Mette Ivie Harrison's Blog, page 89

Tuesday culture review: Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet

I was in Romeo and Juliet my junior year in high school. I was in the chorus and I played one of the corpses in the crypt at the end. That means that I have most of the play memorized, and I don't often find myself surprised by the play. The version in Cedar City this year was so amazing I had to write about it.

When I watch Shakespeare, I admit that there isn't a single play that I don't wish I could change. This is just the way that I am. When I do a retelling, it's always twisted because I want to say what I want to say, and the retelling is just a reference point. Some people feel like my retellings are a bit of a stretch, but I guess by now readers must be getting used to my way. When I watched Richard III, I kept wanting to rewrite the entire last half of the play. I got bored with Richard III killing people off and I wanted to find him a real opponent. Not Henry/Richmond, who defeats him in battle, but an opponent of his mind. Preferably a woman. And I kept thinking about Miles Vorkosigan as a retelling of Richard III.

A Midsummer Night's Dream was fun to me, but I wanted the whole love story to be played out more. I am always disappointed that when Demetrius decides he is in love with Helena at the end, she seems to accept it so readily. I want her to decide she doesn't love him after all, or make him work for it more. In Much Ado About Nothing, I wonder how you would play to a modern audience without talking about the importance of virginity at marriage. I also wonder how you would make Don John a better villain.

So, while watching Romeo and Juliet this year, I kept thinking about the problem with them falling in love at first sight. I want to believe it more than I do. But great actors make me forget about that problem by the time we get to the balcony scene. Then the last half of the play I feel frustrated because I know what is going to happen. Yeah, it's not a romance. It's a tragedy. It's about the effects of feuding. I get that. Shakespeare has lots of romances. This isn't a straight romance. But I want it to be. I want it to have a happy ending every time I see it.

This year, as I watched it, Juliet kissed Romeo's lips, trying to get the poison from them, and he took in a big breath and his hands came up, almost as if to touch her. His legs twitched, and I was sure in that moment that the director had decided to change the ending of the play. Romeo and Juliet were going to live happily ever after, right? He could do that, couldn't he? If I were directing a Shakespeare play, I'm afraid that I would be changing stuff right and left, rewriting and adding stuff in. I don't have the reverence for the bard that a lot of people in acting do (though I can see why they do--he's a playwright whose lines are interesting and poetic enough even for the small parts that you don't get tired of him after a hundred performances). Yeah, I would have my audiences absolutely up in arms.

I thought it was a brilliant move by the director to play with the audience's expectations and desires. We all know what the ending is. But we don't want it to come. We love Romeo and Juliet and the fact that they come so close to a happy ending is what makes it so heart-breaking. If only the friar had arrived a few minutes earlier. If only Juliet had woken a minute earlier. If only, if only . . .

But then Romeo's body went lax again, and Juliet stabbed herself, and the play went on as before. I listened to the final speeches and to Capulet, who is really a hard character to understand in modern times, when he tells Juliet she WILL marry Paris or he will throw her on the streets to starve. He is not very sympathetic these days. Lady Capulet is only slightly more so. She is so young herself that we feel sorry for her, but she also seems selfish and limited in her thinking.

The final great moment in the play for me, then, was when, after the speeches were over, Lady Capulet came over to her husband and slapped him hard. I loved that. I wanted to cheer her. She ended up weeping and in his arms as he took her out, but it was a good tip of the hat to modern audiences, I thought.

Interesting for me to think about how you can do a retelling of a play without changing a single word. Or almost.

Monday Book Recs with Selznick, Card, Laini Taylor, and Wrapsody

Wonderstruck by Brian Selznick

I loved Hugo Cabret so much, so when I saw this out, I was excited and frankly, a little nervous. When you love a book and its author so much (I heard him speak at ALA after he won the Caldecott and I thought he was amazing!), your expectations can be incredibly high and I have to say, few authors live up to those expectations. I think that this book does live up. It surprised me, but it also satisfied the itch for the same kind of story as Hugo Cabret at the same time. It has the same incredibly textured pencil drawings and so many of them, telling an alternate story as the main word plot goes forward. You have to wait to figure out how they tie together. I also really liked how the silent/talking film story came to be a lot more, and how the Deaf culture was portrayed here. I know a lot of deaf and hearing impaired people and I was glad to see a book that didn't ignore them.

Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor

I loved Lips Touch by Laini Taylor last year, but I must admit, felt trepidation when I realized shortly into this book that it was about angels, vampires, and puppets along with being set in Prague. Don't get me wrong. I have nothing against Prague. It just felt like too much for any author to deal with well. But Laini does a great job making old things new, making the setting matter and feel real and distant at the same time, exotic and familiar. I liked the surprise ending (which I will try not to spoil). I liked the bit about gathering teeth. I liked the sense of being propelled forward to find out a secret about the main character that even she does not know about herself. I don't think I could pull off a book like this, but it left me wanting more.

The Lost Gate by Orson Scott Card

Yeah, I'm an Orson Scott Card fan, of him personally and of his books. This year, he's had two new series started and I don't know how he keeps coming up with new ideas. One of the things that he is a master of is making the reader feel like s/he is as smart as the main character. In The Lost Gate, Danny North makes connections between physics and folklore than are really mind blowing and made me feel smarter. I like a writer who does that. There are also fun moments along the way, some that made me cringe in a way the author intended. I like the warmth that Card writes with, inviting the reader inside, and treating all characters with an evenhandedness that villains are never really villains.

A Knitting Wrapsody by Kristin Omdahl

I saw this book while we were in Edinburgh looking for yarn to take home with us. We got some amazing yarn and I got a couple of books. I was expecting to buy books with traditional Aran patterns, which I love. Apparently, those sorts of books are passe now, so I was left with some more modern books. I wasn't sure about this one, but 15 insisted I "had" to have it, so I bought it. I am working through an amazing shawl with the angora/Shetland wool in red that I bought and while the pattern is complex and made me rework it several times, I think the instructions are clearly explained and there are probably seven shawls I will want to make before I am finished with this book. That is a rare thing. I will buy a book if there are two patterns or more I love, because it makes it worth it. I am excited because my guess is that these will be some of the favorite things I have ever made for my daughters, heirlooms every one. And if they don't take them with them to college, I will be glad to keep them.

Friday Tri Tips

My tip of the day is to add to your life, not take away from it. I think so many people make the mistake, when they're trying to get in shape, of telling themselves all the things they can't do anymore. No sweets. No pizza. No fast food.

Instead, I think you will be more successful if you tell yourself the things you are going to do MORE of:

1. more fruits like mangos, and fresh pineapple and apple cider.
2. more vegetables that you love, including olives, corn on the cob, fresh grown tomatoes, squash.
3. more time to walk or do activities you already enjoy, biking with family,
4. If you go to the gym, make sure that it is a good experience. Plan a special DVD to watch or get a small treat afterward.
5. Be positive about the changes in your life and compliment yourself for what is going well.
6. Focus on what you can do, and not what you look like. If it helps, go look at some Rubens.

Writing Tip Wednesday--critics and writers

I remember in college I knew a professor who was a Shakespeare expert and claimed that if he could go back in time and give Shakespeare advice, he would tell him to write less. Because some of Shakespeare's plays are actually bad. On the one hand, I suppose I could wonder to myself who this professor thinks he is, that he should give Shakespeare advice. On the other hand, he may be right, at least in the sense that some of Shakespeare's plays are actually wretched. And even in my favorite plays, there are parts that I would change if I were going to rewrite them.

*But* I think the part that this professor doesn't get is that if Shakespeare had listened to the people around him who were telling him not to write as much, or that he was a hack, that he should quit while he was ahead, that only this play or that one was worth anything--guess what? Shakespeare might very well have stopped writing entirely before he got to the plays that we think today are valuable. Or he might have written a completely different set of plays that are unreadable now. Tastes do change and certain Shakespeare plays that are popular today have not always been the most popular ones.

When you're a critic, you worry about a completely different set of problems than when you are a writer, and that is the way that it has to be. For a writer, you have to think about how to keep going. It's hard enough to get that first novel published. Next to impossible, really. The odds against it are astronomical. But if I my math is right, the odds against getting a second novel published actually get worse. And the odds of making a living as a writer or even just having a career where you continue being published--well, let's just say I wouldn't bet on it.

In order to keep writing, you have to be able to tune out all those critical voices and focus instead on what is important to you. How do you know if it will be important to other people? You don't. And actually, you can't. And I would argue, if you try to figure that out, you will always end up failing. You will cut your creative self short. Mostly, we have to write the best way we can. We write whatever we can, and then we try to make it better. When it's the best that we can do, we let others see it and then it isn't ours any more. Or at least, the part that ours is distinct from the part that belongs to everyone else.


This is one of the many reasons that I think sometimes that spending so many years getting a PhD in literary criticism was one of the worst things I could do as a writer. Yes, it forced me to do a lot of reading and that was good. It also forced me to think about reception of work, about genius, about critical reception centuries later, about historical and cultural influences, and lots of things that would make a writer go insane with fear. Fear is the enemy of creativity. Not pain. Pain is the friend of creativity, I suspect.

So put your blinders on. Write what is given you to write, and then write something else. Let the critics do their job, and you do yours.

Veronica Mars

Yeah, yeah, so I'm a little late to this one. I had 5 kids and one of the things I gave up to do that was TV. So I'm catching up now.

What I loved:
1. Dad and daughter relationship. I think this was played just right. The father never took over the story, but he wasn't just window dressing, either. I liked that he sometimes made V's life more complicated and I liked that he sometimes got in her way when she thought she was all grown up. Very real.

2. Veronica and Logan. I suspect sometimes shows go in directions the writers didn't expect because things happen with the actors and there was just chemistry here where there wasn't so much elsewhere. I also liked that the relationship wasn't resolved. I kept rooting for Veronica and Logan even through season 3 when it was clear that there were major problems (of course!). I think it was smart not to give me what I wanted. It would have been too sappy.

3. The feel of high school. The nastiness, the cliques, the teachers. My teen daughters say that high school isn't like this for them. That makes me wonder if I've exaggerated how bad it was for me or if they simply have a better time because they're richer. I suspect the latter. I grew up in a very wealthy neighborhood (our neighbors were the Osmonds and some diamond dealers). We were 11 kids surviving on a college professor's salary. I rebelled by wearing sweats every day to school and sneakers to church. I couldn't see any other way to make a statement about how horrible it was that other kids wore thousand dollar outfits and got to pick any car on the planet for their sixteenth birthday. Yes, Porsche was on the list, and so was Lamborghini.

4. The feel of college. Just when you think you are out of high school, it turns out that college is just the same only more so, and you have to figure out how everything translates. The fraternities and sororities, real life vs. homework, the hierarchy, and the new games.

5. The character of Veronica as a tough girl who is still feminine, wants to fit in but isn't sure it is worth it. She was so complex. Strong, but not quite Buffy super power strong. Attracted to the bad guy because he lets her be strong and allows her to be her worst self, too. Friends with other strong girls, but a defender of the downtrodden. Prom-hungry. Smart.

What I didn't like:

1. I couldn't believe that anyone could do the kind of detective work on the side, with a job as a waitress and a boyfriend, and still end up getting good enough grades to be top of the school for scholarships. No one has that much time. And also, I just didn't see Veronica reading or studying that much. She quoted some fun stuff, though. I loved that.

2. The lack of cohesive storytelling after the first season. The third season, especially, fell apart. Mostly, as far as I can tell, because the network execs didn't know what they had on their hands and decided to try to make it into everything else that they thought they understood. And then killed it dead.

3. Lily. She was an interesting character, but I wasn't sure that Veronica's reaction to the revelations about her were right.

4. As with most TV shows about high school, the actors were somehow not quite young enough. There wasn't the physical awkwardness that is part of high school, especially for the guys who are still adding inches.

5. Some cliches in the plot turns. Evil dad turns out to be, well, evil.

Monday Book Recs

Drawing from Memory by Allen Say

Picture Book? Not sure what to call this, since I'm not sure it's aimed at children, but I loved it. I picked it up as an ARC at ALA. I am not an artist, but I find myself drawn to art and feel that the lessons of artists often translate well to writers. I was immersed in the drawings and photos from Say's childhood and I loved the story of him finding his mentor through a newspaper article. I loved hearing about his courage as a thirteen year old boy to live alone and become an artist. I remember that age so well and wish that I had been as courageous. I also loved that the book was written in collaboration with his mentor.

Anya's Ghost by Vera Brosgol

Teen Graphic Novel. I wish there were more graphic novels, I really do. They don't seem to sell well, and I think this is because Americans are stupid. Or prejudiced in some odd way against "comics." I loved the way that the ghost is introduced both in the story and in the drawings as harmless, and then gradually changes to have more power. And I loved the metaphor this is for teen (and really lots of girl) friendships.

How to Save a Life by Sara Zarr

Young Adult Novel. I love Sara Zarr, so I was excited to get an ARC of this at ALA. I honestly do not read a lot of contemporary fiction. But Sara Zarr has this way of writing a book that will not let me put it down. She doesn't use any tricks, really. And this is a great concept book about a mother and daughter who have lost husband/father and are looking for a reason to live and find it in a teen girl whose baby they plan to adopt. But the concept is just the beginning. All the characters are spot on. I loved the self defense scene--very funny. I admit, I cried at the end. I felt like this depiction of grief was just right.

Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins

Young Adult Romance. I used to read romance by the bucketload. I think the Provo library stopped checking out romances because it took much time. They asked for a number, and then later not even that because they seemed to want them gone. "Real" readers didn't read romance. Just like "real" readers didn't read movie/TV book adaptations. Yeah, right. I knew even then that a lot of the romances were hokey and stereotyped, but there were a few that were good enough that I was willing to read the others. Since then, I haven't been able to find any romances that I could actually finish. Just too much alpha male stuff/women who describe their clothing instead of their thoughts. But this one not only captured high school relationships but it also made me believe in the characters. I liked them and I didn't want to hit anyone over the head. It made me think that there are plenty of problems in a couple getting together that you don't have to make up stupid ones.

Other Books I loved:
Elizabeth George
Walter Mosley
Anne Perry
Sue Grafton
Orson Scott Card's Pathfinder
Princess For Hire by Lindsey Leavitt (great concept book that wasn't at all predictable)

#10 TV show female character--Fiona on Burn Notice

Next week, I will be trying a new format for the blog just to give it a structure which I think is lacking:

Monday--Book Recs
Tuesday--TV/movie/culture notes
Wednesday--Writing Tips
Thursday--quotable quotes
Friday--Triathlon

But for today, I thought I would do one more bit on a favorite TV show. OK, I admit I haven't watched Burn Notice in the last season with as much interest as the first two seasons. I have tried to figure out why, but I'm not sure I have a good answer. I think it's because I discovered I don't care about Michael getting his name cleared at all and don't think that is what the show is about. I think I had hoped that Michael would figure that out by now, too, and am a little impatient with him and the storyline. That said, I think the show is one of the sexiest on TV. Which makes sense to me when I think about the geeky TV show characters I find sexy (generally, tall, skinny ones with glasses rather like the man I married).

Whenever Fiona comes on the screen my husband says, "I think she would be really hot if she would just gain about twenty pounds." (I married the right guy, huh?) She is definitely on the anorexic side of the scale. And I really hesitate to choose as a heroine a character who probably has an eating disorder. On the other hand, we all have problems, so why should that one exclude her? And she is such a fantastic character. A gun fanatic, ex-spy (not so much ex), ex-lover who has retired to Florida and is still in love with Sam, she is not at all what you might expect from her skinny model looks. She is a bad girl without a normal sense of right and wrong and yet she has a sense of family and her own moral code. She is no weakling, and she saves Michael's bacon more than once (not to mention Sam's). She also has her own agenda pitted against Michael's, and it isn't always to get him to fall back in love with her.

I love Michael's mother just as much as Fiona. She is so interesting and multi-dimensional. Yeah, on the one hand, she is a typical hen-pecking mother who wants Michael to run errands for her and help her friends. She is also a chain-smoker who put up with an abusive husband for years. And yet, you can see how Michael's weird sense of justice comes from her. She has a big heart, maybe too big. I love her big presence on the screen that seems to swallow up everyone else. I also like her odd relationship with Fiona. They talk a lot about Michael, but it isn't always about Michael. So I think it does pass the Bechdel test. They are often involved in working a case together and Maddie is no weakling, either.

Here's to more Maddie and Fiona in the next season! And more complications between Fiona and Michael.

#9 TV show female character--Elizabeth from White Collar

Neal is the easy guy to find hot on White Collar. He's the criminal. He's young, suave, smart, and mysterious. He has HISTORY. He is in love with Kate, the missing woman, and of course, he ended up in prison because of her. But he's still searching for her, and will take insane risks to find her. Until she gets killed. Because, of course she has to get killed. Otherwise, what would the writers do with Hot Neal as a character? We've got to spend the rest of the series watching him get in and out of bed with other hot female characters.

Hey, I like Neal as much as anyone. But I think the real genius pairing in this show is Peter/Elizabeth. Peter isn't suave. But he is smart. Smarter than Neal, since he caught him. And Peter is a straight arrow. Most of the time. Except when it concerns Ellie. And sometimes when it's about Neal, too. And Peter surprises us by being up to playing a part on occasion.

But enough about the guys. It's Elizabeth who interests me primarily in this show. No, it's not a show about Peter and Elizabeth, not really. It's a show about a male friendship romance between Neal and Peter. Elizabeth doesn't have a sexy career. She's a designer. Typical female stereotype. She's not into danger. She's the rock, the woman that Peter can always count on. Yeah, yeah, she could have been really uninteresting. My guess is that the actress Tiffani Thiessen showed she could do more and the writers started to build a more interesting character around her.

Neal ends up going to Elizabeth constantly, sometimes to get around Peter, and sometimes just because Elizabeth is who he needs. Not because she is Peter's woman, but because she knows things that Peter doesn't know and has skills Peter doesn't have. Also, she is the one woman who isn't charmed by Neal. And she's taken already. There is no chance for a sexual relationship between them. So they end up being real friends. I like the way this is developing a lot. Can't wait to see more.

And I should mention also that Diahann Carroll is fascinating as June. Love that she has a past of her own.

some random and possibly ill-informed thoughts on publishing

The publishing world is changing in the new digital age, but not necessarily changing as fast as it should. As an author, I am wondering how to capitalize on the ebook trend, and perhaps on the cellphone app world in general. I know that real bookstores have been the mainstay of publishing for a long while, and I love bookstores. I really, really do. But it's interesting to look back on the history of B&N/Borders eating up smaller bookstores, and now struggling financially and (Borders) closing. So what will fill the void?

Some questions about ebooks?

1. If best-selling authors like JK Rowling and others start selling ebooks online on their own, will this make paper books obsolete more quickly?

2. If paper books become the minority, at what point do best selling authors need publishers anymore? (Will the same kinds of promotion matter? Will they hire their own editors/designers?)

3. If best selling authors sell on their own because they have already established a name, what will publishers who are being pushed hard only to publish best-sellers do?

At some point I think I would like to try an experimental novel that I write "by the seat of my pants" and sell as an ebook installment on a weekly basis, a la Stephen King's The Green Mile but for a new age. I'd do it with the promise that I don't know the ending and haven't outlined it, but am going to find out what happens along with my readers. (Not that big a stretch, since that is how I write anyway--minus the editing stage). I think this would be both insane and the sort of insanity that I thrive on in terms of stress.

What do you think about the new world of books emerging?

I will say that I tend to read disposable books on my iphone, ie books that I actually do not want to have in my library. I still like having physical books around if I love the author and have a signed copy or if I want to read it over and over again. I don't know if other readers are like me, though. Obviously, there are those who don't have ebook readers. But surely that is just a "yet."

a short post on TV moms

When I was a kid, TV moms were Mrs. Cunningham and Mrs. Brady. They offered cookies and sometimes advice. They weren't beautiful, but comfortable looking. They were modest and clean-spoken and utterly, utterly boring. No one wanted to BE a TV mom, but we all wanted to HAVE one.

The TV moms today are sometimes a little sassier, but often the same as in The Brady Bunch. It makes me wonder sometimes how much our cultural image of motherhood has changed in forty years. As a mom myself, I think a lot about what it means to be a mother and what images are healthy and unhealthy for my children to accept about motherhood. I know that children are probably always going to have trouble seeing "Mom" as something other than a function (either she gives me what I want or she doesn't--good mom or bad mom), but that is one of the things I am interested in playing with.

I want my kids to see me as "Mom," but also as a variety of other things: triathlete, writer, volunteer, reader, artist, quilter, knitter, critic, and more. I want them to come to accept the boundaries between me as "Mom" and me in my other roles. There are times in my house when I am writing and I don't want to be disturbed. A good mother can still tell her kids to go away and solve their problems themselves. A good mother can say that she is not the solution to a child's boredom. A good mother can offer sympathy and then look back at her computer screen and allow a child to leave, still sad. A good mother can be running on the treadmill when someone comes to ask where the tunafish is and shout, "Not now!" A good mother can miss events in a child's life because she has her own plans and not have it be the end of the world.

So where is this kind of good mother on TV?

1. Cuddy on House?
2. Sharona/Natalie on Monk?
3. Bones?
4. Abbey Bartlet on West Wing?
5. Judging Amy?

I don't mind a mother who makes mistakes, but she needs to be one who absolutely puts her child first when necessary, yet has a life of her own and is absolutely an individual and not simply a function. Curious if there are comments or ideas about moms I may have missed. And I've excluded lots of sitcoms in this list because I don't like many sitcoms and I don't think the moms there are as interesting.