After it's all said and done, I wrote 625,552 words this year. That, I submit, is quite a few. Over 625,000 to be precise. In fact, I wrote more than that in total, since I didn't count work-related things--typing up assignments or emails--or my social media posts, which would add a fair bit. I'm probably looking at an additional 20,000 words or so, if I had to guess, but since I'm already approximating the numbers that are in the total, I figure it's okay to err on the conservative side. I took some surprisingly meticulous notes on what I wrote, with the monthly breakdown as seen below. (Yes, I included this essay in the calculations, in order to make it as complete as possible.) There are some clear takeaways: June and February were, by far, my most productive months. The former is hardly surprising: June saw me taking not one, but two writing retreats to my family's cabin. There I wrote for upwards of eight hours a day. The most productive day of the year was actually 28 June, when I wrote 18,220 new words and edited an additional 250 words. The next closest was the day before, when I edited about the same amount, but wrote 14,268 in my novel and then an additional 1,500 words in my reading journal. That day, then, is one of the most important days in the year--to go along with my trip to D.C. and some of the other significant things--because that was the day when I understood myself in a way I never had before. I was writing my journal in response to It, by Stephen King, and I only stopped writing what I did because my hand was hurting. So though the day saw over 16k words, those 1,500 are probably some of the most important--to me personally--words that I've ever written.
February being in the second place is a bit of a shock, though. What, I thought to myself when I saw that, did I do in February to put it so high on the list? Digging back into the details, I remembered that, over the Valentine weekend, I went to LTUE, where I wrote about 22k words of notes throughout the different panels. That gave the shortest month of the year a massive boost. Combined with some pretty steady revisions and consistent essay-writing, and I came in with almost 70,000 words. While it isn't close to June's 121,000 word month, it's still an impressive total, methinks. Third place goes, unsurprisingly, to November, where I was committed to writing at least 50,000 words. Combined with everything else I typically write, it's almost a given that I would get so many words typed up during the eleventh month. Now that I can sit on my nest-egg of 625,000 words, I'm free to wonder what the value is and what I'm shooting for next year. I had a goal to write three novels in 2018--I failed at that goal completely. I didn't even finish two. I also wanted to get half a million words, and that I definitely accomplished. So what should I do next? Part of me just wants to keep on--I always have a book sitting on my shelf that needs to be edited. I have desires (fading embers of desire, maybe) to get out there and submit War Golem, though I'm not at all confident I've done enough work to really shop it around. I want the goal for what comes 365 days from now to be something that requires my effort and dedication, but isn't cripplingly large. Much like how I'm trying to figure out a new reading goal, I also need to figure out what my new writing goal is going to be. Here are some givens: I want to keep writing daily essays. However, I have an internal clock/expectation that I need to hit 1,000 words minimum before I turn it over to the internet. Perhaps I should chill out on that one? Allow myself to write a little less non-fiction so that I can focus on what I really care about? Here's a possibility: Regardless of how many words I put down, I want to write some fiction every day, on top of my essays. Another possibility would be to eschew the daily essays and insist that I write, say, three times a week, but it's always a specific amount of time--maybe twenty minutes or thirty. I could also figure out what I want to do with my edits: Every finished new chapter needs to be matched by an edited chapter. In fact, now that I think about that, I kind of want that to be part of my goal: The year of 2019 will be the Year of Editing™. That I'll finish editing Ash and Fire and return to War Golem so that I can make it as good as possible before shifting into its sequel, War Golems. That sounds good… I guess we'll see. All my words for the year are done. What else is there to do but to sift through the morass and see if any of them are worth putting out into the world's stage? Wish me luck. For most of the people who read my essays, there's no need for explanation of the title: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has, for the past 38 years, had three hours of church meetings on almost every Sunday. Back in October, President Nelson announced that there was going to be a change in the amount of time members were expected to be in church each week, shifting from a three hour block to a two hour block and an hour or so set aside for at-home study.
I am in favor of this, if only because it means that I have one fewer hour in which to sit on the metal folding chairs, also known as a violation of my Eighth Amendment rights. The ostensible reason to do this is for members to have more opportunities to study at home and to fortify their familial relationships. (It has faint echoes of a comment I saw somewhere that members of the Church worship families more than they do Jesus; there may be something in that, but I'm not interested in pursuing that thought right now.) The practical result is that my church meetings, which have started at 8:30 in the morning this year (a true trial of my faith) and ended at 11:30 will now begin at 10:20 and finish at 12:20pm. This shows that faithfulness through heartache and sorrow can often lead to great blessings. I'm not much of a morning person--weird, considering I'm a teacher--and I never have been. All joking aside, one of the largest difficulties that I had as a missionary in Florida was following the rules of when to go to bed and when to wake up. I never mastered the different circadian rhythm; within a week of coming home I was back to my midnight to bed, nine-in-the-morning to rise routine. And though having church meetings begin at 8:30 doesn't sound too bad, I should remind you that the weekends are, historically in my house, the times when we finally caught up on all that sleep we'd been missing during the early-hours of the week. I take the idea of Sunday being a day of rest very seriously, so I'm excited to finally be able to get the rest that I need. As for the new structure, I think it sounds great on paper. I've been unsure what to make out of Sunday School for a long time, as the pedantic lessons tend not to be particularly interesting to me, and the third hours of the block were often so physically uncomfortable (seriously, the metal folding chairs the Church purchases make me sad simply to think about) that I rarely pulled much from them. Seeing the shift to one hour dedicated to the sacrament and remembering Jesus Christ, the other being on more practical, communal-modes of worship? Well, that all sounds good to me. I don't know how well it will go in our household once we're back. We'll arrive home in time for a late lunch, so after that, what will we do? Some members are talking about having dedicated scripture study time. Others talked about doing "stations", short activities that the younglings can more readily enjoy--ten minutes coloring in a scripture-based coloring book, a Church-created video (complete with soft-focus speech), or time in their personal journals. One idea that I think I'll definitely use was the idea of strapping the kids in the car and driving up the canyon. We're kind of far from the mountains--they're visible from where I live, but they aren't close, necessarily--but there's a lot of places in this city that we've yet to explore, despite living here for over two years. Maybe we should plan on poisoning the atmosphere as we trundle about and talk of Jesus? In terms of personal study, I'm trying to wrap my head around what I'm supposed to do. When I read literature, I do so with certain lenses--some of them are inherent, others are institutional--and try to find alternative impressions and ideas from the text. In other words, I like to deconstruct things and poke at assumptions within the texts. That's not really encouraged when it comes to scripture study. Admittedly, there is a wide range of interpretations out there--the hermeneutics of the Bible are robust enough to keep a person busy for a lifetime--but when you're a part of a church like mine, there's a lot of pressure to color within the lines. Individual interpretations are often considered secondary to official pronouncements, and approaching the teachings of the Church in any other way is all too frequently considered "apostate" or indicative of a weak faith. Not only that, but I usually end up with a lot more questions than answers when I think religiously. It's not that reading the Book of Mormon gives me questions, per se, but more that I interrogate works. It doesn't matter what it is. I think, perhaps, this is why I love reading Milton so much. Paradise Lost is one of the most doctrinally dense pieces of writing on the planet, and I love to interrogate it. What's interesting about that, is I usually interrogate it based upon my religious lens: The Mormonic* answers to the Miltonic questions is fine for me. That is, I want to read Paradise Lost in order to ask questions that I then think have scriptural answers. But if I go the other way--reading the Book of Mormon and asking questions--then the place I usually turn to for satisfaction is instead the area that's taking me down a dubious path. Gayle said that we can incorporate Paradise Lost into our studies, if it makes me feel better. It does…though there's a definitive risk that I'd put more time and effort into reading Milton than Moroni, if only because Milton is a way better writer. I can really only think of one exception to when prose is superior to Milton's poetry when describing an important idea, and that's because the prose version is Milton's own. So though the Book of Mormon has a straightforward way of approaching a doctrinal thought, I'm not drawn to it in the same way that I am to Milton's more convoluted approach to the same topic. I would rather hear Milton's Satan ruminate on the repercussions of agency and free will than a handful of important but dry lines in the Pearl of Great Price. When both have great substance, I think I'd prefer the one with exceptional style. All that being said, I'm hopeful that I will feel more spiritually enriched through personal study and time with the family than I ever did during the seemingly-endless three hour block. We'll just have to wait and see how it goes. --- * So, Mormonic isn't really a word, and the Church's recent allergy to the term Mormon is something that I've been thinking about a lot. I do believe there's a difference between Mormonism and the teachings of the Church…but that's a topic for another day. My five year old, Demetrius, is a loquacious kid. He is halfway through kindergarten and has pretty much gotten rid of almost all of his speech impediments from previous years. He no longer says, "Dad, I'm hungary," or "I'm sweepy." Though he still doesn't always understand when to use the th sound as opposed to the f sound ("three" and "free" are only now sounding like separate words), he is, for the most part, pretty understandable. (His rendition of "Hallelujah" is "Hall-lay-you-yuh" though, and that's just adorable.)
One thing, however, is he doesn't understand the word supposed. In his ears, he hears shouldposed, as in, "I'm shouldposed to pick up my toys." As I was thinking about it, though, this word, though it doesn't really exist, fills in an interesting gap. I feel like there are things you should do, and things that you're supposed to do, and the fact that there isn't a word for the Venn-diagram center of this concept is a failure of the English language. On a less personal side, though, it brings up the idea of how language ought to be manipulated--and who ought to do the manipulating. As an English major, I've been confronted with this question for a long time. I maintain a prescriptive approach to language--that the flexibility of its meaning can only be in response to what has come before. In other words, I feel like the shifting meaning of words is not the areas where English is strongest. Prodigal is one word that, I think, needs to maintain its original sense of "one who spends generously". Other words have somehow come to mean the exact opposite of what they are supposed to mean: peruse is perhaps the most egregiously abused word, as it means to study deeply and with a single focus, rather than a light skimming as it too often used to mean. Another would be the loss of the word niggardly, which is an antonym to prodigal but has an unfortunate sonic similarity to a word that I won't be writing here. That similarity is so strong that a person once lost his job over the use of it, even though the person used the word correctly…and everyone around him thought it was an epithet. (That being said, I'm also aware of how few people are cognizant of the meaning of the word and, quite likely, would respond out of ignorance; I, therefore, take pains not to use niggardly…pretty much ever.) Again, the shedding of words that are no longer accurate isn't necessarily what I have a beef with in terms of language description/prescription: It's the mutilation of them that bothers me. As I mentioned earlier, peruse is one word that really grinds my gears. So are apropos of and enormity. The former means "with regard to" and the latter "a great wickedness", but they're misused so much that the term's metamorphosis is assumed as the actual definition. Of course, there's a problem in being a prescriptivist: Where does one draw the line that isn't fundamentally arbitrary? And, in this case, there isn't a way to delineate the English I'm trying to prescribe that isn't arbitrary…at least, not one that I'm aware of. Additionally, I have my own capitulations to certain grammatical battles: I don't push hard on ending a sentence with a preposition (as you can see from the preceding sentence), nor do I have too much of a problem with people who like to expertly cut infinitives (as I did right there). "What's the worry?" some may argue. "Who cares if the rules change, so long as communication still transpires?" On one level, I can get behind that. Having had to learn a second language, it's nice to have the contextual flexibility that allows for linguistic neophytes to still be able to say something and be understood. And I think, in many instances, the incomplete way in which we speak to each other is fine--inferences, allusions, and references to a previous part of a conversation all work to communicate, even if the grammar and word choice aren't professional quality. Heck, my essays alone show a deplorable lack of continuity with specific stylistic choices, are often riddled with typos (and why isn't it spelled typoes, anyway?), and try too hard to circumlocute an idea. So I think there is a space for less-than-perfect language. However, I feel like there's an expectation--perhaps it's a presumption--that our speech is fine as it is simply because it's our speech. It's the same sense of entitlement that people have when professing their opinion, which is valuable and important and right for no other reason than because the person expressing the opinion is the one who came up with the thought in the first place. (And, let's be real for minute: Shakespeare wasn't lying when he said, "Opinion's but a fool, that makes us scan /The outward habit by the inward man" (Pericles 2.2).) When it comes to the incorporation of new words, that's where I'm happy to drop a prescriptive stance. Without our language's ability to pull in new ideas and find ways of expressing them, we would stagnate. Having words like "download" or "bandwidth" allow us to expand our understandings. And while slang doesn't compel me to really admit a lot of additions to the language--they tend to be so ephemeral as to not warrant protracted attention or inclusion, save as a novelty--the overall use of slang and other shibboleth are valuable contributions to the language. I'm reminded, however, of a man I met in Miami once. We were at a church dinner and he was enjoying the drumstick of the chicken that had been served up. He looked at me and said, "This is a great milkbone." "What?" He pointed again at the drumstick. "A milkbone. This is a milkbone." "No, it's not." "You gotta help me change people's minds. We need to start calling this a milkbone." "No, I'm okay. Thanks, though." It's that sort of willy-nilly restructuring of the language that shouldposed to go away. The rest can stay as they are.* --- * This essay, despite quoting Shakespeare, doesn't really approach the critique that Shakespeare reinvented the language in all sorts of ways, so what's the big deal? A couple of parts to that: 1) No one else is Shakespeare. Einstein rewrote what's possible in terms of physics, which he could do, because he was Einstein. There's a reason we remember these men of genius. Their contributions are in part because they helped to establish the new rules by which we're operating. 2) Early modern English (not, as people wish to assert, Old English), which is to say, Shakespeare's English, was not yet standardized. While I could probably teleport (that is to say, "would gladly teleport") into London 1599 and be able to understand much of what was being said, there are certain things that would be nontransferable. Spelling is one of them. The use of certain words (excrement is one that pops to mind. To us, it means one thing that we expel and it isn't a pretty one; for Shakespeare, it meant a thing that's excreted, whether it be hair, sweat, or anything else) would put me at a disadvantage. Nevertheless, that's the beginning of our language. Shakespeare's power with the English language comes in no small part because he was part of the formative shaping of the whole thing. Shakespeare and the King James Version of the Holy Bible are two of the largest anchors for creating the kind of English we enjoy today. So of course he was inventing and reinventing the language: It was in its nascent format, just beginning to coalesce into what we now understand English to be. ==== Hey, friends. I have been releasing essays on my website for a couple of years now at a pretty steady rate. I'm happy to do so, as it benefits me as a writer and (I hope) you as a reader. I also think that, as a writer, it's okay if I believe that my work has some value monetarily as well as emotionally. To that end, I've created a Ko-Fi account, which is basically a way to give an online tip to a creator whose work you appreciate. The idea is, you can buy them a cup of coffee. (That's what the name of the website sounds like, if you're curious.) I'm not charging for any of the content on my website; instead, if you'd like to toss me a cup-le (see what I did there?) of bucks to show your gratitude, that would be cool. I'd totally appreciate that appreciation. If you don't? No problem. We can still be friends. As always, thanks for reading! A week or so ago, I posted my list of all the books I read, as well as comics, movies, and video games. The list has expanded since then, as I've finished a book or two and I watched Teen Titans Go! To The Movies for a third time. And while I'm proud of myself for how much art I've appreciated, I felt like I need to think hard about what I'm hoping to accomplish about next year. I mentioned that I don't know how many books I want to have read by the end of 2019--though I likely won't shoot for 100 again. So that's what I'm bouncing around in this essay: What are some things that I'd like to do in 2019 that's different from 2018?
Though it still has familiar components (I like books, movies, video games, and comic books, so I think it's fair to say those will all be feeding my need for art), I want to try to find something that will challenge me just a little bit--yes, I said a little bit; there are lots of things going on in my life that are non-negotiable consumers of my bandwidth, so the amount of slack I have with which to play is limited. Here's my first idea: Broaden my reading diet. Instead of shooting for 100 titles throughout the year, maybe something more like Pioneer Book in Provo does with their reading journals--something with red on its cover; a winner of a major award; a book from a different genre than what I'm used to; something controversial--and tailor it to a list that appeals to me. If I go with this, I would want to have some categories like "Book that's politically different than my point of view" and "Book that is from a part of history that I don't already know" and "A book about a World War I battle" and "A book about an aspect of World War II that I don't talk about very much (so, probably naval)". I'd also add, "Books that I've spent more than a year trying to finish and still haven't," which would include Jerusalem by Alan Moore, The Stand by Stephen King, Oathbringer by Brandon Sanderson, The Iliad by Homer, and The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer. Those five books have been plaguing me for a long time. It'd be nice to get finally them out of the way. The problem I see is that sometimes I'm just not in the mood for what's on my plate. Reading is hard and rewarding, but it shouldn't be painful--at least, not always. There are times when it's good to be difficult. But why should I spend time in books that aren't grabbing me? Do I want to make it so that my reading is one done entirely out of duty? And if it makes me upset--like reading a book whose politics differ immensely from mine--is that really benefiting me? Can I figure out a way to do this where it doesn't feel like a chore? Another thing could be simply prioritizing. That is, having an order of operations. For example, I have to write my essay, then I have to read for fifteen minutes of whatever I need to read, then I have to make sure the dishes are done, and then I can watch a movie or play a video game. The advantages of having that kind of schedule is that, after a couple of weeks, it'll be so rote that I won't have to really catalogue what to do next, as I already have everything set up. The downside to this is that my life, for as regimented as it is, doesn't always work in the same flow on the day-to-day. If one thing gets out of whack, then I'm in trouble, especially because I like to spend time with my family. Often, we find ourselves playing video games or watching cartoons together, and that throws off my desire to do anything but continuing to vegetate. (There's a reason that, on days off (like today), I always try to do my writing first thing in the morning. I'm less likely to write it later in the day as I get distracted by various forms of media.) I feel like this is tenuous. Here's a possibility: Make sure that I have at least one book a quarter that's worth writing about in my reading journal. That's four books--not too many, honestly--but they really have to be worthwhile. They can't be yet-another-Encyclopedia Brown. The idea on this is that, instead of reading widely, I'm reading very specifically, taking care to consume the texts that make me think. Obviously, I'd be reading other books, but the goal would be to find four books that make me scurry to my journal after every reading session. If I go along with that one, then I will have to be very selective about what I choose. I just got a new, shorter biography of John Milton, called John Milton: A Hero for Our Time. Is that something that should be a Journal Book™? What about the other book I've purchased, a compendium of art and behind-the-scenes information about Final Fantasy VII, VIII, and IX? Um, yeah, that one doesn't count. That won't work. Okay, so what will? I could see myself standing in Barnes and Noble for a good hour or two, carefully considering the titles that are before me. I feel like, if I did this one, it would have to be genre specific. Something from the sci-fi/fantasy section, something from the literature section, something from the philosophy section, and something from the non-fiction/science section. I already have some books that fall into those areas*, so maybe this would be a good chance to see them checked off? Perhaps what I really need to do is swear off Overwatch (as soon as my PlayStation Plus account expires, I'm done, I promise…until the summer) and other never-ending video games so that, if I am playing, I'm focusing on games with a narrative text. Games like Spider-Man or Monster Hunter World; though I've already played through the former twice and I just got the latter, so I can't say that it's particularly narrative rich. The idea is that, if I'm not reading narratives, I should still become more aware of them. I replayed Metal Gear Solid IV not too long ago, and filled pages with analyses and thoughts. The same goes for Final Fantasy X. I'm writing down thoughts and trying to use the narrative of video games to better my own understanding of how stories can be told. If I'm using strong-narrative video games and journaling on those, would that count for me as a good change for the new year? I'm not sure. The more I think about it, the more I think I want to do the "Four Great Books", with the understanding that every reading session also has a writing component, where I try to digest what I just finished reading. As I wrote the footnote* about the possible texts, I found myself getting excited by the idea. And if I'm excited about it, then maybe I'll actually follow through? Who knows? Well, whatever I end up doing, I'm certain that 2019 will be a year filled with reading and thinking. That makes me eager for the new year. --- * If you're curious: The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang is supposedly a shockingly powerful read, which would be my fantasy book. That or The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin. I recently purchased Sense and Sensibility but haven't touched it since then; getting some more Austen read would be an excellent move. I have been wanting to reread Gamer Theory and Molecular Red by McKenzie Wark for quite some time, though I recently hit up parts of the former and can't really progress in the latter until I've read some Kim Stanley Robinson, so I might try to comprehend either The Parallax View by Slavoj Zizek or The Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord. I also have The Materialist Shakespeare that is a collection of essays that I've been meaning to read since forever. So I'd have to choose among those three to satisfy the philosophy one. For the final section, I would either pick the Stephen Greenblatt analysis of Shakespeare, Tyranny, or go with The Tyrannosaur Chronicles by David Hone. Those are very different options, though. Getting to the Movie
I follow a lot of my interests on Twitter. When political dumpster-fires aren't eating up all the bandwidth, I find a lot of useful websites, thoughts, and conversations that have helped me become a better person. (Whether or not that balances out the frustration I feel almost every time I log on is still undecided.) One of the accounts I follow--which has been particularly interesting in the post-November tweets--is an account called "WWI Live", which regularly posts snippets of men's journals "on this day" back throughout the Great War. So, unsurprisingly, when Peter Jackson's documentary They Shall Not Grow Old was debuted back in October/November, WWI Live and other WWI related accounts shared the news article. If you don't know, They Shall Not Grow Old is a side-project by the famous director. The idea was to cull 100 hours of film and 600 hours of interviews the BBC did with WWI vets back in the sixties and seventies, assemble it into a type of narrative about the boys who went to France from 1914-1918, colorize it, and give the audience a chance to really feel as though they were as close to the trenches as we could possibly get. As soon as I learned about the movie, I immediately started trying to find if it was going to screen in Utah, but, at the time, it had some festivals it was showing at in London, and other than that, nothing. I mean, I did my due-diligence; I went to the Fathom Events website to see if there was anything pending, but…nope. Nothing. Anyway, a couple of weeks ago, I saw someone tweet that they'd seen the film--an American, speaking from a not-New York location--and that it was mesmerizing. I was with my wife, Gayle, on the way to run some errands, just the two of us. I immediately started looking at the Fathom Events website again--it had been a couple of months, after all, maybe it had updated?--and, sure enough, there were some screenings going on at the end of December. After that, maybe something would show up in February. I started to try to reserve some seats…only to see that every single screening in a 100 mile radius was completely sold out. I was frustrated; Gayle listened to me grouse about the injustice of me being unable to attend--a smaller version of the frustration I felt when I was unable to go to Verdun when I visited France a couple of Januarys back--because she knows how much learning about the World Wars means to me. Then, right at the top of my Winter Break, my little brother texted me, asking me if I knew about the movie. It's sold out, I texted back. Really? It looks like it's still there, he replied. I scurried online. Sure enough, a couple of tickets, on the very back row, tucked into the corner, were two available seats. Without hesitation, I threw in my credit card number and scooped them up, telling my brother he was going to come with me. He was down. I was relieved that, after all of that, I would finally get to see the movie. I had some trepidation: I get depressed and frustrated with war films--Dunkirk was perhaps an exception to this--and part of what always makes me unhappy with war films is that it's a recreation. No matter how hard they strive for accuracy, it isn't what truly happened, and all the people on the screen got to go home at the end of the day. It makes the real sacrifice of real people--even those who died over a century ago--feel…exploited. Well, that might be too strong of a word. Still, I don't normally go to see war films, and part of that is also because of the exceptional violence on screen. I know why it's happening, I get the process…but watching movies like that make me a little queasy and often glum. Nevertheless, I felt this was important for me to go to, so I was excited in a way that I don't normally feel for movies. Anyway, today is the day of the film, so I went by my brother's house, picked him up, and drove to the correct movie theater. We needed some food before the film, but when we tried to get some Chick-fil-A, the restaurant was packed. We decided to head to the theater and try to get something there. We only had twenty minutes before showing to get some food, eat it, and get to our seats. The food--over-priced, but still good--mostly eaten, we headed to the theater. "We're at the top left," I whispered, remembering what I saw when I bought the tickets. We hiked up…only to see that there wasn't anything approaching my seat numbers there. When I had ordered the tickets, I had misunderstood where the movie screen was in relation to the seats I was selecting…I had purchased the front row tickets, not the back. I didn't want to crane my neck at the screen for the next two hours, so I sat down in the empty seats at the back. A couple minutes later, the actual ticket holders came, surprised to see me and my brother parked in their spots. We moved. Another batch of people came. We moved again. I then spent the next fifteen minutes stressing out that the people whose seats we'd claimed were going to come in and kick us out of our seats again. (I really didn't want to move closer to the screen.) Fortunately, that was the last relocation, and my brother and I got to experience the film without further interruption. The Film Itself Where to start? Well, first of all, I can talk about the film pretty freely, as there isn't really any "spoiler" territory for a documentary: If you didn't know, the British fought in the Great War. They had horrible experiences. It ended on 11 November 1918. Many people died. I can also unequivocally and wholeheartedly recommend the movie. I would love to show it to my students--despite the R rating, which it deserves (as it's a documentary with many gruesome and graphic images), the film doesn't sensationalize the subject matter or make it overly grotesque*--though there are many reasons (the rating being one of them) that there's little possibility of that. I don't know how available it will be--I don't know if there will be country-wide distribution of the film later, or if it will become viewable online or through Blu-Ray sales. But if you get the opportunity to see the movie, you should take pains to see it. Of course, the question is, why? There have been plenty of colorized versions of the WWI footage available--and, though Jackson didn't address this in his after-credits, behind-the-scenes explanation of how the movie was made, there are sanitized versions of some of the filming from the war--to say nothing of the fact that there isn't as much interest in the Great War as its flashier, deadlier sequel. So why the Great War? Jackson obviously has a long-standing fascination with the First World War: His grandfather served throughout the entire four-year period, and he actually owns a fair number of WWI pieces, including artillery and uniforms and magazines. For him, it was a personal affair. Another thing is, there is a technological gap between the First and Second World Wars that allows the latter to be better documented and visualized. For us, the First is all about scratchy, silent, black-and-white, static images, where everyone moves at an exaggerated pace. The war is in black-and-white in our memories; whenever we study it, the slides and images feel too far removed. Jackson's idea was to tidy up the footage and coalesce on the experience of living in the trenches. What was it like to do the mundane things, like get hot water for some tea (they're British, after all)? Or the sound of lice popping when soldiers cooked them from the seams of their shirts? All of this minutiae strove to put the audience in what may be considered a "generic" version of events. Not about the big names--I think I heard Neville's name mentioned, but never French or De Gaulle or Von Kluck or anyone else--but just a ground-level experience. By adding carefully reconstructed lip-readings of the footage, there was a stronger sense of belonging--they were no longer silent films, but "talkies"--complete with carefully recorded explosions, marches, and other aspects that we take for granted in a movie. Jackson utilizes the techniques of modern filmmaking to allow us into a mindspace we're familiar with, then pushes that into a world we aren't: The trenches. The cumulative effect was absolutely stunning. The violence was surprisingly subdued--though having explosions on screen with enough volume to make the theater rattle gave a tiny taste of what it was like in 1915 France was one of the most striking moments for me--for the simple reason that no filmmaker, now or then, would want to rush along into the trenches to film the actual fighting. The choices they made were probably the best possible, and easily the part where I was least engaged. Not because there wasn't a lot going on, but because of the opposite: I couldn't keep track of the different voices who all narrated their own unique experiences below the sound of gunfire and explosions. There's one caveat to that: Jackson would put up a slow-motion portrait of a soldier, smiling at the camera, then, when the narration mentioned a death, do a shot of a soldier--dead and bloodied--to create the concept that the person we were looking at died in the way described. Because the narration was entirely done by those who were in the war, there was a personal veracity to it that added an air of realism that was immensely powerful. There are some conceptual flaws to the narrative that Jackson is telling, and this is an understandable (perhaps lamentable, I don't know yet) omission. It seems, when watching They Shall Not Grow Old, that the war simply ended and that was that. But suffering continued. As far as the Allies were concerned, yes, the fighting and dying was mostly over. The Americans--particularly Black Americans--were pressed into service of burying the nearly countless dead. The Germans continued to suffer beneath the crushing weight of the British blockade, their children starving until they became, perhaps, so mentally unhealthy that they would, when older, seek a Final Solution to a Jewish Question. The shattered lives of those in Verdun, Flanders, or Ypres had to be rebuilt, and though the British were done with it all, the ending of the war was only the beginning of the difficulties. Still, Jackson makes it clear (in his after-the-credits explanation of the process) that he had to focus on but one thing, or else it would spiral into a smorgasbord, rather than a singular meal. Because of that choice, there's still a sense of the futility of the entire war, and that was the final moments of the film. In the last few minutes of the run-time, many soldiers merely confessed that they were essentially ignored when they returned, almost as if nothing had happened. One man was asked by his boss, after having returned from the front, where he had been. "What, were you working nights?" The idea that the shells had scarcely stopped falling and people were already forgetting…well, that is condemnatory. This film is doing its best to push back against that, to resurrect, as it were, the voices, images, and lives of men who would never get the chance to grow old. Do yourself and the shades of those men an important favor: Try to see this movie. --- * The sad thing about the Great War is that it's already so grotesque that simply reporting it--without embellishments--is enough to shock any decent individual. Now that the official day of Christmas has passed us by, rushing in and out like an avalanche of avarice and very pretty wrapping paper, and I can slow down just enough to almost hear myself think, I thought it might be enjoyable to go to Barnes and Noble to spend some of my Christmas money. My son, Demetrius, won a $15 gift card to Target during a family game, so he's anxious to get out and buy more--because the hundreds of dollars we all spent on each other wasn't enough, apparently. My wife tried to make a Ben Reilly Scarlet Spider (pictured above) hoodie for me, but accidentally ordered the wrong color (and then, later, size) of hoodie, so she has some stuff she wishes she could return. In other words, there are reasons for my remembering a day after Christmas from many years ago. If I had to guess, I'd say that it was probably the Christmas of 1993. Despite the outrageous success of Jurassic Park, I didn't ask for a velociraptor (a choice that would haunt me until I was in my thirties, when my wife at last hunted down an original Jurassic Park velociraptor for me to add to my collection). Instead, I was big on my superhero kick--more of a punt, really, as it's still one of my favorite things--and a fan of the X-Men cartoon series. Any comic book loving millennial worth her avocado toast remembers the series. Not only has it one of the coolest intro songs of all time, but the animation was much better than I was used to. It's what introduced me to characters that would make me excited for when X-Men, the Bryan Singer movie, released at the turn of the millennium. And, perhaps most importantly for my consumer-based identity, it's what primed me for the Spider-Man cartoon series--the conduit into the web-slinger's world that has made one of the largest differences in my life this side of religion. So, back to Christmas. In the weeks leading up to that blessed day of sleep-deprived desire, I, like most middle-class kids of the era, pored over the toy catalogue from Toys 'R' Us, looking at all of the kid models enthusing about whatever toy was placed in front of them. One of the pieces I saw was a set of X-Men action figures--a total of ten (provided memory serves), standing on two tiers of plastic-molded-to-look-like-metal-or-something. It was $50. Fifty dollars is not a small amount of money--for me now, even, let's be honest--and so this would instantly classify as a "Santa gift"*. I remember sitting at our counter, doing my best fifth grade math (and who says you don't use math in your daily life?). "A normal action figure," I probably said, "costs $4.99. That's more than five dollars after tax. But there are ten action figures in this, Mom!" (Mom was in the kitchen, listening casually and taking detailed mental notes, I'm certain.) "That means that, because of taxes, it probably would be cheaper than buying each one of these characters separately!" That, by the way, is probably the apex of my mathematical prowess. Anyway, I was both hard selling the present and expressing my enthusiasm. Since I knew that $50 was about the limit for a Santa gift, I figured that I was probably going to get what I asked for. After all, it was cheaper than buying each one of those characters separately! Christmas day came. The gift was under the tree. I was quite excited and happy. Until it came to taking the toys out. Now, for me, I still like buying action figures. I have displays on my desk at school…on three or four shelves at school…on my shelf by my desk in my home office…on the shelf above my closet in my home office…on another shelf by my desk in my home office…I have a lot of toys, is what I'm saying. In fact, I have so many that Demetrius sometimes comes in and wants to borrow one of my old-school action figures, if only because they're different than the kinds of toys he gets to play with. And were I now to buy a set of action figures like the one I got in 1993, I would most likely be pretty content with them. But not when I was ten. See, the thing was, these were a display of action figures. It wasn't the ten superheroes from the normal packaging, just discounted and put into a tasteful arrangement. No, they were stuck to the display. Like, completely non-removable. My heart sank. Tears started to creep into my eyes, which I didn't do very often by the time I was ten, and happened even less as the years went by. I stared at my "toy", realizing that my Christmas joy had been dashed. As I looked closer to each one, I saw that not only were the action figures glued onto the display, but they weren't even equipped with their mutant power actions--Wolverine didn't have claws (who makes a toy of Wolverine that doesn't have claws? Who does that? Honestly!), Cyclops' visor didn't light up to show he was using his heat vision (or whatever he calls the optic blasts that come from his eye-hole). When I explained that the characters didn't come off, my dad said he could probably find a way to remove them. But what was the point, I wondered, if they didn't have their mutant powers? (At that point, I remember him looking kind of confused.) There was nothing for it: I had to go through Christmas, enjoying the other presents that I received, and basically trying to be a good sport about being so horribly wrong about what I was getting from "Santa". It was a hard day. My dad got a new bit of technology that Christmas: a handheld camcorder, which he enthusiastically rolled constantly throughout that day. We have footage of a very young little sister babbling in her Christmas bathtub, the detritus of the Big Day's excesses in the front room, my mom chatting to Dad whilst making a Christmas breakfast, and more as Christmas '93 went on. What lives in family memory, however, would have to be the five minutes or so of me trying to cajole my younger brother into letting me borrow his Power Rangers toys for ten or fifteen minutes. His toys, of course, were actual toys that could be played with. I kept begging him; he kept refusing in the obstinate, one-word rebuttals that five year olds are so adept at: "No." I, sitting with my Miami Dolphins pajamas, red bathrobe, and Dolphins hat, plucking at my little brother's shoulder, trying to get him to lend me a toy for a while--seriously, it was only for, like, fifteen minutes--is one of those iconic family video moments that gets trotted out and played with a disturbing amount of frequency. At last, I noticed a chuckling sound. There was my dad, watching the exchange with amusement and a video camera. "This is for posterity!" crowed my dad. I buried my head in my lap and shoved the newly acquired Dolphins hat over me eyes… …so that Dad couldn't see me crying. The video cuts after that--Dad found something else to record--but I remember burning with sadness and embarrassment. I hadn't meant to pick a Christmas present that wasn't as advertised. I didn't want to bug my brother for his toys. I just…didn't have any of my own that day. On 26 December 1993, my mom and I made the seven mile (I'm guessing) trek to the closest Toys 'R' Us, receipt and re-boxed X-Men action figures in hand. As we stood in line to return the present, she pointed out a couple of other parents holding the same item. "I guess we weren't the only ones," she said. I can't remember if it made me feel better. The item exchanged, I went through the store and picked out some different toys--what they were, I can't remember. Maybe a Power Ranger? Maybe a Wolverine with retractable claws and a Cyclops with heat vision (or whatever he calls what comes out of his eye-hole)? What I replaced it with doesn't stand out in my memory very much, though I want to think that I was mollified. Now that I'm a parent, I'm always hopeful that what we decide to get our kids will be appreciated, that it will be memorable and enjoyable. That they will feel like they're noticed and listened to and remembered. And, in the case of the X-Men action figures, I definitely felt noticed, listened to, and remembered. So, at least on that level, it was a successful Christmas. I can be grateful for that. --- * I think that's familiar nomenclature, right? The "Santa gift" is the big thing that you've always wanted, left unwrapped by the Christmas tree with your name on it…so called because eventually you figure out the whole "Santa's not real" thing. At least, that's what we called it. And, by the age of 10, I'd figured out that Santa Claus isn't really stalking me. ==== Hey, friends. I have been releasing essays on my website for a couple of years now at a pretty steady rate. I'm happy to do so, as it benefits me as a writer and (I hope) you as a reader. I also think that, as a writer, it's okay if I believe that my work has some value monetarily as well as emotionally. To that end, I've created a Ko-Fi account, which is basically a way to give an online tip to a creator whose work you appreciate. The idea is, you can buy them a cup of coffee. (That's what the name of the website sounds like, if you're curious.) I'm not charging for any of the content on my website; instead, if you'd like to toss me a cup-le (see what I did there?) of bucks to show your gratitude, that would be cool. I'd totally appreciate that appreciation. If you don't? No problem. We can still be friends. As always, thanks for reading! There's a book series that I read when I was a kid. In it, two boys buddied up and went on random adventures through their town. I think they may have solved mysteries, too.
The books were short--even as a young kid, I could read through them in an hour or two. They had, if my memory serves, a very nineties' style of artwork on the cover--the kind where it's highly detailed, yet exaggerated. They were formulaic, but I enjoyed the formula quite a bit, reading every available copy from the library. I have no memory of any specific plot (though I liked the Halloween one the most), but there was one detail that has stuck with me throughout the years: The sidekick boy character was an idiot. More than that, however, he had a very specific quirk, one that ended up getting the boys out of trouble--and into it, I'm sure--more than once: Anytime he heard a bell ring of any sort, he thought that it was a telephone call from the girl in his class on whom he had a major crush. The girl, of course, had no idea the kid (I can't remember any of their names) even existed. The love-smitten stripling, on the other hand, was convinced that she did…she just was really fickle. She would call him (in his imagination, apparently) but only have enough patience to let the phone ring once. (Clearly this is a pre-cellphone era; in fact, the gag really only works if you remember that phones used to have physical bells inside of them that would emit their metallic rings every time someone called.) If Doug (we'll call him Doug) didn't make it to the phone in time for the "all important first ring" (not a direct quote), then she would hang up on him. Because Doug (I really don't think he was called Doug) didn't want to miss Melissa's (I don't think she was called Melissa) call, he would go through bizarre, cartoonish efforts to get to the phone before the end of the first ring. In his enthusiasm, he would inevitably crash into tables, trip on rakes, or--I think this happened--get his head stuck in between the doors of a moving bus. Now, if you're thinking that I'm building up to a large reveal about this book, perhaps with a picture of the cover of one of the many episodes in the series…you're wrong. I can't, for the life of me, remember what these books are called. I don't remember the author, the character names (obviously), or even when I read them--so no idea about publication dates. This is, honestly, an unusual occurrence. I typically have a better memory when it comes to books I've read--especially ones that I liked--even if some of the memory is fractured a bit. While it's not as effective as it once was--maybe because I've read so many books since I was a kid--I used to be able to remember which side of the page, left or right, a particular image or event would take place. Now, since I don't think I ever bought any copies (though maybe I did? I seem to recall that it wasn't my preference, since they were so short), I don't have them sitting on my shelf. I don't think they were put in a box and donated to my old elementary school. So I can't work through the gauzy mist of memory and try to reconstruct enough concrete details to hunt down any of the copies. And it's really kind of bothering me. Not only because I'd like to reread them and see if they were as fun and bizarre as I thought they were when I was, like, nine or whatever, but because, if they are, I'd like to share them with my boys. We've read a lot of different kinds of fiction over the past couple of years together, and I'm always on the lookout for exciting books that fit in with the interests of my three boys (eleven and under). Another thing about this is the whole "stuck in my craw" feeling. It's the thing where you turn to IMDb because you can't quite place where you've seen that actor before, but it's bugging you so you can't enjoy the movie until you figure it out? It's like that, except that no one seems to know what I'm talking about. My Google-fu has failed me--I can't get so much as a cold lead to chase down. I've asked a librarian, who gave me a pitying look and said she had no idea what I was talking about. Like a splinter in my mind, I want to pry it loose so that I can again rest easy--okay, I'm not actually losing sleep over this, but still… And maybe part of it is that I don't want to feel like I imagined it…though if I did, then maybe I have a great premise to use to write my own fiction! But every time I think of that angle, I can't really settle on that as satisfactory. I'm not crazy, and I know I read those books. They weren't a dream I had back in 1993. And maybe I feel so strongly about that is because there's already enough question marks about things that I definitively remember one way, only to learn that things really weren't like that at all. As a history teacher, this is one of the great perils of my profession, and it's frightening to think that what we know is only what we think we know and the fabrication of the past--maliciously done or through the process of being human with imperfect powers of recollection--could be more real than the memories on which we rely. Though the human mind is capable of up to, perhaps, 2.5 petabytes of information, the "files", as it were, aren't foolproof. They corrupt easily, for lack of a better phrase, and though I can still access them, I might be accessing a degraded copy that is giving me false information…false memories. With that in mind, maybe it isn't surprising to see that I really want to figure out what that one book really is. ==== Hey, friends. I have been releasing essays on my website for a couple of years now at a pretty steady rate. I'm happy to do so, as it benefits me as a writer and (I hope) you as a reader. I also think that, as a writer, it's okay if I believe that my work has some value monetarily as well as emotionally. To that end, I've created a Ko-Fi account, which is basically a way to give an online tip to a creator whose work you appreciate. The idea is, you can buy them a cup of coffee. (That's what the name of the website sounds like, if you're curious.) I'm not charging for any of the content on my website; instead, if you'd like to toss me a cup-le (see what I did there?) of bucks to show your gratitude, that would be cool. I'd totally appreciate that appreciation. If you don't? No problem. We can still be friends. As always, thanks for reading! If I were to count how many different titles I'm reading, games I'm playing, or shows I'm in the process of watching, it would be significantly higher than my hands and feet could track. Books are the largest offender--I am in a perpetual state of lamenting how much I need to read, then spending almost no time doing so. The result is, I buy more books, but I don't read them. They sit on my shelf, looking pretty and making me feel guilty.
My biggest problem is that I have a poor attention span. If I really want to finish a book quickly, I can. Far too often, however, I find something mentioned elsewhere that really interests me, and I think, Hey, I want to read that book I have that's about that sort of thing. So my attention on the current information gets skewed and then I want to wander off and read some of that other book. For example, I used China as a basis for my NaNoWriMo project, Theomancy. Because of that, when I was at Barnes and Noble in the beginning of November, I decided to buy a book that contains a brief history of China (and by brief, it's only 600 or so pages). Every day that I sat down to write, I wanted to read that book instead. But I didn't; instead, I read Citizens, a book about the French Revolution. As I read that and Les Miserables, I would see a mention of Cromwell in the text, which would make me want to read the book I have about the English Civil War. Thinking of that reminded me of Paradise Lost, which was written by a Cromwell supporter, John Milton. Whenever I hit on Milton, I think of his poetic precursor, William Shakespeare*, which brings to mind the fact that I haven't sat down and read one of his plays for my own pleasure in a long time (I read him for my classes and that tends to scratch the itch). That puts me into a mood to read Double Falsehood, which isn't fully Shakespearean, but it was my souvenir from the last time I was at Stratford-upon-Avon. Thinking of how much that little town means to me, I reflect on the time I was able to go to the Folger Shakespeare Library in D.C. this past summer, where I bought a book by Stephen Greenblatt--a signed copy, no less--called Tyranny and how that is further proof that if you've a topic, Shakespeare has a way of commenting on it. Thinking of Greenblatt reminds me of his other book, The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve, which--because I actually finished that one--I don't want to reread, since I have other things to read. My to-be-read pile is essentially an exercise in If You Give A Mouse A Cookie, except less charming and significantly more expensive, as more books are purchased and added to the grist of my desire. It's at this point in my essay that I had to flip to the top of the screen to see what this post is even about, which is fitting, considering the whole point was to talk about my poor attention span. While I'll admit that it might be better than some--and by some I mean my three children, who can't seem to keep a single thought in their heads unless it's about playing video games or finding some other way to drive me bonkers--I have a lot to learn from my mentors and friends with whom I work, almost all of whom don't seem to struggle with this issue as much as I do. I'm certain there's a cure for this particular malady, but it also involves removing other things that I really enjoy (most of those things being digital--Twitter and video games), so I might have to live with the sickness. To get up…to get down with the sickness. So, that reminds of Disturbed, which as part of the Nu-Metal scene is always closely associated--in my mind--with Papa Roach. Whenever I think of Papa Roach, I'm reminded not only of their one-hit, but that I read an article in a guitar magazine about the band. In it, the guitarist said that the best live show they ever performed was in Salt Lake City, and that, though he hates the guy's music, Dave Matthews was a big inspiration to the band Papa Roach because of the way he constructs guitar pieces. Hearing Dave Matthews Band reminds me about my own teenage years, as well as makes me want to go play the guitar, which, in turn, makes me feel guilty for not being a better musician. This impulse pushes me to want to turn to YouTube and see if there are any interesting videos that can help me with my guitar chops, though while I'm there I might check out a video essay about comic books. Comic books? I have a couple that I checked out from the library; maybe I should read those?...... And on and on and on it goes. --- * Everyone's familiar with the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game, right? My brain is constantly doing that, but it's Six Degrees of Shakespeare. Triggering Milton gets an immediate link to Shax, as not only did Milton write a beautiful poem about the Son of Memory (as he calls the Bard), but he clearly was influenced by him in many of his earlier works, most notably in Comus. Honestly, it's probably unhealthy the way that my mind connects things. ==== Hey, friends. I have been releasing essays on my website for a couple of years now at a pretty steady rate. I'm happy to do so, as it benefits me as a writer and (I hope) you as a reader. I also think that, as a writer, it's okay if I believe that my work has some value monetarily as well as emotionally. To that end, I've created a Ko-Fi account, which is basically a way to give an online tip to a creator whose work you appreciate. The idea is, you can buy them a cup of coffee. (That's what the name of the website sounds like, if you're curious.) I'm not charging for any of the content on my website; instead, if you'd like to toss me a cup-le (see what I did there?) of bucks to show your gratitude, that would be cool. I'd totally appreciate that appreciation. If you don't? No problem. We can still be friends. As always, thanks for reading! The above screenshot shows a tweet that went viral over the weekend. At least, on Book Twitter. The tweeter (why is that a word?) is Ryan Boyd, a professor, editor, and writer. He received hundreds of responses to his request, many in the thread itself, while others quoted his tweet and gave their opinions. If you've a minute or ten, feel free to filter through and see what others think about books.
A lot of the stuff that came around was similar--and much wasn't particularly spicy--but there were a couple of people who snarked on Dickens (I'm there for that) and Shakespeare (not in my house). Some were lighthearted, like the one that claimed that Homer was actually the Earl of Oxford. Others were insistent on important parts of book culture (how we define what's "literary" or the usefulness of ebooks and audiobooks) while yet others had bones to pick with highly popular books and authors (Harry Potter and Stephen King getting a fair dose of the attention). Anyway, the ones that really stood out to me and sent me scurrying to my keyboard were those that took on classics as a whole genre, even when voiced slightly differently. This is important to me, because not only do I think classics (as opposed to the classics, which would mainly be ancient Roman and Greek works) are immensely useful, but it's kind of how my job works. We're based on the classics and classics, so whenever people sound off on them, I sit up. One of the things that I constantly bump up against is the possibility of ruining what I love. That is, many people have had horrible experiences being forced to read a book that the teacher (or school or district or…) has claimed is a Good Book. And I get that--heck, I was an English major in college: Of course I had to read books that the professor liked and I didn't. Kind of like eating all of my vegetables on my plate, I'd say. And that's what's so tricky about this whole thing. There's value in vegetables--a lot of value, actually--but they're not inherently tasty. There's an acquired taste to them, but once you're in, there's a lot there. Classics are the same way: Intellectually healthful and hard to choke down at first. That's why it's so important for us to be exposed to classics throughout our early life--we're not likely to get into them later on, at least not without some strong motivator (like it being one's job, for example). I think it comes from the idea that reading is only to be fun and enjoyable, with any other motivation for doing it being artificial or from the point. Books are food, and some meals are exotic, unique, savory, sweet, a once-in-a-lifetime experience, or something that you'd like to have weekly. (And, maybe, then, some books are poison, having gone rancid since they were first made and, therefore, need to be avoided.) To push the book metaphor further, a good teacher is like a good chef's instructor: We try to teach how to understand what's going on inside of the meal that makes it taste the way it does. This comes from my own experience being a student in the culinary arts. My friend is a chef and baker, so I've been going over to her house off and on for the past couple of years to learn how to make a variety of foods. One of the things that my friend helps me to understand is why we cook the way we do. We want to hold the knife in a particular position so that we have maximum control. We sear the meat in just such a way so as to seal in the flavor. We let the meat rest, rather than cook up to temperature, to prevent drying out the cut. That's what's supposed to happen in an English class. Reading is a pleasurable experience, but sometimes there's more going on than what a first-time reader can take in. A teacher is supposed to break it down so that it's intelligible, yes, but also equip the students with the skills needed to transfer to the next book, then the next, then the next. Where we come into a problem--at least, from the perspective of a teacher--is when there's something we have to teach that we aren't passionate about. I'm lucky in that I love basically everything I teach, so it isn't hard for me to be excited about digging in and finding a lot to share. There are others, however, whose opinions are "spicy" when it comes to certain classics--sniffing at Shakespeare, for example, or antagonistic toward Austen--yet are expected to teach those books. They're mandated by the school, so there's already some resistance (that whole American independence thing coming through), which I definitely get. One thing, however, is that I don't know of a book that's taught--at least at my school--that doesn't have multiple reasons for its inclusion. If I had to teach something like Little Britches, a book I didn't particularly enjoy, I wouldn't approach it like a chore. I would still seek to find the value in the piece. Often, that leads to a better understanding of it--I know that was the case for me of reading versus teaching The Great Gatsby--for me and the students. If, however, I absolutely despised the book--like if I were forced to teach Tale of Two Cities, I can see how the experience would be frustrating for my students and lead to the kinds of opinions that launched this essay in the first place. This isn't necessarily a defense of classics--if so, it would be a pretty tepid one--and more of a recognition that there's a real consequence for me teaching a book well. There's a lot of value in older works, but it requires more assistance to get there than some of the more modern stuff, which is why I think we should still read--and teach--classic literature. Okay, full disclosure: I didn't get to sleep until 5:30 am or so last night. I'm pretty sure I'm only firing on, like, two cylinders, max. Insomnia sucks. ==== Hey, friends. I have been releasing essays on my website for a couple of years now at a pretty steady rate. I'm happy to do so, as it benefits me as a writer and (I hope) you as a reader. I also think that, as a writer, it's okay if I believe that my work has some value monetarily as well as emotionally. To that end, I've created a Ko-Fi account, which is basically a way to give an online tip to a creator whose work you appreciate. The idea is, you can buy them a cup of coffee. (That's what the name of the website sounds like, if you're curious.) I'm not charging for any of the content on my website; instead, if you'd like to toss me a cup-le (see what I did there?) of bucks to show your gratitude, that would be cool. I'd totally appreciate that appreciation. If you don't? No problem. We can still be friends. As always, thanks for reading! When last we left our hero…
Note: In the previous essay, I laid out the groundwork for how I would approach telling a Superman story, making the claim that I'd rather have it as a movie than comic, though now that I think more on that, I think either could work. It'd be more gratifying to see it on the silver screen, but if we're just imagining things, I'd like a free trip to England while we're at it. And an agent to sell my book. And a free pass to Disneyland for me and my family. And, um…I dunno, a gift card to Barnes and Noble. I guess I have pretty low expectations for my wildest dreams. Onward. Superman is in shambles: His costume has been torn up by the aliens, and the blast that dropped him into the middle of China has depleted his powers. It's daytime, so the sunlight helps him to feel a bit better*, though he's still struggling to keep himself going. He's given up on trying to fly, and his powers like x-ray vision and super hearing are on the fritz. He can't move at super speed, either. He can speak Chinese (the guy speaks basically every language on the planet, since he can study and memorize at super speed), so he asks for a phone. He manages to place a call to Martha. She is surprised to hear from her son on the phone ("Clark! I didn't know you knew how to use a telephone…" kind of moment). "Mom! I'm…I'm in trouble. I need…" He hesitates. The moment of difficulty--the hardest moment he's had to face so far, is this one: Acknowledging that he can't do everything himself. "I need your help." "What do you need?" Martha writes things down, then hangs up, only to call the hospital in Metropolis and asks after Lois Lane. As she's talking she's on her computer, accessing her bank account--not particularly robust--and without hesitation books a flight from central China back to Metropolis, entering Clark's information into the fields. Just then, the hospital connects back, saying that Lois is in surgery, as her situation has become more complicated and dangerous. Martha hangs up, calls back Clark, and says, "Lois is…" "Is she okay?" "They're looking after her. But you should get home as soon as you can, Clark. She's going to need you." Not truly a lie, but Martha clearly can't bring herself to tell full truth to her son. Clark gets to the airport--wearing some clothes generously gifted from the Chinese couple that found him in a smoking crater in the middle of a field**--but as he's walking up to security, he overhears some American tourists that are headed home, freaking out about the fact that one of them lost her passport. Clark looks around, patting himself, indicating that he doesn't have any identification. He swallows and looks around. There's no choice: He has to try to sprint through at super speed. It's the only way to get on the plane. He takes a deep breath. He glances about, looking for openings. A moment arrives. He starts to run. The guards shout, putting hands up and telling him to stop. Clark is desperate and muscles forward, only to be brought to stop by some angry airport police who are armed. Clark gives up, is placed under arrest, and taken to an interrogation room. An investigator comes in and begins to talk to the handcuffed Clark Kent. They argue a bit about whether he's Superman for real, only to have Clark realize that he had helped the investigator and his family during the opening montage. He says what happened, which makes the investigator realize that Superman is really here. He releases Clark and ensures that Clark gets on the plane. As he gets on, Clark says, "Thank you." "It's good to be able to help a god," says the investigator. Meanwhile, Martha is back in Kansas, watching the news. A TMZ-style tabloid program comes on, talking about a hot tip that just came in. The two irreverent hostesses say, "Have you heard about this guy? Clark Kent--award-winning reporter--has apparently plagiarized his award-winning report. And here he is making out with a woman while his girlfriend is in the hospital!" "How low can you go?" asks the hostess. "Who knew that a sleazebag could be so good looking?" "Honey, you haven't seen my ex, have you?" Then the woman laugh. Martha is out of the house, TV still on, running to their old pickup truck. She gets in and drives toward the interstate, which says Metropolis 100 miles***. Clark, meanwhile, is trying to get his powers to work with some x-ray vision when a stabbing pain makes him gasp. The person next to him gives him a wary look and scoots a bit farther away. Massaging his shoulder, he tries to be patient. It's clear that this--of all things--is rough on him. Martha Kent is anxiously awaiting at the Metropolis airport, looking around pensively. She's whispering, "Meet me by baggage claim 4, Clark, meet me by baggage claim 4," getting weird looks from people as she paces about. Clark, meanwhile, is shaking his head and grimacing--he's in pain. His super hearing is starting to come back, though it's in fits and starts. He hears his mom. He feels some of his strength returning…and it's a good thing, too. Getting back from an international flight requires that he pass through customs^. This time, he's successful in moving quickly enough to avoid notice, arriving at Martha's side, sweating and grim-faced as he clutches his shoulder in pain. "What's happening?" "Clark, are you okay?" "No. We need to get to the hospital." They clamber into the pickup, but not before Clark's super hearing picks up his name. He sees a person watching the clip we saw earlier. He looks at his mom in shock. "What is going on?" "It's not quite what it seems. Come on, son. I'll drive." Martha peppers him with questions about what the video and plagiarism accusations are all about. He explains the kiss; he has nothing about the article. He's not the kind of guy who needs to copy from others, after all. "Here's another piece of the puzzle," says Martha as she slaloms through traffic. "That wasn't Lana Lang." "What?" "If you were having dinner with her when you say you did, then you made out with an impostor: Lana was at my house with her mother, having a night of catching up to do." Clark is confused and clearly angry. He asks about the spacecraft that knocked him around the planet, but on that there hasn't been any reports that Martha is aware of. As they walk into the hospital, Clark wants to use his powers to hear Lois when he's driven to his knees, clutching his shoulder. Stumbling into the bathroom, Clark forces his powers to work and x-rays himself--and sees a small disc embedded in his shoulder tissue. Despite the pain, he forces his heat vision to burn a hole large enough for him to work his fingers into his own body, pinching the disc and pulling it free. He stares at it in the puddle of blood in his palm. It's the same as the one he got from the suicidal robot. Almost immediately he starts to feel better: His shoulder wound heals up, he's no longer pale and trembling, and he straightens himself. Superman is back…and he's angry. He stares a moment longer at the disc, then blasts it with heat vision. Coming out of the bathroom, Martha asks him what was wrong. He explains, then says, "We have to get to Lois." Before they get very far, the nurse at reception tells them that she's recovering from a surgery and that she can't be seen quite yet. Clark asks for the room, then, the moment he's outside, he flies to the right place. The windows don't open, but he can see her for himself. She's still unconscious and hooked up to a respirator. He stares for a long moment before returning to his mother, who wraps him in her arms. "I can't do anything for her, can I?" "We can figure out who's responsible for this," says Martha. "And make them pay." "Mom!" Clark is shocked. "What? They hurt my boy. The fires of hell aren't hot enough for their punishment, so far as I'm concerned. Now let's get you back on track." Clark hands her something and asks her to stay and see if she can't get in and watch over Lois, then flies away, returning home so that he can change out of the clothes from the Chinese couple and put on his Superman costume. When he arrives, he freezes almost instantly. "What are you doing here?" "You're being stubborn," says a voice from the shadows. Out steps Lana Lang, a strange weapon in place of her hand. "It's time to put you out of your misery." "I'm not afraid of that thing," he says. "You will be." She shoots him, which he lets strike his chest. It's another disc, and it drops him to his knees, jolting his body with pink electricity. Lana picks him up with one hand and then flies both of them out from his apartment--breaking through the roof, mostly because that's a jerk move to do--and soaring up to the spaceship that is invisible until Lana gets really close to it. A portal opens and the Man of Steel enters. Lana then hauls him into a main chamber. The moment she removes the pink disc from where she'd shot it--right in the middle of the S on his crest, of course--he instantly reacts, snatching her hand. "Who are you?" he demands, his heat vision kicking in. "Let her go, Kent," says a metallic voice. A bright light turns on, making Superman blink. In that moment, Lana breaks his grip on her and gut punches him to the far side of the chamber. Climbing to his feet, Superman straightens up and looks at the being who is clearly in charge here. "My name is Brainiac," says the android, stepping down from his command chair. "Have you received my message clearly enough? Do you despair, Superman? You should. I have gone to great lengths to make it so that your entire life crumbles before your eyes." "What do you want from me?" "Nothing. You are merely in the way." "In the way of what?" "My plans for this world." Brainiac explains that his is a mission of collection and conquest, but he has, through much observation, determined that Superman was the only thing that might prevent him from attaining his goal. He has, after all, connections to Krypton. He goes through the explanation about how he had quickly and easily discovered Superman's true identity, learned of his past, and even managed to create the Lana Lang clone. The idea was to break all of the fragile props that weren't as invulnerable as the Man of Tomorrow. When Supes asks why the explanation, Brainiac says, "Words hurt you, Superman, though very little else does. Like these: Lois Lane is about to die and there's nothing you can do to stop it." A video screen shows Lois in her hospital bed, the respirator machine nearby. Martha is snoozing in a chair next to the machine, which blinks out. Superman screams. "My control over your pathetic technologies allows me to do as I wish, when I wish. And one thing I've learned is that I never ought to overextend myself. Precision is a thing of beauty, and wasted effort is hardly precise. Why not let her own feeble body die on its own, drowning in her own sickness? I estimate she will die within five minutes. Now you see the weakness inherent in relying on others." Superman lunges away, anxious to escape, only to be stopped by Lana, whose body shifts into weapons to make for a more interesting fight. Superman uses a lot of his different skillset, relying on his super speed, but also his heat vision, freeze breath, and strength. At one point in the fight, he uses x-ray vision to spot the Brainiac Lana through a wall, punches through, and jettisons her into space. He follows suit, only to be yanked back into the spaceship by a weapon of Brainiac's. "Impressive, if futile," he says as he drags the resisting Superman back into the ship. "She will still die in a minute, though." This is accurate--the entire fight with Lana is at super speed, which means only four minutes have elapsed. "You have failed to save her and failed to escape." "I wasn't trying to leave, Brainiac. I still have business to do with you. I just needed to get out to send a message." Brainiac doesn't quite get what's happening when Superman flies forward and punches Brainiac in the face. Another fight ensues in which Brainiac tries any number of contraptions against the Man of Steel, only to lose ground constantly. Though he's strong, he's not at Superman's level, and he gets bested. Superman looks at the monitor. Lois is doing fine, with a doctor talking to Martha quietly in one corner. In fact, Superman can see that Lois is slowly coming to. "How?" asks Brainiac, crumpled and broken on the ground. "I thought of everything. No one is smarter than I." "Don't underestimate my brain. And, since you were kind enough to explain yourself to me, I'll do you the same courtesy before I pitch you into the black. I used that interference disc you shot into me, changing it to accept a broadcast frequency. I then embedded a message into your little housewrecker robot, broadcasting to my mother that Lois needed to be checked on immediately." "Who would hear it?" "My mother. Despite what you said, having others help is not a weakness; it's my greatest strength. She alerted the doctors and they've already got a new machine working. Lois is waking up. And you need to leave." Brainiac presses a button that captures Superman in the same force field that had dragged him into the ship the last time. Brainiac laughs and says that Superman has failed again. Then Superman begins, very slowly, to fly. He's straining in the force field, and the power of his resistance is causing the machinery in Brainiac's spaceship to break apart. Superman is straining so hard that even his Kryptonian clothing is starting to tear and rip. Blood from ruptured veins make him bleed from his nose and eyes. He looks like he's about to tear himself apart, too, when he shrugs his shoulders and spins around. The entire ship begins to revolve, faster and faster, until at last the force field breaks free, sending the ship deep into space, faster than a speeding bullet. Superman is exhausted, but he's not done yet. He flies back to Metropolis, cleans himself off, puts on some normal clothes, and buys some roses. Then he makes it to the hospital. The nurse gives him a look as he walks toward the bay of elevators. On the screen in the waiting room, a news anchor is talking about the bizarre anomalies in gravity near Earth orbit, as reported by NASA. Clark enters Lois' room in his typical bumbling way, only to be greeted by the laughter of both his girlfriend and mother. Lois is still in really bad shape, but she's alert and happy to see him. They hug and he gives her a gentle kiss. "Everything will be all right now," he says, patting her hand. A few days later, Clark walks into Perry White's office, a stack of papers in hand. "Here's my receipts." "For what?" asks White, glowering. "That I was the one who wrote that article." He points at the evidence as he tosses it onto White's desk. "Turns out that the brainiac who claimed I'd plagiarized had missed some of the meta data that showed he fabricated the article before 'turning me in'. Guess he wasn't such a smart fellow after all." "How'd you get this?" he asked "Perry. I'm an investigative reporter. You think I don't know how to chase down a lead?" "This is impressive, Kent." "Thanks. Lois did almost all of it." Perry looks at him incredulously, then laughs. "That makes more sense, Kent." That night, Clark is helping Lois into their apartment ("Sorry about the new sunroof") when the light turns on. Standing in the same place as before is Brainiac Lana. She's in really bad shape, with some of her android parts sparking and hanging out of her body. She morphs her hand into a weapon and points it Superman. "You can't get away that easily," hisses the android. "Wait," says Lois, putting her hand up. "Is that the Lana you kissed?" "She kissed me, but yes." Lois eyes her. "Not much to look at, is she?" "She's seen better days." Lana growls and lunges at the two, knocking Clark over and making Lois yelp in pain. Lana pounds on Clark's face a couple of times, only to stop as electricity rips through her. The android slumps over, either dead or paralyzed. Lois is holding a taser to the exposed metal. "Get your hands off my man," she growls. Clark laughs as he gets up. "How much voltage does that thing have in it?" "I had Jimmy tweak it for me." She shrugs. "When you date Superman, you need to have a little more punch in your corner." "Thanks for saving me," says Clark, smiling. "Don't mention it. Now, will you take out the trash?" Clark nods, picking up Lana, then flying out the window. He returns a moment later. "Into the Sun?" asks Lois as she plops onto the couch, patting the cushion next to her. "Why not? I hear it's lovely this time of year." Fin. === That's how I'd tell a Superman story. It starts off in the way a tragedy could, with the montage, but I feel like the world of Superman falls apart pretty fast, enough to make it feel like it fits the comedic formula. With Superman and Lois back together, the world safe, and his reputation restored, it also fits into a classical comedy. One of the things that I wanted to avoid was having the stakes be about saving the world. Though he does that, too, Superman's final fight with Brainiac is done because he (Superman) is trying to get back to Lois. Brainiac's plan to take over the world--or whatever you want to fit in--doesn't really intimidate the Man of Steel, because if it comes to punching something out, he's going to win. I also wanted to make it so that the simplest of things--asking his mom to check in on Lois--was what saved her life. Superman was the information behind the action, but he had to rely on others to take care of it. This, to me, is the way of making a Superman story that is relatable. No, most of us don't have aliens impersonating ex-girlfriends, but the idea that someone lies about you, or that everything seems to be going wrong and there's nothing that you can do to fix it, that all seems to be applicable and fairly universal. Lastly, though I didn't really plot this out--and there's definitely more to tweak and refine (not that I'm likely to do that)--I feel like my earlier comment about "What could Superman have to say about our world now?" is the one that he emphasizes at the end: It's our connections and helping one another that will prove our greatest strength. It's a message of unity without having to be about the world coming together, as well as an idea that there's power in the humility of having to ask for help. One final thing: If I were given the chance to actually write the script, I would insist that Clark be happy at almost everything he does. Smile as he saves people, smile when he sees Lois, smile when he sees Martha--just be happy. Show the audience that he's glad to be where he is. That way, the restoration to his happiness at the end of the story makes us feel like, despite the hard times he's suffered, there's still cause for hope and happiness. That, I argue, is what the heart of a Superman story is. --- * I feel that this is an important aspect of the story, too: Disempowering Superman isn't my primary goal. Not only do we already have that story in Christopher Reeves films, but it goes against what I'm trying to do, which is to avoid the idea that Superman is unrelatable because of his powers. If I simply told a story where he no longer had his powers, then he's relatable, but he's not Superman. My own opinion is that a superhero's identity is tightly tied into the power set, and a movie about Clark Kent is not what I'd be paying to see: I want Superman to do super things. ** And, yes, that's supposed to be an homage to Clark's origins on the planet. *** I have no idea how far Smallville is from Metropolis. The distance in the TV series Smallville is 100 miles, but that doesn't make sense if Metropolis is a coastal city. We'll say 100 miles and let it go at that. ^ I feel like this scene could either be drawn out to a really taut, is-he-going-to-make-it kind of thing, or one where it's simply skipped over. It's a director's cut part to the story, I guess. ==== Hey, friends. I have been releasing essays on my website for a couple of years now at a pretty steady rate. I'm happy to do so, as it benefits me as a writer and (I hope) you as a reader. I also think that, as a writer, it's okay if I believe that my work has some value monetarily as well as emotionally. To that end, I've created a Ko-Fi account, which is basically a way to give an online tip to a creator whose work you appreciate. The idea is, you can buy them a cup of coffee. (That's what the name of the website sounds like, if you're curious.) I'm not charging for any of the content on my website; instead, if you'd like to toss me a cup-le (see what I did there?) of bucks to show your gratitude, that would be cool. I'd totally appreciate that appreciation. If you don't? No problem. We can still be friends. As always, thanks for reading! |
AuthorWould you like to support my writings? Feel free to buy me a coffee (which I don't drink, but I do drink hot chocolate) at my Ko-Fi page. Thanks! Archives
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