Atlantic Monthly Contributors's Blog, page 943

James Franco, the New William Faulkner

In 1930, future Nobel Prize winner William Faulkner published As I Lay Dying, a multi-vocal novel about the death and burial of a matriarch. Some eighty years later, Yale graduate student James Franco decided to make a film from that novel.

Inevitably, a movie tie-in version of the novel would be reissued. That was expected. The look of that reissue, however, was not. Thus, when Time Out New York's film critic Keith Uhlich tweeted the following, it received dozens of retweets and favorites, the vast, vast majority displaying dismay at Franco's shameless appropriation of a literary masterpiece.

Oh for fuck's sake. pic.twitter.com/3V0dMgB9fI

— Keith Uhlich (@keithuhlich) September 12, 2013

Flavorwire's Jason Diamond expressed his dismay by writing, "The James Franco As I Lay Dying Book Cover Ruined Our Day," while Slate asked, "Is This the Worst Movie Tie-In Book Cover Ever?"

David Haglund of the latter aptly pointed out, "In case you’re wondering: No, As I Lay Dying is not a memoir, and it is not by James Franco. And William Faulkner, though he did have a mustache, wasn’t quite so hunky."

When The Atlantic Wire asked Uhlich why he was so dismayed by the cover, he answered, simply, "Franco. Always Franco," a response he had given over Twitter as well. He added that he would "leave it at that."

We understand. Last month, Los Angeles Times book critic David Ulin begged Franco to "please stop" dabbling in literature as a mere means for self promotion. Quite apparently, that is not advice Franco is likely to heed.

       

'Into the Wild' Once More

Maybe the adventuring Chris McCandless wasn't quite so ignorant and ill-planned after all. The cause of death of the self-styled wilderness explorer made famous by Jon Krakauer's book Into the Wild has been debated for some time. But now, Krakauer claims to have finally found the solution to this discussion in an blog post for The New Yorker, as the author blames the death not on a McCandless blunder or wilderness ignorance, but a toxic substance that he could not have possibly known about.

McCandless may have been unprepared when he entered the Alaskan woods with little more than a rifle, a book on local plants, and some camping gear, but he didn't cause his own death, Krakauer argues. If not for the dearth of information on Alaskan toxic plants, "[McCandless] probably would have walked out of the wild in late August with no more difficulty than when he walked into the wild in April, and would still be alive today," Krakauer writes.

[image error]The author has wavered back and forth on this issue since Into the Wild was published in 1996. He initially blamed the death on McCandless's confusion between a toxic sweet pea plant and nontoxic potato plant, but he has hedged on that theory in the time since then. In a post today for The New Yorker's Page-Turner blog, Krakauer argues that he's found the true cause of death — and he did so with the help of Nazi tests on concentration camp prisoners.

The cause of McCandless's infamous demise is not just an interesting historical factoid; it's the basis of his legend, which has since been made into a major film by Sean Penn. Was his death at a weight of just 67 pounds the result of an accidental poisoning that could have happened to even the most experienced outdoorsman? Or did he die of starvation due to his own unpreparedness, and, more critically, a failure to tell apart a toxic plant from a nontoxic one, as his detractors argue?

Krakauer now says that the evidence "validates my conviction that McCandless wasn’t as clueless and incompetent as his detractors have made him out to be," he writes. McCandless could not have known that a key part of his diet, wild potato seeds, were in fact toxic. Neither his ecology guidebook nor local Alaskans were aware of that, either.

That's partly because the evidence that led to Krakauer's solution originally stems from macabre experiments conducted during World War II, when Nazi concentration camp guards tested the effects on prisoners of ODAP, a toxic chemical in some plants that causes slow crippling known as lathyrism. Lathyrism particularly affected people like McCandless, according to a study by a "writer who until recently worked as a bookbinder at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania library":

Those who will be hit the hardest are always young men between the ages of 15 and 25 and who are essentially starving or ingesting very limited calories, who have been engaged in heavy physical activity, and who suffer trace-element shortages from meager, unvaried diets.

Sounds a lot like McCandless while in the Alaska woods, who survived on plants and meager hunting for those 100 days.

A paper making the ODAP and McCandless connection first appeared on the McCandless's memorial website. Krakauer, faced with this evidence for the first time, had the supposedly-nontoxic potato plants tested by an organic chemist, who found that, indeed, they contained significant levels of ODAP that could cause this lathyrism disease. McCandless death, then, was a direct result of this slow crippling, as that paper on the memorial site explained:

He wasn’t truly starving in the most technical sense of that condition. He’d simply become slowly paralyzed. And it wasn’t arrogance that had killed him, it was ignorance. Also, it was ignorance which must be forgiven, for the facts underlying his death were to remain unrecognized to all, scientists and lay people alike, literally for decades.

So McCandless is not explicitly to blame in his own death; blame the lack of knowledge on toxic wild potato plants. Debate solved, it seems, at least for Krakauer, at least for now.

(Into the Wild film poster via Impawards.)

       

Twitter Confidentially Files for its IPO

On Thursday, Twitter announced that it submitted paperwork to the Securities and Exchange Commission for an initial public offering: 

We’ve confidentially submitted an S-1 to the SEC for a planned IPO. This Tweet does not constitute an offer of any securities for sale.

— Twitter (@twitter) September 12, 2013

As Quartz explained earlier this year, the confidential filing takes advantage of some relatively new SEC rules that allows companies with annual revenues of under $1 billion to keep their filings secret until just three weeks before starting to market shares. They continue: 

It was largely proposed and pushed by venture capitalists in Silicon Valley, who said it would stem a decline in US IPOs by reducing the burdens of going public felt by smaller firms. Ordinarily, a company has to make public a lengthy discussion of its financials, strategy, and risks months before an IPO, giving investors—and competitors—more of a chance to evaluate the stock.

Twitter, recalling the circus-like atmosphere (and disaster) of Facebook's IPO, has previously said that it wanted a "low-profile" offering, rumored to hit some time near the beginning of 2014 . As of last February, the company was valued at about $10 billion by one of its investors (we have a breakdown of that valuation here). 

According to Bloomberg News, Goldman Sachs will be the lead underwriter for the IPO. Sachs, incidentally, was one of a handful of companies sued by Facebook investors in May of 2012. Investors accused the firms of misleading them over Facebook's revenue estimates. 

Now, back to work. pic.twitter.com/e4lK8e7pY9

— Twitter (@twitter) September 12, 2013

Twitter CEO Dick Costolo heightened rumors of an impending filing when he declined to take questions at this week's TechCrunch Disrupt conference after a brief speech, despite expectations that the company would file any day now.

       

Are the Arcade Fire a Bunch of Petty Vandals?

The Arcade Fire: indie-rock saviors or small-time corporate-minded vandals? Ian Dille, an Austin journalist whose wife's picture- framing shop recently served as a canvas for the Montreal band's mysterious street art campaign, is leaning towards the latter. Writing for Slate, Dille today shares a new perspective on the cryptic marketing behind Reflektor—that of the unsuspecting urbanite who unsuspectingly found her property (or workplace, in this case) co-opted by the marketing apparatus of a massively acclaimed rock band:

A few weeks ago, my wife noticed a logo spray-painted on the long gray wall of the custom picture framing shop where she works in Austin, Texas’s gallery district. Along the wall, there is already a large, colorful mural, a few “no parking” stencils, and some street art of a stork dropping bombs from its satchel. (I’d call the stork graffiti, but it’s beloved by my wife and me, and the shop’s owner. Thus: art.)

That logo, it turned out, wasn't any routine nugget of anonymous street art—it was part of a worldwide street art campaign cryptically dropping hints about the Arcade Fire's new album, like such:

Reflektor, street art pic.twitter.com/nAhYsUzRIL

— Jerry Weirdo ☮ (@Wolf_Tron) August 5, 2013

Registering this connection on Monday, when fliers for the album materialized, Dille and his wife were rather peeved. They're fans of the band. But still, he writes, "when I found out the logo was nothing but a commercial promotion, I felt ... used." Alas, an innocuous public art display had been corporatized in seconds flat. Dille's distinction:

If you’ve got a radical social agenda and you think spray-painting property is the best way to convey your message? Go ahead. If you’re a gangbanger and you want to mark your territory, I can learn to live with that.

But if you’re an internationally renowned band that’s defacing public and private property for promotional purposes, maybe go back to the drawing board, and think some more about how you want to let people know about your music.

[image error]Here's the thing: graffiti, by definition, is illegal. And, by most accounts, invasive. That it's intended to promote a product (okay, an album) doesn't make it more so. That it's conveying a "radical social agenda" doesn't make it less so, certainly to those to whom that radical agenda is odious. The law doesn't distinguish. Your own aesthetic tastes can, sure. But such is the nature of
public art—morally ambiguous, often mysterious, blurring boundaries between public and private, creative expression and political statement. 

Dille seems to realize his double standard is just that—but does it hold? As one mouthy commenter captures it:

This graffiti is a nuisance. Graffiti I like is not a nuisance. I think that sums things up?

Alright, we get it. This graffiti was promotional. That's bad—right? But then, most street art is promoting something: a political agenda, a gang, the artist behind the work. And the Arcade Fire's wordless logo can't quite be likened to a corporate billboard: there wasn't a commercial message to be read, unless you happened to be in the indie-rock loop. (Think everyone knows who the Arcade Fire is? You've already forgotten the world's best Grammy-inspired Tumblr.) And that, too, is just the nature of so many street art messages: baffling to most city residents, understood by those in the know.

[image error]Finally, it seems all too easy to confuse critical acclaim with material wealth in calling the Arcade Fire a "multimillion-dollar Grammy-winning band." Sure, they're tremendously successful. But, as New York's Nitsuh Abebe chronicled last year, indie-rock royalty does not a millionaire make. ("People probably have an inflated idea of what we make," Grizzly Bear's Ed Droste told the magazine.)

Dille frames it as a struggle for the Arcade Fire to retain integrity in the face of its own success. But that's a distraction. Win Butler and co. have done just that by not compromising the integrity of their art since Funeral, a trend that seems to be continuing this time around. It seems specious to suggest the street art campaign is much of a money-making scheme—it's all too impractical and cryptic for that, and it's unlikely to boost sales the way, say, a buzzy video for a single featuring David Bowie will. They could have just gone the Justin Timberlake route and scored a corporate sponsorship or two. But they didn't. 

So sure, be annoyed your building was vandalized. But don't complain just because the band is popular or sell-outs.  And anyway, they didn't intend to damage. As Win Butler explains in an apology note that's just been appended to the Slate piece, the logos were only supposed to be done in chalk or water-soluble paint. At least he's a gentleman about it.

All photos courtesy AP.

       

Why We're Afraid of Ben Affleck's Batman

We realize there's only so much time one can spend in a day watching new trailers, viral video clips, and shaky cellphone footage of people arguing on live television. This is why, every day, The Atlantic Wire highlights the videos that truly earn your five minutes (or less) of attention. Today:

Tonight we're lighting a candle at the shrine of Christopher Nolan and praying that Ben Affleck's Batman in the Man of Steel sequel is nothing like his Daredevil:

Fashionistas (not to be confused with designers and models) are sort of the worst. Worse than foodies, worse than Coachella kids. Here is video evidence:

You know what's not the worst? This really fun (and simple) Star Trek prank:

And, finally, we're like this baby. Close the door, give us some privacy, we're going home:

       

Syria Asks to Join the U.N. Chemical Weapons Agreement

Syria has submitted documents requesting to join an international chemical weapons treaty, according to the country's U.N. ambassador and a letter sent to U.S. officials on Thursday. The U.N. confirmed that it has received the country's application to the Chemical Weapons Convention. The international agreement prohibits the possession, production, and use of chemical weapons, and heavily regulates the use of specified precursors to the creation of those weapons. 

#Syria's #UN Ambassador confirming his gov't has submitted documents requesting accession to CW treaty. pic.twitter.com/C5Z9Q3IxRn

— aaronlmorrison (@aaronlmorrison) September 12, 2013

Assad's government would have to declare any chemical weapons, and destroy them, in order to become a member of the agreement. According to a U.N. spokesperson, the organization is still translating the initial documents sent by Syria. On Thursday, Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Geneva for two days of related negotiations with Russia, with the aim of disarming Syria and destroying its chemical weapons capability through diplomacy. 

According to the plan Russia is floating in those negotiations, Syria would have to join the Chemical Weapons Convention as a first step. Then, the country would declare their stockpiles of the weapons. Finally, experts would determine how to destroy the weapons. And it looks like Assad's government is already hoping to demonstrate their initial commitment to such a plan, while making sure that nobody thinks the U.S.'s threat of military action had anything to do with the tentative agreement. "Syria is placing its chemical weapons under international control because of Russia. The US threats did not influence the decision," Assad told a state-run Russian TV station. The U.S.-backed plan for Syrian disarmament, written by France, was met with Russian objection. 

Meanwhile, Reuters reports, the full U.N. report on Syria's August 21st chemical weapons attack could be released as soon as Monday. That report, which won't establish culpability, is expected to corroborate at least some of the findings cited by U.S. intelligence on the scope of the attack. 

       

Vladimir Putin Wrote a Syria Op-Ed for the New York Times

Russian President Vladimir Putin, already established as a prominent artist, singer, and judo master, has now added New York Times contributor to his resume. As the U.S. steps back from a plan to bomb Syria, Putin decided " to speak directly to the American people" in a New York Times op-ed published Wednesday. After reminding America of the good times — "[we] defeated the Nazis together," he writes — Putin launches into an argument for "caution," claiming that a U.S. strike against Syria could "throw the entire system of international law and order out of balance."  Here's more: 

The potential strike by the United States against Syria, despite strong opposition from many countries and major political and religious leaders, including the pope, will result in more innocent victims and escalation, potentially spreading the conflict far beyond Syria’s borders. A strike would increase violence and unleash a new wave of terrorism. It could undermine multilateral efforts to resolve the Iranian nuclear problem and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and further destabilize the Middle East and North Africa.

Of course, the Russian president is already addressing an American public skeptical of any plan to intervene in Syria, and that might be the point: as Syrian president Bashar al-Assad tried to do in an interview with Charlie Rose earlier this week, Putin is likely sensing the direction of the wind of U.S. public opinion here, and trying to appeal to it. That's even as Secretary of State John Kerry heads to Russia to work on a possible diplomatic solution to the Syrian situation. And while he's at it, Putin weighs in on what he thinks America stands for in another key passage: 

It is alarming that military intervention in internal conflicts in foreign countries has become commonplace for the United States. Is it in America’s long-term interest? I doubt it. Millions around the world increasingly see America not as a model of democracy but as relying solely on brute force, cobbling coalitions together under the slogan “you’re either with us or against us.”

At the same time, Putin inserts the latest version of an argument that's led to the country's repeated use of a veto on the U.N. Security Council against pretty much any resolution condemning the Syrian government, especially after the August 21st chemical attacks. "There is every reason to believe it was used not by the Syrian Army," Putin writes, but by opposition forces, to provoke intervention by their powerful foreign patrons, who would be siding with the fundamentalists." Russia has been one of Syria's strongest allies through the conflict in the country.

Putin also finds room to close with a criticism of American Exceptionalism, a notion President Obama gave slightly more than a dog whistle to in his Tuesday address to the country:

My working and personal relationship with President Obama is marked by growing trust. I appreciate this. I carefully studied his address to the nation on Tuesday. And I would rather disagree with a case he made on American exceptionalism, stating that the United States’ policy is “what makes America different. It’s what makes us exceptional.” It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation. There are big countries and small countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and those still finding their way to democracy. Their policies differ, too.

He closes with an appeal that, one might suspect, will fall flat to the ears of any of Russia's LGBT residents, who currently face a series of highly restrictive laws supported by Putin and his government: "We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord’s blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal." 

       

Congress Can Blame Syria For the Cancellation of its White House Picnic

Lawmakers who were looking forward to a picnic at the White House this month can blame Syria for the cancellation of its annual barbecue. According to Politico, the event, to which lawmakers usually bring their families, was scheduled for September 18, but cancelled when the administration assumed Congress "would be consumed by the debate over Syria."

The annual event is known for hosting bipartisan good times. Like this, from 2011: 

[image error]

 (That's Press Secretary Jay Carney, and Speaker John Boehner. Photo: AP)

Via the New York Times, here's the short announcement from the White House, sent to legislators on Wednesday in an email: 

Good evening,

The 2013 Congressional Picnic has been cancelled. The president and Mrs. Obama look forward to welcoming members of Congress and their immediate families at the Congressional Holiday Ball in December. More details regarding the Congressional Holiday Ball will follow at a later date.

Thank you,
White House Office of Legislative Affairs

Even though the White House says it will now allow lawmakers to bring family to the annual holiday party as a consolation prize, the cancellation is potentially an own-goal assist, tapped right to lawmakers who are still coming off the high of seeing the president's plan to get congressional authorization for a Syria strike stalled: 

Congress cancels his war. He cancels our barbecue. RT @politico: The White House has cancelled its annual barbecue with members of Congress.

— Justin Amash (@repjustinamash) September 11, 2013

The September date for the barbecue was actually the second date set this year for the annual event. In June, the White House moved the barbecue because of scheduling conflicts.

       

Hope for 'Better Call Saul': The Spinoffs You Forgot Were Spinoffs

The prospect of a Breaking Bad spinoff, in the form of Better Call Saul, is both exciting for Breaking Bad fans and a bit nerve-wracking. The halls of television history are littered with bad spinoffs. Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan himself was even responsible for one: the X-Files spinoff The Lone Gunmen. Then of course are the good spinoffs everyone remembers were spinoffs. Buffy had Angel, Grey's Anatomy has Private Practice, The Practice had Boston Legal. And finally there are the spinoffs that stand alone. That you forgot were, well, spinoffs. 

The Andy Griffith Show (1960-8) was a spinoff of The Danny Thomas Show. Griffith's character Andy Taylor was introduced in a 1960 episode, when he stopped that show's protagonist to give him a ticket. 

The Jeffersons (1975-80) was a spinoff of All in the Family, though it was just one of many All in the Family spinoffs, including Maude which in turn produced Good Times. Before George and Weezie moved to their "deluxe apartment in the sky" they were the Bunkers' neighbors in Queens. 

Laverne and Shirley (1976-1983) was a spinoff of Happy Days. Laverne and Shirley were originally dates for Richie and Fonzie. Meanwhile, Happy Days—which generated a number of other spinoffs as well—was an expansion of an episode of anthology series Love, American Style.

The Facts of Life (1979-88) was a spinoff of Diff'rent Strokes. Charlotte Rae's Edna Garrett was a maid for the Drummonds before being den mother to all those girls. 

Fraiser (1993-2004) was a spinoff of Cheers. Before moving to Seattle Dr. Fraiser Crane was a patron of Cheers, along with his then-wife Lilith. 

Daria (1997-2001) was a spinoff of Beavis and Butt-head. Yup, she wore a different outfit, but she initially started out as a female foil to MTV's two doofuses. 

NCIS (2003-) was a spinoff of JAG. CBS' insanely popular show was, yes, indeed borne from the series about naval lawyers.

It's hard to imagine Better Call Saul standing on its own the way these shows do. Perhaps that's because there's so much pressure on it, considering how highly Breaking Bad is regarded. Or perhaps that's because successful spinoffs tend to arise from sitcoms. But hopefully these examples can provide some measure of hope, for us and AMC.

       

Pastor Terry Jones Arrested with a Truck Full of 3,000 Kerosene-Soaked Korans

Pastor Terry Jones, famous for constantly threatening to burn Korans (and sometimes following through), won't be able to mark September 11th as he'd planned this year after being pulled over and arrested in a truck full of nearly 3,000 kerosene-soaked copies of the Muslim holy book. 

Those not on Jones's mailing list may have missed his plan to burn the Korans Wednesday evening to mark the 12th anniversary of the September 11th attacks, which he's been advertising heavily for weeks. But that plan seems to have unraveled a bit when Jones's organization, Stand Up America Now, had to change the location of their Koran-burning event at the last minute. Because of that, the group didn't have a permit to set up and burn 2,998 copies of the Koran in a public park, all but begging the Polk County Sheriff's department to arrest him. Jones, anticipating a conflict, had said that he planned to go ahead with the event anyway, without a permit. But he didn't even make it to the park, probably because his transportation strategy for all those Korans was mind-blowingly hazardous: 

Jones's vehicle was pulled over by the sheriff's office for allegedly transporting hazardous materials. Some of the 3,000 kerosene-soaked Korans were apparently inside a grill that was being towed behind a truck.

Terry Jones is arrested on his way to burn 3,000 kerosene-soaked Qurans in Mulberry. http://t.co/gfoap7ytjw pic.twitter.com/VKBfFH06cx

— The Ledger (@theledger) September 11, 2013

Jones was with Wayne Sapp, a pastor and friend of Jones who's often even more excited about burning Korans than is Jones himself. When Jones's church staged a Koran burning in the spring of 2011, the one that started deadly riots in Afghanistan, it was Sapp, and not Jones, who actually did the burning of the book. Both were arrested by the sheriff's office. Sapp's wife Stephanie Sapp said that the arrests were "a very dangerous sign to us as Americans, as citizens, and to the First Amendment." 

Without any Korans to burn, or anti-Muslim pastors to do it, the planned event has been cancelled.