GOING POSTAL (BY) TERRY PRATCHETT

Published 2004, 377 pages

Characters: C

Writing: C+

Plot/Pacing: B

Poignancy: C

Going Postal was recommended to me specifically as a follow-up to John Dies At the End, and reading the two together does make for an interesting comparison — though a rather unfortunate one as well, something my Recommender clearly didn't intend.  Going Postal is the kind of book that makes you appreciate other books more.  Where John Dies At the End was endearingly imperfect, Going Postal has a rehearsed feel to it, as if the writing of the novel came so easily to Pratchett that he neglected to include anything interesting on top of it all.  This makes sense, given that it's the 33rd installment of the "Discworld" series.  Though Pratchett isn't nearly as well known in the States as he is in his native Britain, he is in fact one of the most read authors in the English speaking world, and other reviews of Going Postal seem to indicate that this is a good place to start, one of his strongest efforts.  To Pratchett's credit, you hardly need to know anything in order to understand the story, yet the world behind it still feels extensive.  The possibility for a long and varied series is obvious even from this one installment.   Yet, as a result of its place in this greater world, Going Postal is almost the opposite of a fantasy epic. Instead of showing one piece of a larger story, Going Postal is like a single episode of a sitcom, where nothing that happens ultimately matters.

Surprisingly, Pratchett's deliberate plotting is still Going Postal's strongest feature — it's somewhat original and flows quickly, though predictably.  With as many novels as Pratchett has written, he must be fairly desperate for fresh material, so Going Postal deals with a rather, uh, unique conflict: the failing post office of the fantasy land of Ankh-Morpork.  Our hero must save it, by competing with the Large Greedy Corporation running a competing service, sort of a steam-punk version of the telegraph.  This new technology has been threatening to put the post office underground, and now only one man can save it!  Our hero invents the postage-stamp, woos a lady, hatches various schemes, and saves the day.  Or whatever.  For all the negative things I can and will say about Going Postal, it's never a bad book, just a dull one.  There are no outright failings (nothing to earn the FAIL tag from me, anyway) and I never found it particularly frustrating or offensively incompetent.  In fact, it's almost offensively competent, and no more.  To coyly reference a much better novel, Going Postal is... mostly harmless.

It's hard to read Pratchett without thinking of the master of British comedy-literature: Douglas Adams.  Both men very obviously draw from the same comedic well, write the same sort of novels, and enjoy that quintessentially British goofiness that Monty Python made ubiquitous.  Yet here is where the comparisons get a bit dicey.  Pratchett is hugely popular to this day, his career dating back to the 70's, and yet for all his assets, his novels seem (to me) like the sitcom version of Douglas Adams.  Partly this is due to their very context — as one installment of a 30+ part mythology, Going Postal obviously isn't going to have the weight of a more self-contained effort.  And yet the feeling of triviality goes deep, and I never found myself caring much about the characters, or plot, or even the humor, ostensibly the book's main appeal.  Everything seems lightweight and manufactured, as if Pratchett were yet another Frank W. Dixon, R.L. Stine or Stephenie Meyer.  This is, possibly, the very appeal of a long-running series, and thus probably not so much a fault.  Such books are meant to be light-reading, time-killers, easy amusement: exactly the same as a sitcom.  Do you like those things?  Do you like "Theoretical British Humor"?  Then by all means, check out Pratchett.

The humor, unfortunately, is only ever theoretical.  Theoretical British Humor is the what happens when a British author, writing Standardized British Comedy, believes that the mere knowledge of his Britishness, plus a few silly names, will produce laughs.  It's the turns of phrase, the casual absurdities, the mild satire, the tendency to use certain non sequitors and witticisms, except nothing is actually very witty. You can spot where the jokes might go, you can see him teasing his prose and dancing around them, shaping his sentences to make room... but they never come.  It's as if the mere comedic tone were meant to provide the comedy.  Unfortunately, a comedic tone without actual comedy just makes everything feel casual and unhurried, destroying tension without providing any payoff in its place.  Unless, of course, you find "silly" character names to be uproariously funny.  Do you?  Good, because every character in here has a silly name.  If Silly Name Humor is your thing, then this might very well be your Led Zeppelin.

For all the wrong reasons, Going Postal is a good companion read to John Dies At the End.  The latter book managed something extremely difficult, blending earnest humor, genuine horror and realistic characters while rushing forward at an unrelenting pace.  Going Postal obviously must entertain a certain crowd, given its reputation, but if you, like me, don't find it particularly funny, then nothing else in the book is willing to step forward and save it.  This is ultimately what makes a comedic book memorable — humor is so subjective that it can hardly be relied upon, and authors like David Wong and Douglas Adams understand this, injecting a bit of scale and drama into their writing so that their novels are more than just throwaway gags, even if the humor doesn't work for you.  Going Postal feels skeletal, everything flimsy and cheap.  The characters are wholly unremarkable and the plot, while speedy and effective, merely brings you to the end, no more.

FOUCAULT'S PENDULUM (BY) UMBERTO ECO

Published 1988, 623 pages

Characters: C+

Writing: B

Plot/Pacing: D

Poignancy: B-

Umberto Eco, an Italian medievalist and semiotician, wants you to know that he knows a lot of things.  About a lot of things.  That's why he wrote Foucault's Pendulum, a conspiracy-theory driven mystery novel, forever dooming himself to comparisons with Dan "Encyclopedia" Brown.  Though The Da Vinci Code was written over a decade later, you can hardly find an Amazon review that doesn't compare the two.  (Great.  Now this review does too.)  Eco, often praised in literary circles as a "difficult" and highly "intellectual" writer with "demanding" "labyrinthine" plots, has expressed amusement over the irony of this situation, since Foucault's Pendulum is actually about the foolishness of conspiracy theorists and the obsessive personality required to buy into such fantastical beliefs, even calling Brown "one of [his] creatures" in interviews.  I see another level of irony in this comparison: both men are arrogant writers with grossly exaggerated opinions of their own talent, flaunting their research skills at the sacrifice of literary standards.  Both would do well to realize that "informative" is not the same thing as "intellectual."  Foucault's Pendulum is informative, no doubt — to the point of tedium.  But does this make it smart?

The problem with Eco's novel is (again with the irony) the exact problem that Brown doesn't have — Foucault's Pendulum does not want to thrill you.  Ignore anyone who says this book is a thriller.  Foucault's Pendulum does not want you to turn the page, but rather linger on all the clever witticisms and decades of research Eco poured into the pages you're already looking it.  If at any point that Eco's interesting premise begins to build suspense or tension, he runs up and buries a pickax in the skull of Narrative Momentum.  Here's the summary presented on the back cover of the book:  A Colonel Ardenti starts it all: He tells three editors that he has discovered a coded message about a centuries-old Knights Templar plan to tap a mystic source of power greater than atomic energy.  The editors, bored with rewriting crackpot manuscripts on the occult and amused by his claims, decide to cook up a Plan of their own.  Into their computer they feed manuscript pages on Satanic initiation rites, Rosicrucianism, the measurements of the Great Pyramid — and out comes a map indicating a point from which all the powers of the earth can be controlled, a point located at Foucault's Pendulum in Paris.  Sounds intriguing, right?  Eco certainly doesn't think so, which is why the Colonel Ardenti who "starts it all" doesn't appear in the novel for over 100 pages.  Well, alright, Eco.  That's cool.  He had a lot of research to get out of the way — not exposition, really, but he had to set the tone for the novel and introduce his characters as pompous blowhards who will pontificate at every and any academic tangent.  But, begrudgingly, he's got to get to the story we all came to read.  Eventually.  He has to, right?  Of course he does.  After 365 pages.

For fuck's sake, man.

I realize this is partly a marketing issue, which probably isn't really Eco's fault — maybe he had a different explanation of "what the book was about" when he was writing it, and never intended to position it as a thriller with, you know, a plot.  I'll give Eco the benefit of the doubt, but it doesn't excuse his meandering, disjointed storytelling, or using his characters as thinly-veiled avatars to show us how much he knows about... everything.  Again, it's not intellectualism to accumulate decades worth of obscure knowledge.  It's just research.  Some of it is interesting, and Eco certainly has a fine understanding of secret societies and medieval cults, as well as the particular mindset necessary to cultivate their mythology.  This, more than anything, is the real strength of the novel, and likely the reason it's regarded as a minor classic of the genre.  Foucault's Pendulum is ultimately satire, an anti-Da Vinci Code.  Yet even Realism is not enough to excuse your main character going on holiday for 50 pages immediately following the first major turning point of the novel, presumably because he wants to take a break from Dramatic Tension.

When the main character isn't vacationing in Brazil with his girlfriend, talking to various professors about the occult over drinks, he's lounging about Milan with other academic types, talking about the occult over drinks.  None of the characters are interesting enough to justify their verbosity, considering the entire novel is carried by dialogue. Eco does provide a solid backstory for some of his characters, but as with everything else in the novel, it's tossed out in big awkward chunks that seem to go nowhere.  It isn't enough to simply present more and more information to the reader, as if information were inherently self-justifying.  This is not the internet, Mr. Eco.  As an author, you're obliged to also present that information in such a way as to make it interesting and engaging.

"Hey, what's this about [Obscure Secret Society] during the [Obscure Historical Period]?" one character will ask, causing another character to take an exposition dump all over your face for the next 10 pages or so.  Foucault's Pendulum is the poster child for "show, don't tell," and oh, does it tell.  Granted, this structure is intentional and designed to make a certain point, but the fact that the novel was designed this way doesn't justify the tedium.  Eco's point, after all, could have been made in about 300 pages, maybe even in 15 pages.  He found a rich, interesting setting in which to place his novel, and perhaps if the characters spent more time doing, well, anything, they might have been able to carry the slower passages.  As it is, their lives and background are buried, becoming irrelevant when they don't disappear entirely.  Still, I can see why others might praise Eco's work — if the subject matter interests you, this is undoubtedly your best resource, and the book's thesis is surprisingly sound, its denouement fairly memorable.  Ultimately, this is a book that will make the extremely patient feel that special, masochistic feeling of accomplishment, and all others feel desperate and a bit panicked.

THE FIRE IN OUR THROATS WILL BECKON THE THAW (BY) PELICAN

Post-Metal / Sludge / Atmospheric
Released 2005

I was recently having a discussion with some peers about which albums most influenced our lives — albums that have not only stuck with us, but after first discovering them, drastically affected what music we listen to and how we listen to it.  I can pinpoint many albums that were, in retrospect, important to my current tastes, but most of them were simple progressions of things I was already listening to, another evolutionary link.  Other albums got me into new habits — my flirtations with metal were spread out over multiple years and many extremely different albums — but didn't themselves make a lasting impression, and in retrospect only presented a few easily-digested morsels that encouraged me to pursue new things, new tastes.

When a friend introduced me to The Fire In Our Throats Will Beckon the Thaw in the spring of my junior year of college, the timing couldn't have been more perfect.  For a few months, I had been seeking out experimental, heavy music. I already had a hunch then that I would never be a real metal-head, but I liked a lot of the things metal bands were doing, even if I was having a hard time getting past the often-difficult vocals.  Though I'd been occasionally listening to Godspeed You! Black Emperor since high school, I didn't really have awareness of instrumental music at that point.  GY!BE still seemed to me like a soundtrack lacking a movie, and like most people, I didn't understand why a band would decide to remain instrumental.  So Pelican came out of nowhere — I had truly never heard anything like it before.

Now, kids these days can easily describe entire subgenres of instrumental metal by the degree to which they rip off of Pelican (and other forebears of the post-metal movement), but hearing such a thing for the first time, or describing it to someone else, is like trying to explain to a blind man what "green" looks like.  I remember once telling my father that Pelican reminded me of Pink Floyd — a comparison that's so laughably erroneous four years later, I haven't the slightest idea what I might I have been referring to.  The Fire In Our Throats is, for lack of a better word, glacial — not usually a word I'd use to describe music, but I can't think of anything else that fits so well.  It's cold and stark and huge, slow-moving and dense, but most importantly, it's a glacier in retreat, one leaving behind a vision of spring and growth and possibility.  There's a deep-rooted, earthy sense of beauty in Pelican's music, little touches of warmth and grace amidst all the thundering walls of riffage and distortion, not to mention their extremely unique, perfect executed acoustic transitions.  Amidst the calamity, The Fire In Our Throats evokes the sense that one has finally reached The Last Day of Winter (and whatdayaknow, that's the name of the first song!)  Within such an unsubtle musical style, it's an unexpected touch of subtlety that other bands trying to bogart Pelican's thunderous tone seem to completely miss.  A wall of sound becomes boring eventually — we want to be led somewhere, and sludge-metal is at best a way to move us.  Where many other post-rockers tend to paint a scene that's other-worldly, or post-worldly, The Fire In Our Throats is intensely familiar.  Rather than nostalgia, it evokes a sense of expectation.  It somehow makes the air around you feel fucking crisp.  If you listen to it in winter, you will feel striking disappointment when you step outside and see a gray, snow-filled sky.  Studies show playing it once a day will cause plants to grow 34% faster.  (It's science!)

One particular memory perfectly captures all the feelings that Pelican still evokes in me.  As I said before, the timing of my discovery couldn't have been more perfect.  It was spring.  Metal is generally considered depressive stuff, but Pelican is anything but.  That winter had been a particularly difficult time of my life, and it's no exaggeration to say that I felt totally buried in frustrations and anxieties.  Timid music wasn't going to do anything to move me, but The Fire In Our Throats is as uplifting and inspiring as it is loud.  Like spring, there's a sense that mounds of filth are being washed away — forcefully, cathartically, and jarringly.  I needed that, then, and so I took a walk on the first day of spring, past all the sun-tanning sorority girls and shirtless jock douchemonkeys, and went down to the Hudson.  It felt good to get off campus and out of sight.  I found a spot above a cliff and watched car-sized chunks of ice floating down the river, I stared at the mountains that surrounded me, and I realized just how fucking much I loved the Hudson River Valley — everything except that small vortex of suck that was Poughkeepsie.  I could feel the cold whenever the breeze picked up, but it was still warm enough to wear a t-shirt.  And somehow, Pelican was playing exactly what I was feeling and seeing — without words.  I had never experienced that from music before. Suddenly I was getting punched in the face by a sort of frontiersman's spirit, awed by the severity of nature and music with the ability to capture it as textures and sounds.  I felt, dare I say, inspired.

So, Pelican got me into instrumental music, heavy music, and oddly enough, hiking.  (Cool story, bro).  The sense of gravitas and yearning their music evokes has never worn off, and I always feel an urge to put it on when I venture out to Upstate New York.  Sadly, their last two releases have been solidly mediocre, and their sound has since been regurgitated by dozens of bands, bottled and packaged as a tepid subgenre.  It's obvious in retrospect that Pelican's strengths also demand a rather inflexible formula, and after creating such a perfectly-executed landmark album, they'd basically written themselves into a corner.  (I should note that their first album, Australasia, is nearly on par with The Fire In Our Throats, yet presents a markedly different atmosphere).  The Fire In Our Throats still stands as one of the most evocative and emotional albums in my collection, a testament to the (seldom-realized) fact that beautiful music doesn't have to be timid or cloying.

JOHN DIES AT THE END (BY) DAVID WONG

Published 2009, 373 pages

Characters: B+

Writing: B

Plot/Pacing: B-

Poignancy: A

John Dies At the End, by Cracked.com editor Jason Pagrin aka David Wong, has a history almost as complicated as the story it tells. Originally written as an online serial before transforming into the hardcover available in bookstore's today, Wong's publishing success is a heart-warming DIY underdog tale, just as John Dies At the End is a heart-warming underdog tale of one man's obsession with his own penis.  Secondary to that, it's also the story of two friends confronting supernatural evil and the fragile, tenuous nature of reality.  As pure page-turning entertainment, Wong's novel succeeds so effortlessly that one might not even notice just how unconventional the book's narrative and voice are. JDATE is a headcrab that clings to your skull and just won't stop humping your brain.  It's possibly a classic of its genre — assuming you can settle on a genre to put it in — the rare story that successfully combines comedy and horror without ever trivializing its characters or sacrificing inventiveness.  So yes, the horse I'm trying to beat here is this: John Dies At the End is original.  Shockingly so — and I mean that, despite the comedic, casual tone, this book is actually shocking. The horror isn't just there as a sort of foil to bounce penis jokes off of — well, sometimes, maybe — but with all the wild ideas presented in JDATE, some of them are going to keep you up at night. 

The comedy is largely driven by the novel's nonchalant protagonists, eccentric video-game generation small-town twenty-somethings Dave and John.  The two serve as both straight-men to the increasingly surreal events unfolding around them — glib and dismissive in the face of supernatural evil, as if the possibility of humanity's extinction was just more bullshit foisted upon them by a world they already knew to be unrelentingly stupid — and also the source of the comedic tone, nearly matching the surrealist horror around them for batshit crazy unpredictability.  Yet they aren't played cheaply — their deadpan, cynical view of the world is increasingly linked to a dark, very-real childhood. With a few deft moments, Wong connects the cruelty of adolescence with something far vaster and more terrifying.  For all the cheap laughs, Dave in particular becomes a vivid, wholly original character, and one that remains recognizable and real even when he's bouncing between a haunted shopping mall and an alternate dimension he dubs "Shit Narnia."  Even the side characters — though often hazy, due to their limited screen-time — reveal Wong's discerning eye for small town eccentricities, and I suspect that JDATE will be far more poignant to anyone who grew up in a middle-of-nowhere suburban dive.  The voice and tone are perfect for capturing this secondary source of horror and humor, one that acts as an undercurrent to the main story — that sense of going nowhere in a place that you truly can't stand, of having no options.  It mirrors John and Dave's confrontations with evil itself — they are not heroes, they are not on an adventure, and the best they can manage is to dodge every life-threatening encounter in time for their next shift at the local video rental store.

With such subject matter, it would have been easy for Wong to render his plot as silly and inconsequential, but the drama here is often poignant — there's an unrelenting sense of danger and dread, of hopelessness and futility, even if Wong scripts a few too many Shock and Awe moments into the proceedings.  Some may find the rapidly escalating plot in JDATE overly surreal and confusing, but I believe its wild ambition to be the reason the novel resonates so well.  Wong doesn't stop with the usual sampled staples of supernatural horror: ghosts and arbitrary Christian iconography.  Those elements are there, but they're brought into a universe much vaster in scope, tied to a conspiratorial narrative that's only superficially similar to the basic "demon wants to invade earth" structure.

John Dies At the End isn't perfect, of course.  Even with its unique, possibly alienating approach to an already narrow genre, it's a messy, flawed book, though not in a particularly negative way.  Shouldn't horror — especially of this scope, with this voice, with multiple levels of Unreliable Narrator — be a little messy, anyway?  Nonetheless, it is often apparent that Wong's book was written in segments, despite many edits and additions.  The pacing is consistently relentless, but if you think too hard about how some of the plot elements go together, things start to get a little confusing.  I'd much rather read fiction that overreaches than an author playing it safe and predictable, so I don't hold it against Wong.  There's nothing particularly tidy or safe about the narrative voice to begin with — John Dies At the End deserves abundant praise for realizing that dumb, flippant humor can exist without dragging the whole story down to the same level, and Wong is anything but lazy with his ambitions.  The result is a real bender — clever, original, both exciting and disturbing.  It gets in your head — an achievement that should never be overlooked or discredited, no matter the methods.