Category Archives: Reading & Writing

The Color of Magic

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The Color of MagicAfter my experience of watching the wonderfully entertaining Terry Pratchett’s Going Postal, I decided to read some of his work. So I picked up The Color of Magic, which is the first of the 39 book series (the 40th book will come out in a few months). At first, I was not disappointed. Pratchett is a very inventive and and funny writer.

I’ve never been much of a fan of the fantasy genre, so the book amused me above all as a parody. In the foreword to the paperback edition I’ve got, he writes, “If I had a penny for every time someone asked me where I got the idea of the Discworld, I’d have—hang on a moment—£4.67.” Or his clear swipe at Tolkien, “The Discworld is not a coherent fantasy world… There are no maps.” Indeed. I always hated all those stupid maps and more generally I’ve hated how seriously Tolkien (and even more his fans) took his world. That’s why The Hobbit is infinitely better than The Lord of the Rings. But I digress.

In the story itself, Pratchett is equally sharp. The main character Rincewind explains that while there are many reasons to hate heroes (think Conan the Barbarian), “What he didn’t like about heroes was that they were usually suicidally gloomy when sober and homicidally insane when drunk.” Clearly, the man has lived in the real world. The gods of the Discworld—one of who is Zephyrus the god of slight breezes—go around to atheists’ homes and smash their windows. And there is this funny exchange:

“I should have realized that you weren’t a real wizard when I saw you didn’t have a staff.”

“Lost it in a fire,” lied Rincewind automatically.

“No hat with magic sigils embroidered on it.”

“It blew off.”

“No familiar.”

“It died.”

About halfway through the novel, I stopped marking the funny bits of the novel and started marking the bad bits of writing. You see, for all of his wonderful creativity, Pratchett is a poor writer. The lack of clarity is stunning. And this was apparent from the start. I think that I had to reread every description two or three times to figure out what was going on. Really, it is that bad.

Let me give you a good example of what I’m talking about. Rincewind and Twoflower are sitting in a boat worrying both about sinking and floating off the edge of the Discworld.

He [Rincewind] spotted a small green frog which was paddling desperately in the grip of the inexorable current. To Twoflower’s amazement he found a paddle and carefully extended it toward the little amphibian, which scrambled onto it gratefully. A moment later a pair of jaws broke the water and snapped impotently at the spot where it had been swimming.

We’ve got major pronoun problems here. The way that I read it first was that Twoflower was amazed to find a paddle and that the fish snapped impotently where itself had recently been. I quickly figured out that this was wrong. Twoflower was surprised by Rincewind’s actions and the fish attacked the spot where the frog had been. The problem with this is that it is very hard to simply experience the story. Normally, one reads the words and they are turned into an image in the mind’s eye. In reading Pratchett, it is a three step process: read, translate, imagine. It is very frustrating.

Still, the book was enjoyable. Pratchett has a fine imagination and I generally found that I was happy while reading it. And given the ridiculous pace at which he writes (two books per year), it isn’t surprising that his books would be a little on the careless side. But it’s sad, because I’m not planning on reading any more of his books despite their many pleasures.

Quixote Vs. Kowalski

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QuixoticYou all know what a Don Quixote fan I am. What you probably don’t know is that I’ve been trying to write my own take on the tale. To some extent, I’ve been inspired by Graham Greene’s Monsignor Quixote. I am trying to do something quite different, however. I want to stay much closer to the original. Greene takes the tale in a highly philosophical direction and doesn’t attack the core of the book which is the nature of self. At first, I started the story (for lack of a better term, because I don’t know what it is at this point) on a bus with a man defending a woman’s honor. He is so overpowered with the feelings from this that something snaps in him and he begins to wander the country like Caine in Kung Fu. But the bus wasn’t really cutting it, so I changed the location to a bar.

Life may indeed imitate art. But I write comedy. And life is tragic. Simon Gutierrez at the ABC affiliate in Houston reported earlier this week about a bar fight last Saturday. The reporting is vague and contradictory, but I think I’ve got the broad outlines of the story. A couple of guys came into the bar right before closing. They acted like real jerks, getting in people’s faces and such. Then they force a woman to dance with them. Another guy, our own gallant Don Quixote who is said to be Jesus Geraldo Solis,[1] intervened and told the guys to knock it off. He said she had a boyfriend or some such. A fight broke out. One of the jerks pulled out a gun, and shot Solis twice, killing him.

This makes me reflect on Don Quixote all the more. In a reasonable world, Don Quixote might lose a battle badly. He certainly does in the book but not as much as you would think given that he’s old and crazy. But in our unreasonable world, Don Quixote just gets blown away. There is no romance. No gallantry. No manhood. There is simply the great technological leveler—the individual equivalent of nuclear weapons and the madness Mutual Assured Destruction.

What makes this interesting is that most people who own guns think they make the person more manly. I think it is the opposite. They can certainly just be tools as they are for a great many people. But more often, I’m afraid, they are a symbol of manhood for a culture that has lost it. Don’t get me wrong. I know that actual knights were lowly noblemen who were generally evil and above the law when it came to the vast majority of the people. But there was an ideal.

What is the ideal now? I think there are two things: cash and carnage. Greed is good and so is violence—at least if you can come up with the vaguest of justifications. “He made me look bad in front of that woman, I think I’ll kill him.” But there are ideals for those who want them. And maybe it is better to die a Don Quixote than to live a Stanley Kowalski.

H/T: Mad Mike’s America

[1] I mention his name only because he’s a hero. I get so tired to hearing how every person who puts on a uniform is a hero, like some cop who spends his whole career working in the records department is deserving of the term. People who actually stand up to evil are extremely rare. Mr. Solis is a hero.

Update (23 July 2013 12:09 pm)

Two suspects have been arrested in the case. There is another detail. At first Solis was shot in the leg. He attempted to walk away, so the shooter went up to him and shot him a couple of more times. It is also interesting that one of the guys arrested is only 19.

They Might Be James Goldman

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James GoldmanOn this day in 1917, actor Susan Hayward was born. Ed Yost, the inventor of the hot air balloon was born in 1919. And magician Harry Blackstone Jr was born in 1934.

Economist Thomas Sowell is 83. Musician Stanley Clarke is 52. And actor Vincent D’Onofrio is 54.

But the day belongs to playwright James Goldman, who was born on this day in 1927. He was the older brother of novelist and screenwriter William Goldman. He’s best known for the play and the filmed version of it, The Lion in Winter. But I most admire him for the film They Might Be Giants, which was also a play but it has never been published.

The film is extremely deep, but I fear that most people don’t understand it. It is basically a modern version of Don Quixote. But in this telling, instead of Quixote thinking he is a knight, he thinks he is Sherlock Holmes. His family thinks he is insane, so he becomes a patient of a psychiatrist, Dr Mildred Watson. Once learning of her last name, Holmes becomes convinced that she is his Dr Watson. As time goes on, Watson is pulled completely into Holmes’ fantasy. On its surface, the film is just a silly comedy. But it is really quite deep and poses all of the most important questions that humans ask. Here is the end of the film (which is about all I could find), which shows the final commitment of Watson to Holmes’ world. It doesn’t completely work on screen, but on the stage it would have been perfect:

Happy birthday James Goldman!

The human heart can see what is hidden to the eyes, and the heart knows things that the mind does not begin to understand.

Missing Cat/Dog/People Signs

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Lost CatI rarely torture you all with my own poetry but this rhymes! And yes, I know what you’ll say, “It’s bad enough that this is all about death; do you really have to end it by saying that death is a good thing?” Well, yes, as a matter of fact I do. I’m no fan of death, but there are a great many things that are worse than death. For example (and I hate to bring this up because it really bothers me), I would rather die than have my toes cut off one by one with a pair of cutter pliers. The same thing goes for my fingers now that I think about it. And now that you have that image, enjoy the poem!

Hopefully perky
Each sign I saw said
Please bring back my Muffin
But Muffin is dead.

Not all the king’s horses
Nor pharmacy meds
Will bring back poor Muffin
Cause Muffin is dead.

Maybe on a highway
Or under a bed
There aren’t happy endings
Cause Muffin is dead.

Kristin can tell you
When her Muffin fled
And stayed gone for two weeks
Muffin was not dead.

But that’s the exception
Of which you have read
Cause generally speaking
Muffin is dead.

I know that I’m dreary
And filled up with dread
But ration’ly speaking
Poor Muffin is dead.

She could be in much pain
Tortured in a shed
Then isn’t it better
If Muffin is dead?

Let’s Eat Grandma

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Let's Eat GrandmaWill sent me a link to this t-shirt vendor that has a shirt that reads, “Let’s eat grandma. Let’s eat, grandma. Punctuation saves lives.” This, of course, is very much in keeping with Lynne Truss’ fun book, Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation. But as much as I find these kinds of grammar jokes wonderful, I am, as always, a grammar liberal.

So here’s the thing: meaning is contextual. If you are watching a horror film about some very naughty grandchildren, then sure: we’re talking about eating the grandmother. (Let me point out that meat from an old human is bound to taste gamy.) That might also be the case if you were in an airplane that crashed in the Andes. But in all other contexts, it means you are entreating grandma to enjoy a pleasant repast—comma or no.

And that’s the thing about English (or any other language): there are times when it is vague. And this is the basis for just about all of those little grammar jokes that pedants like me love. For example, “The dog caught the ball as it flew through the air.” To which your high school English teacher would add, “I sure hope the dog didn’t hurt itself when it landed.” And yes, I delight in such word play. But it is wrong to think that it is important. No one but a pedant would for a moment think that the dog was flying through the air rather than the ball.

Good writing is not about rules; it is about clarity. As a result, I try not to create constructions like, “The dog caught the ball as it flew through the air.” That’s because they are unclear. And sometimes, that requires ugly rewrites like, “The dog caught the ball as the ball few through the air.” (Much better: “As the ball flew through the air, the dog caught it.” Although a pedant might ask, “Caught the air?”) But it makes me wonder if teachers who highlight such problems are very good teachers.

The truth is that almost any sentence is a mush of vagueness. I so wanted to use “vagaries.”) And that makes me wonder if we truly communicate with words. Maybe I’m just fooling myself by thinking that I can get anything but the most basic ideas across to a reader. But then I’m something of a solipsist, so I’m not even sure you exist—much less that I can communicate with you.

The Op-Ed Page

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Editorial and Op-Ed Pages

Will asked me what an “OpEd” was—probably because I had used the term in an article that I’d written. It was a good question, because I had been asking myself the same question. Of course, I knew what an OpEd was, just like the Supreme Court knew what obscenity was: I knew it when I saw it. But I didn’t know why it was called that.

I had an idea, though. I thought that “OpEd” was short for “opportunity editorial.” There were two kinds of OpEds as far as I could tell. There were those by columnists like George Will or Paul Krugman. And there were those by people who had nothing to do with the paper like Liz Cheney’s ignorant and vile article in the Wall Street Journal last week.[1]

Because Will asked, I decided to look up “OpEd.” I was surprised to learn that “OpEd” (or “Op-Ed”) is a very recent word: it dates back only to the 1970s. And “Op” does not refer to “opportunity” but rather “opposite.” The term refers to the editorials that run on the page opposite the editorial page. So in the image above, the editorial page is the one on the left and the op-ed page is on the right.

So now we (Will and I) know. I continue to be amazed at how much I stay ignorant about for lack of picking up a dictionary.

[1] She writes the following that is every bit as hysterical and fact-free as the most extreme Tea Partier:

President Obama is the most radical man ever to occupy the Oval Office. The national debt, which he is intent on increasing, has passed $16 trillion. He believes that more government borrowing and spending are the solution to every problem. He seems unaware that the free-enterprise system has lifted more people out of poverty than any other economic system devised by man…

The president has launched a war on Americans’ Second Amendment rights. He has launched a war on religious freedom. He has launched a war on fossil fuels. He is working to nationalize one-sixth of the economy with job-killing ObamaCare. He wants to collect a greater portion of every American paycheck, not for the purpose of paying down the national debt but to expand his governing machine. He doesn’t believe in creating a bigger pie with more opportunity for all. He believes in greater redistribution of a much smaller pie. If you’re unsure of what this America would look like, Google “Cyprus” or “Greece.”

This is shocking coming from a major figure in one of America’s major political parties.

Tobias Smollett Day

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Tobias SmollettBack in 1860, William Jennings Bryan was born on this day. He has a bit of a bad reputation because he was on the wrong side of the Scopes Trial. But the truth is that he was a good strong progressive. I don’t doubt that today he would accept evolution. Sadly, he died just after “winning” that trial in 1925.

It seems most days are good days for Nazi birthdays, and today is no exception. Hitler’s architect Albert Speer was born in 1905. He spent most of his life after World War II arguing that he didn’t know about the genocide. I tend not to believe him, but I will allow that he wasn’t the evilest of men. Speaking of the evilest of men, Adolf Eichmann was born in 1906. I will give Eichmann this: at least he had the good taste to get captured so we could hang him. (I know, I know: I don’t believe in capital punishment. But if anyone does deserve it, it is Eichmann.)

Philip Roth is 80 today. He’s been spouting a lot of nonsense recently, but he was very important to me when I was younger. Burt Metcalfe, the MASH TV series writer, is 78. There are Hollywood birthdays today: Glenn Close, Harvey Weinstein, and Bruce Willis. If you want more details, go over to IMDb! One birthday today shocked me: Sirhan Sirhan is 69 today. I thought he died years ago.

And finally, the man of the day: Tobias Smollett was born in 1721. He wrote the fourth real English translation of Don Quixote. It is one of two mid-18th century translations (the other being Charles Jervas), both of which are quite readable today, even without modern editing. However, Smollett has the advantage of being edited by Carole Slade for the Barnes & Noble Classics edition. As I’ve written before, this edition is worth its price just for Slade’s notes. Give it a read!

I claim this day, 19 March, as Tobias Smollett Day. Hallmark may start printing the cards!

William Gibson in Retirement

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William GibsonDespite what Wikipedia says, this is the birthday of the great British Shakespearean actor Edmund Kean. Since he died in 1833, I know him only from the writings of William Hazlitt. But he made quite an impression on Hazlitt and that’s good enough for me. In addition, Kean lived quite a colorful and scandalous life, so that works in his favor.

I suppose I should also mention Mikhail Vrubel who was born on this date back in 1856. I am not a big fan, but there is no doubt that he was a great painter. Nat King Cole was born in 1919. He was only 45 when he died of lung cancer. I’m not a big fan, but when I was a kid, I thought “The Little Boy Who Santa Claus Forgot” was deeply affecting. And Michael Been of The Call was born in 1950.

But no day would be complete without a serial killer. John Wayne Gacy—or as Michele Bachmann refers to him, John Wayne—was born back in 1942. He is one of the most creepy of the serial killers. Dontcha just love the picture of him with Rosalynn Carter!

Now on to the birthdays. Kurt Russell is 62. Gary Sinise, the guy who seems to be in a lot of Ron Howard movies but maybe just two, is 58. Earl and Mooch creator Patrick McDonnell is 57. Rob Lowe is 49. And when you’ve reached Rob Lowe, you’ve reached the bottom of the barrel.

The day belongs to William Gibson who turns 65 today. He is probably best known as the author of Neuromancer, but as always, I recommend that you read Fragments of a Hologram Rose. As I’ve discussed before, Gibson is one of the inventors of cyberpunk. He used to have a blog that was really good, but I guess he’s just too big to be bothered anymore. Regardless, happy birthday old man! What are you going to do in your retirement?

100 Years of Irwin Shaw

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Irwin ShawOne hundred years ago today the great writer Irwin Shaw was born. About a year ago, I spent a couple of weeks with his Short Stories, Five Decades. It reminded me of when I first started writing about 25 years ago. I became obsessed with his short story “The Eighty-Yard Run.” I read it again and again. It tells the story of a man’s life from one day in high school that he looks back on as the pinnacle: an eighty-yard touchdown run during football practice. It is perceptive that Shaw used this example. In one way, anyone can understand that doing this would make a boy feel very good about himself. Life is like that: relatively little things can put on shine on life. But another way of looking it is that it is pathetic. It is high school and it isn’t even a game — just a practice.

All of Shaw’s work is filled with unspoken truths. No one ever seems quite able to communicate what they think and feel — even to themselves. Everyone is left with the vague sadness that you think life is really all about when you are young. Of course, as you get older, you learn first hand that this is exactly what life is about. The one thing we all share is regret about everything. Shaw conveys this idea with an expansive collection of characters and their stories.

Shaw is kind of a guys’s writer. Most of his characters are men. He still does an excellent job with female characters but he never provides the kind of depth that he often does for his men. There are certainly similarities with Hemingway — especially at his best in The Sun Also Rises and The Old Man and the Sea. But Hemingway is notably weaker. His female characters speak of a man who only ever had much contact with women through prostitutes. And there is a great deal of insecurity in his work, as though he were trying to prove he was a real man. With Shaw, there is no such problem — men just are what they are without editorializing.

Shaw has also written a lot of plays and novels. He got his start writing for radio. I can’t speak to any of that. He had some notable popular successes as with his novel Rich Man, Poor Man. I recommend checking out his short stories.

Afterword

There are a few other notable birthdays today. Peter Stone would have been 83 today. He was a playwright who also wrote some notable screenplays like Charade. Joanne Woodward is 83 today. She starred in one of my favorite movies, They Might Be Giants. And Elizabeth Taylor would have been 81 today. She was known for being Elizabeth Taylor.

Ralph Nader was born in 1934 on this day. Chelsea Clinton, 1980. Peter De Vries, himself quite a good writer, was born on this day in 1910. He wrote some fun novels.

Oh yeah: some guy named John Steinbeck was born on this day in 1902. I’ve heard that he wrote some novels or something. “Angry Grapes”? “Bitter Prunes”? Something like that.

Cyberpunk and Blade Runner

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Blade RunnerI watched Blade Runner this afternoon. I always associate it with William Gibson’s Neuromancer. According to Gibson, the book was about to go to press when Blade Runner appeared. There were many similarities, so Gibson went back and changed a number of things in the book. Both works are generally seen as the beginning of cyberpunk, which is best described as the nexus of high tech and low life.

But there isn’t actually a lot of similarity between the two. Blade Runner is just film noir set in the future. It doesn’t deal that well with the low life aspect of the genre. In particular, Gibson is as focused on drug use easily as much as he is high tech. In Blade Runner it is all cigarettes and alcohol. Of course, in a fundamental sense, Gibson is as derivative as any modern novelist. As I’ve written before, he basically just writes William S. Burroughs without the sex. And without the groundwork laid by Philip K. Dick—who was a true visonary—no one would have even understood Gibson, least of all Gibson himself.

Shortly before The Matrix burst onto the scene, Gibson helped turn his short story Johnny Mnemonic into a feature film. Now given that this film has been widely panned, I feel that I must defend it before continuing. Johnny Mnemonic is a good example of the kind of art that I think needs to be respected. I don’t much like it. But it is everything it intends to be. The artistic vision may not be what I like, but it is what the filmmakers intended it to be. And in this age, I think we should applaud that.

Let us not forget, that Gibson’s short story Johnny Mnemonic is hardly some of his best writing. And more than anything, some of the ideas were even tired when he wrote it. In particular, the super intelligent dolphin is almost comical. But in its defense, Gibson does get low down. In order to get the dolphins to do the data processing work, the military got them strung out. And as I recall, in order to get Johnny’s access key, the price is a packet of dope. All of this is taken out of the movie, of course.

As much as the film is wanting, it still provides a better representation of the cyberpunk world than does Blade Runner. In particular, cyberpunk is never about cops. Cops are just an extension of the corporate power structure. What’s more it is a world where corporations have their own cops and armies. Rather than call Blade Runner cyberpunk, we should call it pre-apocalypse.

None the less, Blade Runner is still a damned good film—the director’s cut, anyway. But there is far too much undeserved mythology associated with it. In particular, I don’t accept that Deckard is a replicant—except in the thematic sense that we all are, or might be. And that makes it more like Witness than Neuromancer. And Blade Runner has no standout scene. Johnny Mnemonic, on the other hand, has this scene that sums up our classist society in one and a half pithy minutes:

The Letter G

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Gis for God.

G is also for other fictional characters like Goldilocks, Godzirra!, and Gollum.

God. Say it backwards, and unlike Zed Zeppelin’s hidden Satanic agenda, it says dog. I like dogs. Dogs have done more good for people than everyone’s gods and goddesses put together. A dog has never killed another on behalf of a doggy deity. It is a fact that dogs and a proper diet have saved more lives than God. Whatever malignant or benign impact believers have had on the world is their own doing — not the actions of god working through them. Maybe they have themselves confused with marionettes.

“Do I look stupid? God damned right I’m an atheist!”

The Letter F

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Fis for Future.

The future is any time that hasn’t happened yet. Unless time is some weird Möbius band, then maybe the future may be time that has already happened but that we, at this point in time, are unaware of. Sounds nuts to me, but then I’m no economist.

Basically the future is a big blank screen onto which we can project all of our hopes, dreams, and debilitating fears. It’s something we try to effectively affect, but mostly just brutally affects us.

“The future looks bleak, but I can’t wait to see what tomorrow brings!”