No Movie in my Mind

A brief thought. A month or so ago I was in a discussion with some friends and family about books and about what we see in our mind’s eye when we read novels.  I admitted that I don’t see the the story as a movie in my mind.  I know that others do.  I wonder how common it is not to have much of a visual picture of the story. 

I long ago knew that I wasn’t very good at imagining the geography of interior spaces described in stories.  Back in grade school there were tests we took in which we read descriptions of interior spaces and then had to sketch floor plans.  Surprisingly, mine were usually wrong. 

I say surprisingly because reading comprehension was always my highest score on most tests.  But comprehending substance and imagining space seem to be two different talents.

In my mind, the setting of stories are somewhat like old movie studio back lots and generic sets.  Just enough to suggest that we are in a woods or on main street or in the drawing room of a mansion.  Not the detail that today’s high definition productions require.  I don’t put any imagination into creating the settings. 

I’ve been wondering if that is one reason why I’ve never read much science fiction.  It is a great effort for me to create the settings in my mind if they don’t fit into some generic classification.

9/11 Fiction

Commentary Magazine put together a list of 30 novels “with the 9/11 attacks at their backs”.   That got me thinking about what I had read and realizing I’ve not read many of them.

I wasn’t particularly interested in reading novels about September 11 in the first few years after the attacks. After watching hours of television of the attacks that week, I didn’t feel that I needed fiction to make sense of it. And over the past 10 years, the 9/11 novels I have read have been accidental readings where I didn’t know 9/11 was going to be a big part of the novel.

I did read Claire Messud’s novel, The Emperor’s Children.

The best novel to emerge from September 11, and perhaps the only real 9/11 novel on the list. A New York intellectual is caught in a lie and stranded in his adulterous lover’s apartment by the attacks, which change nothing for him and everything for her.

What’s strange is that, until I read this article I would never have remembered The Emperor’s Children as a 9/11 novel.  I remember it as a typical novel about people who are not from New York but want to be intellectual so they move to New York and meet intellectual, people.  And are still not happy.   But now that I remember that it did involve 9/11, I remember that the most interesting 9/11 part was the character who used 9/11 to escape from New York and start a new life in Florida.   Cruel to his family perhaps, but interesting.   On the whole I didn’t find the novel added anything to my understanding of 9/11 or evoked any particular emotion from me.

I also read Joseph O’Neill’s, Netherland and it left me cold.

A family of three — Dutch-born market analyst, British wife, two-year-old son — are living in a Tribeca loft when the World Trade Center attacks oblige them to find living quarters uptown, where their marriage gradually pulls apart.

The most interesting part of that novel, for me, was the community of cricket players from former British Empire countries.  But I was tired of the morose feel of the novel, especially because the main character could always escape New York in the months after 9/11 by going back to Europe.  So why didn’t he?   I found it a chore to read.

I did generally enjoy Ian McEwan’s, Saturday but that might be because it was a reflection of Europe after 9/11, not America. 

A London neurosurgeon begins his day by watching a plane on fire — a bomb on board, he assumes — and navigates around an anti-Iraq War​ protest to encounter terrorism in his own home.

I still vividly remember the main character in his car trying to avoid the traffic jams from the anti-Iraq War protest.  And I remember the home invasion.   I remember thinking the ending required too much suspending of disbelief, but on the whole I liked it.

The only other book on the list that I’ve read is Jonathan Safran Foer’s​, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, and I loved it.

A nine year old searches all over New York for the key to his father, who died on September 11.

I remember thinking that Foer had captured something special in that novel: how grief over a death that happens from violence like 9/11 is unique but also completely ordinary. I loved the moment when Oskar blurts out that he wishes it had been his mother who had died and not his father. That moment was so hurtfully real. And it didn’t matter why his father had died.  I loved how Foer intertwined into the novel the story of the bombing of Dresden and the nuclear bombing of Japan to show that no matter how bad 9/11 was, worse things have happened in history.  And worse things have been inflicted by the U.S.  And those events have repercussions through the years. I also liked how Foer mixed graphics, and photos and unique page layouts. I put this novel on a list of books that I wanted to read again in 10 years to see how it would age and if I would still feel the same way about it.  Ironically I only read this novel because it was chosen by my reading group and I didn’t know what it was about.  I would never have chosen it on my own.

And that’s it for the books on the list. I find that I don’t particularly want to read any of the other novels.  Maybe DeLillo’s Falling Man.  But not now.

One novel that was not on the list that left a vivid 9/11 impression on me was John Irving’s Last Night in Twisted River.  I can see why it wouldn’t be on a list of 9/11 novels.  It wasn’t about 9/11 or, really, its aftermath.  But one of the events to which the novel builds dramatically happens on 9/11.   As I said, when I blogged about it:

One of the emotional pinnacles of the story just happens to take place on September 11, 2001.   When I first realized that Irving was doing this (which was after the first plane crashed into the tower and a character has the TV on in the kitchen), I was doubtful.  But I think he made it work.    And one reason it works is because the novel isn’t about 9/11, the novel didn’t lead up to 9/11 or away from it.  It just” happened” to happen on the same day as other emotional things happened to the characters.   So the characters had to react to it and they had to react in the context of all the other things that were going on in their lives.

Since that’s the way that many Americans experienced 9/11 it really rang true for me.  Although the whole day remains vivid for me, in actuality I spent much of that day engaged in parts of my ordinary life doing things that had to get done even though a catastrophe had happened 1000 miles away from me.  That’s what Irving captured. 

It doesn’t explain 9/11.  But it reflects how many people experienced 9/11.

The other novel that sticks in my mind that involved 9/11 was The Sorrows of an American, by Siri Hustvedt, which I loved so much I read in one sitting.  It really isn’t about 9/11 but one of the characters is a little girl who saw the towers fall because she went to school nearby and she is suffering from a type of PTSD.  All of the characters, however, have psychological issues in this novel so she doesn’t particularly stand out because of that.

In the end I don’t know that there ever will be a definitive 9/11 novel.  But there will, I’m sure, be novels that try to make sense of the period that 9/11 will come to represent.  That might be different for different groups of people.  For me, 9/11 stands for the first day in a long slow succession of days in which the people of this country more and more questioned whether they really had enough in common with each other to want to continue to put up with each other.  The day that question is answered is the day that novelists will start trying to make sense of the process using fiction.

Happy 45th Birthday Star Trek

I remember watching the original when I was very young.  Actually I remember sitting there with my dad when it was on.  At the time I liked Lost in Space better (I was young).  But I’ve always liked space travel shows.  And time travel shows like …  Time Tunnel.  Ah … television in the 1960’s.  Those were the days.

Since I  was so young, you can guess which was my favorite episode:

Let’s Kill Hitler

Ok, Who’s  back.  Lots of questions answered.  Lots of questions not answered.  Lots of new questions.

spoilers ahead …

First.  I liked the episode.  It really made me laugh.  A lot.  Beginning with the crop circles.  It’s always nice to remember that in the UK this is a family hour drama that’s meant to be enjoyed by kids.  So laughing and having silly, corny monsters are part of the appeal of Doctor Who.  And we haven’t had a really funny Doctor Who story in quite a while.

Second, I loved the Teselecta, which doesn’t really count as a monster but was a good addition to the Whoniverse.  And that guy who was the captain?  Really handsome. I hope they bring him back.  I loved how he kinda sort looked like  William Shatner (but better looking) and the set looked like the bridge of the Enterprise.  (Although the spaceships in Stargate also had bridges that looked like the bridge of the Enterprise.) 

I loved the timey wimeyness of the Baby Melody/BFF Melody storyline.  I didn’t mind the closed time loopiness of BFF Melody bringing Amy and Rory together or that Amy named her daughter after her daughter.  It makes my head spin but I liked it. I didn’t  like Mels herself though and was glad she was gone really fast.  I had her pegged as River from the second she showed up and I found out her name was Mels.  I was surprised how dislikeable she was though.  I should say that, if the girl in the spacesuit regenerated into Mels in 1970, she must (i) age slowly and (ii) have been knocking about for over 20 years before she found Amelia which, combined with the horrors she endured before she regenerated, could turn anyone into a dislikeable person.  Slow aging can also explain how River can potentially be around for a number of years at about the same age before she dies in the library.

I liked that (finally!) Rory and Amy were like equals.  And when Amy said “I love you” to Rory right before they were going to die – I thought that was the most honest emotional moment I’d seen between the two of them through the whole series.  Now maybe we can get past the whole “Does Amy Love Rory” angst and move on to another emotion?

I liked how when the Doctor asked for an interface with the TARDIS we didn’t get Idris (too obvious) but the old companions that the Doctor felt guilty about and himself who he doesn’t like. I’ve felt for a while that part of the story arc for the Doctor these couple of seasons could be self-forgiveness.  In the episode called Amy’s Choice the doctor says of his counterpart, the Dream Lord, only one person hates the Doctor that much.  And of course he meant himself.  And in The Doctor’s Wife Amy accuses him of looking for forgiveness and, in a nice little emotional moment, he says “Aren’t we all?”   Ten was such an emotional Doctor; but then he regenerated into Eleven and – well he’s so British now, isn’t he?  Keeping it all bottled up inside. I thought those scenes inside the TARDIS where the Doctor is laying on the ground talking to the images was a nice emotional scene and dealt, rather belatedly, with what Ten was feeling right before he regenerated. He needs a companion to keep him honest but he always screws up their lives.

I liked many of the explanations we got:

• Why River knows how to pilot the TARDIS (loved it!  And loved that the TARDIS had a daughter).
• Why River goes by River and not by Melody Pond.  If I were Melody Pond and was brought up to be an assassin, I’d change my name too once someone told me that River was cool.
• That the Silence aren’t a species.  (Although the whole question thing has a real Douglas Adams ring to it that I’m not sure I like.  My bet is that the obvious question is Doctor Who?  And don’t we all think the Doctor whispered his name into River’s ear when he thought he was dying?)
• Loved that the Doctor started teaching River “his’ rules and loved that Rule No. 1:  “The Doctor Lies” came from him.   Or maybe that was just a clever lie to shut us up?
• Not a surprise that the Doctor gave her the Blue Book, but still nice.

So on the whole I liked this episode.  Still lots of questions, especially about the Silence and about the Doctor dying (again).  And we still don’t know how Rory became a plastic Roman way back when.  I didn’t especially like that we found that River became an archaeologist to find the Doctor – I’d rather have had her do that because she was passionate about history etc.   And I’d really like to go a whole episode without the whole “A character is going to die!” crap. 

It did move fast but not as fast as A Good Man Goes to War, and there were some nice moments of Matt Smith being emotional. On the other hand, the evolvement of the characters within the episode, particularly the beginning of the evolvement of Mels into River seemed rather fast.  I went with it but the whole time I was thinking that I could have used a little more help from the production team on that.   But that’s probably because for the last couple of days I’ve been considering the importance of directing and editing on television programs.

It’s weird that when we think of television, we seldom think of who the director is.  Most of the time we never even pay attention to who the director is.  It isn’t like that with the movies.  When we think of Lord of the Rings we think of Peter Jackson.   Any Martin Scorsese film is, well, a Martin Scorsese film.   We may remember Ron Howard as Opie but we go to a Ron Howard film today because he directed it. 

And, yes, sometimes the director also has screenwriting credit. But often he doesn’t.  Tom Hooper, last year’s academy award winner for The King’s Speech, was directing a screenplay written by David Seidler.  Danny Boyle directed Trainspotting and Slumdog Millionaire but didn’t write them.  And we take that for granted.  We take it for granted that a screenwriter has a vision of a story and the director and editor and production designer and the actors all work as a team to bring the vision to life.  And we usually give the Director equal credit with the actors.  At least, I do.

Television seems much more fair to the writer, especially when the writer is also the showrunner (or executive producer).  That’s probably because television has such a grueling schedule that no director could direct every episode in a long season.  So it is the showrunner who must oversee the overall vision of the show. 

But we shouldn’t minimize the importance of TV directors.  And I’m beginning to think that we shouldn’t minimize the director in judging how successful a Steven Moffat-written episode is.

During the recent Doctor Who hiatus, I went back and re-watched all the episodes in which Steven Moffat has been credited as the writer, including the episodes in the series in which he was not the showrunner.  My conclusion?  If I were him, I’d do whatever it took to get Euros Lyn to direct every episode I ever wrote.  And get Crispin Green back to edit them.

The duo of Lyn and Green were the director/editors of The Girl in the Library and the Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead episodes that Moffat has writing credit for.   And they are beautiful.  The stories move along at good clips and never drag but there is plenty of time for emotion.  The reaction shots are things of beauty.  The cutting between reaction shots is brilliant.   There are multiple times in the Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead  where action is going on in the foreground but a key character is in the background either engaging in dialog we hear or evolving though reaction shots. Brilliant.  A very layered direction of a layered script involving characters with many layers.

I think part of my problem with the current season of Doctor Who, which I have attributed to lack of emotion, can be traced to the direction and editing.  Some people, including me, have blamed Steven Moffat’s complicated story arc for leaving no time for emotion and for exploring consequences.  But that’s a bit unfair.  The more I think about it, the less I think it is a problem with Steven Moffat the screenwriter but with Steven Moffat the executive producer and with the production choices that have been made.  Including the choices made in direction and editing.

Yes, the story moves very fast and that leaves little time for emotion.  But television is a visual art.  Not every part of the story has to be told in words. While words are being said we could be seeing other things that give us emotional responses and/or character growth.

I’ll give you an example from this episode.  I thought the evolution of the character who looked like Mels from a character like Mels into what will be River – the moments before she took the step of getting into the TARDIS to try to save Rory and Amy --  were not quite as emotional as they could have been and I think it was because we didn’t see enough of River’s character evolving before our eyes.  Was that a problem of the writing?  Or was it a camera angle problem? 

Obviously, as written, the character evolved.  But when the director went to shoot the scene and/or when the editor went to cut the scene, what did we the audience end up seeing?  We saw the Doctor (the very emotional, dying Doctor) lying on the floor.  We saw a pair of legs in the backround that were the robotic Amy’s legs (that bugged me for a bit because I kept thinking they were supposed to be River’s legs except that River was sitting).  Then occasionally there would be a cut to River sitting in a chair and talking.  Finally there is a cut to where River gets up and comes into the frame with the Doctor. 

But didn’t we need to see her the whole time? Didn’t we need to see her face the WHOLE time?  Her character wasn’t evolving only when she was talking.  It was evolving the whole time and what she was saying was maybe not the evolution but the results of moments of evolution as she thought about things and listened and watched the doctor.   Is there a reason that the scene couldn’t have been shot with the Doctor in the foreground but River visually present in the background the entire time?  Matt Smith doesn’t have a very expressive face but Alex Kingston does.  She could have evolved River in the background quite satisfactorily in my opinion.  It would have added emotion to the scene because it would have showed the effect of what the Doctor was doing and saying on the person who was supposed to be effected.  And then River’s  words would have meant more.

Look at this scene from Silence in the Library and see how often things take place in the background behind things going on in the foreground.  And when David Tennant asks Mr. Lux about the data core we can see Alex Kingston in the background with the smile on her face that later leads up to her egging the doctor with the question “Then why didn’t you sign his agreement”.   You can see on her face that she’s a shit-disturber, but then we are distracted for a moment and are still a bit surprised then she asks the question and proves it.  

Little things, but they all add up to a brilliant episode. Not just a good story.  Not just a well acted story.  But a brilliantly realized story.  Rewatch those episodes and see how many reaction shots and dialog take place in what would usually be the rear.  One of my favorite reaction shots is right after River whispers the Doctor’s name in his ear.  Yes, we see a closeup of David Tennant’s brilliant reaction when he says they are “ok” now but then when the scene moves on he is still in the rear of the scene staring at River and pulling himself together before he takes over again and starts demanding answers.   Again, brilliant acting but also brilliant camera angles. And editing.  All showing us not just what happened but the immediate consequences to the psyche of the characters.

I don’t know anything about the directors for Doctor Who this season but whoever directed A Good Man Goes to War had a galloping story line that needed the emotion to come through visually and I don’t think he succeeded in that endeavor.  The Director of Let’s Kill Hitler was more successful.  But not as brilliant as Euros Lyn in his Steven Moffat written episodes.   And that kind of director is what Moffat needs for his stories.  His stories are layered, his characters are layered.  He needs a director who directs in layers.*

* Euros Lyn also directed every single episode of Torchwood: Children of Earth.  That was a story that could have devolved into melodrama so easily.  Instead it held together brilliantly partly because of the direction and editing and was an absolutely brilliant moment of television.

Who is Coming Back

Charlie Jane Anders has a Wish List for the Fall Doctor Who Season and I basically agree with all of her suggestions.

I’ve been thinking about the first part of Series 6 in anticipation for the beginning of part two (which I’ll have to watch through iTunes).  I’ve liked the storyline about Flesh Amy and Constantly Dying Rory and Who is River Song.  On the whole I think the Steven Moffat era has been high quality and overall has contained more interesting episodes than the RTD era.  But … I do miss the high emotion of the RTD era and I find myself wishing for slightly less complicated puzzling and a touch more emotion. 

I’m not really complaining because on the whole I love the Steven Moffat era.   RTD era plots were often silly in ways that Steven Moffat episodes are never silly.  And during the RTD era there was too much emphasis on the attraction that some of the companions felt for the Doctor.  I like that Moffat had the Doctor emphatically reject the idea of any canoodling with Amy Pond.  But … the RTD era regularly had episodes that brought tears to my eyes and/or smiles to my face.  I don’t find myself tearing up and/or smiling as much these days.  Mostly my face has a screwed up look as I try to figure things out.

The thing is, I really like Matt Smith’s Doctor.  I like that he is a young actor who plays the Doctor like an absent minded, eccentric old guy.  I like that he can pull that off.   But I don’t think he’s given enough to work with in terms of emotions. It isn’t that I think he can’t do emotion, I think that he isn’t given enough emotion to do.

The last episode, A Good Man Goes to War, was supposed to contain moments where the Doctor reached his highest high only to be plunged to his lowest low.  But the way it was written, things happened so fast that there was no time to feel a high or really to feel a low.  I was too busy trying to just figure out what was going on.  Highs and lows are emotions.  Emotions take time.  There just wasn’t enough time. It’s odd that the Flesh story was a two=parter when the whole story could have been told in one episode but A Good Man Goes to War, which could have used 2 parts, was crammed into one episode.

Maybe the problem is that I’ve seen the RTD series.  Maybe for those who haven’t seen it, they aren’t missing anything.  But compared to the highs and lows that David Tennant (or even Christopher Eccleston) reached during the RTD series, I didn’t feel that  this episode was the character of the Doctor’s highest high or lowest low.  It’s almost as if Moffat never saw the RTD series.  Ten would get angrier and/or sadder during any average episode than Moffat has ever allowed Eleven to be at his very angriest or saddest.   And nobody could possibly be higher than Ten at his most manic.  Even Nine had that wonderful moment of happiness when the nanogenes figured out that Nancy was the mother of the gas mask child -- which in retrospect makes Nine seem happier than Eleven has ever been.  And that was a Moffat script – so he can write highs if he has to.  But notice that he built that up for Eccleston to act over a two part episode.

So I’m waiting to see how the second half of the season works out.  I trust that most of the loose ends will be tied up and we’ll find out the answers to most of our questions.  But I’m still waiting to hit the emotional heart of this season.

It’s Hard to Be Hip Over Thirty

Persephone Books publishes forgotten fiction and non-fiction by “unjustly neglected authors” and I recently read It’s Hard to be Hip over Thirty by Judith Viorst.   Viorst was writing poetry in the 60’s, but it hasn’t aged.  Some things have changed.  Options for women have opened up, certainly.  But being married and having children will always require the sacrifice of certain options.  I enjoyed reading her poetry.

Nice Baby

Last year I talked about black humor and the impact of the
     common market on the European economy and
Threw clever little cocktail parties in our discerningly
     eclectic living room
With the Spanish rug and the hand-carved Chinese chest
     and the lucite chairs and
Was occasionally hungered after by highly placed men in
     communications, but
This year we have a nice baby
     and pablum drying on our Spanish rug,
And I talk about nursing versus sterilization
While the men in communications
Hunger elsewhere.

Last year I studied Flamenco and had my ears pierced and
Served an authentic fondue on the Belgian marble table of
     our discerningly eclectic dining area, but
But this year we have a nice baby
And Spock on the second shelf of our Chinese chest,
And instead of finding myself I am doing my best
To find a sitter
For the nice baby banging the Belgian marble with his cup
While I heat the oven up
For the TV dinners.

Last year I had a shampoo and set every week and
Slept an unbroken sleep beneath the Venetian chandelier of
     our discerningly eclectic bedroom, but
This year we have a nice baby,
And Gerber’s strained bananas in my hair,
And gleaming beneath the Venetian chandelier,
A diaper pail, a portacrib, and him,
A nice baby, drooling on our antique satin spread
While I say how nice.  It is often said
That motherhood is very maturing.

Buried History

The 250th anniversary of the founding of St. Louis is coming in a few years and so far I haven’t seen any plans for the big event.  I have a few ideas of my own.  Here’s one.  The City ought to sponsor a One Read event and pick a good history of the founding of the City of St. Louis for everyone in the City to read and discuss.

They might want to consider picking the recently published  Founding St. Louis:  First City of the New West by J. Frederick Fausz.   I recently finished it and, even though I’m fairly well versed in the founding of St. Louis, I found it chock full of new information.  It offers a lot of good background on the personal and political situation of Pierre Laclede, the founder of the City.

It still doesn’t explain exactly why anyone in New Orleans thought that Laclede was the perfect person to lead an expedition to establish a new French trading settlement at the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers.  Laclede didn’t seem to have any experience in traveling the Mississippi or dealing with Indians.  But the powerful New Orleans merchant, Maxent, trusted him, took him into partnership and sponsored the trip.  And that turned out to be a wise decision because Laclede turned out to be the perfect man for the job. 

Fausz does a good job explaining how the end of the French and Indian War laid the stage for the development of a trans-Mississippi French trading settlement.  He places colonial St. Louis within its historical context, as a French settlement in a Spanish territory sitting on the edge of an international border.  He does an even better job showing how the relationship between the first Missouri settlers and the Indians differed tremendously from what American students are generally taught is the typical confrontational settler-Indian relationship. 

Although not utopian, the situation was harmonious. When the Anglos show up to take over the City, after Thomas Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase, it almost seems a tragedy. 

The history of the City of St. Louis was rewritten by the English Americans and is unknown to most of the current residents of this City.   There is almost nothing left of the old French capital of Upper Louisiana; it was bulldozed years ago and now lies buried under the grounds of the Gateway Arch – the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial.  As Fausz points out, Missouri has more memorials to Thomas Jefferson than any other state outside Virginia.  History, for most Missourians, starts with Jefferson and his purchase and the first 30 years of the City almost didn’t exist.

Perhaps for the 250th anniversary, the City could do something about that.