More Information Than You Require - John Hodgman

If, like me, you are constantly frustrated by the mainstream media's ignorance regarding the contributions made to our democracy by mole men, take heart*. John Hodgman, of internet and minor television fame, is ready to blow the doors off the vault of knowledge with More Information Than You Require.

There's the vault of knowledge now. Prior to this book it was fifty percent less explode-y.

A direct continuation of his previous work, The Areas Of My Expertise, MITYR*2 doesn't even bother restarting page count from where it's predecessor left off (it's that much of a continuation). There's always more fake knowledge to be illuminated and Hodgman's flashlight of false truth runs on some organic battery alternative to conventional means*3. Whether he's revealing which of our presidents was a Time Lord, why uber-guitarist Steve Vai could not bring himself to kill Ralph Macchio, or the hidden danger of tiny doctors from the future, Hodgman does so with the studiousness and passion I wish our actual "accredited" historians could. But they can't.

It takes a rare breed to hang out on Twitter and go to Hollywood parties, plumbing the depths of situational notoriety in search of mole-manic rumor and sure thing bar bets to compile for his readers. I salute you, John Hodgman; you live the life so Doris Kearns Goodwin and David McCullough*4 don't have to, and that has made all the difference.

On a personal note, this book is worth buying simply to know why Milwaukee was destroyed by a violent downpour of skulls on February 12th, 1980. Having been born just nineteen months later, I never knew of this event, and probably never would have if not for John Hodgman and his wonderful lies*5.



* Genuine Hissfurther, you are not forgotten.

*2 As the kids and the robots call it.

*3 Much like the Oan Power Ring of Green Lantern fame.

In brightest day, in blackest night,
No evil shall escape my sight
Let those who worship evil's might,
Beware my power...Green Lantern's light!

*4 Respected historians who write about 'actual' history, if that's what you're in to.

*5 Now I know why I find skulls every time I hang out at the beach. Whew! That's a relief!

The Manual of Detection - Jedediah Berry

Star detective Travis T. Sivart is missing. More Phillip Marlowe than Sherlock Holmes, Sivart has been responsible for unraveling the strange crimes of arch-villain, and master of disguise, Enoch Hoffman, ever since Hoffman and his Travels-No-More Carnival occupied the outskirts of the city. Now, with Sivart having disappeared, the city is sliding into chaos; citizens are trapped in fugue states and engaging in strange behavior; signs that Hoffman is making a play for control of more than just the ragged big top under his purview abound. Enter Charles Unwin; a lowly clerk in the employ of The Agency, the solvers of mystery and protectors of the public good. Unwin is, if not happy, then at least content to be the chronicler of Sivart’s cases; collating facts and compiling the exploits of derring-do that Unwin admired but never wanted to experience. Improbably, Unwin is whisked into the world of sensible hats and shoulder holsters in Sivart’s stead, given nothing more than the seventeen slim chapters that serve as the book’s title to go about finding his famed predecessor.


But even that resource is thrown into question, as a strange dream encounter with Sivart reveals the existence of an eighteenth chapter excised for field operatives. Unwin sets out reluctantly to find Sivart in the hopes of everything going back to normal, armed only with a head for detail and a sleepy secretary in love with the life of a detective. Normal falls by the wayside early on, as Unwin proceeds to uncover the actual status quo in the city; a strange balance between falsely resolved mystery and hidden connections whose exposure throws the work of both The Agency and The Carnival into question.


Most appreciated about The Manual of Detection is that, though it is a strange world we’re dropped into, there is no overt attempt to beat us over the head with explanatory exposition. The city is totally noir, phonographs are still en vogue, a giant steam-powered truck serves as conveyance for dead-eyed henchmen, and the gin joint next to the cemetery is the place to ask your questions. The standard detective story archetypes are well-represented but smartly tweaked adding a layer of the fantastic that enhances the story without hijacking the tone.


Jedediah Berry’s first full-length novel is wonderful. With boundless imagination and razor keen characterization, he has delivered a smart, fun story that appeals to the mystery lover and the magical realist fan all at once. The Manual of Detection is strange without being silly; intricate without being minutia-laden; whimsical while still keeping the reader riding the secret subway and plumbing the depths of the hidden catacombs in an attempt to stay one step ahead of gunmen and deranged puppet masters.

A Better Angel - Chris Adrian

Let’s face facts, people. I, your humble typist, am not even close to being cool*. I’m not on top of the latest music, the hippest fashion, or the coolest drugs*2. The only arena (save for comics) that I can pretend to know about is books. As a bookseller in various capacities for the last 7+ years I’ve seen thousands of titles pass my way. I’ve even read some of them*3. However, even when it comes to books, I still fall a bit short of ‘guy you want at your ‘altbook goth poetry slam and appletini mixer’*4.

I’ve gotten weary over the years, especially of hype and marketing. It’s engendered in me no small amount of Bestseller Backlash*5. This extends to lesser-known authors in a ‘coolness mutation’ of the disease (which explains why I’m so McSweeney’s/New Directions/SoHo Press deficient). This mutation kept me from reading a book called The Children’s Hospital, written by Chris Adrian. It sounded good, I wanted to read it, and then at least four co-workers had to tell me just how good it was. This sort of thing has kept me from Murakami, Marias, Marquez*6 and other ‘M’ name authors.

Time went by, The Children’s Hospital stared at me accusingly each time I unpacked it from a Perseus Distribution box, and I got on with life. Then, as if by magic (or the weekly galley box sent to each Schwartz store from the home office), I saw a book by Chris Adrian with my name on it.

Did I dare? Well, yeah, or I wouldn’t be writing about it. I tore through Adrian’s collection of stories, A Better Angel, and soon after felt like the last guy to insist that the Earth was flat*7. From the first story on it’s evident that Adrian has an envious amount of creativity and an admirable grasp of his characters’ motivations and viewpoints.

Make no mistake; these aren’t quirky slices of life or faith-affirming meditations on mankind’s foibles. What’s in this book, in every story without exception, is sadness, nearly incommunicable rage, twisted pathos and the ever-present specter of death. Having never read Adrian before, I was surprised to say the least. There are elements of the fantastic and the supernatural in many cases, but they serve as a means to explore a reality that’s been turned upside down.

The central question in so many of the stories in A Better Angel is “How does a person deal with death?” The death of loved ones, the death of innocence, the death of spirit in the face of atrocity. The answers proffered won’t help you sleep better at night, but they will make you think hard about your own response to tragedy. This book is not a positive coping mechanism; quite the opposite, it is a rage-filled howl against the inadequacy of emotion and the way in which terrible events weigh down everyday lives.

A Better Angel is definitely not for the faint of heart; it is for the questioners and the seekers who are open to plumbing the depths of anguish and living in the chilly recesses of tortured minds for the space of a story now and then.

*I’m not fishing for compliments here. It’s a simple statement of fact. Let it be.

*2 No “meth-mouth” for me, thanks. Drugs are bad. You heard it here first.

*3 Not many classics, too much genre trash, and a fair amount worth recommending here.

*4 Catch the next mixer at Recreational Sherpa’s; Milwaukee’s newest indoor rock climbing center and pub house! Located in the basement of the third crack house on Cambridge, just off the corner of Brady and Farwell. $5 cover, Tuesday night rails are only $2 until 10pm. Can’t relate to having a street with at least three crack houses in your city or town? Good for you.

*5 A particularly virulent book-borne form of elitism that causes sufferers to recoil from any book that comes highly recommended by any print or online publication (except The Inside Flap), or sells a lot of copies.

*6 “It’s Garcia Marquez, jerk!” I’m aware, but go into any bookstore and you’ll find him shelved in both ways. I don’t make the rules, I just bend them to make weak alphabet jokes.

*7 I know; I seem to start a fair amount of my book recommendations by saying that I held off on reading a book and found I was wrong to do so. What can I say? I spend a lot of time being stubborn and wrong. I could have just come out and said as much, but who am I; Georgia’s senior Senator, Saxby Chambliss*8?

“I don’t know what I’m doing here either. While I’ve got your attention; don’t vote for that Barack Hussein Obama feller. He’s a ‘risky’ choice. I hope you take my Southern Strategy meaning when I say ‘risky’.”

*8 I actually know next to nothing about Saxby Chambliss or his reading habits, save for that he’s a Republican and therefore alternates The Bible and Ann Coulter and is most likely evil. Plus, he’s got an ‘old money’, funny-sounding name worthy of mockery.

Awesome - Jack Pendarvis

Okay. All right. Good. Nice. Cool. None of these words could adequately describe the latest book from Jack Pendarvis (could have used ‘adequate’ in that first group of words). Luckily, he’s provided us fellow typists with the perfect pull quote in the form of his title, Awesome.

That’s definitely appreciated, because although I spend a good fifty percent of my day marveling at my own writing skills*, I’ve rarely been able to describe what is good about funny books. I can say, “this book is funny”, “hilarious”, “gut-busting”, “urine-extracting (I know, eww)”. Sure, I could say those things, but how do you, the prospective reader, know if I have any sense to judge ‘funny’? You don’t, so let’s just stop thinking that way. I don’t doubt you, and this blogging*² thing is a two-way street.

To this point, Jack Pendarvis has published two short story collections; The Mysterious Secret of the Valuable Treasure and Your Body Is Changing. While both are ridiculously funny (trust me, remember?), I’d wondered what a book-length story would look like. It’s better than I could have hoped, and Sex Devil*³ set the bar astronomically high.

Awesome is the story of Awesome, a giant man in every way. Sure, he’s a big fella, but it’s not all brawn with him. He’s also the world’s foremost expert in robot creation, time travel, whale songs, effortless seduction and Alpine bells. I could list more of his CV*⁴, but we’re limited to the space the internet affords us.

Okay, maybe this is a cow bell, but you get the idea.

Suffice to say, Awesome seems to have it all. But, as is so often the case with our betters, Awesome still has a, to paraphrase Extreme*⁵, “hole in his heart that can only be filled by you”. Actually, not ‘you’, per se, but Glorious Jones. Who’s Glorious Jones? Now I feel like I’m doing your reading for you, but okay, I’ll bite. Glorious Jones is the special lady who sends Awesome on a globe-spanning, time traveling odyssey in search of the rarest objects to prove his devotion and win her hand in marriage (in a religion created by Awesome).

"If you don't like what you see here, get the funk out."

Whether hanging out with hay-stacking California hippies, their deadly empiricist enemies, his faulty robot Jimmy or rival giant Goliath Brigadoon*⁶, Awesome proves to be the most compelling fictional character since The Mighty Thor. Sure, he may not have that cool winged Viking helmet, but a snazzy brown derby will do in a pinch.*⁷

"Verily, my helm is rad!"

The final litmus test for just how funny this book is; it had me laughing out loud on the bus. Anyone who’s taken the bus knows that laughing out loud on the bus is the surest way to being spoken to on the bus, and no sane person wants that. Still, I was willing to suffer the slings and arrows of captive audience conversation just to keep reading more of Awesome.

As I write this, Awesome is still 74 days away from publication (edit: Now it's even less, but I can't be bothered to do the math.). Don’t fret, stay calm. Well, at least stop clawing at your eyes, you’ll need them. You can preorder and keep yourself occupied with Mr. Pendarvis’s other books and his impressively updated blog in the meantime.*⁸

*Not really. I’m entirely accepting of my writing skills. And conceited.

*2 I believe my computer is from the 1990s as it does not recognize the term ‘blogging’. ‘Bogging’ was the suggestion, so perhaps it’s from the 1890s.

*3 The opening story from Mysterious Secret…, and the funniest thing I’ve ever read.

*4 CV: Short for curriculum vitae, a fancy way of saying resume. Wow, this is a condescending footnote. And it’s not helped by the reference to the editorial ‘we’re’ following ‘CV’.

*5 They won a Grammy………probably.

*6 Were I having a boy in ten weeks time, this name would have rocketed to the top of the list. Respect and power await a ‘Goliath Brigadoon’.

*7 Yes, Thor’s enchanted hammer, Mjolnir, is ultra-badass. No, Awesome doesn’t have an enchanted hammer. I believe I’ve made my case.

*8 I’ll be rereading my galley, complete with Mr. Mxyzptlk sketch. Stang!*9

*9’Stang’ is universal slang meant to express happiness or refer to money. Read the blog.

No Excuses

I don’t care if you don’t like comics. I don’t care if you have dial-up that causes snails to guffaw. I don’t care if someone just lit your mustache on fire. I don’t care if you dropped your nitroglycerin pill into your Lipton Iced Tea and feel a gripper coming on. I just don’t care. You must read this! Right away! No excuses. That is all.

Warren Ellis/Paul Duffield - Freakangels

P.S. Then take a look at all of Warren Ellis' work. It's great with no exceptions.

The Resurrectionist - Jack O'Connell

The very fact that you read up on books on The Inside Flap says to me that you, the reader, are discerning in your tastes. Without tooting any unnecessary horns, I think it’s safe to say that the contributors to this blog know a bit about fantastic reads. In this spirit of congratulations all around on taste and meritorious reading, I’d like to ask a question…

How strange are you willing to get?

Jack O’Connell seems to ask this question at the close of nearly every chapter of The Resurrectionist; and it’s not altogether unlikely that you’ll ask yourself that same question while reading the book.

I hope you’re willing to get so strange that a troupe of alternate reality circus freaks led by a chicken boy doesn’t throw you off the exploration of what might be a window into the collective unconscious.

I hope you’re willing to get so strange that the hard-riding biker gang holed up in an abandoned prosthetics factory and dealing in human bodily fluids doesn’t blind you to the thoughtful meditation about fatherhood and family.

I hope you’re willing to get so strange that an egomaniacal neurosurgeon and his prized salamander don’t obscure the questions raised about ethics and motivation in medicine.

I hope you’re willing to get so strange that you can recognize how a story within the story has the power to teach a lesson about happiness and the dangers of seeking it from a storyteller who owes you nothing.

Most of all, I hope you’re willing to get so strange that all of the bells, whistles, oddities and weirdos populating The Resurrectionist serve not to distract, but steer you right to the ultimate point; forgiveness is transformative.

If the sort of insanity cited above doesn’t faze you, enjoy. If it does, make the leap. You know what they say; The first three hundred and four pages are the strangest.

God Is Dead - Ron Currie, Jr.

No, it’s not Christopher Hitchens’ latest position paper; it’s an innovative collection of short stories woven around the powerful titular premise. The strangeness inherent in God Is Dead is owed to the fact that though God is dead (a victim of the genocide raging in Darfur), we’re still here. Surprisingly, the end of God does not mean the end of the world, though some of the characters in the book behave as such and some would be better off if it were. Taking up several viewpoints amid the aftershocks caused by the death of the most unifying (and divisive) force in human history, Ron Currie, Jr.’s book doesn’t shy away from bold speculation and surreal satire.

The questions raised by the death of God are nearly infinite. To accept the death of God, you have to accept the existence of God. What’s worse, the death of your god, or knowing that He was alive and you didn’t believe when you had the chance? If there is no more God; what of Heaven? Where do believers turn now? Do they worship their children? Do they worship the dogs who feasted on God’s corpse and gained a strange humanity? Do they worship tenets of philosophy, new schisms forming to take the place of sectarian hatreds? Do they succumb to the futility of life and seek its end now that there is no purpose (as hidden as that purpose may have been when He was still alive)?

Some authors would approach these issues with gentle ruminations; some with understated character studies. Luckily, Currie does us all a favor and turns the wheel hard, landing in a ditch of crazed imaginings, bold-faced irreverence and the audacity necessary to make you think without worrying about the consequences of your conclusions.

Rock On - Dan Kennedy

I was wrong again (it happens…let’s just say ‘occasionally’). I saw the title and cover of this book and thought ‘Please, not another ironic hipster penning a love letter to his childhood wrapped tightly in a faux enthusiasm blanket while burnishing his indie rock cred.’ (Okay, maybe my initial thought wasn’t quite that coherent and profanity-free, but we’re all great wits in retrospect. Also, ‘Faux Enthusiasm Blanket’ – possible post-emo/screamo band name.)

Turns out, Rock On is sans hipster irony, and less of a love letter than a debriefing from one of the smoking craters caused by the music wars. Dan Kennedy is (or should be) well-known for his frequent and varied contributions to numerous McSweeney’s publications. For those of you who don’t know McSweeney’s, rectify that posthaste.

As for Rock On; it’s a smart and funny look at the author’s disillusionment with an industry that poses as creative while seemingly ready to wring the necks of baby bunnies if it will get them another airplay for their ‘product’. It’s not a newsflash that when you have an industry controlling artistic expression the results seem less than genuine. It is, however, revelatory just how many decisions made in those ivory towers are driven by a combination of fear, laziness, and stupidity; and here I thought greed was the only boogeyman to aim for.

For eighteen soul-crushing months Kennedy fought the good fight in the marketing department of one of the biggest music companies in the world. His experiences would prove harrowing if they weren’t hilarious, and by all rights his observations should be dripping venom. As a former employee of the world’s largest purveyor of books (They Who Shall Not Be Named), I identified with Kennedy’s day-to-day dread and deer-in-the-headlights inability/unwillingness to play the game with his superiors.

Tales of conference room status wars waged by embittered ladder climbers, near-fisticuffs over baked goods, the mad dash of prospective personal assistants, the inanity of making a point about selling out by selling out, and a parade of yes men who never got music in the first place make Rock On the perfect encapsulation of the wrongheadedness of ‘big music’. Maybe Dan Kennedy’s book is the first fragment of an asteroid coming to usher the corporate dinosaurs into their ice age. It comes not a moment too soon.

What's Next? Adventures In Sequential Art: The Workshed Studio Wrap-Up

The booksellers at Schwartz Bookshop on Downer know how to put on an event (and I’m not just saying that because I work there). From the beginning, Jay Johnson and Joe Lisberg were accommodating, enthusiastic, and committed to spreading the word about “What’s Next? Adventures In Sequential Art”. They put in their time networking with local businesses and schools to get the word out around town and pelted the interweb with announcements (the fantastic promo poster by Joe’s own Deep Sea Studios was spot-on and a great help). Store manager Doug James was supportive and willing to give up some of that all-important front-of-store floor space to make room for a cool display featuring the work of those speaking.

With our goals being to proselytize to folks the wonders of doing what you love and to foster a sense of community with our fellow indies, Alan, Randy and I all came away feeling great about the response. The audience was much bigger than I expected, but I’m an anticipatory pessimist. We took some great questions, and all involved had ample opportunity to speak to what we do and why we do it.

Max Estes and John Porcellino were both stand-up guys, willing to share their views and methods with the audience, us ‘Shed Heads included. I had a chance to speak with both of them, and can wholeheartedly endorse their sincerity and devotion. Max and I were flabbergasted in tandem that with Milwaukee being as small as it is (comparatively), we had yet to run into each other. John was an inspiration; I truly felt that comics were instinctual and necessary when he talked.

The only unfortunate aspect to the night was a technical glitch removing a podcast from the equation. It would have been nice to be able to share the sounds of the event (John Porcellino admitting that everyone in comics is “sad and bitter” being my personal highlight), but I also see the positive in no one knowing what a giant windbag I can be in person.

I’m working on some new stuff at the moment, and having a chance to rub elbows with fellow creators provided an added spark to my typing engine (way to stretch a metaphor).

Thank you to everyone who attended and to those of you who keep your minds open and your wallets at the ready for independence.

Justin Riley (Harry W. Schwartz Bookshop/Workshed Studio)

No Country For Old Men - Cormac McCarthy

At this point, it may well be silly to recommend this book. It’s been out for almost two and a half years, and the movie adaptation (by the Coen brothers – HOORAY!) will be in theaters in a few short months. On top of that, Cormac McCarthy has jumped on the Oprah train with his most recent book, The Road. The publicity machine running behind this phenomenal author and his amazing work doesn’t seem to be hurting for fuel. All that being said; this book is so good that it would be wrong of me to read it and not say something.

Cormac McCarthy is the kind of author that people will teach classes about (perhaps they already do) and his work will be dissected for meaning, nuance and style. I’d say he was an exemplar of a certain crop of writers working the themes of dying culture, dried-up hopes and barren psychological landscapes, but he’s not. He’s not an ‘exemplar’, because no one else does what he does. Sure, some try, but no matter how much they get right, there is something altogether different and in my opinion, better about McCarthy’s writing.

On it’s face, No Country For Old Men is a story of a man who finds a case of money left from a drug deal gone bad and makes a fateful decision that alters his own and the lives of the people around him. But then it’s more. McCarthy is famous for his reticence to discuss his work, and hearing opinions like mine, making it out to be grander in scope than probably intended is doubtless one of the reasons why. But here goes…

I easily viewed the protagonist, Llewelyn Moss, as a Promethean character. He’s an everyman, stuck in his strata and desperate for more than life gave him. Desperate enough to steal the fire of the gods. Unfortunately, the gods in this time and place are gods of greed, violence and amorality. Moss is quickly out of his depth. There are no supernatural elements to the story (unless you count Anton Chigurh, the downright spooky killer on Moss’s trail), but the willingness to wade into the morass of bloody retribution and risk what little he has at the story’s beginning will make you question Moss’s sanity. Chigurh is a representation of the forces that ordinary men have no business butting up against. He’s long past humanity, in fact long past even the code of conduct expected of a man in his line of dirty work. The final member of the trio of perspectives is Ed Tom Bell, the sheriff whose life is turned upside down amid the chaos that ensues. Sheriff Bell is the standard set for community and order in an increasingly violent and, to him, senseless world. You can hear Bell’s bones ache every time he reads a newspaper, every time he hears about the latest transgression against the people he protects. These three men represent the stages of a world going mad. The old guard, the new return to savagery, and the point at which one embraces the other.

Questions of humanity regressing back to animalistic impulse are prevalent in McCarthy’s work; the battle to hold on to ethical and moral standards seems to be going badly. At the end of the day, the visions of violence and depravity presented serve to contrast and enhance the dwindling few who strive to do right. There is something mythic at work in No Country For Old Men.

Bad Monkeys - Matt Ruff

Confession time; I loathe high-octane action novels following rogue CIA/FBI/NSA agents as they untangle a web of government corruption while saving the president’s daughter. Luckily, Matt Ruff’s Bad Monkeys is nothing like those. Sure, there’s a national conspiracy, shadowy cabals on both sides of the good and bad seesaw, and a rogue agent shooting her way through the danger; but her weapon of choice is an ‘NC Gun’, ‘NC’ of course, standing for Natural Causes.

Ruff has done the action genre a service by weaving some fantastical elements into what would otherwise seem by-the-book spy fare. In fact, with these additions, Bad Monkeys goes from airport read to a mindbender of a good time from the first chapter on.

The enigmatic Jane Charlotte is questioned about a murder she cops to in the name of The Organization. The Organization is an outfit dedicated to improving the world behind the scenes, and her branch takes care of the titular primates. Bad monkeys; too far gone to save, too diabolical to be allowed to go on living. It’s Jane’s job to hunt them down, using a variety of sci-fi tech and weaponry and the Big Brother-style surveillance provided by every eye they could hide a camera in.

Read on an action thriller level, Bad Monkeys would succeed easily. It’s a good thing that Ruff wasn’t satisfied with action thriller status. Jane’s story is picked apart at every turn by a doctor and fed back to her in a more believable and less heroic form. The reader is left to figure out what’s to be believed and who Jane is. The psychological aspect of Bad Monkeys is at least as important as the derring-do, and delivers on the Pynchon-esque promise of the premise.

Bad Monkeys reminds me of another twist-and-turn action story recently out in paperback; The Zero, by Jess Walter. I loved Walter’s book for many of the same reasons I find Ruff’s to be so engaging. It just goes to show; genre need not scare you away if it’s used as a basis for expansion and experimentation. Both action novels succeed brilliantly by melding some sci-fi in with their grit.

Immortalize The Classics Personally

So, need more proof that the rest of the world is cooler than us? Check out this idea from Penguin Publishing's UK branch. I'm sure this is a pilot program, and if successful in the UK, Penguin will do something similar here.

Design Your Own Cover

I have to admit; early in my booklife, I had no clue about the impact covers made. It's only been since working in the industry that I've realized their impact, and grown to appreciate the well-crafted ones. There are studies citing the cover as THE most important factor deciding whether a book is picked up by a customer.

With that being the case, Penguin is taking a chance (but not too big of one; the books eligible are all classics, and will likely sell for the rest of time) that the spark of creativity and the chance to express yourself will overcome blank space on THE most important marketing aspect of a book.

Even if this idea tanks, I've got to applaud the effort and ingenuity on display. The book industry needs to be shaken up constantly, or we'll risk truly becoming the dinosaurs of media some already take us for.

* Note: The Dinosaurs of Media would make an excellent rock band name.

The Collected Stories Of Amy Hempel

These are stories that devastate you, and leave you in need of a stiff drink. Not exactly a feel-good comment on this collection, but I think it’s entirely appropriate. Amy Hempel’s writing is like a movie you fight tears through, or a song that reminds you of a personal tragedy. The characters within these stories are almost exclusively at their breaking points, or just beyond. It’s in that melancholy space that Hempel operates to the greatest effect, inviting the reader to slip past battered defenses and bear witness to the pain and frustration resulting from disconnection and disillusion.

Engendering complicity with her readers in a way that seems voyeuristic yet compassionate is a magical feat on Hempel's part. You’d be forgiven for thinking that some of these stories are autobiographical; Hempel is that convincing in her first-person portrayals. The closest comparison I could make is Richard Yates’ Revolutionary Road. But, where Yates tempers his story of suburban decay with wry comic tones, Hempel serves up the discord raw and bleeding, any trace of humor distinctly of the gallows variety.

This is a beautiful book with emotion to spare. When you’re finished, I’ll pass you the tissue and the bottle.

Soon I Will Be Invincible - Austin Grossman Interview

Austin Grossman is the author of Soon I Will Be Invincible; a fantastic new book published mere weeks ago by Pantheon Books. Soon I Will Be Invincible is a genre-twisting look at superheroes, their villainous counterparts and the everyday struggles that don’t go away just because you can lift a semi over your head. Soon I Will Be Invincible is Grossman’s first book, and all the more remarkable for that fact. He graciously agreed to take some time during his promotional tour for the book to answer some questions through the magic of electronic mail (I believe the kids are calling it e-mail).

How is the book tour going?

Anyone who's ever gone on a book tour knows it's a chancy proposition. Everyone who has come to the readings has been awesome - people ask great questions! But there aren't always that many of them. I'm writing this from the Portland, OR airport, where I had a great reading at Powell's. New York, Boston, Chicago, and Minneapolis lie ahead.



Your author bio states that you’re a doctoral candidate at the University of California - Berkley with a specialty in Romantic and Victorian Literature. Given the (frankly appalling) lack of cyborgs and scientifically-enhanced megalomaniacs present in Romantic and Victorian Literature, I’m going to guess your inspiration for this book came from other sources. What inspired you to write a book set among the mythology of comic books? Are you a comic book fan yourself?

I think no one will be surprised to learn I'm a comic book fan - I got hooked in the 1980's on Chris Claremont's X-Men and Alan Moore's Swamp Thing, even before I saw stuff like Watchmen. Apart from Moore, I think the biggest inspiration was just wanting to combine all my favorite stuff in one place - superheroes as filtered through the more detailed language and richer emotional palette of the authors I was studying in school. I grafted it all together and the monster lived!


Is Soon I Will Be Invincible the first book you’ve written for publication?

Yes. I edited Postmortems from Game Developer, an extremely useful anthology, but apart from video games I've never published even a scrap of fiction before.


Comics, while adored by tons of literate readers, still have a bit of stigma to them. Was there initial resistance from publishers regarding a ‘comic book story’?

Well, I think that was balanced by the prevailing wisdom that "superheroes = $" - so if anything comics served as a good hook to get people interested. I was a little unsure who would want it though, whether it would go to science-fiction imprint or mainstream-fiction or what. Pantheon has both a literary line and graphic novels, which is perfect.

The book’s cover and chapter break images are really cool. Of course, it should come as little surprise that Chip Kidd is the designer. How much input did you have in the look of the book?

I spent about half an hour chatting with Chip, and he took it from there. I expected a more vintage-comics look, which has started to become fairly common, but he took things in a totally new direction. Most of my input consisted of sending emails saying "Go Chip! Yay!" By the way, the other designer was M. Kristen Bearse, who I hear great things about - I have no idea how they divided up the work.

(by the way, I think Chip is going to publish something on Amazon's blog about how he did the design for the book - I'm as curious as anyone!)

Along the same lines, the website for the book is a nice touch. Did you have a hand in the design?

The credit there goes to Robert Scott, who took Chip's cover image as the basis for a mad-scientist/Art Deco look that is totally original. I did most of the text and consulted on the features, but as with the book design, it was a case of finding a talented person and staying out of their way.

Who are your major writing influences?

It's pretty eclectic. Alan Moore is obviously a huge model, especially his work on Watchmen, Swamp Thing, and Miracleman (note: Miracleman is a hugely influential, near-impossible to find Moore work caught in legal limbo). There's something of William Gibson's super-compacted prose as well - I've read Neuromancer about a hundred times - and of course his character Molly Millions influenced the idea of Fatale. In a character like Doctor Impossible I'm sure there are echoes of Peter Shaffer's Salieri in Amadeus, and before that Dostoyevsky's Notes from Underground.

I’ve heard some writers say that they write every day. Personally, inspiration comes in fits and starts. Are you an every day writer? What’s your process?

Well it's my first book, so I can barely dignify whatever it was I did as "process." Most of Soon I Will Be Invincible was doodled into notebooks between (and sometimes during) classes in graduate school. Only the last year or so was "full time" writing. When I read about famous writers they always get up at 6AM and get everything done by noon; I generally made it to a coffee shop by 11AM and struggled on until 3 or 4 in the afternoon.

Given your background in video game development, is there any chance of a Soon I Will Be Invincible video game?

A video game adaptation could conceivably follow a film release; if it happens, I'd love to have a direct hand in it, and help author something that really works interactively, rather than just pasting the characters/storyline onto the latest game engine. It would be really fun to work with my own IP to do something genuinely original.

The world you’ve created in the book seems ripe for further exploration. Are you looking to write more about these characters?

I'm working on some new material that may fit into this world - I'd love to develop some of this book's minor characters, and let Doctor Impossible and the Champions lurk in the background for a while.

Have you read anything worth recommending lately?

I got an advanced copy of Douglas Wolk's Reading Comics, which compiles and adds to some of the critical pieces he's published over the years. It's incredibly smart and enriching treatment of some tough material - the Hernandez brothers and the dreaded Dave Sim, for instance, hugely benefit from a careful critical overview. (and yes I'm reading with him in Minneapolis, but I'm not just being nice - I was blown away)

To read the review of Soon I Will Be Invincible, click here.

Justin's Geek Explosion

If you don't read comic books, you're missing out on some of contemporary fiction's best stories and writers. Don't let the wrongful stigma 'Comics are just for kids.' stop you. Today's comic books are geared for and aimed squarely at adult readers. Here's a list to get you started...

Watchmen by Alan Moore/Dave Gibbons - By far my favorite work of fiction, comic or otherwise. Alan Moore destroyed the notion of comics being "just for kids", and told an amazing story of political, social and personal upheaval to rival anything that had come before or since. Where else could you find yourself rooting for a sociopathic xenophobe but in this story?


Fables: Legends In Exile by Bill Willingham/ Lan Medina, Steve Leialoha and Craig Hamilton - Everyone knows fairy tales are deeper than Mother Goose, but Fables takes that idea and runs with it. After being driven from the Homelands by a shadowy adversary, the heroes and villains of every bedtime story ever told are forced to make a go of it among the mundane people of our world. How they create a society and the strife present when larger-than-life personalities clash is the stuff of great fantasy.

Batman: The Killing Joke by Alan Moore/Brian Bolland - My choice for the best Batman story of all time. Between the spot-on characterization of Batman, Commissioner Gordon and The Joker, and the insanity linking them all together, this story has so much to offer. Also, it contains perhaps the best moment between archenemies ever written.

Starman: Sins Of The Father by James Robinson/Tony Harris and Wade Von Grawbadger - A look at legacies and the father/son bond set amidst a coming-of-age story involving super-science, murderous villains and inherited vendettas. That's what's so great about comics - they can be either as straightforward or allegorical as any other medium, make points regarding the deepest human ideas and conditions, and show a twenty-something antique dealer learning to pilot an energy-blasting flight rod.

Preacher: Gone To Texas by Garth Ennis/ Steve Dillon and Glenn Fabry - Garth Ennis is insane and brilliant. He's written a story about a lapsed reverend searching for God while accompanied by his assassin ex-girlfriend and an Irish vampire. Also, the preacher sees John Wayne. Did I mention his family are an ultra violent clan of hillbillies? And how about the sheriff's son who shoots himself in the face and doesn't die? And what about the single-eyed inbred childhood friend? I won't even mention the Vatican's murderous agents, or the living embodiment of Death - The Saint of Killers. Yeah, insane and brilliant sums it up.

If You Liked School, You'll Love Work (Short Stories Vol. 4)

Irvine Welsh is probably best-known for his novel, Trainspotting. As with that book, the true enjoyment in his latest is the clever characterization and cultural immersion on offer. The strange situations and people encountered in If You Liked School, You'll Love Work are masterfully sketched, right down to the intentional misspelling of words to convey an accent; the Midwesterners say 'nat', instead of 'not'; the English bar owner calls women 'gels'. It's touches like these that help to entrench the reader into the body and geography of the characters. Welsh is intricate but never overwrought; there are no wasted words, no descriptions that feel like padding.

Never one to shy away from sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll, Welsh takes aim at the people obsessed with all three (and other vices). The characters on display in this collection are creatures of habit and environment; a common thread being the myopia of self-interest that leads to misunderstandings both funny and terrible. A tripping trio unprepared for the desert, a 'Sex In The City' wannabe with WASP practically tattooed on her forehead, a bar-owning 'chubby chaser' convinced that his happiness is proportional to his control over the women in his life. There are no morality plays here, just people reaping what they sow.

Stereotype plays a big part in the stories as well. Preconceived notions and knee-jerk 'common knowledge' intrude on the ability of most of the characters to think clearly about the (admittedly strange) situations they find themselves in. Of course, without these limitations, the characters wouldn't be nearly as fun to read about. Happy, well-adjusted people are the province of some other writer not nearly as enjoyable to read.

I Love You, Beth Cooper

I Love You, Beth Cooper is the textbook definition of painfully funny. The story of Denis Cooverman; valedictorian, geek, punching bag; is full of those high school land mines that most awkward teenagers stumble into endlessly. The difference for Denis, is that he uses his graduation speech to take a chance and throw off the anonymity that intelligence and studiousness has brought him thus far. From a pool of sweat rapidly forming in his shoes, Denis has shakily spoken the five words that may change his life and could bring him everything he's ever wanted.

Too bad Denis threw in all that other stuff about his (thinly veiled) classmates' secrets and failings. And, is now really the time to proclaim your acceptance of your best friend's homosexuality? Oh, and did he totally overlook Beth Cooper's commando-trained meathead boyfriend? Looks that way. Probably not smart. So, trashing your classmates, outing your only friend (though they protest to the contrary) and evoking the homicidal rage of a trained killer. You've got to wonder if that speech was such a good idea.

I Love You, Beth Cooper is a book filled with humor and cringing in equal measure. A book for anyone who has tilted at social windmills or gathered their courage in a last-ditch attempt to speak up for themselves. Or, for anyone savagely pummeled by a commando for pledging his love to a cheerleader.

The Terror - Dan Simmons

If you've written a complex, period-accurate adventure set in the arctic, you'd probably have a read for 'hardcore' fans only. Add to that the fact that the book is over seven hundred pages long, spans years in the telling, and follows a half dozen major characters, and you've got an intractable manuscript fit only for the diehards, right? Wrong! I'd read Simmons before, but would hardly call myself a completist. In some cases the sheer volume of his work was enough to make my eyes dart elsewhere on the bookshelf. I am now ready to admit what a mistake avoiding this fantastic author was. If he went on for another seven hundred pages I'd devour those too.

Set among the crews of two ships trying to force a northwest passage through arctic ice, The Terror drags you in with tantalizing whispers of what could go wrong. It's not enough having to navigate through tons of ice in experimental ships loaded with sailors of all stripes. It's not enough that the expedition's leader is jovially unaware at least and criminally incompetent at worst. It's not enough that all of the great arctic explorers back home called it lunacy to make the attempt. No, those warning signs should have been enough, but a combination of greed, ego and desperation have conspired to throw these considerations aside. There is however, one consideration no one thought to explore. This is where the whispers of what could go wrong turn to screams. This place is uncharted for a reason owing less to nature and more to evil. There was no accounting for the possibility that at the top of the world existed a force alien to 'civilization', malevolent in intent, and more than a match for anything human minds and hands could bring to bear against it.

If the only people to pick up this book are the author's sizable (but not nearly big enough) contingent of fans, that would be the real terror. This book is essential to any reader who loves action, adventure, iconic characters pulled from the mythic tradition and the feeling on the back of their neck as the hair raises.

Soon I Will Be Invincible

I have to say, my expectations going in to Soon I Will Be Invincible were pretty high. As a comic collector of 18 years, I know what I like, and more importantly, what I don’t about the genre. Austin Grossman fulfilled and then exceeded my expectations, much to my surprise and enjoyment. The pitch-perfect evocation of time-tested comic book archetypes in a novel setting was feat enough to win my praise, but Grossman took the opportunity to explore the concepts further, fleshing out what most would see as stereotypes on first glance. In letting the villainous Dr. Impossible tell his own story to the reader, Soon I Will Be Invincible portrays the character as the underdog (albeit a maniacally fiendish and amazingly intelligent one) who just won’t quit. Sure, most comic heroes have that quality in spades (it seems to come with the spandex); but when was the last time you got the sense that the villain worked harder to prevail?

This book knocks some conventional comic book ideas on their ears, while preserving the spirit of the four-color adventures that only the bravest will admit to reading. For those still in the dark about just what comic books can be, this novel should be a wake-up call that there is a new mythology for those who care to study it, and it’s been around for close to seventy years. Austin Grossman joins the ranks of Alan Moore, Kurt Busiek and Grant Morrison as explorers, preservers (and when needed, challengers) of the traditions of the comic story. If Soon I Will Be Invincible is the vanguard of superhero fiction, I think the genre is off to a great start.

Comic book novel? Yes. Full of strange people, strange powers, strange ideas? Yes. The treatment that some of fiction’s most-underrated concepts and creators sorely deserve? By all means.

Crooked Little Vein

If Chuck Palahniuk was kidnapped, Raymond Chandler was resurrected, their DNA was spliced together, and the mad scientists responsible for those events wanted something to read on lonely nights in the lab, Crooked Little Vein would be the result.

Fans of Warren Ellis’s comic book work know that he deconstructs genres as a function of breathing, and now he’s brought his particular insanity to the literary establishment. This book flouts conventions long held sacred in noir stories. There is no square-jawed stoic gumshoe. Our hero is a dead-end detective whose defining feature is his impossibly bad luck. Corruption is not so much railed against as resigned to. To say Ellis forgoes understatement would be an understatement. It’s all there in front of you, pulsing with strangeness and testing your stomach’s resolve. Crooked Little Vein is vintage Warren Ellis, and it’s time more people know just what that means.