Breakfast with Pandora

Word of the day: quirkmuffin

 By way of the blog "Dealbreakers," which is a grown-up and very funny take on what makes  people "undateable," this post on a word I'd never heard before and which-- today, at least-- came up with only  646 hits on Google.

Pancakes with Pandora.

A quirkmuffin, apparently, is that "adorable female lead from your favorite quirky movie" (such as Natalie Portman or Zooey Deschanel) who would be an obnoxious maniac in real life.

Also an ENFP.

By the way, hands down Natalie Portman's best (really rough and grown-up) role was in Cold Mountain.

Thanks to Drew for the Dealbreaker link.

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Also, watch this trailer and, if you are in your thirties or forties, try to resist going to see this movie. Hint: Tina Fey and Steve Carell. Sad that we have to wait till April to resist fully.

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Finally, there must be some of you out there who like The Freshman, the 1990 film with Matthew Broderick and Marlon Brando. On IMDb.com, it only garners a 6.4 rating. How can this be? It's one of my favorites. Let me know your rating.

My stroll down nostalgia lane was courtesy Netflix, where I currently have a two-week trial. I discovered that I can watch some movies instantly on my computer, and this holiday weekend it's been The Freshman and Bottle Shock. What do I have to say about Bottle Shock, the movie about the 1976 blind tasting between California and French wines that California won? They really worked hard to make the female lead look like Jane Fonda, which was fun to see. Otherwise, it was pretty unwatchable.

BTW, it got a 6.8 on IMDb. What is the world coming to?

The appeal of vampires

By way of elegant blogger Rebecca Clay Haynes, this question: "What accounts for the enduring appeal of vampires?"

She asked this question on her Facebook page, and, among several comments, attracted this Iron John-style assessment:

 The more divorced we get from our primal, pagan, animal, dark, shadow side, the more "civilized", the more "in our head", "out of touch with our bodies", "sexually repressed", etc., etc., the more appealing is the mythology of an external, evil, amoral, blood-sucking, primal being drawn to us, to enter us, fang first.

This may have been true from about 1946 to about 1963, but I don't think anyone can argue that we are out of touch with our bodies or sexually repressed today. We are among the most puritanical and yet sexualized societies ever to hit the earth. You can't escape sexual imagery, language, politics, or anything else sexual if you are in any way a consumer of popular culture. I'm pretty sure we are in touch with our primal-- selfish, fearful, pleasure-seeking, survival-oriented-- selves. We have never not been, some folks' mid-twentieth century desire to the contrary notwithstanding.

I am an interpreter of particular stories in particular contexts, and for this phenomenon I very much consider the target audience.

For the Twilight series of books which is currently holding the attention mostly of young girls and women-- and some of their mothers-- the appeal has nothing to do with vampires, and everything to do with the classic (American?) female desire for the bad boy. Here also you get the double whammy of a bad boy, Edward, who is actually chivalrous and honorable, which is a lethal (so to speak) combination for romantically-inclined girls and women.

But there is also the component of blood. For adolescent girls who are just getting familiar with the reality that blood will be in their lives on a monthly basis-- and that there will be a relationship between that and sexuality and childbearing-- I could see an erotic fascination with vampires.

In the trailer for New Moon, for example, the central scene is the one in which the heroine Bella cuts her finger, and a vampire goes crazy over the droplets of blood that come out. I have the impression that many girls would appreciate a story in which men are more attracted than repulsed when women bleed.

In this context, the title "New Moon" makes complete sense. 

As to the more universal appeal of vampires-- I don't know that there is one. Many international stories are mirrors, reflecting back the tensions and ambiguities with which an individual or culture dominantly identifies. I did a quick search of scholarly literature and found, for example, that the original Dracula by Bram Stoker may have addressed the colonial British fear of interracial marriage. 

BTW, I have not seen New Moon yet, though one man at least has. The two young ladies in my life did so on opening weekend, and both pronounced it good. When I asked my thirteen-year old if she liked Taylor Lautner, the werewolf character with the bare chest, she clammed up. Nary a smile. "Your silence speaks volumes," Dad said. Later on she allowed as to how he might have been somewhat attractive. She always did want a dog around the house.

This blogger is a saint

If you like dark, grown-up juvenile humor, smart-aleck attitudes, curiosity, silliness, words, and things that make you waste your time and keep clicking, check out this blog. You've got to love a blogger with "kidicarus222" in the URL. Large amounts of fun content for free. The Internet is amazing.

Tiramisu for you, Drew.

Samhain and the saints

The other night, the assistant priest at the church where I've worshiped for 20 years came over to the house to host a teenage hero event for the youth group my son attends. I provided chili-- Dad's-- coleslaw, salad, and bread, and she provided the devotion.

As the hosting parent, I felt as if I should be in the background, so instead of sitting with them, I eavesdropped, and waited for the time to pick up my daughter from her dance class.

I don't remember much from the devotion, but I do remember that the priest mentioned Samhain, Celtic New Year, which is the origin of Hallowe'en and a time, during the transition between old and new, when there is a fracture in the fabric of things, and entities from the other world may pass into ours for a time.

Except that the priest pronounced it as it is spelled, Sam-hane, and as far as I know it is not pronounced that way. I thought it was pronounced Sow-een, but according to this site it is pronounced shavnah.

This does not surprise me from a language where the  name Cuchalain is not pronounced Coo-chuh-lane but Cuh-hullen.

In previous years I may have gone up to the assistant priest afterwards and discussed the situation. I have always been a hands-on churchgoer. But this year I felt no pressing need. I have for various reasons moved on from that beloved place to a new beloved place, and with a new beloved. It is good to be worshipping with her there.

Last year at this time, I wrote "I'm optimistic, on this night when traditionally we move from one year to the next. I'm optimistic because we are also moving from one president to the next, and I do feel as if we have a chance to be better."

2009 has been better-- for me personally, for sure, and I hope for my readers and the nation. I know that we have a lot of challenges.

I have always struggled with pessimism, so I was a little surprised that I used that word optimism, especially in such a dark year. But my intuition must have been working that evening I posted.

Americans are optimistic people, and they tell optimistic stories. Apparently, according to Barbara Ehrenreich, we are too optimistic. But I'm okay with it. I'm getting better at accepting optimism. I think my faith suggests it. I'm ready to try something new.

In my house I have an icon of Saint John Chrysostom, the patron saint of teachers and preachers. He is a companion on the way, a daily reminder of my need and privilege to accept from and give love to the saints of God-- human beings around me, about me, behind me, and ahead of me, who are made in God's image. John is an icon of optimism, just as All Saint's Day, November 1, is a Christian response to the uncertainty and anxiety of transitions.

May this morning find us optimistic and with the saints we love.

"We did it for a story"

Here at Breakfast with Pandora, we are in the business of calling attention to the power of stories. And this week we had a doozy.

Didn't you hear? my beloved asked me. About the boy in the balloon?

No, I didn't hear. I have been working hard this fall, and coming home exhausted. Some days I do not home in immediately on the latest micromyth to hit CNN and the other virtual rhapsodes we have going these days.

Most readers have probably heard about it too much: how a 36-pound 6-year old boy somehow found his way into the cargo area of a silvery, flying saucer-shaped hot-air balloon, and flew away.

Or didn't.

After the authorities were alerted, TV cameras began filming the hypnotic flight of the balloon, and a nation waited, holding its breath, it turned out that the 6-year old had been hiding in the rafters of his home's garage all that time.

Oh, joy, we thought. The boy is safe. Then, just as quickly: could this have been a hoax, a publicity stunt?

It could have, especially after the 6-year old famously said during an interview that the reason he didn't come down from the rafters-- he'd gone there because his father yelled at him and he was scared-- was because "You guys said we did it for a story."

I was inclined to believe the child, because I only tried once to get one of my children to keep a secret when she was that age. That lasted for about 30 seconds. And there is no reason for a guileless 6-year old to make up the idea that the family manufactured the whole thing.

And now it turns out that the whole thing was indeed a hoax. The cargo bay of the balloon couldn't even have held the 36 pounds that the boy weighed.

I'm still interested, however, in the original narrative, the original fiction, that captivated the nation. What made it so thrilling? I'm sure there was something very thrilling about the idea of a child perhaps squashed to pulp if something went wrong and he fell out of the balloon, or if the balloon suddenly lost buoyancy and crashed to earth from a thousand feet up. That is the dark side of our fascination with stories.

On the other hand, we do like stories of rescue, victory, resurrection, and redemption. Those who are of a certain age and vintage might remember the story of the two-year old child who fell down a well and really did get rescued.

I will say, however, that the most fascinating part of the story for me was not whether the boy was in the balloon, but the balloon itself. The silvery, puffy material shimmered in the afternoon light. The camera focused on the center of the balloon as it swirled and rotated. It was an hypnotic motion. It seemed to fly so fast, over constantly changing terrain. To me, it was almost like we were, indeed, seeing a flying saucer.

Under what do we put this element of story-- the visual? Aristotle said that spectacle in tragic drama was the least important part of it. But this time, for me, it was right up there.

Further thoughts on Jill McCorkle's Going Away Shoes

Jill McCorkle's Going Away Shoes was a challenge and a revelation to review. Contemporary short stories have seldom floated my boat, and this one was mostly about women and relationships, which is not my most favorite topic.

Photo: Carolina Beach, NC.

Still, McCorkle did a great job with a genre that bestselling authors Daniel Wallace and Allen Gurganus, at the recent North Carolina Literary Festival, agreed was tough to get right, much tougher than a novel.

I was impressed by McCorkle's ability to coax originality out of characters and situations that are very, very familiar. The crucial paragraph in the review was supposed to go like this:

It is not just that McCorkle takes something old and makes it new-- it's that all her stories retain their ordinary-ness while simultaneously brimming with her unique moral imagination. New wine that makes old bottles stronger.

My editor changed the strange and idiotic coinage "ordinary-ness" to "originality":

It is not just that McCorkle takes something old and makes it new -- it's that all her stories retain their originality while brimming with her moral imagination: new wine that makes old bottles stronger.

I wish something like "ordinary-ness" could have stayed in the review. Most of the stories in Going Away Shoes are ordinary on one level. You've got a lot of women reflecting on stuff that's gone bad in their lives. This is common grist.

But the execution of the stories hooked me. There's a richness that you can't explain in a review and you can't read if you're just skimming.

I was particularly haunted by the title story, about a woman who longs to leave the responsibility of caring for her dying mother.

The heroine, Debby Tyler, sees herself as Prometheus, the god who is chained to a rock for his sins, and who has his liver pecked out every day by an eagle sent from Zeus.

Just when she got her liver plump and healthy again, the eagle descended to peck on it. The eagle with piercingly dramatic mascaraed eyes and talons done perfectly in Revlon's Rich Girl Red. Dear God, next time I have a whole liver, please break the chains and let me catch a Greyhound the f*** out of here.

Prometheus does get free, finally. Hercules wanders by and undoes his chains, and since H. is the son of Zeus, Zeus doesn't mind.

But by the end of "Going Away Shoes,"

[Debby] is Sisyphus. All day long she pushes that rock, and when she is almost to the top, something happens to distract her, and it all rolls back to the very place the journey began.

There is no cheap grace here, no temptation to extricate the heroine from the family hell that traps her so completely.

I've done a bit of living now and I understand this idea of not being able to break free from one's patterns. I also understand the difference between being a Prometheus, a person who suffers but finds a way out of suffering, and a Sisyphus, a person who never does get out of that well-worn groove, and maybe on some level is incapable of truly wanting to.

When I was young and much more romantically tragic, I really hated modern short stories. As a teenager I'd bought a used copy of O. Henry's The Four Million, and I loved "The Gift of the Magi" and all the other perfect creations he tied up in a bow with perfect endings. I also read Hemingway's The Snows of Kilimanjaro, and thought he'd done such a fantastic job with "Hills Like White Elephants" and the rest.

But when I got into college and started reading contemporary stuff, I was disillusioned. Most of the stories I read in the Atlantic and the New Yorker seemed to be about young women throwing up in the bathroom at a party because their boyfriends were horrible to them. My peers were writing stories about killing wounded kittens with shovels. Another was about an old woman lying on the floor with a broken hip after she'd tried to change an overhead light bulb. Gaah.

I have now come full circle. I have found a modern short story collection that I like, and it's about women and relationships. There are no dead kittens in it, and no conspicuous throwing up.

Change is possible.

The Aeneid Meme: Casting your favorite Roman epic

(This is a meme, so consider yourself tagged [this means you, Michael Leddy]-- and skip to the bottom if you want to avoid the preliminaries.)

Image: The Roman national epic in Victorian art.

An eon ago, before that Troy thing with Brad Pitt, there was a made-for-TV Hallmark Hall of Fame mini-series that dramatized the Odyssey.

Remember it? The one with Armand Assante as Odysseus, Bernadette Peters as Circe, Vanessa Williams as Calypso, and Greta Scacchi as Penelope? Anyone? Anyone?

Turns out that was back in 1997. Goodness, how time flies.

Back then, mythology geek that I was, and much younger and more idealistic, I decided to have an ancient Greek mythology neighborhood experience with it.

I invited everyone on our cul-de-sac to come see it on our TV, but with a twist: I determined to take the TV outdoors, sit it on a box on the street, and spread out blankets on the grassy slope of our lawn. My scheme was to recreate the ancient Greek practice of outdoor entertainment, making a kind of electronic Theater of Dionysus.

Idea guy that I was, I didn't care how I was going to acquire and spool 50 feet of extension cord and cable out to where the TV was to be perched. But we finally managed it, with much long-suffering from then-spouse, and some neighbors consented to indulge my fantasy.

It was a great scheme, but the experience was a bust. The movie was long, full of commercials, and stupid. Assante was a stiff, and they messed up a great story that was already a screenplay almost as it had been originally written. Plus, at the end of the 3 hours or whatever, we were only halfway through the two-day Event.

My neighbors politely declined my invitation to come back the next night. They were already mosquito-bitten enough, and had earned several cups of sugar and other favors in plenty.

Several years later, with Troy, big Hollywood messed up the Iliad. Now there is only one great ancient epic to go: the Aeneid.

The Aeneid is a downer, so they will have to do a lot of fixing of it if they want to make it palatable to American audiences. But it is also the national epic of Rome, which gives it a great hook.

Aeneas, the national hero of Rome, is your basic Trojan hero minding his own business during the Trojan War, when the Greeks use the Trojan Horse to penetrate his city and destroy it.

Conflict. Violence. Screaming. Fire. Think Troy, but without that confusing ankle thing.

Aeneas has to flee, though he'd rather die fighting. Much to his chagrin, the gods have designated him as the father of the Roman people.

Aeneas and his ragtag band of followers-- an idea stolen from Battlestar Galactica-- go on a long mission to find their new home. Along the way, Queen Dido pops up as a love interest for Aeneas. Another tragedy ensues, as it is impossible for her and Aeneas to be together. Dido ends up with a white flag upon her door.

Finally Aeneas and company come to Italy, where more conflict awaits Aeneas, and a villain-- the Italian superstar warrior Turnus. In the poem, this ends tragically as well, since Turnus ends up not being such a bad guy after all. But Hollywood can get him a Black Stetson and everything will be fine.

Now, with all this going on, there's got to be about 12 optioned screenplays going around So Cal waiting for the right investors.

So let's get a jump on the competition. Who do you want to see in the prime roles of this blockbuster epic? 

Aeneas... the reluctant hero... a family man, a single father, good with a sword when he has to be, but much more interested in peace.

Dido... exotic Carthaginian queen... a widow forced into the executive position by the death of her husband... a great leader, noble city-builder who falls tragically for a man she can never have.

Turnus... young Italian hothead... angry at this newcomer who has stolen his bride-to-be, Lavinia, because of some cockeyed prophecy...  monstrously talented at the art of war, but young-- so young...

Supporting characters:

Anchises... Aeneas' father... an inspiration to Aeneas, and a source of great sorrow... he dies before the proto-Romans come to Italy, but Aeneas meets him in the underworld, where he tells his son about the coming greatness of Rome...

Ascanius/Iulus... Aeneas' son... a cute little kid who grows up throughout the years of the story... by the end, he is a young man himself...

Lavinia... the daughter of King Latinus, the intended of Turnus, who is given to Aeneas after a prophecy tells Latinus that she should be wed to a stranger who comes from overseas... She should be pretty and young, but keep in mind she has no lines...

The Olympians... How do we handle them... yes, they are characters in the epic, especially the jealous Juno, who holds a vicious grudge against the Trojans...

Have at it! Tell the world who you'd like in these roles. And add other roles from the story (e.g., Anna, the lady standing in the painting above) as you see fit.

In a world...

NC Literary Festival: the uses of fiction

Question: why sit inside a lecture hall during a perfectly lovely day off and listen to people read from and talk about their writing instead of going outside and playing softball?

Photo: a perfectly lovely day in Greece.

Answer: when you've got a chance for a wonderful reunion with some old and dear writing friends (hi Bob, Lyn, and Frankie!).

Bob provided  companionship, commentary and feedback as we listened to writers hold forth on their craft and celebrate their successes. A highlight was Ron Rash and Lee Smith, who are engaging and extremely talented. Rash's Serena is a firecracker, and Smith's new set of short stories sounded like a winner.

But Pulitzer Prize-winning Elizabeth Strout provided me the most food for thought in her keynote address last night. She is the latest thing, a favorite of Oprah, and had an adoring crowd eating out of her hand as she read from Olive Kittredge, a set of linked short stories that had heretofore flown under my radar.

Strout came out on stage looking like an aging starlet who'd spent the last month at the beach. Darkly tan, she'd twisted her blonde hair, shining like new straw, into something resembling a do. She had on a ruffled white blouse and oversized black slacks, and everything about her was fashionably rough, wrinkled, and disheveled. Her only concession to writerly appearance was her thick-framed black glasses, which were absolutely the height of chic. Kate Hepburn comes to Chapel Hill after a stay on Bald Head Island.

Like many writers who are basking in the glow, she seemed happy and perfectly at ease in front of the packed house, and fielded questions such as whether her characters took on a life of their own and told her things. "I'm pretty sure I'm making my characters say things," Strout said, eyebrow raised.

The main event for me was Strout's take on the importance of fiction-- that is, well-written stories on a page, electronic or not. You'd think that this would be obvious, but it isn't anymore, what with everyone crazy for reality shows, video games, and anything other than a book.

She began by pointing out how whenever people come out of the subway or their plane has landed, they immediately call someone on their cell phones. "I'm here, I exist," is what people want to tell someone. Everyone is craving connection, a sense that they matter, that they are not alone.

Fiction, Strout says, helps people to locate themselves in the world. Whenever a reader identifies with a character in a story, it creates a connection, community, and a sense that the reader matters, regardless of who and where they are.

I have been attempting throughout my career on writing about mythology to point this out, especially in my online course on Greek mythology. Good stories make people connect and cohere.

Now, I have focused mainly on the tribal aspects of good stories. I define mythology as a set of good stories that are good for a particular culture. Each culture tells its own stories as a way of setting itself apart from others, of creating and maintaining its character, its ethos. A culture's myths do not necessarily translate to other parts of the world. In other words, I do not subscribe to the idea of the archetype-- the notion that characters and stories are basically the same the world over.

"So are there no universal stories?" Bob asked me as we walked back to the parking lot in the late summer sun.

"Maybe, but that wouldn't be myth," I said. "That would be..."

I paused. What would it be?

"That would be fiction," I finally decided.

And I realized that like Elizabeth Strout, I did feel that the role of the author, the novelist, the short story writer, was very important to the world.

Anytime an author attempts to connect us as human beings, rather than as members of a tribe, that, to me, is an act of love. It is so easy for us to sort ourselves into groups, into us versus them. I think it's perfectly natural.

What's difficult is to reach out to other groups and acknowledge what makes us the same.

Fiction has other benefits, too, that Strout did not mention. Maybe the most important is depth and thoughtfulness. In myth, you are looking to have people say yes to your world view as quickly as possible and over and over again. With fiction, an author is trying to say that things are complicated, messy, and take time to resolve-- if they can be resolved.

This messy aspect of fiction is probably a significant reason why, in our nanosecond culture, no one wants to read books anymore.

Maybe all of this is just a snobby and underhanded way of saying that High Literature ("fiction") is better than Popular and Pulp Junk ("myth").

If it is, that's okay with me. I do like both myth and fiction, as I've defined them here (or myth and author, as I suggest elsewhere). But I salute those who are writing that definition of fiction. It's a losing battle for us to try to find our humanity rather than our tribalness. Still, it's worth it.

Hymn for this day

All My Hope on God Is Founded

Pride of man and earthly glory
Sword and crown betray his trust
With what care and toil he buildeth
Tower and temple fall to dust
But God's power, hour by hour
Is my temple and my tower.

Full text here.

Labor Day weekend movie notes, II: The Natural

There are a few movies I watch over and over again: Defending Your Life, when I need a boost of encouragement; Vertigo, when I'm nostalgic for the old San Francisco; When Harry Met Sally, when I need to be guaranteed a laugh; The Princess Bride, when I need to quote along some funny lines; Sideways, when I need to be reminded I am not as bad off as some people.

Movie poster from here.

Another one of these movies is The Natural, the self-consciously mythological baseball movie by one of my favorite directors, Barry Levinson, with one of the best performances Robert Redford has ever given. It tells the story of the ultimate underdog, Roy Hobbs, a 35-year old rookie who once had the chance to be "the best there ever was" but now just wants to get a piece of his dream 16 years after a near-fatal moral error.

Back when I had ambitions of publishing a scholarly book on Greek mythology and American cinema, I wrote a 6000-word chapter comparing the movie with Pindar's Fourth Pythian Ode, which is an extended telling of the myth of Jason and the quest for the Golden Fleece.

I liked the idea of Roy Hobbs as Jason, his teammates as the Argonauts, and the Golden Fleece as the championship of the league, which is symbolized by a "bit of cloth," the pennant.

Over the weekend I popped this one into my VCR because there were no decent sports on television, and did a little pleasure research with it. Apparently Barry Levinson used Arthurian legend as a template for the story, which he adapted from the much darker-- and brilliant-- Bernard Malamud novel. But now I read that on a DVD extra feature someone is comparing the movie to the Odyssey.

The movie is Arthurian because the team Roy Hobbs plays for is the New York "Knights." And it is Odyssean because of the character of Iris Gaines (Glenn Close, a smashing cast), Roy's long-lost faithful Penelope who hasn't seen him for 16 years.

But I shouldn't go on with these pedestrian insights. My 6000-word chapter is absolutely the last word.

<grin>

Well. It's been nine years since I wrote that chapter. Let me excerpt something from it, the poor thing:

There is nothing more entertaining than a good sports story. An exciting finish, unlikely turns of momentum, all of these get our blood racing. But to be good, that kind of story must also have a moral dimension. We must be able to root honestly for an individual or a team. It seems that we consider victory satisfying only when the worthy person or team achieves it. And in the stories we've just considered, it seems that the worthy person must be someone tied intimately to the family, to the things of civilization. If all these ingredients are present, it almost obligates the storyteller to cast his tale in a positive light.

It was a first draft.

Nine years later, I think of The Natural in a more postmodern light, as a story told by a certain author in a certain time. The mythological elements-- which include lightning bolts, special bats (swords, to bring back Arthur for a sec), the death of the father, the unknown son who comes to light, the good woman and the bad woman, good and evil generally, the quest, the moral error, the death and three-day wait for the resurrection moment, the fireworks, the redemption (just to name a few things)-- are put in there on purpose, partly as a way of telling a good story, but mostly as an affectionate tribute to those elements and to the sweetness of American mythology overall.

American cinematic mythology is what I really mean, and that post-Depression, I think. We got addicted to stories with happy endings during that prolonged economic tragedy, and we never got off of them. Barry Levinson is acknowledging that in The Natural.

I finally realized that The Natural wasn't going to be mythology for others as it is for me when one recent academic year I showed the clip of the climactic scene to a bunch of teenage heroes. It is, for me, a baseball and mythology fan, one of the greatest moments in cinematic history. To them, it was a random bit of celluloid without context or interest.

No one in the class had seen the movie, and not very many were interested in baseball. I think if they were to see the entire movie, it might move some of them. But there is something antique about it now that I don't think would translate.

It has been, after all, 25 years since the movie was made. Few things last that long in today's Internet daze.

I wonder if you saw it, and what you thought of it. If you weren't alive in 1984, did you see it on VHS or DVD? Did you know it even existed before this blog post? These are the questions that old scholars need to answer.