edited by Iona & Peter Opie, illustrated by Maurice Sendak. (1992) Published by Candlewick Press. 160 pages.
There’s nothing in this book of taunts, chants and schoolyard riddles that will make you pause very long and ponder the meaning of life, Nor do these poems have the sometimes fantastical scope that you’ll get from a more “legitimate” book of nursery rhymes. But this book is a lot of fun because the editors have no compunction about filling their book with the silliness and capriciousness of true childhood. And Maurice Sendak’s illustrations give you a sense that spirit of this book, if not some of the rhymes themselves, reaches back beyond all the finery of the renaissance to the gritty and grubby world of the dark ages.
Tishomingo Blues
by Elmore Leonard. (2002) Published by William Morrow. 308 pages.
Compared to Out of Sight, this book is a little bit lackluster and even phony. The whole idea of mixing up a southern mob thriller with a civil war reenactment seems too pat, a way to fill up a few paragraphs and chapters with trivia about archaic weaponry and bivouac sleeping arrangements. Nowhere is this more true than in the interminable passages where policeman John Rau drones on interminably about how best to prepare salt pork.
Still, in the last few chapters, when the inevitable stand off finally comes to pass, it becomes apparent that Elmore Leonard really is making some points here, especially about the way men compare themselves to one another. As is often the case, he creates a hierarchy based on the concept of “cool,” and the consequence of being uncool is typically death. Coolness is more than simply an ability to be unfazed by violence. The gangster Robert Taylor is able to outcool his boss Caesar Germano simply because Taylor forms a rapport with Germano’s henchmen, jokes with them, treats them with respect, and uses imagination in finding them new assignments and missions. That’s another aspect of “cool” that’s at play here, the concept of something being “cool” in the sense of fascinating. Robert is a dangerous character, but he also understands that behind all the darkness and danger of the world he’s chosen, there’s still the cops-and-robber appeal to the boyish mind. Interestingly, Robert develops a man-crush on the high-diver Dennis Lenahan, who doesn’t have any sort of criminal past but has chosen in his own way to structure his life around facing death.
Tishomingo Blues was an interesting diversion, but I came away feeling my time would have been better spent elsewhere.
Compared to Out of Sight, this book is a little bit lackluster and even phony. The whole idea of mixing up a southern mob thriller with a civil war reenactment seems too pat, a way to fill up a few paragraphs and chapters with trivia about archaic weaponry and bivouac sleeping arrangements. Nowhere is this more true than in the interminable passages where policeman John Rau drones on interminably about how best to prepare salt pork.
Still, in the last few chapters, when the inevitable stand off finally comes to pass, it becomes apparent that Elmore Leonard really is making some points here, especially about the way men compare themselves to one another. As is often the case, he creates a hierarchy based on the concept of “cool,” and the consequence of being uncool is typically death. Coolness is more than simply an ability to be unfazed by violence. The gangster Robert Taylor is able to outcool his boss Caesar Germano simply because Taylor forms a rapport with Germano’s henchmen, jokes with them, treats them with respect, and uses imagination in finding them new assignments and missions. That’s another aspect of “cool” that’s at play here, the concept of something being “cool” in the sense of fascinating. Robert is a dangerous character, but he also understands that behind all the darkness and danger of the world he’s chosen, there’s still the cops-and-robber appeal to the boyish mind. Interestingly, Robert develops a man-crush on the high-diver Dennis Lenahan, who doesn’t have any sort of criminal past but has chosen in his own way to structure his life around facing death.
Tishomingo Blues was an interesting diversion, but I came away feeling my time would have been better spent elsewhere.
Tales from Firozsha Baag
by Rohinton Mistry (first prineted 1987. This edition first published 2002) Published by Penguin Books. 250 pages. Reviewed 1 March 2008
Rohinton Mistry is preoccupied with suffering. At the end of this book—a collection of linked short stories that develop a novel’s momentum and scope over time—the character Kersi Boyce grows frustrated with his lack of knowledge when it comes to the trees of Canada, where he has made his new home. He vows to purchase a guide to trees so that next autumn when the leaves fall he will be able to recognize than just maple leaves.
In a similar way, by reading the stories of the dwellers of Firozsha Baag (an apartment complex housing members of Bombay’s Parsi community) we get a glimpse of what a field guide to suffering might be like. We see the controlled, redemptive suffering of Daulat Mirza as she bids farewell to her much loved husband; we see the tortured, adolescent sufferings of Jehangir Bulsara as we strives to understand his own sexuality and develop his abundant intellect in the most adverse of conditions; we see the sufferings that arise from pride and selfishness as the Bomans seek to evict the paying guests they’ve taken into their homes; we see the righteous suffering Percy Boyce who chooses to champion the interests of India’s indigent poor; and we see the suffering of the uprooted Kersi, who has to look back on all his memories of Bombay and try to find some sense in it.
I cannot recommend this book enough. The humor is wicked, the subject matter is gutsy, the thoughts are intricate and the characters engaging. In the course of these stories we see Mistry systematically gathering together all the ingredients that will eventually become central to his later novels Fine Balance and Family Matters.
Rohinton Mistry is preoccupied with suffering. At the end of this book—a collection of linked short stories that develop a novel’s momentum and scope over time—the character Kersi Boyce grows frustrated with his lack of knowledge when it comes to the trees of Canada, where he has made his new home. He vows to purchase a guide to trees so that next autumn when the leaves fall he will be able to recognize than just maple leaves.
In a similar way, by reading the stories of the dwellers of Firozsha Baag (an apartment complex housing members of Bombay’s Parsi community) we get a glimpse of what a field guide to suffering might be like. We see the controlled, redemptive suffering of Daulat Mirza as she bids farewell to her much loved husband; we see the tortured, adolescent sufferings of Jehangir Bulsara as we strives to understand his own sexuality and develop his abundant intellect in the most adverse of conditions; we see the sufferings that arise from pride and selfishness as the Bomans seek to evict the paying guests they’ve taken into their homes; we see the righteous suffering Percy Boyce who chooses to champion the interests of India’s indigent poor; and we see the suffering of the uprooted Kersi, who has to look back on all his memories of Bombay and try to find some sense in it.
I cannot recommend this book enough. The humor is wicked, the subject matter is gutsy, the thoughts are intricate and the characters engaging. In the course of these stories we see Mistry systematically gathering together all the ingredients that will eventually become central to his later novels Fine Balance and Family Matters.
Big Rock Candy Mountain
by Wallace Stegner, 1943. 563 pages. Published by Penguin.
Up to page 83; reviewed 29 December
I brought this book with me to a Thanksgiving party when I first started reading it. My friend Cody Jane asked me what it was about. I read her the first line of the back-cover blurb: “Bo Mason, his wife, Elsa, and their two boys live a transient life of poverty and despair.” Ah, the sweet escape that fiction affords us all!
The novel starts out as Elsa, a young and intelligent woman, travels by train to a frontier town in North Dakota. It’s about the turn of the century. Elsa has left her home out of a sense of betrayal and disgust after her widower father married her best friend. The image that we get of the American frontier is free of lyrical hyperbole. Elsa feels out of place here. There’s nothing to read, there are few people her age to speak with, and she’s aware that there are some dark goings on at the periphery of her attention, illegal gambling and liquor consumption, a world so foreign to her sheltered sensibilities that she basically chooses to ignore it until Bo Mason, who runs the local saloon (which is disguised as a pool hall) begins to fall in love with her.
The section of the story that tells about Bo Mason’s early life is one of my favorite parts of the book so far, because it gives an idea of the sort of raw intelligence that the developing American West attracted but did not necessarily nurture. As a child, Bo is a prodigious reader, but that doesn’t endear him to his scowling schoolteacher, nor to his father, a burned out Civil War veteran living off a pension. After running away from home, Bo drifts through a variety of jobs, often coming into conflict with the pettiness of his foremen. I like Bo because he’s quick to protest injustice, but usually only when he’s the victim of it—much more believable than old Tom Joad with his too-sweeping vow to serve the underdog, no matter how, no matter where.
Once Bo’s character is established, we see him put to the test as he becomes Elsa’s suitor. Stegner’s account of their relationship is complex and sophisticated. Elsa appeals to Bo largely because she’s someone who sees through his rough exterior and recognizes all his greatness: his ability to learn quickly, his overriding competitive drive, and the ability he has to open up new frontiers for her in life. But Elsa’s family puts up a strong resistance, and confronted with the unfairness of their rejection, Bo’s mood grows dark and brooding, and he takes out his anger in a violent outburst against a vagrant who tries to cheat him. Elsa sees the outburst and it sours her on him. Eventually they do find their way back into each others arms, and on the day they finalize their plans for marriage a tremendous ice storm hits and it’s Bo that ventures out into the blinding snow in order to rescue Elsa’s uncle, Karl, partly out of concern for him, but also in order to protect Elsa from the rumors that are bound to spring up if the young, still unmarried couple spends a night alone together in a fire-lit cabin.
When we next catch up with Elsa, more than seven years have passed. She’s tending a farm household, doing all her chores with one good arm because the other’s been wounded. The wounded arm seems to be a symbol for the hardships of the early years of Elsa’s marriage—confounding, but not debilitating, and not enough to shake her youthful inclination to enjoying life.
Although in general Stegner doesn’t romanticize the frontier life, he wisely includes the romanticism innate in the experience of young people venturing into new realms of experience. Although we sense that Elsa’s been programmed by her stern Norwegian upbringing to be hard on herself and easily victimized, we also have the feeling that she’s just a little too smart to fall completely into the traps of her upbringing. Elsa has traveled West without any big dreams other than simply finding a little bit of contentment with her life; but the man she falls in love with is the personification of impetuous youthful ambition.
Back cover blurb notwithstanding, this has not yet proved to be a depressing book. We have certainly been warned that bad times are ahead for Elsa and Bo, but the concise and well-told romance story at the outset of the book makes us certain that they have something worth pursuing and fighting for.
23 February 2008, p 83 to end
I can pinpoint the moment that I fell in love with this book. It was in a scene in the third section of the book, where the increasingly violent Bo has abandoned Elsa and their two boys, Chet and Bruce, after a fit of abusive rage. Now Chet and Bruce are living in a large and shabby boarding house. The scene starts with Chet in his high bunk, inspecting the treacherous network of roof beams that span the gulf between the boys’ and girls’ sleeping areas. He ponders, wipes some dust from the top of the beam, and then climbs up onto the beam and begins to walk across. He pretends he’s piloting an airplane. He imagines that the fate of the world depends on his making a safe landing.
And when he reaches the girls’ bunks, he encounters a set of blue eyes that are sharp and alive as a rabbit’s. The eyes belong to Helen Murphy, a character so fascinating and well drawn out that I was convinced Stegner planned to use her as an important figure throughout the book. Not so. Helen teases Chet into a game of “I’ll-show-you-mine-if-you-show-me-yours,” the kids get caught, and Chet’s mother is called to the carpet by the severe hag of a schoolmarm, Mrs. Mangin.
The scene where Chet crossed the roof beam made me fall in love with Stegner’s writing; the scene where Elsa confronts Mrs. Mangin made me impressed by the character of Elsa, because she holds her ground and refuses to accept the idea that a child should be made to feel ashamed for simply engaging in childish behavior. From this point onward, it’s clear that Elsa’s principal characteristic is her resolve. She refuses to give up her vision of what’s right and wrong: she believes her children deserve a home, that they be protected from abuse and that they be given every opportunity to thrive. At the same time, she believes her husband, Bo, is a man worthy of her love and devotion. And her transition from immaturity to adulthood comes when she realizes that these twin ideals can never be realized together, but chooses to commit herself to them anyway. She resigns herself to the flaws of the world she lives in, and through her resignation she becomes the strongest character in the book.
In the meantime, Bo refuses to resign himself to anything. He’s always dreaming about some breakthrough, a scheme that will not only make him rich but, most importantly, prove that the rest of humanity is made up of fools. For this reason, he’s always drawn to schemes that are ill advised and usually illicit. A lot of the action of the book stems from this fact. Bo’s bootlegging activities, the main source of his income, result in a plethora of car chases, crashes and police raids that make the book a surprising page-turner.
But the real fuel of the book is in the way the characters develop. Elsa becomes more and more silent and stoical, standing by her man in even his most maddeningly foolish schemes, but also lending her children a foundation of sanity they’ll remain grateful for their whole lives long. Chet develops into a charismatic high school hero, winning everyone’s approval but unable to hold himself together when faced with the slightest of failures. And Bruce develops a into a reader and deep thinker. In the last sections of the book his perspective draws on a variety of metaphoric comparisons and analyses ranging from Greek Tragedy to Sigmund Freud. This is especially interesting because Bruce represents the culmination of the Mason family’s aspirations, and also represents an encapsulation of the phenomenon of Wallace Stegner’s subject matter; this is a book written for an educated audience, but it touches only tangentially on the concerns of educated elites. The real root of the book is in the struggle of a family that was never offered privilege but always stayed focused on the promise of a sweet deal, a big break, an assortment of dreams whose value lay in the fact that they were all too good to be true.
While the book shifts from the perspective of one character to another, there’s always a sense that the characters own internal development is tightly lashed to the fortunes of the family as a whole. The only exception comes in the last days of Bo Mason, who seems only concerned with his own vain pursuits. An aging widower now, heavily in debt, abandoned by his fair-weather friends, estranged from his son and unable to let go of his old dreams. In fact, by this time Bo can’t even be seen as a dreamer; what he’s holding onto is the tarnished identity of a misbehaving youth, impertinent and cocksure even as a part of it knows that hope is lost. It’s fascinating to see the way Bo’s psyche begins to percolate with self-hatred. It would be easy to damn this character were his stubborn and juvenile ambitions not so hopelessly entangled with so many desires and comforts crucial to the human development of any family, and were his quest for success not so bejeweled with sweet glimpses of hard-won freedom.
Up to page 83; reviewed 29 December
I brought this book with me to a Thanksgiving party when I first started reading it. My friend Cody Jane asked me what it was about. I read her the first line of the back-cover blurb: “Bo Mason, his wife, Elsa, and their two boys live a transient life of poverty and despair.” Ah, the sweet escape that fiction affords us all!
The novel starts out as Elsa, a young and intelligent woman, travels by train to a frontier town in North Dakota. It’s about the turn of the century. Elsa has left her home out of a sense of betrayal and disgust after her widower father married her best friend. The image that we get of the American frontier is free of lyrical hyperbole. Elsa feels out of place here. There’s nothing to read, there are few people her age to speak with, and she’s aware that there are some dark goings on at the periphery of her attention, illegal gambling and liquor consumption, a world so foreign to her sheltered sensibilities that she basically chooses to ignore it until Bo Mason, who runs the local saloon (which is disguised as a pool hall) begins to fall in love with her.
The section of the story that tells about Bo Mason’s early life is one of my favorite parts of the book so far, because it gives an idea of the sort of raw intelligence that the developing American West attracted but did not necessarily nurture. As a child, Bo is a prodigious reader, but that doesn’t endear him to his scowling schoolteacher, nor to his father, a burned out Civil War veteran living off a pension. After running away from home, Bo drifts through a variety of jobs, often coming into conflict with the pettiness of his foremen. I like Bo because he’s quick to protest injustice, but usually only when he’s the victim of it—much more believable than old Tom Joad with his too-sweeping vow to serve the underdog, no matter how, no matter where.
Once Bo’s character is established, we see him put to the test as he becomes Elsa’s suitor. Stegner’s account of their relationship is complex and sophisticated. Elsa appeals to Bo largely because she’s someone who sees through his rough exterior and recognizes all his greatness: his ability to learn quickly, his overriding competitive drive, and the ability he has to open up new frontiers for her in life. But Elsa’s family puts up a strong resistance, and confronted with the unfairness of their rejection, Bo’s mood grows dark and brooding, and he takes out his anger in a violent outburst against a vagrant who tries to cheat him. Elsa sees the outburst and it sours her on him. Eventually they do find their way back into each others arms, and on the day they finalize their plans for marriage a tremendous ice storm hits and it’s Bo that ventures out into the blinding snow in order to rescue Elsa’s uncle, Karl, partly out of concern for him, but also in order to protect Elsa from the rumors that are bound to spring up if the young, still unmarried couple spends a night alone together in a fire-lit cabin.
When we next catch up with Elsa, more than seven years have passed. She’s tending a farm household, doing all her chores with one good arm because the other’s been wounded. The wounded arm seems to be a symbol for the hardships of the early years of Elsa’s marriage—confounding, but not debilitating, and not enough to shake her youthful inclination to enjoying life.
Although in general Stegner doesn’t romanticize the frontier life, he wisely includes the romanticism innate in the experience of young people venturing into new realms of experience. Although we sense that Elsa’s been programmed by her stern Norwegian upbringing to be hard on herself and easily victimized, we also have the feeling that she’s just a little too smart to fall completely into the traps of her upbringing. Elsa has traveled West without any big dreams other than simply finding a little bit of contentment with her life; but the man she falls in love with is the personification of impetuous youthful ambition.
Back cover blurb notwithstanding, this has not yet proved to be a depressing book. We have certainly been warned that bad times are ahead for Elsa and Bo, but the concise and well-told romance story at the outset of the book makes us certain that they have something worth pursuing and fighting for.
23 February 2008, p 83 to end
I can pinpoint the moment that I fell in love with this book. It was in a scene in the third section of the book, where the increasingly violent Bo has abandoned Elsa and their two boys, Chet and Bruce, after a fit of abusive rage. Now Chet and Bruce are living in a large and shabby boarding house. The scene starts with Chet in his high bunk, inspecting the treacherous network of roof beams that span the gulf between the boys’ and girls’ sleeping areas. He ponders, wipes some dust from the top of the beam, and then climbs up onto the beam and begins to walk across. He pretends he’s piloting an airplane. He imagines that the fate of the world depends on his making a safe landing.
And when he reaches the girls’ bunks, he encounters a set of blue eyes that are sharp and alive as a rabbit’s. The eyes belong to Helen Murphy, a character so fascinating and well drawn out that I was convinced Stegner planned to use her as an important figure throughout the book. Not so. Helen teases Chet into a game of “I’ll-show-you-mine-if-you-show-me-yours,” the kids get caught, and Chet’s mother is called to the carpet by the severe hag of a schoolmarm, Mrs. Mangin.
The scene where Chet crossed the roof beam made me fall in love with Stegner’s writing; the scene where Elsa confronts Mrs. Mangin made me impressed by the character of Elsa, because she holds her ground and refuses to accept the idea that a child should be made to feel ashamed for simply engaging in childish behavior. From this point onward, it’s clear that Elsa’s principal characteristic is her resolve. She refuses to give up her vision of what’s right and wrong: she believes her children deserve a home, that they be protected from abuse and that they be given every opportunity to thrive. At the same time, she believes her husband, Bo, is a man worthy of her love and devotion. And her transition from immaturity to adulthood comes when she realizes that these twin ideals can never be realized together, but chooses to commit herself to them anyway. She resigns herself to the flaws of the world she lives in, and through her resignation she becomes the strongest character in the book.
In the meantime, Bo refuses to resign himself to anything. He’s always dreaming about some breakthrough, a scheme that will not only make him rich but, most importantly, prove that the rest of humanity is made up of fools. For this reason, he’s always drawn to schemes that are ill advised and usually illicit. A lot of the action of the book stems from this fact. Bo’s bootlegging activities, the main source of his income, result in a plethora of car chases, crashes and police raids that make the book a surprising page-turner.
But the real fuel of the book is in the way the characters develop. Elsa becomes more and more silent and stoical, standing by her man in even his most maddeningly foolish schemes, but also lending her children a foundation of sanity they’ll remain grateful for their whole lives long. Chet develops into a charismatic high school hero, winning everyone’s approval but unable to hold himself together when faced with the slightest of failures. And Bruce develops a into a reader and deep thinker. In the last sections of the book his perspective draws on a variety of metaphoric comparisons and analyses ranging from Greek Tragedy to Sigmund Freud. This is especially interesting because Bruce represents the culmination of the Mason family’s aspirations, and also represents an encapsulation of the phenomenon of Wallace Stegner’s subject matter; this is a book written for an educated audience, but it touches only tangentially on the concerns of educated elites. The real root of the book is in the struggle of a family that was never offered privilege but always stayed focused on the promise of a sweet deal, a big break, an assortment of dreams whose value lay in the fact that they were all too good to be true.
While the book shifts from the perspective of one character to another, there’s always a sense that the characters own internal development is tightly lashed to the fortunes of the family as a whole. The only exception comes in the last days of Bo Mason, who seems only concerned with his own vain pursuits. An aging widower now, heavily in debt, abandoned by his fair-weather friends, estranged from his son and unable to let go of his old dreams. In fact, by this time Bo can’t even be seen as a dreamer; what he’s holding onto is the tarnished identity of a misbehaving youth, impertinent and cocksure even as a part of it knows that hope is lost. It’s fascinating to see the way Bo’s psyche begins to percolate with self-hatred. It would be easy to damn this character were his stubborn and juvenile ambitions not so hopelessly entangled with so many desires and comforts crucial to the human development of any family, and were his quest for success not so bejeweled with sweet glimpses of hard-won freedom.
The Anchorage International Film Festival 2007
Reviewed 12 December 2007
Last weekend I watched eight films at two venues in the Anchorage International Film Festival. Overall, it was a good experience. I toyed with the idea of reviewing all the films I saw, but instead decided just to focus on the three I liked best. The other films I saw (and enjoyed) were Unraveling the Wind, Nailed, Your Beautiful Cul-de-Sac Home, Body/Antibody, and Donovan Slacks.
REVIEW #1 – PORTRAIT OF A LEGEND: CLIFF HUDSON
This is a documentary about an Alaskan bush pilot who lived most of his life in Talkeetna and holds the records for the most airplane landings on Mt Denali, the highest peak in North America. In its opening moments, the film’s narrator describes Hudson as a quiet, unsung hero. So it seems fitting that through much of the film, Hudson himself seems upstaged by the incredible rural Alaska scenery and by the assembly of typically eccentric Alaska characters who’ve come together to discuss the details of this man’s life.
I must disclose that this movie was made by a friend of mine, Tom Stagg. And I also must say that I envy him the experience of making the movie, of traveling around the area around Talkeetna junction, of traveling the aerial mail route Hudson passed on to his son, and sitting in the living rooms and kitchens of Alaska old-timers, soliciting their stories and reflections.
There’s a strong undercurrent in the movie about the way Alaska’s quirks are sold to tourists. We come out with an impression that Hudson is a man who sold his services as a pilot, but never sold himself, and we get a glimpse of a certain Southcentral Alaska way of life that was once authentic and is now in the process of being turned into a product of great value to the tourist industry.
REVIEW #2 – FAT STUPID RABBIT
In today’s culture of Second Life and Reality TV, it’s useful to remember that Shakespeare himself posed the metaphor of life as a stage. As with all Shakespeare’s metaphors, this one maintains its potency in spite of massive and flagrant misuse, abuse and overuse. This Russian romantic comedy is proof.
The hero, Arcady, is an aging Russian actor stuck in a rut. He’s performed 300 times as a rabbit in an inane children’s play about woodland animals in which. Lately, he’s been drawing ridicule for breaking into Shakespearean soliloquies in the middle of performances.
To me, this film captured more of the true spirit of Shakespeare than many of the direct adaptations of Shakespearean work that have come out on the screen in my lifetime. Arcady is cast as a King Lear figure, and his character is built up with all the highlights and shadows of the original Lear. The symbolism is obvious but not overdone. The rabbit costume Arcady wears onstage is ridiculous, but as the plot goes on we have a stepwise chain of associations reminding us of the associations of the rabbit with Easter, childhood, springtime and renewal and the Christ story, but because of the initial silliness these parallels never outweigh the story itself. There are obvious parallels and allegories: the theater company is taken over by a merchant who wants use it as a vehicle to promote sausage sales; the lecherous producer tries to seduce the beautiful young girl Arcady is in love with. It’s a story about the way art is corrupted by money and cronyism, and the way that idealism in general is corrupted by cynical calculations. But the story is so full of magnificent specifics and authentic bits of comedy stolen from everyday life that it can’t possibly be reduced to mere symbolism.
REVIEW #3 – CTHULHU
Illustrators have long since discovered the graphic possibilities in Lovecraft’s stories of monsters and monstrous deities intent of preying on the world. There are lots of wonderful images of Cthulhu, the octopus headed giant asleep in his palace beneath the sea, or Azathoth and Shoggoths, Lloigers and the Old Ones. Someday soon there will be some large budget movie that attempts to capture the whole vision in lavish computer generated animation. Sadly, it’s only a matter of time.
I sensed that this movie was something better than that when I saw how the director used images of the ocean, casting it as a vast but none-to-comforting alternative to the complicated and frustrating world on the land. Most importantly there’s the conflict of Russ, a college professor whose open homosexuality has brought him into conflict with his family’s constricting religious beliefs.
This conflict itself is a worthy basis for a wholly “serious” film, and would benefit from all the clichés that would place it firmly in the Drama section of your local Video Bargainville. But inevitably there would be a lot that’s lost.
Along with being a good writer of scary fiction, HP Lovecraft was able to root out and exploit the sensation of feeling like a stranger in your own flesh in a way no other writer could, not even Edgar Allen Poe. The creative team of Dan Gildark and Grant Cogswell are absolutely right in approaching Lovecraft’s work from this angle, of using Lovecraft’s storytelling with all it’s grim suggestiveness and slow emergence of unearthly details to explore the way the judgments of modern conservatism can suffocate the sense of individuality in anyone who is different.
Images of the ocean are used brilliantly in this film. As the inevitable apocalypse draws near, two mysterious barges dominate the seascape. The plot is driven forward by a white-bearded old sailor who admits to going out on the sea for five days tripping on acid when he netted a creature that was “like a gigantic baby.” Russ’s early memories of his first romance, simultaneously sublime and profane, play out on the planks and struts of an old pier. And a scene of predatory seduction is carried out in front of an aquarium tank where two massive polar bears swim and gobble fish.
With all its quiet, slow moving scenes this movie is exactly the sort of guilty pleasure I love best in movies. Its quality is likely to go unrecognized for some time by people who need everything to fit into their perfect pigeonholes. Don’t believe such critics. If you’re looking for inspiration and new ways to make storytelling fresh, this is a great place to go.
Last weekend I watched eight films at two venues in the Anchorage International Film Festival. Overall, it was a good experience. I toyed with the idea of reviewing all the films I saw, but instead decided just to focus on the three I liked best. The other films I saw (and enjoyed) were Unraveling the Wind, Nailed, Your Beautiful Cul-de-Sac Home, Body/Antibody, and Donovan Slacks.
REVIEW #1 – PORTRAIT OF A LEGEND: CLIFF HUDSON
This is a documentary about an Alaskan bush pilot who lived most of his life in Talkeetna and holds the records for the most airplane landings on Mt Denali, the highest peak in North America. In its opening moments, the film’s narrator describes Hudson as a quiet, unsung hero. So it seems fitting that through much of the film, Hudson himself seems upstaged by the incredible rural Alaska scenery and by the assembly of typically eccentric Alaska characters who’ve come together to discuss the details of this man’s life.
I must disclose that this movie was made by a friend of mine, Tom Stagg. And I also must say that I envy him the experience of making the movie, of traveling around the area around Talkeetna junction, of traveling the aerial mail route Hudson passed on to his son, and sitting in the living rooms and kitchens of Alaska old-timers, soliciting their stories and reflections.
There’s a strong undercurrent in the movie about the way Alaska’s quirks are sold to tourists. We come out with an impression that Hudson is a man who sold his services as a pilot, but never sold himself, and we get a glimpse of a certain Southcentral Alaska way of life that was once authentic and is now in the process of being turned into a product of great value to the tourist industry.
REVIEW #2 – FAT STUPID RABBIT
In today’s culture of Second Life and Reality TV, it’s useful to remember that Shakespeare himself posed the metaphor of life as a stage. As with all Shakespeare’s metaphors, this one maintains its potency in spite of massive and flagrant misuse, abuse and overuse. This Russian romantic comedy is proof.
The hero, Arcady, is an aging Russian actor stuck in a rut. He’s performed 300 times as a rabbit in an inane children’s play about woodland animals in which. Lately, he’s been drawing ridicule for breaking into Shakespearean soliloquies in the middle of performances.
To me, this film captured more of the true spirit of Shakespeare than many of the direct adaptations of Shakespearean work that have come out on the screen in my lifetime. Arcady is cast as a King Lear figure, and his character is built up with all the highlights and shadows of the original Lear. The symbolism is obvious but not overdone. The rabbit costume Arcady wears onstage is ridiculous, but as the plot goes on we have a stepwise chain of associations reminding us of the associations of the rabbit with Easter, childhood, springtime and renewal and the Christ story, but because of the initial silliness these parallels never outweigh the story itself. There are obvious parallels and allegories: the theater company is taken over by a merchant who wants use it as a vehicle to promote sausage sales; the lecherous producer tries to seduce the beautiful young girl Arcady is in love with. It’s a story about the way art is corrupted by money and cronyism, and the way that idealism in general is corrupted by cynical calculations. But the story is so full of magnificent specifics and authentic bits of comedy stolen from everyday life that it can’t possibly be reduced to mere symbolism.
REVIEW #3 – CTHULHU
Illustrators have long since discovered the graphic possibilities in Lovecraft’s stories of monsters and monstrous deities intent of preying on the world. There are lots of wonderful images of Cthulhu, the octopus headed giant asleep in his palace beneath the sea, or Azathoth and Shoggoths, Lloigers and the Old Ones. Someday soon there will be some large budget movie that attempts to capture the whole vision in lavish computer generated animation. Sadly, it’s only a matter of time.
I sensed that this movie was something better than that when I saw how the director used images of the ocean, casting it as a vast but none-to-comforting alternative to the complicated and frustrating world on the land. Most importantly there’s the conflict of Russ, a college professor whose open homosexuality has brought him into conflict with his family’s constricting religious beliefs.
This conflict itself is a worthy basis for a wholly “serious” film, and would benefit from all the clichés that would place it firmly in the Drama section of your local Video Bargainville. But inevitably there would be a lot that’s lost.
Along with being a good writer of scary fiction, HP Lovecraft was able to root out and exploit the sensation of feeling like a stranger in your own flesh in a way no other writer could, not even Edgar Allen Poe. The creative team of Dan Gildark and Grant Cogswell are absolutely right in approaching Lovecraft’s work from this angle, of using Lovecraft’s storytelling with all it’s grim suggestiveness and slow emergence of unearthly details to explore the way the judgments of modern conservatism can suffocate the sense of individuality in anyone who is different.
Images of the ocean are used brilliantly in this film. As the inevitable apocalypse draws near, two mysterious barges dominate the seascape. The plot is driven forward by a white-bearded old sailor who admits to going out on the sea for five days tripping on acid when he netted a creature that was “like a gigantic baby.” Russ’s early memories of his first romance, simultaneously sublime and profane, play out on the planks and struts of an old pier. And a scene of predatory seduction is carried out in front of an aquarium tank where two massive polar bears swim and gobble fish.
With all its quiet, slow moving scenes this movie is exactly the sort of guilty pleasure I love best in movies. Its quality is likely to go unrecognized for some time by people who need everything to fit into their perfect pigeonholes. Don’t believe such critics. If you’re looking for inspiration and new ways to make storytelling fresh, this is a great place to go.
The Lotus Caves
by John Christopher. (1968) Published by Collier Books. 215 pages.
Reviewed 24 November 2007
A little ways into “Lotus Caves” the first big mistake comes up: the main character, a child named Marty, has a friend over and they listen to some music—on tape. In this science fiction story set in a colony on the moon in the year 2068, the presence of audiotape is an obvious, if forgivable, flaw. It’s also a flaw that betrays a lot about the man who made it.
The lunar colony of “Lotus Caves” is characterized by scarcity. All resources must be shepherded, messes and waste are forbidden. Christopher isn’t interested in extolling the state of tomorrow’s technology, but in underlining its disappointments; in the schools of the lunar colony (informally called “The Bubble”) the students are able to enter into holographic reconstructions of past eras—the Roman Empire, for instance—but the technology to simulate tastes and smells has been forbidden, for fear that it will make children distressed over all they miss out on by not being raised on the world.
I first got to know John Christopher in elementary school, where I read his “White Mountains” trilogy and was captivated by it. John Christopher is a children’s writer who is quite concerned about the state of childhood in the modern world. In “White Mountains” we have a world colonized by aliens who implant hardware into the brains of adults in order to make it impossible to rebel or even think disobedient thoughts. In “Lotus Caves” it’s all about a sort of squalor of the senses and the soul, a legislated dispiritedness and pessimism. I imagine that the soul stifling culture of the Bubble is based on the rationing of goods in England after the Second World War.
What’s really interesting to me is the nature of the main characters in this book. Marty and his friend Steve seem to be remarkably thoughtful children. Even though the whole plot is driven by their disobedience (they take a lunar crawler out beyond the bounds of radio transmission) they don’t seem at all like “problem children.” There’s no roughhousing or mouthing off or restlessness. But the characters are not miniature adults. This is the sort of child that I was growing up . . . or rather, I had the distinct potential to be this sort of child. I engaged in long thoughtful spells and was quite curious about books, even though my learning difficulty made it difficult to read them. I think during the 1980s American culture was just starting to move away from encouraging these sorts of character traits in children, maybe because thoughtful children are less likely to push their parents to buy things; I don’t know. What I do know is that John Christopher’s vision of childhood is something important that we shouldn’t lose track of.
The storyline of “The Lotus Caves” shouldn’t be too unfamiliar to anyone who watched the old Star Trek series. While exploring the moon, the two children stumble across a cave inhabited by an advanced life form, a massive plant that fills the whole cave in the form of mushrooms, vines, trees that produce organ music, grassy meadows and luminescent moss. Because the organism doesn’t want the human colonists to find out about its existence, it insists on keeping the children locked up inside its domain. If offers to keep them entertained and feeds them fruit that levels their personality and quells their desire for escape. In order to succeed, the characters have to find a way to overcome their complacency and build their fighting spirit. In the end, their escape from the caves is pretty easy. The plant doesn’t put up much of a fight; indeed, it’s much easier for the boys to liberate themselves from the forbidden caves than it was for them to get away from their human settlement on the other side of the moon.
The friendship between Steve and Marty is the weakest part of the book. We're told that Steve is the domineering one, and that Marty has to “gain ascendancy” over him in order to pull off the escape from the caves. But Steve doesn’t seem to have much personality of his own, and there’s definitely a coda in their relationship missing from the end of the book.
But what’s good about this book is that it does such a great job at raising the frightening specter of a lifeless, overly controlled childhood, a childhood where all sense of joy and abandonment has been legislated away. There are lots of kids who are in no danger of this, but for some kids the biggest danger is to shy away into a life of obedient introversion. You can’t just deny that kind of personality; there are those of us that are contemplative by nature, who spend a lot of their lives in our heads. But there’s a crisis point where an introspective person has to decide whether or not to succumb fully to the undertow of isolation, or to spend a lifetime fighting the current and making efforts to get out and participate in life. This crisis is very real to those of us who face it; what’s rare about Christopher’s work is how well he brings it to life.
Reviewed 24 November 2007
A little ways into “Lotus Caves” the first big mistake comes up: the main character, a child named Marty, has a friend over and they listen to some music—on tape. In this science fiction story set in a colony on the moon in the year 2068, the presence of audiotape is an obvious, if forgivable, flaw. It’s also a flaw that betrays a lot about the man who made it.
The lunar colony of “Lotus Caves” is characterized by scarcity. All resources must be shepherded, messes and waste are forbidden. Christopher isn’t interested in extolling the state of tomorrow’s technology, but in underlining its disappointments; in the schools of the lunar colony (informally called “The Bubble”) the students are able to enter into holographic reconstructions of past eras—the Roman Empire, for instance—but the technology to simulate tastes and smells has been forbidden, for fear that it will make children distressed over all they miss out on by not being raised on the world.
I first got to know John Christopher in elementary school, where I read his “White Mountains” trilogy and was captivated by it. John Christopher is a children’s writer who is quite concerned about the state of childhood in the modern world. In “White Mountains” we have a world colonized by aliens who implant hardware into the brains of adults in order to make it impossible to rebel or even think disobedient thoughts. In “Lotus Caves” it’s all about a sort of squalor of the senses and the soul, a legislated dispiritedness and pessimism. I imagine that the soul stifling culture of the Bubble is based on the rationing of goods in England after the Second World War.
What’s really interesting to me is the nature of the main characters in this book. Marty and his friend Steve seem to be remarkably thoughtful children. Even though the whole plot is driven by their disobedience (they take a lunar crawler out beyond the bounds of radio transmission) they don’t seem at all like “problem children.” There’s no roughhousing or mouthing off or restlessness. But the characters are not miniature adults. This is the sort of child that I was growing up . . . or rather, I had the distinct potential to be this sort of child. I engaged in long thoughtful spells and was quite curious about books, even though my learning difficulty made it difficult to read them. I think during the 1980s American culture was just starting to move away from encouraging these sorts of character traits in children, maybe because thoughtful children are less likely to push their parents to buy things; I don’t know. What I do know is that John Christopher’s vision of childhood is something important that we shouldn’t lose track of.
The storyline of “The Lotus Caves” shouldn’t be too unfamiliar to anyone who watched the old Star Trek series. While exploring the moon, the two children stumble across a cave inhabited by an advanced life form, a massive plant that fills the whole cave in the form of mushrooms, vines, trees that produce organ music, grassy meadows and luminescent moss. Because the organism doesn’t want the human colonists to find out about its existence, it insists on keeping the children locked up inside its domain. If offers to keep them entertained and feeds them fruit that levels their personality and quells their desire for escape. In order to succeed, the characters have to find a way to overcome their complacency and build their fighting spirit. In the end, their escape from the caves is pretty easy. The plant doesn’t put up much of a fight; indeed, it’s much easier for the boys to liberate themselves from the forbidden caves than it was for them to get away from their human settlement on the other side of the moon.
The friendship between Steve and Marty is the weakest part of the book. We're told that Steve is the domineering one, and that Marty has to “gain ascendancy” over him in order to pull off the escape from the caves. But Steve doesn’t seem to have much personality of his own, and there’s definitely a coda in their relationship missing from the end of the book.
But what’s good about this book is that it does such a great job at raising the frightening specter of a lifeless, overly controlled childhood, a childhood where all sense of joy and abandonment has been legislated away. There are lots of kids who are in no danger of this, but for some kids the biggest danger is to shy away into a life of obedient introversion. You can’t just deny that kind of personality; there are those of us that are contemplative by nature, who spend a lot of their lives in our heads. But there’s a crisis point where an introspective person has to decide whether or not to succumb fully to the undertow of isolation, or to spend a lifetime fighting the current and making efforts to get out and participate in life. This crisis is very real to those of us who face it; what’s rare about Christopher’s work is how well he brings it to life.
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