For years now, film geeks have hyperventilated at the increasingly likely prospect of Ridley Scott making a new Blade Runner. Now, the addictive film blog Twitch has posted the rumor that Harrison Ford might be returning as well. The Guardian sprinted with it, claiming "Harrison Ford is lining up to make a surprise return to the role of Rick Deckard"—which isn't exactlythe case.
As a lifelong fan of Blade Runner and its neo-noir storyline, I wonder: why touch a classic? Or, if one dares revisit a film as ingrained in film-lovers' psyches as Blade Runner, what constitutes a "good" sequel (or—cringe—prequel)? The way I see it, there are five key factors:
Original director. Blade Runner isn't the only cult classic Scott's revisiting: Prometheus, framed as a prequel to Alien, hits screens this summer. Scott is the only director I trust with these films. Pro: Could anyonebut Peter Jackson have made three epic installments of The Lord of the Rings, plus forthcoming "prequel" The Hobbit? Con: You can't touch Richard Donner's quintessential buddy cop classic Lethal Weapon. But by the third episode, Donner added Joe Pesci and Mel Gibson shed his '80s mullet for increasingly bloody historical dramas. We're all too old for that shit.
Different director. Pro: Oren Peli achieved something singularly scary inParanormal Activity, a rare gem in the fulminating "found footage" franchise. Yet Paranormal Activity 3—set 18 years prior to the original and directed by Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman—is even scarier. And Alfonso Cuarón's darker touch to Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban sealed it as my favorite from the inflated series. (J.K. Rowling loved it too.) Con: Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.'s atrocious 2011 prequel to John Carpenter's The Thing, beginning with flash-frozen dialogue and culminating in a shitshow of sucky CGI.
"Same world." Scott says Prometheus shares "strands of Alien's DNA, so to speak." Pro: Whether or not the xenomorphs appear, H.R. Giger's characteristic design most definitely will. Con: That drippy, green-grey palette mildewing the Wachowski Bros' sequels to The Matrix got foul fast.
Recurring characters. A sticky wicket for Blade Runner 2 (or Blade Runner Reloaded, as one Twitch commenter cheekily calls it) if Ford really does return. Pro: Akira Kurosawa's Sanjuro needed scene-mugger Toshiro Mifune (Yojimbo's rough-housing ronin) to ramp up the ass-kicking quotient. Con:Tron: Legacy did itself no favors recasting Jeff Bridges (acting "like a weary cyber version of the Dude", burns Entertainment Weekly's Owen Gleiberman), let alone creepily de-aging his CGI clone.
Totally different characters. The "retrofitted" world of Blade Runner is so vibrant, do we even need a Deckard? Take the Final Destination franchise. Spreading three directors and nearly unique casts over five gory films didn't blunt its box-office success. Evidence: part five has the best Rotten Tomatoes average (61% fresh) and part four grossed the most money. Besides, I loathed the original (Devon Sawa…beurk!).
For now, the “Harrison Ford returning to Blade Runner” scoop remains speculative. But Scott's direction gives me confidence that it'll be dope, no matter who dons that trenchcoat.
Image: GeekTyrant
M.I.A.'s "Bad Girls" video, directed by Romain Gavras, is wildly, seductively, offensively, charmingly, incoherently citational. But what is it quoting? Last week M.I.A. answered some questions from Youtube commenters about shiny trousers, drag racing, and fabrication. How do you get a see-through car? You have it made in India. What do you say when they tell you it'll take five months to ship? "I could take a hundred Indians and make it from scratch."
Here are fifteen presumed sources for the video: some probable (Rick Ross), some possible (Sex and the City in Abu Dhabi), some unendurable (Gaddafi's virgin bodyguards).
"Bad Girls"
1. Saudi Arabia Crazy Motorway Drivers
2. Ghostride the Whip
3. Roll Yo Voges, Oakland Sideshows
4. Rebel Without a Cause
5. Indiana Jones Desert Race
6. Libya Oil Fields on Fire
7. Sex and the City Abu Dhabi
8. Rick Ross Live Fast Die Young
9. The Bangles Walk Like an Egyptian
10. Muammar Gaddafi Parade
11. Need for Madness Video Game
12. Busta Rhymes Arab Money
13. Jibbs Chain Hang Low
(14. Wham! Bad Boys [WISHFUL THINKING])
M.I.A. responds to Youtube commenters
Thanks to Michael Ralph and Yates McKee for recent conversations about Rick Ross, Busta Rhymes, and Libya.
Writing a diatribe on my doubts and fears of reading Haruki Murakami's1Q84 in English must've been cathartic, because I read the whole damn thing over the New Year's holiday. 925 pages in seven days. Estimating it took me over 14 months to read 1,650 pages of Japanese text, the time practically flew.
Overall, it's quite similar to Murakami's original, though I find the lack of humor magnified in English. I'm pinning this on the omniscient third-person POV, a departure from his well honed first-person narration. Not to say it reads blandly: both translators, Jay Rubin and Philip Gabriel, have some fun. Like this naughty gem from Book 1 Chapter 22:
Tengo saw admiration in the eyes of several of his female students, and he realized that he was seducing these seventeen- or eighteen-year-olds through mathematics. His eloquence was a kind of intellectual foreplay. Mathematical functions stroked their backs, theorems sent warm breath into their ears. Since meeting Fuka-Eri, however, Tengo no longer felt sexual interest in such girls, nor did he have any urge to smell their pajamas.
Needless to say, I immediately referred to my own translation:
Tengo looked around the classroom, at the 17- and 18-year-old girls staring at him with awe and respect. He realized he could seduce them by channeling mathematics. His speech was a kind of intellectual foreplay. The functions were a stroke on the back, the theorems warm breath in their ears. But when he met Fukaeri, he lost all sexual interest in these girls. He didn't care to think how they smelled in pajamas.
Here's a gem for you language buffs: 知的な前戯 (“intellectual foreplay”). But I gotta give it to Rubin, hooking in action verbs (“functions stroked”, “theorems sent”) that I glossed over. And that last sentence...no comment.
Rubin and Gabriel split translation duties on Murakami's short-story collection Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman. But, as Gabriel tells The Atlantic,1Q84 is their first collaborative effort on a single novel. Which might explain a few funny discrepancies.
Like the name of Tengo's favorite bar. Murakami's characters internalize their thoughts (even in third-person), and drink whilst thinking. When they're not pouring drams into bedside tumblers, they're out at some bar. In 1Q84, Tengo frequents this one joint near a Kinokuniya (paperbacks at the bar, something I'm emulating in 2012) no less than three times. Murakami calls it 「麦頭」(supplied with tiny furigana adjacent to identify its unique pronunciation), which I translated as “Wheat-Head”. If we're getting nitty-gritty, the first character means “wheat” and is used on beer labels, and the latter “head,” so it could signify the frothy foam atop a draft. Rubin calls it “Barleyhead.” Fine, I'll bite.
In Book Three (Gabriel's translation), this becomes “Mugiatama” (the phonetic translation of those characters), which Gabriel derives into “Ears of Wheat”! I checked the Japanese text and my translation and, yeah, same joint. Tengo's even quaffing the same draft (Carlsberg). Next time he visits, midway through Book Three, Gabriel leaves it as “Mugiatama.”
Finally, that whole “cat town” vs. “town of cats” drama that set me off againstreading 1Q84 in English. Rubin's translation flows predictably enough, like this exchange:
“Did you go to a town of cats,” Fuka-Eri asked Tengo, as if pressing him to reveal a truth.
“Me?!”
“You went to your town of cats. Then came back on a train.”
My own translation practically mirrored this:
"you went to cat town" she said to Tengo as if challenging him.
"I did??"
"you went to your cat town. then you took the train back home"
The original Japanese is 「咎めるように言った」; I called it “said as if challenging” and think Rubin's poetic nudge is a tad excessive. Yet several chapters later, Rubin translates:
“You'll be leaving tomorrow,” Fuka-Eri asked.
Tengo nodded. “Tomorrow morning I have to take the train and go to the cat town again.”
“You're going to the cat town,” Fuka-Eri asked without expression.
“You will be waiting here,” Tengo asked. Living with Fuka-Eri, he had become used to asking questions without question marks.
Imagine my surprise! I feel this reads so much more naturally, calling this far-flung location “cat town.” My translation:
“you're going tomorrow” Fukaeri inquired, looking at him.
Tengo nodded. “I'll take a train tomorrow morning. I have to go back to cat town once again.”
“you're gonna go to cat town” Fukaeri replied, expressionlessly.
“You'll wait here,” asked Tengo. Living with Fukaeri, he'd picked up the habit of leaving the question-marks off his questions.
And several dozen pages later, in Book Three, Gabriel dispenses with “town of cats” mentions altogether, utilizing only “cat town” in Tengo's thoughts and in a letter from Fuka-Eri to him. Best I can do for a response is 「当たり前」, which in slangified English might go “obvs.”
Photo: Mr. Fee
“If a same sex marriage bill comes to the desk of Governor Christie, it will be returned to the legislature with a big red veto on it.” New Jersey Governor elect Chris Christie remembering his Hester Prynne in 2009. New Jersey and Washington State legislatures both passed of marriage equality bills on Monday.
“The fact that Virginia prohibits only interracial marriages involving white persons demonstrates that the racial classifications must stand on their own justification, as measures designed to maintain White Supremacy. We have consistently denied the constitutionality of measures which restrict the rights of citizens on account of race. There can be no doubt that restricting the freedom to marry solely because of racial classifications violates the central meaning of the Equal Protection Clause.” The court’s opinion inLoving v. Virginia, 1967.
“The gem belongs on the ring, standing proud and broad. The stream belongs among the waves, mingling with the ocean flood...The bear belongs on the heath, old and awesome...The female, the woman, must visit her lover with secret cunning—if she has no wish to prosper among her people so that someone will purchase her with rings.” Anglo Saxon wisdom poem Maxims II.
Let Me Recite What History Teaches (LMRWHT) is a weekly column that flashes the lavalamp, gaslight, candlelight, campfire, torch, sometimes even the starlight of the past on something that is happening now. The form of the column strives to recover what might be best about the “wide-eyed presentation of mere facts.” Each week you will find here some citational constellation, offered with astonishment and without comment, that can serve as an end in itself, dinner party fodder, or an occasion for further thought or writing. The title is taken from the last line of Stein’s poem “If I Told Him (A Completed Portrait of Picasso)."
Photograph of Mildred and Richard Loving by Grey Villet, via Time Magazine
Ben Marcus is so hot right now. With reviews and interviews in New York Magazine, The New York Times, NPR, Wired, The Millions, Salon,Bookforum, HTMLGiant, and Publisher’s Weekly, it’s hard not to describe the publication of The Flame Alphabet as a very big deal. While many of the reviews remark on how the book's linear narrative is a departure from Marcus’ other, “more difficult” books, the central conflict—that the speech of children is somehow killing off adults—is anything but conventional. And since our theme this month is "Relative Perversions," I’d like to offer up the top five perversions at play that, regardless of "linear" or "difficult," make the book so compelling.
5. Perverse Fear. The lethal-language-of-kids notion is, somehow, very correct. How could the young not be the end of us? Like any good virus, the disease mutates, becomes a more efficient killing machine by transforming all language into a vector of fatal harm. The questions raised by such an attack are both entirely personal and too enormous to digest. What effects do our words have on other people? Is there a way of speaking without causing harm? How could the world function without language?
4. Perverse Perseverance. So. Any and all language is killing your wife and causing your own very rapid deterioration. What’s a father to do? Work. Feverish, futile work. The father’s determination to keep his family together is the force driving the whole novel. Here is the activity of Beckett (“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”) and the activity we all desperately cling to while our lives swarm uncontrollably on. Wait, what? I don’t think I know what I’m saying, but I like thinking about it.
3. The Perversion of Failure. The Flame Alphabet is rich with objects that are somehow both textually vivid and kind of impossible to imagine. As a reader, this is to experience the perverse failure of language first-hand. These objects are alive, resonant...but I somehow can’t manage to see them. This is delightful. This is an effect that causes me to lean further in.
2. The Perversion of Belief. The Flame Alphabet also explores what happens when a man has to reconcile certain fundamental beliefs with an impossible new reality. Our protagonist is assailed by different authorities (scientists, doctors, rabbis) who make him question whether understanding is desirable, if even possible. This is my favorite kind of game. What usefulness does knowledge have? If an idea can be understood, is it lifeless?
1. Perverse Sexy Time. There are some adorable moments of catastrophically awkward sex: "To prove her vigor, Claire cornered me, sexually, made a physical trespass. Seeking, it would seem, someone to leak on." I know not everyone’s into that kind of thing, but I find a certain charm in these descriptions of failed engagement: the private longing, the humiliation.
And hey, even if perversion isn't really your thing, you should probably read The Flame Alphabet in order to advance, sexually, with Columbia students, or to find out how this novel fits in with Marcus' obsession with men trapped in holes. One of the best things a book can do is provide the space and time and the tiny pushes your brain needs in order to proceed with curiosity. The Flame Alphabet does this astoundingly well.
Image: New York Magazine
A friend and I were preparing deviled eggs for a Superbowl party when I insisted on enhancing our deviled egg production with a few choice sentences from Diane Williams’ new story collection, Vicky Swanky Is a Beauty. How could I not—with the enthusiasm gathering in us of crushed yolks, globs of mayo, secret relish—pull my friend over to take a look at these sentences, these other small, new bursts of pleasure?
When I talk about Diane Williams, author of seven excellent short story collections and founding editor of the literary annual NOON, I tend to talk about her sentences more than I talk about her stories. Her sentences contain an awful lot, and when put together into a whole story, the entirety gives me too much to say in one sitting. Too much to say, and a fear of ruining the pleasurable effect the story’s just had by putting too many other words around it.
The other main thing as to why I talk about her sentences, is that her sentences are brilliant. Her sentences can be plucked from their stories and stand alone devastating people.
So, in order to say a little, but not too much, and as an excuse to publish a list of some of my very favorite sentences from Vicky Swanky Is a Beauty, I’d like to suggest a few methods by which pleasure can come about. First, the sentences:
“Another one of my boyfriends said helpfully there is a great difference between love, hatred, and desire, but nothing compels us to maintain these differences.”
From "Mood Which Gripped Me"
“The mother experiences her losses with positivity. She even frames the notion of her own charm as she heads into her normal amount of it.”
From "Chicken Winchell"
“Her fate was being rigged for the rough surface.”
From "Mrs. Keable’s Brothers"
“The suspense in that moment had drawn me in and I was fascinated to hear my answer to her that was delivered in a weepy form.”
From "Arm Under the Soil"
“I seriously did not think I was in the state I describe as reserved for me.”
From "Expectant Motherhood"
My friend, who was helping with the deviled eggs, and who is well on her way to becoming a doctor, confessed to feelings of inadequacy with regard to talking about very smart literary fiction. I say put the fear aside. The point of reading is not always to then get a hold of something, as if the story is some riddle. Allow for the simple, intense pleasure in the sound of the words. Let the sentence make you think in a way you had not before, with a logic to the syntax that is surprising and fresh, somehow both very true at the same time that it is utterly unfamiliar. Permit yourself to remain in a state of uncertainty and wonder.
Image: mcsweeneys.net
Say what you will about Lana Del Rey, the pop singer whose recent Saturday Night Live debut Brian Williams called “one of the worst outings in SNL history”; at least she didn’t pull an Ashlee Simpson. So let’s take a break from the whole Del Rey shitstorm and look at a few brave artists who have refused to lip-sync in their music videos.
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December, 2011: Fresh off two flights totaling 14 hours, I hit the streets of Tokyo. The thrilling all-female band TsushiMaMire had scheduled a one-off ahead of their big 2012 tour, at a stupidly named but promisingly chic Shibuya venue called clubasia. I'd met these riot grrrls at Santos Party House, and I was aching to catch them again on their home turf. So I did what any ballsy foreigner would do: I emailed them, including a brief message how we'd met in New York and that I'd be in town. Mari, the ballistically cute, ferocious singer/guitarist, immediately wrote me back, all excited. I was in.
Tickets to Tokyo rock shows cost up to 30 American smackers, which is likeTerminal 5 prices for a dude used to dropping $7 for an absolutely bonkers night at Death By Audio. But remember: this is Tokyo, where a Starbucks double espresso goes for $7. Luckily, most tickets factor in a one-drink pass, and drinking at Tokyo live music venues is good, from the smoothest draft beer to the surprisingly ubiquitous Zima.
Photography at shows is generally discouraged, and while you won't be ram-jammed for having your iPhone out, you also won't see people paying more attention to their smartphones than the band. What you can do is smoke cigarettes, so sensitive types should consider donning the ubiquitous "surgical" face-mask.
Locals can reserve tickets online via Lawson Ticket or EPlus and pick them up at their neighborhood 7-Eleven, which is awesome. But for us live-music freaks without local permanent addresses, that's a no-go. Bummer: after all those plane-hours getting stoked about bands, I wanted some guarantee that I'd get in. Good thing I'd sent that email.
On my way to the show, I traversed the rolling avenues of Love Hotel Hill in Dogenzaka, Shibuya. Picture gaudy-ass façades, pink neon and sex advertseverywhere. As Mari had reserved my ticket, I queued up opposite the physical-tickets group, which I noticed was assembled in "waves": like 1 to 4, similar to boarding an aircraft. Outside clubasia's stage room, I noted coin-lockers lining the corridor, where one could stash gear for a 300-yen fee. The importance of these lockers became very clear to me moments later, when the show erupted.
The floor was two-thirds the size of Music Hall of Williamsburg, including elevated stage, and everyone in the first three rows was decked in TsushiMaMire merch: t-shirts, multicolored scarf-towels, buttons, that jazz. I got to know my neighbors, like this reed-thin young dude who was stoked to see TsushiMaMire for the first time, these two cute girls, and this young salaryman-type, still wearing his suit and tie. Then TsushiMaMire ripped into their set…and I found myself slam-dancing. Yes: the front-row types were the hardcore fans, throwing up heavy metal horns in unison, hollering on cue to Mari's riffs, and moshing up a frenzy.
OK, I thought, boosting up the reed-thin dude so he could crowd surf, that'swhy the coin-lockers.
Image: courtesy the author
Several questions came to me while reading Garth Risk Hallberg’s Timesriff, "Why Write Novels At All?" And by "questions," I really mean "moments of skeptical irritation."
To Hallberg, “The central question driving literary aesthetics in the age of the iPad is no longer ‘How should novels be?’ but ‘Why write novels at all?’.” He identifies Jonathan Franzen, Zadie Smith, David Foster Wallace, and Jeffrey Eugenides as the new literary big guns, and then, from what I understand, asserts that the challenges these writers face are not so much questions of form or craft; the new shit to ponder and be judged by is how well the work manifests a sense of connectedness with other people.
Hallberg seems to be saying that these writers have eschewed an exploration of formal principles and standards that would separate themselves from "lower" forms of art. The challenge now, for the, like,super good top literary writers, is to run with this whole empathy thing, making sure not only to "delight" readers, but to "instruct" them as well. But simply because these writers have asked similar questions in and about their work doesn't mean they've ceased to concern themselves with matters of craft. Jonathan Franzen is deeply invested in the style and forms of domestic, realist fiction. David Foster Wallace was an enormous influence on bringing hyper-realism into mainstream culture. These writers have in no way ignored the questions involved in how novels should be.
Another issue I have is Hallberg’s identification of Franzen, Smith, Wallace and Eugenides as writers who are driving literary aesthetics. While these writers are the more literary on the top-seller lists, they are not working in a vacuum. There are other writers at work. Whole pockets of lesser known (even "experimental") writers have been playing with language and style in very serious, exciting, and different ways. They may be on the outer edge of well-known fiction, yet the very fact of their play with language and form pushes its boundaries all the same. To claim that the new "literary" standard is a warm gooey center of feeling surrounded by some sort of message is simply a mistake.
The other boner to be contended with, as far as I see it, is the underlying assumption that the hallmark of "special feelings of togetherness" has usurped formal considerations. Special feelings have always been at work in literary fiction. This whole "not being alone" moralist emotionality has always been at play, in conjunction with formal considerations. Not a dichotomy. Great literature has very special feelings! Great literature stirs very special feelings in the reader!
Screw the whole "message" nonsense (I’d need a whole other post to slog through that wad of sunshine), but feelings! And standards. My god, please, standards, rules, principles. Not everyone can get a gold star. The "age of the iPad" doesn’t change that.
Image: tullamorearts.com
In last week's New Yorker, science writer Jonah Lehrer presents an interesting correlation between creativity and physical space. He sums it up with a quote from Isaac Kohane, a Harvard Medical School researcher: "Even in the era of big science, when researchers spend so much time on the internet, it's still so important to create intimate spaces."
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