With a Bang and a Whimper

Well, my Tuesday nights are free now. The CW has pulled the plug on both Gilmore Girls and Veronica Mars, two of the best-written, most interesting, most compelling series ever aired.

The difference is that GG really had reached a natural stopping point with Rory's graduation from Yale; fans, actors, and producers alike were mentally ready for the end; and although it would have been nice to have another season, the show had a chance to make its farewells and tie up the loose ends. Whereas VM is still fully in midstream, with Veronica in college, the Fitzpatricks still on the loose, and corruption in Neptune still begging to be fought. Everybody was still desperately hoping for a network reprieve, which makes the last-minute stab through the heart even more painful.

So, was the GG finale everything I hoped it would be? Well, no, not quite. After all the angst of the past two seasons, I would have liked more resolution to the Lorelai/Luke romance than a kiss we barely saw, a necklace, and a smile. Some I Love Yous, some hints of what's next (let's go out on the boat/let's go ride on the roller coasters/let's run off to Vegas and get married) would have been ideal.

Christiane Amanpour's long-anticipated appearance was kind of a waste. Emily's declaration that she was proud to be the grandmother of the wonderment that is Rory was just embarrassing. And I certainly could have used about 75 percent less Taylor.

But that's just quibbling. They hit all the notes they needed to, and they hit them with grace. Rory landing a job and heading out into the world. Lorelai realizing she needs to let go. A definite thaw in Lorelai's icy relationship with Richard and Emily. Luke stepping up and showing not just his love for Lorelai and Rory, but his natural place of leadership in the town. Acknowledgment of Lane and Rory's enduring friendship. A final bittersweet goodbye to the townies. Lorelai and Rory having one last overly enormous breakfast in Luke's diner. Oh, shut up, I am not crying.

VM's actual finale is next week, so I don't know if I'll be able to say the same kinds of things about it, but I doubt it. Whether Keith wins or loses the sheriff's race, there will still be the questions of the Fitzpatricks' criminal empire, Vinnie's possible collusion, and Dick's dealing with his postponed guilt over Beaver's death, not to mention (and I kind of wish I didn't have to) the romantic entanglements of Veronica/Piz, Logan/Parker, and Max/Mac. (And can I just say right now, re: next week's previews, the idea of a Pizonica sex tape? Makes me shudder.)

VM's demise can't be laid entirely at the network's doorstep. After the brilliant first season, Rob Thomas had definite trouble repeating the magic, struggling with pacing, making good use of characters, and developing relationships. But the basic quality of the scripts, the daring noir nature of the Marsverse, the eerie beauty of the continuity, and the kickass acting might have been enough to allow the show to recover its footing, had it not been for the unforgiveable, ham-fisted interference by the network.

I don't know nothin' 'bout runnin' no network, but it does seem obvious to me that if you're trying to attract viewers to a struggling show, you should NOT:

• Change the innovative and previously successful format
• Change the emphasis from story-driven to relationship-driven without giving those characters the things they need to do to make them interesting to watch
• Force the producers to introduce characters who have no organic place in the overall story
• Program the commercial breaks with "features" that are mind-blowingly dumb
• Yank the show in midseason for almost 2 months, incidentally forcing a second, last-minute format change
• Fill the resultant hiatus with crap that the discerning viewers you're trying to attract wouldn't be caught dead watching

Excuse me while I take a deep breath. OK, I'm better now.

Anyway, it's over. Goodbye, Lorelai, Rory, Luke, Richard, Emily, Sookie, Jackson, Michel, Paris, Doyle, Lane, Zach, Brian, Gil, Babette, Morey, Miss Patty, Kirk, Lulu, and Gypsy (and thank God you're off my screen forever, Taylor, Christopher, and April). And goodbye, Veronica, Keith, Backup, Logan, Wallace (and Alicia and your invisible baby brother), Weevil, Dick, Mac, Max, Madison, Duncan, Vice Principal Clemmons, Vinnie, Cliff, Sacks, Deputy Leo, and Helga, as well as you ghosts of Lilly, Meg, Beaver, Aaron, and Don Lamb. Goodbye, Stars Hollow and Neptune. Goodbye.

Some Tangential Topics

Just got back from a week in Chicago and I feel inspired to spout off on a few subjects not entirely related to the stated purpose of this blog. What? It's free. Sue me.

You know, it seems in Chicago they have this lake. Apparently they call those suckers the Great Lakes for a reason. For us benighted Easterners, "lake" calls up an entirely different picture; Michigan is really more like what you might call an "inland sea." And they have beaches, golden sandy beaches, downtown. Crazy!

Chicago cabbies seem to have an inappropriate fascination with sex lives. One told me WAY more than I wanted to know about his; another asked me about mine. Dude, buy me a drink first.

My last night in town, I went to a performance of Troilus and Cressida by the Chicago Shakespeare Theater. I can't say I enjoyed it, but it was an experience. I have no problems with people who update Shakespeare to make it more meaningful. My favorite work, filmed or staged, is Ian McKellen's Richard III, which ruthlessly lopped off scenes and characters in presenting the play as a parable of 1930s fascism. But when the director takes out lines that explicate actions and motivations, and adds in "arty" touches (dead soldiers wearing the helmets of all the wars there ever were) designed to beat the audience over the head with "the message," that's just bard abuse. And casting busty blondes with no stage presence or ability to project should also be discouraged (Chaon Cross, I'm talking about you).

Mies van der Rohe said some snappy things I've always believed in, such as "less is more" and "form follows function." Yet somehow I never quite understood that he was the originator and leading proponent of the sterile, repellent International style. Once I learned that, I thought perhaps his own buildings might have been bold, revolutionary, beautiful, and his style degraded by cheap imitators. But now, having seen his IBM Building and twin apartment towers, I can only say: Mies has a lot to answer for.

Recently, I heard Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, interviewed by Terry Gross on her show Fresh Air, followed the next night by Francis S. Collins, author of The Language of God. Dawkins is an evolutionary biologist and an atheist, who thinks that science and religion are utterly incompatible; Collins, the head of the Human Genome Project and an evangelical Christian, thinks that science supports his faith. The funny thing is that, on the belief scale, I'm a lot closer to Dawkins than to Collins. But Dawkins was an obnoxious, pretentious little git that I wanted to backhand across the room, whereas Collins came off as a thoughtful, reasonable guy I would be happy to hang out with. Guess which one represented his point of view better?

Speaking of thoughtful and reasonable evangelical Christians, I just discovered this blog by Fred Clark, in which he is conducting a nearly page-by-page deconstruction of the Left Behind series (he's been doing it since 2003 and he's still not through the first volume). His wonderful posts, which criticize the books for their theology as well as their literary merit, are both devastating and devastatingly funny. I'd like to hang out with Fred, too.

Some Notes on Suicide Notes

There seems to be a new cliche in mysteries: the unsigned, typed suicide note, often not even printed out, just left on a computer screen. I've seen it before, but the only ones I can point to are the one that popped up in a Veronica Mars episode a few months ago, and another in the (so far mediocre) book I'm reading, Deadly Advice by Roberta Isleib.

I'm no expert, and I haven't been able to find any relevant info to back me up in my exhaustive 10-minute search of the net, but surely such a note must raise at least a few suspicions regarding its authenticity. Yet in these stories no law enforcement personnel ever seem to entertain the slightest doubt, leaving only our plucky protagonist to prove that the supposed suicide is *gasp* murder.

Please. Unless somebody can show me statistical proof that a large number of suicides do leave these kind of notes, I am done with this storyline.

I do understand the idea of typing your suicide note. After all, if your handwriting is as bad as mine, you do want your loved ones to understand your last communication. But I promise you that if I ever did kill myself,* I would print out the note, sign it, stick it in an envelope with someone's name on it, and leave it in a prominent spot.

Also, while we're on the subject, if anybody ever tries to say that I killed myself in any way other than a peaceful, painless overdose, call the cops.

*What? Oh, like you've never thought about this.

Edited May 6 to add: OK, I was slightly unfair to Deadly Advice. No, it never got any better, and yes, I correctly predicted that the villain was the heroine's neighbor and that she and the crusty detective would fall for each other. But in fact, the police did suspect the unsigned suicide note and were trying to lull the killer into a false sense of security. So I partly take back my rant.

Movie Diary April 2007

Movies seen for the first time are in green.

1. Barefoot in the Park (1967), Gene Saks. Typical Neil Simon misogyny masquerading as hijinks. Corie is a spoiled, selfish emotional bully, and I can't believe her husband and mother put up with her for a moment. Hard to believe that a post-consciousness-raising Jane Fonda still thinks fondly of it. That said, Mildred Natwick and Charles Boyer are worth watching.
2. Double Harness (1933), John Cromwell. Interesting pre-Code picture about a financially ruined socialite who decides to marry a wealthy playboy to help him rebuild his shipping empire. Not exactly a feminist message ("Marriage is a woman's business," we're told explicitly several times), but the heroine has both agency and desire. Ann Harding (previously unknown to me) is lovely and unmannered, and William Powell the definition of suave as always.
3. Now, Voyager (1942), Irving Rapper. Fabulous sudsy melodrama about the transformation of a sheltered spinster and her love for a married man. Genuinely affecting, with strong underpinning of psychological truth. Bette Davis is at her absolute best, with Gladys Cooper as her soul-destroying mother and a nearly impeccable supporting cast. Paul Henreid makes an unconvincing Californian (?!), but who cares when he's soulfully lighting two cigarettes?
4. An Awfully Big Adventure (1995), Mike Newell. Was distracted and not really paying attention, but I did note an exceptionally tender and erotic sex scene with Alan Rickman. Yowza.
5. The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), William Wyler. There are criticisms you can make about this movie -- that Dana Andrews and Teresa Wright are too old for their parts, that the script pulls its punches on topics such as Frederic March's incipient alcoholism, that Michael Hall (March's son, Rob) almost single-handedly brings the whole thing to a halt -- but it remains one of the finest movies ever made about the aftermath of war. I defy anyone to make it through the wedding scene without sniffling.
6. The Lady from Shanghai (1947), Orson Welles. Twisty noir that really provides no clues beyond Rita Hayworth's femme fatale blonde 'do and "nothing good ever comes from Shanghai." Welles's character is almost criminally dumb; he really deserves what happens to him. His Irish accent is iffy, but he brings the sexy in a way he never did even as Rochester.
7. Cover Girl (1944), Charles Vidor. Stupid musical with virtually no good songs, but Rita Hayworth and Gene Kelly are pretty, and Eve Arden gets to look glamorous as well as crack wise.
8. Stingaree (1934), William Wellman. Irene Dunne was another actress who suffered under the unfortunate delusion that she could sing. Her thin trill is not redeemed by the film's script or the acting. This movie could have stayed lost.
9. National Treasure (2004), John Turteltaub. National stinker. Was vaguely curious to see it, because I heard Philadelphia looks great, but 5 minutes was more than enough for me.
10. The Great Dictator (1940), Charlie Chaplin. I always put off seeing this movie for some reason, but I found it pretty funny and the speech at the end genuinely moving.
11. Moby Dick (1956), John Huston. Mostly boring; relies too heavily on voiceover and Richard Basehart is a nonentity as Ishmael. But some of the visual effects -- the fog, the gulls, St. Elmo's fire -- are stunning, and Ahab's descent into madness and rejection of all right principles in service of his obsession is authentically chilling. Maybe it's time to tackle the book in earnest.
12. Ray (2004), Taylor Hackford. Can add nothing more to the mountains of praise for Jamie Foxx's uncanny embodiment of Ray Charles. Script is sharply written, except for the gag-inducing treacly ending, but suffers from the usual biopic problem of simplifying the subject's life to provide dramatic direction. Also, never tries to dig very hard beneath the surface; why, like so many artists, did Charles's genius explode as he was sinking deeper into addiction? Also would have appreciated some exploration of how Charles arrived at his ground-breaking soul style, as well as (being somewhat musically illiterate) some explanation of what made his innovations so original.
13. Oliver Twist (1948), David Lean. Atmospheric, rather brutal version of the Dickens tale. Kay Walsh fabulous as the doomed Nancy. Mixed feelings about Alec Guinness's villainous Fagin: a bravura performance, but monstrously anti-Semitic.
14. Roman Holiday (1953), William Wyler. Audrey Hepburn at her most gamine and charming, Gregory Peck at his most ornamental and least wooden. Fabulous script and Roman locales.
15. Princess O'Rourke (1943), Norman Krasna. Slight, overly long tale of American flyer in love with incognito European princess. Horrible fixation on the body of the princess as a vehicle for transmission of succession -- to male heirs, naturally. Did enjoy the idea of FDR playing Cupid. And ah for the days when people handed out the tranquilizers like M&Ms!
16. State Fair (1945), Walter Lang. See post April 23, 2007.
17. Fletch (1985), Michael Ritchie. Funny damn movie; also clever, well-crafted mystery, with sharp screenplay by personal favorite Andrew Bergman. Chevy Chase's trademark insouciance is perfect in the role of investigative reporter Irwin Fletcher. Funny to see Geena Davis as the frumpy best friend with an unrequited crush. Badly dated score.
18. High Sierra (1941), Raoul Walsh. There's no male star I love more than Humphrey Bogart, and here he gives a taut, iconic performance as the aging gangster Roy Earle, adrift in a world that's left him behind. Ida Lupino also shines as the dancehall girl Marie, who turns out to be purer in heart than the supposedly "decent" Joan Leslie. Sharp, sensitive script by John Huston, slightly marred by typical Hollywood '40s racism.
19. The Hustler (1961), Robert Rossen. This is a movie I thought more highly of when I was younger. Now its atmosphere of cynicism and tawdriness leaves me somewhat cold. George C. Scott gives a standout performance. But if I were Minnesota Fats, I'd be thinking: "Do I really need to be here for this? Can't these guys play out their little psychodrama on their own?"

Reading Diary April 2007

Books read online are in green.

1. Willy Burke; or, The Irish Orphan in America, Mrs. J. Sadlier. Overly didactic, overly sentimental tale of a Catholic boy making his way in pre-Civil War New York. Moderately interesting for its insight into how Protestants viewed Catholics at that time (Sadlier's no fan of multiculturalism either) , but not nearly as entertaining or naturalistic as her Bessy Conway; or, The Irish Girl in America. Hero is an exasperating prig; I sympathized with his tormentors' desire to knock him out of his smugness.
2. Lincoln, Gore Vidal. Starts off strong but quickly turns dull. Some interesting tidbits, but Vidal's more concerned with showing off his research than telling a story.
3. The Thirteenth House, Sharon Shinn. One of the things I most admire about Shinn is her ability to write about love in a way that makes each set of lovers unique, and this book is no exception. But although the sequel to Mystic and Rider, somehow the canvas feels smaller and the stakes lower, with a disappointingly limited climax. I sure hope some fireworks are coming up in the next book, because they've been in relatively short supply so far.
4. Blue Shoes and Happiness, Alexander McCall Smith. See post April 10, 2007.
5. Petty Treason, Madeleine E. Robins. A good second outing for Fallen Women Sarah Tolerance, in a Regency England just slightly askew from our own. Robins is thoroughly grounded in the Regency period, and her books are prime examples of how to do historical fiction right. Her grasp on plotting and pacing is not quite so sure: she telegraphs her twists well ahead of time and could have brought the book to a close many pages earlier if Miss Tolerance had gone to the magistrate with her evidence sooner.
6. Sister Noon, Karen Joy Fowler. A well-written exploration of sex, class, race, and history in Victorian San Francisco. I wasn't sure what attitude to take to Mrs. Pleasant -- was she a good guy or a bad guy? Not quite sure the book qualifies as fantasy; while there are hints of supernatural activity, they could just as easily have naturalistic explanations.
7. The Accomplice, Elizabeth Ironside. Interesting story of history, family, identity, and murder, with well-drawn characters. Naturally asks the question, who is the accomplice? Shows that we all may be complicit in the crimes and tragedies around us.
8. A Personal Devil, Roberta Gellis. A mixed offering in the Madgalene la Batarde series. Interesting characters and situations, although Magdalene wasn't the only one who found the Mainard/Sabina romance hard to take. Not much mystery, and the resolution is both unsatisfying and slightly nonsensical.
9. Howl's Moving Castle, Diana Wynne Jones. Terrific, fun, and utterly satisfying. Jones plays beautifully with fairy tale conventions, and Sophie is an admirable heroine. Must find the movie.
10. Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides. See post April 25, 2007.
11. Ruddy Gore, Kerry Greenwood. Moderately stylish, moderately entertaining mystery set in 1920s Australia. Don't think much of the heroine's detective powers: on learning that the case involves a baby given up for adoption, she fails to ask even the most obvious questions.
12. The Oxford Murders, Guillermo Martinez. See post April 24, 2007.
13. Death at the Rose Paperworks, M. J. Zellnik. Pedestrian in the extreme. True, I didn't figure out the solution ahead of time; but on the other hand, I was too bored to care. Has Zellnik ever read a Victorian novel? She has no conception of how people spoke and acted in those days (pregnancy openly discussed! ladies inviting seamstresses into parlors!).
14. Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell. Greed is bad. So is racism. Also, slavery. Gosh, Mr. Mitchell, thanks for clearing that up for me.
15. Holmes on the Range, Steve Hockensmith. Pretty entertaining story of cowboy detective who models himself after Sherlock Holmes in 1890s Montana, with his brother serving as sidekick and Watson. Takes the interesting narrative stance that Holmes is a real person.
16. The Rebirth of Pan, Jo Walton. Don't understand the point of International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day (other than a shoutout to my sister, who also uses the term "technopeasant"), but thanks to Jo Walton for posting so much of her work for free online. Really enjoyed this unpublished beautiful, evocative tale of the death of an old age and beginning of a new, filled with memorable characters.
17. Seeking Whom He May Devour, Fred Vargas. Quirky characters and interesting rural French background. Solution comes a little too pat for the hero's romantic dilemma.

Enough with the Negativity Already!

I noticed I've been talking a lot about shit I hate recently, so I thought I'd give myself the pleasure of saying a few words about Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides.

I of course had heard a lot of buzz about the book when it came out a few years ago, but I didn't really pay attention. I have a lingering prejudice against so-called "literary" fiction, born out of my experiences in the 1970s, when Donald Barthelme and his character-is-all school seemed to have banished plot entirely. (I know it's not all like that now; that's why it's a prejudice.) Anyway, that means I never register what's up for the Pulitzer, the Booker, the Whatever, because it always seems unlikely that those books will ever hold any interest for me.

I might never have changed my mind about Middlesex if it hadn't been recommended by Abigail Nussbaum. Even with her brief review, and even knowing that the title referred to a boy raised as a girl and not the county in England, I didn't know what to expect. I vaguely guessed it was something very British, with tea and nannies. I could not have been more wrong, and was completely blown away.

Set mostly in Detroit in the '60s and '70s, Middlesex ranges fluidly backward to Turkey in the '20s to Berlin in the present to tell the story of Calliope Helen Stephanides, a biological male raised and treated as a female. With riffs on genetics, history, politics, growing up ethnic in a WASPy world, family, race, the suburbs, and Cadillacs, this is a funny, tragic, eloquent book, with many memorable passages and images.

Part of the fun for me is that Cal is almost exactly my own age. He experienced many of the things I experienced growing up. Like me, he lived through the race riots of the '60s (way more up close and personal than I did, however); his teenage medicine cabinet is filled with Psst instant shampoo and Love deodorant; schoolgirls use Flair pens. (The minorest of quibbles: noone drank bottled water in 1973.) One thing he doesn't really talk about much is Callie's clothes. Did Callie the girl, like me and so many girls our age, fight with her mother about wearing jeans instead of skirts? Would she have experienced them as liberation or as another threat to her precarious gender identity, as with her refusal to cut her hair?

Another gripping, not so fun, aspect of the book is Callie's eventual diagnosis as a hermaphrodite. I think a lot of people can identify with Cal's horror at the realization that, beyond the normal insecurities of adolescence, there really is something different about him. And that what's more, his parents, who supposedly know him the best and love him the most, think he is fundamentally flawed, wrong, broken, in need of fixing. For me, this resonated very deeply with my experience of growing up fat.

In some ways, the book reminded me strongly of Wallace Stegner's Angle of Repose in the way Cal reconstructs the lives of his grandparents in an effort to understand and cope with his own situation. Like Lyman Ward, Cal must fully accept his own difference before he can let others in and accept love. I only wish this part of the story -- Cal's final achievement of intimacy with a woman after 30 years of loneliness -- had been more deeply explored.

Edited June 8 to add: I may have been late on the Middlesex bandwagon, but at least I beat Oprah!

Smoke and Mirrors

One of the great pleasures of mysteries is that they are often filled with specialist knowledge of various fields. I think of the Amelia Peabody mysteries, full of murderous collectors and Egyptologists, or the stories of Gordianus the Finder, which explicate the hazards of being a slave in ancient Rome and the correct method of making garum. I learn a lot from books like that; in fact, I've been known to tell my sister that everything I ever learned came from a mystery. But what makes the knowledge fun is that, besides providing an interesting background, it serves to provide the motive or the means for the crime.

That's not the case with the extremely thin (more a novella than a novel, hardly worth $13 even if I liked it) and disappointing The Oxford Murders by Guillermo Martinez. An Argentinian grad student comes to Oxford to study mathematics. Soon his landlady is murdered. Police suspect her heir, Beth, but famous mathematician Arthur Seldom soon convinces them that this is the work of a serial killer with something to prove. More deaths follow, culminating in the crash of a busload of kids.

The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other A-list publications have spilled a lot of ink about how "intellectual" and "cerebral" this book is, but don't believe it. Sure, there are lots of discussions about Wittgenstein and Fermat and Pythagoras, but you don't need to understand them or even pay attention to solve the crimes. They have nothing to do with the plot. The culprits are perfectly obvious and their motives straightforward.

All the mathematical content is nothing more than hand-waving and trickery by Seldom (and the author) to distract from the very simple solution. Beth murdered Mrs. Eagleton for her money and manipulated Seldom into covering for her because he is her biological father. The two subsequent "murders" were natural deaths spun by Seldom to fool the police. And the crash was caused by the bus driver, a father desperate to find an organ donor for his terminally ill daughter.

The real mystery is the protagonist. Appropriately nameless, because he is nothing but a cipher, he figures out the real solution after all the crimes are blamed on the conveniently dead bus driver. But you know, even though the case is officially closed, it's not really too late. The grad student could go to the police with what he knows. Why does he agree to keep silent (evidently for years)? Out of regard for Seldom, who used him and whom he barely knows? Out of consideration for Beth, whom he dislikes and distrusts?

What I really want to know is what happens to him afterward. Does he stay in Oxford for the rest of the year, living in Beth's basement?

State Not Even So-So

State Fair? Please. Is this really the sort of thing that used to pass as entertainment? A couple of decent songs does not qualify this as a watchable movie.

Note to Margie (Jeanne Crain): Girl, you have more choices in life than just marrying the loser next door or taking up with the first slick-talking womanizer to come around. Get on the train to Chicago your own damn self, get a job, and buy yourself some decent clothes! Also, I've got $100 that says Dana Andrews cheats on you within the year.

Note to Ma Frakes (Fay Bainter): If winning the mincemeat prize is really the summit of your ambition, you need to get out more. And get yourself a real name. And why the hell can't I ever tell you apart from Spring Byington?

Note to Wayne (Dick Haymes): Get over yourself, plastic boy (calling you "wooden" would be too natural). Thank God poor Emily couldn't marry you: not only didn't you give her the chance to explain to you herself, you went back to your old girlfriend two minutes after you got home. Broken hearts mend quickly in Iowa!

WTF? Department

I'm not one of those snobs that thinks that a movie has to be black and white to be a classic, but The Barefoot Executive? TCM is usually a little more discriminating, at least during primetime.

A Quick Thumbs-Down

A Sundial in a Grave: 1610 by Mary Gentle is one of several books I picked up because Abigail Nussbaum recommended them. I have found Abigail's opinions to be very similar to mine on some things (and always very well expressed), but we're just going to have to agree to disagree on this one.

Stuart England is just a little later than the Elizabethan era that fascinates me, and Gentle is good at period detail: the sights, sounds, and especially smells of the time are vividly presented. But I found the main characters and their sexual kinks tedious and the plot unfulfilling. Especially tedious was the samurai Tanaka Saburo, who suffers from what I think of as "stoopid furriner" syndrome: his facility with English and French varies according to the needs of the plot, so that he can't string words together correctly one minute and can talk about someone's "mad fancy" the next.

My biggest objection was Gentle's framing device, similar to the one she used in her Ash saga, that explains the book as a translation and compilation of actual documents. It's probably meant to make some kind of clever academic point about textuality, but this is a novel, not a textbook, and the frame just needlessly distances the reader from the material. For one thing, if you're going to pretend that your story is a memoir, it should read like a memoir. For another, there's no reason the "extra-textual" material (supposedly letters and other fragments found with the main text) couldn't simply have been incorporated into the narrative without sleight of hand about computer reconstruction and missing kanjis.

I'm sorry I didn't see that this book is soon forthcoming in cheaper mass market paperback, because I resent shelling out 14 bucks for this one. Add it to my "Hours of My Life I'll Never Get Back" list.