Books I Read March 2nd, 2025

There is beauty in the failures we allow ourselves to live with.

Tomorrow, the Killing by Daniel Polansky – As a pretty iron clad rule, I do not re-read the things I've published (I get my masochistic thrills elsewhere), but for an upcoming project (and with great trepidation) I picked this up for the first time since I sent it off to the publisher some 13? 14 years ago? It was a fascinating if not altogether pleasant experience. Not shockingly, I had forgotten swathes of it, side characters and subplots, Easter eggs and personal references I stumbled upon with some joy. Largely, however, this was eclipsed by the predictable post-facto edits one desperately wishes one could inflict on the text. Anyway, is it good? It's OK. Some of the lines are strong and the plot moves swiftly. The nefarious plotting is pretty clever by the standards of noir and very clever by the standards of fantasy. I'd change most of the world-building and I'd cut most of the asides and I'd rewrite about half the dialogues. Also, it's mawkish and overly sentimental. So, yeah, mixed bag. I suspect most people who read it would enjoy it more than I did, but that might be self-deception.

House of Stone by Novuyo Rosa Tshuma – A rootless lodger usurps the family history of his surrogate family in this multi-generational novel of post-colonial Zimbabwe. An absolutely masterful debut, at once a disturbing work of genre fiction and an insightful exploration of how power shapes history and history identity. Very strong recommendation, Tshuma is a writer worth watching.

Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche – 'Supposing truth were a woman—what then?' Something else I haven't read in about 20 years, though I can't say what it was that brought me back. Lately I suppose I've just had more of a yen to test the works of my youth against the internal aesthetic barometer I've developed since. For once my present and past selves seem more or less in agreement. Few men have ever so fully explored the ramifications of subjectivity in the human experience. And he remains howlingly funny, rich with one-liners and brilliant asides. To whit...

'Men of profound sadness betray themselves when they are happy: they have a mode of seizing upon happiness as though they would choke and strangle it, out of jealousy—ah, they know only too well that it will flee them!'

'Books for the general reader are always ill-smelling books, the odor of paltry people clings to them. Where the populace eat and drink, and even where they reverence it is accustomed to stink.'

'Many a peacock hides his tail from every eye—and calls it pride.'

Downsides, he writes like an INCEL on a 'reddit forum thread', with this FRUSTRATING TENDENCY to capitalize words as means of emphasis and a 'penchant' for putting things in 'inverted commas' which CERTAINLY SEEMS 'arbitrary.' And, of course, for all the power and weight of his critiques, for all his ferocious and undeniable brilliance, the fact remains that pressed into service as any sort of prescriptive guide his views remain incoherent where they aren't fundamentally objectionable Still, it was fun to poke at this side of my brain again.