Obsolete Your Idols

If there’s one writer whose writing I always get a kick out of reading, it’s my wife.  If there are two writers whose writing I always get a kick out of reading, it’s my wife, and Tim Powers.  I really groove on his blend of American culture and spooky metaphysical intrusions into that culture.  I’ve read nearly every novel he’s published and enjoyed the hell out of each one.

So I recently read Strange Itineraries, a collection of his short stories, including two collaborations with James Blaylock.

This collection is wonderful.  It’s a rising arc of strong writing, weird tales, drunken protagonists and unearthly encounters. Ghost stories galore, a nice time travel paradox story and California flavor.

Who might like this collection

• fans of Tim Powers novels
• fans of Americana ghost stories
• fans of Donnie Darko

Who might not like this collection

• people who enjoy the often long progression to the tipping point in a Tim Powers novel
• people who need every aspect of a story to make sense
• people who are sensitive to mentions of alcohol consumption

I read another Apex book, this one called Hebrewpunk.  It’s a collection of stories and if I had to pick one word to describe this collection as a whole, it would be ‘underripe’.  Not to say these are bad stories, they’re not.  But some of them feel undercooked and some of them feel like they’re the wrong part of the life of the protagonist of the story.

The collection starts off with a heist story named, of course, The Heist.  It has a reasonably engaging though not very detailed criminal undertaking in some fantastical near future setting.  This sounds like the opening adventure to someone’s Shadowrun campaign.  It ends with a bang but not one I found very satisfying, not enough context for me to even understand the ramifications of the crime, the patron, the protector, any of that.

The other three stories in the collection are individual tales of the three criminals from the first story, taking place in their personal pasts.  These are more interesting than the first tale but for my money, the last story is the best, perhaps because of the strength of the source material used.  That tale, The Dope Fiend, calls out a book used as reference and I’m intrigued enough I’ve wishlisted that book.

It’s called Dope Girls and I think it probably factored into the Hand of Glory storyline from The Invisibles.

I’m not sorry I read this collection, but I think I’d rather have read a later Lavie Tidhar collection.

In the meantime, here’s a sad trombone.