Fiction: “Solar” by Ian McEwan

To say that I was disappointed in reading Solar would be putting it somewhat mildly. I have read two other novels and one novella by McEwan (Atonement, Enduring Love, and Amsterdam, respectively), and loved them all. In every work that I’ve read by him, I’ve been amazed and awed by his use of language, how he twists words around and strings together truly beautiful sentences.

But this novel — true, his language technique is still there; he still wraps sentences around his finger using large, lyrical words, but his protagonist isn’t even an anti-hero; he’s just awful.

I was talking to a friend about the book the other day, and I commented that I distinctly didn’t like the main character (I believe the term I used was “shitheel” — and I called him a shitheel during the entire conversation, much like Pete Campbell on Mad Men will always and forever be known as “Bitchface” to me), and I didn’t really want to finish it, but I needed to know what happened. It’s kind of like when I read Wideacre the first time — I hated Beatrice Lacey, but knew instinctually that something had to happen to her to lead her to either redemption or inevitable destruction.

The protagonist of Solar is Michael Beard, a Nobel Laureate for coming up with something called the Beard-Einstein Conflation, which has something to do with photovoltaics, which from what I can gather, has something to do with light and energy. Look, all I know about science I learned from The Big Bang Theory, so I can’t really be held responsible for getting this junk right. Anyway, in the year 2000, Beard is watching his fifth marriage crumble. How this guy was married five times is beyond me, because every time he described himself, he prided himself on his numerous affairs and his attractiveness to women. Which is also beyond me, as he describes himself as being short, fat, and bald. There’s two-thirds of a joke in there about a friend of mine, but he’s too good a friend for me to make it. Also, it would create a comparison between him and Beard, and Beard’s a shitheel, where my friend is not. So.

Anyway. Beard’s soon-to-be-ex, Patrice, is taking up with their contractor, Rodney Tarpin. Meanwhile Beard is working on a wind turbine at this Center or whatever, struggling with climate change and looking for more sustainable energy. And there’s this kid, Thomas Aldous, and he drives Beard back and forth from his flat to work, because Aldous is an intern, and that’s what interns do. Aldous has some fantastical ideas about using solar energy to create fuel by synthesizing photosynthesis, but Beard poo-poohs the idea and returns to ideas on how to make his wife love him again.

Then Beard goes on a trip to the Arctic, and in a moment that would have been AWE-INSPIRING in the way of making Alaina not turn away from this book: Beard almost loses his penis.

No, go with me on this. He wakes up late in his hotel in Sweden or wherever the eff, and he has to run downstairs to make the snowmobile caravan to this boat in the middle of the icy Arctic Ocean. As such, he doesn’t have time for breakfast, or his morning bathroom break. So he’s driving this snowmobile, when all of a sudden, his bladder can’t take it anymore. So he stops, goes to take a piss in the middle of the frozen tundra, and then becomes surprised when his dick sticks to the zipper of his snowsuit, four gazillion times worse than Flick sticking his tongue to the telephone pole. He gets immediate frostbite to his johnson, manages to unstick it using his hip flask of brandy as lubricant, then returns to his compatriot in the caravan and sits astride his snowmobile. And then this happens:

Something cold and hard had dropped from Beard’s groin and fallen down inside the leg of his long johns and was now lodged just above his kneecap. He put his hand between his legs and there was nothing. He put his hand on his knee and the hideous object, less than two inches long, was stiff like a bone. It did not feel, or it no longer felt, like a part of himself. [63-64]

And I sat up in bed, first with empathy pain, but secondly with “HOLY SHIT THAT’S AWESOME.”

But his dick didn’t fall off. He didn’t even have to put it in a box or anything. He had some intense pain, but it didn’t break. In fact, in the next two sections, he has even more sex than he does in the first part. What a letdown. McEwan could have done SO MUCH MORE with that, and he decided not to Go There.

So Beard comes home from the Arctic, and finds not Tarpin at his house after having sex with his wife, but Aldous. And after a confrontation, Aldous accidentally slips on a rug and hits his head on the corner of the coffee table, and dies. Beard frames Tarpin for the crime, and rids himself of multiple problems in one fell swoop.

Fast-forward five years, and Tarpin’s in jail for murder, Beard has stolen Aldous’s works towards rejuvenating solar energy, and has a new lover named Melissa. He has also grown to be more of a shitheel, and fatter. And then Melissa reveals that she loves him, but wants a baby more, so she went off her birth control and now she’s seven weeks pregnant.

The final part takes place in 2009, on the eve of the great unveiling of the synthetic photosynthesis, and all of his lies come into fruition and are almost revealed.

There was one big error that McEwan makes. In the section when Beard is in the Arctic, turning his junk into a frozen weiner (and remember, this is in the year 2000), Beard remembers this:

He had read of an American hiking alone in the wilderness who got his arm trapped behind a rock and sawed through his own elbow with a penknife. [60]

Now, every February, I attempt Oscar!Watch, where I watch all the movies nominated for the major categories of Academy Awards. Which meant that yes, this February, I sat through 127 Hours. And when I read the above sentence, I thought, “Wait, I thought that happened in 2004?”

Turns out, it was 2003, but still. Unless there is another poor soul who got his arm trapped behind a rock and needed to perform self-amputation, McEwan’s facts needed a stricter check.

All in all, I’m still disappointed in the book. I feel that it could have been so much better, but in the end, Beard is neither redeemed nor destroyed. What the hell? How is that a good ending?

Rating for Solar: 1 star

Fiction: “The Late Hector Kipling” by David Thewlis

First, let me address your first question: yes, it is that David Thewlis. The one that played Professor Lupin in the Harry Potter movies. But you won’t find a single vestige of that boy wizard in this novel.

The narrator is Harold Kipling, and Kipling happens to be an artist. The book starts with him and his artist friend, Lenny Snook, wandering the halls of the Tate, looking at art. When gazing at a painting by Edvard Munch, Kipling begins to bawl, and thus begins Kipling’s downward spiral. His girlfriend, Eleni, has to go back to Crete to be with her mother, who’s dying from severe burns. One of his best friends, Kirk Church, has been diagnosed with a brain tumor. Lenny is a finalist for a prestigious art award and Hector may or may not be experiencing pangs of jealousy. And when I say “may or may not,” I’m not being coy — Kipling genuinely doesn’t know.

Another contributing factor to Kipling’s downfall is the settee belonging to his parents. That piece starts when blood is spilled on the white settee. After it’s ruined, his mother goes out and buys another settee, which cost upwards of 800 pounds. The large expenditure gives his father a panic attack, sending him to the hospital.

Meanwhile, while Eleni is in Crete, Kipling engages in an affair with a twenty-year-old American poet named Rosa Flood. Rosa Flood happens to have an interest in S&M.

And on top of all that, Kipling has a show at a gallery, including a portrait of a dead man. On the opening, the dead man’s son defaces the portrait and then runs away. Later, he turns up and offers Kipling a solution to his parents’ settee problem, which in turn seals the deal on Kipling’s full psychotic breakdown.

I can’t really say much more than that without giving away the farm. I was impressed with Thewlis’s writing, although, the more I think on it, I’m not sure ‘impressed’ is the word I’m looking for. After all, I’ve always had an assumption that all British actors are well-read and great writers. Even Russell Brand, and I didn’t like his book hardly at all. But Thewlis’s novel had a very Beckett-like quality to the dialogue, which I enjoy. And Thewlis (through Kipling) tries to understand what death does to us all – how we interact with it, what we feel when loved ones are threatened by it, what we think about it. He has an interesting take on it, linking it to the art world and especially how artists interact with death through their art.

The two things I didn’t like about the book really had nothing to do with the plot; it was a matter of taste. First, Kipling mentioned that Lichtenstein was a douche. To which I say: LICHTENSTEIN is NOT a DOUCHE. He happens to be one of my favorite artists, and I appreciate the themes he illustrates using comic book techniques.  (In other words, shut up Brad, you don’t know what you’re talking about.)  Also, he mentioned Chuck Klose. I HAAAATE Chuck Klose. He’s disturbing and crazy.

Anyway. This was an interesting read. I finished it in a few days, and when I wasn’t reading it, I did think about what was going to happen in the plot, which I think is always a good sign. Will I read it again? I’m not sure. If he writes another book, will I read it? Again, I don’t know. But if you like art and weird shit happening, then sure, have at it?

Grade for The Late Hector Kipling: 2 stars

Fiction: “Live and Let Die” by Ian Fleming

Before I dug into The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, I was suffering from a bout of Book ADD. At one point, I was reading four books at once. There was Roman Blood by Steven Saylor (a mystery set in ancient Rome). I am still trying to get through Victorian London by Liza Picard, but good lord, that book is ginormous and full of information. I had also read the first chapter in Crafty TV Writing by Alex Epstein, because eventually, someday, I will rewrite that pilot script that’s been languishing on my hard drive for months.

And as if that weren’t enough, I was also rereading Dr. No by Ian Fleming. I had mentioned that title back when I read Casino Royale, and a year later, I was ready to dig into it again. Because there’s this scene that grabbed me, much like that thing grabs Bond, and –

But anyway, I was listing it as a “Currently Reading” book on my Goodreads page, and what Goodreads does that is very helpful to a series reader like myself is it lists the number in the series that the book is. (I apologize for that sentence. But I am so hopped up on cold medicine [goofballs] that I can’t go back and fix it.) So when it said that Dr. No was the seventh book in the James Bond series, and not the second that I thought it was, well. First I said “What the fuck?,” and then I followed it up with a hearty GODDAMN PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION.

Although, in Public School Education’s defense, my high school couldn’t have taught us about the Cold War, seeing as how we barely got to the Industrial Revolution.

ANYWAY. It turns out that Live and Let Die is the second Bond novel, which I did not know. It’s also, apparently, the only Ian Fleming novel I do not own. So I had to wait a couple of weeks for an inter-library loan to come through (how does the somewhat-major metropolitan city of Portland, Maine’s library NOT have a copy of Live and Let Die of their very own?!) and then I read it in about four days.

Now, I know that back when I talked about Casino Royale, I said that I was a huge Bond fan. But if you read that entry carefully, you hopefully noticed that I didn’t talk much about the Roger Moore or Pierce Brosnan incarnations of the spy. And that’s because I am a picky Bond fan. Or, quite possibly, a poser. Because these are the Bond movies I’ve watched:

• Goldfinger
• Dr. No
• From Russia With Love
• Thunderball
• Never Say Never Again (the awful remake of Thunderball starring a practically ancient, be-toupeed Sean Connery and Kim Basinger)
• Casino Royale (the spoof with Peter Sellers and David Niven)
• Casino Royale (the real one with Daniel Craig)
• Quantum of Solace

So yeah … I know just enough to be dangerous, really.

I steered clear of the Roger Moore Bond movies because they have the reputation of being horribly campy. And yeah, Goldfinger isn’t exactly Ibsen, but at least there isn’t a crappy pun at the end of every scene. So going into this book, all I knew about the plot was that Jane Seymour played Solitaire in the movie. And after reading the book, I hit up the plot synopsis on imdb.com, and it turns out that a bit of the plot survived — but not much.

Bond is called to New York to assist the CIA with investigating a smuggling ring, run by a Mr. Big. (No, I’m not making that up.) In the movie, Big is smuggling heroin. In the book, he’s smuggling lost pirate treasure. Uh, book for the win? Smuggled pirate treasure ALWAYS trumps heroin. Bond meets up with his CIA pal Felix Leiter, and they barge into Big’s operation in Harlem and they get beaten up a bit (Bond gets his pinkie finger broken), but apart from that, they escape kind of unscathed. Bond meets Solitaire, who is Mr. Big’s consort and fiancee. She calls Bond the next morning, asking to escape with him. And even though he thinks it could be a trap, he lets her come with him to St. Petersburg, as his end destination is Jamaica.

When they get to St. Petersburg, Bond and Leiter investigate the Robber, a partner of Mr. Big. Then Solitaire gets kidnapped by Mr. Big, and Leiter gets eaten by a shark. Or, rather, gnawed on by a shark. He’s still alive! But barely, and minus a leg. And I still gasped in horror, because I loved Felix Leiter in Goldfinger! Leiter’s awesome!

So that leaves Bond alone on the way to Jamaica, where he teams up with Strangways and Quarrel, both of whom reappear in Dr. No. And there’s this epic scuba dive to the island headquarters of Mr. Big, and of course Bond gets captured, because you can’t have a Bond movie where he’s able to take care of the situation without getting caught. And he and Solitaire escape a fate worse than death: being dragged behind a schooner as shark bait.

Comparing this novel to Casino Royale, the misogyny wasn’t as prevalent — maybe because Solitaire was barely in it, and unlike Vesper, she didn’t betray Bond. One thing that I noticed — and again, this is a sign of the times in which the novel was written — the villains are all African-American, and Fleming uses the descriptor “Negroes.” A lot. Again, written in a pre-Civil Rights era, but still … the lazy racism was noticeable.

Also, there is a small section in the beginning of the book about Voodoo. Solitaire is a telepath, and Mr. Big controls his minions by using Voodoo tactics. And now I just thought of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Ben Stein trying to discuss Voodoo economics. “Something ‘doo’ economics. Voodoo Economics.” ANYWAY. As someone who has read half of the Anita Blake series and has written half of a story concerning zombies, I appreciated the diversion into the roots of Voodoo and Baron Samedi. The good news is that it doesn’t envelope the entire plot.

I talked during the review for Casino Royale about Bond’s humanity. And I think that, in this novel, he … well, doesn’t lose some, but almost makes a more conscious decision to act as a weapon and not as a man. When he’s facing what could be his fate, tied to Solitaire and about to be dragged behind a boat for sharks and barracudas to feast upon, he contemplates his action:

If they were still alive when the first shark’s fin showed on the surface behind them, Bond had coldly decided to drown Solitaire. Drown her by twisting her body under his and holding her there. Then he would try to drown himself by twisting her dead body back over his to keep him under. [204]

I mean, yes, he’s rationalizing it by believing that drowning is a more merciful death than being eaten by sharks. I get that; but the writing makes it sound so much worse.

All in all, I liked the book — there’s a moment where, on his way to the island hideout, Bond gets attacked by something, and it’s such a total surprise that I sat up on the couch, all tense with anticipation and worry — but I don’t think I’ll read it again. Maybe if I decide I want to be thorough and read all the books again (speaking of — stay tuned in June for a massive re-read of the Harry Potter series), I’ll pick it up again. But I don’t think I’ll buy it — unless it’s less than ten dollars, and only to complete the Fleming collection.

… and now my iTunes library decides to have some fun with me and play the theme song to Goldfinger. Sydney, my ever-present laptop: I frickin’ love you. Don’t ever change.

Grade for Live and Let Die: 2 stars

Biography: “The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt” by Edmund Morris

You can blame this one completely on Conan O’Brien.

See, over a month ago, I was watching the Ash Wednesday episode of Conan. I know it was the Ash Wednesday episode because the first guest that night was Pee Wee Herman, and he and the Conan gang put on a skit to tell the story of Ash Wednesday, where Pee Wee was an angel, Conan played Jesus, Andy Richter dressed up as the Devil, and then La Bamba (La Bamba!) came out dressed as an Easter egg, and also, Frankenstein was there. And at the end of the skit, still wearing his Jesus wig, Conan looks to Camera 2 and says, “Coming up next, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Edmund Morris. [laughs loudly] God, I love my job.”

So Edmund Morris comes out and starts talking about Teddy Roosevelt. Apparently, this is the first title in a series of three that he’s written about our … uh … (quickly goes to Wikipedia) 26th president! He was our 26th President! Yes, I totally knew that, as my birthday is on the 26th of something! Don’t look at me like that.

Actually, go ahead and look at me like that. Because once I picked this up from the library (and directly after I went, “holy shit, this is 741 pages of Teddy’s life, and he doesn’t even get to be President in this one?!”) and started reading it, the major a-ha moment I took from this book is that I am not as smart as I think I am.

For instance: Theodore (he apparently didn’t like being called ‘Teddy,’ which I’m pretty sure I knew before-hand) attended Harvard. And as a freshman, he attended a political rally for a candidate named Hayes. And my first thought was, “Aw, that’s too bad – the first guy he backed didn’t make it.” Then, a few pages later, I read this:

About the time he turned nineteen in October 1877, Theodore was informed that his father had been appointed Collector of Customs to the Port of New York by President Hayes. [93]

And I stared at the page, confused, until I remembered five minutes later that yes, there was in fact, a President Hayes.

My next thought, which I uttered out loud and have taken as a new credo, was: “GODDAMN PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION.”

(PS – it took me another five days to remember that it was Rutherford B. Hayes, which is ridiculous – “Rutherford” is my go-to fake middle name for my friend Brad when I get mad at him ["Bradley Rutherford {last name omitted}, DON'T leave your damn time-off requests on my damn keyboard!"])

And look, I don’t know about how your high school taught American History, but here’s how I learned it junior year:
- Our teacher took three class periods — three! — to tell us his life story, including is tour in ‘Nam, and how he only married his long-term girlfriend so they could buy a house
- A lot about the American Revolution and the ratification of the Constitution
- We watched The Star Chamber and Amistad
- Some junk about the … Reformation? Recombination? The stuff that happened to the South after Lincoln was shot. (back to Wikipedia) RECONSTRUCTION GODDAMN PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION

But it’s difficult to remember that year, because ALL of our tests were open-book! I was not held responsible for knowing and/or retaining anything — I just needed to make sure I could find that piece of paper for that question! And then when I started taking English classes in college, I focused on the 19th Century British novel, not American liturature (which is why I know all about Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, and some of the Renaissance and stuff with Cromwell and James). I can kind of talk about the Roaring Twenties and the Jazz Age (thanks, Great Gatsby), and I know that it was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand that began World War I, but other historic details from the 20th Century? If I haven’t seen the movie, then I don’t know it, because we never got past 1869 in American History back in High School.

For instance, other things that I probably should have known or may have known and forgotten:

The assassination of President Garfield was only the latest in a series of political explosions that shook America in the spring and summer of 1881… [147]

Being from Maine, I should have known that the James G. Blaine that was Roosevelt’s constant political opponent during the early part of the 1880s was the same Blaine that our governor’s mansion is named after. Dear Maine Studies teachers: isn’t that more important than studying the poems from Edna St. Vincent Millay again? Again?!

But enough about how dumb I am. For those like me who didn’t get to study Theodore Roosevelt in school, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt goes into incredible detail about his life leading up to his Presidency. The only President to be born on Manhattan island, Roosevelt was a force to be reckoned with throughout his life. He was originally interested in biology and science, and to my surprise, was able to perform taxidermy on animals from about the age of ten. He was a sickly child, and it seemed that he was always trying to overcompensate for it in later life.

He attended Harvard, intending to become a biologist of some sort. But a professor suggested that maybe he consider politics. Upon graduation, he began attending a local Republican meeting, and was elected Assemblyman in his first election. From there, his career rose meteorically.

Aside from politics, he was an avid reader and writer. In addition to daily correspondance, he wrote three or four biographies, four volumes of The Winning of the West, and his first book, a Naval history of the War of 1812, quickly became required reading for the U.S. Navy. He was always writing, and I especially loved this passage:

The sight of snow tumbling past his study window, and the sound of logs crackling in the grate, combined to produce that sense of calm seclusion a writer most prizes — when the pan seems to move across the paper almost of its own accord, and the words flow steadily down the nib, drying into whorls and curlicues that please the eye; when sentences have just the right rhythmic cadence, paragraphs fall naturally into place, and the pages pile up satisfyingly … [391]

Being a part-time writer (and a full-time frustrated writer), when I get into that grove, I do everything I can to not throw it off.

His many careers included: Assemblyman, rancher in South Dakota, Appointee to the Civil Service Commission (under President Harrison), Police Commissioner of New York City, Assistant Secretary to the Navy, Colonel of the Rough Riders in the Spanish-American War, Governor of New York, and finally Vice-President. In each case, he worked against corruption and inequality (although, to be fair, when he was in the Navy Department, he really worked inciting the Spanish-American War — thank goodness they sank the Maine before he could do something on his own).

Other facts of note: he once met one of my favorite authors, Bram Stoker. And Stoker saw what he was about to become:

After watching Roosevelt in action at a literary dinner-table, and afterwarad dispensing summary justice in the police courts, Stoker wrote in his diary: “Must be President some day. A man you can’t cajole, can’t frighten, can’t buy.” [514]

And this just made me laugh:

Aware that his audience contained a large proportion of college boys, he warned against the seductions of “the visionary social reformer … the being who reads Tolstoy, or, if he possesses less intellect, Bellamy and Henry George, who studies Karl Marx and Proudhon, and believes that at this stage of the world’s progress it is possible to make everyone happy by an immense social revolution, just as other enthusiasts of a similar mental calbier believe in the possibility of constructing a perpetual-motion machine.” [553]

I know, I know, not particularly funny by itself, right? But if you’re me, and you can recite the history of The Simpsons better than you can that of the Presidents, then you immediately cut to Homer, sitting in bed, and then calling for Lisa to lambast her perpetual-motion machine. (Hey! There’s a video of this on the internets now!)

Finally, here is the best description of Roosevelt’s personality I think anyone would ever be able to find:

[Roosevelt's] personality was cyclonic, in that he tended to become unstable in times of low pressure. The slightest rise in the barometer outside, and his turbulence smoothed into a whirl of coordinated activity, while a core of stillness developed within. Under maximum pressure Roosevelt was sunny, calm, and unnaturally clear. [603]

He was a man to admire, and honestly, I am looking forward to reading the other two books in the series.

But not right now. Dudes, it was 741 pages long! It took me a whole month to read it! This was the only book I read last month, I have to do something to get my numbers back up.

Grade for The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt: 4 stars