Notes on an Upcoming Silence

June was a wonderful month and it's going out on a fine note, with furniture sold and rooms rented...six-hour lunches and prayer sessions with that extraordinary man who hates everyone equally and whom I love dearly, Wills Biegel...walking through gardens and drinking margaritas with Anna Haas, who twists her legs and stretches in front of Old Masters as no one else can...lazy days showing Adam and Kate the delights of All About Eve...surprise parties which end at 1:30 in the morning with yours truly, intoxicated, slightly stoned, and on his knees, singing "Brilliant Disguise" before a die-hard energetic dive-bar crowd...and lingering breakfasts on Melrose and elsewhere which remind me of just how much I am loved, and how fortunate I am to do what I do with the people I do it with.
There will hopefully be a post in the next three days on some recent cultural milestones of mine, but until mid-July, the Nabokov saga will be temporarily curtailed and the blog a touch erratic. I'm going up north, then driving east, and settling all final Los Angeles debts,
But this thing is way too much fun to write...and you'll always be hearing from me :)

Bleak House: Reacquiring the Taste

Some very excellent flavors...after sopme reconsideration.

INTRODUCTION

This is very sad to say, but I almost skipped over Bleak House to move on to Madame Bovary in the Nabokov sequence, because for many years…I harbored something of a distaste for Charles Dickens. Yes, you can be shocked now. How can a student of British Literature, nineteenth-century British Literature at that, not like Dickens? This post alone might get me expelled from Chicago before I even start. But let me explain how I fell out of love with the man…then fell right back in.

When I was in elementary school and first began reading the Western Canon, I devoured Dickens. Today, I still remember reading David Copperfield and Oliver Twist over and over again, as well as A Tale of Two Cities and a short, obscure novel called A Christmas Carol. Dickens's stories were the literary equivalent of riding the Thunderbolt at Kennywood, filled with plot and vivid imagery and outlandish characters, with a few jolts along the way but always a happy ending…or, in the case of Tale of Two Cities, an uplifting one at least. But after the most Dickensian romp I had yet encountered, The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, I did not pick up any of his novels for the entire run of my Emerson career and almost my entire stay in Los Angeles. There were two reasons for this…

First, more than any other writer, Dickens oversaturated me. Oliver Twist and A Christmas Carol are so ubiquitous in the culture (the former is the only Victorian novel to be the basis for a Best Picture-winning movie, while Henry Winkler, Mr. Magoo, the Muppets, and 50% of all TV sitcoms and children's shows have done variations of the latter) that hardly a month went by without my encountering Dickens in some way, shape, or form. No writer living today makes such an impact, not even Roberts or Meyer. But being constantly exposed to him made it that much harder to want to read one of his books. Heller, Lessing, and O'Hara do not have that quality. They are writers you DISCOVER with the thrill of the new. Second, the more enthralled I grew with Victorian literature, the less enamored I became with Dickens…comparisons with every other writer whose works I read made me judge his oeuvre as terribly melodramatic, rambling, overstuffed tales filled by people with no relation to reality. Trollope (who parodied Dickens in The Warden) wrote stories with just as much plot and emotion, but with a realism I had rarely encountered. Eliot drew her characters with the most subtle but vigorous brushstrokes I had ever found…she created people I could have met on the streets of Boardman and Boston. And even Thackeray, writer of the most brilliant satire of all time, succeeded in part because his comic excess was tempered with strong doses of reality. And so I dismissed Charles Dickens as a writer who certainly and deservedly had a reputation, but was almost as overrated as Salinger.

Slowly but surely, my opinion began to change. Daniel J. Boorstin's essay on Dickens in The Creators portrayed a man with wit, passion, and a burning desire for political and social reform. Sir David Lean's extraordinary 1946 film of Great Expectations gave me a renewed appreciation for the Dickens style. Finally, my increased literary pursuits led me to discover another side of Dickens, the later Dickens, his life dominated by many children, a devoted but illicit love affair, and ambitions to match or surpass the works which had already made him a legend in his own time with novels full of humor, sentiment, and biting, angry criticism of his times. Bleak House was judged the best of these, so one day I bought it on clearance from B&N…but didn't read it. Then Nabokov gave the order and I began.

At first I really liked it. Then I hated it…the over-the-top melodrama seemed to be taking over again. But a few chapters later, everything came together with the sureness and beauty of sperm fertilizing egg…and it was like a peanut butter-and-bubble gum mixture glued it to my hands.

Bleak House is amazing. It tells multiple stories and blends them together with logic and surprise. It is funny to the point of inducing laughter in public. It is emotionally manipulative, but also inspires genuine empathy for the characters. And behind all the comedy, romance, suspense, and action, it is an angry book which mounts an all-out assault on EVERY SOCIAL INSTITUTION KNOWN TO MAN. This is NOT an exaggeration. Charles Dickens in 1852-53 had his eye on so much which plagues us in 2009-10.

Moreover, in terms of Nabokovian Structure and Style and Eagleton's Rhetorical Theory, Bleak House is a case study for the ages. As I shall explain at the appropriate time, the narrative discourse is one of the most intricate and thought-provoking ever created by any writer, so much that just writing this sentence is enough to boggle my mind at its implications again...and I hope anyone who has ever experienced the interaction between Charles Dickens and Esther Summerson will agree.

In short, I now adore the titan of the century again, to the point where there is now much more I am anxious to read, Little Dorrit, The Old Curiosity Shop, and Our Mutual Friend most of all.

At the very beginning of his lecture, Vladimir Nabokov said that with Jane Austen, you have to make "a certain effort to join the ladies in the drawing room," while with Charles Dickens, "we remain at the table with our tawny port." That was it for me exactly. The first time my Uncle Tom ever gave me port at a Thanksgiving dinner, it knocked me out cold. Drinking too much still will lead me to intoxication of the worst kind. But when approached with the right attitude and temperament, port is a drink to savor, enjoy, and revitalize the body. You just need to acquire the right taste in time.

Michael Jackson 1958-2009

When I was six going on seven in the fall of 1991, a period of my life started where I would NEVER miss "The Simpsons." For me, it was the biggest deal on television...and in all of culture. How could you make a great thing even better?
Fox found a way...by premiering all of Michael Jackson's new videos from the "Dangerous" album after some episodes. Every week there would be commercials, teasers, building it up so now I would be wishing the show would end so I could see "Black Or White" (and this was the full eight-minute version ending with the black panther dance), "Remember the Time," and "In the Closet." Hearing him sing, watching him dance, both of which he did with exuberance and charisma to spare...there were few things in life more entertaining.
Michael Jackson was a part of my life evr since I was little...Mom has told me so many times how in preschool I would love to sing along with his "Rockin' Robin." And my parents owned "Thriller," although who didn't? Funny thing is, except for "Billie Jean" and the often-overlooked "Human Nature" (which Miles Davis would brilliantly reinterpret) I never liked "Thriller" as much as "Bad," the last of his three albums with Quincy Jones. "Bad" is one of the more perfect pop albums ever made...three great get-off-your-butt-and-shake-your-booty singles in the title track, "The Way You Make Me Feel," and "Smooth Criminal," and two beautiful ballads, "The Man in the Mirror" and "I Just Can't Stop Loving You." All off the same record. All but "Criminal" number-one hits.
And all the videos...it was ahrd to watch VH1 or big concert specials and NOT see Michael Jackson cutting a rug, a shining smile on his face. He was a ubiquitous part of my childhood.
Then came the molestation scandal...the marriage to Lisa Marie Presley...the surgery...the bloated, mediocre albums after "Dangerous"...he was still the King of Pop, but in the way Elvis was always the King of Rock 'n' Roll even as a fat, impatient, secluded man.
My last major impression of Jackson was his 30th Anniversary Gala at Madison Square Garden. "You Rock My World" had made me think he was genuinely coming back, but the CBS special of the shows revealed a stiff, blustering man going through the motions, striking psoes for a freakishly-smiling Macaulay Culkin and a bloated Brando and Liz Taylor. It was embarrassing, and sad...
That a man who had given so much joy to the world died what was really a decade-long death breaks my heart, never more so then when I see one of my favorite performances ever from "The Ed Sullivan Show," of the Jackson Five in 1970 singing "I Want You Back," still a marvelous record today, and this carefree powerhouse of a twelve year-old with a giant Afro and dark, dark skin in center stage, loving the music and the moment. I see it now and I wonder how he turned into what he became.

But above all, I thank him for "Rockin' Robin"...and everything else.

Mansfield Park: It’s Jane’s World, We Were Just Passing Through

Jane-slash-Anne and her very special dimple.

56 continued: Nabokov begins summing up

Mansfield Park has elements in common with Bleak House, which will come next in the lectures/commentary, which draw on the comedy of manners and are prominent in sentimental novels. The "comedy of manners" grew out of Restoration Comedy…and man, do I hope I have my history right or else 100 people will be yelling at me in Chicago in two and a half months…meaning that finding humor in archetypes and situations was an offshoot of rather more adult comedy. This suits Austen's aesthetic well. And that Dickens, the part-time actor (How many legends are there surrounding his work in Wilkie Collins's The Frozen Deep, one of the most pivotal moments in ANY author's career ever?), would draw inspiration from the stage is to be expected.

The three main features the two novels share are, first, "a young girl as sifting agent" or stand-in for the reader to see the world through her eyes… Dickens will play a wonderful narrative game with this, which will be discussed when the time comes, but essentially Fanny Price and Esther Summerson both describe the action and characters from their point of view, which in turn is the point of view of a young woman of outstanding capabilities who doesn't know how special she is. Again, an insecure protagonist whose good qualities WE recognize makes for good readers' empathy.

Second, the dislikable or silly characters have recurring grotesque traits or devices which are constantly associated with their presence in the story… I'll use Dickens for examples here. Bill Sikes being followed everywhere by a loyal dog, a cuddly contrast to a devilish man…which, of course, will nearly be killed by its master. Or Uriah Heep referring to himself as "very 'umble" every chance he gets. Austen establishes a precedent in her books: Mrs. Norris, whining and talking about money, and Lady Bertram, showering attention on her pug (both examples from Nabokov). These details are necessary to the cultivation of Style. Even as a child watching the Disney animated movies, I was always more drawn to the sidekicks of the hero and villain than the latter characters, because the sidekicks got the best lines and had fun and never worried about being suitably heroic or evil. When a character is peripheral to the main Theme, a writer is allowed to take more liberties in the "realism" of their portrayal, either to illustrate a Thematic point (it is through the larger-than-life we can sometimes see life more clearly) or to have fun and play with Style. It is often in the ancillaries that a writer's imagination runs, not best, but wildest…and we all need a little wildness.

Third, "the Price children tie up nicely with the child theme that runs through Bleak House." The child theme of Bleak House will be discussed fully when I can talk about Horace Skimpole, one of Dickens's most remarkable and despicable creations. But as a preview, for those of you who have read both books or Bleak House…in Mansfield Park, Susan, not even a teenager, takes the major responsibility in a house full of quarreling, not-doing-too-well siblings, an alcoholic, self-centered father living off past glories, and a mother worn out by it all to the point where she is incapable of giving love and motherly affection as she should. When we start examining Caddy Jellyby and Charley Neckett…they could have been Susan's daughters.

Austen does not trade in expansive imagery. "It is a shock to come to loud-speaking, flushed, robust Dickens after meeting delicate, dainty, pale Jane" even if she does sometimes "paint graceful word pictures with her delicate brush on a little bit of ivory." The latter description was used by Austen for herself. Her imagery is not as important as her skill in handling characters…this is a comedy of manners, after all, and when we watch a "chick flick" or a sitcom today, we do not think about the scenery (unless it's something like Under the Tuscan Sun) but about the people who are the source of all the fun. Where Austen does succeed with imagery is using it in relation to her major ideas. Her books usually revolved around money and property, and in Mansfield Park, the scenes are described so we know that Mansfield Park is a picture of order, a true stately home, compared to the hodgepodge and "wilderness" of Sotherton, the garish quality the home takes on during the play rehearsals, and the dirty chaos of Portsmouth. When imagery is called for here, Austen paints with just enough suggestive detail to establish the contrast.

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Austen uses few similes and metaphors. She works much more with participles, but "in a parenthetical way" to introduce character action, as in "stage directions…this trick she learned from Samuel Johnson, but in Mansfield Park it is a very apt device as the whole novel resembles a play." Nabokov refers to how "he saids" and "she saids" are replaced by phrases such as "with an arch smile." This is a fine mark of Style, because it allows for variance in sentence structure while also allowing more insight into the characters with excellent economy. Austen is a very economical writer, and when I read these notes of Nabokov's, I immediately thought of Mark Twain's adage that you should never write "policeman" when "cop" will do just as well. Such writing is delicate and dainty, but far from pale. I might even go so far as to compare Austen to Hemingway for the power of her sparse, plain-spoken language…and isn't Jane's style as representative of ordinary 1810's speech as Ernest's was for the 1920's and 30's? The Samuel Johnson reference probably refers to his prose fiction, Rasselas most of all, a book which relies on various ultra-individuals offering their opinions fully in character.

By the way, my esteemed colleague Mr. Clemens of the Wild Ride sent me a link to a clever piece in the Los Angeles Times suggesting that Johnson, on the 300^th anniversary of his birth, would have fit right in as an Angeleno. I'm not convinced we would have tolerated his conspicuous consumption of meat and entire bottles of port, or his disdain for female writers (imagine putting Johnson and Stephenie Meyer together, as the writer suggests…hoo, boy), but the article by UC-Irvine's Amy Wilentz at http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-oe-wilentz7-2009jun07,0,7769149.story is a good one. I must try to see the Johnson exhibit at the Huntington before I leave.

The "knight's move:" a sudden emotional change for a character. Nabokov invented some of his own literary terms when he couldn't find one which fit his thinking. Outside of literature and butterflies, chess was a great fascination for him. The knight moves according to an unusual logic where it always must swerve sideways, so in a Nabokovian knight's move, a character's emotions will go to the opposite of where they were when an action began, but the change will be consistent with their mental state as established in the narrative. Fanny's gentle nature makes her more than usually susceptible to such moves. Nabokov points out how she feels guilty when she can't rouse an expected emotion, or mixes her jealousy of Mary with pity for Mary's poor personality, or unassumingly contrasts Mary's flippancy toward Henry with her longing for William. The central point is an interesting one, for Fanny never quite co-exists with Mary the way we might think she should. Mary is playing a bored but very successful game of seduction with Edmund, she steals Fanny's pony, she represents everything Fanny is against…but just as in Chekov's plays where characters who seem to be mortal enemies one minute are swimming along together the next, Fanny's increasing dislike of Mary is always tempered by the kindness she feels for all her fellow humans, and her forlorn, near-constant hope that Mary could change. Almost too good to be true, and definitely ALMOST, for Esther Summerson will really take the rest of the cake there.

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The "special dimple:" "delicate irony" popping up in the middle of an ordinary declarative sentence. Another Nabokovian term and another example of Austen's economic but meaning-laden style. He chose the words carefully, picturing the inflection as "a delicately ironic dimple in the author's pale virgin cheek." I am reminded of the seductive but impish smile Anne Hathaway flashes us on the posters for Becoming Jane…here was a quiet, proper Englishwoman who would one day—I wonder if she ever guessed—be hailed as one of her language's greatest writers, living a retiring life in the country, writing about gentle people trying to carve out a gentle existence, but relishing in details such as Mrs. Norris's talkativeness and Maria and Julia giving Fanny their "least-valued toys" as suitable presents. How much behavior like that was going on? And how much of a thrill did Austen get in sending up the most unpleasant aspects of a society she still defended? George Carlin once said that most comedians operate from a premise that life could be better than it is and their humor is a mockery of what they see as detrimental absurdities…this is Austen's Style, cherishing the big picture while laying low to its weakest buttresses. Knowing you're in the right brings a dimple to anybody's cheek.

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The "epigrammatic intonation:" "terse and tender, dry and yet musical, pithy but limpid and light" to express the paradoxical. The examples Nabokov gives are from descriptions of characters: Fanny is not extraordinary in ways special girls of the time were supposed to be extraordinary, but she is really better than the more showy Bertram sisters because of her sincerity. Tom is kind, but it is a kindness based in mockery. Mary dislikes Edmund's manner, recognizes it as antithetical to her own, but at the same time is charmed by it for its difference to what she is used to. Austen builds these thoughts by piling details on top of each other with flowing phrases and judicious comma usage, description of personality far more intently done than her imagery. It is both Style and Structure: Austen knows that it is her characters' interactions which fuel the plot, and arranges her descriptions to lend wisdom to our judgment of how the characters behave.

Austen acquired epigrammatic rhythm second-hand from the French, whose style was imitated by the English…"nevertheless she handles it to perfection." A bit of a back-handed compliment. If you can perform an act better than practically everyone else alive, does it matter if you had an innate ability or if you simply copied something and developed it with practice? History is full of innovators who lost out and copiers who won, who get remembered, who get studied. I'm not trying to defend these people, but…we should always look at the highest form of an art to inspire us in further creation of our own. Nabokov carried a personal predilection for the French almost as strong as his dismissal of female authors.

"Style is not a tool, it is not a method, it is not a choice of words alone…[it] constitutes an intrinsic component or characteristic of an author's personality." The seven authors involved in this commentary, for instance. Nabokov's wordplay and intellectual sensibilities, Austen's genteel satire, Dickens's theatrical flamboyance, Flaubert's epic-poetic depiction of the commonplace, Stevenson's swirling paragraphs rooted in fancy, Proust's lengthy meditations on singular subjects which in the end all link up in a magnificent web, Kafka's plain, direct narrating of the grotesque and insane. None of these are "methods" you can turn on and off, all of them use much the same language to express thoughts, and I don't think any of these writers ever said, say, "today I'm going to spend twenty pages being satiric or flamboyant or epic or fantastic or dreamy or pathological." They were merely writing what they knew. I can pick up a John Grisham novel and put it down without having been literarily enriched at all. He tells a story, and little else. These books, once read, are never to be forgotten, because their authors each had a quirk in their personality which seeped into their pens without them having to think about it all. I'm not saying only the out-of-the-ordinary can be great writers, but if you have a sensibility or a vision you can never help but convey…it helps.

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All people have styles, but only styles of "peculiar writers of genius" are worth the discussion because they are proof of talent; the talentless "cannot develop a literary style of any worth: at best it will be an artificial mechanism" without a "divine spark." In other words, you can practice every technical form of storytelling under the sun and create new and unique Structure, you can have a gift for Plot, you can have meaningful Themes, but if you don't have a Style peculiar enough to transfer to your writing, it isn't worth discussing. I brought up John Grisham in the last comment and only now realized how appropriate that was. Grisham was trained as a lawyer and writes books about lawyers in a dry legal style familiar because so many people utilize it…how many lawyers are in the world? Dan Brown writes in a way where a major jolt happens every five pages, after centuries of melodrama, radio play, and TV serial. We do not study the derivative. We study those who are inimitable, or who might be praised best through so many trying to imitate them. This is why Nabokov took Wilson's advice and chose to teach Austen. He might not have been a fan, but he recognized an immortal, unequalled style, the style of a writer of genius.

The only people you can teach to write are those with talent. They learn to avoid clichés and clumsiness, be patient, and choose "the only right word which will convey with the utmost precision the exact shade and intensity of thought. In such matters there are worse teachers than Jane Austen." Half a century later in On Writing, Stephen King would say that you can't make a great writer out of a good one, but you can make a good writer out of a mediocre one. The great ones have the talent. The good ones build up the technique to the best of their ability. I THINK I might be a good writer. If I have greatness, I shall know after the next five years or so of developing my Style…and I can tell if I am imitating or evolving from within.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Mansfield Park may fall apart in Volume III, but it is a fine novel all the same. Austen's theme, as I see it, is the carrying forth of rational order in a tempest-tossed world, where the steadfast Wellingtons of Fanny and Edmund stand against the rebellious, upsetting-the-balance Napoleons, the Crawfords, told through the light mocking so typical of Austen's Style, but with a dark suggestion of behavior always under the surface…sex, violence, very un-English behavior with the slaves. It reads as another gentle love story with the Austen wit, but now her bite is directed at people and practices which shake foundations, not personal behavior. Pride and Prejudice is a superior book, but it is NOT this vigorous. Nabokov was right to select it, for it is a work of intelligence, superb Structure and Style, and carries some of the meta-literariness he practiced himself.

Thursday…Dickens…

“The Big Sleep”…and the Lyrical Oddity of Barnes & Noble

I spent a wonderful day on Saturday with Matt and John where I cooked a great new chili recipe and we got Dairy Queen Blizzards, much to John's chagrin…he had been craving the Blizzard for months and had no idea there was a Dairy Queen five miles away. I'm enjoying moments like this as I prepare to leave L.A. in seventeen days, moments where we lounge around drinking white wine, talking , and watching a darn good movie. In this case, Howard Hawks's The Big Sleep (1946).

My favorite legend about The Big Sleep is that Hawks and his screenwriters, William Faulkner and Leigh Brackett, were working on the adaptation and realized they never knew who killed Owen Taylor, the chauffeur. So they asked Raymond Chandler, who responded he didn't put that piece of resolution in the novel because he completely forgot about it! (There is no solution in the film either.)

Chandler's confusion is not surprising. The Big Sleep is arguably the greatest noir detective story ever written, but it has a mindbender of a plot with multiple murders and multiple murderers, plus a few twisting red herrings. Of course, it also introduced Philip Marlowe to the world, and perfectly evoked a Los Angeles of orange groves and smogless skies which no longer exists. The film version, even in the Production Code era, is equally great…mainly because Hawks and his writers respect the audience's intelligence and keep the plot almost exactly as it is in the novel, while leaving out none of the complexity. Their faithfulness extends to recapturing Chandler's details: stretches of dialogue are intact, the characters all look the way Chandler described them acting (except Agnes is a bit too classy), and even the minor actions are treated with fidelity. When Marlowe chats up the bookstore clerk, future Oscar-winner Dorothy Malone's appearance and mannerisms immediately reminded me of how Chandler described her in the novel as "an intelligent Jewess," and that's the last time you'll ever see that word on the blog.

The film is also great because of Humphrey Bogart as Philip Marlowe. Not taking one deserved bit of credit away from The Maltese Falcon, but I liked Bogie's Marlowe better than his Sam Spade. For all his morality, Spade is an ice-veined SOB who will discard people as soon as they've outlived their usefulness or his desire. Marlowe, though a cynic, has a heart and a conscience, and Bogart hits this very well: his guilt over failing to stop one of the murders is touching. And of course, Bogart still gets to be "unbelievably cool" (in the apropos words of the usually exaggerative Damien Bona), tossing off Chandler's one-liners and taking on the villains in the third act with style.

Two major differences. In the movie, Marlowe's sex-attraction-tinged antagonism with Vivian Sternwood becomes a full-throttled romance, which makes sense seeing as Vivian was played by a SMOKING 21 year-old Lauren Bacall. But this necessitates a restructuring of the character of Regan, and making Regan an old friend of Marlowe's doesn't match the original, more to-the-bone story. Pairing Marlowe and Vivian also changes the ending to a more upbeat one which STILL manages to work out a significant plot point which might easily have been lost. Second, when Marlowe finds Carmen Sternwood (thumb-sucking Martha Vickers) over Geiger's corpse in the novel, she's wearing a pair of drop earrings and nothing else. In the movie, she's fully clothed. Can't have everything.

 

Also in the artistic world, had a bit of a jolt today. I made a mix a few months ago called "Andrew Rostan's Music for Bookstores," a collection of my favorite songs from the B&N in-store plays. Most of the songs were written and/or sung by some terrific female artists…Amy MacDonald, Lucy Woodward, Leona Lewis…we get much more interesting female musicians than male ones. Camera Obscura is the prime example.

Anyhoo, those who know me well know I love to sing along with songs while driving. For songs by women, I usually change the lyrics so they are now from a man's point of view. The only song which doesn't get this treatment is Carole King and Aretha Franklin's "A Natural Woman." You CAN'T tamper with that and make it sound the same, it needs those two syllables. I had never thought about my gender-bending until today, when, fueled by my increasing studies into the techniques of literature and storytelling, I realized that, like the oblivious Eric Cartman in the "Faith + 1" episode of South Park, you can try to substitute a few words and keep the lyrical idea the same…but it doesn't work.

I was listening to and singing along with Aimee Mann's "Thirty One Today," a sad, lovely song from her last album, @#%&*! Smilers, got to the second verse…and stopped short.

"Called some guy I knew

Had a drink or two

And we fumbled as the day grew dark

I pretended that I felt a spark"

Now, when Aimee Mann sings this, the picture it creates in my mind is that of a lonely human being who, wanting a brief escape from the disillusionment she's facing right now, chooses a lover she doesn't really care for and aims at a night of physical passion. But when I sing this, or think of another man singing this, I think…"hmmm, picking up a girl, drinking with her, trying to score although there's no feeling either way…" and it sounds, well, shitty.

This may be a reflection of the post-feminist age or the ultra-political-correctness Emerson indoctrinates you with, but it made me think that there might be a new sexual double standard reflected in her and others' songwriting from a woman's point of view. A woman can make sexual decisions like this and it appears empowering. I would call it empowering. But a man making a similar sexual decision is wrong. Maybe it's similar to how we always tread carefully around non-whites and allow them to spout racial epithets against themselves and others while any white person making even a suggestion of a slur is vilified. But I'm going to think twice a little the next time a song comes up. Especially Tori Amos…oh, man, there's someone I think men would have a HARD TIME interpreting.

Mansfield Park: Please Read the Letter

Feels great to get back to the Nabokov…you'll be seeing a LOT this week, readers, just giving you fair warning.

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Once Fanny is in Portsmouth, the entire structure of the book changes, as the letters between Fanny, Mary, and others are now no longer social correspondence but exchanges of information. Nabokov calls the conveying of important narrative points through letters a "dismal" characteristic of the 18^th-Century English and French novel. "Dismal" may be too strong a word. Using letters could result in horrid contrivance, as it did for that early visionary of the novel, Samuel Richardson. Richardson's Pamela and Clarissa were both told entirely through letters, and the latter's sex-and-violence-filled action reads a bit ridiculous at this point. However, there is an argument for adopting the format. With the postal service becoming easier and cheaper each decade, the literate, fiction-reading classes were used to long letters to far-off friends and enjoyed writing them (there are references in Trollope about various techniques on how to fill up an entire sheet of paper) and reading them (The Life of Samuel Johnson and its strong-selling predecessors contained a bulk of Johnsonian correspondence). Thus, if a ground-breaking novelist wanted a way to make the new long-form style accessible, to ease people in, using a method familiar and popular with his or her audience was a wise choice, no matter how much havoc it played with realism.

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It is possible that if Edmund had married Mary and Henry had kept up his suit and good behavior, Fanny would have ended up with him in the end. Fanny does develop a kinder opinion of Henry during his visit to Portsmouth, as he is warm and attentive to her every need and change of mood, unlike her family…whom he works his charm on as well. But as Austen says, for Fanny, "the pleasure of talking of Mansfield was so very great!" Fanny's feelings are quite possibly influenced by her longing for Mansfield Park, and Henry, while not the best reminder of that place, is still a bringer of better memories for Fanny, which would be enough to well-dispose her to anyone. If they had made a commitment and returned to Mansfield and society, how long might Henry have kept this good behavior up, considering what happens as soon as he leaves Portsmouth? Nabokov also glances over Mary's continual disdain of Edmund's values, which by this point no wooing could win over. He might have been looking for a last bit of good narrative development and suspense before a conclusion he despised.

"The novel, which shows signs of disintegrating, now lapses more and more into the easy epistolary form. This is a sure sign of a certain weariness on the part of the author when she takes recourse in such an easy form." Austen may have been weary, as a certain remark a few pages hence will show, but I can think of another reason. The "most shocking event" in the novel is now approaching: Maria and Henry running off together. Austen spent most of Volume I railing against her characters for their impropriety. Would such an author be able to narrate these parts with integrity? Why not have the telling of these deeds go to the flighty Mary and the newspapers, thus freeing her from having to describe the action?

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Fanny's reaction to Edmund's assertion of continuing love for Mary is an early example of stream-of-consciousness or interior monologue. Not quite the way Virginia Woolf and James Joyce would apply it, as Fanny's thoughts are always centered in her distaste for Mary. But the non-stop rush of flowing, thematically linked sentences racing from condemnation to a self-crucifying urge that Edmund ask her to marry him and be done with it are written in almost exactly the same style. Has anyone else besides Nabokov noticed this?

51

With Tom's illness taking up his time, Edmund does not declare his intentions to Mary. "Nothing but obstacles, which he SEEMS TO KEEP IN HIS OWN PATH, cross their relationship." (Caps mine) My original note on the subject was "very convenient." Austen, skilled novelist she is, keeps creating situations which sympathetic Edmund nobly gives his attention to, distracting him from Mary. However, and please ignore the fact that I first learned about this from an episode of Frasier, there is a psychological condition where people consciously tell the world they want to do one thing and take steps to follow this desire, but in their subconscious have a different need to fulfill and so keep tripping themselves up in pursuit of the goal. Might Edmund, having always felt the sympathy between himself and Fanny, have a subconscious mixing well with his pure instincts which keeps him from taking the final step with Mary? Both the narrative and mental solutions to the problem are, I feel, feasible.

52

Fanny finds out about Henry and Maria's elopement from a newspaper—essentially the same as a letter—read by her father in the sitting room: "in a dirty room…dirty news." Part of Austen's genius is how, like in a play, she finds the most appropriate settings for her actions. The first romantic intrigues occur in the Sotherton "wilderness," the Crawfords decide about their futures while playing a high-stakes card game in the rectory, etc. And Nabokov's griping has a ring of truth, for the newspaper in these centuries was much more conversational, personal, opinionated, and sensational compared to now. In fact, tonally the old papers dealt with their readers along lines similar to People, US, and their offspring, only Joseph Addison was trafficking in ideas, not gossip.

Nabokov estimates that Austen would have needed 500 more pages to document the Crawford and Bertram romances in Volume III with the similar detail she used in Volume I. "Too much [happens] behind the scenes…this letter-writing business is a shortcut of no great artistic merit." I wish Austen had spent 500 more pages on these scenes, but she had a limit of time and length, and more stories to tell. I would like to get a peak at her notebooks and diaries to see if there were initial plans for an expanded Mansfield Park, if she let the sweep of the story get away from her. Agreeing with Nabokov, this letter-writing is a disappointment after the variety of styles and language in the first two volumes, but I am not prepared to say this was not Austen's design from the beginning. Again, Austen might conceivably have not wanted to write about such goings-on…for instance, Tom's illness is venereal disease if one follows the context, but she never says so…and having the now-not-that-likable Mary and others tell the story for her may have been comfortable for her. Also, Fanny is the audience/author stand-in. No major event is fully described unless she is personally bearing witness to it. So if she's in Portsmouth while her friends and "enemies" are elsewhere, there is no sensible way under the narrative logic to fully tell the story...and Fanny has to go to Portsmouth so there can be distance between her and Henry which will cause him to give up his efforts, resume his old habits, and clear the path for the happy ending…and Fanny would not have been summoned out of Portsmouth after Henry left because Sir Thomas hoped time away from Mansfield Park would tilt her mind in Henry's favor. Again, narrative logic. It's not the best narrative logic, but hasn't Nabokov said that in a story a character can behave however they want and any action can happen as long as everything makes sense IN THAT PARTICULAR STORY'S WORLD?

55

There is a "slight suggestion of incest" when Edmund chooses Fanny as his wife. But only slight. Yes, they were raised to think of each other as brother and sister, but in Austen's opinion this seems to make them only more suitable for each other, knowing each other inside out and ready to be compatible with each other to the best of their abilities.

56

"Life, for all the characters, runs a smooth course. God, so to speak, takes over." Nabokov makes this disparaging observation after bemoaning how it upsets the careful attention to detail Austen used in documenting the characters' foibles in the preceding volumes. Yates's fortune is a bit too tidy an affair, but since Mansfield Park is structured like a play, the return to a peaceful, improved status quo at the end is fine Structure for Austen, who even recreates the inciting incident by placing the devoted Susan at Lady Bertram's side when Fanny goes off to be a wife and mother.

From here, Nabokov moves on to some more general thoughts…

A House of David: “Away We Go” and “Oleanna”

I would love to have a glass of wine with Maya Rudolph…and cradle Julia Stiles in my arms when she is broken.

For several years, at least since Emerson, people have been telling me to read Dave Eggers, acclaimed novelist and editor of McSweeney's. For even more years, I have long admired David Mamet, as I admire any writer who can take the English language and reinvent it to suit his purposes. Until yesterday, I had never experienced Eggers, or seen Mamet performed live on stage. When you add in getting my student loans fully approved, re-coordinating the church book club potluck, and finding potential new subletters…not a bad day.

Away We Go is a collaboration between Eggers and his wife Vendela Vida, who edits The Believer, another terrific magazine which Barnes & Noble actually carries. It would have been a wonderful comic novel…except for the Montreal sequence, which cries out for enactment. So it would have been a wonderful play…it's very episodic, and the tone reminds of George Bernard Shaw if Shaw had a bit more heart in him. Instead it is a movie, and a very good movie…but…

I have never seen Sam Mendes's work on the stage, but between this film and American Beauty, which I seriously dislike, I have an impression of him. In theatre, which demands a level of grandiosity so an actor can reach the back row of a very intimate setting, performers can be encouraged to amp up their styles, go larger. From clips I have seen and the testimony of others, Mendes is extraordinary on stage…the late Natasha Richardson in Cabaret, Nicole Kidman in The Blue Room, Bernadette Peters in Gypsy, all great. But film has an intimacy all its own. Projection and exaggeration are not needed because the camera gets RIGHT THERE. But Mendes doesn't seem to realize this, and he also, I feel, enjoys having a camera so he can select beautiful images he could never find on stage and dwell on them. So not only does he have the tendency to indulge in unnecessary "artsy" beauty, but even worse, unless he is dealing with really good writers and actors who are on the same page about character interpretation, he can encourage these actors to go over-the-top.

American Beauty was ruined for me because Alan Ball is not a good writer in my humble opinion, so everyone except Kevin Spacey, who somehow GOT SOMETHING and saved the film from disaster, is playing their part too broadly, Annette Bening worst of all, and Mendes filled in the thin story with self-conscious "art." I did not see Revolutionary Road but read Justin Haythe's screenplay and, while liking it, thought "Why do I want to spend two hours watching these people?" Lisa Huberman confirmed this impression, including the shocking news that Mrs. Mendes, Kate Winslet, was lost.

This is why I now want to read more Dave Eggers, and Vendela Vida as well, for their screenplay reins in Mendes…almost. They write with the efficiency of the great short story writers, or Hemingway working on a novel, leaving Mendes with no time for inessential shots. And their characters are not only well-drawn, but lovingly empathetic. What attracted me to the movie was a review stating that Burt and Verona, the central couple, are a Boy and Girl who already Got each other and never see their relationship in jeopardy for the duration. Their problems are not with each other but with an outside world where (and this is the plot) they travel from one end of the country to the other and can't find a place to raise their soon-to-be-born baby. This is a rarity in the Hollywood movie: a good relationship, where fighting occurs but is always fair and both sides can laugh with each other and love each other and seem to talk in their own language. It takes just the right actors to capture such happiness without making it look forced or pie-in-the-sky, and John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph are perfect.

The flaws in the film are all in the first half. The structure is based around Burt and Verona meeting friends and family in various cities and observing their parental skills, trying to find someone they can share the experience with. Eggers and Vida give the people in each location a certain flaw with which they can comment on society, and the flaws go from comical to serious. But for the comic parts, the writing is so finely observed that a delicate touch is needed to keep things from getting grotesque. Mendes does not appreciate this. So Allison Janney, sadly, gives the worst performance of a great career as an oblivious alcoholic (though Jim Gaffigan as her suffering husband is good). Catherine O'Hara and Jeff Daniels (Burt's parents) are little better, and Maggie Gyllenhaal and Josh Hamilton just barely avoid cartoonism. These scenes are laugh-out-loud funny when you're watching them, but in the overall context, especially when sandwiched around Burt and Verona's one-on-one scenes, they jar. Horribly.

The final sequences, where the wit gets dryer and the tears flow easier, wipe away the worst memories of the beginning. Burt and Verona visit their best friends from college, now living in Montreal with several adopted children, in four scenes which start uproariously but end…somewhere else. Then they end up unexpectedly in Miami, where they have their moment of divine revelation in a scene involving puppets, Bob Dylan, a trampoline, and Paul Schneider as Burt's brother…though he is absent for Krasinski and Rudolph's unbelievably tender, hope-inspiring conversation in the backyard. It is one of the two best scenes in the movie…the other involves them in Montreal with Chris Messina, Melanie Lynskey, a pole, and the Velvet Underground's "O! Sweet Nuthin'" in five minutes where you suddenly know Messina and Lynskey could have carried a whole other movie on their own and you could never look away.

The ending is a little sappy. But A.O. Scott was dead wrong when he called Away We Go a "smug" movie which "does not like you." Roger Ebert hits the point better in his positive review: "You can be smug if you have something worth being smug about." Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida, and their counterparts John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph, can all be smug for telling and enacting a beautiful story.

Julia Stiles can afford to be smug too, these days. Her Carol in Oleanna at the Mark Taper Forum…and soon Broadway…is great. Really and truly great. So great that even when Stiles has her back turned and you can't see her face, you can't take your eyes off of her.

Stiles is great in spite of the elements working against her. I was fortunate to see this with Lisa, who KNOWS theatre in ways I do not. Lisa saw her class at Rutgers perform Oleanna last year in what she called a very bad production because it focused on the people, not the ideas. But in this play, David Mamet is more concerned with the ideas. John and Carol represent two social points of view and are given only enough personality to make their conflict interesting. But Mamet understands John…he's the man who wrote American Buffalo and Glengarry Glen Ross. He understands men all too well, especially angry and/or determined men. He does not understand female psychology. Carol, as Lisa pointed out to me, has almost no specific characteristics, and the personal battle she clearly wages is kept extremely vague. The context clues suggested to me Carol is a lesbian coming from an environment where such "deviation" is intolerable. Such a solution is simple and direct…but Mamet is direct, and again, this is about ideas. However, if this is the truth…why doesn't Mamet come out and say so?

I don't know if Julia Stiles thinks Carol is a lesbian, but she DOES call upon some inner reserve of pain from her character's life which fuels her most sobbing, voice-raised scenes. But the greatness of her performance comes from a subtext she brings out…and which Lisa and I, and hopefully every other observant theatergoer, recognized.

Here's what is happening in Oleanna. Carol is intelligent, studious, and a natural for higher education, but she has some sort of problem learning in the traditional way. If she has the right teacher, she has the brains and capacity to excel. However, John is NOT the right teacher. John teaches a course involving some kind of educational psychology, and he's written an acclaimed book which says higher education is no longer about learning but about giving higher classes something they think they're entitled to. It's hazing. It's regurgitation. And it's a subtle power play. Arguably this might be true, and John SAYS he wants to teach so he can break from this system. But there's a dirty little secret…John wants power himself and enjoys being a figure of power. He lords it over his students and dresses up even casual, advising conversation to them in over-intellectual nonsense and forces them to question themselves even on the simplest things. After a lifetime of being told he was stupid and no good, he RELISHES being the almighty professor who can make others feels stupid. And in situations where he doesn't have power, as with his wife, his real estate broker, and the tenure committee, he reacts with anger and exasperation…which only fuels his urge to get more power.

Carol, as played by Stiles, starts out deceptively. She seems to be whining. Then you slowly catch on that here is a smart, ambitious girl who wants to make something genuinely positive of her life coming up against a man who refuses to show her human respect, who talks rings around her, who refuses to listen to her. She has nothing, and as she realizes this, her frustration makes her break down. But then Carol hits on something: the only way to put herself on an equal footing with John is to play the game his way. The two other scenes (the play has no intermission and runs by in eighty minutes) depict Carol finding her voice in a way where she uses all of John's techniques on him. She dissects his language and gestures, she interprets him the way he interprets her, she presents an explanation just as convincing as his but with the facts lined up on her side. Best of all, this gives her the courage to call him for what he is: a sadistic, greedy bully of a man. And being seen through by a woman he never expected to catch on only sets John more afire.

But the tragedy of Oleanna is that Carol can't stop. She turns into John. She insists she has nothing to gain from ruining his life…and she doesn't…but she is still ruining it all the same from the sheer joy someone feels when they get a taste of being in control. Carol becomes sneaky, makes demands, backs John into a corner…and then, in the final minute, makes a mistake, and she knows a split-second too late she has made the mistake and sees herself and the situation and how both have transformed…and provokes a finale where I didn't want to look anymore, but I had to.

I shall not repeat the action of the final minute, or Stiles's last line…but that line, spoken with a sobbing voice, condemns both John for the man even he now knows he is…and herself for becoming the oppressor she feared and hated the most. It is a chilling, sorrowful acceptance.

Stiles receives a great partner in Bill Pullman, who never gives John a moment of empathy and nearly erases the picture of President Thomas Whitmore from my brain, and sympathetic direction from Doug Hughes. The only thing wrong with this Oleanna is the industrial whirr of the blinds in John's office which take the place of a curtain…too noisy for a show loud enough already.

Hearst Impressions: To San Simeon and Back, June 17, 2009

"The Chief," who bears a strong resemblance physically and temperamentally to Chris Faiella…who deserves my warmest congratulations on his return to the film industry!

We left Los Angeles at 6:30 and came back at 10:30, 500 miles of driving, all handled by Kal. When complimenting each other, we like to say "You're a prince," and he was a crown prince yesterday. I spent the voyages crammed in the middle of the Scion's backseat with Dave and Jon…just a wee bit cramped, but we had some great talks about movies and ecstatic sing-alongs to Queen and Gillian's favorite rock tunes.

Oxnard is an ultra-depressing site. My memories of it as the beautiful communal gathering place last Halloween when I voted for Obama will now be mixed with images of unnecessary, pretentiously-named housing developments and decrepit, abandoned motels where you could have gotten a great pancake breakfast in 1962 (Jon's words).

My love for Camera Obscura remains undiminished by classically-trained Judy pointing out that Tracyanne Campbell sings the same five notes over and over again, no matter what key or melody the song is in.

There are few better ways to get lost then driving through Solvang (and passing the actual Hitching Post!) on a pleasant June day while trying to find a Mobil gas station.

I once had the privilege of hearing Kal take off for forty minutes on why he doesn't like the police at all. Yesterday was the sequel, where he actually pulled off the highway and drove out of our way so he wouldn't have to be followed by an ordinary officer who was just making her daily rounds in her patrol car…but by being right behind him was cramping his driving style completely. The hilarious part was Kal, so satisfied in his gambit, turned off only to have the cop stop her car on the shoulder immediately afterwards.

Hearst Castle…what can I say? That I have seen so many things in my life where I couldn't believe they existed, and among the man-made things, William Randolph Hearst's estate is among the most amazing? The Neptune Pool which I shall always think of as Olivier's villa in Spartacus. The guest house nicer than any luxury hotel I've ever been in. Staircases modeled right after Rome's, antiquated statues around every corner, 3,500 year-old Egyptian art JUST SITTING THERE. And the main house, La Casa Grande…art and tapestries and fireplaces and the mother of all living rooms and an indoor pool which takes the words "indoor pool" to a whole new level. For two glorious hours, I was lounging with Marion Davies, playing tennis with Charlie Chaplin, dining with Harpo Marx in a room where the closer you were to the fire, the less Hearst liked you. Audacious. Overwhelming. And Julia Morgan was one hell of an architect. In Dave's words, we were certainly Xanadoing it.

We ate the Hearst Ranch's own, very good grass-fed beef…under protest.

The movie they show at the IMAX theatre is not worth the price of admission: free.

On the way back, we stopped in Cambria, one of those gorgeously picturesque little towns which prides itself on quaintness to the point where they can get away with charging visitors exorbitantly. But we ate dinner at a fantastic local restaurant (no chains allowed by law) with their own wines and everything. I consumed three kinds of pie yesterday…shared strawberry at breakfast, shared olallaberry at lunch, and my own seafood pot pie for dinner. Still short of Harold and his Purple Crayon's nine, but nice.

Surreal experience in our final pre-L.A. pit stop. Kal, Dave, and I wander across the street from the gas station to a Chinese restaurant attached to a Best Western so Kal could get some hot tea. Turns out that restaurant had national write-up. The whole time, two strangers who wandered over are talking to Jon and Judy. We heard the whole story afterwards: he was from Maine, she was pregnant and probably underaged, both were living in a tent nearby while he tried to find work, and they were desperate to get back to Maine and his family so they could have resources to tap…and hoped, on seeing a Scion with the right license plate, they might be able to hitch a ride. Jon gave them ten bucks…it was all they could do. But I have to wonder at a world where even people like this (Jon and Judy both thought there might be drugs involved in the situation) are on the fault line between existence and oblivion while two hours away is an ostentatious display of wealth.

"Funny the way it is," as Dave Matthews sings in a fine new song…

There are some days where every moment is unforgettable. Pictures to come soon here and on Facebook.

I Saw Every Stanley Kubrick Movie and All I Got Was Some Lousy Enlightenment, Part II: 1968-1999

2001: A Space Odyssey—One of the ten greatest movies ever made, in my opinion. Or maybe not, because I don't feel comfortable calling it a movie. This is a poem, a symphony, with, courtesy of Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, Geoffrey Unsworth, and the special effects team led by Douglas Trumbull and Wally Veevers, a panorama of abstract imagery which ultimately tells a concrete story. And the audacity of 2001 demands so much of you that it is as easy to despise as to love…my father, his brothers, and several friends call it one of the most boring movies ever made. However, it asks that we sit through 140 minutes with dialogue either perfunctory or nonexistent, characters drawn with almost no shading or detail because, long stretches of silent action set to classical music or ultra-precise sound, and above all, a story where nothing and everything happens, the minimalist action tracing mankind's entire history from the very genesis of our evolving from apes…to the final step of our evolution into a transcendent, serene being above all war, division, and ills of the material world. But once this idea is understood, Kubrick's choices become clear. Dave Bowman (played by the very gentle Keir Dullea) and company are bland because they are bare shells on which we are supposed to project ourselves…WE are the heroes of the story. And the sequences are so quiet and minutely detailed so we can observe just how much WE are capable of, and why we (and Dave) pass the final supernatural test. We have brains with the capacity to grow. We have imagination and motivation to harness the elements in spectacular ways (the "Blue Danube" sequence). And we have the resourcefulness and determination to surmount challenges from even the most seemingly invincible opponents…for this is what happens in Dave's duel with the omniscient HAL 9000 (perfectly voiced by the eerily calm Douglas Rain). 2001 may be the great 20^th Century epic, poetry on the level of Homer and nearing the Bible. I have seen it on small screens, big screens, projected in 35mm, and ultimately in 70mm, and every time it just gets more beautiful.

A Clockwork Orange—A lot of people rank this right with its predecessor as Kubrick's masterpiece. I admire it but don't like it THAT much. For me, it is the beginning of a theme which would carry through the rest of Kubrick's career, the interplay between the two sides of the human being, so separate from both the ape and the computer, which triumphed in 2001: the rational intellect and the emotional, imaginative heart. But even when he failed to offer a resolution, there was always a point to his movies, but here the point is lost on me. Are we supposed to condemn Alex (the charming, cocksure Malcolm McDowell) for his ruthless quest for sex and violence, or a society which could deny individuality by sucking all emotion and desire out of people? And when neither way seems right and we're supposed to condemn both, then what is the purpose of the film existing at all? Visually it's a hyperkinetic mess, aurally it sounds angry, bleating, pulsing with Anthony Burgess's invented language…as a work of art it has an overpowering entropy which fits the mental confusion it displays, but the result leaves me disoriented and unable to care. The "Singin' in the Rain" sequence, as one of the few times where the unruly energy is pulled into focus, is unforgettable, but even the fabled violence was less affecting when compared to how Kubrick used it in films like Full Metal Jacket.

Barry Lyndon—Kubrick's very close second-best movie. This time he has a theme worked out with verve and flair: human beings can devise all sorts of plans, carry them out, improvise to correct setbacks, ultimately succeed…and lose everything because we are humans, with all the accompanying flaws and passions which overrule and disrupt our sense. It's also an unbelievably beautiful film, one which required an artistic temperament and an energetic doer with both faculties working 110%. Kubrick did it, first by brilliantly adapting William Makepeace Thackeray (I can only imagine how he would have made Vanity Fair) by removing the trademark coincidences of the Victorian novel and replacing the first-person p.o.v. with a third-person narration (by Sir Michael Hordern) which weaves its way into the discourse through commentary, contradiction, and paradox. And in the screenplay and shooting, there is a true, riveting tension between, on the one hand, the ultra formal, chessboard-style action and measured, careful dialogue, and on the other hand, the repressed emotion and desire built into every scene's subtext. Then there is the beautiful John Alcott cinematography, including scenes shot strictly by candlelight, and sterling casting: feckless, all-charm-and-little-more Ryan O'Neal, cool regency beauty Marisa Berenson, puffed-up Patrick Magee, and smirky, savvy Hardy Krueger (who replaced the far too soulful Oskar Werner, just as O'Neal said yes after the far too heroic Robert Redford said no). This movie is three hours long and just as demanding as 2001—and it's worth all the effort.

The Shining—A good but very problematic film. Suspense and horror work because audiences react on a visceral level…we feel the shivers in the dark, the terror of either not knowing what's coming next or knowing too much. The IDEA of a man slowly releasing his homicidal mania in a secluded environment with innocent people should be perfect, but the focus is so intent on carefully poking into every side of Jack Torrance's madness that the suspense and horror are diluted, and with Kubrick shifting the emphasis away from Danny, the hero, to Jack, audience's empathy for the victims is reduced. So in the end, not as satisfying as it should have been. However, the atmosphere is exactly right, all the nooks and crannies of the Overlook being exploited into an ever-increasing dread, and Jack Nicholson, incapable of ever being less than interesting, BECOMES a troubled, psychotic killer.

Full Metal Jacket—Maybe it was old age, acquiring an English country house where he could live his own way, and forty years of marriage and raising daughters, but I believe that Kubrick's last two films are also his most purely human. His fourth and final war movie ratchets his style and personal convictions to their peak. The mannered choreography of Paths of Glory is now ultra-mindless communal action, with all the characters moving through even the most chaotic situations with an inflexible, thoughtless order. The violence is more terrifying than ever. And Kubrick's lifelong interest in discourse is similarly brought to a higher level, as communication is reduced to barrages, clichés, euphemistic jargon, and nonsensical emoting of words which can't really describe how the characters feel in an endless go-round. But most of all, the storytelling (in collaboration with Michael Herr and Gustav Hasford) is cinematic narrative at its best. Watching it, I recognized a stunning use of Blake Snyder's thesis-antithesis-synthesis structure. The thrust of the movie is how the military works by exploiting mankind's inner urge for conflict and molding soldiers into emotionless machines capable only of killing. Joker, the protagonist, is confronted by so many terrifying examples of this antithesis of humanity. The sadistic, completely unfeeling, and thus doubly obscene Hartman, Gomer Pyle, whose indoctrination shatters his resistant but weak mind, and Animal Mother, the supreme sensualist who actually wears a "full metal jacket," with bullets to spare. In the final synthesis, Joker becomes a killer by slaying the sniper who killed his friend Cowboy…BUT…Joker acts not from murderous rage but from mercy for the wounded, pained Vietnamese girl, and he uses his own, jacket-less pistol, not the rifle he was trained to think of as a sexual object. He kills on his terms, not the army's. Man may fight war until he self-destructs, Kubrick seems to be saying, but the human element will not be shattered.

Eyes Wide Shut—The final statement. Going back to the beginning, Kubrick makes another movie about fear and desire, filling it with eroticism, lavish cinematography, and intelligence galore. I am now going to repeat myself a bit from my previous blog…for Eyes Wide Shut had a strong impact on me at first viewing…it is the only Kubrick film I have ONLY seen projected. And I devised a theory that Kubrick and Fredric Raphael mixed Arthur Schnitzler's Traumnovelle (the real source material) with the story of Eden, where Tom Cruise's Bill is Adam, Nicole Kidman's Alice is Eve, and Sydney Pollack's Ziegler is God (and how appropriate that Kubrick cast another director in the part). Bill and Alice begin the film in innocence, or at least Bill does.  He is happy in his marriage, deeply in love with Alice, confident of their stability.  Then Alice flirts with the devilishly handsome European--a foreign presence.  When Bill calls her on it, Alice admits her temptations and sexual fantasies.  She has a knowledge of human nature Bill does not possess...but it drives Bill, his ideal shattered, onto his great odyssey.  The journey through New York is for him the eating of the apple.  He acquires knowledge of what humans are sexually capable of as he sees the sex all around him, particularly in the masked orgy, and how far we will go in the throes of passion.  And he discovers good and evil by seeing these acts for what they are in full: the prostitute has AIDS, the angry father actually lets his teenage daughter run promiscuously, and the orgy is a sadistic, misogynistic plaything for the wealthy, powerful, and dangerous.  Then, in the climax, Bill's knowledge of good and evil is complete when Ziegler, who not only knows all but also knows more than he tells (and is the only clearly Jewish character in the piece--the "chosen people"), lays it on the line and orders Bill to stay away from this in the future...an expulsion.  Bill appears to be separated from everyone and everything which is familiar to him, especially after he confesses his transgression to Alice.  But just as the Fall of Man was paradoxically a glorious beginning, the very last scene confirms that Bill and Alice now share a realistic conception of love, sex, and marriage, and Bill knows that despite their urges and desires, Alice loves him as much as he loves her.  Their union is as strong as ever. The beauty of the story makes it easy to ignore how Cruise is a bit out of his depth, Kidman chooses to play her role as a cross between grand Sarah Bernhardt and immature teenage girl, and Kubrick and Raphael's script is annoying at times, with one scene repeating an entire conversation twice. A final bow worthy of the master.

I Saw Every Stanley Kubrick Movie and All I Got was Some Lousy Enlightenment

"The Great Stanley K." (Terry Southern)…and Vincent Van Gogh…no, Kirk Douglas…and the Great Chameleon…

Since I was fourteen and, on a tiny TV screen, glimpsed the extraordinary images of the Discovery's mission to Jupiter…and beyond the infinite…I have been a devotee of Stanley Kubrick. Born 1928, began making movies in 1951, died 1998 with thirteen feature-length films to his name. Even the flawed ones had moments of beauty, and all were clearly the work of a visionary.

John Baxter, his best biographer (in my opinion), called Kubrick a man who chose the life of the eye and mind over the life of the soul and spirit. This is an oversimplification. Kubrick indeed had an eye to match any artist in the Met AND MoMa, and his characters and plots were often cool, logical, and very dark as opposed to emotive, sentimental (like Spielberg), stirring (like Lean), and nostalgic (like Scorsese). But his detachment, as it were, enabled him to tell stories which looked at human nature as objectively as possible, and filled those stories with a richness of meaning almost no other director could approach. And, especially in his final work, there was always an element of humanity and spirit, even in his most inhuman sagas…Kubrick may think we're usually on roads to disaster and Hell, but does not fully deny the possibility of Heaven.

On June 15^th, after seeing Full Metal Jacket, I can now proudly say I have seen the entire canon, every film once, 2001 and Spartacus multiple times.

Here are some very brief thoughts…contains spoilers…

Fear and Desire—I actually didn't see his first film, an allegory set in the Korean War. But it is harder to find than a Seattle Pilots jersey, and Kubrick himself dismissed it as a pretentious beginner's folly. So no great loss.

Killer's Kiss—Caught this during a memorial retrospective on Turner Classic Movies. A low-budget film noir about a boxer trying to save his newfound love from a vicious promoter/underworld figure. Kubrick made a list of sequences he thought would be exciting to film, then filled in the gaps with Howard O. Sackler. It's not very interesting, and there's a completely pointless impressionistic sequence with Kubrick's ballet-dancer second wife, but there are scenes—the murder of the boxer's faithful trainer on a deserted street, the climactic fight in a mannequin factory—which stand out even from Huston and Tourneur's best noir work.

The Killing—A heist movie with Jim Thompson dialogue where the Kubrick legend truly begins. The documentary realism. The unwillingness to follow convention, in this case by telling the story from a constantly shifting point of view where time is turned backwards and forwards to follow every action before and during the robbery. The formal logic by which everyone behaves, their actions always making sense at least to themselves. The distrust of love and romance, as the perfect crime collapses in its aftermath thanks to nice wimp George letting his greedy, unfaithful wife Sherry in on the secret. The ambivalent sexuality, seen in ex-con ringleader Johnny being loved by both his faithful childhood sweetheart Cathy and his devoted sidekick, aged bookkeeper Marvin—but only getting his kicks from working out an intricate maneuver. And of course, an ending which you could never call "happy." (My mom grew up watching Vince Edwards play Ben Casey, M.D., and it's kind of funny to see him as Sherry's treacherous lover.)

Paths of Glory—The first tale of war which adds the final great element of Kubrick's style, as the logic controlling The Killing is taken to an obsessive extreme. Characters move like pieces on a chessboard with rigid precision. Action is symmetrical. The images are composed to the tiniest degree of perfection. The story is deceptively simple (French World War I generals cover up their disastrous battlefield decisions by court-martialing three soldiers to reassign the blame) but thematically profound (you watch with shudders that we, as human beings, are capable of such deception, cynicism, and murder in pursuit of the "best" end). And the discourse is remarkable, following its own rules and, as my friend and greater devotee Eric Burns pointed out, making use of parroting—repetition of sentences to drive their points home. Unfortunately, the film is so choppy that no scenes flow into each other (the ending, though important, still feels tacked on), and the acting ranges from Kirk Douglas's grandiloquence to Timothy Carey's non-acting…Adolphe Menjou as the man pulling all the strings does it best.

Spartacus—Of all the great road-show Technicolor commercial spectacles made during the final two decades of the studio system, this may be the best, and it's certainly the greatest old-school historical epic. Did any director have a better coming-out party? It still astounds me that after four low-budget movies, Kubrick, who was ONLY THIRTY, stepped in for Anthony Mann and took such complete charge of a juggernaut production. Many complain that it's not really a Kubrick film for that reason, but Mann only shot the opening scenes in the Libyan salt mines…and I see Kubrick in every frame, in the contrasts between shadows and light (the former actually fits the heroes, the latter the villains in Rome), in the clockwork movements of the action sequences, and most of all in the quiet intensity whenever Laurence Olivier and Charles Laughton are on the screen. They are playing a game with their own ideas of victory in mind, with plans and strategies galore, and thus are destined to defeat Kirk Douglas because he has no plan, no strategy, no intrigue, just an unshakable ideal in the best of humanity. Maybe the hopefulness of the tragedy isn't up Kubrick's line, and maybe Dalton Trumbo made Douglas and Jean Simmons the most happy, loving couple in any Kubrick film…but Kubrick could have fought these changes, just as he fought to control the cinematography and won. He didn't. For him, Douglas and Simmons's love and the eventual triumph of Spartacus's vision fit. The result is a film which gets better with every viewing. (Peter Ustinov became the only actor to win an Oscar for a Kubrick movie as the put-upon head of the gladiator school…it's a darkly funny performance.)

Lolita—Kubrick's last great misstep. Nabokov was NOT MEANT for the big screen, but still, even a watered-down version of Humbert Humbert's tragedy could have been something special. Kubrick ends up with his most conventional-feeling film ever, with the least interesting aesthetic choices he ever made…it feels like a Douglas Sirk or Jerry Wald production. And if it was meant to be a satire on Hollywood conventionalism, the joke wears thin over two hours and forty minutes…his only unnecessary long running time. Worse, that a man who would end up delving deep into the sexual psyche only took some perfunctory Nabokovian explorations of Humbert and Lolita's relationship is a grave disappointment, and Sue Lyon is whiny, not arousing. The one bright spot is Peter Sellers, stealing the film with his chameleonic portrayal of that most amoral playwright Clare Quilty. (James Mason would have been a KILLER Humbert if the film had followed the novel more.)

Dr. Strangelove, or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb—Besides romance, conventional comedy was Kubrick's weak point. But he admired Charlie Chaplin, and Dr. Strangelove fits in with the surreal worldview of Chaplin's movies, where bumbling fools end up winning over entrenched power systems. The tragic joke here is that while Chaplin's tramp was on the side of the angels, the ham-fisted General Turgidson and Major King Kong override the rational and push the world to complete destruction. Robert McKee wrote that the secret of comedy is its anger, and this is a very angry movie for all the humor present. And yet we still laugh today, for the film is genuinely funny (the conversations in the War Room most of all…"Gentlemen! You can't fight in here!") and so, so true in depicting our capacity for self-destruction. Peter Sellers is again fantastic (I don't think any actor ever worked better with Kubrick, possibly excepting Malcolm McDowell and Ryan O'Neal), and George C. Scott is just as perfectly cast…but it is Ken Adam's production design and the closing "We'll Meet Again" montage which you'll remember the most.

The last six movies to follow Thursday or Friday…

Elton John and Robert Rostan

When I was little, one of the delights of my life was to thumb my way through my father's record collection, kept in two boxes in the basement…33 1/3 rpm vinyl of some of the greatest artists in pop-rock history, but acquired not when their songs had been played to annoying length by classic rock stations but were brand new, never-before-heard, thrilling, exciting. The collection abruptly cuts off, with a few exceptions, after 1975 when he turned 21. That was the age when I, having been schooled by him, my mother, and my Uncle Richard on the classics, began opening my ears to different genres and new artists, and today I am still making such discoveries. Where he sort of ended, I sort of began.

That said, there is something in the "new" music world which binds us. In 1971, when my dad was 17, Elton John—future knight, Hall of Famer, Oscar and Tony winner, and flamboyant showman without peer…and of course, extraordinary singer/songwriter/pianist—released an album called Madman Across the Water. It became one of Dad's favorite records of all time, and when I first became a fan of Elton John in my preschool years after a steady diet of his 80s videos on VH1, I was told by my parental unit to listen to his early work, Madman above all, to hear him at his best.

Thirty years later, when I myself had just turned 17, Elton John released another album called Songs From the West Coast. And as I mentioned in my post a few days ago on Camera Obscura, I consider it the other album of the decade. But while I praise Camera Obscura from an objective standpoint for their mastery of the pop-rock format, my adoration of Songs From the West Coast is mostly subjective. Musically and lyrically it is superb—part of why I bought it is because the critical world considered it a return to seventies form for Elton and his erstwhile partner Bernie Taupin after years of adult-contemporary piffle—but emotionally…it was like when I picked up The Autobiography of Malcolm X and found the saving grace I needed to reaffirm my commitment to God and build up my inner strength for the most traumatic period of my life thus far. I did not know how my life was going to turn out in the seven and a half years after Songs From the West Coast's release, but those twelve compositions have become the soundtrack and mirror of my life thus far and how I have changed.

Obviously, I did end up on the West Coast. But except for one lyrical reference, the album has nothing to do with California et al. What I hear are songs about looking at your past and present and taking stock and adjusting for the future. Songs of falling into love and out of it and losing it but never exactly giving up hope. Songs of maturity. Songs for the emotions running you through the wringer as you go from boy to man in a world shifting far too fast under your feet.

Songs like "Look Ma, No Hands," where a jaunty melody and fanciful lyrics cannot mask the idea of devotion to who raised you and where you came from…and how I still try to make those people, my parents, my family, proud of me.

Or "American Triangle" and "Ballad of the Boy in the Red Shoes." I went from a quiet, rather conservative upbringing in Ohio to a college in Boston where everyone had a sharp opinion, usually a liberal one, and for the first time I was regularly interacting with people of all races, all religions, and most importantly, all lifestyles and sexual orientations. After years of only having vague political and social notions, meeting people like this tapped me into how I could not afford to look away from the rest of humanity. Now I make an effort to stay aware, to stay informed, to think, to argue passionately when I believe something is wrong. Most of all, becoming friends with gays and lesbians and witnessing Prop 8 has cured me of ANY lingering ideas of prejudice against ANYONE on this planet. I believe we all must have the right, as long as we do not infringe upon others, to live as we choose—and in these sad, heartfelt songs, rage and sorrow and indignation…and belief in something better…all mix.

Or "Birds" and "The Wasteland." I once thought I knew it all, or at least enough to handle anything that came my way and plan my future accordingly. But like Socrates, the more I experience, the more convinced I am I know nothing. When I hear these songs, I think of all the times I have stood at the crossroads, dealt with temptations and burdens and rebuilding, and struggled to answer the large and the small questions…and bringing my own version of the raucous energy of the piano to the effort.

Or the love songs. 2001 was the year I first realized how extraordinary it is to find your inner self trying to rip away and cling to someone else, women with beauty and brains and heart and sympathy who make you forget there's anyone else in the world. Unlike McCartney's simplicity and Dylan's obliqueness, however, John and Taupin write of love with a straightforward poetry which tosses in a few surprises, out-of-left-field similes and metaphors and phrases which seem odd at first but, when you think them over, decide that somehow they caught the experience just right. I mean "Off balance, I found love the only place to fall." That's what happens to me…and I think it happens to everybody. I put on Songs From the West Coast most of all to hear about love and to remember…to remember the times I decided who I truly wanted and worried I might never find her ("Dark Diamond," "I Want Love"), the times I did give myself away only to face open heartbreak or the slow, lingering fade into silence as my nerves kept it untold ("Original Sin"), the times I indulged in childish fantasies and dreaming which stayed with me even into my young adulthood of perfection and vengeance ("Love Her Like Me"), the times I wanted to throw in the towel ("This Train Don't Stop Here Anymore"), and most of all, the relationships which gave me moments I'll remember for the rest of my life and comfort me in my darkest thoughts of singlehood and succor me with hope that there will be someone out there, and that all this was a learning experience, laying the ground for something beautiful to come ("Mansfield," the KEY song of the record with a killer Paul Buckmaster string arrangement).

And then, Elton John's voice has lost the high notes, but he sings with unbridled passion, sometimes playful, sometimes wistful, sometimes defeated, always honest. I hear a man who kind of sounds like me. Who is close enough to me to put what I can't express into the best words and music of all.

And now, with Father's Day approaching, I wonder what it was which made my father love Madman Across the Water, why it spoke to him so much. Was it the songs about loneliness and isolation? About fathers and sons and moving beyond what your parent was and what they might have expected of you? About coming to terms with an idealized past in an increasingly cutthroat, industrial present? Or, considering he will have been married to the same woman for thirty years come August, the idea of a person so perfect for you, so able to comfort you in time of need, so HIGH ABOVE you, that she almost doesn't seem real? A person you hadn't even met yet?

All I can guess was there was something in those songs which touched him, just as thirty years later the same men who wrote them would touch me.

He gave me the gift of being able to respond to art in that way…and now, to think that I might be able to make others' lives better by teaching them how to respond.

I love my father for that…among many, many reasons.

Two Conversations on a Saturday Night

A place of visions...

I spent an hour at the B&N Café yesterday with Sarah Byrne, whom I had not seen since March 15, the day after I learned I would be going to graduate school.

I met Sarah when the Americana opened…at the time she was one of our head cashiers. She still is behind the counter, but took an hour reduction to devote herself to her true love, acting. And she'll be a great actress if she lands the breaks…she radiates with sincerity, and she's gorgeous, with blonde hair and blue eyes and a body which looks great in any clothes you drape her in, especially black. (btw, Sarah is quite devoted to her boyfriend Richard…a heck of a guy from the times I've met him…and my judgment of her is mainly one of comparison to a lifetime of movie-watching, and a little bit of being an impressed friend) We ended up becoming friends through a series of hanging-out at various homes and bars…she coaxed me into my first ever all-nighter last July and witnessed my powerhouse vocal rendition of "MacArthur Park."

But more importantly, through my period of transition, from solitary, unemployed, and struggling to write, to a future doctoral candidate with a great job and plenty of friends, she became one of the key people who guided me.

Sarah grew up in a tight family and served in the armed forces before coming to Los Angeles, so she has life experience up the wazoo and, more importantly, plenty of shit together. Somehow, she looked past our differences, saw our similarities, and made herself open and available whenever I wanted to talk about my foibles, my disasters, my problems with decision-making, my problems with the opposite sex, my problems with just figuring out what to do next. Most of all, she's the sort of person who does NOT let you get down on yourself or feel discouraged and sad...I've lost count of how man times she's told me not to look negatively at my life and give myself credit. Sometimes I think she's too complimentary…but she'd argue with me until sunrise about that so I won't mention it in greater detail. Along with Kat and Betsy, Sarah brightened every day I got to see her.

A change in our work patterns made me not able to see her as much…but when we caught up yesterday in between my shift and hers, it was as if no time had passed.

And for some strange reason, as we talked and laughed and mused on furniture and such (seriously), high school popped into my mind. Back then, there were people and experiences I thought would always be paramount in my existence and memory. Not so much. Except for Lisa and Carlee and Gismo and a few others, there's hardly anyone I still am in regular contact with. But that does not diminish the fact that what I lived through in Boardman was essential to growing into the person I am today. I truly believe people come into your life at times when you need them the most, and no matter what happens to your relationship in the future, if they're there when it is most crucial for them to be there…that's what matters and that's what gives you love and strength and wisdom.

Sarah thinks I give her too much credit when I tell her she did that for me…but it's the truth. And we parted with the best hug I've gotten from anyone in a long time.

Back at Big Pink, after cooking up some turkey Rueben quesadillas and washing the dishes, I joined Tyler, the only other conscious occupant of the house, in the living room. I had a few ginger ales, he smoked various things, and words flowed easily.

Tyler has a beautiful soul which comes out in his songwriting (he played me a new one last night, another work in progress with one of his spanglingly repetitive riffs) easier than it usually does in conversation. I can respect that, being similarly quiet at times. Last night something made us both want to talk…maybe the general air that I've got less than a month, they have less than fifty days, and our home will be no more. He's going to London to sing on the streets and develop his music until he HAS to leave the country…it's the sort of risk very hard for me to take. My risks involve spending two months writing lousy novels (didn't pay off) or going for graduate school and increased debt (this one worked).

One part of life we all took a risk with this year was the opposite sex. My own journey ended in rejection and plenty of education. Tyler got close to several women, but none of them exactly fit the bill, and what I've learned about his and some of the other affairs among our roomies has only come in fits and starts. It's because I don't want to know anything about anyone which they don't feel comfortable telling me…I would rather leave well enough alone and only offer comfort when comfort is asked or obviously needed. But it is strange sometimes to live in such close quarters with people and be a perfect stranger to major sides of their lives.

Los Angeles wore down on all of us. Tyler thinks about Los Angeles a lot, and would tell you it's not even really a city, but a mass of people and buildings which built itself up between a mountain range and an ocean somehow and keeps sprawling. It's not urban or rural, not alienating (to a degree) but definitely not home. And while I shall leave with some beautiful memories—sweating in Mike's room in February as I wrote the final drafts of An Elegy for Amelia Johnson, driving onto the Sony lot for the first time before going on Jeopardy, banging on a tambourine and singing "Sara" before about twenty-five people in our living room at three o'clock in the morning, fueled by beer and soda and sugar and marijuana cake—I won't miss the expenses and the driving and the loneliness.

I introduced Tyler to Henry Miller after chiding him that anyone who's been to his library that much should read one of his books—and now he's been swept up. There's a passage in Tropic of Cancer he once showed me which really affected him. Miller writes of a moment of decision, that existence will continue on in a state of moral neutrality, that hoping for anything and trusting to the better nature of man will result only in disillusion and heartbreak, and that the only way to be alive when your spirit and morals are dead is to live to the fullest, to be a hyena consuming flesh as much as possible. I can't agree with a man who says that he found God and God was insufficient, but there is a kernel of truth there. Tyler is certainly not amoral, but he believes in letting the spirit come over you in special ways (like meditation at Big Sur) and following your desires no matter where they lead you.

None of the great plans we had in Boston have come to fruition…all of them have changed. We are still evolving. Someday, maybe after 33, the age when geniuses die (for none of us yet qualifies to be a genius) we may reunite and see how far we've come and find that we have become rocks, not the brutal and thoughtless but the solid, the sure of ourselves, the supporters of people, friends, loved ones, maybe even families…but not yet. Not when we're still figuring things out.

But we have each other and our shared loves of art and life and pad thai, and that is more than sufficient for right now.

The Essential is Invisible to the Eye…

Here's a hypothetical situation.

Let's pretend that in 1966, Phil Spector really did set the world on fire with Tina Turner's "River Deep, Mountain High" and as a result in 1967 got carte blanche from an enterprising label…I'm thinking Warner Bros., eager to establish themselves and compete with Sgt. Pepper, to make an album his way. Spector calls on the Wrecking Crew and members of L.A.'s symphonies, of course, but then asks a fresh-off-of-Pet Sounds Brian Wilson to write the music and handle vocal arrangements. Wilson, wondering how to follow up his magnum opus, leaps at the chance to work with his hero. But Spector also knows that Pet Sounds was sort of a one-mood album. He wants tricks, variety, so for lyrics he enlists Carole King, in the midst of splitting with Gerry Goffin, to provide a little romance and plenty of pop sensibility, and pairs her with a poet newly arrived from Canada to record his own album, Leonard Cohen, who injects wordplay and more ambiguous, heartbroken emotion. Then for vocals, Spector obviously wants the Association and their distinctive blend...but he loves female singers and calls on the sweet-but-vulnerable-voiced new discovery of the Monterey Pop Festival, Laura Nyro, to front them.

Now say this wasn't a hypothetical situation and the aforementioned album actually existed. Well, it does, only it was recorded by Glasgow's Camera Obscura and released this April as My Maudlin Career.

Camera Obscura is guitarist/lead singer/songwriter Tracyanne Campbell, bassist Gavin Dunbar, pianist Carey Lander, guitarist Kenny McKeeve, and drummer Lee Thomson. My Maudlin Career was produced by Jari Happalainen and arranged by Bjorn Yttling. I wanted to mention all of this because these seven people have made one of those frighteningly rare things: a perfect musical statement which never drags or lessens for forty-six minutes and eleven songs.

I first heard My Maudlin Career as an in-store play at B&N, and felt compelled to snatch it up. Turns out it sounds even better when the speakers are right next to you, every percussion beat and violin slur and quiver in Campbell's gorgeous, gorgeous Scottish voice.

The music is usually bright and exuberant ("James" and "Other Towns and Cities" being notable exceptions) and always off-the-charts melodic, boosted by perfect musicianship (Lander's piano is divine, McKeeve's lead guitar sparkles, Dunbar offers a solid bedrock, and Thomson understands dynamics better than any drummer in recent memory) and Yttling's skill and Happalainen's well-mixed production. But Campbell's gifts as a composer are matched by a godly lyrical talent. For all the happiness in the sound, My Maudlin Career is a very, very depressing album, full of songs about heartbreak, getting dumped at the wrong time, being incompatible, drifting apart for no good reason, and yet (as the last two songs suggest) still holding on to love despite it all. It's a journey worthy of comparison to (very hushed whisper) Blood on the Tracks, the difference being Dylan was low-key, intimate, a Monet, while Camera Obscura is a Pollock or Rauschenberg, an explosion weighed with purity.

The opening "French Navy" is the best pop single of 2009. "Honey in the Sun," with its ultra-brash horns (thank you, Jesse Clemens for that word) and extended meters, ends it all on a surprisingly hopeful note. "The Sweetest Thing," "James," "Careless Love," the title track, the lyrics about going from Chicago to Cleveland…everything on this album is just too damn great.

Along with Sir Elton John's 2001 Songs From the West Coast, it's my album of the decade.

Please buy it instead of the Black-Eyed Peas. Please?