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Iain Banks – The Wasp Factory

The Wasp Factory cover

Iain Banks – The Wasp Factory

I recently panned I, Lucifer with the explanation that I can enjoy stories about bad people, but I don’t have to, and since then it seems that my statement has been really put to the test. The Orphan Master’s Son centered on awful things happening to hopeless people, and now I read Iain Banks’ The Wasp Factory. This is told from the point of view of a methodical, mass-murdering teen, and it really doesn’t pull any punches.

It wouldn’t be right to call narrator Frank Cauldhame disturbed. His life may be dominated by rituals, both practical ones like patrolling the land around his home and mystical ones meant to predict the future or grant him power, but he is rational and relatable most of the time. That’s almost the most disturbing aspect of the book: As awful as his actions are, Frank seems relatable, and can even be realistic about whether his rituals mean anything. He’s simply someone who acts on the thoughts that everyone has, but he understands that and is comfortable with it. His home and family are plausible, and add to the overall impression of real people disconnected from sane society.

This is never the kind of realism that made me worry someone like Frank could be living next door, but he definitely felt like the sort of person who could be out there somewhere. And that adds to the most disturbing part: The child relatives he murdered. Told in the same precise, clear-headed style as the rest of the book (yes, he has emotional outbursts, but justifies them with a pseudo-rational approach), he builds up to the deaths slowly and horribly. He takes advantage of their trusting nature, and murders for ritualistic reasons that the victims are not responsible for. Suffice to say that I wish I’d read this book before becoming a parent, because it’s very hard to read afterwards.

So this is powerful and well-written, unlike I, Lucifer, but is it good? That’s a trickier question. The Wasp Factory is a fascinating character study, and it’s mercifully short. It’s interesting, but rarely enjoyable. Even if you’re looking for a visceral thrill, it’s too dry and horrifying to provide that. The book’s main problem, though, is that it doesn’t sustain itself even through its short length. The worst of Frank’s actions have been described long before the book is over, and then he just spends his time acting like any other drunken, self-destructive teen trying to one-up Holden Caulfield. It coasts on the strength of the first half and the promise of a big conclusion. But that ending is based on a twist that feels half-successful. It recontextualizes the book, and does make the character study more interesting, but it isn’t foreshadowed well and it derails the plot, leaving the book no way to end.

The Wasp Factory is memorable, compelling, and often directionless. Its impact on the reader is a testament to Banks’ writing skill, but it still doesn’t feel like it had a point at the end. It will be a great book for some people, but certainly not everyone.

Grade: C+

 
2013
08/23
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Adam Johnson – The Ophan Master’s Son (Book Review)

The Orphan Master's Son cover

Adam Johnson – The Orphan Master’s Son

Usually, I have a pretty good idea what I think of a book after reading it. With The Orphan Master’s Son, I’m a lot less sure. Adam Johnson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel is at times funny, horrifying, insightful, and boring.

Set in North Korea, it’s basically a real-life dystopia. Full of double-speak, blatant propaganda, and misconceptions from people who know no other life, it has a very good bleak humor to it. It is also full of horrors, and doesn’t shy away from emphasizing how cheaply the lives of children, families, and animals are tossed away. North Korea is largely unknown to us, so it’s difficult to decide how realistic this is. However, the setting still gives it a feeling of reality. Instead of enjoying this as a clever book in the abstract dystopian tradition, the horrors feel real. But after a few chapters, just when you’re wondering if you can take a whole book like that, it settles down into a more standard plot about an aimless young man with no identity. Rather than being about some place on the other side of the world, it feels like yet another naval-gazing American story about finding yourself. The main character goes through a series of increasingly unlikely adventures, and despite what I thought at the beginning, it got harder to read as it got further from the cruelties of common life.

A little before the halfway point, it suddenly changes. It jumps forward in time, after some major events have happened, and then unravels that story using flashbacks and new characters’ reactions. This gives the second half the purpose that had been lacking at first, with all the early disjointed plots and themes tying together nicely. It also feels less wild, though, as the reader now knows more or less where the flashbacks are headed. In general, this does save the book – the mix of memorable atrocities and arbitrary plot shifts just couldn’t have been maintained for very long.

Also, the book is saved by the themes it develops. Johnson chooses to make his study of North Korea to be about identity and story. In his vision of this land, the truth is whatever the leaders tell you it is, and no part of your identity is safe from the rulings they can impose. It’s no coincidence that the protagonist is named Jun Do (“John Doe”), and he goes through many very different positions in his life. At first, like a dystopian David Copperfield, he does nothing but accept every new identity he’s given. Eventually, though, he learns to take control of a system in which words redefine reality, and eventually extends that power to the extreme. This builds up gradually so that the result feels like a triumph over the system that defines North Korea, as long as you let yourself forget that the author’s conceit may bear little resemblance to the actual nation.

At times too ridiculous to take seriously, and other times so tragic you wish you couldn’t take it seriously, The Orphan Master’s Son is as full of contradictions as the land it portrays. Some scenes will stick with me for a long time. I have to conclude that it was worth reading, though I sometimes had to struggle to get to the parts that made it worthwhile.

Grade: B-

2013
07/26
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On Authors and Delays

This video from Comic-Con has been making the rounds this week: Paul & Storm start singing “Write Like the Wind”, their song asking George R.R. Martin to hurry up with his next book, when Martin comes on stage and angrily attacks them. It’s obviously staged, but has still struck a chord with lots of people.

It’s time for me to speak up, because I think the conversation is getting one-sided. The common point of view now is Neil Gaiman’s statement that “George R R. Martin is not your bitch“. And, yes, that’s true as far as it goes. The (few) people who are personally attacking Martin are offensive and wrong. However, I think this statement is usually being used to set up a straw man. It’s perfectly possible to be frustrated with a series’ delays without acting entitled.

The question that Gaiman was replying to wasn’t really that strong at all. Someone asked whether or not it was realistic to feel that Martin was “letting him down”. My answer: Hell yes it’s ok to feel let down! The fundamental assumption of my blog is that people have a right to feel any arbitrary way they want about works of culture, and that emotional responses are good. No matter how disappointed I may be in a work, I don’t personally judge the creators for it. But I have every right to feel good or bad about my reaction to the work, and to make it known.

Series are tricky things. The individual installments affect each other, and a new one can change how we see the earlier bits. If you’ve never had an old story retroactively ruined (or saved) by a sequel, then you read very differently than I do. And a book that leaves plot threads dangling would normally be bad, unless you buy into the promise that they will be resolved later. If we aren’t enjoying the work in a vacuum, then those external factors can change it later. (I’m not touching on the balance between timeliness and quality here. Yes, sometimes it’s best in the long run to make fans wait while you make a story right. It’s a fine line to walk, and I’ve seen plenty of successes and failures both ways.)

Authors want us to buy into the promise of the ongoing story. As Gaiman says in his article, almost no one can afford to write an entire series ahead of time and only publish it after it’s complete. But the reason consumers are willing to buy the story before the final installment is complete is because they trust the author to work on it, and their experience will be an open and ongoing thing in the meantime. The claim that “if you enjoyed the work at the time, you have no right to complain now” is a fundamental betrayal of the way series are supposed to work. If authors really believe that, then the only rational response is for people to wait until the series is finished before risking any money on it. And if everyone waits, of course, it would destroy the industry.

We need to accept a middle ground between “authors should slave away for the fans” and “it’s selfish for readers to let delays impact their experience”. The new era of crowdfunding and social media is teaching us a lot about the contract between creators and their fans, and it should be relevant even to existing publishing systems. People support the creators that they like in order to see new works from them, and creators need to respect that trust. There’s no contract in place, of course, but the fans are taking it on good faith that the author will try. It turn, fans need to show good faith when unexpected events get in the way. Fortunately, transparent Kickstarters are helping to teach everyone about all the things that can delay projects. Good reasons typically earn forgiveness. Taking on side projects or saying “sorry, I had no idea what I was getting into when I took your money” typically does not.

In the end, fans have every right to make inferences like “the author will make it a priority to continue his best-selling series”, and every right to complain when delays are justifiably hurting their enjoyment of the books. George R.R. Martin is not our bitch, but we’re not his trust fund, either.

2013
07/20
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Neil Gaiman – The Ocean at the End of the Lane (Book Review)

The Ocean at the End of the Lane cover

Neil Gaiman – The Ocean at the End of the Lane

The Ocean at the End of the Lane is a surprising book. It’s Neil Gaiman’s first adult novel in years, but it actually feels reminiscent of his younger stories. Coraline makes the best comparison: A young child stumbles into a world beyond his own and faces a magical being that threatens him through his family ties. The story moves along with comfortable fairy tale logic, and no one who is familiar with Gaiman’s influences will be surprised by the way the plot unfolds. The half-explained cosmology is intriguing, though. Being a Gaiman story, the writing has a slightly lyrical, twee sensibility, and it’s simple enough to fit the child protagonist, but it always makes the story’s otherworldly logic seem perfectly natural.

Ocean is an adult novel, though, and not just because of the slightly gruesome death early on. It’s told from memory by the adult narrator, and he understands some things that had gone over his head at the time. One theme of the novel is the different perspectives of children and adults. It opens with a quote from Maurice Sendak saying that children know terrible things that would scare adults, and the story seems built around that. The narrator can’t tell the people around him what’s going on, but shoulders the responsibility with a strength that few adults remember. Gaiman does appreciate that aspect of youth, and again, that makes it seem pretty comfortable to its readers. It’s a metaphor for childhood, and we understand what’s going on even though adults aren’t supposed to. We’re in control of the story, right?

But that’s why I introduced Ocean as a surprising book. Things slowly but surely go off the rails for us, even as the fairy tale heads towards its predictable happy ending. The magical threat is a childish horror that wasn’t supposed to scare us after all – there are other surprises here that the kid doesn’t even notice but that did unsettle me.

At the end, we’re treated to a discussion of what it all meant, and it turns out that simple fairy tale logic doesn’t translate to simple answers. We’re left to draw our own conclusions about life’s meaning and value, and how childhood experiences define us as adults.

Like Gaiman’s best stories, Ocean is a slow-building book that doesn’t seem too impressive until all the pieces start to fall together. In this case, the real payoff is in your thoughts for the days after you finish. It’s a very quick read, though, so you can expect that to happen right away. I finished it two weeks ago, and I can say that the haunting thoughts about life faded after only a few days. The book is still there as a faded memory, though, and one that tugs at me. I hardly ever re-read books, but I’m expecting to come back to this one in a few months. Much like the narrator, I need to see what turns up when I reexamine the memories.

Grade: A-

 
2013
07/12
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Glen Duncan – I, Lucifer (Book Review)

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Glen Duncan – I, Lucifer

Glen Duncan’s I, Lucifer is the story of Satan, after God offers him the chance to possess a mortal body for a month. Rather than take the chance at redemption, he splits his time between the pleasures of the modern world and writing his side of the story for us all to read. Naturally, Lucifer’s version of things differs slightly from God’s.

In general, there are two ways to write stories about the devil. Either his rebelliousness can be cool, setting him off against an out-of-touch God, or he can be the scapegoat for all pain and suffering. This book tries to have it both ways, and fails. Lucifer’s writing is confident and collected, and he expects us to identify with his freedom-loving worldview. But then he keeps interrupting that narrative to brag about persuading people to rape and murder. These aren’t kept abstract, either. He’s especially proud of the damage these crimes do to innocents. If you can’t handle scenes of child rape and very detailed descriptions of Medieval torture, this book is not for you.

Of course, even if you can handle those scenes, there’s no reason why this book should be for you. I can enjoy stories about anti-heroes, and even about villains. But I don’t automatically like them just because they’re about bad people. And I, Lucifer doesn’t offer any reason to read it. Possibly worst of all (if you’re not one to get disturbed by the scenes in this book) is how boring he actually is most of the time. When he’s not being the original rebel or the reason for torture, he’s just in over his head in the human world, sounding a lot more like a hedonistic mortal than a deity who has seen ages pass.

Duncan is a great writer. Allusions and economical turns of phrase flow through the prose, and he can set scenes and describe people very insightfully. This book is not well-written, though. Lucifer’s tendency is to wander off on tangents constantly, jumping between philosophy, the “real” versions of Biblical stories, and the modern-day events. Almost no time is dedicated to the plot, and all these aspects end up feeling disjointed. Many individual scenes are good. There’s one digression near the end that justifies the contradiction between Lucifer’s roles as freedom-lover and a perpetrator of suffering. If that had come earlier, and been supported throughout the book, it would have been a very different, much more interesting, story.

I, Lucifer has very good moments, but they’re all temporary. For all Duncan’s skill, the book he wanted to write just wasn’t very good. The main character merges the worst parts of unlikeable and uninteresting, the other characters barely exist, and there’s almost no plot to speak of. I do find myself vaguely curious about what Duncan’s other novels are like, but unless someone promises me that they are very different than this, I won’t be giving them a chance.

Grade: D+

 
2013
07/06
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John Scalzi – Redshirts (Book Review)

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John Scalzi – Redshirts

It’s a running joke that the bit characters on Star Trek get killed cheaply, but what do they think about it? Redshirts is the story of the crewmembers on a ship very much like The Enterprise who realize that they’re always the ones to die on missions. They look for an explanation and a way to save themselves.

It’s no secret that I dislike John Scalzi’s writing style, but I still had high hopes for this. Redshirts didn’t need to be brilliant, but just the clever, well-structured sci-fi adventure that Scalzi does best. And I assumed that his writing had probably improved over the years.

How wrong I was.

Oh, it’s clever at times. Scalzi takes a metatextual nerd joke and builds a story around it that actually makes sense at times. But the characters are flat and pointless, and the writing usually doesn’t feel right for the content. Redshirts should either be a light farce that doesn’t take its situation seriously, or a psychological horror piece about people who can’t escape the force that is killing them one by one. This dallies in both extremes (some death scenes are played for laughs, while at other times characters betray each other to save themselves), but it usually ends up stuck in an awkward middle. The story is played seriously, but without the pathos it needs. And I’m never given much reason to care about anyone in the book, which makes it awkward when the story stops to give a minor character some growth.

Seriously, this is what passes for character development in Redshirts:

“Man, I owe you a blowjob,” Duvall said.

“What?” Dahl said.

“What?” Hester said.

“Sorry,” Duvall said. “In ground forces, when someone does you a favor you tell them you owe them a sex act. If it’s a little thing, it’s a handjob. Medium, blowjob. Big favor, you owe them a fuck. Force of habit. It’s just an expression.”

“Got it, Dahl said.

Yeah, I get it. Light, funny, sexually-charged banter can be fun. But this scene feels lifted from a C+ paper in a class called “Character Quirks 101”.

It’s not just the characters, though. The plot and its resolution, which seemed like another good Scalzi effort at first, eventually go completely off the rails. Redshirts jokes about the nonsensical science in Star Trek-like dramas, which is fair enough. But after establishing the bad science rules, the characters proceed to solve their problems in ways that barely follow from that! Let that sink in: Scalzi presumably meant his writing to rise above the sci-fi hackwork he jokes about, even if it was working in the same system. But instead, he makes fun of those systems, and then proceeds to do a worse job himself.

Seriously. One of the most important actions the characters take comes a few pages after they discuss the fact that it wouldn’t work. They don’t find a way around it. One of them just pops up in the next chapter and says “Hey guys, it’s time to do this.” Some major later plot points also don’t follow from the established rules. (I can’t talk about them without spoilers, so I’ll put them below in the comments.) This book is supposed to work because it plays around with sci-fi clichés in clever ways, so it’s a real problem that the cleverness fails after the first hundred pages.

Then there’s the rest of the plot. It ends abruptly, with a twist that barely makes sense. It’s then followed by three codas, named (and written in) “First Person”, “Second Person”, and “Third Person”. Each one fleshes out a character who only appeared for brief moments in the main story, giving us closure about something that doesn’t matter at all. And yes, one is written with an irritating second-person point of view, for no discernible reason other than the writing gimmick. The final coda would be a pretty good short story on its own, but in context it just reminds us of the single awkward scene its person appeared in: Witnessing a moment of growth for another character that no one cared about.

Yes, I know Redshirts is up for a Hugo award right now. I can’t imagine why. It has an interesting set-up, but it falls apart thanks to flat characters, inconsistent events, and a plot structure that barely even makes sense. Save yourself the effort.

Grade: D

 
2013
06/28
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Raymond Chandler – The Big Sleep (Book Review)

The classic noir novel The Big Sleep has in many ways not aged well. The female characters are petty, childlike, and even get smacked around a bit by the hero. That pervasive sexism is eclipsed by section in the middle with vicious, angry homophobia. And the famous “convoluted plot” (so complex that author Raymond Chandler reportedly forgot who shot one of the characters!) is actually pretty straightforward compared to a modern heist or mystery movie. (To The Big Sleep’s advantage, though, the plot twists feel more natural here, whereas many stories today go out of their way to cram in surprises.) And the ending, whose pop psychology probably seemed right to people in 1939, feels forced and unbelievable today.

But the core of the story still works surprisingly well. The main draw is Philip Marlowe, the private investigator at the center of this mystery. Confident and street-smart, he always lands on his feet (if not without much profit), and is in control even when on the wrong side of a gun. Almost everyone Marlowe meets is scared, hiding secrets, and making stupid decisions, but as the hero he sees right through them. This is a compelling fantasy. Like a cool friend we can aspire to be, seeing the world through Marlowe’s eyes makes us feel like we’re also smarter than everyone else.

The writing feels a little clichéd, of course. This story is the template for the hard-boiled PI, and everything is appropriately harsh and gritty. Marlowe uses metaphors of crime and violence just to describe everyday scenes, because that’s what is on his mind. While it does get ridiculous at times, most of it feels more natural than I’d expect. Lines like “dead mean are heavier than broken hearts” are easy to laugh at in isolation, but build a consistent character and worldview in their place.

The Big Sleep has some real strengths, and still works if you have the right sensibilities. Overall, though, I can’t quite recommend it. The book’s best parts can be found in other works today, without the offensive parts and dated references.

Grade: C+

 
2013
06/14
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Party of One (RPG Gamebook Review)

Party of OneKobold Press has a series of single-player RPG adventures released as Party of One. They’re simple gamebooks based on the Pathfinder system (a D&D spin-off), with all the stats, battles, and die rolls that that implies. However, they explain all the needed rules in the text and keep them streamlined (with no initiative, critical hits, or similar items). Presumably they’re aimed to bring new people into the Pathfinder world, though I don’t know how many people out there are interested in a Choose Your Own Adventure dice-fest but don’t already know the basics of D&D.

I’m reviewing all three as a single item, since each costs $3 and can be completed (with some time peeking at other paths) in about a half hour. They’re sold as downloadable PDFs, and average only fifteen pages each. That page count includes a title page, a page of legal details, and two different character sheets – even though the game explains all the stats needed without referring to those character sheets, and even contradicts them sometimes. Obviously, that doesn’t leave much space for the game.

Each one casts you as a low-level (pre-made) adventurer, faced with a crisis that can basically be resolved in one scene. Your chances of surviving all the battles seem to be about 50-50, and the choices seem fair without arbitrary death or sudden plot twists. However, your decisions do matter: Two of the scenarios have multiple endings, depending on what you did while playing. (The choices it offers frequently depend on past events, so the paths can keep merging together and then branching back off when appropriate.) The real challenge, though not a difficult one, is to figure out how to get the different endings.

These are simple fun, and I never felt like I was being jerked around by unexpected consequences of my decisions. They really are like playing through a story, and are more successful than I expected. They’re still very slight, though. I wonder whether these worked because they were so short that they didn’t need to offer many branches or hard decisions. I’d definitely be interested in longer-form work by author Matthew J. Hanson, but as far as I can tell he’s written no other solo gamebooks. Though these are decent, each one is like an introductory chapter that ends quickly. I’d expect more from a $9 book, let alone a PDF-only product.

The one I’ll highlight is Kalgor Bloodhammer and the Ghouls through the Breach, which features the best and worst of the series. It has the least linear storyline. Once your Dwarven hero discovers his city is threatened, the choices are based around a central hub with options that the player can do in any order. It does matter which ones are chosen first, and that lets the story proceed in a natural way. Of course, I’d prefer a longer story with a few more choices, but it’s still a good structure. On the other hand, it could have used some editing. A supporting character’s stats change without reason (another story has the main character’s damage change as well), and if you choose not to do an important task and later return to that location, the book assumes that you had previously tried and failed. Even stranger, all of the endings give the impression of being “bad” ones, but there really isn’t one where the hero is satisfied with the outcome. Normal linear stories can get away with unhappy endings, but when the reader is an active participant in a challenge, there needs to be a chance to win.

Party of One is very different from the last gamebook I tried based on an existing RPG system. Unlike Tunnels & Trolls, this doesn’t expect the player to be an expert in the rules and it keeps the player on a fair path through a coherent story. It provides a template for RPG gamebooks that feel like a satisfying story experience. Being very short and a little rushed, it is only a template, though. I’m still looking for a completely successful one.

Grade: C+

 
2013
06/06
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Liane Moriarty – What Alice Forgot (Book Review)

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Liane Moriarty – What Alice Forgot

I was a little worried when my new book club chose a chick-lit selection for the second month in a row, but it ended up being an interesting opportunity to consider what makes “chick-lit” good or bad. Liane Moriarty’s What Alice Forgot doesn’t always feel like it’s aimed at me, but it’s still a very good read.

At it’s heart, this book is about understanding people: Alice Love is a woman who bumps her head at the age of 39, and can’t remember anything from the past decade. In her mind, she’s a flighty 29-year-old woman pregnant with her first child and madly in love with her husband, while in reality she’s a sharp, efficient middle-aged soccer mom going through a bitter divorce. Alice sets out both to fix and figure out her life. The reader will be pretty interested, too, especially after the abrupt beginning that puts them right in Alice’s shoes.

I guess the common complaint about “chick-lit” is that it focuses on exaggerated clichés about domestic women, leaving everyone else out. In the past, I’ve argued that the problem with most romantic comedies and similar works is that the characters feel as much like unrealistic fantasies as the people in action movies. But while characters are expected to be secondary in an action movie, I want interesting, believable people in a story about relationships. I’m not completely sure if that was a fair criticism on my part, but if it’s true, What Alice Forgot is the answer I’ve been looking for. It’s protagonist will definitely appeal to the chick-lit audience, but the book is smart, funny, and features three-dimensional characters. Some early character-building is based on flashbacks and discussions that simply tell the reader what to think of everyone, which is an overused technique, but the book proceeds to reveal nuances that sometimes call those first impressions into question. Most main characters have to reconcile the person they used to be with the person they are now, and if it’s a little suspicious that everyone has changed so much, each individual person is believable and sympathetic.

Alice’s unfolding story is fascinating, with lots of uncertainty about if, or how, she’ll reconcile with her husband, bridge the gap with her sister, and keep up on her life. The book relies too much on “muscle memory” and scheduled events keeping Alice on track, but the scientific realism isn’t the point. The biggest problem is a couple distracting side stories: While Alice’s story is told by a third-person narrator inside her head, her sister Elisabeth gets frequent interludes with diary entries. Elisabeth’s story is as interesting as Alice’s, and makes a good counterpoint to it, but her writing voice is overly precious and seems too aware of the fact that she’s in a book. Worse, an elderly friend occasionally shows up in letters that tell a story about her falling in love. That whole plot is telegraphed in its first page, but is supposed to be funny and surprising. I’m sure that it was shoe-horned in by an editor who said that the book needed another romance in order to appeal to women, since it barely intersects with the main story at all.

I was disappointed by the ending, but the more I think about it, the more I realize that that is mainly due to the high standards set by the rest of the book. There are several sudden twists related to Alice learning important details of her past, and it jumps ahead to provide a couple different endings. The important thing is that the characters end up in places that feel fair to them, and the full details Alice learns do flesh out her backstory believably. But the strength of the book before that point is in how the characters evolve according to the surprising events. When the ending rushes through that to just show the surprise and then the eventual result, it feels like we’re missing the most important part of the experience.

What Alice Forgot is a moving, memorable book. Though I don’t feel any compulsion to run out now to buy more books featuring blurbs from Woman’s World and Marie Claire, I will be interested the next time my book club selects a title along these lines.

Grade: B

 
2013
05/31
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The Gatsby Mythos

While reading The Great Gatsby, I was struck by the end of the first chapter. This is how F. Scott Fitzgerald chose to introduce the title character:

 I didn’t call to him, for he gave a sudden intimation that he was content to be alone – he stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way, and, far as I was from him, I could have sworn he was trembling. Involuntarily I glanced seaward – and distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and faraway, that might have been the end of a dock. When I looked once more for Gatsby he had vanished, and I was alone again in the unquiet darkness.

A brooding figure in early Twentieth Century New England, gesturing over the ocean? Everything about that quote screams “H. P. Lovecraft” to me. It’s mysterious and moody, and both that paragraph and the preceding one (in which Gatsby “regards” the stars) could easily describe someone attempting to wake Cthulhu from his slumber.

Unlike Lovecraft, who spelled out every detail in the end of his stories, the narrator of Gatsby never admits to anything supernatural. I couldn’t help watching for hints of this, though, and there were enough to keep me interested. Here is what I found.

(From here on, there are major spoilers for The Great Gatsby.)

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2013
05/25
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