Book Review: Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters

Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters

By Jane Austen and Ben H. Winters

Published September 15, 2009

Quirk Books

344 pp.

ISBN 1-594-74442-4

Date reviewed: October 5, 2009

After positive buzz and glowing critical reception shot “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” to the top of the New York Times bestseller list earlier this year, it came as no surprise that Quirk Books announced that it would only be the first of their new line of altered classics. What did come as a surprise was the revelation that they would not be trying the technique out on a new author but would be sticking with Jane Austen, converting her 1811 novel “Sense and Sensibility” with a nautical twist.

I admitted some doubts in my original post on the news, but chose to yield to cautious optimism for its release – and my optimism has been rewarded. Under the careful eye of Ben H. Winters, Austen’s debut work has been transmogrified into the comic horror “Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters,” submerging her mannered work into the realms of H.P. Lovecraft and Jules Verne. The end result is a bit more extreme but still as hilarious as its predecessor.

The original “Sense and Sensibility” focused on sisters Elinor and Marianne Dashwood, two young women whose family falls on hard times following the death of their father. Relocating with their mother and sister to an isolated cottage, the two find themselves trying to make new lives while also courting the attentions of dashing young men and noble bachelors. Possessed of a clever humor towards existing social conditions, the novel deals with the clashes between the sensible attitudes of Elinor and the more emotional instincts of Marianne.

As with “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” the book does not deviate heavily from the original text but transplants their settings into a wholly alien atmosphere. Following the mysterious event known as “the Alteration,” every inhabitant of the sea has become homicidal towards land-dwellers, and humans live in fear of beasts ranging from oversized octopi to razor-fanged serpents. The Dashwoods now live in a small colony of islands after their father’s run-in with a hammerhead shark, and their supporting cast includes treasure hunters, former pirates and captured tribal princesses.

As I wrote in my “PPZ” review, I thought the book’s greatest strength was in the sheer incongruity of the setting, where the horrifying reality of the “unmentionables” did nothing to alter the social niceties and composed speech of Austen’s main characters. “Sea Monsters” continues this trend, and in many ways makes the difference even more absurdly pronounced. When Marianne’s lover vanishes her mother speculates that either his aunt has ordered him away or a pirate curse has struck him “to wander the seven seas until fate should claim him,” and in neither case seems terribly concerned. Later, Lucy Steele discusses the sad situation of her engagement to Elinor, completely unaware the latter is using an oar to fend off the two-headed Devonshire Fang-Beast trying to capsize their boat – and continuing without a beat after they return to safety.

Winters has also continued the trend of reshaping the characters with these new elements, and once again the effect accentuates their existing traits. Colonel Brandon, looked down upon for being a 35-year-old bachelor in the original version, now has an additional indignity as a sea witch’s curse has transformed his face into a mass of tentacles resembling Davy Jones from “Pirates of the Caribbean.” Mrs. Jennings, once only a meddling older woman, is the former queen of a primitive island and is brashly vulgar in her manners, creating some hilarious clashes with the more proper players.

Even more than “Zombies” however, the changes made to Austen’s original text make “Sea Monsters” feel like a completely different book. Winters said in an interview that reader feedback led Quirk to request more new content, and as such the imagination runs wild with pirate attacks and undersea battles. A long-term visit to London in the original book is now set in Sub-Marine Station Beta, a vast domed city underwater where marine research takes place and giant lobsters are trained to put on shows – at least until they break their conditioning and run amok to dismember the viewing crowd. It not only embellishes, it creates a unique and rather complex setting.

This blend of Victorian manners, pirates, steampunk and aquatic monstrosities does get a little tiring after a while – possibly too ambitious with how much it can do – but the book actually manages to keep the reader riveted to the story on the strength of its horror aspect. Between mysterious chants on the island and the escalating efforts of swordfish to break Beta’s glass dome, “Sea Monsters” builds tension surprisingly well and ends many chapters with a lingering feeling of doom. It works even better as the main characters ignore all of these signs in favor of discussing engagements, building to a sense of panic at the dumb realization “what it meant that they had made their home four miles below the surface of the ocean.”

“Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters” is a second success for the reinvention of old standards, proving that Quirk’s idea has not only avoided jumping the shark but managed to collar the shark and use it to rend apart half a dozen aristocrats. It’s less subtle but a positive step for the nascent genre, encouraging further experimentation and expansion into what the field can be done. Quirk’s likely to continue with these books and one hopes it adds new authors, though I wouldn’t be adverse to a third Austen to make it a trilogy. Can you say “Northanger Abbey vs. The Demonic Hordes or “Emma: Warrior Princess?”

Column: Summer Reading List 2009: The Fall

Well, the autumn equinox has passed us by, and the last time frame that we can consider the summer of 2009 has drawn to a close. And with the end of summer comes the end of summer reading lists, mine among them. Does anyone care how well I did? Does anyone wonder what I thought of them? Does anyone still read this site considering how long it’s been since my last update? (P.S.: New reviews, Back Shelf and Text-to-Screen are coming soon.)

Since that piece wound up being the most read article on my site (piggy-backing onto searches for summer reading lists) I assume people care, so I’ve decided to take a look back and see how I managed to do. I didn’t do as well as I would have hoped, chiefly because I discovered P.G. Wodehouse at the start of June and spent the majority of the summer reading and rereading the adventures of Wooster, Psmith and Ukridge among others. I’m going to be writing a piece on that shortly, but in the meantime here’s a piece the A.V. Club did that has a fairly good introduction to the canon.

Please do note that since I didn’t manage to read the entirety of the list, these entries vary in length – either me talking in detail about the book, or making excuses as to why I didn’t read. Others I did manage to read but wound up writing full reviews on, so I’ll save you from my repeats and just link you to the original articles. Much like my summer, this list will likely be chaotic and all over the place.

1. “2666″, by Roberto Bolaño

In a manner that should be completely unsurprising to anyone who knows me, I seem to have wound up doing this list in reverse order, in that “2666” is the book on this list I wound up reading closest to the end of the summer. A big part of this is mostly that I tend to put off the largest books, and even though I practically opted for the three-volume paperback version of Bolano’s magnum opus it still wasn’t one I had the focus to tackle until recently.

And it’s probably a good thing I waited, because if I started with it everything else would pale in comparison. I’ve only gotten through the first of five sections (“The Part About the Critics”), and to be honest I would be completely satisfied if he had only presented that as a novella. It establishes four characters in their relation to the mysterious author Benno von Archimboldi, people from four different countries who enter the literary world through their ties to his work, and also enter into friendship and romance as they try to find more about him. It’s a maturation of a theme Bolano explored in “The Savage Detectives” – the absent writer – and here it’s presented in an even more gripping fashion.

This book radiates brilliance, from the depth of his characters to his uncanny gift for mastering words. It fits the cliched description of a book that makes you laugh and makes you think, with devices ranging from a sentence that goes on for close to five pages to scenes that reflect the reactions of all four characters to events and each other. By the end of the section I found myself becoming rather attached to each of the critics, because they all struck me as intelligent and tragic and confused – in a word, human.

Personally, it was worth waiting to start this one if only because now I can take my time with it. I have a suspicion that Bolano was only warming up and a lot of the plot points and details fo the first act are going to tie together by the end in a way that would make William Faulkner envious.

And speaking of Faulkner’s generation…

2. “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” by Ernest Hemingway

Maybe it’s a part of my obsessive nature, maybe it’s my feeling of satisfaction at looking upon my bookshelf, but for some reason I always feel both driven and obligated to finish titles that I purchase. However, “For Whom the Bell Tolls” is one of the rare books that I just couldn’t gather up the interest to finish and gave up on within a hundred pages.

Now this isn’t anything to do with the author himself – I always take Hemingway’s side in the Faulkner vs. Hemingway debates, count “A Moveable Feast” as one of my favorite titles and think some of his short stories are possessed of a truly brilliant craft. The problem I have is I find he works best in shorter format, or dealing with his life as a writer – once he gets into the world of war it starts to drag. Honestly, I’ve found that his novels seem to go down in my estimation as they progress: loved “The Sun Also Rises,” was iffy on “A Farewell to Arms,” didn’t like “For Whom the Bell Tolls” at all.

My objection to the book isn’t the craft of the words, but just the fact that it’s utterly devoid of action to start and not in a good way. The main action of the first hundred pages is simply discussing war and bombing the bridge, but never moves on from that first scene – all the same characters and the singular setting. We get a lot of discussion on war and patriotism, but the characters tend to repeat themselves in that same Hemingway voice (and as William S. Burroughs observed, nobody talks like that except Hemingway characters).

And, while I know this isn’t Hemingway’s fault, I could never get around his main character being called Robert Jordan. It makes me wonder if his character will set his explosives muttering about how “ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend.”

Maybe Hemingway just works better in a shorter format, or maybe I just prefer his writing on Paris to his writing on war. Either way, that bell did not toll for me.

3. “The Year of Living Biblically,” by A.J. Jacobs

I actually wound up doing a formal review of this one some time ago, so I won’t go into too much detail here. Suffice it to say that this is a funny and meaningful book, and one of the only things to pique my own interest in reading the Bible – and considering how devout of an agnostic I am, that’s an achievement in and of itself.

4. “Infinite Jest,” by David Foster Wallace

Yeah, what do you think happened? Despite friends telling me you can read it out of order and it really doesn’t matter as much as other books, despite the fact that I haven’t had any work save rattling off a few freelance features this summer, despite the fact I’ve been working out and can lift the volume above my head, I didn’t manage to read David Foster Wallace’s behemoth this year either. Thought about it but always managed to find an excuse – family coming into town, got to get a review done, can’t find my copy anywhere. (That last one’s actually still true.)

I think though that one of the main factors that kept me from really getting into the book was the discovery of the “Infinite Summer” group – though not for the reasons you may think. I wanted to join but the group was already into it, asking questions and discussing plot points I hadn’t heard of. I felt getting into it late would just muddle things up, and with a book like this focus is key. Were I to have discovered this group at the start of the summer, it would have given me something to shoot for and a sense of community, which I think is essential for a book of this scope and depth.

I find it entirely possible I won’t have gotten around to reading it by next summer either, and if so I intend to get into the group right away. Feel free to cite me on this nine months from now.

5. “Losing Mum and Pup,” by Christopher Buckley

Again, this one turned into an actual review so I’ll point you there for my comments. The short version, Christopher Buckley is in top form here, with one of the rare books that manages to choke me up and make me laugh in alternating chapters.

6.“The Graveyard Book,” by Neil Gaiman

This one is uninteresting to talk about sadly – I don’t own the book and am short on cash to purchase new ones, so therefore I have neglected to pick up my own version. For thematic reasons, I’m going to wait a few weeks to pick up a copy and read it around the end of October once the nights start getting cold and the leaves start changing.

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7.“An Arsonist’s Guide to Writer’s Homes in New England,” by Brock Clarke

This one I also didn’t get to, but to be honest it was more of a space issue than a scheduling one. Due to the fact that my apartment has about as much free space as a janitor’s closet I’ve had to economize, storing books in various piles and boxes around the apartment. “An Arsonist’s Guide” wound up inside an antique wooden chest that I use as an end table early on and I never managed to recover it, pulling it out only recently during an apartment reorganization. I’m adding it to the queue of general reading after I finish off a few titles I’ve got lined up to review.

8.“The Road,” by Cormac McCarthy

I have not read or purchased the book yet, and therefore this one is also uninteresting to talk about. Rest assured that I do intend to have it read by the time the film comes out in order to do a proper Text-to-Screen. I have seen a trailer for the film – which was accompanied by trailers for “9” and “2012.” What is up with the apocalyptic fixation of Hollywood these days?

9.“The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay,” by Michael Chabon

Ho ho, what’s this? A book I actually got around to reading.

I said in my original list that this was one I wanted to read on the grounds that I hadn’t gotten into Michael Chabon yet, and reading it proved my title that I really should have read it by now. This is a wonderfully constructed novel, telling the story of two cousins making their names as creators of superhero comics and working past their problematic childhoods.

What I love the most about this one is its atmosphere and the depth Chabon takes with each of his main characters, creating their back story and motivations to a surprising degree. Escapism is a major theme of the book and in many ways it feels like an escapist novel, showing a rags-to-riches story and fountains of creativity in its main characters. Fittingly for a novel about comic writing, it also takes the time to really flesh out the comic characters his main characters create, and expertly show how they were both influenced by real people and influence those people in turn.

The problem I have with this book is that it makes a very unfortunate turn a little more than halfway through, abandoning its earlier focus for a sojourn into the coldest, most isolated part of World War II. I’ll avoid giving away any spoilers, but it breaks what was a rip-roaring jaunt through comic book history and growing romance into often macabre melodrama. The section is certainly well-done, but it doesn’t feel right – like a separate novella Chabon hastily stitched in when the deadline was due. He recovers somewhat in the final section by picking up in New York, but this works chiefly because its plot points are from the first parts.

Final verdict? A good book overall and I’m glad I read it this summer, but it doesn’t earn a spot in my favorites as it has for a lot of other people.

10.“The Boys on the Bus”

In another odd mixup, the last one on the list actually wound up being the first one I read this summer – mostly because the drive to reread has always been stronger in me than most people. And it’s another book that definitely benefits from a reread, especially post-2008 presidential campaign. It’s unsettling to see how many of the trends in reporting and candidates simply remain the same, ranging from pack journalism to the regurgitation of press releases in lieu of proper reporting.

It’s also worth taking a look at for his sections on the reporters as personalities, chiefly because it features R.W. “Johnny” Apple Jr. and Robert Novak, both of whom passed away between my reads of the book. Crouse does a great job phrasing and depicting the reporters, some as egomaniacs and some as strategists, some as frustrated with their editors and some as surprisingly content to churn out their content.

So that’s how my list turned out: four reads, four not started, one stopped early, one in progress. Yours?

In a manner that should be completely unsurprising to anyone who knows me, I seem to have wound up doing this list in reverse order, in that “2666” is the book on this list I wound up reading closest to the end of the summer. A big part of this is mostly that I tend to put off the largest books, and even though I practically opted for the three-volume paperback version of Bolano’s magnum opus it still wasn’t one I had the focus to tackle until recently.

And it’s probably a good thing I waited, because if I started with it everything else would pale in comparison. I’ve only gotten through the first of five sections (“The Part About the Critics”), and to be honest I would be completely satisfied if he had only presented that as a novella. It establishes four characters in their relation to the mysterious author Benno von Archimboldi, people from four different countries who enter the literary world through their ties to his work, and also enter into friendship and romance as they try to find more about him. It’s a maturation of a theme Bolano explored in “The Savage Detectives” – the absent writer – and here it’s presented in an even more gripping fashion.

This book radiates brilliance, from the depth of his characters to his uncanny gift for mastering words. It fits the cliched description of a book that makes you laugh and makes you think, with devices ranging from a sentence that goes on for close to five pages to scenes that reflect the reactions of all four characters to events and each other. By the end of the section I found myself becoming rather attached to each of the critics, because they all struck me as intelligent and tragic and confused – in a word, human.

Personally, it was worth waiting to start this one if only because now I can take my time with it. I have a suspicion that Bolano was only warming up and a lot of the plot points and details fo the first act are going to tie together by the end in a way that would make William Faulkner envious.

And speaking of Faulkner’s generation…

Link of Literacy: Awful Library Books

The most prevalent trait I’ve noticed about the older used bookstores – beyond the fact that I think I want to be buried under one if my time comes before I can be uploaded into a HAL 9000-like consciousness – is that they’re usually full of books that no sane person would likely have an interest in reading. You know the ones I’m talking about – the torn dust jackets, yellowed pages, cover designs that are nauseatingly old-fashioned with retro fonts. These are the books that you marvel ever got published, and which exist more as historical curiosities than actual literature.

And for the past few months, these books have been cataloged online throught the efforts of Awful Library Books. Started in April by Michigan librarians Mary Kelly and Holly Hibner, the site lists the older titles that public libraries still have in stock and which likely haven’t been checked out since the Ford administration.

This is a great site for two reasons. First of all, the breadth of titles they come up with are hilariously out of date, and in some cases shockingly un-PC. They evoke some sort of Brady Bunch-esque idealized view of their readers, and I’m sure if you were to open them up the language would be equally outdated. Don’t believe me? Here’s an example of some titles:

Don’t exactly look like the titles that’ll fly off the shelves, do they?

And that leads me to my other observation on this site – the books covered are silly and clearly for a past generation, but there’s something to be said for their nostalgia/camp factor. At some point, someone not only thought that producing these books was a good idea, but there was an audience of people who bought the titles and discussed them in the same context I and other critics discuss books. It makes me wonder how twenty years from now some of the glossy political books or mass-market paperbacks will be viewed by the enlightened next-generation Kindlebots.

It’s important to appreciate one’s literary past, no matter how strange, and ALB is a site that has that quality to spare. In their posts, Kelly and Hibner both are clearly very fond of their research material, and their judgment on culling the books from shelves is tempered with their gentle mocking of the subject matter. They’re not as cynical as I’d likely be, but in our world of shrinking literacy a little affection is a welcome quality.

So, I encourage all of you with a fondness for absurd titles – check this site out, and if you happen to have a particular title on the shelf send it their way at awfullibrarybooks@gmail.com.

Death of a Writer Notice: Frank McCourt

The New York Times announced on Sunday that author Frank McCourt passed away at the age of 78 from metastatic melanoma. A long time writing teacher in New York City, McCourt was best known amongst literary circles for his 1996 memoir “Angela’s Ashes,” a tale of his difficult Irish and Brooklyn childhood that won several awards and was adapted to film in 1999.

“I must congratulate myself, in passing, for never having lost the ability to examine my conscience, never having lost the gift of finding myself wanting & defective. Why fear the criticism of others when you, yourself, are first out of the critical gate? If self-denigration is the race I am the winner, even before the starting gun. Collect the bets.” – Frank McCourt

Wipe Your Feet Before Entering These Sites

I bet the number of  poetry/short fiction magazines born online per minute is close to the number of cigarettes smoked in the world per minute.  10 million?  Maybe.  But anyway, here are some links to some recent online issues of magazines with lots and lots of words I’ve  enjoyed.

• Ocho 25 : This issue is edited by the great and the crass Blake Butler, and it has artwork from a 12-year-old.
• Diagram 9.3: A tried and true, guys.  This one knows how to serve them up.
• harp and altar: Issue six.  I recommend the  poems translated from their original Russian by Zachary Schomburg about circus freaks.
• kill author: Issue one is dedicated to Roland Barthes, who died after being hit by a laundry van. There are lots of great poems, prose, and a few hot pictures of R.B.
• Sixth Finch: There are two new poems from Emily Kendel Frey. I’m always on the look out for new work from her.
• Jellyfish Magazine is manned by two women, which isn’t as common as I’d like it to be. The first issue is so beautiful, I’ve read it several times. I’ve also seriously considered stealing it all.

Column: In which Carrie looks back at her first attempt to write about poetry

(Lesismore’s note: As an introduction to our new contributors, here’s an earlier column written by Carrie Lorig for the Daily Cardinal on February 14, 2007. See author comments annotated below, as well as a mission statement at the end regarding future articles.)

One of contemporary pop culture’s favorite pastimes is pushing the limits of ‘shock value’ when it comes to sex and sexual innuendo. Today, unfortunately, addressing sexuality is not usually associated with making your mother proud, but with making her cringe.

Even though Fergie thinks she’s being really clever with hooks like “How come every time you come around, my London, London bridge wanna go down?,” we know the “meaning” the Duchess is trying to convey does not hail from her previous woes as a working class bridge operator, forced to raise and lower said bridge for perhaps, a large fishing dinghy or cruise ship loaded with those pesky bourgeoisie. (This paragraph was submitted for carbon dating. Samples were compared to the weave Fergie wore on the cover of this horrible album. Results suggest that this was definitely 2007.)

Listeners engage in their own cover-up games. We coyly feign scandal at allusions to sexual excess and exploitation while secretly sliding up the volume on our iPods. In truth, sick beats do their job well and we rarely concern ourselves with the thought that a song can be too vulgar.

But the tradition of covert sexuality in art and culture is capable of engaging in a much more complicated, and probably a much more healthy game of social tug-of-war. When poets imagine sex in a way that challenges or differentiates from what is considered the “social norm,” a space for real conversation and action is created. While they may contain the similar kinds of gratuitous sexual references as these songs, poems seem to strive to retain the intimacy and poignancy of sex in its snapshot-like frame.

The poet John Donne wrote several notorious poems that, under the guise of metaphor, were rather flowery suggestions to his plentiful mistresses as to what they could, you know, do later on in the evening after some very important study of course, some stately court dancing (The Galliard! The Sinkapace!), and maybe some drinks.

Donne was a very religious man, and his poetry directly comprised and contradicted his dedication to a Christian lifestyle. However, he believed in expressing love as his body dictated him to, sans the guilt imposed by conservative (or perhaps simply repressed or tragically unattractive) leaders in the church. Though poetry instinctively caters to the imagistic imagination, Donne’s work was less of a fantasy than the “pure” world Jacobean moralists insisted was reality.

More contemporary poets, like Carol Ann Duffy, covertly address notions of gender and homosexuality. In poems like “Warming Her Pearls,” she creates a female-to-female relationship that is unapologetic and assertive about its sexuality. “She fans herself / whilst I work willingly, my slow heat entering / each pearl.” (This is the only contemporary poet I reference in this whole article. She’s finally the poet laureate of Great Britain now. I would like to know how the cigars taste inside the boys club, Carol.)

And we are not only invited to view a refreshing, and perhaps more accurate view of sex through such poems, but we can also marvel at their abilities to manipulate and flirt with language. “She being Brand” is a scandalous poem by e.e. cummings, but it’s also light-hearted and vibrant, making it suitable for virgins eyes. “she being Brand / new; and you / know consequently a / little stiff i was / careful of her”

Be comforted. There is more to love poetry than meets the Hallmark card. (That’s the closer? Really, 2007 Carrie?)

This article definitely documents my awkward undergrad poetry awakening. I can’t believe I referenced John Donne because I’ve always sort of hated his poetry. (That doesn’t mean I don’t respect him, though.) I think I did it to feel credible. A big name like that is safe and easy and sure to get you in the door. Anyone moderately interested in literature is acquainted with the same poets for the most part. Someone mentions Pound was a fascist and wins a pie wedge in a game of trivial pursuit. “The  Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” remains as lovely as ever, doesn’t it? We all agree.

But I’m not going to write about those poets we’re comfortable with. I want to talk about poets who are putting out issues of magazines that are available online for free, making free e-books, and keeping small presses alive with their print work. It’s nice to think of a poet checking the same 10-day weather forecast as you. You see your own issues inside their poetry and it feels like a place of resistance and your local Perkins at the same time.  I hope I can show readers that young poets are saying and doing exciting, relatable things. They are driving some fast cars. Let’s go hack their blogs while they’re out, okay?

Column: A Classic from Classical Anna

(Lesismore’s note: As part of an introduction to our new contributors, here’s an early column from Anna Williams written on November 29, 2007 in the Daily Cardinal. Check back on Thursday for the first installment of her “Classical Anna” feature.)

(Author’s note: This is one of my favorite columns because it captures both my mental and physical connection with books. It highlights the sensual experience of reading a book, which is often overlooked. There are a few things I would change about the writing (particularly the sentence structure), but it shows off my voice. I hear the Kindle is doing well lately and that makes me sad.

“No, no, no, no!” That was me as I read an article from the latest issue of Newsweek entitled “Books Aren’t Dead (They’re Just Going Digital).” In this horror-inducing article, Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos promotes his new electronic doo-hickey “The Kindle” as the savior of reading. Apparently, the Kindle is a gadget that holds over two hundred books and displays the pages on a screen.

Now, one might suppose that being the literature lover that I am, I would be in support of any new device that promotes and spreads reading. After all, Bezos says the underlying idea of the Kindle “is that you should be able to get any book – not just any book in print, but any book that’s ever been in print – on the Kindle, in less than a minute.”

But no. Despite all its advantages and possible benefits for reading, I do not support the Kindle. In fact, it makes me want to vomit. I love books, and by that I mean not just the words that when strung together form ideas, convey emotions and create a story, but also the physical book itself – feeling the soft pages of a book beneath one’s fingertips, dog-earing the pages, bending the binding. For me and many other readers, reading is not only a mental and emotional experience, but a physical, sensual one as well, and if books become mainly electronic, an essential part of the reading experience will truly be lost.

For instance, one of the best parts of reading is the smell of the book. In fact, I even consider myself a connoisseur of book smells: my sense of smell is so refined that I can detect a difference, no matter how small, between every book I’ve ever read. Even more than that, these scents are tied to my memory – all I have to do is flip through the pages of a novel, breath in the scent, and I am instantly taken back to the time when I first read it. Imagine me and other book-scent experts pressing our noses against a Kindle! All that would accomplish is smudging the screen.

Furthermore, if this Kindle creates the revolution in reading that Bezos predicts, we will lose the human mark and history that the physical book records. And readers love this history – why else would so many people collect used and first editions? I have many books my grandparents once owned, yellowed with age, their margins scribbled with notes. Sometimes I even find old newspaper clippings tucked between the pages. I just don’t think a future kid will appreciate it in the same way if his grandfather passes a Kindle along to him. (Grandpa, this is just a regular Kindle. I already have the Kindle 2.0!)

The idea of a world where people sit curled by the fire reading from an electronic screen or read to their children at bedtime from a Kindle sends a chill down my spine, as it should for any true book lover. So, here’s my plea to all readers out there: don’t buy the Kindle! Never ever! Instead, I suggest we all celebrate the launch of this little gadget by going to a local bookstore, buying a real book or two, flipping them open, and deeply inhaling the pages.

Links of Literacy: June 10, 2009

(A bit briefer news this week – it was my birthday on Sunday so a little less brainpower is being used this week. Enjoy though, and prepare – even better literary news coming on Friday!)

1. Incentivizing the Kindle, byPatrick, Stomping on Yeti, June 5, 2009

E-books remain the one topic in literature that seems to stir up the most news, and here’s a rather interesting discussion on how the Kindle could see a bit more spread than it has already. As a poor book reviewer I can’t get my hands on a Kindle myself (unless Amazon sees fit to pay attention to me and send me a complimentary copy), but if I could have every title I own physically in digital format, that would make it worth every penny.

Oh, and do check out the rest of Stomping on Yeti – there’s an essay on the expanded Star Wars universe which is somehow miraculously still going, despite the fact it’s more inbred than an isolated Appalachian town with no roads to anywhere and I personally think needs to be put down. There’s a few great books in the series – the Thrawn Trilogy, Rogue and Wraith Squadron – but ever since Vector Prime it’s been one giant clusterfuck.

2. The A.V. Club (and Steven Tyler!) at BookExpo 2009, by Ellen Wernecke, The Onion A.V. Club, June 5, 2009

The last (I promise) news story on the BookExpo 2009, this one taking a bit more of an opinionated tone than the major news outlets. Bonus points for depicting the eBook trend as the war between “gadget-obsessed hipsters and Luddite librarians.”

3. The Examined, and Exhibited Life by Brad Leithauser, Slate, June 9, 2009

A fascinating article that discusses the late John Updike in very interesting terms, in a review of the posthumous title “My Father’s Tears.” Leithauser points out that in addition to being one of the sharpest writers in the American canon, he was also an observer of daily life to a startling extent, with comparisons drawn to bloggers of our time. It makes one wonder what he’d have done had he come of age with Internet access.

4. Progress, by Gabe and Tycho, Penny Arcade, March 3, 2009

To break up the flow of news while staying on the topic of technology, here’s an older Penny Arcade strip that points out what I think is the obvious: the book format isn’t one that really needs to be tinkered with as it works fine the way it is.

Book Review: The Ramen King and I

The Ramen King and I: How The Inventor of Instant Noodles Fixed My Love Life

By Andy Raskin

Published May 7, 2009

Gotham Books

304 pp.

ISBN 1-592-40444-8

Reviewed June 1, 2009

The odds are better than average that if you have ever been in college, unemployed, lived in a bad apartment or been in any other circumstance that limited your funds, you have eaten at least one bowl of instant ramen in your lifetime. One of the cheapest meals available – costing less than a dollar per serving – instant ramen has inspired hundreds of variant recipes, spread to almost every single country in the world and even inspired its originating country of Japan to rate it as the most important invention of the last century.

For all the billions of instant ramen servings that have been consumed, it’s a safe bet that few people have ever considered where it came from, or even realized that one man created it: Momofuku Ando, the founder of Nissin Food Products. Andy Raskin was curious about this fact, and in the process of learning about Ando realized the creation of ramen may hold the secret to putting his life back together. “The Ramen King and I” is his memoir of that journey – a stunningly personal, occasionally funny and regularly appetizing story proving the adage that the best way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.

At the time he began learning about Ando, Raskin was in a state of emotional collapse. Unable to maintain a long-term romantic relationship, he had been consistently unfaithful to his girlfriends and suffering in his professional life, compulsively running through Craigslist and AOL personal ads to fill the gaps. After getting into a recovery program, a series of Japanese food-related coincidences led him to use Ando as a sort of guiding figure, eventually taking him all the way to Nissin to attempt to meet the man in person. The journey proves to be not at all what he expected, finding Ando’s life and writings may in fact hold the answer to how he can free himself from a vicious cycle.

The thought of picking a 94-year-old food tycoon as your spiritual guide certainly seems like a strange one, but Raskin – a regular contributor to NPR – cooks the disparate ingredients together well. Rather than explaining the results of his journey immediately and recounting the experience, “Ramen King” goes into the story with much the same spirit he did, a feeling that there was something connected he needed to track down. Readers come to the truth at the same pace he does, presented with all the same cues and ideas he was, and the presented results are as satisfying and stunning as they must have been to Raskin at the time of discovery.

This vagueness makes the book feel somewhat random or rough at the start, but Raskin quickly counters this by letting readers very deeply into his life. The main story is interspersed with his “letters” to Ando (not sent but written as part of his recovery program) along with journal entries during a abstinence “detox” period. The entries are very emotional, showing his flaws with no attempt to hide or justify – a stunning honesty that makes one much more inclined to see if he’s capable of finding redemption.

If his entries on his personal life add feeling to the book, then his discussion of Japanese food and culture adds the flavor. Raskin has lived in Japan several times (a decision almost always based on the women he was seeing), can speak the language and has a keen appreciation for the culture. He discusses the interaction between customer and chef at a sushi restaurant – a relationship as important as the one between the fish and the rice – and locates a legendary ramen restaurant with portions so rich they burst his gallbladder. There is even a bit of literary discussion worked in as he critiques various food-related manga comic books, mixing their storylines with quotes from Ando’s biographies.

And it is all these elements that push Raskin to his final discovery, answering the question that plagues him from San Francisco to Osaka: why did Ando suddenly devote his life to making instant ramen, and why does that matter so much to him? He refuses to answer it until the very last sentence of the book, when he and the reader are ready, and its revelation is as satisfying as slurping the last noodle from the bowl. “The Ramen King and I” is a memoir of rare depth and honesty, a journey embarked on with some misgivings but which makes perfect sense in the end.

Links of Literacy – May 20, 2009

(As per the manifesto, here are five things I’ve found interesting in the field of books in the past week in addition to my comments on them. Note that relevance in the news is only one factor I use to select these articles – some might be older ones I’ve just been linked to and found to be interesting.)

1. Some Thoughts on the Lost Art of Reading Aloud, Verlyn Klinkenborg, The New York Times, May 16, 2009

A very well-written article I discovered thanks to Neil Gaiman’s blog, reminding me of just how much I appreciate author readings and the act of reading aloud. I’m a bit more sympathetic to audiobooks than she is, especially ones that are read by the authors (as I’ve said before), but I appreciate the clear emotional connection being made here to the physical act and the interpretative quality.

2. Could William Shatner Defeat Kirk? Marty Beckerman, The Daily Beast, May 16, 2009

A review by Beckerman, author of the excellent “Dumbocracy,” of a title he compares to “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” and which calls up my memory of the recent film “My Name Is Bruce.” It certainly looks like a fun title and worth checking out if you locate it.

3. Long-Borrowed Library Book Will Be Hard to Forget Now, Michael E. Ruane, The Washington Post, May 11, 2009

- This is just a good story all around, about someone who appreciates books and libraries, and an anecdote about just how books tend to get around.

4. Mom wants to ban, burn ‘Bunny Suicides,’ Joseph Rose, The Oregonian, October 20, 2008

- An older story I saved when it first popped up, it serves as an excellent parallel to the previous article, focusing on the sort of person who clearly has no idea of the function libraries are supposed to serve. Follow these links as well for the entertaining conclusion to the story.

5. Art of the Deal, Tom McCarthy, New York Times Book Review, May 14, 2009

- A review of Clancy Martin’s “How To Sell,” a book I would consider reviewing myself, but the original review I learned of it from is so well done I can’t think of what extra I’d say, except to emphasize his distaste for the gushing back jacket quotes (I used to work for a publishing house and know the procedure for soliciting those). I’m adding the title to my queue and after the review you might consider doing so yourself.