Bay of Souls

RobotWisdom (Jorn Barger) writes "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: A Novel." The book is compact, and so is the rest of Barger's review (below). Bay of Souls: A Novel author Robert Stone pages 256 publisher Houghton Mifflin Company rating 9 reviewer Jorn Barger ISBN 0395963494 summary Classy, intelligent adventure for William Gibson fans

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.

Comments

Re:$2.50 cheaper

[Mr. Darl McBride]

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.

Ian Fleming's Bond

[R33MSpec]

"...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.

Re:Ian Fleming's Bond

[fm6]

I don't share your adoration of Ian Fleming's fiction, but you're sort of right about the literary James Bond. He was darker and more complicated than any of the movie Bonds. Still, the guy in the book share's the movie character's adolescent obsessions: guns, dangerous pastimes, have sex with as many women as possible. The difference between the books and the movies is more a matter of degree than kind.

And the connections between the books and the movies are stronger than you seem to think. With the obvious exception of Casino Royale (he sold the screen rights to that one early on), Ian Fleming was deeply involved in making all the Bond films that came out while he was alive. And some of the later Bond novels were based on the movies, not vice versa! (Thunderball was one -- not sure about the others.) Yeah, even these books were a little more sophisticated than they movies they were based on -- but not that sophisticated.

The fact is that Fleming didn't take Bond all that seriously. He was just a thriller character who turned out to be outrageously profitable for him.

There's one amusing story I heard about Fleming, pretty sure it's true. It seems that the plot of Casino Royale, where Bond takes an enemy agent's slush fund by beating him at Baccarat, was based on something Fleming and some other British agents actually did during WW II. Except in this episode, the bad guy stripped the Brits of all their cash. That's Hollywood!

Let's start a game...

[Valdrax]

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.

Live And Let Die

[ciurana]

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