I just finished Rebecca Stead's Newberry-winning When You Reach Me this morning while Iwas in the basement of the plasma place, and I figured it would be cause for some taste-making updating on the blag.
Books:
Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare? by James Shapiro. People like to ask me about Shakespeare authorship. I don't like to answer Shakespeare authorship questions. I don't take the high road with the typical academic response of "Why should it matter? Authorship is a construct anyway" because that response is just as stupid as the question. I usually respond with "What makes you think that a guy named Shakespeare from Stratford didn't write the plays?" and I then am caught in the conspiratorial tractor beam. Conspiracy theories satisfy our need to believe that there are always trickier people than us, and somehow those people were smart enough to secretly and ingeniously operate. I rarely buy it. But I do buy books about the people who make up the conspiracies. I bought this book because I admire Shapiro's excellent scholarship and I knew he would take a fresh approach, which he does by chronicalling the beginnings of the Shakespeare authorship controversy and tracing its historical manifestations. To be sure, Shapiro believes Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare, but any sane person would believe that anyway, no offense to Mark Twain and Sigmund Freud. What Shapiro uncovers in this book is much more interesting than who authored Shakespeare. Rather, he uncovers the ways in which Shakespeare has become a secular deity whose authorship question is akin to the parascientists claim that God is not author of the world. The methods of argument are surprisingly similar, if not the details. How dare a man with little education and a quotidian, local lifestyle write the greatest works of the English language!!! How dare he!!! How dare Joseph Smith do anything! Look at the records--this guy was mean to his wife, was a social climber with no refinement, and was possibly sexually deviant!! How is it possible! Right.
When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead. Imagine what happened if smart time-travel novels crossed ectoplasm with concise storytelling about real people, and you wouldn't end up with The Time Traveler's Wife. Instead, you might end up with When You Reach Me, a book that isn't really about time travel and isn't really about real people either, but it has elements of both. Perhaps I should call it the greatest tribute A Wrinkle in Time has ever received, but I am sure that Madeline L'Engle's book has been the subject of so many tributes that I am wrong. This book surprises, though, and although I was pretty good at
predicting plot outcomes, the story was a lot of fun with at least one chapter, the one about looking beyond the "veil," that is as insightful as a good youth book should be. I dread the inevitable film rights on this book, but I welcome the increased exposure.
Grimm's Fairy Tales by the Grimm Brothers and peasants/commoners in the European countryside. I read the fairy tales because I am teaching them this summer, and they are fascinating. But so help me, they are not deep. And that is their major charm. They are stories, and they rejoice in the sense that they are stories, pure and clean, simple and powerful. They have no moral to proclaim, no mind to explain, no philosophy to frame. Why can't we recognize that their importance lies in the fact of their "storiness" and little else. Do we need more justification than that? Sure, like all good stories, they express cultural anxiety and concerns and often threaten social stability, but all in the name of the story's suspense and intrigue. Needless to say, I taught them not through interpretation but through retelling. The class and I retold them in various mediums and contexts, and each time we retold one, it became more useful, not in the moral sense but in the structural sense of narrative consciousness. We read stories because we are enchanted by them--isn't that enough? By the way, the story "The Golden Bird" is phenomenal, as is "The Dog and the Sparrow."
Movies:
I should start by saying that I have recently gained "expert" status when it comes to romantic comedies because I have watched so many in the last year. As an expert, I can proclaim with the heralding trumpet of authority that: they all suck.
But sucking is only half the battle. For a romantic comedy to be distinctive, it has to be repulsive in the way that the two Sex and the City movies are repulsive (I gave the first Sex and the City the same review that Sex and the City 2 got from professional critics, so I am ahead of the game and can continue to exploit my "expert" status). Example #1: Valentine's Day, possibly the worst film I have seen since Miss Congeniality the Second. I am going to try and imagine the pitch meeting:
"Did you see Crash and Babel and 21 Grams? I feel like we need a romantic comedy that uses the same techniques."
"Isn't that what Love Actually did?"
"Yes, but it was British and therefore snobby and exploitive towards 9/11. And it was only shallow, not vapid. I was thinking we could made an LA version about Valentine's Day with lots of hot new celebs and so vapid that we have to reset the vapid scales, which is good for business."
"Huh, now you're going somewhere. What else?"
"Well, who has the most followers on the tweeter thing?"
"Ashton Kutcher?"
"Right. He can be the centerpiece, the connector of all the disparate stories. And isn't there a show where the guys are doctors and hot?"
"Grey's Anatomy?"
"That one. We'll get the hot doctors in this movie."
"Got it, but what's the plot?"
"Hold on, that comes later. The movie that did the best last year was the Twilight movie, and there is a guy who looks like Adam Bluth, circa 1996, who takes off his shirt. We're gonna have him in it, and we'll pair him up with the girl who sings about Romeo and Juliet, but she'll be a cheerleader who smacks her gum and likes boys."
"This sounds like a powerhouse so far."
"Wait a second, we'll also get the guy from The Hangover and pair him with Julia Roberts."
"How're you going to land Julia?"
"Already thought of that--we'll get Gary Marshall to direct, and Julia owes him for jumpstarting her career in Pretty Woman, and she'll play a soldier coming back from Iraq to see her kids, so she can show her range and we can get Red Staters in the seats."
"Perfect."
"But we can't alienate the Blue Staters, so we'll make a gay couple be prominent, and perhaps nobody will suspect they are gay because they are masculine doctors from Grey's Anatomy."
"Beautiful. So let's hear the story."
"The story is how real people with low incomes and middle class lifestyles act in America and what they think about love."
"Ok, but I am not sure how the middle class acts nor do I have any idea what they think about love."
"Neither do I. Neither will the actors. Neither will the director. But I am pretty sure they own flower shops and drive around their kids and watch local news and think that love is the answer . . . it doesn't matter, actually. We can't fall for that trap. They'll act like the actors think they act. Besides, the movies define what love is anyway these days so why would we need to figure out what the commoners think about it? We'll even have a scene in which an aging movie star remembers her love because she sees herself loving in a movie. It'll clue in the audience that love is what we tell them it is."
"Fair enough. How will we afford all the stars?"
"Thought of that, too. I asked the writers to write the script as the movie is being filmed and Gary to direct it in two weeks or less. Since it is an ensemble, each actor will only have to work for one day, never requiring them to actually get into character and taking home a one-day paycheck. As long as the stars' faces are in the movie, the audiences won't care if they are actually acting or not."
"What else will require budget besides the stars?"
"Nothing. Not the camera, the lighting, the scenes. We'll film it two blocks away from here so the stars don't need to travel either."
"I think you have found the perfect formula, my friend. How much do you need?"
"Nothing. I'll ask each actor's agent to talk to you directly about one-day salaries. I am not going to need any money besides that."
"Who'll get top billing?"
"The faces of the stars."
"Is Justin Bieber going to be in it?"
"He would be if we were to make it two months from now when he is a bigger name, but we begin filming tomorrow and looking for a wide release in three weeks."
"Andele."
I don't know what possessed me to write that much, but a movie as bad as Valentine's Day deserved it. Are there other movie to review? When in Rome? More like Dumb in Rome. I can't remember the other movies I've watched, which means they were unmemorable, of course. I guess I liked Shutter Island. I hated it too. In fact, that movie bears recognition because I loathed it and enjoyed it at the same time. And the soundtrack is the best of the year, no irony involved.
Places to eat:
I did the regular stint at Cafe Rio while I was in Utah, which was as good as I remember it--in
both ways. I remembered that the food is good even though I don't want to like it, and the primary reason I don't want to like it is because I remembered the people that patronize it, particularly the Cafe Rio in Provo. It is strange that no matter what happens, the people that go to Cafe Rio never change--guys in caps, scruffy, tight shirts and board shorts, just back from the lake. Girls in tight clothes with pristine hair, tanned and vacant. My recent trip was even better because one of the females in the Cafe Rio had apparently just got back from the lake or from a Daisy Dukes convention and her bottom was forcefully protruding out from the end of her shorts, or bathing suit, or whatever it was. I hear that you enjoy Cafe Rio salads that much more if your bare glutes actually touch the southwestern chairs. I am going to try it next time, and don't think I won't. I have to get back into Provo mode when I am in Provo, so if that means wearing the Cafe Rio uniform when I go to Cafe Rio, that's what it means.
We also ate In And Out Hamburger in Sandy, UT. It tasted the same as the In And Out Hamburger in California, which tastes the same as the In And Out Hamburger in Scottsdale adn Las Vegas. It is like the Church because it is everywhere the same, but the cult which is irrational about it is mainly located in one centralized state.
No comments:
Post a Comment