags. It clocks in at an estimated 320,885 words, making it approximately thrice the length of a typical book in its genre. Its 866 pages move quickly, but Archie's girlfriends in different timelines often blur together, making the reader pause to wonder whether all their lovers from ages 19-22 were really just different varieties of student. When the storylines share common events, notably the political tumult of the 1960s, two of those storylines become almost interchangeable.^ Then there is the interminable obsession with sex: I don't recall my teens and early twenties being dominated by sexual thoughts, so is this simply how Archie sees himself? Lastly, the ending is unsatisfying, which after that much inkshed^^ feels as though the reader is being robbed. Without spoiling the book, the ending is abrupt, at an age when Archie's story is just beginning, and contains a "gotcha!" moment that arguably changes the book's genre.

How would I finish this entry? Ikh hob fargessen!^^^

Ease of Reading: 6

Educational Content: 2

*They are Jewish and their last name is Ferguson. This is explained in detail in the book.

**Paul Auster was born on February 3, 1947. The vividness of the current events discussion in 4 3 2 1 lends credence to the idea that, even if the book isn't semi-autobiographical, Auster was very much inspired by the events of his youth.

***Exactly who Archie loves depends on the storyline.

^I am not alone in this observation. On Goodreads, one reader went so far as to use four different-coloured Post-It notes for the four storylines.

^^Like bloodshed but with ink.

^^^When you read the first page of 4 3 2 1, you will understand this reference.

Bonus Book! A Clockwork Orange

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

Social Criticism (1962 - 141 pp.)

A Clockwork Orange is one of the many 20th-century classics I failed to pounce on as a reader until far too late. In A Clockwork Orange, Alex, the protagonist and narrator, navigates a Sovietized dystopian England in the book's present day (c. 1962), committing murder, rape, assault, and getting into gang wars before being locked up, treated by experimental psychiatry, and then released back into a world he no longer understands. The lack of reform Alex understands is evident in how casually he narrates these jarring events.

Alex's disconnect from any sort of political history, heritage or tradition marks him as clearly living in the now. Despite living in England, he refers to "Victoria flatblock after some victory or other", (43) apparently unaware of Queen Victoria or of any of the United Kingdom's great victories over the centuries. It is not as though Alex is completely uneducated, as he is a budding classical music expert. Crystallography, an unnamed subject of study, is lost to the sands of time due to "a poisonous young swine" destroying all the books. (107) The "F. Alexander" who writes the intra-novel book "A Clockwork Orange" is probably Alex, although this is never confirmed, and Alex refers to a different characters as its author; even so, the book is something that only exists in Alex's recounting of his age 15-19 years.* Alex plainly has no future, even at the end of the book, even after his release from his prison, when the staff list a number of jobs Alex can perform but he shows little interest in them. Equally so, Alex has no past. None of Alex's childhood prior to the start of the book is ever revealed.

The book's locations are bright in my eyes. The Duke of New York is only one word off from a restaurant/pub/bar where I used to attend events in the halcyon pre-COVID days. The Korova milk bar takes a mainstay of communist-era Poland, the milk bar, and transplants it into a dingy, gritty, impoverished England. Alex's frequent returns to these places, inevitably in search of liquid (brandy and milk, respectively - he never orders food), make him see the world through alcohol and milk. In one of Alex's more frightening pre-prison episodes, he serves Scotch to ten-year-old girls (and that's just the beginning). The night before this episode, when Alex returns home to his mother's refreshingly unadulterated glass of milk, Alex recites one of the great one-liners of the whole book: "How wicked, my brothers, innocent milk must always seem to me now." (26) Whether this one-liner is Alex's commentary on the altered state of his life, ominous foreshadowing, or both, the "always" carries forward right to end of Alex's story.

Usually, a 141-page book that flows conversationally and reads as quickly as an airport novel would be a very easy read. In A Clockwork Orange's case, what makes the book difficult to read is part of its charm: Alex's constant use of Anglo-Slavic slang. The first time you read a phrase like "there was no need from the point of view of crasting some more pretty polly to tolchock some old veck in and alley and viddy him swim in his blood while we counted the takings and divided by four, nor to do the ultra-violent on some shivering starry grey-haired ptitsa in a shop and go smecking off with the till's guts", (3) it is virtually incomprehensible, but Alex's linguistic foibles are quickly absorbed. Alex's countercultural way of speech is subverted near the end of the book, when Georgina says Alex "talks funny" while giggling; Pete informs her that is really how he and Alex used to talk. (138) Similarly, Dim reminds Alex that he "was young", emphasizing the past tense. (110) By the end of the book, Dim is a police officer, Alex is unemployed, and, mysteriously, Alex is also a father. Is all the slang, and by continuation Alex's attitude, swept away by the simple process of growing up?

Ease of Reading: 4

Educational Content: 3

*For another example of an intra-novel book having the same title as the book it's in, see Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle, coincidentally also released in 1962.

November's Book: Fire and Blood

Fire & Blood by George R.R. Martin

Fantasy (2018 - 711 pp.)

Finally, after almost nine years, the world of A Game of Thrones comes to this blog.

Fire & Blood is the prequel* to George R.R. Martin's smash hit A Song of Ice and Fire series. Over a roughly 142-year span, an unnamed chronicler** tells a series of roughly chronological stories centering on the Targaryen monarchy. their dragons, their wars, their pinnacles and their nadirs. The chronicler discusses numerous fabricated sources, analogous to The Navidson Record in Mark Danielewski's classic horror novel House of Leaves; from the somber Septon Eustace to the bawdy Mushroom, they make entertaining additions to what otherwise could have been an encyclopedia.

The chronicle format drags the reader right into the action, blazing through Aegon's Conquest and family before listing off the greatest, cruelest and worst kings of the early Targaryens. Aegon I, astride his famed dragon Balerion, flanked by his sister-wives Visenya and Rhaenys, establishes Targaryen dominance over the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros.^ Maegor the Cruel is a truly formidable character, creating enemies all over Westeros who, nonetheless, never seem able to take him down. Jaehaerys I is arguably the main character of the book, having the longest and most prosperous rule; he is a favourite of mine due to his role as conciliator between various warring parties, a role I play whenever I can. Viserys I oversees the greatest proliferation of dragons in Westerosi Targaryen history, yet is unmotivated to mend the rips sprouting in his family. Prince Aemond is a prodigy-level dragonrider who enters multiple duels on dragonback and wins most of them. Princess Aerea's turn riding Balerion ends far less romantically.

Ancestors of the characters in A Game of Thrones make varying levels of cameo, often in surprising ways. The second most powerful house of Westeros is Velaryon, a house unseen in the sequential books. Starks make brief appearances, Lannisters slightly longer ones. What amazed me, though, was the nearly unbroken hundred-year span of the Baratheons serving the Targaryens as faithful allies. This especially put the events of Robert's Rebellion into greater context for me, as the rebel propagandists of A Game of Thrones make their side out to be a sworn adversary of the Targaryens. Maybe not so much...

As a general rule, the more swashbuckling a character or scene is in Fire & Blood, the more I like it. Although Martin does a great job of introducing characters like Rego Draz, the hated-but-effective Master of Coin, and does well to show how financially strained King's Landing often gets, Martin is at his best when someone is swinging a sword. Less convincing scenes include the various brothels and pleasure gardens, each of which could be any of the others, and the endless proliferation of younger siblings who no doubt end up dying in some gruesome way or another.

Martin's writing is extremely accessible, yet Fire & Blood lags when Martin introduces tidal waves of characters, sometimes to only appear in one paragraph. While it is commendable in-world that the chronicler can relate all this information, it is hopelessly confusing after a while. Worst of all, the reader cannot use Martin's dramatis personae at the back of the book to any real effect, as some of the greatest suspense comes from not knowing who will win the throne during one of many succession crises. Looking up the characters would spoil major plot points. I did double takes whenever characters had suspiciously normal-sounding names; after so many pages of characters like Visenya Targaryen, encountering characters with names like Tyler Hill or Sara Snow was jarring.

Fire & Blood is sold on the cover as showing "300 Years Before A Game of Thrones, Dragons Ruled Westeros". Naively, I assumed Fire & Blood would cover all 300 years. Instead, it covers Westeros from Aegon's Conquest up until the end of the Dance of Dragons, a bloody intra-Targaryen civil war that makes the War of the Five Kings look like a picnic by comparison. I reached the end wanting more. Compounding this shortage is the inconsistent pacing. The first 128 years of the book (1-128) take place from pages 1-390. The next fourteen years (129-142) take places from pages 391-711. What had moved at a fast clip suddenly turned into a book that was effectively about the Dance of Dragons. I liked the faster style of the first half, although the second half was interesting as well, especially the Daemon/Aemond dragon duel.

Fire & Blood is a fun read, but it is for readers who have already read the five sequential books so far. One also has to wonder why all this energy wasn't put into The Winds of Winter.^^

Ease of Reading: 7

Educational Content: 1

*Fire & Blood takes 300-158 years before A Game of Thrones. There could quite easily be a second prequel as well.

**This is the only spoiler I'll give. I thought the revelation of the chronicler's identity would be a major plot point. Whose house was this chronicler's? What motivation did the chronicler have for telling this story? Was the chronicler a Targaryen... or perhaps from a rival house, like a Stark or a Lannister? Sadly, the chronicler's identity is never revealed.

On the topic of spoilers, this is one of my extremely rare entries with essentially no pinpoint citations. Fire & Blood is so plot-packed, almost any citation feels like a spoiler.

^Except Dorne, of course. The book's numerous Dornish Wars are testament's to Dorne's ongoing independence.

^^I've ranted on Quora about the unreasonable delay of The Winds of Winter. Martin had the opportunity of a lifetime to release a new book while the HBO show was still in its run. Other than the basically coincidental release of A Dance with Dragons two months after the show's premiere, Martin did not release a sequential book during the show's run. Opportunity wasted?

Alice in Chains self-titled turns 25!

On November 7, 1995, Alice in Chains released Alice in Chains, their first full-length studio album* to hit #1 on the Billboard charts. They didn't tour for the album, in part due to singer Layne Staley's health issues, but the album flew off the shelves, often into the hands of fans who had purchased their previous albums Facelift (1990, #42) and Dirt (1992, #6). 

Alice in Chains turns 25 today.

You can listen to the full album here:

Singles include "Grind", "Heaven Beside You", and "Again". Other notable tracks include "Sludge Factory", "Head Creeps", "Frogs" and "Over Now". It's a 5-star album.

Recent years have seen a flood of Alice in Chains-related anniversaries. This year is also the 30th anniversary of Facelift, which the band has commemorated by releasing a 30th-anniversary edition, complete with special T-shirts.** There's also a "30 Days of Facelift" preceding this coming Friday's release. Earlier this year, Consequence of Sound noted the 26th anniversary of the band's 1994 EP Jar of Flies. The 2010s saw similar anniversaries, including the 25th anniversary of Dirt in 2017, the 27th anniversary of Dirt in 2019, and, curiously, the 24th anniversary of Alice in Chains last year.

I haven't seen any 25th anniversary tributes for Alice in Chains yet, so let there be at least one, no matter what the music sites of the world say (or fail to say).

Layne Staley performing live in support of Dirt in 1993. Image by Shutterstock. I would have taken a picture and posted it myself, as my photography appears in various places on this blog, but I was either five or six at the time. There was no official Alice in Chains tour, so those pictures don't exist.

*Their 1994 EP Jar of Flies hit #1. Despite its 31-minute run time (longer than Slayer's Reign in Blood, for comparison's sake), Jar of Flies was not considered a full-length album.

**Strange personal anecdote: I only own one Alice in Chains T-shirt. I bought it in Krakow, Poland, of all places. It's an extra large, yet it fits me perfectly despite the fact that I'm a medium. It has the Layne Staley-drawn sun logo from Dirt on it.

The Quilliad Issue 12: containing my horror story "Wound Salter"

The Quilliad, a Toronto-based magazine featuring emerging and established artists, has just released its 12th issue.

Among other great artists, Issue 12 features my short story "Wound Salter", in which a hopelessly doomed young woman enters into a pact with a mysterious being in 1920s Toronto. In a castle keep, the lights shine bright over the darkness outside while the Wound Salter holds his grisly court.

See Issue 12 of The Quilliad

October's Book: From the Ashes

From the Ashes by Jesse Thistle
Autobiography (2019 - 347 pp.)

In From the Ashes, Jesse Thistle chronicles his life to date, from a troubled childhood to homelessness as a young adult, before attending university and then becoming a professor at York University. The book is entirely in first person, written by Thistle, interspersed with pictures of him, his family, and any other people of note. I read this book as part of the University of Alberta Alumni Book Club.

From the Ashes opens in medias res, in prison, with a devastating assault, possibly murder, on an inmate. (3-4) This is one of the most exciting prologues I've read in a while, and it frames Thistle's story perfectly: difficulty surviving. The prison assault has an American History X feel to it. If it were included chronologically like the rest of the story, it would likely fit into "Solitary Confinement". (252) From there, Thistle goes all the way back to his first memories, where his life begins.

From the Ashes is split into four parts:

1. Lost and Alone (1979-1987)
2. Falling Apart (1988-1996)
3. The Stolen Streets (1998-2007)
4. Reconciliation (2008-2017)

Each part is divided into a number of smaller chapters, ranging anywhere from 2-10 pages, which makes From the Ashes an incredibly fast read. There is rarely a time when the reader simply does not have time to read more chapter. This process snowballs into reading entire parts in one go. "Lost and Alone" covers Thistle's childhood, starting when he lives alternately with each of his divorced parents, then briefly in foster care, then with his grandparents. "Falling Apart" covers the period when Thistle goes from being a troubled but manageable child to developing anger, mental health and addiction issues. "The Stolen Streets" covers Thistle's young adulthood, on-again off-again homelessness, gruesome leg injury, and imprisonment. "Reconciliation" covers his ascent from these problems to life as a professor. The only thing really missing from From the Ashes is Thistle's work as a doctoral student, which would have been a fascinating read after reading all the rest.

Thistle is the narrator and the protagonist, which binds the reader to him, but he is careful never to present himself as a proverbial "good guy". Thistle commits his first violent crime as an early teenager, when he robs a boy named Ivan in twilight on the boy's front yard; it is one of Thistle's cruelest moments, and it is astonishing he was never reported and arrested for it. (110) Thistle relays his extensive use of welfare fraud schemes during an unrelated criminal trial, (see below) which he describes in vivid detail.* (204) 

Nonetheless, a litany of horrors is thrown in Thistle's face, none of which are entirely his fault. His first exposure to heroin use was stumbling upon his father, in "Hornet", injecting in the bathroom. His father describes the needle as a hornet in the skin, which contains medicine that would be harmful to Thistle. (22) This statement comes very true as the book goes on. In a sober moment, Thistle takes temporary employment in manual labour jobs in Vancouver, some of which never pay even when he does the work. In the worst case, Jesse's reaction was one that would later become horror: "'What's asbestos?' I asked. 'Nobody told me.'" (163) Thistle accidentally meets the two murderers of Baljinder Singh Rai, the Greater Toronto Area's first murder of 2000. The murderers attempt to use him as an unwitting accomplice, which leads to him testifying against himself (on the welfare fraud-related matters mentioned above) in open court. (197) Although Thistle's brothers become successful, including the irony of one becoming an RCMP officer despite the Thistle family's history of criminality, Thistle ends up in situations that either lead him to abuse or lead him to be abused. The scene in which Thistle's father has all three preschool-aged sons, including Thistle, help him rob a convenience store has the unfortunate distinction of being both. (23-26)

One of the main messages of From the Ashes is the importance of not getting in your own way. Thistle loses his girlfriend Karen, who he met when she brought blueberry muffins to a house party, (139) by cheating on her. Thistle's blackout in a nightclub, which happens while he is accompanied by a mysterious man named Rex whose relationship to Thistle is unmentioned and who is unmentioned anywhere else in the book, occurs due to his self-described lack of awareness. (169-173)

Thistle's leg injury, which bothers him to this day (or at least to the time of the book's publication), happens due to his unaided attempt to scale his brother's wall, "like Spider-Man". Thistle was locked out of the apartment building during a fight with his brother and his then-girlfriend. Thistle's lines describing the event are very poetic, although I am sure he would have preferred to not be writing them from first-hand experience:

People who say your life flashes before you when you’re about to die are full of shit. What does happen is your world slows down—seconds feel like hours, the sounds all around become clearer, colours and lights become so bright you can see everything—every bug and creepy-crawly thing in existence. (232)

As the book goes on, a diametric opposition emerges between Thistle's interactions with public authorities and his increasing ability to set his own goals. The near-constant presence of government in Thistle's life, from the Children's Aid workers who take him away from his father at the start of the book to the police officers who arrest him to the prison system that holds him during his 20s, is a nod to the ever-presence of government in Thistle's life. It is when Thistle is recovering from his various drug addictions that he notices just how institutionalized his life has become: “Those cinder blocks seemed to follow me wherever I went—the ones found in jails, mental institutions, probation offices, hospitals, detox centres, detention centres, shelters, Sally Anns, welfare offices, court holding cells, police bullpens.” (295) All of the institutions Thistle mentions here, other than the Salvation Army and some of the shelters, are run by governments.

Arguably the greatest line in From the Ashes is when Thistle sets out how he is going to escape this centrifuge of despair: by setting small, incremental goals. This is how Thistle ultimately overcomes his difficulties with systems like university applications, moving toward becoming the professor he is today:

I’d literally set one- or two-minute goals—If I can just make it to the next minute, I thought, then I might have a chance to live; I might have a chance to be something more than just a struggling crackhead. (313)

The first line above is one of the lines I most identified with in From the Ashes, primarily because I have a noted history of running and I am an Orangetheory Fitness member. When you run, each 0.1 of a mile (or kilometre) motivates you toward the finish line, toward a new personal best, or toward wherever you may end up. When you think, "I have three more miles to run", it is almost depressing unless you are running a marathon. When you think, "just to the next 0.1," or "just to the next street", it feels like you can do it endlessly. One of the topics Thistle comes back to frequently in From the Ashes is how often he was running from something. Running toward something is what saves him.

As a Canadian reader, I felt a connection to some of the places and topics Thistle discusses. Thistle's time in Toronto plugs Sam the Record Man, where I went before its 2007 closure; MuchMusic, which I watched religiously on Friday afternoons growing up;** the Royal Ontario Museum, where I am a member;*** and the Hudson's Bay Company, where I've shopped many times. Seeing the reaction of someone as Canadian as I am, yet so different from me, to these iconic places was one of the more reality-checking moments of From the Ashes: it holds that the old phrase "this happens where you live" is true. On a quainter note, I found various characters' use of, and others' difficulty understanding, Michif to be interesting. As someone who speaks French as a second language, but had never seen Michif written out before reading From the Ashes, I found I could read the Michif phrases in the book seamlessly.

One of Thistle's favourite early memories is Christmas. His family got together, whichever members were living in close enough proximity any given year, and the food shortages Thistle experienced growing up were in temporary abeyance. (72) The return to family shows through when Thistle tracks down his brothers, whenever he sees his mother, and perhaps most notably, when a chance meeting with a fellow teenager becomes foreshadowing for meeting his wife. (84) As Thistle's grandfather tells him when he is a child: "family is the most important thing." (89)

Ease of Reading: 9

Educational Content: 4

*Thistle states: “They give out $1,000 for start-up if you have that. It’s to get you set up in a place with food and clothes—all that shit. But most people just scam it for money and stay at a friend’s house. I do it all the time—forge rental documents so I have some money—” (204)

**I am convinced the MuchMusic Countdown provided me with context for two of my great loves: music and lists. Loud and Pop-Up Video were good too.

***Note to bearded readers during these COVID-19 times: if you are going to wear a mask for 2-3 hours in a public place that requires it, shave first. My pet theory is that mask wearing will finally end the beard trend of the past 18 or so years.

RBC Race for the Kids 2020: Royal York Race

For my fifth consecutive year running the RBC Race for the Kids, I had a special challenge: devise my own route, for my own distance. I chose to run the longest I've ever run for an RBC race (11.5 km), the entirety of the way down Royal York Road, from St. Philip's Anglican Church at the north end to Lake Ontario at the south end. Supporting Sunnybrook Hospital's Family Navigation Project has never been more creative.

In light of the lack of race kits this year, I wore my RBC Race for the Kids 2018 shirt. I also packed blue Gatorade - why not colour coordinate?

The ceremonial starting gate since 1828. (I ran south across Dixon Road, not east through the churchyard.)

Showing off my gear before the race.

Finishing point. I started at 10:45AM, finished at 12:03PM.

What the race lacked in camaraderie and competition, it made up in scenery and a sort of Zen oneness with the running experience itself.

Once again, as always, a huge thank you to all my donors! There's still time.

No New Balance mascot this time, though.