Move Under Ground by Nick Mamatas Summary and Reviews
|
List Price: Our Price: $11.15 You Save: $13.85 (55%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $3.57 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of Move Under Ground
Book Review: lol premise.
Summary: 5 Stars
Normally, this is the sort of book I would avoid with a "you gotta be kidding me," snort. The premise-- Jack Kerouac meeting the Lovecraftian Deep Beasties-- sounds like a bad joke, a juvenile wankfest in the land of the lame. And that would have been the end of it.
It's rare for me to find myself slapped in the face with "don't judge a book by it's cover," but this is profoundly one of those times. "Move Under Ground" makes what could seriously have been a goofy, mawkish premise and makes it gorgeous, rich and interesting. The writing is delightful and just plain fun to read. And then if you want to get even more high-falutin', the language is exquisite and works, and makes the whole idea about as awesome in age as one would have thought it could be in high school. And it is truly and utterly awesome. Mamatas is to be commended not only for creating a madly enjoyable read, but for compelling me to actually write a review for it as well. If the idea turns you off at first, take a moment, think again, and seriously, give it a go. You won't be disappointed.
Book Review: Wow
Summary: 5 Stars
Move Under Ground is one of those rare novels that truly breathes new life into an old genre...in this case the Chthulu Mythos cycle of stories. Author Nick Mamatas grabs the mythos and throws it to hell into left field by sticking Jack Kerouac into the mix. Now, that's the kind of plot device that sounds like it came into the author's head after a long night of hard drinking in a seedy bar far off the mainstream footpath...but that's not how it reads. Mamatas brings a sober intelligence and dry wit that makes the improbable plot absolutely believable, and therefore genuinely frightening.
There are few books that cross the line from genre to literature. Mamatas takes an easy step far across that line.
Book Review: Jack Kerouac Would Be Proud...
Summary: 5 Stars
Jack Kerouac and the beats hit the road and never looked back, digging the bop in clubs across the nation, making love to who and what they met and marrying repeatedly, only to cross the country on a hitching jag and send long-distance for a divorce to marry the next girl. Except, what if those beats got older? What if they REALLY had some power in those over-stimulated minds? What if they had to save the world?
Followers of the "beat" authors, Kerouac, Kesey, and others, a generation of writers and poets, musicians and young people searching the highways and cities, the alleys and rural jungles of America for "it" - that cosmic something, Dharma, Zen, through motorcycle maintenance or the application of the thumb to the air and shoe-leather to asphalt - will recognize elements of Move Under Ground and claim them. Others, those who have the dark shelves full of every issue of Weird Tales since the early days, and Arkham House tomes in careful linear rows, slip-cased when possible and dripping shadows that they carefully hide behind their backs while talking to visitors through the cracks of barely opened doors will be equally at home in the lines of Mamatas' prose, possibly bringing about some sort of odd juxtaposition where the latter group postulates that Kerouac must have had a shelf of old horror novels in the back of his bedroom as a youth, and written in the pulps under a pseudonym, while the "beat" crowd nod and wonder how they could have failed to dig this prophet Lovecraft much sooner.
This is a fun book, but don't let that fool you. Just as with Kerouac, there is a story, and then, beneath that, there is a point, and possibly a second story, running under ground.
Author Mamatas has taken a two-forked road across America this time. Kerouac and Cassidy, both with their own dharma, their own cosmic answer to the questions they've never quite been able to form. We find them, in the beginning of this book, still writing endless letters and dreaming of the road they left behind. Kerouac is a cult figure, taking advantage when he can for free drinks, and digging the new generation of "beats" who don't really get it, but want to go home and tell their friends in mundania that they do. Cassidy is still bouncing from wife to girl to wife, raising kids and thinking about opening a filling station.
The places and events in Mamatas' prose leap to life with the same clarity as Kerouac offered us, but not in the world as we know it. Several layers of what we accept as reality have been shaved away, and a gun-toting William S. Burroughs joins our heroes on one final trip across country, sometimes driving, sometimes riding the rails, other times bending time and space to their needs in perfectly logical leaps of faith. They fight the end of the world as we know it by doing the absurd. There is poetry in this that is undeniable.
I don't believe this will become the "beat" novel of the new millennium. Its roots in Lovecraft and the starry wisdom sort of preclude that, but it can stand as a cautionary statement to any and all who read it, and it's a damned entertaining book. Kerouac didn't know what he was setting in motion when he wrote "On the Road," and I can picture Mamatas' Jack sitting on his porch and throwing things at new generation "beats" who drop by to pay tribute at his door - it rings very true.
Mamatas, on the other hand, knew full well what he was about when he set pen to paper, and had the experience of the world as it evolved beyond "On the Road," and "The Dharma Bums," to build upon. The world saved from itself, and is it worth it? All answered, after a fashion.
For those who see only the surface story, this is a wonderful adventure novel. For those looking, they will find things as they Move Under Ground - and smile. The more things change, well, you know the rest . . .
Book Review: Good Stuff.
Summary: 5 Stars
This is an excellent novel. I'm pretty much over Lovecraft's work these days, and I'm not that interested in Mythos fiction because so much of it is just plain bad--and I haven't liked any Kerouac I've read--but I enjoyed the hell out of this book from start to finish. I bought a copy a while back and gave it away to a friend I knew would love it as much as I did. I've just bought a replacement copy for myself, and I've resolved to pimp this book relentlessly to my friends. Good good stuff, and I'd love to read more like it.Book Review: Wow.
Summary: 4 Stars
Nick Mamatas, Move under Ground (Night Shade Books, 2004)
Nick Mamatas does more than fulfill the promise of his first novella, Northern Gothic, in his debut novel. In fact, he's more than fulfilled the promise of any five young new writers. No matter how you end up feeling about the book itself, you just have to admire the guy's hubris at attempting to take two subgenres of fiction that passed the clich? stage decades ago and add in the exceptionally risky practice of incorporating historical characters into fiction. That the result is at all readable would have been a triumph. That it's actually good is nothing short of miraculous.
Jack Kerouac is recovering from a nervous breakdown in Big Sur when he gets a strong urge to go find Neal Cassady, who (if you'll remember from the end of On the Road) ditched him in Mexico. Knowing Cassady will likely be in San Francisco, Kerouac sets out, and soon stumbles upon a sight neither he, nor anyone reading the opening pages of this book who's somehow managed to miss all the synopses, expected to see: R'lyeh, no longer sleeping, rising from the waves. Yes, folks, the Great Old Ones are back, and Jack Kerouac and his longtime travelling companion have to save the world. However, along the way Kerouac realizes that not only is Neal acting strangely-- does he want to save the world, or is he just looking for the ending of his next novel?-- but that the Earth is only a minuscule part of the bigger stakes of a war between Cthulhu and Azathoth...
I mean, come on. You can't read that synopsis and not tell me it's not a recipe for absolute disaster. But Mamatas does things of beauty with both Beat and Lovecraftian literature, spicing the tale with subtle (and not-so-subtle) references to works in both, but keeping it on such a level that the reader doesn't need to have read extensively in either genre to get something out of this book. You probably don't even have to know who Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady are; they're just two guys driving across the country trying to save the universe from descending into utter chaos.
Come to think of it, that sounds rather like the plot for Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, but believe it-- Nick Mamatas can write rings around Kevin Smith. ****