Stopping Christie Murderers: Crazy is Harder to Stop, Murder is Easy and Endless Night

These posts present fictional crime prevention detectives who go into novels, specifically Agatha Christie novels, to stop the murders there. 

*Spoilers* 

Not many but some of Christie's murderers are nuts, such as Miss Honoria Waynflete from Murder is Easy. And the problem with crazy is that craziness is difficult to stop. 

Take Michael from Endless Night. Although he goes crazy after the murder, he doesn't start out that way. Like most Christie murderers, he is self-protective. He doesn't plan to put himself at risk. The murder at the end is an aberration in an otherwise careful plan.

That is, Christie's murderers usually kill within a mindset and current set of experiences; they want various things out of their real lives that they will protect by not behaving stupidly. The things they want are often the things that make them vulnerable. And because they are vulnerable, they can be stopped. 

With the truly crazy, their craziness is their protection. While Michael's link to Greta immediately gives away his nefarious plan, Miss Waynflete's link to the dead parrot, by itself, wouldn't convince anyone of anything. Unfortunately, my crime prevention detectives would have to catch her in the act of trying to do someone in.

The point here is an important one: my recent personal contact with a suicide brought home to me how much the human spirit, evolutionary or emotionally or culturally or morally, isn't prepared for acts that violate social norms. And social norms do matter! (By themselves, they do an exceptional job keeping society functional.) Consequently, I've always thought it was unfair to blame police and other investigators for not imagining as a reality the unimaginable.

The point here is also the reason that I don't buy the "sane person who murders a dozen people to hide one murder" as occurs in The ABC Murders. I don't think truly non-serial-killing people do that. Something inherent holds us back from that one-on-one level of evil. And, in fact, Christie does a decent job with her serial murderer. He may actually be what he thinks he isn't. (I will come back to The ABC Murders in a later post.)  

To put the matter more cynically: people justify themselves, and they have to live with their justifications. And some acts simply are too difficult to justify unless one is nuts. Michael in Endless Night goes crazy because he can't leap the gap--not when he was likely falling in love, unintentionally, with the wife he killed.  

Quinn's Colin Bridgerton: Imperfect Yet Lovable

My comments are based on the book, not the Netflix show. I watched the first two Bridgerton seasons and enjoyed them. And I will likely watch the later seasons if they ever show up in the library. But I don't have enough interest that I would pick up another streaming service right now. 

Romancing Mr. Bridgerton is one of my favorite Quinn books, in part because it is about writing. In fact, I use a passage from the book to teach description to my students, specifically the passage about sensory adjectives and similes when Penelope discusses Colin's diary with him. 

Both Penelope and Colin are strong characters. I am praising Colin here because Quinn makes him imperfect yet entirely lovable and that achievement is admirable. 

Colin is the third oldest son. He travels quite a lot, being somewhat at loose ends as was typical of young men of that time period and class--those whose parents weren't pushing them towards the military or church. He is whimsical and kind-hearted. He also carries about him a kind of observer's distance. He gets on well with his family yet he seems to hold onto the role of outsider. 

When he discovers Penelope's secret--that she is writing columns under a pseudonym for a society page--he is at first alarmed. He is also jealous.

My image of Colin--personality-wise.

Penelope won't give up her craft, and she treats it and refers to it as a craft. She has been writing the pieces for years and has steadily honed her skills. The pieces are lightweight but as anyone who has tried comedy writing versus drama writing can attest, comedy writing is infinitely more difficult. Short, pithy, and memorable is not the easiest style to pull off. 

And Colin--a travel writer without an audience and at loose ends--covets what she has accomplished. He has to acknowledge how he feels before he can move forward in a relationship with a woman that he finds captivating. 

I think Quinn wisely has Penelope and Colin interested in different types of writing. Penelope is basically a journalist and commentator while Colin is more of a travel writer, Gerald Durrell-style. They can encourage each other rather than compete directly with each other for commissions and fans. 

Yuzuru Hanyu's Gift or Extravaganza as a True Gift

"If less is more, just imagine how much more more would be," Frasier tells Niles.

It's a hilarious line. It also has a grain of truth. 

In the series The (Weird) Director Who Buys Me Dinner, the character Min Yum Dam states at one point, "If we're going to charge more for tickets [to a pop idol's concert], we need to do more, so people get their money's worth."

Yuzuru Hanyu's Gift is a great example of making something worth more. I wondered at first how Hanyu had managed 12 programs over 2+ hours without getting worn out (and, in truth, he does get worn out, but his final programs are as impressive as the earlier ones). 

I ordered the DVD from Japan. The version I ordered has no subtitles. However, I had little trouble following the show's concept, which is an emotional autobiography of Hanyu or, rather, his different personas. Between programs, while Hanyu changes and recovers, the arena offers movies with voiceovers, dancers, the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra and a separate band that appears to include the composer of works made specifically for Hanyu as well as a number of seriously skilled rock-n-roll guitarists. 

In addition, every program--aside from Hanyu's recreation of a set piece from one of his competitions--uses different costumes, different music, different lighting, different backdrops, and Hanyu's frankly more physical style of skating than what one sees in the official competitions. 

I like it! One reason I wanted to own Gift is because I've often felt, watching the more official pieces, that Hanyu is more captivating--and is having more fun--when he seems to embrace the ice, to sweep low and brush his fingers along it, to almost play with his performances. 

The result with Gift is intense emotional self-disclosure coupled with genius proficiency and high production values, a combination in Japanese art that never fails to slightly unnerve me. (When Americans "disclose," they tend to "disclose" for the Protestant purpose of being personally saved--I told you stuff and now I will go home and cook dinner; the British do it with loads of irony--I told you stuff but don't take any of it seriously; I'm sure Japanese "disclosure" follows its own form, but it always catches me by surprise.) 

In any case, Yuzuru Hanyu's Gift is a gift of MORE! And worth the cost of the DVD. 

Books to Movies: Two Towers, Is Message Really Necessary?

The heavy-handed messages in the second film are the filmmakers' choice, not Tolkien's. When characters preach in his works, which they seldom do, they talk from within their own characterizations and knowledge. Manwe and Mandos (Maiar in The Silmarillion and therefore, minor deities) act as Manwe and Mandos, not spokespersons for Tolkien. 

In fact, Tolkien appears to believe quite emphatically that since people can't know the future, they should be careful about forcing a particular futuristic outcome--and their opinions about that particular futuristic outcome--on others.

Two Towers the film does have a message: Hope is better than despair and people should fight for it. 

I'm generally opposed to message-heavy fiction. It violates the principle of show-not-tell and depending on the message, it can come across as rather trite and preachy. 

I think Two Towers (barely) pulls off its messaging for two reasons: Bernard Hill and Sean Astin, who deliver the message speeches: 

Bernard Hill as Theoden: "Where is the horse and the rider? Fell deeds awake. Now for wrath, now for ruin and a red dawn." 

Sean Astin as Sam: "How could the world go back to the way it was?"

I think the (bare) success is because of the characters who make the speeches. First, their speeches don't sound trite.  Second, the speeches come from within their personalities. Theoden is a poet warrior. Sam has a liking for poetry and a disposition to reflect on stories and their meaning. And third, the poetry of the speeches is quite lovely (and drawn from Tolkien). 

Granted, Ian McKellen's White Shores description to Pippin in Return outshines the others because it is entirely Gandalf's reflection and wish. It is consolation, not a message. And, well... McKellen! 

I personally would have advocated for Sam's speech being slightly cut or split between Osgiliath and later. Films are a visual medium. If I want speeches, I can go on social media. (I don't.) 

Lessons from All the Ms: What to Do with So Many Characters

I have discovered in reading the first few pages of books by M authors that despite a wide range of writing styles and topics and tones (there truly is something out there for everyone!), specific writing choices consistently cause problems. 

One of those problems is too many characters. 

I recently read (in March 2025) an "M" author book in which so many characters were thrown at my head at once, I immediately lost interest. 

So...how does one produce a book with a "cast of thousands" without overwhelming the reader? Fiction, after all, to a large extent, is about investment in the individual. If I want to read about large groups of people doing stuff, I'll read the encyclopedia. 

I suggest two methods characterize the writers who manage to successfully present a complex story with multiple characters: 

1. Stick to a single POV. 

The single POV explains the great success of Cherryh's Foreigner Series. It is an exceedingly complex series with multiple political "sides" occupied by strong personalities. Yet Cherryh has managed to keep all personalities distinct. To a huge extent, the non-confusing nature of the story (despite overlapping political/social/scientific worlds) is due to the third-person limited voice of Bren Cameron (main character) and Cajeiri (heir apparent to the main political body). Because we, the audience, see everything through their eyes, the things they see make a great deal of sense.

2. Avoid the "in-joke."

In my "M" reading, the book I encountered that turned me off was a mystery in which the author wanted to mention every single character in a previously established English village. It reminded me of romances in which the authors wants to bring back every single couple from previous books, sometimes in a single chapter. 

I understand the impulse: writers fall in love with characters and want to give them cameos. And this approach can be quite successful with established readers, who enjoy the cameos.

But a cameo is a cameo, not a plot.  

Hollywood's Murder on the Orient Express (1974) versus Death on the Nile (1978) is a good example. Murder on the Orient Express is, quite frankly, a series of cameos. But they have a purpose. The actors play their classic roles with such skill, several were nominated for their performances. The mystery, not the cameos, runs the movie.

Death on the Nile (1978), however, is about the cameos BEING cameos. Ha ha ha. Isn't it sooo clever to see THAT star acting so over-the-top? (Granted, Ustinov is rather like that anyway; he does far better in the TV movies.)

In one romance series, the need to bring back so many characters resulted in the main characters utterly changing personalities. I have mentioned elsewhere that one of the few reasons I'll give up on an author isn't politics or bad writing but, rather, the betrayal of a character. In this particular case, I thoroughly adored the Jon-Donovan novels up to the last book in which suddenly the mature intelligent main characters who exhibited nuanced reactions to the world started throwing around clever put-downs about all the people they didn't like. The book wasn't a story; it was a series of Tweets. 

Pulling in characters for the sake of showing them off often, unfortunately, results in characters being a series of Tweets.

Fiction truly ultimately is about investing in individual people. (Which is why fiction simply for itself is such a threat to totalitarian states and mindsets.)  

Art of Art's Sake: Chariots of Fire

The most heart-felt moment of Chariots of Fire is the voice-over in the final race. 

The character Eric Liddell, in his typical kindly and upfront way, wishes all the other runners well. (The character of Liddell in the movie accords with reports of his character in various biographies.) 

The race then begins. Liddell's sister is watching. In the movie, she is concerned that his passion for racing is distracting him from God (in real life, she was quite supportive of his racing). The finale offers an opportunity for Liddell to express/explain the connection between his racing and his honest passion for God and Christianity. It is a connection echoed by Sister Peters and Tolkien and C.S. Lewis:

"God made me for a purpose--but he also made me fast." 

The statement as spoken by the actor, Ian Charleson, is not a boast but a joyous thankful embracing of his individual self and individual talents. 

As C.S. Lewis stated in The Screwtape Letters, "[God] would rather [a] man thought himself a great architect or a great poet and then forgot about it, than that he should spend much time and pains trying to think himself a bad one."

Thoughts on First-Person in Fiction and Essays

A unique Bones episode told from

the point of view of a dead boy.

I have mixed feelings about first-person in fiction. It is ubiquitous; these days, I read far more of it than I used to. But I'm always somewhat wary of it. Like with fiction based on letters, I can't drop the sneaky suspicion that it is too easy. Oh, just write a memoir already. 

Additionally, I have formed the uneasy impression in the last few years--I read a great many small press books on my Kindle, and I enjoy many of them--that first-person is a kind of fall-back position for being able to quickly establish character, except it doesn't always work. I sometimes develop less feel for the characters than I do with third-person texts. Everything is being discussed out of the perspective of a single mind, but I can't see the person or sense how that person interacts with others: what makes that person unique. The stream-of-consciousness stuff begins to blend together.  

I think good first-person is so difficult because it requires enormous control. As someone once remarked to me about The Curious Incident of the Boy in the Nighttime, "By the time the book was over, I wanted to get out of the boy's head." 

And the reader admired the book! For that matter, I consider Blossom Culp, the narrator of Ghosts I Have Been, to have a fantastic voice. 

But. Still. 

I use Terry and Alim as first-person narrators in His in Herland because the original text is in first-person. I used the god of love as a first-person narrator in my take on Northanger Abbey because I didn't trust that I could pull off Austen's omniscient narrator (I did the next best thing). In both cases, I tried to remember that THIS narrator would use particular references and vocabulary. Terry is hard-headed, pragmatic, and little wry. Alim, who is looking back on events, is more philosophical. Ven, the god of love, is "what have I signed up for?!" off-the-cuff-smoking-pot-behind-the-convenience-store guy. 

I thankfully returned to third-person in my other books. 

The one entirely valid reason to use first-person is for the reason listed below: the first-person narrator is able to supply a first-hand account.

* * * 

Re-post from 2008 with tweaks:

From Ohio Northern University

I occasionally get students who believe they should never use first-person in an essay, especially a research essay. Once upon a time, one of their teachers forbade the use of first-person, and the students took it to heart. The reasoning is that by banning first-person, the teacher will prevent students using non-credible evidence. 

Considering the number of my students who use [the equivalent of A.I.] and still fail their essays, the banning of first-person bears no relationship to the ability of students to think critically.

There's a lot of ridiculous non-first-person evidence out there which has no more credibility than a teenage driver claiming, "I never speed." A claim, introduced with an "I" or not, is still a claim, and any claim is disputable (as is all evidence).

I've seen the results of this logical fallacy in my students' writing; they confuse claims with support, thinking any statement without "I" is evidence (there's a huge difference between arguing, "Cats make great pets" and proving that cats make great pets). They also confuse claims with facts, thinking any statement without "I" is a fact: The United States is having a recession. Newsweek says so. I can use this "evidence" in my paper!

All evidence/claims are testable, both personal evidence ("I experienced") and non-personal evidence. Determining credible evidence has nothing to do with first-person and everything to do with the credibility of the speaker/researcher/study/source.

In a well-intention desire to prevent excessive grandstanding, teachers who ban first-person are confusing cause with effect. A superfluity of "I think that..." "I believe that..." "I must be right because..." may be the result of a me-centered culture (and can get annoying), but it has little to nothing to do with whether the speaker can actually be trusted or whether the speaker's evidence is meritorious. I often tell my students, "Personal evidence is the strongest evidence you have; it just isn't enough except to your parents and your friends." 

But to say that personal evidence carries no weight at all is such an obvious untruth that students are liable to follow the teacher's instructions while missing the point. 

Here's a claim: Non-credible arguments in the college environment will not go away until students are forced to be intelligent (but not cynical) about all information. And...[2025 update]...A.I. doesn't help. Or at least, it rather troublingly enforces how gullible students actually can be. The Internet says it (without "I"!) so it must be true.

Thankfully, I can report that there are students out there who get the problem. They do prefer to think for themselves, which, of course, makes them in the long-run, more objective.

The Brassy Female Character: Peck's Blossom Culp as a Standard Current Writers Should Aim For

One of the more annoying things about trends is that readers/viewers/critics tend to behave as if nothing has ever happened before, such as--

Behaving as if no writer before 2020 wrote strong female characters.

Peck's Blossom Culp proves that assumption utterly wrong (so does Shakespeare, but Shakespeare comes with more baggage). 

Blossom Culp is a fantastic female character in four of Peck's books. Though she appears in an earlier book, the first book primarily about Blossom is Ghosts I Have Been, whose plot has a link to the Titanic! She is exceedingly proactive--she scares boys to stop them tipping over a privy. She defends another girl on the playground. She helps her mentor, Miss Dabney, to out-maneuver a shyster spiritualist. She gains the ability to see ghosts and ends up traveling to England where she poses in Madam Tussauds.

So Blossom Culp is a great character but she does interesting things. She is also great because she has personality.  

In comparison, the scriptwriters of The War of the Rohirrim apparently consider their main female character to be preferable to all other LOTR female characters because she is "complex." I guess "complex" means "does a lot of things with confidence after a brief pause." 

But in truth, the main female character of The War of the Rohirrim is boring. 

Blossom is not boring. Like Agatha Christie's nurse in Murder in Mesopotamia, she is observant and somewhat blunt. Christie's nurse is more tactful. But both characters have a brassy good-nature that precludes cynicism (cynical narrators can be enticing--they can also get a bit wearisome like the Genie constantly breaking the fourth wall). They are intelligent about human nature  at a practical everyday level. 

Blossom Culp is younger than Christie's nurse, of course, being about twelve in the first book. She is also adventurous, tough, smart and clever (the two traits are not synonymous) and human. She is kind. She isn't perfect. She has her weaknesses, one of them being the next-door neighbor boy, Alexander. Consequently, she is well-rounded, especially since she has a sense of humor with a pragmatic view of life:

"I was never threatened with imprisonment after the first hour or so." 

"I could have done better, and I might have done worse. But that's true of life in general."

The Voice of Characters: Cadfael and Others

Patrick Tull

I remark in an earlier post that one issue with books-to-movies is when the character doesn't match the image in one's head. Although I am a big fan of Sir Derek Jacobi, I don't really see him as Cadfael. I like the early Cadfael series anyway. But I never forget that I'm watching Sir Derek Jacobi. 

A related topic here is when someone SOUNDS like the character. The first Ellis Peters' books I listened to were read by Patrick Tull. He isn't one my favorite readers since I like readers who read at a fairly steady clip, and Tull lingers on words. But the voice--oh, my!--was perfect, exactly how I imagined Cadfael would sound. Stephen Thorne was the second reader I encountered, and he is quite good both as Cadfael and as a well-paced reader. I "see" Cadfael through their voices.

Stephen Thorne

Ian Carmichael is the same. His voice, that is. I will occasionally watch the Wimsey TV movies starring Carmichael, but I can never not wince a little: he doesn't match Sayers' description of Peter Wimsey or my own image of Peter Wimsey at all.

And yet, he TOTALLY gets Wimsey. His voice is perfect. 

In reverse, I think David Suchet is perfect as Poirot in the series, but I don't like him as a reader. (I far prefer Hugh Fraser.) Likewise, Barbara Rosenblat as Mrs. Pollifax makes her sound about two decades older than she is in the books, which is just odd. 

Good reading is a skill. And a good reader makes a difference. Voice can be as much a "character" as any other part of an actor. 

Art for Art's Sake: Perfect Scene in The Silmarillion

One of the most remarkable aspects of Tolkien's Middle Earth theology is the preservation of the agency of the individual. Even the Maiar, those beings below Iluvatar who reside on the edges of Middle Earth, are separate sentient beings who must make their own choices. Their lack of knowledge; their idiosyncratic interests; even their preferences re: friendship are not perceived as sins or mistakes or failings. 

In fact, reading (or listening to Andy Serkis read) The Silmarillion brings home how often humans do unfortunately interpret "righteousness" as seamlessness or sameness. 

In contrast, everybody in Tolkien's universe has a unique and personal set of interests and hobbies and loves and wants. 

Consequently, one of the greatest scenes in the book occurs after Morgoth (Melkor) has stolen the Silmarils with the help of the ever-hungry Ungoliant. The Maiar Yavanna then commends the elf Feanor for creating jewels that could restore or replace the Silmarils. The Maiar ask for the jewels.

There was a long silence, but Feanor answered no word. Then Tulkas cried, "Speak, O Noldo, yea or nay! But who shall deny Yavanna? And does not the light of the Silmarils come from her work in the beginning?"

But Aule the Maker said, "Be not hasty! We ask a greater thing than thou knowest. Let him have peace for awhile." 

Love of one's creation is a state of mind deserving of respect. 

Over and over through The Silmarillion, Tolkien praises the desire to make stuff. Even when it goes wrong, the desire to build and fashion and write and produce is never in itself condemned. 

The view here agrees with both Tolkien and Lewis's attitudes toward art. They believed that God was the ultimate creator and when we try to create we are attempting to emulate God. Creation, even imperfect creation, is always the opposite of destruction and negation. It always bears about it the imprint of heavenly favor.

A glorious view of life and deity! 

People Don't Change: The Proliferation of Financial Records

Ancient Egypt was hugely popular in the nineteenth century--and still is. Professor Amanda Podany in her Great Courses CD and DVD on Ancient Mesopotamia comments that people are often confused by her focus: Mesopotamia rather than Egypt, even though Ancient Mesopotamia is the older culture. 

Ancient Egypt, in all truth, is somewhat misleading about what the ancient world was like. Those pyramids! They don't just loom over the landscape, they loom in importance over the history and the lives of Ancient Egyptians. (By the time  Hatshepsut comes along, the pyramids were to the Egyptians of that time period what the medieval era is to us. To Ramses, the pyramids were ancient.) Yes, the pyramids were huge work projects, employing a great many people, and yes, they reveal beliefs about the afterlife... 

But Ancient Mesopotamia reveals what truly pushed human civilization forward from Day 1. The majority of cuneiform tablets from the area are about...

Accounts! 

I can confirm this reality. Reviewing my parents' paperwork, the largest file (just as large if not larger than the letters and journals and stored children's artwork) is...

BILLS! Account agreements. Banking forms. The file would be even larger if some of the documents hadn't be shredded.  

Archaeologists love this stuff, by the way. 1,000 years from now, archaeologists and anthropologists will try figure out our lives--how we lived, where, on what--from tax documents. Which doesn't mean the more imaginative, family-oriented, individual, belief and art-type stuff doesn't exist: imagine trying to figure out everything about United States culture or history from those ubiquitous newsprint circulars that show up in our mailboxes every weekend. Archaeologists and anthropologists could figure out quite a lot from those circulars! But what they figured out would only scratch the surface. And they wouldn't be able to guess that I throw out most of mine--I don't even use them to line the cage of my non-existent hamster. 

What survives the MOST is, itself, up for interpretation. 

The Scarlet Pimpernel: Do Spies Make Good Spouses?

Anthony Andrews' Scarlet Pimpernel is carried to a huge extent by Jane Seymour's vibrant beauty and Anthony Andrews' exceptional skill at exuding bravado and insouciance. Unlike the book, the film's story starts with the courtship, and the question immediately arises: Why would a sharp-witted actress marry a seemingly shallow idiot, if not for his money?

Without abandoning the character's vapid cover, Anthony Andrews manages to give Sir Percy a hint of something deeper when he is around Marguerite. He is boisterously happy to woo her and lets her believe that there is, in fact, "more" there.

 

When they marry and he comes to believe that she sent a family to the guillotine, he retreats entirely behind his adopted persona. Marguerite rightly perceives him as hiding from her. But the lover is still there.

 

This double or, rather, triple face is only possible because Andrews is that good. He manages to give Percy an aura of sincerity no matter what he is doing. When Marguerite complains that she can't confide in him, he is truly upset. He manages to convey that underneath all the frippery and shifting attitudes, a base personality remains.

 

Generally speaking, however, I don't buy it. The history of spies reads like the history of die-hard grifters. Le Carre's version of spies--and for that matter, Andrew Robinson's Garak in Deep Space Nine--is much closer to the truth. In one episode of Deep Space Nine, Garak keeps telling stories to the doctor, as if he were four or five different people: soldier, friend, traitor, exile. All of them are true. All of them are lies. 

 

The slipperiness of an entire personality being constantly in "code" doesn't bode well for a relationship. Though it may be true that one person can never totally understand another, the sheer bewilderment of a person never being one thing--no base personality--would make it difficult to go forward with that person...

 

Unless, of course, the lover LIKES being in love with a chimera.

 

Loid [using Crunchyroll's spelling] and Yo are exceptions here, of course, since they are decent, family people who just happen (oops!) to be a spy and assassin rather than a spy and assassin who are trying to pretend to be decent people.

More About Giving Audiences What They Want: Great Quote

Church

I write in Don't Give Audiences What They Think They Want that authors run the risk of putting out stories with beloved tropes and then...ending up with dissatisfied audiences since viewers/readers want those tropes but they also want more.

(When Tolkien became hugely popular in America in the 1960s, a great many fantasy series by others followed. Some were quite good. Some...feel like a wizard, small person, dwarf, elf, and king were shaken up together in a bag!)

Scene from Murdoch Mysteries

I suggest that the best writers have a vision and that the best visions are by authors who love what they are writing. In American Visions by Robert Hughes, Hughes makes this point regarding painting and Frederick Edwin Church:

Like Dickens, indeed like any artist who becomes both great and popular, he hadn't reach this position [of being America's 'national artist'] by figuring out what the public wanted and then giving it to them. He wanted what the public wanted, and was rewarded by its unstinting gratitude.

Hollywood, like Google Search, often come across as unbearably cynical because they seem to think they have "figured out" the public. 

But only a willing member of the public can truly succeed at capturing a zeitgeist.  

All the Ms: Magaziner to Magorian

Magaziner, Lauren: The Only Thing Worse Than Witches is  witches and kids in the Roald Dahl tradition. I was never a huge Roald Dahl fan but I suspect he is still so popular (nearly ¼ of my students last semester chose him as the author they wanted to research) because he not only taps into topics that interest people but into an approach to life that is fundamentally atavistic: isn't life strange and random? His heirs will never fade.

Audrey Magee: The Undertaking has a fantastic opening! It’s a war novel, and I limit the number of war novels I force myself to read. (I read plenty of historical and violent non-fiction.)

The Magic Bus series is presented under “M” in the Portland Public Library. I read The Search for the Missing Bones. I learned stuff!

I generally argue that fiction should not try to improve people. However, I must say The Magic Bus series is brilliantly written, so much so I thought, as I was reading, “Boy, I wonder if some of my nursing students who have to take that horrible anatomy class, which is pure memorization, would remember things better if they read this book?”

Kekla Magoon: I tend to be warier with young adult novels these days than adult ones. However, The Minus-One Club, though it is tackles a fairly dark topic–high school kids who have lost a loved one bond with each other–is quite engaging. Like Breakfast Club, only better written and less obnoxious. It reminded me of Ryan Conall’s House of Cards. I didn’t continue and I’m not sure that one member of a couple can save another member of a couple. I nevertheless recommend it for what it is.

Michelle Magorian: I’d heard of Good Night, Mr. Tom but never read it. The story of a young boy evacuated from London during World War II who ends up with a gruff yet caring old man it is quite good. (The movie version is far too short.)  

Books to Movies: Keeping Characters Together in The Two Towers, Good and Bad

Since audiences invest in certain characters, keeping them together visually  makes sense. 

In the book, Eowyn does not go to Helm's Deep. In fact, the purpose for Helm's Deep is somewhat different in the book than in the movie. Theoden and his riders do retreat there--and women, children, and the elderly as well as goods are being safeguarded there--but only because Helm's Deep is one of many holdings. It is rather like British civilians retreating to the underground even though London wasn't exactly safe (people stayed in London anyway). 

However, it makes sense to bring together the main characters in this particular plot thread, so Legolas, Theoden, Aragorn, Gimli, Eowyn and the Rohan ride together. Unlike in the book, Eomer is absent, which makes for a great final scene in the film. In the book, Gandalf fetches a new character to ride to the rescue--but in a movie, again, the character who has already earned viewer investment is a better choice for a pay-off.

I think wanting to keep characters together--and in mind--is why the elves show up at Helm's Deep. And it makes for a great visual. 

And it makes me wince every time. 

Tolkien is extremely exact about distances and supply chains. There's a reason the Fellowship brings along Bill, and there's a reason Bill is sent away. Aragorn and others are constantly making decisions about goods versus weight versus travel time. There is a VERY good reason why Boromir was able to reach Rivendell without being pursued but 9 people setting out from Rivendell have to be more cautious. And an equally good reason why moving armies from, say, Rohan to Gondor is time-consuming and impossible to completely disguise. (Theoden's troops take a "back roads" approach to Gondor but once they reach a certain point, their presence is a known variable.) 

No matter how stealthy they were, I simply don't buy the idea that hundreds of elves from anywhere could just show up in Helm's Deep without the enemy being aware or, for that matter, Theoden's own scouts. 

The one reason I kind of let it pass is because it references a point not raised in the film or directly in the book (but brought up elsewhere). There were three fronts during the war, including Lothlorien. 

Of course, in reality, the elves should have stayed in Lothlorien to cover that "front." 

Oh, well. Visuals won over reality.  

 

Don't Give the Audience What It Thinks It Wants

Re-post from 2011.

I recently posted about ignorant characters. I point out problems with such characters. What I don't mention is how the ignorant character is often preferable to the noble, omniscient, triumphant, perfectly good or perfectly evil character. 

The problem with the latter is how often filmmakers and authors do the equivalent of what Plinkett describes below--they make that noble, omniscient, triumphant, perfect character the focus of every prequel. 

Giving the audience what the audience (supposedly) wants is a mistake.

* * * 

In Plinkett's latest Star Wars' review (which is amusing though not as complete as the others), Plinkett, like always, makes a very cogent point.

Here is the cogent point in my own words:

Just because Darth Vadar became an iconic image of Star Wars doesn't mean the prequels needed to be about him. Just because Darth Vadar is important to us doesn't mean he was important to that universe at that time.

There is a writing conundrum here. Yes, it helps when you are writing a novel/short story/movie/show to use motifs and plot-lines and characters that people actually enjoy and recognize.

However, if all you do is stick together the most common motifs/plot-lines/characters, 9 times out of 10, the product will be a dud--or, at least, remarkably lacking in staying power.

Plinkett does a thorough job proving that, unfortunately, this sticking-togetherness is how Lucas approached the prequels. He took iconic images from IV, V, and VI and simply expanded and rehashed those images in the prequels even when the rehash made no sense.

So, for example, instead of the robe Obi-Wan was wearing in IV simply being the kind of robe people wear on desert planets, suddenly it became the robe ALL Jedi wear.

And instead of the training tools on Han Solo's ship simply being what was at hand, suddenly those tools became the way ALL Jedi are trained.

The result is unimaginative. And irrational.

It also highlights a very important principle. Classic motifs are good. Classic motifs backed by an actual vision are BETTER.

In a large, but not unmerited, segue, C.S. Lewis' Narnia series has been criticized for basically being a collection of every single fairytale/folktale/mythological image/motif C.S. Lewis encountered in the course of his extremely well-read life.

But as many critics, including Lisa Miller of The Magician's Book, have pointed out, it isn't the images and motifs that delight us, it is what Lewis did with them. He wasn't pretending to create new stuff; he was taking what he knew and rearranging it into a new pattern. He had a vision.

Every writer has to have a vision. Without the vision, the writing sags. And should the writer give up that vision to satisfy the audience's supposed desire for an iconic image, the audience will feel the vision dribbling away.

The writers did NOT make

Frasier a repeat of Cheers. 

Which is one reason why writing to satisfy fans doesn't always work. The fans LOVE a couple of minor characters, so the writer(s) make those characters a bigger part of the drama, and, hmm, what do you know, the show is less satisfying.

On the other hand, refusing to give the audience what the audience wants out of sheer "BUT I HAVE TO BE DIFFERENT" perversity isn't too smart either.

The solution is writers who give the audience what the audience wants without losing their vision. This, of course, isn't easy, but I see two solutions:

1. Writers can give the audience what the audience wants without losing their vision when they like what the audience likes.

If you want to write romance novels, it helps if you like romance novels.

2. Writers can give the audience what the audience wants without losing their vision when the writers and the audience agree on what the writers are trying to do.

To clarify this second point, not all novels/stories/movies/shows have to focus on the latest popular topic: vampires, for example. People vary; interests vary. There are a lot of audiences out there to satisfy. I would argue that people want much of the same thing within their separate genres, but that leaves a lot of room for individual creative vision-making.

Hey, there's even room for those people who think that reading stream-of-consciousness profundities about Life in Middle Class America is NEW and DIFFERENT! (Shhh, don't tell them they are being pandered to.) The point is, the writers and audience agree that that is what is going on.

In other words, the rules are agreed to--even when the rules are Monty-Python randomness.

Back to characters--the connection between this repost and characters is that giving the audience the characters they love as ALREADY those characters, despite the movie or book being a prequel, destroys the characters. I found Jill Paton Walsh's The Attenbury Emeralds a disappointment because it presented a young Wimsey as already ahead of everyone else in the mystery. There was no learning curve. He met Charles Parker but didn't learn from Parker, a policeman already. 

In truth, I think filmmakers read into audience engagement something that isn't necessarily there. Yes, we like Gandalf's wise remarks to Pippin. We also like Gandalf's snappishness. And we like his confession to Galadriel that he is afraid. We like the noble, semi-omniscient bloke. But we like the imperfect, struggling bloke as well. 

 

As my obnoxious (but accurate) fifteen-year-old self said, 

"If everyone is special, then no one is special."

If there is no contrast between the character THEN and the character NOW, there is nothing for us to delight in. 

The Ignorant Characters of E. Nesbit

The ignorant character is the character who comments on the action without fully understanding it. 

Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird closely observes and comments on the world--while not understanding entirely what she is witnessing. In one of the most gripping scenes of the book/movie, Jem and Scout and Dill surprise Atticus who is sitting vigil outside Tom Robinson's jail cell to stop him being lynched. Atticus is cool and collected until the children arrive. Scout observes the change in behavior without fully understanding that she is observing a suddenly frightened father. 

Scout is ignorant due to age (her age and understanding increase in the book). Other characters, like Watson and Hastings, are ignorant in comparison to Sherlock and Poirot's genius.  

The problem with the ignorant character is that so much naivety or missing-the-point can grate. It is generally excused more with children but even there, as E. Nesbit shows, it can fall a bit flat. 

E. Nesbit wrote a series of connected short stories told by Oswald Bastable (they are told in third-person but ostensibly written by Oswald, who occasionally forgets that he is a character, not the narrator). They are mostly hilarious. But there are a few places where Oswald relates events that he supposedly doesn't understand but amuse the adults within the book. 

[Oswald] placed the ungoated end of the rope in the unresisting hand of the fortunate detective [who won the children's lottery]. Neither Oswald nor any of the rest of us has ever been able to make out why everyone should have laughed so. But they did. They said the lottery was the success of the afternoon. And the ladies kept on congratulating Mr. Biggs.

The difference here between Scout and Oswald is that Lee doesn't make a mockery of Scout. Scout is entirely reliable as a narrator. The conclusions for what she has closely observed are left up to the audience. In fact, I use the scene from To Kill a Mockingbird in my literature course to illustrate how fiction is different from non-fiction. The audience is never told why Atticus behaves the way he does. 

Nesbit doesn't tell anyone either--but the "hmmm, now, now, why did that happen, I wonder?" tone is laid on a bit too thick in places. It's not that different from the hilarious jokes-in-passing in Pixar's Toy Story, where they work perfectly, becoming a bit-too-self-conscious in some of Pixar's other movies. 

Nesbit is generally quite remarkable with child characters. The Railway Children possibly captures better than any of her books the day-to-day thoughts and reflections of ordinary kids. And the adults who step in to help don't turn the siblings' behavior into punch lines.  

Celebrating Eugene Woodbury

My oldest brother Eugene died at the beginning of this year. Today, June 8th, is his birthday. 

Tributes to Eugene can be found on his blog:

• A Tribute to Eugene's Interest in Engines
• A Tribute to Eugene's Time in Japan
• A Tribute to Eugene's Writing and Translation Work

As I mention on his blog, I intend to republish his novel about his mission--Tokyo South--and several of his translations, which original works reside in the public domain. The republished novels will become available through his blog.

The photos are Eugene; Eugene and Kate; Eugene at the center with his siblings.