Books

I first heard of Jeffrey Ford around the end of January, when Leslie told me about a collection of his short stories. What she told me was amazing enough on its own, but when I looked into the author and found out his first novel was titled The Physiognomy, I got really excited... Physiognomy is one of my favorite words, and it was actually the subject of what could be considered my first blog entry (before the term 'blog even existed).
The book was out of print, and of course the Himmel Park library in Tucson didn't have it (the library only stocks books I'm not looking for, as best I can tell). But at Seattle's Central Library, I found it. In large-print only, but I wasn't going to be picky (although the large type did give me headaches for the first few days of reading).
ANYWAY, I finally finished the book the other day. It was a really cool story set in a really interesting sci-fi world. The narration is from Cley, Physiognomist First-Class (physiognomy refers to the study and reading of faces, and in this world physiognomists are basically detectives), and follows him to a mining town, where he's been sent by Master Drachton Below to find out who stole... a piece of fruit. Cley sees it as a punishment after being overheard mentioning that the Master's own facial features suggest an over-abundance of pride. After the crime is solved, the story follows Cley to an island for extended punishment, and in the last third of the book he tells of what happened once he was restored to his esteemed position in the Master's Well-Built City.

The book and the story were great, but I didn't see where it was going. There was no mystery to solve (even though Cley spent a third of the book assigned to such a task, the investigation consisted of looking at faces, so we're not given many clues to go on), and no gaining momentum throughout. For the majority of the reading, I felt these were missing elements, however the last chapter proved that everything in the book was just as it should have been. I don't know if I've ever been so satisfied by a final chapter in a book as this. There are two other books that follow, but they are both out-of-print, and my magical library does not have them. Luckily, The Physiognomy is being reprinted in October, and Memoranda and The Beyond are being reprinted for November.

So after I finished off the book, I still couldn't sleep, primarily due to an abundance of painful bruises (yeah, just wait for the blog about that story...), so I scanned the stacks of books around my room, trying to feel out what I ought read next. I picked up Round the Bend, thinking it was the right time to re-read it, but no. Other things that weren't right include The Martian Chronicles, Living Buddha, Living Christ, Salt of the Air, Days of War, Nights of Love, The Holy Bible, Oryx and Crake...
When Christmas shopping in 2006, a book caught my eye and at a glance I knew it was Scott's gift. A couple of months later he handed it back to me and told me I ought to read it. The book is The Way Out by Craig Childs. From the back cover: this taut, intensely dramatic narrative immerses us in a labyrinth of canyons in the American Southwest where virtually nothing is alive... and where we pay witness as two men confront not just immutable forces of nature but the limits of their own sanity.
And when I saw the book on the shelf there was no way to have known that a year later, Scott and I would have been living in the same desert for months having faced our own issues with nature and sanity. Craziness.

At this point I realize I wrote more than I anticipated about these books. This was meant to be a short introduction to a very different subject, and to go down that path now would seem really out of place... so I'll make it a new entry instead.