Category Archives: fiction

BOOKS: MONKEY, Vol. 4: Music ed. by Ted Goossen & Motoyuki Shibata

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MONKEY New Writing from Japan: Volume 4: MUSICMONKEY New Writing from Japan: Volume 4: MUSIC by Ted Goossen
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

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Release Date: November 14, 2023

This is the fourth volume in a series of translated Japanese short creative writing (mostly poems and short stories.) The series (and this edition, in particular) features some of the best-known Japanese authors (e.g. Haruki Murakami and Meiko Kawakami.) Beyond a few major pieces at the beginning, this edition has a theme of music that runs through it.

Among my favorite pieces were: the novel excerpt Yoshiwara Dreaming about a young girl who is sold into the redlight district and becomes a helper in a brothel; Transformer: Pianos which is a work of surrealist fiction; The Zombie is Haruki Murakami’s fresh take on the zombie story; I also enjoyed many of the inclusions in the section entitled Eight Modern Haiku Poets on Music.

It’s a varied collection of writings. Not only does it include all forms of creative writing — prose and poetic — but the broad selection of writers and translators ensure that there is a diversity of styles and genres. That said, there isn’t a great diversity in quality level. It’s all strong writing, though some works will appeal to any give reader more than others. There’s something for everyone.

I’d highly recommend this volume for readers of literature in translation.

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BOOKS: The Batman Who Laughs by Scott Snyder

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The Batman Who LaughsThe Batman Who Laughs by Scott Snyder
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

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This volume plays on the spookiness of buffoonery that has made the Joker not only one the most well-known and effective villains of Batman’s rogues’ gallery but in all of comic books. However, while the Joker does play a role in this book, he’s not the villain. Instead, the book employs the popular comic book scenario of having the villain be a version of the hero, a version without moral compunctions or constraints. In this case, the central villain is a demented and mutated version of Batman with Jokeresque qualities, assisted by a Batman who is a bit more malevolent and vengeful, one who goes by the moniker Grim Knight.

How are there multiple versions of Batman? The multiverse, of course. That makes this a sci-fi heavy Batman story. If you like your Batman of the Matt Reeves / Robert Pattinson variety — i.e. in a plausible world, with fully human enemies, and with no freaky supernatural happenings, then this one may not be for you. That said, I don’t think the sci-fi elements detracted from the story, and they did allow for some compelling story elements. Snyder, wisely, avoids a problem that can readily plague sci-fi intense Batman stories, which is reference to (or cameos of) the god-tier DC heroes. (An occurrence that always begs the question, why wouldn’t Superman use his god-like powers to fix this debacle before heading to lunch.)

I enjoyed this story. I especially enjoyed that it wrapped up the narrative arc in a tidy package. It is often the case that comic book volumes end with a speedbump on the way to the next volume. This story felt like the central issue was resolved, while still leaving potential for future stories. I should point out that, with flashbacks and multiple Batmen, it does require one’s full attention while reading, lest one get lost between backstory and the present.

I’d highly recommend this volume for comic book readers.

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BOOKS: The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde

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The Importance of Being EarnestThe Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

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This play is an amusing cautionary tale on the dangers of “Bunburying” and / or leading a double life. “Bunburying,” a term coined by Wilde in this play, is the act of concocting meetings with a fictitious friend to get out of tedious familial (and other social) obligations. Don’t want to go to Aunt Bessie’s potluck? Tell her that your friend with a plausibly absurd name (e.g. Bunbury) has ruptured a disc in his back and desperately needs your assistance. Bunburying is the specialty of one of the two bachelor characters this story is built around, a man named Algernon. The other, Jack, goes by the name Ernest when he is in London, and has to invent the story that he has a brother when his town and country dichotomy of personalities starts to be seen through by those other than Algernon.

This humorous tale revolves around both Algernon and Jack finding desirable fiancés while being tangled in the web of their own duplicity. Much of the humor comes from the interactions of Algernon and Jack, two men who are quite alike, though Jack thinks himself more respectable. Algernon is more at ease with his own scamp-like nature and plays a role similar to that played by Lord Henry in Wilde’s novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray. That is, Algernon offers many a quotable line that at least has the appearance of wisdom — if, often, a kind of nihilistic wisdom.

This play is definitely worth reading.

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BOOKS: Wonderful Wonderful Times by Elfriede Jelinek

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Wonderful, Wonderful TimesWonderful, Wonderful Times by Elfriede Jelinek
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

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If I said this book was A Clockwork Orange meets A Midsummer Night’s Dream it would be in some ways deceptive but in other ways, accurate. The book has none of the otherworldliness of those other stories and, instead, is set in a realistic 1950’s Vienna. Furthermore, those comparisons might confuse readers into not realizing this book is unambiguously a tragedy.

The book is set around four kids (Rainer, Anna, Hans, and Sophie) who like to beat up and rob adults, usually using a kind of catfishing scheme where they trick a middle-aged man into thinking he is about to have a getting lucky with Lolita moment before the other three gang up on the man in a moment of shock and awe. Here lies the “Clockwork Orange” comparison: youths enamored of violence as a means to combat the boredom and meaninglessness of their lives — possibly while passing on the abuse they receive in their own lives.

The “Midsummer Night’s Dream” part comes in with the book’s love geometry. Like that Shakespearean play, there are two boys and two girls and both boys are in love with the same girl (Sophie,) leaving the other girl (Anna) in a sad unrequited territory.

The book won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, and not only because it deals heavily in sex and violence. There are a couple factors that make the book feel strange. First of all, it is written in present tense. Secondly, it spends a lot of time in the minds of the characters and relatively little time with the action. Thirdly, the pacing of the conclusion and resolution of the book is abrupt and might feel forced — like the author was 245 pages in when the publisher told her that she had 250 pages, maximum, and that she’d better be wrapping it up. I didn’t find any of these factors to be problematic, but I can see how they would rub some readers the wrong way.

If the premise intrigues, you should definitely read this book – particularly if the previous paragraph’s warning didn’t turn you off.

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BOOKS: The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

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The Picture of Dorian GrayThe Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

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This is a book about what happens when you hollow out a person of all the complexity of the human condition and idealize them. At the beginning of the story, Dorian Gray is young, attractive, and preternaturally likable in a naïvely innocent kind of way. Almost to the novel’s end, through the magic of a wish made upon a portrait, Gray is still young and beautiful, though that naive innocence cracks under the strain of the impossible bifurcation of man and his soul. The artist, Basil Hallward, and Lord Henry (a man who will become a mutual friend of Gray and Hallward) cannot see Gray as a fully formed human being, but rather see him as an emblem of youth and beauty. But this unnatural ideal cannot hold, and a string of tragic deaths will be left in its wake.

The book is full of clever witticisms, albeit often of a nihilistic nature. These are almost all spoken by Lord Henry, who is the Polonius of the story – but a hipper kind of Polonius than Hamlet‘s. That said, it’s telling that toward the end of the book Gray does some of this epigrammatic philosophizing. (e.g. Such as when Gray tells Hallward, “Each of us has heaven and hell in him…”) One might dismiss this as Gray parroting Lord Henry, but I think that life has defrocked him of his naïveté, and he begins to think in ways that were impossible in his [true] youth.

This is a must-read. It’s interesting, thought-provoking, and well worth the time.

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BOOKS: A Double-Barreled Detective Story by Mark Twain

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A Double Barrelled Detective StoryA Double Barrelled Detective Story by Mark Twain
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

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This novella is Mark Twain’s satirical jab at the whole Sherlock Holmes concept. In particular, it pokes fun at a detective who eschews everything supernatural in favor of cold rationality, but who produces results so impossible that they are themselves supernatural.

The story has two temporally disjointed parts that almost seem like independent stories until the very end when all is tied up. (Holmes only appears in the second part.) This works nicely for parody of Holmesian detective fiction as it’s an approach that was used by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle on occasion — e.g. in A Study in Scarlet. The first part tells the tale of a woman who is treated foully by Jacob Fuller, the husband she eloped with but who harbored resentment towards her father, a man Fuller believed felt wasn’t good enough for his daughter. The woman makes her son, named Archy Stillman, promise that he will track down Fuller and make the man’s life a living hell.

The second part revolves around a murder that seems to be independent of the case described above, the killing of a man named Flint Buckner. Here Sherlock Holmes, who happens to be in town visiting his nephew – Fetlock Jones, “solves” the case only to be shown to be entirely and humiliatingly wrong by Archy Stillman using only a superior sense of smell and basic observation of the facts (with no elaborated inductions.)

While I never had anything against the Sherlock Holmes stories — in fact, I enjoyed them all — I did find Twain’s satire amusing and compelling as a story. [And it’s true that Arthur Conan Doyle did regularly strain credulity — that’s what made Holmes an intriguing character.]

Well worth reading.

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BOOK REVIEW: A Boy Named Rose by Gaëlle Geniller

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A Boy Named RoseA Boy Named Rose by Gaëlle Geniller
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

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Release Date: July 18, 2023

This is the story of a preternaturally likeable and enthralling young cabaret dancer, the titular boy named Rose. Rose’s entire life has been lived in the cabaret that his mother runs, and much of the story revolves around his introduction to the broader world as his fame grows.

It is eye-catchingly illustrated in a way that creates and facilitates a unique feel for the story.

As stories go, it’s not particularly emotionally rousing. I suspect that is partly because, as is common with literary fiction, it’s more character-driven than story-driven, and this presents a challenge for the graphic novel format in which the reader has more direct exposure to the characters’ external happenings. One may see a character being pensive, but without insight into that individual’s mental world one doesn’t feel it as intensely as one would with a novel that allows one some internal insight.

That said, a world is presented that is so foreign to most of us, life inside a cabaret, that it generates interest in that sense.

Overall, it was an enjoyable, light-hearted read.

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Five Great Yarns from Kahlil Gibran’s The Madman

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The MadmanThe Madman by Kahlil Gibran
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Project Gutenberg Page

The Madman is a collection of poems and short fiction (often micro-fiction) of a philosophical nature. The protagonist claims he became a madman when a thief broke into his house and stole his masks, the masks that people wear to fit into society and appear “normal.” Beyond the thread created by this mad character, the entries meander along, each with its own moral and with little discernible overarching plot.

There are many clever stories in this collection, offering food-for-thought on religion, philosophy, and psychology. I’ll discuss five of my favorites:

“The Sleepwalkers” A mother and daughter are both sleepwalkers. When they are somnambulating, they speak to each other in horribly cruel terms, but when they wake up, they display (at least a veneer of) love and affection. Besides demonstrating the nature of the aforementioned masks, the loss of which gets one designated “crazy,” this story encourages the reader to discern the differences between conscious and subconscious mental activity.

“War” This one presents an analogy for war in which a thief breaks into the wrong building, walks into a machine, pokes his own eye out, and then takes the building owner to court seeking “justice” for his lost eye. The craftsman / shop-owner says he can’t lose an eye because he won’t be able to do his work, but he knows a neighboring craftsman who could have his eye removed without great loss of productivity. This story builds upon the well-known “An eye for an eye…” Bible verse with the added absurdity of violence being doled out randomly and without concern for whether the victim had anything to do with the events in question.

“The Wise King” A disgruntled witch poisons a city well with a substance that makes drinkers insane. The King avoids the well water and is spared insanity. However, the townspeople begin to plot against the king because, in their insanity, they believe him (as one who acts differently) to be insane. The king eventually drinks the well water in order to come back into synch with his subjects. This entry speaks to the arbitrary nature of classification of sane and insane, an idea that has been discussed in modern times by mental health experts such as R.D. Laing.

“The Two Cages” A bird is caged next to a lion. The bird’s confidence provides the central lesson, knowing they’re both imprisoned separately, the bird refers to the lion as “fellow prisoner.” The power dynamic has changed from that of the jungle. Perhaps, the bird has even happily exchanged its freedom — either for safety or to tear the lion down a little.

“The Eye” In this story, the other sense organs mock the eye after it comments upon how grand a mountain is. The ear can’t hear the mountain and the skin can’t feel the mountain. Therefore, the other senses assume that the eye is either lying or is delusional. This tale speaks to the risk of denying something based on one’s own limited perception.

This book was originally published in 1918 and is in the public domain (most places.) It’s definitely worth the short time investment required to read it.

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BOOK REVIEW: The Rope Artist by Fuminori Nakamura

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The Rope ArtistThe Rope Artist by Fuminori Nakamura
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

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Release Date: May 2, 2023

This is a hard-boiled detective novel centered around the mysterious death of a kinbaku artist, kinbaku is a Japanese art of tying up a person with rope, the practice sprung from the need to bind prisoners of war and criminals, but it came to be associated with the BDSM (Bondage, Domination / Submission, & Sado-Masochism) activities of kinky sex. The death of the rope artist, Kazunari Yoshikawa, is but the first of a few fatalities that are somehow connected, though the reader only learns how by following the story through to the end. There are several novel elements of the story that grab the reader’s attention, including: sex worker doppelgangers and a man with a missing finger and no known name.

I was engrossed by this novel. It captured my attention from the beginning. The psychology on display in the story is at once fascinating and bizarre. The story is told via three perspectives. The first is a junior detective, Togashi, who is a bit libido-driven and prone to ill-considered decisions. As a main character, one anticipates some of Togashi’s decisions because one knows what drives him, he’s a sucker for a pretty woman, but what the reader doesn’t know is when and how it will blow up in his face. The other main perspective is that of another detective, Hayama, who is the antithesis of Togashi. Hayama is immune to libidinous temptations and is solid as a rock where Togashi is nervous and neurotic. (The third perspective is Yoshikawa’s epistolary confession [no one has completely clean hands in this book.])

If you like crime fiction that’s a bit edgy, you may want to look into this book. That said, a warning for sensitive readers, it is sexually explicit and, while it’s not so sex-centered as to be primarily classified erotica, sex of various types occurs throughout the book.


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BOOK REVIEW: The Amazing Camel Toe by Claire Duplan

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The Amazing Camel ToeThe Amazing Camel Toe by Claire Duplan
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

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Release Date: May 16, 2023

This graphic novel tells the tale of a misandrous artist who draws a comic book superhero who is meant to be a hero to harassed and harrowed females everywhere. From reading the blurb, one knows this is going to be a book with a message and a bit of edge. However, one hopes from the apparent whimsicality of title and cover that there will be enough humor to balance the anger and vitriol and make it an entertaining read. There is not.

I use the term misandrous not based on the dastardly characters her comic’s heroine kicks around, but rather based on the protagonist’s interactions with her “boyfriend.” This is the one man in the book who isn’t presented as a complete jerk, and, perhaps, the only man on the planet the protagonist doesn’t want to straight up murder (all the time.) Still, this “nice guy” can do nothing right except to always apologize and except full responsibility for every argument. The couple has a falling out at one point, and I suspect the author saw their reuniting as some sort of rom com “awe” moment, but the reader knows it’s a doomed relationship because the protagonist has a seething contempt for the boyfriend character and the fact that he went away once before means he’s probably got an iota of self-esteem in there somewhere that will not go gently.

If you enjoy the emotional pacing of being stuck in an elevator with a tantrum-prone two-year-old, this book may be for you. Otherwise, it’s kind of a one-dimensional character who’s angry all the time, and not that fun to read.


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