I
Read Odd Books

You know, I am not sorry that I decided to discuss Anders Behring Brevik’s mass murder manifesto. From what I could tell, with the exception of a handful of other writers, notably Jim Goad, no one else who discussed it actually read it. I read it, reacted, and some people found some value in it and that is awesome. Some people did not find value in it and opened up interesting dialogues with me. That too is awesome.

Less awesome is the sort of malaise I feel since writing it. I’ve had e-mails that, were I the snitching sort, would have given FBI agents a twitch in their loins (I’m only exaggerating a little here…).  A friendship ended (I think) over my liberalism.  And I am still getting e-mails from people who just wanna talk about the pros and cons of mass murder based on race hate.  All of that sucked and the sheer weight of all that hate and misery has stayed with me longer than it should have and it has made me reluctant to blog, to discuss books, or even to read much aside from little snippets here and there online.

I seem to be coming out of it though, and the sort of crankiness borne from being reminded that half the world will always want to kill the other half is lifting a bit. The weather is cooler, my mind is focused on more positive ideas and I’m avoiding politics until the last bit of black rage that came from people telling me that teenagers deserved to die at the hands of a madman subsides. As of this moment, there is not much left and I can feel the desire to discuss books returning.

So come back next week. I plan to discuss a fascinating book about schizophrenia called Demons in the Age of Light by Whitney Robinson. It will be another of my long, quote-laden discussions, and in a way I could not have expected, writing about the book is helping me clear out a lot of the angst writing about Anders Behring Brevik caused.

So until 11/2 or 11/3, give me a comment about what you’ve been reading. Let me know if there are any books you’ve been anticipating. Any other media you’re into? I myself have been caught up in Boardwalk Empire and have been reading Richard “Tin Man” Harrow and Jimmy Darmody fan fiction because that sort of user-generated madness is strangely reassuring to me at the moment. It never does anyone any good to compare lunacy but it helps to know I am not the craziest crazy online.

So share, and tune back in after Halloween.

Book: Cosmic Suicide: The Tragedy and Transcendence of Heaven’s Gate

Authors: Rodney Perkins and Forrest Jackson

Type of Book: Non-fiction, true crime, cults

Why Do I Consider This Book Odd: It was a look at the Heaven’s Gate suicide when events were still relatively fresh and mass cult suicide is always a bit strange. The book is also listed as a source in the amazing book Strange Creations by Donna Kossy and would be a honorary odd book on that merit alone.

Availability: Published by Pentaradial Press in 1997, you can get a copy here:

Comments: When I began reading this book I thought there would not be much that was new to me. I had already read quite a bit about the Heaven’s Gate cult, those strange, asexual computer geeks in California who killed themselves en masse to be able to board the spacecraft they were sure was traveling behind the Hale-Bopp comet. And in a way, I was correct. The book tells very succinctly the story of how two lost souls – Marshall Applewhite and Betty Lu Nettles – met and fed off each other, creating the New Age death cult that became Heaven’s Gate.

All the details that caught the public’s morbid imagination are there. The androgyny of those who took their lives, the voluntary castrations of some of the men, the presence of Nichelle Nichols’ brother among the suicide victims. It all made for very tawdry television.

The case interested me for a couple of reasons, above and beyond the strange details of the suicide and Art Bell phone call that some believe was the genesis for the belief that there was something following behind the Hale-Bopp comet – later interpreted as a space craft by Heaven’s Gate members. By killing themselves, they thought they would meet up on the space craft with Betty Lu Nettles, who had died, and achieve what they called T.E.L.A.H. – The Evolutionary Level Above Human.   All of that was sort of interesting, but strangely bloodless in a way. The way the cult killed themselves was orderly, calm, and without the sort of horror I associate with mass suicides. Read the rest of this entry »

Book: Permanent Obscurity: Or a Cautionary Tale of Two Girls & Their Misadventures with Drugs, Pornography and Death

Author: Richard Perez

Type of Book: Fiction, transgressive (sort of)

Why Do I Consider This Book: The content is outre at times.

Availability: Published by Ludlow Press in 2010, you can get a copy here:

Comments: I’m in a slump. I don’t mind admitting it. I find myself reading mainstream fiction and sewing cat toys (if you want some, send me an e-mail). I look at the stack of odd books I need to discuss and I decide it’s time to clean the toilet or watch another barely coherent horror movie, and since Mr. Oddbooks got one of those Apple TV things, I have plenty. Lots and lots of really cheesy, really stupid horror movies. And every one of them seems more appealing than discussing books.

Is it a phase? Is my slump due to the fact that the drought caused the back of my house to sink an inch into the dried clay? Is it because I wake up every morning with a primitive need to pray to Tlaloc, begging him to just let it rain already? I’m not to the point that I’ll consider human sacrifice but I can see how it might come to that if this fucking summer will not end. Perhaps I will feel more kindly disposed toward my stack of oddness once the weather finally breaks and I can go outside without needing to go to the hospital after five minutes or so. Perhaps…

So I’m totally forcing myself to discuss books when I really want to be figuring out how to make my catnip fabric fortune cookies more realistic. And you should bear in mind this shitty mood of mine as you read any book discussion that occurs before Central Texas gets five inches of rain and goes two weeks without hitting 100 degrees.

Okay, Permanent Obscurity is not a bad book but it is not a good book either. The protagonist, in addition to lacking self-awareness, is one of the most tiresome, irritating, foolhardy, aggressive heroines you will ever read. She is best friends with a sociopathic, self-absorbed sadist. Together, the two of them, in the bowels of New York, decide to escape from the terrible financial situation they find themselves in by making a porno. Oh yeah, they owe a ton of money to a drug dealer. That should have gone without saying. The porno goes terribly wrong, as you knew it would, ending in a high speed chase and jail time.

The author tries to justify creating characters that irritate and annoy by saying, through the mouth of Dolores:

You better recognize this fact: People are complicated.

People are indeed complicated. Dolores, the heroine, and her friend Serena, are not that complicated, however. There is really only one complicated character in this book, a man called Baby who is in thrall, in a very controlled manner, to Serena. Everyone one else shows clearly how being completely fucked-up often passes for being complicated.

As I read this book, I imagined Dolores, our pregnant and drug abusing heroine, to be what would happen if you crossed the actresses Rosie Perez and Michelle Rodriguez with a fierce, constantly yapping Jack Russell terrier. I imagined Serena, the best friend who is hardly a friend and governed by a psychopathic self-interest, to be what would happen if you crossed Lindsay Lohan and any random porn actress with a Siamese cat. Read the rest of this entry »