The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more

Book Review: An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

Book #208 of 2020:

An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

I admire the goal for a Howard Zinn-like retelling of the American story, focused on the original inhabitants of this landmass and their descendants. That’s a worthy project to restore a voice to people who have traditionally been misrepresented and trivialized in the narrative of nation-building, and a necessary reminder of how complex and variable these native cultures have been, both before and after European contact.

Unfortunately, the execution here can be dry and repetitive — I’ve lost track of how many times we’re told that the U.S. military still refers to enemy territory as ‘Indian country’ — and I’ve seen several critiques that accuse author Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz of misunderstanding or misstating certain key facts. Also, as a Jewish reader, I’m uncomfortable with how this writer makes repeated irrelevant comparisons between the foundings of America and Israel, and with how she positions the Holocaust as unjustly garnering more sympathy than comparable indigenous suffering.

So it’s a disappointingly flawed text overall, but still an important corrective to the bias of mainstream history. I can only hope that its weaknesses don’t detract from its message, and resent that its editor didn’t catch them.

[Content warning for racial slurs and descriptions of sexual assault.]

★★★☆☆

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TV Review: The Office, season 1

TV #35 of 2020:

The Office, season 1

This 2005 debut was a little rough at the time, and another decade and a half of evolving cultural norms haven’t made it any better. Michael Scott is of course a walking HR complaint of offensive and inappropriate behavior, but even our ostensible hero Jim would be insufferably unprofessional as an actual coworker. These edges get sanded down a bit as the series goes on and becomes more stylized in tone, but in this relatively grounded first season, it’s all pretty cringe-worthy.

A lot of the characters are also just lightly sketched in over these six episodes, which is jarring for a repeat viewer who remembers their big personalities, but does add to the realism of this era of the show. The cast members mostly seem like real people caught in a dull job, where the only excitement comes from unwelcome intrusions by their odious boss or his power-hungry assistant Dwight. Much of the ensuing humor falls somewhat flat for me by 2020 standards, as it tends to reduce to, “Wouldn’t it be awful if this happened in a workplace!?” Yes — yes, it would.

There are seeds of more nuanced comedy here, though, as well as two major innovations that help redeem the year. First, the mockumentary talking-head format is a brilliant device for illustrating the vast gulf between a character’s self-perception and who they are in reality, and it allows Michael to be the butt of the joke rather than the employees that he torments. And second, there’s the sweet understated connection between Jim and Pam, whose dynamic already feels warm and bubbly even as she’s engaged to someone else and apparently only sees him as a friend. Pam is written as less of an active protagonist at this point and more of a goal for the salesman to pursue — we don’t really get a sense of her inner life or precise feelings about her relationship until the finale — but Jenna Fischer elevates that material and makes it easy to root for a romance to blossom.

The Office was almost canceled after this short initial run, and it probably couldn’t have continued on as the same program for much longer without losing all audience sympathy. Luckily it got sleeker and more humane with some distance from the original British series it was remaking, and I’m excited to rediscover it with fresh eyes.

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente

Book #207 of 2020:

Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente (Space Opera #1)

I love the concept for this novel, which is basically Eurovision meets The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. In fact, that Douglas Adams series seems to be the exact model for author Catherynne M. Valente, from the zany screwball comedy to the clevely subversive observational humor underlying it. When humans attract the attention of the federated species of the wider universe, we are invited to participate in their annual music competition — and so long as we don’t decline, forfeit, or come in last place, we’ll be welcomed with open tentacles rather than exterminated. As the earth’s champion, the aliens have chosen a washed-up Bowie-esque glam rocker whose sensibility they think most matches their own.

That’s all a fantastic setup, but unfortunately, the excitement starts dissipating after the musician and his former bandmate are whisked across the stars to compete. Most of the remaining action in the book is just setup for the main event on the final pages, interspersed with Hitchhiker-like travelogue entries about some of the other worlds and peoples in this setting. The writer’s imagination is on full display there, but she seems to lose track of the story and undercut the emotional climax of what follows. As a result I like the end of the tale substantially less than its rocketing beginning, and I don’t imagine I’ll stick around for the forthcoming sequel.

[Content warning for the c-word and discussion of human atrocities.]

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson

Book #206 of 2020:

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson

This title didn’t grip me right away, I think because I was expecting the sort of powerful testimony in author Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns, with its deep ethnographic dive into the lived experiences of a rarely discussed segment of history. And there is a degree of that in this book, but overall the approach is drier and somewhat abstract. The writer is exploring the notion that the American racial system can be best understood as a caste hierarchy, and I confess I spent the early chapters thinking, “Sure — so what?”

As the text unfolds, however, the logic behind adopting that framework makes more and more sense. A caste ranking of groups within a society doesn’t have to be racialized, and Wilkerson draws striking parallels between the treatment of America’s black population — and to a lesser extent its other people of color, whom the author sees as middle caste — and that of the ‘untouchables’ in India or Jews in Nazi Germany, two lower castes not defined by race. Those comparisons help clarify how racism in this country is not merely bias of skin tone backed by power, but specifically a widespread assignment of expected roles and relative status.

With that in mind, Wilkerson illustrates how racist thoughts, actions, and institutions are generally either efforts to keep the lowliest individuals in their traditional place or backlashes to a perception that they’ve taken some position they don’t deserve. It’s a revelatory idea which explains much of modern U.S. race relations, from the overpolicing of minority bodies to the white anger fueling Donald Trump’s political support. It isn’t hatred or generalized prejudice per se that drives these phenomena, but rather an aggrieved entitlement which ruthlessly acts to defend the unspoken social order.

Conceptualizing racism as the reactive protection of caste opens up a new paradigm for confronting and dismantling it, so although this delivery can be overly academic at times, it nevertheless represents a bold new angle for approaching the topic.

★★★★☆

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Book Review: A Very Punchable Face by Colin Jost

Book #205 of 2020:

A Very Punchable Face by Colin Jost

An entertaining if rambling celebrity memoir, which I’ve found most interesting for its backstage look at the production of Saturday Night Live. But there’s also a surprising amount of gore in the descriptions of author Colin Jost’s more memorable injuries and infections, and some edgy jokes that I personally could have done without, ranging from scatological humor to the use of rape in a punchline. (Not to mention all the name-dropping you might expect from a Harvard graduate engaged to a movie star — which the self-deprecating schtick cuts against, but only to a degree.)

Jost is still a funny guy and I’ve definitely laughed out loud at certain parts of this book, but overall it feels like the material could have been stronger as either a more focused autobiography or a series of unrelated stand-up routines. I get the sense throughout that the writer doesn’t really know how to respond to criticism, though, so perhaps it makes sense that his debut work pulls in so many different directions even when polished and edited.

[Content warning for the r-word and scenes of 9/11.]

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

Book #204 of 2020:

Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir (The Locked Tomb #2)

This is a strange sequel to Gideon the Ninth, retaining the excellent focus on lesbian space necromancers but shifting perspectives from the snarky cavalier of the first book to her bitter former enemy. Harrowhawk has also gone mad and literally forgotten Gideon following the events of that debut, rendering her the ultimate unreliable narrator — both in the present where she experiences memory lapses and odd hallucinations, and in the flashback chapters which present an alternate version of the previous volume sans her old associate.

I admire author Tamsyn Muir’s audacity and willingness to reinvent her approach, but the resulting text is just too alienating for me. I never feel like I have a great grasp on exactly what’s going on, and this protagonist is so dour that there’s precious little of that fun energy that had drawn me into the setting before. At this rate I have no idea what to expect from the forthcoming end to the trilogy, but I do hope it skews closer to the original novel than this one.

[Content warning for gaslighting, gore, necrophilia, and cannibalism.]

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: The Illearth War by Stephen R. Donaldson

Book #203 of 2020:

The Illearth War by Stephen R. Donaldson (The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever #2)

This fantasy sequel is structured somewhat like The Empire Strikes Back, a downbeat middle chapter that recontextualizes an earlier victory as a minor skirmish and not the decisive blow it may have seemed. In Lord Foul’s Bane, the leper Thomas Covenant found himself transported to a world he could neither accept nor reject, a tension that appears sublimated when his quest for a powerful relic reaches fruition and he reawakens to his regular life. Yet here we discover him staggering under the psychological aftereffects of that experience, and soon summoned back to the Land to aid its denizens once more.

In that other plane, forty years have passed, and the prophesied doom is nearly upon it. The anguished traveler is again put in the impossible position of sacrificing his tenuous stability for what may be just a dream, while also confronting the ramifications of his own foul sin, the rape of a young woman on his previous visit. He now recognizes and repudiates the crime, but is unprepared to face the intolerable forgiveness of his new daughter, let alone the dawning apocalypse of her precious realm. (As ever, author Stephen R. Donaldson is aiming to satisfy the dual readings of his antihero’s plight: as the Unbeliever’s torment increases, so too does the peril facing his prospective allies, since the latter could be nothing but a delusional allegory for the former.)

I have two major issues with this text, despite it being overall quite strong and an integral part of a series that I love. Primarily, I struggle with the character of Elena, who doesn’t merely absolve her father for violating her mother, but also expresses romantic feelings for him in turn — to the awful extent of kissing and reassuring him that he cannot ravish her because she would welcome his touch. Although he rightly refuses her advances, their mere existence is a bizarre writing choice that is more uncomfortable than I think the writer intends, and one that makes her less convincing as a real person of legible motivation. I can’t even defend it on narrative grounds as I believe I can the rape; it’s simply an odd element which I have never really understood.

Secondly, after a debut novel spent almost entirely locked in one point of view, about half of this volume is told from the perspective of the new protagonist Hile Troy — a figure likewise drawn from our reality, yet without the same compulsion to resist the invoked appeal — or that of a native inhabitant like Lord Mhoram or Bannor. The Warmark’s section of the story is a grand adventure in its own right and another lovely showcase of the mingled beauty and sorrow of the setting, but I just don’t find him as engaging or dynamic of a presence for that journey. Not to mention, I feel the interpretation that these events are all in Covenant’s mind is substantially weakened by the inclusion of anyone else’s interior monologue — though that admittedly only impacts a reader’s perception and not his own.

Still, the worldbuilding remains exquisitely Tolkienesque, and the plot drifts further from seeming like a generic Lord of the Rings imitation (a critique I consider simplistic but possible for the first book). Both trilogies reflect a dwindling glory from a rich history, with mortals keenly aware of their inadequacy to meet the moment and live up to the legends who have come before. I treasure the Land as much as I care for the well-being of its reluctant champion, and by maintaining that taut balance, Donaldson continues to boldly reconfigure what the genre can do.

[Content warning for suicide, genocide, and gore.]

★★★★☆

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TV Review: Shameless, season 10

TV #34 of 2020:

Shameless, season 10

And with that I’m all caught up on Shameless, after my wife and I watched all 122 episodes in roughly as many days. The show has passed through several different versions of itself in that time, from an interestingly flawed family drama to (briefly) a pretty compelling one, and then a bit of a soap opera untethered from its own history. This latest iteration takes that uncoupling even further, and produces possibly the strangest Shameless yet: a sitcom.

Here’s a season where characters don’t just ignore their distant pasts; they actively forget what they were doing a few episodes ago. Carl gets involved with protecting a new undocumented coworker and her relatives, but then they’re gone and he’s terrorizing the neighborhood in a junior police squad. The writing makes no real effort to reconcile the woke hero with the jackbooted thug, let alone connect either with any earlier arcs (even his previous interest in law enforcement and MIA mentor figure). Liam and Veronica each get a few TV hours to belatedly explore their connection with the local black community, but then those threads are similarly dropped and their roles reset to default. These disjointed micro-storylines are entertaining in the moment, but they generate no larger momentum as the season goes on.

And yet — the series is honestly kind of thriving in that new setup! It’s odd for a viewer who remembers the old show, but nowhere near as frustrating as some of the soapier years have been. And as the plots I mentioned above may suggest, there seems to be a conscious attempt in this batch of scripts to treat race with more care and nuance than ever before. (We’ve certainly never had so many people of color in the story, which has long acted as though its focus on lower-class white existence could be racially neutral.) And overall, the recalibration in the cast — major enough to merit finally updating the opening credits — doesn’t blow up as viewers might have worried it would.

It’s still unclear how long we’ll have to wait for the final stretch of the program due to COVID delays, and I do doubt from this penultimate run that it will entirely reward having invested in these folks for so long. But I’ve seen the Gallaghers at their worst, and that’s surprisingly not what’s on display here. The last episode in particular feels better and more in touch with the heart of its past than anything Shameless has produced in years, so I’m cautiously optimistic that the writers won’t completely embarrass themselves on the way out.

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: How We Fight for Our Lives by Saeed Jones

Book #202 of 2020:

How We Fight for Our Lives by Saeed Jones

The difficulty with millennial memoirs is that for the most part, our generation has not yet reached a stage where we can honestly put the arc of our lives into a complete coherent narrative for ourselves or others. Such is the case with Saeed Jones — only 33 when this book was published — writing of his formative years as a gay black teen and his mother’s fatal heart attack some time later. Individual passages are raw and speak to the author’s background in poetry, but I find the overall effort to be somewhat scattered and lacking a clear throughline. I value this perspective of an experience unlike my own amid some familiar touchstones of coming of age in the dawning of widespread internet access, yet I’m not quite satisfied with what it all amounts to in the end.

[Content warning for explicit sex, child abuse, conversion therapy, death of a dog, mention of lynching, and racism and homophobia including slurs.]

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: The Fifth Elephant by Terry Pratchett

Book #201 of 2020:

The Fifth Elephant by Terry Pratchett (Discworld #24)

Author Terry Pratchett’s Discworld is reliably hilarious, and I appreciate how his City Watch subseries blends that humor with wry philosophizing and a detective story structure. The question for me as a reader is always whether the writer can stay out of his own way, keeping to a minimum the unfortunate stereotypes and convoluted plotting that sometimes dog his work. In this case he’s thankfully on top of his game, and although it’s a little strange that this is the second book in a row to send Commander Vimes far from his station in Ankh-Morpork as a cop-turned-diplomat, the foreign setting this time feels less like a lazy pastiche.

Pratchett also plays interestingly with gender in this volume, mostly by having dwarven cultural conceptions of it appear inscrutable to his human protagonist. That’s still a bit stodgy at times — Sam is flummoxed by a romance between two dwarfs he’s taken to both be men, a development that suggests same-sex attraction may be unknown on the Disc — but it’s largely openminded and inviting of a queer reading throughout. And overall, the satire punches up at hierarchies of power far more than it punches down at those marginalized by them, which is exactly what I want from this sort of entertainment.

Up next in this line of novels is Night Watch, the only one I’d read previously. I already loved it before, so I’m excited to see how the additional backstory that I now know informs its familiar plot. And I’m glad that it has The Fifth Elephant as a solid lead-in, rather than one of the shakier earlier tales.

★★★★☆

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