Friday, December 14, 2012

As I was having lunch in the cafeteria today, I was struck by the urge to pray. Now I know why.

In Defense of Hate Disguise

"It is worth remarking as an extremely fine touch in the picture of Bottom that his literary taste is almost everywhere concerned with sound rather than sense. He begins the rehearsal with a boisterous readiness, “Thisby, the flowers of odious savours sweete.” “Odours, odours,” says Quince, in remonstrance, and the word is accepted in accordance with the cold and heavy rules which require an element of meaning in a poetical passage. But “Thisby, the flowers of odious savours sweete”, Bottom’s version, is an immeasurably finer and more resonant line. The “i” which he inserts is an inspiration of metricism."
- G.K. Chesterton, "A Midsummer Night's Dream" (essay)

I was always going to give my habitual heroine a minimum of two fellow-passengers on the Gua Gua, and to make them coworkers came naturally after that. The two of them have a simple job, to sell stuff, but it's not simple stuff that they're selling--it's the concentrated essence of the seasons, but it looks a lot like ice cream and, when you get right down to it, that's all it probably is.

I made one of the two a poet as an excuse to throw all sorts of little songs and jingles into the text. The other fellow was a bit more difficult, and I didn't have a name for him until he'd been around three chapters or so, with me growing more fond of him every minute. Then, on a whim, I stuck him with the unusual monicker of "Hate Disguise"--a name, as a bemused Renee puts it, which is "part English-dubbed anime villain and part sneeze."

It's a misnomer, of course. Hate, while not bereft of bitterness, is a sort of gruff, warm, mopey fellow. Any anger his soul may possess is turned inward--as Shakespeare worded it in As You Like It, "I will chide no breather in the world but myself, against whom I know most faults." So why go with Hate Disguise? Well, the name occurred to me and it just sounded right, I can't say it any way else. The meaning was entirely wrong for the character, but what if you didn't know the language? Then "Hate Disguise" would sound like a big, warm, generous name, a name for a man who smokes cigars and then feels guilty over it, not on account of his own lungs but because he's afraid that his friends Renee Rant and Donovan Din might get a dose of secondhand smoke. That kind of guy. I read a play by Clifford Bax, The Poetasters of Ispahan, where one of the titular lyricists is looking for a decent rhyme: "What though the sense be thin?" he says. "Sound is the soul of song." (I might add that the word "poetaster", which means nothing more than "bad poet", sounds fantastic; I'd crown myself with that word over a forest full of laurel wreaths.)

So in the story Hate has some kind of a normal name before Donovan Din the poet inflicts the flagrant "Hate Disguise" on him. It's a little comment about poetic thinking and how sometimes poets make the sounds matter more than the meaning. Still, I can't help but wonder uneasily how readers will react to him, since these days the word "hate" carries such a strong connotation that it can't be regarded as simple nonsense. All the time, we hear about "hate speech," "hate crime"--things that are supposed to crush and kill the spirits of our fellow men. And people will have a hard time trusting Hate, and how much you wanna bet that my editors (if I'm ever lucky enough to have such things) force me to change his name? I wouldn't exactly blame them, but I'd have a hard time prying the name from the identity. He just is Hate, and it can't be helped; don't hate on Hate Disguise. He surprised me by turning up in a chapter with the name attached to him, and ever since then, it's just been like that.

To me, that's the thing that fascinates about Hate--the fact that he keeps turning out not like I planned him to. He was going to be a madman. Then he was going to be a smooth talker, absurdly comfortable in his skin. Then he turned out to be a daydreamy, foggy sort with an inferiority complex. But I tried to make his tongue cease to be sharp, in order to better suit this characterization, and it never did. Like many a foggy daydreamer, he's every bit as clever as his friend of the sharp focus. And you know what? I shouldn't jinx the boy by writing all of this out as if it's finality. Because I'm going to bet you that Hate's just gonna keep on evolving. I'll stay the course, and we'll see what happens.

The lesson I take from this is that I shouldn't let Renee be static, either. She's a first-person narrator, and it's easy to obsess about consistency when you're writing from a single point of view, but the truth is that people aren't consistent and there's always new sides of them, and sometimes the sides conflict. I could have one person in a room and try to inform you, over the phone, who was with me, by throwing out only descriptive terms--and you'd think that I had a crowd in there. People can't be described in three words. People are crowds and should be treated as such.

One Ringo to Rule them All

One of those stories where I had to check the date to know it wasn't the April Fool's Day edition. John Lennon wanted to do a Lord of the Rings movie with the Beatles. Seriously.

I now have incredibly mixed feelings. I mean, I completely understand J.R.R. Tolkien's thinking--not wanting his artistic vision compromised by a couple of kids whom he probably considered the One Direction of his era. I would have felt the same way.

But at the same time, I don't think I'm ever going to fully forgive him for killing my chance to see Ringo Starr as Sam Gamgee. That's better than the casting in the Jackson movie.

Oh, well, at least we'll always have this. (As someone who has the scene they're doing memorized back to front, I must inform you that, contrary to what the uploader claims, George Harrison is not, in fact, cursing out some random audience member. He's actually saying "Look you," which, in Shakespearean English, is exactly the same as beginning a sentence with an impatient "Look..."

Edit: I totally should have entitled this post "Get Back, Frodo."

". . .and I've been working like a dog."

I don't write diary entries enough, or things of the sort. I've been looking at this comp assignment of mine up, down and sideways for three days now, and I can't seem to see a way to make it work.

Also, I admit, I take extended breaks to do research on The Beatles.

But what are The Beatles, really? I love their music, but that's not what's making me do all this research, because I honestly can't tell you, for instance, whether Ringo's an excellent drummer or not. (All I'm aware of is that he's my favorite, and that he would continue to be my favorite even if it turned out he didn't know which end of the drumstick to hold.) It's the drama that intrigues me; all the individual characteristics of everyone bristling against each other. Not just the Fab Four, but their wives, their managers; each a conflicting character study. I guess I'm just fascinated by plain old people.

So why don't I write about my own family more? That's the thing that's killing me. Because I don't want to be a transcriber. I did that, when I was younger; tried to write down conversations as they came. All I got were hurt fingers. Either I want to write down everything, or I shut down and I don't write anything at all. I should be more of an open book. Starting…now.

Anyway, yesterday Clair and I made some tea and watched A Hard Day's Night. Great movie, and fascinating because back then people had a completely different concept of the "vehicle for hot young stars" film. It's a comedy, and it's a British comedy, which means the humor is all slap and bite and disjointed bits of oddness. From what I've read about John Lennon, that sort of thing suited him just fine; he's utterly believable as the guy who responds to an older man's rebuke by leaning in and saying snidely, "Give us a kiss." I assume that the screenwriter was capitalizing on the Beatle's popularity with the younger generation by pitting them against their elders, among which he himself numbered one.This dynamic gets an interesting reversal in the film's rather vestigial plot, which sees Paul looking after his "grandfather"--a "clean"-looking old fellow with a sneer that could break glass, who defies his appearance by repeatedly running off to try and meet women.

Oddly enough, Paul McCartney--he of the charming face and the left-handed bass--puts up a minimal presence even under these circumstances, and the other three Beatles steal his show. John, always the character, is just as much at home dunking toy boats in a bathtub as he is sassing his elders (in the same scene, even), while George, the quiet one, manages to nearly equal John's sarcasm with a few well-placed eyebrows and some laconic use of Liverpool slang (what does he think of a new line of shirts they've asked him to advertise? "Grotty!")

But it's Ringo Starr who stands out for his portrayal as the sad-sack of the group, by turns embittered and resigned, with an abrupt laugh that serves him equally well as he a) makes a lame joke that his bandmates politely ignore and b) gets asked a standard "girlfriend" question by an interviewer (with the implication apparently being, "Girlfriend? Me?") Despite receiving--in a touch taken right from the band's real-life experience in America--more fanmail than the others, he refuses to believe that any of the screaming girls who pursue his buddies might harbor an interest in him. When a young lady in a train car beckons, he first looks dumbfounded and then gestures at George, as if to say, "Nah, you must be looking for him." It's interesting to see that the standard "Ringo as the expendable Beatle" joke isn't some recent development, but actually a carry-over from the band's early days, quite possibly originated by Ringo himself. It should be noted that the real-life Ringo, like his counterpart in the film, has been alternately encouraging and fighting against this perception for years.

However, these observations must be put to a halt, as I'm unfortunately not supposed to be writing an essay about Ringo Starr. I'm supposed to be writing about education, and I can't see my way around it.

In Defense of Knockoffs

Shortly after I posted my assessment of the show Elementary, Clair gave it a look and spent the rest of the day seething with righteous anger. Unlike me, she wasn't looking hard for something to like, and, also unlike me, she's a diehard fan of Sherlock. And truly, I admit, Elementary is forgettable even as ordinary crime shows go and bears little relationship to its supposed source material. If I watch the next episode, I'll do so with a tepid eye.

But I just have this weird, writerly fascination with knockoffs.

As an author, I forbid myself to write a knockoff. If I reach for something remotely similar to something else, this little voice inside me goes, "Uh-uh-uh, don't touch that dial." But I love looking at other people's. I wade through the darkest marshes of the fanfiction world. When I like something I take a look at every incarnation available.

Knockoff items, too, I love. I used to own a Winnie the Pooh notepad bearing the legend (all in lowercase, no punctuation), "felicity is possess your friendship i cant forget your lovely smile and beautiful eyes". Fairly certain Disney didn't sanction that one, but it's way superior, with that strange word "felicity", to all those misattributed Pooh quotes you see floating around. 

Maybe it's the word "knockoff" that I like. It's too bad I don't let myself write knockoffs. If I'd been on the writing staff of Elementary, I feel that I would have made magic.

Alicia in Terra Mirabili

As if the Lewis Carroll classic Alice's Adventures in Wonderland were not strange enough already, I just found the whole thing translated into Latin. Carroll, a college professor at a time when Latin was a staple of schoolboy knowledge, would certainly have approved.

Like Alice encountering Jabberwocky for the first time, I don't completely understand it, but I'm charmed by what I do understand. In particular, the translator's take on "The Mouse's Tale" (you know, the poem shaped like a mouse's tail--"Fury said to a mouse / That he met in the house...") can only be explained by a stroke of genius. Besides the fact that the English rhyme is transformed into a flawless Roman jingle, the mouse's canine nemesis is re-christened Nero.

Behold an Israelite in whom there is no guile

I'm an innocent. In my online wanderings I used to find these essays all the time, and I guess I assumed, if I assumed anything, that some proud college student put them up for all to read. Only now am I finding out that they're free essays used for cheating. And, having been read the riot act in my composition class, I now believe that those who cheat are infinitely more innocent than I am. After every teacher has made you aware of the plagiarism checker at Turnitin.com, it seems almost a lovable quality in someone to cheat. Such a person cheerfully believes that he's the most trenchant force in his world, refusing to acknowledge that there are those who would inquire into his methods. If the world were made up only of cheating students and suspicious teachers, it would be a refreshing place.

Unfortunately, there are also people like me in the world, possessing neither suspicion nor villainy, and so the world plods the path to destruction. We're not so bad, we innocents, but we're doing murder on the balance.