Matthew LeMay

Wrestling with My Lai

Revisado: 11-23-24

I have really gotten to like Mr. O’Brien. This book possesses a quality J’adore when it’s done well, and this one, for me, excels. It leaves nothing but unanswered questions to chew on. It’s easy to read this with the modern women’s movement perspective and say this is nothing but the tale of a gaslighting predator, and indeed I’m sympathetic to that view. It’s easy, too, to reduce it to a tale of a monster, another view to which I’m sympathetic. But the book doesn’t provide easy answers, and moreover what I love about it is its exploration of the My Lai massacre; it grapples with it, and it’s an incredibly ripe topic.

At my age I’ve always marveled at how Vietnam seems not to have reverberated. Notwithstanding that many who join the military do so as the least evil option for earning a livelihood, many others seem to have not noticed the wicked and misguided - very recent - history of the U.S.’s application of its military might.

I remember a local news crew came to my middle school to interview kids who’d been affected by the war. We were bounteous; my father and uncle were of age, my uncle was exposed to agent orange and his knees were shot (not literally…) but other kids had lost their dads.

Ten years later and boy howdy did we race to sign up, and, very tragically, the rest is history, or should I say a tragic reverberation of history. Even history that hadn’t been around long enough to live up to the name, as yet.

Wie need more reminders of what war really is. That although military service is vital and noble, under poor leadership it can become undone. That’s what this book was for me, and its unresolved questions (beyond the main plot) will haunt me a long time to come.

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Fran Leibowitz where have you been all my life

Revisado: 11-09-24

I discovered Ms Leibowitz on Bill Maher’s podcast. I wish I’d discovered her when this was published. So cynical and insightful. She’s not quite David Sedaris in performance, but I couldn’t imagine a better dry performance for the work.

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Good, with qualms

Revisado: 09-19-24

I heard about this in an interview of Percival Everett around the time of American Fiction. I was skeptical of this book because of Mary Reilly. That book and movie took a masterpiece and sort of missed the point of it, or ignored it, to tell an “all men are capable of being monsters” story. I was wary of this for the same reason. This book is much better written than Mary Reilly, but suffers because it ignores what makes Huckleberry Finn a masterpiece. Not that it’s above critique - I mean, Jim is not a well rounded character in the novel, and that to contemporary eyes is disgusting. But, Huck is deliberately a simple person, an Everyman, who grapples with and then has this stunning revelation. James is a Superman, master of philosophy, morally pure and righteous. I feel like there’s a duty for Jim to be more realistic, even if more precocious than Huck. Or, if the story hadn’t been set in the Huckleberry Finn universe.

Speaking of stunning, huckleberry finn was published in 1884; how is this novel James still capable of being relevant, and how is there still so much need for it?

Still and all, I think I’ll try out some more of Mr. Everett.

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Well done, but lacks focus

Revisado: 10-31-23

I really enjoyed this, the voice acting was terrific. I feel like the book reneged in offering complex moral issues that it failed to follow through on. Josie risks death because of a decision her parents had made, and that decision was apparently for Josie’s social class as an adult. She makes a recovery, so what is the story about? The superstitious beliefs of artificially intelligent beings? The rights of said beings in this future society? And why do we really care about Rick whose parents chose not to “raise” him, where the novel takes a detour for his mother to attempt to call in a favor on Rick’s behalf. I would have been interested if Klara had fulfilled the stunning purpose that’s revealed for her, or I would’ve liked to know more about a society that forces parents to choose a potentially fatal procedure for their children - what were the stakes for those not raised? And what about Josie’s father, who’d somehow opted out of this system? All we hear - from an unreliable witness - is that he’s like a fascist.

Not every question needs to be answered, indeed some of the best fiction leaves you to ponder what happens, or why characters behave a certain way. But for this to be science fiction, it must explore some of the hypotheticals raised to their conclusions.

That said, I really did enjoy this. It’s my first novel by Mr Ishiguro, and I have been looking forward to a novel since seeing remains of the day and never let me go (and the revelation they were based on books😀) I will be reading or listening to more. For its flaws, it still exceeds the great wash of wretched fiction out there, and I don’t regret a minute of time spent listening.

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Generally not a fan of trilogies

Revisado: 10-05-23

Margaret Atwood on her worst day is better than most on their best. I loved Oryx and Crake, for the message delivered in her inimical style - bleak and without a ham fist and evenly distributed. Like many trilogies, I just didn’t care for the latter two. Interesting to compare the denouement of this third with that of Vonnegut’s Galapagos, and worthy of the comparison. But I wish I’d stopped with the first in the series.

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Not ready to quit the series. Not quite

Revisado: 05-16-23

I love the series, I feel like it’s starting to fall apart in the fifth book, the ragtag group of misfits who keep getting caught in geopolitical intrigues. I wish the series had an underlying arc that tied them together that were more obvious and less haphazard. But it’s slipped to where Phule’s Company or Myth Adventures starts. It’s enough to keep me going to number 6. I love the writing and performance.

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Great at short story length

Revisado: 01-23-20

I discovered Joyce Carol Oates late and regret it. This is the second collection of short stories to which I’ve listened. I can’t say enough. They can’t be banished to a genre or theme but moreover do what short stories do in brilliant hands. The voice acting is superb.

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Music and effects distracting

Revisado: 06-18-18

Voice acting and of course the story are superb. The music and special effects are a distraction.

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