Musaner Misses the Mark but DeLeon is on Target

Musaner; DeLeon

Once Upon a Time; Tremor Fantasma

Lucent Music; Tremor Fantasma

*/****

Jazz has become the masala of music. It spices everything from rock and folk music to Celtic and Country. In fact, we’re so used to hearing it mixed with other things that it can sound uninspired on its own, a problem that plagues a new release from the Armenian jazz ensemble Musaner.

I had high hopes that I would hear some intriguing experimental fusion music from an 11-member ensemble led by classically trained pianist Ara Sarkissian, a man of Armenian ancestry born in Cyprus, sired in Lebanon, and now in Boston. What we get instead is pretty tame stuff that would be pleasant if heard in a late-hours café, but is tepid stripped of context. Many of the titles belie what we hear. “A Ride Through the Mountains” sounds like an unfocused Paul Winter composition, with clarinetist Todd Brunet in the Winter role. There are intriguing piano and sax notes interspersed throughout, but they are cool in both senses of the word: impressive, but also unapproachable. The title track is the album's strongest track. It too is cool in that it has a wintry feel enhanced by Sarkissian’s icy-but-light keyboard fingering. But at 9:13 it’s way too long to sustain the feeling and it has an improvised middle section that comes off as a force fit. You’d probably expect tracks such as “Overnight Train” or “Strewn by the Wind” to pick up the pace, but they don’t. In fact, the saxes in the latter composition hardly stir let alone blow hard. In all, a languid release and not what one would expect from such a large ensemble.

 DeLeon’s Tremor Fantasma is more properly a world music/rock release than jazz, though there are jazzy riffs throughout–as well as smatterings of many other things. Multiple influences are precisely what one would expect from a group specializing in Sephardic music. Unlike Musaner, DeLeon front man Dan Saks freely mixes the musical influences of peripatetic Jews. “Barminian,” for example, is a Turkish folk song redone in mariachi style. If you can picture a group of Turks with accordions and oversized guitars singing in Ladino in a Oaxaca plaza, that’s the effect! Saks repeats this throughout, with Greek and Spanish songs given a Latin flavor in Mexico, where he went to make this record. But it’s not really “Mexican” either; a song such as “Buena Semana” sounds like it should be, but only if we call it Mexico by way of Jamaica. DeLeon use an unorthodox combination of instruments: banjos and guitars, but also trumpets, glockenspiel, and “junk” drums, the latter basically anything that can be thumped, banged, clapped, or crashed together. It is often compared to Balkan Beat Box or Gogol Bordello, not because it’s a sound-alike, but because the ensemble is often irreverent, innovative, and delightfully unpretentious. Check out “Ya Ribon Alam,” which is haunting in the way that a pop anthem set in an echoing cathedral might be. It also has more life in its first 30 seconds than in the entire of Musaner’s latest. Tremor Fantasma makes the earth move. 

Mario Testino Exhibit at MFA Misfires

Bold, or clichéd? 

Mario Testino Photographs

Museum of Fine Arts (Boston)

Through June 16

The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston is a national treasure. It’s less pretentious and more accessible than the Met, the Getty, or the Smithsonian; yet more cerebral than peers in cities such as Atlanta, Houston, Milwaukee, or Philadelphia. I adore the MFA, am an active member, and have been attending exhibits there for over 30 years. But even the greats misfire. I will not mince words: the current exhibit featuring the work of Peruvian fashion photographer Mario Testino is the single worst thing I’ve ever seen at the MFA.

Testino made his reputation doing glamour shots for magazines such as Vogue and Vanity Fair, as well as filming in official capacity for some of the highest profile designers on the planet. Like many fashion photographers his stock-in-trade is the high contrast glossy, especially those oozing attitude. Testino is a first-rate technician who occasionally snaps a stunning image, but that’s as far as I’m willing to go. Frankly, I’m not sure why subjects are anxious to have their images captured by Testino unless they are more interested in notoriety than flattery.

I liken most of Testino’s photos to the more unwatchable films of Quentin Tarantino. In each case there is a sense of failed ironic detachment–we’re supposed to be looking at something else, but what we really see is the creator enamored of his own supposed cleverness. Testino seeks to shock, but we see the contrivance in each pose. Quite a few of his images are soft porn, the grabbed crotch being a favorite ploy. There is often a lot of flesh exposed in his shots, but mostly in a slutty “white trash” sort of way. Put another way, he’s no Robert Mapplethorpe! He’s no better in manipulating fear. The MFA choice–for obvious reasons­–was to spotlight an image of Patriots’ quarterback Tom Brady exchanging toothy snarls with a Doberman pincher. Does this horrify? Does it impress as unique? Is there an older contrivance in all of journalism than the man-bites-dog trope? He’s also been the go-to shutterbug for Brady’s supermodel wife, Giselle Bundchen, whom he alternatively presents as akin to a high-priced hooker, or as an anatomical freak whose legs attach in unnatural ways. Both, of course, are forms of objectification.    

One might call the MFA show the beautiful and the damned. The latter category is reserved for his portraits of British royalty. Were she alive, I’m sure that Queen Victoria would proclaim, “We are not amused.” In his royalty shots Testino feminizes most of men and masculinizes the women. Prince William looks like the biggest toff in British history–quite a statement, but not the kind the Windsors are likely to sanction. Ten minutes in this gallery will make you wonder why on the earth the British public countenance the use of public monies to pump up these pimps; fifteen will make you think guillotine!

Testino’s photos are ultimately a form of self-serving decadence–devoid of content and, more distressing still, utterly without character. In fact, they are not even about their subjects; they are look-at-me images that focus on the man behind the lens, not who’s in front of it. Ego and art are a delicate balance. Andy Warhol, for instance, was also a pompous twit, but he knew when to draw attention away from himself–even if he had to bore us in order to do so. (Think some of Warhol’s tedious films, or his endless reproduction of iconic images such as Marilyn Monroe or Campbell’s soup.) Would that Testino could fake detachment as well as Warhol.

Those planning a trip to the MFA should skip this exhibit and head instead for the delightful exhibit titled “The Age of the Postcard.” It is a dizzying display in miniature of 400 cards (mostly from Europe) spanning the years 1890 to 1930. That’s where you’ll find unalloyed whimsy, the protean rhythms of daily life, and intriguing caricatures of famous people. It also possesses a quality sorely missing in Testino’s photographs: humanity.

-Rob Weir

            

American Rust a Tough But Honest Read

AMERICAN RUST (2009)

By Philipp Meyer

Random House 978-0385527521

* * * *

In 1980, Emily and I drove through the British Midlands, making our way through the jobless devastation of Birmingham, Leeds, Wolverhampton, Stoke-upon-Trent, and other non-garden spots.  It was mile upon relentless mile of wasteland: abandoned mills, dire housing developments, decay, decadence, drugs, and hooliganism. It also occurred to me, and I said so at the time, that I was glimpsing America’s future. That wasn’t prescient, merely observant–deindustrialization had already begun to exact its toll, especially in places such as our birth-state of Pennsylvania. Although the term is older, the Associated Press began referring to the “Rust Belt” in 1982, and it was soon part of the everyday lexicon.

The fictional town of Buell, Pennsylvania–modeled loosely Charleroi, located on the Monongahela River 20 miles south of Pittsburgh–is the setting for Philipp Meyer’s debut novel American Rust. Although his book is character-driven, he does for the Rust Belt what Steinbeck did for the Dust Bowl. Meyer presents the “Mon Valley” as the corroded resting place of the American Dream. The Mon Valley has its wooded charms, but it’s never been synonymous with the adjective “bucolic.” But at least its towns and cities once hummed with life, courtesy of the smokestack industries (steel, coal, glass, railroads) that pumped black ash into the air and greenbacks into workers’ pockets. By the late 1980s, though, the Mon Valley looked like the British Midlands only worse. (In case you haven’t noticed, there’s not much of a social ‘safety-net’ in the USA.)

Meyer takes us inside dying blue-collar towns, the shabby streets, vacant lots, and empty red brick factories. They are places where there’s more short-fuse anger than long-term prospects. The Mon Valley is where teens huff glue, bums camp out before hopping the next freight train, and where ex-steelworkers hold down several jobs and jack deer out of season to keep food on the table. And, as several characters remark, it’s a constant reminder that this is not the way America was supposed to be.

Meyer tells his story through the eyes of six main characters. The least developed of these is Henry English, though he is a metaphor for what went wrong. Henry bought into the American Dream–literally–by buying a large house in Buell for his wife and two kids. His job disappeared and Henry went off to Ohio to keep up his payments, until that job dried up as well and an industrial accident left him an invalid. His wife died, but at least his libidinous daughter Lee got to Yale and married a rich man/boy. Left behind to tend to Henry is his son Isaac, a slight, brilliant lad of 20 who belongs in college but has few realistic chances of attending. He’s so unsophisticated that his grand life plan involves stealing cash from his old man and hopping a train to Berkeley, where he will just waltz into the University of California. His best friend, Billy Poe, is a handsome hulk and former high school jock who should have fled the Mon Valley on a football scholarship. Instead, he lives in a house trailer with his mother, Grace, and each daydream of fanciful escapes and opportunities squandered. Grace–still attractive in her 40s but weathered–is estranged from her no-account husband and has occasional flings with Harris, the local police chief and a decent guy.

The drama unfolds when Isaac decides to flee and takes Billy along with him–just for the first leg of the journey to the outskirts of town. But this is no On the Road, rather a harrowing tale involving an accidental death that looks like murder, an insider’s look at the brutality of American prisons, bouts of unrequited love and realized lust, peeks into small-town corruption, and a trip to nowhere.  American Rust is not a feel-good story, but it is one of the most brutally honest books on the shelf. It’s marked “fiction,” but tap into a few oral histories and you could change the label to “sociology.” Other than size, Buell isn’t that different from scores of other places in America: Flint, Detroit, Gary, East St. Louis, Watts, Buffalo, Allentown, Holyoke, Oakland….

Meyer isn’t always a great stylist–his depictions of intimacy seem particularly clumsy–but he’s an excellent storyteller and American Rust, for all its grit, is a surprisingly quick book to consume. It’s not easy to digest, though; it doesn’t just reveal, it rubs your face in what Jonathan Cobb and Richard Sennett called the “hidden injuries of class.” Meyer utterly demolishes the myth of America as a middle-class society and calls into question bourgeois assumptions. Many Americans think it’s fine that dirty jobs like those of the Mon Valley went away. No, it’s not. Not when there’s nothing to fill the void. Not when a kid like Billy is trapped on a dead-end street and one such as Isaac stands a better chance of being adducted by aliens than seeing the inside of a UCal classroom. Not when the black ash and greenbacks flee at the same time. Money can’t buy you happiness, but its absence sure does purchase a lot of misery.

American Rust is a tough book, but one every American should read. If America is not supposed to be this way, who made it such? Until there is culpability there is no justice, and where there is no justice, there is no hope.  --Rob Weir

Hat Check Girl Releases Spooky Gem

HAT CHECK GIRL

Road to Red Point

Waterbug 110

* * * *

If your idea of female/male country collaboration courses toward the overwrought lyrics and contrived drama of Lady Antebellum, steer clear of Hat Check Girl; Road to Red Point is something moodier, rootsier, and more ominous. When Annie Gallup and Peter Gallway label their songs, they drag out adjectives such as “spooky” and “haunting,” and they’re not kidding. This album has quite a few songs about drifters, desperados, losers, and hard-luck folks who, as they do in “The Other Road,” tend to relive regret rather than moving on. The title track also evokes memory, but check out its crunchy bass-driven lines that evoke swamp rock and make you think that maybe an alligator or two will appear to no good end. This dark little gem of an album serves gall along with the whiskey. In “Under Those Trees” Gallway sings: “I never took to the Bible but the words ring true/It’s a hell of a story when you’re lonely or blue/Life is a hard road to travel but we struggle and try/And will sleep in comfort when we die.” How about a love song in which the lady of desire stepping from the shower is compared to Scarlett O’Hara?  As you may recall, she was a romantic figure, but also a tragic one. “Remember” is also a love song, but the kind an outlaw might write. You want a nice ending? You’ll find it “Up in the Country” where “it’s colder than Satan,” and he isn’t the worst thing encountered on the road to redemption.

Gallup and Gallway gives us scorched earth country–literally in the case of “Texas is Burning,” a piece that’s a cross between chronicle, music, and Beat poetry. The entire album evokes the sort of thing Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer might have done after a weekend of reading Nietzsche. So why would anyone want to hear this? Because it’s a sonic wonderment enveloping lyrics of poetic honesty rather than canned emotion. Give this one a little time. At first, it’s quiet and creepy, but the more you listen, the more it gets under your skin and you begin to see tiny rays that pierce the darkness with hope. My hat’s off to Hat Check Girl for a bold, unconventional album. Maybe it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but it’s a potent brew nonetheless.--Rob Weir

Here's the only decent YouTube video of Hat Check Girl. This song is on the new album. 

Let's do a Lieberman on the Tea Party

Believe it or not, Joe Lieberman may have a plan to save America!

It should be clear to reasonable Americans of all political persuasions that the band of radical right lunatics called the Tea Party is dangerous and must be taken down. Principles are important, but what should one do when confronted with those that center on ideals such as racism, naked self- interest, corporatism, contraction of personal liberties, and states rights arguments straight out of the 1832 Nullification Crisis? One exaggerates only slightly when comparing the Tea Party to the rightwing putsch that brought Hitler to power. This time evangelical churches play the compliant role that Roman Catholicism played in Germany and Italy.

Okay, it’s a bit much to call every local who hates taxes and dons a tri-cornered hat a Nazi-in-training. Call him instead the puppet of shadowy masters whose identities he does not know and whose agenda he does not understand. Lots of those who show up at rallies are angry white men engaged in boyish conniption fits. Many feel disempowered, and quite a few lack the intellectual wherewithal and skill sets necessary in today’s economy. They are the collateral damage of globalism, a system created by the very masters who pull their strings. (Globalism is another conversation that needs to take place.) 

But let us make no mistake about their masters–they are beyond unpatriotic. Many of them unabashedly call for the overthrow of the American government. In an ideal society, the FBI and Department of Justice would be making treason arrests. At the very least, they’d be infiltrating such groups with the same ardor with which they got inside the liberation movements of the 1960s. (Most of those groups, I hasten to add, spoke of participatory democracy and greater freedom; only a fringe handful used the word “revolution” to mean a violent overthrow of the government.) Don’t take my word for the treasonous statements made by Tea Party leaders, Google “Tea Party + overthrow government” and see what your search yields.

As in Germany during the 1920s, the very structure of a republic makes it harder to ferret out the traitors in our midst. The Bill of Rights must protect citizens and scoundrels alike to have true meaning. Moreover, money-driven primary elections and the nature of representative democracy make it easy for Tea Party activists to get elected to office. Once in Congress, they need not actively subvert government, simply use procedural moves (filibusters, filing technicalities, arcane Congressional rules, etc.) to undermine political machinery and wait for it to rot away. Often, all they do to subvert is utter the word "no," over and over. In fact, when nothing gets done, it increases their attractiveness to the tri-cornered crowd. 

Luckily, representative democracy is also the way to take down the Tea Party. I say it’s time to Lieberman the Tea Party, a strategy named for (now) retired Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut. Slick Joe was certainly one of the oiliest politicians of recent memory. Lest we forget, Lieberman lost the 2006 Democratic nomination to the far more progressive Ned Lamont; in fact, he lost by 4%, which is on the verge of a trouncing in elections these days. Instead of licking his wounds, Lieberman simply declared himself an “independent,” raised twice as much money as Lamont, and won the three-way general election.  (Four if you count the Green Party, whose 6,000 votes would have given Lamont the election if no Republican had run.)    

Many people perceive an elision of the two major parties, the so-called “Republicrats.” In ideological terms, Republicrats are hard to love; in pragmatic terms, a strategic alliance between what I’d call “non-crazy Republicans” and “payback Democrats” could save the nation from Tea Party toxic tannin. This would involve a sort of “Lieberman Plus” tactic. There are districts in this country that are the GOP equivalent of Democratic Massachusetts; that is to say, if you run for Congress as a Democrat, your chances of winning lie between slim and none. It makes no sense for Democrats to waste resources in red-meat sections of the old Confederacy. What it could do is engage in old-fashioned you-scratch-my-back-and-I’ll-scratch-yours politics. In districts where “moderate” Republicans are in jeopardy or lose primary elections,  Democrats should strike a deal in which they sit out the general election and extract policy promises from the newly declared "independent." In those districts in which a Tea Party Congressman currently reigns, the Democrats should get behind a fusion candidate. Eric Cantor, for instance, won reelection with 66% of the vote against a Democrat, but would he win against a GOP independent? Such a candidate would claim roughly a third of the vote upfront–those who'd rather gargle razor blades than vote for Cantor–and would need only to convince 30,000 GOP Virginian voters–less than a quarter–to switch. If that happened, Cantor would go down. And he's in one of the safer Tea Party districts. 

The Lieberman Plus strategy is, I grant you, low on principles. As political strategy, though, it could be a winning gambit. Here’s another thing about representative democracy–it works best when there’s give-and-take. Compromise has a tendency to frustrate ideologues of all stripes, but it is to be preferred to rule by refuseniks. Democrats–a group never known for their long-term vision–may think it’s in their best interest to allow the GOP to hemorrhage internally, but this is a risky strategy in an electoral system in which a Tea Party Republican needs only win the primary to secure overall victory. As Lyndon Johnson might have said, in politics you have some son-of-a-bitch with whom you can make a deal. It has to be one that at least has the word “yes” in his vocabulary. The future of America may rest upon Democrats willingness to go Lieberman and ransom the electoral present to save America from the traitors at the gates of power.    --Rob Weir

Silver Linings Playbook Needs to Scrap its Script

Two wonderful performances in search of a worthy vehicle.

SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK (2012)

Directed by David O. Russell

Weinstein Group, 122 minutes, R (brief nudity, language)

* *

Need more confirmation that movies are in the creative doldrums? Silver Linings Playbook is up for numerous Oscars, including Best Picture, and it’s not even a good movie, let alone an Oscar-worthy nominee. Were it not for outstanding performances from leads Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence, it would be one of the worst pieces of manipulative tearjerker schlock since Terms of Endearment.

Like so many bad films, Silver Linings Playbook can’t decide if it’s a drama, a romance, or a comedy. By trying to be all three, it doesn’t work as any of them. The setup is simple. Patrick Solatano Jr. (Cooper) comes unglued when he comes home early and finds his wife Nikki (Brea Bee) showering and groping with a colleague. Blind with rage and–we’re led to believe–latent mental instability, he nearly kills the guy. Because of that (script convenient) latency, Pat is sent to Excelsior, a mental health facility in Baltimore instead of jail, though he does end losing his home, job, and wife. Okay, let’s get it straight from the start. This film is set in Philadelphia and I used to work in Pennsylvania law enforcement. It’s extremely unlikely that Pat would have been sent anywhere except jail, and he surely wouldn’t have been shipped across state lines (which would have involved an enormous outflow of money).

Never mind that. We pick up the story eight months later when Pat’s mother, Dolores (Jacki Weaver), signs his discharge from the facility. Pat moves in with Dolores and paterfamilias Pat. Sr. (Robert DeNiro), who is making ends meet by running numbers. We quickly learn where Pat Jr. got his demon–his old man is textbook (or is stereotype?) OCD, a guy who truly believes that he can gamble his way back to solvency through the fortunes of his beloved Philadelphia Eagles, as long as everyone wears the proper jerseys, touches an Eagles kerchief properly, and holds a set of remote controls at the correct height. Having Pat Jr. watch the game with him is part of the “mojo.” Except Pat Jr. is a wreck. He didn’t take his meds in the facility, thinks his therapy with psychiatrist Cliff Patel (Anupam Kher) is a joke, and believes he can cure himself through running, reading, and positive thinking. Part of the “cure” involves winning back Nikki, with whom he is obsessed.

Cooper is terrific in the role. He is a hyper hair trigger that can go off at any time and it doesn’t take much. His ineffectual mother is sympathetic, as are friends Ronnie (Jim Ortiz) and Danny (Chris Tucker), but they have issues of their own. Ronnie is in over his head with a big mortgage, a new baby, and a materialistic, free-spending wife, Veronica (Julia Stiles); and Danny is a frequent AWOL from Excelsior, where Pat met him. Water finds its own level in the form of Veronica’s troubled younger sister, Tiffany (Jessica Lawrence), who also came mentally unhinged when her husband was killed in an accident. The initial sparks fly when Pat and Tiffany spar over which one of them is crazier. Lawrence is every bit Cooper’s equal in a role in which she’s part icy Goth, part vulnerable sparrow, and part call-the-bullshit truth speaker.

Had the film centered on these two people moving toward one another in the healing process, this might have been a very good film. Alas, the film is junked up with paste-up characters: Veronica, a cop that shows up every time Pat goes off, an older jerk brother, and Kher playing one of the least convincing shrinks in movie history (and that’s quite a statement). DeNiro doesn’t do much except populate the film. Did Russell swallow a Political Correctness pill? Pat Jr. has an Indian psychiatrist, a Hispanic friend, and a black sidekick. In North Philly? If you think that’s unlikely, how about a plot that involves Pat Sr. needing to win a bet on an Eagles game to save his dream (and probably his house)? And he’s talked into taking it by none other than Tiffany, who delivers a snarky monologue that’s lifted from My Cousin Vinny with the automobile litany replaced by football stats. But let’s take it a step further down the path of absurdity. Even if the Eagles win, Pat St. can’t collect unless he also wins a side bet that Pat Jr. and Tiffany will score at least a 5 in a professional dance contest! Cue the music and let’s see how much of Saturday Night Fever we can pirate. And let’s throw in a few conventions such as an old-fashioned fistfight, Pat Jr. running through the streets of Philly (Rocky), and letters of questionable authorship (Cyrano).

What could have been an incisive look at mental illness dissolves into caper and lame comedy. The entire movie is a manipulative strip tease posing as a feel-good movie. It has the intellectual depth of junior high school, and it demeans the problems with which Cooper and Lawrence are wrestling. Lawrence may well win an Oscar in a not-so-strong pool of actresses and she’s so good that few would begrudge her. But if this film wins anything beyond that, the Oscars can officially be declared a joke. David O. Russell apparently wishes to be a Hollywood director in the worst way. He’s succeeded. –Rob Weir

 

Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore Hard to Close

Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore (2012)

By Robin Sloan

Farrar, Straus & Giroux ISBN: 978-0374214913

* * * ½

If Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore were a mall movie, the poster tag line and review pull out quotes might include: “Bound Books-Meet e-Books,” “Nostalgia in a Steel-cage Death Match with Innovation,” “The Luddites Battle the Techies,” “Utopia Takes a Holiday,” or  “Vanity Versus Basic Biology.” I’d label it “The Da Vinci Code for Geeks,” and my one-line assessment is that it’s an engaging page-turner that should not be confused with great literature. It may be my favorite “guilty pleasure” of 2012.

Our protagonist is Clay Jannon, a guy in his twenties who may be too bright and too clever for his own good. He’s a quick study for just about everything that doesn’t involve deep human interaction: computer hacking, design work, typography, detective work, electronic systems, cryptology…. His intellect has made him mildly jaded. He’s a dilettante with pronounced slacker tendencies who has done very little with his talents beyond designing Websites for concept bagel emporiums that go under at the drop of a sesame seed, whilst buddies from his college days raked in cash from high tech ventures as profound as hardware development and as banal as making superb boob-simulation software! Faced with the need to pay his share of the rent in the San Francisco digs he shares with two other people, Clay takes a job at a shop whose name intrigues him: Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore.

This is no ordinary bookstore. Clay works the graveyard shift and seldom sees a paying customer. He does, however, encounter numerous “members” who borrow ornately bound books shelved in high stacks. They come and go quickly and Penumbra gives Clay the odd charge of writing down their member number in a massive logbook along with everything he observes about them. He’s also told not to snoop among the reserved stacks, remove anything from the store, or investigate any of the logbooks. Can you say “Pandora’s Box?” As Clay grows more and more curious (and bold), he adds some coconspirators: college friends/entrepreneurs, a roommate, and Kat Potente, a gorgeous high flier who works for Google. Her name means “powerful” (aka/potent) in Spanish, German, and Italian, and is a synonym for “stiff” in the latter language. Kat is both strong and stiff, but before long Clay is in love (or is it lust?) with her. She seems to reciprocate, though it’s very clear that she loves Google more than anything or anybody.

The book’s central mystery is straight out of Dan Brown by way of National Treasure. To say too much would be a spoiler, so let me tantalize you by asking you to think of a secret code, a possible search for immortality, a bicoastal caper, and what it might be like if your favorite book group consisted of a bunch of Rosicrucian wannabes. Got that? Of course you don’t!  It’s the job of Clay and his team to make sense (or not) of all of this. Like a Dan Brown novel–also guilty pleasures–or a Nick Cage National Treasure film–way too banal to suppress my guilt instincts–Robin Sloan’s novel relies on too many coincidences and sudden flashes of insight about amazingly arcane things to be  plausible. It also depends on technology that doesn’t actually exist yet and levels of secrecy unlikely in the age of, well, Google. But, as good mysteries do, Sloan’s pacing and setups are such that you are willing to suspend disbelief to see how things resolve. If you can get past the fact that Sloan’s prose is occasionally turgid and the narrative structure is frequently contrived, Sloan has a fascinating yarn to spin. You also have to give him credit–it’s not everyone who can fashion a novel loosely based on the life of Aldus Mantius (1449-1515), the late medieval printer who developed a favored form of slanted italicized type (with the help of punch cutter Francesco Griffo), the semicolon, and standardized punctuation. (If you think that’s no big deal, try deciphering a pre-punctuation Latin manuscript!)

Sloan used to work for Twitter; hence he has at least passing familiarity with some of the issues he raises in his novel, including what constitutes a “cult.” Google comes across as an amazing innovation incubator, but are its devotees any less scary than robed cultists from the past? Other conundrums are raised. Does the digital future portend a kind of salvation, or the rise of new slave masters? Will that future destroy the past, or will that which survives be the only hope of a better future? What does tomorrow hold for art? Will technology bring eternal life, or death of the soul? (If tech-based immortality seems preposterous to you, check out inventor/futurologist Ray Kurzweil’s belief in the “technological singularity.”)

These are interesting and important questions, but don’t expect Sloan to resolve them in any substantive way. In the end, Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore isn’t much more than pulp fiction for the Millennial Generation. In fact, it’s the sort of book that’s probably going to look very dated in about five years. All the more reason to read it now! It’s a quick, breezy read that’s a bit like hot air-popped popcorn: filling without being bad for you. Go ahead; indulge and damn the guilt! --Rob Weir