Hurricane Milton

This is a little bit of a sequel to my post from earlier in this year about the book Five Days at Memorial. That book detailed the harrowing events in the five days after Hurricane Katrina at one New Orleans hospital where patients and doctors were stranded by the storm and floodwaters. 

As readers may know (well, if my blog actually had any readers...), Hurricane Milton is approaching Florida in the Gulf of Mexico as I write. It is forecast to make landfall in the middle of the night on Wednesday (tomorrow) into Thursday and is currently rated a Category 5.  

This is an extremely severe, strong hurricane that's going to do a lot of damage. As I await the arrival of the storm (from multiple states away, well north and out of its path), I have a certain morbid fascination about what will happen with this hurricane. I just know that things are on the precipice of something major with this hurricane. On a trivial note, I also think the name Milton is interesting, and most likely it will be retired from the list after this storm hits.  

I was in elementary school and too young at the time to be completely aware of all the details and metaphorical weight of what happened with Katrina, so my memories of that are more simplistic. I remember watching the nightly news about it and being aware that it was a significant thing that had happened. I also think I found it somewhat interesting, in that it was something different and unusual (to see/hear about on the news), and it caused me to wish something "interesting" would happen...  

So now, with full adult awareness of this, it lends an interesting mood. I think this will be like the Katrina of the 2020s. It is a little strange to me to think that I could be on the brink of observing (indirectly) the Katrina of the 2020s. It's also kind of strange to think about how Katrina was almost 20 years ago by now. Damn, I'm getting old. I heard Coldplay's song 'Paradise' in McDonald's last week and I said "I remember when this album came out," which is a thing that people say when they're Old. That album was Mylo Xyloto and it was released in 2012 [actually late 2011], if I recall correctly. 'Paradise' was on the radio a lot back then. The album artwork was this bright blue graffiti design. I digress.

This hurricane also could potentially result in another 'Five Days at Memorial' scenario occurring somewhere in Florida in the hardest-hit area(s), so I wonder if that will happen. While we're on this topic, I do think it could be fascinating to have a career in emergency management, since I'm a meticulous, resourceful, logistical planning person and like figuring out what the best way to do something is.  

On TV, the news is showing a chyron with current hurricane status information, like the category and position of it. As of this evening, it was saying it was a couple hundred miles away from a place called Dry Tortugas. This name sounded interesting to me and I wanted to know what/where exactly this was. It is a tiny cluster of islands off the tip of Florida, west of Key West. It is also a national park. 

I was looking at Associated Press photos from the prelude and preparation period for this hurricane. Some show massive debris piles from a recent previous hurricane, others show people trying to make preparations and/or evacuate. Seeing the preparations gives me a foreboding feeling because I think about how the preparations may pale in the wake of the storm's impact and things will just get destroyed anyways. It's a very strange feeling to see the photos and know that a bunch of things will be severely damaged and destroyed in just a day from now. 

The level of destruction will probably be apocalyptic. Some portion of what I see in the photos from today will be destroyed by the hurricane and will look very different by the end of the week. The photos depict things like people boarding up windows, trying to clean up debris, empty shelves at stores for items like bottled water and food, gas stations that ran out of gas, and heavy traffic from people trying to evacuate. 

There is a photo showing a man carrying his friend's cat in a cage to evacuate it [AP photo ID 24282650725969]. This photo was from an island outside of Bradenton (slightly south of Tampa). Last week, I saw a video showing a group of people sitting (?) in a flooded living room somewhere after hurricane Helene. Among the people is a cat sitting on a floating sofa cushion. There was also a dog sitting on another floating cushion.    

So all in all there's an intriguing-foreboding feeling for me. It's sunny and clear this week here, which is an interesting contrast to the meteorological horror that awaits Florida tomorrow. In a way, it's as if I'm watching things in a snow globe. 

Society's normal functioning will break down in the areas that get demolished by the hurricane. It's strange to think about. A lot of human-nature-y things will be laid bare in ways that don't typically happen during regular everyday life. People's will (or lack thereof?) to survive, and the anguish of experiencing something like that firsthand. How does that affect someone on the individual level? How does it affect the country at large on a broader level?

And of course people will die, perhaps quite brutally. The potential for a Five Days at Memorial situation to happen again. There are a lot of facets here that I find rather intriguing/morbidly fascinating from a sociological, anthropological, psychological, even media analysis lens. Especially since I'm now able to be fully aware of the gravity and complexities here in a way I wasn't back in 2005. 

For another little digression, I've thought about and discussed recently the concept of historical awareness, let's say. One's perception and conceptualization of events. "Living memory." 9/11 as a "real" thing in my mind, even though I was too young to remember it actually happening. To a 16 year old today, it's not a real thing to them. It's more of an abstract notion, if that. Katrina isn't a "real" thing to a 16 year old today either. This tangent is pretty meta.          

Also thinking about hurricane Milton in general makes me wonder what I would do if I were in a scenario like this. I live in an area that's blissfully not prone to natural disasters, so I've never had to seriously think about emergency preparedness. Earlier this summer there was a serious tornado scare, but even then, that's just a matter of sheltering in the basement. 

In a hurricane, I suppose I would try to evacuate if possible, if I lived in a mandatory evacuation zone. If I lived in an area without mandatory evacuation orders and/or was unable to evacuate, I guess I'd have to do the best I could at surviving in place and preparing for the immediate aftermath. Stockpile food, clean water, other necessary supplies... 

How things would go in the immediate aftermath, assuming I survived, would depend on whether my home is severely damaged/flooded by the hurricane. If the only place I could evacuate to was a government-run shelter, what would I do in that case? There would only be so much that I could bring with me -- what would it be? I find it all interesting to think about in a theoretical sense. 

As usual, but especially so now, I'm going to be keeping an eye on the news because I want to see what happens. I wonder what Anderson Cooper is thinking about this, as he covered Katrina on location back then. I wonder if he's seeing the (probable) parallels too.   

Movie review: Memory

Double feature! Both for me in terms of watching movies, and for the reviews on this blog. I think Memory (being a more typical movie) worked well as a palate cleanser after Post Tenebras Lux, which was rather experimental, abstract and somewhat incomprehensible. 

This is a movie that Peter Sarsgaard was in, so this post is going to be more relevant to the stated description of this blog. Earlier this year, it was playing in a couple of movie theaters, but it was not widely screened. I never managed to drag myself out to see it in one of the theaters it was showing in, specifically at one of the open-captioned showings. It is a more independent film but it's not extremely esoteric and experimental. 

Anyways, I watched it (with captions, how luxurious) in the comfort and privacy of my own home. The premise of this movie is about a man (Saul, portrayed by Peter Sarsgaard) with early dementia and his relationship with a woman (Sylvia, portrayed by Jessica Chastain) he meets after following her home from a party one night. Sylvia is a social worker, as well as a single mother. I don't think it was specified how she ended up as a single mother, but in any case, her daughter is 13.

The movie had more layers and elements than I was initially expecting. In addition to the part about Saul having dementia (and therefore memory problems), there are other topics involving parenting, caregiving for adults who cannot fully take care of themselves, contentious family relationships and past trauma that the movie explores to some extent.    

It is fairly brief, clocking in at 99 minutes long, so some of the key scenes are tightly scripted and don't belabor their points. There wasn't any part where I thought things were getting slow. I thought the ending was somewhat abrupt and that the movie could have extended further to continue the plot a bit more. I did also wish that Peter Sarsgaard had some more scenes that were a bit meatier, where he could really express a bit more depth, emotion and intensity, because that is what he excels at.  

Overall, I enjoyed it and probably wouldn't have regretted seeing it in a theater had I been able to do so. Peter Sarsgaard co-stars in this movie, but the movie is somewhat more centered on Sylvia, Jessica Chastain's character. The song A Whiter Shade of Pale is heard in one of the scenes briefly and later used as background music the credits, which was mildly interesting to me because I remember (from a long time ago, relatively speaking) this song being used in the soundtrack of an episode of House M.D.   

Movie review: Post Tenebras Lux

Or perhaps more accurately, a film review... Post Tenebras Lux (2012, directed by Carlos Reygadas) is a foreign art film that I decided to watch. The title means "light after darkness" in Latin. I wasn't entirely sure what to expect since I don't typically watch super art-housey films. This film is going to be screened in a small independent theater soon, but I wasn't sure I wanted to drag myself all the way out there to watch it. It seemed interesting enough that I was willing to watch it at home though.

It is pretty bizarre and experimental, very different than mainstream movies and even independent films that aren't quite as arty. For the most part, this is a Spanish-language film although there are small portions in English and French. The storyline, to the extent that there is one, is depicted in a pretty disjointed manner. 

The cinematography is fairly distinctive to me as well; it's very different than standard cinematography and goes hand in hand with the disjointed scenes. Every so often, a scene change will show things skip forwards and back in time, as far as I can tell. There are moments where the screen will freeze momentarily to linger on a certain image, almost as if things are glitching but I think it was actually intentional. 

The colors are typically these foggy or hazy, dusky, twilight-esque hues. It had a very film-esque appearance so I wonder what equipment was used. There are multiple scenes where a blurred, double-vision effect is used on the edges of the frame, while a center circle remains most in focus. 

The cinematography and directing, in terms of the shots chosen, structure, and the scenes, felt very pared down, naturalistic and minimalist. It produced an effect as if the viewer were observing the events in real life through a window, or as a fly on the wall, or some kind of ghost. I don't know if there's an official name for this kind of technique, but it's distinctive. [ETA: the term for this is cinematic realism, and this movie utilizes it to a rather heavy degree]

This type of cinematography and overall feel of the movie is very different than how mainstream movies or TV do things. It felt as if you were watching all this play out in real life somehow, maybe through a surveillance camera (in a way). The dialogue, when there was some, seemed very naturalistic, the way people talk in real life. The same goes for the costuming, it was clothes that you could envision a regular person wearing. 

Additionally, the structure of the film didn't follow the usual beginning - middle - end flow or the exposition, rising action, climax, falling action plot diagram. That disjointed atypical structure also lent a real-life feel to things, since events in real life don't necessarily follow strict plot structures either. Most mainstream movies are more heavily plot-driven, but this film is decidedly not. 

I also just realized that the film doesn't have a typical (musical) score, or at least not that I noticed. There are various portions of it where a rushing noise is heard, like water flowing or maybe rain, or even air whirring out of a vent... I'd describe it as being a bit similar to white noise, I guess.     

It is definitely not for everyone and I'm not sure I liked it all that much, even though I did make it to the end. There were portions by about 2/3 of the way through where I was starting to get bored and think it was dragging somewhat. 

The film follows a family of four who move out to the countryside in Mexico when their two children are rather young. It depicts various events, in snippets, of their life. There are other snippets that focus on other people the family knows or encounters somehow. You see a number of scenes depicting various happenings in the family's domestic life, though these scenes aren't very plot-driven. This description really does not thoroughly capture the nature of the film; it's really something you have to watch to fully get a sense of it. 

I found a review on Reddit from 7 years ago that describes the events in the film in a more complete and comprehensible manner, although one of the conclusions this person made about a certain part of the film is different than what I thought. Obviously, this description contains spoilers.

The film takes a very European approach to nudity, which in retrospect isn't necessarily surprising but I will say I wasn't expecting certain parts of the film that contain ample amounts of complete nudity. Usually in American movies, full nudity is seen much more sparingly. There was a segment of the film that was bordering on pornographic (but it was also done in a rather arty way), in my opinion. 

On the whole, I would not recommend this film to people unless they specifically are interested in obscure art house foreign films. People who have more mainstream tastes are most likely not going to enjoy or understand this film. 

Small Press Expo SPX 2024 review

I have some many doubts as to whether anyone really reads blogs anymore, much less this blog in particular, but anyways... It was useful to me to read a few other people's rather old blog posts that I could find about this event, so I am trying to pass on the favor. 

Small Press Expo (SPX) is a two-day convention centered around independent comics. It takes place in Bethesda, MD, near White Flint station. There are a lot of independent artists there as well as a few indie publishers. I am not hugely familiar with the indie comics scene and this was really my primary introduction to it, basically. 

I attended SPX this year because my friend was an exhibitor and I wanted to see what it was like (congratulations to him; I admire his work ethic). I ended up helping him at his table for most of the day I attended, the second day. I wasn't able to make it on the first day, but I wish I had more time to really look at all the other stuff there a bit more thoroughly. I would like to attend again next year as a guest. 

Exhibitor tables are distributed via lottery, so there's no absolute guarantee my friend would get a spot next year. This year, the fee for for a half table (which is what my friend had) was $195. 

Overall, I'd say it's really overwhelming the sheer amount of stuff there is at all the tables, and it was a lot to take in especially as a first-time attendee. I didn't get to look at everything that closely, alas. There are also panel sessions and workshops you can attend, though I didn't go to any of those. 

While a lot of people were selling various original comics, there was also a decent amount of people selling art prints and things of that nature, rather than only comics. There were people selling stickers, pins and buttons too. I saw a couple tables with some tote bags or t-shirts, even one with some bandanas in original designs. I wanted one of those but I have TOO MANY bandanas already. 

It's easy to see a lot of stuff you might want to buy, but at the same time, you probably also want to be mindful of your budget, so you ultimately have to pick and choose. I only ended up buying one comic, from a publisher's table. It was $15. There was another comic at a different publisher's table that caught my interest, but it just seemed a bit too expensive ($40) for an on-the-fly purchase. It was hardcover, quite large (like a coffee table book) and printed in color, so the price isn't that unreasonable, but I had already bought something else. 

If I had a much larger budget to spend at SPX, I could easily see myself finding like $200+ worth of things I might want to buy. I might try to save up and set aside some money specifically for next year's SPX so I can buy more than just one thing and not have to limit myself so much. 

One of the publishers did a 50% off everything sale in the last hour on Sunday, but they didn't have anything that particularly interested me. The $10 to $20 price range seemed pretty typical for smaller comics like the one I bought (128 pages, paperback, about 6" x 8"). 

In terms of from an exhibitor's (assistant) perspective, it's important to have an eye-catching display at your table. Have prices and any other applicable signage or labeling clearly displayed. And make sure you don't run out of business cards. Additionally, having a friendly and welcoming demeanor to interact with the people passing by your table can potentially help with sales. Don't sit back and hide awkwardly behind the table. 

It was my friend's first time exhibiting at this particular event, although he had done other conventions before. The audience tastes of SPX didn't seem quite aligned with my friend's comic, so he didn't do as well in sales compared to when he sold the comic at other events. 

I'm not sure to what extent his table location affected things in this case. Overall, the setup of tables in the convention hall seemed laid out pretty well. I think maybe it could be a detriment to end up right next to a really impressive exhibitor's table that would grab all the attention in that little area and cause people to look at that table instead of your table, but this is just speculation on my part. 

The next day, we went to a used bookstore which had a comics section. The comics there were primarily or entirely more mainstream. Many of them were from the publisher Image and they all had a very similar art style, like the traditional Marvel or DC comics. Personally I find that style unappealing, so I'm definitely more drawn to some of the work you see from indie comics artists. 

There is definitely a difference between the styles in indie comics vs the styles seen in more mainstream comics, whether that's classic superhero franchises/series or original yet still mainstream work. While there are certain styles that seem prevalent in indie comics, there's a decent wider variety and you can see some that are more unusual or distinctive in some way. 

ETA: a little more about the distinction between mainstream and indie comics. I think the division between what you see in indie comics and what you see in mainstream comics is a lot starker than the division between other media that has indie and mainstream versions (ex: music, books, contemporary art, maybe even film but to a lesser extent). There are some more mainstream books and music I like, even if I also like more obscure/indie stuff. 

I noticed that none of the mainstream comics at the used bookstore from Image seemed interesting to me at all in terms of actually wanting to read them. Whereas at SPX, that wider variety of art styles and subject/thematic matter in the indie comics there is way more interesting to me. All of the Image comics have that stereotypical western superhero comics style, which I just associate with superhero subject matter. The typical mainstream superhero comics stories do not interest me at all. 

Maybe the original non-superhero comics published by Image actually have interesting stories, but my mental association with that art style makes me assume the story won't be any good, it'll just be some cliche mainstream stuff, so I dismiss those comics at the outset. 

As my friend described it, mainstream comics (or Japanese manga) take up all the oxygen in American comics audiences and people assume that mainstream superhero-style comics are what all comics are, that that's the only thing comics have to offer a reader. So it's tougher to carve out a space for indie comics and experience more of that side of things, whether as a comics artist or a reader, or both.  

In a way, I think that I got a mistaken impression from SPX of what contemporary comics are like -- there was so much more uniqueness and variety in the comics I saw there. So I kind of thought if I looked at a comics section in a (used) bookstore, I might be able to find some similar stuff. But alas, no. This is a criticism of what's more available mainstream, not SPX! The Scott Pilgrim series is an indie comic that gained more mainstream popularity, but ultimately it has indie roots in terms of the style and thematic material. 

Back to the previously scheduled programming though, SPX 2024:  

Some things I'd like to know are which items, vendors and/or comics ended up being the most popular in terms of sales? Not that it means those things are inherently better, but just for the sake of curiosity -- what things resonate more with the people attending SPX? How much did a typical attendee buy? 

It is interesting to think about it from the frame of how a given person is not going to buy something from every vendor at SPX. They might purchase something from a few of the vendors out of the hundreds that were there. How do you make your work/items be the thing that someone decides to buy instead of that other person's comic? 

Obviously, different people have individual tastes and not everything will appeal to everyone, so even if your work doesn't interest Charlotte and Phillip, maybe it will interest Jessica. But hopefully you can find enough people to be interested in and buy your work to at least break even on the event fee and production/printing costs. 

ETA also: I'd also like to find some places online, if possible, where there's more meta discussion about indie comics in general. It was difficult to find much information about the experience of SPX as I mentioned earlier, so there might not really be anywhere that people tend to discuss indie comics in general. I can always talk to my friend, but I really would like to hear a wider range of other people's perspectives too.

I admittedly have a terrible sense of work ethic so it's very much a gamble as to whether I could finish some comics material to exhibit at SPX next year, but perhaps at some point in the future I might do it. At the very least, I do want to attend next year as a guest. There is a similar indie comics focused convention in Minneapolis, which is called Autoptic and it'd be cool to attend that one year if possible. 

ETA 3, regarding terminology: I found out some new-to-me information that clarifies some terminology. "Cartoonist" refers to someone who does both the art/illustration and writing of a comic. Comic artist, more specifically, refers to someone who does the art for a comic that was written by someone else (a comics writer). Cartoonists are both comic artists and comic writers, but a comic artist, in the strictest sense, is not necessarily also a comic writer (and therefore, a cartoonist). 

As far as indie comics go, I'd assume it's more common to have cartoonists who write and illustrate their own work, rather than splitting that between two or more people. Previously, I had assumed that "comic artist" was more or less synonymous with the actual definition of "cartoonist" -- casually, it may be, but strictly speaking, it isn't necessarily. 

Movie review: Sign Painters documentary

I've been aware of this documentary for awhile but only got around to watching it today. There is also a companion book which I'd read prior to watching the documentary. The documentary is from 2013 so it's not extremely recent, although there probably haven't been a whole ton of changes in the sign painting industry since then. 

It's not a documentary about the history of sign painting, but rather about working sign painters and their careers and a bit about the industry overall. Numerous sign painters are featured in the documentary and they talk about their work, basically. It also doesn't go into too much detail about the how-tos of sign painting, although there are some bits here and there that mention various technical aspects like using a pounce pattern. The sign painters take great pride in the tradition of their craft despite the prevalence of computer-created vinyl signs today (one of the people featured in the documentary says "Victory Over Vinyl" would be a good name for a sign painting shop).

Overall I found it interesting, even though it isn't instructional in nature. It is a good 80-minute introduction to the topic of sign painting in general. The book features written profiles/interviews of various sign painters and probably goes into more detail about each individual person. I also think there are a few people in the book who aren't interviewed in the documentary. 

I did find the sound editing in the documentary somewhat lacking; in various parts the background soundtrack is a bit too loud while people are speaking, and in other parts that are filmed on location, background environmental noise is kind of loud and makes it harder to understand what's being said.   

Book review: Five Days at Memorial

I read this book just recently even though it was originally published in 2013, which was about 8 years after the hurricane. The book details what occurred in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina at a specific New Orleans hospital, whch was then known as Memorial Medical Center. Although I’d obviously been aware of the vey broad strokes regarding the hurricane, it actually was not something I’d read up on in that much detail.* At the time it occurred, I was still in elementary school so I just have the vaguest memories of probably seeing news about it on TV, probably Brian William’s NBC program as that’s the nightly news show we used to watch back then. Living far away from the Gulf Coast, this wasn’t a formative memory for me in the firsthand sense, but the news coverage of hurricanes in the mid-2000s must have made an impression on child me in that I began to have the vague wish for something “interesting” to happen, like a hurricane.

*okay, well, I did read Anderson Cooper’s memoir in which he describes his experience reporting on Hurricane Katrina. That was just a portion of the book though, and he also described other events in his life.

So there is a strange sense of nostalgia here about the concept of delving into information about something I was vaguely aware of at the time and able to remember simplistically, but too young to fully grasp the scale and gravity of the situation. Unlike my reading about 9/11, which was more as if reading about a historical event that I had no conscious memory of at all, being less than 5 years old at the time.

This book is specifically about what happened at the hospital during five days after the hurricane and the investigation into the incident afterwards. The city had flooded and the beleaguered hospital could not evacuate all of its ailing patients in a timely, efficient manner. Some of the most severely ill patients that had not been evacuated were purportedly euthanized. This book does not provide a broader picture about Katrina’s impact on New Orleans overall, though there are probably other books that do.

I personally found this book very well-written and riveting. The structure of the information was straightforward to follow and not confusing. The events were described chronologically, beat by beat. Although there are many different people whose actions are described in the book, the author is precise in keeping them all differentiated, often mentioning a person’s job title upon subsequent references to remind the reader of that person's role in the events.

Tangentially, in contrast, I found the elongated muskrat biography from the other year to be very haphazardly structured, jumping around a lot chronologically. There were also way too many different people’s names that were impossible to fully keep track of because people’s job titles were typically only mentioned at the introduction of a given person. Upon subsequent references, I just had to try and vaguely remember who was who outside of a few main, more prominent and memorable people (Grimes, the Muskrat family, the ex-wives, the Neuralink employee he also had kids with).

It is very detailed and thorough, painting a vivid picture of the events it describes. A few of the reader reviews I read complained that there were too many superfluous details included, like what various people were wearing at a given time, but I didn’t mind that level of detail. Every piece of information had its place and seemed salient. I myself am a very detail-oriented person, so I can appreciate painstaking levels of detail where others might find it overwrought. I repeatedly referred to maps of the city to observe where specific locations mentioned in the book were. The hospital itself was repaired, reopened and remains in the same location today. A Walgreens mentioned as being across the street also appears to remain.

This book was written by a journalist and in general I find them to be good at writing nonfiction books, as it’s essentially an extemely longer-form sort of news article. The events described in the book obviously raise various ethical questions, which are interesting to contemplate. Who should be prioritized in a disaster situation with a shortage of resources? Is it right for a doctor to decide they should end a patient’s suffering in that kind of situation? I found the book very thought-provoking; it’s interesting to try and think about what I myself might do if I were in the position of the doctors and nurses at the hospital.

One of the things the book did not contain was photographs, except for a couple at the very beginning showing the hospital building amidst the flooding. I read an e-book edition, so maybe there was a photo insert in the print edition? I wanted to be able to better visualize some of the settings and scenes depicted in the book, so I looked up some press photos via Getty Images and the Associated Press. The first images of scenes at the hospital from the AP were taken on Wednesday afternoon (day four in the book). I assume it must’ve taken until then for photojournalists to be able to make it to this particular location to take these photos. There are a few photos depicting the scene outside the hospital on that Wednesday afternoon as some people were being evacuated in boats. As described in the book, people waited on the emergency room ambulance ramp to board boats that would take them away from the hospital to dry ground. In one of the photos, a man in green scrubs stands on the side of the ramp among a crowd of others. He is not named in the photo’s caption, but I wonder if he was one of the doctors mentioned in the book, and if so, which one. Cross-referencing with chapter 6 which describes Wednesday afternoon and the ramp scene, the man in the photo may have been doctor Ewing Cook who was at the ramp then, but I can't be completely sure. In the book, he is described as being retired, so presumably older, and the man in the photo looks older. He is also described as wearing a watch, which the man in the photo does.  

A year or so after the hurricane, the hospital was sold by the company that had owned it and was renamed to its current name, Ochsner Baptist (originally, it had been called Southern Baptist Hospital). The hospital is visible on Streetview. What is (tangentially) kind of interesting to me is the architecture of the building, which has had various extensions and additions built onto it over the years. However, (part of?) the original 1926 building appears to remain, which is built in an old-fashioned brick style. Since local hospitals around here have all been built more recently, it’s a little unusual to me to see a hospital building in the style of the early 20th century. My mental image of hospitals is either a midcentury-ish-looking building or possibly something newer in a very generic 21st (or late 20th) century institutional building style. The architecture of Baptist hospital reminds me of the old dormitory buildings at the state university or older apartment buildings.

Book review: Comfort Me With Apples

This was a really strange book I read last night. It's very short, technically only a novella, so I finished it in about an hour. The description says "Comfort Me With Apples is the age old tale of the garden of Eden and the apples that have the knowledge of good and evil. It is the age old story of escaping from a life you were once content with when you realize why you shouldn't be content." 

Essentially, this book is a biblical allegory, and I knew that going in so the parallels were rather obvious while reading. In some Goodreads reviews, people said they didn't realize it was a biblical allegory until the end. Overall, I didn't like it that much, but I can sort of see what the author was going for. I wouldn't recommend this book unless it was specifically for a person I thought would be into weird biblical allegories with slight magical realism touches. 

It does not hit the spot of light surrealism the way I like. I would consider this book to be more like magical-realism-tinged medium to heavy surrealism, in some ways. Primarily the premise, which is only fully explained by the end of the book. At the beginning, before everything is made clear, it may feel more like light surrealism. Since I knew going in that it was some kind of biblical allegory, by the later portion of the book I could kind of predict/figure out what was going to happen. It overall felt a bit too predictable in an unsatisfying way, even regarding some other aspects in the beginning.     

At the beginning, I didn't particularly like this book. The writing style seemed too overwrought for my preferences. Towards the end, the writing style recedes somewhat and becomes a bit more normal as the plot picks up. But overall, I found this book rather meh and probably would have been more disappointed if it were longer and I'd spent more time on reading it. It gave me a similar feeling of "what the fuck did I just read" like J.G. Ballard's book "Crash," which was also bizarre but in a fairly different way. A review I saw somewhere said that it's slightly reminiscent of the short story The Yellow Wallpaper. 

I think I could have theoretically liked this book more if it had taken a more typical track/premise and were written more like a standard thriller/mystery, instead of a biblical allegory with magical realism. Or if it had been more of a sci-fi surrealism story. I am really not into fantasy or magical realism, which is adjacent, like fantasy-lite. 

In terms of surrealism, there are different flavors or subtypes. I particularly like light surrealism (could also be called subtle surrealism?) but medium to heavy surrealism can be interesting too. Aside from degrees of surrealism, the particular flavor or style has an impact too. A Clockwork Orange, for example, is more like dystopian-flavored heavy surrealism. There's technofuturist-surrealism (such as cyberpunk themes) which can also include dystopian surrealism. There are other varieties that aren't quite as easily described.