I've been thinking a lot lately about technology and teaching. technology and human interaction, human exchange. technology and capitalism. My students are thoroughly plugged in - constantly whipping out mobile phones/text/internet machines throughout class, and throughout the rest of their days. they have cable in the dorms, televisions in most of their rooms or homes. Yet not one of my 25 college undergrads - largely juniors and seniors - knew the name Bernie Madoff when I mentioned it two weeks ago. None of them - except the business major - are following the economic news.
When I was in college, ever so long ago, television wasn't really an option for us. most people didn't have one at all, it seemed; at least, i only knew a few people who had them, with VCRs for movie-watching. the public tvs in the lounges didn't have cable. reception was abysmal to nonexistent, i think because of being next door to an airport. My first year, we were still on dialup. second year, we moved on to ethernet (i think), but - well, if google existed, i didn't know about it. no one had cellphones until my last year, when a few people had them. we all had landlines, but no one used them internally. if you wanted to talk to someone, you simply went and knocked on their door. or found their whereabouts, and tracked them down, if it was important enough. the campus was tiny and the population equally small; everyone knew everyone else, and everyone else's movements.
now everyone is strung together by wires and cables and satellite signals. but somehow - they seem less in touch.
I've been thinking about FEED a lot lately, MT Anderson's rather creepy dystopic novel. I need to read it again. I've only read it once or twice, but lately I can't stop thinking about it. specifically, i think about Violet. I think about not having the money to get the feed installed at a young enough age. i think about dying from technology.
I've also been thinking a lot about WIDE AWAKE, David Levithan's dreamy utopic novel. I think I wrote about it here awhile back, briefly. Levithan's imagined historical event, the "Greater Depression," has happened before the narrative opens (it's set in the mid 21st century - the protagonist's grandparents grew up in the 1990s). That phrase, Greater Depression, keeps knocking around in my brain.
I'm also seeing, in my mind's eye, the landscape of earth from WALL-E. the landscape of deserted parking lots, abandoned trains, cars, refrigerators, lightbulbs, televisions, soda cans, after the population has abandoned to ship, blasting off for the eternal false sunshine of their space cruise.
I wonder about being "too big to fail." what this means is that institutions are too big to be ALLOWED to fail. and i wonder what happens if, despite zillions of borrowed dollars, a bank or system that is "too big to fail" still crumbles. I suspect the Roman Empire thought IT was "too big to fail," also. The technological advancements of the Empire were remarkable; some, in the form of roads, aqueducts and walls, are still standing.
My students DON'T see these things. they somehow still seem to be gazing at the sunny-side-up of a dropped egg. a girl told me a few weeks ago that "everyone" now thinks homosexuality is fine, it's totally accepted.
there's a kind of obliviousness, a blindness, that I see in my students. largely, it's a historical blindness: everything that happened before their birth is "the olden days." they simply have no concept of WHEN things happen, what the pattern of history looks like, what time means. It doesn't feel, to them, like women's suffrage is a relatively recent development. It's something that happened "back in the day," a phrase they use to mean everything from 1980 to 1700 to BC Athens.
i wonder about these things. i wonder what to do about them, in terms of teaching. I wonder how to think about systemic failure, and change, and technology that alienates under the guise of connecting us all.
mostly, i wonder about the Greater Depression, and the feed.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Monday, February 09, 2009
Neil Gaiman Hurrah! - Coraline and The Graveyard Book
The Newbery Medal this year (2008 award) has been given to Neil Gaiman's THE GRAVEYARD BOOK. I'm thrilled to death, because it was such a phenomenal book (my post about it is below, somewhere). I'm also excited because I read and loved this book BEFORE it won the Newbery. I'm pleased and a little surprised that the committee selected this book; it's got some edge to it (the first chapter is a quite horrifying opening sequence about the murder of Bod's entire family, including his child-sister). The Newbery awards its prizes to a variety of kinds of books - not just happy fluff books, or gritty realism that teaches important messages - but The Graveyard Book is uncategorizable, to me - it's a Gaiman fantasy. I do think I need to think more about how to classify the book - as an intellectual exercise, not so much because I believe that books need classification. At any rate, Newbery medal winner The Graveyard Book is an astonishingly wonderful book, and I couldn't be happier about the win.
Now for Coraline.
For a couple of years, I've had a copy of Coraline on my bookshelf; I picked it up for 49 cents at a goodwill store. Then, for some reason, I resisted reading it. I have no idea why. But this Friday, coinciding with the release of Henry Selick's Coraline film, I read it.
And loved it. What a deliciously creepy, inventive book! I wonder about the eye motifs - why buttons? why eyes? why dolls? It makes me think of Hoffman's creepy "Sandman" story; perhaps it's meant to.
I thought the book was fantastic. I loved Coraline, the explorer-heroine. I loved her impulse to explore - it's one that I can connect with, both in recalling my child-self and in my adult-self now (and to be honest, I am not at all sure there's much difference between the child-self and the adult-self, in terms of imagination). I liked her bored snarkiness with her neighbors and family; not malicious, not bratty, simply - apart from the realm of what adults find interesting, or what adults think kids find interesting. Possibly my favorite line comes early on, when Coraline reflects on the dull or dumb things adults say: "She wondered who they thought they were talking to."
This sums up, brilliantly and concisely, Coraline's personality and also my own thinking about adult-child relationships here in my own "real" world. I often wonder, seeing adults clucking and cooing at small children, who they think they are talking to. Likewise with older children, who are people deserving of respect and honest attention.
Saturday night I saw the movie adaptation, which was staggering. Selick's stop-motion animation is just unbelievably well suited to the story, and he handles it marvellously. My only complaint, really, is the insertion of Wybie, the male foil to Coraline - he's not in the book, and he isn't necessary at all. Coraline can manage on her own just fine. I suspect Wybie of being an invention designed to bring in boy viewers, which - if true - infuriates me. Girls and woman have, for years, been expected (and been able) to identify with male protagonists, and male protagonists only, in texts where there's a real absence of meaningful female characters. So why can't boys and men learn to do the same?
The other-world Selick devises is obviously his raison d'etre for making the film. the lavish attention, the long sequences, on the delights and wonders contrived for Coraline in the other-world are the most gorgeous, dreamy moments of the entire film. The garden made for Coraline by the other-father is beautiful and amazing and magical, even before the camera pulls back and reveals that the entire garden has been grown in the image of Coraline's face. That detail only makes it more beautiful.
The mouse circus sequence was my other favorite, aesthetically (Spink and Forcible's burlesque act is HYSTERICALLY funny, a genius moment of "adult" entertainment that had the entire theatre giggling). Pink cotton candy is, to me, one of the most visually pleasing things in the world, and the cannons shooting out cotton-candy cones were a lovely trick.
The joy and beauty in the film - visually - is in the exquisite craftsmanship of the sets and characters. the entire thing - every piece - is handmade, and it gives the film an extra layer of magic, somehow. The textures of Coraline's sweater, her rainboots and slicker, the fluff of the cotton candy, the shine of the black button eyes - are all wonderfully vivid and real. It's a movie that makes me wish for a fabulous dollhouse, with a doll-garden, and finely detailed doll accessories.
Selick's adaptation necessarily contains changes; Wybie is really the only egregious one, the one I have real issue with. The voice of the black cat did not match MY sense of the cat's voice from the book, but it worked nonetheless. But aesthetically, Selick's film is a perfect match with Coraline the book. I was not lucky enough to see it in 3D (I would like to, if I can find a 3D theatre in town), but even barring that, Coraline was an extraordinary visual experience.
Now for Coraline.
For a couple of years, I've had a copy of Coraline on my bookshelf; I picked it up for 49 cents at a goodwill store. Then, for some reason, I resisted reading it. I have no idea why. But this Friday, coinciding with the release of Henry Selick's Coraline film, I read it.
And loved it. What a deliciously creepy, inventive book! I wonder about the eye motifs - why buttons? why eyes? why dolls? It makes me think of Hoffman's creepy "Sandman" story; perhaps it's meant to.
I thought the book was fantastic. I loved Coraline, the explorer-heroine. I loved her impulse to explore - it's one that I can connect with, both in recalling my child-self and in my adult-self now (and to be honest, I am not at all sure there's much difference between the child-self and the adult-self, in terms of imagination). I liked her bored snarkiness with her neighbors and family; not malicious, not bratty, simply - apart from the realm of what adults find interesting, or what adults think kids find interesting. Possibly my favorite line comes early on, when Coraline reflects on the dull or dumb things adults say: "She wondered who they thought they were talking to."
This sums up, brilliantly and concisely, Coraline's personality and also my own thinking about adult-child relationships here in my own "real" world. I often wonder, seeing adults clucking and cooing at small children, who they think they are talking to. Likewise with older children, who are people deserving of respect and honest attention.
Saturday night I saw the movie adaptation, which was staggering. Selick's stop-motion animation is just unbelievably well suited to the story, and he handles it marvellously. My only complaint, really, is the insertion of Wybie, the male foil to Coraline - he's not in the book, and he isn't necessary at all. Coraline can manage on her own just fine. I suspect Wybie of being an invention designed to bring in boy viewers, which - if true - infuriates me. Girls and woman have, for years, been expected (and been able) to identify with male protagonists, and male protagonists only, in texts where there's a real absence of meaningful female characters. So why can't boys and men learn to do the same?
The other-world Selick devises is obviously his raison d'etre for making the film. the lavish attention, the long sequences, on the delights and wonders contrived for Coraline in the other-world are the most gorgeous, dreamy moments of the entire film. The garden made for Coraline by the other-father is beautiful and amazing and magical, even before the camera pulls back and reveals that the entire garden has been grown in the image of Coraline's face. That detail only makes it more beautiful.
The mouse circus sequence was my other favorite, aesthetically (Spink and Forcible's burlesque act is HYSTERICALLY funny, a genius moment of "adult" entertainment that had the entire theatre giggling). Pink cotton candy is, to me, one of the most visually pleasing things in the world, and the cannons shooting out cotton-candy cones were a lovely trick.
The joy and beauty in the film - visually - is in the exquisite craftsmanship of the sets and characters. the entire thing - every piece - is handmade, and it gives the film an extra layer of magic, somehow. The textures of Coraline's sweater, her rainboots and slicker, the fluff of the cotton candy, the shine of the black button eyes - are all wonderfully vivid and real. It's a movie that makes me wish for a fabulous dollhouse, with a doll-garden, and finely detailed doll accessories.
Selick's adaptation necessarily contains changes; Wybie is really the only egregious one, the one I have real issue with. The voice of the black cat did not match MY sense of the cat's voice from the book, but it worked nonetheless. But aesthetically, Selick's film is a perfect match with Coraline the book. I was not lucky enough to see it in 3D (I would like to, if I can find a 3D theatre in town), but even barring that, Coraline was an extraordinary visual experience.
Thursday, November 27, 2008
The Graveyard Book
Since my "thanksgiving" day was spent comfortably nestled, alone, in my little house in the woods, I was able to lounge about and read to my heart's content (okay: i have NEVER read to my heart's content, since I have an ongoing, insistent, persistent, insatiable desire to read). Due to the nice perk of working at a bookstore, Wednesday night I borrowed Neil Gaiman's new(ish) book, THE GRAVEYARD BOOK.
and read it all today (after finishing the last, unfinished, pages of The Mystery of Edwin Drood, and before taking up Harriet the Spy for a re-read).
I've read some of Gaiman's books - Neverwhere, Stardust - and loved them, and I've tried others (American Gods) with no luck. I'm intimidated by graphic novels, so I've never done more than peek in an odd copy of The Sandman here or there. But on the strength of Neverwhere alone, I'd say I'm devoted to Gaiman. I'd heard good things about The Graveyard Book, and on a whim, decided to give it a try.
And it was marvellous. Truly marvellous. What a wonderfully brilliant, clever, weirdly moving, book.
I've got nothing to compare it to, really. The only think I can come up with is the half-ghost boy in China Mieville's Un Lun Dun. But this story, of the live boy Bod who is given Freedom of the Graveyard after being orphaned, then adopted by ghosts (The Owenses, last living in the 18th century). Gaiman's cleverness in his cast of graveyard characters is wonderful; I particularly like his habit of citing a name, followed by its tombstone inscription. Like Eva Ibbotson's, Gaiman's ghosts are largely benevolent. Even the vaguely scary Silas, (vampire? i think?) is also an emotionally rich, intriguing character, and much loved by Bod.
The villains of the story, the Jacks of All Trades, are cleverly conceived, as well. Gaiman's obviously interested in story, and stories; in characters, in folklore, in quirks of the language - and I can't say I'm NOT also interested in these things. The way he combines and recreates these various elements is truly inspired.
The story of a live child raised in a graveyard is certain to be harrowing, at moments; hilarious, at moments; mysterious, at moments - and The Graveyard Book is all of those things. But it's also sad, and touching, and wondering, and wondrous, and courteous, and charming.
Bod himself is fantastically drawn. His interactions with everyone - with Liza Hempstock, with Silas, with Miss Lupescu, with Scarlett Amber Perkins, with Nick and Mo - are genuine and revealing. Bod makes mistakes, but - unlike many obnoxious characters in the world (both fictional and real) - he learns from them. He is able to admit mistakes, apologize, and refrain from committing them again. Instead of seeming cowed, weak or unadventurous, Bod seems intelligent - wise, even. Because of the danger of the man Jack (who murdered his family, and wants to murder Bod), Bod is not allowed to leave the graveyard. When he does, he inevitably falls into grave danger, and must be rescued by Liza and Silas.
But instead of persisting in seeing the world beyond the graveyard, Bod realizes he's in danger, and that his danger endangers the "people" he cares about. It's a striking difference from headlong heroic fools like Harry Potter; Bod never makes the horror-film mistake of opening that door, or going down that flight of stairs, and that is a testament to Gaiman's craft. Bod behaves the way a real human would - he learns, he changes, he grows. He makes mistakes, but he does some things beautifully right. The world of the graveyard is a wonderfully interesting one, and Bod learns an incredible amount, about everything (his teachers, all ghosts, have all died before 1900 or thereabouts; the graveyard's oldest inhabitant is Caius Pompeius, who came to England about 100 years after the first Romans. Bod's curriculum is thus wideranging, though admittedly weak in areas like "the modern world.").
Truly, this book makes me wish for more in a series - the Graveyard is such a compelling place, such an inspired setting, and Gaiman (of course) handles this setting brilliantly. The characters - especially Liza and Silas - are fascinating in their own right, and makes me want to read more about them. The possibilities of a graveyard "populated" by people ranging so far and wide across history and class are incredibly exciting.
This is a book to read again and again; it is one that I will have to purchase for my own library. I can't give a book much higher compliment than that, since - out of necessity - I strictly limit my new-book-buying.
and read it all today (after finishing the last, unfinished, pages of The Mystery of Edwin Drood, and before taking up Harriet the Spy for a re-read).
I've read some of Gaiman's books - Neverwhere, Stardust - and loved them, and I've tried others (American Gods) with no luck. I'm intimidated by graphic novels, so I've never done more than peek in an odd copy of The Sandman here or there. But on the strength of Neverwhere alone, I'd say I'm devoted to Gaiman. I'd heard good things about The Graveyard Book, and on a whim, decided to give it a try.
And it was marvellous. Truly marvellous. What a wonderfully brilliant, clever, weirdly moving, book.
I've got nothing to compare it to, really. The only think I can come up with is the half-ghost boy in China Mieville's Un Lun Dun. But this story, of the live boy Bod who is given Freedom of the Graveyard after being orphaned, then adopted by ghosts (The Owenses, last living in the 18th century). Gaiman's cleverness in his cast of graveyard characters is wonderful; I particularly like his habit of citing a name, followed by its tombstone inscription. Like Eva Ibbotson's, Gaiman's ghosts are largely benevolent. Even the vaguely scary Silas, (vampire? i think?) is also an emotionally rich, intriguing character, and much loved by Bod.
The villains of the story, the Jacks of All Trades, are cleverly conceived, as well. Gaiman's obviously interested in story, and stories; in characters, in folklore, in quirks of the language - and I can't say I'm NOT also interested in these things. The way he combines and recreates these various elements is truly inspired.
The story of a live child raised in a graveyard is certain to be harrowing, at moments; hilarious, at moments; mysterious, at moments - and The Graveyard Book is all of those things. But it's also sad, and touching, and wondering, and wondrous, and courteous, and charming.
Bod himself is fantastically drawn. His interactions with everyone - with Liza Hempstock, with Silas, with Miss Lupescu, with Scarlett Amber Perkins, with Nick and Mo - are genuine and revealing. Bod makes mistakes, but - unlike many obnoxious characters in the world (both fictional and real) - he learns from them. He is able to admit mistakes, apologize, and refrain from committing them again. Instead of seeming cowed, weak or unadventurous, Bod seems intelligent - wise, even. Because of the danger of the man Jack (who murdered his family, and wants to murder Bod), Bod is not allowed to leave the graveyard. When he does, he inevitably falls into grave danger, and must be rescued by Liza and Silas.
But instead of persisting in seeing the world beyond the graveyard, Bod realizes he's in danger, and that his danger endangers the "people" he cares about. It's a striking difference from headlong heroic fools like Harry Potter; Bod never makes the horror-film mistake of opening that door, or going down that flight of stairs, and that is a testament to Gaiman's craft. Bod behaves the way a real human would - he learns, he changes, he grows. He makes mistakes, but he does some things beautifully right. The world of the graveyard is a wonderfully interesting one, and Bod learns an incredible amount, about everything (his teachers, all ghosts, have all died before 1900 or thereabouts; the graveyard's oldest inhabitant is Caius Pompeius, who came to England about 100 years after the first Romans. Bod's curriculum is thus wideranging, though admittedly weak in areas like "the modern world.").
Truly, this book makes me wish for more in a series - the Graveyard is such a compelling place, such an inspired setting, and Gaiman (of course) handles this setting brilliantly. The characters - especially Liza and Silas - are fascinating in their own right, and makes me want to read more about them. The possibilities of a graveyard "populated" by people ranging so far and wide across history and class are incredibly exciting.
This is a book to read again and again; it is one that I will have to purchase for my own library. I can't give a book much higher compliment than that, since - out of necessity - I strictly limit my new-book-buying.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
making the stage safe for boys everywhere
Tonight I finally saw High School Musical 3 in the theatre. I've been trying to coordinate this with a friend from my department for awhile, and finally, we made it (along with four other people - a mom with three kids).
I've been a fan of HSM for awhile now. What I like about these movies is their queerness, a queerness that is unmistakable to even a semi-trained observer. Though the veneer of hetero courtship covers all three films - Troy and Gabriela, after all, are the "stars," - the emphasis of the movies is consistently NOT on their relationship. Troy and Gabriela are incredibly chaste, only really kissing twice in all three films. It's a rated-G movie that still manages to bring a wonderfully queer subtext.
HSM3 pushes that subtext to the forefront. This one is really the Zac Efron show; word on the street is that old Zac was a little too big for his wildcat britches, and had to be paid WELL and catered to for the show to go on. Troy is the star of this film, and - though I am no Zac-maniac - Efron rises to the occasion admirably. There's a genuineness to his scenes that I don't remember from the other movies. He's not just there to be a heartthrob, although I lost track of the number of times he peels off a shirt or two (only once going totally shirtless, and then only seen from the back).
The plotlines, of course, center around the angst of senior year: where to go to school, how to deal with moving away from friends and girlfriends. for Troy, the bigger problem is: how to follow his heart and his dreams when for a very long time, his pushy dad has been pushing him along a certain track? What, exactly, ARE Troy's dreams?
This is not a bad theme, and it rings true for a lot of people well beyond high school. The intermingling of real life with the school's senior musical is a brilliant trick: we never actually see the prom, only the musical's re-creation of it. The senior musical is about senior year, literally, and the two - stage and real life - become twins of each other.
Because at its heart, this is a movie about musicals, and theatre. Sharpay and Ryan's big number comes early on, and shows them paying homage to a number of classical musicals in costume and choreography. The importance of living life in, on and around the stage is paramount to the movie, and it showcases this in an absolutely joyful, unrestrained way.
The girls are the weakest links of the show: Gabriela, Sharpay, the others have weak voices and are bad actors. For Sharpay, this suits her character; for Gabriela, it's simply obnoxious. But the boys in the film are in their absolute glory. Chad (Corbin Bleu) and Ryan (Lucas Grabeel) bring it like they haven't before. Chad and Troy do a surprisingly touching (but also pretty damn fierce) "duet" in a junkyard, and they are both amazing. Ryan is made choreographer of the senior musical, and he glows in purple argyles and white fedoras. Ryan is the most obviously queer character in the movie; he is never set into a hetero relationship (nor, alas, is he given a gay relationship). But the movie, I think, is honorable in not compromising on Ryan's gayness; he IS the Gay Drama Boy, a dancing queen, with a massive amount of talent. His talent is respected throughout the films, and Ryan is very rarely made a figure of fun. He's a pansy for sure, but not one we want to laugh at; we LIKE Ryan, and so does everyone else.
The movie's greatest gift is in its shrugging off the restraints of traditional masculinity. There's a broad spectrum of options represented here, all of them viewed as good and right for the characters who choose them. Ryan's pink-plaid-pants flaming choreography is at one end of the spectrum; Troy's dad, the basketball coach who antagonizes the drama teacher in HSM1 and has nothing but contempt for theatre, is the marker of truly butch masculinity. Chad, who sings and dances along with his friends, but not as enthusiastically, and who is a dedicated athlete, hovers at the traditionally butch end of the scale as well. But the others are more ambiguous; there's the basketball guy whose real passion in life is pastry-making. And of course - Troy, who struggles through three films to come to grips with his talents and love of basketball and jock life, AND singing, dancing and theatrical life. He hides his artistic talent, keeping himself "closeted" from his jock dad, but ultimately, Troy has to make a choice to be himself.
Choosing to be yourself, to be who and what you love, is a fundamental in queer activism, no matter how it's couched in theoretical terms. That these movies choose to push this message - one that can often feel terrible cliched and stale in any movie for younger audiences - is made fresh and new and exciting by the fact that being yourself sometimes means being a drama queen. or a masculine, straight boy who loves to sing and dance. And that all of these choices are okay, and that sometimes you don't have to choose: you can be a jock and a dancer.
I feel excited and inspired by this movie; it's full of cheesy highschool cliches, and everytime Gabriela opens her mouth I want to scream. But the junkyard dance, and Troy's big solo, when he has to figure out what he wants (basketball court or stage?) are powerful moments that feel real.
The film ends with graduation, with the characters dancing and singing and whooping it up as wildcats one last time. but part of the lyrics they sing is :
"I Wish My Life Could Feel Like A High School Musical"
and that's really what the movie's all about: making life feel like a musical.
I've been a fan of HSM for awhile now. What I like about these movies is their queerness, a queerness that is unmistakable to even a semi-trained observer. Though the veneer of hetero courtship covers all three films - Troy and Gabriela, after all, are the "stars," - the emphasis of the movies is consistently NOT on their relationship. Troy and Gabriela are incredibly chaste, only really kissing twice in all three films. It's a rated-G movie that still manages to bring a wonderfully queer subtext.
HSM3 pushes that subtext to the forefront. This one is really the Zac Efron show; word on the street is that old Zac was a little too big for his wildcat britches, and had to be paid WELL and catered to for the show to go on. Troy is the star of this film, and - though I am no Zac-maniac - Efron rises to the occasion admirably. There's a genuineness to his scenes that I don't remember from the other movies. He's not just there to be a heartthrob, although I lost track of the number of times he peels off a shirt or two (only once going totally shirtless, and then only seen from the back).
The plotlines, of course, center around the angst of senior year: where to go to school, how to deal with moving away from friends and girlfriends. for Troy, the bigger problem is: how to follow his heart and his dreams when for a very long time, his pushy dad has been pushing him along a certain track? What, exactly, ARE Troy's dreams?
This is not a bad theme, and it rings true for a lot of people well beyond high school. The intermingling of real life with the school's senior musical is a brilliant trick: we never actually see the prom, only the musical's re-creation of it. The senior musical is about senior year, literally, and the two - stage and real life - become twins of each other.
Because at its heart, this is a movie about musicals, and theatre. Sharpay and Ryan's big number comes early on, and shows them paying homage to a number of classical musicals in costume and choreography. The importance of living life in, on and around the stage is paramount to the movie, and it showcases this in an absolutely joyful, unrestrained way.
The girls are the weakest links of the show: Gabriela, Sharpay, the others have weak voices and are bad actors. For Sharpay, this suits her character; for Gabriela, it's simply obnoxious. But the boys in the film are in their absolute glory. Chad (Corbin Bleu) and Ryan (Lucas Grabeel) bring it like they haven't before. Chad and Troy do a surprisingly touching (but also pretty damn fierce) "duet" in a junkyard, and they are both amazing. Ryan is made choreographer of the senior musical, and he glows in purple argyles and white fedoras. Ryan is the most obviously queer character in the movie; he is never set into a hetero relationship (nor, alas, is he given a gay relationship). But the movie, I think, is honorable in not compromising on Ryan's gayness; he IS the Gay Drama Boy, a dancing queen, with a massive amount of talent. His talent is respected throughout the films, and Ryan is very rarely made a figure of fun. He's a pansy for sure, but not one we want to laugh at; we LIKE Ryan, and so does everyone else.
The movie's greatest gift is in its shrugging off the restraints of traditional masculinity. There's a broad spectrum of options represented here, all of them viewed as good and right for the characters who choose them. Ryan's pink-plaid-pants flaming choreography is at one end of the spectrum; Troy's dad, the basketball coach who antagonizes the drama teacher in HSM1 and has nothing but contempt for theatre, is the marker of truly butch masculinity. Chad, who sings and dances along with his friends, but not as enthusiastically, and who is a dedicated athlete, hovers at the traditionally butch end of the scale as well. But the others are more ambiguous; there's the basketball guy whose real passion in life is pastry-making. And of course - Troy, who struggles through three films to come to grips with his talents and love of basketball and jock life, AND singing, dancing and theatrical life. He hides his artistic talent, keeping himself "closeted" from his jock dad, but ultimately, Troy has to make a choice to be himself.
Choosing to be yourself, to be who and what you love, is a fundamental in queer activism, no matter how it's couched in theoretical terms. That these movies choose to push this message - one that can often feel terrible cliched and stale in any movie for younger audiences - is made fresh and new and exciting by the fact that being yourself sometimes means being a drama queen. or a masculine, straight boy who loves to sing and dance. And that all of these choices are okay, and that sometimes you don't have to choose: you can be a jock and a dancer.
I feel excited and inspired by this movie; it's full of cheesy highschool cliches, and everytime Gabriela opens her mouth I want to scream. But the junkyard dance, and Troy's big solo, when he has to figure out what he wants (basketball court or stage?) are powerful moments that feel real.
The film ends with graduation, with the characters dancing and singing and whooping it up as wildcats one last time. but part of the lyrics they sing is :
"I Wish My Life Could Feel Like A High School Musical"
and that's really what the movie's all about: making life feel like a musical.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
updated versions, and the President's Daughter
This weekend, in a mammothly foolish endeavor, I read the three "new" volumes in Ellen Emerson White's quartet about Meg Powers, first encountered as the eponymous President's Daughter.
I read, as I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, The President's Daughter years ago, when I was in junior high or thereabouts. I re-read it quite a lot - it's funny, clever, interesting, with massively appealing characters and an intriguing and smart premise (Meg's MOM is elected President).
The following three books, which I'd never heard of before, though they seem to have been printed in the 80s, after the first (except the final installment, which is actually new), have been re-released in 2008, just in time for the elections (and, at the start of the year, coinciding with a potential Woman President). The four have been reissued in "updated" editions, each with a new cover representing Meg as the main character in a series of classic paintings - Wyeth, Da Vinci, Vermeer. I kind of hate the covers, but that's all right.
White's a fantastic author - sharp and witty as hell, and spot on in detailing the complex emotions of all her characters - and so I enjoyed reading the books. They get increasingly - dramatic (melodramatic?) - as Meg's mom is shot by a would-be assassin, then Meg herself is kidnapped and tortured by terrorists, before (in the final installment), going off, still battered and seriously injured, to college in massachusetts. The drama was a little much - what are the chances of a kidnapping AND assassination attempt in a single year? - but then, considering that White's attempting to discuss the first female president, it's possible. The recent barrage of insanity from anti-Obama crowds suggests that perhaps, a challenger to the Old White Man Network is in much more grave danger than one might expect.
I'm really happy to see these books back in print, and newly featured in bookstores. White's a great writer, and Meg's a thoroughly engaging character - a kind of slob, who prefers sweats and old button-up shirts, no makeup, and playing tennis; a very real-feeling girl who isn't girlie, who worries about boys and appearance without being consumed by it, a girl who hits her brothers, snaps at her parents, daydreams in class, cracks excellent jokes, plays with her cat, has longrunning inside jokes with her best friend - a totally believable girl. whose mother, by the way, is President.
The updating of the books works, too, which worried me at the outset. I recently came across the first four re-released Sweet Valley High books, and flipped through the pages to see what had been perpetrated. The books seem as shallow and inane as ever, only now - now! - the Wakefields and their friends have cellphones, iPods and Blackberries to further enhance their shallow inanity!
White, on the other hand, has been more discreet in her "modernizing" of her books. Meg's got a laptop, and an iPod, and she now drinks Cokes instead of the quaintly mid-80s Tab; her friends email, she carried a cellphone, mainly for security purposes - but otherwise, those details fade into the background. The most substantial change is to the politics of the book: White has moved Meg's mother's Presidency into an undefined future - a post G.W. Bush world (there's a nice joke about the dog being encouraged to use the GW Bush Maple Tree as a relieving post). It's also a post 9/11 world, so the terrorists who kidnap Meg are evidently members of a new Islamofascist splinter group. We get a reference to life in New York City, and terror alert levels, and "more than one plane."
But really: that's it. a few offhand references to global warming, and the politics have no more real specificity. Meg's mom - and Meg - are staunch liberal Democrats (VERY liberal), and the book pulls no punches about this. It isn't central, but it's an ever-present ideology, and it's one I love to encounter. Moreover, Meg's mom's presidency seems utterly believable, and is very rarely made into a historical women's issue - it's hard dealing with a parent who is President; it's hard dealing with her mom. the books never let us forget that it's IMPORTANT that a woman is president, and that it's something new, but it never beats us over the head moralizing about it, either. It feels natural. And the family's joking over political cartoons and tabloids, suggesting Meg's mother is incapable of governing because she's a woman, makes that particular question seem foolish and outdated.
There are some ridiculous aspects of the book - Meg's relationship with a cad of a player of a dude annoyed the hell out of me (she should be smarter than that!), and some of the college issues are also a little over the top. But on the whole, the series updates itself and advances in its narrative, wonderfully. And if the last book is a little long - well, even when I came to the last page (600-something), I felt a little wistful, wanting to know what happens next in the life of Meg Powers.
I read, as I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, The President's Daughter years ago, when I was in junior high or thereabouts. I re-read it quite a lot - it's funny, clever, interesting, with massively appealing characters and an intriguing and smart premise (Meg's MOM is elected President).
The following three books, which I'd never heard of before, though they seem to have been printed in the 80s, after the first (except the final installment, which is actually new), have been re-released in 2008, just in time for the elections (and, at the start of the year, coinciding with a potential Woman President). The four have been reissued in "updated" editions, each with a new cover representing Meg as the main character in a series of classic paintings - Wyeth, Da Vinci, Vermeer. I kind of hate the covers, but that's all right.
White's a fantastic author - sharp and witty as hell, and spot on in detailing the complex emotions of all her characters - and so I enjoyed reading the books. They get increasingly - dramatic (melodramatic?) - as Meg's mom is shot by a would-be assassin, then Meg herself is kidnapped and tortured by terrorists, before (in the final installment), going off, still battered and seriously injured, to college in massachusetts. The drama was a little much - what are the chances of a kidnapping AND assassination attempt in a single year? - but then, considering that White's attempting to discuss the first female president, it's possible. The recent barrage of insanity from anti-Obama crowds suggests that perhaps, a challenger to the Old White Man Network is in much more grave danger than one might expect.
I'm really happy to see these books back in print, and newly featured in bookstores. White's a great writer, and Meg's a thoroughly engaging character - a kind of slob, who prefers sweats and old button-up shirts, no makeup, and playing tennis; a very real-feeling girl who isn't girlie, who worries about boys and appearance without being consumed by it, a girl who hits her brothers, snaps at her parents, daydreams in class, cracks excellent jokes, plays with her cat, has longrunning inside jokes with her best friend - a totally believable girl. whose mother, by the way, is President.
The updating of the books works, too, which worried me at the outset. I recently came across the first four re-released Sweet Valley High books, and flipped through the pages to see what had been perpetrated. The books seem as shallow and inane as ever, only now - now! - the Wakefields and their friends have cellphones, iPods and Blackberries to further enhance their shallow inanity!
White, on the other hand, has been more discreet in her "modernizing" of her books. Meg's got a laptop, and an iPod, and she now drinks Cokes instead of the quaintly mid-80s Tab; her friends email, she carried a cellphone, mainly for security purposes - but otherwise, those details fade into the background. The most substantial change is to the politics of the book: White has moved Meg's mother's Presidency into an undefined future - a post G.W. Bush world (there's a nice joke about the dog being encouraged to use the GW Bush Maple Tree as a relieving post). It's also a post 9/11 world, so the terrorists who kidnap Meg are evidently members of a new Islamofascist splinter group. We get a reference to life in New York City, and terror alert levels, and "more than one plane."
But really: that's it. a few offhand references to global warming, and the politics have no more real specificity. Meg's mom - and Meg - are staunch liberal Democrats (VERY liberal), and the book pulls no punches about this. It isn't central, but it's an ever-present ideology, and it's one I love to encounter. Moreover, Meg's mom's presidency seems utterly believable, and is very rarely made into a historical women's issue - it's hard dealing with a parent who is President; it's hard dealing with her mom. the books never let us forget that it's IMPORTANT that a woman is president, and that it's something new, but it never beats us over the head moralizing about it, either. It feels natural. And the family's joking over political cartoons and tabloids, suggesting Meg's mother is incapable of governing because she's a woman, makes that particular question seem foolish and outdated.
There are some ridiculous aspects of the book - Meg's relationship with a cad of a player of a dude annoyed the hell out of me (she should be smarter than that!), and some of the college issues are also a little over the top. But on the whole, the series updates itself and advances in its narrative, wonderfully. And if the last book is a little long - well, even when I came to the last page (600-something), I felt a little wistful, wanting to know what happens next in the life of Meg Powers.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
new books, old books
I'm excited that Forever Rose is out. I'm patiently waiting to purchase my copy for reasons which I decline to go into here (they have to do with a new job, and potential discounts). In honor of Forever Rose, I re-read Caddy Ever After, which I found semi-disappointing after the first three Casson family books. The first-person narration puts me off. But on the re-read, I dealt with it okay. I still found it lacking; I especially don't like Rose's first-person narration, but I'll live with it.
The second volume of Octavian Nothing is due out on 14 October. Again - new job, discounts, and I'm excited. I really, really like The Pox Party, and I'm keen to read the next installment. Judith Plotz gave a phenomenal talk about the book, and Rousseau, at the 2007 ChLA conference, and I get all intellectually wound up when I think about it. That excitement carries into reading the book, of course, and so I'm anticipating the second book quite, quite eagerly.
I happened to be in a bookstore over the weekend, and as always, I checked out the children's/YA sections. And was floored to see a stand-alone cardboard display featuring Ellen Emerson White's novel The President's Daughter.
Reasons I was floored:
1) I read The President's Daughter when I was probably 11 or 12, so early 90s. I got it from the library used book sale. I always liked it a lot as a young reader, and when I re-read it sometime within 2008, I was happy at how well it held up. But I always assumed it was out of print, or something - it's from 1985, semi-topical, and though a really terrific read, not the kind of book that libraries are scrambling to stock NOW.
2) There's a SERIES. There are FOUR titles! FOUR! poking around online, I see that they were brought back in print in 2008 (election tie-in, hurray!). I'm skeptical about the quality, since they sound pretty freaking melodramatic, but White's writing in The President's Daughter is tight and witty and highly, highly enjoyable. I'm scheming now to get my hands on all three subsequent books, and cannot WAIT to read them.
I felt a bit sad, actually, realizing that White's premise - the teenage daughter of the first woman elected President - will be fiction for - well, probably quite some years. And recalling the scenes when Meg, the eponymous heroine, attends a NOW speech given by her mother, and sees how overwhelmed with happiness - joy/tears - that a woman is President - reading that as a younger reader, I never quite got it. But having seen Senator Clinton's campaign - and worse, or more - seen the hideous way the media has responded to the selection of Governor Palin as VP candidate - then, I understood why a group of feminists would cry with happiness at the election of one of their own (Meg's mother is quite clearly a liberal and feminist).
on the Old Books front: I dipped into Stephen King! re-read "The Langoliers" and "Umney's Last Case," which lead me to a very tattery copy of a Raymond Chandler book of short stories, which I've been reading rather delightedly this evening.
I've been struggling, a lot, in the last couple of weeks, with balancing my teaching with my politics. Teaching is activism, in my book, and normally I have no problems making that happen, but I feel like I'm not doing ENOUGH. I want to sit down with my class and read articles from the Times and the Post and wherever else media happens. I want to talk, at length, about what the hell is REALLY going on. I want to make feminism a real, meaningful, necessary force in the world, not just a weird group of man-hating lesbian bra-burning feminazis, which, alas, is what my group this summer believed feminists were. even my smart, liberal students had been tricked by this heinous Limbaughesque rhetoric.
I love children's literature for a lot of reasons, but a big one is because every issue that's important to me politically surfaces (as it does in most texts), and because - more for my students than for myself - these texts are formative for children's personal beliefs. I care about that, surely, but I'm more interested in shattering the beliefs of my students, or at least making them examine their own beliefs. But I'm feeling limited by rollicking adventure stories, by the choices I made for my syllabus.
The second volume of Octavian Nothing is due out on 14 October. Again - new job, discounts, and I'm excited. I really, really like The Pox Party, and I'm keen to read the next installment. Judith Plotz gave a phenomenal talk about the book, and Rousseau, at the 2007 ChLA conference, and I get all intellectually wound up when I think about it. That excitement carries into reading the book, of course, and so I'm anticipating the second book quite, quite eagerly.
I happened to be in a bookstore over the weekend, and as always, I checked out the children's/YA sections. And was floored to see a stand-alone cardboard display featuring Ellen Emerson White's novel The President's Daughter.
Reasons I was floored:
1) I read The President's Daughter when I was probably 11 or 12, so early 90s. I got it from the library used book sale. I always liked it a lot as a young reader, and when I re-read it sometime within 2008, I was happy at how well it held up. But I always assumed it was out of print, or something - it's from 1985, semi-topical, and though a really terrific read, not the kind of book that libraries are scrambling to stock NOW.
2) There's a SERIES. There are FOUR titles! FOUR! poking around online, I see that they were brought back in print in 2008 (election tie-in, hurray!). I'm skeptical about the quality, since they sound pretty freaking melodramatic, but White's writing in The President's Daughter is tight and witty and highly, highly enjoyable. I'm scheming now to get my hands on all three subsequent books, and cannot WAIT to read them.
I felt a bit sad, actually, realizing that White's premise - the teenage daughter of the first woman elected President - will be fiction for - well, probably quite some years. And recalling the scenes when Meg, the eponymous heroine, attends a NOW speech given by her mother, and sees how overwhelmed with happiness - joy/tears - that a woman is President - reading that as a younger reader, I never quite got it. But having seen Senator Clinton's campaign - and worse, or more - seen the hideous way the media has responded to the selection of Governor Palin as VP candidate - then, I understood why a group of feminists would cry with happiness at the election of one of their own (Meg's mother is quite clearly a liberal and feminist).
on the Old Books front: I dipped into Stephen King! re-read "The Langoliers" and "Umney's Last Case," which lead me to a very tattery copy of a Raymond Chandler book of short stories, which I've been reading rather delightedly this evening.
I've been struggling, a lot, in the last couple of weeks, with balancing my teaching with my politics. Teaching is activism, in my book, and normally I have no problems making that happen, but I feel like I'm not doing ENOUGH. I want to sit down with my class and read articles from the Times and the Post and wherever else media happens. I want to talk, at length, about what the hell is REALLY going on. I want to make feminism a real, meaningful, necessary force in the world, not just a weird group of man-hating lesbian bra-burning feminazis, which, alas, is what my group this summer believed feminists were. even my smart, liberal students had been tricked by this heinous Limbaughesque rhetoric.
I love children's literature for a lot of reasons, but a big one is because every issue that's important to me politically surfaces (as it does in most texts), and because - more for my students than for myself - these texts are formative for children's personal beliefs. I care about that, surely, but I'm more interested in shattering the beliefs of my students, or at least making them examine their own beliefs. But I'm feeling limited by rollicking adventure stories, by the choices I made for my syllabus.
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
queer theory and the child
i have not read, at all, in the children's lit + queer theory realm. I'm not sure how I managed to miss this. Jody Norton's good, though by necessity rudimentary, essay on transchildren is about it. Lee Edelman's No Future doesn't count, since Edelman is surely no children's lit scholar. The book (what I've read of it, anyway) is staggeringly insightful. There are essays and articles floating around, and a couple of books that have collected them; Curiouser is the only one that comes to mind.
I need to read in queer children's lit theory, but I'm wondering at the outset: is the child already always queer?
or: what does it mean to be a queer child? I believe fervently that children have a (or several) sexuality(ies), but i don't know that it is expressed the same way as adult sexualities. in some physiological ways, obviously not. but in that vast array of components that comprise queerness, what can or do appear in children?
when does queerness happen? when does gender happen, for that matter? is a child gendered from the moment its parent(s) learn its anatomical structure, and rush out to buy pink or blue bedding accordingly? sneakers with baseballs, or sneakers with princess crowns?
(aside: interestingly, and I need to dig in my program for details, a woman at the MAPACA conference last year told me that she worked on children's clothing; and that the pink and blue gendering of baby's gear was a very, very recent development - like in the last 30 years or so).
if, as i accept, gender is a construct, then WHOSE construct is it? or is it always a collaborative effort?
and why are we - and by this i mean everyone, myself most definitely included - so desperate to resolve things into binaries? i do it myself; when i see a person whose gender is not instantly apparent, i try to figure out: is that a man or a woman?
i catch myself at it, now, and stop the querying, but the "instinct" to ascertain gender remains intact.
and what is a queer space, anyway? all the theorists talk about this "space" - what is it? where is it? is it a literal space, a multidimensional, plottable, locatable area in the world? or is it an abstract, a kind of thought bubble, hovering outside the main action? OR, better still: a combination of both?
I need to read in queer children's lit theory, but I'm wondering at the outset: is the child already always queer?
or: what does it mean to be a queer child? I believe fervently that children have a (or several) sexuality(ies), but i don't know that it is expressed the same way as adult sexualities. in some physiological ways, obviously not. but in that vast array of components that comprise queerness, what can or do appear in children?
when does queerness happen? when does gender happen, for that matter? is a child gendered from the moment its parent(s) learn its anatomical structure, and rush out to buy pink or blue bedding accordingly? sneakers with baseballs, or sneakers with princess crowns?
(aside: interestingly, and I need to dig in my program for details, a woman at the MAPACA conference last year told me that she worked on children's clothing; and that the pink and blue gendering of baby's gear was a very, very recent development - like in the last 30 years or so).
if, as i accept, gender is a construct, then WHOSE construct is it? or is it always a collaborative effort?
and why are we - and by this i mean everyone, myself most definitely included - so desperate to resolve things into binaries? i do it myself; when i see a person whose gender is not instantly apparent, i try to figure out: is that a man or a woman?
i catch myself at it, now, and stop the querying, but the "instinct" to ascertain gender remains intact.
and what is a queer space, anyway? all the theorists talk about this "space" - what is it? where is it? is it a literal space, a multidimensional, plottable, locatable area in the world? or is it an abstract, a kind of thought bubble, hovering outside the main action? OR, better still: a combination of both?
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
vampires
I read Stephanie Meyer's vampire YA novel Twilight this weekend. A fair number of other grad students in my department have become obsessed (I believe they are all Team Edward, for the record), and I caved, in an attempt to both keep up with YA book trends AND so i wouldn't feel entirely excluded from the only topic of conversation anyone cares about.
I was a little disappointed that I didn't get into it more. Twilight is no better and no worse than any other mid-grade YA romance novel. I actually found myself thinking a LOT about Nancy Garden's lesbian YA romance, Annie on My Mind. It's another book where I wanted very much to like it - because of its historical/critical significance as the 'first' mostly mainstream queer YA novel - but it was just so schlockily teen romancey.
ditto with Twilight.
I had a very hard time reading the book with a straight face. I laughed, often, at things that were unintentionally funny to me. For awhile, I suspected the book of having its tongue in cheek at times, but by the end, I'd decided, sadly, that it's meant to be straight and on the level. alas.
One thing I will admit: the book worked for me on some weird affective level. I regressed, quickly, to teen girl, pre-any-boyfriends. I didn't swoon for Edward - he's way too irritating and melodramatic without being at all self-aware, and he has no interests or personality besides sucking blood and obsessing over Bella - but I DID find myself wishing rather desperately at times for an intense can't-live-without-you sort of dramatic romance. The kind of romance you fully expect when you are a teenager. The kind of intensity that comes with your First Love (and never again, because novelty does add to the experience).
so in some ways, I give Meyer credit for being able to induce me to return to a mental/emotional age of 14. I resent her for it, because I have no desire to revisit age 14 (it wasn't that awesome, trust me), but I do give credit for tapping into that emotional vein.
A friend has given me a rundown of the plot for books 2 & 3, and I expect to be filled in on book 4. Today she floated the theory that Bella will turn out to be impervious to vampire venom - she won't be able to be "converted" to vampire. I like this, because it has a streak of the tragic, although that affective part of my brain just wants her and Edward to live happily ever after with a flock of tiny baby vampires, or whatever.
I'm also struck again with the way vampirism is such an obvious "blind" for sexuality. Twilight is pretty much the cleanest kinky book I've ever read. Vampirism is also a fantastic metaphor for adolescence (in between states, full of strange desires and needs you can't control, a kind of invincibility, etc).
but who can take seriously a vampire series in which the vampire SPARKLE like diamonds in the sunlight? Sparkly vampires? no. i just can't do it.
I was a little disappointed that I didn't get into it more. Twilight is no better and no worse than any other mid-grade YA romance novel. I actually found myself thinking a LOT about Nancy Garden's lesbian YA romance, Annie on My Mind. It's another book where I wanted very much to like it - because of its historical/critical significance as the 'first' mostly mainstream queer YA novel - but it was just so schlockily teen romancey.
ditto with Twilight.
I had a very hard time reading the book with a straight face. I laughed, often, at things that were unintentionally funny to me. For awhile, I suspected the book of having its tongue in cheek at times, but by the end, I'd decided, sadly, that it's meant to be straight and on the level. alas.
One thing I will admit: the book worked for me on some weird affective level. I regressed, quickly, to teen girl, pre-any-boyfriends. I didn't swoon for Edward - he's way too irritating and melodramatic without being at all self-aware, and he has no interests or personality besides sucking blood and obsessing over Bella - but I DID find myself wishing rather desperately at times for an intense can't-live-without-you sort of dramatic romance. The kind of romance you fully expect when you are a teenager. The kind of intensity that comes with your First Love (and never again, because novelty does add to the experience).
so in some ways, I give Meyer credit for being able to induce me to return to a mental/emotional age of 14. I resent her for it, because I have no desire to revisit age 14 (it wasn't that awesome, trust me), but I do give credit for tapping into that emotional vein.
A friend has given me a rundown of the plot for books 2 & 3, and I expect to be filled in on book 4. Today she floated the theory that Bella will turn out to be impervious to vampire venom - she won't be able to be "converted" to vampire. I like this, because it has a streak of the tragic, although that affective part of my brain just wants her and Edward to live happily ever after with a flock of tiny baby vampires, or whatever.
I'm also struck again with the way vampirism is such an obvious "blind" for sexuality. Twilight is pretty much the cleanest kinky book I've ever read. Vampirism is also a fantastic metaphor for adolescence (in between states, full of strange desires and needs you can't control, a kind of invincibility, etc).
but who can take seriously a vampire series in which the vampire SPARKLE like diamonds in the sunlight? Sparkly vampires? no. i just can't do it.
Sunday, May 18, 2008
apocalypse now!
My most recent reading all seems to be vaguely apocalyptic (post-apocalyptic, really) or just plain old futuristic sci-fi.
first up: Nancy Farmer's The Ear, The Eye & The Arm. Child_lit has been raving about this book forever, and for some reason I never looked it up. This is very unfortunate, because it turns out to be a FANTASTIC book. Really wonderful. I was completely captivated by the world Farmer creates in this book. The futuristic African society was a wonderful change from my normally relentlessly British and American-set reading. But I especially liked the Ear, the Eye and the Arm - their "superpowers," which the narrative never really explains (but the cover of the book says are due to radiation-induced mutations), were an inspired bit of genius. I like the idea of mutations having benefits, or being put to some use, and I suppose I also like that these are "natural" powers - though the result of mutation, the ability to hear and see and feel are not from technology. They come from the men's bodies. The Arm particularly captivated me, because I occasionally suffer from excesses of empathy. His extreme empathy made me wonder and sigh with fellow-feeling. The scenes when the Arm and the baby are mind-melding are exquisite.
My other moment of intrigue with this book: it's a futuristic society, with that post-apocalyptic feel (the trash people, the mutations), but it did not feel like a dystopia. I am very much used to futuristic books set in recognizably earthly locations having a dystopic aura to them, so this was a surprise. It got me thinking, though, about those categories: utopia, dystopia, and what they mean, how they apply to the Real World.
This became relevant when I read (irritably) David Levitan's Wide Awake, which is clearly a kind of utopia. I felt...annoyed reading that book. This is unfortunate because I liked Boy Meets Boy, and I really liked Naomi & Eli's No-Kiss List. In all honesty, I think what irritated me about Wide Awake was its utopianness. It felt falsely optimistic. I tend to prefer bleaker, more complex books; a utopia is a nice dream, but it's a little boring. It also annoyed me because it kept jerking me out of the narrative, and into contemplation of my own current moment, politically, economically, socially. Reading about a fictional "Greater Depression" at the same time the radio is blaring about the Subprime Mortgage and resulting Credit Crisis is not a reassuring thing. There wasn't much pleasure in the reading of this way, just a sense of frustration and a solid sense that: 1) things will never be that good and/or 2) i won't live to see it
I finally read my first Margaret Mahy book - a new one, Maddigan's Fantasia. I am not sure how or why I've never read any Mahy - it's just the way things fell out, I guess. I've only heard wonderful things about her work, so it's just one of those reading mysteries. Maddigan's Fantasia was quite good; it's after the apocalypse ("the Chaos") and set during the Rebuilding. The Fantasia is a travelling circus/magic/wonder show, that travels the "dissolving roads," bringing wonder from town to town. The Fantasia also seems to have certain geographical functions, as well as political and social ones: they are tasked with acquiring a solar converter to keep the main city running. In the meantime, two boys and a baby girl from the future show up to intervene in some crucial way that they don't yet understand.
Time travel always confuses me a little; I try to think it out maybe too logistically, and get confused - how CAN it work? how can you be in two places at once? or not at once? bah! the Time-Turner sequence in HP & the Prisoner of Azkaban always makes my head spin. But Mahy leaves the technicalities out, and also gives us Garland to focalize the entirely puzzling time-travel moments. She's as puzzled and mind-whirled as I was, which was a relief.
The book is quite good, with some wonderfully inventive moments - the chapters concerning a library absolutely charmed me to death (of course - libraries and books always do). I cannot say I really liked the ending, but it was an emotionally satisfying one (which is to say: complete, narratively appropriate, not jarring) if not what I would have wanted.
I will be reading more Mahy.
I also read The House of the Scorpion, again by Farmer. I think I've read most of it before, but I had no memory of the conclusion so - reading it (possibly again) was like reading it the first time. I quite liked it; I love the way Matt's movement away from the estate and out of the border country mirrors our own acquisition of knowledge about his world. The children's breakout from the plankton plant (eurgh!) reminded me forcibly of Holes. I did not mind being reminded of Holes, since it's a terrific book. The House of the Scorpion was nicely complicated, it seemed to me; people having to make decisions and choices with substantial repercussions.
Currently reading The Prophet of Yonwood, by Jeanne Duprau. It's actually pre-apocalypse, but apocalyptic in tone, and I actually have had to set it aside. It's the prequel to City of Ember, a book I quite love, and somehow knowing that the world (my world, our world, the world of Yonwood) is going to smash and ruin very, very soon is just a little too depressing. The apocalyptic world of the book is a little too like our own (all this talk of terrorists!) for me to feel safely distanced. I am not sure if I like the book or not, yet, but I intend to finish it regardless.
Other readings: Heck Superhero, which I loved. I want to teach it, badly. I'm not sure how or why or when or where, but I must teach that book.
Re-read The Amulet of Samarkand, and was reminded of how damn good the Bartimaeus trilogy is. I've read two other Stroud books - The last siege and - oh rats - the Burning on the hill (?) - and neither worked for me the way Bartimaeus does. I think Bartimaeus is one of THE best narrators I have ever read. Totally captivating, totally unreliable. I love the way the books explicitly point up Bartimaeus's unreliability, by alternating narrators. Those brief moments of overlap, when the third-person relates Bartimaeus's actions after Bartimaeus has narrated them are beautifully revealing of the flaws in Bartimaeus's character.
i feel lately like I've read up the library, and I'm feeling a little frustrated. I read so quickly! I'm craving longer books - actually, I have a craving for Angela Brazil-esque books. I've only read one of her books (Joan's best chum!) and it was so bad and good at once. I enjoyed it immensely, and I want more!
I can't keep re-reading Diana Wynne Jones in an infinite loop. I need new books!
first up: Nancy Farmer's The Ear, The Eye & The Arm. Child_lit has been raving about this book forever, and for some reason I never looked it up. This is very unfortunate, because it turns out to be a FANTASTIC book. Really wonderful. I was completely captivated by the world Farmer creates in this book. The futuristic African society was a wonderful change from my normally relentlessly British and American-set reading. But I especially liked the Ear, the Eye and the Arm - their "superpowers," which the narrative never really explains (but the cover of the book says are due to radiation-induced mutations), were an inspired bit of genius. I like the idea of mutations having benefits, or being put to some use, and I suppose I also like that these are "natural" powers - though the result of mutation, the ability to hear and see and feel are not from technology. They come from the men's bodies. The Arm particularly captivated me, because I occasionally suffer from excesses of empathy. His extreme empathy made me wonder and sigh with fellow-feeling. The scenes when the Arm and the baby are mind-melding are exquisite.
My other moment of intrigue with this book: it's a futuristic society, with that post-apocalyptic feel (the trash people, the mutations), but it did not feel like a dystopia. I am very much used to futuristic books set in recognizably earthly locations having a dystopic aura to them, so this was a surprise. It got me thinking, though, about those categories: utopia, dystopia, and what they mean, how they apply to the Real World.
This became relevant when I read (irritably) David Levitan's Wide Awake, which is clearly a kind of utopia. I felt...annoyed reading that book. This is unfortunate because I liked Boy Meets Boy, and I really liked Naomi & Eli's No-Kiss List. In all honesty, I think what irritated me about Wide Awake was its utopianness. It felt falsely optimistic. I tend to prefer bleaker, more complex books; a utopia is a nice dream, but it's a little boring. It also annoyed me because it kept jerking me out of the narrative, and into contemplation of my own current moment, politically, economically, socially. Reading about a fictional "Greater Depression" at the same time the radio is blaring about the Subprime Mortgage and resulting Credit Crisis is not a reassuring thing. There wasn't much pleasure in the reading of this way, just a sense of frustration and a solid sense that: 1) things will never be that good and/or 2) i won't live to see it
I finally read my first Margaret Mahy book - a new one, Maddigan's Fantasia. I am not sure how or why I've never read any Mahy - it's just the way things fell out, I guess. I've only heard wonderful things about her work, so it's just one of those reading mysteries. Maddigan's Fantasia was quite good; it's after the apocalypse ("the Chaos") and set during the Rebuilding. The Fantasia is a travelling circus/magic/wonder show, that travels the "dissolving roads," bringing wonder from town to town. The Fantasia also seems to have certain geographical functions, as well as political and social ones: they are tasked with acquiring a solar converter to keep the main city running. In the meantime, two boys and a baby girl from the future show up to intervene in some crucial way that they don't yet understand.
Time travel always confuses me a little; I try to think it out maybe too logistically, and get confused - how CAN it work? how can you be in two places at once? or not at once? bah! the Time-Turner sequence in HP & the Prisoner of Azkaban always makes my head spin. But Mahy leaves the technicalities out, and also gives us Garland to focalize the entirely puzzling time-travel moments. She's as puzzled and mind-whirled as I was, which was a relief.
The book is quite good, with some wonderfully inventive moments - the chapters concerning a library absolutely charmed me to death (of course - libraries and books always do). I cannot say I really liked the ending, but it was an emotionally satisfying one (which is to say: complete, narratively appropriate, not jarring) if not what I would have wanted.
I will be reading more Mahy.
I also read The House of the Scorpion, again by Farmer. I think I've read most of it before, but I had no memory of the conclusion so - reading it (possibly again) was like reading it the first time. I quite liked it; I love the way Matt's movement away from the estate and out of the border country mirrors our own acquisition of knowledge about his world. The children's breakout from the plankton plant (eurgh!) reminded me forcibly of Holes. I did not mind being reminded of Holes, since it's a terrific book. The House of the Scorpion was nicely complicated, it seemed to me; people having to make decisions and choices with substantial repercussions.
Currently reading The Prophet of Yonwood, by Jeanne Duprau. It's actually pre-apocalypse, but apocalyptic in tone, and I actually have had to set it aside. It's the prequel to City of Ember, a book I quite love, and somehow knowing that the world (my world, our world, the world of Yonwood) is going to smash and ruin very, very soon is just a little too depressing. The apocalyptic world of the book is a little too like our own (all this talk of terrorists!) for me to feel safely distanced. I am not sure if I like the book or not, yet, but I intend to finish it regardless.
Other readings: Heck Superhero, which I loved. I want to teach it, badly. I'm not sure how or why or when or where, but I must teach that book.
Re-read The Amulet of Samarkand, and was reminded of how damn good the Bartimaeus trilogy is. I've read two other Stroud books - The last siege and - oh rats - the Burning on the hill (?) - and neither worked for me the way Bartimaeus does. I think Bartimaeus is one of THE best narrators I have ever read. Totally captivating, totally unreliable. I love the way the books explicitly point up Bartimaeus's unreliability, by alternating narrators. Those brief moments of overlap, when the third-person relates Bartimaeus's actions after Bartimaeus has narrated them are beautifully revealing of the flaws in Bartimaeus's character.
i feel lately like I've read up the library, and I'm feeling a little frustrated. I read so quickly! I'm craving longer books - actually, I have a craving for Angela Brazil-esque books. I've only read one of her books (Joan's best chum!) and it was so bad and good at once. I enjoyed it immensely, and I want more!
I can't keep re-reading Diana Wynne Jones in an infinite loop. I need new books!
Tuesday, December 04, 2007
Golden Compass: film edition
I saw The Golden Compass. And.....
Well. As I alluded to - and will probably allude to for the rest of my life, since it was so awesome - I met Philip Pullman in late October. I asked him for his opinion of the film, and he very diplomatically replied thus: the casting and performances were great, and the look of the film was terrific.
I have to say: I concur with Mr Pullman on this one.
The look of the film was utterly dreamy. A gorgeous, steampunky, Victorianesque world - zeppelins, and an amazing carriage, and Lee Scoresby's balloons, and the clothing. Lyra's Oxford looks more or less the way I always imagined it - like my own experience of Oxford, which was roughly 12 jet-lagged hours in late summer, golden and dreamy and glowing and mysterious.
The casting, and the acting, is TO DIE FOR. Really, I don't think I could have done better if I'd been in charge. Sam Elliott is perhaps the best: he IS Lee Scoresby. and Kathy Bates voices the laconic Hester to perfection. Dakota Blue Richards, who plays Lyra (and has been spoken extremely highly of by Mr Pullman himself) was great as Lyra. A little sneery, a lot bold, a little afraid, a lot wary - she's a great Lyra. I particularly love that she is not too refined, too clean, too pretty, too made up (as Emma Watson is, as Hermione). She LOOKS like she could be Lyra. My Lyra isn't quite so narrow of face, but Dakota Richards has knocked this one out of the ballpark.
And then Ms Kidman, Nicole herself, as everyone's most frightening villainess: Mrs Coulter. The CGI golden monkey is a true horror, really scary and creepy. Kidman has always been my perfect casting choice for this part, and she really is astonishingly Coulteresque. There was a bit more coldness and glamour, and not enough sweetness, but otherwise: lovely.
Daniel Craig as Asriel is an acceptable decision, but he gets way too much screen time. Likewise, Eva Green makes a lovely Serafina Pekkala, though I always pictured her as fair-haired, but felt a little too stagey at one or two moments. The gyptians were pretty great, though John Faa was less dignified, and Farder Coram less frail, than in the text.
Iorek Byrnison is another marvel of CGI work, but I cannot feel great about Ian McKellen voicing him. McKellen's a marvellous actor with a wonderful voice, but there's something a little too slushy for Iorek. Iorek's voice ought to be clean, deep, sharp, cutting. At times, McKellen sounds just a bit too slushily old for the part.
The actual story - well, I knew they'd take liberties, but frankly, I'm DEVASTATED by the conclusion. The permanence of the intercision is glossed over, and the interiors of Bolvangar made me think of Tim Burton's Charlie & the Chocolate Factory in a way that jarred rather unpleasantly. Characters are collapsed, or removed: Martin Lanselius, the consul at Trollesund, disappears, and the information he reveals is instead told by Scoresby and Serafina. I've always been very partial to that chapter of the book - the consul and the bear - but I can see why this needed doing. The Magisterium becomes much more of a presence, in a very unnecessary way, and we get a very dumb extended scene of Asriel being captured, in which he comes off as something much less than the strong, authoritative, proud man he really ought to be.
But the film is truly beautiful to look at. It can't help that NO film could ever capture the lyricism and emotional truth of the novel. How could any image say : "That was intercision, and this was a severed child"? How could any image convey the heartbreaking horror of Lyra's encounter of Tony Makarios in that fish-house? Or the complicated, bewildering themes of Iofur Raknisson's wish to be what he is not? (Iofur gets a name change, by the way - he becomes Ragnur or something, I suppose to avoid aural confusion with Iorek).
The golden compass itself is perhaps my LEAST favorite part. Lyra's ability to read the alethiometer comes slowly, gradually, with work - that chapter is titled "Frustration." It brings with it responsibility, weariness and awe, all of which the film dispenses with. Everyone continually refers to it as The Golden Compass, which is merely a descriptor in the text, not a name it's known by. And the gimmick of golden swirling d(D)ust as Lyra deciphers the alethiometer was appalling. Part of why the alethiometer works as a literary device is that it is mysterious; Lyra goes into a trance, and we NEVER know what she's seeing until she attempts to verbalize it. I've never imagined her readings to be a series of images, but something more....ephemeral. impressions, feelings, senses, not photographs.
The film's ending is a travesty. that is all i shall say about that. If new line decides to film the following two books, I should like to be Creative Consultant. I can't quite see how they'll dig themselves out of the ending satisfactorily, but - hey. who knows? in hollywood, anything is possible. I think a more sensitive director would have done a better job - someone more attuned to the glory of the book(s).
I do have to say, when Iorek and Iofur/Ragnur fight, and Iorek wins, the audience I watched with broke into applause and cheers.
I really will stick with the books on this one: they have an elegance, a beauty and a truth that no film could ever translate.
Well. As I alluded to - and will probably allude to for the rest of my life, since it was so awesome - I met Philip Pullman in late October. I asked him for his opinion of the film, and he very diplomatically replied thus: the casting and performances were great, and the look of the film was terrific.
I have to say: I concur with Mr Pullman on this one.
The look of the film was utterly dreamy. A gorgeous, steampunky, Victorianesque world - zeppelins, and an amazing carriage, and Lee Scoresby's balloons, and the clothing. Lyra's Oxford looks more or less the way I always imagined it - like my own experience of Oxford, which was roughly 12 jet-lagged hours in late summer, golden and dreamy and glowing and mysterious.
The casting, and the acting, is TO DIE FOR. Really, I don't think I could have done better if I'd been in charge. Sam Elliott is perhaps the best: he IS Lee Scoresby. and Kathy Bates voices the laconic Hester to perfection. Dakota Blue Richards, who plays Lyra (and has been spoken extremely highly of by Mr Pullman himself) was great as Lyra. A little sneery, a lot bold, a little afraid, a lot wary - she's a great Lyra. I particularly love that she is not too refined, too clean, too pretty, too made up (as Emma Watson is, as Hermione). She LOOKS like she could be Lyra. My Lyra isn't quite so narrow of face, but Dakota Richards has knocked this one out of the ballpark.
And then Ms Kidman, Nicole herself, as everyone's most frightening villainess: Mrs Coulter. The CGI golden monkey is a true horror, really scary and creepy. Kidman has always been my perfect casting choice for this part, and she really is astonishingly Coulteresque. There was a bit more coldness and glamour, and not enough sweetness, but otherwise: lovely.
Daniel Craig as Asriel is an acceptable decision, but he gets way too much screen time. Likewise, Eva Green makes a lovely Serafina Pekkala, though I always pictured her as fair-haired, but felt a little too stagey at one or two moments. The gyptians were pretty great, though John Faa was less dignified, and Farder Coram less frail, than in the text.
Iorek Byrnison is another marvel of CGI work, but I cannot feel great about Ian McKellen voicing him. McKellen's a marvellous actor with a wonderful voice, but there's something a little too slushy for Iorek. Iorek's voice ought to be clean, deep, sharp, cutting. At times, McKellen sounds just a bit too slushily old for the part.
The actual story - well, I knew they'd take liberties, but frankly, I'm DEVASTATED by the conclusion. The permanence of the intercision is glossed over, and the interiors of Bolvangar made me think of Tim Burton's Charlie & the Chocolate Factory in a way that jarred rather unpleasantly. Characters are collapsed, or removed: Martin Lanselius, the consul at Trollesund, disappears, and the information he reveals is instead told by Scoresby and Serafina. I've always been very partial to that chapter of the book - the consul and the bear - but I can see why this needed doing. The Magisterium becomes much more of a presence, in a very unnecessary way, and we get a very dumb extended scene of Asriel being captured, in which he comes off as something much less than the strong, authoritative, proud man he really ought to be.
But the film is truly beautiful to look at. It can't help that NO film could ever capture the lyricism and emotional truth of the novel. How could any image say : "That was intercision, and this was a severed child"? How could any image convey the heartbreaking horror of Lyra's encounter of Tony Makarios in that fish-house? Or the complicated, bewildering themes of Iofur Raknisson's wish to be what he is not? (Iofur gets a name change, by the way - he becomes Ragnur or something, I suppose to avoid aural confusion with Iorek).
The golden compass itself is perhaps my LEAST favorite part. Lyra's ability to read the alethiometer comes slowly, gradually, with work - that chapter is titled "Frustration." It brings with it responsibility, weariness and awe, all of which the film dispenses with. Everyone continually refers to it as The Golden Compass, which is merely a descriptor in the text, not a name it's known by. And the gimmick of golden swirling d(D)ust as Lyra deciphers the alethiometer was appalling. Part of why the alethiometer works as a literary device is that it is mysterious; Lyra goes into a trance, and we NEVER know what she's seeing until she attempts to verbalize it. I've never imagined her readings to be a series of images, but something more....ephemeral. impressions, feelings, senses, not photographs.
The film's ending is a travesty. that is all i shall say about that. If new line decides to film the following two books, I should like to be Creative Consultant. I can't quite see how they'll dig themselves out of the ending satisfactorily, but - hey. who knows? in hollywood, anything is possible. I think a more sensitive director would have done a better job - someone more attuned to the glory of the book(s).
I do have to say, when Iorek and Iofur/Ragnur fight, and Iorek wins, the audience I watched with broke into applause and cheers.
I really will stick with the books on this one: they have an elegance, a beauty and a truth that no film could ever translate.
Sunday, December 02, 2007
The Golden Compass
I'm teaching THE GOLDEN COMPASS this week, in addition to this being the release week of the film adaptation - so lucky me! I get to re-read The Golden Compass.
I've just finished Part One (Oxford). I've read these books - oh, easily eight times or more - since first encountering them in late 2001. And reading now, with an eye toward teaching, I'm again simply caught up in the gloriousness of Pullman's prose. Every page is absolutely lyrical (as well as being Lyracal). Not a word misplaced, nothing extraneous, it all just pulls you along beautifully.
I love titles, it turns out. And the titling in this book gives me chills. Just reading BOLVANGAR in solid black type makes me shiver. "The Consul and the Bear." "Armor." "The Decanter of Tokay." Ooooh! it all just raises goosebumps for me, even after so many readings.
There's just such an emotional richness and depth to the novel; the way Farder Coram and Lyra react to the alethiometer's power - with fear, with awe, with wonder - is so true, and so real, you wonder how anyone could respond otherwise.
I'm very much looking forward to the film, because it looks to have a wonderful visual aesthetic - steampunky, victorian, beautiful. I'm nervous because every adaptation takes away something, as well as adds something. Nothing can replace the text, because for me so much of the pleasure of these books is in the language.
I've been reading Dickens - David Copperfield (a re-read), and Little Dorrit for the first time. I'm finding Little Dorrit utterly baffling thus far, but both books have that gorgeous richness of language and life that Dickens does so well. And it's a similar richness that I find in Pullman's books. It's so easy to fall into the story of it, but I never forget for a moment the beauty of the language, the way ideas, words, meanings are strung together so carefully, so delicately.
There is more that is true in His Dark Materials than in almost anything else I've ever read. Henry James, maybe, and maybe Dickens - both of those authors have so much that is true in their works. But the story, the plotting, of Pullman's novels just draws me in and in such an aching way. My book group students said that the books were "such a journey," and that phrase has always felt cliched to me; but in this instance, it's utterly true. The characters travel so far and so wide and so deeply inside themselves, and you - the reader - HAVE to go with them. so by the time you reach the final page of the final book, you're as exhausted as if you'd travelled to Svalbard, to Nova Zembla (the name thrills me to my core!), to Cittegazze, to Oxford, to the suburbs of the dead, to the abyss, and back again.
I had the unspeakable honor and privilege of meeting Philip Pullman this Halloween, an evening that will forever live in my memory as a dazzling, dreamlike occasion on which I behaved like a total fangrrl. I desperately wanted to be urbane and charming and witty and brilliant, but I was more like a gasping fish out of water. The Fact that Mr Pullman himself is wonderfully kind, gracious, generous and intelligent made me feel even more fish-gaspy.
But my dream of the past six years - to shake his hand and tell him how much I love these books - has been accomplished. Now I need to get to Oxford, so i can see those dreaming spires for myself in more detail.
It's funny: it isn't so much that His Dark Materials has helped me know about myself; I don't know that I'd say these books changed my life - though they have but in a way I'm not sure any other book ever has. The absolute, total beauty of these books is what it is - it's look I've stared at - for hours, in a bright, clean light - the most beautiful object in the world. You can't be unchanged by being in the presence of that kind of gorgeousness, but I don't know (yet) what the changes are. All I know is that I feel absolutely swept up, moved, shaken, thrilled when I read these books; I feel like my heart and eyes and mind are wide, wide open, and are seeing and experiencing things that cannot be described.
I've just finished Part One (Oxford). I've read these books - oh, easily eight times or more - since first encountering them in late 2001. And reading now, with an eye toward teaching, I'm again simply caught up in the gloriousness of Pullman's prose. Every page is absolutely lyrical (as well as being Lyracal). Not a word misplaced, nothing extraneous, it all just pulls you along beautifully.
I love titles, it turns out. And the titling in this book gives me chills. Just reading BOLVANGAR in solid black type makes me shiver. "The Consul and the Bear." "Armor." "The Decanter of Tokay." Ooooh! it all just raises goosebumps for me, even after so many readings.
There's just such an emotional richness and depth to the novel; the way Farder Coram and Lyra react to the alethiometer's power - with fear, with awe, with wonder - is so true, and so real, you wonder how anyone could respond otherwise.
I'm very much looking forward to the film, because it looks to have a wonderful visual aesthetic - steampunky, victorian, beautiful. I'm nervous because every adaptation takes away something, as well as adds something. Nothing can replace the text, because for me so much of the pleasure of these books is in the language.
I've been reading Dickens - David Copperfield (a re-read), and Little Dorrit for the first time. I'm finding Little Dorrit utterly baffling thus far, but both books have that gorgeous richness of language and life that Dickens does so well. And it's a similar richness that I find in Pullman's books. It's so easy to fall into the story of it, but I never forget for a moment the beauty of the language, the way ideas, words, meanings are strung together so carefully, so delicately.
There is more that is true in His Dark Materials than in almost anything else I've ever read. Henry James, maybe, and maybe Dickens - both of those authors have so much that is true in their works. But the story, the plotting, of Pullman's novels just draws me in and in such an aching way. My book group students said that the books were "such a journey," and that phrase has always felt cliched to me; but in this instance, it's utterly true. The characters travel so far and so wide and so deeply inside themselves, and you - the reader - HAVE to go with them. so by the time you reach the final page of the final book, you're as exhausted as if you'd travelled to Svalbard, to Nova Zembla (the name thrills me to my core!), to Cittegazze, to Oxford, to the suburbs of the dead, to the abyss, and back again.
I had the unspeakable honor and privilege of meeting Philip Pullman this Halloween, an evening that will forever live in my memory as a dazzling, dreamlike occasion on which I behaved like a total fangrrl. I desperately wanted to be urbane and charming and witty and brilliant, but I was more like a gasping fish out of water. The Fact that Mr Pullman himself is wonderfully kind, gracious, generous and intelligent made me feel even more fish-gaspy.
But my dream of the past six years - to shake his hand and tell him how much I love these books - has been accomplished. Now I need to get to Oxford, so i can see those dreaming spires for myself in more detail.
It's funny: it isn't so much that His Dark Materials has helped me know about myself; I don't know that I'd say these books changed my life - though they have but in a way I'm not sure any other book ever has. The absolute, total beauty of these books is what it is - it's look I've stared at - for hours, in a bright, clean light - the most beautiful object in the world. You can't be unchanged by being in the presence of that kind of gorgeousness, but I don't know (yet) what the changes are. All I know is that I feel absolutely swept up, moved, shaken, thrilled when I read these books; I feel like my heart and eyes and mind are wide, wide open, and are seeing and experiencing things that cannot be described.
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
it is better to die than to live
evidently, in the 19th century schoolboy story.
I just finished Oudendale by Ascott Hope, and it was another lovely downer in the same vein as The Hill and Eric.
all these damn kids are so happy and eager to die....it's truly creepy.
I know the religious ideology behind this, but how does it comport with christianity to be so eager to leave this world? i mean, shouldn't you desire to do the lord's work on earth until he calls you home? isn't it selfish to want to leave this world for a better one?
oy.
Read Karin Calvert's Children in the House, which is a historical overview of material culture in America from 1600-1900. it was mostly unenlightening, a presentation of historical information. mildly interesting.
Is it legit to refer to American home furnishings of the late 19th century as "Victorian"?
Victorian to me is British (and brit. colonial). In the States, very different things were happening: the civil war, Reconstruction, the Gilded Age, etc.
Tonight is the first night of my class, and I am inexplicably nervous ( I just never get nervous before teaching). I've been so wrapped up in planning and preparing and thinking about this class that I haven't had much time for the Project.
as a "treat" to set the tone of the course, I'm going to show them Tim Burton's killer first short film, VINCENT. if you haven't seen it, you must! it's delightful, and narrated by Vincent Price himself.
It's about 7 minutes long, and it's a paean to weirdness in childhood. perfect for my class on the weird, grim, gothic, morbid, spooky and creepy!
I just finished Oudendale by Ascott Hope, and it was another lovely downer in the same vein as The Hill and Eric.
all these damn kids are so happy and eager to die....it's truly creepy.
I know the religious ideology behind this, but how does it comport with christianity to be so eager to leave this world? i mean, shouldn't you desire to do the lord's work on earth until he calls you home? isn't it selfish to want to leave this world for a better one?
oy.
Read Karin Calvert's Children in the House, which is a historical overview of material culture in America from 1600-1900. it was mostly unenlightening, a presentation of historical information. mildly interesting.
Is it legit to refer to American home furnishings of the late 19th century as "Victorian"?
Victorian to me is British (and brit. colonial). In the States, very different things were happening: the civil war, Reconstruction, the Gilded Age, etc.
Tonight is the first night of my class, and I am inexplicably nervous ( I just never get nervous before teaching). I've been so wrapped up in planning and preparing and thinking about this class that I haven't had much time for the Project.
as a "treat" to set the tone of the course, I'm going to show them Tim Burton's killer first short film, VINCENT. if you haven't seen it, you must! it's delightful, and narrated by Vincent Price himself.
It's about 7 minutes long, and it's a paean to weirdness in childhood. perfect for my class on the weird, grim, gothic, morbid, spooky and creepy!
Friday, August 17, 2007
Katawampus and Invisible Playmate
Today's books:
Katawampus, by Edward Abbot Parry (1895) and The Invisible Playmate by William Canton (1894).
Katawampus is yet another story of Bad Children who are sent to some fantasy realm to be cured of their badness (fitted for new tempers and good manners). There's a nice chapter on the Parliament of Toys, with the solid old classics as Conservatives, and cheap flashy new toys as Liberals. The tone of this one is pretty light-hearted - very Nesbit-ish, actually, which is not all that surprising since Parry is contemporaneous with Nesbit. Short and sweet, a generally pleasant read, over and done.
The Invisible Playmate: wtf?????
I don't know what to make of this one. I need to re-read, i think, because I feel a bit perplexed about the timeline. The story has a very Turn of the Screw, Jamesian quality to it, which makes it rather eerie. I knew something creepy was going to happen from the beginning - I don't know if it's the doubled narrators (our narrator, plus the letter-writing papa) or some other quality that tipped me off to that.
Quite truly, I don't know what to make of this book. I'd love for someone to simply explain it to me......I don't know Canton, never heard of this story until one of my professors suggested it. It has some Romantic overtones, and reminds me as well of Thomas De Quincey's essays on the deaths of his sister and of little Kate Wordsworth.....it also reminds me strongly of Barrie, and the narrator of The Little White Bird. I'll place The Invisible Playmate in the list of "men who dote on lost/dead/nonexistent children" for now, until I (or someone else) can make some sense of it for me.....
I've begun reading the introduction to Elaine Freedgood's The Ideas in Things (2006), and it's pretty exciting. Freedgood is, I think, proposing a model that is one I've already considered for my own work. More exciting is the newness of her project; her approach to things is, at least according to her, one that has not been undertaken in quite that way before. This makes me hopeful that I can adopt and adapt some of her methodology for my own project in children's lit.
I do wonder about the problem of so much "realist fantasy" in children's lit. Freedgood mentions the abundance of things in realist fiction of the Victorian era, and I think you get that same kind of abundance in children's fiction as well. But much of that is fantasy - often the home/away/home that presents "reality" in the home, and the fantastic in the away. But even the fantasy worlds are chock-full of THINGS. Freedgood is, evidently, attempting to look at the things not as metonyms or allegorical objects, but as things themselves.
I'll have to read more but what little I'm read so far is quite exciting.
Katawampus, by Edward Abbot Parry (1895) and The Invisible Playmate by William Canton (1894).
Katawampus is yet another story of Bad Children who are sent to some fantasy realm to be cured of their badness (fitted for new tempers and good manners). There's a nice chapter on the Parliament of Toys, with the solid old classics as Conservatives, and cheap flashy new toys as Liberals. The tone of this one is pretty light-hearted - very Nesbit-ish, actually, which is not all that surprising since Parry is contemporaneous with Nesbit. Short and sweet, a generally pleasant read, over and done.
The Invisible Playmate: wtf?????
I don't know what to make of this one. I need to re-read, i think, because I feel a bit perplexed about the timeline. The story has a very Turn of the Screw, Jamesian quality to it, which makes it rather eerie. I knew something creepy was going to happen from the beginning - I don't know if it's the doubled narrators (our narrator, plus the letter-writing papa) or some other quality that tipped me off to that.
Quite truly, I don't know what to make of this book. I'd love for someone to simply explain it to me......I don't know Canton, never heard of this story until one of my professors suggested it. It has some Romantic overtones, and reminds me as well of Thomas De Quincey's essays on the deaths of his sister and of little Kate Wordsworth.....it also reminds me strongly of Barrie, and the narrator of The Little White Bird. I'll place The Invisible Playmate in the list of "men who dote on lost/dead/nonexistent children" for now, until I (or someone else) can make some sense of it for me.....
I've begun reading the introduction to Elaine Freedgood's The Ideas in Things (2006), and it's pretty exciting. Freedgood is, I think, proposing a model that is one I've already considered for my own work. More exciting is the newness of her project; her approach to things is, at least according to her, one that has not been undertaken in quite that way before. This makes me hopeful that I can adopt and adapt some of her methodology for my own project in children's lit.
I do wonder about the problem of so much "realist fantasy" in children's lit. Freedgood mentions the abundance of things in realist fiction of the Victorian era, and I think you get that same kind of abundance in children's fiction as well. But much of that is fantasy - often the home/away/home that presents "reality" in the home, and the fantastic in the away. But even the fantasy worlds are chock-full of THINGS. Freedgood is, evidently, attempting to look at the things not as metonyms or allegorical objects, but as things themselves.
I'll have to read more but what little I'm read so far is quite exciting.
Thursday, August 16, 2007
Little by Little (spoilers)
Tonight's completed book is Rev Farrar's rather ghastly Eric; or, Little by Little. This one is published in 1858, and it's a school story of a very different vein: Eric Williams, our protagonist, "little by little" sinks into moral turpitude (drinking! smoking! swearing! stealing! leading little boys astray!). Eric starts off a cheery, honorable, bright boy but eventually, peer pressure and his desire to be popular leads him down the primrose path.
Three boys die in this book, Eric last of them. He's killed his mother with grief after he runs away from school (suspected of theft) and joins a ship full of even more morally depraved folks than himself, and he expires on the lawn, finally seeing that he has a Father in Heaven looking after him.
This book is just another in an evidently unending stream of books about children and teenagers dying.
One of the things I'm puzzling over is: what is this book, exactly? Is it a condemnation of the perils of the public schools? Eric is at Roslyn, which i think is a fictional school. There is no regulation amongst the boys, by the boys (which we see in Tom Brown and The Hill, and elsewhere); the whole school seems to be a den of iniquity (which begs the question: why would anyone send their child there? what's wrong with the masters and Head that they don't see these things happening, and don't intervene?)
The other, more intriguing puzzle, is that Eric is a kind of "india-orphan." He's sent from India at age 4, to live with an aunt, while his parents remain in India. Later, he's joined by his parents and younger brother for one year, at the end of which the parents both return to India. Is there a critique of absentee parents here? I can't help thinking that there is....the weird anti-colonial strand that runs through British children's texts seems to have a hold here, as well as in more obvious texts (The Secret Garden, Kipling). The Imperial enterprise has stolen this boy's parents from him (and ultimately, both Eric and his brother die), leaving the colonizing parents childless.
Hrm. I just recalled some professor's proclamation that: There is no future in Empire, but I cannot remember who said it, or in what context......possibly in discussing the sickly yellowish children of English Empire-builders???
I'm not overwhelmingly interested in the Empire as an area of study; it's interesting, and I like a lot of imperial-related texts, and the project of the Empire touches every aspect of British life, but it simply isn't central to my thinking and my interests. That said, Eric; or Little by Little, seems most useful in this context.
(I also have a vague memory of a Nesbit child character scorning to read the book when given it by an elderly aunt).
Three boys die in this book, Eric last of them. He's killed his mother with grief after he runs away from school (suspected of theft) and joins a ship full of even more morally depraved folks than himself, and he expires on the lawn, finally seeing that he has a Father in Heaven looking after him.
This book is just another in an evidently unending stream of books about children and teenagers dying.
One of the things I'm puzzling over is: what is this book, exactly? Is it a condemnation of the perils of the public schools? Eric is at Roslyn, which i think is a fictional school. There is no regulation amongst the boys, by the boys (which we see in Tom Brown and The Hill, and elsewhere); the whole school seems to be a den of iniquity (which begs the question: why would anyone send their child there? what's wrong with the masters and Head that they don't see these things happening, and don't intervene?)
The other, more intriguing puzzle, is that Eric is a kind of "india-orphan." He's sent from India at age 4, to live with an aunt, while his parents remain in India. Later, he's joined by his parents and younger brother for one year, at the end of which the parents both return to India. Is there a critique of absentee parents here? I can't help thinking that there is....the weird anti-colonial strand that runs through British children's texts seems to have a hold here, as well as in more obvious texts (The Secret Garden, Kipling). The Imperial enterprise has stolen this boy's parents from him (and ultimately, both Eric and his brother die), leaving the colonizing parents childless.
Hrm. I just recalled some professor's proclamation that: There is no future in Empire, but I cannot remember who said it, or in what context......possibly in discussing the sickly yellowish children of English Empire-builders???
I'm not overwhelmingly interested in the Empire as an area of study; it's interesting, and I like a lot of imperial-related texts, and the project of the Empire touches every aspect of British life, but it simply isn't central to my thinking and my interests. That said, Eric; or Little by Little, seems most useful in this context.
(I also have a vague memory of a Nesbit child character scorning to read the book when given it by an elderly aunt).
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
australians and fairies
The Project staggers along. i feel like I am reading an insane amount - I think I'm averaging a book a day - in addition to preparing my fall syllabus, having a life and trying to do some renovating around the house.
Alas, I am not reading fast enough. I think it is physically impossible for me to NOT read a novel in its entirety, unless it's hideously bad (With Clive in India springs to mind). So i can't condense my fiction-reading; I'm already skimming perilously large chunks of, say, Tom Brown's Schooldays, and anything about cricket (the Sport That Baffles). I've been trying to get through the primary texts before hitting the critical stuff, but I'm going to have to fly into high gear with those soon.
I'm a little confused about the project papers: the first is a kind of lit review, I think, an overview of the field/texts read. How can I POSSIBLY write an overview when I haven't read everything yet?
This is a true mystery, and I shall have to discover the answer pretty damn quick if I want to keep my head above water.
Now: the BOOKS!
I'm struggling to finish Arthur Conan Doyle's The Coming of the Fairies. I've been plugging away at it, but I get so cringingly embarrassed for Mr Doyle that I have to put the book down. It's a peculiar text, for sure, and one wonders how Doyle was able to reason and rationalize fairies, while also being the author of the rather sharply and smartly constructed Sherlock Holmes mysteries.
The Coming of the Fairies is an attempt to prove the existence of fairies, based largely on Doyle's investigation (with a few psychic/theosophist acquaintances) of the Cottingley fairies (pictured here). The painstaking lengths Doyle & Co go to to find experts who will verify the purity of the photos is mortifying to read about. People around the country are swearing up and down that there is NO CONCEIVABLE WAY these photos could be faked. But of course, they are: the girls who perpetrated the fairy hoax admitted to it in some interviews in the 1980s. They constructed the fairies out of fabric, cardboard and other materials, and staged the photos. I give them credit for being rather good artists - those are lovely fairies.
But Doyle's credulity is truly embarrassing to encounter. He relies so heavily on extraordinarily flimsy testimony. When he begins to cite examples of "upstanding, honest citizens" who have seen, and talked with, fairies, I wanted to die. People who see and speak with fairies and gnomes are....well, not right in the head.
I only know a very little about the popularity of fairies through the Victorian era (and clearly, into the 20th century), but this is such a cringeworthy attempt to rationally demonstrate not just the possibility, but the true, verifiable
existence of fairies. Doyle also leans on the Romantic view of childhood - the girls can see the fairies, and capture them on film, because they, the girls, are still children. Once the two are older, they are no longer able to see and document the fairies. The elder's reticence to speak about the fairies, once she's in her 20s, is telling, but Doyle ignores this entirely. Her monosyllabic answers to fairy-related questions are reported, but never really analysed; Doyle just blithely moves on to quoting the findings of some local psychic experts.
It's an embarrassing read, well and truly. But I LOVE the photo of the girl with the gnome. I think that gnome is hysterically funny.
Now, for Seven Little Australians, by Ethel Turner (with SPOILERS). Published in the 1890s, this is evidently one of the first and classic texts of Australian children's lit. Naturally, I'd never heard of it before beginning this project (I'm weirdly ignorant of anglophone children's lit outside of England/Scotland/America). Despite its being readily available, apparently, in every Australian bookshop, I had to request it via interlibrary loan from someplace on the other side of pennsylvania. I found this odd.
The book itself: um, wow. I spent the first 50 pages being horrified at Esther, the young (20-year-old) stepmum. Actually, I was really horrified by Captain Woolcot, really, for being so disengaged with his children, and for marrying such a young girl (when his eldest child is 16!). It seemed so.....Hugh Hefner. Then again, maybe in the 1890s the exigencies of life in Australia made that sort of marriage seem reasonable. I simply don't know my Australian history or culture well enough (though I do know about the thylacine and the weird and wonderful animals of Australia).
There were strong parallels for me in this book with Little Women: Judy made a lovely Jo, Meg made a great, um, Meg (the chapter in little women titled "Meg Goes to Vanity Fair" is essentially the blueprint for Meg Woolcot's escapades under the influence of Aldith. Even darling Nell had resonance for me with Amy.
I liked Turner's writing style; I like rowdy, rambunctious, large families in interesting locales in the late 19th century. I was really shocked by the book's conclusion; it felt weirdly out of place in such an otherwise cheerful - or rather buoyant - text. Judy's sacrifice pissed me off, too; she seemed so much the most interesting of the children. Meg's "flirtations" with Mr Gillet gave me mild heebie-jeebies, as well. But Judy's death was uncomfortable and scary, and I appreciated that (Unlike Janeway's and Stretton's children, who happily smile their way into death). It was dreadful to read Judy's words as she tells Meg that she doesn't want to die, that she's scared, that she'll be lonely.
Overall, I don't know quite what to make of this book. I rather enjoyed reading it, and I found the remove to Australia a very refreshing and exciting change from all the time I've spent at boys' public schools lately (Harrow, Rugby, gah!). The moralizing was minimal but then suddenly became heavyhanded, in the last few chapters - after the children and Esther have gone to the country, to Esther's parents' home.
Turner hints at a sequel text, and I'd be REALLY keen to read that; she leaves off so clearly ready to tell us more about her characters.
Alas, I am not reading fast enough. I think it is physically impossible for me to NOT read a novel in its entirety, unless it's hideously bad (With Clive in India springs to mind). So i can't condense my fiction-reading; I'm already skimming perilously large chunks of, say, Tom Brown's Schooldays, and anything about cricket (the Sport That Baffles). I've been trying to get through the primary texts before hitting the critical stuff, but I'm going to have to fly into high gear with those soon.
I'm a little confused about the project papers: the first is a kind of lit review, I think, an overview of the field/texts read. How can I POSSIBLY write an overview when I haven't read everything yet?
This is a true mystery, and I shall have to discover the answer pretty damn quick if I want to keep my head above water.
Now: the BOOKS!
I'm struggling to finish Arthur Conan Doyle's The Coming of the Fairies. I've been plugging away at it, but I get so cringingly embarrassed for Mr Doyle that I have to put the book down. It's a peculiar text, for sure, and one wonders how Doyle was able to reason and rationalize fairies, while also being the author of the rather sharply and smartly constructed Sherlock Holmes mysteries.
The Coming of the Fairies is an attempt to prove the existence of fairies, based largely on Doyle's investigation (with a few psychic/theosophist acquaintances) of the Cottingley fairies (pictured here). The painstaking lengths Doyle & Co go to to find experts who will verify the purity of the photos is mortifying to read about. People around the country are swearing up and down that there is NO CONCEIVABLE WAY these photos could be faked. But of course, they are: the girls who perpetrated the fairy hoax admitted to it in some interviews in the 1980s. They constructed the fairies out of fabric, cardboard and other materials, and staged the photos. I give them credit for being rather good artists - those are lovely fairies.
But Doyle's credulity is truly embarrassing to encounter. He relies so heavily on extraordinarily flimsy testimony. When he begins to cite examples of "upstanding, honest citizens" who have seen, and talked with, fairies, I wanted to die. People who see and speak with fairies and gnomes are....well, not right in the head.
I only know a very little about the popularity of fairies through the Victorian era (and clearly, into the 20th century), but this is such a cringeworthy attempt to rationally demonstrate not just the possibility, but the true, verifiable
existence of fairies. Doyle also leans on the Romantic view of childhood - the girls can see the fairies, and capture them on film, because they, the girls, are still children. Once the two are older, they are no longer able to see and document the fairies. The elder's reticence to speak about the fairies, once she's in her 20s, is telling, but Doyle ignores this entirely. Her monosyllabic answers to fairy-related questions are reported, but never really analysed; Doyle just blithely moves on to quoting the findings of some local psychic experts.It's an embarrassing read, well and truly. But I LOVE the photo of the girl with the gnome. I think that gnome is hysterically funny.
Now, for Seven Little Australians, by Ethel Turner (with SPOILERS). Published in the 1890s, this is evidently one of the first and classic texts of Australian children's lit. Naturally, I'd never heard of it before beginning this project (I'm weirdly ignorant of anglophone children's lit outside of England/Scotland/America). Despite its being readily available, apparently, in every Australian bookshop, I had to request it via interlibrary loan from someplace on the other side of pennsylvania. I found this odd.
The book itself: um, wow. I spent the first 50 pages being horrified at Esther, the young (20-year-old) stepmum. Actually, I was really horrified by Captain Woolcot, really, for being so disengaged with his children, and for marrying such a young girl (when his eldest child is 16!). It seemed so.....Hugh Hefner. Then again, maybe in the 1890s the exigencies of life in Australia made that sort of marriage seem reasonable. I simply don't know my Australian history or culture well enough (though I do know about the thylacine and the weird and wonderful animals of Australia).
There were strong parallels for me in this book with Little Women: Judy made a lovely Jo, Meg made a great, um, Meg (the chapter in little women titled "Meg Goes to Vanity Fair" is essentially the blueprint for Meg Woolcot's escapades under the influence of Aldith. Even darling Nell had resonance for me with Amy.
I liked Turner's writing style; I like rowdy, rambunctious, large families in interesting locales in the late 19th century. I was really shocked by the book's conclusion; it felt weirdly out of place in such an otherwise cheerful - or rather buoyant - text. Judy's sacrifice pissed me off, too; she seemed so much the most interesting of the children. Meg's "flirtations" with Mr Gillet gave me mild heebie-jeebies, as well. But Judy's death was uncomfortable and scary, and I appreciated that (Unlike Janeway's and Stretton's children, who happily smile their way into death). It was dreadful to read Judy's words as she tells Meg that she doesn't want to die, that she's scared, that she'll be lonely.
Overall, I don't know quite what to make of this book. I rather enjoyed reading it, and I found the remove to Australia a very refreshing and exciting change from all the time I've spent at boys' public schools lately (Harrow, Rugby, gah!). The moralizing was minimal but then suddenly became heavyhanded, in the last few chapters - after the children and Esther have gone to the country, to Esther's parents' home.
Turner hints at a sequel text, and I'd be REALLY keen to read that; she leaves off so clearly ready to tell us more about her characters.
Sunday, August 05, 2007
Maria Edgeworth says: GET TO WORK!
I'm reading The Parent's Assistant (1796) now, and while it isn't bad reading, exactly, it isn't good reading either.
The moral of the stories:
BE INDUSTRIOUS!
TELL THE TRUTH!
the class-ishness of it bothers me, of course; the way for affluent young ladies to help the poor folk is to hire them as servants. crikey. I guess that's good, and I know how class worked, but it still makes me uncomfortable. When Simple Susan is trying to scrape together 2 guineas, why don't the fine ladies just give her two damn guineas, instead of resorting to elaborate work schemes? Why buy her a dress when what she NEEDS and WANTS are the two guineas???
Cheerful industry in the face of grueling poverty and hunger has always struck me as....improbably. At least Hesba Stretton gave her cheerful, industrious poor folks some religion to rely on; Edgeworth's poor people evidently just like working themselves to the bone for next to nothing.
But this makes me wonder about Edgeworth's audience, who were more likely to be affluent young ladies than cheerful poverty-stricken kids. So is the lesson: be kind to poor people, some of them deserve your kindness?
Also, is it really charity if you're motivated to your good works by the thanks you receive? somehow, that part seems to be really central to these stories - scenes of cheerful industrial poor people bringing flowers and baked goods to the wealthy, to thank (most pathetically, I think) the wealthy for letting them, the poor people, work?
Should I quibble with anything that seeks to instill a spirit of charity and generosity in its audience?
(yes).
The moral of the stories:
BE INDUSTRIOUS!
TELL THE TRUTH!
the class-ishness of it bothers me, of course; the way for affluent young ladies to help the poor folk is to hire them as servants. crikey. I guess that's good, and I know how class worked, but it still makes me uncomfortable. When Simple Susan is trying to scrape together 2 guineas, why don't the fine ladies just give her two damn guineas, instead of resorting to elaborate work schemes? Why buy her a dress when what she NEEDS and WANTS are the two guineas???
Cheerful industry in the face of grueling poverty and hunger has always struck me as....improbably. At least Hesba Stretton gave her cheerful, industrious poor folks some religion to rely on; Edgeworth's poor people evidently just like working themselves to the bone for next to nothing.
But this makes me wonder about Edgeworth's audience, who were more likely to be affluent young ladies than cheerful poverty-stricken kids. So is the lesson: be kind to poor people, some of them deserve your kindness?
Also, is it really charity if you're motivated to your good works by the thanks you receive? somehow, that part seems to be really central to these stories - scenes of cheerful industrial poor people bringing flowers and baked goods to the wealthy, to thank (most pathetically, I think) the wealthy for letting them, the poor people, work?
Should I quibble with anything that seeks to instill a spirit of charity and generosity in its audience?
(yes).
Thursday, August 02, 2007
gorey details
I'm getting SO EXCITED about my fall class!
My tentative syllabus now features:
Janeway and Newbery
Andersen and Grimm's fairytales (possibly a Hoffmann fairytale)
Alice in Wonderland
"Amelia and the Dwarves," "Speaking Likenesses" "The New mother" (Ewing, Rossetti, Clifford)
Little Meg's Children - Hesba Stretton
At the Back of the North Wind
"Letting in the Jungle" - Kipling, from the Jungle Books (possibly coupled with Stretton?)
Wizard of Oz
Peter Pan
E. Nesbit Book***
Lion, the witch & the wardrobe
The Witches
Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban (?)
Edward Gorey (?)
The Golden Compass
critical texts??? - Freud on The Uncanny; Todorov on the uncanny and the fantastic (thus Hoffmann and the sandman).
*** On the subject of Nesbit!
I thought I was going to use The Story of the Amulet, but I'm not sure it's weird/grim/disturbing enough. I'd like to pair it with Stretton, because of their common concern with poverty/social justice, but I'm just not sure. I INSIST on including a nesbit text, however. I could go with some of her short stories (including The Aunt and Amabel, which sets up the Narnia book really well). I'm also debating The Magic City, which is by far my favorite Nesbit. The Pretenderette strikes me as a rather sinister character, and many of Philip's adventures inPolistarchia are rather spooky.
I'm thinking that, on my first day of class, I'll show Tim Burton's short film VINCENT, about the little boy who wants to be/thinks he is Vincent Price. It's the child playing at the gothic, and it's very much the antithesis of what most students think of as "childlike."
YAY!
I can't wait to finish my syllabus. I am really excited about this class; I only hope my students are on board this time!
My tentative syllabus now features:
Janeway and Newbery
Andersen and Grimm's fairytales (possibly a Hoffmann fairytale)
Alice in Wonderland
"Amelia and the Dwarves," "Speaking Likenesses" "The New mother" (Ewing, Rossetti, Clifford)
Little Meg's Children - Hesba Stretton
At the Back of the North Wind
"Letting in the Jungle" - Kipling, from the Jungle Books (possibly coupled with Stretton?)
Wizard of Oz
Peter Pan
E. Nesbit Book***
Lion, the witch & the wardrobe
The Witches
Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban (?)
Edward Gorey (?)
The Golden Compass
critical texts??? - Freud on The Uncanny; Todorov on the uncanny and the fantastic (thus Hoffmann and the sandman).
*** On the subject of Nesbit!
I thought I was going to use The Story of the Amulet, but I'm not sure it's weird/grim/disturbing enough. I'd like to pair it with Stretton, because of their common concern with poverty/social justice, but I'm just not sure. I INSIST on including a nesbit text, however. I could go with some of her short stories (including The Aunt and Amabel, which sets up the Narnia book really well). I'm also debating The Magic City, which is by far my favorite Nesbit. The Pretenderette strikes me as a rather sinister character, and many of Philip's adventures inPolistarchia are rather spooky.
I'm thinking that, on my first day of class, I'll show Tim Burton's short film VINCENT, about the little boy who wants to be/thinks he is Vincent Price. It's the child playing at the gothic, and it's very much the antithesis of what most students think of as "childlike."
YAY!
I can't wait to finish my syllabus. I am really excited about this class; I only hope my students are on board this time!
Wednesday, August 01, 2007
tag i'm it - a personal deviation
since this is my "professional" and "academic" blog, I try to keep it pretty impersonal (i have other spaces to vent and rant and generally air my dirty laundry online).
HOWEVER: Marius, whose blog I quite love, tagged me, so I must respond!
HOWEVER: Marius, whose blog I quite love, tagged me, so I must respond!
Four jobs I have had or currently have in my life:
1. retail sales associate, Hallmark card shop
2. call center worker, Fisher-Price (temp job, very few calls to answer. very boring)
3. administrative assistant, Reading Is Fundamental
4. office assistant/work-study office monkey, New College office of housing and student affairs (best job ever!!!!)
Four countries I have been to:
1. Norway
2. Denmark
3. France
4. Ireland
Four places I’d rather be right now:
1. Paris
2. southwest Ireland
3. Copenhagen
4. Norway (all of it, any part of it)
Four foods I like to eat:
1. grilled cheese sandwiches
2. gnocchi (really good gnocchi, that is)
3, Haagen=dazs vanilla swiss almond ice cream
4. havarti and (good) gouda cheese
Sunday, July 29, 2007
The Princess & Curdie
Just finished The Princess & Curdie. I'd read The Princess and the Goblins years ago, and several times since then, but never managed the sequel.
And my stars, was it ever WEIRD!
I don't think it'll be on my Weirdness Syllabus (Macdonald will be represented somehow, probably with At the Back of the North Wind), but what a strange and disturbing book.
It's all about Curdie, of course, and has the feel of allegory, but its peopled with such oddness - the pack of bizarre, deformed hybrid creatures, for instance. The detail of the punishments meted to the treasonous court. The battle scene.
Most weird - and unsettling - is the conclusion. Curdie and Irene married, then dead and gone -- and the kingdom destroyed by greed.
truly strange. i don't know what to make of the hybrid monsters. i REALLY don't know what to make of Curdie's gift of the "testing hands" - his ability to take the hand of a person, and feel that person's true nature (either true human, or some sort of animal - snake, vulture, ox, mule).
what a weird book. i'm sure there's more brilliance in it than i've yet figured out, but it's just so odd i don't quite know what to do with it.
And my stars, was it ever WEIRD!
I don't think it'll be on my Weirdness Syllabus (Macdonald will be represented somehow, probably with At the Back of the North Wind), but what a strange and disturbing book.
It's all about Curdie, of course, and has the feel of allegory, but its peopled with such oddness - the pack of bizarre, deformed hybrid creatures, for instance. The detail of the punishments meted to the treasonous court. The battle scene.
Most weird - and unsettling - is the conclusion. Curdie and Irene married, then dead and gone -- and the kingdom destroyed by greed.
truly strange. i don't know what to make of the hybrid monsters. i REALLY don't know what to make of Curdie's gift of the "testing hands" - his ability to take the hand of a person, and feel that person's true nature (either true human, or some sort of animal - snake, vulture, ox, mule).
what a weird book. i'm sure there's more brilliance in it than i've yet figured out, but it's just so odd i don't quite know what to do with it.
Thursday, July 26, 2007
bouncing ideas helps
I've been struggling for - well, most of the summer - to put together a KILLER syllabus for my fall childhood's books class. The summer edition went so well, and I want another fabulous, exciting class. I couldn't just duplicate the summer syllabus, for a number of reasons, not least my desire for a course that has greater historical breadth.
I had a few titles I was determined to use: The Golden Compass, Alice, Peter Pan, Story of the Amulet, a Roald Dahl title, some Janeway and Newbery, Christina Rossetti's Speaking Likenesses.
But what was my theme? what was the organizing principle of the course, other than a generic survey?
So i talked with my friend B last night. B is a fellow grad student, and probably the best grad student teacher amongst us (of all the grad students currently teaching, probably, and CERTAINLY the best in our year). She's a medievalist, and doesn't know children's lit in any special way.
I ran my ideas by her, and she said: "wow, these all sound really disturbing and weird."
and then "why not just do that? focus on the disturbing, the darker parts of children and childhood?"
!!!!
!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
and I will.
Death, grimness, poverty, the supernatural/spooky, disturbing, bizarre, the child imperiled - THAT will be my theme.
Rossetti fits perfectly, now. I can do Stretton, and Andersen's fairy stories (and a few of Grimms' or Jacobs' fairytales, probably). I'm contemplating excerpting from The Jungle Books - "Letting in the Jungle," which I found a very sinister and terrifying story (as well as being a representative of Kipling, as well as featuring the wild child, Mowgli).
I'm thinking of including Macdonald's At the Back of the North Wind, though it's been some years since I last read it; but Diamond dies, and that's creepy enough!
One of my decisions - to be made ASAP for book-ordering purposes - is WHICH Dahl to use? Initially, I planned to use Matilda, but after talking with B, I think The Witches makes a MUCH better choice.
What other texts would be good in this syllabus? I'm going to include The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (supernatural + Aslan's death + Edmund's Badness), and I'd like to put in HP & the Prisoner of Azkaban (the dementors - need I say more? though Order of the Phoenix would be much more appropriate, I don't think any of the books after book 3 can work as stand-alones).
Suggestions welcome, please!!!! especially any from, say, 1890-1970. I have the contemporary overbooked as it is (it occurred to me that Snicket is IDEAL for this class!), and the Victorians are well represented, but anything before 1840, and after 1890, would be fantastic!!!
I had a few titles I was determined to use: The Golden Compass, Alice, Peter Pan, Story of the Amulet, a Roald Dahl title, some Janeway and Newbery, Christina Rossetti's Speaking Likenesses.
But what was my theme? what was the organizing principle of the course, other than a generic survey?
So i talked with my friend B last night. B is a fellow grad student, and probably the best grad student teacher amongst us (of all the grad students currently teaching, probably, and CERTAINLY the best in our year). She's a medievalist, and doesn't know children's lit in any special way.
I ran my ideas by her, and she said: "wow, these all sound really disturbing and weird."
and then "why not just do that? focus on the disturbing, the darker parts of children and childhood?"
!!!!
!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
and I will.
Death, grimness, poverty, the supernatural/spooky, disturbing, bizarre, the child imperiled - THAT will be my theme.
Rossetti fits perfectly, now. I can do Stretton, and Andersen's fairy stories (and a few of Grimms' or Jacobs' fairytales, probably). I'm contemplating excerpting from The Jungle Books - "Letting in the Jungle," which I found a very sinister and terrifying story (as well as being a representative of Kipling, as well as featuring the wild child, Mowgli).
I'm thinking of including Macdonald's At the Back of the North Wind, though it's been some years since I last read it; but Diamond dies, and that's creepy enough!
One of my decisions - to be made ASAP for book-ordering purposes - is WHICH Dahl to use? Initially, I planned to use Matilda, but after talking with B, I think The Witches makes a MUCH better choice.
What other texts would be good in this syllabus? I'm going to include The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (supernatural + Aslan's death + Edmund's Badness), and I'd like to put in HP & the Prisoner of Azkaban (the dementors - need I say more? though Order of the Phoenix would be much more appropriate, I don't think any of the books after book 3 can work as stand-alones).
Suggestions welcome, please!!!! especially any from, say, 1890-1970. I have the contemporary overbooked as it is (it occurred to me that Snicket is IDEAL for this class!), and the Victorians are well represented, but anything before 1840, and after 1890, would be fantastic!!!
Saturday, July 21, 2007
SPOILER SPOILER HP7 SPOILER
SHIELD YOUR EYES!!!!!!
SPOILAGE AHEAD.
I just finished THE BOOK. shockingly, it only took a little over five hours. i'm sure i missed a million things.
but i am a satisfied reader, mostly, except for the epiloguey part.
Chapter Thirty-Three was my undoing. I've always had my own set of opinions about Severus Snape, and this chapter confirmed many of them (in a much more detailed, elaborate way than I'd ever thought through). THE moment of the book that got me is on page 687, and here is the dialogue:
"After all this time?"
"Always."
oh god. the tears.
the sobbing.
goodness snakes alive.
what a book!
there were some horrendous moments. Hedwig, dobby. some wonderful moments: Neville, Luna, Kreacher.
some of it, I think, is a bit of a cop-out. mostly, though, not so much. The epilogue seems like a sneaky foreclosing of possibilities, but I can live with that.
The Dursleys were not wrapped up sufficiently for me. But i can handle that, as well.
This book clipped right along. It was tremendous.
I am pleased.
and now, I need some sleep!
SPOILAGE AHEAD.
I just finished THE BOOK. shockingly, it only took a little over five hours. i'm sure i missed a million things.
but i am a satisfied reader, mostly, except for the epiloguey part.
Chapter Thirty-Three was my undoing. I've always had my own set of opinions about Severus Snape, and this chapter confirmed many of them (in a much more detailed, elaborate way than I'd ever thought through). THE moment of the book that got me is on page 687, and here is the dialogue:
"After all this time?"
"Always."
oh god. the tears.
the sobbing.
goodness snakes alive.
what a book!
there were some horrendous moments. Hedwig, dobby. some wonderful moments: Neville, Luna, Kreacher.
some of it, I think, is a bit of a cop-out. mostly, though, not so much. The epilogue seems like a sneaky foreclosing of possibilities, but I can live with that.
The Dursleys were not wrapped up sufficiently for me. But i can handle that, as well.
This book clipped right along. It was tremendous.
I am pleased.
and now, I need some sleep!
Friday, July 20, 2007
In fewer than four hours...
..... I will be holding in my hands Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
I am tremendously excited. As long as nothing bad happens to Luna Lovegood, I am not terribly invested in who dies and what happens. I'm just RAGINGLY CURIOUS to see how all the various threads get resolved.
Ever since - book three? - I've been particularly curious about how the Dursleys' story concludes, as well as Malfoy's.
I WILL be writing about this book once I've read it - and I am planning on staying up all night to read (I think I wouldn't be able to sleep without finishing, anyway). I have a supply of snacks and caffeine, and I am READY!
The tag/title will indicate spoilage, but essentially, whatever I write about HP7 here WILL include spoilers, so readers beware!
Now it is time to dine and then get ready for book-acquisitioning! I'm going to a Barnes & Noble; I don't do the party stuff, but I plan to get there early and observe the goings-on, and wait for my book surrounded by undergrads, hysterical 12-year-olds and dorks like myself.
can't hardly wait!
I am tremendously excited. As long as nothing bad happens to Luna Lovegood, I am not terribly invested in who dies and what happens. I'm just RAGINGLY CURIOUS to see how all the various threads get resolved.
Ever since - book three? - I've been particularly curious about how the Dursleys' story concludes, as well as Malfoy's.
I WILL be writing about this book once I've read it - and I am planning on staying up all night to read (I think I wouldn't be able to sleep without finishing, anyway). I have a supply of snacks and caffeine, and I am READY!
The tag/title will indicate spoilage, but essentially, whatever I write about HP7 here WILL include spoilers, so readers beware!
Now it is time to dine and then get ready for book-acquisitioning! I'm going to a Barnes & Noble; I don't do the party stuff, but I plan to get there early and observe the goings-on, and wait for my book surrounded by undergrads, hysterical 12-year-olds and dorks like myself.
can't hardly wait!
Thursday, July 19, 2007
Nesbit, Sewall, Wiggin
I re-read The Story of the Amulet, and E. Nesbit is still so, SO good. I hate that I didn't know her books when i was a child....that book is just so smart and clever and funny, and I love the Psammead in all his sandy, cranky glory.
On to the new books!
Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, by Kate Douglas Wiggin.
What a nauseating load of bunk that book was! bleargh. it felt like Anne of Green Gables to me - in its talkative, artsy girl bringing sunshine and originality to a stuffy little town, but at least Wiggin has the decency not to flood us with too much moralizing. Rebecca got on my nerves, but the book was reasonably readable. I have to say I was creeped out by the way "Uncle Jerry" and "Mr Aladdin" admire Rebecca. Now, I am a devotee of James Kincaid, and Erotic Innocence changed my intellectual life. I am quite tough-skinned when it comes to pedophilia-related issues, but even *I* thought the way Mr Aladdin and Jerry go on and on about Rebecca's beauty and charm, when she's only 12 years old, was downright creepy.
ew.
other than that, nothing terribly surprising OR interesting to me about this book. American literature, especially for children, seems dreadfully pragmatic and puritanical. i find it unexciting.
Black Beauty, by Anna Sewall.
I'm ALREADY a total softie for animals. I'm a vegetarian, I don't buy/use leather, I try to shop cruelty free, I dote on three cats (one of whom is a foster), I recently rescued a terrifyingly large beetley thing from certain doom in my basement washtub-sink. I did NOT need to read about the horrors of the horse-using industries of the late 19th century.
I cringed my way through a lot of that book, because I HATE hearing about animals being hurt or killed.
I suppose I am glad it was written, if it affected the way people dealt with their horsies, but honestly, I don't ever want to read it again. Poor horses. The barn fire?! the death of poor Ginger? Shooting Rob Roy and Captain? it was horrifying!
I do have to wonder: is Black Beauty a children's book? If so: why?
The dustjacket notes compare it to Uncle Tom's Cabin, which is not a children's text. Black Beauty is a political tract, really, and it strikes me that most purchasers and users of horses are adults. There are, in fact, very few children in the book. So WHY is this a classic of children's lit? is it more of the old children-and-animals alliance?
this is worth thinking about. i've been interested in the relationship between children and animals via children's books for years, because it seems - well, weird. and provocative. if i had world enough, and time, i would write a nice long essay on animals and children's lit. it would be very animals-rightsish, and probably PETA would publish it.
ah well!
HP7 tomorrow, so I shall have to set aside the project for a day or so.
tonight, I shall probably finished Frances Browne's Granny's Wonderful Chair!
On to the new books!
Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, by Kate Douglas Wiggin.
What a nauseating load of bunk that book was! bleargh. it felt like Anne of Green Gables to me - in its talkative, artsy girl bringing sunshine and originality to a stuffy little town, but at least Wiggin has the decency not to flood us with too much moralizing. Rebecca got on my nerves, but the book was reasonably readable. I have to say I was creeped out by the way "Uncle Jerry" and "Mr Aladdin" admire Rebecca. Now, I am a devotee of James Kincaid, and Erotic Innocence changed my intellectual life. I am quite tough-skinned when it comes to pedophilia-related issues, but even *I* thought the way Mr Aladdin and Jerry go on and on about Rebecca's beauty and charm, when she's only 12 years old, was downright creepy.
ew.
other than that, nothing terribly surprising OR interesting to me about this book. American literature, especially for children, seems dreadfully pragmatic and puritanical. i find it unexciting.
Black Beauty, by Anna Sewall.
I'm ALREADY a total softie for animals. I'm a vegetarian, I don't buy/use leather, I try to shop cruelty free, I dote on three cats (one of whom is a foster), I recently rescued a terrifyingly large beetley thing from certain doom in my basement washtub-sink. I did NOT need to read about the horrors of the horse-using industries of the late 19th century.
I cringed my way through a lot of that book, because I HATE hearing about animals being hurt or killed.
I suppose I am glad it was written, if it affected the way people dealt with their horsies, but honestly, I don't ever want to read it again. Poor horses. The barn fire?! the death of poor Ginger? Shooting Rob Roy and Captain? it was horrifying!
I do have to wonder: is Black Beauty a children's book? If so: why?
The dustjacket notes compare it to Uncle Tom's Cabin, which is not a children's text. Black Beauty is a political tract, really, and it strikes me that most purchasers and users of horses are adults. There are, in fact, very few children in the book. So WHY is this a classic of children's lit? is it more of the old children-and-animals alliance?
this is worth thinking about. i've been interested in the relationship between children and animals via children's books for years, because it seems - well, weird. and provocative. if i had world enough, and time, i would write a nice long essay on animals and children's lit. it would be very animals-rightsish, and probably PETA would publish it.
ah well!
HP7 tomorrow, so I shall have to set aside the project for a day or so.
tonight, I shall probably finished Frances Browne's Granny's Wonderful Chair!
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
overheard/missing the boat
after seeing Order of the Phoenix, a friend and I went to dinner at max & erma's. in the booth across from us were two women who irritated me for a variety of reasons, both petty: one was wearing an engagement ring with a diamond roughly the size of my head, and kept flashing it around (she gestured a LOT with that hand). the other was a very skinny woman, but wearing an oversized shirt. an acquaintance came up and inquired, and the woman was all patting her (very flat) tummy and crowing about being pregnant. The oversize tunic was a maternity top. This woman on her worst days was probably a size 2. Maternity shirt not necessary. patting flat tummy not necessary either. but whatever.
their WORST offence:
they were also discussing the Harry Potter film. and started talking about Loony Lovegood. And they called her LOONY. as if that was her name.
Now, I am very partial to Luna; she's probably my favorite character (along with Lupin). It literally hurt me to hear these two dumb women calling her Loony; it's meant, in the books, to be unkind. Ginny and Harry constantly correct people for calling her Loony. It's not a nice name to call her.
It made me think: these women have totally missed the boat. they have no idea what it's like to BE the Luna Lovegood of your class, or your school. They don't get it at all.
and then I wondered: what else don't they get? and how many other viewers/readers are out there, missing the point all over the place?
their WORST offence:
they were also discussing the Harry Potter film. and started talking about Loony Lovegood. And they called her LOONY. as if that was her name.
Now, I am very partial to Luna; she's probably my favorite character (along with Lupin). It literally hurt me to hear these two dumb women calling her Loony; it's meant, in the books, to be unkind. Ginny and Harry constantly correct people for calling her Loony. It's not a nice name to call her.
It made me think: these women have totally missed the boat. they have no idea what it's like to BE the Luna Lovegood of your class, or your school. They don't get it at all.
and then I wondered: what else don't they get? and how many other viewers/readers are out there, missing the point all over the place?
Sunday, July 15, 2007
coral island, katzekopfs, hesba stretton, Nesbit!
i've been working away at the PhD Project Reading List (sort of; june got lost in the haze of teaching). but since summer session ended, and i am a Free Girl again, I have been trying to read steadily.
The Coral Island - RM Ballantyne. There seems to be this pattern of sneaking natural history/science lessons into books disguised as novels. I found this to be the case in both of my "island" books - Coral Island and Anne Parrish's adorably-illustrated The Floating Island. Not being particularly interested in snails and coral and small sea-creatures, I found most of the natural history quite dull. The Coral Island is weirdly unbelievable because of Our Heroes' ages (18,15,13) - but they don't speak or act like teenagers or young men. It's a pretty typical boys' adventure story - King Solomon's Mines MEETS Robinson Crusoe, I guess (having to rescue the light-skinned black girl and all). At ChLA in June, I'd heard a paper on coral insects, and the way they, and natural history, were used by British Missionary societies, so i had that in the back of my mind while reading. It was useful to have someone else's pre-digested ideas on hand for a book I'm not likely to do much with in the future. Of course, my queer-detectors went off when tall, manly Jack tenderly whispers to Ralph Rover, but beyond that - well, I'm glad I don't have to read it again.
The Hope of the Katzekopfs by "william churne" (the pseudonym of Rev Paget). So I read this one, and kind of went "wtf???" It's a fairly typical 19th century fairytale/moral tale - Lady Abracadabra whisks the nasty little Hope of the Katzekopfs, Prince jerkface, off to Fairyland to learn him a lesson. (think of Toad and Badger, saying "we don't want to teach them! we want to learn them!!!")
It had all the weirdness of the Victorian fairytale - I was thinking of the fairystories collected in Forbidden Journeys, (eds. Nina Auerbach and U.C Knoepflmacher). There's the grotesque, the Fairy, the moral, the transformation: nothing terribly new or surprising, though since Katzekopfs was written in 1844, perhaps I've got the wrong end of the stick, and Rev Paget was really doing something extraordinary and new. "Amelia & the Dwarves" is a better, weirder, story (in my opinion). What perplexes me most about Katzekopfs is the way it is so.....German-ish. But this isn't a terribly pressing (or productive) question, so I'll bracket it.
HESBA STRETTON:
I was dreading reading anything called "Jessica's First Prayer." But I found it....freakishly compelling. I went on to read the three other novella/tracts in the collection with "Jessica," and enjoyed them all. I'm surprised by this, because they're all very Algerish stories: dirt-poor and helpless children with good qualities find benefactors who teach them about Jesus and God. Sometimes, the child dies. Sometimes, the child does not die. Either way, everyone's really excited about Jesus and God and lives happily ever after (but never as happily as those morbid children who ecstatically die, ready and willing to go chill with God and Jesus rather than live their earthly lives).
"Little Meg's Children," "Alone in London," and "Pilgrim Street" were the other three stories, and I have to say I enjoyed them all. Stretton's writing is solidly good, and there's something so wonderfully Victorian, almost Dickensian, about her characters and settings. I don't know much about Stretton, other than that she was a christian reformer, concerned - obviously! - with the poor, and with poor children. i sometimes wonder what would happen if we had decent writers cranking out tractlike stories like this now - about the poor and underprivileged - would anyone read them? would any child read them and be motivated? would any adult?
which is a decent segue into today's re-read, Five Children & It. Now, I love Nesbit and I've re-read nearly all her books repeatedly. I just zipped through The Magic City (possibly my favorite) again, and it's still damn fantastic.
Five children & It is not one of my favorite Nesbit stories, perhaps because the wishes-adventures are SO snarkily carried out. I LOVE The Story of the Amulet, however; which is the Stretton connection. Nesbit and Stretton have similar projects in terms of politics (Nesbit not from the Christian angle, though), in their concern for the poor. And I find it fascinating that they handle their political material SO differently - and equally successfully, I think. Stretton wants to move us through pathos and christian spirit (or maybe christian guilt?); Nesbit wants to move us through a kind of pragmatic rationality, and through a kind of ostranenie , the defamiliarization she can achieve through time-travel.
I'm thinking I might teach "Little Meg" and The Story of the Amulet this fall.....
what do you think?
The Coral Island - RM Ballantyne. There seems to be this pattern of sneaking natural history/science lessons into books disguised as novels. I found this to be the case in both of my "island" books - Coral Island and Anne Parrish's adorably-illustrated The Floating Island. Not being particularly interested in snails and coral and small sea-creatures, I found most of the natural history quite dull. The Coral Island is weirdly unbelievable because of Our Heroes' ages (18,15,13) - but they don't speak or act like teenagers or young men. It's a pretty typical boys' adventure story - King Solomon's Mines MEETS Robinson Crusoe, I guess (having to rescue the light-skinned black girl and all). At ChLA in June, I'd heard a paper on coral insects, and the way they, and natural history, were used by British Missionary societies, so i had that in the back of my mind while reading. It was useful to have someone else's pre-digested ideas on hand for a book I'm not likely to do much with in the future. Of course, my queer-detectors went off when tall, manly Jack tenderly whispers to Ralph Rover, but beyond that - well, I'm glad I don't have to read it again.
The Hope of the Katzekopfs by "william churne" (the pseudonym of Rev Paget). So I read this one, and kind of went "wtf???" It's a fairly typical 19th century fairytale/moral tale - Lady Abracadabra whisks the nasty little Hope of the Katzekopfs, Prince jerkface, off to Fairyland to learn him a lesson. (think of Toad and Badger, saying "we don't want to teach them! we want to learn them!!!")
It had all the weirdness of the Victorian fairytale - I was thinking of the fairystories collected in Forbidden Journeys, (eds. Nina Auerbach and U.C Knoepflmacher). There's the grotesque, the Fairy, the moral, the transformation: nothing terribly new or surprising, though since Katzekopfs was written in 1844, perhaps I've got the wrong end of the stick, and Rev Paget was really doing something extraordinary and new. "Amelia & the Dwarves" is a better, weirder, story (in my opinion). What perplexes me most about Katzekopfs is the way it is so.....German-ish. But this isn't a terribly pressing (or productive) question, so I'll bracket it.
HESBA STRETTON:
I was dreading reading anything called "Jessica's First Prayer." But I found it....freakishly compelling. I went on to read the three other novella/tracts in the collection with "Jessica," and enjoyed them all. I'm surprised by this, because they're all very Algerish stories: dirt-poor and helpless children with good qualities find benefactors who teach them about Jesus and God. Sometimes, the child dies. Sometimes, the child does not die. Either way, everyone's really excited about Jesus and God and lives happily ever after (but never as happily as those morbid children who ecstatically die, ready and willing to go chill with God and Jesus rather than live their earthly lives).
"Little Meg's Children," "Alone in London," and "Pilgrim Street" were the other three stories, and I have to say I enjoyed them all. Stretton's writing is solidly good, and there's something so wonderfully Victorian, almost Dickensian, about her characters and settings. I don't know much about Stretton, other than that she was a christian reformer, concerned - obviously! - with the poor, and with poor children. i sometimes wonder what would happen if we had decent writers cranking out tractlike stories like this now - about the poor and underprivileged - would anyone read them? would any child read them and be motivated? would any adult?
which is a decent segue into today's re-read, Five Children & It. Now, I love Nesbit and I've re-read nearly all her books repeatedly. I just zipped through The Magic City (possibly my favorite) again, and it's still damn fantastic.
Five children & It is not one of my favorite Nesbit stories, perhaps because the wishes-adventures are SO snarkily carried out. I LOVE The Story of the Amulet, however; which is the Stretton connection. Nesbit and Stretton have similar projects in terms of politics (Nesbit not from the Christian angle, though), in their concern for the poor. And I find it fascinating that they handle their political material SO differently - and equally successfully, I think. Stretton wants to move us through pathos and christian spirit (or maybe christian guilt?); Nesbit wants to move us through a kind of pragmatic rationality, and through a kind of ostranenie , the defamiliarization she can achieve through time-travel.
I'm thinking I might teach "Little Meg" and The Story of the Amulet this fall.....
what do you think?
Thursday, July 12, 2007
order of the phoenix - movie montage madness!
so i surprised myself by being very eager to see the film adaptation of Harry Potter & the Order of the Phoenix. surprised, because though I am just as addicted to the books as the next person, I've been vastly disappointed with the films. But I've become, in the last year or so, VERY attached to Phoenix (the book), and I really quite wanted to see how the director (David Yates, who has far as I can tell, hasn't done much of real note before) dealt with it.
Yates seems to have been an excellent choice - there were a lot of small visual details, and cinematographic decisions that I really, really liked. lots of weird, rapid zoom-in close-ups of fragmented body parts - an eye, a neck - that really gave the film a nice spooky tone without being over the top or horror-movie-ish.
Imelda Staunton does a KICK-ASS job as Dolores Umbridge. Her costumes were perfect; she nailed the smiley pinkish evil of Umbridge perfectly. her desire for power is brilliantly staged - one scene has her seated in a throne-like chair, overseeing an exam or lesson. the way she briefly caresses the arm of the throne is genius.
one other genius move: in the final scenes of the film, in the Ministry, we see an enormous portrait banner of Fudge - it's a touch right out of, say, 1984 or any other film about dictators. It's such a brief touch but so brilliantly frames the politics of the movie - i cheered when i saw it.
Also, and I feel hideously creepy saying this, but my friend (with whom I saw the film) said it first: Daniel Radcliffe is going to be one extremely handsome young man. and soon. (although the ringer t-shirt/corduroy hipster/intellectual look he sports in the final scene could go).
I still loathe Emma Watson as Hermione Granger; she's simply NOT hermione. The actor playing Ginny would make a much better Hermione; she has a less glamourous prettiness. The film keeps wanting to make Hermione a Leading Lady, but the stories just don't permit that, so every glowy scene with Watson seems forced. And - sorry, Emma - but she just doesn't look smart.
Helena Bonham Carter is PERFECT as Bellatrix, and stole every scene she's in. I wish she was in it more, somehow.
Evanna Lynch, a fangrrrl who was cast as my favorite character in the whole series, Luna Lovegood, was incredible. Totally dreamy, totally Luna. I wish she had more screen time.
NOW! Let's rip the film to shreds! Keep in mind that of the films in the HP series, this was by far the one I'm most pleased with.
An acquaintance very astutely observed on Monday that they'd need to make two films per book (especially after Azkaban) to really do the books justice. The amount of STUFF in the novels simply cannot be squeezed into a 2+ hour movie. Recognizing this limitation is essential, I think, to having any kind of objective reaction to the films.
The main criticism of this film: to cram everything into 2 hours - everything required to set up the next installment - Yates & co decided to produce a series of montages, rather than a solid block of narrative film. There's remarkably little dialogue. Things happen very, very quickly, and in montage - one of my favorite parts of the book, the St Mungo's chapters, are eliminated altogether. Within about four minutes, Harry has:
seen the snake attack Mr Weasley
been whisked off for Occlumency with Snape
gone on christmas holiday
Mr Weasley returns home cured
it happens rapidfire, montage style.
The DA sessions also run in montage, as do the series of Educational Decrees and Umbridge's inspections of the teachers.
We SEE a lot happen in a short space of time, but never really experience it. The film has virtually no interiority; there's a weak-ass attempt early on, when Harry writes a diarylike letter to Sirius, talking about how sad and alone he feels. Harry's estrangement and persecution by the Wizard community - the awkwardness at school, his sense of alienation from everyone, his anger (ALL CAPS HARRY, WHERE ARE YOU???) are almost completely absent in the film. They're gestured at - he snaps at Ron and Hermione a bit, but the real angst is just....gone.
In my humble opinion, they blew it with the Ministry - it's a hightech 21st century-looking black and glass underground city, not the peacock blue and jewel-toned ministry i imagined. it has the look of being built in a subway stop (and in fact the credits thank and cite Westminster tube stop as a location), and feels creepy in all the wrong ways.
The details of the Ministry - especially the Department of Mysteries - is absent. Harry finds his way into the hall of prophecy instantly; there is none of that spooky blue-black lighting, no Time Room. They don't stumble into the Death Chamber (with the Veil) until after retrieving the prophecy.
I think these absences matter. In teaching Azkaban this summer, (the novel), one of the things that seemed evident to me through our discussions is that the wealth of detail - the fullness and depth of the fantasy world Rowling creates - is perhaps THE major reason why so many people are so passionate about the books. It is a deeply, thoroughly realized Other World. There are spellcheck quills and magical socks. there are self-peeling potatoes and family-vehicle flying carpets (or were, before the ban on them). there are things we can't imagine: the beautiful, glittering belljar, with the hummingbird in its stream - the jar of TIME - in the department of Mysteries; the myriad ailments in St Mungo's ER; the very entrance to Purge & Dowse, Ltd (in Regent Street). The magical parallels of real-world life are what make the books so enthralling. we want to live in that world, and it's so vividly created that we almost believe it exists.
The films fail us in this respect. The richness of the fantasy world is lost, and instead we have this weirdly fakey juxtaposition of magical world and muggle - this is perhaps most cringeably noticeable when harry and the order fly on broomsticks to Grimmauld Place, in London - the "flying broomsticks" look so fake against their bluescreen backdrop of 2006 London. the Magic doesn't seem REAL, in the films, and so it disppoints.
The feel-good moments of emotion between Sirius and Harry, Dumbledore & Harry, and Harry, Ron and Hermione feel like crap, though. It's the problem virtually ALL children's texts suffer when they are transmediated for the big screen: we can't have gritty, subversive, grotesque or subtle emotions. The darkness of the film vanishes in this hopeful conclusion, with harry feeling good about what's worth fighting for. he's too heroic in the most cliched way possible, and too inspirational. Not much about Harry Potter, the character, is truly inspirational. But the film forces him into that position, and again: it grates and jars against the rest of the narrative. The novel does not end on an especially uplifting or hopeful note; the film tries to, and that's when it suffers most.
But i did love some of the staging and cinematography; the Weasley twins are marvellous, as always; Luna and Bellatrix and Umbridge are brilliant casting decisions.
Yates seems to have been an excellent choice - there were a lot of small visual details, and cinematographic decisions that I really, really liked. lots of weird, rapid zoom-in close-ups of fragmented body parts - an eye, a neck - that really gave the film a nice spooky tone without being over the top or horror-movie-ish.
Imelda Staunton does a KICK-ASS job as Dolores Umbridge. Her costumes were perfect; she nailed the smiley pinkish evil of Umbridge perfectly. her desire for power is brilliantly staged - one scene has her seated in a throne-like chair, overseeing an exam or lesson. the way she briefly caresses the arm of the throne is genius.
one other genius move: in the final scenes of the film, in the Ministry, we see an enormous portrait banner of Fudge - it's a touch right out of, say, 1984 or any other film about dictators. It's such a brief touch but so brilliantly frames the politics of the movie - i cheered when i saw it.
Also, and I feel hideously creepy saying this, but my friend (with whom I saw the film) said it first: Daniel Radcliffe is going to be one extremely handsome young man. and soon. (although the ringer t-shirt/corduroy hipster/intellectual look he sports in the final scene could go).
I still loathe Emma Watson as Hermione Granger; she's simply NOT hermione. The actor playing Ginny would make a much better Hermione; she has a less glamourous prettiness. The film keeps wanting to make Hermione a Leading Lady, but the stories just don't permit that, so every glowy scene with Watson seems forced. And - sorry, Emma - but she just doesn't look smart.
Helena Bonham Carter is PERFECT as Bellatrix, and stole every scene she's in. I wish she was in it more, somehow.
Evanna Lynch, a fangrrrl who was cast as my favorite character in the whole series, Luna Lovegood, was incredible. Totally dreamy, totally Luna. I wish she had more screen time.
NOW! Let's rip the film to shreds! Keep in mind that of the films in the HP series, this was by far the one I'm most pleased with.
An acquaintance very astutely observed on Monday that they'd need to make two films per book (especially after Azkaban) to really do the books justice. The amount of STUFF in the novels simply cannot be squeezed into a 2+ hour movie. Recognizing this limitation is essential, I think, to having any kind of objective reaction to the films.
The main criticism of this film: to cram everything into 2 hours - everything required to set up the next installment - Yates & co decided to produce a series of montages, rather than a solid block of narrative film. There's remarkably little dialogue. Things happen very, very quickly, and in montage - one of my favorite parts of the book, the St Mungo's chapters, are eliminated altogether. Within about four minutes, Harry has:
seen the snake attack Mr Weasley
been whisked off for Occlumency with Snape
gone on christmas holiday
Mr Weasley returns home cured
it happens rapidfire, montage style.
The DA sessions also run in montage, as do the series of Educational Decrees and Umbridge's inspections of the teachers.
We SEE a lot happen in a short space of time, but never really experience it. The film has virtually no interiority; there's a weak-ass attempt early on, when Harry writes a diarylike letter to Sirius, talking about how sad and alone he feels. Harry's estrangement and persecution by the Wizard community - the awkwardness at school, his sense of alienation from everyone, his anger (ALL CAPS HARRY, WHERE ARE YOU???) are almost completely absent in the film. They're gestured at - he snaps at Ron and Hermione a bit, but the real angst is just....gone.
In my humble opinion, they blew it with the Ministry - it's a hightech 21st century-looking black and glass underground city, not the peacock blue and jewel-toned ministry i imagined. it has the look of being built in a subway stop (and in fact the credits thank and cite Westminster tube stop as a location), and feels creepy in all the wrong ways.
The details of the Ministry - especially the Department of Mysteries - is absent. Harry finds his way into the hall of prophecy instantly; there is none of that spooky blue-black lighting, no Time Room. They don't stumble into the Death Chamber (with the Veil) until after retrieving the prophecy.
I think these absences matter. In teaching Azkaban this summer, (the novel), one of the things that seemed evident to me through our discussions is that the wealth of detail - the fullness and depth of the fantasy world Rowling creates - is perhaps THE major reason why so many people are so passionate about the books. It is a deeply, thoroughly realized Other World. There are spellcheck quills and magical socks. there are self-peeling potatoes and family-vehicle flying carpets (or were, before the ban on them). there are things we can't imagine: the beautiful, glittering belljar, with the hummingbird in its stream - the jar of TIME - in the department of Mysteries; the myriad ailments in St Mungo's ER; the very entrance to Purge & Dowse, Ltd (in Regent Street). The magical parallels of real-world life are what make the books so enthralling. we want to live in that world, and it's so vividly created that we almost believe it exists.
The films fail us in this respect. The richness of the fantasy world is lost, and instead we have this weirdly fakey juxtaposition of magical world and muggle - this is perhaps most cringeably noticeable when harry and the order fly on broomsticks to Grimmauld Place, in London - the "flying broomsticks" look so fake against their bluescreen backdrop of 2006 London. the Magic doesn't seem REAL, in the films, and so it disppoints.
The feel-good moments of emotion between Sirius and Harry, Dumbledore & Harry, and Harry, Ron and Hermione feel like crap, though. It's the problem virtually ALL children's texts suffer when they are transmediated for the big screen: we can't have gritty, subversive, grotesque or subtle emotions. The darkness of the film vanishes in this hopeful conclusion, with harry feeling good about what's worth fighting for. he's too heroic in the most cliched way possible, and too inspirational. Not much about Harry Potter, the character, is truly inspirational. But the film forces him into that position, and again: it grates and jars against the rest of the narrative. The novel does not end on an especially uplifting or hopeful note; the film tries to, and that's when it suffers most.
But i did love some of the staging and cinematography; the Weasley twins are marvellous, as always; Luna and Bellatrix and Umbridge are brilliant casting decisions.
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