SILLY, BUT SO WHAT?

I have found a new way to enjoy "Hawaii Five-O." I have finally realized that it is a comic book, a live cartoon. It's a lot more fun if you realize it isn't realistic.

Trouble is, sometimes it is realistic. It's a mix of silliness and believable cop drama. Oh, well. I have decided to just enjoy it as a cartoon.

So what if Steve doesn't know how to rappel or how to climb a rope and Danny doesn't know how to belay?

So what if the plots are full of holes?

So what if the whole Wo Fat story-line is way too far over the top?

So what if a bad guy parachutes out of an airplane for no good reason?

So what if another bad guy steals the cops' hot Camaro, making our heroes look like fools?

Who cares? Don't think too much, just have fun. Enjoy the surf and sea and sand and hot cars and hot babes and sometimes mindless action. That's my new motto.

So far, so good. We'll see how long that lasts.

-- Roger

Copyright © 2012, Roger R. Angle

GULLIBLE'S TRAVELS

I hate to admit it, but I am a big fan of pop culture. Pop fiction. Pop movies. Pop TV shows. When they make sense. When they have a brain. The trouble with most of them is that they are mixed bags. Partly fun and partly dumb.

I recently watched the entire first season of Hawaii Five-O, and it gets progressively more stupid and less believable as it goes on. Who is this series for? I can't figure out their demographic, i.e., their target audience.

(SPOILER ALERT)

At the end of Season One, Steve McGarrett, our ex-Navy SEAL hero -- Can anyone be more heroic than that? Especially now? -- suspects that the governor, who hired him and set him up to lead Five-O, has had her assistant killed, and that the assistant, a lovely woman who likes one of his cops, was sending Steve evidence from his late father's case, evidence that could lead Steve to his father's killer.

Yes, it is very convoluted and not very believable. I presume the point is to keep us jacked up, to keep us in suspense. But it doesn't work that way for me. I start laughing when it gets too ridiculous.

How does Wo Fat (the big bad guy) know McGarrett is there? What is Wo Fat doing in the governor's mansion? Does he live there? It doesn't make any sense. He just shows up, out of the blue, or out of the night, and zaps Steve with a taser, knocks him him, picks up his gun and shoots the governor, then puts the gun in Steve's hand, presumably so Steve's fingerprints will be on the gun.

But wait. Isn't Steve wearing gloves? How is it that Steve doesn't hear Wo Fat come in or sense his presence? Isn't Steve highly trained? The scene has McGarrett stupid and vulnerable for the sake of the plot.

So the story doesn't work on its own terms. I don't know if I can keep watching. It is so hard to find movies and TV shows that are not idiotic. Maybe I'll keep watching. If I can.

Today, I'm trying to watch the next episode, where Steve is in prison, and the guards conspire to let in his father's killer, who tries to kill Steve.

Wait! Say what? How the hell did that happen?

I wouldn't say the show is stupid, but it does assume that the audience is not going to question its credibility, that the audience is going to be exceptionally gullible.

I think I'm going to call it "GULLIBLE'S TRAVELS." 

For me, the lack of believability takes the fun out of it.

-- Roger

Copyright © 2012, Roger R. Angle

BEST STORIES, REALLY?

I finally finished trying to struggle through THE BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES of 2010, edited by Richard Russo, who is a fairly well known writer.

If these are the best, I'd hate to see the worst.

As I said before, on Dec. 28, I loved the first story, by Steve Almond, about a shrink who is a compulsive and self-destructive gambler. It was great, the most fun I've had reading a short story in years.

I have waded through the first pages of all the rest, but have not found one that I liked. I did read a couple more all the way through. But I can't even remember them. 

Not one of the rest made me care, and that is the first job of the writer, to make the reader care. If the reader doesn't care -- about the characters, the story, the dilemma, the story problem, the writing, or something -- you have failed. The reader is not going to read on.

Life is too short, and we are way too busy.

As I used to tell my reporters, when I was the editor of a weekly newspaper, the first question any reader asks himself/herself is, 'Why should I give a damn?'

The best way to answer that question is to show the central character in motion, trying to cope with a moral dilemma or serious problem. The first opening that comes to mind is Shakespeare's Hamlet: "Who's there?"

Then we find Hamlet, essentially a college-age boy who comes home from abroad and finds that apparently his uncle has murdered Hamlet's father, the king, and married his mother, the queen.

Now what the hell does he do? Therein lies a tale, as they say.

There is a lot of competition out there, and as a writer you should meet it head-on, with all guns blazing. Don't come half-steppin', and don't be firin' blanks.

Otherwise, the reader is going to drift away, or run away. As my old acting coach, Alex Bruhansky, used to say, "You can do anything, but you can't be boring."

-- Roger

Copyright © 2012, Roger R. Angle

NEW YOUNG WRITERS: YARGH!

I can't believe it. I've spent my life--I'm 73--trying to master my craft as a poet, writer and novelist, and these young people come along and they are not even playing the same game.

Their rules are different, if they have any, and so are their sensibilities.

Take a look at Amelia Gray, soon to have a new novel out by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in March: http://vimeo.com/19614728

Here are three quotes from "Threats" (these are apparently notes from a wife who is leaving her husband):

"I am testing for structural weakness in your skull.... I will hold my finger half an inch away from your left eye until the end of days.... I will lock you in a room that looks very much like your own until it begins to fill with water...."

I can't believe it. This seems to be performance writing. I don't get the appeal. On that video, people are laughing and cheering, like this is great stuff, as if this is enlightening, as if it expresses their own feelings. But the writing seems shallow and superficial and tossed-off, without thought or craft or any intention at deeper meaning.

I can't believe professional editors at a major publishing house are spending time and money on this writing and putting their reputation behind it. Amazing.

It reminds me of “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” by Jonathan Safran Foer, a novel that I hated. It has now become a big-time movie. Here are my notes, from when I first tried to read it:

Extremely erudite and incredibly clever, at first, then too clever for its own good. I loved it for 18 pages, then the meta-fictional elements started to turn me off. Oh, it is so, so, so damn clever. A brilliant 10-year-old who speaks French and turns everything into an intellectual game tries to deal with his grief. The series of pages with just a phrase on each one breaks the “fourth-wall” illusion that is necessary to fiction. The photo of the doorknob is so tedious, boring, and banal.

Yes, this novel is clever, in a way, but it’s so pleased with its own cleverness that it becomes boring and stupid. Sorry, Mr. Foer, wrong number. I lasted about 75 pages. It got to be a chore to read, not a pleasure, which is what fiction is all about. I’m not the right reader for this kind of book. You need a left-brain person who is tickled to be in on the joke. I get it, but I don’t care.

Where does this leave old writers like myself? I have no clue. Maybe the world is just moving on. I am reminded of a scene in a movie, "No Country For Old Men":

"You can't stop what's coming. It ain't all waiting on you..."

It isn't all waiting on me, that's for sure.

-- Roger

BEST SHORT STORY IN 100 YEARS

Today I read the best short story I have read in a 100 years: Steve Almond’s “Donkey Greedy, Donkey Gets Punched” in The Best American Short Stories, 2010.

It's about a shrink who is a compulsive and addicted gambler, a poker player. I could not believe how good it is. It has everything: internal and external conflict, writing style, mixed and complex sympathies, insight into characters and the world and human nature, rising tension, great climax.

Wow. I am always looking for good writing, and it is hard to come by. This one is a winner, at least for me. If the rest of the stories in this collection are as good, I will buy this book. And that is really rare.

More later, as I read along.

-- Roger

Copyright © 2011, Roger R. Angle  

CRAP ART

I read in Newsweek the other day (Dec. 12, Page 54) that the so-called artist Paul McCarthy "sold three copies of White Snow Dwarf (Bashful) at this year's Art Basel Miami Beach for $950,000--each."
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/12/04/why-is-art-so-damned-expensive.html

My God! How stupid can you get? Why would anyone make this crap? And why would anyone buy it, let alone pay nearly a million dollars for such junk?

I try not to use the word stupid when it comes to other people's creative work.

But this takes the cake. It is off the charts.

These figures are not remotely original, and originality is one of the hallmarks of anything creative. Look at the great artists, musicians and writers: Shakespeare, Leonardo da Vinci, Faulkner, Cormac McCarthy, Mozart, Bach, Goya, Georgia O'Keefe, and on and on.
http://totallyhistory.com/art-history/famous-artists/

Their work is original and meaningful, not derivative and meaningless.

My God. What a bunch of crap. Makes me sick.

-- Roger

A WRITER'S CURSE

I am still trying to find motivation to do my work, my writing.

I realized something the last day or two: If I’m going to finish any of these projects, I am going to have to work at it. The stuff is not going to write itself. I’ve been waiting, and it ain’t happenin’, folks.

I hate that. I never used to work at it. I just did it, because I enjoyed it, because I had to do it, for some reason, and the work swept me away. I got lost in it.

Sometimes these days I get lost in it. But not often, not every day. The work has become work, for some reason.

I'm gonna have to put my shoulder to the wheel, my nose to the grindstone, my butt in the chair and my fingers on the keyboard.

Damn, it has come to this. I hate that. I want it to be fun, like it used to be.

As William Faulkner said: 

“It's a shame that the only thing a man can do for eight hours a day is work. He can't eat for eight hours; he can't drink for eight hours; he can't make love for eight hours. The only thing a man can do for eight hours is work.”

And this from William Butler Yeats:

"A line will take us hours maybe;
Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought,
Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.
Better go down upon your marrow-bones
And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones
Like an old pauper, in all kinds of weather;
For to articulate sweet sounds together
Is to work harder than all these, and yet
Be thought an idler by the noisy set
Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen
The martyrs call the world."

Amen to that, brothers.  

-- Roger

Copyright © 2011, Roger R. Angle