Date: 2007-06-30 15:28 Subject: H.P. Lovecraft by Houellebecq Security: Public Tags: essays, h_p_lovecraft, horror, michel_houellebecq

H.P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life (1991)
by Michel Houellebecq, translated by Dorna Khazeni
247 pages - Believer Books

This is a long essay that presents Lovecraft as a sort of hero for those who are disgusted by the world and want to turn away from it; those who believe that life is meaningless and would rather just retreat into their imagination. It's not an academic essay, and though the belligerent and hyperbolic tone of the piece is amusing, it does begin to grate after a while, especially as the author seems to mostly rely on the stories and scanty secondary material that has been translated into French. I also wonder, at times when the author praises Lovecraft's literary and poetic sensibility, if Lovecraft isn't a writer, like Poe, who improves with translation - because even his admirers in the English-speaking world mostly concede that his prose style is creaky and often tends to the unbearably purple.

It was somewhat entertaining while I read it, but I felt disappointed when I realized I was getting to the end and it hadn't really gone anywhere. A far better example of the potential of 'creative literary biography', with plenty of room for personal opinion, is Emmanuel Carrere's book on Philip K. Dick, I Am Alive and You Are Dead. The approximately 100-page essay is padded out by an introduction by Stephen King, and two stories by Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu" and "The Whisperer in Darkness". The King piece was probably the best thing in here.

Date: 2007-04-17 11:43 Subject: Twentysomething Essays by Twentysomething Writers Security: Public Tags: essays, usa

Twentysomething Essays by Twentysomething Writers (2006)
edited by Matt Kellogg and Jillian Quint
293 pages - Random House

A collection of essays by writers in their twenties who address some aspect of their life. These were selected from a contest of email submissions. The obvious limitation is that all of these are from people in the US, but as you read on it's rare to find a submission that isn't from a writing program student/graduate who isn't living in or spent a significant time in New York City. I suppose in a way an opportunity like this probably overwhelmingly pre-selects for that kind of submission, but most of the essays end up being from a somewhat narrow section of society.

The best pieces here relate some personal experiences or feelings of the author. The worst try to generalize or tell you exactly how the world is now, or what everybody in this age group is like. Perhaps the editors share a lot of the blame, because the introduction was cringe-inducing and probably one of the worst pieces of writing in here (using phrases like, "It was as if we were stuck using a Microsoft Outlook approach in a Gmail world." - seriously, that is terrible, just horrid; that makes me want to throw things at the writer). Also, some of the pieces were filled with casually used curse words, which, in my opinion, just makes the author seem stupid.

I don't want to say I hated this book, because in some ways it was an enjoyable read, and I was always interested to pick it up again and read further. In a way it's a bit like a collection of mostly good magazine articles - readable, but you'll rarely find anything of lasting value. And even if you find yourself hating a piece, it'll be finished after a few more pages. I myself am at the tail-end of my twenties, so that was part of my motivation for reading this; I wasn't really expecting to 'identify' with others, and I for the most part didn't, but I don't think it made me be any more negative about others, so maybe that's something.

Date: 2007-02-11 12:35 Subject: Winter Notes on Summer Impressions by Dostoevsky Security: Public Tags: essays, fyodor_dostoevsky, russia, travel

Winter Notes on Summer Impressions (1863)
by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, translated by Kyril FitzLyon
93 pages - Quartet Books

These are some thoughts and reflections on Dostoevsky's trip to Western Europe in the summer of 1862 that were originally published in a periodical he edited. This book is mostly focused on his time in France and England, though to be honest there is minimal space given to actual impressions and experiences, and they mostly serve as a springboard for FD to talk about whatever he feels like talking about. It's also written in a sort of jokey, repetitive, often ironical style, and there's not a lot of development of thought; though on several pages he does articulate thoughts that he would develop in later, more weighty works. This was kind of a disappointing read, as it's just not very much of anything at all.

Date: 2005-11-27 00:32 Subject: Bradbury Speaks Security: Public Tags: essays, ray_bradbury, science_fiction

Bradbury Speaks: Too Soon from the Cave, Too Far from the Stars (2005)
by Ray Bradbury
243 pages - William Morrow

This book is a collection of essays by Bradbury, all of them of the 'familiar' kind, as in they're about his experiences, his views, people he's known, etc. About half have been published before, as magazine articles or forewords to books, while the others are published here for the first time. A few of the pieces are older, but most of them date from the 80's, 90's and early years of this decade.

I'm familiar with the sound of Bradbury's voice, and so reading this book often I could hear his voice speaking the words. Many of the pieces are quite short, and they're all easy to read. Overall you get a good idea of Bradbury's energetic, imaginative attitude, though if you're as familiar with Bradbury as I am a lot of this will seem rehashed. Even some of the essays repeat, in part, other essays. Maybe the most interesting one was The Ardent Blasphemers, his foreword to an edition of Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, where he compares Captain Nemo to Captain Ahab.

At the same time, this collection rarely rises above what it seems to be, which is Bradbury cleaning out his file cabinets himself so that someone else isn't doing it after he dies. He's not exactly noted for his essays, and a large chunk of these weren't good enough to get published anywhere. And the overall quality of his writing in the last couple of decades has been spotty. Ray Bradbury's work has meant a lot to me, and at times reading this book I remembered the enthusiasm, creativity, and imagination that excited me about his best fiction; but there is also a lot of mediocre material here.