July 27th: Bagpipe Appreciation Day

 Bagpipes, like mimes (and Morris Dancing, for some reason), are one of those things people love to hate. 

In Mr. and Mrs. Murder, the perfectly perfect couple Nicola and Charlie--who never, ever, ever fight--get into a brief spat when Charlie suggests, mildly, that Nicola may not be a wonderful singer. He tries to argue that there must be things about him that she dislikes, like the time he tried to learn the bagpipes. 

"Even I got sick of myself," he says. 

"I thought you were charming," she replies. 

Here's a video to celebrate that potential charm:

Books to Movies: Achieving Ambiguity in The Innocents

If an ending or a character's reaction is ambiguous, how does the filmmaker show that?

One way to clarify ambiguity (an equivocal phrase) is with voiceovers. The problem? Film is the ultimate show-no-tell. A voiceover removes the need for the script and camera to SHOW us ambiguity. 

Another way is with avant-garde camera work. Frankly, I consider this a form of cheating--swooping angles and jerky camera movements might as well come with subtitles: We are now being AMBIGUOUS. 

I determined to rewatch the 1961 version of Henry James's Turn of the Screw, The Innocents. The novella leaves the "truth" up to the viewer: 

Did evil ghosts truly possess the children? Did evil ghosts drive the governess insane? Or did her obsession with her employer and her isolation drive her insane? She claims to love children but that claim appears to be code for "I wish I had a husband." In truth, isn't it more likely that she hates her job and has found a way to make the children depositories of her unhappiness?

There is ambiguity too over the children: 

Are they possessed or normal, highly active kids, or damaged in some way (possibly through neglect and abuse)? And if the latter, who is the abuser?

Can a movie provide that ambiguity?

I think The Innocents, directed by Jack Clayton, cinematography by Freddie Francis, does. So, how? How did these filmmakers make it work?

I suggest the following methods:

1. Deborah Kerr 

It helps if you have Deborah Kerr who can look innocent and borderline nuts at the same time. In the film, Kerr has the capacity to produce unsettling moments simply through her "concern." The character invests events with meaning/sub-text/deeper purpose, and Kerr captures this behavior perfectly. The most unsettling aspect of the story is the increasing feeling, "This woman is totally out of her depth."

 

2. Events are produced from a point of view. 

There is a little bit of Salvador Dali-dreamstate imagery, but it doesn't last long and it's entirely based on the governess's interpretation of what could be innocent conversations between the brother and sister. Almost all events, even the supposedly spectral Quint and Miss Jessel, are very much in the here and now, which makes them creepier than hallucinogenic scenes. Events can be more than one thing because they are not presented with an obvious "gloss" of strangeness.

 

3. The music.

The music is not used to alert viewers to "now, there's danger!" The music is used to heighten certain moments but not as commentary.

In the final scene, Miles--who believably morphs from a somewhat affected boy with adult mannerisms (likely in imitation of the uncle whom he has met maybe once) to defensive child--receives neither warning music NOR melancholy music. The music reflects the crazy confrontation, not the meaning.

Silence also becomes a way to convey ambiguity.

4. The video here discusses other techniques the film uses: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpV5J91BnV0

My personal take? The movie is a great testament to how "you must confront your past to be free"--a popular idea in the 1960s--is, in fact, a terrible therapeutic technique.

Spelling Comedy Moments

Spelling in front of people or dogs is a comedy trope. 

In Psych, "Spelling Bee," the humor arises from Shawn providing very easy words from the Spellmaster's grocery list. 

In Frasier, the characters spell b-a-t-h in front of the dog. Later, Niles and Frasier speak French to avoid alerting Eddie to his upcoming surgery. (Viewers learn later that Eddie doesn't take in much except his name.)

In Castle, Esposito spells out an expletive in front of Alexis, who has visited the police station to help with the murder of her favorite pop star. Everyone in the room stares blankly at Esposito. 

"She can spell, Detective," Castle says blandly. 

My favorite example comes from O, Brother Where Art Thou? when the father spells out R-U-N-N-O-F-T in front of his son. He is referring to his wife running off. Later, the son helps the three fugitives escape. He states, "I'm going to R-U-N-N-O-F-T."

The moment is so brilliant because the SOUND of spelling out the word has become the WORD. The son knows exactly what those sounds mean. 

As Stephen Pinker points out, the brain comes ready not only to learn language but to problem-solve it.

The Ultimate Cruel Superficiality: "The Right Side of History"

I HATE the saying "the right side of history." LOATHE it. It takes human mean-spiritedness to a whole new level of self-centered vacuity. 

Supposing that some events and values and outcomes are better than others--and I think that the position has validity--what's the problem with "the right side of history"? 

1. Babies and bathwater 

Good events and values and outcomes rarely come un-entwined with other stuff. 

There's a great Black Adder episode in which an election takes place. It is the Regency Era and one of the candidates wants "the ending of slavery and the compulsory eating of asparagus."

The reporter says, "I understand your point about asparagus but what's up with your stance on slavery?"

The (entirely historically accurate) point being made is that many people (Abolitionists, Millennialists, and Reformers) in the same era had what we moderns would deem rational and valid ethical points about the treatment of others. Unfortunately, they tended to combine those rational and ethical points with ideas that strike many modern folks as...nuts--such as the compulsory eating of asparagus.  

Likewise, certain advancements that strike people as utterly rational will get paired with ideas that MIGHT seem valid at the time but in the end turn out very much not to be--such as the pairing of birth control with eugenics in the early twentieth century.

2. Chronocentrism

How much is the "right side" based on perception?

I mention elsewhere that Ancient Athenians in 590 B.C.E. could be excused for believing that democracy as an experiment had entirely failed; Jews and Christians in 70 C.E. could be excused for believing that their belief systems would remain small and constantly under literal fire. And for those people in that time, that was the reality. 

But democracy is now with us as is Judaism and Christianity. 

Wouldn't Ramsesses II from 1200 BCE be surprised?!

As for Henry VIII...actually, I don't think Henry VIII would be surprised to see his line replaced: he was that paranoid. 

But Shelley's poem is entirely appropriate. What people thought would die didn't. What people thought would thrive didn't.

3. More chronocentrism

Saying, "The winners write history" depends ENTIRELY on when one stops and looks back. 

In my posts on the Protestant Reformation, I point out that at different points along the line from Henry VIII to William of Orange (who was more interesting than I realized), any particular group could be excused for thinking, "That's it! My side is over and done with!" or "That's it! My side won! Ha ha ha!"

For that matter, the Calvinists or Congregationalist in late eighteenth-century America could be excused for blithely assuming (as they did) that Congregationalism would always be the most influential Christian sect coming out of New England. 

Between 1750 to 1850, they were almost entirely replaced by Baptists and Methodists with the Catholics remaining steady. 

As the late great PJ O'Rourke points out, attitude also contributes to that "when"--see quote and #4.

4. Arrogance

Are you right? Really? 

Really?

The supporters of eugenics believed that they were absolutely on the advanced "here is what the future will look like" side of history. And the philosophy/cause spread across political parties. Political libertarians and Catholics were treated like America's nutty, delusional, cat-mad aunts for standing out against what appeared so good and righteous and inevitable.

Going back further, the Salem Witch Trials were criticized by one Mather and supported--at least the legal aspect--by another.

My posts about the Protestant Reformation involve a queen who was threatened for not going far enough, a queen who thought she was restoring the true religion to the country, a bunch of fanatics who felt entirely justified in killing a king and so on and so forth. 

I am not arguing against taking a position on a topic. Waffling also has its problems. As Mike Baxter points out, "naming public institutions after the most boring people we know" may have its advantages, but even that could backfire. The "safe" name or position now may not be "safe" tomorrow. 

A position that can't see the flaws, the problems, the possible arguments against itself...

...is not the "right side of history." 

It's just a side with blinders on. 

5. Imperfection makes an event memorable--not merely someone being lucky.

Like many causes/events that run out of control, the Salem Witch Trials at their height were almost impossible to criticize. People who dared could end up in jail and then hung. 

And yet people did criticize it. And many of those critics--Puritan ministers from all over New England--believed in things we moderns would deem wrong and bizarre. But they also raised points about what constitutes evidence that we would comprehend and even support. The second trial never went forward due to a combination of political events, scandal (the young women were accusing more and more people unknown to themselves), and growing criticism. 

Within a decade of the trials, people who had taken part made public formal apologies. 

Is the event memorable because it was so awful? Or memorable because people at the time actually regretted it? The event stands out in colonial memory as being an aberration rather than what it likely would have been a few decades earlier, just another day in court. 

As I comment in my posts on utopias...when we are in the moment, the time, the years, yes, we behave like Victorians as encapsulated in Dickens' opening to Tale of Two Cities: "It was the best of times; it was the worst of times..." We think the entire universe circles around us and our emotions and our experiences.

Professor Aldrete

Whatever we may imagine or wish or dread, life keeps moving forward. In a few years, what seems of great importance fades or, possibly, becomes terribly important yet...people still move on to something else. The biggest fault with social media is the fundamental lie that we are the center of other people's worlds. (I suggest that most mental issues surrounding social media come down to the belief that what people write and what people read has more meaning and purpose than it ever will in reality.) 

Truth: most people--most ordinary people within history--have done the best they could at the time the best way they could based on what they could best discern by using their brains. They aren't the center of anything. Their deeds, in the long run, mean a great deal to the people around them but little to history books. 

In other words, non-wealthy, non-writing, non-powerful, non-remembered people, which is nearly everybody, those people who had families and farms and jobs, who went to festivals and underwent ceremonial rites, who taught things to others and discussed stuff and told stories...those people were muddling along, just like the people before them. Like us. They deserve respect rather than theoretical labels, name-calling, and "wrong side" disdain.

"The right side of history" isn't just stupid. 

It lacks compassion.

Books to Movies: A Short Rest in a Great Setting

"A Short Rest"

Three differences between the book and the movie:

1. The elves in the book and radio drama are mysterious, hidden, and whimsical, not noble irked warriors. Jackson took the elves from The Lord of the Rings as his baseline here, which I think was wise.

 

2. Galadriel, of course, does not show up at Rivendell in The Hobbit. But I appreciate her appearance in the movie. One of my favorite scenes is her interaction with Gandalf. As preparation for The Lord of the Rings, the various arguments made by all the parties--Saruman, Gandalf, Elrond, and Galadriel--is quite illuminating.

 

The appearance of Galadriel is not as unbalanced as it sounds. In fact, the Rivendell sequence is one of the most seamless, possibly because the action is confined to a single location. It brings together at least two of Jackson's arcs without much fuss (discoveries related to Smaug plus the problem of the Necromancer). It also explains why the dwarfs and Gandalf are temporarily separated.

 

2. In the book, the dwarfs don't protest Gandalf's decision to take them to Rivendell. In the movie, Thorin would prefer to avoid it.

 

The tension between Thorin and Elrond exists in the book and is generally well-handled in the movie. I especially get a kick out of the "intellectual" elves and the frat-boy shenanigans of the dwarfs. Aiden Turner, who could easily have been cast into either group, has such a boisterous, rowdy time as a dwarf, the audience is convinced, "Yeah, these are the guys to root for."

 

A note about voice overs. 

 

I generally vote against them. I think a movie is supposed to be a visual achievement. 

 

So...in the Rivendell chapter, Tolkien gets meta for a moment and comments that good times "are soon told about and not much to listen to; while things that are uncomfortable, palpitating, and even gruesome may make a good tale and take a deal of telling anyway."

 

Yet SHOWING those good times is necessary to establish what Bilbo misses and what the dwarfs are fighting for. And I will say--as comes up with Merry, Pippin, and Boromir--that Jackson has a light hand when it comes to "showing" good stuff. That is, he devises scenes that quickly convey that the dwarfs are a rowdy, happy group who stick together (preparing us for Thorin's later out-of-sync behavior) and that Bilbo likes Rivendell. Bilbo will naturally return there for his retirement.

 

The setting is really, honestly, something else. It achieves Miyazaki's "I want to live there" levels of enchantment, one of the best-conceived settings within both franchises. Kudos to the artists and designers!

 

But the action must continue--which involves the Misty Mountains and Bilbo's encounter with Gollum.

All the Ms: MacBrides

MacBride, Roger Lea: It's hard not to perceive MacBride as capitalizing on Laura Ingalls Wilder fame. He proclaimed himself the "adopted grandson" of Rose Wilder Lane, and she apparently accepted that relationship. But then, it's hard not to see Rose Wilder Lane as capitalizing on her mother's fame. 

I read the beginning of Little Farm in the Ozarks. And I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was reading a nostalgic view of a time period rather than a child's almost ruthless memory of that same time period. 

MacBride, Stuart: In the Venn diagram of life, the Logan McRae novels fall into a narrow subgenre that I don't care for. 

Within the mystery genre, there are cozies, noir, hardboiled, police procedurals, spy, thriller, amateur detective....

I like some of these subgenres. I dislike others. I read only some books within specific subgenres but not others and so on...

Generally speaking, I avoid crime fiction--that is police procedurals which focus on grime and hardships and unfairness as well as the detectives' personal troubles. 

It's a very fine line. Blue Bloods, I like. Early CSI and Law & Order, I like. I got through less than one episode of Hill Street Blues. I watched the first season of Prime Suspect about a dozen times but lost interest in the others. 

Part of the difference is tone. But the other part is that crime fiction almost always seems to have a political angle. In Blue Bloods, this angle is honestly stated with Frank Reagan and One PP. Yet Blue Bloods manages to bring the politics into focus, make them everyday, multifaceted, and even domestic.

Too many times with crime fiction, the politics seem to be about all the hoops the protagonists have to jump through: the meetings to attend; the dog-eat-dog maneuverings to undertake. It's a lot like mafia or, for that matter, vampire stories in which the internecine feuding is the whole point. 

And I don't care.

In the Cold Dark Ground, a Stuart MacBride Logan McRae novel: although the number of police involved is more accurate than one detective and his pal, I discovered that I didn't want to keep track. I do that for Russian novels, not much else (and I rarely finish Russian novels). 

In fairness, MacBride's dialog between the police officers reminded me of The Fugitive, which, by the way, I love.

Go figure.

More about Ancient Greece: Gary Corby

Gary Corby wrote a series of books based in Athens in the brief period I refer to in a prior post: about 50 years of Athenian democracy.

I read through them all with great delight, only to be disappointed that the last was written in 2017 and no other book was forthcoming. 

Corby might be planning another. But he also may have decided to end with Death on Delos, which in fact hints at the beginnings of the end: in history, Athens decided to protect itself--and focus on building an empire--by removing the "treasury" for all the Greek city states from Delos to Athens. 

Athens kept the Persians at bay until the Spartans got fed up with Athens and used Persian funding to attack that city state, leading eventually to...Alexander the Great, actually. But not democracy. 

Corby may have decided that watching a fairly impressive experiment fail was a little too sad. His protagonist, Nicoloas, is the older brother of the (very irritating) youthful Socrates. Nicoloas is married to a strong and intelligent priestess, Diotima. They do marry. The series ends when Diotima gives birth. 

To continue the series would likely see Nicoloas go off to war. He would likely die long before his younger brother, who died several decades later at age 70ish. 

Socrates and his execution by poison is part of the failing state. My basic view of true pluralism is, "If you can't handle your blowhards, you ain't working." Athenian democracy had stopped working.  

Introduces one of my favorite villains!

I recommend Corby's series. What I like is that his main characters, Nicoloas and Diotima. are quite appealing and entirely in favor of Athenian culture. They are pro-democracy but they are pro the democracy they know. So they have slaves. And everyone mostly accepts that a father determines what happens to everybody in a family. Nicoloas and Diotima's families hover on the edge of what we would call the lower middle class and don't have many resources to fall back on. 

In fact, much of the lifestyle that Nicoloas and Diotima take for granted would appall us moderns. But Corby manages to make it "modern" (Athens was more democratic than its neighbors and, therefore, more like what we understand) and historical at the same time. The protagonists are self-aware, yet also part of the world in which they reside. They take some things for granted, such as the need for a patron and for land to pull themselves up economically. They question other things, such as different forms of governance. They are appalled by other cultures since they see themselves as special and unique, and they are frankly right in some cases.  

Writing historical fiction isn't easy. Corby succeeds!

Books to Films: Sleepy Hollow, Better Short Than Long

A-Z List  8 continues with a film from A-Z List 2:

Why do certain books get turned into movies?

Some books seem naturally filmable--that is, they provide scenes and dialog that one can almost picture live (a related question is why such scenes DON'T get used). 

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving, for instance, has a great final denouement which has so seeped into American culture that book covers give it away. And it is effective. Years ago, I saw a theater version of Irving's spooky Knickerbocker tales. The combination of a wry narrator, sparse stage dressing, and simply effects created an memorable aura. 

But the play was a series of shorts rather than a single long story. Although I haven't seen Johnny Depp's Sleepy Hollow, a cursory glance at the movie's plot points to the problem of the adaptation: other than the final memorable scene, is there really enough plot to sustain a long film? That is, unlike Dickens' Christmas Carol, which seems MADE for the visual arts, Sleepy Hollow appears less translatable as a long piece.

The Hallmark version with Brent Carver relies entirely on Brent Carver being quite good as Ichabod, who is not a heroic figure but rather a superior, lanky Yankee (not a positive term in this context): a combination of Barney Fife (without the warmth) and Rimmer (without the trenchant wit). Brent Carver does a good job! But does anyone want to watch an entire hour+ of this guy?All for the sake of an iconic final scene? 

Watching the Hallmark movie of Sleepy Hollow reminded me of a clip my brother Joe shared with me years ago where Stephen Fry discusses American and British comedy. Watching Ichabod be an idiot--"the folk singer" with a "lack of dignity"--is the point. But Americans want to watch John Belushis who can "wise crack their way through the world."

Consequently, Johnny Depp's Sleepy Hollow makes Ichabod a smart mystery solver who gets the girl while surrounded by horrors. 

In many ways, Wishbone's version is the best because it has two stories. Besides, who doesn't want to watch a dog ask for food and get scared and run away from stuff!? The Brom Bones in Wishbone's version is also quite charming. 

July 15th: Celebratration of the Horse Day: Frog

I can't say I LOVED horses when I was a kid. I was interested in riding them, not in communing with them.

However, one of my favorite books as a kid was Frog: The Horse That Knew No Master by Colonel S.P. Meek. It is out of print now and I know from direct experience that getting one of the author's other books through interlibrary loan is close to impossible.

Luckily, I own my childhood copy of Frog. It is a "taming the animal" book with a laid back hero (another one!) as the horse's rider. He is a member of the military--stationed, I believe, in Panama. And I'm sure the book has an underlying assumption of imperialism or something or other.

I honestly don't care. The individual chapters are stories about the horse and his rider rescuing people, including children, and delivering communiques and discovering a spy. The villain is a fellow officer who abuses horses--gotta hate him!--and tries to cheat in order to win a race.

If you can track the book down, I recommend it!

The Good Adulterer in Law & Order

Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter is unique, especially for its time, because the protagonists are adulterers. 

Generally speaking, in fiction, adulterers are not good people.

I'm not going to discuss how they are in real life. But for most people, even those who allow for open relationships, betraying or misleading a lover/spouse/significant-other is, frankly, bad form.

So the adulterous lover, Joel, in Law & Order, Season 2's "Blood is Thicker" starts with strikes against him.

His lover, Lois, the victim, was killed by her dilettante, upperclass husband at his mother's instigation. At the end of the episode, Joel identifies the clasp or family heirloom that the husband took from his dead wife's body, proving that the husband was the killer.  

What makes Joel infinitely touching is not just that he accepted that his lover, Lois, was using him to make her husband jealous--and not just that he is played by Joel Polis--and not just that he finally steps up and tells the truth--

What makes him infinitely touching is that he seems to be the only person who actually misses the dead woman. Even Stone and the police are after the murderer because they despise him, not as payback on behalf of the wife. 

In comparison, Dr. Joel Friedman actually cared for Lois. He was her confidant (in fact, he was likely her confidant before he became her lover). He knows her secrets: things she cared about; things she hoped for regarding her family, her future, and her children. To him, she was beloved.

The final scene in court is one of the best from original Law & Order--due, again, to Joel Polis playing Joel Friedman as a fundamentally decent man, for all his flaws.

Great Prop in a Show: Chalk

I love watching shows and movies where someone has bothered to pay attention to a small detail. 

In Elementary, the police station conference room has a chalk board. Whenever people meet in the conference room, different things are drawn on the chalkboard. Most of the time, it is blank (for obvious continuity reasons) but it is rarely entirely blank. 

Many times, it has a note in the bottom left hand corner: Do not take chalk. 

I love it!  

Books to Movies: Homer's Odyssey

From A-Z List 2, I chose Homer for "Books to Movies."

The issue: How well do sagas translate to film? 

A classic film will have an arc--conflict, rising action, climax, final wrap-up. The arc is possibly one reason superhero films have been so popular in the early twenty-first century. It isn't that filmmakers can't make rambling films about the purpose of life and people contemplating the nature of string. But a movie is a narrow event, which means something should happen.

Odyssey with Armand Assante as Odysseus has a number of positive factors. Assante's Odysseus captures the character's almost modern disdain for his fellow leaders' vainglorious strutting (the attitude exists in the poem), his desire to remain home, his leadership capabilities, and his half-respectful/half-conman relationship with the gods, including the goddess Athena.

The problem is tone. The action sequences are quite good--but the switch back and forth between Odysseus and Penelope makes the events less adventure tales and more a series of acts of incredible misfortune--and the original epic never struck me that way.

 

Moreover, the series suffers from an investment issue. A text--even a told story--can operate somewhat differently. The audience can be told that only Odysseus is left standing and shrug at the idea. Whatever. But a movie gets viewers to care about Odysseus's scooby-gang...who all eventually die. 

 

The point where everyone died was when I ceased to care about the outcome (which I already knew, of course). Assante holds the series together through charisma and strong acting. But the script portrays him as a hero rather than a survivor--and a hero who can't get his crew home isn't much of one. 

 

My thoughts while watching: Since the script skipped 10 years at Troy, why not just skip the 10-year voyage? Why go through the motions of getting us to care about the team and then dispose of them all? If the focus is Odysseus, why not skip forward to the part where he returns home and gets rid of the suitors? 

 

In fact, Wishbone's version starts the story with Odysseus's escape from Calypso, precisely emphasizing the story of Odysseus retaking his home. The related Joe & friends arc seems a bit of a stretch but ultimately both parts emphasize taking back one's home turf. I had to wonder if the original Homer (some scholars now believe that Homer was a title given to multiple poets) created a homecoming story and others kept adding on bits!

 

Of course, there is O Brother Where Aren't Thou, which combines saga and a narrative arc excellently. For one, it doesn't pretend it is doing anything else. It is a shaggy dog story, a homage to 1930s Americana music and settings, a comedy (definitely). Stephen Root shows up--what more needs to be said?! 

 

Most importantly, Odysseus--Clooney's Everett--is perfect. He IS what I imagine Odysseus to be: "Silver-tongued" (as the DVD cover states), level-headed, skeptical, a tad vain ("How's my hair?!), problem-solving, vaguely amoral, opportunistic, extroverted...less the hero-type and more the bargaining type. And he has an ex-wife who, like Penelope undoing her weaving, keeps her rather slippery ex-husband at arms' length. 

 

Not to forget Pete as a toad!

 

Supposed to Love It: Don't--Supposed to Despise It: Really Don't

Many artistic productions are acclaimed by critics and/or by fans. One MUST try/adore/admire...

Some people don't bother or do bother and don't feel the same. 

Many artistic productions are disparaged by critics and/or by fans.

Yet people love them anyway. 

And many productions change from one category to the other according to what's in vogue: classic writers like Longfellow get criticized for not being edgy enough OR, as in the case of Roald Dahl, too edgy and opinionated. Other productions rise and fall, sometimes with the general public, sometimes within the field. 

Speaking of Roald Dahl...

I actually have never cared for Roald Dahl's works. Although I like a few of the movies, I find the books quite creepy, rather like The Wizard of Oz, which I don't care for either. However, my reasons have to do with the creepiness, not with his supposedly political incorrectness. Censoring Dahl would be, to me, rather like replacing all of Salvador Dali's excessively creepy watches with nice pristine Rolexes. He wouldn't be Dahl anymore. And he is one of the authors many of my students prefer to research. 

Speaking of political incorrectness, I don't know where Hemingway sits these days. Is he a great writer because he wrote well? An awful writer because he was drunk a lot? An evil writer because he was misogynistic? No idea. 

I don't particularly care for Hemingway either, but I am a fan of "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber." It has a great final piece of dialog. I suppose it could be labeled something awful. Whatever. It's fantastic:

"That was a pretty thing to do," he said in a toneless voice. "He would have left you too."

"Stop it," she said.

"Of course it's an accident," he said. "I know that."

"Stop it," she said.

"Don't worry," he said. "There will be a certain amount of unpleasantness but I will have some photographs taken that will be very useful at the inquest. There's the testimony of the gun-bearers and the driver too. You're perfectly all right."

"Stop it," she said.

"There 's a hell of a lot to be done," he said. "And I'll have to send a truck off to the lake to wireless for a plane to take the three of us into Nairobi. Why didn't you poison him?  That's what they do in England."

"Stop it. Stop it. Stop it," the woman cried. Wilson looked at her with his flat blue eyes.

"I’m through now," he said. "I was a little angry. I'd begun to like your husband."

"Oh, please stop it," she said. "Please, please stop it."

"That's better," Wilson said. "Please is much better. Now I'll stop."

I've mentioned elsewhere that I could never get into Siddhartha by Hesse. Although not fiction, Thoreau's Walden strikes me in as similar: a lot of navel-gazing, self-pandering exhortations over the meaning of life...nature is involved somehow. 

The trope bores me. I don't care at all about the navel-gazing. And I was an outlier in high school. While my friends and acquaintances in the art club/AP English were reading Walden, I was reading Gone with the Wind (didn't care for it), Cynthia Voigt's books (love them!), Lord Jim (loved it!), and paperback romances I borrowed from my less arty/intellectual friends (mixed reactions). 

I consider myself the winner here. 

I'll be returning to this idea of taste but the point here is: Never allow intellectuals or artists or "rebels" to convince you that a particular "daring" artistic recommendation or "righteous" critique is not, in essence, part of a trend. Reading whatever I want, stars or no stars, is the most honest part of my life. It doesn't make me holy or unholy. Merely a reader.  

Alls the Ms: MacAlister to MacBird

Katie MacAlister: I started Steamed. It has rapid dialog and an immediate conflict. I didn't engage with the narrator, however. At one point, I was legitimately amused since the narrator has a reputation for "Indiana" Jones-types heroics, which he argues were all just happenstance. But then it turns out that the narrator worked for the army with "high-tech...spy technology"--which he doesn't deny--and I lost interest. I would rather he was the guy who didn't see heroic events coming than the supposedly self-effacing guy who is the amazing hero everybody says he is.

Greer Macallister: Girl in Disguise is based on the story of Kate Warne, a Pinkerton agent in the mid-1800s. I found the opening chapter engaging. I didn't read further since I tend to go for detective mysteries rather than thriller mysteries. But I can recommend the writing!

Robin MacArthur: Heart Spring Mountain is presented in an interesting way: the stories of separate people, mostly women, from different decades. It's "raw life in small towns," like a less romantic/less nostalgic version of Sarah Orne Jewett's work. Not my cup of tea. And there's an awful lot of this stuff. But then there are an awful lot of mysteries and romances! It is well-written.

Bonnie MacBird: Art in the Blood starts like many Sherlock Holmes' books--it refers to a recently discovered manuscript by John Watson.

It also references Nicholas Meyer, the "discoverer" of the Seven-Per-Cent Solution and The West End Horror and The Canary Singer. It has the same direct, clear language.

And it takes place abroad, so I didn't continue. Of Meyer's books, for instance, my favorite is The West End Horror, precisely because it takes place in a closed environment, the theater world of Gilbert & Sullivan. I prefer my detectives on, say, trains rather than dashing through countrysides.

Regarding Holmes' books: When I first started out as a writer sending submissions to magazines, editors would warn writers not to send them the same-old-same-old, such as vampire tales. 

I understood the editors' exhaustion--it's the same reason I finally told my students they couldn't write papers about marijuana for me anymore; I was thoroughly bored. 

But I don't have a literary problem with writers tackling the same topics over and over, such as Greek gods or Sherlock Holmes or, even, vampires (I avoid vampire books for entirely different reasons). Granted, the writers may find themselves trying to force their way into a crowded room. But the joy of the thing itself is why people write and why people read. If I'm not engaged by a topic...well, actually, I write in the same way that I wrote papers as a student on topics that didn't interest me--

But what's the fun in that!?

Adapting Versus Awakening in Fantasy Books

In reviewing past reading choices, I've concluded that I prefer certain types of fantasy.

That is, like with Beauty & the Beast versus Cinderella, I find I am drawn to one plot more than another. 

With fantasy, the categories that I've encountered can be broadly separated into adapting versus awakening. 

Adapting is about the characters arriving in a fantasy place and figuring out how to survive, make do, get along. In The Other World's Books Depend on the Bean Counter, for instance, Kondou ends up in another world, mostly by accident, where he promptly becomes the bureaucratic go-to guy for the government. At first, his role is one of survival (since he insists on drinking the magical equivalent of amphetamines to get his work done). It is also, however, about figuring out why the country has gone so off-the-rails with its accounting methods. And about Kondou managing his work load.

Likewise, the manga series Ascendance of a Bookworm focuses on the main character getting by in a very real, other world. Many of the clever DIY projects she comes up with fail because the world simply doesn't have those tools or resources. She can't turn materials into what she remembers. She has to gain knowledge about them first.

In both the above cases, the premise (the reason for the character showing up somewhere else) takes a backseat to the character getting on with things. 

Awakening is more about "the man behind the curtain" and the immediate impact that such revelations have on the primary protagonists. The Matrix--though ostensibly sci-fi--is a fantasy of this type. Red pill or blue pill? One's true name, role, purpose? What ultimate truth explains everything? 

The difference can be delineated through a common fantasy trope: the Quest. In the quest, the characters are moving towards a denouement which, like a revelation, will upend/change the world. However, how the quest is handled varies between the two fantasy types. In adapting, the focus is on solving immediate impediments: Sam steps outside the Shire; Frodo agrees to take the ring against his inclinations; the Fellowship goes through Moria rather than over Caradhras. In the end, Frodo is unable to adapt to Bag End and the Shire. He can't go home again. But everyone else gets on with the business of life. 

In awakening, the focus is very much on identity or self-revelation: Neo is The One; Dorothy always wanted to go home.

A single book illustrates the difference. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is supposedly about a final revelation or literal awakening, and the 2010 film threw in an extra revelation/task to try to bolster that aspect of the story. However, in truth, the book is about adapting. The three lost lords are mostly an excuse for people, like Eustace, to adapt to several new environments.

There is a great deal of crossover, of course: the excessively creepy Girl on the Other Side runs full-tilt towards a revelation but the characters have to adapt to different living arrangements along the way. Although the ending is somewhat disappointing and drops a bunch of balls (huh, what about all those set-ups?), the middle volumes are worth the read. For a series with more satisfying endings: Diane Duane's teen magicians have to figure out how to be magicians in the modern world, while the quests they undertake reveal their true selves. 

And I enjoy some awakening/revelation fantasy. The Matrix is a great movie! 

But my reading choices show a consistent veering towards adapting: how do people get by? how do they manage? what do they do to make everything work? I read very little urban fantasy, even a series like Noragami, likely because the "awakening/revelation" theme is much more prevalent, almost by necessity. The fantasy is, to a degree, about what no one else sees/experiences except the protagonists. So...what does that mean that only they see it? 

I think the inescapable religious subtext with awakening plots can be interesting. But I am more interested in HOW the protagonists will feed the fairies or dinosaurs or monsters (or little girls, as in Spy x Family): how they will cope in a specific world or under a particular set of circumstances; how they will manage, how they will solve the next problem. What will they change about themselves to get by? What choices will they make?

Beauty & the Beast after all.

Voices in Various Venues

I recently mentioned Loid from Spy X Family as a great laid-back hero. 

I must mention the voices--Takuya Eguchi, Japanese, and Alex Organ, English. 

What amazes me about Alex Organ is that he is able to give Loid a dead-pan voice. A dead-pan voice! And yet it doesn't sound monotone. In fact, the voice sounds warm and kind. Even when he gets exasperated, he sounds more like  "guy trying to get by" than a zealot--which is largely the point. 

Like Scarecrow (Scarecrow & Mrs. King), Loid is a spy who actually IS better at the family stuff: he just doesn't know it yet. 

* * *

Max Mittelman

Saitama in One-Punch Man is excellently rendered in the English dub by Max Mittelman, who manages to capture the character's dry, laconic, "hey dude" personality in a light tenor. 

Makoto Furukawa

The voice is amusing by itself--but a great deal of the anime's humor arises from Saitama's tone paired with Genos's earnest, monotone and slightly deeper voice. The exchanges are quite amusing.

Genos is voiced by Kaito Ishikawa and Zach Aguilar.

Makoto Furukawa is the original Japanese actor for Saitama. Voices do not have to match up to image but in this case, I found the "hey, folks, wassup?" photos more than a little amusing. Maybe capturing the character IS all about mindset. 

* * * 

For World Voice Day, I decided to pay tribute to anime voice actors and post a short interview with Don LaFontaine, 1940 - 2008.

The anime voice actor for today's post is Adam Gibbs, who has an impressive resume in that field. He does the voice of Taichi Mashima in Chihayafaru. Gibbs' voice notably captures Taichi's personality, including the doubts, romantic longings, self-reflection, and leadership qualities. Taichi is a complex guy!

Don LaFontaine, of course, is That Announcer Guy From the Movies. 

What amazes me about the interview is the anecdote about how fast his voice changed and how extreme was the change. The other fascinating point was how his voice can cut through loud music and explosions--it doesn't get drowned out.

By all accounts, Don LaFontaine was as sweet and generous and good-natured as he appears in the interview.

Current-Day Literalism: The Accusation of Antinomianism Never Dies

On Papers, I write about certain tendencies in our culture that, these days, arise often from the left. I stress, however, that I've encountered many of these trends in my relatively conservative church. That is, the right bears responsibility.

Those trends include the following:

 

1. Doomsdaying: the end of times is nigh, right now, right around the corner!

 

2. Body versus spirit: the body is sinful and disgusting and utterly malleable (it can be hacked up) while the spirit--the true "I"--is noble and free and sinless.

 

3. Conflation of "know" and "believe" so that debatable claims become entirely undebatable.

 

4. Lack of context, not only for historical events but for current statements--hence Coleman Hughes's difficulty in explaining the not difficult concept of "reasonable doubt" to offended pundits.

 

5. Utopia as the immediate end goal: WE will get you into heaven (or what constitutes heaven).

 

I am adding a sixth:

 

6. Literalism.

 

The bravest woman in the universe, J.K. Rowling praised the book Lolita at one point for being a well-written masterpiece. I don't care for the book myself but lots of people enjoy books I don't care for. However, in the world of "I'm not safe until others conform," apparently a bunch of "youths" have gotten all freaked out. How dare she!

 

Kat Rosenfield from The Free Press describes these youths as "utterly confounded not just by the difference between depiction and endorsement but by the expression of any thought that contains two or more moving parts."

Rosenfield's quote reminded me of a fantastic quote from Andrew Doyle's The New Puritans:

 

Good criticism, on the other hand, is able to balance the subjectivity of personal temperament with the objectivity of professional experience. To put it another way, a critic who is offended is unlikely to offer much in the way of insight. According to Vyvyan Holland, Oscar Wilde's second son, his father's novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890), was universally condemned by critics on the basis that it was 'prurient, immoral, vicious, coarse, and crude'. When the novel was republished, Wilde added a preface as a form of rebuttal, which should be required reading for all critics today. In it, he explains that vice and virtue are simply 'materials' for artists, reminding us that the depiction of immorality is not necessarily an endorsement of such behavior. Even if it were, why should it matter? 'There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book,' Wilde proclaims. 'Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.' (my emphasis)

 

The inability to separate "that book states that/that person states that" from "how horrible is that book/person!" has a long history that likely goes back to the beginnings of speech, maybe earlier. In my research on religious concepts in early American history, I have encountered the term "antinomian" again and again and again. Although there were actual Antinomians, the terms was generally used as an attack word (rather like "fascist" these days and making that point does not mean I favor fascism). "Antinomian" was used against theologians/religious groups that apparently had a flexible morality.

 

What is so fascinating is that term had almost nothing to do with how God actually might operate.

 

So if some Calvinists argued for unconditional election, the response was "but you're letting sinners off the hook--they will carry out numerous degenerate and bad acts because they are already saved. Antinomians!" 

 

And if the Methodists argued for universal salvation, the response was "but if everyone is saved, what kind of community are you promoting? What will you end up accepting? Thin end of the wedge! Antinomians!" 

 

If one responded, "We are talking about God. Can't God save people however God wants?" the response (post-Enlightenment) would be "but God is reasonable!" 

 

And if one responded, "Why does God have to be reasonable? I mean, yes, I like the idea, but who are you to tell God what to be?" the response would be...

"Antinomian!" 

 

That is, the human condition seems to entail entire groups of people who perceive any statement not in terms of its topic, its arguments, its context, its ability to generate ideas and lead to contemplation but as a moral argument that indicates not only the future morality of the human race but the actual morality of the person who dared say it.

 

It's very hard to talk about just-stuff with people these days.

What About Religion?

 

As I mention in the longer post, I have encountered the above listed positions/behaviors at church--though, in fairness, the church of my childhood was LESS PRONE to 6. Debate without an automatic moral indictment was not unusual.

 

By the time I hit my 20s, however, I was encountering "if you said that, you must be implying that you are morally like this" alongside arguments praising relativistic emotion-laden reactions to scripture. It was all very ironic (in fairness, the Calvinists had the same difficulty resolving the tension between "proper" trained responses and idiosyncratic responses). At one point, a Sunday School teacher tutted my mother not for the content of her statement but for making it in the first place (and yes, he had a label ready).

 

As in the longer post, I address why religions have some justification for the behaviors I've listed. Regarding literalism and accusations of antinomianism, religion is to a degree focused on moral codes. My entirely personal view is that the purpose of a religion is to aid humans in getting closer to god/gods/God. The purpose of religion, in other words, is NOT to get people into heaven (and yes, one can believe in heaven and still believe that heaven is God's territory, not the territory of mortal institutions). 

 

But history is filled with many thoughtful theologians who would question my position (and theologians who would agree with me). In the nineteenth century in America especially (post-1776), religion as the training ground for citizens of a relatively free society was something of a given. Whether or not it worked--since plenty of people went on believing whatever they wanted--is debatable. But preparing people to be well-behaved social creatures was perceived as one of religion's purposes.

 

Unfortunately for religion (and current-day conversations), within that mindset, theology often becomes not what God is/does but what God OUGHT to be/do:

 

God (utopia, the "right side of history," righteousness) in our pocket.

 

I'm not a fan of that mindset. 

My point here, however, is that both the right and left (all human beings really) need to take responsibility for the tendency to equate "you pointed that out" with "that means you are morally degenerate" and desist in order for conversations to actual be about things themselves.

You know, in order for conversations to be actually interesting. 

 

Stop the Christie Murder: Do Conspiracies Ever Really Work?

In Elementary, Sherlock challenges the idea of conspiracies, pointing out that people are incapable of keeping schtum. 

I agree with Sherlock entirely. 

I also find conspiracies boring. Conspiracies, drug wars, gang stories..all bore me. The inner machinations of a group of self-absorbed people are not even passably interesting. Give me a single body in the library any day.

Christie created a few books with conspiracies. I have no idea whether she believed in them or whether they were part of the culture. Everyone else was writing spy/conspiracy/hidden agenda tales, so she did as well. 

I quite like the 1997 version for capturing

the time period. That's Andy Serkis on the

right!

I generally avoid such tomes. However, one conspiracy/murder mystery tale I enjoy is Pale Horse, so long as I ignore the implausibility of the underlying set-up. 

Christie, as always, focuses mainly on character so Mark Easterbrook and his experiences with other people run most of the narrative: his off-again/on-again girlfriend; the love of his life and fellow investigator, Ginger; the so-called witches; the local vicar's wife; the doctor...

But whether anyone would really be able to keep the conspiracy a secret, much less keep it operating smoothly...

I doubt it. 

 *Spoilers!*

How the conspiracy works: A client wants to kill someone off. The client visits a businessman and sets up a bet: I bet you so-and-so won't die by this date. If so-and-so DOES, I will pay you $$$$. 

The client is told to visit a pair of witches in a small village and then go abroad for a time. The witches perform a supposed curse, so the client (supposedly) believes that the witches killed the victim.

Meanwhile, survey takers inform a fake business run by the mastermind/contract killer what products the victim uses. The killer slips into the apartment or house and replaces a product with one that kills through thallium. The killer later retrieves the bad product. 

There was a true life case where a man killed numerous people with thallium and wasn't caught immediately. However, he was acting alone as was William Palmer with strychnine.

As a plan, I find The Pale Horse conspiracy fairly unbelievable. First, the killing method is hit or miss. A cat could knock over the product. Someone else could use it (an approach used by Heyer in one novel). The victim could carry it away somewhere (the products are hygiene products), so the killer can't retrieve it. The victim could decide to switch products or temporarily move on to another one (I do this with shampoo all the time), so the death doesn't happen when desired, and the client demands to be paid. The victim could be in the middle of moving and all the products get thrown out the day after they are delivered.  

Other variables: The client could fail to visit the witches, could blab about the witches, feel guilt and blab about the contract, be irritated by the introduction of the witches and send a separate contract killer to cancel the bet with the businessman. The client could ignore instructions and not stay away at the time of the death and therefore be suspected--at which point the client might blab to the police. The victim and client could get into an argument before the scheduled death and one could kill the other. If the murderer is the client, the client could blab to the police in the hopes of leniency. The client might actually truly believe in the occult and fear it, to the point of reporting the encounter and/or to the point of arguing, "I shouldn't have to pay anyone." The client could fail to pay up for entirely mercenary reasons (an approach used in the 1997 movie). 

The witches could turn on the contract killer if they imagine they are not getting a fair cut. So could the businessman. The witches or the businessman might decide to take over the organization, leading to a three-way turf war (witches versus businessman versus mastermind/killer).

For that matter, the survey takers could mess up: ask the wrong person questions, go to the wrong address, fail to mail in the paperwork, take down answers wrong, fill out the forms with whatever answers they want because they are too lazy to go canvassing...

In fact, the conspiracy here

unravels because the conspirators

cannot control the weather, new

passengers, forensic methods, etc.

In fairness, Christie was well-aware of all these holes. Her murderers are often found out because they can't control human vagaries, the oddness of, for instance, one of the survey takers becoming suspicious about the number of deaths she has encountered and telling a priest--who is then coshed on the head (the sequence in the novel). And Christie intelligently implies that the conspiracy would have unraveled eventually: for one, the contract killer is far too arrogant. 

Me? I think the very first killing would upend the entire edifice. The one crazy witch who truly believes in her powers would brag. The businessman would want a larger cut. The client would also blab and/or refuse to pay. The contract killer would try to insert himself into the investigation, as he does in the novel. The police would investigate, not because they identified the poison but because deaths of otherwise healthy people are suspicious. (Police have investigated deaths where the poison was not immediately identified.) The victim would become suspicious and contact a private investigator (the victims don't die immediately).

Unfortunately, I'm not sure my prevention investigators would be able to prevent that first death. But I doubt a conspiracy with so many moving parts would last long. So the deaths that start the novel--that of the priest and the survey taker--would ultimately be prevented.