If you’re a longtime reader, as in last month, you know that I’m a huge fan of author M. T. Anderson. Whether he’s being serious (Feed) or silly (Pals in Peril series), his writing is solid.  In some kind of synesthesia, I feel as if he provides you with a smooth, hard surface that you can walk across with confidence: there are no soft spots or distracting undergrowth to impede your progress.

When I was writing the review last month for Landscape with Invisible Hand, I popped over to Amazon to snag the URL for the book, and that’s when I noticed he had written another book I had missed: Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad.

Well.

I am a huge Shostakovich fan and here was a book about him by one of my favorite authors.  It implied that Anderson is also a fan, which made my heart go pitter-pat.  (Are you, Mr. A.?  If so, text me, bro.) I ordered it immediately.

This book is amazing. I knew the basis of the story: when the Nazi army laid siege to Leningrad in 1941, Shostakovich stayed in his hometown to be part of the war effort and decided to write a symphony that glorified the bravery of the Soviet citizenry. Word got out, and the entire world (at war) waited to hear the results.  When it was finished, the score was microfilmed and rushed to the West in a pretty bizarre sequence of events, where it was performed to general acclaim as part of the war effort.

I didn’t know the half of it.  Anderson has given us a thoroughly researched book that is simultaneously a biography of Shostakovich, a history of the Soviet Union, a political examination of Stalin and Hitler, a telling of the horrific story of the siege, and a musicological look at the Symphony No. 7 while it is being composed.  Like a skilled cinematographer, Anderson leads us from scene to scene, directing our focus in a way that gives us the context to understand both the larger frame of the war and the intimate setting of Shostakovich’s personal life.

Even as I was reading it, my meta-reader’s mind became fascinated with what it must have taken for Anderson to write this book — the staggering amount of research; the pulling-together of all the facts, quotes, context; the balancing of definite facts and the “what-ifs,” of which there are more than a few in the Stalin era.  And what possessed him to write the book in the first place?  These are the things that I will ask him once he texts me and we become BFF.

In the meantime, I have these resources:

• Teacher’s guide (pdf)
• Anderson himself talking to what looks like a book club in Vermont (Vimeo); discussion begins at 20:00ish, where he does discuss the origins of the book; love the know-it-all at 29:00ish…

Yes, I know that every day before Thanksgiving that you decorate for Christmas an elf dies, and honestly I wasn’t going to read my friend Caleb‘s new book Top Elf until December, but one night I picked it up and then couldn’t stop.

Caleb was an RA at GHP back when I was director, and now he works at Avid Bookshop in Athens, GA, which is owned and operated by another former RA, Janet Geddis.  Both are extremely wonderful people, and so when I read that Caleb had written a book — not only written but published — I was excited for both of them.

So I ordered it and got my autographed copy (thank you for the kind words, Caleb) and tried not to read it until December. Which I failed to do.

Top Elf is a whiz-bang adventure, narrated by Ollie Elf, a youngster who loves loves LOVES Christmas.  He’s also a nervous child, often doubting himself and bursting into emotional tears.  When Santa announces his retirement and a competition to replace him — unnerving his oldest son Klaus — Ollie and his best friend Celia decide they’ll go for it.  We follow them through the familiar tropes of reality-TV competitions as one competitor after another is eliminated.

The book is thick with pop culture references, stupid jokes, and sly allusions.  Most of it would go over a younger reader’s head, but I’m sure there were some references in there that went right under mine as well.  There is a fun twist ending that I’m pleased to say I didn’t see coming, and a satisfying (if After School Special) ending. (Well, how else could you end it? Fight Club?)

I asked Caleb if it had been optioned yet for a movie — if nothing else, it would make a spectacular TV movie or even series — and he just laughed.  But if you’re listening, Hollywood (or Atlanta, at this point)…

Recommended as a Christmas gift for older elementary readers, especially those who like gaming.

M. T. Anderson is one of my favorite authors, young adult or otherwise.  His serious works, like Feed or The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, will radically alter the way you perceive what you thought was established reality. His comic works, like Whales on Stilts and Jasper Dash and the Flame-Pits of Delaware, are gaspingly funny.

Since I’ve been retired from checking out books to kindergarteners for six years now, I’m often behind on when YA authors have written something new.  So it was with Anderson’s Landscape with Invisible Hand, which I ordered as soon as I stumbled across it.

It’s a slim volume, only 149 pages, but it is an incredibly tough read.  Not because it’s densely written, but because of the world depicted in the book.

Quick summary: it’s earth, in the future near enough that we can recognize our society, and the aliens who have been buzzing us since the last century have finally revealed themselves to us, bearing amazing technology which they are perfectly willing to share with us.  Our narrator, teen Adam, is an artist.

Here’s my complaint—and it’s not with the book, which is brilliant.  My complaint is with the marketing department: the inside of the dust jacket gives us a plot summary without giving away the nexus of the story, and then it says this:

“M. T. Anderson, winner of the National Book Award and author of Feed, returns to future Earth in this sharply wrought satire of art and truth in the midst of colonization.”

No.

That’s not what this book is about.

I mean to say, it’s right there in the title, marketing department!

The aliens—called the vuvv—are perfectly willing to share their amazing technology with us,  for a price. They can cure any disease if you can pay them. They can raise food and manufacture goods cheaper and better than any Earth company, which promptly puts Earth companies out of business, with a staggering loss of jobs and income for most of the citizenry.

The rich, of course, are unaffected: they are able to invest in vuvv technologies.  They live in floating homes/apartment complexes that block out the sun below. Their lives go on much as they do now.

The vuvv are not cruel.  They are simply intergalactic capitalists unconcerned about anything but trade.

And that’s what the book is about: unrestrained capitalism, colonization/imperialism, and the impact it has on the powerless.  Anderson’s socioeconomic logic is relentless and inescapable, and Landscape is one of the more frighteningly disconcerting books I’ve ever read.

But I think there’s more here than meets the eye. Here’s my question to M. T. Anderson: there’s more to come, isn’t there?  We’re actually following Adam’s radicalization, aren’t we? That bucolic ending in Asheville was false hope, wasn’t it?  Jebus.

Recently fellow Lichtenbergian Daniel gave me a copy of George Saunders’ The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil.

Do not even read the rest of this.  Go buy a copy now.

It’s only 130 pages long, and the pages are small, but you will not be able to read it in one setting.  It will gut-punch you over and over, with the the beauty of its writing and the horror of its prescience.  You will have to stop to let your soul absorb the shock.

It was published in 2005, but it could easily have been published on Nov 9, 2016.  The rapid and easy rise of the evil, hate-driven megalomaniac Phil gives you a sickening jolt of familiarity, even as Saunders’ loopy and surreal subworld creation leaves your brain  scrambling to reconfigure its comprehension of what it’s seeing.  Trust me, it’s weird and wonderful.

The premise is simple: in the midst of  the country of Outer Horner, there exists the country of Inner Horner, a country so small that only one of its citizens can live in it at a time.  The other six citizens have to huddle in the Short-Term Residency Zone right outside, surrounded by the unfriendly Outer Horner.  Spurred by an unrequited love of Inner Hornerite Carol, the odious Phil jacks up his fellow Outer Hornerians to suspect, tax, and eventually disassemble the hapless minority.

And then Phil’s brain slips out of its rack.

Trust me.  You want to read this.  (There is a website, of course.)

Look what came in the mail today, you guys!

I haven’t really blogged about M.T. Anderson’s Pals in Peril series, and so now I shall.

M.T. Anderson is a whiz of a young adult author whose range is fearsome: the dystopian classic Feed (you will never ever again think that Google Glass is a good idea); the alternative Revolutionary War history of Octavian Nothing; and on a completely different level, the awesomely silly Pals in Peril books.

It began with Whales on Stilts, and I was hooked.  Anderson took on the world of children’s book series and scored a direct hit. Lily, our heroine, is nothing special (although her dad obliviously works for a semi-cetaceous evil genius), but her friends Jasper Dash and Katie Mulligan lead such exciting lives that they’ve had whole books written about them.

Jasper Dash, Boy Technonaut, seems permanently suspended in 1930s brio.  (Think Tom Swift.)  Katie lives in Horror Hollow and is always having to deal with creepy supernatural goings-on.  (Think R. L. Stine’s Goosebumps.)  All three save the world from whales on stilts (with lasers!) in the first book, and from there it gets really silly.

Anderson is very funny, with the potshots at children’s literature and popular culture embedded so cleverly that most young readers will never see them.  But for adults of a certain age (mentally 9-13, I’m thinking) his wit is devastating.  Here’s a simple descriptive passage of their hometown:

Pelt—where Jasper, Katie, and Lily lived—was not a very exciting place… To pep up business on Main Street, store owners had put mannequins out on the sidewalk, advertising dusty sweaters or pillbox hats, but the mannequins were just assaulted by gulls.

No kid could possibly recognize the reference to Hitchcock’s The Birds, but the discerning adult will already have laughed out loud.

The pinnacle of the series so far is the third, Jasper Dash and the Flame-Pits of Delaware, in which Anderson’s world-creation is so supremely loopy that to this day it is one of the funniest books I have ever read.  It’s as if the absurdist anarchy of Green Acres were translated onto an earnest children’s adventure tale: much to the astonishment of Lily and Katie, every goofy thing that Jasper mentions turns out to be true in spades, up to and including the monks who live in grand seclusion in the mountains of Delaware.

[Our heroes are in Jasper’s Gyroscopic Sky Suite (because of course they are) heading to Dover to begin their trek to the monastery of Vbngoom in the mountains of Delaware.]

“Okay,” said Katie, “I really am only going to say this one time… [list of incorrect things Jasper has been saying about their destination] …and there are no—hear me—no no no mountains in—”

“Behold: Dover.  Capital of Delaware,” said Jasper.

Its domes and minarets lay before them, glowing gold in the sunlight amid the hanging gardens, the pleasant palaces, the spired roofs of ancient temples; in the harbor, the purpe-sailed ships of Wilmington plied the waves, and the dragon-headed prows of the barbarian kingdoms to the south dipped their oars in wrinkled waters while plesiosaurs turned capers at their sides.  The Zeppelin-Lords of frosty Elsmere drifted above the city, their balloons gilded with the tropical sun, eating sherbet on their porphyry verandas.  Huge tortoises fifteen feet across lumbered through the widest avenues, carry nomads’ tents upon their backs.  Processions wandering through the streets glittered with gold and ancient costumery.

Grand silliness, and yet at the end of the book I found my eyes quite moist as Anderson describes the monks of Vbngoom flying joyfully from trampoline to trampoline between the crags of the monastery, celebrating their victory over the robot gangsters.

But here’s a weird thing: I thought I had a copy of Jasper Dash, but I must have given it away—so I ordered a paperback copy, and Anderson has changed the ending.  It no longer includes that passage, with its boom camera pullback and pan up to sky and fade to black.  Instead, the writing fades into a montage of adventure themes before fading to black.  There’s a new appendix with the “state song” of Delaware, plus a copy of the letter the actual governor of Delaware wrote to Anderson, deliciously funny itself.  (Early in the book, Anderson excoriates writers who spend a couple of weeks in a country and then write books about the place as if they truly understand it.  He assures us he’s not that guy; he’s never even been to Delaware, so he’s completely untrustworthy.  However, since Simon & Schuster value accuracy in their books, Anderson instructs anyone who finds an “error” in his geography, etc., to put that in a letter and send it to //page turn// the Office of the Governor, followed by the full address of the Delawarian governor.)

I may have to go find a library copy to see if I’m completely inventing this memory of the ending of the book.

Still, you see why I’m excited about the newest Pals in Peril book.   Something fun without deep meaning to crack open—that’s the ticket!

Here are a couple of books I have read recently and can highly, highly recommend: Autobiography of Red, and Red Doc>, both by Anne Carson.

They are amazing.  They were recommended to me by Daniel Conlan, a hardcore reader, during a discussion of Seven Dreams of Falling and its use of myth. Carson uses the mythical characters of Geryon, a red-winged monster, and Herakles, who kills him as one of his Labors.

In Carson’s story, Geryon is a boy, still red and winged, who struggles through his autobiography to come to terms with who he is, both as a human and as an artist.  Herakles comes into his life as a teenager, a ne’er-do-well, only to part after a brief affair.  Years later Geryon, now a photographer, re-encounters Herakles and his new boyfriend in Buenos Aires.

It is gorgeously, sumptuously written in prose poetry, and your head spins with the imagery and music in the language.  You come to love and pity and admire Geryon while not quite hating Herakles nor his boyfriend.

Somehow Geryon made it to adolescence.

———

Then he met Herakles and the kingdoms of his life all shifted down a few notches.

They were two superior eels

at the bottom of the tank and they recognized each other like italics.

(Autobiography of Red, p. 39)

And then I ordered Red Doc>, the sequel.  It just came out last year.

From the back of the book:

“Some years ago I wrote a book about a boy named Geryon who was red and had wings and fell in love with Herakles.  Recently I began to wonder what happened to them in later life.  Red Doc> continues their adventures in a very different style and with changed names.

“To live past the end of your myth is a perilous thing.”

Well, that’s an understatement.  If Autobiography was gorgeous, there are no words for Red Doc>.  Hallucinatory, perhaps.  Hallucinogenic, even.

Here:

DO NOT TURN his
photographs he had them
out the other day spread
all over the floor I said
who cut out the faces. He
said I can’t sleep I can’t
remember what to think
about when I’m sleeping I
said why think just sleep.
He said I found her bloody
eyeglasses in the grass
after nothing else was left
not even.  Not even what I
said. Not even the
stupidfuck white plastic
shopping nothing her
family could. Bury
identify keep turn. One
lens smashed the other.
Why cut I said he said
they needed more shadow.
Okay.     The    other
okay.      The     other
okay.

(Red Doc>, p. 94)

The beauty, it burns.  I’m about halfway through Red Doc>, and I’m taking it slowly.  Otherwise I emerge gasping for light with no clear idea of where I’ve been.

How is it possible to create something this beautiful?

Recently I found myself with some free time but without the willpower to make my brain work, somehow, and so I set about re-reading the Harry Potter series.

First of all, the last book in the series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was released in 2007.  Seven years ago.  The first book was released in 1997: seventeen years ago.  Wow.

The good news is that they still hold up.  They’re still terrific reads, still funny and exciting and clever.  Harry is still an annoying twerp and Dumbledore is still my role model.

In fact, I enjoyed them even more this time around because it was fascinating watching the entire plot—not just the plot we thought we were reading—unfold through the seven books.  I remember thinking when we got to the third book (Prisoner of Azkaban) that we were watching something larger happen . Then Jo Rowling said in an interview that she had plotted all seven books ahead of time and that she had seven shoeboxes into which she put index cards of every spell, person, event, object, everything, spreading them across the Potterverse with meticulous care.  I knew we were sunk.

I began to read every book like a mystery: what were the clues she was so blithely throwing in our way?  She always withheld something essential, but there was enough in every book to at least tip you off to the possibility of the ending of that book.  But it meant that you had to read ever so carefully; I began keeping notes on each book, noting “insignificant” details and writing questions that I thought should be answered.  She still fooled me every time.

Except for the big one.  When we got to Half-Blood Prince, I began to suspect that what she was leading us to believe about Severus Snape was not, shall we say, the Truth.  While we waited for Deathly Hallows, I went back and re-read the series again, and one sentence jumped out at me:

“And what the ruddy hell are dementors?” [asked Uncle Vernon]

“They guard the wizard prison, Azkaban,” said Aunt Petunia.¹

…

“How d’you know that?” [Harry] asked her, astonished.

…

“I heard — that awful boy — telling her about them — years ago,” she said jerkily.

“If you mean my mum and dad, why don’t you use their names?” said Harry loudly…

Indeed, Petunia, why not call “that awful boy” by his name?   This was classic Rowling misdirection, and that meant that Petunia was not referring to James Potter.  It didn’t take a lot of thought to come up with the idea that Severus Snape must have been a part of the Evans family landscape, possibly before Hogwarts even.  Was it possible that Snape was in love with Lily Evans?

If so, that explained nearly everything: his hatred of James Potter and his son; Dumbledore’s continued trust in Snape; the constant references to Harry’s having Lily’s eyes; Snape continually saving Harry even though he hates him.  It all clicked.

And so the big reveal in the last book was not a complete surprise to me.  Since I had been playing Snape in GHP’s annual Hogwarts Night, I was gratified to have it confirmed that Severus was in fact the hero of the series; we Slytherins get so few attaboys…

In sum, the books were not just a fad at the turn of the century.  I think they will stand the test of time and will still be read in another 50 years, just like all of J.R.R. Tolkien’s work.

—————

¹ The summer that Half-Blood Prince came out, I was visited at GHP by my son and the two other teens.  Even though they were all of driving age, they willingly sat down to have Story Time.  I read the first two chapters to them, and when Petunia let slip that she knew what dementors were, they literally jumped up and screamed in astonishment and delight.  Fun times.