Book Report: The Brothers Karamazov

The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Crime and Punishment is one of my favorite books, and the only one of Dostoyevsky's that I'd read before this. Karamazov is beautifully and elegantly written but its story is disjointed and aimless. It reminds me of an USA network drama that runs its course after five years and has no place to go. The shift to a tragic courtroom parody toward the end is the strongest section, but it seems like a side story or sequel rather than something that's part of a ohesive whole.

The author establishes tragic, troubled characters then can't much figure out what to do with them other than using them as mouthpieces to wax philosophically. The monologues are brilliant, but largely unchallenged by conversation partners and left to stand alone as awkwardly placed essays.

The ending tries hard to be beautiful and touching, but is forced and 1950s Disney live action movie-level stupid. The last words are forehead-slappingly ridiculous.


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Foods I Cannot Allow Myself To Be Around

There are certain things I can't allow myself to have, lest I resemble the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man:

Doritos. 

Pringles. 

Ben & Jerry's.

Cinnabon. 

Wienerschnitzel chili cheese dogs chili cheese burger and chili cheese fries for $5.

Red Lobster biscuits.

Reese's peanut butter cups.

I love them too much and cannot be trusted around them. So I must gaze upon them from afar, shielding my stomach from their siren summoning. 

That said, if the streets of New York ever rumble as the gargantuan creature pictured above roars through Times Square, you'll know I had a change of heart.

Book Review: The Art of War

The Art of War by Sun Tzu
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It's a dry, straightforward manual on war general tactics of the era. It has some unique and counterintuitive wisdom that can be applied to other areas of management. Sun Tzu's heartless, analytic thinking was the Moneyball of its day.


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Book Report: The Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales

The Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales by Jacob Grimm
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Pure insanity from cover to cover, almost all of them crammed with gruesome morbidity and plot twists that seem as though they came from either the minds of 10-year-olds or were influenced by absinthe. Disney has plundered the stories for many of their classic animated movies, cleaning them up by removing the most sadistic parts. There is a lot of stuff here, though, that could never be adapted, especially the most demented story of all, Clever Elsie. This is one of the funniest and craziest books in existence.


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Book Report: The Prince

The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It's more of an opinionated history than it is a treasure trove of devious advice. It's still a fascinating and illuminating look into the politics of the period. It pairs nicely with The Borgias and the first three Assassin's Creed games.


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Book Report: Lolita

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I hated this book throughout, and I would hope it's not just because I have a daughter. I suffered through the entire thing only to gain the right to smack down anyone who would apologize for this as something other than a child pornography/sex slave fantasy.

The elegant writing and incredible skill involved only make me despise the book more. I don't think there's artistic validity here, and I would discourage anyone who feels as though they have to read it to be well-read from doing so. The book is full of agony and depravity, and it's sickening to attempt to put a human and relatable face to such a monster. I believe the literary world would be better off if Lolita did not exist.


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A Look Back at True Romance, One Of The Greatest Movies Ever Made

In his commentary track on the "True Romance" DVD, Quentin Tarantino reveals how much of himself he poured into the schlubbish Clarence character played by Christian Slater.

The Elvis-idolizing Clarence, an unkempt loner who works at a comic-book shop, is poor and unloved. He's also given to explosions of nutty diatribes on music, television, movies or comic books - which tends to drive girls away. His plight is much the same as Tarantino's own, the filmmaker explains, back when he was writing the screenplay that would one day be filmed by Tony Scott as "True Romance," one of the most dynamic action films of the 1990s.

After hearing his commentary, it's not tough to squint your eyes and see Tarantino in the place of Clarence. After all, Tarantino reveals he spent most of his 20s in poverty, sometimes working at a video store, never having had a girlfriend. He sold the "True Romance" script for a rock-bottom $50,000, to help fund his dream project, "Reservoir Dogs."

The film is essentially a glorious fulfillment fantasy, in which Clarence finds himself suddenly in love and empowered, a daring rogue rampaging through a criminal underworld he'd only experienced onscreen, on the cusp of changing a suitcase full of stolen cocaine into hundreds of thousands of dollars and the easy life.

To start such an adventure, Clarence first must meet the perfect woman, the one who will giddily throw herself into kung-fu flicks, chomp fast food straight out of the bag, maintain a voracious sexual appetite and help him take out the bad guys. As fate has it, the luscious Alabama (Patricia Arquette) stumbles into a late-night Sonny Chiba triple feature and spills popcorn all over Clarence. They strike up a conversation, and he lets her take him out for pie after the show.

The date leads to an all-night sex romp, then a whirlwind marriage, which isn't at all tripped up by Alabama's revelation that she's a call girl, and the only reason she came into that movie theater was because Clarence's boss paid her to do so as a birthday present. Unblinking, Clarence cares nothing about Alabama's past. All that matters is he's finally met his soulmate.

The improbable yet strangely disarming love story quickly melts away into a full-throttle, bullets-blazing blowout, kickstarted by Clarence's insistence that he must confront Alabama's pimp and get her clothes. Muddling over the matter of whether to take the risk, Clarence is fired up from a bathroom pep talk from Elvis (Val Kilmer), who pops up every now and then to advise and compliment the hero.

Bounding through its two-hour running time with unlimited reserves of energy, Tarantino's script twists and turns over on itself, rushing like whitewater. His dialogue is vintage crime-novel pulp, smooth and self-aware:

"If there's one thing this last week has taught me," Clarence says after getting entangled with the police, the mob and movie producers in the drug deal of a lifetime, "it's better to have a gun and not need it than to need a gun and not have it."

That's one of the film's few printable quotes. The script is jammed with enough swear words to get someone tossed out of a longshoreman's pub.

The Internet Movie Database reports that a certain four-letter swear word is used 225 times. Then there are the 21 deaths, all from gunfire.

No, this isn't a movie to show the kiddies, but it has a unique way of bringing out childlike tendencies in adults, causing them to see the film over and over for their favorite parts.

The highlights are too numerous to mention. Christopher Walken tears things up as a sadistic gangster, attempting to beat information out of Clarence's recovered alcoholic policeman father, Clifford (Dennis Hopper), followed by Clifford's button-pushing historical diatribe on why Sicilians have black hair and dark skin. Brad Pitt and Tom Sizemore pop up in small but memorable roles, and Arquette's breathy performance is drop-dead sexy. Alabama, nothing close to a helpless innocent, can turn from caring nurturer to red-eyed killer on a dime.

Alabama is nothing it all like a real woman. She's a female version of Clarence - in turn the female version of Tarantino - and it makes for some amusing armchair psychology to suspect that she represents Tarantino's overwhelming narcissism.

The adoration he has for his dialogue and characters is contagious. The movie doesn't just play. It reaches through the screen and romances you. Truly.