All the Ms: MacMillan to Mad Scientists

Gilly MacMillan: There’s a suspense/mystery genre in which women–mothers, daughters, sister, lovers—either end up in dangerous circumstances or go out of their way to save loved ones from dangerous circumstances. I don’t really get it, but then I don’t really get survivor memoirs either. What She Knew, about a son’s abduction told mostly from a mother’s point of view, is quite well-written. Not my cup of tea. (I would be more interested in the boy looking back on the event years later.)  

Robert MacNeil: And then there are all those famous people who turn around and write books because, I guess, that’s what famous people do. Robert MacNeil wrote Breaking News amongst others. News reporters getting excited about themselves interests me almost as much as actors getting excited about themselves. (Not at all.) On the other hand, the book begins by comparing reporters to Gadarene swine, who rush off the cliff to pursue unsubstantiated stories. I have to say: fantastic analogy! And to MacNeil's credit, he seems to have been open to a range of popular culture.

Elizabeth Macneal: Circus of Wonders is told by several characters about the circus life–including the internal competition–in the 1860s. 

Debbie Macomber: Debbie Macomber’s books fill over a shelf in the library. I chose a Christmas book, Christmas Letters. And I was reminded why I don’t read Debbie Macomber. I like romances. I like romances between everyday ordinary people. But I don’t care for her stuff. It’s not dissimilar to how I like fantasy and sci-fi yet can’t get into Andre Norton. I’m not sure what the reason is but I suspect, with Macomber, that the issue is tone. The book is supposed to be, I think, cute and warm-hearted and whimsical. I found the characters rather tiresome. Like I was supposed to be admiring how cute and warm-hearted and whimsical they were on every page.

Molly MacRae: Plaid and Plagiarism is the first book in a mystery series set in Scotland. So many mysteries! I have to get more and more selective.

The Mad Scientist’s Guide of World Domination gave me a chance to read a short story by Harry Turtledove, a sci-fi writer I know about but have never read. I don’t know if all his stories are written in the same style as “Father of the Groom”--a mad scientists turns his daughter-in-law-to-be into a literal bridezilla–but it’s an engaging style for a short piece: conversational and funny, rather like reading a comedian’s take on contemporary America.

Accountants as Heroes: The Auditors and The Other World's Books Depend on the Bean Counter

Van Dine famously wrote that murder is the only satisfactory problem for a full-length mystery. And generally speaking, most of the Golden Age mystery writers agreed with him. Sayers challenged the notion with a suicide and a second-degree murder. She also wrote a few short stories--as did others--in which theft was the main mystery.

However, generally speaking, the form relies not only on murderers but on Columbo type murderers who plan meticulously and cover up their acts and even murder again.

And many, many mystery shows follow suit.
 
The Auditors, however, makes accounting malfeasance the dirty secret. There is a murder in the wings and several attempted murders/assaults. But the main issue is people stealing money for their own greedy reasons.

And it works!

It works because the stakes are fairly high. Entire lives can be derailed by the scheming, grifting, and lying carried out by management and employers.

In fact, one of the reasons that I like these heroic accountants so much is that their concern about money is not some manifestation of greed. Quite the opposite! By focusing on how things get paid for, they show a greater concern for real people and real solutions than so-called compassionate and sensitive people who look down on such "penny-pinching." The theme here is one I tackled in my story "Golden Hands," a take on Rumpelstiltskin: why assume that the king doesn't have good reasons to want more money? 

In The Auditors, the main character, Shin Cha II, is a man on a mission. He appears ruthless but is motivated by an exact understanding of the crimes and their cost. His prodigy, Goo Han Soo, is a friendly, kind young man who comes to understand his mentor better. 

*Spoilers.* 

The Auditors also supplies good villains; in fact, the eventual primary villain's  psychology is disturbingly familiar these days: I'm so righteous, my sins are necessary to combat the unrighteous. 

And The Auditors gives us some ambiguity. The department is semi-pitted against a member of upper management, Hwang Dae-woong, who turns out to be a supporter in the end. 

The tension between Shin Cha II and Hwang Dae-woong is fantastic since Shin Cha II is a "by the book" operator while Hwang Dae-woong doesn't see the harm is some nepotism, some minor grifting, some handouts. To him, that's the oil that keeps business running. However, he is inherently a moral guy: some actions truly are unimaginable. The two characters are frenemies and provide some of the best and funniest scenes in the series.

So The Auditors is well-crafted. And it provides a nice variation on the detective hero! 

Another great accountant character is Seiichirou Kondou from The Other World's Books Depend on the Bean Counter. One of the best scenes in the light novels and manga is when Seiichirou must persuade the court that his ideas about how to handle the miasma will actually save money--a long-term solution as opposed to housing and clothing and rewarding the Holy Maiden. Another great scene is when he persuades the prince to impress the Holy Maiden by using his income to do stuff for her.

Accountants in both series are cool. However, in terms of sheer dramatic entrances, Shin Cha II wins here! 

The Dragon Character: Totally Meta

Going through characters created by "G" authors reminded me of Gannett's My Father's Dragon. And that got me thinking of the character of the dragon. 

So here is a 2023 post, reposted.

* * * 

I mention in the previous fairy tale post that dragons are just awesome! 

That is, unlike other natural, supernatural, and fantastical creatures in the fantasy universe, they tend to stand alone. They are not necessarily villainous, even when destructive. They are too cool for that. They may be good. They may be bad. Whatever they are, they are above it all. 

Books containing dragons, consequently, also seem to occupy a category of their own. They tend more towards "meta" than just about any other group of fantasy books. 

Tanith Lee's The Dragon Hoard

The Dragon Hoard is a very funny book about a wry, level-headed prince, Prince Jasleth, who has no choice but to set out to find a treasure. He joins up with a group of princes headed on an adventure, namely to retrieve a hoard guarded by a dragon. The adventure is headed by Prince Fearless, whose father is utterly indifferent to the quest and considers it mostly a waste of time. 

Jasleth ends up doing much of the heavy lifting on the quest--in a wry, level-headed, occasionally exasperated way--yet he remains good friends with his companions. In the end, the hoard is obtained without anyone conquering the dragon, who went off to see the dentist about its "nine hundred and fifty-four teeth."

Patricia Wrede's Dealing with Dragons (and sequels)

In Dealing with Dragons, Princess Cimorene escapes her tedious life at court and goes to work for the King of the Dragons (who is female). She wants the job and gets extremely irritated with princes who show up to rescue her. "Go away!" 

In Wrede's universe, having a princess is considered something of a cache for a dragon but also something of a bother. Few of them are as helpful as Cimorene and many of them run away before being rescued since they get tired of the life. 

In any case, the dragons are mostly occupied with their internal affairs and don't care much one way or the other. Having a princess is like having a BMW: a nice perk but not entirely necessary. 

Oliver Selfridge's The Trouble with Dragons

Trouble with Dragons is one of those books I tracked down when I got older, I love it so much. 

The dragons in Selfridge's book are unapologetically destructive, though they go after princesses and princes (people in shiny outfits) more than ordinary folk. But they are like tsunamis and volcanoes, a force unto themselves. 

The true villain is the Prime Minister. Since dragons in his kingdom lay brilliant sapphire eggs after eating a princess--and the sapphire eggs make gorgeous and expensive sapphire goblets--and the prime minister is making a bundle off the goblet factory--he encourages the prince/king to keep sending princesses out to be slaughtered. And it's very sad but eh, what can one do?!

Until a clever, resourceful, and wise princess, Celia, comes along to change things. 

In the end, the dragons retreat to the stars. They aren't punished--but they do need to stop burning stuff down and eating up farmers' herds of cows. So  they become legends. 

More on Characters: Types and Stereotypes

Books on writing often tout that all good writing is character-driven and that all good characters are complex. Complex characters have names and backgrounds and hobbies and tics. If they are angsty/"realistic" characters, they have dark pasts and foibles and unrelenting grief. 

But stories can be told in many different ways.

(1) Good writing can rely on types

(2) Types and stereotypes are not the same. 

(3) Good writing can also rely on stereotypes. 

(1) Tolkien relied on types. Agatha Christie relied on types. Shakespeare relied on types. Tolkien created types. So did Whedon when he invented Buffy (who is actually a deliberate reversal of a "type").

(2) Types are not the same as stereotypes. The difference is the universal quality. Types can move between cultures. Miss Marple is very English, but her type is still recognizable in her descendants, Mme Ramotswe and Mrs. Pollifax (Gilman).

Malahide gives Alleyn nuance.

A stereotype, on the other hand, is a cliche specific to time and place. Ngaio Marsh claimed she was using characters (unlike Christie), not types in her mysteries when actually she was using stereotypes. Don't get me wrong--I enjoy Marsh, but I don't think her characters are transferable beyond a very specific time and place. Alleyn belongs specifically to his upperclass English milieu and there is little of him that survives beyond it. He is a collection of time/place-based cliches: the reticient, fastidious, upperclass British detective working amongst worshipping subordinates in the 1940s to 1950s. 

In 1937 Lost Horizon, Howard

is the Terry character.

(3) Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses stereotypes in Herland. Van is the questioning (good) and progressive intellectual of his day. Jeff is the soft-spoken idealizer of women. Terry is the brash, domineering he-man. They are specific to a utopian polemic and don't need to function much beyond that.

More importantly than types versus stereotypes, Gilman is consistent. She could be more critical of Van (as my Terry is) but once she establishes their characters, she doesn't suddenly change mid-way through the story, forcing them to behave a certain way, so she can achieve an end. Terry's obnoxiousness is grounded in a particular perspective that doesn't vary and isn't inherently conspiring. Terry never lies, and he isn't deliberately scheming. In fact, Van feels some sympathy for Terry, trapped in a world that is outside his comfort level.

I believe that being fair with the reader is 90% of what keeps a story a story, rather than a lecture. I generally dislike "character remembers an important clue from years earlier" moments. But IF the story establishes that such memory retrieval is possible, then having the memory resurface doesn't bother me as much. 

Stereotypes can not only be fair, they can be very funny. In the Monk episode "Employee of the Month," almost all of the characters are stereotypes: the inept stock boys, the weedy manager, the disgruntled retail worker. The stereotypes are so accurate, so right-on, they are hilarious, but they are hilarious within a very specific time, culture, and place. A type, like Monk himself, has more universal qualities. Monk IS the Sherlock Holmes of his time and place and therefore, carries within him the universal qualities that made Sherlock Holmes universal. 

So stereotypes have their place. However, to truly invest in a story, types are more useful in long-run than stereotypes. In my critique/tribute to Herland, I give Terry not only more background but stronger arguments. He doesn't merely stand in for something; he considers what he wants and thinks. 

A human being faced with a new world potentially provides a universal experience. 

The Self-Sufficient Teenage Character: Jean George's Sam

A number of years ago, my mother commented that she found the behavior of a set of characters unrealistic due to their age. The characters were Jamie and Sammy from Cynthia Voigt's Sons from Afar. I didn't disagree. However, since I liked the final confrontation--in which Jamie and Sammy face down men in a bar--I simply increased the ages of the brothers in my head. (The cover makes both young men considerably older than their ages in the book.)

However, the issue underlies a great many plots. To a degree, readers accept the independent decision-making of teens in fantasy literature. The tropes require that they act alone without adult supervision. And historically, teens have often been left to their own devices, for good or for ill, whether anyone appreciated the gesture or not. When Bianca mentions in Last Man Standing that she was once a shift manager but when "you're ten, you just want to go out and play," she is echoing a historical reality. 

On the other hand, the brain literally doesn't stop forming until the late teens to early twenties--which is why forcing a young teenager to make a life-altering decision is bad sense at the very least and evil at the very most. The executive part of the brain that decides NOT to bungee-jump off a cliff using curtain cords begins to make itself felt. 

Between childhood and young adulthood are a number of steps. Kids begin to ask "big" questions regarding abstract ideas from ten to eleven. Before then, when a child says, "What does it mean to die?" the child likely means, "So, is that worm really dead or what?" though adults often leap to the more abstract problem. 

Even at ten to eleven, how abstract depends entirely on the child's exposure and experience, including the kinds of stuff the child hears around the dinner table. I remember conversations about religion at home when I was that age. I didn't form full--and layered--opinions on the issues until much later. 

As for confidence, I suggest that the degree of confidence held by a child comes done to mimicry and experience or lack thereof. In some ways, young children are more confident on camera--and more natural--because they exist pre-self-conscious adolescence. They will also mirror what they know and see.

In His in Herland, when my editor expressed doubts about my narrator's reflections (would a thirteen-year-old boy truly be that objective?), I shifted the time of the narration to later. He is the same character looking back. He admits that at the time, he simply did what was expedient and fit his interests. At one point, regarding his mentors, he reflects,

"Still, there’s something to be said for a society that doesn’t dissolve into Twitter wars at every turn, hysteria followed by self-praise. My strong feelings is the ultimate savagery—so states my Troas upbringing. I didn’t think that at fourteen going on fifteen any more than I considered the impact of social pressure on moral thought. I didn’t think about comparing cultures. There was nothing to compare. Life was what it was. I wanted to run across the world without stopping. Upend everything. Offer me a weapon, I’d have taken it."

Jamie and Sammy, however, are behaving with diplomacy, insight into human behavior, and mature confidence in the moment. How likely is that a response from a 12 and 15/16-year-old? (I think there is more than one answer to that question!)

What about Sam from My Side of the Mountain? 

I reread the book recently and found it as enchanting as I did as a youngster.

I'm not entirely sure I believe in it. Sam is drawn, by the author, as about fourteen. Wikipedia states he is twelve. He sounds about eighteen. He performs tasks that are possible for a self-possessed fourteen-year-old--to a degree. 

That is, I was able to buy into almost everything that he accomplishes--except skinning the deer. 

George has a decent scene where Sam nearly kills himself from carbon dioxide poisoning when he starts a small stove fire in the tree home. He badly frightens himself. In addition, several times he points out that he made mistakes the first month. And he picked up just about everything he did or knew from books. 

Yet George presents Sam as able to properly skin a deer without the result turning into a weird, smelly, grub-infested mess the first time around. 

Again, Sam has no prior practical experience. And I'm afraid that this is one place where I think that it would take Sam about ten deer before he would master the procedure and achieve a lack of non-rotting grossness--so he can make himself a deer suit. 

However, the impulse to leave, to head out, to try to live off the land is an impulse that I  believe could reside in, okay, a fourteen-year-old (again, I increased the age in my head). Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild explores this impulse. The issue is not a hatred of parents--as George properly emphasizes--but an eagerness to head out into the unknown. 

Just--it helps to remember that the young man that Krakauer chronicled died from mistaking one plant in his book for another. 

Books to Movies: Fellowship, Bill the Pony, and Animals are a Lot of Work

In the movie, Bill the pony, shows up when the Fellowship leaves Rivendell. In the book, Bill shows up much earlier since he was obtained in Bree. (I will discuss much later how Tolkien never forgets the importance of supplies.)

Bill isn't used in the movie between when the four hobbits and Aragorn leave Bree and when Frodo arrives at the Ford. Having the hobbits and Aragorn trek through the area on foot makes more visual sense. It also emphasizes the horse chase when it does occur. 

And, too, it means not having to deal with an animal until necessary. 

Animals are notoriously difficult for filmmakers, rather like children on camera. Watch Adam and Jamie from Mythbusters try to get a duck to quack or a skunk to spray: their attempts bring home how suspiciously compliant animals on film appear to behave. Or, to be less cynical, how good their trainers are. 

In truth... 

Animals are not compliant at all! 

Plus there are the thousands of forms the filmmakers have to sign in order to be able to declare "No animals were harmed in the making of this movie..."

On that note--Bill, who is sent away before the Fellowship enters Moria, does survive in the book!  

Animals That Talk and Why the Blogger (Mostly) Doesn't Care for the Trope

Re-post from 2005.

In a recent post about horses, I comment that I prefer books about animals to include humans. 

I'm not a huge fan of books which use animals exclusively (no people). The animals do all the same things humans do and wear the same kinds of clothes and have the same kinds of relationships and the only difference seems to be that they live in burrows or whatnot but otherwise, they are really just humans with furry faces. 

And I don't get it.

I'll leave Watership Down alone since I've never read it and I saw only 1/4 of the movie when I was a kid; I got so scared, my mom took me outside and let me run around the lobby and eye the candy counter. But I have never understood the appeal of Brian Jacques' books (and please don't hate me, Brian Jacques' fans!) As far as I can tell, it makes precious little difference in Brian Jacques' books whether the heroes are mice, rats, frogs, humans, coyotes or whatever.

Let me elaborate.

In Beatrix Potter, the animal-ness of the animals is intrinsic to the plot. They may be temporarily "dressed up" but they always revert to their animal natures, and their animal natures are at the crux of the stories. Peter Rabbit is acting like a rabbit, sneaking into the farmer's garden to steal cabbages. The squirrels in Squirrel Nutkin act like squirrels. Sure, they talk but their animalness is never forgotten. You couldn't replace Peter Rabbit with George Ape. (Speaking of simians, the same is true of the Curious George books.) C.S. Lewis does this in the Narnia books. There's no point in the animals acting human; there are plenty of humans acting like humans (poorly and nicely) to go around. [And I quite enjoyed Zootopia, especially the "naked" animals, since living arrangements are connected to animal-ness.]

Having written the above, though I don't much care for anthropomophized animals overall,  at least with Beatrix Potter and H.A. Rey and Lewis, I get it. 

I still prefer my protagonists to be human. Even that old-time classic The Wind in the Willows didn't change my mind. Really, I'm a humanoid-chauvinist.

After all, why write a book about frogs or moles or rats acting like humans when, voila, you could do a book about humans acting like humans!?

Here's what I think may be the answer. The appeal (and C.S. Lewis says as much in his autobiography and in Out of the Silent Planet) is the idea of animals and people being pals, hanging out. It isn't the biology that people like (a la Gerald Durrell); it's the image of animal-ness (or creature-ness) within the human sphere: something you can buddy up to but won't eat you. Similarly, many people like the idea of conversing with animals, as if animals would say more back than "Mine. Mine. Mine." or "Feed me. Feed me. Feed me NOW." The lion or badger or panda is a friend.

Even as a kid, the idea never appealed to me. I wanted a lion cub, yes, but I never thought it would like me. My attitude was reflected in my reading material. As mentioned, I didn't much care for Wind in the Willows. I love the Narnia books but mostly for the people and their quests. I read Animal Farm and yes, it's great, but I couldn't get into the movie. I adore the movie Babe, but I think Babe is an exception. (The animals are very animalish and the whole sheep-herding thing is necessary to the plot--that is, it isn't pigs and sheep and dogs pretending to be humans; it's pigs and sheep and dogs acting very piggy and sheepy and doggy. Beside, James Cromwell is so very, very great.) As mentioned in the previous post, I read and reread Black Stallion and then Frog when I was younger, and I loved them but never picked up another horse book except Black Beauty, which bored me senseless. I quite enjoy the older BBC version of All Creatures Great and Small but honestly, the thing I like best about it is that the vets actually put animals down.

Let me clarify that.

No, I don't like watching animals get killed, but I like people treating animals like animals and not like people in animal clothing.

As far as I'm concerned, my cats consider me a food bowl and their degree of love ends about two feet past the food bowl. They aren't little people. They're animals. They're kind of dumb; their learning capacity is about the same as a two-day old amoeba. They are more fun to watch than fish and less involved than dogs. But they aren't people. If they were people, I'd want them to get jobs and pay part of the rent. Not to mention the fact that they puke on my rugs and never change the litter box and like to play "I'm on this side of the door/now I'm on this side of the door" twenty times a day. One endures this with toddlers because they grow up. One endures it with pets because they are cuddly enough (and company enough) to pay off the downside. (And you can leave them for long weekends.) With anyone else, the house visit would end very quickly.

Which may explain my complete disinterest in the possibility of me and my cats exchanging views on the universe. [I do love the manga series A Man & His Cat, in part because the cats are treated like animals, not little people, but mostly because the story has expanded to include everything and everyone in the main character's universe!]

The Character of the Wild Animal with the Heart of Gold

When I was growing up, it was a given that girls love horses. I'm not sure where the idea came from. I liked horses and I took horse-riding lessons. But I never got into the whole unicorn/horse subculture, not even My Little Pony (slightly too young for me). 

I did, however, adore the book The Black Stallion by Walter Farley and Frog: The Horse That Knew No Master by S.P. Meeks. I didn't read anything else by those authors or in that genre. But I LOVED those books. 

I suspected then and I know now that I was as much in love with the humans in the books as with the horses. That is, I have never much cared for stories about animals alone (there are a few exceptions). What I still remember about The Black Stallion is the scene where Alec's parents see him leave the ship with a horse that is 15+ times heavier than he is. And with Frog, I was half in love with Roy Scott, the officer that saves Frog in the beginning, by the end of the first read-through. 

In both cases, the main human character meets the animal half-way. It isn't that different from Peter and The Wolf in the  Suzie Templeton and Hugh Welchman's film. They understand each other better than all others. On the island, Black comes to Alec's rescue when he destroys the rattlesnake. In Frog, Frog capers for help when Scott is knocked out and Frog can't rouse him. 

Wild animals will turn on their so-called owners, as will domesticated dogs and cats with the owner's rotting corpse. But that's part of the attraction with The Black Stallion and Frog. They are never entirely tamed, and their handlers know that. They remain on the edge of wildness. 

When I was younger, I always wanted a panther--and at that time, one could get one's picture taken with baby panthers. I never did. I didn't want a carefully controlled and monitored panther. I wanted a real one, just like I wanted a real lightsaber that could, you know, take my legs off. 

The desire for danger lurks, even as we get older and wiser.

Art for Art's Sake: Sister Boniface

I have mentioned elsewhere that in my younger days, I had a somewhat low opinion of "art for art's sake" since it seemed mostly an excuse for people to write whatever they wanted and then expect other people to admire it. "Art," I tell my students, "is about an audience." People CAN write whatever they want--and I've come to believe that there is, in fact, an audience out there for everyone and everything--but art is more than a diary entry.

However, in the last few years, people who love LESSONS and LECTURES and POLEMICS and LABELS seem to be taking over all areas of life, not just politics and certain types of religion. Consequently, I think that art for its own sake--for the sake of composition and narration and show-don't-tell and sound and characters and plot and setting and tropes--should be praised and promoted. 

One of my favorite defenses of art for art's sake comes from Sister Boniface, Season 1. In defense of Operation Q2, an invented show obviously based on The Avengers with Diana Rigg and Patrick Macnee, Sister Peters passionately proclaims the following:

Operation QT isn't blasphemy. It brings millions of people so much joy. There's nothing unholy about that. Every week, the heroes in the story fight evil and win...God gives his blessing to these good people in the practice of their art.

I love what Sister Peters proclaims, not only because it is a defense of art for art's sake but because of what she is defending: a kind of kitschy, schlocky television show. It's a great defense of art AND of "just because others don't like it doesn't mean I shouldn't!" 

Books to Movies: Fellowship, Keeping Characters Characters Plus More About Mary Sues

How much can you change until the character is no longer the character?

Scriptwriters and directors are constantly changing stories until they no longer even vaguely resemble the original plots. 

But what about characters? Most Miss Marples are decent representations of the type even when their movies are completely unlike the books. The movie Christmas with Holly based on the Lisa Kleypas's book Christmas Eve at Friday Harbor changes the brothers' ages and backgrounds but retains their relationship. 

What about The Lord of the Rings?

In the book, Gandalf--rather than Elrond--wants Frodo to be the ring-bearer. In the movie, Gandalf resists that suggestion and is pained by Frodo's decision. 

Frankly, I prefer movie Gandalf here. Book Gandalf seems a little too "I'm a wise wizard--I must prophecy." However, the underlying care for Frodo is consistent between movie and book as is the curmudgeonly wizard who cries, "Fly, you fools."

In both the book and movie, Boromir is belligerent with Aragorn--in the book, because he thinks Aragorn needs to prove himself; in the movie, because "Gondor needs no king." I think the objections, in both cases, come from the same sense of pride and tunnel-vision that characterize Boromir overall (plus his great honor and toughness).

Book and movie Aragorns are quite different in some ways. The Aragorn of the book has already accepted his role and fate. He isn't terribly concerned about the ring's power. He isn't uncertain or guilt-ridden about his role. He is, well, honestly, something of a Mary Sue.

However, Tolkien's Mary Sues aren't annoying in the way that many Mary Sues are--the sense of history throughout the books implies that although we readers may be meeting this character after the character has figured out a course of action, the character has paid for that knowledge and is willing to live with the subsequent fall-out.

Galadriel, for instance, is a saintly Elvin queen who rejects the ring. Of course, she does! But she also exudes a sense of sorrow or sorrow mixed with happiness. She made tough choices long before we meet her. She gave things up. She is now bearing the weight of her decisions.

Aragorn is the same. And he isn't entirely perfect. He becomes troubled near the end of Fellowship since he can't decide whether his duty calls him to help Frodo (as he and Gandalf planned for Gandalf to do) or to go to Gondor. When Merry and Pippin are carried off, Aragorn blames himself and his indecision for what happened that day. And at the end of the trilogy, though he is happily married to Arwen, he, like Galadriel, carries about him a sense of sorrow. Out of all the members of the Fellowship, he seems to bemoan its end the most. 

Duty is a positive in Tolkien's world--and duty is not incompatible with having to give things up. 

In general, Jackson and Jackson's scriptwriters do a decent job retaining the core of Tolkien's characters. The inner struggles, ambiguity, and range of reactions are in the book. The trilogy takes those elements and brings them to the fore.

Darcy's Possibly Happy Childhood

Because Darcy is glum and untalkative, some fan fiction tries to suggest that he has trauma.

I don't agree (and neither does Darcy, actually).

Austen siblings often have close relationships.
Henry & Eleanor Tilney protect each other,  
& their rakish brother, against their father.

It is customary to give heroes and heroines difficult family relationships. After all, it is more dramatic! And, to be fair, a number of Austen's characters do have dysfunctional home lives: Anne Elliot, Henry Tilney, Edmund Bertram, and Elizabeth herself. On the other hand, Catherine Morland, the Musgroves, Elinor's immediate family, and Emma all have good relationships with their families.

Even those without good relationships rarely spend time agonizing over their family issues--not a lot of Freudians in this crowd!

Darcy is one of Austen's characters who had a very happy childhood. His own description follows:

As a child I was taught what was right, but I was not taught to correct my temper. I was given good principles, but left to follow them in pride and conceit. Unfortunately an only son (for many years an only child), I was spoilt by my parents, who, though good themselves (my father, particularly, all that was benevolent and amiable), allowed, encouraged, almost taught me to be selfish and overbearing; to care for none beyond my own family circle; to think meanly of all the rest of the world; to wish at least to think meanly of their sense and worth compared with my own.

In other words, Darcy's pride though partly the result of how he was raised is not in any way the result of poor treatment: neglect or abuse.

Not only is Darcy's pride not the result of poor treatment; it isn't even the result of deliberate brainwashing: "Son, you are better than anyone else; don't you forget it!" Darcy's pride is actually much closer to that described by C.S. Lewis in The Screwtape Letters. In a letter to Wormwood, Screwtape suggests how to exacerbate (spiritual) pride:

[She makes the] quite untroubled assumption that the outsiders who do not share [her beliefs] are really too stupid and ridiculous...it is not, in fact, very different from the conviction she would have felt at the age of ten that the kind of fish knives used in her father's house were the proper or normal or "real" kind, while those the neighboring families were "not real fish knives" at all. Now the element of ignorance and naivete in all this is large...

Screwtape then goes on to discuss how Wormwood can use this perspective to push the cliquey idea of "us versus them."

The attraction of a clique or set to someone like Darcy is not the attraction of being superior to others ("We are so much more beautiful, successful, likable than you"), which is the Crawfords' type of pride in Mansfield Park. For Darcy the attraction of the clique lies in MY family, MY friends, MY people versus Mrs. Bennet, Mr. Collins, Lady Catherine, etc. etc. etc. 

Darcy's "MY" extends from his happy childhood.

Employee Appreciation Day: Office Work Deserves More Recognition

Employee Appreciation Day is today, March 1st. Granted, I think these holidays are often used to make token noises of appreciation and move on. However, I wanted to use the opportunity to write in praise of office work.

In a Monk episode, Monk gives Natalie flowers for "Secretary's Day." Natalie is offended. Lots of people tell Monk that he messed up since Natalie is more than a secretary.

The episode really bugs me. I was a secretary for 10 years (receptionist, secretary, office manager) before I went into teaching. I worked with women who had less education than I did and were far, far, far better secretaries than I was. It is a skill.

To this day, I assign my ability to complete administrative work to my stint as a secretary. 

It annoys me to see it dismissed the way it is dismissed on Monk. I understand the underlying point (Monk doesn't appreciate how much Natalie does for him) but I hate how the script ties the lack of appreciation to the term "secretary." (Not to the flowers--Natalie is initially pleased by the flowers.) 

"Innovation without imitation

is a complete waste of time."

The subplot brings home how seldom books and movies "do" secretary or office work correctly. Sure, there are shows like The Office. But they are almost always only about drudgery and offer a kind of nihilistic view of the kind of work that Mike Rowe, at least, appreciates: someone has to keep the toner stockpiled and someone has to know where things are filed and someone has to have client numbers on hand for quick communication.

I'm not advocating Dilbert as a lifestyle. I worked (for less than a week) for a company that apparently thought Dilbert was a serious guide to a way of life. (They missed the irony.) 

I am advocating that the people who know how to change the toner and order supplies and proofread and file documents and locate those documents and answer phones and summarize phone conversations and handle complaints and direct people to the proper departments and bind proposals and go through mail and send mail/packages and transcribe recordings and update systems, including electronic systems, and handle invoices and plan conferences/reserve conference & hotel rooms and maintain digital and paper calendars and deliver documents in-person as well as digitally and contact customers/patients...

Deserve applause. It may look easy. It isn't. For Natalie or anyone else.

Great Family Characters: The Melendys

One of my favorite series to write has been the Donna Howard series (which I hope to republish in 2026). I created two families--one of three brothers--one of one sister, Donna, and two brothers. They meet over a case (Coin) and continue to interact. 

It is one of my favorite series because the siblings are so distinct. 

Here's the truth: writers tend to return to the same themes and characters and even, to an extent, plots over and over again (Agatha Christie's Adriane Oliver, her fictional version of herself, makes very funny comments about repeated plots). 

When I am working on a novel, I use the Homer technique to keep my characters distinct. Homer is known for attaching adjectives to characters to remind us of their attributes: gray-eyed Athena, swift-footed Hermes. Although I believe in show-not-tell, I think this descriptive approach is an entirely valid technique, in part because--as a reader--I don't enjoy books where I can't tell the characters apart. 

I also change dialog depending on a character's personality. That is, I ask myself, "Would this character be this blunt? Or this funny? Or this philosophical? Or this whimsical? I like that line--but would my character actually say it?"

The Donna Howard novels were such fun to write because the characterizations were relatively easy and remained stable over the series: wry, critical thinker Sammy; insouciant "que sera sera" Chester, and practical everywoman Donna could be thrown into a scene and have the most interesting conversations! (I love to read and write bantering dialog.)  

Character stability isn't always so easy. Consequently, I greatly admire writers who can pull it off. Elizabeth Enright's Melendy siblings are a great example. The characterizations and stability of those characterizations appears to be effortless. Randy is dreamy and friendly; Mona is practical and worldly (in a positive sense); Rush is ironic and dramatic with the emotional intuitive leaps of a musical hotshot; Oliver is industrious and quiet in a "become an engineer or biologist someday" way; Mark is cautious and quiet and intense in a "become an army commander beloved by his soldiers someday" way. 

Enright uses the techniques I mention above. She also uses a game that my family played when I was growing up--I don't know if the game was common to my parents' childhood (1940s) or if we got the game from Enright. It is a kind of 20 questions game but the answer is always a person, and the person has to be compared to animals or a piece of furniture. So, regarding Mark...

Mark turned out to be good Golden Bantam corn, a setter dog, a meadow lark, a maple tree, and many other pleasant reasonable things...Cuffy [the housekeeper and second mother] was like a pigeon...and a pearl...and a big healthy cabbage rose.

Enright KNOWS her characters, and that facility, perhaps, is the best place for a writer to start.

All the Ms: Picking Up on Historical Themes

One of the fascinating aspects of reading all the Ms (perusing the first chapter or 10 pages of all adult fiction books by authors whose last names begin with M) is that I am getting a snapshot of fiction over time. 

That is, I begin to encounter certain tropes or themes within time periods. 

For instance, in the mid-twentieth-century, spy novels, including spy novels with couples, became very popular. 

I can also, somewhat unexpectedly, pinpoint a time in the early twentieth century when writing romances--fiction about couples falling in and out of love--was tackled by male as well as female writers in general fiction. That is, what constitutes marriage was on the table. 

Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte tackled the subject more than adequately in the nineteenth century. However, the twentieth century sees books such as Dodsworth by Sinclair Lewis. Even if one blathers on about realism, it is essentially a romance novel. When Katherine Mansfield wrote story after story about marriages in the 1910s, she wasn't shunted off into the "romance" genre. She was seen as edgy and modern.

I suspect the reason the subject suddenly became "modern" fodder was that divorce was more easily obtained (and people obtained it). A number of screwball comedies at the time also tackled marriages with third-party hangers-on; marriages with divorces; marriages with chatty, bantering couples (see The Thin Man series). 

Consequently, I can fairly confidently affirm that in the early 1900s, the definition and purpose of marriage was perceived as a modern topic--before it got handed back to romance novelists. It has thrived with romance novelists! But the temporary claims of modern authors prove...

So-called great authors are as much slaves to trends as anyone else.  

Books to Movies: Fellowship--More on Excisions and Additions

Excising for the Sake of Focus

"The Sign at the Prancing Pony" and "The Knife in the Dark" contain far more information in the book than included in the movies. Jackson moves through both scenes very quickly by focusing on salient details. The ability to pick out salient details (and summarize them) is a skill that I spend a full semester teaching students. It is far more difficult than it sounds. A good summary is NOT a paraphrase (a blow-by-blow restatement of everything in a text) but a zeroing in on the stuff that actually matters. 

In Jackson's movies, the most important details in the two chapters are retained.

Unfortunately, a summary does mean eliminating beloved material. The radio dramatization offers a wonderful touching moment from the book in which Sam sings a poem taught to him by Bilbo about Gil-galad. It is a reminder that the landscape through which the characters move is full of history. The movie relies on its settings to convey the distant past instead. 

"The Council of Elrond" also contains information that is parceled out in the movie in other forms. The meeting basically comes down to Frodo's decision to take the ring, and that moment is impressively presented in the movie. The audience sees the council members arguing. Elrond slumps to the side, looking annoyed. Gandalf gets up to make his case. Frodo watches the members arguing, their images reflected in the ring. He makes his decision, and Gandalf--who both wanted and didn't want Frodo to accept--closes his eyes in pain.

Additions

Arwen is actually not an addition in the same way as Tauriel. In both cases, however, a female character is given a large role that includes fighting experience. Luckily, this is not out of sync with Tolkien's text. It doesn't feel heavy-handed. Plenty of Tolkien's female characters fight and plenty of his female elfs have been warriors.

That doesn't mean Tolkien would have necessarily approved of Jackson's use of Arwen. But it doesn't feel forced--as can sometimes happen with "historical" pieces (fantasy does have greater flexibility). Moreover, Tolkien's groups--human, dwarfs, elves--are varied enough within their borders that even hobbits of the Shire may have different expectations regarding gender roles than hobbits in Bree.

Arwen is a decent character and frankly her control of the river makes more sense than Gandalf being responsible--Gandalf is still missing when Glorfindel (the elf character in the book who finds Strider and the hobbits) locates Strider. (Granted, Jackson greatly shortens the amount of time it takes characters to walk anywhere--but who wants to watch a several week hike?)

So Arwen commanding the waters is more sensible an explanation.

And, as mentioned in another post, it is always good to give actors jobs.

A Dumb Plot Handled Well: Jessica Fletcher and Her Dead Husband

Lansbury & Husband

A typical motif in drama and sitcoms occurs when the main character, often female, discovers that her dead husband was unfaithful. Sometimes, a grown child of the "other" relationship shows up. There's a lot of weeping and yelling followed by reconciliation and acceptance. Oh, look how advanced and forward thinking the widow is! 

I hate it. It is so entirely unbelievable and falls into the category of imputing to the dead whatever well-meaning intentions the living wish to force on them. 

Hey, lady, maybe your husband was just a jerk!

In a Murder, She Wrote episode, Jessica is contacted by a woman desperate to help her son. The women (falsely, we discover) tells Jessica that the boy is the son of Jessica's dead husband, Frank. The woman and Frank met in Korea, and he strayed. One of Frank's fellow soldiers gives Jessica a speech about how hard it was for soldiers away from home.

She listens. She isn't entirely dismissive. But she is completely devastated. It isn't so much the straying that bothers her. It is that she thought she knew her husband. Not only would her husband have strayed and kept that secret to himself, he would have kept a life-changing occurrence (his child) from her. And he simply isn't the kind of man to abandon his own child. 

Did she even know him? 

Her entire world is rocked. She doesn't give herself a "go, girl!" speech and shake it off. Although the matter is cleared up at the end, the script leaves the impression that she would have been faced with a different dead husband than the one she thought she married, and she wouldn't have altered the dead to meet her expectations. She would have had to come to terms with a truth that might re-form her life. 

She's Jessica! She's tough! She can do it! But it isn't a cute blip--Oh, I forgive him. It's a foundation-rocking event, as it should be. It is also entirely believable.

The Character of Willy Wonka: Endlessly Interpreted

Willy Wonka is a great example of why a book can be turned into any number of movies. 

I'm not referring to "remakes." Rather, I'm referring to a new artist/director/studio trying their hand at a piece, seeing it from a new perspective. 

Gene Wilder's Willy Wonka is, of course, classic. He is also somewhat deadpan and snarky. In fact, the entire movie has a Monty-Python feel to it. His unpredictability is part of the persona.

Timothée Chalamet's Willy Wonka conveys more innocence and charm as well as wonderment and a sense of isolation. The movie doesn't entirely explain why he would become such a recluse since it attempts to end on a sweet note, but the propensity for isolation is already there.

Johnny Depp's Willy Wonka (Tim Burton's movie) is disturbed, nervous, antisocial and far funnier than I'd remembered from my first viewing. Burton's vision, moreover, is very Dahl, and I appreciate that Burton did NOT want to make Wonka a father figure. Charlie already  has a decent father, and the family scenes are excellently conveyed. Freddie Highmore is a very good Charlie, especially since he toned down his wisecracking side. 

All interpretations are in keeping with the book. Although they are variations, they are all variations on a theme. Willy Wonka is a playful imp who may or may not be serious, may or may not be disingenuous. He is wholly committed to his factory, entirely puckish and off-kilter, somewhat suspicious of others (though that behavior is implied in the book more than shown), and touched by sincerity.

Going along with my post about Alice, I consider Quentin Blake's illustration to be quite appropriate to Dahl and the character!