Thus Spake the Mighty Wha-keem

Agent Marc Saunders: Sweden Gets Its First Superhero... or Does It?

2012-01-23T12:00:00.010+01:00

In November last year, a friend of mine shared a link to some interesting news on Bleeding Cool. The headline was "Sweden Gets Its First Superhero" and, as I am both a Swede and fan of the superhero genre, my interest was naturally piqued. However, I had some reservations from the start, which I will return to shortly.

Agent Marc Saunders is written and drawn by Mike Berg (a.k.a. Mikael Bergkvist) and inked by American inker extraordinaire Joe Rubinstein, and the first issue introduces Marc Saunders, a superpowered secret agent working for the US. The premise, which ties into strange meteorites and political upheavals (all revealed in the first issue), is really quite good, but the execution does not fully deliver. While there is nothing wrong with the artwork (I definitely enjoy Berg and Rubinstein's visuals), the language leaves a lot to be desired. Often dialogue and captions read like poor translations from English to Swedish, which is needless to say quite sad for something being promoted as Sweden's first original superhero comic.

The second issue might be a slight improvement in that department, but instead falters in its storytelling, which is often fragmented and confusing. I dare call myself an experienced comics reader, and the amount of times I had to skip back and forth in the second issue to follow the plot (and sometimes failing because necessary linking information was not to be found) was embarrassing. And this is really sad, since there is a really good premise here and some real artistic talent at work.

Returning to the idea of this being Sweden's first superhero and my reservations towards this claim, I think it is worth noting that there has not been any lack of superhero parody and comedy on the Swedish comics scene: there is Kapten Stofil (Eng. trans. Captain Fogey), which I have yet to read, and a great deal of Johan Wanloo's stuff, from Örn Blammo (Eng. trans. Eagle Blammo) to De äventyrslystna karlakarlarna (Eng. trans. the Adventurous Manly-Men) and beyond, certainly qualifies.

I also do not find it insignificant that Agent Saunders is neither a Swede nor situated in or connected to Sweden. Granted that Sweden might not be the easiest country to situate serious superheroics in (a large country with a small population hardly lends itself to extravagances á la DC or Marvel Comics), but if Swedish writer Jan Guillou could create a Swedish James Bond/Jason Bourne type Swedish agent active on an international arena, one may wonder why Agent Saunders could not have been given a similar Swedish grounding. At least if he is to be called Sweden's first superhero.

But the latter is a minor quibble. Especially compared to the more serious problems with language and, more recently, with storytelling.

At any rate, I will support the effort at least one more issue. Because it is a good premise there, and of a kind we do not see nearly often enough over here.

Friendship and Social Media: Human Behaviour beyond Technology and Virtuality

2012-01-13T17:45:00.005+01:00

So, I am back (more or less), somewhat delayed by a nasty cold, and to top it off, this is not the post I had planned to post next. But bear me with me.

Yesterday, I accidentally stumbled upon a youth column in one of Sweden's newspapers in which Mona Jasim argues that true friendship is not to be found on Facebook and that is why she has left. Now, granted that this is a youth column (I will return to some aspects with regards to that), but this is not the first time and place where I have seen this kind of argument posted. And I never cease to be amazed by them.

Why would social media per definition guarantee friendship, or exclude it? Or, for that matter, be the only factor causing inflation in the concept of friendship and what it means?

In my lifetime thus far (i.e. including long before the internet), there have always been people who have had wide circles of loose acquaintances and people who have had a few very close friends. In some cases these two types of people have in actuality been the same individuals. That is to say, the one has never excluded the other.

Physical presence (seeing a person's face, hearing a person's voice, etc) no doubt often makes truly getting closer to people easier, but when it comes down to it, the most central thing is to find a space (real or virtual) where each party feels safe enough to converse more freely and dare to open up to the other. That is it. Now why would this not be possible to achieve within the frames of FB's services? And why would daily communication with acquaintances (and friends) not lead to deepened relationships with them?

At the end of the day, I always get the feeling that people who write columns and posts like that mostly express their own inadequacy to interact with other people virtually in a meaningful way. Which leaves us with the question whether it is actually a sound basis for a general definition of a diversified contact medium.

Returning to the issue of the column in question being a youth column (this time), an old colleague of mine asked whether we really needed to attribute any weight to it. After all, it was directed to young people, many of whom, in his words, have an addiction-like relation to FB. However, even if I had not seen the argument elsewhere often enough before, I do think we have to question the wisdom of trying to get youngsters to abandon technology like social media rather than teaching them to use it constructively. This type of technology, and whatever follows it, is not very likely to go away. Virtual interaction between people is, and will continue to be, necessary in a global community. It does not mean that we cannot question how we use it, but the latter also requires of us to question if how we use it is defined by the medium or by ourselves.

Far too many people talk about all the dangers of virtuality – be it anything from wanton and wasteful escapism to criminally fraudulent behaviour – but few seem to stop to consider the fact that most of these things (sometimes admittedly to differing degrees) existed long before humankind entered the pathways of virtuality. Scams like the Nigeria letters are not new to the internet; the internet is simply a new mode of distribution. And there is a difference between the two.

Case in point, when I was a child, no one would have ever considered telling us that getting a pen pal somewhere in the world would be a harmful or wasteful prospect. In fact, it was quite often encouraged, because it offered the opportunity of us getting to know new people, and perhaps even new cultures in the process. Needless to say, really, the idea of pen pals is not entirely without its dangers. Letters can of course be used for fraudulent purposes, or for just wasting away precious time on surface connections. But then again, it can be used for deeper communication too, as ages of collected correspondence gives evidence to.

Perhaps Mona Jasim would have been better off showing her readers ways in which social media can be used constructively to communicate more deeply with people. But then again, as stated above, it may well be the case that people who write columns and posts like that mostly express their own inadequacy to interact with other people virtually in a meaningful way.

The Big, Fat, Red Lobster Man: Some Seasonal and Associative Ramblings

2011-12-26T12:00:00.011+01:00

"And so it is Christmas," as John Lennon once sang.

Last year around this time (albeit slightly before the arrival of the big, fat, red lobster man, unlike this year), I wrote about some of my own personal Christmas traditions. This year I thought I would be doing something slightly different; so please indulge me in some ramblings and musings on the subject of Santa Clause.

To open up this associative chain of thought, allow me to tell you the first half of a joke once told me by one of my colleagues of the linguistic persuasion: What do you call Santa's little helpers? (Hang in there, I promise to provide the answer before we part.)

So, Santa Clause – or, as the British call him, Father Christmas; which opens up nicely for a segue into associative digression #1.

This is in fact my first Christmas as a father, and although the little fellow is a wee bit too small to fully understand or appreciate the proceedings of the holiday, his presence has certainly altered my own perceptions and understanding. And I do not merely mean things like the annual viewing of The Nightmare Before Christmas taking much longer than usual, with an array of pauses for diverse things. No; while that was certainly a noticeable effect, it is merely a symptom of something much larger. From here on and at the very least for a while, Christmas will once more become a children's holiday, viewed through the eyes of a child, and filled with all imaginable magic and wonder. So, maybe the British are spot on, in acknowledging Santa's paternal role in the children's celebrations.

Of course, Santa has other names to; which opens up nicely for a segue into associative digression #2.

The name Santa Clause itself is obviously a version of the longer Saint Nicholas. With that in mind, it would be easy to assume that the "nickname" (pun half intended) Old Nick was one of Santa's, but alas, one would be ever so wrong in assuming that. Old Nick is, in fact, an old elliptical way of referring to the Devil, who also is a child of many names. One of these names, much publicised by Milton, is Satan. In Christmas times like these, however, it is hard not to recognise that the latter is merely a misspelling of Santa (or vice versa), which leaves a lot of unanswered questions to be pondered. And mayhap the reference of Old Nick is not quite so clear, nor the implied referent so erroneous, as originally suggested.

But let us wrap these ramblings up and return to my initial query (for all good things come in threes): what do you call Santa's little helpers?

Well, naturally they are all sub-clauses.

Merry Xmas!

On Adaptation Revisited: Fidelity, Quality and Translation

2011-12-12T12:00:00.011+01:00

In the past week, I attended a doctoral colleague's work-in-progress seminar, which touches on one of my interests: adaptation. Now, old readers know that I have written on adaptation in here before (and also on the related question of what constitutes a medium), but the seminar made me think about a few things yet again and it seemed appropriate to revisit the subject.

The seminar once more revealed the seemingly great bogeyman of adaptation studies and theories: the issue of fidelity. For some reason, this issue is deemed very problematic, and has people twisting themselves every which way to avoid it. I cannot help but ask why? In truth, to my mind, the issue is much less problematic than most of these critics and theoreticians seem to think, and I will explain why.

Regardless of what medium one adapts from and to, there is a need to distinguish the process of adaptation from the resulting adaptation. The former is arguably an act of translation, a word which etymologically comes from the Latin translatus, i.e. literally "carried across" (see Merriam-Webster). However, as has been noted many times, the act of translation (whether between languages or media) is never a simple process of transfer, but one that always, without exception, involves change on some level. The etymology of the word "adaptation" ("from Latin adaptare, from ad- + aptare to fit, from aptus apt, fit") is arguably a good indication of this aspect, as the idea that necessary changes occur in the process can be seen as the result of the act of fitting something into a different language or medium, and act of metaphorical tailoring attached to the process of the transfer of content. The resulting adaptation, however, is never just a result of that process; it is also a narrative object in its own right.

So what do I mean with this distinction and why do I stress it? Well, the process of translating anything — whether it is translating a text in Swedish to English, or a narrative in literature to film — implies a given source material that needs to be carried across a void of difference, from one language or medium to another; ultimately being fitted into its new location. As such, fidelity can arguably be seen as the mark of a successful process: Was the material carried across adequately; and was it made to fit its new language or medium?

However, fidelity in itself will never tell us if the resulting narrative object is any good. Arguably, one could conceivably transfer and adapt properly (to use Brian McFarlane's distinctions) more or less everything from the source text into the new object (if you will), but without making that object a good one. Sticking to the classic example of adaptation from literature to film, this would basically mean turning a good book into a faithfully adapted but ultimately poor film.

Please note that I am not saying that faithful adaptation is impossible. I am merely pointing out the rather obvious, yet sometimes quite forgotten truth, that fidelity is not a mark of qualitative narrative. In fact, I think that it is this very forgetfulness that haunts adaptation studies and causes the rather unnatural twists and turns in the discourse in trying to shun notions of fidelity and a source text. It is not that the narrative object to come out of the process is not tied into a web of intertext all its own, but clearly the fact that we talk about it as an adaptation of another text means that one of its intertexts is singled out and heavily emphasised. To pretend otherwise seems to be missing something very fundamental about the process.

Similarly, to merely point out failure to be faithful is equally missing the point. The core question here is rather why than what. This is where formalist theories like McFarlane's is so useful. It allows us to delineate what can be transferred (rather simplistically) and what requires adaptation proper (i.e. medium specific changes). Needless to say really, the process at very least mostly involves changes that strictly speaking are not necessary (from the point of view of possibilities in the target medium) and those instances (like those of adaptation proper, I would argue) are what is truly interesting. They are what gives us insights into dimensions beyond the media specific, let us call them societal dimensions to the processes of translation and adaptation. These include ideological, economic, cultural, and even individual-related factors; because an adaptation is never only a question of transfer, or even of making a good narrative object for that matter. (The latter obviously not being unique to the process of adaptation, but a condition it shares with all artistic endeavours to various degrees.)

Art is always produced in an historical and cultural context; it involves individuals in existing ideological and economic systems. Granted that some media are less dependent upon the latter (e.g. literature in its rawest form) than others (e.g. film-making). It would be foolish to think these factors would not also affect the processes of translation and adaptation, just as it would be foolish to assume that the effect itself would be identical (in a heterogenous fashion, I will grant you) to the production of art that does not involve these processes. From an academic point of view, however, these questions would seem not only highly relevant and interesting, but also something that ought to be situated at the very core of adaptation studies.

In short, I think adaptation studies, theory and theorists need to get over both their reluctance towards fidelity and source material, and their willingness to let these concepts blur all boundaries.

Recommendation for Writers: Duotrope

2011-11-28T12:00:00.010+01:00

Apropos of last post's focus on writing, I thought it appropriate to follow up with brief recommendation of a great writer's resource: Duotrope.

This resource (originally recommended to me by Swedish author Karin Tidbeck) offers not only an easy way of keeping track of your submissions, but is also an excellent tool in helping you find the appropriate market for a piece of fiction (in terms of content, length, payment, etc). Obviously, you need to look beyond Duotrope too, but I for one would rather look into the submission guidelines of magazines of definite interest rather than searching through the entire forest of (both real and faux) options manually each time for any given piece.

Try it yourselves!

Writing as Mosaic, or: Grammar in the World of Fiction

2011-11-14T12:00:00.008+01:00

This month is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), which means that a lot of people are spending their time committing words to paper, or screen as it were, this month. While I am not one of them, I nevertheless thought it appropriate to discuss writing in this week's post.

As mentioned already in late June, I taught a creative writing class this summer, with a focus on more sustained types of writing (or lengthier writing, if you will). In the wake of this, I have pondered some issues concerning writing more than I normally do. One of the things that keeps popping up in my head is the question of the relation between the writer and language. This issue is deeply linked to questions of writing as art and/or craft.

Is writing something that can be taught? Can it even be learned? Well, obviously no human being was ever born with the ability to write, so the question might seem null and void even before we phrase it; yet we do struggle with two separate views on the writer: that of the artist born with the gift of genius and creativity, and that of the craftsman who has learned the mechanics of the writing process. Personally, I do not think this is an either-or binary. There are people who seem to have been born with a certain talent, to be sure, but they tend to benefit from learning the craft of their talent. Similarly, people without any talent for it never seem to make as prosperous use of the craft they do learn as those in the first category do. Needless to say, really, neither category is black and white either, so it is not a case of having talent or not, or having learned the craft or not, but rather one of degrees in both areas, and how they intersect in any given writer.

So, where am I going with this? Well, the more I have thought about it, the more I have come to see the process of writing through a metaphor of a mosaic or even Lego. A writer has to start with an idea, but that idea needs to be communicated to the world. This means we need to apply language, but not just any language. Fiction writing certainly requires use of regular language, but also a higher level of grammar; narrative grammar, if you will. Especially the longer your writing becomes, the more important it is to understand the inherent structures of narrative and how to use them.

Does this mean that there is really only craft and no creativity? Of course not, and this is where the metaphor of the mosaic comes in handy. The craft is all about learning to recognise narrative structures and understand grammar in practice. The pieces of mosaic or Lego is language and how to bind these elements together is the narrative structures I talk about. The creative part lies in deciding on the motif you want the mosaic to show, and that could be just about anything a person could imagine (not even the sky is the limit here). However, even if you have the greatest motif imaginable in mind, chances are that your mosaic will fall apart, be jagged and jarring, or not even be remotely akin to what was in your mind. This is where technique, or craft, comes in. It is a tool for the writer to analyse what needs to be done in any given writing situation.

I am not suggesting that all writing problems have one singular solution, far from it, but you would not start building a house without a blueprint and expect a solid structure at the end of the process. Similarly you would not expect a great house if you had no understanding of the materials used in constructing it. And yet, a lot of people seem to think that writers can generate organic wholes without any other effort than sitting down to type. Sure, there are people who work more freely than others who plan and plot meticulously, but I do not think it a great exaggeration that those in the former category often have more rewriting to do in the other end. If not more, then at the very least of a very different (and arguably more substantial) kind.

It is conceivable that some people internalise such structuring, possibly by having a talent for that, to a point where this process becomes less visible, and therefore seemingly working itself out. Just as some people start with a better ear for language.

When all is said and done, there are many ways of reaching the same result here, as long as one understands what the process is supposed to be about; that it is about understanding the components and what will hold them together.

A case in point would be the creative use of language. Grammatical correctness quite naturally does not have the same function in fiction writing as in, say, academic writing. Fiction writing does not frown on sentence fragments per se; it does not disavow any writer who feels compelled to break every capitalisation rule known to man. That having been said, writers must really know their language, because the style does effect the reading of a text.

Sentence fragments are a good example. They can be used with great efficiency, because punctuation does not always mimic thought or speech effectively when grammatically correct. But if sentence fragments causes grammatical reference to be lost, a text suddenly starts breaking apart. In essence, this means that while writers do not need to adhere to grammatical correctness, they need to be aware of it. They need to understand the difference between creating a staccato effect or contemplative pauses, and losing coherence in the text. As I said to some of my students on occasion, while one might want to have a reader go back and reread a sentence for purely aesthetic reasons,* one never ever wants any reader to back because the language is too unclear for something basic, like who did what to whom, to be understood. Simply put, the latter is just sloppy work.

Similarly, while there are plenty of grammatical "incorrectness" that does not cause such breakdowns, as a rule of thumb, it is still good to know and understand what one is working against (i.e. the existing, accepted grammar) and also to contemplate what not adhering to any given grammatical rule means. To illustrate, one can generate a strong character voice, a certain idiolect, by creating a slightly skewed grammar for that character, but one also needs to understand that that idiolect will have bearing on how readers interpret the character. And that is the important key here: how we express ourselves in writing (and not just fiction writing) does have effects. Breaking the right grammatical rule can have a great effect in any text, but unless one operates by blind luck, it usually helps to at least have a clue as to what one is doing.

At the end of the day, it is probably true that not everyone can be a great writer. But I would argue that it is equally true that everyone (even great writers) can become better.

* I would also argue, in particular in narrative terms, that sentences that are too aesthetically pleasing (i.e. that causes your reader to go back to reread them) can be very counter-productive. After all, narrative is all about generating sequences of events and actions; continuous breaks in the narrative flow are therefore not necessarily the best way of achieving a coherent whole.

Mar-Vell, Warlock and an Infinite Saga: Jim Starlin's Cosmic Marvel Universe

2011-10-31T12:00:00.025+01:00

I probably came in contact with some of his work long before I was aware of who Jim Starlin was (e.g. Batman: A Death in the Family), but when I became aware I became an instant fan.

It must have been in 1990 or 1991. I had just a year or so earlier switched to buying and reading US comics in original rather than in Swedish translation, and I was still following the superhero scene (which I would more or less abandon for a very long time within a few years). This naturally meant that DC and Marvel were part of my monthly purchases (the latter for the most part, what with my being something of a Marvel man at the core) and Jim Starlin made his comeback at Marvel with his Infinity trilogy, involving characters he had created or made his mark upon in the 70s, like Adam Warlock, Pip the Troll, Gamora, the most dangerous woman in the universe, and, of course, Thanos of Titan (quite conceivably Starlin's crowning achievement). My love and appreciation for these characters and the cosmic story arcs spun around them had me not only follow their adventures as they were released at the time, but also had me tracking down those glorious stories from the 70s, and much more besides. All in all making me a Starlin fan for life.

So, why do I bring this up now? Well, I found it appropriate, as I have been revisiting some of this material of late — from Starlin's first not-so-tentative steps into the cosmic superhero genre (which he helped shape and define) in the pages of Captain Marvel (nicely collected, for instance, in Marvel Masterworks: Captain Marvel Vol. 3 and The Death of Captain (Marvel Premiere): see reviews here and here), where he introduced Thanos, a nihilist, whose only love proved to be death, and Drax the Destroyer, a being animated only for the purpose of killing the former; through his superb Warlock saga (collected in full in Marvel Masterworks: Warlock Vol. 2: see review here), where he continued his cosmic work and built an even more cosmic mythology; to the Infinity trilogy itself and its preludes (collected in Silver Surfer: Rebirth of Thanos, Infinity Gauntlet, Infinity War, and Infinity Crusade Vol. 1 and Vol. 2: see reviews here, here, and here and here), in which Starlin showed that he was still unparalleled as a writer in the cosmic superhero genre.

Granted that this is not Starlin's sole contribution to comics in general, or even the cosmic superhero genre in particular, but at this particular instance it seemed appropriate to showcase his importance to the cosmic side of the Marvel universe. He built on the foundation created by the likes of Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, to be sure, but he made an unquestionable mark by building a strong mythology upon that foundation.

Was it unique? Well, it would be silly not to acknowledge that Starlin borrowed heavily from various sources, including Kirby's Fourth World and Michael Moorcock's Elric of Melniboné. Nevertheless, Thanos is more than a mere Darkseid clone. His motivation throughout these stories, his love and adoration for Mistress Death, makes him a character in his own right. Similarly, Starlin's transformation of Adam Warlock into an idealistic anarchist bound to his vampire-like Soul Gem appears to have roots in Elric of Melniboné and his soul-sucking black rune blade Stormbringer, but Warlock too transcends the similarities, at least to the degree where it would be possible to think of him as another (cosmic) avatar of Moorcock's fictional archetype, the Eternal Champion.

In short, Starlin's mythology is believable, at least in part, because it is not new; because it is made of the recyclable stuff of myth. Yet also because it was done in a new way and did offer us more than that which Starlin drew upon.

In recent years, two writers have emerged over at Marvel, who shows an understanding of the cosmic superhero genre that, perhaps, equals Starlin's. They are Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning, and with successful runs on Nova and Guardians Of The Galaxy, culminating in the mini series The Thanos Imperative, they have not only brought back characters associated with Starlin, but have used them in a manner that positions them as natural heirs to Starlin's cosmic narrative tradition.

I am sure I will be discussing both other Starlin material (e.g. his creator-owned series Dreadstar) and the work of Abnett and Lanning in the future, but for now, this will have to do.

Post #100: Really, Honestly, I Did the Maths

2011-10-17T12:00:00.009+02:00

"And so we reach a milestone: this is the one-hundredth post on Thus Spake the Mighty Wha-keem. That is, with this post I have written one-hundred posts since I started posting back in May of 2009, and I am obviously still at it."

If I had written those two lines today, all would have been well. Unfortunately they were written at the end of March this year in the erroneous faux "Post #100: Or, When Is a Q a 9?"; the content of which I am still rather pleased with, despite its flawed basic numerical premise. While I did not notice the error until May, when I dutifully reported it in my summary of my second year as a blogger, I will say in my defence that I had already managed to, quite unintentionally, and most certainly ironically, include the line "I am neither turning into a mathematician nor a numerologist," in the post itself. Obviously, I knew what I was talking about.

Nevertheless, here we are. Again. For the first time.

It would seem appropriate to talk about numerical things yet again, but racking my brain seems to yield no fruitful results. Titles fly past my mind's eye: Gabriel García Márquez' One Hundred Years of Solitude, which I am sad to say I have yet to read (although, am simultaneously happy that I have yet to read; go figure!); Brian Azzarello's 100 Bullets, a Vertigo series I have not read either (although I am thinking of picking up now as the whole series is starting to be collected in nice hardcover editions); Numb3rs, a TV series of which I have seen and enjoyed at least the first two seasons (although not to the degree that I really feel I want to write about it at any greater length here). So... what then?

Well, while I have not yet had a chance to read it, I did recently pick up a book that not only seems very interesting, but also fits the criteria to be mentioned here: Alex Bellos' Alex's Adventures in Numberland. This is a book about mathematics, (at the very least seemingly) written to gain the discipline more fans; or perhaps it is more of a love letter for us non-mathematicians to better understand the beauty of numbers. I guess I will know for sure when I get the time to read the book.

And while we are at it... I would also like to recommend a very good film that also seems appropriate (and which I incidentally have not seen in a day and an age myself): Darren Aronofsky's early and weird b&w gem Pi. This film is all about mathematics and numerology, and the greater mysteries of the universe hidden in the endless string of post-decimal-point numbers in the mathematical constant that the Greek letter π (i.e. pi) symbolises. Well worth watching, albeit certainly not for everyone's pallet.

Five Seminars, Four Mini-Seminars, Nine Signed Books, One Piece of Original Comicbook Art and Four Days: The Göteborg Book Fair 2011

2011-10-06T12:00:00.003+02:00

So, this year's theme at the Göteborg Book Fair was German language literature (i.e. a focus on German, Austrian and Swiss literature in practice) and I managed to catch at least two seminars related to it.

The first one was the seminar "Bra och dåliga böcker" (Eng. trans: Good and bad books) in which German critic Kristina Maidt-Zinke discussed the role of literary criticism with Swedish critics Jens Christian Brundt and Ingrid Elam (the latter moderating the discussion), comparing cultural differences between Germany and Sweden. The seminar was interesting and pointed to the fact that German criticism is given greater space in the papers than in Sweden, but also indicated that this fact in and of itself need not necessarily indicate that this criticism is more well-read or important outside of the same circles as its Swedish equivalent. However, the space does allow for more in-depth reviews and a different approach to the subject of criticism in any given instance.

The second German-related seminar I attended was on Friday: "Gillar alla barn Pippi" (Eng. trans. Does All Children Like Pippi?), in which moderator Janina Orlov spoke with Rachel van Kooij (Holland, Austria), Cecilia Östlund (Sweden), Gabrielle Alioth (Switzerland), Nadia Budde (Germany), and Cornelia Funke (Germany) about Astrid Lindgren's Pippi Longstocking as a cultural icon and the importance of myths in children's literature. Funke interestingly noted the inherent problems of using myth in German literature, as a cultural fallout of the Nazis appropriation of that kind of symbolically charged material. After hearing her talk, I was really sad that I had skipped her own seminar the previous day; something I had done simply because she had been paired up with an historically proven bad moderator/interviewer (which I have quite frankly no desire ever seeing in action again). However, I have heard that the seminar went really well, mostly because Funke refused to submit to this bad interviewers premises, told her off and went ahead to present a brilliant seminar under her own control (yes, I really, really regret missing that, I confess).

The discussion on the seminar I did attend also covered question about fashion and trends in children's literature, and who decides what is fashionable or trendy: readers, bookshops, publishers, or writers? While no real answer was provided, I think it's safe to say that all of these (to different degrees) act upon the stage of the literary market to set up the conditions for that. And that, I would argue, holds true for all publishing (and quite likely other cultural production like film, comics and music as well).

Outside of the German language theme, I visited a few more seminars this year (albeit fewer than usual, for various reasons). Friday was clearly my busiest day and included two more dips into the field of children's literature.

First I attended the mini-seminar "Att skriva och illustrera för barn" (Eng. trans. Writing and Illustrating for Children), in which the moderator, Swedish publisher Birgitta Westin, talked with children's book creators Emma Adbåge and Pija Lindenbaum. Both author-illustrators showed samples of both old and new work. I am a fan of Lindenbaum's work since before, but was not familiar with Adbåge's. It too is impressive, and I will probably check it out down the line, but what really struck me was how more or less directly autobiographical her work seemed, and the lack of distance she had to her working process. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Being a good literary scholar does not necessarily make a good writer, or vice versa, but it does become somewhat annoying when there is an attempt at a more theoretical and analytical discussion that sadly seems off-key as it were. Lindenbaum by contrast presented herself as sharp and more theoretically aware. For instance, when posed with the core question of the seminar, she defined the difference in writing for children very acutely as "writing without grown-ups' frame of reference," and also discussed children's as-of-yet unfixed view of the boundaries between fantasy and reality.

Secondly I attended the seminar "Den politiskt (in)korrekta barnboken" (Eng. trans. The Politically (In)correct Children's Book), in which Janina Orlov lead a discussion with illustrator Anna Höglund, (Sweden), writer Ulf Stark (Sweden), critic Ulla Rhedin (Sweden), children's book creator Timo Parvela (Finland), and poet and controversial maker of children's books Oskar K (Denmark). While the topic sounded more than promising on paper, this was one of the lowest points of this year's seminars. The time was very unevenly distributed between the participants, which is not necessarily in and of itself a problem, but in this case was disastrous.

The two most dominating voices in the room were Oskar K and Ulla Rhedin. The former spoke a very thick Danish that I was not alone in having a hard time following (e.g. Anna Höglund, when responding to something, politely pointed out that she was not quite certain what he had said, at all), and after a while in most of his monologues, it became impossible to tune out. Rhedin on the other hand, a scholar with a doctorate in children's literature, kept throwing around very abstract academic theory and terminology of the kind that quite frankly makes this particular literary scholar ashamed. As a consequence, most of her contribution had no real roots anywhere in the discussion or the subject of the discussion. By comparison, Höglund's contributions (sadly far too few and too short) were insightful, as were those of Timo Parvela (who impressed me the most of the people on the panel). Unfortunately, Parvela spoke in Finnish, with Orlov acting as interpreter, which meant that he did not get quite as much time, and that what he did get was all the more limited by having to be told twice.

The worst failing of the seminar, however, was how swift the stated topic was abandoned. Instead of looking at possible tendencies of censorship by publishers and the market for fear of controversial decisions (and these do exist, as a seminar from a few years ago had markedly informed me about), the debate quickly pointed out that "political correctness" isn't a good or selling term, but rather a derogatory one, and therefore it would seem strange that anyone would want to create such children's literature. The problem with this assessment (while true to a point), to my mind at least, is that is fails to account for the more insidious nature of political correctness as it has come to develop. While it is true that no one, in any field, would really want to market themselves or their product as politically correct, this obviously does not mean that the politically incorrect is applauded or embraced. Rather we are in actuality faced with edited material. Jan Lööf has for example spoken about how publishers have asked him to redraw parts of illustration for children's books, even ones previously published, because of content being deemed as possibly offensive. As such an important subject to cover, one which was basically advertised in the seminar program, and one which was very quickly swept under the rug by the panel. For shame, say I.

A more rewarding seminar was "Kolonialismens ansikte" (Eng. trans. The Face of Colonialism) in which Swedish writer Ola Larsmo spoke with Nobel Prize Laureate Mario Vargas Llosa about his latest novel The Dream of the Celt. The book is a fictional account of the life of Roger Casement, an Irishman who spent his life in service of the British Empire until his experiences in the Belgian Congo and South America led him to adapt a more radical idea about his native country: Ireland. Casement, who met Joseph Conrad in the Congo and was a great diplomat, was discredited towards the end of his life. Secret diaries depicting brutal homosexual orgies were confiscated and since homosexuality was a crime in Britain at the time, he was consequently prosecuted and found guilty. However, there is a controversy here as historians disagree as to whether or not the diaries were not written by Casement but rather used to frame him. In the interview, Vargas Llosa offered a third interpretation: that Casement may well have written the diaries, without having committed the acts. As a note (and without having read the full accounts of the diaries), one might of course question whether the controversy should matter at all, and if the more telling point is that it in and of itself shows a rather nasty cultural (and legal) view of homosexuality.

My Friday ended, seminar-wise, with a mini-seminar about Cirkeln (Eng. trans. The Circle) by Mats Strandberg and Sara Bergmark Elfgren. Swedish writer Nene Ormes has spoken very favourably of this book, so I could not resist attending a seminar where both its authors talked about the book, and I certainly did not regret that decision. After a very interesting discussion on everything from how to write as a team to what the underlying ideas to their story about witches in a small, fictional Swedish community, I simply could not resist buying a copy of the book and getting it signed. It now resides in the ever-expanding to-be-read section, but is definitely something I look forward to reading.

Saturday started with another mini-seminar, which somehow seemed to be a bit beside the point. In "Att vara politiskt eller historiskt korrekt" (Eng. trans. To Be Politically or Historically Correct) historian and novelist Dick Harrison talked to novelist Maria Gustavsdotter about anachronisms in fiction, and more specifically about how they themselves avoided them and to what results. Granted that it is interesting to look at anachronisms, but unlike its title, the seminar never really delved into issues relating to political correctness so much as, perhaps, sloppy historical research (or maybe even a certain attitude of not giving a damn with some writers). In short, the "issue" was really settled from the start and therefore the seminar was slightly inconsistent with the stated topic. And somewhat boring as a result. A case in point would be when Harrison spoke of the old film The Lion in Winter, declaring that what he remembered of it was that each scene was littered with anachronisms and that they had lovely dresses, only to later question why anyone would want to use a historical setting if they do not adhere to proper historical detail. The given answer seemed to me at least to be that maybe, just maybe, the writer or film maker wants to use the lovely dresses. And maybe, just maybe, that element does have an intrinsic value, in terms purely of storytelling.

A much more interesting seminar was "Drömmar och verklighet" (Eng. trans. Dreams and Reality), in which moderator par excellence, Peter Whitebrook interviewed American writer Lionel Shriver. The discussion focused on Shriver latest novel So Much for That and the US healthcare system that it criticises, but also brought up her award-winning book We Need To Talk About Kevin. Shriver presented herself as a keen intellect with a somewhat harsh and cynical perspective on life. On the whole, I enjoyed the seminar a lot and is very interested in picking up either of the two mentioned books.

The final mini-seminar I attended on Saturday (and, in fact, on the fair as a whole) was "Årets deckare" (Eng. trans. This Year's Crime Fiction) in which the Swedish Academy of Crime Fiction's Johan Wopenka introduced Lillian Fredriksson and Karl G. Fredriksson, who presented the translated and the original Swedish crime fiction of the past year respectively. It was a quick 20 minutes, as several book titles flew by, with very brief descriptions, but it was illuminating in terms of showing certain trends and both Fredrikssons were a good deal of fun in their respective performances.

Sunday, as has been hinted, was left without any seminars attended. I intended to catch a few, but queues on the first one made me lose my interest and I spent the day on the floor instead.

All in all, time spent on the floor on all days yielded good results as well: including, among other things, a signed copy of Erik Magntorn and Lisa Sjöblom's beautiful little children's book, Hitta barnen! (Eng. trans. Find the Children!), which kicks Waldo's butt quite severely in artistic terms, some nicely signed volumes of the collected edition of Peter Madsen's Valhalla in Swedish, with great original artwork now adorning the first page in each, and a piece of original comic book art by Ola Skogäng, whom I also had sign (with some added drawings) my copies of the first three volumes of his brilliant comic Theos ockulta kuriositeter (Eng. trans. Theos Occult Curios) – Mumiens blod (Eng. trans. Blood of the Mummy), De förlorade sidornas bok (Eng. trans. The Book of Lost Pages), and I dödsskuggans dal (Eng. trans. In the Valley of the Shadow of Death).

And on that particular note, I think I will leave you with a view of page 56 of De förlorade sidornas bok.

Books and Stuff: An In-between Posts Kind of Post

2011-09-19T12:00:00.008+02:00

Okay, so the past two weeks have been kind of crazy (on more levels than I care to remember) and two different planned posts have had to be pushed forward simply because I have not had the time to do some much needed prep on either of them.

However, before I start sounding like the kid who tells the teacher that the dog ate his homework, let me offer you this as an in-between posts kind of post. A good chunk of yesterday was spent browsing through the seminar schedule of the upcoming Göteborg Book Fair in order to decide, at least tentatively, what I should attend this year (the results should obviously be in my next blog post). Thus it does not seem entirely off to use this space on this occasion to promote some books; luckily, I have just read two fine specimens.

First off, I would like to recommend David Morrell's 1972 novel First Blood upon which the film of the same name was based. The novel is a tight thriller with political undercurrents and I recommend it warmly. For a more in-depth review, see the one I put up on Goodreads.

The second novel is no less political (perhaps even more so), but also no less emotional at its centre. The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid is a great piece of writing, and while it does not claim to be a thriller as the former novel, there is a compelling drive in the story, and a sort of mystery at the heart of it. For a more in-depth review, I once again refer you to a full review on Goodreads.

Hopefully the full reviews will whet your appetites for these books. They are well worth your time.

Superman Goes Commando! (In a Manner of Speaking)

2011-09-05T12:00:00.009+02:00

On Saturday, I caught up with an (as per usual) interesting blog post by Zaki Hasan from the previous day: "Why Superman Needs The Red Underoos."

The post ties in with DC's latest stunt, a total company-wide reboot of their entire line and fictional universe (let's not even get started on that one), and more specifically focuses on their redesign of Superman. The man of the hour here is Jim Lee, who is the man responsible for rethinking and revamping an old faithful design (which has already, admittedly, seen some variations over the years, while nevertheless keeping a basic design intact). Apparently, the first view of this new design can be seen in a single panel in the debut release of the rebooted Justice League #1, and the most radical changes appear to be the addition of a collar and the loss of the otherwise ever-present red-underwear-on-the-outside.

Now, as Hasan points out, the red-underwear-on-the-outside has always been a point open to derision, but I could not agree more with his assessment that "the red trunks (along with the yellow belt) [...] helped give a much-needed sense of visual balance," which the Lee version clearly lacks.

However, the loss of the red trunks is not limited to DC's reboot of the character. This week has also provided the first full frontal look of Henry Cavill in his Superman regalia. Cavill is the actor portraying the character in the upcoming Man of Steel, directed by Zack Snyder and produced by Cristopher Nolan, and currently being filmed. (The photo is from on-set, so the colour scheme is not necessarily a definite match to what the film will show, I hasten to add.)

While the fact that this version (at least) has no collar produces a less fascistic and more traditional looking hero, the lack of even a (wrongly) coloured belt seems to underline Hasan's point about visual balance. However, there is more to it than that. Even discounting Cavill's somewhat awkward pose in this picture (which honestly looks quite a lot like a man in need of a bathroom break),

if we think of the traditional skintight superhero costume as a comic book shorthand for the perfected human form, then the need for modesty — and thus the whole "underwear on the outside" thing — starts making a lot more sense. Just look at Cavill's...*ahem*...area to understand what I'm talking about.

I can but agree, yet again, with Hasan's assessment here.

Understanding Culture 101

2011-08-22T12:00:00.015+02:00

In the wake of the Utøya massacre and its insidious perpetrator, the ever ongoing debate on multiculturalism is a hot topic once again. And as always, when certain political factions or elements start debating this concept and its inherent evil, I do not know whether to laugh or cry. Because it is a simple fact that culture is never clean nor monolithic. Not even when it tries to be.

On one level, defining cultures requires a consensus and set parameters to define the specificity of one compared to another. However, most of the political factions interested in this are actually not so much interested in consensus as in being able to provide the vision to govern the definition. The reason for this is, of course, always to separate us from them and clearly establish the difference between ourselves and our Other(s). But anyone who tries to define a cultural enclave in this manner will always (without exception) stumble on the finishing line. No matter how narrow the parameters are made, it is impossible to exclude all those one wanted to exclude, and the narrower the parameters are set, one also increases the equally inevitable risk of excluding people one wanted to include. In short, whatever makes up any definition of any culture can never be absolute, or entirely fixed for the matter.

This does not necessarily mean that we should abandon cultural definitions altogether, but it should make us aware of the imprecision in their natures.

So, what does this mean? Simply put, culture is something that arises in social contexts, in inter-individual meetings, when the ego means an Other. Furthermore, this central metaphor also expands to an intercultural usage (if you will pardon the confusion for a second). That is to say, when one imprecise cultural definition meets an Other imprecise cultural definition, new cultural references arise in that meeting. This is unavoidable, because culture is both resilient and innovative in its nature.

Do not get me wrong. The equation is obviously not that simple. If it was, colonialism and imperialism would never have been a problem. The difference here is that colonialism and imperialism is not so much about a meeting between cultures as one culture violently attacking another. The main factor here has to do with power, and it can arguably be invoked on any situation where one cultural enclave uses force to apply its own cultural definition over others; either to dominate them or to eradicate them. And even in such instances, history has proven that the meeting is not unilateral anyway. There is an old saying that claims that you are what you eat, and apparently even colonisers and empires are affected by what they devour and digest.

But this is not the case here in Sweden (nor I would dare argue, in most European countries or in the US for that matter). Islamic culture (because as always since at the very least 9/11, this debate is about Western civilisation (and possibly Christianity) being overrun by Islam) is not in any position of power here. Nor, differently put, in any position of power greater than any other minority (and most certainly not greater than any majority). Swedish culture (whatever that is) is not overrun by excessive Islamic references or specific values. If anything, one could argue that Swedish culture or identity runs a greater risk of being overrun by Anglo-American values, but you rarely hear political groups like the Sweden Democrats complain about that type of cultural import as opposed to favouring Swedish culture.

And I would bet that they eat pizza as well. After all, pizza could arguably be seen as rather typical Swedish food. In fact, you cannot go anywhere in Sweden without finding a pizzeria. This is more or less true for any small town in the country, but this was obviously not always the case. Nor do we need to go very far back in history to find a time when it certainly was not (the mid-20th century saw the introduction of pizza into Swedish culture, and it was not an immediate success either). Similarly, the epitome of Swedish food – the Swedish meatball – is Turkish in origin, and was integrated into Swedish cuisine much like the pizza, only a couple of centuries earlier.

In short, the notion that the multicultural society is something new is a myth. Culture has always been a mongrel dog of many mixed breeds. And that is partly what keeps it alive.

I am not saying that there are no values to traditions. I am, however, suggesting that we have to understand that traditions themselves are never entirely fixed. We may talk about how a proper Swedish Christmas should be spent, for instance, but in all honesty, if we define proper as "the way they were celebrated 100 years ago" (a fairly short amount of time for judging these things), I honestly wonder how many of us truly do. Or perhaps even more strongly, how many of us even know what that would actually entail? And that is not even taking into account local variations. In more cases than not, our strongest sense of our traditions are our own memories of how things is or was, specifically for us.

Much like language, culture is a living thing. What was will not always be what is; nor will what will be be guaranteed to last forever. Culture is an ocean of ideas, values and traditions, mixing and mingling as the waves and the tides move. And we are creatures adrift on those mighty waters, sometimes pretending that we are in control of their movements.

An Eye for an Eye: Contemplations on the Death Penalty in the Wake of Utøya

2011-08-08T13:00:00.002+02:00

Are there crimes that conceivably could warrant the death penalty?

Yesterday, I read an article by Ann Heberlein in a Swedish newspaper (i.e. the link is in Swedish) on the inherent problems in punishing crimes on the level of the Utøya massacre. Heberlein, who has a PhD in theology and has written books on ethics, evil and forgiveness, enters the debate in response to Ronnie Sandahl and Marcus Birro's respective contributions, both of whom strongly advocates the death penalty as the only reasonable punishment. Heberlein, leaning on both Hannah Arendt and Nietzsche, points to the fallacy of such reasoning in a very sound manner. There is no punishment strong enough to actually be proportionate and the deed itself is too horrible to ever be forgiven, she argues, but also points to the Nietzschean truism that we need to be careful so that our battling with monsters do not turn us into monsters ourselves when caught in this state of emotional impotence and turmoil.

Heberlein refers to Sandahl's reference to a SIFO (the Swedish Institute for Opinion Surveys) in which 33% of the Swedish population believes that there are crimes that conceivably could warrant the death penalty.* Sandahl obviously uses these statistics to question why no politician is pursuing the issue of maybe re-instating it. Heberlein's answer is simple: because it probably is not a good idea in a civilised society. And she then moves onto confronting Birro's switch from anti-abortion (on the grounds that all life is sacrosanct) to pro-death penalty (on the grounds that life is only sacrosanct if the individual has earned that status).**

However, while I appreciate Heberlein's argument, and find it important, I would nevertheless linger on those statistics. Because it strikes me that there is an inherent difference between believing that there are crimes that conceivably could warrant the death penalty and thinking that it is a good idea to institute laws of that nature.

Let me first off answer the question of that survey, the question with which I myself opened this post. Yes, I do think that there are heinous crimes that conceivably could warrant the death penalty. There are deeds where the individual's inalienable right to life can be considered spent, and basically rendered null and void. Do I think this means that the death penalty is a good idea? No, not at all. Because the idea of putting capital punishment into law is problematic on several levels. Not because it is always wrong to take life. Do not get me wrong, I am not suggesting that it is right to take lives, but let us face reality. There is basically no government on Earth that would have any compunction of ordering soldiers onto a battlefield and ordering them to take lives. I am not suggesting that war is a good solution, but sometimes, it is undeniably the only solution. Personally, I am rather glad that Hitler's vision of an expanded Third Reich was thwarted and that concentration camps were shut down. And any time such things occur, there is an ethical need to oppose that.

So, why is the death penalty wrong then? Well, first and foremost because it would be hard, I believe, to institute a law where the required evidence was so definite that an erroneous conviction was entirely impossible. After all, if you kill someone, it is mighty hard to overturn a wrongful verdict. Granted that some crimes come with that level of specificity, but how would you put that into legalese.

Then there is the issue of the legal machinery itself. In countries where the death penalty is practised, like the US, it is worthwhile noticing that this penalty is not applied evenly. In other words, different legal representation (and by default pecuniary assets) might be the difference between life and death. This all goes back to a point Heberlein makes: who decides the criteria for who gets to live and who does not?

There is an inherent ethical dilemma involved in the taking of any life. In war or in violent police actions, such a dilemma is circumvented, or temporarily suspended, by the needs of the moment. Basically, it becomes a question of a practical utilitarian principle in which the good of the many (and innocent) outweighs the rights of an individual or individuals who are posing an immediate threat to the former. Once the person committing the violent deeds is in captivity, any such suspension or circumvention is itself rendered null and void. If the threat is disposed of, it would seem as if we no longer have any moral right to ignore ethics.

In older times, vengeance was the law of most lands. But as civilisation spread and our societal bonds grew, even that practice was influenced by other means of compensation. Weregild was a concept introduced as a means of ending blood feuds and stabilising regions, and I think it is safe to say that this helped us move forward as a species. Naturally, our impulse to strike back at those who hurt us or ours have not been weeded out of the species, but we deal with it by allowing the law to handle things for us.***

At the end of the day, we might also ask the question of what a proportionate punishment means. We cannot kill the mass murderer of Utøya more than once, yet his death would seem puny next to his deeds. Even if we allow ourselves to resort to that ultimate punishment of depriving such a criminal of life, the response fails to achieve proportion.

Furthermore, it is also questionable as a punishment since it is a brief moment to pay for so much inflicted misery. The perfect metaphysical punishment for the massacre on Utøya would, in my humble opinion, be to have the perpetrator spend the rest of (at the very least) his existence reliving the events on that small island during that hour and a half through his own victims, literally as his own victim. But metaphysical punishments elude our capabilities and so we have to deal with this in a human manner, and preferably one where we do not gaze too deeply into the Nietzschean abyss ourselves.

* It is probably worthwhile noting that Sweden does not have a death penalty, and as far as I know, neither does Norway.
** I will grant Birro the not at all unproblematic point that it would be possible to conceive of given rights that can be lost on account of breaches against the social contract as voiced in law. After all, we usually claim freedom to be a given, inalienable right, and yet we do not hesitate to imprison people for crimes, depriving them of that freedom. Granted that depriving someone of their life is somewhat more permanent, but in theory there is nevertheless an analogy here to be considered.
*** This is why the US system of allowing victims or relatives of victims to weigh in on the legal process in cases of release on probation has always struck me as strange. Logically, either the behaviour of the convict weighed against his or her crime should warrant the release or not. Personal opinions of people probably should not be a factor.

Unreal Reality: Utøya

2011-07-25T12:00:00.015+02:00

Two adjectives have occupied my brain since Friday: unfathomable and horrible.

On Friday, catastrophe struck my peaceful neighbouring country Norway.

A bomb was set off at the government building in Oslo and on a small island named Utøya, no more than 0.12 km² big (or 0.075 mi²), what appears to be the same (potentially lone) culprit, an ethnic Norwegian Islamophobe and right-wing extremist, attacked a political youth conference held by the Norwegian social democratic party's youth division. He came to the island masquerading as a police officer and proceeded to open fire at people there (mostly youngsters and kids) with a machine gun, killing at least 86* people in this massacre during the next hour and a half (with at least another 7 killed in the Oslo bombing).

What is unfathomable is the unreality of this situation. We are used to be confronted with scenarios like this in literature and film. In fact, under different circumstances, we might have thought the preceding paragraph a brief synopsis, found on the back cover of a book or a DVD case. But while we are no strangers to such scenarios in fiction, on the whole, most of us (Scandinavians at the very least) have probably been fairly lucky and have never ourselves had to really look deep beneath the surface of the societal contracts.

Somehow, our brains can hardly not manage not to read this as fiction, precisely because of this.

As reality, it just seems implausible and horrible. Horrible because it shows us what we, as a species, are still and continuously capable of. And we have the gall to call such behaviour bestial, while labelling all our better sides human and even humane. But tell me which other animal on this planet of ours acts as cruelly as a human being when it pleases her to act in a such a manner.

Unfathomable. Horrible.

At least 86* people died on Utøya. But how many were wounded for life by the hours spent in horror and devastation? How many souls died on Friday on that small island?

* The latest information from the Norwegian Police indicates that the death toll from Utøya is probably going to be lowered, as the final tally is being put together. So far, however, they have not wanted to indicate by how much.

Acting or Writing Genius

2011-07-13T12:00:00.004+02:00

There is an inherent problem in acting, or perhaps even more so writing, genius.

Don't get me wrong, it is not necessarily an easy task to successfully portray people of normal wits and intelligence. And it is certainly something of a challenge to portray stupid people; in particular in acting, where timing is of the essence to make it believable. The latter is actually one of the reasons why Christina Applegate's depiction of Kelly Bundy in Married with Children is an impressive feat. We utterly believe in Kelly's stupidity; to the extent where it would be easy to assume that Applegate shares this feature with her character. Nothing could be further from the truth, of course. If she had been stupid, we would not have viewed Kelly as a stupid character, but rather as a character played (unsuccessfully) by a stupid actor. We recognise the asinine without a doubt, but we also recognise when something is out of synch with its context; in this case, the story. Stupid in synch equals brilliant portrayal of stupid character; stupid out of synch equals a poor portrayal by a stupid actor.

But I digress.

This post is not about the lower register (which it is still easier to bow down to), but the higher one, which remains ever elusive. As in all cases, fiction does not require being real, it requires seeming real. And therein lies the rub.

Acting or writing genius requires on the one hand to present the audience with an understandable entity; one which they can still comfortably understand as genius. On the other, it also requires that that understandable genius isn't transformed, as if by default, into a regular bloke. The balance is not easy and there are many examples of failure. Mostly, however, the failure does not consist of a too rigid depiction of the genius as actual genius. Perhaps this is because your normal actors and writers aren't actually geniuses themselves. Not even most of the more intellectual ones. And even if they were, chances are that they would ironically dumb down a genius character to make her or him relatable.

The other side of the coin is writing or acting upwards, telling your audience how brilliant your character is, only to stumble on the finish line by having the character absolutely clueless about something which they really ought not be clueless about. In TV shows, this is often shown by the genius character knowing little or nothing about any and all popular culture (Dr Sheldon Cooper obviously being a great exception to that rule). You only need to think about characters like Leroy Jethro Gibbs (NCIS) or Dr Temperance Brennan (Bones) who usually come off as super smart people, up until the point when a pop cultural reference appears. Because, as we all know, super smart people live entirely apart from the world, and can still stay up to date on the human condition, without ever taking in a single tabloid placard or zapping by anything pop cultural on TV. And after all, nothing of the kind would ever appear in a proper news show or newspaper either, so... Well, I guess you catch my drift.

So the trick is balance; to establish a level of genius you can sell, and without selling it short. And at the end of the day, it doesn't require genius. Only the skills to seem like one.

The Author – Creator or Creative Vessel?

2011-06-27T12:00:00.008+02:00

I am currently teaching a creative writing class based on script doctor and story consultant John Truby's book The Anatomy of Story: 22 Steps to Becoming a Master Storyteller, and in one of our net meetings a discussion about this model of the writing process ensued. At the centre of the discussion was the fact that Truby continuously talk about the need to build an organic story, while presenting a model for doing this which can easily be viewed as very technical.

Now, first off, I would say in Truby's defence that there is a difference between an organic result (which comes across as cohesive and alive) and an organic method (which might be how one describes just going with the flow and making it up as you go along). The point here is that the reader or viewer wants an organic result, and more often than not, achieving that requires at least some sort of technique. Especially when committing to writing a lengthier work like a novel, film script or a play.

But even accepting that a lengthy piece of writing requires a solid structure, and that it, by definition, is easier to lay the foundation of a building first, this discussion nevertheless got me thinking about a deeper philosophical issue in how one thinks about the writing process.

On page 84, while discussing the need to start at the end (a sound structuring advice, in my humble opinion), Truby writes:

As with any journey, before you can take your first step, you have to know the endpoint of where you're going. Otherwise, you walk in circles or wander aimlessly.

Now, Truby's metaphor reveals an obvious philosophical vision, but interestingly enough it is not the only one possible to draw out of it. After all, while Truby focuses on reaching a destination, there are those who claim that it is the journey itself that matters, not what destination is reached.

In terms of narrative, I think Truby makes a good point, because narratives (whether fictional or factual) tend to attempt to bring a certain sense of order to our understanding of the world, our lives and our selves. Often even when they deceptively seem to attempt tearing order down. In fact, even when narratives try to mimic reality, they always resort to verisimilitude, attempting to be like reality or truth, rather actually be that thing.* Mostly because if it actually achieved being the thing itself, it would not necessarily make us believe it was.** So, for a story to be credible it needs to be structurally credible as a story. Whether or not it is credible in the sense of whether it could happen in the real world is actually less important. If for nothing else because we normally apply the same rules when relating the real world as well... as if to make that too more credible. Or perhaps just to make sense of its inherent chaos. But I digress.

There are probably as many ways of writing as there are writers. This is not to say that Truby's model and approach are bad, but like I tell my students: while I am there to teach them Truby's model and examine that they have understood it (in order for them to get their credits), what they choose to do with the model after that point is entirely up to them. Planning ahead and working things through on a basic level might save the writer a few (heavier) rewrites down the line, since there will always be a clear definition of where things are heading, and a greater focus on how they can get there. From a creative point of view, it might indeed be more enjoyable to just tag along for the ride, but it also raises the question of what one wants to do with the end product. And where one wants to put in the most work.

At the end of the day, however, the metaphor of the journey hints at a very basic question: are authors to be regarded as creators, in charge of their creation (i.e. the story world and all its inhabitants) or as creative vessels, through which the story world and its characters gain entrance into our reality? I do not suggest this as an either-or proposition. Many writers speak about their writing in a manner which suggests several intermediate states, but the poles are there to be sure.

* Needless to say perhaps, a narrative can never be reality or the truth in this sense, since there is always an imposed distance. Think of René Magritte's famous painting Ceci n'est pas une pipe, for instance, as an illustration of this.

** Dialogue is a good example here: in all writing (though in particular in script- and playwriting), dialogue needs to sound genuine and authentic, like something somebody would say, but at the same time very little fictional dialogue reads like people really speak. Speakers tend to stop, start new lines of thoughts mid-sentence, correct their thought-pattern, etc, all of which would be really inefficient in fiction where most lines have to count. In short, what is required is the illusion of actual speech rather than actual speech.

Newness, that Newfangled Thing

2011-06-13T12:00:00.007+02:00

Our topic today is newness. Or rather a certain obsession with the new and its supposed hierarchical superiority to the old. Well, at least in terms of artistic consumerism; i.e. reading books or comics, watching films, or listening to music. I would never suggest that the new in and of itself has a higher hierarchical position in, for instance, old-school academia. Although, it is worthwhile noticing the common critical (academic or otherwise) favouritism of originality, of which I've written before.

While I do not necessarily see the necessity for originality as a quality marker of storytelling, I can certainly understand the endeavour to go where no author, artist, film maker or songwriter has gone before (even though the likelihood of an actual success in that seems meagre and more illusory than real), what I want to discuss here and now is the notion held by more than a few people (and naturally fostered by the market place) that only the latest thing is good enough. This is not to say that whatever the latest thing is is original (or even claims to be), but the idea of defining newness in these fields as only the latest thing is foreign to me.

As a reader, viewer or listener, I utterly fail to see why I have to be obsessed with the latest thing.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying we cannot appreciate the latest thing to be published or produced for our reading, viewing or listening pleasures. But why be obsessed with it? When there are so many things in all temporal directions from us, yet to be discovered. Some of which we've surely not yet even heard.

Let me confess openly: I have not read every book or comic ever written or published, not seen every film film ever made nor heard every song ever recorded. In fact, I have not even read/seen/heard all the ones I know would like to. This is quite simply because the treasure chest of such material is nigh infinite (at least in comparison to my own time here on Earth), and everything that I've not (yet) read, seen or heard is something new... to me.

Obviously this is not a condition unique to me. I would dare say that there is no one out there who has literally read, seen or heard everything in any of the mentioned categories. Thus, we need to rethink what newness is, I would argue. We cannot allow our treasure chests of the imagination to be dominated by a simple market place insistence on the latest hype; that is to say, newness only as that newfangled thing which like a flash in the pan is here today and gone tomorrow. It is true that not all books, comics, films or music remain in the public consciousness (in fact, it is probably more true to say that few do). But even a passing fancy is something which somebody may pick up long after that moment is gone, and enjoy or not, in very much the same manner people could whenever the hype was on.

In fact, perhaps some of these things will find a better appeal when they are not over-marketed and only get to stand on their own two legs. I'm not saying that the fame will be eternal, but there may nevertheless be an appreciation of finding something new, as in previously unread, unseen or unheard (perhaps even unheard of).

"Never Tease Wolves Who Arrive at Your Door:" On the Splendour of Progressive Rock Band Aragon

2011-05-30T12:00:00.010+02:00

In 1996, an acquaintance lent me two CDs. One was IQ's The Wake (which made an IQ fan out of me) and the other was Don't Bring the Rain, the first full-length CD from the lesser known Australian progressive rock gem Aragon. And I took to the latter immediately.

The band was formed in Melbourne in 1986 by Tom Behrsing (keyboards), John Poloyannis (guitar) and Les Dougan (vocals), and added two more members – Rob Bacon (bass) and Tony Italia (drums) – after having spent months writing songs. Don't Bring the Rain was first released as a mini-LP in 1988, but as it made some success in Europe, the band recorded extra tracks for a full-length CD release, which saw the light of day in 1990 (and reached my own hands some five to six years later). Bacon left the band even before the release of the CD, however, and Italia followed suit in 1991 (albeit for different reasons), leaving the band in its original trio format, in which it has remained since.

After having been introduced to the band, it was not long before I had bought Don't Bring the Rain myself as well as their 1995 concept album Mouse, and the preceding six-tracks mini-CD The Meeting (1992), which is actually Act 5 of the concept album served up as a kind of work in progress teaser (in fact, in 1999, Mouse was re-released by LaBraD'or Records as a double-CD incorporating The Meeting in its proper place in the story). I also managed to track down the rarer 1993 release Rocking Horse and Other Stories, which collects material from demos and the like, including the 20-minutes epic "Rocking Horse." While this material is recorded in lesser quality, it nevertheless provides a good glimpse into the earliest stages of the band, and "Rocking Horse" alone makes the CD worth getting.

By the time Mr. Angel was released in 1997 (as the band's first recording in their own studio and their first release on LaBraD'or Records), I was eagerly anticipating the album. At the time, it represented something of a break from the progressive rock found on Don't Bring the Rain and then developed in the concept album format on Mouse, and while I know that this slightly more pop-rock oriented music disappointed some of my friends at the time, I liked it (albeit in a different way than the earlier CDs).

That being said, when the band's latest album to date, The Angels Tear (2004), I was not in the least bit saddened by the fact that the band was returning to their progressive roots. Rather the opposite.

So what is that makes Aragon so fantastic in my humble opinion? Well, one need only consider the great melodies and the fantastic lyrics, wonderfully interpreted vocally by Les Dougan. Dougan's vocals are quite particular, and I know people who find them hard to digest (just as some people have a hard time digesting the vocals of Rush's Geddy Lee), but the emotion expressed is raw, beautiful and gets me every time.

Or to let you sample their greatness on your own, allow me to present four highly recommended tracks I found on YouTube.

First out, "In Company of Wolves" from Don't Bring the Rain, the playful lyrics of which I absolutely fell in love with the first time I heard it:

Secondly, "The Changeling" from The Meeting (and consequently Mouse), which certainly gives a good sense of where and what the band was about during this period:

Thirdly, a step back into the past, Aragon's epic 20-minutes song "Rocking Horse", which is a really well-constructed song with a good set of narrative lyrics:

And finally, I would like to leave you with a sample of the band's latest release. "Growing Up in Cuckoo Land" is the opening track on The Angels Tear:

And for those of you who find this stuff interesting, I can also inform you that the band is currently working on new material. While there is not yet any set release date, this is indeed great news for all Aragon fans out there – old and new!

(And lest I kill any people from the suspense, I better end this post with a quick tie-in with the preceding second anniversary post. The blog's new sibling (of sorts) arrived not on the day of the anniversary itself, but half an hour into the following day (as if to ensure a celebratory day of his own). So, as predicted, I was indeed elsewhere as the post went up, but after many an hours wait, my son deigned to grace us with his presence. And that, as they say, is that.)

The Musings of the Mad Swede: Year Two

2011-05-18T12:00:00.010+02:00

Before you say it: I know, I am off-schedule. I am in fact five days early, as the next post was not really due until next Monday, May 23. But then again, who could miss an anniversary, or the opportunity to celebrate it? Not I, apparently.

It is now two years ago, on the date, since I first sat down and wrote my mission statement of sorts. And I still stick by it. Sure, there is since October 31 last year an obvious change of publishing pace, but the central parameters of the mission statement still holds and that shift itself is more of a logical extension of those parameters than a break from them.

One year ago, also on the date, I sat down and took stock of my first year as a blogger. Having tried my hand at it, I mused on whatever success (however such a thing is ever measured) I had had in my endeavours. At the time, I noted that I was still more or less on target with the 51st post in 53 weeks (yes, I admitted to having been off target by two posts) and now, 52 weeks later, I have added 38 posts, counting this one (i.e. the 89th). And still, it is not just a number's game.

Looking back over the past year, I have dealt with a host of different subjects: like why censorship does not work, but also the darker sides to freedom of speech and why even these cannot unproblematically justify legal censorship. I have discussed Dutch literature and Swedish comics. I have confessed myself as a literary Satanist and shown my new-found appreciation of Master Word Smith Taylor Mali. I have mused on why feature films are not the filmic equivalents of novels and why it is important to let artists be artists of whatever medium might be theirs. I have celebrated the genius of Jim Henson's Muppet Show, the (lyrical) brilliance of Marillion's Fugazi and the fantastic nature (in both senses of that phrase) of Beautiful Stories for Ugly Children. I have reported from last year's Göteborg Book Fair (in two parts at that). And I spent a month looking into various aspects of writer Adnan Mahmutović (scriptwriter, author and scholar).

Heck, I have even written a faux Post #100, the content of which is not too shabby (if I may say so myself), even though its basic numerical premise mayhap reveals its author's lack of mathematical inclinations.*

All in all, I would say it is not too shabby an accomplishment.

As a final aside (which I cannot refrain from including), this year's anniversary is in some sense doubly significant for me. Two year's ago words came from my head through my fingers into this virtual space... and onwards into the real world via your noggins. Much like Pallas Athena sprang fully formed from Zeus' head in the days of antiquity; if one is partial to such mythical excesses of origin. This year, however, as this gets posted (thanks to pre-scheduled computer wizardry), chances are quite great that your humble scribe is elsewhere, either celebrating or yet nervously anticipating the arrival of another wonderful creation of his. If the date itself proves to be auspicious (in a manner of speaking), I surely will not mind the synchronicity. But I am glad that this humble page will then at least have two years seniority over its sibling of a kind. Because let us face it: much as I love this space of words and phrases and sentences and thought, I fear that it will always play second fiddle from now on.

At any rate, next post will be on Monday May 30 (so as not to generate too vast a gap because of this five days early post), returning us to the current regular interval (i.e. every other week, Mondays at noon). See you then!

* In all honesty, I was quite baffled when I discovered the incongruity whilst preparing this post. The fact that this, as noted above, is post #89 did not quite match the preceding (and incorrect) claim that what is consequently post #85 could ever have been #100. On the bright side, this will allow us to celebrate the 100th post yet another time no more than eleven posts from now. Let us see if I cannot come up with a matching numerical theme for it, eh?

Twisted Endings

2011-05-09T12:00:00.011+02:00

In the wake of recently having watched, and been majorly disappointed by, the fifth season of Supernatural, I would like to talk about stories with a twist, or perhaps more specifically stories that end with a twist.

Now, the phenomenon is nothing new. Far from it. In all honesty, I doubt whether there is ever a time when it is not in use somewhere on the globe, in some narrative medium. However, I believe it is equally true that there are occasions when the phenomenon waxes in usage and becomes (for the lack of a better word) trendy. This could arguably be seen in the mid-nineties when the success of Bryan Singer's The Usual Suspects seemingly created a wave of films using twist endings.

One of the more successful ones to come out of that wave was M. Night Shyamalan's The Sixth Sense, which in many ways (unfortunately) led Shyamalan into making a full blown career of films ending with a twist. (In fact, having no actual twist at the end would probably be the most surprising twist a Shyamalan film could have nowadays.) What makes The Sixth Sense, like The Usual Suspects, so good is the fact that the twist at the end works. And there's the rub. In order to tell a good story with a twist ending, one needs to understand the mechanics of the phenomenon.

A twist ending just for the sake of the twist is rarely any good. At the very least, in the few cases where it is, there is very little enjoyment to be had by revisiting the tale. More importantly, a twist ending must be carefully constructed and worked into the story proper. This quite naturally interacts with the first parameter, as it quite strongly suggests that a twist ending will not save a bad story. It will just be a bad story with a twist ending, and quite possibly a bad twist ending at that.

To exemplify: I remember creative writing exercises in primary school where one had a session in which to write a story. Mostly the sessions were too short to really allow for carefully constructed narratives, and it was nigh inevitable that time would run out somewhere in the middle, paving way for twist endings involving the annihilation of the Earth by nuclear doomsday devices that had no real place in the story prior to their surprise appearances at the end. Surprising, why yes. No one could see that one coming. Simply because this had no foundation in the story told. It was the kind of surprise which breaks the suspension of disbelief and all sense of narrative logic.

In reality, of course, life does not necessarily move along narrative lines. Events happen from left and right somehow, but interestingly, whenever we try to narrate these events, we do tend to at least try to induce logical relations between things, try to establish neatly visible lines between any effect to some sort of given cause. In fiction, this becomes a central rule of the game.

I believe it was Russian author Anton Chekhov who said of short fiction writing that if you introduce a gun on the wall, it needs to be used before the end of the story. While this rule requires modification of sorts to be applicable as a general rule for fictional storytelling (whatever the medium and whichever the length), I still find it useful to illustrate the core point when it comes to functional twist endings. That is to say, the ending while aimed to be a surprise for the reader/viewer, nevertheless requires the sensation of being obvious or a given once it has jumped out of the box.

The nuclear annihilation of the world above is clear not such a thing. It is surprising simply because it is a twist that attaches itself to the story from without. The good twist ending, on the other hand, is something which the narrative subtly builds towards, albeit without revealing its hand to soon. At least ideally. The art lies in pulling that balance off in the reader/viewer's mind, which may well be an intricate high wire act: to be enough grounded without being too obvious before it is all revealed.

Clearly, detective fiction is a fertile ground for this kind of practice at its most basic level. Nobody would want to read a whodunnit if the murderer at the end was revealed to be a person never mentioned in the story. The surprise would no doubt be phenomenal, but it would pretty much be a case of giving someone a puzzle where you take pieces out of the box and replace them with pieces from another puzzle (by default making the puzzle unsolvable).

Unlike whodunnits, however, most stories with a twist do not introduce themselves as puzzles. At least not in quite the same manner. And that, in part, is the root of the surprise. As readers/viewers, we are given a carefully constructed puzzle but without being told that it is a puzzle. We are given all the pieces, but subtly presented; most likely not even as pieces.

This is why I never appreciate reviewers who talk about twist endings. As you may recall, I have talked about spoilers as a very clear example of bad reviewing. While the mention of a twist ending might not seem to be a spoiler (well, as long as the actual twist is not revealed), I would argue that it in fact is. As soon as we are told that the narrative is a puzzle to be solved, we will look at it in a different manner. Just like we read whodunnits constantly trying to figure out who the killer is, we will read/view the narrative with an eye to figure out what the twist will be, instead of being utterly surprised by it.

And a good twist will surprise us. And part of that surprise will be how on Earth we did not see it coming.

A Feature Film Is Not the Equivalent of a Novel

2011-04-25T12:00:00.016+02:00

The other day, I finished watching the second season of Sons of Anarchy, and I was yet again reminded of something, which I have often thought during the last decade (and in all honesty, other minds have presented the same idea or similar ones): the cinematic equivalent to a novel is not a feature-length film, but a TV-series. The aforementioned Sons of Anarchy is a clear example of this, as is the absolutely superb series The Wire. But how? And what do I mean when I write this? Perhaps even more importantly, what does this imply for the visual medium of moving pictures?

Relax. I will explain myself.

Let us first remember the distinction between series and serial (which I have discussed earlier) and remember the fact (as also mentioned) that the TV-series format has slowly moved from a more series structured thinking to a more serial structured one. As in most cases, there is not a sharp dividing line; there is room for series with some serial elements, to be sure. However, that is not to say that clearly distinguished specimens of both categories cannot be found without any problems. For all the shades of grey, there are still black and white on the spectrum too, and the distinctions are therefore useful both in b/w terms and on a shaded scale (where the shades can still be judged in the present ratio of either category in any given case).

Given that the format has moved in this direction, it is perhaps not strange that full-blown TV-"serials" (outside of the already existing mini-series format) have proven themselves successful. But how does this relate to my claim? A novel tends to use a different pacing than a feature film. It is (usually) divided into an unset number of chapters, a feature which shapes the narrative, both in practical terms of how readers tend to interact with the text (chapter breaks often being preferred points of pauses in the reading for many readers) and in terms of dramaturgy. By the latter, I mean that chapters as a general rule are structural devices on the writer's part to create narrative units of drama that in some sense almost hologrammatically* mirror the whole. At least on a general level. Chapters often have an internal build-up, not rarely ending with a cliffhanger of sorts, which drives the reading ever onwards.

Now, feature films clearly do not lack dramaturgy and they are often, dramaturgically speaking, divided into acts (which at least on some level can be compared to chapters; this being something of a simplification of a much more complex relation, of course). Nevertheless, feature films are relatively short and definitely meant for single sitting consumption. Novels can be, but certainly need not (and in more cases than not pushes the possibility for such consumption for most readers).

In a TV-series (or -"serial" if you will), each episode serves as a dramaturgically structured unit in a larger dramaturgical structure. That is to say, each episodes functions like a chapter in a novel. Now, a feature film cannot go on hours and hours and hours on end. And yes, I am aware that some films do, but they really raise the question as to how viewable they actually are, and if, in fact, they actually resort to a somewhat episodic structure anyway, and in some sense then mimic novel/TV-"serial" structure. Still, as a general rule films over the three-hour mark are fairly rare on the whole, and many if not most tend to find them rather bothersome to watch for obvious reasons. TV-"serials" on the other hand can easily go on for hours and hours and hours and... simply because they, unlike feature films, do not go on on end. They come with ready-made pauses, where we can catch our breaths and stop for a bit to digest what has been going on. As with a novel, we can read/view one chapter/episode at a time, or as many as we happen to have time for at any given time.

Even more importantly, this less temporally compact structure allows for slower pacing, additional subplots and greater complexities on the whole. I have discussed adaptation in here before, and this certainly has bearing on it. The medium of film has always enjoyed adapting literature, but it is worthwhile noting that slimmer novels, novellas or even short fiction often make for better films. Or at least better adaptations. Simply because the ratio between story content/plot and narrative length is more even and requires less chopping off, cutting or slimming down. Naturally the line is neither singular nor sharp, at least not in terms of page count vs. playing time. After all, a thick tome spending most of its pages on visual descriptions which a camera can capture with a single image stands a much better chance of remaining intact and on time than an equally thick tome where the bulk of the pages is spent to delineate and develop a heavily complex intrigue.

Differently put, TV-"serials" not only have more time in which to tell the story, more space in which to include more story content, but also the opportunity to pace the storytelling differently, to allow for more characters and character voices to be heard, to be (in some sense at least) in focus. There is time and room for a narrative to breathe, to develop over time, and to consequently (at least potentially) hit you even harder with its moments of emotional impact.

There is no doubt in my mind that Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen would have made a much better TV-"serial" than a feature film. I have my reservations towards certain things in the film adaptation (some of which I may well discuss in here at some point), but my main complaint is still that even the good bits did not get time enough to breathe, were not allowed to develop and expand, but rather ended up feeling rushed (and consequently less than satisfactory). Consider the time Rorschach spends with the shrink and the slow revelation that one issue (or chapter, if you will) builds up towards, its heavy impact, and compare to the swift rush job of the film. In a TV-"serial" that would easily have been an episode in its own right. And a mighty fine one at that, if we would have had Jackie Earl Haley still doing the role.

As I write this, I have not yet had a chance to watch the TV-"serial" adaptation of George R. R. Martin's A Game of Thrones (I have watched and enjoyed the 15 minutes preview available on the HBO website), but it certainly looks promising. And it bodes well, if we are seeing the beginning of a trend that will see more adaptations from novels into moving pictures that are not feature films but TV-"serials".

* Holograms are among other things known for the fact that each piece contains the whole.

Who Will Actually Know How to Change the Batteries When They Run Out?

2011-04-11T12:00:00.016+02:00

A friend of mine recently said that her children will be computer whizzkids more or less by default, and I questioned this notion. Do not get me wrong. It is not as if I question the ability of my friends children to actually become computer whizzkids. They are still very young and have a lot of time to develop such skills in time. What I questioned was the belief that these skills will be more or less inherent in this generation of children. And this belief is more common than one would honestly wish.

The argument relies on the fact that we live in a society where computers are all around us and that everyone, from an early age (and for better or worse), is forced to interact with this technology on a daily basis. This is undeniably a fact in this age of the internet, social media, smartphones, etc, and I certainly will not make any attempts to deny it. What I strongly question is the flawed assumption that simple exposure will computer whizzkids make. And point to the fact that if that is what we believe, maybe we need to redefine our understanding of what a computer whizzkid is.

It is true that the current generation of children will not have (some of their) parents' (not to mention grandparents') fear of using some of these devices and media. Having grown up around them, the children will no doubt see these devices as a natural part of their lives. But having no fear to use a device or medium does not by default mean mastery of said device or medium. In fact, in this specific context, there are gaps. As I hope I will show.

The first gap is this: computers and other devices today (like smartphones) are designed to be user friendly. This is of course a plus, as it makes these media accessible to more people, and as such makes the many fora opening up all the more democratic. Or at the very least the possibility of their being democratic is heightened by the fact that almost anyone can use them, and definitely without an advanced degree in technology or physics. On the downside, there is quite naturally a greater risk that fewer people understand how the technology behind the devices actually work. And this, of course, applies both to hardware and software.

To illustrate this point further, I would like to point to the situation of my own generation. We are the early generation of people exposed to home computers. I had several friends who had Commodore 64 or 128. For my own part, I opted to get a Nintendo, simply for the reason that it was more user friendly when it came to gaming (no real loading times, no winding cassette tapes back and forth – and yes, not only obsolete floppy disks were used in the early stages but also actual cassette tapes). My decision was one of convenience. Yet, while there is no doubt in my mind that my computer-owning friends had their computers for gaming (just as I had my Nintendo), I note with interest that quite a few of them have continued into careers in software programming or computer support.

The key to this is not strange, of course. While I saved a bit of time on loading my games whenever I wanted to play, they gained early insights into the structure and language of computer coding. It is said that necessity is the mother of invention. I would go even further and say that necessity can also be a great motivation for learning. Or differently put: human beings are quite often lazy by nature. If we do not have to know something, chances are that we will not bother about acquiring the knowledge.

This sort of brings us to the second gap I wanted to discuss: we are already a few generations into the supposedly naturally computer savvy homo sapiens computer (if you pardon the expression), yet I have had students who do not know how to use simple functions and tools in word processing programs. And before you make the argument that everyone cannot be expected to know everything everywhere (which is certainly true), one of the core arguments when claiming that young people are more and more universally belonging to a new breed of computer whizzkids is that these people (because of their fearless nature) will be able to find their way on their own, even if they do not have the specifics in their head at the outset. If this was true, how come they stumble on very simple problems like changing font sizes and types, line spacing, adding page numbers, headers and footers? Or use the spellchecker? Quite simply put, the less we need to scratch our way below the surface of things, the less we will bother finding out what is underneath that surface, let alone know and understand how whatever is there actually works.

As the user friendly nature evolves, the average user (albeit quite obviously belonging to a much greater community of users) will know much less about code writing than my childhood friends who did their gaming on computers; will know much less than myself (who would by no means make any claims to be a computer whizzkid), who acquired no knowledge of code writing, but at least some basic understanding of information structures in some operating systems, after years of using computers as tools for word processing and the like.

This problem (and make no mistake, it is a problem) can be compared to an obvious one in the field of car mechanics. When I was a kid, it was not uncommon for people to fix their cars themselves whenever there were car problems. These days it is more or less impossible for an amateur to dive under the hood of a car and fix anything, because of computerised systems, and nuts and bolts that require specialised tools. In short, the further along we have got, the less car users know about how their vehicles work, and more importantly, how to fix them should something break down.

Similarly in computers, the more user friendly and surface oriented they become, the less informed about whatever happens underneath the surface most users will be. And the worse that negative ratio grows, the more hopeless a scenario when something goes awry starts to look.

A while back my internet pal, Zaki Hasan wrote a blog post entitled "The Death of Saturday Morning". The post deals with the technological advances in television broadcasting and recording, which has forever changed the playing field and made Zaki's (and my own) memories of waiting for a show to start (rather than instantly appear at the press of a button, whenever required) somewhat obsolete and incomprehensible to the current generation of children. There is something of an all-consuming id being fostered into the texture of our societal weave in the underlying question of necessity: why wait?

Why wait indeed? I will not pretend that I am not a fan of watching TV-series on DVD, in order to avoid being bound by a TV guide schedule dictating when I can see what and how much of it. But that confession does not deny that there is an inherent problem in a culture that is seemingly developing a greater and greater need for instant gratification, while simultaneously developing technology that insures that we need not acquire "useless" information about how our tools actually work. If we continue on this route, where will we end up?

Or differently put: eventually, who will actually know how to change the batteries when they run out?

Post #100: Or, When Is a Q a 9?

2011-03-28T12:00:00.011+02:00

And so we reach a milestone: this is the one-hundredth post on Thus Spake the Mighty Wha-keem. That is, with this post I have written one-hundred posts since I started posting back in May of 2009, and I am obviously still at it.

So, how should this milestone be celebrated? Well, seeing as how the second anniversary is less than two months away, I would not want to place the focus on the passing of time per se, or contemplate what has gone by (in terms of topics covered and whatnot). If you would thus instead allow me to contemplate numbers for a brief moment or two of your time, I would be content.

Numbers, you ask? Well, fear not, I am neither turning into a mathematician nor a numerologist, but I have happened to notice a number (and language) related issue with regards to Haruki Murakami's latest novel 1Q84 (in Japanese ichi-kew-hachi-yon). The novel, which will be published in Swedish in three volumes (the first two already released this spring), a single volume in the US, and two volumes (1Q84 and 1Q84 2) in the UK, cleverly references both its own temporal setting and George Orwell's famous novel 1984 with its own Japanese title. The pun, if you will, is that the letter Q is a homophone to the Japanese word kyū, (or sometimes, as in the title, transcribed as kew) meaning "nine".

Now, obviously the pun is untranslatable as the letter Q is not pronounced anything like the number nine (either in English or Swedish), but it seems to me that at least the Swedish publisher has missed an opportunity in their typographical choice of using the capital letter Q in the title 1Q84. Clearly, the homophone is lost but if you place the numeral 9 next to a lower case q, one can note an interesting similarity. Perhaps not enough to strictly generate a homograph either, but at least, I would argue, the lower case q would at least suggest the reference to a reader in any language using the Latin alphabet. Clearly 1q84 reads much closer to 1984 than does 1Q84 (which does not really at all). Alas, as stated, a missed opportunity, I fear.

The Immeasurable Nature of Subjective Experience

2011-03-14T12:00:00.008+01:00

Recently I came to ponder upon something, and not for the first time: How does one measure subjective experiences? Or perhaps even more appropriately: Can one?

True enough, we can compare one experience as relative to another. However, this is not perfect, since the temporal perspective affects us adversely. Memory may well be less than exact when it comes to subjective experiences. It may enhance or belittle that which we experienced, in essence causing our memories not necessarily to correspond with our own actual experience.

But even discounting that (after all, even objective measurements can be off, if the tools used to do the measuring are flawed or inexact), taking the comparative approach as a given; how can we possibly compare our relative results to that of other people's subjective experiences? While I am not discounting the importance of communication for our species (I am, after all, something of a fan of the concept), language is never exact enough to measure our experiences. We can use it to share our experiences with others, true; but any measurements given will always be relative and somewhat inexact.

And before you brush me off as a crazy nihilist here, consider our understanding of pain. If you go to the doctor or participate in certain tests, you may be asked to describe your type of pain (i.e. how we experience it). These descriptions are certainly often helpful for our understanding each other in regards to this, because they help us relate it to our own experiences. Yet, doctors also frequently want to measure the pain in some sense (as do maybe we ourselves too). On a comparative level we may make some advances. We may even find that the relative relation (as in something being more, or less, painful) between two things, say a slap and a punch, is equal in more cases than not. That is, the punch will be considered more painful than the slap, most likely. But by how much?

Doctors and tests sometimes asks us to rate pain (or other subjective experiences) on a graded scale. Putting a number to the experience would certainly seem a key component to measuring it, no doubt, but what exactly do the numbers mean? Even with a somewhat strict descriptive qualification for each number, how do we read those descriptions? How do we understand them? How do we compare them to our experiences? And is my 8 equal to yours?

Taking these question a step further, one might also add that the limits of our experiences affect our understanding of any grading system. Not that we lack imagination (well, some people certainly do) but it makes it more challenging. And surely there are times when human beings transcend their own individual understandings of any grade; when the dial suddenly, and in the immortal words of Nigel Tufnel, goes to eleven.

Beautiful Stories for Ugly Children

2011-02-28T12:00:00.011+01:00

In the first half of the 1990s, after I had moved on to reading American comics in English, and certainly after or as I was starting to move away from mainstream superhero comics (at least for quite a while) in favour of the up and coming new DC imprint Vertigo (and comics like that), I stumbled across Beautiful Stories for Ugly Children in the back issue bins at my local comic shop. Unless, I am mistaken, it was the brown cover of volume 4 (see image on the right) that first attracted my attention. It features "The Black Balloon (A Happy Story)", which is all about Raymond Ashbone, a man born strapped into an electric chair. This is a premise both absurd and fantastic, but certainly one which truly shows the regions where artist Dan Sweetman and writer Dave Louapre like to venture in this title. I quickly raided the back issue bins of the twelve volumes available (volumes 1–7, 9–12 and 17).

The reason behind my bringing up Beautiful Stories for Ugly Children here and now is my recent acquisition and reading of volumes 8 and 13, which brought the whole experience of the series back to me with force.

Beautiful Stories for Ugly Children was published by Piranha Press between 1989 and 1992, all in all 30 volumes, plus the two anthologies A Cotton Candy Autopsy (collecting volumes 1 and 13, and the new story "The Resurrection of Joey Puchinello" concluding trilogy) and What if This Were Heaven, Wouldn't That Be Hell? (featuring three new stories). While the external format of publication is that of comicbooks, I would strongly argue that the series itself is not strictly speaking that of comics, but rather of picture books (albeit, not really for children; not even ugly ones). Louapre's prose stories are presented with Sweetman's black and white illustrations not really serving as the sequential art of comics, but rather as picture book illustrations to accompany the prose (and with great effect at that). Add to this that each volume (which is what the series itself labels its issues) contains volume-related and quite fictionally enhanced biographies of the artist and the writer, the reading of which contributes to the full experience. All in all, the result is not quite like anything else I have encountered, and the stories are small gems.

The series opened up quite strongly with the brilliant story "A Cotton Candy Autopsy" (sometimes referred to as "Anybody's Freak," especially when listed in the aforementioned anthology) in which the narrator, a clown at a circus which burns down as the story opens, sets out with his friends Bingo, Foo Foo, Joey Punchinello and Addy the Freaklady on a road trip adventure that stands a good chance of changing your views on clowns forever. This story was later given a sequel, "A Cotton Candy Autopsy II: Bingo and Addy's Escape," in volume thirteen, and there the Louapre biography states that he is working on the concluding part of the trilogy (only published in the anthology, which I have sadly not yet got my hands on).

So what was the series really about? It was about telling stories. Weird, wondrous and wonky stories of the fantastic, the absurd and sometimes even the mundane. All of it presented in Louapre's words accompanied by Sweetman's black and white illustrations. It was no-holds-barred storytelling and imagination freed of many constraints. And this unites all the stories, even though the stories themselves (with the exception of the A Cotton Candy Autopsy trilogy) are not in any way interlinked (at least not as far as my fourteen-volumes-knowledge spans).

In chronological order (with an obvious gap between volumes 13 and 17), the fourteen volumes I have include the stories (and I opt to include these titles just to give you an idea of the stories told) "A Cotton Candy Autopsy," "The Deadjohnson's Big Incredible Day," "Diary of a Depressed Tap Dancer," "The Black Ballon (A Happy Story)," "The Crypt of the Magi," "Happy Birthday to Hell," "Ricky the Doughnut Boy," "Die Rainbow Die: A Story of Hope," "By the Light of the Screaming Moon," "Where the Tarantulas Play," "The Daffodils of Plague Town," "Beneath the Useless Universe," "A Cotton Candy Autopsy II: Bingo and Addy's Escape" and "A Conspiracy of Sweaters". These are stories about clowns, dead people "living" in the suburbs, the devil (telling his story), teens being told that they are lemmings on the eve of their prom, death on a holiday, a superhero who is the newest patient in a sanatorium, and many, many other weird, wondrous and wonky things.

If this presentation still has you on the fence, I recommend a further look into Louapre and Sweetman's mind. For my own part, I intend to do my best to track down the remaining sixteen volumes that I am missing, as well as the two anthologies. Wish me luck. And I hope you get a chance to enjoy this too.

Valentine Who?

2011-02-14T12:00:00.003+01:00

So, it is Valentine's Day today. For some people it is a big hoopla, for others not so much. For some people it is a huge celebration of love, for others it is just a heart-rendering reminder of maybe not being (or at the very least feeling) particularly loved. From another point of view, it is all just a big commercial cash cow that really and truly has very little to do with most (if any) conceptions of what love is.

So where am I heading with all of this then? Well, I will keep my love to my loved ones, bring gifts when I feel like it, and send sympathetic thoughts to all of you out there who quite involuntarily do not have a Valentine (and not just today then). I would like to dedicate this clip I just found to all of you:

Wayne Osborne's FX Is Back for Second Outing!

2011-01-31T12:00:00.014+01:00

In September 2009, I talked about Wayne Osborne and John Byrne's six-issue mini-series and TPB FX over at IDW (see my Goodreads review). At the time, I mentioned that a second mini was in the works, with Uko Smith on art duty, and that I yet again felt giddy with anticipation.

Eventually, the first issue of the second series, FX 2: The Lost Land, was solicited in Diamond, but for some reason or other (quite possibly low orders), IDW pulled the plug on the mini already before I had managed to secure a shop subscription anywhere. Naturally, I found this sad, but I took some heart in the news that eventually seeped out: FX 2: The Lost Land would see the light of day in direct-to-TPB-published form in December 2010.

After some delays for the title to appear in the on-line shops (at least on this side of that wee puddle they call the Atlantic), the title was available to buy around the shift from 2010 to 2011, and it naturally snuck into one of my book orders soon after.

Uko Smith does a very fine job as third FX artist. Yes, I did say third: remember that A. J. Jothikumar did the cover to the first TPB (and a very fine job at that, I would not mind seeing any FX material from his pen in the future). And Osborne shows that he can indeed hold his own beside Uko (which I already said I believed he could, mind you). I will not go into further details about the title here, feel free to read my in-depth Goodreads review for that; but I will say that the giddiness and excitement is still there.

And I do ever so much hope that there will be future adventures to be had with Tom Talbot, a.k.a. FX, and his friends and allies. Heck, I would not mind seeing some offshoots from the series. In fact, TPBs with the Foundation, Homefront or Professor Gerald "Gerry" Turnbull-Stout in it would be a great addition to my collection, to be sure. Together with his artistic accomplices, Osborne has successfully managed to project an enticing new fictional universe with seems to be teeming with exciting people and beings, not to mention stories to be told; and while I hope that quality never goes out of FX or any FX-related material Osborne produces, I certainly hope to see more of those stories.

And perhaps, as a result, to have even more stories just beyond the horizon to dream of.

Let Writers Be Writers: Musicians Musicians and Film Makers Film Makers Too

2011-01-17T12:00:00.019+01:00

This past summer, I came across across an article by Mike Masnick over at Techdirt that I fully intended to blog about. Other subjects have kept coming in-between, and thus that post was never written. In all honesty, this post is not it either, but (for reasons I will return to) some of the basic gist of what I opposed in the article has just recently been given new immediacy here in Sweden.

Masnick's article dealt with copyright issues and was a response to some things written by composer Jason Robert Brown on his blog. Among other things, Masnick quotes Brown: "The blueprints for your house should be free. Movies should be free. The DSM-IV should be free, regardless of the expense required to create these things." He then responds by writing:

This is really frustrating because people accuse me of making this kind of statement all the time. It's not should, it's will. 'Should' is a moral argument. 'Will' is a predictive economic explanation. People aren't saying the information 'should' be anything. They're saying it will be -- or, more likely -- already is. Again, the question is what do you do about it? Falsely claiming people are giving it moral value by saying 'should' twists an economic/business model debate into a moral one.

Perhaps needless to say, I have a couple of problems with Masnick's argument.

First of all, it allows for no ethical dimension in an economic/business discourse. Or rather, his argument never considers whether the fact that something is a certain way means that it should, or ought to, be that way (i.e. is it ethically sound). By way of an admittedly very rough but also very clear analogy, slavery was an economic reality and it was hardly financial reasons that drove that foul practice out of existent in most culture; it was ethical reasons. In fact, given slave-like conditions in manufacturing in certain Asian and African countries, one can only assume that capitalism per se has absolutely no problem whatsoever with the concept of slavery.

Secondly, I find that Masnick's analysis lacks a certain depth. In not better analysing what will be (or perhaps already is), Masnick fails to consider possible implications and consequences of this predictive economic explanation. Now, the quote above is, as stated, a direct response to the following Jason Robert Brown quote: "The blueprints for your house should be free. Movies should be free. The DSM-IV should be free, regardless of the expense required to create these things." If we focus on the second sentence (i.e. the one referencing the medium of the film) and apply Masnick's logic that films will be free (if they are not already), this raises an important issue: Who will make films for free?

Oh, sure enough, there would probably be some ventures made, but clearly the most expensive artistic/entertainment medium we have created would suffer if there would be no money to be made, because who would want to invest? Masnick's analysis may be correct on one level (i.e. that the situation with, currently illegal, downloading may well suggest the predictive economic explanation he sees), but fails to go deep enough to see that this condition might actually lead to there being no film production at all. At which point at least I feel it appropriate to ask: Is that what we want?

So what has given this the new immediacy mentioned in the opening of this post? Well, in the last week or two, there has been something of a public dispute between Swedish author Björn Ranelid and the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, historian Peter Englund. The whole (somewhat ludicrous) affair started when Ranelid, currently a participant in the latest edition of the Swedish version of the TV program Let's Dance, threw out the challenge that the members of the Swedish Academy should leave their ivory tower and participate in this program (or at the very least others like it, presumably).

So what does this have to do with Masnick's article? Well, Masnick and his ilk continuously propose that musicians, film makers, even authors, adapt to the current market and develop new business models. In short, this means a view where for example an author should write his books for free and gain payment some other way, be it on lecture/reading tours or participation in TV programs, etc. Personally, I have two major problems with this idea.

Firstly, I doubt many other workers would accept it if you went up to them and said, "So, hey, we're not going to pay you for your work from now on, but we want you to continue doing it. We understand that you want to be paid, but you just have to do something else on the side to make money." I dare you to try it with a construction worker or a doctor.

Secondly (and sticking with the example of writers), the qualities of writers do not require them to be loquacious, quick-thinking or witty. Heck, they are in no way required to be any type of public performers. What is required by any given writer is a good imagination, a way with words and an understanding of the craft of writing.

Do not get me wrong. I am by no means saying that a writer cannot be a loquacious, quick-thinking and witty public performer who thrives in front of stadium-size audiences. I am merely pointing out that the two are unrelated, and that, perhaps more importantly, there is something seriously wrong if we promote writers not on the basis of their writing, but on how they perform in (at the very least somewhat) unrelated fields. Personally, I am not comfortable with this. I want to read good books, not books by people who happen to be good on stage or in TV sofas, etc (although I do not, as ought to be clear by now, mind reading good books by the latter).

So, for crying out loud, let writers be writers, musicians musicians and film makers film makers too!

"Listen as the Syllables of Slaughter Cut with Calm Precision"

2011-01-03T12:00:00.007+01:00

So, a new year is upon us, and I thought it somewhat appropriate to focus a little bit upon on music, seeing as how it is a somewhat under-represented category given this blog's subtitle.

And, as it happens, during the last few days I have been revisiting an old favourite of mine, which still holds up with razor sharp excellence. Dear readers, I give you Marillion's 1984 album Fugazi.

The album consists of seven tracks, "Assassing" (7.02), "Punch and Judy" (3.21), "Jigsaw" (6.50), "Emerald Lies" (5.09), "She Chameleon" (6.53), "Incubus" (8.30) and "Fugazi" (8.13); the B side of the vinyl starting with "She Chameleon". In the strictest sense, it is not a concept album. There is no plot running through the album, tying the songs together and shaping a unified narrative, but that having been said, I would strongly argue that it is a conceptual album. Because the songs are cleverly tied together thematically. Fugazi, as an album, is all about human relationships, and more specifically ones that "Fucked Up, Got Ambushed, Zipped In" (the acronym stemming back to the Vietnam war).

The brilliance of the album comes, to a large extent, from Fish's lyrical genius. As a huge Fish fan, I would say that this album in many ways constitutes one of the man's finest hours. Each song deals with the aforementioned theme, but each song does so by placing the theme in a certain semantic field. The reference is always to the human relationships going down the drain, but the fantastic metaphors used create seven very different tableaux.

In "Assassing", Fish opens up by creating a mixed metaphor of a battle and linguistics, appropriately expressed in a phenomenal piece de resistance of word play extraordinary. As the title of this post ought to demonstrate quite adequately.

The short, but very intensive, second track, "Punch and Judy" makes use of the commedia dell'arte character Puncinella, or more commonly in English, Punchinello or Mr Punch; or even more precisely it uses the old puppet show classic about a relationship taken to murderous levels (Mr Punch killing both his baby and wife before moving on to other pastures – for people interested in the story, I would strongly recommend Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean's interpretation in The Tragical Comedy or Comical Tragedy of Mr Punch) to express the theme in a more modern, urbanised, and bourgeois setting.

"Jigsaw" is built up on several metaphors, from the notion of jigsaw pieces fitting together (or not, as it were) in the first verse, through the hopelessness in "Screaming out a ceasefire, snowblind in an avalanche zone" in the second one, to the utter despair of playing "Russian roulette in the waiting room / Empty chambers embracing the end" in the final verse. All of these, however, are nicely fitted together as functioning puzzle, almost working as a mise-en-abyme of the album as a whole (i.e. I would argue that it expresses the artistic and stylistic principle behind the lyrics on the whole album, neatly compressed in a single song).

Closing the original A-side of the album, "Emerald Lies" combines a medieval reference involving the Inquisition with a modern day courtroom drama. The colour green is obviously the colour of jealousy and this in turn suits the semantic fields of choice when it comes to the metaphors, since the invasive nature both of the Inquisition and a prosecution eloquently expresses this feeling that can almost literally tear a relationship apart.

Opening the original B-side, "She Chameleon" uses the metaphorical value of a chameleon as type of shape-shifter or deceiver to express physical encounters that somehow never amount to any true meaning, yet which the poetic I nevertheless do not refuse or abandon. Incidentally, I would dare anyone to find a better, more poetically apt use of the word fuck (repeated at that) than in this song.

One of my favourite tracks has always been "Incubus", with its use of photography-, cinema- and stage-related metaphors to describe the lingering remnants of the torn-apart relationships around which the album centres. The power in a phrase like "You who wiped me from your memory like a greasepaint mask / Just like a greasepaint mask" never ceases to amaze me, and never fails to affect me emotionally.

The title track, "Fugazi", brings the theme to a strong close. In some sense, it opens up the notion of failing relationships to a larger stage. It starts with the somewhat intimate lines – "Vodka intimate, an affair with isolation in a Blackheath cell / Extinguishing the fires in my private hell / provoking the heartache to renew the license / Of a bleeding heart poet in a fragile capsule" – but then moves this loss of faith in the Romantic beyond its simpler application on twosome relationships to human relationships on a larger scale, referencing the Holocaust, race riots and the ever-present (at the time) threat of nuclear annihilation.

After establishing that "This world is totally fugazi," the song, and the album, closes with the repeated lines "Where are the prophets, where are the visionaries / Where are the poets, to breach the dawn of the sentimental mercenary," which suggests a desire on the part of the lyricist to plead for a way out of the madness, or perhaps more accurately a way of seeing outside the box, when it comes to human relationships.

Ah well, do not take my word for it. Listen to the album yourselves. And be sure to give those lyrics some extra attention.

The Season to Be Jolly

2010-12-20T13:25:00.002+01:00

Seeing as how Christmas is coming up quickly, I thought I spend this post talking a little bit about just that. Obviously, it is a Christian tradition that has long since also been appropriated as a secular holiday (Santas and Elves often playing a more prominent public part than baby Jesus), and even as such it comes with traditions, both communal and personal.

Obviously, here in Sweden, the big celebration takes place on Christmas Eve (unlike the more Christmas Day-centred celebrations elsewhere). On this day, Swedes meet up, eat good food (usually a smorgasbord of ham, meatballs, sausages, herring, salmon, cheese, and whatnot, although this pescetarian needless to say stays clear of the first three) and get a visit from Santa, who delivers presents (not in socks, but in person).

One of my own (fairly recent, but nevertheless strong) personal traditions is to watch Tim Burton and Henry Selick's wonderful animated film The Nightmare Before Christmas on the day of Christmas Eve (i.e. before meeting up for the family get-together). For some reason, it simply wouldn't seem like Christmas without Jack Skellington's wonderful lament.

Music is, of course, also an important part of setting the mood. This year, I have made a playlist over at Spotify, entitled JJ's Xmas Playlist. It includes cornerstone tracks like "Fairytale of New York" by The Pogues, the above-cited track from The Nightmare Before Christmas and some classical Christmas songs like "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" in different interpretations. Feel free to check it out and enjoy it from beginning to end!

Unfortunately the Spotify playlist does not include a track I always put on every Christmas Eve (much like The Nightmare Before Christmas), simply because it is not available at Spotify. The song in question is "For Christ's Sake", i.e. IQ's instrumental version of "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" (available on the CD Seven Stories into 98). For those of you not lucky enough to have the currently out-of-print CD, you can always listen to the song here.

Anyway, it's a busy season, and I won't keep you all.

Merry Xmas & a Happy New Year!

I'll see you in 2011.

Dipping My Toes in the Canals of Dutch Literature

2010-12-06T12:00:00.013+01:00

After reading Nene Ormes' Udda verklighet and John Ajvide Lindqvist's Låt den rätte komma in (Eng. Let the Right One In), I have somewhat uncharacteristically stuck to books in Swedish for my recreational reading this autumn. Having said, I should also state that I have not only been reading Swedish books, but also translations. In particular, I have been dipping my toes in the canals of Dutch literature, something which I think was long overdue. I have had a number of Dutch books in Swedish translation waiting on my shelves for quite some time (and while quite a few remain, the number has been reduced, at least), and what I have read so far has been really enjoyable.

My first Dutch literary acquaintance was Cees Nooteboom's novel Paradijs verloren (translated into Swedish by Per Holmer as Paradiset förlorat; Eng. title Lost Paradise). This short novel is divided into two halves (eventually connected through chance meetings); where the first half deals with the story of Alma, a young Brazilian woman who makes a pilgrimage to Australia with her best friend Almut after having suffered a particularly savage rape experience. This part of the novel focuses on questions of art and culture, both of which are also tied into the Romantic dream of aboriginal mythology and cosmology. Alma desperately seeks her childhood dreams of the presumably pure innocence of the these categories, which in reality can never quite be captured in such terms.

The second half of the novel deals with ageing literary critic Erik Zondag, whose reluctant visit to a retreat we are invited to join. Literature and the human condition are here fore-fronted by Nooteboom, and the chance meetings that bring his two narratives together serve to highlight this as well. All in all, it is a very interesting novel and I will definitely be reading more of Nooteboom's oeuvre.

Second out was another Dutch writer of the old garde, who sadly passed away at age 83 on October 30 this year, Harry Mulisch. I had a few books by Mulisch waiting on my shelves, but after a recommendation from a friend, I opted to begin with De Aanslag (translated into Swedish by Ingrid Wikén Bonde as Överfallet; Eng. title The Assault). It is the story of how a single horrible event, generated through a number of chance occurrences, shapes the entire life of the protagonist Anton Steenwijk.

On an evening in January, 1945, Anton's life is turned upside down when an infamous policeman and known Nazi collaborator is shot dead in front of the house of his neighbours, the Kortewegs, who move the body so that it is placed in front the Steenwijks' house. As a result, Anton loses his parents and his brother, and is placed in the care of his uncle and aunt after a harrowing experience.

Divided into five sections, set in five different time periods respectively (1945, 1952, 1956, 1966 and 1981), the novel follows Anton through his life and more specifically focuses on four chance encounters which all relate back to the traumatic events he so clearly is trying not to think about. These are accidental meetings with people who in one way or another played a part in that fateful evening's events (e.g. the son of the murdered policeman, the resistance fighter who shot the policeman, and the daughter of the neighbour who moved the body). The book is a depiction of the Second World War in the Netherlands, and its far-reaching impact on the Dutch people, as well as a crime novel or psychological thriller of sorts. Mulisch's writing drew me in, and made me contemplate difficult and sometimes troubling moral issues. He is most definitely an author I would urge anyone to read, and whom I will surely return to myself as well.

Finally, I am currently reading Anna Enquist's short story collection De kwetsuur (translated into Swedish by the aforementioned Per Holmer as Blessyr; Eng. title The Injury). Thus far I have read three out of ten stories, and they are quite impressive little pieces and highly recommended. Situated in different periods in Dutch history, these tales nevertheless focuses on individual humans and their life stories, or perhaps more accurately episodes of some kind of significance in these life stories.

When I am finished with Enquist's stories, I will most likely take a break from the canals of Dutch literature, as well as from my current reading trend (i.e. reading in Swedish), since there are many other things that call upon my attention. But rest assured. These canals will be revisited, because they have proved to be a very rich literary vein and they deserve much more than the mere dipping of toes.

The Devil is in the Details, or: The Irreducible Nature of Narrative

2010-11-22T12:00:00.014+01:00

Yesterday, I had an interesting online discussion with a Canadian acquaintance of mine. It started off as a discussion relating to what I am working on for my thesis, but swiftly covered a lot of surrounding areas.

At one point, Joseph Campbell's classic book The Hero with a Thousand Faces was brought into the discussion. While I find Campbell's ideas (as well as those of many other structuralist thinkers like e.g. Vladimir Propp, Algirdas Julien Greimas, and Claude Lévi-Strauss) interesting, I noted that there lies a problem at the heart of this kind of thinking, namely that it can easily reduce everything too much. It is not difficult to reduce the elements of narratives to the point where we can say that there only exists a very limited number of stories in the world and that any given narrative is just an interpretation of one of these stories. However, narrative (be it in literature, comics, film, music or otherwise) is in some sense irreducible. Reducing a narrative alters it, and altering it makes it into something other than what it was.

Consider the old saying, "the Devil is in the details." As it turns out, I would argue, narrative too is in the details (whether or not this, in fact, would imply that all narration is satanic or that narrative is the Devil's tool, this literary Satanist will leave unsaid). This is why abridged versions like Reader's Digest or summaries like York Notes strictly speaking does not work. Oh, don't get me wrong, I am sure that York Notes have saved many a stressed out student on more than one occasion and that there have been many people who have enjoyed abridged versions in their day, but it nevertheless raises the question of what they have read.

Reading (or watching) narratives is not simply a process of taking in information. It is about making a journey of a kind – an inner journey that can only take place in the meeting between the reader (or viewer) and any given narrative. Maybe one could even argue that any such encounter is temporally bound within the reader's (or viewer's) life span; that is, that who we are at the moment of the encounter most likely affects how we interpret that encounter – how we read the narrative.

Once again, this is not to say that the structuralists were wrong, or that the study of genres, types and the grammar of narrative is a vain effort, far from it. It is rather, perhaps, my way of saying that we need to remember that, while this repetition of a few stories keeps playing out before us, each narrative is in some sense its own entity. And perhaps we need to look not only on the components that make each narrative like another, but also on the (sometimes very fine and minute) differences that set them apart.

The Muppetational Jim Henson and... The Muppet Show

2010-11-08T12:00:00.010+01:00

I grew up in an era when there was no internet; when there were no mobile phones (and when those did arrive, they were mobile, but hardly pocket-sized); and, most importantly for this post, when there were only two channels available on television here in Sweden. Neither of which two channels were broadcasting around the clock like the multitude of channels we have nowadays do. Nope, starting late afternoons/early evenings and then keeping at it till perhaps around midnight (not that the end time was of great importance to me back then, of course), that was all the television available to us. Add to this, the simple fact that there were no DVDs (not an all-round availability of VCRs either for that matter) and you might imagine (if you were not there too) that what was on the tube was something to be watched, in most cases.

Case in point, I watched The Muppet Show as a kid. And I do think I liked it. Kind of. I'm sure some of the funny antics with the puppets were amusing to my younger self, but I'm equally certain that a lot of stuff sailed by way over my head. In fact, while some things have stayed with me (as pop cultural references are wont to do), in some other sense I left the Muppets behind me a long time ago. Until fairly recently, that is.

YouTube has over the last few years reintroduced me to the crazy world of the Muppets. For instance, there is this absolutely outstanding Muppets' version of "Bohemian Rhapsody", which cannot but melt the heart of an old Queen fan like yours truly.

Now, don't get me wrong. It is not like I've shunned the brilliance of master puppeteer (or is it perchance puppet maestro) Jim Henson or his oeuvre. I am a big fan of both his TV show The Storyteller (and its follow-up with retellings of Greek Myths) and films like Dark Crystal and Labyrinth. I just haven't spent many thoughts on The Muppet Show since back in the day.

Well, don't let it be said that it is ever too late to repent for one's proverbial sins of neglect. Having had the Queen extravaganza in my head for quite some time (as well as snippets with the Swedish Chef and the "Mahna Mahna" song – the latter of which can be viewed below), I started considering actually buying at the very least the first series of The Muppet Show. Most of all, what probably drove me to this was a growing suspicion that I had been missing out on something; that my memory simply wasn't good enough or too tainted by a child's p.o.v.

Yesterday, I finally acted on this suspicion and added the first series box set to my collection. Thus far I have only had the chance to watch the first two episodes, but it is funny to note that, yes, I did miss a whole lot of stuff way back when, because a whole lot of it wasn't aimed at children. Looking at it now, there is also the aspect of the show as an historical document, allowing us a glimpse into 1976. However, most of all, I cannot help but laud the late Jim Henson for his genius in setting up a rather typical kind of television show of that era in the most atypical way possible.

I am fairly sure I will be returning to this topic again, but in the meantime, there is only one thing I would like to say... Mahna mahna!

A Change of Publishing Pace

2010-10-31T20:00:00.003+01:00

So, here comes a belated final October post, the topic of which ties in with its belatedness.

When I started Thus Spake the Mighty Wha-keem back in May 2009, I argued that "any type of good publication (electronic or otherwise) needs to be maintained continuously" and I still stand by that motto. Obviously, I have faltered on occasion (as this week would indicate at least slightly), but if anything, I am rather proud to say that this blog has become more regular over time, finding its publishing day and time (Mondays at noon CET), once a week, and pretty much sticking to that.

In that sense, the past week has obviously been something of an anomaly to the by now established norm, but it has also forced me to look ahead a bit and see if I could keep up with said publishing deadline or if the stumbling itself would be bound to become a new (and dare I say it, unwanted) norm. The truth is that I am heading into a period in which keeping the deadline and maintaining the level of content quality simply will not be feasible.

Because of this, I have decided to turn Thus Spake the Mighty Wha-keem into a bi-weekly blog, instead of a weekly one, until further notice. In doing so, I hope to re-affirm my own commitment to have a regular publishing continuity without losing quality or my own sanity in the process.

In short, my next post will be up on Monday November 8 at noon (sticking with the established publishing day and time at least) and will then be followed by another one on November 22. Hopefully, you will all still be around for it.

Longevity and bloom to you all!

Plagiarism, Imitation, Theft and Copyright

2010-10-19T16:30:00.003+02:00

This past Saturday, I attended an interesting symposium on plagiarism hosted by ABF Göteborg, in the of wake of which I have been thinking a lot on this matter. Hence, I have decided to put down a few of those thoughts here.

Earlier this spring, I discussed the cult of originality and its role in art (whatever the art form). The ideas expressed in that post are components that are crucial to our current understanding of plagiarism, but they are certainly not the only ones. The concept of plagiarism requires a sense of originality, true, but it also requires the concept of copyright; and this is a legal concept. As such, while artistic ideas of originality must surely have been part of the context which could give birth to copyright, it would never have come to pass unless a lucrative market had not also arisen. The market is interested in keeping intellectual property intact because it generates revenue. Do not misunderstand me, this is not necessarily, in and of itself, an altogether bad thing (artists too need to earn their living); nor in fact is it in the end the only thing protected by copyright. Copyright secures the right of an artist to be given his/her due for work done (and while copyright mostly define this in financial terms, there are nevertheless other levels added as if by default).

Now, plagiarism can be many things; maybe not all of them bad. I doubt that many would argue with me about the wrongness of say, my taking a poem by Lord Byron and publishing it as my own (i.e. without referencing Byron and consequently making explicit or implicit claims of having "done the work" as it were). But what if I composed a new poem out of quotes from a longer poem by Byron, or perhaps several different ones? Copyright in literature implies that words can be the intellectual property of an individual, yet words are parts of language and have as such always been a mass of reiterations. The sentence "I love you" cannot be ascribed to a single individual, and while other sentences may (quite obviously) be sourced to specific people, there is nevertheless a possibility that these sentences too have been stolen from sources now lost to us (perhaps not even textual sources in the first place). There is even a possibility that the same words have been banded together in that very manner by somebody else without there even existing a connection between the two parties making this specific utterance (granted that this becomes less and less likely the longer a verbatim concordance runs).

Similarly, plot structure, character and many other narrative components have always been in circulation, and before copyright (and perhaps before a demand for originality), the art of imitation was often ranked highly, albeit, perhaps performed differently in different eras. There is, for instance, an interesting question as to how much of Shakespeare's work could have been written with our current copyright laws in effect.

As such, plagiarism per se needs not be an unproductive or inartistic approach. In fact, I would argue that it both can be and have been used very productively throughout history and still to this day. Returning briefly to my Byron example above, making a condensed new poem out of an old one or a collage poem out of several old ones would entail an artistic process. While such poems would certainly be made from stolen (or at the very least borrowed) goods, they would nevertheless constitute something new, if for nothing else than the fact that the combination of sentences on a higher text level also affects the content and meaning of those sentences on lower text levels. In short, any given passage does not necessarily mean the same thing in all contexts.

Still, on a moral note, there is something appealing in paying one's dues (if not financially, then at least ethically). Artists who work with these types of collages or borrowing often do not feel the need to hide it. In fact, the reverberation achieved by such allusions might be part of the effect these artists strive for. One way of paying one's dues in such cases might be an appended list of works used. Under current copyright laws, such a list may even be more or less prompted by law and require explicit permission from the copyright holder (often, in turn, requiring a fee for that permission; depending on the circumstances). The obvious counter-effect to this is that some artists may opt not to pay their dues explicitly in the hopes of circumventing the copyright machinery altogether.

It is also worth noting that a work may lose some of its impact if its potential sources are revealed too clearly and upfront; that is, that artistic or narrative effect may be sacrificed on the altar of copyright and intellectual property. Don't get me wrong here. I am not advocating that we do away with the concepts of copyright and intellectual property. As someone who writes, I think these are important advances in how we view such work, both in financial and ethical terms; but also I think it is important that we note that these rules are not always artistically or narratively productive; that there is something inherently counter-productive within those selfsame parameters.

At the end of the day (and returning to the ethical dimensions), there needs to be a middle-ground of sorts, where artists can borrow (and perhaps steal) to create something out of something else (as it were), but without stealing the claim of originality. Outside of legal and financial issues, this may well be the critical point to make. It may not be the borrowing or stealing itself that constitutes the ethical transgression, but rather the suggestion that such borrowing or stealing constitutes some sort of ex nihilo creation; in essence making the artist into an author-ity by deviously reciting someone else's, while simultaneously erasing that other in the process.

Nine Seminars, Five Mini Seminars, Ten Signed Books and Four Days: The Göteborg Book Fair 2010, Pt 2

2010-10-11T12:00:00.021+02:00

So, time for part two of my report from this year's Book Fair.

Saturday opened with my third and final Africa-themed seminar: "Maktens språk och språkets makt" (Eng. trans. The Language of Power and the Power of Language) featuring a discussion between Kenyan author Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o and Professor Raoul J. Granqvist of Umeå University. The conversation focused on the importance of not depriving humans of their native languages through colonial or neo-colonial school systems. Ngũgĩ also spoke both of oriture (i.e. orality's equivalent of literacy's literature), stressing the connectivity between 0ral and textual language, and what he called cyborality/cyboriture. The latter of which, to my understanding, refers to the oral language impulses that the internet currently feeds directly back into written language; in essence generating texts that end up functioning much more like spoken language than written, in that it often tends towards a greater immediacy.

They also discussed the vicious circle of African publishing, that is, that there are few authors writing in African languages (Chinua Achebe's books for instance are not available in his native tongue, Igbo), which in turn leads to there being few publishers who publish books in African languages; which in turn... I guess, you get the picture. In this context, the importance of translation – of transferring important texts between smaller languages so as to not be overly dependent on bigger languages (i.e. the languages of the colonisers) – is of the essence.

The rest of the Saturday (four mini seminars and one more regular seminar) was coloured by the fantastic. This started with the mini seminar "Kick-ass chick-litt-fantasy" (I somehow think translation is somewhat superfluous here), in which Karin Waller ("Cap'n" of Science Fiction Bokhandeln's store in Malmö) and Nene Ormes (author and "crew") introduced the aforementioned fantasy subgenre which comes out of a combination of elements from chic lit (e.g. Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones's Diary), urban fantasy (e.g. Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere and Jim Butcher's Dresden Case Files series) and paranormal romance (e.g. Stephanie Meyer's Twilight Saga). This heroine based genre includes romance but never allows this to be its sole plot purpose or drive. Rather than stumbling over the mouthful of joint nomenclatures, Waller and Ormes offered the hopefully more catchy and snappy "fantzy". We will have to wait and see if the name catches on, but if you are a fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the seminar suggested that this might be your kind of genre (with titles such as Jaqueline Carey's Santa Olivia and Gail Carriger's Parasol Protectorate series).

This seminar was followed by two short solo flights by Johan Theorin and John Ajvide Lindqvist respectively: "Mord på Öland" (Eng. trans. Murder on Öland) and "Med absolut gehör för skräck" (Eng. trans. With Perfect Pitch for Horror). Both authors were a lot of fun to listen to. I had attended seminars with Ajvide Lindqvist before, but Theorin was new to me, and he really made me interested in reading his books about Öland.

After this brief interlude, it was time to see more of Ormes, this time in a mini seminar entitled "Fantasy på svenska" (Eng. trans. Fantasy in Swedish). Here Ormes was interviewed by her publisher Anna Henriksson from Styxx Fantasy. The full seminar is available on YouTube (albeit in Swedish) and is highly recommended viewing.

Finally, Saturday's seminars ended with "Det magiska norden" (Eng. trans. The Magical North), in which four Nordic authors discussed elements of the fantastic in their fiction together with moderator Janina Orlov. The authors in question were Lene Kaaberbøl (Denmark), Jo Nesbø (Norway), Andri Snær Magnason (Iceland) and John Ajvide Lindqvist (Sweden). Finland should have been represented by Maria Turtschaninoff, who for some reason or another was not able to attend the Fair (although, I did pick up her book Underfors about a secret fantastic city underneath Helsinki). The discussion was interesting even though some of the question were a bit hit and miss. That being said, the questions that really hit home went down very well indeed, and really made it a worthwhile seminar to have attended.

The evening ended with a lovely dinner with some friends from Bookcrossing, all gathering in these glorified days of bookishness.

On Sunday, I only visited two seminars: the added seminar with Jan Lööf and "Livet, universum och allting" (Eng. trans. Life, the Universe and Everything). After having had the pleasure of listening to Jan Lööf in discussion with his sometimes-partner-in-crime Carl Johan deGeer last year, I jumped at the occasion for something of a repeat performance. Granted that his discussion with Kartago's Rolf Classon did not quite match that of the preceding year, but it was nevertheless an amusing and insightful seminar, and I have certainly no regrets for having spent my time on it.

The second one featured a panel debate between science fiction writer Peter F. Hamilton, publisher, journalist and writer Johan Ehrenberg, astroparticle physicist and blogger Anna Davour, and Glenn Petersen from Science Fiction Bokhandeln's Göteborg store. The panel was moderated by Math Claesson from Science Fiction Bokhandeln's Stockholm store. The discussion touched on questions of technology (and its theoretical limits), human norms and what it is that constantly drives us to wonder what is out there among the stars. All in all, a very good seminar with a lot of highlights, and earlier in the morning, I had also had the chance to buy P andora's Star and Judas Unchained (the first two novels in Hamilton's Commonwealth Saga) and get them signed by the author.

The afternoon was spent mingling about a bit on the floor, meeting up with friends (both old and new) and also getting my copy of Karin Tidbeck's debut collection of short fiction, Vem är Arvid Pekon? (Eng. trans. Who Is Arvid Pekon?), signed. This book is not only very good and an extremely charming read, I would also dare to say that it is a book that is necessary on the Swedish literary scene. Writing in a tradition of short fiction that sports such names as Franz Kafka, Jorge Luis Borges, Ray Bradbury, Philip José Farmer and Harlan Ellison, Tidbeck tells us stories which are unabashedly fantastic in nature, yet which adhere to no strict mainstream conventions of fantasy or science fiction (in particular as such definitions are understood on the Swedish literary market). I strongly doubt that this beautiful little book will match Nene Ormes' urban fantasy debut in terms of sales and audience (sadly), but it is a truism that short story collections sell worse as if by an unfortunate default setting, and the very fact which makes Tidbeck's contribution so necessary (even more so, perhaps, than Ormes' book, which I rate very highly) will most likely be part of the obstacles it (and she) will have to overcome. The fact that the book is out there, however, speaks well for the future of the fantastic in Swedish literature.

So, nine seminars, five mini seminars, ten signed books (and a few more bought) and four days of mingling, browsing, and having an awful lot of fun. I would not trade that away for the world.

Nine Seminars, Five Mini Seminars, Ten Signed Books and Four Days: The Göteborg Book Fair 2010, Pt 1

2010-10-04T12:00:00.026+02:00

"... and a bad cold, one could add," was how I opened my first of two posts on last year's proceedings; and here we go again. In that respect, the Göteborg Book Fair delivers like a clockwork.

This year's Fair was held between September 23–26, and the theme this year was Africa. As stated already last year, this is an event of both national and international significance (obviously, given this year's main theme), and it is not aimed exclusively at the publishing world, libraries, education and the like, but is actually open to the general public (with all that that entails, for better or worse). Unlike last year, my schedule started out much less compact, perhaps because of having had less time to pour over the program than I have had the last few years, but also, I think, because of a weaker program. Do not get me wrong. I have enjoyed some mighty fine seminars this year, but there were way too many I decided to skip on. Now, one always has to skip some (need for food breaks and whatnot), but it was much more prominent than previous years. Still, quality over quantity is the ticket, right?

On Thursday, I went to two full seminars and one mini seminar. The first one out was "Sanningen om Röda armén" (Eng. trans. The Truth about the Red Army), in which historian Catherine Merridale spoke with my all time favourite moderator Peter Whitebrook (back after last year's absence for this one seminar) about her book Ivan's War: Inside The Red Army, 1939–45. It was an interesting and rewarding discussion about her interviews with old Russian war veterans and archival research, which certainly left me interested in Merridale's book.

After some time on the floor (Thursday being the best day for milling around down there), and a few accidental meetings (and subsequent socialising), I had the immense pleasure of being present at a brimful seminar with Sofi Oksanen: "Diktaturens formationer" (Eng. trans. The Formations of Dictatorship). The following day's paper stated that the venue, which swallowed 500 people, had not been big enough, and that many people had been unable to attend the seminar because of this. While I have not yet read her work (although I have heard many fine things about it), after hearing her talk about (in particular) her novel Purge, I have to say that this Finnish author of Estonian descent has definitely caught my full interest. The layers of narrative this novel appears to have intrigues me immensely and I will definitely be reading it in the not-too-distant future.

The concluding mini seminar of the day (after some more milling about on the floor and followed by some exhibit stand mingling as the day wound down), was "Verklighetsflykt eller verklighetsspegel" (Eng. trans. Escapism or a Mirror to Reality). In this seminar, children's books author Jo Salmson (whose first book about Tam, I bought at last year's Fair and really enjoyed) talked with Maths Claesson from Science Fiction Bokhandeln about gender and evil in fantasy literature, and whether the way these concepts can be and often are dealt with justifies the genre often being written off as mere escapism. An interesting point that was raised by Salmson was that some of the more social realist children's books around has an audience for which the themes (while somewhat gruesome) may nevertheless constitute a titillating exoticism, and that maybe we need to think twice about what we actually label escapism.

After the seminar, I had wished to buy the second book in her series Drakriddare (Eng. trans. Dragon Knights) about the young boy Tam, and get it signed. Alas, fate conspired against me as only the sixth and last book in the series had been brought along to be sold outside the seminar room. However, things worked out rather well on that account any way, as I opted to pick up books two through six in the publisher's exhibit stand the following day and a few moments later more or less stumbling over a signing session she had at Science Fiction Bokhandeln's exhibit stand, leaving me a happy customer with five signed books after a quick chat about the previous day's seminar.

Friday turned out to be my "theme day", as two out the three seminars I attended that day belonged to the Fair's African theme. The day opened up with an interesting seminar featuring Zimbabwean author Petina Gappah. With the publication of her debut collection of short fiction, An Elegy for Easterly, she has risen to the ranks of notoriety, yet she proved to be a humble and humorous woman. On discussing the issue of ethnicity and identity, she candidly said that she does not first and foremost define herself as a black African woman when she sees herself in the mirror; nor does she believe anyone else has that type of self-definition as their most basic one. One may of course argue that identity always becomes a matter of power (i.e. the age-old game of "you"); we may claim that we are anything, but unless we get someone to play along with us, our own definitions becomes somewhat moot. Gappah, however, responded to the moderator Anna Koblanck's query if it would be appropriate to view her as an African writer by the witty one-liner, "You can see me however you like — as long as you buy my book." Yet, wittiness aside, Gappah pointed to her writing as a serious business, chasing a sense of truth, refusing to subscribe to a positive view of Zimbabwe or Africa; the truth, as she noted, always being a bit more complex than simple positivity.

The second seminar of the day, "Kanske finns det en Magnoliagenre" (Eng. trans. Maybe There Is a Magnolia Genre) featured a discussion between moderator Immi Lundin (literary critic and scholar) and authors Kristina Hård and Gunnhild Øyehaug. Both authors have published books that could arguably belong to a genre which could be called the Magnolia genre, after writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson's film Magnolia; that is, multiple stories about multiple "protagonists" making up the whole of the text (in some way, generating a sense of objectivity while nevertheless maintaining subjectivity). Hård's novel in this particular genre is Himalayabreven (Eng. trans. The Himalayan Letters), which is her second novel, and Øyehaug's is Vente, blinke (Eng. trans. Wait, Blink), her fourth book albeit her first novel (her previous outings having been poetry, short fiction and essays). Both authors caught my interest during the seminar and I consequently bought a copy of Øyehaug's book (which I got signed); Hård's two books already sitting on the shelves of my better half at home. (Incidentally, in the wake of the Book Fair, I have started reading Hård's first novel Alba, a fine science fiction novel, which I am sure I will have reason to talk about more later on.)

Friday closed (after a lot of scurrying about on the floor buying a bundle of books and comics, including a copy of Anders Fager's Svenska kulter (Eng. trans. Swedish Cults), which is supposedly Lovecraftian ideas subtly transposed into a Swedish setting – who could refuse such a thing, right? I also managed to get this book signed by the author, so there is that too), with the seminar "Out of Africa". This seminar was a panel debate between Ethopian-born author Maaza Mengiste, Nigerian author Chris Abani, Swedish-Portuguese author Miguel Gullander (who writes in Portuguese and has been working out of Cap Verde and Moçambique, and currently works out of Angola), Kenyan-American poet, performer and intellectual Shaijla Patel, Nigerian author Sefi Atta (first recipient of the Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature) and Sierra Leonean author Brian James; moderated by author and English professor Stefan Helgesson. While I ended up only attending three of the theme related seminars on the whole, the quality of the ones I did attend were very high and really raised my level of interest in the authors in question (I will definitely be picking something up by at least Abani, Patel, James, and most likely Atta as well). This particular seminar offered not only quality, but also quantity; both in terms of time (clocking in at a full hour as opposed to the regular 45 minutes) and the number of authors present. All in all, an absolutely perfect way to end the day.

Well, I think we would better stop here for now. I will tell you all about my Saturday and Sunday at the Book Fair in my next post.

Books, Libraries and Taylor Mali

2010-09-27T12:00:00.007+02:00

So, the 2010 edition of the Gothenburg Book Fair is over and done with. Next week, I will talk about that for a bit, but time and a post-Fair fatigue prevent me from getting right down to business this week. Instead, I thought I would fittingly (given that the Swedish name of the Fair is actually Bok- och bilbioteksmässan, i.e. The Book and Library Fair/Exhibit/Convention) leave you with some enjoyable words by master word-smith Taylor Mali (whom I have talked about on two other occasions ).

I give you: "I'll Fight You for the Library."

A Brief History of Fantasy in Sweden and the Future of Swedish Fantasy

2010-09-20T12:00:00.034+02:00

Fantasy, science fiction and horror have an interesting history in Sweden. They have clearly interested reading audiences throughout the years, and certain subgenres (mostly of the mainstream variety) of the genres have found their way over here in translation. But for the most part, there has been little to no home-grown writers within these fields making their mark within both the genres and the Swedish language (which is somewhat odd considering the huge mark left by Astrid Lindgren, not to mention a great tradition of folk tales and the like). Also, due to a certain amount of what could probably be described as understandable cowardice on the part of publishers, the genres seem to have been present mostly in their more generic or typical representations; we have had the Eddings, the Jordans, etc, yet little of (for instance) giant Michael Moorcock (despite some brave paperbacks from the role-playing game company Äventyrsspel back in the day). These two factors may, of course, be somewhat related.

Now, there have been those who have made it their business to improve conditions. The aforementioned Äventyrsspel and other role-playing game companies have made attempts at this, but writers like Andreas Roman and Niklas Krog (who should be mentioned in this context) have seemingly always existed in a paperback ghetto, away from regular publishing (and consequently, perhaps, have not had such a strong impact). Even the coming of Järnringen (who while still doubling within the field of role-playing games at least made an effort to publish hard cover books) in 2002 seemed to have little impact on the literary scene in Sweden.

Needless to say, expectations were high late in 2004 when it was announced that some of the people behind the successful book store Science Fiction Bokhandeln (which at the time had one store in Stockholm and one in Göteborg, and have since opened a third store in Malmö, thus covering Sweden's three largest cities) were starting a publishing house in the following year. The result was Förlaget Onsdag, which did publish a bunch of titles (none of which I have read admittedly, although an anthology sits on my shelves) before seemingly just fading away. Many (if not all) of these books showed a very poor understanding of the book as an artefact, sporting less than stellar covers and being littered with poor page layouts, etc, which really had me put down more than one of their books extremely fast (if I even picked it up in the first place).

Around the same time, however, the horror genre took a great leap forward as John Ajvide Lindqvist published his debut novel Låt den rätte komma in (Eng. Let the Right One In), which showed once and for all that it was A) possible to write horror in Swedish, and B) do it extremely well. While admittedly horror has always been the somewhat privileged of the three genres referred to here, I cannot help to think that that gigantic leap did open some eyes as to the possibilities of what else could be achieved in the realms of the fantastic.

The publisher Ersatz, with its focus on German, Eastern European and Russian literature (and a great sense of a book's value as an artefact), opened more doors in 2006 when they began publishing Russian author Nick Perumov's epic fantasy tale The Keeper of the Swords – a series of originally eight books in Russian, planned to be released as twelve books in Swedish (of which seven books have been published thus far). While I have not read Perumov (who incidentally is highly under-represented in English – I could only find Godsdoom: The Book of Hagen in English at Amazon (UK)), I have heard very good things about his epic saga, and also had the pleasure of listening to the man himself at last year's Göteborg Book Fair. Ersatz also decided to publish Dmitry Glukhovsky's (alt. spelling: Dmitrij Gluchovskij) Metro 2033 (also available in English) in 2009, and has as of this year started a fantasy imprint, Coltso, to which they have moved their publishing of both Glukhovsky and Perumov (also including the upcoming publication of the latter's somewhat controversial trilogy Ring of Darkness, which is a free and unauthorised follow up to Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings), as well as having added Russian authors Max Frei (a pseudonym for Svetlana Yuryevna Martynchik) and Sergei Lukyanenko (alt. spelling Sergej Lukjanenko), as well as Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski to their roster. Needless to say, this enriches the Swedish fantasy scene (in particular by breaking the seeming stranglehold of Anglo-American influence on the genre in the market place), but it is also obvious that Coltso follows the basic parameters of its mother company and (as such) does not seem a likely candidate to bring forth any home-grown Swedish fantasy, science fiction or horror (the publication of Peter Bergting's The Portent notwithstanding).

Still, Ersatz was not the only Swedish publisher to start a fantasy imprint this year. Kabusa Böcker (another publisher with a great sense of a book's value as an artefact) had the same idea and thus gave birth to Styxx Fantasy, which started out with two titles in May: Danish author Lise Bidstrup's Spiralportens Vogter (Sw. title Spiralportens väktare; Eng. trans. Watcher of the Spiral Gate) and, perhaps most importantly, Swedish author Nene Ormes debut novel Udda verklighet (Eng. trans. Odd Reality, or perhaps, Udda's Reality, depending on how one decides to interpret the title). Ormes' book (which I have reviewed in Swedish) belongs to the genre of urban fantasy, set in Malmö and involves the entrance of the main character, the young woman Udda, into a fantastic reality which is somehow both in our own reality and just beside it (a world full of gifted people – shape-shifters and others). It is a strong book on oh so many levels; not the least of which is the fact that is a debut (more or less, at the very least) of an entire subgenre on the Swedish literary scene. And as such, it has also been a smash hit, staying in the number one spot on Science Fiction Bokhandeln's best-selling list for three months in a row (and quite possibly still counting). If this is the future of true Swedish fantasy, I foresee a very bright future indeed. And I truly hope this fine piece of work gets translated into English as well.

As for Styxx Fantasy, their next outing will be a long overdue Swedish translation of Richard Matheson's classic vampire novel I Am Legend (to be released in October this year with the Swedish title Legend). It might be worth noting that an older translation of this novel was published back in 1975, but that it was reputedly far from a satisfactory translation... to put it mildly.

For anyone interested, it is also worth noting that Kabusa Böcker and its imprint Styxx Fantasy will be present at the Göteborg Book Fair 23–26 September at exhibition stand B06:39 (early copies of Legend will be available to a special Book Fair price, according to their websites). Ormes will be there to sign her book on Saturday 14:00–14:30 and Sunday 12:00–12:30 (with additional opportunities at Science Fiction Bokhandeln's exhibition stand, A02:42, Saturday 15:00–15:30).

For those Book Fair visitors who happen to have a seminar card, I would also like to mention that Ormes will be participating in two mini seminars on the Saturday. The first one, "Kick-ass chick-litt fantasy" (I don't think a translation is necessary), between 11:00–11:20, is organised by Science Fiction Bokhandeln, and here she and Karin Waller (manager of the Malmö store) will be talking about kick-ass chic lit fantasy (as if there was any doubt about that). The second one, between 13:00–13:20, is organised by Styxx Fantasy and will feature a discussion between Ormes and her publisher, Anna Henriksson, on the topic of writing fantasy in Swedish. Both of these seminars will take place in room J2 at the Book Fair.

Maybe I will bump into some of you there. Who knows, eh?

On Adaptation

2010-09-13T12:00:00.020+02:00

In March, I wrote about what constitutes a medium. At the time, I fully intended to follow up (quite shortly) with a post on adaptation, but (as so often happens) other topics of interest popped up, and the post was delayed and postponed. Until now, that is.

Later this week, I will be speaking on the topic of adaptation at the City Library here in Göteborg as an introduction to a screening of the animated film How To Train Your Dragon aimed at school teachers. As the film (as oh so many others, including the three others that are screened this autumn) is an adaptation (of Cressida Cowell's book How to Train Your Dragon), this subject will be the topic of my introduction. And needless to say, perhaps, I figured I would put some words down on the subject in here as well, while I have it fresh in my mind anyway.

In my March post, I differentiated between material and non-material mediation, and counted media like music, literature, comics and film as non-material in that they function more like languages (with a particular sort of grammar, which definitely serves to create medium specific boundaries of possibilities for these categories) while nevertheless depending on other, material media to express themselves. In short, the argument was, and is, that it is often possible to mediate non-material media through more than one material medium (e.g. the medium of film can be expressed or accessed via celluloid film, video tape, digital video, etc; the medium of music can be expressed or accessed via vinyl discs, cassette tapes, CDs, etc). This is, of course, not to suggest that the move from one material medium to another cannot affect the content at any given time, or even that it cannot affect a non-material medium itself. Clearly developments of new material media have had huge impacts on the medium of film, but these impacts and effects differ from whatever happens when content moves between non-material media.

For the sake of clarity, I suggested that we apply the term re-mediation (which I am sure we will talk more about at some point in the future) to the transfer of content or material between material media, and that we use the term adaptation to address the transfer or translation between non-material media.

In a much earlier post from last year (while discussing the fact that comics are a medium and not a genre), I briefly brought up adaptation theorist Brian McFarlane, and it would seem appropriate to return to him here, albeit a bit more in-depth than last time. McFarlane makes a useful distinction between what he calls transfer and adaptation proper. Transfer refers to all elements in a narrative that are medium non-specific. In simple narratological terms (something which we will definitely be returning to in the future), this would be elements of story. Here we could place things like character, plot, setting, other rather basic information; in other words, the raw components of any narrative. For instance, there is nothing about the character of a blue-eyed man in shorts, who is always angry, that cannot be captured equally well in film, comics or literature (which is of course not to say that such perfect transfer always happens – and we will return to that shortly). However, as soon as these elements get told and consequently embedded in any given narrative, there will arise new elements that are medium specific. These more often than not have to with how a story is told; not just the structural organisation of it but, for instance, the difference between how a film can show the audience an entire landscape in a single shot while a novel requires extended narration with specific focus given to details at any given time (or, vice versa: how a novel through verbal narration can bring story time to a complete halt and discuss a single detail in the tapestry in-depth while a film will more or less have to resort to freeze frames and metafictional devices to emulate the same, or perhaps more aptly a similar, effect).

The narrative elements that are medium specific cannot be transferred in McFarlane's terminology; they require to be somehow translated from one language to another. This act of translation is what he means by adaptation proper.

Now, it is not unimportant in this context to note that adaptation theory and theorists have moved away from questions of fidelity (questions that admittedly are still ever of interest, e.g., whenever someone watches the film version of a beloved book). The argument here is that any film (or any type of adaptation, really) has more than one intertext. That is, like any other text, an adaptation is tied to a number of cultural texts and stories, with which it interacts on a variety of levels. This is an interesting and useful argument (no doubt about it), especially since it allows us to look more deeply into processes of multiple adaptations of the same text (i.e. how such an adaptation often ends up not only referencing the source text but also commenting the preceding sequence of adaptations) or how an adaptation often ends up referencing its own contextual (historical and cultural) time frame while relating to the source text. In short, I find that this idea definitely has its merits.

But— (there is always a but is there not?) the argument also has a weak spot, in my humble opinion. The fact is that while an adaptation has several intertexts (just as any other text), it is equally true that one of these intertexts has been put in the spotlight and given an added focus. It is a truism that there is no necessary equality between intertexts in an text, but in an adaptation there is a given notion that the source text has a privileged position. If it did not, if the source text was in fact merely one of many intertexts, why would we single it out and call the adaptation an adaptation in the first place?

This is where McFarlane's distinction becomes of the essence. After all, it is an undeniable fact that there are (more often than not) changes and differences between a source text and an adaptation. While questions of fidelity in themselves are not necessarily of (at the very least) academic interest, I would argue that the reasons for why things change are of interest both for academics and the general public. Using McFarlane's distinction we can consider which of the differences between any given source text and its adaptation(s) have been susceptible to transfer and which have required adaptation proper. With this knowledge in hand, we can then consider matters of translation inherent in adaptation proper – have these acts of translation been successful, artistic, inventive, clumsy, brilliant, missed the mark, hit the spot, etc.? At the same time, we can note differences in material that could have been transferred (because let us face it, far from all the differences in adaptations stem from adaptation proper) and consider what has caused these changes.

For instance, film is a notoriously expensive artistic medium (most likely the most expensive one we have around – thus far at least). Therefore financial factors will at least affect any adaptation into film. Then we have the question of cultural context. If a source text is produced in one culture and adapted into another, this too will mark the adaptation and quite likely be responsible for at least some of the differences. The passage of time (as in the adaptation of a historical source text) will also be a possible, and quite likely, factor to consider. Then we have issues of format (which includes length) and intended audience. The list goes on, of course, but I would like to add artistic ego as a last but not least category.

Needless to say, artistic endeavours do entail a fair amount of artistic ego, but in adaptations this is a factor which is a very double-edged sword. It can be the difference between an adapter wanting to use his or her creative energies to transfer as much as can possibly be transferred from the source text and properly adapt in as faithful a manner possible that which cannot be transferred and an adapter wanting to "fix" things in the source text, to be more artistic than the original artist or put his or her fingerprints all over the place. Do not get me wrong, there are great adapters out there, many of whom have made their marks on the finished product while remaining very true to their source text; but mostly I think the ones who manage that are those who aim to do a good job. Few if any people (in whatever medium) have ever made a mark by aiming to make a mark. But in all honesty, this point seems to be heading into a completely different area, which we may well return to on a different occasion.

To wrap things up today, I would just like to say that there are many valid reasons for changes in an adaptation to occur. Some changes are necessitated by the shift between media; as McFarlane points out, some medium specific elements require to be translated. Other changes come about from other types of necessities (e.g. getting an 800 pages novel into a 2–3 hours film will, most likely, require subplots being cut, some supporting or minor characters being cut or in some cases amalgamated, etc., in order to get a watchable film), and some will come out of no necessity at all. Surely it is not unreasonable to discuss and delineate such categories of change? If nothing else than to determine which factors alters (if only ever so subtly) the contents of any given story in an adaptation.

A Quick Recommendation: Common Errors in English Usage

2010-09-06T12:00:00.013+02:00

It is a busy, busy time at the moment, what with the autumn term starting up and all; so I will keep it very brief this time. I will however use this short space to post a fitting recommendation: the site Common Errors in English Usage, which I warmly recommend to anyone interested in furthering their knowledge of English usage, and what errors to avoid.

The man behind the site, Emeritus Professor of English Paul Brians (Washington State University), has also produced a book version (with an updated second edition from 2009), which can be found and bought both on Amazon.com and Amazon (UK).

That will have to be it for this week. Next week, if all goes according to plan, our topic of interest will be adaptation. So stay tuned, gentle readers!

To Swim or Not to Swim: Some Thoughts on Reading and Pierre Bayard

2010-08-30T12:00:00.011+02:00

Swimming is first and foremost non-swimming. Even in the case of the most passionate lifelong swimmers, the act of finding and diving into a body of water masks the countergesture that occurs at the same time: the involuntary act of not finding and not diving into all the other bodies of water in the universe.

The paragraph above is a reworking of the following snippet from Pierre Bayard's book How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read. Bayard's original text reads as follows:

Reading is first and foremost non-reading. Even in the case of the most passionate lifelong readers, the act of picking up and opening a book masks the countergesture that occurs at the same time: the involuntary act of not picking up and not opening all the other books in the universe.

So why did I change Bayard's focus on reading to a focus on swimming? Well, quite simply to prove the absurdity of Bayard's claim. Reading is, after all, above anything else the process of reading, that is, the imbibing of a text; in fact any text. If you are doing this, continuously (or at least somewhat continuously), then you are reading despite the fact that you are not reading everything. In fact, the notion that reading intrinsically should mean "reading everything" is ludicrous at best.

Now, before going any further, I want to state outright that I have not read Bayard's book. And that I nevertheless (perhaps against my own better judgement) have decided to discuss it anyway. I am a firm believer in the notion that in order to truly discuss a work in-depth (especially for reviewing purposes) one needs to read the whole (or view the whole; or hear the whole; since this does not only apply to books). Because without the whole, we cannot fully know the text, cannot claim that sort of intimacy with it. So why have I decided to speak about Bayard anyway then, you ask? Well, if nothing else, I seem to have his blessing to do so, since his (seemingly) quasi-intellectual writings suggest that I in fact do not have to read his book to talk about it.

And on some level, I do agree. But more on that later.

I have not read Bayard, but I did hear about his book a while back. I noted its existence and have to say that it did not make much of an impression on me. At least not an impression that had me quickly adding it to my ever-growing wish lists at Amazon (brimming with stuff to keep in mind for getting somewhere down the line; sooner or later, perhaps never, but still...). So, heard of, but almost forgotten (at least placed in the very back of my mind), and now today brought to the fore after having encountered the quote I remodelled into my opening via an acquaintance and fellow literary scholar.

In fact, when I first read the quote, I did not know its source, but a quick google search led me to a review of it by Tara over at Revish.

Tara waxes on about Bayard's book. She happily states that "[t]he terms 'read' and 'unread' are meaningless; one should speak of books in terms of Heard of, Skimmed, Forgotten, or Unknown." I take it that these "new" terms are Bayard's and I instinctively draw back from them. Do not get me wrong. There are naturally books that we have heard of even though we have not read them (and this was true way before Bayard thought of it, surely). We may even talk about such books in terms of their historical significance, their cultural context and their journey through the ages (depending on how far they have travelled thus far). Literary scholarship does in fact do this activity and have done so for a long time. This is not a critique against literary scholarship, because while the proper (if you will forgive my use of that word) discussion of a text's content does require that one, you know, reads said content (and preferably carefully), such a reading will never reveal any of the aforementioned categories (historical significance, cultural context and the journey of any work through the ages); the reason quite naturally being that none of these categories are intrinsic to the text itself, albeit tied, and thereby important, to it. We can thus discuss the importance of Shakespeare without reading Shakespeare, but we cannot fruitfully discuss the contents of Shakespeare's texts without reading them. This does not imply that it would be a downside to having read some of the texts for the former activity, just that it need not be a necessity (nor by default a help either, though I am quite certain it could not hurt).

So, Skimmed, Forgotten and Unknown... these categories also exist (and also pre-date Bayard), but I nevertheless still pull back. There seem to be categories missing. Is Bayard (at least in Tara's reading) suggesting that there is nothing between Skimming and Forgotten? There seems to be a vast gap filled with various degrees of in-depth readings, re-readings, more or less remembered texts – all of which Bayard and Tara seem to have perhaps Skimmed through and then Forgotten.

In her review, Tara writes:

Much as a mathematician can measure a splash, and without seeing the splash occur, can determine the size, weight and trajectory of the object that created it; one can know a book without reading it by observing the affect it has on society, listening (or reading) trusted opinions and probing its connection to other works you are familiar with. Talking about books is unrelated to reading books, which is unrelated to remembering the books that we have read. And here is the realization that alleviated years of unknown anxiety, no one has a perfect recollection of a book that they have read. You begin to forget even before you finish the page. And as each person is an organic entity and continues to change, even if you took meticulous notes, your interaction with a book today would be drastically different in one year, five years and in ten years.

But this is a false observation. The idea does not even hold water on its own premises. After all, Tara moves on to claim that "[w]hat matters, then, about reading, is the book's effect on you, and it's impact on your internal library, those books that you carry with you in your heart and mind, either because you believe their importance in the cultural collective library or because of your personal connection with them." I agree in full with this latter statement; but it is incompatible with her (and presumably Bayard's) mathematician's analogy. Mathematicians can calculate "the weight and trajectory of the object which created [the splash]," but if what truly matters about reading lies in its effect on its reader, on your personal experience of the book, then how can this effect be calculated mathematically without reading it? Especially given Tara's (and again presumably Bayard's) quite adequate notion that "your interaction with a book today would be drastically different in one year, five years and in ten years." For the sake of clarity, I would amend that "would be" to a "could be" if I were to subscribe to that fully. After all, change may be more or less continuous in any person's life, but I would argue that the degrees with which it is affected varies very much on an individual basis, and this would presumably very much play into the interactive process between text and reader.

Furthermore, there seems to be an extraordinary focus on "remembering the books that we have read," and even more precisely on the inadequate manner in which this remembering is performed. Tara (presumably acting as a ventriloquist's puppet for Bayard) claims that this act is, in fact, unrelated to reading. In a line of asinine quasi-intellectual thinking, that claim still has to be in the run for the title of one of the dumbest nuggets in the lot. The fact that memory itself is notoriously unreliable; that it is far from exact or even necessarily stable throughout time; is intrinsic to the very notion of memory itself. If we accept Bayard's premise that remembering books are unrelated to reading the books, we must by default also accept that anything we remember is entirely unrelated to that which we remember. Logically speaking, the fact that our memories are flawed does not equate there not being an actual origin to them. In order to remember a book we have read, we must first have read it, and that causality suggests a relation to me.

There seems to be an underlying tendency in Bayard's book that I do think is relevant; that is, that we should read what we want to read; that we should not worry too much about cultural expectations; that it is all right sometimes to know certain works more or less referentially (i.e. that we know a little about them without knowing them intimately); that there should be no cultural stigma in not having read this work or that... and thereby in essence be free to enjoy reading.

However, there is an overtone of fudging one's reading about the whole enterprise that I do not like. From the title and onwards, there is a rather nasty suggestion that we should need to talk about books that we have not read. Such a suggestion is by no means liberating the reader from cultural expectations, but rather asks the "reader" to fudge it, to pretend to having read certain books by talking about them (presumably in order to be part of the conversation). Needless to say, perhaps, such practices are nothing new. There is an entire industry of York Notes and whatnots allowing students to "cheat within reason," to get to know a text not through the text itself but through somebody else's reading of it. Depending on what one needs out of the work, such material may well provide the information needed for a specific discursive setting. All literary discussions, as I touched upon earlier, are not necessarily rooted in the text themselves. But there is a step between that and more or less suggesting that reading a work does not require actually reading it.

And there's the rub (to borrow from the Bard), because while we should feel free to read that which we want to read, and not to read that which we do not want (though in some cases, it may admittedly be beneficial for us to do so), the premise upon which we should base that argument should, I think, be that there is no shame in saying any of the phrases, "no, I have not read that;" "I actually do not know of that book;" or "I started on that, but found it dull and stopped reading it." There is a leap from moving away from the shame and the stigma of not having read, and pretending to know more than one does.

But hey, what do I know? After all, I have not actually read Bayard.

"What Teachers Make": Taylor Mali Revisited

2010-08-23T12:00:00.006+02:00

In late June, I waxed on about my new-found appreciation for master word-smith Taylor Mali, and seeing as how schools are starting up for the autumn term (at least here in Sweden), I thought it fitting to return to master Mali for the following three minutes plus. Time very well spent in my humble opinion. I won't keep you from it any longer.

Gentle readers, "What Teachers Make" by Taylor Mali:

Freedom of Speech, Yet Again: Apropos of the Recent Verdict in Uppsala District Court, Sweden

2010-08-16T12:00:00.003+02:00

I have discussed the idea of Freedom of Speech in here before, and it would seem that it is high time to do so yet again (although for a different reason this time). On June 30 this year in Uppsala District Court, Sweden, a man was found guilty of possessing child pornography. The man in question is a Japanese translator, and the images for which he was prosecuted and sentenced were manga, that is, Japanese comics. A combination of things that well and truly brings a lot of Freedom of Speech issues to the fore, no doubt; yet interestingly enough, it took more than a while for the Swedish media to react, and even when they finally did (and there have been many interesting defences of Freedom of Speech from those quarters since), the blogosphere has been surprisingly quiet – a blogosphere which was in a furious uproar earlier this year during the Lars Vilks debacle. It is obviously much easier to shout oneself hoarse for the right to offend some people on religious basis than to enter a discussion on the subject of child pornography. At least if the discussion is not altogether a condemnation of the phenomenon, and even something in any way related to the phenomenon.

The two preceding sentences can easily be read as a critique of some people that did not want a balanced discussion in the previous case, but while it is indeed in part intended as such, it is also honestly meant, in a nigh despairing fashion. For I would be a hypocrite not to note that the sentence was pronounced on June 30 and that it is now August 16, that is, some one and a half month later.

The reason for my own procrastination is quite simple: I spent a few years in my youth in Swedish Save the Children, actively propagating the Children’s Convention and working against child pornography. I am a huge fan of author, lawyer and children’s activist Andrew Vachss, and in particular of his brilliant little book Another Chance to Get It Right: A Children's Book for Adults, which has helped shaped a lot of the ideas on the importance of children’s rights in my mind. In short, I too cannot help to question the “need” for pornographic illustration of children to be made in the first place. And nevertheless...

I am certainly not naive enough to think Freedom of Speech absolute in any practical sense. Most judicial systems, even (dare I say it) the American, where Freedom of Speech is pretty high on the agenda, have (and quite rightly so) laws against libel and threatening people. But there is certainly something to be said for a Freedom of Speech that is much freer than it is shackled.

Do not get me wrong. Child pornography is wrong; it is vile; and it constitutes a crime. But exactly what is that crime? Many a year ago now, I read an article by Vachss (translated into Swedish, albeit specifically written for that occasion), where the sound argument was made that child pornography is photographic, or filmic, evidence of the sexual abuse of a child. As such, this evidence is an extension of that abuse, in fact, constituting a continued abuse of that specific child, in some sense. Similarly, I would argue that nude pictures of children (obviously not necessitating the same levels of abuse to exist) still falls within these parameters as they exploit these children’s nudity, and granted that the children themselves in the eyes of the law can hardly be deemed fit to make a decision about “willingly” being part of such pictures, nor necessarily agree with such pictures’ existence when they are old enough to understand that better.

(It is, I feel, at this point worth noting that the Swedish law has been very carefully formulated not to criminalise A) teenage couples photographing themselves and sharing those pictures with _each other_ (as long as the age difference is not substantial or the photographs taken against either party’s will), or B) people owning nude or sexual photographs (or films, I assume) of themselves (alone) even when adults. Basically this states that the presumed injured party cannot be found guilty of such possession. Although spreading such photos would obviously fall within the rules of distributing illegal material, and it would equally obviously be illegal for other parties to view them. Still, the detailed thinking vis-a-vis these questions are well worth noting, especially when we head into the topic at hand.)

In all cases I have brought up, the issue is not only that the images or films are offensive. The point is that they document and extend sexual abuse, that watching them makes any viewer guilty of furthering that abuse. And against this, hard laws are required. But, can a drawn image truly be said to do this? Can it be included in this argument? What I have just outlined above clearly does not apply. A drawn image does not require an act of abuse to exist in the real world. Nor does it depict a specific nude (or even fictionally abused) child. We might find these images offensive. We may well argue against such things being produced. But it is almost frightening how many times I have read comments on on-line articles where the commenters are arguing against child pornography itself on the basis that it is offensive. To me, this seems like pulling the teeth out of the proper definitions of child pornography, that is, as something a hundred times worse than merely being found offensive, simply by the fact that it is both a document and form of abuse.

If drawn images do not constitute such abuse, and granting that we do not easily legislate in matters of taste (and let us be honest, matters of offense are clearly linked to matters of taste), why should drawn images of nude children, or even children in sexually explicit acts, be deemed illegal? Now, here the reason cited is that such images may well incite paedophiles to commit sexual acts, or even (if we are to believe some assumptions) cause people to become paedophiles themselves. Surely, it is better to be overly cautious in such circumstances? Surely it is, as the saying goes, better to be safe than sorry? Or is it?

Now bear with me and please remember that I am by no means arguing in favour of such images, but as Neil Gaiman has pointed out, defending Freedom of Speech, also means defending such speech with which one does not necessarily agree oneself. I would in connection with this also like to bring up Peter Jones’s point that "[w]e may even fight shy of curtailing our conception of the non-legal rights of authors; we can criticise the use that people make of their rights without implying that they have no right to do what we criticise" (in Reading Rushdie: Perspectives on the Fiction of Salman Rushdie 321), which I have already drawn upon before. Following Jones’ judicial reasoning, we must be allowed to debate the usages of Freedom of Speech, to make moral and even aesthetic judgements about any and all utterances, without impeding the Freedom of Speech itself.

My main objective to the current Swedish law on the issue of these types of drawn images (and to laws formulated along those lines in other countries), is that is an arbitrary law. If we fear that such images may incite paedophiles to commit sexual acts (or even, though I honestly find this less likely, generate more paedophiles), why do we stop at images? If it is better to be safe than sorry, why should fictional texts be any different than drawn images? Surely they too must entail the same possibilities of incitement, must they not? And if explicit images (or texts) can do so much damage, surely the seeds of our destruction must also reside in any and all texts or images that even implicitly deal with paedophiles or children in sexual situations (without openly condemning these things three times over and every time they are mentioned, lest someone only reads selected passages). Along to these lines, ought not Nabokov’s Lolita, where the narrator Humbert Humbert is trying to seduce the reader into sympathising with his own paedophiliac desires, also be deemed illegal? And before someone suddenly twists my words into being pro-censorship extraordinary: my point here is, of course, where do we stop? Where do we draw the lines in such an arbitrary quagmire?

The problem with this arbitrariness is that it allows us to feel good about ourselves, to feel vindicated for a moment or two. We have found something offensive and that which was found offensive has been punished accordingly. While I will certainly hold on to my right to vocally oppose things I find offensive, I also find this judicial arbitrariness unsettling, and cannot help but remembering that old adage, “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.” For there are many levels to this quagmire. If we are truly worried about the sexualisation of children, why do we not attack (vocally if not legally) cultural phenomena like Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera, who in their wake have children dressing in an explicitly “sexy” fashion and dancing around in manners it would only be ludicrous to argue do not evoke sexual acts (whether or not the children themselves are aware of it)? These things are situated right in the pop cultural mainstream. Yet in a time, when we are so afraid of the possibility that drawn images might incite a paedophile to commit a crime, we do not even have a large on-going mainstream debate on this problem. Because if these things are not ways of sexualising children, and if such sexualisation is not a way of allowing children to be viewed as sexual objects, then in all honesty, I have no clue what would be.

In this sense, we need to legislate less against fictions and worry more about continually debating that which we find deplorable (we do have that option). Because at the end of the day, fictions do not constitute abuse, but that which could incite such abuse certainly does not, nor will it ever, be confined within the arbitrariness of our laws.

A New Wave of Swedish Comics Creators: Bergting, Skogäng and Andersson

2010-08-09T12:00:00.008+02:00

Earlier this summer, I finally got around to reading a few Swedish comics I have had sitting on my shelf for a wee while now. The comics in question were Peter Bergting's The Portent: Duende (albeit in Swedish translation, The Portent: De dödas rike (2007) (see my review, in Swedish). It was originally released as a miniseries by Image Comics and collected in 2006), Kim W. Andersson's Love Hurts (see my review, in Swedish. It was collected in 2009, but much of it, if not all, was previously published in anthology comics, etc), and the two first instalments of Ola Skogäng's series Theos ockulta kuriositeter (Eng. Theo's Occult Curiosities), Mumiens blod (2008, Eng. The Blood of the Mummy (see my review, in Swedish)) and De förlorade sidornas bok (2010, Eng. The Book of the Lost Pages (see my review, in Swedish)).

What these three comics creators have in common is artistic capability and a very nice sense of visual storytelling. In the Swedish comics field, this is something of a rarity. Not that all Swedish comics artists are bad artists or that all Swedish comics writers (who for some reason more often than not are the same as the artists, leaving little room for collaborations between writers and artists that are not all that uncommon on the continent or in the Anglo-Saxon world), but most really good Swedish comics have tended to be within the comedic genres, e.g. satire or parody; and some of that is admittedly really, really good (e.g. Charlie Christensen's Arne Anka (Eng. Arne Duck) and Johan Wanloo's Örn Blammo (Eng. Eagle Blammo (though the inherent pun is lost in translation) and De äventyrliga karlakarlarna (Eng. The Adventurous Manly Men)). On the other hand, there has been, and perhaps still is, an overflow of black and white, autobiographical comics out there, many of which seem to embrace an aesthetic which is quite frankly ugly, and more often than not reminds me of images drawn by people who could not really draw if their lives depended on it.

Bergting, Andersson and Skogäng, to my mind, offer a new visual paradigm in Swedish comics, and also open up genre boundaries that mostly seem to have been closed here. This in spite of the fact that there has been a more or less continuous influx of translated comics both from Europe and the US for as long as I can remember, with Japan as a comparatively fresh, albeit by now well established, competitor as well. As such, it feels almost strange that it has taken this long for this to happen.

So what do these three bring to the table then? My reviews (linked above) wax on this, but as they are (unfortunately, for more than a few of readers) in Swedish, I will provide a few words in English here. Mostly because I think you should all keep an eye out for these comics creators on the international scene.

Bergting, of course, first published his The Portent: Duende in English, so that one is readily available. It is a very nicely drawn high fantasy series with a quest plot. While it could be argued that it is geared towards the US market, it nevertheless shows that Swedish comics creators are capable of creating wondrous realms of fantasy, both in terms of beautiful images and well-told tales. Bergting weaves a potent mythology that draws upon that which has gone before without being too repetitive of the old. The collected edition also includes a nice foreword by comics artist Michael William Kaluta.

Andersson, on the other hand, shows with great precision, in a day and age where (especially on the US comics market) never-ending story arcs seem to be the order of the day, that it is fully possible to tell nice and intriguing comics stories on no more than a couple of pages. Love Hurts is a great anthology concept that allows Andersson to tell short, short romantic horror stories with twists. I had not encountered his work before this collection, but was entirely won over by it. Visually, one can see clear influences from Peter Snejbjerg (of DC Vertigo's Books of Magic fame). In terms of writing, I am guessing that Andersson has been reading old DC classics like The House of Mystery and The House of Secrets (and quite possibly EC's horror comics from before that) as well as watching TV-series like Tales from the Crypt and films like Creepshow. As far as I have understood, his work has been published outside of Sweden, but I am not entirely sure in which languages or where.

Last, but certainly not least, we have Skogäng, whose combination of Hergé's la ligne claire tradition and influences from great American stylists like Mike Mignola is utterly compelling. Mignola is also a good point of reference, because one of the easiest (and most fitting) descriptions of Skogäng's series is that it is a Hellboy in Swedish (and in Sweden; Skogäng captures Stockholm beautifully in his images). Clearly, Skogäng shares Mignola's interest in and fascination for the occult, the mystical, the mythical and the fantastic, and his protagonist Theo (a man who has been trapped in the body of a brown bear since the 1920s or 1930s) does bring Hellboy to mind with his investigations into the occult. This, and the fact that Skogäng could easily, and very successfully, illustrate a Hellboy story for Mignola (of this I have no doubt whatsoever), could easily make one assume that Theos ockulta kuriositeter is simply a copycat series, but such an assumption would be flawed. It is a rather a case of commonalities, where the reader of one may very well appreciate the other. The first 200 pages volume, Mumiens blod, is also being serialised in French in a more traditional album format. The first album, Théo: Le vampire de Stockholm (Le sang de la momie #1), is available from Amazon (UK) for anyone interested (who also happens to read French, naturally).

So, for my own part, I am looking forward to see what these gentlemen will produce in the future. Not to mention what they will influence others to produce.

The Return of John Byrne's Next Men

2010-08-02T12:00:00.018+02:00

Okay, so some belated news to catch up with. Last Monday, after having posted my final segment on Adnan Mahmutović, I came across some of the best news with which a guy like me could start the week: John Byrne returns to his awesome creator-owned comic John Byrne's Next Men. Byrne has since a few years back now seemed to have found a creative home at IDW Publishing, where he has both helped bring Wayne Osborne's FX (see my review) to life and contributed to Angel: After the Fall – First Night (see my review), not to mention written and drawn Angel: Blood & Trenches (see my review), Star Trek: Assignment Earth (see my review) Star Trek: Crew, Star Trek: Romulans – Pawns of War and (forthcoming) Star Trek: Leonard McCoy – Frontier Doctor, as well as some assorted one-shots.

Byrne's association with IDW has also led to the simple fact that his previous work on JBNM is back in print and now available to a whole new audience, either in three colourful hard cover volumes – John Byrne's Next Men Premiere Collection Vol. 1, Vol. 2 and (soon to be published) Vol. 3 – or (my own preferred choice) two glorious black and white paperback editions – Compleat John Byrne's Next Men Vol. 1 (see my review) and Vol. 2 (see my review). While both options collect issues # 0–30 of the series, the b/w collections have the advantage of including the prequel 2112, originally published as a prestige format one-shot.

Now, as the series is about to start up again with issue # 31, I would heartily recommend anyone interested in either good superhero stories or good SF to check the series out. The available collections are well worth your money, to be very frank, and would allow you to catch up to the story so far. However, if you do not feel sure about it (heck, don't take my word for it, right?), you always have the option of picking up issue # 31 when it hits comic shops in December and see if you like it. And do not fret about being able to follow the story without having read the old stuff first. Byrne likes to follow the old school adage of every issue being somebody's first and he did, in fact, write the following over at the John Byrne Forum (post 23 on the linked page):

So here it is: YOU WILL NOT HAVE TO HAVE READ ANY OF THE PREVIOUS ISSUES IN ORDER TO PICK UP THE NEW ONES.

Trust me on this! And SPREAD THE WORD!

That being said, I do think a lot of you will want to pick up the collections. Not because you have to, but rather because they are that good.

Anyway, what are you waiting for? Off to your respective comic shops and reserve a copy for JBNM # 31!

P.S. If you feel like learning even more, First Comics News has an interview with Byrne up now, and it is all about the return of JBNM.

Adnan Mahmutović, the Scholar

2010-07-26T12:00:00.017+02:00

So, we have reached the fourth and concluding instalment of Adnan Mahmutović month here at Thus Spake the Mighty Wha-keem. After having dealt with a general introduction, the script writer and the author, it is now time to have a brief introductory look at Adnan Mahmutović the Scholar.

Thus far, his scholarly work includes papers presented on various conferences and symposia between 2004 and 2009, in Norway, Sweden and Cyprus, dealing with subjects ranging from Tennyson's "The Voyage of Maeldun", to film maker Darren Aronofsky (with a focus on Pi and The Fountain), and the notion of Halal history in Salman Rushdie's early fiction (the latter of which is forthcoming later this year as an article in Textual Layering: Contact, Historicity, Critique under the title "Halal History and Existential Meaning in Salman Rushdie’s Early Fiction"). He has already published the articles "The Question of the Uncanny in 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner'" in The Coleridge Bulletin (Summer, 2007) and "History and the Nervous Condition in The English Patient" in The Journal of Contemporary Literature (2009), and has another article, "The Nomadic Home in Tabish Khair’s Filming" forthcoming in an anthology on Tabish Khair due to be published next year.

On May 8, this year, Mahmutović successfully defended his dissertation Ways of Being Free: Authenticity and Community in Selected Works of Rushdie, Ondaatje and Okri (click on the title to read the abstract) and earned his doctorate in English at Stockholm University. The selected works in question are Rushdie's Midnight's Children, Ondaatje's The English Patient and Okri's The Famished Road, and his approach is one steeped in existential philosophy and postcolonial theory. As such, it is an interesting study, proposing new ways not only of looking at the subject of these novels but also at how these novels can make us look at identity, freedom and postcoloniality through notions of history and death, and authenticity (the latter of which is tied into the notions of community and identity). It reveals Mahmutović's concerns with postcolonial issues of migration and nation, and the condition of the migrant, all of which, to various degrees are concerns that stand revealed in his fiction too.

While I am not always convinced by all the elements in his readings (e.g. his claim, in passing, that Linda Hutcheon's version of postmodernism is ontological in nature rather than epistemological suggests a misreading, or at the very least a mislabelling, of Hutcheon's work), and while the citations sometimes leave a lot to be desired (e.g. there are works cited (in abbreviated form at that) that problematically do not appear on the works cited list at the end, and sometimes citations are rather unclear in general), the ideas and readings presented are both interesting and valuable. The theoretical framework of existential philosophy and postcolonial criticism (in the case of the latter, in particular the kind that ties in with existential philosophy) is nicely placed in a wider philosophical context, which is very beneficial to the work as a whole. If I have one (perhaps minor) complaint in this department, it is that Mahmutović's reliance on in particular Sartre, Camus and Heidegger do a slight injustice to his equal reliance on Frantz Fanon. Fanon's idea of a "nervous condition" (see The Wretched of the Earth) comes across as a purely philosophical concept alongside Sartre's, without accounting for Fanon's being a trained psychiatrist who discovered signs of psychological nervous conditions in his (post-)colonial patients in Algeria during the rising against the French. In that context, the lack of any references to Freud or psychoanalysis in Mahmutović's dissertation does seem to be a weak spot, especially given that its focus on the "nervous condition" and the existential angst or anguish that he works with would probably be problematised further with that additional contextualisation of Fanon. And I say that as someone not overly enthused about either Freud or psychoanalysis.

I will not dive deeper into the individual readings here. This is not the forum for it; there is simply not space to go into a deeper critical discussion. After all, I would not want to bore you, gentle reader, with a too detailed and nigh endless (perhaps even overly academic) account of this piece of academic work and literary criticism. Nor, in all honesty, do I have the time to do so. Still, if the questions of the dissertation interest you or if any or all three of these authors or novels interest you, this is a dissertation well worth reading, if nothing else for its rigorous use of existential philosophy in combination with postcolonial theory in a manner in which it has not really been applied to these work before.

And with that, it is time to close the door on this four-parter, our Adnan Mahmutović month. I hope you have enjoyed it and that you maybe feel inclined to delve deeper into things Mahmutović; whether you opt for his blog, his film work, his fiction or his academic work (or why not combinations thereof). I am certain I will have reasons to discuss his work more in the future, but for now, in the undying words of Porky Pig, "That's all, folks!"

I will see you again next week, with all new topics to muse on.

Adnan Mahmutović, the Author

2010-07-19T12:00:00.033+02:00

Welcome to this week's stop in the Adnan Mahmutović Thinner than a Hair Blog Tour here at Thus Spake the Mighty Wha-keem, which is also (as my faithful readers know) the third instalment of Mahmutović month over here. This time, the focus is upon Mahmutović the Author, which is arguably his most substantial role (his academic work notwithstanding), if nothing else because it is thus far the role in which he has been most productive.

Mahmutović has published assorted short fiction, poetry and essays in anthologies and (on-line) magazines. Most recently, he won second prize in Biscuit Publishing's short story competition with his story "First Day of Night". Still, his most substantial contribution to date are three published books: [REFUGE]E, a miscellany of short fiction, poetry and essayistic writings from 2005 (see my full review), Illegitimate, a novella published as an e-book by Cantarabooks in 2009 (see my full review), and finally, this year, Thinner than a Hair, a novel published by Cinnamon Press (see my full review).

[REFUGE]E pretty much lays the foundation for Mahmutović's authorship and oeuvre thus far. It draws upon his experiences as a Bosnian-Swede and, perhaps more importantly, a Bosnian refugee from the war in Bosnia following the breaking apart of the old Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia a decade after the death of Josip Broz Tito, its President for Life since the early 60s and, according to many, its single unifying national force. While much of the former nation, or (perhaps more accurately) many of the new (or older depending on how one views it in an historical perspective) nation states that arose in the aftermath of its passing, went through a period of wars and violence, and while it is fair to say that the Balkan region as a whole was in a state of severe turmoil, there is no denying that Bosnia was one of the areas of the former Yugoslavia where the war turned particularly ugly (consider, for instance, the Srebrenica Massacre or Genocide of July 1995, where more than 8,000 Muslim Bosniak men and boys were exterminated).

Like so many other refugee and migrant writers, Mahmutović writes from his own experience of displacement, but like the best of them, he does not succumb to simple autobiography, but produces more general insights into these conditions through well-crafted characters, whom he sometimes allows to narrate their own stories. The latter is certainly true of Almasa, the character who (almost) holds [REFUGE]E together, and who is also the narrator of some of the texts in that book; but it is even more true of Fatima Begovic.

Fatima is Mahmutović's creation par excellence thus far in his oeuvre. She is the narrator of both Illegitimate and Thinner than a Hair, two books that were initially intended as one. While the two books are certainly joined at the hip (much like Siamese twins), and as such deserves to be published together in an omnibus at some point in the future, I think both the novella and the novel (and by extension Mahmutović himself) is better off this way. Fate may have conspired against the original tome with alternating chapters between past and present (or at least a more present moment), but this works in the texts' favour, and in Fatima's. Her narrative voice gets to present two narratives, connected by the fact that they are stories from her own life, yet separated both logically and literally by being two different entities.

After having read both of them, I would strongly urge future readers (if possible) to read them in chronological order of publication (i.e. Illegitimate first and then Thinner than a Hair) as this strikes me as the most rewarding sequence to read them in (naturally after having read them in the entirely opposite manner).

Illegitimate opens up at just as 1999 turns to 2000 and follows Fatima's travails as a Bosnian refugee, prostitute and illegal immigrant in Munich, Germany, up until the fall of the Twin Towers in New York on 9/11, 2001. Thinner than a Hair, on the other hand, is narrated from within this period in Munich, 2001 (yet presumably at least ending after it, if my interpretation of certain passages is correct), but deals with Fatima's past – her birth in the summer of 1974, a few snapshots from her growing up in Bosnia (spring 1986 and autumn 1989), some abbreviated notes on her arrival and early years in Germany (winter 1994 to spring 1998), but mainly about the period between autumn 1991 and winter 1993, when she finally fled her war-torn homeland. This period, covered in nine of the novel's thirteen chapters (not counting the prologue and epilogue), is central not only in the novel's structure, but in Fatima's life and in her fractured narrative of identity.

Mahmutović has managed to draw upon his own experiences and give them a voice through a fictional character's voice and life, and it is certainly not wrong to claim that Fatima has a life. She lives and breathes on every page of these two texts, and her textual birth is a literary feat on Mahmutović's part. Fatima's fictional life captures the life experiences of the Bosnian refugees and gives them a textual identity with which to face the reader, without ever becoming stereotypical or fleshless. Her voice annihilates Mahmutović's own, and he in part allows this to happen. He gives his character absolute precedence over any false sense of textual authority on his own part, and it breathes a sense of life into his fiction which might not otherwise have been possible.

In short, Mahmutović is an author both to be read and to keep an eye on. As I have already stated and repeated in my reviews of his work, he is quite likely one of the up and coming authors of his generation.

Next week, 26 July, the Thinner than a Hair Blog Tour will move on to Tania Hershman's blog TaniaWrites. Be sure to check that out. Meanwhile, we will turn to the fourth and last instalment of Mahmutović month over here and have a look at Mahmutović the Scholar (with the focus on his dissertation on authenticity and community in the writing of Salman Rushdie, Michael Ondaatje and Ben Okri). Until then, gentle readers, take care!

Adnan Mahmutović, the Scriptwriter

2010-07-12T12:00:00.015+02:00

As stated last week, this is Adnan Mahmutović month here at Thus Spake the Mighty Wha-keem, and this week we will take a look at Mahmutović the Scriptwriter. This seems especially fitting today, since his short film Gusul (Eng. Washing, 2010) was shown yesterday at a memorial to mark that fifteen years have passed since the massacre at Srebrenica, Bosnia. Swedish news program Rapport showed a brief segment on this event (the segment starts at about the 14 minute mark, and the clip will be available till 18 July) and included interview snippets (in Swedish) with Mahmutović, who had a hand in organising the event.

Washing is written by Mahmutović (who is also credited as set and costume designer) and directed by Armin Osmancevic (who is also credited as production designer, production manager, storyboard and the telephone voice part of the imam Atif) with whom Mahmutović previously worked on his first book, the miscellany [REFUGE]E (which Osmancevic designed). The film is not outright about Srebrenica, nor an overt comment upon the subject, but Mahmutović has expressed that remembering the horrors of Srebrenica is not only about the horrors themselves, but also about the daily moments in the lives of the survivors. It is this, at least in some part, which Washing is about.

The film is centred around Emina Begovic (played by Aida Gordon) and her mother (played by Sena Mahmutović, i.e. Adnan's grandmother), Bosnian refugees in Sweden, and it opens on a longish monologue (more or less). Emina is talking to her mother, who is old and bedridden. She talks about the atrocities of the Bosnian war, of the loss of her father. While it certainly introduces a lot of these matters to the viewer, this is actually the weak part of the film. The dramaturgy lacks a beat in some sense and the acting never really takes off but rather becomes too much like a theatrical stage performance. This is because Mahmutović and Osmancevic too obviously want to inform the viewer about these things. They do not show us, but instead tell us things (by many often considered a cardinal sin in a visual narrative medium); and the visual dimension does not offer any form of shielding against this problem here.

This might come across as a harsh judgement (and perhaps it is, on some level), but importantly it is not my final judgement. After a quick pie baking scene (which to my mind lacks a certain sense of verisimilitude – it may be that my skills in baking are lacking, but merely throwing some sugar and flower on plums, and pouring some oil over it, does not strike me as a functional way of making a pie; nor does putting said dish into a cold oven to bake – but these are nagging details), Emina's mother passes away, and this is where the film takes off. If Gordon's performance in the opening "monologue" fails to impress, convince or properly pull me into the film, she certainly captures my attention during the telephone conversation with the imam Atif. Still, the core of the film is the act of the washing itself, a Muslim funeral rite. Emina tears a towel into strips and cleans her mother's dead body in a ritual manner. The imagery here is visually strong and convincing. This part of the film is wordless, but absolutely not lacking in either emotion or expression. Also, the previously introduced and repeated idea that the living should not shed tears over the dead, lest they burn the souls of the latter with these tears, is felt throughout.

After the washing, Emina goes out into the hallway outside the flat, sits down on the stairs and awaits the ambulance personnel who have been sent to collect her mother's body. She has brought the plum pie which she made her mother and some coarse, dark bread to go with it, and she eats it forcefully where she sits. This is perhaps the strongest image of the film; this image of Emina forcefully eating her own grief, as it were, not crying because of the traditional prohibition against that, but swallowing her own tears and grief together with that coarse, dark bread and that plum pie; forcing down every single bite. It is strong, memorable, and I dare say an image that will stay with me.

As such, despite its initial shortcomings, Washing comes through as an interesting short film with a definite value, and I would recommend you all to watch it if you get the chance.

For a very moving and enjoyable behind-the-scenes account of the making of the film, I recommend you to read Mahmutović's blog post "Grandma and Death", which talks about the casting of his own grandmother in the role of Emina's mother in very tender and caring words.

Also, do not miss to check out Tom J. Vowler's blog How to Write a Novel where Mahmutović's ongoing blog tour stops by today. Next stop on that tour will be right here, next week, when "Adnan Mahmutović, the Author" (part three of four in my in-depth study of Mahmutović) will be posted. I hope to see you again then.

Adnan Mahmutović: An Introduction

2010-07-05T12:00:00.028+02:00

I first met Adnan Mahmutović in 2006 as a fellow Ph.D. student at the Karlkrona Summer School for Literature and Literary Theory at Blekinge Tekniska Högskola (Eng. Blekinge Institute of Technology). At the time, I did not really know anything about his writing (apart from a few odd poems he showed me, all of which, I shamefully admit, have fled my memory since), but we nevertheless connected over a mutual love of comics, and have kept in touch.

Mahmutović was born in 1974 in Banja Luka in northern Bosnia and migrated to Sweden as a refugee in 1993. He has a dual citizenship as a Bosnian Swede, and currently teaches immigrant literature and a course on Love and its Discontents at Stockholm University during the day, while working with people with mental disorders at night.

As I write this, he is no longer a Ph.D. student but has earned his full-fledged doctorate in English literature with his dissertation Ways of Being Free: Authenticity and Community in Selected Works of Rushdie, Ondaatje and Okri, and he has by now three books of fiction to his name: [Refuge]e (a miscellany published via Konstfack University in 2005), Illegitimate (a novella published as an e-text by Cantarabooks in 2009) and Thinner than a Hair (a full-fledged novel published by Cinnamon Press earlier this spring). In addition to this, he has also written the script to a short film, Gusul (Eng. Washing), which has now been filmed. The experience of the shoot, which involved his own grandmother in one of the central parts, is beautifully discussed by him in a blog post from January this year, over at Under the Midnight Sun.

At any rate, I have decided to spend July taking a closer look at Mahmutović: the Scriptwriter (12 July), the Author (19 July) and the Scholar (26 July) respectively. It is also worth mentioning that Mahmutović is currently out on a Thinner than a Hair Blog Tour and that my own upcoming post of 19 July will be part of this tour.

The full Thinner than a Hair Blog Tour is as follows:
21 June, PaulaZone by Paula Phillips.
28 June, "The Graces" Sagas by Kathryn Magendie.
5 July (i.e. today), Advancing Poetry by Caroline M Davis.
12 July, How to Write a Novel by Tom J. Vowler.
19 July, this very space by yours truly.
26 July, TaniaWrites by Tania Hershman.
2 August, Nik's Blog by Nik Perring.
9 August, Snow like Thought by Rachel Fenton.
16 August, Not Exactly True by Valerie O’Riordan.
23 August, Vanessa Gebbie's News by Vanessa Gebbie.

A Master Word-Smith and Rhetorician: I Give You Taylor Mali

2010-06-28T12:00:00.010+02:00

I love language. This is a statement which may well seem superfluous from somebody whose appreciation of narrative is fairly well documented; taking it as a given fact that narrative depends upon language of one form and another – and more specifically in its original sense depending upon spoken or written language. So, I love language, and that love also opens up to poetry, which admittedly may or may not be narrative in nature (just as narratives, of course, may be poetic in nature too; so there is the possibility for a nigh endless recursion right there).

So why this rather odd opening statement, you may ask yourselves, gentle readers. Well, I have recently become somewhat enamoured (in a very Platonic manner; albeit, to some degree admittedly textual) with teacher, poet and spoken word artist Taylor Mali. These warm feelings are rooted in an admiration for Mali's uncanny mastery of the English language, and not just in terms of choosing the right words to get his message across (like any good word-smith and rhetorician should), but in his delicate and pitch-perfect delivery when performing his work.

For instance, consider the following performance of "Totally like Whatever, You Know" (from Mali's poetry collection What Learning Leaves):

While the poem in and of itself is a well formulated reflection on a trend in language usage, Mali's performance stresses this trend even further by mimicking it, giving it a voice that becomes at once humorous, satirical and utterly serious. Or put differently, when Mali finally speaks of speaking with conviction, he speaks with conviction.

Another one of Mali's strong pieces, both in terms of written poems and spoken word performances (not that I have thus far read or heard one that could honestly be considered weak), is "The The Impotence of Proofreading" (also from What Learning Leaves). Here Mali once again flexes his verbal muscles and delivers something wittily funny yet simultaneously very serious: i.e. the importance of language, of knowing your language, and of controlling your language. Incidentally, this was my own introduction to Mali's work, and, to coin a phrase, he had me at "very, very hoard."

For more Taylor Mali, check out his YouTube channel or his latest collection of poetry, The Last Time as We Are.

"Who's rocking the cradle, if he is not?"

2010-06-21T12:00:00.009+02:00

Apropos of things Satanic, metaphysical and whatnot... Last week while I was writing my post, I put on Bruce Dickinson's album The Chemical Wedding from 1998 for inspirational purposes, and this week I figured I would spend a few lines on that album. After all, that album and I do have a history.

For some reason or another, I was never really an Iron Maiden fan in my youth (I am one since a little more than a decade, but that is slightly beside the point), in fact, I don't think I had properly crossed paths with their music and therefore I had no real in-depth idea of who Bruce Dickinson was when a good friend introduced me to The Chemical Wedding late in 1998 or early in 1999. However, I took to the album instantly. Heavily influenced by William Blake (a poet whose work I really enjoy), Dickinson's lyrics drew me in and captured my full attention, introducing me to one of the best vocal powerhouses in the metal field in the process.

In fact, it was Dickinson's rejoining Maiden in spring 1999 and my joining my friend for the Göteborg leg of the ensuing tour that lay the foundation for my huge appreciation for Iron Maiden's music. I followed the voice, as it were, and it has not disappointed me thus far.

But I digress. While a long-standing relationship to both Dickinson's and Maiden's music would follow, I had no idea of that at the time, and last week's umpteenth revisit to this little musical and lyrical world (while typing away at "Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell"), which has prompted this week's session, sent me back to those early days in some ways (as so often). Because, of course, as I confessed last week, I do appreciate Satanic literature and what Dickinson does on this album, lyrically speaking, definitely (at least in part) qualifies within a tradition of Satanic poetry, walking in Blake's literary (and metaphysical) footsteps as it were.

While I like the album as a whole, there is one song especially which stands out in terms of literary Satanism, and that is "Killing Floor" with its haunting opening lines:

So this is dreamtime, and all is quiet
So this is dreamtime, and all is night
You've never been held by the hand of God
Who's rocking the cradle, if he is not?

The second stanza (or verse if you want to use musical terminology rather than literary) then in some sense answers this question posed at the end of the first one:

He turned the oil into his blood
Panzer divisions burning in the mud
The stain of freedom, he's washed it out
Who's rocking the cradle, I have no doubt

Satanic? I would say so. There is something disturbing (in a nigh metaphorical sense, I stress, as I reiterate my secular stance, taken in the preceding post) going on here, displacing the notion of divine authority and replacing it with something else.

The following stanzas (bridge and chorus, musically speaking) almost complete the lyric in terms of contents (textually and musically everything except the answering second stanza is repeated); I say almost because there are some subtle, yet important, changes to the first two lines of the first stanza when they are repeated (shifting "So this is dreamtime, and all is quiet / So this is dreamtime, and all is night" into "So now it's dreamtime for you tonight / So now it's dreamtime, and all is quiet" (emphases mine)). Most importantly the remaining stanzas bring up a sense of "The darker side of ecstasy" and the fact that "Satan has left his killing floor" (presumably Hell) and that "his fires burn no more," suggesting to me a Satan free from Hell and loose on earth. Yet also, given the first two stanzas, perhaps it is also a statement that this is the only (faux) authoritative presence the world has to offer (in a metaphysical sense).

Perhaps this in itself is merely a metaphysical or existential re-conceptualisation of what the Bard once wrote as part of another rather (albeit faux) Satanic speech: "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, / But in ourselves" (Julius Caesar, Act I, Scene ii: 140-141).

"Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell"

2010-06-14T12:00:00.018+02:00

The title of this week's post is line 76 of Book IV in John Milton's 17th century epic poem Paradise Lost, and the speaker is Milton's Satan. So, you may wonder, what is this all about? What's the topic of the post? Well, I have a confession to make. Gentle readers, I am a literary Satanist.

Now, before that mayhap controversial line gets twisted out of context, let me first off repeat it with some emphasis in the right places; that is, I am a literary Satanist. My approach here is purely secular and unrelated to faith, in fact focused rather on the metaphorical, perhaps mythical, and most certainly literary value of the figure of Satan. And in that context, there is a great value and a rich tradition as varied and wondrous as could be. Because the figure of Satan, the Devil, the Adversary, or the fallen angel – Samael, Iblis, Lucifer, the Lightbringer, the Morningstar, etc. – (many of which are merely repetitions of the same name or function in different languages) is pluralistic and pliable. Even the basic mythologies (if you will pardon that label) allow for varying literary interpretations.

The metaphysical rebellion against divine authority can be, and has been, envisioned as a righteous rebellion against an unjust authority (obviously then questioning the role of God for, at the very least, the duration of the story at hand); just as it can be, and has been, seen as an attempt to usurp righteous power. In some cases, as with Milton, this very question has been something of a controversial struggle between interpretations of the literary work itself. We need only remember William Blake's infamous line from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell:

Note: The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels & God, and at liberty when of Devils & Hell, is because he was a true poet and of the Devil's party without knowing it. (Plate 6)

Yet these two strands of interpretation and depiction (because let's face it, not all depictions are in and of themselves phrased so as to generate the Miltonic duality of interpretation seemingly inherent in Paradise Lost) are not the only ones. Myths, legends, religious and literary traditions offer an array of versions and interpretations of this struggle, and of the identity of Satan. The basic question that needs be asked is, of course: Why did he rebel?

Naturally, here we find the traditional notion of the old Biblical proverb "Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall" (Proverbs 16:18 (King James' Bible)), which is obviously a fitting one, but also one that many a poet and writer have challenged. After all, in some sense, God needs Lucifer's fall, needs an Adversary, for his conception of good and evil (and by extension free will itself) to work. Neil Gaiman draws upon this idea in his wonderful short story "Murder Mysteries" (found in Smoke and Mirrors and also beautifully adapted into a comic by P. Craig Russell), which points to this notion of divine necessity. Similarly, many years before Gaiman, the Swedish poet Karin Boye wrote the beautiful poem "Den fallande morgonstjärnan" (Eng. The Falling Morning Star (this link provides an, in my humble opinion, less than stellar translation, aesthetically speaking, of Boye's poem by David McDuff, but it does give those of you not versed in Swedish a chance to get the literal gist of what I am getting at here), which was published in her 1927 collection Härdarna (Eng. The Hearths). Boye's poem not only points to the divine necessity of Lucifer's fall, but the divine sacrifice involved. I have more than once conceptualised this myself, in purely fictional terms, as a first sacrifice later to be echoed in the image of the crucifixion of Christ.

Then there is a version found in Sufi tradition (one of the many of which I am particularly fond of myself, I confess), where God presents his newest creation, Man (i.e. Adam), to the Angelic host and commands them to bow down before it. Iblis refuses the command, but (in the version I most appreciate) this refusal is not prompted by either pride or an inherent contempt for Man, fleshly and material as Adam is (these versions exist too, of course); no, it is prompted by an extreme faith. Because surely God's command to the Angelic host to bow down before Adam is a form of idolatry and an offence against the first commandment as later given to Moses: "Thou shalt have no other gods before me" (Exodus 20:3). Here we have a paradox of sorts, obviously, since it could well be considered heresy to disobey a divine command (i.e. the command to bow down before Adam; hence, Iblis' fall would be justified as a violation of that command), but equally so to bow down before the non-divine (violating what at the very least will be the command of Exodus 20:3). As such, Iblis becomes a heretical preserver of divine law and (dare I say, at least in some sense, unjustly) punished for his firm faith in and strong love of the divine.

Naturally, these different depictions provide very different versions of the figure itself (righteous revolutionary, evil usurper, necessary sacrifice, heretical preserver of faith), all of which affects his relationship to us (i.e. human beings). We have the tempter, the pedlar in souls, the wheeler and dealer, but also the indifferent, sometimes even sad, observer of human behaviour and human nature (who in more than one case objects to being blamed for our own shortcomings). Most, if not all, of these open doors into a rich tradition of Satanic satire (e.g. C. S. Lewis' wickedly funny The Screwtape Letters); and especially the latter (i.e. the observer) is echoed in Ambrose Bierce's wonderful definition of Satan in The Devil's Dictionary:

SATAN, n. One of the Creator's lamentable mistakes, repented in sashcloth and axes. Being instated as an archangel, Satan made himself multifariously objectionable and was finally expelled from Heaven. Halfway in his descent he paused, bent his head in thought a moment and at last went back. "There is one favor that I should like to ask," said he.
"Name it."
"Man, I understand, is about to be created. He will need laws."
"What, wretch! you his appointed adversary, charged from the dawn of eternity with hatred of his soul — you ask for the right to make his laws?"
"Pardon; what I have to ask is that he be permitted to make them himself."
It was so ordered. (The Devil's Dictionary (online))

This notion of Satanic satire actually takes us to the roots of this post (because I am sure that at least some of you by now wonder what may have prompted this literary confessional); that is, the fact that I am currently reading Glen Duncan's I, Lucifer. The basic story of Duncan's novel (and thus far, over halfway through it, I love it) is this: Lucifer is offered to get a shot at redemption. All he needs to do is live out a mortal existence. He does not even have to decide all at once, but is given a trial month (with an option to renew the lease, as it were) in the recently and suicidally deceased author Declan Gunn (obviously a nice little anagram of Glen Duncan). Thus, the novel opens with a diabolical mission statement (from a Lucifer who has no intention of playing by the rules or accepting the offer permanently):

I, Lucifer, Fallen Angel, Prince of Darkness, Bringer of Light, Ruler of Hell, Lord of Flies, Father of Lies, Apostate Supreme, Tempter of Mankind, Old Serpent, Prince of This World, Seducer, Accuser, Tormentor, Blasphemer, and without doubt the Best Fuck in the Seen and Unseen Universe (ask Eve, that minx) have decided — oo-la-la! — to tell all.

What follows is a satirical review of humans and human nature, analyses of organised religion and questions of faith. Duncan's Lucifer is not necessarily what I would call nice (far from it), but nor do I think he is necessarily to blame for everything either. We (i.e. humans) are doing quite a good job all on our own (with a few nudges in the right, or perhaps more accurately wrong, direction), implying a less than perfect divinity (also pointing to some contradictions along the way). Even before having finished the novel, I recommend it warmly, partly because I like Duncan's way of writing (I will definitely be picking up more of his novels), but also because his take on the diabolical, and his wondrous Satanic ventriloquism, fascinates and engages me.

Incidentally, Duncan was not alone in paving the way for my writing this post. There are also related matters in my scholarly work at the moment which have brought these issues to the front and centre. And then, even more recently (apropos of the whole affair of the recent boarding of the Ship to Gaza flotilla), I stumbled upon the following, fantastic (in a double sense) comment on an on-line article:
I think the comment speaks quite clearly on its own, but would nevertheless like to stress my appreciation for it as very well-rendered and successful attempt at Satanic satire. The commenter (whoever he or she is) has managed ever so well to perform a similar act of ventriloquism to that of Duncan's, and its anonymous, yet simultaneously (in some sense) devilish, authorship fits perfectly into its satirical mission.

In short, as a literary Satanist, how could one not love this brief piece's sharpness and wit.

Why Censorship Does Not Work

2010-06-08T12:00:00.005+02:00

I have written previously in here about the idea that freedom of speech also inherently entails responsibility for speech, but also (referring to Philip Pullman) that we do not have a given right never to be offended. For some, these two ideas might almost seem contradictory, yet I would argue that they are not. There are differences between setting out to offend and to accidentally offend, to challenge powers that be and to attack (mercilessly) those in a lesser position. There is not necessarily an easy line between these categories, of course; while clear cut cases exist in abundance, there are most likely even more things that are hard to position as either-or, and sometimes perhaps even more easily both-and.

The responsibility for speech that I favour is an on-going discussion of what we can say, not in terms of freedom of speech, but in terms of a moral relationship with the Other. However, and this brings us to today's main topic, censorship can never be a solution in this equation. On that level, freedom of speech must be absolute (or at the very least more or less; it is naive to think that it is ever absolute in any literal or pragmatic sense. Most countries have libel laws if nothing else). Because there is a problem with discussing something you have not read or seen, not to mention being offended by it.

In an interview taped on 27 January 1989 by Bandung File (and ironically aired on 14 February on British Channel 4 that year), Salman Rushdie said, "If you don't want to read a book, you don't have to read it. It's very hard to be offended by The Satanic Verses, it requires a long period of intense reading. It's a quarter of a million words" (in The Rushdie File 26). Rushdie's comment was a response to a number of rather vicious critics of the novel, who rather brazenly admitted that they had not read it, in fact had no intention of doing so. For instance, one of the politicians behind the banning of the book in India, Syed Shahabuddin, wrote the following in The Times of India on 13 October 1988:

You are aggrieved that some of us have condemned you without a hearing and asked for the ban without reading your book. Yes, I have not read it, nor do I intend to. I do not have to wade through a filthy drain to know what filth is. My first inadvertent step would tell me what I have stepped into. (in The Rushdie File 47)

Now, on one level (and bear with me, please), there is a certain level of logic in Shahabuddin's argument, and one which I think most of us apply to varying degrees and in different manners. As human beings, we continuously judge things unseen (or partly unseen) or unheard (or partly unheard) all the time; especially in terms of art in its various forms. This in itself is a natural form of selection for us, because, quite literally, there is too much out there for us to read, view, watch, listen to it all. And thus we make our choices, mostly based on what we think will be to our liking, or have some sort of artistic quality to it, or... Regardless of what criteria we apply, apply them we do; and like Shahabuddin (albeit, with hopefully a more modest and less aggressive tone) we deem some of the material less worthy of our attention, perhaps even to be filth we do not want to step into; and we are in our full rights not to.

However, while we do have the right not to read something, why would we have the right to stop others from reading it? And why would we blindly accept somebody else's interpretation of the work without wanting or even worse being able to make up our own minds by looking at the actual work with our own eyes? And this, to me, is at the very heart of why censorship does not work, in fact cannot ever work – because how can we judge art (or any type of utterance) properly without reading/viewing/watching/listening to the work in question? How can we debate a thing without knowing the thing itself, without having the reference? Simply put, it is one thing not to read/view/watch/listen to something and a completely different one to offer an unenlightened strong opinion on the matter.

A review of something where the reviewer has not taken in whatever he/she reviews is not worth a moment's time to read, because it is about nothing more than an uninformed opinion. Similarly, I do not think it is difficult to grasp the inherent problem in banning something without even taking the time to seriously take the work in question in; and even then, why should your opinion be the decisive one, the one to block this work from current and future generations (as if that one even ever truly works)? And if it is not your opinion, why should you trust it so inherently, without questioning it? Offence can be taken, and given, but offence taken at surface level echoes uninformed offence (i.e. the offended party does not even properly know what has offended it, there is merely the statement that it has been so).

Admittedly not all works of art are "a quarter of a million words." An image (e.g. a cartoon) can be so direct as to not allow us the option to avoid it in all contexts before it has managed to offend in a deeper sense (although, I would still say that offence taken without that exposition aligns itself with my discussion in the preceding paragraph). Naturally, this does not give us the option of forbidding the existence of this visual "utterance" any more than we can forbid the existence of a novel or a film. Once more, in this sense, freedom of speech, of expression, must be absolute (or as absolute as "absolute" gets). However, we do have a right to argue against this expression, to raise our voices and tell our own side of the story, to explain why it may be offensive, why it might be inappropriate – but, importantly, in order to do so, we must also see the thing we criticise, we must ourselves have access to it in order to criticise the thing and not a chimera, a phantom image of the thing.

In his article "The Satanic Verses and the Politics of Identity," Peter Jones writes that "[w]e may even fight shy of curtailing our conception of the non-legal rights of authors; we can criticise the use that people make of their rights without implying that they have no right to do what we criticise" (in Reading Rushdie: Perspectives on the Fiction of Salman Rushdie 321). Jones' approach is one that is in total accord with my own. Because if the freedom of speech cannot be used to criticise abuses of that very freedom, without necessarily prescribing a censorship (which by defaults robs the debate of its centre), then how free is that speech? How strong? I would argue that the freedom of speech is not only strong enough to include such a debate, but that it is a necessary condition that it includes this idea by default. If nothing else, because the freedom of speech is our best way to dissent and disagree, and to protect that right, we must also be allowed to vocally dissent against utterances made by others, against verbal or visual offences. Not in order to imply that these others did not have the right to do it (to echo Jones), but in order to question whether it was right to do it. There is a difference and it may seem subtle, but it is essential to discuss that. And censorship can never contribute to that discussion

Works cited:

Lisa Appignanesi and Sara Maitland, ed. The Rushdie File. London: Fourth Estate, 1989.

M. D. Fletcher, ed. Reading Rushdie: Perspectives on the Fiction of Salman Rushdie. Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi, 1994.

Cyberpunk, the Documentary

2010-05-31T12:00:00.013+02:00

I stumbled across this YouTube clip recently. It is taken from an old documentary simply entitled Cyberpunk and includes many interview snippets with one of the fathers of the cyberpunk genre, William Gibson. In fact, I have already referenced one of those snippets in here earlier (one that is actually in this clip), but there are other parts in there of further interest; e.g. Gibson's discussion on a "post-human" condition.

At any rate, the clip is well worth watching, in my humble opinion, and instead of droning on and on about it, I will let you get to it. Enjoy this roughly 8 minutes clip and if you get the chance to catch the full documentary at some point, do.

Thinking that You Are, but Knowing that You're Not

2010-05-24T12:00:00.006+02:00

Earlier this spring I happened to channel-hop into an episode of Inside the Actor's Studio featuring none other than the divine diva supreme: i.e. Bette Midler. Now, the interview was interesting and I stayed with the program till its end, but one thing in particular stood out a little more and has stayed with me ever since. In responding to a question on what it takes to be an actor and to make it as one, Midler said, "You have to think that you're the greatest thing since sliced bread, but you have to know that you're not."

While Midler's comment was intended to define the paradox of being, or rather making it as, an actor, I think it can be applied further. Certainly to all other art forms (be they literature, music, painting), but also to other activities involving some kind of creative input or use of the imagination. Here I would certainly include the sphere of Academia (and no, that is not the nut, although some of us may sometimes seem a little nutty), where you also have to believe that your own point of view, what you bring to the table, is unique and important, while maintaining a little realistic humbleness in the face of history.

So, what does this paradox really mean? In some sense, there is another old adage that seems to reverberate well with Midler's notion, and that is: "Fake it till you make it!"