we’ve obviously never had a beer together. i hate practically everything.
with that said, i’m finding it really easy to find good things to say about books so far this year. i think that’s because the books i’m just happening to read this year are so much better than the books i just happened to read last year, which was maybe the worst year ever between me and books. the thing that turned everything around was the last book i started in 2008, which was the first book i finished in 2009. i recommend the hardcover version.
all of this by way of explaining the fact that i’ve said positive things in every post so far, and now i’m going to say positive things again.
the positive thing’s are about jedediah berry’s new novel, the manual of detection. i first read jed’s stuff back in college. we were in a workshop together my junior year. it was my first, and for all i know it was his too, but no one would have guessed it from reading his stories, which i swear were ready for publication even then.
but the thing is, they were also really different, and in order to understand how different they were you have to think back to 1997. in 1997, jed was writing “literary” stories about sorcerors and goblins and shit. i knew that there was some precedent for that. okay, the only precedent i knew of for that at the time was angela carter, but she seemed more like an anomaly than a precedent, and their sensibilities seemed so different.
you are not alone
jed probably wouldn’t agree with me on that last because mod pays direct homage to carter (along with others who i never connected jed to at the time, like borges and also those guys who made city of lost children), but i now think more than ever that i was right. who are you going to believe, me or him?
here’s my take:
there’s a border between kafka’s dread and chesterton’s (who also gets his due in the book) wackiness that nobody knew was there until jed started publishing. maybe walser, but you get the sense reading him that he’s always about to go off the rails (which is good in its own way), where jed never gives the impression that he has anything less than complete control.
so even though, after kelly link’s (much deserved) success, i could stop worrying that jed’s books would be published with, like, a virile wizard and a sexy fairy on the cover, i also knew that he would still seem different, even though genre stuff has become “respectable.”
the plot is awesome, but you can learn about that in the reviews. here is a randomly selected bit of prose (you can do that with him because it’s all consistently strong, and also hypnotic in its rhythm):
The crowds thinned. From chimneys crooked fingers of smoke pointed at the clouds. Barren clotheslines sagged dripping over the street, and a few windows glowed yellow against the day’s persistent gloom.
the atmosphere is obvious. the imagery is almost dickensian, but the cadence belongs to berry. the way the prepositional phrase precedes the subject in the second sentence helps the smoke fingers skirt cliche because they’re immediately allowed to point at the clouds, and the subsequent use of adjective forms where adverbs are called for creates a more subtle syncopation. sorry to get all didactic.
so, in summation: read jed’s book and think about retiring, and i will not type on here again until i have something mean to say.