Amused in Review

Gone Fishing.  Back Monday August 3rd.

Gone Fishing.  Back Monday August 3rd.

Gone Fishing.  Back Monday August 3rd.

Gone Fishing.  Back Monday August 3rd.

Gone Fishing.  Back Monday August 3rd.

Well, I'm back from vacation and raring to go...back on vacation.  Instead, I have to go to work. Sigh.  Anyway, I just flew in from Chicago (really), and boy are my arms tired...and back, and neck, and... so rather than sit here typing, I'm hitting the sack.  I will point out that now that August is here, there's a brand-new Cutey Bunny desk calendar at the Quagmire.  Now pardon me whilst I slip into something more comfortable, like bed.

See ya tomorrow, with a review.  Honest.

So, what did I read over my vacation?  Well, mostly the first volume of the collected

A Dance to the Music of Time, Vol. 1
by Anthony Powell
University of Chicago Press
Rating: Gosh-a-rooty

Widely regarded as one of the great works of English fiction, this was recently reissued in a beautiful set collecting all twelve books into four volumes by the University of Chicago Press.  This is one of those classics that I've always intended to read, but kept putting off, daunted by the sheer size of the thing; now I regret that I waited so long, although the plus side is that I have three more volumes to look forward to reading as soon as my order from Amazon.com arrives.
   Essentially A Dance to the Music of Time is a portrait of upper-class England, and the upheavals that society went through beginning with the period directly following the First World War, as told through the eyes of the protagonist, Nicholas Jenkins, and the people who drift in an out of his life from the time he was a schoolboy until...well, I haven't gotten to the end, but I understand it covers the next thirty to forty years. In the beginning, I was reminded of Jane Austen (one of my favorite authors), both because of the understated wit and the striking fact that at least superficially the affairs and concerns of the society in which Nick moves hadn't much changed since over a century before.  Debutante balls, social "seasons", making good--that is to say blessed by position and money--marriages and the whole rigamarole of English gentle society in Austen's time is still the prevailing mode at the beginning of the first book and it's not hard at all to imagine the characters of one author comingling freely with the characters of the other.  By the end of the volume (styled "The First Movement", although I don't know if that was Powell's idea, or the editors at the Chicago University Press), though, that world was--not quite gone, but rendered irrelevant, a relic of a bygone era, so that Jane Austen's characters seem not just of a different time, but almost of a different world.
   I can't recommend this more strongly, but be warned, this isn't the kind of book that you can read in brief snatches while riding on the train.  You have to be prepared to savor it; the plot won't drag you along, because by and large nothing happens.  Yet gradually, the detached observations of the enigmatic protagonist, and the repeated encounters with the various characters who, with him, seem locked in eccentric orbits around some common but unseen focal point build up a picture of them and of his world that seem as real to you as your own.  Or even more so.  It's an intoxicating experience, and it's easy to see why it's regarded as one of the classics of twentieth century literature.

Quiz Time

1. What are crottled greeps?
2. Who was Gerhard Schnobble?
3. Where is Bes Pelargic?
4. When was the winter of our discontent made glorious summer?
5. Why?

Avengers #8
by Kurt Busiek and George Perez
Marvel, color, $1.99
rating: So-so.

This definitely didn't do much for me, the usual couple of nice characterizational bits aside.  Triathalon is one of the weaker names that Kurt's ever come up with, and he's come up with some doozies, although to be fair, he also has some like The Samaritan or Winged Victory that I think are inspired. (My least favorite of his are the themed super-mercenary teams that often crop up in Iron Man.)  Silverclaw isn't as bad, by why does every 3rd-world hero in Marvel have powers that scream out their place-of-origin?   I can understand in a world that has Captain America a new hero wanting to be a symbol of his or her country, but except where the powers are deliberately tailored to fit the theme, why this oh-so-convenient correlation of powers with locale?  Granted, Silverclaw's jungle powers are probably going to turn out to be the result of some mystic jungle McGuffin, but based on what we've seen so far, it really feels contrived.