The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more

Book Review: The Nineties by Chuck Klosterman

Book #43 of 2022:

The Nineties by Chuck Klosterman

A whirlwind overview of the history, culture, technology, and politics of the titular decade in America — which, while acknowledging that such a construct is necessarily artificial, author Chuck Klosterman (born in 1972) argues is reasonably bounded by the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the September 11 attacks in 2001, each of which ushered in fairly seismic changes. His aim here is to explore how the 90s were different both from previous eras and from the world that followed, although much of the text plays out more as a self-reported and congratulatory Generation X ethnography than an attempt to offer a truly unbiased account.

Indeed, while the writer is able to articulate things like the ubiquitous ethos against ‘selling out’ and capture what it was like as a young adult experiencing the slacker zeitgeist, he too often strays into subjective opinions and repeatedly brags/complains without evidence that specific pieces of popular fiction “couldn’t be made today” due to supposed modern sensitivities. His Nineties also just weren’t mine: as a child of 1988, I grew up in the era, and while I recognize shared touchstones like the OJ Simpson trial or the sound of dial-up internet, there’s nothing here about, say, Beanie Babies, Pogs, Power Rangers, or the Macarena, those ephemeral artifacts that gave texture to my schooldays. He’s bemused by the obsession with Titanic and its star Leonardo DiCaprio, but he can’t really describe what it was like to see that from the inside.

I wonder if the ideal version of this book might have been a collaboration between Klosterman, a Boomer, and a Millennial, each of whom would bring a distinct and valuable perspective on what this particular moment of time signified to their respective age cohorts. Some racial diversity would have been good too, for although Black celebrities like Oprah Winfrey and Michael Jordan get mentioned, Klosterman seems to be writing primarily about/for middle-class white people like himself (and me, to be fair).

I don’t want to besmirch the work he’s done here; it’s definitely interesting as a younger reader to hear about the monoculture’s omnipresent irrelevance — pretty much everyone watched Seinfeld, yet nobody cared if they missed an episode — as well as the less polarized politics, when it was a widespread assumption that Al Gore and George W. Bush were similar candidates whose minor differences could be breached by common-sense compromise. But there’s so much that feels either off or missing in this narrative, and I think it’s because it’s too rooted in just one man’s point of view.

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: The Drop by Michael Connelly

Book #42 of 2022:

The Drop by Michael Connelly (Harry Bosch #15)

The two cases that make up this Harry Bosch novel are both fine, but not exactly remarkable, especially this deep into the series. In the first, a corrupt politician’s son has fallen from the top floor of a high-rise hotel, and the detective is charged with finding out whether it was suicide, accident, or murder. In the second, an old rape and homicide investigation gets reopened due to new DNA evidence, and the main challenge is not in identifying a suspect, but in determining his real name and locating him after decades have passed. That latter plot leads to the story’s most harrowing scene, when the protagonist finds out his target is a serial killer / rapist / torturer and walks into the home where he carried out his depravities and kept detailed photos and videos of everything.

It’s solid Bosch, in other words, threaded with the character’s particular sense of justice for all — “everybody counts or nobody counts” — and willingness to flout laws himself in his pursuits, each of which creates tension with his partner and superiors. The moments with the hero’s daughter, now 15 and expressing an interest in becoming a cop herself, are quietly endearing. And for fans of the Amazon adaptation, this volume introduces the detectives nicknamed Crate and Barrel — although as usual, they’re pretty different from their TV counterparts. I’m giving the title three-out-of-five stars for never quite blowing me away, and for carrying a bit too much falling action at the end, but it maintains the baseline of procedural competence that returning readers will expect and enjoy.

[Content warning for pedophilia, gun violence, and gore.]

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: In the Serpent’s Wake by Rachel Hartman

Book #41 of 2022:

In the Serpent’s Wake by Rachel Hartman (Tess of the Road #2)

This fantasy sequel has some compelling things to say about indigenous complexity and sovereignty to resist the forces of empire, even when cloaked in the name of science or protesting that they’ve come there to help. It’s an interesting postcolonial critique that’s unusual — although certainly not unique — for the genre, and one which provides important recontextualization for the received wisdom about this setting that we’ve acquired over the three previous franchise installments. It also continues the exploration of genderfluidity and nonbinary identities, albeit still mostly among the various dragon species of its realm.

But I’m less sold on the novel as an actual story, especially one following up on the deeply personal Tess of the Road, an emotional wringer about a young woman who survived rape and the loss of her newborn child and who painstakingly pulled herself up from a deep alcoholic depression as she wandered the countryside in search of a measure of healing. Her adventures in the last volume formed a bittersweet picaresque, but the stakes were always present in every new episode. In this title, by contrast, Tess is just sort of… there. She’s part of an expedition to find the mythical great serpent that’s said to dwell off the southern polar islands of her world, and she gets caught up in the local power struggle and called out for her well-meaning but misguided white saviorism, yet there’s so little about any of this that feels specific to her as a character or as fraught as her earlier ordeals. (The narrative seems to be picking up around a fifth of the way through when the protagonist’s rapist re-enters her life, but then he departs again a few scenes later.)

Our returning heroine is joined by a handful of other viewpoint figures as well, an expansion of scope that allows author Rachel Hartman to paint a broader picture of the region’s stormy geopolitics but further diffuses the sense that this is Tess’s journey in particular and introduces a certain aimlessness to the entire affair. I remember reacting similarly to Shadow Scale as a conclusion to the original Seraphina, so perhaps this is simply a lesson that I need to learn about Hartman duologies going forward.

[Content warning for racism and gore.]

This volume: ★★★☆☆

Overall series: ★★★★☆

Volumes ranked: 1 > 2

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Book Review: The Hidden by K. A. Applegate

Book #40 of 2022:

The Hidden by K. A. Applegate (Animorphs #39)

I don’t always love the weirder Animorphs plots, but this one lands just right for me. In a sudden flare-up of simmering continuity, the Yeerks have repaired a piece of Helmacron technology from #24 The Suspicion, allowing them to track down incidents of morphing energy. The action that results is thus similar to the threat of the morph-hunting Veleek from Megamorphs #1 — and the protagonists even attempt to resolve it the same way, having Cassie turn into a whale from way up above the ocean and crush the tracker beneath her falling weight — but with the added wrinkle that the enemies can detect the morph-granting Escafil device as well, and that’s the main thing they’re after. So as the team races towards the coastline to set up their trap, they are hounded by waves of Hork-Bajir, Taxxon, and human Controllers in a grueling and bloody endurance test that pushes them all to their limits. Luckily, help arrives from an unexpected quarter… an African Cape Buffalo following them that has likewise gained the power to morph.

It may be a bit of a retcon to suggest that an animal brushing against the cube could get the morphing ability and then be able to unconsciously acquire and adopt new forms, but once you accept that premise, it’s a whole new ethical minefield to explore (which is always good for a Cassie title). Since the creature has seen her morph, they can’t allow it to fall into Yeerk hands and be infested, but after morphing Chapman, it feels closer to humanity and thus wrong to kill in cold blood. Our heroine can’t help but coax the beast to morph and heal itself from a would-be fatal wound, despite knowing there’s no tenable long-term solution here. Yet the “buffa-human” plainly has some understanding of its situation and who deserves its pack loyalty, and it even seems to be on the verge of figuring out speech when a stray Dracon beam resolves the conundrum.

Before that point, however, we see our second mutant of the book, and it’s a real horrorshow: an ant that crawls across the cube and Cassie’s bare leg, and then somehow morphs into her. Unlike her fellow mammal, this new morpher isn’t merely confused by its predicament. It is crazed on a Lovecraftian level by the transformation and disconnect from the hive mind, and quickly regrows its pincers to attack her, its features churning back and forth between teeth and mandibles all the while. The sheer nightmare fuel of that scene I think is why I rate this particular volume higher than some of the similarly outlandish developments of the past. It is simply too profane and horrifying for the absurdity to register at all.

(Side note: it’s scrupulously not mentioned one way or another in the text, but these human morphs are nude, right? I can’t imagine how they wouldn’t be, given everything we know about the difficulty of retaining clothes while morphing. Maybe the ant managed to acquire Cassie’s spandex along with her DNA, but unless Chapman had some skintight skivvies of his own and the buffalo is a natural estreen, there are multiple instances in this novel where the teenagers must be standing around the woods with their assistant principal’s naked body. I’m just saying.)

Overall, I like this story, as I tend to do for any mission when the Chee androids have to step in with their holograms at everyone’s homes so that the Animorphs can focus as full-time soldiers in their awful resistance war. Ghostwriter Laura Battyanyi-Wiess, in her third and final outing for the series, pulls her punches a little in terms of saving the heroes from carrying out and living with the hardest choices — even the whale ploy turns out to be unnecessary when a random bird flying into the engine accidentally destroys the tracking helicopter all on its own — but she more than makes up for that in the moral dilemmas and horrific violence she throws their way. The characters aren’t perfect, and it’s hard not to think Cassie’s a hypocrite when she agrees to a plan to take down the chopper filled with Yeerks and their involuntary hosts, scant pages after protesting that killing a buffalo with human DNA would be murder. But we can viscerally feel the strain of this latest ordeal, and that’s what really lingers.

★★★★☆

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Book Review: How to Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question by Michael Schur

Book #39 of 2022:

How to Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question by Michael Schur

A fun and educational read from TV writer-showrunner Michael Schur, sharing some of what he learned about different schools of moral philosophy for his hit series The Good Place, which grappled with thorny ethical dilemmas to a surprising degree for a half-hour network sitcom. You don’t need to have seen the show in order to enjoy the book, though, as the occasional references to it are all explained and the point isn’t really to talk about either the author or the program. (But for fans, I highly recommend the audiobook, which reunites cast members Kristen Bell, D’Arcy Carden, Ted Danson, William Jackson Harper, Manny Jacinto, Marc Evan Jackson, and Jameela Jamil to handle its various quotes and footnotes.)

This is essentially a comedy piece, a self-help book, and a crash course on ethics, all rolled into one. Over thousands of years, humans have put a lot of thought into what it means to be / act like a good person, and Schur has distilled some of the major resulting ideas down into neatly digestible summaries. He explains what thinkers from Aristotle to Kant to Scanlon have reasoned, compares how their conclusions differ from one another, and applies each in turn to the sort of problems that arise in our daily modern life. When, if ever, is it okay to lie? Do I need to return the shopping cart to the store instead of leaving it by my parking space? How much is appropriate to give to charity, and should it be anonymous? Can we continue enjoying a work in good conscience after we learn something horrible about its creator?

Despite the bombastic title, the goal of this project is not actually to reveal the one true answer to such questions. Instead, the writer prompts us to consider how those competing conceptualizations of morality would respond to them, and encourages us to find the approach that feels right to us individually in each successive scenario. He likewise reminds us not to worry about the times when we don’t uphold our principles, so long as we have them and keep on trying. It’s a handy guide to mindful living as one’s best self — howsoever that’s defined — not to mention a great cheat sheet for Philosophy 101.

And it’s funny! Unsurprisingly given Schur’s credentials, the jokes are hilarious and do much to enliven the kind of material that could easily be dry in alternate hands. He also wears his personal beliefs on his sleeve, making no bones about his leftish political alignment. But that’s not a bias or an imposition on the text: it’s directly relevant to his frustrations with billionaires hoarding their wealth and people who won’t wear a mask to help curb the spread of Covid-19 — a simple ethical choice if ever there was one — or his own dilemma over whether to eat from Chick-fil-A knowing their organization contributes to homophobic causes. Indeed, it’s quite clear that the author’s morality is guiding his politics, rather than the other way around. If that discomforts some readers, maybe their attitudes are just the ones that need to be shaken for their own ethics to be honed.

★★★★☆

TV Review: Classic Doctor Who, season 1

TV #10 of 2022:

Classic Doctor Who, season 1

It’s been over a decade now since the first/only previous time I ever watched all of Classic Who straight through, so I figured I was probably due for a rewatch. Doctor Who is still my very favorite franchise, and in the years since, I have of course kept up with the modern program and its spin-offs, but I have also listened to all of the officially-licensed Big Finish audio dramas (which often reprise cast members from the older era), and dabbled in the tie-in novels and comic books as well. So those are my Whovian bona fides heading into this initial season, which debuted in November 1963 in all its black-and-white glory.

TV back then was rather different from our current sensibilities, and my best advice is to treat it more as live theater than as a perfect polished production. Actors, particularly First Doctor William Hartnell, regularly flub the dialogue, or step on somebody else’s, or otherwise miss their cues. The special effects, costumes, and sets aren’t always wholly convincing. But it was a low-budget feature, the cost of film was too expensive to merit many repeated takes, and the performers generally had only a few days in which to memorize their scripts and blocking. No one was expecting the performances to be preserved long past broadcast, either. If you consider the resulting work as a series of rushed plays, I find it’s a bit easier to suspend disbelief.

As for the stories, I would say they are just barely more good than great overall, but there are definitely some real winners here, especially for fans of the later show. As multi-part serials, ranging from two to seven episodes each, a few of these drag on unduly. But so much here is instantly iconic as the Doctor Who that I love, from the look and sound of the TARDIS time machine and the Dalek soldiers to that haunting theme song and the general concept of a mysterious yet enchanting alien stranger whisking unsuspecting humans away through time and space. No one has yet mentioned Gallifrey or Time Lords or regeneration. But the core of the show’s essence is there from the start, along with the glimmer of why it’s continued to endure through today.

In its earliest incarnation, the series was pitched as an educational program, and so there are a lot of pure historical adventures, where the protagonists visit somewhere in the past and there’s no particular science-fiction on display, merely travels with Marco Polo or intrigues of the French Revolution or the like. But the beauty is already that this is a show that can transform itself utterly from chapter to chapter, and so we do get some futuristic vistas and bug-eyed monsters peppered in as well.

With the exception of Susan, who’s frustratingly positioned just to scream and get captured much of the time — and whose role as the Doctor’s granddaughter never leads to the natural pathos or the greater worldbuilding that it seemingly should — the characters are pretty fun. The Doctor is gruffer and sharper than a modern viewer might expect, but his irascible exterior hides a playfulness that comes out as the season goes on and his reluctant passengers endear themselves to him. Those last two travelers, contemporary schoolteachers Ian and Barbara, are our audience surrogates, and they are often the ones saving the day through brains or brawn, rather than their elderly kidnapper. They certainly provide the relatable perspective and emotional heart to many of these early serials.

Do I think every New Who fan needs to watch this first run in its entirety? (Which you more or less can; there are audio recordings and visual reconstructions of the few episodes that haven’t survived.) Nah, not really. Beyond the issues I’ve already touched on, there’s some unfortunate sexism and racism here, perhaps most egregiously in using white British people to play all but one of the Chinese and Aztec roles or an awful line from the Doctor about primitive savages. It’s a specifically 1960s English vision of history, which is sometimes hard to stomach. But it’s more rewarding than you might imagine, if you can put up with the weaker moments.

Serials ranked:

★★☆☆☆
THE KEYS OF MARINUS (1×21 – 1×26)

★★★☆☆
THE EDGE OF DESTRUCTION (1×12 – 1×13)
THE REIGN OF TERROR (1×37 – 1×42)
MARCO POLO (1×14 – 1×20)
THE SENSORITES (1×31 – 1×36)

★★★★☆
THE DALEKS (1×5 – 1×11)
AN UNEARTHLY CHILD (1×1 – 1×4)
THE AZTECS (1×27 – 1×30)

[Content warning for gun violence, sexual harassment, and implied threat of rape.]

★★★☆☆

Book Review: Gwendy’s Final Task by Stephen King and Richard Chizmar

Book #38 of 2022:

Gwendy’s Final Task by Stephen King and Richard Chizmar (The Button Box #3)

I’m pleasantly surprised by how much I’ve enjoyed this latest Stephen King / Richard Chizmar collaboration, given how I was generally lukewarm on the authors’ original Gwendy’s Button Box and cared even less for Chizmar’s solo followup Gwendy’s Magic Feather. And coming in with accordingly low expectations, I’ll admit I rolled my eyes a bit at the setup here. The returning heroine — a precocious teen in the former tale and novelist-turned-politician in the latter — is now a 64-year-old US Senator and first-time astronaut? She’s somehow taking her magic box thing on the rocket without having to tell anyone what it is, and hiding the early stages of her creeping Alzheimer’s to boot? Sure, fellows. Okay.

What saves the piece, I think, is that it is not really aiming to be a conclusion to those earlier novellas, but rather a Dark Tower-adjacent standalone. The year is 2026, and Gwendy’s launch is being run by the Tet Corporation! There are Taheen, those Sombra-aligned low men in yellow coats, scheming to use the button box to bring down the Tower! I doubt any of this wholly works if you are not one of King’s “Constant Readers” deeply enmeshed in that weird wild lore — there’s some terrific material on the malevolent atmosphere of Derry, Maine as well — but it’s a wavelength I personally love, and it makes this title click in a way the Gwendy series never has for me before. I would almost even say you could probably skip the first two volumes entirely, if you’re primarily checking this out as a Dark Tower fan.

As for the plot, it unfolds in two parallel timeframes: the mission to space, where the protagonist is keeping her deteriorating mental faculties to herself and planning ahead for her secret special objective with the box, and a dash of new backstory gradually revealing what has set her on this unexpected path to begin with. Both are solidly good, although there’s a lot of unnecessary fatphobia directed against the Trump-like villain, and I think it’s pretty tasteless for the writers to ascribe a supernatural cause to the Covid-19 pandemic (as they had previously done for the Jonestown massacre in book one, it should be noted).

Overall, however, this is a fine adventure and (literal) sendoff to the character and her trilogy, which I’ve liked far more than I feel I could have reasonably expected. And since I gave the debut story a middle-of-the-road three stars for its rating, I suppose this stronger sequel has earned an extra one from me.

[Content warning for ableism, racism, car accident, insectophobia, and gore.]

This volume: ★★★★☆

Overall series: ★★★☆☆

Volumes ranked: 3 > 1 > 2

Book Review: Comedy Comedy Comedy Drama: A Memoir by Bob Odenkirk

Book #37 of 2022:

Comedy Comedy Comedy Drama: A Memoir by Bob Odenkirk

An interesting reflection from actor Bob Odenkirk on his unlikely rise to global stardom: through fairly obscure sketch comedy gigs for decades before being offered a career-reorienting role as the sleazy lawyer Saul Goodman on the critically-acclaimed series Breaking Bad, who would later go on to anchor its prequel spinoff Better Call Saul and open the door to further dramatic parts. It’s a loving tribute to the late-twentieth century fringe humor scene, full of touchstones which are generally unknown to me but could be useful for readers seeking recommendations in that genre. Throughout it all, the author shares backstage stories and his guiding principle that his happiest moments have been in crafting material that satisfies himself and his co-creators, rather than the whims of an often-unpredictable market. Make what you love, in other words, and trust/hope that the right audience will find your same distinctive wavelength — an attitude that apparently clashed heavily with showrunner Lorne Michaels during Odenkirk’s tenure as a writer on Saturday Night Live.

As a BB/BCS fan previously unfamiliar with the man’s body of work, this is all relatively informative to me. I had no idea, for instance, that he wrote the classic Chris Farley “living in a van down by the river” skit, or that he was the runner-up for Steve Carell’s job as Michael Scott on The Office. At the same time, however, I’ve wanted the book to dig a little deeper into the performer’s own life. He makes mention of an alcoholic father and of witnessing his fellow comedians’ drug abuse, for example, but doesn’t tie those elements together or relate what it was like to resist the cultural pressure to fall into that lifestyle himself. (I’m assuming a stray line about doing copious amounts of cocaine is meant to be sarcastic, given another reference to having only ever nibbled on one hash-infused brownie in Amsterdam.) Some belated mea culpas about sexism in his earlier writing and not hiring enough women on his productions seem likewise perfunctory, and he repeatedly namechecks Al Franken as a personal idol without any acknowledgement of the sexual misconduct revelations that prompted his resignation from the US Senate.

Overall I guess I would say that this title is neat as an impression of its extended subject matter, but it leaves something to be desired as an insightful memoir for the voice behind it all.

★★★☆☆

Book Review: Taken at the Flood by Agatha Christie

Book #36 of 2022:

Taken at the Flood by Agatha Christie (Hercule Poirot #29)

Note: This 1948 Agatha Christie offering has also been published under the title There is a Tide . . ., part of the same quote from William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar that forms the novel’s epigraph: “There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood leads on to fortune.”

By either name, the story has a few ingenious twists to its plot, but the eventual motives behind the various crimes turn out rather unconvincing, as does Hercule Poirot’s detective work throughout. When he’s not making bizarre psychological claims — people are incapable of significant change, a military man was orderly and so would have left a suicide note, etc. — he’s relying on evidence that readers aren’t privy to, like noticing a family resemblance in a photograph. (This is a longstanding complaint that I have with this author: she sometimes forgets that much of the enjoyment of mystery fiction is in attempting to solve its puzzles for oneself, not merely watching a clever and colorful personality show off.)

The characters and post-war premise involving the widow of a London Blitz victim are distinctive enough that I could almost give this book three-out-of-five stars, were it not for a horrifying finale in which — minor spoiler alert — a woman realizes she’s in love with the abuser who literally tried to strangle her to death a short while before (and who just confessed to killing someone else as well). She thought he was boring and safe until then, you see, and is now prepared to adore him wholeheartedly. It shouldn’t take an expert investigator to find something deeply wrong with this development, but there’s no textual indication that it’s meant as anything but a happily-ever-after, and it leaves a real sour taste in its wake.

[Content warning for gun violence, incest, xenophobia, ableism, and rape culture.]

★★☆☆☆

Book Review: Against All Things Ending by Stephen R. Donaldson

Book #35 of 2022:

Against All Things Ending by Stephen R. Donaldson (The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant #3)

This penultimate volume has perhaps the slowest start of any Thomas Covenant story, with literally the first five chapters — one hundred full pages, almost a fifth of the whole text — spent on an extended confrontation that’s already just a continuation of the closing scene from the book before. But author Stephen R. Donaldson’s work has always been philosophically dense, and his characters understandably have a lot to talk about by this point in their journeying. Through Lord Foul’s manipulations and Linden Avery’s own dire choices, apocalyptic forces have been brought to bear that will ravage the world in a matter of days. And Covenant himself, restored to a form of life yet often rendered insensate by the crushing weight of his memories as an immortal piece of the Arch of Time, can offer less help than either she or we might have expected.

My favorite aspect of this novel is probably the continued expansion of the Land’s past, fleshing out intriguing stray tidbits that have been previously mentioned and occasionally introducing brand-new peoples and events that nevertheless help deepen our understanding of the realm. Generally these revelations come via the ur-Lord trapped in the labyrinth of his mind, and while that’s less satisfying a narrative device than the recent incidents of time-travel, it’s still integrated into the action well enough. As the protagonists (eventually) explore hidden corners like the Lost Deep of the Viles, they find themselves face-to-face with eldritch mysteries that remind us of how lovely Donaldson’s worldbuilding has been throughout this series, and how much it would truly ache to witness its final destruction.

Not all of this wholly works for me, and I particularly struggle to see the point of “She Who Must Not Be Named,” a composite beast made up of the faces of betrayed women from across history that has always struck me as goofier than it must have been intended. But overall, this is a somber tome, with some of the most poignant on-page character deaths and ensuing grief of the entire saga. And at its finer moments, the writing is pure Donaldson, offering wrenching questions of culpability and moral failure amid a wondrous fantasy setting where heroes use their powers of intuitive reasoning to navigate a path forward more than any magic or might.

To a certain extent, all ten of these books grapple with the mingled importance and difficulty of resisting despair: of finding the will to believe that unforeseen help might yet arrive despite all hope seeming lost, and accepting that other people have the freedom to make decisions on their own part even when we personally think they’re doomed. Following the calamitous loss in this tale, as the stars wink out in the sky and the Worm of the World’s End rouses from its ancient slumber, that lesson is harder for Linden to accept than ever. But it’s the crucial issue heading into the ultimate finale.

[Content warning for body horror, self-harm, gore, and mention of rape.]

★★★★☆