Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes--Who Watches the Watchmen?

“We have labored long to build a heaven, only to find it populated with horrors.” -–Professor Milton Glass from “Dr. Manhattan: Super-Powers and the Superpowers”

“I am going to look at the stars. They are so far away and their light takes so long to reach us.” --Dr. Manhattan (while staring off the precipice of Mars)

In hopes of stretching our ever-expanding range of themes and book types, our group decided to discuss a story form new to our club: the graphic novel. So with Ben's suggestion, we decided to upon Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons'Watchmen. The energy of our discussion was muted slightly by the knowledge of that this was Ben's last discussion with us (since he & his wife have both taken teaching jobs at Appalacian State in Boone, NC). But back to happy thoughts....

I couldn’t help but be impressed by the Russian-ness of the story. In a novel set during the apex of the Cold War, I couldn’t help but be reminded of Dostoyevsky or Tolstoy by the zig zag narration. Nichole compared it to Lost, the way the story broke off and then entered into a character’s back story. I loved that Watchmen had so many layers. I’ve never seen the movie, but I wonder if Moore & Gibbons’ vision wouldn’t have been better filmed as a 2 or 3 part series instead of 1 film.

The book seems to be an exploration of the superhero psychey every bit as much as an action story. Moore uses several voices to tell his story, not just dialogue, but the end chapter additions that included excerpts from Hollis Mason’s autobiography to letters from Ms. Jupiter’s fan mail.

Yet beyond the actual words, when dealing with comics, you must acknowledge the artwork’s contribution to the overall telling of the story. That’s where Ben came in. As an artist, he pointed out Gibbons’ use of foreground and background to provide emphasis of specific ideas. For example, the scene where Dan sees Laurie in her superhero costume, he’s shocked, and she’s in the background of the panel. The authors make her sexiness low key, thus producing a subtle joke. Whereas the film emphasizes her sexiness in her outfit, the novel subverts that obvious & easy attention-getting. I wouldn’t have been able to compare the different uses of sex & imagery. Ben noticed.

We also noticed the greatness of the book. The committee that puts together the Hugo Award created a special category just to give this book its award. Special things receive special attention. This is important in that the book deals with superheroes, people who are by definition, above the rest of us. But what makes a person or a story super? What makes it uncommon? Being different isn’t enough. Dr. Manhattan is the only one who’s actually super, and even he isn’t as powerful as his abilities suggest. What characteristics denote a specific denotation? The answers are slippery but fun to wrestle with. And with complex questions comes complex answers, hence the layered yet satisfying narrative.

Discussing Arthur's Roundtable at a Sbux Brown Table

“We seem to discuss this idea every few months, so it must be important.” --Nichole

While reading T.H. White’s The Once and Future King, I realized I wanted to talk about the section titled Incipit Liber Primus, translated from Latin meaning “the book’s first section, which discusses Merlyn’s education of Arthur while he was a young boy. Disney recounts this portion of the book in its 1963 movie The Sword and the Stone. As a kid, I never liked a lot of kid entertainment. Sesame Street never held my attention, and I found many Disney films unbearable. But I always liked The Sword and the Stone. I still don’t know why, but I do know why I liked the first part of this book: it deals with teaching. When Merlyn uses his magic to Wart (Arthur’s nickname as a youth) into an owl, or a fish, or one of Robin [H]ood’s Merry Men, he is giving the young king the equivalent to a liberal arts education. Arthur experiences new worlds and new ways of seeing, all so that he can one day bring forth a new Europe, a continent freed from the inequity of feudalism.

I love books that chronicle how people are trained to do great things. And since our group is made up mostly of teachers, we spent time on it. In fact, Ben pointed out that Merlyn’s teaching was often begrudging. For example, he felt games like jousting were a waste of time, yet he shows Arthur a jousting match. Nichole talked of how much of Merlyn’s teaching didn’t involve much instruction but more putting him in a certain situation and then leaving Arthur to learn on his own, similar to how a teacher may give a vague assignment and leave it to the student to mold it. But that is just one section of the book.

And White does more than simply tell a story. He uses the Arthurian legend to show dispel some of the romance surrounding our concept of knightly chivalry. The Round Table is broken apart by jealousy, greed, and resentment. True chivalry, true change, and true legends don’t come merely from great actions; great sacrifice is a prerequisite. And that sacrifice could destroy you. For example, Lancelot returns from his Grail Quest broken…but more godly.

So implicit in this discussion is a question our group seems to return to every few months: how far does sacrifice go? How much should we give? And what should we give? And to whom? These are not easy questions. But if we are to transcend ourselves, should we not ask them? And, just as importantly, how do we answer them? Of course, the answers are different for everyone, which is why we switch books every 4 weeks…

Next book: The Watchmen by Alan Moore

Teaching Amanda Bynes (or What You Will)

Our last get together was good. We discussed casually Twelfth Night. We tried to find an American equivalent to the twelve Christmas celebration that Shakespeare used as the backdrop. We don’t really have a festival of opposites where, for a day, servants are masters, absurdity is normality, etc. We have Mardi Gras, and students have Spring Break. But those are niche celebrations, one being local to New Orleans, the other narrowly confined to students who can afford to go on Spring Break.

For me, understanding the play’s context would be integral for teaching it. How else could students even begin to understand a story whose language is a bit obtuse? That’s when Bob brought up a good point about the need to have a visceral rather than intellectual reaction. This play is built heavily upon the festive mood of the year. Its absurdity makes sense within the part-religious, part-bacchanalian framework. Bob talked about how it’d be good to help students identify with the whimsicality of the story more so than its intellectualness.

Twelfth Night is one of Shakespeare’s problem plays. The main characters fall in love. But no one actually earns their love. Mood and circumstance dictate action. The play is poetic and has elements worth discussing. But Shakespeare doesn’t seem to be putting forth a clear message or philosophy that many of his other plays provide. This is why Bob talks about the importance of emphasizing feeling. Even thoughts about feelings can teach. And theories are seldom born in the void.

Speaking of students and Shakespeare, our group also talked about the Amanda Bynes movie She’s the Man, which is apparently an adaptation of the play in a high school setting. I do find Amanda Bynes’ cheeriness rather delightful, but I’ve never seen it (although Nichole admitted to watching it twice in a 24 hr span). I imagine the appeal with both the play and its younger film-adapted cousin is that they, like the twelve night Christmas festival, help us cope with the absurdity of life by allowing us to purposely court absurdity in a controlled context.

Next book: T.H. White’s The Once and Future King

Calling Out Ishmael

Our discussion on Ishmael by Daniel Quinn ranged across a myriad of topics. Personally, I was skeptical before reading it, especially when Nancy told me that the premise of an ape teaching a man. I anticipated a drudging through this like a wearied soldier through a 3 foot marsh. Yet when I finished reading, it had been less than 24 hours from when I began.

I’m very interested in worldviews, epistemologies, and how they develop, so the content intrigued me. I knew the book would provide good discussion material, but I wasn’t sure how everyone else would receive the novel.

We always look to compare the current book w/ past ones we’ve read. The discussions about captivity and man’s relationship w/ animals remind me of Life of Pi. And the theme of teaching, degrees of learning, and the sacrifice needed for education, call to mind A Lesson Before Dying. Yet Ben brought a classical comparison from a work we have not read: Plato’s dialogues.

Ishmael’s format of teacher lecturing student appealed to me, Nichole, Nancy, and Ben. But Bob felt that Quinn relied so heavily on Ishmael’s (the ape) teachings, that he neglected the elements that make for a good story. Bob’s point was that Quinn’s ideas would have been better complimented with a more intellectual active narrator. He liked Quinn’s discussion but would’ve felt the narrative would’ve been richer if Ishmael had been challenged more in his thinking. Of course, we know Quinn has a sequel, and good writers often clarify or strengthen the obtuse or weak parts of their arguments.

Speaking of arguments, the main question the book addresses concerns whether or not man is equal to or superior to other earthly beings. Are we as much part of the earth as juniper trees and warthogs or are we the crown of creation made by God to subdue the earth? Quinn makes the question more political than religious, and so any religious or mythological arguments are used as foundations for his central point, which is that we should think seriously about overpopulation and wasting of natural resources.

I don’t think we disagreed with the theoretical aspects of Quinn’s points, but we were left wanting more in terms of the ways in which he said we should enact his ideas. Controlling population sounds fine until you’re the one being controlled. Again, I’d like to see how he adjuncts these arguments in the sequel My Ishmael.

Since I love speaking for the group, I’ll do so here: we’d recommend this as a compelling read and as a good book to discuss. In fact, we decided it would work well as a text in an environmental science course or maybe even an upper division English class. But I don’t think any of us are going to check out My Ishmael. That said, I wasn’t too interested in Ishmael before I flipped through its pages and ran my eyes across its opening lines. 

Holiday on Trial or What We Thought of David Sedaris' Christmas Short Stories

"Ladies, you know what this is. Use it. I have scraped enough blood out from the crotches of elf knickers to last me the rest of my life. And don't tell me, 'I don't wear underpants, I'm a dancer. You're not a dancer. If you were a real dancer you wouldn't be here. You're an elf and you're going to wear panties like an elf."                             --David Sedaris, "The Santa Land Diaries"

In a letter to Richard Woodhouse, John Keats talks about the poetical Character being something that "is everything and nothing" and how it "enjoys light and shade." His point was that a true poet becomes invisible behind his (or her) writing, that the voice the reader receives is the voice of the given text. Though not poetry, David Sedaris' Holidays on Ice reflects several voices both likable and despicable, ironically humorous and slapstick humorous. And it's these voices and what they had to say that we discussed on Saturday Dec. 20th.

Since Holidays on Ice is a collection of short stories, we began our conversation by naming our favorite one (I know. I know. Very sophisticated). From there, we delved into the themes and significance of each story. Here's an abbreviated avatar of our discussion:

"Dinah, the Christmas Whore."

Here, we talked about the lesson a Young David Sedaris learned about Christmas, how it's not all about him. The beginning of the story centers around a teenage Sedaris focused on asserting his individuality while exposing the corporateness of Christmas. What Young Sedaris saw was an up-close imbuing of the Christmas spirit when his sister and later his mother feed and care for a prostitute with domestic problems. 

We discussed how the story, though not factually true, was probably based loosely on some incident that Sedaris was able to sensationalize and chronicle. We used this idea to spearhead a conversation about how writers create fiction. From there, we transitioned our discussion to how stories are constructed.

"The Santa Land Diaries."

This collection of diary entries about Sedaris' experience as a Christmas Elf for Macy's one holiday season sparked perhaps the funniest part of our get together, for it constituted us reading aloud our favorite parts from his entries. 

The amazing part of this story is the amount of topics Sedaris was able to touch on in such a short period of time (the selfishness of parents poorly disguised as love for their children, the issue of Santa Claus' race, and the juxtaposition of holiday cheer with biting anger--from the same person, and what the real Santa Claus would do if he were a mall Santa). As a group, this was our favorite entry, but we knew we had others to discuss.

"Season's Greetings to Our Friends and Family!!!"

The appeal of this story was the way in which it evolves like a CSI case. I don't want to give too much away, but our discussion turned into us analyzing evidence and coming to a conclusion about the story's conclusion. We also discussed the "WASPY tone" of the piece, and a few members of our group pointed out that being a WASP (I'm not one) can help you decode what the speaker is saying. Perhaps more than any other reading, this one had a didactic tone that is often characteristic of Christmas stories.

I don't want to make this blog too long, so I'll leave it up to y'all to add as you see fit. But "Us & Them" provided the platform for April's story of how she and her brother spent Christmas giving away their presents after they disobeyed their mom who told them not to snoop around the house hunting for them. "6 to 8 Black Men" was a story that April and Bob had a copy of, but not the rest of us. This was another text w/ a WASPy tone. "Based on a True Story" was probably Sedaris' most overtly satirical piece, which seems to be the overarching purpose of this collection. 

Okay, I've obviously missed some things here, so feel free to grab your bullhorn and speak loudly about what you thought of our get together. 

Works Mentioned:

"A Modest Proposal:

Me Talk Pretty One Day

When We're Engulfed in Flames

Anchor Man

A Christmas Carol

Four Long Roads, Two Good Friends, & One Great Book Club Discussion

“I wasn’t scared; I was just somebody else, some stranger, and my whole life was a haunted life, the life of a ghost. I was halfway across America, at the dividing line between the East of my youth and the West of my future, and maybe that’s why it happened…”   --Jack Kerouac, On the Road

This past get together featured Jack Kerouac’s Beat Generation classic, On the Road. Some books just pull discussion out of you like rope out of your hands in a lopsided tug-of-war match, and this book is one of them. I began our talk by mentioning how On the Road wasn’t what I expected. I thought I was going to get a hipper, updated, more accessible version of Walden. I thought the book would consist of 1/3 narration and 2/3 poetic, philosophical ruminations about post-war America. Since it wasn’t, we discussed what exactly the book was, not so much what it was about but how would we characterize it.

We wanted to separate expectations from reality. Keruouac’s intentions vs. our assumptions. Bob brought up the idea that the book is not about the literal journeys across the US but about the figurative inward one. It’s easy to get hung up on the adventurous aspects of this story, but the travels are only vehicles that Kerouac uses to get to what he’s really after: a discussion about the realization of confronting your limitations (self-imposed and otherwise) and trying to accede them. We added that the journey we have, whatever it is, must have an element of true danger. If the hazards are contrived, then the travels lack authenticity, which undercuts their effectiveness. The moments you find yourself in must be real, not manufactured, which is why Bob and his woman stopped using a safe word. But I digress…

…If I may oversimplify for a moment, the point is this: On the Road could’ve been about one journey from Nashville to Memphis if that’s all it took for him to come to the realization about who he is, who he was, and who he needed to be.

The journey motif in literature is huge, and we could’ve spent all day discussing it, but there’s more to the book than his physical and metaphysical travels. We also talked about how Sal Paradise (the Kerouac character) and Dean Moriarty (Neal Cassady) were opposites who balanced one another. The two needed each other even as they worked in opposition to each other. For a group who spent 2 months reading Sherlock Holmes, we couldn’t help but point out how the name Moriarty has literary significance as the nemesis of Doyle’s hero. Kerouac drew upon that nomenclature to emphasize how, despite their friendship, the Paradise and Moriary are not to be identified synonymously.

Yet we modern readers have trouble separating them simply because we must identify them together as 2 figure heads of the Beat Generation. Along with the characters of the movement, we had to discuss the characteristics of it as well. So we also talked upon the language Kerouac employs. As mentioned earlier, I loved his poetic bursts of philosophical insight and was expecting more of it. But Mandy pointed out that had the whole novel been like that, we would not have the jazzy rhythms that mark the book’s style.

 The vapid moments could be characterized by the steady thumping of a bass guitar, while the philosophic commentary would parallel the improvisation of trumpet blasts. Mandy, whose husband is a musician, would’ve been more attuned to the musicality of the novel. Several of us mentioned that we were more familiar with jazz so that we could’ve appreciated that aspect of the story.

There’s a couple of interesting points that we hit upon such as the nature of belief, the non-linearness of the story, and the satire towards society that Kerouac incorporates. Perhaps some of you could hit on those things in the comments section. But I want to end by going back to the idea of balance. Just as Paradise and Moriarty balanced one another, I like the concept of balance in our personal lives. Kerouac could not have gone on the trips nor written the book had his mom not supported him both morally and financially. I like that we talked about how no one succeeds in a vacuum. Anyone who does anything has people willing to help them in some fashion. I’m reminded of a New Yorker article by Malcolm Gladwell, “Why do we associate Genius with Precocity.” It’s still in the essay section if you want to visit to NewYorker.com and check it out (There’s your plug. Can I have my money now?). But it’s about how we think of genius in terms of prodigies and that we often overlook late bloomers who develop slowly over a long period of time, often with someone supporting them while they write or paint or build their business.

I think we’d all recommend the book, but with a caveat: the more you know about post-war America, the better. Also, don’t expect a non-stop adventure. Some parts seemed (and I’m speaking just for myself here) a little insipid. I would read this with a friend or at the very least, with the intent of discussing it.

Some works mentioned during the discussion: Pimpin’ Pimpin’ by Katt Williams, Lolita by Nabakov, Dharma Bums and Big Sur both by Kerouac, “Howl” by Allen Ginsburg, Walden by Thoreau, The Illiad and The Odyssey by Homer

Myth's Many Visages: Our Discussion of C.S. Lewis' Till We Have Faces

"The complaint was the answer...I saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly, nor let us answer. Till that word can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?"

--C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces

First of all, this is Nick substituting for Nancy since she was out of town last Saturday. So any problems with what is written should be directed towards me. 

In our latest get together, we discussed C.S. Lewis' Till We Have Faces, which is a retelling of the Cupid & Psyche story found in Greek mythology. It's one of Lewis' lesser known fictions, and though it's palpable, philosophical, and interesting, you have to keep in mind that the story's rising action, climax, and falling action is more psychological than physical.

One of the first things we talked about, which Ben brought up, is that Lewis' note at the end of the novel where he summarizes the Cupid & Psyche myth is inaccurate. According to Lewis, Cupid kills her 2 sisters, yet Ben--who studied this myth while completing his MA--pointed out that Psyche is responsible for her sister's deaths. We talked about how that error, though not pertinent to Lewis' story per se, does hurt some of his credibility as a writer. I know it ruined Ben's enjoyment of the novel. I've since thought about what we said, and the only explanation I can come up with (other than either Ben or Lewis is wrong) is that, like any good myth, multiple versions of the story possibly exist. Thus Ben and Lewis may be working from different primary sources. I'm curious to see what the rest of you have to add concerning the issue. 

We did talk about the idea of myths being born out of multiple stories when we discussed how Orual's legend as a queen grew b/c of her military conquests along with the mystery surrounding her veiled face. The idea of stories, of histories, being living things that take on different forms over time is something that we haven't really examined in depth before. We hit on the idea briefly when we read The Alchemist and Haroun and the Sea of Stories but not until we talked about how the people viewed Orual and her accomplishments as queen did we spend a substantial amount of time on how we as people craft narratives over time to shape our notion of what we need stories to say. I imagine the theme will present itself in our next book, In Cold Blood. 

Also, another interesting thing that we haven't talked about in several months is the idea of the unreliable narrator (I think we discussed the concept with Vonnegut's Bluebeard as well as with The Autobiography of Malcolm X). Orual is essentially giving us her autobiography. And in so doing, she describes several fantastic scenes that we as readers can either accept as reality or dismiss as the ruminations of a crazy woman. We decided that accepting them makes more sense when you consider that one of the recurring themes in Lewis' writing is that the spiritual world is much more real than the physical one. Also, the book fits together much better if you accept that her encounters with Psyche and others who no longer inhabit this world are real, not concocted. 

We poured into this book from several different angles, and it's hard to re-construct our conversation as well as I'd like. But something else that I personally enjoyed about Lewis and this book in particular is the poeticness of the writing. I mentioned that reading this was like reading poetry except since it's a novel and I've read it before, it didn't require the patience that one needs for most poems. Lewis strings together some very sonorous phrases that I was able to enjoy even more than the story's action. 

Well, that's all I have. Feel free to add to/edit this blog as you see fit. See ya in the comments section!