The Ching of the Tao and its Te

Oh, geez, I'm on vacation, and I forgot to bring a book to the beach so I could review it. I left it at the library. So as I packed, I grabbed a couple, thinking I'd decide when I got here which to review. My choices were The Trouble With Poetry and Other Poems, by Billy Collins, and Lao-Tzu: Te-Tao Ching: A New Translation Based on the Recently Discovered Ma-Wang-Tui Texts.

I have to go with Lao-Tzu. My apologies to the wonderful Billy Collins.

Lao-Tzu's book is usually titled Tao Te Ching, roughly translated as The classic (ching) of the Way (Tao) and its Virtue (Te).

Manuscripts found in 1973, more than five centuries older than any others then known, reverse the order of the topics. Translator Robert Henricks presents them here that way, addressing virtue first, then Tao.

The Tao Te Ching has been called a cybernetic holy book. Cybernetics is the science of communication and control in animals and machines (Some plants have recently been discovered to communicate chemically, so it may be time to expand the science.). It developed around the end of World War 2.

Here is the first chapter of the Tao half of the book:

"As for the Way, the Way that can be spoken of is not the constant Way;
As for names, the name that can be named is not the constant name.
The nameless is the beginning of the ten thousand things;
The named is the mother of the ten thousand things.

Therefore, those constantly without desires, by this means will perceive its subtlety.

Those constantly with desires, by this means will see only that which they yearn for and seek.

These two together emerge;
They have different names yet they're called the same;
That which is even more profound than the profound --
The gateway of all subtleties."

I recommend comparing as many translations as you can find, because there is always something lost in translation. D. C. Lau has done a couple, one before the Ma-wang-tui manuscripts were discovered, and one after. They are both among my favorite versions. I am currently reading a Spanish translation (El Tao Para Todos), hoping to improve my Spanish, and to gain further insight into Chinese wisdom. If you don't like Chinese wisdom, might I recommend The Trouble With Poetry and Other Poems?

Putting our money where our mouth is - the Guys Lit Wire Book Fair for Boys

In the very beginning GLW started with a mission to bring great books to the attention of teenage boys. We had read the data on boys reading less, heard stories from all over the internet of boys saying they just couldn't find good books to read and as reviewers many of us had ample evidence that more books are published aimed at teenage girls rather than boys. Our goal was to look both at new books and old and write about books we thought boys might like but could have missed. As our group of bloggers is so big (more than two dozen) and so eclectic, we aimed to write about all kinds of books for all kinds of boys and on that front, based on response to that blog, I think we are doing a pretty good job.

But in the grand scheme of things, we just don't think that's enough.

We are moving today into the second phase of GLW, where we put our money where our mouth is and physically act on getting books into the hands of boys that otherwise have none. Today we start the first two week Guys Lit Wire Book Fair for Boys to help the teens incarcerated in the LA County Juvenile Justice System. They have no books - at all - and they need them; they need them desperately.

Time magazine had an article on the juvenile justice system in March which discussed not only recent scandals in juvenile court but also how little attention is being given to recidivism. Here's a bit:

"Many advocates and academics argue that juveniles are not being given enough of a chance to turn their lives around after committing minor offenses. And officials at both the state and federal levels seem to be getting the message. Last summer, after reviewing a large swath of research literature, the Department of Justice concluded that "to best achieve reduction in recidivism, the overall number of juvenile offenders transferred to the criminal-justice system should be minimized." That came three years after the U.S. stopped executing minors, following a Supreme Court decision, Roper v. Simmons, that was largely based on new brain research showing that the full development of the frontal lobe, where rational judgments are made, does not occur until the early- to mid-20s. At the state level, Missouri is leading the country by phasing out its large juvenile-detention institutions in favor of smaller facilities, closer to kids' homes, that offer more specialized services, like mental-health and drug counseling and education. In the process, the state claims to have reduced recidivism rates for juvenile offenders to 10%, compared with a national rate of 40% to 50%. "We cannot incarcerate our way out of this problem of juvenile crime," says Shay Bilchik, director of Georgetown University's Center for Juvenile Justice Reform, who served as Clinton's point person on juvenile issues at the Justice Department."

There are currently about 50,000 incarcerated juveniles in the U.S. (About another 200,000 juveniles are incarcerated as adults.) In LA County (in 2007) there approximately 2,700 juveniles incarcerated. They are held in three jails: Central Juvenile Hall, Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall and Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall. About 300 of those kids (between the age of 12 and 18) are enrolled in voluntary classes through the InsideOut Writers Program. InsideOut is the GLW partner in the Book Fair for Boys.

From InsideOut:

"In a classroom environment free of judgment, students are encouraged to write with clarity and authenticity without worrying about sophistication or grammar. Before each session ends, students are offered the opportunity to read their work aloud. As students’ ability to express themselves grows, so does their self-confidence and motivation to improve other aspects of their lives.

Studies conducted by the Rand Corporation for the L.A. Probation Department have shown that IOW students are less violent than the general population of incarcerated youth. (This finding is not because only non-violent youth are allowed to attend the classes. In fact, the opposite is true. Probation staff often hand-pick the most violent and emotionally distressed youth to take the classes, in hopes that the environment will provide an effective outlet for expressing sadness, depression and anger.) Probation staff and the court school system teachers add that IOW helps youth express their negative feelings through writing, rather than through violence, and that IOW students are better prepared to pass high school exit exams."

IOW is committed to reducing recidivism; it is their primary objective. One of the ways to accomplish that is by getting the boys interested in other things and helping them form goals for after they leave the system. As book lovers, we at GLW believe that books can go a big way towards helping achieve the goal of keeping the boys from returning to prison. In LA County there is no library for the teens held in the juvenile system. The boys can read as many books as they want - but someone has to give them those books. According to IOW they are desperate for books on all kinds of subjects and so, that is what we at GLW are going to try and give them.

The Book Fair for Boys is built around a wish list at Powells Books. We chose Powells because the GLW crew was very determined to use an independent bookstore for this endeavor (another example of putting our money where our mouth is). Everyone gave their ideas of books that teenage boys would love and so we have a wishlist of all kinds of titles. Some of the boys in LA County are reading at the adult level, others are new readers at the picture book level; some are very interested in nonfiction while others hope for novels. What we have built at Powells is a list that is, quite simply, all things for all boys. We've got science fiction and fantasy, history, biography, graphic novels, short stories, war stories, poetry, animal stories and on and on and on. We have put together what we think is the beginning of a library that will be available for any teens using the classrooms in the LA County system. We have, we hope, given them a larger piece of the world that is waiting for them to return to.

And this is just the beginning.

GLW intends to build a longterm relationship with IOW and run book fairs on a semi annual basis. We also have invited IOW to assist the boys in submitting book reviews to our site. We hope in this way to show them that their opinions are valued and to also give them a bit of writing and publishing experience. The book reviews are a way to show that this is not a vanity project - it's a long haul endeavor that hopefully will tie Guys Lit Wire, InsideOut Writers and the boys of LA County for a long long time.

The library will grow as we return to it, and as it grows so will the power of books for boys who have never experienced how magical and transformative books can be.

Going through Powells makes the wish list a little more complicated - they do not operate with a gift registry system yet (although I understand they are working on it). This means that everyone who wants to purchase books for the fair will need to enter the mailing address individually. We hope that the fact that we are buying books from a real independent bricks and mortar store will make up for the inconvenience. Please adhere to the list - the books MUST be paperback - no exceptions. If you want to buy a Standard Used copy that would be fine and hopefully, because of the great sale and used prices at Powells, we will sellout the entire list of 125 books.

You access the Book Fair for Boys list through the main wish list page. Enter our email: guyslitwire@gmail.com From there you can survey the list on one page and after you have made your selections, here is the mailing address:

Eve Porinchak
ADDRESS REMOVED AS FAIR IS NOW OVER! THANKS FOR ALL THE BOOKS!!!!

Eve is one of the volunteer teachers for IOW and while their offices move she has graciously agreed to use her home address for the fair. Please make sure that when you are prompted by Powells, you agree that the books are being bought for the wish list - this way they will tag the books as purchased on the main list.

The Guys Lit Wire Book Fair for Boys will run for two weeks and we invite everyone who buys a book to please comment on our site or send us an email and let us know your first name, where you are from and what you bought so we can run a list of how the Fair is going. We hope to be a sellout, but honestly any number of books will be most welcome. I am a big believer in changing the world in small steps by great masses of people and after seeing how effective Guys Lit Wire can be through the work of many bloggers, I am certain that a group effort can help the boys incarcerated in LA County in a big way. A book can be a small thing in some ways but in others, as so many of us know, it can be everything. We don't think it is enough to just talk about books we love; we want to do something more and we hope that our readers will help us help some boys that really don't know what they are missing.

Hit the wishlist, buy a book and please, let us know what you think of the Book Fair for Boys.

[Post pic at top from Time magazine; all book covers are on the Book Fair for Boys list.]

The Poets' Corner, compiled by John Lithgow

Now, the term "the Poets' Corner" has a geographical meaning: it's the phrase used to describe a particular section of Westminster Abbey where a lot of poets, authors and artists are buried. You can read a bit about it at Wikipedia to get the sense of it. But it makes for a catchy title for an anthology of poetry, so I don't blame John Lithgow and/or his editors for picking it. (And yes, it's that John Lithgow, star of 3rd Rock from the Sun, bad guy in The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai, and voice of Lord Farquaad in the Shrek movies.)

I'm not sure if you can completely make out the subtitle to this one, but the book is called The Poets' Corner: The One-and-Only Poetry Book for the Whole Family, compiled by John Lithgow (who, you will recall, is not a professor, although he played one on TV). Let me say this about the subtitle: it's balderdash. Because Caroline Kennedy's A Family of Poems, which I reviewed on my personal blog a while back is decidedly for the whole family, as are a number of other anthologies for children. And the books put together by Garrison Keillor (Good Poems and Good Poems for Hard Times) are pretty much as capable of being shared with the family as Lithgow's book. Just so we're clear that I take issue with the phrase "one-and-only" here. The rest of the subtitle is fine.

If you were to read the table of contents, you would think that this 280-page book contained fifty poems, one each by fifty poets (organized alphabetically by author's last name: Matthew Arnold through William Butler Yeats). And while that sounds like the premise and is, in fact, what is on the accompanying CD - 50 poems, 1 each by the poets listed in the book - it is not all that is there.

Each poet is introduced in a family-friendly, sanitized kind of way by Lithgow's prose, and then the "featured" poem is introduced. What do I mean by sanitized? Well, Lord Byron is pretty much just referred to as racy, and Lewis Carroll is described as a kindly man who regretted that children had to grow up so quickly, when most people will tell you that he enjoyed the company of little girls and regretted that they had to grow up at all (and not for Peter Pan-like reasons, I think).

After each poem, Lithgow shares his personal response to the poem, including any personal connections he has (after "Birches" by Robert Frost, he shares an anecdote about hanging from a tree by a breaking rope when he was a child, for instance. In addition, for each poet, Lithgow provides a sidebar listing five other favorite poems by the poet (with the following exceptions: he lists only 4 additional poems for Byron and Pound, and lists 6 for Coleridge, Herrick and Shakespeare; he also includes lyrics from one song by Wm. S. Gilbert, who gets nothing more at all).

In addition to the Lithgow commentary and association, for many of the 50 poets, although certainly not all, a second poem is included. Not that you'd know that from the table of contents, although for the life of me I don't understand the omission. And not that you can readily figure it out from the index because there is no index (and yes, I am a curmudgeon, perhaps, but I resent the lack of indices, which ought to include one listing poems by title, and another listing poems by their first line, in my opinion). I can understand the decision to skip an index by author name because of the way the book's organized. There's no effort at chronology here, it's alphabetized by the poet's surname after all. But that's all the more reason that the second poems should have been listed under the poets' names in the table of contents. And yes, little things like this actually bother me in real life. (For example, the table of contents tells you that William Blake's "The Tyger" (from Songs of Experience) is there, but doesn't mention that its cohort from Songs of Experience, "The Lamb", is also included. It tells you that John Keats's "To Autumn" is in the book, but not that his poem "The Belle Dame Sans Merci" is there as well.)

From time to time, there are text boxes with additional information — a quote from the poet, perhaps, or a definition of a poetic form, or a link to someplace on the internet where you can hear the poet reading their own work. This is all welcome, helpful sort of stuff, I think, and I applaud the decision to include it.

What can I tell you about Lithgow's choices of poets and poems? Well, many of them are, for want of a better word, obvious, and cause me to think that Lithgow is fond of reading anthologies himself, since many of his choices are widely anthologized. Here's a sampling of what's there, most of which you've probably heard before, and many of which are in anthologies (including anthologies for children): "The Tyger" by William Blake, "We Real Cool" by Gwendolyn Brooks, Sonnet 43 ("How do I love thee?") by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, "Jabberwocky" by Lewis Carroll, "There is no Frigate like a Book" by Emily Dickinson, Pied Beauty by Gerard Manley Hopkins, "To Autumn" by John Keats, "The Owl and the Pussycat" by Edward Lear, "Annabel Lee" by Edgar Allan Poe, "To a Skylark" by Percy Bysshe Shelley, "The Emperor of Ice Cream" by Wallace Stevens, "Do not go gentle into that good night" by Dylan Thomas, "The Red Wheelbarrow" by W.C. Williams, "I wandered lonely as a cloud" by William Wordsworth, and "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" by W.B. Yeats.

And yet, it's clear to me that Lithgow simply chose to feature some of his favorite poems because of the occasional unexpected choice — such as the lyrics to "The Nightmare Song" by William S. Gilbert — and because of the decisions he made regarding "what to leave in, what to leave out".* He's included Allen Ginsberg, Hart Crane, Randall Jarrell, Ben Jonson, Philip Larkin, and Andrew Marvell. Don't get me wrong, all of them are excellent poets, but they are not nearly so widely anthologized as some of the others, nor are they as esteemed as some of the poets omitted: Robert Browning, say, or Ted Hughes or Sylvia Plath (although their estates are stingy with permissions, so perhaps that was the issue), or Tennyson or Pablo Neruda.

As I mentioned near the top of the post, the book is accompanied by a CD featuring readings of 50 poems, 1 per poet. The readings are each introduced by John Lithgow, who reads several of them himself (and takes on an increasingly obvious mock-English accent in the reading of the Gilbert lyrics). But he managed to get some "friends" to assist. They are Eileen Atkins, Jodie Foster, Gary Sinise, Glenn Close, Helen Mirren, Morgan Freeman, Billy Connolly, Robert Sean Leonard, Lynn Redgrave, Sam Waterston, Kathy Bates, and Susan Sarandon. Let me just say that Billy Connolly's reading of "To a Mouse" by Robert Burns is spectacular, as is his version of "The Owl and the Pussycat" and, oh hell, everything else he reads. I'd probably like to listen to him read the phone book. I heart Billy Connolly and his voice. But I digress. Jodie Foster's readings are glorious, and so are Susan Sarandon's and Gary Sinise's and Morgan Freeman's and, well, if you think I'm going to list everyone, then you're close. There's an occasional track that's only so-so ("Annabel Lee" as read by Sam Waterston, for example) and the track where Kathy Bates gamely reads Gertrude Stein's "If I Told Him: A Completed Portrait of Picasso" is actually quite tedious to listen to, but really, the CD is great. Only you should be warned that the CD is in MP3 format, which meant that my stereo balked at playing it, although yours might not. The computer had no such issue.

My final take on this book is that despite its maddening omissions in the table of contents and its failure to include useful indices, it's an excellent sort of anthology to pick up if you're looking for a smattering of popular poetry - and you're pretty much guaranteed to read and/or hear quite a few of the most popular poems in the English language with this book, so it's kind of a nice way to ease into the poetry waters, as it were.

Mystery and the Mind

There have been several books in recent years where the main characters fall somewhere on the autism or Asperger’s Syndrome spectrum. I am definitely not a medical expert, but I did notice this trend, and hopefully these books will help give folks some insight into how the brain works, and how autism or Asperger’s affects the world-view of some people.

Many of these books are tied in with mysteries. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon, Marcelo in the Real World by Francisco X. Stork, and The London Eye Mystery by Siobhan Dowd all combine coming of age stories with a central mystery. Some manifestations of autism/Asperger’s are portrayed as helping the characters in solving the mysteries—dependence on routine, obsession with numbers and puzzles, and having spent much of their lives trying to figure people out. Another typical trait of autism/Asperger’s is the lack of understanding of others’ emotions—this shows up in the characters having trouble reading people’s faces and moods, being overwhelmed by sensory input, and sometimes seeming insensitive to others’ thoughts or feelings—not because they’re mean, but because they don’t have a shared understanding of emotion. The first person narration in all of these stories gives you a real sense of being in the character’s head and seeing the world through his eyes.

Anything but Typical by Nora Raleigh Baskin does NOT involve a mystery, but deals more with a young man trying to find his place in the world—working out relationships with his sibling, friends, parents, and girls. Jason finds an outlet for his frustrating relationships in creative writing and routine.


If you’re interested in some true stories about this topic, try these autobiographies: Thinking in Pictures: And Other Reports from My Life with Autism by Temple Grandin and Born on a Blue Day: Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant by Daniel Tammet. Dr. Grandin is a pioneer in the field of humane treatment of animals who are being raised for food, and her autism has informed how she perceives animals’ comfort and worldviews. Tammet describes growing up with a talent for numbers and languages and finding his place in the world where he can use his talents to his advantage—one of his many projects is a company that sells online language courses.

Whether you’re looking for a different world view, or one to confirm that your world-view isn’t as different as you thought, these are all excellent reads. For more information on autism and Asperger’s syndrome, try visiting the Autism Society of America.

Boldly Go

Star Trek is here, finally; or here again, I should say. The new movie, of course, re-invents the original characters and for my money, that original series is still the best. I always found that none of the other incarnations could ever capture quite the same powerful, dynamic characters or the same sense of adventure.

If you've seen all the original episodes so many times you know them by heart (I can't be the only one who did that), or if you just want to immerse yourself in the experience in a different way, grab one of the Star Trek Key Collections (by Giotti), which compile the run of Star Trek comics from the late 60's and early 70's.

As with the episodes themselves (and with any good sci-fi), these stories are loaded with interesting ideas and speculation. In "Museum at the End of Time" (Volume 2), the Enterprise is trapped in a cosmic Bermuda Triangle and must cooperate with the warlike Klingons to escape. In "the Choice" (Volume 4), Captain Kirk's double from alternate timeline forces the crew to confront questions of destiny and free will. These stories also made clever use of the fact that they had no budget constraints and could put the crew into larger, more epic situations that wouldn't have been economical for a weekly television show, like taking on an army of automated destroyers (Volume 1) or dealing with a hostage situation involving an entire miniaturized planet (Volume 3).

The art is impressively gritty and textured and the action has an impressively realistic energy. Volume 2 also features early stories by Len Wein, who went on to co-create both the Swamp Thing and Wolverine (!).

Is it a flawless Star Trek experience? That would be stretching it. Are some of the ideas loopy? Yes, particularly in Volume 1, where things like voodoo dolls make a difficult match with science fiction. Are the phasers pink? Well, yes, they are. In the early volumes, some of the figural and color art (as well as the written depiction of some of the characters) is not exactly consistent with the show. But with eight complete adventures in each volume, that's a lot of bang for your buck, and these things are a huge amount of fun.

Meanwhile, if you're looking for a fresh and unusual take on the series, there's Star Trek Manga: the Ultimate Edition, which runs a wide range of styles and themes. They combine the series formula with that manga mainstay, the giant robot, as the Enterprise must take on a whole slew of them in "Orphans." There's a clever (and creepy) tip of the hat to the show's continuity, when the crew encounters a technological virus which they find nearly futile to resist in "Side Effects." They hit the action/adventure vein hard when Kirk and a Klingon captain are trapped together in a collapsed mine in "Art of War" (written by Wil Wheaton, who played Wesley Crusher in the Next Generation series). Of course, it wouldn't be Star Trek without some social commentary, which you get when the men and women of the crew are divided and set against each other in "'Til Death." And, they've even got a story by one of the show's original writers, David Gerrold, recalling some of the humor from his episode "the Trouble with Tribbles."

Finally, I feel obliged to tell you that there is even a Next Generation Manga, if that's your thing.

One Second After by William Forstchen

Post-Apocalyptic Fiction is probably my favorite subgenre. From a world devastated by disease in Stephen King's The Stand to a much quieter and sedate running down of the world due to oil shortages in James L. Kunstler's The World Made by Hand to zombie-pocalypse in Monster Island and World War Z, I love a tale of catastrophe and rebuilding society under severe conditions. The best of the bunch, in my opinion, is S.M. Stirling's novels of The Change (also called the Emberverse after the first book Dies the Fire) but William Forstchen's One Second After is right up there.

One Second After begins with a massive EMP (Electromagnetic Pulse) attack on the United States that wipes out electronics across the country. It centers on the small town of Black Mountain, North Carolina (coincidentally the site of my first library job) and how the lives of everyone in town are affected. It is mainly the story of John Matherson, local college professor and single dad, and his attempts to keep his family and the community at large alive. While the writing is at times clumsy, the novel is action-driven but also filled with small moments of humanity struggling to adapt to a world without electronics, refrigeration, agriculture, and dwindling resources. The survivors are forced to makle life and death decisions that have dramatic repercussions on their friends, neighbors, and family members. It is a brutal and unflinching chronicle of a dark future, like Alas, Babylon in theme and setting, but more like The Road in tone.

If you like end of the world scenarios and communities in crisis check out One Second After. But first you should really read Dies the Fire.

He Said, She Said- Boy Meets Boy by David Levithan

Welcome to He Said, She Said, a feature for GuysLitWire in which a guy (Book Chic, a recent college graduate) and a gal (Little Willow, a bookseller) discuss books that will appeal to both genders.

Little Willow: Last month, when I posted about the many works of David Levithan at GuysLitWire & Bildungsroman, I described his first novel, Boy Meets Boy, as such:

What if someone's orientation was a non-issue? If people honestly, truly accepted gay and straight (and questioning) without question, and recognized love as love? Boy Meets Boy is a romantic comedy for ANYONE, but especially for teen boys who might be shy (or curious) about their orientation, and especially for librarians, teachers, and booksellers who support GLBTQ rights and wish more places would do so without blinking an eye.

Today, Little Willow and Book Chic will be discussing a few aspects of Levithan's novel Boy Meets Boy.

What stereotypes or myths did Levithan completely bust?

BC: Quite a few. He seemed to set out to break tradition and stereotypes and think outside the box when it came to these characters and this school.

LW: I think he busts through a lot from page one, when he (through the eyes of Paul, the first-person narrator) describes the town where the story takes place: "There isn't really a gay scene or a straight scene in our town. They got all mixed up a while back, which I think is for the best." Paul describes the background of their city a little more, closing with, "This is my town. I've lived here all my life."

BC: I particularly enjoyed the cheerleaders on motorcycles bit. I also thought it was great to have a drag (and Homecoming) queen be the school's quarterback, as it shows that not all gay or transvestite people are sports-hating and effeminate. Although Darlene is effeminate, in the book, Paul states that she's all business on the field and will do the best she can and not worry about breaking a nail or anything. It was great seeing someone like that who can be both.

LW: I definitely think it's possible to be strong and sweet at the same time, no matter what your gender or race or orientation. Not only is it possible, but it's OKAY. Don't think you shouldn't be a dancer because you're a guy, or you shouldn't be a weightlifter because you're a girl. Stereotypes drive me insane. BREAK THE STEREOTYPES. Girls can play football. Guys can be cheerleaders. Women can be leaders. Men can raise children. Anyone can be anything. There's so much out there to see and hear, so many things to learn about and pursue - Why limit yourself because you think girls or boys should or shouldn't have a certain hobby or a certain kind of job? Realize your potential, and do what makes you happy.

Do you think the school was idyllic? Utopic? Both? Neither? Was it realistic?

LW: I loved that it was what it was. Gender and orientation were non-issues, for the most part, and people were who they were - with typical high school insecurities and worries, of course.

BC: I really think the school was utopic, and it's a fascinating world to be reading about - a world of acceptance and diversity where it seems like everyone can just be themselves, whatever that may be. It's interesting also to see it in a high school when that's usually the time for the most confusion about who you are and what you want to be. I loved reading how Levithan wrote this school and it shows such a great example of what high school should be like.

LW: I agree. So much changes for kids during middle school and high school as they attempt to figure out who they are while trying to fit in (or rebelling against such things!) Do you think that if the focus were on a straight couple, the school would have just seemed like an everyday school - albeit a good one, meaning a nice environment - rather than a utopia? I wish that the majority of humankind were more accepting and open, that people didn't just claim to tolerate others but truly accepted them, rather than judge them or hate them or worse.

BC: As the school is utopic, in my opinion, and utopia is impossible to achieve, I don't think it's realistic. At least not completely. I don't feel like this level of acceptance and diversity would ever happen. I hope that acceptance of GLBT people, other cultures, etc. in our world will continue to grow, but I don't think it would reach that level, even in just one town.

Paul meets Noah in the self-help section of a bookstore. Discuss.

LW: It makes me think of song lyrics, actually. On page 3 of Boy Meets Boy, it says: "I know Joni's brought us here because sometimes you just have to dance like a madman in the Self-Help section of your local bookstore." Duncan Sheik sings about "the Self-Help section of my local bookstore" in his song Bite Your Tongue. The phrases were so similar that I couldn't help but sing along in my head!

BC: I thought this was really interesting as both definitely needed some help since they'd both had had horrible breakups prior to meeting each other. It's like meeting each other and dating helped them to get past their breakup and see that love is possible and how amazing it can be. It was a very clever way of having them meet, I thought.

To conclude this post, I (Book Chic) wanted to chat a little bit about what this book means to me. This was probably one of the first, if not the first, gay book I read. Now, by the time I did this, I was just barely out of high school and hadn't really had much contact with the GLBT world. This book gave me hope for myself romantically and emotionally as a homosexual (and still does, as I'm single). I hadn't met any other openly gay people and this book transported me to a place where people could be themselves completely with no shame whatsoever and no need to hide their orientations. Therefore, there were quite a few openly gay people in this world that Levithan built and it was interesting to see them all interacting; it made me realize that I wasn't alone in this. It was a fantastic experience for me at the time and still is, having re-read it again for this post. This is one of the books that I would recommend to anybody, gay or straight, and will always be on my favorites list.

Hope to hear from some of you readers out there what you all thought about this book if you've read it! See you next time!

Previously on He Said, She Said:
Play Me by Laura Ruby
Poison Ink by Christopher Golden
Soulless by Christopher Golden
Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher

http://slayground.livejournal.com/tag/he+said+she+said
http://guyslitwire.blogspot.com/search/label/He%20Said%20She%20Said

Whirligig by Paul Fleischmann

It's lucky that Paul Fleischman's Whirligig is short, because it starts so poorly that had it been a longer book I probably would have set it down in the interests of saving myself time. That would have been a shame. After its weak opening, Whirligig settles into a rich and moving story that achieves moments of real beauty.

In the opening scene, Brent Bishop is headed for a party where he intends to impress the cool kids and ask out a very popular girl, hoping to increase his value on the social status market. You can see why I might have been disappointed. At the party Brent (who, unaware of the black and white chess theme, has arrived dressed inappropriately) is mocked by the cool party host, and rejected, publicly and loudly, by the girl he wants to date. It all comes across as a cheap scene from 90210 (except that it's set in Chicago).

The tone of the novella changes, however, when Brent leaves the party, both drunk and emotionally devestated. On the highway, he decides the only answer, the only way to take back control, is to kill himself and so he closes his eyes and lets go of the wheel. He doesn't succeed in killing himself, though. Instead, the accident he causes kills a young woman, Lea, in another car.

In the ensuing hearings the victim's mother asks for neither money from Brent or his parents nor punishment for Brent, but only that he travel by bus to the four corners of the country and build and erect a whirligig (her grandfather had made her whirligigs when she was a child) in each place, in memorium of Lea's lost life. Brent, to the chagrin of his parents, eagerly agrees to the trip and the task, as it will give him a chance to atone for his tragic mistake and to escape a life that has become oppressive. Nothing that happened before the accident seems to matter anymore and as Brent travels the country he rediscovers meaning in his life through the art of building the whirligigs, and the connections he makes to other people.

Some of these connections he is not even aware of. Brent's story is interspersed with the stories of people who Brent will never meet but who are affected by his whirligigs. Each finds a different metaphor in the art-objects which helps put his or her life in perspective, and these stories beautifully illustrate Fleischman's primary theme that people's lives are connected in ways well beyond their knowledge or understanding.

Unfortunately, Brent's journey is marred by Fleischman's cast of supporting characters who are all created to illustrate a political point. Everyone from Brent's previous life, including his parents, is shallow, closed-minded, and obsessed with material possessions and social status. Not only is this difficult to believe, it's unfair, especially to Brent's parents who have nearly lost a son, have just become aware of how deeply disturbed he is, and yet still only manage to see the monetary and social implications of his tragedy. At the same time, everyone that Brent meets on his cross-country voyage is a hip, open-minded, deep-thinking bohemian. Don't get me wrong, I subscirbe to Fleischman's political outlook. I think bohemian artist types are usually better people overall than investment bankers and suburban social ladder-climbers. But still, in real life there are interesting people everywhere. Likewise there are jerks and troubled people everywhere. Sometimes these are even the same people. Beyond that, anyone who has ever travelled, especially, like Brent, with a Greyhound bus ticket, knows just how vulnerable one is to hucksters and criminals. Brent never comes across anyone unethical. In real life, deep-thinking bohemians are sometimes also addicted to heroine or emotionally unstable pathological liars. But everyone Brent meets is a great person, through and through. Fleischman's message is that being free of upper-middle class social expectations will make you completely free as a human. This, of course, is a fairy tale. Brent doesn't have to struggle with a lot of the human complexity that one would expect him to encounter on his journey, and the book suffers for it.

Still, Whirligig is rich enough in its other aspects that it's easy, once you're immersed in Brent's story, to overlook its flaws.

Crossposted at Critique de Mr Chompchomp

The alchemy behind The Alchemy of Stone

Ekaterina Sedia's novel, The Alchemy of Stone, is unlike anything you've ever read. Simultaneously a fantasy, a steampunk, a tale of minority empowerment and a look at the destructive nature of love, it builds on the promise of her last novel (The Secret History of Moscow) in ways that not even that neat story anticipated.

Mattie is an automaton, an artificial person made of gears and metal instead of circuits and software. She's been emancipated by her maker Loharri, except for one thing: he still possesses the only key that will wind her mechanical heart. While she plies her trade as an alchemist, hired by the city's protective gargoyles to find a way to stop their turning to stone, the city itself begins the inevitable slide toward revolution. As trouble brews, then breaks out, Mattie must decide where her loyalties lie and come to grips with her own nature.

Mattie is one of the great literary characters I've had the pleasure of discovering. She, like the city itself, is described only as much as necessary, so that the image in the reader's mind is almost entirely constructed from his or her own preconceptions, much as Maddie herself was done by Loharri. Loharri is far from a one-dimensional ex-maker spurned by his creation: he both encourages Mattie and limits her, repairs her without question and yet refuses to give up the literal key to her heart. Their tapdance around questions unasked and unanswered provides the book's emotional core.

The rest of the tale is equally compelling. Again describing only as much as is necessary, Sedia creates a city-state with a fully-realized history, social structure and belief system. The conflict between the various castes is believable and sadly inevitable, and provides a vivid, if subtle, commentary on our own technology-beholden world.

The Secret History of Moscow was fascinating for its crossing between realism and fantasy; The Alchemy of Stone is just as mesmerizing within its own fantasy world. Mattie will feel like a kindred to anyone who believes they've managed to successfully fit in, only to realize a single misstep can undo everything. Teenage boys, filled with emotions their society often insists they choke down, will understand her all too well. And in Maddie's struggles for both self-reliance and the comfort of a relationship, I suspect these same boys, in the privacy of their own hearts, will see themselves behind her porcelain face, no matter the implied gender difference.

Top of the Heap -- Erle Stanley Gardner Hard Case Crime, #3

Joining the Hard Case Crime book club was the best $6-a-month investment I made last year. (It was also the only one I made, but I'm confident that if there'd been others, it would still be on top.) Sometimes the books are reprints with awesome new covers, sometimes they're original publications, some of them are stronger pieces of writing than others, but they've all been entertaining. They make me happy. If you enjoy the crime genre and aren't offended by the un-PC (especially in regards to how the ladies are treated), they're well worth a read.

Since I jumped in somewhere in the late-40's, I have, of course, been worrying about what I missed. So I decided to go back to the beginning and read their releases in order. Of course, two months in and I'm already off -- my copy of #2 hasn't arrived yet, so I had to skip ahead.

Top of the Heap was originally published in 1952 under the name A. A. Fair. Erle Stanley Gardner is most well-known for the Perry Mason series, but Top of the Heap features a different hero: Donald Lam, of the Cool & Lam Detective Agency. (I have mixed feelings about the disembodied heads on the cover of the book. On one hand, I kind of love them. On the other, they freak me out. I keep waiting for them to zoom in and out at me.)

The book starts off with a voice as classic as classic can be:

I was in the outer office, standing by the files, doing some research on a blackmailer, when he came in, all six feet of him.

He wore a plaid coat, carefully tailored, pleated slacks, and two-tone sport shoes. He was built like a secondhand soda straw, and I heard him say he wanted to see the senior partner. He said it with the air of a man who always demands the best, and then settles for what he can get.

Awesome, right? I love that last line. Turns out, Mr. Secondhand Soda Straw is looking to track down a couple of young ladies he spent the night with earlier in the week -- but he doesn't know their names. Don Lam is on the case -- but from minute one, he knows that there's something fishy about Soda Straw's story. He follows the case wherever it leads, from a failed assassination attempt of a gangster and a missing gangster's moll to a questionable mining operation and an illegal casino. And, of course, murder. Multiple murders, in fact.

The joy in this one, for me, was in the dialogue between Lam and the young ladies -- all of the young ladies. He and his secretary flirt and spar throughout the book, which I loved, and there was a conversation between Lam and a woman he questioned about the case that I dare you to read without picturing Bogart and Bacall. I had their voices ringing in my ears after that chapter. Bertha is another story, but she's one you need to experience for yourself.

I really liked that although Don Lam narrates like a hard-boiled tough guy, he isn't really all that hard-boiled. He bluffs his way through some dicey situations, and he isn't afraid of getting beat up, but he isn't always super cool. He gets scared. And he's not much of a fighter.

The mystery itself, I wasn't particularly interested in. It was so convoluted -- though unlike The Big Sleep, by the end you know who killed who, so that's something -- that I stopped trying to keep track of it and just enjoyed the ride. There were a few parts near the end where Don Lam goes on for pages explaining who did what to who and why and how he figured it out and so on -- I admit to glazing over a bit.

Overall, his voice was a kick and the action and dialogue made even the eye-crossing bits worth it. Apparently, Erle Stanley Gardner wrote almost thirty books about Cool & Lam -- Hard Case has only republished this one, but I'm definitely going to keep an eye out for the others.

_______________________________________________________

Previously:

1. Grifter's Game, Lawrence Block

_______________________________________________________

(cross-posted at Bookshelves of Doom)