The American greats, and Oprah

When Oprah added William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury to her bookclub list as a summer read, said bookclub gulped and shrivelled in the path of The Establishment's raucous laughter. The plebs fell for it and sales of books by Faulkner increased (I know because I sold a few to unwitting fans of Marianne Keyes and Jodi Picoult). This was after the James Frey A Million Little Pieces, which he sold as memoir but was really almost entirely made up, and the 'almost entirely' is debatable.

This introduction is a red herring, but now you know that I know what I'm talking about. To add to your store of Oprah trivia, her bookclub really did shrivel (maybe not gulp). (Although it did come to life again a few years ago. Because, this is Oprah.) Put those two facts together, bind them with logic, and you realise Oprah rarely actually read the books she touted - they were chosen by assistants and publishers' publicists. (What they were thinking when they included Faulkner is a mystery.)

I recently tried to read The Sound and the Fury, but read no further than three pages (read being a misnomer: I daydreamed through three pages - I cannot remember a thing). I don't abandon books after I have committed to them, ever. Even Atomised, and that was at least as traumatising as something I saw in the supermarket the other day (and which shall forever remain wordless, so don't even ask).

Oprah generalised that 'Faulkner is the greatest American writer, like, ever' (sure, along with Hemingway, Twain, Poe, Steinbeck, McCarthy...). But I would imagine even the most stalwart Faulkner fan would harbour a teensy bit of bitterness at having to work so hard to read for fun. I felt that, at present, the only author deserving of that degree of effort is James Joyce. (We have a tempestuous relationship. He channels through the book on my dresser and I ignore his cursing.) He was using up my time with Joyce, even though I haven't so much as picked up the cursed (har!) book in six months (I was polishing the furniture).

Imagine if Oprah had nominated The Odyssey... Now there is a book to bury a bookclub near to the centre of the earth.

Having said this, I am a Faulkner fan (and a Joyce fan - I swear I will finish that book one day, you Irishman!). As I Lay Dying is on my list of books that will haunt me for life. Ok, no, it is silly to lay claim to choices in your future. It haunts me and I hope it haunts me for life (at least because there are way worse types of ghosts to be haunted by... Actual ghosts, for example). In two sentences, the characters sum up the world for me in a Cormac McCarthy-worthy musing:

"It takes two people to make you, and one people to die. That's how the world is going to end."

The book is set in the American south, among a po' family, the matriarch of which has just died. The novel tells of the the family's efforts to arrange her funeral, which chiefly consist of couriering her body on the farm's wagon to another, more affluent part of the family. Really (because this is how literature works), it is about the relationships between the characters, how they live, their relationships with the matriarch and the wisdom that comes from being po'.

That last bit is facetious, but Rousseau's Noble Savage is still alive and well, just now living in shacks constructed from the cardboard of cellphone ads. Faulkner can be forgiven, by historicity, but what is our excuse?

To climb up that tree of great American authors (figuratively, because I tried to climb a tree the other day and found I no longer have the muscles), Faulkner inspires the work of Toni Morrison, the sun of Oprah's universe together with Maya Angelou and her dogs. We studied Morrison every. single. year. of my degree, largely because one of our lecturers was Obsessed with her. Because of this I can name every novel she has ever written, have read them, and know that she is a frightening woman who use to be an editor at Faber & Faber and now terrifies undergrads.

I would sell organs to be terrifying. Or to work at Faber & Faber (I would even volunteer my services as a fridge-cleaner. Someone would see the obsessive way I scrubbed at stains hidden under shelves and would know me for a perfectionist and would let me edit manuscripts so they could take the credit and I would be happy).

Morrison's characters are almost exclusively Southern, African-American, discriminated against, they discriminate against and tattooed with mythology. Slavery, chauvinism, racism, all the meaty -isms. Her novels are uplifting and inspiring, and (I'm going to be serious now) brilliant. Songs of Solomon is my favourite and Paradise my least favourite. Where Faulkner plays devil's advocate, Morrison pursues abuse single-mindedly, creating her own mythologies.

Now, along the way up that greatness tree, we missed two brown-tipped offshoots (like that of the bamboo in my bathroom), titled Zora Neale Hurston and Carson McCullers. I am starting to feel like I am trailing in Oprah's shadow - Oprah ('s assistant) picked books from both authors for her bookclub. In fact, Hurston is (allegedly) her favourite author. Huh, perhaps I and The Establishment have been overly judgemental. Though, still, Faulkner?

Carson McCullers has featured on this blog, more than once, so for equality's sake (it's election day!), let's stick to Hurston. I read Their Eyes were Watching God a couple of months ago, set in... if you have been reading carefully, you, you can guess... yes, the American south, that muddy well of discrimination and abuse (drinking game: take a shot every time this post uses 'discrimination' or 'abuse'. Or 'southern'. Or 'and') and muddied vowels. In this book, the abuse is persistent but limited to the background.

Written in the vernacular (like As I Lay Dying), the novel tells the story (a secondhand account of her telling of the story) of a woman from her childhood to the death of her husband. Based on your cultural dips into Faulkner and Morrison, you expect a certain theme and for a while Hurston gives it to you, until she begins to channel Faulkner, and soon we know that we are all abusing one another, which makes for another less than uplifting tale, but a poignant one.

Zora Neale Hurston, not on Oprah...

At this point, I am wondering why I have read so many of the American greats, when the first great South African title I think of is Cry the Beloved Country (partly because it is long and long equals great, obviously) and authors are Nadine Gordimer and Andre Brink (neither of whom write... enjoyable fiction). (JM Coetzee? This is one of the few instances where man and work deserve to be equated. In short, there is no need to bolster his egoism by acknowledging him.) Oh, and a couple of Fugard's workshopped plays.

(Please don't redirect me to African fiction, because Chinua Achebe is about as close to Nadine Gordimer as spaghetti is to curry.)

While I want to tell you that I am replacing my to-read list with South African greats, to rectify this situation, I would be lying, and why lie in cyberspace? Every culture seems to have an inflection in its writing, some style that is unique. American fiction is vast, given its very nature as a land of immigrants made up of many states. These four authors have been chosen, by me (and Oprah), artificially, by the links I make between them. And perhaps the same could be said for Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, Calvino and Eco, Marquez and Bolano.

South African fiction, especially the political works - sometimes it feels like they're all political - is dry. Metaphors are like kites tied to a fence, like wallflowers that can't dance, like colours mixed into a muddy brown. These works remind me of the Karoo, which I think of fondly but would not live there. When I read, I want to be tossed around, not by emotion, but by the acrobatics of the words. I read to read. To consume the experience and feel bloated with it - and the only way a plot can catch up is to jump and freefall.

We don't have an Oprah (I don't have a TV, but no, whatsherface who used to have an afternoon show on SABC 3 does not count), so there is no one to nominate setworks for the nation to read over the December holidays. If we did, what would she pick? Disgrace? Confessions of a Gambler? Agaat? Fiela se Kind? Maybe Coetzee would admit that his fiction is actually straight-up memoir. We definitely need an Oprah.

Stranger and Stranger: Post 2 of 2

"Stranger and stranger," cried Camilla (she was so much surprised that for the moment she forgot to think up a better title).'

I didn't write this - I typed it. Har! Ok, it isn't original nor is it a decent appropriation of Alice's surprise in Wonderland. In the original (and funny) version, this prim little miss is so surprised she has forgotten 'her grammar', saying 'curiouser and curiouser' when the correct superlative is 'more curious'. (I have just unfunnied it. But wait, there is more funny to come.) She is surprised because her neck is growing longer - nothing else, just her neck - and all she can think about are her shoes and who will tie them. Granted, she is 10 years old or something and has probably just learnt to tie her shoes.

Now my title is not grammatically incorrect or funny. I am not surprised and my neck is still the same length as this morning, I think (I don't measure it regularly or at all so if I really wanted to be sure I'd have to compare photos, but I'm pretty sure it's still the same length). My title should tell you I am confuzzled. Again, this is not a word I am coining. It is a type of confusion, I suppose (I have never had to define it before), where you understand all the factors and reasoning, but that doesn't help you grasp it any better.

Like (sorry, folks), smoking. I don't understand it. I mean, I understand that it's addictive and that people often start out as teenagers due to peer pressure or because they think they look cool (update: not even James Dean in a leather biker jacket leaning on a fast car looks cool smoking) or because it reduces stress or because it smothers food cravings. But come on, we're a smart generation. We know better. You know better.

What confuzzles me is why someone would voluntarily imbibe tar, knowing they are imbibing tar (and bleach and rat poison), which a) is tested on animals (look that one up, you; I have nightmares about that rat) and b) destroys entire forests when factories are built (nevermind the oceans and lakes when the stuff spills). To look like James Dean on a bad day. Voluntarily. There is a link I am missing.

Anyway, that is confuzzlement. Perhaps this post is confuzzlement.

To recap, Stranger in a Strange Land is about Mike the Martian. He is physically human but a sociological 'stranger' and that 'strange land' is Earth. The Martians are a highly evolved civilisation who leave their young to survive or not before welcoming them back into the fold. (That way they weed out the weak ones.) They believe in ghosts. They also can 'discorporate' at will (die) (my favourite bit) and then their friends eat the body  (anyone catch that pun? Probably my best).

There doesn't seem to be a hint of irony in the judgement that human behaviour is largely an arbitrary set of rules designed to prevent human beings from achieving... I have no idea what noun to ascribe to the Martian ideal. Nirvana?

I'm being sarcastic here because I'm all riled up over the animal testing, so find some salt and throw it over your preferred shoulder.

Literature that was revolutionary at the time seems dated a few decades later. I have said this before, in defence of EM Foster (back off, you, that's sacred ground you're about to trample on, literally). Free love was revolutionary in the 60s (a bit like Google will seem in 50 years, after the second Silicon Valley crash). It was Mike's solution to human problems, not the Martians', because by all accounts they are as ugly as salmon and have the mating patterns of.

Mike doesn't have any of the cynicism that I and probably you (else you're in the wrong place, bud) have (I scoffed and rolled my eyes more the further I read). He can set up a telepathic and empathic link between his followers (yes, what happens next is exactly what you think happens next) so that they can access his superhero powers (lifting things and making policemen disappear and, well...) and his Martian bond between his body and let's-just-go-with mind. Ta da, emotions like jealousy discorporate.

I dunno. I can't imagine feeling less jealous because I'm in my partner's brain, and I really, really don't want him in mine.

Maybe my resistance to Mike's spirituality is only proof of how constrained I am by human mores. Well, of course! I yell. Followed by, no, I don't think so. Both. Because human beings need a framework, whether political, familial, social or religious. It's the details of the framework that can be awful and constraining, not the framework (unless your framework is cannibalism. Like Mike's).

Look, no one's stopping me from setting up a hovel... in a hovel, but then I must accept that no one's going to come to my aid when it falls down. I'm sure Mike could have constructed a lovely hovel in no time and without twitching a finger joint, and then rebuilt it, and filled it with followers. But he would just be replacing one framework with another (are you really asking me to choose between democracy and free love? The former has health care and builders to rebuild my hovel, and the latter has the power of the mind, and my mind is a scary place without entrusting my life to it).

Let us sidewind back onto the path. A path. I wrote in the last post that Stranger in a Strange Land can be divided into two distinct books, but that perhaps I was being unfair in judging the second when I hadn't finished. I have finished it, I have let a few days pass, and I stand by my judgement. (Always trust your instinct.) You may be out of salt by now, so you guessed this, I'm sure. No review can end well when it begins with smoking.

Now I think the second book is even worse than I first suspected, especially when compared with the first. Which had a plot. And character consistency. I am confuzzled about how one author can write both books - and in one book! - how it won a Hugo Award and how this book finds itself squished up with 1984, We and A Brave New World on 'best of' lists. I am confuzzled about the editor and publisher who let the book end like that (I won't spoil it - but I will warn you). I am confuzzled about why I read past that 46% (don't).

A common excuse for sci-fi writers is that they were tripping or psychotic at the time, maybe both. According to his Wikipaedia bio, he embraced that stereotype and wandered into Wonderland every once in a while. That might explain the monologues about how awful the modern world is. But Philip K Dick used to write a novel in two days while high on LSD and he wrote Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. Perhaps I am judging Heinlein harshly, based on one bad experience. But I don't think so because that's how I got into this post.

Now I am irritated and need a good book to read.

Stranger in a Strange Land: Part 1 of 2

Once again, I demand your patience. Yes, demand! A reviewer should never review a book when she has not finished said book. She should also never review a book straight after finishing. But a) rules only apply 75% of the time, b) rules bore me 75% of the time and c) Stranger in a Strange Land could be divided neatly into two Kindle singles, the second of which would be filed under a different category - some synonym for 'strange, even for science fiction'.

Despite my claims to unconventionality (literally), this is the 25% of the time when I seem to have introduced my topic in, um, the introduction. Don't worry, no doubt I will have meandered by the conclusion. But just where will I meander to, huh? The mind boggles.

The conundrum here is: What happened to the author, Robert A Heinlein, when he had completed 46% of the book? Here's a clue - or a red herring - he published the book in 1961, a few years after he had written it. Before that, he had written children's books (heavens!). Did he write it and then realise he could use dirty words and sex and indulge in aesthetic, political and humanist dialogues, under the guise of the free love espoused by people who didn't shower or wash their hair (I want to say something nasty here but shall refrain. Unlike Heinlein)?

Enough suspense. I am hungry and my leftovers from dinner are a-calling. From the fridge. I should probably get it checked it out then.

Space travel deposits and then 20-ish years later reclaims a human raised on Mars by, yes, Martians. Martians we now know to be either fossilised single-celled somethings or invisible. These somethings are an advanced civilisation who live for more than 100 years and once they die they become Old Ones who talk to and guide the living Martians. They can control pretty much everything: their minds, growth of their bodies, objects around them and so on. They can also die on command (!), called 'disorporation', and make things not be by reducing them to singularities. (This might also explain why they're invisible to dear Curiosity.)

The Man from Mars (nicknamed 'Mike') automatically becomes the richest and most powerful man ever, through some series of silly laws that are sillier than the ones the colonialists imposed. He finds refuge in the home of a philanthropist named Jubal, who is surrounded by lascivious women and two willing servants, who gets him out of his mess by handing power over to the Secretary General of the world. After Mike makes some policemen disappear (the official story is they got lost. Yes. In a suburb).

Aaaaaand this is where the bar at the bottom of the Kindle screen says '46%'. It should also say 'end of Book One - proceed to the book labelled 'strange, even for science fiction'?' In Martian, 'grok' means something apparently indescribable in human language but, to take some liberties, seems to be a verb for true understanding, where the objective truth and our subjective delusions meet. (Did I mention the Martians are highly advanced? Also in the way of the spirit. That's how they control things. (They sound like hippies to me.)) I don't grok Book Two.

Mike adapts quickly to human life, but he doesn't grok it. So he takes his show on the road, together with someone else's sweetheart. He begins to speak with all the idioms and double entendres of a fluent English speaker raised in America. He also delivers monologues on the philosophies of religion and human relationships, between orgies that to him symbolise having a glass of wine together, and trips to the zoo. And he still can't make or understand a joke.

Meanwhile, back at Jubal's ranch, amid pregnancy (implied to be the progeny of the Man from Mars) and a wedding with - wait - a celibate Muslim (shock, horror!), the ranch-owner delivers his own monologues on the philosophy of aesthetics, with so much passion that I am beginning to suspect the author is speaking through these characters. I fell asleep at this point.

At the end of Book One, I thought, this is unusual: to continue past what feels like the climax and resolution of the novel. Fun; it reminds me of Star Wars (that's a compliment). Sometimes it's best to stop while you're ahead (one valuable rule).

As I said, a reviewer should never pass comment before the end of the book. (Note this, my future reviewers. It's not polite.) Maybe there will be a plot development that says (from the author): "I know this has all been a bit much to stomach and I apologise for offending the sensibilities of sensible people. Here is why I did it and see, it works! Continue reading and praise my book in your blog post." Perhaps just an endnote. Even a footnote.

It won a pretty impressive prize, a Hugo Award (not a Booker or a Nobel though), if you're impressed by that sort of thing. Neuromancer won the same award in 1985 and I thought that was grand (seriously, no one has answered my question). (Also, did you know that they give out the award to films and that Jurassic Park won in 1992? Don't roll your eyes - deny you watch the repeats when they come on the movie channel, I dare you.)

Brontosaurus had been my favourite dinosaur since I was a child. Even though he may not exist. I like an underd-ino (har!)

Essentially (because this is the most conventional post I have written in a while, I will summarise My Point(s) - even though I am listening to Thom Yorke!) the characterisation reduces to the author's opinions (mostly negative) of the human race, thus losing the subtlety of Book One and makes it grand. These opinions are dated: diatribes on modern art, misanthropism, religion as akin to commercialism, how media distort reality and so on. We have heard them and read them ad nauseam. People waiting to cross the road talk about this!

Essentially (revised) in Book Two we're being preached to. By characters who think that orgies are a valid way to encourage social empathy. Granted, Mike is revealing (haha) social norms and mores for what they are: artificial. But that's a little ridiculous from a man who will choose the moment he will die - sorry, discorporate - and believes he is being educated by ghosts. Norms and mores are necessary for the existence of any life form with a brain. Watch your pets introduce themselves to other pets.

Having potentially stuck my foot in my mouth, I am going to finish the book and hopefully not have to retract this post (I won't delete it, that seems unethical somehow, like copying a picture of a model from a website and uploading it as your profile pic. Yeah, I'm talking to you). At the very least, I will grok the philosophies of aesthetics, economics and human relationships in the 60s. I always wanted to take that course at varsity, but it conflicted with the rest of my schedule.

A pair of brackets is not just parenthesis

Something happened in my previous post. Something Happened. (By far my cheesiest and favourite opening lines ever.) In other words, I had just finished reading the book Something Happened by he of Catch 22, Joseph Heller. Is it coincidence that my psychoanalytic reading of Alfred Hitchcock's movies and my reading of the psychoanalytic book Something Happened coincided? Am I interested in both because I am psychoanalytically minded? (Now my favourite introduction and perhaps my best SEO-worthy.)

This is not a review and neither is it scrabble, so keep reading you!

As a writer, I am prone to using parentheses to insert a comment, joke, stage whisper or red herring. Maybe that is why I have found myself adopting the voice of the main character of Something Happened. Which somehow makes me a relation of Joseph Heller, I guess, who first adopted his voice. (I think this logic makes us married. I should look into his estate.)

Bob Slocum, the main character, uses enough brackets to move the keys from the top-right to the center of the keyboard, replacing 'f' and 'h'. He even uses them to begin (and break) paragraphs. Sometimes it seems as though these interruptions have rhyme and reason. That's a red herring. Sometimes the parenthesised comments are short: "(So who else does he have?)" And sometimes they are long: "Somehow the time passes (doesn't it, without help from us..."

Towards the end of the book, I lost a partner-in-bracket and had to move on.

My parentheses are usually jokes, sometimes self-deprecating ones. Occasionally they are instructions to you to keep reading. You. In the last post, I used the brackets to relay missing information. My sentence structure was otherwise quite normal. Conventional, I mean. Not normal. Something abducted my colons and semi-colons and long complex sentences used to convince the reader that My Point is within spitting distance. (Spitting distance?! That is not a term I'd use. I do not and never have, not even in diapers, spat.)

The legend of Oedipus is something I try to avoid contemplating, as with most of Freud's juvenile phase theories. (Of course, it is difficult to miss in Birds, but the birds are a handy distraction.) (Also, the sliver of the screenplay that I appropriated was, uh, appropriated. I did not write it. Wish I had, but did not.)

Slocum narrates the novel, in stream of consciousness. It doesn't take a horoscope to predict that a large part of the novel is about Slocum's fears. The ones he admits to and those he doesn't admit to thereby admitting to them. (With this novel in my back pocket, I'd argue that anyone's unconsciousness stream would filter into fear and the need for security. And the consciousness stream would be an algae mound repressing said fear. And somewhere in there, hunger, in the shape of fish. Too far?)

Even his humour has nestled in here. More hardy, less irreverant. Less unpredictable. (That's a joke, too.)

This has happened before. I get the tone and style, but never the award-winning books. Yet. (One day, I am going to have them write on the cover of my book, "The next Virginia Woolf/AS Byatt/Carson McCullers." And you will get the joke. But you won't laugh because it will be true. Because the Booker Prize council said so.) This is different from feeling like you have been abandoned in a book after you have closed the cover. This is like a habit. This is what comes from identifying with a character (which is oddly what Slocum does: he adopts the gestures of people he has been around). Arrgh! I must be living in a book, where all my thoughts are pirated from others.

That's it, folks. This post is about redemption. To confess to the above (initially I thought I was just confessing to appropriating a fictional character's voice). Soon I will forget all of this, until I re-read this post going through my archives (after the award-winning book in which I inherit the title of a ghost), and wonder who is appropriating the voices of my characters. And then I shall sue them for copyright infringement. After I invest in a patent troll.

The romantic Mr Hitchcock

Where the Wild Things Are is one of my favourite movies. Which is surprising because David Eggers is one of my least favourite writers (and one of the writers of the screenplay. He also wrote a book based on the movie. Not the book the movie is based on). It is adapted from the children's book by Maurice Sendak. One of my favourite quotes (yes, I'm committing the great sin of any blogger; beginning with a quote. But, folks, this really is just the beginning) from that mean old man is that fear "is truth".

He also says that parents who think the movie is too scary should "go to hell" and the children should "go home. Or wet your pants."

Alfred Hitchcock, apparently, was just as mean an old man. His ideas on fear resonate with those of Sendak, for example: "Fear isn't so difficult to understand. After all, weren't we all frightened as children?" Then again, there are few ways to understand fear, its meaning being in the name, and any person with a memory of their childhood will admit to being afraid of cupboards and curtains. (My particular fear was of the foot of my bed. I thought a witch (closely related to the fairies on my duvet and matching curtains) waited there to snack on my toes (as if I could reach the bottom of the bed).

I have watched four Hitchcock movies this week - including those classic horrors Birds and Psycho. The other two were the thrillers Vertigo and Rear Window. I admit I hid behind my hands more than once during the first two. And maybe I pulled my feet up onto the couch and cringed a little. Maybe. But the emotion that affected me most wasn't fear and suspense; it was love. (No no, that's not when I pulled my feet up. Cringed maybe, but not in the foetal position.)

Hear me out! I am the first one in line at the Cynicism Convention scoffing at poems about roses and summer's days. (There's a guy here who's gifted in parodies.) Love is a chemical, and when it wears itself out, you have to still be best friends with that person and come to terms with the facts that said other person's hygiene habits and eating noises and how they spend money, annoy the heck out of you. The poems should be about socks on the floor and replacing toilet paper rolls and hot water in the morning.

Yes, I'm a romantic. Seriously, hear me out!

My favourite ending of the four was Birds'. (I shall try not to drop spoilers, if you try not to step in them.) The movie begins with a montage to the heroine's flippant but endearing approach to life. (What first endeared me was her wardrobe.) She pranks the leading man by pretending she is an attendant in the bird section of the pet shop. And he's pranking her by going along with it because he knows who she is: he's a lawyer and she recently went to court regarding some prank involving a smashed window (I imagine there's a car involved).

MITCH (talking about preserving bird species)
I imagine that's very important. Especially in moulting season.
MELANIE
Yes, that's a particularly dangerous time.
MITCH
Are they moulting now?
MELANIE
Oh, some of them are.
MITCH
How can you tell?
MELANIE
Well, they get a sort of hangdog expression.

'Melanie Daniels'

Melanie Daniel's (the heroine's) pleasure in a good joke (a woman after my own heart - I learnt a thing or two, so be warned, you in egg-throwing distance. No worries, I have a poor throwing arm) isn't portrayed as a heartbroken young woman's attempt to distract herself from her loneliness. If it is, I may have missed the point entirely. (A hadedah bird just cawed above me. Oh dear. Now there's a bird that would strike terror into my bleeding heart if a flock swarmed into my living room. One tried to carry my cat off once.)

Long story short, she arrives at Mitch Brenner's (the hero's) family home carrying two lovebirds, a graze to the head and the jealousy of the local schoolteacher. (She also steers a boat, in a suit and heels.) Mitch's mother hates her and doesn't bother to disguise it any more than Mitch tries to disguise his lust. (Interestingly, Mitch is a stereotypical playboy, as are most of Hitchcock's heroes (stereotypical, I mean).) Melanie is intrigued rather than perturbed (she rarely seems perturbed. Even when she's falling into a coma).

Turns out there's some weird Oedipal thing going on, from the mother's side, and Melanie seems confuzzled but still unperturbed. The birds attack (really, so many options: crop dust their asses, stay inside until they go away, army tanks, cut down all the trees (then they can't see you approach)), first Mother gets jealous, then she has a breakdown and leans on Melanie for support, then Melanie saves her child. Saves both of them, you could argue.

Here it is, despite the deceptive introduction, the relationship being explored is between a mother and her daughter-in-law. The look between the two in the very last scene (second last frame I think) is genuinely heartwarming - not schmaltzy or in need of words or unnecessary. That one look tells a whole new story, where it took an hour and a half to tell its prequel. (And where most movies today would need a script that fills every moment of that hour and a half. And be schmaltzy. And be reviewed as 'feminism revived'. And end with all of the characters on the floor covered in dirt or flour, laughing. Or something.)

Where the Wild Things Are offers something slightly different. While the undercurrent of Birds is a relationship, Where the Wild Things Are is about a child's psychology. Which is what makes it deeply frightening. It is about a boy's impulses and emotions as he grows up (not quite into a man) - how unpredictable they can be, as if they were a host of irrational creatures in our brains. We pretend we 'own them' (apply ghetto accent). But really, we're just scared they'll turn on us.

The heartwarming bit is where the boy reaches an unspoken agreement with these creatures and swiftly rows off to the safety of his mother's arms. (Hello again, Oedipus. I thought your name was Mitch?)

I lied. I lied, but not intentionally.Self-preservation I argue, Judge. Fear is not a self-explanatory emotion. We can be afraid of different things in different ways. I could be afraid of birds pecking my eyes out, but that's different from being afraid of a daughter-in-law (luckily I'm not afraid of either). Hidden behind these could be a hundred different sources or manifestations or triggers just waiting like landmines to be stepped on (have I mentioned the suit and heels?). And then there are fears not hidden behind anything, just careening through a highway of abandoned cars.

Now take this all with a pinch of salt and throw it over your left shoulder (or your right if you're left-handed): I have not read up on Mr Hitchcock. I do not know whether he was married and how many times, whether he really was mean or just honest, or whether I am reading too much into what are just thrillers and horrors. (Although I don't think I am.) I found that quote by Gurgling "alfred hitchcock quotes' (search engines don't care about caps).

If I am afraid of anything, it is my sub- and unconscious in a way that beats the snowriders in furry white 80's suits in Inception. Because I don't have two seconds to live faced with that twisted mess of perception, without my more empathic conscious to intervene. I have evidence. This mess is the star of Where the Wild Things Are and that is what guides my reading into Hitchcock's pure works of art. Don't tell anyone; they won't let me into the Cynic Convention next year.

Neuromancer

Being culturally aware and intelligent folk, you know that the Matrix (starring that master of expression, Keanu Reeves) was based on certain premises in Neuromancer by William Gibson. Which in turn drew from a rich philosophy of talk and debate and drunken theorising about the nature of 'reality' and our place in it. Don't be fooled by Cartesian Maths. That Descartes didn't need drugs to see that our senses are fallible and perhaps wholly untrustworthy. (Insert the rest of Western philosophy here.)

I didn't know all of this. Some filtered through during first-and-only year philosophy class, some of it I live and the rest I looked it up on Wikipaedia.

One of the articles includes a link to various religions. What now (brown cow)? I think. Buddhism, ok, I can see that. Certain sects of Buddhism believe we are living in a dream state, from lesser to more degrees. Some types of Hinduism believe we are ignorant to the 'real' reality. Sikh's believe that the natural world has two states and that we see the superficial layer. Huh. Who knew? I didn't.

The two things I really gleaned from that first-year class are:

• Choose an object, like a table. Define that class of object so it is unique from every other type of object in the world. A chair has four legs that support a rectangular piece of wood. So does a bench. So do certain raised buildings. Anyway you'd have to prove that your senses are accurate and you can't. Philosophers have been arguing this for years and some of these were smart. The senses cannot be trusted, but they're all we have, so let's move on.
• What if we are strapped up to a machine called the Experience Machine? This machine generates only pleasant experiences and we could pre-programme these experiences before plugging in. Would you choose to live in that world? Why? And could you consider that world 'real life'?

These are serious questions, folks - look lively.

Neuromancer is set in a world of wealth and poverty, with no middle class to mediate between them. Case, our hero (such a loose word), is a freelance hacker for various types of smugglers (he doesn't question what of). He is recruited by a new cowboy in town, Armitage, and his leatherclad sidekick, Molly, whose superpower is using sex instead of expressing emotions (she's a liberated woman). 'Recruited' isn't exactly the right word, because it suggests voluntary consent. No, he has a surgically implanted timebomb in his belly and only Armitage knows how to turn it off.

Off the three go, and then three become four when they pick up a heinous character named Riviera whose real superpower is manipulating reality - well, your sense of reality.

Case has a past (involving a woman, obviously), Molly has a past (involving sex, obviously) and Armitage has a past (very Jason Bourne-like - book Bourne not Matt Damon-Bourne, not obviously (although he obviously has a past)). Riviera has a past but he is all past. In another context, this might be touching (a sad but witty comedy where three misfits and a scumbag tackle their demons) except this is sci-fi, where very little is touching, bar occasional revulsion. But this is a post about the real and simulated, about meaning and value, and the matrix.

Early in the novel, a character suggests that Case is a simulation. He hushes the man hastily - perhaps the author hushes the man hastily. Loudly suspiscious, but it is never addressed again. Except, Case is extraordinarily good at what he does. He actually dies more than once in the matrix, where even death is death. Case also recalls a simulation of his early mentor (the one who taught him to run drugs) in the matrix, and the simulation insists he is that a collection of habits and thought patterns. But he can adapt to situations and assimulate new information. He also arranges for Case to switch him off i.e kill him.

On the other hand, the matrix Case plugs in to seems inflexible; it reminds me of the old dos software: black screen, glowing green characters and flickering cursor. You couldn't use it unless you could translate words into a syntax of '\'s.  These characters form the outlines of a city on top of the real city.

Then again, someone implies that the digital city is the real one. What happens next seems so bizarre it could only take place in a simulation. Shying just short of a spoiler and just to muddy the waters, an artificial intelligence named Wintermute keeps interfering. He actually convinces someone to adopt another personality and periodically takes over people's bodies. From the matrix. A dos-like thing.

I sense a ruse - yes, a ruse, people! I have a theory but my theory is a spoiler, and I took a vow never to, uh, spoil. Again. Although no doubt my opinion is scattered all over the previous paragraphs.

Instead let's dabble in some minor philosophy, in questions that actually take up large chunks of my week, as if tomorrow someone will knock on my door or the partition of my cubicle and ask me to choose a coloured pill. (I will look at them suspisciously and tell them I don't do drugs.) But, yes, let's pretend these are not life-defining issues. My burning question (no, it's not heartburn) is: what is the exact relationship between Case's world and the matrix? And is there a third 'reality'?

Which translates into: what the heck is going on around here? (Here being the world in which you are reading this blog. If you are reading it. And if this isn't part of the multi-verse, which would mean there would be realities in which you are reading my blog spiking out all over the place.)

I will stop there because you know what I mean and if you don't you have your own ideas and that's fine too. I must know (what the matrix is - I can wait for the answer to the other question until Morpheus knocks on my cubicle wall)! Someone fetch William Gibson, bring him here and I shall force him to tell. I shall read the original manuscript to him and point out all the errors until he breaks down and tells me. Or until he lies. Then I will go easy and read him my manuscript. He will be so charmed he will tell me the truth (probably 'I don't know') and publish my book under his own name.

The book was phenomenal, astronomical, universinomical. Whatever, just read the book, kidnap Gibson and one of you tell me.

Seriously though, I couldn't put it down. You could argue that there was too much unexplored, but that's what cinched it for me. I laced up my running shoes and hitched a ride. I was on my own journey (I won't say quest because my object eludes me still; although I know there aren't answers, any more than the Holy Grail exists, Dan Brown), supported by mounds and mounds of talk and debate and drunken theorising. I like a mystery that has no answer, as much as I like a tragedy.

The internet is like a swamp and other metaphors

The internet is a fickle thing. (Could I have come up with a more inane opening line? The alternative is to lead straight into my point, like a news article, but I prefer to string you along. Also this is not news.) So is language, really. Once, our teacher started a game: the class was to create a long sentence by working together. Each person in the chain had to add one word to the phrase - then clause - then sentence - then complex sentence - then mass of meaningless statements.

I have written myself into a patch of swamp. Because if the internet is like that game, my blog is a handful of mud. On the bright side, rather that than one of those deep-sea eyeless fish.

What I mean is that - oh gosh, here's another swamp - the internet is in a sense (note the catch-all disclaimer, folks, and that includes third-party insurance) a demonstration of democracy. Listen before you start throwing things. The game was also a bit like democracy. Everyone adds their two cents with minimal censorship. (I mean, if we'd started adding swearwords, I guess the teacher would have stopped us. Maybe washed our mouths out. Is that even allowed nowadays? Because it was pretty effective.)

In about 2009, Penguin Books hosted an international experiment. They were going to enable internet users to write and edit a novel, and they would publish it. There were forums and guidelines and some limits (otherwise a user could stop sleeping and eating for three days and pound out the bulk of the novel, in theory. Less than theory, in my books (har har) - have you met some of these internet junkies?) All intellectual property rested with them.

The experiment drowned in the swamp of the internet. (And media studies grads everywhere yelled, Told ya' so. We love being right. Because it happens so rarely.) Perhaps they overestimated internet users or language or democracy (there, I said it). Proof that James Joyce didn't just pound out random strings of words, two out of five of which make sense. (It's more like four.) That's not the point though.

The writing was a mash of meaningless statements, that were over-edited (or under-edited depending on how you look at it). Forums were filled with sensitive writers (we're all sensitive) whose work has been 'completely decimated'. (I never partook of the experiment FYI. I prefer to stand on the sidelines and criticise. Constructively. And then feel guilty.) We all became commentators and the project shut down ahead of deadline. Penguin sent out a press release saying they wouldn't publish the novel, but it was there on the website to look at, because we had all learnt valuable things about publishing and the internet.

Now, I can't find the site or any references to it, despite a creative assortment of keywords and Google's ability to know what I meant to search rather than what I did. And I can't remember the name of the darn thing. I have just learnt something about the internet: you can delete all trace of something embarrassing - contrary to the logic that the internet remembers everything and that Google is the set of neuron receptors that lead to the memory.

Hence the internet being a fickle thing, and language too. And James Joyce a genius. (Stop throwing things! Huh, at least its a bushel of broccoli rather than - nevermind.)

Perhaps the experiment would have worked if Penguin had retained its role as a gatekeeper, as it would with print novels. For example, you could have gradings of editors, determined by a series of tests and their editing of the manuscript. They could operate as a hive, with a mediator at the top, verifying the above. Hang on, that's how Distributed Proofreaders, which does the OCRing, editing and proofreading for Project Gutenberg, works and have done for years (I started volunteering in 2005).

Hmmmm I feel there is a lesson here. I can't quite grasp it through the mud. No wait, I'm just heightening the suspense. I always know where My Point is. Always. Always. Always. Does democracy in practice mean anarchy? If you want to destroy the system, be prepared for the backlash. And I say this as a sympathetic anarchist. Even challenging the system and redeveloping marshland where the capitalist gatekeepers built their monuments needs project management. Else you're going to be left with half-demolished building in a pool of mud, like in Planet of the Apes.

Now, I'm always telling you that I'm the dictator here and so I can say and do as I wish (I can't but anyway), but I am just a handful of mud in the swamp. No one quotes me in essays and other such vaguely objective things (heavens above, please don't. Although I'd like to be a credible source one day, I'd prefer if you don't quote me using mud as a metaphor. Rather follow me on Twitter and like my posts). And I abide by Blogger's rules, some of them imposed by the design, others by mediators. (But apparently not on spambots.)

Now that I have gotten to My Point (which I always knew was here. Always. Always. Always) I am not sure I agree with myself.  Rules and processes develop for a reason (mostly through trial and error), though some rules and processes have passed their expiry dates and deserve to be broken. Often it takes a skilled gatekeeper to know the difference. Honestly, I'd prefer to have a gatekeeper there to stop children from wandering off at night, and thieves and such wandering in.

But back to business: an experiment requires an hypothesis, guidelines, a process and a placebo. Without these, what do you expect to get except chaos? Do you actually expect to get chaos? Or is this an experiment in chaos? Do you mean to prove that gatekeepers are necessary? Why then has the internet erased all trace of such experiment?

I am overthinking this. Luckily, you probably haven't been able to keep reading through this ridiculously long post. So I can say without recrimination that the democratic nature of the internet sometimes just encourages meaninglessness and chaos. (You get the hint that the same applies to true democracy.) And that this shouldn't always be encouraged or even just played with. I wonder whether, had some more vigorous rules been applied, and perhaps withdrawn in stages, Penguin might actually have come up with something publishable, as well as some useful information.