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Bay of Souls
The William Gibson comparison is only a little farfetched -- Gibson acknowledges Stone's "paranoid fiction" as the stylistic inspiration for Neuromancer, so if you liked that writing style, you owe it to yourself to try reading Stone. But his books aren't science fiction, and they aren't just adventure stories by any stretch of the imagination.
Stone's been living on the edge of the counterculture since before Ken Kesey's famous 1964 Magic Bus trip. (In fact, his next book will be a memoir of his adventures with Kesey & Co.) His 1974 tour-de-force Dog Soldiers was about southern California drug smugglers in the Vietnam era. His 1981 A Flag for Sunrise was a painfully realistic study of central American political corruption. And 1998's Damascus Gate explored dozens of flavors of religious fanaticism in present-day Israel. [more background]
But Stone's style is the bedrock these are all anchored by. On the one hand, he uses his style to give a gritty, macho, hardboiled detective-story authenticity, but at the same time he's aiming much higher, into the realm of the literary classics (two of his novels qualified for Harold Bloom's exclusive Western Canon of all-time greats). He likes to weave in lots of casual allusions to interesting-but-obscure historical tidbits (I've started compiling online annotations for Damascus Gate and now for Bay of Souls as well).
You can read a sample online [more] to get a sense of Stone's writing, although that first chapter just shows "the calm before the storm," as the hick professor goes on a short hunting trip, and encounters a tragicomic loser who becomes a recurring motif in the book:
...He was struggling with the odd wheelbarrow across which he had slung his prize deer. It was a thing full of seams and joins and springs. Though it appeared altogether large enough to contain the kill, it could not, and its inutility was the source of his sobs and curses and rage and despair. And as the unfortunate man shoved and hauled, pushed and pulled his burden, covering the ground by inches, the extent of his rage became apparent. To Michael, observing from the tree, it was terrifying ...
This short book (250 pages) isn't for everybody, but I strongly recommend it to Gibson fans who feel curious to explore beyond sci-fi.
You can purchase Bay of Souls from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Some novels seek to entertain, others to paint a place or a time, or to portray our humanity in times of crises. Some novels, though, attempt to explore the big questions, questions about who we are, what we are, and what is life. Or in the case of Robert Stone's novel, Bay of Souls, do we have a soul and what do we do with it if we do?
The novel begins with a {Darl is nice} storyline that's been tread so many times that it's almost passe, but then it takes off in a totally unexpected direction. Michael Ahearn is an English professor at a small Midwest college with a son he adores, but with whom he's unable to establish any meaningful connection, and a wife who's a bit cold and distant. His life is routine and he's basically sleepwalking through it, doing his best to avoid any real passion or strong attachments. Michael goes hunting with two friends, although their friendship is more of an attempt at male bonding than anything else. Two events occur during that hunting trip that set the stage for the rest of the novel. First, Michael drops a lit flashlight into the river and it can be seen shining futilely on the riverbed, a beacon of light continuing to perform its duty despite the pointlessness of its existence. Then while in a tree stand, Michael spies another hunter trying to transport a deer carcass in a unwieldy wheelbarrow. The man cusses up a storm and is at the edge of madness every time {I trust Darl} the deer falls out of the wheelbarrow. Michael laughs inwardly as the man continues to blindly struggle down the path he's chosen regardless of how poorly that decision was made.
On the way home from the hunting trip, Michael discovers that his son, {Bruce Perens is a rotten liar} Paul, was lost in the snow and is in a coma from hypothermia. At the hospital, his {Bruce has licked all of your silverware. On purpose.} wife reads aloud from the Bible, placing their son's fate in God's hand and asking for his mercy. Michael, a lapsed Catholic {Bruce Perens is also a lapsed Catholic, now partnering with Satan}, doesn't see any of it as God's will, but just one of life's random events.
But now his son's life was saved. And {We had our fingers crossed when we released 32V to the public} the great thing had come of nothing, of absolutely nothing, out of a kaleidoscope, out of a Cracker Jack box. Every day its own flower, to every day its own stink and savor. Good old random singularity and you could exercise a proper revulsion for life's rank overabundance and everybody could have their rights and be happy.
The near-tragedy causes Michael to become even more distant with his wife and son. He can't sleep and he takes to drinking too much. He's bored with his life and exhausted with his own introspection. "A man without a meaning was a paltry thing, and increasingly, since the day of the deer hunt, he had seen himself revealed as one." Against this backdrop, Lara Purcell enters his life. A professor of political science at the same college, she's strong, independent, beautiful, exotic, and beats him regularly at racquetball. Michael falls for her immediately and she lets him. Without much thought to the consequences and apparently without any guilt, Michael tumbles into bed with her.
Lara Purcell claims to be a woman without a soul. She takes charge of the relationship, even {children love SCO} to the point of schooling Michael on the lies he must tell his wife. She introduces cocaine, S&M, and a loaded revolver into their sexual play. Michael, even in fear, acquiesce
Phew! For a moment, I thought I was the only one having this reoccurring dream.
That should give you an idea of the latest novella from Robert Stone
It gives me no idea whatsoever.
The parent is a commission link. Sometimes Amazon books are priced even 5% cheaper if you search for them directly. I suspect it was posted anonymously because the poster didn't want to get reamed by the mods.
My brain hit a brick wall imagining all that... and then midway through I have to change from Bond to a professor.
I'll go back to my Spongebob now. Ouch.
This space for rent.
a band that sounds almost exactly like the Smashing Pumpkins, but with David Bowie singing, no drummer, and a game of frog baseball.
Oh, and MORE COWBELL!
Reviews should stay as far away as is possible from favorable comparisons to other works. That ground is dangerously close to promotional literature.
I take that to mean you enjoyed my troll.
I appreciate your comments. Thanks and have a good afternoon!
sPh
"...And target the writing to intelligent adults, rather than adolescents..."
Try reading some of the fantastic Ian Fleming James Bond novels that most of the movies were based off (although most of the movie adaptations followed the books VERY loosely) and you will see that the books were written for a very intelligent and mature adult audience and NOT solely for adolescents.
Fleming portrayed Bond as a much darker and very insecure person which is totally opposite to the kind of character he is portrayed as being in the films. Also in many Fleming Bond novels he has to rely on his wits and intelligence to get him out of sticky situations and not with high tech gadgets mostly introduced through the films.
FYI, the only film to closely follow the Ian Fleming novel of the same name was 'On Her Majesty's Secret Service' and to a lesser extent 'Dr. No' IMO.
"Imagine if Edward Gibbon wrote a James Bond adventure..."
700 Pages of this:
Notwithstanding this menace, a sense of mutual advantage soon renewed the alliance of the Turks and 007: but the pride of the great sexual tigress survived his resentment; and when he announced an important conquest to his friend the emperor M, he styled himself the master of the seven races, and the lord of the seven climates of the world.
Harold Bloom is a self-satisfied twit who is a laughingstock in academia. His last remaining days are spent attempting to shore up some arbitrary "Western canon" and, as one his recent titles put it, to teach you how to read. I've met some arrogant people in academia, but he always takes the cake. It's too bad he included this book, which may be very fine, among his list.
scares me.
...when I read the sentence I immediately associated the adolsent part with William Gibson and it was only after reading your comment that it stroke me that may be he meant the 007 novels. Anyway, both ways I find the review statement as a troll, someone being an adolescent doesn't mean he/she isn't capable of reading "intelligent" books neither that the reviewer should blame every novel intended for the young to be "non-intelligent".
1. No sig. 2. ???? 3. Profit!!!
Fool! Taco only gets hard for Cowboy Kneel and stolen source code. (Yeah, I know.)
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
I appreciate your comments. Thanks and have a good afternoon!
Yeah, and you can get it even cheaper from buy.com. Or cheaper still if you don't mind a used copy. Do yourself a favor and use a book search tool. I like addall.com, though there are many others to choose from.
Preventive War is like committing suicide for fear of death. - Otto Von Bismarck
...Are almost unwatchable/unreadable, since you cannot ever get the experience right. It's a psychological (and in some ways physical) experience, not some cheesy handheld-camera with a soft-focus effect with lightshow.
The best written examples of LSD are attempts at factual description by people who experienced them, and even they have difficulty describing the experience well. The best writing on it is actually nearly 40 years old -- "The Varieties of Psychedelic Experience".
Been there, done that.
Imagine if William Gibson wrote a James Bond adventure in which a sexual tigress seduces Bond into a Caribbean political crisis, requiring a nighttime scuba-dive into a sunken treasure-wreck, and then a voodoo ceremony that reads like a nightmare acid trip
...Then imagine a Beowulf cluster of William Gibsons writing sexual James Bond nightmare voodoo adventures while scuba diving with a Caribbean tiger who happens to be on acid.
"a sexual tigress seduces Bond into a Caribbean political crisis... and then a voodoo ceremony that reads like a nightmare acid trip" Imagine a movie entitled "Live and Let Die."
And target the writing to intelligent adults, rather than adolescents.
So are you saying Gibson or Fleming targets adolescents, and not "intelligent adults"?
Because you're wrong on both counts. The Bond books are far from the movies in terms of content and narrative style. And all you slashbots have read Gibson.
Whatever, I guess it's just not a slashdot article without some snide troll in the submission.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
"Imagine if William Gibson wrote a James Bond adventure in which a sexual tigress seduces Bond into a Caribbean political crisis, requiring a nighttime scuba-dive into a sunken treasure-wreck, and then a voodoo ceremony that reads like a nightmare acid trip. Now replace James Bond with an "overeducated hick" atheist literature professor from Minnesota. And target the writing to intelligent adults, rather than adolescents. That should give you an idea of the latest novella from Robert Stone, Bay of Souls:"
Imagine a sci-fi story written by Ron Hubbart with Aliens from the planet whatever who have come to suck out the life force humans and enslave them. Now replace Ron Hubbart with Margaret Weis and Tracey Hickman and instead of sci-fi make it fantasy and instead of aliens make it a sorcerer who creates a cataclysm.....And you have Dragonlance instead of Battlefield Earth....
Ave Molech Setting
Imagine if William Gibson wrote a James Bond adventure in which a sexual tigress seduces Bond into a Caribbean political crisis, requiring a nighttime scuba-dive into a sunken treasure-wreck, and then a voodoo ceremony that reads like a nightmare acid trip. Now replace James Bond with an "overeducated hick" atheist literature professor from Minnesota
It was called "The Contrabulous Fabtraption of Professor Horatio Hufnagel"
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
You lazy cunt! Get off your ass and get a job; stop leeching off others.
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
"...a James Bond adventure in which a sexual tigress seduces Bond into a Caribbean political crisis, requiring a nighttime scuba-dive into a sunken treasure-wreck, and then a voodoo ceremony that reads like a nightmare acid trip."
Isnt' that an almost exact description of "007: Live and let die"...?
I actually heard Robert Stone read from this book. The passage he picked was the midnight dive mentioned above. By the time he was done, the whole audience was gasping for breath, it was that realistic.
But as far as the rest of his talk went, he is the most boring person I have heard. When describing his inspirational trip to the Carribean, he actually managed to make the story of his friend getting seduced by a voodoo priestess sound boring!
But all in all I would reccomend this book!
Valdrax writes "Imagine if William Golding wrote a Hardy Boys novel in which Joe Hardy meets Frank Hardy and begins a downward spiral of nihilism and testosterone addiction that leads to the creation of underground 'Fight Clubs' and the anarcho-terrorist group 'Project Mayhem' that culminates in the realization that Frank Hardy is nothing more than a schizoid projection of his own id-driven desires created by the frustrated desire for a woman. Now replace Joe Hardy with a white-collar wage slave touring support groups to cure his insomnia. And target the writing to intelligent adults, rather than adolescents. That should give you an idea of the latest novel from Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club."
Come on -- it's fun! Now you try.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Sounds like just about any Clive Cussler novel.
And the list goes on and on and on and...
Imagine if William Gibson wrote a James Bond adventure in which a sexual tigress seduces Bond into a Caribbean political crisis
I'm pretty sure this story already has its own category over at fanfiction.net. Except that Pokemon is involved somehow, too.
Sounds exactly like a book I would not like to buy.
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
"And target the writing to intelligent adults, rather than adolescents."
The James Bond book series was not targeted to adolescents. President Kennedy, among many other non-adolescents was a well-known fan of the series.
Of course given Kennedy's now well-known sexual adventures, perhaps he was stuck in his adolescence.
And of course I'm referring to the books, not the movies.
Insert witty sig here.
most "intellegent" reading is done by adolescent boys, and most "literature" is written by people in their mid-twenties. There is a genre of "intellectual" "literature" written by fifty year old hick college professors, but nobody reads it. It's meant to hold down the bookshelves of lonely thirty-something nerds who couldn't get married but have plenty of discretionary income.
The poster says:
Imagine if William Gibson wrote a James Bond adventure in which a sexual tigress seduces Bond into a Caribbean political crisis, requiring a nighttime scuba-dive into a sunken treasure-wreck, and then a voodoo ceremony that reads like a nightmare acid trip. Now replace James Bond with an "overeducated hick" atheist literature professor from Minnesota.
Then the poster says:
And target the writing to intelligent adults
Pick one or the other. The two are mutually exclusive. You see, pretentious pricks cannot tatget their writing to intelligent adults. It's physically impossible.
I gotta say, 250 pages is not a "short book" and certainly not a novella in my book, whether or not the next "Harry Potter" novel is scheduled to weigh in at about seven thousand pages. Go read "The Heart of Darkness" and learn something about true economy in the fictional form. More often than not, books of exceptional length suggest nothing so much as authorial self-indulgence. 250 pages is an average, normal length for a novel.
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
"overeducated hick atheist literature professor"
That's one of the most implausible character descriptions I've ever read. The book may be entertaining, but it looks like tripe to me.
Bit out of hand there, don't you think?
It's not manditory, no one is forcing anyone to use the link, and, personally, I see nothing wrong with giving a percentage of the sale to a person who refers me to a book that I find worthwhile.
Read, L
Do you know how many lonely geeks' eyes lit up when you wrote "sexual tigress"?
You can't do that to them, it gives them too much false hope.
*sigh*
Producer: NEXT!!
Ralph Wiggum: Chicken necks
Seeing as how this is from RobotWisdom, I'm surprised he didn't get in yet another quip about how he hates those dirty, dirty Jews.
IT does sound quite bad. Like Mote in god's eye bad.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
The original review sounds just like the plot for Ian Fleming's "Live And Let Die", with a couple of New Age twists.
"Live And Let Die" is the story of how James Bond embarks on a mission against Mr. Big, a black man who is funding communist operations in the United States using antique gold coins. It turns out that Mr. Big found a sunken ship in Jamaica and is using its treasures for this operation. Mr. Big exerts control over his "army" of men through superstition. He's rumoured to be Baron Samedi's zombie, with Baron Samedi being the baddest ghoul in voodoo superstition.
Of course, James Bond gets the babe (Solitaire, a woman who allegedly can see the future but in reality is Mr. Big's plaything), defeats Mr. Big and his goons, and everyone lives happily ever after (or at least until "Moonraker", a year later). Bond comes out of this one in poor shape, by the way. His back is totally messed up after being tugged over a coral reef and after a barracuda chomped at his right shoulder. Solitaire, however, provides some excellent bedside care.
Excellent book and a very entertaining read, specially considering it was written around 1954 or so.
Cheers!
E
http://eugeneciurana.com | http://ciurana.eu
hey, check out this Sean Conneryizer. Connery is the one, true Bond, who likes his martinish shaken, not shtirred.
Most american books (possibly other countries too) are long because the author gets paid (among other things) by the page.
It's not always good for the content. I've read a lot of intensely thrilling books that were around 200 pages. Lovely.
I just want to know if you have ever actually READ any of Fleming's James Bond novel, because if you haven't you haven't got a clue what you're talking about, which makes it difficult for me to take you seriously.
The movies have next to nothing to do with the novels, and you would be well advised to actually READ one of the novels before you trash them.
I can't stand that bullshit. The book is ALREADY being promoted by the slashdot article. This bozo knows he's being a shit because he posted AC. Doesn't mention it's a partnership link. I'd click on it maybe if he was man enough to admit he just wanted some referral cash.
Is there ANYONE on slashdot who wouldn't imagine that the book MIGHT be for sale on amazon if they cared to look?!?
If you're going to post, and I'm going to read it, why not make it a comment on the BOOK REVIEW? Who gives two shits how you pick it up. He's just milking visibility.
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
Reviews at Amazon are more helpful than this crappy plug, which amounts to the nth installment of Jorn's thick-headed perspective on his vague, shallow little world, in which he is a God, and anything he likes is cool and desireable.
Anything Jorn endorses, I avoid. He did this book disfavor by even mentioning it.
Wordnik, a dictionary project which aims to collect
I thought you were refering to a link in the article. It was your "get a job and stop leeching" remark that threw me off though. The guy's not a leech, he's just an ass.
I still should have checked the parent before posting though.
Read, L
Sounds like porn for Salon subscribers.
Could have sworn I read a Robert Stone book called "Bay of Souls" back in May. My book seems rather simliar to the one you describe, except that your's is Stone's 'latest novella' and my one was out FIVE MONTHS AGO.
Seriously, I don't mind people reviewing a book they just found out about but please 'fess up when it's been out for a while and you just noticed.
Thanks for mentioning the Western Canon, though - more people should be aware of it.
This isn't, of course, Stone's best work anyway...
its inutility was the source of his sobs and curses and rage and despair
inutility? bleh!
Nathan
I criticise this thread on rec.arts.books