Just a quick note to let Australian purchasers know that Helene Bartleson’s book ‘Golden Leaves’ is available to order from JimmyD’s Bookshop. Just send us an email to enquire about postage to your destination, or you can call us on 02 4751 8010.

Earlier this year on January 26 American SF author Philip Jose farmer died.
Like many others I started reading his books while at school and
enjoyed the mix of fiction and humour with historical fact and
literature. He was a prolific authour with well over 50 novells and
far more short stories to his credit and winning numerous awards in
recognition of his talent. Farmer often drew upon real characters and
never more so than in his Riverworld series where he uses figures such
as Richard Burton (the explorer not the actor), Alice Hagreaves (of
Alice in Wonderland), Cyrano De Bergerac and Samuel Clemens among
numerous others and places them in a “what would they do” situation
based upon their known characters.
In his 6 book “World of Tiers” series (seven if Red Orc’s Rage is
included) he indulges in what appears to be a love of pulp fiction
characters. The heros invariably are introduced as pretty much average individuals that go on, with mainly courage, to have extraordinary
adventures fuelled by an incredible amount of luck. In the series
Farmer created entire Universes with different natural laws to those
we are used to with creatures often based upon myths and legends. I
was dissappointed in the final book in the series “More than Fire”
published in 1993 which seemed to be a hurried attempt to tie up ends
and complete the series. The odd book “Red Orc’s Rage” on the other
hand was an original work using the idea that real people may be able
in psychiatric therapy to “become” characters from the World of Tiers
books as a form of emotional and mental healing.
I never had the facination Farmer did for Tarzan or nordic legends and
could not really get into many of his books but appreciated the
variety of his works. “Venus on the half shell” remains a favourite as
much for the idea of its coception as for its actual content. Farmer
wrote the book using the psuedonym of Kilgour Trout. Kilgoure Trout is
in fact a fictional author who is a character in many novels by Kurt
Vonnegut and when Farmer had the book published the photo on the back
even has Farmer dressed to look like how Trout may have looked,
complete with fake beard and sun glasses.
For those who enjoy a bit of simple SF escapism I recommend trying a
few of his books, or even a bit of a laugh reading some of the titles
of his writings such as “Bradley Brave Sees New York With Observing
Injun Eyes—And with Knocking Knees” or “The Face that Launched a
Thousand Eggs” and “St. Francis Kisses His Ass Goodbye”.
Much more information can be gained from websites such as Wikipedia or
the official website www.pjfarmer.com

David

The back of this book proclaims that “Kazuo Ishiguro has been acclaimed in the Sunday Times for ‘extending the possibilities of fiction.’ In Never Let Me Go he has fashioned another remarkable story – a story of love, loss and hidden truths – that takes its place among his finest work.”

Usually I’d consider ‘extending the possibilities of fiction’ to be a nugget of boring PR-speak, the sort of thing you see on the back of dreary novels about broken families who eat their way around the globe while translating David Bowie into Cornish: the sort of books that should, by all accounts, be interesting, but instead spend so much time trying to be quirky that they fall as flat as a gluten-free pancake.

Kazuo Ishiguro really does stretch the boundaries of fiction. His work is sometimes surreal and it often features a somewhat bleak, science-fiction type future, but I wouldn’t call him a science fiction author (his science is integrated wonderfully into the narrative, by the way: he doesn’t fall prey to the “info-dump” type storytelling that even some very good science fiction authors love [I wrote a post on the info dump here]).

I won’t tell you enough of the plot of this one to spoil you, but it’s set in a slightly dystopic version of our own times, much like Ishiguro’s other work. It’s almost as if he’s a depressed, less flippant Nick Horby, and all I mean by that is that there’s a sort of inherent Englishness to his work, not quite stiff-upper-lip but almost there. Kathy, the narrator, reminisces about her childhood at a strange, idyllic boarding school in the English countryside. Who is Kathy? Who are her friends?

The lack of info-dumping becomes important here: the book has a soylent greenish subtlety to horror that brings you slowly to an uncomfortable realisation about just how skewed this version of modern Britain is.

I’m glad Ishiguro hasn’t been pigeon-holed as a “genre” author. I recommend this book even if you don’t enjoy science fiction. It’s a very sad book, with very real insights and beautiful, elegiac storytelling.

- Agnes.

The info-dump is one form of exposition, in which authors inform their readers of the important background to the action and plots of their books. An author loads a large amount of information (usually to describe something that sets their world apart from the real one) in a way that is counter to usual conversation or narration. This is a way of quickly and completely filling in background information, usually to furnish an elaborate plot. It’s easy to recognise — you might get the feeling that for a couple of pages the narrator of your book or your character’s voice has been replaced by a dreary university lecturer or an overenthusiastic infomercial spruiker.

A lot of science-fiction authors do this, and writers of television medical dramas are prone to it, too. Basically, instead of saying something like “I’m about to walk through the HoloPort Door,” and letting the audience work out  themselves through context and later information what this means, one character will go on a monologue, in speech or in thought, explaining something that in the world of the book or  movie they both know fairly well.

“I’m about to walk through the HoloDoor, T’akus, and as you well know this special hydraulic seal is made of the rare intergalactic element Siliconza-a, which is only found on one of the planet B52’s twelve moons. God knows what would happen if the hydraulic seal failed!  I guess we’d be sucked out into space, which is filled with intergalactic dust from the Decade Spaceship War, since that war was fought with spaceships powered by lint from the bellybutton of the Planet Zorg’s space-worm crop.”

Cue a shuddering halt and a dramatic hydraulic door failure.

If you’re unlucky enough to have read The Da Vinci Code then you’ll probably know exactly what I mean. Of course, not all information dumps are as heavy-handed as this example and Brown’s handiwork. There are a lot of great novels that contain a large amount of background and history. The trick is seamlessly integrating the things your audience needs to know into the fabric of the story. When that isn’t done correctly, it’s very obvious.

I think Patrick O’Brian supplies his audience with background information particularly well. His books, set on Nelson’s fleet during the Napoleonic wars, are loaded with interesting nuggets of information, and you can jump right into the history. The historical realities are also cemented, I think, by O’Brian’s strong characters: times change, but people don’t, and reading about Aubrey and Maturin’s adventures is a delight, mired as they are in a rich world of historical fact.

We have HMS Surprise in the shop at the moment.

- Agnes.

Someone used to give my dad  a Far Side calendar for  Christmas every year, one of those desk calendars you flip over every day. I loved reading that calendar all at once. There was something about Gary Larson that was too cool to save for a calendar.

Gary Larson, if you didn’t know, does one-panel cartoons that are often dark, surreal and wildly funny. They’re a great gift for someone with a sense of humour, I think, but they’re also addictive (hence the way I spurned the one-cartoon-a-day calendar format).

Here’s something you might not know (that I discovered on Wikipedia). One of Larson’s cartoons features two chimpanzees groooming each other. One finds a blonde hair on the other and says “ Conducting a little more ‘research’ with that Jane Goodal tramp?” This is typical of Larson’s humour, which often features anthropomorthised animals. The Jane Goodal Institute wanted to sue Larson for this cartoon, but Goodal refused since she found the cartoon funny. She has since praised Larson’s ideas for the way they contrast the way that animals and humans live.

Jane Goodall isn’t the only friend Gary Larson has in the world of zoology, either. He has had a species of butterfly and a species of louse named after him. 

You’ll love Gary Larson if you like smart, surreal, weird and “quirky” humour, if you love animals or pop culture. I think this book would be a great gift for the scientist, office worker or comedy buff in your life. Maybe I’ll give it to my dad as a replacement for the calendar, this year.

Agnes.

Joy of joys! Somebody just brought in a copy of Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts… which is also on the Top 100 lists. Therefore I simply must read it. I will slowly make my way through it and let y’all know how I go. Its a doozie.

L’Yan

The most recent film of The Painted Veil came out in 2006, starring Edward Norton and Naomi Watts. The vibrant Kitty meets Walter, a quiet but intelligent young doctor. The two marry, but Kitty has an affair and Edward accepts a place as a sort of epidemiologist in China, which is in the middle of a cholera outbreak. The movie is quite stunning visually and the nasty, loveless relationship (at least one one side — as a Facebook user would say, it’s complicated) was reminiscient, at least for me, of another Maugham work, Of Human Bondage  (that one was made into a charming and amusing film with Leslie Howard and Bette Davis).

The book is very… polite. Maugham is very much a product of his era (as all writers are), and in my (not terribly informed) opinion, that might be why his books are often dismissed as overwrought and sentimental. The latter is certainly true, but if you enjoyed the emotional interplay of the movie (which is really quite sophisticated at the same time as it is downright malicious), you’ll like the book.

Maugham’s plain prose was often criticised for being quite lowbrow,  and this is easy to see, especially when you consider that in his time Modernism was first beginning to assert itself. It’s not hard to infer that Maugham was probably confused about his sexuality (for a public man of Maugham’s generation, being openly gay was impossible), and many of the relationships in his books are dysfunctional and overemotional.

If you liked the movie, I’d recommend that you give the book a go, especially if you like reading classics. Even with the subject matter there’s a sort of comforting quaintness in this book that you won’t get in many other writers of Maugham’s vintage.

-Agnes.

You can find this one, and some other Maugham (pronounced “mawm”, by the way) works, on our Classics shelf. We have whole shelf devoted to books that have been turned into films (and vice versa), too.

What do you think of Maugham?

Excerpt from The Dag’s Dictionary by Richard Glover, published by ABC Books 2004:

Damn!nesia (damn nee’ zee ah) n.

An affliction by which you walk purposefully from one end of the building to the other, but forget mid-trip where you were going.

I suffer from this constantly.

JimmyD’s staff always get a laugh out of this book.  We have a copy in stock right now for $11. But be warned: this book never sticks around very long!

I also like this one:

Liebry (ly’ bree) n.

A pile of unread but fashionable books placed on a coffee table in order to impress visitors.

L’Yan

This copy is now SOLD. Let us know if you are interested and we can putyou on our seeking list!

Twenty delightful stories for children about how the world began by the author of the wonderful autobiography ‘My Place’, where she told the story of her aboriginal ancestry and mother and her grandmothers experiences living in Western Australia.
This book is in lovely condition and the stories will delight young ones.

Two books I selected from our shelves that contain typical Byronic heroes. Wondering how I linked these together?

You may not know what I’m talking about, but you know the type. That’s the thing with stereoypes, with heroes, with protagonists. We may not have a term for these things, but we all know the type.

The typical Byronic hero is idealised but flawed. Lord Byron, for whom the Byronic hero is named, was the first “modern-style” celebrity, and nowadays he’d be characterised in the media as a rock star. His ex-lover Lady Caroline Lamb famously described him as “mad, bad and dangerous to know”, and this is the essence of the Byronic hero.

The Byronic hero is intelligent, cunning, and maybe even criminal. Crucially these more negative characteristics are set off by something negative, perhaps a tendency toward introspection and moodiness, or a streak of cowardice (perhaps just realism) or narcissism. Consider Rhett Butler from Gone With The Wind. He is shunned by his family for being thrown out of West Point, yet is obviously well-educated. He has an adversarial relationship with many characters, and his insight into human nature prevents him from salvaging his love for Scarlett. Cue bitter tears.

The Byronic hero is also intelligent, astute and educated, yet he or she (usually he) struggles with integrity, often bucking convention and suffering for it. Byronic heroes are usually physically attractive and generally in love with someone, but (again, most importantly) often are burdened with a dark secret or source of guilt. Consider Stephen Dedalus from the works of James Joyce. Stephen is considered by his friend Buck Mulligan to be a great poet, but he cannot seem to relate to many people very well. He is extremely guilty over the fact that he could not pray for his mother as she lay on her death bed – his stubborn moral decisions about religion (among other things) prevented him from doing this).

The Byronic hero may be privileged (socially or in terms of money) but will show a disregard for social conventions and their own responsibilities.

The Byronic hero often has an understanding of his of her inner world, but may be overburdened thus. You’re beginning to see a pattern, right? You know a character like this.

To further explore this, I’ll first tell you about some boring literary stuff. Then we’ll talk about some real (fictional) Byronic heroes.

Scholars have traced the tradition of the Byronic hero from the works of John Milton. Milton published the twelve-book version of his epic poem Paradise Lost in 1674. It is heavily concerned with the conflict between God’s foresight and omnipotence and man’s free will.

It wasn’t until the American and French revolutions and the Romantic period that people really began to sympathise with Satanic characters. In 1819 Percy Shelley (a contemporary of Byron) put forth that Milton’s Satan was morally superior to the tyrranical God of the poem. Most crucially, he said that Satan’s greatness of character is flawed (again) by vengefulness and pride. Byron wrote a semi-autobiographical epic narrative poem from 1812 to 1818, called Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. Many of the elements of the Byronic hero are in this: a world-weary character who searches for enlightenment in foreign lands.

That’s crucial to the characterisation of the Byronic hero. The Byronic hero is flawed, and the “but” in the character’s description is very important. Brilliant BUT self-destructive, moral BUT with a Dark Secret, full of integrity but dark and mysterious, etc etc. Consider Bruce Wayne of Batman.

A few more examples: Rochester in Jane Eyre is a typical Byronic hero. Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights is also a popular example (a larger than life dark-and-handsome romance who never wavers from his goal), as well as Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo. The heroes of many hard-boiled detective novels, as I discussed here, are similarly flawed. Sam Spade is a contemporary example of the Byronic hero, as is Philip Marlowe. You might also consider the titular Doctor House from the TV series House to be a similar hero — he’s brilliant but, as you probably would have guessed by now even if you don’t watch the show, Tragically Flawed in more ways than one. Gothic fiction was bursting with Byronic heroes, as are spaghetti Westerns such as The Good, The Bad And The Ugly. Consider also the Phantom of the Opera and the Vampire Lestat. The Modernist era also gave rise to a lot of Byronic heroes

Byronic heroes are a lot more interesting than your regular old white-knight hero, and there’s still usually an element of romance there… the carefully tousled hair, the enigmatic secrets, etc etc.

The Byronic hero fits into the larger genre of the antihero, which we might take a look at next time. The Byronic hero usually has an air of sweeping romance about him or her — their tragic flaws are never so tragic that you don’t adore the character eventually.

A very contemporary example is Edward Cullen from the Twilight series. And now I seem to have linked pop culture with high culture, and so I’ll finish there.

If you got the whole way through that — congratulations!

-Agnes