All Things Quaint and Trite or a Rant Inspired by another Nicholas Sparks' 'movie'

Please tell me when you look up the word 'putrid' in the dictionary you find a list of Nicholas Sparks' novels as examples. 

Either that or American pop culture for the last twenty years. 

There are lows and there is the graveyard of absolute, inexhaustible lows. Here you find the modern book and music industries, as well as the blockbuster cinema machine. Not to mention, the American mindset that embraces it.

Years ago (I wish it was longer) I tried to watch The Notebook only to feel both nausea and revolt. I love romantic comedies, that is well-written, well-structured romantic comedies but anything from Nicholas Sparks, count me out. 

The Notebook, my god, what a badly written, ill-conceived, un-balanced catastrophic mess, all of it under the allure and gloss of telling a contrived, generic, sub-genial story to appeal to the female persuasion. A story that drags and drearily moves along like a beaten-up Ford on a gravel road. And no one notices the road is  bumpy one, alas, because the ingredients, alas, are all there - charismatic leads, star-crossed and all (Joan Allen could have mailed in her performance) - American audiences gobbled it up. A digestive cookie for sops.

I've haven't watched anything since inspired by the mediocre spark of the Sparks' pen, or if I have, I only get half-way through. 

Take for instance, The Lucky One. It isn't a movie but a series of scripted cues.

Cue the war scenes, cue the wild-jive-talking negro companion at the hummer machine gun. Cue the night scene wherein the soldiers are on a mission.

Cue the gunfight. 

When Zac Efron as the manly-sensitive soldier returns home, cue the German shepherd looking up, then barking and running toward him, welcoming him home.

Cue the romantic vistas, the American pastoral farmlands. 

The entire film is simply this derivative pile of cues. And I can go on because indeed, it's endless. 

Cue the pretty blonde with high cheeks and her artsy, outgoing but sensitive child with curly blonde hair. 

Cue the surly, sheriff ex-husband. 

Cue Blythe Danner and her grandmother-knows-best wisdom.

Cue the tension, the breakdowns and dissent between the exes. The Lucky One? Who's lucky? The audience that can blissfully swallow this pre-masticated, emotional pornographic hayride hybrid of values, longing and nationalistic pride. It's one big jig-saw puzzle, a connect-the-dots, a colour-by-numbers approach to bland Americana and its underbelly of propaganda and ignorance. 

And you know what I compare it with? Soviet Realism.

In the paintings commissioned by the Communist regime under Joseph Stalin, one can see Russians happily at work, big arms, titanic smiles of fortitude, eyes resolved with the task at hand. They are occupied with building the strong, mechanized, industrialized Soviet Union, shovels in their hands, pick axes and wrenches, looking off into the distance amidst railroads, productive factories in the background, plumes of progressive smoke emitting from the heavenly stacks. And beside them, never idle but equally involved, the Russian women with their scarfs, working, keeping pace with the men, children red-cheeked and healthy, either in their arms or at their sides.

No one sees the midnight KGB car in the background, ready to take away someone's father. No one sees the Gulag, the snow-weathered limbs of prisoners with year-old beards and sleepless eyes. No. No one sees the suicides and executions, the torture, the fear.

The same could be said about popular American movies. We don't see the working poor, do we? The people working at Wal-Mart, the ghettos of abandoned cities like Detroit, the empty downtown store fronts, the crack addicts and meth-heads. No. We don't see the people who can't afford health care. No. We're always introduced to the (the yet again) problems of the well-established, people who have cushy jobs - doctors and lawyers, architects and so forth, all of whom are noble, kind and talented, accompanied on their Hollywood journey by good friends and good families to see them though. And somehow, despite everything else, their love life needs work.

Poor things. (Cue the tilted head of sympathy.)

We see characters played by Diane Keaton and Meryl Streep with their lovely ranch houses somewhere in California. Oh, it would be so nice to be young again. Such a shame we're divorced. Oh well, oh well, let's flip through a fashion magazine and then a Home and Garden and order something nice. We'll have a big wedding for the daughter who is eclectic and curious but is marrying someone with a financial future - a banker, lawyer, an investor, broker or maybe a high end chef.

And playing opposite the Baby Boomeresses, Kevin Kline and John Cusack and Alec Baldwin and George Clooney...and so one.

The same shit.

We don't see the prisons, the prisoners, the Guantanamo Bays of our world.

With Nicholas Sparks in his latest book-to-screen wonder, we see Zac Efron as Logan, his emotive eyes, always that tender twinkle of melancholy. We find out he can play the piano and that he took philosophy for a year. And that he loves dogs, oh, my, oh my...rally all the ladies for girls night out because he doesn't compare with any man you've met or will ever meet. And best of all, he's a little unshaven. Oh, so rugged, so un-High School Musical.

And as for the girl, somewhere between adorable and forgettable, she stands there with the Soviet Realism women with her sun dresses and slender figure, her girl-next-door looks and maternal charm.

Bread and circuses. American audiences are given The Lucky One when at the same time all their freedoms are being taken away. If an American citizen is considered a terrorist, they can be whisked off to a modern dungeon without trial because of a new law. (I'm not making this up.)

Adolf Obama in the White House, the Chocolate Jesus according to Bill Maher but don't worry, Zac Efron is more manly now. Don't worry, there will be another season of Glee. Don't worry, there will still be InTouch and People magazines, Comos and InStyles to stare you down at the grocery store.


Don't worry, Taylor Swift with regurgitate her bubble-gum for you to swallow.

And so it goes, history eternally repeating itself (sorry, Mark Twain, sorry, my mistake, "rhyming"). Entertainment to keep the masses amused. The people are truly hungry for justice, truth, transparency but they'll sadly settle for a loaf of bread, either a slice of Miley Cyrus sour dough, a Kim Kardashian ciabatta, or a  Brad Pitt pumpernickel. From Caesar to the Popes, to the Kings of France and England, to Peter and Catherine the Great, to Bismarck, to Hitler, Stalin, down through Bush and now with Obama.

Obama...

And Don't worry, he'll probably be re-elected and no one will no the difference. Well, maybe the people in Yemen and Pakistan, bombed by drones, drones manned by former kids who probably, innocently played Doom and the World of War Craft, masturbating to online porn, totally cut-off from the world.

But that doesn't matter. As long as Zac Efron is happy and he gets the girl.

I tried to watch The Lucky One. But I can't stand stupid long enough. I can guess the ending based on the cues.

Let's see... I'm sure there was a showdown between the ex-husband and him. And I'm sure Blythe Danner talked something wise. And I'm sure the kid is alright though I'm sure he had a realization of some kind, a moment wherein he discovered that Zac Efron is better and kinder, more noble than his sheriff dad with slight abuse tendencies.

And I'm sure the near-forgettable love-interest almost didn't want Efron (almost...) but that's not the way it ends right Sparky? 

As for the rest of North America, I'm not sure. It seems we're only safe in our theatres where we can't see all the jobs going overseas to factory workers without union and safety standards. We can't see the fore-closed homes and the Chinese business men laughing at our corrupt system, happy to do business with Wal-Mart.

Moreover, we can't see the dismembered marines coming home, everyone else who doesn't look like Efron.

Popcorn and circuses. My god, Nicholas Sparks... nevermind, you already know who you are. We already know whose bread you butter.

Weemoed: Melancholy in the World of Vincent Van Gogh

'As my work is, so am I." - Vincent Van Gogh

In a few short days I'll be in Amsterdam which means in a few shorts days I'll be visiting the Van Gogh Museum. This means my mind will soon be gloriously flooded with beautiful works of art, art I've only seen in copies in books or on slides during art history seminars.

As a child, I remember a print of the 'Café Terrace' hanging on the living room wall. It struck me as a sad, desolate painting and I always hesitated looking at it for it seemed to be filled with a strange, albeit baffling loneliness. I thought that if I stared long at it, I would become trapped in the painting. Not only this, the man in white, the server looked more like a skeleton than a human being.

My mother loved this painting and she was the one who first hung it up. And I wondered why she liked it so much.

Café Terrace

Today I can look at it from a remove and see its aesthetics instead of being overcome with the emotions. I look at the bright yellow contrasted with the blue sky. I see Van Gogh's use of the vanishing point and perspective. And yet I know there's something symbolically more about that scene, whether it is the blinding, bold light emanating from the café or the vast sparkle of the sky. It is still laden with a melancholy as if this place attracted only the lost souls and no one else. 

I learned about Van Gogh in high school, my mother having lent me her copy of Don Maclean's Greatest His. I listened to the song 'Vincent' and though I heard the words, understood their meaning, I still hadn't arrived at a tender appreciation of the artist. I had seen 'Starry Night' in my grade 12 art class, my teacher Miss Armstrong was very passionate in her discussion of the painting. I noted the vibrant, swirling colours, the near organic and orgasmic quality to the piece. Yes, I saw that the artist had brought the canvas to life. But in the back of my mind, I thought, big deal.

In university, when I was going through my own lonely times I began to feel some compassion for Van Gogh. Prof Knight devoted an entire class to his work, starting from the beginning. I learned that Vincent Van Gogh began his working life in his late teens as an art dealer, that he worked in The Hague, Paris and London. But while visiting the latter city, he was introduced to the terrible working conditions of the poor. Eventually, he lost interest in his position - they fired him actually - and turned to the church. In his letter to his brother Theo, he wrote long sermons and discussed the Bible. He considered becoming a theologian. He moved around, couldn't get settled, he became a vehement preacher and lived in squalor similar to St. Francis of Assisi. 

The church and the church folk too, as it turned out turned their back on him because his passion was too passionate. The Dutch and Belgium burgers with their Calvinism and Dutch Reform ways found he wasn't too conservative for their liking. Sure, they appreciated a vow of poverty but Vincent took it too far.

Neuen Cottage

This is when he began to drawn and paint. Mostly he began with studies of peasants in the fields. His canvas was dark and drab. He asked locals to sit for him so he could draw their features. Highly influenced by the painters of the Barbizon School, a group of painters in France that depicted peasant life and rural scenes, Van Gogh used Jean-Francois Millet as his mentor. 

Prof. Knight introduced the class to the 'Potato Eaters', Van Gogh's first true masterpiece. In the painting, a family of farm workers sit around their table at night, eating potatoes, a single bulb illuminating their faces. One thinks of a murky coal mine, the dismal light so bare and stark - but its really a dining room. Van Gogh wanted to show the viewer the lives of the down-trodden, to show that these people were close to the earth, that they were the ones who had picked the very potatoes they were eating. 

What is fascinating about the masterpiece, Knight pointed out to my seminar is that the sketches Van Gogh did in preparation were far more fascinating, more alive. It was the sketches that give us a hint of his genius.

Van Gogh moved to Paris and lived for a time with his brother. This was a welcome relief to his family. His relatives in the Netherlands were fed up with his uncouth and erratic ways. Van Gogh was a loner and his family made sure of this. All attempts to reach out and connect were made difficult by them. He fell in love easily enough and tried to court a cousin, Kee. Maybe it wasn't the right time. She had a child, she was a widow. One afternoon at her home, Van Gogh put his hand to a flame, demanding his uncle to let him speak with her. Kee's father blew out the candle and lead the artist away to a pub where he could get drunk. 

His relations with his father had grown strained. Van Gogh in his desire to belong, to be seen as someone important, significant had pursued a career in the church purposely to be closer to him. He was well-read in The Bible, could quote scripture. But the pastor had no love for his son. If anything, the father could see the emotional turmoil lurking in Vincent and wanted to distance himself. Though Pastor Van Gogh was a man of the church, a man of Christ he was no Christian towards his son, unwelcoming, distant and judgmental.

Before his move to Paris, it is fascinating to note Vincent's frequent use of the word, melancholy in his letters. In his 7/8 February 1877 letter, he breaks the word down. In Dutch, melancholy is weemoed so we find, thanks to Van Gogh's discernment,  wee (woe) and moed (courage). In English, melancholy is derived from the Greek. Hippocrates and ancient medical science regarded excess of bile as the cause of the sanguine sorrow, hence melas (black) and kholé (bile). 

In addition to Dutch and English, Van Gogh also knew how to speak French and German. But it is this brilliant observation on a single word in Dutch and its meaning that we understand the artist. When he wrote this letter in Dordrecht, he was still focused on a career in the church. But like the 'Potato Eaters' we glean a hint of the future great artist. 

In fact, I think the word in Dutch is better than in English. For the artists of the 19th century, weemoed was a constant. The industrial revolution turned the farmer away from his fields. Cities became the new place of pilgrimage as towns and rural communities lost workers to the promise of jobs in factories and mills. The earth, the hearth held no sway. Artists could see the broken lives of the poor, as well as the broken spirits of the emerging bourgeois. In Germany, they turned to the realm of night and dreams, poetry and philosophy, music. In France, Romantic theatre took storm along with painting, novels and polemics. Cities became busier, crime-ridden, dingier, darker. 

Whether we interpret the Dutch word as 'courage in woe', or 'woe's courage', Vincent Van Gogh was not alone in the realm of artists. He continued on, fighting his woe with art, painting and learning, learning and painting. In Paris, as I mentioned he lived with his brother and painted the windmills of Montmarte, feeling a nostalgia for the windmills of his native land. He met fellow artists, was introduced to the work of the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist. His canvas became brighter, livelier. He was influenced by the pointillism of George Seurat and Paul Signac but he didn't have the patience to apply the little dots to his canvas. Instead, he made the technique his own and instead of dots, quick, flashing, slashing strokes of the brush. 

Tired of Paris, he moved to the south of France, the town of Arles on the Rhone River. Though his brother and him couldn't live together (Theo complained of Vincent's untidiness and his erratic emotions), Vincent still longed for a community of artists. He convinced Paul Gauguin to live with him. But this wasn't to last. The two artists disagreed on everything. Van Gogh was a colourist and favoured the works of Delacrois and Rubens. Gauguin favoured the use of line and placed Ingres and Raphael on a pedestal. Neither could convert the other so the 'brotherhood' disbanded. 

Van Gogh was a loner, a wanderer. In a later letter he wrote: "I am not an adventurer by choice but by fate and feeling nowhere so much a stranger as in my own family and country." His father had been dead for some time now and though he never saw his mother again, he used a photograph to paint a beatific portrait of her, one where she beamed him a forgiving smile.

Landscapes, rural scenes. The light in his paintings was the brightest in Arles, a far cry from the murky, autumn and snow scenes of the north. His 'Potato Eaters' had lead him here and he still found beauty in the human face. He continued to paint portraits. The time he spent painting the everyday people around him, was a kind of haven, an authentic moment of longing and community. He dreamed of companionship but he could get no further than the paintings he created of couples walking, resting, standing together under the stars. 

In the famous self-mutilation incident, he didn't chop off his entire ear, merely his lobe. And some scholars wonder if it wasn't someone else who did the deed. The bleeding was intense, his cry for help even more so. He decided to leave Arles for Auvers, hoping to escape the weemoed he encountered in the south, in his self. 

He found a friend in Dr. Gachet. Vincent painted his portrait, depicting the melancholy on the doctor's face. 

He again turned to the scenes of life around him and painted, but somehow he knew that no matter what he created, it would only be worth something after his death. He had found out that a painting by Millet, his hero had sold for several thousand francs after the artist's death. He saw a similar fate for his works.

There has been recent debate over his death. While many scholars believe he shot himself, others are beginning to wonder if the romantic-martyr image of the failed, starving artist isn't a bit contrived. Some wonder where he got the pistol. And being a Christian, he knew suicide was a sin. Yes, he cut off his ear lobe but are we still certain about his courage to shoot himself?

In a recent, controversial book by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith, the two authors point to the possibility that he was accidentally shot by local boys. The boys had teased the artists, adding salt to his coffee in the local cafe, scaring him with a snake, even having their girlfriends try to seduce him, knowing how lonely he was. When one of the boys came in possession of a gun, it is believed the weapon either misfired or be mishandled and Van Gogh took the bullet.

Not in a wheat field, but closer to the town that he was shot. When the police asked if he shot himself, he said he thought so to which he followed up with: "Don't accuse anyone else." 

Van Gogh wanted to die and he died knowing his brother would no longer be burdened by him.

Vermeer, Van Gogh, and the Artist's Legacy

Yesterday morning, I finished reading Vermeer: A View of Delft by British author Anthony Bailey. I had always been an admirer of the Dutch artist's work since my high school art history classes. There is something both timeless and sensual in his interior depictions of women at their domestic labours. On top of this, there is an element of quiet mystery. The ladies are nameless, the letters they read and receive are equally clouded in questions and as for their duties, the lessons they receive, the men who court them, everything is secretive and hushed. 

Vermeer not only inspired artists but other writers. Proust mentions Vermeer's painting, The View of Delft in his massive novel, In Search of Lost Time where Marcel, the narrator discusses how Monsieur Swann, a family friend was continually writing an essay about the artist. Interestingly enough, the writer Bergotte in Proust's grand opus collapses shortly after seeing one of the master's paintings and dies having witnessed the grandeur of the colours and the composition.

In the twentieth century, there have been numerous historical fictions about Vermeer, the most famous being Girl With a Pearl Earring, a novel crafted by Tracy Chevalier and later made into a movie featuring Colin Firth as the artist and Scarlet Johansson as his innocent muse. 

Bailey is a sympathetic writer and though the details are few about Johannes Vermeer's life (Bailey spends a large portion of filling in the world behind the artist - i.e. talking about the history, the political and historical figures that had a direct and indirect influence on Vermeer and his family), what I was left with is the same appalling sadness I encounter when I think about the legacies of artists.

Vermeer married well but accumulated debts along the way to his death. He lived in the time of Holland's Golden Age. Spain was no longer a threat but in the last years of Vermeer's life, both the British and French made it quite difficult for the people of the Netherlands to feel peace in their profound freedom. The French especially, under Louis XIV invaded the region, then called the United Provinces in 1672. The Dutch armies being smaller than the French, resorted to unique tactics and flooded their landscape to thwart the king's men. The invasion was short-lived but the devastating economic effects rippled through the lives of everyday people. The fields  being flood, there were food shortages which meant there were deaths from starvation and higher prices for everything edible. Also, in a time of deprivation, who needs art?

Vermeer died suddenly in 1675. He collapsed after walking through his house, looking in the various rooms at his children, his wife and their maids. The collapse, some scholars have suggested may have been a result of depression and the stresses of getting his family through a hard time. A heart attack, a stroke, it is difficultt to say but many believed he suffered from melancholy, a then catch-all word to describe the sadness and desolate emotions people experienced.

In the wake of his death, his widow struggled to keep the family together. Some of their children married well which relieved the burden but by the time Catharina passed on some twelve years later, she had nothing to leave her kin. 

Today, Vermeers are worth millions of dollars. They are stolen from private homes and museums. There have been forgeries and frauds. In the twentieth century, a man considered an expert on Vermeer was fooled by a Dutch artist from The Hague. The fake Vermeer had been beautifully painted, giving the impression of being an early work of the artist. The forger used very careful and creative means to give the painting a look of being weathered by centuries - he baked the canvas in an oven, rolled it up to induce cracks and then used blank ink, rubbing it into the surface to give the impression of old dirt. 

The expert simply wanted to believe that something from the fabled artist could suddenly exist, that a bit of mystery still existed out there and that fate had conspired to bring him what had been for centuries, considered lost. 

The expert didn't see it was obviously a fraud. The figures in the painting had not been handled with the same plush sensuality or kindness. The forger couldn't quite capture the same magic and pensive stillness, the same warmth Vermeer is known for. No, the expert fell victim to his own deceit and belief, caught up in his own wistful longing to have something more from the long dead master. The story of how the painting was recovered (it had been in a rich family's home for generations), that it bore the same signature in Vermeer's painting - these were the things that helped fool him but the fooling was easy because the victim was so willing.

And this is where I have difficulty. It is one thing to fall in love with a piece of work, it is another to simply appreciate it because death has sealed off future works from the same hand. It is more the story than the thing itself that is loved.

Van Gogh, a few centuries later would die penniless, tragically by his own hand. Instead of walking through his rooms, Van Gogh wandered into a field and shot himself with a shotgun. 

Like Vermeer, however, there is a legacy that shrouds the intrinsic beauty of his work. People appreciate Van Gogh's work, not because it is beautiful and strange and discomforting, that it doesn't follow the rules of academic art, that it breaks free - no, people are attracted to the death, to the dark story behind the work.(The fact that he mutilated himself also helps bring a touch of excitement to an already somber life.)

In a sense, people are indirectly possessed with a fascination for death. 

I always think of the humorous quote by Max Beerbohm: "Death cancels all engagements." How true and sad and yet, for an artist, death cancels all commissions, all aspirations, all ideas. The viewing public, however, is more intrigued. 

And this extends to the death in the twentieth and twenty-first century of notoriously famous recording artists. We had Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison in the sixties, Elvis in 1997, John Lennon in 1980, Kurt Kobain, Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls in the nineties to most recently, Michael Jackson, Amy Winehouse and of course, Whitney Houston. 

The deaths of recording artists are always multi-platinum. I heard they are going to showing The Bodyguard, the famous, albeit trite Houston film in select theatres. The public cannot have Houston anymore but they can have the digital image, the replica - as if the fleeting possibility of her presence was suddenly renewed and believed in. And there is money to be made in an artist's death.

It all comes back to a banality, an unwillingness to acknowledge that death is a more fascinating aspect to an artist than the art itself. And this is the sadness I feel. Vermeer died broke, indentured, he owed people - bakers, butchers and other merchants, you name it. He owed and yet the world after him has taken and made money and profited a million-fold. It almost makes me angry. That someone with such a beautiful gift could not have ever been rescued by his future, posthumous legacy. No. People flock to see his paintings throughout the world, they revel in his work because the mystery is so pure and evocative and because he died unknown. 

They see Van Gogh but they don't really see the art. Everyone a tourist, a vicarious visitor, wandering in the wake that mortality leads, the shreds of beauty that have become an industry for many and a hobby for the wealthy few. 

The world is such a disparaging mess.    

The Modern Romantic Comedy or the Cinema of Annoyance and Irritation

Like any intelligent film viewer, the modern romantic comedy is perhaps the bane of our entertained existence. We can sit through silent films, foreign film and documentaries and tolerate the latest batch of heavy, depressing, Oscar-nominated movies that hopelessly address some much needed social issue. We can be moved by these dramas, many of them poignant and subtle (so long as the ending isn't Hollywoodized or too morose and cynical). I think most of us want to watch something that is true to life, that it could happen.

The trouble is, there are far too many interesting, profound, albeit dark dramas being churned out and too little discerning, thoughtful and playful comedies being made. 

In fact, Hollywood, for the most part doesn't take comedy seriously. The Golden Globes has at least an aware for a best comedy/musical. The Oscars don't. 

The Oscars being the Nobel Prize of movies, this means that directors and screenwriters hoping to craft careers of notoriety and much-applauded fame typically push their chips in the direction of serious dramas and stay clear of comedy, let alone the romantic kind.

There have been some successes such as Juno, 500 Days of Summer and the recent 50/50. But these are far and few between. And it shouldn't be. 

The romantic comedy has been with us since the days of the Greeks and Romans when the comedies of Menander (342-291 BC), Plautus (254-184 BC) and Terence (2nd century) took precedent in the theatres of the ancient world. These men, their plays along with the romantic adventure novels of Longus (Daphnis and Chloe) and Apuleuis (The Golden Ass) set the stage for Shakespeare in Renaissance England, the works of the Spanish playwrights in the Golden Age and the Commedia delle'arte of Italy of the 16th century. These works inspired the operas of Mozart, Rossini, Donizetti, Bellini, Verdi and Puccini, not to mention Richard Strauss in the 20th century and WWF wrestling (much of which is improvised like the Italian comedies of old).

The stories back then are the stories of now. We have the hero and heroine, two lovers destined to be together. At their sides, his slave and her maid. Of course, you  need a wily enemy, a dark master, typically a doctor, a soldier or a father who happens to stand in the lover's way. Sometimes you have a trickster, the Harlequin character found in Italy and a buffoon, usually the dark master's assistant (think Igor in the Hollywood version of Frankenstein).

Also, we mustn't forget the wise sage, usually a mother figure or a kindly hermit. 

The romantic comedy of today has all these ingredients but without the same magic or charisma. The films of Hollywood, films made by legends have all been ruined by modern versions. Take for instance It Happened One Night which is basically Pride and Prejudice on the road in rural America done by comedy great, Frank Capra (mos famous for It's A Wonderful Life). You have a dashing, if not roguish reporter and an uppity socialite stuck together. The film initially didn't do well but ended up becoming a hit and the go-to comedy if you want to make a romantic road movies (think of such recent movies as Leap Year, The Proposal, and Two Weeks Notice).

When Jane Austen (1775-1817) was writing her novels, she based much of the structure of her work on the philosophy of David Hume (1711-76). Austen's first title for Pride and Prejudice, her most famous book, was First Impressions which had been inspired by Hume's views on morality, perception and human nature.

Jane Austen continues to fascinate readers because she was able to take something abstract and humanize it. The screenwriters of Hollywood that followed her have only caught a glimpse of what she was actually doing. This explains the banality of The Ugly Truth, Sweet Home, Alabama, Hitch and half of Kate Hudson's movies.

Perhaps it is laziness or the expectations of Hollywood producers. Maybe it has to do America and the lack of audiences who want something substantial and settle for anything formulaic. This would make sense as they have become the land of mediocrity, the country that spawned big box stories, disposable everythings and the high calorie, low nutrition diet. 

Nonetheless, I myself have gotten to the point where I can predict the story turns (not twists, they aren't that intelligent to be called such) in most romantic comedies. A romantic comedy is 90 minutes long. At certain points in the movie, screenwriters and directors must establish key points, transitions and developments.

MINUTES 1-10: bring the two romantic leads into focus. For SHE, make sure she is successful, has a nice car, nice house, nice family and friends, great, enviable female job but somehow she is missing her special someone due to be hopelessly single, divorced or tragically widowed. For HE, make sure he too has a support network, that he lives in a masculine environment and does something most film watching men want to do - a record producer, artists, musician, lawyer, doctor, etc.... In the case of establishing both HE and SHE, have them talk about their problems and let their family/friends be quirky, insightful but not too attractive.

MINUTES 11-20: show how the leads are coping without each other. HE is dating flighty women, SHE is meeting men who are either pathetically vulnerable or one-dimensionally crass, crude and irritatingly and unrealistically vain. For SHE make sure there is one potential love interest that the audience seemingly and superficially wants her to land up with (the OTHER).

AROUND THE END OF ACT I: the two leads meet and either hit it off or drive each other crazy (either way, we, the audience are introduced to sexual tension). 

MINUTES  30-50: Any number of possible scenarios are presented. HE likes SHE and can't stop thinking about  her, all of this expressed in city scenes featuring cafes or trendy bars as backdrops, all the while the FRIEND encourages but also suggests he keep his options open. If neither lead cares for the other, have THEM criticize all their flaws while being in trendy restaurants or do something active in public - like jogging or sailing. 

In the case of SHE, make sure the OTHER is never far and have them meet somewhere, say at the gym or when she is with family so the OTHER can see how supported SHE is and won't feel bad when he screws her over later.

In the case of the two romantic leads getting together, either show THEM having lots of together time or have THEM together but not once consummating the relationship, pissing off the audience. 

NEARING THE END OF ACT 2: Now we have some minor crisis, a sub-story featuring a background character. HE comes to the background characters rescue or SHE, instead of being the supportive one, does the supporting.

Following this minor, forgettable episode, the audience would like to get a glimpse of the OTHER and what he is doing to mess with the female lead's head. The OTHER has been established as charismatic, overly-attractive and confident in Act 1. Now he's going to make his move. 

Either A) He fails because of a MISUNDERSTANDING or B) he succeeds because the MALE LEAD hasn't quite gotten his game together. 

Of course we can't forget the MAJOR MISUNDERSTANDING. This usually occurs when the OTHER and MALE LEAD meet each other for the first time, usually in the presence of the FEMALE LEAD. SHE is supposed to be with HE but HE thinks the OTHER is with SHE. Typically trite, HE storms off and the audience shakes their heads (HE has never been one to trust SHE and sorting things out by discussing the MAJOR MISUNDERSTANDING rarely occurs amongst the leads).

MINUTES 70-85: We now see the leads apart. HE and SHE are miserable though they have their quirky companions, their supportive family to get them through the days - but the something that is missing keeps bugging them. They try to date and get back out there but they know and we know they are meant to be together.

SHE might try to get together with the OTHER only to discover he is only charismatic and charming. There's nothing beyond the surface. 

MINUTES 85-89: Now we have a dilemma. HE or SHE is afraid of losing SHE or HE. Depending on who the main lead is, should the focus fall mainly on SHE, it'll be her task to chase after him. If HE was the one who screwed up or supposedly messed things up with a FEMALE OTHER, he'll have to chase after her. 

This is the point in the film where someone is going on a trip. THE CHASER most likely rushes frantically to the airport/train station to make sure THE CHASED is still willing to give it a second chance. It is always about do or die. THE CHASER on the way to THE CHASED crashes into garbage cans on the road, nearly hits people on the sidewalk while running or does something terribly embarrassing all the while blatantly demonstrating to the mediocre audience that THE CHASER is emphatically and desperately in love. 

The public embarrassment leads to the SPEECH. THE CHASER has managed to track down THE CHASED and with the presence of sympathetic by-standers, THE CHASER entreats and convinces THE CHASED to work it out. The by-standers (typically being air port passengers/staff or street side folk) look on with smiles wishing they too were involved in such a high-stakes relationship.

FILM WRAP-UP or END OF ACT 3: HE and SHE are finally together and his quirky friends/family meet her quirky friends/family. It is all one German gemutlichkeit (a happy-being-with-each-other) and the film ends with happy music.

Rereading John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath

Of all the books I read in my adolescence, from The Great Gatsby to The Catcher in the Rye, books assigned in English classes (The Mayor of Casterbridge), books I read for fun (Don Quixoite) and edification (The Consolation of Philosophy), I still believe John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath has been the most important.

Like a song that not only stirs us but revives memories in us of a time when we first tuned in, a great book is both a tome within itself and within us. There is something of a bridge between the words on the page and how they resonate inside us. The philosopher Plato looked down upon artists because they chose to imitate what he considered an imitation. A painter paints a table when the table, in Plato's argument is only a copy of the great eternal idea of a 'table'. 

For me, a great writer is able to create an entire world and the fortunate reader, an opportunity to explore it and become in some way lost in the images, amused and entertained by the scenes, befriended by the characters and moved by the varying moods. The work of art, especially a book is not truly an imitation but a reality, a realm unto itself, a place that changes though the print never truly changes, the story never changes. There is a kind of mystical relationship between the reader and the words written. It is a timeless world that unfolds in time and does so eternally. The words remain but the reader encounters a variation of the same due to his or her experience with the book. 

Steinbeck's world is such a place that ones feels at home. Once the book begins, there is no turning back and though some chapters are difficult, it is a journey that doesn't let go until you find yourself at the end.

For those that haven't read The Grapes of Wrath it's more than just a novel about the Joads. Though the backdrop is the Depression, the places, Oklahoma and California and the roads in between, the real focus is survival along with the need for human support and co-operation, ideals and dreams that are achievable and in reach but often thwarted and obstructed by the greedy, the arrogant and ignorant (for isn't greed a form of blindness). Though there is no good and evil, no black and white in the story, merely a struggle between viewpoints, the conflict between the haves and have-nots is upfront and personal. 

To begin, the Joads, like many farmers of the 1930s Dust Bowl drought years lose their farm and in order to make ends meet, drive out to California in search of work. Along the way they are challenged and though the family is little by little torn apart, a greater picture arises, a greater bond becomes recognized. Though people like the Joads are abused by the cops who act as bullies for the well-to-do, they are never broken. 

It is a perennial story of survival and hope. The ending differs from the film adaptation and perhaps it is the most haunting in literature. 

To read such a work has brought back memories of my teen years, the time when I first discovered Bob Dylan's early folk music and the music of Dylan's main influence, Woody Guthrie. 

While reading the novel, I seemed to recall the strikes my father attended at General Motors in St.Catharines. 

I also remembered the effect the novel had on me then, the longing to live in a world where families worked hard to stay together. Though I knew my parent's separation was inevitable, I admired Ma Joad's tenacity, her fierce will to stay strong in the face of adversity and loss. 

I also looked upon Tom Joad, the pivotal protagonist as not only an icon of hope and justice, but of courage and endurance. For me, high school was hell but there had been other hells out there and Tom was the kind of man I would have wanted to be my best friend, my wing man in a fight or conflict or bad corner.

There was also something to having a brother like Al or younger siblings like Ruthie and Winfield. The Joads are never alone and when I first read the book, it was difficult coming to the end when I knew it would be the end of their kinship. Even tonight, after reading the last page for the second time, it is like closing the door on a crowd of kind, but sturdy companions.

There should be a word to describe the melancholy people feel when a good book comes to an end, when the reader must resentfully place the book back on the shelf after there are no more page to embrace and devour. It is a mournful waking moment and only with beautiful works of literature do I encounter such sombre moods. I can't just jump into another book because the aura of the just read masterpiece is too overwhelming. And the aura, I know, often lingers to the point that other novels will routinely feel pale in the great work's wake. 

I felt the same after my first reading. It is harder even now. I'll probably be a wreck should I return to the book in the years to come.

The thing that stays with me the most is how timely and timeless the scenes of the book played out, especially when the Joads and the other characters in the novel had to deal with cops. The law enforcement of those times and places were bullies then, they are bullies now. I've kept abreast of the Occupy Movement through Democracy Now and it saddens me to think that so little has changed and yet so much. I think about my recent dealing with a Niagara winery, their mistreatment of employees and if it wasn't for books like The Grapes of Wrath, for human rights and labour relations groups, I wouldn't have received a settlement. I can say John Steinbeck has had a great influence on my life in both his writing and the awareness he spread, rippling through the decades. 

Such novelists leave deep impacts in our lives when we let them. All it takes is a simple motion of the eyes and some understanding, some basic literacy and we're on our way to dreaming and feeling something beyond ourselves. The trouble is the confusion we encounter when the books end. What do we do with our learning, who do we talk with? I've always been a loner and there are so few people I can speak to that share similar interests. The Internet is one place but I don't really feel connected to people, not with a blog or with messages on Facebook. Our digital age has tried to recreate a pale version of human interaction. Social media is far from truly being social. I much prefer the company of the Joads, their faces in the firelight, the distant sound of harmonica, the smell of bacon and the soulful eyes of Tom and his preacher friend Casey discussing God, the world and humanity. 

I know I can go back to them.

Falling in Love with Karin Fossum

I'm not one for mysteries. There never seems to be a shortage of hard-boiled, alcoholic detectives with ex-wives and troubled children. Every time I wander into the mystery section, I feel a yawn rising in my chest. I've picked up so many books and it's the same thing for me. Either an American mystery with the same page-turning gusto of a Michael Bay movie where you have to keep reading because your reptilian brain won't forgive you if you don't or another badly translated, badly written Scandinavian novel (or trilogy of novels....hmmmm what could they be?) with boring characters who speak boring dialogue. And the narration is terrible (really can anyone explain the popularity of Steig Larsson's books? Come on....)

(Though to my mother's credit, I applaud English mysteries in her honor and hopefully, eventually, will get around to them when I get the time.)

The mystery section, in other words is the last section for me in the book store. 

But there are a few shining lights and one I must mention is Karin Fossum. 

I simply love her books. I first came across her by accident while perusing Amazon.com. I had read the Toronto's Star bi-weekly 'Whodunnit' section and came across the name of an Icelandic writer. I requested the book from the library only to find it a bit disappointing (again hard-nosed detective who drinks a little too much and has a drug-addicted daughter....and a case that 'can't' be solved...blah, blah, blah...). 

When I went back to Amazon I wanted to see if all Scandinavian mystery novelists were the same. To my eternal joy and happiness I found the name of Karin Fossum among the Amazon recommends section.(I found others but they're not worth mentioning, their books seemingly suffering from bad translation and typical plot-lines relying too much on shock and gore instead of good characters.)

I started with Se deg ikke tilbake or Don't Look Back, her first novel to be translated into English from Norwegian. And all I can say is I can't look back. The book is excellent and best of all, believable. 

The story revolves around the mystery of a girl found naked on a cold Norwegian beach. Detective Sejer is heading the investigation, an older, well-seasoned but certainly not cynical police man. Though he has a world weariness to him, he demonstrates poise and diplomacy and is tough and terse when he needs to be. There is no element of corruption in his character and though he might sound like a by-the-book gumshoe, he's more a down-to-earth realist who simply wants to get thing solved and set right. There is an Everyman quality and he isn't perfect. He has regrets, he suffers from the loss of his wife. He knows he won out by meeting and marrying her. There is an element of mourning but an equally real motivation to let the past be and move on. 

His sidekick Skarre smokes cigarettes. He is young and attractive and there's a kindness to him. Though he might appear innocent and wide-eyed, he's no rookie and works alongside Sejer. 

What I loved about the book is the simplicity, the directness of the text. A good artist paints a picture but a great one allows you to step in it. And that's how Fossum works. She relies on the reader's imagination to help her paint the scenes. Most readers have an idea of the Norwegian countryside and so she helps us in some ways, but she lets us go in others. Her descriptions are rarely elaborate and exaggerated. I would say she sets up her world with a modicum of sentences. The spareness is beautiful and often bewildering because it seems we are following just behind the main characters, getting lost with them, wondering the same things. 

Something similar could be said for all her books. We are there and the best part of being there, is the feeling, both in the moods of the characters and their emotions. We sympathize with Sejer because he in turn is sympathetic. We learn he has a daughter and the daughter has adopted a boy from Africa. Fossum sheds light on the racism in Norway where in such books as When The Devil Holds the Candle and The Indian Bride, the immigrant and the outsider are given harsh treatment. 

There is also a great deal of compassion felt for the mentally ill. Fossum herself worked in hospitals and nursing homes and was most likely no strange to the trials of the psychologically wounded. This is evident in He Who Fears the Wolf, Black Seconds and Bad Intentions. Her crazier characters are often more sane and human than her criminals which exhibit their own crazed behavior. 

And yet, I often hesitate to use the word 'criminal'. The guilty are guilty but there are too many shades of grey here in Fossum's Norwary, a nice contrast to the black and white we see in  our typical American mystery where we are safe with the good guy and threatened by the bad. With Sejer, there are often cases  he has to deal with where the criminal is an old lady or just some kid in the wrong place at the wrong time. The so-called 'bad intentions' aren't really 'intentions', just results of a situation gone wrong which makes the endings of her books feel more incomplete and of course, more real. The case might be closed or it might not be. It's all so ambiguous and complicated and all-too-human.

I've read nearly all her books and I've not been disappointed with a single one. Some I've loved more than others but as a whole, I love them the way any voracious reader would love a writer who continually delivers. I can look forward to Sejer, to his outlook, to his development. At one point he had a dog who passed on. At one point he had a girlfriend, a doctor in a mental hospital with a kinkiness to her. Like in life, people and loved ones come and go. In my latest Fossum read, Bad Intentions, the reader encounter's a moment in which Sejer faces his own fears and thoughts regarding mortality following a walk with Skarre. 

Again I don't read mystery but I wouldn't call Karin Fossum just a mystery a writer. She transcends the genre, makes it personal, making it, in short, her own. For me, it is literature with a mystery. Her books are like the best friends you want to keep in contact with. Seeing where it all goes in turn allows the reading to feel even more rewarding. She's an author who values the intelligence of the reader and over delivers with her characters, her stories and her writing.

And when someone goes above and beyond, thinks the best of us, doesn't insult our intelligence or rely upon the derivative to sell her story, what's not to love? (Fans of the Larsson, you really need to see the light...)

(A final note, I must acknowledge the astute and careful work of translators like Charlotte Barslund that have made Fossum's world so readily available in English. Without people like her, the atmosphere, mood and credibility of another world would remain alien and inaccessible. Many, many, many thanks Charlotte.)

My Life Now as a Hawaiian Shirt

Benjamin Franklin once wrote in his maxims that 'he who is an old young man will become a young old man.'

Friedrich Nietzsche once wrote that some men are born posthumous. Mircea Eliade, Romanian historian and professor of religious studies at the University of Chicago wrote a novella entitled Youth Without Youth that was adapted into a film. I've never read the book nor seen the movie but I can relate to the title. 

If I could rewrite the poet's famous line 'Je est un autre' ('I' is the other or someone else) it would be Jeune est un autre' (Youth is the other).

I've been an old man all my life. And it's not that I bemoan my fate, in fact I favor the Nietzschean, amor fati or love of fate. It is what it is, embrace it, nourish it, watch it, let it be. 

And so it is.

For me youth has always been equal to idiocy, immaturity and ignorance. Youth is truly wasted on the young. The old are nostalgic, eyes glistening with thoughts for the golden time while the young go about blind, not recognizing the potential in their energy, the immense future and how that energy they possess is so often wasted on pranks and other innocuous but pathetic pursuits.

This is demonstrated in numerous ways. If you've ever driven by a high school, you'll notice the young walk out into traffic, brazen with a thousand lives in their pocket. If you've ever been to any downtown club on any given weekend in any given major city, the young dance all night and drink to their hearts content, vomiting to their stomach's discontent the next morning. And if you've ever wandered the halls of a university dorm, peeked into their rooms, the young are capable of pulling off all-nighters usually as a last resort due to their procrastination. 

The young are careless because they can be. 

Even when I was young I wasn't and in some ways envied the youth around me. I felt like I was speaking to my peers as if I came from another planet or though another medium. My classmates gravitated towards certain kinds of music and movies and though I tried to emulate them by following their interests I routinely gave up and subjected myself to a kind of generational exile. 

I was always too cautious. I looked both ways, I've never really been one to party all night and I did my work on time.

And that's how it's been. I've come into this world to feel alone amongst those my own age, to be removed.

But it's strange, I always think of a scene in the film Wild Strawberries wherein the professor, Isak is looking in on the dream world of his memories. Standing to the side amidst the trees, listening to the chatter and gossip of his cousin and sister, Sara begins to describe the young Isak as a refined with sensitive soul, mature and intellectual whereas Sigfrid, the misfit brother is more "fresh and exciting." 

It is a melancholy scene because Isak is an old man, has been all his life. He lost the girl of his dreams because of his seriousness, his appreciation of art and beauty. The poets are poets because they aren't the exciting ones. An artist has to fall for the careless muse, she is unreachable and pernicious in her immaturity.

I think of this scene and relate to it, especially when I'm looking online for a companion - I find the pretty ones just want to watch hockey or go out dancing at a club, dating a guy with abs and arms. I could do without hockey and dancing and I'd work out more if I didn't have to work. 

Fresh and exciting. I've never been those things. I've been disillusioned. I've been lost. I've been found. I've been intrigued. I've been speculative and I've been confounded. 

The trouble is, I'm an anomaly, I'm too curious and too easily bored. I probably should be in a big city, go to art museums and poetry readings but those worlds are filled with hypocrites and wannabes. The art world died as soon as Picasso ruined the canvas with his misogyny and ego and Joyce stabbed literature in the heart.

Or maybe I should be in Toronto, trying to break into the music scene. People tell me I have a beautiful singing voice (Dan Hill of 'Sometimes When We Touch' at a Songwriters conference even conferred) and my songs are unique but just the idea of trying to be an entrepreneur in a high-pressure field doesn't impress me. The idea of being on Twitter disgusts me and I'm clueless and sometimes, happily so.

I don't want to be a part of those kinds of worlds. 

Instead I'm in south western Ontario, in a friendly rural community. I've been hired on for two jobs, one working as a service agent at a rental car company and the other job, a food demonstrator. 

It's almost comedic. I feel like I've retired from what ever noble task I never completed or stepped up to tackle to find myself in the Hawaiian shirt section of my life. I'm sure they'll be fun jobs. No big salary I can boast. There's nothing remotely engaging about either position. They are just joe-jobs to pay the rent. 

But what is this sadness, this sense of ho-hum hovering behind me, looking down at the bald (Or blind) spot of my life? (Ich weiss nicht, das es bedeuten soll, das ich so traurig bin?)

The jobs are part-time, flexible which will allow me ample hours to read and write and be left in peace. I like peace. I don't like crowds, the chaos is too much and the sense of anything could happen disarms.

I am an old man, right? 

There are no regrets just a longing for something more meaningful and beautiful. A helpless yearning for a kindness from the greater mystery. It seems like it's always been this way, only now I'm wearing the shirt and finding it tough to forgiven myself for being different and outside the regular circles that people find themselves. Sometimes I've managed to sit in on the circumference, just in a few steps away from the isolation, looking in long enough to feel I mattered, offering something succinct, perhaps profound and belonged for a short span only to wake up and find it was illusory. There were a few conversations I loved and there was that golden light that filtered through a moment, a eureka moment but it lasted for the duration of a timely topic and once the discussion closed its door, I somehow closed myself off as well. 

When I go out, driving past the brown, skeleton-like corn fields, out for groceries or the library, it's only to help me appreciate the coming back, the coming home. I go into town and the drive is lovely, there's no traffic to complain about, no overpasses and cement walls that make feel even more trapped. On Sundays I pick up the Toronto Star. I have my wine , my books and if I keep going, I might sound like a Simon and Garfunkel song.

I have my Hawaiian shirt, a breath of fresh air, an affordable peace for now and maybe there's someone out there who's envious of me. Someone who had all the freshness and excitement. I don't know.

Freshness expires, excitement eventually has to throw up. I guess my wardrobe is something to accept.