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Only When I Laugh by Len Deighton
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
I’ve read and enjoyed all of Len Deighton’s Harry Palmer novels and Bernard Samson novels, but this is my first time reading a Deighton novel that’s not a spy novel of some kind. This one is a crime comedy from 1968 featuring three con artists – veteran Silas, his lover Liz and young Bob – who work as a team to stage elaborate cons, typically in the form of fake business investment deals. All three characters take turns as narrators, and unreliable ones at that (as you might expect con artists to be).
The story follows a fairly standard template – Silas, Liz and Bob take on a new con that doesn’t go as planned and the team starts to fracture as young Bob gets impatient with Silas running the show, and has designs on Liz, etc. But it’s also an exploration of the generation gap of the late 1960s – Silas is a WW2 vet who (his criminal aspirations aside) embodies the disciplined, stiff-upper-lip values of that generation, while Bob is an impulsive working class yob who has done time and resents the older generation telling him what to do. Liz is somewhere in between as a not-so-neutral observer.
Despite all that, I confess I didn’t get much out of it. The basic story is okay, but Deighton’s characters get sidetracked by unannounced flashbacks (which in Silas’ case are rather lengthy, possibly because WW2 scenarios are Deighton’s comfort zone). The multiple-narration device also makes it hard to get a grip on who these people really are, especially when Silas and Bob start improvising scenes just to see how long they can stay in that character. Maybe that’s the point, but still, I found myself skipping a lot. Anyway, there’s a lot to like here, but for me is just never really gelled into a likeable whole.
The Wind's Twelve Quarters by Ursula K. Le Guin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I tend to enjoy Ursula Le Guin’s novels, but this is my first time reading her short stories. This 1975 anthology was the first collection of her short stories, and of the 17 tales here, I’d read only one before. The opener, “Sembley’s Necklace”, also serves as a prologue to her debut novel Rocannon's World, and is an early display of her tendency to blend SF and fantasy tropes in her work.
In fact, a number of stories here are connected to her more famous novels, if only by location. For example, "The Word of Unbinding" and "The Rule of Names" are stories set in Earthsea. "Winter's King" takes place on Gethen, the planet that became the setting for The Left Hand of Darkness. And "The Day Before the Revolution" is a prequel of sorts to The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia. However, there are plenty of other stories here: A banished astronomer seeks the stars in a silver mine; a planetary survey team receives ambiguous telepathic signals on a world without animal life; the sole survivor of a clone-group weathers the loss of his other "selves."
For whatever reason, I found that the stories linked to the novels worked the best for me – I suppose because they were wonderfully familiar territory for me, and reminded me why I loved those books. "The Day Before the Revolution" is especially good, not least for its concise exploration of the fate of ageing revolutionaries. But the others are also worthwhile, particularly her famous story "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas", which describes a summer festival in a utopian city of whose prosperity depends on the perpetual misery of a single child. Like with any collection, a few don’t clear the bar set by her best work, but then it’s a pretty high bar.
Mondo Barbie: An Anthology of Fiction & Poetry by Lucinda Ebersole
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
All the current kerfluffle over Barbieheimer and the conservative meltdown over Barbie’s alleged wokeness reminded me that somewhere buried in my bookshelves is this 1993 anthology that collects short stories and poems about Barbie in some form or fashion. The whole point of the book is that Barbie is (and has always been) so much more than a toy. Just as there has been many iterations of Barbie (Malibu Barbie, Flight Attendant Barbie, etc), she’s also a feminist icon, a pop-culture phenomenon, a coming-of-age catalyst of sexual discovery and so much more. So of course I had to re-read it.
I’ve heard of a few of the contributors, but most are new to me. The stories and poems here cover a wide range of Barbie experiences and opinions, though a common theme is the contrast between her “perfect” plasticine status-symbol life and the messy complicated real world. There’s also lots of dismemberment, sexual drama (both hetero and LGBTQ) and “Ken has no dick” jokes. Sometimes Barbie is the character, sometimes she speaks to her owners, sometimes she is merely a catalyst for the plot. One SF story is a murder mystery on the moon that takes place amid a religious cult where members transform into Barbie-like people. Another recalls a traumatic childhood visit to a Mattel factory.
As with any anthology, the quality varies, but it’s one of those rare collections where the sum is more interesting than its parts. It all adds up to the inescapable truth that Barbie has been central to so many childhoods and sexual awakenings (whether you had a Barbie or not). Plenty of non-fiction books have been written about the Barbie pop-culture phenomenon, but these fictional stories get to the heart of the matter by taking us to the front lines with the people who came of age in a Barbie world. It also highlights how she has always been something of a sociopolitical lightning rod, especially as American society underwent its own sociopolitical upheavals – which also means the current hoo-ha over the Barbie film is neither new nor original.
DISCLAIMER: I haven’t seen the Barbie movie, and I have no plans to do so anytime soon.
BONUS TRACK: : My sister had some Barbies, and we usually combined them with my Steve Austin, GI Joe and Big Jim action figures. When she decided she’d outgrown them around age 14, my friend Steve and I took the townhouse, the camper van, the surf buggy, Big Jim’s Jeep and all the dolls, and staged an elaborate action sequence in the backyard that also involved fireworks and a can of gasoline. There were no survivors.
View all my reviews
Put another shrimp on the Barbie,
This is dF
Only When I Laugh by Len DeightonMy rating: 2 of 5 stars
I’ve read and enjoyed all of Len Deighton’s Harry Palmer novels and Bernard Samson novels, but this is my first time reading a Deighton novel that’s not a spy novel of some kind. This one is a crime comedy from 1968 featuring three con artists – veteran Silas, his lover Liz and young Bob – who work as a team to stage elaborate cons, typically in the form of fake business investment deals. All three characters take turns as narrators, and unreliable ones at that (as you might expect con artists to be).
The story follows a fairly standard template – Silas, Liz and Bob take on a new con that doesn’t go as planned and the team starts to fracture as young Bob gets impatient with Silas running the show, and has designs on Liz, etc. But it’s also an exploration of the generation gap of the late 1960s – Silas is a WW2 vet who (his criminal aspirations aside) embodies the disciplined, stiff-upper-lip values of that generation, while Bob is an impulsive working class yob who has done time and resents the older generation telling him what to do. Liz is somewhere in between as a not-so-neutral observer.
Despite all that, I confess I didn’t get much out of it. The basic story is okay, but Deighton’s characters get sidetracked by unannounced flashbacks (which in Silas’ case are rather lengthy, possibly because WW2 scenarios are Deighton’s comfort zone). The multiple-narration device also makes it hard to get a grip on who these people really are, especially when Silas and Bob start improvising scenes just to see how long they can stay in that character. Maybe that’s the point, but still, I found myself skipping a lot. Anyway, there’s a lot to like here, but for me is just never really gelled into a likeable whole.
The Wind's Twelve Quarters by Ursula K. Le GuinMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
I tend to enjoy Ursula Le Guin’s novels, but this is my first time reading her short stories. This 1975 anthology was the first collection of her short stories, and of the 17 tales here, I’d read only one before. The opener, “Sembley’s Necklace”, also serves as a prologue to her debut novel Rocannon's World, and is an early display of her tendency to blend SF and fantasy tropes in her work.
In fact, a number of stories here are connected to her more famous novels, if only by location. For example, "The Word of Unbinding" and "The Rule of Names" are stories set in Earthsea. "Winter's King" takes place on Gethen, the planet that became the setting for The Left Hand of Darkness. And "The Day Before the Revolution" is a prequel of sorts to The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia. However, there are plenty of other stories here: A banished astronomer seeks the stars in a silver mine; a planetary survey team receives ambiguous telepathic signals on a world without animal life; the sole survivor of a clone-group weathers the loss of his other "selves."
For whatever reason, I found that the stories linked to the novels worked the best for me – I suppose because they were wonderfully familiar territory for me, and reminded me why I loved those books. "The Day Before the Revolution" is especially good, not least for its concise exploration of the fate of ageing revolutionaries. But the others are also worthwhile, particularly her famous story "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas", which describes a summer festival in a utopian city of whose prosperity depends on the perpetual misery of a single child. Like with any collection, a few don’t clear the bar set by her best work, but then it’s a pretty high bar.
Mondo Barbie: An Anthology of Fiction & Poetry by Lucinda EbersoleMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
All the current kerfluffle over Barbieheimer and the conservative meltdown over Barbie’s alleged wokeness reminded me that somewhere buried in my bookshelves is this 1993 anthology that collects short stories and poems about Barbie in some form or fashion. The whole point of the book is that Barbie is (and has always been) so much more than a toy. Just as there has been many iterations of Barbie (Malibu Barbie, Flight Attendant Barbie, etc), she’s also a feminist icon, a pop-culture phenomenon, a coming-of-age catalyst of sexual discovery and so much more. So of course I had to re-read it.
I’ve heard of a few of the contributors, but most are new to me. The stories and poems here cover a wide range of Barbie experiences and opinions, though a common theme is the contrast between her “perfect” plasticine status-symbol life and the messy complicated real world. There’s also lots of dismemberment, sexual drama (both hetero and LGBTQ) and “Ken has no dick” jokes. Sometimes Barbie is the character, sometimes she speaks to her owners, sometimes she is merely a catalyst for the plot. One SF story is a murder mystery on the moon that takes place amid a religious cult where members transform into Barbie-like people. Another recalls a traumatic childhood visit to a Mattel factory.
As with any anthology, the quality varies, but it’s one of those rare collections where the sum is more interesting than its parts. It all adds up to the inescapable truth that Barbie has been central to so many childhoods and sexual awakenings (whether you had a Barbie or not). Plenty of non-fiction books have been written about the Barbie pop-culture phenomenon, but these fictional stories get to the heart of the matter by taking us to the front lines with the people who came of age in a Barbie world. It also highlights how she has always been something of a sociopolitical lightning rod, especially as American society underwent its own sociopolitical upheavals – which also means the current hoo-ha over the Barbie film is neither new nor original.
DISCLAIMER: I haven’t seen the Barbie movie, and I have no plans to do so anytime soon.
BONUS TRACK: : My sister had some Barbies, and we usually combined them with my Steve Austin, GI Joe and Big Jim action figures. When she decided she’d outgrown them around age 14, my friend Steve and I took the townhouse, the camper van, the surf buggy, Big Jim’s Jeep and all the dolls, and staged an elaborate action sequence in the backyard that also involved fireworks and a can of gasoline. There were no survivors.
View all my reviews
Put another shrimp on the Barbie,
This is dF
