Truth Comes In Blows

Where The Wild Things Are - a film review

2009-11-11T22:15:00.005-07:00

(There are Spoilers ahead, of course. And I apologize for the long windedness. The Cliff’s Notes version of this review is that overall, for me, the film was only pretty good, though extremely beautiful to look at. There. You can move your Reader along now.)

Christy and I finally got to go see Where The Wild Things Are a few weeks ago. We were pretty excited about it. How could you not be with that trailer? The Arcade Fire song, Wake Up, which is featured in the preview quickly became one of my favorite songs when it was released years ago and, despite being borderline melodramatic, the song captures the wistful regret of our lost inner-child. “Something filled up my heart with nothing. Someone told me not to cry. But now that I’m older my heart is colder, and I can see that it’s a lie. Children, wake up! Hold your mistake up, before they turn the summer into dust. If the children don’t grow up, our bodies get bigger but our hearts get torn up. We’re just a million little gods causing rainstorms, turning every good thing to rust. I guess we’ll just have to adjust.” See? The lyrics aren’t speaking to ten year-olds here. They are speaking to the dormant child within the adult who has forgotten how to dream and how to trust instinct and feeling. We age, we get calloused, we scab, and as a result we make the mistake of repressing the better nature of our inner-child. So, children, wake up! Hold your mistake up! Before it’s too late.

And that should have been clue number one that WTWTA was not going to be primarily a children’s movie (as it was marketed to be). We had planned to take our three-year-old, and after reading one review decided against it (thankfully). Visually the film is amazing. Spike Jonze gets such unique imagery in all his work and there are no false steps here in terms of cinematography (like I’m an expert, right?). The soundtrack, by Karen O, is marvelous, including a particularly touching rendition of the Daniel Johnston tune, "Worried Shoes." Spot on voice work from every single one of the Wild Things (James Gandolfini, Catherine O’Hara, Forrest Whittaker, Lauren Ambrose, Chris Cooper, Paul Dano). All nail it perfectly. Max himself (played by namesake Max Records) did a superb acting job as well. Catherine Keener is golden in her role, and for me her interactions with Max were so meaningful they overshadowed every other relationship in the film. There is one little moment in particular when Max is camped out on his back underneath his Mom’s desk at home. She is making phone calls and by all accounts seems to be an expert at juggling both motherly and professional duties. Max isn’t begging for her attention at this point, but he wants it. He reaches over to her foot and tenderly tugs on the toe of her nylon and they exchange this mother-son look that carries all the humanity you might ever hope to catch on film. Yet in the end the film lacked enough of these moments, and it’s been hard to put my finger on exactly why.

I liked the film, but I expected to love it, and I did not love it. The film’s setup was terrific. From the opening scene until Max gets to where the wild things are (and even for a little while afterwards) the film is strong. But then I went over some emotional drop off, and couldn't ever quite return. My best guess is that the writing was a bit too cryptic, and some of the metaphor was a bit too heavy handed. Christy told me on the way home (and I agree with her) that she couldn’t stop asking herself “What does that symbolize?” which ultimately became distracting. On NPR Spike Jonze mentioned that every one of the Wild Things represented an emotion. Emotions, especially for kids, are tricky to deal with and a lot of my frustration in the movie stemmed from seeing Max deal with his emotions just as one might expect—like a child. Symbolically, his relationships with these wild emotions make sense, but the balancing act on screen doesn’t play out so graceful (and no doubt certainly wasn’t meant to, yet that doesn’t invalidate my frustration). The owls “Bob and Terry” are also a bit of a mystery. My guess is that they were a clunky similitude of the real life relationships that Max doesn’t understand, or perhaps doesn’t want to understand (ie: his mother’s boyfriend, bosses, and his sister’s friends). The thrust of the middle section of the movie deals with Max's efforts in this dream, wherein he is a king with the ability to do whatever he wants, to construct (literally) a perfect world. The old Utopia concept. But he ultimately fails, and after all hell breaks loose with the Wild Things he comes to the very real-life conclusion that no such world is possible. It is the other side of the “Wake Up” dichotomy -- that in our inevitable coming-of-age we wake up to the fact that life is hard, and death is real, and there are lots of hard questions and nauseatingly few easy answers. Interestingly enough, when Max discovers this he is not only better equipped to deal with his “real world” but he actually longs to go back. I felt that the ending, much like the beginning, was strong.

My little 3 year old, Gus, loves the book. When we read it together, there are certain phrases that I’m allowed to say, and certain phrases that only he is allowed to say. When Max is being sassy with his mom he lays down a threat, “I’ll eat you up”. Gus delivers the line with sinister eyebrows and a smile. Later on we get to my favorite, and most telling moment in our little exchange. Max’s reign as king has come to and end and it is time for him to go. His threat from the beginning of the book now morphs into an expression of compassion and longing. I let it out like a sad wild thing, “Please don’t go, we’ll eat you up, we love you so”. And Gus delivers Max’s reply with a curt, matter-of-fact, and almost hopeful, “No.”

Kids are resilient and adaptable (“I guess we’ll just have to adjust”). They need to be loved like all the world, and it should be shown and expressed often. But they don’t need to be pandered to. And adults certainly don’t either. WTWTA, despite its hangups, does not do that.

Let The Wild Rumpus Start

2009-08-19T23:49:00.002-06:00

I'm so excited for this film. I love this book. I love Spike Jonze. And in some beautiful way the trailers for this film give me more faith in humanity. All you artists that are out there creating, and being active, and peeling off the scales from our eyes, thank you. Isn't this life amazing?

Slamming Open The Door

2009-08-06T15:29:00.008-06:00

First of all, many thanks to Melanie for directing me to this amazing, heartbreaking peice of art.

From NPR:

Poet Kathleen Sheeder Bonanno's new collection of poems, Slamming Open the
Door, documents the aftermath of the murder of her daughter Leidy Bonanno.
Leidy was found dead in her apartment in 2003, strangled with a telephone
cord by an ex-boyfriend. She had recently graduated from nursing school.
Two of the book's poems have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and poet
Sharon Olds calls the work "a gift of power, truth, rage, and beauty."

Do yourself a huge favor and click here to listen to the Fresh Air interview and read some of the collection's poems.

Death Barged In

In his Russian greatcoat,
slamming open the door

with an unpardonable bang,

and he has been here ever since.

He changes everything,

rearranges the furniture,

his hand hovers by the phone;

he will answer now, he says;

he will be the answer.

Tonight he sits down to dinner

at the head of the table

as we eat, mute;

later, he climbs into bed

between us.

Even as I sit here,

he stands behind me

clamping two

colossal hands on my shoulders

and bends down

and whispers to my neck:

From now on,

you write about me.

Personal Motto

2009-08-05T15:33:00.004-06:00

I won't tell you how I got there, but Google landed me on a wiki article detailing some very useful instructions on how to choose a "personal motto". I found the idea very fascinating. Here you go:

Step 1. Decide what kind of person you are. Your motto should have something to do about what you like to do, or enjoy being a part of.

Step 2. Choose a motto that no one else has! It is important that no one else has the same motto, do not choose theirs, and do not tell them yours, until you have it.

Step 3. Don't over-use your motto. You don't want to walk up to someone and just blurt out your motto. It's all about having one when the time is right!

Step 4. Add your motto to the bottom of your emails as a daily reminder.

Brilliant! Sure, step 2 contradicts itself (can't tell it if I don't have it). And nevermind that step 3 (which is completely awesome) contradicts step 4. And don't worry that it isn't very clear why one would need a personal motto in the first place, or in what circumstance it would be "right" to reveal that motto (since this is what it's all about). I'm thinking I should get one.

I know I'm breaking the secrecy implied in step 2, but...any ideas?

Cass McCombs on Job Satisfaction

2009-07-16T22:04:00.004-06:00

There is work. There is play. There is play that is work, and play that is play. And work that is work, and in only one of these lies happiness.

Cass McCombs: The Executioner's Song

Advertising Gone Bad

2009-07-10T10:15:00.006-06:00

I don't know what it is about a baby gleefully holding a razor to his (or her?) face that makes me want to go out and buy the new Gillette Fusion. But it does.

Check out the 15 Creepiest Vintage Ads of All Time.

R.I.P. McNamara

2009-07-06T22:26:00.003-06:00

Today Robert McNamara died. Read about his fascinating life in this NYT obit. Several years ago Errol Morris filmed one of my favorite documentaries of all time on McNamara's life, The Fog of War.

Two Weeks

2009-07-02T09:55:00.000-06:00

This is one of the best songs I've heard this year. The drumming is nails.

Read This Poem. Now.

2009-06-30T12:36:00.004-06:00

Joe Plicka (poet, teacher, and friend), has published a beautiful poem with Anti-Poetry. To read it click here. He visits this site from time to time, so leave a comment and tell him he's crazy and/or brilliant.

Dancing on Lime Green

2009-06-26T11:14:00.005-06:00

I grew up in rural Idaho with no MTV and very little pop music in the home. What I got came from Saturday morning radio (Casey Kasem’s Top 40) and my older brother and sister (AC/DC, Ratt, Def Leppard, etc.) It seems I was born with a fascination for pop music that has never quite left me (as you can plainly read). One of my earliest memories, and most certainly my earliest musical memory, is from about the time I was in Kindergarten. My oldest sister Alison came home one night, having borrowed a record from her friend. She went into our front room and put the vinyl on the turntable and let it spin. I spent the remainder of the entire evening dancing around on our shaggy green carpet to “Beat It”, “Billy Jean”, and “Thriller”. I’ve always appreciated Michael Jackson as an artist. There is a lot that can be said about him, great and terrible. But I’ll always remember green shag carpet and Eddie Van Halen’s unmistakable guitar in “Beat It”, driving a five year old boy mad with joy.

What are your earliest musical memories?

Lynchian

2009-06-25T15:30:00.002-06:00

What is David Lynch up to these days besides making really weird films, you ask? Well, let me tell you. He's up to Interview Project. Over the course of a twenty thousand mile road trip his crew would stop at random and talk to the men and women of this great nation. There is a fascinating humanity on display in these vignettes (uploaded for your viewing pleasure at the rate of one per day. I suppose any life is worth considering for at least that long).

Gus and Milo

2009-06-24T16:53:00.004-06:00

Christy and I have two fine boys. See them here through the talented, generous, friendly, artistic, focused-despite-the-unchecked-rowdiness-of-my-children, lens of Lacy Jane.

Discovery

2009-06-23T15:24:00.002-06:00

You may want to put this one on your calendar for July 7th. The album is called "LP" (how clever!). Discovery is a two man electronic side project, Rostam Batmanglij of Vampire Weekend and Wes Miles of Ra Ra Riot.

Discovery: So Insane

In Memory

2009-06-15T15:40:00.005-06:00

My Grandma, Beth Reynolds Blake

1916 - 2009

"Late Fragment"

And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.

-Raymond Carver

(see also)

The Place You Last Knew Rest

2009-06-11T11:04:00.011-06:00

As far as poetry in song goes, there is one album this year that is going places others are not, and that is Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle by Bill Callahan. His almost stoic vocal delivery was somewhat lost on me at first, but after spending an hour with him I see it now. Behold:

Too many birds in one tree. Too many birds in one tree, And the sky is full of black and screaming leaves; the sky is full of black and screaming. And one more bird, then one more bird. And one last bird. And another. One last black bird without a place to land. One last black bird without a place to be turns around in hopes to find the place it last knew rest. O black bird, over black rain burn. This is not where you last knew rest. You fly all night to sleep on stone. The heartless rest that in the morn will be gone. You fly all night to sleep on stone, to return to the tree with too many birds. If. If you. If you could. If you could only. If you could only stop. If you could only stop your. If you could only stop your heart. If you could only stop your heart beat. If you could only stop your heart beat for. If you could only stop your heart beat for one heart. If you could only stop your heart beat for one heart beat.

Bill Callahan - Too Many Birds

Updated: mp3 via Unnecessary Umlaut

Crazy On You

2009-06-03T11:17:00.003-06:00

Shara Worden has a mean set of pipes. She's such a spritely little thing outside that voice, and is now sporting an athletic looking (in a 70's sort of way) bob a la Karen O. I met her several years ago, before I knew who she was, as one of the Illinoisemakers. A fine person I must say, and I wish o wish that I loved her My Brightest Diamond stuff more, but I must confess I think it is just interesting and okay. However, I was browsing YANP today and found this clip of her, as one of the Decemberist troubadors, absolutely slaying a cover of Heart's "Crazy On You."

This might be the most acceptable time to admit that two of my first tapes (you know it), were Heart's self titled album and Def Leppard's Hysteria. My rock roots run deep.

Also (to revisit an old post) you might want to watch her kareoke Whitney Houston's untouchable "I Will Always Love You". We've seen American Idol hopefuls butcher it year after year. This should put a smile on your face.

Five Tracks

2009-06-01T16:32:00.004-06:00

Here are five songs that have made me extremely happy to be a rabid fan of pop music in 2009.

Animal Collective: Bluish
Phoenix: 1901
Bowerbirds: Northern Lights
AutoKratz: Once More (Yusek Remix)
Tiny Vipers: Dreamers

The Road

2009-05-16T23:28:00.005-06:00

One of the great novels of the decade, The Road by Cormac McCarthy, was recently adapted for film. It's actually been in the can for a while but has been sitting on the shelf for various reasons. When the project was announced I was immediately worried that Hollywood would hack it up into little pieces and sell it as some awful cousin to I Am Legend. But after seeing that it was going to be directed by John Hillcoat, who brilliantly directed The Proposition (one of the best movies you should never see), I had a spark of hope. This book, despite the darkness, the sadness, the unflinching portrayal of the putrid side of humanity, also increased my faith in the power of love. It didn't hurt that I read it as a brand new father. Then this weekend, the trailer came out, and I'm disappointed again. It looks more like an action movie than the deliberately, steadily, and intensely, yea even unbearably heartbreaking, and quite often suspensefully rolling forward story that plays out in the book. As the saying goes: "Movies. Ruining the book since 1920."

Actually. I still have hope. Many are saying this trailer is a hack job conjured by the production company to put tails in seats. And Esquire is trying to put it in league with The Godfather. So...we'll see.

Thanks to Kirk for nonchalantly showing me the trailer, after my having religiously checked IMDB for months.

Wilco (The Album)

2009-05-13T14:03:00.003-06:00

Now streaming at: http://beta.wilcoworld.net/records/thealbum/index.php

I am a huge fan of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Wasn't as big a fan of their last two records, and though this one is pretty good, it isn't blowing me away yet (though I'm only about halfway through the stream). There is a Feist duet that really shines. I still like the Jay Bennett era Wilco better than this more jammy, noisy version of the band. Wilco (the Album) is due for release on June 30.

Big thumbs up, by the way, on the album art work. Oh, you thought that was a Dromedary camel? Idi-oat. That's a Bactrian camel.

Buffetted Economy

2009-05-04T15:09:00.002-06:00

Warren makes a case for an easing crisis. And repents for being caught too late at the ball.

See the CNN Money video here

Raise your hand if you think he's making sense.

Temple of Suffering

2009-04-18T21:46:00.011-06:00

My four week old son, Milo, cries and wakes. He hasn't been sleeping well. It's all new to him. I'm not upset. It means no dreams is all. It is Friday, which is when I leave. Christy turns him onto his side and he settles for now. My phone reads 3:29 A.M. I watch and wait until the digits flash then listen to the church bells for a few seconds, like the morning call of some era long gone by, before turning off the alarm and heading for the bathroom. My feet leave ghost images on the cold tile and I can hear the leaky shower faucet drip a hearty 4/4.

Thirty minutes later I'm on I-80 heading east toward Wyoming in the back of a van. There are four others, three of them complete strangers (one of which I'd share a bed with that night), and the other a counselor in my Stake Presidency, and the man I hold responsible for my being awake at such an irresponsible hour. As we rise above Parley's we stretch out onto the flats and I'm dozing within twenty minutes. The dark out there is weightless and thin and consistently so in all directions.

I wake up in Green River and switch seats in an effort to be more conversational. Admittedly, in my mind I don't know what to expect.

The snow comes in sideways

and stings

each gust intending to

smooth the ridges out of everything

This storm is a cell

of many cells aching above the earth

the earth itself a cell

all of a body

whose size and proportion

I know not

But that is okay because I'll know soon enough. North from Rawlins, ice is hugging the roads. The wind butts the vehicle next to the yellow line, and we take it slow. We're ahead of schedule. The van has heaters conveniently, dare I say artistically, positioned throughout. There is one just to the left of my feet, keeping them warm. We hold right at Muddy Gap and off to the west we can make out through falling snow the archean granite rising in great bubbles from the land. I imagine a large pot the size of a moon, moving westward, churning the liquid from which mountains are made, sloshing out in kitchen-like spills, haphazard blots upon the high plains, cooled cracked and hardened in the driving wind. A few miles more and we pull off to the left into Martin's Cove.

Is that Devil's gate over there?

It is bigger than I had imagined

It has no door

I'm all set for a day of classroom instruction. I brought my good pen for note taking, and a little folder for the handouts. We register and they hand me an agenda, which changes everything. The afternoon is to be spent pulling handcarts along the trails, over the Sweetwater, and to the base of the cove. We'll then hike in and out of the cove, following trails back to the visitor's center. No classroom instruction after all. Five miles in a Wyoming snowstorm and I'm wearing a thin jacket and sneakers. I think back to the night before when I made my day pack, capriciously throwing in a pair of gloves and a hoodie. I say a prayer of thanks.

We are shown to our handcarts, which are empty. That's not nothing. I jump out front, hopeing the pull will generate warmth. There are many in orbit willing to trade us out. The trail is snow and mud. I pull with Suzanne, from Kearny by way of Australia, and Matt. Both being new we point out things and guess at them. We talk about England and Ecuador. Sometimes the wagon wheel rotates bare and sometimes it cycles up out of the track in a coat of slush and pebble. People are holding their limbs to themselves and spirits are good. No one complains of the weather. No one can.

Gus's face is unreadable

We are saved or we are damned

I can not tell

His nose is dripping and

I fight the urge to reach out

The blocky numbness of my hand to

Wipe away the snot

He'd squirm and twist

Nose reddening

He'd say something like - No

Wipe your nose, I say

And he does

The bank drops off before us and I see for the first time the Sweetwater River. It makes no noise, lost in some ancient reverie. We cross the bridge, built by Riverton Stake, so that none, having no alternative other, would be forced to forge the river on foot again. It takes us a few seconds. Beyond the river are a sculptor's renderings of four young men, D.P Kimball, George Grant, Stephen Taylor, C.A. Huntington. They're portrayed older and strong, faces turned and frozen with urgency. "We wanted to talk to them but they would not listen." I scrunched my cold toes, encouraging blood flow in the ends of my wet shoes. "They were all day in the water." I turned from the small rise upon which the statues stood and looked at the curve of the river, the bend nearest me arching toward the cove, and then turning back on itself again.

I'm too weak to pick up my boys

And it shames me

Weak flesh

I'm sitting over the axle

Cradling Milo's face in a flap of

Great grandmother's fading afghan

And the boy just comes

Saying nothing

And hoists her up like that

Saying nothing

His upper thighs sparkling

With the first beads of frost

It's been hours and they

Have dropped no one

From opposite sides we share a look

But her eyes are all buttoned up

So I secure the flap and look down

From Dan Jones cove we move south. No one speaks. Our only words are our tracking steps. The snow has stopped falling and the sky is one consistent gray cloud, it's umbrage all of us and our lives. There is no flat ground. Several hundred yards ahead climbing leeward on the draw are nine dear. I count twice. They know we are coming but are in no hurry. They acknowledge us and we them, then they continue out, making us room. The trail curves on, past the Lower Cove and we enter Martin's wordless.

Maybe she dies right there

With Milo at her breast

Or perhaps there, back angled against

The incline of that rocky outcropping

Sage branches in her arms

Meant for a fire to warm

Gus's blackening feet

That never will be

I look hard and try to see them. The hundreds in their tents, crooked and glassy eyed, surrounded by death, themselves dying and wondering at rescue. I ask inside if some were, perhaps, afraid to hope. I strain to hear the cries, the distressed instructions, the wind hissing loud off the rock slope scraping into the pinion pine and juniper. Five days and four nights, waiting for rescue. The dead rising and not rising. Twenty, brothers sisters and cousins. Thirty, aunts uncle and boyfriends. Forty, mothers fathers and infants. Fifty, when will it stop? Towards the back of the cove we gather and a missionary tells us stories. She shows us, pointing off to one side, where they stacked the dead. I think about this for a while. I wonder at it, this holocaust of nature, pulling at the context, stretching it around me hoping to see any just and good world in which one would be compelled to "stack" their beloved dead and gone. How did they continue to walk? Why put one more foot forward?

I cannot feel my feet

I prefer not to look

They will come off I am sure of it

Gus fingers the matches

Like I showed him

Trying to light the fire

He's a good boy

Trying to light the fire

Christy was just here

I can't tell if Milo's chest is moving

He used to cry

Back in late summer

Before it became dolorous silence

And the checking of the nose and chest

Which I do again and wonder if it is he

or I

that does not feel

The ground itself sits there, not quite mute under the snow. In the quiet I become quiet myself, and still. The fissures in the rock in front of me jut upward, out of which streams the early runoff, coming from who knows where, living inside that rock somewhere. Living inside the wells of a stone that is broken, but not shattered. Then it comes, the worship, in and out of me, working its way under the snow and the bent blades of prairie grass, through my wet and stinking shoes, hovering about me and all around the sleeping vegetation in a temple of suffering.

My God, this is it, isn't it?

Nerd is such a limiting label...

2009-02-27T15:30:00.003-07:00

...for Ken Jennings. And I suppose, by virtue of this post, I'm outing myself as a nerd as well. But one of my favorite blogs to read is Ken's. We have similar tastes in music and film, and he is always witty. We've all seen "Thankful Thursday" posts, right? How about trying one of Ken's "Wordplay Wednesdays" or other random mind games! His (probably oversized) brain is constantly turning over trivia, categorizing things in bizzare ways. For example, I'm linking you to two sets of lists. If you are neither bookish, nor a music enthusiast, these probably won't be very interesting. But I really enjoyed both.

The best American novels set in each of the fifty states:
Part One
Part Two

The best musical artist/group formed in each of the fifty states:
Part One
Part Two

True Love

2009-02-13T22:25:00.007-07:00

Valentines Day is protected. It is the one day where, in the name of LOVE, you can get away with shameless amounts of cheesiness. And that's okay, because love often is cheesy. It can't help but be, since we're so unused to expressing it. It's a good day to be a bystander in a grocery store. You may find yourself standing awkwardly in a line of men with sideburns and goatees, closely examining bows, shaped chocolate boxes, looking and feeling lost. But today Joe Plicka will save us. He will show us why love, true love, hides in unlikely places, like the poopy pants of a little girl in the middle of nowhere. Joe is my friend. I reprint his poem here without his permission, and hopefully that is okay.

True Love

Somewhere in northern Nevada,
maybe eastern Oregon, where
nothing has a name—travelers
make up their own and the few that stay on
would rather forget—where the sky ends,
prairie dogs dance with truck tires and
the scrubland rolls away like an ocean swell,
that’s where I figured it out—

We were pointed toward Winnemucca when
that new daughter of ours pooped up her back.
I came out of the greasy roadhouse with a giant
         Coke.
She was lying on the trunk, naked, crooked
         limbs
scratching the air like an upturned beetle
while you cleaned and dressed her.
She was your daughter then, and I remembered
the time, cradled in blood water,
piecing her together like a ball of tin foil.
And I was your son, knowing you
only from the outside,
and from books.
I saw you striding across paintings
and through silver screens. Mother.
Goddess. Grant me
my only sin: to have wanted you for myself.

I knew then that I am an empty man,
my body a cage,
organs hanging from strings like a lurid mobile.
When I saw you that day, somewhere,
a string broke; things started to sway
dangerously until they were all tangled up.
         A marionette
left in a box and shaken up. Here a liver
wrapped around a spleen, hanging under a lung
beating against a kidney—and
I couldn’t do anything but
drive on, just holding myself
together, breathing like a man in a body cast
         with you
swirling around me and in me, teasing me with
utter annihilation.

Slumdog Millionaire

2009-02-08T09:59:00.003-07:00

Saw it. Liked it.

DFW

2009-02-05T00:05:00.002-07:00

Since the old days of studying literature at the University I've read as much as I could, and at an unfortunately slow pace. In a down year I'll take in about 15 books. In an up year I can get in 25, and that's about as good as I can do with my schedule. In that time I feel like I've done my most important reading. I am a slave to fiction, which I would love to change someday (and have tried to occasionally), but I cannot seem to break free of its chains. Despite the meager sample there have been a small handful of authors that have really blown me away. One of those authors is David Foster Wallace. I had never heard of him until September of last year when news of his suicide made headlines, and I began linking to articles that left me wanting more. I recently finished Girl With Curious Hair, a compilation of short stories that for me were mostly hit (Little Expressionless Animals) with a little miss (the title story). The man is a phenom and a genius.

Secretly I would like to write as well. But I am plagued by demons that haunt me away from it (which is a euphemism for me being too lazy to commit). In one of his stories, "Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way", the narrator sums up in so many lovely words what it really means to be a writer of stories:

"...occasionally a writer will encounter a story that is his, yet is not his. I mean, by the way, a writer of stories, not one of these intelligences that analyze society and culture, but the sort of ignorant and acquisitive being who moons after magical tales. Such a creature knows very little: how to tie a shoelace, when to go to the store for bread, and the exact stab of a story that belongs to him, and to him only. How to unfurl a Trojan, where on the stall door to carve BEWARE OF LIMBO DANCERS, how to give the teacher what she wants, and the raw coppery smell of a scenario over which he's meant to exercise, not suffer, authority. And yet occasionally the tale is already authoritatively gutted, publicly there, brightly killed, done by another. Or else menacingly alive, self-sufficient, organic, sounding the distant groan of growth, trading chemicals briskly with the air, but still outside the creature who desires to take it inside and make a little miracle."

Reading him has given me a bit more energy to pursue the stab that is exactly mine.

*Caveat: He is not a writer I would take home to Mom. I cannot in good faith recommend him to all readers of my blog, especially if you might be thin skinned, or somewhat easily offended.