The Rebel Jesus

I've been reading the gospels lately, and, you know what?  They tell a good story about a really compelling man (who was also God). 

Every time I read them, I am always shocked by how unsanitized He is in these books.  He is not a pious, clean, respectable man.  He is controversial; He does not pull punches.  He argues, He is sly and clever, He deliberately speaks in parables so people won't understand, He feeds the hungry, He is unpredictable, He seeks solitude and encourages His followers to do the same, He heals the sick even on the Sabbath.  He has no patience with those who aren't really seeking.  He is not nice.  He's loving and kind but not nice. 

I love Him with all my heart because He is so real. 

Outrage (not mine)

I found this write-up interesting because there's some truth to it, especially the second part. 

'One easy way for an author to break out is to offend Christians—easier, apparently, than writing something beautiful or profound.'
. . .
'Authors are certainly aware of the manifold blessings of being condemned. Pullman, also the author of the His Dark Materials series, expressed palpable disappointment in an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald: "I've been surprised by how little criticism I've got. Harry Potter's been taking all the flak. I'm a great fan of J. K. Rowling, but the people—mainly from America's Bible Belt—who complain that Harry Potter promotes Satanism or witchcraft obviously haven't got enough in their lives. Meanwhile, I've been flying under the radar, saying things that are far more subversive than anything poor old Harry has said. My books are about killing God.'

I remember saying very similar things after reading His Dark Materials.  HDM is a series where you can feel the author's hatred of God.  I could never figure out why people were accusing HP of trying to do what HDM was actually doing.  I thought that if lots of people ever read HDM, things might get really ugly for Pullman because Christians in the U.S. do tend to respond with outrage before thinking.

When I heard that The Golden Compass was going to be made into a movie targeted at children (especially because of how brutal the second book in the trilogy gets in addition to all the God-hating), I was shocked.  I was surprised to read Nicole Kidman saying it wasn't anti-God at all because she was a Catholic, and she wouldn't star in something anti-God.  (I mean, that's just kind of hard to deal with for other reasons, but, well . . .) 

The film-makers did manage to twist it into something more anti-establishment than anti-God, but they also made a crappy movie.  By taking out the rage and intensity that drove the books, they created a tasteless mush of a movie that couldn't succeed nearly as well as Harry Potter because it couldn't engage anyone.  You can't rip out something's beating heart and expect it to continue to live.  In the name of marketing, they made a lot of poor choices.  Adapters, beware.

To be fair, there was some brilliant stuff in the movie, too.  It just couldn't generate the same interest and passion as the original overall.  It also didn't get the notoriety it would have gotten had it taken a few more honest risks and followed the heart of the original source material. 

Then again, I'm pretty sure it couldn't be a good movie at all because of how intricate everything in the book is.  This is another one that would have made a great TV series, with plenty of time to sprawl out and develop characters and make us care for them before slaughtering and/or maiming them.

 I still can't get over the fact that these are popular children's books in other countries.  They're brilliant, but they're darkly brilliant.  There aren't easy endings nor happy endings.  They're too complicated and realistic for that.

In honor of 80 degree October days

I am in love with Kieli.  It's a series of books translated from Japanese about a teenager isolated because of her past and her abilities and what happens when she meets someone even more lonely and isolated than she is.  It's aimed at a teenage audience (it's called a light novel), so it's not particularly challenging.  The writing isn't necessarily Pulitzer caliber.  It's horror, a genre I normally don't get on well with, and there are some serious gross-out moments.  What is it, then, that makes me love it so much that it's the first thing I read when I get a new batch of books that contain it among them, no matter how large the batch is (as long as it's sunny out, and I can read in the sun because, otherwise, even the "light" horror will drown me).

There's a lot to like about it.  In the past I've wondered what draws me to the series most.  The atmosphere of sweet, awkward melancholy or the dreamy quality of the storytelling (interrupted by brief and disturbingly clear instants of graphic violence and action)?  Is is the reflective mood?  The detached but sad tone?  The brisk pacing that seems languid at the same time?  The spine-tingling weirdness that creeps in sometimes?  The amusing and crotchety relationship between the lead characters?

This round (volume 3), though, I realize that one of the most powerful draws to it for me is the way that it approaches the walls we put up around ourselves and how to co-exist with them.  That sounds dreadfully opaque.  What it comes down to is that I respect this author for not taking the easy way out, like so many other Japanese stories about teen girls do.  We put walls up, and there can be all kinds of very legitimate reasons for that.  In a lot of Japanese stories aimed at teen girls, the author will tease me by bringing up the subject and then inevitably let me down by making the answer a simple, "Bust down the walls, be friendly to everyone, and everything will be fine!  Nice conquers all!"  That is not reality.  It is false, saccharine, and kind of enraging, especially when it's the cliche in a long series that could do so much with the idea.

Don't get me wrong: I can like those series well enough.  I do like a happy ending.  But I love a happy ending that is earned by blood, sweat, and tears. I love a series like Kieli that says, "Here is what it's like for these people who have excellent reasons to have walls, and here is how sometimes they trust, and it's a good thing, and sometimes they trust and it's a bad thing.  Here is how their walls save them and keep them alive, and here is how their walls crush them, sometimes at the same time."  In other words, it's kind of like real life even though the setting is horror/fantasy/sci-fi.  I love how "genre" works can sort of sidle up to these issues and deal with them sideways.

I do want a happy ending for these characters; I really do.  But I want a believable happy ending.  And I don't see yet how that will happen.  The author is too good at those real-life twists and turns to pander to the reader.  They're billing it as a romance, so I believe things will work out, and I look forward to seeing how, but right now, I love reading about these broken people searching for God knows what.

Protecting/Defending Innocence

There's a fun discussion about one of my favorite series going on right now, and in this one, several people brought up something that was bothering them: one character seems to be going out of his way to protect the other character's innocence, even to the extent of not wanting the poor kid to learn how to protect himself (by hurting/maiming/killing other people).  This seems very two-dimensional to the readers, like it's turning the protected into some sort of lesser person.

(NOTE: The referenced discussion only covers up to the first third of the work in question; I've read the whole thing, which might color some of what I think.  Also, if you're a Princess Bride fan, you should definitely check out the rather hilarious references that pop up in the discussion, especially if you've read Banana Fish.)

It's true I'm pretty generous with characters.  I work hard so authors don't have to.  It is very difficult to make me believe your characer is two-dimensional; I will do all sorts of extra work in the background to flesh out that character unless you go above and beyond. That said, I don't really think this character is two-dimensional at all.  Out of his depth?  Totally.  Frustrated and helpless and conflicted and protected?  Yeah.  Unrealistically simple?  Not really.

One of the ideas I was getting from the discussion is one that I've encountered before, the one that says it's wrong to protect someone because it's the same as reducing them somehow.  I think that idea comes from the way we protect children from as much reality as we can.  Kids hate that as they grow older; it makes them mad.  I think that anger's still sort of fresh in the minds of disillusioned young adults, especially ones who were raised by people who denied them reality and the chance to face it in a more controlled environment.  I don't think that every attempt to protect someone else's innocence is necessarily like saying you think they're a child.

I'm totally willing to buy that one young adult male might really respect and cherish another young adult male's relative innocence without that reducing the one being cherished and protected.  And of course there's a risk of transforming the one you cherish into an object on a pedestal, a thing that must be protected rather than a person, but I don't feel like that's really happening in this story.

[ASIDE: There's another character who is really irritated by that same character's innocence at least partly because it represents everything he never had (peace, a loving family, a life of relative ease, etc.).  I suppose you could say he's two-dimensional because you can infer all that quite easily (more because the author is skilled than because it's blatantly spelled out).  I don't think that being able to figure out part of what motivates someone renders them less-complex, whether they are fictional or non-fictional.]

Another more recent pop-culture example I've been considering is from the TV show Chuck.  Chuck ends up with a head full of government secrets and all kinds of danger his nearly-completed engineering degree and several years in retail hell have really not prepared him for.  He is kind of goofy and adorable, and he has a huge heart and is a good guy.  People like him, even spies.  They like his innocence and his willingness to trust and his desire to do the right thing.  And they don't want him to change.  They are there to protect him from the bad guys, but at least one of them is also interested in protecting him from becoming just another spy.  And one of the bad guys is even very concerned that he'll turn into just another jaded public servant putting his rights and freedom on the line every day to protect the rights and freedoms of others.

(Apparently, in season three when he comes into some special skills, he starts acting like just another spy.  The more cognizant viewers saw what the writers were trying to do; the less-cognizant just got mad because Chuck wasn't good-ole' sit-com Chuck anymore.  And while the show has always had a healthy lot of comedy, it's never been a sit-com because the characters are in flux and changing as they go, you know, like people.  People don't always make the right choices; sometimes they choose very poorly, and we have to watch them live with the consequences (and often share those consequences with us).  That doesn't make them less realistic.  Perhaps it makes them more realistic and thus less funny.  :)  And we wouldn't want any reality in our science fiction because it's all just supposed to be brainless genre-fluff anyway, right?  Riiiiiight . . . )

Anyway, do you have any thoughts on protecting someone's innocence and/or what makes a character two-dimensional for you?

Loving the fallen sparrow

We're back from the dead and ready to roll.  Thank you for your concern about my dead computer and lack of internet access for, er, too long.  My lack of access to the net (and several delayed and canceled flights) meant I read a great book lately, and I wanted to tell you about it while I am still gobsmacked.

READER GEEKING OUT

I loved the characters.  I loved the plot.  I loved this book.  It made me cry so much that my nose peeled from tissue over-use, and I had to do all kinds of wonky things to prevent my awkwardly peeling nose from being what people at my new job remembered about me henceforth. 

This is a difficult and beautiful story.  The characters are lovable and believable and painfully awkward and broken in so many different, normal ways, and that's why this book may break your heart.  It's challenging and moving and heartbreaking and harrowing and full of fragile happiness and despair and death and sadness and tragedy and seeking and surviving and not-finding and truth and grace and faith and hope and love in so many forms.  I can't give you details because it must be read to be understood. 


WRITER GEEKING OUT

No plot summary could possibly do it justice.  Such summaries only serve to cheapen it (as I have proven by trying and getting less-than enthusiastic reactions.  This is a tight book, a finely crafted piece of speculative fiction no "literary fiction" reader should feel ashamed of reading.  World and plot and characters are melded to each other.

The parallel narrative structure is pulled off wonderfully.  I've read other books that try to be this good at a parallel story, and I ended up feeling jerked back and forth, always in the middle of things, as if constantly being in media res is a good thing.  No thank you; I don't appreciate the whiplash.  There is no whiplash here, just elegant execution.

Great balance of new information, great use of point of view to control what is withheld and what we learn and what the characters learn without making the readers feel like the writer is toying with or torturing them.  It's all remarkably organic.  We are on a journey with the main character in the present, and we are reliving the past with him.  We are restricted, but it doesn't feel manipulative because it rises from the story itself and the way it is being told.

It deals extensively with ideas and themes I wish more people would think about (good and evil, maturity, change, celibacy, society, community, mistakes, hindsight, judgment [without facts or love], respect, kindness, tenderness, love and friendship, dignity, fate, good intentions, God, sin, nature, and some other things).  This is a smart book with smart characters, and you will think whether you plan to or not.  Also, regard the calm foreshadowing with awe and dread.

The paperback version I read had some extras at the end, including author insights, and I was blown away by Russell's comments about how we look back at the past and judge harshly, as if we are better people now who would not do these things, as if we are not still the same human beings who make the same mistakes ad nauseum, as if we have the right to judge based on our imperfect information and the twisting of facts and historical records.  If you have any smugness in you, it might be beaten out of you by the end.  Read the book before you read the extra bits because it's kind of like being punched (in a thought-provoking way) if you read it in the context of the whole story.

AND FINALLY

One of the most amazing things about the book is that when you come to the end of the story, having been pummelled and rung out and smashed, somehow there is hope.  This is a miracle.  Don't miss it.

If you've read The Sparrow, feel free to gush or just talk about it or recommend other books people might like.  It's vaguely similar to but clearly better than Out of the Silent Planet and is somewhat redolent of Madeleine L'Engle to me (criticisms I've seen of this work and some of her thinkier works are very similar, and I couldn't help but connect this with The Arm of the Starfish for the sparrow quotes alone).

I'm sorry I waited so long to read this for the first time.  Feel free not to repeat my mistake.

Them's fighting words

Publisher's Weekly has this feature called "Why I write," where they get authors to write a very short explanation about why they write. I find it fascinating for obvious reasons, being a writer and reader and all, and Steven Saylor's mini-essay in the May 3, 2010, issue that highlighted historical fiction was fantastic, and now I want to read his books to see the progression he points out in the article.

Anyway, here's my favorite bit.

"All writing is an act of self-exploration.. . . The so-called literary novel consciously attempts self-analysis, while the genre novel supposedly does not, offering merely--literally--generic entertainment. Don't believe it. Even the crudest, most derivative novel is an expression of the authors hopes and fears and ideas about good and evil. Even the most commercial writer is, at some level, exploring personal demons."

Yeah, he said it. :) Any thoughts?

To kill or not to kill

I am being a big, huge coward right now.  I am not only not writing a story I really want to write but am actively avoiding even thinking about it because someone in the story does something that is worthy only of death, and I just don't want him to die. 

It's not that he doesn't deserve it, and it's not that I feel sorry for him.  He's an adult who made his own choices, and he chose to betray everyone who loved him.  I just feel bad for the people who must pass judgement on him.  They are the ones most cruelly betrayed because they really love him.  To ask them to condemn and execute him is really hard on me.  (It's like that bit in Barrayar.)  But coming up with any other outcome seems fake and forced and thoroughly unfair. 

He doesn't want pardon; he wanted to betray everyone and then die.  It's not that he hated them.  He was mostly trying to get back at someone else entirely, but he had to go through them.  He's consumed by bitterness.  His revenge plot was thwarted (yes, I think he was relieved about that, but despair can warp you).  You can't leave dynamite like that sitting around for so many reasons both general and specific.  The only appropriate ending in this fantasy world is death.

But I still want pardon, somehow, or mercy or grace that isn't forced but flows organically from the plot, the story, the characters, the world.

I really need to just start writing and see what happens, but I'm afraid I know how this ends.


Have you ever read a book like that, where you start liking people and suspecting that things just won't end well, and you drag your feet reading it?

Why the bad guys should win

I was watching a show recently where an antagonist challenged the protagonists by explaining to them why they would never win.  He said that since he was a child, he never got into superheroes or hero shows because they seemed so fake.  The good guys would always win just because they were the good guys when any logical person could see that the bad guys should have won.  The bad guys, he said, can do anything while the good guys are constrained by morality and such.  The bad guys should have won because they bad guys can do whatever they want.

I've had that cynical thought myself.  Maybe it's the time and culture we live in, but it's often difficult to look around and see evil triumphing all over the place because it has no scruples and still believe in the simple hero triumphing because of his or her virtue.

Have you ever struggled with this strain of cynicism?  What are your thoughts about it now?  When you read stories that contain conflicts set in the current world, do you need this imbalance acknowledged, or can you get into the spirit of good triumphing over evil even if it doesn't make sense?

Rogues, wusses, and humanity

Sometimes, you come across characters in stories that give you mixed reactions: you love parts of them and other parts make you crazy.  (People are like this, too, as I'm sure you've noticed.)

Wusses

There's a character in that baseball show I've been stuck on.  He's pathetic in both the traditional and modern sense of the word.  Sometimes, he makes you so irritated you just want to smack him (even if you come from a family where physical violence is not natural at all).  Other times, he just makes you want to cry and hug him.  Sometimes, you want to do both at the same time. 

In a lot of ways, there are perfectly good reasons for him to be neurotic, and these reasons are explained from the beginning so you can't just hate him, but whenever you try to think of how to "fix" him, it frustrates you more.  When people are this damaged, a band-aid just isn't enough to instantly make things better.  People change slowly, and this show respects that, but it doesn't make it any easier to not want to smack him upside the head metaphorically.

Rogues

Another character that's pretty popular in stories is that roguish character.  In a series I'm reading right now, there's this sort of weary/wise character who's also something of a reknowened skirt-chaser, and the alternating of wisdom and lechery sometimes jars me. 

I'll think, "Man, he'd be such a great character if he'd quit with the lusty obnoxiousness."  Then I'll remember that he's led a life of violence and is pretty sure he'll die young.  It still bugs me, but I can understand how fatalism can lead to acting like you take everything lightly because you know you can't hold onto it even if you want to, so why waste the energy?  I can't write him off as a character.  It's like he's given blood for that wisdom, and you can tell he has, and you wish he'd be a little more serious, but he's sort of earned some goof-off moments.  I'm pretty sure he isn't going to make it to the end of the series, and I will cry when he dies, crude jokes and all.

Humanity

I'll catch myself thinking, "This character would be perfect if he wasn't like this!"  Then I remember that most people think "perfect" people are boring, especially in fiction.  It is our flaws and bad decisions that make for better plots.  I've got to remember this, so I can avoid the pitfall of trying to make my characters too "perfect."  I'd rather make them more human.


Any characters that make you want to alternately hit them and cheer them on?  Any really great flawed, realistic, human characters you've come across that you want me (and others) to meet?  Do introduce us, please.