A Real Life Abbott & Costello Routine

Names and occupation have been changed, but aside from that I had this exact conversation at work today.

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ME: Generic City Program Office, can I help you?

WOMAN: Can I get a number for the Generic City Program Office?

ME: This is a Generic City Program Office, but there's more than one. Who are you looking for specifically?

WOMAN (OS, to MAN): He says there's more than one. Who are you looking for specifically? [inaudible] [to ME] I need to talk to someone at the Generic City Program Office.

ME: This is the Generic City Program Office, but there are different ones.

WOMAN: Hold on.

[MAN comes to phone]

MAN: I'm calling for my friend who needs to know who his Generic Program Person is.

ME: What's his name?

MAN: Ben.

ME: What's his last name?

MAN: Oh, I don't know. I just know him as Ben.

[Long pause.]

ME: Then I can't help you. There are different Generic City Program Offices, and without your friend's last name, I can't help you. You need to find out his last name, or find out which specific office you need.

MAN: I just need the number to the Generic City Program Office.

ME: This is a Generic City Program Office, but there is more than one.

MAN: Then just give me your number. I'll have him call you.

ME: ...But you just called me.

MAN: Fine. [Click]

[Exeunt]

Salinger

Of all the stories by J. D. Salinger that The New Yorker has just made available on-line, in honor of his passing, I recommend "The Laughing Man" most highly, but why not dig around a little bit more, if you're unfamiliar with his work. That might not include very many of you, but who knows? I didn't start reading him myself until a few years ago, due to a long-held prejudice against any literature that was believed, by teachers and peers, to appeal to teenagers. I finally pulled Nine Stories off the shelf one day, with the attitude that, well, it was about time, wasn't it? Considerably past that point, as it turned out, or, then again, maybe not. It's possible I wouldn't have loved that book, or The Catcher in the Rye (which has -- and I know how lame this probably sounds to anyone who hasn't read the book, but trust me -- the most heartbreaking use of the word "fuck" I have ever encountered), quite as much if I'd first read them when I was "supposed to". But Lord, did I indeed love them. They're pretty goddamn good, as Holden Caulfield might say.

My own favorite story from Nine Stories is "Down at the Dinghy". In a brief introduction to their free on-line selection of his work, The New Yorker promises there will be "more to come", so if you don't have a copy of Nine Stories handy, maybe if you're patient The New Yorker will come through on that one, too. If they don't, go to the bookstore.

Capsule Reviews - January Doldrums Edition

The January Blues are making it hard for me to write too much at any one time about any one thing. I beg your indulgence as you read yet another edition of Capsule Reviews (plus one long-ish review). Onward!

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Big Fan (d. Robert Siegel) - I had very high hopes for this, coming as it does from the pen and director's chair of Robert Siegel, best known for writing The Wrestler, one of the very best films of 2008. And its subject matter -- a study of a particular kind of obsessed sports fan, and the dark places his obsession and social awkwardness take him -- was something I hadn't quite seen portrayed, or at least focused on, before. And I had a feeling that its lead actor, comedian and heretofore unproven dramatic actor Patton Oswalt, could, if he had any real acting chops at all, knock this role out of the park (to borrow a sports metaphor from a sport other than the one his character is obsessed with). And the film isn't bad. Oswalt is very good, and ultimately I did have a lot of affection for this wreck of a person and the outrageous lengths he'll go to preserve what he incorrectly regards as his personal dignity. The film's major problem is that it's too plotted. And it's not even all that plotted -- there are really only two major turns in the story -- but I think I would have preferred a day-in-the-life approach to this kind of character, than the unlikely, though not implausible, series of events we get.
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Moon (d. Duncan Jones) -I never realize how badly I miss big-screen takes on genuine science fiction themes and ideas until I actually see a new one. David Bowie's son's first film may wear some of its influences too prominently on its sleeve (Silent Running, for instance, and, most blatantly, 2001: A Space Odyssey), but Moon is not doing the same thing as those films, just nodding at them. Sam Rockwell, in what is essentially a one-man show, is superb as Sam Bell, an astronaut who is based on the moon, mining something-or-other, when he has an accident a couple of weeks before his three-year contract is up, and he's sent back home to his wife and child. When he wakes up in the infirmary (cared for by HAL 9000 stand-in Gerty, voiced by Kevin Spacey), however, he's forced to ask "Who's that other guy?" Gripping, sad, thoughtful, eerie, and pretty wonderful.

In the Loop (d. Armando Ianucci) - It was funny. I don't deny that. But I have a hard time giving full credit to a film that is unambiguously a fiction, but asks us to credit it for being insightful satire. And it may be insightful up to a point, but the satirical absurdity of the last third doesn't cut to the bone, because it's fiction, so...maybe my problem is more with satire than this particular film. Anyway, it's brilliantly acted, and personally I preferred Tom Hollander's uneasy deadpan to Peter Capaldi's relentless profanity, entertaining though that was.

Halloween II (d. Rob Zombie) - Rob Zombie's serious movie. Halloween II (a remake of a sequel that I haven't seen) is positively aching to be embraced by the same kind of arthouse crowd that put Tobe Hooper's original Texas Chainsaw Massacre in the MoMA all those years ago. The difference is, Hooper wasn't aiming for that -- he only got there because the film he made was so singular. Zombie's not-even-armchair psychonalaysis of his serial killer is also the polar opposite of what made not only Hooper's film, but Carpenter's original Halloween, so chilling. Explanations are for simpletons, and it's frankly beyond me why Zombie is convinced the opposite is true. And yes, I did see the director's cut, which I've been hearing has an added richness so overwhelming as to make the theatrical version look like House of 1000 Corpses. Which I suppose is entirely possible, but so what? The last shot is kind of creepy, though.

The Hurt Locker (d. Kathryn Bigelow) - Bigelow's Iraq War masterpiece really is as apolitical as everyone says (although I suspect there's enough covert cynicism about military brass, etc., in the film for certain kinds of interpretation to take hold), and focuses on the men who defuse roadside, and other, bombs, and how the adrenaline that's generated from such work can be addictive, and cause some men to become reckless. The Hurt Locker is relentlessly intense, and almost never steps wrong -- the one or two times it did are so minor that I don't think they're worth bringing up. The masterpiece within this masterpiece is an extended sniper duel in the middle of the desert. Brilliant.

The Roost (d. Ti West) - On the surface, this film wouldn't seem to merit more words written about it than, say, The Hurt Locker, but as it happens I have more to say about it. Ti West's most recent film, The House of the Devil, is getting quite a bit of play on-line, and is being hailed as, if not a great horror film, than at least a pretty darn good one. A lot of people are pleased by that film's 1980s horror throwback qualities, which is to say that it's a no-frills, solid, spooky piece of work, with a nice mood and some good jumps. That's what a lot of people are saying about it, and, in fact, I liked it pretty well myself, largely because the set-up was so engaging, and Tom Noonan's too-brief supporting performance is, I think, sensational. The payoff to that set-up, and to Noonan's strange and oddly sympathetic (until we reach the end, anyway) character is less satisfying, but at least it has its moments, and also weren't 1980s horror films a lot of fun? Yes, some of them were, though if I were to pick a decade's worth of horror films that I wanted my modern horror films to emulate, it wouldn't be that one. In general, though, I'd prefer far less of this, period. The same could probably be said of most genres, but horror is the genre whose practitioners most believe that to look forward is to look back, and to make sure you know that they know that they're looking back. Not in terms of influence, but rather of insularity.

Still, why look a gift horse in the mouth? The House of the Devil is pretty good, and let us all be satisfied with that. And I am. I've even defended the film to a friend who liked it somewhat less than I did. But one look at Ti West's previous film, The Roost, and I'm forced to ask "Why are so many horror fans so easy to please?" This is a question I've asked repeatedly, and I'm no closer to an answer now than I was any of the previous times I've asked, but The Roost got quite a bit of good press itself, at least from genre outlets (Fangoria and the like), and I'm becoming more and more convinced that if horror fans fear anything, it's change. The Roost, you see, is also a throwback, an even more self-conscious one than The House of the Devil. Tom Noonan is also in this one, though in a smaller role, this time as one of those fake TV creature-feature hosts that a lot horror filmmakers like to toss into the pot, so that the audience knows what kind of horror movies they watched growing up. Noonan's character is ostensibly introducing The Roost to us, and coming in here and there in the middle of the action to comment on it. At one point, he even pulls a Haneke, and rewinds the film so that the characters can behave differently (with no impact to the story that I could tell, but I was losing focus on the film by that point, so maybe I missed something).

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In other words, West doesn't think any of this matters. And he's actually right about that, because the main story of The Roost -- four friends find themselves stranded in the middle of nowhere and are attacked by bats that turn them into zombies -- isn't worth a hoot, though, in all honesty, it might have been worth at least a minor hoot if West hadn't been so busy laughing up his sleeve. What matters to West, at least in The Roost, is making his film feel like it wasn't made when he made it, and I'll be damned if I can figure out why that's supposed to matter to me. I'll admit that sort of thing can be amusing, but it's a pretty thin kind of amusement, even when done well, and in The Roost it isn't done well. The film image is covered in an artificial grain that reminded me of all those fake films-within-a-film, shot specifically so that characters can be shown watching them, and the filmmakers won't have to pay to use images from real movies. On top of that, West uses technology and effects that wouldn't have been available in the 80s, or the 70s, or whenever he wants us to think The Roost was made. As a result, the whole affair comes off as utterly phony and insincere, which is probably A-OK with West.

RIP Jean Simmons

Idea Strain

Last night, I received in the mail three books. One of them -- The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart by Jesse Bullington -- is not so important, apart from the fact that I want to read it. The other two are by Jeff VanderMeer: City of Saints and Madmen and Shriek: An Afterword. I want to read the VanderMeer books, too, obviously, but they're important beyond that, in the sense that, after reading about the books, I have to ask myself why I don't really write much fiction anymore.

I never wrote a lot, but when an idea struck me, and I found that the idea worked, I would write flat out, for as long as I could, until the thing was done. I've experienced few greater pleasures in my life then when a story I was writing started to take shape, and I could see the finish line, and felt that the destination was one worth reaching. The absence of any significant fiction writing in my life these days boils down to two things. Laziness is unquestionably one of them. The other is a dearth of good ideas. Ideas that I think are both good and workable are pretty hard to come by, but I think laziness plays a part here as well -- sometimes, one has to put in work to come up with an idea. You can't always expect them to just pop into your head. That's my preferred method, but you can't count on it.

The thing about the two VanderMeer books is that they both sound like exactly the kind of thing I'd be writing if I could kick over these hurdles I've set up for myself. In the books (and in Finch, VanderMeer's most recent), he constructs a fictional city called Ambergris, a sort of Victorian London otherworld in which any kind of strange, disturbing story can take place. A lot of writers have done similar things -- some, of course, have created, and populated, entire planets -- but there's something to do with what I've gleaned about what VanderMeer is up to that makes me think "Damn it, I should be doing that." Or something like it. The gist, I suppose, is that you often hear writers say that they write the kind of books that they'd like to read, but which aren't being written. I've often felt the same way, but I now have the uneasy feeling that VanderMeer is already writing the books I'd like to read, but which aren't being written.

Mind you, I haven't read VanderMeer's books yet. I don't know what's in store for me. But City of Saints and Madmen is, to simplify what the book appears to be, a collection of novellas set in Ambergris, and a brief summary on the back of the book describing the first novella perked my ears up. These summaries are rarely to be trusted, and I thought, "Well, if that story doesn't turn out to match what popped into my head when I read the summary, then maybe I have an idea." I don't know. Is that cheating? Anyway, we'll see what shakes out, I guess.

RIP Robert B. Parker

It wasn't until last year that I started reading Robert B. Parker, who died yesterday, and was best known for his longer series of detective novels about Boston investigator, Spenser. As a result, I have very little that I can profitably add to what will no doubt be a flood of eulogies from people more equipped than I. But I will say this: after only two novels, his first Spenser book, and his much more recent Western novel Appaloosa, I can tell that the man was a professional storyteller. That is something that I mean as very high praise.

For God's sake, the man died at his writing desk. The same thing supposedly happened to Tom Reamy, but in that case I'm not sure if the story is apocryphal, or on the level. In Parker's case, it appears to be on the level. Figures.

Affinity #18