Book review in one tweet

Everyone is a con artist, unless you are a giant stone golem. Then you are an emotionless work machine. #ManyPunsIncluded

Favorite quote

Just below the dome, staring down from their niches, were statues of the Virtues: Patience, Chastity, Silence, Charity, Hope, Tubso, Bissonomy, and Fortitude. (Many cultures practice neither of these in the hustle and bustle of the modern world, because no one can remember what they are.)

Review

I've spent the better part of a year submitting stories to short-fiction magazines, most of them of the sci-fi-fantasy variety. Every single one of these magazines has a fairly specific set of guidelines for the formatting of submissions and the kinds of stories they are looking for. Here's a typical example (adapted from Clarkesworld Magazine, probably the best free fiction site online, except maybe Tor.com, magazines which have rejected me... I mean… have rejected my stories a total of seven times between them.)

Though no particular setting, theme, or plot is anathema to us, the following are likely hard sells:

• stories in which a milquetoast civilian government is depicted as the sole obstacle to either catching some depraved criminal or to an uncomplicated military victory
• stories in which the words "thou" or "thine" appear
• sexy vampires, wanton werewolves, or lusty pirates
• "funny" stories that depend on, or even include, puns

I am pretty confident that Terry Pratchett is the reason for that last one, just like I'm pretty confident that the editor of this list used the word "milquetoast" to confuse people. (It means timid). Pratchett is an insanely successful author, and his books are really fun and easy reads, and yes, full of puns. I suspect that legions of Pratchett fans have been flooding the editorial inboxes of magazine editors everywhere since he hit the height of his popularity in the early-to-mid 90s.

But writing humor is hard work, especially in the fantasy realm. This is mostly because fantasy is already so ridiculous that it has to take itself incredibly seriously to get the reader to buy in. So a fantasy story that doesn't take itself seriously will often smash itself to pieces pretty quickly.

So I was a little nervous picking up Going Postal, this being my first introduction to Pratchett and his Discworld series. But from the very first couple Prologs (there's two), I felt confident that I was in good hands. Pratchett has a gift for writing humor that makes you laugh and advances the storyline at the same time, like Shakespeare, only not as long-winded or as good. He has a real gift for crafting horrible character names, Moist von Lipwig being the worst, and the name of the main character. This is a good rule of thumb for all humor writing, I think: any time you can give one of your characters an adjective for a name, you should do it.

The story follows Moist as he goes from a convicted con man to the head of the Ankh-Morpork city post office. I won't give away any more of the plot, except to say that there's a pretty funny scene between a nineteen-thousand-year-old golem and Death.

Thematically, Pratchett spreads the humor around, taking shots at the usual comedic targets: religion, government, big business, and even academia, although the academics he makes fun of are mostly wizards. This is fair, I suppose, although it also leaves me a little underwhelmed at the end. I know this is pre-modern, but I like stories that have a point beyond "Everybody is a fool." I could probably find a point like that in Going Postal if I really tried hard, but I don't think I should have to try hard. I'm out of school.

Nerd rating

7 wizard staffs (out of 10)

If you want a new series to get into, Pratchett currently has 40 Discworld books out, most of which can be read independently of each other. I liked this one enough that I'll probably check out a few more, and that's about the best recommendation you can give for a series.

Non-nerd rating

9 cold, frosty beers (out of 10)

This is just about the easiest fantasy you'll ever read, with the exception of Harry Potter. It's ideal for airplanes, beaches, bus stations, and other places that normal people read books. Give it a shot, unless you are like my wife, and you have an intense hatred for the word "moist."

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These reviews and more can be found on my Goodreads page, for those of you who are a part of that particular electronic social club.

As some of you know, I write an occasional column for McSweeney's Internet Tendency, "Speaking for all Christians Exactly Like Me." The column came about as a result of McSweeney's annual contest, which awards ten or so people with an opportunity to write for the site for a year. Today, I'm continuing an ongoing series of interviews with the other nine winners (or as many of them as I can track down and get to return my emails).

Today’s guest is Ali Fitzgerald, author of the McSweeney's column/webcomic "Hungover Bear and Friends." You'll probably figure this out on your own, but my questions and responses are in italics.

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JJ: Let's start with the most important question: Why is Hungover Bear always hungover? And what does he like to drink?

AF: Well, I don’t necessarily think he’s always hungover. I think he could just as easily be named “Melancholy Bear.” But his drinking definitely contributes to his malaise, and a hungover bear is way funnier. I want to explore the funny/strange side of drinking related depression with him. I imagine him as a kind of introspective, infinitely lovable Lost in Translation character.

I’ve thought about what he would drink quite a bit. And I think it would be Chianti, whiskey, and good IPAs. Coincidentally, that is what I drink.

JJ: So do you identify with Hungover Bear over the others, or do you think there are elements of your personality in all of the characters?

I’ve thought about that question a lot too. I kind of based Hungover Bear on myself, or more accurately, a personification (bearification?) of the way I feel sometimes. The others are mixtures of specific people/behaviors I’ve encountered along the way.

But sometimes I’ll do something and think to myself, “Oh man, maybe I am Self-Righteous Hawk.” But I console myself with the fact that I think we’re all Self-Righteous Hawk sometimes.

JJ: Do you think of your column primarily as humor or as social commentary? It's definitely got elements of both, and the best humor always has some sort of commentary within it. I'm mostly wondering how you see it, or what you intend for it.

AF: That’s a good question. Both? It’s interesting how much you can get away with using animals as proxies. Since I started the column, I feel like I should reread Animal Farm for that kind of allegorical humor. Actually, Patricia Highsmith has a bunch of great short stories from the animal’s point of view. There’s one about a one-eyed rat in Venice, where the rat isn’t anthropomorphized at all, but we still get a sense of its psychology. I’m really excited to plumb the social commentary depths with these characters, because I feel like it’s rich terrain.

Generally speaking though, it’s important that the comic be funny. It really pleases me to think that people will become attached to the characters and chuckle along with them.

JJ: Who do you think of as your audience?

AF: You know, I’m not sure. In my early twenties I tried to get a comic nationally syndicated and the response was that it was “too dark.” I was surprised because the comic was called Patent Sweater, and it was culled from my sweetest, sincerest self. After that I went to grad school and embraced more abstract, perhaps less mainstream leanings, which is to say that people who like my comics are probably not the same as Family Circus readers. But you never know - I actually had a conversation a few days ago about how subversive the structure of Family Circus really was. Surprisingly experimental with all those misleading footsteps and time-lapses.

JJ: How carefully do you pick the titles for your columns? And are the two panels that you include in each column meant to be read independently of one another, or do you put them together for specific reasons?

AF: For titles, I have a list of Al-Anon slogans that I choose from and alter to suit my whims or the comics. A few weeks ago I used "Face It," because Hungover Bear was wearing a giant Werner Herzog head.

Deciding which comics go together is a fairly visual decision. They have to look “right” to me. But they are meant to be read separately as little narrative snapshots.

JJ: Ok let's get to a big question now. Why do you illustrate comics?

AF: That is a big one! I’ve rewritten this answer several times with the same degree of non-specificity. But here’s one: I’ve made and read comics for most of my life, and I think there is still so much to be explored with visual storytelling.

Right now we have this briskly changing cultural landscape, what with the internets and all, and ways of reading and composing narratives are being redefined. I admire people who push the graphic medium, like Joe Sacco, who just made a graphic novel detailing one battle in WWI without any text. It folds out to form a 24-foot-long drawing, which is incredible and shows what comics can do.

JJ: That sounds pretty awesome. Read or seen anything else lately that you really liked?

AF: I just finished the collected short stories of Patricia Highsmith, who I think is the tops. Her writing is so clear and fully-formed, and her stories are these brisk, bizarre little psychological tales. I also saw the documentary Blackfish recently which I watched twice because it was so compelling and harrowing. As for visuals, I saw a Peter Saul show here in Berlin some months ago that was totally inspiring.

JJ: Let me pause here briefly to thank you for describing something as "the tops." Also, anything on the web (in terms of visual storytelling or art) that you admire? Also-also, what sort of direction do you think we're moving in, as far as visual storytelling goes?

I’m not really up to date on webcomics really, but I was reading that wildly popular one by Allie Brosh the other day [Hyperbole and a Half], and I feel like she uses pictures to create this incredible buildup of pathos/humor. She combines text and drawings in this really endearing, highly readable way.

The New Yorker has a “Sketchpad” section now where artists relive an event, like a Pixies concert for example, in comic form. That’s kind of where I think we’re going. Not necessarily to this comics journalism-only place, but to a place where comics regularly cover a range of things, including “mature” and “highbrow” stuff like depression and Pixies concerts.

JJ: How'd you get started illustrating?

AF: I only started illustrating as a career(ish) when I moved to Berlin a few years ago. Before that I was making large-scale art installations and more invested in the gallery circuit. Then I got to Berlin, disillusioned with my life/art/America, and so I partied and half-heartedly tried to work in the same way. Eventually I began writing/illustrating stories about my expat adventures, which felt better and more honest at that time. Plus I could do them sitting in front of a heat lamp in my apartment, which is what I needed during the first few Berlin Winters.

A lot of those comics seem pretty self-involved to me now, partly because I was learning the craft and how to make stories accessible. Now I feel like I have a certain faculty with it that makes it more fun and less labored. Although it’s always a struggle somehow, I think, to make things relevant.

JJ: Ok, so here's the part where I read your McSweeney's bio and ask you things about it. First question: How's the view from the top of the Berlin wall?

AF: My street really does straddle the shadow of the Wall. When I leave my house I stumble over these little brick markers and then suddenly I’m in the East, where a Siemens factory has replaced the former death strip.

My friend Hilda wrote this blog post about my street which used to have an escape tunnel underneath it. Having said that, my apartment actually faces the backyard, where I smell wafting Turkish cooking and watch my neighbors’ kids run around.

I have a bunch of teaching jobs here in Berlin, and will literally teach anything if someone pays me to. Otherwise, I have a studio practice where I paint/draw and occasionally contribute arts writing. Lately I’ve been doing a monthly comic for Modern Painters Magazine about contemporary art, and some other “Berlinterviews,” a word I stole from my friend Sabrina. In my free time I go to the sauna and take walks around the Soviet Memorial, or I indiscriminately watch good/bad TV with my girlfriend.

JJ: I noticed from your bio that you watch a lot of Golden Girls, which I can only assume makes you an excellent person. Is the show still funny in German? My guess is that you'd lose a lot of Blanche's classic flirtatious style. Also, what's your favorite episode?

AF: Actually, my Belgian friend tells me that the Golden Girls is one of the rare shows that’s actually funnier in German. My German isn’t good enough for me to say that definitively. Blanche still carries it off though. I can’t pick a favorite episode, but I found this good top ten list.

JJ: Finally, let's say that somebody you loved was going to enter the McSweeney's column contest next year. What advice would you give them?

AF: Hmmmm…I mean, I think they should make themselves familiar with McSweeney’s. It was always one of my favorite sites/publications and I made Hungover Bear and Friends partially with them in mind, which I think helped it fit in.

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You can follow Ali on Twitter at @AliFitzterrible, and you can see more of her work on her website AliFitzgerald.net.

Book review in one tweet

If you read *Infinite Jest* and you loved all the endnotes about math, then this is the book for you. #ManyParadoxesAlsoIncluded

Favorite quote

"If this still fails to make the basic idea clear, you're asked to please just eat it (the idea) because this is the best we can do." - p. 271

Review

Everything and More traces the development of the mathematical concept of infinity, from the somewhat incomprehensible work of really smart Greek guys to the slightly more incomprehensible work of really smart French guys to the perfectly incomprehensible work of really smart German guys. There's even an American thrown in at the end for good measure. Though the material is super challenging, what Wallace is really going for here is understanding; he wants you to actually see why the concept of infinity was so difficult for mathematics historically, and why the work by Weierstrass, Dedekind, and Cantor (the "heroes" of this book) was so revolutionary and beautiful.

He mostly succeeds. As in, by the end of the book, I felt like I actually sort of understood Cantor et al's basic thinking, in spite of how complex it got. And I think, even more importantly, that I understood the potential problems with it. We tend to treat math as a sort of pure and unquestionable branch of knowledge, but what Wallace does really well is to trace out the places where even the most rigorous concepts of infinity fail to provide that pure certainty. And, in turn, sort of expose the basic uncertainty behind all of math. This uncertainty exists, in spite of how well math works in practical applications. It's Cantor's work that leads eventually to Gödel and his incompleteness theorems, which I know nothing about, but which I intend to read more about after finishing this book.

If you're considering reading E & M, then please consult my favorite quote above, because it perfectly sums up the proper approach. It is impossible to read in the same way you might read, say, Oliver Twist or Moby Dick or the latest edition of Cosmo. If you happen to be a mathematician, or if you just had a lot of college calculus, you will likely understand it better than I did. But for the rest of us, there are a lot of places in this book where you'll have to "please just eat it" and move on. There's enough of value in the rest of it to make this worth doing.

Nerd rating

6 wizard staffs (out of 10)

Normally I'd be giving this seven or eight staffs, but this book is really only suited for three types of nerds: math nerds, David Foster Wallace nerds, and "I'll read anything that looks hard because I am a book hunter and no prey is too challenging" nerds. All other nerd varieties should probably steer clear.

Non-nerd rating

2 cold, frosty beers (out of 10)

I suspect many people will need two cold, frosty beers to get through two pages of this. But if you do manage to get through it, you may find a few things that keep you thinking long after you put the book down. Many of the concepts of infinity can be expressed in terms of regular language (as opposed to massive strings of math symbols), and it's these normal paradoxes of infinity that will make your mind start to spin, rather than glaze over with thick molasses. I'm pretty sure that simile makes sense.

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FYI, there's a lot more book reviews like this on my Goodreads profile, if you happen to be a part of that electronic book club. If not, you can select the "Books" Category of this blog to see the other books I've reviewed.

Last year, I made the transition from successful college student to full-time writer. This year marks another transition, from full-time writer to over-worked, split-attention writer (which is what most writers are). But writing isn't something I'll ever stop doing, so there will still be plenty of words flying at you in 2014. Here's a look ahead to what I've got planned.

Sequel to The Towers

I first want to say thank you to everyone who has read The Towers or is planning to read it or isn't planning to read it but still suggested it to someone else. If there's one thing that writing a book has taught me, it's how blessed I am by family and friends. So thank you.

And for those of you who are already asking me about a sequel, I plan on starting work on the next book in March, with the hope that I will once again have it out by my birthday, November 18. There is no title yet, but you'll be certain to hear all about it as that day approaches.

The Life and Times of Butterfly the Lower Back Tattoo: And Other Stories

February 1 will mark the one year anniversary of the Double J, and, in celebration, a "best-of" anthology of stories will be released that same month: The Life and Times of Butterfly the Lower Back Tattoo: And Other Stories. The release will be in ebook form only, it will contain several original stories exclusive to the book, and it will be $0.99. Look for it on (or after) February 19.

Analog Science Fiction and Fact

My first professional science fiction story, "A Fierce, Calming Presence," will be published in the April 2014 edition of Analog Science Fiction and Fact. The April edition will probably come out in February or March, because that's just how magazines work. Links to purchase the issue (in print or ebook form) will be posted on this website when it is released. Analog is also carried by quite a few libraries, if you'd prefer to read it that way.

Changes to the Double J

The publishing schedule on this site will also be changing in two ways. There are very few people that will actually care about these changes, but I am one of them, and since I get to do whatever I want on this site, I'm going to run through the changes now.

Change 1

Instead of posting a new story most Wednesdays, I'll be posting a new story once a month, on the 19th of that month. The date is almost completely arbitrary, but the frequency is going down simply for time reasons, and because I have lots of other projects to work on. Rest assured, the stories will continue to be completely ridiculous, mildly humorous, and occasionally misspelled.

Change 2

Blog content will continue to get updated weekly, on most Fridays. This year I'll be featuring the following blog categories:

• Speaking for All Christians Exactly Like Me - My McSweeney's column on pop culture
• Interviews with McSweeney's Columnists - I posted the first of these in December (with Ian Orti). More will be forthcoming.
• Letters to my mother - Stuff that's going on in my personal life
• Netflix documentaries you've been meaning to watch - Documentary reviews
• Short-short book reviews - All of these will also be posted on Goodreads, usually before I actually put them on the site. So if you're on Goodreads, you can get them there. I currently have eight friends, but I think I can get that up to ten by the end of the year if I buy some advertising.

I've got a few ideas for some other stuff too, but these will be the meat and potatoes of the whole bloggy meal. And, as always, all promises are subject to being complete lies.

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Hope your year is lovely and peaceful, and remember you can drop me a line at any time using the electronic relationship buttons on the right. Happy new year.