Top Fiction Books 2012

My top list of fictional books I read this year.   No particular ranking.  Other lists will soon follow.  I thought of the music show Later...with Jools Holland when putting my lists together, looking at literature and film from a variety of genres and time periods.

The Mayor of Casterbridge

by Thomas Hardy

The story of Michael Henchard begins with him getting drunk at a fair and then selling his wife.  Remorseful of his actions, he gives up the drink and eventually becomes the mayor of Casterbridge.  When I read the back cover of this book, my first though was that this book has to be read.  A great melodrama.  One scene worthy noting is when the townspeople skimmity ride through the town to publicly shame Henchard and Lucetta.  This part of the story demonstrates that big new scandals and carnivalish ways of gossiping have been around for quite a while.  Hardy leaves us wondering whether or not this is a novel of fate. Probably one of the best books I have ever read. 

The Shining

by Stephen King

Stanley Kubrick's The Shining is one of my favorite films and what led me to go to film school in 1993.  I finally read the book to see what Kubrick left out of the story.  This is a great book and much different from the movie.  Whereas King emphasizes the supernatural, Kubrick underscores the psychological.  I particularly love the The Wasp's Nest sequence.  Of course, in the novel you get a deeper understanding of Jack Torrance and his dissent into madness. There are some really scary moments, especially "The Elevator" scene.  King is a great storyteller.

Fahrenheit 451

by Ray Bradbury 

Bradbury's dystopia world where books are banned and burned.  Great book about literature and mass media.  It is worthy to note that this book came out shortly after Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno's essay: "The Cultural Industry," which deals with mass entertainment and mass culture.  Francois Truffaut's film adaption of the novel is also worth checking out.  

 

The Invisible Man

by H.G. Wells

One of the great all-time science-fiction novels about Griffin (the invisible man) who takes residence in a small village to conduct his research.  Griffin eventually turns to robbing the villagers in order to generate money for his rent.  Once the villagers discover that Griffin is invisible, a mob is formed and they attempt to capture him.  I kept thinking about Michel Foucault's work on the panopticon as I read this. In many ways, Griffin intensifies the villagers' sense of looking and self-scrutiny in a sort of surveillance fashion.  When it comes to surveillance, Foucault argues that it is not that someone is actually watching you that makes the panopticon effective.  It is the fact that you don't know if someone is watching you and what internalizes the gaze.  I believe Griffin has this effect on the villagers.

Freedom

by Jonathan Frazen

Franzen covers a lot of ground in this long tale of the Berglunds family.  Franzen takes his time, providing the reader a detailed account of each character.  The description and dialogue are excellent here.  The storytelling is non-linear, suggesting the disconnection of the Berglunds.  I particularly love the character Richard, a disenchanted punk rocker who has a sort of strange relationship with Walter Berglund.  Though not as great as The Corrections, this was a long, yet rewarding read.  Franzen is one of our best contemporary writers.

Young Hearts Crying

by Richard Yates

Yates' gritty and melodramatic novel about of the Davenport couple.  For more, see my random review.

 

The Dead

James Joyce

Joyce's beautifully written novella at the turn of the twentieth century.  See my random review on John Huston's film adaptation.

Mother Night

by Kurt Vonnegut

Vonnegut's novel tells the story of Howard W. Campbell Jr, an American Nazi playwright living in New York city.   See my random review about the film adaption.  

From Hell

by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell

Alan Moore is known widely for writing Watchmen, probably one of the most important graphic novels of the twentieth century.  From Hell deals with Jack the Ripper which speculates the motives behind these horrific murders in England.  This is a haunting, gruesome and philosophical tale on the nature of evil and madness.

Random Reviews - August 29, 2012 - Collateral, Drunken Angel, and Mother Night

Here are some random reviews of a few movies I had recently seen.

Collateral, Michael Mann, 2004.

Michael Mann is known for his film noir/gangster films such as Thief and Heat as well as his 1980s postmodern television show Miami Vice. Collateral fits nicely with these clutch of films.  The story occurs during one night and is about a taxi driver (Max) who is forced to drive a hit man (Vincent) throughout Los Angeles. The films stars Jamie Foxx (Max) and Tom Cruise (Vincent), in one of his finest performances.  

Collateral is shot in high definition, which was kind of big deal when it came out in 2004.  Although there were slew of films that had been shot on digital video, this made a splash for its big budget and big stars. Collateral demonstrates that digital video can depict vast landscapes through deep focus photography. This is, in particular, what stands out in Collateral: namely, the film's emphasis on empty spaces of Los Angeles in order to create atmospheric tension.  I was reminded or Alex Cox's cult masterpiece Repo Man, where cars traverse lonely highways, bathed in a panoply of washed out neon colors of Los Angeles (see image below). Of course, one of the great filmmakers to depict empty space and loneliness is Italian filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni.

There is also great use of popular music and score in Collateral.  Mann is known for his hypnotic and majestic use of the synthesizer.  And it all works here.  An element that I have been focusing on in my own research is the soundtrack or popular song as narrative digression. We found many moments of musical digressions in Collateral in order to build atmosphere and moods that reflect character interiority. This is a way of moving the narrative without overt causality.

Lastly, the final moments of the film is classic Michael Mann, where Vincent philosophizes the code or life of the gangster. This scene, in particular, calls our spectatorship into question. We begin to question Vincent's motivates as a killing machine--even sort of feel bad for him. It returns us to a question Vincent poses to Max earlier in the film: "Millions of galaxies of hundreds of millions of stars and a speck on one in a blink...that's us. Lost in space. The universe don’t care about you. The cop, you, me? Who notices?"

Drunken Angel, Akira Kurosawa, 1948

Drunken Angel is widely known as Kurosawa's first collaboration with Toshiro Mifune, an actor he made many movies with. The film tells the story of gangster, Matsunaga (part of the yakuza), played by Mifune. Matsunaga is diagnosed with tuberculosis by an alcoholic doctor and will die if not treated. The doctor cares about Matsunaga and believes he can both cure his disease and free him from his gangster life.  Matsunaga, however, is stuck between these two worlds, uncertain if he can truly escape the yakuza. But does he really have a choice or is it his fate to die? Of course, fate is a central tenet of film noir.

The setting of the town is located near a contaminated lake, possibly the cause of illness among its inhabitants. One of the most striking scenes in the film is Matsunag's ocean dream, where he encounters his own death, filmed hauntingly in slow motion. Kurosawa seems to be channeling German Expressionism in this sequence--especially Mifune's excessive gestures and over the top expressions. One wonders if Ingmar Bergman was influenced by this scene when he shot the fantastic dream/death sequence in Wild Strawberries? This is an extremely fine film made by Kurosawa during the time when U.S. had occupied Japan post WWII.  Mifune's performance is outstanding and does a terrific job embodying the character of Matsunaga.

 Mother Night, 1996, Directed by Keith Gordon

Mother Night was released during the surge of Independent cinema in the 1990s. This is a gem of a film and surprisingly not mentioned among the great films of the 1990s. Mother Night is a story about Howard W. Campbell Jr. (Nick Nolte), an American Nazi playwright living in New York city. We find out that Campbell was a spy and sent undercover to transmit special codes during his Nazi propaganda speech during his radio program. Only a few people know  about Howard. One person in particular was an agent of the U.S. War department, which Howard refers to as his "blue fairy godmother" played by John Goodman. Howard chooses to live in New York City after the war.  After meeting his neighbor, George Craft (Alan Alda) things become complicated for Howard, eventually leading to his imprisonment in Israel. The film moves back and forth through time, during Howard being locked up in a jail in Israel (filmed in black and white) and the recounting of his life until his imprisonment.  

This is an intentionally slow moving film with fine performance from Nick Nolte, John Goodman and Alan Alda. Like the novel, the film brings forth complex questions of morality, with a bit a black humor.

As a random note, although the film closely follows the book's narrative, it does not attempt to match the film's aesthetics to Vonnegut's fragmented writing style. I always felt there is a bit of the absurd in Vonnegut's brilliant prose. And I believe there has only been one filmmaker who captured the absurdity that Vonnegut depicts in his works - and that is George Roy Hill and he is dead.  For this reason, I also highly recommend Slaughter House Five - one of Hill's best films alongside The World According to Garp.