Girls Looking Like Renaissance Duchesses
Now Playing: The New Pornographers--"The Spirit of Giving"

They're sprouting all over the place, and it has to stop. 

In a time when even history starts to seem a little "samey" to me (probably a result of overconsumption), I'm starting to find comfort in the voluminous  literature on world cuisine--cookbooks, food histories, and even plant and animal biology and chemistry (only Dawkins and Gould so far, but there'll be more). It all comes at a point where I'm starting to better figure my new career path. Cuisine in general--I may have expressed this before--is one of the most important (if not the most important) subjects for human study, and yet it gets taken for granted, even in such a relatively well-educated age in terms of human consumption. I confess my own culpability in the situation, to be sure. Though I work with food for a living (and increasingly, I think, as a vocation), it's still hard for me not to roll my eyes when I hear some couple that make probably five times what I do in a year wax rhapsodic over a razor-thin slice of jamon serrano that might have come from the kind of eternally secluded Spanish village that figured in Tombs of the Blind Dead or The Vampires' Night Orgy. One of my favorite humorists, Michael J. Nelson, in Mind Over Matters, wrote a hilariously derisive essay on food snobs ("finally... we must do something about Tuscany") that recommended their force-feeding with "those unnaturally red Dolly Madison Zingers" and I found it impossible not to laugh and sympathize. It's also hard for someone living well below the American median income to appreciate a way of life that's marketed, either explicitly or implicitly, to the upper middle class. The kind of "revolution" that a lot of "foodies" expect as a result of their educational efforts will never get off the ground in this country (and indeed others) unless some way is found to make it affordable for an average citizen increasingly squeezed by a grotesquely unequal distribution of income and resources. That I work (and often live) in an environment where this lifestyle is largely celebrated only complicates matters.

Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, Near A Thousand Tables: A History of Food (2002): Fernandez-Armesto has long been one of my favorite historians both for the fluency and erudition of his writing and for his unnerving knack of focusing on subjects of especial interest to myself: childhood fascinations (the history of world, as opposed to European, exploration in Pathfinders, which I still have to read but which looks like a beaut), overriding adult concerns (the comparative history of world peoples, environments and cultures in Millennium and Civilizations, and even atavistic interests due to family ancestry (Before Columbus, his early study of the medieval Spanish conquest of the Canary Islands). Now, it seems, he's turned his powers on the history of food. A self-confessed food snob, Fernandez-Armesto manages at least to point the way towards a possible history of food, though, even with all his talent, Near A Thousand Tables still seems unsatisfying. I think part of the problem may be the sheer enormity of the task. The work tracks the history of food thematically, using social and echnological developments such as the "Neolithic Revolution" and the Columbian contact with the Americas as springboards for well-disciplined ruminations on the nature of food and eating. Much of it builds on his earlier work in Millennium and Civilizations (indeed, Near A Thousand Tables started out as an over-abundance of notes on the multifarious subjects of study with which he had to contend--in itself highlighting the subject's importance). Though interesting and informative as always (and with a delightful lack of the kind of woolly-headed, soi-disant "naturalism" sadly endemic to food writing), for me it seemed a little too wide-ranigng, without enough definite information or discrete detail to quite satisfy me. That said, though, the field is probably in its relative infancy, and Near A Thousand Tables at least marks an important step.

Michael Symons, A History of Cooks and Cooking (1998): Indeed, I wonder if Fernandez-Armesto decided to write his history as a result of dissatisfaction with Symons' own, which has an eminently admirable object but mostly fails, I think, to achieve it. An Australian historian and food writer, Symons brings a refreshingly local perspective to his work (using a Sydney restaurant as his starting point and making frequent reference to Australian achievements in cuisine) but can't seem to decide whether his study is an actual history or one of those airy, maudlin cleebrations of food. Whereas Fernandez-Armesto at least has a definite and recognizable structure, Symons flails all over the place in an overly "philosophical" attempt to find some meaning in the most important of human activities. He does a good turn by focusing on the cook's place in the great chain, and much of the first half explores, however messily, what cooks are and what they do (do bakers qualify, for example?)*. Unfortunately, the frequent philosophical asides and recurring preciousness make A History an often irritating experience. Fortunately, the second half of the book is much better as it lays down an actual history, particularly good on the transition to civilization in which specialized cooking, he contends, played an important role, particularly in the development of Sumerian temple-cities. So it's worth reading in the end, but if you're looking for a comprehensive history of cooking and cuisine, I'd look elsewhere (not that I've found one yet).

*Shit, yeah. 

Ants Won't Listen To Sweet Reason
Now Playing: Roxy Music--"Still Falls The Rain"

Matt Jones, The Black Path (2008): Matt Jones has long been my favorite local singer-songwriter, and it's been a corresponding shame that he's only had one recording to his name for a long time, 2005's EP Right To Arms. Matt's carved out a unique place for himself in the local scene through his offbeat, rather minimal approach to the country-folk style favored by (too) many area bands and artists as well as through his remarkable voice, which is hard to describe--alternately sweet, mellow and abrasive all at once. His (relatively) new full-length album preserves his sound while using masterful production (courtesy of Jim Roll, another great local singer-songwriter) to reach new places. Some songs could have come right off Right To Arms, and in fact, one did: "Marble Sleeves," in this incarnation a mellower, more contemplative tune than its original. The jazzy, subtly anthemic opener, "Threadlines," boasts a strange, repetitive sort of harmony, almost cellular in the sense of Philip Glass or Steve Reich, that recurs in several songs throughout the album, particularly "Jugulars, Bone, and Blisters." "A Sort of So Long" and "Waltzing With Lady Dawn" are live favorites finally transposed to CD that come awfully close to the miniature feel of Right To Arms. Elsewhere, Matt employs his fondness for Americana and obsession with the Civil War to startling effect (we once had a discussion concerning his forearm tattoo, an accurate depiction of the battle lines at Gettysburg, where we both had people on opposite sides), in the gorgeous instrumental "Antietam" and "We Held For Nothing," a swelling, evocatively-titled piece reminiscent of a genuine bluegrass version of a Copland orchestral homage. The closer, "Nothing Joyful," forms a questioning, open-ended conclusion to the album, particularly in its hypnotic instrumental beginning. While favorites of mine--such as "Bearded Faces" and the (so far as I know) only-performed-once "Dagger"--didn't make it, the long-awaited The Black Path is easily one of the best albums to appear locally in a long time.

 Sari Brown, The Color Suite (2009): Speaking of offbeat singer-songwriters with remarkable voices, Sari Brown's also long-awaited follow-up to her 2005 For What Is The Journey has finally come out in a sumptuously designed package that includes poetry and musings about life, friendship and politics. Sari's voice can start out sweet and gentle and then morph almost seamlessly into this leonine growl that stunned the hell out of me when I first heard it. Many of the songs involve colors, hence the album title, and all seem to deal with the same themes explored in the writing. "Blue Ribbon," a deceptively quaint little tune, almost starts off like John Lennon's "Nobody Told Me" in a way that enlivens the rest of the song with the sense that anything can happen. "Purple Mess" is a live favorite with a call-and-response chorus that's almost like a secular hymn. My favorite, "Red Line" (which I don't recall hearing live) is a jazzy, catchy tune with superb string arrangements that remind me of the best of Van Morrison's early stuff. "Lesley" reveals a touching ode to friendship coupled with an open letter to the eponymous correspondent. The last song, "Black Plum," is a little masterpiece, a gently satirical (at least it sounded that way to me) examination of love and how it's seen. All throughout, the songs are strengthened by Sari's voice, the imaginative production, and the percussive force of her guitar playing, which all too often can seem overbearing in lesser hands, but here gives a powerful musical undercurrent to the lyrics. After something of a local drought in my musical universe, The Color Suite (and, indeed, The Black Path) are cause for rejoicing.

The Majesty of Pointless Bickering
Now Playing: Sam Cooke--"Twistin' The Night Away"

Star Trek (2009): I've never considered myself a Trekkie; my primary scifi loyalty has always been to Doctor Who, and I found it difficult to get worked up about The Next Generation or any of its limitless spinoffs ("Mr. Kim, your hair is out of place!!!"). I enjoyed the original series and most of its movies, although for various reasons I tend to subconsciously elide the first part of the second's title, considering it solely as The Wrath of Khan. Even with my reservations, I've never had anything against Star Trek, and was very excited to see the new version from J.J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof (the latter two responsible for the interminable Lost, so I certainly had reason to be wary). The new Star Trek, I have to say, is a brilliant, well-acted, near-literal re-invention of the franchise that I hope leads to a new series. A Federation starship encounters a mysterious, ferociously-armed vessel; in the ensuing battle, the starship is destroyed, commanded by George Kirk, who's nevertheless ensured the escape of his wife and newborn son, James. Two decades later, Jim Kirk (Chris Pine) becomes a small-town Iowa layabout getting in fights with Starfleet cadets until he enlists himself after being set straight by the formidable Captain Pike (Bruce Greenwood). His fellow students, portentously enough, include Dr. Leonard McCoy (Karl Urban), Uhura (Zoe Saldana) and Spock. The last-named's childhood conflicts with fellow Vulcans, as in the original "mythos", help to complicate his own feelings concerning his half-human ancestry. Describing the plot would be a bit of a spoiler in itself, so I'll confine myself to saying that the one weak link is the rather lackluster Romulan villain Nero, played by Eric Bana; something tells me that if he'd been given a "fake chest and cheesy quotes from Moby Dick", as my college chum Mike put it fifteen years ago in relation to the still-greatest of Star Trek movies, things probably would have gone better. Fortunately, it doesn't matter, as the film's most important task is to introduce us to this new perspective on the Star Trek world, and as such succeeds brilliantly. The issues the plot raises are handled with an admirably (and, given the Lost connection, surprisingly) deft touch by Abrams, especially as each sci-fi universe has their own unique (and often tortuous) way of managing them. In many ways, the film's excellence comes down to the cast, who I thought would be good, but who outdid my expectations. Pine, who looked like he could have been a simpering teen-film nonentity, is great as Kirk, paying homage to the swinging-dick machismo of his illustrious predecessor but adding a little Kurt Russell-ish swagger of his own (and getting repeatedly slapped down for it in a number of ways). His chemistry with Quinto as Spock is very convincing, which bodes well for the new franchise's further prospects. Quinto is the young Spock, a little more waspish and impulsive, but fitting a believably callow personality within Vulcan culture. Urban's McCoy comes closest to being a cartoon, but then, so did the original in some ways, and he does a fantastic job with the accent and mannerisms. Scotty (Simon Pegg), Sulu (John Cho), and Chekhov (Anton Yelchin) all sign on for the ride, all familiar, yet all believably their own characters (already partial to Pegg after Shaun of the Dead, I was an even bigger fan after the wonderful Big Train). The best surprise is Uhura, who Zoe Saldana invests with a depth and personality that Nichelle Nichols never quite did (was never allowed to?) in the original storylines. The cast's ability results in a collaborative, ensemble feel that echoes the idealistic aims of the original series and stands out among modern-day blockbusters. A word, too, about the filmmakers' light touch with in-jokes. This film could have been a painful blizzard of self-reference, but all the knowing winks to the fans never last longer or leave a deeper imprint than necessary (my personal favorites being Kirk's response to the Kobayashi Maru test and the fate of the hapless red-shirted Engineer Olson). The lame villain and at least one why-bother celebrity cameo aside (although another surprisingly works brilliantly, as does--less surprisingly--the widely publicized casting of Leonard Nimoy), I can't get over how well done it was. Seeing at Quality 16, reminiscent of the theaters of my youth (with a sound system now probably equivalent to the TV at my house), in the midst of an appreciative matinee audience, was probably the ideal venue and helped to sweeten the deal no end. May there be many more of these new Star Treks.

I Am Curious: Yellow (1967): Vilgot Sjoman's classic art-house hit about a young woman's political and sexual tribulations in social-democratic Sweden had a charactersitically sumptuous release on Criterion a few years back. I'm not sure how I first heard of it, but it's fantastic. Lena (Lena Nyman) is an actress playing a girl named Lena Nyman in contemporary Sweden (the refractive nature of the filmmaking process and drama itself much more ably managed than, say, the bloated American overkill of Synecdoche, New York), getting involved in demonstrations, interviewing random people on the street, and sleeping with her boyfriend Borje (Borje Ahlstedt). The action is a mix of graphic realism and understated surrealism, as the characters interact with people playing the Swedish royal family, Swedish politicians such as Olof Palme, and real-life interviews with notables such as Martin Luther King, Jr. and Yevgeny Yevtushenko. In the process, the audience and characters learn a great deal about themselves and about Swedish society, especially the continuing tenacity of a class system in an allegedly social-democratic state. I wasn't sure how I was going to react to this one, but I loved it, mainly due to Nyman's performance. Not only does she have to find herself in a sea of conflicting images and ideas that threaten to stifle her own voice, but she also has to deal with the jealousy of the director (Sjoman himself) on account of her (on- and off-screen) boyfriend, and the boyfriend's jealousy of her own indomitable spirit (as well as a number of "daddy issues"). Nyman's adorable, but never in an overly "cute" way--she presents a whole host of different states and responses to the various crises in her life (at times, she reminded me of a somewhat more "officially" highbrow version of Vanessa Howard in 1970's Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny and Girly). The film's startlingly relevant to the present day, especially with Nyman's insecurity regarding her own body image. I Am Curious: Yellow was banned in a number of countries, including the U.S., for its graphic nudity and suggestive moments, entertainingly and thought-provokingly chronicled in the extras, which include interviews with the director and others involved in bringing the film to the U.S., as well as trial transcripts from the resulting 1968 obscenity hearings (including expert witnesses such as Norman Mailer and Stanley Kauffmann). A superb riposte to some of the more famous--and arid--classics of Scandinavian cinema (especially Bergman's), it's a marvelous portrait of an interesting time and a tour de force performance from an excellent actress. 

Drunken Scones
Now Playing: Germaine Jackson--"Let's Get Serious"

The Tickled Fancy Burlesque Company played the Blind Pig again last night (supported by Zebras, Counter Cosby, and preceding the Dead Ringers) and delivered a show that, if anything, far surpassed their previous one, which was entertaining enough to begin with. The framing device was brilliant, even if I cringed just a little at the beginning. MC Miss Annie Thing gets involved with the Doctor (my co-worker Joe) and his TARDIS--a Doctor Who reference in a burlesque show (they had a sonic screwdriver and everything). What was I worried about? Fellow MC Chuck Rock realizes they can use the time machine to load up on Sparks before it was "spoiled," and so off they go to various eras throughout history where... women creatively take their clothes off to music. Act settings ranged from prehistoric times to the far, dental hygiene-oriented future, with various performers playing the Virgin Mary, Sarah Palin and sundry. Joe did a marvelous bit as a malfunctioning robot, and Annie Thing and Lydia Valentine had a thrilling showdown in a Western saloon with lots of wonderfully adept gun-twirling. The writing was the perfect balance of witty and bawdy, just the thing for a burlesque show. It was all brilliant, although it I had to pick a favorite, it would probably be Zlata Trouble's incisive recreation of the dark days of Communism in Eastern Europe (natch). It was all the better after a shitty day at work--the perfect remedy. Hats off to all involved; I can't wait for the next show to see what they're going to do next.

Laura Miller, The Magician's Book: A Skeptic's Adventures In Narnia (2008): I've written elsewhere of my fondness for C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia, especially in comparison to J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, and last year, Laura Miller, one of the founders of Salon.com, decided to revisit her childhood enthusiasm and teenage betrayal (due to what she saw as the series' "missionary" ambitions) from the standpoint of middle age. The Magician's Book is, by and large, an interesting and well-written thematic analysis of Lewis, taking into account his own personal history and literary influences without these seeming forced or shoehorned. She explores the initial features of Narnia--the position of Aslan, the primacy of talking animals--and then gets into more interesting territory, especially when it comes to the relationship between longtime friends and occasional rivals Lewis and Tolkien, both professors at Oxford for much of the twentieth century (in, respectively, literature and philology, a difference that had echoes in the ways they both treated their fictional creations). It might seem a little unfair to both writers to consider their work so heavily in relation to each other, but both Lewis and Tolkien drank largely from the same spring, and their mutual criticism helped to determine their literary output.

What emerges is a fundamental difference in perspective that well expresses many of my own feelings about the two writers: Tolkien created a world, while Lewis wrote a story. I felt this when I first read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings at about nine or ten, even as I enjoyed them; there was always something vaguely unsatisfactory about Tolkien, empty desite his epic feat of world-building*. I enjoyed Lewis' work more, probably at first because the talking animals were so cool, but later realizing that it had to do with the greater psychological complexity of the characters and the superiority of prose. Miller clarifies these matters in a way I greatly appreciate. The tribulations of Edmund Pevensie and Eustace Scrubb in The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader show how central characters can actually go wrong and yet right their wrongs (Miller incisively compares their struggles to Harry Potter's, in J.K. Rowling's allegedly more complex series--Harry's always revealed to be blameless in the end, his greatest crime the occasional loss of temper towards his friends). The descriptions of the various witches in the books reveal a sensuality that seems out of place in what's often too simplistically alleged to be a "Christian story" (Miller singles out a passage in The Last Battle, the most allegedly "Christian" of them all, to demonstrate the folly of this presumption). Mind you, at nine or ten, I would have singled out Pauline Baynes' chapter illustrations of Jill Pole in The Silver Chair. Miller even examines the relationship Lewis had with his illustrator, asserting that Baynes understood the visual nature of Lewis' world better than Lewis (reading his own criticisms, I have to agree, especially as he apparently had little affinity for visual art). This visual and prosaic sensuality had a great deal to do with Lewis' understanding of his own nature--he viewed himself, as many of the ancients did, as a combination of male and female, even referencing "the Tao" at one point--and the nature of writing.

This last distinction is particularly interesting when comparing Lewis with Tolkien. Lewis, the literature don, believed that the human imagination consisted of a vast array of ideas and beliefs that had all already been thought or believed; the corpus of human intellectual endeavor since--in art, literature, philosophy--was simply a clever rearrangement of these ideas (partially anticipating, perhaps, the still fraught cultural concept of "memes" as derived from Richard Dawkins' biology classic The Selfish Gene some decades later). I remember reading such a passage (in Lewis' An Experiment in Criticism or possibly On Stories) sometime back and regarding it as a simple, elegant expression of something I had long believed myself. As such, he saw little wrong with throwing everything but the kitchen sink into his Narnia books--medieval philosophy and culture, classical mythology, Norse legends--believing (rightly, I think) that his forbears had done very much the same thing. Tolkien the philologist, on the other hand, was notoriously prickly when it came to the idea of outside influence on his own writing, going to the trouble of creating his own world largely so there could be a people, however fictitious, to speak his own "pure" language, untroubled by linguistic "contamination" (he regarded the Norman Conquest as a colossal tragedy, not least for his own beloved Anglo-Saxon language). Despite his own obvious debts, he consistently downplayed the "real" history of Middle-Earth (other than to acknowledge earlier Victorian restorers of the "romance" such as William Morris and George MacDonald), especially in contrast to his friend's Narnia, which he disliked for precisely the same manner in which Lewis created it. A host of other fascinating revelations by Miller further enriches the already fascinating picture of the two men's friendship. To be sure, Miller delves deep into other aspects of Lewis' life (his relations with his father and brother most of all), but the main focus seems to be theis complex relationship between the two lead figures in "the Inklings", and uses their intellectual exchange as the centerpiece for her mostly excellent and penetrating analysis of Lewis' Narnia and its times.

 There's a bit to dislike here, of course. While I'd be (and occasionally have been) the last to deny the value of thoroughly examining the history and values of the worlds in which writers wrote (as opposed to the worlds they created), the chapter on Lewis' quasi-racist treatment of the vaguely Middle Eastern Calormenes struck me as pretty redundant for twenty-first century readers (it's what one would largely expect, almost offhand, from a conservative Englishman of the period) and unpleasantly reminiscent of L.Sprague De Camp's "gotcha!" treatment of his subject's less likable qualities in his 1975 biography of H.P. Lovecraft (Miller's examination of Lewis' attitude towards women is a little more illuminating, especially given Lewis' dualistic conception of his own character). Miller shares, too, what I'm coming to understand as the mainstream critic's dislike for or apathy to speculative fiction; Lewis presumably made the cut due to her teacher's enthusiasm, Tolkien for his cultic qualities, and (later) J.K. Rowling because of her (mostly well-deserved, I hasten to add) success as a literary phenomenon. She read, at a much earlier age than I, Imaginary Worlds, Lin Carter's literary study of fantasy which stressed Lewis' Christian apologetics in a critical way and alerted her to its supposed religious agenda, and is rather hard on poor old Carter ("one of those inexhaustible autodidacts who flourish at the margins of American culture"**). He wasn't the best writer, to be sure, but his boisterous enthusiasm  made the book a lot more interesting and entertaining than most literary criticism (admittedly, sometimes unintentionally so--I'll have to discuss Imaginary Worlds myself one of these days) and effectively championed some undeservedly forgotten works (Miller doesn't seem to think much of William Morris, either, the man both Lewis and Tolkien acknowledged as one of their primary influences). A recurrent strategy to quiz various contemporary literary enthusiasts, such as Jonathan Franzen, on their own reactions only pays off when someone like Neil Gaiman, about whom I have very mixed feelings but at least isn't ashamed of liking what he likes, is able to hold forth. Miller, interestingly, writes critically elsewhere about the "in-crowd" clubbiness of the Narnia books without the slightest trace of irony (from someone who probably has to take Camille Paglia seriously, no less). This attitude results in the faint whiff of condescension throughout this otherwise largely excellent book, regrettable proof that the snootiness and self-importance Lewis and Tolkien both despised in so much "modern fiction" still persists to some extent even in reviewers and critics who purport to admire their own works. 

*I also sensed how addictive the whole Middle-Earth project can be, as expressed a few years back in one of my favorite passages from Kevin Murphy's wonderful A Year At The Movies: One Man's Filmgoing Odyssey (2002): 

    "Back in college when my life was miserable, I disappeared into music, marijuana, downhill skiing, and Tolkien. I read the Lord of the Rings trilogy over and over again, wanting to make it a part of my life--or, more correctly, make my life a part of the story ... Tolkien was a sort of fantasy therapy for a point in my life when I was rudderless and depressed; indeed it would help me get through many bad days. 

    "You should also know that at the time I was listening to music from the Moody Blues, Yes, Emerson Lake and Palmer, Rick Wakeman, and the like. Occasionally I would hang around the fringes of those traveling fantasy cults, the Renaissance festivals.

    "I owned a leather hat. I was a mess.

    "Then, in about 1979, I lost interest. Completely. And I can remember exactly when and why: Someone played me the album London Calling by the Clash, both discs, both sides."

It's hard to imagine anything more foreign to Tolkien's conception of Englishness--or more generally awesome--than London Calling (at least in 1979), and it's thrilling to see how narrow was my own escape somewhere around middle school. 

 **Either this means "outside academia" or she forgot to substitute the word "publishing" for "culture."

Papers In Weimar
Now Playing: Stereolab--"Cybele's Reverie"

A beloved and influential teacher of mine died last week--I only just found out as I've been away from the Internet since Thursday. Mr. Gebauer taught a number of social studies and humanities classes at McKinley High School in Baton Rouge, including (as far as I was concerned) world geography, world history, "free enterprise," and philosophy. He was a fun and inspiring man with whom I had the occasional clash of personality that made learning a lot more fraught and interesting than it might have been had he--okay, either of us--been less combative or boisterous. My concept of history and the world bears little resemblance these days to what I--or he, I'm guessing--used to think, but I seriously doubt I'd have arrived at my conclusions or been able to question them when needed without his example or teaching. I kept in fitful touch over the years, but hadn't talked to him in a long time. He will be greatly missed, by myself and, if the funeral guest book is any indication, by all the rest of his students.

Being away from the Internet feels quite liberating, incidentally. I honestly haven't gotten a lot done, but it somehow feels like it. I'll have to reconcile the ideal with the reality in a more satisfying way, but for now I'll just like what I'm doing with it all. That'll probably make sense once I think about it enough.

Oh Yeah? Well, I've Got An Armor Class Of Eight Jillion!!!
Now Playing: Kristin Hersh--"Costa RIca"

The Hobbit (1937): I read the book and saw the Rankin-Bass animated film (with Match Game fixture Orson Bean as Bilbo Baggins and John Huston, three years after portraying Noah Cross, one of the screen's great forces for evil, in Roman Polanski's Chinatown, lending his voice to one of literature's great forces for good as Gandalf), made forty years after publication, as a boy and loved them both, though largely forsaking them for Tolkien's greater opus as I grew older. I grew out of The Lord of the Rings decades ago for various reasons: a nagging feeling of emptiness on reading it that I recognized while still a kid, the greater (though smugger and more painfully allegorical) achievement of Tolkien's friend and colleague C.S. Lewis with The Chronicles of Narnia, and a greater familiarity with Tolkien's role models both medieval and modern, such as the Prose Edda and Heimskringla of Icelandic saga-master Snorri Sturluson and the Victorian fantasies of George Macdonald and William Morris. For some time, I always spoke as if I preferred The Hobbit. After putting the theory to the test, I think that's still true, but not by much. Hole-dwelling hobbit Bilbo Baggins leads a contented life in the Shire, a bucolic landscape of small farmers and artisans, until a surprise visit by the mysterious wizard Gandalf, bringing in his train a raft of dwarves who hire Bilbo for a dangerous job in far-off parts, involving enchanted forests, nasty goblins, cranky elves, greedy townsfolk, the ferocious, wily dragon Smaug, and the sinister, cave-dwelling Gollum, the last probably Tolkien's finest fictional creation (for what that's worth). It's a fun story for much of the way, and the sequences in the Misty Mountains in particular are well-handled. Apart from Gollum, Gandalf, Bilbo and Smaug are terrific characters. Other than that, there are a number of quibbles, most of them leading back to the notion that Tolkien created a world but forgot to write a story. Tolkien was never a great stylist, and the prose clunks abysmally at times. Chunks of the story that were presumably included as a nod to the mythical inspirations for Tolkien's writing (Beorn's house, for example) could easily be excised. Were the writing more inspiring, they'd work very well, but the matter-of-fact prose simply makes them a distraction, sitting uneasily alongside the folkloric weight of the material. C.S. Lewis had similar problems in a way, but he managed to make it flow in a way to which Tolkien could never rise (both of them probably could have taken lessons from Jack Vance, had that been possible). The major criticisms can be found, much better expressed, in Lin Carter's excellent work on Tolkien's creations, Tolkien: A Look Behind The Lord of the Rings (1969). In the end, The Hobbit is well worth reading, but for my money hardly an icon (of childhood or of any sort) anymore.

 Earthsea (2004): In contrast, Ursula LeGuin's Earthsea trilogy had steadily grown in my estimation since I read it shortly after (or while) reading The Lord of the Rings (in fifth grade or so). LeGuin came from a vastly different background than Tolkien, with a skeptically feminist consciousness infmroed by a through grouding in and engagement with the conflicts and culture of the modern age (her father, Alfred Kroeber, was a famous teacher and writer of the early twentieth century and one of the founding fathers of modern anthropology). Though some of her work could be didactic, unsubtle and self-righteous (her clumsy 1972 Vietnam allegory, The Word For World Is Forest, stood out in this regard), at her finest she was one of the best science-fiction and fantasy writers of the past half-century, obviating the curses of genre with superb literature. Along with the Hugo-winning, gender-bending sci-fi classic The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), the Earthsea trilogy--comprising A Wizard of Earthsea (1968), The Tombs of Atuan (1970), and The Farthest Shore (1972)--is probably her most famous work. Set in the heavily maritime, quasi-medieval world of Earthsea (essentially an ocean with countless isles and islets), it tells the story of Ged and his growth from a callow blacksmith to an older, wiser, but more sorrowful wizard. Using plot devices such as magic and dragons without once becmoing hoary or cliched, the Earthsea trilogy goes to psychological places I suspect Tolkien would have found completely alien, and Ged is a memorably realistic, strikingly drawn character. When I heard a few years back that they were making a film of it on the Sci-Fi Channel, I inwardly quailed. After finally getting around to watching it this past weekend, I have mixed feelings. Earthsea bears roughly the same resemblance to the Earthsea trilogy that Kevin Reynolds' 2002 film of The Count of Monte Cristo bore to Alexandre Dumas' classic and my favorite novel--somewhat superficially accurate, not quite in keeping with the spirit fo the story, but still passable fun. Somewhat confused during the first half-hour, I realized that the writer and director had decided to roll the first two novels into one movie, a strategy that works surprisingly well in structural terms. Ged (The Ruins' Shawn Ashmore), a young blacksmith on the island of Gont, charms up a concealing mist durnig a Kargad barbarian raid on his village, which brings him to the attention of the wizard Ogion (Danny Glover). After getting all cocky and charming up a demon, Ged is sent by Ogion to the wizards' school of Roke, where he will (presumably) learn to control his powers. So far so accurate, but then not only does the movie start to coincide with The Tombs of Atuan, it introduces an additional wrinkle by bringing in a scenery-chewing villain in the form of the Kargad king, one Tygath (a hilarious Sebastian Roche, who played a number of great baddies on Law and Order back in the day, most memorably obnoxious rock star "C-Square"), who's carrying on an affair with the devious, foxily slimy priestess Kossil (Jennifer Calvert), who hopes to succeed the high priestess Thar (Isabella Rossellini) and gain the secret of immortal life for herself and her lover, in spite of the virtuous opposition of her rival Tenar (Smallville's--and more importantly Edgemont's--Kristin Kreuk). In the meantime, Tygath senses that the main obstacle to his plans will be the most powerful of wizards, prophesied to arise at the same time (guess who?). Whew! Back at the ranch, Ged's teased by a pouting fop into raising one of the "Nameless Ones," which nearly gets him killed and then cast out of Roke to eventually face the gebbeth, or shadow, that will pursue him across Earthsea until he musters the courage to confront it. Still with me? All the plot threads combine in crazy-quilt fashion that preserves some of the books' themes but still fails to fulfil. The acting is adequate, as long as one can ignore the relative psychological complexity of the original characters. It was especially nice to see the adorable Erin Karpluk of the offbeat Canadian show Being Erica in a small role as Ged's childhood sweetheart Diana (Diana? There's another character named "Penelope," too--you think they could have come up with some non-canon names to match LeGuin's imagination). In a weird twist, some characters originally written as black (Ged's pal Vetch in particular) have been changed to "white", whereas in the original version only the "barbarian" Kargad could fit that description (a rather daring choice on LeGuin's part for the time, and one that countered previous fantasy writers' approximations of medieval Europe, one Ring-master's in particular). That change among others--presumably including the compressed plot structure and the elision of the last story, the moody and contemplative The Farthest Shore--got the knives out among online fans and caused LeGuin herself to completely disown the adaptation (what the copyright situation was I have no idea, although the thing was produced by the Halmi Brothers). I wouldn't go quite that far, but it certainly doesn't live up to the novels, which is cause for celebration as far as I'm concerned; after all, as I've said before, if you want a movie that's completely faithful to the book, read the book. Earthsea, while it doesn't live up to its inspiration, does at least offer some decent Saturday afternoon entertainment that would go quite well with folding the laundry.

Fist Cities
Now Playing: Eric Burdon and War--"Tobacco Road"

Synecdoche, New York (2008): My dictionary identifies a "synecdoche" as "a figure of speech by which a part is put for the whole," etc., i.e. saying "boards" when one means "stage" or "sail" when one means "ships." In the directorial debut of screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malkovich, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and Adaptation), it appears to refer to the central character's dominating obsession, while doubling as a homonym for "Schenectady." Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is a theater director and all-around miseryguts who has a succession of disasters befall him in his personal life: his wife (Catherine Keener) leaves him with their daughter for Berlin, he can't seem to make his career get anywhere, and his health is atrocious. After a series of abortive relationships with his secretary (Samantha Morton) and lead actress (Michelle Williams), he gets the idea to produce a groundbreaking theater piece that recreates his own life as it actually happens. Just when things are about to hit rock bottom, he recveives an apparently never-ending Macarthur Genius Grant that allows him to work the piece out in a gargantuan soundstage in New York City, one that starts to grow and grow until it apparently encompasses the actual physical space of the play's setting, rather like that Borges story in which the cartographer decides to make the most accurate map ever in a 1:1 ratio, one that essentially covers its entire subject. The play and real life start to impact each other in mnid-bending ways, until the film ends (I'm told; I had to go to the bathroom as it happened ) in a rather conventional way for this day and age. I had some friends over to watch movies the other night, which I hadn't done in a long time. We had a fun chat and Josh brought Synecdoche over, which I think split opinion down the middle. Nikki's friend Mark said it was the most boring movie he'd ever seen (he's obviously never experienced the delights of Total Eclipse or Ulysses' Gaze), while others were more charitable. I'm still not quite sure what to make of it.l There are a lot of good ideas knocking around in it, but Kaufman the screenwriter definitely needed the skills of Kaufman the director. I've never been much for the auteur theory, but if there's one movie that really underscores the need for a good director at the helm (ironically enough, given the movie's subject), it's this one. The film's supposed to have a dream-like feel, but too many characters (I think mainly of the wonderful Hope Davis' psychiatrist) speak with a forced whimsy that made me think of Synecdoche as the McSweeney's version of Falling Down. Fortunately, the cast is excellent. Hoffman can play parts like this in his sleep now, I think, and he's quite believable and extremely depressing as a man with a complete inability to let those parts of the past go which need it. Among the others, Morton especially stands out as the woman whose devotion to her director and his vision take the film into some very interesting places. Anthony Lane has a pretty good take on it in The New Yorker (amusingly pairing it with High School Musical 3). All in all, it was one of the most unique films of last year, although that hardly means it was one of the most artistically successful.

The Long Ships (1964): In conversations with my co-worker Greg, we've realized that Richard Widmark is awesome, and so I approached The Long Ships with high hopes for an entertaining movie. Based on Frank Bengtsson's potboiler about roving Vikings and swashbuckling Moors searching for a golden bell, it was one of the only movies I know of directed by famous cinematographer Jack Cardiff (responsible for the inimitable look of Powell and Pressburger classics like Black Narcissus and The Red Shoes), and so my hopes might have been higher than otherwise, especially as Viking movies don't generally have a great track record. The Vikings (1958) was amusing enough (especially with Tony Curtis and Ernest Borgnine as Vikings and Janet Leigh as a characteristically feisty damsel in distress), but didn't quite live up to its promise. Revenge of the Barbarians (1986), a piece of Eurocrap made available by my co-worker Joe that I vividly remember being available at my childhood video store (never got around to watching it) was terrible its only saving grace being the striking Icelandic scenery. The Long Ships comes closer to the former, thankfully, although I really wish someone would do one of these right. Rolf (Widmark) and his longship are shipwrecked in North Africa or Spain (was never quite sure) and taken prisoner by the local ruler Aly Mansuh (Sidney Poitier in startling James Brown-style pompadour), who's obsessed with a golden bell hidden by some monks somewhere in the vicinity. Rolf hears of the bell and escapes for home, to find that his father (OScar Homolka) and brother (Russ Tamblyn!!) are being oppressed by the local ruler (Clifford Evans) and his demands for tribute. After hijacking the ruler's ship, Rolf and his merry men head for the Mediterranean, intent on finding the bell. What results is a weird hodgepodge of wacky swashbuckler and  typical early 60s high-minded drama. The film can't quite decide what it wants to be, with some sort of mutual admiration between Widmark and Poitier built up through the movie but then concluding somewhat unconvincingly. One of the high points is the now sadly late Edward Judd as the Viking ruler's committed henchman, who finds himself in Widmark's power and schemes to get the ship and bell back for his master. His performance offers a vision of what the film might have been had someone been a little more focused.

Vale Canem
Now Playing: Frederick Delius--"Brigg Fair"
Our family's dog of fifteen years, Isabel, a Labrador-Catahoula, passed away this weekend. She was obviously very old and this didn't come as much of a shock, but I'll certainly miss her. My family were with her during her last moments which, by all accounts, were peaceful and painless. She became a great friend of mine when I came home from college and in my few years of independent residence in Baton Rouge. Many's the time I can remember watching movies with her, taking her for walks along the beautiful University Lakes, and stopping by McDonald's in my car to get her some water after a long slog around campus. We greatly enjoyed each other's company and it'll be more than a little odd when I go back to Louisiana for Thanksgiving and she isn't there. It's strange that this wave of nostalgia comes as the weather in Michigan starts to warm up and carry certain undeniable smells that take my mind back to the halcyon days of the late 90s. I didn't live here then, but today for some reason it feels similar. RIP Isabel.

Bloggery
Now Playing: XTC--"Towers of London"

I've been blogging now for almost four years (next week!), beginning with the inspiration and example offered by a couple of other local blogs. Since that time, many of these blogs have gone out of business, either through declining interest on the part of the bloggers or because said bloggers moved away. My own frequency this year so far has been a little spotty for a number of reasons--a pyrotechnic social life for the first month and a half and increased writing, both in fiction and inasmuch as I'm trying an actual journal again. I have no intention of giving it up, but I do sometimes wonder as to its purpose. Often it seems like I'm the only one still doing this, and then I run across a friend's blog which just kicked off last month. It gives me a happily cyclical feeling to think about this, and only renews my determination to keep plugging away, despite the collegiate solitude I sometimes feel.

Unfortunately, I have nothing today. For one thing, it's way too nice outside.

The Wiggly World of Walter Walrus
Now Playing: David Bowie--"A New Career In A New Town"
More activity means a lot less blogging, apparently. Michigan has been hit by a wave of freak weather which has brought the temperature up to 60 degrees Fahrenheit, and I think it's made everyone a little loopier than usual, myself included. I may very well be seeing someone again (after last time, I really don't want to jump the gun), the dreams have been getting a lot weirder and narratively richer, and I'm being published again, probably later this year, in The Third BHF Anthology of Horror Stories. I've hardly seen any movies or done any cooking apart from chicken paprikash (still working through my store of sauce from Christmas, as it lives quite comfortably in my freezer), sauteed brussel sprouts and roasted asparagus. Whereas last month was--apart from the engrossing and inspiring national drama--conventionally terrific, February looks to be a much more interestingly and unusually great time. This despite its hosting Valentine's Day, not that anyone should care about that.