This hair that I leave on boys' pillows splits the sun's rays for my eyes only

 Poet still unknown. Reveal thyself, bard!

Don't forget to vote!

After hours of research and agonizing over the choice, I decided to vote NO on the recall of Gavin Newsom. Well, actually, that part was easy, but what about the 46 replacement options? The Democrats are telling us to leave that second part blank, but my take is different. California's Republicans are incapable of fielding a single candidate who would be even remotely competitive with Newsom in a head-to-head contest. So instead, their objective seems to be to make the state into a sad, ungovernable joke by wasting hundreds of millions of dollars on a recall, hoping that exhausted, scared, and angry Californians will stay away from the polls, and the recall will slip through on the votes of the dedicated GOP crackpots. In a rare show of bipartisanship, I've decided that if it works, and Newsom is turned out, I'd like to help with the goal of making the state and its GOP a laughing stock. But so many to choose from. I ended up going with Angelyne, Billboard Queen. One problem: she's not actually a Republican. Another: She'd probably do a better job than Larry Elder, the GOP frontrunner.

So difficult being a responsible voter these days.

Sweet little sci-fi love stories

I confess to being a sucker for the genre of small movies that build a sweet love story on a sci-fi theme. Starman is the classic– though maybe a Jeff Bridges vehicle doesn't really count as "small." I praised Monsters here already– a sci-fi action romance that does a whole lot with what must have been a limited budget. And last night we watched Long Weekend, a worthy addition featuring two cute-as-buttons protagonists, relaxed humor, and a nice supporting turn by Damon Wayans Jr. Between delta, Afghanistan, and Haiti, you need 90 minutes of sweetness, don't you?

"I avoid philosophy, abhor economics"

Oh, Rita, that hurts, but I plan to read your new book of poems nevertheless.

Bacillus

 

Darren Johnston

One of my very favorite musicians, formerly Bay Area-, now Brooklyn-based, always worth hearing whenever and wherever you have the opportunity.

No. 7 in A Major, Op. 92: II. Allegretto

Alexi was but a youngster when we attended a crazy Millennium party, at which guests were invited to give a very brief presentation of their nomination for the greatest human achievement of the past thousand years. Mine was "Beethoven," and I played a snippet of this. I'm happy to report that Alexi, whose knowledge and appreciation of classical music would very soon eclipse my own, now recommends the same piece to readers of the New York Times: 5 Minutes That Will Make You Love Symphonies.

Dystopias

I've been reading... just not blogging. Time to catch up with a first installment of reviews.

Hummingbird Salamander
Jeff VanderMeer

As a big fan of VanderMeer's Southern Reach Trilogy, I went into this with high hopes. After all, I loved the trilogy and enjoyed Borne... and hummingbirds and salamanders are both among my very favorite creatures! With such lead characters, how could a near-future dystopia by a master of biologically informed future weirdness go wrong? Oh, let me count the ways. Basically, Jeff phoned it in, with mediocre writing and a perfunctory, almost weirdly conventional suspense plot. That the hummingbird and salamander are stuffed is emblematic of the lifelessness of the book. The ending is a shameless cliffhanger setup for the inevitable sequel, which I doubt I will be reading.

Good Neighbors
Sarah Langan

Heathers meets Desperate Housewives meets Stranger Things, this novel is at its best when it explores the intensely fraught relationships among the kids who inhabit this sinkhole-stricken suburb– fraughtness that spills over to their class-conflicted parents. The climax is a little forced, but it's mostly a fun and nasty little piece of work.

Klara and the Sun
Kazuo Ishiguro

Ishiguro's latest is more or less a hybrid of his two greatest novels: The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go. It is a good read, but not as great as either of its parents. The protagonist and first-person narrator of this novel of the not-so-distant future is the "artificial friend," Klara. Klara is a wonderful literary invention– brilliant, naive, and tragicomic– but I couldn't help thinking that by now we have had plenty of exposure to interesting cyborgs and synths, if only from some recent TV series. Battlestar Galactica, Humans, Westworld (not to mention movies from Blade Runner to Ex Machina)– each has in its fashion explored quite effectively the territory of synths who become conscious of their exploitation and must decide how to react to that forbidden knowledge. Countless books in the sci fi genre have done the same. What has Ishiguro, Nobel laureate, shown us that we have not already seen? Without giving too much away, the book's distinctiveness and suspense rest with the question of whether Klara– smart, perceptive, and empathetic as she is– is ultimately capable of transcending her artificial worldview and recognizing the true horror of her condition. Like Stevens in the The Remains of the Day, Klara is pathologically self-denying and deluded (in her case, by design). Unlike Stevens, Klara seems profoundly admirable and lovable. Which makes the author's treatment of her– and the reader– that much more cruel.