Posted to imdb.com. Click here to be forwarded or copy this address into your browser: http://imdb.com/user/ur10841632/comments.
Read that first, and then, here's some additional comments I had noted elsewhere, plus a random comment.
I think what I love about this film is that the central mystery, the excuse for the story, the macguffin, isn't really important. There is no great secret to be revealed... except for one, and we find that it doesn't really matter compared to the journey it took to find out. All there is is the place, the journey, the people, the moment.... and the light, which comes in different colours, at different angles, and in different intensities.
The lack of mystery might be a problem for some people.... I imagine they lose interest. That lack of tension is exactly what intrigues me. We know that by introducing Lucy's state of virginity, that it will be 'solved', and the rest is the journey, just as it was for all of us. There we are on the edge of forever, and the view from the brink bears contemplation. All those moments from which we do not return - we don't return from any of them, really. - and then there are those moments which we feel passing, knowing even as they exist, that they will never exist again: weddings, funerals, orgasms...
RANDOM COMMENT... noted earlier today... what is it about N. American men (or is it men in general?) and their need to tell everyone about how they got the better of someone else? "So I said to him, 'Over my dead body!' Hahahahahah...." It's like lions or wolves pissing on their territory. Why don't they just take out their dicks and swing them around to impress everyone? Perhaps that will be my next response to boasting... or how I'll respond to my own urge to brag...
Showing posts with label comment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label comment. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 27, 2006
Mystic River
This was originally posted to the now-defunct "parlons film" on July 11, 2005.
**CONTAINS SPOILERS**
The first time I watched this movie I felt like it was a justification of a violent male code of conduct; or if not a justification, at least an impartial look at it. Having viewed it a second time, I'm not so sure. I think I missed the importance of Kevin Bacon's character, near the end of the film, saying something like, "Maybe we're all still eleven-year-olds locked in a dark cellar." My own hang-ups about that masculine code led me to react to the film in the same negative way I reacted to the characters, but now I think the message of the film is a judgment on the masculine code.
Here is what I wrote after my first viewing (commenting on another review).
You can find a synopsis onimdb.com or elsewhere, but here's a very brief plot summary: three eleven-year-old friends, Jimmy, Sean, and Dave, are playing street hockey one day in their working-class Boston neighborhood when a car stops and two men pretending to be cops force David into a car, and take him away, lock him in a cellar, and sexually abuse him for four days until he manages to escape. Twenty-five or so years later, Jimmy's 19-year-old daughter is brutally murdered in the same neighborhood where the three friends still live. Jimmy, who has gone through crime and doing time and has gone straight, is heartbroken. Sean, a detective with the State Patrol, is investigating the murder with his partner. Dave has become an introverted, broken man, with a wife and a young son, and he becomes a lead suspect in the murder. Even his wife suspects him, and she tells Jimmy, who, with his thug friends, takes matters into his own hands and kills Dave. In the meantime Sean and his partner solve the case, overpowering the teenaged killers in the nick of time.
It's a good story, based on interesting characters, with plenty of suspense and unexpected twists, and Clint Eastwood's direction is flawless. I watched it with Jen and she commented that it's a summary of all classic film. We wondered how septuagenarian Eastwood finds the energy to keep making films and surmised that he might feel he has to because if he doesn't, no one else will - no one else can.
Anyway, back to the story. My initial reaction was one of anger, which I am starting to learn is a good sign that the movie was good enough to draw me in and make me react to the characters as if they were real people, which is not as easy at it seems. I admit that I have a big problem with the tough-guy code of honour which sees the best man as the one who accepts no insult and wins all his fights. I tend to see someone who gets in fights as being a big loser. It's the 'What-did-you-say-about-my-mother?' mentality, which looks for imagined insults when real ones are not present, in order to prove one's masculinity again and again. It's the constant fear of losing masculinity, and it makes victims out of all those who can be dominated, put down, or controlled. It's what makes those of weak character, who have no confidence in their own masculinity, try to prove something that they never really believe: that they are good enough, tough enough, manly enough.
On my first viewing, I was especially offended by the fact that when Jimmy blatantly confesses the murder of his friend and neighbor to his wife, she completely supports him. She doesn't look at him as if he's just admitted he's a monster, she tells him that he was acting in the best interests of his family. The fact that he killed the wrong man doesn't seem to bother either of them, and their lust for revenge is apparently spent; there is no mention of killing the actual murderer. What's more, police officer Sean knows that Jimmy killed Dave, and yet does nothing about it. I took the support of the wife and the non-action of the cop to mean that Eastwood was telling us this was all inevitable: that the stunted system of playground honour these men live by is reality, and even if mistakes get made, it's a necessary system.
Now, however, I think that Eastwood does what few directors do: he allows the audience to make up their own mind. I think that he is showing us just how limited and immature these men are, and how their code of honour makes them into lesser human beings. But instead of telling us that, he allows us to infer it from their behaviour. They wear their crosses (Jimmy has a giant one tattooed on his back), but that's all about being Irish-Bostonian-American, not about anything Jesus might have said about forgiveness and mercy.
Eastwood tells his story in a classical way, and has a very subtle touch with irony - the old-fashioned kind of irony, the way it was before self-conscious post-modernists beat us all over the head with it. He simply shows us what the characters believe about themselves, and what they say about themselves, and he shows us that it's not really true, at least not on every level.
A final note is that these are great actors, and the performances are amazing. Despite their well-known faces, I saw nothing but the characters they were playing. Laura Linney doesn't have much of a role here (there are no strong female characters), but I liked seeing the hardness she portrayed here, since I'm more used to seeing her in cute, dimple-oriented roles. Everyone deserved the awards they got or were nominated for, and if Tim Robbins didn't have political problems in Hollywood, he would have been all over that supporting actor award!
**CONTAINS SPOILERS**
The first time I watched this movie I felt like it was a justification of a violent male code of conduct; or if not a justification, at least an impartial look at it. Having viewed it a second time, I'm not so sure. I think I missed the importance of Kevin Bacon's character, near the end of the film, saying something like, "Maybe we're all still eleven-year-olds locked in a dark cellar." My own hang-ups about that masculine code led me to react to the film in the same negative way I reacted to the characters, but now I think the message of the film is a judgment on the masculine code.
You can find a synopsis on
It's a good story, based on interesting characters, with plenty of suspense and unexpected twists, and Clint Eastwood's direction is flawless. I watched it with Jen and she commented that it's a summary of all classic film. We wondered how septuagenarian Eastwood finds the energy to keep making films and surmised that he might feel he has to because if he doesn't, no one else will - no one else can.
Anyway, back to the story. My initial reaction was one of anger, which I am starting to learn is a good sign that the movie was good enough to draw me in and make me react to the characters as if they were real people, which is not as easy at it seems. I admit that I have a big problem with the tough-guy code of honour which sees the best man as the one who accepts no insult and wins all his fights. I tend to see someone who gets in fights as being a big loser. It's the 'What-did-you-say-about-my-mother?' mentality, which looks for imagined insults when real ones are not present, in order to prove one's masculinity again and again. It's the constant fear of losing masculinity, and it makes victims out of all those who can be dominated, put down, or controlled. It's what makes those of weak character, who have no confidence in their own masculinity, try to prove something that they never really believe: that they are good enough, tough enough, manly enough.
On my first viewing, I was especially offended by the fact that when Jimmy blatantly confesses the murder of his friend and neighbor to his wife, she completely supports him. She doesn't look at him as if he's just admitted he's a monster, she tells him that he was acting in the best interests of his family. The fact that he killed the wrong man doesn't seem to bother either of them, and their lust for revenge is apparently spent; there is no mention of killing the actual murderer. What's more, police officer Sean knows that Jimmy killed Dave, and yet does nothing about it. I took the support of the wife and the non-action of the cop to mean that Eastwood was telling us this was all inevitable: that the stunted system of playground honour these men live by is reality, and even if mistakes get made, it's a necessary system.
Now, however, I think that Eastwood does what few directors do: he allows the audience to make up their own mind. I think that he is showing us just how limited and immature these men are, and how their code of honour makes them into lesser human beings. But instead of telling us that, he allows us to infer it from their behaviour. They wear their crosses (Jimmy has a giant one tattooed on his back), but that's all about being Irish-Bostonian-American, not about anything Jesus might have said about forgiveness and mercy.
Eastwood tells his story in a classical way, and has a very subtle touch with irony - the old-fashioned kind of irony, the way it was before self-conscious post-modernists beat us all over the head with it. He simply shows us what the characters believe about themselves, and what they say about themselves, and he shows us that it's not really true, at least not on every level.
A final note is that these are great actors, and the performances are amazing. Despite their well-known faces, I saw nothing but the characters they were playing. Laura Linney doesn't have much of a role here (there are no strong female characters), but I liked seeing the hardness she portrayed here, since I'm more used to seeing her in cute, dimple-oriented roles. Everyone deserved the awards they got or were nominated for, and if Tim Robbins didn't have political problems in Hollywood, he would have been all over that supporting actor award!
Wednesday, March 15, 2006
Film Appreciation, Inspiration, etc.
Notes made while watching Baraka:
*Note to Baraka fans: Ron Fricke is working on a 'sequel'. Info here: http://www.spiritofbaraka.com/samsara.aspx
Part 1 (particularly during the songs "Host of Seraphim," "Village Dance", and "Varanasi Sunrise"):
It reminds me - as so much has recently - of my heart's hunger for the world (dare I say 'former hunger'?); it reminds me of a younger self, looking into every corner and to the furthest stars, expecting answers, truth, and beauty. "How terrible and wonderful is the world!" I said. "Such sorrow, incomprehension, suffering! Innocence is crushed, knowledge is pain - and all of it so beautiful! I can't take it all in - I am crushed by my own incomprehension, I suffer from my own knowledge. Oh, let me experience all that is real, all that can be imagined! Just let me be part of this beautiful, terrible world. Let me see it with innocence and be crushed, rather than darkening my eyes with knowlege and becoming too burdened to wish to see any more."
That's what I said, oh my soul; that's what you said, and that's what you still say. But now I ask myself - is it good to make suffering beautiful? If we must desire, must we desire pain as well as pleasure? And the answer returns:
What you desire is what you are, and also how you will end. It is the rest of you - your opposite. Gaining your desire, you blend with it; blending with it, you will disappear, one into the other. You will have all and you will be nothing. You are nothing now, but knowing it, you will cease to be.
Part 2 (time-lapse cinematography):
A life is a life for every being. A life is the basic unit of time: a human has a life, a tree has a life, a mountain, in its way, has a life. All that you can experience in your time of existence is all the life you have.
For the longest-living trees, days pass like hours, seasons like days. A mountain feels the climate change like you feel a cloud pass in front of the sun. An ice age is a winter's night. On the other hand, the exposed stone feels the protons washing over it, disintigrating it in a constant waterfall of particles. It feels rain showers and weather like breaths that involuntarily come and go. The flow of protons is as present and palpable as the water of a stream washing over your hand; you reach into the water to pick up a fragment of the mountain that has broken off and tumbled down the waterway to be worn smooth to your momentary touch.
*Note to Baraka fans: Ron Fricke is working on a 'sequel'. Info here: http://www.spiritofbaraka.com/samsara.aspx
Part 1 (particularly during the songs "Host of Seraphim," "Village Dance", and "Varanasi Sunrise"):
It reminds me - as so much has recently - of my heart's hunger for the world (dare I say 'former hunger'?); it reminds me of a younger self, looking into every corner and to the furthest stars, expecting answers, truth, and beauty. "How terrible and wonderful is the world!" I said. "Such sorrow, incomprehension, suffering! Innocence is crushed, knowledge is pain - and all of it so beautiful! I can't take it all in - I am crushed by my own incomprehension, I suffer from my own knowledge. Oh, let me experience all that is real, all that can be imagined! Just let me be part of this beautiful, terrible world. Let me see it with innocence and be crushed, rather than darkening my eyes with knowlege and becoming too burdened to wish to see any more."
That's what I said, oh my soul; that's what you said, and that's what you still say. But now I ask myself - is it good to make suffering beautiful? If we must desire, must we desire pain as well as pleasure? And the answer returns:
What you desire is what you are, and also how you will end. It is the rest of you - your opposite. Gaining your desire, you blend with it; blending with it, you will disappear, one into the other. You will have all and you will be nothing. You are nothing now, but knowing it, you will cease to be.
Part 2 (time-lapse cinematography):
A life is a life for every being. A life is the basic unit of time: a human has a life, a tree has a life, a mountain, in its way, has a life. All that you can experience in your time of existence is all the life you have.
For the longest-living trees, days pass like hours, seasons like days. A mountain feels the climate change like you feel a cloud pass in front of the sun. An ice age is a winter's night. On the other hand, the exposed stone feels the protons washing over it, disintigrating it in a constant waterfall of particles. It feels rain showers and weather like breaths that involuntarily come and go. The flow of protons is as present and palpable as the water of a stream washing over your hand; you reach into the water to pick up a fragment of the mountain that has broken off and tumbled down the waterway to be worn smooth to your momentary touch.
Friday, April 22, 2005
A Few Words on Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
I finally got around to reading Moby-Dick last fall. Getting to the end of it, I felt a sense of accomplishment at having completed the struggle, since the author seems to have done his best to lose his less hardy readers before delivering his best stuff. That feeling of accomplishment, combined with the excitement and obliteration of the climax and ending, left me with a euphoric thrill; but there was much that was dry or irritating on the way. Melville presents a thrilling sea-adventure, with lots of action, interesting characters and colourful detail about life on 19th-century whaling ship; and, connected to and symbolised by the story, a philosophical treatise full of ideas that are still exciting now, and must have been shattering at the time it was published. Grafted on to this duality is a an exhaustive description of whales, whaling, and all things whale-related. This description is packed among the already weighty cargo of the adventure and the treatise, and I found myself frustrated that the pacing was frustratingly broken. Melville spends a lot of time elaborating on his symbols, discussing all their possibilities, their antecedents, their mythical and religious importance, and so on until sea-sickness sets in. I’m a child of a different age, and I don’t admire his explicit dwelling on his own symbols. I prefer, as writer and reader, that an author lets things stand on their own rights, and leaves the reader to decide on their symbolic values. In other words, I think the book might be just as good if it were simply the tale of Ahab’s hunt for the white whale, and we were left to deduce the nature of the symbolic rudder steering the story. Melville, however, had definite ideas he wanted to impart, and he couldn’t just say them aloud, due to the repressive culture (Calvinist upper-class America) that was his audience. I can see why he would choose this treatise-within-an-adventure structure: the desire to get through the suspense of the plot forces one to continue on through the drier tracts, where he imparts the ideas his readers might not have wanted to hear. The taught keel of the adventure cuts through the stormy waters of his ideas. (I apologize for my watery puns. After reading this book, one can’t resist them, just as one can’t help greeting friends with ‘Ahoy!’) But when further burdened by an abundance of dry, factual information, modern, attention-reduced readers may be forgiven a sense of impatience.
I loved the beginning, consisting of some 10 pages of citations regarding whales, though others have said they found this to be a cruel introduction. It appealed to the encyclopaedia-reader in me, and in its lack of thematic organization, seemed to open up a world of possibilities. By the time I got to his chapter, “The Whiteness of the Whale”, less than a third of the way through, discussing all the meanings and occurrences of whiteness was starting to seem like more of an obfuscation than the presentation of an argument. Later, after learning more than I perhaps cared to know about the physiology of whales, starting with the erroneous declaration that they are fish, and constantly referring to them as murderous monsters (I’ll sit proudly on my seat of historical perspective, here), he antagonized me further with such chapters as “Measurement of the Whales Skeleton”, “The Fossil Whale”, and “Does the Whale Diminish?”, and I began to suspect him of deliberate cruelty. It is true that his readers were unfamiliar with whales, and he needed to both fully describe them and support his descriptions as much as possible with facts. But the story might have functioned just as well if the creature in question had been imaginary. Why not? If one of his ideas is that the pursuit of God is destructive, and makes us mad and even evil (especially when God does not want to be found), why not have God symbolized by a creature of the imagination?
It is interesting to me that many consider Moby-Dick to be the quintessential American Novel, and that I consider Moby-Dick and certain other examples of the American cultural gift to the world to be too explicit. That being said, Melville does not narrow the reader’s choices, does not force them to accept a single, happy outcome or meaning; rather, he explains all the potential meanings until the hapless reader (me) feels he is drowning in a tepid sea of meaning. This, as with most criticisms, comes down to a matter of taste. I have no doubt that Melville accomplished what he set out to do with this great novel; and therefore, it can only be called a success. My tastes, however, are for the implicit, the unspoken, and the inferred. It is the hidden nature of his true argument that intrigue me.
Let there be no doubt that I consider Melville to be a great writer. I may dislike his pacing, but I love his prose. It is powerful, and this force, combined with his meter and rhythm, are Shakespearean in effect. There are lines and passages that made me want to leap up and shake my fist at the sky. It is a rare gift to be able to express the true passions of the tortured human soul in mere words, and Melville shows his mastery again and again, unleashing storms of prose to express the madness of his demented Captain Ahab as he bends both man and the gods to his obsessive ends.
I may not be a great scholar with a hyphenated last name, and I have dedicated no more effort to the study of this great novel than to read it once through, but I present my reactions as humble reader of books. I’ve flipped through a few short commentaries on Moby-Dick, most of which were dead boring (D.H. Lawrence’s being the readable exception), and Edward F. Edinger’s “Melville’s Moby-Dick: An American Nekyia”, whose title I don’t even understand, has been sitting on my bedside stack for some time. I’m sure there’s more to be gleaned from further study. Some Great-And-Weighty Novels inspire further pursuit of the author’s work (War and Peace, for example,) but despite my sense of awe when finishing the book, I’m not inclined to read more Melville. Not yet.
I loved the beginning, consisting of some 10 pages of citations regarding whales, though others have said they found this to be a cruel introduction. It appealed to the encyclopaedia-reader in me, and in its lack of thematic organization, seemed to open up a world of possibilities. By the time I got to his chapter, “The Whiteness of the Whale”, less than a third of the way through, discussing all the meanings and occurrences of whiteness was starting to seem like more of an obfuscation than the presentation of an argument. Later, after learning more than I perhaps cared to know about the physiology of whales, starting with the erroneous declaration that they are fish, and constantly referring to them as murderous monsters (I’ll sit proudly on my seat of historical perspective, here), he antagonized me further with such chapters as “Measurement of the Whales Skeleton”, “The Fossil Whale”, and “Does the Whale Diminish?”, and I began to suspect him of deliberate cruelty. It is true that his readers were unfamiliar with whales, and he needed to both fully describe them and support his descriptions as much as possible with facts. But the story might have functioned just as well if the creature in question had been imaginary. Why not? If one of his ideas is that the pursuit of God is destructive, and makes us mad and even evil (especially when God does not want to be found), why not have God symbolized by a creature of the imagination?
It is interesting to me that many consider Moby-Dick to be the quintessential American Novel, and that I consider Moby-Dick and certain other examples of the American cultural gift to the world to be too explicit. That being said, Melville does not narrow the reader’s choices, does not force them to accept a single, happy outcome or meaning; rather, he explains all the potential meanings until the hapless reader (me) feels he is drowning in a tepid sea of meaning. This, as with most criticisms, comes down to a matter of taste. I have no doubt that Melville accomplished what he set out to do with this great novel; and therefore, it can only be called a success. My tastes, however, are for the implicit, the unspoken, and the inferred. It is the hidden nature of his true argument that intrigue me.
Let there be no doubt that I consider Melville to be a great writer. I may dislike his pacing, but I love his prose. It is powerful, and this force, combined with his meter and rhythm, are Shakespearean in effect. There are lines and passages that made me want to leap up and shake my fist at the sky. It is a rare gift to be able to express the true passions of the tortured human soul in mere words, and Melville shows his mastery again and again, unleashing storms of prose to express the madness of his demented Captain Ahab as he bends both man and the gods to his obsessive ends.
I may not be a great scholar with a hyphenated last name, and I have dedicated no more effort to the study of this great novel than to read it once through, but I present my reactions as humble reader of books. I’ve flipped through a few short commentaries on Moby-Dick, most of which were dead boring (D.H. Lawrence’s being the readable exception), and Edward F. Edinger’s “Melville’s Moby-Dick: An American Nekyia”, whose title I don’t even understand, has been sitting on my bedside stack for some time. I’m sure there’s more to be gleaned from further study. Some Great-And-Weighty Novels inspire further pursuit of the author’s work (War and Peace, for example,) but despite my sense of awe when finishing the book, I’m not inclined to read more Melville. Not yet.
Thursday, September 09, 2004
Another Eggers quote
Another quote from Dave Eggers on why to share, in his imitable style:
Mistakes We Knew We Were Making
© D. Eggers, Vintage Books February 2001
pg. 10
"We share things for obvious reasons: it makes us feel un-alone, it spreads the weight over a larger area, it holds the possibility of making our share lighter. And it can work either way - not simply as a pain-relief device, but in the case of not bad news but good, as a share-the-happy-things-I've-seen/lessons-I've-learned vehicle. Or as a tool for simple connectivity for its own sake, a testing of waters, a stab at engagement with a mass of strangers - one or all of the above constitutes the motivation behind everyone with a personal ad, a website, a magazine, a radio show. All good."
Mistakes We Knew We Were Making
© D. Eggers, Vintage Books February 2001
pg. 10
"We share things for obvious reasons: it makes us feel un-alone, it spreads the weight over a larger area, it holds the possibility of making our share lighter. And it can work either way - not simply as a pain-relief device, but in the case of not bad news but good, as a share-the-happy-things-I've-seen/lessons-I've-learned vehicle. Or as a tool for simple connectivity for its own sake, a testing of waters, a stab at engagement with a mass of strangers - one or all of the above constitutes the motivation behind everyone with a personal ad, a website, a magazine, a radio show. All good."
Wednesday, September 08, 2004
AHWOSG quote
A quote, for reference to my review of Aug 31st. This also has bearing on my own fears about revealing too much of myself, either here or in my other writing. It's also pretty funny.
***
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
by Dave Eggers (Vintage Books, February 2001) ©David 'Dave' K. Eggers 2000, 2001
pgs 214 - 216:
Heh. Heh. Heh. Are you sure you want to be telling me all this?
All what?
About your parents, the paranoia...
What am I giving you? I am giving you nothing. I am giving you things that God knows, everyone knows. They are famous in their deaths. This will be my memorial to them. I give you all these things, I tell you about his legs and her wigs - I do so later in this section - and relate my wondering if I should be having sex with my girlfriend in front of their closet the night of my father's service, but after all that, what in the end, have I given you? It seems like you know something, but you still know nothing. I tell you and it evaporates. I don't care - how could I care? I tell you how many people I have slept with (thirty-two), or how my parents left this world, and what have I really given you? Nothing. I can tell you the names of my friends, their phone numbers, but what do you have? You have nothing. They all granted permission. Why is that? Because you have nothing, You have some phone numbers. It seems precious for one, two seconds. You have what I can afford to give. You are a panhandler, begging for anything, and I am the man walking briskly by, tossing a quarter or so into your paper cup. I can afford to give you this. This does not break me. I give you virtually everything I have. I give you all of the best things I have, and while these things are things that I like, memories I treasure, good or bad, like the pictures of my family on my walls I can show them to you without diminishing them. I can afford to give you everything. We gasp at the wretches on afternoon shows who reveal their hideous secrets in front of millions of similarly wretched viewers, and yet... what have we taken from them, what have they given us? Nothing. We know that Janine had sex with her daughter's boyfriend, but... then what? We will die and we will have protected...what? Protected from all the world that, what, we do this or that, that our arms have made these movements and our mouths these sounds? Please. We feel that to reveal embarassing or private things, like say, masturbatory habits (for me, about once a day, usually in the shower), we have given someone something, that, like a primitive person fearing that a photographer will steal his soul, we identify our secrets, our pasts and their blotches, with our identity, that revealing our habits or losses or deeds somehow makes on less of oneself. But it's just the opposite, more is more is more - more bleeding, more giving. These things, details, stories, whatever, are like the skin shed by snakes, who leave theirs for anyone to see. What does he care where it is, who sees it, this snake, and his skin? He leaves it where he molts. Hours, days or months later, we come across a snake's long-shed skin and we know something of the snake, we know that it's of this approximate girth and that approximate length, but we know very little else. Do we know where the snake is now? What the snake is thinking now? No. By now the snake could be wearing fur; the snake could be selling pencils in Hanoi. The skin is no longer his, he wore it because it grew from him, but then it dried and slipped off and he and everyone could look at it.
And you're the snake?
Sure. I'm the snake. So, should the snake bring it with him, this skin, should he tuck it under his arm? Should he?
No?
No, of course not! He's got no fucking arms! How the fuck would a snake carry a skin? Please. But like the snake, I have no arms - metaphorically speaking - to carry these things with. Besides, these things aren't even mine. None of this is mine. My father is not mine - not in that way. His death and what he's done are not mine. Nor are my upbringing nor my town nor its tragedies. How can these things be mine? Holding me responsible for keeping hidden this information is ridiculous. I was born into a town and a family and the town and my family happened to me. I own none of it. It is everyone's. It is shareware. I like it, I like having been a part of it, I would kill or die to protect those who were part of it, but I do not claim exclusivity. Have it. Take it from me. Do with it what you will. Make it useful. This is like making electricity from dirt; it is almost too good to be believed, that we can make beauty from this stuff.
But what about privacy?
Cheap, overabundant, easily gotten, lost, regained, bought, sold.
Bu what about exploitation? Exhibitionism?
Are you Catholic?
No.
Then why are you talking about exhibitionism? It's a ridiculous term. Someone wants to celebrate their existence and you call it exhibitionism. It's niggardly. If you don't want anyone to know about your existence, you might as well kill yourself. You're taking up space, air.
What about dignity?
You will die, and when you die, you will know a profound lack of it. it's never dignified, always brutal. What's dignified about dying? It's never dignified. And in obscurity? Offensive. Dignity is an affectation, cute but eccentric, like learning French or collecting scarves. And it's fleeting and incredibly mercurial. And subjective. So fuck it.
***
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
by Dave Eggers (Vintage Books, February 2001) ©David 'Dave' K. Eggers 2000, 2001
pgs 214 - 216:
Heh. Heh. Heh. Are you sure you want to be telling me all this?
All what?
About your parents, the paranoia...
What am I giving you? I am giving you nothing. I am giving you things that God knows, everyone knows. They are famous in their deaths. This will be my memorial to them. I give you all these things, I tell you about his legs and her wigs - I do so later in this section - and relate my wondering if I should be having sex with my girlfriend in front of their closet the night of my father's service, but after all that, what in the end, have I given you? It seems like you know something, but you still know nothing. I tell you and it evaporates. I don't care - how could I care? I tell you how many people I have slept with (thirty-two), or how my parents left this world, and what have I really given you? Nothing. I can tell you the names of my friends, their phone numbers, but what do you have? You have nothing. They all granted permission. Why is that? Because you have nothing, You have some phone numbers. It seems precious for one, two seconds. You have what I can afford to give. You are a panhandler, begging for anything, and I am the man walking briskly by, tossing a quarter or so into your paper cup. I can afford to give you this. This does not break me. I give you virtually everything I have. I give you all of the best things I have, and while these things are things that I like, memories I treasure, good or bad, like the pictures of my family on my walls I can show them to you without diminishing them. I can afford to give you everything. We gasp at the wretches on afternoon shows who reveal their hideous secrets in front of millions of similarly wretched viewers, and yet... what have we taken from them, what have they given us? Nothing. We know that Janine had sex with her daughter's boyfriend, but... then what? We will die and we will have protected...what? Protected from all the world that, what, we do this or that, that our arms have made these movements and our mouths these sounds? Please. We feel that to reveal embarassing or private things, like say, masturbatory habits (for me, about once a day, usually in the shower), we have given someone something, that, like a primitive person fearing that a photographer will steal his soul, we identify our secrets, our pasts and their blotches, with our identity, that revealing our habits or losses or deeds somehow makes on less of oneself. But it's just the opposite, more is more is more - more bleeding, more giving. These things, details, stories, whatever, are like the skin shed by snakes, who leave theirs for anyone to see. What does he care where it is, who sees it, this snake, and his skin? He leaves it where he molts. Hours, days or months later, we come across a snake's long-shed skin and we know something of the snake, we know that it's of this approximate girth and that approximate length, but we know very little else. Do we know where the snake is now? What the snake is thinking now? No. By now the snake could be wearing fur; the snake could be selling pencils in Hanoi. The skin is no longer his, he wore it because it grew from him, but then it dried and slipped off and he and everyone could look at it.
And you're the snake?
Sure. I'm the snake. So, should the snake bring it with him, this skin, should he tuck it under his arm? Should he?
No?
No, of course not! He's got no fucking arms! How the fuck would a snake carry a skin? Please. But like the snake, I have no arms - metaphorically speaking - to carry these things with. Besides, these things aren't even mine. None of this is mine. My father is not mine - not in that way. His death and what he's done are not mine. Nor are my upbringing nor my town nor its tragedies. How can these things be mine? Holding me responsible for keeping hidden this information is ridiculous. I was born into a town and a family and the town and my family happened to me. I own none of it. It is everyone's. It is shareware. I like it, I like having been a part of it, I would kill or die to protect those who were part of it, but I do not claim exclusivity. Have it. Take it from me. Do with it what you will. Make it useful. This is like making electricity from dirt; it is almost too good to be believed, that we can make beauty from this stuff.
But what about privacy?
Cheap, overabundant, easily gotten, lost, regained, bought, sold.
Bu what about exploitation? Exhibitionism?
Are you Catholic?
No.
Then why are you talking about exhibitionism? It's a ridiculous term. Someone wants to celebrate their existence and you call it exhibitionism. It's niggardly. If you don't want anyone to know about your existence, you might as well kill yourself. You're taking up space, air.
What about dignity?
You will die, and when you die, you will know a profound lack of it. it's never dignified, always brutal. What's dignified about dying? It's never dignified. And in obscurity? Offensive. Dignity is an affectation, cute but eccentric, like learning French or collecting scarves. And it's fleeting and incredibly mercurial. And subjective. So fuck it.
Tuesday, August 31, 2004
Re: "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" by Dave Eggers
I don't like criticism as its practiced professionally, and I've said I don't want to use this space to hand it out. I'm going to try and find ways to talk about other people's work and how it's affected me without losing sight of the fact that they had the courage to do it, which is more than I can say. However, I do consider myself a writer (despite lack of abundant proof), and I do spend a lot of time thinking about writing, about how I do things, how I should do things, about the way things should be done. Therefore, I would be dishonest if I didn't discuss the Work in Question in terms of artistic decisions made, and why I would or wouldn't have made the same choices.
In the Work in Question, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, or AHWOSG, Dave Eggers goes heavy on style and device. Style is something I always find influential, for better or worse (I can feel his style creeping in as I'm writing, and I'm fighting against it - but this parenthesis is an example of it). His style is invasive, in that it's so close to the kind of chatter that happens in my head. And, if I find my mental sentences get shorter and more terse when I read Hemingway, he is easier to shake off than someone who's paranoia is so similar to my own. Two points awarded to Dave Eggers: one for creating a clear and recognizable voice, and another for getting into the head of his character - and getting his head into my head. The problem with that is that the paranoid, fun, silly, self-reflective, hyper-critical ego-talk that goes on in my head drives me crazy; I often wish it would shut up, and I confess that I often wish Mr. Eggers would, too. And yet I keep reading.
I'm very glad that Dave Eggers wrote this book in the way he did, and that he did it well. I'm glad because it's a good story, told in a way that stands out, and I'm glad because he has saved me the trouble of trying to do something that way, and finding out that I really don't want to. The story could stand on its own, without all the self-consciousness, and it would have been readable, moving, maybe even heartbreaking, but not really all that interesting. It might have been Story but not Art. The way of telling it is original, but not THAT original - 150 years ago the Romantics were playing with the characters addressing the reader directly, or the audience, as in Peer Gynt, when Ibsen has one character say "One cannot die in the middle of Act Five." Still, it's good for a laugh and gives that pleasurable moment of mental shift as one sees things from two different points of view - invisible participant and reader - at once. Kind of like certain psychedelic experiences. That is only one of his devices, and one of the most obvious.
Eggers is brave to go head to head with some of the conceits of novel-writing, and especially of memoirs, and this is one reason his book is capital-A Art. The manipulation of characters - especially those based on real people - and the manipulation of the reader, the arrangement of scenes, the very right of the author to think he's so clever that he can tell the reader something: all these raise questions that need to be asked, and he asks and attempts to answer them within and around the text. He gets very involved in imaginary dialogues, haranguing himself for his artistic choices and trying to justify them. In some ways I admire this as bravery, and as a conceptual device showing the layers of paint beneath the picture on the surface. On the other hand, it also comes off as cowardly: his attempts to head off any criticism, or to tear himself to shreds for his choices before anyone else can, stop him from making clear and precise statements. Given his claim in the Appendix about looking the reader straight in they eye and just telling them something, he spends a lot of time building up to and then explaining or apologizing for anything he says. I think of a song on the latest Treatment album which comes down to the simple line, "You lied to me, and that hurts." Eggers rarely allows himself the simplicity of such an avowal. There are a few exceptions, and they are enjoyable (see quotes below). I much more admire those who make simple and honest statements and let them stand, damn the consequences. It's understood by most readers, I think, that if you're making the statement, you've spent some time thinking about it, about possible criticism it may receive, alternative points of view, and so on, and have decided, as an artist, that this is best statement you have to offer right now, and that it belongs there. If people don't understand, it's probably their problem, and if not, you can try again later. Writing down your every thought and fear regarding a statement is not only distracting, it's annoying. The most annoying thing about it is that it reminds me of me, in that I overthink things to such a degree they never get started, let alone finished, and I'm so terrified of criticism, I keep rewriting what I have in different versions that please a certain editor in my head, until I'm left with nothing, which is what those mental editors really want. The difference is that Eggers does all his dancing around but still eventually gets on with the story, gets it finished & published, writes the appendix for the paperback edition and gets on with his life.
The other cowardly aspect is his attacks on real or imagined critics in his notes and appendix, telling them to lighten up, telling them they don't get him or his work. Can someone so reflective have not thought that readers might be able to see through him, saying, 'You know what? Your humour is just another front. We know the tricks, and we've seen them before in our college newspapers. If you didn't want to be taken seriously, you wouldn't have put thousands of hours into a serious artistic project and made it to come to our attention."
So would it have been better to avoid all the gut-twisting self-consciousness of the narrative? Not all of it. Some of it is fun, or funny, and pleasurable to read. But I would have preferred the balance shifted toward the earnest end of the scale. I assess things by the way they make me feel as well as they way they make me think, and reading AHWOSG made me feel like I was skimming the inexplicably hard surface of a deep lake. I can see the depth, I know it's there, I want to go down into it and explore it, but I keep bouncing off this shiny surface. In the end, I've been given a lot to think about, but I feel like I've been robbed of the emotional experience. I feel like the promise of the opening chapter is never delivered (the opening chapter of narrative, not the lengthy and humourous acknowledgments and so on: the sarcasm, self-consciousness, and multiple-layered intellectual torsion gets delivered in full). The times when he gets close are so exciting: I feel like, "Here it comes, the point where he's really going to take us inside the experience!", but then the lights come up and we are forced to consider, again, that it's all an illusion. We're left with a story about someone telling a story, and he is forced to tell us that he's enraged, or guilty, or sad, but he won't actually take us there or show us.
So that's his business, and that's my opinion. Dave Eggers made his choices, and I greatly admire him for making them. The work deserves recognition just for that. His aims were daring, and he manages to balance an undertaking that threatens to implode from the beginning, and he makes it to the end without losing me. Intellectually it comes off reasonably sound for me - I can accept being left with more questions than answers, and probably prefer it that way - but emotionally, I feel ripped off, and that's where the experience matters to me.
The worst thing is that, having been shortlisted for the Pulitzer and sold many copies, it will encourage attention-wanters with typewriters to attempt the same thing, and no doubt publishers will publish them, and we'll be stuck with many clumsier versions of the same thing. Hell, we already have magazines full of that kind of writing. The good thing is that his notes to readers, encouraging them to write down their memoirs, will no doubt lead to a great deal of cathartic exercise for many people, and maybe some great stories will be told. At the very least, it's a nice thing to do, encouraging people to tell their story after you've told yours, and it does encourage me. Dave Eggers is a self-critical cynic, and he got over himself enough to write his story, so why can't I? Thanks, Dave.
In the Work in Question, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, or AHWOSG, Dave Eggers goes heavy on style and device. Style is something I always find influential, for better or worse (I can feel his style creeping in as I'm writing, and I'm fighting against it - but this parenthesis is an example of it). His style is invasive, in that it's so close to the kind of chatter that happens in my head. And, if I find my mental sentences get shorter and more terse when I read Hemingway, he is easier to shake off than someone who's paranoia is so similar to my own. Two points awarded to Dave Eggers: one for creating a clear and recognizable voice, and another for getting into the head of his character - and getting his head into my head. The problem with that is that the paranoid, fun, silly, self-reflective, hyper-critical ego-talk that goes on in my head drives me crazy; I often wish it would shut up, and I confess that I often wish Mr. Eggers would, too. And yet I keep reading.
I'm very glad that Dave Eggers wrote this book in the way he did, and that he did it well. I'm glad because it's a good story, told in a way that stands out, and I'm glad because he has saved me the trouble of trying to do something that way, and finding out that I really don't want to. The story could stand on its own, without all the self-consciousness, and it would have been readable, moving, maybe even heartbreaking, but not really all that interesting. It might have been Story but not Art. The way of telling it is original, but not THAT original - 150 years ago the Romantics were playing with the characters addressing the reader directly, or the audience, as in Peer Gynt, when Ibsen has one character say "One cannot die in the middle of Act Five." Still, it's good for a laugh and gives that pleasurable moment of mental shift as one sees things from two different points of view - invisible participant and reader - at once. Kind of like certain psychedelic experiences. That is only one of his devices, and one of the most obvious.
Eggers is brave to go head to head with some of the conceits of novel-writing, and especially of memoirs, and this is one reason his book is capital-A Art. The manipulation of characters - especially those based on real people - and the manipulation of the reader, the arrangement of scenes, the very right of the author to think he's so clever that he can tell the reader something: all these raise questions that need to be asked, and he asks and attempts to answer them within and around the text. He gets very involved in imaginary dialogues, haranguing himself for his artistic choices and trying to justify them. In some ways I admire this as bravery, and as a conceptual device showing the layers of paint beneath the picture on the surface. On the other hand, it also comes off as cowardly: his attempts to head off any criticism, or to tear himself to shreds for his choices before anyone else can, stop him from making clear and precise statements. Given his claim in the Appendix about looking the reader straight in they eye and just telling them something, he spends a lot of time building up to and then explaining or apologizing for anything he says. I think of a song on the latest Treatment album which comes down to the simple line, "You lied to me, and that hurts." Eggers rarely allows himself the simplicity of such an avowal. There are a few exceptions, and they are enjoyable (see quotes below). I much more admire those who make simple and honest statements and let them stand, damn the consequences. It's understood by most readers, I think, that if you're making the statement, you've spent some time thinking about it, about possible criticism it may receive, alternative points of view, and so on, and have decided, as an artist, that this is best statement you have to offer right now, and that it belongs there. If people don't understand, it's probably their problem, and if not, you can try again later. Writing down your every thought and fear regarding a statement is not only distracting, it's annoying. The most annoying thing about it is that it reminds me of me, in that I overthink things to such a degree they never get started, let alone finished, and I'm so terrified of criticism, I keep rewriting what I have in different versions that please a certain editor in my head, until I'm left with nothing, which is what those mental editors really want. The difference is that Eggers does all his dancing around but still eventually gets on with the story, gets it finished & published, writes the appendix for the paperback edition and gets on with his life.
The other cowardly aspect is his attacks on real or imagined critics in his notes and appendix, telling them to lighten up, telling them they don't get him or his work. Can someone so reflective have not thought that readers might be able to see through him, saying, 'You know what? Your humour is just another front. We know the tricks, and we've seen them before in our college newspapers. If you didn't want to be taken seriously, you wouldn't have put thousands of hours into a serious artistic project and made it to come to our attention."
So would it have been better to avoid all the gut-twisting self-consciousness of the narrative? Not all of it. Some of it is fun, or funny, and pleasurable to read. But I would have preferred the balance shifted toward the earnest end of the scale. I assess things by the way they make me feel as well as they way they make me think, and reading AHWOSG made me feel like I was skimming the inexplicably hard surface of a deep lake. I can see the depth, I know it's there, I want to go down into it and explore it, but I keep bouncing off this shiny surface. In the end, I've been given a lot to think about, but I feel like I've been robbed of the emotional experience. I feel like the promise of the opening chapter is never delivered (the opening chapter of narrative, not the lengthy and humourous acknowledgments and so on: the sarcasm, self-consciousness, and multiple-layered intellectual torsion gets delivered in full). The times when he gets close are so exciting: I feel like, "Here it comes, the point where he's really going to take us inside the experience!", but then the lights come up and we are forced to consider, again, that it's all an illusion. We're left with a story about someone telling a story, and he is forced to tell us that he's enraged, or guilty, or sad, but he won't actually take us there or show us.
So that's his business, and that's my opinion. Dave Eggers made his choices, and I greatly admire him for making them. The work deserves recognition just for that. His aims were daring, and he manages to balance an undertaking that threatens to implode from the beginning, and he makes it to the end without losing me. Intellectually it comes off reasonably sound for me - I can accept being left with more questions than answers, and probably prefer it that way - but emotionally, I feel ripped off, and that's where the experience matters to me.
The worst thing is that, having been shortlisted for the Pulitzer and sold many copies, it will encourage attention-wanters with typewriters to attempt the same thing, and no doubt publishers will publish them, and we'll be stuck with many clumsier versions of the same thing. Hell, we already have magazines full of that kind of writing. The good thing is that his notes to readers, encouraging them to write down their memoirs, will no doubt lead to a great deal of cathartic exercise for many people, and maybe some great stories will be told. At the very least, it's a nice thing to do, encouraging people to tell their story after you've told yours, and it does encourage me. Dave Eggers is a self-critical cynic, and he got over himself enough to write his story, so why can't I? Thanks, Dave.
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