The Book Club

Book Review: Frank Anthony Politio's Drama Queers!

Title: Drama Queers!

Series: Sequel to Band Fags!

Author: Frank Anthony Polito

Publisher: Kensington (2009)

Genre: Literature

Sub-Genres: 1980's, Coming of Age,GLBTQ Studies, Theatre Studies

Plot Summary: Bradley Dayton is a high school senior in the 1980's in a Detroit suburb. He's coming to terms with his sexuality, a best friend who refuses to acknowledge who he is, and not getting the lead in the school play. He just might also be falling in love for the first time, while trying to figure out what to do with the rest of his life.

What I Liked: Well, I liked the original book in this series enough to try out the sequel. And while there is a similar style and some of my favorite characters recur here, this book is almost too like original take. Even the two main character's voices are nearly the same. But if you hadn't read the other book, then you wouldn't know that.

That being said, I think anyone who has done high school theatre can at least appreciate this story. It's a story of learning who you are and why the most talented people don't always succeed in their artistic professions. It's a hard lesson to learn, but a valuable one.

What I Didn't Like: This book felt like fluff. And not in the good way.

There was something either hurried or incomplete about it. The first book had the same problem, but it didn't have the lack of structure that makes this book so unfulfilling. In fact, since the plotlines for both books run concurrently, this book's ending is the same as the first. (I won't spoil it here.) But in the first book, the ending felt earned in a way that it isn't here.

The structure and the narrative voice simply wander too much. Chapters jump around in time and there are constant allusions to 80's nostalgia, but it doesn't feel needed - or in my case, wanted at all. Sure, I'm not a child of the 80's, but just like I don't know as much about music as Nick Hornby, I can still enjoy the allusions he uses and learn something. Here, I felt like the allusions were too kitsch and unneeded, especially when they interrupt the story's flow for pages at a time.

Also, while I understand that the books are both based off the author's life and his real friends, there needed to be more of a character arc and resolution for not only the main character but for some of the minor characters, too. There's literally zero secondary character development in this book, making the main character (who narrates the book) read like a self-centered jerk. And his one true love? A bit too perfect, if you ask me.

Similar Books: Other Frank Anthony Polito Books: Band Fags!

Other Gay Teens: Screwed Up Life of Charlie The Second, Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You: A Novel, and Hero.

Other 80's Nostalgia Trips: Remember the 80s: Now That's What I Call Nostagia!, Talking to Girls About Duran Duran: One Young Man's Quest for True Love and a Cooler Haircut, and High Fidelity: A Novel.

Buy It Here!: Drama Queers!

Last Thought: Unless you love books about the 80's, gay teens, or drama nerds, skip it.

Great Quotes: The Age of Innocence

 

 

"An unalterable and unquestioned law of the musical world required that the German text of French operas sung by Swedish artists should be translated into Italian for the clearer understanding of English-speaking audiences."

Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence

Comic Pull List: The Mousy Girl is Evil Edition

 
Avengers Academy #12 - Christos Gage & Tom Raney

Raney brings his excellent art - perfectly fitted to the former artist Mike McKone's style - to a story that Gage just rocks. Marvel has been hitting it out of the park in recent years, producing great new characters in each tradition (the New X-Men, the Initiative, or the Young Avengers), but I think Gage has hit gold with this newest batch. The subtle development here for 4 of our 6 main characters is surprising and perfectly human. Veil's turn, for example, is deliciously amazing but shocking at the same time. And that scene between Hazmat and Mettle? Heartbreaking. This is simply the best Avengers series out there right now.

 
Batgirl #20 - Bryan Q. Miller & Ramon Bachs

I have to admit - I'm a bit disappointed in the newest turn in the Batgirl saga. I think this title lacks something now that Proxy has replaced Oracle (though she still shows up in non-superhero form) and the Batgirl-Barbara-St. Nick love triangle has been shelved. I like that Batgirl's getting a rounded-out cast, too, but are we going to pull a Smallville and have half of Batgirl's classmates be evil? I'm hoping Miller can pull out more surprises, because the reveal here didn't do much for me. An unusually disappointing issue of Batgirl.

 
Birds of Prey #11 - Gail Simone & Pere Perez

If there's one thing Simone does best, it's providing a double or triple cross that makes sense. But to be honest, Catman and Huntress's flirtation, but with the situation they're in, you almost expected this outcome from the very beginning. It's a nice done-in-one with simple but clean art from Perez, but it feels already done. I mean, I should have loved this issue. It had Catman's abs and all.

 
Thunderbolts #156 - Jeff Parker & Kev Walker

I'm glad I continued on with this series after last issue's try-out. Parker's script moves around the characters with relative ease but the plot still skips along at a blinding clip (although the ending is a but abrupt). Walker's art is different but fits the mood of the title (and those are the best undead Nazis I've seen in a long time), so that this book just seems to gel. A great ride.

 
Uncanny X-Men #535 - Kieron Gillen & Terry Dodson

I was worried about Gillen taking over from departing writer Matt Fraction, but despite the utterly awful Sublime arc, this issue returns to the same uber-X-Men feeling that Fraction managed. The Dodson art team provides one of the most beautiful books on the stands, and Gillen manages to give the characters unique voices. And it's a detestament to this book that I enjoyed it so much when it's reusing a story arc I didn't really like the first time around AND using a team of X-Men that I don't really like (Kitty and Emma being the exceptions). If this is what Gillen can do, then I'm far less worried than I was for my favorite title.

X-Factor #218 - Peter David & Emanuela Lupacchino

A great middle issue of a longer arc, this issue could have come off as without emotion or pointless, especially after the revelation of M's Muslim heritage last issue. Instead, this issue ups the action, giving M, Strong Guy, and Black Cat some great character moments, and giving M some of her finest moments ever. It's well done, and while it wasn't great, I'm definitely excited to see where this concludes.

 
X-Men: Legacy #247 (Age of X Chapter 5) - Mike Carey & Clay Mann

I said to make this be one of the best X-Men crossovers ever, Carey was going to have to stick the landing. Sadly, this isn't really what I wanted. Of course, we're not actually to the end, so I'm hoping Carey has more tricks up his sleeves. The revelation of what's causing the Age of X is a bit of a let down, and the character moments seem off or unreal now, because only one character actually knows what's going on and believes in it. It's an odd balance that isn't really working, unfortunately. I'm crossing my fingers for the ending.

Great Quotes: Eco's Foucault's Pendulum

 

 "You spend a life seeking the Opportunity, without realizing that the decisive moment, the moment that justified birth and death, has already passed. It will not return, but it was — full, dazzling, generous as every revelation."

Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum

Book Review: Mary Karr's Lit

Title: Lit

Author: Mary Karr

Publisher: Harper (2009)

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction

Sub-Genres: Addiction, Family Drama, Religion, Writing

Plot Summary: Karr tells her own tale of tackling an addiction to alcohol. She details, although she never actually tried to commit suicide and how much she cared for her son, how she was utterly, truly messed up, thanks in part to her mother's own wild ways. Karr also tells the story of how she became a literary success and how she found her way from being an atheist to joining the Catholic church.

What I Liked: This book was on most of last year's Best Of lists, as well as my own Top 10 List of Books I haven't Read Yet (4 down, 6 to go!), and I have to say, I agree with all the praise. This memoir is a nice balance of the same tropes we've seen (the bad homelife, the bad marriage, the horrible addiction) but Karr manages to elevate it to new levels with her own humor, style, and prose.

For a lot of memoirists, it's the story that sells the book. In other words, their actual writing might not be that great, because the editors are more worried about a saleable idea than beautiful prose. Karr, as a poet first and memoirist second, is the antithesis of that ugly cycle. Her words are uniquely chosen in that way only poets can do, but she doesn't manage to let that bog down her plot. Her stories moves along at a face clip, allowing her to cover large portions of her life and dreams without letting the poetry stop coming.

I also thoroughly enjoyed the letter to her son at the opening. As a writer, it's hard to let your family read your work. We write from experience. Memorists have it even worse, because their own lives are the story, which means that family members suddenly become characters. And while we could pull an Osborn family (where the elder sister never once appeared with her family on the show and everyone pretended she didn't exist during shooting), it feels like lying - well, at least to me. I thought it was a smart and welcome addition and set the book's tone - as this book was really about Karr's relationship to her own mother.

I also really like Karr's style of not using quotation marks, because it would be impossible to remember actual quotes (or, at least, that's why I'm assuming she did it). It's a little hard to read at first, but I think it speaks to this being her memories, a point she references many times throughout the novel, like when she blacks out and can't tell the reader what happened. She's not the first to use this trick, but she used it well.

What I Didn't Like: I haven't read Karr's other two memoirs, and being the detail-oriented reader I am, I felt like I was missing a few pieces of the puzzle overall. To be a truly standalone book, I feel like nothing should feel out of place or go unexplained. There are a few moments in passing that just brought me short - mostly because I had no clue what she was talking about.

To go along with that, once Karr begins her recovery, her personal world explodes with new people. The book's cast literally quadruples in about three chapters, and well, it's kind of hard to remember who everyone is. While Karr does a good job of describing people, she usually only does so once, when we first meet them, so when they show up later, sometimes it's hard to remember who in the world these people were. It's a continuity issue that causes the reader to remove themselves from the book at times. A few more descriptions (or less characters) might have helped.

Similar Books: Karr's Other Memoirs: Cherry and The Liars' Club: A Memoir.

Books by People in the Novel: Karr's Poetry: Sinners Welcome: Poems, Viper Rum, and Tobias Wolff's Memoir: This Boy's Life: A Memoir.

Drinking Memoirs: A Drinking Life: A Memoir, Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood, and Drinking: A Love Story.

Buy It Here!: Lit: A Memoir

Last Thought: An excellent memoir about family, addiction, finding god, and finding a voice.

Great Quotes: Foundation by Isaac Asimov

 

 

"Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent."

Isaac Asimov, Foundation

Literary Terms: The Differences Between Memoir, Autobiography, and Biography

While memoir has been a popular genre for the last fifteen years or so, suddenly blowing up out of nowhere thanks in part to bestsellers like Prozac Nation and Running with Scissors, there has always been a bit of confusion about just what the difference between a memoir and an autobiography is.

But to understand that, first you have to understand the difference between an autobiography and a biography.

A biography is a nonfiction story of a person's life. To be considered biography, the biography must be as true as possible, based on factual evidence. Most biographies today are split into two types: popular nonfiction books about celebrities, politicians, and historical figures and academic works based on scholarly research. Usually, the popular books have more of an artificial or controversal slant, like the new biographies of Malcolm X and Gandhi, who proclaim that both might have gay love affairs.

An autobiography is a nonfiction story of a person's life, written by that person. In other words, the author is writing about their own life. The autobiography falls into the same trappings and styles as the biography. Both tell the story a life from birth until death - or to the present day, in the case of the autobiography.

A memoir, on the other hand, is written by an author about their own life, but has more in common with narrative nonfiction than biography in terms of style. Instead of telling about the entire life of a person, the memoir tells only about a certain period of time or bout a certain story arc of the author's life. Many memoirs deal with depression, abuse, or drugs, or on the other end of the scale, extraordinary, life-changing events. They can also come from celebrities and famous figures, but these are generally limited to books that are ghostwritten by someone else. These books simply adopt the less formal style of the memoir for mass market appeal. Memoirs are more individualized in style and tone than autobiographies, with the latter being more creative and less formal.

Memoirs, unlike academic biographies or autobiographies which are meticulously researched, come from the writer's memory and often contain known falsehoods. The writer will manipulate their own past to better the story - either moving events around, merging several people into one, or changing the scene of an event to create a better emotional climax. These are considered valid changes in a memoir, as long as the majority of the story isn't fabricated, as it was in the case of James Frey's A Million Little Pieces.

Great Quotes: Hanna

 

 "What did your mother die of?"

"3 bullets."

Hanna, now in theatres

Comic Pull List: The Past Haunts Us Edition

 
Avengers: The Children's Crusade #5 (of 9) - Allan Heinberg & Jim Cheung

God, this book is gorgeous. Cheung is doing the best work of his career here, and frankly, every panel that the Scarlet Witch shows up in is poster worthy. That final shot? Absolutely amazing. And Heinberg's script moves along at a fast clip, giving us a great but important (and needing to be explored since it happened) leap in the Avengers versus Young Avengers conflict. It's abrupt, but in terms of the overall story, god, I can't wait to see what happens next. Impeccable work in my opinion.

 
Fear Itself #1 (of 7) - Matt Fraction & Stuart Immonen

Frankly, I have no idea where Marvel's next big event is going. And I like it. Unlike previous events, mostly penned by Brian Michael Bendis and which usually started with a big bang, this title starts quietly. One hero gets shoved around, a villianess steps up her game, and the Avengers face real world problems. Like several other recent Marvel events, these stories are firmly grounded in today's reality - this time, the building of the Islamic center near the World Trade Center and the economic crisis. If Fraction can keep up this underlying tension, I do believe this might be a great event comic. We'll see. Fraction discusses the issue with Newsrama here.

 
New Mutants #23 (Age of X Part 4) - Mike Carey & Steve Kurth

Another great Marvel crossover, as Carey continues to deliver. Carey manages to drop enough hints that you think you know what's going on here, with alternate X-Men running around, but then drops a few major bombshells without revealing his entire hand. The mystery deepens, and all I can say is: I hope to God Carey can deliver on the ending. If he can, this might go down as one of the best X-Men crossovers since...well, ever.

 
Secret Six #32 - Gail Simone & Jim Calafiore

Speaking of delivers, it's normally the middle part of a three part storyline that fails. But with Calafiore turning in gorgeous pages (not one but two great two-page spreads and an amazing final page) and Simone giving longtime readers some well-deserved surprises, this middle issue simply rocks. You've got two returns, about five subplots running at full speed, and the dialogue is pitch perfect. A great issue - and one of the best Secret Six stories ever, if the ending's as good as the beginning and middle.

 
Thunderbolts #155 - Jeff Parker & Kev Walker

I've seen the reviews that said Parker and Walker had breathed new life into this series after it faltered during Dark Reign, but I simply didn't have the funds to try it out. Now that I have, especially given the prominent place Songbird enjoys and the newcomer Santana (giving Santana the best characterization for her past that I've seen in an easy to understand and simple fashion), I'm going to be sticking around. I'm not a huge fan of Walker's unpolished but stylish art, but I'll stay for Parker's precise plotting and great dialogue. Hell, he even made Luke Cage enjoyable and I hate that character.

 
Uncanny X-Men #534 - Matt Fraction, Kieron Gillen, & Greg Land

God, what a mess the ending of Fraction's run on Uncanny X-Men was. This five part storyline was really two stories in one, and neither worked, alone or together. While Land did have some better moments in this issue than others, his work still seems too photo-referenced for my taste (or should I say photomanipulated?). And just as Northstar found Dazzler and Pixie annoying, so did I find this entire issue. The fabulous X-Men can have been so amazing. You know it's bad when the free issue at the end, which I already own, is the best part of the issue.

 
Uncanny X-Men #534.1 - Kieron Gillen & Carlos Pacheco

I'll be honest: I bought this one-shot for the Pacheco X-Men art. And while it wasn't the best X-Men he's ever done, it was still worth it. Gillen's Magneto story, oddly focusing mostly on the former villain and the PR for the superhuman sect Kate Kildare, works. It's a nice done-in-one that seems to setup Gillen's upcoming work on the title, and if this is any indication of what he can do (rather than that awful arc reviewed above), then I'm excited for what was once my favorite title. But can we get Pacheco on the X-Men rotation, instead of Land? Cause that would be great. And you can read Gillen's thoughts on the issue in this interview with Comic Book Resources.