"The Mezzanine" by Nicholson Baker

Nicholson Baker takes a place among our most meticulous observers of anyone currently producing fiction. By meticulous, I mean not only minutely close, but microscopically close. Baker engenders a sense of wonder as he praises the absolutely mundane from his vantage in a modern office. He compares a stapler and a row of staples to a railroad, and it's an image that stays with me to this day (I read this book about five years ago). His description and assessment of shoe laces raises that quotidian item to the miraculous.

The story takes us out to lunch and a very, very close (again) consideration of typical takeout lunch, outdoor benches near downtown buildings, the architectural spaces in office building entryways ... I can't recall everything, but nothing is taken up that shouldn't be.

I enjoyed this book so much that I immediately took up (and thoroughly enjoyed) "Vox," a book-length phone sex conversation (talk about a dated piece!)

Nicholson Baker is an intriguing practitioner, well worth the acquaintance.

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"Edwin Mullhouse ... by Jeffrey Cartwright" by Steven Millhauser

Warning: over-adverb alert!

"Edwin Mullhouse" is extraordinary on a number of levels. It is extrmely closely observed, appropriate in a narrative about young children. It transports the reader to a very, very odd place: to middle-class childhood in America in the middle of the twentieth century, but a childhood that is ended by the child's own hand on the occasion of his eleventh birthday.

"Mullhouse" is written as a biography done by the young fellow's friend, and the purport is that Mullhouse has written a stunning, moving novel (in comic book form) before dying. How Millhouser (can the similarity in names possibly be coincidental?) conjured this focus-straining, credibility-straining, infinite mirror of a construct, I will never comprehend.

This book took me utterly out of myself, and I challenge anyone to read it and resist its force. Startling, incredible, memorable, fascinating.

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"Villa Incognito" by Tom Robbins

Oh my heavens, such fanciful stuff! The (mostly) human part of the narrative deals with three ex-pat Americans in Laos who supply heroin to hospices as a charitable enterprise. Along the way, we have erudition, particularly in areas of faith. The book is chock-full of thought-provoking insights in this area. We are steeped in the regional lore of Southeast Asia, and that brings us to the tanuki, the wild Japanese racoon dog.

In "Incognito," the tanuki seek out human females to mate with, and when they succeed, it ruins the woman for any other relationship. When the tanuki and the woman conceive, another human female is born, and becomes a teacher to pass on certain aspects of the regional lore. My efforts so far to meld this plot line into the overall theme of faith and charity as it is illicitly pursued in Laos - I've come a cropper.

Highly diverting work. I love the erudition, and the offbeat sensuality, especially in the heart and mind of the tanuki. Plotwise, this is a very straightforward book; don't come for the plot only, come for the fun!

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"Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World" by Haruki Murakami

I have never been taken to the realm of the "other" so successfully nor so beguilingly as by Murakami in this dual tale of technology, mystery, and danger. This book is part polemic about modern technology, and where it might take us, and part cautionary piece on where we might be without it. Are the two story lines exactly alike? Are they simply telling the same story in two separate historical epochs?

One narrative thread takes us to the near future, where the hero’s brain is used to store data, and he loses consciousness when the data is retrieved. Thugs pursue this protagonist for what’s on his mind, and the “Hard-Boiled Wonderland” story involves a scary, almost-dystopian future full of intrigue and danger. The “End of the World” thread is set in a non-specific dark age without technology, but in which the hero listens to the skulls of the dead as they sing to him.

If this sounds odd, there’s a very good reason for it. It is odd. And vivid and challenging and breathtaking and wonderful. This is pyrotechnic Murakami, weaving a spell. This is mysterious Murakami, challenging us to decide, from his out-of-this-world plot, what could he be driving at? Murakami holds his eminent place in the world of literature, as polarizing as he is, for very, very good reasons. For a trip to a place the cosmologists call the “absolute elsewhere,” this book is your magic carpet.
This is as stunning and as innovative as it gets.

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"Cloud Atlas" by David Mitchell

“Cloud Atlas” takes us, wide-eyed and agape, through a cautionary Matryoshka doll of a novel, where hero after hero vies with and suffers from the whims and prejudices of those in power. This book stands as a brilliant testimony and reinforcement of why we take up reading in the first place. Mr. Mitchell echoes the South Seas observations of Robert Louis Stevenson, the crime mysteries of John D. MacDonald, and the dystopian future of Margaret Atwood. In each vividly wrought milieu, the author draws out the plight of a person or group as it strains against the tyranny of the day.

This innovative structure arrests any reader who expects a continuous narrative. At the abrupt conclusion of the first section, set in the 19th Century in the South Pacific, we are thrust forward to Europe, between the World Wars. From the intrigue and exploitation of an amanuensis by a famous composer, we rush forward to the 1970s and a plot involving murder as a corporate strategy by a California nuclear utility. From whence we rush to the years at the turn of the 20th to the 21st Centuries, and the tribulations of a man whom relatives want to confine against his will simply because he turned 60. Then come the futuristic visions, which turn progressively uglier and end in a post-apocalyptic world where all society and technology and culture have vanished. The ultimate of these brings us back to sailing ships on the Pacific Ocean, but without any that the race has any civilizing features, or communal practices, or hopes, at all.

Mr. Mitchell then retraces his steps back through the narratives, providing some measure of resolution for each. Certain individuals bear the exact same birthmark, showing a further continuity for the story. As the narratives build up, the theme of the downtrodden vs. powerful repeats in ever-new and cruel ways. We sense early on that the effects: these clever reiterations will leave an indelible mark on our consciousness. We get what the author wants us to have, and we admire and thank him for the multiple insights. Repetition shows itself as patently the most effective way to focus on the theme: the powerful will wreak their predation and exploitation of weaker people and groups, with never an end in sight.

This is stunning: effective, awe-inspiring, memorable, reverberating. If you are serious about reading serious fiction, read this.

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