Miles Watson's Blog: ANTAGONY: BECAUSE EVERYONE IS ENTITLED TO MY OPINION , page 3
November 26, 2024
BOOK REVIEW: EVELYN WAUGH'S "OFFICERS AND GENTLEMEN" (SWORD OF HONOR #2)
It's going to be a long war. The great thing is to spend it among friends.
The English power of sarcasm is known and feared throughout the world, but it has infinite nuances. Evelyn Waugh's "Officers and Gentleman" is Book Two in his "Sword of Honour" trilogy, and the very names themselves are deeply and richly sarcastic. "Sword of Honour" chronicles the misadventures of Guy Crouchback, the sole surviving scion of a decaying English- Catholic family which is rich in history and education and rather impoverished of anything else. Drawing on his own life and experiences in the Second World War, Waugh sets a table full of farce, disaster, snobbery, and bureacratic misunderstandings with terrible or ironic outcomes, painting the war as a series of accidents, blunders, misunderstandings, and drunken interludes, with major events turning on flukes and happenstances rather than planning or strategy. Many of his authority figures -- generals, senior officers, MPs, and so forth -- are fools or only dubiously sane. Others, such as the Scottish laird (lord), who hosts Guy's commando unit on the Isle of Mug, are purely comic figures with no interest in the war, or who, like the laird's daughter, are ardent supporters of Hitler. Waugh's view, like Orwell's, is that historical events do not feel very historical when you're a part of them, they are merely boring and uncomfortable; and "great men" don't appear very great at close range, merely silly and venal.
I spoke of satire: this is layered satire, of both British society generally and the military and war, specifically, though one is tempted to wonder how much Waugh is actually exaggerating, or if he's exaggerating at all. He clearly shares the view of a number of other British writers who fought in the war and did their best to demythologize it in the minds of the public, to smash the icons and poke rude fun at the slogans we now regard with such quiet awe.
It's important to note as well that Waugh was an almost incredibly complex and paradoxical man himself, a snob of the very highest order whose view of the class system was positively feudal, and whose Catholicism colored everything he wrote, though his ability to avoid obvious spiritual themes was startling.
As "Officers" begins, our trouble-plagued but decent hero has been kicked out of the Royal Corps of Halberdiers and falls arse-backwards into the Commandos, who turn out not to be an elite outfit at all but a collection of misfits exiled to the frigid moors of Scotland for "training." This is in keeping with the theme of the series: Crouchback and his various fellow characters blunder amid military politics, complex social conventions, and failed romantic relationships, all while vainly trying to get into action against the Germans. When at last they do, on Crete in 1941, it proves to be a complete and utter disaster, and Waugh describes the British defeat and disintegration in great detail. On the other hand, one of his cohorts, "Trimmer" McTavish, becomes a press hero following a failed commando raid carried out under the influence of whiskey and bad planning, while another, Claire, leaves his men to their fate only to be saved from punishment by influential relations. At the risk of repeating myself, Waugh's thesis seems to be that war is rather like an extended natural disaster, that nothing ever goes right, that nobody really knows what the hell is happening and credit and blame are often apportioned entirely in the wrong direction: a metaphor for life itself. The characters, meanwhile, are slaves to conventions and class, traditions and snobbery, as well as a bureacracy that grinds slowly, finely, and unjustly. Guy Crouchback himself, via a series of harmless incidents, becomes suspected by British intelligence of being a German spy, and a ridiculous officer named Colonel Grace-Groundling-Marchpole seems to serve as Waugh's epitome of stupidity, witness this passage:
"Somewhere in the ultimate curlicues of his mind, there was a Plan. Given time, given enough confidential material, he would succeed in knitting the entire quarrelsome world into a single net of conspiracy in which there were no antagonists, merely millions of men working, unknown to one another, for the same end; and there would be no more war."
As you can see, Waugh is a fine writer who alternates between prose of a very spare, almost Spartan nature, and beautifully descriptive passages which rise to the level of the poetic. In this book he both rises above and falls below the standard he set in the previous installment, "Men at Arms." There is way too much meandering and wheel-spinning in the story, but there is also much more in the way of emotional release: his description of the Crete campaign is a vivid account of a catastrophe compleat, a total disintegration of order and discipline, which contrasts marvelously with the complex, rigid, out of touch existence he leads in barracks, where minor social faux pas among officers, or trifling mistakes by enlisted men, are punished without mercy and often have extended and terrible consequences. George Orwell once noted that Britain was "a family with the wrong members in control." Waugh's depiction of the British army is very much in that vein: the leaders exist, mentally, in the Edwardian or Victorian eras. They don't lack courage, merely an awareness of what century they're living in. Meanwhile, British "society," represented partially by his ex-wife Virginia, is depicted as bored, shallow, exploitative, remorseless and utterly selfish, aware of the war only as a grand inconvenience. Virginia is loathsome, but her attitude is not entirely unsympathetic: she sees the war as a kind of costume party thrown by men for their own sake. They get to dress up, do daring things in distant lands, get medals and knighthoods, and in short, have all the fun, while the women and the children live boring, uncomfortable lives in bombed cities, eating tinned food. She doesn't care about the war because the war, in her mind, doesn't care about her.
It's worth noting that I recently watched the half-forgotten and difficult to obtain, but thoroughly excellent A FAMILY AT WAR, a BBC series which ran from 1970 - 1973, which depicts an ordinary British family, the Ashtons, coping with WW2. One fascinating thing about the series was how utterly unsentimental and demythologizing it is: instead of just "stiff upper lip" patriotism and "keep calm and carry on" and all the rest of it, we see much more human reactions to the catastrophe, which include fear, selfishness, boredom, cynicism, anger, disillusionment, and moral uncertainty. The characters of SWORD OF HONOUR often operate in a roughly similar vein. They're in this bloody mess, and they're going to do their duty, but they're damned if they always understand why, or even how. Nothing sums up the series like this one passage:
‘I don’t like this at all,’ said Trimmer. ‘What the hell are we going to do?’
‘You’re in command, old boy. In your place I’d just push on.’
‘Would you?’
‘Certainly.’
‘But you’re drunk.’
‘Exactly. If I was in your place I’d be drunk too.’
The English power of sarcasm is known and feared throughout the world, but it has infinite nuances. Evelyn Waugh's "Officers and Gentleman" is Book Two in his "Sword of Honour" trilogy, and the very names themselves are deeply and richly sarcastic. "Sword of Honour" chronicles the misadventures of Guy Crouchback, the sole surviving scion of a decaying English- Catholic family which is rich in history and education and rather impoverished of anything else. Drawing on his own life and experiences in the Second World War, Waugh sets a table full of farce, disaster, snobbery, and bureacratic misunderstandings with terrible or ironic outcomes, painting the war as a series of accidents, blunders, misunderstandings, and drunken interludes, with major events turning on flukes and happenstances rather than planning or strategy. Many of his authority figures -- generals, senior officers, MPs, and so forth -- are fools or only dubiously sane. Others, such as the Scottish laird (lord), who hosts Guy's commando unit on the Isle of Mug, are purely comic figures with no interest in the war, or who, like the laird's daughter, are ardent supporters of Hitler. Waugh's view, like Orwell's, is that historical events do not feel very historical when you're a part of them, they are merely boring and uncomfortable; and "great men" don't appear very great at close range, merely silly and venal.
I spoke of satire: this is layered satire, of both British society generally and the military and war, specifically, though one is tempted to wonder how much Waugh is actually exaggerating, or if he's exaggerating at all. He clearly shares the view of a number of other British writers who fought in the war and did their best to demythologize it in the minds of the public, to smash the icons and poke rude fun at the slogans we now regard with such quiet awe.
It's important to note as well that Waugh was an almost incredibly complex and paradoxical man himself, a snob of the very highest order whose view of the class system was positively feudal, and whose Catholicism colored everything he wrote, though his ability to avoid obvious spiritual themes was startling.
As "Officers" begins, our trouble-plagued but decent hero has been kicked out of the Royal Corps of Halberdiers and falls arse-backwards into the Commandos, who turn out not to be an elite outfit at all but a collection of misfits exiled to the frigid moors of Scotland for "training." This is in keeping with the theme of the series: Crouchback and his various fellow characters blunder amid military politics, complex social conventions, and failed romantic relationships, all while vainly trying to get into action against the Germans. When at last they do, on Crete in 1941, it proves to be a complete and utter disaster, and Waugh describes the British defeat and disintegration in great detail. On the other hand, one of his cohorts, "Trimmer" McTavish, becomes a press hero following a failed commando raid carried out under the influence of whiskey and bad planning, while another, Claire, leaves his men to their fate only to be saved from punishment by influential relations. At the risk of repeating myself, Waugh's thesis seems to be that war is rather like an extended natural disaster, that nothing ever goes right, that nobody really knows what the hell is happening and credit and blame are often apportioned entirely in the wrong direction: a metaphor for life itself. The characters, meanwhile, are slaves to conventions and class, traditions and snobbery, as well as a bureacracy that grinds slowly, finely, and unjustly. Guy Crouchback himself, via a series of harmless incidents, becomes suspected by British intelligence of being a German spy, and a ridiculous officer named Colonel Grace-Groundling-Marchpole seems to serve as Waugh's epitome of stupidity, witness this passage:
"Somewhere in the ultimate curlicues of his mind, there was a Plan. Given time, given enough confidential material, he would succeed in knitting the entire quarrelsome world into a single net of conspiracy in which there were no antagonists, merely millions of men working, unknown to one another, for the same end; and there would be no more war."
As you can see, Waugh is a fine writer who alternates between prose of a very spare, almost Spartan nature, and beautifully descriptive passages which rise to the level of the poetic. In this book he both rises above and falls below the standard he set in the previous installment, "Men at Arms." There is way too much meandering and wheel-spinning in the story, but there is also much more in the way of emotional release: his description of the Crete campaign is a vivid account of a catastrophe compleat, a total disintegration of order and discipline, which contrasts marvelously with the complex, rigid, out of touch existence he leads in barracks, where minor social faux pas among officers, or trifling mistakes by enlisted men, are punished without mercy and often have extended and terrible consequences. George Orwell once noted that Britain was "a family with the wrong members in control." Waugh's depiction of the British army is very much in that vein: the leaders exist, mentally, in the Edwardian or Victorian eras. They don't lack courage, merely an awareness of what century they're living in. Meanwhile, British "society," represented partially by his ex-wife Virginia, is depicted as bored, shallow, exploitative, remorseless and utterly selfish, aware of the war only as a grand inconvenience. Virginia is loathsome, but her attitude is not entirely unsympathetic: she sees the war as a kind of costume party thrown by men for their own sake. They get to dress up, do daring things in distant lands, get medals and knighthoods, and in short, have all the fun, while the women and the children live boring, uncomfortable lives in bombed cities, eating tinned food. She doesn't care about the war because the war, in her mind, doesn't care about her.
It's worth noting that I recently watched the half-forgotten and difficult to obtain, but thoroughly excellent A FAMILY AT WAR, a BBC series which ran from 1970 - 1973, which depicts an ordinary British family, the Ashtons, coping with WW2. One fascinating thing about the series was how utterly unsentimental and demythologizing it is: instead of just "stiff upper lip" patriotism and "keep calm and carry on" and all the rest of it, we see much more human reactions to the catastrophe, which include fear, selfishness, boredom, cynicism, anger, disillusionment, and moral uncertainty. The characters of SWORD OF HONOUR often operate in a roughly similar vein. They're in this bloody mess, and they're going to do their duty, but they're damned if they always understand why, or even how. Nothing sums up the series like this one passage:
‘I don’t like this at all,’ said Trimmer. ‘What the hell are we going to do?’
‘You’re in command, old boy. In your place I’d just push on.’
‘Would you?’
‘Certainly.’
‘But you’re drunk.’
‘Exactly. If I was in your place I’d be drunk too.’
November 18, 2024
BOOK REVIEW: ERROL FLYNN'S "SHOWDOWN"
Hopelessly he gave himself up to the terrible ecstasy of living in suspended time.
Errol Flynn was the most notorious actor in Hollywood, legendary for his degeneracy and cynical, amoral attitude toward life, and this notoriety existed both during his lifetime and for generations after it. Indeed, the saying "In like Flynn" is still in currency today, or at least it was when I was a kid, though I didn't understand the sexual component of it until I was a little older. Flynn, however, was more than an actor of enormous charisma and fairly respectable talent whose main interests in life were sex and money. He was also a widely-traveled man of great physical courage, with a strong need for adventure and a surprisingly incisive and perhaps even sensitive mind. His lengthy autobiography, MY WICKED, WICKED WAYS is proof of this: more than a mere confession of perverse appetites, sexual conquests, failed marriages and profligate spending, it evolves into a scourging self-analysis in which Flynn demonstrated a sort of remorse-free ability to examine his own life, condemn its numerous mistakes, and express regret that he had not chosen a different path. SHOWDOWN is his foray into fiction, and I found it well worth my time in both the sense of entertainment, for its reconstruction of the colonial era South Pacfific life Flynn knew so well, and for its occasional, penetrating insights into human nature.
SHOWDOWN is a semi-autobiographical tale set in the South Seas circa the mid-1930s. It's the story of Shamus O'Thames, a sexually naive, rigidly principled, highly resourceful English sea captain who washes ashore on a South Seas island following a disastrous encounter with "natives" after a failed charter. Rescued by a colorful German missionary named Kirschner who effectively adopts him as a son, O'Thames falls in love with a beautiful young nun named Ganice, and largely to escape the impossibility of the situation, agrees to take a camera crew and some Hollywood actors up the Sepik, the most dangerous river in the most dangerous place in the world, New Guinea -- a place replete with disease, storms, earthquakes, man-eating crocodiles, and headhunting tribesmen. The voyage is naturally fraught with trouble, not the least of which comes in the form of Cleo, an alluring and morally enigmatic actress who tempts the stern young skipper away from his chaste love for the nun with the possibility of more fleshly pleasures...and perhaps more realistic love. At the same time, stormy seas, a hostile local tribe, and the secret agenda of those chartering the voyage come to a head on shore. Shamus is tested not merely in terms of his ability to save his people, but to evolve from the brittle and naive man he was into something stronger and more flexible. If he can survive.
SHOWDOWN is admittedly a strange novel and obviously the work of an amateur, albeit one with great life experience and talent. Flynn knew the South Seas very well indeed, having been born in Tasmania and spent much time in New Guinea running plantations and panning for gold. He was also an expert sailor and his love -- and respect -- for the sea, and his knowledge of seacraft are remarkable. Like George Orwell, who reconstructed Burma so vividly in BURMESE DAYS the reader feels as if he is physically present, Flynn brings the landscape and the water to life. The sequences where Shamus is fighting the storm from the wheel of the "Maski" are beautifully crafted. Likewise, he can explain the incredibly complex racial, ethnic, and tribal dynamics of the colonial era in a way no modern writer would dare, i.e. describing without moralizing. Human life, Flynn notes, was incredibly cheap (he describes the treatment of some native laborers as "the closest thing I have ever seen to legalized murder"), and much of the world and its population were considered simply resources to be exploited, with missionary work, however sincere, being a mere sop to the conscience of the exploiters.
The book also reflects the wry, somewhat cynical wit for which Flynn was well known in his personal life: "Father Kirschner's life was consecrated to the idea of peace on earth and goodwill to mankind, but the principle did not include letting the oil dry out on his gun barrel." This is gold. So too is Flynn's construction of the character of Shamus, a man of stern morals and unyielding principles founded on a sexually scarring experience that occurred in his youth. Shamus seems to reflect the man Flynn might have become, and that Flynn wished he had become, rather than a sexually degenerate, alcoholic actor whose personal life was so notorious it completely overshadowed not only his acting career but the rest of his quite diverse and interesting life. But Shamus is not idealized, not Sir Galahad on a boat: He feels real because Flynn contained elements of the man within him even into the last phases of his life, when he discovered what might have been his true calling -- sailing, shooting documentaries, writing...in other words, real rather than cinematic adventure. (Kind of Ernest Hemingway, but somewhat less inclined to lie.) I find it amusing that Hemingway seems to have disliked Flynn (notwithstanding Flynn's performance in "The Sun Also Rises," which everyone liked), perhaps sensing that Flynn had within him the elements of real greatness that he displayed here.
The main issue come with the book's pacing. We are 156 pages into a 250 page novel before Flynn stops his stage-setting and character introductions and finally gets the plot going. And despite its terse length, the book feels heavily overwritten: it could have come in at 200 pages without any loss, and with considerable gain in terms of narrative flow. Flynn writes often beautiful prose, but he has a love of lanuage that a better editor would have restrained more vigorously, he takes any excuse to plunge into an internal monologue, and he introduces important characters very late in the game and shifts points of view with little regard for structure.
That having been said, I enjoyed SHOWDOWN. Hemingway once declared that "A man shouldn't write what he doesn't know," and in this novel Flynn stands firmly on ground, and water, he knew extremely well. I just wish Errol had stuck around to come to literary maturity. I think he was capable of producing a minor classic.
Errol Flynn was the most notorious actor in Hollywood, legendary for his degeneracy and cynical, amoral attitude toward life, and this notoriety existed both during his lifetime and for generations after it. Indeed, the saying "In like Flynn" is still in currency today, or at least it was when I was a kid, though I didn't understand the sexual component of it until I was a little older. Flynn, however, was more than an actor of enormous charisma and fairly respectable talent whose main interests in life were sex and money. He was also a widely-traveled man of great physical courage, with a strong need for adventure and a surprisingly incisive and perhaps even sensitive mind. His lengthy autobiography, MY WICKED, WICKED WAYS is proof of this: more than a mere confession of perverse appetites, sexual conquests, failed marriages and profligate spending, it evolves into a scourging self-analysis in which Flynn demonstrated a sort of remorse-free ability to examine his own life, condemn its numerous mistakes, and express regret that he had not chosen a different path. SHOWDOWN is his foray into fiction, and I found it well worth my time in both the sense of entertainment, for its reconstruction of the colonial era South Pacfific life Flynn knew so well, and for its occasional, penetrating insights into human nature.
SHOWDOWN is a semi-autobiographical tale set in the South Seas circa the mid-1930s. It's the story of Shamus O'Thames, a sexually naive, rigidly principled, highly resourceful English sea captain who washes ashore on a South Seas island following a disastrous encounter with "natives" after a failed charter. Rescued by a colorful German missionary named Kirschner who effectively adopts him as a son, O'Thames falls in love with a beautiful young nun named Ganice, and largely to escape the impossibility of the situation, agrees to take a camera crew and some Hollywood actors up the Sepik, the most dangerous river in the most dangerous place in the world, New Guinea -- a place replete with disease, storms, earthquakes, man-eating crocodiles, and headhunting tribesmen. The voyage is naturally fraught with trouble, not the least of which comes in the form of Cleo, an alluring and morally enigmatic actress who tempts the stern young skipper away from his chaste love for the nun with the possibility of more fleshly pleasures...and perhaps more realistic love. At the same time, stormy seas, a hostile local tribe, and the secret agenda of those chartering the voyage come to a head on shore. Shamus is tested not merely in terms of his ability to save his people, but to evolve from the brittle and naive man he was into something stronger and more flexible. If he can survive.
SHOWDOWN is admittedly a strange novel and obviously the work of an amateur, albeit one with great life experience and talent. Flynn knew the South Seas very well indeed, having been born in Tasmania and spent much time in New Guinea running plantations and panning for gold. He was also an expert sailor and his love -- and respect -- for the sea, and his knowledge of seacraft are remarkable. Like George Orwell, who reconstructed Burma so vividly in BURMESE DAYS the reader feels as if he is physically present, Flynn brings the landscape and the water to life. The sequences where Shamus is fighting the storm from the wheel of the "Maski" are beautifully crafted. Likewise, he can explain the incredibly complex racial, ethnic, and tribal dynamics of the colonial era in a way no modern writer would dare, i.e. describing without moralizing. Human life, Flynn notes, was incredibly cheap (he describes the treatment of some native laborers as "the closest thing I have ever seen to legalized murder"), and much of the world and its population were considered simply resources to be exploited, with missionary work, however sincere, being a mere sop to the conscience of the exploiters.
The book also reflects the wry, somewhat cynical wit for which Flynn was well known in his personal life: "Father Kirschner's life was consecrated to the idea of peace on earth and goodwill to mankind, but the principle did not include letting the oil dry out on his gun barrel." This is gold. So too is Flynn's construction of the character of Shamus, a man of stern morals and unyielding principles founded on a sexually scarring experience that occurred in his youth. Shamus seems to reflect the man Flynn might have become, and that Flynn wished he had become, rather than a sexually degenerate, alcoholic actor whose personal life was so notorious it completely overshadowed not only his acting career but the rest of his quite diverse and interesting life. But Shamus is not idealized, not Sir Galahad on a boat: He feels real because Flynn contained elements of the man within him even into the last phases of his life, when he discovered what might have been his true calling -- sailing, shooting documentaries, writing...in other words, real rather than cinematic adventure. (Kind of Ernest Hemingway, but somewhat less inclined to lie.) I find it amusing that Hemingway seems to have disliked Flynn (notwithstanding Flynn's performance in "The Sun Also Rises," which everyone liked), perhaps sensing that Flynn had within him the elements of real greatness that he displayed here.
The main issue come with the book's pacing. We are 156 pages into a 250 page novel before Flynn stops his stage-setting and character introductions and finally gets the plot going. And despite its terse length, the book feels heavily overwritten: it could have come in at 200 pages without any loss, and with considerable gain in terms of narrative flow. Flynn writes often beautiful prose, but he has a love of lanuage that a better editor would have restrained more vigorously, he takes any excuse to plunge into an internal monologue, and he introduces important characters very late in the game and shifts points of view with little regard for structure.
That having been said, I enjoyed SHOWDOWN. Hemingway once declared that "A man shouldn't write what he doesn't know," and in this novel Flynn stands firmly on ground, and water, he knew extremely well. I just wish Errol had stuck around to come to literary maturity. I think he was capable of producing a minor classic.
November 6, 2024
I SEE YOU(TUBE) NOW
Many a month ago I promised -- or threatened -- to start a YouTube channel on this very blog. This was a long-standing ambition of mine, and recent circumstances have allowed me to take the step at long last. (drum roll).
@stonecoldprose
Yes, the ramblings and rantings of this blog are now to be online and in person, twice a week. I shall empty my brain, such as it is, on subjects like popular culture, cinema, television, history, politics, my creative projects, and any other damn thing that comes to mind. It is my intention to release two videos a week of about 10 minute length, Sundays and Wednesdays. My first broadcast "Woke Broke Storytelling," exceeded my admittedly very low expectations for it and has already garnered almost 100 views. Mind you, I have no illusions, or even any particularly impressive ambitions, about becoming the next Critical Drinker or anything like that. I should be extremely happy to one day reach, say, 1,000 subscribers, and maintain that number. The idea here is simply to provide myself a outlet for the energy I was never able to release in Los Angeles, where, ironically, I worked in seemingly every facet of the entertainment industry except the one I wanted to. In time I will add longform videos as well as interviews with the more colorful personalities I know: actors, cops, gangsters, stuntmen...it's quite a list. For now, however, the shortform scripted videos have arrived. My next broadcast, "Mary Sue Killed The Strong Female Character" drops tonight at 6PM.
I hope to see you at
https://www.youtube.com/@stonecoldprose
@stonecoldprose
Yes, the ramblings and rantings of this blog are now to be online and in person, twice a week. I shall empty my brain, such as it is, on subjects like popular culture, cinema, television, history, politics, my creative projects, and any other damn thing that comes to mind. It is my intention to release two videos a week of about 10 minute length, Sundays and Wednesdays. My first broadcast "Woke Broke Storytelling," exceeded my admittedly very low expectations for it and has already garnered almost 100 views. Mind you, I have no illusions, or even any particularly impressive ambitions, about becoming the next Critical Drinker or anything like that. I should be extremely happy to one day reach, say, 1,000 subscribers, and maintain that number. The idea here is simply to provide myself a outlet for the energy I was never able to release in Los Angeles, where, ironically, I worked in seemingly every facet of the entertainment industry except the one I wanted to. In time I will add longform videos as well as interviews with the more colorful personalities I know: actors, cops, gangsters, stuntmen...it's quite a list. For now, however, the shortform scripted videos have arrived. My next broadcast, "Mary Sue Killed The Strong Female Character" drops tonight at 6PM.
I hope to see you at
https://www.youtube.com/@stonecoldprose
October 31, 2024
HALLOWEEN HORROR (2024)
Well here we are again, folks: Halloween night. As you must know by now, it's my tradition to go absolutely batshit come the month of October, doing things like carving jack o'lanterns, roasting pumpkin seeds, attending costume parties and watching 31 horror movies, one for each day of the month. This year of our lord 2024 I have slightly departed from the formula, in that A) I wasn't invited to a costume party this year (was it something I said?) and, B) I "only" watched 20 films. Given everything going on my life for the last two months, I consider this quite an achievement despite failing to hit the mark, but I'm still going to grind out the remaining eleven over the next month. It's Halloween, so a certain amount of trickery is not only allowed, it's expected.
I must say that this year, as opposed to others, I found a lot more gold, or at least semi-precious stones, than outright shit among the wide variety cinema I chose to sample. Call it entitlement, but I think I was overdue some really entertaining flicks after all the garbage I waded through on Octobers past. (One of the drawbacks of doing what I do every year is that my insistence that these movies must never before crossed paths with me provides no sure things.) So it's with more pleasure than pain that I invite you to my house of horrors and show you what's inside, which includes movies from America, Britain, Australia, Canada, Germany, and Poland. Here we go.
Alone in the Dark (1982) - This is an obscure but talent-packed movie directed by Jack Sholder (THE HIDDEN) featuring Dwight Schulz, Jack Palance, Donald Pleasance, and Martin Landau, about four dangerous lunatics who escape from an asylum and do bad things. It's much slower, talkier, weirder and more cerebral than it sounds, and it's really not very good, but it tries pretty hard, and the last ten minutes are darkly hilarious.
Lair of the White Worm (1988) - Hugh Grant's first leading man role is a wild ride, a tongue-in-cheek horror movie adapted from one of Bram Stoker's lesser-known works, about the d'Amptom Worm, an ancient English legend. It's about an ageless sort-of vampire who seduces virgins into serving as sacrifices for a dragon-like monster: Grant plays the modern descendant of a dragonslayer who bested the beast in Medieval times and must now cease his drollery and live up to his family name. Like "Waxwork," this is one of those movies you just enjoy for the exuberantly weird, half-sensical ride it offers, and don't ask any questions.
Deep Rising (1998) - Starring Treat Williams and Famke Jansen, this play on the popular "haunted ship" trope has a lively cult following. Basically it's about a crew of hijackers who board a liner to do bad stuff, but encounter much worse stuff waiting for them. I found it extremely dumb and silly, lacking in both thrills and scares, and full of CGI effects which dated very poorly indeed...although I confess it's frenetic as hell and Jansen, who I have met and was one of the true beauties of modern Hollywood, is mesmerizing to look at every time she's in frame.
Horror Express (1972) - One of the many, and by far the most obscure, cinematic takes on the short story "Who Is There?" by John W. Campbell (which spawned "The Thing"), this flick manages to get Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing AND Telly Savalas into the same frame, as men aboard a Siberian train which includes one (presumably) deceased passenger recently disinterred from the Artic ice. This "thing" naturally escapes and causes mayhem, which is augmented by its ability to switch bodies, and our reluctant (very reluctant) heroes must find a way to destroy it before the train reaches civilization. A weird but modestly engaging old-school horror flick.
The Creeping Terror (1964) - Arguably the worst piece of shit I have ever seen, this no-budget drive-in howler was such a "troubled production" the writer-director-star Vic Savage, ended up a literal fugitive from justice when the smoke cleared. It has almost no dialog (narration only), and the monster from outer space which terrorizes the community was (literally) made from rug remnants someone hastily sewed together the night before the cameras started rolling -- since Savage never paid his effects guy, he simply withheld whatever it was he'd made, hence the slow-moving pile of rugs that devours even slower-moving victims who could have escaped by...walking away at the pace of a crawling infant. A fascinating study in how not to make a no-budget movie.
Fear Street: 1994 (2021) - Derived from the popular YA series by R. L. Stine, this movie, despite what I think was a sincere effort, is a bore and a waste of time, offering nothing but an unlikeable heroine, worn-out horror and high-school cliches, including the tedious one about class warfare, and a lot of not-so-subtle pandering to "modern audiences" and their presumed sensibilities. I think it was about a witch that periodically comes back to a California town to possess people and commit murder, but I don't remember or care. By the time anything cool happens, like the cheerleader who gets her head rammed into a meat slicer, I had checked all the way out. And there were two sequels. Why is it the worst movies are always so full of passionate intensity?
The Babadook (2014) - Low budget movies don't have to be bad, and this one is the proof. Featuring what amounts to a cast of two, "The Babadook" is about recently widowed Australian nurse who is trying to cope with her grief while also raising her troubled son. Things get even worse (much worse), when the son begins reporting that the storybook monster he read about in a mysterious book she can't remember buying him, is now taking up residence in their home. A troubling, dark, very intense story that is partly about grief, cope, denial, and the monsters within, I found the child and animal abuse scenes tough to take, but done in a very non-exploitative way that met the demands of the subject matter.
Nobody Sleeps in the Woods Tonight (2020) - An inventive Polish take on slasher films, which combines horror and comedy and then takes a radical turn into sci-fi, is about a group of teens whose internet addictions have banished them to a rural camp where there is no wi-fi. While hiking in the woods they encounter some deformed locals with bad attitudes, and well, shit goes down. I found this movie witty, engaging and innovative, with strong performances and well-drawn characters it takes the time to properly establish, and it has the good sense to shoot the horror as horror and the humor as humor, and not mix the two as so manyhorror movies do.
Thanksgiving (2023) - I can't believe I'm going to say something positive about Eli Roth, but here goes: THANKSGIVING is a fun, well made, and surprisingly well-plotted slasher which manages to pay homage to the genre and all of its tropes while actually managing to come off as fresh and, even more surprisingly, unpredictable. A year after an extremely grisly "Black Friday" stampede kills a number of people at a shopping mall, a masked madman -- or is he just really pissed off? -- starts to exact revenge on those he holds responsible. The film, which has some sarcastic things to say about consumerism, throws so many red herrings at you as to the possible identity of the killer that half the fun is watching your theories get shot down, or rather carved up. Roth wouldn't be Roth without putting one absolutely over-the-top kill sequence in this movie, and I could have done without seeing a woman roasted alive and then served for dinner, but you can't have everything.
In A Violent Nature (2024) - Ever wondered what a slasher would be like told almost entirely from the point of view of the killer? Chris Nash did, and IN A VIOLENT NATURE was the result. Essentially a "Friday the 13th" movie from Jason's perspective, it follows Johnny, an undead murderer whose grave deep in the woods of Ontario was foolishly disturbed by some campers, as he plods through the woods on a mission of revenge. Without a plot worthy of the name, without any character development, without a soundtrack of any kind, with very little dialogue (most of it Johnny overhears as he stalks his victims), and lacking even much of a backstory, it takes some patience (there's a lot of walking through the woods), and it's not what I would call scary, but it is distinctly unsettling and the images (and the kills) stay with you. A very innovative take on a genre most people would have said is deader than Johnny himself.
The Conference (2023) - A deeply satirical slasher with a lot to say about capitalism and corporate culture and the damage it causes, this clever Swedish slasher is about one of those awful "corporate retreats" gone horribly wrong when a killer with a big grudge and no mercy shows up and wreaks havoc with everything he can find, including a boat motor. Another movie that does a pretty effective job of separating its biting wit from its grisly kills, I really liked the performances all the way around, especially by Claes Hartelius as a scrappy old man who gives the slasher all that he can handle, and Adam Lundgren as a sociopathic corporate drone who is perhaps scarier than the killer.
Talk To Me (2022) - This clever and inventive movie from Australia really wowed me. A group of bored teens gets ahold of a Hand of Glory, a variation on the Ouija board, which allows them to talk to spirits, or rather to have spirits briefly inhabit them. It's all fun and games until one of them gets a very disagreeable inhabitant who decides he/she/it don't particularly wanna leave, whereupon things go downhill for everyone in a big way. A not so subtle riff on the perils of drug use and addiction, it's a bit of a slow burn, but manages to avoid being obvious, preachy, or to fall into any predictable story holes. I know I use the word "innovative" a lot but that's because I must reward it whenever I encounter it, as it's incredibly rare horror, a genre which is so heaped with worn-out tropes they can be assembled into a ready-made movie, especially when possession is involved: this is fresh. Sophie Wilde delivers a terrific performance as the heroine, Mia, and the ending is a doozy.
You're Next (2013) - What's more uncomfortable than a dysfunctional family reunion? A dysfunctional family reunion crashed by masked killers with sharp objects and a taste for cruelty. While I would characterize this movie as more of a suspense or even survival-horror story than a "regular" horror film or slasher, I found the protagonist, played by Sharni Vinson, to be likeable and just believable enough in her badassery to be satisfying rather than tedious and silly. The twists are for the most part easy to see coming, but the movie moves quickly, keeps the mayhem to a maximum, and keeps up the pace until the very last second -- literally. It's similar to HUSH, which I watched last Halloween, but executed (no pun intended) on a larger scale and with some layered mystery elements as to the identities and motives of the baddies. Better than I expected by a fair country distance.
American Psycho (2000). Probably no movie has ever made more sport out of American corporate culture generally, and the rampant greed, shallowness and materialism of the 80s specifically, than this horror-satire adapted from the B.E. Ellis novel of the same name. Christian Bale rises to dizzying heights as Patrick Bateman, a shallow, venal, status-worshipping Manhattanite yuppie whose hobbies are pop music and serial murder. Bateman is at once terriying in his capacity for cruelty and his equally creepy obsession with cleanliness and order, and hilarious in the agonies he suffers over things like the font on his business cards, or his inability to get reservations at Dorsia (a restaurant that seems to symbolise the elusive nature of the happiness that's supposed to come from material success). Bateman's inner torment is driven by his awareness that he has no soul, and in a sense does not even exist: his murders are his only outlet, but even they cease to satisfying him over time, necessitating ever more wanton acts of violence that cause his neatly packaged life to slowly unravel before us. The entire story is a masterpiece of unreliable narration, existential angst and savage social commetary. A truly great film.
As Above, So Below (2014) - Ever seen a movie that felt like it drew from so many pre-existing sources it had no identity of its own? This spirited "found footage" film set in the Paris catacombs was like that for me. Taking elements from everything from THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT and BORDERLANDS to DESCENT and even EVENT HORIZON, the acting is solid, the pace is very respectable, but I was left underwhelmed. A tale about a treasure hunter with more metaphorical balls than good sense, who tries to find the Philosopher's Stone beneath the City of Lights, it's just too "been there done that" to be effective, despite some very credible performances from Perdita Weeks and Francois Civil.
Backcountry (2014) - I was rather impressed with this man-vs.-nature story about a quarrel-prone Canadian couple who get lost in the woods of Ontario, and first menaced by a creepy woodsman, and then stalked by a bear who doesn't take "dear God no!" for an answer. The acting is good, my favorite thespian, Nicholas Campbell, has a small role, and Eric Balfour does wonders as that creepy Irish woodsman, who may or may not be a red herring. It's always intriguing when we get reminded how dangerous nature is, especially for cityfolk with too much pride and not enough directional sense. Throw in a bear-mauling scene that is truly horrific to hear (they only show what's necessary), and you won't want to go camping any time soon.
Nobody Sleeps in the Woods Tonight 2 (2021). As good as the first movie was, is how bad this weird, overexpository, overly comedic, overly "meta," underly scary mess of a sequel is. The first one exercised admirable balance between horror and comedy, and even managed to chuck in some social commentary with paying homage to the slasher genre. "2" is just a slop of ideas, and my guess is that the folks in charge slapped it together all too hastily following the success of the first one, in the spirit of "cash in while it's hot." I'm not even sure there is an actual plot. While there are a few good jokes, the story feels almost improvised, and well, it's just kinda shit. I'm sad to say it, but this has neither trick nor treat.
The First Omen (2024). Remember how ROGUE ONE was the answer to a question nobody asked, a movie whose entire premise sprang from a single sentence in the opening crawl of STAR WARS? THE FIRST OMEN is like that. There's a lot of craft, the acting is good, and it's largely very respectful of the original, 1976 OMEN which started the franchise, but it's just slow enough, just overplotted enough, just enough of a departure from the canon of the original movie, and topped off by just enough plot armor and needless girlbossery, that my ultimate feeling was disappointment. The tale of a young American nun-aspirant who arrives at an Italian nunnery to do God's work, only to discover nothing holy is going on within its walls, but rather a complex effort to summon the antichrist into fleshly existence, THE FIRST OMEN does hit some high notes, most particularly the grave performance of Ralph Ineson as Father Brennan, but in the end it just feels unnecessary. Sure, I was curious about the shadowy cult that facilitates the rise to power of Damien Thorn, but sometimes unanswered mysteries are the most satisfying.
The Privilege (2022) - Strong performances and what I think was a great deal of zeal can't save this German horror movie about a boy who survives his sister's seemingly supernatural murder, only to suspect he's still a target of those same mysterious malevolent years later as a high school student. Kind of a riff on many films you've already seen (THE STEPFORD WIVES comes to mind, among many others including THE BELIEVERS, and to some small extent, even HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH), it tries to play on paranoia, teen and familial alienation, and mystery, and create a sense of "who can I really trust here?" but it's just too predictable, and by the way, not even remotely frightening.
Ghost Ship (2002) - My final entry was a pleasant surprise. Another "haunted ship" story, but this time done right, or at least right-er, it follows a salvage ship which includes Gabriel Byrne, Julianna Marguiles, Karl Urban, and Isiah Washington among its crew, as they try to salvage a derelict cruise ship in the Bearing Strait which was last seen forty years ago, before it vanished off the face of the sea. On board the ghost ship they discover a hoard of gold; unfortunately they also discover malevolent ghosts who have no intention of letting them leave. A combination of haunted house and heist stories, with a large mystery at the center, it opens with one of the most inventive kill sequences I've ever seen -- a mass kill sequence, no less -- and also features one of the most interesting flashbacks I can recall, a grisly bit about a massacre-robbery that consumes its own perpetrators in a series of escalating betrayals. The drawbacks are a limp script which wastes some fine actors, and an uneven performance from Marguiles, who just didn't have the oompf to play the scrappy heroine. But I enjoyed the flick.
And with that, fifty-four minutes before midnight on Halloween, we come to the end of HH24. This has become a bit of an institution around here at Stone Cold Prose, and after this fairly enjoyable haul of spooky films, I must say I'm already looking forward to HH25. But I still owe myself, and you, almost a dozen more of these damned things, and in the spirit of completion, and continuing curiosity, I will report back when I've checked 'em off.
Happy Halloween, y'all.
I must say that this year, as opposed to others, I found a lot more gold, or at least semi-precious stones, than outright shit among the wide variety cinema I chose to sample. Call it entitlement, but I think I was overdue some really entertaining flicks after all the garbage I waded through on Octobers past. (One of the drawbacks of doing what I do every year is that my insistence that these movies must never before crossed paths with me provides no sure things.) So it's with more pleasure than pain that I invite you to my house of horrors and show you what's inside, which includes movies from America, Britain, Australia, Canada, Germany, and Poland. Here we go.
Alone in the Dark (1982) - This is an obscure but talent-packed movie directed by Jack Sholder (THE HIDDEN) featuring Dwight Schulz, Jack Palance, Donald Pleasance, and Martin Landau, about four dangerous lunatics who escape from an asylum and do bad things. It's much slower, talkier, weirder and more cerebral than it sounds, and it's really not very good, but it tries pretty hard, and the last ten minutes are darkly hilarious.
Lair of the White Worm (1988) - Hugh Grant's first leading man role is a wild ride, a tongue-in-cheek horror movie adapted from one of Bram Stoker's lesser-known works, about the d'Amptom Worm, an ancient English legend. It's about an ageless sort-of vampire who seduces virgins into serving as sacrifices for a dragon-like monster: Grant plays the modern descendant of a dragonslayer who bested the beast in Medieval times and must now cease his drollery and live up to his family name. Like "Waxwork," this is one of those movies you just enjoy for the exuberantly weird, half-sensical ride it offers, and don't ask any questions.
Deep Rising (1998) - Starring Treat Williams and Famke Jansen, this play on the popular "haunted ship" trope has a lively cult following. Basically it's about a crew of hijackers who board a liner to do bad stuff, but encounter much worse stuff waiting for them. I found it extremely dumb and silly, lacking in both thrills and scares, and full of CGI effects which dated very poorly indeed...although I confess it's frenetic as hell and Jansen, who I have met and was one of the true beauties of modern Hollywood, is mesmerizing to look at every time she's in frame.
Horror Express (1972) - One of the many, and by far the most obscure, cinematic takes on the short story "Who Is There?" by John W. Campbell (which spawned "The Thing"), this flick manages to get Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing AND Telly Savalas into the same frame, as men aboard a Siberian train which includes one (presumably) deceased passenger recently disinterred from the Artic ice. This "thing" naturally escapes and causes mayhem, which is augmented by its ability to switch bodies, and our reluctant (very reluctant) heroes must find a way to destroy it before the train reaches civilization. A weird but modestly engaging old-school horror flick.
The Creeping Terror (1964) - Arguably the worst piece of shit I have ever seen, this no-budget drive-in howler was such a "troubled production" the writer-director-star Vic Savage, ended up a literal fugitive from justice when the smoke cleared. It has almost no dialog (narration only), and the monster from outer space which terrorizes the community was (literally) made from rug remnants someone hastily sewed together the night before the cameras started rolling -- since Savage never paid his effects guy, he simply withheld whatever it was he'd made, hence the slow-moving pile of rugs that devours even slower-moving victims who could have escaped by...walking away at the pace of a crawling infant. A fascinating study in how not to make a no-budget movie.
Fear Street: 1994 (2021) - Derived from the popular YA series by R. L. Stine, this movie, despite what I think was a sincere effort, is a bore and a waste of time, offering nothing but an unlikeable heroine, worn-out horror and high-school cliches, including the tedious one about class warfare, and a lot of not-so-subtle pandering to "modern audiences" and their presumed sensibilities. I think it was about a witch that periodically comes back to a California town to possess people and commit murder, but I don't remember or care. By the time anything cool happens, like the cheerleader who gets her head rammed into a meat slicer, I had checked all the way out. And there were two sequels. Why is it the worst movies are always so full of passionate intensity?
The Babadook (2014) - Low budget movies don't have to be bad, and this one is the proof. Featuring what amounts to a cast of two, "The Babadook" is about recently widowed Australian nurse who is trying to cope with her grief while also raising her troubled son. Things get even worse (much worse), when the son begins reporting that the storybook monster he read about in a mysterious book she can't remember buying him, is now taking up residence in their home. A troubling, dark, very intense story that is partly about grief, cope, denial, and the monsters within, I found the child and animal abuse scenes tough to take, but done in a very non-exploitative way that met the demands of the subject matter.
Nobody Sleeps in the Woods Tonight (2020) - An inventive Polish take on slasher films, which combines horror and comedy and then takes a radical turn into sci-fi, is about a group of teens whose internet addictions have banished them to a rural camp where there is no wi-fi. While hiking in the woods they encounter some deformed locals with bad attitudes, and well, shit goes down. I found this movie witty, engaging and innovative, with strong performances and well-drawn characters it takes the time to properly establish, and it has the good sense to shoot the horror as horror and the humor as humor, and not mix the two as so manyhorror movies do.
Thanksgiving (2023) - I can't believe I'm going to say something positive about Eli Roth, but here goes: THANKSGIVING is a fun, well made, and surprisingly well-plotted slasher which manages to pay homage to the genre and all of its tropes while actually managing to come off as fresh and, even more surprisingly, unpredictable. A year after an extremely grisly "Black Friday" stampede kills a number of people at a shopping mall, a masked madman -- or is he just really pissed off? -- starts to exact revenge on those he holds responsible. The film, which has some sarcastic things to say about consumerism, throws so many red herrings at you as to the possible identity of the killer that half the fun is watching your theories get shot down, or rather carved up. Roth wouldn't be Roth without putting one absolutely over-the-top kill sequence in this movie, and I could have done without seeing a woman roasted alive and then served for dinner, but you can't have everything.
In A Violent Nature (2024) - Ever wondered what a slasher would be like told almost entirely from the point of view of the killer? Chris Nash did, and IN A VIOLENT NATURE was the result. Essentially a "Friday the 13th" movie from Jason's perspective, it follows Johnny, an undead murderer whose grave deep in the woods of Ontario was foolishly disturbed by some campers, as he plods through the woods on a mission of revenge. Without a plot worthy of the name, without any character development, without a soundtrack of any kind, with very little dialogue (most of it Johnny overhears as he stalks his victims), and lacking even much of a backstory, it takes some patience (there's a lot of walking through the woods), and it's not what I would call scary, but it is distinctly unsettling and the images (and the kills) stay with you. A very innovative take on a genre most people would have said is deader than Johnny himself.
The Conference (2023) - A deeply satirical slasher with a lot to say about capitalism and corporate culture and the damage it causes, this clever Swedish slasher is about one of those awful "corporate retreats" gone horribly wrong when a killer with a big grudge and no mercy shows up and wreaks havoc with everything he can find, including a boat motor. Another movie that does a pretty effective job of separating its biting wit from its grisly kills, I really liked the performances all the way around, especially by Claes Hartelius as a scrappy old man who gives the slasher all that he can handle, and Adam Lundgren as a sociopathic corporate drone who is perhaps scarier than the killer.
Talk To Me (2022) - This clever and inventive movie from Australia really wowed me. A group of bored teens gets ahold of a Hand of Glory, a variation on the Ouija board, which allows them to talk to spirits, or rather to have spirits briefly inhabit them. It's all fun and games until one of them gets a very disagreeable inhabitant who decides he/she/it don't particularly wanna leave, whereupon things go downhill for everyone in a big way. A not so subtle riff on the perils of drug use and addiction, it's a bit of a slow burn, but manages to avoid being obvious, preachy, or to fall into any predictable story holes. I know I use the word "innovative" a lot but that's because I must reward it whenever I encounter it, as it's incredibly rare horror, a genre which is so heaped with worn-out tropes they can be assembled into a ready-made movie, especially when possession is involved: this is fresh. Sophie Wilde delivers a terrific performance as the heroine, Mia, and the ending is a doozy.
You're Next (2013) - What's more uncomfortable than a dysfunctional family reunion? A dysfunctional family reunion crashed by masked killers with sharp objects and a taste for cruelty. While I would characterize this movie as more of a suspense or even survival-horror story than a "regular" horror film or slasher, I found the protagonist, played by Sharni Vinson, to be likeable and just believable enough in her badassery to be satisfying rather than tedious and silly. The twists are for the most part easy to see coming, but the movie moves quickly, keeps the mayhem to a maximum, and keeps up the pace until the very last second -- literally. It's similar to HUSH, which I watched last Halloween, but executed (no pun intended) on a larger scale and with some layered mystery elements as to the identities and motives of the baddies. Better than I expected by a fair country distance.
American Psycho (2000). Probably no movie has ever made more sport out of American corporate culture generally, and the rampant greed, shallowness and materialism of the 80s specifically, than this horror-satire adapted from the B.E. Ellis novel of the same name. Christian Bale rises to dizzying heights as Patrick Bateman, a shallow, venal, status-worshipping Manhattanite yuppie whose hobbies are pop music and serial murder. Bateman is at once terriying in his capacity for cruelty and his equally creepy obsession with cleanliness and order, and hilarious in the agonies he suffers over things like the font on his business cards, or his inability to get reservations at Dorsia (a restaurant that seems to symbolise the elusive nature of the happiness that's supposed to come from material success). Bateman's inner torment is driven by his awareness that he has no soul, and in a sense does not even exist: his murders are his only outlet, but even they cease to satisfying him over time, necessitating ever more wanton acts of violence that cause his neatly packaged life to slowly unravel before us. The entire story is a masterpiece of unreliable narration, existential angst and savage social commetary. A truly great film.
As Above, So Below (2014) - Ever seen a movie that felt like it drew from so many pre-existing sources it had no identity of its own? This spirited "found footage" film set in the Paris catacombs was like that for me. Taking elements from everything from THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT and BORDERLANDS to DESCENT and even EVENT HORIZON, the acting is solid, the pace is very respectable, but I was left underwhelmed. A tale about a treasure hunter with more metaphorical balls than good sense, who tries to find the Philosopher's Stone beneath the City of Lights, it's just too "been there done that" to be effective, despite some very credible performances from Perdita Weeks and Francois Civil.
Backcountry (2014) - I was rather impressed with this man-vs.-nature story about a quarrel-prone Canadian couple who get lost in the woods of Ontario, and first menaced by a creepy woodsman, and then stalked by a bear who doesn't take "dear God no!" for an answer. The acting is good, my favorite thespian, Nicholas Campbell, has a small role, and Eric Balfour does wonders as that creepy Irish woodsman, who may or may not be a red herring. It's always intriguing when we get reminded how dangerous nature is, especially for cityfolk with too much pride and not enough directional sense. Throw in a bear-mauling scene that is truly horrific to hear (they only show what's necessary), and you won't want to go camping any time soon.
Nobody Sleeps in the Woods Tonight 2 (2021). As good as the first movie was, is how bad this weird, overexpository, overly comedic, overly "meta," underly scary mess of a sequel is. The first one exercised admirable balance between horror and comedy, and even managed to chuck in some social commentary with paying homage to the slasher genre. "2" is just a slop of ideas, and my guess is that the folks in charge slapped it together all too hastily following the success of the first one, in the spirit of "cash in while it's hot." I'm not even sure there is an actual plot. While there are a few good jokes, the story feels almost improvised, and well, it's just kinda shit. I'm sad to say it, but this has neither trick nor treat.
The First Omen (2024). Remember how ROGUE ONE was the answer to a question nobody asked, a movie whose entire premise sprang from a single sentence in the opening crawl of STAR WARS? THE FIRST OMEN is like that. There's a lot of craft, the acting is good, and it's largely very respectful of the original, 1976 OMEN which started the franchise, but it's just slow enough, just overplotted enough, just enough of a departure from the canon of the original movie, and topped off by just enough plot armor and needless girlbossery, that my ultimate feeling was disappointment. The tale of a young American nun-aspirant who arrives at an Italian nunnery to do God's work, only to discover nothing holy is going on within its walls, but rather a complex effort to summon the antichrist into fleshly existence, THE FIRST OMEN does hit some high notes, most particularly the grave performance of Ralph Ineson as Father Brennan, but in the end it just feels unnecessary. Sure, I was curious about the shadowy cult that facilitates the rise to power of Damien Thorn, but sometimes unanswered mysteries are the most satisfying.
The Privilege (2022) - Strong performances and what I think was a great deal of zeal can't save this German horror movie about a boy who survives his sister's seemingly supernatural murder, only to suspect he's still a target of those same mysterious malevolent years later as a high school student. Kind of a riff on many films you've already seen (THE STEPFORD WIVES comes to mind, among many others including THE BELIEVERS, and to some small extent, even HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH), it tries to play on paranoia, teen and familial alienation, and mystery, and create a sense of "who can I really trust here?" but it's just too predictable, and by the way, not even remotely frightening.
Ghost Ship (2002) - My final entry was a pleasant surprise. Another "haunted ship" story, but this time done right, or at least right-er, it follows a salvage ship which includes Gabriel Byrne, Julianna Marguiles, Karl Urban, and Isiah Washington among its crew, as they try to salvage a derelict cruise ship in the Bearing Strait which was last seen forty years ago, before it vanished off the face of the sea. On board the ghost ship they discover a hoard of gold; unfortunately they also discover malevolent ghosts who have no intention of letting them leave. A combination of haunted house and heist stories, with a large mystery at the center, it opens with one of the most inventive kill sequences I've ever seen -- a mass kill sequence, no less -- and also features one of the most interesting flashbacks I can recall, a grisly bit about a massacre-robbery that consumes its own perpetrators in a series of escalating betrayals. The drawbacks are a limp script which wastes some fine actors, and an uneven performance from Marguiles, who just didn't have the oompf to play the scrappy heroine. But I enjoyed the flick.
And with that, fifty-four minutes before midnight on Halloween, we come to the end of HH24. This has become a bit of an institution around here at Stone Cold Prose, and after this fairly enjoyable haul of spooky films, I must say I'm already looking forward to HH25. But I still owe myself, and you, almost a dozen more of these damned things, and in the spirit of completion, and continuing curiosity, I will report back when I've checked 'em off.
Happy Halloween, y'all.
October 28, 2024
BOOK REVIEW: CARLY RHEILAN'S "A CAT'S CRADLE"
Such is the currency of secrets, and the alliances they forge.
This is the most discomfiting novel I have ever read. It was disturbing, unsettling, haunting. It went to the very darkest places of human experience, and nudged me along with it. I use the word specifically. It did not push, did not demand: it invited me along, quietly dared me to join it, the experience being all the more rattling because once I started along, I felt I could not stop even though at times, I wished to.
Is A CAT'S CRADLE a great novel? You're damned right it is. But the greatness is multidimensional. It's great in the technical sense, being extremely well-written, but it's also great in the sense of its profundity, what it has to say about life, about childhood, about class, about sexual predation and the almost unending ripple-effect it has upon its victims and all of those around them. And beyond this, it is great because it is fearless. This is a subject which most sexual assault survivors could not bear to discuss even from their own perspective; but to fracture the narrative in the way Carly did, to provide the points of view not merely of the victim, but the offender, would be a bridge too far for almost anyone else.
Let's be blunt. A CAT'S CRADLE is about the "relationship" which forms between a convicted child murderer and pedophile named Ralph Sneddon, and his latest victim, nine year-old Mary Crouch. It does not go into disgusting detail, except to the extent that the subject matter is in itself morally disgusting, but in the same vein, it pulls no punches about the way sexual predators think and operate...or the way a little girl, herself so pre-pubescent she does not understand what is happening to her (or rather creatively misunderstands it), would react to her own exploitation and violation. As an advocate for victims of crime myself, I found our heroine's reaction uncomfortably honest, as indeed, the entire novel is uncomfortably honest: it explains that these relationships, twisted and evil as they are, are just that: relationships. They trade on the naivete of the victim, and on a child's natural love of secret-keeping, of living a life within a life which is known only to them. Mary is sometimes disgusted and horrified by Ralph, but she develops a love for him, too; almost a need, because of the lavishness of his nonsexual attentions, his ability to construct a "safe place" for her which is, of course, about as safe as hell on a bad day, and his predatory ability to foster emotional dependence. And here's where we hit my own personal discomfort zone dead center: in my professional experience, most abusive relationships of any kind are co-dependent and partially enabled by the victim, which is one of those topics nobody outside the field ever wants to discuss: but when it comes to a child, who cannot consent by definition, the waters, though murky and scummed-over by the perpetrator's vile intent, are still clear enough to understand. Mary is being maniuplated, but as with most manipulation there evolves (mutates?) a degree of willingness to be manipulated. Nobody I've ever read, and I love to read, has ever had the pitiless honesty to discuss this phenomenon with such scouring honesty. And indeed, since this "work of fiction" is in fact fictionalized autobiography, and Mary Crouch merely Carly Rheilan by another name, it's a doubly impressive achievement. But damn is it disturbing. Having read Rheilan's previous novel, ASYLUM, I had high expectations of the intellectual and moral depth of the story, but this work quite exceeded them, especially in its depiction of Ralph. Rheilan again exhibits "the touch" here, the ability to lay bare the innermost workings of a villain's mind, and even make him understandable by his own hellish lights. In ASLYUM the brief glimpses we get of the villain, a human trafficker called Christmas, are masterful: he's a Monster Compleat, but fascinating. Her examination of Ralph goes much deeper. We are forced into intimacy with this man and shown the naked horror of his own inner landscape -- what drives him, how he tries to resist those drives, and how he justifies his actions (including murder and animal murder) when the drives prove too strong. We see his techniques for grooming, the lies he tells himself as to his own motives, and the way he, as a convicted but paroled child-murderer with no friends or family beyond an invalid embittered mother who hates his guts, flits through the area in which he grew up like a ghost...or more specifically a poltergeist. We never pity Ralph -- his crimes are beyond pity -- but he is presented so realistically, and with such richness and complexity, that we are forced to realize the "monster" label we always use in these situations is unwarranted, because cowardly. By calling Ralph -- or Hitler, or Stalin, or Pol Pot -- a "monster," we let humanity off the hook for producing them in the first place. If A CAT'S CRADLE has an object lesson, it is that there are no monsters. There are only human beings who make monstrous choices, take monstrous actions, do monstrous damage. And somehow that makes everything worse. Ralph is not a monster, he is merely evil. And evil is always "merely." It is always prosaic, empty, even a little boring. Evil is the concentration camp guard who is kind to his dog and waters his begonias and kisses his wife before he goes to work. Evil is next door. Evil is us.
I should close by noting CRADLE is a period piece, being set in 1962, and profoundly English, in that social class and the nature of country village life take prominent places in the narrative, almost to the point of being characters themselves, though they are never extrude into the story. It is also a fascinating examination of childhood, not only in terms of how children think and behave, but how they see the world, which is curiously earthy and intimate and realistic on the one hand (because they are literally closer to the ground, and see things from unusual angles), but on the other, through a lens of pure ignorance and imagination. Children drift a blurry line between the world as it is, which is full of rules they don't understand and truths their parents and society work sweatily to prevent them from understanding "too soon"...and the imaginary world full of misunderstandings and dreams and fancies which they use to fill in those gaps, which can lead to outcomes both comedic and tragic. (Stephen King examined this brilliantly in IT, but from a very different perspective.)
So there it is. One of the best novels I've read in the last decade, and the most disturbing novel I've ever read. A profound work, but not for the faint of heart.
This is the most discomfiting novel I have ever read. It was disturbing, unsettling, haunting. It went to the very darkest places of human experience, and nudged me along with it. I use the word specifically. It did not push, did not demand: it invited me along, quietly dared me to join it, the experience being all the more rattling because once I started along, I felt I could not stop even though at times, I wished to.
Is A CAT'S CRADLE a great novel? You're damned right it is. But the greatness is multidimensional. It's great in the technical sense, being extremely well-written, but it's also great in the sense of its profundity, what it has to say about life, about childhood, about class, about sexual predation and the almost unending ripple-effect it has upon its victims and all of those around them. And beyond this, it is great because it is fearless. This is a subject which most sexual assault survivors could not bear to discuss even from their own perspective; but to fracture the narrative in the way Carly did, to provide the points of view not merely of the victim, but the offender, would be a bridge too far for almost anyone else.
Let's be blunt. A CAT'S CRADLE is about the "relationship" which forms between a convicted child murderer and pedophile named Ralph Sneddon, and his latest victim, nine year-old Mary Crouch. It does not go into disgusting detail, except to the extent that the subject matter is in itself morally disgusting, but in the same vein, it pulls no punches about the way sexual predators think and operate...or the way a little girl, herself so pre-pubescent she does not understand what is happening to her (or rather creatively misunderstands it), would react to her own exploitation and violation. As an advocate for victims of crime myself, I found our heroine's reaction uncomfortably honest, as indeed, the entire novel is uncomfortably honest: it explains that these relationships, twisted and evil as they are, are just that: relationships. They trade on the naivete of the victim, and on a child's natural love of secret-keeping, of living a life within a life which is known only to them. Mary is sometimes disgusted and horrified by Ralph, but she develops a love for him, too; almost a need, because of the lavishness of his nonsexual attentions, his ability to construct a "safe place" for her which is, of course, about as safe as hell on a bad day, and his predatory ability to foster emotional dependence. And here's where we hit my own personal discomfort zone dead center: in my professional experience, most abusive relationships of any kind are co-dependent and partially enabled by the victim, which is one of those topics nobody outside the field ever wants to discuss: but when it comes to a child, who cannot consent by definition, the waters, though murky and scummed-over by the perpetrator's vile intent, are still clear enough to understand. Mary is being maniuplated, but as with most manipulation there evolves (mutates?) a degree of willingness to be manipulated. Nobody I've ever read, and I love to read, has ever had the pitiless honesty to discuss this phenomenon with such scouring honesty. And indeed, since this "work of fiction" is in fact fictionalized autobiography, and Mary Crouch merely Carly Rheilan by another name, it's a doubly impressive achievement. But damn is it disturbing. Having read Rheilan's previous novel, ASYLUM, I had high expectations of the intellectual and moral depth of the story, but this work quite exceeded them, especially in its depiction of Ralph. Rheilan again exhibits "the touch" here, the ability to lay bare the innermost workings of a villain's mind, and even make him understandable by his own hellish lights. In ASLYUM the brief glimpses we get of the villain, a human trafficker called Christmas, are masterful: he's a Monster Compleat, but fascinating. Her examination of Ralph goes much deeper. We are forced into intimacy with this man and shown the naked horror of his own inner landscape -- what drives him, how he tries to resist those drives, and how he justifies his actions (including murder and animal murder) when the drives prove too strong. We see his techniques for grooming, the lies he tells himself as to his own motives, and the way he, as a convicted but paroled child-murderer with no friends or family beyond an invalid embittered mother who hates his guts, flits through the area in which he grew up like a ghost...or more specifically a poltergeist. We never pity Ralph -- his crimes are beyond pity -- but he is presented so realistically, and with such richness and complexity, that we are forced to realize the "monster" label we always use in these situations is unwarranted, because cowardly. By calling Ralph -- or Hitler, or Stalin, or Pol Pot -- a "monster," we let humanity off the hook for producing them in the first place. If A CAT'S CRADLE has an object lesson, it is that there are no monsters. There are only human beings who make monstrous choices, take monstrous actions, do monstrous damage. And somehow that makes everything worse. Ralph is not a monster, he is merely evil. And evil is always "merely." It is always prosaic, empty, even a little boring. Evil is the concentration camp guard who is kind to his dog and waters his begonias and kisses his wife before he goes to work. Evil is next door. Evil is us.
I should close by noting CRADLE is a period piece, being set in 1962, and profoundly English, in that social class and the nature of country village life take prominent places in the narrative, almost to the point of being characters themselves, though they are never extrude into the story. It is also a fascinating examination of childhood, not only in terms of how children think and behave, but how they see the world, which is curiously earthy and intimate and realistic on the one hand (because they are literally closer to the ground, and see things from unusual angles), but on the other, through a lens of pure ignorance and imagination. Children drift a blurry line between the world as it is, which is full of rules they don't understand and truths their parents and society work sweatily to prevent them from understanding "too soon"...and the imaginary world full of misunderstandings and dreams and fancies which they use to fill in those gaps, which can lead to outcomes both comedic and tragic. (Stephen King examined this brilliantly in IT, but from a very different perspective.)
So there it is. One of the best novels I've read in the last decade, and the most disturbing novel I've ever read. A profound work, but not for the faint of heart.
October 17, 2024
BOOK REVIEW: MICHAEL RUPPERT'S "CONFRONTING COLLAPSE"
The love of money is the root of all evil. That is the fundamental truth that I have verified through 3 decades of empirical, investigative, legal, academic research trying to answer some fundamental questions about human existence and why we behave the way we do, why we think the way we do, why we act the way we do...It is the love of money that has the potential to exterminate- to render extinct- the entire human race.
As a writer, Michael Ruppert was a helluva speaker. I don't say that to denigrate this troubled, frustrated, charismatic, controversial, and ultimately tragic figure, merely to explain the modest three-star rating I gave to his book, CONFRONTING COLLAPSE (previously released under the more prosaic title A PRESEIDENTIAL ENERGY POLICY), which I believe ought to be read, or at least skimmed, by everybody in the Western world.
Like many people, I came to an awareness of Ruppert through the excellent (and terrifying) biopic-documentary "The Collapse" (2009), which was about the idea of Peak Oil and what will happen to world civilization as oil production inevitably collapses -- inevitably because oil is a finite, non-renewable resource which is rapidly running out. This narrative weaves around Ruppert's personal narrative, the things he went through and says he went through as a result of decades of muckraking gonzo journalism. The documentary shook me so badly (and I don't consider myself all that easy to shake) that I sought out the book upon which it was based to hear his theories, opinions and warnings in more detail. Yesterday, after about two years of reading the book in tiny installments, I finally finished.
Ruppert's thesis is actually very simple. All of modern civilization is founded on oil. Everything from gasoline to plastic to resin to pesticide to paint to synthetic rubber to toothpaste, and very much else, is manufactured from petroleum by-products. Petroleum also powers our jetliners, our cars, our buses, our motorcycles, our tractors, our trains, our Navy destroyers and our tractors. It heats our homes, allows us to farm and to transport food, to extract raw material and to ship it, and to create and sustain all of our infrastructure (think: garbage collection, police cars, etc.). Everything we do in daily life is founded directly or indirectly on oil, from brushing our teeth to throwing a light-switch to driving a car to shopping at the grocery store to making love (even condoms are made from petroleum by products, i.e. plastic). The total supply of oil on the planet, however, is now "past peak," meaning that more has been burned than remains in the ground, and the supply is dwindling faster and faster because commercial use of oil is going up everywhere in the world, especially developing nations like China and India, but most especially in energy-ravenous America. At the same time, the remaining oil is by necessity harder and more expensive and environmentally destructive to remove from the earth, since the "low hanging fruit" has for the most part already been plucked out of existence. Ruppert believes, and there is considerable evidence to support, that all of human civilization is in a death spiral which will accelerate as oil usage surges even while the oil supply shrinks toward the zero point (zero point is not, incidentally, zero oil: it is the point where obtaining oil becomes so expensive and energy-intensive that there is no return for mining it...think of it in these terms: if you're starving, and somebody tells you there's a strawberry on top of a mountain, you'll burn 3,000 calories obtaining the strawberry but only 10 from eating it, rendering the journey pointless). This will produce a collapse -- power, food and other basic necessities of modern life will no longer be available in sufficient quantity for our population, and will lead to a huge die-off which will encompass wars, riots, and global anarchy.
The driving force behind the collapse is obviously our gluttonous appetite for the energy and products oil provides us, but Rupert argues, also the blind greed and sociopathic disregard for human life which is characteristic of modern governmental systems, be they socialistic, communistic or capitalistic. Our desire for profit and comfort are pushing us faster and faster toward the cliff which Peak Oil represents, and rather than address the problem, he points out that all nations seem to be doubling down on aggressive acquisition of oil (through drilling and if necessary, war) while making meaningless, lip-service commitments to the environment and alternative sources of energy. One of the key arguments of the book is the jinxed relationship between money (fiat currency) and energy, which accelerates the collapse by building an infinite-growth paradigm: very crudely put, our economy must have infinite growth or it will stagnate and collapse, but the resources we base our currency and our growth around, are not infinite. Thus at the heart of the paradigm is a paradox which can lead to only one catastrophic outcome.
All of these arguments are well-presented and difficult to refute on any level without resorting to sophistry or name-calling ("You're just a prophet of doom/conspiracy theorist!"), or the use of wobbly statistics and ideas that rely more on optimism and hope than fact. Nobody, after all, wants to believe our civilization is on its last kick and that our children or grandchildren will grow up in a dystopian future. On the other hand, some of the conclusions Ruppert reaches, and some of his predictions, are less impressive; the main difficulty with the book is that Ruppert, while highly intelligent and very knowledgeable, is really more of a blogger than an author. His writing style varies from arresting to amateurish, gripping to boring, and like many people with martyr complexes (he committed suicide in 2014), he has a tendency toward egotism and would-be omniscience. This makes a 220-page book feel like it's 1,000 pages, which is why it took me aeons to read it when I usually burn through books of this nature in less than a week. It is also why I prefer Ruppert as a public speaker (watch his videos or the documentary), or even as an article-writer and blogger, to a book-length author.
Having said that, I really do feel that CONFRONTING COLLAPSE is a book which ought to be read or at least skimmed by anyone who is still whistling past the petroleum graveyard. Our species (and all species on this planet we dominate) are in an existential struggle against our own excesses and the paradigms we have developed to live safe and comfortable lives. It is well past time that someone in power accepted the unsustainability of our way of life and enacted radical changes to meet the future, instead of telling us a few electric cars and some recycling will save the day, or just sticking their heads in the sand while choking out the words, "All is well!" All is manifestly not well and it is easy to understand why Ruppert's own life mirrored the spiral into destruction that he anticipates for our race. He was just sincere enough to agonize over the needless dilemma in which we now find ourselves, and just sharp enough to see that human nature is sufficiently selfish and illogical that nothing would be done to solve the dilemma until it was far past too late. I leave you with some of his more haunting words, which certainly go a fair country distance toward explaining why he chose to end his own life:
"Bridges are burning all around us; bridges to responses that might have mitigated the already brutal (and just beginning) ravages of Peak Oil; bridges to reduce the likelihood of war and famine; bridges to avoid our selectively chosen suicide; bridges to change at least a part of energy infrastructure and consumption; bridges to becoming something better than we are or have been; bridges to non-violence. Those bridges are effectively gone."
As a writer, Michael Ruppert was a helluva speaker. I don't say that to denigrate this troubled, frustrated, charismatic, controversial, and ultimately tragic figure, merely to explain the modest three-star rating I gave to his book, CONFRONTING COLLAPSE (previously released under the more prosaic title A PRESEIDENTIAL ENERGY POLICY), which I believe ought to be read, or at least skimmed, by everybody in the Western world.
Like many people, I came to an awareness of Ruppert through the excellent (and terrifying) biopic-documentary "The Collapse" (2009), which was about the idea of Peak Oil and what will happen to world civilization as oil production inevitably collapses -- inevitably because oil is a finite, non-renewable resource which is rapidly running out. This narrative weaves around Ruppert's personal narrative, the things he went through and says he went through as a result of decades of muckraking gonzo journalism. The documentary shook me so badly (and I don't consider myself all that easy to shake) that I sought out the book upon which it was based to hear his theories, opinions and warnings in more detail. Yesterday, after about two years of reading the book in tiny installments, I finally finished.
Ruppert's thesis is actually very simple. All of modern civilization is founded on oil. Everything from gasoline to plastic to resin to pesticide to paint to synthetic rubber to toothpaste, and very much else, is manufactured from petroleum by-products. Petroleum also powers our jetliners, our cars, our buses, our motorcycles, our tractors, our trains, our Navy destroyers and our tractors. It heats our homes, allows us to farm and to transport food, to extract raw material and to ship it, and to create and sustain all of our infrastructure (think: garbage collection, police cars, etc.). Everything we do in daily life is founded directly or indirectly on oil, from brushing our teeth to throwing a light-switch to driving a car to shopping at the grocery store to making love (even condoms are made from petroleum by products, i.e. plastic). The total supply of oil on the planet, however, is now "past peak," meaning that more has been burned than remains in the ground, and the supply is dwindling faster and faster because commercial use of oil is going up everywhere in the world, especially developing nations like China and India, but most especially in energy-ravenous America. At the same time, the remaining oil is by necessity harder and more expensive and environmentally destructive to remove from the earth, since the "low hanging fruit" has for the most part already been plucked out of existence. Ruppert believes, and there is considerable evidence to support, that all of human civilization is in a death spiral which will accelerate as oil usage surges even while the oil supply shrinks toward the zero point (zero point is not, incidentally, zero oil: it is the point where obtaining oil becomes so expensive and energy-intensive that there is no return for mining it...think of it in these terms: if you're starving, and somebody tells you there's a strawberry on top of a mountain, you'll burn 3,000 calories obtaining the strawberry but only 10 from eating it, rendering the journey pointless). This will produce a collapse -- power, food and other basic necessities of modern life will no longer be available in sufficient quantity for our population, and will lead to a huge die-off which will encompass wars, riots, and global anarchy.
The driving force behind the collapse is obviously our gluttonous appetite for the energy and products oil provides us, but Rupert argues, also the blind greed and sociopathic disregard for human life which is characteristic of modern governmental systems, be they socialistic, communistic or capitalistic. Our desire for profit and comfort are pushing us faster and faster toward the cliff which Peak Oil represents, and rather than address the problem, he points out that all nations seem to be doubling down on aggressive acquisition of oil (through drilling and if necessary, war) while making meaningless, lip-service commitments to the environment and alternative sources of energy. One of the key arguments of the book is the jinxed relationship between money (fiat currency) and energy, which accelerates the collapse by building an infinite-growth paradigm: very crudely put, our economy must have infinite growth or it will stagnate and collapse, but the resources we base our currency and our growth around, are not infinite. Thus at the heart of the paradigm is a paradox which can lead to only one catastrophic outcome.
All of these arguments are well-presented and difficult to refute on any level without resorting to sophistry or name-calling ("You're just a prophet of doom/conspiracy theorist!"), or the use of wobbly statistics and ideas that rely more on optimism and hope than fact. Nobody, after all, wants to believe our civilization is on its last kick and that our children or grandchildren will grow up in a dystopian future. On the other hand, some of the conclusions Ruppert reaches, and some of his predictions, are less impressive; the main difficulty with the book is that Ruppert, while highly intelligent and very knowledgeable, is really more of a blogger than an author. His writing style varies from arresting to amateurish, gripping to boring, and like many people with martyr complexes (he committed suicide in 2014), he has a tendency toward egotism and would-be omniscience. This makes a 220-page book feel like it's 1,000 pages, which is why it took me aeons to read it when I usually burn through books of this nature in less than a week. It is also why I prefer Ruppert as a public speaker (watch his videos or the documentary), or even as an article-writer and blogger, to a book-length author.
Having said that, I really do feel that CONFRONTING COLLAPSE is a book which ought to be read or at least skimmed by anyone who is still whistling past the petroleum graveyard. Our species (and all species on this planet we dominate) are in an existential struggle against our own excesses and the paradigms we have developed to live safe and comfortable lives. It is well past time that someone in power accepted the unsustainability of our way of life and enacted radical changes to meet the future, instead of telling us a few electric cars and some recycling will save the day, or just sticking their heads in the sand while choking out the words, "All is well!" All is manifestly not well and it is easy to understand why Ruppert's own life mirrored the spiral into destruction that he anticipates for our race. He was just sincere enough to agonize over the needless dilemma in which we now find ourselves, and just sharp enough to see that human nature is sufficiently selfish and illogical that nothing would be done to solve the dilemma until it was far past too late. I leave you with some of his more haunting words, which certainly go a fair country distance toward explaining why he chose to end his own life:
"Bridges are burning all around us; bridges to responses that might have mitigated the already brutal (and just beginning) ravages of Peak Oil; bridges to reduce the likelihood of war and famine; bridges to avoid our selectively chosen suicide; bridges to change at least a part of energy infrastructure and consumption; bridges to becoming something better than we are or have been; bridges to non-violence. Those bridges are effectively gone."
September 29, 2024
THE MANY WORLD(S) OF DUNE: PART II
Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic.
I am often sluggish in delivering promises -- or threats -- but slow delivery is not the same as no delivery, so here we are. Some time ago I began a dive into Frank Herbert's DUNE, one of the most influential novels of all time, which spawned not only a slew of sequels but also numerous cinematic adaptations, culminating most recently in Dennis Villaneuve's highly successful film series, which is still ongoing. You may recall that I wrote an incoherent rant in these very pages denouncing DUNE PART ONE as a "dumbed down" version of Herbert's universe. Specifically, I attacked the dialog, which I thought especially weak and insipid.
In the frenzy of my attack I neglected to mention that I actually rather liked the movie itself. It was by no means great, but it showed promise, and there were touches which were quite inspired and even brilliant. DUNE PART TWO was far better in almost every respect, which is a double accomplishment, because the world Herbert built in his novel is so complex, so rich with lore, so dependent upon internal monologue and numerous points of view, that for decades it has been deemed "untranslatable" to the screen.
My first exploration of Herbert's universe was not an analysis of the novel but rather a review of David Lynch's ill-fated but highly spirited 1985 adaptation of the book, which I likened to bad opera: it's a slog, and often ridiculous, but it is unquestionably and seductively lavish, and there is so much craft in the effort one cannot help but appreciate the final result. Actually, one of the factors which makes Lynch's take on DUNE such a mess is the quite admirable decision he made to cram as many of Herbert's complexities and nuances into the movie as humanly possible. Instead of streamlining the massive storyline and slimming the concepts into digestible form, he simply dumps the entire mass onto our heads, which I grant you showed an impressive trust in the intellectual capacity of the audience, but ended up carrying us away on a tide of ideas.
Villanueve's approach to the tangle that is DUNE was much more practical if less idealistic. He did not attempt, as Lynch did, to cook the whole cow on a kitchen stove, but rather to serve as much meat as possible without choking us to death. In the first film he went rather overboard keeping things simple. In the second he corrects course to a degree that left me almost completely satisfied. DUNE PART TWO is not a perfect film, it is not even a "great" film with a capital "G," but it is very good and also very respectful of its source material. As my brother remarked after we watched it, it is ultimately just one man's take on Herbert's dizzying ideas, but it does not follow the odious Hollywood habit of trying to "improve" upon the originator's vision. This begs the question, "What was that vision? And why is it important?"
DUNE is not merely a science fiction novel, any more than LORD OF THE RINGS is merely a fantasy. It is an almost incredibly sophisticated analysis of the forces which move humanity -- politics, economics, and religion chiefly among them. In the world of DUNE, Herbert created a universe which is feudal in nature. The galaxy is ruled by an emperor whose army, the Sardaukar, are considered by all to be invincible, though everyone is more or less intriguing against him anyway. His imperium is made up of individual worlds, each ruled by Great Houses, noble families each with their own military and their own ambitions and bitter rivals. The most valuable commodity in existence is the spice melange, which not only vastly extends life, but allows a form of space travel called "folding" which makes distances immaterial. This spice is found on only one planet in the universe, the desert planet of Arrakis a.k.a. Dune, and cannot be artificially reproduced, making this obscure and hostile world the axis of civilization even though it is regarded as a hostile wasteland. Because the religion of the imperium forbids artificial intelligence, humans have developed "schools of thought" to replace computers, and one of these schools, the Bene Gesserit, has for thousands of years been conducting a breeding experiment designed to produce what amounts to a superhuman being. The story's protagonist, Paul Atreides, is the end result of this millennia-long effort, but he does not know it, and DUNE is to some extent an exploration of Paul's often contradictory attempts to both escape from, to exploit, and to rise above his own destiny.
It is said that J.R.R. Tolkien hated DUNE because it takes the view that all of humanity's regulating systems -- government, economics, politics, religion, philosophy, and even morality -- are essentially secular control mechanisms. That morality is in essence a construct, and that it can be adjusted according to who is in power. When Paul finds himself in the hands of a band of dangerous desert nomads called the Fremen, and begins to grasp that these are the warriors who might be able to defeat the Sardaukar and unseat the emperor who betrayed his family, he and his witch mother embark on a course of using the Fremen to gain revenge and ultimately seize power; but this course involves a tremendous level of conscious manipulation and deceit. Paul exploits his unnatural abillities to assume a messianic role among the Fremen, becoming a combination of Jesus and Joan of Arc, and unleashes a "holy war" which shakes the universe to its foundations, and threatens to turn Paul into a much worse villain than his various nemeses.
This is, of course, only the most superficial and cursory explanation of Herbert's creation. To fully analyse DUNE would take a book nearly as long as DUNE itself, so we will content ourselves with saying that the story is a study of power, which makes it rather similar at a glance to GAME OF THRONES, but unlike GoT it is also a fully conscious examination of humanity itself, and the various means by which we humans regulate our existence. Dennis Villenueve succeeds with his films in very large part because he sticks closely to this idea -- the way the Emperor motivates his soldiers through a carefully crafted warrior religion which is deeply cultic in nature, and the way Paul motivates his warriors in an eerily similar way. And by "motivates," I mean, and Villenueve means, "exploit." Because at its core, DUNE is also about the way our regulatory systems, be they called government (patriotism, nationalism), religion (fanaticism, jihad), or even psychology and anthropology (manipulation of the masses through dear or dark empathy), are simply devices engineered to get people to do whatever the hell those in power desire. The Atreides are the "good guys" of the story, but their leader, Duke Leto (Paul's father), is in his own way just as ruthless, cunning and manipulative as any of his enemies, if only by sheer necessity. He too can only stay in power if he "keeps his knife hand ready and his shield at full charge."
In DUNE, the House of Atriedes' greatest rival is House Harkonnen, who are unquestionably evil, though driven by the same basic motives as everyone else. The Harkonnens ultimately join forces with the Emperor to destroy the Atreides, who the Emperor see as a long-term threat to his power. The Emperor uses the Harkonnens as a tool, but the Harkonnes are also using the Emperor to position themselves to become greater threats to his position. And Villenueve rightly explores how the Harkonnens manipulate their own people with a combination of terror, gladiatorial games, and appeals to nationalism and greed, in their war against the Atreides. Likewise, the Bene Gesserit witches are master manipulators, using their knowledge of genetic engineering as well as their command of "the voice" (a way of overriding human will) and other tricks to shape events in a way that conforms to their own ambitions. This is true all down the line. Indeed, every one of the power blocks Herbert creates in DUNE and its sequels -- the Emperor, the Great Houses, the Bene Gesserit, the Spacing Guild, the Bene Tleilax, etc. -- are united in their desire to use force, fraud, intrigue, and any other methods which may come to hand to protect their own position and to improve it. This conforms precisely to Realpolitik right here on Earth, and it can be bewildering and depressing, because none of us truly wants to believe that our national identity, race-ethnicity, sexuality, religious and philosophical beliefs, etc. are simply tools by which we are controlled by others. Nor do we wish, in our hearts, to reduce life itself to a mere struggle for power. Writers like Tolkien approach the problem of good versus evil in a more literal and clear-cut manner, in which the good are unquestionably good (though prone to temptation) while the evil are questionably evil, an exception like Gollum more or less proving the rule, since Gollum, who was redeemable, ultimately chose not to redeem himself. In DUNE, the Atreides are "good" because they cling to a code of honor which distinguishes them from their opponents, but on a larger scale they also play by the cruel and cynical rules of the universe they inhabit. Paul, however, tilts increasingly away from the Atreides code as the book progresses into the "cruel and cynical" vein. Through his powers of prescience, sees that by manipulating the Fremen to serve his own goals -- first survival, then revenge, then finally power -- he may very well unleash a force upon the universe far more evil than the Emperor or the Harkonnens; yet he is content to take the risk to satisfy his ambitions. In the end, Paul is himself manipulated by the historical forces that circumstances, including his own existence, have unleashed. Unlike LORD OF THE RINGS, where the good characters are occasionally pushed along in their quest by divine intervention, or GAME OF THRONES, which it could be argued is a contest between different gods using human tribal groupings as proxies, the world of DUNE recognizes no controlling master intelligence behind events. Rather -- and here it has some resemblance to the universe of Azimov's FOUNDATION series -- humanity is half-governed by the conscious manipulation of human agencies, and half by historical necessities which occur because the general trend of events presses that way whether the agencies in question want them to or not. The Bene Gesserit are by far the most farseeing, capable, and manipulative of all the various agencies in DUNE, but they too are ultimately helpless in the face of these historical earthquakes or floods. They created Paul, but in the end they find they cannot control him, just as Paul eventually discovers he cannot control the religious fervor of the Fremen or what it will do to the universe.
To bring this back to Villaneueve, I do believe that with DUNE PART II, he hit upon the essential elements of the DUNE story. In PART I we get an unforgettable and terrifying glimpse of the way in which the Sarduakar are conditioned to do the Emperor's dirty work. In PART II, we see Paul systematically condition the Fremen to do his work which is just as dirty, using a mirror-image of the Emperor's methods. If these DUNE films are simplified versions of Herbert's novel, they have the saving grace -- minus the weak dialog of the first movie especially -- of not conflating simplicity and stupidity. What Herbert had to say about humanity and the way it regulates itself may not be pretty and may not be completely accurate, but it was necessary, it was brilliant, and so long as anyone can read or think for themselves it will continue to evoke the sort of passionate debate which science fiction and fantasy seem to be capable of sparking perhaps more than any other genre.
I am often sluggish in delivering promises -- or threats -- but slow delivery is not the same as no delivery, so here we are. Some time ago I began a dive into Frank Herbert's DUNE, one of the most influential novels of all time, which spawned not only a slew of sequels but also numerous cinematic adaptations, culminating most recently in Dennis Villaneuve's highly successful film series, which is still ongoing. You may recall that I wrote an incoherent rant in these very pages denouncing DUNE PART ONE as a "dumbed down" version of Herbert's universe. Specifically, I attacked the dialog, which I thought especially weak and insipid.
In the frenzy of my attack I neglected to mention that I actually rather liked the movie itself. It was by no means great, but it showed promise, and there were touches which were quite inspired and even brilliant. DUNE PART TWO was far better in almost every respect, which is a double accomplishment, because the world Herbert built in his novel is so complex, so rich with lore, so dependent upon internal monologue and numerous points of view, that for decades it has been deemed "untranslatable" to the screen.
My first exploration of Herbert's universe was not an analysis of the novel but rather a review of David Lynch's ill-fated but highly spirited 1985 adaptation of the book, which I likened to bad opera: it's a slog, and often ridiculous, but it is unquestionably and seductively lavish, and there is so much craft in the effort one cannot help but appreciate the final result. Actually, one of the factors which makes Lynch's take on DUNE such a mess is the quite admirable decision he made to cram as many of Herbert's complexities and nuances into the movie as humanly possible. Instead of streamlining the massive storyline and slimming the concepts into digestible form, he simply dumps the entire mass onto our heads, which I grant you showed an impressive trust in the intellectual capacity of the audience, but ended up carrying us away on a tide of ideas.
Villanueve's approach to the tangle that is DUNE was much more practical if less idealistic. He did not attempt, as Lynch did, to cook the whole cow on a kitchen stove, but rather to serve as much meat as possible without choking us to death. In the first film he went rather overboard keeping things simple. In the second he corrects course to a degree that left me almost completely satisfied. DUNE PART TWO is not a perfect film, it is not even a "great" film with a capital "G," but it is very good and also very respectful of its source material. As my brother remarked after we watched it, it is ultimately just one man's take on Herbert's dizzying ideas, but it does not follow the odious Hollywood habit of trying to "improve" upon the originator's vision. This begs the question, "What was that vision? And why is it important?"
DUNE is not merely a science fiction novel, any more than LORD OF THE RINGS is merely a fantasy. It is an almost incredibly sophisticated analysis of the forces which move humanity -- politics, economics, and religion chiefly among them. In the world of DUNE, Herbert created a universe which is feudal in nature. The galaxy is ruled by an emperor whose army, the Sardaukar, are considered by all to be invincible, though everyone is more or less intriguing against him anyway. His imperium is made up of individual worlds, each ruled by Great Houses, noble families each with their own military and their own ambitions and bitter rivals. The most valuable commodity in existence is the spice melange, which not only vastly extends life, but allows a form of space travel called "folding" which makes distances immaterial. This spice is found on only one planet in the universe, the desert planet of Arrakis a.k.a. Dune, and cannot be artificially reproduced, making this obscure and hostile world the axis of civilization even though it is regarded as a hostile wasteland. Because the religion of the imperium forbids artificial intelligence, humans have developed "schools of thought" to replace computers, and one of these schools, the Bene Gesserit, has for thousands of years been conducting a breeding experiment designed to produce what amounts to a superhuman being. The story's protagonist, Paul Atreides, is the end result of this millennia-long effort, but he does not know it, and DUNE is to some extent an exploration of Paul's often contradictory attempts to both escape from, to exploit, and to rise above his own destiny.
It is said that J.R.R. Tolkien hated DUNE because it takes the view that all of humanity's regulating systems -- government, economics, politics, religion, philosophy, and even morality -- are essentially secular control mechanisms. That morality is in essence a construct, and that it can be adjusted according to who is in power. When Paul finds himself in the hands of a band of dangerous desert nomads called the Fremen, and begins to grasp that these are the warriors who might be able to defeat the Sardaukar and unseat the emperor who betrayed his family, he and his witch mother embark on a course of using the Fremen to gain revenge and ultimately seize power; but this course involves a tremendous level of conscious manipulation and deceit. Paul exploits his unnatural abillities to assume a messianic role among the Fremen, becoming a combination of Jesus and Joan of Arc, and unleashes a "holy war" which shakes the universe to its foundations, and threatens to turn Paul into a much worse villain than his various nemeses.
This is, of course, only the most superficial and cursory explanation of Herbert's creation. To fully analyse DUNE would take a book nearly as long as DUNE itself, so we will content ourselves with saying that the story is a study of power, which makes it rather similar at a glance to GAME OF THRONES, but unlike GoT it is also a fully conscious examination of humanity itself, and the various means by which we humans regulate our existence. Dennis Villenueve succeeds with his films in very large part because he sticks closely to this idea -- the way the Emperor motivates his soldiers through a carefully crafted warrior religion which is deeply cultic in nature, and the way Paul motivates his warriors in an eerily similar way. And by "motivates," I mean, and Villenueve means, "exploit." Because at its core, DUNE is also about the way our regulatory systems, be they called government (patriotism, nationalism), religion (fanaticism, jihad), or even psychology and anthropology (manipulation of the masses through dear or dark empathy), are simply devices engineered to get people to do whatever the hell those in power desire. The Atreides are the "good guys" of the story, but their leader, Duke Leto (Paul's father), is in his own way just as ruthless, cunning and manipulative as any of his enemies, if only by sheer necessity. He too can only stay in power if he "keeps his knife hand ready and his shield at full charge."
In DUNE, the House of Atriedes' greatest rival is House Harkonnen, who are unquestionably evil, though driven by the same basic motives as everyone else. The Harkonnens ultimately join forces with the Emperor to destroy the Atreides, who the Emperor see as a long-term threat to his power. The Emperor uses the Harkonnens as a tool, but the Harkonnes are also using the Emperor to position themselves to become greater threats to his position. And Villenueve rightly explores how the Harkonnens manipulate their own people with a combination of terror, gladiatorial games, and appeals to nationalism and greed, in their war against the Atreides. Likewise, the Bene Gesserit witches are master manipulators, using their knowledge of genetic engineering as well as their command of "the voice" (a way of overriding human will) and other tricks to shape events in a way that conforms to their own ambitions. This is true all down the line. Indeed, every one of the power blocks Herbert creates in DUNE and its sequels -- the Emperor, the Great Houses, the Bene Gesserit, the Spacing Guild, the Bene Tleilax, etc. -- are united in their desire to use force, fraud, intrigue, and any other methods which may come to hand to protect their own position and to improve it. This conforms precisely to Realpolitik right here on Earth, and it can be bewildering and depressing, because none of us truly wants to believe that our national identity, race-ethnicity, sexuality, religious and philosophical beliefs, etc. are simply tools by which we are controlled by others. Nor do we wish, in our hearts, to reduce life itself to a mere struggle for power. Writers like Tolkien approach the problem of good versus evil in a more literal and clear-cut manner, in which the good are unquestionably good (though prone to temptation) while the evil are questionably evil, an exception like Gollum more or less proving the rule, since Gollum, who was redeemable, ultimately chose not to redeem himself. In DUNE, the Atreides are "good" because they cling to a code of honor which distinguishes them from their opponents, but on a larger scale they also play by the cruel and cynical rules of the universe they inhabit. Paul, however, tilts increasingly away from the Atreides code as the book progresses into the "cruel and cynical" vein. Through his powers of prescience, sees that by manipulating the Fremen to serve his own goals -- first survival, then revenge, then finally power -- he may very well unleash a force upon the universe far more evil than the Emperor or the Harkonnens; yet he is content to take the risk to satisfy his ambitions. In the end, Paul is himself manipulated by the historical forces that circumstances, including his own existence, have unleashed. Unlike LORD OF THE RINGS, where the good characters are occasionally pushed along in their quest by divine intervention, or GAME OF THRONES, which it could be argued is a contest between different gods using human tribal groupings as proxies, the world of DUNE recognizes no controlling master intelligence behind events. Rather -- and here it has some resemblance to the universe of Azimov's FOUNDATION series -- humanity is half-governed by the conscious manipulation of human agencies, and half by historical necessities which occur because the general trend of events presses that way whether the agencies in question want them to or not. The Bene Gesserit are by far the most farseeing, capable, and manipulative of all the various agencies in DUNE, but they too are ultimately helpless in the face of these historical earthquakes or floods. They created Paul, but in the end they find they cannot control him, just as Paul eventually discovers he cannot control the religious fervor of the Fremen or what it will do to the universe.
To bring this back to Villaneueve, I do believe that with DUNE PART II, he hit upon the essential elements of the DUNE story. In PART I we get an unforgettable and terrifying glimpse of the way in which the Sarduakar are conditioned to do the Emperor's dirty work. In PART II, we see Paul systematically condition the Fremen to do his work which is just as dirty, using a mirror-image of the Emperor's methods. If these DUNE films are simplified versions of Herbert's novel, they have the saving grace -- minus the weak dialog of the first movie especially -- of not conflating simplicity and stupidity. What Herbert had to say about humanity and the way it regulates itself may not be pretty and may not be completely accurate, but it was necessary, it was brilliant, and so long as anyone can read or think for themselves it will continue to evoke the sort of passionate debate which science fiction and fantasy seem to be capable of sparking perhaps more than any other genre.
September 27, 2024
AS I PLEASE XXVII: UNBEARABLE JUDAS EDITION
It's funny how the people you'd take a bullet for are the same ones who pull the trigger on you.
I took a brief hiatus from this blog to handle some personal business, and now that I've returned, I have a lot to say about a lot, so it's time for yet another entry of "As I Please." Let's get into it.
* I have recently undergone a profound personal betrayal. A very close friend of mine, someone I trusted enough to give a key to my home, someone I loved enough to place their photo upon my wall, someone with whom I have exchanged the sort of deep, dark secrets that only trusted pals hand over to each other for safekeeping, decided it would be momentarily expedient to sink a couple of daggers between my shoulder blades. Now, in my life I have gone through a great deal good and bad, but I have surprisingly little experience with betrayal. Sitting here now, I had to think long and hard to the last time someone turned on me so thoroughly and unexpectedly, and to my surprise, I had to go back to elementary school, when my good pal M.C. turned on me violently without any explanation whatsoever. (The betrayals I experienced in Los Angeles were unpleasant but also unsurprising, so they don't really count: see the old cliche about dogs and fleas.) I would say this long streak of "trust rewarded" has just been my good fortune, but the truth is that I have generally been quite selective in who I admit to my inner circle. When you have been subjected to the sort of bullying I experienced when I was in my tweens (a brief but extremely formative period in my life), you adopt a correspondingly low opinion of human nature, and the unexpected upside of this outlook is that you do not lower your guard easily. That tendency, coupled with the years I spent in law enforcement and the writerly necessity of studying human nature down to a granular level, ensured that I have generally chosen my friends and confidants with great care. This time my instincts failed me -- not once, but twice -- and the cost was extremely high. I am revealing this not because I want to complain, and certainly not because I want to name names that would be meaningless to you or go into sordid details you wouldn't be interested in anyway, but because this shabby treachery has yielded an unexpected dividend. Not only have my actual friends rallied around me to a degree I would not have believed possible, culminating, last night, in a kind of impromptu happy hour, I find that I have very little desire to exact revenge upon this person. I am intellectually angry, but emotionally my feelings are limited to disgust. I think I will be content to let the lying, the snitching and the gaslighting I was subjected to, which is now common knowledge, lead to its own independent consequences and take no hand them myself. This feeling represents a fairly enormous leap from my old, vindictive mind-set, and shows all the tedious lectures I've given in this blog ("life lessons") have not just been blather and bullshit. Yep, I actually try and practice what I preach, and sometimes I even succeed (!). In this particular case the person involved has exposed themselves as a rat not merely to me, but to almost everyone she works with, and my spies tell me she is painfully well aware of it. But whether she feels remorse, or self-pity, or even that weird form of anger that guilty parties usually direct at their victims after screwing them over, makes no difference to me now. This was addition by subtraction -- painful subtraction to be sure, but in the end, still a positive. No group of apostles benefits from a Judas, and in the long run I truly believe that Sherlock Holmes was correct when he said "her offenses carry their own punishments." Sometimes in life it's necessary to right those who have wronged you, if the wrong be egregious enough: other times, as Sun Tsu once noted, all you have to do is wait by the river long enough, and their bodies will go floating by.
* About twelve years ago, I made a point of turning off social media six months before any large-scale political election. In those days this was a very effective means of shutting out the hateful noise I saw spewing from friends of mine who were otherwise rational human beings regardless of their affiliations. Unfortunately it is no longer 2012, and this sort of self-imposed incommicado is no longer really possible. Notwithstanding social media, I cannot turn on the radio in my kitchen, or in my car, or use any music app which runs commercials, or jump on YouTube, or drive anywhere, or even use my phone, without being bombarded into a kind of shell-shocked dismay by political attack ads of the ugliest possible type, by automated polls, by robo-calls, by unwanted text messages, by endless yard signs, all concerning either the upcoming gubernatorial or presidential elections. I would like to believe this nonsense is merely a by-product of our deeply corrupt and ugly electoral system, which runs on money and nothing but money, and always plays to the worst instincts in voters, but I am tempted to wonder if it isn't all part of a truly sinister master plan, one designed to fill the perspective voter with so much disgust at the entire sordid process that they simply refuse to vote at all. If this is not actually the case, it is certainly the actual effect even if there is no controlling intelligence behind the squalor. I have never met anyone of any political stripe, no matter how extreme, who didn't regard the American election season as tedious, ugly and unbearable, and it seems to be worse now than it has ever been. The radio ads I heard just moments ago when cooking in my kitchen exult in exploiting the rape of a five year old child in hopes of provoking the sort of anger, fear, and bigotry which have characterized our political process for way too many years now. We desperately need the most severe possible election reforms in this country, and as with most of what we desperately need from a political perspective, we are 100% not going to get it. This is the face of modern democracy.
* I spent last weekend in a cabin in the woods up on the Pennsylvania - New York border. I drank beer, chopped wood, swam in very cold water, sat by an ever-blazing firepit, ate steak and eggs, shot guns at targets which were largely safe from my bullets, and did a lot of talking with two old friends, neither of whom I see very often. I cannot tell you what good this did my soul after the backstabbing I so recently endured, but what really struck me about the experience was how natural it felt. I live downtown, in a small city, I haven't fired a gun in 20 years, and haven't handled an axe in probably close to 25 or more, and while I won't say I did these things particularly well, the actions themselves felt almost entirely comfortable. I was reminded of some horseback riding I did a long time ago. I had never ridden a horse in my life, and yet when I took my fractious mount, named Satan (believe it or not, that was the horse's name, and a very apt handle it was) to a full gallop, I felt as cool as a cucumber despite a loose saddle and a lack of health insurance. I don't believe this was courge, rather ancestral memory. It just goes to show you that you can take the man out of nature, you can separate him from his tools, you can soften him with air conditioning and other comforts, but you can't entirely eliminate the pleasure he feels at connecting with the Y in his chromosomes.
* Today I received a check from the book signing I held on September 7. I had quite forgotten that the venue that was kind enough to host this effort had sold a quantity of my books at the counter prior to the event itself, and only charged me the 4% credit card fee off each transaction. In this day and age of electronic transfers, where money is reduced to an idea rather than something tangible, it was immensely satisfying to see the sum, small in relative terms but not negligible by any means, printed on that pale blue-gray paper. I will, of course, deposit the check electronically, but I may frame it just to remind me that writing, while not yet my sole source of income by a longshot, is not just my hobby, either.
* In addition to unbearable political ads, I have been reminded recently, in ways both personal-petty and not, that bureaucracy, while certainly necessary to maintain this clanking vehicle we call civilization, is also infuriating and has probably killed more people than bullets and bombs together. On the petty personal level, I have had to take my car in to two different garages a half-dozen times to get it past emissions, not due to any catastrophic shortcoming but rather a loose hose in the engine which was causing the warning lights to flare unnecessarily; that and a spot of rust on the exhaust so small you couldn't have slipped a dime through it. I have also had to wait for a new driver's license for something like 45 - 60 days, forcing to me drive with the expired one until, after God knows how much time and effort, I finally got the new one in hand (the picture is, admittedly, very good for a change). This doesn't matter in the scheme of things, of course; it's just exasperating and reminds one that the government is like a set of huge wheels that rolls with impercepitble slowness but immense weight. Which brings me to the story of NFKRZ, one of my favorite YouTubers. NFKRZ, a.k.a. Roman, is a Russian expat who fled his native land rather than get sucked into Putin's war in Ukraine, and for the last two years I have watched him deteriorate spiritually and mentally as he has battled his way through nests of red tape in one European country after another. I understand that in wartime, moreso than in what we laughably refer to as peacetime, refugees are a problem for which there is often no easy solution; but these "problems" are also human beings whose suffering is terribly real. Roman seems like a good man; he is certainly funny enough, and detests racism, nationalism, ethnic prejudice, war, and all the rest of it, which means he has no place in Putin's half-fascist, half-Mafia state. But he also seems to have no place anywhere in Europe, and thanks to the robot bureaucracy of YouTube itself, he is being demonitized thanks to his stateless condition and may soon run out of money as well as visa. It's easy for us to speak so generally about "illegal immigrants" and "refugees" as if they were weather conditions or species of insects, and hard to keep in mind that but for the grace of whatever god you may pray to, they could be us -- just ordinary people trapped in extraordinary circumstances, trying to be seen as people and not digits.
* CAGE LIFE, my first novel, which I released in 2016, was recently named a Readers Favorite bronze medal winner, an accolade which lands atop its previous laurels of Zealot Script "Book of the Year" and Best Indie Book Award Winner for Mystery / Suspense, among others. I do confess disappointment that it wasn't a silver or a gold, and that its stablemate, KNUCKLE DOWN, did not win or place in the contest (both were rated Readers Favorite 5 Stars), but it's nice to know that my first horse still has some legs despite being so long out of the gate.
* I had plans to go see a baseball game tonight, but it is once again raining. Though I was able to get to three or four games this season, that number would have doubled if not for the fact that every goddamn time I want to go to a game, it fucking well rains on me. This is not just perception. If you were bored enough to compare the schedule of York Revolution "home" games with the days it has rained during this minor league baseball season, you'd find the numbers correspond about 1:1. Indeed, one of the games I did attend was rained out 3/4 of the way through, and another aborted before the first inning after we all sat in the damp stands for an hour and a half, drinking vastly overpriced beer and eating vastly oversalted popcorn. I mention this because someone told me yesterday (it was raining again then, too) that "we need this rain because it's been such a dry summer" and I refrained from killing him, which also shows vast personal growth on my part (I kid because I love).
And that about wraps up this much-overdue entry on a drizzly Friday I spent getting my car inspected for the fifth time. At least it was successful this go-round. In the coming days and weeks I will be posting a review of Carly Rheilan's disturbing novel A CAT'S CRADLE, writing another entry in "Memory Lane" and seeing to two moldy old promises I made here -- the first, to continue my examination of Frank Herbert's DUNE series (the books and the films), and the second, to take a deep dive into one of the best-written television series of all time, Chris Haddock's DA VINCI'S INQUEST.
I took a brief hiatus from this blog to handle some personal business, and now that I've returned, I have a lot to say about a lot, so it's time for yet another entry of "As I Please." Let's get into it.
* I have recently undergone a profound personal betrayal. A very close friend of mine, someone I trusted enough to give a key to my home, someone I loved enough to place their photo upon my wall, someone with whom I have exchanged the sort of deep, dark secrets that only trusted pals hand over to each other for safekeeping, decided it would be momentarily expedient to sink a couple of daggers between my shoulder blades. Now, in my life I have gone through a great deal good and bad, but I have surprisingly little experience with betrayal. Sitting here now, I had to think long and hard to the last time someone turned on me so thoroughly and unexpectedly, and to my surprise, I had to go back to elementary school, when my good pal M.C. turned on me violently without any explanation whatsoever. (The betrayals I experienced in Los Angeles were unpleasant but also unsurprising, so they don't really count: see the old cliche about dogs and fleas.) I would say this long streak of "trust rewarded" has just been my good fortune, but the truth is that I have generally been quite selective in who I admit to my inner circle. When you have been subjected to the sort of bullying I experienced when I was in my tweens (a brief but extremely formative period in my life), you adopt a correspondingly low opinion of human nature, and the unexpected upside of this outlook is that you do not lower your guard easily. That tendency, coupled with the years I spent in law enforcement and the writerly necessity of studying human nature down to a granular level, ensured that I have generally chosen my friends and confidants with great care. This time my instincts failed me -- not once, but twice -- and the cost was extremely high. I am revealing this not because I want to complain, and certainly not because I want to name names that would be meaningless to you or go into sordid details you wouldn't be interested in anyway, but because this shabby treachery has yielded an unexpected dividend. Not only have my actual friends rallied around me to a degree I would not have believed possible, culminating, last night, in a kind of impromptu happy hour, I find that I have very little desire to exact revenge upon this person. I am intellectually angry, but emotionally my feelings are limited to disgust. I think I will be content to let the lying, the snitching and the gaslighting I was subjected to, which is now common knowledge, lead to its own independent consequences and take no hand them myself. This feeling represents a fairly enormous leap from my old, vindictive mind-set, and shows all the tedious lectures I've given in this blog ("life lessons") have not just been blather and bullshit. Yep, I actually try and practice what I preach, and sometimes I even succeed (!). In this particular case the person involved has exposed themselves as a rat not merely to me, but to almost everyone she works with, and my spies tell me she is painfully well aware of it. But whether she feels remorse, or self-pity, or even that weird form of anger that guilty parties usually direct at their victims after screwing them over, makes no difference to me now. This was addition by subtraction -- painful subtraction to be sure, but in the end, still a positive. No group of apostles benefits from a Judas, and in the long run I truly believe that Sherlock Holmes was correct when he said "her offenses carry their own punishments." Sometimes in life it's necessary to right those who have wronged you, if the wrong be egregious enough: other times, as Sun Tsu once noted, all you have to do is wait by the river long enough, and their bodies will go floating by.
* About twelve years ago, I made a point of turning off social media six months before any large-scale political election. In those days this was a very effective means of shutting out the hateful noise I saw spewing from friends of mine who were otherwise rational human beings regardless of their affiliations. Unfortunately it is no longer 2012, and this sort of self-imposed incommicado is no longer really possible. Notwithstanding social media, I cannot turn on the radio in my kitchen, or in my car, or use any music app which runs commercials, or jump on YouTube, or drive anywhere, or even use my phone, without being bombarded into a kind of shell-shocked dismay by political attack ads of the ugliest possible type, by automated polls, by robo-calls, by unwanted text messages, by endless yard signs, all concerning either the upcoming gubernatorial or presidential elections. I would like to believe this nonsense is merely a by-product of our deeply corrupt and ugly electoral system, which runs on money and nothing but money, and always plays to the worst instincts in voters, but I am tempted to wonder if it isn't all part of a truly sinister master plan, one designed to fill the perspective voter with so much disgust at the entire sordid process that they simply refuse to vote at all. If this is not actually the case, it is certainly the actual effect even if there is no controlling intelligence behind the squalor. I have never met anyone of any political stripe, no matter how extreme, who didn't regard the American election season as tedious, ugly and unbearable, and it seems to be worse now than it has ever been. The radio ads I heard just moments ago when cooking in my kitchen exult in exploiting the rape of a five year old child in hopes of provoking the sort of anger, fear, and bigotry which have characterized our political process for way too many years now. We desperately need the most severe possible election reforms in this country, and as with most of what we desperately need from a political perspective, we are 100% not going to get it. This is the face of modern democracy.
* I spent last weekend in a cabin in the woods up on the Pennsylvania - New York border. I drank beer, chopped wood, swam in very cold water, sat by an ever-blazing firepit, ate steak and eggs, shot guns at targets which were largely safe from my bullets, and did a lot of talking with two old friends, neither of whom I see very often. I cannot tell you what good this did my soul after the backstabbing I so recently endured, but what really struck me about the experience was how natural it felt. I live downtown, in a small city, I haven't fired a gun in 20 years, and haven't handled an axe in probably close to 25 or more, and while I won't say I did these things particularly well, the actions themselves felt almost entirely comfortable. I was reminded of some horseback riding I did a long time ago. I had never ridden a horse in my life, and yet when I took my fractious mount, named Satan (believe it or not, that was the horse's name, and a very apt handle it was) to a full gallop, I felt as cool as a cucumber despite a loose saddle and a lack of health insurance. I don't believe this was courge, rather ancestral memory. It just goes to show you that you can take the man out of nature, you can separate him from his tools, you can soften him with air conditioning and other comforts, but you can't entirely eliminate the pleasure he feels at connecting with the Y in his chromosomes.
* Today I received a check from the book signing I held on September 7. I had quite forgotten that the venue that was kind enough to host this effort had sold a quantity of my books at the counter prior to the event itself, and only charged me the 4% credit card fee off each transaction. In this day and age of electronic transfers, where money is reduced to an idea rather than something tangible, it was immensely satisfying to see the sum, small in relative terms but not negligible by any means, printed on that pale blue-gray paper. I will, of course, deposit the check electronically, but I may frame it just to remind me that writing, while not yet my sole source of income by a longshot, is not just my hobby, either.
* In addition to unbearable political ads, I have been reminded recently, in ways both personal-petty and not, that bureaucracy, while certainly necessary to maintain this clanking vehicle we call civilization, is also infuriating and has probably killed more people than bullets and bombs together. On the petty personal level, I have had to take my car in to two different garages a half-dozen times to get it past emissions, not due to any catastrophic shortcoming but rather a loose hose in the engine which was causing the warning lights to flare unnecessarily; that and a spot of rust on the exhaust so small you couldn't have slipped a dime through it. I have also had to wait for a new driver's license for something like 45 - 60 days, forcing to me drive with the expired one until, after God knows how much time and effort, I finally got the new one in hand (the picture is, admittedly, very good for a change). This doesn't matter in the scheme of things, of course; it's just exasperating and reminds one that the government is like a set of huge wheels that rolls with impercepitble slowness but immense weight. Which brings me to the story of NFKRZ, one of my favorite YouTubers. NFKRZ, a.k.a. Roman, is a Russian expat who fled his native land rather than get sucked into Putin's war in Ukraine, and for the last two years I have watched him deteriorate spiritually and mentally as he has battled his way through nests of red tape in one European country after another. I understand that in wartime, moreso than in what we laughably refer to as peacetime, refugees are a problem for which there is often no easy solution; but these "problems" are also human beings whose suffering is terribly real. Roman seems like a good man; he is certainly funny enough, and detests racism, nationalism, ethnic prejudice, war, and all the rest of it, which means he has no place in Putin's half-fascist, half-Mafia state. But he also seems to have no place anywhere in Europe, and thanks to the robot bureaucracy of YouTube itself, he is being demonitized thanks to his stateless condition and may soon run out of money as well as visa. It's easy for us to speak so generally about "illegal immigrants" and "refugees" as if they were weather conditions or species of insects, and hard to keep in mind that but for the grace of whatever god you may pray to, they could be us -- just ordinary people trapped in extraordinary circumstances, trying to be seen as people and not digits.
* CAGE LIFE, my first novel, which I released in 2016, was recently named a Readers Favorite bronze medal winner, an accolade which lands atop its previous laurels of Zealot Script "Book of the Year" and Best Indie Book Award Winner for Mystery / Suspense, among others. I do confess disappointment that it wasn't a silver or a gold, and that its stablemate, KNUCKLE DOWN, did not win or place in the contest (both were rated Readers Favorite 5 Stars), but it's nice to know that my first horse still has some legs despite being so long out of the gate.
* I had plans to go see a baseball game tonight, but it is once again raining. Though I was able to get to three or four games this season, that number would have doubled if not for the fact that every goddamn time I want to go to a game, it fucking well rains on me. This is not just perception. If you were bored enough to compare the schedule of York Revolution "home" games with the days it has rained during this minor league baseball season, you'd find the numbers correspond about 1:1. Indeed, one of the games I did attend was rained out 3/4 of the way through, and another aborted before the first inning after we all sat in the damp stands for an hour and a half, drinking vastly overpriced beer and eating vastly oversalted popcorn. I mention this because someone told me yesterday (it was raining again then, too) that "we need this rain because it's been such a dry summer" and I refrained from killing him, which also shows vast personal growth on my part (I kid because I love).
And that about wraps up this much-overdue entry on a drizzly Friday I spent getting my car inspected for the fifth time. At least it was successful this go-round. In the coming days and weeks I will be posting a review of Carly Rheilan's disturbing novel A CAT'S CRADLE, writing another entry in "Memory Lane" and seeing to two moldy old promises I made here -- the first, to continue my examination of Frank Herbert's DUNE series (the books and the films), and the second, to take a deep dive into one of the best-written television series of all time, Chris Haddock's DA VINCI'S INQUEST.
September 16, 2024
BOOK REVIEW: P.G. WODEHOUSE'S "THE INIMITABLE JEEVES"
Intimitable: so good or unusual as to be impossible to copy; unique.
P.G. Wodehouse (1881 - 1975) was one of the most prolific and famous writers of the twentieth century, creating a slew of characters who became cultural bywords in his home country of Britain and in English-speaking countries everywhere; he was also a noteworthy presence in Hollywood for many years, and his stinging criticisms of the film industry's stupidities and excesses are just as timely today as they were a century ago when he made them. His fame has dimmed considerably with time, particularly on this, the Americas, side of the Atlantic, but his most enduring character, the farseeing, all-knowing butler Jeeves, is still referenced today by countless people who have never heard of Wodehouse. He remains one of the very few authors whose fictional creations have achieved the level of immortality where knowledge of the context is totally irrelevant.
I came to my knowledge of Wodehouse sideways, by reading George Orwell's essay "In Defense of P.G. Wodehouse." The writer had been captured by the Nazis in 1940 when they conquered France, and was accused of collaboration with them, a charge which lingered over him for many years and led him to live the balance of his life in America. It was a charge which was largely unfair, and such legitimacy as it possessed stemmed more from Wodehouse's combination of political naivete, an indifference to the age in which he was living, and an utter inability to work up any belligerent feeling against foreigners. Wodehouse was a humorist, his lens was comedic, and he seems to have been both unwilling and unable to look up from it.
"The Intimitable Jeeves" is a loosely assembled series of farcical incidents involving the narrator, a useless young Englishman of means named Bertie Wooster, and his all-knowing, impreturbable, implacable butler, Jeeves. Wooster personifies the idle rich man of the Edwardian Era, someone who has no real morals, convictions, intellect or substance of any kind, but -- to paraphrase Orwell -- possesses the reflexes of a gentleman. He is fairly harmless himself, but is continually being dragged into moronic situations by his old school friend, the even more useless Bingo Little, who is forever falling into romantic or economic disaster and demanding that Wooster get him out of Dutch. Wooster is, of course, incapable of this -- he is incapable of anything, really, except eating copious breakfasts -- but when his own well-intentioned but clumsy efforts inevitably fail, Jeeves steps in with equal inevitability, and pulls the strings in young master's favor. Jeeves is at once a counselor, confidant, friend, father figure, and confessor, but he is also the brain Wooster lacks, and what's more, he acts as a kind of reinforcing rod on Wooster's wobbly sense of propriety, ever nudging him toward what Jeeves perceives as "correct" behavior. The book's humor relies primarily on the inventiveness with which Bingo gets his long-suffering friend into trouble, and the greater inventiveness with which the omniscient, omnipotent Jeeves gets him out of it. Also in gentle if steady ridicule of the English society, both its upper classes and its more radical, pro-Marxist elements.
It would be a mistake, I think, to presume that Wodehouse is himself any type of social critic. His tone is not on that level, and it was said of him by the Germans who captured him when they overran France that he "lacked any political sense." Its true he mocks the stupidity of the narrator, and therefore the narrator's entire class, without mercy; but this mockery is also without cruelty, or any indication that he thinks society could or should be any different. Indeed, he pokes fun at the would-be revolutionists and feminists of the era with just as much quiet abandon: for example, one would-be Lenin is only too eager to stuff himself to bursting at the table of a lord, all the while denouncing the nobility. If there is a central theme to this novel, it is that there is always a man behind the throne: Wodehouse never once suggests what the reader already knows, to wit: that Jeeves ought to be the one with the money and the societal standing. But since Jeeves already has all the power, including the power to withhold his genius when young master does something he disapproves of like buying spats in the wrong colors, such trappings are unnecessary. Indeed, Jeeves himself is the most ferocious guardian of the social class which employs him and defines his horizons.
I am perhaps reading more into a lightweight period English comedy novel than I ought; this book is meant to make you laugh, and it is funny if you enjoy watching wealthy people make asses of themselves, especially when Jeeves ever-so-tactfully sees fit to remind Wooster that it is he, Jeeves, who is the true master. Take, for example, the incident where Wooster insists on wearing spats in the garish colors of his old university: the conservative Jeeves mightily disapproves, leading to a cold war between them. But when Jeeves saves Wooster for the umpteenth time from one of Little's idiocies, we get the following, conciliatory exchange:
"Jeeves...those spats?"
"Yes, sir?"
"You really dislike them?"
"Intensely, sir."
"You don't think time might induce you to change your views?"
"No, sir."
"All right then. Say no more. You may burn them."
"Thank you very much, sir. I have already done so. Before breakfast this morning. A quiet grey is far more suitable, sir. Thank you, sir."
This was my first exposure to Wodehouse and the plane of light comedic fiction upon which he spent his entire life and career. It was light, silly, and modestly engaging. It is the sort of fiction that does not make any pretense whatever at being more than it is, which in a day and age as pretentious and hollow as ours, was quite refreshing.
P.G. Wodehouse (1881 - 1975) was one of the most prolific and famous writers of the twentieth century, creating a slew of characters who became cultural bywords in his home country of Britain and in English-speaking countries everywhere; he was also a noteworthy presence in Hollywood for many years, and his stinging criticisms of the film industry's stupidities and excesses are just as timely today as they were a century ago when he made them. His fame has dimmed considerably with time, particularly on this, the Americas, side of the Atlantic, but his most enduring character, the farseeing, all-knowing butler Jeeves, is still referenced today by countless people who have never heard of Wodehouse. He remains one of the very few authors whose fictional creations have achieved the level of immortality where knowledge of the context is totally irrelevant.
I came to my knowledge of Wodehouse sideways, by reading George Orwell's essay "In Defense of P.G. Wodehouse." The writer had been captured by the Nazis in 1940 when they conquered France, and was accused of collaboration with them, a charge which lingered over him for many years and led him to live the balance of his life in America. It was a charge which was largely unfair, and such legitimacy as it possessed stemmed more from Wodehouse's combination of political naivete, an indifference to the age in which he was living, and an utter inability to work up any belligerent feeling against foreigners. Wodehouse was a humorist, his lens was comedic, and he seems to have been both unwilling and unable to look up from it.
"The Intimitable Jeeves" is a loosely assembled series of farcical incidents involving the narrator, a useless young Englishman of means named Bertie Wooster, and his all-knowing, impreturbable, implacable butler, Jeeves. Wooster personifies the idle rich man of the Edwardian Era, someone who has no real morals, convictions, intellect or substance of any kind, but -- to paraphrase Orwell -- possesses the reflexes of a gentleman. He is fairly harmless himself, but is continually being dragged into moronic situations by his old school friend, the even more useless Bingo Little, who is forever falling into romantic or economic disaster and demanding that Wooster get him out of Dutch. Wooster is, of course, incapable of this -- he is incapable of anything, really, except eating copious breakfasts -- but when his own well-intentioned but clumsy efforts inevitably fail, Jeeves steps in with equal inevitability, and pulls the strings in young master's favor. Jeeves is at once a counselor, confidant, friend, father figure, and confessor, but he is also the brain Wooster lacks, and what's more, he acts as a kind of reinforcing rod on Wooster's wobbly sense of propriety, ever nudging him toward what Jeeves perceives as "correct" behavior. The book's humor relies primarily on the inventiveness with which Bingo gets his long-suffering friend into trouble, and the greater inventiveness with which the omniscient, omnipotent Jeeves gets him out of it. Also in gentle if steady ridicule of the English society, both its upper classes and its more radical, pro-Marxist elements.
It would be a mistake, I think, to presume that Wodehouse is himself any type of social critic. His tone is not on that level, and it was said of him by the Germans who captured him when they overran France that he "lacked any political sense." Its true he mocks the stupidity of the narrator, and therefore the narrator's entire class, without mercy; but this mockery is also without cruelty, or any indication that he thinks society could or should be any different. Indeed, he pokes fun at the would-be revolutionists and feminists of the era with just as much quiet abandon: for example, one would-be Lenin is only too eager to stuff himself to bursting at the table of a lord, all the while denouncing the nobility. If there is a central theme to this novel, it is that there is always a man behind the throne: Wodehouse never once suggests what the reader already knows, to wit: that Jeeves ought to be the one with the money and the societal standing. But since Jeeves already has all the power, including the power to withhold his genius when young master does something he disapproves of like buying spats in the wrong colors, such trappings are unnecessary. Indeed, Jeeves himself is the most ferocious guardian of the social class which employs him and defines his horizons.
I am perhaps reading more into a lightweight period English comedy novel than I ought; this book is meant to make you laugh, and it is funny if you enjoy watching wealthy people make asses of themselves, especially when Jeeves ever-so-tactfully sees fit to remind Wooster that it is he, Jeeves, who is the true master. Take, for example, the incident where Wooster insists on wearing spats in the garish colors of his old university: the conservative Jeeves mightily disapproves, leading to a cold war between them. But when Jeeves saves Wooster for the umpteenth time from one of Little's idiocies, we get the following, conciliatory exchange:
"Jeeves...those spats?"
"Yes, sir?"
"You really dislike them?"
"Intensely, sir."
"You don't think time might induce you to change your views?"
"No, sir."
"All right then. Say no more. You may burn them."
"Thank you very much, sir. I have already done so. Before breakfast this morning. A quiet grey is far more suitable, sir. Thank you, sir."
This was my first exposure to Wodehouse and the plane of light comedic fiction upon which he spent his entire life and career. It was light, silly, and modestly engaging. It is the sort of fiction that does not make any pretense whatever at being more than it is, which in a day and age as pretentious and hollow as ours, was quite refreshing.
September 8, 2024
AUTHOR'S LIFE: A PAGE FROM A BOOK SIGNING
Since Goodreads is a site devoted entirely to books, it's reasonable to assume that there is some level of curiosity among readers as to the life an author leads. Perhaps this is mere egotism on my part, but I myself have always been curious about the processes behind, for example, singing, songwriting, musicianship, comedy routines, art, dance, and so forth; the mechanical processes involved in the manufacture of art.
In the past I have described more or less jokingly the struggles writers endure, which include all manner of rejection, indifference, humiliation, and disappointment, to say nothing of the economic struggles and the emotional drama. The trope of the broken-down, alcoholic writer with his half-empty whiskey bottle, his overflowing ashtray, his stack of unpaid bills and voice mailbox full of editorial demands and messages from debt collectors and ex-wives, is really not very far from the truth. Even writers far more successful than myself endure these struggles, for the simple reason that writing awards mean nothing to the general public, and royalties often constitute nothing more than a glorified side-hustle. Nevertheless, the life of an author is not all rejection slips and visits to the pawn shop. It includes a fair share of triumph, though by necessity these triumphs are often more emotional than tangible.
Yesterday I was invited to discuss my WW2 novel SINNER'S CROSS with a local book discussion group, and afterwards I spent two hours at a table in a local coffeehouse/restaurant selling and signing copies of my various works. It's worth recording the entire experience here as an example of what a writer goes through during the act of self-promotion.
Writers are by often nature, and even more often by necessity, introverts. I myself am what is known as an "extroverted introvert" in that I require regular social interaction, but then need quantities of solitude to recharge my batteries afterward. Self-promotion is thus a little less odious to me than it is for many of my more closeted bretheren. Notice I say "a little less" because while I frankly enjoy attention and praise, I feel like a fool and a jackass when I pander for it. And self-promotion is literally pandering. It is not a passive wait for acclaim, it is the active hunt for it. And this is anethema for me. Anyone who actually knows me knows that self-depreciation is at the core of my sense of humor. In this I am more like the character of Xander Harris on BUFFY than any other character I've ever seen on television or in the movies. Indeed, I went to great lengths to make Nicholas Brendan's acquaintance when I was living in L.A. because it was important for me to tell him to his face how much it meant to me to witness his performance in that role. But irreverence and self-depreciation are not great sales techniques. Salesmen ultimately sell themselves and not whatever product they are hawking, and to do that, they must present themselves as something highly valuable and desirable and not undercut their image with shyness or jokes at their own expense. To assume such a shape is difficult for me, at least for extended periods: it simply runs contrary to my nature, which is easygoing until it's not.
In any event, the morning of the event, which had the advantage of taking place about four city blocks from my apartment, I drove two boxes of books, a banner, stands, and such-like over to the venue, parked in front of their door, bought a coffee and then walked back home. When I returned a few hours later, I set up at a trestle table on the second floor which had been reserved for the discussion group, only just avoiding the downpour which began as I was lugging the last of the books inside. The second floor of this establishment has huge picture windows overlooking the street and the buildings opposite, and also provides a grand view of a pounding rainstorm, which under the circumstances boded unwell for attendance at this little shindig. And indeed, after the head of the discussion group made her appearance, for an uncomfortably long time it was just the two of us, making chitchat over coffee. And if there is one thing a writer hates more than self-promotion, it is self-promotion which fails so miserably it leaves flop sweat glistening on their forehead and upper lip. My very first book signing was such a disaster, and while the subsequent one was a triumph in comparison, it left a bad taste in my mouth which was slowly starting to reassert itself upon my unwilling taste buds.
The situation quickly changed, however. One by one the discussion group members appeared until the chairs surrounding the trestle table were fully occupied; then another wave of people, partially composed of friends of mine who'd I'd invited to make an appearance, did just that, so that a double ring of faces half-filled the second floor. For the next hour, I answered questions about SINNER'S CROSS -- how it had come to be, the difficulties I'd encountered writing it, the research I'd performed, my own interpretations of the characters and themes versus those of the readers around me, and so forth. I was pleased by the praise but even moreso by the occasional criticism. I have never been one to take intelligent, non-malicious criticism personally: quite the contrary, I actually enjoy the thought people put in to making such criticisms, because if nothing else it shows they were paying attention and cared enough about what I'd produced to give it a critique. The discussion was supposed to last an hour but actually went about 90 minutes. This left less time for the book sale & signing, but as many participants of the group bought additional books besides the copies of SINNER'S CROSS they'd purchased from the restaurant or my online store, it didn't cost me any potential sales and quite frankly, after listening to me talk for an hour and a half, it was the least I could do for them.
We then set up downstairs, by the front counter, so that patrons could not escape seeing my wares displayed on stands above a white banner emblazoned with my name and images of the various awards I've won over the last eight years. Mercifully, enough people lingered to keep me company, and enough foot traffic shuffled to the cash register to lure a few of them over to make purchases. I sold out of two books -- THE VERY DEAD OF WINTER and WOLF WEATHER -- and came one copy short of selling out my stocks of SINNER'S CROSS. Several people bought bundles: three, four, even six books. By the end of the session, I realized I'd had my most profitable personal appearance to date, which I grant you is not saying all that much since I've only done three of them, but we all start something somewhere, nicht wahr?
It is true that awkwardness is a baked-in component of such appearances. One man, a weathered meth addict in recovery with his sobriety chips swinging from his belt, came in and spent about a half an hour talking to me and my friend Jeremy, who had come a very long way while rehabbing a knee wrecked in a jiu-jitsu tournament. He had so soft a voice, and the coffeehouse was noisy enough, that I couldn't understand a word he said, so I finally gave him two free books, went outside to shake hands with two of his friends from the recovery house down the way, and resumed my vigil by the cash register.
Just when I was about to pack up my things, a the bell over the door jangled once more and I was stunned to see my old, old friend Andrew walk in with his wife. I had not clapped eyes on Andrew in decades, probably not since I was still in college. We had grown up in the same neighborhood in Maryland, gone to the same high school, and our families were very close and remain in touch from a distance. He had driven two hours down the turnpike for 20 minutes of face time. I was very deeply moved by this. Indeed, the support I was shown, including a bombardment of texts and so forth from people who couldn't appear, was heartening. Writing, as I said before, is a solitary occupation and can make the writer feel isolated from human contact beyond even what an introvert would wish; but there is a difference between isolation and solitude and any blow struck against isolation is a victory for a writer's mental health.
When I came home, I confess I was a little high on endorphins. I'd sold a lot of books, made a respectable haul of cash, seen faces I hadn't seen in a long time and met a whole slew of new people. I'd had the opportunity to meet people who'd read my books and to discuss my fiction with them, which is not a common experience for authors. I graciously even allowed myself to be taken out for dinner and drinks by another old pal, Nate, who told me he was building a bookshelf in his rural cabin solely devoted to my works. "This is an investment," he said, patting a stack of my novels.
Of course, moments like this, valuable and memorable as they are, do not change anything materially for an author. They are not decisive and generally lack any resonance whatsoever, and its important to remember that the carriage returns to a pumpkin state come the midnight hour. I once walked the red carpet in Hollywood with a beautiful actress; the next morning I had to return the tuxedo, which seemed to symbolize that I was returning to poverty, obscurity and struggle as well. Book signings and interviews (just like awards ceremonies), can delude an author about their importance or the general trajectory of their career. So its important to savor the moment for what it is and not expect anything more. I prefer a carriage to a pumpkin, but I'm rather fond of pumpkins, too.
Today I am posting pictures of the event on social media, and after my ritual hike, will spend some time doing writerly things of a more prosaic nature. These are the mechanics I referred to above: the dull, complicated stuff writers have to do to achieve anything at all: editing manuscripts, compling e-mail lists, conducting website maintenance, making phone calls to discuss potential projects with other authors. Nobody sees how this sausage is made and I can't see any reason why they should want to, but authors periodically like to remind readers that the process takes place, because as J.K. Rowling once ascerbically noted, books do not simply write themselves no matter how badly studio executives wish they would. It's not sympathy we seek: its recognition that there are reasons you're gonna have to wait to, say, 2025 to read the third CAGE LIFE novel even though I finished the first draft months ago in this year of our lord 2024; and a lot of these reasons have nothing to do with the act of physically putting words on pages.
This at any rate is how this particular writer spent much of his weekend. It was a little stressful and very rewarding, and helped restore my morale, which after a week like the last one needed all the shoring-up it could possibly get. We independent and small-press authors often exist on mere crumbs, and sometimes even they are in short supply, so the occasional meal, however modest, does wonders to keep us going.
In the past I have described more or less jokingly the struggles writers endure, which include all manner of rejection, indifference, humiliation, and disappointment, to say nothing of the economic struggles and the emotional drama. The trope of the broken-down, alcoholic writer with his half-empty whiskey bottle, his overflowing ashtray, his stack of unpaid bills and voice mailbox full of editorial demands and messages from debt collectors and ex-wives, is really not very far from the truth. Even writers far more successful than myself endure these struggles, for the simple reason that writing awards mean nothing to the general public, and royalties often constitute nothing more than a glorified side-hustle. Nevertheless, the life of an author is not all rejection slips and visits to the pawn shop. It includes a fair share of triumph, though by necessity these triumphs are often more emotional than tangible.
Yesterday I was invited to discuss my WW2 novel SINNER'S CROSS with a local book discussion group, and afterwards I spent two hours at a table in a local coffeehouse/restaurant selling and signing copies of my various works. It's worth recording the entire experience here as an example of what a writer goes through during the act of self-promotion.
Writers are by often nature, and even more often by necessity, introverts. I myself am what is known as an "extroverted introvert" in that I require regular social interaction, but then need quantities of solitude to recharge my batteries afterward. Self-promotion is thus a little less odious to me than it is for many of my more closeted bretheren. Notice I say "a little less" because while I frankly enjoy attention and praise, I feel like a fool and a jackass when I pander for it. And self-promotion is literally pandering. It is not a passive wait for acclaim, it is the active hunt for it. And this is anethema for me. Anyone who actually knows me knows that self-depreciation is at the core of my sense of humor. In this I am more like the character of Xander Harris on BUFFY than any other character I've ever seen on television or in the movies. Indeed, I went to great lengths to make Nicholas Brendan's acquaintance when I was living in L.A. because it was important for me to tell him to his face how much it meant to me to witness his performance in that role. But irreverence and self-depreciation are not great sales techniques. Salesmen ultimately sell themselves and not whatever product they are hawking, and to do that, they must present themselves as something highly valuable and desirable and not undercut their image with shyness or jokes at their own expense. To assume such a shape is difficult for me, at least for extended periods: it simply runs contrary to my nature, which is easygoing until it's not.
In any event, the morning of the event, which had the advantage of taking place about four city blocks from my apartment, I drove two boxes of books, a banner, stands, and such-like over to the venue, parked in front of their door, bought a coffee and then walked back home. When I returned a few hours later, I set up at a trestle table on the second floor which had been reserved for the discussion group, only just avoiding the downpour which began as I was lugging the last of the books inside. The second floor of this establishment has huge picture windows overlooking the street and the buildings opposite, and also provides a grand view of a pounding rainstorm, which under the circumstances boded unwell for attendance at this little shindig. And indeed, after the head of the discussion group made her appearance, for an uncomfortably long time it was just the two of us, making chitchat over coffee. And if there is one thing a writer hates more than self-promotion, it is self-promotion which fails so miserably it leaves flop sweat glistening on their forehead and upper lip. My very first book signing was such a disaster, and while the subsequent one was a triumph in comparison, it left a bad taste in my mouth which was slowly starting to reassert itself upon my unwilling taste buds.
The situation quickly changed, however. One by one the discussion group members appeared until the chairs surrounding the trestle table were fully occupied; then another wave of people, partially composed of friends of mine who'd I'd invited to make an appearance, did just that, so that a double ring of faces half-filled the second floor. For the next hour, I answered questions about SINNER'S CROSS -- how it had come to be, the difficulties I'd encountered writing it, the research I'd performed, my own interpretations of the characters and themes versus those of the readers around me, and so forth. I was pleased by the praise but even moreso by the occasional criticism. I have never been one to take intelligent, non-malicious criticism personally: quite the contrary, I actually enjoy the thought people put in to making such criticisms, because if nothing else it shows they were paying attention and cared enough about what I'd produced to give it a critique. The discussion was supposed to last an hour but actually went about 90 minutes. This left less time for the book sale & signing, but as many participants of the group bought additional books besides the copies of SINNER'S CROSS they'd purchased from the restaurant or my online store, it didn't cost me any potential sales and quite frankly, after listening to me talk for an hour and a half, it was the least I could do for them.
We then set up downstairs, by the front counter, so that patrons could not escape seeing my wares displayed on stands above a white banner emblazoned with my name and images of the various awards I've won over the last eight years. Mercifully, enough people lingered to keep me company, and enough foot traffic shuffled to the cash register to lure a few of them over to make purchases. I sold out of two books -- THE VERY DEAD OF WINTER and WOLF WEATHER -- and came one copy short of selling out my stocks of SINNER'S CROSS. Several people bought bundles: three, four, even six books. By the end of the session, I realized I'd had my most profitable personal appearance to date, which I grant you is not saying all that much since I've only done three of them, but we all start something somewhere, nicht wahr?
It is true that awkwardness is a baked-in component of such appearances. One man, a weathered meth addict in recovery with his sobriety chips swinging from his belt, came in and spent about a half an hour talking to me and my friend Jeremy, who had come a very long way while rehabbing a knee wrecked in a jiu-jitsu tournament. He had so soft a voice, and the coffeehouse was noisy enough, that I couldn't understand a word he said, so I finally gave him two free books, went outside to shake hands with two of his friends from the recovery house down the way, and resumed my vigil by the cash register.
Just when I was about to pack up my things, a the bell over the door jangled once more and I was stunned to see my old, old friend Andrew walk in with his wife. I had not clapped eyes on Andrew in decades, probably not since I was still in college. We had grown up in the same neighborhood in Maryland, gone to the same high school, and our families were very close and remain in touch from a distance. He had driven two hours down the turnpike for 20 minutes of face time. I was very deeply moved by this. Indeed, the support I was shown, including a bombardment of texts and so forth from people who couldn't appear, was heartening. Writing, as I said before, is a solitary occupation and can make the writer feel isolated from human contact beyond even what an introvert would wish; but there is a difference between isolation and solitude and any blow struck against isolation is a victory for a writer's mental health.
When I came home, I confess I was a little high on endorphins. I'd sold a lot of books, made a respectable haul of cash, seen faces I hadn't seen in a long time and met a whole slew of new people. I'd had the opportunity to meet people who'd read my books and to discuss my fiction with them, which is not a common experience for authors. I graciously even allowed myself to be taken out for dinner and drinks by another old pal, Nate, who told me he was building a bookshelf in his rural cabin solely devoted to my works. "This is an investment," he said, patting a stack of my novels.
Of course, moments like this, valuable and memorable as they are, do not change anything materially for an author. They are not decisive and generally lack any resonance whatsoever, and its important to remember that the carriage returns to a pumpkin state come the midnight hour. I once walked the red carpet in Hollywood with a beautiful actress; the next morning I had to return the tuxedo, which seemed to symbolize that I was returning to poverty, obscurity and struggle as well. Book signings and interviews (just like awards ceremonies), can delude an author about their importance or the general trajectory of their career. So its important to savor the moment for what it is and not expect anything more. I prefer a carriage to a pumpkin, but I'm rather fond of pumpkins, too.
Today I am posting pictures of the event on social media, and after my ritual hike, will spend some time doing writerly things of a more prosaic nature. These are the mechanics I referred to above: the dull, complicated stuff writers have to do to achieve anything at all: editing manuscripts, compling e-mail lists, conducting website maintenance, making phone calls to discuss potential projects with other authors. Nobody sees how this sausage is made and I can't see any reason why they should want to, but authors periodically like to remind readers that the process takes place, because as J.K. Rowling once ascerbically noted, books do not simply write themselves no matter how badly studio executives wish they would. It's not sympathy we seek: its recognition that there are reasons you're gonna have to wait to, say, 2025 to read the third CAGE LIFE novel even though I finished the first draft months ago in this year of our lord 2024; and a lot of these reasons have nothing to do with the act of physically putting words on pages.
This at any rate is how this particular writer spent much of his weekend. It was a little stressful and very rewarding, and helped restore my morale, which after a week like the last one needed all the shoring-up it could possibly get. We independent and small-press authors often exist on mere crumbs, and sometimes even they are in short supply, so the occasional meal, however modest, does wonders to keep us going.
ANTAGONY: BECAUSE EVERYONE IS ENTITLED TO MY OPINION
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