Fury
By Salman Rushdie
Publisher: Vintage Canada
ISBN 0676974414
Format: Paperback
“There’s the happy medium between the highbrow and the dross. Most people are middlebrow…” It’s hard to imagine a literary heavyweight like Salman Rushdie writing a line like that. It’s drenched in irony and drips with mirth. Rushdie is nothing if not highbrow. Or is he? Rushdie is at home with allusions like Ockham’s Razor as he is in the candied, pop world of boy bands and Star Wars. But he still isn’t “middlebrow” is he?
That line comes from Rushdie’s latest critical success Fury. Fury is the closest thing to a middlebrow novel that Rushdie has written yet. It’s short, its plot is relatively straightforward and simple, and it is allegorical. Rushdie has written books with these characteristics before but rarely all at the same time. (Especially not short.)
On the surface, Fury offers a tight, readable story—the tale of a dissatisfied professor who sets out one day to escape from his life and his own irrational and misdirected fury. Deeper down, Fury offers a concise allegory and scathing criticism of modern capitalism as embodied by the United States. It is silly, it is frivolous, and the United States seems completely irredeemable. And yet, of course, Rushdie shows us exactly how it can be redeemed. Its passion and exuberance would be impossible for any entity as cerebral and self-conscious as Rushdie’s anti-hero Malik Solanka.
Souvenir of Canada
By Douglas Coupland
Publisher: Douglas and McIntyre
ISBN 1550549170
Format: Paperback
With Souvenir of Canada Coupland has assembled the great Canadian gestalt test. His devious inkblots are carefully contrived to make the reader think of one thing and one thing only: what it means to be Canadian. Of course, as usual, anyone who isn’t a Canadian just won’t understand. What do President’s Choice, the FLQ and table vinegar have in common? Only a Canadian would know the answer.
Arranged basically alphabetically, Coupland’s Souvenir runs the gauntlet of Canadian stereotypes from Baffin Island to Zed (not Zee). Along the way, he inserts an elaborate series of still-life photographs of Canadian consumer products and images. An overturned bottle of BeeHive corn syrup oozes onto a table hockey game where blue shirts square off against Hab’s red and blue. In the foreground there is a CN coffee mug. In the background there is an assortment of stubby beer bottles. It’s strange, yet touching. Only someone who really loved this country would bother to gather all of this junk—the photos and crap come from Coupland’s private collection. Only a Canadian would understand why gathering all of this junk is so important. Many have tried it, but few have succeeded. Sex in the Snow, Mondo Canuck and Why I Hate Canadians pale in comparison. This is, quite simply, the best book ever about being Canadian.
Bad Astronomy: Misconceptions and Misuses Revealed, from Astrology to the Moon Landing “Hoax”
By Philip Plait
Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
ISBN 0471409766
Format: Paperback
How do you counter the prevalent myth that an egg can only be balanced on its end on the venal equinox (March 21 or so)? Simple, just balance an egg on any other day of the year. It works. And balancing that egg becomes still easier with practice. How does Philip Plait know? He knows because he has done it. He has practiced it too.
Bad Astronomy counters a host of popular myths about the heavens and cosmos. Kids will love it. Trivial buffs will mine it for trivia. Skeptics will read it drooling over each exposé. If sciences, like Astronomy, were not so darn complicated we wouldn’t have so many myths about them. Yet somehow, Plait is able to explain them away. His prose is clear and simple.
And the myths are many. The phases of the moon have nothing to do with the Earth’s shadow. A blue sky is not reflecting the ocean. Silly little myths like these. You know, the type of myths that most people believe are true. There are big myths too, like the “conspiracy” of the moon landing “hoax”. No, the moon landing was not a “hoax.” Yes, there are good reasons for believing that it really happened. If you’re at all curious why, Plait will fill you in.
Everything is Illuminated
By Jonathan Safran Foer
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
ISBN 0618173870
Format: Hardcover
This is a stunning debut. Twenty-five-year old Jonathan Safran Foer has produced one of the best first novels ever. Everything is Illuminated is the story of a young Jewish man, also named Jonathan Safran Foer, who returns to the Ukraine to uncover the history of his grandparent’s shtetl. The plot is Don Quixote meets Heart of Darkness. Foer’s guileless Ukrainian translator, Alex, helps narrate the story in an unforgettable and singular idiolect of broken English. Foer, in turn, (that’s Foer the character not Foer the author) dictates a private mythological history of his grandparent’s shtetl.
Everything is Illuminated follows in a tradition of evoking all of the exuberance of the shtetl. And this is right and good. Elegies about shtetls, Jewish, Eastern European towns, that have disappeared would seem wooden and hollow, though not inappropriate. From all counts, these towns were anything but wooden. At the same time, Foer does something a little different. He also weaves a beautiful story about the value of family, about history, memory and continuity. Everything is Illuminated radiates with brilliance.
