Neil Gaiman Short Stories: Lots of Hit Targets and a Few Stray Bullets

TRIGGER WARNING: SHORT FICTIONS AND DISTURBANCES  (2015)

Neil Gaiman

William Morrow, 308 pages, 978-0-06-233026-0.

* * *

Trigger warnings are those small cautionary flags thrown up to warn that some sort of content (image, speech, written word) may induce discomfort for some listeners, viewers, or readers.  They are, depending upon one’s point of view, either polite warnings, excuses to present objectionable material, or a form of censorship aimed at further infantilizing American culture. (Full disclosure: I am in camp # 3.)  It’s a perfect title for a Neil Gaiman book, as few modern writers take readers as far from their comfort zones as he.

One of the things that makes Gaiman a great writer—as opposed to pulp hacks like Stephen King—is that he knows that “disturbances” are caused as much by the imagination as by any specific action or image. Like earlier writers such as Edgar Allan Poe and H. P. Lovecraft, his horrors often reside in dream worlds, random thoughts, imagined terrors, and mental meanderings; in essence, we fear the things that we can envision more than the unknown or unseen. In a new collection of short stories, Gaiman demonstrates another level of wisdom: the understanding that triggers are linked to more than simply raw fear­–they are highly individualized and they come in unexpected forms. Sometimes it’s an encounter with a man who might be a werewolf (“A Lunar Labyrinth”), but it might be a terror linked to faded memory  (“The Thing about Cassandra”), or even musing upon a David Bowie lyric (“The Thin White Duke").

Trigger Warning contains two dozen stories and original poems. Like all such collections, the quality varies from chapter to chapter. There is, frankly, some filler in the new book, the likes of which probably would never have seen the light of day if penned by an unknown. But when Gaiman is good, he’s very good. “The Truth Is a Cave in the Black Mountain” takes a familiar story—a mysterious traveler seeking a guide that will take him to a place locals claim is haunted—and uses Scotland’s Isle of Skye, a real-life dream world, as a creepy backdrop for a tale that grows more ominous by the paragraph. In “Orange,” he builds suspense through 70 out-of-context answers to an interviewer’s questions. He does something similar in “A Calendar of Tales,” which is true to its title: a dozen tales, one for each month—some of which are scary, some humorous, and others surreal. (Gaiman knows that for many people, nothing is more terrifying than a departure from that which is defined as “normal” or “real.”)

Those familiar with Gaiman’s work will recognize a few of his personal inspirations. He has written a tale of aged Sherlock Holmes (“The Case of Death and Honey”), a new Doctor Who episode (“Nothing O’ Clock”), and reworked fairy tales (Cinderella in the case of “The Sleeper and the Spindle”). He also reduxes his character Shadow from American Gods in “Black Dog”. One his more deft turns is using humor as a trigger warning, which he does to great effect in “And Weep, Like Alexander,” an offbeat tale about an odd little man whose profession is that of an Uninventor. That’s right—he uninvents things humankind creates that would simply cause more havoc than good. (Where was he when the Segway was manufactured?!) This tale is typical in that there is, in fact, nothing in the entire collection that would tempt you to sleep with the lights on. But make no mistake, triggers are repeatedly pulled.

To return to an earlier point, not every effort is a winner. As a poet, he reminds us that he’s a novelist, and a few stories simply trade on the unexplained to build bizarre scenarios that go nowhere. In “Adventure Story,” for example, he spins a tale of his father, World War II, Aztecs, and pterodactyls that is either supposed to highlight his dysfunctional family or suggest a paranormal experience, but nothing is more than mentioned within four scant pages, so who knows? A few others are something we seldom expect from Gaiman: obvious. But when Gaiman puts his finger on the trigger of the metaphorical gun that’s pointed at you, you feel the disturbance, even when it’s more frisson than fear.  Rob Weir

Newest Ellis Paul May be Best Release of the Decade

ELLIS PAUL

Chasing Beauty

Black Wolf

* * * * *

Is Ellis Paul the hardest working musician in acoustic music? Damned if I've ever seen him leave anything behind in the green room. Any new Ellis Paul album is reason for celebration, but Chasing Beauty is triumphant even by his exalted standards. I do not exaggerate when I say this is was not only the album of the year for 2014, but it's quite possibly the best I've heard this decade. Paul is an American troubadour in the mold of Woody Guthrie, Ramblin' Jack Elliot, Johnny Cash, and Bob Dylan and he's a better singer than any of them—he of the impossibly high voice in which each syllable explodes with emotive energy.

Chasing Beauty is Paul's 19^th album and it's a true roller coaster of moods, emotions, and images. The title song embodies the album's namesake theme: the promises, open wounds, and approach/flight dance involved in chasing beauty in its various guises. Where do we find it? Some times it's in simple things—moving in close, a train ride, a cathartic roller coaster ride–themes he explores in "Take Me to a Drive-in Movie." Sometimes it's something more complex, like the American spirit in times of adversity, which he reconnoiters in "Empire State," his love letter to New York City's iconic and indomitable skyscraper. Some times it's looking back ("Plastic Soldier"); other times it's being in the moment and seeing the world through the eyes of his daughter ("Hold Me, Scold Me"). Listen hard to Ellis Paul lyrics–they are filled with poetic wonder, and some times they just dispel simple wisdom: "If you ain't got nothing that you'd die for/Tell me is your life worth living after all." Paul can be as soft as a spring breeze ("One Kiss Could Do Me In"), but he offers precious few nostrums; as he suggests in another song, sometimes roses come in cages. Paul is usually pegged as a "folk" singer, but "acoustic rock" might be a better handle. Chasing Beauty has many quiet moments, but it also a highly polished studio work that sports rolling organ notes, electric breakouts, and rock steady drumming. And, in true Ellis Paul fashion, his guitar work dazzles with virtuosity one moment and sends percussive shock waves the next. Mainly Paul just lets it all hang out and defies conventional classifications. Take a listen to his crowd-pleasing "Kick Out the Lights (Johnny Cash)" and come up with you own label, but I'm going with "masterpiece." –Rob Weir      

New Blu-ray Reason Aplenty to Rediscover My Winnipeg

MY WINNIPEG (2007/15)

Directed by Guy Maddin

Buffalo Gal Productions

* * * *

This documentary created a small stir when it first came out in 2007. Earlier this year it was re-released in Blu-ray and, if your tastes run toward the offbeat and surrealistic, it’s well worth watching—even though parts of it are now outdated.

Winnipeg, Manitoba native Guy Maddin is the director/writer/narrator/central character of what he calls a “docu-fantasia.” That’s not a bad term, though “autobiographical tone-poem” might be an even better one. The film really is about Winnipeg—sort of. Maddin is from there, but his film’s central hook is the attempt to escape. To that end, Maddin imagines himself among a car full of disreputable passengers on a rail-less train hurtling down the city streets and speeding toward the outlying districts, but never quite making it into the surrounding prairie. It is filmed in black and white (at times with deliberately scratched emulsion) and most of the outside scenes are wintry—an effect he uses to add grit, and to blur the boundaries between past and present. (By washing out detail and rendering everything in the same tones, an old photograph has the same clarity and visual value as the present.)

Maddin’s Winnipeg is one weird place and he too has, in popular parlance, “issues.”  Among the strange revelations about Manitoba’s largest city: it is among the world’s coldest cities, it was once a hotbed for spiritualism, the city used to hold an annual treasure hunt whose winner got a one-way rail ticket out of town, and it has the highest measured level of sleepwalking of any known city. The latter is so pronounced that a local ordinance gives citizens the right to possess keys to former residences in case they wander there in a sleepy stupor. If that’s not weird enough for you, consider this factoid: a 1935 winter fire at a local racetrack allegedly sent horses rushing into the Red River, where the ice trapped them and preserved them. Locals strolled through upon the frozen river to visit grotesque monuments: the frozen heads of horses pushed through the ice with their faces captured in the final throes of death.

Maddin’s film is heavy on metaphors such as sleepwalking and frozen horse heads. His most powerful is that of the “Forks,” the place where the Red and Assiniboine rivers merge. At numerous junctures he juxtaposes the Forks with a woman’s torso—both a sexual and birth allusion—and uses these to explore his considerable disagreements with his stern mother (played by Ann Savage) and his deceased father. This film could occupy a Freudian for months! The thread that holds everything together is the reoccurring question, “What if…?”

Those what ifs apply to both Maddin and to Winnipeg. In a Michael Moore-like shift, Maddin also explores changes in the city: a provincial sports hall of fame that moves more often than someone in the witness protection program, the demolition of both the downtown Eaton’s Department Store and an iconic ice hockey arena, the loss of the Winnipeg Jets NHL franchise, the impending doom of The Bay…. In this guise, Winnipeg comes off as Flint-upon-the-Prairie and it underscores Maddin’s desperation to flee. 

Ever notice how people who make films about getting out often don’t? Maddin also plays on the metaphor of Winnipeg being the geographic center of North America. (Note to US residents: Take a look at how much of Canada lies to the north of Winnipeg.) Winnipeg might be weird, but it’s also defiant, a spirit represented by its 1919 general strike. In like fashion, people there must put down pretty deep roots if they hold onto door keys in case they sleepwalk into the parlor.

Maddin’s running commentary is, by turns, poetic, irreverent, wistful, and even hopeful. Since 2007, the Bay closed, but the Jets returned. Like frozen horse heads, Winnipeg’s cycles are marked by ephemeral monumentality yet signs of struggle and life.

--  Rob Weir   

Far from the Madding Crowd Movie is Hardy on Speed

FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD (2015)

Directed by Thomas Vinterberg

Fox Searchlight, 129 minutes, PG-13.

* * *

Although it's literary blasphemy to admit, I have always preferred Thomas Hardy to Charles Dickens. Dickens was funnier and his stories contained more action, but I like Hardy better for the complex interior lives of his characters, and the fact that his women were more than wallpaper. Hardy's women are independent spirits full of resolve and spunk. Think of Tess Darbeyfield, Sue Bridehead (Jude the Obscure), or Eustacia Vye (Return of the Native). And how many Victorian literary heroines can compare with Bathsheba Everdene in Far from the Madding Crowd?  Even her name was scandalous in Hardy's time. Bathsheba was an unlikely name for a 19^th century daughter given that her ancient counterpart was the Hittite woman with whom King David committed adultery and impregnated (with Solomon). David also engineered her soldier husband's death in battle when he couldn't convince him to have sex with Bathsheba. It took moxie to name a sympathetic character Bathsheba.

Hardy played with the Biblical story. A soldier, temptation, lust, and wisdom factor into  Far from the Madding Crowd, but not the ways they were recounted in the Old Testament. Biblical authorities differ on whether Bathsheba was willingly or unwillingly seduced by King David, but Bathsheba Everdene is neither temptress nor victim. Though men desire her, she longs for independence. She is intelligent, strong-willed, high-spirited, and stubborn–traits that are both blessings and curses. She is, for example, often too clever and acts impulsively on the presumption that others will know her mind as well as she.

This foregrounding is essential for evaluating the latest film version of Far from the Madding Crowd. This is the fourth full-length motion picture of Hardy's novel and it shares the strengths and shortcomings of its predecessors. Bathsheba is such an intriguing personality that one can see why directors are drawn to it. The 1967 British production with Julie Christie, Alan Bates, Peter Finch, and Terence Stamp is the most famous attempt, though the BBC's 1998 four-part series (which aired in the US on Masterpiece Theater) is probably the most successful. Locate Thomas Vinterberg's new production somewhere in the middle of the pack.

First the good news: Forget Julie Christie–Carey Mulligan is a superior Bathsheba. She plays frothy and determined equally, thus is totally believable as a woman of both superior intellect and impetuousness. Physically she is desirable without intending to be so, and a fireball of energy that burns those who get too close. We are convinced that if any woman can run her own farm in patriarchal Victorian England, it would be she. In the story, three men are ensnared by Bathsheba's magnetism: loyal shepherd Gabriel Oak (Matthew Schoenaerts), caddish soldier Francis ("Frank") Troy (Tom Sturridge), and steadfast bachelor farmer William Boldwood (Michael Sheen). Each wishes to wed and bed Bathsheba, though two of the suitors are decidedly as unwise as King David. Schoenaerts is also outstanding and plays Oak as Everdene's equal in both kind intentions and pigheadedness, as if he is the anvil to her hammer. (Did Hardy play off the Bathsheba's name—Hebrew for "daughter of the oath"–to come up with Oak?) Sheen is terrific as Boldwood, Everdene's older, socially gauche suitor. Indeed, he's so sympathetic he breaks your heart. Also praiseworthy is the musical score. This movie gets folk music right, because Vinterberg had the commonsense to hire Eliza Carthy as music advisor and include her and her band on the soundtrack.

The not-so-good: Sturridge is a wooden soldier as Troy and he's no Terence Stamp in the glamour department either. His flat demeanor is also frequently the feel of this film. It is gorgeous on the surface, but not much actually happens. To return to an earlier point, Hardy's novels are often about internal struggles and these require time–like a 460-page novel or a four-part BBC mini series–to show how characters grow and change. Try to cram this into just two hours and what we get is Far from the Madding Crowd on amphetamines. This means it's obvious from the get-go who Bathsheba should be with, and just as obvious what will end badly–even if you've never read the book. Vinterberg tries to give us the feel of 19^th century rural life, but these come off as  random snapshots disconnected from affairs of the heart and mind. 

Far from the Madding Crowd is ultimately a classic middling picture–neither great nor bad. It's certainly a pleasant enough way to pass a few hours, but it lacks the transcendence of Hardy's novel. –Rob Weir

   

 

Overlooked Films: The Unknown Known

THE UNKNOWN KNOWN (2013/14)

Directed by Errol Morris

History Films, 110 minutes, PG-13

* * * *

If you think Dick Cheney is scary, Rumsfeld is worse!

This review debuts a new blog feature: films I overlooked at the cinema for a variety of reasons: a short run, too busy, tepid word-of-mouth, lost in the shuffle…. As I recall, the Errol Morris film The Unknown Known didn’t stick around very long, though I probably also ducked it because it’s a documentary and I simply don’t find many of them visually distinctive enough to justify increasingly high theater admission prices. But I can say that this one is certainly worthy of adding to your online or rental queue. Its look at the Machiavellian soul of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is scarier than a slasher film and oilier than West Texas.

The very title boots us down a slippery slope. Remember when—in the middle of hearings on Monica Lewinsky-- Bill Clinton confounded wordsmiths with his statement, “It depends upon what your definition of is, is?” Clinton is a paragon of clarity compared to Rumsfeld, who defined the “unknown known” as “things you thought you know that you didn’t know.” This tips us off immediately that Rumsfeld is a different breed of cat than the last Secretary of Defense Morris interviewed: Robert McNamara. In Morris’ Oscar-winning The Fog of War (2004), McNamara admitted that Vietnam was a mistake. Don’t hold your breath waiting for a Rumsfeld confessional on Iraq, Abu Ghraib, the body armor conflab, or anything else. What we get is something more frightening—an obviously brilliant man whose arrogance and ideology led him to abuse the English language rather than consider that he might have erred. Think upon that statement. Who among us has not been spectacularly wrong on occasion? Not Rumsfeld—at least not in his mind. His explanation for the reason we found no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? “An absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” If such a statement doesn’t chill you, ponder upon Morris’s follow-up query as to whether such a belief was carte blanche to pursue any belief at any time as if evidence was irrelevant. Rumsfeld has a standard response whenever he paints himself into a corner: “You’re chasing the wrong rabbit on this one.”

In many ways, Rumsfeld was prepped for such obfuscating arrogance. Like many rightwing ideologues, he came to power (U.S. Congress 1963-69) in opposition to the counterculture and social change movements of the Sixties—as befitted a 50s-bred conservative (Eagle Scout, World War II, Princeton, Georgetown Law). His big break came when Nixon appointed him to head the Office of Economic Opportunity and then as ambassador to NATO. Like Nixon, Rumsfeld recorded everything he thought or did. Although Rumsfeld dismisses personal tapings as nothing more than organizing thoughts in progress, the 20,000+ sharply worded memos he sent as George W. Bush’s Secretary of Defense (2001-06) instead suggest an inflated sense of self-importance and, perhaps, a dash of Nixonian paranoia. (Rumsfeld also served as Gerald Ford’s Chief of Staff and then his Secretary of Defense from 1975-77. He also mentored Dick Cheney!)

Part of Errol Morris’ brilliance lies with his ability to stay in the background rather than grandstanding like Michael Moore. He allows us to hear (and often see via cutouts and superimposed script) Rumsfeld’s own words. And what words they are. Rumsfeld is, at turns, erudite and dissembling. He is clearly a highly intelligent individual, but also one so enamored with his own cleverness that he occasionally outwits himself. The film ends with Rumsfeld unable to decipher correctly his own “unknown known” formulation or explain why he agreed to be interviewed—a fitting end for one who was fired in 2006 after he ran out of excuses.

Morris’ documentary is equal parts compelling and chilling. Not since Henry Kissinger have we seen a figure of such intellect guided by such an amoral compass. I can’t promise you will enjoy this film, but I can state that it’s an object lesson in why so many American citizens are cynical about politics. It’s also a testament on how a skilled director can document without preaching. Morris is like a polished prosecutor who allows the accused to convict himself.—Rob Weir

Raya Brass Band Pumps Up the Noise and the Fun

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RAYA BRASS BAND

This Train is Now

Rayabrassband.com

* * * ½

The metro New York-based Raya Brass Band is more Balkan than Brooklyn—sort of what you’d get if you merged a hora with a village riot. This high-energy quintet is built around instruments designed to pump up the noise: saxophone, tuba, trumpet, accordion, and drums. Tunes like “Locks and Latches” aim to get your body limber and your feet moving and even when the pace slows, as in “For Mia,” the tempo remains jumpy in the way that a carousel horse elevates and descends. Dance tempos dominate. "Bump" opens with thumping drums, segues to a muscular brass blast, then settles into its namesake staccato rhythm, one with playful echoes of drum and tuba. The Balkan-flavored "Shapkarevo Kasapsko Oro" conjures mental images of a frenzied village fest in which locals take turns trying to one-up each other in the dance spotlight. A personal favorite is the aptly named "Riff Cloud," in which melodic hooks are tossed about to see what can be made of them. This band throws a bit of everything at you: some Balkan jazz, some Dixieland, hints of punk, and on the title track some melody lines that sound like a mariachi band at one moment and faintly North African the next.

The Raya Brass Band will appear at the Flywheel in Easthampton on May 21 at 7:30 and at Thunder Road in Somerville on May 22.

Ignore the Hype: The Novel Euphoria Isn't

EUPHORIA (2015)

Lily King

Grove Press, 261 pages, 9780802123701

* *

As an undergraduate, I read Margaret Mead’s seminal ethnographic work Coming of Age in Samoa. Even though it was already an “old” book (published in 1928), one of my takeaway points was that academic writing doesn’t have to be stultifying. I mention this because Lily King’s latest novel—based loosely, as in very loosely, on Mead—is a boring book. I suppose it’s something of an accomplishment to make one of the 20^th century’s most fascinating people seem dull, but I doubt that was King’s intent.

Euphoria has been highly hyped and well reviewed, with Salon having pronounced it as an early favorite for the year’s best novel. Methinks the praise has come from reviewers too young (or too lazy) to learn much about Mead and are too eager to settle for a (semi) Cliff Notes look into her character. Although novelists are not biographers and are free to imagine what they wish, King’s decision to model her character Nell Stone upon Mead (1901-78) suggests she’s writing historical fiction. So too does her decision to make Stone famous and set the book among primitive New Guinea tribes. Don’t believe any of it, even though every major character in this book is tangentially based upon a real anthropologist—Schyler Fenwick is a stand-in for Mead’s second husband, Reo Fortune; Andrew Bankson is a paste-up of her third, Gregory Bateson; and Helen Benjamin is modeled after Mead’s mentor, Ruth Benedict. But this book isn't about anthropology; it's mostly a love triangle between Stone, Fen, and Bankson. To that end, King mostly mines biography for details that lend themselves to cheap psychological analyses or advancement of dodgy plot devices. For instance, “Fen” comes across as so intimidated by Nell’s scholarly fame that he has become insecure, lazy, vain, and cruel. He’s one part slacker, one part tyrant, and one part cuckold—hardly the sort of man who later evolved an important mathematical theory (Fortunate numbers). Bankson, by contrast, is so psychologically damaged from the deaths of his younger brothers that we wonder how he was capable of conducting research among fierce Kiona tribesmen, let alone woo the headstrong Stone.

In the novel, by the way, Nell’s lesbian relationship with Helen is presented as an acknowledged fact. This allows King to engage in some heavy-handed prefiguring of Stone’s work among Tam women—the name given to the gynocentric tribe she and Fen are studying—and to set up a homoerotic ritual later on. In life, a Mead/Benedict relationship remains speculative and, suffice it to say, the ritual King cribs is quite different in Mead’s ethnography. (Mead did have a lesbian relationship with anthropologist Rhoda Metraux, but this was after her marriage to Bateson dissolved.) But these contrivances are positively convincing compared to hints of Fen’s bisexuality and a subplot involving his desire to plunder a totemic flute from the Mumbanyo people. (Apply whatever Freudian reading you wish here.)

My objections to Euphoria are not based upon making Nell out to be sanctimonious or difficult—both adjectives were rightly applied to Ms. Mead—rather King’s larger sin of making Stone/Mead dishrag vulnerable and uninteresting. Although King touches upon bigger issues—Stone’s struggle to be an unconventional woman in a male-dominated society, the cultural arrogance of Western anthropology, the lingering question of what field researchers understood versus what they misconstrued—these, and New Guineans in general, are dealt with as exotic backdrops for Western jealousy, love, and lust. Do we really care about a triad involving an obsessed female researcher, an arrogant ne’er do well, and a lovesick sad sack? Let me put it this way: Would you volunteer to live among them? Euphoria left me with ennui. –Rob Weir