Twelfth Night

Trevor Nunn's Twelfth Night (1996) is a satisfying, humorous movie.  It's like watching a good Branagh-produced film without the unfortunate side effect of having to watch Mr. Banagh, himself.  Ben Kingsley is fantastic as Feste, one of my favorite Shakespeare character types, the wise fool.  There's a great musical scene that alternates between Kingsley playing a concertina and another character playing the same song on the piano.  While musically beautiful, it's also pretty awkward, as Nunn decides to maximize the sexual tension between Viola (disguised as a young man named Cesario) and Orsino, a mature man who betrays some weakness to Cesario's subtle advances.  Taking this and Orsino's rapture and finding that Cesario, whom he has believed to be a man, is actually a woman, thus eligible for marriage, shows Nunn's willingness to expose the homoerotic undertones of Shakespeare's gender-bending comic plots.
Another attempted seduction provides a highlight as Malvolio, played by Nigel Hawthorne clad in yellow stockings, struts his stuff for Olivia, played wonderfully by Helena Bonham Carter.  If you've seen Branagh's Much Ado about Nothing, or Hoffman's A Midsummer Night's Dream, this film is familiar territory.  So, if you like those films, you'll probably like this one, as long as you don't mind a slightly lower sound and color quality.  The acting is solid, and Shakespeare's language shines brilliantly.

"Boring Macbeth" Should Be an Oxymoron

I've put off writing this post because I knew it would be no fun to write.  Roman Polanski's Macbeth was a big let down.  It's boring.  The scenery was boring, the acting was boring, even Lady Macbeth was boring.  Even her "famous nude sleepwalking scene", as touted on the Netflix slipcase and elsewhere, was about as shocking or moving as it was exposing (that is, hardly at all).  On the other hand, you get an eye full of old naked witches huddled in a basement as if it were an alternate ending to The Blair Witch Project.  Gross.  To be fair, I may have missed the really good parts since I couldn't help dozing off here and there.  But I doubt it.  So, hopefully it's on to better things with Twelfth Night.  I'm excited about this one because the St. Louis Shakespeare Festival is performing Twelfth Night this year.  (On a side note, "twelfth" is about the weirdest word in the English language if you repeat it a few times.)

Shakespeare Movies: Throne of Blood

Akira Kurosawa's Throne of Blood is a clever, deliberately paced, and broodingly shot adaptation of Macbeth set in feudal Japan.  The plot is quite true to the play, and where it deviates it does so creatively.  It's only fair to admit that I'm not a fan of this sort of movie.  I've tried watching Kurosawa's masterpiece, Seven Samurai, and was too bored to get through it.  For anyone familiar with the Macbeth story, however, Throne of Blood is entertaining enough, even in it's dull moments.  For example, when Washizu and Miki (the Macbeth and Banquo characters, respectively) ride their horses back and forth through the fog for what seems like an eternity, just to show us how lost they are, you've got to laugh.
While music abounds in a number of Shakespeare plays, it's absent from his Macbeth.  In Kurosawa's version, though, songs contribute effectively.  Some of the events are moved around a bit, and it works.  The hand-washing scene takes place only after the enemy troops have begun to approach the castle, for instance.  "Lady Macbeth" not only manages to retain her sanity a bit longer, but is much more logical throughout.  Instead of attacking her husband's manhood to move him to regicide, she builds a logical argument based on the fear that Miki will betray the prophecy to the Great Lord (the King Duncan character).  More examples are present, but I won't give them all away.
The ending is also quite different, and I'm not going to give that away, either, because it's really the big payoff.  If you're going to watch the film, you'll want to that to be a surprise.  Overall, it's a satisfying take on Macbeth.  Some of the introspective monologues are lacking, replaced by moody scenery and visual symbols that are not as effective, but are interesting in themselves.  Evil Spirit, Kurosawa's version of the witches, was my favorite part.  Now, I'm looking forward to jumping ahead in time and seeing another version of Macbeth.

Shakespeare Movies: A Midsummer Night's Dream, 1935

My exploration into the "deep cuts" of Shakespeare movies begins with Reinhardt and Dierterle's 1935 rendition of  A Midsummer Night's Dream.  I was impressed.  This is a beautifully designed and shot movie with wonderful special effects.  And it is very, very funny.  
When watching old movies, I find that it takes me a while to get used to the acting, or over-acting.  At nearly two and a half hours, A Midsummer Night's Dream allows time for that.  So, things that were annoying at the beginning, like Puck's spastic laughter, had become charming by the end.  A few scenes, especially the pre-dawn fairy round-up, could have been edited down significantly, but these scenes allowed the film-makers to indulge their whimsy, creating truly magical illusions of fairies floating on the mist or disappearing into the starry night sky.  Still, "brevity is the soul of wit."
It is impossible not to compare this movie to Michael Hoffman's 1999 A Midsummer Night's Dream, one of my absolute favorites.  As is typical, the acting in the more contemporary movie is much more subdued.  The actors in the 1935 movie often sound like they are reciting, not acting.  This is also typical, as the prevailing philosophy about Shakespearean acting has shifted over time to a more natural, less formal, style.  This is most evident, I think, in the character of Oberon, whose style follows his costume.  Making use of the black and white pallet, Reinhardt and Dierterele dress him up in a shiny black body suit and oversized crown of glittering sticks.  Hoffman, on the other hand, dressed Oberon down, way down, to almost nothing.  While overdressed Victory Jory nearly sings his lines, Rupert Everett speaks his lines effortlessly, almost sleepily.  
The performance of Helena is another study in contrasts.  Jean Muir, in Reinhardt and Diertle's movie, responds to Demetrius' rejection with helpless sobbing.  Calista Flockhart, however, is  highly entertaining in Hoffman's movie as a spiteful, obstinate mess of emotions (and hair), who makes the bicycle prop an integral part of her character.  Only Stanley Tucci as Puck uses it as well, and it helps his character even more.  After seeing the 14-year-old Mickey Rooney as Puck (pictured above), however, I have to say that a young Puck makes more sense.  The innocent, playful energy that Rooney brings to the part is electrifying, once you get used to it.  He steals the show.
In Hoffman's movie, Bottom is the center.  With additional brief action scenes, backstory, and exceptional acting by Kevin Kline, the character attains a nuanced, heroic quality.  While Kline grips your heart in his "Bottom's Dream" soliloquy, James Cagney laughs his way through it.  But that works, too.  It's a traditional take on the character, a sympathetic fool.  And while there's nothing wrong with that, Kline's performance is, in my opinion, transcendent.
Reinhardt and Dierterle's A Midsummer Night's Dream is worth watching, if for nothing else, for the cinematic artistry.  It's so impressive what these folks were able to do with film, real physical film.  It's both innovative for it's time and true to the original play.  It's exactly what it should be: comedy.

Shakespeare Movies

I love Shakespeare movies.  Live plays are even better.  And reading them is great, too, even reading about them.  It was the movies that got me hooked, though.  I watched Franco Zeffirelli's 1990 Hamlet with Mel Gibson and Glenn Close when I was a senior in high school.  But I didn't watch it at school, I watched it in my living room at home. I don't even remember why I chose to do that.  At school they made us watch two movies: first, Zeffirelli's 1968 Romeo and Juliet, which I thought was OK aside from Juliet's annoying voice; and, second, his 1967  Taming of the Shrew, which I hated.  (I'm sorry, but Elizabeth Taylor will never be more than the White Diamonds lady to me.)  This Hamlet movie was serious, though, and Elsinore felt like my living room at home: isolated and restricting.
Something else happened my senior year of high school: someone besides Franco Zeffirelli made a popular Shakespeare movie.  By casting Claire Danes as Juliet, Baz Luhrman ensured that my girlfriend, a huge My So-Called Life fan would have to see Romeo + Juliet.  We took our seats in the theater completely unprepared for what was about to happen.  They had guns, but they said "sword".  They spoke in iambic pentameter while blowing up gas stations.  Mercutio was a drag queen on ecstasy.  I had only vague notions of what a drag queen was and no idea about ecstasy at this point in my life.  It was different.  Really different.  And awesome.
In college, I had a fantastic Shakespeare professor who, in addition to taking me to my first two Shakespeare plays, introduced me to Kenneth Branagh's contemporary cinematic renaissance.  I clearly remember watching Henry V in her class, completely surprised by how much I liked it.  Today, one of the greatest pleasures I take in teaching high school is showing my students great Shakespeare movies.  Recently, I picked up Studying Shakespeare on Film by Maurice Hindle at a used book store.  Browsing it's pages got me feeling like I've limited myself by watching the same Shakespeare movies over and over again.  So, here's what I'm going to do: watch some more of them and blog about it.  To begin, let me disclose my current preferences by dividing up those films I've seen into three categories: Like, OK, and Don't Like.

Like
Branagh's Henry V (1989)
Zeffirelli's Hamlet (1990)
Branagh's Much Ado About Nothing (1993)
Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet (1996)
Hoffman's A Midsummer Night's Dream (1999)
Branagh's As You Like It (2006)

OK
Olivier's Hamlet (1948)
Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet (1968)
Burge's Julius Caesar (1970)
Radford's Merchant of Venice (2004)
Taymor's The Tempest (2010)

Don't Like
Zeffirelli's Taming of the Shrew (1967)
Branagh's Hamlet (1996)

After some research, I came up with the following list of films that I will watch in chronological order.

1. Reinhardt and Dierterle's A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935)
2. Akira Kurosawa's Throne of Blood (1957)
3. Roman Polanski's Macbeth (1971)
4. Oliver Parker's Othello (1995)
5. Trevor Nunn's Twelfth Night (1996)
6. Michael Almereyda's Hamlet (2000)

I realize that I am leaving out some important films, specifically the following:
1. The entire silent era
2. All films by Orson Welles
3. Kozintsev's Hamlet
4. Hall's A Midsummer Night's Dream

Perhaps one day I'll get around to those, but for the sake of time and not annoying my wife too much, I've got to draw the line somewhere.  Here we go.

Risk and Reward

I might as well rename my contemporary literature class, and call it something like "humanity at its worst".  The course description would read something like this: "explore the very worst regions of possible human experience through literature--cannibalism, rape, suicide, infanticide, starvation and more!"
What sort of teacher am I to drag my students through the monstrous, mysterious, post-apocalyptic world of The Road, only to follow it with The Kite Runner, a book so heart-breakingly shame-soaked it's infuriating at times?  Well, the thing is, I'm not actually dragging them; they're enthusiastically charging ahead at full speed.
My original idea for the second half of this class was to focus on the theme of coping with disaster, beginning with Life of Pi, then The Hunger Games, and following up with the books mentioned above.  I expected The Road and The Kite Runner to be challenges, the former for its bleak, spare narrative style and shocking content, and the later for its drawn-out emotional story telling and foreign-ness.  I realize now, however, that I had not given much consideration to the agony, the darkness and depravity in which we would be miring ourselves for a whole quarter.
Would I change it now if I could?  No way.  Once again, my students have shown me that they are not to be underestimated.  As 17 and 18-year-olds they are ready for this stuff, actually hungry for it.   They're hungry for some serious conversation and for a brutally honest writer like Cormac McCarthy to balance out the romanticizing of young adult literature like The Hunger Games.  I've seen more visceral reactions to these books among my students than I could have ever anticipated.  They have cared about these characters, placed themselves in their shoes and really thought about what it would mean to lose everything they cared about.
So, I guess what I'm getting at here is that I'm grateful to my students for taking this challenge and running with it.  I'm grateful for writers like Yann Martel, Cormac McCarthy, Suzanne Collins, and Khaled Hosseini.  I'm grateful for the opportunity I have as a teacher to spend my time connecting these young people with these books.  After my experiences this semester, I will always be willing to stand up for teachers who are willing to take intelligent risks in the face of censorship and thoughtless standardization.

NY Times Article on The Hunger Games

This article asks a great question, who is the audience for The Hunger Games?  It's complicated to answer, and demonstrates a fascinating development in the book-to-movie world.  Also, at the end, writer Pamela Paul compares HG to Star Wars:  


"Mr. Levithan also likens “The Hunger Games” to the 1977 demographic-defying “Star Wars,” another teenager-against-the-world (or universe) film. “To say that ‘The Hunger Games’ is a teen movie is like saying ‘Star Wars’ is a teen movie because it involves a teenager,” Mr. Levithan argued."

The Hunger Games part 2: Pandemonium & Myth

It's Hunger Games mania at school right now!  We had a haphazard Hunger Games book club meeting at lunch, which involved a lot of "what's your favorite part" and "who would you be" type discussions.  The poor representative from our yearbook publisher walked into the middle of an intense Gale vs. Peeta argument in my publications class, and got a lot of  "Oh my God, you haven't read it!  You have to read it!"
It's a phenomenon.  Every morning I'm getting updates like, "I stayed up until one in the morning to finish Catching Fire!"  It's affecting students' performance in their other classes, because I'm also getting periodic updates like, "I read chapter 12 in band, and I can't believe..."  I feel like I've betrayed the college prep English teacher, who just assigned Crime and Punishment.  Many students will not have the first 100 pages read by Friday.
That said, here's the post I was planning on writing.  One aspect of The Hunger Games that I love is how Collins has created a story where a classic heroine is placed in a conflict that is so relevant to contemporary society.  To explain, I'll have to employ a Star Wars metaphor via Joseph Campbell.
In The Power of Myth, Campbell discusses Darth Vader, saying that he is "living not in terms of himself but in terms of an imposed system.  This is the threat to our lives that we all face today...How do you relate to the system so that you are not compulsively serving it?"  Campbell's answer to his own question: "By holding to your own ideals for yourself and, like Luke Skywalker, rejecting the system's impersonal claims upon you."
So, what does Campbell mean by "the system"?  We all have institutions vying for our loyalty and imposing systems on us--government, religion, workplace, school--and we all make decisions about how we will go about being an individual in relation to these institutions.  To paraphrase Campbell, our challenge is to find how we, as individuals, can use the system to benefit ourselves and others, instead of being consumed by it.
Katniss is slow to figure out where she stands in relationship to the system, the institutions of Panem and, later, of District 13.  She did not intend to become the leader of a revolution, but she eventually accepts her role.  She accepts it on her own terms, though, and never fully gives herself to the politicians and masterminds behind the revolution.  Her ultimate act of autonomy is the murder of President Coin.
So, if myths are metaphors for the journey of ordinary life, what are we to take from this?  We could start by asking ourselves if we are using the system or if it is using us.  Of course, what "the system" means to each of us will be different.
There is also the consideration of the community.  Heroes are not selfish.  Their victories are supposed to benefit others, as well.  Theseus, though he certainly had fame and fortune on his mind, slew the Cretan Minotaur to end the sacrificial slaughtering of Athenian youths.  Sound like a familiar scenario?  To facilitate this discussion, my contemporary literature class watched Jim Henson's version of the tale.  (Full disclosure, I got this idea from Wikipedia.)  We also charted Katniss' journey according to Campbell's model, which is here in simplified form.  We also discussed comparisons to The Iliad, Lord of the Rings, and others.
I feel like I'm gushing over The Hunger Games, perhaps exaggerating it's quality.  I don't know, I guess time will tell as far as that goes.

The Hunger Games part 1: Politics

I'm excited for the Hunger Games movie, and I'm not alone.  Yes, I'm a bit concerned the hype might overwhelm it, so I'm not paying too much attention.  Why am I so excited?  Isn't this just another teen action/romance series?  Yes and no.  Most of my students who have read The Hunger Games love it.  Many of them, mostly girls, have devoured the entire trilogy within a week or two.  Some guys, however, are not going to go for a book with a female narrator who's torn between two guys, even if she is shooting explosive arrows at hovercraft.  This trilogy is so much more than a post-apocalyptic love triangle, though.  Suzanne Collins has packed a lot of social criticism into these deceptively easy reads, and they serve as a wide open door into some great conversations.

First of all, there are the obvious parallels between the rebellion against Panem and the Arab Spring of 2011, as well as the Occupy movement.  When I brought this up, I was surprised to find out many students knew little-to-nothing about Tunisia or Tahrir Square, let alone the 99%.  The fictional revolution and the real ones certainly have similarities, but probably more differences.  While both the real world protestors and the revolutionaries of the Hunger Games utilized civil disobedience, the real people have been much more democratic in their methods.  There is currently no equivalent to President Coin, no single group masterminding the Arab Spring or the Occupy movement.  There's also no Katniss in the real world, not this time around.  The socialist revolutionaries of the previous century certainly had their emblematic figureheads, and characters like Haymitch are hellbent on turning Katniss into a Che Guevara.  Unlike Che, though, she is naive and usually motivated by her drive to save only her loved ones.  Only in climactic moments of clarity does Katniss see outside her small sphere of concern to realize the bigger game in which she is an unlikely player (i.e. the berries and the forcefield).

Another important social criticism seething between the lines has to do with media manipulation.  In Collins' future world, the revolution must be televised (RIP Mr. Heron).  The government of Panem uses what we now call "reality television" to control the masses through the Hunger Games.  The rebels  utilize the same platform to begin their revolution, using the Quarter Quell, and the popular heroes gathered therein, as their springboard.  Then, they continue to build support for their cause by broadcasting Katniss' contrived forays into the war.  Through these experiences, she realizes the influence she has due to her heroic status in the hearts of the populace.  This hero status is, of course, based on her performances in the Hunger Games, a media event.  The question I find myself asking is, "could this book have been written before Survivor?"  I don't think so.  The Hunger Games is a uniquely contemporary invention, and ingeniously so.

So, there they are, two parallels to our own society.  But what is Collins saying about them?  I think that's a rather complicated question to answer, which is something I love about these books.  Her fictional revolution, while seemingly well-intentioned, has a serious dark side.  There's Coin, the Stalin-like, would-be president who gets murdered by the hero before she has the chance to assume total power.  Then there's Haymitch and Plutarch Heavensbee, supposed good guys who carry out a program of coercion and manipulation to accomplish the takedown of Panem, and for whom the ends certainly justify the means.  District 13 itself seems like a somewhat more friendly version of Panem, one that dehumanizes by means of schedules and uniforms, rather than by violence and intimidation.

So, is Collins telling us to be wary of politicians?  Is this a cautionary tale for would-be revolutionaries, warning them to be careful of repeating history and  putting another Napoleon or Caesar in power?  (All the character names from The Tragedy of Julius Caesar were not lost on my sophomores.)  Or is this a hero story of a more mythological type?  Is Katniss another Theseus saving her people from the Minotaur?  Is her journey a metaphor for our own?

What, You've Never Read Where the Sidewalk Ends?!

Thank you to everyone who commented on the last post.  You reminded me of books I'd loved and forgotten (like Sideways Stories from Wayside School), and given me some great ideas of new books to enjoy.
Yesterday, I was surprised when a number of my tenth grade students did not get my reference to Shel Silverstein's "Boa Constrictor".  So, I promptly retrieved Where the Sidewalk Ends from the library and read a number of selections to them.  Just for fun, here's "The Toy Eater", from Falling Up.

It's strange to think about a childhood encounter with a story, poem, book, movie, or song, and what difference it might have made.  Was some aspect of my personality or sense of humor forever altered by Where the Sidewalk Ends?  It feels that way, but it's impossible to know.
As far as my tenth-graders go, surely some astute teacher or librarian along their educational path read them some Shel Silverstein poems.  Most of them don't remember it, though, and I can't help feeling sad for them.  It makes me want to put out an alert to all elementary teachers.  Of course, that's a can of worms that, once opened, would cause an infestation, because I want them to read all the books on my list and many more.
There are plenty of recommended reading lists by knowledgeable people out there, which is helpful.  Somehow, though, the idea of required reading for elementary rubs me the wrong way.  Childhood is a time for exploration, discovery, and wonder, and adults should do everything in their power to preserve that.  So, there's an art to choosing, suggesting, and guiding kids to the right books.  I, for one, have the utmost respect for those librarians, teachers, parents, and others who practice that art.

Children's Literature, What's the Deal?

The following is an imagined conversation among the characters of Seinfeld.

Jerry: Children's Literature, what's the deal?

Elaine: What do you mean?  It's books for kids.

Jerry: Yeah, but can only kids read them?  What if I want to read one?  Is that not allowed?

Elaine: So, you're saying you want to read Dr. Seuss.  I say go ahead.

George: I love Dr. Seuss.

Kramer: (bursting through the door) Hey, did somebody say something about Dr. Seuss?

Imaginary Jerry brings up a good point.  What is the deal?  What is children's literature?  Infamous book snob (and critical genius) Harold Bloom, in the introduction to Stories and Poems for Extremely Intelligent Children of All Ages, says, "Most of what is now commercially offered as children's literature would be inadequate fare for any reader of any age at any time."  There he goes harping on about universality again, but his point is clear: there's a lot of junky books out there.  Assuming that imaginary Elaine is correct, that children's literature is simply books for kids, then what makes for good children's literature?  This is a question I'm eager to explore.  Tons of smart people (Bloom included) have plenty to say on the topic, but I'm curious about what you think.  

So, I've thought back to my own childhood, made a list of books that stand out in my memory, and I'd like you to do the same.  These are the books that I remember reading, or in a couple of instances remember them being read to me by a teacher.  I figure that's a pretty good measure of the impact the book had on me. I've skipped over the early childhood stuff, but feel free to include those in your own list.

• The Secret of NIMH, by Robert C. O'brien
• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, by Mark Twain
• The Mouse and the Motorcycle, by Beverly Cleary
• The Trumpet of the Swan, by E.B. White
• The Chronicles of Narnia, by C.S. Lewis
• The Hardy Boys series, by Franklin W. Dixon (pseudonym)
• The Phantom Tollbooth, by Norton Juster
• The Alligator and His Uncle Tooth, by Geoffrey Hayes
• Hatchet, by Gary Paulson
• They Whipping Boy, by Sid Fleischman

Please post a comment with your own "most memorable children's book" list.  Also, you can explore these books by checking out my list on Indiebound.

Elizabeth Bennet: the Anti Bella

After reading Twilight, I should have delved into something more manly to compensate, but that was not to be.  I had already decided on Pride and Prejudice as the second book for my novels class, my plan being to read it over the summer.  That didn't happen, so with all the false confidence I could muster, I announced to my students that I would be reading this book for the first time with them.  It's lame, it's embarrassing, it's probably terrible teaching.  We are now halfway through the book, and today we were discussing comparisons between Elizabeth Bennet and other fictional characters.  The class agreed that she was pretty much the opposite of Bella from Twilight, which was nice to hear.  In fact, compared to any other character, Elizabeth was smarter, more confident, and more outspoken.  I think that, as far as female characters I've read, only Shakespeare's Rosalind rivals her in those qualities.  One girl in my class compared her to Annabeth from the Percy Jackson & the Olympians series for the same reasons.  Another contemporary character who comes to my mind is Sam from The Perks of Being a Wallflower.

I am not an expert in feminist issues, and anything I try to say on the topic will only embarrass me, I'm sure.  I have been intrigued, however, by the responses I've heard to both Twilight and Pride and Prejudice.  Some women say that Twilight is bad because Bella is a terrible role model for girls, and some say that the series honestly captures the essence and emotional intensity of teenage romance.  Most women I know who have read Pride and Prejudice love it.  The girls in my novels class are expressing desires to go back in time and live the life of an 18th century, upper-class English girl, mostly for the balls and the gowns, but also for the simplicity of the lifestyle.  They do not, however, wish for the pressure of finding a well-to-do husband or for the social limitations.  I can't help but remember that one of the things that attracted Bella to Edward was his old world charm.  He spoke eloquently, danced gracefully, played piano, and was exceedingly polite.

I also can't help thinking of Chaucer's The Wife of Bath's Tale, in which a knight convicted of rape was given one year to answer the question, "What do women most desire?"  The answer was mastery over their husbands, but for my purposes in this post I'm not so much interested in Chaucer's answer as in the question itself.  The question is, itself, an oversimplification of the greatest degree, but it is, nonetheless, a question for which the books I'm involved in right now are positing some possible answers.  Bella wants romance, Charlotte Lucas wants security, Elizabeth will know it when she sees it, I think.  Of course, I know that she ends up with Mr. Darcy, but I don't know how yet.  So, don't ruin it for me because I'm actually enjoying this one.

Twilight

I just finished reading Twilight.  I made a deal with my novels class, "You read Dracula, I'll read Twilight."  I think most of them actually read it.  So here, in five words, are a 33-year-old man's thoughts on the infamous teen vampire romance: it's a teen vampire romance.  That's it.  As I told my class one day, "my problem is that I'm not a teenage girl."

I feel like I have no context by which to fairly judge this book, having never read a romance novel, but I'm going to judge it anyway.  Stephanie Meyer has obviously captured the imagination of millions of teenage girls of all ages, so she must doing something right.  For me, though, the book was a series of desperately hopeful build-ups, and awful let-downs.  I wanted it to be good, despite everything I'd heard, and honestly gave it a chance.  For the first 150 pages or so, I thought it was interesting, but only because I assumed it was going somewhere.  Alas, that was not to be.

I'll briefly list my chief complaints:
1. Vampires playing baseball during thunderstorms so they can literally hit the ball with a thunderous crack is the silliest thing I've ever read, and not the good kind of silly.
2. Everyone in this book, especially Bella, needs to eat more food.  Skipping lunch because your crush is mysteriously absent is a bad idea.
3. Every time I thought it was headed somewhere, that something was actually going to happen, all I got was more obsessing, more drooling over Edward.
4. A vampire sparkling in the sunlight of a secluded meadow, cuddling carefully with his human girlfriend is the most inane thing I've ever read.
5.  Will everyone please stop comparing this series to Harry Potter?  It is not at all the same sort of book, but as I was reading Twilight, I got so many questions and comments along those lines.

The worst thing about this book is that it is ALL about a lonely girl obsessing over a boy, mostly for his looks.  That's it.  Even the climax is disappointingly bogged down by pages and pages of Bella in a hotel room missing Edward, then being duped in a ridiculously simple way by her captor.

Finally, I'm not interested in the emotional complexities of loving a vampire.  By the end of the book, Bella wants to become a vampire.  She calls prom a "trite human thing."  Edward refuses to turn her into a "monster", which is supposed to demonstrate Edward's nobility, but somehow only makes him seem more self-indulgent.  The best literature, in my opinion, affirms our humanity while allowing us to escape our personal situation for a time.  Twilight, however, only affirms our desire to escape.

Kids in the 1820's

I am teaching a class on folklore this semester and have completely fallen in love with the stories of the Brothers Grimm.  Not only that, but my students have, too.  I was skeptical when I saw that my roster consisted of five guys and one girl, but I should not have been.   Seventeen-year-old guys love violence and gore, and the Brothers Grimm deliver both with a surprising and twisted sense of humor.  Stories like "The Robber Bridegroom" and "Fitcher's Bird" rival any current horror movie for shock factor.  Here's an example from the latter, translated by Maria Tatar in her delightfully titled book, The Grimm Reader:

"Imagine what she saw when she entered!  In the middle of the room there was a big basin full of blood, and in it there were chopped up pieces of dead bodies.  Next to the basin was a block of wood with a gleaming ax on it."

This is a children's story?!  I think one of my students put it best: "Kids in the 1820's were B.A."

I knew that Jacob and Wilhem had magically imbedded themselves somewhere deep in the Disney-dilluted collective cultural consciousness, and I had a hunch that by reading the raw original stories we could light up some long-dormant regions of our temporal lobes.  I'm delighted that it's working.  So far, we've worked on tracing motifs through the stories: the wicked stepmother, human-to-animal transformations, hidden identities, etc.  We've compared the Grimms' "Briar Rose" to Disney's Sleeping Beauty.  It's been fun, and I hope the good energy continues.

After The Grimm Reader, we'll be reading Yeats' Celtic Twilight, Favorite Folk Tales from Around the World (edited by Jane Yolen), and Legends and Tales of the American West (by Richard Erdoes).  Right now, though, I feel like I could linger with the Brothers Grimm all semester.  So, what do I love about them?  It's not the violence, although I can't imagine the stories without it.  It has something to do with the joy of knowing that when a certain element is at play, you know what's going to happen, but not how.  If there's a wolf, you know somebody's getting eaten, but how is the wolf going to trick them?  If there are any number of brothers and one younger sister, you know they're going to get turned into birds, or maybe a deer, and the sister is going to have to save them, but how?  At the end will the wicked stepmother be boiled in a barrel with poisonous snakes, or drug through the streets in a barrel studded with nails on the inside?

And there are always those out-of-nowhere, never-saw-it-coming moments that you can't help but laugh at, like when the young man enters hell and finds the devil's grandmother sitting in an easy chair.  It is in such moments that you can feel the oral tradition bleeding through the page.  You can imagine yourself in cottage in the black forest listening to some old woman spin the tale.  So, props to Tatar for a wonderful translation.

I'm looking forward to seeing where this semester goes.

So Brilliant, So Modern, It Makes Absolutely No Sense to Anyone

Waiting for Godot is a fun play.  Sure it's weird and confusing, and maybe pointless.  It's also sad, difficult, and uncomfortable.  Was it written for high school students to study?  Probably not.  Beckett, I think, just wanted to do something different, something loosely in the existentialist vein.  I think he nailed it, whatever "it" is.  He throws the absurdity of life right in your face, and you have to laugh or cry.  So, how do you approach this with students?  Well, first, you watch this video.

Then you get scripts, go outside, find a tree, and put it on.  Have students  take turns reading the few parts, and give them some direction as you go.  That's what I've done with my World Literature class so far.  Next, we're going to write our own parodies.  I'm aiming for them to see how the sense of humor in Godot has permeated popular culture in the last 60 years.  We'll see how it goes.  Right now, my students are laughing and enjoying themselves with this.  That, in itself, is worth a lot.

On Teaching Camus' The Stranger

How do you explain Existentialism to 17-year-olds?  I'll tell you how I did it, and you can tell me if I'm an idiot.  First, you write two quotes on the board:

 "We are not what we are."

"Existence preceeds essence."


You let them think you're crazy for a few minutes, then you ask if anyone's ever been really bored on a long car ride and starting asking themselves, "What is this thing I call 'me'?"  A couple of them say yes, and you ask them to explain.  Basically, once you take away all the stuff we usually use to describe ourselves, such as what movies we like, who our friends are, places we've visited, where we go to school or work, our opinions and beliefs, it's really hard to imagine what's at the core of all that.  We use words like "mind" and "soul", but we don't really know what those are, either.  So, then you write this on the board.

(in-itself) -------------------> (for-itself)

You explain that Jean-Paul Sartre calls that thing that is the real "me" the "in-itself."  The in-itself is pure individual existence.  All that other stuff, you know the Facebook-profile stuff, is the "for-itself."  The for-itself is a creation of the in-itself.  It's this ongoing project we call our identity.  It's what the in-itself throws out into the world in order to interact with it.  Most of the time, when we think about ourselves, this is what we think about, because of our situation.  Our situation is that we are individuals in constant interaction with the world around us.


This would be a good time to ask for questions or comments...proceed.

But when I really take time to reflect, I realize that I could decide, at any moment, to completely change the "for-itself."  Right now, I could walk out of this classroom, drive to California, and become a beach bum.  I'm totally free to do that.  There would be consequences, I would be hurting my family, but I could do it.  If I died right now, my obituary would say that I was a teacher.  "Teacher" would largely define the essence of who I was.  But if right now I drove to California and lived out my days as a beach bum, then "beach bum" would be in my obituary and largely define my essence.

Another break for questions and comments...proceed.

So you're completely free to change who you are, or to do anything you want, given that there are always consequences to your actions.  You're absolutely free and absolutely responsible.  Write on the board:

Freedom & Responsibility

Of course, none of it "means" anything.  You're born, you live your life choosing to do this or that, not to do this or that, you experience things, you die.  That's it.  Sartre and Camus were atheists, so according to them, there's no God to predetermine anything, give purpose to, justify, forgive, or reward anything.  How do you like that idea?

Most students say it sounds "depressing."

The word Sartre used was "nausea."  To confront the reality of your existence is a nauseating thing, but we must do it in order to live "authentically."  To live authentically is to choose to commit to our own "project", to the creation of the "self" that creates "meaning" for itself in an honest way.

Now you have have a room full of 17-year-old brains that, though they've only recently acquired the capacity for abstract thought, are ready to read The Stranger and have their own existential crises!  What fun!

Beastie Bards

I was surprised today, though perhaps I shouldn't have been, to find that The Beastie Boys are masters of iambic pentameter. We had read Shakespeare's Sonnet 18 ("Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?") and were practicing writing our own ten-syllable-with-every-other-one-stressed lines when one young man says, "Can I use lyrics from a song?"
I say, "yes," and he blows me away with the concluding line of "Paul Revere."

"I grab two girlies and a beer that's cold."

Perfect iambic pentameter. Of course, this led to more Beastie Boys lines being bantered about, but, sadly, all from License to Ill. I try desperately to explain why Ill Communication is a far superior album, but they're not having it. Oh, well.