Right now I'm procrastinating on more important projects by working on a less important project. I might teach a science-fiction course spring semester 2010, so I've taken this as an excuse to read some science-fiction. I asked for some suggestions on facebook; I received a few. Some suggested graphic novels. Watchmen came up. So I checked it out, and finished reading it yesterday.
It was disappointing. I'd heard a lot about this particular work the past couple of years. I like comics; I grew up on a steady diet of Spider-Man, the Hulk, the Avengers, Iron Man, and Thor (speaking of which, where is Thor's feature film?). And I admit that Watchmen engaged comic book superhero tropes in some interesting and engaging ways. I think perhaps the book suffered from what I'll call the Casablanca or Citizen Kane syndrome. Watchmen obviously influenced an entire generation of comic books, films, even TV shows. By the time I read it (much in the same way as I saw those two films) it simply felt cliched. I'd seen this stuff before. Over and over again. Enough with the brooding, flawed super-heroes.
But of course, it's horribly unfair, because Watchmen, Casablanca, and Citizen Kane are the reasons those cliches exist; or at the very least, they helped those tropes become set through their own brilliance.
At any rate, I don't think Watchmen is going to make the cut; it mostly engages comic book tropes; the science-fiction genre, while occasionally making an appearance, takes a backseat to the series' attempts to reexamine classic comic book beats.
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Friday, July 10, 2009
The Zen Koan that is Lance
As baseball fan, an occasional marathon and other track and field events enthusiast, and as an even more casual cycling fan, I've been reminded a lot of steroids issues lately. Lance Armstrong is riding again, and every one and their kid sister seems to have an opinion about Lance the person, Lance the cyclist, and Lance the alleged doper. Manny Ramirez has returned to play for the Dodgers after being suspended for 50 games; apparently he was taking a female fertility drug that 'roiders use when they come off a cycle.
There's probably not much I can add to these discussions. I have a hard time getting self-righteously indignant about doping anymore; it simply happens too often, and it's too exhausting to get upset that often. On the other hand I have a hard time blowing it off as 'that's what athletes do these days to compete' the way that some fans seem to have coped with it.
But on the new Slate sports gabfest, one of the commentators pointed out that we--as the sports watching populace--tend to treat these people differently based on whether we liked them before they got caught on steroids. Alex Rodridguez gets caught--no one liked him to begin with, so we come down on him like a ton of bricks. Manny does it, and we make jokes about the fact that even the drug he gets caught with is typical of his flaky weirdness. And we're thrilled when he starts hitting home runs in Dodger stadium again.
Which brings me to the strange phenomenon of Lance Armstrong. I can't think of any athlete who inspires--at least in me, anyway--the strange mixture of admiration and repulsion. There's enough circumstantial evidence that it's difficult for me to believe that he hasn't played around with EPO on occasion. And he's arrogant enough; he reminds you of high school jocks who thought that mastering their particular sport made them superior human beings in every respect. But at the same time, he has this odd redeeming quality. The cancer scare really seems to have got to him, and I believe him when he says that he is riding for cancer patients. There's something really off putting about the messiah complex so obvious in a commercial like "Driven;" there's something appealing about an athlete doing something in addition to trying to notch another victory. Make no mistake about it: Lance intends to win his eighth Tour de France. But make no mistake about it; he also really believes he's doing it for the 12 year old recovering from cancer.
There's probably not much I can add to these discussions. I have a hard time getting self-righteously indignant about doping anymore; it simply happens too often, and it's too exhausting to get upset that often. On the other hand I have a hard time blowing it off as 'that's what athletes do these days to compete' the way that some fans seem to have coped with it.
But on the new Slate sports gabfest, one of the commentators pointed out that we--as the sports watching populace--tend to treat these people differently based on whether we liked them before they got caught on steroids. Alex Rodridguez gets caught--no one liked him to begin with, so we come down on him like a ton of bricks. Manny does it, and we make jokes about the fact that even the drug he gets caught with is typical of his flaky weirdness. And we're thrilled when he starts hitting home runs in Dodger stadium again.
Which brings me to the strange phenomenon of Lance Armstrong. I can't think of any athlete who inspires--at least in me, anyway--the strange mixture of admiration and repulsion. There's enough circumstantial evidence that it's difficult for me to believe that he hasn't played around with EPO on occasion. And he's arrogant enough; he reminds you of high school jocks who thought that mastering their particular sport made them superior human beings in every respect. But at the same time, he has this odd redeeming quality. The cancer scare really seems to have got to him, and I believe him when he says that he is riding for cancer patients. There's something really off putting about the messiah complex so obvious in a commercial like "Driven;" there's something appealing about an athlete doing something in addition to trying to notch another victory. Make no mistake about it: Lance intends to win his eighth Tour de France. But make no mistake about it; he also really believes he's doing it for the 12 year old recovering from cancer.
Friday, July 3, 2009
I'm back. Again. Maybe.
A couple of thoughts as I try to return to this format:
1. I’m doing this to get myself writing again, in any format, in any way. Most of the past year was completely swamped by teaching, and I simply need to write more: professionally, and for my own satisfaction.
2. I need to be more concise. My favorite blogs, I’ve noticed, keep it relatively short. My favorite blog right now, the 19th floor, usually comes in around two or three paragraphs.
3. I also need to write more often. I check blogs more often that I know are going to be updated more often.
4. Perhaps I need to not limit myself to my workouts or my current reading. Most running blogs I breeze through get pretty boring if they focus on running alone. This probably should have been obvious to me much sooner, but I can be dense.
That being said, I will mention that I’m reading Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited. I’m trying to make up my mind if I like it. I saw the mini-series that Jeremy Irons starred in a couple of decades ago. Waugh’s prose is—well any adjective I use is going to sound trite—but it’s sort of delicious in an overly rich pastry sort of way; it’s heavy on the nostalgia to an almost cloying degree. On the professional side I’m reading Darwin’s Sacred Cause, which is a history of Darwin’s relationship to the abolitionist cause. I’d say it was interesting, and it is, to me, but this up my particular professional alley, and I can have a bit of a blind spot when it comes to that sort of thing.
Since I last wrote, I also bought a Trek 1.5 road bike. There’s little ambivalence there. Despite being occasionally left in the dust by the local cycling club, I have to say that I love cycling. I’d be doing a lot more of it right now if I weren’t trying to focus on training for another marathon in Grand Rapids. Despite these humid South Georgia summers, rides in the morning take on this wonderful meditative quality.
Enough for now. More soon, hopefully.
Saturday, December 13, 2008
I'm back. I think.
It's hard to believe that it's been August since I last posted. I suppose that was roughly when the term started. It's been a four months of teaching at full speed: class prep, grading, and the odd committee meeting (and when I say odd. . . .).
Still, over Thanksgiving I read a book that had me thinking I should start again. The book was What I Talk about When I Talk about Running by Haruki Murakami. It's a short book; I read it quickly over a couple of days. It's a memoir about Murakami's running life. He took up running when he began to write novels in his late twenties. He gave up his jazz club so that he could focus on running, and when he did so, he began to gain weight. Running became the solution. At the time of running he had posted well over twenty marathons, at about the rate of one a year, and a number of triatholons of various distances.
The interesting thing about it is how hard Murakami is on himself. His times still frustrate him. His aging body frustrates him. And his times are impressive, at any age. They aren't Olympic impressive, but he's obviously a solid athlete, as well as an award winning novelist. The book is simply written, but compelling somehow; perhaps it is because--even though he doesn't talk about traditionally 'personal' subjects--the book feels so personal because Murakami feels that running is so personally important to him.
I am neither the athlete nor the writer that Murakami is, but I did relate to him on that level. Even the title seems to get at something. Running--and other distance athletic activities--are odd, and hard to understand for those who have no interest in doing them. And yet it has--in the past few years--become incredibly important to me personally as well, for reasons that I can't quite describe to myself. Like Murakami I became serious about it in my late twenties. In my case it was when I was beginning the process of writing my Ph.D dissertation, which was a marathon in of itself. My goal was to finish a marathon before I defended my dissertation, and I met that goal with about nine months to go.
I haven't raced since May. I've been too busy with school and other act ivies. I've still been running; I could run a reasonably competent half on short notice I think. Still, I've been thinking that it's time to start planning for another half and a full in the spring, in no small part because of Murakami's book.
Still, over Thanksgiving I read a book that had me thinking I should start again. The book was What I Talk about When I Talk about Running by Haruki Murakami. It's a short book; I read it quickly over a couple of days. It's a memoir about Murakami's running life. He took up running when he began to write novels in his late twenties. He gave up his jazz club so that he could focus on running, and when he did so, he began to gain weight. Running became the solution. At the time of running he had posted well over twenty marathons, at about the rate of one a year, and a number of triatholons of various distances.
The interesting thing about it is how hard Murakami is on himself. His times still frustrate him. His aging body frustrates him. And his times are impressive, at any age. They aren't Olympic impressive, but he's obviously a solid athlete, as well as an award winning novelist. The book is simply written, but compelling somehow; perhaps it is because--even though he doesn't talk about traditionally 'personal' subjects--the book feels so personal because Murakami feels that running is so personally important to him.
I am neither the athlete nor the writer that Murakami is, but I did relate to him on that level. Even the title seems to get at something. Running--and other distance athletic activities--are odd, and hard to understand for those who have no interest in doing them. And yet it has--in the past few years--become incredibly important to me personally as well, for reasons that I can't quite describe to myself. Like Murakami I became serious about it in my late twenties. In my case it was when I was beginning the process of writing my Ph.D dissertation, which was a marathon in of itself. My goal was to finish a marathon before I defended my dissertation, and I met that goal with about nine months to go.
I haven't raced since May. I've been too busy with school and other act ivies. I've still been running; I could run a reasonably competent half on short notice I think. Still, I've been thinking that it's time to start planning for another half and a full in the spring, in no small part because of Murakami's book.
Sunday, August 17, 2008
Man in the Dark
So, it's been awhile. Not quite two months. Not that anyone is much reading this, I suspect, but still, for the 1, possibly 3, loyal readers out there, I feel like I've let you down. It's been a hectic summer to say the least. Last time I posted I was still in Indiana. Now I'm in South Georgia, just miles away from the Florida border. So that's one reason it's been awhile. There are others.
BUT, I finished a book tonight that had nothing to do with the job (another reason) I've been starting down here in Dixie. That book was Paul Auster's Man in the Dark. It's a short little novel--a novella almost, about an aging writer/critic experiencing insomnia. Since insomnia is something I regularly deal with myself, I've always found that particular topic especially interesting.
So it's a good book, but it feels, even in 180 rather generously lined pages, a little unfocused. At least one half of the first half (if that makes sense) of the novel is given to a character that that August (our central insomniac) is creating in his head to while away the sleepless hours. The reader gets interested in this meta-fictional character, and the rather odd predicament he finds himself in (he's supposed to kill his creator) and then Auster, using August, kills him off rather unceremoniously. I get the feeling that this meta-fictional character is supposed to tell us something about the domestic plot that August is involved in with his daughter and grand-daughter. Perhaps I'm obtuse, but I never got the connection.
It's like a New Yorker short story got involved with a Charlie Kaufman screenplay, but no one ever bothered to explain the connection. It's not a bad idea, perhaps even a good one, but I needed something a little more obvious to make it all make sense.
What else to tell? I'm trying to learn to run in the Georgia humidity. Honestly it hasn't been that bad so far, but the locals tell me this is a pretty moderate summer. Apparently we're going to get some hurricane inspired rain later in the week. So, THAT should be interesting.
BUT, I finished a book tonight that had nothing to do with the job (another reason) I've been starting down here in Dixie. That book was Paul Auster's Man in the Dark. It's a short little novel--a novella almost, about an aging writer/critic experiencing insomnia. Since insomnia is something I regularly deal with myself, I've always found that particular topic especially interesting.
So it's a good book, but it feels, even in 180 rather generously lined pages, a little unfocused. At least one half of the first half (if that makes sense) of the novel is given to a character that that August (our central insomniac) is creating in his head to while away the sleepless hours. The reader gets interested in this meta-fictional character, and the rather odd predicament he finds himself in (he's supposed to kill his creator) and then Auster, using August, kills him off rather unceremoniously. I get the feeling that this meta-fictional character is supposed to tell us something about the domestic plot that August is involved in with his daughter and grand-daughter. Perhaps I'm obtuse, but I never got the connection.
It's like a New Yorker short story got involved with a Charlie Kaufman screenplay, but no one ever bothered to explain the connection. It's not a bad idea, perhaps even a good one, but I needed something a little more obvious to make it all make sense.
What else to tell? I'm trying to learn to run in the Georgia humidity. Honestly it hasn't been that bad so far, but the locals tell me this is a pretty moderate summer. Apparently we're going to get some hurricane inspired rain later in the week. So, THAT should be interesting.
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Deducing Reality
I read a Michael Chabon novel after finishing his book of essays (Maps and Legends). The novel in question was The Final Solution. Novella might be a more appropriate term--it was pretty short.
It was pretty good. An ancient Sherlock Holmes, obviously in his last days, helps a young boy German Jew, displaced by the second World War, to find his stolen parrot. As stories go, it shows what you can achieve by not over explaining the plot. Chabon refuses to explicate everything for us; instead we, as readers, have to participate in making some sense out of the novella's events. Combined with the elaborate descriptions, the result is feeling like you are actually present for the story. And not in that irritating way that I've seen in some recent novels, where you get the feeling the author has one eye on a film option as they are typing (The Historian, I'm looking in your direction). I don't mean that you see the action, but rather you feel like you are present for it. Considering that one chapter is in the third person limited perspective of a parrot, this is a trick.
Some of the things that I found mildly annoying about the novel can actually be excused because of this. Chabon, for instance, refuses to name Holmes, instead referring to him as the 'old man' and forcing the reader to deduce who the old man actually is. I couldn't decide if I found that little feature annoying or charming. I settled on teasing after awhile. And some of the prose--when describing certain physical details--felt a little overwritten. Adjective happy, I might say, if it was handed to me in an undergraduate paper. But as I think about the overall effect I think I see what Chabon was going for. The overall result--the intense physical descriptions, the refusal to interpret events and plot points, even the coyness over the name of a central character--is that you are thrust into the novel's action, much like you are thrown into life. You are bombarded with sense detail and forced to make a coherent interpretation of it. Considering the vocation of the main character, this seems appropriate.
It was pretty good. An ancient Sherlock Holmes, obviously in his last days, helps a young boy German Jew, displaced by the second World War, to find his stolen parrot. As stories go, it shows what you can achieve by not over explaining the plot. Chabon refuses to explicate everything for us; instead we, as readers, have to participate in making some sense out of the novella's events. Combined with the elaborate descriptions, the result is feeling like you are actually present for the story. And not in that irritating way that I've seen in some recent novels, where you get the feeling the author has one eye on a film option as they are typing (The Historian, I'm looking in your direction). I don't mean that you see the action, but rather you feel like you are present for it. Considering that one chapter is in the third person limited perspective of a parrot, this is a trick.
Some of the things that I found mildly annoying about the novel can actually be excused because of this. Chabon, for instance, refuses to name Holmes, instead referring to him as the 'old man' and forcing the reader to deduce who the old man actually is. I couldn't decide if I found that little feature annoying or charming. I settled on teasing after awhile. And some of the prose--when describing certain physical details--felt a little overwritten. Adjective happy, I might say, if it was handed to me in an undergraduate paper. But as I think about the overall effect I think I see what Chabon was going for. The overall result--the intense physical descriptions, the refusal to interpret events and plot points, even the coyness over the name of a central character--is that you are thrust into the novel's action, much like you are thrown into life. You are bombarded with sense detail and forced to make a coherent interpretation of it. Considering the vocation of the main character, this seems appropriate.
Monday, June 23, 2008
My favorite Star Trek episode is the one with Joan Collins--"The City on the Edge of Forever"
Tonight I finished reading a collection of essays by Michael Chabon, Maps and Legends. The sticker on the back tells me that it is his first book of nonfiction, and then lists a bunch of the novels he has written. I've heard of them; two of them are on our bookshelves, but I haven't read them yet. I did see the film version of Wonder Boys, which I now understand was based on a novel he wrote.
Anyway, it was good. Several essays on comic books/strips, and there were a couple of rants about biases against popular genre fiction, so he had me pretty much from the time he pointed out that science-fiction gets relegated to the generic ghetto just behind the bourgeois suburb of realism. Sometimes I think he may have overstated the case just a bit--sci-fi and detective fiction have been coming up in the world of academia. But I also suspect this may come from our different perspectives. Chabon is a product of an MFA program; I'm a product of literature graduate programs. MFA students always strike me as desperate to be taken seriously; literature students--some of them anyway--always strike me as desperate not to be taken for the snobs we actually are. So literature students drop pointed references to Buffy, the X-Men, and discuss the narrative virtues of video games--even if they do their academic work on Jonathan Swift or Chaucer. MFA students keep writing earnest realism, or even more painfully earnest poetry, and turn their noses up at any narrative with a spaceship or a detective in it. Gross oversimplification, I'm sure, but I've seen enough of graduate school to suspect that it's a rough guide to how things work in your local English department.
The last essay--a kind of digression within an essay within an memoir within a religious reflection--was especially good. It's about a lot of things, but early on Chabon talks about finding a book entitled Strangely Enough! on the YA rack at his local library. The book sounds like a lot of books I remember reading avidly as a kid; the cheap paper back with chapters on UFOs, the possibility of time travel, what made the dinosaurs go extinct, Nostradamus, etc. That portion of the essay evoked some of the real pleasure that reading gave me as a child; memories of long summer afternoons, comic books, Godzilla movies on my grandmother's TV, and choose-your-own adventure books came flooding back. I've been watching some Twilight Zone reruns at night recently, and they've been producing the same effect. One of these nights the wife is going to come out and catch me reading Ray Bradbury and inhaling Fig Newtons. Oh wait. . . .
Anyway--where does that pleasure go? I still enjoy reading. I've made reading literature my life's work. But the trouble with gorging yourself, I suppose, is that you always run the risk of satiation, even cynicism. I haven't become cynical just yet--today I caught myself actually enjoying reviewing some Wordsworth poetry for a class I'm preparing for the fall. But it gets difficult to access that unalloyed pleasure of the text that you had when were a child. You catch yourself--in the middle of a hokey Star Trek rerun--reflecting on the cold war politics that must have shaped the way that the Romulans were written into that show.
But of course, that's a pleasure in and of itself too.
Anyway, it was good. Several essays on comic books/strips, and there were a couple of rants about biases against popular genre fiction, so he had me pretty much from the time he pointed out that science-fiction gets relegated to the generic ghetto just behind the bourgeois suburb of realism. Sometimes I think he may have overstated the case just a bit--sci-fi and detective fiction have been coming up in the world of academia. But I also suspect this may come from our different perspectives. Chabon is a product of an MFA program; I'm a product of literature graduate programs. MFA students always strike me as desperate to be taken seriously; literature students--some of them anyway--always strike me as desperate not to be taken for the snobs we actually are. So literature students drop pointed references to Buffy, the X-Men, and discuss the narrative virtues of video games--even if they do their academic work on Jonathan Swift or Chaucer. MFA students keep writing earnest realism, or even more painfully earnest poetry, and turn their noses up at any narrative with a spaceship or a detective in it. Gross oversimplification, I'm sure, but I've seen enough of graduate school to suspect that it's a rough guide to how things work in your local English department.
The last essay--a kind of digression within an essay within an memoir within a religious reflection--was especially good. It's about a lot of things, but early on Chabon talks about finding a book entitled Strangely Enough! on the YA rack at his local library. The book sounds like a lot of books I remember reading avidly as a kid; the cheap paper back with chapters on UFOs, the possibility of time travel, what made the dinosaurs go extinct, Nostradamus, etc. That portion of the essay evoked some of the real pleasure that reading gave me as a child; memories of long summer afternoons, comic books, Godzilla movies on my grandmother's TV, and choose-your-own adventure books came flooding back. I've been watching some Twilight Zone reruns at night recently, and they've been producing the same effect. One of these nights the wife is going to come out and catch me reading Ray Bradbury and inhaling Fig Newtons. Oh wait. . . .
Anyway--where does that pleasure go? I still enjoy reading. I've made reading literature my life's work. But the trouble with gorging yourself, I suppose, is that you always run the risk of satiation, even cynicism. I haven't become cynical just yet--today I caught myself actually enjoying reviewing some Wordsworth poetry for a class I'm preparing for the fall. But it gets difficult to access that unalloyed pleasure of the text that you had when were a child. You catch yourself--in the middle of a hokey Star Trek rerun--reflecting on the cold war politics that must have shaped the way that the Romulans were written into that show.
But of course, that's a pleasure in and of itself too.
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