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bakechochin · 6 years ago

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The Book Ramblings of June

In place of book reviews, I will be writing these ‘book ramblings’. A lot of the texts I’ve been reading (or plan to read) in recent times are well-known classics, meaning I can’t really write book reviews as I’m used to. I’m reading books that either have already been read by everyone else (and so any attempt to give novel or insightful criticisms would be a tad pointless), or are so convoluted and odd that they defy being analysed as I would do a simpler text. These ramblings are pretty unorganised and hardly anything revolutionary, but I felt the need to write something review-related this year. I’ll upload a rambling compiling all my read books on a monthly basis.

The Man Who Was Thursday - GK Chesterton I bought the Penguin English Library edition of this book mainly because of a tweet that I saw slagging off the cover, saying that the sticks of dynamite in the cover pattern looked like tampons and that 'this could have been avoided if only one woman had looked at the cover’; this irritated me a lot because I know for a fact that the cover was in fact designed by a woman (Coralie Bickford-Smith, to be precise, an artist whose similar works I am also a good fan of), and I wanted to own this edition simply so that I could prove to myself and others that this is the case. However, whilst the cover of this book is indeed very pretty, the texts published in the Penguin English Library collection do not possess the handy introductory chapter at the beginning that the Penguin Classics include, and thus with no frame of reference, I was at something of a loss to describe this book. It is certainly an interesting read insofar as it seemingly refuses to stay as one genre for the whole book. The blurb describes it as a ‘strange and haunting novel’, and at the beginning, this is very appropriate; it depicts a sensationalist image of villainous anarchists and zealous unhinged detectives that is incredibly compelling, and I hold that the character descriptions of the members of the Council of Days (as introduced in chapter five) make for some of the best writing that I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading. By fuck is Chesterton great at characterising these dudes. The blurb describes the novel as a spy thriller, and all seemed to be going well on this front, with a melodramatic but consistent tone maintained for around the first half of the book, with some great twists scattered here and there for good measure. But then things start getting a tad daft, and I’m going to spoil a bit of the plot here because you need to understand how off the rails this shit gets. The adventure grows to involve much of the main cast of antagonists being revealed to be policemen in increasingly convoluted disguises, ridiculously overblown chases in different countries with the stakes being continuously raised in the stupidest and funniest ways, and the main antagonist, built up as a grand unknowable titan of crime and anarchy, escapes the protagonist by leaping over a balcony ‘like an orang-utan’, riding away on a rampaging elephant that he broke out of the zoo, and finally evading capture by flying away on a stolen hot air balloon. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of this sort of shit as a general rule, but by fuck does it seem incongruous in a novel such as this, that is so clever and so beautifully written and, whilst containing its few bits of sensational ridiculousness (as an overt parody of the genre or its tropes), generally quite a serious read. Similarly to The Heat’s On, if this book had just kept on the rails or channelled its madness into chaos that stayed within the genre’s boundaries, instead of just throwing its hands up into the air and screaming, ‘fuck it, put in an elephant chase scene!’, I’d have enjoyed it a lot more. As it is, it reminds me of the overblown nonsense of the 007 stories - this is a novel for dads, I reckon. After finishing this book I then found Beaumont’s introduction to the text, which describes the text as ‘antirealist’, and cites Chesterton’s description of ‘great works which mix up abstractions fit for an epic with fooleries not fit for a pantomime’. As a concept, I can fully get behind this - the juxtaposition of heroics and farcical nonsense puts me in mind of high burlesque, and I’ve always been fully against realism because fuck that noise. But you can’t stick with the idea of this book being wholly antirealist if it takes place in a world recognisable as our own and then suddenly changes to be ludicrous and laughable; that’s just inconsistent, and indeed mildly vexing when I was fully engrossed in the sensational spy thriller. Furthermore, attempting to justify this book’s content by saying that it is reminiscent of a ‘nightmare’ is a bullshit defence, because a) the word ‘nightmare’ could simply be used in reference to this book’s negative depiction of a world in which anarchists triumph in their nasty villainy, and b) it’s difficult to keep the idea of this book’s world supposedly being a dream forefront in one’s mind when it, as mentioned above, represents a view (albeit a sensational one) of reality, with dream nonsense hardly being a part of it at all. That is, of course, until the very end, when the book gives up all pretence of being a spy novel and instead wallows in metaphor and overt Christian imagery before ending abruptly. The ending is bullshit and I don't like it.

Dead Souls - Nikolai Gogol I’ve often cited Gogol as one of my favourite authors, but for the longest time I stayed clear of this book, somewhat daunted by whether what I loved about Gogol’s short stories would translate well to a novel form. This is a different beast to his short stories, but no less interesting to talk about, and indeed possessing many of the short story’s positive attributes, for all of the excellent writing, characterisation, and understanding of the fun nuances of society abounds here as it does in his shorter works. Apparently Gogol was attempting to recreate the structure and overall vibe of The Odyssey and other such Homeric epics in prose form, and although the overall setting and storyline does not reflect the grand awe-inspiring epics of the past, I’ll be buggered if the story’s writing and tone doesn’t somehow achieve it. This is not, despite what some critics have said, due to Gogol’s tendency to ramble on about unrelated digressions (a device apparently comparable to Homeric epics), or at least it didn’t stick out to me as such when I read it - that’s just kind of what Gogol does. No, it’s the writing and tone, as mentioned above, that seems to ape the Homeric tone, in such a way that you wouldn’t notice its explicit presence until after you’d been informed of it, and yet when you are aware of the Homeric influence you see it everywhere clear as day; I’d call it an ineffable concept but that’s just me trying to cover up for the fact that I can’t find the words, because I’m bad at writing these things. But I digress. Gogol’s excellent means of conveying character voices shines as always in this text, but I can’t feel like I’m missing the extent of it because I’m reading it in English. The introduction by Robert A Maguire describes Gogol’s extensive research into ‘all the prosaic rubbish of life, all the rags’, and makes efforts to incorporate such minor details as regional slang, official jargon, outdated terminology, etc. into his characters’ voices, but I fear that I’m missing some of the nuances of these techniques by my lack of knowledge in these fields or that some of the subtleties in language don’t translate as well as they ought to. Of course there are some characters which exemplify Gogol’s skill at diverse voices, such as some of the peasant muzhiks and one of my favourite characters Nozdryov (who draws from a wide array of sources for his dialogue with hilarious results), but there are some instances in which the character voices seem somewhat interchangeable, especially considering how a lot of individual personality is often subsumed by the necessity of upholding social decorum, and thus there are many characters who only speak in refined socially acceptable manners. The characters themselves are all bloody great, be they individual grotesque landowners or incredibly detailed and often brilliantly satirical descriptions of wider groups or demographics. Whilst the writing remains as excellent as ever, the characters in the second part of the book lack the grotesque simplicity of those in the first part - indeed, efforts are made by Gogol to give them complex fleshed-out characterisation - and subsequently these new characters are nowhere near as memorable as the fantastic personifications of negative traits that we got in the first part. Yeah, I forgot to mention, this book is technically made up of two parts, the first part highlighting the problems of society and the second part intended to delve into the resolution of some of these issues; of course, the second part does not exist in its entirety, because Gogol was a great fan of melodramatically burning his manuscripts, but it’s not a major issue because what does survive of the full text is amazing enough on its own (specifically the entirety of part one). Plus, I’ve delved into my thoughts of authors trying to ‘change the world’ through their works (in that I think that it’s a fool’s notion and only really serves to exemplify the author’s delusion), so I’m content with this text only portraying the detrimental aspects of society, as opposed to trying to fix them. I am quite fond of the narrator in this book. Similarly to his short stories, Gogol employs a narrative voice that exists almost as a character in of itself, and I don’t just mean that in the sense of ‘it’s got a lot of personality’. The narrative voice apologises for the story’s content and makes changes in an attempt to preserve decorum, it makes excuses for the story’s characters (especially the protagonist Chichikov), it often reveals information at the same rate as the characters within the setting discover things and have epiphanies, and it even establishes itself as a character with a physical voice as it only chooses to speak of Chichikov’s past when Chichikov himself is asleep, and apologises all the while lest he somehow slight the man. Bringing up this also gives me an opportunity to briefly mention the 2006 BBC radio adaptation for this, which establishes the narrator as a physical character in all scenes to humourous effect (and what’s more gave me yet more reason to love Mark Heap, who makes for a fucking excellent Chichikov). But I digress. Part two of the novel, as mentioned above, does not possess the same sort of wonderfully grotesque characters as part one, and considering that this is a novel defined mainly by its characters, this is somewhat problematic. The plot of part two is perhaps vaguely interesting, even though it seems to shunt the titular focus of dead souls to the side somewhat, but all in all I found it difficult to be too invested in this new story due to its lack of compelling characters. In addition, the Homeric epic tone of part one is somewhat absent, and without a distinctive narrative voice, the narrative suffers. I feel bad shitting on part two, since it was everyone else shitting on part two that catalysed Gogol to burn the manuscript (again) and possibly starve himself to death. Honestly, the first part is bloody amazing, so just read that and then be satisfied with the knowledge that your opinion of the book overall has not been tarnished by the shoddy second part. Sorry Gogol.

Complete Short Fiction - Oscar Wilde I’ve been vaguely aware of Wilde’s short fiction for a while now, having read a selection of his fairy tales and ‘Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime’ (a favourite of mine) for uni, so I decided to give his complete collection a shot. The Penguin Classics edition of his short fiction is separated into his different published collections, but can generally be categorised as either fairy tales or miscellaneous short stories. I’ve studied a shit load of fairy tale authors/compilers (Basile, Straparola, Perrault, the Brothers Grimm, Andersen, Wilde and whoever compiles the radical Russian fairy tales), and Wilde is certainly my favourite of the bunch. The specific blend of Wilde-esque traits incorporated into the fairy tale format make up my favourite fairy tales of any author - this is by no means all of Wilde’s fairy tales, but I’ll get into that. My favourite fairy tales of Wilde take place in a world vaguely recognisable as our own, or at least existing as an exaggerated facsimile of our own society, not just because the urban setting reminds me of Hoffmann’s ‘The Golden Pot’, but because such a setting allows for some heavy-handed but undeniably hilarious social commentary and satire. Such satire works especially well when juxtaposing the romanticised world of the fairy tale with the grimmer reality of Wilde’s society - the two tales that commence the collection, ‘The Happy Prince’ and ’The Nightingale and the Rose’, exemplify this excellently. Whilst I liked the satire attainable by setting the fairy tale in an urban society environment, similar levels of hilarity are obtained via Wilde’s satirical look at certain character archetypes (the titular character in ‘The Remarkable Rocket’ being my favourite example). The fairy tales obviously possess their morals and their teachings (though I was a fan of how this is subverted slightly by some characters actively avoiding, misinterpreting or arguing with the story’s moral), but the tropes that we’d expect to see in fairy tales - the morals from Perrault, the recurring overt ties to Christianity from Andersen, etc. - are not why I like Wilde’s fairy tales so much. The tales in the collection titled A House of Pomegranates are undeniably excellently written, and what’s more include some fantastic settings inspired by the Victorian obsession with the Orient that allow for phenomenal and evocative descriptive writing (the likes of which is not seen in any other of Wilde’s fairy tales), but they fail to capture my preferred positive attributes that the aforementioned tales possess. I cheekily skipped 'The Portrait of Mr W H' because I’d heard from a mate who had also read it that it was a long and dull read, and thus refrained from checking it out lest it tarnish my idealised view of Wilde. I’m sure I’ll live with myself knowing that I haven’t read Wilde’s entire body of works. Indeed, who gives half a toss about that when we’ve still got to talk about the last remaining collection contained within this publication: ‘Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime and Other Stories’, which is not made up of fairy tales but other ‘popular’ genres of writing. Taken at face value, the stories’ content of murder, ghosts, and mystery slot in nicely alongside the fairy tales, in that they can all be considered, at face value, writings intended to appeal to the low-brow interests of the masses. They are, of course, more than that, possessing some great subversions of genre tropes and Wilde’s typical social satire, which all comes together to make the short stories (in particular ‘Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime’ and ‘The Canterville Ghost’) hilarious and very enjoyable reads. The fact that these stories are written with the primary intentions of entertaining, rather than revolutionising the written form or making one think about grand philosophical themes, means that I can’t really offer anything about the stories other than that they’re fucking good and that you should go and read them.

Shit I read this month that I couldn’t be arsed to write about: A Short History of Drunkenness by Mark Forsyth (which I started back in December(?) last year, forgot about until now, and love immensely), and ‘The Penal Colony’ by Kafka (it was much more enjoyable than the other works by Kafka that I’ve read, but that isn’t really saying much).

#book reviews #book ramblings #the man who was thursday #gk chesterton #dead souls #nikolai gogol #oscar wilde #lord arthur savile's crime #the canterville ghost #the happy prince #the remarkable rocket #the nightingale and the rose

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jm-fraser · 8 years ago

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The Simpsons Season 4 - Ranked

22. So its Come to This: A Simpsons Clip Show

Its may not be fair to compare a clip show to episodes with actual narrative driven episodes, as the episodes aren’t really done for creative purposes but rather is just Fox wanting money by saving on animation costs, the writers never really wanted to do any clip shows, but on the other hand they are counted as episodes so I will as well.

21. Marge in Chains

A weird episode, focused on Marge going to prison for stealing a bottle of cough syrup, either consciously or sub-consciously, because of the stress of dealing with the stress of looking after the rest of the sick family. Season 4 of the Simpsons is arguably the best season of any TV show of all time so its difficult to really rank them in any other way than just putting the few that aren’t masterpieces by the bottom, Marge in Chains and the next couple just happen to fall into this category.

20. New Kid on the Block

Ive never really loved this episode, there are parts I find pretty funny, mostly the payoff of Bart’s prank calls to Moe, and some of the Ruth Powers scenes are alright, but for the most part this episode leaves me a bit cold.

19. Marge Gets a Job

This is another episode where the parts are greater than the whole, there are some really funny scenes, but it just doesn't have the cohesion that greater episodes have.

18. The Front

Speaking of cohesion, this is a weird episode. I always used to think that the b-plot of the episode (where homer has to go to night school after he finds out he never really graduated high-school) was the main story, but the title of the episode is referencing the actual main plot, where Bart and Lisa write an Itchy and Scratchy episode and put Grandpa’s name on the script so that it gets produced. I just find it weird that both the A and B plots are pretty much the same length.

17. Brother from the Same Planet

Good but not great is the best way I can describe this episode. It doesn’t help that Tom was meant to be played by Tom Cruse who dropped out after they had already written the episode, so they replaced him with the great Phil Heartman which is never a bad thing, but I can't help but be reminded it was meant to be Cruse.

16. Selma’s Choice

This is the part of the list when I have to differentiate between classics and just put the least of them by the bottom. I really do enjoy this episode, especially the third act at Duff Gardens, but I guess the first two acts are slightly lesser than the last one, but its a minor complaint. Plus Homers sandwich is great.

15. Homer’s Triple Bypass

A pretty dark episode, dealing with Homers death, like One Fish, Two Fish, Blowfish Blue Fish. This doesn’t mean there aren’t funny moments, there are, but there is a slight tonal inconsistency due to the balance needed to tell this story, which isn’t always met.

14. Lisa the Beauty Queen

I really enjoy this episode, I would call it one of the funnier and more touching episodes of the season, again, it just shows the quality of the rest of the season that this falls in the bottom half of the season.

13. A Streetcar Named Marge

Another Homer/ Marge relationship episode, not one of the best but, It has an inspired version of Streetcar in the third act. And the Maggie plot is surprisingly intelligent, commentating on the philosophy of Ayn Rand in a Great Escape parody with a Hitchcock reference at the end, seriously what other show would do that.

12. Itchy and Scratchy: The Movie

One of the best Itchy and Scratchy themed episodes, plus it has one of the first flash-forward scenes.

11. Duffless

This episode has a great concept, of Homer not drinking beer for a month, and while nothing here is extremely surprising, most of the situations and jokes are predictable, but it doesn’t make it any less enjoyable.

10. Treehouse of Horror III

Still in the era of great Treehouse of Horror episodes, with a King Kong, a Twilight Zone and George A. Romero parodies. One of my favorites.

9. Lisa’s First Word

We got the story of how Homer and Marge met, how Marge got pregnant with Bart and how Homer and Marge got Married. This is the next logical step, the birth of Lisa and how Bart reacts to it. Like the rest of the 4 main flash-back episodes there is equal amount of heart and humor, even though this is probably my least favorite of them.

8. Whacking Day

Just a fun episode, with the great moral of not beating snakes to death for no reason.

7. I Love Lisa

Some peoples favorite episode, and I get it the story of a loser who falls for a girl who just tolerates him out of pity does hit a little too close to home.

6. Kamp Krusty

This was apparently meant to be the first Simpsons movie, but they apparently struggled to get enough material for 22 minutes so instead they added the montage at the end and made it an episode, and a damn good one at that.

5. Homer the Heretic

Homer talkes to God and decides to start his own religion so he doesn’t have to wake up early on Sundays to go to Church. With equal parts pathos and humor this is a classic Homer episode.

4. Mr. Plow

One of the most famous and recognizable episodes, and for good reason, its great. The episode somehow manages to stay simple and high-concept at the same time while still being hilarious throughout.

3. Krusty Gets Kancelled

I love this episode, even without the guest stars, (none of whom I knew as a kid) this is great, one of the funniest episodes and my favorite Krusty episode.

2. Marge vs. the Monorail

Many consider this to be the best episode of the entire show, and one of the greatest tv episodes ever made. And I get it, this is as close to a perfect half-hour of comedy as you can get. There are jokes every other second, theres Phil Heartman singing a great song, and theres one of the tightest scripts you will ever see adapted to television.

1. Last Exit to Springfield

While Marge vs the Monorail it great, I feel that this is pretty much a perfect Simpsons episode, you have all the family members given enough time to shine, with Homer still clearly in the spotlight going against the series main villain: Mr. Burns, in a perfectly mad cap, surreal and just immensely funny episode that, just brings something new every time you watch it. TV comedy at its best.

Overall Rankings:

1.Last Exit to Springfield

2. Homer at the Bat

3. Marge vs. the Monorail

4. Flaming Moe’s

5. Lisa’s Substitute

6. I Married Marge  

7. Krusty Gets Kancelled

8. Mr. Plow

9. The Way We Was

10. Bart the Murderer

11. Homer the Heretic

12. Burns Verkaufen der Kraftwerk  

13. Kamp Krusty

14. Bart Gets an F

15. I Love Lisa

16. Whacking Day

17. Saturdays of Thunder

18. Black Widower

19. Lisa’s First Word

20. Stark Raving Dad

21. Separate Vocations

22. Lisa the Greek  

23. Treehouse of Horror III

24. Duffless

25. One Fish, Two Fish, Blowfish, Blue Fish  

26. Itchy and Scratchy: The Movie

27. A Streetcar Named Marge

28. Treehouse of Horror

29. Treehouse of Horror II

30. Lisa the Beauty Queen

31. Like Father Like Clown

32. Radio Bart  

33. Blood Feud

 34. Oh Brother, Where Art Thou

35. Homer’s Triple Bypass

36. Homer Defined  

37. Brush With Greatness

38. Bart the Lover  

39. Three Men and a Comic Book  

40. Simpson and Delilah

41. Selma’s Choice

42. Brother Can You Spare Two Dimes?

43. Lisa’s Pony 

44. Two Cars in Every Garage and Three Eyes On Every Fish  

45. Old Money

46.Brother from the Same Planet

47. Mr. Lisa Goes to Washington  

48. The Front

49. Dead Putting Society 

50. Bart the Daredevil

51. Colonel Homer 

52.Marge Gets a Job

53. Homer vs. Lisa and the 8th Commandment

54.New Kid on the Block

55. Marge in Chains

56. When Flanders Failed

57. Bart’s Friend falls in Love 

58. Itchy and Scratchy and Marge

59. The Otto Show 

60. Bart Gets Hit by a Car

61. Dog of Death 

62. Bart vs. Thanksgiving  

63. Principal Charming 

64. Moaning Lisa 

65. The War of the Simpsons 

66. Krusty Gets Busted  

67. Bart the General 

68. Bart’s Dog Gets an ‘F’ 

69. Dancin’ Homer 

70. The Telltale Head 

71. The Call of the Simpsons 

72. The Simpsons Roasting on an Open Flame 

73. Life on the Fast Lane 

74. Bart the Genius  

75.So its Come to This: A Simpsons Clip Show

76. The Crapes of Wrath 

77. Some Enchanted Evening 

78. There’s No Disgrace Like Home 

79. Homer’s Night Out 

80. Homer’s Odyssey

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