Stephen Graham Jones
Jun. 6th, 2010 12:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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50books_pocI'm sorry I've been AWOL so long. I've been reading (reading lots!! indigenous spec-fic! whee!) just not writing up and posting. But now the term is over (almost), so I'll have a little time to pick the tag project back up and write up some of my backlog.
25. Stephen Graham Jones, The Fast Red Road
Thomas Pynchon meets Repo Man, with more than a touch of Ubik reality-slip and Lynchian horror. Sentient trans-ams, buried submarines, secret societies, Marty Robbins, heyoka rodeo clowns, Old Ones, coyotes, and wiindigos. And so much more that I cannot even tell you. There is stuff in here that I adore, and this being my first reading, I have only just scratched the surface of what is there.
The allusions come fast and thick in this; I haven't felt this unlettered since high school. (But it's okay; the internet can help you out with most of it.) And no, it is not going to make a lot of sense at first; just hang on and pay attention, the sense-making will start to come together. I promise.
...and as you might gather, there aren't that many people I'd recommend it to. It is a dense, dense read. But those I would recommend it to? I would recommend it enthusiastically.
26. Stephen Graham Jones, The Bird Is Gone.
Fourteen years ago, by an Act of Congress, the Dakotas were returned to Indian control. Okay, um, the Dakotas were made a giant preserve for indigenous flora and fauna. But since Indians (canis latrans) are still technically on the books as fauna (those old, never-deleted bounty laws, you know), "indigenous fauna" includes American Indians.
...yes, but this is a sly, sly book.
Issues of identity and authenticity and performance have not eased one jot in this future. It is now possible to be a "tomato" (red on the outside, red on the inside, and still white). The traditionalist elders are now those holding fast to their radios and refrigerators, while the younger generation has eschewed even horses as too new-fangled and colonial. Ultimately, this is a murder mystery: an Indian FBI agent, disguised as an Indian (because the one thing that the IHS has been effective at is vaccinating for the pinkeye that targets American Indians, the pinkeye that has become the social identifier of who is Indian and who is not -- yes, pinkeye is all the rage, and those Indians who grew up on reservations now have to fake a case of pinkeye to pass as Indian), has snuck back onto what used to be Pine Ridge to hunt down a serial killer. And oh, but there are some tangled personal histories she has to sort through, histories of double-identities and racial performance, the things one had to do to survive before the Conservation Act, and the things one has to do to survive after. And, of course, there is no place one can stand to be a mere observer -- well, unless you're standing at the border with the paparazzi-anthroplogists, with their telephoto lenses and directional mikes, but any Indian would rather kill zirself (and does) than stand there -- and the more she tries to untangle everyone else's stories, the more her own footing erodes from under her.
And here's a tip, from me to you: read the glossary. Read every entry. There is some amazing stuff that Jones has secreted away in there -- the history of this future, for example -- things that you cannot access unless you go looking for them and actively piece them together from the inadequately cross-referenced glimpses in this entry and that. (Gosh, what does that process remind me of? I CANNOT IMAGINE.)
Did I say that this book is sly and clever? It is sly and clever. And it made me howl with laughter every single time I caught on to yet another something that Jones was doing.
And to reassure those who were intimidated by my description of The Fast Red Road: this book is a LOT more accessible. Not fully linear, no, and not fully transparent, either. Definitely still more trans-real than a straightforward futuristic police-procedural. But while I might retain the adjective "Lynchian", I'd definitely jettison the adjective "Pynchon-esque."
(Additional tags: Blackfeet)
25. Stephen Graham Jones, The Fast Red Road
Thomas Pynchon meets Repo Man, with more than a touch of Ubik reality-slip and Lynchian horror. Sentient trans-ams, buried submarines, secret societies, Marty Robbins, heyoka rodeo clowns, Old Ones, coyotes, and wiindigos. And so much more that I cannot even tell you. There is stuff in here that I adore, and this being my first reading, I have only just scratched the surface of what is there.
The allusions come fast and thick in this; I haven't felt this unlettered since high school. (But it's okay; the internet can help you out with most of it.) And no, it is not going to make a lot of sense at first; just hang on and pay attention, the sense-making will start to come together. I promise.
...and as you might gather, there aren't that many people I'd recommend it to. It is a dense, dense read. But those I would recommend it to? I would recommend it enthusiastically.
26. Stephen Graham Jones, The Bird Is Gone.
Fourteen years ago, by an Act of Congress, the Dakotas were returned to Indian control. Okay, um, the Dakotas were made a giant preserve for indigenous flora and fauna. But since Indians (canis latrans) are still technically on the books as fauna (those old, never-deleted bounty laws, you know), "indigenous fauna" includes American Indians.
...yes, but this is a sly, sly book.
Issues of identity and authenticity and performance have not eased one jot in this future. It is now possible to be a "tomato" (red on the outside, red on the inside, and still white). The traditionalist elders are now those holding fast to their radios and refrigerators, while the younger generation has eschewed even horses as too new-fangled and colonial. Ultimately, this is a murder mystery: an Indian FBI agent, disguised as an Indian (because the one thing that the IHS has been effective at is vaccinating for the pinkeye that targets American Indians, the pinkeye that has become the social identifier of who is Indian and who is not -- yes, pinkeye is all the rage, and those Indians who grew up on reservations now have to fake a case of pinkeye to pass as Indian), has snuck back onto what used to be Pine Ridge to hunt down a serial killer. And oh, but there are some tangled personal histories she has to sort through, histories of double-identities and racial performance, the things one had to do to survive before the Conservation Act, and the things one has to do to survive after. And, of course, there is no place one can stand to be a mere observer -- well, unless you're standing at the border with the paparazzi-anthroplogists, with their telephoto lenses and directional mikes, but any Indian would rather kill zirself (and does) than stand there -- and the more she tries to untangle everyone else's stories, the more her own footing erodes from under her.
And here's a tip, from me to you: read the glossary. Read every entry. There is some amazing stuff that Jones has secreted away in there -- the history of this future, for example -- things that you cannot access unless you go looking for them and actively piece them together from the inadequately cross-referenced glimpses in this entry and that. (Gosh, what does that process remind me of? I CANNOT IMAGINE.)
Did I say that this book is sly and clever? It is sly and clever. And it made me howl with laughter every single time I caught on to yet another something that Jones was doing.
And to reassure those who were intimidated by my description of The Fast Red Road: this book is a LOT more accessible. Not fully linear, no, and not fully transparent, either. Definitely still more trans-real than a straightforward futuristic police-procedural. But while I might retain the adjective "Lynchian", I'd definitely jettison the adjective "Pynchon-esque."
(Additional tags: Blackfeet)
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Date: 2010-06-07 03:39 pm (UTC)I've been busy writing books (I write romance novels), but when I do read, I get my recs here, and I'm always telling other writers to look here to find books to read. :)
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Date: 2010-06-08 05:48 pm (UTC)If you do read them, I'd love to hear what you think about them.