Brad Simkulet's Blog, page 103

New week, new prompt, new blog!

storytimesaturday:

This week's theme shall be:

furniture

Five Books I Hate

I can't possibly pick only one. So here's my top 5 list of a bunch of books I hate.

5.) Holy Books, by someone's God — This is more of a love-hate kind of thing because, really, holy books are packed full of the kind of sexy and violent tales that are the backbone of literature and the source of one of my favourite genres — fantasy. Plus, that God character (or whatever his followers are calling him) is generally the most bad ass villain one could hope to read. He's definitely in the no-redeeming qualities category. But my big issue with faith books is the laziness of mind they engender. One never has to think about what's important because that thinking has been done and delivered in a neat little package. Sadly — for most of those who are infected with this laziness (and this is by no means all believers) — the thought that happens, if any happens at all, is about how pretty the packaging is and not what's in the box. Root. Of. All. Evil.

4.) Memoirs of a Geisha, by Arthur Golden — An American white guy, a patriarch from a conquering nation, writes a book about the nation his people conquered, about Japanese tradition and Japanese women circa WWII. It becomes a phenomenon and they make a movie, cast with predominantly Chinese actresses. And the whole time I was reading it and watching it (because I am an idiot) I couldn't help thinking, "Fuck. There is something wrong with this, and it's not just the shitty prose (dialogue) and poorly drawn characters." I wonder what Edward Said thought about this book?

3.) A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens — Dickens, Dickens, Dickens. To the cushy middle class folk of the affluent world, you are the herald of their "greatness." You sing the praises of their moral superiority, of their kindness and charity, of their ability to "change" the world without bombs or guns or bloodshed, of their love of law and order which you tell us is as correct as correct can be. And for that, people love you. But I think it is bullshit, and when you're pontificating I check out. So this, your highest soap box, just pisses me off.   

2.) Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy — Excruciating. Depressing. Boring. Too long. Soul sucking. I wanted Anna to kill herself. Why couldn't she have done it 400 pages sooner? I finished this and tossed it in the fire. I think the U.S. should replace water boarding with non-stop Anna Karenina. That would make me talk. 

1.) Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, by Roald Dahl — What a beautiful little tale. A tale about a stinking rich recluse who breaks a candy making union by enslaving a race (but he does it in a lovely, caring, colonial way) of workers (the Oompa-Loompa … is this meant to be a play on "lumpenproletariat"?), then holding a contest to find an heir (preferably a benevolent one) to his Empire. The search finds Charlie Bucket, a young boy whose impoverished life is undoubtedly a direct result of Wonka's destruction of the local economy, who happens to have grown up kind and loving and not at all selfish like the other "contestants." Wonka then proceeds to eliminate contestants, often quite literally, using their own selfishness against them. It's the "Capitalist Dream" of deserving social elevation, offered by the most "benevolent" of Capitalists, wrapped up in a moralistic sheepskin of anti-greed. Which is rich, coming from the richest chocolatier in the world. I loved it as a kid, but I hate it as a man.

Forty years on, and the man who's been dead for years is...

Forty years on, and the man who's been dead for years is frowning and pensive. Sweet. Keep fighting, i.m. ruzz.

ruzzdotorg:

mama, I'm coming home.

Watts Lens, AO DLX Film, No Flash, Taken with Hipstamatic

A Favourite Classic

Grade four. I am about to finish Charles Dickens' Great Expectations for the first time, and I ask my Mom what I should read next. She gives me Wuthering Heights.

A Saturday night in my midteens. My sister has over a bunch of friends, and I am in love with one of them — Heather (a beautiful, purple flower found in the moors) — and she knows it. She comes out of our bathroom as I am passing in the hall. She stares me down with a smile, halting my progress. She raises her fingers and sweeps them across my upper lip while I stand stunned by her eyes and freckles and glowing white teeth and frantically curly hair. It is the first time a woman has deliberately offered me the scent of her cunt. She says nothing. She disappears into my sister's room. She is Catherine Earnshaw incarnate.  

Grad school. I am teaching my first Novel & Short Story course, and the first book I put on my syllabus is Wuthering Heights.

College. I am taking a course in Romantic Literature with Dr. Jane Drover (my secret Professor crush for years and years), and the work I choose to present in the first half of the year is Wuthering Heights.

A summer in my late teens. The Plaza Theatre in Calgary, Alberta is owned and operated by Fleming Nielson, and he's showing classics and cult movies, so I drag my Mom to a Sunday matinee, and we geek out to Merle Oberon's Catherine and Laurence Olivier's Heathcliff.

Sunset on our honeymoon. Erika (a beautiful, purple flower found in the moors) tells me that the stick she peed on is showing a +. She's pregnant. I say it's twins (it was) and name one of them — on the spot — Brontë Woolf (after Emily, of course, and Virginia). Brontë prefers Të these days, but she loves that she's Emily's namesake. 

Last year. A bunch of my favourite students are coming back to my class for Prose Fiction, so I decide to share some of my favourites with them. A Clockwork Orange. To Have and Have Not. The City and The City. They are all on the list. But we start with Wuthering Heights.

Charlotte and Anne. Who are they? To this day the only Brontës I know are Emily and my daughter, and I will probably keep it that way. I'll just keep building on the memories Emily's already given me. 

Two weeks on, and the man who was dead for 78 minutes is smiling...

Two weeks on, and the man who was dead for 78 minutes is smiling and happy. Sweet. Keep fighting, Fabrice Muamba.

photo taken from @ShaunaMuamba on twitter.

A Series I Thought I'd Hate but Ended Up Loving

I spent a long time in that once ubiquitous, now nearly extinct, job of video store clerk. I was a clerk for over a decade, and the bulk of those years were spent in Canada's Jumbo Video — a white elephant if there ever was one.

In the early years of my clerking a little movie called Home Alone came out. I already hated Macaulay Culkin from his smarmy performance in Uncle Buck, and I refused to watch the film when it became a gigantor holiday hit. I never watched it when it came out on video, and since I was already a supervisor at Jumbo, I could veto ever watching it on my shifts. Even today, I've never seen Home Alone. Hooray me!

I was going to school in the States when Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone became a best seller, and I was still married to my now ex-wife. Before touching a page, I had problems with the Harry Potter. Unfair, perhaps, but the problems were real for me.

1). My wife caught wind of the phenomenon, and she became an early fan. Our tastes had diverged long before, so her positive opinion was usually a warning for me to stay away.

2). I was appalled by the Stateside title change, turning the Philosopher's Stone into the Sorcerer's Stone. To this day, I am unclear as to why the change occurred. I was living in the South at the time and the rumours I heard were religious in nature, but I still don't know if those rumours were true. To be fair, I've not done any serious searching on the subject, but suffice to say the title change still rankles. 

3). It felt instantly like the Macaulay Culkin of books. The pissy little boy that everyone loves inexplicably. The cutesy, vapid trash that becomes popular way beyond its true capacity for popularity.  

4). Plus, the early reviews I read of the book were highly unfavourable. Now I am going by memory here, but I remember Ms. Rowling's writing being called "amateurish," "poor," "too simple," "derivative," and just plain "bad." I never let reviewers opinions become my own (I make up my own mind), but I will let them influence my purchases, especially if their bad reviews are coupled with other, more weighty personal influences. And reason 1, 2 & 3 were more than weighty enough for me.

So I decided that I would probably (nothing is certain) never read these books.

Three books later and suddenly Warner Bros was releasing the big screen adaptation of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Lo and behold, the very same jackass who directed Home Alone — that movie I so love to avoid — was at the helm (see, I knew that my Macaulay Culkin fears were well founded). Harry Potter fanboys and fangirls had begun to spring up everywhere. And when Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire was released the year before, there were kids lurking around our local Barnes & Noble dressed as Rowling's wizards — and my wife was waiting in line for her copy before disappearing into the backyard to read it all weekend long. It was becoming as big a nerd magnet as Star Wars & Star Trek, and as big an obsession for those involved. None of this did anything to improve my pre-conceived notions. 

And then the turning point. I was offered a movie pass and the assignment to review the Sorcerer's Stone (even the movie kept the stupid name in the States); I recognized the opportunity to do something nice for my wife (we were in the midst of a divorce by then), so I accepted.

My unofficial policy has always been to read a book before I see the movie. I'm not of the mind that the book is always better (though it is mostly true, it isn't always), so my pre-reading isn't out of loyalty to the written word. I think it is mostly because I am a screenwriter, and I am always interested to see what the screenwriter does in adaptation. Anyway, I had a week to read Philosopher's Stone before watching the movie, so I started reading. By the time I was sitting in the theatre, I was over half way through the Prisoner of Azkaban.

I thought I'd hate it, I was ready to hate it, but Philosopher's Stone, for all its flaws, was fun. I was most impressed, however, by what was to me a genuinely new take on magic. I liked the simplicity of Rowling's magic system, and her school of magic instantly won me over. Then I found myself caring about her characters. And by the time I went into that first (and I think awful) movie, I was in love with Sirius Black, and I cared about every character who was important.

J.K Rowling made me a fan.

Is it the best series ever written? No, but it's pretty high up the list. Is it the best written series ever written? Hell no, but Prisoner of Azkaban (the last book she wrote before she became ROWLING) is a streamlined, clean, perfectly paced work of prose. It's a book I wish I'd written (and that's my highest praise). Her plotting never wavers, even when she blathers on and on; her characters, even Harry, achieve some real complexity; good and evil isn't black and white; Dumbledore is gay; Hermione is amazing; and best of all her books stand up to multiple readings.

I'll never own a wand or a robe or get a tattoo (which I've done for other things I love), but I'll read it again and again. Someday soon I'll be reading my kids Order of the Phoenix (we're taking a break for Ursula K. LeGuin), and I'll be able to give voice to Rowling's excellent people all over again. Harry Potter is part of my life now, and I am more than good with that.

Most Underrated Form*

For just over a decade I called myself a screenwriter, and it was true. That was my medium. I wrote screenplays, and some damn good ones. A couple entered into production and stalled. Most languished in my filing cabinet (as they do with all screenwriters; more on that later), but eventually I took a couple of my best shorts and did something that just isn't done — I published them in a collection of short fiction.

That act wasn't one of desperation; it was a declaration that had long been building towards eruption. The declaration? That screenwriting is as valid a form of storytelling as any other form of drama, and that it deserves a readership just as much as its eventual production deserves a viewership.

Some of the best stories I've ever read are the unproduced screenplays of my friends and colleagues. Every screenwriter has a log jam of unproduced work, and as the screenwriting and film worlds stand, you the reader will never see these stories. You won't see them on screen because they probably don't fit the blueprint of a time-tested money-making film. Movie companies want a sure thing, and the great stories of the screenwriters are not sure money makers. Movie companies will look at a dramatic screenplay, for instance, and they will say things like: "There's not enough action," or "Can you add a policeman?" or "You're spending too much time on character," or "You need to have him say something catchy," or "No one is going to like that ending. It's too dark," and any of a million other things that producers think will keep viewers away. So those screenplays that put more emphasis on character, or have realistically dark endings, or stay away from the clichés of popular (and lazy) culture, or have characters who speak naturally rather than in sound-bytes, those screenplays go nowhere.

For instance, former Navy Seal Chuck Pfarrer — a successful screenwriter — is famous for his action screenplays like The Jackal, Navy Seals and Red Planet (a screenplay whose initial strengths were terminally compromised by the producers). But his best work, his dramatic work, remains unproduced. It sits unwanted up on his bookshelf. It's never going anywhere. It happens to all screenwriters. And you, the consumer, never know.

So for nearly twenty years, I've wanted to bring unproduced screenplays to the reader. Not just my own, but the screenplays of all the screenwriters I know and don't know. I believe there is a massive, untapped readership for these original screenplays. A readership that doesn't even know it is out there waiting for the best stories of the screenwriters written in screenplay form. 

The form may look odd to readers at first, yet as consumers of visual media we all have the tools to read and understand screenwriting. It is there inside every reader, and all they need to do is pick up a screenplay, preferably an unproduced screenplay and start reading. 

I stopped calling myself a screenwriter a few years back. These days I call myself, very simply, a writer. But I love screenwriting. I love screenwriters. I love screenplays, and in a year or so I will be publishing an unproduced feature length screenplay of my own. It will be my second baby step towards bringing screenwriting to readers. I'll toddle along for a while, then maybe I can actually walk. If you're a screenwriter out there, why not toddle along with me? 

*Yeah, yeah … it was supposed to be most underrated book, but I decided to switch it up.

Most Overrated Character*

There are many beloved characters in Fantasy, and a handful of them have become household names like Gandalf the Grey, Bilbo and Frodo Baggins, Harry Potter and Albus Dumbledore, Alice Liddell (yes, that Alice) and Dorothy Gale. But for Fantasy geeks, for all those RPGing boys and girls of every generation, there is a much longer list of beloved characters.

I get why most of them make the list, and I even agree with the bulk of them.

Dragonlance's Raistlin Majere, the Red Wizard turned Black Wizard turned Fistandantilus turned Dark Queen challenger, is a man who is cold and calculating when it comes to his friends and relations, but full of empathy and pity for those the rest of Krynn has forgotten. Tigana's Brandin, the tyrant of the Palm, is charismatic, deserving of love but cruel in his grief; his struggle is one any parent who has lost a child (or could imagine such a thing) can comprehend. The Wizard of Earthsea's Ged, the most powerful wizard in the Archipelago, brings his worst enemies and travails into existence because of his own hubris, and he restores equilibrium by understanding and overcoming that hubris. Tyrion Lannister, the Imp of Westeros, is the keenest mind in the Song of Ice and Fire, and the sexiest dwarf to ever walk in any world. I get the love for these guys, and for plenty of others. 

I don't get the love for RA Salvatore's Drizzt Do'Urden, though. And there is a lot of love for this Dark Elf. He's born into an "evil" society, you see, to an "evil" race. A society of Dark Elves who transfer power around through assassination, murder and torture, who kill other races (almost always "good" races) with impunity, who are ruled by psychotic females who worship the most evil of dark goddesses, who trade guiltlessly in slaves, who hold life to be cheap.

Drizzt, we are told over and over again, is none of these things. He is "good" despite his nature. And we're told that he struggles with his cultural roots. We're not shown these struggles, we're just told they exist and apparently that is good enough because it's believed by most readers. How else can one explain the love for this character? Stupidity? That's probably as good a way as any.

Because, you see, there are plenty of problems with Drizzt's "goodness": this dark elf turned light kills others with impunity (even if he sets torture aside). If something is "evil," and Drizzt just knows their "evil" nature inherently (it seems), then he can kill them without a thought. If there's some sort of supernatural spirit that isn't hurting anyone, for example — and is actually helping a village, let's say — Drizzt can go ahead and end her existence because she's evil. He doesn't ever stop and think about what he's doing, but that's okay because Drizzt is good. If there's something he needs, or something his friends desire, he can help them get it by murdering every last resident of a place because the "other" is evil and that makes his actions okay.

Drizzt embodies the worst characteristics of the xenophobe (and the misogynist if one considers that the "evil" he stands against is a matriarchy), and all of it is supposed to be okay because he is a "dark elf" who has rejected his kind. He is a poorly constructed character, no matter which way you consider it, but people love him and rate him as high as they possibly can. For me, however, rating him at all is overrating him.

Yet as a mirror to our society's visions of good and evil, he is an important character to consider. Pick up the mirror and stare into it for a while. If you come away overrating Drizzt you can be sure that there is something wrong with you. After that you can pick up a real mirror and try to figure out what's wrong. Good luck with that.

But if you stare at the mirror of Drizzt and see even a tenth of the flaws in Salvatore's "hero" you'll know that you're just fine.

*I know this was supposed to be about a book, but I latched onto Drizzt and I couldn't let go. 

A Book that Makes Me Sad(dest)

It's hard for me to separate the book that makes me sad(dest) from its screen adaptation, but I don't know that I really need to in the case of Paul Theroux's Mosquito Coast. They are of a piece in my mind, and that's okay.

I've seen the film (starring Harrison Ford as Allie Fox in what remains his finest performance) countless times, read the book a couple, and have the audiobook sitting around waiting for me to muster up the courage. And I need courage because this book destroys me internally, the way I imagine Magneto would rip apart Wolverine from the inside out if he was ever in the mood.

I love Allie Fox (although I don't like him). I love his genius, the way he acts on his vision of the world, his thirst for proof (of his vision that the world can work and the inventions he brings into the world), his fierce self-belief, and his powerful anger.

His journey through the eyes of Charlie — the son who, at first, loves and believes in him — is an ineluctably doomed endeavour. And we are asked by Theroux, at least this is what it has always felt like to me, to embrace Charle's biased views of his father. We are supposed to see Charlie's early worship of his father as the only possible response to Allie's "abusiveness." We are supposed to see Charlie's eventual break with his father as Charlie's awakening to Allie's "madness." We are supposed to see Allie's eventual death as deserved and pathetic.

All that is where my sadness comes in. I don't see things the way Charlie does. I feel nothing but pain for Allie's ultimate failure to escape the gravity well of his American society. I want so desperately for Allie's vision to succeed, for Allie to prove himself a great man, that when it all blows apart and he tries to pick up the pieces from less than nothing I feel frustration with Charlie's lack of faith in his father's vision and anger at what feels to me like Charlie's betrayal of Allie.

But the saddest thing for me is the hopelessness Mosquito Coast conveys. It suggests that one's culture is totally inescapable — the black hole of one's existence — and no matter how much one wants to change, wants to affect change, wants to effect change, wants change for one's children, change is impossible and all attempts are doomed.

This story leaves me devestated no matter how I consume it, yet I always go back for more.

A Book that Makes Me Happy

This instalment of the thirty day book challenge has been a real pain in my ass. I have perused a list of over a thousand books I've read trying to find one that makes me happy, and I am not happy with where I am at.

While there are a couple of books that I am happy when reading aloud ("Where the Wild Things Are" comes to mind), and a few books that I connect to happy times in my life (such as Michael Crichton's "Sphere"), the conclusion I've come to is that books just don't make me happy.

Books piss me off.

Books piss me off because of what they say.

Books piss me off because of the things they make me think. 

Books are full of important issues and themes that many people don't get, and that pisses me off.

Books depress me constantly because of the things they say about me, or the society I live in, or humanity, or about our future.

Books torture me.

Books obsess me.

Books make me face my fears. 

Books challenge me. 

Books bore me or excite me or move me, but they don't make me happy. 

Books piss me off. And I spend most of my life reading them, and another huge chunk of my life writing them, and another chunk of my life teaching them, and all of my life surrounded by them in bookshelves in my office and bedroom and the libraries I study in and in the electronics I use. 

I can't escape books. They are like air to me. 

But they don't make me happy. And if they make you happy (unless it is in some loosely connected way), I am going to go out on a limb and say you probably missed something in the book or something the book is saying beyond its pages. 

But I think this is all okay because books shouldn't make us happy. There are drugs for that.

So I'll just keep embracing the unhappiness and read a book or write a book until my last breath. It's all I can do.