2009 does NOT feel like the end of a decade for me. Not the way 1999 did, but then all four numbers changed and it was the end of a century and there was Y2K, so that was a little different. But it just seems like 1-10 should go together instead of 0-9, because I wouldn’t put 2000 with the nineties, but maybe it could just be by itself or something, and I know that would make the decades uneven, but isn’t that worth it for my personal piece of mind?
(Also, is it just me, or is the “naughties” an oddly appropriate term?…Really: just me then? Okay, just checking.)
In any case, I’ve seen a lot of best of the decade lists floating around, and really I had no idea until now how many people loooved Children of Men! Craziness. I thought it was blaaaah. Also: Kill Bill. It sure did have a lot of ninjas.
I like favourites lists, but I never know whether to go with what I think is the best of what I’ve seen or with what I actually liked the best, because sometimes I have the sense that oh, say Lost in Translation is probably a pretty good movie, but I still actually much prefer She’s the Man. With tv it gets a little easier, because I’m a lot more confident on how my likes and dislikes stack up against what’s actually good and bad, and when you get into books, I can get into serious detail about why all the other “best of..” lists are completely and utterly wrong and useless. Music I won’t even attempt. I know what I like, but I don’t have any grasp at all on the field at large. I will say my favourite song that came out this year was “Single Ladies” by Beyonce, but for all I know that could have come out last year and I’m only liking it just now.

So, movies:
2009-wise, my favourite movies of the year were “Away we Go,” “I love you, man” and “Zombieland.” That is what I liked. I also have pretty high hopes for “The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus.” I did not like “Star Trek” (and in that case I use the quotes in multiple senses).
Decade-wise: in no particular order except that in which I thought of them: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Pan’s Labyrinth, The Incredibles, The Departed, Mean Girls, Donnie Darko, The 40 year old virgin, The Dark Knight, Amelie, Moulin Rouge.

TV:
In 2009: Tv’s a little different, because barring cancellation, the same stuff comes back year after year, but I’ll make a special mention of “Lost” (because while it has had five seasons, I only started watching this year), “Community” and “Glee” (which are my favourite new shows by a long shot), “30 rock” (because I just watched it a LOT this year) and “American Idol” (because I watched it this year and liked it and you all can just suck it).
Decade-wise:
Comedy DEFINITIVE top 5: (in no particular order) How I met your mother, The Office (US), 30 Rock, South Park, Scrubs, Arrested Development. Shit, that’s six. Well, South Park is a cartoon, so it doesn’t really count.
(Ok this is my disclaimer: Scrubs is crap now, but it did have five great years, which we have to remember, even in light of its latter-day sins (which are many). Also, you could argue Friends deserves some mention, but it was not good this decade; it was good in the nineties. Also, I automatically ruled out some shows that may well become classics–Community, Better Off Ted, Glee, Modern Family, and Parks and Recreation–just because it’s really too soon to tell.)
Drama somewhat-less-definitive top 5: Lost, Farscape, Chuck, Jericho, Dr. Who. Bonus: Slings and Arrows, Firefly.
(Disclaimer #2: I consider Freaks and Geeks a nineties show. Moving on…I have not seen The Wire yet. I will get to it. I also have not seen the Sopranos. It’s obvious from the list I picked that I prefer comedy to drama, since even the dramas I picked have huge comedy angles, and though it’s definitely tilted sharply towards sci-fi, I left out BSG. Mad Men I have seen, and I like it but I’m not totally head over heels. Breaking Bad I have also seen and it disturbed me immensely in a bad way.)

Books:
2009: The best book I read this year was over the top and far and away “Watership Down” but that clearly did not come out in 2009. This just happened to be the first year I read it. I thought 2009 was a bit of a disappointing year for me reading-wise. Audrey Niffenegger’s follow-up to The Time Traveler’s Wife came out and started promising but fell flat, and I didn’t like the new Christopher Brookmyre, and John Crowley’s new one was so-so. I did like the new Coupland, (though it definitely wasn’t his best) so that’s something. I am pinning a lot of my hopes on Jasper Fforde’s “Shades of Grey”, due out four days after Christmas.
Decade-wise: “The Time Traveler’s Wife” by Audrey Niffenegger, “Everything is Illuminated” by Jonathan Safran Foer, “jPod” by Douglas Coupland, Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next books (all five collectively), “Freakonomics” by Stephen Leavitt and Steven Dubner, “Spanish Fly” by Will Ferguson, “A Tale Etched in Blood and Hard Black Pencil” by Christopher Brookmyre, “Black Swan Green” by David Mitchell, “The History of Love” by Nicole Krauss and “Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell” by Susanna Clarke. I’m probably forgetting something. A decent decade for books.

I was gonna get a little more in-depth, but it’s pretty late and I’d (surprise!) rather use my time off reading books than blogging about them. This will probably not be my last end of year type update.

*by which I mean the technology that reads e-books, rather than a person.

Amy: Die painfully and burst into flames, E-book Reader!!

E-book Reader: (swiveling an easy chair around and casually looking up) Oh. Hey, Amy. Whassup? I didn’t see you there.

Amy: Don’t try to be the bigger person here, E-book Reader; we both know you’re just a shiny casing fitted over an evil soulless chasm.

E-b.R: (chuckles nonchalantly) You’re such a kidder.

Amy: Acknowledge your innate evilness, dammit!!

E-b.R: (gently stroking a cat nuzzled into its face. Its eyes get very wide) But…I read books. It’s what I’m made for. You love books, Amy; you told me so yourself. And I can give you access to hundreds, thousands even, at the mere touch of a button. That’s…what you want, isn’t it?

Amy: (fist in the air) Not like this! Never like this!

E-b.R: Why? Why can’t you open your heart to me? Just because I’m beautiful and desired doesn’t mean that I don’t have a brain too, that I don’t have…feelings (brings face to hands and sobs).

Amy: You’re just a machine!

E-b.R: And what about that makes me so abhorrent to you? They fixed the glare, you know; you’ll more likely lose your eyesight reading paper books in poor lighting.

Amy: I’ll never share the same connection with you that I have with my other books!

E-b.R: (giggling flirtatiously) But that’s ridiculous! They’ve replicated note-taking features and page-turning too! You can leave me on a desk, come back later and retrieve the right page without worrying about creases or wear and tear.

Amy: How can you be so callous? You’re going to be the death of print literature!

E-b.R: (looking slightly confused)…but if I can do everything they can, why is that a bad thing? Maybe this is just their time.

Amy: (drops fist, wavers slightly)

E-b.R: (continuing, the hint of a smile starts to peek out) You see, I’m just the same as all the books before me, only better. I contain endless possibility. You’ll never have to worry again about what book to pack or having your entire library lost by a shipping carrier. No more worrying about what point to separate mass markets from trades to make sure your stacks don’t become unbalanced. I have a built-in organization system. My books are always in perfect condition, just the way you like them. Only I can cater to your every need, the perfect book for your every desire… (leans in, puckering lips)

Amy: (closes eyes and leans in, at the last second breaking away in horror) No! This is all so wrong!! I like having to choose which books to carry with me, and I like having to commit to reading one and not switching back and forth every time my mood or the wind changes! I want to keep browsing stores, collecting stacks of books I can’t afford until gradually weeding it down to one or two choices that feel so right in my hands. You, you’d have me believe that I can bend my reading to my heart’s desire, but if I do that, I’ll never be able to appreciate the worth of the book in front of me. I’ll never be absorbed if all the time I have endless possibilities at my fingertips!! For that matter, I’ll never be absorbed if I’m reading books from a computer screen! You can keep denying it, but *real* books, they’re connected to the world outside computers–their heft, the paper they’re printed on, the shelf space they occupy, who knows? Without having to organize books, without having to care for them, without worrying they’ll be lost in transit…without all those things, I won’t have to contribute anything to the reading process. I won’t truly appreciate the inherent value of a book because you’ll make them all interchangable, and I can flit from one to the other forever and ever.
Not to mention, I’ll lose the feel of flipping through pages with my thumb…of scanning a book I’ve just bought because I don’t want to dive in, not just yet. No more staring at a row of covers or going to a friend’s house for the first time and browsing their collection until spotting a gem. A book used to be a piece of art within itself! We’ve already lost illuminated manuscripts; must we be reduced to shoving the entire canon into a single piece of metal alongside trashy romance novels and vapid serialists?? You might be practical, but that’s not what literature is!!

E-b.R: (making a last desperate plea) You mean, you don’t find me sexy?

Amy: Of course you’re sexy. And you won’t stop. You’ll keep going until books are historical relics. You won’t stop. You’ll never stop… (the fury begins to build)

The room falls silent. Just as Amy is about to move, E-book Reader emits a low, steady laugh. Amy looks up to see sparks in flux around the outer shell, which begins to melt away revealing a menacing mix of black circuits. Wires become tentacles, reaching out with destructive intent.

E-b.R: (the slippery charm is gone from the voice, replaced by the low menace of the true form) You should have loved me when you had the chance. (it moves forward to attack)

Amy quickly scans the room for a weapon. Spotting the fireplace poker, she dives to retrieve it. Seeing this, E-book Reader moves to cut her off, bot h reaching the weapon at the same time. E-book reader launches into Amy, pinning her down. Amy stretches out her hand for the fireplace poker…just…out…of…reach. She stretches her arm….almost there. E-book reader looks down upon the helpless victim, laughing maniacally at her vain attempts to secure the weapon. Victory assured, E-book reader raises its tentacles for the death blow…

Just then, Amy’s arm reaches the final millimetres, securing the poker. With E-book reader’s arms still raised, she stabs with all her might, right in the middle of the circuitry. A high-pitched whine is emitted as Amy scrambles out from E-book Reader’s hold and watches as it falls, lifeless, to the floor. One last death rattle, then nothing.

Amy: (spits) Go back to Star Trek. Bitch. Exeunt

I realize that this question is not exactly topical, but when a scrawny guy with a sideways baseball cap and a huge black jacket with skulls on it boarded my bus yesterday, Offspring’s “Pretty Fly (for a white guy)” couldn’t help but jump into my head. I realize the best person to answer this question would be a teenager from the late 90s, but I didn’t know the answer then, and until now I have never got around to asking.
Anyway, there’s a line from the song that goes, “He’s getting a tatoo, yeah, he’s getting it done/He asked for a 13, but they drew a 31.”

On what basis is 13 cooler than 31? I realize 13 has it’s own phobia while 31 does not, but from what I know of my own coolness level, I’m pretty sure that’s not what The Offspring were going for. Is it a sex thing? Is 13 like 69? What is it? Please tell me.

Remember breakfasts down in the Rigby caf, on weekends when if you were lucky they were serving strawberry waffles and there was still whipped cream left and maple syrup on the side with scrambled eggs, bacon and homefries, and it was just breakfast breakfast breakfast until 12:30 or maybe it was 1 but sometimes you still wouldn’t make it and the only question that every really mattered on weekend mornings was whether the possibility of strawberry waffles is worth those last fragments of sleep that you might not have tomorrow? And sometimes your friends would wake you up and you’d all go together, shuffling down the halls like waffle zombies; I remember one really specific time when I woke up with maybe 15 minutes to spare and Joel was standing in my room at the end of my bed but for a second I just thought he was part of my dorm furniture and it really blew my sleep-addled mind when a second later I remembered that it was Joel and we were going to go to breakfast, which we did, but I don’t remember the breakfast part. I assume it was delicious. And then there were other times where you’d just get up and take your chances, trudge your way down to the caf and see who else had made it or if Lindsay was working or something, and you’d palpably feel different from all the ones who were still in bed–like you were on different teams, but it was never clear who had won exactly…and most of the time we just came in whatever we slept in or whatever was cleanest or comfiest or nearest to the bed, but occasionally I even dressed up for breakfast because I’d wear my pajamas to school no question but breakfast was sort of an event and maybe if they had ever served waffles with strawberry sauce in class, I might have dressed up for that too…

Anyway, I miss that. That was nice.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

Biblically speaking, human life as we know it began with a warning. Nothing too complicated, just a simple, straight-forward “Don’t eat the fruit.” Easy enough. The Greeks rehash (or technically, predate) this theme; only their translation says “Don’t open the box.” See the difference? Either way, it’s still pretty simple, and I’m sure if I were aware of a larger selection of mythologies I would be able to produce many more variations on this same old creation story.

Typically, when pondering these myths, I’ve tended to center my focus on a couple of issues: first, the feminist thing (Eve and Pandora sitting up together drinking decaf ambrosia and playing ‘go fish’ whilst Adam and Prometheus drink their nights away playing poker at ye olde taverne surrounded by nymphs and wenches but ooooh no, you can’t even raise an eyebrow when they come stumbling in at sunrise with boots unlaced and shirts on backwards because even in their drunken slur they’ll always remind you–won’t ever let you forget–about that one itty bitty time where you just had to go and ruin paradise for everyone forever), but there’s really very little you can do about that; secondly, of course, there’s the human thing, by which I mean the question of what does this say about humanity? and was the fall inevitable? I’d like to flip a switch on that last one for the time being.

The reason why I find myself pondering these issues on a lazy Victoria Day evening is that I happened to be watching Stardust  on DVD. (Stardust btw, while a more than passibly entertaining film manages to eliminate anything that was either clever or interesting about the book.  However, perhaps in hindsight I would have rathered the book be far less clever and /or interesting because it sparked a passing interest in Neil Gaiman, which then prompted me to pick up a copy of Anansi Boys when it was on sale at Chapters and then hurl it from my presence 129 pages later for being one of the most unreadable pieces of trash I’ve ever spent close to two hours on.) Anyway, prior to watching the film I saw a preview for The Spiderwick Chronicles in which the boy finds this magic book and is warned that death, destruction and general horribleness will plague he who dares to read further….and hearing this, all I could think was, “He’s definitely going to read it now, if only to find out what’s so big and important it needs all the hullabaloo and fanfare!”, and really, could anyone honestly contend that it would be more human to put the book down and walk away then to turn the frickin’ page??

Which brings us back to our “Was the fall inevitable?” query, which by now has become an entirely rhetorical question, prompting us rather to think about the various ’why?s’ of our condition rather than the mostly self-evident ’what?s’.  However, leaving aside those more traditional Philosophy101 questions, what interests me more today is that we have now discovered warnings of this high caliber to be a moot point (ie. the book would have been read either with or without the dramatic epigram), and this being the case, why are they necessary in the first place? I’d like to eliminate any sort of death or self-destructive drive right off the bat because, in the poignant last words of one John Crichton, “You never think you’re gonna die.”  

Perhaps these sorts of warnings should skip all the “ifs” and charge right on through to the “whens”. Rather than an attempt to snare us up in disobedience, warnings arm us with knowledge and foresight and strip any excuses that might accompany such a task undertaken blind.  They solidify commitment to the task ahead and clarify the full weight of circumstance. One of the reasons I’m so looking forward to Season 3 of Chuck is <um, Spoiler Alert, I guess> is that the new Chuck is no longer a victim of circumstance but rather a willing martyr, hopefully to the side of justice. Oh, and I bet you read on anyway, even though I said Spoiler Alert.

Actually, I’ve gotten side-tracked again because even the purpose of warnings wasn’t really what I wanted to talk about. I do realize that there are people who exist that think Adam and Eve are real, historical people and whatnot; of course, these people are missing the point of the whole book of Genesis and probably the Bible in general, but whatever. The people I’m talking to are those that realize that at some point someone or a group of people or Moses or the Greeks or whoever else decided that human history as we know it began with a warning. We decided that the prime motivator in the development of human beings as a species was that God gave us a warning (which, being God, he obviously knew was a moot point) and we disobeyed it (which considering the potential moot pointness of the order and God’s subsequent knowledge of said moot-ness, drastically changes the severity of said disobedience to the point that it’s certainly not the point of the story).  So what is it about the structure, the symbolism, the content of the ominous (but ultimately unsuccessful) finger-shaking that is so integral to us as a culture and a species? There are soooo many integral parts of humanity, of God, of the world that don’t appear in the creation myth…so why is The Warning Ignored the central narrative? We could have written any creation story, but this is the legacy we chose for ourselves, and that…puzzles me.