Book: Breakfast of Champions, by Kurt Vonnegut
Genre: Instructional
Themes: Art, nature
Comps: The Joy of Painting with Bob Ross, The Artist's Guide to Drawing Realistic Animals, How to Draw SUPER SAIYAN Aura in Sketchbook Pro
Representative quote: "A beaver was actually a large rodent. It loved water, so it built dams."
Page: 23
No audience may be more ripe for the picking than the aspiring artist. When it comes to gaining skill and developing style, there is no substitute for practice, practice, and more practice. Thus it is that the world is filled with books and videos which purport to replace the need for hundreds of hours of practice with one simple purchase of $9.99 or more. Why work when you can have someone tell you about how they worked? Why even bother reading about how someone else worked, when having the book on your bookshelf displays your artistic soul to the world at large (or at least the subset of the large world which you invite into your home, or meet while carrying said book, perhaps on the bus, in a park, or while out at lunch)?
Yes, one mustn't disregard the value of real instruction. The baby of a true student-master conference should not be thrown out with the bathwater of static, one-size-fits-all, generic advice. One can learn, in person, valuable lessons when they are targeted at specific strengths and weaknesses. But a book cannot provide such tutelage.
And yet somehow the world is full of these books. Among the throngs of bland, soulless, sucker-bait for the hopeful wannabe, some few have inevitably risen to the top. Breakfast of Champions is one of those, buoyed perhaps by the author's notorious sense of humor, or conceivably hoisted by that keen word, "Champions," which preys on the hopes of the fledgling artist.
The book itself seems to focus on animals of an aquatic nature, prime among them beavers, trout, and some unrecognized critter called a "dwayne." We did not observe it, but understand the author also has a penchant for repeatedly drawing stylized starfish, displayed as an asterisk like so: *. His other drawings are in a similar style derived from heavy ink, with thick, bold strokes, in a highly simplified fashion. Frankly, they are not good. The beaver appears sickly--furless, stricken with speckles, and befanged. Below that, a smoking candle flame (candle not depicted) is so abstract as to be nearly unintelligible. Despite its reputation, it is with a heavy heart we must designate this book as deserving to be in history's dust bin, best ignored and quickly forgotten.
Final Rating: 1/5 bookmarks.
Showing posts with label 1 bookmark. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1 bookmark. Show all posts
Sunday, July 29, 2018
Monday, April 9, 2018
Foundation - A Dated Techno-Thriller
Book: Foundation, by Isaac Asimov
Genre: Thriller
Themes: spies, technology, suspense, courtroom processional
Comps: Fleming's James Bond books, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
Representative quote: "The recorder I have on the table,--which is a perfectly ordinary recorder to all appearances and performs its duties well--has the additional property of completely blanketing the spy beam. This is something they will not find out at once."
Page: 22
Published in 1951, just two years before Ian Fleming's debut of James Bond in Casino Royale, Asimov's Foundation falls into an unfortunate technological chasm, placed in a world where DuPont's "Better living through chemistry" (a slogan that brought us such "wonders" as fancy glass and plastics) is fifteen years old, but the height of cold-war tech has yet to develop.
Consider the following; "Avakim was carefully emptying the contents of a flat folder onto the floor. If Gall had had the stomach for it, he might have recognized Cellomet legal forms ... He might also have recognized a pocket recorder." Dry, passive, tentative. Gall feels "disheveled and wilted," and this master spy's primary desire is a "hearing with the emperor." It is a book that feels the need to posture itself as a spy thriller, when in reality what it most aspires to is probably courtroom drama. But with Perry Mason still 6 years away, Asimov fumbles, uncertain and ineffective, towards a genre and tropes that have yet to be invented.
The technology itself is laughable by today's standards. A listening device and a recording device that can jam the listening device? How original. Where are the exploding pens, the car chases ending in a button-triggered explosion, and the laser-guided anythings? I know that starting in 1950 there isn't much to go on, but even Back to the Future, written in 1985, could imagine flying cars, hoverboards, personalized advertisement, and so much more, which have yet to be realized after three decades. Surely a 1950's tech thriller could have at least envisioned a cell phone?
One can only imagine what might have come from it if Asimov was writing from the modern day, with the currently available crop of electronics, robotics, and software to pull inspiration from. If only he'd been more visionary, instead of limiting himself to the smallest of technological leaps, he could have captured the imagination of generations.
Final Rating: 1/5 bookmarks. Dated and unconvincing. Confused about whether it wants to be a courtroom drama or a thriller, and it shows. It's clear why Bond became the iconic spy character, rather than Asimov's Gaal.
Genre: Thriller
Themes: spies, technology, suspense, courtroom processional
Comps: Fleming's James Bond books, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
Representative quote: "The recorder I have on the table,--which is a perfectly ordinary recorder to all appearances and performs its duties well--has the additional property of completely blanketing the spy beam. This is something they will not find out at once."
Page: 22
Published in 1951, just two years before Ian Fleming's debut of James Bond in Casino Royale, Asimov's Foundation falls into an unfortunate technological chasm, placed in a world where DuPont's "Better living through chemistry" (a slogan that brought us such "wonders" as fancy glass and plastics) is fifteen years old, but the height of cold-war tech has yet to develop.
Consider the following; "Avakim was carefully emptying the contents of a flat folder onto the floor. If Gall had had the stomach for it, he might have recognized Cellomet legal forms ... He might also have recognized a pocket recorder." Dry, passive, tentative. Gall feels "disheveled and wilted," and this master spy's primary desire is a "hearing with the emperor." It is a book that feels the need to posture itself as a spy thriller, when in reality what it most aspires to is probably courtroom drama. But with Perry Mason still 6 years away, Asimov fumbles, uncertain and ineffective, towards a genre and tropes that have yet to be invented.
The technology itself is laughable by today's standards. A listening device and a recording device that can jam the listening device? How original. Where are the exploding pens, the car chases ending in a button-triggered explosion, and the laser-guided anythings? I know that starting in 1950 there isn't much to go on, but even Back to the Future, written in 1985, could imagine flying cars, hoverboards, personalized advertisement, and so much more, which have yet to be realized after three decades. Surely a 1950's tech thriller could have at least envisioned a cell phone?
One can only imagine what might have come from it if Asimov was writing from the modern day, with the currently available crop of electronics, robotics, and software to pull inspiration from. If only he'd been more visionary, instead of limiting himself to the smallest of technological leaps, he could have captured the imagination of generations.
Final Rating: 1/5 bookmarks. Dated and unconvincing. Confused about whether it wants to be a courtroom drama or a thriller, and it shows. It's clear why Bond became the iconic spy character, rather than Asimov's Gaal.
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