The Best Stuff I Read, Played, Saw, and Listened to in 2020

Read

Swamplandia! by Karen Russell ** 

I forget most of this book, actually. I was looking for something weird with a dash of magical realism, and this almost delivered, though not quite. It’s still a good book, though.

Amiable With Big Teeth by Claude McKay *** 

This book is about the struggle to prevent the Communists from hijacking Black activists’ campaign to help Ethiopia against Italy in the 1920s. This book was interesting because I read it during the Democratic primary, and it gave context to Bernie Sanders’ continued failure to connect with minority groups.

Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra *** 

This book clocks in at over 920 pages, but it’s a great read. It’s a police procedural and gangster story rolled up into one book. It’s fantastic.

Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel *** 

I was in a rut during the pandemic, and, ironically, what got me out of it was reading about a fictional pandemic. St. John Mandel glosses over the actual pandemic part to get to the aftermath, where America has been reduced to scattered hamlets, and focuses on a traveling circus troupe that encounters a dangerous cult.

The Lost Man by Jane Harper *** 

This was a surprise gift from a friend, and it was unlike any other mystery I’ve read. The book is about a mysterious death in the Australian outback, and the few families who are trying to figure out what happened. The denouement is phenomenal.

Homeland by Fernando Aramburu *** 

This is a gut punch. It might be the very best book I read this year. The book is about a small town in the Basque region of Spain, and how terrorism destroys the lives of two close families. I cannot overstate how fantastic this book is.

Godshot by Chelsea Bieker ** 

A great debut novel about a once-fertile, remote agricultural town now in the throes of a charismatic Christian cult, and one young woman’s discovery and desperate escape. The Handmaid’s Tale on a very small, but no less terrifying, scale

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke ***

This book reminds me of all of the old adventure games I love to play, from MYST to The Room (not Wiseau), or Quern: Undying Thoughts. If you are familiar with those, you might start to get a hint of what’s happening here, but if not, the less you know about this book going in, the better. The twist, and ending, are both excellent.

Duma Key by Stephen King *** 

I’ve been kinda disappointed with King lately, having grown tired of what I call “Dracula rewrites”, but Duma Key is a very original, fascinating King story with an unusually satisfying ending. It takes a long while to get to the horror part, but you can tell going in that there’s a heavy debt Freemantle (our main character) will have to pay. It ranks as one of my favorite King novels.

Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam *** 

This is a book about not knowing. Some apocalypse happens, but there is no information whatsoever about what it is, or what anyone is doing about it. In an instant, society ceases to exist.

We Have Been Harmoninzed by Kai Strittmatter ***

After reading China Under Mao by Andrew Walder and Deng Xiaoping by Ezra Vogel last year, Harmonized is about China under Xi Jinping. Strittmatter describes how Xi is reviving the Mao cult, and, through rapid investment in digital surveillance technology and artificial intelligence, building the most complete panopticon the world has ever seen. Further, Strittmatter describes how the CCP has managed to erase even recent history in the public consciousness, and through reeducation, injected its children with a jingoism completely divorced from historical reality.

A Libertarian Walks into a Bear by Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling **

This is the true story of how libertarians destroyed the small town of Grafton, NH and got invaded by hyperaggressive bears. This book is on this list because the schadenfreude value is very high. I already hate libertarians, and I was laughing at their comeuppance in this book.

Played

Kentucky Route Zero **** 

I’ve said quite enough about this one already. This game gets an extra star.

Yakuza 0, Kiwami 1, and Kiwami 2 

*** for Y0, ** for K1 & K2 

These games got me through the pandemic. Yakuza 0 is a masterpiece.

Hades *** 

Supergiant’s best game to date, and one of the best roguelikes ever made. Their faithfulness to Greek mythology, while also reinterpreting it to modern audiences, has been praised elsewhere. The writing, and the art direction, are stellar, and the gameplay compels you to immediately restart after every death. Greek mythology is almost a perfect tableau for a roguelike, as the gods are both cyclical and infinite. Supergiant absolutely nailed it.

Paper Mario 64, Thousand Year Door, and the Origami King

PM64 ****, TTYD **, TOK ***

This is the first time I have ever played the original Paper Mario, and I fell in love with it. It was delightful to play, and I was laughing my ass off throughout. TTYD was a bit disappointing because the writing wasn’t nearly as strong, but then Origami King returned to form. While some of the boss battle designs were frustrating and underwhelming (it’s not until one of the last bosses where you get what can be considered a fair fight), the game does an excellent job of causing you to forget your complaints with almost more humor than the original. Every five minutes, I’m shouting for my sister to come see what ridiculous thing the game is doing, from FAX TRAVEL(!!!) to a giant fan rising up from the sea to blow away fog. Paper Mario is always a good time. They also took the “paper” of Paper Mario and just ran with it. I love it, even though it was a bit frustrating.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons *** 

My sister has 705 hours in Animal Crossing. The game came out right as our governor issued the Stay at Home order, and I had gotten the game for my sister as a belated birthday present. She is still playing it. I played from May til the end of the summer, because watching her play it made me want to play it. I’m the kind of person who needs to be able to finish games, but I cannot deny that Animal Crossing is wonderfully constructed, and a perfect game for the existential dread of the pandemic. 

In Other Waters *** 

This fascinating, deceptively simple exploration game is rich in story, and it reminded me of a criminally underrated adventure game I played years ago called The Experiment 112. It’s hard to find games like this, so I get excited whenever I find one. It’s a great game to just chill out to.

Wolfenstein: The New Order/The Old Blood *** 

I still think Wolf II was better, but in terms of quality, they are roughly the same. Play both, if you can. 

The Coma 2: Vicious Sisters ** 

I really liked this one. I often don’t like being forced to hide from enemies with no way to fight back, but the main villain was only occasionally frustrating. I enjoyed it.

Resident Evil 3 ** 

The game is very short, which is a big knock against the $60 asking price, but I appreciated what they were going for. The game is trying to be a straight and simple horror film, with minimal exploration. Capcom just wants to get you from one setpiece to the next. The main issue I had with the game, aside from its length, is that Big Boy (my name for ol’ Nemmy) is never quite as scary inside of a boss fight as he is out of it.

Cyberpunk 2077 *** 

To avoid spoilers, I will issue my opinion on the game at a later date. Some people who will be reading this are still in Night City.

The Last of Us Part 2 **** 

I borrowed this from my neighbor, and I borrowed my sister’s PS4 to play it. I loved every minute of this game. It’s exhausting, terrifying, exhilarating, and devastating—all at the same time. Being forced to play as the “villain” forces you to reevaluate your sense of both characters, and it’s just excellent. It’s Naughty Dog’s best game.

Ori & the Will of the Wisps *** 

I’m a big fan of exploration sidescrollers (Metroidvanias), and the second Ori game was among the best. One highlight of the game is the terrifying giant spider boss, which was a great challenge and a lot of fun to fight.

Saw

Three Colors Trilogy, dir. Krzysztof Kieslowski *** 

I love French cinema, and these films are beautiful. They are, like some of my friends claim with Alien & Aliens, one long film. I watched all of them in a span of a week.

The Fly, dir. David Cronenberg *** 

I’m already a fan of Cronemberg, but I had never seen The Fly until this year. The creature’s final form is a special effects marvel, and it’s absolutely worth watching Jeff Goldblum deteriorate as the movie goes on. You come to Cronenberg for one reason, and he never disappoints. 

Possessor, dir. Brandon Cronenberg ***

And neither did his son. This movie is just awesome. Criticism that he doesn’t go far enough to explore the premise of the film is correct, but as a first film, oh my god is it great. I definitely want to see more.

Coherence, dir. James Ward Byrkit **** 

I forgot I saw Coherence this year. Oh my god this movie is fantastic. The premise is basically a longer Twilight Zone episode, and the less you know going into it, the better. It’s got an 88% on Rotten Tomatoes, and it’s worth every minute of your time. I promise.

Contagion, dir. Stephen Soderberg *** 

Very appropriate for what’s going on right now.

Borat 2, dir. Sacha Baron Cohen *** 

There are a lot of hilarious and awkward moments in this brilliant and necessary sequel, but I swear to god that I was literally dying at the very end with the Running of the Americans. You are free to have your favorite part of this movie, but that one is mine. It is almost an overload of catharsis.

The Reflecting Skin, dir. Philip Ridley *** 

This movie is all kinds of messed up. I can’t even begin to explain it, but it’s disturbing as anything and well worth watching. I was looking for something like David Lynch, and boy did I find it.

Listened to

- The Lorelai soundtrack by micAmic is on repeat, forever.

- I started listening to Chvrches. Night Sky is an excellent track

- Hayley Williams’ solo album came out in May. I enjoyed it, but it doesn’t resonate with me as much as After Laughter did

- I expanded my vaporwave collection with Mori by Aokigahara Online. I have been told that my chill music game is very strong. This by Hong Kong Express (2015) is another vaporwave highlight, specifically the track, “6 AM feat. V I R T U E”

The Octopath Traveler Soundtrack will always be amazing.

Both Ori soundtracks are queued up on a regular basis.

Kentucky Route Zero and How I Think of the Coronavirus

The finale of Kentucky Route Zero was released this past January, and even though it's been nearly 10 months since I played it, I can't stop thinking about it.

At the end of the 9-year-long (the game was released in five acts, spanning sometimes 4+ years between them) journey, when the Mucky Mammoth takes the characters across the Echo River, the party finally arrives at Dogwood Drive, which is a small clearing where no roads lead in or out. It is also ground zero of the Elkhorn Mine disaster that preceded the events of the game. The area is still flooded, and there are piles of dead horses (horses were allowed to roam free in the town and the people living there considered them residents) everywhere.

The last major event of the game, as the party unloads the contents of Conway's truck into the house, is a funeral. The player, taking the role of a housecat, listens in on conversations between the party that just arrived and the people who already live there, and is finally called over to witness the funeral for the horses that have died, but, it is obvious to everyone, both the characters and the player, that the funeral isn't really just for the horses who drowned, but also for everyone who was lost or displaced in the wake of the Elkhorn Mine disaster, or fell into debt to either the Hard Times Distillery (which is what happens to Conway in Act III, and the bar patrons in The Entertainment) or the Consolidated Power Company (like Dr Truman of Act II).

I am not really giving enough information about what KR0 is, I know, but, as we teeter on the edge of another coronavirus spike, it's an experience literally everyone should have.

The reason why this beautiful, poetic, and ultimately bleak game has me captivated, long after I have finished it, is that through it, I am thinking about how we are going to account for this tragedy, the one we are facing in real life right now.

I can't help but think that this game, a magical realist adventure game (more a stage play than a game) about ruthless and terrifying capitalist exploitation by faceless corporations against ordinary people, is directly connected to how we are dealing with coronavirus--or not--as, as of September, eight million Americans have plunged into poverty because the government failed to pass a second stimulus bill to keep people in their homes, and over 220,000 Americans are dead as we head into the winter.

The game serves, ultimately, as a reminder that America was built on tragedy and devastation. Much of what happens in the game is built upon real historical events and circumstances, from the Whiskey Rebellion, to the use of scrip, and the unmitigated greed of corporations outside the reach of government. It's a story about how people try--and often fail--to find life after what seems like divine catastrophe, and it speaks directly to this moment as we face multiple threats--economic, political, and biological--to our lives.

The funeral at the end of the game makes me wonder if and how we will account for all of the lives, not just killed by the virus, but who, like the denizens of the Zero, were destroyed and displaced directly because society preferred to make huge, unnecessary, and wasteful sacrifices of human beings.

Reopening Schools and the Public Trust Deficit

White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany yesterday obliterated any good faith that the government at any level was interested in the safety of students, teachers, and parents in the course of possibly reopening schools during the pandemic:

Asked about President Donald Trump's message to parents as some schools opt to go fully online in the coming weeks, McEnany said "the president has said unmistakably that he wants schools to open."

"And I was just in the Oval talking to him about that," she said. "When he says open, he means open in full, kids being able to attend each and every day in their school. The science should not stand in the way of this." 

To be clear, I was against reopening schools when it was first being talked about, but everyone had since talked about it as though it were possible to reopen schools and protect people. Thanks to McEnany, however, this is impossible.

To my mind, the idea that schools can reopen in confidence has been entirely foreclosed by this statement: As with countless other issues that have been eroded by the Trump administration, there is no way to know if school officials or state and local governments are actually trying to protect people in good faith, or are just bending to the will of the President. That the government doesn't care about the science while it is so obviously and calamitously failing to act against the pandemic speaks volumes.

There is no denying that the economic impact of the coronavirus is severe, but trying to power through it and force people to work--putting literally everyone at risk--just to boost the economy is both murderous and short-sighted. There are studies that show that regions that focus on saving lives recover faster economically than those that let people die. An article from Vox describes a 2007 paper on the economic impact of social distancing (referred to as "non-pharmaceutical interventions") and recovery after the 1918 pandemic ended. The article states:

“The increase in mortality from the 1918 pandemic relative to 1917 mortality levels (416 per 100,000) implies a 23 percent fall in manufacturing employment, 1.5 percentage point reduction in manufacturing employment to population, and an 18 percent fall in output,” they conclude. In other words, a big outbreak spelled economic disaster for affected cities.

Then they combined this analysis with an analysis of the effects of NPI policies. They find that the introduction of social distancing policies is associated with more positive outcomes in terms of manufacturing employment and output. Cities with faster introductions of these policies (one standard deviation faster, to be technical) had 4 percent higher employment after the pandemic had passed; ones with longer durations had 6 percent higher employment after the disaster.

There is also this article from John Hopkins, an interview with Alessandro Rebucci, an economist who argues that an economic depression is inevitable, and "reopening an infected economy is no shortcut."

It's impossible to argue that, with 60,000-70,000 newly discovered cases a day, the United States has coronavirus under control. States like Arizona, Florida, Texas, and Georgia, are now the primary drivers of the pandemic in the country, and while some regions are safer than others, no region is safe enough to reopen schools so long as we lack a competent federally-managed effort to control the disease.

Finally, someone made an epidemiological simulation of coronavirus' spread in a school, and is worth watching the ~10 minute video to get an idea of what schools will be dealing with should they reopen.

Freedom in the Age of Coronavirus

Over the past several months, we have watched the numbers of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths from Covid-19 climb to terrifying heights. As a result, all states issued Stay-at-Home orders, closing businesses and schools, and compelling people to stay at home as much as possible in order to slow—and hopefully stop—infection. Of course, in places like Michigan, Florida, and California, we have seen people openly defy these rules in the name of “freedom.”

Of course, the “freedom” of individuals to choose whether to wear a mask, attend or not to attend a mass gathering, or abide by social distancing recommendations, also comes with tremendous personal and social cost, because not following these recommendations, and choosing to attend something like Trump’s indoor Tulsa rally, puts not only the individual at risk of contracting coronavirus and possibly being hospitalized and even dying, but also their friends, family, and people in their communities that they may not even know.

It is clear that freedom must mean something other than just individual personal choice, because if freedom does not take into account the freedom of others, then every person is at the mercy of another and no one is free.

Lets say that someone walks into a grocery store, is wearing a mask, and practicing social distancing, and is extremely concerned about not contracting or spreading the virus. They want to keep themselves and those around them from getting sick. Contrast this with someone who does not have a mask, and is getting up close and personal with other shoppers, and does yet know whether or not they are carrying the virus.

Our first person goes home, puts their groceries away, takes off their mask, washes their hands, and can be reasonably certain that they and their families are safe from the virus.

Our second person has gotten too close to several people, and potential viral particles have entered their body unfiltered. They went home to their families, did not bother to wash their hands, and have visited several friends who are also not obeying recommendations. They have also potentially infected several people that they do not even know.

Two weeks later, our first example is still healthy, and their family and friends are also safe.

Now, our second person becomes seriously ill, and several people that they know and care about also report symptoms. The number of infected in their community grows by 17.

Of what value is the freedom to endanger others and get sick? What good does it do to not obey the recommendations?

Freedom in the United States, therefore, unless it is to sink as yet another bizarre experiment in self-destruction, must expand to incorporate forces that exert unseen pressure on societies and individuals; it must be expanded to incorporate the needs of the community in which people live. The needs of the individual and the needs of society must be rebalanced.

Take a moment to look at what is happening to the Black community during this crisis. Black and Latinx communities, and especially Philippine immigrants, make up the vast majority of those who have been and continue to be called upon to work during this crisis, and also make up an enormous swath of people who have been exposed to coronavirus largely through no fault of their own,  as reports about shortages of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) for “essential workers” are ubiquitous throughout this crisis. We have lost many, many frontline healthcare workers to the coronavirus, have not adequately protected them on the job, and many of them are nonwhite.  It is difficult to argue that they can be considered “free” in the sense that they can choose whether or not to get sick the way a white woman in Florida can.

Socioeconomic forces almost entirely determine how much freedom an individual actually has, and, in the United States, the system has been deliberately constructed to oppress people of color to the benefit of white people. Much of this has been rendered invisible, built into the policies of banks and the biases of the hiring class, but as our society lurches backward at the whims of 74-year-old infant, we are watching this system fire up its old ways of violence and terror.  The countless black lives who have been outright murdered by the police and their allies in recent decades could not choose whether to live or die, marked forever merely by the color of their skin. If we are to expand freedom, we must also proclaim that these lives matter, too.

Health is the entirety of the coronavirus crisis. People do not want to become infected, and they take pains to protect themselves, their families and friends, and their communities. Others, however, do not., because they are more concerned with living their lives as though coronavirus did not exist. However, it does exist, and they expect other people to put themselves at risk for their benefit. One cannot be free while also demanding that others not be free. We have been there before, and we will not return there.

Health is also influenced by socioeconomic forces, is also a major component of freedom because people who are forced to choose between financial ruin or death cannot exercise their freedom. Health is only partially influenced by individual action, and is mostly determined by where one lives. People who are forced to live next to a chemical plant, or work in mines or other risk-intense occupations experience major health problems, and often cannot afford the treatment they need. They also cannot move or change jobs because they do not have the resources to do so. They have no support system.

Resources. That is an important word. Almost all of these problems are problems of resources, and it can be said that freedom is not just individual choice, but is also tied to access to resources, whether it’s a job, or healthcare, or state officers that won’t put their knee on your neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds (George Floyd), or unload an entire magazine into your back (Walter Scott), or whether a nurse or grocery store worker has enough PPE to protect themselves from the coronavirus. This is what freedom must be.

I, For One, Welcome Our Coronavirus Overlords

We could not ask for a greater gift to get us out of this mess. There are a little over 81,000 people infected worldwide (as of 2/27/2020) with roughly 2,800 fatalities, which is a death rate of 3.4%. The potential to infect hundreds of thousands of people while killing a mere fraction of those is a major event that could mean the collapse of certain authoritarian regimes—including ours.

Deng Xiaoping witnessed the precipitous collapse of the Soviet Union, and believed that the lessons to be learned were economic in nature. Many were indeed economic, but the most important lesson was not. The major reason for the Soviet Union’s demise, which Gorbachev himself realized, was the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl.

Chernobyl, if you’ve seen the HBO series or know anything about it, demonstrates perfectly the flaws inherent in the Soviet system, in that the Communist party ethic deploys denialism in order to protect itself from responsibility. “It’s not that bad,” is all that anyone ever says, even while people’s insides were melting and birds were dying outside. Things came to a head when the Swedish government contacted the Russians and wanted to know what was going on. Up to that point, information was suppressed, scientists were being prevented from sharing their information (or even working at all), and the people in the surrounding areas were left to the mercy of the burning nuclear plant.

The coronavirus presented the same challenge to Xi Jinping, who—of course!--harassed the doctor who discovered it and denied that anything was happening. When the virus escaped China, he was forced to lock down Wuhan and build two hospitals in a week, even though it was far too late.

The Atlantic had a great article about how Xi’s digital panopticon has been set up in such a way that he might not have been able to understand or react to what was happening. This is not a new problem, the article goes on to explain, as the Great Leap Forward (Mao’s catastrophic agricultural program that killed 30 million people) was also the result of this same phenomenon:

“On August 4, 1958, buoyed by reports pouring in from around the country of record grain, rice, and peanut production, an exuberant Chairman Mao Zedong wondered how to get rid of the excess, and advised people to eat “five meals a day.” Many did, gorging themselves in the new regime canteens and even dumping massive amounts of “leftovers” down gutters and toilets. Export agreements were made to send tons of food abroad in return for machinery or currency. Just months later, perhaps the greatest famine in recorded history began, in which tens of millions would die because, in fact, there was no such surplus.”

The article closes by explaining that Emperor Zhu Di during the Ming dynasty faced yet another problem: Lower-level officials were preventing certain people from petitioning the government, essentially preventing the emperor from helping his own people.

What does this mean for the United States? We are not in a good position, which is a colossal understatement. While I cannot give a proper rundown of all of the things that have happened since January 21st, 2017, suffice it to say that, according to the Washington Post, President Donald J Trump has lied—and I quote—sixteen thousand, two hundred and forty-one times (16,241 times) as of January 19, 2020. Compounding that, like Jared Kushner in the Middle East, he has had the infinite wisdom to propose drastic cuts to the CDC and other public health programs and has placed Vice President Mike Pence in charge of the government’s response to the coronavirus. To make matters more interesting, Rush Limbaugh has accused Democrats of “weaponizing the common cold” against President Trump, and called for one of the leading experts on infectious diseases at the CDC to be fired because she is allegedly Rod Rosenstein’s sister.

Does this resemble a government interested in and capable of protecting its citizens from a pandemic? In the words of a young Saurolophus in the animated film The Land Before Time, “Nope, nope, nope!” What happens instead, however, will be exciting. Trump has set himself up perfectly to fall as gracelessly and pathetically from power as possible, and the credibility of the party to which he belongs will be so thoroughly annihilated that they will have to concede quickly or face violence as a significant percentage of the population falls ill (because the CDC has been purged of competent people and his cronies are incapable of doing those jobs) and society faces collapse. We know how this ends, and it will be entirely Trump’s own fault.

A Galaxy Divided (Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker Spoiler-Filled Review)

As Mao’s health was failing him, there were two people vying for his position as paramount leader. His chosen successor, Hua Guofang, advocated what came to be known as the “Two Whatevers”, which stated, “We will resolutely uphold whatever policy decisions Chairman Mao made, and unswervingly follow whatever instructions Chairman Mao gave.” The other person who was maneuvering for paramount leader—and who eventually did outmaneuver Hua Guofeng—was Deng Xiaoping, who, advancing his “Four Modernizations”, put far less emphasis on ideology, refused to concede on the utterly disastrous Cultural Revolution, and advocated a policy agenda that sought to rapidly advance the country’s agricultural output (China had still not recovered from the Great Leap Forward), industrial development, defensive capabilities, and economic development (it should be noted that Xiaoping, for all of the good he did for China, also ordered the Tiananmen Square Massacre on June 4th, 1989).



The reason why I bring this up is that, Star Wars, particularly the latest trilogy, seems to be an ideological and cultural struggle in its own right, between JJ Abrams, who directed The Force Awakens and Rise of the Skywalker, and whose vision for Star Wars might be categorized as the “Two Whatevers”; and Rian Johnson, who directed The Last Jedi, who might more closely resemble the “Four Modernizations” in that he sought to change Star Wars and compel audiences to look at it more critically. Unfortunately for the trilogy, and Star Wars as a cultural entity, I think that its version of the “Two Whatevers” (“Whatever George Lucas would have wanted...”) won out with the final film.



I loved The Last Jedi, as I believed that it pushed the Star Wars saga to a close, and, in a very meta way, asked fans to examine it more critically, particularly when Phantom Yoda and Luke Skywalker were discussing the legacies of past Jedi. It was obvious that they were talking about Star Wars, and Rian Johnson very obviously wanted to change Star Wars—I think—for the better.



The primary theme of The Last Jedi was that the heroics of the original trilogy were no longer working against the First Order, and survival required not one single hotshot pilot running suicide missions, but everyone working together. It left the Resistance on the run from an insurmountable enemy, calling for help from the Outer Planets (the idea that the FO doesn’t control and cannot reach sections of the galaxy is very interesting to me and I wish the political situation was more fleshed out in the series), and on the verge of total defeat. It also introduced more diverse characters, and unfortunately the actors who played these characters—like Kelly Marie Tran—were harassed incessantly by die-hard fans who liked Star Wars when it was much less diverse. Again, pushing Star Wars forward.



Of course, because of the tsunami of vitriol and harassment against the people involved, JJ Abrams was called back in to deliver a salve in the form of what one could call the “most Star Wars of all the Star Wars movies,” which not only erased much of what The Last Jedi was trying to say about Star Wars (like how Rey was a nobody—and then, oops!--she’s a nobody but also of Palpatine lineage, and also the final scene of the kid working in the space stables who lifts the broom using the Force, implying that anyone could be Force-sensitive), but also delivered a highly rushed, extremely crowd-pleasing finale built on a narrative house of cards. 25 years later you are going to tell me that Emperor Palpatine survived not only being tossed into the Death Star fusion reactor, but also the explosion itself, and then somehow made it back to the Sith home system? Upon this house of cards, they further piled on brick after brick of fan service moments—Lando shows up! Phantom Luke Skywalker! A touching funeral for Leia/Carrie Fisher! Han Solo gets Kylo Ren to abandon the Dark Side! Totally sidelined Rose Tico!--specifically designed to, like HBO begging people not to cancel their service after Game of Thrones ended, beg the neo-Nazi fanbase not to have a Unite the Right rally outside their offices.



Did I describe Rise of Skywalker as a house of cards? It would be more accurate to call it a bullet train made of rice paper. The two-and-a-half-hour runtime is jam-packed with loud noises, quick edits, few slow transitions, and no character development whatsoever. I said earlier that it is the “most Star Wars movie of all the Star Wars” because it is filled to the very second of Star Wars “stuff”--little character dialogue, a lot of lasers and lightsabers, and a lot of “this is where we need to go next.” There is no tension, no build-up, no uncertainty. There is no logical consideration for anything that happens; no justification. Early in the film, the Squad falls into what is basically quicksand after a speederbike chase, and they find the dagger which tells them where the Sith starmap is, and then suddenly a giant sandworm/snake thing appears. Later, they go to the ruins of the Death Star II (which is very cool, but I hoped that Rey got her tetanus shot beforehand), and all of the sudden she knows that in the handguard of the dagger is an outline of the ruins and a marker showing the exact location of the Sith starmap. She just takes it out of her pack and bam!—she knows everything. The only real narrative tension in the film—up until the end—is when C3-PO gets his memory wiped so they can break the lock on the Sith language in his programming, but this isn’t Data at the end of Star Trek: Nemesis; toward the end of the film, R2 jabs him in the head and restores his memory lickety-split.



Look, I know Star Wars is supposed to be a Big, Important Thing, but the lack of narrative tension is a real issue. The incessant breakneck pace of the film desensitizes the viewer to everything happening on the screen, and what makes matters worse is the foreknowledge that everything is going to happen a certain way. There is no time to build that tension, to ask what or why the characters are doing a certain thing. It’s Star Wars as told by JJ Abrams: Shit just happens and we’re only here for the laser-light show.



Some pretty amazing things happen in the last twenty minutes or so. The Outer Planets’ massive fleet shows up. Neo fights Agent Smith in the rain and ion lightning. Agent Smith unleashes a massive EMP/lightning storm that disables the fleet’s ships. Kylo Ren kisses Rey before he dies (using the last of his life Force to resurrect her in a necessary sacrifice so that Carrie Fisher can be at peace). And, like Independence Day, all of the Star Destroyers are miraculously annihilated after the Sith base is wiped out (someone needs to explain to me how Ewoks—who have never reached space and have been oppressed by the Empire basically since forever—managed to get rid of a Star Destroyer).



JJ Abrams’ “Two Whatevers” won over Johnson’s “Four Modernizations,” and I really think that the entire series as a cultural mecca suffers for it. It is set in the same black stone, a large mass in space that produces its own gravity, and all of us are just orbiting it now, enjoying the pretty lights and not thinking very hard.

The Joy of Reading a Debut Novel

A new book comes in the mail. You've been waiting over a week for it, and you just finished a previous novel the day before. You read a review of it on your favorite literary outlet, and you crack it open. The author hasn't written anything prior. Maybe nobody's heard of it. Maybe it exploded all over the cultural news. But here it is, on your lap, open to your eyes. Here it is, only having existed for a month. Maybe only a year or, perhaps, two. Untested. New. Novel.

I have finished just shy of sixty books so far this year (and it's only the end of July!). It's a lot. Many are excellent, and some are just average. I like to read the classics; I like to read about history, philosophy, politics; I like novels from around the world. But something that gives me particular joy is reading debut novels. I have read many.

I have read There There by Tommy Orange, who won the PEN/Faulkner Prize for a Debut Novel, who had just won the Hemingway prize, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer--on his first book! I was not the first person to read There There; I had read it early in the year after it was published, but I found it wholly deserving of the praise heaped upon it at the time and the prizes and accolades it continues to win.

I have just started Idaho by Emily Ruskovich. I am about 1/3rd of the way through it. It came out in 2017, it earned a Kirkus Star, and  The Guardian had an article about it, which I only found recently, despite the date of publication. Idaho is the story of a woman whose husband is developing dementia, and the husband's previous wife inexplicably murdered one of their children. She wants to know why before dementia overtakes him.

But one debut novel that had been completely forgotten--and that I absolutely love and still mention to people--is The Ghost Network by Catie Disabato. She has yet to publish another novel. The Ghost Network came out in 2015, and I still think about it. It's not a perfect novel, but it is one of the only two novels I have ever read (the other being House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski, which I will discuss later) written in a nonfiction, investigative style. I forget how I even found it, but I remember reading the NYTimes review of it at some point, and decided that I must read it. I was looking for another novel in the same style as House of Leaves, and I had found it.

The Ghost Network is about a celebrity journalist who is investigating the mysterious disappearance of a Lady Gaga-like pop star named Molly Metropolis. The investigation leads a little bit into the weird, featuring an avant-garde architectural movement, among other curiosities. It somewhat borders on magical realism. I felt that it was brilliant and weird enough for me, and I sing its praises wherever and whenever I can.

This is perhaps the biggest reason I enjoy debut novels so much. I am always hungry for something new, something different. Something so totally bonkers, like Animal Money by Michael Cisco (which is not a debut novel, but is wonderful nonetheless. Go ahead, check out that sexy cover!), that no one else would ever even think to look for it.

I do not, however, want to give the impression that I do not also enjoy the classics. I am as big a literary snob as they come. My favorite novelists are Emile Zola and Dostoevsky. I read everything from Dickens to Dune (I'm bringing Dune on vacation next week. I plan to start it after Idaho). But sometimes I need something really, really, really different. That is where my love of debut novels comes from. As well as my other, secret, love of something called Weird Lit, or, more specifically, New Weird...

Are you ready for this rabbit hole?

Weird Lit encompasses authors like Lovecraft or William Hope Hodgeson, as well as Ambrose Bierce or Robert Chambers. It is fantasy and science fiction, but without traditional monsters or events; things that are indescribable or unexplainable. New Weird builds on this tradition, and incorporates offbeat science fiction like Jeff Vandermeer's Annihilation, Borne, or Danielewski's House of Leaves, The Cipher by Kathy Koja, novels by China Meiville, and Animal Money by Michael Cisco. The famous Japanese horror master Junji Ito (Uzumaki, Tomie, Gyo) is also considered a part of this tradition.

Earlier, I had mentioned Animal Money and House of Leaves, two radically different novels--totally unique from anything else I had read before and since--both in substance and style, that have really opened up new worlds to me, and new literary possibilities. Let's start with House of Leaves, which is a little bit less weird than Animal Money.

If you are familiar with the Slender Man phenomenon, it helps to think of that as a point of reference for the kinds of things that happen in this book. The main character's landlord dies, and, among his belongings, is a heavily annotated manuscript that reads as an investigation into a series of home videos called the Navidson Report.

Main Character > Manuscript > Home Video. Three layers. But we aren't yet done!

The Navdison family has just moved into their new house, and it isn't long before they discover that the external and internal dimensions of the house do not line up.  They discover a gap, and in this gap is a dark, possibly infinite, labyrinth that extends into the earth. Mr Navidson decides to spelunk into the labyrinth, and he brings a video camera and lights as far as he can into the labyrinth.

So far so good.

Layer two, the landlord's manuscript, talks about the Navidson Report as though it were real, and includes citations from real publications, just like The Ghost Network does. It is a heavily researched book on the Navidson Report, trying to figure out what it is and where it came from.

It is as if Slender Man were real and was reported about on the news not as some bizarre pseudo-religious phenomenon, but as actual fact.

Some parts of it are hard to read. I read it on ebook and I feel like I missed out on some important parts of it, because there are annotations, some text changes depending on who is speaking, and one section where you have to only read the first letter of every word, which is very difficult and sometimes didn't make sense.

HOWEVER.

It was the only book to ever keep me awake until morning. I've been reading Stephen King since middle school. I read Joe Hill (King's son). I read the supposed "scariest novels ever." Nothing, I tell you: nothing scared me the way House of Leaves did.

And, I think there's a minotaur in that labyrinth....

The other novel that is completely bonkers was not scary, but it did have Communist aliens, occult economists, money that could sexually reproduce, and a character who did not even exist in the world of the novel itself! Animal Money by Michael Cisco was a complete satire on economics and monetary value, and it was as hysterical as it was brilliant. Once again, look at that cover!

I will close with one final Weird Lit novel, this time by another science fiction author who is famous if you know where to look.

The City & the City by China Meivelle (who also wrote Perdido Street Station, The Scar, and Embassytown) was made into a BBC miniseries a few years ago. Reviews of the series were mixed and I never watched it, but the novel itself is perfect for our current political situation. The story is as follows:

Two cities exist in the same physical space, but different psychological dimensions. Citizens of one city are conditioned to "unsee" events, people, and places in the other. "Breaching" this law is the most serious offense a citizen can commit. The main character is charged with investigating a murder of a citizen of one city by a citizen of the other.

When I think of this novel, I think about how it could be that Democrats and Republicans occupy the same physical space, but completely alien psychological spaces. As our political situation grows more severe, the more relevant this fascinating novel becomes.

One of Meivelle's other novels, The Scar, takes place entirely on a city far out in the ocean constructed entirely of boats.

I am always looking for something new, something different, and debut novels are a big part of exactly that, whether they are of the Weird tradition or not. Reading something that few have ever seen before, that has only existed for a short time, brings the joy of discovery, of surprise, and occasionally, of terror.