Jonathan Poritsky

The fol­low­ing short and sweet review comes from my account over at goodreads.com. If you’re a goodreads user, feel free to check in on my read­ing list and tell me what you think.

The Castle in the Forest: A Novel by Norman Mailer

rat­ing: 4 of 5 stars
This book it tough to swal­low as it human­izes one of the most vile peo­ple in his­tory, Adolf Hitler. However, once I allowed myself to get into the book, I saw the genius behind Mailer’s work. If we human­ize a man by see­ing him through the eyes of a devil, what does that say about us? Layers and ques­tions fill this book, mak­ing it more of a stim­u­lat­ing read than an infor­ma­tional one. Also, Mailer’s prose is incred­i­ble here. He is like a chameleon, enter­ing an older dialect for an older tale. I knew he was great, just didn’t real­ize he was so diverse. A mas­ter of let­ters! (excla­ma­tion points add to the book’s charm. check it out.

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Cormac McCarthy’s The Road is great, but that doesn’t mean I was wholly blown away by it. Sparse lan­guage and stark apoc­a­lyp­tic land­scapes aren’t exactly new ter­ri­tory, and that sort of stuff doesn’t exactly get my noo­dle going. It’s a par­lor trick of sorts that Mr. McCarthy has pulled off grace­fully. The plot and style are sim­i­lar to any comic book or pulp novel or B-movie from a bygone era, but the author has imbued this thin palate with a lit­er­ary cog­nizance that raises story out of the muck and grime of a post-apocalyptic landscape.

The story fol­lows a man and a boy walk­ing down a road, search­ing for sus­te­nance and dodg­ing evil-doers, after the end of days. How and why the earth has been scorched into obliv­ion is never explained because it doesn’t need to be. Mr. McCarthy has kept as much infor­ma­tion out of the story as pos­si­ble, even going so far as to do away with con­trac­tions and other for­mat­ting niceties, like quo­ta­tions marks or chap­ters. The mes­sage is clear: show only what is needed, noth­ing more. I’ll fol­low suit, and offer you noth­ing more of the plot, it would ruin the expe­ri­ence of read­ing it.

According to IMDb, Mr. McCarthy’s books have been adapted into four films so far, includ­ing last year’s Best Picture win­ner No Country For Old Men. The Road rep­re­sents one of three more films com­ing out adapted from his work. I doubt the film will be very good, but it’s obvi­ous why it would be made. The novel’s stripped down nature reads just like a screen­play. Action, action, dia­logue, scene. This for­mula lent itself extremely well to No Country, which fol­lows the book almost to the letter.

But this book is very dif­fer­ent. There is no chase. There is noth­ing to strive for. Ultimately, there seems to be no rea­son to live in this non-world that the author has drawn up for us, which is why this book has mys­ti­fied read­ers since its release. Is it a great read? Yes. Is it any­thing more than that? No. Do I rec­om­mend it? Hell yes.

The Shroud of the Thwacker by Chris Elliott

My review

rat­ing: 3 of 5 stars
I have to say I enjoyed this goofy lit­tle romp. Sure, it’s inane, but for some rea­son I couldn’t put it down. I think Chris Elliot is send­ing a mes­sage to us to not take our­selves so darn seri­ously. Message recieved loud a clear cabin boy.


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For the new book Love Without Blood by Raz Steel.

Thought some of yins out in the world wide web would like to know what I clutch on the sub­way. There’s actu­ally a lot.

The Mammoth Book of Horror Comics, Edited by Peter Normanton

This beast of a book has been fol­low­ing me around lately. It all started when I had the bright idea to make a hor­ror film, but couldn’t come u p with, ya know, plots or char­ac­ters or those things you need to get some decent writ­ing done. I don’t want to reveal my dia­bol­i­cal plans just yet, but I can tell you that I’ve been fas­ci­nated by zom­bies lately. I’d really love to get to know them bet­ter, get inside their heads (though I bet they’d want into my cra­nium more).

Anyway, killing time in the graphic novel sec­tion at B&N last week, I hap­pened upon this tome of mur­der­ous tales. So far it’s tons of fun. Most of the comics I’ve read so far have been from 1950–1955, and while none have lit­er­ally ter­ri­fied me, they cer­tainly have been quite enter­tain­ing. The one that will be tough­est to top in this book is “Hitler’s Head” by Don Heck (and co.). It tells the tale of a dec­o­rated Nazi lay­ing low in South America after the war who is haunted by the ghost of Hitler and his Army of demons. From the begin­ning right down to it’s head-scratcher of an end­ing it is truly fas­ci­nat­ing. It is griz­zly, but not grue­some. Plus, it’s easy enough to cheer on Nazi on Nazi action. Read on…