High

We don’t get many shows in St. Louis that are en route to New York, so when we do we feel flattered.  Which probably isn’t the right way to feel.  After all, if they are trying out a show before it hits New York what they really need is honest criticism.

On Thursday night I saw High at The Rep, written by Matthew Lombardo and directed by Rob Ruggiero and starring Kathleen Turner. It is supposedly on its way to New York.  If it makes it there I don’t think it will last.  Not because of the actors but because of the script.

A three character show, Turner plays Sister Jamison Connelly, a Catholic nun who works at a rehab center run by the Catholic Church.  Michael Beresse plays Father Michael Delpapp, the priest who is in charge of the facility and Evan Jonigkeit plays Cody Randall, a junkie serving a 30 day court ordered stay at the facility with whom Sister Connelly must work.

Matthew Lombardo is, by his own admission, a recovering drug addict.  The role of the drug addict is well written and Jonigkeit played it perfectly.  It is hard to like Cody while at the same time it is easy to see how easy it would be to enable him in his behavior.

Lombardo was also, by his own admission, born Catholic.  So was I. And in the notes for the performance he attributes his own “coming clean'” moment to a spiritual awakening when he hit rock bottom and asked God for help.    According to Lombardo, he was delivered to a nearby hospital where he began treatment. 

Not, you notice, a Catholic rehab center.  He should have stuck with what he knew.

I see the plays at The Rep in the last week of performance.  By the time I see them they have either jelled or not jelled.  My cousin (who was also raised Catholic and is a psychologist) saw this play at the beginning of the run.  I saw her after she had seen it and I asked her how she liked it.  She said she didn’t want to ruin the plot for me so she wouldn’t go into that, but she thought the play itself (the script) needed significant work before it went to New York.   Then she remarked that, despite growing up Catholic, it didn’t seem as if the writer had ever met any “real” Catholics who worked in places like these.

I have to agree with her.  I thought the script was weak.  The drug addict was the best drawn character and, as I said, Jonigkeit played him perfectly.  But the nun and the priest characters seemed forced.  I think Turner and Beresse did as well as they could with what they were given, it wasn’t their fault.  But the way the characters were written seemed outdated.  And there were so many things that he seemed to have gotten wrong.

For instance, the priest is dressed throughout most of the performance in his clerical blacks (with roman collar).  But this seems to be a facility at which he lives and we never see him in “street” clothes.  Priests do wear them at times, you know.  And at one point in the performance he gets dressed in vestments that are used only when saying mass.  There is no indication in the script that they have moved into a sacristy (the part of the church where the priest robes) or that he is preparing to say mass.  He just brings them into the room that, up until that point in the performance, has been the nun’s office, and puts them on as he talks to her.  Huh?  Why?

At one point Sister Connelly talks about how she doesn’t wear traditional nun garb with a rosary around her neck.  It isn’t against the rules to wear a rosary around your neck but most Catholics in the United States don’t.   Back in the day when nuns did dress in habits, their rosaries were usually hanging from their waists from where they could easily be detached and used in prayer.

These are things that could easily be fixed.  A bigger problem was the dialog. Lombardo tried to show that “nuns are people too” by having Sr. Connelly swear a blue streak.  But in every other way she talked as if she were out of a 1950’s movie about nuns.  Think Rosalind Russell in The Trouble with Angels.   She was unlike any nun I’ve ever met in the last 20 years.  And I’ve met a lot of nuns in my life.  A LOT of nuns. 

What it came down to was this:  it wasn’t at all clear why this character needed to be a nun.  The only reason she needed to be a nun was seemingly because she worked in a Catholic rehab center where a priest was in charge.  Having her be a nun must have seemed a good way to increase the tension when she stood up to the priest.  I have news for Lombardo:  lots of lay people work in facilities run by priests.  And there’s plenty of tension when they stand up to them.

Oh, and they don’t stand up to them by going around their backs to the archbishop about a problem that is no more than a run-of-the-mill disagreement.  They don’t even go to the archbishop for BIG disagreements.  Why?  It would be like going to the Governor because you disagreed with your boss who was the head of the highway department.  It just isn’t done. 

I can see why Lombardo wanted to have the priest character.  He was playing with stereotypes and preconceptions by making the audience have to consider their current conceptions about why a priest would be interested in helping a teenage homosexual prostitute drug addict.  The priest sex abuse scandal is always there in the background and it is somewhat useful for Lombardo’s purposes in obscuring some of what he wants to save for the end.  But there was no reason that the actual therapist had to be a nun.  It just doesn’t work and he should change that.

But finally, and most problematically, the story of the drug addict is just not that shocking.   It seemed pretty run-of-the mill to me.  Which would be fine EXCEPT that his story is supposed to shock Sister Connelly intensely. So intensely that it makes her reveal to the audience something terrible that happened in her past.

Give me a break.  Nuns don’t exist in vacuums.  They don’t get to be counselors at a rehab center because some mother superior sends them there.  They have to go to school these days.  They do internships.  They read case studies.  They are exactly like lay people who work at drug rehab centers. 

Even if this kid were her first homosexual, prostitute drug addict, there was nothing about his background or anything he did that should have shocked her.  Heck, it wouldn’t have shocked anyone who ever watched The Wire.  It certainly didn’t shock me.

And that, above all, was the fatal flaw in the script that I’m not sure can be fixed.

Making Conversation

Laura Miller, book critic at Salon, wrote a post questioning the value of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWrMO).  Carolyn Kellog at the LA Times picks it apart so I won’t bother.  There’s a lot that’s wrong with it. 

And, as a writer I know put it, the piece was “mean spirited”. 

Yes, it was. 

But here’s my dirty little secret.  I liked that she said things that were mean spirited. Because thinking about aspiring writers makes me say things that are mean spirited too. 

No, that’s a lie. I don’t say mean spirited things.

I think them. 

And then I think, “gosh that was mean spirited, you can’t SAY that.”

You want examples?

I’m thinking, my GOD you are so BORING!

See?  Mean spirited. 

People say lawyers are boring but they should spend time around  writers.  Case citations can’t possibly be more boring than word counts.  Yes, word counts.  Oy.  

Of course I’m kidding.  Not all writers are boring.  Just the ones I know. 

KIDDING!  Really.

They aren’t all boring.  But they are far more boring than the writers I knew years ago. Yes, the quality of writerly conversation has deteriorated.

I used to work with mystery writer Michael Kahn who was quite entertaining.  The thing is, he never talked about writing.  He talked about other stuff.  Sometimes he talked about books – other people’s books.   He never talked about word counts.

And when I was in law school, Francis Nevins was one of my professors.  He also wrote mystery novels.  And he never talked about writing in class or out of class (at least when I was around).  He talked about other stuff.  He talked about trusts and estates law. He never talked about word counts.

And I worked across the hall from Richard Dooling when he was a young summer intern at a law firm where I was a paralegal.  He was hilarious.  I never dreamed he was an aspiring writer.  I just thought he was a funny, creative person.  Ok, let’s be honest.  I thought he was way too funny and creative to be a lawyer.  I was sure he’d be bored out of his mind!  Again, he never talked about writing. He talked about other stuff.  Sometimes he talked about books – other people’s books. He never talked about word counts.

Now, if you put all these men in a group their conversation might not be as fascinating as, say, what I imagine the Bloomsbury Group conversation was like. But it wouldn’t be boring.  You would come away thinking that they were engaged in the world around them, they were interested in the world at large and that they were reading the fiction being published by their contemporaries.

But over the last five years or so, as I encounter people who “write” I find them obsessed with discussing word counts.  And that doesn’t even count all the people I don’t really know but who I read on line who talk about it even more. Counting is not a problem for me, I just don’t want to hear about it. Do we think that Virginia Woolf sat around talking about page counts?  I hope not.

And the thing that has been bugging me for a few years is this … these aspiring writers really don’t talk about other people’s books. At least not around me.  Not most of them.  And when I ask what they are reading, I feel like I’m interviewing Sarah Palin. 

Ok, YES, not ALL of them.  But enough that I’ve noticed.  Enough that I’ve thought about it regularly.  Enough that it has really bugged me.

See, the thing is …

I’m convinced that many of them don’t read.

Really.

So when Laura Miller relates this story in the middle of her piece, I found myself nodding:

"People would come up to me at parties," author Ann Bauer recently told me, "and say, 'I've been thinking of writing a book. Tell me what you think of this ...' And I'd (eventually) divert the conversation by asking what they read ... Now, the 'What do you read?' question is inevitably answered, 'Oh, I don't have time to read. I'm just concentrating on my writing.'"

Carolyn Kellog rips this by asking: “Where on earth does Miller get the idea that the writers participating in NaNoWriMo don't read books? She cites one dinner party anecdote, one Atlantic article referencing an unnamed independent publisher.”  

Good point.

But I’m with Miller on this one.  I have nothing but anecdote either but when you are bored out of your mind by people who claim to be fiction writers, you just know that something is wrong.

Kellog writes:

At NaNoWriMo, I checked out the Fictional Character Crushes II forum. Among those setting the writers' hearts a-beating: Sherlock Holmes, both Jay Gatsby and Nick from "The Great Gatsby," Mr. Darcy, Aragorn from "Lord of the Rings," Anne from "Anne of Green Gables," the Cat from the Neil Gaiman short story "The Price," Algernon Moncrieff from Oscar Wilde's "The Importance of Being Earnest," Alcide from the Southern Vampire Mysteries, Edmond Dantès from "The Count of Monte Cristo" and Archie Goodwin from the Nero Wolfe series by Rex Stout. There are also plenty of crushes on TV and film and anime characters, which just goes to show that these hopeful writers are readers as well as watchers. They are contemporary cultural consumers, and in NaNoWriMo, they're trying to create something.

um.  Does anyone else notice that most of these characters are from books these people should have read in high school?  What are they reading TODAY?  Neil Gaiman obviously.  But who else?  Any LIVE authors they are reading?  Are they discussing the work of their contemporaries?

Look,  I like Jane Austin’s Mr. Darcy as much as the next person and, yes, I’d gladly welcome a discussion of him.  But did they actually read the book recently?  Or did they read it in high school/college and just recently see the movie?  Because in my book that doesn’t count.

See?  Mean spirited.

Look, I don’t give a shit if people want to sit around all month writing.  I’m not against this writing month thingy, not at all. 

But I’m sticking with Laura Miller on the idea that writers need to read more. They need to be engaged in what is going on in the world.  They need to know what their contemporaries are writing about and they need to be EXCITED by someone’s writing that isn’t their own.

It might not make them better writers.  But it would certainly make them less boring at parties. 

And if they promise to never bring up word counts I promise not to talk to them about statutes of limitations. 

This and That

This is my mother’s favorite ride at Disneyworld.   Seriously.

I just heard that they cancelled Caprica.  Not a surprise but I still thought it had potential. 

I’ve pretty much stopped watching SGU.  The women characters are so terribly written, I just can’t take it anymore.

It’s just a jump to the left …

Tonight’s episode of Glee brought back memories of High School and doing the Time Warp in people’s basements at parties:

Glee Version of the Time Warp

I figured out what was wrong with Glee this season. Too many solos. Not enough choral numbers. It’s a Glee Club for goodness sake. Let them sing all at once. They can’t all be stars.

And this one had a plot that the music worked with rather than music that the plot had to find a way to work with.

More LeBeau Mysteries – Thomas Dumont

I’ve had such good luck with people contacting me about past family mysteries that, what the heck - I’m going to try again. For all the regular readers – sorry. You’re probably sick of the LeBeau family. Back to our regularly scheduled programming soon.

Thomas Dumont was my g-g-g-grandfather and he has always been something of a mystery. He married Louise, the daughter of Jean Baptiste LeBeau and Marguerite Barada. She was a young widow with two children. Louise and Charles only had one child: my g-g-grandfather Charles Dumont. Louise came from a family with a St. Louis history. Thomas? Thomas seems to have just shown up one day. We can’t find any family that he would have come to join. Since it seems so unlikely that she would have married a total stranger who had no “references” we assume that he must have been involved in the fur trade and her male relatives must have known him from somewhere.

Here’s what we do know.

Marie Louise LeBeau and Thomas Dumont were married at St. Charles Borromeo Church, St. Charles, Missouri, on February 9, 1836.

“After a publication, dispensation having been given for the two others, I received the mutual consent of Mr. Thomas Dumont and Miss Marie Louise LeBeau, in the presence of several witnesses. His mark Baptiste LeBeau; His mark Louis Gournon; His Mark August Dorlac; His mark Baptiste LeJeunesse; A. Janis; His mark Sylvestre Barada His mark Louis Geau; Van Assche”

All the witnesses were from the area. Baptiste LeBeau was either her father or her brother. Sylvestre Barada was an uncle. August Dorlac was probably the uncle of her first husband. Louis Gournon and Louis Geau were from the area as were Baptiste LaJeunesse and A. Janis. We know that LaJeunesse and Janis were in the fur trade and it is possible that they were friends of Thomas Dumont, but we can’t tell for sure.

The marriage record does not say where Thomas Dumont came from but family lore said that he came “from Canada”. The burial record for Thomas Dumont lists his parents:

Burial at St. Charles Borromeo Catholic Church St. Charles Missouri; November 20, 1849, Thomas Dumond, 60 yrs, s/o Charles Anton & Catherina (Aught); spouse Louisa (LeBeau)

If Thomas Dumont was about 60 when he died in 1849 he would have been born about 1789. Fr. Van Assche was a Belgian priest and he tended to mangle the spelling of French names. After researching various Dumont couples my dad feels fairly sure, and I agree, that Thomas Dumont’s father was Charles Antoine Dumont and that his mother’s name wasn’t Catherina Aught but was really Catherine Hotte. They lived in Canada, mostly around the Montreal area.

Here is what we know about Antoine Dumont and Catherine Hotte:

Antoine Dumont, son of Charles Dumont dit LaFleur and Genevieve Baribeau Beaupre (Ste-Genevieve de Batiscan), was born March 6, 1749. (see PRDH Cert. # 110291) This couple appears to have had two sons named Antoine, one married Marie Josephe Baillergeon and the other (ours) married Marguerite Decelles Duclos in 1771 and then married Catherine Hotte.

Catherine Hotte, daughter of Claude Hotte and Catherine Pilet (Quebec) was born July 13, 1760. (see PRDH Cert #247977)

Antoine Dumont (s/o Charles Dumont and Genevieve Baribeau) married Marguerite Decelles Duclos, widow of Joseph Lavigne, in St. Denis sur Richelieu on January 21, 1771. They had Francois Noel Dumont b. 12-24-1771, d. 10-04-1773 and Antoine Dumont b. 06-26-1775, d. 07-16-1775. Marguerite Decelles died 07-22-1775. Their marriage, the baptisms of their children and all burials were at St. Denis sur Richelieu although at the burial of their son Noel there is a notation that the parents are strangers of the parish.

At the burial of theisecond child, Antoine is listed as a “Fermier” but at the death of Marguerite he is listed as a “Journalier”. (See PRDH certs 226862; 546880; 562601; 704217; 562655; 378146).

Antoine Dumont did not remarry for five years – which seems a long time for those days.

On February 7, 1780, at Batiscan, Antoine Dumont, widower of Marguerite Duclos, married Catherine Hotte daughter of Claude Hotte and Catherine Pilet. (PRDH 215391).

These are their children as listed in PRDH and where they were baptized:

Antoine b. 07-07-1782 (Champlain civil archives) PRDH 740294

Esther b. 03-31-1784 (Champlain civil archives) PRDH 740320

Marie Marguerite b. 04-21-1786 (Sault au Recollet) PRDH 656276

Marie Rose b. 02-16-1789 (Montreal) PRDH 625763

Marie Louise b. 08-12-1791 (Sault au Recollet), d. 05-31-1792 PRDH 656531 and 516383

Michel b. 10-01-1795 (St. Eustache), d. 04-10-1796 PRDH 651548 and 515266

Marie Louise b. 03-30-1797 (St. Eustache) PRDH 651860

On all of these records the spelling of Catherine Hotte’s name is all over the place: Hotte, Hot, Huot, Hote, Hante, Hauilt.

Antoine Dumont died 01-24-1798 and was buried at St. Eustache (see PRDH 385196 which lists his age as 53 but he would have been 49 based on his birthdate of 1749).

On January 7, 1799 Marie Catherine Hotte, widow of Antoine Dumont, remarried Charles Masson at St. Eustache (PRDH 347320). Her brother in law Charles Dumont and nephew Joseph Dumont were witnesses. One child is listed as born to them (but there could have been more, PRDH stops at that point). He was named after his father: Charles Masson b. January 28, 1799 St. Eustache (PRDH 652287)

Charles Masson died March 13, 1814 at St. Eustache at age 75. (PRDH 1145019)

In searching generally on the web I found a website that states that Catherine Hotte married a third time to Jean Baptiste Gagnon on October 20, 1823 at St. Eustache. There is no citation so I don’t know how reliable it is, but the other information they have on that site is correct:

So … the problem is obvious …. There is no Thomas Dumont listed in PRDH as the son of Antoine Dumont and Catherine Hotte, much less a son born around 1789 who lived. Of course ages were often simply guesswork. Perhaps Thomas is really the Antoine Dumont born in 1782? Or perhaps his baptism record is simply missing?

I’ve searched for his siblings on the web to see what may have happened to them, and I found a reference to his youngest sister Louise married to Jean Benjamin Cadorette. There is no citation so, again, I don’t know how reliable it is.

I also found this on the web:

“Je cherche le mariage
et les parents de Jean-Baptiste
DUCHESNE & Marie-Louise CAILLÉ,
leur fils Michel a épousé
en premières noces
Angélique VALIQUETTE
(François & Angélique BOURDON
) le 14 août 1794 à
Sainte-Thérèse-de-Blainville
et en secondes noces,
Catherine DUMONT (Antoine
& Catherine HOTTE) le 12 juillet 1802
à St-Eustache.”

That stumped me too – there is no Catherine Dumont listed in PRDH as the daughter of Antoine Dumont and Catherine Hotte. If she married in 1802 let’s assume she was born sometime in the early to mid 1780’s. So was she really Esther or Marguerite? Or, again, maybe her baptism is missing? Just like her brother Thomas?

There is a Thomas Dumont who is listed as an employee of the Northwest company at Ile-a-La-Crosse in 1812-1814. I do not know if that is my Thomas Dumont. He would have been about the right age, but there were other Dumonts out in the west. My dad found some St. Louis fur trade records that show payment to a Thomas Dumont at a post along the upper Missouri in the 1820’s. My Thomas Dumont showed up in St. Charles in the 1830’s when he married Louise LeBeau. As I said, we have always assumed he came to Missouri in connection with the fur trade.

[Update:] This is the Upper Missouri information we have from records of the American Fur Company account books (lists that didn't reproduce well so some of the information is a best guess at what is written). In October 1829 a Thomas Dumond was affiliated with the "Kanzas Outfit".

1830 - 375 Thomas Dumond paid his order (31.00) (I don't know where this was)

May 2, 1832 Fort Union Th. Dumond 396.25

August 2, 1832 payable our note to Th. Dumond 153.00 (Fort Clark?)

August 3, 1832 to cash pd. C. Labuyr in acc't of note to Th. Dumond 32.00

August 13, 1832 Thomas Dumond for amt. of his acknowledgment of his note given him.

October 26, 1832 Thomas Dumond - reference acct. Vanderburg family

November 10, 1832 Th. Dumond 300.19

So. Anybody out there have any additional information? I also posted this on a genealogy forum but thought maybe my blog would get other hits. We’ll see.

Books of my Life: AA Milne’s Winnie the Pooh

The Guardian had a series of podcasts called “Books of My Life” in which they interviewed famous people (mostly writers I think) and asked about the “books of their lives”.  At about the same time I started listening to this series of podcasts I also got an iPad and downloaded the free iBook app.  One free book comes with the app and that is AA Milne’s Winnie the Pooh.  I was virtually thumbing through it, looking at the pictures, and I thought “This is a book of my life.”

When I was a child my sister received a full set of AA Milne books and, at about the same time, acquired a set of records in which a British man read them aloud.  I have no idea who the man was.  Probably some famous British actor but, as a child, names meant nothing to me.  I don’t remember either my sister nor I picking up the AA Milne books and reading them but we listened to that record over and over.  I can still hear his baritone voice:

“Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump, on the back of his head, behind Christopher Robin.  It is, as far as he knows, the only way of coming downstairs, but sometimes he feels that there really is another way, if only he could stop bumping for a moment and think of it.  And then he feels that perhaps there isn’t.  Anyhow, here he is at the bottom, and ready to be introduced to you.  Winnie-the-Pooh.”

There was a time in my life when I probably knew the short story in Chapter One, “We are Introduced to Winnie-the-Pooh and Some Bees, and the Stories Begin,” by heart.  I probably could still tell you that entire story very close to word-for-word.   Eventually, when I was older I read all of the AA Milne.  I still sometimes give the original Winnie-the-Pooh books as baby gifts in the hope that, eventually, the small children will grow into the stories. 

Chapter One of Winnie-the-Pooh shaped my expectations of what a good work of fiction should be.  Winnie-the-Pooh was more than a story book.  Oh, sure, there were stories.   In Chapter One Winnie-the-Pooh decides to try to steal some honey from the bees he discovers living in a tree.  He comes up with a plan that involves floating up in the air under a balloon so that he can reach the honey.  He enlists the help of his friend, Christopher Robin, who is doubtful about the plan but helps out anyway.  In the end the plan fails.   My first encounter with a non-happy ending.  Not a tragic ending, but not a typical American ending where everyone gets what they want.

AA Milne created a world that was imaginable but wasn’t too full  of detail.  We know that the story takes place in a forest and that one day Winnie-the-Pooh “came to an open place in the middle of the forest”.  We know that Christopher Robin lives “behind a green door in another part of the forest.”  But we are never overwhelmed with detail.  And if I imagined a Missouri forest rather than an English forest, it didn’t matter.

AA Milne created real, living characters for Winnie-the-Pooh, even if he took his inspiration from his small son and his collection of stuffed animals. He invested his characters with depth without ever having to describe that depth.  We learn about Pooh Bear from his what he says and what he does.  We learn about Christopher Robin from what he says and what he does.

But none of this is completely out-of-the ordinary in children’s books.  The Madeleine books certainly had simple stories, just-enough description and vivid characters.  Milne did something that was a revelation to me as a child.  In Chapter One he told two stories simultaneously.  The main story is the story of Pooh Bear and the honey bees.  But the Bee Story is a story within a story.  It is wrapped up in a story of a man telling his little boy a goodnight story.  There is an “outer story” and an “inner story”.   The little boy, Christopher Robin,  comes downstairs, dragging his bear behind him, and says “What about a story?”  The father, AA Milne, complies and tells a story about Christopher Robin’s bear in which a further fictionalized Christopher Robin makes an appearance. 

This is something that parents do all the time, tell stories to their children in which the children are characters.  Children love that.  What I loved as a child and as an adult about Chapter One of Winnie-the-Pooh is that AA Milne told both stories at a level that children could understand even though he used two “voices” and the “audience” for the two stories is different.  The inner story-within-a story is directed at a “you'” who is the Christopher Robin of the outer story.  The “you” to whom the outer story is directed is the reader.   As a child I completely understood this.  As an adult I marvel that AA Milne could make children understand this.  Here, he is talking to the “you” who is the reader.

When I first heard his name, I said, just as you are going to say, “But I thought he was a boy?”

“So did I,” said Christopher Robin.

“Then you can’t call him Winnie?”

“I don’t.”

“But you said –“

“He’s Winnie-ther-Pooh.  Don’t you know what “ther” means?”

“A, yes, now I do,” I said quickly; and I hope you do too, because it is all the explanation you are going to get.

In AA Milne’s world, readers (even childish readers) live on the adult side and are talked to as adults.  Adults either must know everything or must pretend to know everything.  The inner story-within-a story is told to a child and children are not barred from asking the obvious questions, even if the adults have to make up the answer:

Once upon a time, a very long time ago now, about last Friday, Winnie-the-Pooh lived in a forest all by himself under the name of Sanders.

(“What does ‘under the name’ mean? asked Christopher Robin.

“It means he had the name over the door in gold letters, and lived under it.”

“Winnie-the-Pooh wasn’t quite sure,” said Christopher Robin.

“Now I am,” said a growly voice.

“Then I will go on,” said I.”)

The Christopher Robin in the outer story is a boy described to us the reader and is just a little boy.  Here Winnie-the-Pooh has fallen into a gorse-bush:

He  crawled out of the gorse-bush, brushed the prickles from his nose, and began to think again.  And the first person he thought of was Christopher Robin.

(“Was that me?” said Christopher Robin in an awed voice, hardly daring to believe it.

“That was you.”

Christopher Robin said nothing, but his eyes got larger and larger, and his face got pinker and pinker.”)

The Christopher Robin in the inner story is still a boy but is invested with much more sophistication than the real Christopher Robin, as befits a character in a story.   Here Winnie-the-Pooh has put his plan into action and has rolled himself in mud in the hope of looking like a small, black cloud in a blue sky.  He has then floated upward holding onto the balloon:

“Hooray!” you shouted.

“Isn’t that fine?” shouted Winnie-the-Pooh down to you.  “What do I look like?”

“You look like a Bear holding on to a balloon,” you said.

“Not—“ said Pooh anxiously,”—not like a small black cloud in a blue sky?”

“Not very much.”

And of course the more sophisticated Christopher Robin would not have gone for a walk in the English woods without taking his gun with him (in the pictures it is a hunting type of gun with a pop cork on a string hanging from it) which comes in handy when he has to shoot the balloon so that Winnie-the-Pooh can get down. Of course he misses the first time and grazes Pooh Bear.  The more sophisticated Christopher Robin just simply says “I’m so sorry” but the child Christopher Robin of the outer story is troubled by this:

Christopher Robin gave a deep sigh, picked his Bear up by the leg, and walked off to the door, trailing Pooh behind him.  At the door he turned and said, “Coming to see me have my bath?”

I might,” I said.

“I didn’t hurt him when I shot him, did I?”

“Not a bit.”

He nodded and went out, and in a moment I heard Winnie-the-Pooh – bump – bump – bump -  going up the stairs behind him.

This is a sophisticated structure for a children’s story.  It’s a sophisticated structure to pull off in an adult short story.   As a child I didn’t overtly wonder why AA Milne chose to tell the story this way.  I understood that he was accomplishing something by doing it this way but I never thought to ask myself what he had hoped to accomplish.  But it made me take sophisticated structures for granted.  To this day, I’m never completely satisfied with a novel or a short story that just wants to tell a tale or give me well-drawn characters.  I can enjoy them but I’m never really satisfied. 

I’m only satisfied if there is a good tale with well drawn characters and a complicated structure.  Then I’m in heaven.  And I blame AA Milne for that.

Spoiled?

I don’t watch Mad Men on AMC (no cable) so I didn’t mind when I checked into Twitter last night and there were lots of spoiler tweets during the last episode of the season.  But it seemed to bother some people.   And then other tweeters started making fun of the spoilers and the complainers by tweeting the ends of famous books and plays and movies. Which was humorous.

Today, Matt Yglesias posted this at his blog:

… I think “spoilers” aren’t nearly as bad as people make them out to be. I knew Macbeth dies in the end before I read the play, I knew that Troy falls because they stupidly let a wooden horse full of Greek soldiers into the city walls, and I knew that things weren’t going to work out for Anna Karenina and Count Vronsky.

Foreknowledge doesn’t ruin these works or any other work of quality. If anything, it’s the reverse. If you look at a well-constructed story … knowledge of where things are headed enhances your ability to appreciate the mastery with which the story has been put together.

Well, yes. They aren’t as bad as people make them out to be. They aren’t the end of the world.  But. 

Knowing the end has never ruined my reading of a well written novel.  No, not even a mystery novel.  And generally my second reading of a great novel, in which I know everything that happens, does enhance my ability to appreciate the author’s mastery in structuring the novel.  But my ability to appreciate the mastery with which the story has been put together also includes my appreciation of the mastery by which the author is able to evoke emotional responses during a first read, responses that may not be as intense if you know what is coming.  

My first encounter with the story of Anna Karenina was not through the novel but in opera.  I did not know the story at all.  I did not read the synopsis.  I did not expect her to throw herself in front of a train at the end, although I was sure it was going to end badly.  I remember being emotionally drained at the end. This did not ruin my reading of the novel when I finally got around to reading it.   But I wasn’t all that interested in how Tolstoy set me up for the shock of the train scene because I hadn’t experienced the shock through reading his words.  I appreciated the very modern, almost stream of consciousness way that he wrote the scene, but I couldn’t judge whether that technique would have evoked any emotional reaction from me if I was reading it “fresh” because I would never come to it fresh.

Compare this with the first time I read Martin Amis’ The Information in which I argued with the author and his character, Richard Tull, through most of the novel, was sure that Richard Tull was over-reacting and misinterpreting the actions of Gwyn Barry, was sure that Amis was leading me toward a predictable ending and at times was a little bored by Tull’s revenge fantasies gone wrong.  Then the end came, Richard Tull finds a measure of peace and I, the reader, was arguing with him, saying “you can’t stop NOW, not now that I know what I know!”  As soon as I finished the novel I turned around and read it again to figure out how Amis managed to evoke all of these reactions from me.   Sure, if I had known the ending when I started the novel it wouldn’t have ruined if for me and I might have dispassionately analyzed the “mastery with which the story has been put together” but I could never have analyzed how he evoked reactions from me that I might never have had.

On the other hand, I cried all through the end of Dorothy Dunnett’s novel King Hereafter, the story of the real Macbeth who was not evil but was a decent king and man.  I cried because I knew what was coming although I didn’t know how she was going to do it to him.   And knowing where the story was going did enhance my experience of the novel.

So.  Spoilers?   How do you feel about them?