Archive for the ‘Ugliness’ Category
Slumdog Counterfeiter
It seems a foregone conclusion that Slumdog Millionaire will win Best Picture at the Academy Awards tonight. Well, okay. I haven’t even bothered to see all of the competition, but Boyle’s movie was certainly the liveliest, most consistently entertaining of the nominated films I have seen. Not as moving, complex, and real as Milk, no, but …it is fun here and there. It does have that going for it. And yet I hope it doesn’t win much of anything.
Don’t get me wrong. I like overheated melodrama. I love dancing on train platforms. I am even fond of completely outlandish story structures like the Q&A one at the heart of this movie. I like me my crazy storylines in service of a good time. But there is so much that is deeply wrong with Slumdog Millionaire that I can’t let go and enjoy the frippery of the story. That it has been embraced so feverishly by so many Westerners I find deeply suspect, because no way no how not in a million years would this story fly with US audiences if it had been set in, say, New York. Read the rest of this entry »
In Conversation 3
[Background: Sitting in a hotel bar in Vegas, waiting for someone, reading my Diana Wynne Jones novel and, when the person next to me strikes up a conversation, blathering happily about what I do, and the book, and reveling in my dorkiness. I am so naive! I'd forgotten that Las Vegas is notorious for more than just gambling.]
M: So that’s what I do. What about you? What do you do?
Q: Whatever I want. (pauses significantly) You know what I do.
(silence while Stearns processes)
M: (blushing, no doubt) Well, I do now.
Q: So, what do you say?
M: Erm, you know, I don’t usually have to … pay for that sort of thing.
Q: Really!?
M: Hey! Be nice!
(Q mutters, goes off in search of other prey.)
In Conversation 2
Q: So you work in children’s books? Any books I might have heard of?
M: (uncomfortable shifting) Well, do you have children?
Q: No.
M: Are you, like, married to a children’s librarian?
Q: Um, no.
M: Do you maybe read children’s books for fun?
Q: No.
M: Well, okay then. Nothing you would have heard of.
In Conversation 1
Q: So where are you from?
M: Eh, New York, by way of California.
Q: Oh, I thought you were British!
M: No, just anal-retentive and well-spoken.
Q: … Oh.
Oh, those innumerate Swedes!
As most have read elsewhere (galleycat’s coverage has been pretty entertaining), Horace Engdahl, the permanent secretary for the Nobel prizes for literature, has slammed American literature as too insular, whining that we “don’t translate enough” and “don’t really participate in the big dialogue of literature.”
This complaint that the American market doesn’t translate enough world literature is an old one, but the numbers that are usually cited aren’t quite as clear-cut as they might at first seem. Thing is, the lion’s share of books translated into other languages are translated from English—American and British authors—and are big bestsellers. John Grisham. Stephen King. Sue Grafton. Maeve Binchy. Frank McCourt. J.K. Rowling. Lemony Snicket. Etc.
These books aren’t translated because the publishers in France and Turkey and Poland are keen to engage in an international dialogue with American literature. These books are translated because there is a market for these books, and because these books sell, and sell well.
The real test is to ignore translations from English, and for someone to examine how many books each market translates from a more obscure source. South Korea, say. Or, heck, let’s say Japan. Big country, big body of literature. I’d wager that the numbers will be awfully similar.
My Accident (a tale told at the Moth)
(A second story I’ve told at the Moth StorySlams over these past few years. Once again, not about books or publishing, just about unpleasant things and storytelling without a net.)
There was a time when my face was most horrifying thing I’d ever seen, when my visage struck terror in the hearts of people on the streets, when the wan girl who was ringing me up at the Hollywood Video store couldn’t look at me, but instead tearfully told me I could “have the movies for two weeks, that’s fine already, really it’s no problem, just take them and go please go now. Please go.”
This was in San Diego a few years back. Late afternoon on the day after Christmas, I’d had a bicycle accident. The sun was setting. Headlights were snapping on. Darkness was pooling on the streets. I was going fast after a marathon training ride, and my front tire got caught by a huge pothole. The bike flipped, and since I was wearing clipless pedals, I went with it. Face first into another pothole, into its jagged, crumbly edge.
My Mugger (a tale told at the Moth)
(Thought I’d open this blog with a few stories I’ve told at the Moth StorySlams these past few years. No, they’re not about books or movies or agenting or any of that folderol, but they are storytelling—and true stories, at that.)
The gunman came out of the bushes as I rounded the corner and pressed the muzzle of a silver-plated .38 automatic against my forehead. “Give me your money,” he said, “and we won’t have a problem.”
“Dude,” I said, “here’s my wallet.”
As he thumbed it open with his left hand I said, “But there’s no money in it” at the same time as he said, “There’s no money in here!”
“Right,” I said.
“You’ve got an ATM card,” he said. “So we’re going for a ride.” I offered to tell him the code, but he said, “That ain’t gonna work. Come on. You’re driving.”
