Writing Goals, 2016

Posted on January 5, 2016 by Daniel (@MKNN)

I don’t really believe in goals as a fixed entities. As I am way too fond of saying, any damn fool can have a plan. The key is the re-planning, the adjustments that happen along the way.

But I do see value in stating things, and stating them in ways that a community is able to witness and engage if they so desire. So, my writing goals for this year:

  • By mid-year, have a completed outdraft (my made up term for what I am doing right now, which is more than an outline but less than a draft) of the rest of In Time.
  • Find a home, whether self-published or elsewhere, for Readings, which means having a finalfinal draft done in the next few months.
  • Gain some clarity on the future of In Time. Do I just start self-publishing chapters and see if an audience can be found that way? Do I engage in the agent-pitch-submission process? My guess is there is no “right” answer, but I need to be better informed.
  • Finally, continue to post Reading Well‘s with some regularity. They help me reflect on what I read, and, who knows, may be useful someday for others. Not as useful as @The Movies with PopPop, of course, but still …

We’ll see. I know that I am happier and healthier when I feel like I am productively and creatively writing.

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@The Movies with PopPop: Spotlight

Posted on January 4, 2016 by Daniel (@MKNN)

If you haven’t seen Spotlight, do! It’s a very well made movie that will keep you focused all the way through.

Spotlight is about the team of Boston Globe journalists who uncovered the depth and breadth of sexual abuses in the Catholic priesthood in Boston in 2002, including exposing enough of those in the hierarchy to make it clear it was a systemic problem – a very longstanding one – and not merely one of a handful of misbehaving priests.

Its focus is the real life work of investigative reporting, the non-glorious, ethics-driven kind that, alas, becomes ever rarer. Most of the film takes place either in what seems to be and is said to be a wonderful recreation of a real newsroom and the archival and research facilities of a major newspaper, or in courts and libraries doing tedious research and document review, or on the streets tracing down and interviewing – or trying to interview – perpetrators, victims, attorneys, and the Church.

The evolution of the story, the calls about when and what to publish, the decision to hold back on exposing the initial identified individuals in favor of tracing down 70 (!) specific priests and their victims, and uncovering cover-ups that extended over decades is what drives the film. Remarkably, the director, Tom McCarthy, while keeping the focus on the day to day pursuit and evolution of the investigation, has made a gripping, fascinating movie. The acting is superb and is a recreation of the actual investigative team that won a 2003 Pulitzer for their work.

Don’t miss it – it joins that small pantheon of great movies about investigative journalism.

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@The Movies with PopPop: If I Were You

Posted on December 27, 2015 by Daniel (@MKNN)

The 2012 film, If I Were You, directed by Joan Carr-Wiggin and starring Marcia Gay Harden, Leonor Watling and Joseph Kell is one of those movies that while not great, is delightful and an amusing and diverting couple of hours. Harden is wonderful in it.

The story essentially is of a middle aged couple, Madelyn and Paul, and Paul’s young mistress, Lucy, an incompetent but aspiring actress. Madelyn discovers the affair, Paul suspects Madelyn knows, tells Lucy it’s all over. Madelyn follows Lucy home, and while not revealing who she is, saves her from suicide, and gets drunk with her. They make a pact to make each other’s decisions, and the film takes off. An early decision has Madelyn accompanying Lucy to an audition for an extraordinarily amateurish King Lear, and improbably, Madelyn is cast as Lear and Lucy as the fool. At Lucy’s behest, Madelyn invents a secret lover and the rest of the film deals with the entanglements and unraveling.

All quite delightful, much insightful and some out-loud funny. You’ll enjoy it.

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Reading Well: The Girl in the Road by Monica Byrne

Posted on December 24, 2015 by Daniel (@MKNN)

The Girl in the Road, Monica Byrne‘s debut novel, carries with it one strikingly unforgettable image: a boardwalk across the ocean from India to East Africa. The path moves up and down on the waves, and the energy from that motion is captured and used to power a world transformed by the rising oceans: North America is desolate, and Addis Ababa, largely through its elevation, is the leading center of commerce in Africa.

That, of course, endeared me to the book, as did the use of Amharic. But that’s fairly idiosyncratic.

For others, the key to the book is the voyage of two young women: Meena heading west from India on the boardwalk, driven half-mad from a violent incident at home and Mariama, heading from West Africa to Ethiopia in a caravan. Each have memorable episodes: an encounter with bandits at the edge of the desert, an overwhelming crowd in the churches of Lalibela. For me, that was enough to overwhelm the plot twists (which are a little too convenient) and the final reveal (which was a little underwhelming), making The Girl in the Road an enjoyable diversion.

#WhatIWishICouldDo

Byrne dives into areas of mental instability with a confidence and bravery that I envy: both of her characters struggle, and she describes the edges of madness in a compelling and moving way. That, and the Amharic.

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Reading Well: Lock In by John Scalzi

Posted on December 7, 2015 by Daniel (@MKNN)

In some ways, Lock In by John Scalzi is two different things lurking inside one book. On the one hand, it is a sketch of a fascinating possible future where an epidemic has left millions of people fully conscious in fully paralyzed bodies, yet where technology exists that allow them to project their consciousness into androids or (more rarely) specially gifted human beings. On the other, it’s a page-turner of a police procedural, strong on the not-quite-buddy cop dynamic.

I was deeply intrigued by the former, then entertained by the latter. But I believe the world Scalzi created deserves further exploration: he sketches the possible technology, the political and social implications, and the impact of the presence of such a sizable population of lock-in’s (as they’re called) in a way that cries out for more. Wikipedia claims a sequel is in the mix, but given there is a decade of latitude in its publication date, I’ll believe (and buy) it when I see it.

Once the police procedural kicks in, the story moves very quickly, and the obligatory twists at the end are satisfying and believable within the world and characters he has created. So, well done, there.

#WhatIWishICouldDo

As the kids these days would say, I wish I could genre. Scalzi does, impeccably: he is writing within an established form and he stays faithful to its limits, its rhythm, and its tone. Doing that well–and he does–is one way to build and maintain a faithful audience of enthused readers.

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@The Movies with PopPop: Clouds of Sils Maria

Posted on December 5, 2015 by Daniel (@MKNN)

Clouds of Sils Maria is a 2014 film, written and directed by Olivier Assayas and starring Juliette Binoche, Kristen Stewart and Chloe Grace Moretz.

This is a very interesting film dealing with several layered themes: aging; acting; “real” life and fiction among them. Binoche plays an aging actress whose career was made playing the younger woman in a play in which, as a personal assistant to an aging actress, she coldly enters into an affair with her and eventually dispossesses her. Now, 20 years later, she agrees to redo the play for the London stage, this time playing the older woman to an up and coming young and calculating actress (Moretz). Stewart plays Binoche’s real life personal assistant. Their relationship and the older-younger woman relationship in the play have some parallels (and many differences) – to the point where when they’re reading lines from the play, it’s at times difficult to know whether the exchanges are from their actual relationship or from the play’s script.

The title refers to a phenomenon at a particular place in the Swiss Alps when at times the clouds roll in along a river bed appearing as a great white snake moving along the river – an actual phenomenon, and hence the name of the play in the film, the Maloja Snake. The setting and photography are stunning.

There are many more relationship complications, and for a film with minimal “action,” the dialogue and technique are riveting.

I didn’t think it a great film, but a fascinating one, and quite worth its two hours.

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Reading Well: Waiting by Ha Jin

Posted on November 30, 2015 by Daniel (@MKNN)

Waiting is a novel by Ha Jin, set in near-contemporary China and focused (although it never quotes nor acknowledges Langston Hughes) on exploring the question of deferred dreams. The protagonist is a comfortably successful doctor, stationed at an urban military base. He has a wife, and a daughter, in a distant village, but is in love with a younger nurse on the base.

And … well … that’s really it. Both are too confined in their own morality to act on their love as long as the prior marriage exists; once it is dissolved, they find that, perhaps, they have missed their moment.

The book is full of lost moments, of things that could–even, should–have been, but never where, and as such, it is a touching, often sweet, and ultimately sad story. There is pain and suffering–and a theme of impotence that culminates in a rape that is handled with some delicacy, but perhaps not enough force–but the ultimate narrative surrounds the cost of choosing to do nothing.

It also has some lovely insights into modern China, both its beauty and its bureaucracy, as well as its ongoing struggles with a growing divide between urban and rural lives.

#WhatIWishICouldDo

Ha Jin often catches visual detail with the skill of a photographer, adding resonant description that is not burdened with meaning, but just exists: the way branches sway in a breeze, the flight patterns of insects, the types of shops on a high street. None of it is essential to the scene, but all of it contributes to an immersion that is effective and quite impressive.

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Reading Well: The Southern Reach Trilogy by Jeff Vandermeer

Posted on November 3, 2015 by Daniel (@MKNN)

The Southern Reach Trilogy (the individual books are Annihilation, Authority, and Acceptance) is an engaging and intriguing piece of horror fantasy, somewhere between traditional Southern Gothic and HP Lovecraft. Each books is pretty short–the whole trilogy is about 800 small-size pages.

Area X appeared a few decades ago: an area on the Southern coast of the USA that is populated by fantastic creatures, holds no industrial pollution, and seems to repel all attempts at understanding. Tasked with exploring it is our hero, John Rodriguez. He initially focuses on two twin structures: one a lighthouse that dominates the coastline of Area X, the other a spiral staircase that winds into the ground nearby.

What makes this more than a standard procedural is the depth of commitment to the setting and the skill with which Jeff Vandermeer pulls that off. These are books of swamps and mosses, of spores and fungus, of luminescence and slow rot, and that is where the magic lies. The narrative is almost always creepy, sometimes spectacularly so, and there are images–a glowing fungus that writes fantastic scripture on the wall of a stairwell, a figure sitting at the nexus of glowing webs, a molding midden-pile of notebooks sitting beneath a trapdoor–that will stay with you long after you finish.

It’s a good read, and if that kind of horror is your thing, you’ll like it even more.

#WhatIWishICouldDo

The total commitment to tone and setting. Vandermeer never strays, and the ability to maintain that throughout the trilogy is impressive: it’s the same thing that Lovecraft–or Poe–is able to do, and something with which I struggle.

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@The Movies with PopPop: Timbuktu

Posted on October 5, 2015 by Daniel (@MKNN)

Timbuktu, a 2014 nominee for best foreign film comes from director Abderrahamane Sissako, born in Mauritania but known as a Malian film director (a prior film of his is Bamako). It’s a powerful, beautiful, and often times difficult film, set in and around Timbuktu during the time it was under jihadist control – a few years ago. The film does not focus on the well known story of the Timbuktu manuscripts but rather on the day to day lives of folks and the impact of jihadist control – on both Timbuktu’s residents and the jihadists.

There are several story lines: a Tuareg family living in a tent on the dunes, a woman who sells fish, some musicians, the local commander, and many more. What we see is the absurdity of the dimensions of life the jihadists wish to control, the extremes of Sharia law as applied, and most importantly, many acts of passive and subtle resistance and the human strength they convey. Dress for men and women is controlled, smoking, music and sports are forbidden, etc. (One of the wonderful scenes is some young boys playing soccer without a ball!) Women and their particular struggles are central to the movie.

What the movie is really about is how today’s neighbors can become tomorrow’s oppressors; how long standing differences can become caught in the oppression; how the oppressors lose their humanity in their obsession with power; and how strong are the impulses for resistance and maintenance of humanity.

The movie is in multiple languages: French, Tuareg, English and another local language or two. There are English subtitles, except for sections where the particular translation is unimportant. The capturing of the beauty – sometimes stark, sometimes gorgeous – and the reality of sophisticated urban life (as urban as Timbuktu is) is extraordinary.

It’s not always a comfortable movie to watch, but it’s a film not to be missed.

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@The Movies with PopPop: Pariah

Posted on September 26, 2015 by Daniel (@MKNN)

Pariah is a far better and more interesting movie than the trailers would indicate. It’s the story of a young teen who has realized she’s a lesbian and is struggling with family, peers, and the existing lesbian community, taking place in current times in Brooklyn.

The movie is terribly mistitled in that she’s not a pariah by any means, but a struggling young woman finding her way. And the emphasis in the trailers on the yelling and screaming in her family is not what the movie is essentially about. I found it not only a very well done movie, but one that provided insights into what it’s like for young persons on the brink of coming out. Try to see it.

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