Spice of Life

Published

2012-01-30T20:42:00.000-06:00

Someone somewhere (an editor of the new literary journal Torrid Literature based out of Tampa, Florida, to be more specific) saw something they liked in one of my stories, so they published it. No pay or anything, but it's a start. You can find it here. It's on page 25 if you want to skip right to it.

A first novel: One year on

2012-01-21T04:10:00.000-06:00

It's been a bit more than a year now since I began work on my novel. In the bottom-left corner of the word processor it says that there are 170 pages. Without the line breaks and chapter headings, added later to make concentrating on discrete sections easier, it would probably be nearer to 160 pages, but they're single spaced. That's kind of impressive, but it's nowhere near where I wanted to be after a year of writing, at least in terms of quality of writing. Honestly, I was hoping to be doing final revisions and edits at this point and already thinking hard and preparing notes about my next one. I thought that was an attainable dream when I finished the first draft last May, but the months since then were not as productive as I would have hoped.

To really stick the knife, most of those 170 pages are garbage and will need extensive revision. I don't know whether these changes will shrink or expand the manuscript, but even if the final piece is exactly 170 pages again, it will bear little resemblance to what I have now. Only about ten of those pages are solid, but I honestly feel good about them. I know that they aren't perfect and will need some revisiting as the rest of the novel develops, but I don't find myself hating them, and that's pretty good at this point.

I consider my typical writing schedule. Before I began the novel, when I was still writing some short stories, it took about a month before I felt good about them, felt that they were something worth handing in to a professor or sending off to a journal. Most of my short stories then were around ten pages, maybe a bit less. By that standard, I'm doing alright, writing at about the rate I always have. That's something nice to keep in mind when I feel that I'm dragging my feet, that it'll never get done. I just have to keep going. I'm not doing any worse than I was before.

Considering Elizabeth Strout's "Olive Kitteridge"

2011-12-29T04:40:00.001-06:00

The final lines of the final story of Elizabeth Strout's Olive Kitteridge suggest that the work is about love. Remembering the stories of husbands and wives, parents and children, boyfriends and girlfriends, mistresses and men, it does not seem inappropriate as the central theme, but it came as a surprise to me. I had thought Olive Kitteridge was about misery. A young widow learns of her husband's infidelity the day he is buried. An old lover returns to a woman only to tell her that he slept with her mother. A daughter runs away from home to be with a man who only told her he preferred that they live together but not as a married couple on their wedding day. The titular character, who appears in all the stories if only as a cameo, is dismissive of her meek husband and is told by her son that she ruined his young life through her mercurial moods. For something so widely celebrated in contemporary American life, what little love there is in Crosby, Maine, setting of all the stories, brings little happiness to the people. Even when it is found and recognized, as Mrs. Kitteridge seems to do at the very end, almost two years after her husband dies, it is not very appealing. She does not like the man particularly. She merely finds in him someone who has undergone the same pains she has and makes her feel needed and less interested in leaving the world.

It's childish, ironic considering that Olive Kitteridge is retired by the time the stories begin and seventy-two by the time they end. If there were a motto for Olive Kitteridge it would be, "Life is loneliness and pain. Should you be lucky enough to find someone to make it a little more tolerable, you will probably neither recognize nor appreciate them." The only people who could find such a statement profound and true is a snot teenager whose first intimate relationship does not go as planned and who finds their parents fools. There are good things in life. There are things to smile and laugh about and enjoy, but there is no humor to be found in this collection.

"Childhood's Cost"

2011-12-21T21:01:00.002-06:00

Nicholas Kristos knocked at the front door, the door used by Boy Scouts selling popcorn and Jehovah's Witnesses offering salvation, and waited.

“Oh, Nicky!” Maria Kristos shrieked in joy when she answered. He tried to step past and out of the snow, and she wrapped him a tight embrace. “You should have told us you were coming. I would have cooked you something special.”

Nicholas made an effort to return the gesture, but he carried a briefcase.

“It's alright. I just need to see my father.”

Maria released Nicholas and stepped back to look him over.

“Oh, please, it's never any trouble. Anything you want, I'll make. You look too skinny.”

“Don't worry about it. I just need to speak with my father, and I'll be on my way.”

“Well, if you want to see George, he's reading in the living room, but just let me know if you change your mind. I feel like celebrating. I'll cook anything you want.”

Maria walked toward the kitchen, and Nicholas was alone for the moment. The temperature was the same as when he lived in the house, set ten degrees higher than where any reasonable person would keep it. It was cloying and stifling, and Nicholas had to concentrate to avoid feeling slow and stupid. He drew a breath and walked into the living room.

“Hello, Nick,” George said. He rose from his chair and opened his arms to embrace his son. Nicholas extended a hand, and George shook it after a pause. “How have you been?”

“I have come to settle my accounts.” Nicholas said it as though he had rehearsed it, careful to speak at just the right tempo and with enough bass to achieve an affect of determined authority.

“What do you mean? Are you in trouble? Do you need a loan?”

“No. I want to settle my accounts with you.”

“But you don't owe us anything.”

“Yes, I do.”

“I don't understand, Nick. We've never loaned you anything.”

“You have. I'm in incredible debt to you, and I want to pay you back for everything. I lived rent-free under your roof for eighteen years. I want to pay you for that. For every day of those eighteen years my breakfast, lunch and dinner were bought and prepared for me through yours and my mother's labor. I want to pay you for that. I want to pay you for every piece of clothing you ever bought for me, for every school fee you ever paid, for every toy. I want to balance the books.”

George gave a gentle chuckle.

“Really, son, we don't expect anything from you. It was a gift. Forget about it. Sit down, and we'll talk.”

“Then I have no reason to stay here. I have a long drive back to Seattle.” Nicholas turned to leave.

“Wait, Nick,” George sighed. “Stay. We'll talk about it.”

Nicholas placed his briefcase on the coffee table, opened the clasps and passed the papers to George.

“I've organized your expenses and my debt into seven categories: food, lodging, clothes, transportation, education, medical and entertainment. These, in turn, are organized by year. The two columns on the far right reflect the expenses for the year and their current value adjusted for inflation. Please feel free to review my estimates and revise them if you think they are wrong or if I missed anything significant, but I hope you will find the sum to your liking.” Nicholas tapped a number, bold and several sizes larger than anything else, on the top page.

“You could pay this right now?”

“I have the check ready. You just need to confirm my estimates.”

George nodded, took his bifocals from atop the magazine where he had left them and began reading. After a little while, he said, “If you really want to go through with this, we should do it right.” George left and returned with two decades worth of files on taxes balanced atop a cardboard box. Inside were tens of notebooks, bound with rubber bands. “Your mother's journals,” George explained. “Every day she listed everything that happened. Tax records are fine, but these will fill in any gaps. You should make yourself comfortable. This may take awhile.”

George leaned back in his chair. Nicholas sat down straight on the sofa and didn't take off his coat. Maria stepped in briefly to put down two cups of tea and a tray of cookies and sweets before she bustled out.

After awhile, his eyes still on the records and estimates, George asked, “How are you doing?”

“I'm doing well. I spent the summer looking at potential sites for Gyro Place franchises in Phoenix, Denver and San Francisco.”

“I'm glad to hear that. Your restaurant deserves to do well. Your mother and I went down to the one on King a few months ago. I was impressed. The food and service were much better than McDonald's or KFC.”

“Thank you.”

“San Francisco, though. That's exciting. How did you like the City by the Bay? Did you catch a Giants game? I've always been interested in visiting, but the opportunity never came up.”

“It was fine.”

The silence returned. George kept a pen between his fingers but had not written a single note. When he finished comparing Nicholas' estimates and the tax record, he picked through the journals until he found the oldest.

“Is this really necessary?”

“Of course. Anything worth doing is worth doing right, remember?”

Nicholas collapsed back in the sofa and drummed his fingers on the end table.

George stopped on one page and chuckled.

“I didn't remember this.”

Nicholas let his tea continue to grow cold.

“Don't you want to know what it is?”George asked.

“No.”

A few minutes later George said. “Do you remember when you went to that summer acting camp? Do you remember speaking with that terrible British accent for weeks afterward? I was only glad that you stopped before school started again.”

“That was a long time ago. I included it in my estimates.”

There was silence again, and George continued to go through the journals. When he was through the last of them, failing several times more to draw Nicholas out, he left for a moment and brought back a laptop.

“What's that for?” Nicholas asked, finally allowing his irritation to distort his voice.

“I just want to check your numbers for inflation. I want to make sure they're right.”

“They're right. You don't have to do that.”

“Just the same, I'd like to check them myself. It'd be an easy mistake to make when you're concentrating on getting everything else right.”

“No, really, they're right.

“We'll see.”

George tapped at the keys and looked from the screen to the estimates, double checking every number.

“It looks like you were right.”

“I told you I was.”

“It never hurts to double check. Better the few seconds for a second look than embarrassing yourself with a stupid mistake.”
George gathered the papers and squared them.

“There were a few little things, I think, but everything looks good. I don't think I need to change anything. This was an impressive job you did. Very professional. You should be proud.”

“Of course.”

Nicholas took the papers back, leaving only the contract for his father to sign, and rose to leave.

“Actually,” George set, a look of fear crossing his face, “I've just thought of something. All of these papers calculate just the financial aspect of raising you. What about your values? Doesn't that count for something? What if I hadn't pushed you on your homework, to always strive to do your best and get an 'A' and not just coast to the 'B'? Would you own a fast-food chain then or would you have settled for something easier?”

“Maybe not, but I think that's balanced out by the bills I'm paying my therapist now.”

“I didn't know you were seeing a therapist.”

“I never told you.”

“Is something wrong? Can I help?”

“You could sign and let me leave.”

“I just thought of something else. What about our opportunity costs? It's not just what we paid to raise you. You didn't calculate at all what we gave up to raise you. You know your mother forced me to turn down a job offer that would have made me the regional manager in Seattle because she didn't want to take you away from your cousins and friends. What about all that? Sit down and stay awhile, and we'll figure it out.”

“How about this?”

Nicholas scribbled a new number, twice the original estimate, and pushed it toward George.

“This will make you richer than you ever dreamed. You physically won't be able to spend all of that money in how ever many years you have left.”

“I would like to check the numbers one last time.”

“You already have.”

“Would you like to know what we'll do with the money?”

“It doesn't matter to me.”

“I think I'd like to buy a house outside the city, some place small where there isn't so much traffic. Your mother will probably want to send some of it to her cousin in Athens. You probably don't know, but she's working with immigrants there and could use the funding.”

Nicholas didn't say anything, and George sighed, defeated.

“Where do I sign?”

Nicholas tapped the line.

As George wrote his signature and the date, he said “This is silly, you know. You've already paid me back. You're happy and successful. That's all I ever wanted for you. Your mother would like it if you got married and raised a family, but she just wants you to be happy, too. That's better than anything you could pay us.”

Nicholas took the signed contract. He scribbled a new check and put it on the coffee table in front of George.

George said, “If I disappointed you or somehow hurt you to make you want to do this, I'm sorry.”

“You haven't done anything wrong. I just wanted to settle my accounts.”

Maria walked into the room.

“I know you said you didn't want anything, but it's already getting dark, and I didn't want you to leave hungry. I set a place for you, and the eggplant's almost done in the oven,” she said.

“You could pay us for it, if it'd make you feel better,” George said quietly. “I think fifteen dollars would be fair for your mother's labor and the ingredients.”

“George,” Maria said, shocked. “There's no need for that.”

Nick didn't pause.

“No, I really have to go.”

His parents didn't protest and followed Nicholas to the entrance. When Nick opened the door to let himself out, Maria asked, “Do you think you'll come back for Easter this year?”

Nicholas said, “I don't think so,” and walked out into the snow and night.

Considering David Fincher's "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo"

2011-12-20T23:32:00.003-06:00

It's funny how film releases go. There can be months of waiting where maybe one or two releases has me thinking that if I were bored on the weekend I might take the time to visit the theater and watch them, and then comes a two week stretch where there are at least four movies out that I'm actively interested in seeing. I'm trying to figure out how I can justify paying for all the tickets and how I can make time, and then I get a pair of free tickets to an advance screening of David Fincher's remake of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. When fortune smiles on me like this, I cannot help but to share my thoughts.

Adapting Stieg Larsson's The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is an interesting choice for Fincher. On the one hand, it's a crime procedural like Seven and Zodiac and Lisbeth Salander is an outsider not so different from The Social Network's Mark Zuckerberg and Fight Club's Tyler Durden. You can see what Fincher could find attractive about the novel, and he does some excellent work with what he has. There are some beautiful scenes. The use of ambient sound of the subway when a man grabs Salander's bag and runs and the floor buffer when Salander first asks Bjurman for money are brilliant. The editing makes a guy looking flipping through pictures on his computer engaging. Fincher gets a surprisingly effective turn from Daniel Craig, the new James Bond, as the tired and broken Mikael Blomkvist. Rooney Mara does a fine job as Salander but doesn't match Noomi Rapace in the Swedish original, but who could?

But what's it all for? The source material is a generic thriller that most stands out for the intensity of the sexual violence and its Swedish setting. Fincher's faithful to it and creates some beautiful scenes and imagery, but that's all there is. Not that there's anything wrong with it, but I had hoped for something more from the man who has directed three of my favorite films of all time.

A question regarding the sexual violence. Salander is handcuffed and anally raped by her government payee and guardian early in the film. She returns to the man to do the same and more to him. Both scenes are brutal. If you found them titillating in the least, you need to ask yourself serious questions about your proclivities, but people laughed when Salander had Bjurman at her mercy. I don't understand that. It wasn't meant to be funny. I even think that Fincher edited the two scenes that they resembled each other, that there were more parallels than simply what they did to one another. Why did people laugh? Why was it funny when the woman kicked a dildo into the man's anus and not when the man straddled the woman? Cheering at the second scene, as loathsome as it would be, I could understand. The woman outsmarted the man legally and physically superior to her. Evil was answered and vengeance was taken, but the audience's laughter unsettled me. Why did they laugh?

"Camera Obscura"

2011-12-14T20:27:00.002-06:00

His cellphone sang. “One love, one blood, one life. You got to do what you should.”

It was Kate, the photo editor. She didn't say hello.

“I can't use your pictures,” she said.

“What?” Toby's voice was higher pitched than he had intended. He took a breath. “I'm sorry, but I thought they were good. Why can't you use them?”

“The Saturday package is about homelessness and what the city government and everyday citizens are doing to fight it. Our job is to put a face to that enemy, a face that captures all the suffering and deprivation it causes. Your pictures don't do that. No one is even going to believe these men live on the streets. Washed faces? Collared shirts? Clean shaves? My stepson doesn't dress this nice, and they're supposed to be the bums.”

“They said they wanted to look good if they're going to be in the paper. I thought the homeless deserved that little dignity at least.” Toby stressed “the homeless” instead of “bums” and hoped Kate would notice.

“You don't understand. We want to touch people's hearts. We want them to demand change. No one will care if the face of homelessness is healthy, clean and well-fed. This is a daily newspaper, not some high school yearbook. You fought for this assignment. Now go out, and do it right,” Kate hung up.

Toby gave a full sigh that the others at the bar noticed.

“I need to go and take more pictures,” Toby explained when Jason turned. “Apparently the men at the YMCA aren't 'homeless' enough for the Herald.”

“That sucks,” Jason said. “Happy hour ends in twenty minutes.”

“I'll make it quick. I just wish they'd told me when I turned in my pictures. No one deserves a new assignment on Friday night. God, it's been such a long week, too” Toby sighed again even though he had their attention. “Do any of you have any idea where I can find the 'real homeless?'”

“Highman Park,” Anna said without hesitation. “If you drive by too slow, guys will rush your window asking for change. Be careful, though. I hear a lot of gangs and drug dealers hang out there, too.”

Toby had never been to Highman before, and Anna gave him directions. No wonder he didn't know the way. It was on the west side. He preferred to avoid that part of the city.

He finished the rest of his micro-brew in two long gulps before leaving the bar. What Kate had said was true. He had fought for the story. When Toby picked up the photography assignments that morning and read that Rachel Emans had the front-page homelessness package while he was left with the profile of the local driftwood artist, tentative headline “One man's garbage...,” he went straight to Kate's office. If she had been surprised when he walked in without knocking, she didn't show it. She glanced up only briefly from the pictures and papers on her desk before returning her full attention to them. Toby, however, was impressed by the audacity of his entrance. He understood it as evidence of his zeal for the assignment. While waiting for Kate, he considered his argument.

“This may be presumptuous of me,” he carefully began when the editor finally looked at him and held her gaze, “especially since I've only been here a couple of months, but I think I deserve the homelessness assignment. I don't think anyone else on staff cares more about the homeless or can show the same compassion for them in their photographs.”

Kate made no reply but to take a sip of coffee and lean back in her chair, but Toby felt himself getting into a rhythm and his voice gained strength.

“You know how some people take up environmental causes and plant trees or run across the country to raise cancer awareness? Well, my issue is homelessness. My senior year at State I was president of the Homelessness Action Front and led some of our biggest campus awareness campaigns. We chalked facts about homelessness on all the sidewalks and collected signatures to force the city council to increase funding for social services. I wrote editorials for the student paper about the incredible rates of mental illness among the homeless and their drastically shorter life expectancies. I wanted everyone to know that homelessness matters. This isn't just another assignment for me. This is my passion.”

Kate took another sip of coffee. Then she picked up her phone.

“I need you in my office now, Rachel,” she said. Waiting for the senior photographer, Toby could hardly stand to stay still. He knew the story was his. He just needed one final push.

Rachel knocked before walking in, and Kate told her, “The rookie wants your assignment today because he thinks he could do a better job than you.”

Turning back to Toby, Kate said, “Tell her why.”

Rachel gave a wry grin as Toby began, but he didn't notice. He was concentrating on everything he had learned in his Advanced Public Speaking class.

“With all due respect, Rachel,” he said, “do you know what it's like to be homeless and spend the nights outside and carry all your possessions with you everywhere? I do. I spent a week in solidarity with the homeless when my club slept in front of the school library last spring. We only had coffee and day-old doughnuts for breakfast every morning and peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches for every other meal. We couldn't go into our dorms because we were homeless, so we had to shower in the gym locker rooms. I understand the homeless at a personal level, and I think that's imperative to doing this assignment right. Don't you?”

“What do you think?” Kate asked Rachel after the briefest possible pause.

Rachel shrugged.

“If he wants it that badly, he can have it. I'm waiting on a call from Thomas to finish that story on illegal dumping by Agrochemical. If he calls, I need to be there immediately. The suits have been such a pain in the ass with scheduling an interview and tour of the plant that I won't get a second chance at them.”

Toby let a smile break across his face. His first front-page assignment. And for a major weekend package. That was something to celebrate. After giving them both the most gracious thanks possible, he had rushed from the office to get started. Toby checked first with Ericsson, writer of the package's lead story, and he sent Toby to the YMCA. Ericsson had met a few sources there and thought it would be an easy start and safe since it employed security. He told Toby that if he hurried, there still might be a few people at the free breakfast.

When Toby arrived, there were no more than ten men sitting at long tables in the poorly lit cafeteria. The guard sitting casually at the doors told him they were free to stay as long as they wanted so long as they didn't make any trouble for each other or the staff.

“Just give a shout if they start causing a commotion or you see them with any alcohol or drugs or weapons,” he told Toby with a smile and patted his billy club.

Toby assured the guard there would be no trouble and no need for the help but thanked him.

Toby walked over to a slight man, sitting silently against the wall and staring toward the distant windows, first.

“Hello. I'm Toby with the Herald,” he said as he put his hand out. “You mind if I sit with you for a little while? Ask some questions?”

The man didn't look up, and the guard shouted from across the room, “I wouldn't bother with him. George's pretty retarded. Hardly ever speaks, and when he does, it doesn't make any sense.”

Toby glared and made sure the guard was looking before he very deliberately sat down next to George. Toby tried to introduce himself again. George didn't even turn his head. Toby asked what the YMCA had served that morning and tried to joke about how stale the doughnuts were, but George only leaned forward to watch birds flying outside the windows. Frustrated after several more minutes of silence, Toby walked to the man sitting at the nearest table.

“Couldn't get anything out of George, could you?” the man said with a grin that made Toby's fists clench. “I wouldn't feel too bad about it. He doesn't talk to anyone.”

“That doesn't mean he's any less of a person,” Toby said without hesitation.

“Oh, I never said that. He may not be as interesting as some here, but he's a lot better than most. At least he's never been to prison.”

“Yeah? Have you?” Toby had never met a convict before and felt excited.

“I've made some mistakes, but the Lord knows that I've taken my punishment like a man. Now, I'm just trying to do right by Him and get back on my feet.”

“Like how?”

The man looked hard at Toby. “Who are you asking all these questions anyway?”

“Oh, I'm sorry,” said Toby. “I should have introduced myself. My name's Toby. I work for the Herald, and I'm on assignment.”

“Oh yeah?” the man said, the large smile returning and showing off missing teeth. “You here to write a story about me or something?

“Almost. I'm a photographer. You mind if I take your picture? The article's going to be on the front page tomorrow.”

“That sounds great.” He was positively gleaming now. “Of course you can take my picture. Come on, let's move over there by the window. I always look better in the sunlight. How do you want me? How about sitting? I look kind of funny when I'm standing. I got shot in the leg in 'Nam, and I've kind of leaned to the right since then. Maybe if I had my hand on a chair or something, like that portrait of Washington, no one would notice.”

“Hey, Dennis,” another man shouted as they passed. “What are you doing with him?”

“I'm getting my picture taken. I'm going to be in the Herald tomorrow. Front page,” Dennis shouted back.

“In that jacket? You'll be the city's most famous bum,” the other man laughed. Toby flinched.

“You're right!” Dennis said when he looked down. Grabbing Toby's arm, he said, “Give me a minute. I need to wash and put on something nice. Maybe that shirt I wear for job interviews. Do you think that would look good?”

Dennis came back fifteen minutes later. Every line of dirt on his face was gone, and his hair was combed neatly to the side. Toby felt as though he were at an advertising shoot instead of a homeless shelter. Dennis eagerly followed Toby's every suggestion to turn his head to better catch the light or to rest his chin in his hand, but he could never look serious for more than two seconds.

“I just can't,” Dennis laughed after failing for the fifth time. “This is too great. I'm having too much fun.”

Toby nodded with good humor and bit his frustration back. He was supposed to look somber and aged beyond his years but was acting like a child.

Soon enough the other men in the cafeteria drifted toward Toby and Dennis and started asking questions. Then they were all clambering for portraits of their own and hurrying to change and shave. Toby only barely left the YMCA before lunchtime and the newcomers started to ask what he was doing with the camera.

By the time Toby parked outside Highman Park, the sun was just above the horizon. A chill pierced Toby the moment he stepped out of the car. It was colder than he had expected for an early October evening. Colder even than the week of solidarity. Still, not enough to make him shiver. He had forgotten gloves, though. It hurt when he kept his hands out of his pockets too long, and his fingers were stiff and clumsy as he handled the camera, checking the body and lenses. To warm himself, Toby stomped his feet and breathed into his cupped hands. Jason had ordered a pound of french fries before Toby had left. He hoped he would be back before they finished them, even if the last few were lukewarm.

He could see how Highman might be nice for a walk or picnic in the afternoon for those who lived in the area, but it was ill tended. The grass hadn't been mown in weeks. There were tracks of bare dirt where people worn down their own paths between the designated gravel trails. He could see, too, how drug dealers would appreciate the thick bushes. There was plenty of privacy in Highman.

A quick look through the park and he would be done, Toby promised himself. He was losing daylight, and the temperature was dropping. It wouldn't matter if Toby found someone, and it was too dark to take his picture. Then Kate would just have to settle for one of those he had turned in earlier. And they were fine. They may live in shelters now, but those men had lived on the streets. They knew the suffering and indignity of being homeless. They deserved to be on the front page as much as anyone Toby might find tonight.

Toby started jogging to ward off the cold. The special had been Irish Coffee. He should have ordered it. With no certain destination he took turns indiscriminately. There were no fountains or statues or tennis courts or any landmarks whatsoever to mark Toby's way. Every few minutes he would pause to make a quick check of the area for homeless, but he always found that it looked entirely like the last part of the park he had stopped. He doubted he could easily retrace his steps and find his way back. Toby pushed on.

Coming around a turn much like the last, Toby skidded on the gravel, barely stopping. Standing in the middle of the trail, not more than ten feet ahead, were two African-American men. They were tall and wore dark, down-filled coats that disguised whether they were thin or fat or even carrying guns.

Don't think like that, Toby told himself. That's racist.

He opened his mouth to say good evening, but it caught in his throat as both men slid their hands into the breasts of their coats at the same time, their faces hard. Toby tried to smile, but it felt wrong.

The one with a scar running from the base of his jaw to the corner of his lips spit and took a step forward.

Toby turned and hurried back the way he came, faster than before. He thought he could hear a bitter laugh and the second man begin to walk. Toby ran.

Another turn. Another. Nothing looked familiar. Toby thought he passed that tree minutes ago.

Then the obnoxious odor of cheap alcohol and vomit. Toby remembered his assignment. He stopped and turned in every direction, looking for the source. Getting down on hands and knees, Toby found the drunk deep underneath one of the few shrubs whose leaves still clung to the branches. It was impossible to estimate an age. Toby would have guessed 45 but would not have been surprised if the answer were 30 or 60. A fraying wool cap covered the hair, but an unruly beard was streaked with white, gray and a pale brown. The coat had once been a rich brown but was sun-bleached from years of use and stained dark by drinks spilled that night. The soles of the shoes were only kept on with duct tape.

Even with the full force of his creativity, Toby could not have imagined a more appropriate scene. Here was Kate's “real homeless.” There could be no better demonstration of the urgency of their situation or the need for action now to save them.

There was a twitch. Toby jumped back, but that was the only movement. The sun was sinking. Toby had little time before it was completely dark. He set to work. He stepped back for a few wide-angle shots. He doubted Kate could use them. It was nearly impossible to distinguish anything, but they set the tone, how easy it is to miss the homeless among us. They're invisible to the rest of the community. Toby thought it would be funny if Kate saw the pictures and asked why he had taken them. He would relish the chance to point her blindness out to her. It would be politically incorrect, but if only they could print the pictures with the caption “Can you find the homeless person in this photograph?” to show the community its own blindness.

There was a sound. Faint, some distance away. Toby lowered the camera to his chest and listened. Two voices farther up the path? He switched lenses quickly and laid down for a better angle and close-up. He was relieved that the first shots were crisp. Despite the failing light, the details were clear. Long shadows cast by the low sun turned the broken nose into something of mythic proportions. Every scar, no matter the size, no matter the depth, was clear. The thick lines around the eyes and across the forehead had a gravity earned by years of rejection. It was a face that had known suffering intimately and endured.

The leaves of the shrub rustled when Toby got up after the final shot. The subject's eyelids drooped open.

“Hey,” he slurred. A line of drool of began to run from his mouth. “Could you give me a little help?”

“Sorry,” Toby said. “I don't have any change.”

“You don't have nothing for a cold vet?”

The voices were growing more distinct, and Toby's voice grew more rapid. “Sorry, I really don't have anything. Maybe the YMCA could help you out. They might have a bed or blanket or something for you.”

“I don't need their rules. I'm free here.” He grunted. “Didn't I see you there earlier? Weren't you the one with the camera?”

Toby was stuffing the camera back into its case and only glanced down briefly before looking up the trail again. There might have been something familiar in that profile, but he wasn't sure.

“You're wrong. I don't remember you.”

“Huh.” The man gave a wet belch and rolled to face the other way. Toby could make out individual words and took off at a sprint.

His breathing came in gasps, and the backs of Toby's legs burned. The camera bag was bouncing wildly, bruising his hip. He didn't dare look back.

Another turn but the gravel was loose. Toby's feet slid out from under him. His hand was just fast enough to cover his face before he hit the ground and rolled. No time to concentrate on the bright pain in his ankle or searing on his palms. Toby scrambled forward on hands and knees until he was running upright again.

The trees and bushes were thinning. Toby could see the parking lot, not more than a hundred meters ahead. A final surge and Toby was leaning, panting, against the hood of his car.

“Hey, boy.” The smooth bass voice came from behind Toby. “Why'd you run off like that? That was rude.”
Toby rolled onto his back like a defeated dog. It was them.

“We just wanted to make your acquaintance,” the one with the scar said. He bit out every syllable in “acquaintance” to prove there was nothing kind in the suggestion. “My name's Michael. This shit's Damon.” The smaller one smiled, and Toby saw gold teeth. “What's yours?”

“My what?” Toby's voice squeaked.

“Your name, dumb ass.”

“Toby.” It squeaked again.

“Toby, huh? Well, now that we know each other's names, that makes us friends, don't it?”

“I guess so.”

“And friends share. Right?” They were within arm's reach now.

“I guess so.”

“So why don't you share whatever that's in your bag with us?”

Toby tried to step back but only pressed himself flatter against his car.

“That's a fine car you have. What about sharing your keys with us, too?” The shorter one spoke for the first time. His voice was coarse, malicious, like it was used to telling jokes which ended with a kitten being flayed. Toby opened his mouth. To reply, to scream for help, he didn't know. No sound came from it. It just hung loose.

Another car pulled into the parking lot, and a uniformed officer sauntered out. The two stepped back.

“How you boys doing tonight? Have any trouble?” he asked, swinging his flashlight between Toby, still tight against his car, and the two blacks.

“No trouble,” the taller one sneered.

“And you, sir?” the officer asked holding the light steady on Toby. “Any trouble?”

“No.” Toby's voice still squeaked.

“Good.” There was a note of finality in his voice. “How about you all keep it that way and move along.”

The blacks slouched back into the park, and Toby's hands shook as he tried to key in the door code. He only managed it on the fourth try.

“Be careful,” the officer said just before Toby closed the door. “There are some bad people out here. It's no place for a man like you.”

Toby nodded quickly and sped away without looking back.

* * *

Kate called too early the next morning.

“Last night's pictures are brilliant. They were everything I hoped for.”

“Thanks,” he managed, still fuzzy from the night before. Anna had taken his keys just after ten, and he hadn't stopped drinking. She had driven him home around midnight.

“I think they could really make a difference. Good job.”

The Justice Society of America film genre

2011-12-12T10:31:00.000-06:00

Sean O'Neal's first sentence in his description of the trailer for The Avengers is long and is a piece of comic brilliance.

Sneaking in under the radar next year is The Avengers, an ensemble piece featuring indie-film favorites Robert Downey Jr. (Two Girls And A Guy), Mark Ruffalo (The Kids Are All Right), Samuel L. Jackson (Coach Carter), Scarlett Johansson (Match Point), Chris Hemsworth (A Perfect Getaway), Jeremy Renner (The Town), and Chris Evans (Puncture) teaming with cult television director Joss Whedon (several episodes of Dollhouse) for an intimate story about the fragile bonds forged between headstrong individualists under difficult circumstances.

He prefers to imagine the film as something small and contemplative until he admits in the very last line of the piece that it's "a kick-ass comic-book blockbuster juggernaut that’s going to make tons of money." For those members of the cast whose reputations weren't already forged and faces recognized by films like Sherlock Holmes, Pulp Fiction, The Hurt Locker and Fantastic Four, they were through films that gave their heroes their origins. It's a large investment to gather an ensemble of actors and actresses, any of whom could lead their own film, but it's not a bad way to guarantee that your film will make handfuls of money. It's worked with the sheer star power the three Ocean's films, it's worked with the overwhelming masculinity of The Expendables, it's worked with the mixed bag of Valentine's Day, and it'll work again with New Year's Eve and What To Expect When You're Expecting.

But I don't want to talk about those films. I want to talk about those that some remarkable mixture of prescience and fortune assemble an ensemble that has amazing things in store for the future.

Consider The Fugitive. It cannot honestly be described as an ensemble piece, starring Harrison Ford who started coasting on a reputation built on Star Wars, Indiana Jones and Blade Runner about this time and Tommy Lee Jones, but it still gave managed supporting roles for Julianne Moore before her four Oscar nominations, Jane Lynch before her Golden Globe and Joe Pantoliano before his productive career.

Consider The Faculty. It had Salma Hayek before Frida and Desperado, Elijah Wood before The Lord of the Rings, Josh Hartnett before Pearl Harbor, Jon Stewart before anyone cared about The Daily Show and Usher before he discovered Justin Bieber.

Consider 10 Things I Hate About You. It had Joseph Gordon-Levitt before Inception and 50/50, Julia Stiles before the Bourne franchise and Dexter, and Allison Janney before The West Wing. It not only had Heath Ledger long before his Oscar roles in The Dark Knight and Brokeback Mountain, but it is the only American film I know of that had him speaking in his native Australian accent. It also had David Krumholtz before Numb3rs and Gabrielle Union before Bring It On for those who happen to care about those.

I would like to propose a name for these films, justice society. The Justice Society of America preceded the Justice League of America and its various iterations, and the biggest names in superheroes could not be members. Superman and Batman were only honorary members and the Green Lantern and Flash left once they gained their own series.

I would like to propose rules to this retroactive genre. First, and most obviously, more than a few of the actors and actresses must go on to stardom or win major awards or lead their own films or television series. Second, the film cannot be a smash. Its own success cannot be directly responsible the success of its actors. The Lord of the Rings and Star Trek may not have the biggest names in their casts, but you can be sure Orlando Bloom wouldn't have had the career he did without Legolas and that it wasn't The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagment that led to a role opposite Denzel Washington for Chris Pine. Third, it has to be an ensemble piece. It cannot be a star vehicle for a single lead character. It doesn't count when some uncredited background character goes on to bigger things, though it is impressive that Bruce Lee beat up both Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung in Enter the Dragon.

I would like to propose love for this genre. It's like five before-they-were-stars segments only interesting.

I would like to thank IMDB for making me appear a lot more informed with regard to film than I am.

Others?

"The Boy Who Very Much Wanted To Be A Writer"

2011-12-06T07:24:00.001-06:00

The summer before Edgar began the fifth grade, an uncle asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up. Edgar answered with no hesitation, “A writer. I want to be a teller of stories, to weave narratives fantastic, to craft characters with depths unplumbed.”

Toward this end he attended writing workshops and read manuals of style. Some emphasized unique descriptions and many of them. Others celebrated the terse. Some wrote that one must speak truth to power. Others replied that such was not literature but editorial.

Edgar found only one rule consistent throughout: show, don't tell.

It became his law.

“I love you,” Laura, dear Laura, told Edgar years later as they sat outside the park duck pond one Thursday evening.

Every attempt prior, she had breathed in deeply to quiet her heartbeat and steady her hands, prepared to say it. Then she would hold it a beat too long. The moment would pass, and she could only release a sigh of disappointment.

As soon as the declaration left her lips, Laura lowered her eyes, turned her face away and raised her hand to hide her profile, but Edgar could see the smile in her cheek.

Edgar could want nothing more. Already this was more than he believed he deserved. She loved him. She was his muse. Every hero, every good character he wrote partook of Laura's perfection. The china shoulders of Alexis. Aunt Cameron's casual recitation of Whitman. They would not exist without Laura.

He kissed her on the ear. Her hand fell from her face, and Laura turned. Edgar kissed her mouth. She kissed his. They remained so enjoined for some time.

When they disengaged, Laura held herself close against Edgar's chest and looked up at him with expectation.

Edgar took a breath to quiet his heartbeat and steady his hands. And paused. He released the held air in a steady stream.

Sitting together in the theater through the credits until they were the last to leave. A home-made dinner of polenta and spinach frittata and red wine for two on New Year's Eve. How could she begin to think he could mean anything less?

Edgar held her close, too, and they waited. Laura continued to hold him, but it was not so tight, so earnest, as it had been.

Time passed, and they went their separate ways home.

Considering Arthur Phillips' "The Tragedy of Arthur"

2011-11-28T03:13:00.001-06:00

There is a relatively simple idea at the core of The Tragedy of Arthur: a forger discovers a lost play of William Shakespeare and gives it to his author son to publish, a son whose relationship with his father is strained at best and whose faith in the play's authenticity is understandably suspect. This simple idea is then wrapped in a massive conceit as the published work begins with an understated preface from the editors of Random House/Modern Library on the momentousness of the discovery, is followed by the highly personal and long introduction that veers into memoir territory and develops the aforementioned simple idea, and ends with the play itself and annotations on possible puns and archaic terms by both Mr. Philips and a Roland Verre, Shakespearean professor. The dedication to the conceit is pushed even further as William Shakespeare is given a little author biography along with Mr. Philips on the back page, their list of published works are together on the front inside pages and Dr. Verre's comments have their own copyright notice.

It's clever, I admit, and about as well done as one could hope. The many voices in this novel, those of Mr. Phillips and Shakespeare, Dr. Verre and the editors and lawyers of Random House/Modern Library, are distinct and reasonable facsimiles, at least to this one who is unfamiliar with the originals. One would think that by effort of this massive, multifaceted effort, it should be no problem at all to suspend disbelief that there is a fortieth Shakespeare play and this is it, but unfortunately, I could not. I find that fascinating. I have no trouble believing that Jason Statham can beatdown ten men at once or that the Joker could steal a firetruck and light it up at just the right spot to divert Harvey Dent's motorcade, but I cannot accept the authenticity of this new Shakespeare play, though a play is offered and it would appear that every single detail is accounted for. I wonder if perhaps it is just this ponderous detail to the fact otherwise that keeps my disbelief close and active. Would it not have been simpler to just be told that the play exists and to cut everything else out and not make the evidence perfect? Isn't that how real cons work, by glossing the details and allowing the mark to provide the answers? Were it just the introduction, I think I could believe it, but I can't the way it is. As it is, it becomes a game to find the errors. Those more familiar with Shakespeare's work than I will read the play close to find the false lines and words and be distracted from what should be a fairly enjoyable read.

It would be great if I could believe because the story's emotional arc is based on the late-arising conflict between Mr. Phillips and his twin sister as they battle over the play's authenticity in the face of their father's crimes and a single piece of contradictory evidence when every Shakespeare scholar and dating test suggests the manuscript is real. Without the suspension of disbelief, every character but for Mr. Philips appears a willing and active dupe and everything they do in relation to the play, which would appear reasonable if the document might be real, appears mean-spirited and cruel. This is especially damaging for Mr. Philips' twin sister. Early on he writes that she is perhaps the only character to come out of the story clean and good, but that is not my impression when she humiliates Mr. Philips and forces him to grovel, choose a Shakespearean punishment for himself and publish the play. That ending retroactively damaged everything that preceded it, leaving only a sour taste from what I had already enjoyed. The debates on the play's authenticity also distract from the much more interesting storyline where Mr. Phillips considers whether this play is some sort of twisted apology to him from his father who disappointed him throughout his life.

In the same way that Mr. Phillips cannot help but to construct this intricate artifice to justify the play's authenticity, he cannot help but to make this work a primer to contemporary thought on Shakespeare. When Mr. Phillips as a character is not musing on the politics of Scottish royalty in the plays or questioning whether the preponderance of surviving plays by Shakespeare against those of all other Elizabethan playwrights is the reason for his exalted place in the canon, other characters do it for him. A Scottish actor has his own ideas on the presence of bawdy jokes, and Dana covers the basics of anti-Stratfordian scholarship and offers her own idea of dual authorship by a Jew and earl. It's enough to make one appear pretty educated at their next cocktail party or water cooler or wherever it is that adults discuss Shakespeare.

For what it's worth, I found Arthur in a used book shop and bought it on a whim. I had heard mention of it somewhere on the Internet at some point and had thought the concept interesting, but the final decision was pushed by the fact that this edition was the advance reader's edition. In the place of blurbs of praise there are warnings that contained are uncorrected proofs and that any quotes should be compared against the sold edition before publication. I was kind of giddy at the discovery. I had always assumed early editions would have to be burned or something, but now I own something that only a select few could have, even if several editions more have been published since then.

Considering J.M. Coetzee's "Elizabeth Costello"

2011-11-26T17:53:00.001-06:00

I'm curious what it would be like to be J.M. Coetzee. The man has won the Booker Prize twice and the Nobel Prize for Literature. He has won literary prizes worthy of note in his one-paragraph biography from South Africa, Israel, Ireland and France. A disparate and not inconsiderable part of the world has named him a great and important writer, and he's only 71 and sounds to be in good health. What's left for the man?

Experimentation and personal challenges would seem to be the answer considering Elizabeth Costello. I like to imagine Coetzee saying to himself, "J.M.? You're objectively an excellent writer if all these awards mean anything. But can you write a compelling story about an aging woman where she is only revealed through a series of lectures delivered by her and those she knows?"

Yes, he can. Though the novel is named for its protagonist, it seems to me that it's not really about the traditional characters, the professors and students, the Africans and Australians, the believers and atheists, the humans. It's about their beliefs and ideas. Beside Ms. Costello and her son, no character appears, is even referenced, in more than one chapter, and the lives they demonstrate in that little space have little depth outside of the ideas immediately presented on orality in African literature, on the relation of the Greek and Roman classics to Africa, on the ethics of imagining a Nazi execution, on animal rights, on Kafka.

But these ideas have life. The discussions are not simply whether they are right or wrong. That matters, yes, but there is so much more. Ms. Costello contends with her past relationship with the man speaking on a cruise ship to Antarctica. She systematically destroys her relationship with her daughter-in-law over her belief in the ethics of eating meat. She considers how she can speak the truth to evil when the man who wrote the passage she to which she is replying is in her audience. Elizabeth Costello takes the debates and ideas from the pages of specialty journals and gives them vitality, shows how they matter, not just for themselves but to the people who support and defy them.

And then it is all drawn together in the two final, amazing chapters as Ms. Costello tries and fails and tries again to deliver her final statement on all that matters. It's heady stuff. I haven't read enough of Coetzee to say if this is a step off his game which lead to all the awards, but if it is, I can't imagine what his work in its prime was like.

Shelter nights: Images of the homeless

2011-11-21T08:13:00.001-06:00

Just as those seeking to alleviate African famines push the image of the children whose bellies are bloated by kwashiorkor and limbs are skin wrapped around bone and eyes are touched by flies, the opponents of homelessness have their dominant images. The first, and kinder, is of someone, generally younger, of college age or so, and clean, bending or crouching toward someone sitting and obviously homeless in layers of filthy shirts and coats. The younger offers the elder a tray of food or some clothes or just a smile. It demonstrates the work the organization does, offering both something concrete to and acknowledgment of the homeless people. The second image is of the homeless asleep outside, lying atop cardboard boxes, under a torn sleeping bag or too thin military surplus blanket. The face is always covered. The feet might be visible. These images show the material poverty of the homeless and their great need. They also seek to shame the viewer. Hidden underneath whatever they have to keep warm, the lumpy, sleeping bodies appear like bags of garbage. Do the homeless deserve to be treated like garbage is the underlying question.

Neither are the images I hold of the homeless. My image is of someone waiting, someone bored. Perhaps they are just sitting on a bench crowded on both sides by either people and blankly staring ahead for hours, or maybe they are someone who is woken from bed in the morning only to go directly to the day room, rest their head in their arms and go straight back to sleep. The most fortunate are actually waiting for something, for their housing application to go through and to be placed on a sixteen-month waiting list or to hear back from a temporary employer. The rest are just waiting because they are discouraged from being in and around many places, because their families are scattered or no longer see them, because they receive disability and can't work. The overwhelming boredom of homelessness is my first image of it.

My perception is skewed, of course. I have so far only worked in shelters, the provider of the most basic services and entry point for housing and other opportunities. I have never been a case manager, actively working with clients to file paperwork to move on, and have never spent time with outreach services, meeting people on the streets, but it is a facet of homelessness I am not likely to forget.

A first novel: Return

2011-11-17T09:23:00.001-06:00

Remember back at the end of August when I wrote that I needed to take some time for research before I could begin writing again? That has not been so successful as I had hoped. I did do some more research but that amounted to copying down the links to a few more references. I have failed to read The Ontology of Photography and The Gutenberg Galaxy, and I have failed to watch Hard Target and The Delta Force. Pretty disappointing.

I realized the research wasn't going so well by the end of September, once I had a job and we had settled into Seattle and the most high priority distractions were taken care of. I decided then that I couldn't wait to begin and finish my research. The important thing was to keep writing. My writer's block on this first novel continued, though, and I thought maybe working on another novel would help. It didn't. I wrote out a whole stack of notes. I had an even better conception of that novel's development and direction. I was excited about it. Then I wrote a few paragraphs, maybe a quarter of a page, and realized that the tone was way too somber and self serious and generally pretentious. I had to rethink my approach entirely.

Then I learned that a local bookstore was holding a contest in conjunction with NaNoWriMo: best novel written according to the game's rules would be published on the store's press and stocked for at least three months. That, I thought, could not fail to inspire me to write. No time to think or revise or edit. Just pure inspiration and sweat. It did not. Again, I crashed out after a few paragraphs. At least this time I completed more than a full page.

And so I return to my first novel again. I still have doubts about, that it will not be good enough, that it will not be smart enough, that I will make some stupid factual, cultural mistake and that the people who understand the material better than I will laugh at it, but I am doing my best to push these doubts to the side. I'm still going to do the research, too, but it's going to be concurrent with the writing. No more excuses and delays. I'm going to finish this. It'll take longer than I had first hoped, but I will do it.

Stats

2011-11-14T04:13:00.001-06:00

I began this blog in the May of 2005. For most of the time since then I actively avoided checking my blog stats. Once or twice I did manage to accidentally click my way to that information, but I promptly forgot how to repeat it. I didn't want to know how many people were visiting it, much less which articles were the most popular. At my most optimistic it was because I didn't want to settle and prefer writing posts on only the most popular subjects and topics. This blog has always been meant to be free form, to be whatever I need it to be, a place to think more about what I've read and seen and share some pictures and stories. At my most pessimistic it was to avoid recognizing that no one beside a few bored members of my family and a couple of friends ever visited it. I've never expected the blog to be popular, but it would be nice if other people thought my thoughts were interesting.

A month or two ago, though, Google made a major upgrade to the Blogger system. If you use Gmail, you have some idea of what it looks like, much more open and with easier to access and more intuitive buttons. Personally, I love it, but the up-to-the-moment accurate count of site hits is now right on the welcome screen. No way to avoid it anymore. Now it's only a click away to see which countries most of my audience is from (almost entirely American with a few from Canada, Germany and Russia) and what sites (Middle of the Pack and Pete Magete Blog) and searches ("intelligent movies," "harry potter paraphernalia," and "skateboarders") refer them to my blog.

What really fascinates me though are my most popular posts. Three of the all-time most popular top ten posts ("Harry Potter paraphernalia (mostly of interest to fellow Gonzaga students," "Posting to 'Spice of Life,'" and "Blogger vs. LiveJournal (a fight for the aeon!)") I have to assume are the result of bots. These three account for almost all of the comments this blog has ever received, and they are all spam. The most popular all time, "Intelligent movies" with 468 hits, and sixth most popular, "Skateboarders at Under The Freeway Skatepark" with 98 hits, I guess are fortunate accidents due to common search strings.

What about the remaining five most popular? I'll give you the post titles and see if you can spot the similarities: "Considering Meja Mwangi's 'The Cockroach Dance,'" "Considering 'An Anthology of East African Short Stories,'" "Considering Ngugi wa Thiong'o's 'Petals of Blood,'" "A Year (or Two) in Kenya: Cafe Guava," and "'An Africa For The New Millennium.'"

The answer is obvious. If wanted this to be a popular blog, I would have to return to Africa and read only its novels. "Popular" is a subjective term here as the the range in hits for these posts is between 107 and 43, but it would be something from which to build a small audience, maybe even large enough to make some money through AdSense. Hits on posts made in the past few months and that haven't had the time to build comparable numbers, bear this information out. Posts on Africa, foreign authors and progress on my own novel have easily been the most popular.

The data isn't the most accurate, counts were only kept beginning in November 2009, ignoring the blog's first four years, and even then the data is spotty as there are posts with comments but without hits, but it is fascinating, for me at least, to consider what I do have.

"Airplane"

2011-11-12T20:30:00.001-06:00

A spray of red dust, the color of congealed blood, rose on the horizon. A motorbike raced down the dirt road from Chemeril, swerving around the rocks it could avoid and slowing for the potholes it could not. Dr. Berg watched it. Behind the driver sat a man and woman. The man held the woman across his lap. One of her arms had escaped his hold and dangled at her side. It flew without restraint at every bounce of the motorbike. The man leaned close to the driver and shouted in his ear. Berg considered possible diagnoses and calculated the medicine that remained to him and when the next shipment should arrive. It would be a near thing.

It was not until the motorbike braked to a hard stop just before the doctor that Berg could tell the woman was pregnant. It was only the slightest of bumps. When the woman’s eyes were open, they stared at nothing. She only stood with her husband’s support. Berg had to discount the most optimistic of his diagnoses. It would be a much nearer thing, if it were a thing at all.

Berg immediately led them into the tent that served as his operating theater as the driver reclined in the shade cast by the motorbike. People died all of the time in Pokot. There was nothing for him to get excited about. The husband was talking, but he spoke so fast and his voice was so twisted with emotion that Berg barely understood even the little of the tribal language that he understood.

“My wife didn’t wake this morning. She slept even when I touched her shoulder. When I pulled off her wrap, there was blood all over. Please, doctor, help her.”

“And she was well last night?”

“Yes, doctor.”

“And she has not been in any accidents recently?”

“No, doctor.”

“And has she eaten anything unusual?”

“No, doctor. Please, doctor, tell me what is wrong. Save my wife.”

“I do not know, but I will discover her illness and cure it,” Berg said with confidence he did not feel but wanted the man to feel.

Together they laid the woman on the wooden operating table, and Berg blotted the blood that streamed down her leg.

The husband held his wife’s hand, and Berg moved to a discrete corner of the tent. The machine was there, hidden behind his operating tools. Berg tore a piece from the bloody rag and dropped it into the machine. He sanitized his hands while waiting for the analysis. He needed to know whether she would survive, whether he could keep the medicines for someone else.

The machine ejected a card, and Berg took it. “Airplane.” He smiled.

“Please, sir, step outside of the tent,” Berg ordered. “Your wife will be fine, but I need space to work.”

The man hurried out after squeezing his unresponsive wife’s hand once more, and Berg gathered the precious medicines that would save the woman's life. He worked with confidence. Every time the bleeding began again, he staunched it and administered another medicine. When the time came, Berg did not hesitate to draw his own blood and transfuse it with hers to buy more time for the medicines to take effect. He would survive. She would survive.

By the end of the hour, the woman was dead and her body cooling. Unsettled by the stillness inside the tent, the man looked through its opening. Berg had not called him in for a final moment with his wife. He hadn’t expected there to be a need for it. He motioned for the man to come in, and Berg withdrew.

He paced. Patients died under his care, he accepted that, but not patients whose fate was death by airplane. How did it happen? Where was the twist? Where was the airplane? Could the machine have been wrong? Berg slowed, and hope began to flicker in him. If the machine were wrong, if weren’t infallible, he could return to Germany. He could see his father and mother and Sabine again.

“Doctor,” the man called from inside the tent.

Berg returned to the man and the body.

“My child,” the man said, his hand on his wife’s abdomen. “Please.”

Berg wanted to tell him no. The woman could not have been more than six months pregnant. It would be a struggle to save such a pre-mature infant in Europe’s finest hospitals. It would be nothing less than a miracle to save the child here. Berg wanted to tell him no and save the man the sight of a dead fetus and preserve the woman’s body from further desecration, but the man was in anguish. Berg would try.

He directed the man outside again and began the operation. He cut across her abdomen with a scalpel. Through the viscera he could just make out the body of the fetus. He moved carefully, never cutting too deep and taking the time to clear away organs to keep a clear view. Finally he opened the womb and removed the fetus. It was small and still. Berg would break it if he tried to slap it and make it breathe. Berg pricked its foot with another scalpel. The child screamed, long and healthy, and his father cried outside.

Amazed, Berg took the child to the corner of the tent to clean him when a thought struck the doctor. He wiped off the scalpel’s blade, the one that had pricked the infant’s foot, with a swab and dropped it into the machine. When the analysis was complete, Berg dropped in a second swab with a new sample of blood taken from the mother. Dr. Berg read the cards. The first, the child’s, said “Airplane.” The second, the mother’s, said “Hemorrhage.” The machine was right, again, and Berg felt his earlier elation deflate. He would remain in Pokot.

Berg brought the child to his father. Berg silently watched them together, the father rocking his son in his arms until the infant fell asleep. The husband looked toward the motorbike and the driver who still reclined against it. Berg nodded. There was nothing more he could do for the boy here, but he would survive.

It was only when the father mounted the motorbike that Berg thought to give him the card. The man looked at it and shook his head. He passed the card to the driver, but he also shook his head.

“Me no English,” he said in broken English. “My wife know, but no me.”

Berg could not think of the tribal word, if there even was one, for airplane. He looked to the sky but could not see or hear any airplanes there either. He tried to mime the vehicle, but Berg could see that the man and driver did not understand. He gave up. They left.

Days passed. The man returned for his wife’s body after Berg cleaned it to the best of his abilities. A man died. He had contracted rabies from the goats he herded. A man lived. A minor cut on his foot had become infected. He had ignored it, and the flesh became necrotic. Berg amputated the foot to save his life.

Weeks passed. Berg delivered five infants and four stillbirths. Only one mother died in labor. A new supply of medicines finally arrived.

Months passed. The rains did not return when they should have. There was a cholera outbreak in one of the distant villages. Over one hundred died because the government could not afford the medicine and supplies from the World Health Organization arrived late.

Years passed. The rains returned. They disappeared. Cattle rustling against neighboring tribes escalated into war. Few died, but many were maimed. The tribes made peace again.

Berg treated those he could heal. He eased the passing of those he could not. He made sporadic attempts to train the tribal doctors in modern medical techniques and to petition international pharmaceutical companies for further donations of medicines but always gave up in futility.

A puff of dust, vermillion against the setting sun, rose on the horizon. A lone figure made its way down the dirt road from Chemeril. Dr. Berg watched him. It was a young man, no more than twenty years old. He stood tall. He did not limp. He swung both arms easily. His gait was neither slow nor hurried. He carried only a long, thin walking stick. The danger, if there was any, was not immediate, and Berg waited patiently.

When the young man was near enough, he shook Berg’s hand and put his free hand across the other arm in a sign of respect.

“I am honored to meet you, doctor,” the young man said in carefully rehearsed English. “My father tells me that you delivered me, that you saved my life. My father tells me that it was a miracle. You took me from my mother’s womb after she had already died. You are a great man, indeed, to manage such a feat.”

Berg still remembered the day he thought the machine had made a mistake and waved his hand to dismiss the compliment.

“If I were truly a great man, I would have saved your mother as well. Moreover, if I were only an average man but with an adequate supply of medicines, I would have saved her.”

Unprepared for this response, the young man said in less certain English, “But you did it. That is great.”

Uninterested in continuing this conversation which Berg knew the young man would not give up, the doctor invited him to share the ugali and cabbage he had just cooked. The rains had returned early that year, and Berg enjoyed the fresh vegetables from his small farm.

They sat across from each other and ate with their hands. They did not talk until they each cleared their plates of every remaining crumb and took a glass of goat’s milk.

“What is your name?” Berg finally asked.

“Michael Krop Kamais,” the young man answered, still in English. “I am named after my mother. They say that you come from Europe. Is that true?”

“Yes, from Munich, Germany. My family still lives there.”

“That is near the Alps and the Mediterranean Sea?”

“Yes.”

“Could you tell me about them? I have read about them in my textbooks and seen pictures, but I have never spoken with someone who actually visited them or even traveled beyond Nairobi or Kampala. What are they like?”

Berg stretched his memory.

“Well, the Alps are very nice. There are trails, and you can walk up them to the very top and see cities and nations that are very far away. The sides are covered in forests, and they are always cool. The Mediterranean Sea is very nice, as well. When I was young, my family would visit its shores once a year for holiday. The water was warm like a bath. No matter how far I would swim out, I could never see the opposite shore.”

Krop smiled.

“That does sound very nice, not like here at all.”

Berg waited for Krop to continue, but the young man was quiet. He did not look at Berg, and the doctor was patient. When Krop was ready, he would talk. Krop finally took a sheet of lined paper from his pocket, unfolded it and began to read without lifting his eyes to Berg.

“Sir, you have already done more for me than any man has by giving me life. I could never adequately or fully express all of the gratitude I have toward you for this, and I regret that I am only beginning to share it with you now because I have a request.”

Krop paused again.

“This year I completed the fourth form of secondary school, and took the KCSE. I had the top marks in my class and I will qualify for any college or university in Kenya to which I apply. I am the first in my family to have this opportunity. I could enter the University of Nairobi and study law, but I have only one desire, to become a pilot. As I said earlier, my marks will qualify me for any aviation school that I apply to, but unfortunately they are not high enough to qualify for government support. The entire burden of tuition and board falls upon my family, and we cannot bear it. Even if my father and uncle sell their entire goat herd and received the best price, it would only pay for a single term, so I come to you to ask for assistance. If you will support me and pay these fees, you will honor me and my family. I will defend your name against any who would speak ill of you. I will name my first-born son after you.”

Berg shook his head.

“Before you were born, I tested your blood. It told me that your death would be caused by an airplane.”

Berg saw Krop shake his head and twist his speech in his hands, but the doctor continued.

“It is true, and it is unavoidable. The test has never been wrong. I am sympathetic to your dreams, of course, and am very sorry, but I could never hasten your death by supporting your choice to become a pilot.”

It was brutal Berg knew, but he would not lie to the young man. If Krop did not know the truth, he would only find some other way to attend aviation school. Berg had to kill the dream entirely to protect him. Krop struggled with the words in English. When they would not come, he spoke in his tribal language.

“But, sir, I know this. I have always known this.” Krop took a scrap of paper from his pocket and passed it to Dr. Berg. It was stained and creased many times over, but the faded letters still read “Airplane.”

“My father showed the card to the district chief, and he explained what it meant. As soon as I could understand, my father told me how I would die, and he gave me the card when I was old enough to be responsible for it.”

“Then why do you want to rush toward your death? You are very fortunate. It did not read “Cholera” or “Thirst” or “Knife.” It read “Airplane.” You can live a long, full life here. I have never once seen an airplane pass over head. Years from now, perhaps, they will build an airstrip here, and then you will meet your death by an airplane, but that will not be for a long time.”

“But then how would I ever see Europe and the Alps and the Mediterranean Sea or the great cities?”

“You can drive, you can find another way.”

“And what of the Americas and Japan and Australia? I can’t drive over oceans.”

“Then you can take a ship. You can find a way.”

“No, I can’t. It would take me years. I could never see them all. I have to fly. It’s the only way. The prediction does not give a time. Maybe it will not come until after years of flying and visiting these lands.”

“And if it does not? What if it comes after only a year of flying?”

“Then it will be worth it to see just one new place.”

“And if it comes even earlier than that, when you are training on the ground?”

Both men stopped talking. They were breathing heavily. Berg spoke next.

“I was not tested at birth like you, Krop. The machine was not invented until I had completed my medical training. Like everyone I knew, I took the test. I did not keep and cherish my card like you because I was embarrassed by it. I threw it away immediately, but I still remember it. It predicted ‘Bratwurst.’ Do you know what that is?”

Krop shook his head.

“It’s a type of sausage. It’s made from the meat of pigs. My homeland is famous for them. I do not think that there is anything that tastes better, but to die from one, to choke on a bite or trip on a slice or to any other perverse method by bratwurst, would be ridiculous. It would be embarrassing. Immediately I searched for a place where they never ate pigs, a place so remote that it had never heard of sausage and that even Germans would not visit it. Pokot was that place, and I have not once feared for my life here.

“I have saved the lives of hundreds of your tribe. I have read the complete works of Goethe, Schiller, Novalis and the other masters. I have lived a good life. One day, when I am old and tired, I will return to Munich and accept my fate but not until then. I know what I am saying when I say that a life, any life, is better than death.”

Krop shook his head and spoke again.

“No matter when it comes, whether after years of traveling the world and seeing all of its wonders or before I have even left the ground, it will be a good death. What is there to die from here except for disease and wars with the Turkana and Samburu? They are common. There is no honor in those. My father is proud of me. He knows that I will be more than a goat herder, not like his father or his father before him so far as anyone can remember. My death will be remembered. I will be remembered. It will be good.”

It was dark now. Berg looked up to the sky. The moon was new, and the stars were brilliant.

“No where else will you see stars like this,” he said after some moments of contemplation. “There are too many cities, and they are too bright from electric lights. They hide the stars.”

“Then I will look everywhere but the sky,” Krop said.

Because it was late, Berg invited Krop to sleep in his tent that night.

The next morning, after Berg and Krop drank their goat milk, he told the young man he would support him at aviation school.

Later that year Krop’s father came to Berg with two letters from the aviation school. They were in English, and he asked the doctor to translate and read them to him. The first said that Michael Krop Kamais was dead. There had been an accident. While learning the airplane’s controls on the runway, the plane had started on fire, and Krop did not escape. The letter expressed its deepest sympathies that Krop’s remains could not be returned to his family because they were disfigured beyond recognition. It was signed by the headmaster.

The second letter was written by one of the instructors. He had taken the first-year students on a short flight through the Highlands and over the Great Rift Valley and only turned when they reached Mombassa and the Indian Ocean. The instructor wrote that he had made that flight many times over the years, but he had never seen a student in such ecstasy during it as Krop. The instructor wrote that, had he lived, Krop would have been an excellent pilot.

Reading the letters to Krop’s father, Berg felt old and tired for the first time. That same day, after Krop’s father had left to share the news with his family, Berg left Pokot for Nairobi and made arrangements for his return to Munich.

Considering Moses Isegawa's "Abyssinian Chronicles"

2011-11-10T08:59:00.001-06:00

There was a bad stretch earlier this year where I wasn't terribly excited about anything I read, but I didn't outright hate of it in the same way I hate Moses Isegawa's Abyssinian Chronicles. There were a number of boring and underwhelming books (cough, The Imperfectionists, cough, A Visit from the Goon Squad) but none of them were detestable. And now, with a month and a half remaining before 2012, Chronicles is the worst novel I've read this year.

There are some technical problems in the writing. The perspective is confused. Ostensibly it's told from the point of view of Mugezi, a boy who comes of age alongside the independent Uganda, but chapters are spent with his parents, Serenity, his withdrawn father, and Padlock, his harsh Catholic mother, and offer information on them that Mugezi could not possibly know. The timeline is confused for the first couple of chapters as Mugezi stops the action to explain the current relationships between characters and has to slide back again to explain how that earlier state of relationships came into being. There is no rising action or climax of which to speak, either. Chronicles also touches a personal gripe of mine as a novel by an author from the developing world who writes first for a developed world audience. Isegawa, born in Uganda but now a Dutch citizen, includes a brief list of "African words" that are hardly even used in the text but immediately defined where they appear and makes sure to always explain Uganda's cultural and political history.

But these are minor things, matters of techniques and personal gripes. They don't make this a terrible novel. The cast of entirely unpleasant characters does. The problem begins with the narrator, Mugezi. Mugezi is filled with hate. He hates his mother for beating him and giving him chores. He hates his father for allowing his mother to treat him as such. He hates the priests at the seminary for keeping the best food for themselves and keeping in budget by feeding the students corn mash. Mugezi takes clandestine vengeance on them. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as there is a rich history of literature and film of precocious children and teens playing pranks on their hypocritical elders, but Mugezi's unadulterated and unmoderated hatred poisons it all. He cannot refer to his parents without calling them "despots." He never forgets the colonizing history of the Church and never forgets to mention it in increasingly florid language.

It's like going through a sandblaster of hate, it wears you down, and Mugezi comes out the worse for it. His acts of vengeance include writing a love letter to his mother from an admirer and allowing his father to find it, destroying the headboard to his parents' bed, throwing a bag of human waste at one priest and gouging the boat of another priest. Mugezi's delight in these acts is disturbing, and his lack of self reflection with regard to his own failings including arranging a paid trip to the Netherlands by blackmailing an NGO accused of child pornography and sleeping with girls fleeing civil violence is disgusting. He can't even be bothered to name one of his younger brothers or sisters whom he refers to only as "the shitters."

And yet I read the whole thing, all 462 pages of small type. Part of it is my will to finish everything I start. The greater part of it was the language itself. The grandiosity is staggering. You can literally flip to any page and find a gem like "It made cities retch with the talons of unassuageable pain, and the villages writhe with the stench of green-black diarrhea." or "Loverboy received these morsels of her past with an ironical air, sticking disdainful needles of criticism into the parts which did not appeal to him and rewarding the bits that he liked with loud laughter and corroborating remarks." Chronicles is translated from Dutch, but Isegawa still manages to do one thing right and capture some of the lyricism of East Africa in these lines. Not enough for me to come near liking the novel, but at least something to enjoy and remind me of Kenya in the slog that is the rest of the novel.

City life

2011-11-08T09:10:00.000-06:00

Our move to Seattle intimidated me. There was some excitement, yes, for a larger job market offering employment in fields I was trained in and for the possibilities of visiting art house movie theaters and attending concerts I was interested in, but mostly there was intimidation. It was a city, not even among the top twenty largest in the United States, but a city none the less. Contemplating it was overwhelming. To get most anywhere, you would have to enter the freeway. There would be stop lights on every road. There would two major professional sports teams, four if you count men's soccer and women's basketball. Not more than five miles away there would be a university with lecture halls that could hold my entire hometown and have seats to spare for the people of Williams.

And then we moved here, and it wasn't so bad. Where I live, a largely residential neighborhood, traffic is well confined to just a few, peripheral roads and leave everything else fairly quiet. There is plenty of green space, so the urbanity doesn't press in and subsume you. It's been surprisingly slow and peaceful.

For these reasons friends have called Seattle a "small city," which I can see the truth of, but the easy pace, I believe, is more due to the small life I live here than anything small about the city. I wake up. I might run the same route I have since the day I arrived. I return to the apartment and wash. I check my email and the Internet. I cook dinner. I read and write. I take the bus to work downtown five days a week. I come back and sleep. I buy my groceries at Safeway and QFC when an ingredient is missing. I might visit a Barnes & Noble, but I prefer two independent bookstores on the same block. That's pretty much it. That is my schedule, my life. My night shifts bear some blame for the smallness of it all as I'm awake when everything else is closed and everyone else is asleep, but it is a small life. Perhaps it will change when I can transfer to a day shift, but for now I don't go to either the theatre or the theater, I don't catch concerts, I don't stroll downtown, I don't visit parks except the one opposite my apartment building. Is there much more frustrating than to have all of this opportunity available, browsing the culture listings of the weekly newspapers and seeing all of the restaurants and galleries and museums and everything else that there is to do, and not doing them because the timing is too difficult and it's too much trouble to figure the bus routes and times and it's just easier to do the same few things that I have figured out?

Considering Orhan Pamuk's "My Name is Red"

2011-11-07T05:40:00.001-06:00

My Name is Red was a disappointment. Perhaps I am unfair to it as I came to it in a rush from Snow, a novel which I read just because I needed something, anything in Mangochi, but when Snow seriously challenges for one of the best things I have read since leaving university, I think it is fair to have some expectations.

Unsurprisingly, Red suffers in comparison. It's an odd thing to write because the two novels are so much similar. A young man, driven by memories of the woman he loves, returns to his home city after years abroad. The beloved, who had married but is now separated from her husband, lives with her father and at first rebuffs the protagonist. There are deaths in the community which the protagonist must investigate. In the course of the investigations, the protagonist meets with those more interested in discussing religion and art in the abstract and the European influence on Turkey. Stylistic techniques such as the doubling of characters, narration by pictures and authorial insertion abound. Really, Snow and Red are the same book for the first half, switching Snow's modern setting and interest in Islam for Red's classic setting and interest in art.

The difference is that things happen in Snow. A night at the theatre falls into terror when the rifles are not loaded with blanks but live bullets. The town is isolated by a blizzard and military coup takes control of it. It all builds to a second night at the theatre. The monologues remain, and the speed of the action can only be described as plodding, but there is always a sense that it is building to something, that something is going to happen.

Red touches that same live wire at its best such as the chapters where plans are made for a wedding that must be conducted at all speed and navigate any number of legal and cultural obstacles, but in between there is a visit to the sultan's archives where chapters are spent describing each and every illuminated page the protagonist sees. Even when the suspects begin to arm themselves to confront the still-unknown murderer, scenes where the suspense and tension should be at their highest, seem perfunctory and the author ultimately uninterested in them as so little time is spent on them in comparison to those ceaseless descriptions of masterful illustrations.

Where Snow seemed to be exactly the right length, Red feels that it would lose nothing by being half the size, hacking away at the redundant descriptions that crop up in every chapter.

"Crucifix"

2011-11-05T21:40:00.001-05:00

My thanks go out to Zach and Spencer for their efforts to make this piece the best it could be. It unfortunately was not selected for inclusion into the coming volume of Machine of Death, but I still hope that you will enjoy it. I'll post my second, rejected submission sometime next week.

The evening call to prayer rose across Paris from ten thousand mosques and swallowed the city. All conversations paused in respect and deference to the superior sound. Before the last call faded, the city’s rich and powerful began to make their way to La Grand Mosquée.

Opposite its entrance Dismas knelt among the Christian beggars who hoped that the penitent would remember another pillar of their faith when they completed their prayers. Like them Dismas wore layers of ragged clothes that offered too little protection from the autumn chill and let his hair and beard grow long and tangled, but where they averted their eyes and lifted only their outstretched hands, Dismas stared and searched the swarm of Muslims. They wore silk robes whose fields of white were embroidered with gold thread and not marred by a single mote of dust. At another time, on another night, Dismas would have felt jealousy. They could still worship. They could still pray.

There he was. There was Abdul Rahman, already having completed his prayers and walking away from the mosque. He had come directly from the security offices and still wore his uniform and the violet sash of an officer first class. That was good. It would be difficult to lose him in such distinctive clothing. Rahman left the mosque in the company of two other men, admirers who wanted to hear the officer’s stories of killing Zealots. Rahman was polite, but he did not oblige them. Outside a café, the two tried to entice him to join them for tea and a water pipe, but Rahman refused.

Rahman left alone in the direction of the 16eme arrondissement. Dismas rose and followed him. They walked past halaal butcheries where stripped cow carcasses hung in display. There were posters for a coming action film in which a former football player starred. Some newspapers still reported on Rahman’s seizure of a small arsenal of explosives and rifles, a security action during which fifteen Christians were killed, but most were not interested in dwelling on the continuing troubles and reported political and celebrity scandals instead. The Muslims they passed paid no particular attention to either of them except to give Dismas a wide berth. They passed no Christians. In all this time Rahman never looked behind him and noticed Dismas following him.

The officer finally entered an apartment building too modest for a man of his rank and reputation. There would be no security. Dismas continued past the building to the end of the street; counted to one hundred, enough time for Rahman to enter his rooms; returned; opened the front door; and walked in. Dismas found Rahman’s name on the door farthest from the stairs on the third floor. He rested his hand lightly against the door, knocked and called out in perfect Arabic, without the trace of a Christian accent, “Delivery for Abdul Rahman.”

When he heard Rahman approach, Dismas tensed his body. When he felt the door begin to move back under his hand, the Christian kicked it in. The door struck Rahman full in the face, and he fell backward. Dismas pounced on top of him and pressed against Rahman’s throat with his forearm until the officer became unconscious. Taken so completely by surprise, the Muslim only offered token resistance.

Dismas stripped Rahman naked, bound his hands and feet behind him, threw his mobile and pistol out of reach, and went into the kitchen. Dismas had not eaten since midday when he took his position across from the mosque and was ravenous. There was a pot of couscous, already spiced, cooking. There were slivered almonds and golden raisins on the table. Dismas threw them into the pot and ate it all before he heard Rahman's first groan of pain.

Dismas drew a knife from deep within his clothing, its blade kept to a perfect edge, dulled only by the throats of security officers and government officials, and knelt in front of Rahman.

“Do you believe that you will die here tonight?” Dismas asked when Rahman's eyes were able to focus on him. “Do you believe that you will die by the blade of this knife?”

This was important. If a knife was not Rahman’s death, if he was too confident and showed no fear of Dismas, something was wrong. The bindings were loose, or there would be a visitor. Dismas would have to leave immediately.

Rahman looked away. He did not struggle. Acceptance.

Dismas waited for Rahman to say something. When the officer did speak, his voice was firm.

“You will not escape. Security will not permit my murder to go unpunished. There will be an investigation. You will be caught and executed.”

Dismas shook his head and answered in an equally firm voice.

“No, I will not. For the many, many men I have killed, the only punishment is death, but my death is by crucifix, and your government will never crucify me.”
“Then that is why you were sent to kill me? Because your superiors do not believe that you will ever be caught?”

Dismas nodded, and they were silent.

“Would you like to pray?” Dismas asked. “I know that you have already recited the evening prayers, but perhaps you would like to pray something different knowing that you will never again have the opportunity.”

Rahman looked at Dismas hard.

“I do this only as a courtesy for you. It is not something I am able to enjoy for myself since I cannot enter a church without approaching a crucifix and risking my life and mission.”

Rahman nodded.

“Would you bring me my prayer mat? It is in my bedroom.”

Dismas found it beside the bed and brought it back. When Rahman struggled against his bounds to assume a reverent position, Dismas helped him into it, careful to avoid stepping on the mat. When Rahman finished, Dismas helped him off of the mat.

“What did you pray for?” Dismas asked after he returned the prayer mat to the bedroom where it would not be stained by Rahman’s blood.

“I prayed that my soul be prepared for the next life and that my sister-in-law and her children be provided for.”

“Did you pray for forgiveness?”

Rahman nodded.

“Did you ask forgiveness for the Zealot lives you took in the raid last week?”

“Yes, and for other things as well.”

“Did you, as is rumored, plant the weapons to justify killing Zealots meeting peacefully to discuss nonviolent protests against the Christian curfew?”

“No.”

“I believe you. Maybe five years ago, I would have believed the rumors. I would have sworn to avenge the death of every Christian brother with ten Muslim heads and every Christian sister with twenty Muslim heads. I would have been the first to volunteer to carry explosives into the heart of the security offices and detonated them myself, but I do not feel that way anymore. This is only my mission.”

“I did not plant weapons then, but I have. I asked forgiveness for those times. It was my mission, as well. I had no choice.”

The two waited in silence. Dismas was in no hurry.

“How do you think you will die?” Rahman finally asked. It was the first time anyone had ever asked Dismas that.

“I have never imagined it.”

“Perhaps the Zealots will succeed. The Christian zones will be eliminated, the churches will be returned to you and the laws against public Christian displays will be repealed. It will be impossible to avoid a crucifix if you step outside, and one will fall upon your head.”

Dismas smiled at the image.

“How do you think that will happen?”

“Perhaps my government and people will grow weary of this constant war and give in to your demands, or moderates will come to power, and our people can live as equals.”

“Perhaps your death will hasten that future.”

“Then it would be worth it.”

“If that day does come and my mission is finally completed, I only wish that I will be able to visit confession again and be told that I did right and all is forgiven. I want to know, like the Good Thief, that I will enter Paradise.”

They were both quiet, not entirely unlike two old friends who understood the thoughts of the other despite the silence.

“Is there anything else?” Dismas asked.

“No.”

Dismas walked behind Rahman. He put one hand on top of the man's head to pull it back and expose his throat. Rahman did not resist.

“Do you forgive me for what I am about to do?” Dismas whispered in Rahman’s ear.

“No.”

Dismas nodded and slid the knife across Rahman’s throat in an easy, familiar move.

The man died without any sound but for the blood pouring from his neck.

Shelter nights

2011-10-24T03:02:00.000-05:00

I have a job. I am a counselor on the night shift at the Downtown Emergency Services Center's main shelter. The title is more impressive than the work. My responsibilities and duties are not so different from what I did at the House of Charity in Spokane where my title was Front Desk Worker as I provide basic services like handing out towels and toothbrushes. The significant difference is that maybe ten clients are awake at any one time at night. It makes for a lot of dead time once the preparations for breakfast are complete. But that's alright. I'll never take an hour of two clients coming off their highs, another two squaring off over whether one meant to bump the other's chair or not and yet another faking a seizure over an hour where a single client asks once for a cup of water and the rest mind their own business.

One regret I have about my time with the House of Charity is that I never made the effort to write about it until I had left it. I think this was due, in part, to an exaggerated concern of protecting client confidentiality and privacy and also to so many other things occupying my attention in my final two years of university. Now, however, I would like to take the time to reflect on my work with the homeless. I certainly have time as I spend my days off sitting alone in my living room while everyone I know is sleeping and all the places I would like to visit are closed, so you can look forward to this in the future.

For now, allow me to share my favorite things from this past month: one client said I looked like Asher Roth, another compared me to a young Clint Eastwood, I met again a client I had worked with in Spokane and who now had a part-time job and was looking healthier, and a client asked whether I was "undercover staff" because I was not wearing my ID badge.

Considering Graham Greene's "The Heart of the Matter"

2011-10-21T22:37:00.000-05:00

I have no interest in novels that hinge on acts and practices of infidelity. That, along with the excessive praise, pretty well guarantees that I will never read Franzen's Freedom. The Heart of the Matter hinges on a practice of infidelity, but it's written by Graham Greene, and I would read 560-page novel about the men of the IRS if Greene wrote it.

What turns me off from stories of infidelity is how small they are. One or both partners are tired of the other. They are no longer the person they married. They are not living the life they had wanted. They need to make a drastic change. They have sex with someone else. They may or may not repent and return to their partner, but it doesn't really matter. It's petty and disgusting.

Through Greene, though, with Scobie and Louise and Wilson and Helen, though, there are stakes. There is the sense of a whim at the beginning of the affair, but it has consequences that matter to Scobie. It is nothing less than the fate of his immortal soul at stake as well as the emotional lives of the two women he loves. I appreciate that about Heart. Things matter in it. Scobie cares whether he takes the Body in a state of grace and how he upholds all his responsibilities and the duties of his job. If there was any irony on the part of the hero, I do not remember it. He has honor. It was refreshing.

To be sure, Scobie has a God complex. He has the arrogance to believe that his decision alone will determine the ultimate and unending happiness or pain of two women, but he is rescued by his absolute earnestness. There is nothing false or prevaricating about him. It's a razor edge that Greene follows to write Scobie. It would take only a suggestion of a complaint on Scobie's part that he deserved the promotion to commissioner or that he didn't deserve the travails thrust upon him to turn him into the sort of man that whines he is the nice guy that always finishes last, but Scobie maintains his dignity throughout in a place that is too often petty and evil. I, too, have a hard time holding much against a man who wonders whether, "If one knew ... the facts, would one have to feel pity even for the planets? If one reached what they called the heart of the matter?" and actually lives according to it, able to forgive even the man who openly and without dignity pursues Scobie's wife.

And the writing is just brilliant. The chapter where Scobie and Yusef wait for the arrival Ali is breathless.

Other runners

2011-10-19T20:05:00.000-05:00

I admit it. I am a running snob. My own running schedule has been light and irregular for near two years now and so I still have the same running shoes I bought after graduating from Gonzaga, but I absolutely judge other runners when I pass them and they pass me. I'm disappointed in runners who wear long-sleeves when the temperature might be in the low 60's. I think less of those who hold their arms stiff and close to their bodies. I have to hold back a laugh when someone wears a belt with two water bottles stuffed in it when it's obvious they aren't running more than three miles.

Beside the runners who clearly know what they're doing, the only runners I really respect are the ones who have no idea what they're doing. There was a man I passed near every day for one summer in Spokane. He looked like a snowman with a ball of a head on top of a bigger ball of a body, his elbows had a wider range of motion than his hands and he wore a sweatshirt that had to have absorbed every drop of sweat he dropped during his run, but I respect him more than most all of the runners I see on the Burke-Gilman Trail. He wasn't waiting to be properly equipped with all of the latest gadgets suggested by Runner's World or with the latest, most high-tech fabrics and shoes from REI and The North Face. He, and the people who run in cargo shorts and their basketball shoes, are getting out there and running and not caring whether they look like runners. They are just doing it. I respect that.

Considering J.M. Coetzee's "Waiting for the Barbarians"

2011-09-13T16:40:00.000-05:00

Waiting for the Barbarians is an intensely frustrating novel. I had enjoyed Coetzee's Disgrace a great deal last year and was eager to try Barbarians which was mentioned on the dust jacket of Disgrace. What I found was a novel with frequently brilliant writing and evocations of character but crippled by its thematic foundation. You can use Kobe beef and bread crumbs from an artisan bakery and only the freshest onions and celery, but they can only take meatloaf so far.

Coetzee's descriptions of his narrator's torture ("But my torturers were not interested in degrees of pain. They were interested only in demonstrating to me what it meant to live in a body, as a body, a body which can entertain notions of justice only as long as it is whole and well, which very soon forgets them when its head is gripped and a pipe is pushed down its gullet and pints of salt water are poured into it till it coughs and retches and flails and voids itself.") and the narrator's confusion at his own desires and motives ("I know that they commit an error in treating me so summarily. For I am no orator. What would I have said if they had let me go on? That is it is worse to beat a man's feet to pulp than to kill him in combat? ... The words they stopped me from uttering may have been very paltry indeed, hardly words to rouse the rabble.") are the finest ingredients. This is excellent writing. It is honest, it is clear and it all goes to waste in the service of eviscerating imperialism, the distance between colonists and colonized, the rush to violence, the senseless of it all. He even goes so far as to say straight up that maybe the colonists are the real barbarians of the title.

He may as well have written in support of women's suffrage or against chattel slavery. Barbarians was published in 1980. Did anyone take imperialism seriously anymore then? After Britain gave Rhodesia its independence that year, its only remaining colony in Africa was South West Africa which became Namibia in 1989. George Orwell had published "Shooting an Elephant" in 1936. Did Coetzee seriously think that he needed to convince people that imperialism was bad, that things needed to change?

It only becomes doubly frustrating because I know Coetzee can do so much better. In Disgrace a professor leaves the city in the wake of a coercive affair with a student to live with his daughter. Their home is invaded, the professor beaten and the daughter raped. It would be easy enough to provide simple morals for these events, like he does in Barbarians, but Coetzee resists and explores the complexities and compromises that lead to and from these. It's a far cry from Colonel Joll and Mandel, the leading villains of Barbarians.

All of which makes me curious. Why the celebration of this novel in particular within Coetzee's oeuvre? Why was Barbarians picked by Penguin Books as part of its Great Books of the 20th Century and again for its six-book Penguin Ink series? I admit that I have only read this and Disgrace from among Coetzee's twelve novels and three memoirs, but were none of the others more worthy?

My worry is that Barbarians's popularity has something to do with its simple disparaging treatment of something that very few today would celebrate. People can read Coetzee and recognize that he has more than a way with words, but they don't want the ambiguities of Disgrace. They want something easy that they can understand and be applauded for agreeing with. They want To Kill A Mockingbird. Which isn't so bad. You could do a lot worse than Barbarians. It's just that it's wasted opportunity, and there's better by the same author.

A first novel: Research

2011-08-30T15:21:00.000-05:00

A bit more than a month ago I wrote about dividing the novel into chapters in the hope of making the process of revising easier on me, giving me discrete parts to work on and improve rather than nebulous bits with no definite end that only serve to burn me out before I'm through the first third of the work. I still have faith that this approach will work. Unfortunately, I have no proof of this. I have only spent one day since then working on the novel. This is due, in part, to returning to the United States, spending time with family, traveling between three states and moving into a new apartment and new city.

It is also due to an extended period of writer's block. I have struggled to convince myself that this novel is any good, that it's worth another minute of my time and effort. Updike found references to any number of writers who won or deserved to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in Snow. What allusions does my novel contain? What references to the canon does it hold? Does it even point to anything beside itself?

To remedy this, I have decided to do some research to gain a better understanding of the foundations upon which this novel is set before I again begin to write. On the one hand, this means reading again Marshall McLuhan's The Gutenberg Galaxy and the collected essays of Johann Baptist Metz and reading for the first time André Bazin's "The Ontology of the Photographic Image." On the other hand, there are a number of films I need to watch to better enter the mind of the narrator, and they are not directed by the likes of Kurosawa and Godard. You don't find those films on the streets of Nairobi. You find DVD collections starring Jean-Claude van Damme, Steven Seagal and Dolph Lundgren. Those are my narrator's formative films, and those are what I need to watch. I'll let you guess to which half of this research I'm more looking forward.

Considering Thomas Mann's "Buddenbrooks"

2011-08-13T01:17:00.000-05:00

No one writes like Thomas Mann anymore. The Pulitzer Prize this year went to a series of interconnected short stories. Modern mobile technology is waiting for the app that finally brings nano-fiction to the masses. Even those who are still writing elephantine tomes prefer the micro. Adam Levin's The Instructions spent one thousand pages on four days. I know no contemporary writer who still crafts decade-spanning literary epics.

On the one hand, I appreciate this. If this was the trend still, I would consider myself fortunate to finish a novel every month. On the other hand, I am glad that we have Mann. Buddenbrooks is thick and slow. Mann cannot help but to record everything that happens in the lives of the titular family. Nothing is too minor, too inconsequential in the family's descent from the heights of society to mention. Every character who appears for the briefest moment, the man who reads a poem at a family dinner, the teacher who says nothing while watching the high school students between classes, receives two pages worth of physical description and motivation.

The book is thick, the book is slow and the book is beautiful. Part of it is Buddenbrooks' sheer density. In short stories there is no time or space to lose yourself in the narrative. The techniques are clear. The mass of words in Buddenbrooks obscures the craft. The family's fate is foreshadowed in the first chapters, but it's lost amid all the rest. The final chapters include a page of reference to the trials of Job, and I almost lost the significance in the comparison to the Buddenbrooks' own fortunes. All the words make it seem natural and unforced.

The writing itself is great. Better still is Mann's treatment of his characters. The central triumvirate of Thomas, Christian and Antonie Buddenbrooks are no less ridiculous than any other character in the novel. They have their vanities and other flaws, same as Therese Weichbrodt or Alois Permaneder, but they have their pride, their honor, too. They have their sympathy. It's a remarkable treatment and portrait of these characters.

Just, wow, what a novel.

A first novel: Chapters

2011-07-25T13:05:00.002-05:00

I have divided my novel into chapters. Its one-hundred and sixty-seven pages are now portioned between eighty-two chapters. They have no clever names, just numbers. The shortest are a few small paragraphs. The longest span three or four pages.

I do not know yet if I will keep them. It was not my intention at the beginning to divide it so. I wanted the novel to be a seamless whole and not in discrete, defined chunks.

I did it because I was struggling in my revisions. My thought before was to keep going through the whole again and again, adding scenes and developing the characters at first and later eliminating them down to only what is necessary. That did not work out so well. I would push through as many words as I could in a morning and write and revise until I burned myself out for the day. The trouble was that I was still a little burned out the next day, and it only accumulated. The chapters allow me to pace myself and focus my writing. Now I work every day only on a defined section of the novel, never more than a single scene, and focus just on making it the best it can be now. I’m feeling good about this.

With eighty-two chapters and assuming I hold to my goal of working on a single chapter every day, my goal of having a draft ready for the thoughts and reactions of friends by the beginning of November remains intact.

Considering Orhan Pamuk’s “Snow”

2011-07-20T08:35:00.001-05:00

We read T.S. Eliot’s “The Wasteland” in my second literature class at Gonzaga. More than a few of my classmates admitted that they had only the barest understanding of what was happening in the poem, but they liked it nonetheless. Maybe it was the rhythm of “Please, hurry up, please,” or the imagery of waves crashing against the shore that caught their attention. I don’t know. I thought it was a garbage position to take. How can you claim to enjoy something but fail to understand it, especially something as rigorous as that poem? Since reading Orhan Pamuk’s Snow, though, I think I can understand them.

First, the Snow I read was not entirely what Pamuk intended. I read a translation from the original Turkish. No matter the skill of Maureen Freely, no doubt a great deal of the wordplay and allusions were lost in the process.

Second, a review in Harper’s called it a “political novel.” I have to agree with that as there are constant references to Turkey’s history of coups and a clear concern with the nation’s current struggle between secularism and popular Islam, but these are topics I am not well prepared to encounter as my knowledge of Turkey and its history begins with the might of the Ottoman Empire’s army and ends with the emergence of Atatürk.

Third, in his review, John Updike draws connections between Snow and the works of Kafka, Joyce, Calvino and six other seminal figures of the Western literary canon. Of those referenced, I had read only Mann and Dostoevsky and not even the referenced works. I wasn’t even well placed to understand its literary significance, but I enjoyed Snow nonetheless.

No, I loved it. It’s the best novel I’ve read so far this year. It was just so great in everything. The evocation of the city of Kars and its teahouses that no longer sold coffee because the unemployed customers couldn’t afford it. The sense of surreality as the city is isolated for days by a freak snowstorm and Ka meets the city’s powerful. The rich cast of characters concerned with politics and faith and their shadows. The plays and poems within the novel and the power of art and theater. The structure of the gradual reveal of the narrator and his own passions and hopes. It’s amazing. I would be happy if I once wrote something that came within a stone’s throw of Snow’s success at every level.

I find this incredibly hopeful that I can enjoy something without understanding it in its entirety. It invites later returns and promises new responses then and opens up so many other works.

A first novel: Autobiography in fiction

2011-07-19T14:07:00.003-05:00

There is a basic rule of writing that goes “Write what you know.” It makes sense. You write best about the things you understand best, the characters and settings you have personally experienced. In that way you best set yourself up to place the telling details and reveal the truth. It may not have the same glamour as the lives and romances of landed English men and women two centuries past, but if you know hunting and plumbing and write about them, your stories will have the honesty of Austen. If you don’t know a thing about the Russian aristocracy in the nineteenth century, you don’t write like Tolstoy. Of course, if this is taken too strictly, there is no opportunity for fantasy, but a story can always be grounded by the conflicts the writer personally understands, be it sibling rivalry or racial prejudice or whatever.

I took this rule too far in my early writing. More than a few of the stories I wrote while attending Gonzaga were mildly fictionalized events and scenes taken from my own life. Some times I barely bothered to change the names. I have gotten away from that somewhat though it is still not hard to find the inspirations for the small Minnesotan town or the western Kenyan bush where so many of my stories are set.

I used to think it was vanity to think my own life was so interesting and rich and full of insight into the human condition that other people would want to read about it. I don’t think that anymore. I write for myself first. That way I can at least be assured of pleasing one reader. And when I write for myself I am trying to understand my life. I remember and create again those moments I thought were revealing and important and try to understand what they might have meant or why I did or did not do something. It’s an act of understanding, too, as I consider especially those whom did not appreciate or like and try to understand their own place and motives.

I don’t know. It’s the beginning of an artistic statement, I guess.

Rejected story

2011-07-15T08:36:00.000-05:00

I received yesterday another rejection for “Perfection.” It was the eleventh I’ve received for that story, and I can pretty safely assume that another five journals rejected it but didn’t bother to send any notification whatsoever as it’s been so long.

What was different was that this was the first rejection I have received that was not a form letter. It was the first to be accompanied by the editor’s personal comments. His complaint was that there was too much exposition. He wanted to scratch “SUMMARY” in red pen across entire pages and leave only half of the whole behind, only the real meat of the story.

I can understand that. I might revise it, especially since a friend made the same point about one of the stories I submitted to Machine of Death and that story was definitely helped by the cuts. I probably won’t. I like it the way it is. “Perfection” is something like a confession or memoir. There is supposed to be meandering.

What interests me is that the editor said the writing was engaging. Isn’t that a good thing?

Let me make the point now that this isn’t an argument that the editor should have accepted “Perfection” and hailed it as the greatest thing he has ever read. He didn’t like it. That’s fine. My feelings aren’t hurt. I’ll try again with another journal. I appreciate that he took the effort to write personal comments in response to it. That’s really decent.

What interests me is the premise of liking the writing but wanting to cut it. He called it “exposition.” “Exposition” is clear and direct explanation. It’s the information that puts what follows into context and allows it to make sense. I learned early in my creative writing classes that exposition was bad and should be avoided, and the editor appears to agree with that. It may be necessary, but it requires finesse and should not call attention to itself. For the most part, I tend to agree. After reading friends’ stories, I’ve told them to cut paragraphs and pages worth of exposition. I’ve quit reading some novels because there were such slabs of exposition at the beginning that I just got too annoyed to continue.

But he said the writing was engaging. I’m not serving the rules of creative writing. I’m serving the reader. What does it matter if there are passages of exposition if the writing is strong and a pleasure to read? What I think is the problem is that he recognized the passages as exposition. Once he saw that, he couldn’t help but see them as an amateur technique and be impatient for the rest of the story to begin. What I wonder is that if the writing were stronger, maybe he would have been too caught up in it to realize it was exposition. Maybe exposition is not a problem until you recognize that what you’re reading is exposition. Maybe writing is just a magic act that is always trying to keep the reader’s attention on the words and characters and story and not on the processes and techniques that make them work lest they lose their sparkle and allure. It’s just a thought.

Considering Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s “A Grain of Wheat” and “Writers in Politics”

2011-07-14T04:43:00.002-05:00

I do believe that it is congenitally impossible for Ngugi wa Thiong’o to not write Literature. The man cannot write something small and light. Wizard of the Crow was about the resistance to a president’s corruption. Petals of Blood handles a town’s transformation from pastoral to industrial. A Grain of Wheat, one of Ngugi’s earliest novels, is, if possible, even more ambitious than those.

It is the dawn of Kenya’s independence in A Grain of Wheat. It has already gained self-rule, and Jomo Kenyatta has returned from his imprisonment. In a few days the people will celebrate uhuru when the British formally withdraw from the nation. A Grain makes every attempt to capture the breadth of the zeitgeist. Everyone with a stake in uhuru is represented. There are veterans of the Mau Mau resistance and the detention camps, and there are collaborators and homeguards. There are white colonial bureaucrats and new black ministers of parliament.

It is, unfortunately, the weakest of Ngugi’s efforts that I have read thus far, too. There are some wonderful scenes that reveal the community’s spirit when the people gathered at the train station on Sundays or of the spontaneous celebrations on midnight of 12 December, but they are the exceptions rather than the rule. Much of it the writing is over explained and clunky. The symbolism of the “Narrow Escape” and “Lucky One” matatus at the end is a bit much.

What interests me, however, is the contrast between this work and the philosophy and impetus of literature Ngugi lays down in his second collection of essays, Writers in Politics. In the collection’s preface he makes the point that all writing is inherently political and reflective of a society’s power structures. It cannot be denied. The writer’s only choice is whether to support the ruling powers or to challenge them. He repeats this position that every writer must be actively and consciously political in every one of the ensuing thirteen essays. Two essays are dedicated to celebrating Mau Mau. He argues in “Return to the Roots” that writers in the post-colonial world should write in their national and tribal languages rather than English to find their true audience.

Ngugi’s latest, Wizard of the Crow, is a perfect example of this theory. It was first published in Gikuyu and actively celebrates those who resist government corruption and oppression. Not so with A Grain. Leading veterans of Mau Mau are murderers and rapists. One who confessed the oaths and collaborated with the colonists during the Emergency did enjoy the ensuing power but did it first out of love for a woman. The man who led a successful hunger strike in detention camp also betrayed a Mau Mau leader. Even the departing colonial officials are treated with some sympathy. It’s hardly what you would expect from a writer who is fighting the power and celebrating the resistance.

It’s very possible that Ngugi’s views simply changed over time. A Grain was published in 1966. Ngugi only wrote the first essay of Writers in Politics in 1973. A lot can happen over seven years, but I like to believe that superior literature is too subtle for this. It can only be so strident and definite with ideas and abstractions. When it comes to characters and their motives, the edges are blurred and things become less certain, like life, and people do their best to muddle through and do what’s right.

Two months in Malawi: Bicycle taxis

2011-07-13T04:43:00.002-05:00

Bicycle taxis are called boda boda in Kenya. We never took them in Nakuru. They weren’t allowed within two blocks of the city center, where we spent most of our time, and when we could have used them to ride to a rugby or football match, we didn’t out of pride. They would push their bicycles in front of us and cut us off to convince us to ride with them, and that was just annoying.

We missed out. We took bicycle taxis on our first night in Mangochi. It was already night, we were carrying luggage and we had no idea where to find the hospital where we would be staying. Someone called two bicycle taxis for us, and it was, to take a cliché, magical. The bicycles were nearly silent. It was a new moon and there were no street lamps, so the darkness was complete. It felt like we were floating.

Bicycle taxis are everywhere in Mangochi, filling people’s transportation needs in the absence of intra-city mini-buses and tuk-tuks. Some replaced their carrying racks with padded leather seats and added foot pegs and handlebars for passengers. Others reinforced the racks to carry everything from bundles of sugar cane to cages full of chicken to fifty kilo sacks of maize flour to bound goats to cases of soda and beer bottles. These riders are tough. Carrying passengers, more than a few of them can still easily pass me when I ride alone for fun. As a passenger, my driver has fought up hills that would have given me pause riding alone. The riders take pride in their bikes and adorn them with decorations. They add hand-painted license plates and mud flaps and rows of extra reflectors.

If I were a rich man and if I settled in Mangochi and Malawi, I would build a bicycle racing complex. I already picked out a site, a few kilometers from the city center on the outskirts. I would build three tracks. There would be a two-kilometer track for sprints. There would be a second two-kilometer track, but it would have terrain. It would cross the dry irrigation canals and hit jumps. The last would be a ten-kilometer loop for endurance rides. There would be a variety of race formats. There would be singles races, of course, and doubles, too, where the passenger and driver would have to switch positions halfway through. There would also be singles races where they rode loaded down with freight. The winners could receive pennants that declared their speed and victories to potential customers.

There is a necessity for bicycles in Mangochi where there is not enough money to afford motor vehicles and fuel. It would be beautiful if it turned into a passion and entertainment.

Two months in Malawi: Business names

2011-07-08T08:34:00.002-05:00

Mangochi offers little for those who shop for amusement and distraction. Every shop and every stall carries the same products from the same suppliers. If you find one printed Tanzanian shawl you like at one stall, you are going to find it again at the next five shawl stalls. Everyone who sells plates and bowls carries the same Chinese ceramics. No matter how many bicycle shops you visit, your choice is still only between the Hunter and the Humber. There isn’t even much fun to be had in bargaining and haggling as the shopkeepers generally give you their best price first. Rather, the real fun to be had in shopping in Mangochi is in the shop and stall names.

Of the first order are the literal and straightforward. You can buy new clothing every Friday from the Fair Price Clothing Shop and be shaved at The Nice Cut Barbershop. There is the Snack Attack Restaurant and Resthouse and Sonny’s Stitch 4 Life Studio.

Then there are the Christian and Muslim faithful who operate Miracle Printers and Blessings Electronics. If these are too subtle declarations of faith, there are also Jesus Is My Boss Mini-Shop and God is Good Cosmetics and Salon.

I would have expected Black Boy Fashion Wear and Niggaz Music Centre to deny me entrance, but they accepted my patronage as well as any other shop.

Boyz 2 Barber Shop and Quiet Boyz Sound Company are just great names, but the greatest class of names overall are for those stores which admit in their names that their customers shouldn’t expect very much. Maybe Imagination Another wants you to imagine that they’re a different wholesaler. If you want to upgrade from the OK Restaurant and Resthouse, you can go to the OK Executive Lodge. That’s not including Time Tells Variety Shop, My Mistake Hyper, Slow But Sure Food Shop, Mixed Bag Shopping, Mzasi For Show Variety Shop and the Cheap-Cheap Shop.

All of this humility is only countered by the very overqualified Dr. Ishu Cellphone Repair.

Considering Leo Tolstoy’s “War and Peace”

2011-07-07T08:04:00.000-05:00

I finished it. I have now read the unabridged War and Peace from beginning to end.

I never had any particular interest in reading it. Though I enjoyed “The Death of Ivan Ilych” and some others of Tolstoy’s short stories, I was not that impressed with Anna Karenina. Really, it was a matter of efficiency more than taste that drove me to read the Russian novel. This return to Africa includes a week in Kenya and another eight in Malawi and over fifty hours of sitting in airports and flying. I needed something that would last me, and hauling one elephantine tome made more sense than five books of a reasonable size.

The Signet Classic edition’s 1455 pages of small type and no line spacing took me roughly four weeks to complete. Assuming I read every day, which I totally didn’t, it’s an average of just over fifty pages a day. For the expressed purpose of taking a while to read, it succeeded. As a demonstration of my reading speed and actual interest in reading it, that’s not so great, but who can blame me? Something like a third of the novel is Tolstoy taking a break to explain his theory of history and its ultimate inscrutability. Napoleon was a twit because he thought he made the decisions and was important. Kutuzov was a genius because he realized he was merely an expression of the people’s will. We get it. We got it the first time you brought it up. Get on with it. That said, I would still rather read Tolstoy’s theory of history than another scene of Levin on his estates marveling at the peasant spirit and hunting. Shut up, Levin.

But, really, get on with it because the parts that aren’t that, the stories of the Rostov and Bolkonsky families and Pierre, are pretty great, a lot better than most everything else I’ve read this year. They’re good characters. They’re conflicted. They’re driven by their impulses and responsibilities. They’re making the effort to be good people. I liked reading about their lives. One hundred fifty years later they were still interesting and compelling. No doubt I missed a great deal of the nuance and subtleties in the interactions of the early 19th century Russian aristocracy, especially when the most shameful villain only sought to marry a girl without her father’s permission, but there were still some great moments. I felt more than a little sympathy and understanding with Pierre as he tried to liberate and improve the lives of his serfs but his every move is undermined by rampant corruption without his awareness.

For such a monument in the Western canon it seems like backhanded praise to just say of War and Peace, “I liked it,” but it’s true. It didn’t prompt any revelations, but I enjoyed most of the four weeks I spent in Tolstoy’s world with Prince Andrei and Princess Marya and Pierre. That’s something.

Two months in Malawi: Give me my money

2011-06-29T12:26:00.000-05:00

I like Malawians. If a secondary school student starts a conversation on the street, it doesn’t end with him asking for assistance in paying for school fees or in obtaining a visa out of their country. They just want to ask some questions about the United States. The stall owners don’t quote me prices three times what their countrymen pay when I ask. They give me the straight price and save us both a few minutes worth of haggling. The third time the chain slipped off my Humber, a Malawian ran up to show me how to use a stick to work it out of where it gets stuck on some screws. The thirteenth time the chain slipped off my Humber, a passing Malawian spent ten minutes tightening bolts to make sure it would stop happening and didn’t ask for payment in return. It’s a nice change from Kenya where we constantly wondered what was in it for them whenever a local showed us some kindness.

There is one respect, however, in which the typical Malawian is more irritating than the typical Kenyan. It comes, unsurprisingly, from the children. Where the Kenyan children were content to scream “Mzungu” and maybe run up and touch us when we passed, the Malawian children take it a step further into the irritating. Rather than ask “How are you?” they put their hands out and shout, “Give me my money.” “Give me money” and “Give me bicycle” are also acceptable and common variations.

I want to know who told them how to say that. I want to know who told them it’s even remotely right to say it. The adults, even the teenagers, don’t say anything like that. Is it a common line in their English language education? Have they all seen Jerry Maguire and understood Cuba Gooding. Jr., as its hero? It’s not a begging culture that I’ve found here. Where did they learn to ask that? And why do they stop saying it around the time they turn eight? I just want to know.

A first novel: Beginning revisions

2011-06-28T08:50:00.000-05:00

It came a week later than I had planned, but I have returned to my novel and begun revisions. With a draft complete from beginning to end and five weeks of distance and perspective, I have a better understanding of it. A title still eludes me, but I know the characters better and what they want and why and what they will do for it. I know what the novel is about. I know where I want to take it and where not.

I would not call these major changes. They are more refinements of ideas that were already in place from the onset and toyed with throughout the draft than a wholesale rejection of my first thoughts. I do not think that they will require massive rewrites, but it troubles me that the changes I have made so far are so minor. Except for bringing back the original paragraph which sets the narrator’s voice as one telling the story some decades later rather than in the moment, I have done little more than shift around a few words and delete some sentences.

I know this first draft is not good. I wrote more than a few sections in a rush to finish or to fill space or late at night when I only wanted to sleep. I know it needs work, but the work it needs is more significant than I am currently doing. The trouble is gaining the right perspective. Right now I am revising on too fine of a level, making things work where they are now instead of putting them where they would work better. To make an analogy with carpentry, I have gathered all of the lumber I need and have drawn up the plans but am sanding the wood when I should be joining the pieces together and reinforcing them.

I do not know yet how I can do that. For now I think that I will just push through, try to knock things into place better, expand a few sections that need it and delete the parts where the characters do not act true to themselves and the voice is inconsistent. When this draft is done, my plan is to print it and make handwritten notes and changes. When I can flip between pages and sections more easily, maybe I will have a better perspective on where to join and reinforce the sections. We’ll see.

A first novel: A persistent universe

2011-06-27T05:48:00.000-05:00

For some time I have entertained the idea that this first novel of mine will also be the first in a very loose trilogy. I’m not thinking the continuing adventures of Kukat Lochilangor or anything so unified as Lord of the Rings but a trilogy of theme and place, an exploration of Kenya and the United States. This first is about a Kenyan in Kenya. The second will be about an American in Kenya, and the third about a Kenyan in America. A handful of supporting characters will recur between stories. Main characters may reappear only well after their own stories are told and in much more limited roles, but their presence will be felt. The new characters will know of those that preceded them and be inspired by them. The action of the following novels will only be possible through the efforts of the characters before them.

I like this idea as it allows me to use a first-person or third-person limited perspective but still see complex, conflicted characters and places through a multitude of eyes, but lately I have been considering expanding this idea even further. What if all of my stories took place within the same universe? The origin was in writing my second submission to the second volume of Machine of Death. I was trying to think of a name for one of the characters, another Kenyan, and I thought why not make him the son of two minor characters in my novel now? That’s all. There’s no more allusion to my novel because I cannot be too confident in any more of the details, but I like the idea that my characters had some existence outside of my writing, that their lives continued and mattered after I stopped writing about them.

If I follow through with this idea, even that may be an exceptionally strong relationship between two of my stories. Most of them will have nothing whatsoever to do with any other story, but I like the possibilities this opens up. Events after another story’s end can be mentioned. Hints of characters’ fates can be referred to. A character in one story can comment on the work of an artist in another and may hate it.

I can see how this can be a limiting idea. If I held tight to it in absolutely everything, it can hold me back from attempting stories too large as their impact on the world would spin its course too far from that of the real world, something I would very much want to avoid, but I don’t have to always hold so tight. I can be loose in it. We’ll see where it goes. It’ll be fun.

Two months in Malawi: Bicycle

2011-06-26T05:45:00.002-05:00

We live with cheat codes in the United States. Maybe not invulnerability and auto win but unlimited ammunition and double-speed build times for sure. In the United States I have a Gary Fischer. It has twenty-one speeds. It has front shocks. It has a solid frame. I can adjust the seat height to better fit me and allow full extension on the down pedal. It has knobby rubber tires, and a seat that is comfortable to sit on.

In Malawi I have a Humber. It has a single gear. It has no shocks. The brakes only barely work. The frame is held together by a few nuts in critical positions and is much too small for me. Even with the seat at its full height, my legs are never fully extended. My knee never makes an angle larger than one-hundred and ten degrees. The tires are smooth plastic, and I can’t sustain too hard of a turn to either side because the tire is so large and my feet so big that I would kick it on every revolution. The seat is made from the same plastic they make action figures from and offers no padding. Since the springs beneath the seat bent horizontally, it’s become more comfortable because my bottom rests on more than three narrow points. The Huffy I rode in the first grade was a better bike than the Humber.

The first time I rode it, pulling away from the shop, it shook so bad that I thought it was going to collapse into a puddle of screw, nuts and pipes. It probably would have if I had gone all the way back to our hostel because it needed immediate maintenance. I watched for an hour while the man tightened every nut, attached the brakes and bent the gears into shape so that the chain wouldn’t slip with every revolution.

In the game of life, the Humber is playing on the highest difficulty and employing the harmful cheat codes like one-hit kills against you. It makes even the lowest levels more exciting. I took my Gary Fischer across Spokane’s trails and down Beacon Hill and felt pretty good about that. With the Humber, driving on asphalt and over speed bumps is an adventure. It’s so off balance that it veers off course if I take a hand from the handlebars to scratch my nose. I have to fight up even minor hills in my single gear.

I will be glad to sell the Humber a few days before we leave Malawi and to be back on my Gary Fischer, but until then, I will enjoy my little daily rides down Malawi’s roads and be reminded of what biking was like a few decades ago and how far we’ve come.

Two months in Malawi: Zomba Plateau

2011-06-21T04:35:00.000-05:00

I have bought Coca-Cola in Malawi. I like it more here than in the States. It is less sweet and has more flavor. I have seen my first knock-off jersey for the U.S. national soccer team in Mangochi. It was a red sash on a black background. I have seen here, too, authentic jerseys for the Chicago Blackhawks, Minnesota Wild and Toronto Maple Leafs because I can’t believe that there’s enough of a market to make knock-offs of them. I have watched the New York Yankees and Chicago Cubs play on ESPN on satellite television. And yet none of these things have reminded me of the States so much as our hike up and along the Zomba Plateau this past weekend.

The hiking trail to the top is wide and well used. Pine trees line it. They are not indigenous and their needles are long and soft, but they are the first pine trees I have seen in Africa. There are small waterfalls. There are raspberries and strawberries in the underbrush. There are duikers that can be mistaken for a small deer at a glance. There is a cool breeze, and the air smells heavily of mint. Halfway up we felt we could have been on any trail in the Rockies.

Not that we would have forgotten that we were in Malawi. Locals passed us carrying pine logs balanced on their heads. We passed a group of vervet monkeys scampering up the trees. Those were unusual in that they were the first we had seen so far outside human habitat. At the pinnacle we saw that we were not within a mountain range, just “an isolated syenite protrusion,” as the guidebook put it, rising up from the Upper Shire River Valley, and we could see few other lonely hills on the plains.

Much of the pleasure in travel for me comes in escaping the familiar and discovering the new. I enjoy seeing new landscapes and tasting new foods, but I was glad to take a familiar hike on the plateau.

Two months in Malawi: Matola

2011-06-17T08:50:00.000-05:00

Every terrible thing I have ever written or said about matatus I take back. I want them again because, somehow, Malawi discovered an even worse form of public transportation.

Malawi and its people are poorer than Kenya. The capital is not available here to buy a fleet of minibuses for the minor cities, and even if one made the investment, there would not be enough people who could pay for a ride to make it a profitable venture.

For the most part, this is not such a problem in Mangochi. The city is small, no more than four kilometers across at its widest. You can walk across it in a half hour. If you are in a rush or need to transport packages within the city, a bicycle taxi will suffice. If you need to travel to Lilongwe or Blantyre or another major city, you can take a bus.

It is, however, a problem when you want to make only a short trip outside the city to one of the villages, too far for a bicycle and too short for a bus. For these instances, Malawi provides the matola. A matola is a Chinese pick-up truck. The bed is shallow and long. Men stand just behind the cab and grab onto it or sit on the sides. Women sit in the center with their knees to their chests. Because the matolas that leave Mangochi go to villages over fifty kilometers distant, many of its riders pack a month’s worth of groceries and fish that they don’t have to make the trip too often.

The matola departs when it’s full. This is a floating number, higher now because of a national fuel shortage that has forced operating costs up, depending on just how large the passengers are, how many of them can be forced to stand and how many supplies are being transported. I rode a matola with Demetra that fit thirty people in the bed, not including children, infants and supplies. The police at the checkpoint didn’t care. They wrote the driver a ticket for having an expired sticker in the window and waved him on.

Of course the matola will stop to pick up every person who waves it down from the side of the road because that is another paying passenger. Unless it is a light load, there are a few seconds of hesitation when the matola stops as the current passengers try to figure out how to arrange themselves to make room for one or two more.

Riding a matola is pure terror. It is open air, and there is nothing to hold you in. You can never keep more than one hand on the cab because of how many other men are pushing to take their own hold on it. The sides are less than an inch wide on top and provide no balance at all. Fortunately the drivers are aware of their passengers’ precarious position and are less insane than those in Kenya, but you are constantly aware that it would not take a very small bounce or very sharp turn to make you lose your balance and tumble out or into someone else and knock them out. When I ride a matola I am constantly making plans on how I would jump out and curl to save myself if it takes the bend too fast or stops too suddenly for another passenger.

And that is why I bought a bicycle.

Two months in Malawi: HIV theater

2011-06-16T09:35:00.000-05:00

We are in Malawi for Demetra. She applied to and was accepted by the University of Washington’s Global Health Opportunities Program, so rather than spending the summer in Helena or on a reservation, she earns her credit by performing a community health assessment of Mangochi and developing and implementing a program that meets one of its particular health challenges. For obvious reasons, I am not doing that. I’m not even allowed in the hospital with Demetra because in the patriarchal culture, they’ll ignore her and treat me as the doctor even when she’s the one with the white coat and stethoscope.

So, while Demetra will tell me at lunch and in the evening about her time in the wards and meetings with the district health officer, my personal interactions with the health system of Malawi have been limited until this Sunday when I arranged for us to attend a university troupe’s performance in a local village that taught the people about HIV.

The stage was the shade cast by an ancient tree. It was theater in the round because the audience crowded around on all sides and had to be parted when characters entered and exited. The smallest children sat in the front while their older brothers and sisters and parents stood behind them to guarantee everyone a view.

I do not know if there was an official title, but it could have been called “An HIV Carol.” On the eve of his wedding to Shakira, Kenny is visited by three spirits. The first, the Ghost of HIV Past, reveals that Kenny’s mother passed HIV on to her son in the womb. The second, the Ghost of HIV Present, did something I did not quite catch because it was all in Chichewa. The third, the Ghost of HIV Future, reveals the future where Kenny does not deviate from his current path, and Shakira dies young. So inspired, Kenny amends his ways to seek treatment and protect his new wife from the infection.

In the second play two men, one with a stutter and the other with a bum leg, suspect each other of having HIV until they learn that such disabilities do not imply HIV and, furthermore, that even if it did, it cannot be transferred by sharing a meal.

It was a success, in some respects. The people seemed to enjoy it well enough. They laughed when Shakira’s body was brought out and when the one with a bum leg stole the other man’s bread when his eyes were closed during the prayer. They didn’t drift away after the plays began. Sixty men and women were tested for HIV and received counseling on their results. Perhaps, too, it aided in making the discussion about HIV public.

In other respects, it was less successful. Between plays there was a quiz on HIV with soap and condoms as prizes for correct answers. Maybe one in five got their answer right. When the plays were done and we returned to the truck, kids no older than ten had their hands stretched out and asked for condoms, leading one to wonder if they really knew what they were for. Follow-up visits to offer further testing and assure that those who tested positive had visited the hospital are rare because the funding is not there.

It’s a young program, only three years old. I hope that it gets the continuing support it needs from the community and donors to maintain it and continue helping people.

A first novel: Thoughts on an artistic statement

2011-06-12T01:44:00.000-05:00

I completed the first draft of my novel on May 9. I wrote a post to celebrate the occasion and make plans for the break from it before returning for revisions. I was going to prepare a couple of submissions to the second volume of Machine of Death. I was going to finish two short stories that were very nearly there. I was going to gain a fuller conception and understandings of the novel’s characters and what it was about.

I was less than successful in attaining these. I wasn’t lazy. I was busy, which is okay. Preparations had to be made for the summer. Things needed to be stored and things needed to be packed for our return to Africa. There were three days of driving. There was a week back in Minnesota visiting family and friends and canoeing and shooting and fishing and all that. There were two days on airplanes and in airports. There was a week in Kenya to visit the kids.

Now that we have mostly settled into life in Malawi and are prepared for the next two months here, I have finally found the time to work on these earlier goals. I haven’t returned to my earlier stories yet, but the Machine of Death stories are going well. The trouble is with my goals relating to my novel. I am starting to wonder if they aren’t too ambitious, if I might not need to start at something more fundamental, specifically an artist’s statement.

I never considered one before. They sounded pretentious. They sounded limiting, setting down what you think is worthwhile and what is not, but then I read some essays by Flannery O’Connor and Ngugi wa Thiong’o. I began to understand artistic statements better. They exist whether we elucidate them or not, even if they are as simple as entertaining through stories of men and women who are irresistibly drawn to one another despite conflicting personalities or of strong men who fight other strong men. They may be limiting, but they also give focus within that range. They do not have to be static either. They can change.

I have no idea what my artistic statement will be. I have snatches of what it might be, but I do not see the whole. I will give it some thought. I will experiment with some and see what I write from it.

A week in Kenya: Kibera

2011-06-10T04:41:00.000-05:00

Walks the streets of Nairobi around the Hilton or past the City Market and men will come up alongside you and ask if you are interested in a safari to Maasai Mara. These shills for tour operators will stop short of cutting you off, but they will push brochures in front of you and not stop talking. If you make the mistake of stopping to talk to them, they will go on to suggest Lake Nakuru and Tsavo, all in the hopes of attracting you to their offices to make payment on a booking. They never mention the slum tours, but those are options, too. For the right price you can walk through Kibera or Mathare or any of Nairobi’s many other slums with a guide and see where the inhabitants eat and drink, work and play, wash and sleep.

I admit to a longstanding curiosity to see Nairobi’s slums. I want to know how they compare to the rural poverty of Pokot. I want to see how they differ from those in Jakarta built on and around the city landfills. I never would have paid for a tour. Neither would I have gone by myself, but an opportunity presented itself last week when our Tanzanian friend wanted to visit a woman who had helped her once when she was in need. Demetra and I quickly asked to accompany her.

The friend’s name was Mary. She was Maasai. She did not wear a shuka ¬or the elaborately beaded fan necklace. She wore a blue and black dress and had her hair done at a salon. She left her tribal lands and its cow dung cooking fires to gain a college degree. She worked for a while at a pharmacy but wanted her own. She moved to Kibera and opened it. Her husband was Caleb. He had just returned that day from Kisumu where he was visiting family. He sold groceries in Kibera.

Their home was the size of a dorm room. Half of it was occupied by their bed. The other half held a new blue couch, one table with a Chinese TV and DVD player atop it, and a second table with their dishes. The walls and ceiling were pieces of corrugated steel and decorated with a variety of bank calendars. There was a single bare light bulb, but they turned it off early because it only added to the room’s stifling heat. There were maybe four other rooms like this in their row, all sharing walls, so that you could hear the telenovella played in the room next door and the baby crying at the very end of the row. There was no door, only a hanging sheet. Neighborhood children poked their heads in and another friend passed through and joined us for lunch. It was like eating with my German relatives. It was impossible to leave an empty plate without being offered another scoop of rice and beans or a banana.

I do not know for what the people who pay for these urban safaris are looking. It may be some sort of karmic balancing to acknowledge Kenya’s squalor after spending thousands on flights and days spent in luxury watching exotic fauna. It may be a personal reminder that their lives could be that much worse and that their complaints about delayed flights and lines at the DMV are ultimately very shallow. It may just be an opportunity to see something different and to have atypical stories and pictures to share with family and friends back home. It probably is some blend of the three and cagey tour guides no doubt emphasize one aspect or another depending on what their customers expect and want.

I found a vibrant community. It was with some pride that Mary told us Kibera was the second-largest slum in Africa after Soweto in South Africa. She and Caleb liked living there. I do not doubt that Mary and Caleb would prefer to have indoor plumbing and consistent electricity and more than a single room, especially once they have children, but they still chose it over their homelands. The slum offered them opportunities to economically advance their lives. There were restaurants and bars. There were pharmacies and markets. There were clothes and toys. There was a coffin maker. There were schools.

Humanity can adapt to an awful lot. That not every person in prison commits suicide and that communities continue to exist in Pokot is proof enough of that, but the slums are far from the worst there can be. I know there is no privacy and I am sure the crime rate is incredible and that there are other psychic troubles that I have not imagined, but materially, someone camping in a tent is probably more deprived than a slum resident.

I do wish that one day there are no slums because every person and family has the same opportunity for the material things and utilities that we take for granted in the developed world and that they do not have to content themselves with what Mary and Caleb enjoy now, but until that day comes, Kibera will do.

A week in Kenya: Nairobi Safari Walk

2011-06-09T02:45:00.000-05:00

The man who collected the entry fees made an effort to convince us that the Nairobi Safari Walk was a superior option to Nairobi National Park. His argument hinged on the fact that animal sightings were guaranteed on the Safari Walk; they were not in the park proper. This was not entirely true. Though a glorified zoo, the animals, except for the Colobus monkeys in their cage, could still escape to their pens or into the ditches running along the fences and be out of sight of those on the platforms and walking paths.

Not that we needed convincing. We were going on the Safari Walk. Its entry fee was twenty dollars American. Entry to Nairobi National was forty dollars American and required a vehicle, doubling the total cost at minimum. The Safari Walk only became a better deal when the man took Demetra’s alien card and did not notice that it had expired near a year ago or that it did not, in fact, permit her the greatly reduced resident rates.

That would make the Nairobi Safari Walk the second zoo we visited in Kenya after Haller Park and Bamburi Forest Trails outside of Mombasa. We walked the path twice. We saw the ostrich and its whip neck. We saw the leopard bat at its tail in surprise. We saw the crocodiles be still. We read the educational signs and learned facts about the hyenas. We waited for the lion and elephant but never saw them. It was cool. It would have been cooler if my camera had not run out battery just before we saw the cheetah playing with the old thatching thrown down by workers replacing a roof or the Colobus monkeys chasing each other through their cage or the duiker slinking through the underbrush, but I’ll take it.

It seems like a cheat. Kenya is the nation of long safaris through Maasai Mara and tours around Lake Nakuru. To visit and be content with the zoos, attractions not unknown in the United States, seems like less than a full embrace of all the nation has to offer.

It is, but allow me to raise some points. Kenya’s parks are not American parks. There are no hiking and biking trails. There are only roads. Outside of Hell’s Gate, entry to all of Kenya’s national parks is only possible through a motorized vehicle. It makes sense. There are a great number of animals that can kill you pretty easily, and a car provides protection, but it means you go at your own pace. Even if you do want to dawdle over a patch of flora or wait from a particular vantage point, someone will always be waiting for you, even if you are paying him to drive.

The zoos you take on foot and at your own pace. You can stop and backtrack and go around again. They are quiet, and the air is cool. You can sit. That is a glorious break from the madness of the cities and their dearth of public spaces and people who are not trying to sell you something.

Neither do the zoos feel terribly much more exploitive than the parks. Around Lake Nakuru our driver cut off a rhinoceros already walking away from another car. Yes, it allowed better pictures, but the man ran the car right up next to it. The animals are safe from that in the zoos, and the zoos aren’t even entirely artificial environments. They’re merely penned sections of their natural habitat.

Yes, someday I would very much like to go through Aberdares and spend a few days in Tsavo and Maasai Mara, but until my finances allow that, I will be happy with Kenya’s zoos.

Personalized license plates

2011-05-15T22:15:00.000-05:00

I have thought, at times, that were I to personalize a license plate, it would read "DARTHJOJO." Never mind that it is far too long. Never mind that I do not own a car. It's awesome. There is a Star Wars reference. There is a touch of whimsy in the association of a Sith lord's honorary and the name "JoJo." It is a name with personal significance as I frequently employ it as a screen name.

Not that I would ever do so. Never mind the aforementioned objections. I have imagined the possibility that these were not obstacles and have still decided that I could not personalize a license plate on my car. The line of thinking proceeds in this manner:

(1) A personalized license plate is more memorable and easier to remember.

(2a) Were my car to be stolen, it would be easier to identify and the odds that it would be returned to me and the thieves captured would be increased.

(2b) Were I to use my car in a bank robbery, it would be easier to identify and the odds that I would be found and captured would be increased.

(3) I find it more likely and/or prefer to believe that it is more likely that I will commit a bank robbery and escape in my own car than that my car will be stolen.

A first novel: End of the first draft

2011-05-10T13:04:00.000-05:00

Single-spaced pages with one-inch margins? One-hundred and forty-four.
Words? One-hundred six-thousand and nine-hundred eighty-two.
Named characters? Forty-five.

Those are the sums of the complete first draft. It took me four full months and a few days more to write all that. A fair amount of some import changed in that time. There were five Lochilangor children then. Now there are four. It remains in the first person, but it is in the moment now and no longer a story retold years later. I thought in January to write only a thousand words every weekday and to spend the weekends revising what I had wrote. When I realized that my goal for this first draft was to write everything and not to write it well, I increased my daily words to two thousand and no longer expected to take breaks.

Are these changes for the better? Except for the increase in writing pace, I don't know. I think so, but I may very well come and change them back later after further consideration.

Now it is time for a break. The next few weeks are going to be busy ones as we move out of Bozeman, visit my family in Minnesota and fly back to Africa to see the kids in Kenya and see something new in Malawi. There will not be so much time to focus on the language of my novel then, but there will be time for thought and reflection. I have experimented with my characters. I have tried different personalities and directions for them. Now it's time to make decisions as to which are the best. I know the sections with which I struggled, and I know the research I need to do to reduce those struggles. I need to find the parts of which I am most proud and develop from them. I need to find the parts of which I am disappointed and change them. I have enjoyed tasting all the opportunities of what this novel could be, and now I need to decide what it will be.

It will still be time for writing. There are two short stories, "As The Spirit Moves You" and "The Happy Housekeeper," to complete. There are new stories to write and submit to the next volume of Machine of Death.

It will be good times, and in a month I will be ready for another round.

A first novel: Push to the end

2011-05-02T22:06:00.000-05:00

I have struggled with writing these past weeks. There are legitimate reasons. I need to complete a grant application this Friday, and there is still so much that needs to be done. I have spent the past three weekends out of Bozeman and away from my computer. In other words, I've been busy. It's an excuse, a lame and popular one. If I was dedicated, I could find an hour or two to write my two-thousand words, or fewer if I really were that busy. It wouldn't be hard.

But, of course, there are complications. The haphazard beginnings to my writing have come back to me. I have a list of events, I know what happens, yes, but the characters are too thin and flat, when they're not contradicting themselves, to support those endings. Motivation comes from my whim. The central thread of the story has been lost between sections. There are common characters between the parts, but the conflicts are entirely new and have little resemblance between them. I know how bad it is now, and it's hard to finish when I can imagine how much of it will change in the coming months. It doesn't seem worth my while.

However, having made these mistakes and trying out others that would have been far worse, I know how to correct them. I know what needs to change in the next draft to make it stronger over all. I know the research I need to do and what would make better foundations for the characters to develop from, but I am not going to make those changes now. Now I just want to finish this first draft. No matter how miserable it may be now, no matter how little of it will survive into the final piece, I just want it all together. I want to try a few more ideas to see if there is any merit whatsoever to them. It will be a whole, and I can understand that. I can work out from that. I can improve that.

Single-spaced pages with one-inch margins? One-hundred and thirty-two.
Words? Ninety-eight thousand and seven.
Named characters? Forty-five.

"Open Eyes, Full Heart"

2011-05-01T21:35:00.002-05:00

Troy kissed with his eyes open. There were times, like when Charlotte said it was creepy and when Keiko refused to kiss him in the light, that he tried to stop. He closed his eyes but missed things. He liked to watch the lines around her mouth tighten and her eyelids relax. They, like the warmth of her lips, made the kiss special. He couldn't help himself.

Then Troy met Maria. She kept her eyes open, too, and they would watch each other's eyes trace the arc of their cheeks and the figure of their faces and enjoy their majestic being.

***

I like the arc of this. Character has a peccadillo. Said peccadillo is off putting. Character finds another who finds another who shares and/or appreciates said peccadillo. They find happiness.

What I do not like is the final line. It reads like something of a hallucinatory epiphany more appropriate to Cynthia Ozick or Flannery O'Connor. Not that I have anything against them, especially O'Connor whom I hold in the highest esteem, but it's not for me. "...their majestic being" is too much and doesn't ring true to me.

"Good Game"

2011-04-23T03:44:00.000-05:00

Jeremy's hand was wrapped tight with athletic tape, and he could only bump the Warriors' hands after the game. Every tap sent slashed pain through his wrist. Patrick tried to goad Josh into another technical foul and squeezed his hand hard enough to make him wince. The gauze pad above my eye had soaked through with blood. The excess oozed down. Coaches Lundgard and Browning hardly brushed one another.

The refs didn't call the flagrant foul on Matt's game-winning shot, but we still said, “Good game.” We would play again. There would be atonement. That would be a good game.

***

This may be over the top, especially with the threat of "atonement," but it rounds nearer to the truth for me than not. How often, especially when you're in high school or whatever, do you really mean "good game" when the final second passes and your team has lost? Do you really mean that the referees called it fair, that everyone played to the best of their abilities, that you deserved to lose, that they deserved to win? Hardly ever, for me at least. There is always that promise when you go through the line that if things had been a little different, if a foul had not have been missed or one mistake not been made, the result would have been different, and it will be that little bit different next time.

A first novel: Advice

2011-04-17T18:45:00.001-05:00

In the many years since I first decided that I wanted to be a writer, I have received a great deal of advice. I attended the Young Authors Conference three times in middle school. In my first summer at MITY I took Jack Kreitzer's Polishing and Publishing class. I took two fiction writing classes in my last years at Gonzaga. From all of those hours of lecture and study there is not a single distinct piece of advice that remains with me. This may be clear in the rather slapdash way I have approached my novel thus far.

The only advice I remember came from a form letter from K.A. Applegate sent in response to what must have been an extensive piece of praise for Animorphs that I wrote when I was 10 or 11. The advice was simple: write every day. It doesn't matter whether it's a novel, a journal entry meant only for yourself or a letter to an author who will never personally read and respond to it. Just write. It's solid advice that I have only managed during limited stretches.

Despite this poor history with advice, I felt the compulsion this past month to read some. Perhaps it's that I'm nearing the completion of a first draft. I want to be reassured that I have been on the right path and that I won't have to throw more than a hundred pages of writing and a few hundred hours worth of work out.

Whatever the case, I think one can advise much worse than the following.

Before writing can begin, there needs to be an idea and the conviction that the idea is good and worthwhile. Austin Kleon's "How To Steal Like An Artist (And 9 Other Things Nobody Told Me)" (suggested by Emmett) does this. Read, watch, listen. Find the best of everything. Learn from and adapt it. Don't wait to create. And, perhaps the best of his advice, write what you like.

The first third may be a memoir, and the final third as well, but the middle portion of Stephen King's On Writing has some solid advice on the mechanics of writing. Write two thousand words every single day. Never lose track of what the story is about. Follow the grammar and technique rules made by Strunk and White. Avoid using too many adverbs. Be prepared for a lot of rejection.

Then, for the necessary dose of humility, there is Jessa Crispin's "A Sea of Words." Being a graduate of an MFA program guarantees nothing. Modern communication technologies mean that anyone can be a published writer and that rising above the tumult requires so much more than skill alone.

Crispin's article was inspired by the editor's request that she base her next piece on writer's manuals, "the poor-man's MFA" as she calls them. With a will to write, honest friends willing to read your drafts and these three works, you can probably do better than most of those guides and still save yourself a few thousand dollars on tuition.

Single-spaced pages with one-inch margins? One-hundred and twelve.
Words? Eighty-four thousand and eleven.
Named characters? Forty-five.

"Poker Night"

2011-04-16T17:32:00.000-05:00

Mike stared at Jerry across the table. Jerry wore a Yankees cap and reflective sunglasses.

“I call,” Mike said. “All in.” He flipped his cards. “Pair of queens, pair of aces.”

Jerry gave a warrior's whoop.

“Wraparound straight! I win!”

“What the hell's a 'wraparound straight?'”

“Ace is high and low, so it's jack, queen, king, ace, two.”

“That's not real,” Mike growled.

“Okay, but a small straight still beats two pair, right?”

“That's Yahtzee, moron.”

“Oh. Good thing you didn't call me on those other hands then, huh?”

***

Also based on a true story. Except that I always knew a wraparound straight wasn't real. Was, however, disappointed that a small straight wasn't real.

"Slug Bug"

2011-04-09T13:54:00.001-05:00

“Slug bug!”

“Ow. What was that?”

“I saw a Beetle. I get to hit you.”

“That's stupid.”

“That's the rule.”

“Whatever.”

“Slug bug!”

“Where?”

“It passed us.”

“I'm sure.”

“Cruiser bruiser!”

“Ow. What's that?”

“Same thing but with a PT Cruiser.”

“You're a child.”

“Hummer bummer!”

“That really hurt.”

“Yeah?”

“Psych! Cruiser bruiser!”

“Nope. That's a Chevy HHR. They look the same.”

“Jerk.”

“Cop chop!”

“Quit.”

“Subaru boogaloo!”

“I'm going to drive us off the road. Seriously.”

***

Based on real life.

"First Kiss"

2011-04-02T14:13:00.000-05:00

Alex had his first kiss last night. He and Sarah were waiting for her bus after dinner at Thai on First and huddled close against the evening chill. He considered asking her permission but decided to just sweep in.

There were no rising strings. In fact, Alex’s mouth was too dry to feel anything but the curry on her breath.

“I'm sorry. Was that too fast?”

“No, no. It was nice.” Sarah smiled.

Needless to say, Alex thought the world would be somehow different, brighter, the morning after, yet his Cheerios crunched just the same.

***

Given the chance to do it again, I would have read this piece first. It's the best of the three I wrote for the tournament. It's honest in its treatment of an early act of physical intimacy in contrast to the wonder and fireworks of a Hollywood first kiss. There are some nice details in the taste of Sarah's breath. I'm proud of this.

"The Young Writer"

2011-03-28T11:11:00.001-05:00

The English teacher told him there was no spark in his writing. She said it lacked passion.

The young writer remained composed. He thanked her for her honesty before leaving. Walking to the parking lot, his manner betrayed nothing.

Once inside his electric blue Dodge Neon, however, the young writer sounded his barbaric yawp.

“Why must I be male and middle class? Why was I not born gay? Why was my mother not black and my father not Jewish? Where is my addiction, my depression? Where is my story?”

***

I write humor very rarely. If I cannot see the person in front of me laughing, I lose faith in my jokes and references and puns. This, however, was supposed to be funny, and it was supposed to give me an audience that would laugh or not, that would allow me to know whether it was funny or not, but then I had to go and lose in the first round, and I never found out.

What do you think? Does it make you giggle? Chortle? Snort in derision? Yearn for the simple pleasures of Marmaduke and Family Circus?

A first novel: Break

2011-03-20T18:31:00.000-05:00

I took a break in writing this week. Not that I particularly deserved or needed one. I struggled to put down just over two hundred words and gave up, called it a week. Part of this was due to the appearance of Spring Break. Demetra and I spent the week at her parents', and that is not conducive to writing. There are new relatives to visit everyday and errands to run. There is also a TV with a diagonal that pushes four feet. That is a lot of distractions.

Also, I had run out of timeline. The timeline had helped my writing more than I understood. Knowing what was going to come next and only needing to fill in the details and taking the time to better understand the characters within the situations made it all come so smooth that when I ran out of timeline, it jarred hard. I don't even know how to finish this final scene before they leave for Nairobi. This break week has been an opportunity to develop that as well.

With any luck now and without any further breaks, I should have this earliest draft done by the summer, and there will be a lot of fun in revision to look forward to then. Good times.

Single-spaced pages with one-inch margins? Seventy-three.
Words? Fifty-four thousand, two-hundred and forty-five.
Named characters? Thirty-one.

"Car Shopping"

2011-03-19T12:19:00.000-05:00

Good news everybody. Since The Inlander redesigned its website, the pieces read in its 2009 flash fiction tournament are no longer up. That means I am free to share the three pieces I wrote for it with you. Please enjoy "Car Shopping."

****

Mom took me car shopping this morning. I graduate next month, and she said I deserved it, that he would be proud of me. We went to a lot, and a salesman said he knew what I needed.

“Ready?” he asked, gunning the engine of a 1975 Pontiac Grand Am.

Dad asked me that when I was younger. Sure of my grip, I would lean forward in my red wagon and give a fevered nod. The car would never make me choke in exhilaration like that wagon when Dad charged ahead, kicking up leaves on the street.

I miss him.

****

There were rules for the tournament, themes and phrases that had to be included. This story had to include a red wagon. Of the three I wrote, I had the least confidence in this one, but I read it in the first round in the hopes that by keeping my stronger stories for later, they would propel me to the championship. That was a mistake. I lost in that first round and didn't get to read my other two stories at all. Then again, I don't think even my best story would have sent me to the second round. That was a really good story I lost to, and I knew it when she was done reading. I didn't feel so bad when the judges announced her victory, but the woman who sat behind me in the audience said that she had liked this one more. That felt good.

A first novel: Character

2011-03-15T00:24:00.000-05:00

There is only a single piece of writing advice I have found common between writers as diverse as Stephen King, Kurt Vonnegut and George Orwell. It's basic. It's to cut additional, unnecessary words.

I'm not quite at that point yet. I would need the characters and setting and all the rest of the details developed before I could begin to consider taking words out. I do, however, believe that I have found at least one additional, unnecessary thing: one of the main characters, the second eldest brother in the Lochilangor family. The intention was that he would serve as a foil to the eldest and third eldest brothers. Not as talented at football as his younger brother, he falls in with his older brother and becomes an enforcer for him. Unfortunately, so far he has been no more than a pale imitation of both. He has done absolutely nothing to distinguish himself. That is kind of the point, for purposes of theme or something, but it doesn't make for an engaging character.

I don't know what I'll do. For the time being, I'll keep him in the story. Maybe I will find some inspiration in the next month or two that makes him more interesting and a better character. Maybe not. In that case I will be scrubbing him from more than a hundred pages of story before the second draft.

I'm curious whether this is a validation of my strategy to just go with a few vague ideas and develop them on the fly or not. Had I taken the time to fully envision the characters and their situation would I have realized this earlier? Had I taken the time would I have better understood what made the second eldest unique and necessary? I don't know. I guess those sorts of questions will have to wait for their answers until I see the rest of the mistakes I'll make.

Single-spaced pages with one-inch margins? Seventy-three.
Words? Fifty-four thousand and twelve.
Named characters? Thirty-one.

Lent 2011

2011-03-11T12:26:00.000-06:00

Another Ash Wednesday, another Lent, another opportunity to deepen one's faith through sacrifice and spiritual activities. The plan this season was to practice a Muslim fast, absolutely no foods or drinks beside water during the daylight hours. It's something I've wanted to try for a few years now, but as I gave it further thought in the days leading up to Mardi Gras, it began to seem less and less like a good idea. Not for any particular physical reason. Millions of Muslims manage it for the duration of Ramadan without suffering ill effects. The problem was what sort of guest it would make me. If I went out with friends for lunch, if I was invited to a friend's home for dinner before sunset, what sort of impression would it set if I insisted on holding to my fast? A poor one, that's what, and I would hate to be a poor guest. So that plan will be scuttled for a few years until I manage to spend Ramadan in a Muslim nation where the entire community is behind the fast. It's on my list of things to do before I die.

Instead I'm trying something much more mundane, reading the Bible daily. I've tried this before, beginning with Genesis and working my way through sometime in high school. That failed miserably, somewhere in Leviticus understandably, so I'm trying to follow the day's selected readings. The United States Council of Bishops makes it really easy, posting the entirety of the day's chapters and verses from the New American Bible Revised Edition translation on their website. I don't even have to open a physical Bible. Maybe I'll make it carry this on next year with a more Catholic twist and read the papal encyclicals and bulls.

A first novel: Pre-writing

2011-03-06T14:19:00.000-06:00

Those who follow this blog through an RSS feed or regular visits to the site missed an insightful comment to my last Sunday post regarding this novel. My best man pointed out on Facebook that these last few posts make it sound as though I'm still pre-writing, putting down all my thoughts on character and plot and setting and refining and organizing them rather than really writing this novel even though I am more than sixty pages in.

He's right. It may be more traditional to write extensive timelines and character descriptions, but this works for me. I had some vague ideas of the characters and their settings and plot just went at it. I test them out and get a sense of what is most right and what I want to continue with.

The worry that kept me from writing detailed notes was that once I began writing, I would discover I was not actually interested in these wind-ups I had created once they were set free and I would have to rewrite significant pieces. To some extent, this has already borne out. One of my early interests in this novel was treating is as some sort of redemption for bad movies. The protagonist loves film, but seeing as how he lives in Kenya and is entirely without access to any film but those with the broadest appeal, he only sees the films of Jean-Claude Van Damme, Chuck Norris, Steven Seagal and other men who have since become punchlines. The working title, The Subber, is a reflection of this as the protagonist begins to write subtitles to these and other movies. That theme is still present but much reduced as my interest has moved toward more fundamental themes like storytelling.

Maybe I would have realized this earlier or found ways to stay more excited about bad movies with different pre-writing techniques, but I'm content with this. Beside when I better understand what this novel is about and who its characters are, the actual writing will be much less intimidating when there are already some hundred pages of foundation to build from.

Single-spaced pages with one-inch margins? Sixty-six.
Words? Forty-nine thousand and eighty-one.
Named characters? Thirty-one.

Considering Ngugi wa Thiong'o's "Wizard of the Crow"

2011-03-02T22:54:00.000-06:00

We have an obsession with villains. Victorian readers turned Satan into the hero of Paradise Lost. Grendel and Sauron became the protagonists of their own novels by John Gardner and Yisroel Markov. Darth Vader is the most enduring character in Star Wars, and Heath Ledger won his Oscar as the Joker, while no one paid any attention to Christian Bale or Gary Oldman. For the kids, this summer saw the release of Despicable Me and Megamind whose protagonists respectively planned on stealing the moon and defeated Metro Man.

Maybe it has something to do with Tolstoy's line that all happy families are happy in the same way while the unhappy are miserable each in their own way. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that villains are active. They rob banks, kidnap presidents and threaten cities while the heroes passively react to them. Maybe we all just want to be villains and be free law and morality to do whatever we will. I don't know.

In any case, the trend continues in Ngugi wa Thiong'o's Wizard of the Crow. The villains are the best part of the novel. When the story followed the Ruler and his plans for Marching to Heaven, a project to rival the Tower of Babel in size and ambition, and the power plays of his ministers Machokali and Sikiokuu, the story rollicked. When the story followed Kamiti and Nyawira as they healed peoples' souls and advocated for equal rights for women and against the dictatorship in Aburiria, a thinly disguised Kenya, the story collapsed.

The problem is that you already know Kamiti and Nyawira. There is no mystery to what they will do. They are prophets with ideas heavily inspired by Buddhism. Without guile, they treat everyone who asks for their help. They lack conflict and bore.

The Ruler and his lackies, however, you never know what they'll do, who they'll double cross, from whom they'll beg forgiveness. Tajirika takes over an entire prison with the bucket he used as a toilet for a week and cows all of his guards by telling them he has the death virus. Machokali has surgery to expand his eyes to the size of light bulbs in order to see the Ruler's enemies no matter how far they run, and Sikiokuu takes ears the size of a rabbit's to hear the most private of conversations regarding the Ruler. Urged by the Global Bank to turn Aburiria into a multi-party democracy before they will release the loans necessary to fund Marching to Heaven, the Ruler gives birth to Baby D and makes himself the titular head of all parties.

In a masterstroke, Ngugi does not make these villains implacable opponents on the level of Lex Luthor or Archie Costello. Rather, they have more in common with the Shredder and Cobra Commander of the 1980's cartoons. Their insanity only serves to mask their gross incompetency. Ambition paves the fastest path to the crocodiles of the Red River. Sycophancy and groveling are the keys to success. When lines of people converge in protest in the capital, the Ruler decrees that no more than five people can stand in line together, forgetting that he had earlier dispatched motorcycle riders in every direction of the compass to make lines in support of the government. The Movement for the Voice of the People disrupts the Ruler's birthday with plastic snakes. The ministers overhaul the education system so that the only proper textbooks are those written by the Ruler.

By all rights the government should have collapsed under its own weight long ago, but it has had support in the West. The Ruler came to power by slaughtering some seven thousand suspected Communists during the Cold War, and now, when times have changed, the West is pleased with the slightest movements toward democracy. A complete lack of understanding of Aburiria and its people only complicates the problem. In one of the best scenes, women protesters disguised as tribal dancers and official entertainment for the Ruler and representatives of the Global Bank moon their audience and proceed to defecate all over. The Global Bank men want to laugh but see the stony expression of the Ruler and become convinced it is actually a very solemn dance.

In this, Ngugi draws a clear picture of the ills that continue to afflict far too much of sub-Saharan Africa. His ambitions to prescribe remedies are not as effective, but what he offers us is enough.

I read another of Ngugi's books, Petals of Blood. You can read my thoughts on it here.

A first novel: Impatience

2011-02-27T18:13:00.000-06:00

I am growing impatient with this draft. When I began writing, I had estimated this first sketch of a plot and character to run somewhere around eighty pages, certainly no more than one hundred. This week I broke sixty pages. It'll be at least another two weeks of writing, somewhere around another fifteen pages, before the characters leave their tribal homelands for Nairobi. I've been expecting the Nairobi portion of the novel to be the longest, something like half of the entire work. Assuming these estimates are any more accurate than those I made at the onset, this original draft will run near one-hundred-and-fifty pages, and I won't complete it until the end of April. That's a lot and a long time.

On the one hand, this is cool. The novel's long. That's legitimate and respectable.

On the other hand, what I'm writing right now is garbage. There are no details. There is barely more dialogue. It's characters doing things in the minimum number of words, so they can hurry on to the next thing.

This was the idea. Write quick and write dirty now, and write it better later. So far it has worked. I'm glad I've done it. I haven't gotten myself hung up on names and eye color and all those other little minor points.

But I find myself lately wishing that what I was writing now was better. It'd be nice to have more fully developed characters who spoke to each other not through paraphrase. It'd be nice to take some time to imagine what these characters and the landscape look like.

For now I am quashing the wish. I believe it's better to know where it's all heading before I start putting an effort into these details that might later be invalidated by the novel going in entirely unexpected directions. This week I sublimated the wish by writing a few stories for The Inlander's contest. Maybe working on and completing other short works in the interim will keep me happy until I can bring a greater attention to the novel. Maybe you would like to see some new fiction from me. We'll see.

Single-spaced pages with one-inch margins? Sixty.
Words? Forty-four thousand and one-hundred-and-five.
Named characters? Thirty-one.

Peeling beets

2011-02-24T16:36:00.000-06:00

Turns out Demetra really enjoys beets. She really enjoyed the beet curry with green peas I made last fall, and I admit that the borscht a few Sundays back was excellent. Myself, I'm ambivalent. They're another ingredient with which to experiment. They stain my hands and everything else purple.

They are also beautiful. I was quartering beets for dinner. Every sweep of the peeler revealed rings like those of a tree, and the rings followed the angle of peel. It was like the sheen of oil on a puddle in the parking lot. It was like gazing into the swirling mists of a fortune teller's crystal ball.

And tonight I will braise that beauty and eat it with a horseradish sauce.

Kenyan TV

2011-02-24T00:31:00.000-06:00

When our first volunteer to the Nakuru center arrived in Kenya, Demetra and I were sent to pick him up from the airport. Part of this was to simplify the process for him. It would be easier to spot us in the crowd at Jomo Kenyatta International than another African. Part of this was that Demetra and I really needed a break from the kids. In any case, during the drive back to the center, the volunteer kind of stared out the window in amazement. He explained that he hadn't expected Nairobi to look like this. He was prepared for mud huts, not paved roads and steel and concrete buildings.

The point is Kenya is developed. It's not wealthy, but it's developed and only becoming more so. Its three major television stations (NTV, KTN, Citizen TV) even upload daily reports to YouTube. It's a chance to hear some Kenyan accents and see the land, if you are so inclined and so bored.

Here are a selection of choice reports on the Pokot: "Samburu and Pokot Peace Initiative," "The Turkana-Pokot Conflict," "West Pokot Early Marriages," "Pastoralists Killed in Pokot," "Pokot Disarmament." Super.

Flash fiction contest

2011-02-22T00:20:00.000-06:00

The Inlander is sponsoring another flash fiction contest. Write a story in one hundred and one words or fewer. Submit it before March 10. Perhaps be published. Perhaps be invited to compete in a flash fiction tournament in Spokane. It's fun, and it was the first place I was published outside of Gonzaga publications after leaving Minnesota. Also, it's an opportunity to link to the stories I wrote for the first tournament. They're good if you have a minute or two.

"Jump"
"Her"
"Miracle by the nanosecond"
"That One Guy"

A first novel: Timeline

2011-02-20T19:03:00.001-06:00

It worked. Writing out last week all those things that should and could happen while the characters remained in the bush and forming those things into a timeline helped. The first day of writing was still a struggle, but then it all just slid into place. I wasn't sitting and wondering what should come next or what the scenes needed to lead to. I only had to check the timeline. I can only hope that this easy writing continues for the next week or two until the characters move on to Nairobi.

Like I wrote, the timeline works. I'm not going to stand some principle of the ideal writing process. So long as timelines help me coast through any and all ruts, I will continue to write and use them. Still, I cannot help but to wonder whether they will lead to the best possible story. A friend told me this week that when Umberto Eco wrote fiction he first imagined the setting and characters. When he finally understood them in their entirety, a process that could take two years, he began to craft the plot. Then he began to write. I respect that. I admire that. I could never do that. I don't have the patience to wait two years before I begin writing.

Characters are central to the best literature. Plot should be driven by the characters, their motivations, their goals and their relationships. My tool, my timeline is an artifact of plot. It is a list of the things that happen. That does not necessarily mean that the characters become plot-moving tools. I still try to base these future turns on what I know of the characters, but that changes as I write. I write quickly and inconsistently. For a few days I may emphasize a character's cowardice or another's viciousness. A few days later I try something else with them, make the one a schemer and the other a struggling goatherd.

I like to think that my style of writing is more a process of discovery than Eco's. When he begins to write, he is putting in motion fully-formed characters. When I write, I am still learning about my characters. There is a lot of room for change, and I will be doing some heavy rewriting as I try to bring into line my different conceptions of the characters through the novel, but we will see in the end who has chosen the better course.

This sounds an awful lot like I'm comparing myself to Eco. So be it. Confidence and motivation and whatnot.

Single-spaced pages with one-inch margins? Fifty-three.
Words? Thirty-nine thousand and fifty-seven.
Named characters? Twenty-eight.

A first novel: Challenges

2011-02-13T22:37:00.000-06:00

There were some struggles in writing my five thousand words in the last week of January, as discussed here. I stand by that week as the most difficult to write, but this coming week could pose a significant challenge to that title, for whatever its worth. The challenges are different. In January it was a problem of inspiration. This week it is a challenge of technique and craft.

The progression of the story has been pretty simple so far. Something happens, and the characters respond to it. There is cause, and there is effect. While I have not adhered to Aristotle's unity of time, only about six weeks have passed in the pages. That is not very much. Though not every minute of every day is explored, you know what the characters are doing. They always have an immediate goal or destination driving them, but things are changing. Now they have spent some three weeks in their tribal homelands. They have overcome the earliest and most significant obstacles to life there and are beginning to settle into it. Things must slow down as the characters find their rhythms. There are another two years to fill before they leave. Things still happen and theere is still cause and effect, but it is distant. The relation between events is neither immediate nor clear.

I don't know how to write that. I don't know how to set a timeline in motion and then slip in, picking and presenting the noteworthy moments. My short stories are tight and unified in time. There is no summary of years or even months because the story is in a day, a morning, a single conversation. I've never tried anything like this before.

For the time being, I wrote out a list of the things that need to happen for the story to move forward. I wrote a second list of things that could happen and opportunities for characters to distinguish themselves. Not that all this helps me the act of writing these things, but it does provide some framework and guidance. We'll see how it goes.

Single-spaced pages with one-inch margins? Forty-seven.
Words? Thirty-four thousand and eighty-three.
Named characters? Twenty-eight.

"Haiti and the truth about NGOs"

2011-02-11T18:34:00.000-06:00

Edward Stourton conducts a necessary investigation of the aid industry in this BBC Radio 4 documentary. There is something very wrong when billions of dollars in aid and thousands of NGOs leave somewhere around a million people still in tents in refugee camps and can neither stop an outbreak of cholera nor begin large-scale reconstruction in Haiti a year after the earthquake that killed over a quarter million people. Stourton leaves little hope when he presents the choice as between small NGOs led by incompetents who struggle to coordinate their efforts with others and large NGOs led by the corrupt who are dependent on national governments for the bulk of their funding, but the points he raises are good ones. It's worth a listen.

A first novel: Research

2011-02-07T00:33:00.000-06:00

This novel begins in Nakuru during a riot. It spends two years in the bush before moving to Nairobi's slums. I like to think that I know some things about Kenya after spending nine months there, but I admit that of these things, of some importance to my novel, I do not know so much. I was not in Nakuru during the riots, and I only spent maybe two weeks total in the bush and another two weeks total in Nairobi, none of that time in the slums.

I have yet not done any research to change this, which, I guess, is understandable. This is, after all, only a very early draft. I don't want to be captured in the details national history and tribal quirks and force them in. I want words and characters and events on paper that I can respond to and develop into something better with time.

Less understandable, perhaps, is that I do not intend on doing any research at any point. I feel that I know enough of the details to make it real. The rest I will make up. The Nairobi slum will be fictional. The bush tribe will not because I would rely way too much on my experiences with the one tribe I know to create it, and it would be nothing more than the clearest imitation with only a few names and letters changed around.

Otherwise it's just about a family, staying alive and making your way in the world. How much can any amount of research help that? The rest is window dressing.

Single-spaced pages with one-inch margins? Forty.
Words? Twenty-nine thousand and thirty-four.
Named characters? Twenty-eight.

A first novel: A hard week

2011-01-30T13:06:00.000-06:00

This past week may has been, with no argument, the hardest to write yet. The daily thousand were a struggle as I grasped at and filled out mundane and redundant details to reach a thousand. This past week my characters spent a lot of time complaining about the heat and their hunger and thirst and how exhausted they are after days of walking. It will be no surprise to me if I come back to this section and hack words with a vengeance, paring it down to half its present size if not more.

The first fifteen thousand words were pretty easy. Things happened, and the characters responded to them. They moved from plot point to plot point. There was a clear destination and immediate goal, and they ran between them. Now they've attained that goal, and they're going to be hanging around there for another two years or so. Things are happening slower now. I know why and how things will change at the end of those two years and what will proceed from there, but things need to develop to that point. They can't just happen.

That's the problem, trying to fill all this time. It's an opportunity for the characters to develop, to be themselves at their leisure and not focus on staying alive until the next scene. I need to write things that don't matter as much and don't serve solely to advance the plot. That's harder, but that's why I have this goal of one thousand words a day. Without it I would be sore tempted to take a break now. Ostensibly this break would be to think about what came next. In truth it would be because the work became too hard. Now I don't give myself this luxury of long breaks from writing. I just have to keep pushing through and putting down whatever comes to mind first. A motive for a secondary character appears and guides the day's writing. A minor errand fills another thousand words. Maybe it's stupid, but it's something. I'll take care of it later if I have to.

Word count as of today? Twenty-four thousand and eight words.

McDonald's Adventures: The end

2011-01-24T22:28:00.000-06:00

Two Fridays past I gave notice that I would quit McDonald's. Yesterday it happened. I worked my last shift. In two weeks I'll pick up my final pay check and turn in my uniform. For this, we can thank Mrs. Mallory Ferland Ramos who let me know about a place online that would 15 dollars for how-to articles, allowing me to make more money in less time according to my own schedule without three levels of managers and not requiring being on my feet all day. We can all show our appreciation to her by visiting The Salty Cod and reading of her baking adventures as an expatriate in Brazil.

To McDonald's I say so long, farewell, good riddance. I never wanted to work there, but when no other place would accept my application, I had to take what I could get to pay the rent and buy the groceries. I never liked working there. I never looked forward to the upcoming shift. I did not want to put my bachelor's degree to use in scraping eggs and meat off a grill. I did not want to come back from a year in Kenya and Indonesia to pull chicken and fish from deep fryers. Whenever the managers needed a volunteer to leave early because there were too many of us in the back for too few customers, I was always among the first to offer.

At some point, not so long after I started, this line of thinking mutated. It changed distaste for to an active hatred of my job. From there it was not such a leap to a demand for justice.

A ridiculous thought, yes. No wrong was ever done. They didn't treat me poorly. McDonald's offered me a job when no else did. No one shouted at me. So long as I dropped meat on the grill and delivered it to the heating cabinet as requested, they left me alone, all I asked or hoped for. My only complaint was that they scheduled me for the late shift on Christmas Eve and opening on Boxing Day, not even allowing me to spend a second night in Butte, but then they gave me New Year's Day off. Still I believed that wrong, somewhere, sometime, had been committed, and I needed to respond to it. To give it the simplest formulation: I didn't like my job. Someone had to pay.

Not that I pursued this anywhere either. Working slow would only inconvenience the customers, most of whom were senior citizens looking for a meal out that wouldn't break their Social Security check. Skipping a shift without a call would force more work on the rest of the crew, none of whom liked their jobs particularly much either. I didn't argue with the managers. They didn't make enough money to deserve it, and in keeping with the trend, also didn't want to work at McDonald's. Who was I to make their shifts any worse?

That only left the owners, a couple I saw pass through to their office in the basement a few times a week. What was I going to do to them, trip them? By the end, I resolved to spend as much of their money as possible. Not that this came to much of anything either. I wasn't going to steal food so long as I was a vegetarian or had culinary standards. I wasn't going to throw food away on a whim when kids were starving in whatever developing country. Instead, I used new paper tray liners for every run of meat and new boxes to microwave every batch of biscuits. These were the sorts of things that were taught in the training slideshows but no one bothered to follow day to day. I was reduced to trying to get back at the owners for hiring me by following the rules to the full extent.

Even on my last shift I took no vengeance. I didn't curse out the idiot manager whose idea of leadership was telling the crew under him to do what another manager had just asked him to do and who could only toast English muffins during breakfast because he had no idea how to do anything else. I stole a biscuit that would have been thrown out in any case because I was hungry. The opening manager was even pleasantly surprised that I showed up. Most people blow their final day off. I steamed the grill and left promptly when my shift was over. I just wanted it to be over.

I'm happier now.

A first novel: The longest

2011-01-21T14:41:00.000-06:00

As of yesterday evening, my novel was seventeen thousand and twenty-six words. My thesis on service-learning, with a title page, table of contents and five pages of bibliography, is sixteen thousand, six hundred thirty words long. That makes these early scratchings of a novel the longest unified, coherent work I have written as of yet. That makes me happy. That is all.

A first novel: Dramatis personae

2011-01-18T23:50:00.000-06:00

Today I began a dramatis personae for my novel. I had a character list before I began writing, but it was little more than the names of the five siblings at the center of the action, their relative ages and their motivations. This new character list includes the other twelve characters who've appeared so far, their relationships with relevant characters, their professions, their motivations and more precise ages for the children. It makes me feel awfully professional to have this. It makes me look like I know what's going on when I'm really just throwing words at the page as fast as I can to get the characters to the next place they need to be.

The names part of the list is the most important for me. Deciding on an appropriate name for a character can knock me off my writing stride for a good five minutes. I can never just pick a name and call it good. The name has to have a thematic resonance with historical or mythological overtones. It has to look good on the page and sound nice, too. It's a little bit easier when the vast majority of the characters so far are from a single Kenyan tribe, and I only know so many tribal names, but it can still throw me. I've avoided that particular block for these first weeks by just calling them by a family name and title, but no longer. They all have names now, even if no one ever actually says their name. It seems smarter than just calling a man "the uncle" or "the father" sentence after sentence.

I have another reason for this small writing diversion. It reminds me that a character exists. In general, I know what the five main characters want, and I even have some idea of whether they will get those things or not. What I don't know is how they'll get to that point or how it'll change them. I need to remember these characters that they can appear again, drive the leads to or from their goals. I don't just want these characters to appear for a scene or few pages, to say their bit and leave. I want them to really exist within the story. I want characters to come back later in the story in different circumstances. This novel is going to cover years. There will be plenty of time and opportunity for revenges to be carried out and goods rewarded.

I wonder if I should include this in the completed novel. I haven't seen one in a contemporary novel for years, but it could help the readers navigate all the foreign names, especially when every woman's name begins with 'Chep.' I guess people manage through Russian novels somehow without though.

Word count as of today? Fifteen thousand and eighteen words.

McDonald's Adventures: McMore

2011-01-16T19:32:00.000-06:00

Everyone is familiar with McDonald's affinity for the 'Mc' prefix. Its their thing like square patties are Wendy's thing, fried chicken is KFC's thing and E. coli is Jack in the Box's thing. McDonald's has McNuggets, the Big Mac, the McChicken, the McDouble, the McRib and those are just for lunch. There are McMuffins, McGriddles and McSkillets for breakfast along with the McCafé line of drinks, and you can finish it all of with a McFlurry for dessert.

I would like to add two more items to this list, less obvious to the typical customer and ones you are advised not to order. The McFree is found underneath the back sink. It's a drain cleaner. The McBulk is a stainless steel tank taller than me deep in back storage. It's a carbonation system. McDonald's might have gotten a little carried away with those, or it has an inside line on the best carbonation and drain cleaning systems on this planet. I'm thinking the former. Unless the idea of the drain cleaner is to make a soup with the consistency of mud and the color of flesh rot. Then it works great.

A first novel: The first week of writing

2011-01-12T19:08:00.002-06:00

I have a strategy in writing this novel. Five days a week, the five days I go to McDonald's, I write a thousand words. They are not good words. I write them as quickly as I can. At longest, when I dawdle to check articles on The Millions and links on Bookslut, it takes me ninety minutes to finish my thousand words. Characters are introduced and do some things. The plot moves along. Sensory details, rich dialogue, powerful characterizations are left for later. There will be time enough when I better understand the whole of the novel and am not concentrating so much on creating the foundations of the thing in the first place.

The sixth day, my first day off, is an opportunity to read what I have written. It is an opportunity to confirm that the thrust of the story remains true and to make necessary corrections and adjustments before I drive the novel into a blind alley, pursued by hooligans.

The seventh day, my second day off, is a day of rest. It is a time to concentrate on other things, on short stories left uncompleted but tantalizingly near their end.

This strategy has left me with 10,772 words as of last night. That makes these beginnings of a novel the longest piece of fiction I have ever written. I have a short story that recently passed eight-thousand words but is unlikely to go much farther. Few other of my stories have even breasted five-thousand words. That's exciting.

I still have no idea how long to expect the whole. It was taken this long for the Lochilang'or family to leave Nakuru and begin their journey to Pokot. Maybe they will stay there for twenty-thousand words or so before leaving for Nairobi. That final city ought to occupy some fifty-thousand words or so, and all those are fast words.

For a point of extrapolation, on my first day off from work, I began rewriting a single paragraph of about a hundred words until it was approaching eight hundred words. It would not surprise me to see this all go past two-hundred-thousand words when all is done. That's a long way yet. I'll be pleased to be halfway there by the end of this summer.

A first novel: The first words

2011-01-01T20:58:00.002-06:00

In my high school newspaper, I was quoted saying that I had made no New Year's resolutions as I believed that self-improvement was a constant project with neither end nor beginning. To reduce it to a list written on a single day was ridiculous.

I believe the same still today yet I find myself on the first day of the first month of this new year having begun something of a resolution. I have written the first words of my first novel. One thousand and seventy-six words have been typed, displayed on a screen and saved to my flash drive. I have no idea. how many words will follow. I have no idea how long before they are all assembled and groomed. But two hours a day, one thousand words a day, I will find out.

The idea came to me this summer. I wrote it down and saved it in August that I would not forget it. I promised in November to begin writing it in the new year, giving myself the rest of the month and all of December to discover the greater cast of characters and the beginnings of their vanities and ambitions and to finish some other writing work and not leave it half finished. The latter half of that has not gone as well, two short stories still well in progress and the end not so distant from them that it will be easy to push them to the side. The former half of that promise has not gone so well either, amounting to a few lines of scribbled notes for the five members of the Lochilangor family and an awareness of the dominant thrust of the story, but to know the names of the characters, their desires and motivations, and where all this will lead them, is a lot to begin with, even if I still have no idea of their ultimate fates.

My hope is that this chronicle of writing my first novel becomes a regular series on this blog. In its higher moments, I hope that it share the process of creating a novel and become a sort of companion to other writers, allowing them to see my challenges and victories and to know that they are not alone in their struggles in beginning and ending their own works. In its lower moments, I hope merely that the promise to write this series once a week and share my progress with you is motivation enough to keep me writing everyday.

What it will not be is a summary of the creative work. I do not like to talk about my work in progress as my wish is that people who may read it come to it without expectations and are surprised by what they find, but I do not wish either to be unnecessarily evasive in my writing, so allow me to share this at the beginning. The tentative title is The Subber. It is set in contemporary Kenya. It is about passion, responsibility, ambition, family, escape and all the rest. It's going to be amazing.

I hope you enjoy this journey as much as I.

Night driving

2010-12-26T20:32:00.000-06:00

Coming off my shift at McDonald's Christmas Eve in the late afternoon, I left straight for Butte, no stops at the apartment to shower or change out of my grease infused uniform. I wanted to cross the pass before nightfall. I wanted to get my holiday started. I wanted to see Demetra again since she had left a few days early to help her parents with gift wrapping and cookie baking.

The sun was already just a few degrees from the horizon when I left. Passing Belgrade, it was already dipping below. The wisps and trails of cirrus clouds that hung it around burned peach and apricot and lavender as the sun fell further. The clear skies before, above and behind me passed from the pale, milky blue in the west through to the muted sapphire of dusk in the east. The silhouettes of the summits of the mountains on the horizons appeared above low-hanging clouds. Frost and snow gilded the trees I passed. It was the kind of drive where I had to force myself to pay attention to the roads when I wanted to turn my head every attention and see it all.

And yet for all that drive's majesty, it could only hope to compare equally with the drive back, begun after the sunset and under a sheet of clouds that hid the waning moon. There's something about driving at night. The day is done. There is neither appointment nor meal to rush to at the destination. It is easy. Your attention turns inward when the landscape is in the dark, offering no distraction, and there is no horizon to look toward and yearn for. It all happens in turn. It all just passes.

I am no great, eager driver. I willingly cede the right to drive to anyone I ride with, but on the road at night, singing along to a CD to stay at attention and seeing only the road in front of me, it's a comfortable sort of thing.

Happy holidays

2010-12-22T19:26:00.000-06:00

I liked to think that I was over the whole "happy holidays" and "winter break" things. If you want to call Christmas by another name in order to be more inclusive or whatever, that's fine. It takes nothing away from the Christian holiday I celebrate. But then I heard a manager at McDonald's today tell one of the front desk workers that corporate rules do not allow them to wish our customers a "Merry Christmas," only "happy holidays" even when the restaurant will be closed on Christmas day. I wanted to throw the plastic spatula at her head, followed in short order by the metal spatula and the rest of the grill tools. I guess I'm not over it.

It's one thing to be politically correct and recognize that not everyone has the same beliefs and holidays as you. It's another to be twit. Hanukkah ended over a week ago. Diwali celebrations ended early last month. Muslims celebrated the end of Ramadan with Eid ul-Fitr in September.

Seriously, what are all the holidays we're wishing people happiness in beside Christmas at this point? "Happy holidays" isn't even about hedging your bets anymore, taking the middle path when not sure whether someone's a Christian or Jew or Muslim or Hindu or whatever. The States don't celebrate Boxing Day or Bank Holiday. No one celebrates Kwanzaa. Near as I can tell, all that's left is New Year's Eve and equating that with Christmas, in either its secular or Christian incarnations, is just silly.

Don't be a twit. Wishing someone "happy holidays" now is just lazy and shows that you really have no idea whatsoever regarding the faiths you're trying to be respectful of.

Considering Kevin Murphy's "A Year at the Movies"

2010-12-18T19:39:00.000-06:00

Passion is a beautiful thing to behold. There are major instances of the players in the finals of the World Cup or in the NCAA basketball championship, but there have no less power behind them some guy sounding off on his latest night of pub trivia or someone biologist on the evolutionary path of the artichoke, every sort of thing that people can devote their work and free time and lives to. In the right groove and at the right time they can make you want the same thing.

A Year at the Movies is a book of passion, Kevin Murphy's passion for film and the cinema. Every day for a year, he watches a movie at a theater. He watches film in Hollywood, New York City, London, Mexico, Australia, Finland and the South Pacific. He attends Cannes (is discouraged that so many are left on the fringes and that he only is able to attend through a press pass), Sundance (dismisses it as a tradeshow), the Midnight Sun Festival (enjoys it most of all), the Get Real Festival and the Jewish Film Festival. By the end, you want to do the same. That is the power of the passionate.

It is important to note that passion does not equate to shill. The passionate care and want the best. They dig at the worst and celebrate the best and always push for more. Murphy does this. A Year at the Movies is a series of essays, each chapter covering a week and focusing on a single aspect of his experiences. There is a sense of the stunt in some of these chapters like the one where Murphy watches from the front row or the other one where he subsists for a week on theater snacks, something more akin to the work of A.J. Jacob or Morgan Spurlock, but Murphy cares about the theater experience. There are good years, and there are bad years in film. Not much can help that, but the theaters we watch them in are here to stay, and Murphy wants us all to demand the best from them. Murphy spends a lot of time searching for alternative venues to franchise multiplexes staffed by minimum-wage workers and projectionists who destroy film reels, and he writes with love for the movies he watches at Grumpy's Bar, at the Walker Art Center and at New Mexico's Giant Travel Center, preferred by passing truckers, because the audience is engaged with them. Film should not be an idle entertainment, a distraction for a few hours on a weekend evening or an air-conditioned break from the summer heat. It should be something that excites us and makes us cheer the heroes, hiss the villains and cry from the seats. The role of the theater in this process, in making us comfortable and developing an educated audience, cannot be ignored.

The films themselves are secondary concerns. Only on occasion does Murphy give comment to what he spent the week watching. There are some good lines. He dismisses Original Sin as a film so boring that its naked Angelina Jolie couldn't hold the attention of twelve-year-old boys. He calls Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone a movie clone with all the appearances of a piece of entertainment without carrying the burden to entertain. He celebrates a performance of Javier Bardem years before No Country for Old Men and Vicky Cristina Barcelona. He declares the transformation of Anne Hathaway in The Princess Diaries fascist. On Rarotonga in the Cook Islands he watches Waking Ned Devine following the September 11 attacks and remembers enjoying it with his wife a year earlier.

Murphy is right. We deserve better than to be herded into every remaining space in the theater and given foodstuffs we would rightly throw back at our parents if they tried to serve it at our house. Though skipping between Atonement and Juno, No Country for Old Men and Jumper at the AMC in River Park Square were my first dates of sorts with Demetra and I asked her out after we saw Die Fälscher together, the best time I ever had at the movies was seeing Fix with the director Tao Ruspoli in attendance during the Spokane International Film Festival at the Magic Lantern Theater. I couldn't stop talking about it the entire walk back, not the director's talk after, not the theater itself, not the film itself. I hope that my children won't have to spend years searching for the same sorts of experiences. If more people read Murphy and A Year at the Movies and felt that passion, they won't have to.

McDonald's Adventures: Sounds

2010-12-17T22:43:00.000-06:00

Entirely befitting a vegetarian, I was trained to work the grill on my first day at McDonald's. I watched a twenty-minute slideshow and was entirely prepared for it. There has been only a single difficulty: warning tones. A reasonable approximation of the Jaws theme counts down the final five seconds before meat can be pulled from the grill. There is a bass line when the oven timer has found zero. There is a beep when a new order arrives on the monitor. There is drone when the timer is complete for McDonald's proprietary microwave, the Q-oven. When meat has been in the heating cabinet longer than thirty minutes, there is another tone. The most annoying and high-pitched tweets are reserved for fried products ready to be pulled, one for fried meats and one for fried potatoes.

Several times these sounds have terrified me into believing the fire alarm had activated. Yesterday a fellow crew member assured me this would never happen. There is no fire alarm. They once set an English muffin on fire in the toaster and filled the kitchen with smoke and there was no alarm. I am a mote concerned.

Considering Vladimir Nabokov's "Lolita"

2010-12-14T22:59:00.000-06:00

I took a series of correspondence courses during high school. The second was in philosophy, and I remember reading Hume's An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. Pursuing Hume's assertion that one must carry a skeptical attitude in all things by withholding immediate judgment and carefully examining one's reactions, my teacher asked me to concern my next essay with what category of experiences this skeptical philosophy would not be appropriate. I resisted him for some time on this point, convinced that there was no such category.

About a week later and preparing to write an essay on why this skeptical attitude would be proper in all matters, I realized that Hume's philosophy does not work with aesthetic experiences. Yes, one can refrain from comment after watching Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World and consider why they feel the way they feel about it being one of 2010's greatest films. Perhaps on later viewings their opinion will change as the performances of Brandon Routh and Ellen Wong rise in their estimation. Maybe upon closer inspection they will realize things they did not realize before like how the snow melts around the feet of Mary Elizabeth Winstead as she skates down the road. Or it could go the other way entirely. Whatever.

The point is that there is a certain value to one's initial reaction to art that is entirely different from one's first reaction to a news report. A tight reading of art can change one's opinion of the piece, but it doesn't invalidate that first response which may have come from a different place but has an essential honesty to it. On the other hand, the late revelation that there was no evidence whatsoever that the Duke lacrosse players raped the stripper, forces a complete re-evaluation of one's reaction to the whole affair.

This is a long way of coming to the point that I think it is this initial reaction to art which separates the great from the good, decent and inferior. Capital Art can, to some extent, be quantified through their execution and interpretation of the basic elements. Literature has character, plot, setting, perspective. Music has rhythm, melody, harmony, pitch, scale. Visual art has depth, color, form, line, texture. They all have themes and tones. These elements can be analyzed and dissected, compared to other works. In a very real way, one can argue that Tobias Wolff's characters are superior to those of J.K. Rowling or that Josh Ritter's lyrics are better than those of the Black Eyed Peas.

Not so with that initial reaction. It cannot be controlled and any attempt to quantify or explain it will be incomplete. Not that we shouldn't make the attempt, but that is a matter for another place. That initial reaction comes from a place of honest and true connection and understanding with the piece, a place created from personal history and universal human desires. That reaction is what separates the art that we remember and cherish for our lives from that which we merely respect.

I lacked that initial reaction with Lolita. The book is well understood to be a masterpiece. The edition I read is part of Random House's Everyman's Library series, a series that includes Jorge Luis Borges, Thomas Mann and Virginia Woolf, and has an introduction by Martin Amis, a man probably as honored to write as the publishers were to have him write it. Modern Library named it one of the greatest novels of the past century, as did Le Monde.

I can understand why. The character Humbert Humbert is magnificently well drawn, and Nabokov is totally committed to him. Humbert is not deep, entirely consumed by his obsession, his disease, and never deviates far from it, but the three hundred pages of the book paint a fascinating picture of a terrible, terrible person with a man's fondness for word play and allusion, the emotions of a teenager and the responsibilities of a child. That pervasive voice is mesmerizing. Great, too, are the details of America gleaned from hours on the highway in cross country road trips and months spent in motels. And there is real comedy in this otherwise tragic story of a man's relationship with a girl. Being funny is hard, but Nabokov achieves it.

Absolutely I respect Lolita, but I neither love nor particularly care about it. I have no idea how much of it I will remember in a decade or two when I'm pushing What We Talk About When We Talk About Love and On The Night In Question or Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell and American Gods on my children and their friends. I think it is that Lolita feels like an experiment. It feels to me that Nabokov wrote it as a challenge to himself, to see if he could inhabit and recreate the mind of an unrepentant child molester and to do so with a minimum of self flagellation and pathos, which he achieves with aplomb.

There is nothing more to Lolita than this case study, which may be part of why it is esteemed so widely so highly. One can point to Nabokov's originality and fluency with language and observations as marks of excellence, as indeed they are. However, these marks of excellence can become shields for Lolita's proponents as they are not forced to found their opinions on their initial reactions but on Nabokov's considerable literary skill. Perhaps, more than likely, this is me throwing too far my own experience of the novel upon others, but who can admit to being personally moved by this story of a child molester and murderer and the very many detestable people he meets? Is Lolita really that great, or is it merely the one most widely respected?

"An Africa For The New Millennium"

2010-12-11T19:21:00.000-06:00

At dawn, when the air was still cool and the dry-season sun had yet to broach the horizon and blast the land, the elephant fell. Kiptoo Kiplanat, who protected the sleeping, emaciated goats from tribal raids, had seen it passing in the distance and called the men to the hunt. The elephant had run when the first arrows pierced its skin that evening, and the hunters needed all of their cunning and speed to keep pace. The young men chased it over the uneven rocks of the parched riverbed while the others attacked it from both banks. On open land the bravest sprinted ahead to slash the beast's flank with their panga knives.

With time the blood ran free from a thousand wounds, and the elephant slowed. The hunters slowed too and kept a distance, wary of a final struggle. The elephant no longer stepped but dragged its feet forward, and it stumbled. It only found its balance when it stopped, and three hunters threw and stuck their spears into the beast's backside. The elephant made to surge, but its strength had drained down its legs and soaked into the earth and dust. One of its great tusks broke when it fell. When the elephant rolled, its sides heaving, a cry of celebration went up amongst the band of hunters.

A boy climbed atop the elephant. Lomurion Kakwa, who had traveled as far as Nairobi, had advised against the chase. He had not believed they could bring the creature down, the first to cross onto their tribal lands in a lifetime. He had said only men from the cities with enormous guns and trucks could kill an elephant. He had said the men would only waste their energy and lose their arrows. Now the boy danced wild steps in pride and in anticipation of his first meat in weeks.

“Kopus,” his father called him. “Bring your mother and sisters and all the women. There is work to do.”

Kopus Lomada jumped down. He had carried neither panga knife nor spear nor bow during the hunt. He was young and only ran to learn to kill. Some had worried he was too young and would tire, but Kopus had not fallen behind. Now he had an important task while the hunters prepared for the butchery.

“The elephant has fallen,” he sang when he ran through the village. “Bring sufuria pots. There is work to do.”

Kopus had only time for a single swallow of gritty water before all the women were prepared. With the entire village following, he ran again. It was still early. The sun had not yet been in the sky more than two hours, but the heat was already punishing. Kopus' legs burned from the chase that night and the run that morning, but he did not stop or slow. There was work to do.

An hour from the kill Kopus' foot slid against a loose stone. He threw up his arms to protect his face as he skidded against the rough ground. When he finally stopped, Kopus had to breathe deeply before he could stand and wipe the blood from his eyes.

“Just tell us the way,” Kopus' mother said when his first steps were made delicately. “We will run ahead.”

There was a road nearby, two weaving gouges in the infertile soil from the rare truck. They could follow it. It was longer than cross country but passed near the kill, and they would see the elephant's bulk.

“No.” Kopus spit the dirt from his mouth. “Follow me.”

It hurt, but he sprinted ahead until only the strongest and fastest women could stay with him. The others followed by the clouds of dust the leaders left behind.

When Kopus and the first women arrived, the sides of the elephant still rose and fell but only in trembles, no longer great heaves. Slabs of meat drawn from the legs lay in careful piles. The women ululated in joy and offered water to the thirsty butchers. The women built fires as Kopus brought branches broken from the scattered, dead scrub. Kopus worried as the elephant's blood pooled on to the ground, wasted and not collected to mix with ugali, but his mother assured Kopus he would not be hungry for it when all the meat was cooked. With this meat he would not be hungry again until the rains returned, she said.

When the sun was at its peak, Kopus' father called a break in the butchery. Women made covers from their kangas and sat underneath them with their husbands and sons. The girls collected the finished meat and offered it first to the men who had brought the elephant down and then to the women who cooked it before coming to the children.

Waiting for his piece, fat and juices dripping from cracks in the charred flesh, Kopus heard the distant sound of a low rumble. He climbed on top of the elephant and saw the brilliant glare off metal and glass approaching on the road. A truck. He rushed off and to the side of the road to see it close when it passed. It was not long before the others heard and joined him.

The truck stopped before the crowd, and a woman came out, followed by the government-appointed district chief. Kopus never saw the district chief more than twice a year as he rarely left his stone home in the market town, but Kopus' attention was only for the woman. She was the first mzungu woman that Kopus had ever seen. Against the pale of her skin, he could have seen the slightest mote of dirt if there had been any to see. There were no scars on her arms and no sores on her legs. She wore bright, clean clothes that no one had worn before her. She was like something from a story sung around the night fire.

Kopus' father tried to greet her, but she passed him without noticing his outstretched hand. The others pulled away to form a passage, and she walked through, straight to the elephant. She put her hands and forehead against an unbloodied patch. At her pressure the elephant gave a long, low moan, and a final tremor passed from its head through to its back. Its ears which had flapped weakly throughout the morning collapsed against the skull.

A tremor ran through the mzungu woman's body too. She woman spun and yelled words Kopus did not understand. She pulled free a panga knife left in the elephant's side and threw it into the ground so that it broke. The crack was not so loud as the heaving sobs that made her face ugly. The district chief rushed to her side, and Kopus heard him apologize again and again. The district chief guided her inside the truck and gave her a bottle of the clearest water Kopus had ever seen. Kopus' father came forward again, and the district chief shoved him away.
When the district chief carefully closed the truck door behind the woman he turned to face and yell at the people.

“Why did you kill this animal, you fools? This woman wanted to build us a new school, but now she is upset that you are eating this animal that she loves. Now she thinks you're savages! She thinks we don't deserve a school!”

The district chief grabbed the meat that Kopus' father still held and threw it to the dusty ground, kicked it.

“Get rid of this meat. Get rid of this animal. Bury it, and maybe the woman will forgive you. We will come back this evening, and I don't want to find any trace of it, or I'll hold you all responsible for this loss.”

The district chief stormed back into the truck and slammed the door so that everyone flinched. The truck moved away faster than even the elephant. Behind him Kopus heard the men and women scrape the sufuria pots against the ground to make a shallow grave for their meal.

His father called him to help, and Kopus ran. He ran between the truck's track, the dust still settling from when it passed, and cried the loudest curses he knew. Kopus ran until he collapsed and then threw stones, wishing the mzungu woman and district chief had turned back.

***

The People's Party of Kenya, the ruling party, called the contested election and its aftermath spontaneous riots, a matter best managed by local police forces. The Kenyan Democratic Union, the opposition party, called it a civil war though they could identify no armies. The international press, unwilling to take a side, called it post-election violence and civil strife.

Kopus watched the international reports from a pub in Oxford.

“What's wrong with your country, John? How many times has this happened now? Four?” asked Natalie. She was a Jew from America and was studying for just the year at Oxford. She and his other friends in England called him John because he had never told them his given name. When his parents gave him to the Catholic sister so that there would be one less child to feed, she took him to the boarding school in Nairobi and gave him his new name. She said it would prevent conflict with the children from other tribes if their heritage was obscured. Kopus performed well at that school, and his teachers conspired to find him this scholarship. Kopus told them he would prefer the University of Nairobi, but they insisted Oxford provided the best outlet for his intelligence.

Kopus was taking a sip from his pint when Natalie posed the question, and he couldn't answer, but Bernard said, “These conflicts are the natural consequence of a colonial history. The British built no infrastructure and did not adequately prepare the people for independence because they were afraid Kenya could become a competitor. They wanted Kenya to be weak and hobbled it for generations.” Bernard was Kopus' friend from France, but he was black, not white, and an atheist.

“Of course I make no apologies for what my government did to the colonies, but we're making up for it now,” said James, Kopus' white friend from England. “I don't know any nation on this planet that is more generous in aid or that operates more NGO's in developing nations. You can't blame us now. We're doing everything we can, and things aren't getting better.”

“Then what would make it better?” asked Natalie. “If there's been these decades of aid and civil strife is still the result, what will work?”

She looked toward Kopus, but he remained silent. He had no idea. The reporter announced that there were mass migrations away from contested cities to tribal homelands. The people traveled cross country on foot because militias beheaded families that stopped at their highway checkpoints.

“Perhaps,” James said, “more extreme measures are necessary. If Kenya can't govern itself then someone else should.”

“That's so racist,” Natalie said and laughed.

“I'm completely serious,” James said. “The Kenyans don't trust a different tribe to rule the nation and treat them fairly, and why should they? The country is riddled with corruption. The powerful do whatever they want and fear no reprisal. Ordinary Kenyans deserve a leader who cannot be bribed and whom everyone trusts. They should officially ask a foreigner to act as prime minister. Just look at Hong Kong. It was governed by the English, not the Chinese, for over a century, and it prospered when mainland China struggled. It could be the same for Kenya”

“I don't believe you,” Natalie said and laughed again.

The conversation turned to sustainable development or gender issues or something. Kopus wasn't sure. The blood rushed in his ears, and he could hear nothing else. He liked them, Kopus told himself. He appreciated that James, Natalie and Bernard were willing to spend time with him. James had bought Kopus his first bourbon and Bernard introduced him to the films of Werner Herzog, things he would never have known in Kenya. Kopus held his pint glass tightly to keep his hands from shaking and didn't trust himself to speak until well after the report on Kenya was finished.

A month later, when a delegation from the United Nations brokered a power-sharing deal between the People's Party of Kenya and the Kenyan Democratic Union and regular commercial flights returned between his homeland and England, Kopus took a sabbatical from his studies and flew home.

***

“Kopus!” the Chinese mine director cried, running into his office. “There is a mob outside. They have knives and bows and arrows, and our workers are preparing to meet them in kind.”

“Of course they are,” Kopus cursed. “They can never let a good thing happen.”

He threw the stack of production reports he had been studying against the table and strode out of the office, the manager hurrying to keep pace. In negotiating the rights to mine the gold vein on his tribal lands, Kopus had made his position as assistant manager contingent to the deal. The Chinese had willingly agreed when the riots at their Zambian mines had received international attention. They had intended to only keep Kopus available for the press, but the mine director had come to rely on him in handling all communications with the local workers until the mine became one of the most productive in Africa.

At the entrance to the office building, two Chinese guards had their shotguns drawn but aimed only at the ground in front of them, wary of the crowd of workers who stood between them and the approaching mob. The mine workers and Kopus' tribesmen were armed with hammers and any mining tool with an edge that could be carried by hand, and they pushed against the fence, jeering at the tribe outside.

The blood was rushing in Kopus' ears. It drowned out the insults called by his people and returned by those outside. Kopus jerked away the shotgun from the nearest Chinese guard and pushed his the crowd until he reached the fence. The Chinese mine director and guards stayed near the office building and kept the door open.

Kopus shot a shell into the air. Hammers and spears were turned toward him.

“Sit down,” Kopus yelled in their language. He shot again, and they sat.

“What are you doing, you fools?” His blood pounded. Kopus felt it in his arms and legs. It made him feel strong. “Do you know what they say about us in the West? They say we are savages, that we are not fit to govern ourselves. They call us goats and imagine themselves as our goatherds. I didn't believe them. I came here to show them that we need no one, that we need no one. This mine was the beginning. Now we have paved roads and jobs. We dug sinkholes and have water. We have electricity and stone homes. We are growing stronger, but you want to prove the West right.” Kopus glared at the tribe outside the fence. “You cannot stand the possibility that we could profit and better our condition because we once stole your goats. You decide that it is better that none of us have anything. You hold our nation and our people back, not the West. Let something good happen to us. Leave.”

Kopus spit and walked back to the offices. The Chinese manager directed the workers back to the mine. Much of the intruding tribe remained, and the men on the edges drifted away.

The next day the Chinese mine manager brought with a man some years younger than Kopus, little more than a boy, in a stained and torn shirt to Kopus' office.

“This boy has sat outside our gate since yesterday. He refuses to leave until he has spoken with you,” the Chinese mine manager said.

Kopus remained in his seat and only looked at the man. He said nothing. The man looked to the Chinese mine manager who did not look back at him.

“My name is Joseph, sir,” the man finally said to Kopus.

“What do you want?” Kopus asked when Joseph paused.

“Forgive me, sir, for saying this, sir, but you do not understand us. Sir, we are glad the mine is here. We travel on the roads and use the electricity as well as you, sir, and our lives are better for them, but it is not all better, sir. We have no sinkholes for water, and the mine takes all the water in the river since the rains returned. Our goats have nothing to drink, and they are dying. The smoke from your refinery settles on our maize fields, and kills them dead, sir. Without our goats and crops, we have nothing. Sir, we need your help.”

Kopus looked toward the Chinese mine manager and asked him, “This mine is the greatest in Africa, yes? In the coming months we will dig new shafts and will need new men for them, yes?”

The Chinese mine manager nodded.

“Then I would like all of those new men to come from this tribe. If their goats and maize die then they will have jobs with us and buy their food. They will work in crews alongside our workers now, and they will be foremen as well. Together they will be the foundation for the new Kenya and the new Africa.”

“Yes, sir,” the Chinese mine manager said.

***

Kopus stood before another crowd. They were armed with cameras and recording devices. He carried a pair of gold-plated scissors.

“When I cut this ribbon, it will signal the opening of our newest high-energy coal plant. It is the last needed to power Salama, Kenya's own technocity. Salama is the future of Kenya, East Africa and the entirety of Africa. Kenyan innovations will reach a fever pitch here where all the latest technologies for research and testing are brought together. It will create a community of developers and inventors that will only mean the best for our nation. It will rival Silicon Valley of the United States and Bangalore in India and allow Kenya to take its rightful place among the great nations of the international community. But what good are words? Let us show the world what we Kenyans are capable of.”

The assembled audience broke into wild applause and cheers. A team of engineers and technicians walked into the plant. It began to hum, and thick, black smoke poured from its towers. The cameras of the international press flashed. Video was captured from every conceivable angle, by official sources and by those who wanted evidence that they were there at the beginning of the new Africa.

Making his way through the crowd, Kopus was congratulated and thanked in every possible language. One accent caught his attention, and Kopus recognized James from Oxford. The crowd pressed tight against them, but in that brief time James elicited from Kopus a promise to see him that evening.

James was waiting in the lobby of the Grand Salama Hotel when Kopus arrived late from his interviews, and they went together to the hotel bar.

“Try this,” Kopus said and pushed a drink toward his old friend. “It is chang'aa.”

James took a careful sip. He immediately began to cough.

“Potent, yes?”

“Very,” James said with a chuckle and took a smaller sip.

“Not long ago you could only buy it from the gangs. A few years ago, though, entrepreneurs began to open chang'aa distilleries, and our people invested in them. Now Kenyan distilleries are famous throughout East Africa. It will not be long before you find chang'aa in Oxford and all quality European pubs.”

“I'm impressed,” James said, his eyes fixed on Kopus. “I've been in this country for nearly a decade now, and I've seen so much change in just this little time. Of course I heard the name Kopus Lomada and that he was behind much of it, but I never imagined it was you. I saw your picture in The Daily Nation this morning and still wouldn't believe it until I heard your voice today. Why did you always tell us your name was John?”

“What have you been doing here these last ten years?” Kopus asked.

“Working with non-profit organizations. I started with ClearEyes, which provided free eye exams and donated eyeglasses to children in Kibera, Mathare and the other slums, but that ended when you started to open those clinics and hospitals. There was the chance to move to a new ClearEyes center in Nicaragua, but I didn't want to leave. I just fell in love with Kenya. I cannot remember ever feeling so wanted or needed before in my life. I honestly have no idea why you ever wanted to leave to study in Oxford. Since ClearEyes left I've done some fundraising work with a few different environmental groups in the Central Highlands.” James took another sip of chang'aa and didn't cough.

“Kenya is a good country full of good people, yes,” Kopus agreed.

“I was in Nakuru before I came here. I was making much better time than I thought I would, so I passed through Kibera for old time's sake. I couldn't recognize the place. I had to ask someone to make sure it really was the same Kibera I worked in. It was clean. There were no dirt tracks anymore. It was all tarmac. The children all wore fresh, clean school uniforms. I felt completely safe. If I had my way, I would award you the Nobel Peace Prize for that alone. I didn't think anything could ever change it.”

“Thank you,” Kopus said. “It has been a long road, but we have done it. The transformation of Kibera began very simply. An American company opened a call center, the people had money and stability, the local economy grew with local entrepreneurs, and it just grew from there to the city you saw.”

James turned his glass of chang'aa a few times on its bottom edge against the bar.

“I'm sorry to tell you this, but this isn't entirely a personal visit,” he said. “The environmental non-profits I've been with asked me to speak to you in an official capacity. First, we want to extend our gracious congratulations to you in turning this nation around. We were afraid for the worst after the post-election violence, but it has been nothing but good news since then. Many of us were prepared to offer assistance when those storms tore apart the ports in Mombasa, but you managed the emergency response and rebuilding entirely yourselves, better even, perhaps, than we could have done.”

“Thank you,” Kopus said again.

“We have only a small request. Be careful with your growth. That coal plant you opened today was the twentieth already this year after eighty-three last year. We don't think you fully understand the impact they can have upon the environment and air quality. Along with all the mines and personal automobiles, you could be doing irreversible damage to the environment. Just look at the Trans-East African Highway. It cuts twice through the migration routes of wildebeests and zebras between Kenya and Tanzania, and your drivers have killed thousands of animals. They can't be replaced when they're gone. We don't want this to become another China.”

“You cannot be serious, my friend,” Kopus said. “That highway has been the source of so much good, not just here in Kenya but all East Africa. Safe, efficient roads have transformed our economies and allowed us to share our growth with our neighbors. I do not disagree with you that animals have died, but is it not worth it when measured against the increased quality of life for the millions of East Africans?”

“Please listen to me, Kopus. I'm not asking for just Kenya and East Africa. Other nations have seen your growth and want the same. You and Kenya are role models, and we want other countries to grow in a conscientious, sustainable way. Use sustainable technologies. Practice moderate, safe growth. If you do it, they will follow.”

Kopus carefully set his chang'aa glass down and stared full at James.

“Let us be plain with one another. What do you want from me? Want do you want from Kenya? Do you want us to close all of our coal plants and rely entirely on hydro and wind power? Do you want us to walk to Uganda and Tanzania?”
James didn't look away.

“Yes. Close down every plant that depends on non-renewable resources. Encourage public and foot transportation. Start from the beginning to assure a better life or any life at all for your children and grandchildren.”

Kopus did not look away either.

“I cannot do that. I will not do that. You would put us back decades and return Kenyans to the slums. Alternative power is not enough. We tapped all of them to the fullest decades ago, and they did not even our basic needs then. Coal power and the Trans-East-African Highway are our right. We Kenyans now enjoy basic luxuries like universal indoor plumbing and consistent electrical lighting, the same luxuries you have enjoyed for over a century. This is what we have spent the past years working for. We deserve meat at every meal. We deserve air conditioning and heating. We deserve our own cars. We have dreamed of them for decades, but now that we have them, you are telling me that we cannot keep them. We have the industry to compete with Europe, and you would still tell us what we can do, but we will not listen.”

Kopus walked away from the bar before James could say anything more.

***

“Kopus Lomada, also known as John Lomada?” the white man asked. There were six of them. There was the white man and another man just behind him on his left side, one man standing guard on either side of the room's only door, and another two men who had taken positions behind Kopus when he rose to greet them. They were all colors, but the white man had confirmed Kopus' identity. He had an English accent. It could only be deliberate. Kopus wanted to laugh, but he had only one part to play now, and he wanted to play it with dignity.

“Yes,” Kopus said.

“The International Criminal Court in The Hague has charged you with crimes against humanity for your continuing construction of coal-burning power plants and other acts of unsustainable growth in direct violation of the Shanghai Treaty. The Security Council of the United Nations has commissioned us to assure that you appear before the court, and we ask that you come with us peacefully.”

And that was it. Kopus had heard reports from Brussels and New York City intimating this action nearly a year ago, and he immediately had gone underground, no longer publicizing his upcoming appearances. He never doubted the reports' veracity. Since Kenya had entered the G-20 and forced out Italy, the casual talk in the West of a Nobel Peace Prize for Kopus had ended and serious talk of the Ascendant Africa and its attendant economic and environmental threats began. When the definition of crimes against humanity were expanded to include environmental destruction as the extermination of future generations, Kopus knew he had little time remaining. He began meeting in secret with elected and military leaders throughout Africa. Kopus had spent the last months in close talks with the prime minister of Morocco and president of Egypt to lay the last pieces. When the African Union announced Kopus as the unanimous choice for President of the Pan-African Parliament, the plan was well in motion. The only action remaining was to fly to South Africa and await his fate. Kopus' location would be publicly known. The West would arrest him, but it was done. There was nothing the West could do now.

“Of course,” Kopus said. “If the Security Council wills it, I am their servant.” Before he left with his captors, he said to his single assistant, “Please give my apologies to the parliament. I am sure they will understand my absence.”

Walking in the center of the team of six men through the halls, Kopus imagined his assistant speaking before the assembly and explaining his arrest. The leaders would inform the appropriate people, and the next step would be made. The African Union military forces sent to quell the manufactured riots in Morocco and Egypt would turn against Europe. By the end of the week, bombing runs against the continent's major military centers would be complete and the invading armies would have established bases of operations in Spain and Italy. Kopus could not imagine a credible European response to the organized African force.

He was not sure of his own fate. Perhaps his captors would execute him when the invasion began. Perhaps they would hold him as a bargaining chip for peace negotiations. Maybe bombs from African fighters would destroy wherever he was held. It didn't matter to Kopus. Europe would know that Africa was for Africans, that they had the same right to meat and clean water as them.

Outside and pushed into a massive, black sport-utility vehicle, Kopus thought he could hear applause from inside the parliament. He wanted to dance with all the pride he had atop the elephant all those years ago but contented himself with a smile.

Considering Graham Greene's "The End of the Affair"

2010-12-06T16:58:00.000-06:00

Michael Gorra discusses the one key plot point in Graham Greene's The End of the Affair during his introduction to the Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition, and I was prepared for that. I stopped reading them first when the introduction to my school library copy of Crime and Punishment pretty well revealed every major resolution but for Raskolnikov's final choice. That Anna Karenina throws herself beneath the train and that Snape kills Dumbledore are near unavoidable knowledge, but I do enjoy not knowing what will happen as much as possible.

What I was not prepared for was the revelation that Sarah Miles, the ender of the titular affair, was likely modeled on Greene's own mistress, a Catherine Walston, potentially the 'C.' to whom the novel is dedicated. Maurice Bendrix, the narrator, was an unpleasant enough character already in his selfishness, lies, obstinacy, self-centeredness, arrogance and all the rest. When it becomes possible that Bendrix is modeled on Greene himself, the novel begins to seem like so much wankery. Sarah continues to love Bendrix after she ends their affair? She tries but cannot find solace in the body of another man? Her cuckolded husband forgives Bendrix and invites him to take their spare room after Sarah's death? Sounds like a super awesome guy, that Bendrix.

No mistake, the writing in these sections is beautiful and fluent. The opening lines "A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead. I say 'one chooses' with the inaccuarte pride of a professional writer who-when he has been seriously considered at al-has been praised for his technical ability, but do I in fact of my own will choose that black wet January night on the Common, in 1946, the sight of Henry Miles slanting across the wide river of rain, or did these images choose me?" are classic. Bendrix discovers, too, a brilliantly drawn ensemble of characters, especially the investigator Albert Parkis who is at pain when writing a list of expenses for Bendrix and the street atheist Richard Smythe, but it all only seems to lead to so much self pleasure and satisfaction.

Yet the narration of Bendrix bookends the diary of Sarah Miles, one of the greatest accounts of faith I have seen in fiction outside of C.S. Lewis' The Screwtape Letters. For his personal faith and for Sarah's baptism into the Roman church, The End of the Affair is called a Catholic novel, but beyond these particulars I find nothing especially Catholic about it unless the theology is too subtle for me. In the transformation of Sarah's arguments with and hatred of God to a grudging acceptance and willing belief in Him, I see nothing that would be so foreign to a Lutheran or Pentecostal or even a Jew or Muslim as nothing would seriously change if the church Sarah runs to became a mosque or the father who baptizes her a rabbi. Sarah's prayer to a God she does not understand, much less believes in, is answered. She defies God. When she finds the miracle unbearable, she rages against Him and is prepared to break her promise to Him but finds her efforts and ploys thwarted. She comes to accept that she cannot hate Him without believing in Him. The path from there is still tenuous but it only leads in one direction.

That Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, Dennet and all the rest straw man faith is no surprise. Their works on religion are polemics and leave no room for subtlety, but I do wish they would read just Sarah's passage and realize that faith is so much more complex than they imagine. It is not some simple salve for a fear of the dark and a rustling in the bushes. It can be very unpleasant for the believer and means sacrifice but must be pursued because it is true.

McDonald's Adventures

2010-12-05T21:28:00.000-06:00

I remember the last time I ate at McDonald's. It was after a high-school cross-country meet, my junior year I think. I had a hunger and ordered five cheeseburgers. It seemed like a good deal for five dollars. I remember because I paced myself in eating them, and by the time I got to those on the bottom of the bag, a half hour after beginning, there were dark stains that covered near half of the wrapping. I ate them anyway. I still had that hunger. Considering later, I figured the stains were the grease draining and pooling out from the meat.

I'm sure I've eaten at McDonald's in the years since, maybe some french fries or a McFlurry, but I don't remember. Certainly haven't had any meals there, and my interest in eating a Value Meal has only decreased since embarking on the whole vegetarian thing.

Funny to think that I would sooner work at McDonald's than eat there again. It was slow season at the hotel, and they only needed me once in the past four weeks to clean rooms. There was rent to pay and groceries to buy, and I needed to find a job with better hours, any hours. I worked my first shift on Saturday. I start my second shift at five tomorrow morning. There will be thoughts when I spend forty hours a week pressing meat and steaming prepared eggs. Something for you all to look forward to as the short stories have slowed this past month.

Music

2010-12-05T01:53:00.002-06:00

If one were to ask, I would say that my favorite active music acts today were Rodrigo y Gabriela and Josh Ritter. Bloc Party would be among them if they hadn't broken up last year, Flogging Molly is nipping at the edges and Brandi Carlile would make a strong run at that distinction if I listened through more than one of her albums. Astor Piazzolla would certainly be there, if he weren't dead.

I sit at my computer with some regularity and play one of their albums. If I catch a groove in writing or find a fascinating article, it can be a full thirty minutes of silence before I realize nothing is playing and I have to wonder whether I had even hit the play button. I know their music. I like their music, but I can't recall hearing any of it just then. It was just white noise and blocked the sound of the neighbors upstairs or cars pulling in and out of the parking lot. The music became the background, and I didn't even notice anymore.

And that's the music I like and want to hear. Then there's the music on the car radio that keeps me from nodding off, and the music in the supermarket and restaurants that keeps me moving through the establishment in a suitably brisk manner and make way for incoming customers. There are film and television soundtracks that track the emotional beats and cues.

I do not think it is such an exaggeration to say that we don't so often really listen to music anymore. It's like a color. It adds a certain shading to the daily proceedings. We expect it to be there. It's nothing special or spectacular.

To actually hear music again and be taken up by it and lose track of everything else while it plays, to be reminded forcefully that music is not just a tempo to my life but full of textures and brilliance, that is something incredible. This song and video did it for me. Maybe you saw it already. It has over seventeen million hits on YouTube already, but that's several billion who haven't yet seen it and need to.

Favorite characters

2010-11-29T20:14:00.000-06:00

I am inspired. By a meme. After near two weeks of aborted attempts at posts I find inspiration in providing reasoning behind my selections for the 15 Favorite Characters meme, already on Facebook. Enjoy.

Rachel, K.A. Applegate's Animorphs

Tobias was trapped in the body of a red-tailed hawk. Marco was prepared to kill his mother. Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthil betrayed his people. Jake ordered the murder of his brother. Cassie was morally inconvenienced. The war against the Yeerks damaged all of the Animorphs, but none so much as Rachel. She was so subsumed by the fight that she wouldn't have been able to exist without it had she not carried out Jake's last order. Her essential conflict was repeated in each of her books after the David trilogy, but hers was the most powerful. And she was the only one to regularly zing Marco.

Screwtape, C.S. Lewis' The Screwtape Letters

The banality of evil is a not uncommon phrase. Screwtape is the methodology and bureaucracy of evil. His machinations toward all other demons, including his own nephew and suggestions on the small, gradual capture of a soul make him as terrifying as the Joker. And somehow, even though Lewis didn't exactly enjoy writing the character, he still created something that was, if not sympathetic, at least lamentable.

Tyler Durden, David Fincher's Fight Club

The passing perfection of the hand on the beach withstanding, my preference is for the film Tyler Durden whose overwhelming charisma could make you believe all the things that came out of his mouth. He had style to burn and beat a man without touching him. And we all know that he was really the grown Hobbes to Edward Norton's grown Calvin.

Jin, Shinichiro Watanabe's Samurai Champloo

Shinichiro Watanabe is fascinated by characters betrayed many times over and still beholden to their pasts no matter how long or far they go to escape them. They are the heroes of his premier series Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo. When these characters begin to shed their pasts and emotional shells to look forward to a future with their new friends, the series reach their emotional climaxes. None of the climaxes reach as high as Jin's return. He had been left for dead by Kariya Kagetoki. He could have escaped with his life but returns and accepts a killing blow to save Fuu. And he totally would have beaten Mugen given a fair chance.

The father, Tobias Wolff's "Powder"

Because even forty-eight year-old, rumpled, kind, bankrupt of honor men have their moments.

Calvin, Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes

When I was younger Hobbes was my clear favorite. He pounced and won the fights. Calvin transmogrified into a tiger. Hobbes just always seemed to have the better of Calvin. My appreciation for the boy who was Spaceman Spiff, Stupendous Man and Tracer Bullet; the boy who invented the Duplicator and Ethicator; and the boy who led GROSS as dictator-for life has only grown. He was irrepressible, and that counts for a lot.

Jim Gordon, Frank Miller's Batman: Year Zero

Jim Gordon can beat a drunk, baseball-bat-wielding former Green Beret alone, but Batman can defeat an entire SWAT team. Gordon can't even stop an out-of-control truck from running down an old woman, and she is only saved by the appearance of Batman, but Gordon is the braver and better of the two. He fights crime and the corruption of the Gotham police department without a mask. If Batman wanted security for the rest of his life, he would only have to burn the cape and cowl and live forever as Bruce Wayne. Gordon can never escape his enemies, and he has more to lose. He has a wife and children. Even if his identity were revealed, Batman has a near infinite fortune that can replace any material loss and keeps every person at arm's length. Batman wishes he could be as good as Gordon.

Lancelot, T.H. White's The Once and Future King

In the many, many retellings of the Arthurian legends, Lancelot is a beautiful playboy, but White's man with a face as ugly as a gorilla's is definitive. He knows himself to be a bad man but is desperate to be a good man and great knight in service of his king's dreams. When he is allowed to perform a miracle and heal Sir Urre, it's heartbreaking.

O.E. Parker, Flannery O'Connor's "Parker's Back"

Parker is unique among O'Connor's characters, mostly in that he is neither a jaded university student or jaded land owner. Like them, a person whom he has no interest in enters his life and becomes its focal point. Unlike them, he does not spend all of his time rejecting this person. He doesn't always understand why or enjoy doing so, but he pursues the woman who hates his tattoos, and somehow finds himself a new man at the end of it.

Morgan Grimes, Chuck

Morgan has no Intersect and has no expertise, but his loyalty to his friends has saved any number of missions and kept Chuck sane. When the CIA couldn't handle the Buy More properly, he became the manager. And the Morgan stance has defeated more than its share of villains.

Marge Simpson, The Simpsons

The only Simpson that doesn't overshadow Marge is Maggie, and that's only because she can't talk. Marge lacks the rampaging id of Homer and Bart and the unrelenting idealism of Lisa, but her sense of responsibility and unflagging love keeps the family together. When she was allowed to take center stage in episodes like "A Streetcar Named Marge" and "Marge vs. the Monorail," The Simpsons was at its best.

Woody, Toy Story

Through the de facto leader of Andy's toys the crises of becoming obsolete, finding a sort of immortality and being discarded find their focal point. Woody is not perfect. He is jealous of Buzz to the point of knocking him out a window and is tempted to join the Tokyo toy museum, but his loyalty to his friends and Andy carries him through against all challenges.

Cole Richards, Scott Kurtz's PvP

Cole Richards is the Marge Simpson of PvP, the only responsible adult amidst a company of children who would rather be playing than doing their jobs. He has his pathos in seeing the world move on from the pop culture that sustained him as a child that make his small victories, seeing Superman Returns and finally beating Max Powers, as ridiculous as his rivalry with him may be, all the sweeter.

Jesse Pinkman, Breaking Bad

While Breaking Bad is undeniably the domain of Walter White, Jesse has become the nearest thing to a moral center the drama has as the teacher has clung to his new identity as the meth supplier of Albuquerque. Jesse takes beatings from every side and still strives for human connections and relationships that White has forsaken. If the drama has any hope, it lies in Jesse. That being said, I've only seen the first two seasons. Maybe things get considerably cheerier in the third.

Inigo Montoya, William Goldman's The Princess Bride

Inigo Montoya is the best at what he does, swordplay, just as Fezzik is the strongest, Vizzini the craftiest, Buttercup the most beautiful and Humperdinck the greatest hunter, but it comes from a place of misery. Mandy Patinkin's "Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die." is legendary, but Goldman's literary Montoya edges him out for having a deeper past that is not entirely driven by revenge and the same intensity.

The following are the near misses. Maybe another character from the same work or the same creator is included proper, and this character was overlooked in the name of diversity. Perhaps I don't want to admit to liking them that much. Possibly the boundary between their reality and their fiction is disputed. In any case, if the meme expanded to thirty favorite characters, they would there.

Chewbacca, Star Wars; Elwin Ransom, C.S. Lewis' Space Trilogy; Lisa Simpson, The Simpsons; Turanga Leela, Futurama; Nightcrawler, X-Men; Troy Barnes, Community; Agatha Heterodyne, Phil and Kaja Foglio's Girl Genius; Satchel, Darby Conley's Get Fuzzy, Mark Zuckerberg, David Fincher's The Social Network; Budd, Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill, Vol. 2; Hobbes, Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes; James Wilson, House, M.D.; Cloud Strife, Final Fantasy VII; Naota Nandaba, FLCL; Spike Spiegel, Shinichiro Watanabe's Cowboy Bebop

Considering "Machine of Death"

2010-11-28T19:24:00.000-06:00

I read an article in the Boston Review earlier this month, an article unfortunately unavailable online, that discussed the impact of Amazon upon book publishing and sales. It argued that Amazon is not a force for good in the book world as it has removed the 'buy' option for books from publishers who have refused to give the online distributor deep discounts on bulk purchases and has attempted to create an early artificial ceiling on e-book prices for its Kindle, a price that would be untenable for publishers once Amazon required a larger cut of the sales.

I do not refute any of it, but I do give Amazon credit for providing a platform where it was possible for a short story collection, already not the most popular writing, written by a bunch of nobodies and illustrated by people only slightly better known to be the best selling book in America for a day. Seriously, look at the contributor biographies in the back. The most accomplished of them have webcomics. The rest offer jokes along the lines of those found in university arts and literary journals. What's more impressive about this feat is that it topped Amazon sales the same day that Keith Richards' memoir Life and Glenn Beck's latest provocation Broke were released, the sorts of books that end up in Costco because their assumed market is so large. This took some planning as the editors asked people to wait to buy Machine of Death until a certain day to pump up its sales ranking, but it is impressive nonetheless.

I'm fairly well tempted to leave this post at that. A collection of bloggers and webcomic artists independently published were more popular for a day than a member of one of the biggest bands of the twentieth century and a man whose rally in Washington D.C. attracted at least tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands. That's pretty sweet.

But what about the stories?

As you might expect in any short story collection, even one by Tobias Wolff or Raymond Carver, they are a mixed bag. Some are excellent, some are less so. They are all bound in including the titular machine of death, a device that is able to predict absolutely the means of someone's death. Any attempts to avoid or circumvent the prediction fail or just lead to it in a Death in Baghdad sort of way. Unfortunately, the predictions are not always clear. They are often vague and more frequently ironic and unexpected. CRACK can be cocaine or a break in a sidewalk. ALMOND can be choking, an allergic reaction or being buried under the tasty nuts.

The writers cover every possibility. They create origins of the machine, they consider the greater social implications of the machines, they imagine the individual struggles against and acceptances of predictions. In fact, these cover about every possible scenario, and it feels as though thirty-four stories is too long for the collection as I began to dread another overly serious story about someone refusing to accept their predicted death. For a collection inspired by a webcomic, I expected more laughs and have a preference for Brian Quinlan's "HIV Infection From Machine of Death Needle," Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw's "Exhaustion From Having Sex With A Minor" and Shaenon K. Garrity's "Prison Knife Fight." Though not without their flaws, Camille Alexa's "Flaming Marshmallow" has a wonderful voice in imagining the reformation of high school cliques in the face of the death predictions, and Jeff Stautz's "Loss of Blood" creates the best dystopian response to the predictions. Bartholomew von Klick has a great exploration of accepting death in "Shot by Sniper" while Erin McKean and William Grallo contribute some poetic pieces with "Not Waving But Drowning" and "After Many Years, Stops Breathing, While Asleep, With Smile On Face" respectively.

And what about the illustrations?

Those are pretty sweet, too. Some of the biggest names in webcomics contributed, and my favorites included Christopher Hastings, Brandon Bolt, Carly Monardo, Aaron Diaz, John Allison, Roger Langridge, Rene Engström and Ramón Pérez.

Buy Machine of Death. You'll laugh, you'll think, you'll appreciate some art, you'll stick it to a man who is a sneeze away from collapsing into a pile of cocaine and another man who is a pinprick away from popping like a balloon filled with rage

Honorable runner-up in The Global Citizen Photo Art Contest

2010-11-08T09:09:00.000-06:00

Even if they didn't select my picture to appear on the cover of the fifth volume of The Global Citizen, I do appreciate that the Krista Foundation selected it as an honorable runner-up and posted it to their website. I don't so much appreciate that they didn't tell me about this. A friend who had been informed by a friend of hers had to tell me.

I did know about its appearance as a header piece within the journal, not that you could easily recognize it. The picture was cropped to about a fifth of its original size so that you could only see the horizon line. You couldn't even see the third girl with the open kanga in it. There was a certain irony in the pairing with Dr. Moses Pulei's article as he is of the Maasai tribe, and the Pokot in East Pokot kind of freak him out.

But, anyway, it's still cool to be recognized by someone else and gives me the warm fuzzies inside.

Personal statement for the Rhodes

2010-11-05T20:42:00.000-05:00

Take this as a negative example. If you really want a Rhodes Scholarship, don't write a personal statement like this one.

I studied journalism at Gonzaga University because I believe it can change the world for the good. Quality reporting reveals injustices and informs complex issues. It makes our communities and nations better places. I enjoyed my work with the student newspaper, but I became frustrated as I realized the gap between advocacy and action. On the one hand, there are the journalists and other observers who identify problems and draw attention to them. Then there are those who do something about those problems. The ability of reporters to change the world is real, but it is a passive ability. It depends on others reading their article and acting, devising solutions, organizing support, finding funding. It is the difference between Nicholas Kristof writing about human trafficking and Carol Sasaki founding the International Humanity Foundation (IHF) to protect children from a future in prostitution. The work men and women like Mr. Kristof do is valuable and necessary, but I no longer wanted to be just the inspiration for change. I wanted to be the change itself.

To learn and to make a difference I joined IHF after graduating from Gonzaga and served as a director at its orphanage in Kenya and education center in Bali, Indonesia. That year was the most physically and emotionally challenging of my life. I was responsible for the children's health, education and happiness. I organized and attended monthly famine feeds to drought-stricken East Pokot. I managed a staff of twenty and served on the online Directors Executive Committee. I adapted to a radically different culture. The work required all my attention all day, and at times it bordered on overwhelming when there were power outages and when new children arrived at the center. I was forced to dig deeper inside myself than I ever had before to find the energy to meet it all. I was proud of what I accomplished in Africa and Asia, but I found myself frustrated again. More could have been done for the children, more needed to be done for them, but even at the extent of my abilities, I could only do so much. More people needed to be involved and contribute in different ways if a substantial difference at the orphanage, in Nakuru, in Kenya, in Africa, in the world were to happen. I could not be the change alone.

Some months into my service (and perhaps tardily), I asked myself how I had arrived in Kenya and become responsible for over one hundred children. Though I had been active in service from a young age through the Boy Scouts and my church, my high school self would have had a hard time imagining directing an orphanage on a different continent a mere five years in the future. This change was not some instantaneous transformation. It was a gradual evolution that began with a twenty-hour service placement required by my freshman colloquium and developed through a spring-break service trip to San Antonio and the student club Program for International Education and Relief where I led projects to welcome refugee immigrants to Spokane. As a junior and senior, service became a practice when I took a front-desk position at the House of Charity, a homeless shelter. As soon as I became comfortable with one position and one group, I moved on to the next, pushing further to face new challenges and to take greater leadership. By the end of my senior year, joining IHF as a center director was simply the next logical step in this progression.

In researching my undergraduate honors thesis and through conversations with the director of Gonzaga's community action department, I learned this development was designed under the theory of service-learning. It was an education that did not treat students as mere vessels to be taught skills and concepts. It was an education to make us morally better people. The concept fascinated me. This went well beyond teaching a survey of ethics and asking students to consider abstractly the categorical imperative in relation to the greatest good for the greatest number. Service-learning asked us to consider how best to apply our unique skills, passions, positions and resources for others. It encouraged us not to be content with just filling a bowl of soup at a homeless shelter or mentoring a child in need but to form relationships with the served and be available for them emotionally and socially. Service-learning demanded constant self reflection to avoid complacency and to discover where the need was greatest and where we could best serve.

Now, my year of service abroad complete, I am impelled to gather myself before taking the next step, the largest step. With the Rhodes Scholarship I will read for Higher Education and Comparative International Education, two one-year Msc degrees. Professor Ingrid Lunt, director of graduate studies for the department of education, has already indicated I would qualify for these programs.

Prepared by these studies and degrees I will educate the educated about the poor. I will design and implement study-abroad programs in developing nations and communities. Through these programs I will teach students the realities of poverty's origins and persistence. They will discover the differences between urban and rural poverty and the different challenges facing the impoverished in nations as different as Thailand and El Salvador and Guinea-Bissau. These programs will be a synthesis of advocacy and action. The students will learn first hand about some of the world's most intractable problems. They will know what needs to change, how they can change. Then, through these direct, personal experiences they will discover how they are best suited to act and to make the world better. I will teach them, and we will be the change.

The Rhodes

2010-11-04T16:55:00.000-05:00

I got an email from the selection committee of the Rhodes Scholarship Trust for District 14 earlier this week. That would be the group that chooses two students from Washington, Alaska, Idaho, Oregon, Wyoming and Montana to study at Oxford University for two years, all tuition and living and everything expenses covered, the same award that brought Bill Clinton, Nicholas Kristof and other American luminaries to England.

I tried to avoid talking about the fact that I had applied. I thought it was pretentious to even admit that I thought I had a chance. Not that I wasn't pretentious or arrogant or any of that. I thought I had an even shot at the scholarship. I looked at the biographies of Rhodes Scholars selected in the past few years and thought I measure up. I have a shot. At least with the ones whose most prominent achievements were in service. Not the ones who had an internship with the World Bank and wrote a thesis on economies of the developing world or had their research and names published in leading scientific journals. I am an Eagle Scout. I wrote an full thesis on service-learning. I graduated summa cum laude. I studied abroad and am marginally bilingual. I spent a bleeding year directing orphanages on other continents. That seemed to pretty well cover the three criteria of literary and scholarly attainments; truth, courage, devotion to duty, sympathy for and protection of the weak, kindliness, unselfishness and fellowship; and moral force of character and instincts to lead, and to take an interest in one's fellow beings. As far as I was concerned, the only criteria I missed was the demonstration of an energy to use one's talents to the full, as exemplified by fondness for and success in sports.

But I guess that was enough of an omission because that email earlier this week was to inform me that I was not selected to attend a personal interview mid-way through the month. I think it would be appropriate to say that devastated me. Sure, whenever someone mentioned the possibility of life in England after I submitted my application, I would say I needed to have the interview first, but I didn't really mean that. As much as possible, I thought I was a shoo-in for an interview and was preparing for that, which is a surprising lot like filling out a Facebook profile in being able to identify a favorite novelist, nonfiction writer, poet, painter and so on as well as demonstrating a familiarity with current events and having an opinion on them. I was trying to figure out the best way to get to the interview and who I could bum a bed or couch off of for a night.

The email sent me into a tailspin. The day after, for the fourth time in a row I was told not to come in for work since not enough rooms had been rented the night before. Without the chance for distraction through scrubbing bathrooms and making beds, I spent the day watching streaming Netflix. I watched the entire first season of Archer, got through the first few episodes of Samurai 7 and finally saw the fruits of Werner Herzog and Nicholas Cage's collaboration Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans.

I'm better now, I guess. If I think about it, it bothers me, as in What more could I have done?, but I'm not actively seeking distraction from that line of thought anymore. I'm trying to remind myself that the odds were always against me. I'm trying to focus on the positive, in that I get to spend next year with Demetra and not be separated from her by an ocean and continent.

It's weird. It was my last real opportunity to be officially told that my performance and achievements were greater than those of others. I am no athlete, obviously, so there are no Rookie of the Year or Most Valuable Player awards to compete for. I have little interest in going on to graduate school otherwise, so there are no more scholarships or fellowships to apply for or academic honors nights to attend. All part of being an adult, I hope, admitting I'm not that great and no longer being told that I am great, having to find the motivation and whatnot in myself.

Winter encroaches

2010-10-26T15:01:00.000-05:00

It's late October now, and Bozeman's Indian summer has finally passed. First frost appeared last week, the temperature hasn't broken seventy for a while and snow is forecast any day. It's all I hear people talking about. Most are not excited for this. I am.

I like winter and the snow and the long nights and the stillness imposed by the cold. I missed it in Kenya when our Christmas was very much green.

I have not, however, very often enjoyed the run up to the season. In Baudette it was rainy and wet, and the only color the leaves turned were brown. Fall was a season to muddle through before winter's wonder. Spokane was better. There was a clear fall and crispness in the air. For a couple of months it was jacket weather and the leaves went gold and orange and purple and all the rest. It was a season I could actually look forward to.

Bozeman's fall tends more toward Baudette's, but it may boast the best indicator of the coming season yet as the snow falls first on the mountains, capping them in white. The clouds pass them, and I know what will soon be coming here. It is quite excellent.

Calls to Kenya and Jakarta

2010-10-20T09:28:00.000-05:00

I like to think that I know a little something of the philosophy underlying service, having written a thesis on the subject and whatnot. Reflection is one of its core tenets. There is the reflection in the midst of service, identifying where one is doing good, how one could be doing more good, what one is learning and so on and so forth. Then, perhaps even more importantly, there is the reflection that follows service that asks all of these same questions as before but tries to integrate them into the rest of our lives and not merely allow the service to exist in that one time in the past.

I haven't been doing so well with the latter. I have excuses. Preparations for weddings, weddings, weekend trips to other states and cities, settling into a new city and finding a new job have all required my attention, but I am starting to get back into it a little, staying in touch and staying involved. This week I am writing an article about my experiences in Kenya and Indonesia for a travel magazine. Last week Demetra and I hosted a fundraising dinner for IHF. I cooked rice complemented with Indian spiced beans and lentil and potato curry. She invited her friends and professors. We called the centers on Skype, so our guests could see the children, and the children could have a performance. You'd expect something culturally relevant, something traditionally Javan from the Jakarta kids. Nope. They did a dance entirely appropriate for an American talent show to Shakira's "Waka Waka (This Time For Africa)." If nothing else, I guess it was a prime demonstration of globalisation as Indonesian children danced to a Colombian's song for South Africa.

There were some problems, and we didn't manage to call Nakuru until two hours after our guests had left and dinner was cleaned up. Surprisingly, they did go for a Pokot song and dance replete with a leader and ululations and shuffle steps and everything. Afterward we talked for a while with the old director as some eight children huddled around her, watching us and their reflection in the camera.

Things continue on in Nakuru. There is bad and there is good. That was unexpected. What was less expected was how much I missed it. Life in Nakuru was some of the toughest I have known. I had about an hour of privacy a day after the kids were locked into their dorms. There was an emergency once a week. I never felt completely comfortable in Kenya. I was always exhausted, but I have been gone only a little more than half a year and can already see the children growing, becoming less round and more lanky. For almost a year Nakuru and the children were my life, and now I couldn't feel more apart from them. It shouldn't be like that. I will not go so far as to say I want to leave right now and be a director again, but I want to see the kids again and make sure they are doing well, are happy and safe.

Anyway, if you would like to help make more good than bad in Nakuru and at the rest of our centers, please consider sponsoring a child. Thanks.

Minnesotans abroad

2010-10-17T13:49:00.000-05:00

I consider myself Minnesotan but only marginally. My driver's license is now from Washington, and I'll be living in Montana for three of the next four years. My parents are both transplants to the state. Canada was nearer than any other Minnesotan city. All of our television stations broadcast from North Dakota, and the largest local daily newspaper was printed there as well. I prefer the Packers to the Vikings and do cheer for the Twins but not to the extent of actually watching them lose every playoff series to the Yankees.

This is rather unfortunate. If I were more involved with my homestate, I would have an instant point of conversation throughout the world. Minnesotans are everywhere. When I spent five months in Germany and was taking to regular weekend trips to other countries, the only nation I didn't find a Minnesotan in was England. Paris, Istanbul, Cork, Munich, yes but none in Oxford or London. I hear that Ithaca College has a Minnesotan student club that screens Fargo every year, and I knew plenty of Minnesotans at Gonzaga. I never met any Minnesotans while in Nakuru, but my mom tells me that some members of our parish went on safari there the same time I was abroad. In Bozeman now Minnesotan license plates are second most common to Montanan. Minimal exaggeration, I see at least one new Minnesotan car every day.

Yes, it is very possible that this is confirmation bias and that Minnesotans stick in my mind for our tribal relationship, but let's pretend that's not the case. What drives Minnesotans out and into the world? To resort to a bifurcation, the only choice appears to be whether they are escaping state fairs and Scandinavian accents or are born adventurers, gluttons for adrenaline.

I prefer the second.

Thoughts?

Mammoth Hot Springs

2010-10-11T09:39:00.000-05:00

Know what I like about Yellowstone National Park? That it may be one of a handful of places on this earth where there is a higher per capita of cameras than people and not just little point-and-click jobs a few steps above being disposable but SLR's with exchangeable lenses and tripods. Whether the people just have too much disposable income and know how to properly use these or not is another matter. I guess the challenge then for anyone shooting pictures in Yellowstone is not to find something beautiful, because there is plenty of that, but to find something that no one else has yet captured or to capture it in a new and different way. I'm not going to pretend that I managed that in my one-day whirlwind visit to America's first national park, but I would like to discuss taking pictures of Mammoth Hot Springs, our first stop.
In family trips to the Canadian Rockies near a decade ago I first saw hot springs. They were little things, a spot of bubbling water or a stained line on a wall of rock. Mammoth Hot Springs is nothing like this. They are, in a word, mammoth. They rise up and extend longer than most houses. A section of the boardwalk had to be removed recently because the hot springs were still growing. The trick in this case becomes how to best capture this immense feature. This first picture tries to catch it all.

The pool at the bottom and the very lowest levels that have begun to dry out. The tables, the bubbles, the steam and the everything. I am generally of the opinion that it fails. In trying to contain everything, it gives it all short shrift. Nothing is emphasized, and some of the wonder is lost.

This second picture is slightly tighter, removing the pool at the bottom to focus on the rest, and emphasizes color, which is a good choice when the fine detail is lost, but again fails. There is too much and no particular emphasis to really draw our attention.

So I tried to focus on some individual elements of the hot springs.

Steam is in emphasis here. It seems like a safe choice. There is a certain drama to not being able to totally see everything. This picture is hobbled, though, by poor framing and composition. Steam seems to lose a great deal of mystery, too, when it is pictured on a clear, sunny day.

These two pictures examine some of the other unique physical growths of the hot springs. I'm sure they have a proper geological name somewhere, but I am content to call them tables and bubbles. They're not bad pictures. They are close enough to reveal details, and the composition is decent, especially with the tables in how they grow, but I must admit a preference for this final picture.

This is a microsm for the whole of the hot springs. There is the steam. There is the table on top. There are the bubbles. The wide range of colors are represented. It captures everything that makes the hot springs so fascinating but brings it all in close enough that the detail can be seen and appreciated.

Hotels

2010-10-04T19:30:00.000-05:00

I have a job. Someday I will write the wonders of working with one's hands as a part-time hotel housekeeper and no longer being the Man, but that day is not today.

When I had my interview with the manager, she told me the hotel was around two-and-a-half stars. This fall and winter they are making the push for the third star. This entails replacing the porcelain sinks with granite, painting new accent walls and hanging more nature watercolors. Apparently hotel stars are more about ticking items off a checklist than symbols of excellence like Michelin stars.

I can live with that. Some rooms have been finished, and I admit that they look better than the rest. What continues to bug me is that we keep the same glowing red alarm clock radios and gray plastic garbage cans, exact same that every other hotel I've ever stayed in use.

I guess these just scream "cheap" to me. Granted, these are fairly minor concerns in relation to how bright a room is or how nice the sink top is, but why not use an analog clocks or something? That would be unique. I would remember that. Why not a little something to distinguish the hotel a little bit from the competition, something a far sight cheaper than about forty pounds of imported rock?

Considering "The Social Network"

2010-10-03T18:40:00.000-05:00

I didn't very much like Michael Chabon's "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay." Part of this was the fault of its historical fiction genre where Chabon gleefully inserted his characters into scenes with Stan Lee and Salvador Dalí and their luminous ilk. This tic reached its most egregious when the title characters attended the premiere of Citizen Kane, immediately recognized its greatness and were inspired to write the greatest adventures of the Escapist. I hated that scene and would have quit reading then if I hadn't been in Kenya and without many other novels in waiting, but I found myself in something of a real life parallel when I saw the opening of David Fincher's The Social Network this Friday past.

The movie is brilliant. Beginning with the acting and moving on through to the script and score and cinematography, there is nothing less than excellent. Some forty critics on Metacritic and another one hundred and sixty-three on Rotten Tomatoes celebrate all of these.

But a work's impact isn't always about its particular brilliance. No Country for Old Men and Das Leben der Anderen and Toy Story 3 are all equally brilliant movies, but they never captured my imagination in the same was The Social Network has. I saw it at the right time. It's a movie for me and my generation.

The Social Network is about a man who did things his own way. Inspired by arrogance, spite, challenge, Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook, a website no one asked for but now is valued in the billions of dollars. It may not have been done the best way or for the best reasons, but Zuckerberg did it without kowtowing to the elite, the privileged, the powerful, the entrenched, his seniors. As much as anything else, it was an enormous middle finger to them. He did something they couldn't and did it better. Even when he paid millions of dollars to settle lawsuits, he won.

Sean Parker tells Zuckerberg late in the film "This is our time." It is. The Baby Boomers are retiring. The Internet has created something new. The opportunity to do something, to be something important is there if we reach for it.

Criticism

2010-09-30T18:17:00.000-05:00

I remember the first time I allowed my dad to critique a story of mine. It ended with me in tears, but it was better for his suggestions. It may have taken me a few months to get over that particular savaging, but then I regularly asked him to look at my homework and articles and whatnot to find sentences in need of improvement and underdeveloped themes. I was a perfectionist. I didn't just want to hand in 'A' papers. I wanted them to be the best my teachers had read. His suggestions made me a better writer. By the last years of high school he had pointed my mistakes weaknesses out often enough that I could find them myself. At Gonzaga, I never asked anyone to read my essays. I was confident in them, and that confidence was more or less rewarded. My grades at university were not significantly lower than those in high school.

I managed little writing outside of this blog while abroad, but I began work on a number of half-finished and half-started stories from my time at Gonzaga. Now, with a great deal more time, I put more effort into them. I send them off to a few friends for comment. Their comments are helpful. They point out weak characters and thematic problems. I do my best to meet these criticisms and submit the stories to contests. I don't win the contests. I begin to wonder whether my best is good enough, whether writing is even worth my time if no one else likes it very much.

This past week I spent near three hours on the phone with a Gonzaga professor discussing the thousand words of my personal statement for a scholarship. He called my first draft, and I quote, underwhelming. There was a lack of passion in the final paragraph. There were split infinitives. There were ambiguous antecedents and awkward phrases. It was, quite possibly, the best thing anyone has said about my writing in a year or two. When he pointed out that I was denigrating a former recipient of the scholarship, I laughed.

I had thought the essay was pretty decent. I was wrong. I didn't have any idea what 'pretty decent' was, much less 'good.' This wasn't my best work, and I doubt my writing before was much better. I haven't peaked. I don't even know where the summit is, but I know I can do a lot better. I can win some contests and be published. I just need a little savaging every once and a while.

Considering Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche's "Half of a Yellow Sun"

2010-09-24T16:20:00.000-05:00

Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche gave a fine TEDTalk last year. The essential message, to write what you know, is nothing special, but she illustrated it well with personal experiences of first writing stories about white-skinned, blue-eyed children eating apples when she was born in Nigeria and had only ever ate mangoes. Then she went that extra step and drew the theme out with the need to search for a diversity of voices and not let a single narrative come to dominate any single person, culture, nation, event.

You can see how this idea is present in her second novel, Half of a Yellow Sun. There are a diversity of voices. Three characters, a boy from the bush serving as houseboy to a mathematics professor, a daughter of privilege and the professor's lover, and a British expatriate live through the years preceding and during the separation of Biafra from Nigeria and the ensuing war to bring it and its oil fields back into the fold. Just in writing about this time from the Biafran perspective, Adiche is creating another voice to challenge and correct the existing narrative. It reveals little to say now that Nigeria wins the war as Biafra is unable to find any international support, and as tends to go for the winners, their story tends to be the better known.

Thematically this is all very nice and good, but in this novel it frustrates me to no end. Borges once said something along the lines that he knew a series of stories were authentically Arabian because they never once mentioned camels. They were a given and needed no exceptional recognition. If someone traveled from Medina to Mecca, it would have been redundant to write "by camel." Reading Yellow Sun you will never forget it takes place in West Africa. Igbo words are frequently dropped in conversation. They eat a lot of jollof rice and garri. It's not as egregious or as blatant as Junot Díaz in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao where footnotes are generously employed to bring foreign readers up to speed on just how terrible Rafael Trujillo was, but it's still heavy enough to jar me from the narrative when there is another reminder that this is a different place where they eat different things and mourn differently. It really bothers me then when these novels become so celebrated in America. I get the feeling that Americans read Yellow Sun and Oscar Wao as much to educate themselves as for the story itself. Now they know Biafra once existed and can drop a few good facts on the lead up to the war and the leaders should the opportunity come up in conversation.

Compare this to Sherman Alexie and Jhumpa Lahiri, two foreign-born writers whom I respect. Both write about their unique cultural experiences. Alexie's stories are set on reservations and Lahiri writes about educated Bengali immigrants in America, but there is never a sense that one is receiving a lecture on their lives and cultures. Alexie's stories are really about fathers and sons and Lahiri's are about founding one's place in a new land. That they include reservations and Bengalis is incidental. They are just the best ways they know how to express these themes.

Perhaps it's inevitable when Adiche sets her story in a time of war, when characters are caught up in events so much larger than themselves, that the larger facts of the situation come to bear, so I would like to see Adichie write something small next time, something much less epic. Maybe just the relationship between two sisters, which is by far the best aspect of Yellow Sun. It would be another voice for Adichie to share.

Considering Sherwood Anderson's "Winesburg, Ohio"

2010-09-21T16:48:00.000-05:00

It is time to add another name to the pantheon of major and minor literary deities who have disappointed me. Be it an honor or otherwise, Sherwood Anderson now stands in my mind alongside Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Anton Chekov, Alice Munro and Henry James as those writers who have been built up and then failed to earn my esteem. It's not that I couldn't respect their works and themes and ways with words, but they failed to strike that deeply resonant cord within me and remain a splinter in my mind. Perhaps it is too much to expect, but after hearing so much, anything less than a life-altering work from these writers would have to be considered a failure. Maybe, probably, my response would be different if I had read more than a single work of Anderson, but Winesburg, Ohio is held up as his greatest and sometimes used as evidence for how the Noble prize for literature has missed the actual great works of Jorges Luis Borges and Marcel Proust while passing ten million kronor to Sully Prudhomme, Frédéric Mistral and Verner von Heidenstam.

Winesburg, Ohio is a collection of vignettes about the residents of this small town. In the prologue, Anderson sets the stage for the series by writing:

That in the beginning when the world was young there were a great many thoughts but no such thing as truth. Man made the truths himself and each truth was a composite of vague thoughts. All about in the world were the truths and they were all beautiful.

...

And then the people came along. Each as he appeared snatched up one of the truths and some were quite strong and snatched up a dozen of them.

It was the truths that made the people grotesques. The old man had quite an elaborate theory concerning the matter. It was his notion that the moment one of the people took one of the truths to himself, called it his truth, and tried to live his life by it, he became a grotesque and the truth he embraced became a falsehood.

It's a pretty sentiment, though I am prone to disagree with and believe it to be nonsense, more or less. In that it's like Joel McHale in Community's season finale as he considers whether Slater, who is like him on New Year's Day with a list of resolutions, or Britta, whose is like him four weeks later when he's hitting the snooze button and screening his mother's calls, would be better for him, whether it would be better for him to strive to be a better person or to know himself. It's nicely put and thematically interesting but requires ignoring the episode just past where he gave Shirley his priority registration because of Britta's influence.

And so Anderson explores the truths and falsehoods held dearly by the residents of Winesburg, Ohio. There's the teacher who was run out of town on accusations of touching his students. There's the artist who prefer imaginary friends to the real. There's the landowner who desires a male heir to defend their property from Philistines. There's the reverend who peeks at a woman as she reads in bed. There's the man who hates women. The only two truths necessary to exist in this town are that life and marriage are miserable things and that sharing your defining story with the town's youngest reporter is a good thing.

There are a wide variety of characters present. For that and for making them each distinctive, I give Anderson credit. In that he does right in forming the backbone of the work, but then Anderson goes and does them a disservice by forcing their stories into just a few pages. Twenty-two characters are identified and explored in the 231 pages in this volume. That's just more than ten pages for each, and the typeset is not exactly compressed. It's enough room to describe each character's background and leaves little room for much else. Few characters face conflicts, but those that happened and were decided long ago. When Anderson prefers to give each character such short shrift, though, the entire book begins to fill more like a collection of character sketches and preparations for a much better, longer work. It should be no surprise that the most compelling stories in the book come from "Godliness, a Tale in Four Parts," where the three lead characters have four times the time and space to develop.

Seeking publication

2010-09-15T09:32:00.000-05:00

The blog is fun and all, but I would like to make some money with my writing, fiction in particular. As referred to earlier. I am new at this and could be totally wrong, but there appears to me two ways to do this. The one, and more lucrative, option is to write a novel and get a deal for that. The second is to submit short works to contests and journals of varying stripes. Having some four short pieces complete and another seven or so in some stage of completion, I am opting for the latter.

Thus far, I have submitted these in different combinations to five contests. It goes without saying that I have yet to win one of these. I would so totally post a pile of links to my victorious submission should that happen and exhort you all to a buy a copy of the publication were it not available online. That doesn't bother me so much. Even if I don't particularly care for the winning pieces, I know there are a lot of submissions and victory comes down to the personal taste of the editor and judges as much as anything. That can't be very well accounted for. Beside, I'm used to losing. Years of bottom half finishes in cross country and track and playing second banana to East Grand Forks in Knowledge Bowl prepared me well for that. Winning is an unexpected but pleasant surprise.

What does bother me is that I had never before heard of these journals before I found their call for entries on NewPages. Glimmer Train? Grist? Gulf Coast? Zone 3? Even once I visit their sites, I hardly even visit the fiction sections, short of getting an idea of the style and tone they are looking for. These are not journals that I have dreamed of my work published in, and I am unlikely to read much of them after I submit. They just happen to be offering some money for what I like to do, which is the crux. I don't care about the journal itself. I care about the money they could offer me.

Is this a bad thing?

I would say no and would even suggest that it isn't mercenary. I write because I enjoy it, crafting narratives and creating characters and all the rest. That someone else enjoys my work enough to make space for it in their publication and gives me some money in return is a nice bonus. Whether further people read my stories and enjoy them is largely immaterial. With writing, I've already pleased myself, and that's about all I can count on. So long as publication alone does not lead to any personal declaration of myself as a great writer, I think I will be okay, though publication is an enormous ego stoke and would hopefully push me through on larger projects when the efforts don't seem worth it.

Considering Thuy-Dzuong Nguyen's "The Truth Lenders"

2010-09-13T09:24:00.000-05:00

Know what I like about most about Scott Pilgrim vs. the World? The passion. And Brandon Routh, Kieran Culkin and Mary Elizabeth Winstead. But mostly the passion. Mostly. Scott Pilgrim was the most exhilarating films I have seen since Kung Fu Hustle. There was such a sense of joy in the entire piece. At any given moment most anything could happen because they were works of utter passion, and the creator had so fully fused the work with their interest and essence. Edgar Wright and Bryan Lee O'Malley like indie music and 8-bit video games as much as them. They're going to make a film about them, and not in some minor way where the main character enjoys a little Minus the Bear or Double Dragon in their down time. Their entire world and lives are consumed with these things. It's like an enormous middle finger to the audience. I don't care if you like all these things as much as me. I'm going to make a movie about them.

That's what Thuy-Dzuong Nguyen's first novel The Truth Lenders is like except, this being Thuy, more like a tongue sticking out than middle finger. Thuy likes journalism. The Truth Lenders has journalism and lots of it. Measurements are made with picas. Reporters and editors are a hunted species, atomically rearranged into eggplant and pitchers of water for Eastern European and African families when caught but still don disguises and creep through air vents to report on city council meetings. The News Now! Corporation is developing a pill that immerses consumers in the events of the day in their dreams.

Thuy likes home-cooked meals, and the Chef Machine, which makes any dish perfectly, is disparaged in favor of the inconsistency in quality brought on by human hands. Thuy likes dinosaurs, and they have been cloned. Thuy likes architecture and fashion, and both receive special attention. Thuy likes Eastern philosophy and creates Zen English. You get the idea. There is a sense of anything goes throughout as it all really comes down to what interests Thuy. She doesn't pander to what her audience might want to read about. First and foremost, she's writing for herself and creates in the process something unique and unlike most anything else you are likely to find.

It's appropriate that the plot centers around the development of the immersive journalism pill. Thuy calls this a multimedia novel, one designed to create a more fully realized world. On the one hand, this is done through a CD including songs performed and produced by musician friends of Thuy to represent those played by the bands SpynSpeck and Binman and the Flaw in The Truth Lenders. Myriad footnotes and short chapters include scraps of official documents and recipes for popular drinks that flesh out the world still more.

I would like to point out that The Truth Lenders was self published by Thuy and last I heard she was somewhere between one-third and one-half the way toward breaking even. Should being on the forefront of what best ought to be the next step in literature in creating an immersive environment well suited to taking advantage of the technologies offered by e-readers not be your thing, do consider supporting the efforts of a young writer. You can buy the book and read more here. Please do.

Considering "El Secreto De Sus Ojos"

2010-09-10T18:04:00.000-05:00

Bozeman has a single movie theater that dependably plays all wide releases. This is a vast improvement over Nairobi. This is not an improvement over Spokane where one could choose between four major, one second-run and one independent single-screen theater. But Bozeman opened yesterday its annual film festival, and that's cool cool, even if all of the slated films have already played at the Magic Lantern or are playing there now.

The Bozeman Film Festival began with the Argentine El Secreto De Sus Ojos, winner of this year's foreign language Oscar. This victory was apparently something of a surprise against France and Germany's entries, Un Prophète and Das Weiße Band. Having not seen it but very eager to do so, I can't speak for Prophète, but Band, despite gorgeous black and white imagery, left me cold and sad with its view askance at a small village and the violence of parents and children it obscures. I don't quite know what others found so deserving about it.

I do feel confident, though, in saying that, controversy aside, Ojos was a film deserving of this award. It does so much excellently. The acting is excellent. Every character through the lead Benjamin Esposito through to the hopeless alcoholic Pablo Sandoval to Ricardo Morales, the husband grieving for his young murdered wife is distinct and resonates. The cinematography is excellent. The shot composition in conversations gives them gravity, and there is the magnificent sequence that begins with a pan across a soccer field, moving into a chase scene that begins amidst jumping Racing fans and passes through a bathroom and the stadium's concrete hallways, ending on the field when the suspect is clipped to the ground by a charging player. It is the greatest long shot I have seen since Children of Men.

I have only a single complaint with Ojos, and it is, unfortunately, a significant one. The plot progresses on parallel tracks. Since retiring from civil service, Esposito has struggled to write a novel about a rape, murder case over twenty years old. This is the better of the tracks. The procedural is comparable in the best way to David Fincher's Zodiac. Evidence is accrued, efforts are stymied, suspects are discovered, justice and the lack thereof is made.

On the other track, Esposito pursues, both in the past and present, Soledad Villamil, a former supervisor at the courts. She is his passion, the one thing about himself that he can never change. Near every character who has met the two of them comments on this as well as the impossibility of a relationship between the two of them, though both desire it. I have never held much truck with the romantic conception of the One, the only person another could ever truly love. Attraction, admiration, lust, these things I can understand at first meeting, but they diminish. To remain strong over decades, even after other marriages, affairs and children, hints at something like obsession and does not seem quite healthy. To end with something like a declaration of love and request for either an affair or divorce on Villamil's part, just sort of sours the rest for me.

It must be said that some familiarity with Argentina is necessary to wholly understand and appreciate the film. For at least half of the film I thought that Villamil was Esposito's secretary, but it turns out the man telling her to sort files was just a sexist dick. I guess, too, that Argentina in the seventies thought that Chicago had the right concept of law and justice in the twenties.

Considering "Avatar" and "Inglourious Basterds"

2010-08-25T13:52:00.002-05:00

You know what this blog prides itself on more than anything else? Topicality. That's why rather than immediately writing this post after I saw Avatar in June rather than December and January like every other person on the planet, I held on to it until Cameron decided to release Avatar:Special Edition with an incredible nine minutes of additional footage in theaters this coming weekend. That's the sort of topicality that keeps me relevant.

To get to the point, I absolutely hated Avatar. This is a new experience for me. Movies have annoyed me (XXX), confused me (Auf der Anderen Seite), bored me (Das Boot), depressed me (Big Fan) and bitterly disappointed me (Stars Wars: The Phantom Menace), but I have never outright hated a movie before and wished that it were stricken from the earth and our collective memories. The points raised by Ross Douthat and Red Letter Media regarding Avatar I agree with. It relies on spectacle rather than developed characters or an interesting narrative. It is more manufactured than crafted. It appeals to the lowest common denominator.

Not that Avatar has some sort of unique grip on these properties. They are more or less common to every Hollywood blockbuster. Yet they escape my wrath. Even if they exist primarily to make money, they make some motions toward believing whatever message they set down. An ordinary person can become a hero. True love exists and can overcome all obstacles. Friends and family are more important than wealth. So on and so forth.

Avatar believes in nothing. Yeah, some words about an earth mother and connection with all beings and the sacredness of life are made, but Avatar doesn't really believe that. Neytiri arrives in the movie when she puts arrows into the demon cats chasing Sully down. Ignoring his attempts at thanks, she immediately drops to pray for the fallen demon cats. Prayer done, she flips out on Sully. "This is sad. Very sad only." "All this is your fault. They did not need to die."

Okay, the sanctity of life. I can deal with that. Avatar can't, at least when there's the possibility for a full thirty minutes of war, blood and catharsis. Then it's cool to run people down with rhinoceroses and cheer when a dragon tosses a gunner from his helicopter. I think the Ewok celebration after the destruction of the second Death Star was less enthusiastic than that following the retreat of all humans from Pandora.

Avatar only believes in the sacredness of life so long as it makes the Na'vi seem like a decent race. Unless, of course, you believe that humans are outside the earth mother and don't deserve life in the same way as her demon cats, but that's just sick and doesn't deserve response.

Consider, in contrast, Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds, his best by my money and much more deserving of the Best Picture Oscar than The Hurt Locker. The attention of the critics was drawn by the themes of the political, physical, metaphorical power of film, but Basterds is no less a profound statement on cinematic violence. Kind of odd considering this is Tarantino, the man who made us laugh when Vincent Vega blew off Marvin's head in the car and had the Bride begin her roaring rampage of revenge by tearing out a trucker's throat with her teeth and proceeded to slam a nurse's head in a door after cutting his Achilles tendon, but it's true.

I believe it was an interview with Giada de Laurentiis where she said that she used to eat every sweet within reach when she was younger. Then she threw from eating too many at once and was cured of that. In the same vein, Tarantino just keeps pushing the violence until the audience can't help but ask itself whether its really enjoying this, whether this is in any possible sense of the word right. It's one thing to make Neytiri say "This is sad," over a demon cat's dead body. It's another to make us uneasy with the beating of a Nazi officer by baseball bat or the shooting of Adolf Hitler, the go-to villains for Hollywood and video game designers when an entirely unsympathetic enemy is required.

It would be remiss of me not to direct you toward the extended analysis of Basterds done by Todd Alcott. No small part of the inspiration for this post comes from him, and he does it better.

For fun, this is how Avatar should have ended.