Melusine

I recently turned in a major research paper (which will ultimately become the first chapter of my thesis) so I have a bit of a breathing space. (For two weeks until the whole reading-paper-reading-paper stuff starts up again.) In that breathing space, I read the book Melusine by Sarah Monette.

And I liked it. It is definitely book one of A SERIES. At least, it had better be considering how many threads she left hanging. It is a rather uneasy book; the first part of the book is extraordinarily well-crafted; the middle of the book wavers about until it rushes, discarding characters left and right, to the end.

The book is told in alternating first-person: Felix (a wizard with a history in the bad part of town) and Mildmay (the principle narrator; a thug from the bad part of town). Felix is off his head for most of the book, and the off-the-head scenes are believable. Felix is also carrying a lot of mental baggage, which is also believable. (And evocative; the writing is good.) That said, Mildmay has the far stronger voice in terms of character. When he talks about Felix, Felix's character also comes clearer. I think the writer was right to keep both narrators, but the difference in strength adds to the uneven feel to the book.

Around the middle of the book about five story strands are added and never finished. Since the book is 421 pages long, I don't see that any of them were necessary unless they were for book 2 (and 3 and 4); if so, I wish some kind of acknowledgement had been made at the end of the book. "Set-up and pay-off" my playwriting professor used to say, and even if payoff isn't going to come for several books, I should at least know that it is still in the cards. We never even learn what the bad guy's motive is.

Nevertheless, I approve of this book being published despite its unevenness because the set-up is so good. It's world fantasy (or, which is rather more popular, city fantasy) where the reader is thrust into a fully-developed, complex civilization on page one. Monette uses the usual world/city fantasy elements (although there are no elves, thankfully; not that I mind elves, but I get tired of the constant array of man-elf-dwarf, etc. This is mostly just a bunch of people). Monette's ability is not that she has created something totally new (check out Ellen Kushner's Swordspoint and C.J. Cherryh's Angel With the Sword) but that the reader believes in the world. Which I don't always. But I believe in this one.

And the characters are more than a little appealing. I'm a big fan of honorable-men- supporting-each-other-through-thick-and-thin fiction. I like Prison Break even though I don't really like the morality at work (I'm not sure one person's life is worth all the deaths and grief and anguish and taxpayer's money that Michael Schofield is expending. The only thing that keeps it working is that Schofield obviously didn't anticipate the problems that have occurred, and now he is in too deep. On the same note, one reason Batman is a preferable hero to so many others is the underlying acknowledgment that he is a vigilante and that there are problems attending such a stance.) In any case, Melusine comes up trumps in this area, and they are some nice subtleties of characterization . . . that are also left hanging; but, hey, at least they are there.

CATEGORY: BOOKS

Streamlining History

I'm sitting in class--any class--and a topic or text is introduced. Usually a text. This text will eventually become the spring-board for the day's discussion. It happens in this way: judgment is passed of the author or of the text. The judgment is the judgment of partially informed grad students who are reacting to the text from within their own personal ethos (as Wayne Booth would say), which is very normal.

At some point, and sometimes I can see it happen and sometimes not, that judgment gets attached to the text itself or, more likely, to the author's motivations. Which is unfair, if understandable. I don't like it, but I don't get hot under the collar until the author's motivations (which are, remember, actually a constructed judgment) are extrapolated to form a theory of effect and causation. A perfectly legitimate judgment has been formalized into a completely imaginary construction of a historical event or person.

From the deconstructionalist point of view, this is all okay. Language is subjective anyway so why shouldn't we develop imaginary theories based on imaginary motivations that are linked to our own personal judgments? No problem at all, so long as you don't confuse the three things. Which is what ends up happening. The class' theoretical construction (based on theoretical motivations based on personal judgment) does not mean that we have gotten any closer to understanding what Harriet Beecher Stowe or the Purtians or Noah Webster or the colonial revivialists were really like. The discussion we are having is not about them, it is about us. This is a modern discussion by modern people who are using historical personages to further their modern opinions and modernized ideologies.

It's basically an effort to avoid deconstructionalism. Frankly, finding boxes within boxes can get a bit dull after awhile; most academics don't like to go too far down that path. Which is fine with me. But they want to have it both ways: the ability to deconstruct a historical personage as if language is a non-definite, exploitable (for the business of creating theories) entity as well as the desire to have said deconstruction taken as something close to reality. Which it isn't. If you accept reality. If you don't, your position here won't make any difference anyway.

Which doesn't mean that authors don't intend things. Stowe did intend to improve women's position in the home by improving the image of the house and housework. She says so. But it doesn't then derive that Stowe's intent is the same of our judgment of that intent. Or that any kind of linear cause and effect can be derived from our judgment of that intent with any degree of success.

When it comes down to it, it's this tiresome business of streamlining everything, creating literal, one-way effects from author to ideology to long-term consequences of that ideology. Which seems sloppy to me, oddly enough. I am, rather naively, unendingly surprised at the academic world's ability to dissociate itself from what it is doing. I've sat in several classes where the students and teachers have criticized (mocked) groups or political parties or people (or high school teachers) who believe in "original intent," a reality at the back of all the facts and texts and deconstructions: oh, they are sooooo gullible, hee hee hee. And I've looked around the class and thought, "You've paid $700 to sit in a hot, dusty room with 15 other people forcing texts and historical personages into steamlined, linear, motivation-to-ideology-to-theory-to-causation one-size-fits-all realities, and you think other people are gullible?" At least, I know I'm crazy.

But it makes me tired.

I have, consequently, taken refuge in reader-response theory, not because I think it doesn't contain its own amounts of silliness but because, within the academic world, it's the only legitimate defense available to this deconstructionalism-without-deconstructionalism approach. If I say, "Texts don't have that much influence," I'll be dismissed as reactionary and gullible. If I say, "Ah, yes, but as a reader deciphers a text, the text undergoes a process of filtering, unconscious association and communal application which is further influenced by the reader's character and experience" (which is pure Holland, by the way), I have stumbled on an accidental truth (it's all very religious, which is even more tiresome, since I already have a religion). The only difference then lies in my personal belief that the reader's experience does in fact matter more than the social implications of the text. Which is a fairly big difference. I believe the reader is more pro-actively invested in taking what he/she wants out of the text than in being influenced by that text. Which means, if I'm right, that you can't blame the connection of women with the home all on Stowe (or writers like her), you have to accept that maybe people actually want to believe that particular idea and that the "want" stems from something other than cultural influence. Which in my program is like trying to argue in favor of extraterrestrial lifeforms or the worthwhileness of television. You just don't go there. (Or argue for the meritoriousness of Christianity--you REALLY don't go there. We're talking Grinch, ten-foot pole territory.)

Which means I spend a lot of time writing papers where I try not to go there. The result is papers that don't really say anything since I'm not going to say all that garbage about texts being tied to ideologies because, reader-response or not, I think it's pure fantasy, and I refuse to make up pure fantasies about dead people and then pretend that that's not what I'm going. Which is why I prefer to write fiction. It's just more fair.

CATEGORY: HISTORY & TEACHING

Odds & Ends

So CSI: Las Vegas is having a weird start to their season. I can't figure out if they are deliberately extolling the pointless-crime theme or if it is just lame writing. Whatever, I like my television to have a point.

I'm saddened that I can't watch Wednesday night's Criminal Minds. Mandy Patinkin! And the guy from Dharma & Greg! But I have class that night. I saw the first episode and liked it. Maybe this summer . . .

I have a theory that you can always tell when an actor/actress has kids, even if they are trying to play someone who is bad with kids. So kudos to Tony Shalhoub in "Mr Monk and the Kid" for believably playing someone who is unaccustomed to children. (Shalhoub has two kids.) Keep your eye on Hugh Laurie. He has three kids himself, but is supposed to be a kid-less misanthrope. I bet he gives himself away. This is why Hugh Grant is so good. He really is lousy with kids.

Speaking of Monk, isn't Ted Levine sexy?!

I watched Commander-in-Chief again. It's fun. But she's got to stop saving the world. The ambiguous Donald Sutherland character is carrying all the drama right now.

I confess to a sneaking liking for My Wife and Kids. It's a kind of Home Improvement, only more conservative (in terms of husband and wife roles). The show even has a "Wilson," the genius child from next door who doles out advice.

I prophecy that Out of Practice will last but Twins won't. After seeing the third Bones, it has a good chance of lasting (Boreanaz saying, "This is my space; that is your's. This is all mine," was well-done comedy. The man has talent; it just needs to be used right.) Good replacement casting on NCIS. Cold Case appears to have, thankfully, dumped the soap opera line, at least temporarily. (It's a very romantic show, though.) Ghost Whisperer will probably last but not because it deserves to. Unfortunately, despite the awesome Brent Spiner, I can't get into Threshold. How Numbers held out is beyond me.

Watched a brief scene of Boston Legal. I must say that Spader and Shatner are hilarious together: like watching two wits from a Restoration comedy. By the way, everyone on that show looks related. Everyone.

I get all sociological: I've wondered if the new influx of brother shows is a way of casting two males leads without having to imply a homosexual relationship. Ah, the good old days of Holmes and Watson, Kirk and Spock. On the other hand, maybe it is a way to imply a loving relationship between two unrelated actors who are playing related characters--the network can play up the homeoeroticism without having to worry about political correctness (in either direction).

You can tell I've been a grad student too long. Speaking of which, my professors still want me to extend ideological theories for more than one paragraph. *Sigh.*

CATEGORY: TELEVISION

Commander-in-Chief: Yes, I Watched It

I watched Commander-in-Chief Saturday night. It's the new ABC show starring Geena Davis as the United States V.P. who is catapulted into the President's seat when the top dog snuffs it. The idea, I think, is that she's a woman, and she's brilliant, yadda yadda, but she wasn't seeking power.

Here's the good stuff:

I like Geena Davis.
I adore Donald Sutherland (talk about scene chewing) who looks like becoming, I can only hope, Mr. Giles to Davis' Buffy.
Geena Davis' character is an independent.
Geena Davis' character is believably tough.

Here are the problems:

The movie opens with the V.P. being fetched out of an assembly. I've said it before (maybe not on this site), I'll say it again. It may or may not have been a slam at Bush (those 7 minutes in the classroom), but I think walking out of an assembly while kiddies are still singing is just rude. I don't care how big and powerful and important you are. It's rude. The guy with the brain clot back home still HAS the brain clot. The bad stuff isn't going to stop just because you get up and walk out, all important-like.

There's some kind of weird, ritualistic idea going on here: that if the politician would only react in 10 minutes, no 5, no 3, no 1, no 20 seconds, the terrorist-driven planes would disappear and the waves would wash back into the Gulf and the brain clot would dissipate even as we are speaking. Sure. Yeah. Right. Give me a break. Politicians, get over yourselves. Silly people who criticize politicians for things like sitting in a classroom for x minutes (and who expect politicians to be all-seeing, all-knowing, and omnipotent), get over your superstitions already. Presidents aren't magic. It's not Merlin to the rescue. It's a guy in a suit who works alongside other people in suits who rely on information from other people in suits who think that other people in suits know what they are doing even if they don't.

Problem 2: I don't think scaring an ambassador from a foreign country into complying with your wishes is terribly smart. It works on television, sure, but in real life . . . eh. Foreign affairs aren't that easy. I thought it would have been much more interesting if the scare tactic had backfired, and the new President would have had to make the hard decision of whether or not to go to war over a diplomatic incident. There's a mighty large group of people out there who really do believe that this kind of grandstanding works--that you don't have to go to war and lose lives and make the tough choices in order to win, you can just play mind games and make great speeches. But it doesn't work like that in the real world.

There's a Star Trek: Next Generation episode that illustrates this. Now, Star Trek: New Generation is not known for its profound plotting. Voyager gets the closest to combining the adventure story aspect of Next Generation with the no-easy-solutions of the socio-political Deep Space Nine. (Although Voyager usually gives up about ten minutes to the end and just winds everything up with a sudden plot twist.) But there is this Next Generation episode where Picard has been sent into Cardassian territory to bring back a rogue Federation captain who is blowing up Cardassian outposts. And Picard has to invite on board a bunch of Cardassians, one of whom is played by the same actor who ended up playing Gul Dukat, which means that he is really, really good at playing an ambiguous slimeball.

The Federation has informed Picard that they can't afford a war. He has to bring the rogue back. And he does, and in the process, he has to make some really difficult choices. And it turns out that, what do you know, the Cardassians are re-arming. But there isn't anything anybody can do about it. Picard warns the Gul Dukat character, and it's an effective scene, but you know and Picard knows and the Cardassians know that it doesn't make any difference. And if you are familiar with Star Trek, you know this is the beginning of the Marquis, where Federation members will go rogue to fight the encroaching Cardassians because the Federation itself can't afford to start another war and are too fine-spread anyway.

And the uncertainty is allowed to stand at the end of the episode (and you get to hear Colm Meaney sing an Irish song). It really is one of their most effective episodes.

The British do this sort of thing even better. Yes, Prime Minister works because the Prime Minister never wins. Well, occasionally. Sort of. But never really. And it isn't just because of Humphrey, the civil servant. It's because, well, it's government. Governments don't fix things, hey, presto fashion. It's not that easy, first of all. And it's a bureaucracy, second of all.

Which is why people who get excited about having a "smart" president ("He's so smart; he really thinks about stuff!") are kind of naive, me thinks. I always thought Kerry was a bit of an idiot, personally, but even if I hadn't, I wouldn't have been sold on the idea that "smartness" equals a peaceful, prosperous nation. What people who want "smart" presidents are thinking is that smart presidents will be able to do all these clever, grandstanding things (like on Commander-in-Chief) and fix stuff. But in the real world, people aren't impressed by articulate speeches and don't care much for someone else's logic and aren't going to stop to be managed or manipulated or "understood" in their geo-social-political context, etc. They just do what they want to do, and they don't always react along given "smart" lines.

Cunning, now, I don't mind cunning.

Hopefully, for the sake of Commander-in-Chief, the writers will realize this. Although, I'm not sure it matters. Maybe, Americans want their political fictions to be fantasy.

CATEGORY: TV