Sequelitis for the Writer

Over the course of the past few months, I have read a number of books that were parts of a trilogy. Specifically, the first and second books. In both cases (I'm not going to name the series, but if you want to hunt around Goodreads and find the reviews, go ahead) the first book in the series blew me away. It was a great read, fantastic storytelling, original concepts, etc. Everything you could hope for in a book, particularly when in both cases these were the first books by those authors that I had read. In one case, it was the first book by that author (though the author was working in collaboration with another, more established author). Things were good.

Then I read the second book, and things became less good.

Some of this is simply a case of expectations. As a reader, if the first book is good, I expect the rest to be. After all, if the author did it once, they should be able to do it again. (Presumably. The writing profession has it's share of one-hit wonders, too.) I don't expect to always like every book an author puts out - though I hope to - but that's okay. Everyone has off moments. What I do expect is that if an author takes the time to plan a trilogy, then they've put the time in to think it through and carefully craft it. Such is not always the case, but such are my expectations.

Also, having started with such a phenomenal book, there is probably pressure on the author much the same as pressure is put on a successful film when it moves into sequel territory. The need to go bigger, or more complex, or to in some ways shake things up because the first one broke so much new ground that it's impossible to follow it otherwise. Or they go in the other direction, and the sequel is a formulaic copy of the first.

That happens, too, but for both of the series I read it was more the first trap. Nor did it work out well for either series. The first series introduced an essentially useless macguffin in the second book that opened up massive plot holes and seemed a sad throwaway device. The second series padded out the center section of the second novel by adding in police procedural details that were at worst wholly unnecessary to the plot and at best could have been dealt with in much shorter passages.

Nor is this the first year this has happened with books I've read. I really enjoyed the first volume of Dean Koontz's Frankenstein series. The second book was not only disappointing but downright silly. Enjoyable, but at nowhere near the level of the first one.

All of which is a roundabout way for me to make the following plea: Authors, if you're going to write a trilogy, and the first one gets really good reviews and press, please, please, PLEASE, do not f*** up the rest of them.

I don't think that's too much to ask.

The Letdown

Let me start by saying I stuck with the X-Files from beginning to end, even after they'd clearly gone off the rails. (Then again, I also liked the last movie, though that took a couple of viewings. On first viewing it was kind of like watching one of those last seasons. It grew on me, though. And not like a mold.) So with that clear caveat and embarrassing reveal of just how long I will stick with something, there are times when you just kind of have to give up on things.

I say this in the wake of the new Fall TV season, and also in the aftermath of a couple of books I was disappointed in. However, this isn't about having just one bad book. Every author is entitled to at least one of those, if not two or three depending on how long their career lasts. These things happen, for various reasons, and an author can and should be forgiven so long as they don't continue to repeat the error.

Sometimes, though, they do. Sometimes the error seems to become the norm, and where once I looked forward to an author's latest output, I start to have that internal debate with myself. Is this one going to be better? Are they going to "snap out of it?" Will it be worth my time? Now, maybe someday when I am old and less active and return to the halcyon readership days of my youth where I could sit around for hours and hours with a book, maybe then that last question will be less pressing. But now? I've got things to do, or things I should be doing, and spending time on a bad book isn't one of them.

So how do you know? When do you quit? As I said at the start, I'm inclined to give authors a bit of leeway. I know many were disappointed in the last couple of Robert Parker's books, and perhaps had been for a while. I kept reading him, and while I might be generous in saying his last few outings he was maybe batting .500 (maybe only .300), there were still good reads in there. I was saddened when he died, and am sorry there will be no new tales of Spenser, Sunny Randall, or Jesse Stone. (Books penned by other authors using those characters do not count. I am always leery of such things, but that's for another post.)

On the other hand, I gave up on Tom Clancy over a decade ago, when after a hundred pages into his China vs Russia book, nothing interesting had happened. When his characters started making long, dull speeches instead of doing things, I quit. Though I add, it was not something that started with that book, but that had actually begun happening the moment Jack Ryan became President, if not before. If Tom Clancy is still writing (is Tom Clancy still writing?) I honestly neither know, nor care.

There are other authors I could beat up on (Laurell K Hamilton and Jack Higgins for instance), but the point wouldn't change. In most instances, the author got lazy, and stayed lazy, or wandered so far afield from the earlier style or tone or premise that made their early works good that it was impossible for them to come back. Sometimes they do. I think Dean Koontz cycles through unreadability every so often, but that also implies that I keep coming back to check. Which I do. I've not quite stricken him from the list just yet.

Quitting on television shows is easier; once they start feeling like a chore, it's easy enough to cancel that particular weekly appointment. Authors are harder. Each time they put out a new book, each time I see it in the store or on the bestseller list or Amazon or wherever, that little bit of hope rises. I pick it up, leaf through it, and cross my fingers. (Which makes it hard to turn the pages, let me tell you.)

It's not an endless cycle. Authors can crush that hope too often. The trick, as a reader, is knowing when to quit, even if the authors don't.

Review: 77 Shadow Street by Dean Koontz

I've been a fan of Dean Koontz since I started reading "adult" books. I remember his early works keeping me on the edge of my seat, and he remains one of only two authors who've written a book that unnerved me as I read it. Over the years, my enthusiasm has waned a little bit. Sometimes the old Koontz seems to be at the computer, other times it's the guy who often seems to be repeating himself in his choice of themes and characters. The Odd Thomas books, for example, have all been good reads so far. 77 Shadow Street, on the other hand, was not.

I wanted to like this one, and let me say right now that it's not a bad book. If this is the first Koontz book you've ever picked up, it's probably pretty good. The problem for me was, it wasn't even close to being the first. And page after page, character after character, I found myself thinking, "I've read these people before." Different setting, slightly different problem, but the characters were stock Koontz characters. The only thing missing was the dog. Without getting into spoilers, either, the fates of these characters unfold pretty much the way you expect them to. I could tell within two paragraphs of meeting a character, especially as the book progressed and more people were introduced, whether they would live or die.

It was a good premise. I like the idea of the apartment building over the space-time rip. But that, too, was problematic, because Koontz lets the readers know way too early on what's causing all the weird things. Worse, this is done through a first-person narrative that is the most cliched and over-the-top Lovecraftian-esque narration I've read in a long, long time. It was bad. Bad enough that I found myself skipping those chapters the moment I say the italicized text. I'd have much preferred not knowing the cause behind it all until much later, as that not knowing added to the suspense and intrigue. Once that was gone, I was left with nothing but the predictable characters.

There are books where character, not premise, drives the story, and this seemed like it wanted to be one of those and just had the wrong characters to do it with. There were also too many characters, and two sets of them were practically interchangeable. (Again, this is a result of Koontz dipping into his well of stock characters.) It became difficult sometimes after putting the book down to remember who was who when I picked it up again.

Unlike past Koontz works, this was one I found myself putting down a lot.

Rediscovering Children's Lit

Neil Gaiman once made a comment on his blog about passing stories on to his children. I don't remember exactly what he said, as though I took the time to write it down once upon a time, it got subsequently lost in an internet shuffle with another project I was working on (I blame Yahoo). The essence of it boiled down to the importance of sharing stories with your children, and how it's not only good for them but for yourself as well. It wasn't just about parental bonding, either, but the importance in and of themselves of stories and their telling.

I was reminded of that recently when I started reading The Wizard of OZ to my little girl. We have been reading books for years, but she's recently started to move from the standard picture books into more complex picture books. I've had OZ on my shelf for years, along with Alice and Pooh, since before I had or had even considered children. With regards to Alice and Pook, they were stories I enjoyed, and as for OZ, it was bought with the notion that maybe someday I'd have someone to read it to.

While Dorothy will never replace Alice, or Pooh, for that matter, I did enjoy the story. I was also surprised from the start to discover that the change from a black and white world to one of technicolor was not something done just for the movie. For those who haven't read the book, I don't think I'm giving anything away by saying Kansas is written by Baum to be literally grey. Everything he describes in Kansas is said to be dull and grey, so that the colors explode when Dorothy arrives in Oz.

(Not literally explode, mind you, at least not until Michael Bay does the remake.)

I don't plan on ever writing for children - though there is one idea clanking around in my head - but I think the sense of fun that is imbued by most children's stories is a good thing to interweave into any story, no matter the audience. Even if you're writing horror and want to scare the socks off of your readers, they should still have fun even as they're losing their footware. I also think it's probably not something that comes with trying to do it. Like humor, it will likely lose a lot if you try and actively make your story fun.

Just as importantly, there is a sense of discovery that seems to come from these books. Baum and the others have a real gift for crafting worlds where each corner turned brings something new. In an adult work it would be too much, and I noticed there were inconsistencies and things that just didn't make sense (in Through the Looking Glass it can be hard to follow the geography of Alice's travels, and there is supposed to be one, for example). But it was still nice to see an entire world where, unlike in a lot of modern works, the author made it up as they went along. Nowadays "world building" is it's own thing, and maybe Baum and Caroll could teach a thing or two about that.

Almost every writer I have ever read who commented on what it takes to be a writer has stressed that they read. A lot, and all kinds. It wouldn't hurt to put a few children's books on that list, even if they are things you read once as a child. Take it from me, they take on new life reading them as an adult.

And then there were none....

Words are important things, especially for writers. Not exactly an earth-shattering kaboom of an idea, I know. What few readers I have (assuming any of them have stuck with me) know I listen to Radiolab, a radio science program. Back in may they did a program on a study someone did on the use of vocabulary in the works of Agatha Christie. I'm not sure if it was done intentionally to try and diagnose her, but by studying the words she used, and the frequency with which she used them, they were able to determine that Christie suffered from some form of mental degeneration, beyond what might be expected from simple old age. Alzheimers or a similar form of dementia were mentioned as likely candidates.

Now, while such a disease is scary in its own right, and I speak here as one who's seen too many close family members afflicted with it, as a writer this story carries a particular horror with it. The disease took away Christie's use of words. Her later novels, especially those towards the end, are far less complex and varied in word choice. She relies on more generic terms, less descriptive language.

Moreover, as in many cases of these kind of diseases, she seems to have been all too aware of it. In her last novel, it seems very likely one of her characters became a stand-in for herself, leading to the implication she knew what was happening to her. Knew, and was powerless to do anything about it. As a writer, I cannot imaging being forced to watch as my ability to express myself clearly and vividly was slowly taken from me, word by word.

The actual decline was somewhat less dramatic than that, of course. It's not as though one day she woke up and was able to use one word less. The study talked in frequencies of occurrences, and complexity of ideas, and how those could be charted to demonstrate Christie's failing mental faculties. But it's the idea of such a thing happening, of sitting down to write each day and finding, day by day, that your skills were a little less, and that there was nothing you could do about it, that is at once sad and terrifying.

An 18-Minute Gap in My Memory

This is one of those times where, quite some time back, I jotted down a brief bit of notes, consisting of less than a sentence. At the time, I had a clear idea of where the idea was going to go, what I was going to say, and how it was all going to make sense. I freely admit that sometimes I only manage two out of three... and sometimes only one. But I always have at least one.

In this case it had something to do with the coincidence between the length of Arlo Guthrie's most famous song and a corresponding amount of blank tape from the Nixon White House. That's a subject that has been tackled elsewhere, and at length probably exceeding the eighteen minutes of the song. I heard it while listening to a version of the song - and it would count as "a" version because it seems to change upon each telling - that included a commentary about that coincidence. The song itself remains a remarkable bit of largely extemporaneous storytelling, I must admit, enough so that the last time I heard it on the radio I was content to listen to the whole thing instead of searching elsewhere.

But whatever I had originally intended to say about that has long since vanished into the ether. Which is the problem with taking only sparese notes, or jotting down random one or two line ideas. Most of my idea book is filled with stuff like that, and for the most part I elaborate more than just one line. I may include a short little description, or a list of things, or something else to help jar my memory and get my mind back into whatever groove it was in when I wrote the idea down in the first place.

For example, I have the phrase "Dr Doolittle with insects" which came from a dream I had about a boy who could talk to scorpions, among other things. (Yes, I am well aware that scorpions are not insects. Regardless, the dream was of the boy and bugs and things in terrariums, including scorpions. .... Yes, I have odd dreams.) That story idea may not be written out completely, but I haven't forgotten it, and it's still there.

It's different when I lose an idea completely. That has happened, and I can remember one such instance clearly. My memory of that incident is helped by the fact that I wrote about it shortly after, but I also distinctly remember it. Precisely because I can't remember whatever it was I thinking at that moment, just what I was doing. While frustrating, it's less frustrating than staring at a line in my notebook, knowing I took the time to write it down, and being completely at a loss for why I wrote it down.

(Which is not the same thing as being at a loss for words, obviously.)

It may eventually come back to me, what it was I meant to say with this post on that topic. Or it may not. Odds are, having written this about it, whatever else I meant to say will get shunted to the side, replaced by this set of thoughts. That's just the way my mind works, and I know it.

If it does come back, I promise to make sure I write it down more completely in my notebook, so that I don't end up back here again.

Real Life Fiction

I read a little bit of everything. And I do mean everything. I've been known to read a romance novel or two, even. (Admittedly, one of those two was accidental, as I had no idea it was romance when I ordered it off of Amazon.) I run through phases where I read poetry or non-fiction or philosophy, and while those often coincide with there being nothing new from my favorite authors in my local library, sometimes I'm just in the mood.

The one thing I tend not to read much of is "literary" works. Those quotes around it are mandatory, as that category has taken on a life of it's own, often to the exclusion of other works that would be "literary" were they not written by the wrong sort of author.

Now, unlike some other genres, there's no real reason for this omission. I don't read much romance because it all tends to be rather formulaic. Which I understand is the appeal of the genre, to a certain extent, but boy meets girl gets a little old when it follows the same formula. (Case in point was the accidental romance novel I read, which was some sci-fi thing. It was well written, and I had no complaints about that, but the next installment in the series was a carbon copy of the one I had just read, only with new characters.) I don't read much chick lit because, well, because I'm not a chick and I found Sex in the City to be, by and large, shallow and uninteresting.

On the other hand, most of the literary works I have read I do enjoy. I find them to be the thought provoking exercises they are meant to be, and that, I've decided, is half the problem. Generally I read the genre books I read because I'm not really looking to do a whole lot of thinking. I want a smart read, don't get me wrong, but I read novels as an escape. If I'm looking for mental gymnastics, I'll pull down one of those aforementioned philosophy texts, or some of the poets I read. (Poetry, for me, seems to straddle the escapist and intellectual reads, but that's another post entirely.)

My other issue with them is that they aren't very escapist. One of the things that separates the genre is that, by definition, they are supposed to deal with real life things. Updike does not write about Martians, and by the same token one would not expect Bradbury to talk about middle-class, middle-age life without resorting to Martians. I like the escapism. I like reading about things that only nominally resemble my own life, in terms of the themes they deal with. I may not be middle-aged yet, but I know enough about the humdrums of modern American life to want to get away from it when I read.

Of course, that is also part of the appeal of the more literary authors. That examining of the life we all lead. More or less, of course. I recently read - well, more appropriately would be to say I was turned on to Philip Roth, and while one of his characters was in a profession and a life that is actually plausible as a path my own life might have taken - sans Martians - there were definite aspects that would just not happen to me. Or anyone else I know. Which is a good thing, considering.

But, it's that deconstruction of modern life, the examination of the mundane, the requirement that you think a little (or so I would hope) about what you're reading and what it all means and the themes involved, that makes the genre of "literary" fiction a pleasure to read. I can get something out of it that, for the most part, I am not going to get from King or Kellerman. Not to say the two, and the rest of the genre fiction crowd, don't make me think, but for the most part if they're dealing with themese I'm ignorning them, not poring over the text to examine them.

Does that mean I am going to be checking out more "serious" books from the library? Probably not. As I said, I read to escape, and for fun, mainly, much the way I watch movies. I like my fiction smart, but not necessarily requiring a mental warm-up before I engage with it. Yet when the mood strikes, as it does for poetry and philosophy and non-fiction, I won't be adverse to wandering through different sections of the library than I normally find myself in.

The Power of Felt and Ping Pong Balls

[This was inspired by someone else's article, which, along with a film clip, can be found here: Saying Goodbye 20 Years Later You don't have to read that article first, but it provides far more historical context than I'm going to, and I think it's worth your time.]

Jim Hensen was my introduction to the idea that you didn't have to shackle your imagination. The idea that if you could dream it, and believe in it enough, you could make it real. You could turn it into something you could share with other people, even entertain them with. The idea that the stories clamoring to get out of your head had a place to go where they would be welcomed and where you could revisit them.

I don't remember how old I was when I first saw The Muppet Show. I doubt I watched it during it's initial run, given the time frame and my age, so almost certainly I saw it rerun in syndication. There were, of course, Muppets on Sesame Street, but to this day they feel slightly different than the rest of Hensen's creations. They cater to an audience that is primarily children, and in short spans at that. The average Bert and Ernie segment probably doesn't last more than five minutes at most, and even if there was a running storyline - such as the time the Count stayed over at Bert and Ernie's - it was broken up across the hour. (Such is my age that I remember when this was the format of Sesame Street, in the days before Elmo.)

Fraggle Rock was different. So was the Dark Crystal. The latter is one of the first movies I distinctly remember being in a theater for. (My mother insisted I sat rapt through Star Wars, but being about five or six at the time of the first re-release just prior to Empire, I don't really remember it.) The Dark Crystal I remember. It blew me away then, and aside from being one of my earliest movie memories, it was also my first real introduction to the fantasy realms. The Fraggles were one of the first shows I made it a point to watch, each and every week. I can still sing the theme song.

Just as importantly, these were worlds. Complete, whole, and though in the case of the Fraggles occupying a space alongside ours, they were entirely different places. (We can't eat our architecture, for example, and my trash has never spoken to me. For which I am both grateful and yet disappointed.) Here was a lesson for a young creative mind like myself. You could give free reign to your imagination, and more importantly, if you worked at it, you could see it brought to life. Labyrinth just reinforced this a little later. (While also giving me a lifelong appreciation for David Bowie, and a lifelong crush on Jennifer Connelly. But, again, another entry.)

The non-Muppet movies didn't do very well, of course, and the Fraggles eventually went into reruns themselves. By that time, I had sort of out grown them, having hit an age where the bright colors and generally upbeat messages (though at times serious) were something I was disdaining a bit. I wasn't done with all things Hensen, though, because then came the Storyteller. Like the Fraggles, this was must-see tv with me before such a phrase had been coined. And I remember the Storyteller being the first series cancellation that bothered me. This was the first series to have the plug pulled where not only did I miss it, but I wondered what idiot had made the foolish decision to yank such an incredible show off the air.

(Wasn't the last time I had that thought, just the first.)

And he was the first celebrity whose death I mourned.

Hensen's legacy lives on, of course, and the Muppets continued. Yet, to me at least, these post-Jim projects have lacked some of creative vision of the mind behind the Fraggles and the Storyteller. They have been "Muppet Treatments" of other things, and even the original storylines have not had the force of imagination, nor the completeness of story that came with Hensen's works. There have been no more worlds. (There is another Dark Crystal movie in the works, though, so we'll see.)

More so than anyone else, and as much as I can claim to have been inspired by anyone, Jim Hensen is it. (Yeah, sure, George Lucas is in there somewhere, but he's a one trick pony.) Hensen had multiple worlds in his head, and expressed them in a media that few else would have dared to. I'm sure someone, somewhere, early in his career told him there was no future in puppets, and I think on that every time I hear someone say there's no future in print, either. You can't separate them, either, as Hensen's vision and his legacy would not have been the same if he'd been a cartoonist, or just used actors. He worked in the format that called to him, making the stories that called to him, regardless of the critics, and while I have read that he took a lot of the criticism to heart, he kept at it anyway. There are lessons in that for anyone.

I said at the beginning that this entry was inspired by another article. I said you didn't have to read it. You still don't. But, if you do, I would call your attention to the video clip at the end. If there is a better way for someone of such imagination to be remembered than by being mourned and missed by his own creations, I don't know what it is.

The Case for a Reread

When I moved a little over a year ago, one of the challenges I didn't face was what to do with all my books. This had been an issue in moves past, but this time around it was much less so, because a few months prior I had finally given away a lot of the books on my shelves. I donated them to a library, and this was done to get the boxes out of my closet. At one point they had all been on shelves, but I had simply run out of room.

I also realized I was probably not going to get around to rereading most of them. Not because they weren't good books, because they were, but simply because they weren't really books I was going to re-read anytime soon. Eventually, yes, but in the meantime they were taking up space, and with a few exceptions when the time comes I'm sure I can find them in a library or used book store all over again.

I did hold on to my collection of Stephen King books, but I confess that at one point I belonged to that "King book of the month" thing. Not quite as bad as some other things I could confess to, sure, but I still feel a little foolish about it. Most of those I won't reread any time soon either, but there are two exceptions.

That there are only two is not a reflection on my fondness for the author. Truth is, most of the things I read get read once and then shelved. Part of that is just that I remember the plot for them, and so I won't get more than thirty pages in before everything clicks into place. With the mysteries I like to read, that takes away some of the joy. (I say this as someone who skips ahead to the end of the book, but that's different.) Part of it is just sheer voraciousness on my part, reading lots of different genres and authors and subjects.

Which means that I have no shortage of new books to read. So why go back at all, then, to something I've already read?

The short answer is that some books are just so complex, they require a reread. This is why 'The Stand" is on my list of books to go through again this summer. It's been far too many years since I read it last, and I think this is the summer to amend that. It's also why every few years or so I drag Tolkien, or Herbert, back off my shelves (or the library shelves) and read through stories I am quite familiar with already.

That familiarity is also a part of it. While reading new books by favorite authors reunites me with their voice and mannerisms, it's not quite the same as stepping back into a favorite story by a favorite author. The first is like reconnecting with an old friend, the second is like reconnecting with an old friend in the places you used to hang out, sort of recapturing the past. Of course, it's never quite the same because you're in a different place than you were then (which is why nostalgia only goes so far), but it's close enough to provide a certain kind of pleasure you just can't get anywhere else.

Which is why some books will always be on my reading list, no matter how many times I've been through them. Sure, I'll continue to read new things, yet it's comforting to know that, should I ever come up empty at the local library - only because my local branch is quite small - there's something waiting for me at home.

The Guilt of Putting It Down

I have no problems turning off a bad tv show. Or changing the channel on a boring movie. I've started to listen to an album only to realize there's only one decent song on it, and switched to something else. All of which I do without remorse. Books are another story. For some reason, putting down a bad book is hard to do.

Putting down a mediocre book is almost impossible.

I'm not sure why I feel guilty about not finishing a book, about taking the bookmark out when it's only half completed it's march to the last page. It seems to be much stronger when it's a book from the library. (Certainly there were books I was assigned to read that I put down without compunction, nevermore to pick them up again nor feel a twinge of regret for having done so. Even so, those were few and far between.) I think part of it is the idea that I picked this, I chose this particular book, so I owe it to myself to validate that selection by reading through it.

Sometimes I think it's a question of just the wrong book at the wrong time. There have been one or two books where the first time I checked them out I wound up returning them unfinished, only to get them again some time later and take them to completion. I don't often give books second chances. Usually it's only when I know it wasn't the fault of the story, or when it's a particular author whom I'm trying to give another redemptive shot to. In part this comes with the recognition that once I've put a book down from an author, I'm much less likely to get another one from them. (This has kept me reading authors who have long since managed to lose their spot on my "must read" list, by sheer hope that someday they'll pen something to find their way back onto that list.)

So I know, when I put a book down without finishing it, that author just got a black mark from me, and the odds of my getting another book from them have dwindled significantly. This means it is a major undertaking, a severing of either a well-established relationship, or the ending of what might have been a promising long term endeavor. I don't set a book down without consequences, and as a reader I tend not to be very forgiving.

Some of the guilt is also tied up with other people's expectations, especially if it's a story I'd heard good things about. Then it becomes a question of, everyone else loved this. I don't. Ergo there is something wrong with me, as a reader, that I don't get how awesome this is. It's not really a valid argument, I know, and speaks more of my own insecurities than anything else, but hey, we all have our neurotic ticks. This just happens to be one of mine.

Sometimes it's simply the reluctance to abandon a project once it's started, and often for reasons that make up only part of the whole. I'm finding myself struggling through Under the Dome right now, for example, because I absolutely cannot stand one of the major characters. I just want someone to put a bullet through his head, and suspect instead I am stuck with him for the next thousand pages or so. Abandoning the book now just because of one character feels slightly treasonous. Yet I have a hunch I may do so, and know also I'll check it back out again eventually.

Only to perhaps feel guilty all over again if I put it down a second time.

When Tragic is Better

I'm normally all for a happy ending. This does not mean I necessarily want everything to work out for the "happy ever after." Given my preferred genres for writing - namely sci-fi and horror - I am all too aware that sometimes what you're left with is the "happiest possible ending." Let's face it, at the end of an apocalyptic film, it's still the end of the world. Mad Max does not get to settle down someplace with a wife and kids. The world still sucks. Sometimes that's all implied, especially in a horror film. Yeah, you've survived, but you've also watched several people get whacked. Usually in horrible fashion. So there's going to be a bit of mental trauma, I think.

But on the whole, especially with movies, I prefer not to have things end on too down a note. This is why I eschew a lot of foreign cinema. Everything I know about Chinese cinema can be summed up as follows:

• The girl dies.
• The boy dies.
• The girl goes crazy.
• The boy goes crazy.
• The girl goes crazy and then dies.
• The boy goes crazy and then dies.
• They both go crazy and/or die.

Which, seeing how most of the movies I watched to determine that formula were either two hours or longer, seems a bit more of my life than I want to invest in being depressed. If I'm going to sit down and give up two or three hours of my life, I'd like it to end on a good note.

Which does not always me everyone walks away in the end. Sometimes the tragic ending is the better ending.

And fair warning, there are spoilers below.

Take 1408, for example, which is based on one of King's best short stories (in this humble reader's opinion, anyway). In the original story - this is the spoiler part, so consider yourself forewarned and stop here if you don't want to know - the ghost hunter protagonist does not make it out of the hotel room alive. I can't remember off the top of my head if we learn exactly how he dies, only that he is, in fact, claimed by the room.

In the film, he gets out. He "beats" the room, so to speak, and survives his ordeal, reconciles with the important people in his life, and everything goes on, with our hero in theory a better person. Which was fine, I didn't mind that, only there was an alternative ending, a tragic ending, in which he still "beats" the room only he doesn't get out. Instead he dies, but he takes the room with him.

Now, aside from giving Samuel L Jackson more screen time, which as a general rule I am always in favor of, I thought the tragic ending had more weight to it. Aside from reuniting our character with his dead daughter - as having her taken from him twice was a particularly cruel touch and the kind of thing that even if you survive it will truly mess with your head - it seemed more fitting with the overall tone of the movie.

(I suspect the ending was changed for much the same reason that I Am Legend and The Forgotten went with the weaker ending - it tested better. )

There are some other instances I could think of if I put my mind to it where, for whatever reason, the ending needs that little bit of tragic element to it to make it work. It's not the same thing as a tragedy where everyone dies, like Hamlet (and if that was a spoiler than you need to write a letter of apology to your high school English teacher), it's just tragic in one fashion or another. These are also often the more realistic endings, I think, the ones that more often make sense within the framework of the given story and are less likely to feel merely tacked on at the end.

Sometimes that happy ending just doesn't feel right.

Death of a Character: The Show Must Go On

It's been a while since I touched on this topic. I've covered a bit of ground in this little ongoing theme I have here. I've dealt with replacements, the "really really truly we're not kidding they're completely dead," and resurrection. Yet there's another kind of character resurrection, and that's when an author dies but his most beloved creation lives on. Which is why it seemed appropriate to dust off this last little bit I had to say on it in the wake of an author's passing. Robert Parker died earlier this month, and I for one shall miss him.

Parker's most iconic creation was, of course, Spenser - spelled like the poet and no first name ever given. (Except maybe once, but I think perhaps that was a typo in one of the early books.) Much has been written elsewhere about that, and he penned other characters as well, most of whom I liked and enjoyed. I have read all the books, and read that there were, I think, two more books ready for publication. I will look forward to them, and be sad when I finish the last one knowing it is the last one, but I must also say I hope that's where it stops.

Ironically, Parker himself took on another author's creation post-mortem. He finished Raymond Chandler's Poodle Springs and then wrote one more Marlowe book based on Chandler's notes. However, he didn't keep going after that, and if any author can be said to be a reincarnation of another one, or a reinvention, then Parker was that to Chandler. Spenser wasn't Marlowe, but he was a Marlowe for his times. And he had the good sense to let Marlowe rest in peace once his creator's ideas were done.

Other characters have not been so fortunate.

James Bond is an example, so too now is Jason Bourne. Neither character ever died, but with the death of their creators I think they should have been allowed to. On paper, anyway. I love the Bond and the Bourne movies. Just not as fond of the later books, even though I like Lustbader, who has taken over the Bourne helm. The Bond books are another story altogether. There were (perhaps are) rumors that there was a final "Travis McGee" story, penned by the author in anticipation of his eventual passing. To the best of my knowledge that's just a rumor, and thankfully McGee's been left alone. Sherlock Holmes has also been penned once or twice by other authors.

Never successfully, in my opinion. Not for the caliber of writers that have attempted it, mind you, and not because they weren't good stories. Some of them were very good stories. But they weren't quite Holmes and Watson. Close, perhaps, and an excellent imitation, but never quite the real thing.

Bond, Bourne, and Holmes were all resurrected for one simple motive: money. The series are money-makers, and the new Bourne books didn't appear until Matt Damon built a franchise. I suspect for that reason there won't be any rush to hand Spenser's reigns over to someone else. (The Tom Selleck CBS movies based around one of his other characters are different. Like the Robert Urich Spenser for Hire series, they have established their own universe, more of a "based on" than anything else. There is apparently one more Jesse Stone book, and I shall mourn him after putting down his last tale, too.) There isn't the oodles of money to be made from it that there are with the others.

I do think, however, that characters like that ought to be left alone. There is no way to capture the original voice of their authors, not completely, and so they come off as the imitations they are. When the only reason not to come up with your own character - as Lustbader has done in the past - is money, while I can't begrudge an author for taking a pay check (heck, I'd take it), I wish the powers that be behind it would have the good sense not to offer it in the first place.

As the horror cliche says, sometimes it's better to let things rest in peace.

Hamlet's Last Words

The podcast that inspired today's post can be found here. (And while you're there, I would recommend perusing their other podcasts. Then supporting your local public radio station.) I listened to it a while back, but it was brought back to mind today by another story on NPR about Jude Law stepping into the role of Hamlet. Not sure how I feel about that, but then every actor approaches the role somewhat differently. It is arguably one of the most famous plays in existence, probably #2 behind Romeo and Juliet I would think - though I much prefer Hamlet, and has been subject to much interpretation.

I would hope I'm not giving anything away by saying Hamlet dies at the end, in, arguably again, one of the most famous death scenes of all time. His last words are "the rest is silence." Which is generally the last thing he says. Only, there's another version, where it isn't the last thing he says. Added after Shakespeare's death, they may or may not represent an editorial decision made first by an actor interpreting the role. Given that Hamlet is a role that is open to much interpretation, this seems a small thing, but I found that the idea of Hamlet having a death rattle not only pretentious and presumptuous on the part of the actor who thought to do it, but also unnecessary.

Before I go too much further, I should say there are times when just because an author chose to end the story arc one place, it doesn't mean that it's forever sacrosanct. That said, you have to pick and choose your moments, and your story before you decide the original ending just wasn't good enough. I've never read "Gone With the Wind," nor seen the movie... and have no desire to. That said, I'm familiar enough with the ending, and think it remains one of the better endings in literature. Ambiguous, sure, but at least with a heroine who stands on her own. Only to end up with a "happy ever after" in the sequel.

Which invalidates the original ending, I think.

Which is my problem with Hamlet's death rattle.

You take what is, essentially, a perfect ending. A poetic ending, especially given Hamlet's penchant for wordiness (exceeded only by Polonious). And then you undo all of that for no good reason other than someone else's hubris. (Which is a major Shakespearean theme, so it kind of fits.)

I'm not saying you can't ever mess with something. The Lego version of the Bible is at once both faithful to the text and somewhat irreverent. There's a couple of riffs off the Lord of the Rings that made me laugh out loud. But those were meant to be what they are. With Hamlet and GWTW the add-ons were serious efforts. Completely extraneous serious efforts.

I'm not even saying you can't continue the story. I'd like to know what happens to Rick after the end of "Casablanca" and think that would make a good story. Might even be tempted to write it someday. But I wouldn't have Ilsa get back off the plane, or come back to Rick. Because that would undo the power of the original ending and, if I may say so, be disrespectful of the text. I won't say that "Scarlett" was disrespectful of GWTW - as I said, I've not read it so I won't presume to comment too extensively. I have read, and watched, Hamlet. And I cannot imagine it with a death rattle.

All I am saying is that if you feel the need to mess with a classic ending, or the story in general, maybe you ought to think twice about it.

Vellum

This is a first in what will hopefully be an ongoing series of entires, which will occur at irregular intervals. (If you were expecting something regular, clearly you've not been reading my blog very long.) It was inspired by a conversation held elsewhere about profiling lesser known authors. Now, granted, that conversation centered around the idea of well-known authors, and I'm hardly in that category yet by any means. Also, I don't know for certain that these authors are all that lesser-known, I'm simply basing this on the number of books my local library has of them, and whether I'd heard of them before the cover/title attracted my attention.

Yes, I judge books by their covers. If covers weren't important, they'd all be solid colors with nothing on them but the title and the author's name. Which, unless your Stephen King, you don't get.

For this first installment I thought I would highlight the twin works of Hal Duncan, Vellum and Ink. I'm using both books, because even though they are two volumes, they are essentially a single work, under the subtitle The Book of All Hours. Think Lord of the Rings only one book short. And without hobbits. Though, given the premise of the book, their are probably hobbits in there somewhere, the reader just doesn't encounter them.

It's a little bit science-fiction, a little bit fantasy, a little bit alternate-history, all rolled into one, dense story. And I do mean dense. Most of the time, I can judge how good a book is by how long it takes me to go through it. If it's taking me longer to read it than the time the library allots me, chances are it's because I've lost interest. With Vellum and it's companion novel, it's just because the story is a bit to wade through.

So this recommendation comes with a caveat: if Armageddon, nanites, angels (that are and aren't), Sumerian/Hebrew/Christian mythology, and an alternate history or two of the 20th Century (including one semi-steampunk), plus numerous science-fiction realms, through which a recurring cast of souls (not quite characters, but read it and you'll understand) find themselves wandering about before ultimately trying to save the world as we know it... if all that sounds like something you might enjoy, I recommend the book.

Just set aside the time to read it. It was, for me at least, somewhat slow going. It was engrossing, well-written, and the kind of first novel I can only dream of ever attempting (I'm just not that complex with my plots and I know it), but it was something I had to renew in order to finish. So if you're normally a slow reader, and your library does not have a generous renewal policy - mine's unlimited - you might want to consider buying it to finish it.

It'll be cheaper than the fines.

Master Storytellers: Artists

When I was a freshman, before you took Freshman English you had to take a test, to see which level class they'd place you in. I won't bore you with the test results, but the upshot of this was that the class I was in had a somewhat unusual teacher, which resulted in a somewhat unusual class. We didn't read the usual books, we didn't have the usual assignments - for the most part. This was, after all, the class where I wrote a discussion on the merits of nudity in NYPD Blue, discussed the incarnations of Batman in popular media, and where my final paper was a conversation between Nietzche and Borges (in Lewis Carroll style rhyme, no less).

But our first assignment was more mundane: the trip to the museum. I imagine this is an assignment straight out of some writing handbook. You go to the museum, find a piece you like, and write about it. Now, if we'd been sent to the natural history museum, it might have been more interesting... and my essay probably would have been on some dinosaur coming to life and eating the night staff, leaving a skeletonized person inside the T-rex skeleton the next day. However, we were sent to the art museum. I do not remember the artist I chose, though I remember the picture. A landscape, nothing spectacular.

There was, however, a story in it. I found one, I'm sure someone could have found something else, and it occurred to me that the best works of art - whether they be from the masters or from more local, less well known artists (like that girl in the next cubicle who constantly doodles on the quarterly reports) - tell a story, or at least hint at one. For example, either in that class or another, I ended up writing a poem on Picasso's "The Old Guitarist." It's from his blue period, which is that clustering of his works that I'd actually hang on my wall. Looking at that picture, there clearly is a story or two or even three behind the somewhat forlorn strummings of the old guy in the clothes that don't quite fit. And I don't always see the same story every time.

I'm not going to presume that anything that occurs to me when I look at it was in Picasso's head when he painted it. If he's spoken or written about his inspiration for the piece, I am unfamiliar with it and (followers of this blog will be unsurprised to learn) not going to bother looking it up at the moment. Maybe later.

Likewise, a friend of mine showed me a picture of a tree. I'd known she was working on the tree, and so I had certain expectations in my head as to what it would look like. I was, as it turned out, completely wrong, but that's fine because what was on paper was much more complex and beautiful than what had been in my head. It was, like the Picasso, something that I could see putting on my wall, and every time I looked at it coming up with a different story behind it. Never quite seeing it the same way twice.

There are a number of my favorite books that are like that, too, where no matter how many times I read them, each time I find something I hadn't noticed before, a story that hadn't occurred to me the last time I read it. I find things familiar, too, of course, but I think the paintings that tell a story are like the books that do so: each time you see it there's that mix of the familiar and the as yet to be discovered, and it's somewhere in that middle space where ideas are born.