Posts
I've watched an abnormal number of horror movies this year. Some of that is because my wife is researching portrayals of librarians in film, and the most recent batch she added to our collection simply happened to include a lot of horror flicks. But I've also been re-embracing my horror roots, not only in film but also in literature (for a while this summer I returned to reading my beloved vampire novels, though only a handful turned out to be any good; I do highly recommend Robin McKinley's Sunshine) and in my own writing.
In that vein, I've been more in the mood recently to watch horror, and I've seen some interesting movies (Rob Zomebie's The Devil's Rejects and his remake of Halloween) and re-watched some old favorites (the original Wicker Man, Interview with the Vampire). But for this Halloween, I thought I'd list a few of the disappointments.
Weirdest/lamest/silliest horror movies I've seen this year:
House of 1,000 Corpses
Yes, I know it's Zombie and has become a cult classic of sorts, and it is fun in places, but it's also chaotic and mostly absurd; The Devil's Rejects was better.
The Dunwich Horror
Despite the lame "Satan spawn" write-up on the DVD case, it stays surprizingly faithful to the story, at least as far as this sort of movie can remain faithful. But Dean Stockwell tries way too hard for "intense and creepy"; he only ever manages "numb gaze" and "dull breathy monotone." Plus, in a weird sexploitative move that violates the tone of the original story, they tossed in a "sexy" leading girl, who winds up being one of the stupidest "blonde bimbos" in the history of horror cinema--and that's saying something.
Chainsaw Sally
Imagine an unintentional spoof of House of 1,000 Corpses crossed with a intentional (but failed) attempt at an homage to the bizarre but far superior Suspiria, all on a $6,000 budget. The hick-cop dialogue was sort of funny, though, and I admit I enjoyed all the serial-killer references.
From a Whisper to a Scream
Actually not half bad, but the Vincent Price interludes are the best part--the four sketches that make up the rest of the movie range from idiotic to hilarious to mildly interesting, sometimes in the same sketch, but it does manage to stand in the great tradition of the old Amazing Stories and Twilight Zone serials.
11/01/2008
10/16/2008
Judy Blume
Last night I drove with my wife and another university librarian (our education librarian, who oversees our children and young-adult literature collection on campus) to Madison to attend a lecture by Judy Blume. Blume's speech was part of the larger Wisconsin Literary Festival underway this week, but her specific appearance was at the invitation of the Cooperative Children's Book Center, a youth-lit organization my wife belongs to; Blume was giving the 11th Annual Charlotte Zolotow Lecture, named for a children's-lit editor and author and anti-censorship activist who attended UW-Madison in the 1930s.
Like most kids in this country, I read Judy Blume's Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing when I was myself in fourth grade. And, like most kids in this country, I thought that book was about me. Blume has an almost eerie ability to tap the minds of young people and write about our universal confusions, questions, explorations, and discoveries as we grow up. Because of her ability to access our universal experiences, her books have long felt timeless: I was surprised to learn, as an adult, that Tales had been published a full four years before I was even born; she so convincingly related to my own experiences I was long convinced the book was contemporary, that Tales could only have appeared the year I read it, when I was in fourth grade. More amazing still is the revelation that the book's sequel, Superfudge, didn't appear until 1980, eight years after its predecessor, yet none of the characters had aged more than a few years and the sequel felt just as contemporary as the first, as though they had appeared back-to-back (which, incidentally, is how I read them). Most of her character-series (the Sally Freedman books, the chronicles of Fudge and his family, the saga of the Great One and the Pain) follow that pattern, some letting whole decades lapse between books. Yet every one of them feels new, familiar, contemporary, and, because of this, timeless.
Blume's fiction shares another magic, related to or perhaps even the cause of her timelessness--she writes with superb realism. We connect with her books because they are about us, our lives, the real world in which we live and fear and love. And it is this second quality that sometimes--thankfully--gets her into trouble. Some people feel Blume's fiction is too real, that it exposes children and teenagers to subjects they should not be exposed to (underwear, death, sex, religious doubt, etc.). The truth is, Blume is simply describing the reality in which children and teenagers already live; she is voicing the questions and doubts and fears and curiosities that children and teenagers are already longing to express, and in acting as a voice for them, Blume is helping them make sense of their world. "How can children possibly understand when no one tells them what's going on?" Blume asked toward the end of her speech. "They live in fear and confusion, and have to invent their own truths."
Blume's speech last night dealt with issues of censorship and intellectual freedom, but she spent most of her time focused on her own career as a writer. Brilliantly, she organized the speech into three "chapters," which followed her brief introduction explaining how she'd been invited and how nervous she was to be following previous Zolotow Lecturers Lois Lowry and Patricia MacLachlan (whom Blume called "Patty"). She also asked a question, which she waited till later to answer: are storytellers born or made? (She was careful to clarify, though, that in her view "storytelling and writing are not the same thing.")
The "chapters" of her speech-proper were all centered on fear, beginning with her own childhood fear of sharing her made-up stories. The closest she came to sharing her own fiction, she said, was a period in the fifth grade when she would have to give book reports in school. As a child, she had almost unlimited access to books--her parents never wanted to censor what she read or protect her from books other people felt she wasn't ready for, though her aunt did instill an almost religious reverence for the printed word, making Blume wash her tiny hands and display them for inspection, palms and backs and fingernails, before allowing the young girl to even touch a book. Her parents also frequently took her to the public library and let her spend hours reading from the shelves, anything she could reach and pull down to the floor where she sat. Consequently, she quickly read through everything available at her age level and began very early to read books well beyond her "appropriate" reading group. She described reading books like Saul Bellow's The Adventures of Augie March and Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead at a very early age; even if she didn't fully understand what she was reading, she felt compelled to always have a book in hand, and even as she grew older would continue to read anything she could pull off the shelf. (Later, she related how so many of her family members, including her uncles, had died while she was growing up--"I spent my childhood in shiva," she said--and her mother had developed the habit of constantly knitting sweaters because, as Blume explained, "God wouldn't take her in the middle of a sleeve." Blume, who was attached to her father and worried about his safety, decided to read books in order to save his life; she became convinced that if she always was in the middle of a book, God wouldn't dare take her father--as though Blume's salvation could be passed along to her father. It was a touching moment.)
As a result, when Blume was in fifth grade, she knew she couldn't give a book report in class on anything she was currently reading because no one would understand the material she was reading--or, worse, everyone would think she was "weird." Instead, when book report days arrived, she would stand in front of the class and invent a book--title, author, and all--and spend her entire presentation expounding on the characters and themes of this imaginary creation. They were usually about horses, she said, because she had some idea that girls in her age group all liked horses (or were supposed to like horses), even though Blume herself was indifferent to horses.
Her second chapter dealt primarily with her discovery of fearlessness and her growth as a professional writer. And it was in this section that she revealed that, for her, storytellers are indeed born--that a true storyteller must have some innate ability and desperate need to tell stories. It's not a view I completely buy into, but it's not one I can much argue with, either, because I have certainly read people and met people I remain in awe of, people of whom, despite all my education and years analyzing the craft of writing, I continue to ask, "How did they do that?" I think this is perhaps why Blume made her early distinction between storytellers and writers, the implication being not only that writers can be made and that storytellers must be born, but also that some writers can study forever and never be storytellers and, conversely, that some storytellers can write forever and never be writers. This, I suppose, I might more readily agree with. Whatever the case, Blume clearly feels she is a storyteller, though she doesn't attach any pride to this label or suggest she is in any way an accomplished writer. She seems to claim her status as storyteller mostly by merit of her continual surprise at her own work--even she doesn't fully understand how she does what she does. "I'm not aware of where things come from," she says, referring not only to her story ideas but also the craft of her books, though this latter she is inclined to credit to her early editor and mentor, Dick Jackson. She described one of her early meetings, to discuss her book Then Again, Maybe I Won't, and despite her "professional" demeanor (she laughed that she had worn a yellow turtleneck with a plaid kilted skirt and go-go boots, because it made her feel "professional"), she claimed she was nervous through the whole meeting. Jackson kept asking her what her book was about, and she stammered through a very short list: "I don't know. It's about Tony, it's about his family...." For Blume, everything revolves around character and dialogue; she struggles with plot and loathes descriptive writing (a view I've written on recently). But Jackson wasn't after any of that. He didn't want to know whom the story was about, but what is was about. "A book has to be about something!" he told Blume. Finally, they began working on a list of things the book could be about--not themes, precisely ("I hate themes!" Blume said while slapping the podium), but ideas, issues, even physical objects that became central to the narrative. This, she claims, is how she learned to focus her writing.
Still, she seems suspicious of craft and relishes the "freedom" of pursuing ideas outside analysis and criticism, the ease and joy of writing that can occur when we don't have our educated self-editor on our shoulders. "It's great not knowing anything when you're starting out," she says. "I envy people that now." I can see her point, though I've recently been arguing against just this perspective with a friend of mine. I think the issue isn't one of education ruining a writer, but of how we engage that education and what we do with it. I agree that some people pursue an education in writing--or some people teach writing--only to the point of introducing us to our shoulder imps with their forked tongues and their little red pens. We get to the point in our writing where everything we do is wrong, or at least everything we do could be better, and for some reason--we get fed up and leave too early, or our teachers through laziness or ignorance choose to take us only so far--we never get past the critic, we never learn how to set aside the education and rediscover the joy. I maintain that studying craft is important--perhaps vital--for a working writer, but I also remain a fan of the axiom that we must learn the rules in order to know how best to break them. There must be a way to re-access the joy in writing without abandoning the craft. My friend is in the process of struggling with that now--I hope successfully, and her recent blog posts sound promising. Blume claims to have found her method in setting aside the writing entirely until a story builds up in her and she can't wait any longer to burst into her little writing room and sit down for her two hours a day. This, of course, is a luxury only an established writer can afford, but the result is the same--she finds a way to set aside whatever "rules" she's learned in her long career and re-access the pleasure and necessity of writing.
Her final "chapter" moved from her own fearlessness in writing to combating the fear-mongering of censorship (Blume herself has been labeled "the most banned author in America" on a number of occasions), and intellectual freedom has become one of Blume's most-championed causes, for which she has frequently been recognized. (She recently edited a collection of stories related to censorship, all written by banned authors; the collection is called Places I Never Meant to Be: Original Stories by Censored Writers.) This is where I began this entry, and it's where she would want me to leave it, so I'll end by pointing out only two things: 1) Without ever revealing her candidate of choice (though it wouldn't be hard to guess), Blume made several references to the debate we were all missing last night (and which she encouraged us to watch online later) and to what she perceived as the importance of this year's election--"the most important election in my lifetime," she said--and she urged us to act with our votes to preserve intellectual freedom and encourage an attitude of hope for our nation and our nation's children. 2) She insisted, repeatedly and heatedly, that banning books creates ignorance and supporting intellectual freedom is a necessary component of any free society; we must, she said, work to preserve the First Amendment rights of our children as well as ourselves. Throughout this blog entry, I've placed links to various sites about intellectual freedom and Blume's own efforts to protect books and the children who want to read them; please click on those links and take up Blume's call to action.
Like most kids in this country, I read Judy Blume's Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing when I was myself in fourth grade. And, like most kids in this country, I thought that book was about me. Blume has an almost eerie ability to tap the minds of young people and write about our universal confusions, questions, explorations, and discoveries as we grow up. Because of her ability to access our universal experiences, her books have long felt timeless: I was surprised to learn, as an adult, that Tales had been published a full four years before I was even born; she so convincingly related to my own experiences I was long convinced the book was contemporary, that Tales could only have appeared the year I read it, when I was in fourth grade. More amazing still is the revelation that the book's sequel, Superfudge, didn't appear until 1980, eight years after its predecessor, yet none of the characters had aged more than a few years and the sequel felt just as contemporary as the first, as though they had appeared back-to-back (which, incidentally, is how I read them). Most of her character-series (the Sally Freedman books, the chronicles of Fudge and his family, the saga of the Great One and the Pain) follow that pattern, some letting whole decades lapse between books. Yet every one of them feels new, familiar, contemporary, and, because of this, timeless.
Blume's fiction shares another magic, related to or perhaps even the cause of her timelessness--she writes with superb realism. We connect with her books because they are about us, our lives, the real world in which we live and fear and love. And it is this second quality that sometimes--thankfully--gets her into trouble. Some people feel Blume's fiction is too real, that it exposes children and teenagers to subjects they should not be exposed to (underwear, death, sex, religious doubt, etc.). The truth is, Blume is simply describing the reality in which children and teenagers already live; she is voicing the questions and doubts and fears and curiosities that children and teenagers are already longing to express, and in acting as a voice for them, Blume is helping them make sense of their world. "How can children possibly understand when no one tells them what's going on?" Blume asked toward the end of her speech. "They live in fear and confusion, and have to invent their own truths."
Blume's speech last night dealt with issues of censorship and intellectual freedom, but she spent most of her time focused on her own career as a writer. Brilliantly, she organized the speech into three "chapters," which followed her brief introduction explaining how she'd been invited and how nervous she was to be following previous Zolotow Lecturers Lois Lowry and Patricia MacLachlan (whom Blume called "Patty"). She also asked a question, which she waited till later to answer: are storytellers born or made? (She was careful to clarify, though, that in her view "storytelling and writing are not the same thing.")
The "chapters" of her speech-proper were all centered on fear, beginning with her own childhood fear of sharing her made-up stories. The closest she came to sharing her own fiction, she said, was a period in the fifth grade when she would have to give book reports in school. As a child, she had almost unlimited access to books--her parents never wanted to censor what she read or protect her from books other people felt she wasn't ready for, though her aunt did instill an almost religious reverence for the printed word, making Blume wash her tiny hands and display them for inspection, palms and backs and fingernails, before allowing the young girl to even touch a book. Her parents also frequently took her to the public library and let her spend hours reading from the shelves, anything she could reach and pull down to the floor where she sat. Consequently, she quickly read through everything available at her age level and began very early to read books well beyond her "appropriate" reading group. She described reading books like Saul Bellow's The Adventures of Augie March and Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead at a very early age; even if she didn't fully understand what she was reading, she felt compelled to always have a book in hand, and even as she grew older would continue to read anything she could pull off the shelf. (Later, she related how so many of her family members, including her uncles, had died while she was growing up--"I spent my childhood in shiva," she said--and her mother had developed the habit of constantly knitting sweaters because, as Blume explained, "God wouldn't take her in the middle of a sleeve." Blume, who was attached to her father and worried about his safety, decided to read books in order to save his life; she became convinced that if she always was in the middle of a book, God wouldn't dare take her father--as though Blume's salvation could be passed along to her father. It was a touching moment.)
As a result, when Blume was in fifth grade, she knew she couldn't give a book report in class on anything she was currently reading because no one would understand the material she was reading--or, worse, everyone would think she was "weird." Instead, when book report days arrived, she would stand in front of the class and invent a book--title, author, and all--and spend her entire presentation expounding on the characters and themes of this imaginary creation. They were usually about horses, she said, because she had some idea that girls in her age group all liked horses (or were supposed to like horses), even though Blume herself was indifferent to horses.
Her second chapter dealt primarily with her discovery of fearlessness and her growth as a professional writer. And it was in this section that she revealed that, for her, storytellers are indeed born--that a true storyteller must have some innate ability and desperate need to tell stories. It's not a view I completely buy into, but it's not one I can much argue with, either, because I have certainly read people and met people I remain in awe of, people of whom, despite all my education and years analyzing the craft of writing, I continue to ask, "How did they do that?" I think this is perhaps why Blume made her early distinction between storytellers and writers, the implication being not only that writers can be made and that storytellers must be born, but also that some writers can study forever and never be storytellers and, conversely, that some storytellers can write forever and never be writers. This, I suppose, I might more readily agree with. Whatever the case, Blume clearly feels she is a storyteller, though she doesn't attach any pride to this label or suggest she is in any way an accomplished writer. She seems to claim her status as storyteller mostly by merit of her continual surprise at her own work--even she doesn't fully understand how she does what she does. "I'm not aware of where things come from," she says, referring not only to her story ideas but also the craft of her books, though this latter she is inclined to credit to her early editor and mentor, Dick Jackson. She described one of her early meetings, to discuss her book Then Again, Maybe I Won't, and despite her "professional" demeanor (she laughed that she had worn a yellow turtleneck with a plaid kilted skirt and go-go boots, because it made her feel "professional"), she claimed she was nervous through the whole meeting. Jackson kept asking her what her book was about, and she stammered through a very short list: "I don't know. It's about Tony, it's about his family...." For Blume, everything revolves around character and dialogue; she struggles with plot and loathes descriptive writing (a view I've written on recently). But Jackson wasn't after any of that. He didn't want to know whom the story was about, but what is was about. "A book has to be about something!" he told Blume. Finally, they began working on a list of things the book could be about--not themes, precisely ("I hate themes!" Blume said while slapping the podium), but ideas, issues, even physical objects that became central to the narrative. This, she claims, is how she learned to focus her writing.
Still, she seems suspicious of craft and relishes the "freedom" of pursuing ideas outside analysis and criticism, the ease and joy of writing that can occur when we don't have our educated self-editor on our shoulders. "It's great not knowing anything when you're starting out," she says. "I envy people that now." I can see her point, though I've recently been arguing against just this perspective with a friend of mine. I think the issue isn't one of education ruining a writer, but of how we engage that education and what we do with it. I agree that some people pursue an education in writing--or some people teach writing--only to the point of introducing us to our shoulder imps with their forked tongues and their little red pens. We get to the point in our writing where everything we do is wrong, or at least everything we do could be better, and for some reason--we get fed up and leave too early, or our teachers through laziness or ignorance choose to take us only so far--we never get past the critic, we never learn how to set aside the education and rediscover the joy. I maintain that studying craft is important--perhaps vital--for a working writer, but I also remain a fan of the axiom that we must learn the rules in order to know how best to break them. There must be a way to re-access the joy in writing without abandoning the craft. My friend is in the process of struggling with that now--I hope successfully, and her recent blog posts sound promising. Blume claims to have found her method in setting aside the writing entirely until a story builds up in her and she can't wait any longer to burst into her little writing room and sit down for her two hours a day. This, of course, is a luxury only an established writer can afford, but the result is the same--she finds a way to set aside whatever "rules" she's learned in her long career and re-access the pleasure and necessity of writing.
Her final "chapter" moved from her own fearlessness in writing to combating the fear-mongering of censorship (Blume herself has been labeled "the most banned author in America" on a number of occasions), and intellectual freedom has become one of Blume's most-championed causes, for which she has frequently been recognized. (She recently edited a collection of stories related to censorship, all written by banned authors; the collection is called Places I Never Meant to Be: Original Stories by Censored Writers.) This is where I began this entry, and it's where she would want me to leave it, so I'll end by pointing out only two things: 1) Without ever revealing her candidate of choice (though it wouldn't be hard to guess), Blume made several references to the debate we were all missing last night (and which she encouraged us to watch online later) and to what she perceived as the importance of this year's election--"the most important election in my lifetime," she said--and she urged us to act with our votes to preserve intellectual freedom and encourage an attitude of hope for our nation and our nation's children. 2) She insisted, repeatedly and heatedly, that banning books creates ignorance and supporting intellectual freedom is a necessary component of any free society; we must, she said, work to preserve the First Amendment rights of our children as well as ourselves. Throughout this blog entry, I've placed links to various sites about intellectual freedom and Blume's own efforts to protect books and the children who want to read them; please click on those links and take up Blume's call to action.
9/28/2008
Taboo: The answers
- Your grandma makes it--it's warm. You sleep with it.
- Answer: a quilt
- This is a really old famous writer.
- Answer: William Shakespeare
- It's Friday! It's a candybar!
- Answer: Payday
- It's coming out of your nose.
- "Boogers! Snot!"
- Yes--another word for what's happening....
- Answer: Drip
- "Boogers! Snot!"
- (hilarious laughter) Just skip it!
- Answer: Armpit
- Thing in the sky. When you're little, you make fun of it.
- Answer: Uranus
- People who can't have regular bikes use this.
- Answer: Tricycle
- Uh..... no.
- Answer: Pierce Brosnon / Judge Judy
- When a little kid wets himself, he had a....
- Answer: Accident
- When you get owned, you get....
- Answer: Pawn (Internet geeks will love this)
- You're an animal in the jungle, and you have an abnormally large butt.
- Answer: Baboon
- They're white. They're really annoying.
- Answer: Seagull
Also, most disturbing outburst, followed by most awkward silence, followed by funniest/most appropriate pass on a card:
A student turned over the word "Kiss" and shouted, "Oh, this is what you do with your girlfriend!"
His partner shouted, "Fight!"
The reader said, "No, the other thing!"
Everyone went silent and looked around at each other.
The reader said, "Come on, man!"
His partner gave a nervous laugh and said, "Uh, what do you want me to say here?"
The reader waved his hand and said, "No, not that! Before that!"
His partner said, "Oh! Kiss!"
The next card they turned up was "Sexism." They skipped it.
9/26/2008
Taboo
This week I have my students playing Taboo. The exercise serves a number of functions, actually: 1) It helps them form bonds within their newly-created workshop groups; 2) it allows them to practice description by finding alternate ways of describing things or ideas, since they have to avoid the obvious descriptive terms on the cards; 3) it teaches them tactics of audience analysis, since they have to make sure their teammates can understand their alternate descriptions; 4) it gives them bonus points on their workshop grades; and 5) it's fun.
But the best part of today is that I get to walk around the room and hear some fascinating descriptions, sometimes depressing ("This is what you do on Friday nights"--"Get drunk!"; "When you've been drinking, you're eyes look..."--"Bloodshot!"), but sometimes hilarious. In fact, some of the things I overhear, whether in context or out of context, struck me as so funny I've started keeping track, and I'll share them here (watch for updates throughout the day).
For fun, I'm going to number these and leave the item being described blank. Anyone reading this, feel free to guess what my students are after here [NEW CLUES--6-8] [and EVEN MORE new clues--9-12]:
The most-sexist-clue award: "It's a chick who's at a game." Answer: Cheerleader.
And, strangest outburst: "You are a..." Answer (immediate--not even a pause): "Badger!" They were going for "teenager," but we are in Wisconsin, the Badger State.
But the best part of today is that I get to walk around the room and hear some fascinating descriptions, sometimes depressing ("This is what you do on Friday nights"--"Get drunk!"; "When you've been drinking, you're eyes look..."--"Bloodshot!"), but sometimes hilarious. In fact, some of the things I overhear, whether in context or out of context, struck me as so funny I've started keeping track, and I'll share them here (watch for updates throughout the day).
For fun, I'm going to number these and leave the item being described blank. Anyone reading this, feel free to guess what my students are after here [NEW CLUES--6-8] [and EVEN MORE new clues--9-12]:
1. Your grandma makes it--it's warm. You sleep with it.
2. This is a really old famous writer.
3. It's Friday! It's a candybar!5. (hilarious laughter) Just skip it!
- 4. It's coming out of your nose.
- "Boogers! Snot!"
- Yes--another word for what's happening....
6. Thing in the sky. When you're little, you make fun of it.
7. People who can't have regular bikes use this.
8. Uh..... no.
9. When a little kid wets himself, he had a....
10. When you get owned, you get....
11. You're an animal in the jungle, and you have an abnormally large butt.
12. They're white. They're really annoying.
The most-sexist-clue award: "It's a chick who's at a game." Answer: Cheerleader.
And, strangest outburst: "You are a..." Answer (immediate--not even a pause): "Badger!" They were going for "teenager," but we are in Wisconsin, the Badger State.
9/21/2008
I'm watching The Watchmen, that's who!
Thanks to a generous loan from a former student/current fraternity advisee, I'm reading The Watchmen. I'd long heard of the book, but back in the apex of my high-school comic nerdism, my tastes tended more toward the X-Men, a healthy dose of Spidey and the Punisher, and a handful of mainstream DarkHorse titles (if there was such a thing back then). I wasn't terribly picky in what I read, but my one fast rule back then was that if DC published it, I wasn't interested. (Alas--I had learned from bad childhood experiences to equate DC with cheap Superman and Batman runs in which the heros pontificated in long strings of spoken exposition, which even then felt horribly false to me.) Consequently, I missed out on the genius of Alan Moore (and Frank Miller, for that matter), and I am reading The Watchmen now for the first time.
Initially, I'd planned to pick it up only because the movie is due in theaters this coming spring, and I like to read the books ahead of the movies when I can (which is the main reason I subjected myself to the Twilight series this summer). But since deciding I needed to read The Watchmen, I've begun studying graphic narrative and reading more graphic novels (I finished the initial ten volumes of Neil Gaiman's Sandman this summer as well) in an effort to learn more about the medium and the genre--because I suspect it is both, and more--as I set out to write my own graphic novel. In my studies, I've seen Alan Moore's name come up repeatedly, and though I was already familiar with his stature thanks to works like V for Vendetta, From Hell, and his important additions to the Batman mythos, the book most people talk about is The Watchmen. Except they never actually talk about it--they mention Moore himself off-handedly, almost as a given, the way we might mention Shakespeare or Austen, yet they always write The Watchmen in a whisper, as though they're all afraid to inadvertantly disrespect scripture. And that seems to be the way most serious comics writers and scholars and critics approach The Watchmen, as the Bible of graphic novels. (Or, perhaps, the "New Testament" to the power of the comics medium, the "Old Testament" being Will Eisner's The Spirit, a film version of which is also due in theaters soon, this time directed by comics legend Frank Miller.)
I am barely a fourth of the way into the novel, but already I see why it is so revered. I cannot yet comment on the intricacies of the story--of the plotting and the structure as a whole--though I am already picking up on subtlties of visual structure that astound me. But even only this short distance into the story, I am amazed--awed is not too strong a word, I think--at the sheer scope of Moore's storytelling prowess, particularly as regards his understanding of character and of symbolism--which, in the comics medium, is somehow textual and visual simultaneously. Moore is famous for his angry disavowal of any film versions of his work: he insists that the comics medium is unique to the degree that no other medium, even film, can possibly accomplish what he can do in a graphic novel. I have long been prepared to disagree with him, and I am still looking forward to the film adaptation of The Watchmen, but reading this novel now, I'm beginning to see his point. And I am beginning to understand for the first time the full possibilities of the comics form, which excites me for my own writing so much that I'm hoping to assign comics to my own creative writing students, not because I can teach the form but because I am so thrilled at the potential for it and want desperately to see what students would do with it.
Initially, I'd planned to pick it up only because the movie is due in theaters this coming spring, and I like to read the books ahead of the movies when I can (which is the main reason I subjected myself to the Twilight series this summer). But since deciding I needed to read The Watchmen, I've begun studying graphic narrative and reading more graphic novels (I finished the initial ten volumes of Neil Gaiman's Sandman this summer as well) in an effort to learn more about the medium and the genre--because I suspect it is both, and more--as I set out to write my own graphic novel. In my studies, I've seen Alan Moore's name come up repeatedly, and though I was already familiar with his stature thanks to works like V for Vendetta, From Hell, and his important additions to the Batman mythos, the book most people talk about is The Watchmen. Except they never actually talk about it--they mention Moore himself off-handedly, almost as a given, the way we might mention Shakespeare or Austen, yet they always write The Watchmen in a whisper, as though they're all afraid to inadvertantly disrespect scripture. And that seems to be the way most serious comics writers and scholars and critics approach The Watchmen, as the Bible of graphic novels. (Or, perhaps, the "New Testament" to the power of the comics medium, the "Old Testament" being Will Eisner's The Spirit, a film version of which is also due in theaters soon, this time directed by comics legend Frank Miller.)
I am barely a fourth of the way into the novel, but already I see why it is so revered. I cannot yet comment on the intricacies of the story--of the plotting and the structure as a whole--though I am already picking up on subtlties of visual structure that astound me. But even only this short distance into the story, I am amazed--awed is not too strong a word, I think--at the sheer scope of Moore's storytelling prowess, particularly as regards his understanding of character and of symbolism--which, in the comics medium, is somehow textual and visual simultaneously. Moore is famous for his angry disavowal of any film versions of his work: he insists that the comics medium is unique to the degree that no other medium, even film, can possibly accomplish what he can do in a graphic novel. I have long been prepared to disagree with him, and I am still looking forward to the film adaptation of The Watchmen, but reading this novel now, I'm beginning to see his point. And I am beginning to understand for the first time the full possibilities of the comics form, which excites me for my own writing so much that I'm hoping to assign comics to my own creative writing students, not because I can teach the form but because I am so thrilled at the potential for it and want desperately to see what students would do with it.
9/17/2008
Passive voice
I don't lecture on passive voice with the same frequency or fervor as I did back when I taught technical/professional writing, but it's still a sticking point for me, and I like to point it out when I see it. My favorite example remains the Reagan line during the Iran Contras of the `80s: "Mistakes were made." By whom were those mistakes made, Ronnie? What a "clever" way to deflect blame! Why Bill Clinton didn't use the passive voice is beyond me--how much news coverage might we have been spared (yep--passive voice deflecting blame here, too) had he simply told us, "Sex was not had with that woman." Still, I have discovered a resurgence of the line in recent politics: Three years ago, expressing his frustration with the Bush administration's non-response to the Katrina disaster, Sen. Trent Lott told the press that "mistakes are being made" (Lott is a Republican and, angry as he was over the tragedies unfolding in his home state--his own house was destroyed by the hurricane--he was understandably reluctant to openly blame his fellow Republicans for the fiasco). And more recently, in an interview with Charlie Gibson, vice-presidential hopeful Gov. Sarah Palin explained away the military mess in Iraq and Afghanistan with the old line, "Mistakes were made."
Today, I was reading an article about hiring Amish contractors, and I discovered a convenient example of the kinds of misinformation and obscurity passive voice can create. In the article, the author extols the benefits of Amish craftsmanship and the Amish work ethic, but she follows this with a caution about the "special challenges" associated with Amish contracting:
"Imagine trying to keep in touch with a contractor who doesn't own a phone--most are forbidden to have one at home. They also aren't allowed to drive, so they need a driver or other means to get to the job site."
Most Amish "are forbidden" by whom to own a phone? The Amish "aren't allowed to drive" according to what? My problem with the passive voice here is that it implies a kind of authoritarian moral structure in which individuals or even religious texts are dictating the lifestyles of the Amish. And this simply is not true.
The answer to these questions is that those Amish who refuse phones or cars forbid themselves (or, I suppose, each other) these technological luxuries. And even this is dependent not on religious law or even widespread custom, but on individual communities. Each Amish community revolves around the Ordnung, a word referring both to the community itself and to the system of ethics and rules governing that community. Each Amish community gathers in regular meetings, presided over by community elders, and decide in an essentially democratic process what sorts of ethical and moral guidelines they would collectively like to hold each other responsible for. And most Amish elect to forgo technological luxuries because they view such luxuries as distractions from a simple, contemplative religious life. I like to refer to the Amish as secular monks, communities who choose to live highly spiritual lives focused almost exclusively on their faith and their God. For the Amish, tilling the fields and washing the linen and eating dinner all become a part of their regular religious experience; mentally, they are always "in church."
The use of the passive voice in the article confuses this important feature of Amish life. The author has made it sound like the Amish live restrictive, oppressive lives dominated by antiquated laws that originated and continue to exist outside the group or the individual. In fact, the opposite is true: the Amish choose to live their lives within the spiritual liberty of work and family, free from the distractions of our modern "English" lifestyles. The passive voice takes that away from them; I am writing this in an effort to let them have their freedom--and to correct the mistakes that were made in the article.
Today, I was reading an article about hiring Amish contractors, and I discovered a convenient example of the kinds of misinformation and obscurity passive voice can create. In the article, the author extols the benefits of Amish craftsmanship and the Amish work ethic, but she follows this with a caution about the "special challenges" associated with Amish contracting:
"Imagine trying to keep in touch with a contractor who doesn't own a phone--most are forbidden to have one at home. They also aren't allowed to drive, so they need a driver or other means to get to the job site."
Most Amish "are forbidden" by whom to own a phone? The Amish "aren't allowed to drive" according to what? My problem with the passive voice here is that it implies a kind of authoritarian moral structure in which individuals or even religious texts are dictating the lifestyles of the Amish. And this simply is not true.
The answer to these questions is that those Amish who refuse phones or cars forbid themselves (or, I suppose, each other) these technological luxuries. And even this is dependent not on religious law or even widespread custom, but on individual communities. Each Amish community revolves around the Ordnung, a word referring both to the community itself and to the system of ethics and rules governing that community. Each Amish community gathers in regular meetings, presided over by community elders, and decide in an essentially democratic process what sorts of ethical and moral guidelines they would collectively like to hold each other responsible for. And most Amish elect to forgo technological luxuries because they view such luxuries as distractions from a simple, contemplative religious life. I like to refer to the Amish as secular monks, communities who choose to live highly spiritual lives focused almost exclusively on their faith and their God. For the Amish, tilling the fields and washing the linen and eating dinner all become a part of their regular religious experience; mentally, they are always "in church."
The use of the passive voice in the article confuses this important feature of Amish life. The author has made it sound like the Amish live restrictive, oppressive lives dominated by antiquated laws that originated and continue to exist outside the group or the individual. In fact, the opposite is true: the Amish choose to live their lives within the spiritual liberty of work and family, free from the distractions of our modern "English" lifestyles. The passive voice takes that away from them; I am writing this in an effort to let them have their freedom--and to correct the mistakes that were made in the article.
9/11/2008
Dissertation vs. Novel
Today (yes, it took that long--it's been nearly a year), the bound copies of my dissertation arrived in the mail. It's an odd thing to see, this document long finished here anew in my hands, in a solid form suggesting something like legitimacy. In some ways, I dread looking through it--over the past year, while revising portions of the novel and revisiting sections of the scholarly preface, I have found many dozens of typos and whole paragraphs, even chapters I'd like to significantly rework--and since this new printed form has such an air of finality about it, it makes that dread all the worse. Still, I've been browsing the print version of the preface just now, and it turns out this isn't half so bad as I thought it was. Maybe it's simply because it is in print and appears authoritative for that: Also a year ago, around the time I was finishing this dissertation, I quoted in this blog a line from Dylan Thomas: "I always think typescript lends some sort of certainty: at least, if the things are bad then, they appear bad with conviction."
Which might explain the joy I get from the second document to arrive today. In placing my order for bound dissertations, I selected several copies in the traditional large, hardbound versions, as this is what those family members who'll receive them requested. My wife, too, demanded a large hardback version for our shelves, and of course she's right--it will look quite nice sitting next to our masters theses and her undergraduate thesis. But on a whim, I also ordered a single copy in paper, run in reduction on smaller pages so it looks like a trade paperback. That's the only difference really, but when I took to flipping through it this afternoon, I discovered it does indeed look quite like a published novel, and seeing it in that form has allowed me (rather giddily) to excuse all sorts of flaws and faults in the writing and start imagining it as a novel again.
I'm in the middle of adapting that story into a graphic novel, which has been an education in economy, in plot development, and in visual imagery (to say nothing of visual narrative and the totally new possibilities available in so different a format), but I'm beginning to wonder if I can take what revisions I've made and re-adapt them to the old novel format. (One of my earliest writing mentors used to compress his novels by rewriting them as screenplays and to develop his film characters by writing them into novels; I find myself in a similar process with this novel-to-comics endeavor.) I'm starting to think this novel might not be as hackneyed as I'd first considered it. And I might just shop this thing around in both forms.
Which might explain the joy I get from the second document to arrive today. In placing my order for bound dissertations, I selected several copies in the traditional large, hardbound versions, as this is what those family members who'll receive them requested. My wife, too, demanded a large hardback version for our shelves, and of course she's right--it will look quite nice sitting next to our masters theses and her undergraduate thesis. But on a whim, I also ordered a single copy in paper, run in reduction on smaller pages so it looks like a trade paperback. That's the only difference really, but when I took to flipping through it this afternoon, I discovered it does indeed look quite like a published novel, and seeing it in that form has allowed me (rather giddily) to excuse all sorts of flaws and faults in the writing and start imagining it as a novel again.
I'm in the middle of adapting that story into a graphic novel, which has been an education in economy, in plot development, and in visual imagery (to say nothing of visual narrative and the totally new possibilities available in so different a format), but I'm beginning to wonder if I can take what revisions I've made and re-adapt them to the old novel format. (One of my earliest writing mentors used to compress his novels by rewriting them as screenplays and to develop his film characters by writing them into novels; I find myself in a similar process with this novel-to-comics endeavor.) I'm starting to think this novel might not be as hackneyed as I'd first considered it. And I might just shop this thing around in both forms.
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