“Because our pain makes us real, Dawson”

I fell in love with Dawson’s Creek in the summer of 2003, my first summer home from St. Thomas. If the first summer after college is indeed a universally frustrating experience, then I would guess that mine was worse than most in a number of ways. I won’t invoke past hells, but it’s just now occurred to me that the two accursed jobs (one MUCH moreso than the other–I’m glaring at you, A&W) at which I spent most of my waking hours may have been helping keep my sanity much more than I realized at the time.
However, one fond memory I have of that summer were those sunny May mornings before I found work (or work found me, if you prefer), waking up at 8 in an empty house and dragging my blanket downstairs for four morning hours of Capeside drama. Waking up early was an accident at first; I actually found it rather inconvenient at the time. I spent the first day or two heartily ashamed of myself, and then before I even realized it, I just…wasn’t anymore. I grew to love Pacey and Joey and Jack and Jen, if not actually Dawson himself.

Until recently, I hadn’t thought about the show since that summer ended, almost six years ago now. That in itself seems almost unreal; television devotee that I have since become, I’ve watched and rewatched almost every show that ever touched me. But my summer fling with Dawson’s Creek remained all but forgotten until finding seasons 3 and 4 in a WalMart bargain bin three days ago. Since then, I’ve spent far too many hours watching the whole of season 3, which to my surprise, I mostly missed in my TBS viewings all those years ago.

I like the show now more than I did then, or rather, I feel freer to like it now, as I’m hopefully confident enough in my opinions not to be swayed by critical consensus. It had compelling characters, and while the quality of the writing is nothing to Freaks & Geeks, I’d hold the two on an even keel for the way they portrayed their themes and situations. Dawson’s Creek was never considered *edgy* in the same way that Freaks & Geeks was, but it did celebrate peripheral culture, if only more optimistically than its ’80s-set counterpart. Because that was the ’90s: optimism. In the world of Capeside, a ballsy anti-establishment speech condemning the cheerleading squad will get you elected Homecoming Queen on the same day that your gay best friend becomes the star of the football team. Dawson’s crew were part of the freaks and the geeks of Capeside High, but they told us they were cool and we believed them.

Sadly, Dawson’s Creek most likely finds far more comparisons to Gossip Girl, the current trendsetter in the “How much teen sex is too much?” department. In many ways, the latter is not a bad show narrative-wise, but I still can’t watch it anymore. I wasn’t made for casual relationships…even with tv shows, and horrible people just irritate me. Even at their worst, the Capeside teens all had noble goals and dreams, and they spent the series actively trying to grow as people and to support their friends and loved ones. They subverted the status quo, and would have laughed off the very idea of obsessive social-climbing. Nobody ever mentioned fashion. Their lowest faults were committed out of fear or blindness, rather than spite or malice. Occasional (or more than occasional, DAWSON) bouts of self-righteousness is still a lot better than blatant, unapologetic selfishness.
Both shows are infamous for their portrayals of teen sex, but watching Dawson’s Creek ten years after its debut, it’s insane how far TV has gone off the deep end in that department. Season 3 in its entirety contained no sex whatsoever; there’s even a 3-episode arc where Pacey and Jen decide to have casual sex (which of course doesn’t work out), but they NEVER actually do it. Contrary to the press it got back in the day, this is not a parent’s worst nightmare. Especially since, sex or no sex, Dawson’s Creek always found the characters struggling with moral and ethical issues and the difficulties of doing the right thing, a feature all but absent from current teen fare. I won’t at this time attempt to pass judgment on censorship issues and “appropriate” tv content (mostly because I think the word “appropriate” completely misses the point in a way I won’t even attempt to explain except to say that, sure, maybe you should be allowed to have all the smut you want, but I think a certain amount of moral tension is necessary to actually tell a decent story, because otherwise, at a certain point it just turns into porn, which is fine I guess if that’s what you’re going for, but who would ever claim that it’s Good Art?), but I will say that I wouldn’t want any kid of mine watching Gossip Girl.

I’m looking forward to watching season 4; the knowledge that Joey and Pacey are together in the end (whoops, Spoiler Alert) will see me through their tumultuous first relationship and break-up. Even with their super-charged vocabularies (it delights AND educates) and melo-dramatic problems, I can’t help but connect with these characters in a way I couldn’t even with the Freaks & Geeks crew. In one season 3 episode, Joey, Jen, and Andie have a regular high school girls’ night sleepover, and I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a better portrayal of what high school sleepovers were, and it brought me back to that 2003 summer when it wasn’t such a bad place after all, and I missed my high school slumber parties with Megan and Cara and all the many sleepovers before that.

The Magic Ring

I talked about this book briefly when I first read it over a year ago, but after recently giving it a second look, I thought it deserved a little bit more attention. Friedrich de la Motte Fouque is a name pretty much forgotten in today’s literary scene; information about him, especially critical treatment of his writings, is sparse and most of his writings have yet to be translated from the German. I delved briefly into learning to read German last summer in the hopes of reading his work in their original language (and I hope I haven’t wholely abandoned that pursuit; rather just set it on the back burner for the time being); The Magic Ring hasn’t been translated since the mid-19th century, and by all accounts, professes to be a barely adequate representation of the tale. Any critical comment I can make about his work seems similarly limited.

For all the influence Fouque held over writers such as George MacDonald, C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkein, those scholars who know him at all have never firmly decided whether he fits in the box of high or low culture. Towards the end of his career particularly, he was looked on as hopelessly sentimental, as his particular brand of romance faded out of fashion…of course, literary fashion really should be neither here nor there. However, The Magic Ring can’t help but get sorted into the same hat as Horace Walpole’s craptastic Castle of Otranto, and that’s never a desirable association.

Most post-Medieval literature that takes a Medieval setting attempts to graft modern day values, ie. a sense of enlightenment, onto at least the more noble-seeming of the characters. Walpole and Fouque are unique in that they attempt to write a Medieval-type romance, while preserving the values of the period (however, I may gladly report that the similarities end there). Fouque’s protagonists are all devoutly Christian, and therefore, they support unreservedly the Crusade into the Holy Land. It saddens me that the book’s contents would probably turn away anyone who was not themselves a Christian, and at times it’s hard to wonder if I shouldn’t be turned off myself by the subtle (and not so subtle) racism portrayed at times by the characters.

However, every time my thoughts turn on to this particular train, I have to keep reminding myself what a stupid way of thinking this is. If my studies in Chaucer and House of Fame taught me nothing else (or rather, reinforced what I already know), it’s that inquiring into the meaning of a text is completely different than inquiring into authorial intent. (George MacDonald’s essay, “The Fantastic Imagination” has some fabulous things to say on this topic, and I highly reccommend it to anyone interested in *real* literary theory.) The point is, that if I didn’t know that Fouque himself was a devout Christian and a member of the nobility, it wouldn’t even occur to me to wonder if he too was a supporter of the Crusades even with over 600 years of historical perspective to ground his judgment. The fact is, it shouldn’t matter even if Fouque really did think the Crusades ruled the school, which he most likely didn’t, and that definitely shouldn’t be the guiding force in determining the worth of his writing; all that matters is what the story itself seems to suggest, which (I really shouldn’t have to remind myself) can be RADICALLY different from what the characters (even the Good ones) think or believe about it.

The overarching theme of the story, especially considering the resolution, as well as the central symbol of the ring, celebrates the unity frequently rejected by the characters, and Fouque certainly has mind enough to entwine pagan myth and symbols into his writing, even while his characters themselves reject them as anti-Christian. While (unfortunately) having no first-hand knowledge of this, the translation problems stem for the inherent complexity of Fouque’s prose and the many symbolic layers that he packs into his story telling.

Finally, and most importantly, the story is a frickin’ structural masterpiece. Each individual element serves it’s own function as well as contributing to the main theme, and by the end you’ve heard a million stories as well as just hearing the one, and furthermore you can’t but be convinced that all the stories you’ve ever heard are really just a part of the same story in different words. I’ve never before encountered a plot this crazy and twisted and magical, and while reading it the second time, I kept remembering shades of different plot threads that seemed to me couldn’t all fit into that one book, one tale, but ended up showing themselves after all, as well as many more that I thought I remembered from somewhere else, but really just came from this.

For the reading pleasure of all, I now present a passage from one of my favourite parts of the book:

Meanwhile, Gabrielle had again recovered her recollection and power of speech, and in vehement tones expressed her indignation at the Prince Mutza; inasmuch as he had insulted the confidence reposed in him by his noble host, and also broken his own word of honour, solemnly pledged, when he came thither as a hostage and prisoner.
“As to my word of honour, pledged to the Chevalier de Montfaucon,” answered the Moor, “I have twice in his own presence declared that I was no longer bound by any such contract; and if your dazzling beauty has led me astray, who shall question me on the consequences? I must act, in the first place, according to my own sense of justice; and in the second, according as your irresistible charms compel me to do.” With these words, he took Gabrielle in his arms; and, notwithstanding her loud cries for help, bore her down to the sea-shore, where a boat was already prepared by his people. Blanchefleur, during this adventure, had sunk into complete forgetfulness of all that had passed; for she had fainted; and the young Arab, who had knelt before her, took her in his arms, and followed his prince and leader. However, when the rest of the Moorish party, now become more than ever bold and determined, stept up to the Lady Bertha, she called out in a loud, severe tone,
“I take God and man, heaven and earth to witness, that here, on this day, a deed of violence, a deed of shameful wickedness and dishonour, is committed! Whether a miracle shall be wrought to check or hinder its achievement I know not yet. But beware, cowards as you are, thus triumphing over the defenceless; for such a miracle may come to pass, when you think yourselves most secure and independent. I say this to you with confidence, that whoever dares to tear me from the sacred place on which I stand, to your pirate-ship, will draw the wrath of Heaven upon his own head.”
The Moorish knight looked on her as she stood clinging to the cross, illuminated by the ruby light of the setting sun, and recoiled as if terrified from her reproaches. His soldiers, too, without saying a word, retreated to the shore; and when Bertha once more made him a sign, with her uplifted right arm, he exclaimed,–”She is more like a ghost than a mortal woman!” So he left her with precipitation, and fled to the boat, which immediately afterwards began to ply its oars and depart from the coast.

You can buy the book online here.

Dear Miss Manners?

What do you do when you’re walking towards somebody you know and you see them and they see you, but there’s still so much distance between you? Especially if it’s someone that you don’t know very well or aren’t sure if you want to stop and talk to and don’t really know what their thoughts are on the subject, and if you wave hello from a distance, then do you just keep walking like the encounter has already ended, except to maybe say hello or nod again as they walk past? Because that thing that sometimes happens is just really really awkward–when you see someone and they see you but you pretend you don’t see each other and instead watch the ground or fiddle with your iPod until just before you pass when it’s okay to look up and say “Oh, hi!” like I’ve only just seen you there except that you haven’t and you both know it. Even with people you do know or were even supposed to meet, it’s weird because you see each other and then the interaction falls into limbo because you’re not really sure what to do in the interim. How long can you keep your headphones in? How close is talking range? Seriously, is there etiquette on this?

Pitches, man, Pitches

I’ve been thinking a lot about the business side of writing lately; of course, like any devoted ex-Liberal Arts major, I can’t but think any business of art a crude and unfortunate evil that causes my first-year poetry students–with the utmost of solemnity–to define Great Literature as *ahem* “whatever makes the most money.” Of course, the equally revolting translation of this view into something like critical analysis would be something like a po-mo Reader Response view that Great Literature is whatever people happen to like the most, or whatever the most people happen to like; which, of course, has nothing to do with literature whatsoever.

I suppose the difference between Now and the proverbial Then is that back Then (whenever you suppose Then to be) all you really needed was one person to really like your work, so long as that one person was rich enough to pay you to continue it. It sounds more difficult than it is, because you have to keep in mind that the gap between rich and poor has historically been quite high, and rich writers of course could fund themselves while poor writers would have comparatively little competition, seeing as there would be few of their peers with adequate skills and education to make a go of it into the literary world. Additionally, I’m sure the rich were constantly on the prowl for new authors to sample, if only to kill time until someone got around to inventing television, at which time the popular relevance of literature was replaced by Speidi and LiLo.

So hardly anyone reads, but every Tom, Dick and Harry wants to write (which I can’t without hypocrisy profess to be a bad thing), and you can’t really blame the publishing houses for opting not to dredge through every manuscript that comes their way. But it can’t help but leave aspiring authors in a bit of a pickle as the beloved, complicated sweat of my pen is reduced to one ominous refrain: “What’s it about?”

I’m not saying Plot’s not important; all I’m saying is, it doesn’t have to be, and the current publishing industry regards books through a very plot-oriented lens. Now there are many of my favourite books that would pass this screening with flying colors. To wit:

*Little girl walks into a wardrobe and unwittingly enters a magical land where she and her siblings must defeat the evil Queen and bring justice back into the world.* Sweet. I’d want to read that.

Similarly,

*A man and a woman attempt to find small vestiges of freedom within their dystopian futuristic society, ruled over by the mysterious Big Brother.* All good stuff.

But can you imagine the elevator pitch for Pride and Prejudice?

*Elizabeth Bennet and her sister Jane attempt to find suitable husbands despite a general lack of fortune and many undesirable relations.*

Not only is it lame, it’s boring and unoriginal, and any editor would have binned it immediately and continued searching for some worthy item in the pile. I can’t at this time suggest a better system, but I do think it a little unnerving that the current screening process would likely have weeded out The Greatest English Novel Ever Written (and those few of you with the word Ulysses on your lips, I urge you to let the thought die; anyone with thoughts of Lord of the Rings, or God Forbid, Harry Potter should have stopped reading this loooooooooong ago).

I suppose that last bit is as deserving as any of a long-ass tangent, and as I’ve finished most of what I originally wanted to say, I don’t mind following it. I am aware that Jane Austen is Penis Kryptonite. Aside from the utter lack of testosterone in Austen’s writing (and the Victorian period in general, I suppose), I don’t quite understand this phenomenon, but all experience has proven it to be so. I certainly know many males who appreciate the book for its biting wit and obvious merits but have never met any who truly love it the way that girls love it (and I have to add that, so far as females go, I’ve barely met a literary-minded girl who doesn’t love P&P, and when I have, I’ve always thought it some deep fault of theirs, and where possible, attempted to remedy it).

Since Ulysses is really the only other serious contender I’ve heard bandied about for World’s Greatest Novel, I’m inclined to think that men would rather have a candidate they can still feel, well…manly about supporting. I don’t think I’ve ever heard Ulysses’ praises sung from a female mouth, and…now that I think about, I can only really think of one, maybe two, people I’ve ever met who have genuinely loved that book.

I’m not going to call Ulysses a blathering piece of crap (even though parts of it are begging for it) because as much as I really did not enjoy reading the thing, it does deserve credit for the scope of its ambition, and where intelligible, the style is elegant and pleasing. I do find that the Testosteroned Ones are more apt to reward an Epic Project done adequately…and really, therein lies the chief opposition of the two works. Joyce’s aim is to transcend his genre; one arm is reaching through the past while the other is stretching into the future and he spends upwards of 900 pages just trying to hang on. Austen isn’t trying to reinvent the novel; she just wants to write one, and unless you count pretty much inventing the genres of Chick Lit and Romance, and re-inventing the Comedy of Manners, it’s a project on a much smaller scale than Joyce’s. However, Austen holds a death grip on the subtleties of her present, and she is in full control of all the various machinations of her prose. Pride and Prejudice is, and probably always will be, my hallmark of literary perfection.

As we grow up, most of the books we are (hopefully) told are worth reading, start out as being all but inaccessible. Obviously, this is par for the course for anyone learning to master a language (which most people never even come close to doing), but I think it gives birth to a Pavlovian reflex that whatever writing is obscure, complex, and just plain difficult must be somehow more deep and meaningful than we can comprehend. This can be true in certain cases, where an idea is still too big for us and we can only describe it in abstract, metaphorical ways (which is the true curse of Babel: even those who would find any Truth could never explain it if they wanted to), but most of the time it’s people like Derrida and Butler obfuscating their points and making up words, so no one will suspect not even they know what the hell they’re talking about. In any case, I’m a true believer that the better you know an idea, the better you can express it. It was Austen herself who said “I cannot speak well enough to be unintelligible.”

Well, perhaps later on this week I will find time to discuss the books I’ve been reading and re-reading. I went on a recent re-reading spree, giving second furtive glances to The Magic Ring, Watership Down (which I only just read two months ago and already want to read again!!), and Little, Big, all of which I adore. I was delighted to see that the A.V. Club has picked Little, Big for their August book club selection, not only because I am glad to hear it is getting some due attention but because I’ll be interested to see thoughts and comments from others on it. I also recently discovered that Little, Big is coming out in a severely limited 25th anniversary edition that I really REALLY want but don’t know if I can justify spending upwards of $100 on a fancy new edition of a book that I already own.

Why American Idol Makes Me Smile

This had to be done. It’s no secret that I’ve been waaay too into American Idol this season, and I’m well on my way to not being ashamed of that, on account of there were some seriously talented and original kids this season that are going to end up maybe surpassing the Kelly Clarkson/legitimate star end of the spectrum rather than the Taylor Hicks end. But mostly, I’ve had no job and not a lot to do and I was away from Andrew for a long while and Idol was, is and always will be a big old bowl of comfort food that’s on like a thousand hours a week with music and drama and snarky British comments. There are worse ways to pass an hour (or two. or three.).

Honestly, the only reason I haven’t blogged it out before is that Jacob’s recaps on Television Without Pity have pretty much echoed my sentiments to a scary degree. Except for all his Anoop hate and Giraud love. Most of the time I dug Anoop, and Giraud always seemed to me like that type of guy that would tangentially hang around with a group of my friends and they would all like him and talk about him, while I would be totally unable to stand him for no completely tangible reason but that might have more than a little to do with his frown-y faces and his emo scarves and his Justin Timberlake-wannabe hats.

I haven’t watched a full two hour American Idol winner revealed results show since the infamous Ruben/Clay showdown of…2003(?), and even then I think I only popped in and out every once and a while to see what was happening. I was (and am) a Clay fan because not only can Dude sing but, like Adam and Kris, he was always gracious, accepting and cool about everything (at times being massive amounts of bullshit) going on around him to the point where all three have earned invitations to my Fantasy Celebrity Dinner Party (which I may post the full list to at some other juncture when it’s not completely off-topic.

What I mean is, I couldn’t stand how Lil Rounds took criticism. Talking back to the judges is one of the biggest ways to get me to hate on you in American Idol, which I think surprises some people because in most other ways I’m all about standing up to authority. But. I’m not a star, and the whole thing about Fame as a concept is that it’s all about what everyone else thinks about your deal, and what you happen to think about yourself is both a moot point and something that you have to keep inside if you want to get through life with any semblance of dignity. Plus, the decision to enter American Idol in the first place is the choice to throw yourself upon the mercy of the judges. Getting your bitch on about their comments just looks petty and makes everyone think you must be confused about why you’re there in the first place.

Which, I suppose, brings me to Danny Gokey. Contrary to popular belief, I was actually happier about the sheer fact that Adam and Kris had made the top two than the fact that Gokey was finally getting the boot because we all know the world will end in fire before it ends in ice, and that, my friends, is a very good thing indeed. Not only did choosing Kris over Danny put the ki-bosh on the pre-ordained showdown the judges had been pushing for since Day one, but it also nullified the weird ideology clash that seemed to be going on between Adam fans and Danny fans, which I have to say, I don’t really get. From what I understand, a large portion of the population believes that Adam and Danny as people represent two polarizing ideologies, which if what they meant was that Danny is a douche and Adam is the negative space surrounding Danny’s doucherie, I would totally understand, but that’s not what this is.

I am also made to understand that a large part of this apparent ideology war has to do with Danny’s backstory, which was by far the saddest on the show, overshadowing even THE BLIND GUY who in season’s past would have been a shoe-in for the sympathy vote. In any case, it’s hard to really talk about this without seeming like you’re deliberately offending the guy’s family or belittling his pain, but when something is so obviously eating away at every fiber of your being and then you go ahead and broadcast that very thing on REALITY TV…you’re kind of asking for it a little bit. I hate the audition rounds of the show because I hate hate HATE all the time they spend on the various backstories because they have totally zero effect on who I’m ultimately going to root for, but even more I hate the fact that a large contingent of people DO pick their horse based almost solely on these backstories, which is why I was fated to hate Danny Gokey even before he wore douche-y jackets and sang cheesy songs karaoke-ly.
But it all comes back to what I was getting at with Clay and Adam and Kris, which is that while you’re constantly demonstrating your real true self in every song you sing and every performance you give, which is what being an artist is all about, you’re not degrading yourself by pandering to that world that loves you because, famous or not, your private life is still your private life and your private thoughts are still your private thoughts. The world may be completely and utterly fixated on you, and that’s okay because that just means you’re special and you’ve clearly got something that others don’t, which is what makes it so genuinely gross if you’re fixated right back. Being famous doesn’t mean using the public as a support group or a sounding board for all your shit; it means being the person you always were and having your unique light shine in such away that other people can’t help but take notice. And lots of times that notice manifests as tabloid headlines and gossip and pettiness, but petty is as petty does, and just because everyone is talking about you, it doesn’t mean that you need to add your tongue to the mob. For example, I watched last season pretty religiously (though not so zealously) as this season, and I heard alllllll about David Archuleta’s throat/vocal cord/whatever issues ad nauseum, but I had no idea until a couple weeks ago that David Cook’s brother had brain cancer, and that’s what I call class.

So, while I guess I understand how, in this certain way, Danny as a person could have lost himself and turned into an issue that some people connected with, I still don’t remotely understand how Adam is somehow the opposite of that. I understand how some people could not appreciate his music and his art, and while these people are wrong, they’re wrong for the right reasons. These are people that it’s humanly possible to have a conversation with, to argue with. The people who see him as some sort of Anti-Christ (to Danny’s saint, I guess) are the ones who represent a really ugly underbelly of our society, that I’m always genuinely shocked to realize still exist. Whether or not you liked Adam’s music, everything he did on the show was always the very picture of consideration and composure (thanking the band, mentoring the other contestants, encouraging Kris to the very last, always smiling). Simon seemed quite genuinely baffled about the fluffy soft pink ball of Niceness that epitomized both finalists.

The best thing about the Adam/Kris finale was that it was, ultimately, the choice NOT to have an ideology war, because as much as the show half-assedly tried to amp up the air of competition between its final two, it was impossible not to see how much each of them was rooting for the other one, and cheesy as it was, it made me smile all through the final episodes and know that both of them were going to do fine. Ultimately, ideology did play its hand in the results (Kris clearly won on the strength of Danny’s fans rather than just his own), but ultimately it didn’t matter or was cancelled out by the fact that Kris completely refused to play along. The first words out of his mouth: “Adam deserved this. I’m sorry.” And yeah, Adam should’ve won (and honestly I was rooting for Kris to lose if for no other reason than he seems like such a great guy that I don’t want fame to spoil him; Adam just seems like he’d handle it a little better) but Kris is still really talented and he deserves everything he gets (and at least Adam’s first single won’t be that awful Kara DioGuardi song).

To me, the Adam/Kris finale was more than it was because it seemed like the first time in years that America has chosen to shy away from what could have been a completely superficial ideology battle and instead chose to celebrate two very different things that have almost nothing in common but still seem to really like and appreciate each other, and it honestly felt like the first glimpse this decade that people are rediscovering that dichotomys don’t have to be mutually exclusive, and that ultimately the world doesn’t exist in a vacuum of either/or’s. Maybe I’m reading too much into this, but the shoe seems to fit.

I’ve been told these are dark times we live in, and there’s a lot of problems I have with modernity and cyber-culture, so maybe in certain ways, that’s true. But maybe now that this “Dark Times” chant has universally pervaded, without knowing it, our eyes are gradually adjusting, and it’s becoming a lot less dark after all. I don’t know how much that has to do with American Idol exactly, but I do know that’s what I ended up thinking about after watching it…and that’s something.