ray bradbury, rip

Ray Bradbury was the first major literary influence in my life. His stories captured my nascent imagination, and I obsessively read the 100 stories collected in The Stories of Ray Bradbury repeatedly (in addition of course, to numerous stand alone anthologies and novels—my collection is extensive). There's not much to say about the passing of someone who has spread their influence through text—one doesn't know much of what went on beyond the page. Luckily, the pages are still here, and Bradbury lives on through his stories, and I look forward to enjoying that life as long as I can see to read.

Other obituaries will mention Fahrenheit 451 and The Illustrated Man, The Martian Chronicles and even Something Wicked This Way Comes; but these by no means exhaust the genius of Bradbury's output. For the uninitiated, I want to emphasize the poetic beauty of "The Anthem Sprinters" and "The Big Black and White Game"; my introduction to chaos theory through "A Sound of Thunder"; the colorful portrait of childhood in Dandelion Wine . . . but really, there are too many to mention, too many for adequate words.

from sheckley into pinkwater

It's hard not to imagine that Daniel M. Pinkwater's classic "young adult" novel Alan Mendelsohn, the Boy from Mars (1979) wasn't heavily influenced by Robert Sheckley's Mindswap (1966).

Sheckley's novel involves a bizarre and disorienting trip across first planets, then the hero's hallucinations, and finally a "Twisted World" in which the laws of physics themselves are topsy-turvy; along the way, a sequence of intelligentsia and gurus mislead and confuse our befuddled hero. Pinkwater's novel involves first bizarre telekinetic experimentation, then interdimensional travel by intrepid highschoolers, all following the accidentally successful guidance of a weird guru named Samuel Klugarsh.

Sheckley's novel begins and ends with a character Kraggash, who steals our main character's body (inspiring a flight of his mind through a sequence of replacement bodies), and returns at the end, leading him into the Twisted World and a disorienting battle of wits.

Kraggash and Klugarsh are both mystical anarchists who lead our heroes through layers of self knowledge and surreal disorientation. The multiple worlds in Mindswap and multiple dimensions in Alan Mendelsohn play for very different effects, but they both combine the familiar with the alien in a manner sensitive to the inherently imagined and created aspects of our reality.

Not at all to belittle Pinkwater's novel, which, I think, over all is more effective and a greater achievement. (Though my long history with it perhaps biases me. . . )

how to film the dark tower

Apparently, there are / were plans to make a trilogy (+ TV series?) of the Dark Tower books by Stephen King. I will now tell you how to adapt the Dark Tower books to the screen effectively. Any deviations from this plan will be atrocious, I assure you.

First, a caveat: I have not actually finished the series. I read the first book many many times, and it is tied very closely in my memory to various experiences during my formative years even my love of reading itself. I read the second and third books hungrily and was quite excited by them, but did not resume consumption of the remainder until some time after the fourth was published and the series resumed.

After the third book, my experience was with audio books. I listened through about a third into the final book. I still have the audio book on my computer, but doubt I will ever be able to stomach going back to it.

The success of the first Dark Tower stories lies entirely in their imagery and atmosphere, the old west, the Beatles, dark magic—these elements seamlessly blend into an organic whole which evokes a magical picture in the reader's mind.

By the last few books in the series, however, Stephen King had fallen in love with his characters. For a storyteller, this is the death of their craft, in particular, the death of arc and character—after he fell in love with his characters, he was scared to kill them off, and, correspondingly, unable to produce legitimate tension in the story; after he fell in love with his characters, he was unable to make them cruel, and, consequently, Roland the anti-hero became Roland the kind and wise uncle whose supposed willingness to sacrifice his loved ones for the quest was given lip-service, but not realized in any convincing or tension-inducing way.

Furthermore, King's near-death experience induced him to force a post-modern turn on the series, emphasizing a multiverse perspective, fatalism, and introducing himself as a character. Fatalism kills suspense, it kills character, it removes the incentive for motivation, which drives both character development and plot—fatalism is the the bane of modern genre storytelling.

So, fuck the end to the last Dark Tower book: King, you had your chance and punted—if a Dark Tower movie adaptation is going to be any good whatsoever, it will have to follow the first rule of adaptations in a very serious way and feel free to violate the source material.

Usually this means feeling free to replace features of the source material inappropriate for the relevant new medium. For example, the Harry Potter films erred on the side of including incidents from the books rather than developing characters in the spirit of the books. Less time spent on including all the scenes from the first books in early movies, and more time spent on showing us in a manner unique to the medium of cinema the same character features that were demonstrated in the books in a manner unique to the medium of text would have greatly improved the quality and efficacy of the early movies. (I refrain from commenting on later ones as I am unqualified.)

So, the rules for adapting the Dark Tower books to the screen effectively are

1. Ignore the NYC plotline; ignore the multiverse aspect; ignore everything that is self-referential.

If the multiverse is included, everything will become convoluted, in-joke, inaccessible, and directed only at the fans or King himself. If it is abandoned, then there is some hope of telling a story which stands on its own, and is compelling to the viewer whether he has read the books or not.

2. Ignore cutesy references to other Stephen King books / The Wizard of Oz.

Same reasons as above for the first; for the second, it ridiculously undermines the atmosphere.

3. Acknowledge you cannot tell the whole story.

Making a good (series of) movies about the Dark Tower series means acknowledging you cannot reproduce every detail and nuance of the series of seven (sometimes very long) books. Confront this fact and meditate on it. If you do not, you will fail. Begin with the idea that only a very very tiny fraction of the material will make it to the screen—in the case of a series of this magnitude, we're looking at less than 1/20th, even if, say, a trilogy is green lit. Probably less.

4. Once you have meditated on 3, pick moments from the book to collect in each of the films which (a) will stand alone, (b) are cinematic, (c) will constitute a compelling story for someone who hasn't read the books, and (d) allow for an organic and internally consistent development of the characters. How many and which moments you collect will depend crucially on the scope of the series which is funded.

For example, suppose a trilogy is funded: you might break the story down such that:

I. includes the first story in detail, the discovery of the boy, and the Gunslinger's sacrifice of the boy.

II. The Drawing of the Three? Introduce the coherence of the quest, and the secondary characters? Culminate, perhaps, in the grand train journey across the radiated countryside?

III. Some kind of climax - combining features of Wolves of the Calla, and Song of Susannah with an actual confrontation with the Man in Black at the actual Dark Tower. If the cutseyness, the NYC scenes, the meta-fictional world crossing are left out, and one focusses entirely on a) scenes crucial for character development, and b) cinematic imagery which also advances story, one may be able to compress key elements together into a coherent conclusion to the story.

Then, keep the flashback story in Wizard and Glass in reserve, to use as a prequel if one hits financial gold with the trilogy.

Key point: Don't bring "the boy" (Jake) back!!!!!! Bringing back Jake was the beginning of the end for The Dark Tower—it is the abandoning of consequences, the undermining of Roland (the Gunslinger)'s character, and the introduction of multiverse, metafictional, self-indulgent, character-loving idiocy.

Follow these rules, and a powerful adaptation could be made. Abandon them in favor of the full details of the story, and you court pathetic, self-referential claptrap. Tell a good story! This is more important than faithfulness to the exact text of King's novels. Remember that it only takes one man to create a novel, but an entire team of individuals and millions of dollars to create a movie. There is much less room for ego and self-indulgence in the realm of cinema. This brings us to

5. If Stephen King doesn't sign over the rights and agree to 1, 2, 3, and 4, then don't waste any of (our) time or (your) money, just forget about the project, and go reread the books instead.

on reading unfinished novels

There's no reason to read an unfinished novel if the author is alive. He just might finish it, for instance, and then that finished product would have the stamp of approval from an artist (presumably) one is already interested in, or at least, one has heard is worth being interested in. If that artist has produced an unfinished work worth consuming, one might as well wait until he/she is dead before consumption in order to ensure that one doesn't eavesdrop on notes and ramblings when a mature work is imminent.

[Exception which proves the rule: the recent trite crap "completion" of the Star Wars saga. nuff said.]

[Of course, in media other than the written word, unfinished status can be conferred by situations other than the writer/creator's death: go watch post haste if you have not already, Andrzej Żuławski's On the Silver Globe, the greatest unfinished movie of which I am aware—and be moved.]

There are, of course, famous examples here, e.g. Kafka's Amerika or Nabokov's Dying is Fun—although in both cases an ethical question arises since the respective authors requested their unfinished works destroyed upon their deaths.

In the case of David Foster Wallace's The Pale King, I know of no such request. The question does, nevertheless, arise: what legitimates publishing this unfinished work and distributing it widely?

Apparently, upon Wallace's suicide from depression, he left behind on his desk "a neat stack of manuscript, twelve chapters totaling nearly 250 pages" and "hundreds and hundreds" of additional pages and notes for the novel scattered about his office. (There was, however, no outline, or explicit description of the novel's intended structure and ordering of events / written sections.) His editor on Infinite Jest, Michael Pietsch, was tasked with assembling this chaos into something that could be published, and make money for the publisher / the estate.

Graciously, the details of these circumstances are described in an introductory editor's note.

So, when reading the book, there are many questions: is this the right order of the information? Would this chapter have even been included? In this form? Questions which, when reading a completed work, are not raised. And worries (questions / confusions / imaginations) about the structure of the work are no longer criticisms of the author (and, perhaps, only on some occasions criticisms of the editor), but rather merely circumstances under which one might imagine one's own perfect version of the work, or extrapolate its completion into the ideal work for you, the reader (even if not one that's realistic for the author to have produced, editor to have approved, etc.).

Was it right? ( . . . to publish this unfinished, to charge $27.99, etc.?) In the case of The Pale King, I know of no countervailing demands expressed by Wallace, and I emphatically agree with Pietsch's assessment that there is plenty here for the reading public to enjoy / value. (Even if there is some sense in which the dead are being taken advantage of, you, the $27.99 reader are not. I say this only a fifth of the way through the book, and already having earned back the cost through insight, amusement, and beatific and sublime experiences.)

The first chapter (only a page and a half) is almost worth the price of admission alone for sheer beauty. There are ups and downs, but chapter 9, the "author's forward" definitely confirms the value and insight of the work, no matter how disjoint, and (ultimately, despite the fact that only Wallace's name appears on the title page) collaborative the work in this form is. (Look, chapter 11 is just notes, it would not have appeared in a finished novel by Wallace. And the influence of its content on the novel would not have been felt at the precise place in the ordering in which it was placed. Pietsch knows this. But he acknowledges it and, more importantly (consequently?) you the reader know it as well: this affects your processing and interpretation of chapter 11.)

I have to admit, however, a spooky feeling, when reading passages like

. . . this right here is me as a real person, David Wallace, age forty, SS no. 975-04-2012, addressing you from my Form 8829—deductible home office at 725 Indian Hill Blvd., Claremont 91711 CA, on this fifth day of spring, 2005, to inform you of the following: All of this is true. This book is really true.

Of course, even in this "autobiographical" section, there are deliberate obfuscations and falsities. But from the style, from the circumstances, we know that one day Wallace sat down and wrote these words, and he wrote them from a perspective in which the novel was finished, and published, and it had only taken 3 years to write. We know that he put himself in that frame of mind, and "talked" to the potential reader. But within 3 years he had become so completely unable to find this frame of mind in which the novel was done again that he committed suicide.

This is a man talking directly to you, the reader, from beyond the grave, yet it was not him who decided that you would hear him, but his estate and publisher and editor. Again, not that that's wrong (this is the start of the aforementioned chapter 9, well worth the price of the book alone in terms of insight and depth), but that it's certainly spooky. And you allow yourself to imagine Wallace cutting it, or rephrasing it, or (more likely, my imagination), dropping the conceit that the work is real, and introducing the (admittedly, startlingly profound) discussion of the history and nature of American taxation into it in a more organic way. To imagine that this was an exercise in the style of his popular nonfiction essays to bring together information that ultimately would be more effectively (?) conveyed through fiction.

But then that's just my fantasy of David Foster Wallace, and what he might have done. But to even take the first tentative steps on this staircase, to even find a direction in which to look, is not only worthwhile, but strangely creative as a reading experience.

how fake? / why fake?

Offensive but catchy frat-rap sensation 3OH!3 have released a "documentary" to go along with their most recent album.



Now, anyone who has ever tried to make a documentary before (or any keen observer) can instantly tell that these scenes are staged. On the other hand, some of the drama depicted is relatively plausible given the band's stage in their careers.

For instance, fans have already complained about the apparent switch to a more pop-friendly sound aimed at reproducing past hit success, rather then the result of direct inspiration. And a decision to do such is depicted at the start of this "documentary." Even though the idea comes from a supposed record exec, the 3OH!3 boys are clearly portrayed as desirous of following his advice.

So, one question to ask of the "documentary" is how fake? (Although, embarrassingly, it seems a question which doesn't even occur to many of 3OH!3's fans.)

The most interesting question here though is why fake? 3OH!3's absurd posturing and excessively misogynistic / materialistic lyrics leave one wondering just how sincere the band is in these sentiments, and just how much is a carefully constructed ironic artifice. The decision to stage a "documentary" confirms the careful construction of the 3OH!3 image, but it does not reveal what exactly is being hidden. Was it necessary to fake these scenes because the truth is far more mundane: that the album and its lyrical excesses are simply a subterfuge constructed by subtle and acute businessmen? Or were they necessary to conceal a dark sincerity in the band's rank materialism and abject objectification of women?

Take the opening scene with the executive, for example - are 3OH!3 laughingly revealing a frustrating pressure which helped shaped the album? Or concealing their own cynical machinations?

Of course, a "real" documentary would have shed light onto this puzzling dilemma. The "documentary" on offer, however, merely confirms the worst of both interpretations: on the one hand, the boys' lifestyle can't be anywhere near as frat-party excessive as they portray it in their lyrics (and some of the staged scenes), or else they would a) be unwilling to take time out for such elaborate acting / memorization / staging exercises, and b) produce an even more compelling effect by depicting the actualities of their excess anyway. On the other hand, the fact that so much effort went into such a thing certainly confirms their intention, self-awareness, and complicity in their fabricated image.

the documentarian

When a filmmaker has no budget for actors, no imagination for a script, and no guile for special effects, we call him a documentarian. He is reduced to turning his camera upon the "blooming, buzzing confusion" that surrounds him and using these chaotic events as grist for his mill. Luckily, the documentarian too has the opportunity to create. He exercises first the creative power of omission, for with his tiny lens and four-cornered frame he captures only a single perspective on an event. By selecting one perspective amongst a continuum of such possible, the documentarian squashes the subtlety and complexity of any moment into a single, simple interpretation. Later, in the darkness of his hovel, the documentarian strings these moments together into a narrative. And here again, there is room for creativity, for some moments are omitted and others rearranged, until a vast complexity has been whittled down to a simple, linear story. Modern heir to the alchemical tradition, the documentarian has performed a mystic transformation: he has made of reality, a fiction.