General Musings: Last night was awful. Someone took umbrage with a joke I made about drugs last night on Twitter. I removed the post and apologized but it obviously struck a nerve with someone. My whole life I've aimed to be congenial and respectful, it kills me when someone gets upset by something I did. I have 10 hours left of being PIO and created controversy before I got to single digits.Today I had a bit of trouble finishing my book on time. Incredible considering that it was a slim novel (dare I say novella?) but a crowded commuter train didn't allow for me to read on my travels, my work was very busy, and I misplaced my book for a few hours. I may have read a few paragraphs and little else until late tonight. But it is done.
I once read that a French count wrote a three volume historical book during the minutes in the morning he waited for his preening wife to arrive for breakfast--I believe it. Time is a gift that is given without warning and often in small parcels. I've taken to always having a book on me. Bathroom, elevator, driving--you never know when that stop light will turn into a 4 hour traffic jam or the elevator will stop and you'll be waiting on Otis. Estote Parati--Be prepared!
Running Page Count: 3,781
Today's Title (Science Fiction): H. G. Wells' The Island of Dr. Moreau
Preface: I finally know what Devo, House of Pain, and Oingo Poingo were talking about! An oft quoted book in popular culture--I was wholly ignorant of the allusions until today (see below). Wells reminds me remarkably of Michael Chrichton. Both are weak writers (albeit stronger than me) that use great and speculative ideas in the world of science fiction. Michael Chrichton's Species is very much the same concept as The Island of Dr. Moreau substituting genetics for vivisection. Wells' writing is equal parts Victorian popular science and B movie plot. Wells was a student, although not a graduate, of biology and was fairly indiscreet in his private life--shocking Victorian/Edwardian society with his lady lovin' antics. A couple of years after the book was published the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection was formed. However, I don't believe Chrichton was ever successful in getting the American Society for Protection of Dinosaurs off the ground.
The Book: Edward Prendick's manuscript is discovered by his nephew and it is a whale of a tale. Prendick was aboard a British ship when it sunk and soon his two life boat companions die in a fight. Prendick is on death's door when he is discovered by a freighter with a doctor on board. Soon our protagonist is nursed back to health and discovers he is on a ship that resembles Noah's ark. The doctor who saved his life gets into some heated arguments with the captain of the vessel and when the doctor, his assistant, and the animals depart on a remote island, Prendick is given the hee-hoo too. Prendick is a sissy of enormous proportions and after pissing off his lifeboat companions and the captain and crew of his rescue ship he gets to work on the island's owner, Dr. Moreau and his physician from aboard the ship, Montgomery. There are some strange goings-on with the island including exotic fauna and an abnormal amount of animal surgery.
Grade: C
Observations: This book is about as badly written as a Penthouse Forum letter---with no sexy tidbits to compensate for the oddly wooden words. The concept is great but I live in the 21st century and it has been explored a wee bit since--with far better and more original insight. Better yet for my immature self it has some hilariously unintentional gay sections:
"My one idea was to get away from these horrible caricatures of my Maker's image, back to the sweet and wholesome intercourse of men." (p97)
"No one would believe me, I was almost as queer to men as I had been to the Beast People [...] my trouble took a strangest form." (p130)
When Wells isn't making awkward sentences about British bachelors he tends to pack the narrative with copious amounts of archaic words and scientific esoterica--my edition had end notes to explain and speculate.
Segues: Three films--I saw the 1996 one directed by Frankenheimer with Val Kilmer and Marlon Brando--awful but it improved on the original text with a cat-woman third act love interest. Note that the date of the pending scientific event is the 8th day of 2010--apocalypse seems always to be just around the corner! Also for an equally banal writing experience with an interesting primer on genetics check out Chrichton's Species.
Tomorrow's Book (Modern Fiction): Yann Martel's Life of Pi 14/501
