Collected Miscellany

Believe it or not, what first attracted me to Adam Fawer’s first novel Improbable was the web page. It was interesting and interactive and I thought that if the web page is cool the book might be equally fun.

And this much can be safely said about Improbable: it is a wild ride. It is a unconventional mix of poker, statistics, philosophy, and action packed suspense thriller.

The basic story line, if there is one in this multi-layered plot, centers on David Caine a one time graduate student at Columbia who was forced to leave school due to debilitating seizures. Caine is surviving by playing high stakes poker – Texas hold ’em to be exact. His uncanny ability to rapidly calculate probabilities in his head makes him a excellent card player. His seizures, however, are devastating and disrupting any semblance of a normal life.

The book starts with Caine sitting on one of the strongest hand in poker, four aces, while at the same time fighting off a seizure. As he madly calculates the probability of someone having a better hand, very low, he is trying not pass out before the game is over. Unfortunately for Caine he both loses the hand and passes out. Next thing he knows he is in a hospital and owes the Russian mob a lot of money.

From there the plot thickens, twists and turns, and gets more complex practically with every page. You have un-ethical scientists using human subjects to test wild theories about the unconscious mind; there is a beautiful renegade CIA agent; there is a secret government agency devoted to stealing cutting edge scientific research with a renegade director of the agency out to help only himself. Not to mention Caine’s twin brother who has a history of mental illness; a high school buddy who wins the lottery; and a girl who needs a bone transplant.

All of this centers around Caine. Apparently Caine’s seizures are a result of an ability to tap into the collective unconscious and see the future – or at least potential futures. The book alternates explorations and explanations of the ideas behind probability theory, chaos theory, determinism, genetic biology, etc. to weave a story of how this fantastic plot might be scientifically possible with action packed scenes of Caine on the run from a variety of bad people.

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The NYT has a book review of Kevin Guilfoyle’s novel Cast of Shadows this weekend written by Spin contributor Mark Schone. I don’t know if the men are related by marriage, drinking buddies, or complete strangers, but Schone has nice things to say about Guilfoyle’s novel while acknowledging the subject of cloning to be fair game for literary reservations.

Last week Galley Cat quoted an email from an anonymous source; the courageous emailer ripped Guilfoyle and the novel he rode in on leaving GC to ponder a broader issue; was Guilfoyle’s association with the Morning News bound to lead to a softball review by his editorial peers? GC recuses herself on the grounds she hadn’t read the novel, but it seemed a bit of disservice to Guilfoyle. A casual reading of her column might’ve led readers to believe that she was dissing the guy.

Conspiracy theories aside, Kevin Guilfoyle can balance the unidentified flying snark with a full review in the Times. It takes longer to write a novel than it does to write an email; I think it’s fitting that Guilfoyle got an actual review of his work while the anonymous source is relegated to the bush leagues. Galley Cat could even cover the real story, Guilfoyle’s novel.

Traffic at this blog seems to drop like a rock on the weekends starting on Friday’s. So in a vain attempt to bump that up and give readers something fun to do, I thought I would join in on a few of the memes kicking around the ‘sphere these days.

–> Ed started this one about AFI’s Top 100 Films. Below is my list (with those I have seen in bold):
1. CITIZEN KANE (1941)
2. CASABLANCA (1942)
3. THE GODFATHER (1972)
4. GONE WITH THE WIND (1939)
5. LAWRENCE OF ARABIA (1962)
6. THE WIZARD OF OZ (1939)
7. THE GRADUATE (1967)
8. ON THE WATERFRONT (1954)
9. SCHINDLER’S LIST (1993)
10. SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN (1952)
11. IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE (1946)
12. SUNSET BOULEVARD (1950)
13. THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI (1957)
14. SOME LIKE IT HOT (1959)
15. STAR WARS (1977)
16. ALL ABOUT EVE (1950)
17. THE AFRICAN QUEEN (1951)
18. PSYCHO (1960)
19. CHINATOWN (1974)
20. ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST (1975)
21. THE GRAPES OF WRATH (1940)
22. 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968)
23. THE MALTESE FALCON (1941)
24. RAGING BULL (1980)
25. E.T. THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL (1982)
26. DR. STRANGELOVE (1964)
27. BONNIE AND CLYDE (1967)
28. APOCALYPSE NOW (1979)
29. MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON (1939)
30. THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE (1948)
31. ANNIE HALL (1977)
32. THE GODFATHER PART II (1974)
33. HIGH NOON (1952)
34. TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD (1962)
35. IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT (1934)
36. MIDNIGHT COWBOY (1969)
37. THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES (1946)
38. DOUBLE INDEMNITY (1944)
39. DOCTOR ZHIVAGO (1965)
40. NORTH BY NORTHWEST (1959)
41. WEST SIDE STORY (1961)
42. REAR WINDOW (1954)
43. KING KONG (1933)
44. THE BIRTH OF A NATION (1915)
45. A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE (1951)
46. A CLOCKWORK ORANGE (1971)
47. TAXI DRIVER (1976)
48. JAWS (1975)
49. SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS (1937)
50. BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID (1969)
51. THE PHILADELPHIA STORY (1940)
52. FROM HERE TO ETERNITY (1953)
53. AMADEUS (1984)
54. ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT (1930)
55. THE SOUND OF MUSIC (1965)56. M*A*S*H (1970)
57. THE THIRD MAN (1949)
58. FANTASIA (1940)
59. REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE (1955)
60. RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (1981)
61. VERTIGO (1958)
62. TOOTSIE (1982)
63. STAGECOACH (1939)
64. CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND (1977)
65. THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (1991)
66. NETWORK (1976)
67. THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE (1962)
68. AN AMERICAN IN PARIS (1951)
69. SHANE (1953)
70. THE FRENCH CONNECTION (1971)
71. FORREST GUMP (1994)
72. BEN-HUR (1959)
73. WUTHERING HEIGHTS (1939)
74. THE GOLD RUSH (1925)
75. DANCES WITH WOLVES (1990)
76. CITY LIGHTS (1931)
77. AMERICAN GRAFFITI (1973)
78. ROCKY (1976)
79. THE DEER HUNTER (1978)
80. THE WILD BUNCH (1969)
81. MODERN TIMES (1936)
82. GIANT (1956)
83. PLATOON (1986)
84. FARGO (1996)
85. DUCK SOUP (1933)
86. MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY (1935)
87. FRANKENSTEIN (1931)
88. EASY RIDER (1969)
89. PATTON (1970)
90. THE JAZZ SINGER (1927)
91. MY FAIR LADY (1964)
92. A PLACE IN THE SUN (1951)
93. THE APARTMENT (1960)
94. GOODFELLAS (1990)
95. PULP FICTION (1994)
96. THE SEARCHERS (1956)
97. BRINGING UP BABY (1938)
98. UNFORGIVEN (1992)
99. GUESS WHO’S COMING TO DINNER (1967)
100. YANKEE DOODLE DANDY (1942)

I guess you can see I am a book person not a film person. What’s that 36? Ed had 96!

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Yesterday was World Book Day for the UK and Ireland. No, I don’t know why it isn’t the UK and Ireland Book Day or why it isn’t Book Day in the rest of the world. Stop thinking about it.

This year’s theme was “Spread the Word.” A survey, conducted for The Booksellers Association (I believe), shows that sales are highly influence by personal recommendations. BBC News reports, “Other factors which are said to influence readers’ book choices are the synopsis on the back cover, the jacket design – but much fewer people are swayed by advertising campaigns.” These factors as well as reader faithfulness to an author or “author loyalty” are the meat and potatoes of bookselling.

[Enter The Lit-Blogger, stage right]

Given my review of Rosa in the post below I thought it might be interesting to post a few quotes from Jonathan Rabb on how he approaches writing. Here he is on starting a book:

The process of writing a book starts, for me, with a place in time that I find intriguing. I begin to do a little research — if possible, with novels written at the time — and then, if all goes well, I experience a kind of flash of complete understanding a few weeks later. Every character, every setting, every moment of tension, choice, betrayal, and resolution comes into perfect focus. But only for an instant. It’s as if I’ve been given this one chance to see how the book is meant to be, and the rest of the process – the next year to year and a half – is spent trying to recapture everything from that flash. Of course, I never manage to get it all, but that moment floats above and acts as a kind of guide.

Luckily, there are some bits that remain clearer than others. The general arc of the book – the scenes that I know I have to get to – usually seems pretty well fixed, but what happens between the scenes is left for me to discover. And, I suppose, I prefer it that way. I’ve never been one for detailed outlines. I have the five or six scenes that stand out – usually those when choices are made and, later on, when consequences play out – but, aside from that, I like to see how the characters get from one place to another as they go.

Also of interest is how he approaches historical fiction or the type of books that he writes:

What resonates most strongly from the flash, however, is a connection with one or two of the characters. In my first two books, that wasn’t much of a stretch since the main characters were, to a greater or lesser degree, versions of myself. This time around, it was something entirely different, not just because the main character was someone I had to get to know, but because one of the characters wasn’t a person, but the city of Berlin. That might seem odd, but I’ve come to discover that place is as much a living, breathing thing as are the people who inhabit it.

Once all of that is in place, I go back to research. For my last book, I put together nearly fifty pages of single-spaced typed notes on language, settings, characters, clothing, etc., 95% of which never made it into the book. I do that because I have to feel absolutely certain in the world I’m creating before I begin to write, otherwise how can I expect a reader to accept that world as something possible. And that is always of critical importance given the type of books I write. My fiction is of the “what-if” variety. I like to find moments in history where there are gaps, or unknowns, and then play with what might have been. This is different from taking something we know and saying, “actually it happened differently.” I’m not one for rewriting history, or for distorting things we know to be true in aid of fiction. I take what we know surrounding the moment, make sure I relate it in authentic terms, and then create my own story inside the gap . . . As long as the reader trusts me in the first thirty pages or so – that I know this world, and that he or she is now stepping into it – what I then decide to create on my own will fit into that reality, and the reader will have no choice but to follow along.