Mark Bossingham

Pullman flails away at Lewis

HERE'S A mini-review of "The Golden Compass" I posted on Amazon:
    Let's keep this simple. Lyra is a well-drawn, charming character. She is also a weapon in Pullman's battle with the late C.S Lewis ("Chronicles of Narnia"). Pullman is an atheist and a revered member of the Brit elite class. He has called his manichean view of religion--evil, evil, evil--"an artistic flaw." Yep, you bet. About halfway through the first book my stomach began to hurt, as if I had swallowed something rotten (and I am not terribly religious).
    So, parents, there you have it. If you are atheists, this book is just the ticket. It, however, needs a PG-13 label. Young kids will certainly have nightmares. It is scary-gruesome. I wonder if Nicole Kidman (cast as the icky lay church official) will actually break the good witch's fingers or will the director skip that part?
    Heretical positive comparisons with Tolkien aside, if you have even the slightest belief in a higher power or don't want to scare your kids half to death, I suggest you give Pullman's propaganda a pass. When an author's primary goal is to kill God (Pullman succeeds), he clearly has issues. Don't make them your own

My latest: Pachinko

HERE'S A column published this week in the IHT/Asahi. Our Web site leaves a lot to be desired, most importantly the cool art that accompanies the piece by Kayo Mori. The copyeditor RC gets props for cleaning up my grammar and a great headline.

    Where have you gone, evil skinny dudes in lime-green sweat suits?

    I had an hour to kill and a few thousand yen to fritter away.
    Grumble, grumble.
    "What did you say?" my wife asked.
    Mumble, mumble.
    "What'd you--"
    "It's not the same."
  I watched 1,000 yen in pachinko balls pour uselessly down the drain. I stared malevolently at the portraits of male Korean pop idols spinning on the face of the machine. "You look like girls!" I snarled.
    "You look like a loser," the portraits seemed to whisper as the last ball vanished.
  I tried a different machine--this one anime-themed. I fed another 1,000-yen note into a slot on the side, wiggled my butt into a comfy but no-nonsense position and turned the handle.
    Clatter-clack--smack on glass: The balls raced up and fell back.
  What the heck? I looked down; the tray was empty. In 90 seconds? No fun! What happened to staring mindlessly at the machine for 30 minutes?
  I'd entered the pachinko parlor only 10 minutes earlier. I should have known something was amiss when a frisky employee trotted up to offer assistance.
    Expecting sullen, I got eager; expecting a slob with half a bento spilled down the front of his uniform, I got fabric-softener fresh.
    It was all wrong. I had long viewed pachinko as the essence of Japanese culture--a furious, eye-glazing form of Zen. Pachinko was satori; Kabuki was paint drying.
    But that was 15 years ago. My Osaka pachinko parlor prowling days were long gone.
  It got worse. Where were my deafening gunkan navy marching songs? Gone, replaced with insipid pop tunes. Where was the cigarette smoke as dense as San Francisco fog? Gone. Only a couple of people were puffing, and none of the smoke was drifting my way.
    The clientele was different than I remembered. Most looked sane. Many prosperous. Nobody gave me a dirty look.
  Where were all the evil skinny dudes in lime-green sweat suits? It was unnerving. The one thing most of us seemed to have in common was losing.
    There were two exceptions. A dull-eyed woman in her 50s and a fat guy. Their winnings--tubs and tubs of metal balls--sat at their feet.
    I returned to my wife and the pop idols. She'd hit a mini-jackpot, winning enough to keep playing for a few more minutes.
  My idols started singing and pouting after I stuffed another 1,000-yen note into the machine. Like lemmings, my pachinko balls jumped off the cliff. As I stubbornly shoved in more cash, my wife quit playing. She'd lost 2,000 yen, her limit.
    "It's impossible to win," I said.
  She shrugged. "The government keeps changing the rules. The machines can give out more balls now, I think." She nodded at the fat guy squatting over his hoard.
    So, I asked her, "If a few win more, a lot of people are going to win less?"
    "Maybe," she said. "You sure did."

Update — Crazy Noise

AT LAST I have added a new chapter to The Novel. You can hit this link or slide over to the Crazy Noise pages and scroll to the bottom. A thrilling, well sort of, read guaranteed. Here's a snippet:
    Manny had no guidebook but his family in Olongapo did.  Purchased at the expense of a bumpy Victory Liner trip to Manila, it was well-thumbed.  They wanted to see this, and that, and everything.  And if they couldn’t afford to go themselves, he had to go for them.  And postcards, too, don’t forget the postcards.
    It wasn’t much to ask, to see through his eyes.  But the most important sights he could never convey.  Springtime.  He would always remember a welder’s black silhouette high in the beams.  A purple twilight and sparks like a waterfall, silver and gold—tumbling down.  A winter’s day.  Sweating underground.  Laying a foundation, listening to Christmas carols high above.  And falling past shoppers, bundling past, his first snowflakes.  If only a little, Manny had helped build the city.  He’d already seen Tokyo from the bottom, today he wanted to climb to the top.
  He heard a sound, angry and barren, like sandals crackling over dead leaves.  A man approached carrying a briefcase and a head filled with noise.  In old Edo, aristocrats had lopped off the heads of commoners to test their blades.  Their descendants—all commoners now—bullied people on sidewalks.  Japanese stepped aside, gaijins eventually resisted.  They ended up with black and blue shoulders and victories at too high a price.
    Manny sighed and moved out of the way.  The salaryman plotted another collision course.  He looked left and right—innocently up and away.  Sidewalk bullies never made eye contact.  They collided and Manny whacked him with his new plaster cast.  The salaryman grunted and staggered forward.  Weak under the sky, in spaces too open, he didn’t rub at the pain until reached the subway.
    Read the whole thing or better yet, bet one of, uhh, a few who have bought the book from Amazon. Did I mention I got a another royalty check from my publisher not long ago? $2.20. Luckily, getting rich was never on the agenda.