Structured Rambling: April 2012

I’ll start with a disclaimer. I am not one of those annoying people who intentionally rags on what is popular. I know that glancing back through my posts it might seem that way, but it’s not. What appears below is me responding to some encounters with popular literature, and for once not trying to have my finger on the pulse.

I don’t like not liking books. I feel guilty about it. I worry so much about dipping literacy rates that I want to believe that any reading is good reading, but I don’t always succeed.

It’s a funny line we walk, we who work with and advocate for the written word. On one side we have our desire for people, especially kids, to be reading. On the other, our worry about the quality of what they are reading, that it is challenging. If I were a little higher up the ladder of academic pedagogy, I might be more insistent that people read literature, as opposed to fluff.

FLUFF: Reading that does not challenge the reader’s ability. At or below the reader’s comfort level. Books found at supermarket checkouts, books that take one or two days to get through. You know when you finish a book and tell someone that it “really makes you think”? These don’t. It should be noted that all readers read fluff at some point, whether constantly, as a break, accidentally, or out of curiosity or perhaps even masochism. I read fluff. My fluff of choice is Viking fiction and the odd graphic novel.

I like to know what the kids are reading. I like to know what the adults are reading. When it’s a title on lips and its outside the halls of academia, I like to see what all the fuss is about. I don’t like to think I’m such a stuffy critic of literature that I can’t appreciate a yarn for a yarn when it doesn’t exactly fit my high-fallootin’ expectations for quality literature. Curiosity led me to read the outstanding Harry Potter series, the transcendent Life of Pi, the challenging (given its audience) The Giver, and the fluffy Da Vinci Code. Sadly, despite the cries of my students some years ago, I could never bring myself to read Twilight, and I’m pretty sure that my life is no poorer for the oversight.

Lately, I’ve had three encounters with popular books, books made all the more popular by their recent film connections. In each case, the book is a part of a series, where, maddeningly, advocates tell me that you just need to stick it out after the first one. Who does that? As I told a colleague recently, that’s like marrying someone after they punch you in the face on the first date.

One of these books (A Clash of Kings) made me wish I was fifteen years younger. I won’t read its sequels, I think. One of these books (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) made me think that people are easily duped. I will likely read the second book, though, when I’m feeling fluffy. One of these books (The Hunger Games) made me angry. Seething, spitting mad. Let’s start there.

1. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

Whenever I hear this book mentioned, whenever I hear talk of its unbelievably successful film adaptation—and keep in mind I work in a school so I hear both a lot—I want to grab the zealot and slap him. I get violent. I. Hated. This. Book.

a) I once read a critic who said—ironically, I think it was about a book I liked—that it’s good to hate a book now and again. That it’s cleansing. If so, then I’m downright disinfected.

b) You may ask why I didn’t just quit reading it. I rarely drop a book (I admit, I did with #3 on this list, but special circumstances). I thought it would somehow redeem itself in the end—Harry Potter’s first book never truly cornered me until the jigsaw came together in the end. I don’t like to quit.

I went in really wanting to like this book. As with The Giver by Lois Lowry or Holes by Louis Sachar, I wanted to believe that them young ‘uns were on to something. I really wanted to see this book be good, and I hate it all the more for being so bad. It could be guilt over being duped.

Often people feel that if you don’t like a kid (or young adult) book, it’s because you expect it to be more than it was intended to be. No, I expect them, that is, the kids, to be more than that book. Excusing a bad book as “just a kids’ book” is to ignore the power of The Outsiders, Anne of Green Gables or the Narnia series. Kids are not stupid, and their books shouldn’t be either.

This is a bad book. So, so, so bad. And not done poorly, actively bad. Criminal. Vile. It’s a video game, a plot, a series of action-oriented events with next to no message sent through.

BOOM—and then—BOOM—and then—BOOM. It’s like listening to a four year old describe a roller coaster. Does the plot have twists? Sure. Do you turn the pages? Sure. Is it well-written with good characterization, clear themes, a good amount of kid-level interest and adult-level behind the scenes (hello Mr. Potter)? No, no, no and hell no.

It’s a bunch of fights. After the fights, they get stuff. Compete properly, and the Gamemasters give them gifts. I honestly was shocked that when Katniss got her first kill she didn’t Level Up. The characters have all the life of a cord of 2X4s. There is no remorse when murder is committed because Collins has copped out and created an easily-slaughtered group of nasty kids for cannon fodder. Three good, twenty-one evil. The potential of exploring twenty-four humans thrust into a “Most Dangerous Game” or Battle Royale scenario is cast off. She doesn’t even toy with making us uneasy by having good people kill other good people. The other kids are, conveniently, rotten little bastards—so we cry out for their blood. This is the novel’s greatest missed opportunity for some significant emotion, for having a real impact. For "makin' ya think."

Mind you, the whole book is a missed opportunity—the opportunity to tell a good and important story, to write a good book.

Alright, enough, I’m ranting. Cleansed, though. Let’s move on to those I feel a tad more conflicted about.

2. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

This is fluff, but like Dan Brown, it’s fairly well-researched fluff. Unlike Dan Brown, it’s well-researched fluff that concentrates more on its characters than pissing off the church and the Masons. Larsson knows his stuff. In the end, though, it’s still supermarket fiction.

There were a lot of variables that got to me. The book’s in translation, so many of the techniques that annoyed me might have worked differently in Swedish. For example, every description resorts to simile: “She jumped like a panther through the door that gaped like an open mouth and landed on her motorcycle which was buzzing like a bee.” It starts with forty pages of of economic history only barely connected to the main plot. It features an uncountable cast, many of whom are unimportant members of the central family, or employees of the magazine. It details Mikael Blomkvist’s every meal, drink, coffee, every character’s outfit, what novel they are reading, what movie they’re watching. Some people like that sort of thing. I found it exhausting—so, yes, it transcends fluff at times—but chacun à son goût.

The strengths of this book are its refreshing setting—all that Scandinavian-ness got me misty for the family in Norway—and of course the Girl, Lisbeth Salander. She’s a well-conceived character, although I think created by using an archetype rather than an original creation. I’ve yet to see either the Swedish or American films, but my guess is she’s better to see than to read, to watch an actor interpret than to have our mind dissect. That’s a problem when we’re talking books.

Her one major character flaw, that is, the flaw her creator has written in to her, is also the greatest flaw of the whole book: her susceptibility to the magic wand in Herr Blomkvist’s pants.

Any woman who encounters him sleeps with him (with one exception that would be a spoiler to indicate). Older woman, much younger woman, married friend with benefits, any woman that encounters this dude can’t seem to rip her clothes off fast enough. Oh, and then there’s the excusing it! Lisbeth needs to show how strong she is, the others only want him for his body, no strings attached. Larsson bombards us with rationale for all the sack-jumping. How much of this is one man’s fantasy? I mean, they’re more liberal in Sweden, but there’s a point. I find Lisbeth’s attachment to Blomkvist beyond the professional as insulting—it would’ve worked better with him as a father figure. In a book that sets up every section with a quote about abused women, presenting a smokescreen of feminism by having significant female characters, in the end, they’re still just objects. Women in this book are nymphomaniacs. If that’s not derogatory enough, a character who is good but is not great is limited by the writer’s need to get in her pants.

3. A Clash of Kings by George R. R. Martin

I read the first book of the Game of Thrones (yeah, yeah, A Song of Ice and Fire) series ten years or so ago. I don’t recall liking or disliking it, but I think it’s telling enough that I stopped there. Maybe it was just a break from university reading. Then, last year I watched the television series, and it worked its magic on me too. I committed the crime of reading a book after seeing the adaption, but worse. Reading the sequel book after seeing the original a-film.

I quit pretty quickly. For a series of books, Martin’s tale makes a helluva TV series. The TV series cuts out the excess. Much of his writing strikes me as filler, a need to balance all characters when only a few of them matter much, and the rest we could just get updates on.

The number of points of view is maddening for this reason. So many characters to keep track of, so many threads of narrative. Many of them are unneeded. After we spend a chapter inside a character’s head (or beside it, this being third person subjective), we wonder if he just wrote the chapter to see what it was like to be inside a certain character’s head, because often nothing is done to advance the narrative. The TV series retains only that which matters and—it irks me to say—is better for it.

My biggest beef isn’t the series’ fault, it’s with all alternate-world fantasy written by anyone whose first name isn’t J.R.R. I gape in awe at the detail and planning in creating religions, politics, cultures, histories, and I say, “All to cheat.” It’s all done out of a need to control a world rather than work with the one we’ve got. I’ve come to see the so-called High Fantasy as a lazy man’s history.

Two all-encompassers.

A) Anyone who loves these books tells me that they get better after the first one. Are we that series-mad, has Hollywood ingrained in us a need so desperate for sequels, prequels and (in Spider-Man’s case) requels that it’s now a forgone conclusion that you read beyond a first book even if you didn’t like it? I’ll try something completely new and hope it’s good over something I know was bad, thank you very much.

B) I’ve heard Hunger Games and Tattoo lauded for their strong female leads, and if you don’t like them you’re a chauvinist by implication. Heard the same thing about Twilight. Bull. I don’t know Twilight, having neither read nor seen, but I have been given a gist, and the gist tells me that the message is a young woman should define herself completely by her boyfriend, do whatever he needs, that he is the scope and the limit of her identity. Wholesome.

I’ve already debunked the feminism in Tattoo. Game of Thrones, like most post-Tolkien nerd-feasts, has men in primary roles and women as a place for these tough guys to put their penises. Even Daenays Targaryan, the one strong female lead, takes her place by opening her legs. As for The Hunger Games’s Katniss, yes, she’s fairly strong and keeps her undies on. But she defines herself by her male relationships (Daddy, Cinna, Haymitch, Gale and especially Peeta). She despises older women and she pities younger girls. She’s not a strong female character, there isn’t anything feminine about her, and I don’t care that the author’s a woman. Katniss is sexless. A few quick alterations, with only a stumble at the contrived “romance” plot, and she could be a boy with no real change in the tale. That sucks. You want to show me a strong female lead, show me a lead that’s female, not one who is “just as strong at boy things.” Show me a woman who is a woman and good at it. Like Lisbeth Salander before she swan-dives into Blomkvist’s sheets.

These books are no victories for feminism. They cloud womanhood by saying a strong woman is one who craves sex like a man, or hunts and shoots like a man.

I will likely read the second Girl book when I need a break. I may someday think Thrones is worth a read, but that’s not likely if the show stays good. As for Collins’ series—girl on fire? I’d burn the whole book. If nothing else, we have reaffirmed that success is not a mark of quality.

Structured Rambling

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

That Song Makes Me Feel Good

Sunday, April 1, 2012

Two Games and One Tattoo: Three Books