There's something about Michael Mann's Miami Vice. (Not the television series, which I've never seen, but the movie version, which I just saw.) Something emotional and true. Emotional, because the film wisely spaces out its gentle and lyrical peaks. True, because much of the movie is made up of dozens, if not hundreds, of stereotypical story archetypes that, nevertheless, can still carry a mythic resonance underneath the common grime: the white cop and his black partner; their beleagured women; the enemy female who cannot be trusted; the snarling South American crime lord. We've all been there, done that, seen this. Just today I read an interview with novelist and screenwriter Michael Tolkin, who made an interesting argument as to why so many movies recently so blatantly suck: that the mythic structure perfected and articulated by Joseph Campbell, utilized by George Lucas so well, has been superseded by the reality of real life atrocities in Iraq and elsewhere. We, as a society, are no longer that which the hero-structure claims us to be, and we've all seen that structure co-opted by a thousand, million action movies, making its hollowness even more multiple and muted. (Only kids are immune, as they're being introduced to these myths for the first time.)
All of this may be true, but the best movies have recognized this for the longest time; a story is not about its twists or its originality, even, but about how it makes us think, and feel, about itself and about life itself. Miami Vice is such a film, and Michael Mann does not even attempt to dazzle us with his originality. He knows we've paid money to see a movie based on a twenty-year old TV show that was all sizzle and little steak. (Or so I'm told.) Mann is, first and foremost, a filmmaker of style, period. In another artist's hands, this could be, almost has to be, a blueprint for the superficial. Under Mann's direction, what we get, instead, is something inside of the style. Something indefinable and alluring amidst the cliches.
Bottom line, Mann cuts through the bullshit. There's no flashy opening credits. There's no light, comical introduction to the characters. Crockett and Tubbs don't strut around projecting 'cool'; they are experienced, and weary, and tough. Whatever 'cool' remains is the nasty residue of their immersion in the shit of their jobs. They share no Lethal Weapon banter, no in-jokes, no sly winks to an imaginary audience. These men know themselves and each other (or think that they do) and their city, and we're left to insinuate and figure out the rest.
The film is hesitant, and deliberate, and paced. Not fast-paced, or slow-paced -- just paced, period. Mann shoots his characters against a backdrop of city and squalor, water and sun. His compositions almost always place his characters in the foreground of their locations. We see, with the crisp, pristine clarity of digital cinema, high-rises and highways, urban slums and ocean blues. Like the best Japanese filmmakers, Mann understands filmic space and how to use it -- that who we are is always in relation to where we stand.
Here, that stance is in Miami, yes, but there are no glittering, gleaming montages of babes and buildings, landmarks and street signs. Well over half of the movie takes place outside of Miami, in Haiti and Colombia and on the open sea. We watch the men at work. We follow them around. No time for frivolous nonsense. Their business is adult and grim.
I'm making it sound kind of mannered and laborious, and it is indeed glacier-like, at times verging on boring. But there's something going on here. Something in the way Foxx and his woman play in the shower. In the way, every so often, hints and traces of human emotions are allowed to shine through the grime. In the way Mann is not afraid to be lyrical, almost elegaic, if only briefly. Farell and Foxx slide in and out of these extremes, but they do not swagger and preen; they move fiercely, warily. Foxx continues to prove that he is well on his way to becoming a premier, if not the premier actor of his generation. (Watch the way he morphs from the hotshot football player of Any Given Sunday to the craziness of his converted-Jew middle aged trainer in Ali to the blind genius of Ray Charles in Ray. Wait until he hits his forties, and hence his stride.) Foxx, whose stand-up comedy routines can be hilariously outrageous, whose mere personality is infectious, alert and expansive, is self-contained and confident here -- but not brash. He has a clarity to his delivery that reminds me of DiCaprio and Denzel Washington: we always know what their characters are thinking and feeling. Their emotions are clear; their faces can be read, and understood. (Clarity and understanding being the hardest effects to achieve in art.) Farell, too, has an audacity in his eyes that carries no mirth, only bravado; his Crockett is opaque, but he hints at what he wants, and what he fears, and we get the hint.
There is no more common story than a crime story, and there is nothing here that we haven't seen before. And yet it contains little of what we would expect from a Miami Vice movie. It's as if Mann is purposely throwing away all that we most want to see: the witty banter, the babes, the beaches, the glitz, the shine, the fun. Mann is not concerned with that. He is interested in texture and tone, colour and light, honesty and impact. (Even the deaths here are blunt and brutal.) The film, by its end, has earned its moments of heartbreak and grace. What will you do for your job and what will you do for your life, the film explores. The last shot, simply framed, is utterly clear and completely ambiguous, somehow moving and heartbreaking and hopeful and sad, all at the same time.
By the end, after that final image has come and gone, when the title Miami Vice finally flashed on the screen, the film had made me realize that the 'vice' of the title has nothing to do with drugs and everything to do with the wants and needs and hurts of work and love, the true vices that form the undercore of our lives and of this sleek, sedate, superb summer film.
Friday, September 01, 2006
Friday, August 25, 2006
WHY WORKING WITH KIDS ALLOWS YOU TO BECOME THE TERMINATOR WHENEVER YOU DAMN WELL CHOOSE
One of the marvellous assets about working with people under the age of, oh, eighteen is that you can see them in the hallway, and smile at them, and wave at them, and make your finger into a little gun, pointing at their heads while stating flatly in your best Schwarzenegger: "I have come from the future to terminate your existence."
You can then mime shooting them in the face, and they will most likely fall half-way over the stairway railing, managing, in the process, to unleash their own imaginary uzi whose rapid fire bullets strike you in the chest. At which point you can fall to the floor, and they will laugh, and ask if you are alright, and you can stand up, nod, smile and be on your own way to the next class.
And they will think nothing of it. Such goofiness is second nature. Their reaction to your idiotic lunacy will be the same: idiotic lunacy. Kids are hard-wired into avenues of creativity and play that seem like foreign countries I used to visit. They remind me of how I used to think; how I can still think, if I choose. The colours of life can become more vivid, and the gaps between hours richer, fuller, less stolid and adult.
The problem with adults is that we pass each other in the hall, and nod, and smile, and ask how's it going, and pretend to hear the response. We interact without imagination or flair or colour. And our everyday attempts at levity often feel like those old black-and-white movies from the forties that Ted Turner colorized in the eighties-- creepily static and oddly tainted.
Much better to greet somebody you know by pretending to be The Terminator sent from the future to eradicate their existence, only to discover that they, in fact, have turned the tables on you for once and for all, and that you have to fight to maintain your grasp on the here and the now by eluding their invisible arsenal of destruction.
Makes the day go by quicker, is what I'm saying.
You can then mime shooting them in the face, and they will most likely fall half-way over the stairway railing, managing, in the process, to unleash their own imaginary uzi whose rapid fire bullets strike you in the chest. At which point you can fall to the floor, and they will laugh, and ask if you are alright, and you can stand up, nod, smile and be on your own way to the next class.
And they will think nothing of it. Such goofiness is second nature. Their reaction to your idiotic lunacy will be the same: idiotic lunacy. Kids are hard-wired into avenues of creativity and play that seem like foreign countries I used to visit. They remind me of how I used to think; how I can still think, if I choose. The colours of life can become more vivid, and the gaps between hours richer, fuller, less stolid and adult.
The problem with adults is that we pass each other in the hall, and nod, and smile, and ask how's it going, and pretend to hear the response. We interact without imagination or flair or colour. And our everyday attempts at levity often feel like those old black-and-white movies from the forties that Ted Turner colorized in the eighties-- creepily static and oddly tainted.
Much better to greet somebody you know by pretending to be The Terminator sent from the future to eradicate their existence, only to discover that they, in fact, have turned the tables on you for once and for all, and that you have to fight to maintain your grasp on the here and the now by eluding their invisible arsenal of destruction.
Makes the day go by quicker, is what I'm saying.
LIFE AND DEATH: THE NEW UNDERARM DEODERANT
The ruler I found lying around the large white plastic desk at work has Joy emblazoned across the side. The whiteboard marker I use to erase my messy scrawl is Valiant, or so it says. Inanimate objects have been christened harbingers of the finest human emotions, apparently.
I mean, c'mon. Who's kidding who here, right?
We're talking rulers. We're talking whiteboard erasers. If these puny, functional objects wield the greatest sensations known to man, then what hope is there for us, the rest of us, the human ones I mean?
It reminds me of a Jerry Seinfeld appearance on the Regis Philibin show a few years back. He was riffing as only Seinfeld can, talking about how he was eating LIFE cereal a few days back, wondering who the genius advertising execs were who named this particular product.
"I don't know," Seinfeld said. "If it were me, I would have called them 'Wheateos', or 'Toast-eos'. But somebody sat in a meeting and actually said: "No, this is bigger than that. This is life."
(It's, um, probably funnier when he does it. I swear.)
What's next, is what I'm asking. Pencils marked Ecstasy? Staples labeled Orgasmic? I can see it coming. (No, uh, pun intended.)
Everything has to be happy and bright and shiny and heroic. Things can't be just what they are, otherwise life would be revealed to be, well, mundane. Even difficult.
If we feel the need, as a species, to label office stationery with such superlative endorsements, life itself seems to become cheap and trival and somehow tainted.
In my opinion, anyway. It's all irrelevant anyway, I guess. Excuse me, but I've got to go eat a chocolate bar, Mars, named after a massive planet, a wonder of the universe. And read a magazine, Time, named after the unstoppable hunter that hunts us all. While slapping on a cologne, Eternity, a notion encompassing all the past and the future, but designed essentially for the purpose of making me stink less.
I mean, c'mon. Who's kidding who here, right?
We're talking rulers. We're talking whiteboard erasers. If these puny, functional objects wield the greatest sensations known to man, then what hope is there for us, the rest of us, the human ones I mean?
It reminds me of a Jerry Seinfeld appearance on the Regis Philibin show a few years back. He was riffing as only Seinfeld can, talking about how he was eating LIFE cereal a few days back, wondering who the genius advertising execs were who named this particular product.
"I don't know," Seinfeld said. "If it were me, I would have called them 'Wheateos', or 'Toast-eos'. But somebody sat in a meeting and actually said: "No, this is bigger than that. This is life."
(It's, um, probably funnier when he does it. I swear.)
What's next, is what I'm asking. Pencils marked Ecstasy? Staples labeled Orgasmic? I can see it coming. (No, uh, pun intended.)
Everything has to be happy and bright and shiny and heroic. Things can't be just what they are, otherwise life would be revealed to be, well, mundane. Even difficult.
If we feel the need, as a species, to label office stationery with such superlative endorsements, life itself seems to become cheap and trival and somehow tainted.
In my opinion, anyway. It's all irrelevant anyway, I guess. Excuse me, but I've got to go eat a chocolate bar, Mars, named after a massive planet, a wonder of the universe. And read a magazine, Time, named after the unstoppable hunter that hunts us all. While slapping on a cologne, Eternity, a notion encompassing all the past and the future, but designed essentially for the purpose of making me stink less.
Sunday, August 20, 2006
JUNIOR HIGH INDUSTRIAL ARTS AS THE NINTH LEVEL OF HELL
Tall, with slicked-back red hair, constantly clad in a white lab coat, Mr.Stapleford made morticians seem downright exuberant. Hell, undertakers were fucking riots compared to him. His movements were slow and deliberate, as if he were tired of life, or pacing himself towards some ultimate violent outburst, like the Terminator, but without the payoff of carnage. (Only the possibility of it.)
"This machine will not chop your finger off," he said. "It will slice it off. Slowly and painfully. And I don't want to clean up the blood."
Followed by a physical demonstration of a hunk of wood sliced (not chopped) by a swirling, whirling blade. And me, twelve years old, having recently been introduced to the blood-soaked words of King and Barker, Straub and Slade, suddenly confronted by my own potential for mayhem. Me, gulping, thinking: I'm now supposed to use this fucking thing? Thanks for the pep talk, teach. Mr.Chips ain't got nothing on you.
I've since seen first-hand Khmer Rouge killing fields and the ruins of Hiroshima, but nothing in life compares to the fear contained within the walls of my junior high Industrial Arts classroom. Everyone worked at their own pace, which usually meant that everyone else would move through steps one, two, three and four while I still struggled to somehow fit my plastic goggles over the bulky lenses of my Robocop glasses. (The cardboard kind used for 3-d movies were downright cozy in comparison to those protective lenses.) The ultimate end-result being, at the conclusion of one semester, a slew of barely begun projects littering my locker: blocks of misshapen wood, small slabs of ragged steel, never to be completed. Good-bye, metal box. Perhaps in another life I will make you mine.
I didn't actually give a shit about not completing the projects; I knew from the get-go in life that mastering carpentry would not be my ultimate destiny, that Bob Villa would never have anything to fear from me should we somehow, someday meet at high noon on a dusty street while tumbledweeds tumbled on by and the powerdrills in our hands began to pulse. No, what pissed me off was being made to feel like a spastic loser for not understanding how to operate a lousy lathe.
What saved me from failing the class -- both years -- were the tests. Tests, I could handle. I fucking hated them, yes, but I would study my ass off and end up almost acing (or at least passing) most of them.
Before each exam, good old Stapleford would slide giant wooden rectangles into pre-carved slots in our desks, so there was no conceivable way we could cheat. Jesus Christ! I remember thinking. This guy's a loony! What is this, Harvard? We're twelve-year old St.Catharines kids!
When handing back my first test, which I did quite well on, Stapleford held my eyes to his own, as if judging my competency and reliability, then said: "You were so incompetent with your projects that I was stunned to see you do as well as you did on this exam."
Was he waiting for me to admit to cheating? Was he hoping for a confession? I smiled a sheepish smile and took the paper and looked at the floor. I wanted to say: "How could I have cheated?What, do you think I burrowed a fucking hole into your dividers during the test? Is what you said supposed to be some kind of a compliment, you fucking prick?"
(And if you doubt that twelve-year old kids thought like that or spoke like that, then you must have forgotten what it was like to be twelve years old in the first place, in command of yourself and your language for the first time in your life. Willing to step outside of the parameters of enforced childhood etiquette into the liberating realms of vulgarity and scorn.)
But I survived. I didn't think I would but, I did, as most kids do. There were times during those days, lost in my own incompetence, when I would stare out the window at the freshly cut grass and deep blue sky and wonder when, or if, it would ever end. I didn't know that Toronto and Tokyo and Phnom Penh lay beyond the realms of those suburban streets. I couldn't have imagined it. All I had in front of me were projects that would be stillborn and mutant.
Eventually, it ended. Good-bye, wood chips. So long, metal box.
And now, whenever I feel the urge to criticize one of the Korean kids I'm teaching for some boneheaded error or another, I try to get myself to stop, and breathe, and chill. In their eyes, I may very well be their own version of Mr.Stapleford, white and foreign and speaking in a strange tongue only half-way comprehensible. I am big and they are small. They may remember my words, and those words might sting, even years later. And really: who gives a shit that they can't do this or that properly? They're kids, and it's our job to ease their passage into the tough and lonely years that lie ahead.
Memory lasts a long time. I'd rather they remember a pat on the back than a snide, snarky comment that can burn, even scar.
"This machine will not chop your finger off," he said. "It will slice it off. Slowly and painfully. And I don't want to clean up the blood."
Followed by a physical demonstration of a hunk of wood sliced (not chopped) by a swirling, whirling blade. And me, twelve years old, having recently been introduced to the blood-soaked words of King and Barker, Straub and Slade, suddenly confronted by my own potential for mayhem. Me, gulping, thinking: I'm now supposed to use this fucking thing? Thanks for the pep talk, teach. Mr.Chips ain't got nothing on you.
I've since seen first-hand Khmer Rouge killing fields and the ruins of Hiroshima, but nothing in life compares to the fear contained within the walls of my junior high Industrial Arts classroom. Everyone worked at their own pace, which usually meant that everyone else would move through steps one, two, three and four while I still struggled to somehow fit my plastic goggles over the bulky lenses of my Robocop glasses. (The cardboard kind used for 3-d movies were downright cozy in comparison to those protective lenses.) The ultimate end-result being, at the conclusion of one semester, a slew of barely begun projects littering my locker: blocks of misshapen wood, small slabs of ragged steel, never to be completed. Good-bye, metal box. Perhaps in another life I will make you mine.
I didn't actually give a shit about not completing the projects; I knew from the get-go in life that mastering carpentry would not be my ultimate destiny, that Bob Villa would never have anything to fear from me should we somehow, someday meet at high noon on a dusty street while tumbledweeds tumbled on by and the powerdrills in our hands began to pulse. No, what pissed me off was being made to feel like a spastic loser for not understanding how to operate a lousy lathe.
What saved me from failing the class -- both years -- were the tests. Tests, I could handle. I fucking hated them, yes, but I would study my ass off and end up almost acing (or at least passing) most of them.
Before each exam, good old Stapleford would slide giant wooden rectangles into pre-carved slots in our desks, so there was no conceivable way we could cheat. Jesus Christ! I remember thinking. This guy's a loony! What is this, Harvard? We're twelve-year old St.Catharines kids!
When handing back my first test, which I did quite well on, Stapleford held my eyes to his own, as if judging my competency and reliability, then said: "You were so incompetent with your projects that I was stunned to see you do as well as you did on this exam."
Was he waiting for me to admit to cheating? Was he hoping for a confession? I smiled a sheepish smile and took the paper and looked at the floor. I wanted to say: "How could I have cheated?What, do you think I burrowed a fucking hole into your dividers during the test? Is what you said supposed to be some kind of a compliment, you fucking prick?"
(And if you doubt that twelve-year old kids thought like that or spoke like that, then you must have forgotten what it was like to be twelve years old in the first place, in command of yourself and your language for the first time in your life. Willing to step outside of the parameters of enforced childhood etiquette into the liberating realms of vulgarity and scorn.)
But I survived. I didn't think I would but, I did, as most kids do. There were times during those days, lost in my own incompetence, when I would stare out the window at the freshly cut grass and deep blue sky and wonder when, or if, it would ever end. I didn't know that Toronto and Tokyo and Phnom Penh lay beyond the realms of those suburban streets. I couldn't have imagined it. All I had in front of me were projects that would be stillborn and mutant.
Eventually, it ended. Good-bye, wood chips. So long, metal box.
And now, whenever I feel the urge to criticize one of the Korean kids I'm teaching for some boneheaded error or another, I try to get myself to stop, and breathe, and chill. In their eyes, I may very well be their own version of Mr.Stapleford, white and foreign and speaking in a strange tongue only half-way comprehensible. I am big and they are small. They may remember my words, and those words might sting, even years later. And really: who gives a shit that they can't do this or that properly? They're kids, and it's our job to ease their passage into the tough and lonely years that lie ahead.
Memory lasts a long time. I'd rather they remember a pat on the back than a snide, snarky comment that can burn, even scar.
Thursday, August 17, 2006
A MYSTERY SOLVED? (MAYBE...)
I'm flat-out fucking floored by the fact that a suspect has been arrested in Thailand in the murder of child beauty-queen Jon Benet Ramsey.
Why the shock?
Because last year (as I recorded in this blog), I became slightly obsessed with the decade-old Ramsey case, after reading a wonderful book that convinced me, big-time, that the killer of the kid was her mother, Patsey Ramsey, who recently passed away from cancer.
After researching the case, pondering the evidence, weighing the probabilities, I was convinced that the mother, in a fit of rage, accidentally killed her daughter -- and that the husband then helped her cover it up.
Now, this new news shakes everything up.
I thought I was quite the amateur sleuth. I thought I'd figured it out. I thought the book was closed and that a murderer had passed away without serving justice.
Damn, I guess I don't know everything after all.
Let's just say I'll be following the upcoming developments pretty darn closely.
(And I still think she did it...)
Why the shock?
Because last year (as I recorded in this blog), I became slightly obsessed with the decade-old Ramsey case, after reading a wonderful book that convinced me, big-time, that the killer of the kid was her mother, Patsey Ramsey, who recently passed away from cancer.
After researching the case, pondering the evidence, weighing the probabilities, I was convinced that the mother, in a fit of rage, accidentally killed her daughter -- and that the husband then helped her cover it up.
Now, this new news shakes everything up.
I thought I was quite the amateur sleuth. I thought I'd figured it out. I thought the book was closed and that a murderer had passed away without serving justice.
Damn, I guess I don't know everything after all.
Let's just say I'll be following the upcoming developments pretty darn closely.
(And I still think she did it...)
Sunday, August 13, 2006
A BRAVE NEW WORLD; JOHN D.MACDONALD; THE OPPOSITE OF AMBIDEXTROUS?
You know you've entered a brave new world when your departing student -- Korean, good-natured, always smiling -- chooses as a memento of your class a video taken of you wishing him good-luck, a video taken on his motherfucking dictionary.
Me, I used to settle for a handshake. Wait. That's a lie. Usually I didn't say anything to my departing teachers; after all, the door was open, summer break was near -- who had time for such adult pleasantries? But my students, some of them, were here for only two weeks, and I am a foreigner, and who knows when they'll get to shoot the shit with one of those exotic creatures again anytime soon?
So, my student pointed his electronic dictionary at me, told me to say a few words, then videotaped my good wishes to his heart's delight -- and to my rather low-key astonishment. I watched myself played back for our mutual amusement on the tiny monitor, the picture stilted but clear, the sound muffled but adequate.
I shouldn't have been so surprised. I taught in Japan for four years, and have been teaching Koreans for almost a year, and they always bring to class gidgets and gadgets that will hit western shores in five, six years time. Let's make it seven. I think Canada and America are probably about seven years behind, electronically, the best that Japan and Korea have to offer. (One of my former students, an elderly gentlemen in Japan who used to be head of Research and Development for Toshiba, told me that his company was working on DVD technology back in '85 -- right when video was just hitting its stride.)
Earlier this year my student asked me: "What's the English word for turning on your microwave with your cellphone?"
"Good question," I said. (Thinking: What the fuck?) "We don't have an English word for that function, because our cellphones don't do that."
But they sure as hell do in Korea and Japan. You can buy a Coke with your cellphone -- just hold your phone up to the vending machine, and, via the magic of pre-paid cards, you can guzzle to your heart's delight. You can order movie tickets. Register for lotteries. Check train schedules. And don't even get me started on what you can do in convenience stores.
And who knows what's in store for us? I saw a piece on the news about an event that happened in Hong Kong a little while back, where a rather heated argument broke out between a younger man and an older man on a subway. The older man berated his junior antagonist with vigor and energy. A fellow passenger videotaped the confrontation on his phone. Posted it on the web. The video spread. Within a few days the old guy's outburst was being used as a ringtone for cellphones all across Hong Kong.
So one minute you could be shouting at an asshole, or have him shout at you, and the next your voice would be used to serve as the wake-up call to sleepy commuters across China. Mama mia.
Living in Cambodia, and in some sense the Philippines, has been a good reality check, though. As far behind as Canada and America are, there are other countries even further back. (Not that this lack of progress is a good thing. But it does show that you can still function and glide through life without being constantly inundated by the latest, gotta-have-it technology.)
And as Bogie knew so well, the fundamental things apply as time goes by. A video camera in your electronic dictionary won't make your English any better, I don't think.
It could, however, be just cool enough to impress your old-fogey of an English teacher. That's gotta carry some street cred back in Seoul.
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I first encountered author John D. Macdonald through his introduction to Stephen King's short-story collection Night Shift back in junior high school, and for many years, decades, in fact, that was where my involvement with Mr.Macdonald started and finished. I kept going back to that introduction, which commended King for his style and his sense of story, and which also served as a subtle lesson in how to write well. He was an intensely prolific writer of paperback originals, crime books, mostly (though not exclusively), and for some reason or another his own works eluded me; mostly because a lot of them were out of print, I suppose.
Recently, though, through the magic of astonishingly cheap used book-shops here in Baguio, I've been able to pick up a dozen or so of his paperbacks from the 1950's and 60's and 70's at less than twenty, thirty cents a pop. The original, tattered paperbacks. Speaking from the past. Rugged and well-read. Hinting at the humanity and insights to be found within their tales of crooked men and desperate women.
And you know what? Big surprise. The man is good. Real good.
There's something about crime fiction I especially like -- its lack of pretension and snobbery. The story in crime fiction exists to move. The book exists to tell us about something bad that happened to this particular set of people, and because the focus is on the story, the subtext, the human emotions, the lessons learned, are allowed to hover below the surface instead of announcing their importance at every opportunity, as the worst of 'literary' fiction so often does.
Macdonald was most famous for his private-eye series of Travis McGee series, but his first hardcover bestseller, Condominium, is an excellent read, humane and true. One condominium complex in Florida in the late seventies. The sad and lonely lives of its inhabitants. A hurricane on the way. You can do the math. A metaphor for life itself, some might say, all of us living together, foolishly making our way through our lonely little lives, aware that we're perched precariously on the edge of disaster, but living anyway, the best that we can. Until the calamity starts, and we're all washed away.
A powerful, thoughtful book that glides along effortlessly. (Of course, the most effortless books are usually the ones that were the hardest to write. To look effortless takes a lot of effort.)
It's always nice, at a later age, to discover writers who speak to you. It's as if they've been waiting there all along -- on the rack, behind the shelf -- wondering when you would find them.
And when you find them, all you have to do is open up.
***********************************************************************************
What's the opposite of ambidextrous? Monodextrous?
I'm not sure. It sounds like it would be lonely -- to be the opposite of something as agile as
'ambidextrous'. If you can use both hands to do anything, it gives you a sense of power and grace. If you can only use the one, I would imagine that would make you feel somewhat inferior. But that can't be the case, because most people aren't ambidextrous, right? Most people use the hand they're good at to cut with scissors, hold their cups, change the channel. (Me, I'm a lefty; my right hand is pretty much confined to typing.)
Do ambidextrous people secretly sneer at the rest of us? Do they look at the consistency with which we use only one hand and roll their eyes at how underdeveloped we are as humans? Do they wait for the human race to evolve so that, eventually, all of us, united, brethren, separated no more, will rule the earth with both hands as our humble and hungry servants, obedient to our ferocious, ravenous, insatiable will?
I'm just asking.
Me, I used to settle for a handshake. Wait. That's a lie. Usually I didn't say anything to my departing teachers; after all, the door was open, summer break was near -- who had time for such adult pleasantries? But my students, some of them, were here for only two weeks, and I am a foreigner, and who knows when they'll get to shoot the shit with one of those exotic creatures again anytime soon?
So, my student pointed his electronic dictionary at me, told me to say a few words, then videotaped my good wishes to his heart's delight -- and to my rather low-key astonishment. I watched myself played back for our mutual amusement on the tiny monitor, the picture stilted but clear, the sound muffled but adequate.
I shouldn't have been so surprised. I taught in Japan for four years, and have been teaching Koreans for almost a year, and they always bring to class gidgets and gadgets that will hit western shores in five, six years time. Let's make it seven. I think Canada and America are probably about seven years behind, electronically, the best that Japan and Korea have to offer. (One of my former students, an elderly gentlemen in Japan who used to be head of Research and Development for Toshiba, told me that his company was working on DVD technology back in '85 -- right when video was just hitting its stride.)
Earlier this year my student asked me: "What's the English word for turning on your microwave with your cellphone?"
"Good question," I said. (Thinking: What the fuck?) "We don't have an English word for that function, because our cellphones don't do that."
But they sure as hell do in Korea and Japan. You can buy a Coke with your cellphone -- just hold your phone up to the vending machine, and, via the magic of pre-paid cards, you can guzzle to your heart's delight. You can order movie tickets. Register for lotteries. Check train schedules. And don't even get me started on what you can do in convenience stores.
And who knows what's in store for us? I saw a piece on the news about an event that happened in Hong Kong a little while back, where a rather heated argument broke out between a younger man and an older man on a subway. The older man berated his junior antagonist with vigor and energy. A fellow passenger videotaped the confrontation on his phone. Posted it on the web. The video spread. Within a few days the old guy's outburst was being used as a ringtone for cellphones all across Hong Kong.
So one minute you could be shouting at an asshole, or have him shout at you, and the next your voice would be used to serve as the wake-up call to sleepy commuters across China. Mama mia.
Living in Cambodia, and in some sense the Philippines, has been a good reality check, though. As far behind as Canada and America are, there are other countries even further back. (Not that this lack of progress is a good thing. But it does show that you can still function and glide through life without being constantly inundated by the latest, gotta-have-it technology.)
And as Bogie knew so well, the fundamental things apply as time goes by. A video camera in your electronic dictionary won't make your English any better, I don't think.
It could, however, be just cool enough to impress your old-fogey of an English teacher. That's gotta carry some street cred back in Seoul.
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I first encountered author John D. Macdonald through his introduction to Stephen King's short-story collection Night Shift back in junior high school, and for many years, decades, in fact, that was where my involvement with Mr.Macdonald started and finished. I kept going back to that introduction, which commended King for his style and his sense of story, and which also served as a subtle lesson in how to write well. He was an intensely prolific writer of paperback originals, crime books, mostly (though not exclusively), and for some reason or another his own works eluded me; mostly because a lot of them were out of print, I suppose.
Recently, though, through the magic of astonishingly cheap used book-shops here in Baguio, I've been able to pick up a dozen or so of his paperbacks from the 1950's and 60's and 70's at less than twenty, thirty cents a pop. The original, tattered paperbacks. Speaking from the past. Rugged and well-read. Hinting at the humanity and insights to be found within their tales of crooked men and desperate women.
And you know what? Big surprise. The man is good. Real good.
There's something about crime fiction I especially like -- its lack of pretension and snobbery. The story in crime fiction exists to move. The book exists to tell us about something bad that happened to this particular set of people, and because the focus is on the story, the subtext, the human emotions, the lessons learned, are allowed to hover below the surface instead of announcing their importance at every opportunity, as the worst of 'literary' fiction so often does.
Macdonald was most famous for his private-eye series of Travis McGee series, but his first hardcover bestseller, Condominium, is an excellent read, humane and true. One condominium complex in Florida in the late seventies. The sad and lonely lives of its inhabitants. A hurricane on the way. You can do the math. A metaphor for life itself, some might say, all of us living together, foolishly making our way through our lonely little lives, aware that we're perched precariously on the edge of disaster, but living anyway, the best that we can. Until the calamity starts, and we're all washed away.
A powerful, thoughtful book that glides along effortlessly. (Of course, the most effortless books are usually the ones that were the hardest to write. To look effortless takes a lot of effort.)
It's always nice, at a later age, to discover writers who speak to you. It's as if they've been waiting there all along -- on the rack, behind the shelf -- wondering when you would find them.
And when you find them, all you have to do is open up.
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What's the opposite of ambidextrous? Monodextrous?
I'm not sure. It sounds like it would be lonely -- to be the opposite of something as agile as
'ambidextrous'. If you can use both hands to do anything, it gives you a sense of power and grace. If you can only use the one, I would imagine that would make you feel somewhat inferior. But that can't be the case, because most people aren't ambidextrous, right? Most people use the hand they're good at to cut with scissors, hold their cups, change the channel. (Me, I'm a lefty; my right hand is pretty much confined to typing.)
Do ambidextrous people secretly sneer at the rest of us? Do they look at the consistency with which we use only one hand and roll their eyes at how underdeveloped we are as humans? Do they wait for the human race to evolve so that, eventually, all of us, united, brethren, separated no more, will rule the earth with both hands as our humble and hungry servants, obedient to our ferocious, ravenous, insatiable will?
I'm just asking.
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