April 30 Used Book Porn

Thirty-six German-language books.  Thirty-three of them cost 10¢ each; the other three were 95¢ each.

 Did my biweekly trip to McKay's today.  Traded in my entire Sandman collection (I plan on buying the Ultimate volumes in the next year or so, so after not having read them again these past 2-3 years, I could justify doing so now in order to add to my "rainy day" collection of books) and certain others.  Ended up with almost $94 in store credit.  Spent about $65 or so on 48 books, one of which is a new 2012 release.  Not too shabby.  Going to read the Freud book in Spanish to see just how true the stories of how his English translator altered the semantics of his theories via Latinization of certain expressions.

The Livy is in Latin, the other five are in Spanish/Spanish translation.

The DeLillo will be read later for a Gogol's Overcoat read-on; the McCarthy completes my collection of his Border Trilogy, which I will read sometime in May/June, with possible reviews.

Heard positive things about the new Johnson novel; for years I have been meaning to read Ellison's posthumous novel.

I am a fan of Banana Yoshimoto's fiction.  I have not read these two novels, however.

A few thoughts regarding the tempests surrounding Scott Bakker's writing and blog posts

A warmth climbs through her as she speaks, an unaccountable assurance, as if out of all her crazed burdens, confession is the only real encumbrance.  Secrecy mars the nature of every former slave, and she is no different.  They hoard knowledge, not for the actual power it affords, but for the taste of that power.  All this time, even before Achamian's captivity, she has been accumulating facts and suspicions.  All this time she has fooled herself the way all men fool themselves, thinking that she alone possessed the highest vantage and that she alone commanded the field.

All this time she has been a fool.

– The White Luck Warrior, p. 431-432, Canadian edition

For the past several months, there have been a series of arguments, starting first with a revival of old complaints on Bakker's Three Pound Brain blog regarding comments made on the Requires Only That You Hate blog, before a recent diffusion of these issues and comments to several blogs, including those operated by authors such as John Scalzi and Catherynne Valente, as well as several threads over on Westeros.  Outside of a few comments months ago on Bakker's blog (I want to say it was something like the third out of what appears to be nearly a dozen or so long essays referencing his detractors) and bemusement on Twitter, I have largely stayed out of the main points of contention:  the issue of Bakker's texts being misogynistic, the author's claims to be battling for feminism (among other such claims; I believe these were made on another blog or LiveJournal), questions of evolutionary psychology, whether or not there is a "rape module" to be discovered inside of humans, and most recently, gang-raping dolphins.  It is enough to make the mind hurt trying to process the various iterations of these arguments.

I held off writing anything substantive on this because I had more important (NB:  "selfish") matters to deal with recently:  health and exam preparations.  Now that I'm nearing the end game of waiting to set up job interviews for ESL/English/Social Studies, I have a spare hour or so to devote to noting briefly some of the issues that I have with Bakker's text and his approach to introducing/discussing controversial ideas/research.  Having met the man personally nearly eight years ago, I am not able to place my opinions in reductionist terms; people are, as Whitman notes, are "large" and "contain multitudes" within themselves.

The issue of female agency and the reduction of female roles in his fictions to largely variations on the crone/whore/victim triad has dominated most of the discussions.  It certainly is an issue that has been problematic for me for years, although I have been willing enough to give the author just enough of a shadow of a doubt to see if his hinted plans to deconstruct both ancient/biblical and modern (and presumably "postmodern"?) conceptualizations of gender/gender roles will come to fruition.  I certainly can see where the text itself supports an interpretation that women are sexualized beings that are either passive recipients of male lust/violence or are the wanton harlots that trigger those reactions in males.  I wish I could lie and say I am puzzled as to why Bakker cannot commit to just a simple "yes, the text is problematic as it stands now, but future developments will hopefully show that there is much more going on under the surface," but I cannot.

What has dragged this out for months largely (but not exclusively) deals with Bakker's truer intent in his fiction, that of exploding conceptualizations of how things are.  He seems to be challenging the assumptions that underlie the reactions.  If anything, one could make the argument that he and his texts are not as much misogynistic as they are misanthropic; humans are fallible creatures whose base motives are rooted in violence and desire to dominate/control power.  This is not precisely "nihilistic," as there are meanings to be found to these actions, but it certainly is a very dark and potentially disturbing world-view.

I say "potentially disturbing" because there likely are going to be many who challenge these presumptions.  In making his larger case, Bakker often resorts to the language found in neuroscience and evolutionary psychology research.  In particular, he has frequently cited Jonathan Haidt's work in discussing how humans organize themselves into particular group structures.  While I cannot say that I am familiar enough with Haidt's theories to give expert opinion, what I have noticed based on Bakker's references to them that they seem to be simplistic reductions of a myriad of complex impulses and rationales that appear to be too heavily rooted in Anglo-American political culture to be of much use in discussing more "global" matters.  Leaving aside the inevitable uncertainties of evaluations made on incomplete information, it appears that Bakker is being too uncritical in using arguments such as Haidt's that appear to be based on faulty or non-testable methodologies.

That in and of itself is relatively minor.  But when such terminologies are being applied as retorts to those who question (sometimes vociferously and occasionally in a very acerbic fashion) his motives and rationale for his statements regarding gender roles and potential latent and/or active sexism and/or misogyny in his fiction, the terms of the debate are shifted too much toward the semantics of the debated terms and too much away from anything really substantive when it comes to the issues at hand.  After reflecting upon this for some time, something occurred to me that perhaps some will see as ancillary to the long-running arguments, but for myself it may be key toward understanding my own growing ambivalence toward the storytelling mechanisms around which the debates have been centered.

Above is a passage from late in his latest novel, the epic fantasy The White-Luck Warrior.  The character providing these thoughts, Mimara, is reflecting back upon her past while trying to negotiate the rapids of her present travel through a dead and ancient land.  There are descriptions of her experiences after the degradations of her past as a brothel-slave (her mother sold her into sex slavery in a moment of desperation).  This passage, I suspect, is meant to be a foreshadowing of something greater revolving around the setting and how the characters within it have their world perspectives stripped away.  Yet a close reading of that quoted passage reveals a structural issue that plagues much of Bakker's writing.  Note the distant reflective voice present within this quote.  Does it feel like something that a human being, particularly one who is still relatively young and who has experienced repeated traumas over at least ten years, would actually think?

Too often, Bakker does not trust the narrative and the characters within it.  There are moments where instead of presenting a more "naturalistic" character perspective on the world and surrounding events, there is this separation, as if the point found in the chapter epigraphs must be reinforced and referenced repeatedly by the characters.  Nuances and subtleties are often removed or obscured by this narrative intrusion.  Instead of reacting and processing with the characters, readers often have notions that they, like the characters, are self-deluded fools who will go automatically for the easy and pleasurable while ignoring the hard truths around them.  It is little surprise that many take umbrage at this, sensing (even when they may not be able to articulate it fully) that these challenging asides may be flawed, that there is something else besides what Bakker, through the narrative structure, is attempting to hammer down into them.

Yes, there are times when reader reactions are going to fall in line with Bakker's expectations.  But I cannot help but sense there is much not being covered.  Even when granting times in which cultural training and possible behavioral tendencies guide us subconsciously toward reactions that we little understand ourselves, it rarely is simply a simple issue of "being hardwired," as Bakker often puts it.  The "software," our acculturation processes and our own unique reactions to environment and societies, is not a significant part of his story.  That makes me suspicious of the underlying intent and how effective it truly is.

This suspicion does not deny that when considered, Bakker is making some intriguing arguments regarding human volition.  The issue, however, becomes that of efficacy.  His relative lack of nuance and engagement with societal (as opposed to strict biological) conditioning weakens the story in crucial places for me.  Take for instance the so-called "rape aliens," the Inchoroi.  Their lasciviousness, their seduction and coercion of human wills to perform obscene sex acts, this is meant to be the awful counter to the absolute moral strictures of this setting (one in which damnation is a physically real and present occurance).  They are meant to be horrifying, but Bakker largely reduces them to being mere grotesques.  Their actions are revolting, but there is little true horror behind them because of the narrative emphasis on revelation and (self-)deception.  Some of the themes tied into the Inchoroi and their Sranc creations resemble in some aspects those covered in some of Thomas Ligotti's works.  Where Ligotti utilizes the narrative structure to accentuate the alienation and anguish present in human deceit, Bakker's narrative intrudes too much into the processing realm, interrupting the reader's ongoing interpretation of the textual themes.  While this does not destroy the power of certain key narrative developments, it does weaken them, making some interpretations, such as that of human sexuality and the treatment of women in a world whose intentional misogyny (itself "confirmed" by the local metaphysics, at least through the fifth volume) muddled.  This gives validity to those who argue that the writer either implicitly (or explicitly) endorses these problematic views or he really has no understanding at all when it comes to describing human characters and their motivations.

This latter accusation certainly has some evidence to support it.  Having read twice his neuro-thriller, Neuropath (2006 and 2008), during my second reading I found myself becoming disengaged from the text (perhaps because I knew of the manipulations to come) because the characters were so implausible.  Having a hypersexualized woman who had been "altered" at first seemed to be a critique of standard thriller use of sex (and sexual violence) to further the plot.  Yet that character's scene was so stilted and contrived upon a re-read that it felt devoid of any real impact because that character had become "other" in the sense of her not really being a human being.  The same held true when I read Bakker's The Disciple of the Dog:  the "voices" were being forced too much into a pre-designated role, to the detriment of any real characterization.  When these poor character constructs are placed in settings where they are meant to be ciphers for controversial explorations of human sexual domination and violence, it is little surprise that those who have experienced sexism, if not outright misogyny, in their lives will frequently turn against the text, viewing it as an endorsement of what they cannot stand, all due to its poor structure and implementation.

Spending time trying to force others into considering "second order" questions regarding truth and the underlying structures behind one's world-views is a strategy doomed to failure, especially when there is the belief that the issue at hand is the narrative and what appears to be its underlying belief foundation.  While I personally think the author has not intentionally set out to reinforce misogynistic world-views, his stated intent of targeting predominantly male readers while arguing with women of various feminist ideologies that he is fighting that battle better than they are is leading to a debacle.  Borrowing half-processed neuroscience and evolutionary psychological terms uncritically, when there appears to be evidence that mitigates or even challenges those assumptions regarding just how important biological imperatives are in human interactions, only leads to accusations of trying to remove the terms of the debate from the immediate realm of function and practical application to the semantic level, in which the disagreement over terminological interpretation seems to lead only to a derailing of the larger argument. 

Things are at an ideological impasse, or so it seems to me.  Bakker doesn't seem to be engaging with his critics as much as he is attempting to force them to argue their points through his own chosen schematics.  While there is obviously some value to considering things through another's perspective, when it is not readily being reciprocated (or being perceived as not being reciprocated), why bother?  All it seems to lead to is just dozens of posts on an issue that seems to be too easily reduced to the caricature of an actual substantive debate.

Ranking the awards for 2011 releases: Preliminary placements

I have been following nearly twenty literary/genre awards given for books released in 2011, starting with last year's Man Booker Prize and continuing through the recently-announced Shirley Jackson Awards.  Although I have read some novellas and other shorter fiction, I'm going to limit this just to fiction/novel categories for better comparison points.  Mind you, there are still a few award nominees I have to read and some awards that haven't been announced yet, so this is just a prelim to something that I might expand upon in November, after the final awards for 2011 releases, the World Fantasy Awards, announces their winners.  Below are rough chronological listing of the awards:

2011 Man Booker Prize 

Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending 
Patrick deWitt, The Sisters Brothers
Carol Birch, Jamrach's Menagerie
Esi Edugyan, Half Blood Blues
Stephen Kelman, Pigeon English
A.D. Miller, Snowdrops

This was a weak shortlist, as few of the stories ever accomplished anything other than being competent at telling stories within long-established literary genres.  The Barnes short novel was well-written, but utterly forgettable in terms of an actual story or characterization.  The deWitt was my favorite from this group, but even it broke no new imaginative or prose ground.

2011 National Book Award


Jesmyn Ward, Salvage the Bones 
Téa Obreht, The Tiger's Wife
Edith Pearlman, Binocular Vision (collection)
Andrew Krivak, The Sojourn
Julie Otsuka, The Buddha in the Attic

This was a much, much stronger shortlist than the Man Booker shortlist.  Ward's story, although not my favorite, was strong, emotional, and lyrical.  Obreht's debut novel won the Orange Prize in 2011.  Pearlman won the National Book Critics Circle Award this year for her excellent collection.  Otsuka won the PEN/Faulkner Prize, and Krivak's book is up there with the others in quality, despite not making any other shortlists/winning any major awards.

2012 National Book Critics Circle Award

Edith Pearlman, Binocular Vision 
Teju Cole, Open City 
Jeffrey Eugenides, The Marriage Plot
Alan Hollinghurst, The Stranger's Child
Dana Spiotta, Stone Arabia

This too was a strong shortlist, although the Hollinghurst and, ultimately, the Eugenides left me feeling distant from the texts.  Cole's debut novel was my favorite of the five, followed by Pearlman and Spiotta.

2012 PEN/Faulkner Award

Julie Otsuka, The Buddha in the Attic 
Don DeLillo,  The Angel Esmeralda (collection)
Anita Desai, The Artist of Disappearance
Steven Millhauser, We Others (collection)
Russell Banks, Lost Memory of Skin

Interesting mix of short fiction and novels, newer voices and established names.  Of these, I liked the Otsuka the best, but DeLillo and Millhauser had strong collections.  Banks' premise was purposefully unsettling and the Desai was good but not as excellent as the others.

2012 Man Asian Prize


Kyung sook-Shin, Please Look After Mom 
Yan Lianke, Dream of Ding Village
Rahul Bhattacharya, The Sly Company of People Who Care
Jahnavi Barua, Rebirth
Amitav Ghosh, River of Smoke
Banana Yoshimoto, The Lake
Jamil Ahmad, The Wandering Falcon

Toss-up for me between this and the National Book Award (and one other) for having the strongest shortlist.  I loved each and every one of these seven fictions, but there were few similarities in theme or approach between them.  Several of these are up for upcoming awards, including Lianke for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize.


2012 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 

 No Winner

Finalists:

Karen Russell, Swamplandia!
David Foster Wallace, The Pale King
Denis Johnson, Train of Dreams

This was not a great list of finalists.  I liked all three, but each were flawed in some form or fashion (the Wallace was tragically left unfinished).  None of them deserved to win the award.

2012 British Science Fiction Award


Christopher Priest, The Islanders 
China Miéville, Embassytown
Adam Roberts, By Light Alone
Lavie Tidhar, Osama
Kim Lakin-Smith, Cyber Circus

This is one of the two SF/F fantasy shortlists announced so far that have not annoyed me.  Priest was a deserving winner.  Tidhar's book was very, very good as well and while I had problems with both the Miéville and the Lakin-Smith (I have yet to read Roberts' book; maybe when I have more money to import books again), it is a stronger list than the following two genre awards.

2012 Nebula Award for Best Novel

China Miéville, Embassytown
Jack McDevitt, Firebird
Jo Walton, Among Others
Genevieve Valentine, Mechanique:  A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti
N.K. Jemisin, The Kingdom of Gods
Kameron Hurley, God's War

This is a solid albeit unspectacular SF/F shortlist.  The Hurley and Walton are the two stories that I enjoyed most.  Refuse to read the McDevitt due to past experiences with his writing.  The others were okay, but not award-worthy to me.


2012 Arthur C. Clarke Award 

Jane Rogers, The Testament of Jesse Lamb
Charles Stross, Rule 34
Sherri Tepper, The Waters Rising
China Miéville, Embassytown
Drew Magary, The Postmortal/The End Specialist
Greg Bear, Hull Zero Three

Blech.  I have read four of the six shortlisted (the Rogers won't arrive until after the May 2nd ceremony; the Stross I refuse to read due to past experiences) and none of them strike me as worthy of any award shortlists, much less winning one of the few genre awards that awards a cash prize.  Easily the weakest shortlist out of the 2011 releases cycle that I have followed.

2012 Orange Prize

Esi Edugyan, Half Blood Blues
Anne Enright, The Forgotten Waltz
Cynthia Ozick, Foreign Bodies
Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles
Ann Patchett, State of Wonder
Georgina Harding, Painter of Silence

I have not finished all of these (read the Edugyan, Enright, Ozick, and Miller) and some of these are 2012 releases in the US, but it is a good, solid, but not spectacular shortlist this year.  The Enright took me until its final pages to hit me with the full force of its narrative.  The Miller was good, but there were a few longeurs.  The Ozick was unmemorable for me.  The Edugyan was OK, but I thought it was not deserving of the Booker Prize consideration that it received last year.

2012 Hugo Award for Best Novel

China Miéville, Embassytown
George R.R. Martin, A Dance With Dragons
Jo Walton, Among Others
Mira Grant, Deadline
James S.A. Corey, Leviathan Wakes

Ugh.  The Walton was my favorite, followed by Miéville and Martin, each of which was decent but not the authors' best works.  The Grant I will not be reading due to lack of interest in following a series and the Corey was dreadful.

2012 LA Times Book Prize

Alex Shakar, Luminarium 
Edith Pearlman, Binocular Vision
Joseph O'Connor, Ghost Light
Julie Otsuka, The Buddha in the Attic
Michael Ondaatje, The Cat's Table

This was a strong shortlist.  The Shakar took me a bit to warm up to, but the premise and conclusion were excellent.  Already gave my encomiums to the Pearlman and Otsuka books, but the Ondaatje was also excellent.  The O'Connor was merely very good.

2012 Independent Foreign Fiction Award

Umberto Eco, The Prague Cemetery
Sjón, From the Mouth of the Whale
Diego Marani, New Finnish Grammar
Judith Hermann, Alice   
Yan Lianke, Dream of Ding Village
Aharon Appelfeld, Blooms of Darkness

Outstanding shortlist (I've read all but the Appelfeld, which will be read in the next few days).  The Marani book blew my mind and the others read are up there.  This could be the best shortlist of them all for me.

2012 Best Translated Book Award for Fiction

Jean Echenoz, Lightning
Moacyr Scliar, Kafka's Leopards
Jacques Jouet, Upstaged
Diego Marani, New Finnish Grammar  
Juan José Saer, Scars
Wiesław Myśliwski, Stone Upon Stone
Dezső Kosztolányi, Kornél Esti
Dany Laferrière, I am a Japanese Writer
Magdalena Tulli, In Red
Enrique Vila-Matas, Never Any End to Paris

I have read only five of these ten finalists, but those five (Echenoz, Scliar, Marani, Myśliwski, and Tulli) ranged from very good to outstanding in the case of Marani.  I certainly will be reading the rest of these shortlisted titles to judge their quality.

2012 Shirley Jackson Award for Best Novel

Michael Cisco, The Great Lover
Glen Duncan, The Last Werewolf
Donald Ray Pollock, The Devil All the Time
Sheri Holman, Witches on the Road Tonight
S.P. Miskowski, Knock Knock
Reggie Oliver, The Dracula Papers

Having read all but the Oliver, I think I can safely say that this year's Shirley Jackson novel finalists are the strongest SF/F genre shortlist that I've read.  The breadth and depth of these finalists is refreshing after the conservatism I detected in the Clarke and Hugo nominees.


In addition, I have read all or am in the process of reading the winning novels for these awards:

2012 James Tiptree, Jr. Award

Andrea Hairston, Redwood and Wildfire - excellent novel.  Should have been on some of the other SF/F shortlists.

2012 Bram Stoker Award

Joe McKinney, Flesh Eaters - decent but not great zombie apocalypse-type horror novel.

2012 Edgar Award

Mo Hayder, Gone - I'm currently 2/3 into this crime/thriller novel.  Better than expected, but not excellent so far.  But it is better than the other finalists I've read:

Keigo Higashino, The Devotion of Suspect X
Philip Kerr, Field Gray


I'll update my rankings later in the year, after other awards are released, but if I had to rank the top three, it would go:

1.  Independent Foreign Fiction Award
2.  National Book Award
3.  National Book Critics Circle Award
4.  Man Asian Prize
5.  PEN/Faulkner

There is very little space between these five.  For the bottom three, I would go:

1.  Arthur C. Clarke Award
2.  Hugo Award
3.  Man Booker Prize

The rest is closer to the first group of five than to the bottom three.  If you've read some or all of these shortlists, what are your thoughts on them individually?

No, science fiction is not the world's first "international language"

Damien Walter in today's Guardian argues that science fiction somehow is the best-equipped literary/cultural mode of expression to capture a "global" esprit du temps.  He is all over the place in trying to make this case, starting with the argument that movies like the forthcoming Avengers symbolize this "globalization" by noting:

At first sight this seems a triumph of international connectivity, but the sci-fi blockbuster transcends cultural boundaries by doing away with the whole problem of meaning and replacing it with CGI spectacle. The director, Joss Whedon, has pulled off an impressive feat in packing so many mythic symbols and archetypes into one movie, while completely castrating their meaning.

 Where to begin?  The most obvious is that there is not as much a transcending of cultural boundaries as such a movie represents the triumph of a particular national mindset, that of mid-to-late 20th century American culture.  The symbols and expressions contained within reflect the values of American pop culture (itself an entity very distinct from the fading regional and ethnic cultures within the United States), not those of a world.  Using blockbusters such as this as examples only serve to reinforce the notion that instead of a "global" melding of cultures, a particular national culture has exported most of its value system intact in an insidious form of imperialism.

Although Walter does note that this is not "good," with the comment about "castrating their meaning," followed by the next paragraph observing that "it's arguable that geek culture is really just a response to a lack of culture, a generation who have grown up alienated from any sense of cultural belonging, and are left clinging on to Hollywood product," the problem is not that of an absence of culture (devoid of divergent voices as this mass-pop culture may be, it is still a ritual affair in which some ideals have become reified in the form of superheroes and gadgets that stand in the place of religious/social ceremonies), but that of a particular cultural strain that seeks to homogenize matters.

Walter claims that in the face of this development that science fiction, out of all the other literary modes by which people express their concerns, is the most apt to handle these rapidly-changing developments.  To that, I say no.  This is not to deny the validity of science fiction's role in voicing certain concerns, but when judged outside the Anglo-American direct sphere of influence, it quickly becomes apparent that science fiction is not the mode of choice.

For example, over the past three decades in Latin America, three distinct yet related literary movements (the infrarealismo that influenced not just Roberto Bolaño, but others associated with him, such as those in the list found within the link; the Crack Manifesto group, which included Jorge Volpi and Ignacio Padilla, among others; and the McOndo group, which included Alberto Fuguet and Edmundo Paz Soldán and several others) emerged that focused on utilizing a hyper-realism to describe the effects of American imperialism/"global" culture on quotidian lives.  Their narratives, often acerbic and written as an antithesis of sorts to the magical realism of the Boom Generation, have begun in the past 15 years or so to disseminate into other parts of the world.  Bolaño certainly is the most popular of the crew and while he does note in his writings some appreciation for the themes discussed in American science fiction, his main focus is on the world as it is and how the past century has had a devastating effect.  Spanish writer Javier Marías also discusses this fragmentation of native cultures over the course of his Your Face Tomorrow trilogy.

I am not as qualified to speak about African and Asian literatures as I am Latin American (I can only read in English, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and French at least semi-fluently), but based on people like Gao Xingjian (Nobel Prize winner) and Yan Lianke, both of whom had their works banned by the Chinese government, it would seem that the dominant mode of social discourse in literature is still that of the social-realist novel.  Again, this is not denying that China does not have a large SF community – it does – but numbers do not necessarily reflect influence, if the case of dissident literature is to be considered in discussions of "international literature."

While I have no problem with Walter claiming that SF has become more "international" in focus (considering the huge turnout in Portugal earlier this month for George R.R. Martin, it can safely be said that there are active, vibrant communities in several nations on six continents), I do have issues with the unsubstantiated claim that science fiction is the best-equipped to express global sentiments.  First, because of my suspicions that "global" is more "imperialist at its end stage" than anything where there is a bilateral dissemination of ideas, and second, because of the rise of a newer style of social novel in which the tensions between the native and imported cultures is a central thematic element.  For those reasons alone (and doubtless, there are others that will occur to me later), I have to dismiss Walter's argument for lack of evidence and for arguing a flawed position.  

Squirrel eating chicken breast

Some of you thought I was joking when I have stated in the past that I live surrounded by carnivorous squirrels.  Just a few minutes ago, I witnessed one eating a chicken breast that I had tossed outside for our lab, Molly, to eat.  Although due to the lighting/shadows the breast cannot be easily discerned, that is what the squirrel has in its forepaws, happily munching away.

It's a young squirrel, so doubtless this early taste of flesh will increase its appetite in the future.

This is why I love to read stories and to translate some of them

I began reading Argentine author Angélica Gorodischer's 2000 story collection, Menta, as a counterbalance to another read-in-progress whose prose was merely serviceable.  I have been a fan of Gorodischer's writing since reading first the translation and then the original of her acclaimed Kalpa Imperial, but I find it sad that besides this excellent novel, there is only one short story of hers that, to my knowledge, has been published in English translation.  She is a gifted writer, one who because of her prose style and thematic treatments of gender, sexuality, and societal issues reminds me favorably of Ursula Le Guin (yet Gorodischer has written as much outside of SF as within that nebulous literary genre).  Her stories often open with enticing paragraphs that suck the reader into its sticky web, refusing to let go until the story has been digested properly.  Below is one such example, "Eso no es todo" ("That is Not All"):

Le contaban cuentos cuando era chiquita.  Muy chiquita, tanto su mamá como su papá.  Los de su mamá eran mejores.  No es que los de su papá fueran malos, no, nada de eso, eran estupendos y estaban poblados de héroes y aventureros y puertos exóticos y desiertos, pero eran vacilantes, a veces tanto que se volvían confusos.  Como si su papá quisiera darle el gusto y anduviera tanteando porque no sabía, realmente no sabía lo que ella prefería.  Y en todos, en los de su papá y en los de su mamá, en todos aparecía en algún momento el genio protector o el hada rubia o el gnomo pícaro que concedía tres deseos a la niñita perdida o al muchachito desamparado.

They told her stories when she was a little girl.  Very little, as much her mama as her daddy.  Her mama's were better.  It's not that her daddy's were bad, no, nothing like that, they were stupendous and were populated with heroes and adventures and exotic ports and deserts, but they were unsteady, sometimes so much so that they turned confusing.  As if her daddy wanted to please her and was gauging her reactions because he did not know, he truly did not know what she preferred.  In all of them, in those of her daddy's and in those of her mama's, in all of them appeared at some moment the genii protector or the blond fairy or the wicked gnome that granted three wishes to the lost little girl or to the abandoned little boy.

My translation is a rough sketch, as in future drafts, I would tighten the prose somewhat (likely eliminating some of the repetitive clauses – en todos – that work well in Spanish but not as well in English), but I believe even this quick draft, which took all of maybe five minutes to type out, should give the reader enough information to judge for herself the power of this beginning.

For myself, I found myself remembering the stories my mother used to make up on the fly when she was stuck with me (and later, my sister) when I was a toddler, stories about a little cow named Coco (OK, not the most original of names, but it was something).  There is something about stories told to us by parents during our youth that stick with us into our adulthood, and reading Gorodischer's opening paragraph, I was reminded of that.  It is not precisely a "direct" introduction; there is a hesitant pause in reminiscing about the narrator's father that seems to carry the germ of something deeper, something I wanted to investigate further.

So I did.  It was an even better tale than I expected, but that is something for another time.

What are your thoughts on this translated/original paragraph?  Would you have wanted to read on from this point?

Results of putting forth more efforts to read women writers

I just reached the milestone of 150 books read over the past 113 days.  That has been a typical pace for the past five years, so that's not what's noteworthy.  What is noteworthy was what authors/books I've discovered since I decided that I wanted to try to read more female authors after only 28% of my first 100 books read were by women.  For the past 50, that total increased to 44% (22).  And here's a listing of those twenty-two women writers, with notes by some of them:

1.  Elfriede Jelinek, The Piano Teacher (Nobel literature laureate; very good novel)

2.  Melanie Rae Thon, The Voice of the River (loved one of her short stories enough to flag it for BAF 4 consideration; enjoyed this novel)

3.  Maureen F. McHugh, After the Apocalypse (very good story collection)

4.  Wisława Szymborska, Here (Nobel literature laureate; excellent poetry collection)

5.  Maya Jasanoff, Liberty's Exiles (won 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award in History; outstanding history of the Loyalists)

6.  Giannina Braschi, El imperio de los sueños (one of the more avant-garde Latin American poets/writers of the past 30 years; Spanish; very good trio of novellas)

7.  Leah Bobet, Above (selected one of her short stories for BAF 4 consideration; good but uneven debut YA novel)

8.  Mercé Rodoreda, Aloma (Catalan; I wrote a commentary on her fiction that will appear in the near future on Weird Fiction Review; moving story)

9.  Phil and Kaja Foglio, Girl Genius:  Agatha Awakens (graphic novel; it was well-done in places, but a bit spotty for my taste)

10. Kim Lakin-Smith, Cyber Circus (BSFA Award finalist; decent novel, but the weakest on the shortlist that I had read)

11.  Sherri S. Tepper, The Waters Rising (Clarke Award finalist; weakest novel of that shortlist)

12.  Elizabeth Hand, Available Dark (excellent sequel to her Generation Loss, which was nominated for some awards, if I'm not mistaken)

13.  Amal Al-Jubori, Hagar Before the Occupation, Hagar After the Occupation (finalist for the 2012 Best Translated Fiction Award; poetry; outstanding; to be reviewed later on Gogol's Overcoat)

14.  Nawal El Saadawi, Woman at Point Zero (gripping fictionalized account of a real prison confession told to one of Egypt's most prominent dissident writers)

15.  Jan Morris, Hav (a modern-day classic that tweaks the approach of a travelogue to create something profound)

16.  Anne Enright, The Forgotten Waltz (2012 Orange Prize finalist; very good novel that may be reviewed later on Gogol's Overcoat)

17.  Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles (2012 Orange Prize finalist; perhaps my favorite on the shortlist)

18.  N.K. Jemisin, The Kingdom of Gods (2011/2 Nebula Award finalist; very good in places, but the narrative was a bit too uneven for it to be the strongest contender on this year's Nebula shortlist)

19.  Herta Müller, The Passport (Nobel literature laureate; very good short novel)

20.  Jac Jemc, My Lovely Wife (forthcoming debut novel is very, very well-written; review next month on Gogol's Overcoat)

21.  Cynthia Ozick, Foreign Bodies (2012 Orange Prize finalist; good, but weaker than the other two finalists read this month)

22.  Judith Hermann, Alice (2012 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize finalist; very good collection of related short fictions that revolve around how a single character, Alice, deals with loss and grief).


Best part is knowing that this is the tip of the iceberg and that most of these are the equals to the best fiction read so far this year by male writers.  Are there any recent (2011-2012) releases by female writers that you think might be of interest to me, based on the list above?