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Friday, March 13, 2009

Books This Weekend in Books, Part I

Posted by Paul Constant on Fri, Mar 13, 2009 at 1:21 PM

I just wanted to let you know that the author I wrote about in this week's book section, James Morrow, is going to be reading at the University Book Store on Sunday at 2 pm. Here's a little bit from the middle of the review:

The next book I bought at Bookland, with my own money this time, was This Is the Way the World Ends, the story of a man who wants to buy his daughter a nuclear-war-proof suit. Through a series of awful circumstances including, but not limited to, nuclear war, he is one of the only surviving humans, put on trial as all humanity's proxy by a weird, alien tribunal. He is charged for the crime of planetary suicide and convicted for not being morally outraged enough to do anything about the impending Armageddon. Ends is well and truly a bleak book, about as dark as they come. Towing Jehovah was a return to form for Morrow: God's two-mile-long dead body is found in the ocean, and the Vatican hires a disgraced captain named Anthony van Horne (who is despondent after causing a horrible oil spill reminiscent of the Exxon Valdez) to deliver the body to a hidden tomb before the world notices the corpus dei and drives itself into riots of existential madness. Along the way, we discover that God's corpse tastes just like Chicken McNuggets...

I hope you Kurt Vonnegut fans are paying attention:

...Since Vonnegut's death, American fiction has felt incomplete; it lacks his sense of moral outrage at man's capability for atrocity. Morrow is the only author who comes close to Vonnegut's caliber. Like Vonnegut, Morrow shrouds his work in science fiction, but the real story is always man's infinite capacities for love and for evil. His fictions are little moral laboratories, testing ideas for their durability and usefulness...

I hope you'll come out and give him a listen. If you can't make it on Sunday, you should also know that Morrow will be hosting a screening of two Lon Chaney Jr. movies at Northwest Film Forum on Monday night at 7 pm. (Morrow's newest novel mashes Chaney and Godzilla together in a mashup about America's culpability in bombing Hiroshima.)

The reading is free, the screening is a suggested $5 donation. I hope you'll go and experience Morrow for yourself.

Comments (7) RSS

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I love James Morrow's 'Only Begotten Daughter'. He does tend to write in very dark tones, but it's pretty dense and fun to think about later.

Posted by Enigma on March 13, 2009 at 1:30 PM

His form is a little different, but I think George Saunders matches Vonnegut's caliber in this department. He's doesn't use sci-fi often, but can.

Posted by Dougsf on March 13, 2009 at 1:31 PM

The Son will come out to Morrow.
Bet your bottomed dollar it's to Morrow.

To Morrow. To Morrow.

it's always to Morrow.

It's only a day ... away!

Posted by Little Orphan Rush on March 13, 2009 at 2:24 PM

@2: Saunders is a good, close call, but I would hesitate to connect him with Vonnegut because his writing, to me, often lacks the basic humanity. Some of Saunders' best stuff is practically nihilistic, and Vonnegut always had that hope in there somewhere.

Posted by Paul Constant on March 13, 2009 at 2:27 PM

#4 - Good point. There's a small handful of Saunders stories that are Vonnegut-ish in plot, and the fixation (maybe fixation isn't the best word) on morality is comparable I think, but you're right in the conclusion that Vonnegut leaves you with the sense that "things can be changed", where Saunders leaves you with the sense that "sometimes, this is how things are - period."

Posted by Dougsf on March 13, 2009 at 2:36 PM

But I do love Saunders' stuff a whole hell of a lot.

Posted by Paul Constant on March 13, 2009 at 2:38 PM

Paul, have to say I love your lines "His fictions are little moral laboratories," and "Morrow's fiction isn't stridently anti-religious; rather, it's pro-idea" from this review. "Only Begotten Daughter" blew my mind when I read it about six years ago -- and I particularly love the fact it's based in my home state of New Jersey, in a part (southern) I grew up in. Thanks for reminding me about Morrow -- I need to read more of his stuff, and re-read "OBD" soon.

Posted by bookworm on March 13, 2009 at 3:15 PM