setsuled

Lately I've been reading The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien again and The Making of Modern Japan by Marius B. Jansen. Those are both heavy hardback books so when I need something lighter to take on the train I've been reading Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess' Stardust. In one of the boxes of my old books that my grandmother sent to me was my trade paperback copy of the novel with the original Charles Vess illustrations. It was a lucky find many years ago at a Barnes and Noble. I wish it were the hardback, though, because the cover's become a bit delicate over time.

The novel was adapted as a film in 2007 starring Charlie Cox and Claire Danes, with Peter O'Toole, Robert DeNiro, and Michelle Pfeiffer. I've only seen it once and didn't hate it but I greatly prefer the novel, particularly with the Charles Vess illustrations. His aesthetic along with Gaiman's Lord Dunsany inspired narrative tone provides a vastly different experience to the film's big budget Princess Bride concept.

Now I have to read it amid the controversy of "sexual assault" allegations against Gaiman. I put that in quotes because one thing I find especially creepy about the coverage is how strong language is applied to matters that really aren't resolved and definitely aren't clear. But the novel, which includes at least one scene of a young man kissing a woman who does not express her consent beforehand, would be seen as a smoking gun by some critics. Such critics would be arguing in bad faith since spontaneity has been a part of romantic portrayals since, well, always. The madness of modern western Puritanism, which the results of the recent presidential election were largely a reaction against, as usual assumes not only the obvious correctness of its new moral dictates, but retroactively applies them to the whole of preceding history.

The sad thing is that the one paraphrased quote from Gaiman that seems to have the most traction is his characterisation of his pushing writer Julia Hobsbawm onto a sofa and kissing her. He says it was a young man misreading a situation. So he feels he acted wrongly, that he made a mistake, but has apparently over the years forgiven himself. One might detect some indignation in his response at the idea that a public who are not participants in a piece of his private history feels entitled to pass judgement on it. Which I'd say is reasonable. But woe to the celebrity who dares question the public's right to pass judgement on any celebrity's private life, however biased and incomplete the coverage.

"WHOM THESE CHAINS BECOME NOT SO", by Caitlin R. Kiernan, is the new Sirenia Digest story I read to-day. It's good. It's a sort of mash-up of the ancient Greek Andromeda story, altered so that she can expect no rescue, and a vignette of an author for the story discussing it with a friend and sometimes lover. The imagery in the Andromeda story is lovely and horrific. Equally so is the friend/lover's description of a strange dream.

Whether or not the author in the story is meant to be Caitlin and the other person someone she happens to know is never clear. It did get me thinking about the community that surrounds a group of writers and artists, such as the Beats, the Pre-Raphaelites, and the group around Henry Miller and Anais Nin. There must be many such groups and many, even for some that contain successful and famous writers, that are beyond living memory. I was sort of thinking about the extended group of fantasy and horror authors that includes both Caitlin and Neil Gaiman. If the sexual assault allegations do spell the end for Gaiman, it's going to suck for a lot of the people he was routinely generous to. I shouldn't be but I kind of am surprised by how quickly some readers are ready to wipe their hands of Gaiman. I've been coming to the opinion, though, that the reason Gaiman and his close friends have been publicly silent is that he plans to sue. And I think he has a great case and the more people who swear him off, he better case he has. Tortoise Media has taken some very suspect accounts of ex-girlfriends and couched them in malicious language and put what little substance they have behind a pay-wall. Sadly, there are many people now willing to "cancel" at the first use of the word "allegation". So Gaiman has plenty of ammo to claim damages.

Speaking of writing, I was watching Willow a couple nights ago and it occurred to me it's really badly written. I realise that's hardly a revelation to most people but I loved that movie when I was a kid. I was even really stoked for the Disney+ series. Everyone was feigning shock when Disney recently cancelled The Acolyte but the Willow series was a much bloodier execution. Not only did they cancel it, they removed it from the streaming service. Do you know how many crappy movies and TV series are still on the service? Air Bud is still on Disney+. Remember the one about the dog that plays basketball?

Unlike The Acolyte, which seemed to be made up of people looking for paychecks and status, the Willow series seemed more like a labour of love. Warwick Davis had been wanting to come back to the character since forever and he really seemed to have bonded with new cast members--all of whom I thought were perfectly fine.



All that love and camaraderie and Disney didn't just cancel they show they insulted them with a removal from the service. TaleSpin can stay, Willow the series has to go. Willow the movie is still on, of course.

And yes, I know Disney is using legal fine print from the Disney+ subscription to get out of paying damages to the family of a woman who died in a Disney restaurant, so I know they've done worse. But art is the primary topic for this blog, okay?

Anyway, yeah, the Willow series was indeed badly written. Though I don't blame Jonathan Kasdan and Bob Dolman who wrote the first couple episodes which I still think were fine.

Bob Dolman was screenwriter on the original Willow. As I was dozing through it a couple nights ago, it occurred to me how much the story is dependent on coincidences. There's the coincidence of the baby coming to Willow on the river, the coincidence of the brownies flying over Willow on the hawk once again carrying the baby. The coincidence of running into Madmartigan the second time in that tavern, of Bavmorda's daughter being there to personally inspect the place moments later. That kind of thing makes a fantasy world seem small. I mean, that's what you say when you meet someone who coincidentally knows someone you know; "It's a small world." The more coincidences you pile on, the smaller the world gets.

Take Star Wars: A New Hope as an example of the opposite. Now, let's ignore the fact that Anakin built C3PO and owned R2D2 in the prequels. Ignore the fact that Anakin grew up on Tatooine. In fact, let's ignore the prequels entirely. There are otherwise no major coincidences propelling the plot forward in A New Hope. Leia's blockade runner was going to Tatooine specifically with the intention of seeing Obi-Wan Kenobi. The droids are just droids on the ship among many--we see another protocol droid in the background. Leia probably chose R2D2 because he was closest at hand. Now, it was improbably good luck that C3PO and R2D2 weren't shot when they walked across the corridor in the firefight but, in terms of the plot, that could just as well have happened as not have happened--it doesn't move the story forward, it's just a bit of garnish.

The two wander the desert and they're both picked up by Jawas. It's not clear how much time passes from the time they land on the planet to the time the Jawas picked them up but it's not unlikely that the Jawas, being scavengers that roam the wastes, would have spotted the two shiny mechanical beings sooner or later. It's a bit of a coincidence that both droids meet again on the same sandcrawler but not a huge coincidence.

It would be a big coincidence for the droids to wind up with Leia's brother, Luke Skywalker, but I suspect Lucas hadn't thought of that yet. At any rate, it was far from anyone's mind who first saw the movie. When the movie first came out, as far as anyone knew, Luke's father was a Jedi who was killed by Darth Vader. And Vader killed a lot of Jedi. So it's not a big coincidence. So this all contributes to making the fantasy world fill big, composed of various people with various motives which would usually only coincide due to intent or natural flow of circumstance, making everything feel more credible and therefore lifelike.

I do like the prequels but I think my biggest problem with them at this point is the inclusion of C3PO and R2D2. Lucas was originally inspired by Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress which is told from the point of view of two peasants who are just trying to survive while the clans fight around them for reasons they don't comprehend. They have their own motives separate from those going on all around them. The first part of A New Hope is from the droids' point of view and it therefore makes sense we don't have much of a grasp of what motivates the parties at war. But the prequels are all about those politics--and, anyway, the way they're shot, they're clearly told from the points of view of the Jedi.

Anyway. I'm rambling a lot to-day. That probably means I'm procrastinating. By the way, here's a YouTube version of my Top 20 Pirate Movies post:



It took 24 hours to upload during which time I couldn't use the internet for anything else so do please watch it. Thank you.

X Sonnet #1874

Remember thirsty skulls control the woods.
So walking late, refuse to carry wine.
For ghosts recall the taste of spirit goods.
The afterlife a palate doth refine.
Contestants name a spotted cat as king.
The second bachelor brought a lively fish.
For singing pawns, the queen bestows a ring.
For swimming prawns, the princess grants a wish.
It's Pan whose appetite surrounds us all.
We know a film in truth is just a tree.
Remember words to make a stronger call.
A wasp is not a thin and longer bee.
You shouldn't tighten helmets through your brain.
A smaller skull is but a dodgy gain.

Last night I read the new Sirenia Digest which contained "PASSAGE OF VENUS IN FRONT OF THE SUN", a new story from Caitlin R. Kiernan. It's good, beginning with sort of a drowsy mood and becoming a story about a very gentle alien invasion of Earth.

The aliens are primarily concerned with stories, their society somehow not being able to generate such things. The discussion then becomes about censorship and the destruction of works of fiction. It's a timely topic when people from both political sides these days have started to endorse the destruction of texts. Caitlin makes reference to Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 and Francois Truffaut's film adaptation of the book. I think the two great works to read on the topic are that and Milton's Areopagitica. Milton gives the devil his due (as usual) and famously describes books as living things, capable of exerting real influence on people's minds. But he just as famously said that he cannot praise a "cloistered virtue", a person whose virtue is due entirely to never having been exposed to challenging ideas. The fact that people are so quick to fear works of fiction these days is surely a sign of rampant cowardice, cowardice being something that used to be regarded as a negative trait.

"I cannot praise a fugitive and cloister'd vertue, unexercis'd & unbreath'd, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race, where that immortall garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat. Assuredly we bring not innocence into the world, we bring impurity much rather: that which purifies us is triall, and triall is by what is contrary." - John Milton

Despite the Halloween season being over, I've kept up reading H.P. Lovecraft Selects, a collection of stories drawn from Lovecraft's famous essay on supernatural horror. To-day I read Rudyard Kipling's "The Phantom 'Rickshaw". Lovecraft describes Kipling as approaching greatness despite "omnipresent mannerisms". These may be the pervasive bits of local colour Kipling is famous for and it is a great and subtle addition to the story of a man seeing his dead lover stalking him in a 'rickshaw. That one element of strangeness is made the more striking for the abundant evidence of the author's casual familiarity with the reality of the place.

This piece of window dressing even comes to the fore as the story's narrator tries to use it as a tool to keep himself sane;

Two or three times I found myself saying to myself almost aloud: “I’m Jack Pansay on leave at Simla—at Simla! Everyday, ordinary Simla. I mustn’t forget that—I mustn’t forget that.” Then I would try to recollect some of the gossip I had heard at the Club: the prices of So-and-So’s horses—anything, in fact, that related to the workaday Anglo-Indian world I knew so well. I even repeated the multiplication-table rapidly to myself, to make quite sure that I was not taking leave of my senses.

As for the story itself, the poetic justice of a man undone by the ghost of a woman he so cruelly spurned isn't as satisfying as it is horrific. There's a surface of a basic, functioning morality--man does wrong, man gets punished--but the strangeness of it against the authenticity of the location emphasises a dreamlike quality in the proceedings. She may indeed be a manifestation of the narrator's conscious or self-loathing. It's an effective story at any rate.

It's been over ten years since I last read a book by Ursula LeGuin, who passed away two days ago. So I can certainly say her works linger in my mind long after reading them, certainly more than many other authors I read over a decade ago. I first read her over twenty years ago, though, in high school when I encountered Wizard of Earthsea which compelled me to seek out Left Hand of Darkness, then The Dispossessed, a few other novels in her Hainish Cycle, and then The Lathe of Heaven as well. Looking over excerpts and summaries to-day I would credit LeGuin with teaching me at a young age the value of understanding other perspectives, of appreciating the complex factors that form a human personality. Whether in her works of fantasy or her works of science fiction, a consistent virtue in her work is the fascinating exploration of people and how and why they think as they do.

Looking over several quotes from her at Wikiquote, I see many keen and insightful statements, some of them almost reminding me of Oscar Wilde.

As a fiction writer, I don't speak message. I speak story. Sure, my story means something, but if you want to know what it means, you have to ask the question in terms appropriate to storytelling. Terms such as message are appropriate to expository writing, didactic writing, and sermons—different languages from fiction.
The notion that a story has a message assumes that it can be reduced to a few abstract words, neatly summarized in a school or college examination paper or a brisk critical review.

And this is absolutely true. What I learned about the value of understanding other perspectives didn't come from LeGuin saying to me, "You need to understand other perspectives!" but by taking the time to invite me into another time and place and showing me how they work. The fact that the books are deeply enjoyable is related to this.

There's something frantic and inherently fearful when people cling to messages over a portrait of experience. As LeGuin also said, "The artist deals in what cannot be said in words. The artist whose medium is fiction does this in words." It reminds me of Oscar Wilde again, saying that art is "the perfect use of an imperfect medium." It's precisely in the lack of precision, the dovetailing of impressions of visceral experience and human relationships, that we get to something that truly speaks to human nature. Partly it's simply the virtue of "showing not telling," partly it's that people naturally respond better to the companionable tone of storytelling over the rebuking and restrictive tone of the prescriptive lecture or sermon. When Ged goes on his journey in The Wizard of Earthsea, it's not a story about how we should be more like Ged but simply about who Ged is and what we do with that is entirely up to us.

The world seems especially in need of more voices like LeGuin's and I'm very sorry to see her go.

I spent a few days devouring Mark Frost's Twin Peaks: The Final Dossier, a short book that any Twin Peaks fan would read in double time. But I haven't read The Secret History of Twin Peaks, also written by Mark Frost, released before the première of season three. Partly I avoided it because of this quote from David Lynch from a press conference:

Q: What did [Lynch] think of Frost’s book, The Secret History of Twin Peaks?
A: I haven’t read it. It’s his history of Twin Peaks.

Lynch's emphasis on "his" made me think the book reflected a perspective on Twin Peaks Lynch didn't share. I was reminded that Lynch and Frost parted ways creatively after the series and that Frost didn't contribute to the screenplay for Fire Walk with Me. I wondered if their reunion for the series return was on the condition that Frost be allowed to put out his version of events in book form while Lynch was the dominant creative control on the show itself.

I can only guess what the differences in perspective might be. When reading the Dossier I tried to spot contradictions and inconsistencies compared to the show. Aside from the fact that Agent Preston is referred to as "Tammy" on the show--even the plaque on her desk says "Tammy"--and in the book she refers to herself as "Tamara", I only caught one real contradiction--on the subject of Judy. The Dossier takes the form of a report from Preston to Gordon Cole and in the section on Judy she makes inferences and deductions based on Phillip Jeffries' statements in Fire Walk with Me and on some info found in Buenos Aires. She doesn't once refer to the great deal of information on Judy supplied by Gordon himself on the show. This made me wonder if I was right in one of my earlier suspicions regarding the disagreement between Lynch and Frost, that Lynch preferred a more spiritual explanation for the strange forces operating in Twin Peaks while Frost preferred an extraterrestrial one. As it is, the show mixes the two together a lot with references to Project Blue Book and Major Briggs monitoring the skies alongside things like Hawk's map or the angel in Fire Walk with Me.

The book also doesn't spend much time talking about new characters. The only new character from the third season who has his own section is Ray Monroe. It's no surprise that characters like the Mitchum Brothers, Candie, or Janey E wouldn't figure in the book since it's supposed to be about the residents of Twin Peaks but I was surprised by the absences of Carl and Miriam. I actually really wanted to know what happened to Miriam.

The urge to find out "what happened" was the main compulsion behind reading the book, of course. The show does an excellent job of piquing your interest and leaving it piqued. A review of The Final Dossier I read yesterday describes the differences between Lynch and Frost as being the differences between "artist" and "storyteller". This isn't accurate enough for me. I'd say the difference is more like the difference between "sensation" and "exposition". I would say both involve art and storytelling. I think Lynch would argue the experience of watching the Fusco brothers grin stupidly at each other conveys a story that couldn't come across in words. Stories are more than words. But words are pretty good too.

The Dossier spends a surprising amount of time catching us up on season two characters--I was particularly interested in learning more about Annie Blackburn. I'd heard there were some intriguing contradictions about her in the Secret History, also related to contradictions involving her relationship with Norma and their mother, played by Jane Greer in season two. Who knows if these were mistakes on Frost's part--given Lynch's love for mistakes, I think he'd likely focus on the strangeness of the discrepancies but Frost endeavours to tie up all lose ends logically as possible. So references to Lana as the winner of the Miss Twin Peaks contest in Secret History are explained by Annie being stuck in a coma requiring the runner up to assume duties. Frost surprisingly spends time delving into Lana's subsequent biography which includes an obliquely referenced affair with Donald Trump. This was both amusing and unpleasant--it's nice to get away from any mention of that asshole but it actually makes perfect sense Lana would seek him out.

Frost's explanation for Norma being an only child and also having a sister is a little more complicated but it results in Frost giving a much bigger back story to Vivian, which, considering she was played by the noir great Jane Greer, I did kind of appreciate.

So the book did satisfy some of my urge to know the scoop. At the same time, if Lynch wants to contradict any of it in the future, I'd be perfectly happy to go on that ride.

Wikipedia quotes H.P. Lovecraft, about his Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, as worrying that "Randolph Carter's adventures may have reached the point of palling on the reader; or that the very plethora of weird imagery may have destroyed the power of any one image to produce the desired impression of strangeness." Though virtually all of Lovecraft's fiction implies a strange, hostile universe of his conception, usually they feature something roughly resembling familiar, contemporary reality into which the introduction of the strange and horrifying is the more striking. Short tales set in places alien to our world can still maintain that power of strangeness by virtue of being short but The Dream-Quest is novella length. It is a wonderful piece of fiction but for these reasons its strengths are distinct from the rest of Lovecraft's works.

Following the journeys of Randalph Carter through the Dream Lands, the novella is set in fantasy locations peopled with fantasy beings like the small, forest dwelling zoogs, the vicious gugs, and Carter's allies, the ghouls. The story, particularly in its second half, reminds me strongly of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Princess of Mars in its focus on strange armies coordinated by the human protagonist on missions of assault, rescue, or reconnaissance. One of the most significant ways Dream-Quest differs from Princess of Mars is in its constant reminders of how the appearance or odour of the strange beings frighten or disgust the protagonist. We're even reminded of this in the case of some of Carter's allies, like the ghouls:

And Carter shook the paws of those repulsive beasts, thanking them for their help and sending his gratitude to the beast which once was Pickman; but could not help sighing with pleasure when they left. For a ghoul is a ghoul, and at best an unpleasant companion for man.

It might have been difficult for Lovecraft to imagine modern horror and fantasy fans who have often seen what was obviously repulsive before as something that's now attractive and could even be applied to heroes. Yet the strangeness in Dream-Quest functions in this way, whether Lovecraft meant it to or not--the Dream Lands are beautiful and its denizens are fascinating. It's not easy to understand why the former human, Pickman, had chosen to become a ghoul but the fact that he did in itself makes the beings more intriguing. Making the weird regular does not, as Lovecraft feared, dilute the "desired impression of strangeness" but transforms it into something different. It becomes less of a shock and something like a remapping of basic reality where all the landmarks take on a lustre for their inherent unpredictability and danger. The difference from Burroughs' Mars or Tolkien's Middle Earth is that nothing ever truly feels safe even if it feels familiar and friendly. Even the cats, the animals Lovecraft displays a lovely affection for in this story, have something sinister and secret about them, especially after their treatment of the zoogs early on.

So when the protagonists face extraordinary danger, as in the story's climax which takes Lovecraft's skill at conveying a fundamental wrongness in physics and geometry to new heights, the stakes feel higher. The normal human means of negotiating the world through forging friendships and building a reputation seem inevitably fractured and uncertain. Everything is compelled to hide--the zoogs hide in the forest, the ghouls hide underground, the cats are always sneaking. Everyone and everything's existence is not built on strength but in evasion which makes the potency of the final threat all the more effective because it's a revelation of just how meaningless the apparent rules of reality always were, it's the ultimate rug pulled out from under the reader.

But the ending is a consummation of the feelings that had been built up all along by forcing the reader to identify with protagonists described as repulsive. One becomes more afraid for the ghouls when they're captured because they've been described as repulsive. I even felt bad for what happens to the zoogs despite knowing what they planned for the cats. So the cosmology invoked in the end, of gods who are selfish or indifferent, isn't an abstract concept but something concretely felt. You don't have to ask why the gods aren't in love with these people.

So hug your nearest ghoul or nightgaunt. If for some reason they don't tear your face off or disembowel you.

Coming to the end of the semester, I find myself indulging in reading more things that haven't been assigned for a class lately. I started reading The Fellowship of the Ring again, getting quickly and very happily drawn in. I've probably watched the Peter Jackson movies about twenty times since the last time I read the books but I'm surprised to find I generally don't picture the characters as the actors who played them in the movies. It's not to say I don't like Elijah Wood or Sean Astin, but Frodo and Sam are so different in the book. Frodo's older, of course, and he comes off that way in the way he deals with people. The man I picture is something like Ray Milland. I understand the reasons for the changes Jackson made to pick up the story's pace and give an audience hungrier for young faces someone to be attracted to. But the feeling of a man with years of life experience having contemplative, intellectual conversations with Gandalf by the fire is a nice vibe. I suppose I could say I wish the movie were more like that, but then I do have the book, after all.

The Hobbits as a people are a bit more three dimensional in the book, too. I was surprised by this level of contempt Frodo expresses for his people:

"I should like to save the Shire if I could--though there have been times when I thought the inhabitants too stupid and dull for words, and have felt that an earthquake or an invasion of dragons might be good for them."

Earlier, Tolkien mentions how the Hobbits have grown complacent due to the Shire's isolation from war. Like so many things these days, I look at this through the prism of Trump. Here's the virtue of Tolkien's dislike for allegory--one can see how Tolkien was likely inspired by the state of England before World War I, but because he doesn't explicitly tie it to that, it invites the reader to look for commonalities in human nature to-day or in any other time. If I think of the people who didn't vote in the last election or were mentally complacent enough to think they could vote for Trump in the name of trolling reality, I can apply Frodo's frustration, which leads me to attempt finding also his love for his people. That's a lot harder.

Considering what happens with "The Scouring of the Shire" in the end, and, from what I remember, the Hobbits' complicity in that, it works as an inversion of the connexion dependence on assembly line, steel working, and coal mining blue collar industry Trump's campaign hearkened back to, and which also seemed to have been a big motivating factor for Brexit. Tolkien was writing about the waste and ugliness of it at the beginning, and here that ugly thing exerts its influence even as it grows undeniably obsolete.

I've always liked how the journey in The Lord of the Rings seems to be from a sort of Victorian world in the Shire into a more mediaeval world to the east. If one does apply Tolkien's experience in World War I, it's an interesting contrast to the progression of poetry from idealised odes to valour in war by Alfred Lord Tennyson to the grim reality of the trenches composed by Wilfred Owen. Tolkien seems to stand in direct opposition to that trend. It's oddly heartening that he could see the incredible horrors of the World War I battlefield and somehow digest it and produce years later a work about beauty and magic.