The Future of Print

Thought this was kinda cool. And since it's Sunday, you've probably got time to watch it. Enjoy.

EPILOGUE: the future of print from EPILOGUEdoc on Vimeo.

The Tour de France kicks off today

“I have started many stories about bicycle racing but have never written one that is as good as the races are both on the indoor and outdoor tracks and on the roads.  

“…I must write the strange world of the six-day races and the marvels of the road-racing in the mountains. French is the only language it has ever been written in properly and the terms are all French and that is what makes it hard to write.”

-Ernest Hemingway, in A Moveable Feast

(And yes, in the 20s there was a slightly higher incidence of smoking on the Tour than you’ll probably find today. But that’s awesome in its own way.)

First Line Friday

MacEvoy has been putting a bug in my ear as of late about The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides.  I haven't read it, but I did take a look at the first page earlier today.  As such, I figured we might as well examine its first line:

"To start with, look at all the books."

Hmmmmm.  I don't love it, to be honest.  It's too flippant.  Too brief.  Too colloquial for my taste.  MacEvoy may disagree . . .

(Side Note:  I am considering discontinuing First Line Friday to pursue other opportunities, such as "Title Tuesdays" or "Metaphor Mondays." What say all of you?  Are we tired of First Line Fridays?)

Review: Train Dreams, by Denis Johnson

So I’m working my way through the ill-fated 2012 Pulitzer finalists- you know, the ones that became entangled in controversy when no prize was awarded earlier this year? I took a look at Karen Russel’s Swamplandia!  here. And today I dig into Denis Johnson’s much-acclaimed novella, Train Dreams,  the story of a day-laborer in the American West named Robert Grainier.

I should say up front that I’m not disparaging the writing, which was more than capable. After all, Johnson’s the National Book Award Winning author of Tree of Smoke, which is high on my future reads wishlist.  Rather, I’ve got a bone to pick with the lack of “evocative and poignant fiction” that I was promised by reviewers and blurb writers. Is this book truly “an epic in miniature” as they claim?

Well, it is miniature. And it does cover the span of a lifetime. But in creating such a spare and economical work, it seems Johnson has cut out all the emotional impact of the story along with any semblance of a rewarding plot structure.

There was just... not much there. This book felt less like a well-crafted piece of fiction than the kind of cursory memoir that people goad their aging parents into penning for posterity. It was a list of memorable events, sure, but there was no discernible theme stringing them together. It didn’t really say  or mean  anything to me.

I guess there’s something to be gleaned about the crazy cast of characters who won the American West, and the sometimes inexplicable reasons they held their ground in the face of untold hardships. But I just wasn’t carried away like the advance press said I would be. It was okay. But I don’t think okay is good enough these days. Not for a major prize, anyway.

I didn’t even really care when the main character’s wife and baby daughter were consumed in a forest fire, because I didn’t feel like I knew them at all. I didn’t even know anything about him  except that he worked as a logger and had once wanted to throw a spastic Chinese railroad laborer off a bridge.

I don’t know. The more 2012 Pulitzer finalists I get to know, the more I think the jury got it right by not awarding a prize. That should be a pretty high bar to clear. Maybe the Pale King  still has a case that it was jobbed, but Swamplandia!  and Train Dreams  haven’t given me too much hope.

Anybody disagree?

Poet's Corner: "At The Cancer Clinic" by Ted Kooser

Alright. Today’s poem-for-the-common-man is short and sweet. There’s nothing overtly profound about it, but it still manages to tear your heart out. See for yourself:

At the Cancer Clinic

By Ted Kooser

She is being helped toward the open door

that leads to the examining rooms

by two young women I take to be her sisters.

Each bends to the weight of an arm

and steps with the straight, tough bearing

of courage. At what must seem to be

a great distance, a nurse holds the door,

smiling and calling encouragement.

How patient she is in the crisp white sails

of her clothes. The sick woman

peers from under her funny knit cap

to watch each foot swing scuffing forward

and take its turn under her weight.

There is no restlessness or impatience

or anger anywhere in sight. Grace

fills the clean mold of this moment

and all the shuffling magazines grow still.

 *******************************

Am I right? The imagery is simple, and yes, it’s got some nice lines. But what makes this poem truly great, in my view, are the seven words that make up that last line:   “and all the shuffling magazines grow still.”

Criminy, that’s good! One minute we’re reading some poem where almost nothing happens, and in an instant we’re made part of a crowded hospital waiting room, frozen in admiration of this woman’s courage, or reverently marking her impending death, or silently cheering her fight for life. Or Maybe all of the above. 

Sometimes all it takes to give us a little perspective is to watch the right person shuffle weakly down the hall.

Hats off to Mr. Koozer. Anybody else been bowled over by a poem lately?

Short Story Club: "An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge"

Come on in and have a seat. We’re just getting started.

What did everyone think of “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge?”

It’s a little different than the other stories we’ve covered, but I think it’s got a great opening- one that has you asking yourself questions immediately. After that it seems Bierce quickly overplays his hand, getting bogged down in a lot of overly detailed stage direction: who was standing where, how they were holding their guns, what their ranks were, etc., etc, etc. Most modern readers will find themselves skipping ahead. (You're pathetic. Go hang your heads in shame.)

But I’m actually going to defend Bierce here. At first I chalked the heavy description up to the time period and the nineteenth century tendency to belabor every detail. Then I started to think that maybe he was just capturing the hyper-awareness of a man who was staring at his imminent death- sponging up every last impression that this world could give him. Both of those theories might be true, I suppose. But I think he’s doing something else here.

He feeds us all those details so that we’re drawn into the story once all of those pointless bystanders start to play a significant role, as they react to his noose snapping and rush to shoot him in the water instead. The reader revisits those early details and tries to figure out whether our hanged man has a real chance at escape. I thought it was a great way to build up the tension.

I also liked the flashback explaining how we got to the hanging. Bierce lets us chew on what’s happening, while he cuts away for some interesting backdrop. Again, he’s letting the tension simmer and percolate.

And then we really get some nice things happening. The noose breaks, our man is in the water, and what was a kind of sleepy, plodding story is now a life and death struggle. I love the description we get along the way:

“He was now in full possession of his physical senses. They were, indeed, preternaturally keen and alert. Something in the awful disturbance of his organic system had so exalted and refined them that they made record of things never before perceived. He felt the ripples upon his face and heard their separate sounds as they struck. He looked at the forest on the bank of the stream, saw the individual trees, the leaves and the veining of each leaf--saw the very insects upon them: the locusts, the brilliant-bodied flies, the grey spiders stretching their webs from twig to twig. He noted the prismatic colors in all the dewdrops upon a million blades of grass. The humming of the gnats that danced above the eddies of the stream, the beating of the dragon flies' wings, the strokes of the water-spiders' legs, like oars which had lifted their boat--all these made audible music. A fish slid along beneath his eyes and he heard the rush of its body parting the water.”

And then, of course, the ending! Bierce has yanked our chain! And yet we’re not angry, because hey, maybe that really is  what occurs in that instant before your neck snaps. Sounds pretty plausible to me.

Here's the Oscar-winning short, for those of you who were too damn lazy to read it.

Anyone else like it? Hate it? Tell us why in the comments.

Short Story Club Selection for June

Yes, friends. It’s that time once again.  

This month we’re going to take a trip in the WABAC Machine and examine a story that was first published in 1890:  Ambrose Bierce’s “An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge.” Why did we choose this story? For one, we’ve never talked about brother Bierce on this site. And for another, this particular story contains one of the all-time great, swift-kick-to-the-crotch  endings.

Here’s how it begins:

“A man stood upon a railroad bridge in northern Alabama, looking down into the swift water twenty feet below. The man's hands were behind his back, the wrists bound with a cord. A rope closely encircled his neck. It was attached to a stout cross-timber above his head and the slack fell to the level of his knees.”

Click here to read the full story, and then get yourself back here tomorrow for the discussion. Tucker’s making his world famous bruschetta, you won’t want to miss it.

The Writer's Voice: F. Scott Fitzgerald

We often become so familiar with the distinctive literary voice of an author, that it can be somewhat jarring to hear their actual speaking voice. Unless, of course, that author happens to be F. Scott Fitzgerald. Then you have no choice but to be lulled into a peaceful slumber by his dulcet, velvet voice.

Sweet dreams, readers.

Hemingway and Gellhorn

Anyone see “Hemingway and Gellhorn” yet? I don’t subscribe to HBO, but they must have had a free preview a couple weekends ago because I was able to snag it on the ol’ DVR. Now that I’ve had a chance to watch it, I thought I’d weigh in with my thoughts.

As the title suggests, the film is a biopic on Hemingway and his third wife, war correspondent Martha Gellhorn. Clive Owen plays the role of Hem, while Nicole Kidman plays Gellhorn. Both are about 10-15 years older than the real Hemingway and Gellhorn were when the actual events took place. But Kidman, I think, still manages to pull of a youthful look. Owen… not so much. More on that later. The supporting cast include Robert Duvall, David Strathairn, Parker Posey and a surprisingly obese Jeffrey Jones (picture Edward R. Rooney with about 80 lbs too many.)

The movie takes us to Key West, Cuba, Ketchum and even China, but focuses for the most part on what I think is the most captivating period of Hemingway’s life: his involvement in the Spanish Civil War and his documentation of it in For Whom the Bell Tolls,  and in the short propoganda film, “The Spanish Earth.”  (If you haven’t read FWtBT,  repent forthwith, and if you haven’t watched the film he helped write and narrate, go here.)

But make no mistake, this is Gellhorn’s story. Hemingway is continually portrayed as an overbearing, sexist lout- all of which he probably was. But you won’t find any of Gellhorn’s well-documented infidelities in the film. Her story feels a little too white-washed. When an assignment from Collier’s takes her to China, no mention is made of Hemingway’s own credentials with PM magazine, or his post as an intelligence officer for the US Treasury Department. The viewer just assumes he’s tagging along on her assignment and resenting her for it. In another scene Hemingway is shown practically raping her backstage in order to “feel like a man” and overcome a bout of stage fright before speaking. Gellhorn is then called out on stage for impromptu remarks which outshine Hemingway’s in every way.

At other points he is shown flying off the handle for no apparent reason and challenging a Communist General to a game of Russian Roulette. He stabs people in the back, rides roughshod over everyone in his path. And I don’t know how they did it, but they made Clive Owen appear tired, pasty, sniveling and frumpy. Hemingway is no doubt far from perfect, but the continual pile-on just didn’t ring true.

Don’t get me wrong, I came out of this movie with a desire to know so much more about Gellhorn and her life, but I felt that they gratuitously “over-caricatured”  Hemingway to provide a compelling foil for her. Too many pot shots at an easy target.

Anybody else see it? Anyone disagree?

First Line Friday

I've been a little bit of a downer recently with the first lines I've highlighted.  I haven't love them all.  And I am going to continue the trend today.

"I told you last night that I might be gone sometime, and you said, Where, and I said, To be with the Good Lord, and you said, Why, and I said, Because I'm old, and you said, I don't think you're old."

Hmmmmm, pretty shady punctuation, isn't it?  For my taste, it's far too meandering, too random, too loosy goosy.  The novel is Gilead by Marilynne Robinson.  And, having said all of this, I think I can predict what the rebuttal will consist of.

So go ahead, disagree with me, if you will.