#links for 2008-02-01
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via False 45th: the building that housed River Run (Plainfield, VT) is up for auction; only ate their a couple times but it was a pretty awesome joint
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via False 45th: new candidate for dopest watch ever
Archive for January 2008
#Ghostwritten
WARNING: elements of my review may be interpreted as spoilers. Proceed with caution.
FIRSTLY: If the entirety of Ghostwritten
David Mitchell delivers a very strong novel here. Stylistically, it is very mature — especially for a first novel from such a young author. He is able to bring themes, concepts, and phrases from one section into another apparently disjointed section fluidly, naturally and — most of the time — without that recurrence or repetition feeling like a gimmick. Mitchell is fucking with you (the reader), and you both know it, but the reason that you believe he is fucking with you is a little bit different than the reason he believes he is fucking with you. Meanwhile, the narrative has an agenda of its own. The comparisons to Haruki Murakami are justified but not all together accurate; Murakami blissfully and accidentally trips into an improbable parallel universe while Mitchell begrudgingly tries to inch his way back from a very possible tangential universe.
Now there were two thematic elements of the story that jumped out at me as worthy of commenting upon:
(1) Varying shades of apocalypse. Maybe my sensitivity to the subject is up because I’m also neck-deep in the John Joseph Adams collection Wastelands but there is a sense of penultimate destruction within each of the disjointed narratives in Ghostwritten. We start with a cult member trying to hurry along a very eschatological apocalypse and over the course of 400 more pages, we work our way through every flavor of personal or global threat we can stomach. The whimsical, speculative damnation of the “Night Train” component was clearly my favorite. (Though “Holy Mountain” blew my mind for the way tone and voice was used as the treatment for personal and national world-ending.)
(2) Have any other readers picked up on the sub-text that concerns conception and birth? Every one of these tales somehow works in a child (real or imagined, material or emblematic) that I presume is supposed to function as a cue for each story’s theme. But the children aren’t safe and sound. They’re adopted orphans, aborted fetuses, ghosts of infanticide, bastards, parents that can’t conceive, a precocious matricidal AI… I have not quite figured out this sub-text yet (hence the “to-re-read” shelving) but it’s definitely there. And it is haunting me.
Above review first appeared on GoodReads.com.
#links for 2008-01-26
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via DF
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via Mike Davidson (via DF)
#dream.20080125: hay on sale
My cohorts of left behind to tend to the convenience store on my own. The guy that usually runs the store said that he was locking the doors behind him, pulling the roll-cage and all that… So I go about my business inside, taking notes, reading, etc. I ignore the clamoring outside because he had locked up; he had post the sign that reads “back in 15 minutes”. Right? Apparently not because as I get up from the table to use the restroom, I see a young child (maybe 2 or 3 years old) pulling a bag of hay off the lower shelf. I turn toward the door and there is his mother (caretaker?) and several other similarly young children. The mother is dressed in some dress or sari that suggests far-flung origins. She startles me just as I appear to startle her. She has several other bags of the hay up on the counter and she is miming to me that she is ready to pay. I try to explain that I do not know how to run the cash register (nor do I know how much the bags of hay even cost) but she will have none of it. She mimes to me that she understands (points her finger to her head) and that she is ready to pay (rubbing her thumb against two fingers); she gets out her check book and writes one out. I say to myself that this ought to be fine — even if I don’t know how to work the cash register then at least my friend (the shop keeper) will have gotten his piece for the goods.
But I hear a little voice in my head start to explain what to do. Push these buttons, scan the bags this way… So I got through the motions like the voice says. And the cash register throws up a total that’s nearly three times what the woman has written out the check for. She is furious and gestures to the orange starburst sticker with the “99¢” printed on it. Sale items? I should have known… I try explaining that I’ll honor her check — at this point, it seems like the only “good customer service” thing to do and anyway, the voice in my head is explaining that the hay is really just grass clippings that my friend has swept or otherwise raked up off the ground in the surrounding exurbs.
After the woman and her children leave, I turn around to see a short little mutant of a man. He is about three feet tall, has a face (from the nose down) a bit like Robert DeNiro but his scalp has been replaced by short tufts of hair that stick out of a haphazard cluster of at least a dozen eyestalks. This little mutant, that is where the voice in my head was coming from. He climbs up on the shelves of chips and candy bars and tries to get my attention, tries to get me to change my mind about calling my friend in my blind panic.
#webdev gang sign
High nerdery; join us.
#Vermont is hiring
Where by “Vermont”, I of course mean “Vermont companies”. Like the one I work for. If you’re a reader and you’re looking for work (or just “looking for better work”) come say hello and let’s see what you can do. See y’all at the Vermont 3.0 Tech Career Jam!
#dream.20080124: gloves in the jungle
We follow the tree line that hugs the sand, ducking up into the trees briefly and at intervals, checking to see what is on the other side. We are looking for things that we have lost. Our belongings are scattered. The landscape seems so familiar. But every time we look past the forest veil to see even thicker stands of trees, our next glimpse catches some isolated cluster of cottages. Night and day pass too quickly, as if they have promised more intensity in exchange for shorter shifts. Eventually I become separated from the other two in our party. I turn around and they are gone.
I force myself through a particularly thick gnarl of trees and bushes to find a small house straddling a stream. I knock on the door but no one answers. Turning the unlocked door knob, I let myself in and start to look around. I find a bag that I recognize. It is filled with my stuff — t-shirts, gloves, pants. Next to the bag is a bed and a dresser; the dresser is also filled with things that belong to me. There are far too many gloves for some place that is supposedly in the jungle.
Exploring the house some more, I find some food in the kitchen and a bathroom. I start to run the water and get undressed when I hear someone come through the front door. I call out to them, let them know that I am here, and not to be afraid. I stuff as much of my stuff as I can, as quickly as I can, from the drawers into the bag. Every grab has more gloves; there are so many, it cannot be avoided. I put my hands up, not bothering to dress, my bag dangling from one of my free hands. A startled Korean family stands in the doorway, surprise on their faces, the father in the family adopting a defensive stance, ready to throw me into the stream should I make any sudden moves.
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