Assassination Vacation

Warning: reading this book could cause sudden and intense interest in President Garfield's commitment to civil service reform, and in weighing brains scooped out of skulls.

I first encountered Sarah Vowell watching the documentary of one of my husband's favorite bands: They Might be Giants. As she mentions in Assassination Vacation, Vowell used to work as a music critic. What I remember about Vowell from the documentary, was her precise voice, self-effacing and side-splitting dry humor, and the fact that she had an awful lot of busts of Lincoln in her house.

So I started the audio book edition of Assassination Vacation because Sarah Vowell had not only written it, she was reading it, too (guest voice actors also include Jon Stewart, Conan O'Brien, and Stephen King, who plays Lincoln). I had so little interest in the period of American history between the Civil War and Roosevelt that I was relieved to hear Vowell begin her book with an enumeration of the things that make her uncomfortable when staying at a Bed and Breakfast.

Assassination Vacation is the story of Vowell's almost autistic devotion to visiting historical landmarks related to presidents Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley, and the men who killed them.

Vowell puts forth the interesting thesis that the articles kept on display at museums and historical sites are the American answer to relics. She is fascinated by the way history has handed down the personal items and sometimes pickled body parts of both the martyred presidents and their assassins.

Like me, Vowell is a New Yorker who never feels the handicap of having no driver's license until she leaves the city. Having expected all her visits to take place in D.C., Maryland, and Springfield, Illinois, I was tickled by the number of relevant landmarks she visited right here in NYC. When she does venture away from the subway, Vowell is obliged to bring friends and family to chauffeur, and their presence provides a repeating cast of amusing characters. And the author's true love of historical plaques and tour guides is endearing.

But, most important, Vowell has has a special talent for making things that happened a long time ago seem comprehensible and relevant to modern audiences. The parallels she draws between current and historical events really do make history come alive.

William Shatner speaks Esperanto and the Curse of Incubus

For the past two years my husband and I have gone on Esperanto learning kicks over the summer. This year we had enough of the language under our belts to start having fun. We ordered a book of poetry in Esperanto, downloaded some songs from iTunes in the language, and we even found a film spoken entirely in Esperanto!

The film is called Incubus. Made in 1965, Incubus falls somewhere between a guilty-pleasure B horror flick and an Ingmar Bergman Cries and Whispers or The Seventh Seal. The plot of this movie isn't nearly as important as the emotion and symbology conveyed by the cinematography- which the film can express much better than I can. There has been a lot of discussion about William Shatner's pronunciation of Esperanto- which he learned expressly for the film in a matter of weeks.

But what I'm really interested in is the curse. The special features of the Incubus DVD made a convincing case for the Incubus Curse. Wikipedia did a good job of enumerating the incidents, too.

1. The pure young woman threatened with rape by evil was played by Ann Atmar, who committed suicide a few weeks after the film wrapped.

2. The spooky, creepy bad guy in the film was played by Milos Milos. About a year after the film was shot, Milos shot his girlfriend, then himself.

3. One of the female "bad guys" was played by Eloise Hardt. Her daughter was later kidnapped and murdered.

4. In 1993 Consolidated Film Industries reported that the only print and all negatives of the film had been lost in a fire.

To listen to the film's producer, Anthony Taylor, describe the incident, he was crushed when he learned the last surviving print of Incubus was destroyed. Several years later, Taylor's friend happened across a battered and forgotten version of the film (subtitled in French) at the Cinematique Francaise in Paris. The print was in awful shape, and it took international cooperation, modern technology, Taylor's passion to revive the film, and funds and promotion from the Sci-Fi Channel to bring the light and shadow, the love and hate, the purity and corruption of Incubus to a new generation of spec fic fans.

Consumed by the Consumed One

The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula K. LeGuin was one of those books I literally couldn't put down. Dishes sat piled in the sink while my after dinner treat stretched from one chapter to two... then three, four.

Arha, the "Eaten One" is the virgin priestess of the Nameless Ones. Her family, her name, her childhood, was consumed by the Nameless Ones, and she is in service to protect the sanctity of their eternally dark, labyrinthine tombs. When a man violates Arha's dark cave with his magical light, her journey toward womanhood begins- a journey that will end either in enlightenment, or a life lost in the tortuous underground passages.

The Tombs of Atuan is the second of LeGuin's Earthsea Trilogy (my review of the first in the series, A Wizard of Earthsea, is here). LeGuin develops aspects of the Earthsea universe only tauntingly touched upon in A Wizard of Earthsea. We follow the story through Arha's eyes, a very different protagonist than LeGuin's Ged of the first novel. It is only as the action begins to rise that we meet our old friend, and it's pretty cool to meet Ged through Arha's eyes.

LeGuin's writing is noticeably more powerful in this second installment. The reader moves through her world in beautifully selected detail. The feel of the desert wind is still on my skin, the smell of stale and decay in a sealed treasure trove, the wonder of the scene Arha beholds when light touches the Tombs of Atuan for the very first time.

Fancy hearing cake

My search for a manga series as fun to read as Full Metal Panic led me to Azumanga Daioh, and a group of silly, yet endearing high school girls. The series has four volumes- one for each year of the girls' high school experience, alla Harry Potter. But there are no wizards or giant robots in the four-panel sketches that giggle down the page from right to left. I was first disappointed that the manga contained no speculative element. As I turned the pages, I grew to enjoy Chiyo-Chan's perky piggy tails, Osaka's wide-eyed daydream stare, Miss Sakaki's desperate wish to have a cat, despite the fact that every cat she meets tries to bite her. But as the vignettes of the lives of ordinary high school girls unfolded, a little fantasy found its way into the series.

Call them dreams (daydreams in Osaka's case) if you like, but the fantastic experiences met in sleep bleed into the girls' daytime consciousness. Osaka becomes convinced that Chiyo-Chan's piggy tails allow her to fly, and are trying to control her. Miss Sakaki dreams that Chiyo-Chan's father is a Tanuki-type furry Japanese guardian spirit. The animal-loving Sakaki sews stuffed animals that look like the guardian spirit. Sakaki, and soon all the girls, begin to call the stuffed animals "fathers."

Azumanga Daioh isn't speculative fiction. The stories depend on the realistic framework of school life in Japan. But there is a fun thread of imagination that spec fic fans will enjoy. And if that still isn't enough to intrigue you, then you can always try the Azumanga Daioh anime DVD. The theme song to the anime is called "Fancy Hearing Cake" (空耳ケーキ). I'm actually studying Japanese, and have no idea what a fancy hearing cake might be. If anyone can figure out what it means, let me know.

Lunatics not that crazy

Lunatics by Bradley Denton was an enjoyable read, but it wasn't all that crazy. If anything, it was just a little too safe to be truly satisfying.

Denton is the author of one of the best science fiction books I've ever read (Buddy Holly is Alive and Well on Ganymede). Though it has been years since I read Buddy Holly, the sense of urgency (and the robotic dog) from this novel made a permanent impression on me. I can't say the same for Lunatics.

In Lunatics Denton set up a premise rife with potential for conflict and a deep exploration of what makes human beings tick. His characters are everyday people- a single mother looking for love in all the wrong places, a middle-aged professor who would love to have children, but can't manage to have sex with her husband, and an aging Venus who is frustrated and annoyed with her small business and young boyfriend. Protagonist Jack was once the lover of each of these women back in college, and, remarkably, they've all remained friends. When Jack's wife dies, Jack is distressed and depressed until he meets a new woman. She isn't any ordinary girlfriend- she's a goddess, and she can only meet with Jack when he stands naked under the light of the full moon. The presence of Jack's new girlfriend not only gets him arrested for public nudity, it begins to warp the relationships of Jack's friends and former lovers.

Denton steers away from exploring the dark side of this middle-aged group of friends, and sticks to a Midsummer's Night Dream-type adult fantasy. Jack's moon goddess girlfriend appears to be messing up everyone's lives, but, for me, there was never any doubt her lunatic influence would show all the characters the moonlit road to happiness in the end.

Lunatics tackles some serious subject matter- grief, mortality, jealousy, and loneliness- and asserts that all these grave problems can be solved with a good laugh and a good lay. It is an uplifting, feel-good, and often funny narrative, but lacks the stomach-wrenching tension that really makes me turn the page.

A world built of strings

A marionette stands, dejected, in the falling rain. He bows his head, raises a knife, and cuts his strings- then splashes to the ground, dead. The marionette is the king of Hebalon, and he has just committed suicide in the hope that his son will lead his people toward peace.

Strings is not a fantasy played out by puppets. The fact that the actors are marionettes is vital to the plot, the setting, and the characters. Soldiers kill one another by cutting the string that holds their foe's head. Slaves of war have limbs harvested to replace a vetran's arm or leg, severed from its string in combat. The city gate is just a thin piece of wood that lowers to let welcome travelers in, and need only raise a few feet to block the enemy's strings, and, so, the enemy. The prison is a grid that separates inmates with a lattice, blocking them by their strings from high above their heads. Playing children tangle themselves in each other's strings. The birth of an infant marionette is just something you have to see.

There is no evil puppet master in the film, no unseen god, no hints from above that help or hinder the characters as they struggle. The strings stretch high as the marionettes can see. Above the clouds, where only the audience has eyes, the strings continue upward to infinity. The strings are life and death, freedom and slavery, love and hate. The story would be impossible to tell without the strings. Watch them tangle, watch them fray. Check out Strings.

Stardust in our eyes

In his Saturday blog post, "Why I Like Russia," author Neil Gaiman is happy that the August 10th release of Stardust (based on Gaiman's book of the same name), was number one this weekend in Russian box offices. He's less thrilled with box office numbers in the United States, and notes that the US comprises about 40% of the film's theatrical market.

I am one of the many Americans who made Stardust's box office numbers a little lower this weekend. Although I've heard rumors that the movie's opening wasn't well-advertised in the US, and that even rabid Gaiman fans were unaware of its release, I've known Stardust was coming to the big screen for at least a year. So why wasn't I at the theater, eTicket in hand?

Well, see, I haven't read the book. I started it. I started it twice, in fact. I read Chapter One, set the book down, and didn't pick it up again until I felt I had forgotten the story. As the opening of the movie approached, I picked the book up again, read Chapter One again, and set it back down.

I'm probably missing a fantastic experience. Gaiman's novels, graphic novels, and film collaborations are always lots of fun. Gaiman figures high on my list of favorite fantasy writers. I know Stardust is worth the investment of turning that next page, starting Chapter Two- but Chapter One is so conventional in tone and character. Stardust announces itself as an adult fairy tale, but fails to spark my imagination with the promise of adventure. A young man's first roll in the hay isn't enough to grab me, not even when it takes place at the border of normal life and fairyland. I just haven't been enchanted. I don't have stardust in my eyes.