Slow Burn by Ace Atkins: A Book Review

Not too much to say about this Ace Atkins effort. Pretty good. Not bad. He's done better. I've read a lot worse from writers hired by the Parker Estate. (Are you hearing me, Michael Brandman?)

This one is a comfortable pair of slippers for those who've read all of the Spenser novels. It fits in, and does not detract, from it. It doesn't add to it, either, exactly, but that's okay. That's not why people read #44 of a single series, is it? For something very different?

It was a little jarring to read that Spenser has had a knee replacement, though. Not quite as bad as Superman needing dentures, but still an unwelcome reminder that even our heroes get old. Spenser won't be keeping up with any long-distance runners (a la Crimson Joy), I guess. Susan Silverman, by contrast, seems to be getting younger, thinner, sexier. This is a glaring inconsistency that you'll go along with, because who wants to hear that Spenser's had a knee replacement, and that Susan needs to wear Depends? What's next, Hawk swinging around his walker and whining about taxes?

So it was pretty good. Not especially memorable. Not bad. A comfy, if worn, pair of slippers.

The Bazaar of Bad Dreams by Stephen King

Photo: First Edition front cover, from the book's Wikipedia page.

Quick note: I'm just the 27th to publish a review of this book on Goodreads, as of 10.10.2015.  Though I'm sure someone will have typed one up and posted it before I finish mine.  Mine, as you know, are long.

Very good short story collection, but then again they all are.  (Except maybe Everything's Eventual, which I dimly remember had more misses than hits for me.)  This one has more hits than misses--many, many more--and even the misses miss in just minor ways for me.  My biggest beef with them is that they were maybe insignificant to me.  They might not be to you.  To each his own.

The book begins with a disclaimer that most of the stories have, of course, been previously published.  There's some claptrap about how a story is never finished, but he's got to write something there, I guess.  The fact is, these stories have been published before, and only a couple have been extensively revised, and he's publishing them now because that's the cool thing about short stories: you get paid for them once, and then if you're a name that anyone cares about, you can collect them in a book and get paid for them again.  Much more this time for King, I assure you.  I wonder if he's still getting $10M per book, if he ever was.

In front of each story is a short comment about the genesis of each.  Entertainment Weekly said these were reason enough to read the book.  These are usually distracting for me, so I read them all at once, before I read any of the stories, and then I started reading the stories the next day.  Again, to each his own.  But he's written better intros than any of these.  (My fave's probably the one with The Bachman Books.)

Anyway, some quick thoughts about some (stop now if you don't want to know anything about a few of the stories):

"Mile 81" reads well, as all his stuff does.  You're maybe sick of reading the phrase "compulsively readable" in my reviews of King's stuff by now, but I'll continue typing it as long as it stays true.  Such is the case with this story, except that it's one of my "insignificant" ones in this book, which is not necessarily a terrible thing.  Who doesn't need a good, irrelevant story?  But I read this book (impulsively and compulsively) when I perhaps should have been doing something else, so I felt badly when I felt that tinge of "So what?"  In this one, an alien vehicle kills some better drawn-out characters than usual for this kind of story, and then flies away.  And that's what happens at creepy and abandoned rest areas.  A better story could be made of this.

"Premium Harmony" is a very effective story about a guy and his wife (who very much don't get along), and a dog that prefers her over him.  This one's very memorable and very well-written, and could actually happen.  Good voice and good ending--not always a King strong-suit.  I read this one before somewhere.  Maybe in Details?  Atlantic Monthly?  There's usually a Previously Published In... page, but not this time.

"Batman and Robin..." is okay, a good story that passes the time.  Won't stick in my noggin' but it may in yours.

"The Dune" is a very good story about a judge who sees names in a sand dune, and when he does, that person drops dead soon.  Clever little ending, reminiscent of King's Night Shift days.

"Bad Little Kid" was okay.  The kid in question is sort of representative of all evil, in a ghostly kind of way.  Stands in for Death itself, too.  This is actually a common theme in this collection.

"A Death" is an extremely successful little story that'll leave you guessing until the end.  Written in a different style and tone for King, and he pulls it off.  Very good detail, and it'll make you question your belief system--even if you know how far people will go to deny, and to save their own skin, even from themselves.  I've seen way too much of that, and I was still surprised.  Created a long conversation between myself and my better half.  I read this one somewhere before, and was still impressed when I re-read it again here.  Very memorable.

"Morality" is an effective, nasty long story.  Sort of like a more shrill take on Indecent Proposal.  I read this, and "Blockade Billy," in the limited-release book that had just those two stories, and something originally written for his son, if I remember right.  Anyway, this one says something about the human condition, though I'm not sure what.  Maybe that you can't run away from your own guilt, but he's done that better elsewhere.  What was that short story about the farmer who killed his wife and tried to run away from it but kept seeing and hearing the rats?

"Afterlife" was entertaining and okay.  Probably not memorable for me.

"Ur" was also good, and a welcome back to the men in yellow coats and a bit of the Tower.  Good.  No surprises.  One of the longest in here.

I'd read "Herman Wouk Is Still Alive" somewhere before and just skimmed it here.  Very good story.  A bit of a head-scratcher about life, about depression, about poverty.  About how some find peace and some don't.  Memorable.

"Under the Weather" is probably the most effective and memorable for me.  What does one do when someone you've placed your heart and soul to dies?  So effective because I can imagine this actually happening, in exactly the way that it does here.  And I think you will, too.

For "Blockade Billy," see "Morality" comment.  This is a good story that maybe baseball fans--especially those who like the game from the early 1900s like I do--will better appreciate.

"Mister Yummy" is a bittersweet take on the same themes as the bad kid story.  This one worked better for me, but again it's about getting old and dying, and about what might come next.  There's a lot of that in this collection.

"The Little Green God of Agony" didn't work for me.  Not a bad story, exactly.  A shoulder-shrugger.

"That Bus Is Another World" could have been titled "Kitty Genovese."  I liked it's point more than I liked the story, and it doesn't go with King's intro for it at all.

"Obits" worked for me, but the love-interest tie-in didn't, and it sort of peters out at the end.  Good idea; bad follow-through.  Okay story.

"Drunken Fireworks" was the clunker of the collection for me.  Skip it.

"Summer Thunder" is the bummer of the collection, but still a very good story and very memorable, though the ending is never in doubt, and there really wasn't any other ending King could've given it.  Because of all this, it's a huge victory that this story is still so readable and memorable and sad.  It tries for a strong human will ending that was just more sad for me, though it may register a little better for you.

All in all, this is a great short story collection that shows some of King's best writing in years.  Worth your money and time.  Get it.

Bones by Jan Burke

This book has been sitting on my shelf for years, so maybe there were unrealistic expectations.  I was also impressed with the Edgar Award for best mystery this book won, as well.  But I wasn't overly impressed by the end.  It left me underwhelmed.

The first third or half was solid.  Investigators in the mountains; a serial killer with them.  Bodies turn up and you know the killer will get away.

But there were so many missteps after that.  The dialogue is really, really terrible.  Very stilted, very unrealistic.  It talks down to the reader and overexplains really simple things, as if the author didn't think the readers could follow along.

Some scenes just backfired.  When the killer mails to the main character, a reporter, a pair of her own underwear, she and her co-workers break into inexplicable laughter.  The author tries to say that the hilarity is due to extreme tension, but it never comes across that way.  It's just an awkward scene.  There's a lot of those.

An example that blends both of these: a bomb is set up beneath one of the bodies in the mountains, and the killer gets away (after awhile) in the confusion.  The author/narrator (or the first-person main character) asks: How could have known that was going to happen?  I read that and immediately thought, I did.  You will, too, even if you're not a particularly astute reader.  Awkward.

And the end is unrealistic.  The killer, a genius, suddenly comes to her workplace, where there's an armed guard or two, plus co-workers, plus a helicopter that lands on the roof--and he doesn't know any of this, even though he has stalked all of his other victims to the point of knowing their lives better than they do.  The ending is really unfulfilling.  It hinges on the identity of the killer's helper, but you'll figure that out before too long.  You might even see it right away, not too far into the book.

These could be forgiven if the writing was good enough, but it's not.  It's awkward, the dialogue is just plain bad, and it mellows in a sentimentality and, at times, in suddenly jarring religious-speak (the main character suddenly says out loud to someone that they don't have to work on the Lord's day--even more confusing, since the narrator says she's mostly a non-believer)--and, well, the book's an award-winning mess.  I have nothing against a suddenly and unrealistically religious character, or occasionally bad dialogue, or scene and plot missteps--but not all at once in the same book.

This book is the 7th in the series, but you don't have to read any of the previous ones to read this one.  Unfortunately, I have no desire to do so, nor to read any of the next ones.  I see that I have written more negatively of this book than many have, but I don't see any way around it.  If you wish, someone please let me know if the previous ones, or the latter ones, were any better.  I've never seen the show based on these books, but the clips look good, and the show's been successful for some time now.  If you're watching that, please let me know if it's any better than the books.

Beta-readers

A quick message:

I have 7 beta-readers lined up, and I would love 10, and I haven't asked any of my e-friends yet.  I mean, haven't we all been buried by people asking us to read their books and manuscripts?  And I especially feel bad because I haven't had the time to read and comment on too many of anyone else's work lately.

But if you're an e-friend of mine, and you wouldn't mind being a beta-reader, please let me know by Wednesday the 27th.  My email is on this blog page somewhere.

Please and thank-you!

Revival by Stephen King

Photo: The book's cover art, from its Wikipedia page

Another compulsively-readable book by Stephen King, Revival is one of his recent best.  A mish-mash of Frankenstein (thematically) and Lovecraft (in plot, Otherness, and The Angry Ones, as well as some fairly fearsome Gods) and Hieronymus Bosch, it reads like a first-person confessional (which is a well King has tapped for some time now) and it ends with one of the more horrifying things that King--or anyone I've read--has ever written.
 
Especially if it's true, if that's really what's waiting for us Afterwards.  If you've ever seen Bosch's Seven Deadly Sins or his Garden of Earthly Delights, you'll know what I mean.  Nasty, disturbing and memorable stuff.  This book's ending--and the potential ending for us all, good or bad--are just that: nasty, disturbing and memorable.  Frightening, because the "good" or "bad" doesn't matter.  The ending depicted here isn't the ending of the bad.  It's the ending of all of us.

In recent interviews, King has said that the views expressed by the narrator are not necessarily his--a fact that any reader is well aware, in anyone's writing.  But he has also said recently that he thinks about Death and God a lot (which King fans have always known), and that he does believe in God.  Sometimes he says that there has to be a God, because otherwise he would not have survived his accident or his addictions.  (This begs the question: Since others have not survived being hit by a car, or concurrent alcohol and coke addictions, does that mean there isn't a God?  Or does God simply not want them to live?)  Lately, King's been using Pascal's Wager to express his views.
 
(Pascal's Wager has always seemed like a cop-out to me, but it's really not meant to be.  And as I get older, and I contemplate that slab of stone more and more, Pascal's Wager sounds infinitely more rational.  Though I don't know how one can live a life as if one believes in God, which is what the Wager advises, if one truly does not believe.  But I suppose an agnostic like myself could pull it off.)

This is actually not much of a digression, as a belief in Something is very much at the core of this novel.  Picture an agnostic who grew up with devout, religious parents, and throw in some family tragedies, a wasted life of coke and booze, and some Lovecraftian Cosmic Horror, with Bosch's view of a potential eternity in Hell and a Frankenstein theme, and some hellish chaos on Earth at the very un-Stephen King-like end (after all the Frankenstein / Lovecraft / Bosch stuff), and you've just about got the narrator and his story.

There are some other horrors until then as well, neatly tucked into this novel.  There's a car accident you won't soon forget, and a dream about dead family members that those of us with dead family members will all relate to--and not happily.  And his ending after the ending (a writing style I've pointed out in my last ten or so reviews of King's work) is even more unforgettable.  It's debatable, in fact, if the first or second ending is more horrible.  Since I don't believe in the existence of the first, and since I very much believe in the existence of the evil--or of, worse, the tragic inexplicable--portrayed in the second, I'm going with the latter.  You watch the news, you see this.

The writing is as compulsively-readable as always, but--finally!!!--here are some horrors, terrors and chills, too.  If forced to rate out of five stars, I'd say this is a four--only if compared to his truly great stuff, like IT and The Shining.  But compared to his most recent stuff--some of it quite terrible, and sometimes, at best, rather pedestrian--Revival would get five.  Though the title refers to the revival of the narrator and a few of its almost-dead characters, it could well refer to King's horror writing as well.

Read it, regardless.  And then Wikipedia Pascal's Wager, if you have to, and tell me whether it makes more pragmatic, rational sense than it may have in your youth.

Cheap Shot--Book Review

Photo: The book's hardcover...cover?  From its Goodreads page.

Another good, compulsively-readable entry into the series by Atkins.

There's not much here you haven't seen before if you've read the others by Parker and Atkins.  But this one still stands apart from the others because of its purposely scattered structure.  Spenser's all over the place, from Boston to NYC and back again.  He speaks to old characters (Gerry Broz runs a fish store?!?), only some of whom are actually useful for this case.

This is the one startling aspect of this book.  Old, non-regular characters either come up (Broz; Tony Marcus; Ty-Bop) or are brought up (Rachel Wallace; April Kyle) simply to stir them up in the readers' minds.  Doing this could've led to disaster, almost like name-dropping, but Atkins handles it well.  It doesn't distract.  It adds.

This one reads a little more gritty, a little more true-to-life.  This is also different than many, but not all, of Parker's.  His often tended to get wrapped up neatly.  The better ones, now that I think about it, didn't end that way: Looking for Rachel Wallace and April Kyle's second (and last) come to mind.

Who-dun-it is not a surprise, exactly, although I was a little surprised about how it suddenly came to a head.  I mean this in a good way.  It makes sense, and the reader and Spenser were kind of heading there, but it all gets sidetracked, as did Spenser, as does the reader.  So when the ending happens, it all makes sense, and isn't really surprising, and yet it was a nice, little twist at the same time.

In a gritty, realistic kind of way.  Would it really happen that way?  The motel room?  The trunk?  Yes, I believe it really could happen that way.  But in the trunk?  Yes, because he just didn't care.  (I won't reveal the end, so you'll just have to read it to fully grasp what I'm talking about.)  Would it have ended that way in Parker's hands?  Nope.  But that's okay.

It works.  That's all that matters.  Things change.  People change.

And, often, they don't change.  The bad ones, when they get really pissed, tend to stay that way.  And then they do bad things.  And then everything sort of goes to hell.

Sometimes that kind of thing ends well.  Other times--I'm thinking Cormac McCarthy here--they don't.  As it is in real life as well.

Why American Horror Story: Coven Really, Really Sucked

Photo: Stevie Nicks, from her Wikipedia page.  Read on for the AHS: Coven connection, especially if you haven't seen the show.

It's over now, anyway, and the ending was so disappointing that I didn't even want to write about that.  That's bad, and that's how bad it was.  The only reason I felt even slightly motivated to write about it was because of how bad it was, and now I'm over it enough to do just that.  So, Coven sucked because of:

--Mona's end.  She was by far the most interesting, the most dynamic character, and the way her end was handled was indeed very sloppy.  What about all those scenes of her knowing about her darkness?  What about how she wanted to be better, and asked for forgiveness?  She knew Stevie Nicks, for God's sake, so how bad could she be?  (And I'm unsure of how I feel about unabashedly plugging Stevie Nicks so much.  I mean, the last episode began with a video for her.  But...she always did strike me as kinda earthy, kinda wispy, kinda Misty Day-like, actually.) True, her daughter saw her future killings of everyone, but could that really have been the case if she was dying of cancer the whole time?  And why not have the Axe Man do her in, if you're only gonna have her use him, which does him in, and then have her disappear for awhile so that we think she's dead, only to have her return, but be dying of cancer?  Does that make any sense at all?  And that Catholic / Hell / Purgatory judgment thing at the end, with her character and a few others?  No thanks.  That's as old and as unnecessary as the movie Ghost.  Didn't like it there; didn't like it here.  Writers do not judge their characters.  They only write about what happens.  Understandable that they wouldn't want Lange's character to seek redemption, as I said above, and then work to get it, since that's exactly what they did with her character last season--but this?  Did they have to do this?  And was that really a purgatory for her character--suddenly she doesn't like the guy (if she ever did) and she has a fit about the wooden floors and walls?  Incidentally, that voodoo-whatever guy was apparently responsible for that end, but remember, Mona was unable to make a deal with him to begin with because he said she lacked a soul.  No deal, so no punishment for reneging on that deal.  Stupid, ridiculous, and really, really bad writing.  Made me angry.

--Misty Day's end.  (And what a great character name!)  So, speaking of judgment, someone is supposed to remain in Purgatory, or just die (or, what exactly did happen to her?) because she doesn't want to kill anything?  And she feels like this to begin with because she was burned at the stake herself?  Why did she live just to be in Purgatory because she didn't want to kill anything--which, by the way, is normally seen as a good thing?  Why not just stay in the swamp, or go back there once the threat of getting killed was gone?  (A serious threat that Mona, by the way, took care of.)  Ridiculous ending to what could have been a good character.  After Mona, she was my favorite character.  Stupid, ridiculous, and really, really bad writing.  Also made me very angry.

--Misuse of Kathy Bates and Angela Bassett.  So Angela Bassett's character gets conked on the head by Mona's former slave / servant--who had died but not died, like almost everybody else--and then buried alive somewhere, and nobody knows where?  What was her character around for, anyway?  And was she that evil at the end that she would shove hot pokers in the throats of Bates's daughters?  If so, why wasn't she in her own Purgatory?  That's the thing about judgment: Once you judge a character for reason X, you have to judge every character by that same reasoning.  Or it's a mess.  What a waste of a good actress and a role that could have gone somewhere.  Speaking of judgment: What exactly did Bates's daughters do that was so bad that they deserved to be killed like they were, and then to be pokered like they were, for eternity?  Again, that's where judgment goes bad.  Stupid, and really, really bad writing.  And Kathy Bates...Well, at least her end was a little more understandable, though I'm still not keen on the whole judgment thing.  And her character had her scene-chewing moments.  But...again, did her daughters belong there, as well? And if the argument is used that those aren't really her daughters, but representations of them for Bates's own Purgatory--then wouldn't she get that, sooner or later?  I mean, she has all eternity to figure that out.  Once she does, it's not Purgatory-like punishment, because she knows it's not really her daughters getting it, anyway.  And does Bassett's character need to be there for all eternity as well?  Stupid, and really bad writing.

That's what really gets me about Lange's, and Bates's, and Bassett's characters (and maybe Misty Day as well, who had a certain flair): They were the only interesting ones, the ones with any sort of character arc, or personality, or sense of humor.  Or anything.  Like, at all.  And they get punished for that?  Stupid.

Have I gotten across how stupid I thought the whole thing turned out to be, and how bad the writing was?  And don't get me started on FrankenCarl.  What, exactly, was he around for?  And Madison.  She was, at least, interesting.  Did she get a Purgatory?  We didn't see one.  Misty Day gets one, completely undeserved, and she doesn't get one, when she mauled a bus-ful of boys (as understandable as that was, considering what they did), but then kills, but doesn't kill, Misty Day?  (So that she can later have a breakdown in eternity in a science class with a frog.  Reader, repeat that sentence again to yourself.)  There's perhaps a certain irony there, considering Roberts was later arrested for assaulting the real FrankenCarl.  They also later become engaged.  And--

What a mess!  What an incredibly horrible stinking mass of excrement that was still--because of the acting of Lange and Bates and Bassett--at least still shockingly bearable.  Until the end.  And coming on the heels of Season Two, which I thought was one of the best shows that I have seen in a very long time, perhaps ever...

So bad that it defies explanation, despite my reasons expressed here.  Unbelievable that the same writers who wrote Season Two also wrote this.  Like the Brandman book of a few blogs ago, this was so egregiously bad that it actually crossed the line and became offensive.  It's hard to screw up a series in which essentially anything goes, with really good actors and a talented writing crew--but they somehow managed.

And that's why American Horror Story: Coven really, really sucked.

Did you think it sucked?  Why?

Click here for American Horror Story: Freak Show, my new blog.  Each episode will be reviewed in the blog.  Let me know what you think!

Damned If You Do--Book Review: If You Read It, You're [see title]

 Photo: Book's hardcover, from robertbparker.net. 

The real title is Robert B. Parker's Damned If You Do, but if you read my reviews, you know how I feel about using a name as part of the title, especially if he's dead, so I won't further go at it here.  But...argh...

And that's pretty much what I have to say about this book itself, as well.  This is a giant step back from the other two Brandman novels, neither of which were exemplary to begin with.  What a horribly written story!  The dialogue is wooden and preposterous.  The story is tired and distant.  It's told and not shown.  And it's got little writer edits at the end of some sentences, like Brandman's explaining it to us.  (Note to Brandman: Mystery and procedural readers like to remember such things for themselves.  Even if they're unimportant--because you don't know until the end what was important and what wasn't, right?)

There are too many examples to cite them all.  There were so many that I had to put the book down and do something else.  I actually groaned and complained out loud.  And I can't find the one now I really wanted to put here, so...From page 247, after Jesse Stone saw a character, who he'd liked, die: "He hoped that the scotch would accomplish what he was unable to achieve himself...He wanted it to erase the haunting look in her dying eyes from his mind and his heart."

First, that's just bad writing.  Second, that's telling, not showing.  Third, if you've read Parker's--and even Brandman's--Jesse Stone works before, Stone (and the 3rd person narrator) would never think or speak like this.  Fourth, we all know why people drink after they've seen someone they like die.  Fifth, we all know why borderline alcoholics (or former alcoholics, which Stone is) drink after such an event.  Sixth, that last sentence--melodrama, anyone?  And Stone, and Parker--well, they're so anti-melodrama that this is just blasphemy, in of itself.  And I know that comparing Brandman and Parker is unfair because they're different people--but Brandman is so obviously trying to emulate Parker's sparse style, and failing so miserably at it, that the comparison is just here.  I feel certain that Parker would be upset with this book.

And the action sequences are just as bad.  This from page 239: "Suddenly everyone was on the move.  Chairs scraped loudly and tables were overturned as people began to anxiously respond.  There were shouts of panic.  The crowd began a confused surge towards the exits."

Again, this is just bad writing.  The word "suddenly" was used tons of times in this book.  That's bad.  When chairs scrape, it's loud.  So that's redundant--and it tells.  And it overuses adverbs, which I learned in high school and college is bad to do.  When people are "on the move," what is that, exactly?  When settlers are on the move, they're just walking along, and slowly.  There's probably lots of dust.  And when there are "shouts of panic" and scraping chairs and overturning tables--that's not how people "anxiously respond."  That's chaos.  Stuttering is anxiously responding.  And notice the word "began" is used twice in this one short paragraph.  Nobody begins to do something.  That's a huge pet peeve of mine, and it's used a million times in this book.  You're either doing that thing, or you're not doing that thing.  In this image, the people were well beyond the "began to anxiously respond" stage, whatever that is.  They were panicked and running over each other.  By definition, a surge is an action in progress, so there's no "began" there, either.

Literally almost every sentence and every paragraph has an instance of lazy writing, bad writing, passive writing, and...Oh, man, it was just plain horrible.  What a disappointment!  I don't want the reader to think I'm just nitpicking here, or in a bad mood, or whatever.  I'm telling it straight--the writing of this book is that bad.

So bad I was shocked at its badness.

So bad it gives hope to all unpublished writers out there--if this can find its way into Barnes & Noble, your book can, too.

So bad I pictured Parker rolling over in his grave.

So bad it was a blight on all the Jesse Stone books I've bought and read before--all in hardcover, too.

So bad that if someone else hadn't bought this book for me for Christmas, I would've stopped reading it.

So bad that I can't even say to save it for bathroom reading, which is the advice I usually give for bearably bad books.  But this isn't even bathroom reading--unless you need to use its paper.  Which you probably should.

This is so bad that it reminded me of Dorothy Parker's quip: "This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly.  It should be thrown with great force."

By the way, the characters and story are bad, too.  Stone, a police chief, tells a mass murderer that he feels "surprisingly comfortable" that he's watching his back.  I'm not kidding.  I actually disliked Stone at the end.

The best things about this book are the title, and the cover.  And that it ended.

Skip it, even if you have all the others.  It is worth having a hole in your collection so you don't have to put yourself through this.  It is that bad.

Don't even buy it in the remainder bin.  Don't start off the new year with this.  Don't do that to yourself.
   

American Hustle--Movie Review: Great Acting; Tepid Movie

Photo: Movie's poster, from its Wikipedia page.

Outstanding performances by Christian Bale, Amy Adams and Jennifer Lawrence didn't save this movie for me.  It's worth seeing for their performances alone--especially Adams', who appears like I've never seen her before--but you shouldn't necessarily think that the movie will be great because of them.

Though normally you would, right?  If you have three great performances--it's really Bale's film--and two other very good ones, then the movie should be great.  This is a first for me, that one movie could have so much great acting and yet still not work for me.  I mean, it was alright, but you'd expect much more, right?

The problem is in the writing.  Essentially, the scriptwriters wrote themselves into a corner that they couldn't escape.  The whole point of the film is that everyone's conning everyone, including themselves, and in the end, someone's got to walk away, which means someone's going to get the most conned.  And the way it was pulled off really didn't work for me.  And I mean, really.

For many reasons.  First, I had no doubt who'd walk away.  [Spoilers now.]  Bale and Adams were clearly going to stay together, and Lawrence was clearly going to walk away with her criminal boyfriend, yet stay on good terms with Bale.  You didn't know what would happen to everyone else, but you hoped for the best.

Well, that doesn't happen.  Jeremy Renner's character, who comes across perhaps as the nicest in the movie, gets sent to jail, as do the other politicians whose hearts are in the right places, but whose hands are in the wrong wallets and pockets.  And the FBI agent, who had a hubris problem and ultimately wanted his name in lights more than he wanted to fight crime--but who was still fighting crime, and killers and mobsters!--at the end looks dejected and doesn't get the credit for the politicians' arrests that he deserves.  And he may get fired, as well.  The serial killer mobster gets away, as do the two main characters, who essentially preyed on the pathetic, lost and desperate before they were caught. 

This makes the viewer--at least this viewer--feel like he's had to swallow too much Castor oil.  The acting is so good that you root for Bale and Adams and Lawrence, though you understand that the first two are criminals, and that the last one is an annoyance that her prettiness and crazy courage hide most of the time.  These are not nice people, though they are all trying to be, kind of, though you don't see enough of that to really root for them.  You just take their word for it when they say so, and they're so sad, and they're trying so hard, that you root for them.  And Bale cares about this kid, and Adams and Lawrence are so pretty, and then you realize that you're not really talking about the qualities of the film anymore, or the characters, and that something's amiss.

And that's the biggest problem.  You root for them because of the great acting, and not because of the characters' inherent worthiness.  Bale and Adams constantly say they're trying to be good, but only Bale convinces, and that's only at the end.  And he fails miserably trying to be the good guy who tries to save the actual good guy who's done an unwise thing.  These two characters are also likable more for the acting of those who portray them than they are for any likeability they actually have.  Bale, again, comes across as the more likeable, since he looks so ever-suffering, and since he truly loves both women, and the son of one of them--a boy who's not even his.  Adams comes across as very likeable (and as very very...well, never mind), though the viewer wonders where her loyalty lies, probably because she does, too.  Ultimately she wasn't as strong a character as she could have been, as I wanted her to be.  That was another big letdown.

Another issue is David O. Russell's sleight-of-hand.  The director shows you all of their hustles, all of their swindles, and he shows you all of the conversations about all of the hustles and swindles--but then doesn't show you the one that really matters at the end.  You don't know the hustle is on because you weren't shown it, while you were shown all the others.  That's a writer's and director's cheat.  How could the viewer possibly know it?  You see all of Bale's and Adams' conversations, and heart-rending conflicts, but you don't see the one they put together when it matters?  And when we're finally shown it, it isn't that awe-inspiring.  Essentially, it's just a lie, really.  The one they lie to is a charismatic, fast-talking, hyperkinetic--a role Bradley Cooper has played quite a few times now, in almost every film he's ever been in.  (Sorta makes me wonder if he's acting, or if he's playing Bradley Cooper playing these characters.  But I digress.)  The problem here is that he's at least fighting crime, not doing it (though he walks that fine line for awhile), and he's interesting and funny--and he's the one that loses out.  He doesn't get the credit he deserves, although he ambitiously reached for the stars, and wasn't boring.  Now he's got to go live with his annoying mother and his ignored fiancee--which wasn't very nice of him, either, the way he treats her, but that's really the least bad thing in a movie full of characters who all do some very bad things.  He's at least not hustling her, as he lets her hear as he tells Adams' character that he'll be right over.  Adams, who knows he's engaged, is still more than happy to spend time with him, and...bleh.

Why do some get away with it, and why do some don't, and why does the worst--the serial-killing mobster--get to go home?  It's never explained, and by the end, I was so over it that I just wanted to praise the performances and move on.

The worst thing I can say--if I haven't said enough already--is that this movie is by far the shortest of the ones I've seen recently, but it felt like the longest.  The Desolation of Smaug and Catching Fire were much, much longer movies--but didn't seem it.  American Hustle was much shorter--by about an hour, compared to the other two--yet seemed too long.  True, the others are action films, and the acting in them doesn't come close--yet, they may have been better films anyway.

It's too bad.  Not since Edward Norton's performance in American History X and Denzel Washington's in Training Day have I loved the performance and disliked the movie.  I don't dislike American Hustle as much as I disliked those two--as I mentioned before, this movie was okay--but it was still such a letdown. 

Those other two movies only had one great performance in them.  American Hustle has at least three--and it still left me with a case of Whatever.

Irrelevant Note: It was nice to see in the previews that Kevin Costner will be back soon in two major movies.  There will be other old geezers from the 80s and 90s returning to film this Christmas through February, and all of their movies look good.  (Let's hope they actually are.)

Irrelevant Note 2: Viewers of Boardwalk Empire will note Shea Whigham (who plays Nucky's brother) and the guy who played the assassin with the ruined face (who was really the best character the last few years) in American Hustle.  The director, David O. Russell, came to popularity with Three Kings, which co-starred Mark Wahlberg.  And what does Mark Wahlberg co-produce?  That's right--Boardwalk Empire.  It's not what you know, it's who you know, I suppose.  Of course you know that Lawrence and Cooper followed Russell from Silver Linings Playbook...Don't ask me how I know and remember such things--I just do.  

Book Review--Robert B. Parker's Wonderland, by Ace Atkins

Photo: Book's hardback cover, from robertbparker.net

I've gone on before about titles that contain the name of an artist as its main selling point, so I won't do so again here--except to say that book titles that contain the name of a deceased writer is even worse.  At least when John Carpenter used to title his movies with his name in it, he was still alive, directing them.  But when the publishing house (or perhaps it's Parker's estate) does so, it comes across as a bit gauche to me.  Especially when the real author, Ace Atkins, is doing such a credible job since taking it over.  How about giving him a little credit now?  Or does someone think that Spenser's loyal fans will forget that Robert B. Parker gave birth to him?

Having said that, Wonderland is a good book that could have been better if Atkins hadn't tried so hard to make Spenser so witty.  Even Parker didn't make his narrator this much of a wiseass.  Here Spenser drops something sarcastic, or witty, or banal (depends on your appreciation for what he says, I guess) in his dialogue and in his narration, a double-whammy here that makes it seem that Spenser is a little verbally out of control.  One minor character even says that he comes across as immature to people who don't think he's funny.  (Nobody ever dared call Parker's Spenser immature, except maybe Susan.)  There's way too much here, and it comes across as Atkins trying too hard, and not, surprisingly, like Spenser trying too hard.  Some of it is funny, but occasionally one sounds forced.

Another distraction here is that every now and then a piece of Spenser's dialogue simply doesn't sound authentic.  I've read every single Spenser, since the first--The Godwulf Manuscript--and I'm telling you that every now and then Spenser says something that sounds inauthentic, and it clunks.  A major tell-tale is that Atkins makes him speak on occasion too grammatically correct: he doesn't use contractions when anyone--especially Spenser--would.  One example of many is on page 273.  Henry Cimoli and Spenser are talking about how bad Spenser's psyche got when he got shot up by The Gray Man.  Henry calls it, "The really bad time."  Spenser responds: "They are all bad times when you are shot."  It's just too stiff.  Spenser, one of the more comfortable conversationalists in all of detective fiction (if not fiction in general), simple would not have sounded so formal, especially to Henry.  He would've deadpanned: "When you're shot, they're all bad."  Or something like that.

But, of course, this is a very quick read.  I might read faster than some, but I'll bet a Spenser fan will read this in a couple of days.  There are no great surprises here; the supporting characters are all users and being used.  The main characters go back and forth guessing who the guilty parties are, but the reader shouldn't.  Truth be told, the family-relation reveal towards the end shouldn't have been a surprise to Spenser, Healey, or Belson.  It is, though, and it's handled well.  I didn't consider the oddity of it until I'd finished reading, so that's good enough.  Your suspension-of-disbelief won't be ruined.  The writing is good, but Atkins has done better with Spenser.  I like the way that Atkins says a lot with very little, as Parker had.  Atkins might actually say more with his little.  Spenser fans won't be disappointed.  New readers to the series won't be blown out of their socks, but they shouldn't throw it away with great force, either.  It's a good read.

One caveat: Atkins shows his hand a little bit with the dating.  As Parker had, he throws in a sentence or two to let us know Spenser is narrating from some future date.  Something like, "The winter was especially cold that year..."  In Wonderland, Spenser frequently mentions how very, very bad the Sox are with overpaid stars and a manager that has won with them in the past.  So it's got to be 2011.  They were disappointing under Francona in 2005, 2006, 2008-2010, but they still won more than they lost, and they made the playoffs--or almost did--pretty consistently.  But the book says they were very, very bad, so it's got to be 2011.  Spenser has always gone out of his way to remind us that he exists in our real universe, during our real time--just an indiscriminate year in the past.  Here, he seems to have almost caught up to us.  This was a little jarring to me, though it may not be to anyone else.  I'm just putting it out there.  Feel free to politely disagree.

The Obama Care Website: A Plea

Photo: President Bush and President-Elect Obama meet in the Oval Office on November 10, 2008.  From Obama's Wikipedia page.

This isn't exactly a political rant, so stay with me if you felt like leaving because of that.  It's more of a plea, I guess.

There are so many Republicans slamming Obama for the recent website problems, and for what some are perceiving as his sleight-of-hand about being able to keep current policies.  (I don't know about that.  Though both parties have their hands in the health care industry's pockets, which one do you think counts more on money from it?  I'll provide a hint: It's the party that's not trying to change it.)  Some Democrats seem to think that his ship is sinking.

It's not--though it has taken a torpedo hit.

The bottom line here is that there's a website that's not working right.

There's an insurance industry that said one thing to Obama and then did another.

Or, in fairness, perhaps the President himself said one thing to the insurance industry, then did the other.

My guess is that it's both.  And surely the right hand didn't know what the left hand was doing here.

But that's all.  It's surely a mess.  It looks bad.  It's Obama's biggest misstep so far.  And what was he thinking when he hired a Canadian internet company to do an American website?  This is bad enough, in terms of our economy--and even worse when you consider that Canada itself fired this internet company when it flubbed work for Canada.

Maybe Obama didn't make that decision himself, but the buck stops with him, and he'll say the same himself.

But let's take a step back.

Did we actually think that overhauling the American healthcare industry would be easy?  Is a radical change ever simple?  And what's wrong with trying to change American socio-economic parity as we know it?  Wouldn't you think there'd be a few mistakes along the way?

This is ground-level health care and social upheaval, and we thought a mouse click would make it all perfect?  That there wouldn't be mistakes, "fumbles," and some honest errors and humane shortsightedness?

So the site doesn't work.

It'll get fixed.

It's the first huge step for equity in health care in this country, something that hopefully narrows the gap between the rich and the poor.  A simple website won't make it all happen by itself, but it's a step in the right direction.

And it'll get better.

Let's all stop rattling our sabres against those who try to make drastic change for the better good and who make a few mistakes while doing so.  Are we not to have groundbreaking change unless it's quick and easy and perfect?  Drastic change is never easy.  And no one thing--health care or anything else--is going to be perfect for everyone, all at the same time.

Yes, Obama dropped the ball here.  But he cared enough to try to make the play to begin with.  He'll pick it up again.  He'll learn from his mistakes.  My guess is he doesn't like to be wrong, at all.  He knows that this will be one of the biggest things he'll be remembered for--good or bad.

And here's one more sports metaphor for you: an infielder who gets to more grounders (and who therefore has more range) will make more errors than will an infielder who never gets to the ball to begin with.  This second infielder will have a misleadingly and superficially better fielding percentage--he'll make fewer errors--because he won't attempt a great play if he thinks there's a chance he'll make an error.

Those who try to make great plays will make more mistakes than those who don't.

Possibly Obama's reach has exceeded his grasp here.  But he attempted to make the play that nobody else could--or would, or wanted to--and then he bobbled it.  And then he dropped it.

But he tried to make the play.

Let's applaud that.  And let's have some patience as he makes the play without a drop next time.  Or would we rather have a nation of leaders who don't try to ever again make a great and sweeping change for fear of such an impatient and unforgiving public and political backlash?

He was at least brave enough to chance failure.

And then he failed.

But that's temporary.

Let's understand that most politicians would never have attempted such legislation and change to begin with, specifically because of the very real probability of failure, and of the fear of the political finger-pointing afterward.

Nobody would know the stakes better than the first black President in American history.  Aware of the severe ramifications, he tried anyway.

Let's be proud of those who selflessly take chances for the better good.

And let's help them fix their mistakes rather than blaming them for their very humane imperfections.

Unless we have a better idea to create beneficial social change for the good of those less fortunate than ourselves--and I didn't see anybody else trying anything lately--let's help those who do, and not just point our fingers at them.

P.S.--According to his website, the health insurance marketplace is once again open.  Try it now, if you need to.  Give it a chance, and be thankful, as I always am, when someone tries to help.  Because, correct me if I'm wrong, but people don't often go out of their way to help change people's lives, do they? 

Two Dreams

Photo: Freud's Vienna office, from forpilar.blogspot.com.

Despite being woken up more than six times by my car's alarm that inexplicably went off three times, and by my dog, who whined constantly through the night, I somehow managed to sleep deeply enough to have two very strange dreams.

Dream #1

I'm rooming with another guy, who seemed likeable and reasonable enough, but in the dream I become more and more concerned that he is not a good guy at all.  I ask questions and he doesn't answer them.  He gets that lean and hungry look, as Shakespeare's Caesar called it.  Somehow it becomes clear that he's a murderer, and I come upon a giant folder of files and documents, one of which seems to prove the issue when I pick it up and read it.  When I lower it from my eyes, there he is, looking dangerous, obviously about to do something nasty.  But before I have the chance to do something about it, either my car alarm goes off in the garage, or my dog whines and wakes me up.

The most surprising thing at all: the dream makes it very clear who this person is: It's Red Sox back-up thirdbaseman Will Middlebrooks.  Who, despite striking out way too often, I'm sure is a nice enough guy in real life.  That was just weird, man.

Dream #2

It's in the future, not too distant.  I work under a bridge that crosses a wide, beautiful river.  Things are so bleak in this existence that countless people jump off of this bridge in an attempt to kill themselves.  My job is to rescue them from the river, and resuscitate them.  I get a bird's-eye view of this bridge (of which I did remember the name, but some time in the last fifteen minutes, I've forgotten it; I hope to remember it by the time I finish typing this, and I can tell you it's a simple name, like the Point Bridge, or something.  It's not something famous, like the Golden Gate Bridge, or even something real).  It's a long suspension bridge; it's fall, because the leaves are turning color.  The river water is very smooth and clear.  There are no boats. Everything's serene and peaceful and beautiful.

Except it's not, because people are jumping.  I save quite a few people over a short period of time on this day.  Maybe a dozen, or more.  I don't have a boat to get them.  (Maybe there's a gasoline or engine shortage in this future.)  But the last person to jump, a tall, full brunette, is different.  I can't find her in the water at all.  This has never happened before.  Never has someone gotten away, or died.  But just when I'm about to give up, I see her, and soon she's on the riverbank and I'm trying to force the water out of her lungs.  This happens for a very long time, much longer than is useful.

I look at her.  I don't know her.  She's got a solid enough neck, a pretty face, and soaking wet black hair that trails on the damp ground.  Her eyes remain closed (though I know in real life, a dead person's eyes stay open) and, when I stop blowing in her mouth, trying to revive her, that, too, closes.

She's completely still.  She's dead.  I've lost her.  For the first time, I've lost one.

And then the dog's whine wakes me up.

And that's it.  Two strange dreams.  I never did remember the name of the bridge, but I'll go with the Point Bridge for now, until I remember.

Freudian analysis, anyone?

P.S.--A very hearty thank ye to Ashley Cosgrove, who was kind enough to put a link to a recent Shakespeare entry (the one about how he did not play a part in the 1608-9 publication of his sonnets) on her Facebook page--and without me asking (or even being aware of it, at first); and to Gibson DelGuidice, who was nice enough to recently say very complimentary things about my blog (and to place a link to it) on his blog.  And I didn't even know about it, either, until recently.  You guys rule.   

Shea Allen, Fired Reporter--Personal Blog vs. Public Job

Image: Shea Allen, former reporter for an Alabama news station, on a happier day.  From an article on dailymail.co.uk, here.

Shea Allen, former on-air reporter for an Alabama news station, was recently fired for re-posting a list of ten confessions, each of which had to do with her job.  She has stated that she was fired for the post, and that she (and maybe half of the commenters) are aghast about this.

Before reading the rest of this, take a quick look at her blog entry.

If you'd read the comments, you might've noticed that I'd deleted a comment that I had, for about three seconds, originally published--and I did so before I copied it, which shows you how dumb I am.  Now I have to try and remember what I'd written, and put it here as honestly as I can.

The reason I responded at all is because I also have (and still have) a very public job. My response went something like this:

Wait!  Genius that I am, I figured that if I just pressed the BACK button enough, I'd get my list back, and I did.  I wrote it as if I were writing to her, since I'd been responding to the entry on her blog.  So, here it is, and afterwards I'll explain why I deleted it there and posted it here (besides the obvious copyright infringement, if her site is copyrighted, which it should be):

--You have a child to provide for.

--You had a public job. You were a public figure.

--You showed up a public employer, in the public realm.

--You needed to show that you took your job seriously, as well as the responsibility of reporting the news and of putting it before yourself.

--You risked lowering your news ratings by alienating your largest demographic. If the ratings plummeted, you, and others, may have lost your jobs.

--You posted all of this in a public forum. On the internet, there is no such thing as a private anything.

--You showed incredibly poor judgment and really bad decision-making skills.

--You were unprofessional, and in a very public way.

(Me again.)  I would argue that these are all valid points (you can comment so if you disagree), but I think the one that would surprise her, twenty-six year old, pretty woman who has grown up in the technology age that she is, is the one in which I said that, on the internet, there is no private anything.

The argument she poses is that her blog is her "personal" and "private" blog, and the (public) station had no right firing her over it.  This is, of course, nonsense.  There is no personal or private anything on the internet.  Period.  Her ignorance of this, considering her job, is astoundingly immature.  Another facet of this point, that I didn't at first mention, is that she even makes her station look bad by not moderating the comments on her blog.  Have you read some of that stuff?  She let complete idiots use any language they wanted to comment about her blog, about what she does, and about what she thinks re: working for her public news station.  She didn't even moderate the comments!  She didn't even try to moderate the attention she received--she took it all!

What public figure does that?  Even I moderate the comments on my blog--which drives away those who want to leave a stupid or juvenile comment.  Her failure to do so is a clear example of poor judgment and bad decision-making.  Just that alone--never mind her comment about her fear of the elderly (I'm going to guess that at least 75% of this nation's elderly watch some sort of news program) or about stealing people's mail.  I can't imagine Murrow or Brokaw posting a blog like this, had they been able to.

It just wasn't professional.  And letting the riff-raff post juvenile comments is another example of that lack of professionalism.

I have a public job.  The reader will rarely, if ever, read about it here.  Instead you'll find probably more than you want about my thoughts of the movies I watch, the books I read, and the non-job-related thoughts (none of them controversial) I have about things (I feel one brewing about people who never take down their yard sale signs).  My job?  I simply don't mention it.  Why?  Because it's not professional.  Do I have things I'd love to vent?  Sure--Who doesn't?  But I don't.  Because I'm an adult.  Because there's no such thing as a private, or just personal, anything on the internet.  Because, fair or not, that's just the way it is.  And at my age, I'm way over "That's not fair!" being a winning reason about why I do anything at all.

And it's more than that.

Bottom line: I like my job.  A lot.  And I have a mortgage to pay, and things I want to do in which I need money.  I like my (very minor) social status.  For example, I get many hellos when I go to Dunkin' Donuts drive thrus.  It ain't much, but it's all I've got, and I like it.  This former reporter showed she didn't like her job and she didn't take it seriously.  How do I know this?  Simple.  She re-published the blog after she was told to take it down.  She did take it down, at first.  But like some petulant child, she re-posted it, thereby giving the finger to her bosses, and showing her ignorance for the very good reasons about why they told her to take it down to begin with.  I guarantee that their #1 reason was her quip about fearing the elderly, and about how she will not do any story about an elderly person, ever.  That's the demographic, man.  The elderly watch the station, which shows ads, which makes it money, which the station uses to pay its reporters, of which she had been one.  It's that simple.  She very publicly cost her employer money, and she very publicly made it look bad.

And she let any idiot comment on it.  Do you think Brian Williams would post an incendiary blog in which any moron could respond by using whatever word at all he wanted to?  That alone would make NBC look bad.  And so I deleted mine, because I didn't want to be one of those, although many commenters were fine, and adult.  But when I realized that there wasn't any moderating going on (and, yes, I should have realized that sooner, before I was just asked to re-type two words, and then saw my response published), I decided that I didn't want to be a part of that--and that my response would make a better blog entry, since I also have a public job, with very public responsibilities.

It's just part of being an adult.

And, as a last caveat, her blog page says that she is still a reporter at that station.  She isn't, and wasn't even professional enough to edit that on her blog.

What do you think?  Should she have been fired?    

Black House by Stephen King and Peter Straub

Photo: The book's cover, from its Wikipedia page

This is probably the last of my unread Stephen King books for awhile, in case you were getting tired of my many Stephen King reviews lately.  At 625 pages, this one took half a week to read, and much of it was pretty intense.  This intensity waned a bit the more it went on; an editor working with two lesser-known names would've done much good here.  The second half, and definitely the last third, are very fat.  Much could have, and should have, been trimmed there.

But it is still a good ride, especially the first third.  It's told in a very third-person omniscient style, and in the present tense, no less.  Lots of the word "we," as in "And now we see Jack Sawyer--."  That takes a little getting used to, but it's not that bad.  It fits, though I can't see why such a different storytelling tactic was necessary.  The last third is so fatuous that even this third-person omniscient, present tense POV does not give the narrative a you-are-there feel.  It's so in need of editing, that such word-bloat takes away from the intensity the reader is supposed to feel by this narrative POV.  You don't get that "Once upon a time..." lean story-telling voice that the authors are clearly going for.  (The book even ends with exactly that phrase.)

Having said that, it's worth reading, especially if you're a fan of the The Talisman and/or The Dark Tower books.  Black House is situated firmly in the Dark Tower universe, much more so than The Talisman, though by the end of it, you get the feel that it's a story from a minor planet of that universe, so to speak.  It is not a major entry in that series; the Dark Tower saga, as it's now complete, can and does exist without this.  It's a side-room behind one of the many doors in the Dark Tower's house.  It's interesting to open that door and peer in, and see what's there, maybe admire the old furniture and to appreciate the character of the room, but when you shut the door, you can move on to the staircase and to the more important rooms.

Black House can't decide which character it wants to follow.  It follows Jack Sawyer more than anyone else, but not like The Talisman did, and when the focused POV of the second half follows a gross old man, a pawn of the Crimson King, it starts getting fat and unfocused.  With that character's demise, it then focuses again as it should, upon Jack Sawyer, and then goes a place or two that the reader wouldn't expect--but shouldn't be completely surprised about, either.  Stephen King has followed the antagonist before--lately in Under the Dome--and you have to wonder about his main character, his protagonist, if even he decides that his antagonist is much more interesting.  The reader had better agree--and this one didn't, in this case.  (I did agree with that tactic for Under the Dome.)

But it doesn't work here because the gross old man is still nothing more than a gross (and murderous) old man.  The power he has is given to him by the Crimson King and his minions, and so he's nothing more than that.  More or less, then, this novel is an examination of the root of evil, of where it comes from.  Where does an evil, murdering, pedophile cannibal like Albert Fish (Mentioned very frequently here, and worth a Wikipedia visit--if you can stomach it.  No sin if you can't.  It's extremely gut-wrenching stuff.) and Charles Burnside (this book's Albert Fish) come from?  Well, apparently from another universe, and its evil incarnate, which uses the (less?) evil and the weak here for its own nefarious purposes.  All well and good, I suppose, except that this book doesn't present a convincing case for that.

Ultimately, the first third of the book is extremely good.  The first half is very good.  By three-quarters it starts to wane, and by the end you're ready for the end to end.  But it still ends well, and so it is still worth reading--if you can tolerate the fat.  I was able to cut it away and dine on the rest.  If you can do that, this book is worth the read.

(The parts written by Straub, in my opinion, stand out from those written by King here.  My guess is that Straub wrote most of the first half, King most of the second.  There are some Straub writing patterns and signatures I recognized, and some from King as well.  For example, Straub does not tend to choose his antagonist as a POV focus as King does, and so I feel much of that is King's.  Since most of the Charles Burnside focus happens in the second half, I feel that's where King's fingerprints are.  The first half, especially, resonates, as all good writing should.  The first half sank into my consciousness enough so that I was compelled to write a previous blog entry, two entries ago.  Ironic, since most of what I wrote about were Stephen King thematic constructs, though it was Straub's treatment of them in the beginning of this book that compelled me to write about them.  But that's art for you.)