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Read during the summer:
Aug. 28th, 2013 05:33 pmTad Williams: The Dirty Streets of Heaven: Urban fantasy, also a loving spoof of hard-boiled novels/film noir. Our hero is an advocate angel but also the detective of this little mystery, which involves angels, demons, and several souls of the dearly departed gone missing instead of having ended up in heaven or hell. It has everything typical for the genre: shady organizations (two of them, and yes, obviously) , wisecracking, bantering heroes, doublecrossings, and a cool mysterious femme fatale involved in the crime in not easily deducable ways whom our hero falls for. Alas, this also brings me to one of my two criticisms, because the book follos the noir model a little two closely, where the morally ambiguous dame is a strong character for two thirds of the tale but then, once she's revealed to be actually a good and not a bad girl, is promptly menaced by the villain in a damsel role. (Think Gilda.) My other critique is that I thought this was a standalone and while the book's central mystery is solved within this volume, there are a couple of dangling threads because, not suprisingly of course given it's Tad Williams, it turns out it's the first of a series.
This being said, it really is great fun to read. (Tad Williams lampshades and circumvents a problem with the world building when he lets one of the younger angels remark that the whole organization of the afterlife is terribly American and um, what about everyone who isn't a Christian? Were they wrong? The reply given in the relevant dialogue is no, that everyone experiences everything according to the cultural context they imprinted on, so if you're an Arab Muslim, you see and hear everything very differently.) The scheme that causes the central mystery actually makes sense, and the use of a hard-boiled/noir narrative voice with a wink in a completely different context reminds me of Lindsay Davis' early Falco novels. Oh, and there is a werehog! From a family of werehogs, who made the mistake of asking hell to reverse his curse, which they literally did, so now he has a pig's mind when in human form and a human's mind when in pig form. Did I mention this novel is fun?
Harry Belafonte: My Song. Very apropos today, at the 50th anniversary of the March To Washington and Martin Luther King's speech; Harry Belafonte was not just attending but one of the day's speakers and co-organizers. Belafonte had an amazing life, and the emphasis in these memoirs is on his being an activist over his singing and acting, though he has fascinating stories to tell in all three arenas. Mind you, he also has a big ego, and makes no bones about his likes and dislikes. While he did use a ghost writer, this makes his narrative voice feel less generic than most memoirs, while there is still some sense of professional polishment over individuality. Though you sometimes wish there was more. For example: after the third or fourth time when he mentions Sidney Poirtier, life long simultanous best friend and object to be picked at, only became America's favourite black actor because he projected castrated/asexual black male masculinity. It's not a new critique when it comes to Sidney Poitier, of course, but seriously, I heard it the first few times, Mr. Belafonte, and actually I thought that Poitier's character in, say, Heat of the Night embodied intelligent strength most of all. One also thinks that Sidney Poitier, whose relationship with Belafonte started when they were both desperately poor and theatre obsessed in the New York of the 40s - theyregularly purchased a single seat to local plays, trading places in between acts, after informing the other about the progression of the play -, and who must have heard that "you're so castrasted" on a regular basis, must have the patience of an angel. (Also, zomg, do I spot another combination of the hot tempered acerbic artist and the calmer professional who has the greater public success and is therefore suspected of having sold out to the masses?) One of the best stories involving the two of them is presented right at the start at the prologue: during the "Freedom Summer" in 1964 Belafonte bankrolled the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, and flew to Mississippi, that happy state of lynch mobs and freedom riders upbeatings, that August with Sidney Poitier and $60,000 in cash.
There is a lot of anger in the book, and not all limited to the past (though the picture he paints, of, say, Las Vegas in the 50s, and the way you could perform in the casinos as a singer but of course were not allowed to have dinner there with the white guests, is biting). The Democratic presidents, including Obama, come in for as much critique as the Republican ones do (well, except for Reagan being called the biggest obstacle to an American fight against Apartheid in South Africa, which isn't something said of the others), with the poverty within the US something Belafonte has a particular beef with re: the politicians prefering to ignore same. He's not agreeing with anyone's foreign policies, either. The description of going to Rwanda in 1994, and being confronted with the aftermath of the genocide there, is harrowing. (And then there's the notorious characterisation of Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice as the "house slaves" of the Bush administration.) (To which Condoleeza Rice said she didn't need Harry Belafonte to teach her how to be black.) On the other hand, he's also open with his admiration: Paul Robeson, who was his role model, Martin Luther King of course, and also Dorothy Dandrige whom he acted with several times though he denies they had an affair.
Speaking of his personal life: standard for many a male ghost written autobiography. (I.e., yes, I had lots of affairs, but the failure of the marriages was totally my wives' fault, too.) What's not so standard and somewhat chilling is his brutal frankness re: daughter Shari, painting her as desperate to be famous but without any particular talent to justify it. I mean, I've only seen her once in a very minor role where you couldn't judge her acting, so it might be true, but still - it's not something I can image saying about my child for all the world to read.
All in all, he doesn't come across as someone you'd want to be married to, or have as a father, but he does come across as someone whose stories you really want to listen to, and who can be accused of many things, but never indifference to the world around him or a lack of drive to try and change it.
This being said, it really is great fun to read. (Tad Williams lampshades and circumvents a problem with the world building when he lets one of the younger angels remark that the whole organization of the afterlife is terribly American and um, what about everyone who isn't a Christian? Were they wrong? The reply given in the relevant dialogue is no, that everyone experiences everything according to the cultural context they imprinted on, so if you're an Arab Muslim, you see and hear everything very differently.) The scheme that causes the central mystery actually makes sense, and the use of a hard-boiled/noir narrative voice with a wink in a completely different context reminds me of Lindsay Davis' early Falco novels. Oh, and there is a werehog! From a family of werehogs, who made the mistake of asking hell to reverse his curse, which they literally did, so now he has a pig's mind when in human form and a human's mind when in pig form. Did I mention this novel is fun?
Harry Belafonte: My Song. Very apropos today, at the 50th anniversary of the March To Washington and Martin Luther King's speech; Harry Belafonte was not just attending but one of the day's speakers and co-organizers. Belafonte had an amazing life, and the emphasis in these memoirs is on his being an activist over his singing and acting, though he has fascinating stories to tell in all three arenas. Mind you, he also has a big ego, and makes no bones about his likes and dislikes. While he did use a ghost writer, this makes his narrative voice feel less generic than most memoirs, while there is still some sense of professional polishment over individuality. Though you sometimes wish there was more. For example: after the third or fourth time when he mentions Sidney Poirtier, life long simultanous best friend and object to be picked at, only became America's favourite black actor because he projected castrated/asexual black male masculinity. It's not a new critique when it comes to Sidney Poitier, of course, but seriously, I heard it the first few times, Mr. Belafonte, and actually I thought that Poitier's character in, say, Heat of the Night embodied intelligent strength most of all. One also thinks that Sidney Poitier, whose relationship with Belafonte started when they were both desperately poor and theatre obsessed in the New York of the 40s - theyregularly purchased a single seat to local plays, trading places in between acts, after informing the other about the progression of the play -, and who must have heard that "you're so castrasted" on a regular basis, must have the patience of an angel. (Also, zomg, do I spot another combination of the hot tempered acerbic artist and the calmer professional who has the greater public success and is therefore suspected of having sold out to the masses?) One of the best stories involving the two of them is presented right at the start at the prologue: during the "Freedom Summer" in 1964 Belafonte bankrolled the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, and flew to Mississippi, that happy state of lynch mobs and freedom riders upbeatings, that August with Sidney Poitier and $60,000 in cash.
There is a lot of anger in the book, and not all limited to the past (though the picture he paints, of, say, Las Vegas in the 50s, and the way you could perform in the casinos as a singer but of course were not allowed to have dinner there with the white guests, is biting). The Democratic presidents, including Obama, come in for as much critique as the Republican ones do (well, except for Reagan being called the biggest obstacle to an American fight against Apartheid in South Africa, which isn't something said of the others), with the poverty within the US something Belafonte has a particular beef with re: the politicians prefering to ignore same. He's not agreeing with anyone's foreign policies, either. The description of going to Rwanda in 1994, and being confronted with the aftermath of the genocide there, is harrowing. (And then there's the notorious characterisation of Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice as the "house slaves" of the Bush administration.) (To which Condoleeza Rice said she didn't need Harry Belafonte to teach her how to be black.) On the other hand, he's also open with his admiration: Paul Robeson, who was his role model, Martin Luther King of course, and also Dorothy Dandrige whom he acted with several times though he denies they had an affair.
Speaking of his personal life: standard for many a male ghost written autobiography. (I.e., yes, I had lots of affairs, but the failure of the marriages was totally my wives' fault, too.) What's not so standard and somewhat chilling is his brutal frankness re: daughter Shari, painting her as desperate to be famous but without any particular talent to justify it. I mean, I've only seen her once in a very minor role where you couldn't judge her acting, so it might be true, but still - it's not something I can image saying about my child for all the world to read.
All in all, he doesn't come across as someone you'd want to be married to, or have as a father, but he does come across as someone whose stories you really want to listen to, and who can be accused of many things, but never indifference to the world around him or a lack of drive to try and change it.
