Coalescent

This is not a review, only a brief note. I don't know Westerns except as cliches, and in this case I only knew the names. Doc Holliday, Wyatt Earp, the gunfight at the OK Corral: I couldn't have told you stories that went with them, indeed wasn't consciously aware they were part of the same story. Which made reading Mary Doria Russell's latest novel an odd experience, at times. Doc is part of the story of John Henry Holliday. From context, I gather the summer of 1878 is one of the parts that is less-told, but at least as Russell tells it, it's the summer when, living in Dodge City, Kansas, Holliday and Earp became friends. A relatively quiet summer; unlike The Sparrow there's no shattering personal tragedy to uncover here, unlike A Thread of Grace and Dreamers of the Day no geopolitical event giving shape to the story. Dodge is a frontier town, but there are precious few gunfights (though Russell does allow herself one "get out of Dodge!"); set pieces are more likely to focus on a party or a poker game, and most of the novel is taken up with the texture of daily existence.

But it's a novel that's aware of and comments on the fame of its protagonists, and the other inhabitants of Dodge City. The cast list is even longer than that of A Thread of Grace, I think (although the only other name I recognised was Bat Masterson), and the narrative voice is as temporally free as that of Dreamers of the Day (though without the fantastic enabling conceit), making reference to the OK Corral even though the novel stops years before the event itself, and considering the later exaggeration and distortion of certain events. The result is a novel very aware of the contingency of life, whose emotional peaks often involve evocation of the "ghost lives" that its characters might have lived if certain events had gone otherwise; usually as grace notes, but in one chapter there is a sustained imaging of an unremarkable alternative life for Holliday, hanging off a turning-point in his relationship with a prostitute, Kate Harony. Such explicit self-commentary did ensure that I wasn't as adrift as I might have been; and made it clear that the novel is in part an intervention into the dialogue of the Western, and the processes by which people have been made into myths; yet also made it clear how much of the detail of that intervention I must be missing.

Perhaps it also played into the fact that Doc took a while to win me over. Russell's writing is always a mix of sentiment and steel, but the balance seemed off in the first half of this novel, too much of the former and too much of the latter. But as more perspectives are brought into the mix -- Jau Dong-Sing, proprietor of the town laundry; Bessie Earp, the madam of a Dodge brothel; Alex von Angensperg, S.J.; Captain Elijah Garrett Grier; I gather some of these were real people, some are invented -- the more Holliday and Earp and Dodge itself are seen from a variety of angles -- the better the balance, and the more Doc drew me in. Unlike Ron Charles I don't hunger for a sequel (in fact I think a sequel would rather miss the point), and by some margin it's not my favourite of Russell's books. But Doc contains some exquisite moments, and taught me some things, and I'm not sorry to have read it.

OK, gang, here's the deal: I'm on holiday next week. I am looking forward to nine consecutive days filled with sleeping, reading, and writing (and maybe just a little bit of socialising). But there's a problem, which is that even my I-must-read-this-soon buffer is overflowing, never mind my actual to-be-read pile (or the to-be-read sprawl, as I more accurately like to think of it). I know that I'll be reading the new Stephen Baxter, Transcendent, because who can resist an opening line like "The girl from the future told me that the sky is full of dying worlds"? Not me. But I don't know what else to read. Consequently, a poll:

[Poll #605320]

I may read the three that receive the most votes, or I may ignore you all. But that shouldn't stop you exercising your democratic right.

(If it makes any difference to anyone, I've already been dipping into all the collections on that list--the Hill, Mieville, Phillips and Tiptree--it's just a question of which ones I try to actually finish. And I was planning to keep Camp Concentration to the end of the month--it's the instant_fanzine book choice for November, so I want to read it just before the discussion, and I know I've got a flight on which I'll have time to read it. And if anyone wants to justify their votes with a comment, that'd be cool too.)

UPDATE: Those write-in votes in full:


immortalradical suggests PASSAGE TO INDIA, YOU NUMPTY. It's true, I do have Passage to India around here somewhere, but it's second in the Literature pile. The Periodic Table comes first (third is Dubliners).

ajr votes for Damon Knight's In Search of Wonder, which I acquired from the fishlifters earlier this year. That, along with Clute's Look at the Evidence and Parietal Games, is one of the books that sits in the bathroom for me to read in those idle moments. So I'm getting through it, but slowly. Books of reviews are not one of those things I can just sit down and read straight through.

grahamsleight nominates Rogue Moon by Algis Budrys. Two pre-1995 books is enough for one week, Graham.

tefkas' entry is Judas Unchained by Peter F. Hamilton. Flaw in this plan: it's part 2 of 2, and I haven't read its predecessor, Pandora's Star (although I do have a copy).