Martin Millar on werewolves and Led Zeppelin

Martin Millar's Good Fairies of New York has received no small amount of cult-like status among fantasy readers (including an introduction by Neil Gaiman to its recent Soft Skull edition). I discovered Millar through his werewolf novel, Lonely Werewolf Girl which manages to be as much about a dysfunctional family and loving Sabrina the Teenage Witch as much as it is about werewolves. Here is a bit of my review from my July column:

Millar has done more for the urban fantasy genre with Lonely Werewolf Girl than most authors. He lifts the entire oeuvre of werewolf stories up, in a manner similar to what Joss Whedon has done for vampires. There is far, far more here than killing, although Millar never shies away from realistic violence. But when he introduces Kalix’s older sister as a fashion designer he then spins out a subplot concerning the theft of fashion design and gives it a fantasy element. Her cousins are alcoholic pop singers who can’t hold it together long enough to carve out decent careers and Millar takes part of the plot into their hopes, dreams and addictions. Politics, both in Kalix’s dysfunctional family and the larger werewolf world, are key to the story and the author makes that as exciting as one of Kalix’s many desperate chases through the city. Every detail in this book is rich and deep and thoughtful; Millar gives his characters the time and attention they deserve and because of that, readers finds themselves with far more story then werewolf fans have come to expect.

Martin's latest title, Suzy Led Zeppelin and Me, is an autobiographical novel about Led Zeppelin's 1972 concert in Glasgow and teenage crushes, battling with best friends and what it means to be cool. (As it jumps back and forth in time there's also a bit about being a modern literary fiction judge which will likely make many writers shake their heads and pronounce "I knew it!!"). I am reviewing that book next month but here is some of what Jenny Davidson had to say in August:

It is a work of utter genius and considerable grim hilarity, so that I was laughing out loud as often as every couple of pages. It is a short book, composed in short chapters, about the weeks leading up to the night of the 4th of December, 1972, when Led Zeppelin came to play in Glasgow. Martin Millar is just as funny as Charlie Williams and Cintra Wilson, my two other particularly favorite not-as-widely-read-as-they-should-be funny novelists.

Here are some thoughts from Martin Millar he forwarded my way in the past month.

Chasing Ray: Lonely Werewolf Girl is a big book. Did you plan in the beginning to write an epic about werewolves (everything from politics to romance to music to the ripping off of arms) or did the book’s overall narrative expand as you got deeper into it?

MM: I didn’t expect it to be such a long book; it just seemed to evolve that way. I think that’s probably due to the number of relations Kalix has. She’s a member of a large clan of werewolves. It was quite surprising, finding myself writing such a long book. My previous works have tended to be short.

CR: I know you’re a big fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer – any aspects of the show that affected how you wrote about the MacRinnalchs? Also, what audience were you think of when you wrote Lonely Werewolf Girl? I reviewed it for teens but as an adult I enjoyed it a lot as well. It seems to crossover perfectly (just as Buffy does). Is it hard to create characters that appeal to both teens and adults?

MM: About teens and young adults - I never intended to write for a specific market. After enjoying Buffy the Vampire Slayer so much, I thought I'd like to write something which shared the same sort of general tone. And also, in a way, the tone of various comics I used to read.

So, for instance, there aren't any explicit sex scenes in the book, but that's not because I meant the book to be aimed at a specific audience, it's because an explicit sex scene wouldn't fit in with the tone of the book.

I'm quite happy for Lonely Werewolf Girl to be seen as a Young Adult book - because I seem to be a fan of this sort of thing myself - but I really didn't write it with that in mind. I expected adults to enjoy it too.

Possibly the distinction between Adult/Young Adult has become blurred to an extent where it isn't that important any more. Certainly, if I'd attempted to add any specifically 'adult' scenes to Lonely Werewolf Girl, it wouldn't have improved the book, it would have made it worse. The tone would have been spoiled, all the different strands wouldn't have fitted together properly, and it wouldn't have been believable.

CR: Kalix is not an obviously sympathetic character; in fact for most of the book she reads as more bipolar then you would expect (even for a werewolf). Was it hard not to write about the teen protag as a victim? How did you envision her from the very beginning?

MM: Poor Kalix has a lot of problems, though her highs and lows tend to arrive via anxiety and depression, rather than being strictly bi-polar. Many of the things the unfortunate young werewolf suffers from have been taken from my real-life experiences. From myself and from people I’ve known. Her eating problems and her self-abuse are based quite directly on people I’ve known, as is her depression and anxiety, and panic. Speaking personally, while I’m not prone to depression, I have suffered badly from anxiety at times in my life.

Writing about Kalix, I felt very sympathetic towards her. I didn’t regard her entirely as a victim, because she does have the power to take control of her life at times. When things really get tough, she has the willpower to come through it, just about. As for how sympathetic readers would be, that’s always hard to tell. Possibly I like her more than a lot of readers might.

CR: There is a ton of humor in this book – a lot more than readers have a right to expect compared to most of the urban fantasy out there. How much of this (from Sabrina the Teenage Witch to some major fashion insanity) did you plan ahead of time? Were you always intending to balance the violence with laughter or did some of the characters (such as Kalix) just evolve that way as time went by?

MM: You’re giving me too much credit for planning. I’m a terrible planner when it comes to writing, and always have been. However, I did set out to write Lonely Werewolf Girl with quite a specific tone in mind, and that was always going to involve humour. I think in general I find it difficult to write without being humorous to some degree.

Agrivex, or Vex, is really a character straight out of an American teen comedy. I have, for some time, been a fan of American teen comedies (This may be unusual for a British author of my age) I think this started with the film ‘Clueless’, which the first time I saw it, affected me quite a lot. I was very impressed that anyone could make such a sharp, funny film, using a Jane Austen story as the source (I am a great fan of Jane Austen, though I have never attempted to emulate her style, obviously.)

Queen Malveria is another humorous character. However, I don’t know where the inspiration for her came from, she’s not based on any other character I’ve encountered.

CR: What aspects of the story did you enjoy writing the most – the political maneuverings, the fashion crisis, the music crisis, the coming-of-age moments and friendships or the cut-throat violence? And how hard was it to bring all of this together into one story? Did you ever worry that there were too many threads or do you think maybe we (as readers) just aren’t used to reading books that combine so many characters into one coherent (and thrilling) tale?

MM: That’s difficult to say. I’m not sure what I enjoyed writing the most. I like writing anything about Kalix, because I like her, and apart from that, probably the scenes between Malveria and Vex. I liked writing about Thrix and Malveria and their fashion obsessions, though that was difficult because although I sympathise with people who are very keen on fashion, I don’t actually know anything about it. So really I was relying on copies of Vogue bought from the local newsagent.

As for the werewolf violence, I quite liked writing that too. (I wouldn’t say it was on a very high level – I’m not fond of gore or horror) It made for a change. I’ve never written about fighting before but possibly, having read a lot of comics as a youth, I had a secret desire to do so.

I wasn’t worried about including a lot of different threads. I thought that they were related enough for people to follow. Though there are a lot of characters, most of the story is driven by the feud about the succession to the leadership of the werewolf clan, so it’s all going in the same direction. As for the balance of the book, with its humorous parts and serious/violent parts, I have the general feeling that if you write these parts all properly, they should fit together well enough.

CR: Switching gears a bit, Suzy, Led Zeppelin and Me reads more as a memoir than novel in a lot of ways – could we call it a fictionalized memoir? How much of your own story (past and present) is found in the book?

MM: Most of the significant events in the book are true, so in that way it’s a memoir. However, I re-arranged them all, added in pieces of fiction, and I had no qualms about shuffling events, places and times around to make it into a better story. So I think of it as a novel rather than a memoir.

CR: How much do you think we bond with the music of our youth? In a lot of ways you’re written an entire book around this subject – how significant do you think music can be over the course of someone’s life. (Or in other words – is it more important during the turbulent teen years than to adults?)

MM: We definitely bond with it. When I was a teenager there was nothing so important in my life as music. Actually, that lasted beyond my teenage years, though it’s faded a little now, which is natural as you get older. New music doesn’t resonate in the same way, and you find yourself more attached to the music you’ve always loved.

I regret this in a way. It would be good to hear some new music now and think ‘This is fantastic! It’s changing my life!’ But that doesn’t seem to be possible when you get older. Shame really.

However, when you do get older, and find yourself keener on the music from your youth than the music that people are listening to today, you should take care not to assume that the music you love is somehow better. It’s not necessarily better, it’s just that it means more to you.

CR: Part of what really appealed to me about Suzy was that it seemed like the ultimate coming-of-age story. Readers bond with Martin as he struggles with first love, fragile friendships and significant relationships and then see, basically, how he ended up. Is this sort of the ultimate (and most realistic) sort of coming-of-age story – one that does not stop with a moment of teen awareness but continues right through to adult nostalgia?

MM: I needed to find some way to write about my extreme excitement at the thought of Led Zeppelin coming to town, but I was too aware of how life went on afterwards to end it like that. So I wrote it from the viewpoint of an older person looking back, and that naturally took the story on after his coming of age moment. Possibly, if I’d been writing about some fictional characters, I’d have let them just end happily at the Led Zeppelin concert. I’m not against a happy ending, even if life isn’t really like that!

From my own point of view, it was interesting looking back in detail at the concert, and my life at the time. I got in touch with various school friends, asking what they remembered about the gig, and I learned a lot of details I’d forgotten. Also, to my amazement, I found a bootleg CD of the actual gig, which I bought from Japan. I was astonished that a recording of this concert in Glasgow in 1972 existed, and it was strange listening to the concert again, and thinking about being there, such a long time ago.

CR: So what sort of book do you prefer writing – the big sweeping epic with a dozen main characters and confrontations or the short chapters in a tightly focused story about one singular event in the narrator’s life?

MM: Short books. I said In Suzy, Led Zeppelin and Me that I have a short attention span these days and it’s true. My attention span has been destroyed by cable TV and the internet, no doubt. I can offer no cogent explanation as to why I suddenly wrote something as long as Lonely Werewolf Girl. And, as I'm writing a sequel now, I’m doing it again. But I have vague plans for my next book after LWG 2, and that will almost certainly be short.

Cross posted at Chasing Ray.

The Fine Art of Getting Under People's Skin

Right now, my bedroom is swamped with partly-read books.

It’s been going on for months: that shiny new cover looks so promising, love how the photographer sliced off the model’s head, very edgy.

Then I dig ten pages beneath the candy-colored photo--down into the ink and paper and flesh and blood of the story--and I’m bored. The book lands on the floor or the teetering stack on the dresser. I promise I’ll get back to it, but I won’t.

None of these abandoned books were bad. The characters are familiar. The author’s voice is soothing dulcet tones. Every major plot point is proceeded by the proper amount of foreshadowing. And if I ever did get to the end of one, I’m sure it would come to a satisfying conclusion. The evil queen would be banished or everybody would learn an important lesson about tolerance or both. True love would conquer all. There’d be just enough loose threads left for the sequel.

These books are worse than bad, they’re perfectly adequate. They’re tidy. They’re polite. They wouldn’t dream of talking over the reader’s head or asking questions they don’t have a ready answer for or making the reader feel uncomfortable or out of place. They’re perfectly adequate except that they have nothing to say and absolutely no reason to exist.

Heartbreakingly, a lot of the books laying on my floor are young adult titles. It shouldn’t be like this. Adolescence is not tidy. It’s not polite. It’s the decade when people ask the most questions, and pound their feet the loudest, demanding the answers. Maybe it’s because the YA market includes as many well-meaning grandmothers and librarians as actual young adults. Maybe we’ve gotten so desperate to get teenagers to read, we’ve stopped asking if any of it’s worth reading. But over and over good intentions gets mistaken for good art, and the horrible beige plague of adequacy spreads.

Finally, I couldn’t take anymore. After throwing one more pleasant, perfectly nice book against the wall, I put on my coat, drove down to Barnes & Noble, and picked up Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick.

Nobody would call Philip K. Dick an “adequate” author. Dick got his start writing for the science fiction pulps during the 50s and 60s, and his stories are filled with the whizz-bang fundamentals of that era, rocket ships, telepathy, the whole bit. His writing tends to be... I’ll be charitable and call it “sturdy.” A good adjective to use when describing a toolbox. Not so much when talking about prose. In fact, a lot of the stories devolve into a series of talking heads, discoursing on whatever idea Dick had bobbing around his head at the moment.

But oh, what beautiful, horrible, messy ideas they are. What does it mean to be human? How can we ever separate what’s really real from what the people in charge insist is real? And how sure are we that we even want to know the truth?

The whole of Dick’s work wobbles between modern day prophet and bat-shit crazy. It’s fun to try and pinpoint the exact paragraph where the amphetamines kicked in. But even at his drug-addled worst, Dick always has something interesting to say.

Halfway through the collection and late at night, I turned to “The Days of Perky Pat.”

At ten in the morning a terrific horn, familiar to him, hooted Sam Regan out of his sleep, and he cursed the careboy upstairs; he knew the racket was deliberate. The careboy, circling, wanted to be certain that flukers--and not merely wild animals--got a care parcels that were to be dropped.

The opening lines start something fizzing like a fuse in my brain. That word “flukers” is familiar from somewhere... Mother Teresa on Toast, I’ve read this story before.

Suddenly, I’m two people. I’m me now, laying in bed surrounded by lousy books. I’m also me at a chubby thirteen, on a camping trip with my family. To my mind, the entire outdoors can be roughly divided into things that can kill you and things that merely give you a rash, so I’m hiding in the minivan, safe from all that fresh air and sunlight. There’s nothing to read except a science fiction anthology my older brother brought along, so I flip around, mostly bored by the rocket ships and telepathy, really missing TV. Then I find a story about flukers--survivors of an apocalyptic war--who’ve become obsessed with a Barbie-like doll named Perky Pat.

Letting the world crumble around them, the survivors pull apart radios and computers to build Perky Pat garbage disposals and self-directed lawnmowers, lost in daydreams about how good life used to be.

By adulthood, I’d forgotten the author and title, but a few images were still lodged in my brain like shrapnel: The flukers living in their underground bomb shelters, the children going “upstairs” to hunt while their parents played games, and the simple idea that grown-ups spend a lot of energy and effort on stupid things. (A simple idea, but one that will get you surprisingly far in life.)

I carried those fragments around, and most of the time they didn’t hurt at all. Every once in while, though, they’d act up. Like, say, if there was a war on and the economy was in the toilet and people were actually worried about one of the candidates not wearing a flag pin or or how much money another one spent at Saks Fifth Avenue AND DID I MENTION THERE’S A DAMN WAR?

Then I’d start thinking about that strange story I’d read years back, written by a mad genius who knew the fine art of getting under people’s skin, a story that’s lingered in my memory for years while hundreds of perfectly adequate ones have vanished like fog.

Cross-posted on Kris' blog.

Notes on the Half Continent and Star Wars....

From the D.M. Cornish interview over at Finding Wonderland:

FW: The mythology of Rossamünd's world is intricately developed, particularly with respect to monsters and those who deal with them on a daily basis. Was this your starting point for the story—the idea of a world filled with monsters and monster-fighters? Or did it start with a character, like Rossamünd?

DMC: It began specifically with a city, actually, Brandenbrass, a more early 20th Century setting than the Half-Continent is currently; and with this a character called Icarus who (unsurprisingly) wore wings on his back and walked about this city of Brandenbrass in a state of poverty and perpetual confusion. Indeed, notebook 1 begins with a story some sour octogenarian is telling to the rather clueless Icarus, if I may indulge myself...

"There was this boy, you see," and he leant forward, "and he was stuck on an island with 'is dad. Couldn't get off – no boats and high walls all around, too tall to climb with spikes on top. But you see, he was sick of having nothing to do and only his old man there so he saw the birds--flying, that is--and said, 'I'll fly out too!' So he got some feathers and wax and made his own wings, and 'cause his dad bugged him so, a pair for him as well. And he flew out of there with his dad, but it doesn't end here. All was well, but this boy got proud and soon soared higher and higher still 'til he was right near the sun; too near! 'Cause the sun--the nasty evil sun--melted the wax out of spite and jealousy and the boy's wings broke and the boy fell into the sea and 'cause his idle olds hadn't taught him to swim he drowned dead."


So, in a way, it began with a soliloquy, though I had written role-playing rules (yes, I was into role-playing, I am that kind of nerdy) much of which now features--heavily modified--in the Half-Continent, and a few H.P. Lovecraft-ian bits of what these days would be called "fan fic." Deeper still, it all began with Star Wars at age 5, with The Lord of the Rings at age 12, Narnia, H.P. Lovecraft, Fighting Fantasy books, the illustrations of Ian Miller and Angus McBride and Rodney Matthews, the Iliad, Frankenstein, Dune, Steinbeck, building with Lego[TM] and inventing worlds and stories to go with the models, the dinosaur and ghost books I read as a child, that really really cool Galactic Aliens book in my primary school's library (looking out for it still)...and all those things that boiled and bubbled until Mervyn Peake's Titus Alone finally burst the lid.

See links and quotes from the all the Winter Blog Blast Tour interviews today, here.

Winter Blog Blast Tour Day #1

The Winter Blog Blast Tour has started. Here are your links to the author interviews today:

Lewis Buzbee at Chasing Ray: "The other part of the question: because I was so formed, in some way, by Steinbeck, I have always had an urge to write about him, but non-fiction never felt the right venue for me. His letters are so good, there are several fine biographies, not to mention Benson’s brilliant epic biography, and I know that I am no biographer. When I first started writing this book, I thought it was all about the libraries, but for me it was all about Steinbeck, in the end, trying to pay tribute to the power of his words. That part of it kind of snuck up on me."

Louis Sachar at Fuse Number 8: "When Stanley first sees some of the other boys, their race is part of their initial description, but after digging all day, they were all the color of dirt."

Laurel Snyder at Miss Erin: "I think somehow "old fashioned" is easier for me, because I don't have to try to sound young and authentic. There's no temptation to be like, "Yo, wassup?" in a fairy tale. Nothing is worse than grownups doing bad impressions of teens. Gag."

Courtney Summers at Bildungsroman: "Maintaining an online presence takes a certain level of time and commitment, true, but I'm down with it . . . and yes, I'm totally guilty of using them as a means to procrastinate sometimes. But if it wasn't them, it'd be something else. Not to brag, but I'm a FANTASTIC procrastinator."

Elizabeth Wein at Finding Wonderland: "The symbolism of bells are wonderful, though—they ward off thunder and the devil, they warn of fire and flood and invasion. They're always female (a bell is a "she," not an "it") and they all have individual names. Some of them are also very old. I used to thrill to ring a certain bell in Magdalen College, Oxford, because it predated Columbus's discovery of America. Most musical instruments that old are in museums, not in public use."

Susan Kuklin at The YA YA YAs: "The bias probably comes from my choice of subject matter. I choose such issues as prejudice, human rights, pregnant teenagers, and so forth. These are subjects that concern me. On one hand, once the subject is chosen I try to not let my bias govern the content of the book. On the other hand, not all my books try to look at a subject from all points of view. For example, I didn’t give human rights violators a voice or, more recently, those who favor capital punishment. Perhaps that’s where my bias comes in overtly."

A President-Elect and a Writer

The President-Elect of the United States, Barack Obama, did not know much about his father. In fact, he spent very little personal time with his dad—just a brief encounter during a Christmas visit when the young Barack was in elementary school. Dreams from My Father is a sincere journey into a man’s thoughts about where he came from, the absent man who shaped his past, the people in his life who lifted him up, and the discovery of who he might be.

It’s important to stress that this is a candid book. Political books involving personal stories are usually very circumspect. The politician-author most often meanders around their biography, picking up heroic or patriotic details when convenient. It’s also rare to find a political memoir that is written by the subject. The politician usually finds a ghost writer or biographer. Obama is the rare exception. He uses highly skilled prose and deftly shapes a stirring narrative that takes the reader from Obama’s family history in Kansas, to the distant shores of his childhood in Hawaii and Indonesia, his college education in Los Angeles and New York City, his early work in Chicago, and eventually Kenya, the place of his father’s birth.

This book is very little about Obama’s politics or his destiny to become an elected Senator or President. Instead, the author wants to unravel the mystery of his identity. What does it mean to not know your father? Who am I supposed to be if I’m half black and half white? What do I believe is important or gives meaning to life? The fact that Obama felt unrooted led to aimless pursuits (including bad grades, reckless behavior and drug use). Though, it wasn’t as if he spent his time staring at the pounding Hawaiian surf pondering his history and the nature of man. He did feel loss or longing or wonder, but it took him many years, and many miles traveled, to grasp some sense of what was for so many years shapeless.

This is a powerful book, in part, because we know the outcome. A boy growing up without his father, raised on domestic and foreign lands, living a wandering but thoughtful life ends up finding purpose and reshapes history. It is also a sharp and clear analysis of a man coming to terms with a complicated history. Dreams from My Father is a fine memoir from an unlikely source (a politician) whose history is now a small part of our own American journey.

(Final note: This post is not a political endorsement. It is simply a suggestion to read a good book. If you’re at all interested in reading about John McCain, Faith of My Fathers is a fascinating book. The recent election may have been the best literary presidential race in history.)

Calling all swashbuckler fans......

Midori Snyder did an excellent job at her site last week of summarizing the Captain Alatriste series by Arturo Perez-Reverte. Here's a bit of what she had to say:

It seems right on Veterans Day to review the swashbuckling and harrowing novels of the 17th century Spanish swordsman, veteran of the Thirty Years War, and sometime royal assassin, Captain Alatriste written by Arturo Pérez-Reverte. Pérez-Reverte deftly combines the heroic tale of a charismatic swordsman, a wry social history of a corrupt Spanish Empire, and a coming of age story for the novels' narrator, Iñgio Balboa, the orphaned son of a fallen soldier now apprentice to Alatriste as a page.

And what a figure Captain Alatriste cuts throughout these novels: tall and slim, wrapped in his cape, with a sword and long dagger at his side, his face shadowed by the broad brim of a felt hat, an aquiline nose, huge mustache, and blazing eyes. "He was not the most honest or pious of men, but he was courageous...It was one of Diego Alatriste's virtues that he could make friends in Hell," Iñgio tells us in the introduction. His title of Captain, more complimentary than official, was bestowed on him by the men who fought at his side one winter in Holland. His legendary skills with the sword have attracted the attention of the king, his scheming advisers, the Inquisition, and an Italian assassin with a score to settle.

Midori briefly reviewed each of the four books, starting with Captain Alatriste. If you've ever dreamed of taking wielding a rapier, these sound like must reads. (All Errol Flynn fans should clearly take special note.) (And if you're not a fan of Captain Blood then I pity you.)

Not So Mad After All

Young Princess Alyss has been kidnapped from the safety of her home in Wonderland and, charged with finding her is her bodyguard, member of Wonderland's elite fighting men, Hatter M. It's a harrowing, bizarre and dangerous journey through strange lands like Paris and Prague. And it isn't just a matter of finding her. There are zombies, fez-wearing monkeys and the terrifying, child-kidnapping imagination vampires to contend with as well.

Based on the Looking Glass War series, which tells the "real" story behind the Alice and Wonderland that we know, Hatter M (by Beddor, Cavalier and Templesmith), features anything but a funny little teetotaler with a few screws loose. Zombies and imagination vampires? Not a problem. This guy has so many blades on his body, Wolverine would pale to think of it. He's got 'em in his sleeves, on his back, spinning, whirling, throwing, slashing. And that's not even counting his hat, which is to a Hatter as a samurai's katana is to him. A traditional weapon that seems almost alive at times is surely the coolest weapon on a comic page since Captain America's shield.

It's heavy-loaded with what comics do best: great action. And though it's nearly non-stop, there are some fascinating ideas slipped in, too, from the clever references to the original work to the dark and terrible secret at the center of Baroness Dvonna's Orphanage for Lost Girls.

Even if you're going to ignore the story completely (don't, please), get a look at Ben Templesmith's art. Perhaps you recognize it from 30 Days of Night? Full of impressionistic eeriness and blinding motion and highlighted by the most effective use of color in modern comics (and I'm not just talking about the strategic splashes of blood -- get a look at the rainbow-tinted speech balloons), this truly highlights the graphic element of the graphic novel.


Meanwhile, perhaps you already know that the day these words hit GuysLitWire, the new James Bond Movie Quantum Of Solace hits the screens. Don't know where you stand on the subject of Bond, but the last one (Casino Royale) was so great, seems to me like you really ought to check this one out. Meanwhile, should you think that all of Bond's off screen adventures took place in novel form, have a look at something like Polestar, which is merely the latest in the vast and ongoing series of Bond comic strip collections. Originally produced in the 1950's and 60's in England, the strips adapted pretty much all of Fleming's stories and then moved on to original material (which all four stories in Polestar are). Surprisingly tough and a little bit risque, all the Fleming adaptations are quite faithful (way more than most of the films) and the original stuff manages to keep the hard-hitting, suspenseful and clever spirit of the novels intact.
And, if you get a kick out of those, maybe you even want to get a look at James Bond: The Illustrated History of 007, which is a beautifully illustrated rundown of Bond's entire history in comic strips and comic books. What could it hurt?

A Cautionary Tale

I have this dream. I want to take five or six months off from work, and do a through-hike of the Appalachian Trail. So I have read a bunch of books by people who have done just that. I've read books about hiking techniques and equipment. And Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods, which is pretty funny, although he did not accomplish a through-hike. The way it looks now, I may have to retire, and then hit the trail. But that's OK. Now I can read about fellow hikers out west: The Cactus Eaters: How I Lost My Mind - And Almost Found Myself - On the Pacific Crest Trail, by Dan White, for example, was good fun.

Dan White's writing is better than his outdoor skills, I think. I mean, after his partner, Allison, bought a fishing rod, he threw away food because he assumed they'd eat the fish she caught. She didn't catch any fish, partly because he had a schedule in mind that did not allow her enough time for that.

On another occasion, he dumped a bunch of drinking water, thinking it would save weight, as they were about to hike through some very dry terrain. Hours later, they were practically out of water. "'Did you know," Allison said... "that you can get water out of a prickly pear cactus?'... I laughed in triumph as I popped the cactus morsel into my mouth... I remember the pain, as hundreds of needles... plunged themselves...into my mouth, tongue, and gums... I spat out my spiny food, fell to the ground, and howled... 'You're supposed to remove the spines first, Dan!'"

Running out of food or water is not my idea of a good time. I don't think I would want to go backpacking with Mr. White. Allison ended up not completing the hike, because of a knee problem, he tells us (I would not have blamed her for making up such an excuse, for that matter.).

I wouldn't hike with him, but maybe I'll learn from his story. Hell, if this guy can hike the Pacific Crest Trail, I figure I can do the Appalachian Trail, no problem!

The Dean Martin of Oklahoma

It's an odd, almost unsettling experience to finish reading a book, fire up the internet to see what sort of buzz the book has, and then discover that almost simultaneously the book was just named as a finalist for the National Book Award. That's exactly what happened a few weeks back, in one of those moments when you wonder if the universe is trying to tell you something important.

Cue eerie music for... The Spectacular Now.

Sutter Keely is a charmer. A senior without a care, he is an unrepentant alcoholic living in the now, willing to embrace the weird. The only problem is that his beautiful fat girlfriend Cassidy is getting tired of his shtick. He's late and constantly drinking Seagam's and 7-Up; he's fun but irresponsible; he's a good time at parties but he's selfish. When the last straw comes and Cassidy finally dumps him Sutter figures she'll eventually come back around to his wannabe Dean Martin swagger.

The problem is that Cassidy is looking down the road at life beyond high school and Sutter isn't there. And not just Cassidy, all of Sutter's friends seem intent on trying to figure out what comes next. After years of floating without a care Sutter doesn't see the big deal, or the need to plan beyond his current buzz. So when Cassidy shows how serious she is by picking up with a new boyfriend, Sutter redirects his energies toward hooking up his best friend Ricky with a girl of his own.

Wallowing drunk, he is found passed out on a lawn early one morning by Aimee, one of those withdrawn girls everyone walks all over. Taking her on as his own special project to help her grow a spine and realize her inner self, Sutter finds himself promising to take her to the prom, officially declaring her his girlfriend, and knowingly leads her on in an effort to build self esteem. But Aimee isn't like the other girls he's dated, willing to hang out with a party boy until it's no longer fun. Aimee has fallen in love -- deep, hard, and seriously -- and slowly begins to entangle Sutter into her plans and dreams, into their combined future together. She could be the girl Sutter has always needed, the one he never realized he'd always wanted, a girl who could change him for the better.

If Sutter doesn't first succeed in dragging her into his own dead-end spiral.

Will Sutter reform, confront his deadbeat father and clean up his drinking? Or will Aimee become his sloppy, drunken sidekick, the girl who abandons her dreams of college and NASA to stay by the side of the only guy that has ever bothered to give her the time of day?

Up until the final pages there's no way of knowing how this is going to turn out. Tharp does a nice job of having the characters remain true to themselves in such a way that every meeting is a quiet trial of wills. When Cassidy continues to get together with Sutter on Thursday afternoons after they break up -- and with the full knowledge of their new dating partners -- Cassidy makes no bones about the fact that she will probably always be drawn to Sutter's bad boy antics but cannot let him back into her life as anything more than a buddy. This suits Sutter just fine, but his unspoken longing for Cassidy seeps in and pushes him that much farther along. He's like a comet that gains velocity in her orbit, then spins wildly out into the universe seemingly with a lack of control, but he's always drawn back into her gravitational orbit when he reaches the outer limits with Aimee.

Tharp pulls a nifty trick in giving us the portrait of a charming young drunk well on his way toward becoming a pathetic one. But he doesn't judge -- Sutter's friends are more than willing to do that, and they do it with a large dose of tough love despite the apparent futility of their gestures. There were moments when I was almost afraid Tharp was romanticizing teen alcoholism in trying to present a realistic portrait, but Sutter's own aimlessness undermines anything remotely cool about being drunk. It plays as humor when Sutter goes to his sister's house for dinner and nearly sets himself on fire when he tries to secretly smoke a joint in her closet, but Sutter's empty apologies and quick judgments about his family members make the laughter ring hollow.

I wasn't as impressed with Tharp's last outing, The Knights of Hill Country, because there was something about it that felt stale. This time out Tharp returns to his Oklahoma soil with an approach that feels slightly on edge. Not edgy, but teetering at the brink of excess and charm -- much like its main character. It is unflinching in its handing of teen drinking, almost casual, but equally sober about what sort of dead end that leads to.

I don't think it's necessarily undeserving the National Book Award, but given the competition I'm having a hard time seeing this pull through as the winner. Then again, perhaps the universe was indeed trying to tell me something. We'll find out soon enough.

The Spectacular Now
by Tim Tharp
Knopf 2008

also:
The Knights of Hill Country
by Tim Tharp
Knopf 2006

A Request For Recommendations

A Guys Lit Wire reader has emailed us looking for biography recommendations for her 14 year old nephew. He has an assignment (of course) to read a book of that nature and is particularly interested in WWII and/or the Roman Empire. (I'd like to meet this kid!) If any books come to mind, please let us know in the comments. (I keep thinking he needs to watch "The Great Escape" but that probably doesn't qualify.) (But man - was anyone cooler than Steve McQueen on that motorcycle?)