Wednesday, October 24, 2018

A Middling Murakami

Killing Commendatore by Haruki Murakami.
Book review by Michael Isenberg.

Haruki Murakami’s latest novel, Killing Commendatore, was released in English this month, following its Japanese premiere back in February.

I didn’t love it.

First a little back story. Commendatore is Italian for Commander. A knight or a military officer. The Commendatore is a character in the story of Don Juan, best known from Mozart’s operatic version, Don Giovanni. The opera begins with the Don’s unsuccessful seduction of Donna Anna, who rather noisily refuses his advances. The fleeing Don is confronted by her father—the Commendatore. They fight. The Commendatore is killed.

The episode figures into Murakami’s book in the form of a painting. The narrator—an artist of no real fame, whose name we never learn—has recently separated from his wife. A friend of his offers to let him stay at his father’s house in the mountains. The friend's father—a famous artist—is in the advanced stages of senility, confined to a nursing home, and therefore no longer able to reside in his now-empty mountain abode. The narrator takes his friend up on the offer. A short time after he takes up residence, he hears something moving in the attic and goes up to investigate. An owl, it turns out. But while he’s up there, he discovers a painting wrapped in paper and hidden away. It is labeled “Killing Commendatore” and despite its Japanese style, and the traditional Japanese garb of the figures in it, the scene and characters from Don Giovanni are readily identifiable.

The painting is an enigma. Clearly a masterpiece, why had the artist hidden it—alone among his works—from the eyes of the world? What meaning did it hold for him and did it have something to do with his involvement in a plot to assassinate a Nazi official in 1938 Vienna? And who is the grotesque figure poking his head through a trap door in one corner of the painting—the narrator calls him “Long Face”—the only character not recognizable from Mozart’s opera?

“Dragging a painting like that out into the light could well have been a mistake,” the narrator tells us. “By discovering it, I had set a cycle of some kind in motion.”

Such cycles are common in Murakami’s works and must be allowed to run their course. Before the circle is complete, the narrator is awoken by mysterious bells ringing in the night, discovers an underground chamber of unknown origin and purpose, and comes face-to-face with the Commendatore and Long Face—not as intimidating as it sounds, since they’re both about two feet tall, their actual sizes in the painting. Finally, his neighbor, the thirteen-year-old Mariye, goes missing. In order to save her, the narrator must journey through a bleak supernatural underworld, cross the River between Presence and Absence, and confront his lifelong fear of confined spaces.

All the elements we’ve come to expect from Murakami are there: classical music, food, astral projection, alternate dimensions, and finely crafted passages like this one:

Low patches of clouds hung over the surrounding mountains. When the wind blew, these cloud fragments, like some wandering spirits from the past, drifted uncertainly along the surface of the mountains, as if in search of lost memories. The pure white rain, like fine snow, silently swirled around on the wind.

Really makes me feel like I'm there. Or perhaps seeing it in a Japanese painting. In my imagination, a cello plays a mournful sonata.

With all of Murakami’s trademark elements in place—and I’m a fan of Murakami—I’m not sure why the book didn’t work for me. But I think a lot of it had to do with the narrator. I just wanted to slap him. Even before the trauma of learning his wife was sleeping with another a man, he was dead inside. “At some point in my life,” he tells us, “I had given up on new music. Instead, I listened to the old stuff over and over again. Books were the same. I reread books from my past, often more than once, but ignored books that had just come out. Somewhere along the way, time seemed to have come to a screeching halt.”

The screeching halt goes far beyond his tastes in music and literature. Although he has other relationships after he leaves his wife, and the sex is good, it all seems rather mechanical; he derives no joy from it that I can see. He is effete, unable to act. He mainly watches while the characters around him drive the story. He is aware that one of them might be using him, and although he should be resentful of that, he isn’t. “I remained, as ever, the impartial observer.”

Most significant of all, he is stunted artistically. Even while he was with his wife, he lived off commissions for the kind of formal portraits of company presidents found in board rooms. Not what he wanted to be doing, but it paid the bills. After he leaves her, he shows some promise of developing as an artist. But I don’t think it’s a spoiler to remind you that he describes the course of the story as a “cycle.”

Even the climactic journey through the underworld, with all its trials and ordeals, is ultimately pointless. It is never made clear how it did anything to help Mariye, who we eventually learn was never in any real danger. Maybe it’s more a journey of discovery for the narrator than a rescue mission for Mariye. But the narrator doesn't seem to have discovered anything.

It doesn’t help that the book is sloppily edited. There is at least one misspelling, a split infinitive, and some minor inconsistencies. At one point we’re told “Menshiki, I, and the Commendatore were seated at that large table,” followed two pages later by “The Commendatore finally made an appearance in the dining room, though not at the seat at the table prepared for him. Given his short stature, he would have only come up to nose level, hidden by the table. He plunked himself down on a kind of display shelf diagonally behind Menshiki.” Of greater concern, from an editing point of view, is the novel’s repetitiveness. The narrator tells us multiple times—each time as if it’s the first—that he’s separated, that he had a sister who died when she was Mariye’s age, that this, that, or another woman reminds him of her.

Killing Commendatore often seems profound. And yet, its profundity doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. The Commendatore tells us he’s an Idea incarnate. Sounds deep, but what idea is he? Freedom is an idea. Is he freedom? Marxism? Archimedes’ method for measuring specific gravity? Similarly Long Face is a metaphor, we’re told. A metaphor for what? We’re never told explicitly. As for the River between Presence and Absence, what is it that’s present, and what’s absent?

Maybe I just wasn’t bright enough to figure these things out. Or maybe I’ve outgrown Murakami. I hope that’s not the case. Despite Killing Commendatore, I’m still a fan.

Check out Mike’s Nerds who Read review of Murakami’s 2004 novel After Dark, “Vignette Films get the Murakami treatment.”

Michael Isenberg drinks bourbon and writes novels. His latest book, The Thread of Reason, is a murder mystery that takes place in Baghdad in the year 1092, and tells the story of the conflict between science and shari’ah in medieval Islam. It is available on Amazon.com

Monday, October 22, 2018

Back to Basics

Daredevil Season 3.
Review by Michael Isenberg.

The Marvel Defenders universe is in trouble. After an enthralling start in the first seasons of Daredevil and Jessica Jones, the subsequent entries in the franchise just haven’t had the same punch. In the past few months we’ve had a second season of Luke Cage in which the title character might just as well have stayed home washing his hoodie, and an Iron Fist installment which was just like Black Panther but boring. There was practically zero buzz about either. Two weeks ago, the news broke that Netflix had cancelled Iron Fist, followed by last week’s announcement that there would be no third season of Luke Cage either.

So it is encouraging that Season 3 of Daredevil, released on Netflix this weekend, gets back to the fundamentals that made the franchise so great to begin with.

The first season introduced lawyer by day/Daredevil by night Matt Murdock, his law partner Foggy Nelson, and their office manager (not secretary) Karen Page. They teamed up to fight organized crime in Hell’s Kitchen in a taut and gripping story.

Season 2, in contrast, was all over the map. The force of multiple plotlines spun the team of Nelson, Murdock, and Page in three different directions.

But if Season 2 drove them apart, Season 3 brings them back together. It’s a bumpy road—they act at cross purposes more than once—but eventually, they reunite. As if to symbolize their return to their roots, Daredevil even wears his Season 1 homemade black costume, instead of the custom-made horned red body suit traditionally associated with the character. What brings them back together is their Season 1 nemesis, the Kingpin himself, Wilson Fisk.

Fisk is a fascinating character—thanks to his contradictions. Despite a brutal disposition—he began his violent career at age 12 when he murdered his father by smashing his skull in with a hammer—he would move heaven and earth for those he loved: his mother Marlene, and his romantic interest Vanessa. He’s so protective of the latter that he might not, to coin a phrase, beteem the winds of heaven visit her face too roughly (Whether Vanessa wants that degree of protectiveness is another question, one that is answered in Season 3). Fisk was also a man of vision: he wanted to demolish the slums of Hell’s Kitchen and replace them with gleaming, modern towers. That anyone might oppose that vision—the people who call those slums home, for example—was a source of genuine bafflement to him; one almost feels sorry for him. At least until the next time he beats the bloody crap out of someone with his bare fists.

The plot of Season 3 starts slow. Daredevil is broken in body and spirit as the result of having a building collapse on him at the end of last year's The Defenders. It takes an episode and change before he begins to Daredevil again, and this part is a little boring; it’s not like there’s any suspense as to whether that’s going to happen. The Kingpin meanwhile, who was imprisoned at the end of Season 1 and barely seen in Season 2, has cut a deal with the FBI to transfer him from the slammer to house arrest in a luxurious penthouse hotel suite, in exchange for turning state’s evidence. Daredevil and friends don’t like that and start poking their noses into the situation. Kingpin retaliates by getting his own Daredevil. Ah, the Marvel Universe, where there’s always a fight between superheroes with similar powers. It’s not until mid-season that we discover just how much the Kingpin has manipulated the FBI—and that he has a larger plan than merely getting better accommodations.

The Kingpin’s plan involves a certain amount of political intrigue, and this being 2018, those are perilous waters. Anyone creating a series for mass consumption must navigate a narrow channel to avoid pissing off one side of the political divide or the other. Daredevil manages to pull this off using the same solution as the recent season of The Man in the High Castle: give something to everybody. Conservatives will see parallels to current events in the way that the FBI has been thoroughly corrupted by the Kingpin’s machinations. And for my left-of-center friends, they will see their calls for Medicare for All vindicated by the character arc of FBI agent Ray Nadeem: it's set in motion when his sister-in-law’s health insurance is cancelled in the midst of cancer treatment, bringing financial ruin on the family (didn’t Obamacare fix that?). And then there’s this speech, which Kingpin delivers at a press conference:

You’ve been manipulated, poisoned into believing the news media’s fake story, that I am evil, that I am a criminal. Quite the opposite is true. Because I challenge the system, because I’ve told the truth and tried to make this city a better place, the people in power decided to tear me down, to tear me down with false allegations.
Sound familiar? Well, the Kingpin is a Manhattan real estate tycoon.

As with most entries in the Marvel Universe, Daredevil 3 has its share of plot weaknesses, if not actual holes.

There’s a big reveal about Daredevil’s past which, IMHO, is lacking any real emotional resonance. It merely serves to pad the run time by having Daredevil sulk for an episode.

We get a big reveal about Karen’s past, too. It takes up large chunks of Episode 10. Like Eleven’s Chicago journey of discovery in the latest season of Stranger Things, it’s a complete side quest that temporarily derails the arc of the season.

As for the heroes’ plans, none of them seem to work. At one point, a discouraged Karen complains to Foggy, “Do you know what happens when you make a plan? Fisk has already thought of it and he’s made it part of his plan.” Trouble is, the Kingpin is so adept at delving one yard below the mines of Daredevil and company that he would have had to foresee things he couldn’t possibly have foreseen.

Then there's the final three-way battle between Kingpin, Daredevil, and the other Daredevil. It’s got some good fighting—the two Daredevils match the Kingpin’s brutality blow for blow—but it’s completely pointless. The season would have ended exactly the same with or without that fight.

And yet, despite these flaws, I couldn’t turn it off. I binge watched all thirteen episodes in two days. There were other things I needed to do this weekend, but every time I started on one, I ended up saying, “I’d rather be watching Daredevil.”

Daredevil is back, baby, and I hope it marks a turning point for the battered but still standing Defenders franchise.

Michael Isenberg drinks bourbon and writes novels. His latest book, The Thread of Reason, is a murder mystery that takes place in Baghdad in the year 1092, and tells the story of the conflict between science and shari’ah in medieval Islam. It is available on Amazon.com

Photo credit(s): IMDB

Wednesday, October 10, 2018

Staffel Null

The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick.
Book review by Michael Isenberg.

Season 3 of The Man in the High Castle dropped on Amazon this past weekend. I binge watched it and found it to be an exciting ten episodes, with important character development for most of the leads and a gripping climactic scene. Politically there's something for everybody. My left-of-center friends will no doubt see themselves in the Resistance, and will also be gratified that the writers delivered on the hint they dropped in Season 2 that one of the characters will come out as gay (as will several others). My right-of-center friends, meanwhile, will see chilling parallels to current events in the Nazi plan to wipe out American history by destroying statues and other memorials to our past.

But since this is Nerds who Read, rather than dwell on the series, I’m going to review the original Philip K. Dick novel which started it all. Think of it as Season Zero.

Philip K. Dick is not generally thought of as part of the 1960’s New Wave movement in science fiction. Nevertheless, he contributed to New Wave anthologies like Harlan Ellison’s Dangerous Visions. More importantly, his work shared the salient characteristics that distinguished New Wave works from earlier generations of sci fi: the writing is exceptional, intended for a more literary, avant garde audience. And it had more imaginative plotlines; it didn’t limit itself to the earlier “Space travel—yay!” kind of story. Both features are to be found The Man in the High Castle.

For those not familiar with the series, MITHC takes place in an alternate universe where the Axis won World War II. It is by no means the first alternate history of the War. Stories of a Nazi-dominated dystopia began appearing in print almost as soon as the guns fell silent, beginning with Laszlo Gaspar’s We, Adolph the First (1945). Isaac Asimov touches on the theme in his 1956 short story, “Living Space.” So although this was well-worn territory by the time The Man in the High Castle was published in 1962, MITHC is definitely one of the best entries in this sub-sub-genre, and thanks to the Amazon series, has definitely become the best-known.

In the world of MITHC, the victors have carved up America between them. The Greater Nazi Reich rules the East Coast and the Midwest; the Japanese control the Pacific States of America. The Rocky Mountain States, a wild and lawless throwback to the Old West, serve as a much-needed neutral zone between the fascist powers, whose relationship is often uneasy. That relationship is expected to only grow more hostile, now that a senile Hitler has been packed away to a nursing home and the remaining Nazi leaders jockey for power.

The Germans and Japanese have brought to America all their loathsome ideologies about the superiority of their own races, along with the hideous practices of their secret police. The Jews in the East have been exterminated; those in the West are subject to extradition if caught. But some time has passed since the war, and for the most part Americans have come to terms with being second class citizens in their own country, and are getting on with their lives.

Then a bestselling novel threatens to disrupt everything. The Grasshopper Lies Heavy depicts an alternate alternate universe in which the Allies won the war. This alternate history within an alternate history is a clever plot device. Freely circulated in the Rocky Mountain States, banned by the Germans, inexplicably enjoyed by the Japanese, Grasshopper seems so realistic that absolutely everybody is talking about it. Many dare to find hope in its pages for a different future. Little is known about its mysterious author, Hawthorne Abendsen, but according to the cover, he has taken refuge in a High Castle, bristling with defenses to protect himself against the onslaught of Nazi assassins. But as the heroine of MITHC, Juliana, will learn, Abendsen is not what the marketing hype says he is.

Fans of the Amazon series will notice that some parts of this is familiar, others not so much. The Grasshopper Lies Heavy was a collection of films in the series, not a book, and Abendsen was collecting them, not creating them (although there’s a new twist on that last point in Season 3). The same sense of familiar-yet-different applies to the characters and plotlines. Many characters from the series are in evidence—the Jewish machine operator Frank Frink, his friend Ed, his love interest Juliana, her love interest Joe, the antiques dealer Childan, Trade Minister Tagomi, and his “Swedish” visitor Baynes—yet they aren’t the same. Frank and Ed have a very different plotline from the series; in the book, Ed and not Frank is the stronger character, and the leader of the duo. Childan is far more layered, thanks to the power of novels to tell us what the characters are thinking.

Some characters from the series don’t appear at all, which is to be expected when a 250 page book is made into 30 hours of television and counting. Takeshi Kido, the Inspector Javert of the Kempeitai, is nowhere to be found (sadly, IMHO. He's one of my favorites). The story takes place entirely in the PSA and the RMS, so the New York and Berlin characters don't appear either. No Smith Family Fascism, no Obergruppenführer discount Christopher Walken, Hitler Youth Wesley Crusher, or Desperate Housewives of Nazau County. I'm less sad about that; I despise Nazis regardless of how hard the writers work to make them sympathetic. Especially American Nazis. F--king collaborators. (Mr. Dick planned a sequel to MITHC. He never finished it, but two chapters appear in The Shifting Realities of Philip K. Dick: Selected Literary and Philosophical Writings. The first takes place in upstate New York, and elements of it are found in Season 3 of the series.)

But it is Juliana who differs the most. Even her name is different. She’s Juliana Frink in the book. Frank’s ex-wife. Not his girlfriend. He doesn’t even know where she is. “She was wrong for me,” he realizes, “I know that.”

Juliana—the best-looking woman he had ever married. Soot-black eyebrows and hair; trace amounts of Spanish blood distributed as pure color, even to her lips…

Beyond everything else, he had originally been drawn by her screwball expression: for no reason, Juliana greeted strangers with a portentous, nudnik, Mona Lisa smile that hung them up between responses, whether to say hello or not. And she was so attractive that more often than not they did say hello, whereupon Juliana glided by. At first he had thought it was just plain bad eyesight, but finally he had decided that it revealed a deep-dyed otherwise concealed stupidity at her core…[But] he still never saw her as anything but a direct, literal invention of God’s, dropped into his life for reasons he could never know. And on that account…he could not get over having lost her.

Clearly Book Juliana is very different from TV Juliana—a knockout with a size 38 bust where TV Juliana is slim and merely pretty. Book Juliana is stupid where TV Juliana is cerebral, and she has a bit of gold digger in the mix, as we learn when Joe takes her up to Denver for a big spending spree. And yet some things are the same. As Abendsen tells his wife in the final pages,

She’s doing what’s instinctive to her, simply expressing her being. She didn’t mean to show up here and do harm; it simply happened to her, just as the weather happens to us. I’m glad she came.

In both the book and the series, Juliana, without planning to, puts the story in motion and a lot of people get hurt.

Given the whole familiar-yet-different vibe, fans of the series should enjoy the book, and yet still feel like they’re getting something new. If you finished Season 3 and still want more, I highly recommend you read it.

It’s almost as if the characters you know and love are in an alternate universe.

Michael Isenberg drinks bourbon and writes novels. His latest book, The Thread of Reason, is a murder mystery that takes place in Baghdad in the year 1092, and tells the story of the conflict between science and shari’ah in medieval Islam. It is available on Amazon.com

Photo credit(s): Amazon.com