Books of the Year: The Grebbies

Well here it is, Christmas time again. The ol' year end. Yup, there it went, and that means it's time to look back and give out some awards.

The Nobel Prize committee has had their say, the National Book Award is done. The Goodreads Books of the Year have been voted on and added to thousands of "To Read" lists, never to be thought of again. The Rooster and the Pulitzer Prize are but blips on the horizon. If you're jonesing for more book awards, you've come to the right place.

Allow me to present the First Annual Grebbie Awards, given to notable books by the staff at grebmaR.net. A more complete list of my notable reads is available on my Goodreads page, but these are my personal highlights.

Books of the Year that I didn't read

Let's face it, I didn't read that many books this year, and I had to skim a Lemony Snickett to hit my Goodreads target of 35 books. Which leaves a lot of books I meant to get to but didn't, including the second book on the Lemony Snickett series. But that doesn't mean I couldn't follow the buzz. And of all the buzz-worthy books, these are the ones I most regret not getting to.

MaddAddam, by Margaret Atwood 
This one looked great, but as the third book of a trilogy I never started, it's down on my list.

Tenth of December, by George Saunders 
Okay, here's reason #1037 why publishers don't like short story collections: I read some of these stories in Best American collections and/or The New Yorker, so it didn't make a lot of sense to lay out money for the rest of them. On the other hand, Saunders is an amazing talent, well worth your time. But if you're not already reading The New Yorker or the Best American series, you're probably not his target market. See what I mean?

The Good Lord Bird, by James McBride 
I always regret not reading the NBA winner, and this book, about a kid joining up with the John Brown raids, made this year no exception.

Literary Novel/Book of the Year:

The shortlist of Grebbie-nominated books I did read includes:

Life After Life, by Kate Atkinson 
Infinite rebirths, the Blitz of London, and murdering Hitler. What else do you need in a book?

We Live in Water, by Jess Walter 
A compassionate collection of stories about hard luck losers in the Pacific Northwest by one of the great writers of our time (and my Tin House workshop mentor - Hi, Jess!)

A Tale for the Time Being, by Ruth Ozeki
Japanese schoolgirls, ancient Buddhist nuns, diaries that float up on distant shores, and quantum-zen weirdness. Put on your thinking caps, folks, and read this one now.

But the Grebbie goes to...

The Flamethrowers, Rachel Kushner 
Looking over my list, there wasn't one head-and-shoulders standout. But this book, the story of a young artist known as Reno who in the late 1970's hangs on the outskirts of art collectives and anarchists, was probably my favorite book this year.

I love this book as a perfect blend of everything I'm into, novelistically: Historical labor movements, art, motorcycles, anarchic shadow organizations, sexuality and sexual politics, and yes, myth-making on a shamelessly grand scale.

Pulpy Good Fun retro-read of the year

The Dain Curse, by Dashiell Hammett
When eight diamonds go missing from an eccentric millionaire, it seems like a routine insurance investigation for the Continental Op, until the bodies start piling up and the man's niece - a drug addict, possibly insane - is at the center of the whole thing.

Dashiell Hammett wrote the hell out of mysteries, and his Continental Op is one of the great creations of noir mysteries. The Op is nameless, middle-aged, overweight, and without much in the way of history or emotion. What he does have is a bulldog's perseverence and about as much morality- he's always willing to play people against each other to solve the case. Which is different from pursuing justice, and he'd say the same thing if he were much of a philosopher.

Award for Comics that do what Comics should do:

All-Star Superman, Volume 1

Sure, this title has its problems: A cardboard sex-doll Lois Lane, an overly stuffed smorgasboard of villains, and loose choppy plotting. But it also has some great moments: bio-engineered suicide bombers, multi-dimensional time travel, and Jimmy Olson as Doomsday.

Superman was always his most fun when he let loose of reality and just went with acid trip weirdness: Cities in bottles, flying superdogs, evil clones, Mr. Mxptlyk - everything I think isn't in the last movie (I haven't seen it, the trailer looked like a pretentious gloomy mess) is in here. Repeat after me, everyone: Superman should be fun!

Country of the year: Turkey

Well, I know what you're saying: Turkey is not a book. And you'd be right, Turkey is a country. But you'll notice on my Goodreads list a couple of books by Turkish authors, including Nobel prize winner Orhan Pamuk, the historical novelist Ayse Kulin, and a collection of Turkish Fairy tales.

That's because, dear reader, I live in Turkey. I haven't written much about it - I pretty much live on the Internet these days - but I hope to bring some of that to this blog in the future. Meanwhile: If you like sweeping historical romances, check out Ayse Kulin. If you like dense brooding exposes on melancholy and the nature of art, Orhan Pamuk is your guy. And, well, who doesn't like a fairy tale once in a while?

So step up to the podium, Turkey, and receive your Grebbie.

And what will 2014 bring? I can't wait to find out.

A grebmaR Christmas special: the Miser Brothers

When I was a kid, the holidays meant Christmas programming. There were the obvious solid, heartwarming classics like The Grinch, Charlie Brown, and Frosty the Snowman. But no one could match the Rankin/Bass studios for sheer madcap discombobulatory dissonance. Their specials were often pretty good, like the charmingly awkward "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" or the maudlin but effective "Santa Claus is Coming to Town." But they were equally capable of churning out bottom feeding dreck such as "The First Easter Rabbit" or "Frosty and Rudolph Save the 4th of July."*

Somewhere in between, there was "The Year Without a Santa Claus," a syrupy tale of Jingle and Jangle, two elves who set out to save Christmas when Santa gets the sniffles. (Why Santa gets sick on Christmas so often is an unexplored mystery.) You actually forget that part, though, once the Miser Brothers show up. These two narcissistic avatars of nature steal the show like Samuel L. Jackson dreams he could.

In the mythopoetics of Christmas Special Land, Heat Miser and Snow Miser lord over the realms of Snow and Heat. Twin children of Mother Nature, they couldn't have been more different, except for their theme song, which was eerily similar, and spectacularly AWESOME! Listen:



It's a beautiful tune, isn't it? A rollicking good-time number, with straw hats and chorus lines clearly influenced by Bob Fosse. And I don't think it's a stretch to consider Michael Jackson watching Snow Miser's spin-move showmanship and filing it away for future use.** In the years following their introduction, the Miser Brothers have inspired literally thousands of stoners, slackers, and blog posts. It was only natural that they would appear in sequels.

In the 00's, someone did a live action special remake starring Michael McKean (from Spinal Tap) and Harvey Fierstein, which turns the two part song into a duet complete with bikini-clad minions, slingshots and crossbows. It starts off as a total train wreck, then kind of grows on you, and then goes back to train wreck... here, see what I mean:



I understand their intention here, uniting both versions into one complete number - it always seemed sort of a time-filler and union-cost-cutting move to use the same song twice - but the execution seems spotty. Why are the two heat misers' domains separated by such a thin chasm? In what realm of physics can this exist? By taking the metaphorical division of heat and cold and placing them in such proximity, the dialectic of hot and cold turns into an in-house squabble between pouty brothers, rather than an epic, meta-conflict between points of view that the original suggested.

On the other hand, I do love Harvey Fierstein's Louisiana gutter accent, and the gusto with which he's determined to sell this turd as fertilizer. The icicle up the butt at the end also seems the work of a good sport. But McKean seems to be phoning it in here, like his agent had come to him with either this or a Lenny and the Squigtones reunion tour, and he chose poorly.

But, you know, it makes me wonder where Mr. Temperate is in all this? Mr. Heat, Mr. Snow, and no one in that sweet spot in between, where we live most of our lives. That boring zone of mud and flowers and sweet spring rain. The Temperate Miser. It's always the middle child that gets forgotten. Maybe it's the lost Miser Sister, Lady Temperate. She should have her own song:

I'm Lady Brown Christmas
I'm sorta 'meh'
I'm 'Bring a light jacket,'
I'm 'Watch out for that mud!'

Friends call me Temperate Miser
Whatever I touch
gets soon enough to room temp-utch-(ure)
I'm not that much!

I never want to know a day that's outside a particular range
From fifty to seventy, say! Hey, let's wear sensible shoes!

I'm not that much!

(spoken): Yeah, thanks a lot mom, my brothers got all the attention and why? Because they're all Hot and Cold and people think I'm just a law of thermodynamics or entropy well fuck you mom it's more than that, not that you care... (fades away, mumbling)

Well, you know, it's an idea.

Merry Christmas! And hey, Santa - take some vitamins this year. No more colds!

Addendum: For completeness sake, there's also a 2008 version of the song, from The Miser Brother's Christmas, which despite its techincal advances adds absolutely nothing to the conversation.


* This special is actually called Frosty and Rudolph's Christmas in July

** The question of whether the Miser Brothers influenced the Jackson 5 or vice versa I will leave for the comments section to determine.

Salinger, Zombies and flying canoes: a round-up

Here's a themeless round-up of some of my favorite web-things of the past week or two.

JD Salinger's work is leaking
Three previously unpublished Salinger stories are showing up on file-sharing sites, according to Vulture and tons of other sources. This isn't quite an Edward Snowden scale leak, but it does feel like a watershed for Salinger fans lined up and waiting for the five books promised by the somewhat shady documentary released this summer. For a much longer more digressive read on fan reaction, from "Omigod amazing!" to "I can't belive what the Philistines are up to!" scan the Reddit posts.

I think my biggest problem with this is: what's with all the secrecy over when and if these stories - and the promised five other books - will ever emerge through traditional publishing? As far as I know, no publisher has announced any release dates or plans, or plans to make dates. It's okay, you say, because Salinger was secretive. And sure, it's important what Salinger wanted. But he's gone now, and it's not clear why his cult of privacy has extended so far past his death. Unless there are no books. But no one will say officially one way or another.

So what's really depressing about Salinger's legacy is that no one seems to be in charge of it. Instead of an agent or spokesperson, we get leaks and rumors and salacious biographies.

Please, someone, step forward and tell us what's going on. This is ridiculous.

And for a fun read on what it was like to answer Salinger's fan mail, Check out Salon.com.

On-line Story of the Week:
The Rose Trellis, by Jim Meirose. I can say I've never read a story quite like this one. Nothing much happens - it's about an old woman and her tenant, who builds a rose trellis and then goes out to buy roses for it - and the prose is strangely distant, and it's kind of too long. There's a hazy dreaminess to the entire piece, and several weird God stand-ins, and an inspired flashback section narrated by the woman's dead husband who is looking forward in time.

I'm not exactly sure what I think of this story, to tell the truth. It's good, I think, but it's not mainstream good, which I mean as a compliment. It's almost outsider art in its denial of contemporary sensibilities regarding form and style. It's too idiosyncratic, holding to a vision that comes off as unsophisticated, though it's actually anything but. It's about dreams, memories, and death. My hats off to you, Jim Meirose.

Folk Story of the week:
A quick fun read. French Canadians and a flying canoe tempt the Devil and anger God in this new-to-me tale.

Trailer of the week: Zombie Hamlet
It's so obvious that Shakespeare and zombies should get together in a satire about the hackiest aspects of Hollywood. They are three of our most enduring cultural institutions, after all. Why did it take so long?

My only concern with this trailer is that even after several viewings it's not clear whether an actual zombie outbreak occurs. There would have to be a real outbreak, wouldn't there? Don't toy with my emotions, Zombie Hamlet - give me zombies or don't waste my time.