The Rule of Four

I really wanted to like this book, and in many ways I did.  But I still finished it somewhat disappointed, and--even worse--I felt that while I was reading it.

I think the problem is that this book tries to do too many things at once.  That is its selling point, its victory and its curse.  It screams "We're not just The Da Vinci Code!" and yet on some levels it is, with much better writing and characterization.

But it lacks Dan Brown's (albeit superficial) tension.  There are no cliffhangers.  There's really no suspense.  You don't really care who the villains are--and the characters don't seem to, either.  There's a nice relationship (in fact, the girl deserves better), but I didn't care, except that I felt bad for the girl.

But while I felt bad for her, I realized that it didn't matter, and for God's sake let's get on with it.

If you liked rich-school hijinks, a la 1983's Class (You remember, with Rob Lowe, Andrew McCarthy, Jacqueline Bissett and Cliff Robertson?), then you'll like the Princeton antics described here.

But I didn't care.  Just bring on the book, the mystery, the characters, the murders.

If you liked the almost-homoerotic tension between rich schoolboys, a la A Separate Peace, then you'll enjoy that part.  I hated A Separate Peace, and I hated that part of this book.  C'mon, bring on the book, the mystery, etc.

If you liked good writing, you'll like that part.  I do, and I did. But...Does the writing have to be that good for a book like this?  I guess you can have it both ways.  Umberto Eco's Name of the Rose and Pears's An Instance of the Fingerpost come to mind. But...the sometimes great sentence seemed superfluous here.  While I was waiting for it to get back to the mystery, I often read a great sentence that shocked me out of the book.  I actually uttered "Wow" a few times, out loud.  But...

Surprisingly, this book was not quite the page-turner I'd heard about.  The word on the street was so high on this one, that maybe my expectations were unfair.  I don't know, but I'm confident that this book would have been much better with all of the Princeton kijinks taken out, as well as least half of the Separate Peace nonsense, and tighten up the mystery and the murders.

On that last point, another problem here is that you don't have time to wonder (or, to even care) who the murderer is.  I mean, there are only two options, and then one of them turns up dead.  Not much of a mystery, really.

The direction of the writing also doesn't let you think about it.  You just go along with it all and wait for it to be shown to you.  It gets buried behind the other stuff.

And so I have to say I liked it, but with reservations.  It ultimately disappointed me, but I acknowledge that it's well-written, though maybe I needed the more base of writings here.  It tries to be both The Name of the Rose and The Da Vinci Code, but somehow doesn't end up being either one--and doesn't even, somehow, fall between the two.

No Longer A Vet--Now I'll Pay the Toll at the Gate

If you've been reading my blog for awhile, you know I never write about my job.  Few of you know what I do for a living, and any reference to it in a comment--good, bad or neutral--makes me delete that comment.

For the most part, that won't change now.  I won't write about the job, but I do have an announcement to make.  In keeping with my policy of not writing about my job, it may seem like code to those who aren't associated with it.

This entry is for those of you who are.

It is with great regret that I have to announce that I am [see title].  This was a brutal decision to make, and I even (almost) had an emotional moment after it was said and done.  There was paperwork to sign, and a long walk back to my seat.  (And they forgot to sign something, so I had to do it again.) I'm told that I made that walk both times with my head down, and that I did not look happy.

Though the job itself remains the same, I will be at a different building, working with a different community.

(However, it seems like I will be allowed to continue with the after-work program at the first building, so stay tuned for that.  It is still on my way home, and so I can still run the program on Wednesdays, from 2:30 to 3:00, which was the plan anyway.  Stay tuned for further details on that.)

I worked for 14 years at the building I left.  I ran an after-work program there for 14 years, with good-to-great success.  I served the same building in a different capacity for 4 years a long time ago. Overall, I spent 18 years--a large percentage of my life--in that one building.

But the building will be a different type of building in two years, and I could not see myself being successful with the new job requirements.  I may have been transferred to another building anyway--quite possibly to the building I am now.  But there was a small chance that I would have been transferred to another building, or asked to stay where I was, with new workers and new requirements, where I felt I may have been less successful at my job.  The bottom line: for me, and to support my loved ones, I felt compelled to switch to a different building so I can work with the same type of workers--the same ones I've worked with for the past 14 years.

I will miss the workers I worked with, many of whom joined the after-work program I ran, as well as the other workers who stated they were very happy to be able to work with me again next year.  Some of them had to talk to people to make that happen, and it seems like they went out of their way to do so.  Now that won't happen.  I do feel, a little bit, that I have left you and that I have let you down.  I hope you don't feel the same way, and I hope you understand my explanation.

Job certainty is an important thing.  So is knowing I will be able to stay in the same type of work environment for the foreseeable future--now, and long after any current worker has moved on. Hopefully, I'll be doing this for the next 25 or so years.  We'll see.

And I may be seeing some of you again in two years, when you are sent to work at my new building.

I also look forward to the challenge of my new building.  I have already met with some of the other workers (literally, the workers) and everything seems great.  This new building also has an after-work program of the same type, so it would be cool to compete against this building's after-school program, should I be allowed to do so.  Maybe I'll be asked to anchor it.  I'd rather anchor the program of my former building, but we'll see.  I look forward to a successful year with my new fellow workers--both literal and figurative--and I look forward to every challenge this building offers.

I take my job very seriously--perhaps too much so, on occasion--and I take the responsibilities of supporting my loved ones very seriously, too.  As much as I, they deserved to know that I had job certainty, and that I was able to work in a situation where I felt I would do the most good, and to be the most successful.  If I am not successful at my job, I am not happy.  Nothing else at work matters.

I did what I could for the building, for its workers, and for the community--for 14 years.  I spoke publicly against those who wanted to shut down or transform that building.  I care for the building, its workers and its community, and don't let anyone tell you different.

I will always be a vet; I'll always be very pro-veteran.

And so I say goodbye.  Maybe just for now; maybe for good.  Even if we had our differences, I hope that you agree that I did the best I could at my job, every single day.  And that my best was good.

Be good.

Be safe.

Be happy.

Robert B. Parker's Ironhorse

 
Photo: Book's cover, from Amazon

I've gone into how I don't like it when publishers sell a book with the (more popular) deceased author's name in huge letters on the top of the title, then the actual author's name in smaller letters below it.  Just a pet peeve, but the practice clearly says that the money made from the book is more important than is the name of the guy who actually wrote it, or the memory of the guy who created the series, who is no longer with us...But that's not much of a surprise, is it?  The copyrights are owned by The Estate of Robert B. Parker, so maybe it has to be titled like this, legally.  Whatever...

Anyway, nobody would get confused about the authorship once they've read it, because, although it's very good, nobody would believe that Parker wrote it.  Just not his thing.  There's no message here, no statement of any kind about honor, or the code of being a real man, etc.  Nothing even about the knight-in-shining-armor thing, though there are women saved by the strong, silent types of Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch.  They save the day without saying much, and they're both great shots and they're great at what they do, so what else can you ask for?

I read this very quickly--371 pages over a day and a half or so--and the writing flows as quickly as a river with rapids, so it's worth your time.  Even Ed Harris says so, in a blurb on the back.  If you liked the series with Parker writing it, you'll like it with Knott writing it.  He is his own writer, and he may or may not have been trying to emulate Parker--I'm guessing half yes, half no--but it will go off now in Knott territory, I'll bet.  This was a mostly-smooth transition.

Except for a few spots.  One that glared at me is on page 212:

"What do you allow, Virgil?"

"Hard to speculate."

I didn't say anything else as we continued walking.

"You?" Virgil said.

"Don't know," I said.  "Been sort of expectant about it."

"Sort of?"

"More than sort of."

And so on.  You get the idea.  So what was glaring here to me?  The clipped responses and the distant first-person were always done well by Parker, even when it was all perhaps too spare. 

But it isn't Knott's thing, exactly.  He writes better when he writes medium-length sentences and paragraphs.  When he writes short, clipped stuff like this, it's a low word count that doesn't say much.  Which is fine, but when Parker used few words, he did so to say a lot.  When Knott uses few words, he just says fewer things.  With Parker, less was often more.  With Knott, less is just...less.

Again, there's nothing wrong with that.  But look at the excerpt above.  See the sentence where Everett Hitch, the first-person narrator, says that he walked and didn't say anything?  And then see where he almost immediately responds to Cole's question?  With Parker, they both wouldn't have said anything, and that would have said something.  Here, Hitch says he didn't say anything, and then he says something, and there's nothing said or meant by that odd interchange.

That's Knott trying to be Parker there, and not succeeding at it.

Which is fine.  But now it's time to move on, as much as I hate to say so.  I liked Parker as a writer, and I really liked him as a person.  I'd spoken with him three times: once when I worked at a Borders he was signing at, and twice at a Barnes & Noble, once extensively, during a Q&A.  I'd asked him about his apparent bias against the high school and college education system.  He admitted to the bias, and blamed it on an experience at a college where he used to teach.  And I had to chase after him when he left his prescription glasses behind at that Borders.  And he was even gracious enough to give me his agent's name, and permission to speak with her.  (I've yet to do so.)

Knott goes into many things that Parker never would have, including everything you'd ever want (and not want) to know about how to operate a coal-powered train, and about how to operate, and trace the operation of, a telegraph.  It was mostly good stuff, though I'm biased because I like accurately-told, well-researched, historical fiction.  You won't have to like westerns to like this, either.

Anyway, it's time now for Knott to ONLY write like Knott.  From what I saw here, that should be more than good enough.

Dan Brown's Inferno and the Joy of Info. Dumping

Photo: Inferno's first edition hardcover, from its Wikipedia site

I liked Inferno, but I can't say that I really liked it, and I certainly didn't love it.  It's got some things going for it, but it's got a surprising number of things against it, too.

It depends on why you're reading this book, I guess.  If you're looking for really good writing, whatever that is, exactly, then you're going to strike out here.  Some parts made me shake my head, literally.  There are some parts that are so remarkably bad, you'll want to put the book down, but you won't.  (One aspect of the ending made me want to do this.  Actually, some parts are so bad that it reminded me of the famous Dorothy Parker quip, that "...this isn't a book to be put aside lightly.  It should be thrown with great force.")  Some parts really are that bad, so be forewarned. 

What makes them bad?  Well, in a nutshell, Brown's writing is at its worst when he tries to give his characters some depth, and I mean that in the best of all possible ways.  He just can't.  It is that simple.  His characters just say things.  And they just do things.  Anytime he tries to get beneath that surface, your eyes will roll, I assure you.

Robert Langdon, for example, is (in)famously described, very simply, as Harrison Ford in tweed.  Brown describes him that way in every single book, and he makes Langdon describe himself that way, and he makes many of the other characters describe him that way.  Everyone, in fact, in Brown's universe, describes him that way.  This is very lazy writing, of course, as if nothing else about him needs to be said.  And, in a way, that's true.  Nothing else really is needed.  He's smart and erudite.  He's tall and handsome.  He has a deep voice and he wears tweed.  And that's it, throughout four books now.  Nothing else is needed because, frankly, there isn't anything else.

But there's a method to this madness.  Is Brown simply incapable of giving him individual depth, or is there another reason?  Well, there is something else.  Langdon is a blank slate because the reader needs to have room to put himself in Langdon's clothes.  In short, we are Robert Langdon.  He is the audience figure, perhaps one of the better ones in contemporary fiction.  And if he had more specific personality, that would shut us out, because he would be too uniquely himself.  There wouldn't be room for us in there.  We would have to watch him do things, rather than us being him, thereby allowing us to do those things, instead.  It's the difference between playing a video game and watching the character do things, and playing more of a reality role-playing game, and feeling like it's us actually doing those things.  This, plus the world-traveling, the codes and puzzles, and the info. dumping, are the reasons why his books work like they do.

Of course, Brown also carries this into his minor characters, which is bad.  And he tends to get a little preachy about his themes, which Inferno certainly does.  By the end, you'll wonder about how Brown actually feels about what his antagonist feels.  I think they're one and the same.  Brown gets just as fever-pitched as his antagonist does.  And he, and his characters, are severely repetitive about it, too.

For the record, their point--that this world is so overpopulated that we could potentially create our own cataclysmic demise--is well-taken, and well-known.  I know that we don't need a super-villain (or not, depending on your point of view) to create a virus that will become our present-day Black Death; there are plenty of them out there right now, including two presently incurable viruses written about this week, one in California, the other in Saudi Arabia.  We are very overdue for another pandemic like 1918's super-flu, which originated in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and which killed hundreds of millions throughout the world, more than every war combined.  The population-thinning virus before that?  The tuberculosis of the mid- to late-1800s.  One herd-thinning virus tends to hit the world every fifty years or so.  Nature has a way of cleaning its own house.  The book will hit you over the head with this, and then stuff it down your throat, about fifty times over--and then it will end with a horrific event that all of the characters just shrug their shoulders about.  Very, very odd.

Having said all that, there is a lot to like about this book, which isn't as good as Angels & Demons or The Da Vinci Code, but is a bit better than the slower The Lost Symbol and Dan Brown's others.  In fact, the best (and perhaps only) good thing about The Lost Symbol is what works really well with Inferno.  In The Lost Symbol, I was surprised to learn about how much like a deity George Washington was treated.  The painting of Washington standing like God, or like Jesus, in the clouds, in a giant painting on the ceiling of The Capitol, is flat-out creepy and fascinating.  Without The Lost Symbol, I wouldn't have ever known about that, or about the painting, or a few other things about D.C. in general.

I felt the same about Inferno.  Though lots of writers have used Dante's work as a focal point for a novel of historical fiction--the best is perhaps Matthew Pearl's The Dante Club--this book works because it brings the world-famous work of Dante to light, to better historical context, and to a better present-day understanding.  It made me want to take out my (very nice) copy of The Divine Comedy and to read it, which I'd never really done before--well, beyond line 50, anyway.  (I have a feeling that Dan Brown would be very happy if his book was well-received and that it made people want to read Dante again.)

Dan Brown's Inferno also will show you a lot of Dante's death mask, St. Mark's, Venice, Istanbul / Constantinople, Florence, The Hagia Sophia (mentioned before in Brown's works), the Palazzo Vecchio, and seemingly dozens of other things.  All of this was so interesting that I found myself wanting to buy The Illustrated Inferno once it comes out.

And that's why you read this stuff, right?  To place yourself as Langdon into all of the places he goes, to see all of the things he sees, to think about and to know all of the things he thinks about and knows.  To learn about all of the stuff that Dan Brown teaches us with the info. dumps.  To Google all of the things he refers to that we find interesting.  To travel to all of the places he travels to.  (Dan Brown clearly has his very favorite places in Florence, Venice, Rome, Vatican City, and Istanbul.  You have to spend a lot of time in all of these places to know their nooks and crannies, to have favorite spots.  I mean, I know Fenway Park like that, because I practically live there.  That's how well Brown knows these places, and there's a large amount of envy on my part involved with that.)

Anyway, to rate this, I'd probably give it three stars if I was in a writerly mood at the time, because the characterization, and sometimes, the plot, really are that bad.  But I'd give it four, maybe even five, stars if I was in the mood to remember that we read his stuff for the globe-trotting, for the vast amount of info. he has about history, about art and architecture, about stuff that you wouldn't normally think about.  And, if I was to remember that to do all this, for the reader to feel this way, the main character would have to be such an empty shell so that there'd be room for us to step in to experience these things.

So if that's what you want, you should read this.  If it isn't, if you want characterization and plot, you'd be better off with almost anybody else.  Read and choose accordingly.