Sometimes it seems as if every other path in New England takes you past a graveyard. There’s one on my street, likely full of people who lived in the same house I do. Amelia and I stumbled across a small family plot while hiking in Ashland, a few towns away in the hills. The plots in downtown Boston are the highlight of the Freedom Trail, full of dates scarce believable were it not for their weathered faces, their skull-and-wings motifs, signs of a world old and long gone.

I usually get to thinking about Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book whenever I walk past a cemetery now, when that distinct feeling of otherworldliness settles around my shoulders. I find it strange that the book shapes my thoughts in even the most well kept cemeteries.  Gaiman’s graveyard is old, rundown and distinctly British. It is the home of a young boy who wandered unknowingly from the death of his family and finds himself part of a dead family. The book follows him as he grows up, facing the difficulties and wonders of adolescence familiar to us all while adding a dimension of death that surrounds him and shrouds his past.

Gaiman openly alludes to the influence of another favorite of mine, The Jungle Book. Once it’s pointed out, it’s easy to see how the adventures of Nobody Owens and his ghostly family resemble Mowgli and his forest pack. Both boys exist outside of society and grapple with their identity when that barrier begins to weaken. Both boys struggle against daunting foes – Nobody and the man Jack, Mowgli and Shere Khan. Many other analogies exist, but Gaiman’s story is no rip-off – it’s good enough to stand on its own.

Denizens of the graveyard include druids, Romans, Victorians and everything in between. Gaiman plays with the different speech styles that span the ages with his characteristic banter and dry wit. Mythology, fairy tale, nursery rhyme and even medieval allegory are woven together to create a reality that reverberates among readers and echoes Gaiman’s other works, like American Gods (a must read). In keeping with his style and the nature of these influences, the central narrative of the book is characterized by individual stories that with little modification would stand well on their own. The result is several images depicting different moments in Bod’s life. I’m reminded of the stories in stained glass.

The book begins with death and ends with life and more questions than when it started. That’s Neil Gaiman. The Graveyard Book is not a long read, and it’s hard to put down. It would make a good book to read with your kid, or someone else’s if you can borrow one.

Pages: 336 FOA Pages: 18,551

See what pieces of literature will be possibilities for your upcoming movie nights.

William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying

J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit: The Desolation

Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game

Suzanne Collin’s The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

If we missed any other upcoming books on film, let us know in the comments sections.

I live with a toddler. And as any parent can tell you, toddlers have a way of putting their mark in every area of the life of his or her guardians. I have stomped on Noah and his entire ark stumbling through the living room at night. I have found my wife’s shoes in the trash, and I have been pulled out of bed before 7 a.m. on a Saturday for no particular reason. Little fingers have poked me in the mouth, the nose, the ears, and in the eyes. Bodily fluids are really not that big of a deal anymore.

Among other areas of parenthood, Pixar movies have become part of a almost daily routine. My skill is not perfected yet, but I can almost quote Cars by heart. I am becoming a student of the clever cartoon genre, and I have found that these stories have some common characteristics.

First of all and most obviously, the Pixar movies have a deeply rooted sense of humor that can be appreciated among a wide range of ages. Secondly, each story contains a huge adventure. How memorable are those vast blue depths that Marlin crosses to find his beloved Nemo? Or the dangerous, tropical island of The Incredibles? Lastly, each Pixar story features a conglomeration of unlikely companions. Buzz and Woody, the circus bugs of A Bug’s Life, Wall-E and Eva… (I can do this all day.)

I was once mandated to read a short story by G. K. Chesterton in college, and though I remember enjoying the story I cannot recall the title. What stayed with me though is that Chesterton preceded and influenced the works of C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and other members of the Inklings. As a fan of the latter, I sought to become better acquainted with the former.

When I picked up The Man Who Was Thursday, I was expecting a story that was somewhat slow paced with staunchy details that I just assume (probably incorrectly) of a novel written at the turn of the twentieth century. G. K. Chesterton showed me otherwise. In fact, Chesterston’s story, though full of philosophy, would have made a great Pixar movie.

The story begins with two poets arguing in a city park. One declares the glory of anarchy while the other argues that law and order is in fact more poetic. From Chesterton’s character descriptions, I immediately pictured two cartoonish figures like those in the short film, One Man Band, arguing their philosophical points in the open public.

After the anarchist poet is challenged in his statements and the other is sworn to secrecy, the anarchist reveals that he really does belong to a society of anarchy that is planning some sort of bombing. He even brings the other poet to their layer to prove his claims. After swearing the anarchist to secrecy and immediately before the rest of the secret society arrives for a meeting, the second poet reveals that he is part of a police squad dedicated to seek out destructive philosophies and in particular, anarchists.

So the stage then is set in a some what humorous way to have a policeman sworn not to go to the police in the middle of a meeting of anarchists, and the one anarchist who knows that he is a policeman is sworn to not tell anyone. You can see the animated connection that came to mind.

As the story progresses, the policeman poet Syme is elected within the Anarchists ranks as Thursday where each of the men of authority is named after a day of the week. Sunday, the frightful president of the anarchist counsel, is portrayed as some figure of demi-god and a dreadful villain.

What we learn in time, though, is that the counsel is actually a conglomeration of under cover policemen all pretending to be anarchists and all there to spy on each other. Once this revelation has been made, the team enters a chased-and-be-chased sequence with Sunday who becomes more frightful and terrible throughout.

Then the end… Well, I won’t give it away, but it probably is not what you expect. Probably not the ending that Pixar would have picked.

However, Chesterton was not trying to make some money selling a soft feel good story to some children. His fanciful and incredible story is riddled with convoluted paradoxes and biblical allusions that all convince the reader to find some deeper meaning.

What Chesterton was attempting to point out seems to be a topic of debate, but he was determined to make it remembered that “a Nightmare” was the subtitle. Some feel that Chesterton wanted to show that faith cannot be fortified without being tested, a purged by fire metaphor. Though you can build some evidence to support this thought (and I am not literary expert), I am still not convinced that was Chesterton’s message. Truthfully, just I am still seeking for the deeper meaning of Wall-E, I am still pondering over the writing of Chesterton.

Interestingly written and honestly humorous, I was pleasantly surprised by The Man Who was Thursday. I am still digesting the events that occurred through the nightmare, but even on the shallowest level this is a story to be enjoyed.

Pages: 145 FOA Pages: 18,215

How spectacularly mundane of me.

Well, that was where the mundane ended, because Kij Johnson’s sci-fi/fantastical fiction is anything but. Between the covers of Bees (at least I assume there are versions with covers floating around out there . . . darn e-books) are stories ranging from captivity on alien spacecraft, to the secret lives of cats and foxes in old Japan, to tales I’m not even sure how to classify. A little girl pressured to mutilate her real-life My Little Pony-esque pony of its magical properties by removing its wings, horn and voice box with a knife? It’s here, and it has a dark connection to draw between conformity to cliques and the loss of childhood innocence, all stained with fresh cotton-candy blood.

I’ve always been a lover of short stories. They can contain sprawling worlds, truly memorable characters and momentous events melted down into bite-sized nuggets. As Stephen King once wrote, they’re “like a quick kiss in the dark from a stranger.” I guess if you’re at a really bad party, like with a bunch of chain smokers or something, those quick kisses in the dark are going to leave you longing to get out of the place pretty fast. Same goes for a collection of short stories. If you’re three or four in and you haven’t hit anything good yet , you probably won’t have much motivation for plowing on further.

To me, reading a collection of short stories is a bit like walking down a house-lined street at twilight. Let’s say it’s your average looking suburbs.  Once in a while you head off the street and up the walkway to a random house. The doors are always open and you’re expected to let yourself in. Often enough, once you step through the entrance way you find that the size of the interior defies the dusky outline of the structure you saw from the street. Here’s a summer day in a nameless village, where all the residents are clustering around a black-painted box in the square (Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”); here’s a view of the water from atop Owl Creek Bridge, a noose looped around your neck as you pass through the front door (Ambrose Bierce’s “Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”). I don’t even know if I want to re-enter the “A Good Man is Hard to Find” house yet–Flannery O’Conner might be in the back room stroking the barrel of her shotgun.

Sure, you’re going to go down a street from time to time where the inside of every house is painfully similar, but not in Kij Johnson’s work.

If I was now traveling this figurative street laid down by Johnson–let’s call it the Street of the River of Bees–every door would let in on an exceptionally different world, regardless that the houses were furnished by the same hand. Some common themes do run throughout the collection: obsession is one that turns up often, and many of the stories center around or heavily feature animals. I wasn’t a fan of all the stories, for me there were certainly a few duds, but by and large I was drawn right in.

One of the longer tales here, “The Man Who Bridged the Mist”, is about one architect’s obsession with his craft and the trial of completing his greatest work: a bridge over a vast and monster-filled river of mysterious mist. Living for years among the people in the very towns destined to be connected by the project, the architect forms relationships with the locals and encounters both the human toll and development that comes with the massive project. I have a friend whose great passion happens to be architecture, and “The Man Who Bridged the Mist” brought to mind many of the things he’s spoken and written about in the past on the subject. As soon as I finished it I sent him the first part of the story (alas, not all of it), which can be linked to for free from Johnson’s website. If you’re interested, a selection of stories from this book are available there in their entirety.

One of the great things about short stories, actually, is just how easy they are to share. Recommending a novel is one thing, handing someone a collection and telling to check out a certain ten-page story in it is another.  Kids, and kids-at-heart, can crack open a book of scary tales around a campfire, a practice second only to telling them off by heart, and happily ruin any chance of their friends having an easy sleep that night. And now, in this day and age, granted its been made available, we can sometimes share a story using just a link on the internet. They can be read in the space of a lunch hour and then you’ve shared far more than just a body of text–you’ve shared ideas, images, characters and a world. You’ve both been to the same house on that twilit street. You may have seen it very differently, regardless that everything is always laid out the same inside, but still you were both there for a while, and you can discuss what you saw and experienced anytime you want.

So yes, the story of how I acquired this collection is anything but exciting, but Bees certainly took me for a ride, filled with destroyed civilizations, a sojourning cat, an infatuated fox, wolf packs, a girl who will one day have an ocean on another planet named after her, enigmatic performing monkeys, invasive gelatinous alien sex (it’s as weird as it sounds . . . actually much weirder), the land of the dead, the obligatory river of bees, and other things I don’t encounter in my day-to-day, which I can’t say about Amazon and the creeping corporate tendrils it has twined into my reading life.

Hey, I’ve got an idea for a terrifying sci-fi: a device you can’t help but love, that can hold a thousand purchased books you don’t actually own, and keeps running out of battery.

Pages: 300  FoA pages:  18,070

The Little Free Public Library, which I still know very little about but to which this structure belonged, appears to be a community activity in which households can request and plant a bookhouse in their front yard. The structures are amazingly sturdy, waterproof, easily accessible from the sidewalk, and pretty cute. No membership is required, and anyone passing by is welcome to take or drop off a book or two. You’re also encouraged to write notes and reviews in the books for other readers to find. (If only Romeo and Juliet had been blessed with access to such a convenient means of communication!) Soon, another such structure was installed closer to our house, and it was on my first visit to this bookhouse that I found The Help.

I was about to complete my time working as a nanny with a 2-year-old boy, and was struck to the quick when I read the final pages of The Help as Aibileen is fired and Mae Mobley cries in agony at her apparent abandonment. Of course, Aibileen wasn’t abandoning her, but to her 4-year-old mind, she couldn’t understand why Aibileen was leaving. “Oh my gosh,” I said internally as I thought about my little guy, “He’s going to think I’m abandoning him.”

Even though my little boy’s family are dear friends of ours, take pains to keep us in touch, and love him dearly (decidedly not Mae Mobley’s situation), I still wanted to make sure he knew that I wasn’t abandoning him. I had no idea what to do, though, and after sharing this concern with some friends at church, God showed me that I needed to become an author myself. Yes, The Help inspired a much shorter, simpler picture book entitled, Mrs. Holly’s Year of Construction Education. My little guy and I read his new book every day of my final week, and his parents continue reading it with him often, so he is reminded that I love him and won’t forget him. I’m not sure if it’s this message or the pictures of himself seated in various trucks that he likes so much, but I feel better knowing that he has a reminder of our precious time together and an explanation of why I’m gone.

Total number of pages: 464, FoA pages: 17,770 (The total number of pages reported upon by the Friends of Atticus)

Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro 

The Wool Omnibus by Hugh Howey

How to Be Black by Baratunde Thurston

I’ll Trade You and Elk by Charles A. Goodrum

The Unincorporated Man by Dani & Eytan Kollin

]]> https://friendsofatticus.wordpress.com/2013/04/25/the-four-post-review-no-12/feed/ 0 friendsofatticus IMG_1053 IMG_2028 howtobeblack IMG_3881 The Unincorporated Man https://friendsofatticus.wordpress.com/2013/04/23/the-unincorporated-man-by-dany-eytan-kollin/ https://friendsofatticus.wordpress.com/2013/04/23/the-unincorporated-man-by-dany-eytan-kollin/#comments Tue, 23 Apr 2013 06:25:57 +0000 Steve Gerner http://friendsofatticus.wordpress.com/?p=1486 Continue reading »

I stumbled across The Unincorporated Man by brothers Dani and Eytan Kollin in my GoodReads recommendations a few weeks ago and the description immediately piqued my interest. The Unincorporated Man explores issues around social justice, individualism, and freedom. As an enthusiastic reader of Saint Augustine, Kant, Locke, and Rawls you might see the immediate appeal the Kollin brothers’ utopian / dystopian future of social, political, and economic equality of opportunity holds for me.

The Kollin brothers craft an intriguing socio-economic future which literally left me riveted to the edge of my seat for the first third of the novel. If you just burst out laughing over the visual of someone eagerly yearning for macro-economics, my only defense is at least I fly my nerd flag openly. Nevertheless, I think you will agree the economic system and world building of The Unincorporated Man almost singularly makes it a compelling novel.

The novel revolves around Justin Cord, a cryogenically frozen 21^st century American resurrected into a 24^th century in which individuals sell shares or equity in themselves giving up a percentage of their future income to investors in return for immediate cash. Individual Corporation attempts to harness capitalism to align personal interests with the good of other individuals and the collective. By owning a percentage of the future income of another, the owner is invested in the overall personal good of the worker rather than just the product of their labor, but the owner also gains some limited control over the worker’s life choices. Essentially, Individual Corporation attempts to turn selfishness into a virtue at the cost of individual freedoms. Does this remind you of any other morally reprehensible social arrangement cloaked in pseudo-scientific language?

The world of The Unincorporated Man is far from an intriguing thought experiment. Platforms currently exist for individuals to sell stock in themselves to investors for a percentage of an individual’s future income over a set term, making this novel a terrifying and intriguing possibility. Predicting the mess that might be appear from a poorly regulated futures market in individual equity or unscrupulous elites exploiting exotic options excites a perverse glee in me. Financial engineers the world over may rise to the challenge, but I suspect getting bogged down in the intricacies of The Unincorporated Man’s economic system is beyond the point.

Similar to most science fiction, The Unincorporated Man is fundamentally a mirror of contemporary society exploring the meaning and relation of freedom to the individual and collective. The Kollin brothers’ libertarian bent shows prominently (e.g. the reader is repeatedly force feed the evils of fiat currency) and offers an intriguing critique on the limitations and responsibilities of contemporary rights based freedom.  The dangers of centralized economic power in the hands of corporation, household debt by proxy, and social mores as means of restricting personal autonomy feature prominently and offer an important reminder to citizens and leaders alike. I largely disagree with the conclusions the Kollin brothers reach; however, I thoroughly enjoyed the journey along the way.

While The Unincorporated Man is filled with big ideas which challenge and explore contemporary norms, that is about all the novel has going for it. The plot line is contrived and forced with several unresolved and essentially pointless side plots in a poorly imitated parade of classic 1960s and 1970s science fiction tropes. Character development leaves much to be desired. The main character oozes a ridiculous combination of machismo and rugged individualism better set in an over-the-top Western conjuring up some romanticized illusion of America’s golden age rather than a serious exploration of social justice and economic theory. The leading lady is a one dimensional caricature of 1950s femininity. Overall I find the writing style and structure flat and uninspired.

Yet the often horrendous writing and character development of The Unincorporated Man should not deter you from the novel. In the vein of Ayn Rand, the authors’ choice of fiction is simply a tool to explore libertarian ideas and perhaps a better choice given the likely alternative dry tomb of ivory tower erudition. We’ve all enjoyed a trashy poorly written book (my guilty pleasure is young adult zombie novels) and in terms of writing quality, little more is on offer. I can already visualize the abysmal stiff B-list acting and overblown special effects of the straight-to-video movie adaptation. But, the Kollin brothers have done a brilliant job encouraging contemplation, reflection, and at least in my case some heated rants to my cat and my Kindle about some truly great and worthwhile ideas which more than compensates for the limitations of plot, characters, and writing. In the end, there’s little more you can ask for.

Total number of pages: 479, FoA pages: 17,306 (The total number of pages reported upon by the Friends of Atticus)

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Such a book is like a close friend:

-comfortable enough that you can fall asleep with it in your lap

-pleasant enough to spend a lot of time with

-interesting enough that you want to check in and see what’s new

-jovial enough to make you smile after a long and stressful day

-confident enough of your interest in its life that it doesn’t force you to come over every day

-considerate enough to let you get your rest and put your must’s first

-faithful enough to be there whenever you have time

I found such a companion at a used book sale at the local library right before our move to China. Through the 13-hour flight (plus 3 more hours sitting on the tarmac before take-off due to technical difficulties while every child on the plane decided to throw a fit), jet lag, and initial culture shock, I’ll Trade you an Elk was a comforting presence. After a fitless nap on the plane or a day of fighting the crowds in Beijing, I could return “home” to my familiar friend for some light conversation and gentle humor.

I’ll Trade you an Elk is the true story of the Wichita zoo during the Great Depression, told from the point of view of the zoo manager’s son. The story is charming, the problems, though highly unusual, strangely relate-able, and the characters as regular and realistic as your neighbors. You feel empathy for their struggles, but not so strongly that you break down crying in the airport (an extremely awkward sight – take it from one who knows).

As a whole, I’ll Trade you an Elk leaves a pleasant taste in your mouth, which is more than I can say for airline food. Next time you’re in for a stressful month at work or transition in life, check out this heartwarming read for your own relaxation, not to mention sanity.

Total number of pages: 192, FoA pages: 16,827 (The total number of pages reported upon by the Friends of Atticus)

I first became aware of Baratunde Thurston while watching This Week in Tech (TWiT), a weekly podcast featuring pundits ranging from tech writers and bloggers to the geekerati, economists, columnists and humorists. Every week, the show features a small number of these guests, three or four, to talk tech with the host, Leo Laporte. Thurston appeared irregularly, maybe two or three times a year. He drew me in with his comic wit (he was, at the time, the director of digital at The Onion, after all) and perspective, a unique synthesis of technology and pop culture. I found out about How To Be Black while watching TWiT; Thurston, while guest-hosting, plugged his book and I decided to try to find it for Kindle.

Thurston, while talking about his book, wanted to start a discussion about race in America. He alluded that it’s better to deal with real, heavy and serious issues with a touch of humor. Controversial issues, sensitive issues, issues of any sort: race, religion, gender and sex, are best handled with the disarming approach of humor, a spoonful of sugar. Thurston draws on a wealth of personal experience, as well as his seven person “Black Panel”, six black entertainers, comedians, activist, entrepreneurs and musicians and Christian Lander of “Stuff White People Like” fame (providing a “group control” as Thurston puts it). The book is divided into chapters with titles like, “How to Be the Black Friend”, “Being Black at Harvard”, “How to Be the Angry Negro”, “How to Be the (Next) Black President” and “How’s That Post-Racial Thing Working Out For Ya?”, each chapter ending with input from Thurston’s Black Panel. Intentionally so, this book is an important step in addressing race and post-racialism.

I remember when President Obama won his first election. There were many reasons to be excited. However there was a lot of talk about the race issue. Some Obama supporters breathed a sigh of relief, patted themselves on the back and congratulated themselves for heralding in a ‘post-racial’ America. The fact that post-racialism never left the collective conversation proved, in a kind of meta way, that we were far beyond race and racialism, that in spite of electing a half black, half white president, it was still at the forefront of the collective conscious. We couldn’t stop talking about our “black” president. Obama’s election didn’t usher in an era of post-racialism; however, it made talking about race more acceptable and therein lies an important distinction, one that this book makes and is a step toward a brave, inclusive discussion initiated by Thurston throughout the book. As the author asks at the end of the penultimate chapter, “So if the future is a United States in which race is no longer the primary issue that binds or divides us, then (a) why have you read this far in a book called How to Be Black, [...]?”

Inclusion is an important word when relating to this book. While Thurston is black, most of his Black Panel was black and a substantial number of his audience is black (I wouldn’t venture to guess as to whether it’s a plurality or majority). I’m white, he plugged this book as the only black guest-host on TWiT that day and many of his fans are white (and Latino and Asian and all the other colors of the rainbow). This is the new direction of discussion about race in America and this book is one of its first, most important steps. Let’s not kid ourselves that we’re beyond race. The day America is beyond race is the day that the last guns are melted down and made into a memorial. Race is part of our national identity. The back and forth on how we’ve handled it; Jim Crow, segregation, King’s pacifism and X’s early militarism, Obama’s victory and the publication of How To Be Black, these are the footprints of who we are, a trail from where we came. But I must say, I like Thurston’s direction. I like having been invited to the dialogue and hearing what he had to say. What was black? What is black? What will black be? We all have a stake in promoting and supporting this dialogue and not stifling it with the beliefe that we live in a post-racial America.

While reading this book, I considered my own minority status. As previously mentioned in my last post, I currently live in South Korea. I found a lot of what Thurston and the Black Panel had to say relevant to my own experience here in small but significant ways. When I first came to Korea back in 2010, it was nearly impossible for a foreigner to get a credit card or smart phone (first world problems, I know). I still face elements of discrimination and segregation, taxi drivers being rude and old drunk men yelling at me to go home, save Korea for the Koreans. While racialism in Korea is a whole other conversation entirely, I had to stop myself from thinking I had experienced anything like what Thurston and the Black Panel (minus Christian Lander) had experienced themselves. While I am a minority here in Korea, I am of the most privileged group in the world: I am a white, middle-class male.

What I got out of reading this book is not what I have in common with minorities but what I have avoided. I came to Asia by my own accord. Every choice I make is my own and I don’t have to remain in any place or situation unless I choose otherwise. It’s too easy to fall into a victim mentality, even as a privileged minority. Sometimes I forget just how far my privilege goes. Though I’m not black nor am I marginalized, I am grateful to have been included in this new discussion on race. Discussing race is not taboo. Race is a part of who we are, our identity. That’s not a bad thing, nor is talking about blackness. I never would have imagined that reading a book entitled How To Be Black would help me figure out who I am in the context of living in an East-Asian country. By participating, I am better able to define myself. I think that was Thurston’s point all along.

How To Be Black is funny, sincere and too short of a read. I highly recommend it.

Pages: 272 FoA Pages: 16,735

Halfway through reading Wool, I realized that Mr. Howey had also pulled off quite an interesting trick by publishing the book himself.

My grandfather self-published a textbook in the 1970s, so I grew up with the knowledge that you could write a book and get it professionally printed and bound without going through the rigors of satisfying some publisher’s editorial board.  But in my experience, those books rarely circulated beyond the bookshelves of family and friends—and here was a book, with cover art and an ISBN!  A book we’d discovered through normal searches on Amazon, that urbane purveyor of new literature and yoga mats!  In other words—a self-published book procured accidentally through wholly normal means!

As it turns out, things have changed since the 1970s.  Wool is a collection of five novellas, the first of which was distributed on Kindle in 2011 as a $1 short story.  It was a hit on the Kindle market, so Mr. Howey wrote more—a lot more.  The five novellas in Wool range in length from 40 pages to nearly 200, adding up to a healthy 532 pages cover to cover.  That said, it’s not very dense reading; I got through it in a just over a week, and I’m not a particularly dedicated reader.

Wool is a well-written book about a unique dystopian future I hope humanity never faces.  Particularly due to the book being self-published, I was pleasantly surprised by Mr. Howey’s unoffensive writing style and tantalizing plot progression—two points on which I can be a bit persnickety.  In fact, I found myself impressed by Mr. Howey’s ability to captivate my interest in his bleak world, which he reveals through a thrilling and deliberate plot progression.  Let me say right here that I happily stamp the book with my seal of approval.  Go read it.

That said, I do have my complaints—as I do with all new literature (and by new, I am referring to all literature where the author is not yet deceased).  The original short was written to be a standalone story, and it shows: the story does little more than set the stage for the rest of the book.  On the other hand, the rest of the book suffers from an opposite malaise, beginning and ending like TV season premiers and finales, unable to stand alone.

This carries into my second complaint, which is that the story is not finished even in Wool‘s 500 pages.  Although it concludes at a good resting point, my understanding is that Mr. Howey is still writing new portions.  I must sarcastically note here that the Bible handles creation in a few paragraphs, and Mr. Howey is struggling to destroy the world under a thousand pages.

The most thought-provoking aspect of Wool, however, was the process by which it got into my hands.  The book was made available through Amazon’s print service, which allows authors to send a book-length text and cover art to Amazon, and advertise in the Amazon marketplace for a minimal initial cost.  When someone makes an order, Amazon hits the print button, sends a book to the buyer, takes a 15% cut off the profit, and sends the remaining cash to the author.  Thus, when my sister and mother both decided to buy the book, Amazon printed two copies and Mr. Howey got a $34 check.

On its face, it seems like this process would wind up flooding the literary market with junk.  I could, after all, send Amazon the text of the blog I kept in college, put it up for $5, and make four bucks every time someone decided the cover art looked worth the purchase.  One successful online ad campaign later, my college travails could be on some snarky bestseller list.

On the other hand, crowd-sourcing the editorial process opens the market to authors and ideas that previously would have been dismissed in favor of yet-another-favorite-from-last-year’s-bestselling-author, a la everything published since 1974.  When you consider the number of writers there are in the world, and think about how few authors are featured or advertised at Barnes & Noble (and as a former B&N employee, I should know), the old model doesn’t seem particularly robust, after all.  Do we really, actually, need yet another novel from Steven King?  Or Mary Higgins Clark?  Or Nicholas Sparks?

Wool is a great example of what can go right in the new democratized publishing process.  A well-written, intriguing short story can propel hitherto unknown authors into overnight fortune and relative fame, inspiring more from the minds with the best ideas.  I thoroughly enjoyed Mr. Howey’s work, and will probably read more from him in years to come.  In his case, the crowd turned out to be right.

And yet, I worry that the crowd will often turn out to be right only about the story—and not about literature.  One of the most important aspects of literature is its ability to impact culture: to voice ideas and shape the context of debates in ways we hadn’t thought about before.  And while great literature does this through great storytelling, it seems to me that what wins in a crowd-sourced book market is not the greatness of an idea, but the greatness of a well-told story.

Wool is a captivating story and a unique concept.  It’s a world worth exploring.  It prompts questions worth asking about the role of central governments, the frailty of human plans, and the value of human life—but only, it seems, accidentally.  Truthfully, Mr. Howey needed a stricter editor to make him finish the story.  He needed a sharper critic to help him cut his story’s many extraneous portions and overburdened explanations.  In short, he needed a publishing house to help him iron out his natural imperfections as a writer, because despite his obvious talent, none of us is as good alone as we could be with good editors.

There are the seeds of a great book in Wool, but unfortunately the process by which it came to be—this delightfully 21^st century crowd-sourced book market—has, in my opinion, robbed Mr. Howey of the opportunity and the environment needed to make Wool a true work of literature.  As it stands, of course, I still regard the book (and its many portions yet to come) as a fascinating, well-told story, quite worth reading.  But probably only once.

Wool, by Hugh Howey (2012), $20
Pages: 532 / 16,463