Jeff Suwak's Blog, page 3

Here’s to Grinding Out 2014

In mixed martial arts, the term ‘grinder’ is used to classify a specific sort of fighter. They are not the guys with the flashy kicks or the soul-stealing right hands or the slicker-than-oil submission game. No, the grinder is a guy who uses dogged tenacity as his primary weapon. The grinder is not likely to fill out a long highlight reel, nor will he promise anyone any differently. What he’s going to do is walk into the cage, eat every kick and punch his opponent hits him with, and just keep pressing forward. He’s going to get his adversary against the cage or down on the floor, and he’s going to grind elbows in his face, knee the thigh, press his forearm on his throat, until the adversary has simply had enough. The grinder is out to break his opponent’s will.

The UFC, highest court of the MMA world, seems to be phasing out grinders. If the smaller organizations follow suit, we may never see the likes of Yushin Okami, Jon Fitch, Clay Guida, Mike Pierce, Chael Sonnen, or Jake Shields in a couple years. Those guys could become nothing more than stories of the past. The ever-expanding MMA crowd doesn’t want to see guys grind out decisions. They want flying dragon kicks and spinning elbows and cartwheeling leg locks (not sure if that’s actually possible). It’s a shame, really, because the grinder represents one of the most beautiful aspects of the human experience…which is the ability of spirit to overcome all obstacles and get the win.

It’s hard to believe that grinders choose their style from a wide palette of options. If a guy has the ability to end any single fight with an overhand right or a left hook, earning the bloodthirsty applause of the money-bearing fans, then it’s hard to imagine to he would opt to do otherwise. Grinders are grinders because that’s where their talent lies. They are tenacious. They are tough. They are unbreakable. It’s no small thing for a man to say, “I am going to go out there for fifteen minutes and stay on that guy until he can’t fight anymore. I am going to eat every shot, ignore all fatigue, and just keep dogging that guy until he can’t breathe anymore, until he just wants out of this cage, and then I’m going to dog him some more.” The ability to keep up a pace like that is no small thing.

But, this isn’t an MMA fan post. This is my post for my 2014, and my note to all the other grinders out there. I was not born with exceptional intelligence or talent, sure as hell not exceptional access to resources. I was born with only one thing, and that’st he refusal to quit. 2014 is going to be the best year of my life. I’m going to get right out there and press it against the cage and beat on it until it doesn’t want to fight anymore. I am going to take huge strides towards my goals…financial, artistic, athletic…all of them. Nothing flashy. Nothing crazy. I’m just going to put my head down and keep grinding out every single day, every single hour, until the obstacles crumble. Victory by erosion. Victory by persistence.

That’s all really, just my thoughts on this New Year’s Eve. I’m coming at you 2014, and I just thought you should know.

Good luck to all you other grinders out there. I respect the hell out of all you. I hope you make 2014 the best year of your life…or at least go down fighting in the attempt.

Here’s to grinding out 2014.

Richard Price’s “Ladies’ Man”

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From the moment he published his first novel, The Wanderers, Richard Price has been praised for his incredible talent for writing dialogue. His prowess is so great in that area, in fact, that many of his other literary skills are sometimes overlooked, including his remarkable talent for revealing the inner workings of his character’s minds. It is a talent that is put on display in Ladies Man perhaps more than any of his other works.

The convoluted and contradictory internal world of “ladies’ man” Kenny Becker is illustrated masterfully. It is sometimes frustrating, sometimes hilarious, and usually a little bit of both at the same time. Kenny doesn’t know what the hell he wants. He wants relationships to assuage his loneliness, but he doesn’t want to be bothered by others’ needs. He’s always horny, always on the prowl for sex, yet the moment he finds he becomes full of uncertainties and fearful analyses. He is, in short, the prototype of the modern man, and while the book offers a fascinating exploration of New York’s 70′s party scene, the book is perhaps most interesting in how it provides a glimpse at the origins of modern manhood.

Kenny is insightful and wise, in a way, but those things offer him no ultimate conclusions or ideas of how to live his life. He is aware of his destructive need for sex and the damage that his narcissism causes in his life, but none of that changes the failed routine he is caught in. There were times when I literally yelled at the book. Laying there alone in bed, reading, I actually shouted things like come on Kenny, get your head out of your ass, man! At other moments, I laughed like a lunatic. After reading the novel’s peep show scene, I had trouble falling asleep  because I was laughing so hard, and the moment I woke up the next morning, started laughing again.

The late-70′s perspective is also interesting from our modern vantage point, because we can see the shadow of HIV looming over the events. As Kenny penetrates deeper into the underground party scene, attending sleazy sex parties, I couldn’t help but think about the specter of that deadly disease that was floating around the city even then.

Thematically, Ladies’ Man resembles another of Price’s early novels, Blood Brothers. Like Brothers’ Stony De Coco, Kenny is drawn to a dream that does not fit with the masculine expectations of his upbringing. He wants to be an English teacher, but is plagued with doubts because of the perceived insignificance and the career’s unimpressive financial prospects. But his internal struggle is really just part of who Kenny is. He analyzes everything in his life and then places the worst aspects of it under the microscope, until that is all he sees.

At times, he catches glimpses of the fear of death that drives most of his behavior, but he either does not know how to explore its significance, or simply chooses not to. It’s much easier to run to the next lay, to the drink, to the next laugh, and so that’s what he decides to do. Over and over and over again, he runs in this hedonistic circle of desire, appeasement, and guilt. Hell, looking at him that way, his life might just be a metaphor for America.

Ladies’ Man is one of the funniest books I’ve ever read. It’s also an amazing look inside the brain of the modern man. I couldn’t help but see aspects of myself in there. It’s a book that I walked away from feeling like I had a better understanding of myself and of life in general. I can’t think of any higher compliment that I could possibly pay a work of literature.

Holiday Book Sale

A Fascinating Account of Cult Psychology in Mark E. Laxer’s “Take Me For a Ride: Coming of Age in a Destructive Cult”

Two of my recurring fascinations are obscure books and cult psychology, so I was excited to discover Mark E. Laxer’s “Take Me for a Ride: Coming of Age in a Destructive Cult.”

Victims are often and understandably hesitant to talk about their experiences. For that reason, I have a lot of respect for Laxer’s account of his immersion with Fred Lenz, aka Rama, in 1979. In many ways, cultists can be seen as rape victims. Their sense of psychological and spiritual safety is abused and damaged, often leaving their self confidence in shambles. This is the lens through which this story is told, as Laxer recounts his experience with Lenz while undertaking a cross country bike ride in which he is trying to repair his self-hood.

So many people look at cults from the outside and say ‘this could never happen to me. Those people are foolish and flawed in some fundamental way.” But, that assessment is really nothing more than comfortable egotism. Many of those who fall under the sway of cults are intelligent and sensitive people. The Jonestown victims, for instance, were largely driven not by stupidity, but by a deep and overwhelming need to find something more in life than what is offered by society’s materialism. Laxer also falls in this category. He was a bright young man with a lot of potential, so much potential that he didn’t want to squander it on chasing wealth. That desire for spiritual meaningfulness in life drove him in the sway of a charismatic and manipulative professor who eventually took his guru status to malicious and megalomaniacal levels.

The book offers the insights of someone who is examined enough that he knows what happened to him and and can express it. In that way, the book is powerfully educational. What people don’t like to see or admit to, is that the dynamics of cult psychology are not so very different from the psychological dynamics at play in our lives. We all have psychic blinders that drive us to believe in that which is not true, when we want so badly to deny reality’s harshness.

Much has been written and said about Lenz. I choose not to do that here. This is not Lenz’s story. This is Mark E. Laxer’s story, and it’s definitely worth reading for those who want a darkly fascinating story, a view into cult mechanics, or a look inside the dangerous psychological dynamics that are part of us all, on one level or another.

 

 

Ding Dong, The Governor’s Dead!

Many tears have been shed in the last couple days over the death of The Walking Dead’s Hershel, and rightfully so. In many ways he took over Dale’s role as the group’s moral compass. He also provided some medical heroics, without which many more would have died.

I, however, am far too elated by the Governor’s death to mourn much of anything else.

Some people were lulled into an appreciation of the Governor by his recent portrayals. He might be a homicidal maniac, some said, but it was only because he cared so much for his family. He was willing to do anything, to anyone, to keep his people alive.

I never bought into any of those positive assessments. For one,they assume that life is nothing more than survival, that cooperation, kindness, and forbearance do not also play a crucial role in the human will to live. No group sustained and motivated purely by the desire for self preservation will last long. There is a reason that dictatorships always crumble from within. Eventually, the time comes when all people need a purpose to keep moving forward.

But, beyond the existential wasteland created by the Governor’s style of leadership, I just couldn’t stand the man. Halfway through the Woodbury story line I had become so fed up with the Governor that I found myself snarling at the television and ranting to friends in text messages about how tired I was of him. By the time he ripped out a zombie’s throat 70s Kung Fu movie style, a move which is utterly pointless considering that walkers can only be killed by taking out the brain, I was truly asking myself if I could continue watching the series if the Governor was going to play a major part.

I was so thrilled to see the Governor die that everything else in the episode is now colored by a bright halo of light in my memory. I was able to completely suspend disbelief even as I watched a hollowed out filing cabinet deflect bullets. When Darryl performed an impossible feat of strength in carrying a walker in front of him like a shield, when said walker shield inexplicably absorbed every round without a single shot passing through, I only cheered in joyous bloodlust.

Now I look forward to the latter half of this season, Governor-free, and full of enthusiastic anticipation. I am so excited, even, that I feel compelled to finish this meaningless post with a poem.

At last,

the Governor is dead,

and the final bullet in the head

ensures that not even as a biter

will never come back again.

Ding Dong.

It’s 4 in the morning. I should be sleeping.

The Ignoble Savage: Thoughts on Ted Kotcheff’s “Wake in Fright”

One of the great pleasures enabled by the internet is the ability to track great niche films from the ancient stacks of cinema. One of the best finds I’ve recently discovered is Ted Kotcheff’s 1971 film “Wake in Fright.” The story got under my skin in a way that few works of art have ever managed to. The movie may be over 40 years old, but the masterful cinematography captures images of a sort of bleak surrealism that feels truly timeless, which is fitting, because the story itself explores the conflict between the Id and the Superego that has likely played out inside the human psyche since civilization began.

I suspect the movie may move a bit slowly for most modern tastes, but it’s subtle evolution is part of the film’s virtues. It draws us inexorably deeper into the darkest parts of our hearts every bit as masterfully as Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness,” except that rather than the Congo River being the conduit into the shadow, “Wake in Fright” employs the harsh countryside of the Australian Outback.

The story follows John Grant (played by Gary Bond), a city-dweller who has become disillusioned with his professional office as a school teacher in a backwater town, a position foisted upon him as a requirement of his education.

Grant’s journey to Sidney is disrupted and he winds up in a strange, vaguely forbidding little town named Bundanyabba. A night of drunkenness sets off a chain of events that has his gradually falling into the nihilistic uber-masculine culture of the place. For the remainder of the film, he is simultaneously attracted and repulsed by the violence and sexual depravity that he encounters, and is gradually led far outside his ethical boundaries. His journey culminates with a gruesome nighttime kangaroo slaughter and a homosexual encounter, two things which he’d previously not identified with and thereby badly shake his sense of self. His psychological and moral collapse, combined with his seemingly cursed inability to escape the town, eventually drive him to attempt suicide.

The film dramatizes the dilemma of the modern man, as he is pulled between the responsibilities of civilization and the drives of his most basic nature, simultaneously repulsed by both the demands of bureaucracy and the savagery of freedom, seeking in each a respite from the other, and consequently feeling torn in two and never psychically or emotionally whole.  Civilization demands that he work a job he hates in order to earn an education; the unrestrained subculture of Bundanyabba demand that he stays perpetually intoxicated and uncontrolled. Neither is fully satisfying.

Grant’s dilemma is illustrated at its extremes by Doc Tydon, whose character is rendered by Donald Pleasance in a role so masterfully performed that it would justify the immortality of “Wake in Fright,” even if the film’s other considerable virtues didn’t exist. Tydon is a medical doctor who has left behind the prominence of his position to live a meager existence in Bundanyabba. He accredits his decision to alcoholism and a wandering nature, but bits of his dialogue suggest that he has arrived at his hedonistic existence as a result of his own existential questions. One gets the impression that he has looked long and hard at the pretty veneer of civilization and found it wanting. As a result, he not only embraces his base impulses, but makes that embrace the cornerstone of his philosophy. In some ways, he is the film’s ‘villain’— if such a simple notion can be ascribed to such a subtle and complex film—because he is responsible more than anyone else for leading Grant down his dark path. But Tydon seems to have no wicked notions, as at the end of the film he is instrumental in covering up Grant’s suicide attempt and helping him escape the town. One is left to assume that Tydon had no motive of self-gain. He was merely offering what Grant seemed to want, which is a life free from the shackles of civilization’s monotony.

Grant doesn’t take Tydon’s road. In the end, he elects to escape Bundanyabba and return to his life as a school teacher. As demanded by the Hero’s Journey, he comes full circle, back to where he began, but having new wisdom and insight because of his experiences.

The depravity of life in Bundanyabba holds little appeal on the film, yet Grant’s return to his job doesn’t seem to offer much better, either. There is none of the senseless violence of the kangaroo hunt, but instead there is more boredom and drudgery. In that way, the film maintains to the very end an ambiguity offers no easy answers, but instead inspires deeper questions of self and of civilization. The eternal push-and-pull doesn’t disappear. It’s still there, waiting for each person to explore on their won. The journey is never easy and rarely pleasant, but it’s part of what it means to be human. It’s a struggle that has been in our hearts since day 1, and one that will probably always be in our hearts.

The question I’m left asking is whether or not Grant’s fright began upon waking up in Bundanyabba, or waking up to his conditions of servitude in the school house. One of those places offers the horrors of violence and nihilism, but the other offers the horrors of perpetual monotony and restraint. Perhaps a meaningful life lies in the battlefield between those dual impulses, or perhaps it lies in some country far beyond the borders of both. I’m not sure yet, but “Wake in Fright” has had me asking these questions ever since I stumbled upon it, and that’s the highest mark of quality that I can think of for any work of art.

Review of Robert R. Mitchell’s “Only Shot at a Good Tombstone”

I came across this book at a book festival. The poet sitting in the booth next to me had purchased a copy and I opened it up to take a gander. I was instantly drawn in by the voice, read the first two pages, and went over to get a copy.

The book is fairly unique in that it combines a simple narrative with extended contemplations on various subjects, everything from history to science to sexuality. Obviously, those who do not appreciate that kind of intellectualization might not appreciate those qualities, but I found them to be some of the most fascinating aspects of the book. The history of queer culture in San Francisco and the Pacific Northwest, for instance, was endlessly interesting.

The book has no chapters or breaks in textual continuum of any kind. I’ve seen this done before (McCarthy’s “All the Pretty Horses” comes to mind), and have always felt that it has a curious effect. Because things are not compartmentalized into chapters, the story feels rather rambling and, consquently, akin to reality. When it’s over, it felt like I’d actually lived a couple days of life and was left to figure out what it meant…or to impose my own meaning upon it.

The narrator mentions Salinger’s “Franny and Zooey” and an appreciation for the extended dialogue in the book. I can’t help but think that the author is speaking directly through the narrator in this aspect, because OSGT also has long chunks of dialogue. Dialogue, in fact, probably constitutes the greatest portion of the novel.

Ultimately, the book had a really strange effect. In terms of pure narrative, I felt that it meandered and drifted at times, yet whenever I set the book down, I found my throughts gravitating back towards it.

There are some passages of beautiful description, but it was the philisophical/historical musings that stuck with me the most.

Ultimately, I gave the book four stars based on my personal scale of literature, which is weighted entirely on the ultimate effect of the book. I don’t disconstruct works of art and weigh them according to their pieces and details…I make my assessment based on the book’s ability to provoke worthwhile thought and emotion.

OSGT definitely left me with a lot to think about, and many of the characters stick in my mind like real people. I wish things went better for them, and hope the narrator finds his peace.

In saying all of the above, I nearly forgot to mention that there are also some really funny sections in the book…it’s a dark kind of gallows humor that had me laughing out loud more than once.

OSGT isn’t a popcorn read full of plot driven action that leaves you overful but undernourished…it demands attention, but pays off that demand with plenty of food for thought. To me, that’s the surest sign of a book worth reading.

Why John Carpenter’s ‘They Live’ Will Never Die

Earlier today I was driving on the stretch of I-5 that runs between Tacoma and Olympia, a stretch of road that I affectionately refer to as ‘The Corridor of Death,’ when John Carpenter’s film They Live popped into my mind. This psychic visitation by They Live is not as rare as some might assume. I actually find myself thinking quite often about the movie, particularly when I’m crawling through traffic on the highway or doing some other similar, joyless task necessitated by modern life.

Yes, the movie is from 1988, which makes it quite old in many people’s minds, but nearly all of the books and movies that I find myself thinking about are over 20 years old. I don’t know why that is, really. To my view, all the best writers are dead, the golden age of dramatic cinema was in the 70s, and the golden age of fun movies was the 80s. These estimations don’t only apply to the films and books I read as a kid. Most of my movie nights are spent combing the catacombs for old flicks that I’ve never seen. Most modern movies strike me as intolerably formulaic and dull. It’s quite possible that I’m a pretentious asshole, though I’ll let others determine the truth of that statement for me.

Before I go on, let me say this to anyone that might not have seen They Live: The movie stars Rowdy Roddy Piper of professional wrestling fame, and within the film there is an entertaining, needlessly drawn-out fight scene in which Piper body slams, forearm blasts, and elbow drops his way into cinematic immorality. If that little tidbit excites you, then I urge you to stop reading this article right now and go watch the movie. You won’t be disappointed.

On a side note: I recently watched some old footage of Rowdy Roddy Piper. The guy really was/is a comic genius. When I was a kid, I was too absorbed in the testosterone and high drama of the WWF to understand how funny it was…but now, I can appreciate Piper for the great performer that he is. Embedded below is my proof of that claim.

So, what is it about “They Live” that I love so much and that causes the film to come so frequently to my mind? Briefly, the movie is about a rootless guy called Nada who finds a pair of sunglasses that allow him to see America for what it really is:  a socially stratified slave camp in which aliens run the upper crust of society (not much of a stretch, I know). He then picks up his shotgun and goes on a crusade to take the aliens down and reveal the true nature of the world to the rest of its sleepwalking inhabitants.

The idea isn’t new, of course. It’s really just a variation on a theme that goes back at least as far as Plato’s cave, and almost certainly much further back than that. The idea apparently appeals to something deep-seated in the human psyche, and if the success of “The Matrix” is any indication, something that has only become more powerfully rooted in the modern zeitgeist.

Perhaps the appeal isn’t too hard to understand. On the subtlest level, the idea that there is more to reality than what we can say implies at least the possibility that there is something beyond death, which is obviously appealing when one considers that humans are biologically designed to pursue survival at all costs, while cognitively capable of understanding that such an aim is impossible to maintain forever. But, it also appeals to something much simpler and more overt.

The thing is, even if the other reality beyond the pale of our perceptions is one full of carnivorous machines or hostile aliens, in many ways it beats the hell out of modern life. The idea of running around brandishing a shotgun, possessing proof that the rules of society are so malicious and inhuman that we are morally justified in completely disregarding them, almost certainly appeals to every modern person’s long-neglected Id.

Yea, every day in such a world would be spent fearing for one’s life, but there would also be excitement, tests of endurance and wiles, and mandatory exercise! Terrifying, yes, but in many ways it beats the prospect of spending 40 years in an office cubicle watching yourself age inexorably in the reflection of your computer monitor.

Beyond the prospect of daily adventure and lawlessness, such a life would also provide one with a  clear purpose. In They Live, Nada stopped wondering what his purpose in life was the moment that he put on those sunglasses and saw ill-intentioned aliens all around him. From that point on, his purpose was clear: shoot as many of them as possible and reveal the truth to the rest of the world. That’s a panacea for every existential crisis in the repertoire.

All of those things probably explain why They Live pops into my mind at such moments as those spent sitting in slow-moving traffic, wondering what the hell the point of my life is. If I were fortunate enough to discover that the world was full of stuck-up, pompous aliens bent on keeping the good people of the world down, I most certainly wouldn’t be struck as often by nihilistic anxiety, which also means I probably wouldn’t feel the need to write blog posts such as this….which leads me to the question of why I felt the need to write about all of this in the first place. That’s a question probably best left unanswered.

Related articles

‘Rowdy’ Roddy Piper confesses: ‘They Live’ was a documentary (twitchy.com)

Ray Bradbury’s “Something Wicked This Way Comes”

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“Oh, hell, don’t let them drink your tears and want more! Will! Don’t let them take your crying, turn it upside down and use it for their own smile! I’ll be damned if death wears my sadness for glad rags. Don’t feed them one damn thing, Willy, loosen your bones! Breathe! Blow!” – Charles Halloway in Something Wicked This Way Comes

In the long history of letters, there are few voices as distinct as that of Ray Bradbury.

Many years ago, Bradbury stated that he viewed his books as works of cinema rendered on paper. It can hardly be argued that the man was a master at laying out a scene and bringing it to life, but the man’s love of film did nothing to detract from his uniquely exuberant storytelling voice, and that voice might have never been put to finer use than in Something Wicked This Way Comes.

Bradbury’s masterpiece of dark fantasy, Something Wicked, has an interesting history. It was originally written as a ten page short story, then expanded into a screenplay that was never produced, then repurposed into a novel, and finally transformed back into a screenplay that was ultimately made into a film. Through all of this, the novel’s language didn’t lose a bit of Bradbury’s characteristic passion and wit.

Unlike today’s oft-homogenized writing styles, Something Wicked hits in the ear like the voice of your crazy, drunk, brilliant uncle telling stories around a campfire. Your dad always told you to stay away from crazy old Uncle Ray, but you never listened.

In fact, Uncle Ray is your favorite family member of all, becaue you know that he’s the one guy in the whole family that’s NOT crazy. While the others are sitting around stuffy dinner parties or vegetating in front of television sets, ol’ Unlce Ray is wandering around in the thrill of an open night, barking poetry at the stars.

He’ll never be a great accountant or an actuary or a chief of police, or any other sort of upstanding occupation, but within his realm of specialization he is a doctor, a scientist, and an artist all at once, and within that world he can make absolute miracles happen right here on Earth.

There are lines in Something Wicked that only Ray Bradbury could have written. They are lines of strange wisdom, magical insight, or simply unparalleled description. Consider this:

“Death doesn’t exist. It never did, it never will. But we’ve drawn so many pictures of it, so many years, trying to pin it down, comprehend it, we’ve got to thinking of it as an entity, strangely alive and greedy. All it is, however, is a stopped watch, a loss, an end, a darkness. Nothing.”

“Too late, I found you can’t wait to become perfect, you got to go out and fall down and get up with everybody else.”

“Somewhere in him, a shadow turned mournfully over. You had to run with a night like this so the sadness could not hurt.”

“Once, as a boy, sneaking the cool grottos behind a motion picture theater screen, on his way to a free seat, he had glanced up and there towering and flooding the haunted dark seen a woman’s face as he had never seen it since, of such size and beauty built of milk-bone and moon-flesh as to freeze him there alone behind the stage, shadowed by the motion of her lips, the bird-wing flicker of her eyes, the snow-pale-death-shimmering illumination from her cheeks.”

It is Bradbury’s distinctly vital prose that takes Something Wicked from being just another adventure yarn and turns it into something greater.

First, to be clear, the book does work perfectly well as an adventure yarn, and would earn its place of immortality on those grounds alone. From the moment that the salesman flops into town with his bag of lightning rods, from the time we hear the first hinting echoes of that haunted calliope cry, Something Wicked takes us on an engaging adventure.

But the novel is much more than an adventure story. The characters play out an allegory that plays with concepts of time, youth, friendship, father and son relationships, mortality and memory. Those themes are brought to life by the novel’s ebullient language. The prose is tireless, just as boys are, and sometimes teeters on the edge of melodrama, just as boys do.

Through the novel’s words, we enter the idyllic headspace of boyhood, both the boyhood of boys and the boyhood of men. While moving through that territory, the potential loss of youth and optimism seem so much more terrible than they would without Bradbury’s language. This heightened sense of empathy and concern gives the book a sort of timeless, fairy tale quality.

The book isn’t perfect. There are some flabby sections in the middle where the writing seems to just drag on. During one section, I even found myself wondering if the author was dragging things out just to bulk up the word count. Obviously, that’s purely speculation, and simply the thought that drifted into my mind. I only know for certain that some parts of the book rambled enough that I started scanning ahead, and I very rarely do that while reading a book I enjoy.

But, a slip of fortune cookie paper once advised me that one should never judge a work of art by its flaws, and I always strive to adhere to that wisdom.

As far as I’m concerned, the only thing that ultimately matters about a book is the sum total of the reading experience it provides. I see no point in dissecting smaller parts of qualities and magnifying flaws under my scrutiny.

All that matters to me is that Something Wicked left me wholly inspired to write, to love, and to live. Not many books have ever done that for me. Of those that did, very few were fantasy or science fiction. Only a work of art could hit me with that kind of inspiration.

That’s what Bradbury always stood for: passion, wonder, and joy. Somewhere along the way in American history, ‘cool’ became the nation’s desired character. So many people today are like sitcom characters…sarcastic, dispassionate, unmoved, living moment by moment in anticipation of delivering a snarky one liner that will set the canned laughter rolling.

I never understood the appeal of ‘cool,’ and I doubt that Bradbury did, either. In the grave we’ll be damn cold forever, and shivering wish we had time to run again beneath the open sky and be wild and loud and alive. Ray understood that. He knew it and  never forgot it and embedded that wisdom in his stories.
See, Uncle Ray wasn’t cool. No, he was full of fire and compassion, venom and love, fits of dancing. He was alive. Even in his later years of life, in interviews he shook the camera glass with the force of his vitality. He always said a writer should love life first. Only after loving life should he or she touch pen to paper. That internal fire is on display in Something Wicked This Way Comes. The book is a gift left behind by crazy old Uncle Ray, for us to return to whenever we need to be reminded of certain things.
In the novel, Charles Halloway explains to his son that joy is the one defense against the forces of evil. “A single smile,” he advises Will, “the night people can’t stand it.” In that scene, I can’t help but hear Bradbury’s voice speaking directly to the reader, calling to them through the wicked calliope music to show them the way home.

Keep smiling, he was telling us. Keep smiling no matter what the goddamn night people say.
Thanks for the tip, Uncle Ray.

P.S. I’ve added the movie version of Something Wicked This Way Comes below. I have not yet seen the movie. I will be watching it tonight.

Bookworm Blues Review of Beyond the Tempest Gate

Sarah at Bookworm Blues reviewed my book and had some very interesting thoughts on it. My favorite part about publishing this book has been hearing from people who said that my writing caused to think about the themes at play…this review, in particular, has some insights that I enjoy reading.

http://www.bookwormblues.net/2013/10/31/beyond-the-tempest-gate-jeff-suwak/