Porcellino writes about his Thoreau graphic novel

Over at Containing Multitudes, a blog run by the School of Amercan Studies at the University of East Anglia, John Porcellino talks about his forthcoming graphic novel about Henry David Thoreau, titled Thoreau at Walden, coming soon from the Center for Cartoon Studies. I've seen an advanced readers copy, and I can't think of a better cartoonist to depict the iconic American writer and philosopher.

If you've seen either the Houdini or Satchel Paige graphic novels from the Center for Cartoon Studies, then you know what a cool, informative, and out-of-the-ordinary series of biographies these books are. They tackle the material in ways that break out of the typical "life story" box to bring something new to the table, and really open up the lives and times of the subjects.

What's fascinating here is to see how a writer and artist approaches adapting someone elses words and ideas:

"Thoreau has been a major inspiration to me since my High School days, and to get the chance to immerse myself in his work and life, and then to try to bring that out in a way that would be accessible to contemporary readers was really a dream come true for me, pardon the cliché."

More at the link!

NYC dystopia x2

dys·to·pi·a ~noun. a society characterized by human misery, as squalor, oppression, disease, and overcrowding.

Well, there's plenty of that going around in a pair of books I'm featuring today, both of them set in New York City but written 40 years apart from one another.

First up is the dead and the gone, Susan Beth Pfeffer's sequel to Life As We Knew It. As with the previous book, the events that follow occur after an asteroid has hit the moon, knocking it out of its former orbit. Where Life As We Knew It was set in rural Pennsylvania and followed closely the struggle for survival as seen from a teen girl's perspective, the dead and the gone shows us how events unraveled through the eyes of Alex Morales, a seventeen year old boy living in Manhattan.

Alex is the second-eldest of the divided Morales family; his older brother Carlos is a Marine stationed on the West Coast; his mom is a nurse on night duty when the book begins, possibly on her way home via the subway; his father is in Puerto Rico attending the funeral of Alex's grandmother; and at home, Alex's two younger sisters wait for him to return from his night job working at a pizza parlor. In the beginning the news of the asteroid's collision course is peripheral at best; most people are listening to the baseball game.

Unraveled is the best way to describe events that follow. As the shifting of the moon has profound effects on the planet's delicate ecosystem, tides flood the subways and knock out all satellite transmissions. Without his parents there to guide them Alex quickly moves into survival mode in order to protect his sisters and keep the family together. When his sisters ask about the safety of their missing parents Alex reassures them without hesitation that everything will be okay. Alex is as pragmatic as he is protective, shunting his emotions in order to assure their survival.

As things progress, Alex's attempts to keep things normal at home run counter to what's happening all around him. Yankee stadium becomes the repository for people to claim unidentified family. Alex's trip to the makeshift morgue tugs at his emotions - he'd like to know what happened to his mother, but he also doesn't want to know if she's dead. Without phone service he is unable to contact relatives in Puerto Rico to check on his father, so without proof he assumes his father is alive despite reports of the island being struck by a massive tidal wave. Alex and his sisters continue to go to school and remain as normal as possible under the circumstances, while bit by bit it becomes clear that things will never be normal again.

Where events felt more ominous in Pfeffer's previous exploration of this disaster scenario, here in New York City the events that unfold seem merely to hasten the inevitable. As the food shortages and flu epidemic spread, as stifling heat gives way to mountains of snow, as the rich get out of town and the poor are trapped on an island left for dead, New York comes to represent the ultimate failure of the urban model of living, an unsustainable wasteland. Alex casually learns to lie and steal and, in the end, manages to get himself and one of his sisters successfully out of New York and toward a promise of a new life further inland. It's a somewhat bleak ending, but it feels genuine and hopeful at the same time.

* * * * *
Recently released for its 40th anniversary, Harry Harrison's Make Room! Make Room! gives us another version of the Big Apple in decay. The events are no less ecological, though the cause is man-made this time.

It's the future, the end of the millennium. You'll have to forgive a book written in the 1960's for getting the future of 1999 wrong, though in many ways the book does correctly understand some of the problems we're facing today. Harrison's premise was that the US was unconcerned with population control and that short-sidedness led to a planet where the people outstripped the resources. Greenhouse gases have ruined rich agricultural farmland, food and water is scarce, New York city is under a constant heat wave. As Harrison paints it, only the date of this scenario might be wrong as we may still be headed in this direction under global warming.

I have to break the review here to interject that this book was nothing like I had remembered it to be. I had this strange sense of double deja vu because there are familiar elements in the story that echoed both a movie adaptation of this book and the sudden realization that my disappointment was the same I felt when I first read this book as a teen. The movie was Soylent Green, and the disappointment I felt then as now was that there is no such thing as Soylent Green in the book. That is to say, if you've seen the movie and you think you know what the book is about, you don't.

Harrison tells the story of a police detective named Andy Rusch who investigates a case of murder that was nothing more than a crime of opportunity. The problem is that the corrupt politicos believe there's something deeper going on and Andy's forced to follow-through on the investigation beyond when it should have been dropped. There's a girl involved, a gangster's moll, who takes up with Andy once she's out of her meal ticket. And darting through the story is the thug on the lam who shows us the seamier underside of a New York Harbor clogged with decommissioned Liberty Ships used as emergency housing for the world's refugees.

What Harrison has done is graft a noir-ish crime story onto a New York City that has collapsed under the weight of its population. It's a dirty, ugly world with rationed water, no electricity, a black market for produce and meat, and corruption at every level of government. Where the dead and the gone gives us the quick death of NYC Make Room! Make Room! gives us the tail end of the long, slow demise. Both versions, as written, are equally plausible portraits of a metropolitan city in decay.

But in a head-to-head grudge match it's Pfeffer's book hands down as the better read. Pfeffer's book continues to draw out the disaster in diary format, one day at a time, inviting the reader to put themselves in Alex's shoes in deciding whether or not he's made the right decisions. the dead and the gone deals somewhat flatly with Alex as a protector of his sisters and there is little for him emotionally. Harrison's book has a more balanced emotional story at it's heart with Andy questioning love and what it means to live in this rotten world, but in imagining the worst aspects of his world into our future he retained some ugly racial and sexist stereotypes that, while "authentic" for a reader back in 1966, detract from the story.

the dead and the gone
by Susan Beth Pfeffer
Harcourt Children's Books 2008

Life As We Knew It
by Susan Beth Pfeffer
Harcourt Children's Books 2006

Make Room! Make Room!
by Harry Harrison
Tor Books 2008

Cory Doctorow's graphic novel for free!

From Boing Boing:

IDW have just published the collected issues of "Cory Doctorow's Futuristic Tales of the Here and Now," a six-edition series of comics adapted from my short stories by an incredibly talented crew of writers, artists, inkers and letterers...s with all of my books, this one is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike-NonCommercial license, meaning you can copy it, share it, remix it and play with it, provided it's on a non-commercial basis. I've uploaded the full book in high resolution as a PDF and CBR file to the Internet Archive, for your downloading pleasure.

Collected in this volume are adaptations of my award-winning stories "Craphound," "Anda's Game," "When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth," "After the Siege," "I, Robot" and "Nimby and the D-Hoppers."

"Anda's Game" in particular impressed the hell out of me - I couldn't believe what I was reading but some checking on the internet showed that yeah, some of the kind of flat out insanity he wrote about in that story really is true. If you want to read that story in its prose form, get a copy of the new SF anthology Starry Rift. To download the graphic novel for free, go here.

Crime, Punishment and Robert Frost

Last December a bunch of teens had a very rowdy party in poet Robert Frost's old summer house in Vermont. (It is now a museum.) There was a lot damage and the judge in the case just got creative about how the defendants are not only going to pay for what they destroyed but also learn a bit in the process. As the NYT explains in a recent editorial:

The criminal justice system in Ripton, Vt., prescribed poetry, of all things, as punishment — and we hope rehabilitation — for 25 teenagers (townies all) who broke into Frost’s old summer house in the woods last December. They trashed it during a snowy night’s bout of drinking and partying.

Skeptical at first, Mr. Parini, who teaches at nearby Middlebury College, accepted the invitation to teach the wayward teens. He did not pull any iambic punches in class last week.

One lesson was built around “The Road Not Taken,” Frost’s caution on the fateful choices that crop up in the dense woods of life. Harsher still was the choice of “Out, Out,” Frost’s account of a youth’s precious life spilling away in a sawmill accident amid the heedless glories of Vermont.

“They seemed shaken to their foundations,” said Mr. Parini, not that surprised. “A wake-up call: don’t waste your life.”

The young perpetrators must also do hours of community service, but the professor knows Frost’s words struck home best. “Poetry is about life and death and who you are as a person,” Mr. Parini explained, quoting the prose line from Frost “that really drove me towards these kids.” It’s from the essay “Education by Poetry,” in which the poet warned, “Unless you are educated in metaphor, you are not safe to be let loose in the world.”

A Kiss Before the Apocalypse by Thomas E. Sniegoski

Want a great action-adventure story with both legendary swordfights and present-day crimesolving? Check out A Kiss Before the Apocalypse by Thomas E. Sniegoski, where the leading man is part angel, part film noir detective, living in modern times.

Sniegoski's one of my favorite novelists. He's able to combine legends and mythology with comedy, and he creates complex characters, both heroes and villains, who square off in kick-butt action sequences.

Don't just take my word for it - Check out author Christopher Golden's praise of the book: "The most inventive novel you'll buy this year. A hard-boiled noir fantasy by turns funny, unsettling, and heartbreaking. This is the story Sniegoski was born to write, and a character I can't wait to see again."

Here's the official summary:
Boston P.I. Remy Chandler has many talents. He can will himself invisible, he can speak and understand any foreign language (including the language of animals), and if he listens carefully, he can hear thoughts.

Unusual, to say the least - for an ordinary man. But Remy is no ordinary man - he's an angel. Generations ago, he chose to renounce heaven and live on Earth. He's found a place among us ordinary humans; friendship, a job he's good at - and love.

Now he is being drawn into a case with strong ties to his angelic past. The Angel of Death has gone missing - and Remy's former colleagues have come to him for help. But what at first seems to be about tracing a missing person turns out to involve much more - a conspiracy that has as its goal the destruction of the human race.

And only Remy Chandler, formerly known as the angel Remiel, can stop it.

If you dig A Kiss Before the Apocalypse, you'll also enjoy Sniegoski's series The Fallen. It too offers good guys, bad guys, mythological characters, and loyal canine companions. You may have seen the TV series on ABC Family last year and the year before that - These are the books upon which that show was based, and the books are even better than the series. More action, more angels, more twists and turns.

Go pick up Sniegoski's stories. You won't be disappointed.

Tough Boy Sonatas

Last year, it was my pleasure and my chore to read the poetry collection Tough Boy Sonatas by Curtis L. Crisler, illustrated by Floyd Cooper. It was a pleasure because Crisler has put together a collection of poetry specifically for teenage boys, and more specifically, for kids who come from the 'hood or the wrong side of the track (or those who feel that way, wherever they may be from). The collection includes stories of innocent kids in a bad neighborhood and stories of kids dealing with massive life issues: drugs, crime, racism, social isolation, politics, religion, and more.

One of my reasons for wanting to write about poetry for Guys Lit Wire is kinda summarized in the title of one of my favorite poems from the collection: "Boys Love Words".


boys love words
by Curtis L. Crisler

we slog to library to
do reports on satchmo
in rustic brick-red after-
school afternoons. little
brown-faced hood rats
sneaking chocolate-
covered donuts into library.
don't got milk or red cream
soda to stop-stick to roof
of mouth. half in study --
laughing, hungry amontst
tart, stale smell of old
books, cedar chairs -- dead
authors and miss library
lady-- she looks beyond
her white, cate-framed
glasses like we stink
of piss. we too breathe
the once dank lines of
whitman, the open pores
of petrarchan lady who
makes shakespeare sweat,
and we try nhot to sigh
when we open the hard
backs. she knows we
can smell the sex
bonded and glued,
sandwiched between
black and white lines--
no short attention span,
it's our curiosity in love
w/ the words she oversees,
checks in, hands out, in
love w/ what trickles out
our mouths, we flush her
cheeks, flex our callow
pecs-- callous lotharios
tugging at that new
itch in genitalia.

This is just one of the 39 poems that make up the collection, and it comes from the third section of the book, which is entitled "Tough Boy Sonatas". The first two sections are "Gary" and "Son of a City". The language used is indicative of the sort of rawness that appears in many of the poems, some more dark or violent, others more blunt or sexual. Each poem in this collection packs a bit of a punch.

This book is a great collection for teens interested in looking at edgy poetry for their age group, or who are interested in writing (in poetry or otherwise) about some of the inequities that still exist in today's American society, including racism, poverty, education and societal expectations. Most of the poems in the collection are serious poetry, almost all of them touching on serious issues, although with an infusion of sly humor now and again, as in "The Black of Gray", when Crisler writes:

. . .I prayed to the prototype
re-creation reprint of Jesus, never knowing this
dude was Michelangelo's relative or running
buddy or model . . .

Or in "Day Dreamer", which starts

In third grade on first floor of bliss
or was it hell? at David O. Duncan School

I'd lose chatter of overzealous teacher
talking-talkity-talk 'bout someone famous, white,

and dead or how many manias lived in texbooks--
how history declares, "Columbus revealed America"--

and we knew Indians gave Chris's ass a little help. . . .

The poems in Tough Boy Sonatas will challenge readers and make them think, which is probably one of the reasons that this book is on the 2008 ALA list of Best Books for Young Adults. The illustrations by noted illustrator Floyd Cooper contribute to the ambience of the book.

***All excerpts from Tough Boys Sonatas by Curtis L. Crisler, illustrated by Floyd Cooper (Wordsong/Boyds Mills Press, 2007)

Soccer fans take note

As the European Soccer Championship gets under way, Slate rounds up a a bunch of sites to help you keep on top of things and also provides some literary selections for those who can't get enough of the game. One in particular caught my eye:

A more serious read is Soccer in Sun and Shadow by Uruguayan novelist Eduardo Galeano. Originally published in 1998, it is an eloquent, occasionally bombastic love letter to the game, comprising dozens of short essays with titles like "The Language of Soccer Doctors" and "The Perfect Kiss Would Like To Be Unique." Galeano has a fatalistic, purist take on the sport: "The history of soccer is a sad voyage from beauty to duty. When the sport became an industry, the beauty that blossoms from the joy of play got torn out by its very roots." But there is joyful play in Galeano's writing about great players and great goals, even in these fallen times. Of Italian striker Roberto Baggio, a star of the 1980s and '90s, Galeano says, "His legs have a mind of their own, his foot shoots by itself. … Baggio is a big horsetail that flicks away opponents as he flows forward in an elegant wave."

Steampunk Animals

From artist Jessica Joslin's site description of her new book, Strange Nature:

The creatures that make up Jessica Joslin's world are specimens of unknown species, captured from the collision of myth and science. They are constructed and formed through an intricate fusion of bone, brass, antique hardware and other delicate fragments. This finely wrought craftsmanship is displayed with exquisite full-color photography throughout. Jessica Joslin: Strange Nature is an opportunity to enter this artist's eccentric and wonderful world.

I've never seen anything like this - way way too cool. (original link via boing boing.)

How Texas affects everyone else's textbooks

This article on the battle over evolution in Texas textbooks is a bit worrisome:

Now a battle looms in Texas over science textbooks that teach evolution, and the wrestle for control seizes on three words. None of them are “creationism” or “intelligent design” or even “creator.”

The words are “strengths and weaknesses.”

Starting this summer, the state education board will determine the curriculum for the next decade and decide whether the “strengths and weaknesses” of evolution should be taught. The benign-sounding phrase, some argue, is a reasonable effort at balance. But critics say it is a new strategy taking shape across the nation to undermine the teaching of evolution, a way for students to hear religious objections under the heading of scientific discourse.

This would be no big deal to the rest of us (except of course that it is annoyinig) except that Texas has a lot of power over textbooks nationwide:

What happens in Texas does not stay in Texas: the state is one of the country’s biggest buyers of textbooks, and publishers are loath to produce different versions of the same material. The ideas that work their way into education here will surface in classrooms throughout the country.

Grrrrreat. Now we have to worry about stupid Texas on top of everything else.

Truancy, by Isamu Fukui

Have you ever cut school? Would you if you knew that if you were caught, you’d be killed? This is the world that Tack lives in—school is truly totalitarian, and the punishment for even small transgressions (talking back to the teacher, questioning the rules) is severe. Truancy by Isamu Fukui follows Tack’s journey as he realizes that the current system is not the only way, loses someone important to him, and joins the Truancy, the resistance movement with the goal of freeing the City’s children from the wrath of the Educators.

Written when the author was 15 years old and extremely dissatisfied with the education system (he’s 17 now, and has just graduated from high school), Truancy looks at what goes wrong when one group has too much power over another in a near-future nameless City. It’s also packed with action —Tack is trained (both mentally and physically) and mentored by Umasi, a boy he meets in an abandoned sector of the City, and then soon becomes second in command to Zyid, commander of the Truants. Their missions include supply raids, assassinations, and all out battle with the Enforcers, all with the hope of bringing the Educators, the Mayor, and their oppressive system down.

Tack is not a straightforward character—he doesn’t join the Truancy because he’s bullied at school by both other students and by the teachers. His first motive for joining the Truancy is revenge—someone he loves was caught in the crossfire during one of the Truancy’s actions, and was killed. Tack vows to find the assassin who killed with seemingly no emotion, and make him pay. Once he’s involved in the organization, he starts to learn about the goals of the Truancy, and begins to sympathize with the cause. He eventually has to make choices about where his true loyalties lie.

Find out a little more about the author’s inspiration and creative process (he wrote the novel in a month over summer break) in this NPR interview, and visit Truancy’s official web site here. If you enjoy the book, you’ll be happy to know that a trilogy is planned, Fukui is working on a prequel, Truancy Origins, to be published in early 2009, and will start on a sequel shortly thereafter. He plans to complete his work while still involved in the educational system (he plans to attend NYU). Fukui is worried about losing his anger at the system which inspired Truancy in the first place once he’s no longer entrenched in it. I was happy to hear that Fukui will be revisiting this world for a few reasons—whenever I read a dystopian novel, I always crave more information as to how the society got that way—was it a slow, almost imperceptible shift, or did change happen suddenly? Was resistance present from the beginning, or did the anger and frustration take a long time to build up? I’m also very curious about the backgrounds of Umasi and Zyid, and how they came to their very different belief systems and methods of resistance.
A good read for anyone who's already dreading going back to school in the fall.