The Winding Road to Roundabout

Advent Ghosts 2011: "Incarnation"

2011-12-24T14:31:00.005-05:00

Note: The following 100 word story is part of Loren Eaton's 2011 Advent Ghosts fiction contest. Please follow the link to check out the other wonderful snippets of fiction he's made available.

If my wife took another, I would understand.

The idea was promising, once. Reborn on silicon circuits into godless eternal life.

Waking on frosted metal, I didn’t shiver. Didn’t warm myself with my wife afterwards. Didn’t understand her fear of death.

She remained, aged, kissed my ever-young body, caused no pain or pleasure.

Phantom sensation arrived. Not pain—never pain—just a lack. Remembrance.

The media loved me. Would’ve laid down palms. Women, too, for a season.

Then only my family was left: loving, uncomprehending.

Incarnation’s a bitch. An ageless spirit, helpless as a babe on long winter nights.

She

2010-12-24T14:10:00.001-05:00

saw a man, weeping, leading his pregnant fiancé through the snow. It was only a moment before they vanished, but she swears it was true.

The box of wine fell from her hand, bloodied the snow creeping to the edge of her porch. She didn’t remember stumbling inside, found herself in front of a fire made of week-old newspapers. It wasn’t cleaned—smoke slunk through her home—but she didn’t care.

Her rosary was in her hand, as well. What a jacked-up life, she thought. Jealous of the god-damned Big Man Himself, and unable to ever know his ever-virgin wife.

The rosary pointed outward where it met the bulge of her womb. She sobbed uncontrollably, cursing the lover who discarded her, praying for the strength to live out her own involuntary perpetual virginity.

(This story is part of Loren Eaton's Advent Ghosts flash-fiction contest. See others at http://isawlightningfall.blogspot.com/2010/12/advent-ghosts-2010-stories.html)

Cliches: Two test-cases

2010-08-30T10:04:00.002-04:00

I haven't been on the blog for a while, and don't necessarily intend to. Still, I comment on various blogs (mostly about writing genre-fiction), and one comment grew large enough I feel I have to link to it.

So....cliches.

Cliches are, or at least can be, the backbone of excellent writing. The problem is when they aren't recognized as cliches, that is as potential problems.

Patrick Rothfuss recently wrote a book about (Warning: minor spoilers):

1) An orphan

2) Who goes on to be the greatest poet/fighter/wizard of all time

3) In a fantasy setting with a deep history, told in sparse, poetic, mythographic language

4) Who fights a dragon

5) Who has a mysterious love interest

6) Who goes to a wizard's school, where he is taught by an eccentric-to-the-point-of-insanity wizard

7) Who gets into the wizard school on scholarship, having been a poor beggar literally pages before

8) Who has a legendary instrument

&c. &c.

His book was preceded by two pages of the best writers in the SF/fantasy field praising his originality, his merit, and the sheer wonder and goodness of his story. It is also full to the gills of cliches--the most obvious, post-Tolkien cliches of fantasy literature.

At the same time, there was another author, Joe Abercrombie. He wrote a trilogy in which (major spoilers hidden, highlight text to reveal):

1) One of the main characters is a crude, bitter, violent cripple and torturer

2) The nearly omnipotent wizard supporting the forces of civilization turns out to be both cynical and ruthless, happily killing thousands of innocent people for the greater good

3) The characters go on an epic quest for a magical item, which they fail

4) One of the most beloved characters dies horribly outside of battle (of cancer)

5) One of the most sympathetic characters tends to kill his friends

6) The young, idle, philandering prince stays a young, idle, philandering prince despite ruining the life and reputation of his one (lower-class) true love

7) The most honorable character in the trilogy gains a promotion as a result of a horrible breach of trust--rashly murdering his king.

8) The evil artifact of doom is not destroyed, but used to save civilization.

&c. &c.

In short, the difference between the books is one of their use of cliches. Whenever Abercrombie finds himself about to voice a cliche of fantasy, he runs away, to the point where his quite-serious trilogy reads, in summary, like an inverted spoof of The Lord of the Rings. Whenever Rothfuss finds himself brushing against a cliche, he often embraces it. Conventional wisdom would say that Abercrombie would be the better author: more "serious," more "original," more engaging. Conventional wisdom is wrong on all accounts.

The reason is that Rothfuss has a better ear than Abercrombie for cliches, and plays on them as if they are a musical instrument--in a variety of keys, with unexpected syncopation, and with the slight differences of a master. Many of the "cliches" in Rothfuss's list are put into play in absolutely original ways (the dragon, for instance, is unlike any dragon I have read about), while others are played straight (does anyone doubt that the protagonist in a book called The Name of the Wind will learn, er, "the name of the wind," which no-one has known in a thousand years?) Rothfuss loves cliches, but he is not a slave to them--sometimes he serves them straight, sometimes slanted, sometimes he hints at a cliche before turning away from it entirely. But always he remembers something simple and obvious--most people started reading fantasy because they loved it and felt its cliches meant something, despite the cheesy sense of emptiness caused by excessive repetition.

Abercrombie, on the other hand, actually comes to seem the less original author by his rejection of cliches, and his books drop off in quality as he works his way to the inversion of the expected "heroic fantasy" climax. For moments (and strangely enough these moments often coincide with his unironic use of fantasy cliches) the human complexity of his characters place him at the top of his category. One is refreshed to see a party of diverse people where tensions are real, for instance, and to see them joined together by bonds and hatreds (however tenuous and uncomfortable) that feel infinitely more richer than those found in almost any other writing, in any field. But this is only true for stretches--as the story goes on, one gets the dominant impression not of human, suffering characters but of "hey, wouldn't it be cool if what happened was merely the opposite of what you expected?"

The problem with cliches, one begins to think, is just as strong if one tries to avoid them blindly as it is when one follows them blindly. Instead, perhaps they should simply be used.

Nativity

2009-12-24T11:50:00.004-05:00

She visits every Christmas.

She wears the robe she wore on our honeymoon, green and translucent. She wears it well, like shortly before--

It is nothing she’d have worn in public, before. But no one else can see her, so she isn’t in public, not really.

We find a time to talk alone. It’s wonderful to catch up, necessary, leaving me empty and yearning.

I’ve seen a therapist. He said the visions would fade, and that they don’t lock people up for hallucinations anymore. It never faded, but I'm not locked up, either.

I wake up cold, earth-born in winter.

(This story is written for Loren Eaton's Advent Ghosts 2009 contest. Click the link to see the rest.)

Quote of the Day from Internet Monk

2009-10-08T19:09:00.003-04:00

Context: Michael Spenser, "The Internet Monk," is a self-described post-evangelical whose pastoral-focused blogs on various subjects of contemporary theology manage to follow in the great tradition of combining serious theology with a constant commitment to pastoral issues of real people and real suffering.

Today, he continues his recapitulation of Lewis's The Screwtape Letters, in which a demon gives instructions on how to best create apostasy. iMonk is no C.S. Lewis when it comes to diabolical wit (though his demon's ambivalent views of Dawkins and co. are hilariously dead-on; see above link.) However, I think he hits something at the core of the issue dead-on:

By the way, it’s exceptionally ironic that the creator has endowed his creatures with the capacity to be completely overwhelmed by the implications of love and justice. Apart from Jesus ***mumbling*** – excuse the use of the name- these attributes of God will drive humans to despair. Take almost any of them, but especially sovereignty, justice or love. It’s like being forced to look at the sun. (Something those of us in the spiritual world know all too well.) But Jesus makes the deity tolerable without resolving all questions. To that end, may we all be encouraged by the disappearance of teaching and preaching about Jesus. Another 50 years of what we see with Osteen, and victory is at hand.

Briefly, on Making Cliches (and Poetry)

2009-09-27T00:03:00.002-04:00

There are, I think, many types of cliches.

One is when the author attempts to sound poetic, and doesn't control the sounds of the language enough to have a somatic effect. The result is something that looks like the worst form of cliche, that makes the author grit his teeth in frustration, but that may be a small edit away from poetry.

That is a hopeful thought.

This also, I think, explains the difference between Tolkien and Tolkienspeak. Tolkien's language in its heightened, theatricality is always one small step away from cliche. But, for those who have a taste for Tolkien and the patience to savor his words, there really is that subtle interplay of sounds that makes his writing beautiful and transporting.

LeGuin knows this, and can recreate a Tolkienesque feel while using language somewhat removed from Tolkien's. Many authors don't know this, and copy Tolkien's vocabulary without making anything interesting.

Hence, the fact that Tolkenesque fantasy is legendarily cliched.

How Language Matters

2009-07-22T14:39:00.004-04:00

[Warning: this post about cursing contains cursing]

I wanted to like Derek Webb's "What Matters More." I really did. I find myself in agreement with a lot of Derek's premises: Christians are sinning when they ignore the effect of their speech on those they consider sinners (especially those self-identifying as homosexuals); Christians need to be marked by a profound care for the poor; the call of Christ is one that doesn't fit neatly into the culture-war mentality; "Christian" art should not necessarily mean "sanitized" art. And Derek Webb has, occasionally, managed lyrics that blow me away with their intelligence, wit, and (above all) sincere passion.

But listening to "What Matters More," I found myself profoundly underwhelmed.

The offending passage comes from the end of the song:

If I can tell what's in your heart by what comes out of your mouth
Then it sure looks to me like being straight is all it's about
It looks like being hated for all the wrong things
Like chasin' the wind while the pendulum swings
'Cause we can talk and debate until we're blue in the face
About the language and tradition that he's comin' to save
Meanwhile we sit just like we don't give a shit
About 50,000 people who are dyin' today
Tell me, brother, what matters more to you?
Tell me, sister, what matters more to you?

Provocative lyrics are well and good; but Derek's line seems to come out of nowhere. One can be, for instance, a culture warrior with no curiosity about the plight of homosexuals, and give 90% of one's income to those areas of the world where 50,000 people are dying. The line seems (and certainly there are people who have said this) to be there simply for shock value. But more to the point, it draws the wrong sort of battle lines. If you aren't with Webb on this, you're with the terrorists--oops, I mean the Pharisees who don't care about anything but the appearance of piety.

In this villainization of his audience, of course, Webb the folk singer has a long tradition. Tom Lehrer mocked it quite wittily and succinctly: "We're joining the folk song army / Everyone of us cares / We hate poverty, war and injustice / Unlike the rest of you squares." His point is, I think, valid. For all the real issues music can engage with, it has a great potential to merely redefine hip; people who buy Organic Fair Trade simply because that's what the cool people do.

But the tradition Webb claimed isn't that of folk-rock counterculture, but of the equally antagonistic Old Testament prophecy. "Israel is a whore, a pillager, a nation so far from its roots that God cannot stand it," the Old Testament prophets say. Mostly because they no longer worship God, and don't give a shit about the poor and foreigners. And, of course, they have delusions of holiness.

If one accepts a prophetic voice, however, one has to tell the truth. Yes, the term "whore" is a strong word, but it accurately describes Israel's foolish departure from godliness towards whatever shiny new cult their neighbors share.

If Webb wants to write a song about how we "don't give a shit" about poverty, that's fine. More than fine, we need such voices. But he starts sticking a line in the middle of his song on sexual identity. "If you're a conservative, you hate the poor," he seems to say. Kind of like how "if you're a liberal, you love terrorism."

Why, I wonder, couldn't he have put in something that actually made sense? How about giving his Evangelical audience a taste of its own medicine? Show it what its words really sound like? I'm no Derek Webb, but how about this as an improvement:

...Cause we can talk and debate until we're blue in the face
About the language and tradition that he's comin' to save
And all the lost Jesus Christs who are neighbors down the street
Hear just how holy we are, and how we think that they're shit
Tell me, brother, what matters more ...

At least he'd be on topic; if you take the words of Christ seriously, his is the only way to life. And if that message is being perverted to a message of hate for sinners, then great should be our judgment.

It seems a clear misstep of artistry, but it irritates me more than that. And perhaps Derek's culture-war-in-reverse language is indicative of something more. On the latest trends in Webb's music, Michael Spencer has perhaps the best summary:

..And make no mistake about it, on the “law-Gospel” continuum, this is law and prophetic denunciation, delivered with relentless consistency. No one else is saying this stuff and Webb doesn’t miss his punches. His pleasant voice betrays his very unpleasant message. We are a captive church that is now identifying with the values of our cultural captors, and it’s not pretty. Our treatment of the gay community provides a painful example. [...]

Webb is an artist, and I respect his freedom to create and I encourage you to get and listen to Stockholm Syndrome. As a Christian, I want to give Webb all the artistic room possible, and my soul needs to be jolted as much as anyone. But I’d like to pray that Webb has a Lutheran turn in the near future, and finds that speaking of law and Gospel, prophetic intensity and Christ’s love are things that can go together in art and must go together in life.

It would be a turn as well, I think, away from the culture war rhetoric (both left and right) that requires one's enemy to be caricatured and hated, and towards the love, peace and grace of Christ.

McKinley and the Poetry of Coziness

2009-07-21T00:43:00.006-04:00

There are two authors who have earned a place, literally, next to Tolkien on my bookshelf: Ursula K. LeGuin and Robin McKinley. (LeGuin is to the left and McKinley to the right, if you must know, but any political significance is purely accidental.)

My choice of the two authors is somewhat intentionally subversive. Both are women, first of all, whereas Tolkien famously included just about three female characters (out of about 17 leads) in the entire Lord of the Rings and virtually none in The Hobbit. (Galadriel and co. get somewhat better treatment in the Silmarillion, but that is neither here nor there.) Moreover, both are authors who in different ways have actively asserted their femininity; most notably neither is the Hawk that Tolkien was, and if they celebrate courage it is far more likely to be an introspective, Frodo-like pacifistic persistance than the Norse courage-at-life's-end of an Aragorn or Gimli or Theoden or Beren or Turin.

But mostly, they both simply understand (and deploy) the power of words and legends to make life, ease pain, and build imagined communities. There is a richness in the best moments of stories that doesn't simply represent life, but re-awakens us to the wonder of existence. If Oscar Wilde preferred the beautiful lie to the ugly truth, both books seem to tie the two inextribly together.

While LeGuin ranges far and wide in search for her inspiration, covering seemingly every possible culture and perspective in an attempt to embrace all in her liberal-minded poetry, McKinley consistently stays determinedly at home. Her books are, without exception, about coziness.

This doesn't mean that they are always feel-good, or that they ever fit into the Hallmark-sentiment mode. She manages to frankly and explicitly deal with topics ranging from purely soulless vampires and dystopian regimes to the trauma of early-life incest and rape, and she has no problem leaving characters with continual emotional and physical wounds. Yet the center of each story is not the physical or spiritual war and anguish that forms the heart of the revenge tales and world-saving adventures that form the bulk of post-Tolkien fantasy. It is, instead, the quiet desire for peace and home and family and, above all, the comfort of being a human in a world that miraculously contains other humans.

And so it makes sense that her first and tenth books would both be reworkings of Beauty and the Beast, a fairy tale about being separated from the home you love, about cultivating something safe and beautiful and living in the midst of a dead, monstrous, masculine domain. And while historians and literary critics can (and, I would argue, should) talk until they're blue in the face about how the story represents the psychological experience (and idealized) of medieval marriage, which after all sent very young women into strange castles to live under the alien rule and control of strange men, McKinley finds something that seems much more primal in the story. It becomes an allegory not for some lives but for all life, lived in the cozy corners between the harsh inhumanities of war or taxes or job markets or statistics. It is the wonder of community, and affection, and things that don't go as poorly as they maybe should for someone who has the persistence to keep hope and love alive.

But really McKinley puts it best herself, when Rose Daughter's protagonist, Beauty, finds herself encountering for the first time an enormous glittering mural on the roof of the insubstantial and alien mansion of the Beast:

"But--no--splendid is not the right word. They are splendid, but they are--they are so friendly. Oh dear!" she said, and looked up at him, half laughing, half embarrassed. "How childish that sounds! But so many of the beautiful things in the rooms beneath us--push you away--tell you to stand back--order you to admire and be abashed. These--these draw you in. They make you want to stay and--and have them for company. Yes, that's right. But I--I am still making them sound like a--like--sort of comfortable, though, am I not? Like a bowl of warm bread and milk and an extra pillow, and that's not it at all. They are not comfortable. Indeed, I feel that if I lived with them for long, I should have to learn to be ... better, or greater, myself. If this Queen of the Heavenly Mountain looked down at me from my bedroom wall every day, soon I should have to go looking for that path to her domain. I wouldn't be able to help myself."

It isn't the poetry of arrival, nor of anguished and fevered search. But it is the poetry of life, and of the coziness that comes when the world is harsh and one has found a nook in which is shelter and fire to keep off the chill and rain--and a human to help out and offer company. It is pure escapism, if you will, but it is escapism in the best sense of the word. It is escapism that offers but a rest and a gentle stop, and that (like Tolkien's Shire) also asks to be used as a stopping off point for the greater tasks of living. And a reminder, that every day we encounter far more than we will ever dream of in our philosophies, and that the cozy details of life are not unworthy of serious celebration.

A Paranthetical Non-Review of Gilead

2009-07-21T00:35:00.004-04:00

(Alas, I have yet to write a review of Gilead. Hopefully I will; probably after I get a new copy so I can look at quotes. Suffice it to say that the book lived up to its promises; intelligent and thoughtful and quietly engaging. Also, very Chestertonian in its celebration of "existence" without ever sacrificing nuance or contemplative serenity. I found myself most often meditating on my tendency to idolize books; for some reason (possibly because the novel is not my natural habitat) the book seemed almost incapable of being idolized. The peace of the book (when it shows up; few beauties or sorrows of earthbound humanity are omitted) is one I wanted to pursue in reality rather than savor in fiction.

My one criticism is sometimes it felt that the fiction was unnecessary, if not somehow forced. Why read the musings of a fictitious pastor, however iconic and thoughtful and realistically human, when I have yet to crack open Merton's Seven Storey Mountain? It's not a question that I ask much; but this time I was compelled to ask.)

And yet another random quote

2009-07-10T09:50:00.004-04:00

(Presumably, at some point I will get back to actual blogging.)

(Background: A "sheep unit" was (and remains) the measure for amount of grass eaten by animals; horses, at the expensive cost of four "sheep units," were determined too expensive for the Najavo to maintain and ordered to be sold or destroyed. This upset the Navajo; but Chamberlain argues that the term "sheep unit" may have been even more offensive than the order itself.)

"Thus held they the funeral for Hector, tamer of horses." These are the final words of Homer's epic The Illiad, a story from the crossroads of Europe and Asia and Africa, where misunderstandings between civilians and barbarians were the order of the day. They hold out a promise of dignity in the face of defeat and death. Not "Hector, worth five hundred sheep units," but "Hector, tamer of horses."

Oh, but that all happened such a long time ago, we say. And such a long way off. But of course it didn't. Hector the Homeric hero is the Indian cowboy who just arrived in the pickup truck. Long before I knew about Homer's Hector, I wanted to be like him, a tamer of horses. And I even knew a cowboy named Hector, riding the rodeo circuit in the Kootenay and Columbia River basins. Like his namesake, he got into a nasty fight over someone else's woman, and he got dragged about in the dirt a lot. When a Brahma bull he rode for all of two and a half seconds caught him from behind and tossed him back up over the chute in Coeur d'Alene, the rodeo announcer had a far-fetched figure of speech ready, just like Homer. He said that he'd gotten his oil checked.

Yet Collier and his colleagues [in the reorganization of Navajo lands] didn't see all this. Maybe they were mesmerized by their colleague Will Durant, teaching across town at the Labor Temple and insisting that civilization begins when chaos and insecurity end, with the equivalent of sheep units. In any case, they could not see the parallels between the Navajo saga and the story told over twenty-five hundred years ago, which also celebrated the irrational and the unreasonable and the inexplicable as central parts of our lives; while the Navajo themselves, who did not know Homer but had their own scholars and storytellers drawing on tales remarkably like The Illiad, understood that horses count for something more than sheep. They recognized that the choice they were being offered--between useless horses and useful sheep--was a false one, like the choice between being marooned on an island and drowning in the sea. They insisted that while their horses might well be worthless--to claim otherwise was to risk falling into the cost-accounting of sheep units--they were also priceless.

--J. Edward Chamberlin, from If This is Your Land, Where are Your Stories

Random Chesterton Quote

2009-07-07T13:51:00.001-04:00

Misers get up early in the morning; and burglars, I am informed, get up the night before. It is the great peril of our society that all its mechanisms may grow more fixed while its spirit grows more fickle. A man's minor actions and arrangements ought to be free, flexible, creative; the things that should be unchangeable are his principles, his ideals. But with us the reverse is true; our views change constantly; but our lunch does not change. Now, I should like men to have strong and rooted conceptions, but as for their lunch, let them have it sometimes in the garden, sometimes in bed, sometimes on the roof, sometimes in the top of a tree. Let them argue from the same first principles, but let them do it in a bed, or a boat, or a balloon. This alarming growth of good habits really means a too great emphasis on those virtues which mere custom can ensure, it means too little emphasis on those virtues which custom can never quite ensure, sudden and splendid virtues of inspired pity or of inspired candor. If ever that abrupt appeal is made to us we may fail. A man can get use to getting up at five o'clock in the morning. A man cannot very well get used to being burnt for his opinions; the first experiment is commonly fatal. Let us pay a little more attention to these possibilities of the heroic and unexpected. I dare say that when I get out of this bed I shall do some deed of an almost terrible virtue.
For those who study the great art of lying in bed there is one emphatic caution to be added. Even for those who can do their work in bed (like journalists), still more for those whose work cannot be done in bed (as, for example, the professional harpooners of whales), it is obvious that the indulgence must be very occasional. But that is not the caution I mean. The caution is this: if you do lie in bed, be sure you do it without any reason or justification at all. I do not speak, of course, of the seriously sick. But if a healthy man lies in bed, let him do it without a rag of excuse; then he will get up a healthy man. If he does it for some secondary hygienic reason, if he has some scientific explanation, he may get up a hypochondriac.

-from On Lying in Bed

And....a bonus quote

2009-07-02T14:33:00.001-04:00

Because the first may have inaccurately reflected the book...

T

hey had a particular way of addressing each other when the old bitterness was about to flare up.

"Have I offended you in some way, Reverend?" my father would ask.

And his father would say, "No, Reverend, you have not offended me in any way at all. Not at all."

And my mother would say, "Now, don't you two get started."

Quote of the Day

2009-07-02T14:26:00.002-04:00

Lately, I've been reading my way through Marilynne Robinson's Gilead. Amazing book, but I'm not sure how to talk about it. Instead here's a quote. I'll probably put up more later.

When I was a child I actually believed that the purpose of steeples was to attract lightning. I thought they must be meant to protect all the other houses and buildings, and that seemed very gallant to me. Then I read some history, and I realized after a while that not every church was on the ragged edge of the Great Plains, and not every pulpit had my father in it. The history of the church is very complex, very mingled. I want you to know how aware I am of that fact. These days there are so many people who think loyalty to religion is benighted, if it is not worse than benighted. I am aware of that, and I know the charges that can be brought against the churches are powerful. And I know, too, that my own experience of the church has been, in many senses, sheltered and parochial. In every sense, unless it really is a universal and transcendent life, unless the bread is the bread and the cup is the cup everywhere, in all circumstances, and it is a time with the Lord in Gethsemane that comes for everyone, as I deeply believe.

The Magician's Craft

2009-06-09T14:28:00.003-04:00

I've heard there is such a thing as a "short" blog entry. I'm skeptical, but I'll try one.

Stumbled upon an interesting quote from Laura Miller's The Magician's Book:

The Chronicles [of Narnia] are unified, not by anything resembling the exhaustive cultural stuff that Tolkien invented for Middle-earth, not by a single aesthetic or style, and not even, really, by a cogent religious vision, but by readerly desire. Lewis poured into his imaginary world everything that he had adored in the books he read as a child and in the handful of children’s books he had enjoyed as an adult. And there is more, too: treasures collected from Dante, from Spenser, from Malory, from Austen, from old romances and ballads and fairy tales and pagan epics. Everything that Lewis had ever read and loved went into Narnia, and because he was a great reader, these things were as deeply felt by him as actual experiences. In his own way, Lewis, too, believed that everything in the Chronicles was true, and this conviction is what he communicates to his young readers.

I think she has in mind a very important distinction, and one not exclusive to Lewis. "The Medieval" in post-medieval literature has often (like the orient) been considered a place of disorder, anarchy, and chaos. In a sense, that has given medieval fantasies--whether the early Gothic novels of Walpole or the bizarre dream-visions of MacDonald or the postmodern pastiches of Gaiman--a particularly immediate link with "readerly desire" and the experience of fiction. If one can put whatever one wants into a story, without fretting too much about the physical realities of the world, then one is better equipped to put down, well, whatever one wants. But of course, what one wants is often a lot more complex and weird than one might first assume.

But I wonder. Following Tolkien, a whole industry seems to have popped up centered around realistic, non-fantastic otherworlds; that is, books where magic is just an alternate system of physics, with politics, economics, history, religion, and geography fleshed out to a remarkable degree. I enjoy these books. At their best they offer an alternate perspective from which to question our own world while sidestepping the reality of our position in favor of abstract thought. Recently I've greatly enjoyed Robin Hobb's alternative take on the social, economic and political development of a land that doesn't exist. More commonly, these tales offer a believable world in which to see characters who don't exist overcome struggles and become happy. It may be "escapist," but it's a nice break between periods of dealing with an often scarier reality.

But I wonder. While the relatively iron-clad realism of these books seems designed to make them sell, Lewisian fantasy hasn't lost any of its popularity. Think of Gaiman's Stardust (now a Major Motion Picture), in which the characters are rescued by sky-pirates, as Gaiman put it, "because I kinda thought it seemed cool at the time." Or almost any film by Tim Burton, in which creativity is king and continuity a secondary afterthought. Or for that matter the Chronicles of Narnia themselves, which (despite considerable stylistic roughness) continue to sell well even among people who violently disagree with Lewis's religion and politics.

Fantasy always has existed on the edge of dream-land; sometimes I wonder why it seems so obsessed with crystalizing itself into the solidity (and respectable predictability) of our daylight hours.

**edit: well, maybe not so short an entry after all.

Social Oceans -- Robin Hobb, Pirates and Dinner-Guests

2009-05-12T15:09:00.005-04:00

A Renaissance-era pirate's cabin is often seen to be the furthest thing possible from a Austenesque dining room. After all, a pirate's life is full of all sorts of physical skills: tacking against headwinds, being skilled with a blade, knowing what trade routes carry the most valuable and unguarded prizes. Austen-era housewives are traditionally represented as passive, timid things, and their actions seem a part of an entirely different milleau: gathering families for dinners; seating table guests according to their stations and compatibility, always keeping an eye out for good matches for their daughters.

But when it comes to fictional situations, the two are more alike than one might think. The life of a successful literary pirate, like the life of a socially skilled Jane Austen protagonist, is made or broken on a single ability: the ability to judge and make use of both individual psychology and group sociology. Indeed, both the world of the dining room and the outlaw high seas, as found in literature, have another theme in common: they are places with strict and all-encompasing rules and power-structures, that are nevertheless constantly violated and renegotiated when no one seems to be looking.

Long John Silver knew this, of course, and showed his knowledge by his insistence on the ambiguous term "Gentleman o' Fortune." By assuming the name (and genteel mannerisms) of a civilized member of the upper class, he opened up new spaces for himself--he could command troops without resorting to excessive physical violence, but he could also negotiate skillfully with the forces of law and order. Indeed he is perhaps literature's greatest social chamelion, shifting his social identity seamlessly from kindly cook to vicious killer to nautical commander to kindly father-figure.

Mr. Wickham knows the power of social illusions as well. He takes on the role of a dashing soldier, and Lydia accepts it as the truth. Yet when they begin to live together, Darcy, Mr. Bennet, and Elizabeth--three characters who understand the flexible-but-real nature of society--play their own game with social conventions. Lydia and Wickham aren't married out of any religious or moral conviction (as much as D, B, and E might wish they were), but the bribe the forces them into the form of piety allows them to work within society. Wickham becomes, indeed, a "Gentleman o' Fortune," but he's intimidated enough to act the part and so for Lydia's sake (and Elizabeth's!) we are happy.

But in all cases, it is the indeterminate locations that are the source of adventure. This is what makes the desert island negotiations in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies so much fun--people switch from the role of hero to villain, subordinate pirate to ambitious soldier, rum-drinking Englishwoman to practical manipulator. Sometimes the roles work, and sometimes they don't, but the real-world results are always real.

This is a connection I probably wouldn't have made on my own, but lately I've been reading Robin Hobb's Liveship Traders series. In summary, it seems like a very odd hybrid: nautical adventure (and romance) intercut with scenes of a female-only household (the men are at sea) full of clashing personalities and one very difficult teenage daughter. But it all works, since Hobb has a profound understanding of how people work in culture. Whether the question is "should we liberate slaveships when we could be stealing jewels?" or "should I engage in a dumb game of bear-bating in order to look like a "real" crew-member?" or even "what clothes should I wear when meeting my daughter's suitor?", the fundamental issues are the same: "how do I want to appear and what difference does my appearance make?" And the real fun is watching how, in the play of appearances and masks and pretensions successful and unsuccessful, character is revealed and made.

Of course, Hobb does write unapologetic genre fiction; this is a fantasy story, which means action will drive the characters through emotional crisis to some sort of triumphant ending (though not, perhaps, the one we expected.) But it is the tapestry of mixed motives and social skills she weaves along the way that captivates. Hobb writes in the tradition of the greatest historical novelists, but without being enslaved to any particular historical period, she is able to consider touchy topics while minimizing their historical baggage. Hobb takes on: the cultural effects of owning (and transporting) slaves, the psychology of prostitution (from all perspectives involved), the effects of a culture swiftly evolving to strip power from women, the slow erosion of agreements made between a powerful king and his relatively powerless colony, and a vast arrays of stupid or wise decisions found on every level and every side of her unique society. But her fantasy world--and her wise understanding of the play of social identity--keep this from being a straightforward sermon. Instead she provides the reader with experience, of sorts: the ability to see actions which are similar to our own from an alien and relatively disinterested perspective.

(Two brief warnings: Hobb (as you might have guessed from the review) doesn't shirk from clear depictions of either sexuality or violence. Unrelatedly, she suffers from the most common plague of fantasy writers: rushed to publication, her books seem to contain at least 33% more words than are useful to her narrative.)

Real Fantasies

2009-04-08T12:08:00.003-04:00

If I ever get to be a published author, there will be two short-story collections I'll want to release.

The second one, which contains all the stories that don't fit into the strict constraints of the first, may be called "Real Fantasies." In any case, it seems a suggestive term.

For a long time, I've thought about "true fantasy." It's a category that I tend to classify books that move me in a certain way. "True fantasy" isn't about coherent narrative, exciting adventure, fleshed-out characterization, or any of the things that most commonly gets stuck in quotes on the back cover of fantasy books. It's about images and legends which slap you in the face with a sense of place and time that is of its nature heightened; it almost doesn't matter whether what is heightened is peace and comfort or strife and peril.

This isn't what most fantasy books do today--not, I think, because most fantasy authors are bad so much as because that's not their goal. (I actually enjoy thoroughly many books in the "fantasy" section of the bookstore without experiencing any of the particular pleasure I associate with fantasy literature.) Perhaps it is a mis-interpretation of Tolkien; Tolkien's world was profoundly fragmentary, with pieces of the legendary past constantly being discovered in all their wonder, but most fantasists would rather emulate his consistency and complexity. But there is something unique at work when one hears:

Gil-Galad was an elven king
Of him the harpers sadly sing
The last whose realm was fair and free
Between the mountains and the sea.

Nothing is mechanistic, nothing is related to plot, there is no clearly-implied moral for how the reader ought to live. These are stories set off by themselves, even if places (Mordor) and themes eventually overlap with the main narrative. And somehow, in the reading and re-reading of this re-telling of a fictional legend, a measurable, profound emotional experience is created which has nothing to do with Cambellian plot-structure or the moral themes of the book. The narrative seems, for the moment, to reach beyond politics and setting and simply depict some essential element of the joys or sorrows that make up human life. For me, very few authors can do this trick, but it's a trick of which I never grow tired.

But I also think there is a converse to True Fantasy, which is Real Fantasy. If True Fantasy lifts us up to (like Troilus in Chaucer's classic) behold the world as if from orbit in the Heavens, Real Fantasy jerks us back to Earth, and revels in the violence of the process. Pan's Labyrinth juxtaposes Ofelia's childhood imagination with the localized tragedy of militarization, revolution, and counter-revolution. Gaiman starts a story with "Mrs. Whitaker found the Holy Grail, it was under a fur coat." The Bridge to Terabithia highlights the powers of imagination only to show their limited utility in the face of life-shattering tragedy. If True Fantasy departs the story to arrive at lofty abstractions, Real Fantasy moves downward, towards the limited power and perspective of mere mortals instead of Heroes of Legend. This is the realm of the domestic, but also the political (since politics, by definition, refers to that which people have different perspectives on based on their position.) And in a sense, of course, it has always been a part of any memorable fantasy; Tolkien evokes the sensation as well as anyone in his introduction to The Lord of the Rings:

If [WWII] had inspired or directed the development of the legend, then certainly the Ring would have been seized and used against Sauron; he would not have been annihilated but enslaved, and Barad-dur would not have been destroyed but occupied. Saruman, failing to get posession of the Ring, would in the confusion and treacheries of the time have found in Mordor the missing links in his own researches into Ring-lore, and before long he would have made a Great Ring of his own with which to challenge the self-styled Ruler of Middle-earth. In that conflict both sides would have held hobbits in hatred and contempt: they would not long have survived even as slaves.

This is, of course, far from the plot of The Lord of the Rings itself, nor is it the story Tolkien wants to tell. But it is the type of story, Tolkien makes clear, that the reader ought to remake in order to fill out the story's significance, to make it mean something to the reader whose life and experiences are different from the author:

I think that many confuse 'applicability' with 'allegory'; but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author. An author cannot of course remain wholely unaffected by his experience, but the ways in which a story-germ uses the soil of experience are extremely complex and attempts to define the process are at best guesses from evidence that is inadequate and ambiguous.

The reader is free to "apply" The Lord of the Rings to World War II; he or she is also free to apply it in many other ways or to many other things. Politics may be contrary to the beauties of Tolkien's text, but the ability to imagine Middle-Earth in political terms and politics in Tolkien's terms is essential to making the text worth reading.

Which is why I add the "s" to "Real Fantasies." There is an infinity of ways of locating fantasies of nobility in our fallen, ignoble, everyday world. But each act of ironic localization also reminds the reader of the beauty that is overwritten, just as each utopic text reminds the reader of the gap between ideals of beauty and truth and his or her present existence.

Lacan (if I understand him correctly) defines the "Real" as the terrifying realm that is forgotten in our day-to-day life (made up of "symbolic" self-narratives and cultural metanarratives.) One of the joys of poetry is its ability to challenge our understanding, and for a moment to jar us out of the Symbolic and into the Real. But of course, one of the oldest doctrines of Christianity (predating Christ's incarnation by thousands of years) is that there is more than chaos and nonsense beyond the limits of our comprehension. God, too, is Real, but by virtue of his reality and completion he stands beyond the comprehension of any human.

Fantasy is uniquely suited to depict worlds outside of our immediate expectations. In delving further into the "real" it points out its own artificiality; in pursuing ideals it stands ready to condemn and criticize the world in which we live. In both forms, it broadens our mental world, even as it reveals to us the limitations of all our ways of seeing.

Spenser, Battlestar Galactica, and the Ethics of Compassion

2009-03-20T14:18:00.003-04:00

Two things have been occupying a good deal of my time and imagination, lately: The Faerie Queene, and Battlestar Galactica.

Both are exceedingly long, rather challenging works of imaginative fiction that delve fearlessly (okay, Battlestar Galactica does pull some punches, unlike Spenser) into the mind and heart of society and civilization. And both are, or have been seen as explicitly political, and concerned with the question of empire and the amount of viciousness a government is allowed in order to procure peace and justice.

Traditionally, the two are read as polar opposites.

BSG is, of course, like "all Hollywood" (as long as you exclude Pixar, Mel Gibson, and a number of other outliers) trends liberal. And of course the beginning of season 3 is one high point of their liberal focus. Humanity is colonized by cylons, who themselves want to institute a new, more humane and cooperative regime, but are willing to face just about any death toll to form the wastes of humanity into a governable civilization. The good guys, of course, are with humanity and against the cylons....

....and, of course, in desperate times a subgroup decides that their most effective strategies are to use suicide-bombers and target cylons and sell-outs alike. Coming during the current war, the allegory has been read as pretty straightforward: resistance fighters and suicide bombers are humans too, and are driven to such methods by desperation and military oppression. Bush bad terrorists good.

Spenser is, of course, the reverse. His book on "Justice" involves the expected allegorical personification of justice, who solves moral quandries with intelligence and grace. It also involves his pet iron robot Talus, who slaughters men, women and children by the thousands (and with absolutely no hesitation or regret.) Talus isn't a hero, exactly, but in some way he is a superego--it's fine and good for justice to be set out, and in fact it is necessary. But unless you're willing to go through the practical injustices of slaughter and unrestrained force, no one is ever going to follow your program. It is (as has often been put out) not insignificant that Spenser was an Englishman in Ireland--shortly thereafter he wrote a erudite and intricate analysis of foreign policy recommending the decimation of the Irish (through both slaughter and starvation) in order to civilize Ireland. Justice good, peace is obtained through superior firepower and the willingness to follow through with an invasion.

But I wonder--are both readings really getting at what is going on? Can we convienently group authors into "hawks" and "doves," and relegate the rest of their writings to the support of their independent ideologies?

The answer, unsurprisingly, is "yes." As art distributed in the public forums of their perspective times, both the creators of BSG and Edmund Spenser knew damn well what sort of effect their writings would have. That is, the former humanizes an enemy and therefore weakens our national resolve to kill them for their own good. And the latter shoves the reader up against the impotence of any form of justice that is so bound by its own conscience as to never respond to inhumane violence with inhumane violence. As Spenser later wrote, "better is a mischief [a purposeful evil done by a government] then an inconvenience [a situation in which the rule of law is prohibited because of civil unrest.]"

The answer, as well, is "no." Read in their entirety, the two works offer resistance to simplistic interpretations of their prima facia position.

In BSG, of course, both the political (former Education Secretary and now President Roslyn) and military (Admiral Adama) leadership are repeatedly forced to live in a darkly Spenserian world--from the very first episode, when thousands of civilians are killed at Adama's command, simply because that is the only way to ensure the survival of the human race (they are on a nuclear-powered ship hijacked by Cylons and headed towards the fleet.) Ethical lines are constantly blurred, enemies are arrested, tortured, and executed without trial, all simply because civilization must be maintained if human survival is to continue. The fact that such atrocities are never treated as commonplace or above reproach is besides the point--contrary to the Bush-bad-terrorists-good impression, BSG is constantly in dialog with the way in which liberal debates about human rights are only possible in a place kept safe by military and executive violence.

Nor is Spenser less complicated (in fact, he is quite a bit more subtle--but then, he had the benefit of a better rhetorical education and more time for composition and rewriting.) Talus, notably, is neither human nor noble; it is an impersonal force, whose vicious slaughter of enemies nearly always exceeds the immediate mandate that unleashed his power. His scenes are uncomfortable to modern readers not because we have progressed but because they are intended to be uncomfortable. Throughout the rest of the text Spenser valorizes knightly combat, aliging it with St. Paul's description of the armor of God and the abstract allegory of Christian-as-soldier. But Talus is something else entirely. Talus doesn't seek quarter, he doesn't use a Shield of Faith or the Sword of the Lord. Talus harvests bodies with a giant flail, leaves them in bleeding masses on the ground, and continues slaughtering people until reigned in by a horrified justice.

So what, then, do these stories have to say about Guantanamo Bay, about the continual wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, about the possible invasion of Iran, about the nature of surveliance in wartime? Nothing, perhaps, since they're escapist fantasies. And everything. Both texts offer a remarkably similar entrance into the issues, and a remarkable stubbornness to stay comfortably in the realm of easy and clear decisions. If you pay attention, they should make you think twice about the way you vote, the way you talk, and even the way you think about political issues. But in both cases, I'm not sure that the statement "the author would vote for resolution X" is all that relevant to the way we understand the text--or even the way the creator(s), working in the playground of our civilization and its ideas, want us to understand their creations.

How to Begin an SF or Fantasy story

2009-03-20T09:52:00.004-04:00

There is, I think, only one really good beginning to an SF of Fantasy story. It goes like this:

"Reader, imagine this false thing to be true, for just as long as this story lasts. When you're done, then maybe, just maybe, you'll have a bit more wisdom about the world outside our heads. But certainly you'll have a fun time."

Of course, there are a million ways of doing this. "In a hole in a hill there lived a Hobbit" gets the idea across pretty well--we know there aren't Hobbits, but doesn't it sound fun (and maybe there's some Hobbitness in all of us.)

So does "Hwaet! We Gar-Dena in gear-dagum / [th]eod cyninga [th]rym gefrunon" (Loosely: "Lo! We have heard tales of the Spear-Danes, in days of ancient years / those princely-kings.")

Or: "Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun." Facts are aluded to, but the big emphasis is fantasy: there are things going on in the galaxy, interesting, fascinating, unimaginable things, and we provincial earthlings are just left out of the loop.

Or: "Now is the winter of our discontent / turned to glorious summer by the son of York."

Or: "No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intellegences greater than mans and yet as mortal as his own."

Or, by the same author: "The Time Traveler (for so it will be convienent to speak of him) was expounding a recondite matter to us."

Or even "One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that in bed he had been changed into a monstrous verminous bug."

Or, perhaps the most honest (and trenchantly political of them all), Robert Heinlein's declaration: "Once upon a time there was a Martian named Valentine Michael Smith."

None of these statements prove their premises. This isn't Science Fiction in the strictest form, arguing that something must happen or will happen based on technological advances or societal evolution. This is pure fantasy: "Once upon a time there was" when we know very well there wasn't, and almost certainly never will be.

It is also, I think, what everyone wants when they get a story. Here are words, outside of the reader's immediate experience. It's no less true to make any claim than to say, for instance, "On the morning of Friday, December the 13th, Joe Smith stopped by Starbucks on his way to work." Both are imagined, unreal. Both rely, in the end, on the reader's curiosity. Fantasy just admits the fact.

But exploring these ideas, as any reader of SF or fantasy knows, is as fun as figuring out what it is that makes people tick--probably because the two categories overlap. More fun, really, since psychology is always reductive ("your problem is simply that...") whereas fiction suggests possibilites and often leaves open gaps--the reader gains experiences; psychology merely posits theories and abstractions.

And, fortunately, this mode of thinking--honestly positing falsities in order to suggest realities, is not dead. One of the Nebula-award nominated short stories, "The Ray-Gun: A Love Story," begins:

"This is a story about a ray-gun. The ray-gun will not be explained except to say, "It shoots rays."

It's fantasy, but as the story develops it is also about psychology and ethics and literary criticism and love and heroism and who knows what else. But really, that was all in there from the beginning--after all, we were warned that this was a story about a ray-gun.

CR's Law of Political Delay

2009-03-19T16:46:00.003-04:00

When the government and people scream "Crisis!" or "Scandal!" and want dramatic, sudden action.....

don't give it to them.

This applies to wars in which uncertainties about WMD's abound when we're already engaged in a different war that relates to the fight against terrorism.

This applies to the economic collapse, when people want the government to bail out banks NOW.

This applies to the same banks, when they give out bonuses and people want blood and don't care to put too fine a point on contractural law or consequences.

The Greatest XKCD Ever

2009-03-16T15:32:00.006-04:00

For a while, I've read the webcomic xkcd. It manages to combine surreal randomness, technical science-based humor that's occasionally beyond my relatively well-educated generally interest, and just plain old-fashioned silliness. If the essence of humor is surprise, kxcd manages that by simply being utterly and bizarrely unpredictable.

And today it outdid itself:

(Content warning: xkcd can, occasionally, be rather crude. Caveat lector.)

Appropros of Nothing

2009-03-10T18:29:00.004-04:00

For a long time, I've heard of the legendary British newspaper, The Daily Mail.

It was a horrible newspaper when Lewis was around, apparently, manufacturing all sorts of false controversies and making apparently conservative but idiotic claims.

The tradition has supposedly carried on today; certainly they have a yearly tradition of printing headlines CHRISTMAS OUTLAWED IN BRITAIN on the basis of a single small town's ruling from many years ago.

But really, I thought, how bad can it be? I mean, if something stays in business that long, it can't be as idiotic as it's made out to be.

Today I was proved wrong.

Not unexpectedly, they posted a news article about the exchange of gifts between Obama and Brown. Apparently Obama carried on the great tradition of giving cheap gifts to the British PM, by offering him 25 classic American films. (On the plus side, this allegedly included ET: The Extra Terrestrial, so it's a good group of classic American films. This is a great relief. If you don't like ET, as everyone knows, you are either a Communist or a Terrorist. Or possibly a Nazi.)

Or so the Daily Mail claims. Normally, I'd believe them on such a factual and provable assertion, but today I'm inclined not to. They go on to show their equally encyclopedic knowledge of Great American Film Quotations:

"And he will hope that at a General Election the British public do not shun his imploration for another term in office by thinking at the ballot box of the famous line from another of the movies, Casblanca: 'Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn.'"

He should also hope, methinks, that Obama doesn't lead an evil reign of terror and quote from Raiders of the Lost Ark when speaking to Gordon: "Luke, I am your father."

A Lenten Prayer from the Good Old Days

2009-03-09T17:47:00.002-04:00

Haven't posted in a while lately--been working on a lot of projects at once, and the few blogs I've been inspired to write never quite got finished.

But thanks to Em the Luddite, I stumbled upon the last poem of Medieval saint Thomas More. Lent, and it seems for me life, is often a dark, confusing place. Too often, a phrase from a C.S. Lewis poem (addressed simultaneouly to God and Joy Gresham) dominates my life: "I speak of love / A scholar's parrot may speak greek." Yet I think More's words, written on the eve of his death, offer an important balm for troubled times--reminding us in a way more contemporary than the dusty past of the Scriptures of the importance, and primacy, of the two commandments that contain all the rest.

It is easier, sometimes, and certainly healthier, to remind ourselves of the fundamentals rather than drowning in the ambiguities and paradoxes of application.

Rede distinctely
pray deuoutly
syghe depely
suffer pacyently
meke youe lowly
giue no sentenc hastely
speke but rathe* and that truly once
preuent youre spech discretely
do all your dedes in charytye
temtacyon resyst strongly
breke his heade shortly
wepe bytterly
haue compassion tenderly
do good workes busyly
loue perseuerently
loue hertely
loue faythfully
loue god all only
and all other for hym charitably
loue in aduersytye
loue in prosperyty
thinke alway of loue for loue ys non other but god hymselfe. Thus to loue bringeth the louer to loue without ende.

Battlestar Galactica

2009-01-28T00:09:00.005-05:00

The best of cinematic Science Fiction, whether on the big screen or television, has always wrapped itself around a center of the cold isolation of the cosmos--either discovered or created.

Star Trek minimized the cold, but it was there in the silent visual of the Enterprise surrounded by stars, a threatening unknown quickly banished by the words "Captain's log, Stardate..." The Empire Strikes Back majored in it: Luke isolated and captured in the cold caves of Hoth; Han and Leia in a cave that is disturbingly not what they thought; the grimy and utterly unexpected Dagobah; the final isolation of the incomplete team against a distant galactic backdrop. Alien and Blade Runner went further yet, enclosing the viewer within the vast nothingness of space or shoving the reader into the inhumanities of the scientific mass-production of humanity itself. And, for a season and a movie, Joss Whedon created an incredible resonance with a show centered around a makeshift crew of friends creating a fragile pocket of life in the gray heavens between atomizing regulation and inhuman savagery. And yet the abyss itself, whether seen through the lens of Hollywood cinematography or ancient constellation-making, remains a site of beauty and (potentially) transcendent, inhuman adventure. "The heavens declare the glory of the Lord," and if we see our isolation and loss we are still reminded of the glory.

The best of literary Science Fiction, however, has tended in a slightly different direction. Paperback books, in general, are utilitarian rather than beautiful objects. Few purely verbal descriptions of the cosmos, however well-written, can quite create the stark beauty of light and music found in the opening credits to a mediocre television series. And so SF literature during the "golden age" became a literature of ideas: Laws and Robotics (Asimov), Martian philosophies (Heinlein), the cold comforts of humanity in a purely scientific future (Clark.) The best of the ideas went beyond mere games, however clever--they asked readers what it means to be human, and often as not elicited uncomfortable or uncertain responses. SF became a mirror to show humanity, not all at once, but in a multiplicity of fragments both hopeful and damning.

Both, of course, often (but not always) centered around adventurous plots in which the protagonists have to act to survive. But that, as C.S. Lewis pointed out, is what keeps an audience moving through a story. It is rarely if ever what draws in--or keeps--fans of Science Fiction.

Battlestar Galactica, properly speaking, doesn't bring much new to the table. The visuals carry the level of precision and innovation that viewers have come to expect from an A-grade Science Fiction production. The protagonists are sharply and iconicly heroic, as befits adventurer-explorers of space, but at the same time exceptionally realized and deeply flawed. And the screenwriters never fail to come up with new troubles for these heroes to find themselves in--and this time (unlike, say, Star Trek) they seem to be actually collaborating with their Science Adviser rather than just assigning him the task of creating realistic technobabble to support their plot.

But what makes it special is the appropriation of old stuff from the literary side of SF. Human annihilating robotic races are nothing new, nor are robots that look and feel so human as to blur the line between the human and the inhuman. Nor are leaders denied the comfort of easy solutions, political dangers interwoven with fights for survival, or any other parts of the apparatus used to blend Galactaca's adventure stories with deep and challenging ethical questions. Indeed, Adama's show-defining speech at the beginning of the miniseries only echoes the concerns of science fiction since the pulp days: "when we fought the Cylons, we did it to save ourselves from extinction. But we never answered the question "Why?" Why are we as a people worth saving?"

The ambiguous ways of asking, answering, and leaving unanswered the central question which fill the show are nothing new--at least to those who read SF. But its combination with excellent adventure, fully-realized characters, and the full weight of innovative Space Opera cinematography and FX may very well be original. In any case, it makes for an immensely absorbing (if noticeably hybrid) television series.

I'm only in season 2, but I think I'm already sold on watching the full, four-season journey.

Ever wonder what The Little Mermaid would be like if she were a pirate-vampire?

2009-01-16T11:09:00.002-05:00

Wonder no more. Apparently someone figured it out, and wrote an awards-nominated short story about the subject.

Ironic Quote of the Year

2009-01-15T22:43:00.000-05:00

"Murdering the innocent to advance an ideology is wrong every time, everywhere."

-George W. Bush

Reading from Christmas Break

2009-01-13T11:39:00.001-05:00

It's been a long time since I blogged. I'm back, for at least the moment.

Children of Men is one of my favorite movies. It is SF at its best: an open-eyed meditation on the future and its horrors; a portrait of diverse, lovable characters acting at cross-purposes; an affirmation of life in the midst of our worst fears of horror and death. It is the type of poetry we need, I think, to make sense of our world and allow us to inhabit it as humans. It also involves the most brilliant use of a camera that I have ever seen.

When people ask me why I love it so much, I generally talk about The Shot. The first one. If you've seen the movie, you'll remember--it takes place in the car, they run into an ambush, and everything--character psychologies, the sense of what sort of world this is, the sense of what sort of adventure story we're going to watch--is shattered at least twice in a single, unblinking shot of the camera. As a piece of storytelling, it is utterly cinematic--all the words that are spoken or shouted are merely there as backdrop; we react to the events, expressions, sights and sounds of the very visual actions unfolding on a screen. And viciously, almost immaculately effective. As a technical exercise it is an unimaginable tour de force--one wonders how it is possible for that many actors, vehicles and special effects to be organized into place and captured so perfectly by the ever-moving camera. The Shot, I would propose, is a textbook in itself of what it means to "effectively use the medium of film."

But The Shot isn't the part that I remember most vividly. What I remember is the following conversation:

"I was carrying a baby up the stairs. I started crying. I forgot what they look like they're so beautiful. They're so tiny."
A bullet impacts above the man's head. With a look of hate he fires back at his assailants.
"I knew you was wrong! You thought I could be peaceful. But how can you be peaceful, when they try and take away your dignity?"
He points the gun at Theo.
"We need that child! We need the baby we need him!"
"It's a girl, Luke."
"Yeah, well I had a sister."

The scene is nowhere near as innovative as The Shot. Here the visuals (however perfectly designed) are background--all we need to know is that Luke is desperate and being fired upon. Out of context, the line "How can you be peaceful when they try and take away your dignity?" evokes the worst of Hollywood trailer tell-don't-show. But in context it is heartbreaking--an anatomy of the human spirit struggling for compassion and, in the end, failing to cling to anything other than group identity and violence. It's a scene that tells the truth of cruelty present throughout the world. More importantly, it rings true.

*****

I suppose the last two books I've read, Persepolis and The Name of the Wind, tend towards those two polarities--one a work of personal courage and pain, the other a work of immaculate craftsmanship.

The Name of the Wind is, simply put, the perfect fantasy novel. It taps into the same sense of myth and wonder that only Tolkien and LeGuin have managed to evoke. And even though it follows one of my least favorite patterns--the progression of a brilliant and unbelievably talented boy into the brilliant and unbelievably talented Hero of the Age--I was never anything but entranced. The hero Kvothe (K as in Q, V as in U) is outrageously brilliant, but his failtures are as immense as his successes. He nearly reaches Harry Potter levels of dumbness when it comes to girls, and yet his caution and aprehension may actually be quiet wisdom. And we see enough of his uncertainty, humility and compassion to make him fully human--even as events unfold to turn him into the public legend, mythologized in his time.

But what makes the novel perfect is its craftsmanship and storytelling. The novel begins with a dedication:

To my mother, who taught me to love books.
Who opened the door to Narnia, Pern and Middle-Earth.

To my father, who taught me that if I was going to do something, I should take my time and do it right the first time.

What is impressive is that he does. Everything one could want in a fantasy novel is here--epic tragedy, schoolboy friendship, hillarious humor, romance, desperate fights, an intricate magic system, and a story that never lags. Yet everything is set into an incredible order. In 722 pages of writing, it seems almost as if not a single word, phrase, scene, event, or character is flat. That sort of the impression is the result of but one thing--work. Years of hard labor, cutting out words until only the story remains.

I've only read it once, and it's only the first of a three-volume work, so I can't yet evaluate it accurately. It has the potential to be the best fantasy since The Lord of the Rings. And whether or not it lives up to that potential, anyone who reads for pleasure and isn't alergic to fantasy really ought to read this book.

*****

Persepolis is a work of a different order. Marjane Strapi will not, I think, ever be hailed as one of the great masters of the comic book medium. She did, however, find a corner of it that works perfectly for her story.

Persepolis is the story of her childhood in Iran, drawn in a simple but evocative style remniscent of Peanuts. It's the story of political betrayl, failed promise, war, the loss of faith in Marxism and Islam, friends and family dead and tortured, and stubborn refusals to bow before the ideologies of a nation. As such, it could've been Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: self-indulgent, "literary," self-consciously elite and fiercely challenging. But instead, it reads much more like....Peanuts. We see amusing people, hillarious classroom hijinks, and a multifaceted, good hearted, and deceptively straightforward account of life, family, and friendships.

Portrait of the Iraqui Dissident as a Young Woman would've been far easier to write. Strapi's ability to maintain the funny, warm-hearted pleasantry of her style even as the backdrop gets more and more horrific is an act of pure moral courage. This is the type of story that needs to be told; one that engages with the reader as a human, avoiding the temptation to shout or denounce in favor of a winning understated simplicity.

I don't know that I'll ever read another of Strapi's stories--I'm not sure that she could ever equal herself. But if Faulkner is right in claiming that every author has only one story to tell, she has done a remarkable job of finding it rather quickly. Persepolis may be more of a readers' book than a writers', but it is nearly perfect at being itself. And therefore well worth reading.

Realistic Magicism in Tolkien and Modern Fantasy

2008-08-12T13:20:00.001-04:00

Tolkien is an interesting grandfather to modern fantasy. Namely, he relates to the field he started in exactly the way H.G. Wells didn't.

On the surface, one might expect a number of similarities. After all, both Wells and Tolkien lived in an England that is quite alien to contemporary life, and which profoundly influenced their texts (how many Wells stories center around a discussion in a Victorian library?) Yet as LeGuinn points out, the driving force behind Wells's SF is essentially modern in its worldview. "Wells was the first writer of real note to write fiction as a scientist, from within science, whether than as an outsider looking on with excitement or complacency or horror at the revelations and implications of the scientific revolution of the nineteenth century." Despite his enormous sloppiness regarding the nuts-and-bolts of his invented scientific processes, Wells establishes the spirit of SF from Robert Heinlein to William Gibson as an exploration of humanity's newfound and newly-recognized ability to reshape its fate--for good or ill--with technology. A modern SF reader may laugh at the naieve science behind Wells's time machine, for instance, yet the far-future war between two equally alien forms of humanity, or the sublimely beautiful account of the ending of the world, often come across as fresh as if they'd been written today.

Tolkien, at least according to the dominant narrative, is quite the opposite. As an Oxford don, as a Medievalist, and as a Roman Catholic he repeatedly insists on his nature being rooted in ways of looking at the world that are far removed from Modernism. "It is a curse having the epic temperament in an overcrowded age, devoted to the snappy bits." His fiction, then, is largely seen as a sort of reactionary escapism by its detractors and as repackaged ancient wisdom by those (from whatever political background) who embrace it. Central to this retroactive mindset, certainly, is Tolkien's immense ability to craft utopian communities from a mix of history and magical legend. Neither Hobbits nor Elves are precisely unfallen, but their essential bits of "magic" combine with their pastoral nature to reveal a community distanced both from the harsh mechanisms of the industrialized 20th Century and the harsh power-politics and political expediency of the history 20th Century scholarship came to reveal. Elves make things that are impossibly beautiful, it is true, but to them it is nothing but an extension of their nature, and in many ways of the natural surroundings in which they live. It is perhaps no wonder, then, that so much of the American countercultural Left embraced the visions of the conservative Roman Catholic as a possible alternative to Cold War jingoism and inhuman (not to mention antienvironmental) commercialism. To steal from the title of LeGuin's 1976 "different kind of love story," Tolkien offered the idea that a near-Eden could be imagined that was "Very Far Away from Anywhere Else," and the refreshing powers (and popularity) of his texts proved that such exercises were not without use in our modern society.

Yet those contemporary authors who seem to best understand Tolkien seem to consistently take a different tack, reverentially evoking the unironic purities he imagined even as they place them into an ironic relationship with contemporary life. Tad Williams Otherland essentially recapitulates the central conflicts of The Lord of the Rings within a virtual-reality internet, but the wonder and beauty of the lands visited by the protagonists is constantly marred by postcolonial realities, globalized greed, and their foundation on heinous crimes against an innocent child. Neil Gaiman frequently cites the formative effect that Tolkien (as well as Lewis and Chesterton) had on his childhood, yet magic in his stories is almost always associated with the tensions and inconsistencies of Freudian/Lacanian psychology and thereby anchored, no matter how far it may soar at any given moment, within the contemporary self-view of modern humanity. And for LeGuin herself, probably the best reader of Tolkien to write post-Tolkien fantasy, realms of the imagination may be liberating, but are rarely allowed to exist without some specifically-defined purpose within reality. The Earthsea cycle creates a world of immense sociological realism in which the cycles of life are recapitulated with sensitivity and insight, but few readers long to dwell in Earthsea. The Beginning Place offers an exquisitly Tolkienesque twilight realm of rest and healing, but only with the strong caveat that the place is just an alternate "road to the city"--that is, fantasy self-consciously serves as another path towards maturity, love, and self-realization.

But perhaps the fully-realized world is not precisely what Tolkien really brought to us anyway, and perhaps those authors who are also his most sensitive readers saw something that isn't immediately apparent. The thought came to me when I was thinking about the musical adaptation of Gregory Maguire's Wicked. Elphaba, as everyone knows, was born green--but the question is at one point opened why she was born green. I mean, sure, her father gave her mother a magically green elixir on the night of her conception, but maybe it was some sort of genetic aberation. After all, her father is (like Dorothy) from Earth, not Oz.

The pattern is an interesting one. As in many detective stories, a phenomenon exists that may be explained quite easy as the result of magic, or perhaps more elaborately as the product of a handful of improbable-but-mundane processes. In El Labyrinto del Fauno, Ofelia's mother might be healed by the magical properties of mandrakes, but really couldn't it just be a relapse that happens to occur only when the mandrake is placed under her bed? And thinking back at this narrative ploy, I can't imagine an author who uses it more generously than Tolkien himself. Faramir is not alone--is in great company, in fact--when he "saw, or it seemed that I saw, a boat floating on the water, glimmering grey, a small boat of a strange fashion with a high prow..." In a traditional detective story (according to Woolfe the most Modern of genres, since the main character is dead when the curtain rises) the conclusion ties everything in a nice, clean knot, announcing the triumph of scientific reason over nature and the imagination. Tolkien's persistent engagement with dual possibilities is not, of course, unique--Conrad teems with such tensions between grim reality and life-giving ideals--but Tolkien's placement of the imaginary on equal (if not superior) footing with the mundane is perhaps his greatest gift to 20th-Century literature. In a world of increased mechanization of thought and life, Tolkien reminds us of the possibility that life may be better than we have made it, hinting that the green grass may yet be "a great matter of legend, though we walk on it under the light of day."

Nine Spy-Novel Titles of the English Language

2008-07-27T22:02:00.000-04:00

Many people consider the English language to be among the most difficult to master on the basis of its bewildering tendency to combine features (and words) from a large number of different languages. I wouldn't know, really, being a native English speaker myself. What I do know, however, is that the terms used to describe English grammar tend to be rather....more ominous than perhaps they ought to be. Like terms from a spy novel or something.

So, without further ado, I give you Nine Spy-Novel Titles of the English Language.

An Indefinite Modifier (Working Title: The Definite Modifier) -- The book starts as a Ludlumesque thriller centered around the plot of three CIA agents to manipulate geopolitics for financial gain. Yet as John Smith uncovers more of the mystery, he enters into a world of deception in which the unreal exerts an alarming influence on the commonplace, and comes to question his comforting assumptions about the nature of power and truth.

An Impersonal Pronoun -- John Smith is drawn out of retirement for a second investigation by a pair of agents claiming to work for the NSA. But who are these men, exactly? The answer to that question is far more complicated than it at first appears, and allows the author to investigate more fully the of isolation and inhumanity produced by our modern society.

Dangling Participles -- John Smith's wife has been kidnapped by person or persons unknown. John cautiously follows the ransom directions, only to find an empty park instead of the expected clandestine rendezvous. Soon John finds himself captured once again by the web of deception he thought he had left behind forever. In the course of the investigation, John begins to piece together an alternative vision of his personal history. Did his wife know of long-dead affair when it was happening? And was she herself something other than the sweet and innocent darling of his youth. The third book is considered by critics either to be the most daring or the least coherent, as the focus turns ruthlessly inward leading up to the conclusion in which all results seem equally impossible--and John is left at the mercy of the unknowable systems of modern society.

Next, we have the series considered closest to the Modifier trilogy. The Dependent Clause trilogy seems purposefully to offer a somewhat more optimistic perspective on the world even as it revisits the same themes of impersonal power-systems and pervasive corruption.

The Dependent Clause -- When up-and-coming CIA analyst James Doe was invited to meet with the Director for "a proposal over drinks," he was considered it the opportunity of a lifetime. Yet the resultant promotion brings with it a number of unexpected results. Another cloak-and-dagger thriller in which nothing is as it seems.

Correlative Conjunctions -- As an Irish Catholic raised during the Cold War, James found it hard to imagine a more diabolic character than that of a Vodka-swilling agent of the KGB. That is, until Ivan Vadislov arrived on his doorstep with documents whose veracity and import James found impossible to deny. Their budding friendship is one of the unexpected joys of this book, marking the beginning of the author's lighter period even as the novel ends on a note of tragedy.

Parallel Construction -- In the wake of the conclusion to Correlative Conjunctions, James and Ivan find their trust in each other--and in humanity--put to the test as they race against time to stop a far worse disaster. Largely considered the author's most "commercial" work, Parallel Construction nevertheless offers, in its great variety of fleshed-out characters, the author at his most human.

And finally, since the Vatican historically has not been without political intrigue, I figure a Latin-themed series might not go amiss:

The Ablative of Association

The Genitive of Posession

The Dative of Separation

But I'll leave the plot summaries for those up to you, my gentle readers!

Batman Can Still BREATHE in SPACE...Because He Can Take It

2008-07-20T23:15:00.002-04:00

I try to never judge superhero films too definitively upon first viewing, but considering Batman is equal parts superhero adventure and crime drama, I'm going to go out on a limb: The Dark Knight is a film that can serve as a textbook for how to Do a Film Right. (Not to mention one based on an instantly recognizable character seen in three film incarnations, multiple cartoon incarnations, and a vast sea of comic books in a variety of styles.)

That isn't to say that I necessarily enjoyed it more than any of this summer's movies. The lonesome WALL-E amidst the far-future wasteland of Earth still wins as the summer's most memorable piece of cinematic poetry. Indiana Jones in front of a mushroom cloud (however contrived the conditions) is still probably my favorite freeze-frame. Iron-Man is still what it is--a slick, unpretentious blockbuster with the perfect lead and the revolutionary idea of realistically filming a comic-book-style script.

But Dark Knight is much bigger, much more of a balancing act, and therefore much more impressive when it does everything just about right. The action is spectacular, both in visual spectacle and in constant creativity, in a way only hinted at in Batman Begins. The drama is equal to the best of the comics (that I've read), balancing three main heroes, Joker, and a host of small villains while capturing the uncertain, flawed, and morally complicated heroism of The Dark Knight. Batman gets to be a hero, sure, using his almost unlimited intellect and technology to pull acceptably happy endings out of impossibly compromised situations. But not all the time, and (unlike Spider-Man and most other superheroes) a great deal of tragedy is the direct result of his courage and decisiveness under fire. Batman isn't just a normal guy stuck in an exceptionally difficult situation--he is a crusader for justice whose illegal vigilantism (as he learns early in the film) is a sword that cuts both ways.

And so, yes, Dark Knight lives up to his promise. Yes, Harvey-Dent's story (whose ending any Batman fan knows going in) strikes the perfectly expected balance between heroism and villany, with the Nolan-esque contemplations of the fine line separating the two. (This is, after all, the director whose breakthrough hit was Memento.) And yes, Heath Ledger inhabits The Joker so thoroughly that it seems unimaginable for anyone else to take over the role. But what holds the film together, as it turns out, is an equally sensitive ear for goodness and light. It may be hard to notice over the noise and violence, but Dark Knight is actually funnier than its predecessor, with a multitude of throwaway jokes that slyly slip in to pad out the constant stream of operatic drama. And when push comes to shove, it turns out that while the huddled masses may not precisely share Batman's commitment to justice, they are capable of acts of quiet heroism that offer a potential alternative to Joker's gleefully nihilistic perspective of the human race.

So is the film a crime-drama about the ability for circumstances to corrupt the most apparently noble of men? An investigation into the nature of humanity and their dangerous need for charismatic leaders? Or just an escapist fantasy of a man so smart, tough, and dedicated that he can almost single-handedly take on the burden of a sinful city pushed towards collapse by a demonic monster? Really, it's all of this and more--and on first viewing, at least, it is hard to think of a single false move in the 152 minutes between the opening explosion and the final ride into the midnight darkness.

Sidenote: The Dark Knight is rated PG-13 "for intense sequences of violence and some menace," which has to be the most hillarious sounding rationale for rating since Ice-Age ("rated PG for mild peril." Mild PERIL. Really.) But if any movie has to be rated PG-13 for menace, I suppose this would be the one--Joker's knives themselves should be nominated for study by any filmmaker interested in how to create a feeling of horrific violence without showing a single violent action. It's quite fascinating, in a way, to watch Nolan and Ledger toy with the audience, reminding the viewer that even in a summer blockbuster it's what they don't see that's always the scarier part.

**EDIT:
Also, keep your eyes open for a certain scene at the end that is specifically orchestrated to thumb its nose at Tim Burton's Batman. Now I like both Tim Burton and Batman separately, but I found the sly dig at the Burton series' shallow morality immensely satisfying nonetheless.

A Long-Delayed Rediscovery

2008-07-02T22:08:00.002-04:00

The following reproduction of a news article is, in my estimation, almost certainly fictitious.

However, true or not, it is the funniest courtroom scene I have ever read. I saw it many years ago, read it, and attempted multiple times (in vain) to find it on the internet. Now located, I place it on my blog for the betterment of humanity.

a man named Chrysler is accused of stealing more than 40,000 coat hangers from hotels round the world. He admits his guilt, but in his defence he claims that - well, perhaps it would be simpler just to bring you a brief extract from the trial. We join the case at the point where Chrysler has just taken the stand.

Counsel: What is your name?

Chrysler: Chrysler. Arnold Chrysler.

Counsel: Is that your own name?

Chrysler: Whose name do you think it is?

Counsel: I am just asking if it is your name.

Chrysler: And I have just told you it is. Why do you doubt it?

Counsel: It is not unknown for people to give a false name in court.

Chrysler: Which court?

Counsel: This court.

Chrysler: What is the name of this court?

Counsel: This is No 5 Court.

Chrysler: No, that is the number of this court. What is the name of this court?

Counsel: It is quite immaterial what the name of this court is!

Chrysler: Then perhaps it is immaterial if Chrysler is really my name.

Counsel: No, not really, you see because--

Judge: Mr Lovelace?

Counsel: Yes, my lord?

Judge: I think Mr Chrysler is running rings round you already. I would try a new line of ttack if I were you.

Counsel: Thank you, my lord.

Chrysler: And thank you from ME, my lord. It's nice to be appreciated.

Judge: Shut up, witness.

Chrysler: Willingly, my lord. It is a pleasure to be told to shut up by you. For you, I would--

Judge: Shut up, witness. Carry on, Mr Lovelace.

Counsel: Now, Mr Chrysler - for let us assume that that is your name - you are accused of purloining in excess of 40,000 hotel coat hangers.

Chrysler: I am.

Counsel: Can you explain how this came about?

Chrysler: Yes. I had 40,000 coats which I needed to hang up.

Counsel: Is that true?

Chrysler: No.

Counsel: Then why did you say it?

Chrysler: To attempt to throw you off balance.

Counsel: Off balance?

Chrysler: Certainly. As you know, all barristers seek to undermine the confidence of any hostile witness, or defendant. Therefore it must be equally open to the witness, or defendant, to try to shake the confidence of a hostile barrister.

Counsel: On the contrary, you are not here to indulge in cut and thrust with me. You are only here to answer my questions.

Chrysler: Was that a question?

Counsel: No.

Chrysler: Then I can't answer it.

Judge: Come on, Mr Lovelace! I think you are still being given the run-around here. You can do better than that. At least, for the sake of the English bar, I hope you can.

Counsel: Yes, my lord. Now, Mr Chrysler, perhaps you will describe what reason you had to steal 40,000 coat hangers?

Chrysler: Is that a question?

Counsel: Yes.

Chrysler: It doesn't sound like one. It sounds like a proposition which doesn't believe in itself. You know -- Perhaps I will describe the reason I had to steal 40,000 coat hangers; Perhaps I won't. Perhaps I'll sing a little song instead.

Judge: In fairness to Mr Lovelace, Mr Chrysler, I should remind you that barristers have an innate reluctance to frame a question as a question. Where you and I would say, 'Where were you on Tuesday?', they are more likely to say, 'Perhaps you could now inform the court of your precise whereabouts on the day after that Monday?'. It isn't, strictly, a question, and it is not graceful English but you must pretend that it is a question and then answer it, otherwise we will be here for ever. Do you understand?

Chrysler: Yes, my lord.

Judge: Carry on, Mr Lovelace.

Counsel: Mr Chrysler, why did you steal 40,000 hotel coat hangers, knowing as you must have that hotel coat hangers are designed to be useless outside hotel wardrobes?

Chrysler: Because I build and sell wardrobes which are specially designed to take nothing but hotel coat hangers.

Sensation in court. More of this tomorrow, I hope.

There's no place like a hotel

Yesterday I brought you part of an extraordinary High Court case in which Mr Arnold Chrysler stands accused of stealing thousands of hotel clothes hangers. His defence is that he manufactures wardrobes that can only take hotel clothes hangers, and he can only get hotel hangers from hotels. As a service to any of us who have ever taken anything home from a hotel, I bring you a further extract from this trial today.

Counsel: Now, Mr Chrysler, am I right in saying that hotel clothes hangers do not have hooks on top but little studs that will only work on special racks?

Chrysler: That is correct.

Counsel: This design arose because so many hotel hangers were stolen.

Chrysler: That is correct.

Counsel: And they had no option but to change the design to stop them being stolen?

Chrysler: That is not correct.

Counsel: That is not correct?

Chrysler: No. The world of hotels had not one, but two options. They could change the design of the way they were hung, yes, but they could also cheapen the hangers. They could very easily have given guests inexpensive plastic or metal hangers they would never have missed when they were stolen. But that would have lowered the tone of the hotel. Hotels, even hotels in a chain, like to have a touch of class. They like giving guests high-class solid wood hangers. It makes them feel good about themselves. It also makes them worth stealing.

Counsel: And people come to you, do they, asking you to make special wardrobes so that they can use stolen clothes hangers?

Chrysler: It isn't so much the fact that they are stolen that makes them attractive. You have to remember that many top businessmen spend more of their time in hotels than in their own home. They become used to hotel life. They think of hotels as home. Therefore they become used to hotel hangers and think of them as normal, and on the rare occasions when they spend some time at home they canâ€™t stand these fiddly things with hooks which you and I may think of as normal but which the business traveller thinks of as loose-fitting and badly designed. So they come to me and get me to make a hotel-style wardrobe.

Counsel: Are you seriously suggesting that there are people who prefer hotel life to home life?

Chrysler: Certainly. A lot of businessmen would never go home if they had the chance. So when they get home they like to recreate the hotel experience in their own house. Many of my clients have their own mini-bars in their bedrooms. They have TV sets at the end of the bed on a raised shelf, often with an adult sex channel on it. All their bathroom products come in wrappers and are thrown away each day. I have even known people in their own home put out 'Do Not Disturb' notices on the door of their own bedroom.

Counsel: Stolen, presumably, from some hapless hotel.

Chrysler: Never call a hotel hapless. They know what they are doing. No hotel loses money willingly. They may have things taken from them, but the stuff that guests leave behind is just as valuable.

Counsel: Are you serious when you say that clients of yours drink from their own minibars in their own bedrooms in their own homes?

Chrysler: Certainly. And just as in a hotel, they grumble about the price and size of the bottles, and the absence of ice.

Counsel: So why don't they get a proper fridge in their bedroom?

Chrysler : Because then it wouldn't be like a hotel.

Judge: Tell me, Mr Chrysler, do these businessmen of yours also have Gideon Bibles by their bedside at home?

Chrysler: Many of them, sir.

Judge: And where do you get the Gideon Bibles from?

Chrysler: Alas, they, too, have to be taken from hotels.

Judge: Then why are you not also up on a charge of Bible-stealing?

Chrysler: Because the Bibles do not belong to the hotels. They belong to the Gideon Society. And the Gideon Society has decided not to prosecute me, but to forgive me and tell me to go and sin no more.

Judge: And have you sinned no more?

Chrysler: Alas, no.

Source: http://www.ocnus.net/artman2/publish/Light_Side_14/The_Man_who_Stole_40_000_Coat_Hangers.shtml

(If I recall correctly, the original article was far longer, but I'm happy to have found this much.)

WALL-E, an Addendum

2008-06-28T14:58:00.000-04:00

WALL-E is not the first time Pixar has dealt with issues politically and culturally active in America.

The Incredibles originally was supposed to start with a different scene--Mrs. Incredible at a dinner party, being subtly mocked because she was "only" a stay-at-home Mom and didn't do anything "important." The scene was later replaced with their more ingenious beginning, but it formed one aspect of the "politics" of the film: families are sometimes more important in their rough-hewn individualities than any overarching Plans to make everyone equally "incredible" by denying individuality. It was contraversial points like this that gave its cutting catchphrase: "if everyone is incredible, then nobody is," its strangely refreshing heft.

Cars was even more surprising in its positive portrayl of the urban mindset; I don't want to attack the Democrat nominee here, but I think Hollywood (despite their obvious love of the photogenic qualities of small-town life) could be categorized by his famous slip of the tongue: small town folks are just "bitter, clinging to guns and religion." Cars was, essentially, the counter that needed to be said: many people who live in small towns cling to a lot of things--because they know how life has been successfully lived and really don't care for risky plans to change things. Which is, as anyone who's stood in a grocery-store checkout would know, more than can be said for most of Hollywood. Cars simply refused to take a patronizing view of small-town existence; even the tribute to Dale Earnhart came off as genuine and heartfelt.

I sometimes wonder if the exceptionally low ratings critics tended to give to Cars represents such a urban bias against a poetry that wasn't city- (or future-) centric.

And then there's WALL-E, a film with an equally honest, equally heartfelt Green message. Which also happens to be the Message of the Year in Tinseltown lately, uniting everyone from Al Gore to M. Night Shamylan. It is also, by far, the most specifically preachy movie Pixar has ever released, filled with an almost religious awe in the face of biodiversity in both dialog and all-important visuals. I'm not saying that it's an Issue Film in the way that the horrible, terrible, excruciating Evil Film That Must Not Be Named is an Issue Film, but ecological concerns are far more foregrounded than any other political claims in other movies.

I happen to agree with Pixar here--simple environmental responsibility is crucially important, and something that our beloved "free" economic system obviously fails to implement on its own. But I wonder if this is a sign that even Pixar is somewhat tied down by the tyranny of Tinseltown Political Fashion.

Summer of Popcorn 4 (skipping 3): WALL-E

2008-06-28T14:56:00.000-04:00

All fiction, taken as fiction, works in so far as it manages to touch on our fundamental and internal desires (whether universal, personal, or cultural.) The wooden boy becomes more than his parts but may return to wood. A young man, previously living a drab and sheltered existence, sets out to find his way in the world. A kiss brings the sleeping princess to life. Such stories, though admittedly made up, seem to consistently mean, or at least ask, something important. What does it mean to be human? What does it mean to live in society? What is it that fills us with a sensation of life?

Speculative Fiction (at least at its most self-reflective), tends to take the basic themes of legend and fairy tale and re-introduce them in a context that allows us to believe their literal plausibility. What is the difference between a replicant (who thinks he is human) and a real human? What happens to an intelligent and highly moral boy who slaughters an alien race to save humanity? Is Ofelia's final triumphant vision of virtue rewarded and grace received really in some way more real and human than the senseless cruelty of the Spanish Civil war?

WALL-E opens with a beautiful view of the cosmos, oddly enough sounding in tune with the hopeful city-centric music of "Put on Your Sunday Clothes." For a moment, we are in the world of pure legend/fairy-tale/Space Opera--where once the town was the location of life (filled with "sparkling lights") now the cosmos are on display. Yet as the camera moves to Earth, the music shifts sharply towards the ironic. We plummet out of the heavens through a haze of space-junk and into a trash-dominated wasteland out of touch with the sublimities of the heavens. Even before the opening song ends, it is but one small voice amidst the great silence of Earth. The empty cityscape brings with it eerily empty music, its loneliness only emphasized by occasional burst of cheerful music that accompanies WALL-E's brief appearances within the lonely landscape.

[Reader be warned: After this point, there be spoilers]

It is a brilliant opening, and one whose potential the rest of the film tries in vain to fulfill. On the one hand, there is the story we saw in trailers, the story of cheerful music amongst the stars. This is the story of WALL-E the robot, the ultimate underdog who finally learns the meaning of the love he has longed for in a grand adventure among the stars. But on the other, we have the story of Earth and humanity--a story of emptiness and lethargy, of an Earth that stands barren and an obese species that does (and can do) almost nothing except sit on floating chairs and sip their meals from a cup.

In execution, the first story is Pixar's first priority, a not unexpected choice considering that even The Incredibles, Pixar's previous flirtation with sociological pessimism, was ultimately a story of self-realization. This straightforward story is bolstered by their most courageous directorial decision yet--the limitation of significant dialog only to the supporting human characters. Instead of words, details of animation tell us the story: EVA's stylishly triggerhappy acts of large-scale destruction; WALL-E's tendency to quiver and then collapse into a box at the first sign of danger; the constant anthromorphisms by which EVA coldly rejects WALL-E's nervous advances; the climactic breathtaking dance around the spaceship Axiom. Pixar has always featured an unprecedented depth and ingenuity in their animations, so the lack of speech serves only to highlight what has always been their greatest strength.

Yet the second story is not such an unqualified success. An overweight, lazy, consumerist collection of nearly-identical blobs of humanity is, it turns out, not nearly so likable a protagonist as a small, anthropomorphic garbage-collecting robot. And perhaps that is why Pixar avoided the obvious conflict of the colonist's struggle to love and re-colonize Earth, and instead created a HAL-like autopilot which can only be dealt with by the cuter robots (along with the captain.)

Of course, it may be that realistic portraits of our darker thoughts about humanity are not necessarily a good fit for a bit of kids summer entertainment, and certainly WALL-E's triumphantly happy ending is a refreshing counter to the avalanche of depressing eco-themed movies released lately. In the end, the robotic antics and elements of satire were enough to leave me more than glad I'd seen the movie--it's almost certainly the best movie this summer so far--but like the latest Indiana Jones, regret over the movie that one couldn't help but imagine somewhat mars the otherwise well-crafted summer film.

Quotes from Gaudy Night

2008-06-21T18:49:00.002-04:00

Lots of thoughts over the summer, but not much time for posting. In the meantime, some quotes from the inimitable Dorothy Sayers.

"Look here! I admire you like hell, but I believe you're all wrong. I'm sure one should do one's own job, however trivial, and not persuade one's self into doing somebody else's, however noble."
(48)

"Yes. Best intentions no security. They never are, of course. You may say you won't interfere with another person's soul, but you do--merely by existing. The snag about it is the practical difficulty, so to speak, of not existing. I mean, here we all are, you know, and what are we to do about it?"

"Was this what lived in the tower set on the hill? Would it turn out to be like Lady Athaliah's tower in frolic wind, the home of frustration and perversion and madness? 'If thine eye be single, the whole body is full of light'--but was it physically possible to have the single eye? "What are you to do with the people who are cursed with both hearts and brains?" For them, stereoscopic vision was probably a necessity; as for whom was it not? (This was a foolish play on words, but it meant something.) Well, then, what about the business of choosing one way of life? Must one, after all, seek a compromise, merely to preserve one's sanity? Then one was doomed for ever to this miserable inner warfare, with confused noise and garments rolled in blood--and, she reflected drearily, with the usual war aftermath of a debased coinage, a lowered efficiency and unstable conditions of government."
(74-5)

"With tobacco and literature one could face out any situation, provided, of course, that the book was not written in an unknown tongue."
(287)

"'You would have to abandon the jig-saw kind of story and write a book about human beings for a change.'
'I'm afraid to try that, Peter. It might go too near the bone.'
'It might be the wisest thing you could do.'
'Write it out and get rid of it?'
'Yes.'
'I'll think about that. It would hurt like hell.'
'What would that matter, if it made a good book?'"
(291)

"What does it matter if it hurts like hell, so long as it makes a good book."
(347)

"Now that you have the age of national self-realisation, the age of colonial expansion, the age of the barbarian invasions and the age of the decline and fall, all jammed cheek by jowl in time and space, all armed alike with poison-gas and going through the outward motions of an advanced civilisation, principles have become more dangerous than passions. It's getting uncommonly easy to kill people in large numbers, and the first thing a principle does--if it is really a principle--is to kill somebody.

...One may either hulloo on the inevitable, and be called a bloodthirsty progressive; or one may try to gain time and be called a blood-thirsty reactionary. But when blood is their argument, all argument is apt to be--merely bloody."
(317-8)

"I do know that the worst sin--perhaps the only sin--passion can commit, is to be joyless. It must lie down with laughter or make its bed in hell--there is no middle way."
(436)

"Here then at home, by no more storms distrest,
Folding laborious hands we sit, wings furled;
Here in close perfume lies the rose-leaf curled,
Here the sun stands and knows not east nor west,
Here no tide runs; we have come, last and best,
From the wide zone in dizzing circles hurled
To that still centre where the spinning world
Sleeps on its axis, to the heart of rest.

Lay on thy whips, O Love, that me upright,
Poised on the perilous point, in no lax bed
May sleep, as tension at the verberant core
Of music sleeps; for, if thou spare to smite,
Staggering, we stoop, stooping, fall dumb and dead,
And, dying so, sleep our sweet sleep no more."
(346)

Summer of Popcorn II: Prince Caspian

2008-05-19T21:38:00.000-04:00

When Andrew Adamson's The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe first came out, I heard a lot of comments along the lines of "but what is a big, Hollywood studio going to do with the specifically Christian messages woven throughout Lewis's stories?" The worry was, I think, largely founded. Hollywood seems to show a marked trend of misunderstanding Christianity, Gibson's personally driven Passion being perhaps the only exception in recent memory.

The odd thing about Prince Caspian is that, in general, the specifically Christian allegory is about the only thing the film consistently gets right. Aslan's relative absence, Lucy's longing for the peace and beauty of Narnia, Edmund's penitance, all are there. Better yet, the movie chooses perhaps the best through-line for the child protagonists. Peter starts as a brawling kid, desperate to return to his "rightful" place as an absolute monarch; the movie charts (in part) the folly of his pride and his eventual recognition that in order to grow up, it is necessary to leave the physical Narnia behind and find Aslan "in your own world." Maturity, indeed, is the theme for most characters in the film. Susan learns that "nothing happens the same way twice" and finds that faith in a distant Aslan is every bit as important as love for a present Aslan. Edmund balances his love of Aslan with the desire for solidarity with his brothers, and learns at least one new hard lesson about Peter's fallibility. Susan inexplicably discovers the joys of kissing a boy one is guaranteed never to see again. The world itself has "grown up," though in a much less healthy manner--the desire for "Turkish Delights" has sophisticated into a political network of self-serving backstabbing and manipulation of hereditary conventions.

The problem with Prince Caspian as an adaptation is that maturity was only one (and the least memorable) of the two themes found in Lewis's novel. The problem with Prince Caspian as an entertaining children's film is that the moral story-arc is only one (and the least emphasized) of the two elements in Adamson's film.

For readers of Lewis's novel, the first impression made by the novel is a profound sense of a mythic but lost past which becomes associated none-too-subtly with the wonder and magic of Greco-Roman paganism. From the first realization that Narnia's great castle is nothing but ruins to the climactic Bacchanal overseen by both Bacchus and Aslan, Lewis sets a sort of cultural regression in opposition to his coming-of-age narrative. As the characters mature, they mature beyond both the narrow-minded politics of self-centeredness and the cruelly pragmatic educational ideology of occupied Narnia. Yet they discover the youth and wonder of the real magic that has been there all along. As Lewis himself once commented, "when I was a child, I put away childish things--including the foolish desire to never appear childish." In this sense, Peter's maturity is of a distinctive kind. He may not be allowed to inhabit the gentle training-grounds of life in Narnia any longer, but it is only because he can find the same wonder--and the same moral struggles--in his own England. In opposition to the Talmarenes who forget their desires in pursuit of wealth and power, Peter retains true to the magic of his childhood by seeking to bring the moral vision into the superficially more prosaic land of England.

For viewers of Adamson's movie, the first impression is of a 21st Century "epic" in the vein of Braveheart, Gladiator, The Lord of the Rings, or even the earlier (and utterly forgettable) Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. In contrast to Lewis's scene (introduced later in the book) of a dark moonlit castle in which the part-dwarf professor introduces Caspian to the hidden truths of Narnia's magical past, we see a dark moonlit castle as the setting for a realistically painful childbirth, ridiculous attempted crossbow execution, and daring escape into Narnia's woods. Fantasy and imagination has been replaced with savage adventure, and the change is consistent throughout the book. Battle piles upon (unnecessarily inserted) battle, but the only point of divergence with movies seen before is the increase in unrealism. Crossbows treated as automatic weapons are irking enough, but how many people can Susan knock down with the edge of her bow before the battles reduce themselves to meaningless spectacle? The final battle of LWW was memorable as a battle of mythological heroes in individual combat; the most heroic element of Caspian's battles is the courage of an audience that persistently endures through wave after wave of CGI-critters in order to find out what will happen next to the protagonists. At least these battles have some meaningful relationship to the plot (if not enough to justify their length), but one wonders what purpose such endless (if bloodless) carnage serves other than to confuse younger audiences by celebrating the savagery in combat of the child-warrior-heroes.

Fortunately, Adamson's missteps are a misunderstanding of contemporary fantasy cinema as much as Lewis's chidren's story. The Lord of the Rings balanced battlefield spectacle with resonant magic and a constant sense of wonder; only the second (and inarguably worst) Harry Potter focused on numerous creatures rather than images of personality and beauty. It's not that Lewis's book couldn't make a great story, it is just that Adamson seems obsessed with copying the most superficial and easily copied externalities of contemporary fantasy. Before I saw Prince Caspian, I was concerned that the untraditional nature of Voyage of the Dawn Treader might make it a hard sell for audiences and sink any opportunities for further movies. Now, I'm just happy to see what happens when Adamson is given a story which is virtually impossible to turn into a neutered fantasy-war film. He seems to have a decent acquaintance with the characters as Lewis wrote them; maybe next time the audience will be able to spend the time required to get to know them.

Iron Man: Let the Summer Popcorn Begin

2008-05-12T10:37:00.000-04:00

1) As a kid, I have a specific memory of a scene from Tom Swift. He was working in his lab with sensitive chemicals, and some thugs ran in with guns, missed Tom, and hit the chemicals he was working with. He dives to the floor, the flaming chemicals slide harmlessly off his special fireproof labcoat, and the head of security catches up with (and handles) the thugs.

It's a minor scene, but it captured a lot of what gave Tom Swift its particular magic. The first element is the most obvious: science, played with for the good of humanity by a boy brilliant and rich enough to do just about anything he wants. The second: adventure, drawing upon (or creating) an association between the visceral thrill of dangerous adventure and the wonder of intellectual discovery. Between the two, I wanted to be Tom Swift.

It's a bit of childhood pulp fiction, but I think these things are important (and healthy) elements of a healthily functioning society. Tom Swift fed my desire to learn all that I could, and to use that knowledge to make life better. And even in college, when I was required to get a lab coat for my O-Chem class, I remember thinking "this is the thing I dreamed about as a kid--just like Tom Swift." It turned out that I have very little in the way of practical laboratory skills, and I ended up switching from biochemistry to English, but the very fact that Tom Swift was one of the vioces making lab coats sound cool speaks to the power of adventure stories.

Iron Man, more than any superhero movie, is about the wonder of human potential. Tony Stark is a partier and a superstar, but the thing that makes him cool is the time spent in the lab, loud music blazing as he perfects his latest invention. This is a movie that understands why people want to see a superhero movie, and gives it to us. Hero slams together prototype in a cave and kills terrorists. Hero builds two more models, experimenting with reckless (and injurious) abandon and painting the whole thing red. Along the way he gets to fly, save the day, and rescue the damsel in distress.

There really isn't a lot to Iron Man (despite its setting in one of our two real-world war zones) but there really doesn't need to be. What is there is precisely what needs to be there. It's a space opera on earth, and a reminder that there's some really cool stuff out there to be built. But it works, and like a well-designed device it works effeciently, cleanly and with just a bit of excessive power. Sure, audiences wouldn't soar with Iron Man if it weren't for the impressive array of actors who give weight to often paper-thin roles. But at its heart, it is refreshing to see a superhero movie that doesn't consciously try to define itself primarily as an obvious metaphor for the struggles of adolescent teenagers or contemporary politics.

2) Iron Man also puts paid to another adage I'd kinda assumed to be true. Traditionally, when talking about comic books and movies, I'd always said something like this. "Well, of course cinema is a different medium, so you have to adapt the comic book to fit the screen." In practice this generally meant an increased level of societal realism, greater room left for incidental character development, and an increased focus on emotions and the surroundings rather than the actions and dialog of the central character. So, instead of:

"Hello, [general who is my friend], how's it going buddy?"
"We have a hostile in the area, is that you?"
"No."
**gets fired at**
"Okay, maybe that was me."

You have a long scene of the general, wakened from his bed where he slept with his wife. He's called to respond to the emergency. Calls the hero on the way to work. Complains. Grumbles. Arrives and interacts with allies. Et cetera. The point is to give audiences what they're accustomed to demand from movies: a sort of all-embracing convention of verisimilitude that focuses the viewer on the world around the hero, rather than just the hero himself.

Then there's Iron Man:
"Hello, [general who is my friend], how's it going buddy?"
"We have a hostile in the area, is that you?"
"No."
**gets fired at**
"Okay, maybe that was me."

It doesn't have time to develop the secondary characters, fill in world details, or do a dozen of other things because it wants to TELL A STORY about a central character, accompanied by pretty pictures. And you know what? It works as well on screen as on person. Apparently screenwriters adapting comic books to movies could've saved themselves the trouble: just have the actors read the comic book dialog while letting CGI artists make pretty pictures of SLAM and BANG. The result: arguably the best comic book movie to date (though on most days I'd still go with Batman Begins), with a thrillingly fast pace and tons of exuberance.

Gilbert Quote of the Day

2008-04-29T11:57:00.001-04:00

"Precisely what gave him such a genius for friendship was that life had left in him so much of himself; so much of his youth; so much even of his childhood. He might never have been a Cabinet Minister; he might have been any common literary or artistic fellow, with a soul to save and some dim and secretive ideas about saving it."

-Chesterton on a certain political opponent

A Brief Review: Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day

2008-04-19T22:00:00.000-04:00

I'll admit it up front. I'm a huge fan of screwball comedies (1930's rom-coms like Bringing up Baby). I'm also a bit of a sucker for a good, straightforward love story. And like anyone who's given Wodehouse the good ole' whatsit ("I believe the term is 'honest try,'" my inner Jeeves politely intones), I'm a sucker for any story set in the world of irresponsible pre-WWII English middle-high culture.

But Pedigrew is, in fact, all of those and more. The script is brilliant, and if it slows its insanely breathless pace in the second half, it's actually for a really good reason. There's a real tone of darkness hovering around the edges, which doesn't deflate the fun but rather grounds the glittering, highly wrought world in the sort of genuine emotion that makes romantic comedies worth their while. Everything is pretty, the swing music (and other exclusively period compositions) keeps the party going, but it's all just a fragile connection of smoke and mirrors waiting for Nazi bombs to blow it apart. And when, in all the madness, some characters find a few glimmers of love and hope, it's just all that more beautiful.

Also, the ending may seem a bit disappointing at first (and is certain to offend any feminist tendencies), but in retrospect may be the most truly honest moment in the film. The last shot makes the point beautifully--as Pettigrew dissappears into the background, two armed British soldiers march towards their departing train. Young love is beautiful, and well worth making movies about, but it's the willingness to take a chance and throw one's lot in with another (however imperfectly) that makes life worth living in the shadow of death.

This humble screwball comedy may possibly end up as the greatest film of 2008.

Theological Thoughts of the Day

2008-03-31T19:39:00.001-04:00

I think that there are two things God will say to pretty much every Christian when he arrives in Heaven.

1) "When you did [X], you were very silly and very wrong. But you were responding to my Spirit, and it was a step towards Me."

2) "When you did [Y], you were very smart and very correct. Even so, you were arrogant about your accomplishments, and it was a sinful stumble away from Me."

Just thoughts of the day. I could be wrong, though.

To See or Not to See a Dalek

2008-03-26T12:58:00.002-04:00

Just as the only real James Bond (really) will always be Mr. Connery, the indisputable real face of the good Doctor is Tom Baker.

Yet I must admit, I have been rather un-dissappointed by David Tennant. Something about his performance--the idiotic energy, the inappropriate wide grins, the rare moments of old-school Shakespearian intensity--has just hit me as essentially English and essentially Doctoresque. Almost against my will, I must conceed he's a good face for the iconic character. Eventually, I'll probably end up owning the unconscionably expensive DVD sets of his incarnations.

In what once was unrelated news, I have never seen a live performance of Hamlet. For an immense number of reasons, this is about as illogical a fact as the $130 pricetag on Dr. Who seasons. I mean, just to brush the surface:

1) As unoriginal as it may sound, Hamlet is (at most times) my favorite Shakespeare play. (At other times I go for Twelfth Night. Twelfth Night has everything I want in light entertainment--swordplay, strong tragic undertones, and a resolutely happy ending.)

2) I have seen Romeo and Juliet. I know, one of my wife's friends starred in the performance, but still. I've seen Romeo and Juliet, but not Hamlet. Le sigh.

3) Whatever enthusiasm I have for Hamlet will never draw near to my wife's passionate love for the play. Some people think "Brush Up Your Shakespeare" is a funny and silly song. For me, it is an expression of a self-evident truth: it is always a good thing to quote Hamlet to my wife; the more insanely inappropriate the quote is to the situation, the better*.

As I said, these two elements of my taste in entertainment used to be quite separate. But now, God (in cooperation with the Royal Shakespeare Company) has decided to taunt me with my status as a poor grad student residing an ocean away from England.

David Tennant, apparently, is now starring in Hamlet.

I would adapt a soliloquy to express my bitterness at this latest mocking sling and arrow of outrageous fortune, but I have not the heart.

On the other hand, there are more things which wind up on YouTube and the internet than are dreamed up by corporate lawyers.

*This is yet another way Hamlet is the anti-Romeo. Quoting Romeo, like quoting Anakin, is a joy which must be engaged in only very rarely. Otherwise, I might end up sleeping on the couch.

I Have an Odd Connection with England

2008-03-20T16:48:00.002-04:00

I have an odd sort of connection with England. Somehow, in many ways, it feels far more familiar than I might expect.

Mostly, I guess I like the fact that they actually have a national history--that everything wasn't wiped out by malaria blankets just a couple hundred of years ago. And that the Middle Ages, for which I also have a Quixotic love, happened there, so that's a plus.

But I really hope I never find out that they imported this French armor style:

Yes. That is a duck. On his head. While he's dressed for war.

Le sigh.

(Image yanked from BibliOdyssey, an immensely cool blog and well worth checking out.)

The Perennial Pi-Day Video

2008-03-15T00:02:00.000-04:00

Still as trippy and hillarious/oddly-disturbing as ever!

Christian Publishing, A Reconsideration

2008-03-04T12:25:00.000-05:00

Thinking about some comments I made about Christian publishing yesterday, I feel some clarifications need to be made so that I can better understand what I think about the issue. And hey! If I have to say it publically, maybe I'll get other ideas from, like, other people. And stuff.

1) I quite enjoy making fun of the Christian publishing industry. Mainly, because in a lot of ways they make it quite easy. Their legalistic focus on what ought to be in/out of a book seems, even at just a glance, to have a strong potential for encouraging stories that flee truth-telling in order to portray every Christian as entirely unsinful and the world as entirely unthreatening. Worst of all, the marketing of "Christian" literature separately from "secular" literature draws those authors who would otherwise be entering into dialog with their fellow writers into a realm where they get the final say simply because they get the only say. (When I've said this before, it's been misinterpreted as a critique of Christ-lit authors, which it isn't. It doesn't matter how effectively an author deals with real questions and deep issues of life--if they're under a Christian distribution system they'll almost exclusively be read by not only Christians but those Christians so subsumed into "Christian" lifestyle that they seek out such labels. A "Christian" fantasy author will in all likelihood not be read by too many of his "secular" counterparts, for instance, with far-reaching un-effects. For example, say a guy (for the sake of argument lets call him "Mr. Lewis") comes up with an idea (again, to choose randomly: "kids going through a wardrobe and into a whimsical world where highly religious and allegorical overtones mix with an appreciative mythopoesis"). Now say he publishes in the CBA. Some people may hear of him, some people may not--but there'll probably be a lot of Christian novels featuring portals and different worlds, though with a smaller talent pool probably not as many brilliant versions as otherwise would occurr. Certainly it would be unlikely that an author such as Niel Gaiman would feel the book's influence strongly enough to devote an entire heartfelt story to the scene h e felt was most offensively Christian. Marketing would rather lead to it being simply ignored.

2) I still like the concept of a Christian publishing company. Certainly overt Christian themes and arguments have found their way into a wide variety of "secular" publications--many times because they were in stories created by self-identifying Christian authors. But I think it an interesting and worthwhile adventure to start a publishing company on a vaguely Christian basis, selecting books that it feels in some way contains an aesthetic excellence while focusing on specifically Christian themes or preoccupations. That's why I get excited about Relief Journal, who opens its doors even to those who don't identify themselves as Christians but are interested in writing those type of stories.

3) I quite enjoy making fun of the Christian publishing industry. So here's a list of some of my favorite items that are ACTUALLY SOLD in SBC-affiliated Christian stores.

* Apples to Apples, Bible Edition. Okay, this one I actually could imagine enjoying, though only if mixed with normal Apples to Apples (the Greatest Game, might I add, Ever.) But it goes on the list for the example hand shown on the back of the box (quoted loosely):

Green Card (Card to Match): Awesome!

Red Cards (Suggestions): The Bible! The Church! Jesus! God! Baptism! (For some reason the examples are slightly different on this image.)

I would be tempted to play "Satan," but only because I'm constantly tempted to play "Hiroshima, 1945" with my current cards.

* Settlers of Cannan. Hex-based strategy games are of Satan! This is because one sits at a table with college-aged nerdy friends to play them--just like the Evil Dungeons & Dragons! But now, we can redeem them! It won't be "Catan," an imaginary (and therefore PAGAN!!) kingdom. It will be Cannan, and the first step in the game should be to kill every imaginary man, woman and child in the name of God. Then you lay down your city and road at the port, before some other Tribe of Israel gets there--because you know the House of Benjamin is just waiting to block your path.

* Goliath Electronic Sword. This one, quite literally, takes the cake (but only away from the evil Israelites.) Tired of seeing your young boy play-pretend as noble knights like Arthur or Galahad who are not mentioned in the Bible? Now you can rest in peace, knowing that your child is in Scripturally-ordained training to become the most powerful champion of the Phillistines. But maybe this time, he will learn from the past and work hard enough to succeed in his valiant attempt to slaughter the Lord's Annointed and decimate the people of God.

Sigh.

(In all fairness, I must admit that none of these items were exactly flying off the shelves. Which might point to the root of the problem: people who trust "Christian" stores do so under an illusion that these companies are, in some manner, "Christian." In fact, they are quite often entirely out of touch with reality, merely promoting any immitations of anything and hoping that somewhere, something will turn a profit.)

Towards a Christian Narrative: Love and Character-based Storytelling

2008-03-03T13:01:00.000-05:00

I've been putting a lot of thought into what "Christian literature" should be. Not, of course, the silly sub-sub-genres that fill the bookstores where only Christians go and have to follow a long list of rules seemingly made up by 1950's-era pitchfork-holding Southern Baptists on a very angry day ("may not include alcohol consumption by Christian characters, dancing, card playing, gambling or games of chance (including raffles), explicit scatological terms, hero and heroine remaining overnight together alone, Halloween celebrations or magic or the mention of intimate body parts.") Bit I think if one takes Christ's call seriously, it should change the way stories are told nonetheless.

One of the questions that keeps rolling around my head is the label "inspirational" as applied to Christian literature. As an inspirational teacher, I'd give Jesus (for instance) a B- at best. Sure he can command magnificently impossible things such as loving one's enemies, and sure the tale of the Prodigal Son (and more prodigal Father) is about as heartening as allegories can come. But do inspirational teachers really run around destroying furniture in temples and hitting people with whips? Do they tell rich seekers bluntly to give everything away to the poor? Do they talk casually (if allegorically) about the destruction of the Temple on the Mount? If Jesus submitted a book to an "Inspirational" publishing outlet today I think he'd be told that revisions were needed, otherwise he'd alienate too many people.

One of the quotes that's always inspired me was by good ole' Gilbert, and goes something like "It is the prime duty of an author to tell the whole story about life. Either the characters in a story are evil, or the story itself is." But I think, on the whole, our society (at least the part not hiding under a mask of "Christianity") may be a bit glutted with "genuineness" and "honest self-expression." I applaud Rich Mullins for having the courage to write the song "Jacob and Two Women" and thereby honestly chronicling the weaknesses and difficulties of a life of faith. But I think there was something far deeper and richer going on beneath the Dylanesque honesty that makes the song worthwhile. In a word (and it is the most rightfully elusive word in the English language): it is love.

I think a lot of fun can be had with manipulation of motif, story, "form vs. content," philosophical speculation, and clever manipulation of reader expectations. If it wasn't so, Quentin Territino would not be in buisness, and the nation of France would not have the character we see today. But in the end, if ALL you have is clever ideas, brilliant writing, and innovation, the story's going to be hollow at the center. In that sense I guess a good story is a lot like a good Christian: "If I speak in the tongues of men and angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal."

Now maybe I'm wrong, and maybe there can be a non-character based and equally right ideal of Christian literature which through avant-garde manipulation of words seeks to open the soul and fight injustice on an ideological level. But it seems to me a bit dangerous to put one's ideas in front of one's characters--one might find oneself arrogantly putting one's ideas in front of the real-life "characters" one meets and interacts with on the street.

And maybe that's why I tend to appreciate either older works or modern genre fiction more than most contemporary "literary fiction." Authors like Shakespeare, Doestoevski, Steinbeck and even Raymond Chandler were not particularly revolutionary--or even interesting--in terms of form. But in revealing the complexity and humanity of their characters in a spirit of love, they created resonant works that are humanizing in the best sense of the word.

Wuthering Heights: The RPG

2008-02-07T18:09:00.001-05:00

Once again, I feel any commentary I could provide would be unnecessary.

Here is the link.

Here is one great section among many:

The murderer should roll below his Rage twice.
Two successes mean a perfect Murder.
One success & a failure mean the victim is only Wounded .
Two failures mean the would-be murderer couldn't do such an horrible act. He loses 1 Rage & gains 1 Despair
One fumble means someone else was killed, not the Persona's intended victim. The murderer loses 1d10/2 Rage & gains 1d10/2 Despair .
Two fumbles mean the wrong est person was killed (the murderer's true love if possible). The murderer loses 1d10 Rage & gains 1d10 Despair .

For Hannah--Unoriginal but True

2008-02-04T12:07:00.000-05:00

Well I'm livin' in a foreign country
Ever searchin' for the line
Beauty walks a razor edge
Every day I get to make her mine
In a world of cold concepts and men
Who are dyin' to stay warm
'Come in,' she said 'I'll give ya
Shelter from the storm.'

Beowulf II: The Hero and the Critics

2008-01-29T12:25:00.000-05:00

Beowulf, as Tolkien helpfully reminds us in his seminal essay "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics," may or may not have originated as a pagan tale (though it probably did). The text that survives, however, is profoundly Christian in intent, allegorizing and critiquing the pagan culture Beowulf represents even as it celebrates Beowulf's adventures. For Tolkien, then--and most post-Tolkien Beowulf scholars--the poem rose from its dark and savage state as a bawlderized and incompletely Christianized version of an odd Germanic legend to a profound work of art through its contemplation of both the valors and the inconsistencies of the pagan past. Essentially the piece became a document of cultural conversion, an elegy for the best of fallen humanity and its hopeless struggle against evil, as represented by the three famous "monsters." The hero is unashamedly pagan (though in a vaguely Jewish, Old Testament manner), but the tale tries to be a Christian moralization of his "heroic" times (albeit an incredibly subtle and polysemous one.) Thus one could argue that Beowulf is a forerunner of the historical novel, from Sir Walter Scott to Bernard Cornwell, which tries to historicize the past with realistic depictions of its evils while retaining the excitement and semi-allegorical appeal of national heroes, knights and adventures.

The Gaiman/Avary Beowulf script starts firmly at the pagan side of things. From the beginning, we have "Ye Olde Dark Ages," with a cartoonishly almost-naked Hrothgar verbally abusing his wife, and leading his band of merry men in irresponsibly manly life of drinking, fighting, and "fornicating." (I sometimes wonder if the odd choice of the last word isn't an intentional echo of the Old Testament anachronisms scattered throughout Beowulf.) Certainly the points are made with a relatively unsubtle brush but it sets the tone--the CGI images may be gritty and semi-realistic, but the plotting and characterizations will exhibit the clear, colorful delineations of old-school cell animation. And the tone itself is, in its way, quite refreshing. It has been the plague of Medieval-themed cinema of the '90's that every pre-Christian society must fit into the innocent-native Colonial stereotype of Romantic poetry, living at peace and harmony with the spirits of nature. In comparison to previous Beowulf films, at least, the rude, savage, yet undeniably courageous (on the whole) thanes of Hrothgar and Beowulf seem to be depicted with a downright "gritty realism," complicated wonderfully by the nuanced feminity of Hrothgar's wife (who publicly embraces but privately resists her role as "peace-weaver," and whose individuality is grudgingly accepted by the privately-browbeaten Hrothgar.) (About her, and the other women in Beowulf, I could write quite a few pages. But I won't, at least for now.)

Beowulf, of course, is in a category of one. Eschewing the vices and weaknesses of his companions, he seeks only two things: honor and glory. And he always wins--or so he tells everyone. Like Hrothgar, he has a public and private life--while the Finnsburg diversion (i.e. the sea race) is told much as it occurs in the poem, the reader is treated to a different view: an underwater sea-nymph of sorts whose encounter Beowulf apparently finds shameful enough to leave out. And, of course, such a public/private dichotomy becomes most clear in Beowulf's seduction by Grendel's mother, wherein Beowulf chooses external fame and eternal glory over personal internal integrity. (The eternal life and the aglak-wif's sexual allure, we are lead to believe, are almost entirely secondary and incidental to Beowulf's way of seeing things.)

All these considerations of public/private, shame/guilt, &c. are, of course, almost entirely external to the poem Beowulf and the Heroic Age it depicts. Yet they are absolute commonplaces in another tradition--Medieval Christianity. And, lo and behold, mere minutes after Beowulf relates the false version of his encounter with Grendel's mother, we are swept years into the future, out of the dark ages and into the High Middle ages. Beowulf suddenly becomes a Christian King (though privately still quite pagan), living at comfort in a Norman-style castle, crowned and advised by the very Christian monks whose academic teachings his alienated wife embraces as her sole comfort. This is, one feels, a distinctly more comfortable world to live in (particularly if you're a woman, and noble), as well as a more ethical and humane one (Beowulf opens this segment by sparing the life of a coward--an act unimaginable to a pagan warlord but in sympathy with contemporary ethics.) Indeed, in the beauty, grandeur, and majesty of the court and king, we feel very much at home--to the point where this can stand as a substitute for "our world," a humanistic court based on abstract but universally-accepted ideas such as "justice" and "manners," rather than the more natural virtues of "strength" and "ability-to-kill-lots-of-people."

At this point, it was hard to resist a leap of logic. All along, I thought that I'd been watching a film about Beowulf the person. Yet with the conversion to Christianity, the subtle and complicated mix of pagan and Christian, and the emphasis on cultural conversion, something else emerged. Beowulf, the hero of the film, is not the same as Beowulf, the hero of the poem. Nor is he (despite a few vague guestures in this direction) a proposed "real" Beowulf who the poem was based upon. The movie's hero is, in the end, nothing more or less than a symbol of the POEM itself--a work with savage origins, incomplete conversion to Christianity, and a thoroughly elegaic tone contemplating the hopeless but noble attempt to stand alone against the evils of the world.

And yet...Beowulf the king (and thus, the symbol of the entire realm) is not comfortable within his society. Because he knows something that no one else will accept--his righteousness is illusion. The mentor-mentee pattern established with Hrothgar-Beowulf is continued with Beowulf-Wiglaf, and once again the pattern is of cynical age forseeing what innocent youth cannot. Beowulf tries repeatedly to tell Wiglaf the truth--that he didn't conquer the monster but is a monster himself, but Wiglaf refuses to allow his idol and leige-Lord to be so portrayed. And, in the end, Beowulf makes partial atonement by slaying the dragon (alas, without Wiglaf's help)--and realizes that the dragon is his other half. And Wiglaf sees, as Beowulf dies, that all Beowulf tried to tell him was true--and seeks to grasp the false immortality that so captivated Beowulf himself.

Which is, as far as meditations on the evil within all men go, not that spurious a comment--and not as far away from the central themes of the poetry as one might expect. Sure most of the subtle glories and intricate beauties that make the poem such a joy to read has been washed away, but what is left is a revisionist Beowulf that doesn't make a mockery of the poem itself, but instead tries to pull out meaning and reinvent a poem that itself was born in reinvention.

Not a bad days work, for a cartoon of swordplay and bloodshed.

The 101st Post!

2008-01-20T18:04:00.000-05:00

And as celebration, I shall send a link to Stephen Fry (i.e. Jeeves, but with a worse haircut, worse clothes and less omnipotence) and Hugh Laurie (i.e. Berty Wooster, I don't care how good an American accent he can put on, he's Berty Wooster) discussing the radical Structuralist view of language.

Only in very small and incoherent terms.

(Click even if you didn't know "structuralist" was a word, have no idea who Jeeves and Bertie are, and think "the code of the Woosters" sounds like a British conspiracy-theory cooking group. You'll thank me afterwards!)

Many, Many thoughts on David Maine

2008-01-19T19:39:00.000-05:00

New Testament theology is breathtakingly beautiful, wonderfully paradoxical, calling for such unnatural beauties as a willingness to love one’s bitter enemy and the voluntary sacrifice of a Creator for the redemption of his rebellious creation. But there aren’t any stories, really, other than the one central Gospel of Christ. And when it comes to characters, well, I can count the number of truly vibrant characters on two hands. Peter, of course, in his firm enthusiasm and his broken weakness. Judas is at least interesting—the disciple who refused to learn. Paul has adventures, but it’s always been hard to see his humanity between his superhuman adventures and his insistences that we follow his almost-perfect example.

In the Old Testament, we have something entirely different. The greatest king was famously an adulterer, murderer, and follower of the heart of God. Prophets rage in the wilderness, each speaking and acting in their own way (one—Jonah—living out a near comedy as he seemingly dedicates his life to trying to foil the will of the God who chose him.) A prostitute lies in defense of foreign agents and the New Testament accounts it faith, another woman earns eternal fame by driving a stake through the head of a foreign king. Throughout it all God cares for His people—but the various ways he does it sure seems resistant to any simple encapsulation within a system of theology. This is the world of Story, even if it is part of the Divine History. This is David Maine’s home territory—and it is rather fitting that one of the phrases that most pops up in his stories is the simple caution “make of it what you will.”

The Book of Sampson

When I first finished The Book of Samson, I really didn't know what to ake of it. A month (or so) and another David Maine book later, I still don't know what to make of it.

Well, I do have some ideas, but then I always do (for better or worse):

In the first place, it strikes me as the most unlikely book I've read. Certainly the mythic nature and overall flashiness of the story of Samson has made it a sort of Sunday-School favorite for centuries, but it's not really a story that gets along too well with simple Sunday-school interpretations. Which is not necessarily a bad thing. Certainly as a Christian and a fan of literature, the first paragraph (to steal Lewis' description of another unique publication) carries all the surprise and shock of "lightning from a clear sky:"

"This is the story of my life and it's not a happy one. If you wish to read about me you're welcome to but if you're looking for something to give you hope & joy comfort & inspiration then you had best leave off here straightaway and go find something else. My life has an abundance of frustration and pain plus a fair bit of sex and lots of killing and broken bones but it's got precious little hope & joy comfort & inspiration."

Yet a glance at the cover makes it an even more puzzling book: not only is it published by St. Martin's Press in New York, but the author himself wrote this while living in Pakistan with his presumably Pakastani wife (who I mention mainly because she has one of the coolest last names ever--Khan). These facts, of course, certainly have some bearing on a novel whose protagonist has no problem slaughtering a Philistine village in order to keep his drunken word--after all, Jewish law isn't that particular about actions towards foreigners, but is very specific about the importance of dealing faithfully.

Certainly, too, the contemporary applications of the story often jump to the fore. Many of my favorite conversations are between Samson and the Philistine priest who talks to him while awaiting Samson's captivity. The priest emerges (despite Samson's characterizations) as, well, rather more sane than Samson:

"--Yes indeed we shall see. All the highest families from every Philistine town and city will be on hand to watch your execution and all our best military minds as well. And then we shall celebrate your death with a fete unlike any ever known on earth. And then you know what we shall do?"
--March on my people. Slaughter my men and rape the women. Enslave the children & salt the fields fire the buildings & burn the orchards. Erase our very memory.
Tears stung my eyes as I said this. As I saw this.
--How ahh quaint he replied.--But happily how wrong as well. After the fete and the pyre that will carry off your last ashy remains--we shall all go home.
I said nothing to this obvious lie.
--Home to tend our wives and farms he said.--I shall return to the temple in Hebron where I belong. The Ammonites will bring their caravans to our villages. Philistine shall not attack Israelite nor shall Israelite attack Philistine. Our villages will prosper. At first there may be some mutual suspicion as we have little to do with each other but as time passes and our people flourish we shall once again walk side by side. ... At some blurry point in the future all this trouble will be ancient history best forgotten and--listen well--happily consigned to oblivion.
He went away with his lies ringing in my head. Lies of peace and tolerance and brotherhood. And I gnashed my teeth and prayed for the jaws of a rat that I could gnaw through these chains. Then I would show them peace. Show them all the peace of the grave with me standing above them with their blood black on my hands and the hand of none other but the LORD giving me shelter succor and delight."

Of course there's a lot more going on than just the portrait of a lunatic who believes himself God's gift to Israel. The book carries a long ride through various forms of piety, a great deal of savage violence, a couple of love stories, and an ending which, ironically, strikes only the cynical protagonist as a true case of eucatastrophe. But it's a good ride, a thoughtful ride, and at times a wondrous ride--even if it's rather hard to see, even at the end, where it went.

Fallen

The book starts with an old man, weathered by the difficulties of life and the hatred of mankind, who calmly predicts his imminent death to his devoted son. The first section moves backwards through his very troubled life, his equally troubled marriage and father-son relationship, to his long-premeditated murder of his angelic (but not-too-smart) brother Abel. By the last page of the book, time has rewinded not only through the rest of their childhood, but through their (and everyone’s) parents’ harsh struggles to exist in their exile from the Garden of Paradise. All this is shown through the perspectives of four very different characters (Cain, Abel, Adam, Eve), refracted through the rest of a family whose personalities seem to cover the entire breadth of human experience. And always, two themes echo: the broken and savage dignity of man and the inscrutability of the ways of God.

Most of all, the theme of the book seems to be love; and if God’s grace in Christ seems so far away from all the noise and strife as to be nearly invisible, yet each character is painted with love, grace and beauty. There is something Joblike in the simple faith of Adam in the God who exiled him. One feels, somehow in some other circumstances, that there could have been greatness and truth and beauty in the stubborn persistence and deep perception of the first murderer, and even as an exile he is never incapable of love or humanity. The ever-practical Eve has a single-minded determination to raise as many happy and unsoiled children as possible, striving with all her heart to make something like a second Eden for her cursed family. And even Abel, possibly the most difficult character to paint with subtlety, seems just on the cusp of a real, independent manhood (rather than his childish meld of good intentions and self-righteousness) at the moment of his murder. Mixed together, it is a heartbreaking mélange as well as a beautiful meditation on the divine. Cain seems to get the last word (“I wouldn’t spend the rest of my life telling my children how fair you were, and how benevolent and merciful, and how you gave me every blessing in this life. I would tell my children: Yes, my father has some good qualities, but he’s also thoughtless and selfish and unforgiving and hateful and mean. That’s how God treated you.”) But in the end, it is perhaps God’s silence that speaks loudest. Each section ends with a scene which is repeated with a new voice in the next; the last chapter is entitled “The Old Man,” but God’s speech is not to be found in the book, even if at every step it is God’s direct providence that preserves the characters from death.

Yet after doing so much right, Maine seems to inexplicably misplace the core of his tale. If the whole point of a novel entitled “Fallen” is to lament our corrupt stage (which seems a fair assessment), then one would expect the glimpses and memories of the Garden to shine with a heartrending beauty. Instead, Paradise just looks boring.

I can only explain this by theorizing that somehow, Maine is the only Christian author with literary pretensions to have not read any C.S. Lewis*. Instead of Lewis’ talking animals whose companionship mankind has eternally longed for, Maine’s Adam merely has the ability to make animals do whatever he wants (including die on command for food.) Instead of Adam and Eve enjoying God’s company and exercising their minds and wills in divine harmony as sub-rulers of creation, the two just get fat and slow eating the same perfectly delicious berries perfect day after perfect day. (Indeed, Maine’s Eve eats the fruit of the tree partly out of dissatisfaction with the identical daily repetition of the Garden; years later, she rejoices to see how the struggles of toil and labor have toned Adam’s muscles and body so that he looks better than he ever did in Eden.) Worst of all, Maine explains the Fruit not on the basis of the Biblical account, but in terms of the worst of Medieval Gnostic-influenced biases. It is not “knowledge of Good and Evil” that the Serpent promises Eve, but the ability to create. Or, more specifically (though the Serpent avoids details), procreate**. Lewis the reticent English gentleman and bachelor filled his stories with celebrations (even, on one occasion, orgies) of ideal, unfallen sexuality. For Maine the postmodern man of the world, with no inhibitions about exploring realistically many nooks and crannies, wonders and nightmares of human sexuality that Lewis the gentleman never touched upon, Eden stands as a testament that all sex is fundamentally evil. The mind does boggle.

Even with its flaws, Fallen is one of the best books I’ve read this year. Heartrending, faith-filled, offering no explanations for God (other than the sparse few He chooses to give) and much sympathy for his most errant creatures, the book is in turns immensely moving, exceedingly provocative, and a call for humility to anyone who ever thinks they have God figured out. Having read both The Book of Samson and Fallen, David Maine (despite his flaws) has earned a place near the very top of my short living-authors-to-watch list.

*The only other explanation—that Maine *wants* Eden to be boring, falls flat. Eve herself (generally a trustworthy if cynical narrator) declares the Garden to be considerably better than anything else, including sex.

**Admittedly, there are some loose grounds for Maine’s interpretation: in addition to “her desire shall be for her husband” and the introduction of pain in childbirth, there’s always Christ’s words that there shall be no marriage in Heaven. Yet there emphatically *was* marriage in Eden, so Maine’s decision to declare all sex categorically the result of sin seems an utterly unnecessary damper on the longing, incompletion, and fallen-ness that fills the rest of the story.

Christ and Poverty

2008-01-18T11:27:00.000-05:00

Holy Father we all want bread,
both from heaven and your fields so green.
I know your grace is man's first need,
but I can no longer hold the pain I've seen.
I am my brother's keeper and that I'll always be.
I'll not turn my back be he stranger or blood
and embrace a life of greed.
I am my sister's keeper
and that I've always been.
Every day I've left her out in the streets
I've turned Christ out again.

-Ballydowse, from "The Land, the Bread, and the People"

What is the compassion of Christ? Am I entirely missing the life of self-sacrifice, of being "crucified with Christ," every time I go out to eat, buy a video game, or pay tuition? Is it possible, given the injustice and inequities of power in the world, to have a vibrant Christian community that exists within the system of America?

There is something deeply profound in the equality underlying the lines "I am my brother's keeper ... / I am my sister's keeper," something that slams straight into the Platonic idea that we all know what is right, if we could just remember it. For there is something incredibly human (in the most positive, image-of-god, dignitati humanis sense of the word) about committing oneself irrevocably to the side of "right," and few things more wrong than the starvation of millions of brothers and sisters merely because they live in the wrong place at the wrong time. And the words of Christ are full of such intentionally provocative and "radical" statements: "sell all that you have and give it to the poor." "I have no mother and father." "Those who live by the sword will die by the sword." It is perhaps these words, more than any others, that lead (for instance) the atheist Denys Arcand to declare Christ "the only irreplacable voice" that he had ever read.

This also flies in the face of virtually any society. Wherever people live, there are inequities, there is injustice. And in order to live their lives in peace and harmony, people count it wisdom to separate themselves from the suffering they see, repeating the phrase "it's not my problem." A foreigner lies wounded at the side of the road, the pharisee walks by nervously on his way to preach about compassion. A nervous Christian in Nazi Germany keeps silent and goes about his business, hoping things will be better.

Or, perhaps, we turn to arts, and justify ourselves by "bringing awareness to the cause." Perhaps, like Lodowick in an early play about Richard III, we say "for fear I should be seen talking with her, I will shun her company and get me to my chamber, and there set down [her tragedy] in heroical verse...which is no doubt as wonderful as the defoliation of a kingdom."

Yet as far as I can tell, there is only one character in Scriptures who seems to advocate the truly revolutionary methodology of converting all excess into alms for the poor--and neither his person nor his motives (in John 12) are what one might expect:

1^(A)Jesus, therefore, six days before ^(B)the Passover, came to ^(C)Bethany where Lazarus was, whom Jesus had raised from the dead.

2So they made Him a supper there, and ^(D)Martha was serving; but Lazarus was one of those reclining at the table with Him.

3^(E)Mary then took a pound of very costly ^(F)perfume of pure nard, and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped His feet with her hair; and the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.

4But ^(G)Judas Iscariot, one of His disciples, who was intending to betray Him, said,

5"Why was this perfume not sold for ^[a]three hundred denarii and given to poor people?"

6Now he said this, not because he was concerned about the poor, but because he was a thief, and as he ^(H)had the money box, he used to pilfer ^(I)what was put into it.

7Therefore Jesus said, "Let her alone, so that she may keep ^[b]it for ^(J)the day of My burial.

8"^(K)For you always have the poor with you, but you do not always have Me."

This is, I think, one of the most brilliantly cynical and extravagantly human passages in Scriptures. Mary expresses her love for the man who raised her brother from the dead extravagantly. The perfume she used could have provided a meal for dozens of real, really starving poor people. The person who points this out does so because he wants to enrich himself personally. And Jesus himself, the man who constantly points an angry finger against the hipocracy and greed of the upper class, the man, indeed, who morally and mystically is the poor who are deprived of money because of the perfume, shows only approval for the spontaneous expression of love found in the act.

The poor of the world are real, they can be seen daily on television, testiments to our greed and gluttony. They are our keepers, and we are theirs; while they are starving, the body and testimony of Christ is weakened. A part of my mind, maybe a Judas to myself, constantly whispers that I should show no extravagence, but rather sell everything and give it to the poor, pour myself out until there is nothing left but an empty husk and a testament to my righteousness. (Is this so that it, my pride, can rejoice in my righteousness and faultless virtue, perhaps?) And still Jesus reclines, sharing food with friends, pointing to the fleeting nature of our lives and reminding us that love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control start at home, spontaneously, even if they eventually must reach out universally. As much as Christ's love is a challenge and a "stone of offense," it starts with the simplest, most local and intuitive level (John 4:20):

"For the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen."

It's not a plattitude that "solves" the issue, but I think it is a tension that every Christian must face--and face with the knowledge that we live by grace, hoping in the forgiveness in the God whose earthly incarnation is the suffering, feasting, drinking, loving, demanding, and forgiving person of Jesus.

"Real" Posts Coming Soon...

2008-01-15T22:37:00.000-05:00

...for now I'm just posting the greatest poster ever.

...It's funny because it's so true.

(Thanks to Letters from Kamp Krusty for the link.)

Beowulf Review I: Summary and Technical Review

2007-12-09T22:56:00.000-05:00

Finally saw Beowulf.

1 Paragraph Review:
All indicators to the contrary, Beowulf is a quite good movie, and an even better adaptation. Certainly it is the only Beowulf film to give any attention to the poem itself--not only is Old English featured (once narrating a preformance, once in a rather more inexplicably creative manner), not only is there dozens of jokes showing that Gaiman and Co. have read and understand the poem, but it nails my favorite themes from the heart of the poem. And has a great dragon fight (but more about that in a moment.) And does something interesting with the scholarship, a gamble which (for me) quite succeeded (but more about that in quite a while.) Two thumbs up--but be ready to kinda sit through an awkward and self-consciously "this-is-dark-ages" first chapter.

The Tech Report
Beowulf films live or die by their dragon fights. This is why every previous attempt failed--no dragon fight = bad dragon fight(1). With Gaiman's incarnation (and it is Gaiman's, btw., this will be one of those rare films where the screenwriter dominates) the dragon-fight is the one moment where 3D makes the difference. It's one thing to see people shoot arrows at a hero. It's another thing to watch from the hero's perspective as arrows fly out of the screen and through one's body. More impressive, though, is a simple shot of Beowulf free-falling(-ish) through midair. I've seen midair antics a thousand times in films such as Die Hard 2 or Air Force One, but this was entirely different. There was a real sense of space, and I felt exactly where Beowulf was, where the dragon was, and exactly how precarious his midair fall was. On that scene, at least, I'm sold.

With the rest of the movie, not so much. Imax 3D is good, but far from perfect. Every time something got too close to my field of reference, I began to see double; by the time I left, I had a minor headache. Moreover, the characters seemed strangely flat most of the time--sure it was cool to see some pop out in the foreground and others "pop in" to the background, but somehow the same doesn't apply to the characters themselves. It's a minor quibble, but distracting--as if the entire world was populated by animated cardboard cut-outs.

As far as the animation itself, though, any of the infamous "deadness around the eyes" was overridden by the gee-whiz impact of the 3-D. Ceratainly I saw what they were trying to achieve with the CGI and I think they were largely successful. Many reviews claim that the film would be R-rated if it were live-action, and they're entirely correct. But so would Wiley E. Coyote and the Roadrunner, if made into a realistic live-action film. The artificiality of the animation provides a bit of distance between the viewer and the flesh-and-blood "reality" of the characters. That's a good thing. This isn't The Lord of the Rings, here, with its fully-formed and lived-in alternative world. This is a legendary and highly evocative sketch-portrait of a clearly three-dimensional protagonist and his adventures. I think the test indicator may be the Infamy Herself--a naked Grendel-mother who seems to physiologically lack the naughty bits is a strangely literary creation for a film. One gets the full narrative idea of "naked-woman-threateningly-seductive" but not the same shock of "naked-woman-on-screen." The discontinuity works as myth and Story, much more than exploitation. (Not that exploitation isn't there, because it really is. It's just that a larger role is assigned to the viewer's interpretation.) And of course the same is true of the violence--blood doesn't flow freely so much as in specific ways to suggest the very specific type of violence the filmmakers want you to think about at the moment. It was a courageous move, but I think it was also the right one.

Still...the combination of the "paper effect" from the 3D and the artificiality of movement was perhaps a bit too distancing--about 20 minutes in I had to start thinking of the film as an extended video-game cut scene. It was only after I made the shift that I began to "get into" the story. I wouldn't be surprised if this process was very subjective--after all, I'm the type of guy who found my eyes full of tears when Aeries died.

(1)Dragons are kind of ironic like that. Characters tend to (rightly) think no dragon is a good dragon, but viewers know better.

Now We See the VIolence Inherent in the System

2007-11-29T12:34:00.000-05:00

There is this guy at the center of Christianity

Well, actually he's this God.

Well, that's not true either. He's kind of part of a triume God. It's like God has three personalities, only being God and all they can hang out with each other, talk to each other, and even separate and go do different things while checking in to make sure they aren't getting in each other's way. (A lot of people talk about how this eternal hanging-out is the basis of God's social character and the foundation of his eagerness to hang out with man.) And Jesus is one of those.

Only he became a man, which meant he got to do a lot of not-typically-godlike activities like "learn" and "grow" and "weep at a man's funeral." He also did a lot of typically-godlike activities like spout seeming nonsense that seemingly makes sense of the world, break all sorts of laws of man and physics with authority and confidence, and raise a couple of people from the dead (including, incidentally, the guy he wept over.)

He preached about a "Kingdom of Heaven," which is not different from the kingdoms of earth in the way that it white differs from black, but is different from the kingdoms of earth in the way that white differs from lamps-being-turned-on. He understood that we wouldn't understand, but said God would help us, that only by God's power could we come to understand anything at all. (Some debate has crept up at various times in the past 2000 years as to how this works, and what this means for free will, but I have a sneaky suspicion that even those answers are left purposefully mysterious.) Most of all, he said that our whole life should be aimed at furthering the "Kingdom of Heaven" and earning "treasures in Heaven," and demonstrated this by his willingness to sacrifice his very life on a Cross. He also did this by eating and drinking with sinners, calling prostitutes to forgiveness, and generally go about the process of making people whole in a way that seemed twisted, strange, and backwards. He didn't have a lot of good things to say to the rich or the visibly spiritual. Mostly he had this idea that it was him, personally, who showed what God is like and how to become like God. And that it was God, his father, who gave people power to live a changed life, so they can be just like Jesus--the "man of sorrows, and well acquainted with suffering."

Somehow, this all made sense in a left-field sort of way to a lot of people. It makes lots of sense to me. The world is broken, and it's up to God to fix it. But we can play a part, too, especially if we humbly acknowledge our poverty, rely on Jesus, and live a life of grace.

Now Christ's life is not the only thing Christians hold to be true, or even the entirety of the message we claim God sent to us. But it is the core--which is why we embraced the (originally derogative) term "Christians" and hold it as our own.

But there was this other guy, a very smart and compassionate guy, who saw a lot of the greed and hypocrisy of the world, and decided that it was completely broken. The rich, he saw, generally stay rich at any cost, while telling the poor stories that make them content enough to keep working. These stories took many forms--some of them were histories, in which first kings and later self-starters were idolized as Great and Noble, and any small indiscretions or vileness glossed over as part of their secular beatification. Some of them were religions, which the rich use to say "blessed are the poor" while keeping money for themselves. Some of these are, well, stories, which all have hidden "ideologies," or values which they espouse as either good or bad.

For him, the only way to escape these troubles was to associate himself with the powerless and not the powerful. The only good stories, really, were the peasant stories, the proletarian stories, because these were the honest speeches of oppressed peoples as opposed to the oppressive ideologies of the rich. The only good religion, really, was the worship of the peasant, because all our images of god are a form of worshiping the ultimate power, and therefore presupposes a natural (and oppressive) hierarchy of power. The only good fiction is that which doesn't corrupt, that which hasn't been sophisticated in order to systematize oppression but expresses the communal experience of united peasants.

Now one could argue that neither ideal has ever been fully put into practice in a social sense. Christianity, as one could argue (and many have), is that way because of its central paradox--even Christians are redeemed only through a process, and the fallen nature of humanity perpetuates the power-based kingdoms of earth. It is, in a very strong sense, a religion of longing for heaven far more than a religion enabling earthly happiness. Marxism failed because, not to put too fine a point on it, those who lead Marxist revolutions had a sneaky tendency to grab what power they can and then destroy anything that threatens their positions at the top of a power chain.

Now all of this, for me, puts a very interesting slant on the recent Pullman debate. Basically, and not to put too fine a point on it, a lot of Christians(1) seem to object to Pullman's books because, however well-written they are, they exist as expressions of an atheistic ideology (however strongly based in Christian thought and values.) For this reason, the Catholic League (for instance) has expressed a desire for a boycott of the movie on the hopes that no sequels will be made. The correlary, of course, is that a specifically Christian art should replace the secular, dangerous art of Pullman and his ilk; and Christians should only consume those products since they are written from the Christian ideological perspective. By replacing vehicles of "secular" or "pagan" ideology with vehicles of "Christian" ideology by exertions of financial power, the world can (according to such reasoning) be made into a more Christian place--that is, a place where the ideas and truths of Christ take precedence over the ideas and truths of man.

Funny thing, though. The methodology I see (villification of the dissenter, a strong sense of the necessity of group solidarity, communal use of power to suppress potentially evil ideas) seems to follow the pattern of one of these world-changing individuals. Guess who?

(1) Leaving aside, for the moment, the issue of Pullman's novels being given to children who are not sufficiently capable of reasoning through the arguments implicit in Pullman's books. After all, it does seem fundamental to Christianity to direct a child's life clearly, and limit early temptations to evil. Even Christ himself was raised as a good Jew.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight--The Short Version!

2007-11-27T12:51:00.001-05:00

For those who love obscure Medieval texts of marginal importance, but just don't have the time to wade through thousands of lines of dialectic Middle-English verse, I present to you...Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the Short Version! (New and Improved, too: Now with 78% more of the tricky bits!)

Fitt 1:
Our story takes place long after the fall of Troy and that treacherous Aeneas and all that. In Camelot, in fact!

No, not that Camelot. Well, kind of. It's the young Camelot, lead by a young and sexy Arthur who may be somewhat childish but definitely has ADHD. It's a place of wonders, marvels, and games. Lots of games. Kissing games! Games with lords and ladies! Games in halls and chambers! (No, not those types of games. Well...maybe those types of games. But maybe not. Thing is, we're too polite to say either way, because the one thing we like better than games is manners. And fair fights. And the Spanish Inquisition.)

Enter Green Knight, on horse, with the bling of kings:

Green Knight: Hey, Arthur yo! I've heard your court is the best. I laugh. I bet your court is the worst.

Arthur: If it's a fight you want....

Green Knight: What kind of a barbarian do you take me for? Don't you see that I'm holding an olive branch (in the hand that isn't holding the Mother of All Axes)? I want a game!

Green Knight: A BEHEADING game.

Green Knight: A polite BEHEADING game. You chop my head off, then I chop off yours.

Court: We won't say anything. Maybe because we're polite, maybe because this is weird, maybe because he's GREEN.

Arthur: I will defend Camelot's honor, then.

Gawain: No, silly, people would actually be sad if you died. I'm not good at anything but talking. I'll take the honors.

Arthur: Helpful tip: Beheaded Enemies rarely have the ability to return the blow.

Gawain: Sure thing. *cuts off Green Knight's head in a single stroke*

Green Knight's head: Jolly good times! See you next year, at the green chapel!

Gawain: But...where is that?

Green Knight's head: I could tell you, but that would quite spoil the fun of my little game.

Green Knight leaves, carrying head.

Arthur: Well, what a show! What'd I tell you--we're a court of marvels! Back to the feasting and games!

Intrusive Narrator: And so everyone lived happily ever after. Except Gawain, who is DOOMED! DOOMED I TELL YOU!

Fitt 2:

Seasons: We change! It's winter now, so everything dies!

Gawain is fancily armed. Step by step. Wears a pentangle on his chest, to show that he embodies all virtues, and if he ever screws up they all are worthless.

Nobility of Camelot: Gawain seems such a decent fellow. We politely regret sending him off to die.

Gawain: I am a decent fellow. I politely regret going off to die.

Everyone smiles and returns to games, except for Gawain.

Gawain faces MARVELOUS, WONDROUS adventures in the savage wilds. But enough about that.

Bercilak: Welcome to my Castle in the Middle of Nowhere. Meet my wife.

Gawain: How convienent. Thanks! Name's Gawain.

Bercilak: Oh! The knight of Arthur! In that case we'll put you in socially awkward situations, and take notes to see how Arthur's court measures up on the polite-o-meter!

Gawain: Thanks! And I will return the great compliment by being polite. How may I best serve you by remaining in my bed and recovering from my wounds and starvation?

Bercilak: Oh, you have no idea. Mwua ha ha--, oh, er, by playing a game!

Gawain: Yay! I love games! They never cause me any inconvenience and are always so fun!

Bercilak: Then you'll love this. You stay at home and sleep. I hunt. We trade my winnings for your checkmate--er, for your winnings. Oh, also, what do you think of my new collection? I call it: The Menagerie of Strange Items that Resemble Headless Knights!

Gawain: This game in no way resembles the last game I played. So certainly there's no trick here, either.

Fitt 3

Gawain: What is that at my door? Let me look...secretly.

Gawain: Blast! It's bercilak's wife, and I'm in bed. Maybe if I close my eyes and pretend to be asleep, she'll go away.

15 minutes later...

Gawain: Or I could just wake up and see what she wants.

Wife: Oh, you sexy knight. You're really cool, you know that? I love the way you powerfully force people to do whatever you want. It's very chivalrous of you. I offer you my body--er, my obedience as your submissive servant.

Gawain: Er...and you're very beautiful too. And as a woman locked up alone in a castle in the middle of nowhere, I bet you read a lot of books, and hear the best rumors. Let's talk about everything!

Gawain: But first can you leave so I can get dressed?

Wife: No.

Gawain: A noble sentiment. Now as I was saying, the nature of the soul is such that it is imbued at birth, but does not in fact originate with the creation of a person's body.....

Meanwhile, Bercilac and his theigns make sure that they're only hunting female deer. Then they mount their horses, pull out their lances, and drive the panicking deer into the dark corner of the forest until it has no further space to run. Then they pierce it through the heart with their long lances, take it back to the castle, strip off its skin, remove its guts, and begin to prepare it as meat for the night's dinner.

Wife: Well...it's been a long day, and you are a most wonderful polite and conversant knight. But there's one other thing I'd like to ask.

Gawain: Just name it, m'lady.

Wife: A kiss.

Gawain: A noble request, and thus I am honor-bound to accept. But just one kiss.

Later

Bercilak: Just for you, Gawain, this wonderful feast represents all my winnings!

Gawain: And for you, all my winnings.

Bercilak: Wow, Gawain, you're a good kisser. Who taught you that?

Gawain: A knight is a man of mystery, and never reveals his secrets.

Events repeat, until at the end of the third day...

Wife: Gawain, you most noble and wonderful knight, you have given me such great conversation and I have given you so little. Take this green girdle in memory of me--and because it will make you invincible.

Gawain: If you insist.

And later....

Bercilak: I must say...you keep getting the best kisses, my elaborate feasts pale in comparison.

Gawain: Well, ya know, we knights of Camelot like our games...

Bercilak: Anything else you were given today? Girdle, perhaps, or something green?

Gawain: Nope! Just kisses! Certainly not a girdle of invincibility!

Fitt 4:

Random Squire: Gawain, are you sure you want to go to the Green Chapel? If you turn back now, no one can tell otherwise!

Gawain: I am Beowulf!!!...er...I am Gawain. I never quit mid-game.

Random Squire: Okay. But you will die.

Gawain: If I die, I will die....WITH HONOR!

Random Squire: Big words from a guy who spent the last three days kissing his host's wife in bed.

Random Squire: Ooohhh, do you hear that strange and ominous sound?

Green Knight: **Sharpens Axe.** **Loudly**

Gawain: So?

Green Knight: **Runs finger along blade** Ouch! Still sharp.

Gawain: Meh!

Green Knight: **Twirls axe through the air, cutting the head off several nearby woodland creatures.**

Woodland Creatures: **Writhe in terrible agony**

Gawain: Pah! These sights affright me not!

Green Knight: Then in that case...stand still right there, and wait for a few minutes. I'm not quite ready.

Gawain: Now you're just being mean.

Green Knight: **Swings at Gawain**

Gawain: Eek!

Green Knight: Hah! Knew you'd flinch!

Gawain: No, I just wasn't ready! Try it again:

Green Knight: **Stops axe just before it hits Gawain's neck**

Gawain: You scare me not! Now swing for real already!

Green Knight: **Swings again, and nicks Gawain's neck**

Gawain: HAH! You hit me that time! The game is over!

Gawain: Now I can ask you your name!

Green Knight: I'm Bercilak, the knight who hosted you. Oh, and you were an evil sinner, you should have given me that useless girdle in the exchange of winnings! You are a false and faithless knight, who trusts to superstitious talismans.

Gawain: Nooooooo!!!!!

Green Knight: You are also the bravest and best knight who ever lived.

Gawain: Noooooooo!!!! *sobs* *gives back girdle*

Green Knight: And I want you to keep the girdle, as a gift from me.

Gawain: Noooooooo!!!

Green Knight: And I am your father!

Gawain: Really? My father was green?

Green Knight: Just joshin' with you. But in all seriousness, this whole thing was put on by Morgan le Fay to humiliate Arthur.

Gawain: Noooooooooooooo!!!

Gawain: **Returns to Camelot, and tells his story.**

Court: What a brave knight! We want to be like you!

Gawain: Noooooo!!!

Court: I know! We'll wear the girdle!

Gawain: But, but--that's supposed to represent my eternal shame. I'm going to go be sad about this dumb ending now.

Strongbad: It's over!

The End.

Identity 1: Marketing and Identity

2007-11-20T01:23:00.000-05:00

Gilbert once wrote that it was atheists, far more than any other group of people, who lead him back to the Roman Catholic Church. This was because, as an atheist himself, he thought their arguments remarkably naive. (Apropos of nothing but in all fairness, I think the inverse is often true of Christians who loose their faith. In fairness to both sides, I seem to recall reading somewhere that "you will know a tree by its fruit.")

When I first started reading about globalization, I had a similar (though somewhat less profound) experience. I was reading Thomas Friedman's rather unintentionally nihilistic book on globalization, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, and came upon a rather striking illustration of the power of free commerce and global corporations. I don't remember the words, but the details are somewhat engraved on my mind.

Say you have a man, Friedman starts, in a repressive and authoritarian Middle-Eastern theocracy. All media supposedly should be censored, since that's what oppressive regimes do. But now, thanks to the wonders of globalizing technology, this is becoming an untenable proposition. For the Middle-Eastern TV viewer, national broadcast television has an illegal competition--small, concealable satellite dishes which enable him to spend all the time he wants watching the wonders which are kept from him through American television shows like .... (and here Friedman's unique rhetorical flourishes reach an all-time high) Baywatch.

Now there are a number of problems here. The first is Friedman's utterly loony interpretation of the idea of sexual liberation. Personally, I don't like the term in the first place, and I think it's common sense rather than oppressive conservativism that demonstrates that sexual liberty can be achieved most strongly when guided in the proper direction by self-control. In my opinion the only reason "sexual liberation" ever had any popularity is through a massive confusion of debate over the "proper" direction sexuality with debate over whether sexuality should be directed at all. Otherwise, we're just switching a consciously-adopted (or consciously resisted, as the case may be) controlling ideology for the unconscious tyranny of sexual urges.

All of which, however, is besides the point, because under no ideological grounds could Baywatch be considered sexual liberation of any kind. The point of the show is not to liberate Friedman's male viewer from the constrictive sexual roles which society assigns to him and release him into a unconstricted sexuality healthy for mind and body. The point is to encourage sex roles at their basest and most immature, calling on Friedman's male viewer to imagine a world whose greatest good is an exaggerated and commodified female form, available for $40/month plus installation.

But that, according to Friedman, is but the tip of the iceberg. For the prime force of globalization is "branding." Not content to commodify sexuality, "freedom of choice" now brings us commodification of identity. Since I'm apparently culturally stuck in the '90's (and, if I remain in academia, will ever remain so), a perfect example is the birth of Nike. Their clothing is rarely (if ever) marketed on the basis of superior quality or performance, but entirely on the basis of associative psychological conditioning. Their success lies entirely in their ability to train commercial-viewers to associate their icon with the fit and successful athlete-celebrities sporting it. The result has been the creation of a magic talisman in a trademarked shape which instantly boosts the value and psychological effect of clothes who demonstrate the swoosh. All through a simple process: Nike wearers (that I see) are athletic and hip. I can buy Nike clothes. Then I'll also be athletic and hip.

(And, lest I think I am immune, the same is true of Mac OS. Certainly it is a superior OS to Windows (why else would I use it), but what are we to make of the commercials in which a cool young hipster *is* a Mac, and a lovably-awkward middle-aged wannabe *is* a PC. Could it be that the real message of the commercial is that Mac *users* are hip and sane, and PC *users* are old-school behemoths refusing the newer, better technology? And that the consumer can change between these identities by the simple expedient of shelling out a few thousand dollars for a box containing the Mystical Apple?)

The truth is, "identity"--that is, culturally recognized markers of status and role--has always been a valuable item, on some cases worth killing for (just ask Shakespeare's Richard III as he seeks to be named "king") or sacrificing for (just ask the patriotic veteran proud to have lost a leg "for the flag.") It's also always been something that exploitive marketers are more than willing to sell you (what, did you think the 12-18 simultaneous owners of the so-called holy foreskin didn't consider themselves more holy for having purchased the false relics at inflated price?) The only difference (and the scary thing about Friedman's brand of globalism patriotism) is that the new consumerism has the psychological know-how to largely create its own ideals. A Nike-wearer gets his value from Nike ads, not through association with religion or nation. The difference? Religion and politics both present truth-claims (even if only on their own terms), and as a result are frequently debated amongst all classes within a culture. Advertisement works without conscious assent or dissent.

The true travesty here, is that Friedman is himself sold so that in his book our most beloved societal ideal (freedom) is merely the ability of the rich to purchase titillation and identity easily and cheaply.

(Coming Soon: Christianity and Identity, or a More Problematic Issue where I Return to the Standard CR Stance of Not Really Knowing the Answer.)

Just (or Mostly) to Set the Record Straight...

2007-11-13T13:47:00.000-05:00

"It's a film that finds its main character's heroism not in his perfection, as it was in the poem, but in his ability to eventually overcome his human frailty and immorality and redeem himself through real selflessness."
(from a review of this weekend's Beowulf.)

Point of fact: The poem's Beowulf is notable not for his representation of the pinnacle of a pseudo-proto-Christian warrior culture, but by his inevitable defeat at the hands of evil despite his status as a paragon of well-formed humanity. Also, he could quite possibly out-talk Odysseus (though THAT grudge match would be well worth watching, and re-watching, and re-re-watching.)

Anyway, if the review represents the film correctly, they got it exactly wrong. (And, from other reviews, apparently gave into the temptation to make Beowulf fall into the Hollywood Stereotype of a Hero: a guy who does all his work with his sword (or gun), none with his mouth*. As a guy who really, really likes interesting and complex words, that's sad. I think Neil Gaiman just couldn't stand the fact that the REAL Beowulf's word-horde was bigger than his own.)

* Come to think of it, that paradigm might do a lot to explain America's traditional attitudes towards foreign policy.....

I Have Nothing to Recant--But Let Me Explain!

2007-11-06T12:00:00.000-05:00

A few responses have indicated that I did not fully make the point I was attempting to make in my last entry. Here, then, is a few selected clarifications:

I am not "launch"ing myself "into "poststructuralism."" I am, in fact, firmly committed to the traditional orthodoxies of Christianity, with its associated "incarnational realities." If extreme poststructuralism is correct about the nature of language, than indeed that deepens my understanding of my dependence upon the one Soverign God who stands over all.

However, what I am questioning is the validity of the poststructuralist assertions, which in effect is a questioning of certain "anti-reason" strains within Protestantism, traceable to Luther and brought out most clearly in Calvin. There's a reason I chose the Catholic Chesterton as the "patron saint" of my blogging exercise: Chesterton's "common sense" approach to the world (which, had he lived long enough, would've described Foucault and poststructuralists as "madmen") is based on a contradictory but (arguably) equally Christian assertion. That assertion, put simply, is "there is no such thing as 'human reason;' all reason, rightly followed, leads to the one truth of God and Christianity."

(This is not to say that Chesterton enthrones Reason over God--on the contrary, he admits that in many ways, God doesn't seem to exist, and his own conversion to Christianity was based on a very intuitive and non-logic-bound sense that Christianity and life both allign in the areas they "don't make sense.")

A lot of contemporary Protestants subscribe to this "Catholic" theory of epistemology--but largely (I would argue) because they're influenced by C.S. Lewis, who was brought to Christ by (among others) the writings of the Catholic Chesterton and debates with the Catholic Tolkien. (Because, as a tracer of cultural history, it's okay for me to ahistorically deny the existence of any noncalvinist Christian denominations before 1943.)

For me--at the moment I stand between the Catholic and Protestant theories of knowledge. The Protestant theory certainly emphasizes the sovereignty of God--but for me, this comes largely at the cost that I cannot know much about doctrine in any absolute sense, and must continuously be skeptical about anything I say about God--or indeed, anything I say whatsoever about the structure of reality! I'm not sure how that works with the Pauline concept of a "richly rewarded" confidence, except possibly in a Exestential sense as I alluded to with my comment about "my faith is the evidence of things unseen."

The "Catholic" theory, on the other hand, strikes me as immensely sane and offers a reasonable grounding for discourse over doctrine/theology/etc. However, it merely asserts itself in opposition to the relativism of Protestant faith--from a "Protestant" perspective it could be seen as nothing more or less than an attempted assertion of "human reason" against the all-encompassing mystery of God.

Of course, Schaeffer's anti-relativist (i.e. "Catholic") assertion also carries a lot of weight--the Catholic view (unlike Calvinist poststructuralism) is "livable," and for Schaeffer any theory that cannot be lived by is meaningless. (Seriously--have you ever heard a preacher start his sermon by saying "of course, any thought you have in attempts to understand this is mere human reason, but let us hope that God through his unknowable soverignty shall speak to us in this time anyway.") I'm simply not sure that Schaeffer's "livable" acid-test has complete validity, and so I sit, wavering, somewhere between the two.

Is Poststructuralism a Protestant Faith?

2007-11-05T13:33:00.001-05:00

It seems to me that Protestant (and certainly Calvinist) thought on the nature of truth since the Reformation is based on the tension between two related ideas:

1) Sola Scriptura, which effectively works out as a focus on the individual mind, armed with a single text (the Bible), as the final arbiter of truth. Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door* in order to liberate the truths of scripture from cold, dead interpretations of the corrupt Catholic Church of the Renaissance, and we should clutch our Bibles tightly and memorize them in order to come to a Christian understanding of life.

2) Total Depravity, and more particularly its pre-incarnation in Luther's phrase "human reason," a concept to be disparaged in favor of the unknowable "divine reason" which God uses as he sits in Heaven and predestines reality. That is, God can not be brought before the court of human reason, and since He (not mankind) created the universe, the key to ultimately understanding the world lies in His infinite mind and not humanity's finite comprehension.

This conjunction can (at the best of times) result in unbelievably profound meditations on the unapproachability of God--poems that try to rise through sheer effulgence and point at a God who is indescribable. As Donne says:

BATTER my heart, three person'd God; for, you
As yet but knocke, breathe, shine, and seeke to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow mee,'and bend
Your force, to breake, blowe, burn and make me new. ...

And so on. But there is a catch--quite possibly the biggest catch imaginable. While many poets who actually take time to imaginatively enter Donne's world can find themselves caught up in the wonder and rapture of this passionate, personal, infinite, incomprehensible God who works as a force of nature, only the elect will ever have this desire fulfilled in any real sense. The rest are left in their sin nature and "human reason," trapped in flawed systems of thought that are utterly separated from the luminous reality of the one true "Three person'd God." All our human systems of perception and reason are inherently flawed, part of the trap of our sinful and groaning world, and only the very few Elect shall ever be able to transcend it.

So, when Foucault and Derrida discuss language and culture as an inescapable system of power, control and exploitation--are they really in any way disagreeing with Calvinist thought, which states that even "true" religions (Old Testament Judiasm, Christianity) can and will become "whitewashed tombs" in accordance with the workings of sin and human reason--and that only the elect can transcend through the direct predestination of God and workings of the Holy Spirit? (Evidence suggests not--Foucault frequently appropriated Christian language and thought in order to describe his views of the world.)

And if so, does this mean the "Christian" response is to congratulate poststructuralism on its critical acumen, be thankful that God has chosen his Elect, and hope semi-blindly that I am indeed the "Elect" and not one of the millions hopelessly mired in Derrida's systems of power and control which the Bible calls "the world"?

It's questions like this that keep me rather deeply fearful of Calvinism, and that make me applaud Chesterton every time he demonizes Calvinists (an occurrence which, fortunately, is far more common in his writings than his hypocritical and incredibly wrongheaded antisemitism.) At the same time, without acknowledging a Pope, limiting the power of God, or becoming a Universalist (and the third of those I constantly find incredibly tempting--it would simplify so much!), I'm not sure how firm grounds I can stand on as a "Bible-believing Protestant" when considering the epistemological merit of my own personal readings of Scripture.

And yet Calvinism, and Christianity itself, is all based on particular readings of scriptures--readings that are themselves based on individual human reason.

And so, according to the Luther-Calvin-Foucault-Derrida line of dialog, we are thrown into a vortex of thought that implicates even reason itself in evil, and all that a sane person can do is (a) live a life of faith that God may lift you onto solid ground or (b) laugh, play, and drink lots of coffee in French cafes.

Maybe this is why early Christianity called itself "the Way," and looked only to the strange life/death/avowed resurrection of Christ as "the Way/Truth/Life." But still....I'm not sure that there isn't something we're missing re. the relationship of Reason and God.

*Of course, Luther didn't necessarily nail his theses to the door, nor was the hypothesized action a call for Luther's discourse ever to leave the already-present Church/academic structures of debate. But when all is said and done, Luther did introduce a radically personalized view of the method for the Christian to approach Christ's doctrine--and however conservative Luther himself may have been**, it's nearly impossible not to draw a line from Luther's foulmouthed anger at the corrupt body of the Catholic Church and the modern Christian who differentiates herself from "organized religion."

**And let us not forget that "however conservative Luther himself may have been," one of the first actions of this new way of looking at "sola scriptura," "sola Christus "sola gratia," "sola fide," and "soli Deo gloria," was to condemn the book of Titus and order its destruction.

Hans and Dumbledore

2007-11-02T08:56:00.000-04:00

So...one of my friends is mildly obsessed with Alan Rickman. And has included on her site the following picture illustrating the Facebook group "I can't wait to watch Alan Rickman kill Dumbledore:"

This picture is simple brilliance.

Techno-Luddites Rejoice!

2007-10-29T15:06:00.000-04:00

If you are one of those (like me) who eternally debates the various benefits of listening to custom MP3 playlists all day against gently and reverently placing a cold, shiny vinyl album on a spinning wheel and watching in glee as a plain, honest, literal needle descends and magically sends forth warm, beautiful, snuggleably organic tonalities.....then according to Wired Magazine, your time may be at hand!

Heterodoxy, or: Further Up, Further In, and Our Hope in God that We End Up in the Same General Direction

2007-10-28T02:46:00.001-04:00

Do any two Christians actually believe in the same version of Christianity?

On the face of it, most people (or at least most Evangelicals) would give a resounding "yes." I mean, of course there are the "conservatives," who "believe in the Bible," and the "liberals," who are a bit more squishy about matters of doctrine (generally) but no less lacking for steely-eyed indignation against certain evils in the world. And then those emergent folks, who try to mix the two in strange ways while using bigger words for secular matters and little short words for theology (because that's the language the world speaks). And of course the Catholics and Eastern Orthodox, but in America they mainly stay huddled up in corners and occasionally make silly faces at the rest of us.

So lets just look at organized Conservative Evangelicalism. Heck, let's just look at the Southern Baptist Convention. They all convene together, after all. Though they do tend to argue, and form various sides such as "reformed" and "prosperity heresy" and suchlike. So...let's look at the Conservative, non-superchurch, plane-jane SBC First Baptist Churches that pop up in your typical mid-sized Texan town. And let's look at the people in one theoretical version. Some people are Southern Baptists because they grew up so by God and going to Church on Sunday is simply what good people do. Some because it's the place with dead-on doctrines, preaching boldly and without flinching even when the Bible talks about homosexuality as a vile preversion (although they generally tend to downplay things the Bible has to say about, say, excommunication and submission to Church leaders.) Some are just there because it's the place where the Gospel is preached, even though they personally find it stuffy and oppressive. But all of them have about an equal right to be called Baptists.

Recently, C. S. Lewis tried to solve all this fuss, and gave a series of WWII radio broadcasts explaining the fundamental thing that Christianity "is," the things that all Christians share regardless of denomination. He did such a great job that Mere Christianity became arguably the most-read "classic" among evangelicals, yet a work that reaches out to a far broader audience. (I was amused once to find him outside the "C of E and Dissidents" section of a Catholic bookseller--my conclusion is that he is considered a Catholic author only because of the prayers of the departed Saints Tolkien and Chesterton. And if that's improper Catholic doctrine--hey, what's being a Protestant mean if you can't occasionally Make Stuff Up Yourself.) The only problem: he offered a common-sense explanation. And therefore, I've seen at least a couple of very well-reasoned Evangelical articles on why Mere Christianity demonstrates Lewis' status as a heretic, and therefore someone (presumably) roasting in Hell. I mean, not only was he downright friendly with the scientific theory of Evolution, but the guy said that you didn't even have to be a Christian to be a Christian! “There are people in other religions who are being led by God’s secret influence to concentrate on those parts of their religion which are in agreement with Christianity, and who thus belong to Christ without knowing it."

Of course, generally it is only lay-Christians who even assume a commonality of doctrine among believers--pretty much any time an intellectual discipline of theology develops, a gradient of "core issue/ancillary issue" and the concomitant "orthodox/heterodox/heretical" soon follows. Of course, few systems (as much as they might want to) line up precisely--even on the "core issue" area. And that's before the theoretical ideal "system" gets interpreted by its followers.

I'm not about to say that I have a theologian's understanding--and unless God calls me to make a career of theology, I probably never will. But the whole point of the Chestertonian Rambler is for me to blog irresponsibly, so here's my two cents:

If God exists, then my theology, like my life, is in His hands. The unity of the Church, too, is in his hands. So I'll spend my own time wrestling with Scriptures as Jacob wrestled with the angel. And I'll pray that God breaks me where I am wrong, just as the angel broke Jacob. And in all things, even theology, I'll seek humility (and the child of humility, graciousness of speech) as in various ways I testify to what I can see of God.

After all, as the liberally foulmouthed and often surly Luther once said (or was it his erstwhile ally and bitter foe about human free will, Erasmus?):

In essentials unity, in non-essentials diversity, in all things charity.

The horror! The horror!

2007-10-23T17:45:00.000-04:00

Just saw the latest Beowulf Trailer. A few confusions.

1) LSD and Anglo-Saxon literature should NEVER mix.
2) Trailers that do the "fade-in, fade-out" montage style...should FADE ALL THE WAY IN. If I ever develop epilepsy, it will be because of that trailer. I don't care if such causality is physically impossible--that trailer can do the impossible, as long as it's pointless and irritating.
3) I saw Beowulf standing on top of the dragon. This means, I think, that I should give up all hope of anything I like from the poem of being included...even Wiglaf. Darnit. Wiglaf is cool.
4) Grendel's mother is still played by Angelina Jolie. No matter how many trailers they release, this isn't going to change.
5) Beowulf will never be made into a movie in which the plot and themes of Beowulf are even remotely visible. No matter how many film versions they release, that also isn't going to change.

6) Despite (1) and (5), I'd still see Julie Taymor's Beowulf on opening night, if she ever got around to making it. (She did start, once!)

Magic and Story

2007-10-08T17:19:00.001-04:00

Was reading a rather interesting book today, and ran across a comment that gave me pause. Basically, it was talking about legends, and stated the old theme in fantasy that magic is a sort of cousin of Story, and works the same way. That is, we want stories about Families, and so one character who has a miraculous (and magical) life is likely to give birth to another character whose life is, in a manner of speaking, magical.

Or to go with the bigger theme, we want Stories where the little beat-up Cinderella grows up to be the beautiful princess, so we call in the narrative component of Magic to make things interesting and unusual and miraculous--that is, to make them Story-ish.

But if magic were real, it would seem the opposite would be true. Magic would just be one more way for the rich to have comfortable lives--and to ignore the pleas of the poor. Because those who seek power would gain magic, and they would want to keep their power exclusively. I dunno...I hate the tendency to make magic a thin veneer on reality, when there's so much expressive ability in the tropes and characters of fantasy stories themselves, but I still can't help but think: there have to be some wonderful fairy-tales to be found where magic itself is the enemy of Story, the protector of the powerful and enemy of the weak. I wonder what they would look like...

It's That Time Again--Random Gilbert Poem

2007-09-25T16:01:00.000-04:00

A Song of Defeat

The line breaks and the guns go under,
The lords and the lackeys ride the plain;
I draw deep breaths of the dawn and thunder,
And the whole of my heart grows young again.
For our chiefs said 'Done,' and I did not deem it;
Our seers said 'Peace,' and it was not peace;
Earth will grow worse till men redeem it,
And wars more evil, ere all wars cease.
But the old flags reel and the old drums rattle,
As once in my life they throbbed and reeled;
I have found my youth in the lost battle,
I have found my heart on the battlefield.
For we that fight till the world is free,
We are not easy in victory:
We have known each other too long, my brother,
And fought each other, the world and we.

And I dream of the days when work was scrappy,
And rare in our pockets the mark of the mint,
When we were angry and poor and happy,
And proud of seeing our names in print.
For so they conquered and so we scattered,
When the Devil road and his dogs smelt gold,
And the peace of a harmless folk was shattered;
When I was twenty and odd years old.
When the mongrel men that the market classes
Had slimy hands upon England's rod,
And sword in hand upon Afric's passes
Her last Republic cried to God.
For the men no lords can buy or sell,
They sit not easy when all goes well,
They have said to each other what naught can smother,
They have seen each other, our souls and hell.

It is all as of old, the empty clangour,
The Nothing scrawled on a five-foot page,
The huckster who, mocking holy anger,
Painfully paints his face with rage.
And the faith of the poor is faint and partial,
And the pride of the rich is all for sale,
And the chosen heralds of England's Marshal
Are the sandwich-men of the Daily Mail,
And the niggards that dare not give are glutted,
And the feeble that dare not fail are strong,
So while the City of Toil is gutted,
I sit in the saddle and sing my song.
For we that fight till the world is free,
We have no comfort in victory;
We have read each other as Cain his brother,
We know each other, these slaves and we.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton

On the Lamentable Decline of Reasonable Discourse among Our Moste Publick Personages

2007-09-18T13:58:00.001-04:00

Just read a rather interesting article about the new Pullman movies. Interesting, that is, in its rather bizarre presuppositions. And by interesting, I mean depressing.

The first interesting quote comes halfway through the second paragraph. "Unfortunately for the filmmakers, Pullman's books also include a fair amount of what has been perceived to be anti-Catholic rhetoric."

Which, despite the pejorative nature of the term "rhetoric" (implying name-calling rather than a fully-defined argument), is a pretty big understatement. At the moment, I've only read the first two books, but it seems to me Pullman takes a central and uncompromising stance in which any religion calling for "humility and submission" is, not to put to fine a point on it, wrong and evil. In interviews, Pullman takes pains to point out that this doesn't make him a moral relativist, as he very much believes in and is interested in the idea of right vs. wrong. He just thinks Christianity (and any similar religion) is on the side of wrong, philosophically speaking, even if many Christians may honestly do very good things. And he likes to focus on the many times they do bad things, for obvious reasons.

Or, to allow Pullman his own way of putting it:

Underlying the trilogy there is a myth of creation and rebellion, of development and strife, and so on. I don’t make this myth explicit anywhere, but it was important for me to have it clear in my mind. It depicts a struggle: the old forces of control and ritual and authority, the forces which have been embodied throughout human history in such phenomena as the Inquisition, the witch-trials, the burning of heretics, and which are still strong today in the regions of the world where religious zealots of any faith have power, are on one side; and the forces that fight against them have as their guiding principle an idea which is summed up in the words The Republic of Heaven. It’s the Kingdom against the Republic.

And everything follows from that. So, for instance, the book depicts the Temptation and Fall not as the source of all woe and misery, as in traditional Christian teaching, but as the beginning of true human freedom – something to be celebrated, not lamented. And the Tempter is not an evil being like Satan, prompted by malice and envy, but a figure who might stand for Wisdom.

Now there are a number of directions that it is possible to go with these revelations. I suppose one traditional response throughout Christianity would be to label the book as "dangerous" and censor it. Which works really, really great, because we live in a theocracy and have expunged all people who disagree with us and therefore all that is necessary for order is for everyone to agree word-for-word with the dictum of those in our religion who are best at attaining earthly power. And of course burn the witches, because there's nothing that makes the righteous feel ... er ... righteous quite like killing those who aren't righteous.

There's also the secular humanist equivalent: go see the movie, read the book, &c., because it tells the truth about the evils of Christianity uncompromisingly. I mean, how can we ever establish a world where every human is treated with value if we allow big groups of people to run around saying that man is made in the image of an immeasurably powerful God? And how can we live up to the humanist beliefs started by people like Erasmus of Rotterdam and fed by the intellectual conviction of people like Martin Luther if we allow there to be religion? It simply isn't possible: man must be God Himself. And then, whenever a man has absolute power, he will of course naturally be a benevolent and virtuous creature, just like God isn't.

Then there's the more reasonable take: Pullman is continuing in the tradition of C.S. Lewis (whose Narnia books he despises) in crafting a fantasy that's concerned far more with ethics, morality, and religion than with mere striking images (although neither author is lacking in beautiful images). It may (or may not) be reasonable for those in one camp to wish to avert their children from emotional damage of facing a violent attack on their fundamental beliefs before they have the critical capability to analyze arguments--certainly there is a good deal of emotional-scar-potential in both "the problem of Susan" and Pullman's God-as-villain. But the "other side" cannot in a diverse culture be avoided forever--sooner or later the collision will occur, and the individual must choose one side or another. And even then, one will have to live, work, talk to, and vote with many whose fundamental beliefs are contrary to one's own. So there needs to be an allowance for debate.

(Incidentally, Lewis himself would be on the rather liberal side of this view: not only did he highly value the "second friend" defined roughly as "that guy you disagree with about everything, and with whom you're constantly enjoying rousing debates," but in Surprised by Joy he takes pains to point out that he was allowed free range of his parents' library (including books almost universally kept away from children), and that it didn't seem to do him any lasting harm. Being taught that he must "truly believe" the things he prayed, on the other hand, did. It is perhaps this honesty and friendship with debate that makes Pullman admit that "the things Lewis said as a critic" are "very acute and full of sense and full of intelligent nad sometimes subtle judgments.")

And finally....there's Nicole Kidman's view of the subject:

"It has been watered down a little...I was raised Catholic, the Catholic Church is part of my essence," Kidman said.

"I wouldn't be able to do this film if I thought it were at all anti-Catholic."

By all that is sane and reasonable....what in the world ARE they teaching those kids in school these days?

What's In a (Street) Name

2007-09-10T23:38:00.000-04:00

Halfway between the University of Toronto and Chinatown, Hannah and I stumbled upon the following road:

As a huge fan of cheesy SF adventures, English novels of manners, and utterly bizzare combinations, I have to admit that this sign is the greatest road sign since Shades of Death Road.

It refers, of course, to Vxy'cutular'varen D'arcy XXIV, the stern but surprisingly just Glorious Conqueror of a Thousand Worlds, who was nevertheless smitten upon the 3472nd year of his reign with love for the perspicacious, energetic, and exceptionally free-willed second daughter (Elizabeth) of Reg ulation Cooridnator Bennett. The whole affair became the number one gossip topic among Intergalactic Society when the woman responded to D'arcy's order to "accept the role of my wife with all the dignity, obedience, and servitude the position requires." Against all the power and intensity of the Unopposed Conquerer Elizabeth merely calmly admitted to "a great number of reservations and misgivings concerning the character of your race, your person, and your manner of proposal," but according to the closest sources the largest objection remained unsaid: on the night of their first meeting, Elizabeth had overheard D'arcy describing her in no unclear terms as "a puny Earthling," an insult, all must agree, worthy of giving the most besotted woman grounds for anger.

In the end, however, the wedding did occur--though again accounts differ as to the specific reasons behind the earthling's reversal of opinion. Most of those that gave the area any serious thought concluded that it had something to do with her younger sister's marriage to the dashing but amoral Bua'ingl'fey, formerly commander of D'arcy's personal guards. In any case, all events remain so shrouded in secrecy that any theorized connection remains little more than idle guesswork.....

The Reading Update

2007-09-06T12:44:00.001-04:00

In some ways, the fact that most of my library is in Texas while I'm in Toronto has actually been a good thing for my reading habits. That is, I've been by necessity forced to (1) read those of my wife's favorite books that I hadn't gotten around to reading, (2) make use of the library, and (3) the few gems we've already picked up at Bakka Phoenix. Two books particularly stand out.

1) Deerskin, by Robin McKinley. Robin McKinley is now, by far, the best author I discovered over the course of the last year, and one of the greatest living fantasy authors period. Already her Sunshine is on the very short list of Truly Great Books I've Read This Year, and so I figured it was time to check out Deerskin, the only McKinley book we have that I hadn't read.

My first thought: Deerskin is the book for anyone who thinks fairy tales are lighthearted, pretty, and pleasantly childish. Deerskin is, in fact, quite the opposite--a thick and unflinchingly dark novel full of atmosphere, personality and detail. But other than the relatively large number of words, it has everything that could be asked for in a fairy-tale: great deeds of momentous import; a sense of real, clear, hideous evil (that is climatically defeated); a world far more in touch with nature than ours; magical shelters; a fairy-godmother (of sorts); the Handsome (well...immensely likable, which in a book is far more important) Prince; tear-jerking moments of humanity and relief and divine intervention; and a love story to warm the heart and soul. It just happens to be centered around, er, incest and rape at the hands of a beloved king.

Deerskin is also one of those books that I have a hard time praising, simply because it treads so confidently and earnestly in a direction that is, as far as I can tell, unique to the story. It's not that the darkness of the storyline is necessarily so original; fantasy was eagerly delving the depths of human depravity long before a stodgy Oxford don found a blank essay sheet and scribbled "in a hole in a hill there lived a hobbit." It's that McKinley embraces all the darkness of her subject matter, and then writes a happy, warm, humorous and incredibly human fairy-tale about friendship, redemption, and the cute difficulties of raising orphaned puppies (no, I'm not making this up.) All that, but without flinching away from the damage, in the kind of world where it is a magical and wondrous thing for a girl to be allowed to forget her entire childhood and adolescence. And McKinley writes the whole thing with such conviction that it seems there isn't any difficulty reconciling the two, that heartbreaking stories about rape should naturally involve princes that sleep in the barn and have a near phobia of balls, or that such stories should dedicate pages to the cute peril of puppies with newly-opened eyes and sharp "needle-like teeth."

And then there are the moments of true fantasy, which is probably a sensation harder to describe than even compassionate horror or the warm and human narration. But it's there, showing at the surface in vivid detail when appropriate, staying close at hand in the background throughout the tale. And in the end, we are thrown back into the realm of faerie violently enough (if a bit too briefly) to please any fantasy-lover--not just happily ever after, but bloody spells, operatic passions, single-minded desperation, and the struggle (writ large) of sanity against the very real threat of deadening madness.

It doesn't quite achieve the perfection of tone that made Sunshine so remarkable, and every once in a while the physical horror seems to counteract the calm compassion McKinley otherwise carefully builds up. But it remains one of the best fantasies I have ever read, a dark and slanty-eyed tribute to the power and beauty that most beloved of fantasy genres.

2) The Lies of Locke Lamora, by Scott Lynch.

If Deerskin is the book for anyone who thinks fairy-tales too airy and lighthearted, The Lies of Locke Lamora is the book for those who think that the term "escapist" implies a lack of intelligence or skill. The book is unabashedly escapist, blatantly irresponsible, and shamelessly fun. On the first page, the eight-year-old protagonist is sold by the Thief-maker of Camorr, for the simple reason that he steals too much and schemes too big to be allowed to remain in the school of thievery and schemes. He then joins the Gentleman Bastards, a merry band of men who rob from the rich and, er, pile the gold in their basement (only after their success realizing that it's actually easier to steal money than to spend it.) The story is fun, the characters absolutely lovable (if utterly roguish) in the old Errol Flynn style. Better yet, the adventure (and oh is there adventure) hearkens back entirely to the time before everyone wanted to be a movie star. It's swashbuckling fantasy, but not of the guy-with-sword-killing-hordes variety. Locke Lamora himself is, it turns out, not a gifted fighter in the least--but he was born to lie, charm, and shake the world with his outrageous schemes.

And, of course, the whole thing is written with a wit and vigor reminiscent of Wodehouse. It's the most fun I've had with a book for quite some time, and I'm only half way through. Better yet, I've been informed by a reliable source that the sequel involves (what else?) pirates.

Curious Sidenote 1:
I think I've made myself something of a connoisseur of really bad back covers for fantasy novels. Deerskin, despite the three great quotes from fellow fantasy authors, has one of the worst. Clearly, the person who wrote the text had neither read Deerskin, nor read a summary, but merely heard someone talk about the summary that they remembered reading sometime.

"As Princess Lissar reaches womanhood, it is clear to all the kingdom that in her breathtaking beauty she is the mirror image of her mother, the queen." (The book goes out of its way to point out that, despite resembling her mother, she constantly shocks the court with her bad manners and inelegance, so that they wonder how she can be the queen's daughter!) "But this seeming blessing forces her to flee for safety from her father's wrath." (Well...I have to give credit for the creative euphemism, I guess...but then comes the real kicker:)

"With her loyal dog Ash at her side, Lissar unlocks a door to a world of magic, where she finds the key to her survival--and an adventure beyond her wildest dreams..." (How can I begin to complain! First of all, it's rather a strong symbol in the book that Lissar never, in the entire book, is described as unlocking a door. And when you're talking about Robin McKinley, whose first thought about an exciting adventure is "when and where are these people going to eat, sleep, and use the restroom", that says a lot. Moreover, there is actually quite a bit of prose (with rather obvious literal and symbolic meaning) in the first act in which we see in detail exactly how Lyssa locks doors, where the keyholes are, and which way the doors will swing if they are opened etc. But I suppose we shouldn't expect people who write summaries of books to actually read the book they summarize--as Chesterton pointed out, books do tend to have lots of words, and that means lots of work for the poor editor.

But even if keys and doors and locks had never been mentioned--do people really want drab copies of Narnia so much that every story has to involve a "door to a world of magic," even when the girl lives inside a fairy-tale? Sheesh.)

But here's the true kicker: The front cover illustration (also probably written by someone who never read the book) captures the soul of the book perfectly. The moral: sometimes it's okay to judge a book by its cover--but only it's front cover, never the back.

Curious Sidenote 2:
Locke Lomora is, generally speaking, not a man all that concerned with ethics, or aesthetics, or philosophy, or basically anything except palling around with his friends and pulling off brilliant capers. So I find it very interesting that he is, perhaps, the only character in his genre to be faithfully in love with just one woman. I mean we're talking about a genre where the most idealized men of justice and truth are assumed to seduce every woman in sight, just to prove that they're cool and suave, and even if the girl recently slept with their father played by Sean Connery. I always found that aspect a rather disconcerting theme. But it's interesting that the first exception is possibly the most immoral of the bunch.

Honesty and Morality in Fiction--Or If You Can't Write Fiction, Write About Writing Fiction

2007-09-05T03:19:00.000-04:00

I believe that one of the fundamental elements in fiction is morality. Not that "one of the fundamental elements in fiction ought to be morality," not that "one of the fundamental elements in Christian fiction is morality," not even that "one of the fundamental elements in good fiction is morality." Humans are driven to tell stories, and while we all like clever stories, and we all like funny stories, the parts of stories that actually mean something to us are always about morality. Oedipus is driven to justice, blind to his own guilt. Huck Finn decides that he'll help free a nigger, even if it means he'll go to hell for it. Luke declares that there is some (moral) good in Vader, but goes into a killing frenzy when his thoughts betray his sister. Lancelot violates his king's trust, but only because he follows the rival moral system of Courtly Love (well, until he sleeps with the two Elaines). The list goes on.

Of course, the list also proves another thing: morality in stories is not necessarily easy, comforting, or consistent with other stories. Often, the very opposite is true. Chaucer hears a moralist's inhuman allegory, turns around, and writes a story about a greedy Pardoner who preaches chilling tells of how "radix malorum est cupiditas." Neoclassical authors assert order and reason and submission; Romantics idealize the "natural" and "primitive" and rebellious. And so it goes.

In a sense, I guess one could say that much of postmodern art is just such a reaction, although one focused almost exclusively on destroying previous "illusions" rather than presenting any coherent alternative. The Western For a Few Dollars More starts with an image of a man getting shot off a horse--in isolation it means nothing, but it's darkly humorous merely because in the moral universe of Westerns, the lone rider is virtually always an image of rough-and-tumble moral goodness, as well as the protagonist. By killing him, Sergio Leone is in essence arguing that all moral codes are senseless, that our most edifying myths are errant.

But I digress. The point is, even when attacking "traditional morality" and attempting to destabilize the viewer, fiction retains an inherent moral focus--if only by emphasizing morality's absence. Which brings me to the sentence I once wrote, which brought such interesting questions to my mind it inspired this whole posting.

"At last he told me of myself�the beloved daughter he never could have but in whom he saw and loved so much of himself."

The line came to me rather unbidden, which is (alas!) rather a rarity for me in the course of writing. It occurs at the end of a story that serves largely as a contemplation of love, or at least of the brokenness and fragmentation of love in a fallen world, where sin touches on everyone and on my protagonists more strongly than many. Yet out of an abyss largely made of desperate sexuality and fearfully ambiguous puritanism, at the end, a sort of promise of healing comes in a friendship between a failed father and a girl whose own father felt it reasonable to lock her in a tower until she was old enough to be given away*. The ending felt right, retaining the honesty of the darkness that had gone before while depositing a real glimmer of hope, heard in the ever-sweeping roar of the sea and the equally peaceful and steady love born of sin, suffering and compassion. And then I wrote the sentence.

"...but in whom he saw and loved so much of himself." Now the line, as I said, came to me, and I was struck with its unexpected beauty just as if I had been reading it in someone else's book. (In fact, it's experiences like this that convince me of the sheer idiocy of the contemporary idea that an author somehow "owns" the ideas he happens to set down in ink.) In a very real sense he sees his failures as echoed in the girl, and if it feels natural to love and forgive her (who looks like him), maybe he can accept forgiveness for his more momentous mistakes. At the same time, the instant I wrote the last word, I was struck by the bite at the end, and instinctively tried to rephrase it. "But who he loved as his daughter reborn" simply didn't work, but any variant of "whom he loved saw past the failures and sins of an irresponsible life" seemed so cloying and patronizingly moralistic as to destroy any value the story might have.

But my problem remained. Because if "he saw and loved so much of himself," does that not mean that he is self-focused, and unable to see the girl herself but only a younger form of himself? What does it say about his love for his daughter, who despite the paternity in fact had very little in common with him, and never experienced the grief that came to dominate his life. Am I, in fact, implying that love never really leaves the self, that our feelings towards others are really nothing more than a slight twist on our own self-love?

And then I made a realization. I'm not responsible for what other people might think as a result of my stories. It was an honest line, and the only proper line to fit in that particular place in the story, and the impulse is a real fact of human life. The more I thought of it, I realized two things. First, that it made sense within the framework of a lot of what I believe to be true and beautiful about the world, that maybe it wasn't as fearsome a starting place as it might first appear. But more importantly, it was what I thought should go there, and if I ever want to get any writing done, I'm going to have to write what I feel and see, as an author and observer and poet, and forget for a while the Spanish Inquisition in my head asking what might be the consequences of pointing out this fact as opposed to, say, that fact.

After all, there's a reason why the study of literature is classed under the heading of "humanities." For writing a story is a very human action, an intuitive joining of emotion and thought that doesn't really follow strict reason. And if I don't write fiction as a human, with the courage to put on paper potential errors as well as my insights, then I will have neither errors nor insights but drab, lifeless illustrations of conceptual theology. And really, in the end, it should always be up to the reader to decide what my observation means, based on his or her experiences and beliefs which will by definition differ from mine. My only duty is to see what I see, and try to point using whatever vagaries of words I can to the beauties and intricacies that fill every corner of our lives.

*It's okay, though, because the book is vaguely Medieval in setting. So it's cultural, just like Indians wearing headdresses or Russians dancing with bottles of beer on their head.

To Rejoice in the Weakness and Failings of Others

2007-08-30T11:22:00.000-04:00

Twice, it seems, in the past few weeks, I have been compelled to defend dead people who I look up to as icons of Christianity, both times in light of their failures, confusions, and doubts. The first was probably the most personal, as I was defending C.S. Lewis, whose writings have probably done more to keep me sane in the long and confusing path of my doubts and faith than any other person. The biggest question for me was not so much "was Lewis a Christian?" as "why do I so passionately and earnestly feel compelled to defend the particular spiritual position of someone who was dead before I was born?" The same thing happened today, though in microcosm, in reaction to a blog dealing with the general reactions to Mother Teresa's letters.

In both case, the answer seems to be the same: It matters because in these people can be seen great failures.

Now there are (I believe) multiple interpretations of this statement. One is exactly what shook me in the linked blog:

There is a tendency in us — if we are honest — to rejoice in the weakness and failings of others. There are some that are quick to draw attention to this soul-struggle that is highlighted, and to say, “I told you so.” We spend our lives comparing and contrasting our standing with that of others. Pastors look at other pastors leading bigger churches and having a “more successful” ministry, and privately think “I’m actually better than he is, if only I had an opportunity to preach to thousands, they would know that. But I face evil opposition instead. My people don’t realize how blessed they are.” And with that mindset, we actually have inner rejoicing when that “more successful” pastor is caught in a scandal. “See, I knew I was better all along. Now maybe my people will appreciate me more.” Others must fall if we are to be raised. And our masks and robes must be carefully worn so that the status we have achieved is not defaced or lessened.

The logic is sound, and certainly this desire to elevate ourselves by bringing others down is a fundamental temptation to pride. But there is another side to the "rejoicing" in the revelations that one of the most looked-up-to icons of Christianity had many "weaknesses and failings." In a culture (and, alas, even a Christian Evangelical culture) that idolizes strength and success above all, that preaches so often that once you accept Jesus in, everything will be better, that faith naturally equals simplicity--is there not a wonder, a sort of breath of fresh air, that comes when we discover our potential idols, like us, are sinners, and all their righteousness but clinging rags?

I do "spend my life comparing and contrasting our standing with that of others." The way I do it, I know, is a sin--but it's also one of the reasons I'm befuddled by the Scripture passages that talk about how we shall "know a tree by its fruit." I know God has saved me, has given me this desire to love and serve him--but I feel doubt, and chaos, and the moral worthlessness of my so-often self-centered life. I feel these things and I wonder if I'm maybe Esau, crying without hope to a sad but firm God the pathetic words "father, please, is there any left for me." Or I wonder if I'm the lukewarm that Jesus spits out of his mouth. When the sins, doubts, and confusions of those Christians I most look up to are revealed, it is a marvel--because strangely I do believe people like Mother Teresa or C. S. Lewis to be saved, and their lives are a reminder that despite the confidence and "faith" I see around me, it is still only the sinners who feel their need for the Divine Physician, and it is them who the Man of Sorrows came to earth to save.

Top Five Cinematic Swordfights

2007-08-23T12:36:00.001-04:00

There's nothing that says Classic Hollywood Goodness more than two guys trying wittily to cut each other in half with large metal swords. It just leads to happiness. So, I figure, I haven't done a top-_ list in a while, time for the Top Five Great Hollywood Swordfights.

1) Wesley v. Inigo Montoya, from The Princess Bride. Not only is the film an inspired (and nearly flawless) blending of the fairy-tale with the spoof, but the duel itself carved such fresh new territory in an almost-dead area--and inspired countless films to come. The two fencers are so confident, so cool, that the entire absurdly theatrical exchange is accompanied by a quiet, concentrated conversation one might expect of two tradesmen meeting over a pint of ale. Assuming, of course, that the two tradesmen sparkle with such wit and enthusiasm for life that every other sentence leaps into new levels of originality and hillarity. Brilliant, I say!

2) Tristan v. Er...um....Septimus? from Stardust. Minor spoiler, but arguably not if you've seen the trailer. The concept is brilliant, but seems likely to lead to hokiness: it's a high-adventure duel, only one of its participants is dead. And being remotely controlled. What sells it is the sheer talent of the wire-work. It simply isn't possible for a man to execute elaborate slashes and parries to the side while bent over backwards at a 90-degree angle, but it's done is such an utterly convincing manner that it's impossible to not end up rolling on the floor in laughter.

3) Luke v. Vader, from The Empire Strikes Back. Not much to say here, I guess. The greatest duel in the greatest episode of arguably the greatest adventure saga ever committed to celluloid. Sure the later films (even Jedi) have a bit better technical choreography, but as any audience knows choreography is never really what it's all about. It's about larger-than-life struggles, good vs. evil, Wagnerian scope, endless creativity, and just plain narrative intensity. In other words, it's about jumping out of a death(ish)trap, blocking the next blow with a steam pipe, then blowing the Greatest Villain in the face with a burst of steam so you can use the force to grab your dropped lightsaber. And, of course, screaming "No! That isn't possible!" in a way that fully lives up to Lucas' directing dictum of "Faster! More intense!"

4) Indy v. Sword-Wielding-Arab, from Raiders of the Lost Ark. So maybe this isn't a duel, per se. It was scripted as one, though. And then Indy shot him, and walked on in that world-weary way that only a lifetime of watching Humphrey Bogart films can impart. And he can get away with it, too--because he's Harrison Ford, and he always shoots first.

5) William Wallace v. Robert the Bruce, from Braveheart. Historically, it's bunk. The central theme of struggling for freedom doesn't hold any water. The chronology is shifted 10 years to give Mel an extra sex scene. Bruce is shifted from one of the most brilliant tacticticians in military history to an adolescent raging against the inhumanity and complexities of his father's world of corruption and compromise. But he's an utterly brilliant raging adolescent, and when he looks into Wallace's eyes, and sees the passion with which he fights, and takes it from him--none of that matters. Because it's great cinema, and great story, and all told with a gritty "realism" that may not be historical, but is nothing if not mythic.

Fights not making the list include Aragorn v. Ringwraith and Undead Jack Sparrow v. Undead Barbarrosa, and the climactic fights from The Adventures of Robin Hood (starring Erroyl Flynn) and The Three Musketeers (the original), starring everyone and continued in The Four Musketeers). Perhaps I'll say why later, time and internet access permitting.

Of Grandmothers and Literary Pretensions

2007-08-10T02:15:00.001-04:00

I've read and written a lot about fiction, and Art, and Christian Art, and Horrible Bad Trite Things that Must Be Avoided. I shall read and write a whole lot more.

I've thought a lot about what type of narrative art Christians should create, and specifically how Christians can justify a life dedicated to stories that are literally false. I try to put these principles into practice, writing novels and short-stories that will almost certainly never find their way into a Christian bookstore, but that reflect intensely many struggles and beauties that are somewhat unique to or prevalent in the Christian life. I want to make good art; I want to make art that is glorifying to God; I want to make stories that are well-crafted, honed, and as precise as a surgeons scalpel, even when they're targeted at ripping the reader's heart out through a gaping and jagged hole. I want to write mythological fantasy and be unapologetic about it, because we need large stories as well as small. And I will fight with all my might to make sure that honest, personal and worthwhile stories come to be a recognizable form of Christian literature again, so that we can have more works such as Pearl, Crime and Punishment, or Jane Eyre.

But I think that the first step in any literary criticism should be something entirely different. I spent at least an hour in a car, talking with my grandmother about the books she reads. Her reactions are largely plot-level, and she's ready to use phrases such as "too deep for me." She wants books that are in recognizable, comfortable real-world settings. She doesn't like murder mysteries because they are too dark. When she asks me about my short story, there's an awkward moment of mental grasping for any way to put my dark quasi-literary fantasy about the darkness and difficulties of faith. And yet--books are immensely important to her life. They give her opportunities to exercise her mind, exploring places and sights and situations beyond her immediate horizons and stretching her mind to absorb and understand these stories. They give her humor, and interest, and experiences of sorts. They stir her mind to an interest in the places and times in which they take place. Books are just one element of many in her life, but without their stories I just can't but think she would be that less whole, that less relaxed, that less capable of being the powerful force of hospitality and friendliness and life-making that she is.

I can (and will) talk about art v. entertainment until I'm blue in the face. I can (and will) write stories that are challenging, that show life and genre from odd and often unexpected angles. But it is good to remember that books are a service, and at the end of the day writers are only craftsmen hoping to serve those whose lives exist far away from the world of words and stories.

Just an Observation

2007-08-03T12:09:00.000-04:00

Fact: It is impossible for the English language to have two synonyms about any subject people feel strongly about, but that they will become sharply differentiated so as to mean "good" and "bad" to a certain group of people. This is true even if they're the same word. This is true even if one of the words was invented by the speaker five seconds ago--people will just accept it.

I'm not sure how I feel about this. I mean, I live and breathe words, and this certainly gives authors lots of opportunities to be original and fresh. It makes people see that the same thing can be two very different things to different people. It has the power to jerk people out of apathy, get away from baggage that seems incidental, and remind them what a word presumably meant in the first place. "This newspaper is not a liberal publication, it's a progressive publication." "He's not retarded, he's developmentally delayed." "It's not just another book, it's a work of literature." The only problem is, people believe these phrases to actually have meaning, rather than being poetry. Which is problematic.

Why was I thinking about this? I'll show you:

"It takes a lot of intellect to have faith, which is why so many people only have religiosity."
--Madeline L'Engle

Now I see her point. The difficulties of faith are really quite worth thinking about. I also disagree strongly with her Plutocratic view of Christianity ("He has told the, O man, what is good and what does the lord require of thee? But to...um...come intellectually with grips with the fact that "God is a s--t" and yet persist in faith due to one's own intellect?" Somehow I seem to recall a justice, mercy, and humility as being a bit higher on the totem pole. Even maybe a few comments about children entereing the kingdom.)

Mostly, though, I wonder if someone as self-admittedly bright and authorial as L'Engle really needs to be introducing the word "religiosity" to the language that already has "narrow-minded funamentalism," "pharasaism," "legalism," and "puritanism?"

The Return of the Shameless Self Promotion

2007-07-27T11:45:00.000-04:00

So, Coach's Midnight Diner is finally working its way to the printers. What is better, the editor has decided to release a 93-page free "Sample-Size Diner," which contains the first 2-10 pages of every story in the collection. Of course, it is the nature of the short story to lead up to one central point, so it's hard to really judge a collection based on the first halves of the story, but what I've read so far seems to be a very good indicator that this project is just what I'd hoped it would be.

I can only describe the general tone as "hard boiled;" a sense of seething violence seems to settle in, which is pretty much what one would expect from a short-story collection with "Midnight Diner" in the title. Premises range from the self-consciously absurd (Jesus dressed as Thor at a comic-book convention) to the hyper-gritty (a man leaves his sympathetically-portrayed abusive wife, convinced by his lover she's demon-possessed), with just about everything in between. It's not always easy to tell where the stories are going to go, and some of them certainly seem capable of going the kitchey-Christian route, but as a whole the anthology seems to do an excellent job of keeping away from the predictability and pratfalls of so much modern Christian lit.

But there's really only so much you can say about an anthology of first parts of short-stories. If it sounds interesting, follow the link and check it out. It shall, at the very least, be a collection like nothing you have ever read before.

Stardust: First Impressions

2007-07-25T16:31:00.000-04:00

Recently I stumbled upon the UK trailer for Stardust, which looks to be the latest in this summer's series of wonderful fantasy entertainment. (Okay, actually I stumbled upon the inferior American version, but we don't like to count that, do we.) The trailer's humor, wit, and Princess Bride-esque B-movie charm ("Wait, you're the star? You're the star? Really? Oh, wow.") pretty much instantly launched it to the top of my to-watch list. But then I did what any internet-addict would do after stumbling upon a new bit of entertainment--I hopped over to RottenTomatoes.com and imdb.com. Turns out that this is actually an adaptation of a Neil Gaiman & Charles Vess short story, which has (alas!) also had all the pretty pictures viciously torn out for an ugly, boring, text-only version. Well, I'm done with Harry Potter for a while, and the Terry Pratchet I nibbled on while catching back up with my sleep is over, so today I cracked open the softback illustrated version (not on Amazon.com) to see what the ever-unpredictable Gaiman cooked up this time.

I'm twenty pages into the thing, and I'm already hooked. It is, as Gaiman wastes no time informing us, a fairy-tale about a boy who sets out (as most all boys do) to find his heart's desire. Gaiman, I have learned, does whimsical coming-of-age stories quite well. And with a beginning that enchants from page one despite its basic mashup of world-setting exposition and glorified town gossip, I doubt I'll be disappointed. What surprised me was the illustrations: I don't have a lot of experience with illustrated stories, but from what I've seen Stardust is the the most lavishly illustrated book that doesn't have "Gospel" or "Kells" in the title. Each page averages at least one color illustration (watercolor or colored pencil depending on the effect needed), and interspersed are a number of beautiful black and white drawings, which themselves run the gamut from faux-woodcut clarity to misty and atmospheric charcoals. I felt almost overwhelmed with an orgy of illustration, and found myself studying the pictures as much as the words too eek every ounce of character, whimsy, color, and sheer personality from the book.

And then came the most brilliant stroke, which I sincerely hope will be repeated whenever useful. On page 19, a young man visits what is in essence a fairy flea-market. He "paused in front of a stall covered with tiny crystal ornaments; he examined the miniature animals, pondering getting one for Daisy Hempstock. He picked up a crystal cat, no bigger than his thumb. Sagely it blinked at him, and shocked, he dropped it; it turned in the air like a real cat, fell on its four paws. Then it stalked over to the corner of the stall and began to wash itself."

At this point, if you're anything like me, you're sharing in the young man's wonder, savoring Gaiman's inventiveness, and could use a bit more. The next line, "Donstan walked on," is the last line on the page. I turned the page to read what happened next....

....and was greeted by a full two-page visual spread of the entire market, stretching from corner to corner and top to bottom, divided ino two rows by great red tarps but with mysteries peering out from the edges. On the very top, a shadow with eyes. Below everything and set off by a ragged set of roots, a mother and two children sift through wheat. And throughout the middle, marvels too numerous to name, as crowds of people purchase books, staffs, weapons, armor, fruits, wheat, bottles, mysterious cages, lamps, and strange items of all descriptions.

Eventually, the desire to continue on with the story pervaded over my curiosity to soak in every inch of the tableau, and I turned the page again. I read:

"The market was thronged."

I literally laughed out loud, and thought: "you're telling me!" Because, of course, I knew what the market was like, and any time they referred to it I would know exactly what is meant. I had already even spent more than a few moments wondering just what it was that was behind those red curtains, what was it that was so valuable as to be hidden away and visible only in the smallest glimpses, with an avidity that probably rivaled Donstan's.

If anyone tries to tell me that stories don't need illustrations, or that pictures kill written fantasy by giving it one fixed image that prohibits freedom of imagination, I think I shall be sorely tempted to put a gun to their head and force them to read Stardust. Yes, that includes you, O ghost of Tolkien.

**Content Warning: Having read a bit further, I feel I should warn the reader that while the book is delightfully Victorian in most ways, it is not so in its description of the one sex scene that is so far present. Caveat lector.

The Cross and the Moralist

2007-07-24T10:44:00.000-04:00

I have come to a realization: almost every time I hear a Sunday sermon where the Gospel is not preached (and by preached I mean explicated/dwelt on/delved into, not a tagged on section informing unbelievers that they can receive the free gift of eternal life), I stumble out of the church a bit shell-shocked, more than a bit angry, and with despair gnawing on my heart. The funny thing is, every time I walk out of a sermon that did revel in God's grace and Christ's sacrifice and all those metaphysical violences in which a universe of corruption, desires, and divine love collide in blood and gore on an executioner's scaffold made of two pieces of wood, I feel rather happy and eager to seek after and love our Lord.

O love of God! O sin of man!
In this dread act Your strength is tried;
And victory remains with love;
For Thou our Lord, art crucified!

Now, I know that a bit of the reasons behind this are linked to me. If I were dwelling upon the Scriptures more daily, maybe I'd be able to take a sermon on poverty or financial responsibility while remembering to place it in the context of Christ's love. If I weren't so self-focused, maybe I'd be able to brush off these admonitions, or turn them into announcements of my guilt and return with greater gratitude to divine forgiveness. If I were given a magical WWJD bracelet that turned me into the Christ himself, I'd sit down after the sermon and calmly instruct the elders on the meaning of the scriptural passages they'd read.

But I'm not, and instead I'm as sinful as the next guy, probably more self-righteous than most, more proud of my intellect than I ought to be, and and a guy who'd rather throw all my forces into a brute-force attempt at virtue than even take the first step towards patience. The thing is, though, that sermons that attack those sins only generally tend to make the problem worse.

I once went to a couple of church services with my Episcopal friend. I was rather shocked at their callous disregard for the Scriptures that seemed to throw out sections that I'd agonized over and about which I'd wrestled violently with God. I felt that they'd jumped a bit too hard on the tolerance wagon, and was reminded again what a pale and sickly ghost of love tolerance can be. I wondered how long a church that seems to put our culture on an equal level with divine Scriptures can even remain Christian at all. But both sermons held as their central focus the death and resurrection of Christ. Talking with my friend, I found out that this is a requirement for any service featuring communion, and that communion was taken nearly weekly. And if I ever find myself an Anglican rather than a non-denom protestant, well, I'm pretty sure that'll be the reason why.

Ponderations on a Song

2007-07-18T16:41:00.001-04:00

"And the pain of the world is a burden
But it's my cross to bear
And I struggle beneath all the weight
I know you're Simon standing there"

I don't know how I managed to not hear those lines before. They're from Long Line of Leavers, the experimental album that (along with their praise Album) directly preceeded Derek's departure from the band.

I've certainly listened to them countless times; Caedmon's was, for the longest time, my favorite band. But the meaning. I hesitate to parse the lyrics, feeling it's something akin to explaining a joke.

I miss that old Derek, the one who wrote lyrics for Caedmon's Call. I still enjoy the new Derek, who writes his own albums and fills them with all his frustrations with the Church, the world, and himself. But I don't know that we'll ever see him so unified than in those four lines. That honest acceptance that the whole world has gone wrong, but we are identified with the Crucified Christ, born to set things right. The reversal into struggle. Then the final line:

"I know you're Simon standing there."

It's hard to say some things without sounding trite, yet he does it. If Christians really are to be "crucified with Christ so that I know longer lives, but Christ lives within me," we need to remember what it means, who the real Christ was as described in scriptures. The man of sorrows, weeping at his friend's tomb. The god-man who begged his Father to give him the chance of opting out. The scourged and bleeding man who, despite his moral perfection and perfect faith and the full power of God, didn't have the strength to carry two planks of wood up a hill.

He needed Simon of Cyrene to step alongside, carrying the cross so he could stumble to the place of the skull.

It is not good that man should be alone.

The Experience of Writing

2007-07-12T15:45:00.000-04:00

This year has been the first year where I really took myself seriously as a writer of fiction, and it has also been the first year that I made the startling realization that if I write short stories, I can actually have a reasonable certainty that my story will be complete before, say, I die of old age.

Now there are many books about the craft of writing, and countless retrospectives written by authors. But this is my blog, so here, in one page or less, I present The Experience of Writing:

1) You start with an idea. It comes out of nowhere, and hits you at a really, really inconvienent time. Like when you're having a work meeting and they're announcing overtime. But it's there, and it begins to ferment and grow in your head, aided by lots of little sentences scribbled madly on the back of hotel contracts.

2) You outline, write, rewrite, and in all ways try to get those ideas onto paper. Then you try to connect them, and discover what the story is behind those images and ideas. The story turns out to be something that contradicts all the ideas and images you have for its second half, so with a cry you copy and past all those beautiful ideas to the Electronic Netherworld of "Unused Ideas." This is either a separate file or an area at the bottom of the story's document itself.

3) You come to The Scene of Doom. Every story has one, whether it's "now we need to kill the invincible dragon without even a gun" or "they fight and leave each other and it's really sad." You can feel in the back of your head a bit of the weave of the story, and you know it should be this way and make sense--but at the same time you feel completely unequipped, lacking in personal experience, and just plain too uncreative and tired to ever pull off The Scene of Doom.

4) Brilliant ideas come for The Scene of Doom at 1:30 in the morning. Brilliant ideas aren't so brilliant at 5:30 the next afternoon. Repeat until they stay brilliant, darnit, or until you're just too sick of working on the same story to get any more ideas, in which case the story gets submitted or shelved, depending on level of completion. (Mantra of this stage: No story is ever complete, no matter how hard you work at it, so go with what you've got.)

5) The story is complete. You read it. Hopefully, you look at it and you go "yeah. That story did something to me. It still has a punch. It's not perfect, and I could write it better, but that's not the point." Really hopefully, someone else says the same thing about it.

6) Because you are a complete lunatic, you say "That was fun! Now let's try something a little bit less expected and more interesting for the next story!" And so it begins anew.

The Man Who Knew Too Much, 2

2007-06-14T17:10:00.000-04:00

Chesterton is a very strange author. His prose (with some justice) has been used by Thomas Merton as a textbook model for how not to write. He writes with an apparent absolute lack of subtlety, pitting exadgerated caricatures against exadgerated characters in surrealistic stories that are at once never fantasy (pretty much always set in his contemporary England) and unbelievably fantastic. Worst yet, the caricatures often do apply to religions and ethnicities in seemingly simplistic manners (Chesterton himself had no problem differentiating between his friends and their dangerous ideologies, but the concept doesn't always come out right in his hastily-written prose.) Yet for all that, it is impossible to go away from one of his stories unchanged, and generally the change is generally a very happy one.

So, in the end, it seems to be with The Man Who Knew Too Much. In this case, I knew I'd found a book worthy of endless rereads when I came to the conclusion of Chapter 6. Now, you must remember that this is Chesterton we're talking about, an Englishman's Englishman if ever there was one, to realize exactly what he's saying about humanity:

A cloud came across the brow of Horne Fisher. "I knew only too much about it already," he said, "and, after all, it's shameful for me to be speaking lightly of poor Bulmer, who has paid his penalty; but the rest of us haven't. I dare say every cigar I smoke and every liqueur I drink comes directly or indirectly from the harrying of the holy places and the persecution of the poor. After all, it needs very little poking about in the past to find that hole in the wall, that great breach in the defenses of English history. It lies just under the surface of a thin sheet of sham information and instruction, just as the black and blood-stained well lies just under that floor of shallow water and flat weeds. Oh, the ice is thin, but it bears; it is strong enough to support us when we dress up as monks and dance on it, in mockery of the dear, quaint old Middle Ages. They told me I must put on fancy dress; so I did put on fancy dress, according to my own taste and fancy. I put on the only costume I think fit for a man who has inherited the position of a gentleman, and yet has not entirely lost the feelings of one."

In answer to a look of inquiry, he rose with a sweeping and downward
gesture.

"Sackcloth," he said; "and I would wear the ashes as well if they would stay on my bald head."

But then again, once I start quoting Chesterton, it's very hard to stop; and I think Chesterton's political pointedness (applicable every bit as much to our America now as to his England there) is misrepresented whenever it's taken out of the overarching context of his Christianity. Human systems of compassion that work without grace turn to nothing but futile condemnation, which is the reason (when one comes to it) why Liberation Theology and Humanism alike will never have the solidity of the message of the Cross. (They're a lot simpler, yes, as they paint an easy path to virtue so that one can be better than one's fellow man. But they don't work in the long run in the light of the more difficult and marvelous concept of universal sin.) And so, I give you a final quote of the day, and let Chesterton have the final word in this post.

After a silence Fisher answered in a lower voice, looking his friend in the eyes.

"Did you think there was nothing but evil at the bottom of them?" he asked, gently. "Did you think I had found nothing but filth in the deep seas into which fate has thrown me? Believe me, you never know the best about men till you know the worst about them. It does not dispose of their strange human souls to know that they were exhibited to the world as impossibly impeccable wax works, who never looked after a woman or knew the meaning of a bribe. Even in a palace, life can be lived well; and even in a Parliament, life can be lived with occasional efforts to live it well. I tell you it is as true of these rich fools and rascals as it is true of every poor footpad and pickpocket; that only God knows how good they have tried to be. God alone knows what the conscience can survive, or how a man who has lost his honor will still try to save his soul."

A New Side of Chesterton

2007-06-14T17:08:00.000-04:00

So, lately I've been listening (through the wonders of Librivox!) to Chesterton's The Man Who Knew Too Much. This is not, of course, to be confused with Hitchcock's film by the same name, but it is quite entertaining, and very fascinating to look at the political (and thus far more cynical) side of Chesterton.

The protagonist (Fisher) begs comparison to Father Brown, and not just because he goes around solving Chesterton's ... unique style of mystery stories. He is, like Father Brown, posessed of a profound and topsy-turvy understanding of the vile depths of depravity common throughout all areas of society, and solving the case for him generally involves being able to see through the illusions of security everyone else builds for themselves. (So far, the list of whodunit includes: the warm and friendly peasant who everyone loves, the innovative London police officer leading the investigation who shoots his own men, and the celebrated general who stands as the last icon of all things British and good). But he forms a far darker protagonist than Father Brown, a man of almost infinite passivity, far more interested in what he doesn't know (such as fish that glow in the dark) than the dark deeds he does. And while Father Brown generally instructs people towards godliness at the end of each story, the narrators of Fisher's stories generally realize that they're happier people than Fisher because of their ignorance of the corruption surrounding them.

It's a very new side of Chesterton, and makes me wonder when it was written. Certainly Fisher spouts all the hallmark Gilbertian defenses of Christianity, so my early suspicions that this was the writings of the early atheist Chesterton seem unfounded. Yet there is certainly something more of the spirit of Doestoevski (who Chesterton always loved) here, something like The Man Who Was Thursday at the moment before it makes the transition to full-blown surrealism. And while I don't know what to think of it, one thing is sure: it is quite fascinating, in my opinion much more so than Father Brown. And pretty much any book that fascinates and dances through realms of philosophy is pretty much irresistable to me.

Update...again

2007-06-05T13:39:00.000-04:00

For a while, I've been blogging exclusively on my Xanga account, for the very valid reason that I don't have enough time to make the slightly-polished essays that find their way onto this site.

I just realized that there are a few articles that actually are worth posting here. Two (on Fantasy) are up now, two more will go up once I figure out how to make back-dating work in this new Google-run Blogger.

Responding (Indirectly) to Littlemanpoet

2007-06-05T13:33:00.001-04:00

I have no time (this week), alas, for a full-fledged duscussion, but I think I wanted to make a couple of points as they clarified.

1) There can certainly be a distinction between Myth and Fantasy (according to my definition from the last post) in the sense that Myth is a universal desire within all humans, and Fantasy is one specific way in which Myth can be expressed. The distinction is certainly entirely artificial, but is useful in at least one sense: it allows us to talk about Fantasy as a singular phenomenon and look at its roots, its branches, its misinterpretations and how a Christian artist can deal with it. (Pretty much everything from misogyny to subcreation to neopaganism, which apply pretty specifically to 20th- and 21st-century fantasy.)

2) In talking about Fantasy as Myth, I think in many ways I was approaching Littlemanpoet's Unity of Meaning. I certainly don't agree that Tolkien is the only one to achieve this, or even that Tolkien's works particularly encapsulate such unity any better than, say, LeGuinn's The Beginning Place or Gaiman's Anansi Boys. It is good here to remember that Lewis and Tolkien both wrote their fantasies because they had seen such beauties in the works of McDonald, Morriss, et al. That is, Tolkien may have done something new (and he certainly did), but he was participating in a tradition. It is very sad to me that "High Fantasy" seems a confused branch, draping downward towards readers from Tolkien's branch rather than trying to find its own way to the sun. But as far as what Tolkien did do, I'm not sure at the moment that I much disagree with Littlemanpoet. If I were to put Elves into a video game, I'd give them advantages against supernatural creatures in combat, a sort of limited prescience to allow for their advanced intelligence, many skills for reading the subtle signs of nature, no need to sleep, etc. But that would be missing the point. The point is that they are wise, natural, sorrowful and powerful--all tied up in the fact that they are simply Elfin. (I can use the term--Tolkien did.)

So....there's today's update.

What is Fantasy and Where Did It Come From

2007-06-05T13:33:00.000-04:00

It is a thought that I have had for many, many years--pretty much ever since I came to realize that the tales told in the Middle Ages weren't precisely identical with the stories that raged through my imagination after reading The Lord of the Rings or The Chronicles of Narnia. The question is: "what exactly is this thing called fantasy that, while entirely (and self-consciously) imaginary, exerts such an immense power over people who hear even mere icons of fantasy such as knights, castles, and dragons.(1)

First, a definition of terms. The majority of "fantasy" books seem to have as little to do with fantasy as possible. Tamora Pierce, for instance, has written a great number of highly-successful stories that take place in a highly-developed world with pretty much all the fantasy tropes: knights, spells, Kings of Thieves, honorable desert nomads, kingdom politics, etc. Yet in the end, each feels more like a combination world-striding spy novel and coming-of-age story. That is, we get to see a multitude of fascinating cultures, watch a successful and long fight against a truly evil and clever villain, and find ourselves absorbed pretty much entirely into the sights and experiences of a likable and interesting protagonist. At the same time, that protagonist (normally a girl with an indomitable passion for hitting people with swords) grows into adulthood, learning the meaning of courage, love, dilligence, etc.

Of course coming of age is a hugely significant thread in the rope of fantasy tales, but it is most certainly not the only thread. Compare the above summary of Tamora Pierce's stories with, to take an example that I was watching when I started this post, The Last Unicorn. Here we have two central protagonists, the unnamed unicorn and the inept magician Schmendrick. They travel through a great variety of locations, face various dangers, and rescue all the unicorns while coming into a much more mature understanding of life. But unlike any of Pierce's protagonists, each step of the story means far more as a story than it means to the characters.

Let me illustrate. If a character in a Pierce novel gets thrown in prison (as is quite plausible to happen at some point), it means simply that someone in the government is against her for some reason, and she must find a way to (a) convince the king she's worth letting go or (b) escape. But the Unicorn is captured by an evil witch who exploits people's need for wonder by providing her with a false horn that is visible to those who can't see her real horn. She is released by an inept wizard because he is pure of heart enough to instantly recognize her true self. (Also, he stole the keys from the stupid guard, but we only know that because of a slight dropped comment allowing us to ignore the effecient cause and get on with the story.)

Both circumstances have an immediate meaning for the reader. In Pierce's book, we will feel the panic of being stuck in a prison, the need to escape and finally the wonder of freedom again, as the protagonist gets her sword and horse back and takes to the open roads. If it's well enough written, we will read it in a frenzy, scared that around any corner there might be enough guards to overcome the protagonist. We might even have an ethical question to muddy up the waters--is the mission important enough for the protagonist to kill an innocent guard in her escape? More likely, the protagonist will see the evil man who imprisoned her, but learn self control as she realizes that she must repress her desire for vengeance and flee in order to accomplish the mission.

The questions presented in The Last Unicorn are much more philosophical, and also much less questions. We may wonder what it is in humanity that desires beauty but prefers things that are "false" even when the slightly harder truth is much more beautiful. We may want to be like the inept wizard, capable of seeing the true beauty of people and courageous enough to destroy whatever cages destroy that beauty. Or we may think of the crowds, and think about the blindness and corruption at the heart of man, how our very desire for beauty and wonder can destroy the things we claim to love. Or we could not think in words at all (which may be the best way of doing things), and just feel our heart clench at the sight of a unicorn behind bars with a second false horn. But the point is, if it moves us at all, fantasy moves us by presenting us a world much more concerned with ideas and ideals than schemes and skills. Beauty transforms the Beast into a Gentleman because of True Love, and the point is really quite lost if we start asking what degree of devotion is required for the love to be True and has Rose really been acting in the cautious and wise way that we want our daughters to act.

Which, now that I think of it, is all in Plato. Or at least, if I want to say that Fantasy is better than all other forms of storytelling (which, in my biased heart, I really really do) my job is simple. "Action" literature concerns itself with Plato's Efficient Cause, that is "how is the bad guy to be defeated." This is true rather the story is a romance novel, a spy novel, or low fantasy. But fantasy transcends the Efficient Cause and goes straight to the Final Cause. We know that a fairy tale doesn't make sense--that's why we call it a fairy tale. Sauron isn't defeated because of Gandalf's wisdom, he is defeated because in all his evil wisdom, he still cannot imagine that someone who has power would seek to throw it away. All the wars and plotting and distractions are just side-games to make us a bit more involved in the story.

So...I haven't yet arrived at a working definition of fantasy, showing that this requires a lot more thought. But I'm on my way there, and this is a blog, so now I hit "save changes."

(1)The Inklings, of course, had something of a solution: "myth," properly speaking, shouldn't be contrasted with reality. Fantasy reflects the crying out of the human heart, a thirst which is itself better than earthly satisfaction, a hunger for something earthly pleasures cannot supply. All of which I think, in the end, to be quite true. But that is somewhat tangential to the question which I may or may not continue to pick at in a number of new posts: in our culture, which is about as far from Medieval as one can imagine, what is it that has worked together to create this absolutely enrapturing field of the imagination that is so recognizable Medieval--even when talking about Jedi guardians of distant galaxies, for instance.

The Internet is for Inefficiency

2007-02-07T22:59:00.000-05:00

It has often struck my mind that we value the wrong things in inventions. We value the ability to "do more," to "work smarter and faster than ever before," to "think globally." And certainly all those things can be very good (or very evil, just ask Hitler), but I think some of the most marvelous inventions are the ones that seem a waste of time, that don't come pre-packaged with guarantees nad promises, but rather work sideways and unpredictably. Things like the volunteer-run Wikipedia, or the Old Time Radio Reaserchers, or the user-submitted MySpace, or even the blogosphere. Because the unique power of the internet is not its ability to bring us together faster and better than ever before; it's the ability to bring us together along with a spattering of semi-random static, out of which we can occasionally discern something wholly new to us, something that makes our lives better, richer and fuller if only in a very small way.

I write this thinking of a recent post on web-tribes, in which the author describes a frustration we all have had: the endless search of incomplete and unauthoratative information on the internet in which he utterly fails to find what he was searching for. And the solution, or part of the solution, is to have a specific human network of known and respected sources that helps to filter information. Not that I can disagree directly, but it does bring up a concern I tend to have with many internet utopias.

My reservation is that any filter cuts both ways. Because machines lack the breath of curiosity of humans, and searches based on popularity can end up obscuring immediate connections. It's not that I disagree with the ideas of remote groups of internet sources--I'd rather deal with people who I understand (if only a bit) on a human level for a deeper judgment on what their opinions mean--it's just that I'm a bit distrustful of effeciency, because I know that in many ways one of the most productive forces of the internet is its chaos and unpredictability.

One example: I was once googling Germanic legends, which with my tastes should’ve been something I’d already know some authority on the subject. But because of the inaccessibility of known sites, I was just skimming the surface with Google, and found a hillarious one-minute summary of Vagner’s Rings Cycle that instantly caught my attention by purposefully confusing Nothung with Narsil. I bookmarked the site for later, then went on with my work–but I later came back and the blogger who wrote that page has since become my #1 resource for provocative commentary and interesting news on Dr. Who or the Inklings.

So, for what it's worth, I'll throw my nickel into the debate on The Evolution of the Internet: let's work to make the internet smarter and faster, but let's not forget that the internet has hidden, as well as obvious, virtues. And let's remember there is a value in an internet that is expansive as well as effecient, broadening in perspective as well as valuable in focus. Because the true power of the internet will always reside in the unexpected connections, the ones we couldn't have searched for because we didn't know they were there.

Violence, Film and Sensitivity

2007-01-29T22:33:00.000-05:00

Ever since the beginning of last century, it seems that war has come as a bitter shock to us. It started with World War I, where we found new toys like gas and machine-guns, and used them to great effect: viciously killing our own troops due to bad wind predictions, creating strategies (in the case of the Russians) that involved piling up bodies until the guns overheated, eventually (by the time Part 2 came around) tossing bombs at London or incinerating everyone in Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

Now, perhaps it was because our new toys bore to strongly the imprint of human ugliness. Or perhaps it was due to just the plain and simple fact that the ruling class (now the people) actually had to die horrific deaths because of war, rather than just walking around in the relative safety of armor. Or perhaps it was just because our poets were already succumbing to a certain madness because so many had rejected religion and therefore saw death as the worst thing that could happen to a man. But whatever reason, people began to hate war in a way that feels rather new and distinctly Modern. War was no longer a thing of honor, of duty, of risking one's life in order to defend that which one loves. Instead,

Yes; quaint and curious war is!
You shoot a fellow down
You'd treat if met where any bar is,
And help to half-a-crown.

(It is notable here that one of the biggest exceptions to this principle was a man himself utterly unfit for the battlefield, who after losing all his friends spent most of WWI in the hospital with a sickness quite likely magnified by his horror of war, of walking over the faces of fallen soldiers in the mud. But, then again, his biggest hero was Frodo: the man who goes into war gung-ho, and by the end of the war is a permanently-scarred pacifist.)

The interesting thing, though, is what the poets who spoke against war were (and still are) trying to do: they wanted to show the moral price that a man pays for the unnatural act of killing others. And, from a certain perspective, I think that they're right. Just look at how many people returned from Vietnam (or even our current Iraqui war) screwed up, suicidal, violent to their wives when they'd never been before, etc. But looking at history, it's hard to imagine that Teddy Roosevelt, for instance, experienced the same brokenness. As far as I can tell, he remained a compassionate and humane man, and one who had no problem with killing many in a fair fight for a good reason.

Which brings me to 2006, and a very different poetic reaction to war. To wit, cinema.

Now the traditional line about violent movies is that their moral threat is that they "desensitize" us to violence. And to an extent, that is indubitably true. As Rich Mullins pointed out, not only do lots of people die in the film Die Hard, but each time someone dies, the audience laughs. And I find it hard to imagine that someone could enjoy Saw while feeling any sort of compassion or sympathy for the characters who are being brutally hacked up on the screen. But for me, that's not the aspect of violence in films that I'm particularly concerned about.

Something changed in films, though I'm not sure what caused it or when exactly it happened. Certainly advances in computer animation made realistic violence a possibility in films for the first time, and perhaps that was part of it. But it seems that a greater number of mainstream films had violence that was "ultraviolent" in a way quite different from most earlier films. That is, (in many films at least) film violence became realistic, not only physically, but emotionally. Reviews of Letters from Iwo Jima discuss its brutality, not so much in terms of the body parts blasted across the screen (which many filmgoers have seen before), but in terms of the facial expressions and reactions of Japanese soldiers as they make the difficult decision to obey orders and throw themselves on their own grenades. The main adventure theme of Munich is not "can these guys continue to kill terrorists without themselves getting killed" but rather "how many guys can a group of good Jewish boys assassinate before they become as uncaring and uncivilized as the terrorists they fear?" One of the most memorable scenes from Black Hawk Down involves a child who accidentally guns down his father--and the American soldier who he tried to kill makes a split-second shrug before leaving the armed enemy behind. The result of watching such films (at least for me) certainly isn't insensitivity to violence so much as sensitivity to violence. That is, as I consider the reality of war, as I read news reports of traumatized veterans, I begin to think that if I were drafted for some new war, my struggle wouldn't be to overcome cowardice and stand valiantly for my country. My struggle would be to survive and continue to love my neighbor even as I killed him.

It all makes me wonder. In a sinful world, it certainly seems that lethal force is required to keep order and peace, and I certainly hold an immense respect for those willing to die for the relative liberty and security of others. And sometimes I wonder if art that points out the moral cost of violence (those who live by the sword will die by the soword) doesn't potentially undermine our ability to fight as a people. How can we serve God in a world of violence? For me, I suppose it just means trying to understand, and in the meantime living where God has placed me--and praying that He keeps me away from the necessity of violence. Because if we start to censor difficult ideas, then the humanly impossible call of Christ will soon be one of the first things to go.

I'm Back

2007-01-29T22:02:00.000-05:00

Well....for anyone who is still checking my blog here, I think I may be posting with a big more frequency in the months to come. To wit, at all.

Things have been crazy, balancing applying to far too many grad schools with maintaining a job and a new marriage. But now...the Eternal Process of Application has drawn to a close, and I may devote my time to a variety of other tasks--including blogging.

I Had a Wonderful Post to Make...

2006-10-13T19:58:00.000-04:00

It was basically a long "reading" of Ballydowse's CD Out of the Fertile Crescent that pointed out a realization that I had come to the other day. Basically, the CD started out with 3 songs of protest against war, then went into three songs about marriage, then turned to discuss the concepts of longing and the struggle of the joys of Heaven for a couple of songs before ending with a magnificant saga of human cultures, human history and divine mercy. With an epilogue reminding us in America to wake up to the world of suffering around us that we are helping to bring to pass, ending: "pull the blankets over our head--it's we who are dead."

It was a brilliant essay, I thought, and a wonderful chance to talk about some of my favorite parts of Crescent, a CD which has arguably the most magnificant lyrics of any album I own. From:

"In Mosul where Jonah rests the sheep are waging war.
They dared to raise their eyes when the planes above them roared."

to lyrics not entirely original (quoting John Masefield's poem for much of it), but excellently used:

"I may go down to the seas again for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that's hardest to deny
I may go down to the seas again to the vagrant gypsy's life
To the gull's way and the whale's way
Where the wind's like a whetted knife
But I'll not go alone my love from this day on I swear
Whatever current lays below, you and I will share."

to original celebrations of the hope of Heaven:

"Exiled to finally breathe am I.
Doomed to actually see the sky
And the waters in all of their glory.
The best are the truest of stories.
The best are the truest of stories."

to the magnificient "Crescent" which I want to quote verbatim for its sublimity of thought, purpose, and language, but will instead offer two snippets:
"Four rivers flow past the beaks and the jaws.
Anarchy, Judgment, Mercy and Law
New cities rise upon history's dust. Cultures revolve between wonder and lust.
Guillotine blades release peasants and slaves. Peasants turn princes and chain them again.
The rivers flow on, they join and they grow,
Mixing life and death into all that we know."

"A future's on its way, my friend, where hate will be like gills
Gills that cannot breathe, my friend, in the sharp air of the hills.
We saw so clear the rights of all, the path was the mistake,
The vanguard is forgiveness, the light for which we ache."

So I sat down at my computer, with such magnificent reachings crammed within my head, and (more to the point) with a definite plan for how to get them out. Because I knew the structure of the CD, so I had a "story" to tell when talking about it, something interesting on which to hang my opinions of the lyrics as a whole and the structure of the CD and even (in a way) the message of the CD. (No work of narrative art worth its salt has a "message" or "moral" that can be fully explained in a sentence or even an article--else the art would be unnecessary! But it can, as in one of Chesterton's short stories, have "thirty-seven morals to this story, but one of them is that it is he who has really gone around the whole world who is anxious to come home.")

Then I read the lyrics to the second song, apparently for the first time. Now in my defense, lyrics of Ballydowse songs are hard to understand, because they're generally screamed in a drunken chorus (when not sung beautifully and passionately by a woman who has an excellent voice--but that's the minority). And they're so dense that I generally tend to try to tease meanings out of those songs whose meanings (in the dictionary sense) I do understand.

But it turns out that I was mistaken to think that they were protest lyrics (although, again, "drunken screaming!" I remind thee.) In fact, they are lyrics defending the oddly tetotling nature of the bend--but by means of that, the Christian view of a distant joy which we are but travelers towards.

"A joy that outdances the pagans. A taste for moon and sun.
Great board of wine and laughter when the watch of the night is done.
Sing of some pale Gallilean, greying the world with his breath.
This wraith is not my master; in fact we've never met."

So at least it's a good song.

But it did ruin the article I was going to write, based on the structure of the CD. Worse yet, I composed it in my head all day and then typed an hour on it before thinking to check even this most basic of facts. Then, I deleted the article in frustration, despite the fact that it had a lot of good discussion of the CD that could be worked into another article.

Finally, I just wrote this "review." Hope you enjoy it! Meanwhile, I believe I may launch a war of short duration against facts, since apparently they just get in the way.

Pattern Recognition

2006-10-06T17:34:00.000-04:00

"It is pretty obvious that the debasement of the human mind caused by a constant flow of fraudulent advertising is no trivial thing. There is more than one way to conquer a country. . "
-Raymond Chandler

A lone man walks down dark city streets. He knows, intuitively, where the lines of power are, who "owns" the city, and how much corruption there is everywhere. Everyone is complicit; most struggle to be as human as possible. And the line between humanity and corruption, between honor and pragmatism, is never clear. Everyone blurs lines, but everyone hands their breaking points. Unlucky sobs stand for their convictions, for their women--and more often than not kill for it. But, walking in such a setting, that one man manages to make his way. "He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor. He talks as the man of his age talks, that is, with rude wit, a lively sense of the grotesque, a disgust for sham, and a contempt for pettiness."

The man, of course, is Raymond Chandler's Phillip Marlowe. He wasn't the first detective, and he certainly has links back to Sherlock Holmes, the father of detectives. But Chandler was perhaps the first to capture the sense of alienation, of corruption and sin and evil codified into urban power structures. It is not a coincidence that the first collection of comic books in the series entitled Sin City was named for Chandler's last full-length novel (The Hard Goodbye, now, from The Long Goodbye.)

Which brings us to William Gibson, the founder of cyberpunk, and his contemporarily-set novel, Pattern Recognition.

Like Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles, the world of Pattern Recognition (our world, but seen through Gibson's eyes) is one where dehumanizing sin has been accepted as an integral part of the power structure. The primary indicator of this is the nature of "contentless advertising," a sort of worldwide house of mist built on the fact that, as Sprite puts it, "image is everything." And of course, all that is built solidly on the greed of men and companies who cannot be trusted, on the immense flow of information that leaves no secrets safe yet bewilders the mind, and on the process of "branding" that seeks to exploit, market and sell even our very identities.

The protagonist, then, is an ideal update of the hard-boild detective: a hyperspecialized woman who is simultaneously capable of detecting the marketability of logos at a glance and severely allergic to "contentless advertising." And of course, following the noir formula she is drawn into a web of deception and lies, but of the sort that reflect, rather than hiding, the fundamental impersonality of modern life. In this case, she is searching for the creator of an internet-released film unlike anything ever seen, under the employ of an untrustworthy employer and feeling herself using some rather unethical means. All in a world where, due to a pace of change so great as to exceed our ability to imagine it. "We have no future because our present is too volatile. We have only risk management. The spinning of a given moment's scenarios. Pattern recognition."

But perhaps the brilliance of Gibson, like that of Chandler, is seen most in his use of style. I wouldn't have thought it when I read the first sentence ("Five hours' New York jet lag and Cayce Pollard wakes in Camden Town to the dire and ever-circling wolves of disruptd circadian rythm.") But somehow Gibson's agressively highbrow prose solidifies the more it is read, revealing a clarity and (surprisingly) a simplicity indicitive of a long and careful process of revision. I don't know that I will ever read a book that better captures the surreality inherent in a company credit card, or an internet-based friendship. Like Steinbeck, Gibson captures something of the tempo and rythm and poetry of modern life. It is certainly a different poetry than Steinbeck, a poetry specifically urbanite rather than rural, but it carries the same resonance of understanding and observant wisdom. For one thing, it is the first time I've seen an author successfully and beautifully deal with the World Trade Center bombings. For me, just that flashback scene in its poignancy, insecurity, and confusion is worth hundreds of dreary documentaries of the type that filled television on this year's September 11.

In any case, it is certainly as haunting and memorable book as I've read in some time. And that, for me, is one of the prime marks of good fiction--it sticks with you, like a good meal, and haunts your memory at the oddest times. And you realize you understand a bit more about the world, or at least see a bit more of its poetry and wonder.

It Has Arrived

2006-10-06T02:19:00.000-04:00

It has arrived. A combination so bizarre, so surreal, so, in fact, English, that my wife and I were compelled to use our Best Buy gift card to order it. And now it is here.

"Very well," you might say, "but what could this most extrordinarily uncanny bit of merchandise be?" I hope you do, because I will now tell you.

Or, better yet, show you.

Yes, indeed, that is our friend Hugh Laurie. But where (and who) has he found himself in this image, where he is certainly not the good doctor Gregory House?

Yes, my friends. Through the magical powers of television and old acting jobs, I give you not House, M.D.--but Bertie Wooster. With, of course, the inimitable Jeeves.

I can't wait.

In the meantime, I found this article, in which Hugh discusses the wonderful powers of the Master. Hint: it works best if you imagine House reading it in his trademark embittered but self-satyrical snarl.

I Want a Word...

2006-09-20T20:39:00.000-04:00

...that means "of or related to tradition," but that doesn't carry the very specific meaning of tradition. As in, I'd like to be able to talk about a "traditional viewing of V for Vendetta" and mean something akin to a "feminist viewing of V for Vendetta," only instead of talking about the relation of power and sexuality I'd be talking about the relationship of tradition--artistic, religious, and culture--to power. Because I think it'd make an interesting essay.

After all, V is in his way the ultimate liberal, the ultimate rebel, one so opposed to everything he sees that he has chosen to make himself into an icon for freedom and destruction. But the way we know he's serious about this is that he's a scholar and an art critic who fills his basement with "classic" (read: traditional) books and movies.

I think this irony may have been even more consciously embraced in Alan Moore's original graphic novel. One scene (reproduced in the movie) revolves around the highly immoral and lecherous hobby of a well-respected Anglican priest and his death at the hands of V. In the graphic novel, the "chapter" (in which, of course Evey's honor is preserved despite the priest's desires) has a title: "Virtue Victorious." Moore is very fluent with the terminology of Victorian times--so it is hard to imagine the "Virtue" of the chapter title doesn't at least carry an echo of the archaic euphemism for virginity. It's a perfectly V-esque moment--in its implicit appeal to Victorian sensibilities it demonstrates that V is far more appreciative of the "tradition" of the English culture he wishes to topple than those who claim to be "virtuous" while seeking only power. And after all, isn't that subtle wit far more "English" than the England V is warring against?

And so on. But I won't do more, because I don't have time. But I'd like to know a term that works for this. I mean, "feminist critique" would never have gotten anywhere if it'd been called "womanly critique."

Errata

2006-09-09T02:06:00.000-04:00

It turns out that, in my rush to write an article about the West Wing episode, I misinterpreted at least one major line. Bartlet hadn't lost any of his literal sons, and was speaking metaphorically about the troops who'd died under his command, and particularly troops lost in a completely unpredictable hurricane.

Also, when I talked about Bartlet studying to be a priest at Notre Dame, I mean he was studying theology as an undergraduate at Notre Dame, IL. I've been informed that other interpretations were left open.

Also, one other vague area that I'd like to clarify: the point of the article was to explore the idea of "faith" and "works," continuing a long-term contemplation but triggered at the moment by West Wing. The show itself is far from a Christian show (though not perhaps as far as one might assume), and I am not endorsing its views of salvation. Even so, it goes to show how even a popular television show can serve one function of art by asking questions aesthetically that resonate at many levels. Perhaps soon I'll do an entry on contemporary television, its tendency to replace iron-clad answers with open-ended questions, and the relative merits of wrong answers and wrong questions in imperfect human art.

Faith, Works and The West Wing--and yes, spoilers

2006-08-30T20:26:00.000-04:00

What use is it, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but he has no works? Can that faith save him?
If a brother or sister is without clothing and in need of daily food, and one of you says to them, "Go in peace, be warmed and be filled," and yet you do not give them what is necessary for their body, what use is that? Even so faith, if it has no works, is dead, being by itself.
But someone may well say, "You have faith and I have works; show me your faith without the works, and I will show you my faith by my works."
You believe that God is one? You do well; the demons also believe, and shudder. But are you willing to recognize, you foolish fellow, that faith without works is useless?
Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up Isaac his son on the altar? You see that faith was working with his works, and as a result of the works, faith was perfected; and the Scripture was fulfilled which says, "AND
ABRAHAM BELIEVED GOD, AND IT WAS RECKONED TO HIM AS RIGHTEOUSNESS," and he was called the friend of God.
You see that a man is justified by works and not by
faith alone.
--James 2:14-24

The last episode of season two of The West Wing has a rather provocative title for anyone who holds a Christian theological bent: "Two Cathedrals." Better yet, keeping in line with The West Wing's tendency to deal idealistically with rather complex and seemingly answerless issues, it actually had something to say worth listening to.

The story centers around Bartlet, the embattled president who lied about his medical history of Multiple Sclerosis in order to increase his chances of becoming president. In the previous episode, his kindhearted and elderly secretary was killed by a drunk driver on the way home from a car lot where she bought her first new car. Despite all the tension and fear about a pending Grand Jury investigation, he seems preoccupied and more focused on his secretary's death than any affairs of state.

Throughout the episode, glimpses are seen of a young Bartlet aspiring to be a priest at Notre Dame. He is obviously idealistic and passionate about the plight of the powerless. He is also chided for leaving a cigarette on the floor of a chapel. At one point, he objects to a "non-denominational" prayer because it wasn't Catholic--the preacher claimed that man was saved by faith alone, and not faith and works. And, of course, he meets the reason he chose not to become a priest, his future wife.

The two threads converge after the funeral service at the National Cathedral. Bartlet stays after everyone leaves, having the Secret Service clear the building so that he can be alone with God. He then launches into a great tirade against God, starting with his secretary's death the moment she could enjoy her car and working his way up to his son's untimely death, quipping that all he'd offered God's son was praise and adoration. He quotes Grahm Greene: "You can't conceive, nor can I, the appalling strangeness of the mercy of God." Then he lights a cigarette, takes a single drag, grinds it out with his foot and leaves it on the floor of the cathedral.

As a Christian watching this show, it was impossible not to see this moment as anything but a moment of moral and spiritual decision. He had the choice, in a cathedral that echoed from its floor to its vaulted arches the beauty of God, to remember that God's son was sent to embrace the pain and wretchedness that results from sin, and by that embrasure to provide us a way back to His sinless paradise. He can choose to follow the example of Job, who endured suffering innumerable and yet in the end affirmed his love for God, even if that God were to take Job's life from him. Instead, in that moment, he chose an arrogant hatred for God, a pride that would rather spend itself marring a small segment of the floor of a cathedral than listen to what it had to say. Like Milton's Satan, he decided that it was "better to rule in Hell than to serve in Heaven." When he walked from the room, his face seemed to reflect the tortured soul of a demon.

But the interesting thought I had wasn't about the sadness of Bartlet's very human response (though it was a very moving moment.) The thought, as someone raised in a DTS-influenced Evangelical Bible Church, was "this is the decision people talk about in Sunday School, the decision as to rather you're going to put your faith and trust in Jesus Christ or put your faith and trust in yourself." The problem with this conception is that, at this point, Bartlet already is a Christian.

In point of fact, Bartlet's struggles seem far closer to my own than the ideal Christian touted by Evangelicals who has his life fixed suddenly by "faith in Christ." There seems an organic wholeness to the fact that we aren't saved in one moment only, but through a lifelong process. Evangelical theologians know this, that's why they talk about the three ways of being saved--I am saved through faith I put in Jesus Christ at a historical moment, I am being saved by the continuous work of the Holy Spirit in my life, and I will be saved and made perfect and holy when I reach Heaven.

But I'm not sure anyone ever believed that before the last few hundred years. Luther certainly didn't believe that when he talked about salvation as being the continuous work of God in the believer's life as he calls the believer to join him in the life of Christ. The poet who wrote the Medieval poem Pearl certainly didn't believe that when he wrote of a Christian man in rebellion against God for taking his daughter, his "pearl," from him through the black plague who is brought back to slow repentance through a heavenly vision. Neither Calvin nor Arminius believed that--Calvin believed that Christians were saved through the continuous work of God from their birth to their death, and Arminius believed that Christians wouldn't be eternally saved unless they continued to choose God over the world.

Bartlet got a second chance to think through his position before the end of the episode. He reversed his decision, on the cruelty of God as well as on other issues. But that doesn't mean he won't have another chance to make the same decision, facing the same questions and doubts and struggles. And even if I am assured of salvation by my first profession of faith, is it not true that all Christians are called to a continuous life of "accepting Jesus into their soul," a continuous struggle against the forces of darkness whose end may be certain, but whose means are often so confusing that we can only "see dimly" and must wait until the time when all our doubts, fears and tears will be washed away in the glory of God's presence.

The Post That Says What's Going On

2006-07-10T16:15:00.000-04:00

Okay, I've had rather a lack of internet, and will at least through mid-July.

Worse, when I do have internet, it's with a censoring program. Now I'm not necessarily philosophically opposed to censoring programs, but this one is different. It censors Blogspot, where I submit posts for this site.

So, I have now updated, adding three posts previously put up on the Xanga account I run in tandem with this(It does have posts that this doesn't--but unless you know me personally, they're probably of rather little interest.) There may be future updates that I'd like to put here but only can put on my Xanga, but there probably won't be. I am, after all, getting married in 19 days--and that (combined with applying for permanent jobs and juggling temp jobs) is keeping me rather busy, as it rightfully should.

I have quite missed my blogging, though, so I fully expect to resume my previous semi-steady blogging schedule once I live in an appartment with internet.

Until then, cheers!

Backing Into Walls

2006-07-10T16:11:00.000-04:00

I like to have my back against the wall. It's the place where I feel safest.

When your back's against the wall, you're dealing with absolutes. There's no room for stepping back, no room for choosing your footing. You fight because you have to. And that, for me, often seems a much surer place to be than driving forward, pressing the fight but knowing that there are a million places you can go--and a million places from which you can be attacked.

Thus when I first started dating Hannah, I didn't ask her just because I wanted to or thought she would make a great girlfriend--though both were very much the case. I asked her because I wanted to so bad that I couldn't try to pretend friendship for long without either telling Hannah of my interest (and risking the consequences) or poisoning the relationship with feelings that I'm being dishonest. In other words, my back was against the wall, and the only way I knew of even having a real significant friendship with Hannah was to run the risk of asking for what I really desired--a romantic relationship.

On the most extreme level, it was this tendency that lead me to obsess over the subject of "certainty of salvation," and was half the reason why I reacted so violently against Calvinism the first time I saw it. (The other half was bad Calvinists, but I'm not going there.) For me serving God, I wanted to have my back against the wall. I wanted to know that I was saved, and I wanted my salvation to be the firm wall which I could brace myself firmly against while "fighting the good fight." Then Calvinists began to muddy the waters, to show me the verses and make arguments that I can't necessarily know I've been saved based on a moment in my personal history when I uttered a certain prayer, but that God saves us according to His will through His purposes in a long and mysterious process.

I didn't like it. Trusting God's promises was something I could do--especially when they were clearly laid out by my Sunday School teacher. But to trust God, who is by his very definition beyond our understanding? That was another matter entirely. It was much easier to rest on God's Word, and easier still to rest on what Pastors Tom and Reggie said about God's Word. And after all, didn't God inspire the Scriptures for a reason? And didn't those Scriptures talk about the importance of listening to one's teachers?

But by now, I think I'm beginning to come around--at least somewhat. After all, God says that he is a fortress to his people, and a merciful God whose lovingkindness never fails. God says that he will draw near to those who seek him. God never claims to be a wall--but He is the shepheard who seeks that one lamb who willfully wandered astray, leaving the many faithful waiting patiently in their stable. So maybe He shall teach me to trust Him, and to live as though I am one of the righteous elect--so that by faith, one more sinner may be saved.

I'm still not sure how exactly I feel about "certainty of salvation." It could be that it is the absolute truth, and one more example of God reaching down towards man. Or it could be a false Savior built by man in order to make salvation a simple and easy-to-qualify commodity that can be had at the most affordable price. Even in the case of the latter, it has certainly been a useful first step for many faithful, teaching them to cast off fear and reach gratefully to their Savior, whose blood mingles with Esau's and brings substance back into all the hopes and dreams of man. But I think it is good to trust in God, and good to press forward in faith--even (and perhaps especially) when that means feeling the chilling breeze of nothing but air on your back.

Lash the oars to our hands and let us pull
We're sick of these suffocating landlocked days of talk and drool.
What's it like to love where youre going?
Futher on and futher in till these eyes are closing.