‘They’re not tattoos, they’re skin illustrations!’

I was first introduced to Ray Bradbury’s work by ‘Nobby’ Jones, my English teacher, when I was thirteen years old. Up until that point, no literature had moved me. We read the classic short story A Sound of Thunder, which opened up a fissure in my philosophically barren mind. A couple of years later, I watched the movie adaptation of The Illustrated Man, and once I found out it was based on a Bradbury novel, I vowed to read it. Thirty-odd years later...

The Illustrated Man is essentially sixteen science fiction short stories of varying tone, from the morality tale of The Other Foot, to the light-hearted The Rocket, to the creepy Zero Hour, and the rather pointless The Last Night of the World. The stories are top ‘n’ tailed by the brief encounter between the narrator and the illustrated man of the title. The short stories are ‘seen’ by the narrator in the weirdly hypnotic tattoos – skin illustrations – that cover the man’s entire body.

Is it better to step on a butterfly or kill your own grandfather? (image: scaryforkids.com)

The premise of seeing stories unfold in the skin illustrations is fabulous, but unlike the movie, the two characters have no interaction between viewings - we just get the sixteen stories, one after another. This makes the unevenness of the stories seem odd; they don’t feel like they’re from the same collection. This could be explained away if the narrator describes the unevenness of each illustration he sees before they begin to move. A missed opportunity, in my view.

Nevertheless, there are some stand-out stories. The Veldt, which features in the movie, tells the story of the misuse of technology and children out of control; The Long Rain (also filmed) gives the reader the drowning claustrophobia that visiting astronauts suffer on a rainy planet; The Rocket is a heart-warming tale of a man who buys a full-size rocket at the expense of his business, modifying it to make his children believe they go on the journey of a lifetime; The Visitor shows man’s selfishness and greed in action when a group fight over a mysterious man who can give them their dreams.

'I can feel 'em squirmin', movin' on my back' (image: imdb.com)

Bradbury uses a simple, easy-to-read style of narrative that allows the reader to engage quickly with each story. There are times when you have to make allowances for the outmoded ‘future’ technologies and scientific ideas – the book was written in 1952, after all. There are some excellent dialogue exchanges, and a fair turn of phrase; including ‘back to the future’. Bradbury comes up with a few truly great concepts – some of the stories would have made brilliant Star Trek episodes a decade-and-a-half later. I'm sure Kaleidoscope inspired the ending to John Carpenter's Dark Star.

For me though, this is a rare case when the movie trumps the novel – just. The movie has two things in its favour: one is the increased storyline of the illustrated man and the narrator (Willie in the movie), and the other is Rod Steiger, who brings the character of the illustrated man to life like no other actor could have. However, the book does have more stories (sixteen, against three in the film). If I were to adapt The Illustrated Man, it would have to be a six-hour miniseries at the very least.

The Illustrated Man is a recommended read. It was written during the golden age of science fiction, but is far more literary than the ‘pulp’ novels at that time. I also recommend the movie. Steiger was awarded an Oscar two years before making The Illustrated Man, and you can see why.

Lucky bleeders?

There are probably more books on how to be successful than there are successful people, depending on how you measure success, of course. Then, there are age-old adages to spur us on, like Edison's 'genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration', and yet I've never seen a sweaty, stinky genius. Or, there is the brilliantly inane 'you make your own luck' statement, usually trotted out by someone who has won something through sheer chance.

However, in any walk of life, there are those that seem to defy all logic by being thick, lazy and successful. But is that perception from the envious (a.k.a. me) strictly true? Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers attempts to dig deeper into how the extraordinarily successful reach the pinnacle of their realm. Using a mixture of anecdotes and psychological research, he investigates the impact that opportunity and legacy have, enabling certain individuals to rise, helium-filled, out of site of the rest of us.

Check out those pits. It's like Death Valley in there. (d6.allthingsd.com)

By opportunity, Gladwell means factors such as age-grouping, where, in sports, older children within the group have a huge physical and experiential advantage, giving them more chance of being picked and trained to the next level. Opportunity also means practice. There is a ridiculous phrase, 'naturally gifted', where the words 'naturally' and 'gifted' are euphemisms used by the lazy that actually mean 'obsessed' and 'doing something about it' respectively. Gladwell calls this the 10,000-hour rule. In other words, while most people are losing brain cells watching TV soaps, or strangling their liver at the pub, the 'naturally gifted' are, hour after hour, physically and mentally honing their skills until they achieve their goal, and not giving up at the first hurdle because 'it's hard'.

Gladwell's chapters on legacy talks about the cultural factors – memes - whereby some people grow up in a strong work ethic environment, or where each generation is determined that the next will have better opportunities. Gladwell also shows that in some cases, the rigid, deferential structure of some cultures, has the opposite effect, such as in the 'ethnicity of plane crashes'. Even if this book doesn't increase your success quotient, it will save your life.

"Who is the Master now old man? It's still you, isn't it?" (ffbsccn.wordpress.com/20thC Fox)

Gladwell writes in an easy-to-read style, using layman's terms, and his anecdotes are interesting in their own right – real watercooler jobs. This isn't a scientific paper, and some of Gladwell's conclusions are slightly stretched, but he gives the reader something to think about while demystifying some of the processes, which, when understood, could improve the reader's lot. But he cannot advise on what is perhaps the biggest influence: being the right person, in the right place, at the right time.

This is something about which Obi-wan Kenobi speaks (in the novelisation by Alan Dean Foster) when Luke learns how to use the Force to deflect laser beams while blindfolded, and Han Solo attributes Luke's success to luck. The Jedi Master responds, 'In my experience, there's no such thing as luck, only highly favourable adjustments of multiple factors to incline events in one's favour.' Gladwell could do worse than stand on the shoulders of the wisest man in the Universe.

The tears of a clown

The reprobate will always exist. That kid whose underdeveloped sense of humour, or overdeveloped sense of mischief means that they will, at some stage in their school career, let off a stink bomb, flood the boys toilets, or stick a ‘kick me’ sign to the school bully’s blazer, signed with your name. He, and it always used to be a he, would construct a reputation with the teachers that was so bad he would be blamed even when it wasn’t him who covered the Headmaster’s car with spitballs.

Billy Casper is that reprobate, and Barry Hines’ council estate terror is instantly recognisable to most people. His dysfunctional family life is typical of a good proportion of British children more than forty years after A Kestrel for a Knave was written. Hines’ unpretentious attitude towards writing allows him to admit that there was no deliberate intention to write social commentary, that’s just how the story can be decoded in hindsight, by those who wish to do that sort of thing.

Barry Hines was not a reprobate (bbc.co.uk)

An absent father, a self-centred mother, and an embittered older brother combine to make Billy’s life a misery at home. Add to that a lack of encouragement, and no academic confidence, and Billy finds subversive means to occupy his mind, bringing him to the attention of cane-happy Headmaster Gryce. Billy lives out a continuous cycle of ‘well if I’m going to get the blame, I might as well do it’.

Until, one day, Billy is let down by a couple of mates for a planned nest raid. For once, events favour the lad and he ends up with a kestrel chick. Billy is transformed. He steals a book on falconry, and, despite having ‘a job to read and write’, makes perfect use of the entire text, and trains the bird. In short, Billy Casper is a success. But Billy lives in the real world, and nothing last forever.

Hines’ bittersweet story captures much of working class life during the sixties and seventies. His settings and characters are so familiar he needs minimal description to bring Billy’s existence to life. Hines uses a mild Yorkshire dialect for his dialogue, which even the narration slips into at times. And despite his opinion in his afterword that he would not write in dialect now, I think it works in this case. His prose is clean, with a light sprinkling of magical phrases like ‘great rashes of buttercups’, ‘[hymn books] bloomed white across the hall as they were... flicked through’, and ‘just because we’re in 4C [the teachers] talk to us like muck... allus callin’ us idiots’.

Kes: almost the real thing (Film4.com)

There are stand-out characters galore such as Billy and his family, Headmaster Gryce, and pathetic PE teacher Sugden. Observations of the minutiae add to the intimacy of the narrative, such as Billy getting dirt in his eye when throwing pebbles at his friend’s bedroom window, or when Mrs Casper’s skirt zip works only half-way, so she fastens the waistband with a safety pin. Hines’ descriptions of architecture are less successful, but this is rare and doesn’t detract from the story’s pace. Although not quite on my all-time favourites list, the novel is well worth a read. Billy Casper’s reputation was further advanced by Ken Loach’s sympathetic film adaptation, Kes.

Despite Hines’ protestations, A Kestrel for a Knave is a social commentary, and although the minutiae are different now, nothing has changed for the Billy Caspers of this world. In fact, watching the news these days, Billy had it easy. Instead of studying Hines’ novel for GCSE English Literature, it should be discussed in Citizenship lessons in an attempt to break the underclass cycle that turns sink estates into third-world zones within twenty-first century Britain.

A Rough Guide to Washington D.C.

I believe that there’s a generation of middle-aged westerners who, at an impressionable age in 1969, watched Where Are You, Scooby Doo? and for whom Mystery Incorporated shone a beacon of scepticism. The team's reductive approach to problem solving was Holmesian (they just took LSD instead of cocaine), and as such their mind-bending adventures dismissed the ridiculous, and promoted reality. Although the same age as me, the twenty-first century’s most popular problem solver, Robert Langdon, it seems, may have had parents who didn’t allow him to watch silly cartoons.

My heroes (Hanna-Barbera/Warner Bros)

If you’ve read Dan Brown’s previous Langdon novels, then his latest blockbuster, The Lost Symbol, will feel like a breath of stale air. Once again, symbol-bore Langdon leads from behind, wandering around historical monuments solving ambiguous clues worthy of 3-2-1’s Dusty Bin, and partnering the female relative of a dead or dying pillar of the community while in opposition to both a fanatic with huge physical prowess, and an institution with bottomless resources, all in the interests of bringing together the mystical and scientific realms.

A symbologist ahead of his time (Yorkshire TV)

Having boosted tourism figures in Rome and Paris, Brown has responded to the global downturn by keeping the tourists’ dollar within the United States. Either that, or Langdon has used up his air miles in the previous novels. In fact, he may not even be able to spare shoe leather because he spends the first one-third of the book in the Capitol Building, which, according to the novel,

... stands regally at the eastern end of the National Mall, on a raised plateau that city designer Pierre L'Enfant described as "a pedestal waiting for a monument." The Capitol's massive footprint measures more tnan 750 feet in length 350 feet deep. Housing more than sixteen acres of floorspace, it contains an astonishing 541 rooms. The neoclassical architecture is meticulously designed to echo the grandeur of Ancient Rome, whose ideals were the inspiration for America's founders in establishing the laws and culture of the new republic.

Each time Langdon relocates to another historical (in the American sense) landmark, Brown prefaces that particular chapter with similarly edificating (spellchecker wants to place defacating here) descriptions, each sounding like a snippet from a Washington DC tourist brochure. Is it possible that Brown is risking another plagiarism lawsuit – this time from copywriters?

Langdon is again paired off with the crème de la crème of the scientific community. Rather than a biophysicist whose fish have outmanoeuvred Einsteinian physics, or a cryptologist with a 260 miles-per-gallon SmartCar, we are introduced to pioneer of Noetic Sciences, Katherine Solomon. A little Internet research soon raises suspicions that the ‘Science’ part of Noetic Sciences is on a par with the ‘Scien’ root of Scientology.

Historical, apparently (allposters.com)

Katherine is the sister of mega-Mason Peter Solomon, whose high-ranking, public servant brothers are concerned that should their bonkers rituals be placed on YouTube, then the public might think they are-- well, bonkers. Why one would consider political leaders rolling up their trouser legs, drinking ‘blood’ from a skull, and talking mystical gibberish as less than normal is beyond ‘sceptic’ Langdon – after all, it’s just harmless fun.

Brown portrays Langdon as a sceptic, but I find that his scepticism is the open-minded type whereby, as described by Richard Dawkins, Langdon’s mind is so open that his brain has dropped out. He has no problem with Masonic rituals, California-crazy science or pyramids with mystical powers to transform.

Langdon’s Brown-vaunted intellect and symbological prowess are about as well formed as his scepticism. Early in the story Langdon is foxed by the Roman numerals IIIX tattooed on the amputated hand of Peter Solomon. It should be possible to show that, statistically, every person on the planet except Dan Brown thinks that upside-down Roman numerals are not a world-class puzzle. It took Langdon several chapters to solve this, and the solution came by accident rather than from a churning of the great man’s huge cranial computations.

No sweat, Langdon can't read it

Katherine Solomon’s brain must have become so full of Noetic nonsense that she fails to notice for three whole years that a ninety-second stumble in the dark, to and from her secret laboratory, could have been easily eliminated by technology known about for thousands of years: the torch. Except that it would have meant rearranging Brown’s unimaginative effort to produce drama by having a beast of a man chase a poor damsel in a dark room.

All of Brown’s plot-driven characters are one-dimensional, except for Langdon himself who, lacking even that, should be nicknamed the human singularity, and the antagonist, Moloch, the inhuman monster of the story, whose failings and disappointments in life give the novel its only human insights. Each character speaks with a banality that Spock would find overly formal, and any variations their speech patterns are so indiscernible that in dialogue heavy text, it helps to annotate the pages script-fashion.

The ultra-omniscient third person narration drifts from person to person, sometimes several times within a few paragraphs. Even the innermost thoughts of minor characters are splashed about like Brut 33, so that the reader feels like one of Katherine’s ‘scientifically-proven’ psychics who are unable to filter out mental chatter. This omniscience occasionally naps, like when events ‘apparently’ happen or are due ‘possibly’ to some reason or other that the character can’t be bothered to recall. Then there are the blocks of Brown’s preachy narrative voice that vacillates between mild scepticism and a wish for the ‘at-one-ment’ of mysticism and science.

SJG, 'Non-overlapping magisteria' (stephejaygould.org)

Brown’s already low metaphor/simile count drops like a symbologist with a handkerchief for a parachute for this novel. Though with Brown’s likening of the Washington Monument to a ‘grand ship’s mast’ being one of the few, perhaps this is a good thing. The inability to name a ‘grand ship’ shows Brown’s interest in the historical is not quite as strong as that implied in his protagonist, though the make, model and serial code of every aircraft, elevator and gadget is brandished with pride (or advertising revenue).

The chapter lengths are arbitrary, bordering on random. Some last almost a page, while a few reach double figures. This may be an endeavour to inject pace into the geographically static story, but diving from one person’s flashback to another’s has the opposite effect. These constant digressions are merely clumsy attempts either to give a character back story, or to bolster a lame eureka moment. This invites the hypothesis that if the characters had all just sat around talking about their personal histories at the beginning, then events may have worked out by themselves, thus avoiding the need for the novel. On the rare occasion that the action is in the present, the story rattles along like a good old pulp page-turner.

Who parked HMS Victory on the White House lawn? (visitingdc.com)

While the mystery of how Brown has sold more than eighty million books may seem like material for nothing less than a Robert Langdon adventure, the answer pleasingly simple. He has cleverly combined three of the best-selling books of all time: the Bible, for its mysticism; the Guinness Book of Records, for its facts (and remember, each Langdon novel starts with the word ‘facts’); and Sudoku (and other books like it), for its puzzles. Brown has added a dash of the swarming belief in conspiracy theories for good measure.

For all Brown’s self-reported liberal tendencies, his novels feel as if they would be more at home on the ‘Mind, Body and Spirit’ shelf, or wherever it is bookshops stock the ravings of Erik von Daniken, Graeme Hancock and David Icke. If, as in speculative fiction, we accept Langdon’s universe as a weird perversion of our own, then I invoke assistance from the Scooby-Doo universe, whereby a group of meddling kids will come along and unmask Dan Brown - as an algorithm. Like the book’s theme, I live in hope.

P.S. There really is a hidden message in this blog. A hardback copy of The Lost Symbol (only once read) to the first person to post the correct answer.

Never judge a book by its theme tune

I often cite Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) , Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy as typical of excellent television programmes that are preceded by brilliant theme tunes. Books, we are told, should not be judged in the same way, and, unfortunately for James Bradley, his novel The Resurrectionist has a superb cover.

I have a sneaking regard for the reading public’s star rating on Amazon’s reviews; rarely does it fail (I have theories about Amazon review scores which I might share one day). The Resurrectionist averages forty-four percent, which I think is a little generous. However, there is a decent story within the book that’s dying to get out.

Irresistible, isn't it?

My first point is about ignorance on my part. I didn’t realise that ‘resurrectionist’ is a euphemism for ‘graverobber’, so I thought the book was a take on Frankenstein. Second, on revisiting the blurb, I realise it hands out information not covered in the novel – bizarre. Third, what a dirge this novel becomes.

Set in 1826, the narrator is main protagonist Gabriel Swift, apprentice anatomist, the day-to-day business of which is beautifully rendered, if somewhat gruesome, in the first chapter. However, the first person perspective fails to deliver for Bradley. Throughout the novel, we get no sense of Swift’s personality from the narration (think the opposite of Holden Caulfield), and the start to some chapters feels very third person omniscient.

We follow Swift in this near-linear story as he falls foul of colleagues, resurrectionists and whores, descending into the most unconvincing opium habit ever, and finally attempting to reconstruct his life abroad. Thinking about it, the title is misleading: Swift is a resurrectionist for no more than ten percent of the book’s three hundred and thirty three pages.

Shelley's inhuman character had more personality than Gabriel Swift

Despite its promising start, the novel deteriorates into a monotone record of minimal drama, split into one and two-page chapters that give a disjointed feel. There is simply no energy in the prose whatsoever. Bradley tries to create suspense by using what can only be described as reverse dramatic irony, where a character interacts in plain view of Swift, who he knows, and who we have already met, yet remains nameless at that point in the text. Ridiculous.

There is a general lack of characterisation throughout, including the protagonist-narrator. With Swift, we start off feeling neutral about him, and then, as we read on, we discover reasons to dislike him. Perhaps if we understood the motivations for his actions we might identify with him, but Bradley insists on telling us what to think instead of showing us, and in the end we just don’t care. The blurb promises a classic gothic antagonist in Lucan, but he turns out to be a damp squib.

Resurrectionists, apparently

The final quarter of the novel, set ten years after the resurrectionist events, has some redeeming features. In fact, if Bradley had been given a half-decent editor, this would have been where the story starts. We would have seen Swift in his ordinary world, tutoring the offspring of Australian landowners, and painting his beloved stuffed birds; a picture of sweetness and light. The chance arrival of former anatomist colleague, Robert Newsome, throws Swift’s happy existence into turmoil, dragging up the miserable existence he suffered in London ten years ago, affecting the relationships he has built up. The ending, of course, would be the memory of the bird crashing in to the mirror (p,251), thus making sense of his birds-only portfolio (how sad).

All-in-all, the book fails to deliver in character, drama and style, and takes no advantage of its gothic appeal. If it had a theme tune, it would be something like The Love Boat, and then we’d know not to read it.