The two I expect to remember are In and Ursula's

the others have their merits

.

090) Apocalypse Taco by Nathan Hale, finished on September 4

My son brought this home from the middle-school library. It had an amusing title and he said it was good, so I decided to read at least the beginning, and I'm glad I did.

Although it's aimed at a young audience, this comic could make a genuinely terrifying movie. It would only require four physical sets (school, city streets, taco shop, green-screen room) but the CG sets would be elaborate.

It's a dopey horror setup worthy of the most absurd 50s b-flick, but the explanation of what's happening takes a wonderfully long time to arrive. Long enough that we get to experience the terror and confusion of the unknown, but not so long that the arrival feels like it flushes everything we've experienced down the toilet.

In short, the shape of the plot and the madness of the concept are perfectly balanced. If you're the least bit interested in this sort of thing, this is for you.

bedtime

091) In by Will McPhail, finished on September 4

Abebooks has a 50 Essential Graphic Novels list and I was checking out how many I'd read. This one (new this year) I had not, but it had a striking cover and my local library could provide it so I picked it up.

I think I was also attracted to his name because the similarly named David McPhail is a solid picture-book creator. I do know this other McPhail's work from The New Yorker but I hadn't learned his name.

Anyway. I had no idea what to expect. But what we have is an urban fellow probably around age thirty who is connected to his environment, but not in any meaningful way. And he's seeking more meaningful connections. And he begins to find them. But will it be enough? Will it be in time?

Most of the book is mostly black and white with gray washes—like his New Yorker cartoons—but the moments of breakthrough become full-color digital paintings flooded with metaphoricality.

It's a moving book. And if it weren't for some explicit sex, I would push it on my teenagers.

I worry about the pandemic generation's capacity to connect with each other.

And I worry about their ability to know about this lack.

about fifty minutes


092) Deadpool Does Shakespeare by Gerry Duggan and Ian Doescher, finished on September 4

The Shakespeare part had plenty of fun play with the plays but, ultimately, and as per usual, I find the Merc with a Mouth dissatisfying. I wish it weren't so.

Although, note to self, Deadpool did, whilst going Elizabethan, use the contraction "I'ld." Add this to the list.

watching my daughter rollerskate

093) WE3 by Grant Morrison, finished on September 4?

So the government picked some lost pets off the street and turned them into a cyborg murder team. But they're still just a dog and a cat and a bunny that have learned to live together. So, when they get decommissioned and manage to escape, they try to incredible-journey their way to a new life.

It's not a perfect success and there's hella blood and guts (and teeth and spleens) along the way to what is, largely, a happy ending? I guess?

a sitting


094) The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin, finished on September 21

I picked this novel up because I wanted to consider adding it to the dystopia list I use for an AP Lit assignment. I'll need to think about it a bit longer before I decide but I think the answer is no. It's a brilliant novel  but it deconstructs the whole utopia/dystopia dichotomy so thoroughly that I think it would end up difficult for students to apply to the assignments. I mean—they could definitely do it but they would spend so much time stressing over basic questions like just what is the dystopia here that the whole process would end up focused on the wrong things.

ANYWAY, the point is, this novel is brilliant. And because of its backtrackingly complexitous engagement with the genre, maybe my favorite utopia/dystopia.

For one thing, I love that the failing of the utopia is what allows it to prove that it is, in fact, a utopia.

Among other things, I'm impressed how well Le Guin predicted her world. I'd wondered if Terra was in fact our Earth and now I know for certain that it is. But that Earth falls apart after hitting nine billion people and the collapse is caused by things I can find by reading the news or by looking out my window. She even describes the effects of plastics as we think of them now. I had no idea these thoughts even existed in 1974.

As I was reading, oh, maybe thirty, fifty pages from the end today, leaving campus, as the possibility of utopia was being reborn in one timeline just as it was being crushed in the other, I realized there's a nice parallel with another book I'm currently reading, the new biography of Eugene England.

One of the complaints people (including Bob Rees, who should know) are making about that book is that the author, Terryl Givens, is calling Gene naive and a dope for failing to sufficiently (properly) suckup to Church leadership. I'm not deep enough in to take a stance yet but I'm certainly leaning toward agreement with the criticisms. What I'm seeing (and maybe this is some form of projection?) is a man who consistently gave others the opportunity to do the better thing, even when the alternative could be damaging to himself. I can understand that motivation.

And it's a motivation we see in Shevek, the hero of The Dispossessed.

Even before I made the Eugene England connection, I had been thinking about the Anarresti in terms of Mormon parallels. What if the Saints had been isolated long enough to truly form a separate ethnicity?

They Anarresti invent a language (ie, the Deseret alphabet; although actually, I assume, the recreation of Hebrew) both designed to be more accurate to their philosophy and to keep outside ideas outside.

A great religious leader whose greatest, most radical ideas seem absurd and impossible to outsiders.

A sexual and relationship reimagining that, let's face it, is hella queer by contemporary standards.

Although the differences to Mormon stuff are at least as great as the sames, it was impossible for me to read The Dispossessed without imagining glorious what-ifs. 

***Incidentally, a couple Mormons-on-Mars novellas (Steve Peck's Adoniha and my Prophetess) build on similar themes in an extremely Dispossed way with actual Mormons and I recommend them to your consideration.***

This is a wise novel. Wise and provocative, in all the best ways. This is a world important for us to imagine.

But I don't want to do it alone. Even if (or because) the book does tell us that "An artist can’t hide behind the truth. He can’t hide anywhere."

under three weeks