I love this song soooo much right now. Can't stop listening to it, in fact. So here's the video, of Hank III, grandson of Hank Williams, Sr. It's full of F-bombs. So don't watch if your delicate ears can't handle it.

This one's for you, Wa11z.

Back in 1999, I actually caught Fight Club in the theaters. I can understand why it wasn't a hit at the box office. On its surface, it had a nihilistic world-view, but by the end of the film, facing death hand-in-hand with his girlfriend, the narrator of the tale was giving us some kind of hope. Not necessarily hope that we would be free from credit card companies, but hope that we can carve out happiness and individuality for ourselves in a world where corporations are co-opting rebellion.

Choke the book followed Fight Club the movie two years later. If I remember, it was published before 9/11, so perhaps reading it now, six years later, I come to it differently than I might have on, say, September 10. The thing is, after having read Choke, I think it still speaks to us now just as much as it did before.

Choke follows the life of Victor Mancini, an ostensible sex-aholic who runs a scam to pay for his mother's treatment at a nursing home/mental hospital. By day, he works at a colonial village, recreating life in the 1700s. He and his co-workers spend their time getting high and feeding the visiting school kids the true story of life in colonial times, instead of the sanitized version that they're supposed to.

Victor's mom has Alzheimer's, and from the sound of it, she was a pretty radical chick in her day, dragging him from place to place, causing fun trouble along the way, whisking him off onto new adventures along the way. Victor's also a med-school dropout, so as we follow him along through his story, we learn little do-dads about what can happen to the body, like what happens if, say, plastic spheres block a certain opening in, say, the bowels.

Thematically, Palahniuk is on pretty much the same ground as he was in Fight Club, or it's incredibly familiar ground, but it followed Fight Club, so that's to be expected, right? And like Fight Club, it ends on a hopeful note with Victor and his friends. They - metaphorically at least - build a new world for themselves - so there is a departure here for Choke. Hope through construction rather than destruction.

However, it takes the story a while to get to the idea. If this were a movie, the seeds of the construction would have started much earlier. And it's something I'm wasn't too happy with here. Also, the plastic balls would have come into play much earlier, too. I think it would have been a stronger metaphor for the story. The resolution of said balls, though, is perhaps my favorite part of the story. It's horrifying, funny as fuck, and - for me, anyway - something of a slight physical relief. I suppose you could say that I physically empathised with Victor in that moment. Not literally, but... well, you'll get the point if you read it.

I blame this on the editors, mostly. I could rant for days about slack editors. They aren't doing their jobs anymore. And that's mostly due to the fact that the business has changed for book editors. They don't edit as much as they used to, instead spending most of their time pitching books to the sales teams, who then pitch them to chain stores. I heard that there's basically one person who controls the flow of fiction through either Barnes & Noble or Borders. And if she likes your book, then you're guaranteed a great place in the store.

Anyway, Palanhiuk did need an editor for Choke. It only needs a slight rejiggering, but I think it could have been a shining, perfect novel. As it stands, it's merely great.

I bought Choke from Murder Ink - or its sister store, anyway - up around West 92nd and Broadway in Manhattan. Murder Ink is out of business now, thanks to places like Barnes & Noble and Borders. I knew that my buying Choke and The Road wouldn't keep Murder Ink in business, but I wanted to show my support. I'd just found them, and it broke my heart to see them going under. So if you buy Choke - or any book for that matter - try to do it at a local mom-and-pop bookstore, or a local chain at least. Perhaps it's going to be inevitable that Barnes & Noble and Borders and their ilk are going to take over the retail book world, but I don't think we should go out without a fight.

Two nights ago I saw Hot Fuzz.

And you didn't.

Yeah, see, my friend David had passes from the IFP for a screening, and he invited me, because I've been talking about this movie constantly since I heard about it. So it seemed like the kind thing to do, I guess.

If the Oscars were held today, Best Picture would have to go to Hot Fuzz. It would be a first in a long time. The Oscar hasn't gone to a comedy in a couple of decades at least. But still! This is the best movie of the year so far.

The story is pretty simple: Nick Angel is the best cop in London, doing 400% better than his peers. So to keep everyone from looking bad, he's promoted and transferred to the safest town in the UK. Of course, he finds crime around every corner, including accidents he thinks are really murders. Of course no one believes him. Except, of course, his new partner, Danny Butterman. Danny wants more than anything to be a cop like he sees in action movies like Point Break and Bad Boys II. And, of course, by the end he gets what he wants.

If you liked Shaun of the Dead, then you'll love Hot Fuzz. I think HF is at least as funny. There was no sophomore slump here. There is at least a joke a scene, and all of the jokes are funny. I got a workout from laughing the for two hours straight. The only complaint I have - and it's not much of one - is that the director, Edgar Wright, needs to work with his editor on the fight scenes. They seemed too manic, and I wasn't always sure what was happening. But this was only with the fist fights. The gun battles were fine. Great, in fact.

So run, don't walk, to your local cinema, and demand that they show you this movie today! TODAY! It's not out until the 20th of April, and even then in limited (what the fuck?) release. And to prove I've seen the film - since there's not much in the way of spoilers here - I'm going to spoil a bit.

HERE THERE BE SPOILERS!













But not much of one. There's a lot of blood in this movie. About as much as Shaun. But the grossest bit, beating even Shaun I think, is when the reporter gets the spire tip from the cathedral through his head. Absolutely disgusting, and hilarious. Or, when Timothy Dalton's character gets the miniature church spire through his jaw! Oh, god that was nasty. And hilarious.

HERE END THE SPOILERS!













After the film, three men came out to answer questions.

Edgar Wright, the director.

Simon Pegg, writing and star.

And Nick Frost, star.

Simon slouches when he sits, by the way.

Anyway, we got to ask questions of them, but it was the usual crap, like where'd you get the idea for this, what genre are you going to spoof next, and so on. They were off-the-cuff funny, which was a nice surprise. They talked about the homoerotic moments in the movie, citing Lethal Weapon as being a really gay movie, especially at the end, with Danny Glover cradling a topless Mel Gibson in the rain. Brokeback Weapon they called it.

They claimed to have watched 138 action films of all kinds, including a few Westerns, including High Plains Drifter and High Noon. They watched a lot of Chuck Norris and Steven Seagal (who both get nods in Hot Fuzz.) There's a peace lilly in the film that Nick Angel cares for, and that's a nod to Leon. They're wating for some money to clear the music rights for Spaced, so it can be released on DVD in the US. There were other things, but it wasn't as personal as I would have liked, with answers to questions like, where'd you get the money to make this damn thing. But what can you do, right?

So there you go. Hot Fuzz. I saw it early.

And you didn't.

Finished House of Leaves over the weekend, by Mark Danielewski. I figure I spelled his name right. As you can gather, I'm totally over the world about the book. Actually, I think you should read it, because it's great fun. But I'm at work, and that always just overwhelms me with enthusiasm and joy.

Sigh.

Anyway, House of Leaves is a strange book, about a guy named Johnny Truant who moves into an L.A. apartment of a man named Zampano. There's a tilde over the o at the end. Anyway, Zampano is dead, and that's why Johnny gets the apartment. While moving in, Johnny finds a manuscript on which Zampano was working, about a movie - a documentary - called The Navidson Record.

The Navidson Record is about a guy named Navidson - a Pulitzer prize winning photographer - and his girlfriend Karen, and their kids, who move into a house that's bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. And Zampano wrote his book all about this. And Johnny tries to take the scraps of the book and put them together for whatever reason. Johnny becomes obsessed with it. And in doing so, his life goes down the tubes. He loses his job. He loses his friends. He loses lovers. All because he's reading this book.

Throughout the book, there are quotes from famous people about The Navidson Record. Quotes from people like Stephen King, just to name one. But of course, The Navidson Record doesn't actually exist in our world. And the funny thing is, it doesn't actually exist in the world of House of Leaves either. At least, Johnny can't find it.

One of the best things about the book is that Johnny is an unreliable narrator. He actively changes something about The Navidson Record to reflect his own life. He writes to us that it's a better parallel. So how much of this story is true? How much of it is false? In the end, I think the answer is that it doesn't matter. What really matters is this: Is the story any good?

Yes, it is. Now go buy it.

I saw two movies in the last week, The Host and 300. I'd say skip both, but at least wait for The Host to come out on DVD.

Let's begin, shall we? All right, The Host is basically a monster movie with politcal overtones. The politics belong to Korea, where The Host was shot, and you don't have to have kept up with Korea to have some fun at this movie. The story is pretty basic - after a lot of formaldahyde is dumped into the Han River in Seoul, a monster is born. A large, CG monster that blends rather seemlessly into the background. Kudos to the guys who did the effects here. It's better than a lot of what Hollywood puts out.

So, in the first act, the monster comes out of the water in the middle of the day. It's a big reveal, and it's really early in the film. Normally, this might kill any suspense a monster movie has, but it's loads of fun, a little bloody, and a great ride. Our hero, Park Gang-du, helps his dad run a food stand on the river. Gang-du is rather lazy, falls asleep at odd intervals, and so on. His story is pretty clear. He's going to rise to the moment.

His daughter, Park Hyun-seo is taken by the monster to its lair where she's kept for a later meal. Then the second act begins, which is where The Host runs into problems. It's flabby as second acts go. A good script editor could have shaved a good 15 minutes off this thing, and nothing would have been lost. But the third act does kick in, and Gang-du and his family come to the rescue of Hyun-seo in a spectacular face-off with the monster.

Final verdict: Wait for the DVD, but see it.

Then there's 300. I've been kind of hyping this to my friends, but I admit that a few weeks before it premiered I was already getting ambivalent about it. The Spartans were a pretty rigid group. I read somewhere that rooting for them was like rooting for North Korea. And the fact that they were pedarests to the man, well, you can see why I'd be kind of bothered by rooting for them.

Now, in the movie, the Athenians become the boy lovers, and everyone fights wearing leather loincloths, and so on. I can accept the loincloths. But don't bring up the man-boy love thing if you're going to distort it. Just let it drop.

Then there was a feeling I had, that the whole thing was a little more than vaguely racist. It was Greek versus Persian, but in the movie it was a bunch of white guys against a bunch of brown people and yellow people. There was one scene that had a fade out straight from the 20s. I wasn't too uncomfortable with it, because it didn't really surprise me. But I had to wonder what the filmmakers were communicating to the audience. Does Zack Snyder really know what he's saying with this movie? Does he care?

It was pretty, but it wasn't very groundbreaking. This style of filmmaking has already been done in so many other movies, like Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, Sin City, Immortel, Casshern, and arguably the Star Wars prequels (especially 2 and 3).

On top of all of this, the dialogue, which kind of worked in the comic, just doesn't work here. Mostly there just needed to be less of it. In one scene, when the Spartans are watching the Persian boats lashed by a storm, the narrator says something along the lines of "Only one of us kept his Spartan reserve." The camera goes to Leonidas, whom we already know is the king of the Spartans. The narrator continues: "Our king. Leonidas." You know, just in case we missed it or weren't sure. There are more moments like that, but that's the one I remember most clearly.

There were scenes added to the story from the graphic novel, of course, in order to flesh out the run time. These scenes are of King Leonidas' wife, Gorgo, trying to get the council in Sparta to send the army to Leonidas' aid. Whenever they came up, the pace of the film ground to a halt, or nearly so. Dominic West, who plays Theron, the bad Spartan, is the only saving grace in these scenes. But because they were so not great, I'm not sure if they - in their concept - should have been excised from the script or not. I just can't tell. They didn't add anything to the story that I could see, but if they hadn't been there, the movie would have been exhausting to sit through.

It's too late to warn you all away, of course, because 300 has made an ass-load of cash. And it was destined to. Nevertheless, if you haven't seen it, skip it. Don't even wait for the DVD.

I've been reading lately, and I recently finished J.G. Ballard's Cocaine Nights, which didn't really impress me as much as I wanted it to. It's the whole descent into... well, not madness, but adoration? Anyway, since Ballard wrote Crash and The Atrocity Exhibition, I was actually expecting more from him - more violence, more sex, more violent sex and sexy violence. I was expecting something that would make me queasy like Ichi the Killer made me queasy. But this didn't do it. So read Empire of the Sun, and read Crash, but I think it would safe to skip Cocaine.

On the other hand, I started Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer, and I had to stop. It's just too precious. I didn't buy the boy's voice at all, and he seemed too precocious for his own good and my gag reflex. But I feel kind of bad, because this is one of the first post-9/11 novels to deal with 9/11 in some direct fashion. I just wish it hadn't been treacly, or gooey like it is. And that's even before I got to the pages with the text that all ran together into big blocks of... well, text. At some point in the book - I looked ahead, but I didn't read ahead - the text starts to run into itself, until it because a big mass of black ink. I don't get this, but then I didn't read the section. The problem is, I was driven away by the rest of the story, so I never got that far.

I'll give Foer one thing: He at least gave it a shot. It just didn't work for me. Of course, I didn't like Everything is Illuminated either.

I can't stand it. I'm done with The Brothers Karamzov. I can't bring myself to read it anymore, and I suggest that if you want to read some good Dostoyevsky, stick to Crime & Punishment. It's got many of the same themes, but it's a much better book. Karamazov was Dostoyevsky's last book, and it seems to me that he was given a lot of leeway and deference when writing this. As I wrote in other posts, he got away with a lot of stuff that would have fucked a first time writer, or even a mid-list writer. And that pisses me off, because this thing is touted as a masterpiece. It's a piece of shit, really.

So skip it. Don't waste your time, like I did mine. I'm not going to sell this thing on eBay or Half.com, because I wrote in the damn thing. Then again, maybe I will. Of course, when I list it, I'll write about how great it is, and what a masterpiece it turned out to be. But I'll be trying to sell it, so you understand.

I saw Babel this weekend. As some critics are saying, it's the Crash of 2006. You know, so many story lines, so little time, no matter how long the stretch out the running time. That's not to say Babel is bad. Babel is great. My only complaint is... well, it's kind of two-fold, or a one-or-the-other proposition. Either they should have extended the running time to three hours, or they should have cut two of the stories.

I mean, I get it, we're all connected. That's great. It's nice to know that my actions will somehow effect some untouchable in India (nothing like that happened in the movie, but you get the point). Anyway, the story is pretty basic: Two Morrocan boys fire a rifle into the air, hit an American woman on a tour bus, causing an international incident. Meanwhile, the Americans' young kids are heading to Mexico with their nanny to see the nanny's son get married. And in Japan, a deaf-mute teen girl is acting out against her father. That connection isn't as clear at first until we see a badly photoshopped photograph of the deaf-mute's father on a hunting trip in Morroco. I say it's badly photoshopped because it is, though it's not supposed to be. It's not a clue in a mystery, it's just bad production values, which was rather surprising to me.

Anyway, I'm picking on Babel a little here, because it got the Oscar nod over Children of Men, which is a superior movie in my mind. However, that's like saying something that scored a 10 is superior to something that got a 9.85. While true, it's not much of a difference.

Oh, and the other thing I wasn't too keen on in Babel was how quickly they cut from one scene to the other. Just when things got interesting, they would cut from one scene to the next. Just when I'm getting into the scene, or I feel like I'm learning something about the character, we're off to another part of the world. And that's why I think it either needed a longer running time, or it needed to kill two of the stories. I knew I'd get around to writing that eventually.

See, the pace was excellent, because Babel is a pretty long movie to begin with. And it moves fast. And toward the end, we do stick around with the characters. But still.

Nevertheless, go see this in a theater. It's worth your money.

And again, 2006 was a great year for Mexican filmmakers.

I finished Hannibal Rising the other day. If you want Hannibal Lecter to remain a mystery, skip it. Then again, I'm still not sure why he became a cannibal in the end. It's not like he was showing the signs of serial killing or whatever when he was a child. And it seemed to me that there was more motivation for him to actually not be a cannibal than for him to take it up, even as a hobby. Nevertheless, I'll probably still see the movie.

I read some more of The Brothers Karamazov, and by more, I mean another chapter. The scene is still at the church where the Karamozov family is meeting with the church's elder. While waiting for the eldest brother, middle child Ivan has a discussion with the priests about the separation of church and state. What I gathered by the end is that he believes that the church should be held as the highest standard in terms of moral and personal governance, and the state should try to attain that standard. The church should lead by example, and the state should follow it.

This is all well and good. But I know now that Dostoyevsky was getting paid by the word, because there's no way anyone would stand for this shit in any other novel.

I saw Pan's Labyrinth over the weekend. It was great. You should see it. The Mexican directors had a great year in 2006 apparently, though I haven't seen Babel, (the other Mexican directed film being, of course Children of Men). So I'm thinking maybe I should just do the trifecta and see Babel and get it over with.

Anyway, back to Pan's Labyrinth. Oh, and there will be spoilers ahead, so stop reading now if you don't want to be, well, spoiled. Okay, while I preferred Children this is defintely worth your time, your dime, and your effort. Pan's is a fairy tale through and through. The story is basic, a young girl, Ofelia, is going with her pregnant mother to live with her stepfather, a captain in Franco's fascist army in late 1930s Spain. While there, Ofelia learns her stepfather is a pretty rotten bastard. First fairy tale trope - evil step parent - check!

You know how in Disney movies, they always have the friendly, helpful servants? Pan's Labyrinth has them, too! Except they're allied with the communists hiding in the hills! So we have another fairy tale thingee going on here.

The list goes on. And that's before we actually get into all the creatures, like the Pale Man, the Faun, the fairies, and so on. It's a basic story, but there's a lot of question as to what's going on here. Is Ofelia really seeing the Faun? Is she really a princess? Is she just crazy? I think she's just dealing with the fact that her father has died - hey, another fairy tale trope! - and her mother settled for a real dickhead of a new husband. And if that means she's seeing fantastical creatures, more power to her.

Because in the end, not only is there a strong story here, it's beautiful to watch. The Faun, the Pale Man, the fairies are all wonders to behold. While I loved Del Torro's Hellboy it seems to me that his more personal stories - like The Devil's Backbone and this - are the better films.

Next up, Babel, Tears of the Black Tiger, and god only knows what else.

I saw Children of Men last week. This is the best movie of 2006 in my opinion, and I saw Brick, Hard Candy, and Sympathy for Lady Vengeance. Men is less of a trick pony than Brick and Vengeance, and it didn't make me nauseous like Hard Candy (though it was the best bout of nausea I ever had).

I won't go into details about it, but there's a sequence in Men - one long shot - that follows Clive Owen as he runs for point A to point B that's worth the price of admission alone. Just the technical aspects of getting that shot must have been boggling, and the fact is, I felt like I was right behind Clive as he made the run.

But this weekend is a long weekend, and I intend to make the most of it. I'm definitely going to see Pan's Labyrinth, but I'm also tempted to see Tears of the Black Tiger, the trailer for which you can download here. It's a Thai Western, and it looks like it was actually shot in the 50s, though it was shot in 2000. It's out in New York this weekend, and I'm really thinking of catching it on Monday. I get that day off, and what the hell am I going to do that day, right?

Dostoyevsky has this thing about going nowhere slow. For two chapters - that's about 15 pages - this religious elder has been tending to his flock. Basically he's been talking to a bunch of women (it's specifically women, but I get the impression that it could have been anyone) about their travails.

I'm about 70 pages through this book, and it's taken Dostoyevsky that long to truly start the action. Now that the elder is back talking to the Karamozov father and son Ivan, we're getting into a discussion on the separation of Church and state. Ivan is all for the combination of Church and state it seems. That's as far as I've gotten into this little conversation. I'll get into his argument after I read it more fully.

But let me just write this: It's taken 70 pages to get this heap moving, and we're still sputtering along. I read somewhere that Sigmund Freud thought this was the greatest book ever. Someone should dig up Siggy and beat the dead shit out of his body (it would be difficult to beat the living shit out of it).

Dostoyevsky's got 30 pages to pick up the speed and start telling his story. Otherwise, this bitch is over.

I finished Cormac McCarthy's The Road over the holiday. It's shown up on a few best-of-2006 lists, and I can kind of see why. The thing is, it's a pretty loose book, not much happens, though it's a lovely read. And it has an unhappy ending, so it's par for the course for me.

The story - such as it is - is about a man and his son (no names, just "the man" and "the boy") who wander a post-nuclear wasteland. I'm guessing post-nuclear, because there are references to explosions, and burnt out cities. There's nothing explicit, though, and the holocaust could have been anything. But that doesn't hurt the book, and instead makes it eerier. Nothing is alive, it seems, except for a few human beings. No animals populate this book, and it seems the only plant left is grass, and even then I had doubts (there's only one explicit mention of grass, and it's in passing).

The man and boy see horrible things in their travels - cannibalism, murder, disease, and so on - and can do very little about it. The man carries a revolver with two or three bullets. When he leaves the boy alone, he tells the boy how to commit suicide, you know, just in case cannibals attack.

My one reservation is that as great as the writing is in this book, there is no story. The man and boy wander around for a while. Sometimes they're hungry, other times, they find food. Sometimes they see horrible things, usually they don't. The man is sick. The boy is malnourished. That's about it.

This is all written in beautiful prose, but since I left the book at my parents' house, you're not going to get to read any of it here. I would say you could see where this story is going, but since there's no real story of which to speak, there's not much to forsee. The man is sick. What do you think happens? The boy knows what to do with the pistol in case cannibals show up. What do you think happens? I'd say read it to find out. But either wait for the paper back, or get it out of your local library.

And yes, it has a depressing ending, just in case you were wondering.

I saw Dreamgirls the other night. I can see why there's awards buzz around Jennifer Hudson and Eddie Murphy. Whenever they're on screen the movie comes alive. Certainly you can tell this was adapted from a stage show, since the scenes, the framing and the music are very "Broadway musical."

Now, I don't know if Beyonce was wasted on this part, or if she's just a flat actress, but I don't get why she has received a Golden Globe nomination for her part in this film. And I certainly don't know why Ms. Hudson got a nod for best supporting actress. Who the fuck was she supporting? You know, other than the whole production.

Something that surprised me at first was that people in the audience of the movie theater were clapping and cheering on the performers on screen. I can certainly understand why they would. Part of me was feeling like, "come on, it's not like they can hear you." But then, if the spirit moves you, you might as well move, right?

But overall, I don't think the movie deserves a best picture nod. Well, it doesn't deserve a win. I imagine that the stage show is something like 4 hours. And this was two-and-a-half. So there were gaps, and it was choppy. And Jon Lithgow had a bad haircut. And the guy from the American "The Office" played a screen writer, or a director. I was never sure. Anyway, the story wasn't well served by the film's length. It fails the story.

One final thing: There's a big scene for Ms. Hudson - the scene that got her the nod, I'm sure - where she's singing to her group mates and lover. And the gist of the song is "Look at me, love me, pay attention to me." Up to this point, her character, Effie, hasn't been the most likable. And in this scene, she's being pretty self centered. But the scene is perhaps the best in the film. Slowly, her groupmates and friends leave the stage until it's just Effie singing to an empty theater. This scene - for its staging and power - is worth the price of admission alone.

It's Christmas Eve, and I'm with my parents. Well, I'm with one half of my parents. Seeing as I'm at the ass end of Generation X, it's only appropriate that I am the child of divorce. So I'm with my mom this year. Actually, I think this is the way it's going to be from now on. Thanksgiving with Dad, Christmas with Mom, and whatever in between.

I have been reading, but it's not been Brothers. In fact, the less I read of it, the more I like saying I'm reading it. Have to admit, it impresses people.

But that's not to say I haven't been reading. I recently finished Sight for Sore Eyes by Ruth Rendell. Not a great book for her, but better than most. The story was kind of flabby, you could tell who was going to die before they bit it, and the characters were more caricatures, but what the hell. Now, I'm reading The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Don't know how long it'll take to read that.

Anyway, tomorrow I'm going to visit other family, and I'll do what I can to read on with Brothers. Wish me luck. And Merry Christmas!

As you can see, I haven't really posted anything about Brothers in a while. And I've got a reason. Actually, I have several reasons. Basically, there's a lot of personal shit going on in my life right now, and Brothers is not at the top of my list of things to do. Not that it's at the bottom, but it's not breaking into the top 10. Now, I hope to have another posting about it before the New Year comes, but I do want to write that I will do my best to be back to it full force come 2007. I'm thinking that I should do one big book a year.

I also want to let you guys in on something else: It took me years to get into the groove of Ulysses. Seriously. I did a lot of stopping and starting on that book before I settled in and just read it. I hope it's different with Brothers. In fact, I'm going to be better with it than I was with Ulysses. But bear with me.

I finally finished The Heart of the Matter yesterday, and Greene stayed in form with his depressing ending. And while I thought this was a very good novel, there was something about it that bothered me, which was Scobie's sudden devotion to God. But I'll get to that in a second.

First, I'd just like to write two things: One, I'm not going to give the ending away. Two, I recommend you read The Heart of the Matter, simply because - aside from my coming gripes - it's a great book. Graham Greene knows what he's doing when he sits down to write.

Now, the main gripe: Scobie became a good Catholic very fast. For most of the book, he's lackadaisical at best when it comes to mass and observing his faith. Then, it seems as if he becomes hard core overnight. I don't have a problem with him becoming religious, having conversations with God, and so on. Guilt does that to people. But there didn't seem to be a transition. There was no gradual slip back into - or into it in the first place - into his belief.

My only other complaint is that he uses a broken rosary as a very obvious metaphor, but if that's the worst of his sins as a writer, then I can live with that.

Okay, clumsy seque here...

At one point, Scobie talks to his priest, Father Rank, who says, "It's better to sin 70 times and repent each time than to sin once and never repent." This concerns me on two levels. On the one hand, it's clear that it's foreshadowing the end of the book, and it's a bit obvious. But on the other hand, it makes me wonder how many people - especially Catholics - actually believe that. I mean, if you have someone sinning so often, don't you think there's something going on? That maybe they need an intervention? At least the guy who sins once and doesn't repent isn't going around making life hell for those around him. Father Rank does save his own ass spiritually/philosophically at the end of the book, but I'll leave that for you to find out.

Anyway, that's it for now. Maybe I'll have more time for The Brothers Karamazov now, though don't hold your breath too much. I will make it to page 100, but I don't know when at this point. I've got a busy weekend ahead of me.

I read some more of Brothers finally!

The elder Zosima takes leave of Pavlovich, Ivan and the others for a moment to see the people of his village, a group of about 20 women. The narrator says this is normal, that people come from all around to see Zosima because he has a reputation as a healer. Over the course of the chapter, he "heals" about three or four people. One woman is a shrieker. She's basically having a nervous breakdown, and Zosima covers her head, says a prayer, and that seems to clear things up. I bet he sees that woman again.

Anyway, another woman comes to him. Her infant has died, and her husband has given in to drink. This is actually a pretty good scenario, because there's nothing Zosima can really do here. So he basically feeds her a line. That line: Since the baby didn't have a lot of time on the earth, he's an angel in Heaven. So his mother should be happy. And of course she is.

The thing about the chapter is, there's not a lot to learn about anything other than Zosima. And while I've complained about Dostoyevsky's writing before, I have to say, this is a better way to show character - Action. Zosima is doing what he can to heal these people, though I think he's full of himself. He kind of deals with these people as if he's reading from a script. That's fine in terms of character development, but as a person... I don't know. Still, this is one hell of a step up from before. I think the novel should have started two chapters ago, instead of wasting time and space with the crap that Dostoyevsky shovelled out before.

So the verdict? Things are picking up.

So Scobie and Helen kiss. And an affair begins. And then we cut to what I'm assuming is a month or two into the affair, when some of the shine has worn off, and the two lovers are... well, they're not exactly bickering. But Helen reminds Scobie of his wife, Louise, which isn't that great for Scobie. It is - as my friend Mike might say - a bit of a "weenie shrinker."

But there's a cold reality to this predicament. Scobie is married. Not only that, he's Catholic, which means he'll never be able to spiritually divorce Louise for Helen. And despite his lacadazical efforts to got to Mass, things like faith are important to Scobie. So a fight erupts, words are tossed back and forth like bombs, and Scobie leaves Helen for the time being. He later writes her a letter, professing his love for her, telling her that he'll always be there for her while he's alive.

That last part is important. Greene seems to be dropping lots of pretty heavy clues as to how this is going to turn out. The book pretty much opens with Scobie investigating a suicide, and now this. I probably just gave the whole thing away.

Anyway, something that's a little astonishing is that Scobie and Helen are flying under the radar in all of this. No one in the entire colony seems to know what's going on with them. When Scobie finishes the aforementioned letter, he goes to Helen's with it, slips it under her door. It's evidence. It's a physical declaration of his love for Helen. Since this is Greene, you know nothing good is going to come of it.

And nothing does. Scobie meets Helen at a party, and finds out she never got the letter. Not only that, but Louise is coming back from South Africa. She misses Scobie, basically. So our man is up a creek. To top it off, Helen's house boy got to the letter before she did and brought it to Yusef, the Syrian from whom Scobie took the loan to send Louise to South Africa. Now the blackmail begins.

I don't think the French chippy is actually French. I don't know why I thought she was French, but whatever. It doesn't have much bearing on the story. This is Graham Greene we're talking about here. A woman's involved, so there's going to be infidelity, and some tragedy (unless it's The Third Man, then it's just tragedy). I just wanted to clear that up before the holiday. I haven't read much more into The Heart of the Matter, so this isn't an update for that.

I promise to get back to Brothers soon. I'm going away for Thanksgiving, and I have a long bus ride ahead of me, so I'll kill some time with it then. And I'm going to start marking up the pages with notes and whatnot. My fear of marking up a nice book has put me off doing that, but it will make these blogs easier, so I'm going to do it.

If I don't see you before then, have a happy Thanksgiving!