Back in October of 2004, nearing my little niece Gabrielle's birthday, I stopped on my local Sunday route to buy a Barnes and Noble gift card so that I wouldn't have to be bothered for actually considering what to buy as a gift for my niece. On my way into the store I caught a glimpse at a thick book, shrink-wrapped and looking all the while like a dictionary, sitting on the new arrival section of the store. Forever a victim of the cruel master of the written text, I went instantly to the book and picked it up. It's cover was black and had a matte finish. I read the title, emblazoned in, naturally, white type: Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. It was written by some woman named Susanna Clarke. I frowned. What the fuck was this damn thing? Did I know of the author? Not likely. Why was it so damn heavy? Is this a historical piece? Should I care? Whatever trick the muse of literature had used to lure me towards the damn big book had worked even after I put it down and walked a few paces away. I literally turned back around and picked up the book again, scrutinizing it. I was puzzled. On the back sleeve were several quotes praising the piece, and one made me blink in surprise. It was written by Neil Gaiman, an artist I admired greatly at the time (this was before his terrible "Anansi Boys" was released and the clumsy film "Mirror Mask," which he wrote the screenplay for, hit the theaters...), and in it he praised Clarke's ability to weave the fantastic and the historical so seamlessly. Not knowing at all what the book was about (it was shrink-wrapped, remember), I took the damn thing up to the register and bought it, almost forgetting to get my niece's gift card in the process. In the company van minutes later I tore off the plastic protection and cracked open "Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell" for the first time.
People often speak of favorite things that rule their idle times; books, or movies, or drug habits. Whatever... I'd never really had favorites specifically in music or movies or books or art or any form of expression. Then I saw Hitchcock's "Vertigo." On the television, there used to be a syndicated program on PBS titled "The Prisoner," starring Patrick McGoohan, which I watched obsessively as a baffled child and returned to decades later as a bored, listless man of thirty, awed and ashamed. In an unwearyingly boring art class at Sierra College, a drab instructor put up a slide of a painting by an Italian Baroque artist named Caravaggio. In 2000, I bought my first Stereolab CD on a whim after reading a small article about the band in "Spin" magazine. Suddenly, I indeed had fucking favorites to hang my loyalties upon. With the pinnacles of these respective art forms establishing a measure by which to judge all of the others, I began to tout proudly about my favorites for this and that and so fucking on, but literature escaped such tagging. I don't know exactly why.
I'd read obsessively. I loved Philip K. Dick because he questioned everything under the sun. Robert Asprin, God rest his soul, made me a reader in my teens thanks to his addictive Myth series featuring the adventures of Skeeve, Aahz and Tananda. James Morrow makes me hate him for his ability to work with words so damn beautifully. Certain books, like Gaiman's "American Gods," Lethem's "Amnesia Moon," or Morrow's "This Is the Way the World Ends" knocked my mind out cold. But, still... I never touted a favorite book up to anyone. I thought it impossible. A book demands too much of your time, too much of your mind to just simply be labeled good or bad. Why bother if it just to represent all of that time in a simple equation? True, I read a lot of lame duck books, but none really made me angry like a movie could, or an over-hyped album. I'd read "The Hobbit" and thought, "That was boring," but I wasn't angry. I could see what the author was trying to pull off, but he failed in my estimation. It never really bothered me not being able to say I had a favorite book.
Today I finished listening to an audio reading of "Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell" for the fifth time. Actually, it may be the sixth...? Huh. Anyway, as with all the previous times, I was mesmerized. Pure, unfailing escapism is a beautiful fucking thing, isn't it? The reader for this recording is also known to me by name: Simon Prebble. He could make the Bible interesting. Shit, he could read a box of cereal's ingredients and make me burst into tears. Anyway, to get to the fucking point, this book is it. It really is. My favorite fucking book. Period. None come close. It's ridiculous.
People often speak of favorite things that rule their idle times; books, or movies, or drug habits. Whatever... I'd never really had favorites specifically in music or movies or books or art or any form of expression. Then I saw Hitchcock's "Vertigo." On the television, there used to be a syndicated program on PBS titled "The Prisoner," starring Patrick McGoohan, which I watched obsessively as a baffled child and returned to decades later as a bored, listless man of thirty, awed and ashamed. In an unwearyingly boring art class at Sierra College, a drab instructor put up a slide of a painting by an Italian Baroque artist named Caravaggio. In 2000, I bought my first Stereolab CD on a whim after reading a small article about the band in "Spin" magazine. Suddenly, I indeed had fucking favorites to hang my loyalties upon. With the pinnacles of these respective art forms establishing a measure by which to judge all of the others, I began to tout proudly about my favorites for this and that and so fucking on, but literature escaped such tagging. I don't know exactly why.
I'd read obsessively. I loved Philip K. Dick because he questioned everything under the sun. Robert Asprin, God rest his soul, made me a reader in my teens thanks to his addictive Myth series featuring the adventures of Skeeve, Aahz and Tananda. James Morrow makes me hate him for his ability to work with words so damn beautifully. Certain books, like Gaiman's "American Gods," Lethem's "Amnesia Moon," or Morrow's "This Is the Way the World Ends" knocked my mind out cold. But, still... I never touted a favorite book up to anyone. I thought it impossible. A book demands too much of your time, too much of your mind to just simply be labeled good or bad. Why bother if it just to represent all of that time in a simple equation? True, I read a lot of lame duck books, but none really made me angry like a movie could, or an over-hyped album. I'd read "The Hobbit" and thought, "That was boring," but I wasn't angry. I could see what the author was trying to pull off, but he failed in my estimation. It never really bothered me not being able to say I had a favorite book.
Today I finished listening to an audio reading of "Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell" for the fifth time. Actually, it may be the sixth...? Huh. Anyway, as with all the previous times, I was mesmerized. Pure, unfailing escapism is a beautiful fucking thing, isn't it? The reader for this recording is also known to me by name: Simon Prebble. He could make the Bible interesting. Shit, he could read a box of cereal's ingredients and make me burst into tears. Anyway, to get to the fucking point, this book is it. It really is. My favorite fucking book. Period. None come close. It's ridiculous.