Monday, December 14, 2009
Tuesday, December 08, 2009
The Road Not Taken
CORRECTION: it turns out Sean hated the book, and tells me "I was oddly attracted to The Road. It was one of those awful books you read that drag you down and make you want to stab the author." So ignore what I say about Sean in the following.
***
I read the book "The Road" a few months back. My friend Sean asked me to do it. More than once, I nearly threw the book across the room because I found it so depressing and dull. But Sean wanted to discuss the book with me, and the book wasn't too long, so I forced myself to finish it. When I got to the end, I wished I'd never picked it up.
Oprah made this a book on her list of must reads? Seriously?
I could summarize my experience of the book as follows:
The entire world is dying. EVERYTHING SUCKS. Oh, we found some food. EVERYTHING STILL SUCKS. I used to have a pretty wife. THEN EVERYTHING SUCKED. We're traveling and people want to kill us. THESE PEOPLE SUCK. Horror! EVERYTHING SUCKS! Moral ambiguity? EVERYTHING SUCKS. Mystery! EVERYTHING SUCKS! A father wants the best for his son, even though EVERYTHING SUCKS. The end.
Sean said he liked the book because it was the first apocalypse story without a shred of hope -- society has collapsed and there's no hope of it ever coming back.
Why this would be a reason to recommend a book, I can't really say.
The other thing Sean liked was the father and son relationship. The interplay between the two characters is the real spine of the book. The father will do anything to keep his son alive. Meanwhile the son is suffering a moral crisis.
"Are we still the good guys?" the son asks.
I have a simpler question -- why don't you have names? The boy, the man, the wife... Isn't this a literary device 14 year old boys use? Isn't this novel little more than the despair of an angry, depressed adolescent, right down to the graphic scenes of cannibalism?
"I didn't want to give them names or describe the characters because I want him to be every man, and I want him to be every boy," says the writing class student. "I want people to be sucked into the story and become those people."
I can't tell you how many creative writing teachers banged us over the head with a stick whenever we tried using this gimmick. Empathy is developed by knowing more about a person, not less. If someone is just "the man" and he gets hit by a bus, I don't care. If he's "Daniel Webster" and we just spent ten minutes talking about his kids over a cup of coffee, I care when the bus crushes his head. That's how humans work.
Yes, yes, yes -- authors can break the rules. There are no rules in writing. I just found the lack of names irritating.
So, yeah, I hate the book. Sean loves it.
And to be fair, Sean is not alone. Tons of people love this book. It won a Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Critics are raving. And then there's the highest modern tribute one can pay to a book -- they've made it into a movie.
I was so genuinely baffled by the positive response the book was getting -- what am I missing here? -- that I went online and read critical reviews. Much to my surprise, a lot of people see the book as a warning about our future. We need to take the environment seriously, or this is the world we'll get. This is how bad things could be. This, they said, is a brilliant book about environmentalism.
Which is bullshit. There is no cry for stricter rules on carbon emissions in this book. The author is very careful to avoid mentioning what happened to destroy almost all the life on earth. The backdrop of doom and gloom doesn't seem political or environmental. It just is.
To me, the despair, the collapse of society, and even the end of the world -- they all feel like an emotional element to the story, and the author's state of mind. He's depressed. The world is hell. These characters are struggling in hell. The father wants to create a world for his son, and he can't. He wants the best for his son, but everything is awful. That's the story.
Saying "The Road" is a book about environmentalism is like saying the movie "The Road Warrior" is a scathing critique of our dependence on fossil fuels.
Evidently the movie tries to make a statement about environmentalism. Some scenes were filmed where real human catastrophes and pollution have created a freakish, apocalyptic landscape.
But the book is not an environmentalist screed. People who say otherwise are simply seeing what they want to see. That doesn't make them wrong, necessarily. It's one of the messages you can take away from the book, if you're so inclined. I just don't see it as intentional on the author's part.
(And for the record, neither did Sean. When I told him there were people holding up this book as an environmental statement, Sean was just as surprised as I was.)
Reviews of the movie "The Road" describe it as grim, powerful, and not for everyone. Clearly it's the must-see feel-bad movie of the year. Not for me, thanks. I don't mind art that's depressing and dark, but the book was enough. I'm not going back for seconds. There wasn't any imagery in the book that I needed spelled out in celluloid.
Taste is a matter of taste, obviously. I'm not saying everyone should think and feel like me. Maybe I'm missing some key life experience that would make the book and movie compelling. But, from my perspective, the book is so pointlessly depressing. It's a suicide note in novel form. If the author, Cormac McCarthy, blows his brains out tomorrow with a shotgun, I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest.
Instead, I would think to myself, "I was right! It was just a suicide note!"
And then I'd feel a sickening and perverse sense of satisfaction.
***
I read the book "The Road" a few months back. My friend Sean asked me to do it. More than once, I nearly threw the book across the room because I found it so depressing and dull. But Sean wanted to discuss the book with me, and the book wasn't too long, so I forced myself to finish it. When I got to the end, I wished I'd never picked it up.
Oprah made this a book on her list of must reads? Seriously?
I could summarize my experience of the book as follows:
The entire world is dying. EVERYTHING SUCKS. Oh, we found some food. EVERYTHING STILL SUCKS. I used to have a pretty wife. THEN EVERYTHING SUCKED. We're traveling and people want to kill us. THESE PEOPLE SUCK. Horror! EVERYTHING SUCKS! Moral ambiguity? EVERYTHING SUCKS. Mystery! EVERYTHING SUCKS! A father wants the best for his son, even though EVERYTHING SUCKS. The end.
Sean said he liked the book because it was the first apocalypse story without a shred of hope -- society has collapsed and there's no hope of it ever coming back.
Why this would be a reason to recommend a book, I can't really say.
The other thing Sean liked was the father and son relationship. The interplay between the two characters is the real spine of the book. The father will do anything to keep his son alive. Meanwhile the son is suffering a moral crisis.
"Are we still the good guys?" the son asks.
I have a simpler question -- why don't you have names? The boy, the man, the wife... Isn't this a literary device 14 year old boys use? Isn't this novel little more than the despair of an angry, depressed adolescent, right down to the graphic scenes of cannibalism?
"I didn't want to give them names or describe the characters because I want him to be every man, and I want him to be every boy," says the writing class student. "I want people to be sucked into the story and become those people."
I can't tell you how many creative writing teachers banged us over the head with a stick whenever we tried using this gimmick. Empathy is developed by knowing more about a person, not less. If someone is just "the man" and he gets hit by a bus, I don't care. If he's "Daniel Webster" and we just spent ten minutes talking about his kids over a cup of coffee, I care when the bus crushes his head. That's how humans work.
Yes, yes, yes -- authors can break the rules. There are no rules in writing. I just found the lack of names irritating.
So, yeah, I hate the book. Sean loves it.
And to be fair, Sean is not alone. Tons of people love this book. It won a Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Critics are raving. And then there's the highest modern tribute one can pay to a book -- they've made it into a movie.
I was so genuinely baffled by the positive response the book was getting -- what am I missing here? -- that I went online and read critical reviews. Much to my surprise, a lot of people see the book as a warning about our future. We need to take the environment seriously, or this is the world we'll get. This is how bad things could be. This, they said, is a brilliant book about environmentalism.
Which is bullshit. There is no cry for stricter rules on carbon emissions in this book. The author is very careful to avoid mentioning what happened to destroy almost all the life on earth. The backdrop of doom and gloom doesn't seem political or environmental. It just is.
To me, the despair, the collapse of society, and even the end of the world -- they all feel like an emotional element to the story, and the author's state of mind. He's depressed. The world is hell. These characters are struggling in hell. The father wants to create a world for his son, and he can't. He wants the best for his son, but everything is awful. That's the story.
Saying "The Road" is a book about environmentalism is like saying the movie "The Road Warrior" is a scathing critique of our dependence on fossil fuels.
Evidently the movie tries to make a statement about environmentalism. Some scenes were filmed where real human catastrophes and pollution have created a freakish, apocalyptic landscape.
But the book is not an environmentalist screed. People who say otherwise are simply seeing what they want to see. That doesn't make them wrong, necessarily. It's one of the messages you can take away from the book, if you're so inclined. I just don't see it as intentional on the author's part.
(And for the record, neither did Sean. When I told him there were people holding up this book as an environmental statement, Sean was just as surprised as I was.)
Reviews of the movie "The Road" describe it as grim, powerful, and not for everyone. Clearly it's the must-see feel-bad movie of the year. Not for me, thanks. I don't mind art that's depressing and dark, but the book was enough. I'm not going back for seconds. There wasn't any imagery in the book that I needed spelled out in celluloid.
Taste is a matter of taste, obviously. I'm not saying everyone should think and feel like me. Maybe I'm missing some key life experience that would make the book and movie compelling. But, from my perspective, the book is so pointlessly depressing. It's a suicide note in novel form. If the author, Cormac McCarthy, blows his brains out tomorrow with a shotgun, I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest.
Instead, I would think to myself, "I was right! It was just a suicide note!"
And then I'd feel a sickening and perverse sense of satisfaction.
Sunday, December 06, 2009
Friday, December 04, 2009
Lazy Poem
A Brief Critique of Existentialist Theatre
The actor on stage asks,
"Why isn't anything happening?"
"I was just going to say that!"
yells a member of the audience.
The actor on stage asks,
"Why isn't anything happening?"
"I was just going to say that!"
yells a member of the audience.
Wednesday, December 02, 2009
The Big Con
"I suppose I could work at McDonald's, but that stuff's for pussies. I'd rather deal crack on the street. That's where the action is. That's where the tough guys are. And, okay, selling the shit to school kids is low, but if I don't do it, somebody else will. Besides, these kids are miserable little shits. The rock gives 'em a rush. And it's not that addictive. I mean, I use crack every once in a while, and it's no big deal."
"Sure, I hit my kids a little. But that's just to teach them what's right. People are too soft on their children nowadays. Kids need to know you're serious. And what are words, without force? They're empty, unless you back them up with a smack now and then. What, are you one of those pussy types, thinks kids are precious? Give them an inch and they'll stab you in the back with it. The little buggers are monsters."
"All right, it was probably wrong to cook the books. But you know, we were all making money there, for a little while. We were all making millions. Sure, I cut some corners to make it happen, but isn't that what a CEO is supposed to do? I can't run a multimillion dollar corporation and live like a goddamn Boy Scout. So, I got caught. I rolled the dice pretty good, for a while there. We all made money. Sure, some little people got hurt. But me, my friends, the shareholders -- we were all riding high. For a while. Guess the party had to end sometime."
Now what's your story? And what's my story? And what's everyone else's story?
"Did you see what they did, over there? I knew it! The whole time, I knew it. You can't trust 'em. Isn't that what I told you? Can't trust 'em. They poison the wells. That's what they do. They don't care about us."
THEY ARE US, GOD DAMN IT. Who do you think they are?
When the football team wins -- WE WON.
When the same football team loses -- THEY LOST.
Evil is what other people do. What I do is entirely justifiable.
Oldest con game in the world. People have been running it on themselves since the dawn of time.
"Sure, I hit my kids a little. But that's just to teach them what's right. People are too soft on their children nowadays. Kids need to know you're serious. And what are words, without force? They're empty, unless you back them up with a smack now and then. What, are you one of those pussy types, thinks kids are precious? Give them an inch and they'll stab you in the back with it. The little buggers are monsters."
"All right, it was probably wrong to cook the books. But you know, we were all making money there, for a little while. We were all making millions. Sure, I cut some corners to make it happen, but isn't that what a CEO is supposed to do? I can't run a multimillion dollar corporation and live like a goddamn Boy Scout. So, I got caught. I rolled the dice pretty good, for a while there. We all made money. Sure, some little people got hurt. But me, my friends, the shareholders -- we were all riding high. For a while. Guess the party had to end sometime."
Now what's your story? And what's my story? And what's everyone else's story?
"Did you see what they did, over there? I knew it! The whole time, I knew it. You can't trust 'em. Isn't that what I told you? Can't trust 'em. They poison the wells. That's what they do. They don't care about us."
THEY ARE US, GOD DAMN IT. Who do you think they are?
When the football team wins -- WE WON.
When the same football team loses -- THEY LOST.
Evil is what other people do. What I do is entirely justifiable.
Oldest con game in the world. People have been running it on themselves since the dawn of time.
Tuesday, December 01, 2009
Chess
"You can't beat me in chess.
Whenever a loss is in sight,
I flip over the entire board
and wish you a pleasant goodnight."
"I'll win this time, sir --
And won't your face be red!
-- when I pick up the chessboard
and smash it over your head."
"You'd never have a chance!
I'll distract with a battle cry,
scoop up a pointy bishop
and thrust him into your eye!"
"Using the board as a shield,
deflecting your bishop's blows,
I'll scoop up one of your rooks,
and stuff him right up your nose."
And so the chess masters raged,
deep into the dark of night,
plotting every swing they'd take
without ever starting to fight.
Monday, November 30, 2009
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