The narrator in an audio book makes all the difference in the world. Notable actors typically do a very good job. For instance, I just finished Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut read by Stanley Tucci, who read with the precise amount of irony, pausing at the right moments, etc. Brilliant. Ethan Hawke did a remarkable job with Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five. (There are exceptions. The dead affect John Hurt put on The Sun Also Rises made it sound like he was bored and/or depressed while reading it.)

I’m starting Don DeLillo’s Libra today but I don’t know if I’ll make it all the way through because of the narrator. Take a listen to this snippet and tell me if you agree that Michael Prichard sounds like an NPR field reporter reading in the style of Paul Harvey.

Current Mood: Sleepy |

If someone asked me how I would stack up Australia footie vs. US footie, my knee-jerk reaction would be to give the nod to the US. After all, Australia just qualified for their first World Cup in dog’s years and their fledgling domestic league is worse than our somewhat less-fledgling domestic league.

Yet I would reassess that position after looking at the below table. One of my big peeves is the US fan talking about how many players we have in the Premier League like it’s the best thing in the world; I maintain that you also need to consider the team they’re on and the role they play. This table shows the regular Australian and American players in the Premier League ranked by league position. US players are in gray, goalkeepers are italicized, players who can’t get in the team get an asterisk.

So, what jumps out at me right away is that although there are way more Americans than Aussies in England, they’re also clustered at the foot of the table. And can you even imagine an American making such a huge splash as Tim Cahill has for Everton? Or playing for (alleged) title contender and Champions League winner Liverpool, like the oft-injured Harry Kewell? Hell, even Mark Viduka is on a “big” team in Newcastle.

I do want to say that I think there’s a serious bias in England that’s pro-US goalkeepers and anti-US field players. I hope that Clint Dempsey, who has been a stand-out for Fulham, would get picked up somewhere else should Fulham get relegated, a scenario for which they are well on course. But for who? It’s far more likely that scrappers Boro or Bolton would go in for him rather than upward-looking clubs like Spurs, Newcastle, or Man City. I like Bobby Convey too, but would he be playing much at a bigger club? I don’t know.

Alarmingly, this also suggests a dearth of talent for the US in the center of the park. Benny Feilhaber can’t even get in the Derby first eleven for Christs sake, and they’re going down as the worst team in Premier League history. Yes, this is only looking at England, but you tell me where Americans are truly standing out in other foreign leagues. And I’m far from sold on England being the heads n’ shoulders best league in the world. How many Americans are playing significant roles on teams in Spain, Italy, or Germany? I’m thinking of a number that’s less than one…

The future of the US national team kind of depresses me.

Current Mood: Kind of Depressed |

I watched (or partially watched) a couple movies in the last week: Bloom, which was an interpretation of James Joyce’s Ulysses, and the Steven Soderbergh version of Solaris.

I didn’t get more than 30 minutes into Bloom before shutting it off. The big question I had going in was “How do you capture Ulysses on film?” The answer: not well. I think the acting put me off more than anything. Everyone but Stephen Rea seemed to be putting on stage performances, as if they were trying to project themselves to the cheap seats. For every second I watched, I was painfully aware of this being a film and the characters as actors. Not for an instant did I believe Angeline Ball was Molly Bloom or Hugh O’Conor was Stephen Dedalus. Oddly, O’Conor played Stephen, who I view as a grumpy wet blanket type of person, as merry and enthusiastic as one of Peter Jackson’s hobbits. He’s even smirking when he delivers the line, “History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.”

In fact, it was at that moment I lost patience with the film. The scene between Stephen and the schoolboys felt false, the discussion he has with Deasy far too blasé, and then the camera then centers on Stephen for his big quote. “History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake” is undoubtedly an important theme in the book but it meant next to nothing in the film. Yet it was included and thrust upon the viewer with as much subtlety as a flashing neon sign. Add to that the questionable choice of starting the film with Molly’s ramble, the need for the constant voice overs, and the forced acting and you get a big “no thank you” from me.

Solaris was far better but, alas, fell short. I tend to be a purist when it comes to film adaptations; not because I don’t understand that it’s okay for movies to deviate from their source but because the book almost always makes more sense. Solaris is a great example of this (FYI, mild spoilers to follow.) Solaris the planet hardly features at all in the movie, or at least it’s not clear that Solaris is the sentient ocean the scientists are trying to study. Most of the movie falls into the “something weird is happening” category, which is fine. Personally, I like the idea of the scientists grappling to comprehend an unknowable planet but that might not make for riveting film making. I also didn’t mind them changing the reason for Rhea’s suicide, though it did reduce Kelvin’s part in it, which in turn complicates the rationale for his sense of guilt. But whatever, I was still on board.

Where Soderbergh lost me was in the last fifteen minutes. The ending reminded me a lot of Speilberg’s mucking with A.I. to give it a more positive spin. The ending of Soderbergh’s Solaris is reunion; yet this runs entirely counter to Lem’s novel, which I would describe as estrangement and unknowability. The best part about the novel, in my mind, is that there are no answers. Solaris starts as unknowable and it ends as unknowable. No one knows why Solaris sent sentient reproductions from the crew’s memories— was it being kind, cruel, teasing, or did it even know it was doing it? Kelvin never knows and neither does the reader. My problem is that not only does Soderbergh not play by that script, he actually overturns it. Which is disappointing because it would have been awfully brave to make a Hollywood movie that refused a Hollywood ending.

Yet the Cohen brothers did it with No Country For Old Men; how that’s working out for them again?

My suspicions that this is going to be a damn interesting semester have been confirmed. My Visual Narratives course, where we’ve been studying Dada and the Surreal, has been fantastic. My only problem is the format of being split into two, ninety-minute sections each week rather than a three-hour seminar. Because we’re watching a lot of films in class, we haven’t had any time to discuss what we’re learning.

My primary reason for wanting to go back to school in Creative Writing was most certainly not to learn how to write fiction (which is mostly trial and error from what I can figure out) but to open my eyes to a wide variety of, for the lack of a better word, stuff. To read books and criticism I normally wouldn’t read, to grapple with ideas I normally wouldn’t think of. Seeing how Modern art coincides with, reflects, and refutes what’s going in Modern literature is pretty cool, and being taught how to “see” art in a different way sets off a whole slew of creative chain reactions. Good stuff.

Current Mood: Okay |
Currently Listening To - Mississippi Fred McDowell - “This Ain’t No Rock n’ Roll”

It’s been a long weekend. I think it’s natural to want to fast-forward through the grieving and just get to the consoling reflection phase already. Each day it gets a little better, but I’m often surprised by the sudden, soul-crushing waves of sadness that wash over me from time to time.

Browsing a few pet grief websites also helped. I think it’s also natural to think that you’re weird for feeling overwhelmed with sorrow because “its just a pet,” but such feelings are pretty common. With a little reflection, it’s not hard to see why. Heineken has been in my life for 12 years, and has been a daily part of it for about 8. Besides Amy, I don’t interact with anybody that much.

And we both have a strong affinity for animals. Such a deep connection might not be rational, but reason’s overrated. We care for our pets, feed them, keep them warm, protect them, and in return they share unconditional love. I think some pet owners get confused and treat their pets like humans, but that’s not right. They’re always animals, with animal instincts, animal motivations and animal feelings. But we do consider our pets with their pronounced personalities to be people— just not human people. There’s a difference there, I think.

It’s hard because everything happened so fast, and because we’re both longing for that magical, non-existent moment where everything is still okay and you know that it will be your last hug and kiss and snuggle and you make the absolute most of it. But we’re not that lucky, and the reality is that we could have given him a million kisses in the vet’s office that evening and today we’d still be wanting a million and one. Hence the sharp pangs of grief.

I’ll resume regular programming tomorrow— my usual litany of what I’m reading, what’s happening in school, footie, and other random thoughts. I just wanted to get this out of my system.

A sincere thank you to everyone who extended their condolences and kind words. We’re doing pretty well, and Athena is getting a lot of extra love and attention. We’re not sure if she’s figured it out yet but she has definitely cued in on our sorrow and has been there to lick the tears away.

Current Mood: Still Awfully Sad |

In Loving Memory of Heineken

(Dec 1995- Jan 2008)

Heineken, our cat of 12 years, passed away tonight. He went from being healthy to gravely ill in a matter of a few days and was diagnosed this morning with advanced lymphoma. A battery of expensive treatments would have cost a fortune and extended his life a few months at best, but he was miserable and we didn’t want to prolong his suffering. We got to pet him and hold him as the doctor put him to sleep. It was very peaceful.

Heineken came into our lives six months after we started dating and has lived in every home Amy and I have ever shared. We love our pets dearly, and it’s amazing to think how intertwined your lives become—we knew Heineken’s habits as well as our own, and I’m already missing having him curl up in my lap when I sit down to read; it will be strange to not have him snuggling in Amy’s hair tonight when we go to bed.

Some people don’t understand how you can love an animal so much. I don’t know how you can love them any less. This hurts.

We picked out some of our favorite photos from the last few years. Click here to go have a look.

We love you, little man. Always have, always will.

Current Mood: Grieving |

Here’s a brief rundown of what I’m taking this semester. For those of you not in the know, I am a first-year Ph.D. student in Creative Writing at UW-Milwaukee, having finished my MA there last August.

The classes with brief descriptions and reading lists after the break:

ENG 778 - Contemporary Native American Novel
ENG 782 - Contemporary Lit: Visual Narratives
ENG 815 - Fiction Workshop

Overall, I have to say I’m really excited about this semester. All of these classes look great.
(more…)

Writing news: some good, some bad. I’ll start with the bad.

- I had a rewrite request from Asimov’s turned down. Sheila asked for me to change one central part to my story, which necessitated a cascade of other changes. The rewrite didn’t work for her which is very disappointing, but so goes the writer’s life. Onward.

- Graveside Tales has accepted my story “Of Silver Bullets and Golden Teeth” for its lycanthrope anthology, The Beast Within. This story was previously published in Animal Magnetism, an anthology that donated its proceeds to Hurricane Katrina victims, but I don’t think it sold particularly well. I’m excited that this story, which is a Western set about hunting down a possessed bear, gets another run out and hopefully a lot more exposure. I also noted that I’ll be joining Mr. Gary Braunbeck in the TOC, and that’s good company to keep, indeed.

- In a bit of awesomeness, I found out that my story “Working Out Our Salvation” is being included in a special edition “Zombie Love” publication which will be awarded to the winner of the 2008 Phoenix Comicon’s inaugural Zombie Beauty Pageant. You have got to check this thing out. So. Friggin. Cool.

- While on vacation I received an email from a budding director who is interested in turning my work into a short film. He cited “From the Mouths of Babes” as the near-perfect story for a short film, save only its reliance on a brilliant child actor who are few and far between. He was so enamored with the story, he’d like to work with me on finding something that might be suitable for a relatively low budget, 10-15 minute film. Alas, many elements of my work— enraged bears, two-headed sheep, 19th Century settings— might not jive with the constraints of a small budget. Still, we’re both really excited about the opportunity and there’s the possibility of writing something specifically for production. How cool is that?

Current Mood: Philosophical |

In the last three months I’ve plowed through the last 6 of Cormac McCarthy’s 10 novels. Before I give my impressions I’d like to point out that my time for books not directly related to school is precious, so to dedicating this much time to one author should suggest how I feel about his work right off the bat. Couple that with the fact that had the semester not started I would have gone on to read his first four novels, and I think it’s safe to say that I believe McCarthy deserves all the attention he’s gotten. I keep thinking, “When I teach a McCarthy class…”

For starters, I can’t get Blood Meridian out of my mind. I found some critical articles on the book over winter break which have stretched and deepened my understanding of this complicated, haunting story and I simply can’t wait to read it again, though I’d be the first to say it’s not for everybody due to the lack of a definitive plot and the extreme violence. This is right up there with my all-time favorites and is McCarthy’s best for my (and many others’) money.

The Border Trilogy (All the Pretty Horses, The Crossing, and Cities of the Plain) is also very good but a bit more work to get through, especially as All the Pretty Horses takes awhile to get going and The Crossing meanders a bit too much. Still, McCarthy is always dealing with borders in interesting ways. The physical border between Mexico and the US is the most obvious, but also the fuzzy borders between cultures, races, languages, relationships, man and nature, truth and fiction, fate and free will, etc. Many of the elegiac passages of ATPH and The Crossing bowled me over, but not so much in COTP. There are some critical books written on the trilogy that I’d like to read to see what I might of missed, but I felt COTP was a bit underwhelming compared with what came before it.

I was amazed how much the film version of No Country For Old Men followed the book, but reading it strengthened my feeling that McCarthy doesn’t translate all that well into film. NCFOM was a great adaptation but there’s a strange power to McCarthy’s writing style that gets lost on the screen. I still have questions about the range of a transponder and the film felt too spread out, but the book condenses the geography and timing of events which makes the pursuit of Llewellyn more realistic, and the philosophical parts resonate more in the text as well. The final image in Bell’s dream, his father carrying a horn of fire into the wilderness, is a perfect segue into…

McCarthy’s most recent novel, The Road. Overall, I thought this book was pretty good but I think my reading definitely benefited from having read a string of McCarthy’s novels (and even some of the criticism of those novels) going into it. If anything, the metaphor of the unnamed man (being the old world that’s fallen) and the boy (being the new world being born) was a little heavy. The man trusts no one, tells fanciful stories to comfort the boy, and doesn’t believe in God; the boy is the opposite of all these things. The boy “carries the fire” of the belief that people aren’t all bad, something the man cannot accept after what he’s seen.

Some critic (can’t remember who at the moment) has written extensively on McCarthy’s implicit critique of late capitalism; though it was written before The Road, the novel would undoubtedly strengthen this argument. In the wake of the apocalypse, the survivors are entirely dependent upon processed foods and goods as the natural world can no longer sustain them. In a world where God has been replaced by plastic, concrete, and other false idols, there’s nothing left when that material world goes by the wayside. The open question is who is right: the man, who assumes everyone is out to harm them, or the boy, who thinks that everyone needs to help each other. The ending is ambiguous, as you might expect. But NCFOM and The Road ought to be read back-to-back with the ideas of “fathers and sons” and the question of where the world is heading kept in the front of the mind. I think both of them are stronger when read in that context.

Overall I find McCarthy easy to read but challenging to interpret (in a good way), and I love his writing style. I didn’t think I’d be a fan of his oft-unpunctuated “muscular prose” but that wasn’t the case at all. The best part is that all of these books are dense with meaning, but the bigger question is “Meaning about what?” The answer/s are not at all clear and these complicated novels invite multiple readings.

And really, is there any higher compliment than that?

Current Mood: A Bit Tired |
Currently Listening To - Wilco - “A.M.”

Right, so I plan to post plenty of pictures along with a narrative after our trip to Costa Rica, but with the workload I’m looking at this semester, it might not be for awhile unless I get really ambitious this week. (My classes look awesome but with heavy workloads. More on that tomorrow.)

In short, I would say that we really liked, although didn’t fall in love with, Costa Rica. Our biggest complaint is that Costa Rica has really mastered the art of turning a country into a tourist attraction. Almost everything is packaged and ready for tourist consumption; everything, that is, except Costa Rican culture. I kept feeling like we were getting a performance of Costa Rican culture rather than the real deal. Nearly everyone spoke at least some English, and most Ticos preferred to practice their English than indulge my Spanish, which was a bit of a disappointment for me but I can’t say that I blame them. Mastering English helps them with their jobs.

The country was predictably gorgeous and we had great weather. We’ve got pictures of waterfalls, volcanoes, rain forests, beaches, whitewater rapids, and lots more. We didn’t do as many activities as we’d planned—no horseback riding, kayaking, hikes with guides, etc. The main reason is because they were all overpriced, or least priced more than we wanted to pay. $85 for a morning horseback ride was too much, as was paying $60 for a guided two-hour walk in the forest. Those things all add up over the course of the trip and didn’t feel like a good enough return on the money. Kind of like the $2 cans of Coke in the hotel lobby.

And also on the downside was being pulled over by a cop and having to pay a cash ticket/bribe when we’re not at all convinced Amy was speeding, or speeding by much, or driving anywhere as recklessly as most Costa Ricans. And then there was being swindled into paying a phony parking attendant. And then there was getting our tire slashed at the beach (story here). Those things also add up, even though we found the locals to be overwhelmingly friendly and accommodating.

Overall, the big question is whether you’d go back. I think we would, but it’s not high on our list even though we had an amazing time. One of our rafting guides told us that Costa Ricans are considered “gringos” by many other Central American countries because they bend over for the US tourist trade, and much of what we experienced felt geared towards pleasing the American tourist. That’s just not our bag. We fell in love with places like Guatemala and Spain because very little is set up to help the tourist, and when that’s the case you can’t help but get a flavor for “real” life the locals lead.

But for people who want an easy trip to a foreign country, Costa Rica is an inviting place. No worries about seeing any of the stark poverty like I’ve seen in Mexico and Guatemala. Even in the country, the Ticos seemed to be doing pretty well for themselves. I’m not for a second suggesting this is a bad thing and I’m not promoting cheap holidays in other people’s misery,* but much of what we experienced felt like an Epcot version of a Central American country and I’m not sure how you get around that.

Pictures forthcoming, and I’m sure they’ll make the above whinging seem silly.

* - name that song

Look, I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve been a bit down on Spurs this season, what with their poor start to the season, the idiotic handling of Martin Jol, and the club’s penchant for trying to make money on young players rather than winning things… but 5-1? 5-1? You can say all you want that it wasn’t the full squad for the Ars*, but 5-1?

My only regret is that it was on pay-per-view and I won’t likely see it, except for maybe the highlights on the Fox Soccer Report.

5-1

Unbelievable.