Scar Tissue – Anthony Kiedis (with Larry Sloman) (2004)

It took me a couple days after finishing this book to realise what it was actually about.  On the surface, Scar Tissue is the autobiography of the lead singer of the Red Hot Chili Peppers – one the of the most successful rock bands of the past twenty years and one of only a very few acts who made their name in the 90’s that have managed to maintain their relevancy this far into the new millennium. So it would be an interesting enough story on its own, considering that the Chili Peppers have gone through several reinventions, or rather, resurrections - but this is not the main thrust of the book.

Rather, Scar Tissue is primarily about Anthony Kiedis’s life long battle with addiction that started around the time his father handed him his first joint, aged 11. The fact that he eventually became a superstar and multi-millionaire gives the tale a backdrop that it might not have had were Kiedis simply another junkie on the street. It is this fact that makes the book such a strange read but perhaps it is also the key to understanding the whole point, which the role that the addiction plays in the life of the addict. Here you have one of the most successful artists in recent time, yet all his achievements, relationships, falls and recoveries can only be seen through the lens of a deadly craving that is either running full blown or in a temporary remission.

That is not to say that there are no genuine insights into his career and that of the Chili Peppers’ – the band’s first shows, the coming and going of members, the albums and era defining songs such as Give It Away, Under The Bridge and Scar Tissue – but everything finds its place in the shadow of Kiedis’s personal battle. For better or worse, as it must be for such sufferer’s and for those around them, the tale ultimately becomes a never ending roundabout of recovery and relapse. By the time it ends on a high, you are tuned in enough to expect that the next low is just around the corner. It also leaves you with a strange discomfort (as in Bukowski’s Ham On Rye), that this is book is written by one of the few that managed, or in this case was privaledged enough, to tell his story. What about all the others that didn’t?

Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? - Philip K. Dick (1962)

Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? is a science fiction crime novel written by Philip K. Dick in 1968. It is set in the near distant future of 1992 - a post-apocalyptic world where nuclear war has filled the air with degenerative radioactive dust and rendered the earth largely unfit for human existence. A world where the highest of status symbols is to own a live animal and where citizens are offered free androids – robots that have been developed to resemble human beings as acts as substitutes for various forms of manual labour – in exchange for voluntary emigration to colonized planets.

The book centres on Rick Deckard, a bounty hunter employed by the police to track down and ‘retire’ rebellious androids that have escaped from their employ and returned to earth. The story covers a 24 hour period in which Deckard must hunt a group of six of the most advanced androids to date. The androids, however, are so indistinguishable from humans in function and appearance that the difference can only be told through minute delays in response to situations that require a show of empathy.

When reading Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? it was very hard to do so without constant reference to Blade Runner, the 1982 film adaption of the book directed by ­Ridley Scott and starring Harrison Ford. Blade Runner has since become a cult sci-fi classic. The film folowed a similar plot to the original book and had an underlying theme that questioned the morality of hunting down robots that were perhaps developing human emotions. It also famously suggested, subtly, that Deckard himself might have been a andoid (or ‘replecant’ as they were referred to in the film).

The book however, provides a different and far more complex reading. While the story also deals with the yearning for freedom of the non-humans, the main theme seems to centre on the notion and effects of empathy. While the android’s empathetic responses are their Achilles’ heal in terms of being identified as non-human, it is the human capacity for empathy that in turn creates their own point of vulnerability.

Blade Runner depicted a battle of mental and physical strength that culminated in the final confrontation between Deckard and the male leader of the rebellious replicants. The battle in Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? is more one of weakness. It is a case of the flawed robots versus the flawed humans, both in search of a better existence but both ultimately doomed to fail by their inherent limitations. Here the pivotal confrontation plays out not in the physical battle, but within the realms of the relationship that develops between Deckard and the female android Rachael Rosen. 

The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz - L. Frank Baum (1900)

The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz is a strange little book. Written by L. Frank Baum in 1900 it is his self-professed attempt to create a modern fairy-tale. However, as Baum felt that morals were already being taught at school and that the classic European fairy tales were far too dark and gory, his effort is one that purposefully attempts to do away with both. So while The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz has become one of the most enduring children's tales of modern times, it also reads as a fantastical tale as told by an actual child who every now and then morphs suddenly and unexpectedly into an adult before reverting back to original form.

The tale follows Dorothy, along with her dog Toto, on her adventures through the land of Oz as she attempts to find her way back home to Kansas from which she has been blown by a cyclone. On the way she befriends a scarecrow, a tin woodsman and a cowardly lion who join Dorothy on her quest in the hopes of fulfilling their own dreams. On the way, many other characters and creatures come and go and sometimes return. The story itself veers from being insightful in an odd, backhanded sort of way, to totally random - from some astonishingly dry and sardonic wit to new characters who appear momentarily for no other reason then to furnish a necessary plot point.

While Baum claimed that there were no hidden meanings or subtexts to the story, you get the sense that in his method there might well be something of American culture: remove the morals and the angst and you are left with a tale that is both wonderfully and frustratingly absurd.

The War Of The Worlds – H.G. Wells (1898)

The War Of The Worlds was first published in 1898. 1898! No one who was around when this book was published is around now and still it is a book about Martians who land on earth and set about lighting the place (and people) up with their heat-rays and giant metallic machines.  Considering that it was only twenty years before that London had got its first public electric lights, the ability of Wells’ imagination to conjure up the these aliens and their technology is astonishing. At the same time, set against the Industrial Revolution, as well as Darwin’s recently published On The Origin Of The Species, the images of both Martian technological might as well as the physical evolutions of the invaders is a great exercise in thought as to where humans might well end up.

Beyond its gaze into the future, The War Of The Worlds is also great in its depiction of English life at the turn of the century. There are, of course, countless classic novels that give an insight into the society and struggles of the time but none of them do so in such a modern format – that of the alien invasion. For a start, the Martian invasion provides the opportunity to let go of the weight and expectation that usually comes with reading an old classic. Also, with a plot device that is so easily accessible to us in the twenty first century, we are able to take a look at a bygone era with a very modern filter through which the people, attitudes and technologies of the time can be contrasted with those of our own.  

In that sense, especially with respect to alien invasions, it is interesting to note the location of the invasion – England. At the end of the nineteenth century the British Empire, the largest empire in human history, was still in the full swing of a century-long reign as the foremost global power. There hadn’t even been a world war yet. What is it about aliens that they always seem to know exactly who the most powerful nation on earth is at the time - and that this is where they land and attack? And what does it say about the human psyche that even the most powerful need to be able to cast themselves as the underdog from time to time?

(Plot spoiler alert)

Having said that that, there is an intriguing difference between the outcome of The War Of The Worlds and most modern American takes on the alien invasion. In the classic America version, the attackers are generally vanquished by the ingenuity of a lone hero, or heroic force, representing the hopes of the nation (and the world). In Wells’ version the hero is but a helpless bystander as the human race are ultimately saved by bacteria - their smallest and easiest forgotten relatives on the tree of terrestrial life against whom the Martians have no defense.

Ham On Rye - Charles Bukowski (1982)

Ham On Rye is an almost-autobiography - both a loose memoir of his Charles Bukowski’s life up until the end of his teens as well as the story of a young man growing up and finding himself completely lost in an unforgiving society.

The novel is a first person account of the youth of Henry Chinaski – an alter-ego Bukowski often used in his other works - growing up in depression era America as the son of an abusive, regularly unemployed father and helpless mother. Over the course of the book, Chinaski moves from one disheartening failure to the next as he tries to navigate his way through life as a strange kid, ill at ease with his surroundings and on the wrong side of the tracks of American society. Through his encounters with the street, school, violence, sex, alcohol and an extreme and debilitating case of acne Chinaski lurches from one misadventure to the next, leaving him lost and bewildered by a pitiless world. 

The genius of Ham And Rye is that Chinaski’s redemption does not arrive on its pages. Even though the future of the author is well known - Bukowski went on to become one of the most celebrated poets of the 20^th century - his writing and his discovery of and love for literature are mentioned but barely explored. Rather the story is of a life that both starts off as difficult and that then provides very little chance of salvation. It is in giving the reader no more than a hint of his own future that Bukowski presents not only a memoir but also the devastating story of an everyday, nameless, down-and-out American youth on a road that can only lead to nowhere. Ham On Rye is as much the story of Charles Bukowski, the one that made it, as it is the story of all of those that didn’t. It leaves you startled, in a sort of shocked awe, at how many others must have been, and surely still are, left out there.

From the point of view that is actually Bukowski’s story, it is an amazing insight into his early life. The fact that someone can be born so out of place in this world - and continue from that starting point to move even further down the wrong path - yet still somehow manage to find his place is remarkable. For those who have read his poetry (I can recommend Pleasures Of The Damned, essentially  a Best Of collection) the realness, dark dark humour and desperation of his work is only reinforced by a reading of Ham On Rye and the realization that this is actually how he lived.  

Harry Potter and The Philosopher's Stone - J.K. Rowling (1997)

I was very late to the Harry Potter series and might never had read it at all had I not stumbled upon this article in November last year. The idea in the article that struck me was that there is now a generation of kids who have grown up with a character who has grown up along with them, and that this is a fairly unique situation. Having not had much interest in the books up until that point I was now intrigued so I went out and bought a copy of the first book, Harry Potter and The Philosopher's Stone, and proceeded to read the whole series over the next five or six months. From the moment I closed the last book I have been looking for an excuse to start it from the beginning again.

With regards to the series, the thing that strikes me most, beyond the sales figures or how many kids it turned back on to reading, is just what a phenomenal body of work it is. It is a complete story told over seven volumes where right the way through the plot, up until the final chapters, you are consistently being introduced to factors whose consequences run back through the entire length of the story, constantly changing your view of the characters and situations that they have faced. To be able to put together such a large plot, over so many volumes and be able to drop in twists right till the last moment and have it all make sense really is a massive achievement. On finishing the series for the first time I was left with the overwhelming sense of what a great challenge it must be to construct such a massive project.

Harry Potter and The Philosopher's Stone itself is a great kids book: nasty foster family, escape to a fantastical world, new friends, new enemies, great adventures. It is also it is full full of some pretty heavy shit: young kid grows up in an unloving family after the supposedly accidental death of his parents only to discover at age eleven that they were in fact murdered. He is whisked off into a new world that for the first time in his life provides a sense of both love and belonging but also forces him to confront demons far beyond those of a nasty uncle. The skill of the book is that is it able to mix up the fun adventure stuff with the far more mature ideas of loneliness, alienation, elitism, poverty, acceptance and the challenge of trying to figure out your place in a world that you do not understand and that only allows you to uncover small pieces of the puzzle at random.

The bonus of reading the book for the second time is that the characters, which are really good to start with, take on even deeper and well constructed personalities in terms of how their pasts and futures unravel over the length of the series. Simply being able to put the hatred that Harry and Snape immediately feel for each other into the context of the whole story - Harry's misjudging of the potions teacher which is in no way helped by the latter's massive internal conflicts with regards to his student and his past -  makes for really great reading.

The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver (1998)

Over the last ten or so years since The Poisonwood Bible was written I reckon it has been the book that, more than any other, has completed the sentence 'have you read..." when that sentence has been directed towards me. Most recently a friend who grew up as a Jehovahs Witness said that if I wanted to know about her childhood growing up in a devout Christian family I should just read The Poisonwood Bible. And convnianlty it was on  my bookshelf. So I read it.

First off, If you want to find out about just a few of the ways in which Europe (in this case, Belgium) and The United States have totally fucked up Africa by either (a) completely misunderstanding it or (b) acting out of the most gratuitous self interest, then this is the book for you. Some of it you might already know and some might come as a large shock, but to paraphrase (and somewhat redirect) my favourite line in the book "Africa, you don't have to like it but you sure as hell have to admit that its out there".

On a human level, it is a story of a family who end up in the wrong place, at the wrong time, for all the wrong reasons and consequetly have their notions regarding life, the universe and everything turned on their heads. This book is a great portayal of just how fragile the average human life is to the preasures and changes that it must encounter along the way - pressures that originate in those closest to us as well as places in time and space so distant that they are almost unknowable. In the end, free-will might simply come down to our ability to make the best of an utterly uncontrolable situation.



Spoiler alert - don't read on if you don't want to.






My only critisism of the book, if it is really a criticism, is that from the point that the family breaks up after Ruth May's death, the story of each family member could have been a novel on its own rather then the abbreviated histories that are given. But that could be a bit too much to ask.