Tenth of December, by George Saunders

This is my second book of Saunders' short stories (see previous entry on In Persuasion Nation). I particularly enjoy the first person narrative style in the opening and closing stories - centered on young men moved to action and wrapped (encumbered?) in the nuanced (not so nuanced?) baggage of childhood relationships with family. Unlike David Foster Wallace's short stories of doom, gloom and psychological terror, Saunders' writing is generous. While tragic and sometimes sad, they all left me with a sense of hope. If you are muscling your way through top shelf contemporary fiction, this guy needs to be on your reading list.  

The Strangers in the House, by Georges Simenon

Hector Loursat may represent at some level pre-war French existential paralysis. In Moulins, where he practiced law, but now sits all day in his study poking his fire, reading his books and drinking his burgundy, it is winter, dark and moody. The large house in which he has confined himself to two rooms is drafty. It holds secrets up on the third floor. Those secrets eventually draw out misanthropic Loursat to once again practice law. But this is not primarily a story of a murder investigation. Rather, it is an exploration into the mind of a man who emerges from 18 years of self-imposed isolation. Structurally, the story's tempo is rapid and regular enough to keep your attention. Moreover, its introspection may inform the reader's own life - a mark of a great read.

The Drowned World, by J.G. Ballard

I wouldn't say that J.G. Ballard was prescient when he wrote this immersive, atmospheric and psychologically interesting story. True, the planet had flooded due to a 90 foot rise in sea levels and, true, the cause was heating. But the rise in temperature was due to increased solar activity and not due to a compositional imbalance of atmospheric carbon. Nevertheless, what is interesting is the resemblance to one of the great tales written in the past 150 years - Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad (I think I wrote a little about this a few years ago). OK,  Ballard doesn't command the language like Conrad (who does?) but Ballard's tale takes the conceit of man returning to an "earlier" nature and wraps it in a fantastic world of iguanas, submerged cities, jungles and survival. Kerans is a doctor/scientist on a military expedition sent from the Arctic, the last place one may live comfortably on Earth, to document/chart/analyze the climate and the changing world. The bad guy, Strangman, is an albino privateer whackadoo piloting a hydroplane trailed by a paparazzi of crocodiles. Mirroring the Conrad story, Strangman represents the intrusive outside world much as Marlowe, the company man, meets Kurtz. However, the physical presence and mental imbalance of Conrad's Kurtz is wrapped up in Strangman, the intruder, what with his physical bearing, grandiosity, otherworldliness, charisma and seeming insanity. Strangman wants to recreate the lost world or, at least, acquire as much of its treasure as possible. His depot ship carries looted treasure from museums; he drains the lagoon and sets his minions loose on the exposed city streets of London, lost 90 years ago to the rising tides. Kerans, on the other hand, is the cerebral, introspect, who is being sucked back in time, manipulated psychologically much as Conrad's Kurtz, down an evolutionary slide, to a triassic world long before humans where the sun beats rhythmically in his head and the heat and water explode in lush cascades of tropical flora, insects and lizards. I love walking in the woods, running in the snow and, generally, being outside. In many ways this story resonates with me.

The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil and In Persuasion Nation, by George Saunders

I've encountered this guy's work in the New Yorker from time to time but this is my first sustained experience with his writing. Stylistically and thematically, he reminds me a bit of David Foster Wallace. The stories very much are a satire on contemporary life in the United States. They certainly do have a lot to say. In very short order you may move from hilarity to darkness. Both Seussian and Edward Gorey-like ("A" is for Amy who fell down the stairs, "B" is for Basil, devoured by bears...). Phil, the robot, turns into a megalomaniacal idiot whenever his brain falls out of his "tremendous sliding rack" because the bolt holding it in place comes loose. Then there are some stories, like adams,  which left me unsettled in a way that stories seldom do (I recall one of DFW's short stories about a child accidently burned by boiling water - in of itself a horrible thing; yet that story, too, takes it to a completely different, personal, level). Phil's power-hunger will be familiar to you, darkly and comically mirroring some of the not too bright and self-serving politicians who sit in public office. The landscape is ludicrous and weird. Consumerism and marketing are skewered in jon and American policy in Brad Carrigan, American. But the stories do more - somehow they inject a deeply personal element - a humanity that left me reflective. This is good stuff.

Toms River, by Dan Fagin

What a great read! Admittedly, I am from New Jersey, once worked in the chemical industry and now work as a physician. So the subject and setting resonate particularly strongly with me. That being said, on many different levels this story is important for all of us. Among other things, it teaches us about the dynamic between corporate and individual/social interests, speculative versus scientific inquiry, role of government and how it may sometimes fail its citizens, chemistry, cancer, the history of the Toms River area of NJ, epidemiology and statistics and how sometimes it only takes a few determined people (and some luck) to effect significant change. I found the epidemiological discussion(s) among the more interesting parts of the book. The first quarter of the book takes the reader through the history of the dye industry and weaves in tales of epidemiological cancer investigations. It serves as a valuable history lesson, germane to both scientist and non-scientist types. Well worth the effort.

A Murder of Quality, by John Le Carré

Somehow this early story by Le Carré over the years escaped my attention. Together with what I believe is his first novel (Call for the Dead), this tale sits more in the murder mystery genre rather than with spies and such, which made his fame. Nevertheless, it is well-crafted both as a mystery and as a literary work. Suffusing the story is a critique of English society and class divide. It might be worthwhile to compare the style of the Swedish police/detective novels (see earlier posts about Sjöwall and Wahlöö), crafted with tight, clean prose, with the more artful language of Le Carré. Both are wonderfully wrought, on similar canvases, yet are so distinctly different that one may marvel over the flexibility of language and the creativity of the human mind.

The Cancer Chronicles, by George Wilson

Wilson's journalistic-style narrative is loaded with a potpourri of cancer related stuff mostly geared to a non-medical professional audience. Nevertheless, I found many interesting facts and ideas sprinkled throughout. For example, Wilson delves, albeit briefly, into the Love Canal disaster in New York state in the 1970's and cites research that found only modest increase in genetic mutations in offspring of people living in the area and actually a decrease in overall cancer prevalence. And who knew that dinosaurs got tumors? I suppose it's logical that they did. One of the strengths of the book is that it is heavily referenced. Cancer, to me, is a byproduct of existence. I've always felt that it wasn't a disease in the same way that a bacterial infection is. Or an autoimmune condition like rheumatoid arthritis or Crohn's. Cancer is uncontrolled cell proliferation. When the out of control cells migrate and take over other tissue (e.g. breast carcinoma cells traveling to bone), it is called metastatic cancer. After some time the uncontrolled growth takes over the other organs to such an extent that they no longer function properly and the organism dies. Cells need to divide in order for an organism to live. But they cannot divide and just keep dividing willy nilly. They would take over the body, right? Cells have a control mechanism which regulates when and how often they divide. Some genes encode proteins that are part of the machinery of cell division (so-called "oncogenes") and other genes encode proteins that regulate the process by slowing/stopping it (so-called "tumor suppressor genes"). When any of these myriad genes get mutated and don't work properly, the cell is at risk of losing control and becoming cancerous or immortal; the balance is disrupted. How do mutations happen? Sometimes just randomly - every time the cell divides it must duplicate its DNA. The machinery is not perfect and mistakes happen. This is one way mutations develop. Another way is through exposure to something which mutates the DNA - chemicals, viruses, radiation such as x-rays, radon, the sun, cell phone towers - nope, just kidding (there's no real evidence that low frequency electomagnetic radiation in power lines, cell phones, or other appliances is mutagenic.  A certain basic amount of energy is needed to ionize molecules or break DNA bonds and for the average person walking the streets the background electromagnetic radiation is insufficient to generate this level of energy. Please don't get too agitated. Don't forget that you can increase the amount of electromagnetic radiation either by increasing the number of devices or increasing the amplitude of one device, but the energy level will still be insufficient to ionize molecules or damage DNA. Energy is proportional to frequency and inversely proportional to wavelength; amount has nothing to do with it. Check out a physics book if you want to learn more. Or see this nice summary, especially parts 2 and 3, http://large.stanford.edu/publications/crime/references/moulder/moulder.pdf. By the way, Einstein's Nobel prize was on the photoelectric effect which harnessed this relationship). The longer you live, generally speaking the more often your cells have divided. And, since mutations occur when the DNA is replicated during cell division, it stands to reason that the longer you are alive, the greater the chance that you will develop cancer. And it's true! Cancer, for the most part, is a disease of older people (check out SEER data for verification - you have to dig into the website a bit but you'll find age charts like this one for bladder cancer http://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/urinb.html). You might argue that it keeps us from living too long for purposeful advantage of the species. If we (as a species) lived too long, it would be a disincentive to reproduce (which also introduces mutations because of rapid cell division both during genesis of germ cells - sperm and ova - and during fetal development). Reduction in reproduction slows the evolution of a species. Take a look at bacterial colonies which reproduce and mutate rapidly. They develop resistance to drugs quite quickly both in vitro and in vivo.  When was the last time you saw a subset of humans develop mutations that conferred an equally powerful selection advantage? The development of larger craniums to accommodate larger brain sizes was due to a series of mutations that conferred a survival advantage. But that happened over millions of years. It can be fairly argued that without cancer or other things like infections, tigers, wars, or the "thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to," you wouldn't be here reading this. I would have liked Wilson to dive more into these types of discussions. Instead, he whips through a tour of the cancer industry, epidemiology, and basic science research approaches to killing cancer cells. His own life serves as the gravitational force for the narrative - his wife was diagnosed with a high grade endometrial carcinoma and his brother developed head and neck squamous cell carcinoma. Their stories are woven into the text. A good but not great tour of cancer. If you are interested in the subject and not a physician or cancer researcher, you will find it extremely informative. If you are of the industry, it's still a quick and, at times, interesting read.