...And I just finished Paul Auster's Oracle Night. I enjoyed it, although I feel as though the parts may be more than the sum. All of his writing has a lulling, dreamlike quality, which I, obviously, enjoy.

One strand is about an anecdote from The Maltese Falcon, and for a second I thought, "Boy, everyone loves referencing that story," because I know I've seen it mentioned in other books. But after a little more thought, it seems more likely that it's just that Auster has mentioned it in his other books. It makes sense that he'd be attached to the story since it captures his interest in fate and chance and self-destruction. Anyway, the book's narrator, an author named Orr, tries writing his own version of the story. And within it is another novel called "Oracle Night," and its plot is described as well. Orr's own story is mostly told in footnotes for the first half of the book, but real life gradually intrudes on the fiction, and vice versa. Auster's usual elements are present: mediations on creation, artistic works that are destroyed or lost, and coincidences.

It's not entirely satisfying, although the abruptness of the ending is intentional, but it was fun to think about. And I like stories that have layers within layers, and... oh, I don't know. I just liked it. I'll try to be more coherent about it at some point, probably when I reread it now that I know what happens. For now, I wouldn't say it's my favorite because it's so meta that there isn't as much to think about afterwards, but I enjoyed the hell out of it while I was reading, so I'd probably put it toward the top of my Auster list just because of that. Maybe it's a style preference, I dunno, but it's just yummy.

I got Vernon God Little because I thought I had seen someone praising it. Somewhere. I'd assumed it was in the Washington Post, but if it was I can't dig up the reference any more. I wish I'd double-checked and seen the Post's full review first. I didn't dislike it as much as the reviewer. But yeah, it mostly renewed my appreciation for Chris Buckley. The satire isn't very clever and more importantly, isn't very funny, and the narrator got to be very tiresome. I enjoyed the last third a bit more but stupidity by itself isn't all that entertaining, and the premise of the book is "Look how stupid everyone is! Ha!" They're not stupid in funny ways, they're just stupid.

I probably wouldn't have finished it except the memory of reading something good about it made me think, "Well, it must improve..." And it did a little, but I wouldn't recommend it. To be fair, there are parts that are clever, and lines I enjoyed, but my reaction tended to be "Oh! Hey, that was a good joke! Maybe it'll pick up now..." and then that would be it for another thirty pages. The bare bones of the story could have been worked into something funny, so I don't think it was the material (though it's tempting to think that, considering that school shootings and child abuse are central to the plot). On the other hand, I'm pretty sure I've laughed at more inappropriate things in my time. This just wasn't funny. That's pretty much all I have to say about it.

But now I have the new Paul Auster book, Oracle Night, to read. Since that was the main reason I went to the bookstore anyway. So I'm going to go do that.

I finished Fritz Leiber's Three of Swords. I liked it more and more the further I went on. Okay, so there's Fafhrd, the big Norse-type warrior, and Mouser, the wizard/thief. Mostly thief. One of the things I liked about the books was they sometimes run into magical stuff, but they aren't casting spells and waving wands around, which is what I was nervous about. But basically, Mouser knows enough about magic to be properly scared by stuff. That's about it.

Oh, and they each have magical gurus who sometimes send them out on mysterious missions. Ningauble of the Seven Eyes and Sheelba of the Eyeless Face. They don't like their gurus very much, because they're basically ultra-mysterious jerks. That part sounds really tiresome, but the fact that Fafhrd and Mouser are either frightened of, or embarrassed by them (and sometimes both) makes their interactions pretty amusing. Most of the stories involve them trying to steal something. Occasionally they have more altruistic motives, but that's unusual. Oh, and sometimes they're just after women.

Well, let's take it in order, since it's actually three books:

As I mentioned, Swords and Deviltry is the first book, with the obligatory "how they met" stuff. It's probably not the best introduction to the characters, or the style of the stories that follow. I'd skip it and go back later if you decide you care, because it's got a more serious tone and just isn't as fun as the later books. The only background you really need to know is mentioned later when it's relevant, so you won't miss anything.

Swords Against Death is a collection of short stories, and they're a little more lighthearted but they're basically straight adventure stories. Often with a tinge of supernatural horror, with demon worshippers and ancient gods trying to destroy mankind, and so on. I really liked "The Howling Tower," just for being creepy.

And Swords in the Mist is my favorite, because it has the most silliness. "Lean Times in Lankhmar" has Fafhrd and Grey Mouser going their separate ways; Fafhrd becomes a disciple and Mouser becomes a mobster, basically. And then comedy ensues. This book ends with "Adept's Gambit," which is great. One of my favorite parts involves a long chat with Ningauble when they're forced to ask him for help. He's one of them long-winded, portentous magical folk. And Fafhrd and Mouser aren't very patient, so they keep interrupting him. Which annoys Ningauble, who reacts with things like, "Be quiet, Mutilator of Rhetoric!" and "Silence, Trampler of Beautiful Phrases!" Which is funny, firstly, but also breaks up what would otherwise be a full page of exposition. Oh yeah, and I enjoyed this far too much:

"You must go to the Lost City of Ahriman that lies east of Armenia -- whisper not its name --"

"Is it Khatti?" whispered the Mouser.

And I'd be very surprised if it wasn't an influence on The Princess Bride. You know how Fezzik and Inigo have to do all of these quests to get the ingredients for the resurrection pill? And how that's glossed over because it's not one of the Good Parts? There's a very similar thing in "Adept's Gambit." Fafhrd and Mouser have to collect a whole bunch of rare items, and they detail how impossible that will be, and then there are two pages covering the year it takes for them to get everything. But it's not just that; the tone is very similar, and the mix of the goofy and the genuinely sad. So I hate to do that "if you liked this..." type of recommendation, but yeah, if you liked The Princess Bride, get Swords in the Mist, since it's the most similar. Then get all the others. I'm going to go dig up the next three books the next time I get to the used book store. Yay! Stuff to look for.

Happy New Year. I did about half of the things I wanted to do over the long weekend. Which is okay, because I wanted to do about a month's worth of things. A site revamp is in progress behind the scenes [and three weeks later it's mostly done, but that's why this entry is finally getting posted weeks after it was written], and I cleaned, and did dull things, and most importantly, went to the comic shop.

Where they had copies of the new hardcover of Alan Moore's novel, Voice of the Fire. So I bought it and read it. Mostly early this morning. Hooray. I'm very tired now.

Calling it a novel is stretching things; it's more like a set of stories. Although if you think of Northamton as the main character, which I imagine Moore does, it's easier to view as a novel. I'm going to talk about them as stories, though, because that's easier. The first is a first-person narration set in Northamton, starting with an boy in 4000 BC, and the last is narrated by Moore himself in 1995. In between, the narrators include a witch, several murderers, a Roman looking for forged coins, a mad poet, and a nun. Oh, and a severed head. The elements linking the stories are, not suprisingly magic and ritual. And shagfoals (my new favorite word -- they're large doglike creatures which are common in British folklore; I'd heard stories that mentioned them but I didn't know they were called shagfoals in some places). Characters from earlier stories begin to make ghostly appearances in the later ones, although not always directly.

They're also linked because they're all about loss. None of the stories are particularly happy ones.

The first story is definitely the hardest to read, just because of the style. The narrator is a Stone Age orphan with a very limited vocabulary -- partly due to the time, but it becomes clear that he's got some kind of disability as well. So, well, the first sentence is "A-hind of hill, ways off to sun-set-down, is sky come like as fire, and walk I up in way of this, all hard of breath, where is grass colding on I's feet and wetting they." It's a tad hard to read, although it's kind of like A Clockwork Orange in that, if you persist through the first few pages, you suddenly get the hang of the language. It's also one of the longest stories, though, and it did start to wear me down. I wouldn't say it's wrong to skip it and start with a different part, exactly... but you do need to read it eventually since it ends with a sacrifice that's key to the rest of the stories. The second story also seems overly long, although it's much easier to read and is kind of like a Jim Thompson story set in the Bronze Age. But my favorites are probably "In the Drownings" and "The Head of Diocletian," maybe just because I found them the saddest; the characters in those two stories wind up losing whole worlds. But I reread them immediately, before even going on with the book.

There's also a lot of neat trivia in there. Obviously, it's neat trivia about Northamton, which is a very specific subcategory of trivia, but Northamton turns out to have a lot of weird stuff in its history. For instance, I'd never heard of John Clare (the mad poet I mentioned) so I was bewildered when, early in his story, he mentions that he has to get back to work on Childe Harolde. Well, first I just thought, "Oh, it's Byron," since the narrator doesn't identify himself by name, but pretty quickly I realized that it couldn't be Byron unless I'd been gravely misled about nearly everything about Byron's life. Turns out Clare claimed to be Byron and a few other people at various times. In Moore's closing story he talks about some of the themes and motifs, and how some of them weren't planned, and mentions the background of some of the characters.

Oh, and the new edition has beautiful full-color photos, one for each story, by Jose Villarubia -- who turns out to live up in Baltimore. Neat!