The Mysteries of Pittsburgh

I finally made my way around to reading Michael Chabon's 1988 novel "The Mysteries of Pittsburgh." I had tried reading through this book a few years ago, but got bogged down about halfway into it and distracted by other things, and eventually it made its way back on to my shelf. I picked it up again (literally) a few months ago, and put it in my car with every intention of reading it, but but before I could read it, it got buried under the myriad and sundry things that eventually end up in the backseat of every car. Finally, it was discovered and I committed myself to getting all the way through it. (But enough about that...)

The book covers one summer in the life of Arthur Bechstein, as he discovers new friends and lovers in the college areas of Pittsburgh. Jobless and aimless and recently graduated, he gets caught up in a whirlwind of activity surrounding his new friends. Although he falls madly in love with the exotic librarian Phlox, he also struggles with homosexual feelings for his best friend, Arthur Lecomte. Bechstein bounces between the two lovers through most of the novel. Meanwhile, he is also trying to keep his past - specifically his mobster father - away from his newly developing personal life. But, when Cleveland - one of the new friends - forces Bechstein to introduce him to his father, things begin to sour on every front. Phlox and Lecomte force Bechstein to choose between the two of them, and Cleveland gets caught up too heavily in the mob scene and meets a tragic end. In the end, we learn that Bechstein chooses Lecomte and they move to Europe, although it is also revealed that Lecomte leaves him there and the novel ends with Bechstein reflecting upon his abandoned relationship with Phlox and what might have been.

"The Mysteries of Pittsburgh" was the first novel that Chabon read, and that becomes painfully obvious while reading. The voice and tone of the novel is unrefined and seems to change regularly, as though Chabon wasn't quite sure where he was going from chapter to chapter. He relies too heavily on archetype to create his characters: Phlox - the exotic woman; Lecomte - the forbidden lover; Cleveland - the rugged man; Jane - the ideal upper-class beauty. Cleveland's dramatic death represents the climax of the plot, somehow, even though he was only a slightly-higher-than-minor character throughout the book - rather than the climax being Bechstein's choice between Phlox and Lecomte, which the entire book was building towards but ends up being delegated to a few sentences in the resolution. There are also moments of beautiful metaphor and description that do not seem to add to the novel in any way except that, well, they're the type of thing a novel is supposed to have and so they were thrown in to the book.

Of course, part of the reason I blast "The Mysteries of Pittsburgh" here is out of jealousy. The book is better, by far, than anything I could ever write (me being the same age now as Chabon was when it was published). Clearly, Chabon is setting the stage for his later great writings involving similar situations - the ensemble cast in "Wonder Boys" (one of my personal favorite books of all time) and the love triangle in "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay" (although that was a minor subplot).

Like a teenager shaving with a straight blade for the first time who nicks himself several times in the process, "The Mysteries of Pittsburgh" isn't perfect, but it marks the beginning of an already great career, highlighted by a Pulitzer Prize honor, but not yet punctuated. (And with that poor imitation of a Chabon metaphor, this post is over.)

Juno

So, I finally broke down and saw Jason Reitman's 2007 film "Juno" - mainly because Nicole wanted me to.

The movie follows the pregnancy and related life-changes of a teenage girl named Juno (Ellen Page). Not only does she have to deal with her pregnancy, but also the complexities of giving the baby up for adoption as well as the typical challenges of being an American teenager. She decides to give her baby to a young couple - Mark and Vanessa (Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner) - whose marriage then proceeds to fall apart. In the end, she gives away the baby to the suddenly-single Vanessa, and then realizes that she is in love with the father of the child. The end.

There is a moment very early in the film in which Juno's father, just informed of her pregnancy, says that he thought she was the kind of girl who knew when to say when. Juno responds by saying "I don't know what kind of girl I am."

Frankly, that's how I felt about the whole movie. I could not tell which way it was going or what kind of message I was supposed to be getting out of it. Was it supposed to be a realistic drama about teenage pregnancy? Was it supposed to be a comedy? A tragedy? A romance? (I pretty well eliminated sci-fi adventure after the first scene.)

As a realistic drama, it failed. The character of Juno was completely unbelievable. No high school junior is familiar with Iggy and the Stooges, the Carpenters, Sonic Youth, Mott the Hoople and is completely comfortable referring to the early seventies as "Punk, Volume One" as well as readily referring to McSweeney's (among her many other underground cultural references). She had the witty comeback and the right thing to say simply too often to be believable. Her parents were even less believable, leaving reality the moment they said that they couldn't believe she was pregnant because they were expecting her to have a DWI or be into hard drugs. Let's face it - no parent would act so casually so soon after hearing that kind of news from their teenage daughter.

As a comedy, it failed. Rainn Wilson and Michael Cera are great at what they do in their other movies and TV shows (well, maybe not Rainn Wilson in his movies), but in this movie their performances seemed forced and fell flat. Rainn Wilson's only scene was shown, nearly in its entirety, in the trailer, and seemed only there to leverage his star power from "The Office." Michael Cera, meanwhile, wasn't given nearly enough screen time to do anything meaningful, except eat Tic-Tacs, or have any impact on the film (but more on that a little later on in this post).

As a film tragedy (perhaps tragedy is the wrong word - character piece?) about the trials and tribulations of a pregnant teenage girl, it failed. Juno cries or shows any major emotion about her situation once (maybe twice) in the entire film. Instead, she spends most of her time showing off how hip she is (or, rather, how hip the writer and director are to include the references) and occasionally complaining about how much she has to pee. I'm not saying that I wanted the baby to die or anything, but a little bit of suffering - or even some discomfort - would have been a bit more appropriate. Instead of any sort of panic or worry when her water breaks, she once again takes the chance to show off how cool she is by referencing the Thundercats when she needs to leave.

Finally, as a romance, it fell completely flat. Juno's romantic interest is her best friend Bleeker (played by Michael Cera), who also happens to be the father of the baby. Yet, he only appears in a handful of scenes. Which is what makes it so surprising that the big cathartic moment in the resolution is when Juno realizes that she is truly in love with Bleeker, and they go playing guitar together happily ever after. I didn't see that coming - mainly because that subplot was so insignificant for the entire movie up until that point!

So - what kind of movie was "Juno" then? (And if anyone says anything like "it was an indie movie," I'm going to pummel them with a truckload of DVDs of the movie!) I'm not quite sure. And that leaves a really dissatisfying taste in my mouth.

Gran Torino

Last night I watched Clint Eastwood's 2008 film "Gran Tornio" (which he both starred in and directed). I have to say that, despite my initial misgivings (mainly Eastwood playing the same character he's played in a thousand other films), the movie was pleasantly surprising.

Although the previews portrayed the movie as a simple movie about an old man griping about changes in the demographics of his Detroit neighborhood, the previews fail to even hint at the complexities and depth of the characters.

Yes, Eastwood does play an old man - Walt Kowalski - griping about the changes in demographics of his Detroit neighborhood, but that premise is over with after the first thirty minutes of the movie. From there it moves to developing his relationship with his new neighbors, especially the two young adults - Thau and Sue. Thau gets into a little gang trouble with his no-good gangbanger cousin, but Walt, being a righteous, hard-working, and old-fashioned American, tries to steer Thau into a more traditional adulthood. The two sides violently clash (literally and figuratively), and, without spoiling anything, Walt reveals a side of himself nobody believed existed.

My only real problem with this movie, until the last few scenes, was that I had felt I had seen the entire thing before, except in the old west instead of Detroit and titled "Unforgiven" instead of "Gran Torino." The major differences in the end make up for the striking similarities, though.

Of course, the highlight of the movie is Clint Eastwood in his gritty, growling, snarling, insult-hurling best, especially now that he's almost eighty. One of my favorite moments is when Walt happens upon a couple of gang members harassing his neighbor, Sue. He steps out of his car, confronts the assailants by saying, in a gravely voice, "Ever notice how you come across somebody once in a while you shouldn't have fucked with? [At this points Walt spits on the ground and stares coldly before continuing] That's me."

Rumor is that Eastwood has proclaimed that "Gran Torino" was to be his final acting performance. If so, he certainly went out on the top of his game doing exactly what he did best. But I hope that the rumor isn't true, because it would be very hard for me to believe that the man who portrayed Walt Kowalski - as well as "the Man with No Name" and Dirty Harry - could ever just quit and walk away, or ever stay down for very long.

The Road

A few days ago I finished reading Cormac McCarthy's Pulitzer Prize winning novel "The Road"(first published in 2006), but it has taken me a few days to really absorb it.

You'd think that with a cover like this, I would have at least a hint of the unnerving bleakness that was the theme of the book. But you'd be wrong.

The novel is set in a post-unnamed-cataclysm world, in which some catastrophe has led to the atmosphere being encased in a smoky cloud cover, effectively killing all the world's plant life (and, thereby, all the world's animal life). The few remaining humans are left to scrounge the earth for the remaining cans of food and other resources, such as fuel for fires (because, apparently, without the sun, it gets pretty cold during winter).

Through this dark world (pun intended), the reader follows a peripatetic man and his son, as they relentlessly follow a tattered map to the coast, where the man has hung his last best hope of finding any sort of civilization (although it is clear to the readers that this hope is completely unfounded in this fictional reality).

A story about a relatively silent man and boy walking around in a world without sunlight would be pretty boring. To add intrigue, then, McCarthy has them encounter various other survivors and horrific situations including a bit of cannibalism (because humans are the last source of meat on earth). This book is not for the faint of heart. McCarthy's prose is as stark and as brutal as the story described, but also hauntingly beautiful - as if the descriptions and metaphors used would be the type of literature a survivor would write.

The book itself is chilling in the way it portrays many of the darker sides of the way we live today, as well as presenting terrible choices that nobody hopes to ever make. In a dying world, would you be the type of person to keep surviving through the killing of others, or to kill yourself (which is what the man tells the boy to do if he were ever to be confronted by the cannibals), or to just keep moving on and clinging to baseless hopes? Would you rather wander the earth silently on your own to eventually die by yourself, or would you take a companion or join a group and risk their betrayal the next time the food runs short? After reading a scene in which the boy drinks what is perhaps the last soda in their molding world, I slowed down to savor my next Dr. Pepper and appreciated something I so often take for granted.

I am still puzzled by the novel's final passage, regarding the trout that once swam in the world's streams. The book ends with the line "In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed with mystery." It is the only point in the book which does not focus on the man or the boy (or, does it?), and I am not quite sure how I am supposed to feel about it. (Based on the rest of the novel, though, I doubt it's meant to make the reader feel bright and bubbly.)

I will not soon forget this book, its words, and the characters and world and images it presents. One passage in particular strikes me as one morbidly worth sharing and contemplating (although I don't know why):

He walked out in the gray light and stood and he saw for a brief moment the absolute truth of the world. The cold relentless circling of the interstate earth. Darkness implacable. The blind dogs of the sun in their running. The crushing black vacuum of the universe. And somewhere two hunted animals trembling like ground-foxes in their cover. Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it. (p 130)

Harsh sentiment, good writing.

Lies My Teacher Told Me

Last week, I finished reading Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James Loewen. First published in 1995, the book analyzes twelve common high school American history textbook in regards to both the actual facts presented as well as the way in which the history is presented.

The opening volley of the text uses history textbook treatment of Christopher Columbus's voyages to condemn the textbooks as Euro-centric by pointing out the ways in which they omit certain facts, distort other facts, and (in some cases) invent undocumented facts. Most of the rest of the book follows this same pattern. There is also a breakdown of the process of "heroifcation" that takes place in textbooks, in which historical figures are presented as unblemished and ideal, rather than the flawed figures that they are. For example, the book points out that while most history textbooks mention Helen Keller overcoming her blindness and deafness, but not a single one mentions that she became a noteworthy radical socialist.

One of the more interesting chapters (actually, pair of chapters) discusses the disappearance of race (both racism and anti-racism) in American history textbooks. There is little to no mention of the history of explicit racism which saturates American history. In doing so, then, the textbooks prevent students from understanding complex historical figures. For example, the abolitionist John Brown is always presented as being a lunatic when, in fact, he was a highly intellectual person. But to discuss his intellect would reveal to the students that he spent much of his time arguing against racism, which is a taboo subject, so the students are only given a simplistic view of the man, which prevents them from truly understanding his motivation.

It is also funny Loewen points out how textbook authors strategically use the passive voice in writing, which effectively prevents students from seeing any causality in history. For example, he cites one textbook which, in discussing the Korean War, claims simply that "in June, 1950, war broke out" without any discussion of how the war broke out or what caused the conflict.

The title is a bit misleading because the book really condemns the American history textbook publishing industry and state textbook adoption methods (of which teachers are only a small part). But I guess a title along the lines of "Lies My American History Textbook Presented Me With and Which the State Textbook Adoption Board Approved, Making Them Complicit in My Miseducation" would have been a bit clunky.

Run Fatboy Run

I must admit that I didn't expect much from "Run Fatboy Run" (2007) when I threw it in the DVD player last night. I figured it would be simple, corny, and filled with dry attempts at edgy humor. And, to an extent, my expectations came true. But the movie also had a simple, heart-warming charm that I was not expecting, and which made it an enjoyable film.

It stars Simon Pegg as Danny, a somewhat overweight, lowlife of a man who has major trouble with commitment - running away from his pregnant would-be bride, Libby, moments before the wedding. He is trying to re-spark the relationship with his ex-fiance, when, surprise surprise, he finds out that she has taken on a new lover - the very wealthy and in-shape Whit (played by Hank Azaria). Danny decides to prove that he has matured enough to commit by running in the same marathon as Whit.

Where I feel the movie gains its real charm, though, is through its minor characters and (albiet weak) subplots. Danny and Whit are vying for the affection of both Libby and her son - Danny with humor and Whit with an endless supply of money (and all the things money can buy). Danny's best friend Gordon (Dylan Moran) has a gambling problem, but has managed to wager his entire debt to the underworld on whether Danny can complete the marathon. The sultry daughter of Danny's landlord wagers with Danny that she will forgive all of his past-due rent if he can complete the race, but that she'll evict him immediately if he doesn't. But his kind landlord takes it upon himself to become Danny's "assistant coach" and motivate his training with a swift spatula in the rear-end.

Have I mentioned that this little heartwarmer was directed by non-other than Ross from "Friends"? That's right - this film was the big-screen directorial debut for David Schwimmer. The screenplay was also written in-house (at least, collaboratively) by Simon Pegg.

Most of the people involved in this movie have been a part of bigger and better things. This movie doesn't necessarily mark a low-point in their careers. More of a side project that became overshadowed by everything else surrounding it.

Ghostbusters

I went to see "Ghostbusters" and the local "indie" theatre last night, and somehow it took me by surprise at how good of a movie it actually was. Even after 25 years, the jokes are still fresh, the characters still seem real, and even the effects have held up pretty well.

The four main Ghostbusters, Peter Venkman (Bill Murray), Ray Stantz (Dan Akroyd), Egon Spengler (Harold Ramis), and Winston Zeddmore (Ernie Hudson) are perhaps the most believable team of Ghostbusters that could have possibly been assembled. Stantz and Spenger represent the heart and the brains of the operation (respectively), with Venkman being the salesman who can actually deal with the public. The small details of their characters are perfectly formed, and their interactions throughout the film do not seem forced but feel as though they've been friends and colleagues for years - except for Winston, who fits in well as the new guy who gets caught up in the storm. The hardest character for me to believe this time around was Dana Barrett (Sigourney Weaver) - she comes off as too cold and simple, and misses some of the finer touches of a well-defined character.

On the big screen, I noticed some interesting details that I had never seen before. In the kitchen scene (when the eggs cook on the counter), a bag of Stay Puft Marshmallows can be seen on the counter. Later, when panning the city skyline, a billboard for Stay Puft Marshmallows can be seen on the side of a building. Although these details are largely unnoticed, they subtly set the stage for the climactic appearance Gozer the Destructor in the form of The Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.

To say that I grew up on this film (and its many franchises) would be a gross understatement - I just recently got the video game for Wii, fulfilling a life long dream of blasting ghosts! I look forward to watching this movie again and again, through its fiftieth anniversary, and warmly embracing any new additions to the series.

Alien

I re-watched the 1979 science fiction / horror movie "Alien" the other day, and it only reminded me of what a great movie it actually is. Sure, it's not "Casablanca" (and Sigourney Weaver is sure no Humphrey Bogart), but it definitely has all the small things right which helped turn it into a cult classic.

Watching it this time around, I was struck by two things: 1) The quiet of the movie, and 2) the great use of plot twists.

I was surprised how closely the movie stuck to it's tagline - "In space, no one can hear you scream." In fact, the movie itself is eerily quiet, considering that it features an acid-bleeding monster and several death scenes. There's no major explosions, no huge gun fights, and very little screaming. Instead, the movie lets the silence seep in and absorb you, which makes the occasional loud noise very striking and haunting. For example, in the scene in which the captain, Dallas (played by Tom Skerritt), is tracking down the alien in the ventilation system, the "blip" on the motion monitor of the alien running at him is much creepier than booming footsteps or horror movie music. The same goes for the scene in which Ripley has set the ship to self-destruct, and the alarm system constantly blares in the background for five minutes - without any other sounds, the alarm becomes eerily ambient.

In regards to the plot twists - this movie hits all the great ones, including the classic chest-bursting sequence. There is also a great moment when Ripley, taking command, checks the ship's computer to determine how to handle the situation, only to find that the science officer had received orders to bring the alien back to earth alive as the primary objective with the note "Crew expendable" (at which point the camera pulls back to reveal the science officer standing right behind her, reading over her shoulder).

Although this movie spawned (no pun intended) many sequels, the chain went significantly downhill after the second film ("Aliens"), and this progenitor stands out far above the rest.

First!

This is my new blog. It is where I will keep track of what I've been reading, watching, listening to, and other things I've generally been thinking about.