Flight Paths of The Emperor - Steven Heighton

The best story in this collection is the first one, about a Canadian, who speaks some Japanese, working at a coffee shop in Osaka to make ends meet. The coffee shop, built after the war, is slated to be demolished to make way for some new developments, and there is some trepidation that a certain lifestyle was about to come to a end.  Shot through with bits of humour (even if some of it seems a bit forced - the idiom mangling English student, for example) you can tell it's a serious work of fiction because the coffee shop isn't saved.

This "serious work" tag infects most of these stories - objects take on significance, narrative shifts through time, connections are drawn between relationships and larger events. At times the stories collapse under this seriousness, but at other times it works - a story in which a man (Caucasian) takes his daughter (born to a Japanese mother) back to Japan ends in uncomfortable territory.

Of course there's the war and the bomb and a sense of old Japan dying to make room for a new Japan (though it should be pointed out that the old Japan, such as it was, created the conditions for the war) and proverbs that start stories and a very unbelievable episode involving Yakuza kidnapping an English teacher.

These stories are trapped in a certain time period - both a certain time in Japan and a certain time in Canadian fiction - and the energy created in the first story failing to sustain itself throughout the collection.

The Big Short - Michael Lewis

On the surface, it`s hard to find the good guys, the heroes, in this story. Three years we are living in the aftermath   - S&P, who just downgraded the U.S.`s credit rating and sparked a massive dip in the stock market, plays a role in this book as one of the agencies that continued to give triple A ratings to mortgage backed securities, even though they were junk.  It reminded me of the moral universe in a James Ellroy novel - everyone is selfish and corrupt, so the hero is the person who is the least corrupt, or at least corrupt for a reason.

The story follows a few individuals saw the impending economic doom of the sub-prime mortgage, and shorted the market (and made a fortune in doing so)  They are colorful characters - a medical doctor with Aspger`s, a socially stunted trader, three California dudes who have little idea what they are actually doing - and the author spends considerable time with them, providing some solid reporting and character background.  The usual suspects are here - Goldman Sachs, Bear Sterns, AIG - and what struck me is how they managed to not only screw people and businesses over and make millions, but it was all technically legal - it was so far out in front that no one had any idea if it should be against the law or not.

2030 - Albert Brooks

A challenge in reading a book by an author who is famous for other things is that you are predisposed to view the book through a lens clouded by the author's fame. In non-fiction and autobiography, this isn't much of an issue - the reason why are you reading the book is usually based on who the person is. With non-fiction, this gets a bit trickier.

Since he is famous of acting and directing, I was expecting more of a Vonnegut, black humour style tale of the future. There are elements of that in this, but it's mostly a straight up story about what happens to the US in 2030, after a massive earthquake destroys Los Angeles. It takes time to get where it's going - the characters are set up with lots of background, the plot is put in motion - but it comes together at the end. An ending that seems entirely probably under the circumstances, and one that seems devoid any political influence.  One thing that did stand out - the lack of the role technology plays in this future, particularly the Internet. There is an Internet, but no one in 2030 seems to have an iphone or spend their time online - it's a future Internet that could have been written in the late '90's. (Which stands in contrast to Super Sad Love Story)

Lost in Shangri-La - Mitchell Zukoff

Perhaps the most remarkable part of this adventure story set in the later days of the Second World War is the consequences for the natives of the secluded area called Shangri-La that three American soldiers crash into - living a lifestyle unchanged for thousands of years, the natives are yanked into the 20th century. In the epilogue the author finds a few still clinging to their traditional ways (penis gourds, bones through noses) to sell their souls by posing for photographs with tourists.

In May 1945 twenty American military personnel (including women) go on a pleasure flight over a secluded section of Papa New Guinea but bad weather forces the plane to crash. Only thee survive and they are helped by the natives, who believe the Americans with their white skin are spirits. A group of Filipino-American soldiers parachute in to set up a camp and help the survivors, and eventually a daring rescue plan is crafted involving gliders, a near-forgotten aircraft nicknamed "coffin boxes".  A good summer time adventure read.

Pastoralia - George Saunders

My second George Saunders book this year, I bought this one based on how much I liked CivilWarLand in Bad Decline. Pastoralia is similar - a collection of short stories, all about sad sacks trying to survive in a world that has it in for them, a world where things go from terrible to even worse that you could have imagined.  In the first story, a man with a very sick boy has a job as a caveman in a history theme park, but his desire to do a good job is thwarted by his partner's tendency to speak English and act uncave-like when visitors come by.  The best one in the collection is Sea Oak, about a male stripper trying to support his extended family by working in a nautical-themed club. His grandmother dies during a break-in at their squalid apartment complex, but the cheap coffin they buried her in can't hold her and she comes back to tell them to start improving their lot and not wasting their life.  Her advice crumbles along with her corpse, leaving the narrator in the same place as when he started, except this time haunted by the bleak future before him.



 

Among The Truthers - Jonathan Kay

The most disappointing part of this book is the part that's not there - the refuting of the claims of 9/11 Truthers. Kay writes around it, mentioning it only once when he offers up an excuse for not including it  - "Debunking books don't sell". This hole transforms the book into a history of conspiracy theories, starting with The Truther Movement, rather than a book singularly about the Truther Movement, making the title a marketing ploy. Given the title a reader expects that the author spends time among 9/11 Truthers and reports back, but we are only offered truncated versions. (Better versions appeared in the National Post when Kay was writing this novel). This 'among the natives' approach was done much better by Matt Taibbi in The Great Derangement, who spends time with the religious right in the US and the 9/11 Truthers and draws connections between the two groups.

You can't go far complaining about a book for what it isn't. This book is a history of conspiracy theories, including the JFK assassination and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the two Rosetta stones of conspiracism.  The parallel between religion and conspiracism is drawn, as is the power of the Internet and video streaming. Overall very nice, but ultimately unsatisfying.

This Cake Is For The Party - Sarah Selecky

10 stories, remarkable for being even in their distribution of style, wit and a high degree of writing. All are about loss, and what comes before and what comes after.  The most skillful is the last in the collection, One Thousand Wax Buddhas, which plays with narrative structure and first-person perspective to tell the story of a candle-maker and his mentally ill wife. Hints of Munroe, suggestions of Carver, but Selecky makes these stories her own.