The day is finally here, only a few more hours left before 2020 ends in all time zones. Then we only need to worry about Jan 5 (runoff election in Georgia), Jan 6 (electoral college votes tabulated in Congress), Jan 20 (inauguration in DC), …

Hench by Natalie Zina Walschots 📚

It has been difficult for me to sit down and read a book lately, despite reading being the best way for me to escape stress and depression, to spend some time in a different world detached from the travails of so-called “real life.” The global pandemic, the ongoing attempts by racist, authoritarian extremists to destroy democracy, the acceleration of human caused climate change, the replacement of traditional media and journalism by highly biased algorithm based social feeds, all of these forces and more make any escape from doomscrolling seem all but impossible.

Recently the only way for me to make that escape is to have the secondary world of the novel be even worse than the one we currently inhabit, which Hench provides in spades. We meet our first person protagonist Anna working as a lowly temp henchman for a cut rate villain under constant threat from costumed superhumans, in effect a red shirt of the criminal world. In common with recent treatments on the small screen (such as The Boys on Amazon Prime or Watchmen on HBO Max, each based on earlier comic series) we quickly learn that the real monsters are the “heroes” themselves, who appear suddenly, wreak destruction on the henches, and vanish again, often leaving extensive collateral damage. The matter-of-fact way in which the narrator tosses off brief references to the names and abilities of these superhumans makes it clear that they are the ultimate media celebrities, supported by a vast government bureaucracy and lauded by the public at large.

Anna has fallen into her life of crime as a result of desperate economic circumstances, but after an encounter with a super where she survives a glancing blow with “only” a shattered femur she discovers that her true talent lies in data analysis, and in particular determining the effects of those super powers both in lives and property. In short order she is using her talent for pattern recognition as part of a team under the direction of a major supervillain in an attempt to limit that damage by any means necessary. The story manages the moral inversion with aplomb, using Anna’s words and experiences to present a sympathetic view of villainy, and making the fight against government sanctioned heroes a logical necessity.

Along the way terrible things happen, both to Anna and to several of her costumed adversaries, and the action becomes frenetic at times as the stakes are raised and situations become increasingly desperate. And yet each set piece flows naturally from the one before, and the comic book revelations make sense within the strange and complex world. Many loose ends are tied up by the end, but not all…there is plenty of room left for a sequel.

Highly recommended.

Book cover for Hench by Natalie Zina Walschots, a red silhouette of a person wearing a dress and casting a shadow with a cape.

Always be suspicious of conclusions that reinforce uncritical hope and follow comforting traditions of Western thought.

— The Flamingo’s Smile by Stephen Jay Gould

No one else looks out upon the world so kindly and charitably as the pedestrian; no one else gives and takes so much from the country he passes through.

— Winter Sunshine by John Burroughs

Sometimes people carry to such perfection the mask they have assumed that in due course they actually become the person they seem.

— The Moon and Sixpence by W. Somerset Maugham

but bein alive & bein a woman & bein colored is a metaphysical dilemma
i havent conquered yet

— For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf by Ntozake Shange

Opening lines

I’ve been taking part in Microblogvember by posting a daily quote which includes the prompt word, and today the random word generator selected the one, singular word which allows me to use the one, singular opening line in all of American literature. What are the odds?*

There can be little debate that Moby-Dick is one of (if not the) greatest of American novels, and I think we can all agree that the opening line is the most iconic of them all. But is it the greatest opening line in all of English language literature? What competition does it have? Perhaps “It was the best of times…” or “In a hole in the ground…”?

I might have to go with “It is a truth universally acknowledged…”

* The odds are small.

The first years of man must make provision for the last.

— The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia by Samuel Johnson

To represent something symbolically, as we do when we speak or write, is somehow to capture it, thus making it one’s own.

— The Dreams of Reason by Heinz R. Pagels