Tom Wolfe’s new novel, about “contemporary college life as seen through the eyes of students,” is due out this fall. Wolfe’s been kicking around frat houses to do his research. (via TEV)
Month / January 2004
Tainted by Influence?
Iowablog: “I think everything I learned at Iowa is wrong.”
These are good, honest words to hear from a young whipper-snapper who wants to write. If there’s a positive spin to this, it’s the fact that Concho is willing to question the lessons she’s learned. I’ve never been in a nuts-and-bolts creative writing class (screenwriting, nonfiction and journalism classes don’t count) and I have only a second-hand idea of what goes down in Iowa, but I do know the merciless world of rejection notices weighed against the ocassional acceptance and/or check. If anything, the pivotal lesson that any writing class or seminar should include concerns the world not giving two fucks about the writer’s circumstances, and a publishing industry that is worse than Cthulhu in its callousness. Any writer hoping to break in must have the thickest hide. Anything less than an iron carapace, a firm resolve and a dedication to the work will send out “AMATEUR” in bright neon lights.
Some folks may recall last July’s Clarion-Wolfe debacle, where an extremely sensitive gentleman mistakenly informed Gene Wolfe that the class disagreed with his hard criticisms. Wolfe bolted. An imbroglio ensued. And there was some controversy over whether Wolfe’s perceived ruthlessness was good or bad for the students. The authoritarian impulse that had gone unquestioned before was replaced by a general sense that workshopping should involve a back-patting atmosphere to foster encouragement.
Well, I cry foul. Constructive criticism is one thing. But personally, I could never trust anyone who would do nothing but praise every element of a lengthy piece I’ve written. Something I’ve observed of so-called “writer’s groups” is that their formation involves stroking egos rather than improving writers and preparing them for the harsh battlefields of Manhattan and beyond. Some of the finest criticisms I’ve received were from people who were honest enough to eviscerate every nicety that was slightly off. To do anything less is a betrayal, a celebration of monkey-clapping amateurism that’s as hypocritical as The New York Times running some bullshit story on sexual fetishes and failing to include the word “fuck.”
The rise of books about writing (and, to a similar degree, screenwriting) has unleashed a Pandora’s box where hope is more prominent than it should be. An “I can do it too!” spirit has emerged, but the hard truth is that writing is difficult work, that even if you manage to finish something, it can be torn to pieces in a New York minute. Even if you get your book published, you will face savage reviews and emerge from the fracas to convince frugal folks to lay down the twenty-five clams to buy the sucker on a book tour.
So why the contentment? Why the entitlement? Why the anti-snark movements?
The answer lies somewhere within the atavistic feel-good jungles that have permeated almost every facet of the liberal arts. The air stinks of softness. Nurture is certainly necessary, but there comes a point when the writer must understand that it’s a tough racket. If a writing instructor doesn’t have the effrontery to call a piece of shit by its true name, then he has no business instructing.
(Iowa lead via Maud)
Noir City #6
The Locket (1944): Normally, I frown upon the flashback structure. Unless you have a solid justification for it (like Memento), it comes across as gimmicky. There’s no reason to move backwards, particularly when the flashback does nothing to resolve the problems set up in a film’s early moments. But The Locket is a different kettle altogether. Not only does it have a flashback-within-a-flashback, but it has a flashback-within-a-flashback-wthin-a-flashback. Indeed, there were so many flashbacks in this movie that I feared writer Sheridan Gibney and director John Brahm would lead me to the moment in which sperm fertilized egg and Laraine Day’s character was born. Fortunately, the flashbacks stopped when the Day character was nine.
But the flashbacks in The Locket work. Because they tell how Laraine Day’s psychosis came to be. They also echo the perspectives of the characters surrounding Day. The film’s methodology runs something like this: A flashback is initiated when a previously screwed over s.o. of Day tells the story to an about-to-be-screwed over s.o. of Day. And we begin to see common patterns of how Day is in denial about her condition. We also learn how the men are foolish enough to play into her sympathies. Even as they tell their stories to the next guy, there is still a part of them that believes that Day is benign.
And if that weren’t enough, we get a silly middle-aged, upper-class Englishwoman singing and dancing a really terrible jig, to the unjustified pleasure of her audience. (“The Germans couldn’t stop her from dancing during the blitz,” we’re informed.) We get crude psychoanalysis with overgeneralized theories. We get Robert Mitchum cast as a cocky painter (and since this is a young Mitchum, it’s fascinating to watch the Mitchum stare in early development). We get the most ridiculous pretext for Day and psychiatrist Brian Aherne hooking up. (One bicycle, moving slower than a treadmill at its lowest setting, runs into the other and both fall down. Either people cycled slower in those days or the filmmakers were on crystal meth and failed to compensate.)
Plenty of the films programmed had better dialogue, better visuals and better performances, but this was one of my favorite films of the festival. I think it had something to do with the dancing Englishwoman.
Decoy (1946): The phrase “consummate trash” comes to mind. Nedrick Young’s script is implausible, the sets are more wobbly than an episode of Doctor Who, the production design is flat and uninspired (to the point where even walls and tables are largely unadorned). This movie looks and feels like the cheapest B-movie possible.
But nobody seems to have informed director Jack Bernhard that he’s propping up pulp. Benhard approaches this movie as if he’s David Lean. He dollies the camera across sparse prison sets that look as if they were put together under a WPA project. He goes for the arty shot, despite the fact that it will reveal the set’s limitations. He adorns the audio with an overbearing symphony, almost as if he expected the audience to rise from their seats and stand for the Queen. Bernhard’s remarkable tenacity reminded me of Don Edmonds’ work on the Ilsa films, whereby Edmonds raised the worst material possible to something oddly endearing.
The film has extremely baffling moments, such as the guy in the morgue who flips through the dictionary and howls with laughter over what the words mean. (And on top of that, he pronounces dichotomy “DI-SHAW-TA-ME.”) Or the philanthropic doctor in the skids somehow convinced to abandon his practice on the flimsiest of reasons.
And then there’s Jean Gillie, who gives Faye Dunaway a run for her money on sheer camp alone. Gillie’s idea of commitment is running over her partners and grabbing hold of a suitcase, shouting, “Mine! All mine!” It’s safe to say that Gillie wouldn’t last long in a job interview.
My only real quibble with the film was that I wasn’t tipsy when I saw it. If ever a movie was made to befuddle humanity, it’s Decoy. And I say this with the best of intentions.
Okay, Howard Dean is Almost Finished
To call Dean’s second place finish in New Hampshire “close” is to approach a cliff face, jump off, and attempt to land on the ground without so much as a bruise. But apparently it’s worse than that. Howard Dean is now down to $5 million. Barring a Missouri win next Tuesday, it looks like we may stuck with Kerry. Unless Dean musters up Robert Kennedy-like support in California and many of the big states, and reenergizes his campaign. Kennedy, however, was more of an idealist than Dean is. And it ain’t exactly 1968.
However, while I woefully miscalculated the percentage points, I was dead-on in my place predictions.
[UPDATE: Dan Spencer has compiled all blog NH predictions with success and failure rates.]
[1/21/06 UPDATE: Apologies for the introspective aside, but I’m truly astonished by the idealism here. Not entirely surprised, mind you, because wildly optimistic notions enter fresh upon my noggin on a daily basis, with several acted upon during any given week. Indeed, I can safely confess that, since I turned thirty, life has been a process of trying to hold onto any and all scraps of hope, bonhomie and idealism, as the wise and sober forces of adulthood demand me to be serious and responsible (I am to a great degree, but I maintain that one can be both!). Granted, there’s still plenty of helium in the Zeppelin, with the only real Hindenburg being my inevitable death, I suppose. But this is what it means to be a committed “optimistic realist” at 31. On one hand, and tying this into Howard Dean, it would be foolish to discount the role of the Internet in disseminating Howard Dean’s Muskie moment. The conservatives guffawed and remixed that twenty second holler and played it over and over and effectively obliterated Dean’s momentum. But let us also consider how refreshingly genuine Dean’s yell was from the stiffs. Here was a man who was ultimately punished for expressing a genuine moment of excitement during the 2004 presidential election. And how much of a telling statment is that of what the United States political process has become? Little wonder that we have no real candidates to choose from anymore. American media, and those who react to it, is particularly unforgiving when it comes to genuine enthusiasm.]
