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50books_poc2010-09-20 12:32 pm
seekingferret.livejournal.com) wrote in 50books_poc2010-09-20 12:32 pm
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Gil's All Fright Diner, Among the Believers
44) Gil's All Fright Diner by A. Scott Martinez
The second book by Martinez I've read and reviewed here. Whereas, The Automatic Detective is SF noir, this one is comic horror. It's not so much my genre, and this was not so much the novel for me.
It had its bright spots. Vampirism as metaphor for lust is a theme that's been well-plumbed over the past few years, but it was refreshing to see someone use Vampirism to explore the fact that sex can be funny. Earl the Vampire was by far the novel's most compelling character, and Martinez did a lot of good things to put him in situations one doesn't usually find a vampire in. But otherwise, I don't know... not a whole lot of substance here, just goofy adventures with werewolves and ghosts and witches.
45) Among the Believers by V. S. Naipaul
A really unique travelogue from Naipaul's 1981 tour of four non-Arab Muslim countries: Iran, Pakistan, Malaysia, and Indonesia. Naipaul, a Trinidadian of Indian Hindu descent who holds British citizenship, is an interesting outsider to tell the story. On the one hand, he has little enough experience with Islam that he can ask questions with near-childlike naivete. On the other hand, he has enough experience with the world of the colonized to know the right questions to ask.
I'd heard Naipaul's reputation as a particularly strong stylist, but to be honest, I wasn't particularly struck by his prose. It was serviceable, journalistic, and direct. What I really liked was his perspective, which was aimless, infinitely curious, and driven purely by self-interest. In Malaysia he detours from a planned visit to a particular region because the monsoon rains bother him. He makes no plans to return later, just cuts the trip out of his tour. The ever-present distortion of his own perspective reminds us that most outside visitors to these regions have an agenda. They're there to see something in particular, to record it, and to leave. Naipaul's just there to see whatever comes his way, and tell everyone what he saw, what interested him. One of the book's best passages, in my mind, is when Naipaul discusses his approach to curiosity with a Pakistani journalist who can't quite make sense out of it.
Naipaul is sharply critical of many aspects of Islamic culture (and already, the book I've picked up for #46 has attempted to answer some of his criticisms) for offering no substantive solutions to the poverty, injustice, and inequalities that permeate these societies. He describes the dream of an Islamic society as one driven by vague and elusive promises of a divine law whose shape its dreamers cannot clearly envision, or would not desire if they could. He can be occasionally kind of mean-spirited about this, picking fights with people who are just trying to get on with their lives because he finds their worldviews alien.
But Naipaul has an odd sort of cover: his tour of the Islamic world was so haphazard and random and anecdotal that he can't possibly claim to have a valid read on the society. In the Indonesia section he describes visiting the pesantren, cooperative unstructured Islamic schools. His initial visit finds him hearing them described by a whimsical teacher who refuses to call himself a teacher, and he is shocked and appalled by a school system that appears to "teach villagers how to be villagers", as he puts it. But a later visit, impelled by his guide's insistence that he has misunderstood the system, reveals that he has in fact misunderstood the system. The Islamic world is too large and complicated for Naipaul to easily master its nuances. And I kind of appreciate the fact that he just rolls with this and tries to do his best anyway. But if there's a problem with the book, it's the tedious concluding chapter when he mostly fails to make any sense at all about where the Islamic world is heading.
The second book by Martinez I've read and reviewed here. Whereas, The Automatic Detective is SF noir, this one is comic horror. It's not so much my genre, and this was not so much the novel for me.
It had its bright spots. Vampirism as metaphor for lust is a theme that's been well-plumbed over the past few years, but it was refreshing to see someone use Vampirism to explore the fact that sex can be funny. Earl the Vampire was by far the novel's most compelling character, and Martinez did a lot of good things to put him in situations one doesn't usually find a vampire in. But otherwise, I don't know... not a whole lot of substance here, just goofy adventures with werewolves and ghosts and witches.
45) Among the Believers by V. S. Naipaul
A really unique travelogue from Naipaul's 1981 tour of four non-Arab Muslim countries: Iran, Pakistan, Malaysia, and Indonesia. Naipaul, a Trinidadian of Indian Hindu descent who holds British citizenship, is an interesting outsider to tell the story. On the one hand, he has little enough experience with Islam that he can ask questions with near-childlike naivete. On the other hand, he has enough experience with the world of the colonized to know the right questions to ask.
I'd heard Naipaul's reputation as a particularly strong stylist, but to be honest, I wasn't particularly struck by his prose. It was serviceable, journalistic, and direct. What I really liked was his perspective, which was aimless, infinitely curious, and driven purely by self-interest. In Malaysia he detours from a planned visit to a particular region because the monsoon rains bother him. He makes no plans to return later, just cuts the trip out of his tour. The ever-present distortion of his own perspective reminds us that most outside visitors to these regions have an agenda. They're there to see something in particular, to record it, and to leave. Naipaul's just there to see whatever comes his way, and tell everyone what he saw, what interested him. One of the book's best passages, in my mind, is when Naipaul discusses his approach to curiosity with a Pakistani journalist who can't quite make sense out of it.
Naipaul is sharply critical of many aspects of Islamic culture (and already, the book I've picked up for #46 has attempted to answer some of his criticisms) for offering no substantive solutions to the poverty, injustice, and inequalities that permeate these societies. He describes the dream of an Islamic society as one driven by vague and elusive promises of a divine law whose shape its dreamers cannot clearly envision, or would not desire if they could. He can be occasionally kind of mean-spirited about this, picking fights with people who are just trying to get on with their lives because he finds their worldviews alien.
But Naipaul has an odd sort of cover: his tour of the Islamic world was so haphazard and random and anecdotal that he can't possibly claim to have a valid read on the society. In the Indonesia section he describes visiting the pesantren, cooperative unstructured Islamic schools. His initial visit finds him hearing them described by a whimsical teacher who refuses to call himself a teacher, and he is shocked and appalled by a school system that appears to "teach villagers how to be villagers", as he puts it. But a later visit, impelled by his guide's insistence that he has misunderstood the system, reveals that he has in fact misunderstood the system. The Islamic world is too large and complicated for Naipaul to easily master its nuances. And I kind of appreciate the fact that he just rolls with this and tries to do his best anyway. But if there's a problem with the book, it's the tedious concluding chapter when he mostly fails to make any sense at all about where the Islamic world is heading.