Two Books: The Convalescent and Stars In My Pocket Like Grains Of Sand

[rax]

I spent Friday, Saturday, and some of today in Wisconsin visiting my family; this meant two plane trips, which means I read two books that I was not required to read for a class, book group, or other specific obligation. Yaaaaaaaaay. :) The first one was The Convalescent by Jessica Anthony, who won the Amanda Davis Highwire Fiction Award for this book. The second one was Stars In My Pocket Like Grains Of Sand by Samuel R. Delany, who did not win any awards for it but I am not sure why. The first I read because McSweeney's sent it to me as part of my book subscription package; the second I read because rushthatspeaks cornered me at some point and insisted I read it right now, which while it didn't get me to actually read it right now, got me to purchase it and put it in the Read Me pile and it finally bubbled up to the top of the list when I got tired of rererererererereading Dubliners and taking notes for my novel.

The Convalescent, in brief, is an enjoyable and surreal novel that resolved itself in a satisfying way and made a good airport read. I think most of you would like it; it does a lot of the things I think of as "standard" for "McSweeney's sent me this" without being terribly long, challenging to enter, or failing-to-end. That means:

• It's surreal but not completely arealistic, in a way that feels a lot like magical realism
• It has nested plot threads that inform each other (in this case, a mythic history of the creation of Hungary involving a hypothetical extra cursed tribe that's actually really hilarious)
• The language is clever and you will be annoyed if you would like to be able to completely ignore it but it is also not going to force you to push through it like a broken hedge maze
• None of the characters are totally "good" but all of them are at least a little bit sympathetic

If this sounds kind of general, it's because it is; the specifics of the story are fun and it's an enjoyable book but I didn't feel terribly moved by it, nor do I feel I'm going to be remembering it for a terribly long time. I think Deb Olin Unferth's Vacation has most of the same elements, but it's subtler and I felt more connection to the characters; that said, the Amazon reviews for Anthony's book are all five stars and so obviously some people think this book is astounding. I think it's good, but not worth writing home about. I guess I wrote here, though at least in part because McSweeney's accidentally sent me two copies, so if you'd like to borrow one, that can absolutely be arranged, and if you really like it, you won a book.

Stars In My Pocket Like Grains Of Sand, in brief, is an intensely frustrating and rewarding experience that will engage you academically, intellectually, emotionally, and erotically. It's science fiction, which I still have a limited toolkit for reading, but that didn't get in my way as much as it did for the last few; I think I'm getting better at it. (scifibookqueue has been pushing me, it's great.) The first fifty or so pages tell a fairly contained and engaging story, and then the book explodes open with information and perspectives pushing for attention and position. I actually found this quite difficult --- fifty pages was long enough that I had gotten into a groove with the way the text worked and I expect that Delany did that on purpose. The recontextualizing switch definitely pushed me outside of my comfort zone for the majority of the book, and I will probably need to reread it to see what I missed while I was getting back on track --- because once I was back on track, it mashed a few of my buttons super hard. 

Here's the biggest one: it had the best explanation of desire I have ever seen, barring Barthes. (I actually expect Delany had read and was in some ways responding to Fragments: A Lover's Discourse but of course I'd say that.) It's not surprising that I would prefer to read Barthes's explanation of desire, given that he wrote an entire book about it and I am as much a Barthes fangirl as I am an anything fangirl. It is surprising that the next best I've seen was not in theory, was not in poetry, was not even in love letters but was a natural part of the running text of a science fiction novel. For squee. Aside from that, though, it also has a whole lot to say about the place of literature in society, the problems with "free flow of information," and the way marginalization of groups and social practices is effected and evolves. He even presages (the book came out in 1984) the World Wide Web, and more importantly, a major organization with some political ties that controls much of how that information is accessed and polices, to a certain extent, why.

The major thing he didn't seem to presage was a shift in how people were sexual with each other. I think in some ways this was on purpose, in order to echo the gay male sexuality of his time, but I found it sort of difficult to believe that there was no digital or otherwise non-somatic sexuality at all in the universe. In particular, Marq talks about having thousands of sexual encounters, but it seems like all of them were in-person sexual encounters that focused on genital stimulation. Maybe that's what she was into I guess but if she's going to talk about totally understanding desire on the basis of extreme experience you think she'd try phone sex a few times, you know?

Oh and if you're interested in alternate uses of gendered pronouns you should also check this out. And I know some of you are! ;) I could write a longer review, but I will not, in the interest of actually posting reviews before it has been three months.

Comments

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

Yay Stars in My Pocket! I think Delany may be being intentionally frustrating, sometimes. But it's hard to prove. I am glad you liked it. It hits some of my buttons pretty hard, too. Like the dragon hunt, where the text of the hunt turns out to be the text of the hunt song, and you can go through and prove that it adheres to all the arbitrary aesthetic rules of hunt songs. And I want to read all the books Rat Korga reads, the time she reads all those books. And the Dyeths have the best banqueting hall ever.

Your point about non-somatic sexuality is a good one. I think it goes with some of the way Delany thinks about the Web (which papersky originally pointed out to me)-- portions of the Web are restricted-access, but everything on there is true. Not even opinion. Fact. So Delany predicted very thoroughly the way that information access and the flow of information and even how one uses a phone would change (how much do I like that passwords are non-physical sensory-interface? so much), but got none of the social dimensions of the Web at all, the way some of us keep half our brains on it and the way you can't believe one tenth of what you read and the way it connects people who never physically meet. Which is, I suspect, why this is not the book that founded cyberpunk.

I had an interesting experience with, oh, what's-her-face who Marq hooked up with, the dangerous one, in that my mental image of her was very visual and solid, which for most of the other people in the book it wasn't due to the different biological options. And then I realized that my image of her was very clear because my thoughts on her gender presentation are very clear: regardless of biological sex, she is totally an anime bishounen, subspecies badass. Which amused me.

[rax.livejournal.com]

Like the dragon hunt, where the text of the hunt turns out to be the text of the hunt song, and you can go through and prove that it adheres to all the arbitrary aesthetic rules of hunt songs.

WAIT WHAT. WHAT. Really? So hot.

And I want to read all the books Rat Korga reads, the time she reads all those books.

Yessssssssss.

And those are very good points about fact versus opinion (though I'm unconvinced that everything is actually fact, just intended to be...).

[eredien]

I haven't finished Stars in my Pocket--because I couldn't devote an entire weekend to it to do it justice, and so must needs read it in small chunks to do it justice another way--but I can't freakin' wait to read about the dragon hunt, holy crap; the medieval hunt aesthetic is kind of one of my mini-research specialties.

[rax.livejournal.com]

That chapter is written specifically for you as far as I can tell.

[thomasyan.livejournal.com]

I am so sad that Delany will probably never write the sequel to SimPLGoS.

Aside: I didn't realize or had forgotten death-star pumpkin guy had done lots of other carvings: http://www.fantasypumpkins.com/

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

I've poked at other Delany but not that one. Maybe I should dig it up.

[rax.livejournal.com]

I think you'd dig it, like, with a shovel.

[iankeith.livejournal.com]

Wish I coulda hung out witcha, Raxes. Hope you had a blast though!

[rax.livejournal.com]

It was great and stressful in all of the ways that big family gatherings are when you like your family but you're also the local weirdo :) We didn't really leave Green Bay or I would have at least dropped you a line. Maybe next time I'll rent a car and take an extra day...

[iankeith.livejournal.com]

Could be fine. You're always welcome to come bug me; my door is open!

[laura47.livejournal.com]

i'll borrow the first if i can!

[rax.livejournal.com]

Sure, you've got it.

[lhexa.livejournal.com]

I'll keep my eyes open for the Delany book, even though I read far less science fiction than I once did.