Review: Armageddon in Retrospect

As stated in a previous post, I'm quite embarrassed to admit that I've somehow managed to live twenty-nine years without reading any of Kurt Vonnegut's work. After finishing Armageddon in Retrospect this morning, my embarrassment has blossomed to full on mortification.

A collection of short stories loosely themed around war and many specifically pertaining to the Second World War, this is a fantastic volume that seems to be a perfect introduction to his work, though it is technically his last - published after his death in 2007. It's a lovely volume that I bought for primarily aesthetic reasons - it's a beautiful trade paperback with folding sleeves and original artwork by the author and it screamed at me from the shelves. I've always meant to pick up a volume or two since I have been told many times by reputable sources that I would enjoy his writing. But this volume was the first to ever catch my eye, and so I begin at both the beginning (with his letter sent home as a POW during WWII) and the ending (his final written speech).

I read this book rather quickly, one story at a time every few days. The only exception was the story "Spoils" - one of the shortest but easily the most emotional for me. After reading that story and having a good cry, I held off reading for a few weeks. It's a simple story, but it conveys acutely the pain of losing everything in a war only to realize that there is always something else left to lose. Just thinking of the little boy and his rabbit now makes me tremble and tear up - it's one of those stories that gets under your skin because it's so sad, but also because it's so true. And that, to me, is the essence of what makes these short stories so great. They are sketches of real men, real places, real wars and real suffering. No one is inherently good or evil, right or wrong.

Vonnegut sees the world with the cold gaze of a man who has lived through some of the worst history has to offer, and like many other men of his time he has seen through the haze of lies we weave to soften the edges of the world. He sees the world and its inhabitants for what they are, and he describes them with great integrity. You see his pity, his apathy, his disbelief in every word. And most importantly, you see few heroes and few villains, just people caught on both sides of a struggle to survive. His own account of the war is remarkable, and his letter home voiced with a total detachment from the facts that causes them to play out with a sick humor as he relays the series of events occurring between his capture by the Germans and his release from POW camp. Included in this, and written about in several of the stories, is the firebombing of Dresden.

Though some of his stories, especially those based on the actual events he experienced in the war, hit me with an unexpected strength of emotion, it was his humor I enjoyed most of all. In particular, the final quote in the book: "Where do I get my ideas from? You might as well have asked that of Beethoven. He was goofing around in Germany like everybody else, and all of a sudden this stuff came gushing out of him. It was music. I was goofing around like everybody else in Indiana and all of a sudden stuff came gushing out. It was disgust with civilization."

Now I finally see what the fuss has been about all these years, and why he's remained such a popular author. I can't wait to dig into the rest of his writings, and to make a good thing even better Random House is reissuing all his works in editions designed with his own artwork. Time to clear more space on the shelf!

Review: The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

I usually don't read stories written from the perspective of young girls for the same reason I avoid "lifestyle" television programming - I tend to find both overly feminized and sappy. But something about the synopsis for this book struck me, and I decided to take a chance. I read a book written from the perspective of a young boy a few years ago, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time, and it was unexpectedly wonderful. A lot of the enjoyment came from the fact that the boy was obsessive compulsive, and therefore quite different from most child narrators. The narrator of this book, Rose, is different from most children because she has a fanciful ability - to read the hidden emotions of whomever cooks the food she eats. I thought the idea sounded clever and offered a lot of narrative possibilities, so I snagged a copy a few weeks ago and finally read it last night in its entirety.

I definitely enjoyed the story, and felt that it built upon itself well. I was never overly emotional at any point up until the very end, which allowed me to enjoy the story without any distraction, and I absolutely adored the writing style and narrative voice. There was just the right amount of sadness mixed into the story, enough to make it believable without becoming cliche. The primary focus of Rose's ability is on her mother since she prepares the family meals and children's lunches. At first she doesn't understand why the food tastes so terrible, why it feels empty. Discovering the nature of her talent leaves Rose with many questions about why her mother's interior emotions are so different from her exterior. The struggle to understand adult emotions as a girl is overwhelming to Rose, and she faces each meal with dread - both for the tastes of the food and the experience of her mother's sadness. I found this to be an interesting way to tell a coming of age story - learning about the world through exposure to the dark emotions people hide behind happy facades. Rose is not a traditionally bright child in the way her brother is constantly hailed as being gifted, but she comes to understand the world far ahead of the curve, and is a prodigy in her own way. Her perceptions are simultaneously childlike and astute. What she does not yet understand about the world is endearing and sad, as are truths she uncovers at too young an age.

I think my favorite part of the book is how Rose's own emotional development is stunted by her gift. Rose shrinks from her gift throughout her childhood, eating snacks and processed foods, and avoiding her mother's cooking at all costs trying to avoid the unpleasant emotions contained within her meals. To my mind she does everything she can to hide from these emotions, and this aversion affects her own emotional development. When she finally eats her own meal as a young woman, she is shocked to discover how empty she feels. She tastes like the factory food she loved as a child - without any emotion, good or bad. I feel like this is her big coming of age moment. She has finally overcome her fear and faces herself down with a steady gaze. She doesn't like what she sees, and instead of trying to mask her unhappiness as her mother had done for so many years, she confronts herself head on. She wants her inside emotions to match her outside, she wants to be whole and be able to cook and live honestly, without the hollowness of deception. As the character of George says quite early on, her curse is also a terrific gift that could be grown into, and is.

I enjoyed Rose's mother and father as well, and loved George, though he is perhaps a bit unrealistically kind and wonderful. Rose's brother, however, is a mystery to me. At first he played as a contrast to Rose, and I enjoyed their hollow suburban family dynamic - it felt both bizarre and real at the same time, and Bender's prose style really brought the entire family to life. But towards the end I was absolutely confused about Joseph's character and his purpose in the story. Rose's father's surprise reveal was unexpected and welcome - seeing those two grow closer slowly over time was a real pleasure. The scene where she tells him of her skill might be my favorite from the entire book, it played out with real tragicomic shine. And then there is her brother - I just cannot make any sense of his bizarre and senseless final appearances. Everything else about the book holds together and tells a warm yet not overly sweet story. Minus the strange ending parts with Joseph, it's a great story. I only wish the plot device was put to further use - it's wonderful to see Rose grow up with this gift of seeing people's hidden emotions, and learning to get by seeing and knowing things she shouldn't. But there is a lot more potential that was not explored, and I feel in the end the story stops short and doesn't deliver in this regard.

Fiction Book Club - Seattle

I've started a fiction book club for Seattle on Shelfari as an experiment. It's tough to get the first few members to this sort of thing, so unless it picks up quickly, I don't expect it to get off the ground, but I'm ever hopeful! Perhaps this clever peer-pressure tactic will help me progress with my goal to read all the unread volumes on the shelf.

Manga Withdrawal

It may sound crazy but I hate suspense - not knowing, even for a short time, drives me absolutely insane. Because of this I generally don't read mysteries, and I heavily favor stories that start at the ending and then work backwards. I also struggle with waiting for new manga chapters every week, so I tend to hold off from reading them weekly and read them in batches to negate some of the cliffhangers and suspense.

Because of this, I didn't realize that my very favorite online manga source had taken down its online reader and I now don't have a reliable source of well translated manga! Fortunately, I have some volumes of Yotsuba&! to read to tide me over while One Manga sorts out some options to launch a new online reader (I hope!). It's not difficult to find new sources for the most popular mangas, but the more obscure ones are difficult to find in English and often take weeks to appear in translation. Here's hoping they're back soon!

Indiespensable #20 Arrived!

I received my first package from Powell's last night! I was not disappointed in the least - everything was shrink wrapped in place and arrived without any damage. The volume of I Curse The River of Time is beautiful - I adore books in slipcases! And the bonus gifts are nice, some pre-release chapters and a delicious smelling gourmet salt. I love the idea of this club. The books are sometimes volumes I would buy, but frequently they are unfamiliar and something that I might not chose for myself. The supplemental gifts are a nice little treat, and best of all they are not something I would typically buy for myself. Sometimes the best "gifts" are the things you'd never think to buy! I've never belonged to a book club of any sorts, as I like to read on my own (agonizingly slow) schedule and my reading preferences are also a rather narrow band of fiction. I suspect that this subscription will be a good experience for me, pulling me out of my normal comfort zone and into new types of fiction, new authors, and even experiencing new treats.

As for my pledge to soldier on through this stack of summer reading: I am halfway through Kurt Vonnegut's posthumous Armageddon in Retrospect, a collection of short writings around the theme of war. I am utterly embarrassed to admit it's my first read of anything by Vonnegut, and it's left me speechless. The stories are short but incredible, and I've had to take a break after one of the stories in particular. But the most impressive bit of writing is in his own letter sent home after being rescued from the POW camp in Germany. Everything about its sparse language and dry tone repeats in his later stories, but here it is especially powerful. He is a man who understands the unlikelihood of his own survival and the inhumanity of war and that reflects heavily in the remaining stories.

Indiespensable #20 Shipped

I'm very excited - my first volume of Powell's Indiespensable collection is on its way! I was disappointed last month to discover that the previous selection, Aimee Bender's The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, had sold out before I could reserve a copy. To avoid this happening again, I subscribed! Now I will receive a volume every six weeks. I look forward to getting a nice variety of books, and having new volumes for my collection.