INVISIBLE CITIES XXXVI -- Thin Cities: OCTAVIA

from here

It's been months since the last IC entry.  An unexpected impetus, however, struck, and I'm back.  No need to dwell on it; let's just jump back into it.

This chapter offers an obvious knee-jerk reminder--certainly and thankfully ridiculous--of a Spiderman villain, and perhaps less so, one from The Lord of the Rings.  Maybe if I hadn't taken a four-month hiatus, I wouldn't have had to reread the exposition at the head of chapter 5 to get what's going on.  We examined a little bit over the previous four chapters the subtle shifting--or, at least, the unlabeled shifting--of narrators.  I'm not sure who's dream is Octavia, or, for that matter, that of the next two chapters (though I expect the entire chapter, whoever's dream it is, is the same), but clearly it's commentary on the unchecked expansion of the empire.

• Assuming that Octavia is analogous to all of the Kublai's expansive territories, what do you make of the closing sentence?

by John Howe; from here

GENRE FICTION: KEELER versus PATTERSON by analogy of METAL

While I tend to avoid for the most part the "lesser" writing of so-called genre-fiction (becoming less and less the case as I continue to find, or am introduced to, examples of the stuff of unimpeachable literary excellence), I have always harbored a taste, and kept it fairly closeted until now, for another strain of genre, this one "musical" (quotes should connote potential for sarcasm) --that of heavy metal.  Just like mystery and sci-fi and thriller and horror and whatever else in fiction, so in music there is hip-hop, R&B, grunge, metal, jazz, and so on--ad infinitum, really (just check out that family tree of rock n' roll below).

a graphical history of 40 years' of rock n' roll, from lindsargwatt.com

I have not been quiet about my recent reading of Harry Stephen Keeler's mystery novel, Riddle of the Traveling Skull, which both delighted and astonished me.  I am now reading another genre piece, this one by famed genre master ("genre": though not typical of this author; and "master" only if sheer staggering quantity of book sales qualifies one for such a title), James Patterson: his Witch and Wizard (well, it's not really his--some Charbonet character, ghost writer--but has his name on the cover and bigger, which is essentially the same thing, as I can't imagine he'd sign off on it if it didn't at least match his far-from stringent qualifications).  While I firmly believe that Keeler surpassed the typecast of his genre (and this by a dense combination of wit, originality, utter abandonment of reality, and a total dedication to his craft), Patterson has murdered it.

Let's keep things as positive as possible, however, at least for a minute, if no more, because, well, Patterson must be doing something right if he's got 200 million books sold, right?  W&W is written for teens.  Teens have a short attention span (if this sounds like an insult, it's meant to; I don't feel this way about adolescents, but clearly Patterson does).  So instead of bogging down the reader with things like exposition and description and even emotion, Patterson simply deletes them.  Sure, the more seasoned reader is left with the impression that he's reading a plot summary or liner notes under the panels of storyboard illustrations for in-development B-movie, but teens are eating it up.  And, well, it could even be seen as a good introduction to fantasy for new readers, especially because there's absolutely nothing original to it. The book flagrantly steals most obviously and glaringly from The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, among many others, including Lev Grossman's The Magicians (any of which is a little like watching some hack in the audition rounds of American Idol attempt a Whitney Houston number--why would he even want to have his book compared to theirs???).

Now, I've never read anything else by Patterson, so take my snap judgments of him with a grain of salt, and I don't plan to, especially after this.  I picked up W&W because so many of my students are reading it, and I wanted to be able to talk to them about it.  That and it was only 6 bucks at Wal-Mart, and I needed a new book for the bathroom.  Perhaps my problem here--because, really, this book is not next door to terrible, but flagrantly squatting in Terrible's moldy boiler room--is that maybe, just maybe, Patterson should have left fantasy alone and stuck with his more practiced genres of thriller and mystery, not to mention his shift of target audience (which audience, teen/young adult, and which genre, fantasy, tend toward the realms of sacred for me, especially in the case of the audience he's infiltrating (maybe I'm just jealous!)).  To really get my point across, however, I think I need to paint all this in the vibrant tones of analogy.

When I was a teen, my favorite genre band--hard rock/metal (metal, of course, is a subjective term and has developed significantly over the last thirty years) --was Metallica: slightly more musical than others, certainly more popular, and particularly great for weight-room blasting after track practice.  Over the years, of course, I grew up, and slowly grew away from Metallica.  In 1999, however, genre buster and genius composer/conductor for the San Francisco Symphony, Michael Kamen, decided to do up a fat concert's-worth of Metallica charts for symphonic orchestra, and charter the band to take the stage right with the strings and brass, winds and percussion.

The result was absolutely tremendous, and I loved it.  If pulp mysteries may be perhaps aligned with metal, maybe specifically Metallica, then Harry Stephen Keeler is Michael Kamen: a little bit crazy, a little bit genius, a lot reckless, and totally given up to having fun with what he does best and loves.  No matter how crazy, it just freaking works.

James Patterson, on the other hand, and apart from genre shifting yet, is more like pop hard rockers Godsmack, who simply take all the ideas that everyone else has already had, inject it all with a little more sex, a little more violence, and lot more bad language, and sell it to the highest bidder: teenagers.  Now imagine, just for a minute and the sake of argument, that a band like Godsmack took something sacred, like, oh, I don't know, Debussy's "Claire de Lune" and translated it to their particular brand of metal?  Well, you'd get--  Hold on.  Let me repeat that fantasy has more potential for sublimity, I think, than any of the other "genres."  Disbelieve me?  Take a look at the greats: Lord of the Rings and Ender's Game, a couple of my most mainstream favorites, and Summerland, though it's less well-known, or the brilliant stuff that someone like Margaret Atwood or Lewis Carroll or Louis Lowry or, heck, even Douglas Adams (to name only a few of the dozens of this world's and our history's greats) can do with it.  Let's use Lord of the Rings.  It's about as obvious for it's brilliance as is Debussy's "Moonlight."  See what I'm getting at here?  "Claire de Lune" is to Godsmack as Lord of the Rings is to James Patterson.

When it comes right down to it, the idea behind W&W is actually pretty okay, but instead of giving it to Godsmack (because Patterson DID NOT WRITE IT), why not dish it off to a band that can actually play--like a Sevendust or a Tool or a Porcupine Tree (okay, not metal, but it would be awesome) or, yeah, even Metallica?  Better yet, why not a Michael Kamen and the brute, masterful force of his orchestra behind him?  Because I still like a lot of metal out there.  And sometimes, cross-genre translations do work, but I'm sorry: Mr. Patterson, Ms. Charbonnet, yours doesn't.

(Ugh.  I'm gonna go read a poem.)

Jane Eyre XXXIV -- chapter 33: WHERE WAS THE INTERNET WHEN JANE MOST NEEDED IT?

Norham's Castle

Day set on Norham's castled steep, 
And Tweed's fair river, broad and deep, 
And Cheviot's mountains lone; 

The battled towers. the Donjon Keep, 
The loopholes grates, where captives weep, 
The flanking walls that round it sweep, 
In yellow lustre shone. 

The warriors on the turrets high, 
Moving athwart the evening sky, 
Seem'd forms of giant height: 

Their armour, as it caught the rays, 
Flash'd back again the western blaze, 
In lines of dazzling light.

*

1. My new favorite analogy: "I again felt rather like an individual of but average gastronomical powers, sitting down to feast alone at a table spread with provisions for a hundred."  I don't think it's entirely accurate here, but what an image!  And certainly "gastronomic powers" could not have carried quite the same meaning then as now, when we have such things as competitive eating.
2. The behavior of Mr. Rivers is interesting to me:  his return to Jane's place has the appearance of being merely weather-related; the fact that he sits and waits some time indicates he is without hurry, regardless of whether he's building up his courage or wavering over how to articulate his motives; but the most curious is his immediate, apparently hurried departure.  What's his deal?
3. Forget Bronte: does cosmic force exist that would draw together such estranged families as these, and why?  Perhaps more importantly (and coming back to the author), how does Bronte avoid the appearance of contrivance here (basically, the "Oh-wow-we're-cousins-isn't-that-freaking-convenient?")?
4. Regardless of what happens in the conclusion of the book, what might prevent Jane, and remain within her character, from sharing the wealth with her new-found family and living with them happily ever after at Marsh End?
5. The travel or stagnation of information--its content, context, quantity, and quality (among other characteristics) --play a huge part in the creation of fictions and their conflicts.  Consider the palantiri of The Lord of the Rings, and their effective transference of selective information (or misinformation, depending upon the strategy behind their implementation).  The entire plot of Jane Eyre could not happen (well, not without excruciating ignorance on the part of its players) in the modern world.

*

Jane Eyre XXV -- chapter 25: A YEAR AND A DAY

1. Paragraph 1 is a fine example of existentialism.
2. The cloven chestnut tree in its description here is like, though perhaps only in portent and not eventual outcome, the white tree of Gondor from The Lord of the Rings (either the original textual version or the cinematic.)  Thoughts?
3. vampyre; vampire  -- application, then?  and is it more or less than the by-now so terribly stereotypical "modern" vampire tropes?  (Fascinating history, of course, but I wouldn't about more than etymologies in this case.)
4. A year and a day.  This law has always boggled me, as much invented, seemingly, for its poetry as its legal application.  But considering its contextual use here in the book, what is Rochester actually saying (you may include exclude other listed English traditions ascribed to this legalese anapest?
5. Interesting: once the tale is confessed and quelled (was it really?), the wind too has died down; but how could she possibly accept the lame, or at least incomplete, explanation from Rochester?

A QUESTION OF FAITH AND VANITY via The Lord of the Rings

I don't have as many audio books as I'd like; however the books I do have are excellent, and that counts for something.  I'm back to The Lord of the Rings on the rotation, and I heard, or came near understanding, something yesterday afternoon I haven't before.

Context: The fellowship is just ending their stay at Lothlorien, and Galadriel  is speaking to Frodo of the necessary elvish departure of Middle Earth--all elves preparing or already en route.  Their destination is the Gray Havens and they are prepared and intend to never return--at least as far as I understand it (my LoR lore is not quite full-geek).

Galadriel's claim is that the elves must depart Middle Earth, else remain relegated to "caves and dells to be forgotten" (not sure the quotation is exact--sorry), insinuating, in essence, that a departure will be a rescue of sorts, and maintain and even enforce their potency and immortality.  But why do the elves have to leave--and for the "Havens" (Haven = heaven; departure for heaven = death and immortal glory, right)?  Is it because of the ignominy of diminished power, for at the End when the One Ring is destroyed, the other rings of power--Galadriel's Nenya and Elrond's Vilya (I'm pretty sure of those names) --will fade and eventually end (though no one is sure this will happen).  Is their departure a vanity, that they might not fade like their rings, for if they depart--if they quit while they're ahead, as it were--they will yet survive eternally in Middle Earth, if not bodily then in song and lore, where their power will not just linger but grow continually and expand with the hyperbole of time and storytelling?

But if this is indeed it, then it could also be more than this:  Is their departure also an act of faith against the survival of the One Ring--faith that Frodo will succeed, which success, once again, will spell the end of their special gifts of wisdom and power--faith, because if Frodo fails, then there is no precise reason to leave already, if at all, and maybe yet linger in a last ditch attempt to defeat Sauron?  There is, after all, power deliverable by faith, as sure as light travels on waves through the void to Earth (okay, that was pretty cheesy--sorry).  Do they expect--or at least hope--that this demonstration of faith by departure, and even early departure, will act in benefit of the quest?  If so, does the good of this demonstration of enacted faith supersede the vanity of their self-preservation?

I don't know.  This was while driving home from work.

East of Eden XIX -- chpt18:To Bury Secrets

Reading Questions Chapter 18.1

Chapter 18.2

1. Didn't Grendel's Mother live at the bottom of a lake--hidden, you might say--and didn't come up until her monster son started causing all that trouble and got himself killed?  (I might be bending the facts a little there.)  And what is it about Pandora's Box?  What about the One Ring?  Endless examples there are of the trouble with burying something evil and powerful and dirty....
2. To quote Obi-Wan Kenobi, "Who's the more foolish, the fool or the fool who follows him?"

Chapter 18.3

1. What's the benefit of going through the motions?  It's not "real."
2. Why won't Lee have his bookstore, now that Adam is alone?  And why does it seem to turn out that he "didn't want it much anyway"?