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What makes Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth so powerful is that it brings together to different sets of material, which are completely incompatible, yet insists on being true to both until the very end. On one hand there are fauns and faeries, on the other a sadistic fascist captain who will brutally murder with only the flimsiest of excuses. The nature of these two worlds is probably the scariest part of the film, for both contain incredible dangers that could get 11-year-old heroine Ofelia killed.
The faun seems at times both good and evil, yet what he really offers Ofelia is an opportunity to choose between the two. Her inability to follow his warnings almost get her killed by one of the most frightening, albeit initially ridiculous, monsters to grace any screen I’ve seen. And her refusal to accede to the faun’s requests in the end is her way of finding redemption when given a second chance.
But she is likewise tested in the real world. Finding out that the captain’s servant has been aiding the anti-Franco rebels, Ofelia refuses to divulge the information because she doesn’t want anything bad to happen to her. The movie seems to be about the choices that Ofelia must make, that she must learn to be true to herself, even in the face of grave danger.
Though Ofelia is the only person who can see the faun or faeries, there is evidence to convince one that they are real enough. For one, the magical chalk that she uses to create doorways helps her escape a room that was guarded, something unlikely to have occurred otherwise. The mandrake root provided by the faun to help her mother seems to have positive results, and its discarding has the opposite.
I am at a loss in trying to explain exactly how this movie works, about what makes it so good. The visuals are stunning, like something out of a real nightmare, something attempted by the makers of The Cell, though this time with resounding success. Del Toro’s mastery is in how he is able to present these two vastly different worlds side-by-side, make it work, and make the result more than the sum of its parts.
What Tim O’Brien said is true. Stories can save us. Lover of stories and faerie tales, Ofelia creates a story for herself that becomes real, helps her survive the horrors of her surroundings, and in the end becomes real enough to save her. The conclusion can be interpreted in two separate ways, yet I choose to believe that she was saved. The film moved me, changed me, and I don’t think I will forget this feeling for a long time.
In the fall of 2004, 72-year-old Ernie Colon bought and read the 9/11 Commission Report, realizing as he did that only a fraction of the book’s buyers would do the same. With tons of free time even though he was employed as a security guard, he wondered if more people would read the Report if it were presented in an easier to understand format. He called Sid Jacobson and put together the nonfiction graphic adaptation of the 9/11 Report.
The two had worked together at Harvey Comics in the fifties, on titles like Richie Rich and Casper, the Friendly Ghost, but had moved into other fields as the superhero comic wiped out the children’s market in the nineties.
Their graphic adaptation of the 9/11 Report has won kudos from many. I found the book quite moving, and as Colon surmised, the only reason I know a lot of what I do about that Tuesday morning is because of their effort. For instance, the report states that at most, 2,152 individuals died at the WTC who were not rescue workers or on board one of the two planes. Of that number, 1,942 were at or above the impact zones. That the evacuation of the building was such a resounding success was something that I hadn’t been exposed to, even with all the coverage.
The tone set by the creators is a calm and factual one, reflecting the prose of the Report itself. The likenesses are well rendered and the information is presented in such a way that it is easily digestible. Their accomplishments will be followed with another title, After 9/11: America’s War on Terror (2001- ), and the pair have another three in the works.
This being the case, I wonder why this technique isn’t used more often. Though series like the ‘For Beginners’ have had a fair amount of success, there has been little crossover into other genres. So much can be taught in a form that many find more palatable than prose. We’ve seen how well Scott McCloud was able to discuss some fairly heady work on comics by writing in the form, and thousands of kids, including me, have read comic versions of historical classics like Moby Dick.
The popular criticism is that our country is getting dumber and prefers the graphs and photos of USA Today to the lengthy texts of the Wall Street Journal. But what if we look at that as not a failure in literacy but a shift to a different kind of literacy? With this new perspective, perhaps we can begin to see that these readers may very well be interested in reading things like Jacobson’s and Colon’s The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation.
There may very well be a hole in the market. Somebody should fill it.
I spent a week thinking over this review, trying to decide if I was being fair to Ron Rosenbaum or not. In some ways it feels that I let my preconceived notions about the book influence m enjoyment of it, which there is nothing wrong with. However, as John Updike would say, it’s not really fair for me to criticize someone for not doing something they weren’t trying to do.
I have mixed feelings about The Shakespeare Wars. In many ways it was quite informative. Even though I 
have taken a couple of classes that focused on the Bard entirely, those courses were taught through a certain critical lens that obscured other valid methods. For example, Rosenbaum’s copious interviews with directors like Peter Hall and Peter Brook, among others, gives a lot of insight into the performance studies aspects of the plays, and a lot of their comments were fascinating and insightful. These approaches also helped me identify a method I would use later to organize a paper around Pinter’s The Homecoming. Often he suggests other readings that may help explain more nuanced arguments, and I do feel that they are genuinely helpful.
But there is a lot that I didn’t like too. Rosenbaum spends forty pages covering the insignificant ‘Funeral Elegy’ issue, which is bad enough, but its inclusion seems to be based solely on the fact that Rosenbaum has a personal grudge to settle with Don Foster. Allegedly, Foster at one point said he could ‘bury’ Rosenbaum for questioning his methods. Forty pages used to essentially make Foster look like an ass.
After a lot of thought though, I really only have two major problems with the book. First, Rosenbaum claims that he will illuminate the battles in Shakespeare scholarship for the layman, and this is something that he does from time to time. But too often he presents only the view he thinks is right and obscures the other opposing view. For instance, he admits that there are some that feel Shakespeare should be experienced in the theater and not on the screen, but he does little more than this. Since he is a strong proponent of film, it receives the brunt of the attention.
Rosenbaum also hates postmodernism, even suggesting that Derrida and Foucault have little if anything to offer. Not in Shakespearean studies, but little to offer anyone, anywhere. This is naïve. It is easy to see his age and the time he went to school based on his love of the ‘close reading.’ While there is certainly something to be said for that critical approach, it fell out of vogue thirty years ago. Rosenbaum comes across as an old man, afraid of these new-fangled critical methods the kids are using these days.
Secondly, Rosenbaum is a journalist. He’s not a scholar. Sure, he may know a lot about Shakespeare, certainly more than me. And he is always cautiously deferential to Shakespearean scholars he cites, even though he really only bothers with the most elite. (It is easy to admit that a world-renowned expert in something knows more than you.) But he doesn’t seem to understand that what he is doing isn’t scholarship. Rosenbaum postulates as much as he reports, and the assumption is that we will respect his ideas as much as we would a scholar’s. But what makes scholarly work scholarly isn’t the idea so much as it is the approval that the scholarship is valid by a group of scholarly peers. To the best of my knowledge, The Shakespeare Wars underwent no such review process.
In some ways I feel that I am nit-picking, that this criticism is unfair and that the book really isn’t that bad. (It’s not.) But Rosenbaum spends too much time on himself, to the point of distraction and frustration. I don’t know if he is a cocky asshole in real life, but he comes across as one in his writing. This is an interesting primer for further readings on Shakespeare, but as a text itself, it didn’t do much for me.
There has been a severe lack of content on this site, much less than I had intended a few months ago. One of the things that I am going to endeavor to do is write reviews more often, though they will likely be less substantial than previous reviews. Perhaps a couple hundred of words apiece.
To report, in the month of April I managed to read 19 books, play, and graphic novels. Here is what they were:
1. The House of Bernarda Alba by Federico Garcia Lorca: If you take a passage on English, translate it to Spanish and then back again to English, all the nouns will be the same. But the verbs can change the meaning of the passage entirely. So when reading the lyrical drama of Lorca in English, something is truly lost. I found the symbolism in this play to be over the top, and the characterization screamed farce rather than tragedy. But the real reason this is considered a great play is the lyricism, and it just doesn't translate well. Reading Clive James over the past year, I've begun to think that perhaps it is time that I at least get my Spanish up to the functionally literate level so I can enjoy some of these writers in their native language.
2. 100 Bullets: The Hard Way by Brian Azzarello & Eduardo Risso: The storyline really hits it
s stride here, and as more of the Minutemen are activated, I am getting a better idea of what is going on. I'm still haunted by something that happened, still sad. A lot of things happen that I wasn't expecting, and Risso's artwork captures the mood unlike any other artists I am familiar with. Often described as a noir tale, a description I feel is apt, I wonder why this is about the only noir that I really enjoy. As if I only enjoy derivations from the convention, not the convention itself.
3. The Cripple of Inishmaan by Martin McDonagh: though nowhere near as interesting as The Pillowman, McDonagh has written a genuinely entertaining and funny play. However, I hesitate that much more is going on than that. There is a bit about the nature of lying and telling stories, yet it sems to be a door that McDonagh opens but refuses to walk through.
4. Forged in Fire by Michael A. Martin & Andy Mangels: Extended comments available here.
5. Endgame by Samuel Beckett: I spent the month pondering the power of silence in the drama of Harold Pinter, and it is easy to see how he was influenced by Beckett in this play. Clov inflicts so much violence in his silences at the end of the play, it is a shame it is so overshadowed by the violent language that Hamm uses. I just don't think it is possible to fully understand the play though a mere reading, something I found a lot like Pinter as well.
6. The Bald Soprano by Eugene Ionesco: Didn't really offer anything new or different from The Lesson, which was a better play even if I didn't enjoy it. Ionesco embraces absurdism to the point of near incoherence, something that makes him less accessible to readers than other absurdists.
7. The Skin of Our Teeth by Thornton Wilder: I hated this play. Pirandello did the same thing first and better. I can't believe that the same person who wrote Our Town had a hand in this. And what kind of name is Thornton anyway?
8. The Night Country by Stewart O'Nan: An unsatisfying ghost story that broke several conventions but wasn't enough to salvage a fairly predictable narrative. O'Nan has been said to be the voice of the working class, but I didn't get a sense of that here. Perhaps I will try another of his books in the future; I do find myself with a certain professional interest in how he depicts the restaurant environment in Last Night at the Lobster. The narration is so specific that it goes to the point of distraction. Does it really matter which value meal a character orders from McDonald's? Or that a character eats a 'Nutrageous' rather than a candy bar? Just because something would be depicted specifically in another medium, say film, doesn't mean it needs to be so precise in prose.
9. 100 Bullets: Strychnine Lives by Brian Azzarello & Eduardo Risso: This collection contains the most violent scene I have ever read in a comic. The overall story progresses nicely, and now that I realize only two following collections have been released thus far, I am trying to keep myself from reading them all at once.
10. The Best American Short Stories 2002 edited by Sue Miller: I'd already read the best story before (Richard Ford's 'Puppy'), but this was my first exposure to Jhumpa Lahiri whose story was fantastic. These collections are a nice way to be introduced to lesser known writers, or perhaps even famous ones who you just haven't had a chance to read yet.
11. Amnesiascope by Steve Erickson: Erickson writes like a less talented and inspired Jonathan Lethem or David Foster Wallace. There is quite a bit of pornography as well, with passages being written for no reason other than to titillate. He gets a lot of praise, so I may take a look at the supposedly more mainstream Zeroville, but perhaps not.
12. Exit Wounds by Rutu Modan: A good, though not great, graphic novel from an Israeli creator. the storyline is something that we have seen before, but the characterization is well handled and the art really does evoke a different culture without descending into stereotypical depictions. I am very interested to see where this creator goes next.
13. A Burning House by Keith R.A. DeCandido: Though I have enjoyed the episodes of Star Trek that have focused on Klingon politics, their civilization as a whole seems to make no sense. DeCandido is able to write convincingly about a culture that is based entirely in honor, but even some of his inventions ring false. For example, a member of an opera chorus can challenge and kill one of the leads to take their place? A good novel overall though, and the conclusion of the Rodek storyline was well handled.
14. The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams: A good and interesting memory play whose conceptual idea causes narrative problems. I'd like to go back and read this again with a better understanding of Williams's biography, especially the way he treats Laura who was modeled after his sister. Better than I remembered, but I don't thin
k this is a classic.
15. Reading Legitimation Crisis in Tehran by Danny Postel: A collection of Middle Eastern journalism and scholarly work that is most interesting with respect to the natural alliance between anti-imperialist Westerners and Iranian dissidents. Read more about it here.
16. The Shakespeare Wars by Ron Rosenbaum: I have a lot to say about this, so I will write a bigger review in the next couple of days. Brendan, this was the book I was referring to earlier.
17. Greatest DuckTales Stories, Volume 2 by Carl Barks: Barks is a genius. Not only are his stories entertaining for children and adults without pandering or offering some pat moral at the end, he changes the ways his characters are presented from panel to panel is vastly different ways, yet integrates it within the page in a way that is almost undecipherable unless you are looking for it. Barks has been the focus of a dedicated critical effort in the past few years, and it is easy to see why he deserves it.
18. Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman: Not as good as Smoke and Mirrors, this collection still contains a few gems. I really enjoyed 'A Study in Emerald' and 'The Monarch of the Glen.' I had been told to pay special attention to 'The Problem with Susan,' but I must confess that while I found the story serviceable, my lack of any real knowledge of Narnia dampened its impact. Maybe I should go back and read the series, they sit on my shelves, but that type of writing just holds less and less appeal for me as time goes on.
19. A Good School by Richard Yates: Yates has a way of capturing the isolation that we all feel and articulating it in such a way that evokes the same emotions the characters feel in you. While I felt this was the least effective of his novels that I have read so far, it still is a testament to Yates's place as the most underappreciated writer of his generation.
In his essay ‘Iran, Solidarity, and the Left,’ Danny Postel examines the 2003 student-led protests against the Iranian government that occurred in Tehran and the coverage of those events by legitimately leftist media. Students were savagely beaten and threatened by agents of the government, often with disappearances that have yet to be explained. Searching the typical progressive websites, he found no mention at all of these events, and after searching through a large portion of the political blogosphere, Postel found only one account of the event, reported by Andrew Sullivan. Where was this account found? On the website of the National Review, a right-wing magazine. (T
his is also interesting since Sullivan is now a commentator for The Atlantic, a moderately left-leaning magazine.)
Postel goes on to quote Matthew Yglesias, also now a columnist for The Atlantic, who said that ‘Normally, the global peace movement and political left would respond to oppression by an authoritarian, theocratic regime with outrage and protest.’ Instead, there was a seemingly bewildering silence from these communities.
He tries to explain the reason for this silence in the essay and theorizes that while no one on the left could sympathize with the homophobic, anti-Semitic theocrats in Tehran, they seem to hate the American right more. Members of the left, in Postel’s view, are unable to align themselves with the imperialist powers at work on the right, especially when considering that this imperialist rhetoric is emerging from the Bush Administration.
Postel goes on to draw comparisons between the Iranian student protesters and the American left, claiming that neither are pro-imperialism, and therefore the American left should not remain silent merely because their rhetoric would seemingly parrot that of the Bush Administration. He claims that opposing imperialism is essential, but not sufficient. In addition to speaking out against the Iranian government, as the administration is doing, Postel suggests that the left expose their rhetoric for what it is: hollow words, said not to benefit Iranian students but to gain the power and oil that lies there.
This calls to mind ‘On Viewing Rhetoric as Epistemic,’ an essay by Robert L. Scott. He identifies that the point of view that asserts that man is unable to be certain but must ‘act in the face of uncertainty to create situational truth entails three ethical guidelines: toleration, will, and responsibility.’ Within the context of the first of these principles, toleration, Scott claims that when one’s ‘undertaking involves the belief and action of others, one spoils his own potentiality for knowing…if one fails to respect the integrity of the expression and the action of others.’ The left’s lack of understanding, in Postel’s view, does not respect the beliefs or behaviors of the protesters, and therefore is unethical.
The will to make a change is Scott’s second guideline. He asserts that inaction, failing to take on the burden of participating in the development of contingent truth, ought to be considered an ethical failure. Postel would of course say that the inaction on the part of the American left in supporting the Iranian student protesters as an ethical failure, for they are not helping to define an emerging truth: that from at least Postel’s point of view, the behaviors of the Iranian government are abominable and worthy of public outrage in the part of Americans.
Scott goes on to say that one must be responsible as well; one must ‘recognize the conflicts of the circumstances he is in, maximizing the potential good and accepting responsibility for the inevitable harm.’ Postel strongly argues that the American left does understand the circumstances they are in with regards to the Iranian conflict since they have decided to remain silent rather than produce rhetoric that aligns with the Bush Administration’s condemnations of these acts. But in his view, they are not maximizing the potential good since he feels that much more could be achieved by vocally speaking out against Iran and siding with these protesters. In his mind, they are natural allies regardless of the Administration’s point of view.
Essentially, Postel is claiming that the action of the American left with regards to the Iranian student-led protests have been unethical, and using arguments that reflect the work of Robert L. Scott, is urging the left to start acting in a more responsible way, to maximize the greatest good, and to speak out.
Imagine a movie based on a true life story, one that is not only based by actually really close to the actual material. Imagine too that the characters in this movie, who represent real people, are regularly alongside these real life counterparts. Imagine a film where the real life person narrates the story of his character, frequently commenting on how this is just a movie and not really him at all. It sounds like something John Barth or David Foster Wallace would come up with, something that would likely require a great amount of attention and a little ingenuity to make sense of.
But that isn’t the case with American Splendor. The directors of this movie have done a remarkable job, but all would have been for not if they would have tried to confound the audience with their aforementioned stylistic choices. These aren’t postmodern tricks, a questioning of identity in the contemporary world. Instead, these choices are just part of the fabric of the movie, the way things are.
Many shots in the movie are framed through the panel of a comic strip, with titles like ‘Our story begins…’ Hilariously, as Harvey and another character walk out of a room and the camera angle switches to a hallway view, the frame in noted with ‘Seconds later.’ The most interesting use of comic panels though is after Harvey has started to get the comic produced, and various actions from his life are transformed on screen into inked drawing from the comics. A waitress fills Harvey’s cup with coffee as he sits in a diner, and the scene is transformed into a drawing with a thought balloon saying ‘I’m desperately lonely and horny as hell.’ Just before Harvey meets his future wife, a person who only knows him from the pages of his comic, she sees various versions of the character waiting for her in the train station.
Both Paul Giamatti and Hope Davis, who play the fictional versions of Harvey and his wife Joyce respectively, do amazing work in this film. But the real standout is 30 Rock’s Judah Friedlander, who plays Harvey’s friend Toby. Toby is a truly original character, a guy who has no problem driving across the state to see Revenge of the Nerds. While Toby is likely a borderline autistic, something that is mentioned in the film, he is never treated as less than an equal by anyone. He is a funny character, but we don’t laugh at him in a cruel way.
The film also depicts Pekar’s experiences on Late Night with David Letterman using actual footage from the show, again interrupting the actors with their real life counterparts. I’m sure that many know Pekar from these appearances, but they were a little before my time and I didn’t even know about them until the movie. I do wish we could have seen the actual footage of Pekar’s disastrous last appearance, rather than seeing the silhouettes of Letterman and Pekar from behind, with a poor vocal imitation of Letterman. This was the only point in the movie where I felt friction between the different portrayals of the characters, yet that may have been a necessity depending upon the availability of that footage.
I began to wonder why the director’s chose to make this film the way they did, rather than just presenting a straightforward documentary. Other such documentaries, like Crumb, have been quite successful. But this approach serves to intensify the material since we can see it played out in front of us rather than only recounted, yet also serves as a comic distance between the real life, somewhat sad story of this man and the playfulness the narrative takes
On the surface, the new Captain Sulu novel, Forged in Fire, is full of a number of good ideas. How did Sulu gain command of the Excelsior? What precisely led to Curzon Dax’s blood oath with Kang, Kor, and Koloth to feast on the still beating heart of the Albino’? And how did the smooth headed Klingons get their ridges back?
However, these ideas are presented in an ultimately unsatisfying way. While the ridges subplot was handled well, it didn’t really fit with the overall narrative of the story. But the story is ultimately going to be unsatisfying when you start from such a flawed premise. The events of the DS9 episode ‘Blood Oath’ are the basis for pretty much the entir
e novel, and it establishes that not only did the Albino escape from the Klingons and Dax, he also managed to kill their firstborn sons. Therefore, we know when starting the novel that the Albino won’t be brought to justice within the novel, no matter what happens. 480 pages that lead up to an unsatisfying conclusion that we already knew was coming. Of course, this is assuming that a reader is familiar with the episode; if one isn't, the book probably seems to just abruptly end without any real resolution at all.
If Michael A. Martin and Andy Mangels couldn’t bring something new and compelling to the story to give the reader a sense of closure, then maybe the conception of this novel should have been rethought. That said, their prose was capable, as always, and their characterizations were well done: from people we know well, like Sulu and Sarek, to original characters like Cutler, all seemed like realistic, believable people.
Limited scope is also an issue. While the plot appears at first to be complicated and spanning a range of times, the flashbacks merely serve to set up small plot elements in the story and aren’t returned to afterwards. The narrative essentially boils down to a terrorist attack, followed by our heroes chasing the terrorist for the next 300+ pages. It’s not any more complicated than that.
I sat down to watch ‘Blood Oath’ this afternoon after finishing the novel last night. I’d forgotten how uneven and undramatic it was. (Not to mention how bad an actor I find Terry Farrell to be.) But it did help me put a point on something that I find monotonous and unrealistic.
I understand that vengeance is not accepted behavior by the Federation of the 24th century, but why does every damn Klingon story have to drive this point home? Both Sulu in the novel and Sisko in the episode take great strides to make their abhorrence for the Klingon’s oath known. But are condemnation and understanding really irreconcilable things? Have we not all had feeling of vengeance that we haven’t acted upon? Could we not look at a man whose son has been killed and understand why he would seek the death of the killer even if we felt it would be the wrong thing to do?
For all the permissiveness and acceptance the Federation supposedly has for other peoples and culture, we don’t really seem to actually see it all that much. Perhaps it is the writers’s fault; they use humanity (the Federation) as the inflexible moral line, the white in what is actually a grey situation. But it would be nice to see some of the novel authors try and combat this practice, given that they tout their freedom to go places that the television shows couldn’t.
