Running After My Hat

Watchmen: The Movie?

August 2, 2008 by John 2 Comments

I don’t read many graphic novels, but I do read some. There’s no pattern, apparently, to the ones I’ve chosen to read, except that I tend to favor ones heavy on story (and not necessarily on action).

Watchmen (written by Alan Moore, illustrated by Dave Gibbons) is in a class by itself.

Published as a regular “comic”-book series in 1986-87, from the very first issue it announced its difference. (See the cover of issue #1, over there on the left, for the opening evidence — surely among the most subversive uses of a smile symbol.) If you have no classic-comix-style used bookstores handy, fear not: its twelve issues were repackaged in 1995 in a single paperback volume, which you can obtain at many places (it’s still in print), including Amazon and all the usual brick-and-mortar sources.

The premise of the story, while neither unique nor original in the comic-book universe, will strike newcomers (in these days of superhero movies and other forms of media worship) as a little strange: Imagine a world in which superheroes are real, really real. They include superheroes you’ve never heard of, among them the seven who figure as Watchmen‘s protagonists: Doctor Manhattan, the Comedian, Ozymandias, Nite-Owl, Rorschach, Captain Metropolis, and Silk Spectre. (That’s them in the image below and to the right, running clockwise and starting with the freaky blue guy at the top.)

Watchmen - cast of characters They’re “people,” yes, of a particularly intense (and talented or perhaps even mutant) sort. But people nonetheless, with ugly or sympathetic pasts, who live in flophouses or penthouses, perhaps eat meals cooked in the equivalent of microwave ovens, have relationships with one another, get disappointed and p!ssed off.

Furthermore, as a class, they’re regulated, or rather registered with the mid-1980s government. Why? Because in the Watchmen world, there was a time when it seemed like any idiot with a stretchy-fabric uniform was running around, fighting crime (or imagining he was fighting it). They kept getting in the way of the real forces of law and order — the police et al…

I won’t spoil your pleasure in getting to know more about Watchmen on your own. (But I will note that it not only won a Hugo Award for science fiction in 1987 — the only graphic novel to have done so. In 2005, Time magazine also named it to its list of the best 100 novels in the English language published since 1923. Get that? Not graphic novels. Not comic books. Not fantasies or works of science fiction. Novels, period.)

But I will say I was delighted to learn recently that a Watchmen movie is scheduled for release sometime in 2009. (Here‘s the IMDB page on it.) Like many fans of the book — of superhero comics in general — I’m apprehensive about Hollywood’s take on it. They can never include everything, after all, and what’s left must necessarily be altered somehow to account for the subtractions.

Still, hope springs eternal and all that. Based on the trailer (below), they seem to have certainly captured the look of the comic — to the extent which any live-action film could:

It Was Like This

August 1, 2008 by John 3 Comments

My weekly favorite selection from the incomparable whiskey river (which daily seems as unlike a blog as it’s possible for a blog to be):

It Was Like This: You Were Happy

It was like this:
you were happy, then you were sad,
then happy again, then not.

It went on.
You were innocent or you were guilty.
Actions were taken, or not.

At times you spoke, at other times you were silent.
Mostly, it seems you were silent – what could you say?

Now it is almost over.

Like a lover, your life bends down and kisses your life.

It does this not in forgiveness –
between you, there is nothing to forgive –
but with the simple nod of a baker at the moment
he sees the bread is finished with transformation.

Eating, too, is now a thing only for others.

It doesn’t matter what they will make of you
or your days: they will be wrong,
they will miss the wrong woman, miss the wrong man,
all the stories they tell will be tales of their own invention.

Your story was this: you were happy, then you were sad,
you slept, you awakened.
Sometimes you ate roasted chestnuts, sometimes persimmons.

(by Jane Hirshfield)

Story Starters: Shadows on a Wall

July 31, 2008 by John 5 Comments

A number of things I’ve come across in the last week have reminded me — at a time (yes) when I really should be concerned with ending a story — just how little it takes to start one. In particular, they’ve reminded me of the way in which implied story lines radiate forwards and backwards, starting from a single moment captured in a painting or photograph.

First, there was my post of the other day, about Brueghel’s Fall of Icarus painting and the W.H. Auden poem which sprang from it. What makes this a “story” as opposed to a conventional landscape is the precise instant crystallized in that tiny little area of the bottom right corner. We can imagine what must have led to that moment: the construction of the wings, the warnings from Daedalus, the over-confident youth rising and rising and rising toward the sun. We can see some other things happening during it, of course, and imagine other things which we can’t actually see (such as Daedalus, watching horrified from a shoreline). And we can guess about the moments to follow, from the immediate (the long, panic-stricken but then silent sinking of a feathered figure to the bottom of the sea) to the more remote (the wasteland of Daedalus’s life to come).

Then along came some posts over the last few days on the writing in the water blog. The innkeeper there, marta, recently acquired a scanner; she’s begun to post old family photos, taking off from each to ruminate about the stories it tells, fails to tell, or tells incompletely — and the stories it might have told instead (if the world and the people in it were different).

So while I was thinking about these things, it occurred to me that visual “moments” aren’t the only ones from which stories might branch, forward and back. Musical ones can work that way, too.

I don’t mean obvious story songs — shaggy-dog stories or Broadway show tunes, for instance (the latter of which can be associated with specific points within the show’s plot). No, what I’m getting at is songs, especially short ones, whose lyrics suggest with a quick few brushstrokes more — sometimes much more — than the words themselves say.

Like marta’s (or anyone’s) snapshots, like Fall of Icarus-style paintings, these songs fall into a category we might call “shadows on the wall.” A shadow is not the thing it represents, of course; but our eyes have been trained to see in certain shadowy shapes, or portions of shapes, the corresponding fully-fleshed 3D objects projected, darkly, on the wall. In the same way, shadow-on-the-wall story starters — images and songs — mark the edges of a plotline or a relationship, and let our minds fill in the gaps.

At the time these (not exactly earth-shaking) revelations came to me, I was in the car; in the CD player was Carly Simon’s Torch album of old standard, reworked, and brand-new songs of blues, heartbreak, and wish fulfillment. Just starting up then, in fact, was a perfect shadow-on-the-wall song: “What Shall We Do with the Child?”

[Read more…]

Writer’s Bane: Alan Nelson’s “Lafayette”

July 30, 2008 by John 2 Comments

Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs! bird A 1948 science-fiction story by Alan Nelson is called “Narapoia.” (And no, smarty — whoever you are — I did not read it when it originally came out.)

It’s an entertaining enough premise: a man visits a psychotherapist, showing signs of an unusual disorder:

“I don’t know exactly how to explain it to you, Doctor,” the young man began. He smoothed back his slick black hair that shone like a phonograph record and blinked his baby-blue eyes. “It seems to be the opposite of a persecution complex.”

Dr. Manly J. Departure was a short severe man who made a point of never exhibiting surprise. “The opposite of a persecution complex?” he said, permitting one eyebrow to elevate. “How do you mean — the opposite of a persecution complex, Mr. McFarlane?”

“Well, for one thing, I keep thinking that I’m following someone.” McFarlane sat placidly in the big easy chair, hands folded, pink cheeks glowing, the picture of health and tranquility. Dr. Departure stirred uneasily.

“You mean you think someone is following, you, don’t you?” the doctor corrected.

“No. No, I don’t! I mean that while I’m walking along the street, suddenly I have this feeling there is somebody just ahead of me. Somebody I’m after. Someone I’m following. Sometimes I even begin to run to catch up with him! Of course –there’s no one there. It’s inconvenient. Damned inconvenient. And I hate to run.”

After a couple of visits, the patient confesses to another symptom: non-hallucinations, you might call them — hallucinations which turn out not to be hallucinations at all:

“I’m afraid I’m beginning to be troubled with hallucinations, Doctor,” McFarlane finally volunteered.

Dr. Departure mentally rubbed his hands. He was back on old familiar territory now. He felt more comfortable.

“Ah, hallucinations!”

“Rather, they’re not really hallucinations, Doctor. You might say they were the opposite of hallucinations.”

Dr. Departure rested his eyes a moment. The smile disappeared from his face. McFarlane continued:

“Last night, for instance, Doctor, I had a nightmare. Dreamed there was a big ugly bird perched on my short-wave set waiting for me to wake up. It was a hideous thing — a fat bulbous body and a huge beak that turned upward like a sickle. Blood-shot eyes with pouches under them. And ears, Doctor. Ears! Did you ever hear of a bird with ears? Little tiny, floppy ears, something like a cocker spaniel’s. Well, I woke up, my heart pounding, and what do you think? There actually was an ugly fat bird with ears sitting on the short-wave set.”

Dr. Departure perked up again. A very simple case of confusing the real with the unreal. Traditional. Almost classical.

“A real bird on the short-wave set?” he asked gently. “With blood-shot eyes?”

“Yes,” McFarlane replied. “I know it sounds silly. I know it’s hard to believe.”

“Oh, not at all. Not at all. That type of visual aberration is a common enough phenomenon.” The doctor smiled soothingly. “Nothing to…”

McFarlane interrupted him by reaching down and hoisting the carton onto the desk. “You don’t understand, Doctor,” he said. “Go ahead. Open it.”

The doctor looked at McFarlane a moment, then at the brown box which was punctured with air holes and tied with heavy twine. Disconcertedly, the doctor cut the string and folded back the top flaps. He leaned over and peered in — then sucked in his breath. Pouchy, blood-shot eyes leered up at him. Floppy ears. The up-side-down beak. An obscene-looking bird.

“His name is Lafayette,” McFarlane said, tossing a few bread crumbs into the carton which were quickly devoured with a noisy, repulsive gulp. “He rather grows on you after awhile, don’t you think?”

(You can find more information — including the complete story — easily enough on the Web, if you’d like to follow up.)

By now you may wondering what this might have to do with writing, per this post’s title. Glad you asked…

[Read more…]

Review: Dean Koontz’s ODD HOURS

July 29, 2008 by John 2 Comments

No, no, no — not here. On The Book Book.

You will note, in the guidelines for reviewers over on the right side of that site’s various pages, the word-count specs: minimum one word; maximum 60,000 words. I believe these were meant humorously, meaning “Nobody’s gonna go through your review and count the freaking words, you dolt.”

Nevertheless, I suffered a bit of a guilty twinge when I saw how long my review looked relative to the other recent ones.

Dang. Gotta tell you, writing a book review is hard. Especially for an action-y book: you want to describe, kinda sorta, what happens. But you don’t want to give away anything really surprising, either. Tough balance to strike. I admire the other Book Book reviewers (also listed down the site’s right-hand menu) who manage to pull it off, review after review.

Writing about Reading — and Not Blogging

July 28, 2008 by John Leave a Comment

I may — may — be posting a real entry later today. At the moment, though, I’m focused on preparing my first contribution to the BookBook blog: a review of Dean Koontz’s Odd Hours.

Until then, I offer you a YouTube “Thriller” extravaganza:

First, we have the original video (embedding this video has been disabled on YouTube, so you’ll just have to follow the link if you want to see it).

Here’s the same thing (1/3 the length of the original), re-created by 1500+ inmates at the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center, Cebu, Philippines:

And one of at least a couple wedding-reception versions:

…and, finally, the definitive (or at least, the most painstakingly assembled) version: Legos!

The First Blank Page

July 27, 2008 by John 6 Comments

For reasons which I’m not sure I could articulate, I love this drawing without reservation. (Click the image for a larger version.) It’s from a page in 2007’s Edward Gorey “Page-a-Day” calendar and I’ve kept it around on various computers, trying without success to make it work as a desktop wallpaper. (Icons are inconsistently legible when layered over it.) Perhaps I must get used to just knowing about it, without ever using it in some way.

(If there’s anything guaranteed to p!ss a writer off, it’s knowing about something which can’t be used.)

“About suffering, they were never wrong…”

July 26, 2008 by John 8 Comments

Last weekend, The Missus and I visited the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. By the time you’ve seen (say) your 500th painting in one day, it’s tempting to claim they all look pretty much alike. Tempting, and wrong. Many of them sort of blend together, true. (In the Renaissance galleries, I lost count of the number of paintings titled “Portrait of a Young Man.”) But some always stand out, and leave their hooks in place long after you’ve laid eyes on them.

The painting above was done by Pieter Brueghel the Elder in 1558; its title is Landscape with the Fall of Icarus. (You can click the image to see a larger version.) It looks unremarkable, on first glance: a fairly typical (albeit expertly done) late-Renaissance rendering of a fairly typical pastoral/nautical subject. A — yes — a landscape.

But Icarus? Where’s Icarus?

Just in case you don’t know the Greek mythological story, here’s Wikipedia’s brief version:

Daedalus fashioned a pair of wax wings for himself and his son [Icarus]. Before they took off from the island, Daedalus warned his son not to fly too close to the sun, nor too close to the sea. Overcome by the sublime feeling that flying gave him, Icarus soared through the sky joyfully, but in the process he came too close to the sun, which melted his wings. Icarus kept flapping his wings but soon realized that he had no feathers left and that he was only flapping his bare arms. And so, Icarus fell into the sea…

So then. In the painting, Icarus must be falling. Perhaps in that bright sunlight-glowing area of the sky, just right of center; such an intensely lighted area certainly draws the eye… No? Then maybe it’s what the shepherd is looking up at — after all, he’s placed dead-center in the painting, so he must be important. Right?

Well, no. Here’s where Icarus is:

[Read more…]

Wallowing in Unhappiness

July 25, 2008 by John Leave a Comment

Per whiskey river:

As incredible as it sounds, an unhappy man does not realize that happiness is better than unhappiness. Knowing only his own concealed anguish, he worships it, which is the same as self-worship. – Vernon Howard

Sound familiar? It will if you listen in on enough writerly conversation: it’s the sound of writers who aren’t writing.

Department of Neighborhood Security

July 25, 2008 by John 2 Comments

The Missus and I live in a smallish subdivision some distance away from downtown. Nonetheless, the area around the development is all within City limits — except for the development itself, which for whatever mysterious reason has never agreed to annexation. We (TM and I) refer to it, privately, as The Principality — because it’s so much like a Monaco situation, y’know?

Anyhow, recently The Principality’s governing body (a/k/a the neighborhood association) voted to establish one of those “neighborhood crime watch” programs. You know the deal: neighbors look out for each other, particularly alert to the possibility that miscreants of one kind or another might be breaking into homes or cars and so on.

Not that we personally know of any such incidents. (I’m not saying there have been none — just that we’ve never heard of any.) …Oh, wait, yes, I’m sorry: a neighboring subdivision had its entry sign stolen. Other than that, nada.

But as we all know in the post-9/11 era, unseen threats are everywhere. In fact, a given imaginable danger is magnified in direct proportion to its invisibility. Kind of If there’s no evidence of wrongdoing, you’re just not looking hard enough.

So we have the new crime-watch thing. One key element of which, apparently, is the appointment of “block captains” to coordinate the crime-watching efforts of neighbors who live along a specific stretch of roadway. Our own block captain recently mailed us a two-page flyer providing some details. The following is, I believe, a critical excerpt (emphasis in the original):

…As your block captain, I will be asking for you to provide phone numbers, and e-mail addresses, which will allow two-way communication between neighbors and the neighborhood crime watch program. The exchange of this information will allow members of the community to provide and receive timely information regarding suspicious events and observations that have occurred. As an example, we recently had neighbors report a suspicious vehicle parked in the area. Through our communication, we also learned that the County Sheriff’s office did locate the vehicle and identify the occupants. Although on this occasion, the occupants of the vehicle did not intend to commit a criminal activity, through the effective reporting and communication of our neighbors, the individuals most assuredly would have been apprehended, had they committed a crime.

Got that? “Had they committed a crime.”

And if they didn’t, in fact, commit a crime — well, it’s their own fault they got “located” and “identified.” After all, they were in a suspicious vehicle, the dumb bastards! I’ll tell ya, what’s this world coming to when everyone can’t afford a decent, respectable, non-suspicious car?