Carlos Ruiz Zafón’s The Shadow of the Wind is promoted as a sort of literary thriller, along the lines of Umberto Eco’s Focault’s Pendulum or The Name of the Rose, and people also seem to compare it with Borges a lot. Those comparisons aren’t exactly wrong, but I think they sort of miss the point.

More than anything else, The Shadow of the Wind is about synchronicity. The young protagonist, Daniel Sempere, goes to the “Cemetary of Forgotten Books”, is entrusted with a novel by mysterious author Julián Carax, and soon, events in his own life start to echo those of the Carax’ life. The novel in the novel is also titled “The Shadow of the Wind“, which should give you some idea of the direction in which this is headed. A mysterious man has been burning all copies of Carax’ novels, and is after the one Daniel has, which might be the last. The mysterious man uses the name Laín Coubert, which is the name of the devil in one of Carax’ novels, and so on and so forth. There’s also a large helping of references to 18th century gothic horror, romance, and adventure novels, especially later in the book, which of course are exactly the genres Carax wrote in.

The large story arc is interesting enough, and it’s skillfully executed, although some of the “mysteries” are not too hard to figure out, and the main mysteries to be revealed are more the details of how things happened, instead of the larger revelations it seems Ruiz Zafón wants the reader to experience. In the end, however, this doesn’t matter too much, since a lot of the joy in the book is in the details, especially, perhaps, in the humorous ancillary characters, such as Fermín, the ex-revolutionary turned homeless drifter under the Franco regime who Daniel and his father take in and give a job in their bookstore. I found myself looking forward to any sequence where he would play a prominent role, since his hilarious anecdotes and outrageously brazen solutions to problems are the book’s high points.

The ending is not entirely unexpected, and perhaps a bit pat, but by then, you’ve been so thoroughly charmed by the characters (not to mention Barcelona, which is as much a character in the book as anyone else) that you don’t care too much. Highly recommended, especially if you don’t take it too seriously. It’s not as intellectual as Eco or Borges, but it’s at least as enjoyable, especially if you love books.

I’m on The Horror Blog’s Horror Roundtable again this week, where the question is about one’s favourite cinematic animal attack. Go check it out.

The Cult of Alien Gods: H.P. Lovecraft And Extraterrestrial Pop Culture, by Jason Colavito (Prometheus Books, 2005), is a strange book. From the title and a quick check of the summaries available, I thought it would be more about Lovecraft’s work and its influence on pop culture in general. It’s not, not really.

It’s mostly a debunking of ancient astronaut theories and related fringe “science”, such as the work of Erich von Däniken. That’s fine, although it’s not so interesting, at least not to me. I read von Däniken back in the day, and found it sort of intriguing, but weak, and it’s been a long time since I considered any of it as anything but fantasy. Linking ancient astronaut theory back to a possible origin in Lovecraft’s fiction sounds like an interesting idea, though, and even though that’s a much more narrow analysis of Lovecraft’s influence than I was hoping for, it still seemed interesting. And to an extent, it is.

But the book fails on a number of points. First, and most importantly, the “linking” of ancient astronaut theory and the like to Lovecraft’s works just fails. The author keeps claiming there’s a link, but never shows much for it, and indeed, from his examples of parallels to other works, it seems much more likely that ancient astronaut theory had some of the same influences as Lovecraft, such as the writings of Blavatsky and Charles Fort, or the ancient civilizations craze of the late 19th century. Lovecraft used it as inspiration for fiction, while others have used it as inspiration for writings they pass off as fact, of course, but otherwise it seems obvious. Colavito is committing the same mistake as people who think humans descended from chimpanzees, while in reality humans and chimps have a common ancestor.

Even that would be excusable, though, since the book could be read as an investigation into the links between fiction writing and fringe science anyway. But there are other problems. There’s the never-ending smugness and feeling of intellectual superiority that oozes off every page, like the author is a particularly precocious and nerdy member of a high school debate team. He used to write for Skeptic magazine, which is full of this kind of arrogant attitude (and that’s probably why people in general don’t listen to them). It’s like hearing Penn Jillette’s debunkings on Bullshit, slightly amusing, but you get the feeling it would actually work better if he calmed down a bit and tried to be more objective, instead of frothing at the mouth. And that’s for a half-hour TV show, imagine a whole book of it.

Which brings me to the third and perhaps biggest problem. Colavito has that particularly American right-wing libertarian point of view, where society is seen as in decay, “everything is relative”, we’re overly politically correct, and people can study GAY HISTORY in universities! Imagine that, surely western civilization must fall. He links this to the rise of ancient astronaut theories, since apparently the gays have tricked people into not believing in science. It’s not surprising he’s a Lovecraft fan, since Lovecraft also ranted endlessly about the moral and racial decay of society and whatnot. He conveniently glosses over the racist and xenophobic aspects of Lovecraft’s fiction in an early chapter as well. Colavito sees western society as being in decline, the “rot” having set in “shortly after” the revolutions of the 18th century. All that because some people believe in UFOs? Let’s get some perspective here. How much scientific knowledge did an average person have in the late 18th century, as compared to now? Fundamentalist religion and superstition was almost universal back then, and that’s generally improved a lot now. It’s ironic that Colavito, as an obvious atheist and believer in science, can skirt so dangerously close to arguments we’re most used to coming out of the Religious Right.

All in all, this is an ok book, if you can get by the problems above. When it sticks to the facts, it’s interesting material. Just don’t read it without a healthy dose of skepticism towards the author and his motives. If someone’s claiming to be the only person who’s honest, unbiased, and without an agenda, just telling it as it is, that’s who you should scrutinize the most.

I’m in the Horror Roundtable over at The Horror Blog this week. Go and check it out, and The Horror Blog in general is worth reading too.

Brick is a weird little thing, a teen movie crime mystery where people speak slightly updated forties lingo, and the main character, a quiet loner, takes on aspects of the Man with No Name from Leone’s Dollars trilogy.

Yeah, it’s weird. What’s weirder is that it works really well. Brendan gets a call from his ex girlfriend, Emily, where she asks him to help her, and then hangs up as if she’s scared of something. A while later, she’s dead, and he’s infiltrating a drug ring to find out who and what killed her. His advantages are that he’s smarter than most, and that he’s a little nuts, totally fearless and uninhibited, and not afraid to get violent. He doesn’t mind manipulating people to get what he wants, either, all in keeping with the noir antihero.

That’s a pretty standard noir setup, but the characters are mostly high-schoolers (except for the Assistant VP, played by Richard Roundtree, of all people, who stands in for the stock noir police detective who thinks the main character is useful, but untrustworthy). The result is odd, a lot of the humor (and the movie is quite funny at times) stems from breaking the tone of the hard-boiled crime drama when parents pop their heads in and serve the kids some apple juice, or make small talk.

In general, though, it’s the teenagers who rule this movie’s world, and they’re just as ruthless and manipulative as you might expect from a noir movie. The plot isn’t amazingly complex, but it’s good enough to keep your interest. What really sets the movie apart is the acting, especially Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Brendan, and, most of all, the dialogue. It’s modern enough to not sound weird, but it has some 40s slang thrown in, which works surprisingly well, but the great thing about it is the rhythm. It’s a sort of clipped, truncated, hyper-realist version of how people really talk, minimalist, but with a jazzy rhythm, like David Mamet writing noir. I really, really loved it, so much that even though I enjoyed the action sequences, I found myself waiting for another scene of dialogue between Brendan and his nerdy sidekick Brain.

Of course, our hero doesn’t really get what he wants, but he gets even, and is left with nothing more than he started with, except perhaps for a sense of having done the right thing. Antiheroes can’t end up happy, that’s just the way the story goes, and Brendan seems to be aware of it, and accepting it stoically, in the end. The movie is very recommended, especially if you’re interested in what can be done by a first-time director on a modest budget, as long as the script is well-written.