Mood Music VIII

Since the last two posts have been mini-treatises, today will just be a song.

Over the last month or so, this song and Like Vines have become personal favorites.  It's so sunshiny and dreamy.

Why I Disagree With Stephen King

In the past day or so, Twilight fan sites have been all a-flutter with the news that Stephen King told USA Today that he thinks Stephenie Meyer is a terrible writer. Not only that but apparently, he also calls out other compatriot in commercial literary success James Patterson, while commending J.K. Rowling and Jodi Picoult as "terrific." Now, what's been posted is just a sort of "coming attractions" post. I'm curious to see whether any article space is devoted to what criteria he uses to evaluate what makes writing good, but in the meantime I thought I'd discuss why I disagree with King.

All four authors cited are ones whose work I've read and enjoyed. My parents are big Alex Cross fans, and during one school break sometime over the last few years I plowed through that series. I read a number of Picoult's books this past summer while I twitchily waited for Breaking Dawn to come out. I was a Harry Potter devotee from early on, from the time that I originally received Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone as an Easter gift in seventh grade (so early in the craze that Chamber of Secrets hadn't even been published in America) to the midnight release of Deathly Hallows. And my enjoyment of Twilight is well-documented. None of the four is the kind of writer who's going to win a Pulitzer Prize. (Nor is King, for that matter.) I'm not a big enough fan of Patterson or Picoult to mount a coherent defense of their work, but I have very clear opinions about why I think both Rowling and Meyer are good writers, and what that means to me.

I can be a critical reader (like, copy-editing people's work without being asked to critical) but I'm not the kind of reader who places a lot of emphasis on technical quality. Obviously, grammar is important, but I don't know that I find it absolutely vital in narrative fiction that is centered in storytelling. Both Meyer and Rowling have strengths and weaknesses as writers, but to me, the fact that those strengths are being expressed through words makes them good writers. As a reader, I think that Rowling is an unparalleled plotter. She knows how to pace her stories expertly, and deftly built seven nail-biting climaxes. Conversely, I think that this is one of Meyer's weakest areas. Her pacing can be somewhat schizophrenic, with chapters and chapters devoted to action taking place over a few days, then significant time jumps that get glossed over. I'm interested to see what Chris Weitz and Melissa Rosenberg do with the bogged-down middle section of New Moon in adapting the story for the film.

What then, in my opinion, is Meyer's strength? Contrary to King's assertion about those readers who enjoy Twilight, not everyone who loves the books is thrilled by the swoony descriptions of Edward's icy skin. To me, Meyer's characters live and breathe on the page, distinct and vibrant personalities. Both Meyer and Rowling imagined fictional universes filled with a number of characters, and while I don't doubt that each character is clear to their creator, Meyer can communicate who they are to the reader in a way that Rowling does not. After Deathly Hallows, there was an interview with Rowling where she discussed the decision to kill Fred rather than George, saying something to the effect of Fred being the more lighthearted of the two. This surprised me, since nearly a decade of reading and re-reading the books had never revealed any substantive difference between the two to me. The run-up to the release of the film version of Half-Blood Prince has also made me realize that Ginny is still kind of a non-person to me, character-wise. The last few Potter films have diverged dramatically from the books, largely because the story can be formed around the plot and characters can appear extraneous or unimportant in the bigger picture.

Additionally, (and Stephen King would probably find this totally sacrilegious) I think Meyer's skill in writing is similar to that of Brian Wilson. Both understand how to vocalize emotions the way that a teenager does. Sometimes I find Bella unbelievably annoying, but I also find her voice totally authentic as a teenager, and am positive that if I went back to my journals from high school I would find similarly embarrassing odes to whatever guy I had a crush on at the time. This is something that I don't think Rowling has ever done well - Order of the Phoenix remains one of my least favorite of the Harry Potter books due to Harry's constant immature whining. He never seemed authentically teenaged to me in that scenario, just like a petulant child.

Some of my favorite authors are wordsmiths, some are storytellers. To me, they're all good writers, all for different reasons. I hope that as I continue to write, and look ahead to my thesis and dissertation, that I, too, can find a voice and play to my own strengths, writing as well as I know how and not trying to be a writer I'm not.

Steve Jobs is Taking My Money

I appreciate Apple's new "DRM-free music for all!" initiative, I really do. The whole computer-authorization thing was a pain, and I've been availing myself of the opportunity to re-download my purchased music now that songs can be purchased individually.  After my music library as it once existed disappeared during a virus eradication, it's nice to maybe not have to rely on the myriad backup CDs I've accumulated.  Viewing the majority of my purchases in bulk, though, is not encouraging.  I'm beginning to wonder if I have a problem.

I own up to being a media junkie pretty easily.  Loving and hoarding music, books, movies and TV is part of who I am - it informs the academic work that I like to do; it comprises the bulk of what I talk about on this blog.  When I started college four-and-a-half years ago, one of the first things that I did when I was alone with my shiny new laptop and my dorm room's internet connection was download iTunes, having only dreamed up until that point of having the means to amass a vast, legal digital music collection.  I've always been kind of principled about not illegally downloading music, maybe prissily so.  I'm the kind of person who bought CD singles.  Before iTunes, there were a lot of rationalized purchases of full albums for one or two tracks, which is how I ended up with CDs like The Best of the Cowsills.  When I regard my iTunes purchases in retrospect, it's certainly better to have bought them all than to have pirated them.  If I illegally downloaded music, it would be Out Of Control. (The last month or so has taught me this, as apparently it is insanely easy for me to talk myself into a $5 purchase. The answer to "Should I give five dollars and x bytes to this piece of media ?" is invariably "Yes!"  At some point my rampant consumerist tendencies are going to catch up with my not-particularly-lucrative chosen field and things are going downhill. Either that, or my computer will run out of memory.) My hard drive would have so much ridiculous crap on it (that is, more than there already is), I can't even say.

Maybe it's not so bad.  I'm just a little concerned about how many of the purchases I completely do not remember making.  I mean, I give myself a little leeway since it has been nearly five years in total.  Undergrad years can be completely insane.  There are some purchases that I clearly made as part of gifts for my family, though I couldn't pinpoint when if my life depended on it.  It's just the niggling few, the ones that are tracks shared with albums I've owned and enjoyed for a long time, that are inexplicable to me.  For example, the Rushmore soundtrack has become one of my absolute favorite albums, but I don't think that development was an extremely recent one.  So then why/when did I buy "Here Comes My Baby" and "Ooh La La"?  How much of the last five years has devolved into this mystery haze?  Why buy "See Me, Feel Me" if I already had Tommy?  Sometimes viewing oneself and one's habits from a distance is a little troubling.

Gendered Soda

Is the world of soda really so gender-marked that there needs to be a diet soda "for men?" Did marketing research do this? It's just packaging, right? There's no substantive difference between this and other diet sodas? Just, it's supposed to appeal to men who tie their sense of masculinity to a disinterest in preserving their physical well-being?

...Sigh

February Goals

So, I'm going to try this posting-at-least-once-per-day thing again.  Working on my writing habits is a goal for my program, and I think that I can do it if I'm disciplined about it.  I've got some ideas in the tubes - I never quite finished my review of favorite book-to-movie adaptations, I've been watching some interesting TV, there's always some new pop culture/media thing that I latch onto and obsess about.  Maybe I'll even start writing about things that are a little deeper or more serious, who knows?  I'll try to utilize this shortest of months to make daily writing a habit.

Typographical Errors

I got this insert today.  Sweet tea sounds delicious.  Sweat tea, I'm not so sure about.

Books Read: January 2009

Reading Nick Hornby's essays about reading inspired me to try to keep a record of what I'm reading. Sometimes (i.e., when I'm not on break) it will skew more academic, sometimes more recreational, although the hope is always that the academic will also be compelling and interesting, and of course, that I will really read those books and not just pretend to. I'll just keep adding to the list until it's February's turn.

Housekeeping vs. The Dirt and Shakespeare Wrote for Money by Nick Hornby

Books of the aforementioned essays from the magazine The Believer. Reading About a Boy as part of my Chris Weitz mini-primer reminded me of how much I enjoyed High Fidelity and drove me to pursue more Hornby. The next time I have a stretch of time to read recreationally, I'll probably tackle some more of his fiction, but these essays were positively delightful. Above all, I really latched onto Hornby's basic philosophy, which paraphrased is basically "Read what you like, because life's too short to read something that makes you miserable." His anti-literary-snobbery stance is refreshing, and made me feel better about some of my literary choices of the past year, namely quitting on Blood Meridian after about ten pages, neglecting to read Housekeeping for class (his writing on the book convinced me that I couldn't have possibly given the book the attention it merits in the time given to read it for class, and made me eager to pick it up when I do have that time) and not feeling the least bit guilty or ashamed for enjoying the Twilight series.

The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman

Another exercise that grew out of Weitz assessment. I first read The Golden Compass back when it originally came out, when I was in elementary school, and didn't return to it until last month, when I prepared to watch the movie. Back in the day, I didn't move on to The Subtle Knife because a friend told me that I should wait until the third book came out because of the frustration involved in waiting for the conclusion. Knowing little of the joyous tension that can come from anticipating the release of a book (or movie, or album, or new TV season), I heeded her advice, and hence was no longer interested when The Amber Spyglass was released. It has thus taken the better part of a decade for me to get around to it. I liked the series, and I'm glad that I finally took the plunge and just finished it already. Lyra is a delightful, ballsy heroine, and the worlds that Pullman imagines around her are vividly imagined. It's not supplanting Harry Potter in my personal esteem, but it was a satisfying way to spend a few days.

The Final Solution by Michael Chabon

A short mystery by another author who's becoming one of my favorites. Chabon has what many of my favorite authors have, which is an innate sense of history. By which I mean that the manner in which they write fictional histories weaves stories in an epic sense that evokes documented factual history (that is, history by academically trained historians). Though The Final Solution is brief, one gets the sense that among the silences and unfilled gaps in the mystery, is a deeply involved story that Chabon ultimately knows from beginning to end.

Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood by Koren Zailckas

Maybe it's weird to say so, but I find stories about substance abuse, fictional and otherwise, unbelievably fascinating. They frequently show life at it's most dramatic and melodramatic, small moments exacerbated or writ large due to the influence of alcohol or drugs. However, even if Zailckas' memoir wasn't about substance abuse, it would still be interesting due to her startlingly clear-eyed observations about what it means to be a young woman in America today. She looks at herself and her peers and draws their misadventures with alcohol out to make points about expected behavior of women as young people, as drinkers, as friends, as protectors that are sad but revelatory when plainly stated.

This is the True Story...

Real World: Brooklyn - MTV Shows

Try as I might, I can't quite seem to stop loving The Real World.  I'm years removed from my own peak viewing era (New Orleans to Las Vegas), but there's something reassuring about the show's tenacity on a network that values youth and novelty above all else.  Working on a paper about the VMAs really piqued my interest in MTV and their constant revitalization versus their embrace of their own history and brand representatives.  Barring some sort of dramatic programming decision on MTV's part, the next few years will see the first housemate born after the initial premiere of the first New York season, which should be a really intriguing milestone for the network.

I love Real World retrospectives, and this one was actually pretty interesting, if a little focused on recent seasons.  Shockingly, this one managed to go an hour and a half without the classic Slap from Seattle (as well as my personal favorite, Dan and Melissa's throwdown in Miami over her opening his mail - it epitomizes the core philosophy that has driven The Real World for so many seasons, namely that twenty-somethings forced to live together will fight over anything and everything). I love the "institutional memory" role taken on by Jonathan Murray - you can tell that he's seen a lot of crazy shit over the years, and he seems to truly love the show and all that has come from it over the years without the mercenary sort of air you get from people like Mark Burnett.  I'm sort of fascinated by the made-for-TV biopic they're apparently making about Pedro Zamora - on the one hand because it seems like a whole new level of self-cannibalization on MTV's part, but on the other because it elevates something that happened on MTV and seems to make the argument that it should be known to people too young to watch it when it happened.  I'll be interested to see what comes of that.

I might actually watch this season, for old time's sake.  Even though the show seems to have gotten trashier over the years, I can still see how a young teen could get something rewarding out of the show.  When I was really into The Real World (like, I bought their behind-the-scenes books, that's how into it I was), I latched onto Melissa from New Orleans and Coral from Back to New York in particular.  At the point I was at in my life, there was something really reassuring about seeing young women of color living their lives and interacting with peers and just generally acknowledging that sometimes it is really difficult to just exist.  I truly believe that there's still value to be gained from The Real World, hot tub shenanigans aside.

Quoted III

"Joyce Maynard, who lived with Mr. Salinger in the early ’70s, wrote in a 1998 memoir that she had seen shelves of notebooks devoted to the Glass family and believed there were at least two new novels locked away in a safe."

- Charles McGrath, "Still Paging Mr. Salinger," New York Times, 12/30/08

This article kind of epitomized the slow news day ("Salinger: Still a Recluse" is not exactly breaking or urgent news), but as a Glass family devotee, the above sentence made my heart skip a beat. I hope against hope that he ultimately decides to share whatever his output has been with the fans who love those characters.

Quoted II

"I don't want anyone writing in to point out that I spend too much money on books, many of which I will never read. I know that already. I certainly intend to read all of them, more or less. My intentions are good. Anyway, it's my money. And I'll bet you do it too."

-Nick Hornby, The Polysyllabic Spree

I had a delightfully Brit-tastic afternoon, huddled under my covers because my bedroom at home is frigid in a way that seems to completely defy that whole "heat rises" concept, reading Hornby's essays about reading and listening to Coldplay. My favorite part of any break from school is having time for recreational reading - reading about reading just epitomizes the temporary freedom from academia's shackles.

Mood Music VII / Favorite Music Videos Addition

I was watching Walk the Line while paper-editing this morning, and realized that I left a video off my list of favorites.  This video is a beautiful, heart-wrenching coda to that love story.

Johnny Cash - Hurt

Added bonus - a performance of theirs that I simply love.  No disrespect to Bob Dylan, but this song is exponentially more interesting as a duet.  If I ever engage in a karaoke duet, this song's first on the list.

Mood Music VI

This may be the only good thing that came out of all the time I spent watching Studio 60.  I can't say how thrilled I was that the person who posted this chose to mute all the dialogue - just the sight of the characters making eyes at each other made me roll mine.  In many ways, this scene is emblematic of all the things that didn't really work about Studio 60 - it's the culmination of a plot about the show's musicians taking leave to give their spots over temporarily to displaced musicians from New Orleans.  Unquestionably well-intentioned, but poorly executed - mostly, it always seemed like Aaron Sorkin was trying to give the same kind of import to the backstage goings-on of a sketch comedy show as he once did to the backstage goings-on of the White House.  It never really gelled.  Mostly the show siphoned away my goodwill for The West Wing and made me feel sorry for Kristen Chenoweth, as Sorkin seemed determined to address various sticking points of their relationship through the show. (I read somewhere that there were rumors about her writing a memoir, and it made me really excited because I'd love to know her take on all that craziness.) However, right after this show aired, NBC offered the song as a download on their site, and I have enjoyed it ever since.  I'm generally more of a fan of poppy, sixties-era Christmas music, but this is a beautiful rendering of a more traditional song.

Hmmm...

This is not inspiring confidence.  Personally, I'm reserving judgement on the whole director switch - I like Catherine Hardwicke, but I also understand how it makes business sense to Summit.  Changing it up increases the likelihood that those fans who were unhappy with Twilight will be willing to give New Moon a chance.  I'm planning to Netflix Chris Weitz's oeuvre if he gets picked officially - About a Boy seems promising, The Golden Compass seemed to have a lot going on that was out of Weitz's hands.  New Moon comes in with significantly less controversy than The Golden Compass, and it would be nice to think that he's learned from the difficulties with that film.  I'm not a person who thinks that it has to be directed by a woman, I'm willing to wait and see.

Mainly, what's troubling is the tone being used to discuss the movie, and the seemingly speedy timeline.  This time last year, Kristen and Rob had been cast and the movie was heading forward to start filming in February with a December release date.  Now there's no director, Volturi and Quileutes (vital to any potential future films) yet to be cast, and apparently they're going to start shooting in March and plan to get all the post-production work, including the giant wolves, done in time to hit theaters on the same November weekend next year.  The statement about a "guaranteed $100 mil. gross" shows a lack of understanding of the fan base - there seems to be an idea that the success of Twilight is tantamount to a carte blanche from the fans for future work, which anyone who's spent any time on a fansite for the series knows is grossly inaccurate.  Summit only got to their $70 mil. opening weekend with a healthy respect/fear of the fans.  Assuming blockbuster status is counting chickens before they've hatched.  As one of the crazy bitches who love and obsess over this series: we're fickle and easy to anger - failure to respect us could blow up in their faces hardcore.

Mood Music V

Oh, Kristen Stewart.  Others may mock you for your hostile body language in interviews, or for toking on your front stoop as though you haven't a care in the world and are not, in fact, the star of a movie making millions upon millions of dollars (something the fandom seems surprisingly chill about - maybe it's the fact that Twilight fans face a solid amount of judgement themselves, but most places the response I've seen has been a resounding "Whatever. It's her life."), but to me you seem kind of delightful, and probably very cool and a lot of fun.  Also, after hearing that putting this song on the Twilight soundtrack was your suggestion, I officially cannot dislike you at all, for it is beautiful, and makes me want to cry all the time, and is my new favorite song.  It was kind of perfect for today, a kind of grey day when I should have been working but didn't and was generally irresponsible and lazy.

Screw You, ABC

No, really. I mean it.

When I was watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade, and Kristin Chenoweth came on singing a cheery Christmas tune, tears sprang to my eyes just thinking about Pushing Daisies. Listening to her sing, I recalled how much I want Alfredo to come back so she and Raul Esparza can sing the beautiful duet of my musical-theater-loving dreams. But that will probably never happen now. Screw you, ABC. I mean, the fact that they didn't use the summer to show reruns of the strike-shortened season (of which there were only nine episodes. Nine.) just demonstrates the lack of regard they have for this show.

Gah!

On a partially related note, Ms. Chenoweth is not the only phenomenally talented member of the cast. I just watched this movie again, and, well, damn.

Tell me that man shouldn't be on my television all the time.

Sigh.