gluckenstein's reviews
127 reviews

Uzumaki by Junji Ito

adventurous dark mysterious tense fast-paced

4.25

Контраст між підходом "монстра тижня" перших 11, здається, випусків і концентрованим і невтишним жахом цілісної сюжетної лінії останніх восьми, як на мене, був надто різкий, але тим сильніше завершальна історія дає під дих спочатку безкомпромісною похмурістю, а потім масштабом.

Bleak House by Charles Dickens

dark emotional funny hopeful mysterious sad

3.5

#SerializedAndItShows #HotBloodedFrenchWomen #FrenchAreTooEmotionalToFunction #LadyDedlockIs19thCenturyDrake #PorfiryPetrovichAntecedent #DickensStreetUrchinDialectWhatTheHeckIsItMakeItStop #ILostTrackOfHalfOfSubplotsAndCharacters #DostoyevskyIsJustDickensWithExtraNeuroses
Сподобился менше, ніж "Великі сподівання". Сюжетні гілки здалися якимись більш розведеними одна від одної і скуйовджено-зигзагоподібними. Двом найбільшим, як я зрозумів, предметам критики/сатири роману — аристократичному суспільству і неповороткості судів, так і не судилося, як на мене, зрезонувати один з одним до кінця роману, на відміну від "Сподівань", де любовна лінія, загадка навколо особи благодійника і повчання, як слід жити чесному містянину, ідеально випливають з... і перетікають одне в одне.
Зате чомусь слухаючи "House" вперше серйозно задумався над тим, як впливала серіалізація романів на їх форму і першу половину романа було дуже цікаво будувати здогади (номери розділів, що друкувалися в кожному з журнальних номерів, на Вікіпедії допомагали це робити). Ранні гачки стосовно центральної загадки, надмірна, порівняно з сучаснішими романами, красномовність та закінченість окремих епізодів, додавання все нових і нових сцен з найбільш вдалими персонажами, під час кожної з яких вони ніби представляються заново, почали відчуватися ознаками/наслідками серіалізації. Але може десь перегнув.
А взагалі, попри всі речі, яких мені не вистачило в романі або ж які пролетіли над моєю головою, дивуєшся, яка ж підготовча чи яка робота була потрібна для такого складного за конструкцією роману. Одна лише алегорія на місці роботи Токінгорна, яка описується чи не під час першого знайомства з персонажем, а потім отримує нову вагу в кульмінаційному сюжетному повороті, чого коштує.

Піранезі by Susanna Clarke

dark hopeful mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes

4.0

Не так дивно і загадково, як я боявся, але й сподівався. Схоже на найбільш прозорі та розлінійовані історії Ніла Ґеймана — де цікавість метафізикою і культурою спаяна з бездоганно структурованою гостросюжетною інтригою.
З одного боку, це добре, бо читається захопливо, а з іншої — ця однозначна сюжетна тяга ніби трошки відбирає ваги і простору, щоб розвернутися, в Будинку, який, очевидно, має бути головною стравою книжки. Іншими словами, шкода, коли книжка, присвячена будівлі такого масштабу, сама видається напрочуд малорозмірною. Хоча, звісно ж, краще гарна історія відносно скромних амбіцій, ніж плутаюча всі береги графоманія, то ж тужіння тут-таки припиняю.

Black House by Peter Straub, Stephen King

tense medium-paced

2.5

Not great, not terrible.
I liked the presentation of the story, with its self-conscious narration. Some characters were fun to read about. But I just cannot get over how arbitrary every plot development in a King-ian tale of supernatural is.
I mean, all fantastical stories may seem arbitrary 'cause it's about stuff that's markedly not real. But the claim is doubly true for everything King ever wrote because you can count on the main characters getting these helpful flashes of telepathic communication or precognition that eventually take care of everything. And it's honestly dispiriting. Do better, ffs.
Ending is kinda like "Pirates of Caribbean 3" ending, only half as dramatic, if that.
*DISCLAIMER* My impression of this book was colored by the fact that it was narrated to me through several pairs of headphones of varying quality as I did repetitive tasks at work. *DISCLAIMER*

The Best Short Stories of Fredric Brown by Fredric Brown

adventurous dark funny mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

3.0

After finishing this, I can say rather definitely that I've read many of these stories in Russian translations on separate pages of lib.ru or some such site. It's notable that the shorter the story the more likely it was to seem familiar, which checks out with my usual way of skimming through such collections.
This time, as with all fiction I encounter, I decided to be more thorough. I cannot say it was very rewarding to complete this. Most stories can be more or less grouped into two camps: comic stories, witty riffs on stock concepts of the sci fi genre alternating with, possibly indebted to John Collier, more supernatural funny stories, and light adventure. Some of comic ones, especially flash fiction, are quite ingenious, and the hit ratio is much, much lower on the adventure stuff. Even his most famous story, Arena, is, in my opinion, actually pretty slack. But it can't hold a candle (of terribleness) to something like Nothing Sirius, with its main dramatic conflict of "will an overserious pilot man notice how hot main character's daughter is for him?", an obvious corny disaster.
Somewhat of an anomaly are two fairly long and straight-faced horror stories (a genre which a couple of others also toy with but not quite to the same extent) Eine Kleine Nachtmusik and Come and Go Mad. The former, although not necessary influenced by Lovecraft, possibly just sharing a part of his romantic, gothic literary ancestry, feels very much like one of the weaker, the least distinctive Lovecraft short stories, like The Hound. The latter, on the other hand, is pretty cool, one of the wildest and the most inventive stories here narratively and stylistically, which ends on that sweet note of  horror in the face of revelation of the true order of the universe (although, where a certain another writer could err on the side of being too frustratingly vague, Fredric Brown cannot help it but describe that order a little too precisely for the story's own good).
I think Brown's higher success rate with flash fiction is not accidental because he strikes me as a better idea man than a wordsmiths. In one or two pages he has no opportunities to dilute his concepts with extraneous detail. But even in stories as short as a dozen pages there's often a sense of the lack of consiceness that can make or break such material. And compared to Robert Sheckley, another writer of similar profile, he is less sure to imbue his tales with either a humanistic pathos, or a seductive cynicism that will give them an appearance, at least, of a satirical edge. Often Brown is more than satisfied enough to just relate a kooky plot he came up with — and so when the plot or the leanness in its telling is lacking it looks especially damaging. Although I have to shoutout to Pi in the Sky as rare very amusing longer story.
An advantage of vintage popular fiction, though, is that even if it isn't that good it can teach you something new about the era of its first publication. And in this sense the collection is fairly generous. Yehudi Principle and Etaoin Shrdlu, both not so good stories, are good examples of this: the former revolves around a meme apparently originally conceived on a Bob Hope-hosted radio show, the latter deals in detail with the job of using a Linotype.

Rollerball Murder by William Neal Harrison

challenging funny reflective

• Plot- or character-driven? Character

3.75

Although there’s quite a variety of stories on display, a certain formula emerges. It is usually a modernist character portrait augmented with a bold fantastical, or at least vaguely magical-realist-y, twist. Usually the kooky element acts as a counterpoint or a metaphor for the character’s proclivity or his (no women main characters) inner turmoil.

At its cleanest, as in Down the Blue Hole, a story of a sad boy magician, living in a town full of other psychics and seers, who can hide in some tear in reality, the metaphor of his inability to form a meaningful connection, the result seems a little too obvious. Other times, as in The Arsons of Desire, tales of a superb firefighter who may or may not be psychically attracting fires to his district because of his astounding horniness, it is, conversely, rather messy and perplexing. Under the House, about a serial rapist freelance plumber, who draws the line at going «under the house» to accomplish a job, reeducated by a bunch of female students and young professionals living together comes closer to a happy medium, of being neither too obscure, nor a worn cliche, but seems a tad dated.

Weatherman: A Theological Narrative, about an aged man who finds out he can not only estimate the weather but change it and proceeds to destroy the world around him with various natural disasters just as he prepares to shuffle off his mortal coil himself, has a powerful image at its center, well-drawn, but gets overly intellectual as it describes main character’s nihilistic thoughts on the nature of God. Finally, the strangeness of the overarching concept ends up being its own reward in Eating It, a story of a young man’s sensual awakening, spurred by his aunt, as he goes on to taste everything around him, including things like chairs and lamps.

A subset of stories where fewer supernatural things happen can be summed up as «a man with a specific job has a peculiar philosophy». Of those especially effective are those written in the first person confessions of anti-heroes: ex-military mercenary of The Warrior, who apparently does raids of civilians now mainly just to wake up the sheeple (he might as well be screaming «Welcome to the real world, jackass»), and the huckster of The Good Ship Erasmus, who smuggles cigarettes on the cruise that purports to help you quit smoking, thinking of himself in very Mephistophelean terms. Narrated in the third person Nirvana, Götterdämmerung and the Shot Put, about an athlete that gets very into Zen, to his trainers’ chagrin, packs a comparatively smaller punch.

The rest of the stories are more unique in the context of this collection. The most lightweight of them is The Blurb King, an indulgently jokey piece that mocks blurbs by imagining a world where they are used everywhere and for everything. Roller Ball Murder is ultimately disappointing science fiction: despite the good command of language and voice that Harrison displays here as well in most other stories, the story never quite fully reaches its full potential, with the not well-integrated into the narrative cry for disappearance of books and physical media in the dystopian future being especially reminiscent of the genre’s 50s-60s most cloying sub-Bradbury offerings. The Pinball Machines, probably the most off-brand story of the bunch, a very straightforward tale of a family surviving the Great Depression and the principal breadwinner having to make a choice between a surer financial security and personal values, is apparently, as foreword tells it, something of a biographical account and one of his earliest written stories. The remaining two stories are closest to his template as I tried to describe it above. The Hermit, his first «stream of consciousness» story, according to the foreword, unfortunately is very much recognizable as a first try, seems indulgent and amorphous. A Cook’s Tale, a story about of an affair of an University Hospital kitchen cook with a younger woman, who works while her boyfriend is finishing grad school, on the contrary, is not only the longest but possibly the best in the collection, a genuinely weird exploration of the type of pretension that sparks a desire to be well-read.

Mostly like the most popular (and twice-adapted-for-the-screen) story here, Roller Ball Murder, this collection shows promise but rarely quite takes off and at times lets you down. Still, it may be worth it to check out the best stories here, A Cook’s Table and The Good Ship Erasmus, and then sample others, maybe, The Warrior, Eating It, The Pinball Machines or Weatherman.

Hits, Flops, and Other Illusions by Ed Zwick

hopeful lighthearted fast-paced

4.0

"Every night I would lie in bed, sleepless, trying to devise original ways to stage men killing each other. It was downright ghoulish."
The book is a little rough around the edges — when Zwick tries to infuse his writing with pathos, especially when talking about music or chastising the current era of content (also, he curiously criticizes the glut of serialized fiction as «engendering conversation, not catharsis» mere pages after congratulating thirtysomethings for being politically impactful), his prose can get a little purply; his little epigrams about work in Hollywood situated at the end of each chapter are simply too numerous and start to run together after a while; and his praise for his collaborators, actors most of all, at its least inspired can sound very close to the stuff one says, and probably was said by him, in promotional interviews — but still the book is a very smooth ride. As is probably mandatory in any biography there’s a smidge of shrink-y self-diagnosis. A lot of actors stories. Acquiring of friendships and connections, and arising health issues get more attention than specifics of working out of script problems and technical intricacies of setting up shots, which is probably true to director’s day-to-day existence in Hollywood.

The feeling the book leaves you with is that, for all his faults, Zwick is an interesting figure in film, a big-scale historical drama/literary adaptation/message movie director, very scant now when all but few seem to be presented with a choice between samey overblown multi-million dollar entertainments and under-20 million dollars idiosyncratic festival play.