Argobot

Can we all just read the Tom Bissell essay where he interviews Jennifer Hale (the actress who did FemShep's voice) and then discuss the completely surreal moment when he plays Mass Effect 3 with her?

I guess it rubbed me the wrong way because--and this is speaking entirely from my own personal experience--music subcultures tend to have a lot of weird gender issues, so a female character having a line about how her husband's love of vinyl is some big unknowable thing, seems a little tone deaf. Especially since the line comes out of now where, since I never got any indication that Aviva felt shut out from her husband's obsession.

I can completely understand that, I normally would never do anything to purposefully damage a book (funny story, one time my boyfriend surprised me with a necklace by putting it in a hollowed out copy of a Dostoevsky book, and even though it was a bad translation and a really pretty necklace, I still yelled at him for damaging a classic), but now when I look at my beat up copy of Infinite Jest, I see at as a symbol of all the effort I put into actually reading it and feel weirdly proud of it. Plus, it was just fun to rip the damn thing in half.

Finished the book last night as well. Towards the end I was just speeding through to finish, and wasn't really concerned with how the plot threads were going to tie up or what was going to happen with the characters. There was one particular point where I wanted to just put the book down and never look at it again (ok, two points, the first was the Obama scene). It's when Aviva is talking to Nat and Archy about the record store, and she has a line about how men like them will always create empires, love vinyl, etc, and that she--because she's a woman is the implication--will never understand them. That's just terrible. The two female main characters gave me the most problems in the book. Aviva was definitely the weakest character; she seemed like a weird stand in for Chabon's own wife. I actually liked Gwen, until the end when she apologizes to the man who threatened to sue her. The scene is written like it's supposed to be a big character moment, but the whole time Archy is in the background, acting smug at the sight of Gwen being taken down a notch His weird superiority only draws attention to the fact that between the two, it's really Archy who deserves to be shamed and humbled, but everything works out pretty OK for him. I'm glad that in this week's podcast, Jake briefly mentions his own dissatisfaction with the book; I'd been feeling guilty about panning a book that's a bookcast selection, but not anymore. Really excited to hear everyone's thoughts on this one.

Actually, I'd recommend buying the book in paperback and then physically ripping the book into different sections. I ripped mine into three parts: two parts for the main book and then the entire endnotes section. It definitely makes the book a lot easier to cart around. When you're done reading, you can always buy a nice copy, but I'm kind of fond of my torn up version.

Here's an article defending the reading of so called "bad" books: http://therumpus.net/2012/10/on-the-comfort-of-bad-books/ I don't really agree with the article's main thesis--which pretty much boils down to David Foster Wallace read a John Grisham book once, so it's ok for everyone else to read bad books--especially since I think that books can offer the reader a form of escape and still be considered "good."

Subtlety keeps me from being bored; if everything in the book is obvious and spelled out from the beginning, why would I bother reading it? I can understand the need for pure entertainment, something that requires little to no critical thought, but that's not what I want from books. TV or movies sure, but because books require more of a commitment from me, I expect them to challenge or engage me on a deeper level than other media does. Reading!

With the movie's wide release date coming up this Friday, there seems to be a lot more coverage of it in the press. I found this article particularly interesting, because it discusses the weird race issues that are in the movie: http://hyperallergic.com/58869/ethnic-cleansing-colorblind-casting-in-cloud-atlas/ Here's a particularly choice quote: "Among the several characters she plays in the film, Korean actress Bae Doona does don blonde hair and blue eyes for at least two of them. Halle Berry, also, lightens her skin and eyes to play a white socialite in the 1930s. Of course, having a minority actress play a white character does not and cannot negate the legacy of racial discrimination inherent in the use of blackface. If anything, it just makes the whole situation worse. The filmmakers labor under the misapprehension that their work resides in some sort of vacuum, free of wider cultural context, or in that unicorn domain known as the “post-racial” society. This blissfully naïve understanding proceeds from the dominant point-of-view, the white point-of-view." The choice to cast the same actor as multiple characters, and then to CGI the white actors to look Asian, is such a weird, insulting choice and I hope more people point out how problematic the whole situation is.

I find my tolerance for being scared is a lot lower for games than with movies, probably because of the interactive requirements of playing a game. I tried playing through Dead Space recently, and I couldn't make it past the intro monster. Sit me in front of a Paranormal Activity though, and I'm more likely to laugh than cringe. Fear is a strange thing.

Well, I'm glad that I bought the book on sale! There's nothing I love more than getting mad at books (my poor, suffering boyfriend is dealing with a lot of this as I read Telegraph Ave). I didn't listen to the one about Pulphead, but I did start listening to the YA episode. I'm really enjoying it, it's exactly what you'd expect a podcast made by significant others to be like (that's meant as a compliment).

Hey, has anyone read Pulphead? After waffling on reading it for the past few months, I finally broke down and just bought it on sale from Powells (along with next month's bookcast book, because I lack good fiscal judgement when it comes to literature). I generally enjoy these types of non fiction, pop culture essays, but I'm afraid that Sullivan will just be a watered down version of Klosterman or Bissell. Thoughts from those who've read it?

Just talk to them about Idle Thumbs, works like a charm.

Come on man, give nerds some credit, not all of them are helpless with women.

Based on a lot of the reviews that I read of Telegraph Avenue, this seems to be the majority opinion on the book. I've only read Kavalier and Clay, and I'm having a hard time accepting that the same author wrote both those books. One review I read brought up a really interesting point, that Telegraph Avenue is basically a novelized version of a Tarantino movie. The direct references to his movies, the focus on blaxploitation kung-fu movies, and the heavy reliance (or maybe over reliance?) on pop culture references, all make the comparison to Tarantino's films seem appropriate. Anyone else picking up on this as they read the book? I'd put the book down for a few days after the infamous Obama scene, but I think I'll try finishing it. Gwen and Julie are interesting enough characters that I want to see how their stories end, and I obviously I want to be able to follow the discussion in the bookcast. Still, I'm disappointed in how this book is turning out, especially since I know that Chabon is capable of writing a truly amazing story.

Just finished the latest episode, and it amazed me in the way that I've come to expect with this series. Such a great game, with such an amazing story line. If I had one quibble with this episode, it'd be:

Please tell me the book is worth finishing, because at this point, I've lost all my motivation to read it.

Wow, I just finished the Barack Obama portion of the book, and I'm at a complete loss for words. It almost makes me want to stop reading the book. I can't believe that Chabon really thought that scene was a good idea.

Yeah...that's kind of...awkward? I remember from a while back in one of the podcasts where Sean and Jake were discussing the issue of race in the Walking Dead and how they felt uncomfortable as two white guys, to write a black character. I think there's a lot of the same concerns in Telegraph Avenue, but amplified, because this book is directly confronting racial issues. There are a lot of tongue in check references to stereotypical liberal white people who are overly concerned with appearing racial sensitive in Telegraph Avenue, but I can't help thinking that Chabon is making a lot of the same unfortunate mistakes that he's mocking other white people of doing.

Whoops, sorry for misunderstanding what you wrote there.

I just want to clarify that I agree with what most of what you're saying, but I think it's a little overblown to say that genre-driven communities are some how harmful to the goals of "literary fiction." These circles have managed to co-exist since the beginning of written fiction, and I'm that they will continue to do so. No matter how wildly successful something like 50 Shades of Grey is, there will always be a market for serious fiction written by serious authors that can be read by serious readers.

Very true, and I feel like Telegraph Avenue is going to have enough complicated issues (race) that there just won't be enough time to do a genre discussion justice. Which is a shame. It's one of my favorite literary arguments to have.

This uneasiness towards genre fiction is really interesting, given that Michael Chabon has very publicly declared his respect and admiration for genre fiction, and his overall disdain for labeling certain books as "fiction" and other books as "genre fiction." I'm wondering if this will come up at all in the discussion of Telegraph Avenue.

I just passed the 100 page mark and am enjoying what I've read so far, minus one particular section: the at home birth. When the two main female protagonists are midwives, it shouldn't come as a surprise that there will be a birthing scene in the novel, but man, I was unprepared for how visceral my reaction to it would be. It's not even a particularly graphic scene, but it still created this very real, raw emotional response for me. So far I wouldn't put the book in the same league as Kavalier and Clay, but I'm hoping that it will surprise me in the end. Chabon is a really interesting writer with a lot of interesting opinions (his collection of essays called "Maps and Legends" is really worth a read, if only for the essay where he argues against the ghettoizing of genre fiction).

David Mitchell has an article out on the experience of having his book adapted into a movie: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/30/magazine/cloud-atlas.html?gwh= The article itself is really short and Mitchell seems genuinely pleased with how the film turned out. I'm still wary of seeing it however, and this quote especially, seemed a lot more sinister than I think Mitchell intended it too: "When I try to recall how I imagined my vanity-publisher character, Timothy Cavendish, before the movie, all I see now is Jim Broadbent’s face smiling back, devilishly."