"Olive Kitteridge": A Personal Anecdote --Wednesday Journal

Tonight as we prepare for a heavy snowstom in Chicago, my thoughts go back to a warmer time of year.  Last June, Mark and I attended the Chicago LitFest, formerly known as the Printers Row Book Fair.  For anyone who loves to read, or write, or aspires to write greatly, or wants to brush elbows with those for whom words, sentences, and literature are passions, the LitFest is an annual excitement in our city.

Tonight I want to share with my readers this most inspiring of events, which was important in the decision to increase my literary output.

Perhaps my favorite fiction of the past year has been Elizabeth Strout's novel-in-short-stories, "Olive Kitteridge".  It is a deceptively simple but mature work, filled with quiet power.  The chapters stand on their own as stories, yet are arranged in a subtle chronology, creating a delicate architecture of emotion reaching its apex like a finely built staircase..  

 Set in contemporary rural Maine, each story is linked by the headstrong, contradictory title character.  Our sympathies are stretched in many directions, culminating in the final chapters' extraordinary power, in which Olive, like a great wounded beast, rails against the terror of aging, and comes to terms with her regrets over her failed marriage and motherhood.  The book slowly settles on the reader with extraordinary grace, like a soft and forgiving snowfall.

Along the way we are introduced to other complex, fully realized characters, in whose stories Olive sometimes appears only in a sentence, or as a reference,  or a fleeting thought. Even then, Olive's influence is strongly felt.   Strout's gentle style masks a ferocious imagination, and the stories emerge in surprising and sometimes shocking ways.

Rather than write a full review here (I will post one soon, after I have re-read the book), I want to revisit the Book Fair now, my meeting with Strout, and my impresssions of the day, just as I recorded it then in my journal:

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June 5 2009

It's early Monday morning and I am writing at my kitchen table, the table being a significant fact in light of our experience at Chicago's LitFest yesterday.


The excitement that had been bulding around the book festival was dampened, literally, by heavy rains early Sunday morning. Motivated by the rare prospect of seeing two Pulitzer Prize winners speak in person (Tracy Letts and Elizabeth Strout), my partner and I nevertheless fortified ourselves at our favorite coffee spot (Caribou in Mt. Prospect, IL.) and began the drive into the city. We live in the suburbs (a place seeming more like a foreign country to me every day) and fortunately found the traffic easy and parking facilities convenient and (relatively) inexpensive.

(Happily, the rain eased up after our 30-minute trip, and finally ended.)


Elizabeth Strout appeared (along with Elizabeth Berg) in a panel interview. .... I was immediately drawn to her quiet, practical sincerity. No large ego or literary histrionics here. She talked about her growing up in Maine, and how spending time with older relatives helped her to draw characters much older than herself. She addressed the audience with such humble good humor and generosity that I liked her the way you might like a favorite neighbor.

I was very moved as she described her worst days as a lawyer, giving it up to devote her time to writing, stating that she would rather fail as a writer than as a lawyer.


And I thrilled to her statements about how important it is, still, to write good sentences, sentences that produce a "sound" that allows readers, whether consciously or not, to take in the writer's meaning.

Strout revealed these personal anecdotes: she never took a writing course (although she now teaches one); she enthused that the names of her characters are important and described how she came up with Olive Kitteridge (a composite of an elderly aunt and a favorite uncle); she explained that she did not base the character of "Olive" on a teacher of her own, but that the character was vivid and fully formed in her imagination; and stated her belief that no matter how technology changes the way stories are delivered to readers, people will always need stories and will find them, and authors need to keep writing them.


After the presentation I approached the stage and she graciously spent a minute to chat with me. I asked her where she likes to write, if she had a favorite surrounding in which to create. With her characteristic warmth and lack of irony, she said, "the kitchen table".

When my turn in line came up later for her to sign my book, she recognized me and told me she was glad to see me; and in response to my final question, she told me she sold her first short story while in law school.


I came away feeling like I had just received the nod of approval from a new friend, who stood with me in solidarity as I ventured to create my own work.
 
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The Next Time You Watch A Pro Football Game, Remember This Face.... Tuesday Journal

We notice the scars...but mostly the eyes, haunted by a cruelty he cannot comprehend...dark, hollow eyes, the light gone... resigned, asking, "why?"

For some reason the story passed  below my radar.  It was December 23, and attentions were focused on other activities, the holiday frenzy.

On that date, National Football League teams each named one player to receive the Ed Block Courage Award.  Ed Block, a long-time athletic trainer for the Baltimore Colts and a well-respected humanitarian, established the Ed Block Foundation, dedicated to the awareness and prevention of child abuse:

"The Ed Block Courage Award Foundation is dedicated to improving the lives of neglected children and ending the cycle of abuse. The purpose is to raise Awareness and Prevention of child abuse. That objective is coupled with the Foundation's commitment to celebrating players of inspiration in the NFL."

And on December 23, the Philadelphia Eagles cast their vote to hand the award, reportedly by unanimous decision, to Michael Vick.

Vick's long and sordid story of animal neglect and abuse, and his conviction for conspiracy to organize a dog-fighting operation from his home in Virginia, intensified my outrage at his receiving this particular recognition.  It served to whitewash his reputation and dilute his cruel behavior.

When I regained calm, I told myself to be rational. 

I told myself that everyone needs a chance to atone, to be given another chance to overcome past mistakes.  Then I realized that he had been given this chance, in a big way, when the NFL reinstated him.  Anyone else convicted of the same charge would have a much less glamorous and lucrative road to redemption.

I told myself that the players who voted for him knew more about him and his challenges and tribulations than I did, and that maybe he was remorseful.  Then I read his statement after winning the award, sounding every bit as though he felt he deserved it. As I read it, I thought about the animal on top of this page:

"I've had to overcome a lot, more than probably one single individual can bear," Vick said. "Take a look at what I've been through. You ask certain people to walk in my shoes, they probably couldn't do it. Probably 95 percent of the people in this world -- because nobody had to endure what I've been through, situations I've been put in, situations I've placed myself in, decisions that I've made -- whether they were good or bad."

I told myself that it was an industry award, voted by the team, and in the long run, it had no significance;  that the team may award any member as it sees fit.  Then I realized that the honor was incongruent with what Vick perpetrated.  I realized that, had Vick done to children what he did to helpless animals, the award would have been loudly decried.  It told me that the culture of professional football, amid its high-tech trappings and pretensions to American values and respectability, only pays lip service to these ideals; for without respect and care for the creatures in our midst, we have not achieved respectability, and don't deserve to be called civilized.

I looked again into the eyes of the poor dog above, and  I could tell myself nothing more.  I could have posted more gruesome pictures...it would have been abusive...you can find them...not that you'd want to.

If you want to express your displeasure, sign a letter here:  Change.org.   I did!

Playoffs and bowl games are coming up, and I think it will be somewhat lonely to choose not to be a part of that.  One guy refusing to watch NFL, or be exposed to their sponsors, will not cause the collapse of professional football.  Yet I will make my quiet statement, and (as Ghandi wisely taught)  I will be the change I would like to see in the world.

Next week: my first Saturday at the Animal Shelter.

"Avatar", the Product and the Principle

"Avatar" is unavoidable.  Unless you prefer to be excluded from the cultural conversation, one might as well climb the bandwagon, and take the ride.  For those of you, like this reviewer, who generally don't care for this kind of movie, having to purchase the special eyewear (you must, if you go, see it in 3-D) is akin to drinking the proverbial Kool-Aid.  Knowing that your purchase will support the efforts of a megalomaniac director (who needs no encouragement to divert popular attention away from literate, emotional and personal films with modest budgets and efficient shooting schedules), you might die a little; but I can tell you that the death is relatively painless, the experience mostly inoffensive.


That's because, at heart, "Avatar"is an amusement park ride, a throwback to childhood thrills, a harmless entertainment that only pretends to say something about war and imperialism and ecology.  It is big, often hugely imaginative, its visuals created with obvious care by scores of craftsmen and designers and technicians, and loaded with gorgeous detail and color.  Some of it is irresistible; although, in the end, it's an  enormous, hyped-up version of the kind of action and fantasy pictures that sensitive viewers, in general, successfully avoid. 

Yet it won't be just the film alone that draws record crowds; for many, it will  be almost impossible to withstand the virtual tsunami of marketing and promotion; so we will allow ourselves to be swept away by this massive, faddish wave, and hope to survive, and be deposited safely, relatively unscathed, to reality in three dimensions.

Filmmakers misrepresent the grosses of blockbusters like these in order to justify making more of the same. (As I write, "Avatar" is proclaimed to be the fourth-largest moneymaker in movie history ...with no mention of the adjustment for inflation, and the highest admission prices in movie histoy).  But more of the same is already in the can, so to speak, so there is a lot at stake in ensuring the success of "Avatar". 

In fact, the trailers at the afternoon screening I attended New Year's Day featured a  remake of "Clash of the Titans" (creatures, explosions, lots of noise); Ridley Scott's "Robin Hood" with Russell Crowe (or, "Gladiator: Men in Tights", more noise and explosions), and two 3-D films (a sequel to "Shrek" and Tim Burton's "Alice in Wonderland"). So for now, those moviegoers who prefer human stories and engagement with real characters in recognizable human situations are left to go begging. 

Is it a great film?  I think for about 90 minutes, "Avatar" is a work of visual splendor, trapped inside an inane battle movie stretched to 162+ minutes, bloated to the size of director James Cameron's ego.  Cameron has actually stated that "Avatar" was the integration of  his life achievements, boasting that it was the most complicated job anyone had ever done.  (Give me 4 years, 250+ million dollars and over 1000 employees, and I'll hand you a review to end all film criticism.)

Is it art?  Aesthetic pleasure is so elusive, and subjective.  If one is satisfied with sumptuous surface appearances and textures, then it could suffice.  A lot of sincere imagination went into the creation of the plant and animal life we see on the fictional planet of Pandora, among the Na'vi, a culture of blue-skinned humanoids with large eyes, slender buff bodies and wiggling ears, who revere nature and possess a natural resource ("unobtanium") that the evil earthly military wants to mine. Some of the graphics have the layered delicacy and palette of  a Chinese silk painting, and the mysterious glow of underwater sea creatures.

The detail work is top-notch. I especially loved the whorled plants that withdrew quickly on the slightest touch; or the lovely "milkweeds" that descend on special souls as if by instinct; the flying insects that appear to escape the bounds of the screen and float perpetually in front of us; the way light reflects off the eyes of the Na'vi, and the way their ears move to catch sounds; their sleek bodies and four-fingered hands; even their jewelry, the feathers, and finery are a designer's dream.

But "Avatar"'s ideas, as well as its physical beauty, have been manufactured by a committee, factory-like.  It's meant to be admired for its technical success, for its surface detail, but we are not meant to look at it too closely or think about it too long, the way, I think, art invites us to do.   

With the staggering (some may think obscene) amount of resources committed to this one entertainment, I think it's not unreasonable to have expected something more profound than it delivers.   "Avatar" in 3-D is a new kind of movie triumph, but it is a triumph of logistics, like "Titanic";  it's also a franchise.  One wonders, after seeing the 2-dimensional trailer, what kind of life the film will have after its theatrical run.  The "flat" images were colorful, but not remarkable.

If only a bit more of the budget were committed to the script, and to logic.  The story is promising: The year is 2154, and paraplegic marine Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) is sent to Pandora as a Na'vi avatar operator (given a "virtual" body) to bond with the native population of Na'vi. He must convince them to relocate away from their homeland in order for his employer to mine the unobtanium that will be carried back to earth (which vaguely, has burned out, or something).  Since the Na'vi are wise and are able to commune with the plant and animal life around them, it's never clear why they don't just give the unobtanium away, since we never see how it's crucial to their own survival. 

Jake, with the aid of his mentor, botanist Grace Augustine (Siguorney Weaver, often sporting a pristine Stanford University T-shirt...more on that later) and a motley crew of fellow scientists and sympathetic military folk, enters the Na'vi world, learns the customs of the natives and the sacred place of the creatures there, and falls in love with the beautiful (by Na'vi standards) Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña).

Jake sees the unfairness of his assignment, and sides with the Na'vi against the insensitive mining company's corporate hack (Giovanni Ribisi) and the evil, neo-con-like colonel and head of the mining company's security detail (Stephen Lang).  Battle lines are drawn, and by the third hour, when all is clashing hardware, swooping creatures, and James Horner's cliche-ridden score to remind you to be awestruck, you may be too worn down to care that Neytiri happens to know how to use an oxygen mask (there is no oxygen on Pandora, by the way) to save our hero's life.

Dazzling, yes, but not wholly original. "Avatar" owes a huge debt to "The Lord of the Rings", and shows the definite influence of "Star Wars", so when the weapons and the creatures start their airborne battles, you may have the sense of having seen all of this before. (Industrial Light and Magic had a hand in the production).  In fact, lots of movies came to mind, in not always flattering ways.  Jake's introduction to the nest of winged creatures recalled Rod Taylor's cautious steps around the crows and gulls in "The Birds"; the Na'vi's tails wave to and fro as if in tribute to Bert Lahr as the Cowardly Lion; the fall of Home Tree was a green version of the final plunge of the "Titanic"; and Grace is brought to the Tree of Souls for healing, in a scene hilariously reminiscent of  the Lourdes of Jennifer Jones in 20th-Century-Fox' own "Song of Bernadette".

If Cameron were really revolutionary, if he had the full confidence in the power of his images and his technology, he might have tried scrapping the music entirely, and gone strictly with "natural" sounds. Some small portions of the score were developed with a musicologist to create a musical culture for the Na'vi;  but I felt more wonderment and awe in the first 10 minutes of Terrence Malick's "Thin Red Line".  Malick, using traditional, luminous photographic lighting to capture the natural jungle and the creatures therein,  accompanied his images with the sweet exalted chorus of voices of an actual native people.

(Cameron is said to have developed an entire Na'vi culture, and a language with a thousand-word vocabulary, little of which appears to be used in the film.  Is there really so little left to discover about our own world?)

The performers are fine in their limited "human" roles.  For their computer-generated incarnations, the use of motion-capture techniques employed tiny cameras affixed to the actors' faces to be digitally manipulated, creating the look of a new species, while keeping the performer's features recognizable. Credit must go to the technicians who "created" Sam Worthington's "performance" as an avatar. Worthington is much more expressive in "animated" form than in his human scenes.  No matter---he is quite watchable nonetheless.  Weaver is a pro, and thoroughly convinces as the tough-as-nails botanist.  Saldana, Wes Studi, and C C H Pounder all lend expert vocal acting skills to their Na'vi characters.  As the "villains", Ribisi and Lang are stock characters, their dialog a thinly-veiled representation of America's involvement in current global wars. 

Finally, I admired the attempt to create some wonderful creatures, patterned after our own dogs and horses, and mythical pterodactyls and other fierce beasts; but, apart from enlisting them in battlefield heroics, we learn little about them.  For "Avatar" to have worked for me, I would have preferred the whole film to take place on Pandora, drop the bracketing military story and the battle sequences, keep it completely "animated", and linger there; create a story involving the mystic bonds between the Na'vi and the nature around them.  Of course, there would be little material in that for a video game.

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A bit more about SiguorneyWeaver and her surprising collegiate sportswear: Stanford University must have done something right to last another 100 years on a burned-out planet (or, at least, to keep up their on-line merchandise sales!).  Weaver is a graduate of Stanford, and my research has not yet uncovered whether she brokered a deal for a "product placement" for the school. I do understand, however, that the University has an incredible Virtual Human Interaction Lab for developing motion capture for the purpose of studying and predicting human behavior.  I was heartened by the practical use of this technology. 
You can read more about it here.

Short Take: Best Image of 2010, So Far!

While watching the Rose parade this morning, I caught the float featuring the bulldogs sliding down the ramp on snowboards.  After all the philosophising, and recounting the past year, and pondering the seriousness of the future, this innocently absurd image made me laugh happily.  When confronted by a bulldog on a snowboard, is it really possible to brood?  This will probably remain one of my favorite images of the fledgling year....I might even lighten up a bit...join the masses and see "Avatar".....

What Might Have Been..What Could Yet Be...A New Year's Day Journal

Can one be realistic and hopeful at the same time?  I saw this picture, and wondered if 2010 would be a year of reckoning for our political system and global crises, or if there would be more of the same gnawing anxiety and disappointment I've experienced of late.  I want so badly to remain optimistic.

I took this candid photo of Mark on November 5, 2008, one day after the election of President Obama. 

I saw Mark searching the horizon, contemplating a vast sky of endless possibility, a river to explore, a bridge to cross....

We were in Tempe Arizona for a brief vacation, having voted early in our home state of Illinois.  What an ironic moment for us both, missing the huge victory celebration back home in Chicago, also Obama's hometown, while we waited, in McCain's home state, with our breaths held, for the returns. We screamed with joy and relief as the results came in.  And from our neighbors around us, silence....

The evening was characterized by the excitement of fitting in, of having our voices heard, of the triumph of science and reason, after eight agonizing years; it was also the fear of something going terribly wrong, and the threat of irrationality, and social and scientific regression, if the results went the other way.

My journal was strangely reticent...I wrote "around" the election, instead of commenting head-on.  I wanted to write about what lie underneath, about the almost ominous quietness of post-election day in Arizona, an undertone of caution--of guarded optimism--I wanted to describe the tranquility we both enjoyed, having borne the exhaustion of the endless campaigns, and survived the long, polarizing election......

From my journal:

--Election day, late afternoon: "Packed sandwiches, chips, grapes, water and drove to Tempe Beach State Park and sat on a bench near the Tempe Center for the Arts for a picnic supper.  The cool breeze, rattling the leaves in the young trees near us, and the long shadows cast by the late afternoon sun, recalled memories of Kodak photos of the past, a golden light shed on the whole scene...."

--The day after: "Rose early to catch news coverage of last night's election...John McCain's concession speech at the Arizona Biltmore, 3 miles from where we sat last night...Barack Obama's acceptance speech to 250,000 in Grant Park (as though an absolution for the riots at the Democratic Convention, on that very spot, 30 years ago...)...

Mark and I took a bench at Tempe Beach Park, across from the KPMG building, the company where my father worked, and retired 30 years ago...My father, a stalwart Republican, voted for Obama....Mark and I wrote in our journals (I'm writing this now, from this spot, and I just took Mark's photo).  Cool breeze, lawn behind us being mowed, water moving determinedly in the canal across the running path in front of us...."

2009 was the year for Barack Obama. It was a year  with the promise that intelligence, rational thought, peace, and pride would prevail.

I have been caught up in disappointments....I felt then that those who voted for Obama did so in good faith that an articulate and reasonable leader, with majorities in both houses, could get work done, without asking the permission of those who were doing everything to ensure his failure. 

Mark Barabak in the LA Times today published a piece about how the

GOP is poised for a comeback in the mid-year elections.  According to the article, "the results could hamper President Obama's legislative efforts as he prepares to seek reelection and reshape the political landscape for a decade beyond, as lawmakers redraw congressional and state political boundaries to reflect the next census."

I was finally happy to place my trust in someone who I felt represented my true feelings and beliefs, who was able to persuade, and to rally the energies of good-minded people to do amazing things.  So I was unprepared for the small betrayals along the way.  I think about how ideas like the public option, ending a dishonest war, and protection for gay rights in marriage and the military somehow got turned around; and that I, and people like me, were seen as merely "seeking perfection as the enemy of good".  I wasn't prepared to see hard-fought battles and promises compromised in the name of claiming "victory".  Was the leader I supported selling out and discarding his ideals? Could I accept his changes in direction and trust his first-hand assessments? or was I a victim of a bait and switch?   I read pundits and editorials, on all sides, doing my best to weed out the purely ideological, and found serious questions from those whose opinions I admired. 

I thought of the alternative, McCain/Palin, and admitted that in some ways we are so much better off than we could have been....aren't we? At least the Obama administration does not seem to be legislating on the basis of superstition and ancient prophecies, or backing down to special interests.. Right?  Is there a place for ideals in modern politics, no matter who's in? 

Yeah, I'm naive.....I knew then and still do that the world doesn't work that way, yet I believed, symbolically anyway, this was our last best chance for positive progress in my lifetime. 

Am I willing to let go of that and succumb to total cynicism?   Can I follow my better nature and believe that the world can be better?  What will I do this year to address that in a meaningful way?  Will I ever vote again?? Those questions I pondered as I looked at a couple of  photos I found of the victory rally in Grant Park, and remembered the feeling of complete happiness, sitting on that bench with Mark on that Arizona November morning.