Book Report: In the Distance by Hernan Diaz

If you've ever driven to the west coast from anywhere east of the Rockies, you know how much of the United States is a complete wasteland. There are thousands and thousands of square miles unfit for human habitation. In the Distance spends most of its time in that unforgiving place, following a Swedish immigrant named Hakan (pronounced Hawk-can) from boyhood to old age as he does little more than survive. The landscape is unrelentingly bleak, and it's an apt metaphor for Hakan's life. After getting separated from his brother, Linus, on the voyage to America in the mid 1800s, he ends up in San Francisco and makes it a goal to reunite with Linus in New York. He speaks no English, and so the early part of the book is nearly incomprehensible, as the events are seen through his eyes and interpreted incompletely based on how Hakan understands the situation. He's held captive by some sort of criminal gang based in a California gold-rush town, led by a violent, disgusting woman with rotting gums who makes Hakan her sexual slave.

After escaping her clutches, he spends most of his life avoiding other humans, especially after killing most of a band of marauding religious extremists called the Avenging Angels and becoming a wanted man. Hakan is a giant, and is for the most part a gentle soul who I rooted for, but he's in mortal danger for nearly the entire book. He's either on the verge of starvation, or freezing to death, or dying from an infection, or thirst, or at the hands of whatever bloodthirsty vigilantes who have stumbled across him. In between, years pass as he merely subsists in isolation. He comes into contact with a few good people, but they die off more quickly than your average Spinal Tap drummer, often in similarly gruesome fashion. It's a rough world, and Hakan inhabits one of the most unwelcoming areas of it, with unpleasant results.

Book Report: Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut

We live about a mile from a really cool sci-fi and mystery bookstore, Uncle Hugo's & Uncle Edgar's, and until a couple of weeks ago, we'd never darkened their door. I found a really cool mass-market paperback copy of The Sirens of Titan (very similar to the one pictured above, but in even better condition) by Kurt Vonnegut for $4. The store is extremely cool, and it gave me an excuse to read one of Vonnegut's books that I'd never read before. I would like to know enough about sci-fi to purchase a book by someone who I was less familiar with, but that's a goal for a different day, I guess.

Most of the enjoyment that I got from reading the book came from some unexpected twists in the plot, so I'll try not to spoil any of the surprises that I enjoyed here. The Sirens of Titan was Vonnegut's second novel, after Player Piano, and came out a decade before Slaughterhouse-Five. It didn't seem like his satirical knife was quite as finely-honed as it was by the time Slaughterhouse-Five and Cat's Cradle came out. The main themes (which I certainly enjoy) of the absurdity of both war and organized religion are firmly in place in The Sirens of Titan, but they seemed to have benefited from some additional reps by the time of his later works.

The main character of The Sirens of Titan is Malachi Constant, who begins the book as the richest man on earth. Fellow rich person Winston Niles Rumfoord is in some sort of cosmic loop where he and his dog materialize at different times in different places, and Rumfoord can see the future. There's a war fought by Martians who invade Earth, and a religion which emphasizes both God's disinterest in humans as well as the disproportionate influence which luck has over humans' outcomes. Constant is brought low, goes to Mars, then to Mercury, and then back briefly to Earth before heading to Titan, a moon of Saturn, where he's reunited with Rumfoord's wife, whom he raped on the initial voyage to Mars, and their son who was conceived at that time.

The Sirens of Titan is a good book, but it left me slightly cold. None of the characters seemed to be intended to be fully recognizable or relatable as human. That left the story to do the heavy lifting, and while it's very imaginative and swiftly plotted, I wasn't emotionally invested in any of the characters' outcomes.