Critical Monkey entry #6 - Treasure Island - “The secret has been told to the parrot.”

Having suffered mightily at the hands of James Patterson and his abysmal King Tut “non-fiction” meanderings (I still don’t have peripheral vision in my left eye), the Critical Monkey had to take a well-earned rest for a bit. But time heals some wounds, although not altogether cleanly. There is still a scar on my soul, and I find I cannot bear to try and conquer another bottomless pit of despair just yet.

So instead, I’m going old-school. 19th century old, to be precise. I’m taking to the high seas to read a youthful classic I have somehow avoided up to now:

Treasure Island
by Robert Louis Stevenson (1883)

Why I might like it: As per the rules, I have never read Stevenson, nor have I watched any of the cinematic adaptations of Treasure Island (not even the Muppets version). I have, however, greatly enjoyed the movie versions of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (the Frederic March version in particular) and The Body Snatcher. And there must be something to it; Treasure Island is a novel that has withstood the test of time and has entered the lexicon and popular culture. You may not have read the book, but if you haven't heard of Long John Silver, you must be living in a cave or something, and should really get out more.

Why I might hate it: I hold no particular affinity for pirate stuff, or novels about seafaring. This doesn’t go for films: I enjoyed Pirates of the Caribbean (all three movies, actually), I can watch The Sea Hawk endlessly, I love submarine films, I'll never get tired of Gregory Peck battling giant whales, and I consider the movie version of Master and Commander to be one of the great ignored classics of the 21st century. But reading and watching are entirely different things, and frankly, I find most of my readings to date on naval goings-ons to be as dull as dirt (and I include pretty much half of Moby Dick in this). I claim no expertise on the matter, I do not mean to malign artists or their craft (I really should read at least one Patrick O’Brian), and I fall back purely on my own ignorance of the genre.

The verdict: Fun. Not earthshattering, not spectacular, but a decent-enough adventure novel for the younger set.

The plot is standard adventure story boiler-plate, but considering the age of the text, I’ll give it a little leeway for a lack of originality. Jim Hawkins is a young lad bound for adventure, chosen by circumstance to join a gang of buccaneers on their search for buried treasure. While consumed with the headstrongedness of youth, he’s also savvy enough to survive many scrapes that would kill lesser boys. Or men. I admit to being unprepared for Stevenson’s body count, quite high considering the novel’s reputation as a classic of young adult literature. I thought this might be because it was written more for adults, but as it was apparently written first as a serial for Young Folks magazine, I guess that people gave kids a little more credit than they do now. Still, I rarely hear of challenges to Treasure Island, but I guess that’s because killing is fine, but finding love among one’s own gender, now that's unacceptable (sorry, editorializing).

For a young adult novel, Treasure Island has a surprisingly malleable take on morality, embodied through Silver's handling of events. Most of the pirates take rather a bleak view of mankind; as the two-timing Israel Hands eloquently puts it:

For thirty years...I’ve sailed the seas, and seen good and bad, better and worse, fair weather and foul, provisions running out, knives going, and what not. Well, now I tell you, I never seen good come o’ goodness yet. Him as strikes first is my fancy; dead men don’t bite; them’s my views—amen, so be it.

Silver, however, twists and turns all people to his advantage, but somehow still ends up on top. He's not all evil, just opportunistic, which is some instances is even worse. At least with evil, you know where you stand. It is this flexibility of moral coding, as well as the theory that a gentleman's word is his bond and honour, that adds a weird ethical ambiguity little seen to such an extent in young adult literature.

Yet as the pages flipped by, I admit to a fair degree of boredom on my part; this despite the presence of copious amounts of pirates and pirate-related mayhem. Jim may be a daring avatar for a younger reader, but to an adult he reads as woefully one-dimensional; shrewd and capable, yes, but as a character he's rather flat. The adults are either upper-class English types or roguish layabouts, and while the latter is infinitely more preferable to read about, neither group (outside of Silver) is much fun. I also am perplexed by the reputation of some of the characters; I had heard of Blind Pew before, and on the rear cover of the book jacket Pew is described as being evil incarnate. But he's barely in the novel, he's dead long before the actual seafaring begins, and while he's undeniably unpleasant, I fail to see why he has garnered any reputation at all.

I'm glad I read it, though, even if I was underwhelmed, and I'll put Dr. Jekyll on my list, as I'd like to see how Stevenson wrote for adults.

THE MONKEY IS SO-SO, BUT HE SURVIVED, SO LET'S CALL THIS ONE A WIN

Girl Crazy by Russell Smith - Quill & Quire review

The estimable mag Quill & Quire had published my review of Russell Smith's newest novel Girl Crazy online. I'd never read Smith before this, but Girl Crazy is strong enough that I'm going to seek out his earlier work.

Here's a nugget:

Smith excels at presenting the sexual fixations of the male psyche, slicing them apart and exposing the emotional impotence beneath. Justin, still an adolescent at heart, fetishizes each woman who crosses his path, living for “the fright of helplessness that he felt when he felt himself staring so hard at a woman who was not staring back: the feeling of seeping power … that you were the wailing infant, waiting for her to feed you.”

If you're intrigued (or bored, who am I to assume your interest level), the rest of the review can be found here.

Canada Also Reads: And the winner is...

Canada Also Reads: And the winner is...

Well, not Steve Zipp. Sadly for friend of the blog Steve (but hey, honour to be nominated, am I right, folks?), his novel Yellowknife was not the winner of the National Post's Canada Also Reads competition.

No, instead it was given to another quality offering, Jessica Grant's Come, Thou Tortoise.

My congrats go out to Miss Grant and to the rest of the nominees, all worthy reads.

And go find a copy of Yellowknife, it is a gloriously weird piece of Canadian magic realism absurdist satire, or something like that. Great novel, anyway.

Monkey Droppings - The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag by Alan Bradley

The monkey remembers a simpler time, when all you needed to solve a mystery was a zest for crime-solving, three good friends, and maybe a talking dog.

And a van. Always need a good van.


The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag
by Alan Bradley (2010)

If one were to closely follow the tenets of Agatha Christie mysteries, one would be wise to stay as far away from quaint English townships as possible. The murder rate of such hamlets, as described by Christie and her ilk, must rank in the highest percentile of crime statistics.

The town of Bishop’s Lacey is no different, having quite an off-centre proportion of strange criminal conundrums for such a tiny municipality. For balance, all such villages must also be blessed with a detective of unusual cunning and resourcefulness, ideally a local eccentric with a penchant for amateur sleuthing.

Flavia de Luce is just such an investigator, and Toronto-born author Alan Bradley revels in her peculiarities. Introduced in 2009’s surprise hit The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, Flavia is a self-possessed eleven-year-old girl with a fondness for chemistry and a yearning to make sense of her world, and in Bradley’s hands she is the spiritual lovechild of Sherlock Holmes and Miss Marple.

At the start of Bradley’s second de Luce mystery, The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag, Flavia finds herself still living in a large old house with her two detestable sisters and her philatelist father. Flavia is proceeding with her investigations into chemistry, already “making notes for a definitive work [called] De Luce on Decomposition, in which I would outline, step by step, the process of human cadaveric decay.”

When Flavia happens upon an enigmatic woman weeping in a graveyard, she takes it upon herself to intervene. The young snoop quickly finds herself caught up in a mystery involving marionettes, the past death of a local child, and one decidedly dead BBC children’s personality.

Flavia is a strikingly enjoyable heroine, precocious, preternaturally intelligent to a fault, and not giving “a frog’s fundament” for anyone who crosses her. Her intellect crosses the border into the implausible, but such a leap is far easier with such an engaging narrator, at ease with explaining the mechanics of human decay as she is espousing that Beethoven, while “a very great musician, and a wizard composer of symphonies…was quite often a dismal failure when it came to ending them.”

As in classic Christie novels, the mystery forms only half of the narrative. The other half is the town itself and its many varied characters, and Bradley heaps scads of idiosyncratic personalities with such glorious monikers as “Mad Meg,” “Dogger,” and “Mutt Wilmott” into an already convoluted plotline.

If there is any real shortcoming to The Weed That Strings, it is that Flavia has shown precious little growth as a character since her introduction. While continuity of character is another staple of such anachronistic entertainments (did Miss Marple ever evolve beyond her knitting and gardening pursuits?), one hopes that the few glimpses allowed into Flavia’s past, especially concerning her long-deceased mother Harriet, will eventually allow her some avenue into maturity in further stories.

Otherwise, The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag is a surfeit of pleasures, an old-fashioned puzzler of red herrings, left turns, and sharp twists. It should easily please Bradley’s fans, and newcomers will find themselves happily falling for Flavia’s exploits.

VERDICT: MONKEY LIKES

Originally published in the Winnipeg Free Press (expurgated version), March 13, 2010.

Canada Reads, but does Canada listen?

As some of you may know (the Canadians, anyway), tomorrow marks the start of the ninth annual Canada Reads competition, that "battle of the books" wherein Canadian celebrities (???) meet at an undisclosed (but probably in Toronto) location to argue over those particular books they each feel all Canadians should read. The winning author is then proclaimed king or queen of all Canadian literature for a year, and attends mall openings and rodeos as part of their royal obligations. Or something.

I have nothing against Canada Reads, nothing at all. I am all for anything that gets people interested in reading, and very often the list yields some interesting candidates worth discussion. Brown Girl in the Ring? Volkswagen Blues? The Fat Woman Next Door Is Pregnant? Fruit? Some real interesting stuff. The great thing about such competitions is that there is room for genuine surprise. The sad thing is, such surprises are invariably few.

As is the case with almost all similar contests, very often the popular trumps all. I don't mean to argue that the winners of Canada Reads are not worthy of merit, not at all. But the nebulous point of Canada Reads was to get all Canadians to read the same book. That worthy ideal becomes diluted when the choices are novels that everyone has already read.

Canadians already read Margaret Atwood. Was there any person actually interested in Canada Reads who hadn't read The Handmaid's Tale? Ditto Life of Pi, ditto The Stone Angel, ditto A Fine Balance, ditto A Complicated Kindness. Again, I do not mean to disparage these novels; I unreservedly love Handmaid and Life of Pi, I dig Complicated, I've never even read Balance, and my views on Stone Angel are likely distorted by the overall unhappiness of my high school years and cannot be trusted.

But most every reader (every Canadian reader, anyway) has already read these novels. These are bestsellers, Canadian classics discussed in college courses, and sometimes international sensations.

What I'm saying is, be a little more creative. There was no need at all to argue over The Book of Negroes, a bestseller many times over. Fall on Your Knees has Oprah's stamp. Generation X is so popular it actually changed the way we talk. Let's look into the nooks and crannies for the books that fell behind the couch.

These are not new arguments, I know, and they have been made repeatedly over the years by persons far more knowledgeable than myself. And maybe next year, I'll follow the example of others and have my own mini-Canada Reads.

But for now, all I'll do is offer up a list of Canadian novels that I wish more people would read so that we could discuss their merits. I have decided not to list authors who have already had a novel on Canada Reads, even though I may desire their inclusion, as they have had their chance.

These are not all 'perfect' books. Some have sold fairly well, some have not, but I don't think anyone will argue that they are overexposed. Some are 'literary,' some are just plain fun. But they all, in unique ways, affected me deeply, and need more love. And if you've already read them, and dislike them, or actively hate them? We can talk about that too, if you want.

And no, I did not include Shelf Monkey, as I figured that went without saying.

1. 4x4, by Wayne Tefs
   
2. All My Friends are Superheroes, by Andrew Kaufman
3. Amphibian, by Carla Gunn
4. Angry Young Spaceman, by Jim Munroe
   
5. The Big Why, by Michael Winter
6. The Culprits, by Robert Hough
7. Entitlement, by Jonathan Bennett
8. From the Notebooks of Dr. Brain, by Minister Faust
   
9. The Incident Report, by Martha Baillie
10. Inside, by Kenneth J. Harvey
    
11. ManBug, by George K. Ilsley
12. The Mysterium, by Eric McCormack
    
13. Planet Reese, by Cordelia Strube
14. Shining at the Bottom of the Sea, by Stephen Marche
    
15. Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town, by Cory Doctorow

So, anyone have anything to add? What novel would you like to see represented?

Monkey droppings - The Waterproof Bible by Andrew Kaufman

The monkey searches for meaning in his life.

Maybe it's in the folds of this chair... nope, but hey, a loonie! Score!


The Waterproof Bible
by Andrew Kaufman (2010)

"Why do bad things happen to good people?"
"Because it makes a good story."

Please allow me the courtesy, if you will, to begin this review in an exceedingly lazy fashion, with someone else's words (courtesy of Dictionary.com):

Whimsy (whim·sy)
–noun,plural-sies.

1. capricious humor or disposition; extravagant, fanciful, or excessively playful expression: a play with lots of whimsy.
2. an odd or fanciful notion.
3. anything odd or fanciful; a product of playful or capricious fancy: a whimsy from an otherwise thoughtful writer.

I like whimsy, don't love it. Achieving whimsy is a delicate balancing act wherein the author is forever teetering on a razor's edge between way too clever and cutesy-wootsey. And forced whimsy is even worse, as any parent forced to attend any movie involving the joint participation of the Disney Corporation and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson can attest. Ooh, look, he's a big tough hockey player in a tutu! Hilarious! Look at him prance about! *retching noise*

Andrew Kaufman is very, very good at whimsy (particularly the aforementioned "odd or fanciful" definition), especially in the category of magic realism, a category tragically laden with excess dollops of whimsy. Sure, the genre might yield a novel as perfect as The Iowa Baseball Confederacy (so whimsical, so magical, so great), but when the other side of the coin is The Alchemist (ugh), well, there are better things you could likely be doing with your time.

Take Kaufman's debut novel, All My Friends are Superheroes (a novella I grow more to love every day). It sets itself up as an ode to mythic heroes, but quickly changes its mind (obvious in its choices of superheroes; one hero, the aptly-named 'Someday', is blessed with "an amazing ability to think big and an unlimited capacity for procrastination") and instead becomes a lovely meditation on romance and love and human foibles.

The Waterproof Bible is an equally quirky effort, and one even harder to quantify. Call it a treatise on the search for meaning of life, if you like, or a discussion of religion versus the secular. Whatever it is (I'm not the smartest when it comes to allegory), it's bloody marvellous.

Kaufman follows the intersecting paths of several characters over the course of a few exceedingly strange days. There's Margaret, a hotel owner in Morris, Manitoba with a few odd traits: "she seldom blinked, her skin often had a greenish tinge to it." There's Rebecca (a woman able to project her emotions onto others), and Stewart (her estranged husband, building a large boat in the middle of the prairies). Then there's Lewis, Rebecca's brother-in-law, who has recently lost his wife and fled to Winnipeg, and is starting up a relationship with a woman who claims to be God, but only part-time.

"Being God isn't a full-time gig?"
"Who would I invoice?"

And there's also Aberystwyth, a frog-woman searching dry land for her mother. Aberystwyth is a member of Aquaticism, a religion based on a belief that "where [other] religions believe God flooded the world in order to start again, Aquatics believe God simply liked water better." There also a competing father-son duo of rainmakers. All these individuals share an internal damage and a confusion as to their place in the world.

As the above description might hint at, Kaufman has a true taste for the metaphorical. The pages of his Bible are suffused with totems, and religions, and floods, and sudden blindness. What it all means is entirely up to the reader, and there will doubtless be a few who find The Waterproof Bible not to their liking. The tale is just barely linear, and most of the outlandish events that occur are left unexplained. I would argue that when the trek is this much damned fun, it doesn't matter if you're left a little bewildered at journey's end. Why should you be any better off than Kaufman's characters? Part of life is to enjoy the mysteries, to embrace the unexplainable, and the one's who can't accept that not all is knowable are the ones who lead lives of utter misery. As Margaret thinks of the dangers of living by a rigid dogma, such beliefs remind her"of the Christians she knew who were scared of their genitals, or the scientists who could accept only a rational explanation as the right one."

"The only difference between a happy ending and a sad ending is where you decide the story ends." So Kaufman writes, and so we should all believe. Do we create our destinies? Are there other forces at work? No one really knows (although many would claim otherwise), but it may be that it is how we react to such mysteries that defines us. Some may find comfort in books that declare that there is a god, that all occurs according to plan. Myself? I'll take the uncertainty of The Waterproof Bible any day.

VERDICT: MONKEY LOVES

Critical Monkey! Update the 8th!

Before we begin the 8th Update of Critical Monkey, I would like to send a personal shout-out to our very own Steve Zipp. Steve is the author of Yellowknife, a terrific slice of twisted Canadian absurdity that is currently being argued for in the National Post's counter-programming to Canada Reads, Canada Also Reads. I won't get into a rant on the merits of Canada Read's choices here - too much has been said already, and by smarter people than me. I'll leave it at this: the point of Canada Reads was to get Canadians to read certain books. Books that have been huge best-sellers and/or trend-setting game changers should be ineligible on the face of it, regardless of that book's individual merits. If 'everybody' has already read a book, why push it again?

The Post has put together a wonderful mix of novels to argue over, and Steve's debut work made the list. But Steve has his work cut out for him - check out the list of nominees and defenders:

• Writer and critic Steven Beattie defends My White Planet by Mark Anthony Jarman

• Author Tish Cohen defends The Day The Falls Stood Still by Cathy Marie Buchanan

• Singer/songwriter Andy Maize defends Best Laid Plans by Terry Fallis

• Poet Jacob McArthur Mooney defends The Last Shot by Leon Rooke

• Author Lisa Pasold defends You And The Pirates by Jocelyne Allen

• Author Neil Smith defends Come Thou Tortoise by Jessica Grant

• Author Zoe Whittall defends Fear of Fighting by Stacey May Fowles

Man, that is some harsh competition. Defending Yellowknife is John Mutford, a blogger and well-rounded person with excellent taste in literature. John's heartfelt defense, with nods to Mikhail Bulgakov, can be found here.

I'm sure I'm not alone in wishing Steve good luck, and only my crushing depression at not being nominated myself keeps me from sending him a poke on Facebook.

And now - the leaderboard!

Acceptance (seven reviews)

Depression (six reviews)

Lori L
Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen
Roses of Glory by Mary Pershall
Spock's World by Diane Duane
A Texan's Honor by Leigh Greenwood
Star Wars: Rebel Dawn by A.C. Crispin
Twilight by Stephanie Meyer *ineligible for contention*
Love Comes Softly by Janette Oke

Steve Zipp
Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town by Stephen Leacock
A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking
The Whiteoaks of Jalna by Mazo de la Roche
The Palm-Wine Drinkard by Amos Tutuola
Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens

Anger (five reviews)

Corey Redekop
Twilight by Stephenie Meyer
The Justice Riders by Chuck Norris
Jake and the Kid by W.O. Mitchell
Left Behind by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins
The Stainless Steel Rat by Harry Harrison
The Murder of King Tut by James Patterson & Martin Dugard *ineligible for contention*

Guilt (four reviews)

Jeanne
Empire of Lies by Andrew Klaven
A Merry Heart by Wanda E. Brunsetter
A Washington, D.C. by Robert J. Hensler
It's Not that I'm Bitter by Gina Barreca

Scrat
Bright Shiny Morning by James Frey
Hold Tight by Harlan Coben
Double Cross by James Patterson
Strangers in Death by J.D. Robb (Nora Roberts)

Bargaining (three reviews)

Denial (two reviews)

Betty
Generation Dead/Generation Dead: Kiss of Life by Daniel Waters
A Bend in the Road by Nicholas Sparks

gypsysmom
Waiting for the Barbarians by J.M. Coetzee
Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice

Shock (one review)

Alison
On the Road by Jack Kerouac

Wow, Depression has been achieved by two contestants! The aforementioned Steve breaks through with the high-toned effort of Charles Dickens, and Lori cracks the barrier by reading (and enjoying) a Janette Oke! Coming up fast on the outside is Scrat, suffering through the mild indignities of Nora Robert's alter-ego.

As for myself - a bad month, I fear. I started reading a Richard Marcinko, but had to stop for fear the testosterone that filled the pages would leak out and stain my carpet. I simply could not read past ten pages of the garbage. I lack the strength, The Murder of King Tut really did a number on me. Honestly, I think it may have harmed my soul. I plan to rejuvenate myself with a trip back to childhood to read a classic that escaped my eyes: next up, Treasure Island!

Now, I didn't have a prize for this update, but I'm going to throw in an ARC of Alan Bradley's The Weed that Strings the Hangman's Bag for the next month. All new entries will be eligible.

Four more months, everyone! Can we all meet the deadline?

Good luck, and god save us all.