Matthue Roth's Blog, page 129

Tron. Avatar. Me?

OK, just saying: According to Hollywood Reporter, a sequel to Tron Legacy is in the works. And since I was in the Tron3 prequel -- or a character named after me, whatever --






-- I just want to let you guys know, I am, in fact, available for major motion pictures. Also weddings and bar mitzvahs.






TRON The Next Day - Flynn Lives Revealed (TR3N... by daftworld

The Oven of Aknai: A Talmudic Story of Debating and Death, in Friendly Cartoon Format

So I taught storytelling at this Jewish animation festival this summer. Stu Sufrin, you are wonderful. Eliana Light, you are wonderful. So glad I got to see this.

Introducing Alice Mattison

Sorry I haven't been writing! Great things are afoot at the day-job, but of course I am not allowed to talk about them. And there are all these things I've been meaning to say, but they're all percolating, and they'll probably all bubble to the surface at the same time and I'll be unable to speak coherently. For a change.



Last night I was asked to introduce the writer Alice Mattison at a reading at Brooklyn College. I wasn't going to share this, but I got asked a few times and her book is wonderful and unexpected and wild. Here's what I said:





There’s a part in Alice Mattison’s latest novel, When We Argued All Night , in which Harold, a self-conscious intellectual Jewish guy, is flirting it up with Myra, who’s this hot, reserved WASP. They’re talking about Henry James’ Portrait of a Lady, which she swiped his copy of.



It had not occurred to him that Myra would have read the book, much less have an opinion about it. He was charmed, though he disagreed. He tried to explain what he believed to be true about the ending. If James thinks Isabel Archer should stay away from her husband, what is the book about? Why would it end just there? What has she accomplished?



Myra scoffed. What does anyone accomplish? She should have stayed away. She could
manage.




In college, they did not speak as if characters in books could have chosen to do something else. Harold couldn’t think how to explain that this wasn’t the proper way to read.



This is one of Alice Mattison’s favorite things to do (not that I have any idea whether that’s actually true or not) : To introduce us to characters, a scene, a reality, and then subvert it by completely reversing the tension, upstaging the power dynamic, and yanking the carpet from beneath the reader’s feet.



Mattison is a remarkable, piercing, unsettling and versatile writer. She teaches fiction in the graduate writing program at Bennington College in Vermont. She’s published five novels and four collections of short stories, and, as far as I can tell, is equally at home in both forms. She has a knack for details, quirks, surprise turns, and single lines that could be novels unto themselves. She also might be one of our finest living book titlers: the novel The Wedding of the Two-Headed Woman; the collection Men Giving Money, Women Yelling; and her previous book, 2009's Nothing Is Quite Forgotten in Brooklyn.



When We Argued was released this summer and . It was a New York Times editors’ choice book, and received a wholeheartedly geeking-out review: “Mattison makes you care about her characters right to the end, and care so deeply that you take their every disappointment personally.”



In an alternate universe, Mattison’s acts of world-building might belong to a science fiction grand master. Among the several achievements of When We Argued, Mattison takes us back to the mid-1930s in Jewish America and, with startlingly little explanation or set-up, gives us a vivid picture of what it’s like to be a Jew in a world where half the population is trying to kill you and the other half has no idea that it’s happening. In one line, the novel is straddling a fence with Catskills hookups a la Dirty Dancing, the next it’s sharing Holocaust-era guilt and aggression with Maus.



She gives the same weight to police beatings, family fights, and a strip-tease in a 1930s Catskills bungalow. When We Argued might be a secret epic, one that takes on the grandest scope--two best friends, an entire lifetime--but also breathes life into the smallest of moments.



Here she is.

G-d Dialogue

Internal dialogue while bringing cereal back to my desk.



ME: I already have a spoon at my desk! Thank G-d I remembered to leave it there before.

ME (smarmy): You know, it really isn't G-d's fault. You kinda got that one on your own.

ME: Yeah, but people are always blaming G-d for stupid things when they go down, and it isn't really G-d's fault at all; it's their own. So why not thank G-d for something that isn't necessarily G-d's direct doing for a change?

ME: Ah, but G-d created the universe and everything in it, and therefore, nothing that happens is an accident. So one way or another, G-d really manipulated you to leave a clean spoon at your desk earlier...right?

ME (undeterred): Thank G-d there was soy milk in the refrigerator. I hate it when they're all out.



THE END.



(Well, the end of the dialogue. The beginning of my very late breakfast.)

Joshua: The Movie

A while ago, I helped produce this series of movie adaptations of the Torah with G-dcast.

Our plan at the time was to hit the Prophets and Writings and just not stop. "No sleep till Malachi" was the actual phrase used, I believe.

It's taken a little while, but today G-dcast launched the next book. Here's the three-part series "Joshua," which I wrote, which Sarah Lefton directed, Richard O'Connor animated, and Matt Ryd wrote the theme song to.



 



 ...originally I was trying to convince them to let me play shofar for it, too, but that didn't really happen.



 This is Part II:

 





And Part III:

 




Next up is Judges, but don't ask about that yet -- apparently it's a lot faster to write words than it is to draw a few thousand animated icons. Who knew?

grad school confidential

a new question from the FAQ desk. weirdly, three people asked me this today. so here is what i said, more or less.



Why are you going back to grad school?



if i could do anything with my time, i'd do a degree in physics or math. that, i think, is where real religion flourishes. it's the actual fulfillment of the biblical commandment to "know g*d and know g*d's work." but life is the way it is, and i need (a) constant practice writing and challenging myself, (b) connections in the literary world, and (c) willing people to read my work on a mass scale, and this program is being very generous with all of them.

The Kafkaesque Mess that is LAX

Oh, man. I hate complaining, but sometimes in life it's either (a) really therapeutic or (b) really necessary. This might be both, but hopefully it's also entertaining. Yesterday, we were stuck at the airport for hours. I tweeted:

Because of @americanair, my kids have been stuck in an airport all day. twitpic.com/ao2u1s

— Matthue Roth (@matthue) August 26, 2012

And they very nicely (if obliquely) replied:

@matthue Sorry for the delay Matt. What is the flight number?

— American Airlines (@AmericanAir) August 26, 2012

So this is what I wrote back. (Start reading from the bottom, if you're curious.)





Or come back tomorrow? I promise I'll have something more fun.







Matthue Roth ‏@matthue

@ AmericanAir  And then during landing, an overhead compartment popped open and the luggage almost fell onto people. That's all.



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4hMatthue Roth ‏@matthue

@ AmericanAir  I don't approve of censorship at all, and I appreciate sex and violence, but not when my 4-year-old's asking me about it.



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4hMatthue Roth ‏@matthue

@ AmericanAir  Half an hour later, there were naked people getting it on onscreen.



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4hMatthue Roth ‏@matthue

@ AmericanAir  5 minutes in, my daughter asked me why all the soldiers were getting dead by explosions.



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4hMatthue Roth ‏@matthue

@ AmericanAir  I know I'm pushing this. But the ACTUAL film you showed? On the one monitor for our section? "The Lucky One."



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4hMatthue Roth ‏@matthue

@ AmericanAir  On the plane, squished together and miserable, we had to watch a promotional video about how AA just bought spacious new planes



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4hMatthue Roth ‏@matthue

@ AmericanAir  We finally made it on the THIRD flight. And the gate attendant was incredibly nice (I forget her name.)



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4hMatthue Roth ‏@matthue

@ AmericanAir  Then we stood by AGAIN. My kids responded with uncharacteristic good humor--they played Fruit Ninja for an hour.



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4hMatthue Roth ‏@matthue

@ AmericanAir  And, turns out you guys don't have any special consideration for parents. So the first-class standbys got on and we didn't.



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5hMatthue Roth ‏@matthue

@ AmericanAir  We were put on the next flight. But, oh wait! It was oversold.



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5hMatthue Roth ‏@matthue

@ AmericanAir  We made it. Except, no! It was 5 minutes to takeoff, and the door was already closed.



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5hMatthue Roth ‏@matthue

@ AmericanAir  But THEN we raced to the gate. The TSA helper couldn't come. So my 4-year-old pushed the luggage. I took the baby.



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5hMatthue Roth ‏@matthue

@ AmericanAir  That part was actually kind of cool, because our older kid was fascinated by the explosive-testing wipes.



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5hMatthue Roth ‏@matthue

@ AmericanAir  Then, guess what!--because we had a baby bottle, we had to get additional X-raying and testing.



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5hMatthue Roth ‏@matthue

@ AmericanAir  When we were 5 people away from the end, a TSA worker (!!) finally offered to help push a stroller.



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5hMatthue Roth ‏@matthue

@ AmericanAir  The line took nearly an hour.



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5hMatthue Roth ‏@matthue

@ AmericanAir  My wife stayed behind. I took both kids. But try getting through security with a 2- and 4-year-old -- it is REALLY HARD.



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5hMatthue Roth ‏@matthue

@ AmericanAir  We checked one bag, then time ran out on checking the other--so we had to either abandon it in the airport or miss our flight.



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5hMatthue Roth ‏@matthue

@ AmericanAir  Then your system took forever printing tickets, & wouldn't recognize my wife's married name (we used it on both ID and ticket)



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5hMatthue Roth ‏@matthue

@ AmericanAir  First, we got to the airport (LAX) and there were only 4 attendants to handle a waiting-room that was like a mosh pit.



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5hMatthue Roth ‏@matthue

@ heysuburban  oh, man -- wait for it.



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14hMatthue Roth ‏@matthue

Baggage claim. Never have i been happier to type these two words. My face says it all: http://twitpic.com/ao62mh 



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20hMatthue Roth ‏@matthue

Because of  @ AmericanAir , my kids have been stuck in an airport all day.http://twitpic.com/ao2u1s 



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incoming!

Hey, just wanted to sort of let you know, as a collective universe, that I sort of sold out of Automatics. I'm printing more up (today?) (if my overlords will let me sneak out?), but if there's a slight delay in getting R.E.M.'s spirit into your clutching hands, I sincerely apologize.

Rav Shalom Sings the Blues

[image error]This is just a quick post, and later than I should've put it up: A few nights ago Rav Sholom Brodt spoke at our house. Here are my notes from what he said -- scanned, although I'm not sure the quality is good enough to read, either in terms of the scanning or my handwriting. If you're interested, totally go for it (click the images for higher quality) -- and if you like what you read, consider checking out the Shlomo Yeshiva, where he teaches.




 

This Non-Profit Life

Two weeks ago, I told my boss I was leaving. This is at my day job, understand--not my job job (writing poems and books and movies), or my real job (taking care of a bunch of little kids, and doing my best to keep them from killing themselves and each other, and possibly teaching them some stuff), but rather the place where I've spent 8 hours of most days of the past four years. Ten hours, if you add in the commute.



It's kind of an incredible math: There are 24 hours to a day, one-third of which is spent at work, another one-twelfth getting there, one-third to one-quarter (6-8 hours, on average--admittedly, an optimistic average) sleeping, in preparation for the onslaught of your day. What's left should be a lot of time (another 8-10 hours, right?, if you've been keeping up with the math), but where does it all go? Praying. Cleaning. Eating. Posting dumb stuff on Facebook. Trying to write.







Far and away the biggest thing I've done with the past few years is Jewniverse--which, if you haven't been getting it, is a daily email I've been writing and designing that's better, I hope, than the title suggests: something cool and interesting and novel that you've never heard of, that's in some way Jewish. You can subscribe here--too late to catch most of mine, but good people will still be writing (I'll still be one of them, occasionally), and I've still got a month of stuff in the can. The website is not quite live yet, but in a week or two, if you go to thejewniverse.com, there'll be a ton of these things to check out.



(And then I've done a bunch of other stuff, like these videos and these articles and this blog, and omg I threw years of my life into this blog, and one day I'll separate the cool articles from the stupid video posts, but I don't know when...but it's weird, saying goodbye.)



So that's been the past two years. It's weird to say goodbye to your babies, especially since, unlike actual babies, it's not even like my old posts are going to come back from college or invite me to their weddings or put me into a nursing home or something.



But it's been good. Daniel, my editor, made a point of telling me that, over the past 2 years, I've written and sent out 4.7 million emails. Most of them have been short, under 200 words, but it's still pretty powerful and an amazing gift that I've been able to. And it's totally dumb of me to say thank you to you for reading and listening, but I'm going to say it anyway.



I'm still around. I'll still blog (hopefully more, now that I've got time!) at matthue.com, and I have a new book coming out next year! I'm moving on--starting Monday, I'll be writing video games for Wireless Generation, and I'm hugely excited, although right now I'm more nervous and anxious about it. But I'll see you around. It's a small Internet, after all, and it's only getting smaller.



Thank you.



(Yeah. That's all I meant to say.)



Thank you.