On the planet Arieka, Avice Benner Cho is a little girl who is called to assist the local people, aliens to her, in expanding their Language. The Ariekei are physically incapable of lying, so Avice acts out a story so that they can describe it. In doing so, she becomes a living simile, "the girl who ate what was given to her." Human beings can converse with Ariekei only with the help of genetically engineered Ambassadors: sets of human twins who can speak at the same time with the same intent, approximating the Ariekei's two mouths and harmonious consciousness.
After years of space travel, Avice returns to Embassytown. There, a radical Ariekei is trying to teach itself and its followers how to speak a lie. But a larger threat soon emerges: an Ambassador unlike any other, sent by the galactic government light-years away. This Ambassador contains two people who are not only unidentical, but who even dislike each other. The schism behind their words, the Ariekei's first glimpse of individual human consciousness, shatters the base of the symbiotic alien mind. What follows are war, inspiration about the ethics and origins of abstract thought, and a revolution of an angelic society into modern communication.
This is it: the book I meant to order when I accidentally picked up The City and the City. And though that goof-up was worth it, this book is a step even higher.
The odd structure is the first thing worth noting. The book is neither completely chronological nor completely jumps around. Instead, it begins by spinning the past and the future closer and closer together toward two important moments: the liar Ariekei's public attempt at lying, and the new Ambassador's first words to the Ariekei. Once both of these events have been achieved, the narrative switches to the present, which for a while is a period of timelessness, of agitated waiting. In my own writing, pacing is something on which I focus especially. Sometimes this includes going as slow as possible without making the story less interesting. That's what Miéville does here. I've never seen a portion of any other book in which so much suspense is drawn out before anything actually happens. And even better, it makes the moment of crisis that much more exciting.
As far as the sci-fi aspect can go, Miéville does about as good a job as anyone in my limited experience, with the possible exception of Frank Herbert. He places his gadgets and space jargon precisely rather than lose the reader in them, leaving more room for the story without giving the impression that he knows nothing about science. And the Ariekei are never totally described, making it all the more interesting to imagine them as giant centaur-beetles with wings for hands, based on the tidbits that are provided.
I caught only a few weaknesses. Some of the characters are not as strong as they should be. Unfortunately, this includes Avice. Despite the fact that she's the narrator, there's a portion of the book during which I forgot she was present, and when I remembered, I couldn't figure out why she was still there. This is perfectly acceptable if you want to portray a typical view of an event that's happening to thousands of people, as this does, but Avice turns out to be pretty important in the end. More early exposition of her personality would have helped to make this transition less jarring.
My love of speculative fiction was only one of my reasons for reading this book. The main reason was my exploration of language and its philosophic possibilities. In that and in many other ways, Embassytown delivers handily, proving both incredibly original and profound. I'd recommend it to anyone, especially if it's not in your niche. Authors like Miéville give sci-fi a better name.
Thursday, December 27, 2012
Wednesday, December 26, 2012
Review: The Hobbit, An Unexpected Journey (2012)
In a hole in the ground lives Bilbo Baggins: a hobbit, that is, a small, peaceful little man who lives comfortably in a beautiful land called the Shire in the world of Middle-Earth. All this (except his stature, I guess) changes when the wizard Gandalf appears and volunteers Bilbo to accompany a group of dwarves on a quest to reclaim their ancient home, the Lonely Mountain, from the fearsome dragon Smaug. Although he is initially very reluctant, Bilbo learns to grow into the role of the adventurer, gaining the respect of his brave companions. In the meantime, a dark being with power over death awakens in the heart of Middle-Earth.
Chances are you've read the book by Tolkien. Maybe you've also read The Lord of the Rings, or seen the movie. Here's the first thing to accept, for better or for worse: this movie is nowhere near as close to its book as The Lord of the Rings. The fact that this, too, is a trilogy probably clued you in, but this should clear up any lingering doubts.
It's not entirely like the LotR movies, either, but neither is Tolkien's The Hobbit. Written for children, there's a lot more whimsy involved in Bilbo's tale than in Frodo's. In the book, trolls and spiders talk and joke while they're trying to eat the main characters, swapping some gravitas for humor in order to keep Bilbo's character light. He's not a serious character, but that doesn't mean he isn't significant. Unfortunately, one fair weakness of the film is its portrayal of Bilbo. He begins firing off snappy one-liners far too early, without the right kind of development to show how he became used to the adventures of the road. If the film is going to deviate from the book, it should have some sense of depth to those who haven't read the book; otherwise it's using the book's elements in the wrong order.
Other deviations were more fun. Radagast, in particular, is definitely jumbled together from what fans would like to see rather than from Tolkien's notes, but that doesn't stop him from fairly bursting with the raucous balance between silliness and magic that this film works to achieve. And Azog's storyline is blatantly non-canon, but he works very well as a foe for the stubborn Thorin Oakenshield.
In every aspect other than plot and character, the film succeeds overwhelmingly. The visual aspect is totally breathtaking, as if LotR were painted with brighter colors so that it could shine from every crevice. My only complaint about that aspect is that some shots were a bit dizzying, even for someone who isn't normally averse to helicopter shots or shaky camera. But the musical score is fantastic, even better than its predecessors. For days afterward I found myself humming the dwarves' theme song in empty public restrooms (which have quite good acoustics).
Even if you're a loyal fan of the books or the movie trilogy, I recommend this film. After all, if you can look past the fact that Jackson now has a different approach to adaptation, he still comes up with gold. It's fun, which is the only real reason to go to the theater, anyway.
Chances are you've read the book by Tolkien. Maybe you've also read The Lord of the Rings, or seen the movie. Here's the first thing to accept, for better or for worse: this movie is nowhere near as close to its book as The Lord of the Rings. The fact that this, too, is a trilogy probably clued you in, but this should clear up any lingering doubts.
It's not entirely like the LotR movies, either, but neither is Tolkien's The Hobbit. Written for children, there's a lot more whimsy involved in Bilbo's tale than in Frodo's. In the book, trolls and spiders talk and joke while they're trying to eat the main characters, swapping some gravitas for humor in order to keep Bilbo's character light. He's not a serious character, but that doesn't mean he isn't significant. Unfortunately, one fair weakness of the film is its portrayal of Bilbo. He begins firing off snappy one-liners far too early, without the right kind of development to show how he became used to the adventures of the road. If the film is going to deviate from the book, it should have some sense of depth to those who haven't read the book; otherwise it's using the book's elements in the wrong order.
Other deviations were more fun. Radagast, in particular, is definitely jumbled together from what fans would like to see rather than from Tolkien's notes, but that doesn't stop him from fairly bursting with the raucous balance between silliness and magic that this film works to achieve. And Azog's storyline is blatantly non-canon, but he works very well as a foe for the stubborn Thorin Oakenshield.
In every aspect other than plot and character, the film succeeds overwhelmingly. The visual aspect is totally breathtaking, as if LotR were painted with brighter colors so that it could shine from every crevice. My only complaint about that aspect is that some shots were a bit dizzying, even for someone who isn't normally averse to helicopter shots or shaky camera. But the musical score is fantastic, even better than its predecessors. For days afterward I found myself humming the dwarves' theme song in empty public restrooms (which have quite good acoustics).
Even if you're a loyal fan of the books or the movie trilogy, I recommend this film. After all, if you can look past the fact that Jackson now has a different approach to adaptation, he still comes up with gold. It's fun, which is the only real reason to go to the theater, anyway.
Sunday, December 23, 2012
Review: Love in Exile by Bahaa Taher (2005)
An unnamed narrator is living in Europe after being failing as a nationalistic journalist in Egypt. There, he discovers that he cannot escape the news of national tragedies; at a conference for the broadcasting of torture in Chile, he meets Brigitte, an Austrian translator, also on the run from a painful past. Though Brigitte is half his age and very beautiful, the two fall in love with the intention to keep the violent world out of their lives. But their love is threatened by Brigitte's broken psychology, the narrator's failing health, and a dubious prince who is conquering the whole world, piece by piece.
I don't want to spend much time on this one because, frankly, there wasn't very much to spend time on. The narrator is dull, although realistically so, and none of the other characters was especially compelling. Even Brigitte failed to convince me that she was truly experiencing any kind of crisis. And the end is extremely disappointing.
The book has a few good points, including a prevalent concept about whether to isolate oneself from the outside world. I think this is extremely relevant to most people, especially those of us here on the internet. The book argues that this kind of lifestyle is impossible, but I vote for a balance. Complete introversion, as the narrator and Brigitte experience, can lead to a greater shock when you are forced to look outward once again.
More books are soon to come! I have quite a few read but not blogged. And thanks to everyone who frequents my reviews; you help me more than you know.
I don't want to spend much time on this one because, frankly, there wasn't very much to spend time on. The narrator is dull, although realistically so, and none of the other characters was especially compelling. Even Brigitte failed to convince me that she was truly experiencing any kind of crisis. And the end is extremely disappointing.
The book has a few good points, including a prevalent concept about whether to isolate oneself from the outside world. I think this is extremely relevant to most people, especially those of us here on the internet. The book argues that this kind of lifestyle is impossible, but I vote for a balance. Complete introversion, as the narrator and Brigitte experience, can lead to a greater shock when you are forced to look outward once again.
More books are soon to come! I have quite a few read but not blogged. And thanks to everyone who frequents my reviews; you help me more than you know.
Monday, December 3, 2012
Review: The City and the City by China Miéville (2009)
Besźel and Ul Qoma are two European cities with a unique geographic rivalry: physically, they occupy the same piece of land, the same dot on the map. Yet theirs is a relationship so ancient and convoluted that the people of either city cannot acknowledge the presence of the other right next door. Next to one Besź building can stand an Ul Qoman one, and two neighbors from cities apart may brush elbows, but neither will acknowledge it. Through a trained process of "unseeing" and "unthinking" the neighborhood, animosity and politics keep the people separate. In the middle of it all is Breach, a deadly secret police that exacts immediate vengeance on anyone who violates this doctrine. But when the body of a young woman is found in Besźel, and Police Inspector Tyador Borlú deduces that she came from Besź, he stumbles across a power struggle between the millions of indoctrinated citizens and forces that want to separate, unite, or destroy them all.
To call this book a cross between 1984 and a gritty detective novel would only get you so far. There's a lot going on in this story, and Miéville doesn't focus on what you might expect. That's his greatest strength, in my opinion: he layers the fictional setting smoothly and continuously across the background, so that you don't lose sight of the main characters. After all, it's not just an allegory, but also a story.
His focus on the present moment and space, while in perfect keeping with the theme of the novel, has its advantages and disadvantages. In spite of my better sense, I found myself wanting to know some more about Borlú's past, which is indicated to have some depth to it, but Miéville only plays over the surface of it. Likewise, the limited, superficial interactions of all the characters is, while intentional, disheartening. If you're more pessimistic than I, count this as a point for realism. But if you want an uplifting or fulfilling novel, look elsewhere.
However, these are only limited drawbacks. All the unique aspects of this book, the way it treats mass thought patterns and physical geography, are brilliant. If you've ever read Pierce Lewis on landscape, consider putting these two together. Landscape, says Lewis, consists not only of hills and rivers, but literally of everything. Without reducing everything to a simple feature of the world, we can therefore say that the physical patterns that surround us are as much projected outward as they are internalized, and we will never fully recognize how profoundly they affect us. A tree is as much a part of this total landscape as is your neighbor's garden gnome or your neighbor herself. This is the science of judging things at first sight, which will never go out of style.
And there you have The City and the City, an exercise in taking a second look at the world. I'm sure there are things I "unsee" in the way Borlú "unsees" that foreign country, Ul Qoma; you may find some, too. Just don't expect it to work out neatly or comfortably.
To call this book a cross between 1984 and a gritty detective novel would only get you so far. There's a lot going on in this story, and Miéville doesn't focus on what you might expect. That's his greatest strength, in my opinion: he layers the fictional setting smoothly and continuously across the background, so that you don't lose sight of the main characters. After all, it's not just an allegory, but also a story.
His focus on the present moment and space, while in perfect keeping with the theme of the novel, has its advantages and disadvantages. In spite of my better sense, I found myself wanting to know some more about Borlú's past, which is indicated to have some depth to it, but Miéville only plays over the surface of it. Likewise, the limited, superficial interactions of all the characters is, while intentional, disheartening. If you're more pessimistic than I, count this as a point for realism. But if you want an uplifting or fulfilling novel, look elsewhere.
However, these are only limited drawbacks. All the unique aspects of this book, the way it treats mass thought patterns and physical geography, are brilliant. If you've ever read Pierce Lewis on landscape, consider putting these two together. Landscape, says Lewis, consists not only of hills and rivers, but literally of everything. Without reducing everything to a simple feature of the world, we can therefore say that the physical patterns that surround us are as much projected outward as they are internalized, and we will never fully recognize how profoundly they affect us. A tree is as much a part of this total landscape as is your neighbor's garden gnome or your neighbor herself. This is the science of judging things at first sight, which will never go out of style.
And there you have The City and the City, an exercise in taking a second look at the world. I'm sure there are things I "unsee" in the way Borlú "unsees" that foreign country, Ul Qoma; you may find some, too. Just don't expect it to work out neatly or comfortably.
Saturday, November 10, 2012
Review: Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih (1966)
If Arabic literature is all about seasons, then sign me up. This is the first book in my class by a writer from somewhere other than Egypt. Salih is from Sudan (now South Sudan), and this is my favorite Arabic work so far.
An innominate narrator returns to his rural Sudanese hometown after an Oxford education in English literature. In spite of his radically new worldview, nothing has changed in the village – except for the presence of a mysterious stranger named Mustafa Sa'eed. Mustafa turns out to know more about English poetry and European cynicism than the narrator, and he soon drops several threads of his past into the narrator's lap, introducing the machinery of cold manipulation and lustful violence into the peaceful village. But before this conceptual disease can take root, Mustafa vanishes and is presumed dead, leaving his estate and family to the young narrator, who spends the rest of the novel in a desperate search for the lost pieces of his own identity as well as the cultural identity of his friends and family.
My professor's complaint about the book is that nothing happens. If you don't like a story that begins at the end and backfills the plot, turn back now. Personally, I don't mind, considering that I'm getting all the information anyway. At its worst, this device is a cheap method of foreshadowing, but Salih avoids that by not being very concerned by plot, either. Take note: you should also turn back if plot is the main thing you're seeking.
In the place of a coherent, cohesive story, Season weaves a philosophic narrative. The difficulty lies in the nonlinear shape of the main event, which arguably takes place over centuries. It's about the disease of humanity, of cultures of cold calculation opposing those of hot passion. It's political without involving nominal politics.
Therein lies the second complaint my class voiced about the novel: it's racist. Many pages are full of description contrasting the ice of Europe with the hot African sun. English go to school and kill each other; Sudanese breed donkeys and have sex. Mustafa is characterized as the ultimate European in an African body. His genius-level intellect and sociopathic unfamiliarity with emotion are what make him a tragedy from the beginning.
I have a specific reason for disagreeing with the assertion of racism here, but it must be supported by the entire narrative, so I'll do my best to support it without spoilers. Essentially, Mustafa is portrayed as the carrier of a metaphorical fatal disease that affects everyone he knows intimately. A soft reading of the text shows this disease to be European civilization, especially in the description of Oxford spires, of frantic student parties, and of steamboats chugging down the Nile. This logic equates his intelligence with the English tradition of colonization, and there are many opportunities to examine the book from a post-colonial critical perspective. In essence, machines are the tools of empire, whereas conquered people, or simply those who keep to themselves, are closer to nature, but duller-witted. For example, the narrator's grandfather has a mud house that blooms with plants every spring, and that dies every harvest season.
However, the point is not to characterize the various races so concerned, but the civilizations. As common as human nature is, you'd be kidding yourself to think that all civilizations across the globe are the same. So many centuries later, it's difficult to see all around us the germ of industrialization that led to colonialism, institutionalism, and Pandora's box of modernisms. Perhaps you can surpass it, but not everyone can. It's the essential distinction between viewing people, including one's self, as objects or viewing them as beings too precious to conceive. Call it love or call it concern for human rights; either way it opposes itself to having a mind of metal and wheels.
An innominate narrator returns to his rural Sudanese hometown after an Oxford education in English literature. In spite of his radically new worldview, nothing has changed in the village – except for the presence of a mysterious stranger named Mustafa Sa'eed. Mustafa turns out to know more about English poetry and European cynicism than the narrator, and he soon drops several threads of his past into the narrator's lap, introducing the machinery of cold manipulation and lustful violence into the peaceful village. But before this conceptual disease can take root, Mustafa vanishes and is presumed dead, leaving his estate and family to the young narrator, who spends the rest of the novel in a desperate search for the lost pieces of his own identity as well as the cultural identity of his friends and family.
My professor's complaint about the book is that nothing happens. If you don't like a story that begins at the end and backfills the plot, turn back now. Personally, I don't mind, considering that I'm getting all the information anyway. At its worst, this device is a cheap method of foreshadowing, but Salih avoids that by not being very concerned by plot, either. Take note: you should also turn back if plot is the main thing you're seeking.
In the place of a coherent, cohesive story, Season weaves a philosophic narrative. The difficulty lies in the nonlinear shape of the main event, which arguably takes place over centuries. It's about the disease of humanity, of cultures of cold calculation opposing those of hot passion. It's political without involving nominal politics.
Therein lies the second complaint my class voiced about the novel: it's racist. Many pages are full of description contrasting the ice of Europe with the hot African sun. English go to school and kill each other; Sudanese breed donkeys and have sex. Mustafa is characterized as the ultimate European in an African body. His genius-level intellect and sociopathic unfamiliarity with emotion are what make him a tragedy from the beginning.
I have a specific reason for disagreeing with the assertion of racism here, but it must be supported by the entire narrative, so I'll do my best to support it without spoilers. Essentially, Mustafa is portrayed as the carrier of a metaphorical fatal disease that affects everyone he knows intimately. A soft reading of the text shows this disease to be European civilization, especially in the description of Oxford spires, of frantic student parties, and of steamboats chugging down the Nile. This logic equates his intelligence with the English tradition of colonization, and there are many opportunities to examine the book from a post-colonial critical perspective. In essence, machines are the tools of empire, whereas conquered people, or simply those who keep to themselves, are closer to nature, but duller-witted. For example, the narrator's grandfather has a mud house that blooms with plants every spring, and that dies every harvest season.
However, the point is not to characterize the various races so concerned, but the civilizations. As common as human nature is, you'd be kidding yourself to think that all civilizations across the globe are the same. So many centuries later, it's difficult to see all around us the germ of industrialization that led to colonialism, institutionalism, and Pandora's box of modernisms. Perhaps you can surpass it, but not everyone can. It's the essential distinction between viewing people, including one's self, as objects or viewing them as beings too precious to conceive. Call it love or call it concern for human rights; either way it opposes itself to having a mind of metal and wheels.
Tuesday, November 6, 2012
Review: The Napoleon of Notting Hill by G.K. Chesterton (1904)
I was first drawn to this author by my campus minister, who remembers most vividly Chesterton's saying that he would rather be "a toad in a ditch" than be forced to participate in even the most glorious of democracies. Happy election night, U.S.A.!
For the rest of us, this story is set in an ostensibly future England, in an urban world where all wars have ended and everybody praises the single empire under which they live. The king of England is selected randomly to ensure fairness, and the mantle falls to Auberon Quin, an imaginative prankster. He immediately sets about re-hashing the bureaucracy and its ceremonies into increasing self-parodies, and is delighted when nobody cares about how ridiculous they are being made to act. But from the formal chaos rises Adam Wayne, a young firebrand who is completely incapable of seeing the joke for what it really is. King Auberon has divided London into districts and enforced separate nationalism among each of them, and Adam Wayne decides to take his district, Notting Hill, to war against all the others. Wayne's seemingly insane zeal makes him a fearsome military commander, and as he confounds the rich bureaucrats who try to squash him, this Napoleon and his King are brought ever closer to a confrontation over the nature of what it really means to have human value.
Chesterton, to start at the beginning, is one of the most pompous authors ever to speak the English language. For example, this little number is the first line of the book:
The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children's games from the beginning, and will probably do it till the end, which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up.
Self-renowned (that's right) as the anti-Nietzche, Chesterton filled his non-fiction with more one-liners and pithy pieces of wisdom than Groucho and Karl Marx combined. He was staunchly Roman Catholic and had a talent for analyzing people across cultures, usually erasing the difference between anthropologists and the people they study, or between historians and the past they analyze. However, sometimes he sets aside this talent unfortunately; I have to be skeptical when in The Everlasting Man he asserts that everything worth studying has happened relative to the Mediterranean Sea. And easily the biggest drawback of The Napoleon of Notting Hill is that it fails to include even a single woman. Maybe it's a future where men have learned to reproduce asexually and forgotten the feminine thought process. Got any better ideas?
Apart from these concerns, the book is mostly phenomenal. I retain some reservation because there are parts about which I don't have the slightest clue. A large chunk of thought is devoted to humor and the effects of taking something seriously or not. In Chestertonese, this means he's making fun of us, the readers. This is a consolation when you're reading something silly, but not when you find yourself agreeing with a philosophical point only to realize that you've been set up.
Here lies the main piece of brilliance of the novel. In terms of popular culture, Adam Wayne and King Auberon are closest to Batman and the Joker, respectively, but Chesterton did it first. The unstoppable, devoted idealist is going to triumph in the short term, but the prankster has removed all the rules from the game. It's a psychological contest, with each losing on the other's terms, and neither compromises. To top it all off, the two rely on each other: firm belief needs to be taken more seriously than anything else, and humor must have something taken seriously to subvert. So entrenched are Wayne's certitudes that, in a post-apocalyptic scene, the most poignant moment of the book, he is able to acknowledge this co-dependence without being able to let go of it.
This book is tricky to apply to life and literature, but it's worth it. The central theme is how seriously to take things, and as an English major in a liberal arts college, I've seen otherwise intelligent people damn themselves and dam their thoughts by taking this very question too seriously, never noticing the irony. They become parodies of self-awareness. Know that there are things worth involving yourself in, but always be able to put something down or take a step back. That goes for reading, thinking, and analyzing, so that you can go on living.
Tuesday, October 16, 2012
Review: Miramar by Naguib Mahfouz (1967)
Miramar centers on a group of people who, for various reasons, come to stay at the Miramar hotel in Alexandria, Egypt. Each chapter recounts the same complete story from the perspective of a different narrator. There is Amer Wagdi, a retired journalist who has come to find a peaceful place to wait for death to catch up to him. Hosny Allam is a young, reckless womanizer adrift in a mindset of random causality. Mansour Bahy, once an idealistic revolutionary, has come to the Miramar to escape his conscience at not being radical enough. And Sarhan al-Beheiry, the smoothest of the lot, enters in pursuit of Zohra, a stunningly beautiful young woman who has fled to the hotel from a sticky past. Under the watch of Mariana, the sly old proprietress, these four men revolve around the central struggles of Zohra, no one coming quite near enough to discover her spirit.
I'll be honest: this is the first novel of my Arabic literature course that has impressed me strongly. This comes with the admission that political literature, which includes books that examine social balances, is not my strongest suit. And of course, that's what you'll find in a survey course aimed at conveying culture. With all that said, Miramar is impressive because it juggles this and an examination of human nature at the same time. One outcome of the book is that human nature is what causes social currents. It's so nice when writers agree with me!
Perhaps the biggest strength of the novel is that Mahfouz finds a way to immerse himself totally within each of his narrators. Not one of them has remotely the same voice as any other, yet with the binding beauty of Zohra's development, the speakers are missing something without each other. The novel is a whole only with four sides. Arguably, it also lacks a supporting center, but I'll come to that in a moment. I was particularly touched by Amer Wagdi, the first and last narrator; Mahfouz was not old by this time, nor was he especially religious, but Amer's voice perfectly matches what a meek, benignant old man should embody. I think I also like Amer the best because he never tries sexually to intrude on Zohra, but that's another story.
Zohra, on the periphery of each narration, is the center of the story. My first essay for this class is about reading between the lines of Miramar. I argue that the very act of excluding Zohra from the narration, when she ties all the pieces together, is both a descriptive portrayal, which is superior to a proscriptive one, and is a feminist writing. Feminism, when done right, is not a promotion of one sex or a denigration of the other, but a diagnosis of a way in which humanity can't stand up straight without both male and female perspectives. And the book is purposely incomplete: we never know where Zohra goes after the Miramar, or whether she completes her education in spite of the fact that she is objectified wherever she goes.
To say all this would be incomplete without a bit about Zohra. She's deliberately shady, but there are points at which her real personality shines through the narratives. She's uneducated, but she's sharp. She's usually quiet and flighty, but she gets into more fights than any other character. She's the kind of character a girl should want to relate to, but she never gives the reader the chance.
Both Mahfouz books I've read have kept my attention and kept my brain running on its hamster-wheel, but Miramar is the one that makes me want to read more. I'll grant that this could have to do with the fact that he keeps his true ideology under lock and key, whatever it is. But sometimes we need a good story to tell us what we think, rather than to tell us what to think.
I'll be honest: this is the first novel of my Arabic literature course that has impressed me strongly. This comes with the admission that political literature, which includes books that examine social balances, is not my strongest suit. And of course, that's what you'll find in a survey course aimed at conveying culture. With all that said, Miramar is impressive because it juggles this and an examination of human nature at the same time. One outcome of the book is that human nature is what causes social currents. It's so nice when writers agree with me!
Perhaps the biggest strength of the novel is that Mahfouz finds a way to immerse himself totally within each of his narrators. Not one of them has remotely the same voice as any other, yet with the binding beauty of Zohra's development, the speakers are missing something without each other. The novel is a whole only with four sides. Arguably, it also lacks a supporting center, but I'll come to that in a moment. I was particularly touched by Amer Wagdi, the first and last narrator; Mahfouz was not old by this time, nor was he especially religious, but Amer's voice perfectly matches what a meek, benignant old man should embody. I think I also like Amer the best because he never tries sexually to intrude on Zohra, but that's another story.
Zohra, on the periphery of each narration, is the center of the story. My first essay for this class is about reading between the lines of Miramar. I argue that the very act of excluding Zohra from the narration, when she ties all the pieces together, is both a descriptive portrayal, which is superior to a proscriptive one, and is a feminist writing. Feminism, when done right, is not a promotion of one sex or a denigration of the other, but a diagnosis of a way in which humanity can't stand up straight without both male and female perspectives. And the book is purposely incomplete: we never know where Zohra goes after the Miramar, or whether she completes her education in spite of the fact that she is objectified wherever she goes.
To say all this would be incomplete without a bit about Zohra. She's deliberately shady, but there are points at which her real personality shines through the narratives. She's uneducated, but she's sharp. She's usually quiet and flighty, but she gets into more fights than any other character. She's the kind of character a girl should want to relate to, but she never gives the reader the chance.
Both Mahfouz books I've read have kept my attention and kept my brain running on its hamster-wheel, but Miramar is the one that makes me want to read more. I'll grant that this could have to do with the fact that he keeps his true ideology under lock and key, whatever it is. But sometimes we need a good story to tell us what we think, rather than to tell us what to think.
Monday, October 8, 2012
Short Review: Autumn Quail by Naguib Mahfouz (1962)
The year is 1952, and there is revolution in Egypt. The youth of the nation, more reckless and optimistic than their parents, have formed a militia to drive out both the English colonizers and the corrupt Egyptian king. Miraculously, both goals are achieved. But Isa, an ambitious government worker, is thrown beneath the hooves of history when a new inquisition discovers his corrupt bargains and fires him ignominiously. All at once he is deprived of his job, his fiancé, and his home. The novel traces his existential wanderings through Alexandria and the questions that accompany a lasting revolution.
While this book lacked the physical vividness of The Open Door, the moral structure of it is compelling enough to create its own aesthetic value. This is true even if you're not a card-carrying existentialist. (It's all right; neither am I.) Mahfouz focuses on Isa's story and mental processes rather than using him as a conduit to state any plain conclusion. Yes, the pathetic fallacy makes several appearances (that's when the setting reflects the character's disposition, and it's frowned upon by those who disbelieve that our perceptions of nature influence nature as we perceive it), but it's tastefully in the background. Primarily we become intimate with a powerful listlessness that makes Isa believable.
I don't recommend this book on the basis of an entertaining plot or likable, Rowlingesque characters. Isa is a bastard who doesn't know what to do with himself, even to the very end. Nearly all of the other characters are forgettable. But I do recommend it because it's short and will make you take a moment to breathe a different kind of air.
While this book lacked the physical vividness of The Open Door, the moral structure of it is compelling enough to create its own aesthetic value. This is true even if you're not a card-carrying existentialist. (It's all right; neither am I.) Mahfouz focuses on Isa's story and mental processes rather than using him as a conduit to state any plain conclusion. Yes, the pathetic fallacy makes several appearances (that's when the setting reflects the character's disposition, and it's frowned upon by those who disbelieve that our perceptions of nature influence nature as we perceive it), but it's tastefully in the background. Primarily we become intimate with a powerful listlessness that makes Isa believable.
I don't recommend this book on the basis of an entertaining plot or likable, Rowlingesque characters. Isa is a bastard who doesn't know what to do with himself, even to the very end. Nearly all of the other characters are forgettable. But I do recommend it because it's short and will make you take a moment to breathe a different kind of air.
Wednesday, September 19, 2012
Review: The Open Door by Latifa al-Zayyat (1960)
Fun fact: I'm taking a contemporary Arabic literature class, so this and at least five other reviews will be about books written in the Middle East or North Africa. I hope you read some of them, especially if you don't know much about the literature of this part of the world!
Young Layla (pronounced LYE-la) Suleiman is an adolescent in Egypt in the 1950's, when the country decided it had enough of British imperialism. Egypt is the site of the Suez Canal, an extremely important trade route whose possession is a powerful decider of world politics. The revolution for Egyptian independence is originally made up of mostly youths, and Layla's older brother Mahmud is a fervent activist. Unfortunately, as a girl, Layla is cloistered by her parents and unable to follow Mahmud's example. She is also beleaguered with awful suitors who consider her nothing more than property. Layla steels her heart against the injustice that occurs to her, but in doing so she misses the chance to accept the love of Husayn, a revolutionary who has made it his mission to make Layla free at heart. Separated from her family and countrymembers by ideology, behavior, and war, Layla struggles to find an escape from restriction without leaving behind everything she loves.
There's a problem with this book: it's a tremendous allegory. There's no getting around it. Layla is Egypt; her father and suitors are colonial countries, etc. Even knowing very little about modern Egyptian history, this was obvious to me. In fact, I think my ignorance on the subject made the story more enjoyable than knowledge would have done.
But that's enough griping. Apart from the allegory, Layla is a likable protagonist if only because her problems are deep but relatable. I approve of the fact that she doesn't know what she wants for most of the story, because this is so true of everybody I know. She's not out on a mission; instead, she's dealing with the everyday problems of a young woman in a restrictive society. Her desires and failings are understandable if the story is taken at its own pace. There's quite a river of metaphor through which to wade, so you might as well get wet.
Most of the male characters irritated me. As a man who doesn't make a habit out of psychologically enslaving women, I tend to have two harsh reactions to these portrayals: sympathy for the female characters so victimized, and indignation that I and my fellow dudes should be established as creeps. Al-Zayyat gets slack from me because I believe her descriptions are accurate toward middle-class Egyptians of the time. The only exception is Husayn, whose role as the "good guy" ranges from amusing to maddening. At times he even hints about the end of the book; either he read ahead, or al-Zayyat spoiled it for him.
Overall, I found The Open Door to be about average in terms of entertainment and tired in terms of morality. It's not about female empowerment, but Marxism, and even that has to be read pretty closely between the lines. I don't regret reading it, but as recommendations go, I'd hold off until I've read other Arabic novels.
Young Layla (pronounced LYE-la) Suleiman is an adolescent in Egypt in the 1950's, when the country decided it had enough of British imperialism. Egypt is the site of the Suez Canal, an extremely important trade route whose possession is a powerful decider of world politics. The revolution for Egyptian independence is originally made up of mostly youths, and Layla's older brother Mahmud is a fervent activist. Unfortunately, as a girl, Layla is cloistered by her parents and unable to follow Mahmud's example. She is also beleaguered with awful suitors who consider her nothing more than property. Layla steels her heart against the injustice that occurs to her, but in doing so she misses the chance to accept the love of Husayn, a revolutionary who has made it his mission to make Layla free at heart. Separated from her family and countrymembers by ideology, behavior, and war, Layla struggles to find an escape from restriction without leaving behind everything she loves.
There's a problem with this book: it's a tremendous allegory. There's no getting around it. Layla is Egypt; her father and suitors are colonial countries, etc. Even knowing very little about modern Egyptian history, this was obvious to me. In fact, I think my ignorance on the subject made the story more enjoyable than knowledge would have done.
But that's enough griping. Apart from the allegory, Layla is a likable protagonist if only because her problems are deep but relatable. I approve of the fact that she doesn't know what she wants for most of the story, because this is so true of everybody I know. She's not out on a mission; instead, she's dealing with the everyday problems of a young woman in a restrictive society. Her desires and failings are understandable if the story is taken at its own pace. There's quite a river of metaphor through which to wade, so you might as well get wet.
Most of the male characters irritated me. As a man who doesn't make a habit out of psychologically enslaving women, I tend to have two harsh reactions to these portrayals: sympathy for the female characters so victimized, and indignation that I and my fellow dudes should be established as creeps. Al-Zayyat gets slack from me because I believe her descriptions are accurate toward middle-class Egyptians of the time. The only exception is Husayn, whose role as the "good guy" ranges from amusing to maddening. At times he even hints about the end of the book; either he read ahead, or al-Zayyat spoiled it for him.
Overall, I found The Open Door to be about average in terms of entertainment and tired in terms of morality. It's not about female empowerment, but Marxism, and even that has to be read pretty closely between the lines. I don't regret reading it, but as recommendations go, I'd hold off until I've read other Arabic novels.
Thursday, September 13, 2012
Review: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke (2004)
"Unquestionably the finest English novel of the fantastic written in the last seventy years." So sayeth Neil Gaiman, the only currently-living fantasy author who is both a very famous celebrity and whose opinion I respect. All this adds up to unquestionably the finest English dust jacket quote of the fantastic written since who-knows-when, but what book is he describing? (The rhetorical question works better if you forget the title for a moment.) Everything written by Tolkien makes the cut, as do The Chronicles of Narnia. J. K. Rowling and Terry Pratchett are accounted for, as is T. H. White.
Now forget everything you know about fantasy. I find myself agreeing completely with Gaiman's quote, because the only two books I'd rank with it (Lord Foul's Bane and possibly The Last Unicorn) are American. I present Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell.
In the early 1800s, magicians still populate England. Unfortunately, magic itself has passed them by; the profession is populated by little more than street performers and stuffy scholars. One day, offended by the presumption done in the name of his craft, the stuffy old Mr Norrell decides to reveal to the world that he is the most powerful (that is, only) magician alive. He demonstrates his prowess by raising a young London lady from the dead, keeping it a secret that this particular miracle has come from a bargain with an ancient, powerful fairy king who then considers himself loosed upon London. Anxious both to secure his newly garnered respect and to keep any more unstable magic from threatening the people of England, Norrell sets out to collect any magical knowledge for himself and hide it away... until Jonathan Strange discovers a talent for magic that may surpass that of Norrell. Norrell takes the audacious young gentleman as his first and only pupil. Together, Strange and Norrell span an English cultural revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, and a malevolent magical presence as they try to determine whether Norrell's bookish caution or Strange's stylish confidence will set the standard for the re-emergence of English magic.
The first thing to notice about this book is its complete devotion to the setting. The entire story is written in the style of early 1800's English romances, complete with alternate spellings like "chuse" and "surprize." Then comes the fact that Clarke's legendarium may surpass the size even of Tolkien's if you consider all the real-world references she weaves into the narrative. Not only is there a tremendous amount of fictional secondary material (she uses footnotes dozens of Mr Norrell's private books), but she also draws on figures of the time period. It takes a history lesson to tell some of them apart. My favorite is the intrusion of Lord Byron, who alternately bickers with Jonathan Strange and fuels Strange's melodramatic tendencies.
Now, since this is a blog interested in fantasy, magic ought to be an important focus. Magic is represented differently by every author, but there are several broad categories out there. Some authors (I'm lookin' at you, R. A. Salvatore) portray magic as a powerful weapon with no repercussions, and suddenly everybody is shooting energy blasts like super soakers. Others express the multi-functionality of magic, not just as a weapon, but as a tool for any aspect of life. Frequently these authors try to express the dangers of magic by linking it to the energy of the magician's body; that is, a character who does magic undergoes the physical strain as though he had done it by hand. Christopher Paolini's Eragon is a popular example of this. Personally, I find that this takes the magic out of magic. Nothing as mysterious and compelling as a fairy tale should be governed by such a bland, self-interested weighing of ends and risks.
Compare this to Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. Those two magicians can do nearly anything. At one point, Strange moves a city (a Dutch one, I think) to the modern-day Dakotas, picking up a handful of cowboys and Indians along the way. In her Austenian deadpan, Clarke quips that this is very inconvenient for the city's inhabitants unless Strange can put it where he found it, but it turns out that this is the whole point. Magic is not instructive if it's just a tool we've mastered already. It's the act of turning over stones, not knowing what might escape from under them. It's the act of opening doors to see what's behind them. Nobody, not even Clarke, captures it better than Peter Beagle when he has Schmendrick cry, "Magic, do as you will!" Only then do we realize that the world spins in ways the keenest instruments cannot meaningfully describe.
This is the heart of Strange and Norrell's quarrels. Norrell gets all his learning from books, yet he turns out to be a prodigious magician. He loves magic and himself enough to offer his services to his country, but this is primarily to gain respect and fear not only for himself, but for his craft. He then spends the rest of the book trying to stop anyone else from doing magic, no matter what or where. But the gentleman with the thistledown hair – that's our fairy villain – is already loose in London. The door has been opened, and the consequences are more than personal. On the other hand, Strange advocates active learning by as many people as possible, yet his audacity is no safer than Mr Norrell's caution, as certain casualties come to show. The resulting calamities resolve the way all calamities resolve: life goes on for some.
I love all of the characters in this book, including the ones I hate. Both the scoundrels and the gentlemen, most of whom overlap, are portrayed with powerfully realistic strokes. Both women and men are given complex, characteristic stories. They weave together in a masterful dance that combines poetic justice with the footsteps of real life. It's fitting, because these are the genes of magic.
Now forget everything you know about fantasy. I find myself agreeing completely with Gaiman's quote, because the only two books I'd rank with it (Lord Foul's Bane and possibly The Last Unicorn) are American. I present Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell.
In the early 1800s, magicians still populate England. Unfortunately, magic itself has passed them by; the profession is populated by little more than street performers and stuffy scholars. One day, offended by the presumption done in the name of his craft, the stuffy old Mr Norrell decides to reveal to the world that he is the most powerful (that is, only) magician alive. He demonstrates his prowess by raising a young London lady from the dead, keeping it a secret that this particular miracle has come from a bargain with an ancient, powerful fairy king who then considers himself loosed upon London. Anxious both to secure his newly garnered respect and to keep any more unstable magic from threatening the people of England, Norrell sets out to collect any magical knowledge for himself and hide it away... until Jonathan Strange discovers a talent for magic that may surpass that of Norrell. Norrell takes the audacious young gentleman as his first and only pupil. Together, Strange and Norrell span an English cultural revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, and a malevolent magical presence as they try to determine whether Norrell's bookish caution or Strange's stylish confidence will set the standard for the re-emergence of English magic.
The first thing to notice about this book is its complete devotion to the setting. The entire story is written in the style of early 1800's English romances, complete with alternate spellings like "chuse" and "surprize." Then comes the fact that Clarke's legendarium may surpass the size even of Tolkien's if you consider all the real-world references she weaves into the narrative. Not only is there a tremendous amount of fictional secondary material (she uses footnotes dozens of Mr Norrell's private books), but she also draws on figures of the time period. It takes a history lesson to tell some of them apart. My favorite is the intrusion of Lord Byron, who alternately bickers with Jonathan Strange and fuels Strange's melodramatic tendencies.
Now, since this is a blog interested in fantasy, magic ought to be an important focus. Magic is represented differently by every author, but there are several broad categories out there. Some authors (I'm lookin' at you, R. A. Salvatore) portray magic as a powerful weapon with no repercussions, and suddenly everybody is shooting energy blasts like super soakers. Others express the multi-functionality of magic, not just as a weapon, but as a tool for any aspect of life. Frequently these authors try to express the dangers of magic by linking it to the energy of the magician's body; that is, a character who does magic undergoes the physical strain as though he had done it by hand. Christopher Paolini's Eragon is a popular example of this. Personally, I find that this takes the magic out of magic. Nothing as mysterious and compelling as a fairy tale should be governed by such a bland, self-interested weighing of ends and risks.
Compare this to Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. Those two magicians can do nearly anything. At one point, Strange moves a city (a Dutch one, I think) to the modern-day Dakotas, picking up a handful of cowboys and Indians along the way. In her Austenian deadpan, Clarke quips that this is very inconvenient for the city's inhabitants unless Strange can put it where he found it, but it turns out that this is the whole point. Magic is not instructive if it's just a tool we've mastered already. It's the act of turning over stones, not knowing what might escape from under them. It's the act of opening doors to see what's behind them. Nobody, not even Clarke, captures it better than Peter Beagle when he has Schmendrick cry, "Magic, do as you will!" Only then do we realize that the world spins in ways the keenest instruments cannot meaningfully describe.
This is the heart of Strange and Norrell's quarrels. Norrell gets all his learning from books, yet he turns out to be a prodigious magician. He loves magic and himself enough to offer his services to his country, but this is primarily to gain respect and fear not only for himself, but for his craft. He then spends the rest of the book trying to stop anyone else from doing magic, no matter what or where. But the gentleman with the thistledown hair – that's our fairy villain – is already loose in London. The door has been opened, and the consequences are more than personal. On the other hand, Strange advocates active learning by as many people as possible, yet his audacity is no safer than Mr Norrell's caution, as certain casualties come to show. The resulting calamities resolve the way all calamities resolve: life goes on for some.
I love all of the characters in this book, including the ones I hate. Both the scoundrels and the gentlemen, most of whom overlap, are portrayed with powerfully realistic strokes. Both women and men are given complex, characteristic stories. They weave together in a masterful dance that combines poetic justice with the footsteps of real life. It's fitting, because these are the genes of magic.
Wednesday, September 5, 2012
An Outsider's Perspective on Social Politics
As I warned you, social politics are a thing that not even I, with my squirrelly cluelessness, can avoid. I've been waiting for the right book to toss around my opinion on the subject, and The Secret Life of Bees is probably as good as I'm going to get.
To begin: social politics are the attempts of constructed groups to gain a comparative advantage over each other. They're different from regular politics because they don't always travel widely-shared, explicit modes like elections, and because they are more frequently peopled by clichés and ideals. They're a favorite of Marxists, and like many Marxist theories, they're thought to be inescapable.
That's the first and last paradox to hurdle. Is everything we do an assertion of power over another class, race, etc.? Many people would disagree, but the assertion is that sitting in front of your computer and reading a literary blog is a luxury purchased at the expense of everyone else in the world who doesn't have that opportunity. After all, they say there's no such thing as a free lunch. The ideology that most promotes the awe of social politics also tends to find fault with behavior that doesn't make everybody equal–not only in freedoms and opportunities, but also in comfort, possessions, behavior, morals, personality, etc. I'm not straying too far into the political: this has everything to do with literature, being the branch of criticism that analyzes the social spheres of the winners and losers in any novel. In The Secret Life of Bees, if Sue Monk Kidd gives Lily a sandwich, it has a different import than if she gives Zach a sandwich. This has nothing to do with their lives and everything to do with their gender and skin color. What could be more natural?
The trick is that a level of this is always necessary. If I pretend that all my characters' races, etc. are random or arbitrary, then I'm both kidding myself and making room for a ton of accidental cultural slander. This is a trap that catches most of the crappier fantasy authors in the biz. Assuming that their legendariums are coming entirely out of their own heads, their characters and cultures reflect medieval Western Europe time after time. (Some are beginning to show signs of America, but this may be the result of declining levels of research.) Culture is what's literally inescapable, and writers shouldn't try. After all, we're creating culture. To admit anything less would be selfishly to insist that our ideas, including the language in which we write, are our private property. In this case, I shouldn't let anybody read my books.
Culture, however, is not at all the same as social politics. Oh, the two almost always intersect. There are many examples of culture without social politics, but a Marxist literary critic could read class warfare into almost all of them. Social politics, on the other hand, finds existing without culture a lot like breathing in space. After all, culture is the structure given to the shared beliefs of a society, and without more than one person to share political ideas, you've got a dictator on your hands.
People will read social politics into any book not because of their ideology, but because of who they are. I read The Secret Life of Bees much differently from the way my mother read it, because I've never been a fourteen year-old girl. I can share as much of Lily's ethics or personality as I want, but I don't have the experiences Kidd has written into her backstory. And neither I nor my mother has specifically African American memories, nor South Carolina ones. We understand the characters the same way we understand other people; that is to say, we read imperfectly.
Once this is understood, there are many ways to leap from the platform. All of them have to do with the outcome people want each other to have after reading the book; we want others to agree with us. Some readers insist that Lily should triumph in the end, and that she should come to a deeper understanding with the black characters who support her. This, it can be argued, would create an optimism that encourages other people to seek a similar understanding with their neighbors of a different social background. Other readers, especially the grumpy varieties of postmodernist, want a sad ending in which the iniquities of the real world (for example, racist dads) strangle Lily's dreams and her relationship with August, Zach, and the rest of the gang. The point of this would be to create a pessimism that would fuel the reader to go forth and fix such iniquities.
I don't believe that these outlooks are worthless. I, like most authors, tend to write mixed outcomes, with optimism and pessimism holding hands. But it becomes dangerous to neglect looking at a story from the inside. And, unlike a view of which class is oppressing which, it's absolutely necessary for reading. I tried to connect with Lily's choices in spite of never having been a fourteen year-old, white, lower-middle-class, South Carolina girl in the year 1964. Kidd's words and my thoughts are both human, and so however imperfect my understanding of the political setting, I am the better off for having read it.
There is a great reason that people like to empathize with the characters, and it has nothing to do with selfishness. Books are lessons that help us deal with the problems we face every day, not just what politicians and scholars see when looking down at a map of humanity. Everything else is founded on the face-to-face drama, which is the only (but generous) source of meaning for the vast majority of people who don't have the luxury of brooding in the ivory tower of progressivism.
To begin: social politics are the attempts of constructed groups to gain a comparative advantage over each other. They're different from regular politics because they don't always travel widely-shared, explicit modes like elections, and because they are more frequently peopled by clichés and ideals. They're a favorite of Marxists, and like many Marxist theories, they're thought to be inescapable.
That's the first and last paradox to hurdle. Is everything we do an assertion of power over another class, race, etc.? Many people would disagree, but the assertion is that sitting in front of your computer and reading a literary blog is a luxury purchased at the expense of everyone else in the world who doesn't have that opportunity. After all, they say there's no such thing as a free lunch. The ideology that most promotes the awe of social politics also tends to find fault with behavior that doesn't make everybody equal–not only in freedoms and opportunities, but also in comfort, possessions, behavior, morals, personality, etc. I'm not straying too far into the political: this has everything to do with literature, being the branch of criticism that analyzes the social spheres of the winners and losers in any novel. In The Secret Life of Bees, if Sue Monk Kidd gives Lily a sandwich, it has a different import than if she gives Zach a sandwich. This has nothing to do with their lives and everything to do with their gender and skin color. What could be more natural?
The trick is that a level of this is always necessary. If I pretend that all my characters' races, etc. are random or arbitrary, then I'm both kidding myself and making room for a ton of accidental cultural slander. This is a trap that catches most of the crappier fantasy authors in the biz. Assuming that their legendariums are coming entirely out of their own heads, their characters and cultures reflect medieval Western Europe time after time. (Some are beginning to show signs of America, but this may be the result of declining levels of research.) Culture is what's literally inescapable, and writers shouldn't try. After all, we're creating culture. To admit anything less would be selfishly to insist that our ideas, including the language in which we write, are our private property. In this case, I shouldn't let anybody read my books.
Culture, however, is not at all the same as social politics. Oh, the two almost always intersect. There are many examples of culture without social politics, but a Marxist literary critic could read class warfare into almost all of them. Social politics, on the other hand, finds existing without culture a lot like breathing in space. After all, culture is the structure given to the shared beliefs of a society, and without more than one person to share political ideas, you've got a dictator on your hands.
People will read social politics into any book not because of their ideology, but because of who they are. I read The Secret Life of Bees much differently from the way my mother read it, because I've never been a fourteen year-old girl. I can share as much of Lily's ethics or personality as I want, but I don't have the experiences Kidd has written into her backstory. And neither I nor my mother has specifically African American memories, nor South Carolina ones. We understand the characters the same way we understand other people; that is to say, we read imperfectly.
Once this is understood, there are many ways to leap from the platform. All of them have to do with the outcome people want each other to have after reading the book; we want others to agree with us. Some readers insist that Lily should triumph in the end, and that she should come to a deeper understanding with the black characters who support her. This, it can be argued, would create an optimism that encourages other people to seek a similar understanding with their neighbors of a different social background. Other readers, especially the grumpy varieties of postmodernist, want a sad ending in which the iniquities of the real world (for example, racist dads) strangle Lily's dreams and her relationship with August, Zach, and the rest of the gang. The point of this would be to create a pessimism that would fuel the reader to go forth and fix such iniquities.
I don't believe that these outlooks are worthless. I, like most authors, tend to write mixed outcomes, with optimism and pessimism holding hands. But it becomes dangerous to neglect looking at a story from the inside. And, unlike a view of which class is oppressing which, it's absolutely necessary for reading. I tried to connect with Lily's choices in spite of never having been a fourteen year-old, white, lower-middle-class, South Carolina girl in the year 1964. Kidd's words and my thoughts are both human, and so however imperfect my understanding of the political setting, I am the better off for having read it.
There is a great reason that people like to empathize with the characters, and it has nothing to do with selfishness. Books are lessons that help us deal with the problems we face every day, not just what politicians and scholars see when looking down at a map of humanity. Everything else is founded on the face-to-face drama, which is the only (but generous) source of meaning for the vast majority of people who don't have the luxury of brooding in the ivory tower of progressivism.
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
Review: The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd (2002)
Look out! Duck! It's another one o' them dastardly Christian novels! Because of certain themes well covered by The Secret Life of Bees, I'm going to split this review into two posts, the second being about social politics. Here's the first, which is about real things.
It's the year 1964. Our white-skinned heroine, Lily Owens, has turned fourteen. It was the best of times, because the Civil Rights Act has just been signed (That's the federal mandate doing away with Jim Crow Laws and enforcing the right to vote regardless of race or ethnicity. There was probably more to the story, but it's not covered in this book, and my memory for history is notoriously bad.) It was also the worst of times, because a culture of racism is still alive and kicking (among other things... sorry). Lily's caretaker and role model, a black woman named Rosaleen, goes to town to exercise her new rights, and finds herself beaten and in jail. Lily takes action into her own hands by fleeing from her abusive father, freeing Rosaleen, and running off in search of the origins of her long-dead mother, whom Lily accidentally killed as a toddler. The fugitive pair are taken in by a trio of wild and crazy bee-keeping black women, who teach Lily a new perspective on spirituality while gradually helping her to discover a painful past.
Here's one of my first reactions to this book: it should be taught in middle school or high school. I'm not trying to devalue it, even though those kinds of booklists are frequently catered toward kids who don't want to be in class as well as the ones interested in reading. But there are many things that make The Secret Life of Bees right for the role. First: the writing style is not obscure or overly subtle. One of the most impressive aspects of Kidd's writing is that she is able to create intricate, flowing description without losing the fourteen year-old girl's narrative voice. Second: the main character is the right age. She's a strong, realistic girl, instead of an unrelatable narrator. Third: it's historical. The Civil Rights Act, the space race, Johnson vs. Goldwater, and some more are good lesson spearheads that enter the plot. Fourth: it's damn good.
If there's one aspect of a book I enjoy more than complex characters, it's complex symbolism. The Secret Life of Bees' symbolism revolves around (you guessed it) bees, which are connected both with the nuclear feminine society and with feminine spirituality. I have mixed feelings about the structure of these relationships, but my overall opinion is positive.
For those not in the know, Christianity carries with it a Marian tradition based around the adoration of Mary, the Mother of Jesus. As far as I know, this is true even of denominations that don't emphasize sainthood in the same way as Roman Catholicism. Like Jesus, Mary was born free of original sin and was assumed body and soul into Heaven. We don't worship her or any of the saints, but we look to her and study her life as the best example of how to live. The Daughters of Mary in The Secret Life of Bees portray her as a black woman because, as one of the characters says, "Everybody needs a god who looks like them." Although I take personal issue with the phrasing, I love the sentiment. I've heard of people who, even recently and in such tolerant lands as New York, have been offended by pictures of a black Jesus or who say Jesus is American, and they're not setting themselves up for much sympathy.
This brings me back to the symbolic structure. The Daughters of Mary are a spiritual and social society created by the bee-keeping women who shelter and mentor our heroines. They create their own hybrid religion which, in the words of our charming narrator, "would make the Pope keel over right there," but which has quite a bundle of good ideas. August Boatwright, the closest mentor to Lily, is a genius for all the answers she has for every question. She's the only unrealistic character by being too perfect, but I enjoyed reading her anyway. All of her bee facts are relevant both to Lily's predicament and to her perception of the Blessed Mother. If the queen dies, the hive becomes despondent and unproductive; the women of the world depend on the guidance of Mary; Lily's emotional turmoil is all based on the death of her mother. I also thought that Lily's familial world was a bit too mired in absolutes; she and her father are both unnecessarily fixated on her dead mother, and her father is crazier than most supervillains. But again, these exaggerations do not detract from the book's high enjoyability.
It's the year 1964. Our white-skinned heroine, Lily Owens, has turned fourteen. It was the best of times, because the Civil Rights Act has just been signed (That's the federal mandate doing away with Jim Crow Laws and enforcing the right to vote regardless of race or ethnicity. There was probably more to the story, but it's not covered in this book, and my memory for history is notoriously bad.) It was also the worst of times, because a culture of racism is still alive and kicking (among other things... sorry). Lily's caretaker and role model, a black woman named Rosaleen, goes to town to exercise her new rights, and finds herself beaten and in jail. Lily takes action into her own hands by fleeing from her abusive father, freeing Rosaleen, and running off in search of the origins of her long-dead mother, whom Lily accidentally killed as a toddler. The fugitive pair are taken in by a trio of wild and crazy bee-keeping black women, who teach Lily a new perspective on spirituality while gradually helping her to discover a painful past.
Here's one of my first reactions to this book: it should be taught in middle school or high school. I'm not trying to devalue it, even though those kinds of booklists are frequently catered toward kids who don't want to be in class as well as the ones interested in reading. But there are many things that make The Secret Life of Bees right for the role. First: the writing style is not obscure or overly subtle. One of the most impressive aspects of Kidd's writing is that she is able to create intricate, flowing description without losing the fourteen year-old girl's narrative voice. Second: the main character is the right age. She's a strong, realistic girl, instead of an unrelatable narrator. Third: it's historical. The Civil Rights Act, the space race, Johnson vs. Goldwater, and some more are good lesson spearheads that enter the plot. Fourth: it's damn good.
If there's one aspect of a book I enjoy more than complex characters, it's complex symbolism. The Secret Life of Bees' symbolism revolves around (you guessed it) bees, which are connected both with the nuclear feminine society and with feminine spirituality. I have mixed feelings about the structure of these relationships, but my overall opinion is positive.
For those not in the know, Christianity carries with it a Marian tradition based around the adoration of Mary, the Mother of Jesus. As far as I know, this is true even of denominations that don't emphasize sainthood in the same way as Roman Catholicism. Like Jesus, Mary was born free of original sin and was assumed body and soul into Heaven. We don't worship her or any of the saints, but we look to her and study her life as the best example of how to live. The Daughters of Mary in The Secret Life of Bees portray her as a black woman because, as one of the characters says, "Everybody needs a god who looks like them." Although I take personal issue with the phrasing, I love the sentiment. I've heard of people who, even recently and in such tolerant lands as New York, have been offended by pictures of a black Jesus or who say Jesus is American, and they're not setting themselves up for much sympathy.
This brings me back to the symbolic structure. The Daughters of Mary are a spiritual and social society created by the bee-keeping women who shelter and mentor our heroines. They create their own hybrid religion which, in the words of our charming narrator, "would make the Pope keel over right there," but which has quite a bundle of good ideas. August Boatwright, the closest mentor to Lily, is a genius for all the answers she has for every question. She's the only unrealistic character by being too perfect, but I enjoyed reading her anyway. All of her bee facts are relevant both to Lily's predicament and to her perception of the Blessed Mother. If the queen dies, the hive becomes despondent and unproductive; the women of the world depend on the guidance of Mary; Lily's emotional turmoil is all based on the death of her mother. I also thought that Lily's familial world was a bit too mired in absolutes; she and her father are both unnecessarily fixated on her dead mother, and her father is crazier than most supervillains. But again, these exaggerations do not detract from the book's high enjoyability.
Monday, August 13, 2012
Review: Going Postal by Terry Pratchett (2004)
In the wacky fantasy city of Ankh-Morpork, Moist von Lipwig is the best swindler in town, until he's caught and condemned to death for a life of crime. But the local tyrant, Lord Vetinari, has other plans: he fakes the hanging of von Lipwig's alter ego in order to appoint the arch-fraud as the city's new postmaster. He even assigns him an unstoppable golem as probation officer, in case Moist has any plans of escaping. The Post Office is obsolete, having long been outstripped by a privately-owned network of signal messages, whose monopoly is beginning to frustrate the city. Armed only with his talent for fooling people, Moist decides to give the corporate pirates (whose chairman is an actual pirate) a run for their money in order to see who is better at conning the city.
This is about the sixth Terry Pratchett book I've read. So far, it's the least humorous, but it's also got the best plot. Go figure. It seems that unlike Vonnegut, Pratchett needs to give up plot consistency for the sake of his jokes, and vice versa. Perhaps it's a function of British humor, or perhaps because most of his jokes are literal gags, they drive the story haywire. Either way, the book doesn't suffer from lack of humor; it's just slightly less cram-packed with its usual.
I once saw an interview in which Pratchett described the premise of his Discworld universe, of which Going Postal is a part. Nowhere did he mention the fact that his books are funny, not once. That would be like implying that your book doesn't have characters, or a plot. As usual, go figure.
Going Postal stands out from the larger Discworld collection by its characters. Apart from Moist, we have Mr. Pump, his golem probation officer, Who Talks In Capitalized Words And Isn't Quite Sure What Happiness Is. Moist's love interest, Adora Belle Dearheart, is a chain-smoking cynic and the only person who sees through Moist's various tricks and shams. As long as I'm discussing details, I thought the dynamic between Moist and Miss Dearheart was one of the most original romantic relationships I've ever read. Their attraction isn't random, as it so often happens, and Miss Dearheart is critical to the story as more than just a love interest. In fact, the story wouldn't work without her, and Moist's flirting is just a well-fitting backdrop. Take note, fiction writers: women are more compelling secondary characters when they have interests other than the main character. This works especially well if your protagonist is full of himself (or herself), but try to avoid the trap of making the love interest preoccupied with taking the protagonist down a notch. That's still a kind of obsession.
Other fun characters include Mr. Groat, the disgusting old postman who takes care of the abandoned post office; Stanley, Mr. Groat's young assistant who is obsessed with collecting pins until Moist accidentally invents stamp collecting; and Reacher Gilt, Moist's pirate-turned-CEO-for-better-pay nemesis.
One of my favorite aspects of the book is its theme. Pratchett plays the mailman storyline to its full advantage. Because Moist can't resist fooling people with style, he eventually establishes himself as a mailman messiah, promising "deliverance." His several near-death experiences are punctuated with discussions of angels, from which the book draws on the theme of divine messengers. Tied up with these is the concept that words immortalize their speaker. This has always entranced the likes of Dante and Shakespeare, but Pratchett can't resist immortalizing junk mail as well. It's just wacky enough to make sense.
This is about the sixth Terry Pratchett book I've read. So far, it's the least humorous, but it's also got the best plot. Go figure. It seems that unlike Vonnegut, Pratchett needs to give up plot consistency for the sake of his jokes, and vice versa. Perhaps it's a function of British humor, or perhaps because most of his jokes are literal gags, they drive the story haywire. Either way, the book doesn't suffer from lack of humor; it's just slightly less cram-packed with its usual.
I once saw an interview in which Pratchett described the premise of his Discworld universe, of which Going Postal is a part. Nowhere did he mention the fact that his books are funny, not once. That would be like implying that your book doesn't have characters, or a plot. As usual, go figure.
Going Postal stands out from the larger Discworld collection by its characters. Apart from Moist, we have Mr. Pump, his golem probation officer, Who Talks In Capitalized Words And Isn't Quite Sure What Happiness Is. Moist's love interest, Adora Belle Dearheart, is a chain-smoking cynic and the only person who sees through Moist's various tricks and shams. As long as I'm discussing details, I thought the dynamic between Moist and Miss Dearheart was one of the most original romantic relationships I've ever read. Their attraction isn't random, as it so often happens, and Miss Dearheart is critical to the story as more than just a love interest. In fact, the story wouldn't work without her, and Moist's flirting is just a well-fitting backdrop. Take note, fiction writers: women are more compelling secondary characters when they have interests other than the main character. This works especially well if your protagonist is full of himself (or herself), but try to avoid the trap of making the love interest preoccupied with taking the protagonist down a notch. That's still a kind of obsession.
Other fun characters include Mr. Groat, the disgusting old postman who takes care of the abandoned post office; Stanley, Mr. Groat's young assistant who is obsessed with collecting pins until Moist accidentally invents stamp collecting; and Reacher Gilt, Moist's pirate-turned-CEO-for-better-pay nemesis.
One of my favorite aspects of the book is its theme. Pratchett plays the mailman storyline to its full advantage. Because Moist can't resist fooling people with style, he eventually establishes himself as a mailman messiah, promising "deliverance." His several near-death experiences are punctuated with discussions of angels, from which the book draws on the theme of divine messengers. Tied up with these is the concept that words immortalize their speaker. This has always entranced the likes of Dante and Shakespeare, but Pratchett can't resist immortalizing junk mail as well. It's just wacky enough to make sense.
Wednesday, August 8, 2012
Review: The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky (1880)
When I said this blog was going to review the books I read, I meant almost all of those books. Limiting myself to fantasy would limit fantasy, saying that it can't stand on the same shelf as other great literature.
But enough griping. I present: The Brothers Karamazov.
Set in post-feudal, pre-Communist Russia, this book follows the trials of the dysfunctional Karamazov family, the father of which is Fyodor Pavlovich, an old man known for his buffoonery and sexual promiscuity. Fyodor's eldest son, Dmitri Fyodorovich (you get the hang of the naming rules after a while), is a hotheaded man who often gets into trouble with love and money. The middle son, Ivan, is cold and critical, but tragically passionate. And the youngest, Alexey, is an overzealous monk whose dying elder knows that Alexey belongs out in the world for a longer time. Reuniting after living apart for many years, the family must find a way to keep from destroying each other over matters of money, women, and ethics.
You guessed it: this book is very different from anything I've already reviewed on this blog, both in time and space. I'm a big fan of Dostoevsky's philosophic beliefs, and so I must recognize from the beginning that these may tip the enjoyment of the book depending on where you stand. Because, as it turns out, philosophy and moral speculation are the backbone of this book. Its biggest problem is that the plot is secondary until the dramatic twist.
I'll tackle things chronologically. Dostoevsky's characters are amazingly complex and come with lots of baggage. I don't know whether this is more a 19th century trope or a Russian one, but that baggage is described in massive detail, including an entire chapter of back-story whenever a significant minor character is introduced. It's important to note that the book was originally released in chapter-long installments in a magazine. Dostoevsky was enormously popular by then, and readers were hooked; they looked forward to this month's exposition of the disgraced army captain's woes. But put into a continuous narrative, translated into English, and picked up by a young man in the attention span-fearing 21st century, the technical details slow the story nearly to a standstill. If it were written in the U.S. today, The Brothers Karamazov would need to be a third of its current size for a publisher to touch it with a ten-foot copyright. As it is, the first task is to sort out all the characters and their histories, making the book difficult to dive straight into.
Once it picks up, the book fluctuates between solid and brilliant. The long characterization pays off: everyone is understandable as a real person, and their actions make them more understandable rather than too complicated. For me, all the real points of gold come to or from the character Alexey, who is the only character without any concealed intentions. His bravery and honesty do not make him simple-minded or even all that naïve, as is the tendency. He is faced with the problem that too few books try to tackle, perhaps because nobody knows the answer: what to do when you have succeeded in becoming humble and good-hearted, but the world keeps on turning up new problems.
The other characters are explored just as well. I didn't understand or like Ivan until the very end, mostly because he felt like a crabby "stock atheist" who should have been more complex. Here's a spoiler: he is. The women in the book are brilliant, which is more remarkable considering the time (I don't know about the place, never having read a Russian, non-Dostoevsky book). 19th century authors, even those I wouldn't consider sexist, didn't tend to know quite how complex women act. I'm not an expert, but at least I try to give my women characters layered personality traits and actual motivations. Dostoevsky's women are at least as complex as his men–they're as realistic as people. None of his characters is limited to a desire for love, sex, money, power, purpose, or any other mold into which a sociologist might try to cram one of us. Just like anybody, they're not always sure what they want. This is something I try to give my characters, so I can say from experience that it's the hardest character trait to write, because the whole character goes bonkers if he's not written naturally. And Dostoevsky does it masterfully.
The political and religious debates were interesting. Not knowing enough about Russian history, I didn't have enough context to judge the attitudes with which his characters discuss socialism, which was already a common–if not popular–concept there. I was able to get down and dirty with the religion, and I found myself morbidly fascinated by Ivan's story "The Grand Inquisitor," in which a bishop explains his dystopian vision of the Catholic Church to his prisoner, a heretic who is actually Christ. Dostoevsky does well to include his characters' personalities in their religious views, keeping them real and at least semi-rational. After all, it's people who believe that humans and faith can be separated who have the dimmest sense of what constitute belief, apart from those who take it for granted. This, I digress, is the reason stories are useful for exploring philosophy.
What lost my interest was the turn of the story after its climax, which I won't spoil here. It involves a crime, an investigation, and a trial, none of which interested me very much. Caught up in rhetoric, the book loses some opportunities for its characters to develop smoothly, although they get there in the end. It's certainly not a thriller.
Although I hold this book in high regard, it's not the first one I'd recommend off the shelf. Read it if you're looking for some solid insight on Christianity, ethics, psychology, Dostoevsky, or Russia. Don't read it if you're looking for some insight on legal proceedings, or if you're looking for thrills and spills. Better find those elsewhere.
But enough griping. I present: The Brothers Karamazov.
Set in post-feudal, pre-Communist Russia, this book follows the trials of the dysfunctional Karamazov family, the father of which is Fyodor Pavlovich, an old man known for his buffoonery and sexual promiscuity. Fyodor's eldest son, Dmitri Fyodorovich (you get the hang of the naming rules after a while), is a hotheaded man who often gets into trouble with love and money. The middle son, Ivan, is cold and critical, but tragically passionate. And the youngest, Alexey, is an overzealous monk whose dying elder knows that Alexey belongs out in the world for a longer time. Reuniting after living apart for many years, the family must find a way to keep from destroying each other over matters of money, women, and ethics.
You guessed it: this book is very different from anything I've already reviewed on this blog, both in time and space. I'm a big fan of Dostoevsky's philosophic beliefs, and so I must recognize from the beginning that these may tip the enjoyment of the book depending on where you stand. Because, as it turns out, philosophy and moral speculation are the backbone of this book. Its biggest problem is that the plot is secondary until the dramatic twist.
I'll tackle things chronologically. Dostoevsky's characters are amazingly complex and come with lots of baggage. I don't know whether this is more a 19th century trope or a Russian one, but that baggage is described in massive detail, including an entire chapter of back-story whenever a significant minor character is introduced. It's important to note that the book was originally released in chapter-long installments in a magazine. Dostoevsky was enormously popular by then, and readers were hooked; they looked forward to this month's exposition of the disgraced army captain's woes. But put into a continuous narrative, translated into English, and picked up by a young man in the attention span-fearing 21st century, the technical details slow the story nearly to a standstill. If it were written in the U.S. today, The Brothers Karamazov would need to be a third of its current size for a publisher to touch it with a ten-foot copyright. As it is, the first task is to sort out all the characters and their histories, making the book difficult to dive straight into.
Once it picks up, the book fluctuates between solid and brilliant. The long characterization pays off: everyone is understandable as a real person, and their actions make them more understandable rather than too complicated. For me, all the real points of gold come to or from the character Alexey, who is the only character without any concealed intentions. His bravery and honesty do not make him simple-minded or even all that naïve, as is the tendency. He is faced with the problem that too few books try to tackle, perhaps because nobody knows the answer: what to do when you have succeeded in becoming humble and good-hearted, but the world keeps on turning up new problems.
The other characters are explored just as well. I didn't understand or like Ivan until the very end, mostly because he felt like a crabby "stock atheist" who should have been more complex. Here's a spoiler: he is. The women in the book are brilliant, which is more remarkable considering the time (I don't know about the place, never having read a Russian, non-Dostoevsky book). 19th century authors, even those I wouldn't consider sexist, didn't tend to know quite how complex women act. I'm not an expert, but at least I try to give my women characters layered personality traits and actual motivations. Dostoevsky's women are at least as complex as his men–they're as realistic as people. None of his characters is limited to a desire for love, sex, money, power, purpose, or any other mold into which a sociologist might try to cram one of us. Just like anybody, they're not always sure what they want. This is something I try to give my characters, so I can say from experience that it's the hardest character trait to write, because the whole character goes bonkers if he's not written naturally. And Dostoevsky does it masterfully.
The political and religious debates were interesting. Not knowing enough about Russian history, I didn't have enough context to judge the attitudes with which his characters discuss socialism, which was already a common–if not popular–concept there. I was able to get down and dirty with the religion, and I found myself morbidly fascinated by Ivan's story "The Grand Inquisitor," in which a bishop explains his dystopian vision of the Catholic Church to his prisoner, a heretic who is actually Christ. Dostoevsky does well to include his characters' personalities in their religious views, keeping them real and at least semi-rational. After all, it's people who believe that humans and faith can be separated who have the dimmest sense of what constitute belief, apart from those who take it for granted. This, I digress, is the reason stories are useful for exploring philosophy.
What lost my interest was the turn of the story after its climax, which I won't spoil here. It involves a crime, an investigation, and a trial, none of which interested me very much. Caught up in rhetoric, the book loses some opportunities for its characters to develop smoothly, although they get there in the end. It's certainly not a thriller.
Although I hold this book in high regard, it's not the first one I'd recommend off the shelf. Read it if you're looking for some solid insight on Christianity, ethics, psychology, Dostoevsky, or Russia. Don't read it if you're looking for some insight on legal proceedings, or if you're looking for thrills and spills. Better find those elsewhere.
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Review: Girl Genius by Kaja & Phil Foglio (2001-present)
Girl Genius is an ongoing online comic set in an industrial Europe where "sparks" are fanatic mad scientists whose prowess can break the boundaries of possibility. The plot follows the adventures of Agatha Heterodyne, a young university student who discovers that she has been hidden as the most powerful spark in Europe. As her skill quickly begins to blossom, Agatha is forced to choose which side of her lost family to emulate: her father, descended from a line of conquerors but himself the greatest hero in memory; or her mother, a shadowy manipulator whose inventions have toppled empires. Among the countless colorful characters Agatha meets are Gilgamesh "Gil" Wulfenbach, energetic heir to the Empire of Europe; Tarvek Sturmvoraus, a deceptive prince with access to Agatha's family secrets; and Emperor Krosp, Agatha's talking cat.This comic is unique in a wide variety of ways. First of all, you're not going to find another webcomic of this quality that churns out three comics a week. Their staff is religious about deadlines; they always update at midnight, even on the occasion when the colorist had a heart attack. And the finished product looks fantastic. The brightness of the art, including the style that seamlessly fuses wacky cartoons with breathtaking landscapes, makes Girl Genius fantastic even from a purely visual perspective.
One of my favorite aspects of the comic is the way science and magic are fused. There's not a huge amount of technical description, both because the science is unworkable and because they probably want to keep it exciting. This makes almost anything possible. There's a huge amount of monsters, most of which are explained as genetic constructs, and many of the wizard-like characters are actually scientists who have adopted a magical style. Many people have called the comic "steampunk," which is frequently ambiguous anyway, but the creators have gently objected to this label, noting that nearly every imaginable power source, not just steam, powers the crazy machines. My favorite is a giant robot squid whose gas valve is labeled "unleaded."The story is also amazingly intricate, especially for a project that has been going on for so many years. Against its credit, this can make it hard to keep track of the plot points. Many of the events currently happening are explanations for things alluded to years ago, which a reader would forget without going back and reading it again. For this reason, I'd recommend reading Girl Genius all at once, or at least volume by volume, to avoid being bored or confused. But do read it! It's at your fingertips, and it's unlike anything else I've seen.
Thursday, July 26, 2012
Long Story Short
[Hi everybody! I've been lost in the unfamiliar territory of JOBS, so I haven't updated in a while. Sorry! I'll be back on track soon. Here's a short story I wrote roughly a year ago. Enjoy!]
Not much inspires quite the same flavor of crystalline terror as watching a dazzling winter sunset and knowing there’s no going back inside tonight. Bittersweet, it snags onto your tongue like an icicle and drags it down, down over the horizon until your brain is pulled straight out through your mouth and everything dissolves into blackness.
My
eyes are already stuck in that direction, so I look on. Our Sun, Helios, the
ultimate provider of warmth, light, and life (until Prometheus, the
great-granddaddy of all us couch potatoes, taught his buddies how to drag it
inside, away from God) is throwing a nuclear fit as big as a million Earths and
as small as two atoms of hydrogen. From my refracted perspective within the
troposphere, all I can see is a dazzling display of photons that leap down from
heaven and splatter themselves across the whole sky, catching cotton cloudy
canvases with tufts of saffron, nacarat, rose-pink and indigo. Normally I’m a
sentimental guy, but this evening I can’t forget that when the light show ends,
my worldly existence is soon to follow.
The
display is made many times more breathtaking by the billions of ice crystals
that reflect colors back and forth at each other like a light-speed game of
Pong. High above, stars begin to stare down with a cold constancy normally
found in the eyes of job interviewers. I shift my aching, frostbitten feet
slightly, careful not to disturb the gentle equilibrium my floe keeps above the
lapping waves. I’m the only dull-colored object in sight. As if the scenario
weren’t humiliating enough, now I feel like a blot on a glittering, pristine,
snowball Earth.
As
ridiculous situations go, I think,
tugging the legs of my jeans to stop the snow from soaking them, This
one should win an award. I’ll remember it for the rest of my life… that is, for
the next few hours.
The
earlier dawn broke upon a promising scene; the weather had dropped down to
thirty degrees Fahrenheit again, and a few tantalizing wisps traced the edge of
the sky. I woke and wistfully gazed out at them, now and again looking back at
the brown grass all around and imagining it painted white. A walk was the order
of the afternoon.
I
don’t know what made me wear jeans instead of shorts. I rarely do. They hardly
heat me; the chilly denim rubbing against my skin often counteracts the warmth
trapped by the twin shag carpets of hair I cultivate on my legs. For me, long
pants serve only a social function. In New York, if not also other parts of the
world, the knees are considered among the private parts when the temperature
drops below fifty-five. Thus, one can be fully clothed and still experience the
accusation, “Why aren’t you wearing pants?” It takes some accustoming, and I’m
a slow learner.
Normally
I disregard all of it. Even without an elevated pulse, my legs are usually cozy
until the temperature falls into the single digits or below. Besides, baggy
shorts are nearly a universal fit. Blue jeans, the everyman’s standard pick,
are too restrictive in all the wrong places. Even the ones I’ve had measured
for me are short if they’re narrow enough and wide if they’re long enough. I
don’t blame the clothing industry or anyone else for my peculiar proportions.
But until today, I’d never been thankful for canvas on my shins.
The
freeze arrived suddenly, softly, like a glacier sped up to take moments instead
of centuries. The gulls noticed it first. One by one, they stilled their
squawking and turned northward, keen eyes inspecting the Long Island Sound as
if they had never seen it before. Then, not in fear, but as if all at once
notified of a great inconvenience, they surged into the air and began an
unplanned, southbound migration. I watched in detached awe from the trailhead
high above the Kings Park Bluff. It was like sitting outside and observing a
fire drill. Neither of the two old men down by the parking lot looked up from
his cigarette, but the orange stray cat by the dock followed the flock with
wide, impassive eyes. Then she turned and slipped up the road.
Cell
phone service is poor in the park, especially as I made my way down to the
beach. My phone had been off for most of the walk. It rested comfortably in my
back pocket, leaving room in the front for only the most essential knickknacks:
wallet and keys. Blue jeans are meant to be sleek and subtle, to blend in. The
instruction manual does not recommend the cramming of curios. Standing only
feet from the lapping, briny shoreline, I buried my hands in the sweatshirt
pockets, which are reserved exclusively for my numb hands. Then it happened.
It
took a moment before I realized that feeling had fled not only from my fingers,
but also from the rest of my body. Slowly I gazed around, from the sand to the
drowsy waves to glittering Connecticut far across the Sound. Although nothing
was happening, each moment took longer than the last, draining me of motivation
even to question what was occurring. The swishing whispers of the waves began
to fade as if receding into the distance. It was as if my brain and my
surroundings are decelerating, preparing to shut down. I tried to sigh but was unable.
I tried again. I was stuck. Nothing hurt. Nothing moved. It was still for the
longest moment and eon of my life. Everything melted into white light.
I
often wonder about Heaven, on the off chance that I earn a posthumous ticket of
absolution. Doubtless the temperature is perfect for everybody, but I hope they
don’t mind my wearing shorts anyway. I’ll wear them beneath my robes if I must.
After all, the pockets would be bottomless: perfect for packing my spare wings
for that overnight trip to the Aurora Borealis.
I’ll
know I’m in Hell if after I die, I find myself in a 100000 ˚C room, wearing
itchy jeans I can’t remove.
But
neither of these seemed to be taking place today. Gradually I became conscious of
a searing pain in my head, as though a hibachi chef had sliced it into bits
waiting to fall apart. This agony extended down to my hands and navel, but
everything below my waist had become tingly and warm. Stale carbon dioxide
steamed in my burning lungs. Even as I stood suffocating the scream, the tingling
warmth spread, colonizing my organs one by one. It was the scorching heat and
eventual relief of stepping inside from a blizzard.
Ahead
was nothing but an eternal landscape of freezing fog, yet even as I strained to
blink, the crystals coating my eyes melted into tears which flowed forth to
reveal the clear, sparkling world.
No
sooner had I the chance to take in the drastic changes in my environment than I
buckled forward to an earsplitting crack! Ice water flowed into my shoes, sending an electric wave
of panic from my ankles up to my screaming brain. I scrambled forward onto the
upheaved sheet of ice, which flattened as I lay panting, inhaling thanks for my
narrow escape and exhaling befuddled ruminations of what the hell was going on.
The surface was soft and crunchy. I could feel sweat rising in wisps my neck.
Only
after a moment did the full implication of my scenario occur to me. It was
probably the gentle rocking that clued me in. I looked over my shoulder and
past my elbow to observe the shore granting me a gradual adieu as I bobbed out
to Sound.
The
floe drifts slowly; by now, after a few hours (judging from the sun) I think
I’m only a mile or so from the shore and many more east of Kings Park. Or I
could be somewhere completely different. At least I know it’s sunset. Wait:
that’s no more. In my rueful reminiscence, I forgot to stick my tongue to the
sun again, to taste and try to anchor it above the horizon with my soggy feet
stuck to the ice. If there’s only one thing that breaks down whatever it is
that ordinarily shields me from the cold, it’s being wet.
Now,
with only starlight and the last receding pink glow over the remote spires of
New York City to illuminate my thoughts, I realize that the jeans must have
saved me. Irony, my on-again, off-again inamorata, must have wrapped them
carefully around my calves in anticipation of this catastrophe. If I escape
this alive, if anyone else has weathered the freeze that seems to stretch to
each horizon, I’ll never attempt to deflect their denim-coated criticism of my
attire again. The world sure was right about the wisdom inherent in an extra
eighteen inches of fabric.
A
pinpoint of light catches my eye. Where was it? What was it?
There
it is again! There’s a boat, and it’s approaching! It cuts through the shadowy
surf like an angel of mercy riding a silver bullet. I pause to imagine the Grim
Reaper at the helm, ready to escort me to my awaited doom. So that’s why the
United States employs a Coast Guard!
Without
warning the floe is violently jarred and jerked down in the back. Dumb
reactions save me and I seize the edge of the ice to prevent myself from
sliding backward to my doom. A frenzied snuffling fills the air now below me,
and I dangle by my fingertips as the heavy ice sheet is tilted almost
vertically.
“Damn
it!” I yell aloud in panic. “A polar bear?! It’s not really that cold!”
The
boat’s motor is audible now, and its searchlight is trained on the rocking
shard of my crisis like an angler closing in on its prey, but will it reach me
in time? And was there room for a gun in the captain’s pocket?
The
bear roars in similar frustration, black eyes seeming to glow red from beneath
matted fur as I glance, horrified, to the yellow teeth into which I’ll plummet
if my fingers relax a degree or two. It belches ravenous puffs of steam up to
my face, but I can’t hold my nose. Under the beast’s weight, the ice begins to
sink, and it swings a paw at my leg.
I
gasp, anticipating a grisly injury.
But
the deadly nails only hook into my jeans and tear them off at the knee. I hoist
the leg up, but another swipe takes the calf off the other leg of the garment.
In
one of those moments in which I’m too blinded by fear to ascertain quite what
happens, the ice flips, and I wind up on top of it. Silver wind rips at my
now-exposed calves and my already-exposed face. The bear grumbles below the
surface, swimming apart for another strike. But the search boat has rumbled up
to my little disc of ice, drowning my senses in wild light that reveal me,
coated in frozen sweat, half my jeans torn from me.
The
man below the searchlight can only stand there dumbly, a ready floatation
device forgotten in his gloved hands. “What the hell, kid? What are you doing
out here in shorts?”
Monday, July 16, 2012
Review: The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss (2007)
I'll be honest: despite what I say, there are times to buy the book at the front of Barnes and Noble. If I were the kind of snob who read only Hugo Award winners, I'd have no idea what anybody else is reading and thinking. You can argue that I have no idea anyway, but at least now that's irrelevant to what's popular.The Name of the Wind is all about Kvothe (pronounced nearly the same as "quothe" (that's what the dust jacket says, but most of us who aren't Edgar Allen Poe have to think twice anyway)), a mysterious innkeeper who turns out to have a legendary past. Kvothe is discovered by an enthusiastic Chronicler who persuades him to tell his memoir in three days (one day for each book of the series). The Name of the Wind details his origins, beginning as the son of traveling players, continuing through his days as a homeless teenager in the big city, and concluding with his escapades at the University. At every turn, Kvothe is forced to make great sacrifices in order to pursue love and magical knowledge, but frequently he is pressed into choosing one over the other.
I'll start with something this book does right. For me, the best feature of the story is the stylistic completeness of the world in which Kvothe has adventures. Rothfuss is not shy about getting technical with anything, not just including magic: he explores politics, economics, music, archiving, metalworking, organized crime, dendrology–you name it. As someone without a Ph.D. in Everything, I didn't feel equipped to question the accuracy of his explanations, which did a good job of convincing me they were true. At the least, they were consistent with each other within the world of the story, which is all I needed to enjoy it.
The biggest problem with the book is Kvothe. It's blatantly obvious that Rothfuss wanted to make a cool character and designed the rest of the story around him. This is fine and even common, as seen in Beowulf, A Wizard of Earthsea, and everything in between. But Superman needs kryptonite to make his adventures a challenge, and a fantasy hero needs some kind of character flaw other than, darn it all, being just too awesome for his own good. This is a description that isn't convincing, and unfortunately, Rothfuss applies it to Kvothe. Kvothe is the best musician in the world, the best magician, the smartest... it gets tiresome. I think his studies in the University actually are leading him to a Ph.D. in Everything. He's the center of attention even when he's not narrating, and he doesn't seem to mind, which automatically makes me dislike him.
On a lesser note, I couldn't buy into the University, either. Academia is a useful place, but it's so unlikely to be a teach-all in your fantasy kingdom that I found it to be the most unrealistic part of the story. It's blatantly modeled after a modern American university. Good fantasy does more than translate something as a one-to-one symbol; it creates something new to explore a variant possibility grounded in human sense.
In spite of all this, the plot is quite good, and I'm looking forward to reading the sequel. Rothfuss doesn't mess around with useless anecdotes. Every detail is relevant, and he leaves hanging threads in a way that the sequel will be able to pick them up. The climactic action scene is really a culmination of most of the stuff that happens previously in the book. And the villain behind the scenes seems like he will be very solid when he appears again.
Read this book! For a popular interpretation of the fantasy hero, it's pretty good, if not genius.
Monday, July 9, 2012
Is Genre Empty?
You may have noticed that this blog is mostly about the workings of fantasy, but it's worth noting exactly what that is. The implications of this question can reach as far as your worldview, politics, religion, and personal ethics. It can reach as low as to be a synonym for things I try to avoid when I'm searching for "fantasy art" on Tumblr. But as a writer, I try to focus on fantasy literature, which has a history, politics, and morality all its own.
Ursula K. Le Guin is the writer who tends to express this in my favorite terms, but I'm still going to try from my perspective as a guy 60 years younger, yet to move beyond self-publishing. Her gripe is with the division between "literary fiction," which is okay to be taken seriously, and genre fiction, which is banned from the privilege of valued criticism.
The difference can be seen on several levels. First, there's the level everyone has seen: the issue of sales. In a bookstore, it's easy to see the separation between genre fiction and lit-fic. Frequently at the front of a typical bookstore stand a couple of tables full of the recent bestsellers (or just what they expect you to buy). Genre fiction is frequently here: just think of the popularity of Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, or Game of Thrones, and try to think of three works of realistic fiction, written in the last ten years, that have sold as well. These are the books that get the movies and television shows. But I know many people who consider genre to be contrived; perhaps this has a connection to popular, obviously-contrived reality television. People go to corny fantasy in order to escape, heedless of the fact that the true journey always involves a return trip.
This is closely related to the social problem of genre fiction. I'm talking about talking about books. How do you describe your reading habits to your friends? Many people don't, because they're somehow ashamed of what, how much, or how little they read. I have a friend who was genuinely surprised when I answered her request for a book recommendation, because most people hadn't given her a straight reply. It makes sense to use a person's literary preferences as a way to gain insight into his or her personality, but people want to look good, and genre can seem to indicate a loose grasp on reality. This is especially true because of trashy books like Game of Thrones, which are sold as a supplement to televised "reality" drama and then used as an indicator for all fantasy literature.
Here's an example from the history of this phenomenon. Peter Beagle, one of my favorite authors, describes a time when a publisher called him up to ask for a jacket quote for Terry Brooks' then-new novel, The Sword of Shannara. After reading the book, Beagle returned the publisher's call and told her that although he'd like to do her a favor, he had nothing good to say about the book and thought she'd lost her marbles before agreeing to publish it. "Trust me," said the publisher (and I'm paraphrasing from memory), "This will sell. There are people who read The Lord of the Rings forty-two times but can't get the energy to read it a forty-third... this will give them their fix." And she was absolutely right. This was the time when Tolkien-derived fantasy branched off into an offspring that was far more genre than story, which is how genre is most often considered today.
Here's a tangential disclaimer on which you can chew: I haven't yet read The Sword of Shannara, but it's not at the top of my list because I trust Beagle's opinion.
The academic side of this problem comes last because it takes the longest. The elevator on our ivory tower keeps jamming, and there are too many damned stairs. A large part of the problem has to do with funding. In recent decades, the legitimacy of the liberal arts has been called into question in entirely new ways, whereas it was untouchable for centuries. Like it or not, our new gods are science, statistics, and social justice, all pulled by the strings of who's got the dough. In order to justify its existence, college English departments have become, to paraphrase one of my professors, an amorphous monster that bites pieces off of other disciplines, or absorbs them entirely. Film studies? English! Drama? English! African-American voices? English! And since becoming a better person isn't as lucrative as any of these arts and crafts, the battle of wits and morals across literature tends to become marginalized. Now I can learn how to trace the plight of women writers since the 1960's feminist movements, but nobody's telling me what the hell I'm supposed to do about it.
The result of all this is that genre is pushed to the side because the widely-read books have no bearing on issues that are pushed as being contemporary, and the ones that actually deal with self-betterment (what could be more relevant to anybody?) are treating an outdated issue. If we fight for such truly fabricated ideals as the greater good and the future instead of learning to treat other people, things fall apart.
Here's some shameless advertisement: the fantasy trilogy I'm currently writing is all about what happens when one person has the responsibility to change the world, or when someone wants that chance but doesn't get it.
What fun! Here's what you can do about this: read everything. I believe that's the wisest thing I have ever had to say. Lots of responsibility comes along with it, such as the willingness to communicate what you've learned with other people, and encourage them to do the same. After all, most of the problems in the world, on whatever scale you decide to tackle them, have to do with a lack of communication, or with people who think they already know it all, or don't care. And unlike nihilist deconstructionist critics, I'm of the opinion that there is plenty to share with each other.
The difference can be seen on several levels. First, there's the level everyone has seen: the issue of sales. In a bookstore, it's easy to see the separation between genre fiction and lit-fic. Frequently at the front of a typical bookstore stand a couple of tables full of the recent bestsellers (or just what they expect you to buy). Genre fiction is frequently here: just think of the popularity of Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, or Game of Thrones, and try to think of three works of realistic fiction, written in the last ten years, that have sold as well. These are the books that get the movies and television shows. But I know many people who consider genre to be contrived; perhaps this has a connection to popular, obviously-contrived reality television. People go to corny fantasy in order to escape, heedless of the fact that the true journey always involves a return trip.
This is closely related to the social problem of genre fiction. I'm talking about talking about books. How do you describe your reading habits to your friends? Many people don't, because they're somehow ashamed of what, how much, or how little they read. I have a friend who was genuinely surprised when I answered her request for a book recommendation, because most people hadn't given her a straight reply. It makes sense to use a person's literary preferences as a way to gain insight into his or her personality, but people want to look good, and genre can seem to indicate a loose grasp on reality. This is especially true because of trashy books like Game of Thrones, which are sold as a supplement to televised "reality" drama and then used as an indicator for all fantasy literature.
Here's an example from the history of this phenomenon. Peter Beagle, one of my favorite authors, describes a time when a publisher called him up to ask for a jacket quote for Terry Brooks' then-new novel, The Sword of Shannara. After reading the book, Beagle returned the publisher's call and told her that although he'd like to do her a favor, he had nothing good to say about the book and thought she'd lost her marbles before agreeing to publish it. "Trust me," said the publisher (and I'm paraphrasing from memory), "This will sell. There are people who read The Lord of the Rings forty-two times but can't get the energy to read it a forty-third... this will give them their fix." And she was absolutely right. This was the time when Tolkien-derived fantasy branched off into an offspring that was far more genre than story, which is how genre is most often considered today.
Here's a tangential disclaimer on which you can chew: I haven't yet read The Sword of Shannara, but it's not at the top of my list because I trust Beagle's opinion.
The academic side of this problem comes last because it takes the longest. The elevator on our ivory tower keeps jamming, and there are too many damned stairs. A large part of the problem has to do with funding. In recent decades, the legitimacy of the liberal arts has been called into question in entirely new ways, whereas it was untouchable for centuries. Like it or not, our new gods are science, statistics, and social justice, all pulled by the strings of who's got the dough. In order to justify its existence, college English departments have become, to paraphrase one of my professors, an amorphous monster that bites pieces off of other disciplines, or absorbs them entirely. Film studies? English! Drama? English! African-American voices? English! And since becoming a better person isn't as lucrative as any of these arts and crafts, the battle of wits and morals across literature tends to become marginalized. Now I can learn how to trace the plight of women writers since the 1960's feminist movements, but nobody's telling me what the hell I'm supposed to do about it.
The result of all this is that genre is pushed to the side because the widely-read books have no bearing on issues that are pushed as being contemporary, and the ones that actually deal with self-betterment (what could be more relevant to anybody?) are treating an outdated issue. If we fight for such truly fabricated ideals as the greater good and the future instead of learning to treat other people, things fall apart.
Here's some shameless advertisement: the fantasy trilogy I'm currently writing is all about what happens when one person has the responsibility to change the world, or when someone wants that chance but doesn't get it.
What fun! Here's what you can do about this: read everything. I believe that's the wisest thing I have ever had to say. Lots of responsibility comes along with it, such as the willingness to communicate what you've learned with other people, and encourage them to do the same. After all, most of the problems in the world, on whatever scale you decide to tackle them, have to do with a lack of communication, or with people who think they already know it all, or don't care. And unlike nihilist deconstructionist critics, I'm of the opinion that there is plenty to share with each other.
Monday, July 2, 2012
Review: On Stranger Tides by Tim Powers (1987)
Who knew that the fourth installment in the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy... um, franchise, was based on a book? I didn't! And after reading both this book and the movie's summary on Wikipedia, I still don't, no matter what the publishers or Jerry Bruckheimer claim. But that doesn't reflect poorly on the book. The main thing in common between On Stranger Tides and the actual inspiration for Pirates of the Caribbean is that they're both roller coasters; I can't speak for the literal theme park ride, but Tim Powers' novel is certainly worth a try.
In the early 1700's, John Chandagnac is traveling to the Caribbean in order to regain an inheritance stolen by his shady uncle. As these things go, his ship is captured by pirates, who press-gang him into their crew and redub him Jack Shandy. Shandy begins to discover that the vodun (that's voodoo) superstition held by nearly everyone he meets may have a lot of truth to it; the eerie powers of this hemisphere have also led ex-professor Benjamin Hurwood to bring his beautiful daughter Elizabeth on a quest that crosses paths with Shandy. Together with pirate king Blackbeard and psychopathic physician Leo Friend, these characters embark on a quest for the Fountain of Youth, the consequences of which will decide which powers have the upper hand in the rising New World empires.
Adventure is the theme of this book. Shandy is no Jack Sparrow in that he's not a major cause of every problem that faces him; he's more of a blank slate for the reader to experience the supernatural world Powers creates. This can be bad at times, especially including his relationship with Beth Hurwood, with whom (you guessed it!) he falls in love for reasons that are never made clear. She's not a profound character, either; she's unconscious for most of the central quest, and she spends literally all of her limited time in the book as a damsel in distress. I was particularly skeptical of the fact that when Shandy sets out to save her for the last time, he hasn't seen her for weeks, still hasn't said more than a few lines to her (though it's implied they hung out for about a week while Shandy was helping to rebuild a boat), and what's worse, he could have begun searching for her at any point in those past few weeks. The resolution is kicker, but I don't want to spoil it entirely. No, kids, don't read this one for the romance.
All the other characters are pretty solid, however. Blackbeard himself is fantastic, both literally and figuratively. The magic can get pretty corny, resembling some sort of collaboration between George Lucas and Terry Pratchett, but it's tied together with strong vodun themes, so it's always interesting. Powers definitely did his research for this one. Every event and detail struck me as solidly based on historical and cultural research, even the creepy plant-monsters. And what's not to love about an ancient Ponce de Leon who talks to chickens?
I'd recommend this book to anybody who's looking for a solid adventure book with a degree of depth. Powers alludes quite a bit to the Odyssey, and that element comes off quite successfully. The sea's the limit for zany nautical adventures and forgetting to save your family and friends!
In the early 1700's, John Chandagnac is traveling to the Caribbean in order to regain an inheritance stolen by his shady uncle. As these things go, his ship is captured by pirates, who press-gang him into their crew and redub him Jack Shandy. Shandy begins to discover that the vodun (that's voodoo) superstition held by nearly everyone he meets may have a lot of truth to it; the eerie powers of this hemisphere have also led ex-professor Benjamin Hurwood to bring his beautiful daughter Elizabeth on a quest that crosses paths with Shandy. Together with pirate king Blackbeard and psychopathic physician Leo Friend, these characters embark on a quest for the Fountain of Youth, the consequences of which will decide which powers have the upper hand in the rising New World empires.Adventure is the theme of this book. Shandy is no Jack Sparrow in that he's not a major cause of every problem that faces him; he's more of a blank slate for the reader to experience the supernatural world Powers creates. This can be bad at times, especially including his relationship with Beth Hurwood, with whom (you guessed it!) he falls in love for reasons that are never made clear. She's not a profound character, either; she's unconscious for most of the central quest, and she spends literally all of her limited time in the book as a damsel in distress. I was particularly skeptical of the fact that when Shandy sets out to save her for the last time, he hasn't seen her for weeks, still hasn't said more than a few lines to her (though it's implied they hung out for about a week while Shandy was helping to rebuild a boat), and what's worse, he could have begun searching for her at any point in those past few weeks. The resolution is kicker, but I don't want to spoil it entirely. No, kids, don't read this one for the romance.
All the other characters are pretty solid, however. Blackbeard himself is fantastic, both literally and figuratively. The magic can get pretty corny, resembling some sort of collaboration between George Lucas and Terry Pratchett, but it's tied together with strong vodun themes, so it's always interesting. Powers definitely did his research for this one. Every event and detail struck me as solidly based on historical and cultural research, even the creepy plant-monsters. And what's not to love about an ancient Ponce de Leon who talks to chickens?
I'd recommend this book to anybody who's looking for a solid adventure book with a degree of depth. Powers alludes quite a bit to the Odyssey, and that element comes off quite successfully. The sea's the limit for zany nautical adventures and forgetting to save your family and friends!
Thursday, June 28, 2012
Review: Brave (2012)
Brave, Pixar's most recent film, follows the adventures of the Scottish princess Merida, whose imminent betrothal drives her to a drastic attempt to break out of the fate imposed on her by society and by her mother, Queen Elinor. Because this is a primarily literary blog, I'm going to focus mostly on the plot and other elements that most directly affect the story. That said, the best way to summarize my opinion is to say that everything except the plot was nearly flawless. The animation, voice acting, music, and other elements I probably didn't notice all came together to make it a beautiful piece of cinema; that's unmistakable. It's a much bigger task to sort out the point of what actually happens.
Before seeing the movie, I had a plot predicted in my head. It was Brave as I would have written it, shaped by all the preview footage I had seen. In it, Merida begins as a stereotypical Disney princess: beautiful and strong-willed, but forced into a marriage she doesn't want. But she's made of sterner stuff than most Disney princesses, and rather than having her change handed to her by a ridiculous prince, she strikes a Faustian bargain with an evil witch, knowing full well that it will upset her kingdom, but not caring. Somehow her family is turned into bears, as the previews indicated, and the repercussions aren't as easy to face as she had anticipated. The climax of the movie would involve Merida, now having gained the knowledge of the consequences of her various actions, would learn to set aside her personal desires for the good of the kingdom. This could have involved a marriage, but preferably there would have been some other integral element.
The actual plot is much more haywire. To begin with, Merida is a lot more clueless than I had expected. In fact, she's downright idiotic. I'm aware that she's a teenager, but I think most of my high school class could have anticipated that, perhaps, the pastry brewed by the magical bear-themed villain might have something to do with turning the person who eats it into a bear! Lots of fairy tales involve hubris, but usually it's not nearly this specific or predictable. Many other parts of the film, including Merida's speech to the clan leaders, showed a similar pandering and lack of creativity. Pixar isn't usually a company that dumbs down its movies for a child audience, but I'm afraid that's what happened here.
Merida's parents, Queen Elinor and King Fergus, were very well done, and I especially enjoyed the Queen's personality when she becomes a bear. This middle part of the movie held me the most. Merida is aware of the damage she's done and is actively trying to repair it, and she and her mother are bonding in a creative way. It greatly helps this part that Elinor occasionally becomes "a bear on the inside, too," so that there's less silliness and more urgency.
The resolution was the sloppiest part. Things stop making sense in the last five minutes, after Mor'du dies. If legends are lessons, then the giant bear was the only thing keeping a sense of sanity tucked into this movie.
First: Merida completely forgets about the words the witch gave her to break the spell. If that was a message and not an incantation, it should not have been phrased that way, because it left the tapestry bit feeling like a cop-out.
Then she doesn't have to marry anybody, and all the clans go home happy. This means that there are no consequences, or in other words, that if you're angry about your betrothal, you can publicly humiliate your family by turning half of them into fuzzy animals and tricking your parents into trying to rend each other limb from limb. They will forgive you for everything, and all of your political allies will be too confused by the deus ex machina to remember why they sailed into the movie in the first place.
In the parting shot of the movie, one of our blue will-o-th'-wisp friends waves just to remind the audience that we have no idea of his motives. I guess this could be symbolic, but I'm not totally convinced.
There are plenty of core elements of this film that I enjoyed. The biggest one is that the plot is not driven by the machinations of a significant villain. This is true of fairy tales: the hero wanders into wacky events and leaves them having grown, as we do in real life. It was also primarily driven by women, which, though not intrinsically better in itself, is too lacking in the film world. And, of course, it was quite an adventure to watch, even while I remained skeptical of some of the plot devices. Even what I thought was flawed was enjoyable at the same time. I'd recommend this movie to anybody, as long as you're not looking for the same kind of moral weight Pixar put into Wall-E.
Tuesday, June 26, 2012
My Two Big Fantasy Influences, Part 2
Stephen R. Donaldson
Hey, look! It's an author of what ordinary people would call fantasy! Stephen R. Donaldson is most famous for his series The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, The Gap Cycle, and Mordant's Need. Of these, I've read only Thomas Covenant, but those books are inextricably at the top of my list of favorites.
Thomas Covenant is a leper who has lost everything and lives as an outcast in a midwestern American town. One day, he blacks out and wakes up in the Land, a world where beauty and health are tangible forces, like color or gravity. Covenant believes he is losing his mind, and although his experience is detailed and convincing, he tries to remain certain that he is trapped in an elaborate dream. But to the inhabitants of the Land, Covenant is the only living person who can defeat their immortal enemy, the Despiser. Covenant therefore must find a way to save these people without admitting they are real.
The first and best part of Donaldon's writing is his ability to think of scenarios like that. Instead of putting his characters in trouble by having them captured by brigands or chased by wolves (although his stories contain elements of these), he writes them into psychological obstacle courses. His short stories, as I've discussed, take these issues in hand, but Covenant is what really makes a masterpiece of it. Donaldson's short story "Gilden-Fire," originally part of book 2 of Covenant, was actually removed from that book because it accidentally implied a resolution to the question of the land's reality. His "real world" characters: Covenant, Troy, Linden, Joan, and Roger, are never let off the tightrope between accepting or rejecting the dream.
The criticism I read most often about Donaldson is about his verbosity. There are websites devoted to the archaic words that only he still uses. This kind of problem goes two ways. If you're not in love with the books, then the vocabulary is probably going to push you further away, because you won't be motivated to look up the word if it's not clear from the context. I strongly prefer it, and find it highly poetic. The problem is that I can't (and shouldn't) replicate it perfectly in my own writing, nor are my books the appropriate setting for that kind of language, so it's a challenge to emulate without copying.
Donaldson is able to get away with this style in Covenant and not quite in his short stories because of the concrete elements that make up the Land. What some science fiction writers and even a few of fantasy get wrong is the complexity of symbolism. Symbols tend to become less real as they become complicated, unless they're a direct analogy, like parodies or political satire. Dragons, for instance, can mean nearly anything unless they're hammered down in a certain style; Tolkien, for instance, gives Smaug the dragon the direct speech patterns of an upper-class Englishman of old money, so that his message is clear enough. But real symbols are much more than a one-to-one substitution that fits the text, and high school English classes aren't likely to admit this.
Take stone, for example. Stone in Covenant has substantial qualities than actual stone does. Giants can sing to stone and make it move or float, and some stones can harness the energy of the sun in order to perform ritual magic. This doesn't mean that Donaldson means stone to be a metaphor for jet fuel or something more powerful found here on Earth. Stone, in essence, is just a metaphor for itself. To respect the power of stone as part of the story is to notice a basic underlying pattern in the elements of our own world. This, too, is fantasy.
Thomas Covenant fans are sometimes described, even self-described, as hopeless masochists, because of the incredibly depressing course each of the characters follows. It's no mere thrill ride, however. Characters do not turn up dead for no reason, nor is Covenant battered with misery just to evoke an emotional response from the reader. If you are looking for a sob story, Covenant is not your man, largely because he's not very likable. Instead, the books are a great example of the wise advice of the late Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.: "No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them–in order that the reader may see what they are made of." Thomas Covenant is neither sweet nor innocent, but through reading them and then looking around, I've seen what I'm made of, what people are made of, and what the world is made of. I can give a book no higher praise.
Does this sound familiar? Probably.
The criticism I read most often about Donaldson is about his verbosity. There are websites devoted to the archaic words that only he still uses. This kind of problem goes two ways. If you're not in love with the books, then the vocabulary is probably going to push you further away, because you won't be motivated to look up the word if it's not clear from the context. I strongly prefer it, and find it highly poetic. The problem is that I can't (and shouldn't) replicate it perfectly in my own writing, nor are my books the appropriate setting for that kind of language, so it's a challenge to emulate without copying.
Donaldson is able to get away with this style in Covenant and not quite in his short stories because of the concrete elements that make up the Land. What some science fiction writers and even a few of fantasy get wrong is the complexity of symbolism. Symbols tend to become less real as they become complicated, unless they're a direct analogy, like parodies or political satire. Dragons, for instance, can mean nearly anything unless they're hammered down in a certain style; Tolkien, for instance, gives Smaug the dragon the direct speech patterns of an upper-class Englishman of old money, so that his message is clear enough. But real symbols are much more than a one-to-one substitution that fits the text, and high school English classes aren't likely to admit this.Take stone, for example. Stone in Covenant has substantial qualities than actual stone does. Giants can sing to stone and make it move or float, and some stones can harness the energy of the sun in order to perform ritual magic. This doesn't mean that Donaldson means stone to be a metaphor for jet fuel or something more powerful found here on Earth. Stone, in essence, is just a metaphor for itself. To respect the power of stone as part of the story is to notice a basic underlying pattern in the elements of our own world. This, too, is fantasy.
Thomas Covenant fans are sometimes described, even self-described, as hopeless masochists, because of the incredibly depressing course each of the characters follows. It's no mere thrill ride, however. Characters do not turn up dead for no reason, nor is Covenant battered with misery just to evoke an emotional response from the reader. If you are looking for a sob story, Covenant is not your man, largely because he's not very likable. Instead, the books are a great example of the wise advice of the late Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.: "No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them–in order that the reader may see what they are made of." Thomas Covenant is neither sweet nor innocent, but through reading them and then looking around, I've seen what I'm made of, what people are made of, and what the world is made of. I can give a book no higher praise.
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