Hundred Book Challenge # 10: “Ragtime” by E.L. Doctorow

Hey! Look at that number in the title! We are one-tenth of the way through the Hundred Book Challenge. At least we are one-tenth through the titles. Being completely accurate it could be more or less depending on how long the remaining books are- I did get through A Dance to the Music of Time.

So. “Ragtime” is pretty spectacular. It's one of those “weave a half dozen stories together” type of story that can get pretty annoying as it substitutes flash for story or character- but not “Ragtime.”

This tells the story of a few different groups of people as their lives twist and turn around each other as well as famous historical folk from early 1900s.

Houdini features prominently in it as does Henry Ford, JP Morgan, Emma Goldman and Robert Peary. It even has a scene where Sigmund Freud takes a ride in the tunnel of love at Coney Island with Carl Jung so that's fun.

One central story that works to unify the various threads of this story features a black ragtime piano player named Coalhouse Walker. Walker dresses nicely and drives an amazing car. One day, a bunch of racist firefighters get tired of what they see as an uppity black man thinking he's above his station and they block the road- preventing him from moving. Walker leaves his car for a moment and the firefighters trash it.

Walker gets mad and demands his car be fixed. The firefighters refuse. Time goes on and Walker starts leading a group of revolutionaries. They want real social change- he wants his car repaired.

And.... as I recount this I realize it's a bit crazy to try and recount the story. After all I already said there is a scene where Freud and Jung share the tunnel of love and how it all connects to Walker is... well, it's there but it would basically be the same length as reading the book and the book has much prettier words- including my new favorite phrase:

“As it happened Houdini's unexpected visit had interrupted Mother and Father's coitus.”

and

“Freud, clamping his teeth on his cigar, said nothing.”

and

“She didn't dare confess to Tateh that she had had no idea socialism and anarchism were not the same thing.”

and

“The Archduke Franz Ferdinand didn't seem to know who Houdini was. He congratulated him on the invention of the aeroplane.”

and

“America was a great farting country. All this began when Taft moved into the White House.”

And a dozen more. This is one of the best written books I've ever read. I was highlighting almost every other line before I just said “stuff it” and just enjoyed the thing as an experience which is a great thing to do.

Ragtime music, unsurprisingly, plays an important role in “Ragtime.” As such, I started populating my Spotify list with ragtime music. A whole bunch of Joplin. As I read this book and listened to this music- music I always associated with cartoons and silliness, I found myself really loving it. Something switched in my mind and I got it.

The same holds true to the people who lived in the past. It's hard to say this but I have to think I'm not the only one who has a hard time empathizing with people who lived before I was ever born. After all, I am the center of the universe right?

Especially people who lived in more or less iconic times. It's easy to think of the stereotype and not the person. This book forces you to erase the stereotypes of past ages and shows you that their problems, though seemingly like ours today, are more vital and interesting that you can possibly believe.  

A plea to the upcoming MMO Wildstar

Dear WildStar,

I'm not going to tiptoe around here. Please be completely awesome. Not just good, not just great, not even better than WoW. I need you to be completely awesome.

You are vey pretty in a kooky kind of way. 

I cut my teeth on World of Warcraft days after it was released and have been playing, on and off, ever since, but I'm falling out of love. If it were a marriage we'd only be staying together for the kids (vanity pets).

Here's the deal, I'll never be on the highest levels of WoW. I can't spend the time to raid and, frankly, if there was a time I wanted to spend weeks grinding in order to see the coolest content the game had to offer, it evaporated around the time I turned 30- and that was several years ago.

I've been hopeful for other MMO to bring back the magic I felt in the early years of WoW. I went through Lord of the Rings Online, but found it redundant and derivative. I had huge hopes for Star Wars the Old Republic and The Secret World- and they were fun experiences but, you know.... The Secret World didn't feel like a complete game and SWTOR, well, SWTOR is still pretty fun but after going through the story lines there isn't much left to do.

So, WildStar, to say I'm a one MMO man would be lying, and I don't want to lie to you, but if you are completely awesome I will stay with you for years.

All signs so far look good. I've been following you for quite a while and everything I see I like. Extreme customization, a unique talent system, a fun art style and a seemingly huge variety of gameplay options and re-playability all point to a good thing.

Also, My wife and brother are both excited about your upcoming release as well so I'll have people to play with. When I watch your trailers and you Devspeak videos I feel that familiar flutter of excitement. 

And yet... and yet.

I've been burned before. I'd like to go full Yatzee and say I'm not excited by any video games any more but that never works out. So, yeah, I'm very excited. I didn't get a beta invite but my wife did so I'll be looking over her shoulder all weekend, hoping to get a glimpse at some grandeur.

So please, WildStar, be totally awesome. I don't want to be crass here but if you are totally awesome I will pay you up to $15 a month to play you... Ok, this personification of the game is starting to turn weird.

Just be completely awesome, Ok?  

Hundred Book Challenge #9: "A Dance to the Music of time" by Anthony Powell

I really don't know how to start this. Reading through Anthony Powell's 12 book series “A Dance to the Music of Time” is the most rewarding literary experience I've ever experienced.

The painting that inspired the book

According to the list from whence my Hundred Book Challenge comes from, Time Magazine's list of the 100 best English-language novels written since 1923, “A Dance” counts only as one novel- I listened to the audio books and it clocked in at around 84 hours and I loved every minute of it. So much so that I am blindsided by how much I miss it now that I'm done.

These books got me through some tough times. When I started writing it I was working in a job I wasn't crazy about for very little money. We had no idea we were going to have a baby. My wife worked in a job that was forged from the depths of hell and we just weren't sure what we were going to do.

I didn't sit and read this through all at once. I spread it around, inserting other books throughout the series. I savored it and that is probably the best way to describe the experience. It was savory.

I listened to this book as I walked my dog around the streets of Cedar City. I listened to it as I tried to tame the yard of my old house. I listened to it after Beth told me she was pregnant. I listened to it as I drove to Provo for the interview for my current awesome job. I listened to it as I drove back and forth between Provo and Cedar City when I was living on my brother's couch. I listened to it as I moved my stuff up here. I listened to it on the night my son was born. I listened to it as I painted the garage on what will become my new house.

In a way that is far more literal than any other story, I feel as if these characters are part of my life. Not only did I take them with me through one of the most transformative sections of my life, the very nature of the book allowed me to see the complete lives of the characters within.

It is a VERY literary, VERY British book. It acts as the memoirs of Nicolas Jenkins from his days as a school boy through to the brink of his death. It also chronicles, in a very personal way, the history of England from the early 1920s to the mid 1970s. Of Jenkins we don't learn much, other than how he interacts with those he comes across.

I suppose I should go real deep into this story, and I'm sure there are plenty of places where that can be found. I just want to make a few observations.

1. The characterization in this book is amazing. There are literally hundreds of characters, some of them showing up only once or twice, but when I go over a character list I remember who each one is and something interesting about them. In a story where almost every character is a middle-class, white, British person the depth of characterization needed to make them all unique is, frankly, mind boggling.
2. It's funny. It made me laugh out loud more than a few times. I thought I'd go into some of the jokes, but I realize it would be impossible without reams of paper worth of backstory. Suffice to say there is a scene where a butler is attacked by a monkey and another where a high-ranking military official bemoans the fact that a specific battalion doesn't have porridge.
3. Kenneth Widmerpool. Widmerpool is my new favorite literary character. He is just so slimy and awful in a wonderful way. Literally everything the man says makes me smile at the clueless, smallness of it all. Widmerpool is the type of guy who would, if invited to a dinner party, would insist on giving a speech about whatever is on his mind at the time and expect everyone to not only listen, but to thank him for it afterwards. I've started calling people Widmerpool from time to time because it's a great way to insult people and you know they have no clue what you are referencing. Widmerpool is the best reason to read these books.

One more thing. I remember listening to a bunch of small-time authors at a writing conference talking about how books are categorized. They were genera fiction writers and they were bashing on literary fiction, saying literary fiction is “uppity” and other obviously sour-grape complaints. They said it was only an excuse to have sex scenes and that “nothing happens so why would I care.”

I wish I could bludgeon these “writers” with the entirety of “A Dance to the Music of Time.” It hurts the universe that these people have been published. OK, that may be sour grapes on my side but still. You shouldn't have to tell a writer to read a book.

Because here's the deal, I wouldn't have read these books if not for this challenge I gave myself. There is a real value in exposing yourself to stories you normally wouldn't come in contact with. It changes you for the better and, speaking as a writer, it can only make you better. So, you know, read something you normally wouldn't. Push yourself a little and the rewards will be amazing.  

Hundred Book Challenge #8: "Neuromancer" by William Gibson

Imagine, if you will, a world where people can spend all their time in an artificial construct of networked computers. Woah.

OK, so this is one of those science fiction books you have to allow yourself to travel back in time in order to appreciate. Before Cyberpunk was a thing. Before the Matrix movies. Before people thought long, black trench coats were cool. If you can get in that frame of mind, this story is pretty amazing.

Neuromancer is good on it's own grounds. Taken as simply a story, which ultimately is how all novels should be taken, it's a lot of fun. Full of mystery and crazy plot twists and so forth- like you'd expect from one of the seminal science fiction works. But taken as a historical artifact, the book becomes far more interesting.

Here is the question: Do you know what cyberspace is? Yes, you probably do. Does it match this definition by any chance?

A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts. A graphic representation of data abstracted from banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity.

It's a bit wordy, but yeah. That's what cyberspace is. At least, that's what cyberspace is at it's coolest, most romantic notion.

Much has been written on the influence of this book. I didn't give this book all the attention it probably deserved as I read it mostly in the days just before and after my son was born, but even with that light read I couldn't help but see influence from this book everywhere. Online games, the Anonymous Collective, social networking, how people communicate on the internet- most online interactions seem to stem, partially, from a foundation built on this work.

That makes sense to me. Jack Womack wrote an amazing post-script to the book where he explains what he thinks happens. His theory is that the computing pioneers of the 1980s read Neuromancer and thought it was completely awesome. They then incorporated the style, language and concepts of the novel into the mortar of cyberspace.

If the point of art is to change the world then Neuromancer is completely successful.

So, hey, I'm a father now.

So, hey, I'm a parent now. It's odd. One moment it was just Elizabeth and I and the next moment there was this whole other person. 

There are about a billion thoughts going through my head about having a baby. A son. A, you know, member of the future generation. Don't expect this to be all coherent, but these are my thoughts. 

When I first started dating Elizabeth something strange happened to me. The best way I can describe it is that a dam burst inside me somewhere releasing all these here-to-for unknown emotions. the concepts of love, happiness, satisfaction- all that- ballooned into something far larger than I thought they could ever be. That is how I knew she was different. That is how I knew this wasn't a girl I could live without. more than 10 years on, and things are going well. Down right awesome actually. 

So, now this baby shows up. Throughout Beth's pregnancy I felt love for the little boy growing inside her, but when I saw him come out, when I saw him laying on his mother's chest- minutes old and still wet and a bit...say... cheesy- it was like an all new dam burst inside me flooding me with a whole new batch of emotion. The love I feel for him is so much more than I thought it would be. 

It makes me wonder how many more dams are waiting inside my emotional center. I'm pretty thrilled to find out. 

I was in the room when Beth gave birth. More than that, I was part of the primary decent team. I was called by the captain, told to put on a red shirt and then given a duty. If I was any more involved with the  process they would have given me a catcher's mitt. 

In my grandpa's day, the men were forced to wait outside, smoking cigarettes with a dozen other worried and impatient fathers. In my dad's day, they could go inside the delivery room but were then forced to leave after visiting hours. Today, the tell the fathers to grab a leg and get going. Cutting the umbilical cord was the least of it. Still, I got to see him come out. I saw the hair, the top of his wrinkly little head and finally his whole head- including detached earlobes. It was a crazy, scary experience but it's also the best experience I've ever had. 

Newborn baby poop is like... horrible. I thought I knew what poop was like but this stuff... black and sticky. Like an alien symbiotie about to turn into Carnage. I think babies absorb all the world's evil while they are in the womb only to poop it out in a tarry, viscous ooze. 

I just don't care if people are annoyed. I'm going to show off pictures of my baby. He is a good looking kid and I'm gonna get his face out there to anyone who can see it. Will I lose friends? No. Besides, I got all the friends I need. 

Being a new father is like being in a cult. There is sleep deprivation, a lot of singing and chanting, wearing robes and you are totally dedicated to a person you've only known for a few days.