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09/08/2008: "Kicking off Rust"
listening to: Jazz on YouTubereading: Black House by Stephen King and Peter Straub
Well no wonder I feel like I am in a rut, I am not using my creative outlets! My poor blog is missing me, and I am missing it.
I blame it partially on Facebook. It’s a very fun, addicting and slick website which makes it easy to post pictures with text. It’s not an actual blog entry, but it’s effective nonetheless.
However, the text is the whole point. Facebook makes it easy to minimize the text and go with pictures only. Too easy. For me, storytelling includes pictures, but the text – the writing – has to be there. It has not been there lately. Not for much of the summer, really.
So, now that that horse is dead after just three short paragraphs, let’s get up to date.
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Dylan seems to be adjusting well to high school after a week. No complaints other than the sheer size of the school and the distance between classrooms. Junior high was an absolute bear for us, as it probably is for most parents, and we are glad it has faded away in favor of something better. I would never want to be a junior high student ever again.
Katelyn seems to enjoy the full day class of first grade. No complaints either. The transition has been smooth, and she seems just fine.
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Soccer has started! Katelyn’s team colors are black and white, and the team name is the Dalmatians. Not Dominoes, not Zebras, not Newspapers, not BlackJacks, but Dalmatians. That’s what little girls would choose as a name, I guess. I like it better than last year’s Purple Princesses. Yech, he said.
Dylan’s colors are light blue and white. Although he did not score on Saturday, his aggressiveness will pay dividends as the season progresses. He was the most aggressive shooter. I think a little bit of soccer rust was the only thing that kept him from two or three goals.
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I blitzed through Brian Hebert’s and Kevin J. Anderson’s Sandworms of Dune in just two days one weekend ago. I went through it so quickly, I did not even register it as a current book I am reading on Allconsuming.net.
Well, it was simply awful, and a terrible end to Frank Hebert’s previous six Dune novels. Let me give you some background:
Frank Hebert wrote six Dune novels from 1965 to his death in 1985. The sixth novel ended on a cliffhanger that captivated fans for over twenty years. These novels were all of high literary quality. Although difficult to read at times, these novels are complex, well thought out, and creative.
Frank’s son Brian teamed up with fellow author Kevin J. Anderson to continue on with the Dune universe. Their novels are based upon Frank’s outlines and notes. We have no idea how closely the authors followed Frank’s vision, but I feel they fell far short. To put it simply, Frank’s books were written for adults, but Brian and Kevin’s novels – all eight of them now – were seemingly written for juveniles. The classic characters are reduced to stereotypes, the villains are over-the-top ridiculous, the heroes worry constantly and fret about, and there is a huge cast of disposable characters with nothing much to say but sarcasm and muttering-under-the-breath throwaway lines.
I was disgusted from the very first of the eight. So, why did I go on to read all of them? Like a moth to a flame, that’s all I can say. The Dune universe is complex, compelling, and literary. No words are wasted, especially in conversations. The people Frank described are all on pedestals, even the villains. One really believed that Baron Vladimir Harkonnen was a clever, yet sick manipulator in Dune, as opposed to a mere non-witty comic book pervert. We saw the honor that Duke Leto Atreides had while he was alive; he was more than a swashbuckling pulp hero.
I can honestly say that I never want to read another novel by the Hebert/Anderson team now that they have completed Frank’s vision, such as it was. We are given a bone at the end of Sandworms of Dune which sets up a whole other realm of sequel books, but I am done. In fact, they intend to write more prequel books, similar in vein to what they did with the first six they wrote, but I am done.
So, I am now reading Black House by Stephen King nad Peter Straub. This is the first Stephen King book I have read since I was at Purdue. I read several of his books in succession, and I burned myself out! It’s taken me this long to get back to him again. I did not realize it until I was one hundred pages into the book, but it is the sequel to The Talisman, a book I read either while in college or shortly thereafter. Heather and I bought the book in the Spring, assuming we would read it while we were on vacation in Pennsylvania. I never got to it because I was knee deep in Red Mars.
Jumping from Sandworms of Dune into Black House is a bit like jumping from an ice cold Bud Light into a room temperature pint of Guinness. Although I did not like the novel, Sandworms was an easy read with super short chapters and easy-to-follow plotlines. Black House is thick with characterization, diversions, cultural references, sidebars, inner turmoil, and just plain weirdness (at least now that I am at the fourth murder). This is typical Stephen King. So, I am working a lot harder to read, but it’s worth it.
If I ever were to become a writer, I would in part like to emulate/channel Stephen King. He does have an amazing knack for the little details of our lives, even if they are mundane details in mundane lives. He is also a wizard of portraying the inner thoughts of the characters. We see them in their insanity, their frustration, their fear.
So, after I am done with both that novel and Richard Bachman’s Blaze -- which we also bought last spring – I will finally get back into Hugo and Nebula award winning science fiction . . . right after I pay my library overdue fines.