Review: Klara and the Sun

Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro features an interesting use of the device of the unreliable narrator. In this case, the unreliability comes from the many misunderstandings and misinterpretations of the titular Klara. She (it?) is an AF – Artificial Friend – a child’s companion. She accurately reports everything that happens, but frequently misinterprets. As the novel progresses, her understanding of human nature progresses and the reader’s understanding of the near-future dystopian society she inhabits also progresses. Unlike many things I read, this book sticks with me. I keep reflecting upon Klara & her journey from the store to being Josie’s companion to the junkyard. There are many themes to the book, but one that settles with me is how often the well-off receive assistance from those with less yet the more fortunate never realize the sacrifice that was made. From a literary standpoint, this was the finest bit of fiction I’ve read in quite some time.

 Recommendations from Netflix Streaming

One challenge in dealing with Netflix is finding what's worth watching from its vast library of available titles. Some small number get a lot of buzz, but those are not usually what I like the best. Here's a list of titles which are available for streaming right now (22 February 2023), don't appear to be heavily promoted, and I think highly of.

After Life. This Ricky Gervais vehicle about a man mourning his deceased wife has a lot of sweetness. At times, it made me laugh, and at other times, I cried.

Black Mirror. Imagine if Twilight Zone were still in production and updated to deal with the current age. It is composed of excellent, thoughtful stories often featuring a twist.

Borgen. According to Wikipedia, "Borgen" is a slang term for Christiansborg Palace, a building in Copenhagen which houses all three of Denmark's branches of government. You might like this if you liked West Wing. Think of this series as West Wing with a Nordic slant. 

Cunk on Earth. Diane Morgan is excellent as the clueless Philomena Cunk in this mockumentary. I'm amazed and amused as the real-life experts she interviews are patient and polite enough to endure her stupid questions. This actress also played a minor character in After Life. 

Inside Man. Here we have mystery with a famous detective. That might sound like pretty well-explored territory, but here's a twist: the detective is a convicted murderer who must solve the mysteries working from prison. It's very funny in an edgy way, and it explores humankind's capacity to do the wrong thing. Performances by David Tennant and Stanley Tucci are especially memorable and entertaining.

The IT Crowd. Even though each character is a stereotype from the world of corporate IT, this is funny. We have clueless bosses, a genius man-child, a misogynist, and a goth. Of course their department is housed in the basement.

Love, Death, and Robots. An animated science fiction anthology with episodes ranging in length from about five to twenty minutes. There's a variety of animation styles and story themes. If you like Black Mirror, you will probably like this. Currently, there are 35 episodes. I hope they create and release another season.

Margin Call. A fictional drama showing how the economic contagion that became the Great Recession of 2007 to 2009 might have begun.

Molly's Game. This based on a true story drama shows how a former Olympic-level skier runs a high stakes poker game. Aaron Sorkin's clever dialog makes the characters spark. I especially liked the performances of Jessica Chastain, Idris Elba, Kevin Costner, and Chris O'Dowd (who played the misogynist in The IT Crowd).

2 westerns that break the mold. From the twisted minds of the Coen Brothers comes several vignettes of the American west in The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. And Godless shows a distaff western in which a small Colorado town populated by women faces a cold-blooded outlaw and his gang.

 I've started to enjoy reading mysteries as well as watching them on Netflix. Rather than review yet another hunt for a serial killer, I'll mention a novelist I recently discovered: Stuart Turton. Strangely, I started by reading his second novel, and I'm planning on reading his first soon. The second novel, The Devil and Dark Water, was very well-written. It's sort of a historical novel, being set in the 1600s. It's sortof a nautical novel since most of the action takes place on a ship -- specifically a Dutch cargo ship. It's sortof a locked room mystery since there's murder on a ship where no one can get on or off. It defies mystery conventions in some ways even as it follows them in others. Defiance: the murder happens well into the story. Follows: the mystery features a famous detective.  But most of the action involves the famous detective's assistant. There is an unexpected twist, which is to be expected in any well-written mystery, but the twist defies conventions in its own right. To avoid spoiling the surprise, I will not write more.

 One of the surprises about my retirement life is that I am not reading as much as I thought I would. Prior to retirement, I imagined that I would read perhaps 4 or 5 books a week. The rate turns out to be much lower. I've also become much more selective. I'm not reading just any old thing. There needs to be a reason for reading it.

But the reason can be as simple as entertainment. Based upon a published review, I decided to read Search: A Memoir with Recipes by Dana Louise Potowsky: A Novel by Michelle Huneven. Compared with some of the grand space operas I like to read (think The Expanse -- review forthcoming), this is a small story. Rather than covering the fate of mankind as it expands beyond our solar system, this story -- told in first person by a restaurant reviewer for a local paper -- covers the search for a new minister for a Unitarian Universalist (UU) church in southern California. 

Being a lapsed UU myself, the novel provides many moments of amused recognition. The following quote strikes me as particularly typical:

"I contributed two articles I'd published in the Times: one was about my writing group's bouillabaisse. (One person made the fish stock -- the bouilla -- and everyone else brought a pound of seafood -- the baisse. Since we were UUs, no two people brought the same thing, making it a 'delicious union of diversity.'"

As I've already said, it is a small story and the stakes are small except that they are big for the search committee members and for their congregation. I won't reveal how the search turns out, but I will say that I was surprised by how much I enjoyed reading this little novel.

 The recent passing of the comedian Gilbert Gottfried brings to mind his memorable appearance in The Aristocrats. In case you don't know, The Aristocrats is a documentary film. But the subject of the documentary is unlike any other documentary I've ever seen. It's a documentary about a joke . The joke was apparently well-known in the community of professional comedians and widely known as "The Aristocrats," but I believe it was relatively unknown outside of that community at least until that film came out. Released in 2005, the main creator of the film was Penn Jillette (yes, THAT Penn -- the magician). I enjoyed the film so much when I watched it at the now-departed Tivoli Theater in Kansas City that I bought the DVD. My wife, on the other hand, was sick to her stomach and disgusted when she watched it with me. You see, the joke is probably the most disgusting dirty joke ever told. And Gilbert Gottfried's telling is the dirtiest one of all. And it's what I thought about when I learned that he had died.

 I've been posting occasional book reviews on Facebook, and I've decided not to give Facebook free content anymore. I'm going to copy at least some of that old content to this platform, and I plan to post new reviews here going forward.

Here's the first old one. It's from 2020 (snip):

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This is part of my continuing book review service for my handful of followers. I'm going to make a marginal recommendation for a very silly book: "Make Russia Great Again" by Christopher Buckley. Buckley's earlier works include "Thank You for Smoking" and "The White House Mess." This recently published memoir was written by President Trump's former Chief of Staff from his prison cell. It is a fictional work that occasionally veers close to the news. It was amusing, but I cannot imagine that I will ever want to read it again. Thus, one for the library. In the strange times we now live in, I feel that I must mention again that the book is fiction, and it is political satire.

Rest in Peace

The recent death of Dennis Ritchie is another sad milestone for information technology. As the inventor of C and UNIX, I would argue that Ritchie's impact on western civilization exceeds that of Steve Jobs.